The Militant (logo)  

Vol. 74/No. 48      December 20, 2010

 
Washington’s underestimation
of Cuban Revolution
(Books of the Month column)
 
Below is an excerpt from October 1962: The ‘Missile’ Crisis As Seen from Cuba, one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for December. Following the defeat of the U.S.-organized mercenary invasion of Cuba in April 1961, Washington implemented new efforts to destroy the revolution. Toward this end the Kennedy administration initiated Operation Mongoose, described below. The U.S. rulers’ course pushed the world to the edge of nuclear war in October 1962. Steps taken by Cuba’s revolutionary government to defend the country’s newly won sovereignty and achievements of the unfolding socialist revolution there blocked U.S. plans for a military assault. U.S. imperialism’s hostile acts against the Cuban Revolution continue to this day. Copyright © 2002 by Tomás Diez Acosta and Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.

BY TOMAS DIEZ ACOSTA  
As the Cuban people undertook huge efforts to develop their country despite the campaign of subversion, new plans for aggression were being drawn up in the United States. A debate was under way in Washington over the most effective method of directing, applying, and controlling the many resources devoted to overthrowing the Cuban revolutionary government.

In view of ongoing blunders in the anti-Cuba plans carried out by different departments and agencies, top echelons of the Kennedy administration began looking in late October 1961 for new methods to eliminate the prevailing “disorganization and lack of coordination.” Just as in their earlier analysis of the Bay of Pigs operation, failures were ascribed to operational problems. Once again Washington underestimated the capacity of the Cuban people and their revolutionary leadership to successfully confront the challenges that such a hostile policy posed for their country.

U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy proposed to President John F. Kennedy the establishment of an operational command to direct the various plans of action in a unified, coordinated, and organized fashion and merge them into a “single plan.” In practice, this meant the preparation of a new covert operation, not merely by the CIA but by the entire U.S. government. The president asked Assistant Special Counsel Richard N. Goodwin for his opinion. Goodwin, who also headed the Interagency Task Force, replied in a memorandum, “The beauty of such an operation over the next few months is that we cannot lose. If the best happens we will unseat Castro. If not, then at least we will emerge with a stronger underground, better propaganda and a far clearer idea of the dimensions of the problems which affect us.”  
 
Operation Mongoose takes shape
At a White House meeting on November 3, 1961, Kennedy authorized the development of a new program, much more sinister than its predecessors, designed to destroy the Cuban Revolution. The project was code-named Operation Mongoose. As a first step, several documents were prepared laying out the government’s existing action plans and its options against Cuba… .

On November 20, 1961, President Kennedy called the incoming CIA director, John A. McCone, to inform him that a new program of action against Cuba was being studied. In a memorandum summarizing Kennedy’s call, McCone noted that the proposal “would embody a variety of covert operations, propaganda, all possible actions that would create dissensions within Cuba and would discredit the Castro regime, and political action with members of the OAS in support of the action.” In addition, McCone recorded that the president told him that Brig. Gen. Edward Lansdale, an expert on guerrilla and antisubversive operations, would be in charge of designing the project, under the direct supervision of the attorney general… .

The program included a variety of political, diplomatic, economic, psychological, propaganda, and espionage actions, different acts of terrorism and sabotage, as well as encouragement and logistical support to armed counterrevolutionary bands. In short, the operation was aimed at provoking a “revolt” of the Cuban people, which once begun would lay the basis for direct military intervention by the armed forces of the United States and its Latin American allies. The document asserted:

“The revolt requires a strongly motivated political action movement established within Cuba, to generate the revolt, to give it direction towards the object, and to capitalize on the climactic moment. The political actions will be assisted by economic warfare to induce failure of the Communist regime to supply Cuba’s economic needs, psychological operations to turn the peoples’ resentment increasingly against the regime, and military-type groups to give the popular movement an action arm for sabotage and armed resistance in support of political objectives.”

General Lansdale’s mentality in drawing up the project was shown in a memorandum to members of the Operation Mongoose working group, in which he emphasized: “It is our job to put the American genius to work on this project, quickly and effectively.” The kind of genius the chief of operations had in mind was shown when he later added task thirty-three, consisting of “a plan to disable Cuban sugar workers during harvest by means of chemical weapons.”

A day later, in a meeting chaired by Robert Kennedy, all those present were called on to show absolute, resolute determination not to fail in carrying out their tasks. Kennedy stated that solving “the Cuban problem” was at that moment “the top priority in the United States Government—all else is secondary—no time, money, effort, or manpower is to be spared.” He stressed that the president of the United States had told him that “the final chapter on Cuba has not been written” and that “it’s got to be done and will be done.”
 
 
Related articles:
Cubans lead campaign to fight cholera in Haiti
Call to widen fight to free Cuban Five
Internationalism in Africa: ‘A duty fulfilled’  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home