Those of us of a certain age are unlikely to forget "the most dangerous moment in human history" – the Cuban missile crisis. I remember hearing John F. Kennedy's address that night – I was eighteen – and wondering quite seriously if I wouldn't be toast by the next day. It was certainly the culmination of all those years when, as children, we "ducked and covered" under our school desks like "Burt the turtle," while sirens screamed outside and everyone dreamed their own private dreams about how the world might end. ("You and I don't have shells to crawl into, like Burt the Turtle, so we have to cover up in our own way. Paul and Patty know this. No matter where they go or what they do, they always remember what to do if the atom bomb explodes right then. 'It's a bomb! Duck and cover!'")
For Cuba, that most dangerous moment actually began soon after Fidel Castro's guerrilla forces overthrew the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista and, though we came out from under our desks and went about our lives once the missile crisis was over, for Cubans, in some sense, that moment never really ended. 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.
In his new book, which I strongly recommend, he argues that perhaps the greatest form of terror on earth has been practiced by the leaders of the globe's last superpower who, when faced with the choice between global control -- hegemony -- or survival, have constantly opted for the path of hegemony. Don't miss the eye-opening account that follows. Tom
Cuba in the cross-hairs:
A near half-century of terror
By Noam Chomsky
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.
Operation Mongoose
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."
"A bad press in some friendly countries"
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."
Economic warfare
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.
Successful defiance
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 a Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT. In addition to Hegemony or Survival, America's Quest for Global Dominance (The American Empire Project, Metropolitan Books), he is the author of numerous books on linguistics and on U.S. foreign policy.
Reprinted by permission of Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
Copyright C by Aviva Chomsky, Diane Chomsky, and Harry Chomsky. All rights reserved.
