Chapter One
Weekend Teach-In: Opening Session
1. On
Kennedy's fraudulent "missile gap" and major escalation of the arms
race, see for example, Fred Kaplan, Wizards
of Armageddon, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983, chs. 16, 19 and 20;
Desmond Ball, Politics and Force Levels:
The Strategic Missile Program of the Kennedy Administration, Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1980, ch. 2.
On
Reagan's fraudulent "window of vulnerability" and "military
spending gap" and the massive military buildup during his first
administration, see for example, Jeff McMahan, Reagan and the World: Imperial Policy in the New Cold War, New
York: Monthly Review, 1985, chs. 2 and 3; Franklyn Holzman, "Politics and
Guesswork: C.I.A. and D.I.A. estimates of Soviet Military Spending," International Security, Fall 1989, pp.
101-131; Franklyn Holzman, "The C.I.A.'s Military Spending Estimates:
Deceit and Its Costs," Challenge,
May/June 1992, pp. 28-39; Report of the
President's Commission on Strategic Forces, Washington: U.S. Government
Printing Office, April 1983, especially pp. 7-8, 17, and Brent Scowcroft,
"Final Report of the President's Commission on Strategic Forces," Atlantic Community Quarterly, Vol. 22,
Spring 1984, pp. 14-22 (the administration's own Scowcroft Commission's
rejection of the "window of vulnerability" story). See also chapter 3 of U.P. and its footnotes 3
and 4.
On
Kennedy in Latin America, see for example, Charles Maechling, Jr. [leading U.S.
counterinsurgency planner from 1961 to 1966], "The Murderous Mind of the
Latin American Military," Los
Angeles Times, March 18, 1982, part II, p. 11 (discussing how the Kennedy
administration shifted the mission of the Latin American military from
"hemispheric defense" [i.e. defense against external enemies] to
"internal security" [i.e. control of domestic dissidence] after the
Cuban Revolution and the failed U.S.-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion attempt
against Cuba, and thereby changed the U.S. position in the region from
toleration "of the rapacity and cruelty of the Latin American
military" to "direct complicity . . . [in] the methods of Heinrich
Himmler's extermination squads"); Stephen Rabe, "Controlling
Revolutions: Latin America, the Alliance for Progress, and Cold War
Anti-Communism," in Thomas Paterson, ed., Kennedy's Quest for Victory: American Foreign Policy, 1961-1963,
New York: Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 105-122; Jenny Pearce, Under the Eagle: U.S. Intervention in
Central America and the Caribbean, London: Latin America Bureau, 1982, Part
II; A.J. Langguth, Hidden Terrors,
New York: Pantheon, 1978, especially pp. 99, 115-116 (detailed description of
how Kennedy liberals engineered the overthrow of Brazilian democracy in 1964
and replaced it with the subfascist regime that ruled for decades, after the
Brazilian President Goulart had refused Robert Kennedy's admonition to end his
flirtation with "romantic left-wing causes"). See also, David F. Schmitz, Thank God They're On Our Side: The United
States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 1921-1965, Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1999, ch. 6.
Chomsky
adds that military-controlled states dedicated to "internal security"
constituted one of the two major legacies of the Kennedy Administration to
Latin America. The other was the
Alliance for Progress, a 1961 program of U.S. aid to Latin America, which was a
statistical success but a social catastrophe (apart from foreign investors and
domestic elites). On the devastating
effects of the Alliance for Progress, see for example, Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in
Central America, New York: Norton, 1983 (2nd revised and expanded edition
1993), ch. 3; Walter LaFeber, "The Alliances in Retrospect," in
Andrew Maguire and Janet W. Brown, eds., Bordering
on Trouble: Resources and Politics in Latin America, Bethesda, MD: Adler
& Adler, 1986, pp. 337-388; Simon Hanson, Five Years of the Alliance for Progress, Washington: Inter-American
Affairs, 1967. And see generally,
Robert Williams, Export Agriculture and
the Crisis in Central America, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1986.
On
Reagan in Latin America, see footnote 13
of this chapter; chapter 2 of U.P.
and its footnote 15; chapter 4 of U.P.
and its footnotes 3 and 10;
and chapter 5 of U.P. and its
footnote 48.
2. On U.S. terrorism against Cuba, see the text
following this footnote in U.P., and
footnote 21 of this chapter; and chapter 5 of U.P. and its footnote 29.
3. On Kennedy's authorization of attacks
against Vietnam beginning in late 1961, see The
Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of United States Decisionmaking
on Vietnam, Senator Gravel Edition, Boston: Beacon, 1972, Vol. II, pp.
656-658, 677; William Conrad Gibbons, ed., The
U.S. Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and Legislative Roles and
Relationships, Part II (1961-1964), Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1986, pp. 70-71. For early press
coverage of these attacks -- which elicited little protest in the U.S. for
several years -- see for example, A.P., "U.S. Pilots Aiding Combat In
Vietnam," New York Times, March
10, 1962, p. A8.
4. On public opposition to U.S. intervention in
Central America in the 1980s, see for example, Edward Walsh, "Reagan Gets
First Public Opinion Backlash," Washington
Post, March 27, 1981, p. A9 (mail to the White House was reported to be
"running 10 to 1 against the administration's new emphasis on military aid
and advisers" to El Salvador, and the strong public opposition was
confirmed in polls); Cynthia Arnson, El
Salvador: A Revolution Confronts the United States, Washington: Institute
for Policy Studies, 1982, p. 73 (less than 2 percent of the U.S. public favored
military intervention in El Salvador, and 80 percent opposed sending advisers,
according to March 1981 Gallup polls); Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America, New
York: Norton, 1983 (2nd revised and expanded edition 1993), ch. 5.
