Yahoo! May 1, 2001
Castro Calls on Cubans for March
By Anita Snow, Associated Press Writer
HAVANA (AP) - Urging workers to protest international criticism of its human
rights record, Fidel Castro (news - web sites)'s government called out Cubans
for a militant May Day march past the U.S. government's mission in Havana.
The protest, part of May Day labor celebrations worldwide, also comes as
Cuba approaches the first anniversary of Elian Gonzalez's return from the United
States after a bitter custody battle.
Like the demonstrations over the Gonzalez case, Tuesday's march was to focus
on Cuban youth.
"Hundreds of thousands of compatriots from two Havana provinces will
represent our embattled people,'' the Communist Party daily Granma said Monday.
"In this concentration of the people, the voice of workers' representatives
from the youngest and most promising generation of Cubans will be heard.''
Marchers were called Tuesday to protest the recent U.N. condemnation of Cuba
for its rights record.
The Czech Republic's proposal to condemn Cuba, strongly supported by the
United States, was approved by the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva on
April 18. Another 10 nations abstained.
The government's call for young people to demonstrate echoes its recent
emphasis on youth's role in the island's leadership. For more than a year, it
has been working to engage the young people it sees as the key to the survival
of Cuban communism.
Since Havana's battle over Gonzalez began in December 1999, young people
ranging from primary school children to university students have been cast as
the protagonists in hundreds of marches, rallies, speeches and state television
programs.
Almost a full year after Elian, now 7, returned to the island in June 2000,
a massive gathering is held in a different province every Saturday to protest
U.S. policies toward Cuba.
The march also comes amid increasingly strident political language and
symbols by the communist government.
In mid-April, when Castro reaffirmed his commitment to socialism 40 years
ago, he thrust an automatic rifle high into the air and urged Cubans to "defend
this revolution to the last drop of blood.''
Participants at that rally dressed in military uniforms and hoisted old
rifles into the air.
U.S. Military Wanted to Provoke War With Cuba
By David Ruppe.
ABCNEWS.com.
Tuesday May 01 11:39 AM EDT
The U.S. military's top brass in the early 1960s concocted secret plans for
terrorizing American cities, killing people on U.S. streets, even blowing up a
U.S. military ship to build support for an invasion of Cuba, a new book reports.
The civilian leadership, fortunately, nixed the ideas.
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.
Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible
assassination of Cuban and eacute;migr and eacute;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.
The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the
international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader,
communist Fidel Castro (news - web sites).
America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military
casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and
blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a
helpful wave of national indignation."
Details of the plans are described in Body of Secrets (Doubleday), a new
book by investigative reporter James Bamford about the history of America's
largest spy agency, the National Security Agency. However, the plans were not
connected to the agency, he notes.
The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and
were presented to President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in
March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and
have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years.
"These were Joint Chiefs of Staff documents. The reason these were held
secret for so long is the Joint Chiefs never wanted to give these up because
they were so embarrassing," Bamford told ABCNEWS.com.
"The whole point of a democracy is to have leaders responding to the
public will, and here this is the complete reverse, the military trying to trick
the American people into a war that they want but that nobody else wants."
Gunning for War
The documents show "the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved
plans for what may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government,"
writes Bamford.
The Joint Chiefs even proposed using the potential death of astronaut John
Glenn during the first attempt to put an American into orbit as a false pretext
for war with Cuba, the documents show.
Should the rocket explode and kill Glenn, they wrote, "the objective is
to provide irrevocable proof … that the fault lies with the Communists et
all Cuba [sic]."
The plans were motivated by an intense desire among senior military leaders
to depose Castro, who seized power in 1959 to become the first communist leader
in the Western Hemisphere — only 90 miles from U.S. shores.
The earlier CIA (news - web sites)-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by
Cuban exiles had been a disastrous failure, in which the military was not
allowed to provide firepower.The military leaders now wanted a shot at it.
"The whole thing was so bizarre," says Bamford, noting public and
international support would be needed for an invasion, but apparently neither
the American public, nor the Cuban public, wanted to see U.S. troops deployed to
drive out Castro.
Reflecting this, the U.S. plan called for establishing prolonged military —
not democratic — control over the island nation after the invasion.
"That's what we're supposed to be freeing them from," Bamford
says. "The only way we would have succeeded is by doing exactly what the
Russians were doing all over the world, by imposing a government by tyranny,
basically what we were accusing Castro himself of doing."
'Over the Edge'
The Joint Chiefs at the time were headed by Eisenhower appointee Army Gen.
Lyman L. Lemnitzer, who, with the signed plans in hand made a pitch to McNamara
on March 13, 1962, recommending Operation Northwoods be run by the military.
Whether the Joint Chiefs' plans were rejected by McNamara in the meeting is
not clear. But three days later, President Kennedy told Lemnitzer directly there
was virtually no possibility of ever using overt force to take Cuba, Bamford
reports. Within months, Lemnitzer would be denied another term as chairman and
transferred to another job.
The secret plans came at a time when there was distrust in the military
leadership about their civilian leadership, with leaders in the Kennedy
administration viewed as too liberal, insufficiently experienced and soft on
communism. At the same time, however, there real were concerns in American
society about their military overstepping its bounds.
There were reports U.S. military leaders had encouraged their subordinates
to vote conservative during the election.
And at least two popular books were published focusing on a right-wing
military leadership pushing the limits against government policy of the day. The
Senate Foreign Relations Committee published its own report on right-wing
extremism in the military, warning a "considerable danger" in the "education
and propaganda activities of military personnel" had been uncovered. The
committee even called for an examination of any ties between Lemnitzer and
right-wing groups. But Congress didn't get wind of Northwoods, says Bamford.
"Although no one in Congress could have known at the time," he
writes, "Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs had quietly slipped over the edge."
Even after Lemnitzer was gone, he writes, the Joint Chiefs continued to plan
"pretext" operations at least through 1963.
One idea was to create a war between Cuba and another Latin American country
so that the United States could intervene. Another was to pay someone in the
Castro government to attack U.S. forces at the Guantanamo naval base — an
act, which Bamford notes, would have amounted to treason. And another was to fly
low level U-2 flights over Cuba, with the intention of having one shot down as a
pretext for a war.
"There really was a worry at the time about the military going off
crazy and they did, but they never succeeded, but it wasn't for lack of trying,"
he says.
After 40 Years
Ironically, the documents came to light, says Bamford, in part because of
the 1992 Oliver Stone film JFK, which examined the possibility of a conspiracy
behind the assassination of President Kennedy.
As public interest in the assassination swelled after JFK's release,
Congress passed a law designed to increase the public's access to government
records related to the assassination.
The author says a friend on the board tipped him off to the documents.
Afraid of a congressional investigation, Lemnitzer had ordered all Joint
Chiefs documents related to the Bay of Pigs destroyed, says Bamford. But
somehow, these remained.
"The scary thing is none of this stuff comes out until 40 years after,"
says Bamford.
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