the march plan

Cuba in the cross-hairs:
A near half-century of terror
By Noam Chomsky

The Batista dictatorship was overthrown in January 1959 by Castro's
guerrilla forces. In March, the National Security Council (NSC)
considered
means to institute regime change. In May, the CIA began to arm
guerrillas
inside Cuba. "During the Winter of 1959-1960, there was a significant
increase in CIA-supervised bombing and incendiary raids piloted by
exiled
Cubans" based in the US. We need not tarry on what the US or its clients

would do under such circumstances. Cuba, however, did not respond with
violent actions within the United States for revenge or deterrence.
Rather,
it followed the procedure required by international law. In July 1960,
Cuba
called on the UN for help, providing the Security Council with records
of
some twenty bombings, including names of pilots, plane registration
numbers,
unexploded bombs, and other specific details, alleging considerable
damage
and casualties and calling for resolution of the conflict through
diplomatic
channels. US Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge responded by giving his
"assurance [that] the United States has no aggressive purpose against
Cuba.
" Fou months before, in March 1960, his government had made a formal
decision in secret to overthrow the Castro government, and preparations
for
the Bay of Pigs invasion were well advanced.

Washington was concerned that Cubans might try to defend themselves. CIA

chief Allen Dulles therefore urged Britain not to provide arms to Cuba.
His
"main reason," the British ambassador reported to London, "was that this

might lead the Cubans to ask for Soviet or Soviet bloc arms," a move
that
"would have a tremendous effect," Dulles pointed out, allowing
Washington to
portray Cuba as a security threat to the hemisphere, following the
script
that had worked so well in Guatemala. Dulles was referring to
Washington's
successful demolition of Guatemala's first democratic experiment, a
ten-year
interlude of hope and progress, greatly feared in Washington because of
the
enormous popular support reported by US intelligence and the
"demonstration
effect" of social and economic measures to benefit the large majority.
The
Soviet threat was routinely invoked, abetted by Guatemala's appeal to
the
Soviet bloc for arms after the US had threatened attack and cut off
other
sources of supply. The result was a half-century of horror, even worse
than
the US-backed tyranny that came before.

For Cuba, the schemes devised by the doves were similar to those of CIA
director Dulles. Warning President Kennedy about the "inevitable
political
and diplomatic fall-out" from the planned invasion of Cuba by a proxy
army,
Arthur Schlesinger suggested efforts to trap Castro in some action that
could be used as a pretext for invasion: "One can conceive a black
operation
in, say, Haiti which might in time lure Castro into sending a few
boatloads
of men on to a Haitian beach in what could be portrayed as an effort to
overthrow the Haitian regime, . . . then the moral issue would be
clouded,
and the anti-US campaign would be hobbled from the start." Reference is
to
the regime of the murderous dictator "Papa Doc" Duvalier, which was
backed
by the US (with some reservations), so that an effort to help Haitians
overthrow it would be a crime.

Eisenhower's March 1960 plan called for the overthrow of Castro in favor
of
a regime "more devoted to the true interests of the Cuban people and
more
acceptable to the U.S.," including support for "military operation on
the
island" and "development of an adequate paramilitary force outside of
Cuba."
Intelligence reported that popular support for Castro was high, but the
US
would determine the "true interests of the Cuban people." The regime
change
was to be carried out "in such a manner as to avoid any appearance of
U.S.
intervention," because of the anticipated reaction in Latin America and
the
problems of doctrinal management at home.

Operation Mongoose

The Bay of Pigs invasion came a year later, in April 1961, after Kennedy
had
taken office. It was authorized in an atmosphere of "hysteria" over Cuba
in
the White House, Robert McNamara later testified before the Senate's
Church
Committee. At the first cabinet meeting after the failed invasion, the
atmosphere was "almost savage," Chester Bowles noted privately: "there
was
an almost frantic reaction for an action program." At an NSC meeting two

days later, Bowles found the atmosphere "almost as emotional" and was
struck
by "the great lack of moral integrity" that prevailed. The mood was
reflected in Kennedy's public pronouncements: "The complacent, the
self-indulgent, the soft societies are about to be swept away with the
debris of history. Only the strong . . . can possibly survive," he told
the
country, sounding a theme that would be used to good effect by the
Reaganites during their own terrorist wars. Kennedy was aware that
allies
"think that we're slightly demented" on the subject of Cuba, a
perception
that persists to the present.