The
Reagan administration was so concerned about the public's attitudes towards its
policies that it developed plans to suspend the Constitution and impose martial
law in the event of "national crises," such as "violent and
widespread internal dissent or national opposition to a U.S. military invasion
abroad." On these plans, see for
example, Alfonso Chardy, "Reagan advisers ran 'secret' government," Miami Herald, July 5, 1987, p. 1A
(reporting based on internal government documents that in such an event the
administration intended to turn control of the United States over to the
national crisis-management unit F.E.M.A., an agency directed by Louis
Guiffrida, a close associate of Reagan and Attorney General Edwin Meese, who
while at Army War College in 1970 wrote a memorandum recommending the
internment of at least 21 million "American Negroes" in
"assemble-centers or relocation camps" in the event of an uprising by
black militants); Dave Lindorff, "Oliver's Martial Plan," Village Voice, July 21, 1987, p. 15;
Christopher Hitchens, "The adoration of the mad guy," New Statesman (U.K.), July 17, 1987, p.
20.
For
an example of how these revelations were treated by Congress, see Taking the Stand: The Testimony of
Lieutenant Colonel Oliver L. North, New York: Pocket Books, 1987. An excerpt (p. 643):
Rep. Brooks: Colonel North, in your work
at the N.S.C. [National Security Council], were you not assigned at one time to
work on plans for the continuity of government in the event of a major
disaster?
Mr. Sullivan [North's
Lawyer]: Mr.
Chairman? (Gavel sounds.)
Chairman Inouye: I believe the question
touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area. So may I request that you not touch upon that, sir?
Rep. Brooks: I was particularly concerned, Mr. Chairman, because
I read in Miami papers and several others that there had been a plan developed
by that same agency, a contingency plan in the event of emergency that would
suspend the American Constitution, and I was deeply concerned about it and
wondered if that was the area in which he had worked. I believe that it was, but I wanted --
Chairman Inouye: May I most respectfully
request that that matter not be touched upon at this stage? If we wish to get into this I'm certain
arrangements can be made for an Executive Session.
On the Reagan administration's move towards
intervention in Central America, see for example its so-called "White
Paper" on El Salvador, Communist
Interference in El Salvador: Documents Demonstrating Communist Support of the
Salvadoran Insurgency, Special Report No. 80, Washington: United States
Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs, February 23, 1981. On the subsequent exposure of the basis for
the "White Paper" as fraudulent, see for example, Robert G. Kaiser,
"White Paper on El Salvador Is Faulty," Washington Post, June 9, 1981, p. A1; Robert G. Kaiser, "The
Man Behind the White Paper and the Unfolding of the Story," Washington Post, June 9, 1981, p. A14;
James Petras, "White Paper On The White Paper," Nation, March 28, 1981, pp. 353f; Raymond Bonner, Weakness and Deceit: U.S. Policy and El
Salvador, New York: Times Books, 1984, ch. 13; Jonathan Kwitney, Endless Enemies: The Making of an Unfriendly
World, New York: Congdon & Weed, 1984, pp. 359-374.
5. On the Office of Public Diplomacy, see for
example, Alfonso Chardy, "N.S.C. supervised office to influence
opinion," Miami Herald, July 19,
1987, p. 18A ("'If you look at it as a whole, the Office of Public
Diplomacy was carrying out a huge psychological operation of the kind the
military conducts to influence a population in denied or enemy territory,' a
senior U.S. official familiar with the effort said"); Robert Parry and
Peter Kornbluh, "Reagan's Pro-Contra Propaganda Machine," Washington Post, September 4, 1988, p.
C1 ("the campaign came to resemble the sort of covert political operation
the C.I.A. runs against hostile forces overseas but is outlawed from conducting
at home"); Robert Parry and Peter Kornbluh, "Iran-Contra's Untold
Story," Foreign Policy, Fall
1988, pp. 3-30; Joanne Omang, "The People Who Sell Foreign Policies,"
Washington Post, October 15, 1985, p.
A21; Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable
Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media, New York: Lyle Stuart,
1990, pp. 131-141; Alfonso Chardy, "Secrets leaked to harm Nicaragua,
sources say," Miami Herald,
October 13, 1986, p. 12A (reporting that a disinformation campaign named
"Project Truth," designed to set the agenda for debate over
Nicaragua, apparently was activated in a secret National Security Directive
titled "Management of Public Diplomacy Relative to National
Security," dated January 4, 1983); Staff Report, State Department and Intelligence Community Involvement in Domestic
Activities Related to the Iran/Contra Affair, Committee on Foreign Affairs
of the U.S. House of Representatives, Washington: U.S. Government Printing
Office, October 1992, pp. 3-4 (the Comptroller General of the General
Accounting Office condemned the Office of Public Diplomacy's activities as
illegal).
President
Wilson's propaganda office during the First World War was the "Committee
on Public Information," also known as the "Creel Commission."
6. On Carter military spending projections, see
for example, Robert Komer [former Under-Secretary of Defense], "What
'Decade of Neglect'?," International
Security, Fall 1985, pp. 70-83. An
excerpt (pp. 73, 76, 78-79):
Actual
defense outlays went up in every Carter year, in strong contrast to the
declines characteristic of every Nixon-Ford year from F.Y. 1969 through F.Y.
1976 [with a] substantial increase in F.Y. 1981 [i.e. under Carter]. . . . As it turns out, the F.Y. 1982-1985 outlays
actually approved by Congress average slightly lower than the Carter
projections. . . . Almost every Reagan
equipment program to date was begun under Carter, or even before, with the
notable exception of S.D.I. [i.e. "Star Wars"]. . . . Reagan rhetoric tended to obscure the fact
that Reagan's program was mostly an acceleration of a buildup already begun
under Carter.
Bernard Weinraub, "White House Plans Rise to
$124 Billion in Military Budget," New
York Times, November 16, 1978, p. A1.
An excerpt:
Administration
sources said defense officials were especially gratified because the President
[Carter] has decided to cut about $15 billion out of the normal growth of a
range of social and domestic programs . . . [while raising military spending by
some $12 billion]. Officials indicated
that the "guns and butter" argument waged within the Administration
had now been settled by Mr. Carter in favor of the Defense Department.
See
also, Thomas B. Cochran et al., Nuclear
Weapons Databook, Volume I: U.S.
Nuclear Forces and Capabilities, Cambridge, MA: Ballinger/Harper & Row,
1984, p. 13; Raymond L. Garthoff, Détente
and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan,
Washington: Brookings Institution, 1985 (revised edition 1994), pp. 865-882.
