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Cuba
in the Cross-Hairs
A
Near Half-Century of Terror
by
Noam Chomsky
Dissident
Voice
October 25, 2003
First
Published in TomDispatch.com
Now that the Bush
administration, pursuing its "war against terrorism," has once again
elevated Cuba into America's cross-hairs as a newly anointed member of the Axis
of Evil, it seems like a good moment to consider the question of terrorism and
Cuba. Noam Chomsky takes up this matter in his new book, Hegemony or Survival, America's Quest for Global Dominance,
and a long, chilling excerpt from that book is included below (with his kind
permission). No one has written more powerfully or consistently on the subject
of state violence and state terror or reminded us more powerfully or
consistently that "terror" isn't primarily what small stateless bands
of fanatics deliver to large and powerful states. History is, in a sense, a
history of state terror and the United States has been a practitioner of the form,
in the case of Cuba, as Chomsky shows, with unrelenting perseverance and relish
for nearly half a century.
-- Tom Engelhardt (TomDispatch.com)
The
Batista dictatorship was overthrown in January 1959 by Castro's guerrilla
forces. In March, the National Security Council (NSC) considered means to
institute regime change. In May, the CIA began to arm guerrillas inside Cuba.
"During the Winter of 1959-1960, there was a significant increase in CIA-supervised
bombing and incendiary raids piloted by exiled Cubans" based in the US. We
need not tarry on what the US or its clients would do under such circumstances.
Cuba, however, did not respond with violent actions within the United States
for revenge or deterrence. Rather, it followed the procedure required by
international law. In July 1960, Cuba called on the UN for help, providing the
Security Council with records of some twenty bombings, including names of
pilots, plane registration numbers, unexploded bombs, and other specific
details, alleging considerable damage and casualties and calling for resolution
of the conflict through diplomatic channels. US Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge
responded by giving his "assurance [that] the United States has no aggressive
purpose against Cuba." Four months before, in March 1960, his government
had made a formal decision in secret to overthrow the Castro government, and
preparations for the Bay of Pigs invasion were well advanced.
Washington
was concerned that Cubans might try to defend themselves. CIA chief Allen
Dulles therefore urged Britain not to provide arms to Cuba. His "main
reason," the British ambassador reported to London, "was that this
might lead the Cubans to ask for Soviet or Soviet bloc arms," a move that
"would have a tremendous effect," Dulles pointed out, allowing
Washington to portray Cuba as a security threat to the hemisphere, following
the script that had worked so well in Guatemala. Dulles was referring to
Washington's successful demolition of Guatemala's first democratic experiment,
a ten-year interlude of hope and progress, greatly feared in Washington because
of the enormous popular support reported by US intelligence and the
"demonstration effect" of social and economic measures to benefit the
large majority. The Soviet threat was routinely invoked, abetted by Guatemala's
appeal to the Soviet bloc for arms after the US had threatened attack and cut
off other sources of supply. The result was a half-century of horror, even
worse than the US-backed tyranny that came before.
For
Cuba, the schemes devised by the doves were similar to those of CIA director
Dulles. Warning President Kennedy about the "inevitable political and
diplomatic fall-out" from the planned invasion of Cuba by a proxy army, Arthur
Schlesinger suggested efforts to trap Castro in some action that could be used
as a pretext for invasion: "One can conceive a black operation in, say,
Haiti which might in time lure Castro into sending a few boatloads of men on to
a Haitian beach in what could be portrayed as an effort to overthrow the
Haitian regime, . . . then the moral issue would be clouded, and the anti-US
campaign would be hobbled from the start." Reference is to the regime of
the murderous dictator "Papa Doc" Duvalier, which was backed by the
US (with some reservations), so that an effort to help Haitians overthrow it
would be a crime.
Eisenhower's
March 1960 plan called for the overthrow of Castro in favor of a regime
"more devoted to the true interests of the Cuban people and more
acceptable to the U.S.," including support for "military operation on
the island" and "development of an adequate paramilitary force
outside of Cuba." Intelligence reported that popular support for Castro
was high, but the US would determine the "true interests of the Cuban
people." The regime change was to be carried out "in such a manner as
to avoid any appearance of U.S. intervention," because of the anticipated
reaction in Latin America and the problems of doctrinal management at home.