Kennedy implemented a crushing embargo that could scarcely be endured
by a small country that had become a "virtual colony" of the US in the
sixty
years following its "liberation" from Spain. He also ordered an
intensification of the terrorist campaign: "He asked his brother,
Attorney-General Robert Kennedy, to lead the top-level interagency group

that oversaw Operation Mongoose, a program of paramilitary operations,
economic warfare, and sabotage he launched in late 1961 to visit the
'terrors of the earth' on Fidel Castro and, more prosaically, to topple
him."

The terrorist campaign was "no laughing matter," Jorge Dominguez writes
in a
review of recently declassified materials on operations under Kennedy,
materials that are "heavily sanitized" and "only the tip of the
iceberg,"
Piero Gleijeses adds.

Operation Mongoose was "the centerpiece of American policy toward Cuba
from late 1961 until the onset of the 1962 missile crisis," Mark White
reports,
the program on which the Kennedy brothers "came to pin their hopes."
Robert
Kennedy informed the CIA that the Cuban problem carries "the top
priority in
the United States Government -- all else is secondary -- no time, no
effort,
or manpower is to be spared" in the effort to overthrow the Castro
regime.
The chief of Mongoose operations, Edward Lansdale, provided a timetable
leading to "open revolt and overthrow of the Communist regime" in
October
1962. The "final definition" of the program recognized that "final
success
will require decisive U.S. military intervention," after terrorism and
subversion had laid the basis. The implication is that US military
intervention would take place in October 1962 -- when the missile crisis

erupted.

In February 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff approved a plan more extreme

than Schlesinger's: to use "covert means . . . to lure or provoke
Castro, or
an uncontrollable subordinate, into an overt hostile reaction against
the
United States; a reaction which would in turn create the justification
for
the US to not only retaliate but destroy Castro with speed, force and
determination." In March, at the request of the DOD Cuba Project, the
Joint
Chiefs of Staff submitted a memorandum to Defense Secretary Robert
McNamara
outlining "pretexts which they would consider would provide
justification
for US military intervention in Cuba." The plan would be undertaken if
"a
credible internal revolt is impossible of attainment during the next
9-10
months," but before Cuba could establish relations with Russia that
might
"directly involve the Soviet Union."

A prudent resort to terror should avoid risk to the perpetrator.

The March plan was to construct "seemingly unrelated events to
camouflage
the ultimate objective and create the necessary impression of Cuban
rashness
and responsibility on a large scale, directed at other countries as well
as
the United States," placing the US "in the apparent position of
suffering
defensible grievances [and developing] an international image of Cuban
threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere." Proposed measures included
blowing up a US ship in Guantanamo Bay to create "a 'Remember the Maine'

incident," publishing casualty lists in US newspapers to "cause a
helpful
wave of national indignation," portraying Cuban investigations as
"fairly
compelling evidence that the ship was taken under attack," developing a
"Communist Cuban terror campaign [in Florida] and even in Washington,
" using Soviet bloc incendiaries for cane-burning raids in neighboring
countries, shooting down a drone aircraft with a pretense that it was a
charter flight carrying college students on a holiday, and other
similarly
ingenious schemes -- not implemented, but another sign of the "frantic"
and "savage" atmosphere that prevailed.

On August 23 the president issued National Security Memorandum
No.181, "a directive to engineer an internal revolt that would be
followed
by U.S.military intervention," involving "significant U.S. military
plans,
maneuvers, and movement of forces and equipment" that were surely known
to Cuba and Russia. Also in August, terrorist attacks were intensified,
including speedboat strafing attacks on a Cuban seaside hotel "where
Soviet
military technicians were known to congregate, killing a score of
Russians
and Cubans"; attacks on British and Cuban cargo ships; the contamination
of
sugar shipments; and other atrocities and sabotage, mostly carried out
by
Cuban exile organizations permitted to operate freely in Florida. A few
weeks later came "the most dangerous moment in human history."

