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| How Do You Characterize NORTHWOODS? |
| A memorandum that the President scrapped |
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35% |
[ 7 ] |
| An "operation" plotted by "govt agents" |
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55% |
[ 11 ] |
| Other (specify below) |
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10% |
[ 2 ] |
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| Total Votes : 20 |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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 Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2008 2:04 am Post subject: How Do You Characterize NORTHWOODS? |
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The mods asked for a civil debate, Bacasper. Debate this and let the poll respondents judge. The first option represents my position; the second yours (and in your own words -- I left out "conspiracy" to avoid prejudicing anyone against you in the poll choices); and the third gives respondents a chance to voice a different take, should they have additional or contradictory evidence to offer.
Question/Issue: what is your take on this document?
NORTHWOODS
My evidence will follow your response, if you dare...I will even pledge to limit my entire case to three posts following this one and give you ten following your response. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2008 2:30 am Post subject: |
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And make sure you also look at this from the National Security Archive:
| Quote: |
| In his new expos� of the National Security Agency entitled Body of Secrets, author James Bamford highlights a set of proposals on Cuba by the Joint Chiefs of Staff codenamed OPERATION NORTHWOODS. This document, titled �Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba� was provided by the JCS to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on March 13, 1962, as the key component of Northwoods. Written in response to a request from the Chief of the Cuba Project, Col. Edward Lansdale, the Top Secret memorandum describes U.S. plans to covertly engineer various pretexts that would justify a U.S. invasion of Cuba. These proposals - part of a secret anti-Castro program known as Operation Mongoose - included staging the assassinations of Cubans living in the United States, developing a fake �Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington,� including �sink[ing] a boatload of Cuban refugees (real or simulated),� faking a Cuban airforce attack on a civilian jetliner, and concocting a �Remember the Maine� incident by blowing up a U.S. ship in Cuban waters and then blaming the incident on Cuban sabotage. Bamford himself writes that Operation Northwoods �may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government.� |
And this from ABC News:
In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.
| Quote: |
| Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban �migr�s, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities. |
And Wikipedia:
| Quote: |
| Operation Northwoods, or Northwoods, was a 1962 "preliminary submission suitable for planning purposes" by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, signed by the Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer, to the Secretary of Defence to stage acts of simulated or real terrorism against U.S. interests and then put the blame of these acts on Cuba in order to generate U.S. public support for military action against the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. It was part of the U.S. government's Operation Mongoose anti-Castro initiative. It was never accepted or executed. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2008 2:37 am Post subject: My First Post Following the OP; second on this thread |
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Very well. My first response: I have never denied that MONGOOSE represented an operation (run by the Special Group, out of the White House). Your entire case on NORTHWOODS, however, rests on secondary sources that mischaracterize the document, probably for partisan purposes -- but that remains beside the point.
The document's authors, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, do not refer to the NORTHWOODS memorandum -- that is, to their response to the President's inquiry -- as an operation. We also know that the President scrapped the memorandum after he read it. How have your sources determined that this represented an actual operation? (I do not believe you can answer this question; and I believe that they have simply inserted the word to sensationalize their reporting.)
My next post, tomorrow evening, will interpret and contextualize this document in much more detail.
I reserve my fourth and final post to rebut anything you may say about my second and third posts and then I will rest my case.
I would ask anyone interested in voting to wait for Bacasper to rest his case before doing so. We will concede the final word to him -- indeed, he ought to have seven or eight posts remaining to articulate whatever he wants to say. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2008 5:04 am Post subject: |
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Gopher, you have convinced me that the Joint Chiefs did not use the word "Operation" in the document describing NORTHWOODS.
Have I convinced you that "Operation Northwoods" is the common parlance used almost everywhere to refer to the proposed operation, NORTHWOODS?
To expend so much effort to split hairs over what something's exact name is distracts from the true significance of the proposal, which is that officials at the highest levels of government considered launching attacks against our own assets to establish a pretext for war.
Furthermore, you have also succeeded in taking us far afield from what the original intent of my bringing it up was, which was to come to a common definition of a "conspiracy (theory)" in order to advance the discussion.
I am trying to break this down into its most basic terms. People planned it, ergo it was a "conspiracy." I am hoping we can go from here unless you want to say it was not because it was planned by "our guys" or whatever else you will come up with to say this conspiracy was not one.
