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Files: Focus On The Presidents
Who Ordered Each Specific
CIA Crime Against Humanity

By Jay Janson

06 July, 2007
Countercurrents.org

Investigators seeking to discover on whose orders apprehended perpetrators of a crime acted, sometimes have difficulty pin pointing the individual or individuals bearing primary guilt. .

Prosecutors would have no trouble identifying exactly who directed the Head of the CIA to covertly execute each of the sets of violent crimes disclosed in the recently declassified CIA files. The Head of the CIA by law executes directives of the President of the United States of America.

As one would expect, conglomerate owned commercial entertainment/news media passes off these recently declassified 'revelations' (similar to what can be found in the Encyclopedia Britannica upon checking the entries for almost half the countries in the world), as necessary, sometimes mistaken, violence committed for the sake of U.S. interests. Media presents these incriminating files as just a bit of as scandalous news', unworthy of any indignant or surprised tone of voice in reporting on this past covert lawlessness of the CIA, with as little mention as possible of the U.S. presidents who ordered it.

But why do our more ethically motivated progressive journalists not accent the nefarious and criminal CIA deeds as shameful to the memory of U.S. presidents, who in dishonesty and crime dishonored themselves, the office of the presidency and the nation by directing these secret, now openly admitted illegal and often murderous acts.

Why are we not calling a spade a spade? These U.S. presidents, were presented in media as jovial, pleasant, charming, law abiding citizens as honest as the day is long in their characters, and smiling to us on TV, all the while they were deceitfully engaged in criminal activity world wide.

And mark this! What is the first thing that the public wants to know when someone big is convicted of a crime? We want to know why! Why did someone so highly placed, well to do, and above suspicion, direct terrorism, assassinations, the overthrow of democratically elected governments abroad and harassment of religious leader, civil rights and peace advocacy groups at home?

The answer offered for this question in regard to U.S. presidents past crimes against humanity is always the same. 'We' had to stop the spread of communism in the world and dissent at home, even when necessary, promoting the installation of dozens of brutal dictatorships and arranging financial neo-colonialism. (Never mind the suffering of billions of people.)

But how was this excuse to be taken seriously when for years now communist China is America’s great trading partner. The U.S. currently backs WTO membership for the formerly unacceptable communist government of Vietnam. Over a quarter of a century, six U.S. presidents spent American lives and billions upon billions of dollars to kill millions of citizens of that country and neighboring Laos and Cambodia using the communist excuse for U.S. terrorism, both covert and overt.

We best seek to know now, what President Bush is secretly ordering the CIA to accomplish, rather than waiting to read declassified files of horrifying tortures and terrorist acts years from now, when it will be too late to challenge a deceased president’s excuses for not having been law abiding and too late to save lives criminally and covertly taken.

Serious students of history can find any number of chronologies of CIA covert crime and mayhem against haplessly defenseless nations. Clicking on www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/KillingHope_page.html,
gives one an index of 22, and clicking on www.killinghope.org/ gives an index of 56 countries covertly attacked by U.S. presidents since WW II.

Let us for lack of space just consider the covert crimes of two of the least maligned U.S. presidents, ‘Ike’ and JFK. A majority of Americans truly trusted both of these men.

Corporate media covered in a blanket of cold war contingency whatever came out in the New York Times about Eisenhower’s known acts of belligerency: the bombing of the poor little rebellious French colony Laos; his refusal to allow the all Vietnam elections that had been agreed upon in Geneva, while opening acknowledging Ho Chi Minh would have won overwhelmingly; his gangster-like overthrowing of a popular democratically elected President Arbenz of Guatemala; ordering the assassination of the first elected President of the newly independent Congo. Media presented the fatherly figure of a World War Two hero, General Eisenhower, as a veritable ‘Mr. Clean’

John Kennedy would not have had streets and townships on all the continents named after him, had the worldwide media audience known what is in CIA files. Some of these streets signs have already been changed, and more will be, as people, who formerly followed the media’s idolization of a young handsome American president, awake to the deception in Kennedy’s fine speeches about fairness.

