The Sow is Mine: The Exorcist and Mind War from Spike EP on Vimeo.
"Marketing researcher and psychologist James Vicary tested subliminal ads in a New Jersey movie theatre. "Hungry? Eat Popcorn" and "Drink Coca-Cola" were flashed on the screen at 1/3000 of a second every five seconds during the movie. Sales increased for popcorn and Coca-Cola. On December 8, 1972, The New York Times reported that In-Flight Motion Pictures, Inc. would begin selling subliminal commercials embedded in the movies they would distribute to all the major airlines. Stores across thecountry are reducing theft an average 30 to 50 percent by broadcasting subliminal messages such as "I will not steal." Stimutech, Inc. of East Lansing, Michigan markets a computer video system that flashes subliminal messages on your television while you watch the regular programming. The subliminal messages are prepared by a team of psychologists to change the thinking patterns and behavior of the viewer.
Pazuzu, Ancient Summarian God of the East Wind
Bringer of Locusts
Lord of the Flies
Using what was called the Precon Process, the picture of a skull and the word BLOOD were flashed subliminally on the screen in the movie My World Dies Screaming. Some words and images trigger strong emotional responses in people. Laboratory experiments show that people will react to words like BLOOD and to pictures of skulls with quickened pulse, faster breaming, sweating palms and other indications of heightened emotions.
The Exorcist used both subliminal sounds and pictures. A number of times during the movie, the face of Father Karras became a two-frame, full-screen death mask. Twenty-four frames of motion picture film are projected per second. The death mask flashed on the screen at 1/48 of a second. The consciously unnoticed word PIG appears many time throughout the movie. The terrified squealing of pigs being slaughtered was mixed subtly into the sound track. The buzzing sound of angry, agitated bees wove in and out of scenes throughout the film. People really did faint in large numbers, many more became nauseous in varying degrees, a great many more had disturbing nightmares.
It is interesting to note that William Peter Blatty, the author of the novel and producer of the movie, is a former CIA operative who served as the policy-branch chief of the Psychological Warfare Division of the U.S. Air Force. According to previously classified documents, the CIA tested subliminal manipulation in movie theatres during the late 1950s."
"I would say to Mr. Zannier, don’t go to Ukraine, rather you should denounce the abuse and perversion of an OSCE vehicle in the name of the OSCE by what is in fact NATO military intelligence, and if you’re caught behind military lines with no uniform, that’s sometimes called espionage, whether that’s the current situation or not, it’s not clear, but I would urge everyone to stop referring to them as OSCE observers, they are NATO military officers."
Alleged OSCE Observers Held in Slavyansk by Pro-Russian Forces Are Active Duty NATO Military Officers Out of Uniform, Many from Geilenkirchen Intelligence Base Where Awacs Are Flown; Visit Was Sponsored by German Defense Ministry, Which Is Pressuring Osce To Keep Up Attempted Camouflage of Possible Spy Mission-or Worse
Press TV: Now looking at the current events with OSCE observers, it goes to show the level of mistrust people in eastern and southern Ukraine have with regards to anything connected with Europe. How do you see the role they are playing?
Tarpley: I would have to say first of all, we should stop calling them OSCE observers because all indications are that they are not. That is what the OSCE has been saying continuously since this started and you can see it on their website. There are basically two versions. The Western media say OSCE observers, but the mayor Mr. [Vyacheslav] Ponomaryov, the pro-Russian mayor of Slavyansk, knows them as spies. I’m afraid reality seems to be going in the direction of Mr. Ponomareyov.
These are active-duty NATO military officers. They are four from Germany, one from Sweden, the Czech Republic, Denmark, and Poland. All NATO or European Union (EU).
The German officers come from a place called Geilenkirchen, which is a very important NATO base. This is where the AWACS planes are flown from. It’s one of the big NATO reconnaissance centers and they particularly belong to a unit of the German army, the Bundeswehr, which is called the center for enforcement or verification tasks. In other words, it’s military intelligence. What seems also to be the case, is that they were accompanied by five active-duty Ukrainian officers of the pro-Kiev forces, the ones that are controlled by the regime.
