Published on The Huffington Post, Salon.com, USAToday.com,SFgate,com,Alternet.com--April 6th, 2009
How many times did former vice president Dick Cheney whisper undermining, surreptitious words into the ears of Israeli and high-ranking Pentagon officials? Every day? Once a week? Several seditious rumors a month?
Those who listened are simply Cheney’s Toys. Sadly, Dick does not understand his play date is done and his tinker toys need putting away. In the words of Shakespeare, “Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look.”
This week Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh reported some sobering news. Now that the clock has run out on Bush/Cheney, the former vice president has, according to Hersh, not only called Israeli officials and told them “not to trust Mr. Obama because he was pro-Palestinian and not ready for the major leagues,” but Hersh went on to report that Cheney/Bush “Stay behinds,” loyal senior officials in the Pentagon, National Security Agency and even inside the White House, are still reporting back to Cheney. Those of us who regard Hersh as one of the greatest journalists of our generation tend to believe him.
Sleep deprived and soaked in worry after stomaching that gaseous news, a startling look at an often-ignored declassified military document leads one to consider how back-room whispers can stir up funnel clouds capable of causing long-term hurricanes.
Past is prologue. Shakespeare wrote it and it is carved in stone on the National Archives Building. Many secrets are buried in the piles of paper held in that building, but one document gives a clue to just how far those who proclaim love of country, but seem to prefer love of power, will go to destabilize it in the name of a poisonous “patriotic” ideology. Although seemingly unrelated to JFK’s murder, a plan for attacking Cuba called Operation Northwoods was declassified by the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board in 1997. It remained clouded in obscurity until James Bamford wrote about it his book on the National Security Agency titled “Body of Secrets” back in 2001. Even so, it has remained unknown to most, another victim of the mainstream media’s memory hole.
Written in May of 1962, a month after the Bay of Pigs fiasco; five months before the Cuban missile crisis; and a year before President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated; the Northwoods document illustrates in horrifying language that Kennedy, like Obama, had “hold over’s” and “loyalists” willing to risk millions of American lives to further their own agenda.
Despite a legion of Soviet Missiles pointed toward America, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, guided by Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer and goaded by Curtis “Bombs Away” LeMay, were itching to kill themselves some Communists—even after Kennedy made it clear he did not want a war with Cuba. Scorning the wishes of the President and the restrictions of the US constitution, the Joint Chiefs contrived and plotted a way to stir one up. Duplicitous whispers no doubt echoed through the halls of power then, too. Mr. Cheney cannot keep his telescopic gun scopes from covertly targeting Iran, just as The Joint Chiefs’ fixation on Cuba led them to concoct a chaos-inducing secret plan to undermine their President, as the follow memo proves:
How far were the Joint Chiefs of 1962 willing to go?
- "It is possible to create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has shot down a chartered civil airliner enroute (sic) from the United States to Jamaica, Guatemala, Pamama or Venzuela.
- “We could blow up a US ship in Guantanamo bay and blame Cuba.”
- “We could develop a communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even Washington.”
For the complete Joint chiefs/Cassius collage see: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf
We all remember how plotting and conniving against a democratically-elected president ended in November of 1963. And we have heard the comparisons between the young, vibrant JFK and this new President. May the parallels end there. Past cannot be Prologue.
“Forever and Forever farewell Cassius.”