Below, from The National Security Archive, are some vignettes of secret conversations in public deception and deadly immorality intended to protect capitalism - always couched in terms of anti-communism. Each entry is documented. Both presidents, by their naïve words, appear ignorant of the actual feelings of the population in Cuba. These two presidents caused the deaths of a couple thousand citizens of that island nation, many from the CIA use of napalm.

LATE OCTOBER 1959: President Eisenhower approves a program proposed by the Department of State. The operations are intended to make Castro's downfall seem to be the result of his own mistakes. As a part of this program, Cuban exiles mount sea borne raids against Cuba from U.S. territory.

MAR 17, 1960: At an Oval Office meeting with high-ranking national security officials, President Eisenhower approves a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) policy paper titled "A Program of Covert Action Against the Castro Regime. He argues that everyone must be prepared to deny its existence and only two or three people should have contact with the groups involved, agitating Cubans to do most of what must be done. The President tells Mr. Dulles that "our hand should not show in anything that is done." (Memorandum of Conference with the President, 3/18/60)


AUG 1960: CIA Director of Planning Richard Bissell and Colonel Sheffield Edwards, director of the CIA's Office of Security, discuss ways to eliminate or assassinate Fidel Castro. Edwards proposes that assassins hand picked by the American underworld, specifically syndicate interests who have been driven out of their Havana gambling casinos by the Castro regime do the job. Between August 1960, and April 1961, the CIA with the help of the Mafia pursues a series of plots to poison or shoot Castro. (CIA, Inspector General's Report on Efforts to Assassinate Fidel Castro, p. 3, 14)

JAN 3, 1961: President Eisenhower meets with advisers at 9:30 a.m. to discuss steps to take on Cuba. Regarding the trend of public opinion in Cuba, Assistant Secretary of State Mann argues that support for Castro has gone down from approximately 95% to about 25 to 33%. President Eisenhower offers that he would move against Castro before the 20th (of January) if the Cubans provided him a really good excuse. Failing that, he says, perhaps the U.S. "could think of manufacturing something that would be generally acceptable." (Memorandum of Meeting with the President, January 3, 1961, 1/9/61)

JAN 19, 1961: President Eisenhower meets again with President elect Kennedy and endorses the covert Cuban operation. Eisenhower makes it clear that the project is going very well and that it is the new administration's responsibility to do whatever is necessary to bring it to a successful conclusion. (The White House, Meeting in the Cabinet Room, 9:45 a.m., January 19, 1961)

JAN 25, 1961: President Kennedy meets with the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the White House. JAN 27, 1961: Sherman Kent, chairman of the CIA's Board of National Estimates, argues against the view that the Cuban population is eager to stage an uprising against Castro.

JAN 28, 1961: Kennedy receives his first briefing as President on the Cuban operation in a meeting attended by Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, CIA Director Dulles, General Lemnitzer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Assistant Secretaries Mann and Nitze, and Tracy Barnes of the CIA.

Feb. 8, 1961: In a meeting of President Kennedy and his top advisers, Richard Bissell of the CIA reports the CIA plan for landing the brigade has a fair chance of success. Success is defined as an ability to survive, hold ground, and attract growing support from Cubans. At worst, the invaders should be able to fight their way to the Escambray and go into guerrilla action. … President Kennedy presses for alternatives to a full-fledged invasion, supported by U.S. planes, ships and supplies. A memcon written by McGeorge Bundy records Kennedy's question: "Could not such a force be landed gradually and quietly and make its first major military efforts from the mountains then taking shape as a Cuban force within Cuba, not as an invasion force sent by the Yankees?" Kennedy authorizes creation of a small junta of anti Castro leaders to give the Brigade forces some political purpose. (McGeorge Bundy, Memorandum of Meeting with President Kennedy, White House, Washington, February 8, 1961)

FEB 11, 1961: In a memo to the President, Arthur Schlesinger points out that there is no way to disguise U.S. complicity in the plan and "at one stroke, it would dissipate all the extraordinary good will which has been rising toward the new Administration through the world." (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., "Memorandum from the President's Special Assistant to President Kennedy," 2/11/61)

FEB 15, 1961: Thomas Mann, Assistant Secretary for Inter American affairs, writes a memo opposing the invasion. Mann notes that the CIA's original plan is based on the assumption that the invasion will inspire a popular an uprising that is unlikely to take place.

