Showing posts with label Operation Northwoods. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Operation Northwoods. Show all posts

Sunday 13 July 2014

1963


ARM’D year! year of the struggle! 

No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you, terrible year! 

Not you as some pale poetling, seated at a desk, lisping cadenzas piano; 

But as a strong man, erect, clothed in blue clothes, advancing, 
carrying a rifle on your shoulder...


"For the very first time ever, When they had a revolution in Nicaragua,
There was no interference from America - Human rights in America
Well the people fought the leader, And up he flew...
With no Washington bullets, what else could he do?

And in the Bay of Pigs in 1961, Havana fought the playboys in the Cuban sun,
For Castro is a colour, is redder than red, Those Washington bullets want Castro dead.

For Castro is the colour...That will earn you a spray of lead..."


“Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt”


Measure for Measure
Act I, Scene IV


For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground,
And tell sad stories of the death of kings:
How some have been depos'd, some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos'd;
Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd — for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king,
Keeps Death his court: and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp;
Allowing him a breath, a little scene
To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks;
Infusing him with self and vain conceit —
As if this flesh, which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable — and, humour'd thus,
Comes at the last, and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and — farewell king!

Richard II, Act III - Scene II

Sunday 13 October 2013

Kennedy and Nixon


"People forget China, and your War on Cancer,
Yea, they all betrayed you,
And your country, too..."




"The Watergate break-in of 1972 (in which, I have always been convinced, Nixon was not so much a guilty perpetrator as a guilty victim) followed Nixon's secret negotiations with Hanoi for disengagement from Vietnam, significantly advanced by his May 1972 visit to Moscow, where he signed the first Strategic Arms Limitation Agreement."

- Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1993)





The Hegelian Dialectic of 20th Century History.

The National Security State creates it's own Manichean duality, objects of ego identification and vilification.



Thesis: One ruler + one territory 
(Oriental despotism)

Antithesis: Many rulers + many territories 
(Greco-Roman democracy and aristocracy)

Synthesis: One ruler + many territories 
(Prussia, or Hegel's Germanic monarchy)



Thesis: One ruler + one territory 
(Unipolar - American Exceptionalism)

Antithesis: Many rulers + many territories 
(Tripolar - Kissinger's Triple Detente )

Synthesis: One ruler + many territories 
(NeoLiberalism and the Global Balkans)

=
New World Order


The Love of Richard Nixon from Spike1138 on Vimeo.

The love of Richard Nixon, death without assassination
The love of Richard Nixon, yeah they all betrayed you
The love of Richard Nixon, death without assassination
Yeah they all betrayed you
Yeah and your country too

The love of Richard Nixon, death without assassination
The love of Richard Nixon, yeah they all betrayed you
People forget China and your war on cancer
Yeah they all betrayed you
Yeah and your country too

"In all the decisions I have made in my public life
I have always tried to do what was best for the nation"

"I have never been a quitter."







MEMO FROM THE NATIONAL AFFAIRS DESK

DATE: MAY 1, 1994
FROM: DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON
SUBJECT: THE DEATH OF RICHARD NIXON: NOTES ON THE PASSING OF AN AMERICAN MONSTER.... HE WAS A LIAR AND A QUITTER, AND HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN BURIED AT SEA.... BUT HE WAS, AFTER ALL, THE PRESIDENT.

"And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird."
---Revelation 18:2

Richard Nixon is gone now, and I am poorer for it. He was the real thing -- a political monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time. He lied to his friends and betrayed the trust of his family. Not even Gerald Ford, the unhappy ex-president who pardoned Nixon and kept him out of prison, was immune to the evil fallout. Ford, who believes strongly in Heaven and Hell, has told more than one of his celebrity golf partners that "I know I will go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon."

I have had my own bloody relationship with Nixon for many years, but I am not worried about it landing me in hell with him. I have already been there with that bastard, and I am a better person for it. Nixon had the unique ability to make his enemies seem honorable, and we developed a keen sense of fraternity. Some of my best friends have hated Nixon all their lives. My mother hates Nixon, my son hates Nixon, I hate Nixon, and this hatred has brought us together.

Nixon laughed when I told him this. "Don't worry," he said, "I, too, am a family man, and we feel the same way about you."

It was Richard Nixon who got me into politics, and now that he's gone, I feel lonely. He was a giant in his way. As long as Nixon was politically alive -- and he was, all the way to the end -- we could always be sure of finding the enemy on the Low Road. There was no need to look anywhere else for the evil bastard. He had the fighting instincts of a badger trapped by hounds. The badger will roll over on its back and emit a smell of death, which confuses the dogs and lures them in for the traditional ripping and tearing action. But it is usually the badger who does the ripping and tearing. It is a beast that fights best on its back: rolling under the throat of the enemy and seizing it by the head with all four claws.


That was Nixon's style -- and if you forgot, he would kill you as a lesson to the others. Badgers don't fight fair, bubba. That's why God made dachshunds.

Nixon was a navy man, and he should have been buried at sea. Many of his friends were seagoing people: Bebe Rebozo, Robert Vesco, William F. Buckley Jr., and some of them wanted a full naval burial.

These come in at least two styles, however, and Nixon's immediate family strongly opposed both of them. In the traditionalist style, the dead president's body would be wrapped and sewn loosely in canvas sailcloth and dumped off the stern of a frigate at least 100 miles off the coast and at least 1,000 miles south of San Diego, so the corpse could never wash up on American soil in any recognizable form.

The family opted for cremation until they were advised of the potentially onerous implications of a strictly private, unwitnessed burning of the body of the man who was, after all, the President of the United States. Awkward questions might be raised, dark allusions to Hitler and Rasputin. People would be filing lawsuits to get their hands on the dental charts. Long court battles would be inevitable -- some with liberal cranks bitching about corpus delicti and habeas corpus and others with giant insurance companies trying not to pay off on his death benefits. Either way, an orgy of greed and duplicity was sure to follow any public hint that Nixon might have somehow faked his own death or been cryogenically transferred to fascist Chinese interests on the Central Asian Mainland.

It would also play into the hands of those millions of self-stigmatized patriots like me who believe these things already.

If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.





These are harsh words for a man only recently canonized by President Clinton and my old friend George McGovern -- but I have written worse things about Nixon, many times, and the record will show that I kicked him repeatedly long before he went down. I beat him like a mad dog with mange every time I got a chance, and I am proud of it. He was scum.

Let there be no mistake in the history books about that. Richard Nixon was an evil man -- evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency. Nobody trusted him -- except maybe the Stalinist Chinese, and honest historians will remember him mainly as a rat who kept scrambling to get back on the ship.

It is fitting that Richard Nixon's final gesture to the American people was a clearly illegal series of 21 105-mm howitzer blasts that shattered the peace of a residential neighborhood and permanently disturbed many children. Neighbors also complained about another unsanctioned burial in the yard at the old Nixon place, which was brazenly illegal. "It makes the whole neighborhood like a graveyard," said one. "And it fucks up my children's sense of values."

Many were incensed about the howitzers -- but they knew there was nothing they could do about it -- not with the current president sitting about 50 yards away and laughing at the roar of the cannons. It was Nixon's last war, and he won.

The funeral was a dreary affair, finely staged for TV and shrewdly dominated by ambitious politicians and revisionist historians. The Rev. Billy Graham, still agile and eloquent at the age of 136, was billed as the main speaker, but he was quickly upstaged by two 1996 GOP presidential candidates: Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas and Gov. Pete Wilson of California, who formally hosted the event and saw his poll numbers crippled when he got blown off the stage by Dole, who somehow seized the No. 3 slot on the roster and uttered such a shameless, self-serving eulogy that even he burst into tears at the end of it.

Dole's stock went up like a rocket and cast him as the early GOP front-runner for '96. Wilson, speaking next, sounded like an Engelbert Humperdinck impersonator and probably won't even be re-elected as governor of California in November.

The historians were strongly represented by the No. 2 speaker, Henry Kissinger, Nixon's secretary of state and himself a zealous revisionist with many axes to grind. He set the tone for the day with a maudlin and spectacularly self-serving portrait of Nixon as even more saintly than his mother and as a president of many godlike accomplishments -- most of them put together in secret by Kissinger, who came to California as part of a huge publicity tour for his new book on diplomacy, genius, Stalin, H. P. Lovecraft and other great minds of our time, including himself and Richard Nixon.

Kissinger was only one of the many historians who suddenly came to see Nixon as more than the sum of his many squalid parts. He seemed to be saying that History will not have to absolve Nixon, because he has already done it himself in a massive act of will and crazed arrogance that already ranks him supreme, along with other Nietzschean supermen like Hitler, Jesus, Bismarck and the Emperor Hirohito. These revisionists have catapulted Nixon to the status of an American Caesar, claiming that when the definitive history of the 20th century is written, no other president will come close to Nixon in stature. "He will dwarf FDR and Truman," according to one scholar from Duke University.