Edit: removed a redundant "exactly"
Last edited by bacasper on Mon Apr 07, 2008 5:46 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2008 6:43 pm Post subject: |
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This has never been a matter of mere semantics. You attribute this document to the military-industrial complex's doings post-1945 to the present (especially 9/11 and post-9/11); I attribute it to JFK and RFK's temporary insanity and their probing their own options, conventional and unconventional ones, re: Castro's Cuba 1961-1963. Huge difference.
In any case, I note that five posters have voted for your position before I have even presented mine, Bacasper. This confirms my impression that posters on this forum cannot and will not consider and discuss evidence. Rather, we typically deal with predetermined and rigid ideological clashes only.
Since this is clearly the case in this instance, I am going to withdraw from this debate and neither invest the two hours or so that I would need to adequately and comprehensively reduce and cite the evidence from the primary and secondary sources that bear on this problem nor spend another moment talking to this brick wall.
Enrico, you asked about debates. What is the point of debating a question when the most likely result will be that posters will side with the position that best resonates with their own preexisting ideological biases, the evidence and any discussion of it be damned? I offer this thread as an answer to your earlier proposal: this is what such a debate would probably look like. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2008 11:32 pm Post subject: |
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Again, I brought up NORTHWOODS almost at random as an example of something I hoped we could all agree was a "plan." Whatever you imagine as my view of it, I never meant to get into an in-depth debate about it at this point. I was trying to define "conspiracy theory," remember?
So now you've placed a poll but are ending it prematurely because it did not turn out as you hoped. That's fine, but please explain just one thing: why did you post the poll BEFORE fully stating your position if you wanted people to wait until AFTER?
Since you have mentioned it, I'll say the following: if you weren't averse to morally pronouncing on the issue, in order to advance the discussion I'd ask what do you think about such a plan? Is this a horrible, unethical idea that should never even be considered in a democracy, or are such plans necessary contingencies given the exigencies of the world in its current state? |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2008 11:42 pm Post subject: Final Post |
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Against my better judgement (I know in my heart I am totally wasting my time and not really reaching anyone with this), Bacasper, I am going to finish my case, at least in large part. More time-consuming than I had planned.
| bacasper wrote: |
| I brought up NORTHWOODS almost at random as an example of something I hoped we could all agree was a "plan." Whatever you imagine as my view of it, I never meant to get into an in-depth debate about it at this point. I was trying to define "conspiracy theory," remember? |
This nicely represents the entire problem. It was never "an operation"; and it was never "a [contingency or other] plan," either. It was an emotional, exploratory conversation between JFK, RFK, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recorded in a memorandum, entirely consistent, as I will demonstrate, below, with dozens of other such conversations with CIA in the same exact time-frame. And, again, when the President read NORTHWOODS, he scrapped it. And that was the beginning and the end of it.
You wholly and dangerously misunderstand what NORTHWOODS was, then, and you only compound this when you resist and avoid getting into a nuanced debate about what it was. Instead, you seize on others' emotional and sensationalist reporting on it -- in the mass-media, no less, which is ironic given your claim to wish to avoid it and search out alternative information -- and you defend it to the death because it conforms to your conspiracy-theory worldview. And along with defending it to the death you force the conversation away from any careful and sensitive investigation of NORTHWOODS in order to lecture on "democracy" and "morals." Frustrating, to say the least.
What exactly was NORTHWOODS, Bacasper? Care to stop in your rapid-fire, allegation-driven, value-laden discourse long enough to take a good, long look at this question and the answer I propose here? Before taking a thing and running with it, should you not take a moment to confirm you understand exactly what it is?
__________
Evidence I have thoroughly reviewed and will partially cite, below, in addition to the NORTHWOODS document itself, in my first post on this thread, which I hereby incorporate into this response, includes but is not limited to the following:
Bradley Earl Ayers, The War That Never Was (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1976). Former Army Special Forces captain's memoir. Sheep-dipped into CIA's Paramilitary Branch after the Cuban Missile Crisis and assigned to JM/WAVE's training branch. Ayers trained Cuban exiles in guerrilla warfare and sabotage. He also places RFK at several CIA operations-level cocktail parties in Miami.
