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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 11, 2017 at 12:10 am
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un has threatened to launch possibly nuclear-tipped missiles at Guam, an unincorporated United States territory in the Western Pacific Ocean.
And President Donald Trump has responded with a threat to bring “fire and fury” to North Korea if it does.
Will their exchange of threats lead to all-out nuclear war?
The last time that Americans faced such a threat came 55 years ago, during the Presidency of John F. Kennedy.
On January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro swept triumphantly into Havana after a two-year guerrilla campaign against Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Fidel Castro
Almost immediately, hundreds of thousands of Cubans began fleeing to America. The first émigrés were more than 215,000 Batista followers. The exodus escalated, peaking at approximately 78,000 in 1962.
In October, 1962, Castro stopped regularly scheduled travel between the two countries, and asylum seekers began sailing from Cuba to Florida.
Between 1962 and 1979, hundreds of thousands of Cubans entered the United States under the Attorney General’s parole authority.
By 2008, more than 1.24 million Cubans were living in the United States, mostly in South Florida, where the population of Miami was about one-third Cuban. Their sheer numbers transformed the state’s political, economic and cultural life. And not entirely for the better.
Many of these Cubans viewed themselves as political exiles, rather than immigrants, hoping to eventually return to Cuba after its Communist regime fell from power.
The large number of Cubans in South Florida, particularly in Miami’s “Little Havana,” allowed them to preserve their culture and customs to a degree rare for immigrant groups.
With so many discontented immigrants concentrated in Florida, they became a potential force for politicians to court.
And the issue guaranteed to sway their votes was unrelenting hostility to Castro. Unsurprisingly, most of their votes went to right-wing Republicans.
John F. Kennedy was the first President to face this dilemma.
During the closing months of the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the CIA had begun training Cuban exiles for an invasion of their former homeland.
The exiles’ goal: To do what Castro had done—seek refuge in the mountains and launch a successful anti-Castro revolution.
But word of the coming invasion quickly leaked: The exiles were terrible secret-keepers. (A joke at the CIA went: “A Cuban thinks a secret is something you tell to only 300 people.”)
Kennedy insisted the invasion must appear to be an entirely Cuban enterprise. He refused to commit U.S. Marines and Air Force bombers.
The invaders landed on April 17, 1961 at the Bay of Pigs—and were quickly overwhelmed, with hundreds of the men taken prisoner.
Kennedy publicly took the blame for its failure: “Victory has a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan.” But privately he seethed, and ordered the CIA to redouble its efforts to remove Castro at all costs.
To make certain his order was carried out, he appointed his brother, Robert—then Attorney General—to oversee the CIA’s “Castro removal” program.
Robert F. Kennedy and John F. Kennedy
It’s here that America’s obsession with Cuba entered its darkest and most disgraceful period.
The CIA and the Mafia entered into an unholy alliance to assassinate Castro—each for its own benefit:
The CIA wanted to please Kennedy.
The mobsters wanted to regain its casino and brothel holdings that had made Cuba their private playground in pre-Castro times. They also hoped to use their pose as patriots to win immunity from future prosecution.
The CIA supplied poisons and explosives to various members of the Mafia. It was then up to the mobsters to assassinate Castro.
The CIA asked Johnny Roselli, a mobster linked to the Chicago syndicate, to go to Florida in 1961 and 1962 to organize assassination teams of Cuban exiles. They were to infiltrate their homeland and assassinate Castro.
Johnny Roselli
Rosselli called upon two other crime figures: Chicago Mafia boss Sam Giancana and Santos Trafficante, the Costra Nostra chieftain for Tampa, for assistance.
Sam Giancana
Giancana, using the name “Sam Gold” in his dealings with the CIA, was meanwhile being hounded by the FBI on direct orders of Attorney General Robert Kennedy.
The mobsters were authorized to offer $150,000 to anyone who would kill Castro and were promised any support the Agency could yield.
Giancana was to locate someone who was close enough to Castro to be able to drop pills into his food. Trafficante would serve as courier to Cuba, helping to make arrangements for the murder on the island.
Rosselli was to be the main link between all of the participants in the plot.
The available sources disagree on what actually happened. Some believe that the Mob made a genuine effort to “whack” Fidel.
Others are convinced the mobsters simply ran a scam on the government. They would pretend to carry out their “patriotic duty” while in fact making no effort at all to penetrate Castro’s security.
The CIA’s war against Castro was known as Operation Mongoose–the mongoose being a traditional enemy of the cobra. And those entrusted with this assignment were known as the Special Group.
“We were hysterical about Castro at about the time of the Bay of Pigs and thereafter,” Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara later testified before Congress about these efforts. “And there was pressure from JFK and RFK to do something about Castro.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on December 2, 2016 at 12:02 am
“John and Robert Kennedy knew what they were doing. They waged a vicious war against Fidel Castro–a war someone had to lose.”
And the loser turned out to be John F. Kennedy.
So writes investigative reporter Gus Russo in Live By the Sword: The Secret War Against Castro and the Death of JFK, published in 1998.
In what is almost certainly the definitive account of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Russo reaches some startling–but highly documented–conclusions:
- Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated Kennedy.
- He did it alone.
- Oswald, a former Marine, was a committed Marxist–whose hero was Castro.
- The CIA’s ongoing campaign to overthrow and/or assassinate Castro was an open secret throughout the Gulf.
- Oswald visited New Orleans in the spring of 1963.
- There he learned that Castro was in the crosshairs of the CIA.
- For this, he blamed John F. Kennedy.
- Oswald told his Russian-born wife, Marina: “Fidel Castro needs defenders. I’m going to join his army of volunteers.”
- Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner, murdered Oswald because he was distraught over Kennedy’s death.
- Ruby was not part of a Mafia conspiracy to silence Oswald.
- Skeptics of the Warren Commission–which concluded that Oswald had acted alone–asked the wrong question: “Who killed Kennedy?”
- They should have asked: “Why was he killed?”
- The answer–according to Russo: “The Kennedys’ relentless pursuit of Castro and Cuba backfired in tragedy on that terrible day in November, 1963.”
Another book well worth reading about America’s Cuban obsession during the early 1960s is American Tabloid, by James Ellroy.
Although a novel, it vividly captures the atmosphere of intrigue, danger and sleaziness that permeated that era in a way that dry, historical documents never can.