On Reagan's military budget, see footnote 1 of
this chapter.
7. On public opposition to Reagan's policies
and popular attitudes remaining stubbornly social-democratic in important
respects since the New Deal years, see for example, Thomas Ferguson and Joel
Rogers, Right Turn: The Decline of the
Democrats and the Future of American Politics, New York: Hill and Wang,
1986 (tracing the myth of a "right turn" in public attitudes in the
U.S., and discussing general popular opposition to Reagan's policies); Thomas
Ferguson, Golden Rule: The Investment
Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995, chs. 5, 6, and Postscript
(extending Right Turn's analysis and
confirming its conclusions through 1994); Benjamin I. Page and Robert Y.
Shapiro, The Rational Public: Fifty Years
of Trends in Americans' Policy Preferences, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1992, chs. 3 and 4, at pp. 169-170 (after reviewing an enormous number
of polls over time, the authors conclude: "Ferguson and Rogers [in Right Turn] are correct, therefore, in
arguing that the policy right turn of the Reagan years cannot be accounted for
as a response to public demands"); Stanley Kelley, Jr., "Democracy
and the New Deal Party System," in Amy Guttman, ed., Democracy and the Welfare State, Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1988, pp. 185-205 (presenting poll results that demonstrate consistent
public support for New Deal-type programs from 1952 to 1984, with only a brief
dip in 1980); Vicente Navarro, "The 1984 Election and the New Deal: An
Alternative Interpretation (2 parts)," Social
Policy, Spring 1985, pp. 3-10 (reporting that polls during the 1980s regularly
indicated that the public would support a tax increase devoted to New Deal and
Great Society programs; support for equal or greater social expenditures was
about 80 percent in 1984, and a greater number viewed social welfare programs
favorably in 1984 than in 1980; 95 percent of the public opposed cuts in Social
Security, people preferred cuts in military spending to cuts in health programs
by about 2 to 1, they supported the Clean Air Act by 7 to 1, opposed cuts in
Medicare or Medicaid by well over 3 to 1, preferred defense spending cuts over
cuts in these medical aid programs by 3 or 4 to 1, and opposed a ban on
abortions by over 2 to 1; three-fourths of the population supported government
regulations to protect worker health and safety, and similar levels supported
protection of consumer interests and other social expenditures, including help
for the elderly, the poor, and the needy); Mark N. Vamos, ed., "Portrait
of a Skeptical Public," Business
Week, November 20, 1995, p. 138 (reprinting a Business Week/Harris poll on popular attitudes towards the role of
government, and concluding based upon its findings: "the public agrees
more with the Democratic notion of government as protector of society's most
vulnerable than with the Republican vision of Washington as arm's-length
guarantor of an 'opportunity society'").
See also footnote 50
of chapter 10 of U.P.
On
Reagan's electoral "mandate," see for example, Joshua Cohen and Joel
Rogers, On Democracy: Toward a
Transformation of American Society, New York: Penguin, 1983. An excerpt (p. 33):
On
election day in 1980, the 53.2 percent turnout was the third lowest in American
history, higher only than the 1920 and 1924 elections that followed the abrupt
swelling of the eligibility rolls resulting from the enfranchisement of
women. In winning the victory that
continues to be labeled a "mandate" and a "landslide" by
the national press, Ronald Reagan gained a smaller percentage of the eligible
electorate than did Wendell Willkie in his decisive 1940 loss to Roosevelt.
See also, E.J. Dionne Jr., "Bush Names Baker As
Secretary of State, Hails 40-State Support," New York Times, November 10, 1988, p. A1 ("estimates put the
turnout [in the 1988 Presidential election] at from 49 to 50 percent of
eligible voters. That would make it the
lowest since 1924"). On public
attitudes and the 1994 Congressional elections, see the text of chapter 10 of U.P. and its footnote 18.
For
a poll on how past Presidents are remembered, see Adam Pertman, "Carter
makes a triumphant return," Boston
Globe, July 15, 1992, p. 19 (among ex-Presidents, Carter is well in the lead
in popularity ratings at 74 percent, followed by the virtually unknown Ford at
68 percent, with Reagan at 58 percent, barely above Nixon at 54 percent).
8. On the Congressional origins of U.S. human
rights programs, see for example, Lars Schoultz, Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin America,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981, especially ch. 2; Lars Schoultz,
"U.S. Foreign Policy and Human Rights Violations in Latin America: A
Comparative Analysis of Foreign Aid Distributions," Comparative Politics, January 1981, p. 155 ("Over the open and
intense opposition of the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations, since 1973
Congress has added human rights clauses to virtually all U.S. foreign
assistance legislation"). See
also, Edward S. Herman, The Real Terror Network: Terrorism in Fact and
Propaganda, Boston: South End, 1982, especially p. 244 n.10.
Chomsky
adds that it is a real tribute to the propaganda system that the press can
still refer to a "human rights campaign" during the Carter
administration, a Presidency which sponsored and supported the Somoza family in
Nicaragua, the Shah of Iran, Marcos in the Philippines, Park in South Korea,
Pinochet in Chile, Suharto in Indonesia, Mobutu in Zaire, the Brazilian
generals, and their many confederates in repression and violence (The Washington Connection and Third World
Fascism -- The Political Economy of Human Rights: Volume I, 1979, Boston:
South End, pp. 370 n.80, 40).
9. On continued funding of Guatemala despite
Congressional legislation, see for example, Lars Schoultz, "Guatemala:
Social Change and Political Conflict," in Martin Diskin, ed., Trouble in our Backyard: Central America and
the United States in the Eighties, New York: Pantheon, 1983, pp. 187-191
and Tables pp. 188-189 (annual U.S. military aid deliveries to Guatemala for
1977 to 1980 continued at between 94 percent in 1979 and 61 percent in 1980 of
the 1976 level, with economic aid continuing as well); Allan Nairn, "The
Guatemala Connection: While Congress Slept, U.S. Arms Merchants Delivered the
Goods," Progressive, May 1986,
pp. 20-23 (and see the exchange of letters with a State Department official, at
pp. 6-8 of the September issue).
