CIA to Kennedy, “Cuba’s No Good, Junior”

Alright reader I know you love the Free Cheese, no? But perhaps you’re also a reader of pulpy-type fiction or a consumer of Hollywood cookie cutter dramas with the former CIA operative who finds themself set up by their old employer to take the fall for…blah… blah… and furthermore, blah. (funny how the saying blah, blah, blah which is supposed to denote something boring or trite has itself become boring and trite…. And here I am using it!) Anyway, you probably know that genre of fiction and to each their own. <–That’s libertarianism bubbeleh! But if you’re into that stuff (pulpy fiction or libertarianism) then this post is for you. Now, in those stories it usually comes down to the government doing some type of dirty trick that Americans, while secretly enjoying the idea itself and finding it entertaining, still don’t think their guys and gals in D.C. (Demagogue Central) would actually resort to doing. There have however been hundreds of shady plots pulled off by our government and I’m going to discuss one that took place during the Kennedy administration.

Back in 1962 people across the country had a case of the Cold War yips and were seeing commies behind every tree and possibly hiding in Art Garfunkel’s prototype fro’. Tension was way high between the U.S. and the Soviets as both empires jockeyed for influence in such important places as Angola, the Congo, and Montenegro. This truly was the heyday for cold warriors as it seemed the balance of the planet, the planet I tell ya, hung upon which side would prevail. Nevermind that the whole idea of communism, constantly belittled by the anti-communists as being unworkable and inhumane, was clearly unworkable and inhumane and stood no chance of taking over the world. In fact, to quote a wise man (one of the Stooges, and not the Iggy Pop version) and apply his quote to communism,  it was “Completely illogical, preponderantly impracticable, and moreover – it stinks.” But I guess you just had to be there, I wasn’t, to truly understand the hysteria involved but the general population had little room to truly think for themselves while trying to withstand the full court anti-communist deluge laid out by the media and the State so I have to give that generation at least a minor pass (minor passes don’t hold up in divorce court though, they’re all major passes my friend, trust me.)

For the anti-commie Cold Warriors the ultimate evil was naturally the USSR but a close second, and much closer to home, was that home of stogies and great baseball players, and a sandwich named after the country itself that to me is nothing more than a grilled ham and cheese with pickles that’s squashed until it’s almost flat, Cuba. By 1962 Cuba had been fully “lost”, (for an entertaining though slightly less than full account of the Cuban revolution see the Godfather Part II “It was you Fredo.”) and America was clearly worried about the island nation and went about covertly trying to run Castro out of power. That’s what this post is actually about. Nice to find that out 432 words in, huh reader? Jesus Gross, get on with it!

The CIA, the rest of the intelligence community, and many within the power corridors of D.C. and Wall Street were all too happy to find a way to get rid of Fidel and turn the nation back to friendly terms with the U.S. government, oh and U.S. business. It truly was the perfect shit-storm. Also for all you Kennedy fan boys out there don’t get too uppity about the role of the Brothers Kennedy in this story because they were fully on board with getting rid of Fidel, especially that bloodthirsty political animal Robert Kennedy who never seems to get any of the bad press he deserves due to the court historians that have grown up around the Kennedy clan having a scorching case of the Came-flauge (see Free Cheese Glossary.) Anyway, after the debacle that was the Bay of Pigs invasion, (which in retrospect looked about as smart as an ashtray on a surfboard) there was even more impetus to get rid of the Beardo. This led to the intelligence guys coming up with all sorts of plans to cause the dictator’s death, or even worse his overthrow. Now some of these plans were pretty damn kooky and you’ve probably heard about them: the exploding cigar, the poisoned gift scuba suit, the plan to blame the Cubans if the 1962 Mercury spaceflight with John Glenn aboard ended up el’ flamo. What a nice way to check out for Glenn, “I know, what could be a better send off than using this hero’s death as a pawn in a geo-political chess match.” Oh, and my favorite plot, the doctored photo of an obese Castro, all Elvis style, lying around some swanky hotel room with two voluptuous trollopes pigging out on food and drink while his people starved. Let them eat cigars!

These are all entertaining and somewhat sad in their own right but today I really want to discuss what was known as Operation Northwoods. This was stuff of a more sinister bent, for you see reader, the U.S. government under the plan laid out in Northwoods was going to perform false flag terrorist acts, inside the U.S. and blame them on Cuba hoping to gin up war fever in the U.S. and legitimize an American invasion of the island. On a side note reader, not that the U.S. wouldn’t have been able to handle Cuba especially via air power but it may not have been easy. Chew on this. (Always a loaded statement, but in this case not so.) Cuba is not some puny island like the places where you dock when you’re on that cruise and later sally forth from in hopes of scoring some Caribbean homegrown (Hey mon’ indeed!) No, it’s 780 miles long, or almost exactly the distance between New York and Chicago. That’s a big island and not one that would have been easily conquered and held. But anyway, like I was saying before that sidebar, the plan called for any of the following to be within the realm of possibility:

•  Operatives were to disguise themselves as Cubans and attack our base at Guantanamo Bay.
• A plane, ostensibly loaded with American passengers, was to be “hijacked” by operatives, again disguised as Cubans, drop off of radar signals, and then crash though not before being replaced by a pilotless empty aircraft.
• An American ship was to be sunk near Guantanamo, Cuban terrorists were to be blamed with mock funerals held for the victims.
• The development of a pseudo Communist/Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, Florida proper, or even Washington D.C. (pause on this one for a moment. The U.S. government was going to destroy property and possibly kill people in the United States and blame it on another country)
• The sinking of a boatload of Cubans (real or simulated) with blame placed on the Cuban government.
• Having several fighter jets fly out of Homestead AFB in Florida towards Cuba. At a pre determined spot one of the pilots, under an assumed name, would say he was taking fire from Cuban MIGs and going down. He would then fly from the scene at low altitude back to Florida where the plane would be stored and have its serial numbers changed. Rescue ships would be dispatched that would conveniently find plane wreckage in the ocean.

All of this and more made up Northwoods and it’s impossible to quantify the number of deaths that would have ensued if a hot war between Cuba and the United States had actually become a reality. This plan was signed off on by the Joint Chiefs of Staff before it got to Kennedy who shot it down (for real, not simulated) and the plan got filed away. This led to a great deal of animosity between Kennedy and the military and intelligence community. Kennedy went on to dismiss Lyman Lemnitzer the then chairman of the Joint Chiefs over Northwoods and similar programs such as Operation Mongoose which you can read about on your own time lazy buns.

Now, word of these plots naturally made it to Cuba. And a guy named Lee Harvey Oswald was in contact with the Cuban embassy in Mexico City. Just sayin’ okay. This also led many in the military and intelligence communities to view Kennedy with suspicion especially in Latin America as they came to view him as soft on Cuba. So you had Kennedy, with the CIA and the rest of the intelligence community extremely mad at him as it seemed he would perhaps, even by accident, upset their carefully crafted structure with all the geo-political (and economic) consequences that the continuation of that structure entailed. That’s right reader, he was often at odds with the CIA, the guys who showed that they were more than capable of having foreign leaders assassinated……………….Alright we’re done here, good day.

H.R. Gross