“The 50’s are finished,” reads its paperback dust jacket. “Zealous young lawyer Robert Kennedy has a red-hot jones to nail Jimmy Hoffa. JFK has his eyes on the Oval Office.
“J. Edgar Hoover is swooping down on the Red Menace. Howard Hughes is dodging subpoenas and digging up Kennedy dirt. And Castro is mopping up the bloody aftermath of his new Communist nation….
“Mob bosses, politicos, snitches, psychos, fall guys and femmes fatale. They’re mixing up a Molotov cocktail guaranteed to end the country’s innocence with a bang.”
Among the legacies of America’s twisted romance with anti-Castro Cubans:
- Following the JFK assassination, there was a cover-up.
- Its purpose: To protect the reputation of the United States Government–and that of its newly-martyred President.
- The CIA and FBI concealed the CIA-Mafia assassination plots from the Warren Commission assigned to investigate Kennedy’s murder.
- Other government officials participating in the cover-up included Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and President Lyndon B. Johnson.
- Ironically, this secrecy ignited the widespread–and false–belief that the President had died at the hands of a government conspiracy.
- Robert Kennedy feared that his relentless pursuit of Castro might have led Castro to “take out” JFK first.
- Fearing his own assassination if he continued Kennedy’s efforts to murder Castro, President Johnson ordered the CIA to halt its campaign to overthrow and/or assassinate the Cuban leader.
- The huge Cuban community throughout Florida–and especially Miami–continues to exert a blackmailing influence on American politics.
- Right-wing politicians from Richard Nixon to Donald Trump have reaped electoral rewards by catering to the demands of this hate-obsessed voting block.
- These Cuban ex-patriots hope that the United States will launch a full-scale military invasion of the island to remove Castro.
- Having grown rich and soft in the United States, they fear to risk their own lives by returning to Cuba to overthrow the Castro regime–as he had overthrown Fulgencio Batista.
- Only President Barack Obama had the political courage to re-establish diplomatic relations with Cuba–in 2015.
- This occurred long after the United States had done so with such former enemies as the Soviet Union, China and Vietnam.
- With President-elect Donald Trump due to take office in January, 2017, America’s future relations with Cuba remain in doubt.
The Cuban Missile Crisis remains the single most dangerous moment of the 50-year Cold War, when the world stood only minutes away from nuclear Armageddon.
That crisis stemmed from the American Right’s twisted obsession with Cuba, an obsession that continues today.
So what are the lessons to be learned from that obsession?
- It is long past time to demand major changes in our foreign policy toward Cuba.
- It’s time to end the half-century contamination of American politics by those Cubans who live only for their hatred of Castro–and those political candidates who live to exploit it.
- (For example: Marco Rubio got elected U.S. Senator from Florida in 2010 by claiming that his parents had been forced to leave Cuba in 1959, after Fidel Castro took power. In fact, they had left Cuba in 1956–during the Batista dictatorship.)
- It’s time to end this wag-the-dog relationship. A population of about 1,700,000 Cuban exiles living in Florida should not be allowed to shape the domestic and foreign policy of a nation of 300 million.
- Those who continue to hate–or love–Fidel Castro should be left to their own private feud. But that is a feud they should settle on their own island, and not from the shores of the United States.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on December 1, 2016 at 10:46 am
On October 22, 1962, President John F. Kennedy went on nationwide TV to announce the discovery of the missiles and his blockade of Cuba.
He warned that any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation would be regarded as an attack on the United States by the Soviet Union–and would trigger “a full retaliatory response” upon the U.S.S.R.
President John F. Kennedy addresses the nation
And he demanded that the Soviets remove all of their offensive weapons from Cuba:
“The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are, but it is the one most consistent with our character and courage as a nation and our commitments around the world.
“The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender or submission.”
On October 26, the United States raised the readiness level of SAC forces to DEFCON 2–the step just short of war. For the only time in U.S. history, B-52 bombers were dispersed to various locations and made ready to take off, fully equipped, on 15 minutes’ notice.
Other measures taken included:
- One-eighth of America’s 1,436 bombers were on airborne alert.
- About 145 intercontinental ballistic missiles stood on ready alert.
- Air Defense Command redeployed 161 nuclear-armed interceptors to 16 dispersal fields within nine hours with one-third maintaining 15-minute alert status.
- Twenty-three nuclear-armed B-52 were sent to orbit points within striking distance of the Soviet Union.
An invasion date was set for October 29. But the Kennedy Administration–and the American military–didn’t know that the Russian soldiers guarding the missiles had been armed with tactical nuclear weapons.
Had the Marines gone in, those mini-nukes would have been used. And a fullscale nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union would have almost certainly followed.
At the height of the crisis, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy offered a solution.
Khrushchev had sent two teletypes to Kennedy. The first had agreed to remove the missiles, but the second had demanded that the United States remove its own missiles from Turkey, which bordered the Soviet Union.
Robert Kennedy’s solution: The administration should ignore the second message–and announce that it had accepted Khrushchev’s offer to remove the missiles.
After this announcement was made, President Kennedy said to his advisers: “It can go either way now.”
John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office
The crisis ended on October 28. Under enormous pressure, Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles from Cuba.
Behind his decision lay a secret promise by the Kennedy administration to remove its obsolete nuclear missiles from Turkey, which bordered the Soviet Union. And a public pledge to not invade Cuba.
On the night the crisis ended, there occurred a prophetic exchange between the two Kennedy brothers.
JFK: “Maybe this is the night I should go to the theater”–a reference to Abraham Lincoln’s fatal attendance of Ford’s Theater at the end of the Civil War.
RFK: “If you go, I want to go with you.”
John F. and Robert F. Kennedy
But President Kennedy was not finished with Castro. While continuing the campaign of sabotage throughout Cuba, the Kennedys were preparing something far bigger: A fullscale American invasion of the island.
On October 4, 1963, the Joint Chiefs of Staff submitted its latest version of the invasion plan, known as OPLAN 380-63. Its timetable went:
- January, 1964: Infiltration into Cuba by Cuban exiles.
- July 15, 1964: U.S. conventional forces join the fray.
- August 3, 1964: All-out U.S. air strikes on Cuba.
- October 1, 1964: Full-scale invasion to install “a government friendly to the U.S.”
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Robert Kennedy–referring to the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor–had resisted demands for a “sneak attack” on Cuba by saying: “I don’t want my brother to be the Tojo of the 1960s.”
