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| Issue No 116 |  |
19 October 2001 |
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HistoryAmerican TerrorBy Rowan Cahill
Incredible revelations about the work of the US National Security Agency through the Cold War years help put the current War of Terror into perspective.
***************** The April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba spectacularly failed, alerting the world to the dark underside of American foreign policy. The adventurous, somewhat amateurish, attempt by Cuban exiles to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro had been covertly planned by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the operation went ahead without the involvement of US military firepower. Undaunted by failure, US strategic planners returned to the drawing board, determined to oust Castro and return Cuba to American investors and organised crime. The five Joint Chiefs of Staff, headed by Army General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, figured they could do better than the CIA. No farting about for them; they came up with Operation Northwoods, a crackerjack ruthless plan to manufacture full-scale war with Cuba. To achieve this, innocent civilians had to be killed and terrorism unleashed upon America. The proposal was to assassinate Cuban emigres in the Miami area and in other Florida cities; to sink Cuban refugee boats on the high seas; to highjack civilian aircraft; and to blow up an American ship in Guantanamo Bay, the US strategic base in Cuba. Washington was also targeted as a potential site for this self-induced, self-inflicted terrorist campaign. Senior right-wing American military leaders rationalised that "casualty lists in US newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation". The plan was to blame Cuba for these terrorist acts, and surf the ensuing wave of national anger to full-scale war with the island nation. The launch into orbit of pioneer astronaut John Glenn (February 1962) was also taken into account by Operation Northwoods. If the attempt to orbit failed, and Glenn came a cropper, the plan was to blame Cuban sabotage and fabricate the evidence necessary to provide an excuse for war. Operation Northwoods was presented to the Kennedy Administration early in 1962, and rejected in March. Which confirmed what the military leadership suspected; President Kennedy and his Administration were a bunch of political soft cocks. A few months down the track Lemnitzer got the chop and was allocated less sensitive duties, but not before trying to have all evidence of Northwoods destroyed, just in case pansy liberal wankers decided to investigate. President Kennedy got the bullet in November 1963. In 1992 Oliver Stone's conspiracy movie JFK aroused large-scale public interest in US covert history. Eventually Congress passed a law facilitating public access to secret government documents relating to the assassination of Kennedy, in an effort to disarm Stone's conspiracy theory. Hey presto; it turned out that General Lemnitzer had not controlled all the paperwork, and Operation Northwoods made it into the light of day. The story of Operation Northwoods is told in the recent book BODY OF SECRETS (Doubleday) by highly regarded American investigative journalist James Bamford. In 721 massively researched pages of exhaustive dissection and documentation, Bamford places the National Security Agency (NSA) under his microscope. Created in 1952 by a top-secret presidential order, the NSA is an ultra-secretive, mammoth, spook outfit that dwarfs the CIA in term of influence, budget, and manpower. Primarily engaged in global electronic eavesdropping, the Agency leads the world in cyberwarfare; it has recently been linked with economic espionage in Europe, and has been in the forefront of the search for Osama bin Laden. The revelations about Operation Northwoods are perhaps the most startling and chilling aspect of Bamford's book. However there is much more as Bamford carefully details NSA involvement in a catalogue of Cold War conflicts, and in the Vietnam war, bringing the story up to date with details of the Agency's Orwellian powers of global surveillance. Given world events since September 11 this year, and what seems like an attempt to manipulate the anthrax threat to implicate Iraq, there is much in BODY OF SECRETS to raise huge questions about the current War on Terror. With working people everywhere the victims of terrorism and anti-terrorism, Bamford's book is cautionary and disturbing reading; not exactly bedside reading, but recommended for the trade union library at least.
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   Interview: The Green MachineNick Bolkus outlines Labor's environmental stance and lays down the gauntlet to Bob Brown's Greens. Industrial: Regaining Control France�s 35 hour week stems from the program of the Left coalition government which went to the polls in June 1997 with the policy of �worksharing�. Unions: Home Of The Longest DayAustralia has a dubious new prize to put in its cluttered national trophy cabinet. We are increasingly the most over-worked nation in the world. Campaign Diary: Week Two: FightbackLabor's doing everything to win a normal campaign - but this is no normal campaign. Economics: Who Will Notice When You Die?Johann Christoph Arnold asks whether the anti-globalisation movement is the answer to an epidemic of loneliness. History: American TerrorIncredible revelations about the work of the US National Security Agency through the Cold War years help put the current War of Terror into perspective. International: Global Day of Action In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in the US last week, the ICFTU has announced that preparations for the Global Unions Day of Action on November 9 will go ahead. Satire: World Gripped by Fear as Howard Third Term LoomsThe global community has uniformly condemned the recent terrorist attacks, which horrifically helped revive the re-election prospects of John Howard. Review: FlashbacksCultural theortician Neale Towart consults his record collection in a bid to understand the chaos gripping the earth.
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