Peter Kornbluh, ed., Bay of Pigs Declassified (New York: the New Press, 1998). This includes CIA Inspector-General Lyman Kirkpatrick's report and Richard M. Bissell, Jr. and Tracy Barnes's response to it. Kirkpatrick attacks Bissell and Barnes and the entire covert-operations faction and their incompetency in running these "operations" that so scare you, Bacasper. And Bissell and Barnes defend themselves. An argument that reveals the Agency's inner-workings as well as operational details, including one of my favorite excerpts from Kirkpatrick's report on the early, failed guerrilla warfare phase (autumn 1960) of the operation:
| the CIA's Inspector-General wrote: |
| A 100-man arms pack was dropped for an agent rated as having considerable potential as a resistance leader. The crew missed the drop zone by seven miles and dropped the weapons on a dam. Castro forces scooped them up, ringed the area, caught the agent and later shot him. The airplane got lost on the way back to Guatemala and landed in Mexico [where Mexican authorities impounded it]. It is still there. |
It did not get any better after this, Bacasper. One pilot could not find his marker but dropped his cargo in any case because, he later reported, he had "a positive feeling." Yet another pilot circled his drop area for such a long time that the guerrillas claimed he was threatening them. That is, they speculated in an after-action report that he had been either "drunk or crazy."
Evan Thomas, The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared: the Early Years of the CIA (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995). Thomas, a journalist who writes on foreign-relations history, presents a group biography of Tracy Barnes; Richard M. Bissell, Jr.; Desmond FitzGerald; and Frank Wisner, as seen through their personnel records at CIA, their memoirs and/or interviews with family and former colleagues, as well as a voluminous secondary literature (see his notes).
United States Senate, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1975). Probably available online. This is the Church Committee's investigation into and report on U.S.-Cuban relations and especially Operation MONGOOSE, 1961-1963 (and beyond). Richard M. Bissell, Jr.; Richard M. Helms; and many others gave sworn testimony to this committee, which also reviewed tens of thousands of classified documents.
[Theodore] Shackley, Spymaster: My Life in the CIA (Dulles: Potomac, 2005). Former Director of JM/WAVE and later former Director of Latin American and Caribbean Operations's memoir.
Peter Wyden, Bay of Pigs: the Untold Story (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979). Another journalists' account based on the same kinds of sources Thomas cites.
__________
Very well, then. Based on this and other information, who initiated the NORTHWOODS conversation and why? Start by rereading the opening paragraphs and pages on the NORTHWOODS document itself. The Joint Chiefs of Staff are clearly responding to RFK and the Special Group (Augmented) -- National Command Authority on the Cuban operation. They are speaking hypothetically and not concretely. They respond to JFK and RFK's demand that they think outside the box and get Castro.
Just how bad did the Kennedy brothers want to get Castro after the Bay of Pigs?
According to Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, the Kennedys were "hysterical" about getting rid of the Castro government post-Bay of Pigs. They considered it personal. They also lost faith in and then micromanaged all CIA operations, especially in the Caribbean, from that point forward.
All of the above sources, and additional sources I did not cite, all agree on this point. The Church Committee report explicitly confirms this. Richard M. Helms explicitly confirms this. Theodore Shackley explicitly confirms this. Let us hear what Shackley has to say about it, when discussing how he and his colleagues at the Agency had assessed the situation and were trying and failing to advise RFK on Cuba�
| Shackley wrote: |
�I could soon see that the cherished options for regime change were all non-starters. The old-line Soviet-controlled Cuban Communist Party was not going to make any attempt to replace Fidel. The military had disgruntled elements in it but not enough of them to mount a coup. Nor did the prospects of a popular uprising look much better, but this was will o' the wisp in Bobby Kennedy's strategic thinking. What he wanted were 'boom-and-bang' paramilitary operations mounted by the Miami Station against major industrial targets like the Matahambre copper mine. It sounded to us in Miami as though Bobby wanted sabotage operations to be a substitute for strategic bomber sorties, targeting and destroying the enemy's industrial base. Unfortunately, Bobby's mind was focused on fighting a World War II-type battle against Cuba with unconventional warfare techniques. Where he got this idea or how he developed it into a strategy, no one could ever explain to me. In any event, it was the wrong approach�
Because Bobby Kennedy and Task Force W were never able to read from the same sheet of music on the boom-and-bang issue, constant tension and pressure to do more came from the Bobby part of the orchestra. The 'more' motif forced us to stretch our resources in an attempt to be responsive. We were also being asked to provide such a level of detail on each sabotage operation that something as simple as blowing up an electrical transformer or highway drainage culvert required a forty- to fifty-page operational plan, to be second-guessed in its turn by the wise men of the Special Group (Augmented) [that RFK commanded at the White House]� |
Then Shackley explains how RFK supervised their planning for the raid on Matahambre and how he reacted when it failed...
| Shackley wrote: |
Unfortunately, there was no boom at the time the explosives were set to go off. What had happened? Who could say?