It was all gibberish, of course. Nixon was no more a Saint than he was a Great President. He was more like Sammy Glick than Winston Churchill. He was a cheap crook and a merciless war criminal who bombed more people to death in Laos and Cambodia than the U.S. Army lost in all of World War II, and he denied it to the day of his death. When students at Kent State University, in Ohio, protested the bombing, he connived to have them attacked and slain by troops from the National Guard.

Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism -- which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.

Nixon's meteoric rise from the unemployment line to the vice presidency in six quick years would never have happened if TV had come along 10 years earlier. He got away with his sleazy "my dog Checkers" speech in 1952 because most voters heard it on the radio or read about it in the headlines of their local, Republican newspapers. When Nixon finally had to face the TV cameras for real in the 1960 presidential campaign debates, he got whipped like a red-headed mule. Even die-hard Republican voters were shocked by his cruel and incompetent persona. Interestingly, most people who heard those debates on the radio thought Nixon had won. But the mushrooming TV audience saw him as a truthless used-car salesman, and they voted accordingly. It was the first time in 14 years that Nixon lost an election.

When he arrived in the White House as VP at the age of 40, he was a smart young man on the rise -- a hubris-crazed monster from the bowels of the American dream with a heart full of hate and an overweening lust to be President. He had won every office he'd run for and stomped like a Nazi on all of his enemies and even some of his friends.



Nixon had no friends except George Will and J. Edgar Hoover (and they both deserted him). It was Hoover's shameless death in 1972 that led directly to Nixon's downfall. He felt helpless and alone with Hoover gone. He no longer had access to either the Director or the Director's ghastly bank of Personal Files on almost everybody in Washington.

Hoover was Nixon's right flank, and when he croaked, Nixon knew how Lee felt when Stonewall Jackson got killed at Chancellorsville. It permanently exposed Lee's flank and led to the disaster at Gettysburg.

For Nixon, the loss of Hoover led inevitably to the disaster of Watergate. It meant hiring a New Director -- who turned out to be an unfortunate toady named L. Patrick Gray, who squealed like a pig in hot oil the first time Nixon leaned on him. Gray panicked and fingered White House Counsel John Dean, who refused to take the rap and rolled over, instead, on Nixon, who was trapped like a rat by Dean's relentless, vengeful testimony and went all to pieces right in front of our eyes on TV.

That is Watergate, in a nut, for people with seriously diminished attention spans. The real story is a lot longer and reads like a textbook on human treachery. They were all scum, but only Nixon walked free and lived to clear his name. Or at least that's what Bill Clinton says -- and he is, after all, the President of the United States.

Nixon liked to remind people of that. He believed it, and that was why he went down. He was not only a crook but a fool. Two years after he quit, he told a TV journalist that "if the president does it, it can't be illegal."


Shit. Not even Spiro Agnew was that dumb. He was a flat-out, knee-crawling thug with the morals of a weasel on speed. But he was Nixon's vice president for five years, and he only resigned when he was caught red-handed taking cash bribes across his desk in the White House.

Unlike Nixon, Agnew didn't argue. He quit his job and fled in the night to Baltimore, where he appeared the next morning in U.S. District Court, which allowed him to stay out of prison for bribery and extortion in exchange for a guilty (no contest) plea on income-tax evasion. After that he became a major celebrity and played golf and tried to get a Coors distributorship. He never spoke to Nixon again and was an unwelcome guest at the funeral. They called him Rude, but he went anyway. It was one of those Biological Imperatives, like salmon swimming up waterfalls to spawn before they die. He knew he was scum, but it didn't bother him.

Agnew was the Joey Buttafuoco of the Nixon administration, and Hoover was its Caligula. They were brutal, brain-damaged degenerates worse than any hit man out of The Godfather, yet they were the men Richard Nixon trusted most. Together they defined his Presidency.

It would be easy to forget and forgive Henry Kissinger of his crimes, just as he forgave Nixon. Yes, we could do that -- but it would be wrong. Kissinger is a slippery little devil, a world-class hustler with a thick German accent and a very keen eye for weak spots at the top of the power structure. Nixon was one of those, and Super K exploited him mercilessly, all the way to the end.

Kissinger made the Gang of Four complete: Agnew, Hoover, Kissinger and Nixon. A group photo of these perverts would say all we need to know about the Age of Nixon.

Nixon's spirit will be with us for the rest of our lives -- whether you're me or Bill Clinton or you or Kurt Cobain or Bishop Tutu or Keith Richards or Amy Fisher or Boris Yeltsin's daughter or your fiancee's 16-year-old beer-drunk brother with his braided goatee and his whole life like a thundercloud out in front of him. This is not a generational thing. You don't even have to know who Richard Nixon was to be a victim of his ugly, Nazi spirit.

He has poisoned our water forever. Nixon will be remembered as a classic case of a smart man shitting in his own nest. But he also shit in our nests, and that was the crime that history will burn on his memory like a brand. By disgracing and degrading the Presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream.


Copyright © 1994 by Hunter S. Thompson. All rights reserved.
Originally published in 
Rolling Stone, June 16, 1994.



9/11!

Saturday 12 October 2013

9/11: The Plot to Kill Ted Kennedy


"I see these bumper-stickers everywhere: 'Bush Knew!' 

This is an oxymoron.

Bush knows nothing."

- Webster G. Tarpley

It is therefore extremely significant that the Shadow Government attempted to murder his wife on the day of 9/11.



There has been endless debate as to what really took place and what really happened regarding Flight United 93.

What cannot be denied, however was that there was a plane-like object in-bound to Washington DC that never made it to to it's intended target.

Many have stated as blase fact that it was inbound to the White House - in the event of a Fascist NeoCon coup, however, all the Liberals and moderate Republicans were in the US Capitol and all the PNAC boys were at the White House in the bunker (with McCain, Jesse Helms and the others on-board the Doomsday Plane, heading for NORAD in Colorado.)

No one bothered to evacuate the Capitol - the First Lady, Ted Kennedy, Daschele, Lehey, Levin, Paul Wellstone and the rest were left up on Capitol Hill - like sitting ducks.



This also highlights another key point - if the planes are fake, and the people on the planes are either fake or not dead.... Those first two planes took off from Boston Logan International.

This meant that Ted Kennedy probably spent most of the remainder of his life talking with Crisis Actors.

And in the immediate, post 9/11 world, the legislative effectiveness of both the Junior and Senior Senator from Massachusetts was completely neutralised.

What would have been the chances of John Kerry in 2004 embracing the cause of 9/11 Truth if to do so meant ostensibly attacking his own constituents...?

What's vital to glean from this is at a time AFTER the Pentagon was hit, when Cheney and Norman Manetta are in the White House bunker, allowing the Flight 77 decoy to approach DC, at a point where "there are other planes in the air", and the US Capitol was an obvious target, the senior living Kennedy Family member, who is IN the Capitol, in the presence of Secret Service agents and Laura Bush's protection detail are doing absolutely NOTHING.

The Secret Service have EXTREMELY good and extensive secure Comms and this would have been exactly around the time of the "ANGEL IS NEXT" flash message to the fleeing Air Force One - I don't know what the protocol for protecting the First Lady would be, whether they pick her up and take her to the Bunker to wait with Cheney and his wife, but whatever it was - they weren't doing it.







White House Continuity of Government Plan
Since the days of the Cold War, the United States has had a plan in place to continue the operation of the government following a catastrophic attack on the nation's capital. Because of its sensitive nature, details from the classified "Continuity of Government Plan" have been kept secret, even from Members of the House Homeland Security Committee. As further proof that the Obama Administration is the most open and transparent in history, the White House has decided to brief the American People on this important program.

National Continuity Plan

The 2007 "National Security Presidential Directive 51" directs the geographic dispersion of leadership, staff, and infrastructure in order to maintain the functions of the United States Government in the event the nation’s capital is “decapitated” by a terrorist attack.

Buried deep within the 98-page National Continuity Plan is the strategy for the mass evacuation and relocation of every federal government agency including The White House and the military in response to an exceptional catastrophic event within the National Capital Region. Each agency is required to have a detailed Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP) in place.

The Shadow Government
Following a catastrophic national emergency, the President, or his successor can authorize the establishment of a temporary "shadow government" to maintain control of the essential functions of the Federal Government. President Bush activated the shadow government on September 11, 2001 shortly after the second attack on the World Trade Center.

Every federal agency has designated key individuals to be part of an "Emergency Relocation Group". These ERGs are assigned to an alternate secure location on a rotating basis and are ready to take over the duty of supporting the National Essential Functions of this nation in an emergency.

Presidential Line of Succession

The Presidential Succession Act of 1947 sets the order of Presidential Succession. This order is followed if the President dies or is incapacitated. The order of cabinet officers included in the list is determined by the dates on which each of their positions was created:

Vice President
Speaker of the House
President pro tempore of the Senate
Secretary of State
Secretary of Treasury
Secretary of Defense
Attorney General
Secretary of the Interior
Secretary of Agriculture
Secretary of Commerce
Secretary of Labor
Secretary of Health and Human Services
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
Secretary of Transportation
Secretary of Energy
Secretary of Education
Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Secretary of Homeland Security


Orders of succession are also established for each of above Cabinet officials within their own departments. Ten successors residing within the National Capital Region (NCR) and three successors outside the NCR are identified for all executive departments and agencies. Here is an example of a 2013 Secretarial Order of Succession.

