New Castro Documents Released

[David Stager]

Posted at 6:56 a.m. PST Tuesday, November 18, 1997

At a tense time, plots abounded to
humiliate Castro

WASHINGTON (AP) -- At the height of the Cold War, American military
strategists recommended a string of bizarre events intended to harass
and humiliate
Fidel Castro or get him overthrown, newly released Defense Department
documents show.

Some 1,500 pages of Pentagon memos show that military strategists
cooked up
plans to fake photos of Castro ``with two beauties in any situation
desired''; to
simulate the downing of American planes or the sinking of a U.S. ship
to provide the
pretext for a Cuban invasion; to use Cuban refugee pilots to provoke a
``distracting''
in-flight argument with a Cuban pilot over the radio; or to distribute
valid one-way
airline tickets to Mexico City or Caracas, Venezuela, ``to create
unrest and
dissension amongst the Cuban people.''

The memos were generated at a time when U.S. policy-makers were
preoccupied
with the threat they thought Castro posed. Many were written after the
aborted
April 1961 American-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion and before the
October 1962
showdown between the United States and the Soviet Union over the
placement of
missiles just 90 miles off American shores.

One plan, called ``Operation Dirty Trick,'' was intended to pin the
blame on Castro
in the event that the Feb. 20, 1962, Mercury-Atlas flight of astronaut
John Glenn,
America's first orbital flight, ended disastrously.

The objective, said a 1962 memo entitled ``Possible Actions to Provoke,
Harass or
Disrupt Cuba,'' was ``to provide irrevocable proof that, should the
Mercury manned
orbit flight fail, the fault lies with the Communists et al Cuba.''

``This would be accomplished by manufacturing various pieces of
evidence which
would prove electronic interference on the part of the Cubans.''

The ``Dirty Trick'' memo was among a number of previously classified
military
documents from 1962 to 1964 that were released by the Pentagon at the
instigation
of the Assassination Record Review Board.

The board is a small agency created by Congress to make available any
records
related to the assassination of President Kennedy.

``These documents further expand the historical record by illustrating
the United
States government's deep interest in developing a policy that would
force Castro
from power during the early 1960s,'' said historian Anna Nelson, a
member of the
board. When Kennedy was killed, Cuba was immediately suspected of
involvement.

The documents show that:

--On April 10, 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed to Defense
Secretary Robert
S. McNamara that the United States overthrow the Castro government.

``In view of the increasing military and subversive threat to the
United States and
the nations of the Western Hemisphere posed by the communist regime in
Cuba, the
Joint Chiefs of Staff recommend that a national policy of early
military intervention
in Cuba be adopted by the United States,'' said a memo signed by the
late Army
Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The military
leaders
offered the opinion that this could be done ``without risk of general
war.''

--The month before, the Joint Chiefs' ``Cuba Project'' suggested
staging ``a
`Remember the Maine' incident'' by blowing up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo
Bay and
blaming Cuba or by staging the disappearance of an Air Force plane and
blaming
Cuban MIGs for downing it. ``Remember the Maine'' was the slogan
Americans
adopted when they blamed Spain for sinking that American warship in
Cuban
waters and went to war against Spain in 1898.

--To disillusion ordinary Cubans, a memo recommended that a faked
picture
showing ``an obese Castro'' with two women ``and a table brimming over
with the
most delectable Cuba food'' be airdropped or circulated in Cuba. The
caption would
say something like, ``My ration is different.''

Said the Pentagon plan: ``This should put even a Commie Dictator in the
proper
perspective with the underprivileged masses.''

A memo written by Army Chief of Staff Earle G. Wheeler a month after
Kennedy's
assassination said the new president, Lyndon Johnson, opposed
``sabotage and
harassment'' and opposed any ``high-risk actions.''