| Author | Message | | gchq | | Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2004 9:28 am Post subject: THE BAY OF PIGS |
| THE BAY OF PIGS
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The Pivotal Operation of the JFK Era
by 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 1961
"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.
continued... | |  | | gchq | | Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2004 9:29 am Post subject: |
| continuation...
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.
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.
---- ---- ---- ----- | | | | gchq | | Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2004 9:24 am Post subject: THE COLD WAR $$$ TRILLIONS, THE "MAKE-WAR" ROLE OF |
| THE COLD WAR $$$ TRILLIONS, and THE "MAKE-WAR" ROLE OF THE CIA.
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After the "Unconditional Surrender" victory by the United States and its allied powers in World War II, it became essential to reorganize the "Conventional War" force structure of our Armed Services without delay. First of all, we had to take advantage of our enormous superiority from Carrier Task Forces, Submarine "Wolf Packs", and "Over-the-Beach" Amphibious elements, to Long-Range Heavy Bomber units, Global Air Transport units and Hard-hitting Fighter Wings, all in support of Battle Hardened Infantry Divisions supported by Highly Mobile Tank Brigades, Artillery, and Engineers along with the finest Logistics forces ever assembled.
Through-out the evolution of warfare such a force structure had never been created, assembled and led into battle to achieve such significant victories on a global scale. But, more than that: suddenly, during the month of August 1945, the full spectrum of warfare had been expanded, as never before, to new dimensions by the actual combat utilization of Atomic Bombs. Warfare would never again be the same. Its potential cost and destruction estimates were beyond imagination.
At the same time, the first icicles of the glacial encroachment of the Cold War had become evident. As early as September, 1944, as the Russian army crossed the border into Rumania, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) had already assembled a number of Nazi Intelligence "Eastern European" experts and their Rumanian pro-Nazi counterparts who had engaged in the war against the Soviet Union; and secretly transported them among a larger group of American air-crewmen POW's in a freight train that was operated by the OSS (Frank Wisner) from Bucharest through the Balkans and Turkey to a small town in Syria just north of Aleppo. There they were met by a fleet of about forty transport aircraft and flown to safety and concealment in Cairo. [I was the Air Transport Command's Chief Pilot in Cairo, and led this air-fleet from Cairo to Syria and back under the direction of General Benjamin Giles, the Africa-Middle East Commander of Allied Forces.] This was an early, positive "Anti-Communist" step of the type that became so common as the Cold War flourished.
Then in early May, 1945, just before the surrender of Germany, it was the Nazi Foreign Minister, Count Schwerin von Krosigk, who first used the phrase "Iron Curtain", during a speech given in Berlin, in precisely the same context that was repeated later by Winston Churchill in Missouri. Krosigk's "Iron Curtain" speech was reported in The Times of London on May 3, 1945. Then Winston Churchill used those words again in a letter written to President Truman on May 12, 1945, three days after the German surrender.
With this psychological ploy the concept of "Cold War" against the Soviets was thereby implanted, in the minds of the world, while the Russians were still our notional allies against the Germans and the Japanese.
Nearly one year later, on March 4 and 5, 1946, Truman and Churchill traveled on the President's special train from Washington to Missouri, where, at Westminster College in Fulton, Churchill delivered those historic lines:
"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent."
Most historical publications and media sources would have us believe that it was this memorable occasion, in Missouri, that marked the end of the wartime alliance with the USSR and the beginning of the Cold War. But, as we have seen, this was not so.
The Grand Strategy decision to create a new bipolar world had already been made no later than 1944-1945 as evidenced by that OSS operated "Freight Train" exodus of Nazis from the Balkans. The partners in this new global power alignment were to be the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, and Japan... three of the WW II victors and two of the vanquished.
Not long before that momentous date, President Truman had signed "Executive Order 9621", "Termination of the Office of Strategic Services and Disposition of its Functions". In compliance with that order the OSS was abolished effective with the "opening of business October 1, 1945".
By the end of WW II it had become evident that changes would have to be made in the structure of the armed forces to build upon the lessons of the war, and to incorporate the ever evolving capabilities of new weapons and technology. After considerable discussion among the services, the White House and the Congress, the President signed the National Security Act of 1947, Public Law 253, on July 26, 1947. President Truman said later that the signing of that legislation into law was the greatest mistake of his administration. Many would agree with that statement.
This legislation was enacted to establish a National Security Council (NSC) that consisted of the President, Vice President, Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense. The single Department of Defense (DOD) was established over the traditional Departments of the Army and Navy with the Marine Corps and a newly independent Department of the Air Force with a permanent office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This was the new military structure.
In addition, and to fill a void that had become obstructive during WW II, a Central Intelligence Agency was created:
"For the purpose of co-ordinating the Intelligence activities of the several Government departments and agencies in the interest of national security..."
It had become apparent on several important occasions that even though one service or another may have had valuable military intelligence, there was no permanent organization given the responsibility to collate and co-ordinate the intelligence of the services for the benefit of the President, and theater commanders. It was to fill this void that a "Central" agency was created by Congress, and assigned that specific duty. It is significant to note that nowhere in the law was the CIA given the responsibility to conduct "Covert Operations". As a matter of fact, in order that the CIA not conflict with the work of other Intelligence offices, such as those in each military service, the CIA is specifically not charged with "collecting" intelligence; and no where in the Act is the term "National Security" defined as it is used in the legislation. In other words, the Law left the door ajar for the fertile minds of the intelligence community.
As a result, the CIA continued certain well-seasoned underground activities that were the product of OSS achievements during the WW II period, and as enhanced by the hundreds of experienced Nazi Intelligence agents such as the famous Nazi General Reinhard Gehlen. It began to enlarge its role in such countries as Greece, Italy, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East along with certain countries of Asia.
Its long-range "Make-War" goal was fixed on Indochina. On September 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh had announced the formation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. On that notable date, U.S. Navy transport vessels were on the high seas en route from Okinawa with one-half of the 500,000 man arsenal of supplies that had been planned to support the invasion of Japan. That enormous arms supply was on its way to Hanoi for delivery to Ho Chi Minh and his new state of Vietnam. (The other half was delivered to Syngman Rhee in Korea. Both long-planned deliveries telegraphed the wars to come in both locales.)
The Vietnamese opposed French rule and expected the Allies to support their independence, as President Roosevelt had announced at the 1943 Teheran Conference. Instead, the first British troops arrived in Saigon on September 12, 1945, the first French troops arrived ten days later, and the first American casualty of the Vietnam warfare occurred during September, 1945.
Despite an agreement in March, 1946, between the French and the Viet Minh, French forces landed in North Vietnam and strong differences of opinion developed. This resulted in a war that lasted until the French were soundly defeated at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954. This warfare had lasted for eight years and was a disaster for the French. They lost 35,000 killed and 48,000 wounded. The United States supported the French and the State of Vietnam with about $4 billion in aid.
What is more important from the point of view of this account, is the fact that during this period the new military structure of the U.S. was joined by a small but ambitious "Fourth Force"... the "Fun and Games" teams of the CIA in its growing clandestine operations role as the Cold War became the leading element of a multi-trillion dollar "Make War" adventure.
During the May 6, 1953, National Security Council meeting, President Eisenhower said:
"...unless something could be done to change [things there], nothing could possibly save Indochina, and continued United States assistance would amount to pouring our money down a rathole." and "...regulars can't win against guerrillas."
At this point, it is important to note that Mr. Justice W.O. Douglas, Senator Mike Mansfield and Senator John F. Kennedy, among others, met with Ngo Dinh Diem (a native of Vietnam) privately, in Washington on May 7, 1953. It was characteristic of Kennedy to stay tuned to coming events of historical significance.
