http://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/23/w...ons.html?scp=4&sq="with+faked&st=nyt&emc=eta1
WASHINGTON— FOR seven years, Washington has warred and jawed, dispatched legions of troops, dropped bombs both smart and dumb, fired missiles and hired spies, broadcast propaganda, enforced sanctions, launched ships and jets, solemnly threatened and sternly resolved. And Saddam Hussein is still standing.
The bandit of Baghdad has caused Washington so much grief that many an American has wondered: Why don't we just . . . you know . . . get rid of him?
The answer? Two words -- Operation Mongoose.
Operation Mongoose was the secret effort approved by President Kennedy, and spurred by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, to make Fidel Castro disappear. The Kennedys were ''operating a damned Murder Inc., in the Caribbean,'' in the indelicate words of President Lyndon B. Johnson.
The White House plotted assassinations and all-out attacks, and it used covert action, paramilitary operations, subversion, sabotage, sophomoric pranks and the services of a certain Sicilian fraternity to eliminate the Cuban leader -- who is, notably, still giving seven-hour speeches in Havana.
Pentagon documents declassified last week show for the first time how manic and how murderous the military plans for Mongoose became. They also serve to illustrate why the United States doesn't plot assassinations anymore, even against the most irritating of despots.
The weird, night-blooming schemes of Mongoose proliferated after the botched Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961. The Central Intelligence Agency devised 33 different plans, ranging from attacking Cuba's sugar crops with biological weapons to hiring Mafia hit men. Its Technical Services experts made pens to inject Castro with poison, a toxic wet suit intended as a lethal gift -- everything but a nuclear-tipped cigar.
The military side of Mongoose was every bit as inventive, and equally ineffective. For example, Mongoose's chief, Air Force Brig. Gen. Edward G. Lansdale, thought that the people of Cuba could be convinced, through rumors, that the Second Coming was at hand, if only the satanic Castro were overthrown. This plan climaxed with a great burst of white light over the island, phosphorescent starbursts from shells fired from a Navy submarine. Skeptics at the C.I.A. labeled it ''Elimination by Illumination.''
The Pentagon's kit bag was brimming with tricks, the newly released documents show. In Operation Free Ride, American planes would air-drop one-way airline tickets to Mexico City or Caracas. In Operation Good Times, those same planes would bombard the island with faked photos of a fat and happy Castro gorging on food and sex. (''This should put even a Commie Dictator in the proper perspective with the underprivileged masses,'' the Pentagon planners wrote to General Lansdale.)
Even John Glenn
There was even a dirty trick code-named Operation Dirty Trick: ''to provide irrevocable proof by manufacturing various pieces of evidence'' showing that if John Glenn died aboard the Mercury space shot in 1962, it was Castro's fault.
But the Joint Chiefs of Staff believed that ''military intervention by the United States will be required to overthrow'' Castro. In April 1962, they approved plans for ''pretexts'' to justify that attack.
''We could blow up a US warship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba,'' the Pentagon's planners mused. ''We could develop a Communist Cuban 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 sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated),'' they wrote. Or ''create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner. These plans remained fantasies.
Thirty-four years ago this weekend, on Nov. 22, 1963, Robert Kennedy was scheduled to meet with a cadre of Cuban coup plotters, the newly declassified documents show; the same day, the C.I.A. delivered its poison pen to a potential assassin in Cuba. And then the President was killed. The assassination cooled the murder plans in Washington.
Two decades ago, after the basic facts of Mongoose came out, the United States formally forswore assassination as a tool of foreign policy. But the milder methods of Mongoose remained in play, in many theaters of war.
In 1996, the C.I.A. had a base in northern Iraq that functioned something like its station in Miami in the early 1960's -- a place to plot against the palace from exile. The agency beamed radio propaganda into Iraq, recruited defectors as intelligence agents, tried to undermine the regime. But Saddam crushed the base. The Iraqi exiles proved no more effective than their Cuban counterparts, the dreamers who led imaginary provisional governments, and the brave ones who died brutally for their lost country.
The United States may still be learning lessons from Mongoose and a thousand other covert actions. These may be that democracy does not grow out of the barrel of a gun, that silver bullets don't work, that murder will out and that evil regimes fall in the fullness of time, when they ripen and rot, not necessarily when the United States sends soldiers, spies and starry shells.
Photos: The durable Saddam, left, on a swim. (Reuters); The even more durable Fidel, in 1978. (Associated Press)
Editor's Note: October 30, 1998, Friday An article on Sept. 29 discussed the release of 60,000 secret documents on the killing of President John F. Kennedy. Their declassification occurred over a period, leading up to the final report of a citizens' commission created by Congress six years ago to dispel lingering suspicions that the truth had been hidden. Discussing criticism of the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination at the time, the article said that one member, Allen W. Dulles, a former Director of Central Intelligence, had failed to tell fellow members ''that Kennedy had ordered the C.I.A. to assassinate Castro.'' The article did not cite evidence or authority for the assertion about the President. Earlier articles, on July 20, 1997, and Nov. 23, 1997, also declared without qualification that Kennedy ordered Fidel Castro's assassination. A number of prominent historians and officials with knowledge of intelligence matters in that era have asserted in interviews that President Kennedy gave such an order. But others, also close to the President, dispute their account. The Times's practice is to attribute or qualify information that it is unable to report firsthand. That should have been done in these cases.