Tracking Individuals in the Presidential Line of Succession
In the past, FEMA maintained the Central Locator System (CLS), which tracked the 24-hour movements of key government officials. This legacy system has been replaced by the Internet Protocol Locator (IPL). A real-time tracking system is incorporated into IPL to identify the location of key officials at all times using Location Based Services (LBS) available from cellular phones and GPS devices implanted in wearable accessories such as pins, earrings, and wristwatches. There are 24/7 Observer Stations responsible for monitoring the status of each key government official to determine his or her location in the event of an emergency.

Evacuating the Presidential Line of Succession
The U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) is responsible for evacuating government officials under the guidance of the classified Concept of Operations Plan CONPLAN 3600: Emergency Preparedness in the National Capital Region. The executive agency and department heads would be transported to classified locations around the country above ground, below ground, and at sea. An Emergency Action Alert sent by the FEMA Alternate National Warning Center in Olney would direct the 1st Helicopter Squadron from Andrews Air Force Base to the Capitol to evacuate the top congressional leaders to the Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center.

http://whitehouse.gov1.info/continuity-plan/index.html



Shortly before 10 am on the morning of September 11, 2001, amid rumors of a fourth hijacked plane headed for Washington, DC, a mystery aircraft appeared in restricted airspace over the White House. There has never been an official explanation for this incident, which has provided abundant fuel for 9/11 conspiracy theories.

CNN has now learned from two government sources that the mystery plane was a military aircraft and has determined that the blurry image on video appears to match photos of the Air Force's E-4B (discussed here on Wikipedia), a specially modified Boeing 747 with a communications pod behind the cockpit.

"The E-4B is a state of the art flying command post," CNN explained, "built and equipped for one reason -- to keep the government running no matter what, even in the event of a nuclear war, the reason it was nicknamed the 'doomsday plane' during the Cold War."

9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton told CNN he was aware of the incident and that it had simply never seemed important enough to make it into the commission's report. He called conspiracy theories involving government complicity in 9/11 "ludicrous."

The plane was previously identified as the E-4B a year ago by one researcher on a forum associated with the 9/11 conspiracy film, Loose Change.

CNN acknowledges that, despite its identification, the absence of the aircraft from official investigations, together with the Pentagon's denial that it was a military plane and the insistence by the Pentagon, Secret Service, and FAA that they have no explanation for the incident, may continue to raise suspicions.

The above video is from CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, broadcast on September 12.

JFK: American University Commencment Speech: A Strategy of Peace - June 10th 1963


JFK: American University Commencment Speech: A Strategy of Peace - June 10th 1963 from Spike1138 on Vimeo.


At American University on June 10, 1963, President Kennedy proposed an end to the Cold War.”

Khrushchev called the American University Address “the greatest speech by any American President since Roosevelt.”

To work his way out of the arms race (and free from the kind of dilemma that arose from his science advisor knowing more about nuclear war, even its strategy, than his Defense Secretary), Kennedy decided to create a series of peace initiatives. He began with the American University address, the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, National Security Action Memorandum 263 withdrawing U.S. troops from Vietnam, and a covert dialogue with Fidel Castro.

During his final months in office, he went further. Compelled by the near-holocaust of the Missile Crisis, he tried to transcend the government’s (and his own) disastrous Cold War assumptions by taking a visionary stand for general and complete disarmament.

On May 6, 1963, President Kennedy issued National Security Action Memorandum Number 239, ordering his principal national security advisers to pursue both a nuclear test ban and a policy of general and complete disarmament. . . .

Marcus Raskin has commented on the meaning of this document: “The President said, ‘Look we’ve really got to figure out how to get out of this arms race. This is just impossible. Give me a plan, the first stage at least of how we’re going to get out of the arms race.’

“This would be a 30% cut of arms. Then move from that stage to the next stage. He was into that. There’s no question about it.”

In the three paragraphs of NSAM 239, Kennedy uses the phrase “general and complete disarmament” four times—twice in the opening paragraph, once each in the final two paragraphs. It is clearly the central focus of the order he is issuing.

The president’s accompanying, secondary emphasis is on “a nuclear test ban treaty,” which he mentions three times. It is his secondary focus that shows just how strongly he is committed to to NSAM 239’s higher priority, general and complete disarmament. For we know that in the three months after NSAM 239 was issued, JFK concentrated his energy on negotiating a nuclear test ban agreement with Khrushchev, a goal he accomplished.`

General and complete disarmament is the more ambitious project in which he says he wants immediate steps to be taken: “an urgent re-examination of the possibilities of new approaches to significant measures short of general and complete disarmament,” such as the 30 percent cut in arms mentioned by Raskin.

In his American University address the following month, he reiterates: “Our primary long-range interest [in the Geneva talks] is general and complete disarmament—designed to take place by stages, permitting parallel political developments to build the new institutions of peace which would take the place of arms.
The American University address and the test ban treaty opened the door to the long-range project that was necessary for the survival of humanity in the nuclear age. The test ban treaty was JFK’s critically important way to initiate with Khrushchev the end of the Cold War and their joint leadership in the United Nations for the redemptive process of general and complete disarmament.

In NSAM 239, Kennedy said why he was prepared to pursue such a radical program: “the events of the last two years have increased my concerns for the consequences of an un-checked continuation of the arms race between ourselves and the Soviet bloc.”

Having been shaken and enlightened by the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy had the courage to recognize, as head of the most disastrously armed nation in history, that humanity could not survive the nuclear age unless the United States was willing to lead the world to general and complete disarmament.

“You believe in redemption don’t you?” Kennedy said to his Quaker visitors. As usual, his irony told the truth and doubled back on himself. Ted Sorenson observed that when it came to disarmament, “The President underwent a degree of redemption himself.”

- Jim Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable

Friday 11 October 2013

SCADS - State Crimes Against Democracy




This document caused quite a stir when it was discovered in 1977


Dated 4/1/67, and marked "DESTROY WHEN NO LONGER NEEDED", this document is a stunning testimony to how concerned the CIA was over investigations into the Kennedy assassination. 

Emphasis has been added to facilitate scanning.


CIA Document #1035-960, marked "PSYCH" for presumably Psychological Warfare Operations, in the division "CS", the Clandestine Services, sometimes known as the "dirty tricks" department.


RE: Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report 

1. Our Concern. From the day of President Kennedy's assassination on, there has been speculation about the responsibility for his murder. Although this was stemmed for a time by the Warren Commission report, (which appeared at the end of September 1964), various writers have now had time to scan the Commission's published report and documents for new pretexts for questioning, and there has been a new wave of books and articles criticizing the Commission's findings. In most cases the critics have speculated as to the existence of some kind of conspiracy, and often they have implied that the Commission itself was involved. Presumably as a result of the increasing challenge to the Warren Commission's report, a public opinion poll recently indicated that 46% of the American public did not think that Oswald acted alone, while more than half of those polled thought that the Commission had left some questions unresolved. Doubtless polls abroad would show similar, or possibly more adverse results.

2. This trend of opinion is a matter of concern to the U.S. government, including our organization. The members of the Warren Commission were naturally chosen for their integrity, experience and prominence. They represented both major parties, and they and their staff were deliberately drawn from all sections of the country. Just because of the standing of the Commissioners, efforts to impugn their rectitude and wisdom tend to cast doubt on the whole leadership of American society. Moreover, there seems to be an increasing tendency to hint that President Johnson himself, as the one person who might be said to have benefited, was in some way responsible for the assassination. Innuendo of such seriousness affects not only the individual concerned, but also the whole reputation of the American government. Our organization itself is directly involved: among other facts, we contributed information to the investigation. Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us. The aim of this dispatch is to provide material countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims in other countries. Background information is supplied in a classified section and in a number of unclassified attachments.

3. Action. We do not recommend that discussion of the assassination question be initiated where it is not already taking place. Where discussion is active addresses are requested:

a. To discuss the publicity problem with and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors) , pointing out that the Warren Commission made as thorough an investigation as humanly possible, that the charges of the critics are without serious foundation, and that further speculative discussion only plays into the hands of the opposition. Point out also that parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists. Urge them to use their influence to discourage unfounded and irresponsible speculation.

b. To employ propaganda assets to and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. The unclassified attachments to this guidance should provide useful background material for passing to assets. Our ploy should point out, as applicable, that the critics are (I) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (II) politically interested, (III) financially interested, (IV) hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (V) infatuated with their own theories. In the course of discussions of the whole phenomenon of criticism, a useful strategy may be to single out Epstein's theory for attack, using the attached Fletcher article and Spectator piece for background. (Although Mark Lane's book is much less convincing that Epstein's and comes off badly where confronted by knowledgeable critics, it is also much more difficult to answer as a whole, as one becomes lost in a morass of unrelated details.)


