Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Gopher]

I would only modify what you have said here so that you recognize that these were "hypothetical tactical options." This document makes a preliminary proposal in a specific time and place and in a specific historical context. No more no less. No capabilities to carry such things out existed. Look at the evidence I present, above: CIA could not even drop weapons to an agent on the ground in Cuba; how were the Joint Chiefs of Staff going to carry out NORTHWOODS with covert assets (and what covert assets did they even have, by the way, in the early 1960s? NONE.)

As you get into, it does say a couple of things, however. People at State and CIA might have objected and even resigned rather than make such a proposal (consider the direct evidence I cite, above). The Joint Chiefs of Staff, conversely, seemed willing to go along, at least to an extent, with JFK and RFK. Had the President asked them to carry it out, they might have. Given what I know about the Joint Chiefs of Staff and their belligerency in the 1960s, I think it would have been an even toss -- this was not Colin Powell's Joint Chiefs of Staff.

On the other hand, none of this ever happened. We are talking about an exploratory conversation that the President decided to scrap after he understood where it was going.

[loose_ends]

[Gopher]

[loose_ends]

[Gopher]

My position is more simple than that: the Pentagon never ran covert operations. My evidence for this claim is the utter lack of evidence that it ever did. Further, the reason the American govt went with a civilian intelligence service in 1943 (OSS) and again in 1947 (CIA) was because neither State nor War/Defense wanted to be involved in covert operations; they wanted to plausibly deny knowledge and involvement. And this is well documented in the CIA creation documents, long available and written about.

In the case of NORTHWOODS, they were asking for control because the Bay of Pigs proved too large a scale for CIA to manage and, they reasoned, if the American govt decided to embark on another large-scale paramilitary operation, the Pentagon wanted to control it. This, too, is old information, Loose_ends. In any case, no one ever carried out the proposals NORTHWOODS articulates and the American govt, of course, as I am sure you know, did not invade Cuba, either.

[loose_ends]

[Gopher]

First, I have never argued that CIA did not run covert operations. I do not understand why you feel it necessary to state something as obvious as this as if you were stating something new. Next, I conceded that they might have, Loose_ends. Do not mischaracterize or overstate my position.

Further, NORTHWOODS shows that JFK and RFK asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff to discuss all options re: Castro's Cuba. It does not establish "how all presidents operate in American history," Loose_ends. Do you, for example, have anything that even barely resembles NORTHWOODS that any subsequent president proposed? I know what you really want to say, that NORTHWOODS explains 9/11. Well, then. Where is 9/11's NORTHWOODS document...?

[loose_ends]

[Gopher]

Understood. I would caution you on these points, however...

[bacasper]

[bacasper]

[loose_ends]

[Gopher]

We call these people "ins-and-outers." They move in and out of academic, business, and/or legal careers and govt.

Govt still changes and is much more complex than this. Elections matter, especially in Congress. And what happened in the Cold War-era Kennedy years re: Caribbean politics, Castro's Cuba, and anticommunism has little to tell us about the post-Cold War W. Bush Administration, Middle Eastern politics, and Islamic extremism, Loose_ends. I keep hammering at "context" to help you get this: things other than domestic American conditions matter; there is a big world out there that acts upon us at least as much as we act upon it. U.S.-centric approaches cannot grasp this.

[loose_ends]

[Gopher]

You are thinking along U.S.-centric lines when you look only at the American govt -- and an especially sinister one at that, allegedly -- when describing and explaining 9/11.