The
Bay of Pigs invasion came a year later, in April 1961, after Kennedy had taken
office. It was authorized in an atmosphere of "hysteria" over Cuba in
the White House, Robert McNamara later testified before the Senate's Church
Committee. At the first cabinet meeting after the failed invasion, the
atmosphere was "almost savage," Chester Bowles noted privately:
"there was an almost frantic reaction for an action program." At an
NSC meeting two days later, Bowles found the atmosphere "almost as
emotional" and was struck by "the great lack of moral integrity"
that prevailed. The mood was reflected in Kennedy's public pronouncements:
"The complacent, the self-indulgent, the soft societies are about to be
swept away with the debris of history. Only the strong . . . can possibly
survive," he told the country, sounding a theme that would be used to good
effect by the Reaganites during their own terrorist wars. Kennedy was aware
that allies "think that we're slightly demented" on the subject of Cuba,
a perception that persists to the present.
Kennedy
implemented a crushing embargo that could scarcely be endured by a small
country that had become a "virtual colony" of the US in the sixty
years following its "liberation" from Spain. He also ordered an
intensification of the terrorist campaign: "He asked his brother,
Attorney-General Robert Kennedy, to lead the top-level interagency group that
oversaw Operation Mongoose, a program of paramilitary operations, economic
warfare, and sabotage he launched in late 1961 to visit the 'terrors of the
earth' on Fidel Castro and, more prosaically, to topple him."
The
terrorist campaign was "no laughing matter," Jorge Dominguez writes
in a review of recently declassified materials on operations under Kennedy,
materials that are "heavily sanitized" and "only the tip of the
iceberg," Piero Gleijeses adds.
Operation
Mongoose was "the centerpiece of American policy toward Cuba from late
1961 until the onset of the 1962 missile crisis," Mark White reports, the
program on which the Kennedy brothers "came to pin their hopes."
Robert Kennedy informed the CIA that the Cuban problem carries "the top
priority in the United States Government -- all else is secondary -- no time,
no effort, or manpower is to be spared" in the effort to overthrow the
Castro regime. The chief of Mongoose operations, Edward Lansdale, provided a
timetable leading to "open revolt and overthrow of the Communist
regime" in October 1962. The "final definition" of the program recognized
that "final success will require decisive U.S. military
intervention," after terrorism and subversion had laid the basis. The
implication is that US military intervention would take place in October 1962
-- when the missile crisis erupted.
In
February 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff approved a plan more extreme than
Schlesinger's: to use "covert means . . . to lure or provoke Castro, or an
uncontrollable subordinate, into an overt hostile reaction against the United
States; a reaction which would in turn create the justification for the US to
not only retaliate but destroy Castro with speed, force and
determination." In March, at the request of the DOD Cuba Project, the
Joint Chiefs of Staff submitted a memorandum to Defense Secretary Robert
McNamara outlining "pretexts which they would consider would provide
justification for US military intervention in Cuba." The plan would be
undertaken if "a credible internal revolt is impossible of attainment
during the next 9-10 months," but before Cuba could establish relations with
Russia that might "directly involve the Soviet Union."
A
prudent resort to terror should avoid risk to the perpetrator.
The
March plan was to construct "seemingly unrelated events to camouflage the
ultimate objective and create the necessary impression of Cuban rashness and
responsibility on a large scale, directed at other countries as well as the
United States," placing the US "in the apparent position of suffering
defensible grievances [and developing] an international image of Cuban threat
to peace in the Western Hemisphere." Proposed measures included blowing up
a US ship in Guantanamo Bay to create "a 'Remember the Maine'
incident," publishing casualty lists in US newspapers to "cause a
helpful wave of national indignation," portraying Cuban investigations as
"fairly compelling evidence that the ship was taken under attack,"
developing a "Communist Cuban terror campaign [in Florida] and even in
Washington," using Soviet bloc incendiaries for cane-burning raids in
neighboring countries, shooting down a drone aircraft with a pretense that it
was a charter flight carrying college students on a holiday, and other
similarly ingenious schemes -- not implemented, but another sign of the
"frantic" and "savage" atmosphere that prevailed.