4. In private to media discussions not directed at any particular writer, or in attacking publications which may be yet forthcoming, the following arguments should be useful: 


a. No significant new evidence has emerged which the Commission did not consider. The assassination is sometimes compared (e.g., by Joachim Joesten and Bertrand Russell) with the Dreyfus case; however, unlike that case, the attack on the Warren Commission have produced no new evidence, no new culprits have been convincingly identified, and there is no agreement among the critics. (A better parallel, though an imperfect one, might be with the Reichstag fire of 1933, which some competent historians (Fritz Tobias, AJ.P. Taylor, D.C. Watt) now believe was set by Vander Lubbe on his own initiative, without acting for either Nazis or Communists; the Nazis tried to pin the blame on the Communists, but the latter have been more successful in convincing the world that the Nazis were to blame.)

b. Critics usually overvalue particular items and ignore others. They tend to place more emphasis on the recollections of individual witnesses (which are less reliable and more divergent--and hence offer more hand-holds for criticism) and less on ballistics, autopsy, and photographic evidence. A close examination of the Commission's records will usually show that the conflicting eyewitness accounts are quoted out of context, or were discarded by the Commission for good and sufficient reason.

c. Conspiracy on the large scale often suggested would be impossible to conceal in the United States, esp. since informants could expect to receive large royalties, etc. Note that Robert Kennedy, Attorney General at the time and John F. Kennedy's brother, would be the last man to overlook or conceal any conspiracy. And as one reviewer pointed out, Congressman Gerald R. Ford would hardly have held his tongue for the sake of the Democratic administration, and Senator Russell would have had every political interest in exposing any misdeeds on the part of Chief Justice Warren. A conspirator moreover would hardly choose a location for a shooting where so much depended on conditions beyond his control: the route, the speed of the cars, the moving target, the risk that the assassin would be discovered. A group of wealthy conspirators could have arranged much more secure conditions.

d. Critics have often been enticed by a form of intellectual pride: they light on some theory and fall in love with it; they also scoff at the Commission because it did not always answer every question with a flat decision one way or the other. Actually, the make-up of the Commission and its staff was an excellent safeguard against over-commitment to any one theory, or against the illicit transformation of probabilities into certainties.

e. Oswald would not have been any sensible person's choice for a co-conspirator. He was a "loner," mixed up, of questionable reliability and an unknown quantity to any professional intelligence service. 

f. As to charges that the Commission's report was a rush job, it emerged three months after the deadline originally set. But to the degree that the Commission tried to speed up its reporting, this was largely due to the pressure of irresponsible speculation already appearing, in some cases coming from the same critics who, refusing to admit their errors, are now putting out new criticisms.

g. Such vague accusations as that "more than ten people have died mysteriously" can always be explained in some natural way e.g.: the individuals concerned have for the most part died of natural causes; the Commission staff questioned 418 witnesses (the FBI interviewed far more people, conduction 25,000 interviews and re interviews), and in such a large group, a certain number of deaths are to be expected. (When Penn Jones, one of the originators of the "ten mysterious deaths" line, appeared on television, it emerged that two of the deaths on his list were from heart attacks, one from cancer, one was from a head-on collision on a bridge, and one occurred when a driver drifted into a bridge abutment.)


5. Where possible, counter speculation by encouraging reference to the Commission's Report itself. Open-minded foreign readers should still be impressed by the care, thoroughness, objectivity and speed with which the Commission worked. Reviewers of other books might be encouraged to add to their account the ideathat, checking back with the report itself, they found it far superior to the work of its critics. 

The Mossad on 9/11



"We are not your problem - the Palestinians are your problem."

All lines are down at the FBI Joint Terrorism Taskforce in New York City. 

Because they're all in Las Vegas attending a conference and can't get a flight back.

Thursday 10 October 2013

Hypatia



"There was a woman at Alexandria named Hypatia, daughter of the philosopher Theon, who made such attainments in literature and science, as to far surpass all the philosophers of her own time. Having succeeded to the school of Plato and Plotinus, she explained the principles of philosophy to her auditors, many of whom came from a distance to receive her instructions. 

On account of the self-possession and ease of manner which she had acquired in consequence of the cultivation of her mind, she not infrequently appeared in public in the presence of the magistrates. Neither did she feel abashed in going to an assembly of men. 

For all men on account of her extraordinary dignity and virtue admired her the more.”

—Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History



The Egyptians taught that the most important relationship you can develop is that which you have with your divine Ka - your Higher Self.



Most people achieve this spiritual communion - if they do achieve it - around aged 40.

The age demonised as the the Mid-Life Crisis; also known as the Mid-Life Opportunity.


This is Hypatia. The only known relief of her true face.



She represented an existential threat to the New World Order.





"And, in those days, there appeared in Alexandria a female philosopher, a pagan named Hypatia, and she was devoted at all times to magic, astrolabes, and instruments of music, and she beguiled many people through Satanic wiles . . . 

A multitude of believers in God arose under the guidance of Peter the Magistrate . . . and they proceeded to seek for the pagan woman who had beguiled the people of the city and the Prefect through her enchantments. 

And when they learnt the place where she was, they proceeded to her and found her . . . they dragged her along till they brought her to the great church, named Caesareum. Now this was in the days of the fast. 

And they tore off her clothing and dragged her . . . through the streets of the city till she died. 

And they carried her to a place named Cinaron, and they burned her body with fire."



"Yet even she fell a victim to the political jealousy which at that time prevailed. 

For as she had frequent interviews with Orestes, it was calumniously reported among the Christian populace that it was she who prevented Orestes from being reconciled to the bishop. 

Some of them, therefore, hurried away by a fierce and bigoted zeal, whose ringleader was a reader named Peter, waylaid her returning home and, dragging her from her carriage, they took her to the church called Caesareum, where they completely stripped her, and then murdered her with tiles. 

After tearing her body in pieces, they took her mangled limbs to a place called Cinaron, and there burnt them."












Thursday 4 July 2013

The Bay of Pigs

The Pivotal Operation of the JFK Era

by L. Fletcher Prouty








Col. L.Fletcher Prouty


Few, if any, international events of the Twentieth Century have been so misunderstood and so viciously misrepresented by the media and by "historians" as that which is popularly known as the anti-Castro "Bay of Pigs" operation that took place when a Brigade of about 1,400 U.S. supported Cuban-exiles landed on the shores of the island of Cuba at dawn on April 17, 1961.

Because of the passage of years and the growing mass of untrue and contrived reporting, few people have had an opportunity to discover the truth behind this notionally "Clandestine" operation that was created and directed by the CIA. Furthermore, to fully understand this operation, it is imperative that one becomes aware of its antecedent roots that grew so profusely in the mire of underground operations during the fifties. We need to understand the concealed, and frequently distorted, events many of which had their origin during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. The "Bay of Pigs" plan did not originate during the Kennedy administration. It had been inherited, full-blown. During the last few months of 1958, it had become clear that the Cuban President/Dictator Fulgencio Batista y Zaldivar, was being forced to flee; and that Fidel Castro was leading his band of well financed rebels out of the Sierra Maestra mountains into Havana, unchecked. By late December 1958, Castro was close to Havana. The country was his to take.

At that time, on the Washington Mall near the reflecting pool beside the Jefferson Memorial there were several World War II "Tempo" buildings that had been hastily converted into offices for the clandestine services of the CIA. Here, during the last week of December 1958, the CIA had called together an inter- departmental task force under J.C.King, the Chief of its Western Hemisphere Division, and his deputy Jake Esterline. Its objective was to be ready to move American armed forces instantly if/when the U.S. Government decided to stop Castro before he reached Havana.

As the representative of the U.S. Air Force I was there, among five or six others in the Alcott Building, during the long night of New Year's Eve '58, awaiting the order that would have caused thousands of American troops to be landed in Cuba to block Castro's entry. However, shortly after midnight...as the festive New Years Bells were ringing all around town...the Government decided to take no action at that time. Castro entered Havana undeterred. Batista had fled, and Washington remained cautious and undecided.


[ NOTE: ]
Some may recall that the CIA had mounted its biggest "Clandestine" operation against the government of Sukarno in Indonesia during that same year, 1958; and that the agency's active support of more than 42,000 anti-Sukarno rebels ended in an ignoble defeat at the hands of General Nasution of the loyal Indonesian army.

It did not take long to find out that Castro was a ruthless dictator. Hundreds of Cubans died at the wall. Thousands fled the country. Castro met with Vice President Nixon early in 1959 and Nixon later declared that if Castro was not a Communist, he certainly acted like one. The ranks of Cuban refugees swelled, and began to innundate Florida. President Eisenhower thought the Cuban males would be most effective and manageable if placed in camps under the care of the Army. Later it was decided to put them in special Cuban training camps, in other countries, to keep them together without involving the regular armed forces of the United States, except in the role of trainers and suppliers.


