from: http://www.steamshovelpress.com/operationmongoose.html Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.steamshovelpress.com/operationmongoose.html">O peration Mongoose Psy War Against Cuba</A> ----- RE: Operation Mongoose, Etc. Below is a follow-up to a recent exchange between Steamshovel editor Kenn Thomas and Jon Elliston, author of the book Psy War On Cuba: The Declassified History of U.S. Anti-Castro Propaganda, that appeared in Parascope Dispatch Three, the hard-copy counterpart of the Parascope web site (www.parascope.com). Thomas and Elliston recently appeared together, along wit h Robert Sterling of Konformist, Jonathan Vankin, and a "skeptic" named Dave from Wired magazine, on the Fox network's Full Nelson program, discussing conspiracies of the new millennium. Dear ParaScope, If Jon Elliston can forgive my erroneous assertion (a typo, actually) that Edward Lansdale sat in on the meeting between JFK and Ian Fleming, I will forgive his misidentification of Gus Russo's 1998 book, Live By The Sword (Jon calls it Die By The Sword.) Jon is correct that Lansdale has not been identified as present at that meeting, but Russo does note the presence there of CIA agent John Bross. I have not seen documentation establishing that JFK himself initiated the bizarre assassination plots against Castro which seemingly originated at that meeting with the creator of James Bond. I don't argue with Jon's assertion that "propaganda and paramilitary actions were directed straight out of Washington." Washington is a big place, however, and I think Jon should be careful when he accuses Kennedy of initiating the 1960s politics of assassination by gunning for Fidel. For one thing, people like E. Howard Hunt publicly confessed to trying to smear Kennedy in this way, in Hunt's case, by forging cables suggesting that JFK had the Diem brothers killed in Vietnam. If JFK was so ruthless, why the need to frame him? Long before Russo's book was published, before Oliver Stone's JFK movie in fact, he was being quoted in Newsweek and other major media as a critic of Stone. Mark Lane pointed out in Steamshovel Press that this was noteworthy in that long-time experts on the assassination (like Lane himself) are rarely quoted at all. At the very least, in Live By The Sword, Russo is quite incredulous when it comes to his intelligence agency sources. For instance, he quotes as credible Edward Lansdale's pronouncements in 1975 that Kennedy was behind the assassination plots. As the real chief suspect behind the plots, any reasonable person could hardly accept what Lansdale has to say on this matter at face value. Unfortunately, Russo does. That the CIA resumed its connection to Rolando AMLASH Cubela on the very day Castro announced his awareness of the plots against him, making the announcement in Brazil, where Cubela met with his CIA contacts on the very day those contacts were to resume, is a matter of history. (1) Even the Senate Intelligence Committee felt that Castro's announcement was meant to send a signal to JFK. As for the back-channel diplomacy between JFK and Castro, I would suggest that rather than Russo, readers should return to Jean Daniels' articles in The New Republic just after the assassination (12/7, 14 & 21/63) Daniels was on hand when it was happening. Castro's "most important" question to Daniels after getting word about Kennedy's death was about LBJ: "What authority does he exercise over the CIA?" Time and again, Castro gives indication that he felt Kennedy himself had potential as a possible ally, but that the real power, and the real threat to him, resided within the intelligen ce community. 1. Schulz, Donald E., "Kennedy and the Cuban Connection," Foreign Policy, Spring 1977. Columbus Dispatch, 6/21/76 >From Parascope Dispatch Three, December 1999-January 2000 (ParasCope, 1430 Williamette #329, Eugene, OR 97401, www.parascope.com) Subj: Operation Mongoose Parascope Dispatch Two came out before I could comment on Parascope Dispatch One, so I'm send- ing this belatedly. Fine little zinelet you have there, and I wish it the best success. Hard copy zines still have many advantages over the inter- net, like reaching new readers from people who browse the newstands. Despite the proliferation of conspiracy info on the web, it's all targeted to those of us who have a specialized interest. It is obviously important that conspiracy researchers reach larger audiences, so I hope Parascope Dispatch can help serve that function. The article about Operation Mongoose (Dispatch One, The Paper Trail, "Dirty Tricks Vs. Cuba") particularly grabbed my attention. It reported on Brigadier General William Craig's bizarre projects to discredit, harass and possibly assassinate Fidel Castro. According to new DoD files released by the Assassination Records Review Board, Craig came up with projects above and beyond those initiated by Edward Lansdale. As I pointed out in my new book Maury Island UFO, according to researcher Gus Russo, who wrote a book entitled Live By The Sword, Lansdale's projects may have originated in a conversation between Lansdale, JFK and James Bond author Ian Fleming. To this, I would like to add another often over- looked history lesson about these attempts against Castro. The Cuban dictator made a clear effort to track them up the American intelligence hierarchy to see if indeed they were a matter of official U.S. policy On the day that one potential Castro assassin, Rolando Cubela (codenamed AMLASH), was to have a meeting at CIA head- quarters, Castro made a public statement at the Brazilian embassy, where AMLASH had previ- ously met with a U.S. contact. In regard to the attempts, Castro said "We are prepared to fight them and answer in kind. United States leaders should think that if they are aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe" and that the "CIA and other dreamers believe their hopes of an insurrection or a suc- cessful guerrilla war. They can go on dreaming forever." CIA apologists have long tried to offer this threat as suggestive of Castro's involvement in JFK's assassination, in defiance of the logic that he would have hardly announced such intentions