10. On the 42-page document outlining the mercenary-state
network, see for example, Stephen Engelberg, "Document in North Trial
Suggests Stronger Bush Role in Contra Aid," New York Times, April 7, 1989, pp. A1, A11 (summarizing and quoting
excerpts from the 42-page document); Joe Pichirallo, "Bush Joined Efforts
by Reagan, Aides To Solicit Arms for Contras During Ban," Washington Post, April 7, 1989, p. A1.
On
the rise of U.S. mercenary states and clandestine foreign policy activities in
the 1980s, see for example, Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott, and Jane
Hunter, The Iran-Contra Connection:
Secret Teams and Covert Operations in the Reagan Era, Boston: South End,
1987.
On
U.S. control over the World Anti-Communist League, a collection of Nazis,
fanatic anti-Semites, death squad assassins, torturers and killers from around
the world, see Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson, Inside the League: The Shocking Exposé of How Terrorists, Nazis, and
Latin American Death Squads Have Infiltrated the World Anti-Communist League,
New York: Dodd, Mead, 1986.
11. On Israel as a U.S. mercenary state, see for
example, Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, The
Israeli Connection: Who Israel Arms and Why, New York: Pantheon, 1987;
Israel Shahak, Israel's Global Role:
Weapons for Repression, Belmont, MA: Association of Arab-American
University Graduates, 1982; Jane Hunter, Israeli
Foreign Policy: South Africa and Central America, Boston: South End, 1987;
Bishara Bahbah, Israel and Latin America:
The Military Connection, New York: St. Martin's, 1986. See also, "Carving a big slice of world
arms sales," Business Week,
December 8, 1980, p. 43. An excerpt:
Although
excluded from the lucrative Middle East [armaments] market, Israel has made
headway in other parts of the globe -- notably Latin America, the Far East, and
Africa. The Latin American market has
developed rapidly in recent years following the Carter Administration's
decision to prohibit U.S. arms sales to many right-wing regimes. Israel has become a leading supplier to such
countries as Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Colombia, and Guatemala. Other major Israeli clients include South
Africa, Taiwan, Nigeria, Thailand, and Singapore.
And
see footnote 16 of this chapter.
12. For Arce's interviews in Mexico, see for
example, Rubén Montedonico, "Militarily and Morally the Contras Are Finished: Horacio
Arce," Honduras Update
(Cambridge, MA; Honduras Information Center), November/December 1988, pp. 13-16
(from El Día of Mexico City, November
6 and 7, 1988); Marcio Vargas, "'This War Is Lost. It Is Over' -- Exclusive Interview With Top
Contra Defector, Comandante Mercenary,"
Central America Information Bulletin
(Managua; Agencia Nueva Nicaragua), No. 40, December 21, 1988, pp. 1, 4-5. Arce, whose nom de guerre as a contra leader was "Mercenario,"
explained:
We
attack a lot of schools, health centers, and those sorts of things. We have tried to make it so that the
Nicaraguan government cannot provide social services for the peasants, cannot
develop its project . . . that's the idea.
13. On the death toll in Guatemala in the 1980s,
see Report of the Commission for Historical Clarification (C.E.H.), Guatemala: Memory of Silence, 1999
(quotations are from paragraphs 1, 2, 15 and 82). This report of an international human rights investigatory panel
administered by the United Nations concludes that "the number of persons
killed or disappeared as a result of the fratricidal confrontation reached a
total of over 200,000" in Guatemala since 1962, with 91 percent of these
violations occurring between 1978 and 1984.
The Commission found that "state forces and related paramilitary
groups were responsible for 93% of the violations documented by the C.E.H.,
including 92% of the arbitrary executions and 91% of forced
disappearances."
For
additional sources, see for example, Susanne Jonas, The Battle for Guatemala: Rebels, Death Squads, and U.S. Power,
Boulder, CO: Westview, 1991, p. 149; Piero Gleijeses, "The Reagan Doctrine
and Latin America," Current History,
December 1986, pp. 401f at p. 435; Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America, New
York: Norton, 1993 (revised and expanded edition). An excerpt (p. 362):
[T]he years from 1979
to 1991 turned out to be the bloodiest, most violent, and most destructive era
in Central America's post-1820 history.
The number of dead and "disappeared" varies according to
different sources. The minimum is
200,000 (40,000 in Nicaragua, 75,000 in El Salvador, 75,000 in Guatemala,
10,000 in Honduras and the frontier fighting in Costa Rica), but this is only
an estimate. Millions have been
displaced or made refugees. If a
similar catastrophe struck the United States in proportion, 2.5 million North
Americans would die and 10 to 20 million would be driven from their homes.
See
also, Amnesty International, Guatemala: A
Government Program of Political Murder, London: Amnesty International,
February 1981. An excerpt (pp. 5-6):
The bodies of
the victims have been found piled up in ravines, dumped at roadsides or buried
in mass graves. Thousands bore the
scars of torture, and death had come to most by strangling with a garrotte, by
being suffocated in rubber hoods or by being shot in the head. . . .
By far the majority of victims were chosen after
they had become associated -- or were thought to be associated -- with social,
religious, community or labor organizations, or after they had been in contact
with organizers of national political parties.
In other words, Amnesty International's evidence is that the targets for
extreme governmental violence tend to be selected from grass roots
organizations outside official control.
And see footnote 54
of chapter 8 of U.P.
14. For the McNamara-Bundy intercommunication,
see Memorandum for the Special Assistant
to the President for National Security Affairs, "Study of U.S. Policy
Toward Latin American Military Forces," Secretary of Defense, June 11,
1965 (available in the Lyndon Baines Johnson library).
For
similar statements in secret but now declassified U.S. government documents,
see footnote 52 of chapter 2 of U.P.
On
U.S. training of Latin American military leaders, see for example, Jan Knippers
Black, United States Penetration of
Brazil, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977, pp. 220-221,
170-171 (over 200,000 Latin American military personnel had been trained in the
U.S. by the late 1970s, and U.S. military training has purposefully built a
network of personal relationships between United States and Latin American
military cadres); Joanne Omang, "Latin American Left, Right Say U.S.