Most of us do not recall that John Kennedy, while a member of the House of Representatives, had visited Vietnam as early as November, 1951; and, that as the son of the Ambassador to the Court of St. James at the time of the outbreak of WW II, as a Navy Officer serving in the Pacific during the war, as a Member of Congress immediately after the war, and as a Senator by 1953, John Kennedy was as highly experienced a man as any who had ever sought the office of the Presidency. This is apparent in this early meeting with Ngo Dinh Diem more than a year before Diem became President of South Vietnam, and serves as a clue to Kennedy's seasoned views concerning the role of the United States in the Vietnam war.
We have noted above that Ho Chi Minh declared the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on Sept 2, 1945. On that same September date, in 1953, the Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, delivered an address before the American Legion Convention in St. Louis. His remarks included this statement about Vietnam:
"In Indochina, a desperate struggle is in its eighth year. The outcome affects our own vital interest in the western Pacific, and we are already contributing largely in material and money to the combined efforts of the French and of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia."
It must be noted, that for the most part, US activity in Vietnam during a good portion of those eight years had been under the operational control of the CIA, with the U.S. Armed forces in a supporting role. In other words, for the CIA, the assets of the military establishment represented a bottomless pit, all available under the still-viable provisions of the National Economy Act of 1932, plus "out-of-pocket" costs.
By 1954 things were coming to a head between the Viet Minh and the French. Because we were heavily involved in providing support to the French, in terms of dollars and military material, 1954 was becoming a critical year in Vietnam, and for the CIA.
During an NSC Meeting, Jan 8, 1954, President Eisenhower commented: For himself.. said the President with great force...he simply could not imagine the United States putting ground forces anywhere in Southeast Asia, except possibly in Malaya... but to do this anywhere else was simply beyond his contemplation. Indeed the key to winning the war was to get the Vietnamese to fight. There was just no sense in even talking about United States forces replacing the French in Indochina. "I can not tell you," said the President with vehemence, "how bitterly opposed I am to such a course of action. This war in Indochina would absorb our troops by divisions."
This developing history from the end of WW II until the start of the year, 1954, is presented in this manner to lay the ground work for an understanding of the true role of the CIA during these formative years. January 1954 was the month in which it made its move toward leadership in the Cold War.
On Jan 29, 1954, only three weeks after the President's emphatic words, Allen W. Dulles, Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) attended a meeting of the President's Special Committee on Indochina. He inquired if an unconventional warfare officer, specifically, Colonel Edward G. Lansdale, could be added to the group of five U.S. liaison officers who had been selected for Vietnam duty, with the approval of the French General Navarre.
This was a bit of exquisite timing. Ed Lansdale, whom I had met many times in Manila during 1952-1953, had been working behind the scenes for the election of Ramon Magsaysay as the President of the Philippines to replace Elpidio Quirino. Magsaysay had been elected with American help on December 30, 1953, and Lansdale had just returned to Washington. It was because of Ed's success in Manila that Dulles wanted to move him to Saigon for a similar covert task there. Lansdale was present at this January 29, 1954 meeting, and shortly after that he was on his way to Saigon.
This was the most important single step on the way to the CIA's "Make War" activities. It initiated the creation of the CIA's "Saigon Military Mission", (SMM) i.e. the "Keystone" of the Vietnam War. It was certainly not a "Military" mission in the normal sense, and its activities were generally carried out well outside the limits of the city of Saigon. Before that war had come to an end, without victory, no less than $220 billion dollars had been spent on its support.
To emphasize the stages of this "High Stakes" ploy behind the back of the President, on February 10, 1954, during a news conference, the President said:
"No one could be more bitterly opposed to ever getting the United States involved in a hot war in that region (Indochina) than I am; consequently, every move that I authorize is calculated, as far as humans can do it, to make certain that does not happen.
"I cannot conceive of a greater tragedy for America than to get heavily involved now in an all-out war in any of those regions (Indochina) particularly with large units."
Despite the President's emphatic words again, and less than a month after the appointment of Lansdale to be Chief of the Saigon Military Mission, John Foster Dulles, in a message to our Ambassador in Saigon said that he was "MOST IMPRESSED WITH POSSIBILITIES OF "UNCONVENTIONAL WARFARE" i.e. this was Col. Lansdale's specialty. As defined by the President's Special Committee:
"Unconventional Warfare includes psychological warfare, guerrilla warfare, and certain aspects of pacification operation." ("Pacification" as practiced by the veteran French forces from Algeria...from whom Lansdale learned the business, is the ultimate form of "terrorist" clandestine warfare.)
Whether this trend was noticed and understood by the American people, all of these decisions, that January, set the stage for a major role for the CIA, and the USA in Indochina under the cleverly crafted cover of the Saigon Military Mission.
Such official statements set the tone and the character of the warfare in Vietnam in later years, from 1954 to 1965, when all "military type" operations were actually under the operational control of the CIA...not by the U.S. Military. Even the first helicopter units were brought in by the CIA, beginning in December 1960 just after Kennedy had been elected President.
[Author's note: As Commander of a military Air Transport squadron based in Tokyo, I was regularly involved in flights to Manila, Saigon and other Far East bases during these same years 1952, 1953, 1954. I met Ed Lansdale in both cities many times, and he and his CIA associates traveled in my aircraft frequently. At the same time, my brother an Air Force Lt. Col. Was assigned to Hanoi as the U.S. Air Force liaison officer to the French Air Force. From 1956 to 1963 I worked in close proximity to Maj. Gen. Edward G. Lansdale in the Pentagon both in Air Force Headquarters, and in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. For the reader's information: Lansdale was always a CIA agent and served with the Air Force as a "Cover" assignment. I trust the above note lends validity to the above historical account, even though it may differ from the many contrived stories in the public domain.]
The above are high-points on the life-line of the CIA from its creation in 1947 to its early maturity in 1954. The next step along the way was truly momentous. National Security Council Directive, NSC 5412, dated March 15, 1954, was the most important top level policy statement of "Peacetime Operations" as Allen Dulles euphemistically called "Clandestine Operations".
This can be said today, because the highly significant changes, that were intended to modify NSC 5412 and the role of the CIA as defined by that directive, which had been initiated, published, and signed by President John F. Kennedy as National Security Action Memorandum #55, dated June 28, 1961, had not been fully accomplished by the time of his death in November, 1963. [This will be fully presented in the next article.]
Continuing this course of the CIA as planned and carried out since January, 1954, NSC 5412 decreed that "the overt foreign activities of the U.S. Government should be supplemented by covert operations." As defined by NSC 5412 "Covert Operations" were:
"...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."
This action by the NSC on behalf of the CIA made that Agency the advance unit for the "Make War" activities of the U.S. Government on behalf of the military-industrial complex that was so well defined later by President Eisenhower in his famous January 1961 address to the American public. With this authority, the CIA could support a rebellion as large as the 42,000 man force in Indochina in 1958, and as far-reaching as its attempt to aid the Tibetan Khampa tribesmen against the Chinese in 1959-1960, and as costly as the $220 billion, 30 year-long Vietnam warfare that did not end until 1975.
Because President Eisenhower believed that the CIA should not become a "Fourth Force" along with the Army, Navy and Air Force, he directed that each of the services should provide military material and logistics support for the clandestine activities of the CIA that had been specifically directed by the NSC.
To accomplish this, each service was instructed to establish a small, highly classified "Focal Point" office for contact by the CIA's Deputy Director, Plans, i.e. "Clandestine Operations" contacts with the Pentagon. That "Focal Point" office would be given global responsibilities and would provide the requested men and material for the CIA's utilization, world-wide.
[NOTE: I had returned from Tokyo and the Korean War activities at the end of 1954. During 1955, I was directed to establish this "NSC 5412-Focal Point office" for the U.S. Air Force. This was done with the close co-operation of the General Counsel of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and of Larry Houston, General Counsel of the CIA. Its most intricate policies were those that covered the financial and personnel arrangements between the Air Force and the CIA.