We learned later that Cuban authorities had found the explosives, disarmed them, and were grateful the operation had not been a success.
In our own postmortem we concluded that the operation had failed due to human error. One of our Cuban infiltrators apparently had improperly set the timer despite hours of premission training on this relatively simple task.
Needless to say, our Matahambre failure was not well received by Bobby Kennedy. His caustic tongue worked at full speed to let all and sundry know we were the new Keystone Kops�(Shackley, 53-56) |
Further, everyone reports RFK's constant drumbeat that CIA and everyone involved in the Cuban operations produce more boom-and-bang only got louder and more insistent as time passed.
Thomas reports this, for example�
| Thomas wrote: |
In January 1962, shortly after he had told Bissell 'to get off his ass' on Cuba, RFK had declared that Castro was the administration's 'top priority�No time, money, effort -- or manpower is to be spared.' Kennedy told 'the Special Group (Augmented),' the secret [White House] cell created to push for Castro's overthrow, that 'the President had indicated to him that the final chapter had not been written -- it's got to be done and will be done�'
'Bobby wanted boom and bang all over the island,' said Sam Halpern, who served as the top assistant on the Cuba operation. 'It was stupid, for a simple reason. We didn't have a cotton pickin' asset on the island! I told this to Helms. We can't do it with mirrors. But the pressure from the White House was very great. I said we've got to get an intelligence base. But they wanted to set Cuba ablaze -- like Churchill and Europe�to the White House it was just pressing buttons. They didn't understand how long it took.' (Thomas, 287-288) |
By 1963, Des FitzGerald had assumed command over the Cuba project�
| Thomas wrote: |
'Des came in,' Halpern reports, 'and unfortunately, because of pressure from Bobby, tried to do too much�
�as FitzGerald watched the younger Kennedy go to work on the CIA, he was encouraged by Kennedy's boldness, his willingness to cut through the bureaucracy and demand results. But he also found Kennedy imperious and a little reckless�At first, FitzGerald thought the president's brother was 'a young punk,' said Frances [FitzGerald, Desmond's daughter, author of an award-winning critique of the Vietnam War -- g.]. But 'he was scared of Bobby's power,' said Barbara Lawrence. 'He felt threatened by him�' Kennedy was a force of nature, willing to bully anyone. 'He could sack a town and enjoy it,' [General] Maxwell Taylor remarked after watching the attorney general chew out the Special Group, all senior government officials. 'Bob Kennedy was very difficult to deal with,' said Thomas Parrott, the Special Group's secretary. 'He was arrogant, he knew it all, he knew the answer to everything. He sat there, tie down, chewing gum, his feet up on the desk. His threats were transparent. It was If you don't do it, I'll tell my big brother on you.' (Thomas, ch. 20) |
FitzGerald got along with RFK better than others; they thought along similar lines re: paramilitary warfare and covert operations. This explains why RFK asked CIA to appoint FitzGerald to command the Cuban operations in 1963, where others, from his point of view, had failed him. But even FitzGerald could not keep up with RFK's recklessness�
| Thomas wrote: |
| FitzGerald could not escape Kennedy's incessant demands. While he was out at FitzGerald's country house, his nephew Albert Francke recalled overhearing his uncle say, firmly and loudly into the telephone one Sunday afternoon in 1963, 'No Bobby, we can't do that. We cannot do that.' (Thomas, 298). |
This entirely conforms with RFK's performance at this meeting as well, which was not with CIA but State, in June 1961, when the administration reacted to Trujillo's assassination by dissident Dominicans�
| Chester Bowles wrote: |
The tone of the meeting was deeply disturbing. Bob Kennedy was clearly looking for an excuse to move in on the island. At one point he suggested, apparently seriously, that we might have to blow up the Consulate to provide the rationale.
His general approach, vigorously supported by Dick Goodwin, was that this was a bad government, that there was a strong chance that it might team up with Castro, and that it should be destroyed--with an excuse if possible, without one if necessary.
Rather to my surprise, Bob McNamara seemed to support this view. I took the opposite view that our whole world position was based on treaty rights, that it would be a catastrophic mistake to take them lightly, and that in acting in a reckless manner in the Dominican Republic, we would only be compounding the mistake of Cuba, and that while I thought it was necessary to take all possible measures for the protection of American lives, we should not move beyond that point...
