01-06-2013, 08:36 PM
1/4/1962 Fred Korth, a Fort Worth lawyer and bank president, is appointed as Navy Secretary by President Kennedy to replace John Connally. According to author Seth Kantor, Korth only got the job after strong lobbying from Lyndon B. Johnson. A few weeks after taking the post, Korth overruled top Navy officers who had proposed that the X-22 contract be given to Douglas Aircraft Corporation. Instead he insisted the contract be granted to the more expensive bid of the Bell Corporation. This was a subsidiary of Bell Aerospace Corporation of Forth Worth, Texas. This created some controversy as Korth was a former director of the company. Korth also became very involved in discussions about the TFX contract. Korth, was the former president of the Continental Bank, which had loaned General Dynamics considerable sums of money during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Korth later told the John McClellan committee that investigated the granting of the TFX contract to General Dynamics "that because of his peculiar position he had deliberately refrained from taking a directing hand in this decision (within the Navy) until the last possible moment." As I. F. Stone pointed out, it was "the last possible moment" which counted. "Three times the Pentagon's Source Selection Board found that Boeing's bid was better and cheaper than that of General Dynamics and three times the bids were sent back for fresh submissions by the two bidders and fresh reviews.
On the fourth round, the military still held that Boeing was better but found at last that the General Dynamics bid was also acceptable." Stone goes on to argue: "The only document the McClellan committee investigators were able to find in the Pentagon in favour of that award, according to their testimony, was a five-page memorandum signed by McNamara, Korth, and Eugene Zuckert, then Secretary of the Air Force." Robert McNamara justified his support for General Dynamics because "Boeing had from the very beginning consistently chosen more technically risky tradeoffs in an effort to achieve operational features which exceeded the required performance characteristics." The TFX program involved the building of 1,700 planes for the Navy and the Air Force. The contract was estimated to be worth over $6.5 billion, making it the largest contract for military planes in the nation's history.
1962: The US government sprays florescent particles of zinc cadmium sulfide over Stillwater, Oklahoma, but reportedly does not monitor how the application affects the population. Leonard Cole, an expert on the Army's development of biological weapons, later explains to an Oklahoma TV news program: "Cadmium itself is known to be one of the most highly toxic materials in small amounts that a human can be exposed to If there were concentrations of it enough to make one sick, you could have serious consequences a person over a period of time could have illnesses that could range from cancer to organ failures." [KFOR, 4/25/03] Sometime between 1962 and 1973 the US government performs biological and/or chemical weapons tests in Florida and in Vieques, Puerto Rico, possibly exposing the civilian population to these agents. [Reuters, 10/10/02]
1/23/1962 Congressional hearings into the "muzzling" of military officers opened, appearing before the Senate Preparedness Subcommittee in 36 days of hearings. Gen. Walker was among the witnesses. He charged that "with this nation's survival at stake, our armed forces are paralyzed by our national policy of no win' and retreat from victory." He blamed Secretary of State Rusk and others in the State Dept.
1/29/1962 Sen. John Tower (R-Texas) said on the Senate floor, "I think it is naive and unrealistic to be preoccupied with the question of disarmament. We know that the communist conspiracy has no intention of co-existing with us."
2/2/1962 Pentagon memorandum entitled "Possible Actions to Provoke, Harass or Disrupt Cuba," written by Brig. Gen. William H. Craig and submitted to Brig. Gen. Edward Lansdale, the commander of the Operation Mongoose project. The memorandum outlines Operation Bingo, a plan to, in its words, "create an incident which has the appearance of an attack on U.S. facilities (GMO) in Cuba, thus providing an excuse for use of U.S. military might to overthrow the current government of Cuba." It also includes Operation Dirty Trick, a plot to blame Castro if the 1962 Mercury manned space flight carrying John Glenn crashed, saying: "The objective is to provide irrevocable proof that, should the MERCURY manned orbit flight fail, the fault lies with the Communists et al Cuba [sic]." It continues, "This to be accomplished by manufacturing various pieces of evidence which would prove electronic interference on the part of the Cubans."
3/13/1962 Operation Northwoods was a false-flag conspiracy plan, proposed within the United States government in 1962. The plan called for CIA or other operatives to commit apparent acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Castro-led Cuba. The plan stated: "The desired resultant from the execution of this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere." The main proposal was presented in a document entitled "Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba (TS)," a collection of draft memoranda written by the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) representative to the Caribbean Survey Group. (The parenthetical "TS" in the title of the document is an initialism for "Top Secret.") The document was presented by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on March 13 as a preliminary submission for planning purposes. The Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended that both the covert and overt aspects of any such operation be assigned to them. There is no record of McNamara 's response. However, according to the record of a March 16 White House meeting, President Kennedy told Lemnitzer and other key advisers that he could not foresee any circumstances " that would justify and make desirable the use of American forces for overt military action" in Cuba.