When this office and its operating procedures had been written and approved by the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Allen Dulles arranged for one of his senior agents and myself to make a trip around the world in order to visit as many of the CIA's Station Chiefs as possible. At the same time the Air Force had arranged for us to visit each of its major over-seas Command headquarters where similar "Focal Point" offices had been established.
Our journey had been planned to take place in a westerly direction and we arrived in the Middle East via Japan just as the Suez Crisis of November 1956 had begun; and transited Austria at the peak of the Hungarian uprising against the Soviets. Few incidents could have provided a more immediate and effective launching of the NSC 5412 planning than those events and their aftermath.
All of these things had served to strengthen the CIA's role in world events. With the fall of Dien Bien Phu to Ho Chi Minh's forces on May 7, 1954 the warfare in Vietnam entered a new era. The French had been fighting the Vietminh for seven years. The U.S. Government had provided them with no less than $4 billion in arms and other support. All that remained of that vast stockpile was captured by Ho Chi Minh's forces and was used to continue their war against the South Vietnamese and the U.S. personnel.
continued... | | | | gchq | | Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2004 9:25 am Post subject: |
| continuation
Colonel Lansdale, as the SMM Chief arrived in Saigon on June 1st, 1954 and was assigned by the CIA to initiate paramilitary operations against the North Vietnamese, and to prepare the way for the introduction and indoctrination of Ngo Dinh Diem as the first president of South Vietnam.
On July 7, 1954, Ngo Dinh Diem formally assumed the office of President of the newly established nation of South Vietnam.
Shortly after that, the Geneva Conference issued an unsigned Final declaration on July 21, 1954. Among other things, it provided for the partition of Vietnam into two zones north and south of a line drawn "slightly above the 17th parallel". One little-noticed provision of that agreement provided "for the peaceful and humane transfer, under international supervision, of those people desiring to be moved from one zone to another of Vietnam." As we shall see, this became a most important factor of the CIA-SMM "Make War" plan for Vietnam. These "refugee" Tonkinese became the "insurgents" of the warfare in the South.
As a result, by March 8, 1955, the SMM had succeeded in coercing or terrorizing, by one means or another, more than one million northern Tonkinese Vietnamese to flee from their ancestral homes in the north (Tonkinese) zone to the south. During this period, U.S. Naval transport vessels carried some 660,000 refugees from the Tonkinese delta region to the south while the Civil Air Transport airline of the CIA carried more than 300,000. Tens of thousand more fled on foot.
On this same date, March 8, 1955, Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles delivered a speech over nationwide radio and television in which he said:
"As always, when international communism moves in, those who love liberty move out, if they can. So far, about six hundred thousand persons have fled from northern Vietnam, and before the exodus is over, the number of refugees will probably approach one million."
Dulles confirmed this massive, clandestine operation that had been brought about by the CIA and its SMM. These people, all one million of them, were thrust into the zone of the new government of South Vietnam. They were homeless, destitute and disliked as hostile strangers from the dreaded north. Of course, a good number of them were trained agents of Ho Chi Minh's forces. It was not long before these Tonkinese were forced to turn to banditry for food, shelter and the bare necessities of life.
And, it was not long before the psychological warfare campaign waged by the SMM began to call these Tonkinese refugees, the "Viet Cong." They had become the "enemy". They became "insurgents", and fodder for war. This situation remained subdued during the closing years of the Eisenhower second term. For example, during the year 1960, TIME magazine published no more than six articles about South Vietnam. CIA's operations in Laos were a larger news story during those emerging years of the Vietnam war.
We should recall that during 1957, the Senate Minority Leader, Lyndon B. Johnson, appointed Senator John F. Kennedy to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. As a member of that committee, Kennedy was made aware of all covert operations launched by the CIA during those final critical years of the Eisenhower administration when the Dulles brothers and their associates had their way in global affairs.
At that time, the CIA was making plans for its biggest "Covert" operation. In response to information gleaned by its agents in Jakarta, the agency learned that a cabal of Indonesians were prepared to rebel against the corrupt "Guided Democracy" regime of President Sukarno. During 1958, the CIA backed that rebellion of no less than 42,000 Indonesians. Although this CIA operation was led by Allen Dulles' own "protege", Frank Wisner, and was by far the largest "clandestine" operation ever mounted by the CIA, the rebels were soundly defeated by the loyal forces under the command of General Abdul Haris Nasution.
By the time the CIA was ready to participate in an operation as large as the Indonesian campaign of 1958, it had obtained the resources to open foreign bases, to create an entire supporting Tactical and Transport Air force, and to demand the services of naval supporting forces...including submarines. The CIA had become a major operational power by 1958, and was ready to enter the world arena as the core of the greatest peacetime, it can hardly be called "clandestine", operational force ever assembled. [It should be noted that among the selected U.S. Marines, from the CIA's Far East headquarters base at Atsugi in Japan for duty during this Indonesian rebellion, was Lee Harvey Oswald.]
This major Indonesian operation ended in a defeat for the CIA-supported rebels; but it launched the agency into the ever-growing, active war-making campaign in Vietnam. All of the aircraft that survived the Indonesian action were moved to CIA bases in the Philippines and Taiwan. A fast-growing air capability was emerging in Laos. Strange as it may seem, this same "air capability", fully augmented by the CIA's Civil Air Transport airline, played a major role in what was soon to become the "Bay of Pigs" anti-Castro operation in Cuba.
On December 31, 1958, I received a call from the office of the Chief of Staff of the Air Force to inform me that I should join certain members of the staff of the CIA's deputy Director, Plans office that evening, because it had been learned that Batista had fled the country and that Fidel Castro and his "Moncada Barracks, July 26, 1953" rebel movement were marching into Havana. As of that date no decision had yet been made in Washington whether or not to interfere with Castro's plans by keeping him out of Havana, or to sit tight and see what happened.
As a result, about six of us...I represented the U.S. Air Force...sat in the old World War II "Tempo" building "Quarters Eye" just across the pond from the beautiful night-lighted Jefferson Memorial in Washington. We all had to call our wives, cancel New Year's Eve plans and say nothing about "Why?" we were there. Needless to say it was a long night.
As it turned out, Castro was permitted to enter Havana without opposition from the United States and we received word at about 2 a.m. that we could go home. For those of us in the clandestine operations business, New Years Eve, 1959, was the start of a long and busy year.
During April, 1959, after a meeting with Castro in his office in the Capitol, Vice President Nixon had written, "As I have already indicated, he (Castro) was incredibly naive with regard to the Communist threat and appeared to have no fear whatever that the Communists might eventually come to power in Cuba..." The "Castro" problem was now on the front burner.
Meanwhile, across the far Himalayan range in the city of Lhasa, in Tibet, the CIA had made contact with the Dalai Lama and his closest associates because of the threat of the invasion of Tibet by the Chinese Communists. In one of the most daring, and spectacular operations by the CIA up to that time, the Dalai Lama and a small band of his closest friends had been advised to slip out of Lhasa in "twos" and "threes" along the course of a little used trade route to India across the High Himalayas. He left the sacred city of Lhasa during the night of March 16-17, 1959.
En route to sanctuary in India, the CIA provided aerial support, i.e. food and other necessities, for his small group as they assembled along the way. In this manner he and his friends crossed the border undetected and were led to safe haven in India where they continue to reside.
Meanwhile the CIA, at the suggestion of the Secretary of Defense, Thomas Gates, and with Air Force assistance, set up a long-range aerial operation from Thailand to various tribal regions in Tibet in support of their "life and death" battle for their country. Some of these C-130 flights went as far north in China as Lake Koko Nor across the Chin Sho river. Hundreds of Khampa tribesmen were trained at a secret base in the Colorado Rockies by Army and Air Force instructors for their sabotage work against the invading Chinese forces. Without precedent, this was one of the most important and far-reaching projects ever attempted by the CIA with the U.S. Armed Forces in support.