Militarized Continent," Washington
Post, April 11, 1977, p. A16 (over 30,000 Latin American officers had been
trained in the U.S. "School for the Americas" alone by the 1970s, and
the training of Latin American military personnel in U.S. bases and training
schools has placed great weight on ideological conditioning and has
"steeped young Latin officers in the early 1950s anti-Communist dogma that
subversive infiltrators could be anywhere"); Jeffrey Stein, "Fort
Lesley J. McNair: Grad School For Juntas," Nation, May 21, 1977, pp. 621-624 (on the Inter-American Defense
College).
15. On the U.S. overthrow of the Chilean
government, see for example, U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental
Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, Interim
Report, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975, section IIIF,
especially p. 231 n.2. This report
explains that the White House and C.I.A. pursued a "two track" policy
in Chile. The hard line called for a
military coup, which was finally achieved.
The soft line -- which included a White House directive to "make
the economy scream" -- was explained by U.S. Ambassador Edward Korry, a
Kennedy liberal, who stated: "not a nut or bolt will be allowed to reach
Chile under Allende. Once Allende comes
to power we shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and the Chileans to
utmost deprivation and poverty, a policy designed for a long time to come to
accelerate the hard features of a Communist society in Chile." Chomsky stresses (Year 501: The Conquest Continues, Boston: South End, 1993, p. 36):
[E]ven
if the hard line did not succeed in introducing fascist killers to exterminate
the virus, the vision of "utmost deprivation" [in Chile] would
suffice to keep the rot from spreading, and ultimately demoralize the patient
itself. And crucially, it would provide
ample grist for the mill of the cultural managers, who can produce cries of
anguish at "the hard features of a Communist society," pouring scorn
on those "apologists" who describe what is happening.
On
the coup itself, see for example, James Petras and Morris Morley, The United States and Chile: Imperialism and
the Overthrow of the Allende Government, New York: Monthly Review, 1975;
William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military
and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, ME: Common Courage,
1995, ch. 34; John Gittings, ed., The
Lessons of Chile: The Chilean Coup and the Future of Socialism, Nottingham,
U.K.: Spokesman, 1975 (providing first-hand accounts of the effect of the coup
on socialist activists in Chile); Fred Landis, "How 20 Chileans Overthrew
Allende for the C.I.A.," Inquiry,
February 19, 1979, pp. 16-20 (on the role of the Institute for General Studies,
a C.I.A.-funded think-tank that ran vast anti-Allende propaganda operations for
the C.I.A.). See also footnote 17
of this chapter.
16. Chomsky points out that the principal
weakness of the "October Surprise" theory is that the arms flow to
Iran began during the Carter administration -- before the 1980 election --
whereas under the "October Surprise" theory the quid pro quo of
delaying release of the hostages was that the Reaganites would secretly begin
to provide arms to Iran after they were elected. With respect to the "arms for hostages" theory
concerning the hostages taken in 1985, reams of documentation prove that there
was an arms flow to Iran prior to the earliest period that was examined by the
Congressional Hearings and the Tower Commission. In addition, many express statements by insiders explain that
their goal was, in fact, to bring about a military coup in Iran.
For
some of the evidence supporting these points, see for example, David Nyhan,
"Israel plan was aimed at toppling Khomeini," Boston Globe, October 21, 1982, p. 1 (Israeli Ambassador Moshe
Arens stated in an interview that Israel had provided arms to the Khomeini
regime "in coordination with the U.S. government . . . at almost the
highest of levels." "The
objective," Arens said, "was to see if we could not find some areas
of contact with the Iranian military, to bring down the Khomeini regime");
Robert Levey, "U.S. denies Arens' claim," Boston Globe, October 22, 1982, p. 1 (the U.S. State Department's
immediate denial of Arens's account); David Nyhan, "Israeli disputes Globe
story," Boston Globe, October
23, 1982, p. 4 (Arens's attempt to correct his story the next day, maintaining
that the arms deal with Iran was discussed in advance with U.S. officials but
saying that not enough equipment was sent to topple the Khomeini regime,
although he reaffirmed that "the purpose was to make contact with some
military officers who some day might be in a position of power in Iran");
Transcript of Panorama, B.B.C.-1 T.V.
(U.K.) at 8:10 p.m., February 1, 1982.
After David Kimche, head of Israel's Foreign Office and former director
of its intelligence agency M.O.S.S.A.D., discussed Israel's sending American
armaments to Iran from 1980, he stated:
Question: So that if Israel wishes
to see a strong Iranian army it would be in Israel's interests for America to
supply those spare parts?
Kimche: Well, I don't want to
reach the obvious conclusion here. I
think I made our position plain. We
think that the Iranian army should be strong, yes.
Question: So, really, an army
take-over is what you're saying?
Kimche: Possibly, yes.
Former C.I.A. Director and U.S. Ambassador to Iran
Richard Helms then elaborated:
One doesn't mount
coups to change governments or influence events without specific assets in the
form of guns, people, groups desirous of helping, people who are prepared to
take risk, all of these things, so that this is not a theoretical matter, it's
a very practical matter and I wouldn't have any doubt that the United States is
trying to find out what assets it can bring to bear.
On
the timing of the arms sales, see for example, Zbigniew Brzezinski [Carter's
National Security Advisor], Power and
Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977-1981, New York:
Farrar Straus Giroux, 1983, p. 504 (reporting that the Carter administration
had learned in 1980 of secret Israeli shipments of U.S. armaments to Iran); Dan
Fisher, "Israel-Iran Arms Flow Reportedly Began In '79," Los Angeles Times, November 22, 1986, p.
1. An excerpt:
Israeli arms dealers, with the acquiescence of the
government, have maintained a nearly continuous supply of weaponry to Iran
since 1979, including at least seven shiploads dispatched independently of a
U.S.-sponsored Iranian arms program over the last 14 months, according to
informed sources [in Israel]. . . .