James Bamford wrote on Northwoods:
"Operation Northwoods, which had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war."
In addition to Operation Northwoods, under the Operation Mongoose program the U.S. Department of Defense had a number of similar proposals to be taken against the Cuban regime of Fidel Castro.
Twelve of these proposals come from a 2 February 1962 memorandum entitled "Possible Actions to Provoke, Harass or Disrupt Cuba," written by Brig. Gen. William H. Craig and submitted to Brig. Gen. Edward Lansdale, the commander of the Operation Mongoose project.
The memorandum outlines Operation Bingo, a plan to; "create an incident which has the appearance of an attack on U.S. facilities (GMO) in Cuba, thus providing an excuse for use of U.S. military might to overthrow the current government of Cuba."
It also includes Operation Dirty Trick, a plot to blame Castro if the 1962 Mercury manned space flight carrying John Glenn crashed, saying: "The objective is to provide irrevocable proof that, should the MERCURY manned orbit flight fail, the fault lies with the Communists et al. Cuba [sic]." It continues, "This to be accomplished by manufacturing various pieces of evidence which would prove electronic interference on the part of the Cubans."
Even after General Lemnitzer lost his job as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Joint Chiefs of Staff still planned false-flag pretext operations at least into 1963. A different U.S. Department of Defense policy paper created in 1963 discussed a plan to make it appear that Cuba had attacked a member of the Organization of American States (OAS) so that the United States could retaliate. The U.S. Department of Defense document says of one of the scenarios, "A contrived 'Cuban' attack on an OAS member could be set up, and the attacked state could be urged to take measures of self-defense and request assistance from the U.S. and OAS."
The plan expressed confidence that by this action, "the U.S. could almost certainly obtain the necessary two-thirds support among OAS members for collective action against Cuba."
Included in the nations the Joint Chiefs suggested as targets for covert attacks were Jamaica and Trinidad-Tobago. Since both were members of the British Commonwealth, the Joint Chiefs hoped that by secretly attacking them and then falsely blaming Cuba, the United States could incite the people of the United Kingdom into supporting a war against Castro. As the U.S. Department of Defense report noted:
Any of the contrived situations described above are inherently, extremely risky in our democratic system in which security can be maintained, after the fact, with very great difficulty. If the decision should be made to set up a contrived situation it should be one in which participation by U.S. personnel is limited only to the most highly trusted covert personnel. This suggests the infeasibility of the use of military units for any aspect of the contrived situation."
The U.S. Department of Defense report even suggested covertly paying a person in the Castro government to attack the United States: "The only area remaining for consideration then would be to bribe one of Castro's subordinate commanders to initiate an attack on [the U.S. Navy base at] Guantanamo."
In 1962 Sen. Strom Thurmond asserted that if the President issued an unconstitutional order, the military would be honor bound to revolt. In the late '50s and early '60s he had hinted that the military might have to take over the federal government to preserve states' rights (Gothic Politics in the Deep South, Robert Sherrill, p258)
May 1962 Averell Harriman told Arthur Schlesinger that JFK's Laos policy was being "systematically sabotaged " from within the government by the military and the CIA. "They want to prove that a neutral solution is impossible," Harriman said, " and that the only course is to turn Laos into an American bastion. " From the journal of Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. , May 14, 1962; cited in Robert Kennedy and His Times, p. 758
6/9/1962 NSAM 161 to the Secretaries of State, Defense, Treasury, Commerce, Attorney General, CIA director, Military Rep. of the President, FAA administrator, AEC chairman. "SUBJECT: US Internal Security Programs. 1.In line with my continuing efforts to give primary responsibility for the initiative on major matters of policy and administration in a given field to a key member of my administration, I will look to the Attorney General to take the initiative in the government in insuring the development of plans, programs and action proposals to protect the internal security of the United States. I will expect him to prepare recommendations in collaboration with other departments and agencies in the government having the responsibility for internal security programs with respect to those matters requiring presidential action. 2.Accordingly, I have directed that the two interdepartmental committees concerned with the internal security - the Interdepartmental Intelligence Conference (IIC) and the Interdepartmental Committee on Internal Security (ICIS) - which have been under the supervision of the National Security Council will be transferred to the supervision of the Attorney General....signed, John F. Kennedy." A copy of this NSAM was sent to J Edgar Hoover.