MAR 10, 1961: CIA Director Dulles, preparing to meet with President Kennedy, is briefed on the agency's efforts to create a provisional government of exile leaders.

MAR 31,1961: Under Secretary of State Chester Bowles hands a memorandum to Secretary Rusk. Bowles considers the plan profoundly disturbing and a grave mistake.

APR 4, 1961:President Kennedy polls a dozen advisers on whether to go ahead with the Bay of Pigs invasion. After Senator Fulbright outlines his objections, all vote in favor of moving ahead, with only Secretary of State Rusk remaining non-committal. Arthur Schlesinger returns to his office to draft a substantive memorandum outlining why the invasion is "a terrible idea."

Schlesinger sends President Kennedy a comprehensive memo laying out why the CIA invasion will turn into a "protracted civil conflict" that will lead to pressures to send in the marines. The United States, he predicts, will be branded as an aggressor. The President tells Schlesinger, "You know, I've reserved the right to stop this thing up to twenty four hours before the landing. In the meantime, I'm trying to make some sense out of it. We'll just have to see.” (Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, p. 236)

Theodore C. Sorensen, Kennedy's special counsel, who has not been informed about the Cuban operation, asks the President about the invasion. Kennedy cuts the conversation short: "I know everybody is grabbing their nuts on this," he graphically tells his aide.

APR 14, 1961 From the White House, President Kennedy calls Bissell and says the Saturday air strikes can go forward. He asks how many planes will participate and is told sixteen. "Well, I don't want it on that scale. I want it minimal." Bissell passes the word down for only eight planes to fly. (Bissell, p. 183; Wyden, p.170)

Luis Somoza, the Nicaraguan dictator, comes to the dock to say goodbye to the Cuban Forces about to launch the invasion: "Bring me a couple of hairs from Castro's beard," he reportedly tells them. (Johnson, p.86)

Arthur Schlesinger talks to the President and asks: "What do you think about this damned invasion?" Kennedy reportedly responds: "I think about it as little as possible." (Thomas, p. 251)

[Kennedy ordered go, and there followed a week of planes bombing with false Cuban markings to make it look like the planes were piloted by defecting pilots and tanks landing and the sad loss of many many Cuban and some American lives.]

APR 21, 1961: At a press conference President Kennedy accepts responsibility for the failed invasion: “There's an old saying that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan. What matters,” he says, is only one fact, “I am the responsible officer of the government.”

[Media featured a Kennedy admitting to military defeat but not to international crimes and the attempt to deceive that the files graphically describe, which continued to be ignored in media.]

JUN 6, 1961: Insisting on "indemnification" for the invasion, and refusing to negotiate for the release of prisoners by cable; Castro suggests that either Eleanor Roosevelt or Milton Eisenhower meet with him in Havana.

On November 30, 1961, after replacing the CIA Director Allen Dulles with John Alex McCone, President Kennedy authorizes another aggressive covert assault on the Cuban Republic codenamed Operation Mongoose. The CIA Brigadier General Edward G. Lansdale, under the guidance of Attorney General Robert Kennedy, directs the operation. The CIA creates an organization under its control, the Special Group Augmented (SGA),

OCT 4, 1962: Robert Kennedy in a SGA meeting states that the President was concerned" more priority should be given to trying to mount Operation Mongoose sabotage operations”

[So a year before his assassination, Kennedy was still directing covert criminal acts of violence against Cuba.]


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