The complicating factor is they were riding around in OSCE vehicles. They were in a bus that seems to have been displaying OSCE markings. Now, when they were captured, there was obviously tremendous pressure exercised by the German Defense Ministry and the whole NATO apparatus on the OSCE to play along with this charade, pretending that they were sent by the OSCE, but it hasn’t worked.
On Friday evening in Vienna, on the first program of the Austrian television, Claus Neukirch, a high-ranking official of the OSCE, said this was not our group, not our visit, we were not the ones who did it. This is also admitted on the Deutsche Welle. Deutsche Welle is the international TV and radio of the German Foreign Ministry.
All of this exists really only in German, so today, the Ukrainian foreign minister struggling to keep up this fakery to maintain the camouflage, the Ukrainian foreign minister said, “oh, the Secretary General of the OSCE will be arriving here in order to begin negotiations or to take them over.” Very wisely the secretary general of the OSCE, an Italian diplomat named Lamberto Zannier, said “no, I’m not going.” He was very well advised not to go. Who knows what would happen to him if he got there?
The fact is that for the first couple of days, negotiations were conducted exclusively by the German Defense Ministry, who were the people that made the deal with Kiev to send these people in. This was embarrassing that the German Defense Ministry leaned on the OSCE to say “why don’t you go in and negotiate,” which the OSCE I think unwisely did.
I would say to Mr. Zannier, don’t go to Ukraine, rather you should denounce the abuse and perversion of an OSCE vehicle in the name of the OSCE by what is in fact NATO military intelligence, and if you’re caught behind military lines with no uniform, that’s sometimes called espionage, whether that’s the current situation or not, it’s not clear, but I would urge everyone to stop referring to them as OSCE observers, they are NATO military officers."
BERN, 27 April 2014 – OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Swiss Foreign Minister Didier Burkhalter condemned the detention of a group of military inspectors from OSCE participating States and of their Ukrainian hosts in Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine, and called for their release. One military inspector was set free today for health reasons, he confirmed. While this is a positive step, the OSCE continues to work at all levels – through the Special Monitoring Mission on the ground in Ukraine as well as through high-level political contacts – to assist for the release of all the detained persons, he said.
The German-led group of unarmed military inspectors from Germany, Denmark, Poland, Sweden and the Czech Republic, and their hosts from the Ukrainian Defence Ministry were detained by a group of individuals linked to the “people’s mayor” of Sloviansk. The group’s visit was being conducted upon the invitation of Ukraine under the OSCE Vienna Document 2011 on Confidence and Security-Building Measures..
Burkhalter stressed that the detention of the unarmed military inspectors and their hosts from the Ukrainian Defence Ministry was unacceptable and that the safety of all international observers in the country must be guaranteed and ensured.
He thanked the participating States and all international partners for their support in the OSCE’s efforts for the release of the detained persons. He also expressed his expectation that Russia’s signals of support, which are crucial, would rapidly translate into progress in this regard. Burkhalter called upon all sides, particularly upon all signatories of the Geneva Statement, to actively contribute to conditions which allow for effective implementation of the Geneva measures. Furthermore, he repeated his previous calls to resolve the crisis in Ukraine through inclusive dialogue.
This incident goes against the spirit of the recent Geneva Statement agreed upon by Ukraine, the Russian Federation, the United States and the European Union aiming at de-escalating the situation and leading the way out of the challenging situation, Burkhalter said. At the same time, it underlines the importance of the international community’s efforts to assist all sides in Ukraine to keep channels of communication open and find ways to peacefully resolve the crisis, Burkhalter continued.
Article from the The New York Times published at the end of World War I showing the provisional boundaries of the Ukrainian People’s Republic emerged from the collapsed Russian Empire, later incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1922.