Now the Kennedys planned such an attack on Cuba just one month before the November, 1964 Presidential election.
Then fate–in the unlikely figure of Lee Harvey Oswald–intervened.
On November 22, 1963, while the President rode through Dallas in an open-air automobile, a rifle-wielding assassin opened fire. He scored two hits on Kennedy–in the back of the neck and head. The second wound proved instantly fatal.
The nation and the world were shocked–and plunged into deep mourning.
But for some of those who had waged a secret, lethal war against Fidel Castro for the previous two years, Kennedy’s death–at least in retrospect–didn’t come as a surprise.
Robert Kennedy, in particular, spent the remaining years of his life agonizing over the possibility that his highly personal war against Castro had backfired.
That Castro, fed up with the CIA’s assassination plots against him, had retaliated with one of his own.
Robert Kennedy’s fears and guilt were compounded by the fact that, while waging war on Castro, he had waged an equally ruthless crusade against organized crime.
He knew that some of the mobsters he had tried to send to prison had played a major role in the CIA’s efforts to “hit” Castro. Had the Mafia–believing itself the victim of a double-cross–put out a “contract” on JFK instead?
It was a question that haunted him until the day he died.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 30, 2016 at 12:02 am
In April, 1961, the CIA tried to overthrow the Communist regime of Cuba’s “Maximum Leader,” Fidel Castro, at the Bay of Pigs.
When that failed, President John F. Kennedy ordered Castro’s removal through a campaign of sabotage and assassination.
These covert operatives became known within the CIA as the Special Group, and were ultimately supervised by Robert F. Kennedy, the President’s brother and Attorney General.
The war against Castro became known within the CIA as Operation Mongoose.
But not everyone in the CIA was enthusiastic about the “get Castro” effort.
“Everyone at CIA was surprised at Kennedy’s obsession with Fidel,” recalled Sam Halpern, who was assigned to the Cuba Project. “They thought it was a waste of time. We all knew [Fidel] couldn’t hurt us. Most of us at CIA initially liked Kennedy, but why go after this little guy?
“One thing is for sure: Kennedy wasn’t doing it out of national security concerns. It was a personal thing. The Kennedy family felt personally burnt by the Bay of Pigs and sought revenge.”
It was all-out war. Among the tactics used:
- Hiring Cuban gangsters to murder Cuban police officials and Soviet technicians.
- Sabotaging mines.
- Paying up to $100,000 per “hit” for the murder or kidnapping of Cuban officials.
- Using biological and chemical warfare against the Cuban sugar industry.
“Bobby (Kennedy) wanted boom and bang all over the island,” recalled Halpern. “It was stupid. The pressure from the White House was very great.”
Among that “boom and bang” were a series of assassination plots against Castro, in which the Mafia was to be a key player.
Chicago Mobster Johnny Rosselli proposed a simple plan: through its underworld connections in Cuba, the Mafia would recruit a Cuban in Castro’s entourage, such as a waiter or bodyguard, who would poison him.
The CIA’s Technical Services division produced a botulinus toxin which was then injected into Castro’s favorite brand of cigars. The CIA also produced simpler botulinus toxin pills that could be dissolved in his food or drink.
But the deputized Mafia contacts failed to deliver any of the poisons to Castro.
Rosselli told the CIA that the first poisoner had been discharged from Castro’s employ before he could kill him, and the back-up agent got “cold feet.”
Other proposals or attempts included:
- Planting colorful seashells rigged to explode at a site where Castro liked to go skindiving.
- Trying to arrange for his being presented with a wetsuit impregnated with noxious bacteria and mold spores, or with lethal chemical agents.
- Attempting to infect Castro’s scuba regulator with tuberculous bacilli.
- Trying to douse his handkerchiefs, tea and coffee with other lethal bacteria.
Former members of the Kennedy Administration later insisted that neither John nor Robert Kennedy knew or approved of these assassination plots. But the sheer weight of available evidence indicates otherwise.
Bobby, in particular, was constantly pressing the CIA to “do something” about Castro. In the world of covert action, words like “Kill Castro” aren’t committed to paper. Or even spoken.
Castro, rightly seeing his life and regime threatened, appealed to Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union, for assistance.
1960s poster of Fidel Castro and Nikita Khrushchev
Keizers [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D
Khrushchev was quick to comply: “We must not allow the communist infant to be strangled in its crib,” he told members of his inner circle.
By October, 1962, the Soviet Union had sent more than
- 40,000 soldiers,
- 1,300 field pieces,
- 700 anti-aircraft guns,
- 350 tanks and
- 150 jets
to Cuba to deter another invasion.
Most importantly, Khrushchev began supplying Castro with nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles.
Their discovery, on October 15, 1962, ignited the single most dangerous confrontation of the 50-year Cold War.
Suddenly, the United States and the Soviet Union–bristling with nuclear weapons–found themselves on the brink of nuclear war.
At the time, Kennedy officials claimed they couldn’t understand why Khrushchev had placed nuclear missiles in Cuba. “Maybe Khrushchev’s gone mad” was a typical public musing.
This remained the official American view for years afterward–as depicted in Robert Kennedy’s memoir, Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis, published in 1969, the year after his death.
No admission was made that JFK had been waging a no-holds-barred campaign to overthrow the Cuban government and assassinate its leader.
The same proved true for the 1974 doc-u-drama, The Missiles of October, starring William Devane as John F. Kennedy and Martin Sheen as Robert Kennedy.
On October 16, President Kennedy was informed of the missile installations. He immediately convened a group of his 12 most important advisers, which became known as Ex-Comm, for Executive Committee.
Then followed seven days of guarded and intense debate by Kennedy and his advisers. Some of the participants–such as Air Force General Curtis LeMay–urged an all-out air strike against the missile sites.
Others–such as Adlai Stevenson, the United States delegate to the United Nations–urged a reliance on quiet diplomacy.
It was Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara who suggested a middle course: A naval blockade–a “quarantine” in Kennedy’s softened term–around Cuba. This would hopefully prevent the arrival of more Soviet offensive weapons on the island.
Finally, the President decided to to impose a naval blockade.
On October 22, Kennedy went on nationwide TV to announce the discovery of the missiles and his blockade of Cuba.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 29, 2016 at 12:08 am
On November 25, Fidel Castro, Cuba’s longtime “Maximum Leader,” died at the age of 90.