The entire spirit of this meeting was profoundly distressing and worrisome, and I left at 8:00 p.m. with a feeling that this spirit which I had seen demonstrated on this occasion and others at the White House by those so close to the President constitutes a further danger of half-cocked action by people with almost no foreign policy experience, who are interested in action for action's sake, and the devil take the highmost...
Immediately following the staff meeting, I called in George McGhee, Ed Murrow, and George Ball, and told them the full story. They were startled and shocked as I was, and I was gratified to find them in full agreement on the position I had taken. Indeed, they were even more outspoken in outlining the disastrous consequences of this kind of action...
[The next day,] Bob Kennedy was in an even more aggressive, dogmatic, and vicious mood than the previous meeting. He turned directly to me and said, "What do you propose to do on the situation in the Dominican Republic...?' |
See Document No. 310
So I submit, Bacasper, that when you read NORTHWOODS, you are looking directly into JFK and RFK's temporary insanity re: Castro's Cuba, post-Bay of Pigs. They wanted him gone and they pressed every button in the government to get people to move to make him gone.
You are not looking into your mythical military-industrial complex and its "govt agents," then. You are looking into the Kennedys' foreign-policy thinking: you are hearing the other end of the RFK-FitzGerald telephone conversation that Thomas reports, above; and you are hearing RFK elaborate on the kind of thinking he proposed to Bowles, above -- only in very officious-sounding military-style bureaucratese. Look again at the document's hypothetical and not concrete language. Not to mention its very preliminary tone. And if you are paying close attention, Bacasper, you will note that in fact most of the "govt agents" who appear above seem to be attempting to talk reason into the Kennedys' heads -- and with little or no success -- re: Castro's Cuba.
Why are you so unwilling to confront this massively conclusive context and fact-pattern when reading NORTHWOODS and claiming that it proves so much about "govt agents" and their "conspiracies" up to and including 9/11? (And why are so many on this forum so willing to follow your take on it without having even read a tenth of what I just cited?)
How many of your conspiracy theories are based on such egregious errors as those that so thoroughly and pervasively appear in your muddled thinking on NORTHWOODS, Bacasper?
Finally, my response to your "democracy" lecture: if people do not believe that democracies should have such discussions as NORTHWOODS, then those people ought not support and vote for national leaders such as the Kennedy brothers -- which, in today's context, apparently means Barack Obama, He who has so consciously inherited and accepted the Kennedys' mantle. In any case, I do not expect any responses from you or any other poster on this thread after this point -- people here remain mostly unable to interpret and discuss evidence at this level. Much more comfortable to remain firmly within the narrow confines of one's secure worldview... |
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Manner of Speaking
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sat Apr 05, 2008 7:50 pm Post subject: |
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A couple of comments:
1. Gopher, I don't doubt you, but do you have a specific link or reference that states that the US President scrapped this NORTHWOODS memorandum?
2. The NORTHWOODS document that Gopher has posted a link to is interesting not just for historical reasons, but - IMHO - may have relevance in terms of the decisions - or at least the decision-making process - leading up to the US invasion of Iraq. Possibly a similar process, or set of documents, was developed.
3. I'm not sure how analytically valid or helpful it is to describe this document as a "conspiracy" or as part of a "conspiracy process". Clearly, this document outlines a set of 'options' that could have been implemented prior to, and to develop justification for, a US invasion or military intervention of Cuba. But so what? I don't think any analyst, from Noam Chomsky to Oliver North, would deny that during the Cold War a number of US agencies developed covert plans and options to intervene politically or militarily in Latin America.
Regardless of their utility or their dubious moral validity, it seems clear from this document that there was/is accountability for who did what. The US Joint Chiefs is clearly identified in the document as one of the agencies involved in its development, as well as the other authors. Obviously the document was top secret at some point, and activities similar to the ones described were covert. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sat Apr 05, 2008 8:04 pm Post subject: |
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We have no evidence or even any indications than any of these suggested activities ever took place -- not to mention a United States invasion of Cuba. We also have no record of any task force being formed or any funds diverted to support such activities. That is, no one ever took this preliminary, suggestive memorandum and developed any specific plan to create an actual, workable operation let alone act on any of it. We have evidence for such things (task forces and their budgets, for example) for each and every other covert operation we know of. Why would this one be any different?
