Another WSJ Reich Hack Gets 'Bay of Pigs' Wrong As She Attacks Bernie's Socialism

Wall Street Journal op-ed columnist Mary Anastasia O'Grady I sometimes read on Mondays, if I've nothing else pressing.  I read her usually lurid, anti-socialist tirades to see how far off the beam she is on a given day. That is,  in covering Latin American and Caribbean politics, issues.  Yesterday, her piece 'Bernie Rewrites Cuban History' (p. A15) caught my attention because I wondered how another hack from the WSJ's stable of  neoliberal, capitalist defenders (including Holman Jenkins Jr., Dan Henninger, William McGurn et al) would respond to Bernie Sanders' rise.

All I will say here is that her screed is every bit the indoctrination twaddle and propaganda she accuses Fidel Castro and the Cuban government of.  (A gov't by the way, which was among the few to dispatch medical specialists to Barbados when it desperately needed help in the 70s and 80s owing to a dire shortage of health care workers and medical specialists.)

It was also interesting reading her agitprop how - while she indulged in all the Castro regime's transgressions -  she mentioned none of the atrocities of the U.S.   For example, the well-documented Operation Northwoods plot - conducted outside JFK's purview - to foment a full scale war and invasion of the island. We actually have the documents that confirm  the extent of it, e.g.                                                           


In Operation Northwoods the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. military planned a campaign of terror, to include the sinking of refugee boats (carrying Cuban refugees) on the high seas, as well as the killing of innocent citizens on American cities’ streets, plus random bombings carried out in Washington, DC, Miami and other places. What was the  motivation? Author James Bamford shows (Body Of Secrets, pp. 82-83) it was to incite an invasion and war against Cuba and enable the U.S. to invade and overthrow Fidel Castro.

But the documents to support suspicions of this (failed) conspiracy were only released years later – though many smelled a ‘rat’. When I first heard of Northwoods, I had trouble processing how any U.S. government agency or entity could remotely conceive of such foul deeds, far less carry them out. Then I quickly recalled the blowing up of Cubana Airlines Flight 455 over Barbados, on October 6. 1976 by Luis Posada, Freddie Lugo and other renegades sponsored in the extremist Alpha 66 enclave by the CIA.

 As former federal agents Warren Hinckle and William Turner noted in their excellent book, ‘Deadly Secrets: The CIA-Mafia War Against Castro and the Assassination of JFK’ (p. 384, Thunders Mouth Press, 1992):

“Two men who had deplaned in Barbados, Freddy Lugo and Hernan Ricardo Lusano, were interrogated after joking about the bombing in a Barbados taxicab. The two were employed by Luis Posada…and confessed that Posada and (Orlando) Bosch had supplied them with two bombs, which they planted on the Cubana aircraft.”

Luis Posada  Carriles - state-sponsored  (by the U.S.) Venezuealan terrorist, who was allowed U.S. sanctuary by George Bush Jr. and never extradited for trial in Venezuela.

According to a secret CIA cable dated Oct. 14, 1976, intelligence sources in Venezuela relayed information about the Cubana Airlines Flt. 455 bombing that tied in  Alpha 66 terrorist Orlando Bosch, who had been visiting Venezuela, and Posada, who then served as a senior officer in Venezuela’s intelligence agency, DISIP. On his arrival, Bosch was met by a CIA operative and Posada, according to the report. Later, a fundraising dinner was held in Bosch’s honor. “A few days following the fund-raising dinner, Posada was overheard to say that, ‘we are going to hit a Cuban airplane,’ and that ‘Orlando has the details,’” the CIA report said.

Those of us living in Barbados at the time had no remote notion of the bloody act to come, nor of the U.S. complicity in it, or that the same right wing Cuban renegades - whose associates conspired in the JFK assassination -  were part of it.  The CIA Report went on to read:

“Following the 6 October [1976] Cubana Airline crash off the coast of Barbados, Bosch, Garcia and Posada agreed that it would be best for Bosch to leave Venezuela. Therefore, on 9 October, Posada and Garcia escorted Bosch to the Colombian border, where he crossed into Colombian territory.”

Meanwhile, Venezuelan police began rounding up suspects. Two right wing Cuban exiles, Hernan Ricardo Lusano and Freddy Lugo, who got off the Cubana plane (Flight 455) in Barbados, confessed that they had planted the bomb and they named Bosch and Posada as the architects of the attack. A search of Posada’s apartment in Venezuela turned up bomb-making instructions, some materials as well as Cubana Airlines timetables and other incriminating documents.