Old age and disease finally achieved what years of plotting by CIA and Mafia assassins could not.
To his supporters he was a tireless champion of the poor and a foe of American imperialism. To his enemies he was a ruthless dictator who drove his country to economic ruin in the name of a failed ideology–communism.
His reign began on January 1, 1959, when he swept triumphantly into Havana after a two-year guerrilla campaign against Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Fidel Castro
Almost immediately, hundreds of thousands of Cubans began fleeing to America. The first émigrés were more than 215,000 Batista followers. The exodus increased, peaking at approximately 78,000 in 1962.
In October, 1962, Castro stopped regularly scheduled travel between the two countries, and asylum seekers began sailing from Cuba to Florida.
Between 1962 and 1979, hundreds of thousands of Cubans entered the United States under the Attorney General’s parole authority.
By 2008, more than 1.24 million Cubans were living in the United States, mostly in South Florida, where the population of Miami was about one-third Cuban. Their sheer numbers transformed the state’s political, economic and cultural life. And not entirely for the better.
Many of these Cubans viewed themselves as political exiles, rather than immigrants, hoping to eventually return to Cuba after its Communist regime fell from power.
The large number of Cubans in South Florida, particularly in Miami’s “Little Havana,” allowed them to preserve their culture and customs to a degree rare for immigrant groups.
With so many discontented immigrants concentrated in Florida, they became a potential force for politicians to court.
And the issue guaranteed to sway their votes was unrelenting hostility to Castro. Unsurprisingly, most of their votes went to Right-wing Republicans.
John F. Kennedy was the first President to face this dilemma.
During the closing months of the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the CIA had begun training Cuban exiles for an invasion of their former homeland.
The exiles’ goal: To do what Castro had done–seek refuge in the mountains and launch a successful anti-Castro revolution.
But word of the coming invasion quickly leaked: The exiles were terrible secret-keepers. (A joke at the CIA went: “A Cuban thinks a secret is something you tell to only 300 people.”)
Kennedy insisted the invasion must appear to be an entirely Cuban enterprise. He refused to commit U.S. Marines and Air Force bombers.
More than 1,400 invaders landed on April 17, 1961 at the Bay of Pigs–and were quickly overwhelmed, with hundreds of the men taken prisoner.
Kennedy publicly took the blame for its failure: “Victory has a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan.” But privately he seethed, and ordered the CIA to redouble its efforts to remove Castro at all costs.
To make certain his order was carried out, he appointed his brother, Robert–then Attorney General–to oversee the CIA’s “Castro removal” program.
Robert F. Kennedy and John F. Kennedy
It’s here that America’s obsession with Cuba entered its darkest and most disgraceful period.
The CIA and the Mafia entered into an unholy alliance to assassinate Castro–each for its own benefit:
- The CIA wanted to please Kennedy.
- The mobsters wanted to regain their casino and brothel holdings that had made Cuba their private playground in pre-Castro times. They also hoped to use their pose as patriots to win immunity from future prosecution.
The CIA supplied poisons and explosives to various members of the Mafia. It was then up to the mobsters to assassinate Castro.
The CIA asked Johnny Roselli, a mobster linked to the Chicago syndicate, to go to Florida in 1961 and 1962 to organize assassination teams of Cuban exiles. They were to infiltrate their homeland and assassinate Castro.
Johnny Roselli
Rosselli called upon two other crime figures: Chicago Mafia boss Sam Giancana and Santos Trafficante, the Costra Nostra chieftain for Tampa, for assistance.
Sam Giancana
Giancana, using the name “Sam Gold” in his dealings with the CIA, was meanwhile being hounded by the FBI on direct orders of Attorney General Robert Kennedy.
The mobsters were authorized to offer $150,000 to anyone who would kill Castro and were promised any support the Agency could yield.
Giancana was to locate someone who was close enough to Castro to be able to drop pills into his food. Trafficante would serve as courier to Cuba, helping to make arrangements for the murder on the island.
Rosselli was to be the main link between all of the participants in the plot.
The available sources disagree on what actually happened. Some believe that the Mob made a genuine effort to “whack” Fidel.
Others are convinced the mobsters simply ran a scam on the government. They pretended to carry out their “patriotic duty” while in fact making no effort at all to penetrate Castro’s security.
The CIA’s war against Castro was known as Operation Mongoose–the mongoose being a traditional enemy of the cobra. And those entrusted with this assignment were known as the Special Group.
“We were hysterical about Castro at about the time of the Bay of Pigs and thereafter,” Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara later testified before Congress about these efforts. “And there was pressure from JFK and RFK to do something about Castro.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on September 8, 2016 at 1:21 am
In late July, Donald Trump’s new spokeswoman, Katrina Pierson, accepted an impossible mission that even Jim Phelps would have turned down:
Convince Americans that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were responsible for the death of Captain Humayun Khan, who was killed by a truck-bomb in Iraq in 2004.
Appearing on CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer on August 2, Pierson said: “It was under Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that changed the rules of engagements that probably cost his life.”
Katrina Pierson
Totally ignored in that scenario:
- President George W. Bush lied the nation into a needless war that cost the lives of 4,486 Americans and wounded another 33,226.
- The war began in 2003–and Khan was killed in 2004.
- Barack Obama became President in 2009–almost five years after Khan’s death.
- Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State the same year.
- Obama, elected Illinois U.S. Senator in 2004, vigorously opposed the Iraq war throughout his term.
Pierson’s attempt to rewrite history touched off a frenzy on Twitter, leading to the creation of the hashtag #KatrinaPiersonHistory. Its purpose: To mock Pierson’s revisionist take on history.
Among the tweets offered:
- Hillary Clinton slashed funding for security at the Ford Theater, leading to Lincoln’s assassination.
- Obama gave Amelia Earhart directions to Kenya.
- Remember the Alamo? Obama and Hillary let it happen.
- Obama and Clinton kidnapped the Lindbergh baby.
Not content with blaming President Obama for the death of a man he never sent into combat, Pierson claimed that Obama started the Afghanistan war.
Appearing again on CNN, Pierson said the Afghan war began “after 2007,” when Al Qaeda “was in ashes” following the American troop surge in Iraq.
“Remember, we weren’t even in Afghanistan by this time,” Pierson said. “Barack Obama went into Afghanistan, creating another problem.”
In fact, President George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Afghanistan following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Millions of Americans who lived through 9/11 remember that.