WASHINGTON— FOR seven years, Washington has warred and jawed, dispatched legions of troops, dropped bombs both smart and dumb, fired missiles and hired spies, broadcast propaganda, enforced sanctions, launched ships and jets, solemnly threatened and sternly resolved. And Saddam Hussein is still standing.
The bandit of Baghdad has caused Washington so much grief that many an American has wondered: Why don't we just . . . you know . . . get rid of him?
The answer? Two words -- Operation Mongoose.
Operation Mongoose was the secret effort approved by President Kennedy, and spurred by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, to make Fidel Castro disappear. The Kennedys were ''operating a damned Murder Inc., in the Caribbean,'' in the indelicate words of President Lyndon B. Johnson.
The White House plotted assassinations and all-out attacks, and it used covert action, paramilitary operations, subversion, sabotage, sophomoric pranks and the services of a certain Sicilian fraternity to eliminate the Cuban leader -- who is, notably, still giving seven-hour speeches in Havana.
Pentagon documents declassified last week show for the first time how manic and how murderous the military plans for Mongoose became. They also serve to illustrate why the United States doesn't plot assassinations anymore, even against the most irritating of despots.
The weird, night-blooming schemes of Mongoose proliferated after the botched Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961. The Central Intelligence Agency devised 33 different plans, ranging from attacking Cuba's sugar crops with biological weapons to hiring Mafia hit men. Its Technical Services experts made pens to inject Castro with poison, a toxic wet suit intended as a lethal gift -- everything but a nuclear-tipped cigar.
The military side of Mongoose was every bit as inventive, and equally ineffective. For example, Mongoose's chief, Air Force Brig. Gen. Edward G. Lansdale, thought that the people of Cuba could be convinced, through rumors, that the Second Coming was at hand, if only the satanic Castro were overthrown. This plan climaxed with a great burst of white light over the island, phosphorescent starbursts from shells fired from a Navy submarine. Skeptics at the C.I.A. labeled it ''Elimination by Illumination.''
The Pentagon's kit bag was brimming with tricks, the newly released documents show. In Operation Free Ride, American planes would air-drop one-way airline tickets to Mexico City or Caracas. In Operation Good Times, those same planes would bombard the island with faked photos of a fat and happy Castro gorging on food and sex. (''This should put even a Commie Dictator in the proper perspective with the underprivileged masses,'' the Pentagon planners wrote to General Lansdale.)
Even John Glenn
There was even a dirty trick code-named Operation Dirty Trick: ''to provide irrevocable proof by manufacturing various pieces of evidence'' showing that if John Glenn died aboard the Mercury space shot in 1962, it was Castro's fault.
But the Joint Chiefs of Staff believed that ''military intervention by the United States will be required to overthrow'' Castro. In April 1962, they approved plans for ''pretexts'' to justify that attack.
''We could blow up a US warship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba,'' the Pentagon's planners mused. ''We could develop a Communist Cuban 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 sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated),'' they wrote. Or ''create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner. These plans remained fantasies.
Thirty-four years ago this weekend, on Nov. 22, 1963, Robert Kennedy was scheduled to meet with a cadre of Cuban coup plotters, the newly declassified documents show; the same day, the C.I.A. delivered its poison pen to a potential assassin in Cuba. And then the President was killed. The assassination cooled the murder plans in Washington.
Two decades ago, after the basic facts of Mongoose came out, the United States formally forswore assassination as a tool of foreign policy. But the milder methods of Mongoose remained in play, in many theaters of war.
In 1996, the C.I.A. had a base in northern Iraq that functioned something like its station in Miami in the early 1960's -- a place to plot against the palace from exile. The agency beamed radio propaganda into Iraq, recruited defectors as intelligence agents, tried to undermine the regime. But Saddam crushed the base. The Iraqi exiles proved no more effective than their Cuban counterparts, the dreamers who led imaginary provisional governments, and the brave ones who died brutally for their lost country.
The United States may still be learning lessons from Mongoose and a thousand other covert actions. These may be that democracy does not grow out of the barrel of a gun, that silver bullets don't work, that murder will out and that evil regimes fall in the fullness of time, when they ripen and rot, not necessarily when the United States sends soldiers, spies and starry shells.
Photos: The durable Saddam, left, on a swim. (Reuters); The even more durable Fidel, in 1978. (Associated Press)
Editor's Note: October 30, 1998, Friday An article on Sept. 29 discussed the release of 60,000 secret documents on the killing of President John F. Kennedy. Their declassification occurred over a period, leading up to the final report of a citizens' commission created by Congress six years ago to dispel lingering suspicions that the truth had been hidden. Discussing criticism of the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination at the time, the article said that one member, Allen W. Dulles, a former Director of Central Intelligence, had failed to tell fellow members ''that Kennedy had ordered the C.I.A. to assassinate Castro.'' The article did not cite evidence or authority for the assertion about the President. Earlier articles, on July 20, 1997, and Nov. 23, 1997, also declared without qualification that Kennedy ordered Fidel Castro's assassination. A number of prominent historians and officials with knowledge of intelligence matters in that era have asserted in interviews that President Kennedy gave such an order. But others, also close to the President, dispute their account. The Times's practice is to attribute or qualify information that it is unable to report firsthand. That should have been done in these cases.