Early in 1960, President Eisenhower approved a CIA plan to create a Cuban-exile force to be used for "time to time" opportunistic raids against Cuba, and to stir up the Cuban public. The next day the CIA agents from Air Division came to my office and asked for suggestions for such a training camp. I checked with the Army and Navy and discovered that an ideal, relatively small and remote site existed in Panama at Ft. Gulick. The base was re-opened and the CIA began its Cuban exile training there. At that time it was made clear that President Eisenhower, the Commander of the Normandy invasions of WW II, had not the slightest idea of authorizing an "invasion" of Cuba by unskilled exiles. The CIA planned to hit Cuba from the air with air drops of supplies and para-troopers; and from the sea using over-the-beach operations with U.S. Marine Corps training and U.S. Navy support. [That was early and mid-1960.]
It must not be forgotten that President Eisenhower had planned a farewell Paris Summit conference with the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, the French President Charles DeGaulle, and the Russian leader Nikita Kruschev during the week of May 16, 1960. Because of that significant meeting, the White House had ordered that all "Over-flights" of the Soviet Union and of its Communist allies must cease during April and May, 1960. These Presidential orders covered all U-2 flights as well as all those flights we had been operating into China and Tibet...among others.
I grounded all of the flights we were operating into Tibet and China as well as many special flights in other denied areas. This caused serious problems in Tibet where our air-borne assistance was a matter of life and death for the brave Tibetans fighting for their country against the invading Chinese forces. A special request, was made by the Secretary of Defense to the White House that we be permitted to continue the Tibetan flights for humanitarian reasons. His request was denied. We were all grounded with no exceptions.
Then, when I came to work in my Pentagon office on Friday, May 6, 1960, I saw the frontpage headlines in the New York TIMES:
"SOVIET DOWNS AMERICAN PLANE;
"U.S. SAYS IT WAS WEATHER CRAFT;
"KRUSCHEV SEES SUMMIT BLOW."
I met an officer from the U-2 program whose office was across the hall from mine. He and his associates were stunned. It had been announced, belatedly, that "an unarmed, weather observation U-2 operated under NASA's orders had been shot down over the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960."
An old friend and high ranking Pentagon official rushed into my office with a note that contained four names. He gave me that scribbled note, and said "They did it," and left. I knew them. I had never seen that long-time, battle-hardened employee so distraught during the decades I had known him.
[Note: This is no place to open this subject; but it will be discussed in some detail in a following article. I will simply state here, that if you look in the Congressional Record of that period you will find a rather different story than that which appeared in other sources.]
This was a crucial event. It all but caused the cancellation of the Paris Summit Conference and did cause the withdrawal of the invitation to President Eisenhower to visit Moscow on his "Crusade for Peace" during the summer of 1960.
Meanwhile, as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and from confidential information from friends, Sen. John F. Kennedy was well aware of these operations. At the same time he was campaigning for the Presidency. By Mid-July, 1960, he had been nominated by the Democratic Party as their choice to run against the long time Vice President Richard Nixon.
During May of 1960, I had been transferred from Headquarters, U.S. Air Force, where I had been since 1955, to the Office of the Secretary of Defense. In the Office of the Assistant to the Secretary, Gen. Graves B. Erskine, USMC Ret'd, I continued the same type of "Military Support" work I had been doing for the CIA since 1955...on an All-Service basis.
One day in August, 1960, I was directed to get a military sedan and go to a certain office number in the Senate office Building, and to provide transportation for four men there who had been invited to visit the Secretary, Mr. Thomas Gates. As I reached the door of the room I had been sent to visit, I discovered that it was Senator Kennedy's office. The Senator greeted me and introduced me to his guests: Miro Cardona, formerly President of Cuba, Manuel Artime, Tony Varona and a fourth man whose name I do not recall. They were the CIA-selected leaders of the Cuban Government in Exile. I took them to the Pentagon and to Mr. Gates office.
This small incident reveals, all too significantly, the thoroughness with which Kennedy handled the Cuban problem even at the time when he was running a busy campaign for President. On the way between Capitol Hill and the Pentagon these men told me that they had visited Kennedy at his father's estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
During that crucial Fourth TV Debate of the Nixon vs. Kennedy Presidential campaign, October 21, 1960, when the subject of Cuba came up, it was apparent that Sen. Kennedy knew more about the Anti-Castro situation than did Vice President Nixon, and was fully prepared to speak about it. Many people believe Kennedy's clear "victory" during this debate gave him the necessary margin to win the election.
In the days following that Fourth TV Debate, the Gallup Poll read: 49 percent for Kennedy, 46 percent for Nixon, with 5 percent undecided.
The Eisenhower administration had long planned for a continuation of Republican control of the U.S. Government with the assurance that Richard Nixon would be elected President. As a result, major procurement programs in the budget had been held in abeyance until after the election for the benefit of the new Nixon administration. One of these was the Vietnam war (estimated total cost, $220 billion) under the operational control of the CIA, and the newly created Special Forces "Counterinsurgency" troops specially selected and trained by the CIA and Col. Lansdale at the Special Force Center at Ft. Bragg.
During October 1960, Lansdale had asked me to set up an airplane for a trip to Ft Gordon, GA., home of the Army's school for "Civil Affairs and Military Government". Among other things during that visit, Lansdale picked up the full curriculum of that school. On the way back to Washington he discussed it with me and Maj. Sam Wilson, an experienced Special Forces office for the Burma "Merrill's Marauder" days of WW II. Ed divided that curriculum into three parts, and each of us was responsible for converting his section to the new "Green Beret" U.S. Army Special Forces doctrine.
It is significant to note that the Special Forces school at Ft. Bragg has been called the "Kennedy Center". This is a curious misnomer. Actually it was opened for its first classes in late 1960 and dedicated by the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Donald Douglas. As with the "Camelot" scenario that was created by the U.S. Army for a "Think Tank" project, both terms were intended to be derisive when used in connection with President Kennedy.
The Kennedy election came as a severe blow to those who had so carefully planned for the extension of the Administration's plans. The Vietnam War was a major target for heavy expenditures. As far back as 1959, plans had been made to introduce thousands of costly helicopters into Vietnam. The first move of large combat helicopters came in December, 1960, during the Eisenhower "Lame Duck" period, and before Kennedy became President.
On top of this, the largest new aircraft procurement program ever put together was designed for the TFX (F 111) fighter that would cost no less than $6.8 billion by the time the bids were accepted. The Kennedy administration changed that procurement from the Boeing Company to a General Dynamics-Grumman proposal on November 22, 1962.
The Kennedy election endangered these heavily loaded plans, and created intense animosity between President-elect Kennedy and the powers of the Military-Industrial complex [even before he had taken office.]
On January 17, 1961, just prior to Kennedy's inauguration, President Eisenhower delivered his memorable "Beware of the Military-Industrial Complex" speech. Although it was delivered to the American public, it contained a significant warning for the new President:
"The conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual - is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the Federal Government...In the councils of government we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist...We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted..."
Three days later John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as President of the United States of America. Less than three years later he was shot dead, in Dallas. President Eisenhower's word had been proven to be prophetic.
This intense drama, from the period of the four TV Debates, the election itself, and that ominous speech
by President Eisenhower on January 17, 1961, was to play an important part in the developments after Kennedy's election and up to the time of his decision, on April 16, 1961, to authorize the landing of the Cuban-exile Brigade at the Bay of Pigs on the shores of Cuba. These, and other related subjects, will be presented in a following article. | | | | gchq | | Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2004 6:51 pm Post subject: CIA chief orders more aggressiveness |
| CIA chief orders more aggressiveness
Washington Times
Washington, DC, Nov. 18 (UPI) -- CIA Director Porter Goss has ordered his new chief of spy operations to expand the use of undercover officers, USA Today reported Thursday.