When your spokeswoman becomes a nationwide laughingstock, your own credibility goes down the toilet as well.
In July an Associated Press/GfK poll found that half of Americans saw Donald Trump as “racist”–and only 7% of blacks viewed him favorably.
There are numerous reasons for this:
- His enthusiastic support by racist white supremacist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party.
- His “birther” attacks on President Obama as a non-citizen from Kenya–and thus ineligible to hold the Presidency.
- His attacks on the Black Lives Matter movement and calling on his supporters at rallies to rough up minority protesters.
Since 1964, blacks have overwhelmingly voted for Democratic Presidential candidates. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s won their loyalty with his support for and passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
President Johnson signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act
Republican Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater opposed it–as did the majority of his party.
Since 1964, fewer than six percent of blacks have voted for Republican Presidential candidates. Whites have not only remained the majority of Republican voters but have become the single most important voting bloc among them.
John McCain received four percent of black votes in 2008 and Mitt Romney received six percent in 2012. When a Republican collapses into single digits among blacks and other minorities, it reduces the number of white votes a Democrat needs to win the presidency.
To counter this, Donald Trump has turned to his Director of African-American Outreach: Omarosa Manigault.
Trump made the appointment just hours before the first night of the Republican National Convention.
Omarosa Manigault
Manigault is best known as the villain of Trump’s reality-TV show, “The Apprentice”–where she was fired on three different seasons. Her credentials include a Ph.D. in communications, a preacher’s license, and topping TV Guide’s list of greatest reality TV villains in 2008.
During the Clinton administration she held four jobs in two years, and was thoroughly disliked in all of them.
“She was asked to leave [her last job] as quickly as possible, she was so disruptive,” said Cheryl Shavers, the former Under Secretary for Technology at the Commerce Department. “One woman wanted to slug her.”
In her role as Trump’s ambassador to blacks, Omarosa has inspired others to want to slug her. Appearing on Fox Business, she ignored Fox panelist Tamera Holder’s question on why blacks should support Trump,and then mocked her “big boobs.”
Manigault isn’t bothered that blacks regard Trump so poorly in polls: “My reality is that I’m surrounded by people who want to see Donald Trump as the next president of the United States who are African-American.”
Appointing as your public relations director a woman who gratuitously insults and infuriates people is not the move of a smart administrator. Nor the move of a smart Presidential candidate.
If Donald Trump becomes President, he will inherit the authority to appoint thousands of officials to domestic and foreign agencies. Voters have a right to judge him on the quality of the appointments he has already made to his own campaign.
A review of those named within this series gives serious cause for concern.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on September 7, 2016 at 12:18 am
Even the Secret Service can’t protect Donald Trump from the notoriety of his supporters.
The current manager of Trump’s Presidential campaign is Stephen Bannon, who’s under fire for anti-Semitic remarks and having been registered to vote at a vacant house in Florida.
But before Bannon signed on, his predecessor was Paul Manafort, whom Trump hired to add stability to his often scattershot campaign.
Paul Manafort
For Trump, Manafort came with a dangerous liability: His longstanding ties to pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine–which inevitably led to Vladimir Putin.
For years, Manafort worked for Viktor Yanukovych, a Putin protege who was deposed as Ukraine’s president in 2014 amid widespread demonstrations.
In August, the New York Times unearthed handwritten ledgers that listed $12.7 million in cash payments to Manafort from Yanukovych’s political party between 2007 and 2012.
Trump’s own ties to Putin were already facing increasing scrutiny for a number of reasons:
- Trump’s and Putin’s public expressions of admiration for each other’s toughness.
- The removal from the Republican party platform, written at the convention in Cleveland in July, of references to arming Ukraine in its fight against pro-Russian rebels who have been armed by the Kremlin.
- In July, high-ranking Democratic officials–including presumptive Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton–were embarrassed by a hack of thousands of Democratic National Committee emails. This was quickly traced to Russian hackers allegedly working on behalf of the Kremlin. Their alleged motive: To tip the election in favor of Trump.
- Trump drew more suspicion upon himself by inviting Russia to find 30,000 emails deleted from the private server used by Clinton while she was Secretary of State in the Obama administration: “I think you will probably be mightily rewarded by our press.”
Added to Manafort’s embarrassing ties to Russia was another minus: He and Trump didn’t get along. Trump had begun calling him “low energy”–a term he once aimed at his former GOP rival, Jeb Bush.
Manafort wanted Trump to bring more self-discipline to the campaign and concentrate his fire solely on his Presidential rival, Hillary Clinton. Instead, in late July, Trump ignited a days-long feud with members of a Gold Star family, costing him support within the veterans community.
Manafort also wanted Trump to establish a conventional chain-of-command organization typical of a Presidential campaign. But Trump resisted, preferring to improvise and rely on his instincts and the counsel of his family.
In late August, Trump fired him.
Foreign policy nearly always plays a major role in Presidential elections. Yet Trump has shown a surprising lack of respect for a detailed knowledge of it.
Asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” who he consults about foreign policy, Trump replied; “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things.”
In late August, former Republican Congresswoman (2007-2015) Michele Bachmann claimed that she was now advising Trump on foreign policy.
Michele Bachmann
A member of the Right-wing Tea Party, Bachmann has said that diplomacy “is our option” in dealing with Iran–but wouldn’t rule out a nuclear strike.
Among the statements she’s made:
- “I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?'”
- “Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas.”
- “President Obama waived a ban on arming terrorists in order to allow weapons to go to the Syrian opposition….U.S. taxpayers are now paying to give arms to terrorists, including Al-Qaeda.”
- “I’m a believer in Jesus Christ. As I look at the End Times scripture, this says to me that the leaf is on the fig tree and we are to understand the signs of the times, which is your ministry, we are to understand where we are in God’s end time history.”
A woman who believes that God causes earthquakes and hurricanes, and that mankind has arrived at “End Times,” can hardly be a comfort to rational voters.
Another Trump adviser is former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes. His assignment: Prepare Trump for the upcoming fall debates with Clinton.
But Ailes comes with huge notoriety: In July he was fired from Fox News on multiple charges of sexual harassment.
At first, only Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson dared accuse him. But then more than two dozen women came forward to accuse Ailes of sexual harassment.
On September 6, Carlson reached an out-of-court settlement with the parent company of Fox News for a reported $20 million.