Summer 1962 The president's friend Paul Fay, Jr., told of an incident that showed JFK was keenly conscious of the peril of a military coup d'etat. One summer weekend in 1962 while out sailing with friends, Kennedy was asked what he thought of Seven Days in May, a best-selling novel by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II that described a military takeover in the United States. JFK said he would read the book. He did so that night. The next day Kennedy discussed with his friends the possibility of their seeing such a coup in the United States. Consider that he said these words after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and before the Cuban Missile Crisis: "It's possible. It could happen in this country, but the conditions would have to be just right. If, for example, the country had a young President, and he had a Bay of Pigs, there would be a certain uneasiness. Maybe the military would do a little criticizing behind his back, but this would be written off as the usual military dissatisfaction with civilian control. Then if there were another Bay of Pigs, the reaction of the country would be, 'Is he too young and inexperienced? ' The military would almost feel that it was their patriotic obligation to stand ready to preserve the integrity of the nation, and only God knows just what segment of democracy they would be defending if they overthrew the elected establishment. "Pausing a moment, he went on, "Then, if there were a third Bay of Pigs, it could happen." Waiting again until his listeners absorbed his meaning, he concluded with an old Navy phrase, "But it won't happen on my watch." (Fay, The Pleasure of His Company p190)
In Seven Days,' a military cabal schemed to topple the government under the guise of a military communications exercise. This "war game" was to have been used as the cover for toppling the government and installing a General as President who would stop arms control treaties with the Soviet Union. According to David Talbot, the book was published in September 1962 and JFK had received an advance copy in late summer. (Brothers) Knebel said he got the idea for the book after interviewing Curtis LeMay, who at one point went off the record to fume against Kennedy's "cowardice" at the Bay of Pigs. (NYT 2/28/1993) Kennedy quickly read the book and others in his inner circle did as well. JFK contacted director John Frankenheimer, who had been working on The Manchurian Candidate (another Cold War thriller JFK was a huge fan of) and encouraged him to turn Seven Days into a film. "Kennedy wanted Seven Days in May to be made as a warning to the generals," recalled Arthur Schlesinger. "The president said the first thing I'm going to tell my successor is Don't trust the military men even on military matters." (Talbot interview with Schlesinger, Brothers). Sinatra had gotten Kennedy to intervene with United Artists to get The Manchurian Candidate made, when the studio began to get cold feet. (Sinatra interview, 1988 video release; Brothers, Talbot)
7/20/1962 JFK announced that Lauris Norstad would resign as NATO commander and would be replaced by Lyman Lemnitzer. Max Taylor was appointed new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
10/1/1962 Maxwell Taylor becomes Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, replacing Lyman Lemnitzer. Gen. Earl Wheeler becomes Army Chief of Staff. Even after General Lemnitzer lost his job as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the JCS still planned false-flag pretext operations at least into 1963. A different U.S. Department of Defense policy paper created in 1963 discussed a plan to make it appear that Cuba had attacked a member of the Organization of American States (OAS) so that the United States could retaliate. The U.S. Department of Defense document says of one of the scenarios, "A contrived 'Cuban' attack on an OAS member could be set up, and the attacked state could be urged to take measures of self-defense and request assistance from the U.S. and OAS." The plan expresses confidence that by this action, "the U.S. could almost certainly obtain the necessary two-thirds support among OAS members for collective action against Cuba." Included in the nations the Joint Chiefs suggested as targets for covert attacks were Jamaica and Trinidad-Tobago. Since both were members of the British Commonwealth, the Joint Chiefs hoped that by secretly attacking them and then falsely blaming Cuba, the United States could incite the people of the United Kingdom into supporting a war against Castro. As the U.S. Department of Defense report noted: "Any of the contrived situations described above are inherently, extremely risky in our democratic system in which security can be maintained, after the fact, with very great difficulty. If the decision should be made to set up a contrived situation it should be one in which participation by U.S. personnel is limited only to the most highly trusted covert personnel. This suggests the infeasibility of the use of military units for any aspect of the contrived situation." The U.S. Department of Defense report even suggested covertly paying a person in the Castro government to attack the United States: "The only area remaining for consideration then would be to bribe one of Castro's subordinate commanders to initiate an attack on [the U.S. Navy base at] Guantanamo." (Bamford, Body of Secrets)
10/19/1962 JFK secretly taped the White House meetings during the crisis. The tapes were declassified, transcribed, and published in the late 1990s. [(In 1997 Ernest R. May and Philip D . Zelikow edited and published transcripts of the Cuban Missile Crisis tapes in their book The Kennedy Tapes ( Cambridge, Mass . : Harvard University Press, 1997). The transcripts reveal how isolated the president was in choosing to blockade further Soviet missile shipments rather than bomb and invade Cuba. Nowhere does he stand more alone against the pressures for a sudden, massive air strike than in his October 19, 1962, meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In this encounter the Chiefs' disdain for their young commander-in-chief is embodied by Air Force Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay, who challenges the president. President Kennedy asked LeMay skeptically, "What do you think their reprisal would be ?" LeMay said there would be no reprisal so long as Kennedy warned Khrushchev that he was ready to fight also in Berlin. After Admiral George Anderson made the same point, Kennedy said sharply, "They can't let us just take out, after all their statements, take out their missiles, kill a lot of Russians, and not do...not do anything. "
LEMAY: "This [blockade and political action] is almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich...I just don't see any other solution except direct military intervention right now."