Finally, my point is a simple point: this is not the product of the so-called military-industrial complex and/or mysterious and never-identified "govt agents" acting on their own, usurping "democracy." Rather, this is the Joint Chiefs of Staff's response to JFK and RFK's pressure -- and JFK and RFK represented legally-constituted, constitutionally-elected political authority in America between 1961 and 1963 -- that they and everybody else in govt "do something, do anything!" about Castro's Cuba.
There is not a world but a universe of difference, then, between Bacasper's and my positions on this document and what it means. Most of our differences revolve around our answers to these questions: who produced this document and why? Bacasper believes "govt agents" from "the military-industrial complex" did it and they did it to further their "agenda." He even believes these govt agents and their agenda have continued uninterrupted from the Maine to 9/11 and beyond. I believe the Joint Chiefs of Staff produced it in response to the Kennedy brothers' pressure that they produce it and that it has nothing to do with anything more than the Kennedy Administration's foreign relations -- and specifically in the Caribbean Basin and not elsewhere at that.'
In other words, where Bacasper wants to establish a long continuity model re: "the military-industrial complex" and its allegedly insidious doings; I offer a historically-specific interpretation. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2008 4:32 am Post subject: |
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I wouldn't say what you've done is a waste of time. I mean, at least I read it. And as I previously admitted, the Joint Chiefs did not call it an operation. I also want to actually commend and agree with you on insisting on proper terminology.
I am not sure what you were expecting to gain or demonstrate by putting up this poll. I am certainly not going to gloat over its results. Considering that it is referred to as Operation Northwoods just about everywhere else besides the original document, I am surprised that as many as 4 out of 13 poll respondents do NOT consider it as such. Can we agree to call it "proposed operation NORTHWOODS" then?
Regarding our "differing worldviews," what I found most interesting in what you wrote was how the CIA was irked with the Kennedy brothers for scolding and attempting to micromanage them. This would only seem to lend credence to those who would attribute to CIA roles in their assassinations.
I don't believe I have used the term "military-industrial complex" in this entire conversation. In any event, proposed operation NORTHWOODS described actions that, if carried out, would constitute illegal conspiracies by military (including the Commander-in-Chief) and intelligence officials. Just because they put their names to it does not make their actions legal. You imply that since this was originated by president voted into office, that somehow makes it OK.
Again, the poll results are not all that significant. Whatever it is, reality is NOT a democracy. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2008 7:17 am Post subject: |
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| bacasper wrote: |
| This would only seem to lend credence to those who would attribute to CIA roles in their assassinations. |
Which CIA executives or case officers exactly do you allege participated in the Kennedy brothers' assassinations and how exactly do you know this?
The only people in the American govt working on assassination at this time were JFK, RFK, and those under them who were working on assassinating Fidel Castro. And it is especially rich that as focused on morality as you are, and after having read the evidence that I have cited, that you continue constructing the Kennedys according to the conspiracy theorists' romantic mythology.
| bacasper wrote: |
| ...if carried out, would constitute illegal conspiracies by military (including the Commander-in-Chief) and intelligence officials. Just because they put their names to it does not make their actions legal. |
Wrong. Ours is a presidential system. This is what presidents can and do do. Make -- or, in this case, merely talk about and explore -- foreign policy as they see fit. And you continue mischaracterizing this as something that "the military" did. This is something JFK and RFK talked about and explored. Your inability or unwillingness to make this obvious distinction reveals and confirms a great deal about you and your position.
| bacasper wrote: |
| You imply that since this was originated by president voted into office, that somehow makes it OK. |
I offer no comment whatsoever on whether this is "OK." Like your overly enthusiastic reading of NORTHWOODS, you are attributing positions to me that are not mine.
Rather, I expressly point out and argue that you never even took the time to understand this thing you so self-righteously pass moral judgement on, including legal opinions. I also point out that most govt officials, especially at State and CIA, did not think what the Kennedys wanted to do was "OK" and they in fact spoke out against it when counseling the President and his brother, as the above-cited evidence clearly shows. And, ultimately, re: NORTHWOODS, JFK did not think it was "OK," either. He scrapped it and did not further explore this avenue after reading this memorandum. And not only did none of the proposed fabricated pretexts ever occur, but obviously neither Kennedy nor any of his successors ever invaded Cuba, either.
| bacasper wrote: |
| Can we agree to call it "proposed operation NORTHWOODS" then? |
No. Why do you insist on calling it something more, and making it into something more, than that which its authors called it, "the proposed memorandum...a preliminary submission suitable for planning purposes?" Because it suits your dark worldview about "the military-industrial complex" and its insidious workings and how it and not "the people" control America and hence the rest of the world, and blah, blah, blah.