"A bad press in some friendly countries"

Terrorist operations continued through the tensest moments of the
missile
crisis. They were formally canceled on October 30, several days after
the
Kennedy and Khrushchev agreement, but went on nonetheless. On November
8,
"a Cuban covert action sabotage team dispatched from the United States
successfully blew up a Cuban industrial facility," killing 400 workers,
according to the Cuban government. Raymond Garthoff writes that "the
Soviets
could only see [the attack] as an effort to backpedal on what was, for
them,
the key question remaining: American assurances not to attack Cuba."
These
and other actions reveal again, he concludes, "that the risk and danger
to
both sides could have been extreme, and catastrophe not excluded."

After the crisis ended, Kennedy renewed the terrorist campaign. Ten days

before his assassination he approved a CIA plan for "destruction
operations"
by US proxy forces "against a large oil refinery and storage facilities,
a
large electric plant, sugar refineries, railroad bridges, harbor
facilities,
and underwater demolition of docks and ships." A plot to kill Castro was

initiated on the day of the Kennedy assassination. The campaign was
called
off in 1965, but "one of Nixon's first acts in office in 1969 was to
direct
the CIA to intensify covert operations against Cuba."

Of particular interest are the perceptions of the planners. In his
review of
recently released documents on Kennedy-era terror, Dominguez observes
that "only once in these nearly thousand pages of documentation did a
U.S.
official raise something that resembled a faint moral objection to U.S.-

government sponsored terrorism": a member of the NSC staff suggested
that it might lead to some Russian reaction, and raids that are
"haphazard
and kill innocents . . . might mean a bad press in some friendly
countries."
The same attitudes prevail throughout the internal discussions, as when
Robert Kennedy warned that a full-scale invasion of Cuba would "kill an
awful lot of people, and we're going to take an awful lot of heat on
it."

Terrorist activities continued under Nixon, peaking in the mid- 1970s,
with
attacks on fishing boats, embassies, and Cuban offices overseas, and the

bombing of a Cubana airliner, killing all seventy-three passengers.
These
and subsequent terrorist operations were carried out from US territory,
though by then they were regarded as criminal acts by the FBI.

So matters proceeded, while Castro was condemned by editors for
maintaining
an "armed camp, despite the security from attack promised by Washington
in
1962." The promise should have sufficed, despite what followed; not to
speak
of the promises that preceded, by then well documented, along with
information about how well they could be trusted: e.g., the "Lodge
moment"
of July 1960.

On the thirtieth anniversary of the missile crisis, Cuba protested a
machine-gun attack against a Spanish-Cuban tourist hotel; responsibility
was
claimed by a group in Miami. Bombings in Cuba in 1997, which killed an
Italian tourist, were traced back to Miami. The perpetrators were
Salvadoran
criminals operating under the direction of Luis Posada Carriles and
financed
in Miami. One of the most notorious international terrorists, Posada had

escaped from a Venezuelan prison, where he had been held for the Cubana
airliner bombing, with the aid of Jorge Mas Canosa, a Miami businessman
who
was the head of the tax-exempt Cuban-American National Foundation
(CANF).
Posada went from Venezuela to El Salvador, where he was put to work at
the
Ilopango military air base to help organize US terrorist attacks against

Nicaragua under Oliver North's direction.

Posada has described in detail his terrorist activities and the funding
for
them from exiles and CANF in Miami, but felt secure that he would not be

investigated by the FBI. He was a Bay of Pigs veteran, and his
subsequent
operations in the 1960s were directed by the CIA. When he later joined
Venezuelan intelligence with CIA help, he was able to arrange for
Orlando
Bosch, an associate from his CIA days who had been convicted in the US
for a
bomb attack on a Cuba-bound freighter, to join him in Venezuela to
organize
further attacks against Cuba. An ex-CIA official familiar with the
Cubana
bombing identifies Posada and Bosch as the only suspects in the bombing,

which Bosch defended as "a legitimate act of war." Generally considered
the
"mastermind" of the airline bombing, Bosch was responsible for thirty
other
acts of terrorism, according to the FBI. He was granted a presidential
pardon in 1989 by the incoming Bush I administration after intense
lobbying
by Jeb Bush and South Florida Cuban-American leaders, overruling the
Justice
Department, which had found the conclusion "inescapable that it would be

prejudicial to the public interest for the United States to provide a
safe
haven for Bosch [because] the security of this nation is affected by its

ability to urge credibly other nations to refuse aid and shelter to
terrorists."