At least two other women have settled with Fox, an anonymous source told the New York Times. And others may be planning to file lawsuits.
All of which makes Ailes the poster boy for sexual harassment.
Trump has been married three times and has often boasted of his sexual conquests–including ones he believes he could have had.
(Shortly after the 1997 death of Princess Diana, he told a radio interviewer he could have “nailed” her if he had wanted to.)
In a mid-March CNN/ORC poll, 73% of female voters voiced a negative view of Trump. Associating with a notorious sexual harasser like Roger Ailes can only do even more damage to his candidacy.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on September 6, 2016 at 12:08 am
“The first impression that one gets of a ruler and his brains is from seeing the men that he has about him.
“When they are competent and loyal one can always consider him wise, as he has been able to recognize their ability and keep them faithful.
“But when they are the reverse, one can always form an unfavorable opinion of him, because the first mistake that he makes is in making this choice.”
So wrote the Italian statesman Niccolo Machiavelli more than 500 years ago in his famous treatise on politics, The Prince.
And his words remain as true in our day as they were in his.
Niccolo Machiavelli
They are especially important to remember when evaluating Donald Trump’s talents as an administrator.
In pursuing the Presidency, he is seeking the most powerful office in the world, one that would give him authority to appoint thousands of officials to domestic and foreign agencies.
Consider some of those he has placed around him in his campaign for President:
Founder of Latinos for Trump Marco Gutierrez told MSNBC’s Joy Reid: “My culture is a very dominant culture. And it’s imposing, and it’s causing problems. If you don’t do something about it, you’re gonna have taco trucks every corner.”
At a Tea Party for Trump rally at a Harley-Davidson dealership in Festus, Missouri, former Missouri Republican Party director Ed Martin reassured the crowd that they’re not racist for hating Mexicans: “Donald Trump is for Americans first.
“He’s for us first. It is not selfish to support, or to be for, your neighbor, as opposed to someone from another nation. And Mexico, Mexicans, that’s not a race. You’re not racist if you don’t like Mexicans. They’re from a nation.”
From the outset of his Presidential campaign, Trump has polled extremely poorly among Hispanic voters. This is perfectly understandable, given his comments about Mexicans as:
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”
Trump has also promised to “build a great, great wall on our southern border and I will have Mexico pay for that wall.”
Donald Trump
These comments made Trump the winner of the Republican primaries, where voters always nominate the most extreme Rightist candidate.
But the general election phrase requires Republican and Democratic candidates to appeal to both their base and beyond it. As a result, Trump is now desperate to attract the votes of Hispanics.
Comments such as those by Marco Gutierrez and Ed Martin guarantee this won’t happen.
Wayne Root, opening speaker and master of ceremonies at many Trump events, told Virginia radio host Rob Schilling that people on public assistance and women who get their birth control through Obamacare should not be allowed to vote:
“If the people who paid the taxes were the only ones allowed to vote, we’d [Republicans] have landslide victories. But you’re allowing people to vote. This explains everything! People with conflict of interest shouldn’t be allowed to vote. If you collect welfare, you have no right to vote.
“The day you get off welfare, you get your voting rights back. The reality is, why are you allowed to have this conflict of interest that you vote for the politician who wants to keep your welfare checks coming and your food stamps and your aid to dependent children and your free health care and your Medicaid, your Medicare and your Social Security and everything else?”
Wayne Root
According to a March Gallup poll, 70% of women–or seven in 10–have an unfavorable opinion of Trump.
Such comments as Root’s aren’t going to increase Trump’s popularity with them. Nor with anyone who receives Medicaid, Medicare or Social Security.
Donald Trump’s new campaign manager, Stephen Bannon, was charged with misdemeanor domestic violence, battery, and dissuading a witness in 1996, after an altercation with his then-wife, Mary Louise Piccard, in Santa Monica, California.
Picard also said in a 2007 court declaration that Bannon didn’t want their twin daughters attending the Archer School for Girls in Los Angeles because many Jewish students were enrolled there.
Stephen Bannon
Not only is this certain to lose Trump votes among women, it will make him unpopular among Jews. A campaign manager charged with anti-Semitism could cost Trump heavily Jewish states like New York and Florida.
In addition: Bannon and another ex-wife, Diane Clohesy, were registered to vote at a vacant house in Florida, a possible violation of election laws in a key swing state.
Republicans have vigorously denied voting rights to tens of thousands on the pretext of “voter fraud.” More than a dozen states still have voting restrictions in place since 2012.
A Washington Post investigation found just 31 credible cases of voter fraud from 2000 to 2014, out of an estimated 1 billion ballots cast in the U.S. during that period.
Meanwhile, voting rights groups have been fighting back–and winning.
“Voter ID” laws in Texas, Wisconsin and North Carolina have been found discriminatory against minorities–who traditionally vote Democratic.
With evidence of Republican fraud like that supplied by Trump’s own campaign manager, victories against “Voter ID” laws may well increase.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, Self-Help, Social commentary on July 6, 2016 at 12:17 am
NO SWIMMING
BEWARE
PLEASE BE AWARE OF ALLIGATORS IN THE LAKE.
So warns a sign at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress Hotel, in Bay Lake, Fla. To drive home the message, it features an eye-catching symbol: A green alligator, its jaws open wide.
Just minutes away lies the Grand Floridian Hotel at Walt Disney World Resort, where, on June 14, a sign read:
STEEP DROP-OFF
DEEP WATER
NO SWIMMING
It’s likely that the parents of two-year-old Lane Graves wish they had chosen the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress Hotel for their vacation spot.
Had they done so, their son might well be alive today.
On June 14, an alligator, estimated at seven feet, snatched Lane as he waded in less than six inches of water at nightfall.
Lane Graves
His father, Matt, rushed into the water to save Lane. But he was attacked by a second alligator as he fought for his son. He suffered several bites before the two alligators disappeared into the lagoon.
The next day, an Orange County Sheriff’s dive team found Lane’s intact body.
The Graves family, natives of landlocked Omaha, Nebraska, were overwhelmed with grief.
“We are devastated and ask for privacy during this extremely difficult time,” said a statement released by a family friend on June 16.
The Graves family were not the only ones shocked by the lack of an alligator warning at Disney.
Several tourists interviewed at the nearby Hyatt shared similar outrage.