On
August 23 the president issued National Security Memorandum No. 181, "a
directive to engineer an internal revolt that would be followed by U.S.
military intervention," involving "significant U.S. military plans,
maneuvers, and movement of forces and equipment" that were surely known to
Cuba and Russia. Also in August, terrorist attacks were intensified, including
speedboat strafing attacks on a Cuban seaside hotel "where Soviet military
technicians were known to congregate, killing a score of Russians and Cubans";
attacks on British and Cuban cargo ships; the contamination of sugar shipments;
and other atrocities and sabotage, mostly carried out by Cuban exile
organizations permitted to operate freely in Florida. A few weeks later came
"the most dangerous moment in human history."
Terrorist
operations continued through the tensest moments of the missile crisis. They
were formally canceled on October 30, several days after the Kennedy and
Khrushchev agreement, but went on nonetheless. On November 8, "a Cuban
covert action sabotage team dispatched from the United States successfully blew
up a Cuban industrial facility," killing 400 workers, according to the
Cuban government. Raymond Garthoff writes that "the Soviets could only see
[the attack] as an effort to backpedal on what was, for them, the key question
remaining: American assurances not to attack Cuba." These and other
actions reveal again, he concludes, "that the risk and danger to both
sides could have been extreme, and catastrophe not excluded."
After
the crisis ended, Kennedy renewed the terrorist campaign. Ten days before his
assassination he approved a CIA plan for "destruction operations" by
US proxy forces "against a large oil refinery and storage facilities, a
large electric plant, sugar refineries, railroad bridges, harbor facilities,
and underwater demolition of docks and ships." A plot to kill Castro was
initiated on the day of the Kennedy assassination. The campaign was called off
in 1965, but "one of Nixon's first acts in office in 1969 was to direct
the CIA to intensify covert operations against Cuba."
Of
particular interest are the perceptions of the planners. In his review of
recently released documents on Kennedy-era terror, Dominguez observes that
"only once in these nearly thousand pages of documentation did a U.S.
official raise something that resembled a faint moral objection to
U.S.-government sponsored terrorism": a member of the NSC staff suggested
that it might lead to some Russian reaction, and raids that are "haphazard
and kill innocents . . . might mean a bad press in some friendly
countries." The same attitudes prevail throughout the internal
discussions, as when Robert Kennedy warned that a full-scale invasion of Cuba
would "kill an awful lot of people, and we're going to take an awful lot
of heat on it."
Terrorist
activities continued under Nixon, peaking in the mid- 1970s, with attacks on
fishing boats, embassies, and Cuban offices overseas, and the bombing of a
Cubana airliner, killing all seventy-three passengers. These and subsequent
terrorist operations were carried out from US territory, though by then they
were regarded as criminal acts by the FBI.
So
matters proceeded, while Castro was condemned by editors for maintaining an
"armed camp, despite the security from attack promised by Washington in
1962." The promise should have sufficed, despite what followed; not to
speak of the promises that preceded, by then well documented, along with
information about how well they could be trusted: e.g., the "Lodge
moment" of July 1960.
On
the thirtieth anniversary of the missile crisis, Cuba protested a machine-gun
attack against a Spanish-Cuban tourist hotel; responsibility was claimed by a
group in Miami. Bombings in Cuba in 1997, which killed an Italian tourist, were
traced back to Miami. The perpetrators were Salvadoran criminals operating
under the direction of Luis Posada Carriles and financed in Miami. One of the
most notorious international terrorists, Posada had escaped from a Venezuelan
prison, where he had been held for the Cubana airliner bombing, with the aid of
Jorge Mas Canosa, a Miami businessman who was the head of the tax-exempt
Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF). Posada went from Venezuela to El
Salvador, where he was put to work at the Ilopango military air base to help
organize US terrorist attacks against Nicaragua under Oliver North's direction.
Posada
has described in detail his terrorist activities and the funding for them from
exiles and CANF in Miami, but felt secure that he would not be investigated by
the FBI. He was a Bay of Pigs veteran, and his subsequent operations in the
1960s were directed by the CIA. When he later joined Venezuelan intelligence
with CIA help, he was able to arrange for Orlando Bosch, an associate from his
CIA days who had been convicted in the US for a bomb attack on a Cuba-bound
freighter, to join him in Venezuela to organize further attacks against Cuba.