People call it "Operation NORTHWOODS" "just about everywhere else?" Those people, like you, Bacasper, never really read or historicized this document. And you compound their error by citing them and not the document as your primary authorities.
Five hundred years ago, Bacasper, "just about everyone" believed the Sun revolved around the Earth. Did that make them right? I believe Copernicus and Galileo argued that those people relied on dogma and ignored the actual evidence that they were staring at for a long time. This is what you do with respect to NORTHWOODS.
Last edited by Gopher on Sun Apr 06, 2008 7:38 am; edited 3 times in total |
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Adventurer
Joined: 28 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2008 7:35 am Post subject: |
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Gopher, how are you? I really don't have a clue about Northwoods.
Can you give me the 411 on it? Start out with a little information. This isn't really my forte. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2008 7:37 am Post subject: |
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Adventurer: I have posted NORTHWOODS and explained my take on its meaning in excruciating detail, above. Why not take a few moments and read this?
By the way, Bacasper, have you taken into account or simply dismissed offhand former Director of Central Intelligence Richard M. Helms's remarks on JFK's death...
| Richard M. Helms wrote: |
| The events concerning that ever-so-sad day have all been laid bare and documented. I have only a few observations to make. First, all of the speculation and conspiratology notwithstanding, I have not seen anything, no matter how far-fetched or grossly imagined, that in any way changes my conviction that Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated Kennedy, and that there were no co-conspirators. Furthermore, I know of no information whatsoever that might have any bearing on the assassination that has been concealed from the public. |
He attributes the conspiracy theory trope to a KGB black propaganda operation, "a textbook example of how, with a minimum of effort, the KGB covert action specialists were able to exploit a corrupt minor official and one of democracy's most precious components, a free press." That is, the conspiracy theory trope first appeared in a Soviet-controlled French and Italian media outlets. The rest of the Western press -- including Jim Garrison -- rapidly repeated, reprinted, and/or acted on it, something intelligence officers call "the multiplier effect." And the conspiracy theory sheeple blindly followed all of them, as they were supposed to...
| Helms wrote: |
From the early years of the Cold War, Moscow and its dependent communist services had plagued the United States with dozens of forged documents, usually prepared on official letterhead paper stolen or reproduced in Moscow. Each document was "authenticated" by the forged signature of one or more appropriately senior American officials. The forgeries invariably purported to show the sinister aspect of an alleged secret American activity or policy. The texts were relatively well prepared but quite easily shown to have been fabricated. Errors in format, spelling, syntax, and official titles were common. However obvious these mistakes or ludicrous the policy content, the allegations invariably reached a far greater audience than our subsequent crystal-clear -- to us at least -- proofs of forgery.
To avoid the appearance of coming directly from Moscow, the forgeries were most often slipped to left-leaning or communist-owned foreign newspapers. The sensational story would then be picked up and trumpeted by Soviet and Eastern European media. In due time the Western press would latch on.
...Before the dust settled...a significant number of Americans had apparently been convinced that CIA and the Pentagon, supported by "the military-industrial complex," had successfully cooperated in murdering President Kennedy. |
Helms, Look over My Shoulder, 229, 285-291.
Last edited by Gopher on Sun Apr 06, 2008 8:11 am; edited 3 times in total |
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Adventurer
Joined: 28 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2008 7:58 am Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| Adventurer: I have posted NORTHWOODS and explained my take on its meaning in excruciating detail, above. Why not take a few moments and read this? |
Gopher, you and Bacasper did put a lot of work in this. Are you saying that a proposal for American intelligence people to hit American targets was suggested but rejected by the president? Is Bacasper saying it was accepted and happened? And following accepting that idea is Bacasper saying that it happened in the 1960s and it happened in 2001 with 9/11?
I want to make sure I've got both of your arguments down. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2008 8:54 am Post subject: |
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| You are stating it very crudely but more or less on the right track. I see this as a single moment in time, at the height of the Cold War, especially in the Caribbean, a window into what many of JFK and RFK's advisors saw as their irresponsible and reckless thinking on getting rid of Castro; Bacasper sees this as a timeless window into sinister "govt agents" and their conspiracy-driven world, from the Maine to 9/11 and beyond. |
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