The move to more aggressive field operations represents Goss's first major effort to put into effect a strategy he laid out on his first day on the job Sept. 24.
The strategy is a departure from the CIA's traditional style of human intelligence, in which field officers under flimsy cover as diplomats in U.S. embassies try to recruit foreign spies and gather tips from allied intelligence services.
However, there is no way to do that with terrorist groups, or where the United States has no embassy.
Now, field officers who blow their diplomatic cover are typically expelled from foreign countries. Under the new tactics, officers caught under deep cover could expect no protection and could be executed.
"I know it won't go right all the time," Goss said. "When it goes wrong, it will be supported." | | | | gchq | | Posted: Fri Nov 19, 2004 9:11 am Post subject: The Fifth Estate |
| The Fifth Estate
Oct. 1974
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last January 9th 1974, the Canadian Broadcasting Company televised a documentary that startled viewers and immediately sparked a debate in the Canadian Parliament. It was called the Fifth Estate and revealed for the first time the existence of a Canadian Agency known as the Communications Branch of the National Research Council (CBNRC).
This agency is Canada's secret communications and electronic intercepting and bugging agency.
It operates both inside and outside of Canada and has contacts with the clandestine National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States. It is the role of the Fifth Estate to inform, at all times, the public about such clandestine organizations.
Meanwhile, Americans had been hearing about the Fifth Estate from an articulate, itinerant writer and sometimes political jouster, Norman Mailer. If, "the gallery in which the reporters sit has become a Fourth Estate of the realm", as Thomas Babbington Macaulay said in 1828, -then as reported by the Washington Post-
"the stairwell landing (from which) Norman Mailer energetically held forth for over half an hour" may quite be called the site of the rebirth of the precocious Fifth Estate.
From that stairwell Mailer was announcing to a surprisingly large gathering, all whom had paid $10 to join with Mailer and others in launching the Organizing Committee for a Fifth Estate, what was meant by this new Estate of the Realm, and what he hoped could be accomplished . I had met with him on other occasions and we had talked of the need for such an establishment.
The need to know what really is going on in our government has never been greater. The people in control of our government have become so proficient in keeping information from us that we are in many ways no better informed today than we were before the great scientific achievements in communications.
Consider the recent gasoline and oil shortages. Our government professes to know very little about oil supplies, oil storage, oil in transit, oil refining, and oil production. Despite the fact that we have an intelligence system that can tell us all we would ever need to know about oil in the Communist World - and of course all about oil anywhere.
Government spokesmen acted as though there was nothing they could do in the face of the "crisis". When the price of oil and gasoline had doubled, the crisis was suddenly over and gas and oil were available again. What had really happened? We have no way of knowing but we know that the American people have been taken and taken badly.
Americans have never refused to pay for something and to give their money for something if they believed there was a good reason. Witness the Marshall Plan, the generation of foreign aid programs all over the world. and the $200 billion spent on South Vietnam War. When Americans are just plain cheated they get aroused.
So when the Canadians learned about their clandestine government operations from the Fifth Estate they were seeing just another part of the act. Americans are looking for a Fifth Estate to find some way to learn what their government was doing
As Watergate has so emphatically demonstrated. the American government today is a government for the people in power and as Watergate so shows. A number of the people in power are not in the government, they are outside and they use the processes of our government for their own ends. It is the challenge of the Fifth Estate to discover identify analyze and expose this kind of abuse. Generally this power works through the intelligence machinery of our government because that is where secrecy and deceit are common.
During the month of October 1973, Mailer had gone on a speaking tour of twenty colleges and universities to begin serious discussions on the Fifth Estate. He came back from this tour convinced that it was an essential concept and that he should join with others to see what could be done to organize a Committee that would formalize and promote his objectives. By that time a number of people who were seriously concerned over the encroachment of the intelligence community into our daily lives had begun regular and frequent meetings with Mailer and others.
In British history, reference is made to the Three Estates of the Realm. The lords spiritual, the Lords temporal, and the Commons which together have come to stand for government. To that was added. The Fourth Estate--the Press Today reference to the Fourth Estate means the Press, and in particular the significant role a free Press plays in our modern society.
As Watergate has shown, when government becomes too powerful, too secretive, and too deceptive, the public has no alternative but to rely on the Fifth Estate not only to publish information which it may discover but as a trusted middleman to whom a concerned person may give information with the expectation that it will be published and exposed for the good of the country
Hidden away in the Watergate mess there have been other insights into the underworld of intelligence that have flickered momentarily into view. These are harder to identify and to understand and much more difficult to root out The National internal intelligence for domestic surveillance organization that was set in motion by Thomas Charles Huston is a case in point.
Sponsored by the White House and by the CIA: the Department of State, and of Defense, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Army Intelligence and by the National Security Agency (NSA), this sinister organization would have entered into every phase of our lives and of our government; it may still be doing so. We have no positive guarantee that it has been dismantled and abolished.
Furthermore Watergate has exposed the wily hands of the CIA and the FBI in the domestic scene to include the world of CREEP(Politics) and of the legal break-in to the office of Daniel Elsberg's psychiatrist. The activities of Howard Hunt and James McCord. both of whom were CIA officials of considerable rank and position even though they say that they were at the time retired from the agency.
Underscore how far the intelligence community has encroached on domestic policies and internal affairs.
The Fifth Estate is designed to provide the public with that special kind of experience and know-how that can see through intelligence apparatus at home and abroad and which can compile information about activities of intelligence that are vital to the maintenance of our free society
The Fifth Estate appreciates the signal distinction between privacy and secrecy. Certainly there are things that must be done by any government in privacy and which must be carried out with the assurance that others will not know about them and reveal them to unfriendly parties needlessly or dangerously. This is agreed, however, when unwise officials of the government use official secrecy as a cover for legal or unwise and dangerous acts, it is important that the ordinary citizen have at his call resources and expertise to protect his liberty and freedom.
The Fifth Estate is in no way against government, its against the abuse of government by those in power, whether they hold government office or are outside wielding power through government machinery.
The real actions of this government have been so confused and obscure that many people are unable to determine which actions are correct Take as an example the so called secret war in Cambodia. The secrecy surrounding that war was an administrative secrecy applied only in the United States. Certainly the Cambodians knew all about the war. They were its victims. And since they knew about it, the North Vietnamese, the Laotians. the Shais. Chinese, Japanese and Russians--along with about everyone else in the world - knew about it. What then was the secret? The only "victims" of that secrecy were the very people who should have known about it.
As happens frequently the issue of secrecy has little to do with thing as they really are. but its applied to permit a group to obtain compete control over some program or to maintain control it might otherwise lose. This was true of the military in the early days of the development of the atomic bomb during World War II. No country can operate well when important facts are held by a few and not made available to others whose skill, experience, or wisdom call for them to possess that vital information. These are gut issues. The mere existence of a Fifth Estate and of a Committee to Organize a Fifth Estate will not guarantee that all will be well.
This country has too long been blinded by the smokescreen and brain-washing of the Cult of the Gun, which has operated under secrecy on the one hand, and under the impetus of militant reflex anti-Communism on the other. But nothing has had the impact of Watergate on this country since the Japanese attack on Pear Harbor.
Like Norman Mailer. I, too have been speaking from Vancouver to San Diego, from Boston to Miami.
Anyone who has mixed with his fellow citizens since Watergate began to unravel feels the new sense of urgency and involvement of the American people.
---- ---- ---- | | | | gchq | | Posted: Sat Nov 20, 2004 9:05 am Post subject: The Fourth Force |
| The Fourth Force
Dec. 1975
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Bay of Pigs in 1961 was a large military exercise. It involved an Air Force, a Navy, and a sizable over the beach force of Cuban expatriates. The insurrection against the Sukarno Government in Indonesia 1958 involved more than 42,000 rebel troops, a good-sized CIA clandestine Air Force, and a Navy, including submarines.