"The Young Poland of Lelewel and Worcell demands the re-creation of the Polish state and rollback of the 1772-95 partitions of Poland. But they go much further, laying claim to Poland in its old Jagiellonian borders, stretching from the shores of the Baltic to the shores of the Black Sea. This includes an explicit denial that any Ukrainian nation exists. In the orbit of Young Poland is the poet Adam Mickiewicz, a close friend of Mazzini’s who was with him last year during the Roman Republic. Mickiewicz argues that Poland is special because it has suffered more than any other nation; Poland is “the Christ among nations.” Mickiewicz dreams of uniting all the west and south Slavs against the “tyrant of the north,” the “barbarians of the north.” By this he means Russia, the main target. Young Poland’s program also foreshadows the obvious conflict with Young Germany over Silesia. Young Russia means the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin and the aristocratic ideologue Aleksandr Herzen. Herzen is an agent of Baron James Rothschild of Paris. Right after the Crimean War, Herzen will start publishing “The Polar Star” and “The Bell,” both leak sheets for British secret intelligence that will build up their readership by divulging Russian state secrets. Herzen’s obvious target is Czar Alexander II, the ally of Lincoln. Herzen prints the ravings of Bakunin, who preaches pan-Slavism, meaning that Russia will take over all the other Slavic nations. “Out of an ocean of blood and fire there will rise in Moscow high in the sky the star of the revolution to become the guide of liberated mankind.” Vintage Bakunin. If Mazzini relies on the stiletto, for Bakunin it is “the peasant’s axe” that will bring down the “German” regime in St. Petersburg. Herzen is interested in sabotaging Alexander II and his policy of real, anti-British reform in Russia. To block real industrial capitalist development, he preaches reliance on the aboriginal Slavic village, the mir, with “communal ownership of the land” plus the ancient Slavic workshop, the artel. The mir will never build the Trans-Siberian railway. Herzen sees Russia as the “center of crystallization” for the entire Slavic world. Herzen, although he is usually called a “westernizer,” is totally hostile to western civilization. He writes of the need for a “new Attila,” perhaps Russian, perhaps American, perhaps both, who will be able to tear down the old Europe. In the moment when the British will seem so close to winning everything, Herzen will support Palmerston’s Polish insurrection of 1863, and will lose most of his readers. Once the American Civil War is over, the British will have little use for Herzen. By then, London will be betting on the nihilist terrorists of the Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will), who will finally kill Alexander II, plus the Russian legal Marxists, all British agents. But already today we can see the conflicts ahead between Young Poland and Young Russia. In the conflicts among Mazzini’s national chauvinist operations, we can see the roots of the slaughter of World War I." http://spikethenews.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/lord-palmerstons-multicultural-human.html
Events are moving rapidly in Crimea. Our friends in Washington expect more decisive actions from your network.
I think it's time to implement the plan we discussed lately. Your job is to cause some problems to the transport hubs in the south-east in order to frame-up the neighbor.
It will create favorable conditions for Pentagon and the Company to act.
Do not waste time, my friend.
Respectfully,
JP
Jason P. Gresh
Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army
Assistant Army Attaché
U.S. Embassy, Kyiv
Tankova 4, Kyiv, Ukraine 04112
(380-44) 521 - 5444 | Fax (380-44) 521 - 5636
Hello
We are Anonymous Ukraine
We have hacked e-mail correspondence of US Army Attache Assistant in Kiev Jason Gresh and a high ranking official from Ukrainian General Staff Igor Protsyk.
It appears that they are planning to conduct a series of attacks on Ukrainian military bases in order to destabilize the situation in Ukraine.
Particularly, Jason Gresh writes to Igor Protsyk that it’s time to implement a plan that implies “causing problems to the transport hubs in the south-east of Ukraine in order to frame-up the neighbor. It will create favorable conditions for Pentagon to act”, says Jason Gresh.
In his turn, Protsyk writes to some "Vasil" and tells him to arrange an attack on an airbase of 25 aviation brigade of Ukrainian air force stationed in Melitopol.
This "Vasil" is responsible for arranging the details of the attack, gathering of the gunmen and providing them with a map of sites that are chosen to be attacked.
We strongly recommend everyone to look through these documents. There you will find all the details.