“We didn’t know there weren’t any signs like they have here, ‘Beware of Alligators,'” Hyatt guest Chloe Giles, 21, told PEOPLE. “We thought they had a big sign like they have here: ‘Beware of Alligators.’ “
Three weeks before the fatal snatching of Lane Graves, Dani Saunders, Christopher Spackman and their two young daughters, Charlie and Laila, visited Disney in Orlando, Fla. They stayed at the Caribbean Beach Resort, but one night they went to a beach on Bay Lake to watch fireworks.
Grand Floridian Hotel at Walt Disney World Resort
“It’s the same area that the lagoon goes into,” Saunders said. “And we went at the same time– at 9:30 as the other people were there.”
In a state where the alligator population numbers at more than one million, Florida residents know the dangers and keep small children away from ponds and lakes. But many out-of-state visitors aren’t aware of threat posed by the reptiles.
An official at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission stated that May and June are typically mating season for alligators.
The Commission’s executive director, Nick Wiley, announced that his agency had taken and killed five alligators who were suspected of the attack.
Even more damning for Disney, the Orlando Sentinel reported that Disney staff at a nearby resort knew about guests feeding alligators, and had ignored requests to put up a protective fence around the lagoon.
Mike Hamilton, a custodian at the Polynesian Resort Village–a short distance from the Grand Floridian resort–warned his employer that gators were swimming too close to guests and that a protective fence should be erected to keep them at bay.
“The entire property is interconnected via canals so it is difficult to keep [alligators} out of the lakes. Gators are on all of the golf courses. The team attempts to relocate the gators to the uninhabited natural areas as best they can, but the gators don’t understand the boundaries,” former Disney executive Duncan Dickson told the Sentinel.
According to The Wrap, guests at the Polynesian Resort Village–which charges $2,000 and $3,000 per night for a room–commonly feed the alligators.
“Disney has known about the problem of guests feeding the alligators well prior to the opening of the bungalows,” a source told The Wrap.
The day after divers found the body of Lane, Disney announced that it was reviewing its policies about warning signs.
“We are conducting a swift and thorough review of all our processes and protocols,” Walt Disney World Vice President Jacquee Wahler said in a statement on June 16. “This includes the number, placement and working of our signage and warnings.”
Among the changes:
- “Tick Tock,” the Croc from “Peter Pan,” has been removed from the park’s Festival of Fantasy parade.
- So has “Louis,” the trumpet-playing alligator from “The Princess and the Frog,” who was supposed to be part of the Friendship Faire castle show.
- The Jungle Cruise tour guides will no longer joke about crocodiles eating children as they narrate a boat tour through the world’s rivers.
- The Kilimanjaro Safari ride has dropped references to a crocodile pit.
This is typically how an incompetent bureaucracy operates:
- Ignore repeated warnings about a problem that poses a threat to its customers. The reason: To avoid spending money–most of which will otherwise go to the top officials of the company.
- When the predicted disaster occurs, the company issues a public apology–and makes “security theater” gestures to reassure the public.
There is no word as yet whether the Graves family intends to file a wrongful death lawsuit against Walt Disney World. But only such a lawsuit–and a huge financial loss–will convince this corporation to make a genuine effort to protect its guests.
ABC NEWS, CBS NEWS, CENSORSHIP, CLIMATE CHANGE, CNN, FACEBOOK, FLOODING, FLORIDA, FLORIDA CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING, FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION, GLOBAL WARMING, LYING, MIGRATIONS, NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION, NBC NEWS, REPUBLICANS, RICK SCOTT, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, TWITTER
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Politics, Social commentary on March 16, 2016 at 2:53 am
Politicians can lie to voters. And voters can lie to themselves. But Nature can never be fooled.
By 2100, more than 13 million Americans living along the coast could be displaced by rising sea levels. And these, in turn, are the result of melting polar ice caps–courtesy of a Republican-denied event called climate change.
At Ground Zero of this oncoming catastrophe lies Florida, Its densely populated coastal locales could see up to 6.06 million residents displaced if sea levels rise six feet.
“As the sea level rises, coastal parts of Florida will be inundated,” warns University of Georgia geography professor Deepak Mishra. “Sea level rise is the phenomenon that makes climate change a reality for millions of people worldwide. The sheer volume of people at risk of displacement and becoming climate refugees is the main threat.”
Mishra was one of several researchers for the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) who assessed sea level change scenarios by 2100 for coastal states along with population growth trends and projections in high-risk areas.
The number of people who could be displaced might be three times larger than previous estimates.
“These results suggest that the absence of protective measures could lead to U.S. population movements of a magnitude similar to the 20th century Great Migration of southern African-Americans,” the researchers wrote in the journal Nature Climate Change.
This referred to the exodus of more than six million blacks from the rural South to cities of the North, Midwest and West from 1910 until 1970.
More than a quarter of residents of major urban centers such as Miami and New Orleans could face coastal flooding. Three counties could see the displacement of 80 percent of their population:
- Florida’s Monroe County, site of the Florida Keys;
- Hyde County, North Carolina; and
- Tyrrell County, North Carolina.
In Florida, climate change reality is about to slam into Right-wing denial and censorship.
Rick Scott, its Republican Governor, doesn’t believe in “climate change’ or “global warming.” Asked by a reporter for his views on the subject, he fobbed off the question with, “Well, I’m not a scientist.”
Smiling at the coming apocalypse: Rick Scott
Accordingly, he has ordered members of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to stop using those terms “global warming” and “climate change” in official correspondence.
DEP has a $1.4 billion budget and 3,200 employees, but is forbidden to speak openly about perhaps the foremost danger now facing Floridians.
According to the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting (FCIR) the policy is “unwritten” and was “distributed verbally statewide.”
Just as the Nazis passed down many of their orders verbally, to ensure deniability, so has Scott.
Accordingly, John Tupps, Scott’s spokesman, told The Washington Post: “There is no policy in existence. … Allegations and claims made in the [Florida investigative article] are not true. This policy, it doesn’t exist.”
But FCIR has no reservations about exposing the issue that threatens the very existence of the state.
“The irony is clearly apparent,” said Tristam Korten, one of FCIR’s writers. “Florida is a peninsula with 1,200 miles of coastline, and when it comes to climate change, we’re the canary in the coalmine. And we’re relying on the state government to protect us and to plan for these changes.”