Economic warfare

Cuban offers to cooperate in intelligence-sharing to prevent terrorist
attacks have been rejected by Washington, though some did lead to US
actions. "Senior members of the FBI visited Cuba in 1998 to meet their
Cuban
counterparts, who gave [the FBI] dossiers about what they suggested was
a
Miami-based terrorist network: information which had been compiled in
part
by Cubans who had infiltrated exile groups." Three months later the FBI
arrested Cubans who had infiltrated the US-based terrorist groups. Five
were
sentenced to long terms in prison.

The national security pretext lost whatever shreds of credibility it
might
have had after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, though it was
not
until 1998 that US intelligence officially informed the country that
Cuba no
longer posed a threat to US national security. The Clinton
administration,
however, insisted that the military threat posed by Cuba be reduced to
"negligible," but not completely removed. Even with this qualification,
the
intelligence assessment eliminated a danger that had been identified by
the
Mexican ambassador in 1961, when he rejected JFK's attempt to organize
collective action against Cuba on the grounds that "if we publicly
declare
that Cuba is a threat to our security, forty million Mexicans will die
laughing."

In fairness, however, it should be recognized that missiles in Cuba did
pose
a threat. In private discussions the Kennedy brothers expressed their
fears
that the presence of Russian missiles in Cuba might deter a US invasion
of
Venezuela. So "the Bay of Pigs was really right," JFK concluded.

The Bush I administration reacted to the elimination of the security
pretext
by making the embargo much harsher, under pressure from Clinton, who
outflanked Bush from the right during the 1992 election campaign.
Economic
warfare was made still more stringent in 1996, causing a furor even
among
the closest US allies. The embargo came under considerable domestic
criticism as well, on the grounds that it harms US exporters and
investors -- the embargo's only victims, according to the standard
picture
in the US; Cubans are unaffected. Investigations by US specialists tell
a
different story. Thus, a detailed study by the American Association for
World Health concluded that the embargo had severe health effects, and
only
Cuba's remarkable health care system had prevented a "humanitarian
catastrophe"; this has received virtually no mention in the US.

The embargo has effectively barred even food and medicine. In 1999 the
Clinton administration eased such sanctions for all countries on the
official list of "terrorist states," apart from Cuba, singled out for
unique
punishment. Nevertheless, Cuba is not entirely alone in this regard.
After a
hurricane devastated West Indian islands in August 1980, President
Carter
refused to allow any aid unless Grenada was excluded, as punishment for
some
unspecified initiatives of the reformist Maurice Bishop government. When
the
stricken countries refused to agree to Grenada's exclusion, having
failed to
perceive the threat to survival posed by the nutmeg capital of the
world,
Carter withheld all aid. Similarly, when Nicaragua was struck by a
hurricane
in October 1988, bringing starvation and causing severe ecological
damage,
the current incumbents in Washington recognized that their terrorist war

could benefit from the disaster, and therefore refused aid, even to the
Atlantic Coast area with close links to the US and deep resentment
against
the Sandinistas. They followed suit when a tidal wave wiped out
Nicaraguan
fishing villages, leaving hundreds dead and missing in September 1992.
In
this case, there was a show of aid, but hidden in the small print was
the
fact that apart from an impressive donation of $25,000, the aid was
deducted
from assistance already scheduled. Congress was assured, however, that
the
pittance of aid would not affect the administration's suspension of over

$100 million of aid because the US-backed Nicaraguan government had
failed
to demonstrate a sufficient degree of subservience.