(SNIP - Turner Radio Network will not directly reproduce the Hyper-Links to the 7.9 MB files full of allegedly stolen emails)
--------------------- END of Anonymous' Announcement -----------------
Behold, what is alleged to be one of the hacked e-mails, complete with IP addresses, e-mail addresses and full internet server routing information PROVING state-sponsored terrorism, perpetrated by the United States government, specifically designed to start a war with Russia:
Delivered-To: igor.protsyk@gmail.com
Received: by 10.220.4.2 with SMTP id 2csp62561vcp;
Sun, 9 Mar 2014 08:57:15 -0700 (PDT)
X-Received: by 10.224.51.74 with SMTP id c10mr35436450qag.33.1394380635325;
Sun, 09 Mar 2014 08:57:15 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path: < GreshJP@state.gov>
Received: from haig2.state.gov (haig-ee.state.gov. [169.253.194.10])
by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id f6si8135208qap.24.2014.03.09.08.57.14
for < igor.protsyk@gmail.com>
(version=TLSv1.2 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-RC4-SHA bits=128/128);
Sun, 09 Mar 2014 08:57:15 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of GreshJP@state.govdesignates 169.253.194.10 as permitted sender) client-ip=169.253.194.10;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com;
spf=pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of GreshJP@state.gov designates169.253.194.10 as permitted sender) smtp.mail= GreshJP@state.gov
Received: from EEAPPSEREDG02.appservices.state.sbu ([10.47.98.102])
by haig2.state.gov with ESMTP id s29FgT0w013967-s29FgT0x013967;
Sun, 9 Mar 2014 11:42:29 -0400
Received: from EEAPPSEREX06.appservices.state.sbu (10.47.98.206) by
EEAPPSEREDG02.appservices.state.sbu (10.47.98.102) with Microsoft SMTP Server
(TLS) id 14.3.158.1; Sun, 9 Mar 2014 11:57:13 -0400
Received: from KIEVMB01.eur.state.sbu (10.168.34.7) by
EEAPPSEREX06.appservices.state.sbu (10.47.98.206) with Microsoft SMTP Server
id 14.3.158.1; Sun, 9 Mar 2014 11:57:13 -0400
Content-Class: urn:content-classes:message
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft Exchange V6.5
Subject: Peninsula
Date: Sun, 9 Mar 2014 17:57:09 +0200
Message-ID: < 71C9088C4C6F7A4582772808F54C25520349E214@KIEVMB01.eur.state.sbu>
X-MS-Has-Attach:
X-MS-TNEF-Correlator:
Thread-Topic: Peninsula
Thread-Index: Ac87sDqNfxCUW94zShqj0tXF8YAqGQ==
From: "Gresh, Jason P" < GreshJP@state.gov>
To: < igor.protsyk@gmail.com>, < i.v.protsyk@mil.gov.ua>
X-FEAS-SYSTEM-WL: 10.47.98.102
Ihor,
Events are moving rapidly in Crimea. Our friends in Washington expect more decisive actions from your network.
I think it's time to implement the plan we discussed lately. Your job is to cause some problems to the transport hubs in the south-east in order to frame-up the neighbor.
It will create favorable conditions for Pentagon and the Company to act.
Do not waste time, my friend.
Respectfully,
JP
Jason P. Gresh
Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army
Assistant Army Attaché
U.S. Embassy, Kyiv
Tankova 4, Kyiv, Ukraine 04112
(380-44) 521 - 5444 | Fax (380-44) 521 - 5636
Jason P. Gresh's Summary
Currently serving as the Assistant Army Attache at the U.S. Embassy, Kyiv, Ukraine.
Advises the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, European Combatant Command, Headquarters U.S. Army, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Ground Force military issues pertaining to the country of Ukraine. Helps formulate and synthesize U.S. security strategy towards the greater Black Sea region.
A Foreign Area Officer with 16 plus years experience in the U.S. Army. Formerly commanded as an Armor Officer at the platoon and company level.