A historian who has studied the missile crisis tapes for over twenty years, Sheldon Stern, has noted a pause in the conversation at this point, during which the Joint Chiefs "must have held their collective breath waiting for a reaction from the President. The general had gone well beyond merely giving advice or even disagreeing with his commander-in-chief. He had taken their generation's ultimate metaphor for shortsightedness and cowardice, the 1938 appeasement of Hitler at Munich, and flung it in the President's face. "President Kennedy," Stern says," in a remarkable display of sang froid refused to take the bait; he said absolutely nothing." Ending the awkward silence, the Navy, Army, and Marine Corps Chiefs of Staff argue for the prompt military action of bombing and invading Cuba. General LeMay breaks in, reminding Kennedy of his strong statements about responding to offensive weapons in Cuba. He almost taunts the president:
LEMAY: " I think that a blockade and political talk would be considered by a lot of our friends and neutrals as bein' a pretty weak response to this. And I'm sure a lot of our own citizens would feel that way, too. In other words, you're in a pretty bad fix at the present time. "
KENNEDY: "What'd you say?"
LEMAY: "I say, you're in a pretty bad fix."
KENNEDY: [laughing] "You're in with me, personally."
The discussion continues, with Kennedy probing the Chiefs for further information and LeMay pushing the president to authorize a massive attack on Soviet missiles, Cuban air defenses, and all communications systems. As the meeting draws to a close, Kennedy rejects the arguments for a quick, massive attack and thanks his military commanders.
KENNEDY: "I appreciate your views. As I said, I'm sure we all understand how rather unsatisfactory our alternatives are."
A few minutes later, the president leaves the room, but the tape keeps on recording. General LeMay, Army Chief of Staff General Earle Wheeler, and Marine Corps Commandant General David Shoup remain. Shoup, who is usually the most supportive of the Joint Chiefs toward Kennedy, praises LeMay's attack on the president:
SHOUP: "You were a . . . You pulled the rug right out from under him."
LEMAY: "Jesus Christ. What the hell do you mean?"
SHOUP: ". . . He's finally getting around to the word 'escalation.' . . . When he says 'escalation,' that's it. If somebody could keep 'em from doing the goddamn thing piecemeal, that's our problem..."
LEMAY: "That's right. "
SHOUP: "You're screwed, screwed, screwed. He could say, 'either do the son of a bitch and do it right and quit friggin' around.'"
LEMAY: "That was my contention."
After the meeting, the President recounted the conversation to his aide Dave Powers and said," Can you imagine LeMay saying a thing like that? These brass hats have one great advantage in their favor. If we listen to them, and do what they want us to do, none of us will be alive later to tell them that they were wrong. "
In a conversation that fall with his friend John Kenneth Galbraith, Kennedy again spoke angrily of the reckless pressures his advisers, both military and civilian, had put on him to bomb the Cuban missile sites. "I never had the slightest intention of doing so," said the president. (John Kenneth Galbraith, A Life in Our Times (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981), p. 388.)
During the discussions on invading Cuba, Marine Corps Commandant David Shoup displayed a map of Cuba during a meeting by overlaying it on a map of the US; everyone was surprised at how big the island was. Then he placed a red dot over the map of Cuba, and explained that this represented the island of Tarawa, which cost 18,000 Marines to capture in WWII. Shoup would become Kennedy's favorite general. (The Best and the Brightest p85; RFK and his Times p484)
10/16/1962 As discussions continue on proposals to destroy the missiles by airstrike, RFK passes a note to the president: "I now know how Tojo felt when he was planning Pearl Harbor." This phase of the meeting ended at 12:57pm. (Robert Kennedy, Thirteen Days (New York: Signet, 1969) President Kennedy also telephones John McCloy, who recommends that the president take forceful action to remove the missiles, even if that involves an airstrike and an invasion. (The Missile Crisis, Abel; The Wise Men, Isaacson & Thomas)
10/24/1962 On 24th October, 1962, Seth Kantor reported in the Fort Worth Press that: "General Dynamics of Fort Worth will get the multibillion-dollar defence contract to build the supersonic TFX Air Force and Navy fighter plane, the Fort Worth Press learned today from top Government sources."