[ NOTE: ] 

Because so much of the "historical record" is erroneous, contrived and weakened by omissions, I am for the most part using a copy of the original "Letter to the President" dated 13 June 1961 written and signed by Maxwell D. Taylor in response to an earlier letter written to him by President Kennedy dated April 22, 1961...the day after the surrender of the Brigade. The President's letter charged General Taylor in association with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Admiral Arleigh Burke and Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles, i.e. The Cuban Study Group:


"to study our governmental practices and programs in the areas of military and paramilitary, guerrilla and anti-guerrilla activity which fell short of outright war with a view to strengthening our work in this area," and to... "direct special attention to the lessons which can be learned from the recent events in Cuba."


Gen. Taylor made special note of the fact that:


"As we have found no difficulty in reaching a unanimous

view on all essential points under consideration, we are
submitting this view as a jointly agreed study."


This later statement is most important. When one considers the enormous pressure on this group as a result of the failure of that operation; and the widely divergent interests of the members, it is remarkable that General Taylor was able to cite that this review was "a unanimous view" and "a jointly agreed study." Most historical accounts have failed to consider the enormous significance of that statement at that time.


Those selected to testify before the Cuban Study Group did so under oath, and--for the most part--their testimony is as valid as could be obtained. However, one thing the report lacks is direct testimony from the key CIA operational-level principals, and their active duty military counterparts who actually drew up the master plan, recruited and trained the Cuban exiles and who provided the supporting elements of the entire operation.


By the time this rebel "Brigade," landed on the beach it had at least 25,000 weapons in reserve on the ships, the largest combat and transport air force in Latin America and the supplies necessary to support the expected rising of anti-Castro Cubans from inside the country. They were trained, well equipped and well supported.


This failure to obtain testimony from those tactical leaders was a serious omission, and it was not accidental. Neither Taylor, Burke nor Bobby Kennedy knew who they were; therefore.and for the most part with a few notable exceptions the testimony was taken from a list prepared by Allen Dulles. Much of it, as a result, was self-serving and not objective. This omission has made it very difficult for otherwise meticulous historians to get to the true facts of the matter. I have yet to see a worthwhile book or article with material derived from those real sources.


I possess a copy of this original "Report" by Gen. Taylor. At the top right hand corner of the cover-page the Study Group cited its Pentagon location as "Room 2E980." My room number in the Joint Chiefs of Staff area of the Pentagon was 2D958. During the hearings, I was a short distance from their office. Since many of the men called to testify were long-time working associates of mine in the CIA and the Military, I was kept up-to-date with what was going on as they came and went via my office for a "coffee break" while awaiting their call for testimony.


This Cuban Study Group was made up of four totally different people: Gen. Maxwell Taylor, whom the President had not met before this period; Admiral Burke, Chief of Naval Operations and the member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff closest to the anti-Castro activities since March 1960; Allen Dulles who was, at least nominally, in charge of the entire operation; and Bobby Kennedy who, they all knew, sprinted from that room each day for a meeting with his brother in the White House.


Often the participants said to me after being in that room that it was like being among "Four Scorpions in a Bottle." They wondered if any would come out alive. All of them said that the dominant one was that young man, sitting stiffly in a "GI" office chair, saying little but hearing all. Of course that man was Bobby Kennedy.

[ end note ]

On March 17, 1960, President Eisenhower approved the basic policy paper "A Program of Covert Action Against the Castro Regime." This policy document, developed by the Central Intelligence Agency and indorsed by the "Special Group," i.e. a nondescript euphemism for a creation of that National Security Council, provided for a program divided into four parts to bring about the replacement of the Castro regime by covert means. They were:

"a) The creation of a responsible and unified Cuban

opposition to the Castro regime located outside of Cuba.

"b) The development of means for mass communication to the

Cuban people as a part of a powerful propaganda offensive.

"c) The creation and development of a covert intelligence

and action organization within Cuba which would be
responsive to the orders and directions of the exile
opposition, and...

"d) The development of a paramilitary force outside of Cuba

for future guerrilla action."

Shortly after the approval of this policy paper by President Eisenhower, the latter section was further modified, as follows:

"d) Preparations have already been made for the development of an adquate paramilitary force outside of Cuba, together with mechanisms for the necessary logistics support of covert military operations on the island. Initially a cadre of leaders will be recruited after careful screening and trained as paramilitary instructors. 

In a second phase a number of paramilitary cadres will be trained at secure locations outside of the United States so as to be available for immediate deployment into Cuba to organize, train and lead resistance forces recruited there both before and after the establishment of one of more active centers of resistance. 

The creation of this capability will require a minimum of six months [ Sept 17, 1960 ] and probably closer to eight [ Nov 17, 1960 ]. In the mean time, a limited air capability for resupply and for infiltration already exists under CIA control and can be rather easily expanded if and when the situation requires. Within two months it is hoped to parallel this with a small air supply capability under deep cover as a commercial operation in another country."


NOTE: 

It is important to add here that Senator Lyndon Johnson, in his role as Senate Majority Leader, had appointed Senator John F. Kennedy, Mass. to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1957, under its illustrious chairman, Sen. J.W. Fullbright. As a result, we may be certain that Kennedy was well aware of these early developments as they were initiated and that expanded by the CIA and the military in support of Agency.


As these activities progressed, Kennedy through his good friends Sen. Smathers, Florida, and Sen. Mansfield, Montana, among others, became aware of developments among the Cuban exile community. Manuel Artime, who was one of the Revolutionary Council's leaders, told me, during August 1960 just after Kennedy had accepted the Democratic nomination for President, that they had visited with Sen. Kennedy at the Kennedy family's vacation home at Palm Beach, Florida. In many ways Kennedy was as well aware of this undercover planning against Fidel Castro as anyone on Capitol Hill. It may not have missed his notice that the six to eight month period, devised by the CIA for the "creation of this capability" neatly bracketed the date of the coming election on Nov 8, 1960. As we shall see, these became two of the most important dates in the whole scheme of things. 

[end note]


With this March 17th Presidential approval in hand, the CIA began at once to implement these policy decisions. A target for 300 male Cuban exiles was set for the recruitment of guerrillas to be trained covertly outside the United States. As a function of my office within the Headquarters staff of the U.S. Air Force, it was my responsibility to provide "Military support of the clandestine activities of the CIA." 

Therefore, before the end of March 1960 a few CIA men, whom I knew well after working with them for more than four years, visited my office and, among other things, asked if I knew of a base, perhaps in Panama, that could be used for the housekeeping and training of 300 Cuban exiles.

Shortly thereafter we visited Panama and found that Ft. Gulick was on stand-by, and would be available for what the CIA wanted. This is where the training and organizing of the "Brigade" began.
At this point it must be made clear that it was during the administration of Eisenhower that the United States Government had, in 1954, for the first time, defined and approved the concept of "Covert Operations." That decision led to the establishment of the policy structure for such an activity. The measures that were taken during 1960 and 1961 in support of the Anti-Castro program were strictly in accord with the limits of that National Security Council directive.

The approval of NSC 5412, "National Security Council Directive on Covert Operations" on March 15, 1954 marked the first official recognition and sanctioning of anti-Communist covert activities by the U.S. Government throughout the world. The NSC had determined that the overt foreign activities of the U.S. Government should be supplemented by covert operations. This had not been done by the National Security Act of 1947 that had established the National Security Council and the Defense Department, and had created the CIA.

NSC 5412 defined "covert operations" as:



"all activities conducted pursuant to this directive which

are so planned and executed that any U.S. Government
responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized
persons and that if uncovered the U.S.Government can
plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them."

To provide a mechanism for the approval and coordination for most covert operations, NSC 5412 directed the establishment of the "5412 committee," (later the "303 committee," and the "40 committee"). To conceal its purpose it was generally known only as the "Special Group." This "5412 Committee" consisted of the Deputy Under Secretary of State, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, the President's Special Assistant for National Security Affairs and the Director of Central Intelligence, who also was designated as the "Action Officer." During 1957, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff became a member.

A major consideration behind this action, on the part of President Eisenhower, was his insistence that the CIA must not become a "Fourth Force" for pseudo-military Peacetime Operations, (Allen Dulles' term for Clandestine Operations) similar to the Army, Navy and Air Force during wartime. Therefore, the military services were instructed to establish "Focal Point" offices that would be charged with the responsibility to "Provide the military support of the clandestine operations of the CIA."

The frequently high cost of such an arrangement was worked out with the assistance of the General Counsel of the CIA, Larry Houston and his counterparts in the Department of Defense. In general, permanent transfers of military equipment were made under the provisions of the National Economy Act of 1932, as amended, and augmented as necessary by the CIA's agreement to reimburse each service for additional "out-of-pocket" costs.

The idea of the "Focal Point" office, as required under NSC 5412, was to reduce CIA contacts, in the Pentagon--for matters other than its Intelligence function--to a single office in each service for security reasons, and to enable that office to become familiar with the CIA's limited number of agents who would be authorized to make such contacts.

In keeping with this stricture, when I had completed the establishment of the "Focal Point" office with its global affiliates for the Air Force in 1956, Allen Dulles sent me and one of his key officials on a "Round the World" trip to become acquainted with a number of his Station Chiefs, among others. Fundamental to this procedure was the fact that both parties recognized that "military support" was not to be provided unless the NSC had first approved the operation.