Jason P. Gresh's Experience
Assistant Army Attache
U.S. Embassy, Kyiv, Ukraine
2011 – Present (3 years)
Assistant Army Attache
U.S. Embassy Kyiv
June 2011 – Present (2 years 10 months)
Graduate Research Assistant
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Nonprofit; 51-200 employees; Think Tanks industry
June 2009 – August 2009 (3 months) Washington D.C. Metro Area
Assistant to the ODC
U.S. Embassy, Dushanbe
January 2008 – May 2008 (5 months)
Company Commander
1st Battalion, 63rd Armor
November 2004 – December 2005 (1 year 2 months) Vilseck, Germany
Platoon Leader
1st Squadron, 3rd ACR
1998 – 2001 (3 years)
Jason P. Gresh's Languages
*
English
(Native or bilingual proficiency)
*
Russian
(Professional working proficiency)
*
Ukrainian
(Professional working proficiency)
Jason P. Gresh's Skills & Expertise
1. Security Clearance
2. International Relations
3. National Security
4. Policy Analysis
5. Research
6. Government
7. Counterterrorism
Jason P. Gresh's Education
Georgetown University
Master of Arts (M.A.), Russian, Central European, East European and Eurasian Studies
2008 – 2010
George C. Marshall Center
2007 – 2008
United States Military Academy at West Point
B.S., Civil Engineering
1993 – 1997
Activities and Societies: Chapel Ushers, Cadet Orienteering Team
UPDATE 1:43 AM EDT MARCH 13, 2014
A map of an Melitopol.airport was attached to one of the allegedly hacked emails showing exactly what parts of an airport the U.S. wanted attacked by terrorists they were paying. According to one of the allegedly hacked emails,this airport was/is to be attacked on March 15. That map, with Russian writing on the image, is shown below (Click image to enlarge):
Transcript of Meeting Between Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq,
April Glaspie. - July 25, 1990
(Eight days before the August 2, 1990 Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait)
July 25, 1990 - Presidential Palace - Baghdad
U.S. Ambassador Glaspie - I have direct instructions from President Bush to improve our relations with Iraq. We have considerable sympathy for your quest for higher oil prices, the immediate cause of your confrontation with Kuwait. (pause) As you know, I lived here for years and admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. We know you need funds. We understand that, and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. (pause) We can see that you have deployed massive numbers of troops in the south. Normally that would be none of our business, but when this happens in the context of your threat s against Kuwait, then it would be reasonable for us to be concerned. For this reason, I have received an instruction to ask you, in the spirit of friendship - not confrontation - regarding your intentions: Why are your troops massed so very close to Kuwait's borders?
Saddam Hussein - As you know, for years now I have made every effort to reach a settlement on our dispute with Kuwait. There is to be a meeting in two days; I am prepared to give negotiations only this one more brief chance. (pause) When we (the Iraqis) meet (with the Kuwaitis) and we see there is hope, then nothing will happen. But if we are unable to find a solution, then it will be natural that Iraq will not accept death.
U.S. Ambassador Glaspie - What solutions would be acceptab le?
Saddam Hussein - If we could keep the whole of the Shatt al Arab - our strategic goal in our war with Iran - we will make concessions (to the Kuwaitis). But, if we are forced to choose between keeping half of the Shatt and the whole of Iraq (i.e., in Saddam s view, including Kuwait ) then we will give up all of the Shatt to defend our claims on Kuwait to keep the whole of Iraq in the shape we wish it to be. (pause) What is the United States' opinion on this?
U.S. Ambassador Glaspie - We have no opinion on your Arab - Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary (of State James) Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960's, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America. (Saddam smiles)
On August 2, 1990, Saddam's massed troops invade and occupy Kuwait. _____
Baghdad, September 2, 1990, U.S. Embassy
One month later, British journalists obtain the the above tape and transcript of the Saddam - Glaspie meeting of July 29, 1990. Astounded, they confront Ms. Glaspie as she leaves the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
Journalist 1 - Are the transcripts (holding them up) correct, Madam Ambassador?
(Ambassador Glaspie does not respond)
Journalist 2 - You knew Saddam was going to invade (Kuwait ) but you didn't warn him not to. You didn't tell him America would defend Kuwait. You told him the opposite - that America was not associated with Kuwait.
