I found this article in which is discussed a book called “Body of Secrets” by James Bamford. In his book, it is alleged that the U.S. Government had various plans to justify an attempted invasion of Cuba. Plans allegedly range from:
to
and
and finally, from this ABCNews Article mentions the following:
At first my reaction was that this was impossible, that someone was trying to boost sales for their book. I looked a bit further and found this article from the National Security Archive, at George Washington University. This article seemed to have no more information than the other ones, until I scrolled down and found this PDF that is supposed to be a photocopy of the actual documents. Some pages are harder to read than others, but it seems to confirm what Mr. Bamford alleged in his book.
After reading all this information, I came to the conclusion that such plans were probably made but, thank God!, never implemented.
What do you think?
Is this a big hoax, or did this actually happen?
Anyone else find such a plan despicable, to say the least?
Or could it be justified?
Fellow Dopers, I want to know what you think of this one.
Yes, I find it dispicable to think about, but possible to believe. I would not be shocked at all to learn that the US gov would consider such tactics to involve the USA in a war. #2 about blaming a falling astronaut on electronic interference from Cuba is the most far out, but I can imagine that being discussed at least at a low level in the CIA in the 60’s.
In addition, I have read speculation that some of the wars involving the USA were indeed started under false pretenses:
Spanish-American war. The sinking of the Maine in Cuba that started the Spanish American war may have been an accidental boiler explosion, not a mine. Furthermore, the US leaders may have known this, but wanted to blame it on the Spanish.
WW1. The sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, which led to US involvement in WW1, was not just an attack on innocent passengers. The ship was secretly carrying munitions to Britain, using passengers as shields.
WW2. FDR knew about the Pearl Harbor attack plans.
Vietnam. LBJ knew about the Gulf of Tonkin attack plans, or the actual events were largely fabricated.
I can’t give cites for any of these, and will probably be verbally lynched again for even mentioning them. Here is the best I can do:
1)I most recently read about the Maine sinking theories in National Geographic a few months ago. It is very similar to the plans you mention for starting a war with Cuba. The FDR-Pearl Harbor theory I most recently read about a couple days ago when people where comparing it to the WTC attacks last week.
http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq71-1.htm
“Despite the best efforts of experts and historians in investigating this complex and technical subject, a definitive explanation for the destruction of Maine remains elusive”.
Regarding the Lusitania, http://members.home.net/vincebjs/Lusitania/lusi.html
“Germany tried to find ways to defend itself against these attacks and protests. It claimed that the Lusitania was armed and that it was carrying munitions for the destruction of German soldiers. The first claim was a false claim, and although the British denied it, the second claim was proven to be true many years later in secret British documents”.
Cold war: The US claimed they didn’t have spy planes flying over Russia in the 60s, until Russia shot down a U2 pilot, Frances Powers.
1)I most recently read about the Maine sinking theories in National Geographic a few months ago. It is very similar to the plans you mention for starting a war with Cuba.
http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq71-1.htm
“Despite the best efforts of experts and historians in investigating this complex and technical subject, a definitive explanation for the destruction of Maine remains elusive”.
Regarding the Lusitania, http://members.home.net/vincebjs/Lusitania/lusi.html
“Germany tried to find ways to defend itself against these attacks and protests. It claimed that the Lusitania was armed and that it was carrying munitions for the destruction of German soldiers. The first claim was a false claim, and although the British denied it, the second claim was proven to be true many years later in secret British documents”.
The FDR-Pearl Harbor theory I most recently read about a couple days ago when people where comparing it to the WTC attacks last week.
Other: The US claimed they didn’t have spy planes flying over Russia in the 60s, until Russia shot down a U2 pilot, Frances Powers.
OK, I don’t know what the etiquette [sp?] for bumping your own thread when you don’t get enough responses is so if I shouldn’t do this,please just tell me and I won’t do it again. Promised.
The thing is: I posted this thead here that I wanted to discuss because I wonder if it’s real or not. Is it a king-sized hoax the guy pulled off (faking the documents) to promote his book, or do you think that such plans were actually made? I read the whole thing and it sounds plausible, but I’d like other opinions on this.