In Tibet in 1959-60, more than 14,000 insurgent Khamba tribesmen were supported by a major airlift of arms over the Himalayan mountains. All of these programs, and many more, were under the operational control of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Yet the federal law that created the CIA to "coordinate the intelligence activities of other government departments and agencies" does not authorize clandestine activities such as those listed above.
Where did the CIA get its power? How could a small agency created to coordinate intelligence have grown to such a force that it assassinates rulers of governments and raises armies in support of rebel cabals around the world? Congress does not fund these operations. Yet the CIA has the power and the money to mount them.
When the CIA sought thousands of arms and tons of ammunition for India's border police, it got them from the United States military. When the CIA wanted 42,000 rifles airlifted to Indonesian rebels, it got the United States military to do it. When the CIA needed long-range transport aircraft to drop Tibetan sabotage teams on Chinese roadways in northwest China, it got the planes, the training, and the equipment from the United States military. But the United States military is held accountable for its equipment and is banned from engaging in clandestine activities. How does the CIA arrange this? How does the CIA repeatedly defy the rest of the United States government? The answer lies in its ominous role as this country's mysterious Fourth Force.
Years ago, the War Plans scenario for a bipolar world visualized that the two great powers, the Soviet Union and the United States, would exchange massive nuclear blows. The seats of government in both nations would be destroyed, along with their industrial capacities. The armed forces of both nations would be crippled and there would be chaos because all major cities would have been annihilated and radioactive fallout would have rendered enormous areas uninhabitable.
It was believed then and may still be that the war would be won by the nation that could pull itself together fastest after the initial exchange and put a force into the other country for the purpose of control and reorganization.
In the 1940s Washington came up with a War Plan that called for the creation of mobile, airlifted forces with global capability that could be dispatched immediately to areas in the Soviet Union where damage and radioactivity would be minimal following nuclear war. These forces would have the ability to form a military government and establish a communications system in the devastated areas. But one link in the plan had to be created before the nuclear exchange. Networks of agents had to be in place in "safe zones" of the Soviet Union to form the nucleus of any command-and-control system that would be established. Furthermore, the designation of the safe zones was a function of top-level war plans and was determined by the prepositioning, during peacetime, of CIA agents as well as Russians in the Soviet Union working for the CIA.
While the military was pondering this problem, the CIA came onto the scene. The United States Army had had experience in military government during World War II and it had done a good job, especially in Italy after the Germans were defeated and in Japan under General Douglas MacArthur.
The Office of Strategic Services had been close to the civil affairs and military government functions and was a precursor of the CIA; so the military turned to the fledgling CIA for help with its World plan. At that time the CIA was assisting with the administration and questioning tens of thousands of defectors from eastern Europe. The Agency had countless leads into eastern Europe and some, if exploited properly, would even stretch into Russia.
Thus the CIA came to take an active part in this supersecret war planning. The Agency established a presence in the Pentagon and in the major United States military headquarters all over the world. The Agency had available hundreds of skilled former military men. Most retained their reserve status while others were given equivalent rank. Some CIA personnel carried letters of authority that gave them rank above that of any three-star general or admiral... The CIA was moving in.
In the War Plans game, the CIA is scheduled to play the actual role of the Fourth Force - the name given to it in the Pentagon. The CIA Fourth Force would serve under the Supreme Allied Command. The Army, Navy, and Air Force would have paramount roles in time of all-out war. Then the CIA, the Fourth Force, would go into action.
This Fourth Force was not an intelligence force; the military, even before the days of the Defense Intelligence Agency, (DIA) which was created in 1961, was extremely jealous of its own intelligence capability and did not want any CIA meddling. But it readily accepted the CIA as the Fourth Force, in a paramilitary sense, for duty during wartime.
The CIA, under Allen Dulles, put exceptionally able operatives into each military headquarters. The over-worked planning staffs found these extra hands ready and eager to help with any small task. Such offices as Subsidiary Plans, Special Operations, Psychological Warfare, and Unconventional Warfare began to spring up and they were all loaded with "helpful" CIA men.
The law that created the CIA specifically prohibited the Agency from building up forces for clandestine operations. The Secretary of Defense in the late 1940s, Louis Johnson, had informed the Director of Central Intelligence that if the Agency needed military equipment it would have to pay cash for whatever it ordered. In those days the CIA budget was small, so this order effectively controlled any undue clandestine use of military equipment in foreign countries by the CIA.
President Eisenhower continued the policy. One of the old Clandestine Operations documents known as NSCID 10/2 Later updated to NSC 5412/2 and it set forth limitations concerning the role the CIA could play in clandestine operations. In the margin of one of the master copies of NSC 5412/2 Eisenhower had noted in his own handwriting that nothing was to be given to the CIA that would enable it to create a force that would permit it to operate over any lengthy period of time, or to be able to operate in such a manner that the operation would not remain "covert". In other words, clandestine operations were to be small and "one time" so said Eisenhower.
But the CIA was gathering power as the Fourth Force. It began in Europe, where military maneuvers were to be held in Germany. All the armed forces, including the Fourth Force, were to take part. Each service had its own equipment, established by the War Plan.
As the exercise took shape and the military forces began to prepare for their roles, the CIA asked for weapons, trucks, radios, jeeps, and other items it would need to "play" Fourth Force. This was a problem. The military couldn't fund the CIA and the CIA could not go to Congress itself and ask for military equipment on a permanent basis. The military forces came up with a solution. The Army, Navy, and Air Force all created "phony" CIA cover units. Then they let the CIA "equip" these units according to the War Plan and in time the CIA acquired a huge stockpile of military equipment, even aircraft, ostensibly for its formal Fourth Force mission.
Over the next few years the CIA amassed more and more equipment. Its phony Army, Navy, and Air Force units did not have the usual "equipment lists" or "tables of equipment" that other United States military organizations had; so the Agency had in effect an open-ended horn of plenty. Warehouses in England, Germany, Libya, Okinawa, and the Philippines, among others, were bulging with CIA-owned military hardware. Then, since all of this had cost nothing, the CIA began to use its money to buy foreign weapons. For example, the CIA bought boatloads of Russian, Czechoslovak, Polish, and other weapons that the Israelis had captured from the Egyptian army in the 1956 war. The CIA soon had substantial stockpiles of foreign equipment.
By the mid-1950s the CIA was ready to exploit its new capability. It turned its back on hard-core Soviet and East European targets and began to operate secretly in the realm of the Third World. When it wanted to equip a rebel cabal to overthrow some government, the CIA did not have to ask anyone for weaponry. It could ask the Air Force for planes to fly "training equipment" into some country; and the next thing anyone knew a well-equipped and well financed rebel force would be rising up against an "enemy" government.
The United States armed forces, meanwhile, had no idea how much equipment the CIA had gleaned from them. I recall in 1962 telling Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the CIA had "hundreds of military units and that they were all well armed and equipped". He said he didn't know it had become as extensive as that. Lemnitzer, a member of the recent Rockefeller CIA Commission, turned to the Commandant of the Marine Corps, General David M. Shoup, and asked if the Marines had such units. Shoup replied that they had a few, and added: "This must explain why I was asked by an Army unit on Okinawa for 14,000 rifles one day. I never could figure out why the Army needed 14,000 Marine rifles. Now I realize that I gave them to a CIA 'Army' unit". Those rifles found their way to Meo tribesmen fighting for the CIA in its private war in Laos.