10/24/1962 At the direction of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, SAC increases its alert posture to DEFCON 2 for the first time in history. Thomas Power, the commander-in-chief of SAC, believed, as he later wrote, that while discreet preparations had been appropriate before, it was now "important for [the Soviets] to know of SAC's readiness." Consequently, Power decides on his own authority to transmit uncoded messages to SAC commanders noting that SAC plans are well prepared and that the alert process was going smoothly. (The Air Force Response to the Cuban Crisis 14 October - 24 November 1962, ca. 1/63, pp. 7-8, Tab A2-A3; Garthoff 1, p. 62; Sagan 2, p. 108)
On the fourth round, the military still held that Boeing was better but found at last that the General Dynamics bid was also acceptable." Stone goes on to argue: "The only document the McClellan committee investigators were able to find in the Pentagon in favour of that award, according to their testimony, was a five-page memorandum signed by McNamara, Korth, and Eugene Zuckert, then Secretary of the Air Force." Robert McNamara justified his support for General Dynamics because "Boeing had from the very beginning consistently chosen more technically risky tradeoffs in an effort to achieve operational features which exceeded the required performance characteristics." The TFX program involved the building of 1,700 planes for the Navy and the Air Force. The contract was estimated to be worth over $6.5 billion, making it the largest contract for military planes in the nation's history.
1962: The US government sprays florescent particles of zinc cadmium sulfide over Stillwater, Oklahoma, but reportedly does not monitor how the application affects the population. Leonard Cole, an expert on the Army's development of biological weapons, later explains to an Oklahoma TV news program: "Cadmium itself is known to be one of the most highly toxic materials in small amounts that a human can be exposed to If there were concentrations of it enough to make one sick, you could have serious consequences a person over a period of time could have illnesses that could range from cancer to organ failures." [KFOR, 4/25/03] Sometime between 1962 and 1973 the US government performs biological and/or chemical weapons tests in Florida and in Vieques, Puerto Rico, possibly exposing the civilian population to these agents. [Reuters, 10/10/02]
1/23/1962 Congressional hearings into the "muzzling" of military officers opened, appearing before the Senate Preparedness Subcommittee in 36 days of hearings. Gen. Walker was among the witnesses. He charged that "with this nation's survival at stake, our armed forces are paralyzed by our national policy of no win' and retreat from victory." He blamed Secretary of State Rusk and others in the State Dept.
1/29/1962 Sen. John Tower (R-Texas) said on the Senate floor, "I think it is naive and unrealistic to be preoccupied with the question of disarmament. We know that the communist conspiracy has no intention of co-existing with us."
2/2/1962 Pentagon memorandum entitled "Possible Actions to Provoke, Harass or Disrupt Cuba," written by Brig. Gen. William H. Craig and submitted to Brig. Gen. Edward Lansdale, the commander of the Operation Mongoose project. The memorandum outlines Operation Bingo, a plan to, in its words, "create an incident which has the appearance of an attack on U.S. facilities (GMO) in Cuba, thus providing an excuse for use of U.S. military might to overthrow the current government of Cuba." It also includes Operation Dirty Trick, a plot to blame Castro if the 1962 Mercury manned space flight carrying John Glenn crashed, saying: "The objective is to provide irrevocable proof that, should the MERCURY manned orbit flight fail, the fault lies with the Communists et al Cuba [sic]." It continues, "This to be accomplished by manufacturing various pieces of evidence which would prove electronic interference on the part of the Cubans."
3/13/1962 Operation Northwoods was a false-flag conspiracy plan, proposed within the United States government in 1962. The plan called for CIA or other operatives to commit apparent acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Castro-led Cuba. The plan stated: "The desired resultant from the execution of this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere." The main proposal was presented in a document entitled "Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba (TS)," a collection of draft memoranda written by the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) representative to the Caribbean Survey Group. (The parenthetical "TS" in the title of the document is an initialism for "Top Secret.") The document was presented by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on March 13 as a preliminary submission for planning purposes. The Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended that both the covert and overt aspects of any such operation be assigned to them. There is no record of McNamara 's response. However, according to the record of a March 16 White House meeting, President Kennedy told Lemnitzer and other key advisers that he could not foresee any circumstances " that would justify and make desirable the use of American forces for overt military action" in Cuba.
James Bamford wrote on Northwoods:
"Operation Northwoods, which had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war."
In addition to Operation Northwoods, under the Operation Mongoose program the U.S. Department of Defense had a number of similar proposals to be taken against the Cuban regime of Fidel Castro.
Twelve of these proposals come from a 2 February 1962 memorandum entitled "Possible Actions to Provoke, Harass or Disrupt Cuba," written by Brig. Gen. William H. Craig and submitted to Brig. Gen. Edward Lansdale, the commander of the Operation Mongoose project.