US economic warfare against Cuba has been strongly condemned in
virtually
every relevant international forum, even declared illegal by the
Judicial
Commission of the normally compliant Organization of American States.
The
European Union called on the World Trade Organization to condemn the
embargo. The response of the Clinton administration was that "Europe is
challenging 'three decades of American Cuba policy that goes back to the

Kennedy Administration,' and is aimed entirely at forcing a change of
government in Havana." The administration also declared that the WTO has
no
competence to rule on US national security or to compel the US to change
its
laws. Washington then withdrew from the proceedings, rendering the
matter
moot.

Successful defiance

The reasons for the international terrorist attacks against Cuba and the

illegal economic embargo are spelled out in the internal record. And no
one
should be surprised to discover that they fit a familiar pattern -- that
of
Guatemala a few years earlier, for example.

>From the timing alone, it is clear that concern over a Russian threat
could
not have been a major factor. The plans for forceful regime change were
drawn up and implemented before there was any significant Russian
connection, and punishment was intensified after the Russians
disappeared
from the scene. True, a Russian threat did develop, but that was more a
consequence than a cause of US terrorism and economic warfare.

In July 1961 the CIA warned that "the extensive influence of 'Castroism'
is
not a function of Cuban power. . . . Castro's shadow looms large because

social and economic conditions throughout Latin America invite
opposition to
ruling authority and encourage agitation for radical change," for which
Castro's Cuba provided a model. Earlier, Arthur Schlesinger had
transmitted
to the incoming President Kennedy his Latin American Mission report,
which
warned of the susceptibility of Latin Americans to "the Castro idea of
taking matters into one's own hands." The report did identify a Kremlin
connection: the Soviet Union "hovers in the wings, flourishing large
development loans and presenting itself as the model for achieving
modernization in a single generation." The dangers of the "Castro idea"
are
particularly grave, Schlesinger later elaborated, when "the distribution
of
land and other forms of national wealth greatly favors the propertied
classes" and "the poor and underprivileged, stimulated by the example of
the
Cuban revolution, are now demanding opportunities for a decent living."
Kennedy feared that Russian aid might make Cuba a "showcase" for
development, giving the Soviets the upper hand throughout Latin America.

In early 1964, the State Department Policy Planning Council expanded on
these concerns: "The primary danger we face in Castro is . . . in the
impact
the very existence of his regime has upon the leftist movement in many
Latin
American countries. . . . The simple fact is that Castro represents a
successful defiance of the US, a negation of our whole hemispheric
policy of
almost a century and a half." To put it simply, Thomas Paterson writes,
"Cuba, as symbol and reality, challenged U.S. hegemony in Latin
America."
International terrorism and economic warfare to bring about regime
change
are justified not by what Cuba does, but by its "very existence," its
"successful defiance" of the proper master of the hemisphere. Defiance
may
justify even more violent actions, as in Serbia, as quietly conceded
after
the fact; or Iraq, as also recognized when pretexts had collapsed.

Outrage over defiance goes far back in American history. Two hundred
years
ago, Thomas Jefferson bitterly condemned France for its "attitude of
defiance" in holding New Orleans, which he coveted. Jefferson warned
that
France's "character [is] placed in a point of eternal friction with our
character, which though loving peace and the pursuit of wealth, is
high-minded." France's "defiance [requires us to] marry ourselves to the

British fleet and nation," Jefferson advised, reversing his earlier
attitudes, which reflected France's crucial contribution to the
liberation
of the colonies from British rule. Thanks to Haiti's liberation
struggle,
unaided and almost universally opposed, France's defiance soon ended,
but
the guiding principles remain in force, determining friend and foe.

[Note that this passage (pages 80-90) is fully footnoted in Hegemony or
Survival. Chomsky's discussion of the Cuban missile crisis itself can be

found elsewhere in the same chapter of the book.]

Noam Chomsky is a Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT. In
addition to Hegemony or Survival, America's Quest for Global Dominance
(The
American Empire Project, Metropolitan Books), he is the author of
numerous
books on linguistics and on U.S. foreign policy.

Reprinted by permission of Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Henry Holt
and
Company, LLC.

Copyright C by Aviva Chomsky, Diane Chomsky, and Harry Chomsky. All
rights
reserved.

-- -Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island
http://www.anaphoria.com
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