Again, if I’m breaking some unwritten rule by doing this, just tell me, after all I haven’t been here that long…
Threads do get lost (falling off the first page) around here, but they don’t fall off as quickly in GD as they do in GQ or MPSIMS. Unfortunately, if your post rolls off in a fairly short period, it may simply mean that you picked a topic that others did not find exciting at that time.
While bumping is not forbidden, it is not encouraged.
If you really feel that it was pushed out by a hot topic that generated multiple threads and they have now settled down to a smaller number, you can probably get away with bumping it once.
In the interest of not looking as though you’re jumping up and down screaming “Talk about my topic!”, you can usually bump it by digging up some further information regarding the subject and adding it with an opening such as “I know this didn’t generate much discussion, but I just found . . . .”
If it doesn’t fly after one bump, then I’m afraid that you just have a topic that is not very interesting to the current crop of posters. After that, the polite thing is to simply let it settle out of sight.
Regarding your OP, I suspect that lots of plans are discussed at various levels. Engaging in such discussion, and even documenting the discussions, is what the CIA (and similar outfits) do. Note, however, that while it appears that several Castro assassinations were attempted, none of these tactics discussed got any further than the talking stage. They do not appear even to have been initiated and later squelched by cooler heads.
While the US government can be blamed for overlooking or fudging the truth, that’s a far step from planning a self attack and killing its own citizens.
k.os, I am still reading your cites and considering what more to say about them. If you just want to see if they are a hoax, go to Snopes: http://www.snopes.com
Fair deal. That’s more than most people will give me. I am not saying that FDR and the gov “planned” Pearl Harbor, just that they may have purposely not been as vigilant as they should have been.
Some more leftist thoughts about war conspiracies, hidden agendas, and how they may relate to current events:
Statement from the Workers World Party http://www.workers.org/
…
"Under these conditions, it would be irresponsible at this time to jump to conclusions as to what political forces were behind these attacks. Many, many times in the past, going back to the battleship Maine in this country and the Reichstag fire in Germany, bogus explanations have been fabricated by the authorities in order to line up the population behind a course of aggression.
It should be remembered that the 1964 congressional resolution giving a blank check to the Johnson administration for the Vietnam War was passed 98-2 after a fabricated “attack” on U.S. warships in the Tonkin Gulf that was later exposed in the Pentagon Papers.
On Sept. 12, a resolution passed the U.S. Senate 100-0 that gives the present administration the same kind of unrestrained authority to wage war and to finance the Pentagon with whatever funds it requests. In the context of the present capitalist economic downturn, everyone should understand that this means with Social Security funds–the trillions of dollars set aside from workers’ earnings for their retirement–more than anything else.
The pronouncements of U.S. leaders from President George W. Bush on down make it clear that the government’s priority is to restore the image of unchallenged U.S. hegemony in the world by unleashing its powerful military somewhere. There can be no doubt that the targets will be peoples in oppressed countries where the mass sentiment is already one of anger at past U.S. aggression and extreme exploitation".
…
Well, I checked snopes (before even posting the OP) but found nothing. This does not mean it is not a hoax. Snopes is a really good source of information, but obviously not exhaustive. All the sites I found treated this as a bona fide article, but who knows? What I had hoped by posting this was to have a discussion as to:[ul][li]Is it a hoax? Probably not, but I’d like more opinions.Do you think it’s OK that such plans were made? Personnaly I don’t, but I have yet to hear your opinons…[/ul][/li]
Thanks to tomndebb and curious george for sharing their views on the OP. Anyone else?
I’m going to throw some doubt on this. Oppressed people are lousy targets. They are already oppressed after all, all you can do is make them madder. The fact that it isn’t the US that is oppressing them doesn’t really enter their view. They’re mad and they’re going to blame someone and quite smartly their oppressors convinced these people that the US is to blame.
Food and hope are the way to stop oppressed people from being angry.
The US has to target existing terrorist cells and convince the nations that sponsor them that to continue to do so is not in their best interest. But stopping the next generation of terrorists will require a humanitarian effort.