Posada and Bosch were charged in Venezuela for the Cubana Airlines bombing, but the case soon became a political tug-of-war, since the suspects were in possession of sensitive Venezuelan government secrets that could embarrass President Andres Perez. Posada escaped from a Venezuelan prison where he was awaiting trial in 1985. In his autobiography, Posada thanked Miami-based Cuban activist Jorge Mas Canosa for the $25,000 that was used to bribe guards who allowed Posada to walk out of prison. Another Cuban exile who aided Posada was former CIA officer Felix Rodriguez, who was close to then-Vice President Bush.  More details on the worst  terrorist act in the hemisphere to that date are provided below:

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/cuba/2016-10-06/bombing-cuban-jetliner-40-years-later

http://www.loopnewsbarbados.com/content/watch-cubana-air-bombing-remembered

https://www.theguardian.com/world/1976/oct/08/cuba.fromthearchive


In the last link we learn that Right wing Cuban exiles, the lot Ms. O'Grady extols, were responsible.  Subsequent documents have confirmed the role of these terrorists and U.S. CIA complicity (via Luis Posada) as well. So in the midst all her outrage about Bernie Sanders and Fidel Castro ("a megalomaniac"), O'Grady mentions none of this.  Convenient memory lapse or selective attention to rewrite Cuban history?  I.e. rewriting the history of the Bay of Pigs, and JFK's involvement:

"Around 2,800 Cuban men trained for the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. They had been promised U.S. air cover but President Kennedy reneged at the last minute and the Communists easily defeated them."

Now the truth: Little known by Americans, “Operation Zapata” (aka 'The Cuba Project') was actually initiated and developed during the Eisenhower administration and pushed on Kennedy. (Telling him it was "in the national security interest” to do it). Awed by the conviction and national security patter of an elder president with 8 years in the Oval office, (while he himself was a new-be), JFK took Ike at his word and paid the price.   Most of this didn’t come to light until the discovery of an internal CIA Report on the “Cuba Project”, which had been kept hidden for over 35 years.  The results were released under ‘The Bay of Pigs Declassified’.  It was actually based on the agency’s own internal audit and assessment of its behavior in respect of the event.

According to the declassified report, the Agency committed at least four extremely serious mistakes:

i)                Failure to subject the project, especially in its latter, frenzied stages to a cold and objective appraisal by the best talent available before submitting the final plan to Kennedy

ii)              Failure to advise the President, at an appropriate time, that the mission’s success had become dubious- and to recommend the operation therefore be canceled.

iii)            Failure to recognize the project had become overt and that the military effort had become too large to be handled by the Agency alone

iv)             Failure to reduce successive project plans (dating back to 1959) to formal papers and to leave copies with the President and his advisers, to request specific written approval, confirmation thereof.  

The section goes on to note (p. 53):

“The timely and objective scrutiny of the operation in the months before the invasion – including study of all available intelligence- would have demonstrated to Agency officials that the clandestine paramilitary preparations had almost totally failed and there was no responsive underground Cuban force ready to ally with the invaders.”

The commentary is even more critical of the CIA after noting (ibid.) that the United States Intelligence Board, the Office of National Estimates, and Office of Current Intelligence all provided clear warning that a careful reappraisal was needed.

RE: Cancellation (p. 55):

“Cancellation would have been embarrassing. The Brigade could not have been held any longer in ready status, probably not held any longer at all. Further, its members would have spread their disappointment far and wide. Because of multiple security leaks in the huge operation, the world already knew about the preparations, and the Government’s and nation’s embarrassment would have been public”

Re: The Choice (ibid.)

“The choice was between retreat without honor and a gamble between ignominious defeat and dubious victory. The Agency chose to gamble, at rapidly decreasing odds.”

The consensus position of the National Archivists is that JFK was misled by the Agency’s hubris and incompetence. Depending on the CIA for guidance as to intelligence about this operation – in preparation for more than two years-  the Agency blew it and big time. JFK took the blame, yes, but the CIA ultimately was responsible for not advising cancellation when they knew the near zero chances of success, had the opportunity to do so.

As per a Baltimore Sun piece on the above named Report findings ('Internal Probe Blamed Bay of Pigs Fiasco on CIA', p. 6A, Feb. 22, 1998), it was noted:

"The 150-page report, released after sitting in the CIA Director's safe for nearly three decades, blames the disastrous attempt to oust Fidel Castro not on President John F. Kennedy's failure to call airstrikes, but on the agency itself."