Under the authority of NSC 5412, the U.S. Government launched in 1954-1955 a large "covert" CIA-operated program in Vietnam, as well as related programs in Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. This major program, by 1965, had escalated to the point that the military had to assume responsibility for its operational control, initially by the invasion at Da Nang. At the same time the U.S. Marines invaded Vietnam openly, not "Covertly," military operations became the norm for the remaining decade of that 30 year struggle.

This NSC 5412 program provided the policy guidance for support of the anti-Castro Cuban exile program that Eisenhower approved in March 1960; and that continued in effect throughout the Kennedy administration.

Both Presidents knew that "covert operations" are against the principles of International Law, the Charter of the United Nations, the Treaty of the Organization of American States and the long-time practices of this country. Covert operations are a denial of national sovereignty.

President Eisenhower made it clear that the active duty military establishment would have no operational role whatsoever in the Cuban exile support program. That prohibition was made ironclad, and in no way changed with the arrival of a new administration on Jan 21, 1961

This policy established why the "Air Cover" problem so frequently named as a Kennedy failure was not a Kennedy decision to make. That policy against the use of active-duty U.S. Armed Forces in Covert Operations had been promulgated in 1954. President Kennedy and his administration were bound by its terms.

In keeping with the injunction that the military remain behind the scenes, the CIA made use of its equipment left over from that huge, and distant operation in Indonesia. It had been gathered at key bases in the Pacific Rim and in the United States. The large number of WW II-type B-26 bombers that had been modified for the Indonesian action were available. Because much of the equipment that was eventually needed for the Bay of Pigs operation was already available, the CIA did not have to go through the process of getting additional approval for a good share of the aircraft and other heavy equipment needed for the anti-Castro operation. It did need ships that were acquired from storage locations, refurbished and loaded at Elizabeth City, North Carolina.

Initially this made it appear that the CIA's master plan was relatively modest, and might be limited to the initial 300 men who were training in Panama. This is a significant factor when it is realized that the decision to create a full-sized invasion force was not made until after the election of Senator John F. Kennedy as President of the United States, when the CIA began a sudden escalation of the program from that approved 300 Cubans to approximately 4,000 five months later. In fact, President Eisenhower had approved nothing more than such operations as air- drop, over-the-beach landings and other moderate activities. He had never approved any plan for an invasion of Cuba by the CIA- trained exile force...not the General who had directed the Normandy invasion. He knew better. The CIA did that on their own by taking advantage of the post-election "Lame Duck" period.

These changes did not catch Kennedy off guard. He continued his own contacts with the political leaders of the Cuban exile community.

By August, Kennedy had been nominated for the Presidency.

During that month the Republican candidate, Vice President Nixon, delivered a speech before the American Legion convention in Detroit. At that same convention a swarthy, charismatic Cuban exile aroused thousands of Legionaires with a promise to liberate Cuba under the flag of the exile brigade. This magnetic Cuban speaker in Detroit, Manuel Artime, was the ace in the CIA's anti-Castro deck; but JFK got to him early. On the very same day Artime and his other inner circle Cuban exiles were in Washington for a meeting in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, they made a stop in the Senate office building for a meeting with Senator Kennedy.

I had been transferred, from the Air Force to the Office of Special Operations, a division of the immediate office of the Secretary of Defense, by that time. I was asked to obtain a military limousine and go to the Senate Office building to pick up a group of four men. All I had been given was a certain room number. To my surprise when I entered that office, I met Sen. Kennedy

With him were Artime and the other Cuban exile leaders. JFK had not missed a beat. He knew them well from their visits at his home in Florida.

During the lull between the Indonesian campaign and the origin of the Bay of Pigs plan, the CIA had decided to create a major air establishment headquarters in the United States. I discussed several sites with their Air Division officials and it was decided to utilize a little-used, interior site at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. The CIA pulled together much of its equipment from bases all over the world and moved it to Eglin.

The CIA's very able and potent Air Division already had C-130, C-118 (DC-6), C-54 (DC-4), C-46, C-47 (DC-3), C-97 and C-45 transport aircraft. It had very special Short Take Off and Landing (STOL) air craft designated L-28 (single engine) and U-5 (twin engine); and it had the versatile B-26 bombers that had been modified by the Air Force for the CIA to carry eight 50-cal aircraft-type machine guns in the nose. It also had some U.S. Navy aircraft , called P2V-7's, that had been highly modified and were kept under Air Force cover as "RB-69's," as well as the U-2's and other reconnaissance aircraft that were supported by the Air Force in a separate organization. Additionally, it had the largest airline operation in the world with its Air America and some 101 other names under the Pacific Corporation leadership.

As stated in the Taylor letter to the President, 13 June 196:


"Sometime in the summer of 1960 the paramilitary concept for the operation began to change. It appears that leaders in the CIA Task Force set up in January 1960 to direct the project were the first to entertain the thought of a Cuban strike force to land on the Cuban coast in supplementation of the guerilla action contemplated under the March 17, 1963 policy paper. These CIA officers began to consider the formation of a small force of infantry (200-300 men) for contingency employment in conjunction with other paramilitary operations, and in June began to form a small Cuban tactical air force. Eventually it was decided to equip this force with B-26 aircraft which had been widely distributed to foreign countries including countries in Latin America."

Without any specific mention of the November Presidential election, the Taylor letter continued with its chronological account of the build-up and changing structure of the CIA's "Anti-Castro" master plan. This is a most important period and it reveals how the Eisenhower-approved plan for air-drop and over-the-beach limited activities began to be expanded during the summer and then was accelerated by the CIA during the "Lame Duck" period between Kennedy's election and his inauguration in Jan 1961 A careful study of this phase of the development of the Master Plan confirms that this was not an incidental deviation from the approved plan.

At the same time, one must keep in mind that Sen. Kennedy had his own "eyes and ears" tuned to developments as cited above.

The Taylor letter again provides an accurate and significant inside view of this course of action:
"There were ample reasons for this new trend of thought The Air drops into Cuba were not proving effective. There were increasingly heavy shipments of Communist arms to Cuba, accompanied by evidence of increasingly effective control of the civilian population by Castro. The Special Group became aware of these adverse factors which were discussed repeatedly in the Committee meetings during the fall of 1960. 

(Note again avoidance of any mention of the Presidential Election.) 

The minutes of the conferences indicate a declining confidence in the effectiveness of guerrilla efforts alone to overthrow Castro. "In this atmosphere the CIA began to implement the new concept, increasing the size of the Cuban force in training and reorienting the training toward preparation for its use as an assault force on the Cuban coast. On November 4th,


(NOTE: It has become obvious that the CIA, along with most of the administration, were convinced that Nixon would be elected President in Nov,'60.) 

CIA In Washington dispatched a cable to the project officer in Guatemala describing what was wanted. The cable directed a reduction of the guerrilla teams to 60 men and the introduction of conventional training for the remainder as an amphibious and airborne assault force.


"From that time on the training emphasis was placed on the assault mission and there is no evidence that the members of the assault force received any further preparation for guerrilla-type operations. The men became deeply imbued with the importance of the landing operation and its superiority over any form of guerrilla action to the point that it would have been difficult later to persuade them to return to a guerrilla-type mission. The final training of the Cubans was done by specialists from the U.S. Armed Forces in Guatemala where more than 400-500 Cubans had been assembled."

It is unfortunate that so few writers have learned that at the time of this build-up, so thoroughly outlined by the Taylor report above, the services had been asked to provide experts in this type of warfare for the development of the Master Plan, for the build-up of the force and its logistical needs, and for the training of the Cuban exiles. This is clear evidence that the Bay of Pigs operation was not a Kennedy plan. All of this had been set in concrete before the election.

It may be added here, that a U.S. Marine Corps Colonel with considerable amphibious landing and beach-head experience was appointed the chief of this all-military contingent of leaders of the tactical training programs. He was responsible for the actual invasion plan that had been taken to the Joint Chiefs of Staff for final approval

Had his tactical plan been carried out as visualized, the Brigade would have achieved its goal, according to the Cuban Study Group Report:


"Capture of the beach zone, provide a nucleus for the loyal

Cubans who, the CIA believed would rise to join them, and
hold Cuban territory for seventy-two hours, after which time
the Organization of American States would respond to their
call for recognition as the true Cuban government by
providing military land, sea, and air support immediately."

All of this had been planned, and agreed upon before the invasion. Fate played the cards differently.
It is imperative to note that even the Taylor Report itself enters into this game of obfuscation with regard to the Cuban- exile, anti-Castro plans. At one point it states:



"In the period December 10, 1960 to February 8, 1961, former Ambassador Whiting Willauer and Mr. Tracy Barnes of the CIA were charged with keeping the President and the Secretary of State informed."


Of course we all know that between those dates there were two Presidents, Eisenhower and Kennedy, and two Secretaries of State, Herter and Rusk. Although the Report refers to a single President, it makes no reference to which one.