The memorandum outlines Operation Bingo, a plan to; "create an incident which has the appearance of an attack on U.S. facilities (GMO) in Cuba, thus providing an excuse for use of U.S. military might to overthrow the current government of Cuba."
It also includes Operation Dirty Trick, a plot to blame Castro if the 1962 Mercury manned space flight carrying John Glenn crashed, saying: "The objective is to provide irrevocable proof that, should the MERCURY manned orbit flight fail, the fault lies with the Communists et al. Cuba [sic]." It continues, "This to be accomplished by manufacturing various pieces of evidence which would prove electronic interference on the part of the Cubans."
Even after General Lemnitzer lost his job as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Joint Chiefs of Staff still planned false-flag pretext operations at least into 1963. A different U.S. Department of Defense policy paper created in 1963 discussed a plan to make it appear that Cuba had attacked a member of the Organization of American States (OAS) so that the United States could retaliate. The U.S. Department of Defense document says of one of the scenarios, "A contrived 'Cuban' attack on an OAS member could be set up, and the attacked state could be urged to take measures of self-defense and request assistance from the U.S. and OAS."
The plan expressed confidence that by this action, "the U.S. could almost certainly obtain the necessary two-thirds support among OAS members for collective action against Cuba."
Included in the nations the Joint Chiefs suggested as targets for covert attacks were Jamaica and Trinidad-Tobago. Since both were members of the British Commonwealth, the Joint Chiefs hoped that by secretly attacking them and then falsely blaming Cuba, the United States could incite the people of the United Kingdom into supporting a war against Castro. As the U.S. Department of Defense report noted:
Any of the contrived situations described above are inherently, extremely risky in our democratic system in which security can be maintained, after the fact, with very great difficulty. If the decision should be made to set up a contrived situation it should be one in which participation by U.S. personnel is limited only to the most highly trusted covert personnel. This suggests the infeasibility of the use of military units for any aspect of the contrived situation."
The U.S. Department of Defense report even suggested covertly paying a person in the Castro government to attack the United States: "The only area remaining for consideration then would be to bribe one of Castro's subordinate commanders to initiate an attack on [the U.S. Navy base at] Guantanamo."
In 1962 Sen. Strom Thurmond asserted that if the President issued an unconstitutional order, the military would be honor bound to revolt. In the late '50s and early '60s he had hinted that the military might have to take over the federal government to preserve states' rights (Gothic Politics in the Deep South, Robert Sherrill, p258)
May 1962 Averell Harriman told Arthur Schlesinger that JFK's Laos policy was being "systematically sabotaged " from within the government by the military and the CIA. "They want to prove that a neutral solution is impossible," Harriman said, " and that the only course is to turn Laos into an American bastion. " From the journal of Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. , May 14, 1962; cited in Robert Kennedy and His Times, p. 758
6/9/1962 NSAM 161 to the Secretaries of State, Defense, Treasury, Commerce, Attorney General, CIA director, Military Rep. of the President, FAA administrator, AEC chairman. "SUBJECT: US Internal Security Programs. 1.In line with my continuing efforts to give primary responsibility for the initiative on major matters of policy and administration in a given field to a key member of my administration, I will look to the Attorney General to take the initiative in the government in insuring the development of plans, programs and action proposals to protect the internal security of the United States. I will expect him to prepare recommendations in collaboration with other departments and agencies in the government having the responsibility for internal security programs with respect to those matters requiring presidential action. 2.Accordingly, I have directed that the two interdepartmental committees concerned with the internal security - the Interdepartmental Intelligence Conference (IIC) and the Interdepartmental Committee on Internal Security (ICIS) - which have been under the supervision of the National Security Council will be transferred to the supervision of the Attorney General....signed, John F. Kennedy." A copy of this NSAM was sent to J Edgar Hoover.
