Chomsky on JFK and Cuba

[Richard Coleman]

A new Chomsky article on this subject is posted at Common Dreams: The Week The World Stood Still.

A small excerpt:

From the same source *, we learn further that, on August 23, 1962, the president had 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. Shortly after came “the most dangerous moment in human history,” not exactly out of the blue.

Kennedy officially renewed the terrorist operations after the crisis ebbed. Ten days before his assassination he approved a CIA plan for “destruction operations” by U.S. 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 assassinate Castro was apparently initiated on the day of the Kennedy assassination. The terrorist campaign was called off in 1965, but reports Garthoff, “one of Nixon’s first acts in office in 1969 was to direct the CIA to intensify covert operations against Cuba.”

*Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis: Revised to Include New Revelations from Soviet & Cuban Souces by Raymond L. Garthoff

The full article is here: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/10/16

[Richard Coleman]

Jim: "This guy is over the edge." I assume you were referring to either Chomsky or Garthoff, not me!

I posted this for general information. Quite a few people will be reading Chomsky's article, as Common Dreams is a popular rad/lib website. The discussion following the article is quite interesting. Your take on Chomsky is well represented.

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

This must be responded to. The left cannot continue to hear the best lies. It does mater even if you are not on "the left" whatever the hell that means these days... and it means nothing precisely because of sewage like this Chomsky article. Jim an others I urge you to go to Chomskys page directly on Facebook and post it right where all his adoring fans can read it I have been posting stuff there for along time. I am too busy though I will try to help. I just wrote a long bad letter to Amy Goodman. I have a demanding job and a family so I need some help. We cannot allow this xxxx to go unanswered by the fake left. Otherwise EVERYONE WILL run with the "leftist chomsk's having removed all policy consequences of the assassinaton. Just so does Bill O'Reilly note Chomsky's worst book Rethinking Camelot in his "Sources"