Pleased initially that revelation of the Reagan
program [of clandestine weapons shipments to Iran] made Israel appear as a
loyal strategic ally aiding an effort to free U.S. hostages held by pro-Iranian
elements in Lebanon, Israeli policy-makers have watched with growing discomfort
as Washington news reports seem increasingly to depict Jerusalem as a villain
in the affair. . . . "The State of
Israel has never sold American arms or weapons containing American components
without having received authorization from the U.S.," Defense Minister
Yitzhak Rabin told an Israeli Army Radio interviewer last week. . . . [T]hen-Israeli Defense Minister
. . . [Ariel]
Sharon argued that arms shipments would help keep channels open to
"moderate" or "pragmatic" elements in Iran, particularly in
the military, who would one day overthrow or at least inherit the reins of
power from Khomeini.
"Carving a big slice of world arms sales,"
Business Week, December 8, 1980, p.
43 (according to Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Mordechai Tsippori,
"Iran, once a big customer for Israeli arms under the Shah, [is] now
purchasing Israeli weapons again through European intermediaries"); John
Walcott and Jane Mayer, "Israel Said to Have Sold Weapons to Iran Since
1981 With Tacit Approval of the Reagan Administration," Wall Street Journal, November 28, 1986,
p. 3 (noting that U.S. authorization of Israeli arms sales to be compensated by
the U.S. goes back to 1981, with the knowledge of Haig, Weinberger, Shultz,
Baker, and others; "Officials said both Israel and the U.S. hoped that the
arms sales would curry favor with the military people in Iran, the so-called
moderates, helping to position these men to take over if Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini died or there was a coup"); General Robert E. Huyser, Mission to Tehran, New York: Harper
& Row, 1986 (Carter National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski's
endorsement of Huyser's book about his dispatch to Iran to organize the Iranian
military to carry out a coup states that Brzezinski remains convinced that only
"procrastination and bureaucratic sabotage prevented the U.S.-sponsored
military coup" he advocated and "that might have saved Iran from
Khomeini" and "the masses").
See
also, Samuel Segev, The Iranian Triangle:
The Untold Story of Israel's Role in the Iran-Contra Affair, New York: Free
Press, 1988; Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott, and Jane Hunter, The Iran-Contra Connection: Secret Teams and
Covert Operations in the Reagan Era, Boston: South End, 1987, chs. 7 and 8;
Scott Armstrong et al., The Chronology:
The Documented Day-by-Day Account of the Secret Military Assistance to Iran and
the Contras, New York: Warner, 1987, pp. 7-8.
17. For unclassified U.S. military aid figures
during the Allende years, see for example, Covert
Action in Chile, 1963-1973, Staff Report of the Select Committee to Study
Governmental Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities, U.S. Senate,
Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, December 18, 1975, pp. 32-38 (with
tables on military assistance, military sales, and training of Chilean military
personnel in Panama, based on "unclassified" figures from the Defense
Department). An excerpt (p. 37; emphasis
in original):
[M]ilitary
assistance was not cut off at the
time of Allende's confirmation.
Military sales jumped sharply from 1972 to 1973 and even more sharply
from 1973 to 1974 after the coup.
Training of Chilean military personnel in Panama also rose during the
Allende years . . . [increasing the number of trainees from 1969 to 1973 by 150
percent].
18. On C.I.A. involvement in overthrowing
Sukarno in Indonesia, see for example, Peter Dale Scott, "The United
States and the Overthrow of Sukarno, 1965-1967," Pacific Affairs, Summer 1985, pp. 239-264 (study documenting the
C.I.A.'s role); Ralph McGehee [ex-C.I.A. officer], "The C.I.A. and The
White Paper On El Salvador," Nation,
April 11, 1981, p. 423f (this article was censored by the C.I.A. under a clause
in the author's contract, and was published with deletions noted; the author
reports that he is familiar with a highly classified C.I.A. report on the
Agency's role in provoking the destruction of the P.K.I., the Indonesian
Communist Party, and he attributes the slaughter to the "C.I.A. [one word
deleted] operation"); Kathy Kadane, "Ex-agents say C.I.A. compiled
death lists for Indonesians," San
Francisco Examiner, May 20, 1990, p. A1 ("Silent for a quarter
century, former high-ranking U.S. diplomats and C.I.A. officials described in
lengthy interviews how they aided Indonesian army leader Suharto -- now
president of Indonesia -- in his attack on the P.K.I. [Indonesian Communist
Party]"); Gabriel Kolko, Confronting
the Third World: United States Foreign Policy, 1945-1980, New York:
Pantheon, 1988, pp. 173-185 (concise summary of the events leading up to the
massacre). An excerpt (p. 177
n."*"):
U.S.
documents for the three months preceding September 30, 1965, and dealing with
the convoluted background and intrigues, much less the embassy's and the
C.I.A.'s roles, have been withheld from public scrutiny. Given the detailed materials available
before and after July-September 1965, one can only assume that the release of
these papers would embarrass the U.S. government.
During
Congressional testimony, Pentagon official Paul Warnke, a reputed dove,
acknowledged the purpose of U.S. military aid to Indonesia before the 1965
coup. See Foreign Assistance Act of 1968 Hearings, Hearings before the
Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, 90th Congress, 2nd
Session, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968, p. 706:
[Connecticut Senator John] Monagan: Speaking of military assistance programs, I
think of one that is in Indonesia, where at least in the latter days the
purpose for which it was maintained was not to support an existing [i.e. the
Sukarno] regime. In fact, we were
opposed, eventually and increasingly, to the then existing regime. It was to preserve a liaison of sorts with
the military of the country which in effect turned out to be one of the
conclusive elements in the overthrow of that regime.
Warnke:
That is correct, sir.
On
the subsequent massacre in Indonesia, and for more on the U.S. involvement, see
footnote 23 of chapter 2 of U.P.
On
U.S. government involvement in another "classic operation,"
overthrowing the democratic Goulart government in Brazil in 1964, see for
example, A.J. Langguth, Hidden Terrors,
New York: Pantheon, 1978, pp. 38-116; Jan Knippers Black, United States Penetration of Brazil, Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1977; Phyllis Parker, Brazil
and the Quiet Intervention, 1964, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979;
Ruth Leacock, Requiem for Revolution: The
United States and Brazil, 1961-1969, Kent, OH: Kent State University Press,
1990. See also, Thomas Skidmore, The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil,
1964-85, New York: Oxford University Press, 1988 (comprehensive scholarly
study of the post-coup period).