Summer 1962 The president's friend Paul Fay, Jr., told of an incident that showed JFK was keenly conscious of the peril of a military coup d'etat. One summer weekend in 1962 while out sailing with friends, Kennedy was asked what he thought of Seven Days in May, a best-selling novel by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II that described a military takeover in the United States. JFK said he would read the book. He did so that night. The next day Kennedy discussed with his friends the possibility of their seeing such a coup in the United States. Consider that he said these words after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and before the Cuban Missile Crisis: "It's possible. It could happen in this country, but the conditions would have to be just right. If, for example, the country had a young President, and he had a Bay of Pigs, there would be a certain uneasiness. Maybe the military would do a little criticizing behind his back, but this would be written off as the usual military dissatisfaction with civilian control. Then if there were another Bay of Pigs, the reaction of the country would be, 'Is he too young and inexperienced? ' The military would almost feel that it was their patriotic obligation to stand ready to preserve the integrity of the nation, and only God knows just what segment of democracy they would be defending if they overthrew the elected establishment. "Pausing a moment, he went on, "Then, if there were a third Bay of Pigs, it could happen." Waiting again until his listeners absorbed his meaning, he concluded with an old Navy phrase, "But it won't happen on my watch." (Fay, The Pleasure of His Company p190)
In Seven Days,' a military cabal schemed to topple the government under the guise of a military communications exercise. This "war game" was to have been used as the cover for toppling the government and installing a General as President who would stop arms control treaties with the Soviet Union. According to David Talbot, the book was published in September 1962 and JFK had received an advance copy in late summer. (Brothers) Knebel said he got the idea for the book after interviewing Curtis LeMay, who at one point went off the record to fume against Kennedy's "cowardice" at the Bay of Pigs. (NYT 2/28/1993) Kennedy quickly read the book and others in his inner circle did as well. JFK contacted director John Frankenheimer, who had been working on The Manchurian Candidate (another Cold War thriller JFK was a huge fan of) and encouraged him to turn Seven Days into a film. "Kennedy wanted Seven Days in May to be made as a warning to the generals," recalled Arthur Schlesinger. "The president said the first thing I'm going to tell my successor is Don't trust the military men even on military matters." (Talbot interview with Schlesinger, Brothers). Sinatra had gotten Kennedy to intervene with United Artists to get The Manchurian Candidate made, when the studio began to get cold feet. (Sinatra interview, 1988 video release; Brothers, Talbot)
7/20/1962 JFK announced that Lauris Norstad would resign as NATO commander and would be replaced by Lyman Lemnitzer. Max Taylor was appointed new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
10/1/1962 Maxwell Taylor becomes Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, replacing Lyman Lemnitzer. Gen. Earl Wheeler becomes Army Chief of Staff. Even after General Lemnitzer lost his job as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the JCS still planned false-flag pretext operations at least into 1963. A different U.S. Department of Defense policy paper created in 1963 discussed a plan to make it appear that Cuba had attacked a member of the Organization of American States (OAS) so that the United States could retaliate. The U.S. Department of Defense document says of one of the scenarios, "A contrived 'Cuban' attack on an OAS member could be set up, and the attacked state could be urged to take measures of self-defense and request assistance from the U.S. and OAS." The plan expresses confidence that by this action, "the U.S. could almost certainly obtain the necessary two-thirds support among OAS members for collective action against Cuba." Included in the nations the Joint Chiefs suggested as targets for covert attacks were Jamaica and Trinidad-Tobago. Since both were members of the British Commonwealth, the Joint Chiefs hoped that by secretly attacking them and then falsely blaming Cuba, the United States could incite the people of the United Kingdom into supporting a war against Castro. As the U.S. Department of Defense report noted: "Any of the contrived situations described above are inherently, extremely risky in our democratic system in which security can be maintained, after the fact, with very great difficulty. If the decision should be made to set up a contrived situation it should be one in which participation by U.S. personnel is limited only to the most highly trusted covert personnel. This suggests the infeasibility of the use of military units for any aspect of the contrived situation." The U.S. Department of Defense report even suggested covertly paying a person in the Castro government to attack the United States: "The only area remaining for consideration then would be to bribe one of Castro's subordinate commanders to initiate an attack on [the U.S. Navy base at] Guantanamo." (Bamford, Body of Secrets)
10/19/1962 JFK secretly taped the White House meetings during the crisis. The tapes were declassified, transcribed, and published in the late 1990s. [(In 1997 Ernest R. May and Philip D . Zelikow edited and published transcripts of the Cuban Missile Crisis tapes in their book The Kennedy Tapes ( Cambridge, Mass . : Harvard University Press, 1997). The transcripts reveal how isolated the president was in choosing to blockade further Soviet missile shipments rather than bomb and invade Cuba. Nowhere does he stand more alone against the pressures for a sudden, massive air strike than in his October 19, 1962, meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In this encounter the Chiefs' disdain for their young commander-in-chief is embodied by Air Force Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay, who challenges the president. President Kennedy asked LeMay skeptically, "What do you think their reprisal would be ?" LeMay said there would be no reprisal so long as Kennedy warned Khrushchev that he was ready to fight also in Berlin. After Admiral George Anderson made the same point, Kennedy said sharply, "They can't let us just take out, after all their statements, take out their missiles, kill a lot of Russians, and not do...not do anything. "
LEMAY: "This [blockade and political action] is almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich...I just don't see any other solution except direct military intervention right now."