Furthermore this Report states:


"The Director of Central Intelligence briefed President

Eisenhower on the new paramilitary concept on 29
November 1960 and received the indication that the President
wished the project expedited."

At that time: 


"the new concept was one consisting of an amphibious landing on the Cuban coast of 600-750 men equipped with weapons of extraordinary heavy firepower. The landing would be preceded by preliminary air strikes launched from Nicaragua..."

This brief outline of the newly developed Cuban invasion plan proves beyond doubt that it originated during the Eisenhower administration, and that the plan emphasized that the landing had to be preceded by "Preliminary air strikes launched from Nicaragua..." This was its fundamental tactical parameter.

It was the cancellation, on the eve of the landing, of the crucial air strike that caused the failure of the Bay of Pigs operation. This fact was confirmed by the Group Report that was signed by Gen. Maxwell Taylor...more on that later.

The Cuban Study Group Report continues with its rather obscure narrative of these developments prior to the inauguration of President Kennedy with the following:


"On January 11th, Ambassador Willauer representing State and

Mr. Barnes of CIA first discussed with representatives of
the Joint Staff the over-all problem of effecting the
overthrow of Castro. As a result, a working committee
including representation of CIA, State, Defense and the JCS
was formed to coordinate future actions..."

That's Jan 11, 1961, and still during the Eisenhower term. As the date confirms, these representatives were still Eisenhower people.

The Report then clarifies these notes:


"On January 22nd, [ the day after the Kennedy inauguration ]

several members of the new administration including Mr. Rusk,
Mr. McNamara, Mr. Bowles, and Mr. Robert Kennedy were
introduced to the Cuba protect at a briefing at the State Department.
General Lemnitzer and Mr. Dulles were also present... ."


NOTE: 

It is imperative to keep in mind that two of the men present at that Jan 22, 1961 meeting, Robert Kennedy and Allen Dulles, were also members of the Cuban Study Group that began its meetings only three months later. This serves to emphasize that this Cuban Study Group Report to the President of 13 June 61 had to be the most accurate account of the entire "Bay of Pigs" historical record. 

END NOTE



" John F. Kennedy received his first briefing on the

developing plan as President on January 28 at a meeting
which included the Vice President [Johnson], Secretary of
State [Rusk], Secretary of Defense [McNamara], the Director
of Central Intelligence [Dulles], the Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff [Lemintzer], Ass't Sec. Mann, Ass't Sec. Nitze,
Mr. Tracy Barnes, and Mr. McGeorge Bundy."


The fact that McGeorge Bundy was present at this first meeting is significant because it was Bundy who made the telephone call to Gen Cabel, Deputy Director of Central Intelligence at 9:30 P.M. the evening before the landing of the Brigade in Cuba, that ordered cancellation of the crucial air strike from Nicaragua, as confirmed by the Cuban Study Group's unanimous report. That Report cites that cancellation as 


"probably the most serious" of its finding of "Immediate Causes of Failure of the Operation Zapata."

At this point the Taylor Report itself appears to have over- looked this important meeting of January 28, 1968 when it stated:



"The cancellation seems to have resulted partly from the

failure to make the air strike plan entirely clear in
advance to the President and the Secretary of State..."

Earlier this same Report had made it clear that Kennedy had been briefed as early as November 18, 1960 by Dulles and Bissell, the CIA official in charge of the operation and again on January 2 1961; and that both Allen Dulles and Robert Kennedy had attended that same Jan 28, 1961 meeting with the President. What the Study Group may not have realized was that Kennedy also had kept himself informed of the anti-Castro plans from as far back as March 1960 by many personal meetings with the Cuban leaders, as noted above. He knew what was going on. He knew very well how vital that final air strike was to the success, or failure of the Brigade's landing. He certainly did not cancel that attack that he had directed himself on April 16th; and it would have been ridiculous for the Cuban Study Group to attempt to weave such an idea into its Report...not with Bobby Kennedy sitting right there with them.

The Taylor Report followed with:


"The [Joint] Chiefs [of Staff] approved and forwarded to the

Secretary of Defense on 3 Feb 1961, JCSM-57-61, Military
Evaluation of the CIA Paramilitary Plan-Cuba."


At that time they considered that "timely execution of this plan has a fair chance of success..."

Again we find one of those most important bits of historical information buried in the pages of this Report. Following a detailed study made by a team of three officers from the Joint Staff during 24-27 Feb 1961 with visits to Retalhuleu, Guatemala and Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua:


"The JCS evaluation pointed out that if surprise were not achieved, the attack against Cuba would fail, adding that one Castro aircraft [ T-33 jet ] armed with 50 caliber machine guns could sink all or most of the invasion fleet.



"The JCS in approving this report on 10 March 1961 commented to the Secretary of Defense that...the plan could be expected to achieve initial success. Ultimate success will depend on the extent to which the initial assault serves as a catalyst for further action on the part of anti-Castro elements throughout Cuba."

At this point we again find that the NSC Directive ~5412 , March 1954, on "Covert Operations" remained an over-riding factor in this plan. The Taylor Report continues by emphasizing that point:

"From its inception the plan had been developed under the ground rule that it must retain a covert character, that is, it should include no action which, if revealed, could not be plausibly denied by the United States and should look to the world as an operation exclusively conducted by Cubans. This ground rule meant, among other things, that no U.S. military forces or individuals could take part in combat operations."

These statements from the JCS report and the later Taylor Report are high-lighted historically by the charge that President Kennedy refused to provide "Air Cover" for the Brigade once it hit the beach. This charge has been contrived since the earliest days following the landings. Anyone, at all familiar with the policy promulgated during the Eisenhower administration since March 1954, must realize that the entire framework of the anti- Castro planning was necessarily shaped by that highest level doctrine. There was no way that the Kennedy administration could lawfully ignore that earlier, and still active, doctrine by providing for the use of U.S. Navy "air cover" in any case.

For his part Kennedy had authorized and directed the first, exile Cuban, air strike of Saturday, April 15, 1961. That strike had succeeded in destroying all but the last, and most-potent three of Castro's combat-capable air force. He knew beforehand:



"One Castro jet armed with 50 caliber machine guns could sink all, or most the invasion fleet." (See above)


That is why President Kennedy again directed (April 16th) another, exile Cuban, air strike to be made at dawn, just before the landing on April 17th, to eliminate those last three jets on the ground. They had been located by U-2 reconnaissance after the April 15th strike that had destroyed the other combat-capable aircraft in Castro's small air force.

It had become that simple, and that imperative. Those remaining aircraft had to be destroyed to assure the success of the operation. President Kennedy well knew all of this antecedent tactical planning. He also knew that he could not order active duty U.S. armed forces into the fray. He knew that the dawn air strike from Nicaragua by four specially modified Cuban B-26's could easily destroy the last of Castro's air force while it sat on the ground. After all he knew that this is precisely what the combined French and British Air Forces had done to Nasser's superior air force at the time of the Israeli invasion of the Negev in 1956.

From Feb 1961 the plan of the invasion and the logistics preparation for it went forward even to the extent that CIA's top covert operator, Edward G. Lansdale had obtained the support of skilled Philippine Special Forces officers, chief among them was the President's military aide Col. Napoleon Valeriano, to aid the Cuban exiles. Meanwhile the military "Focal Point" offices were doing all they could to get the supplies and transport ready at the port in North Carolina.

On March 15th the Joint Chiefs of Staff reviewed and approved the CIA's latest tactical plan and reported to the Secretary of Defense that the ZAPATA concept "was considered the most feasible" of those considered and "did not oppose the plan." They were unable to review that plan in its final form because it had not been submitted to them until April 15th when the Brigade was already at sea.

On that earlier day, March 15th, the President was briefed and as a result, "The President again with-held approval of the plan and directed certain modifications be considered." Mr Bissell returned the next day with minor modifications and "The President authorized them to proceed with the plan, but still without giving it his formal approval."

During this period a memo had been given to J. C. King, Chief, CIA Western Hemisphere operations stating:


"The Cuban air force and naval vessels capable of opposing

our landing must be knocked out or neutralized before our
amphibious shipping makes its final run onto the beach. If
this is not done we will be courting disaster."

Although the name of the author of this most important tactical fact has been removed from the record, I am quite certain that I know who it was. There were some experienced Marines working with the CIA and the Cuban exiles. This admonition sounds like the voice of experience.

As D-Day approached, even without approval of the President, the Report states,



"A compromise was reached with regard to the air plan.

Early in April, it was decided to stage limited air strikes
on D-2...to give the impression of being the action of Cuban
pilots defecting from the Cuban Air Force...The Joint Chiefs
of Staff did not favor these D-2 air strikes because of
their indecisive nature and the danger of alerting
prematurely the Castro force."


The Taylor Report adds another most important item:


"Mr. Bissell of CIA also later stated at a meeting of April

6 that CIA would prefer to conduct an all-out air strike on
the morning D-Day rather than perform the D-2 defection
strikes followed by limited strikes on D-Day...

In summary the Taylor Report states:


"...the realization is that main reliance for the

destruction of the Castro Air Force must be placed on the D-Day strikes."