An ex-CIA official familiar with the Cubana bombing identifies Posada and Bosch
as the only suspects in the bombing, which Bosch defended as "a legitimate
act of war." Generally considered the "mastermind" of the
airline bombing, Bosch was responsible for thirty other acts of terrorism,
according to the FBI. He was granted a presidential pardon in 1989 by the
incoming Bush I administration after intense lobbying by Jeb Bush and South
Florida Cuban-American leaders, overruling the Justice Department, which had
found the conclusion "inescapable that it would be prejudicial to the public
interest for the United States to provide a safe haven for Bosch [because] the
security of this nation is affected by its ability to urge credibly other
nations to refuse aid and shelter to terrorists."
Cuban
offers to cooperate in intelligence-sharing to prevent terrorist attacks have
been rejected by Washington, though some did lead to US actions. "Senior
members of the FBI visited Cuba in 1998 to meet their Cuban counterparts, who
gave [the FBI] dossiers about what they suggested was a Miami-based terrorist
network: information which had been compiled in part by Cubans who had
infiltrated exile groups." Three months later the FBI arrested Cubans who
had infiltrated the US-based terrorist groups. Five were sentenced to long terms
in prison.
The
national security pretext lost whatever shreds of credibility it might have had
after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, though it was not until 1998
that US intelligence officially informed the country that Cuba no longer posed
a threat to US national security. The Clinton administration, however, insisted
that the military threat posed by Cuba be reduced to "negligible,"
but not completely removed. Even with this qualification, the intelligence
assessment eliminated a danger that had been identified by the Mexican
ambassador in 1961, when he rejected JFK's attempt to organize collective
action against Cuba on the grounds that "if we publicly declare that Cuba
is a threat to our security, forty million Mexicans will die laughing."
In
fairness, however, it should be recognized that missiles in Cuba did pose a
threat. In private discussions the Kennedy brothers expressed their fears that
the presence of Russian missiles in Cuba might deter a US invasion of
Venezuela. So "the Bay of Pigs was really right," JFK concluded.
The
Bush I administration reacted to the elimination of the security pretext by
making the embargo much harsher, under pressure from Clinton, who outflanked
Bush from the right during the 1992 election campaign. Economic warfare was
made still more stringent in 1996, causing a furor even among the closest US
allies. The embargo came under considerable domestic criticism as well, on the
grounds that it harms US exporters and investors -- the embargo's only victims,
according to the standard picture in the US; Cubans are unaffected.
Investigations by US specialists tell a different story. Thus, a detailed study
by the American Association for World Health concluded that the embargo had
severe health effects, and only Cuba's remarkable health care system had
prevented a "humanitarian catastrophe"; this has received virtually
no mention in the US.
The
embargo has effectively barred even food and medicine. In 1999 the Clinton
administration eased such sanctions for all countries on the official list of
"terrorist states," apart from Cuba, singled out for unique
punishment. Nevertheless, Cuba is not entirely alone in this regard. After a
hurricane devastated West Indian islands in August 1980, President Carter refused
to allow any aid unless Grenada was excluded, as punishment for some
unspecified initiatives of the reformist Maurice Bishop government. When the
stricken countries refused to agree to Grenada's exclusion, having failed to
perceive the threat to survival posed by the nutmeg capital of the world,
Carter withheld all aid. Similarly, when Nicaragua was struck by a hurricane in
October 1988, bringing starvation and causing severe ecological damage, the
current incumbents in Washington recognized that their terrorist war could
benefit from the disaster, and therefore refused aid, even to the Atlantic
Coast area with close links to the US and deep resentment against the
Sandinistas. They followed suit when a tidal wave wiped out Nicaraguan fishing
villages, leaving hundreds dead and missing in September 1992. In this case,
there was a show of aid, but hidden in the small print was the fact that apart
from an impressive donation of $25,000, the aid was deducted from assistance
already scheduled. Congress was assured, however, that the pittance of aid
would not affect the administration's suspension of over $100 million of aid
because the US-backed Nicaraguan government had failed to demonstrate a
sufficient degree of subservience.