Rising sea levels threaten Miami–and the rest of Florida
Further proof of the governor’s censorship decree comes from statements of former DEP employees. One of these, Kristina Trotta, was told during a 2014 meeting that she couldn’t employ terms such as “climate change” and “global warming.”
“We were told that we were not allowed to discuss anything that was not a true fact. The regional administrator told us that we are the governor’s agency; this is the message from the governor’s office. And that is the message we will portray.”
Many Americans believe climate change-denying politicians are simply ignorant of the truth: “If they knew, surely they would do something.”
While some politicians may genuinely believe that climate change is a hoax, others have self-interested reasons for denying its reality.
Among these is Rick Scott, whose 2014 financial disclosure records revealed that he was heavily invested in more than two dozen oil and gas ventures.
One was Spectra Energy, now working with Florida Power & Light to build the $3 billion Sabal Trail pipeline in North Florida.
Scott and his appointees at the Public Service Commission backed construction of Sabal Trail despite state ethics laws that generally forbid public officials from owning stock in businesses subject to their regulation.
Another entity in which Scott shares an interest is Regency Energy Partners, LP. In 2014, the governor valued his Regency units at $194,000. He also reported a $206,600 state in PRV Partners LP, which was acquired by Regency.
Scott’s oil and gas assets include 18 publicly traded master limited partnerships, some with significant ties to GE Energy Financial Services.
So while Scott and many other Right-wing politicians expect to handsomely profit from the coming onslaught of Nature, those at its epicenter will be its foremost victims.
Ironically, their victimization will result from their unswerving support for greed-addicted, Right-wing politicians, whose denial of climate change makes such catastrophes inevitable.
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AMERICA’S BRUSH WITH ARMAGEDDON: PART ONE (OF FOUR)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 11, 2017 at 12:10 amNorth Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un has threatened to launch possibly nuclear-tipped missiles at Guam, an unincorporated United States territory in the Western Pacific Ocean.
And President Donald Trump has responded with a threat to bring “fire and fury” to North Korea if it does.
Will their exchange of threats lead to all-out nuclear war?
The last time that Americans faced such a threat came 55 years ago, during the Presidency of John F. Kennedy.
On January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro swept triumphantly into Havana after a two-year guerrilla campaign against Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Fidel Castro
Almost immediately, hundreds of thousands of Cubans began fleeing to America. The first émigrés were more than 215,000 Batista followers. The exodus escalated, peaking at approximately 78,000 in 1962.
In October, 1962, Castro stopped regularly scheduled travel between the two countries, and asylum seekers began sailing from Cuba to Florida.
Between 1962 and 1979, hundreds of thousands of Cubans entered the United States under the Attorney General’s parole authority.
By 2008, more than 1.24 million Cubans were living in the United States, mostly in South Florida, where the population of Miami was about one-third Cuban. Their sheer numbers transformed the state’s political, economic and cultural life. And not entirely for the better.
Many of these Cubans viewed themselves as political exiles, rather than immigrants, hoping to eventually return to Cuba after its Communist regime fell from power.
The large number of Cubans in South Florida, particularly in Miami’s “Little Havana,” allowed them to preserve their culture and customs to a degree rare for immigrant groups.
With so many discontented immigrants concentrated in Florida, they became a potential force for politicians to court.
And the issue guaranteed to sway their votes was unrelenting hostility to Castro. Unsurprisingly, most of their votes went to right-wing Republicans.
John F. Kennedy was the first President to face this dilemma.
During the closing months of the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the CIA had begun training Cuban exiles for an invasion of their former homeland.
The exiles’ goal: To do what Castro had done—seek refuge in the mountains and launch a successful anti-Castro revolution.
But word of the coming invasion quickly leaked: The exiles were terrible secret-keepers. (A joke at the CIA went: “A Cuban thinks a secret is something you tell to only 300 people.”)
Kennedy insisted the invasion must appear to be an entirely Cuban enterprise. He refused to commit U.S. Marines and Air Force bombers.
The invaders landed on April 17, 1961 at the Bay of Pigs—and were quickly overwhelmed, with hundreds of the men taken prisoner.
Kennedy publicly took the blame for its failure: “Victory has a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan.” But privately he seethed, and ordered the CIA to redouble its efforts to remove Castro at all costs.
To make certain his order was carried out, he appointed his brother, Robert—then Attorney General—to oversee the CIA’s “Castro removal” program.
Robert F. Kennedy and John F. Kennedy
It’s here that America’s obsession with Cuba entered its darkest and most disgraceful period.
The CIA and the Mafia entered into an unholy alliance to assassinate Castro—each for its own benefit:
The CIA wanted to please Kennedy.
The mobsters wanted to regain its casino and brothel holdings that had made Cuba their private playground in pre-Castro times. They also hoped to use their pose as patriots to win immunity from future prosecution.
The CIA supplied poisons and explosives to various members of the Mafia. It was then up to the mobsters to assassinate Castro.
The CIA asked Johnny Roselli, a mobster linked to the Chicago syndicate, to go to Florida in 1961 and 1962 to organize assassination teams of Cuban exiles. They were to infiltrate their homeland and assassinate Castro.
Johnny Roselli
Rosselli called upon two other crime figures: Chicago Mafia boss Sam Giancana and Santos Trafficante, the Costra Nostra chieftain for Tampa, for assistance.
Sam Giancana
Giancana, using the name “Sam Gold” in his dealings with the CIA, was meanwhile being hounded by the FBI on direct orders of Attorney General Robert Kennedy.
The mobsters were authorized to offer $150,000 to anyone who would kill Castro and were promised any support the Agency could yield.
Giancana was to locate someone who was close enough to Castro to be able to drop pills into his food. Trafficante would serve as courier to Cuba, helping to make arrangements for the murder on the island.
Rosselli was to be the main link between all of the participants in the plot.
The available sources disagree on what actually happened. Some believe that the Mob made a genuine effort to “whack” Fidel.
Others are convinced the mobsters simply ran a scam on the government. They would pretend to carry out their “patriotic duty” while in fact making no effort at all to penetrate Castro’s security.
The CIA’s war against Castro was known as Operation Mongoose–the mongoose being a traditional enemy of the cobra. And those entrusted with this assignment were known as the Special Group.
“We were hysterical about Castro at about the time of the Bay of Pigs and thereafter,” Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara later testified before Congress about these efforts. “And there was pressure from JFK and RFK to do something about Castro.”
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