A historian who has studied the missile crisis tapes for over twenty years, Sheldon Stern, has noted a pause in the conversation at this point, during which the Joint Chiefs "must have held their collective breath waiting for a reaction from the President. The general had gone well beyond merely giving advice or even disagreeing with his commander-in-chief. He had taken their generation's ultimate metaphor for shortsightedness and cowardice, the 1938 appeasement of Hitler at Munich, and flung it in the President's face. "President Kennedy," Stern says," in a remarkable display of sang froid refused to take the bait; he said absolutely nothing." Ending the awkward silence, the Navy, Army, and Marine Corps Chiefs of Staff argue for the prompt military action of bombing and invading Cuba. General LeMay breaks in, reminding Kennedy of his strong statements about responding to offensive weapons in Cuba. He almost taunts the president:
LEMAY: " I think that a blockade and political talk would be considered by a lot of our friends and neutrals as bein' a pretty weak response to this. And I'm sure a lot of our own citizens would feel that way, too. In other words, you're in a pretty bad fix at the present time. "
KENNEDY: "What'd you say?"
LEMAY: "I say, you're in a pretty bad fix."
KENNEDY: [laughing] "You're in with me, personally."
The discussion continues, with Kennedy probing the Chiefs for further information and LeMay pushing the president to authorize a massive attack on Soviet missiles, Cuban air defenses, and all communications systems. As the meeting draws to a close, Kennedy rejects the arguments for a quick, massive attack and thanks his military commanders.
KENNEDY: "I appreciate your views. As I said, I'm sure we all understand how rather unsatisfactory our alternatives are."
A few minutes later, the president leaves the room, but the tape keeps on recording. General LeMay, Army Chief of Staff General Earle Wheeler, and Marine Corps Commandant General David Shoup remain. Shoup, who is usually the most supportive of the Joint Chiefs toward Kennedy, praises LeMay's attack on the president:
SHOUP: "You were a . . . You pulled the rug right out from under him."
LEMAY: "Jesus Christ. What the hell do you mean?"
SHOUP: ". . . He's finally getting around to the word 'escalation.' . . . When he says 'escalation,' that's it. If somebody could keep 'em from doing the goddamn thing piecemeal, that's our problem..."
LEMAY: "That's right. "
SHOUP: "You're screwed, screwed, screwed. He could say, 'either do the son of a bitch and do it right and quit friggin' around.'"
LEMAY: "That was my contention."
After the meeting, the President recounted the conversation to his aide Dave Powers and said," Can you imagine LeMay saying a thing like that? These brass hats have one great advantage in their favor. If we listen to them, and do what they want us to do, none of us will be alive later to tell them that they were wrong. "
In a conversation that fall with his friend John Kenneth Galbraith, Kennedy again spoke angrily of the reckless pressures his advisers, both military and civilian, had put on him to bomb the Cuban missile sites. "I never had the slightest intention of doing so," said the president. (John Kenneth Galbraith, A Life in Our Times (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981), p. 388.)
During the discussions on invading Cuba, Marine Corps Commandant David Shoup displayed a map of Cuba during a meeting by overlaying it on a map of the US; everyone was surprised at how big the island was. Then he placed a red dot over the map of Cuba, and explained that this represented the island of Tarawa, which cost 18,000 Marines to capture in WWII. Shoup would become Kennedy's favorite general. (The Best and the Brightest p85; RFK and his Times p484)
10/16/1962 As discussions continue on proposals to destroy the missiles by airstrike, RFK passes a note to the president: "I now know how Tojo felt when he was planning Pearl Harbor." This phase of the meeting ended at 12:57pm. (Robert Kennedy, Thirteen Days (New York: Signet, 1969) President Kennedy also telephones John McCloy, who recommends that the president take forceful action to remove the missiles, even if that involves an airstrike and an invasion. (The Missile Crisis, Abel; The Wise Men, Isaacson & Thomas)
10/24/1962 On 24th October, 1962, Seth Kantor reported in the Fort Worth Press that: "General Dynamics of Fort Worth will get the multibillion-dollar defence contract to build the supersonic TFX Air Force and Navy fighter plane, the Fort Worth Press learned today from top Government sources."
10/24/1962 At the direction of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, SAC increases its alert posture to DEFCON 2 for the first time in history. Thomas Power, the commander-in-chief of SAC, believed, as he later wrote, that while discreet preparations had been appropriate before, it was now "important for [the Soviets] to know of SAC's readiness." Consequently, Power decides on his own authority to transmit uncoded messages to SAC commanders noting that SAC plans are well prepared and that the alert process was going smoothly. (The Air Force Response to the Cuban Crisis 14 October - 24 November 1962, ca. 1/63, pp. 7-8, Tab A2-A3; Garthoff 1, p. 62; Sagan 2, p. 108)