To Kill an American

When the Pentagon Turns its Weapons Against U.S. Citizens

By Gregory Wonsey
04 May 2001

Please read the following quote and try to guess its source: "We could develop a communist terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington [...]. The terror campaign could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States [...]. We could blow up a US ship in Guantanamo Bay [the American military base in Cuba]. Casualty lists in US newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation".

Does it sound like an extract from Fidel Castro's personal diary? Or maybe an extremist conspiracy to subvert law and order in the U.S.? Or perhaps an evil plan, devised by some despised rogue nation, to kill American citizens on their own soil? The answer is none of the above. The quote is in fact from a batch of recently unearthed U.S. government documents, in which U.S. Pentagon officials discuss plans to murder unsuspecting American citizens by staging a terrorist campaign in towns and cities throughout the nation.
The 1962 documents, revealed on May 2 by investigative journalist and writer James Bamford, discuss the possibility of blaming the Pentagon-instigated terrorist campaign on Cuba, in an attempt to gain American public support for a U.S. armed invasion of the small Caribbean island.

Other ideas outlined in the documents include a plan to sink boatloads of Cubans on their way to Florida, or fostering attempts against the lives of Cuban-Americans in the U.S., "even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized".

Most of the documents bear the signature of Brigadier-General William Craig, the super-patriot officer in charge of Operation Mongoose, a sinister Pentagon project aimed at assassinating President Fidel Castro and subverting his government. According to the paper trail, the documents were read by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and passed on to the then Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.

No U.S. newspaper has dared to report on the discovery of the Pentagon documents, which has been widely reported by British, Canadian and Australian newspapers. The British newspaper "The Guardian" even approached McNamara, who denied even having seen such documents: "It makes no sense", he exclaimed. "There were contingency plans, yes, but there are contingency plans to invade the moon". No kidding.

The significance of the documents discovered by Bamford has been downplayed by the mainstream Western press and many columnists appear to consider them irrelevant to today's world. Yet, even the most ardent U.S. patriot ought to be shocked by the brutal "contingency plans" described in the recently unearthed documents. The latter seem to disqualify a number of widely-held myths about the aims and scope of U.S. policy throughout the Cold War:

(a) firstly, the Cold War image of the U.S.'s role as "defender of the free world" ought to be seriously questioned. A defender does not consider deliberately killing the people (s)he is supposed to be defending;

(b) the belief that the U.S. policy of confrontation with Socialist nations during the Cold War was motivated by the need to safeguard the civil liberties and the lives of its citizens appears rather frail in light of the documents. Evidently, the Pentagon thought that killing U.S. citizens was worth considering as means of manipulating popular opinion in the U.S. and abroad. It would follow that the civil liberties and the lives of U.S. citizens were viewed by many in the U.S. defense establishment as a value worth sacrificing in favor of undermining nations it considered enemies;

c) the idea that U.S. policy toward Castro's Cuba involved the provision of humanitarian assistance to Cuban and Cuban-American exiles appears fallacious and uninformed. The documents show that the U.S. government viewed desperate Cuban exiles as nothing more than diplomatic pawns that could be tossed into the fire when required by the perceived U.S. "national interest";

(d) the idea that U.S. foreign policy is centered on mutual trust and dependency on allied nations is not supported by the documents. Among the plans outlined in the memos, is a suggested attack against British colonies and protectorates in the Caribbean. The Pentagon hoped that, by attacking Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago or the Bermudas and then blaming it on Havana, Britain would eventually be forced into a war with Cuba. If the Americans were prepared to sell out the British -admittedly their most trusted allies- in such an inconsiderate manner, it is highly probable that they would also be prepared to sell out any other "allied" nation.

Ultimately, how are we, American citizens, supposed to reconcile the paradox that the same U.S. military establishment, which claims to exist in order to protect us from foreign terrorists, has considered harming us in order to further its political agenda? Could this be a lesson for all U.S.-hating terrorists the world over? Mr. bin Laden, distinguished anti-American members of Hamas and Fatah, should take note: there's no need to kill Americans any more. Instead, make sure that Pentagon officials get desperate enough and they'll probably do it themselves. Just give the U.S. government a good enough reason and it will consider murdering its own citizens.© The News Insider 2001Gregory Wonsey is a News Insider analyst. Copyright notice

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