publicly. Historians suggest that Castro actually was announcing his awareness of the plots and putting official D.C. on alert. Cubela may have been a double-agent, on assignment for Havana to find out where the responsibility for the plots ended. Since back-channel diplomatic rapproche- ment was happening between Kennedy and Castro at the time of the assassination, it seems likely that Castro felt that such responsibility did not reach all the way to the top. Maybe it ended in a Pentagon intelligence cel that included Lansdale and Craig. Best, Kenn Thomas Editor, Steamshovel Press POB 23715 St. Louis, MO 63121 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Thanks very much for your feedback on ParaScope's new print project. We're still building up steam, but this issue is our most ambitious yet, and we have some interesting special issues lined up for the near future. I agree that it's crucial for the underground media to reach out to readers both in print and on the Internet. Those of us who are "wired" can easily forget how many intelligent, active people there are who have absolutely no interest in the Internet, but who never- theless read quite a bit. It would be foolish for the "con- spiracy" media to isolate its efforts solely on the Internet. I offer my heartfelt condolences on the recent loss of your friend and co-author, Jim Keith. His passing was a sudden shock - at first I thought it had to be an unsubstantiated rumor, I just couldn't believe it. But your confirmation of the news brought home the sober- ing reality that the underground research community had lost one of its heroes. Jim's work was an early inspi- ration for ParaScope. He will be sorely missed. In regards to your comments about "The Cuba Project,' I referred your Letter to Jon Elliston, editor of "The Paper Trail" and Dossier (www.parascope .com) data, whose knowledge of such matters far exceeds my own. -Charles Overbeck Jon Elliston responds: I'm glad our coverage of anti-Castro covert opera- tions, a topic near and dear to us, was read by similarly interested individuals. There is an avalanche of newly released documentation on this matter, and it has become possible to clear up (or at least illuminate) some of the shadowy comers of Kennedy-era Cuba operations. I want to offer my two cents on some of the incidents and operations you mentioned. Some are tangential and some are of real importance to the JFK-Cuba story. In order, they are: JFK, FLEMING AND LANSDALE: In his book Die by the Sword, Gus Russo recounts the well documented story of a dinner party at which then-Senator John Kennedy asked Bond author Fleming what could be done about the pesky revolu- tionary Fidel Castro. I have not heard that Lansdale was present at the dinner, and I doubt he was - so there was probably no conversation among Lansdale, Fleming and JFK. However, President Kennedy and his brother Robert are reported to have referred to Lansdale as "our James Bond" when they assigned him to run Operation Mongoose. CUBAN COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE: Castro's security forces and spies are renowned -- Cuba always seems to know what its enemies are up to. You mention Castro's efforts to track operations against him "to see if they were a matter of official US policy." I doubt that was his motive. There is plenty of evidence that Castro managed to discover, through espionage and direct experience, what he was up against when the Eisenhower and Kennedy adminis- trations unleashed a secret war against revolutionary Cuba. But there was little question who was sponsor- ing and directing the anti-Castro campaign. Certainly there were some Cuban exile groups that attacked the island without U.S. government support, but in the overwhelming majority of cases, the sabotage, propa- ganda and paramilitary actions were directed straight out of Washington. Castro knew this from the get-go, and he publicly identified his attackers in numerous speeches. (A choice example: shortly before the Bay of Pigs invasion, Castro announced that he knew the CIA was up to something, and suggested they be called the "Central Agency of Yankee Cretins.") His spy opera- tions were important for defensive purposes, but he need not have searched for the origins of hostile policies that he well knew were originating in the White House. ROLANDO CUBELA: I have never heard that Cubela "was to have a meet- ing at CIA headquarters." CIA officers did meet with him in such far-flung countries as Brazil and France, but to bring a potential Castro assassin, a "defector in place" who was still serving in the Cuban govern- ment, into the CIA's Langley headquarters would have been a display of ineptitude and bad judgment that even the CIA was probably not capable of. Cubela may indeed have been Castro's agent the whole time he was supposedly working with the CIA, but the fact remains that he was ultimately arrested by Cuban authorities for his plotting and wound up with a 25-year prison sentence. If Cubela was "on assignment for Havana," again I doubt that the purpose was to "find out where the responsibility for the plots ended." That the Kennedy brothers were leading the secret war against Cuba, a fact demonstrated again and again the recently released government files, was no secret to Castro. THE BACK-CHANNEL TALKS: Emissaries of Castro and Kennedy were indeed engaging in tentative talks shortly before JFK was gunned down. (See an upcoming installment of "The Paper Trail" for new revelations on this matter.) Were the talks a sign of a sea change in Kennedy's Cuba pol- icy? Was he really interested in making nice with none other than Fidel Castro? The preponderance of the evi- dence suggests not. Even as some White House aides argued that the talks might be an avenue for pulling Castro out of the Soviet orbit, the U.S. covert action program against Cuba was expanded - on the orders, and with the knowledge, of John and Robert Kennedy. Gus Russo's book, which you mentioned, does a nice job of summarizing the unceasing attack against Cuba in JFK's last year. -Jon Elliston Previous Things Are Gonna Slide! 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