It must be noted that throughout this growing discussion of how and when to eliminate the Castro combat-capable Air Force there is not a single mention, by any of the many parties involved, of the utilization of U.S. Armed Forces aircraft for the air strikes or for air cover. This was not, and could not be a part of the plan as a result of seasoned Government policy.

Throughout this period of discussion the D-Day date slipped back from April 5th to April 17th, the date of the landing.

On April 12th an important conference took place with the President, the Secretary of State, the JCS and other NSC officials during which Mr. Bissell presented a paper outlining the latest changes in the ZAPATA Operation including the air strikes of D-2 and D-Day.

Even as late, in time, as this meeting was the President did not give final approval to the plan at this meeting, April 12th. Meanwhile, the ships of the invading force were at sea and approaching Cuba.

The D-2 strikes did take place with effective results. However, U-2 reconnaissance revealed that the three T-33 jets had been away from Havana and avoided damage. They were located at another airfield in effective range of the Cuban-exile B-26 aircraft at Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua.

The Report states:


"At about mid-day on D-l, April 16th, the President formally

approved the landing plan..."

The "Landing Plan," as you will recall from the above data, was premised upon the pre-dawn air strike by Cuban-exile B-26's from Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua. It is at this point that the Taylor Report reveals its inadquacies as a result of the fact that key U.S. military tactical air and over-the-beach amphibious experts were not questioned.

I had assigned an Air Commando tactical expert to the camp at Retalhuleu to train the Cuban B-26 pilots. The CIA had placed its finest Air Operations officer at Puerto Cabezas. The Marine Corps had assigned an experienced Amphibious Landing Colonel to head the Brigade training; and the Army and Navy officers were as highly qualified.

Among these men there was absolutely no question or doubt about the extreme significance of this D-Day air strike to destroy the three T-birds on the ground. With no combat aircraft Castro would have been helpless against the Brigade's tactical ground attack aircraft and its potential fire-power.

The Cuban Study Group's Report makes it appear that there was some doubt and some lack of understanding about this operation. At the combat level where it really mattered there was absolutely no misunderstanding.

Without introductory comment, the Report states starkly:


"At about 9:30 P.M. on 16 April, Mr. McGeorge Bundy, Special
Assistant to the President, telephoned General C. P. Cabell
of CIA to inform him that the dawn air strikes the following
morning should not be launched until they could be conducted
from a strip within the beachhead."

 NOTE: 

That Bay of Pigs site had been selected, because--among other advantages--
there was a suitable air-strip on the beach. The Brigade's
B-26's would operate from there once it had been secured.
That was the plan; but it was predicated upon the
destruction of Castro's jet aircraft first.

Gen Cabell and Mr Bissell tried to persuade Secretary Rusk to permit the dawn D-Day strikes.


"The Secretary indicated that there were policy

considerations against air strikes before the beachhead
airfield was in the hands of the landing force..."

The Secretary added, with reference to the air strikes that
President Kennedy had ordered, 


"They were not vital."

The Report continues:


"The order cancelling the D-Day strikes was dispatched to

the departure field in Nicaragua, arriving when the pilots
were in their cockpits ready for take-off."

That CIA Air Operations chief in Nicaragua is an old friend of mine. After he had received that order from General Cabell, he called me at my home, at about 2 A.M. on the morning of April 17th and told me about that catastropic order. I could hear the B-26 engines roaring nearby. He urged me to call the CIA command section and convince them to cancel it. We all knew that the entire operation depended upon that air strike. I called them; but as we all know now, that order was never reversed, and as the Cuban Study Group reported:



"The cancellation of the strikes planned at dawn on D-Day...was probably the most serious of the causes of failure of the operation as it eliminated the last favorable opportunity to destroy the Castro Air Force on the ground."


Sometime later, I met my CIA friend who had called me that night. He had been absolutely shattered by that reversal. He told me, 


"If I had gotten on my bicycle, and left the operations tent after that call those fired-up Cubans would have revolted and taken off. If they had left they would have destroyed those jets. The Brigade's landing would have succeeded."

That is how close the Bay of Pigs operation came to victory. Even failing that, many of us believe that General Cabell and Richard Bissell ought to have called off the landing once they had received that call from McGeorge Bundy. They certainly knew its significance. At least that would have prevented the horrible losses that followed.





What Oliver Stone thinks was said during the 18 1/2 minute gap.



I'm very fond of Hopkins' "...I had nothing to do with that...!" ,moment...


But...the story can not end here. Why did Nixon frequently refer to that "Bay of Pigs" thing? Why has the Kennedy role been so terribly contrived and dishonestly fabricated? Why has the Air Cover issue been ballooned all out of shape? To put it in more simple terms, 

"Why did McGeorge Bundy make that telephone call?"

As a result of the Cuban Study Group Report to the President, a report that contained Bobby Kennedy's vote for unanimity as well as Allen Dulles', it is clear that President Kennedy had not ordered Bundy to make that call. Does anyone believe that Bobby would have sat there silently and let Bundy blame that call on the President, if he heard Bundy give that testimony? Or, if he did and returned to the White House with that news, his brother would have known what Bundy said that evening and that issue would have been settled before it got on paper...or did the Kennedys have other ideas?

In a most unusual Op-Ed page item in the New York TIMES of October 23, 1979 McGeorge Bundy wrote a somewhat garbled column under the title "The Brigade's My Fault." 

It was a somewhat elaborate and confusing confession. At least it's an answer. Because of the fact that I was so close to the anti-Castro planning from December 1958 to January 1964, I find great significance in the testimony, before the Cuban Study Group, of a man whom most historians have failed to notice at all, with reference to the Bay of Pigs and the following Study Group Report.

For my money, the most important man to have been interrogated by the Cuban Study Group was none other than General Eisenhower's Chief of Staff during the European Campaign in WW II, the Ambassador to Moscow immediately following the end of that war, and President Truman's Director of Central Intelligence from 7 October 1950 to 9 February 1953. This was General Walter Bedell Smlth...a man whose role in this pivotal hearing was as significant as that of General Taylor, if not more so. He and General Taylor were the weathervanes pointing the course john F. Kennedy had decided to travel

His appearance before the Group meant more in the long run than any, and all of the others. General Smith was there to signal President Kennedy's plan for the future, "Don't get mad: Get even." The Kennedys were going to fight back, not just for the Bay of Pigs failure; but for the many other failures and errors of the CIA.

This is no place to continue the Study Group's Report in detail; but it does contain some little-known and priceless clues to the history of the past quarter-century, General W.B. Smith set the tone when he testified:

a) "A democracy cannot wage war."

b) "When you are at war, Cold War if you like, you must have an amoral agency which can operate secretly and which does not have to give press conferences."

And, from the man who had been Director of Central Intelligence for more than two years,

c) "Covert operations can be done up to a certain size."

d) Then he began to lift the corner of the tent:
"The covert work might have to be put under another roof)

The following question was, "Do you think you should take covert operations from CIA?" and his answer was direct and unmistakable,

e) "It's time we take the bucket of slop and put another cover over it."

That was the General's testimony, and the Study Group might have ended its ordeal right there; but before General Taylor was finished with that Letter to the President he added certain most important section "Recommendations." They led to the formulation and publication of three of the most powerful policy papers signed by President Kennedy: the basic source of Kennedy's plan to "Break the CIA into 1,000 pieces."

They are:


1) National Security Action Memorandum No. 55, June 28,

1961.

In part it reads:



"I wish to inform the Joint Chiefs of Staff as follows with regard to my views of their relations to me in Cold War Operations:

a) I regard the Joint Chiefs of Staff as my principal military advisor responsible for initiating advice to me and for responding to requests for advice. I expect their advice to come to me direct and unfiltered.

b) The Joint Chiefs of Staff have a responsibility for the defense of the nation in the Cold War similar to that which they have in conventional hostilities. etc.

c) I expect the Joint Chiefs of Staff to present the military viewpoint in governmental councils in such a way as to assure that the military factors are closely understood before decisions are reached. etc.

d) While I look to the Chiefs to present the military factor without reserve or hesitation, I regard them to be more than military men and expect their help in fitting military requirements into the over-all context of any situation, recognizing that the most difficult problem in Government is to combine all assets in a unified, effective pattern.

John F. Kennedy"

The second policy directive, NSAM #56, June 28, 1961 requested an "Evaluation of Paramilitary Requirements." The third was NSAM #57, June 28, 1961. It defined the "Responsibility for Paramilitary Operations."

With the formal publication of these unquestionably definitive papers it became clear that Kennedy had set the course as his paramount objective following his re-election in 1964. Before the year was out he had accepted the resignations from the CIA of its long-time Director Allen W. Dulles, it's long-time Deputy Director Charles P. Cabel and it's Deputy Director, Plans and formerly the man principally responsible for the "Bay of Pigs" operation, Richard Bissell.

By July 1961, John F. Kennedy was not getting mad, rather he was getting even; and since that date things in Washington, in this country and throughout the world have never been the same; because he was not permitted to finish his self-assigned task.