19. On the C.I.A. coup in Iran, see for example,
William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military
and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, ME: Common Courage,
1995, ch. 9; Bill A. James, The Eagle and
the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations, New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1988, ch. 2; Kermit Roosevelt, Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran, New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1979 (first-person account of the coup by a former C.I.A. officer;
this book was recalled from stores by its publisher McGraw-Hill in 1979 under
pressure from British Petroleum Company, the successor corporation to the
petroleum entity which Roosevelt implicated in the coup). See also, William A. Dorman and Mansour
Farhang, The U.S. Press and Iran: Foreign
Policy and the Journalism of Deference, Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1987, ch. 2 (on the distorted U.S. press coverage of the coup, and of
Iran generally). On the recall of
Roosevelt's book, see Ben H. Bagdikian, The
Media Monopoly, Boston: Beacon, Fifth Edition, 1997, p. 39.
20. On the
C.I.A. coup in Guatemala, see for example, Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen
Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Story of the
American Coup in Guatemala, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999
(expanded edition); Richard H. Immerman, The
C.I.A. in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention, Austin: University
of Texas Press, 1982; Walter LaFeber, Inevitable
Revolutions: The United States in Central America, New York: Norton, 1983
(2nd revised and expanded edition 1993), pp. 113-127; Stephen Schlesinger,
"How Dulles Worked the Coup d'Etat," Nation, October 28, 1978, p. 425 (based upon more than 1,000 pages
of State Department documents from 1953 and 1954, released to Schlesinger under
the Freedom of Information Act; concluding that the coup "was conceived of
and run at the highest levels of the American government in closest cahoots
with the United Fruit Company and under the overall direction of Secretary of
State John Foster Dulles, backed by President Eisenhower").
For a statement of the U.S.'s reasons for the coup,
see Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The
Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1991, p. 365. This
study quotes a State Department official's warning prior to the coup that
"Guatemala has become an increasing threat to the stability of Honduras
and El Salvador. Its agrarian reform is
a powerful propaganda weapon; its broad social program of aiding the workers
and peasants in a victorious struggle against the upper classes and large
foreign enterprises has a strong appeal to the populations of Central American
neighbors where similar conditions prevail."
21. On the scale, illegality and activities of
Operation MONGOOSE, see for example, Raymond L. Garthoff, Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis (1989 edition), Washington:
Brookings Institution, 1989. An excerpt
(p. 32 and n.53):
[A]
secret Special Group . . . [was] established in November 1961 to conduct covert
operations against Cuba under the code-name "Mongoose." Attorney General Kennedy was a driving force
in this covert action program. A
Washington headquarters group had been set up under General Lansdale and a
C.I.A. "Task Force W" in Florida under William K. Harvey, both
veteran covert action managers. The
operation came to involve 400 Americans, about 2,000 Cubans, a private navy of
fast boats, and an annual budget of about $50 million. Task Force W carried out a wide range of
activities, initially mostly against Cuban ships and aircraft outside Cuba (and
non-Cuban ships engaged in the Cuba trade), such as contaminating sugar
shipments out of Cuba and tampering with industrial imports into the
country. A new phase, calling for more
raids into Cuba, opened in September. . . .
A Miami C.I.A. station was also established, in probable violation of
the law banning C.I.A. operations in the United States, to say nothing of
organizing activities that contravened the Neutrality Act.
U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Government
Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, Final Report,
94th Congress, 2nd Session, Books II, III, and VI (Report No. 94-755),
Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976; Warren Hinckle and William
Turner, The Fish is Red: The Story of The
Secret War Against Castro, New York: Harper & Row, 1981, ch. 4; Morris
H. Morley, Imperial State and Revolution:
The United States and Cuba, 1952-1986, New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1987, pp. 148-154; Edward S. Herman, The
Real Terror Network: Terrorism in
Fact and Propaganda, Boston: South End, 1982, ch. 2.
One
of the commandos who participated in paramilitary operations against Cuba under
the command of William "Rip" Robertson describes them as follows
(quoted in Taylor Branch and George Crile III, "The Kennedy Vendetta: How
the C.I.A. waged a silent war against Cuba," Harper's, August 1975, pp. 49-63):
After the Bay of Pigs is when the great heroic deeds
of Rip really began. I was on one of
his teams, but he controlled many teams and many operations. . . . Our team made more than seven big war
missions. Some of them were huge: the
attacks on the Texaco refinery, the Russian ships in Oriente Province, a big
lumberyard, the Patrice Lumumba sulfuric acid plant at Santa Lucía, and the
diesel plant at Casilda. But they never
let us fight as much as we wanted to, and most of the operations were
infiltrations and weapons drops.
We would go on missions to Cuba almost every week. When we didn't go, Rip would feel sick and
get very mad. He was always blowing off
his steam, but then he would call us his boys, and he would hug us and hit us
in the stomach. He was always trying to
crank us up for the missions. Once he
told me, "I'll give you $50 if you bring me back an ear." I brought him two, and he laughed and said,
"You're crazy," but he paid me $100, and he took us to his home for a
turkey dinner. Rip was a patriot, an
American patriot. Really, I think he
was a fanatic. He'd fight anything that
came against democracy. . . . At the
end of December, 1961, [commando Ramon] Orozco went on a ten-day operation with
a seven-man team. The commandos blew up
a railroad bridge and watched a train run off the ruptured tracks, then they
burned down a sugar warehouse.
See also, U.P.I., "C.I.A. reportedly tried to
dry up Cuban crop," Boston Globe,
June 27, 1976, p. 3 (reporting the allegation by former Pentagon researcher
Lowell Ponte that the C.I.A. and the Pentagon seeded clouds "to try to dry
up the Cuban sugar crop in 1969 and 1970"; in the next day's issue the
report is denied by the Pentagon); Drew Fetherston and John Cummings,
"Canadian Says U.S. Paid Him $5,000 to Infect Cuban Poultry," Washington Post, March 21, 1977, p. A18 ("The
major details of the Canadian's story [i.e. in the title] have been confirmed
by sources within and outside the American intelligence community"); Drew
Fethersten and John Cummings, "C.I.A. tied to Cuba's '71 pig fever
outbreak," Boston Globe, January
9, 1977, p. 1. An excerpt:
With at least the tacit backing of Central
Intelligence Agency officials, operatives linked to anti-Castro terrorists
introduced African swine fever virus into Cuba in 1971. Six weeks later an outbreak of the disease forced
the slaughter of 500,000 pigs to prevent a nationwide animal epidemic.