"The CIA's ignorance, incompetence, and arrogance toward the 1,400 exiles it trained and equipped to mount the invasion was responsible for the fiasco, said the report, obtained by the Associated Press yesterday."

"The document criticized almost every aspect of the CIA's handling of the invasion: misinforming Kennedy administration officials, planning poorly, using faulty intelligence and conducting an overt military operation beyond 'agency responsibility as well as agency capability'."

In the wake of the Bay  of Pigs fiasco, and learning how badly he’d been played, JFK fired Allan Dulles – the then CIA Director  -  and asserted his willingness to “smash the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.” He also fired Charles Cabell, the deputy CIA director at the time and unwittingly laid the basis for the national security state to act against him.  Indeed, many serious JFK assassination researchers (including me), are convinced that at least one team of mechanics for the Dallas hit were comprised of surviving Bay of Pigs Cubans - with axes to grind against JFK.

Maybe it's time Mary O'Grady take an early retirement and write some children's fantasy books instead.  Especially as she has so much more talent for bunkum and distortion of real world events.  (As well as ignoring many others).  

See also:

Peter Bloom

Capitalism

The Real Global Threat to 21st Century Freedom Is Authoritarian Capitalism Not Democratic Socialism

And:

Class: The Little Word the Elites Want You to Forget

And:
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2016/03/what-maddow-left-out-in-her-segment-on.htm

JFK Would Have Welcomed Re-Opening of Cuban Embassy Today

John Fitzgerald Kennedy would be jubilant today about the Cuban Embassy reopening in Washington. His rapprochement efforts with Castro would have culminated in this earlier - had he lived.

This morning, in a ceremony marking the end of 54 years of hostility, Cuba will raise its flag over a limestone  mansion to officially reopen its U.S. Embassy.  There will be hundreds present, including U.S. congressmen, diplomats and others who are expected to join visiting Cuba Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez and 30 official from Havana.

Make no mistake JFK would be overjoyed to see this milestone.

Very few Americans seem to be aware of recent history especially to do with the last days of the Kennedy administration. In multiple blog posts I have tried my best to fill in what may have been earlier blanks and another opportunity presents itself today as we celebrate this historic restoration of Cuban-U.S. relations (which 58 percent of Americans support).

While some hysterical right wing Cubans such as Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R, FLA) and posturing American Reepos (e.g. John Boehner)-  are beside themselves with  rage,   even planning a news conference to denounce the event -  there is no doubt President John F. Kennedy would have welcomed it.

Why would he not given he had, in fact, initiated a rapprochement with Fidel Castro from late 1962. Let me try to unpack this for those whose history books totally avoided the issue, which is understandable, given it would have provided yet another clear motive for the CIA and security state to snuff out JFK's life.

Even as the Cuban Missile Crisis had wound down, we know that by the late fall of 1962 – unknown to all but Robert Kennedy and a handful of advisors – a mission had gotten under way toward secret dialogue and rapprochement with Fidel Castro[1]. To get some remote idea of how this might be perceived today (by the entrenched national security state) it would be somewhat similar to President Obama trying to engage in a secret dialogue or rapprochement with the Iranian President, Hassan Rouhani. Imagine how well that would be received!

 

 This is not to say that the latter is on the same geopolitical plane as rapprochement with Castro, only that the emotional baggage and extent of reaction would be relatively equal,  taking into account both eras and circumstances. The shadow government and intelligence collective that would be enraged at Obama for such an effort as they were at JFK then.

But Kennedy was vastly more at risk given the rapprochement would have been seen in concert with his other momentous moves including:

-         Signing Executive Order 11,110,  issued on June 4, 1963 - to challenge Federal Reserve control of the money supply, by printing and circulating U.S. Notes

-         Signing the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with Nikita Khrushchev in August, 1963 – which also severely limited all anti-missile defense systems

-         Federalized National Guard troops in Alabama to assist in school integration

-           Signing NSAM 263 to remove all U.S. personnel from Vietnam by 1965
 

Any one of these would have been ample reason for most of the hate mongers or power elites to want him dead. But these in concert with the rapprochement to Castro would have sealed the deal.