This Fourth Force technique was carried so far that it was the CIA that actually selected and purchased the first M-16 rifles. The CIA had aircraft of its own, types that it concealed in the military inventory even when the services had none like them such as the L-28, the U-2, and the RB-69. The CIA sent the first sizable units of large helicopters into South Vietnam and moved in thousands of men under military cover to maintain them. These concentrations of men, ostensibly maintaining helicopters and no more, became early targets for the Viet Cong. They eventually had to be protected by United States military forces that might not have been sent if the CIA had not required them to protect its huge bases, a fact that does much to explain the early phases of the escalation of the Vietnam war.
The CIA has the world's largest private airline. It is generally known as Air America and it is part of the Pacific Corporation. But Air America itself has on occasion had more than one hundred subordinate affiliates all over the world. At one time Air America had more than four thousand men each on two separate bases. Of course, these bases appeared to be U.S. military bases and needed protection, which in turn involved the assignment of regular military forces.
Four government panels have been studying the CIA, plodding through stacks of irrelevant bits and pieces, swamped by titillating tidbits that lead nowhere. None of them knows about the Fourth Force, and they probably would not be able to identify and understand it if they found it. The Fourth Force is a major power. It has been used to start major wars and is at full strength today. The beginnings of Fourth Force activity may already be seen in the Middle East, and when the CIA is ready, action will begin there. This is the real CIA.
The Rockefeller Commission did not look into this because it had been penetrated on behalf of the CIA by David Belin, its chief counsel and former counsel of the Warren Commission. In fact, Belin still reports to the CIA. The Senate committee will not get into this because it has been penetrated by its chief counsel, William G. Miller. Miller was recruited by the CIA in the fifties when he was in Harvard, and the CIA assisted him by getting him a Foreign Service assignment in Iran from where he regularly reported to the CIA.
The House committee investigating the CIA will not get into this subject because its leadership has never really wanted a thorough investigation of the CIA. The committee is little known and it will not dig deeply. This committee is working on government reorganization activities and is administered by Presidential aide Donald Rumsfeld. This top committee has an active and important subcommittee on the Reorganization of the CIA. The CIA may be reorganized, but there is little chance that any of the present investigations will get deeply and significantly into the Fourth Force concept.
With the end of effective operations in Laos, Cambodia, and South Vietnam, the CIA will be shifting its apparatus from southeast Asia back to the United States. Then it will become embroiled in some small conflagration which will rage into an inferno until we are again at war. This is inevitable. And the fires the CIA ignites are costly to extinguish. The most recent one the Vietnam war cost $220 billion and 58,000 American lives | | | | gchq | | Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 10:53 am Post subject: THE FORTY COMMITTEE |
| THE FORTY COMMITTEE
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"By God, Prouty , those bastards are going to let them murder Trujillo. They go around telling everyone this shit about anti-communism; invading Cuba with a half assed task force and then when they have one tough son of a bitch right there in the heart of the Caribbean, what do they do? They take away his support. He'll be dead in less than forty-eight hours."
General Darcy was spitting mad. He was one of the toughest guys who ever strapped himself into a P-51 fighter. He was a real professional. He believed in fighting the Cold War as hard as he fought the total war against Hitler. Now, in May 1961, less than one month after the Bay of Pigs, he had just come back from a meeting of the Forty Committee (then called the Special Group 5412/2). They were playing God again and Rafael Trujillo, the dictatorial president of the Dominican Republic, was the next target for termination.
"Prouty, before you go back to your shop, go down to personnel. Find out what it takes to retire. This is not my game. I'm getting out." Before Darcy's papers could be processed, Trujillo was dead, murdered in the city that carried his name, by men in his own army.
Tom Darcy had made it clear many times that he had no love for Trujillo nor for what he stood; but despite that he knew Trujillo would never condone communism, and anyway, "it is not our business to mess around in their internal affairs."
Assassinations are not made by the Forty Committee; they are permitted. When the South Vietnamese military found out that the U.S. was withdrawing its support from the Diem brothers in Saigon, there was but one thing for the Diems to do. Take that preferred plane ride and leave - quickly. Trujillo was too proud to heed the warning, and he was shot down in the streets. The Diems were too stubborn. They returned to their palace to find that their CIA trained elite guard - their only real personal protection - had vanished. They were defenseless, dead. Many of the telegrams that tell this story are contained in the "Pentagon Papers". Anyone can see how this country removed its support from the Diems' Government and all but engineered their murders. An interesting sidelight to this came up in the Watergate testimony. Charles Colson ordered E. Howard Hunt to doctor up the State Department cables pertaining to the Diem murders in order to make it appear that President John Kennedy had ordered that act.
Look at this from another perspective. Colson, Hunt, and others knew that Kennedy had not ordered those murders. They wanted it to look as though he did. If Kennedy did not order that action someone of lesser authority did. Was it the Forty Committee? If not the committee, was it the CIA acting alone? Without belaboring this crucial point here, this is what it is all about. Who was this tremendous power? Who uses this great power - with or without presidential consent, let alone without the consent of congress? The record is full of these actions. Eisenhower, Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Nixon were all caught in this web.
When President Salvador Allende's opposition in Chile learned that the United States had withdrawn all support of his government, they knew it was time to move. The Forty Committee did not have to say, "We have decided to kill Allende." All it had to do was let the right people know that they would not support him and that they would not censure these people. Allende should have recognized the pattern; not long before, he had witnessed the same thing in Bolivia.
President Victor Paz Estensoro lost favor with Washington. The CIA tipped off General Rene Barrientos Ortuno that the gates of the city were open. In an almost effortless coup d'etat, Barrientos and his CIA friends flew into La Paz and the country was theirs. Estensoro accepted transport out of Bolivia and flew to exile in Lima, Peru. The committee does not kill anyone, they just welcome in the new regime and fling out the old - dead or alive.
What is this Forty Committee, which has had its power over the noncommunist world? Who are its members? Do they operate within any law? Whom do they represent and whose interests do they promote?
The Forty Committee is the latest of a long line of such committees, all of which live in deepest secrecy. Before it was called the Forty Committee it was the 303 Committee. Before that the Special Group. In the early Fifties it was the Special Group 10/2 and later the Special Group 5412 or 5412/2. Ostensibly this organization has always been made up of a representative of the President (the President's Advisor for National Security Affairs - a euphemism for the CIA's man in the White House); a representative of the Secretary of State and one for the Secretary of Defense. It also includes the Director of the CIA and since Kennedy's time it has included the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. These five men, representing as they do the principals of the National Security Council, have had thrust upon them the responsibility for international clandestine operations.
At one time Nelson Rockefeller was the President's National Security Advisor. So were Robert Cutler, McGeorge Bundy, and Maxwell Taylor. The present incumbent is Henry Kissinger, because he did not relinquish that CIA-oriented job when he became Secretary of State. This is no doubt an unauthorized and perhaps illegal use of this position because the law requires that the President have a National Security Advisor. By his very duties this advisor performs functions that are in direct conflict with those of the Secretary of State.
The power of this committee is awesome. Like the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, there is almost nothing in the world that cannot be done secretly by the might and money of the government of the United States. Consider some of the actions of this committee, or at least things that the CIA has done under the guise of having the committee's support.
Years ago the CIA had an old-time oil expert named George Prussing who knew the Middle East and its power centers like the back of his sunburned hands. In those days many of the Arab countries were weak and the Russian bear loomed large over the Caucasus. Prussing was directed by the CIA via the Special Group to plant mines in the oil wells of such countries as Saudi Arabia against the day when the Russian might overrun those defenseless oil fields. Did he do it? Are they still there? Are they effective? Who knows? But most of all, who reviews these matters? Who knows about such horrendous things? And if these five men know or knew, then from whom do they, or did they, draw their supreme power? Did Eisenhower know about Prussing's assignment? Did he authorize it? He didn't know about Francis Gary Powers's U-2 flight.