A U.S. intelligence source said in an interview that
he was given the virus in a sealed, unmarked container at an Army base and
C.I.A. training ground in the Panama Canal Zone with instructions to turn it
over to the anti-Castro group. The 1971
outbreak was the first and only time the disease has hit the Western
Hemisphere. It was labeled the "most
alarming event" of 1971 by the United Nations Food and Agricultural
Organization. African swine fever is a
highly contagious and usually lethal viral disease that infects only pigs and,
unlike swine flu, cannot be transmitted to human beings. . . . [A]ll production of pork, a Cuban staple,
came to a halt apparently for several months.
And see chapter 5 of U.P. and its footnote 29.
22. On U.S. assassination attempts on Castro,
see for example, U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations
with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Alleged
Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, Interim Report (S. Rept.
94-465), 94th Congress, 1st Session, Washington: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1975, sections IIIB and IV, pp. 71f, 139-180 (reporting both MONGOOSE
and non-MONGOOSE efforts to kill Castro).
One
of the known assassination attempts on Castro was implemented the very day that
John F. Kennedy himself was assassinated.
See Thomas G. Paterson, ed., Kennedy's
Quest for Victory: American Foreign Policy, 1961-1963, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1989. An excerpt (pp.
153-154):
In
mid-June [1963] the N.S.C. [National Security Council] approved a new sabotage
program. The C.I.A. quickly cranked up
new dirty tricks and revitalized its assassination option by making contact
with a traitorous Cuban official, Rolando Cubela Secades. Code-named AM/LASH, he plotted with the
C.I.A. to kill Fidel Castro. . . . On the
very day that Kennedy died, AM/LASH rendez-voused with C.I.A. agents in Paris,
where he received a ball-point pen rigged with a poisonous hypodermic needle
intended to produce Castro's instant death.
See also, William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II,
Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1995, Appendix III, p. 453 (listing all known
prominent foreign individuals in whose assassination, or planning for the same,
the United States has been involved since the end of World War II).
23. On MONGOOSE in the 1970s, see footnote 21
of this chapter.
24. On U.S. "contingency plans" for an
invasion of Cuba and military deployment in the region before the Cuban Missile
Crisis, see for example, Raymond L. Garthoff, Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis (1989 edition), Washington:
Brookings Institution, 1989. An excerpt
(pp. 6-8, 31, 50-51):
American exercises in the region continued apace
through the summer and fall. An
airborne assault was tested in Jupiter
Springs. In August the U.S. Strike
Command carried out Swift Strike II,
a major limited war exercise in the Carolinas with four Army divisions and
eight tactical air squadrons, some 70,000 troops in all. A strategic mobility command post exercise
called Blue Water was conducted in
early October, and a large Marine amphibious assault was planned for
mid-October under the code-name Phibriglex.
. . .
On October 1, two weeks before discovery of the
missiles, Secretary McNamara met with Joint Chiefs of Staff and directed that
readiness for possible implementation of the contingency plans [to invade Cuba]
be raised. For example, U.S. Air Force
tactical air units designated to meet the contingency war plan for an air
strike (Oplan 312) were put under the operational control of CINCSTRIKE
(Commander-in-Chief, Strike Command); U.S. Navy forces were earmarked for
6-hour, 12-hour, and 24-hour reaction times, and the war plan was revised to
put the base at Mariel for Soviet Komar missile patrol boats on the air-strike
priority target list. On October 6,
increased readiness was also directed for forces earmarked for Oplan 314 and
316, the two war plan variants for invasion of Cuba.
See also, Thomas G. Paterson, "Fixation with
Cuba: The Bay of Pigs, Missile Crisis, and Covert War Against Castro," in
Thomas G. Paterson, ed., Kennedy's Quest
for Victory: American Foreign Policy, 1961-1963, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1989, pp. 140-142.
25. For Bundy's denial, see McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival: Choices About the Bomb
in the First Fifty Years, New York: Random House, 1988, p. 416 ("We
knew that we were not about to invade Cuba and we saw no reason for the
Russians to take a clearly risky step because of a fear that we ourselves
understood to be baseless").
26. On the "missile gap" being in the
U.S.'s favor, see footnote 1 of
this chapter.
27. For the two references to the factory
bombing during the Cuban Missile Crisis, see David A. Welch and James G.
Blight, "The Eleventh Hour of the Cuban Missile Crisis: An Introduction to
the ExComm Transcripts," International
Security, Winter 1987-88, p. 12 n.18; Raymond L. Garthoff, Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis (1989
edition), Washington: Brookings Institution, 1989, pp. 122-123.
28. On the General openly raising the level of
security alert without informing Washington, see for example, Raymond L.
Garthoff, Reflections on the Cuban
Missile Crisis (1989 edition), Washington: Brookings Institution, 1989, pp.
61-62; David A. Welch and James G. Blight, "The Eleventh Hour of the Cuban
Missile Crisis: An Introduction to the ExComm Transcripts," International Security, Winter 1987-88,
p. 12 n.5.
29. On the enormous preponderance of U.S. military
force at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Generals' attitudes, see
footnotes 1, 24 and 28
of this chapter.
30. For Herodotus's analysis in the fifth century B.C., see Herodotus: A New and Literal Version, Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries, 1972, Book One, Stanzas 95-100, pp. 44-46 (describing the story of the Medes, who gained their freedom through revolt, then "were again reduced under a despotic government" when they voluntarily made Deioces their king and he decreed: "that no man should be admitted to the king's presence, but every one should consult him by means of messengers, and that none should be permitted to see him; and, moreover, that it should be accounted indecency for any to laugh or spit before him.