As National Security Archivist Peter Kornbluh shows (by reference to documents he has accessed), it was William Attwood, a Washington lawyer, who had negotiated the release of the Bay of Pigs prisoners who was to be instrumental. Attwood was then charged by JFK with becoming the first American emissary to secure Castro’s ear and trust. In particular, to show good will and good faith, Attwood arranged for $62 million in medicines and food aid as part of the prisoner deal.

 Attwood was also continually active in the spring of 1963, securing the release of other prisoners, including three CIA operatives held in Cuban jails[2] .  Following each trip Attwood was debriefed by U.S. Intelligence officials, and he always described each meeting as “most cordial and intimate”.

 

At this stage, one is led to ask: To what extent did those debriefings remain in closed, confined circles or were they bruited about beyond JFK's  immediate circles?

The question is germane and relevant because in the spring of 1963 we know that the Chief of Psychological Warfare branch of the CIA's JM/WAVE station in Miami (George Johannides,),  was busy “guiding and financing” members of the Revolutionary Cuban Student Directorate or DRE, one of the largest anti-Castro groups in the United States[3].  This attention included providing the DRE with up to $25,000 a month, so long as they submitted to CIA discipline[4].   (Not surprisingly many of the Cubans screaming loudest today probably have affiliations to those in the DRE then.)

 At the same time it was known that Operation ZR-Rifle, an Agency project to assassinate Castro, was well underway and quite plausibly without JFK’s knowledge or approval. (Since it’s incomprehensible that Kennedy would’ve approved any Castro assassination plan while also pursuing rapprochement. He’d have to be schizoid- and hence dysfunctional. Further it would flout all the arguments to do with his “moral compass” shown by James Douglass in his book, JFK and the Unspeakable).

 

Thus, given Johannides’ band of DRE reprobates, it’s plausible that any debriefings done by the CIA (of Attwood- in the course of his talks in Cuba) would find their way back to those running the Johannides’ and ZR-Rifle operations. It doesn’t take a whole lot here to conjecture that – if such a leak transpired (say from the de-briefers to Johannides, or ZR-Rifle) -  the plan to assassinate Fidel Castro might be altered to target Kennedy instead. Surely, the rage would be there, make no mistake. The DRE members especially would feel betrayed, as well as the 2506 Brigade imprisoned after their capture. 

Further probability of cross-Agency leakage would’ve occurred when ABC News reporter Lisa Howard offered herself as an intermediary, and her apartment in New York as the venue, for the first bilateral talks between U.S. and Cuban officials[5].  Certainly, the Agency’s eyes and ears would’ve been turned (tuned?) toward Howard after she did a fairly sympathetic TV special on Castro in April, 1963.   Might they have bugged her apartment and listened in? Possible, but they may not have had to – since a “high society” crowd attended and these may well have provided all the extra source leaks the Agency needed to plan ahead for what it wanted to do.

By September 24, 1963, Robert Kennedy had informed Deputy U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. William Atwood, that Jack might be able to meet Castro, but not in Cuba. Mexico may have been suggested as an alternative. By then many of us suspected that the conspirators had a plan afoot to possibly take out Kennedy in September. That plan was scrapped after an incident involving double agent Richard Case Nagell.

 

Sadly, Nagell's actions merely postponed Kennedy's assassination and he never lived to see the fruits born out by his rapprochement. Today, he'd be looking on and smiling that his efforts ultimately resulted in re-establishing relations.

Meanwhile, the U.S. will wait to raise an American flag at its own Embassy in Havana until Secretary of State John Kerry travels there to do the honors later this summer. But Kerry will meet Mr. Rodriguez at the State Dept. today.

 
Let the right wing Cubans scream and shout. All they can deliver is sound and fury signifying nothing. JFK's vision finally won out!

---

[1] 'Kennedy and Castro: What Might Have Been', by Peter Kornbluh, in The Baltimore Sun, Aug. 22, 1999, p. 1C. Kornbluh is the head of The National Security Archives and he compiled the attendant documents that support the Kennedy-Castro rapprochement efforts.

[2] Kornbluh, ibid.

[3] Jefferson Morley, ‘The George Johannides Cover-up’, in JFK LANCER, May 19, 2005.

[4] Morley, ibid.

[5] Kornbluh, ibid.

Stanislav Petrov: The 2nd Man To Save The World

Most Americans who've had a proper introduction to recent American History are aware of how JFK pretty well saved the world (much of it) back in October, 1962 at the peak  of the Cuban Missile Crisis. As we know, Kennedy rejected the Joint Chiefs pressure to bomb and invade Cuba in favor of a naval blockade. Just as well, since as his former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara observed (in his documentary 'The Fog of War') Castro would have launched over 100 armed ballistic missiles had that happened.