In 1958, when the Special Group authorized the CIA to invade Indonesia and to support more than forty thousand scattered rebels against the legitimate government of Sukarno, who really gave them that power? Was it really in the best interest of the U.S. for the CIA to mount such a large operation against a "friendly" country? Either the CIA acted on its own or with the approval of the Special Group mechanism. Richard Nixon, as Vice President, knew all about this. He knew that Allen Dulles's protege, Frank Wisner of the CIA, was in Singapore directing this operation. After its failure, Nixon ordered Dulles to fire Wisner. But did Eisenhower know of this?
When the CIA was created, soon after World War II, the law (the National Security Act of 1947) stated clearly what its duties were to be. There are five. The first four are clearly above-board intelligence functions. It is the fifth duty that opens the door to clandestine operations:
"5) to perform such other functions and duties related to intelligence affecting the national security as the National Security Council may from time to time direct."
This is the exact language of the law. This is the law today, and despite countless efforts by the CIA to have us believe otherwise, this is the only law that properly lists the duties of the CIA. It has not been changed and it has not been augmented.
The CIA would like to have us believe that it has the right to perform clandestine activities. It does not have this authority in law unless it is directed by the National Security Council to perform such an activity. Even then the law is most explicit: it adds, "from time to time... " And when the CIA is authorized to perform a clandestine operation, that authority does not carry over to another. The law further limits the CIA by saying "As the National Security Council may direct". In such important matters there is a vast difference between "direct" and "authorize". When the NSC directs, that means that the highest authority in the country has originated the idea, approved it and resolved to carry it out. When the NSC believes that the plan must be carried out, and only then, the NSC directs that it be done. And the NSC has the authority to direct any agency, not just the CIA.
After Allen Dulles had been appointed Director of the CIA by President Eisenhower, he began a deft campaign to water down this prescribed process. Working in conjunction with his brother John Foster Dulles, who was then Secretary of State, Allen Dulles put his proposal in the following terms: because the members of the NSC are the busiest people in Washington, because they have the cares of the world on their shoulders, because the President or the Vice President cannot be at every meeting, it is proposed that representatives be appointed to a sub-committee of the NSC which can meet regularly in place of each member to act upon CIA clandestine matters.
This sounded logical from an administrative point of view. But was it legal? Congress and federal law already said how this should be done. Congress knew that the NSC would be busy. They also knew that those top men would be most responsible and ultimately discreet. So Congress did not provide for a subcommittee. But it was done. The CIA had prevailed upon the NSC to publish a series of National Security Council Intelligence Directives (NSCIDs). One of these, NSCID 10/2, came close to giving the CIA what it wanted. In that document the NSC had spelled out that the CIA could get into clandestine work. However (and I used to have one of the original drafts of this directive in my files in the Office of the Secretary of Defense), President Eisenhower had written in his own handwriting on the side margin of NSCID 10/2 a stipulation to the effect that neither the military nor any other branch of the government was to provide the CIA with men, money, materials, or overseas base facilities in such quantity that the agency would have the ability to carry out a series of operations, a large operation, or a long-term operation. Eisenhower knew that if he cut off its men, money, and supplies, the CIA could not get deeply involved. The full meaning of this interpretation cannot be overemphasized. Yet the CIA eventually got around this device. Even the written directives of Presidents are ignored.
For years Eisenhower's stipulation slowed Dulles down. But through a procedure found in the complexities of the national war planning process, of which the CIA's a part, he was able to find another loophole and to build up supplies as though they were part of his "Fourth Force" augmentation during wartime. The military fell for this and gave him more war material than he could ever use, even in peacetime. Then the CIA penetrated the military with cover units. At one time more than one thousand military units of varying strengths belonged to the CIA. Even though they were not large, they permitted men and material to flow anywhere and at no cost to the CIA.
Then Allen Dulles got the Special Group established and it became the platform for the development of a capability for clandestine operations. With meticulous care Dulles saw to it that the men designated as representatives of the White House and of the State and Defense Departments were men with strong connections with the CIA.
At one time General Edward G. Lansdale attended meetings for the Secretary of Defense. Lansdale had served with the CIA for most of his active "military"career.
By 1955, when I began my daily work within this secret framework, the Special Group was regularly approving items brought to it by the CIA. Very rarely, if ever, did the NSC "direct" the CIA to get itself involved in some activity. Rather the CIA, as Dulles had visualized, found itself creating and originating exercises one after the other, with the Special Group rubber-stamping them. In those days, when the CIA made a request of the Department of Defense, we would screen top-secret Special Group logs. If we found that the Defense Department representative had "voted" to approve the "fun and games", we would provide the men, material, and overseas resources through an elaborate "cover" process that was global in its capability.
On the other hand, when we found that the operation had not been presented to the Special Group, we would notify the Secretary of Defense immediately and await his instructions. Between 1955 and 1959 we had the power to stop CIA requests that had not been approved by the Defense Department. Sometimes the CIA would attempt to get around us and tie one operation to another or otherwise attempt to beat the system.
We learned to put knowledgeable experts in the field pilots; doctors, and so on who would detect their plans and report them immediately. Once, when I was asked to move a squadron of Marine helicopters from the Laos CIA operational zone to South Vietnam, I found no precedent and no approval. I informed the Secretary of Defense of this item and he did not approve the project. At that time it would have been the first such move of major "hardware" into South Vietnam. The CIA battled this decision for weeks and finally prevailed, as they usually did, by using the weight of the Special Group and the White House.
Since those days the Special Group or Forty Committee has become a power unto itself. The State Department has thousands of career people who are responsible for the Foreign Policy of the United States to the Forty Committee's five men. They approve items that have much greater impact on world events than the State Department. They do this secretly, without proper review, without comprehensive experience and often without anyone but a very few "spooks" knowing about it.
Technically the CIA does not have this authority, and legally this is not the way things should be done. The CIA was never given this power by law and should not be permitted to continue this practice. No new laws are needed; the present law should be followed precisely and enforced. The CIA is in existence to perform an intelligence function and no more.
It would not take much to conclude that the Forty Committee possesses sufficient leverage over international affairs to overthrow Allende. To give money to the opposition party in Italy? To train King Hussein's elite bodyguard? To create and build up the Shah of Iran? To grant soft drink bottling concessions to Marshall Sarit of Thailand in order to make him the most powerful and wealthy man of that CIA-pawn country? To create Willy Brandt in West Germany and then to knock him down when it wished? To overfly Chinese nuclear plants at will? To arm and equip Indian Border Police? To infringe on the air rights of Norway? To bolster the Katangese rebel government of the Congo while the State Department was working with the legal government? To overthrow Pat Estensoro? To spy in Antarctica despite an international treaty prohibiting it? To play "dirty tricks" at several Olympic Games until the Games now have become political battle-grounds? To spy with U-2's on the French and British at the Suez in 1956? To place so many CIA personnel in other branches and agencies of the American government that the CIA is internally powerful in almost every agency? If the Forty Committee did not authorize these things, then is the answer that the CIA did them on its own, illegally?
When Gary Powers's U-2 spy plane went down in the Soviet Union in 1960, President Eisenhower did not know about it until after he heard the news from Krushchev. Rather than admit that a tiny irresponsible cabal had sent the U-2 out, Eisenhower had to say that he knew about it. After the Bay of Pigs, when John Kennedy learned about the CIA's role, he wrote three strong orders intended to control the CIA. But he did not live to complete that task. Lyndon admitted that the CIA ran a "Murder Inc." but confessed that he had been unable to do anything about it.
The combination of the Forty Committee and the CIA has outlived any usefulness that it may once have had. It must be abolished and the CIA must be so controlled by Congress and the Executive that it will be removed from the business of clandestine operations together. After all, there are other ways to do these things. We'll discuss them at a later date. | | | | Nobody | | Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 2:53 pm Post subject: |
| This should be all over the political, educational, stratosphere....
Good work  | | | | gchq | | Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 5:46 pm Post subject: |
| | Nobody wrote: | This should be all over the political, educational, stratosphere....
Good work |
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