US
economic warfare against Cuba has been strongly condemned in virtually every
relevant international forum, even declared illegal by the Judicial Commission
of the normally compliant Organization of American States. The European Union
called on the World Trade Organization to condemn the embargo. The response of
the Clinton administration was that "Europe is challenging 'three decades
of American Cuba policy that goes back to the Kennedy Administration,' and is
aimed entirely at forcing a change of government in Havana." The
administration also declared that the WTO has no competence to rule on US
national security or to compel the US to change its laws. Washington then
withdrew from the proceedings, rendering the matter moot.
The
reasons for the international terrorist attacks against Cuba and the illegal
economic embargo are spelled out in the internal record. And no one should be
surprised to discover that they fit a familiar pattern -- that of Guatemala a
few years earlier, for example.
From
the timing alone, it is clear that concern over a Russian threat could not have
been a major factor. The plans for forceful regime change were drawn up and
implemented before there was any significant Russian connection, and punishment
was intensified after the Russians disappeared from the scene. True, a Russian
threat did develop, but that was more a consequence than a cause of US
terrorism and economic warfare.
In
July 1961 the CIA warned that "the extensive influence of 'Castroism' is
not a function of Cuban power. . . . Castro's shadow looms large because social
and economic conditions throughout Latin America invite opposition to ruling
authority and encourage agitation for radical change," for which Castro's
Cuba provided a model. Earlier, Arthur Schlesinger had transmitted to the
incoming President Kennedy his Latin American Mission report, which warned of
the susceptibility of Latin Americans to "the Castro idea of taking
matters into one's own hands." The report did identify a Kremlin
connection: the Soviet Union "hovers in the wings, flourishing large
development loans and presenting itself as the model for achieving
modernization in a single generation." The dangers of the "Castro
idea" are particularly grave, Schlesinger later elaborated, when "the
distribution of land and other forms of national wealth greatly favors the
propertied classes" and "the poor and underprivileged, stimulated by
the example of the Cuban revolution, are now demanding opportunities for a
decent living." Kennedy feared that Russian aid might make Cuba a
"showcase" for development, giving the Soviets the upper hand
throughout Latin America.
In
early 1964, the State Department Policy Planning Council expanded on these
concerns: "The primary danger we face in Castro is . . . in the impact the
very existence of his regime has upon the leftist movement in many Latin
American countries. . . . The simple fact is that Castro represents a
successful defiance of the US, a negation of our whole hemispheric policy of
almost a century and a half." To put it simply, Thomas Paterson writes,
"Cuba, as symbol and reality, challenged U.S. hegemony in Latin
America." International terrorism and economic warfare to bring about
regime change are justified not by what Cuba does, but by its "very existence,"
its "successful defiance" of the proper master of the hemisphere.
Defiance may justify even more violent actions, as in Serbia, as quietly
conceded after the fact; or Iraq, as also recognized when pretexts had
collapsed.
Outrage
over defiance goes far back in American history. Two hundred years ago, Thomas
Jefferson bitterly condemned France for its "attitude of defiance" in
holding New Orleans, which he coveted. Jefferson warned that France's
"character [is] placed in a point of eternal friction with our character,
which though loving peace and the pursuit of wealth, is high-minded."
France's "defiance [requires us to] marry ourselves to the British fleet
and nation," Jefferson advised, reversing his earlier attitudes, which
reflected France's crucial contribution to the liberation of the colonies from
British rule. Thanks to Haiti's liberation struggle, unaided and almost
universally opposed, France's defiance soon ended, but the guiding principles
remain in force, determining friend and foe.
[Note
that this passage (pages 80-90) is fully footnoted in Hegemony or Survival.
Chomsky's discussion of the Cuban missile crisis itself can be found elsewhere
in the same chapter of the book.]
Noam Chomsky is an
internationally renowned Professor of Linguistics at MIT, and is America's
leading dissident intellectual. He is the author of many books, including most
recently Hegemony or Survival:
America's Quest for Global Dominance (Metropolitan Books, 2003), Power and Terror (Seven Stories
Press, 2003), 9-11 (Seven Stories Press, 2001), A New Generation
Draws the Line (Verso, 2000), The New Military Humanism (Common
Courage, 1999), and The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel &
the Palestinians (South End Press, new edition 1999). This essay appeared
in TomDispatch.com
Reprinted
by permission of Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
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