McNamara learned of this while on a conference visit to Havana in 1992, commemorating the 30th anniversary of the crisis. McNamara had asked Fidel what he would have done had the U.S. invaded Cuba. Castro didn't hesitate, informing him that over 100 armed (with single megaton warhead) missiles would have been sent flying.

Flabbergasted, McNamara pressed him: "You really would have destroyed your country?" and Fidel replied, "Yes, and you would have too in a similar situation!"

Echoing the 'better dead than Red' meme entrenched in Americans at the time.

How close we came to nuclear war at the time was well documented in the excellent book of the tape transcripts: T'he Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis’, by Ernest R. May and Philip K. Zelikow (1997, President and Fellows of Harvard College).

Therein , on p. 347, for ’10:00 A.M. Oct. 24” one finds:

“At the time the quarantine became effective, the Strategic Air Command moved from the general Defense Condition 3 to Defense Condition 2, the level just below general war. In addition to ICBMs and submarine-based ballistic missiles, every available bomber – more than 1,400 aircraft- went on alert. Scores of bombers, each loaded with several nuclear weapons and carrying folders for pre-assigned targets in the Soviet Union, were kept continuously in the air around the clock with shifts- refueled by aerial tankers, taking turns hovering over Northern Canada and the Mediterranean Sea. The Soviet government was presumed to be aware of these developments.”

On p. 183 one beholds Gen. Curtis  LeMay saying that "We have got to do more than take out the missiles" and he demands a massive air strike as well.  Here's how that would have played out: At the first hint of U.S. attack planes picked up on Cuban radar most or all of the 100-odd Soviet IRBMs would have been launched. The targets would mainly have been U.S. east coast cities: Miami, Baltimore, Washington, DC, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, but a number of the missiles would have struck interior cities including Cleveland, Detroit, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Chicago and possibly Milwaukee.

Even as those missiles were in flight, the Kennedy White House would have been forced to go to Defcon 1, or full war condition, even as the Soviets - also now acknowledging what was happening (realizing Cuba's missile launch would make them a target), launched their own missiles. In the space of about 30 minutes, as McNamara pointed out, some 7,500 missiles would have been in the air headed for targets in the USA and USSR.  Since most warheads at that time were in the 1-10 megaton range, the full nuclear exchange - lasting maybe an hour would have resulted in possibly 300 million dead and massive clouds of radiation polluting the rest of the planet via the trades and other winds.

The world escaped at least partial obliteration, thanks to Kennedy's use of reason over reaction.

Flash forward now to September 26, 1983.   A Soviet satellite detects five U.S. ICBMS heading toward the USSR.  This detection immediately causes alarms to sound at the Soviet Central Command in Oko with backlit screens flashing LAUNCH!    Standard operating procedure at the time dictated that the command be followed with a full scale missile launch - including all 3,000 or so Soviet ICBMs - all armed with multi-megaton warheads.

But something didn't seem right to Stanislav Petrov, lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces.  Why only five ICBMs? Surely if the Americans had really planned a pre-emptive nuclear attack they'd have thrown their whole arsenal at the USSR.  

Using his reason, like Kennedy did 20 years earlier, Petrov declared the system's indication a false alarm. Subsequent investigation showed that he was right: no missiles were approaching and the computer detection system was malfunctioning.  According to the Wikipedia account:

"It was subsequently determined that the false alarm had been created by a rare alignment of sunlight on high-altitude clouds and the satellites' Molniya orbits, an error later corrected by cross-referencing a geostationary satellite."

Alignment of a satellite with sunlight on high altitude clouds nearly led to a full retaliatory response from the Russians and likely nuclear war? Yes, indeed, and the near breakdown showed a nascent weakness in the Soviet early warning system and also raised concern about the U.S. system too - also based on hair trigger alarms.

While there remains debate on the role Petrov actually played in the events that day, just as there remains debate on Kennedy's role, all generally agree that his voice of doubt- and reasoning -  was enough to leverage restraint.  Analogous to how Kennedy's doubt that an invasion was the answer in 1962 leveraged a restraint on precipitous action that might have led to a major nuclear exchange.

We have had then two men saving the world at different times. The question is: Will a third person come to the rescue with the next geopolitical or  technical snafu? Or will our luck have run out?