Journalist 1 - You encouraged this aggression - his invasi on. What were you thinking?
U.S. Ambassador Glaspie - Obviously, I didn't think, and nobody else did, that the Iraqis were going to take all of Kuwait.
Journalist 1 - You thought he was just going to take some of it? But, how could you? Saddam told you that, if negotiations failed , he would give up his Iran (Shatt al Arab waterway) goal for the Whole of Iraq, in the shape we wish it to be. You know that includes Kuwait, which the Iraqis have always viewed as an historic part of their country!
Journalist 1 - American green-lighted the invasion. At a minimum, you admit signaling Saddam that some aggression was okay - that the U.S. would not oppose a grab of the al-Rumeilah oil field, the disputed border strip and the Gulf Islands (including Bubiyan) - the territories claimed by Iraq?
(Ambassador Glaspie says nothing as a limousine door closed behind her and the car drives off.)
"The primary aim of modern warfare is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living. Ever since the end of the nineteenth century, the problem of what to do with the surplus of consumption goods has been latent in industrial society. From the moment when the machine first made its appearance it was clear to all thinking people that the need for human drudgery, and therefore to a great extent for human inequality, had disappeared. If the machine were used deliberately for that end, hunger, overwork, dirt, illiteracy, and disease could be eliminated within a few generations.
And in fact, without being used for any such purpose, but by a sort of automatic process — by producing wealth which it was sometimes impossible not to distribute — the machine did raise the living standards of the average humand being very greatly over a period of about fifty years at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. But it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction — indeed, in some sense was the destruction — of a hierarchical society.
In a world in which everyone worked short hours, had enough to eat, lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed a motor-car or even an aeroplane, the most obvious and perhaps the most important form of inequality would already have disappeared. If it once became general, wealth would confer no distinction. It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste.
But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away.
In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.
To return to the agricultural past, as some thinkers about the beginning of the twentieth century dreamed of doing, was not a practicable solution. It conflicted with the tendency towards mechanization which had become quasi-instinctive throughout almost the whole world, and moreover, any country which remained industrially backward was helpless in a military sense and was bound to be dominated, directly or indirectly, by its more advanced rivals.
Nor was it a satisfactory solution to keep the masses in poverty by restricting the output of goods. This happened to a great extent during the final phase of capitalism, roughly between 1920 and 1940. The economy of many countries was allowed to stagnate, land went out of cultivation, capital equipment was not added to, great blocks of the population were prevented from working and kept half alive by State charity. But this, too, entailed military weakness, and since the privations it inflicted were obviously unnecessary, it made opposition inevitable. The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world.
Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare. The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.
Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labour power without producing anything that can be consumed. A Floating Fortress, for example, has locked up in it the labour that would build several hundred cargo-ships. Ultimately it is scrapped as obsolete, never having brought any material benefit to anybody, and with further enormous labours another Floating Fortress is built.
In principle the war effort is always so planned as to eat up any surplus that might exist after meeting the bare needs of the population. In practice the needs of the population are always underestimated, with the result that there is a chronic shortage of half the necessities of life; but this is looked on as an advantage. It is deliberate policy to keep even the favoured groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another.
By the standards of the early twentieth century, even a member of the Inner Party lives an austere, laborious kind of life. Nevertheless, the few luxuries that he does enjoy his large, well-appointed flat, the better texture of his clothes, the better quality of his food and drink and tobacco, his two or three servants, his private motor-car or helicopter—set him in a different world from a member of the Outer Party, and the members of the Outer Party have a similar advantage in comparison with the submerged masses whom we call ’the proles’. The social atmosphere is that of a besieged city, where the possession of a lump of horseflesh makes the difference between wealth and poverty.
And at the same time the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival."
Who was the most senior member of the Military Industrial Intelligence complex to be fired by John Kennedy in the wake of the Bay of Pigs?
Give me your first answer, don't think about it.
Not even close.
Allen Dulles retired, was awarded a medal for his service by John Kennedy and remained a close friend of the family until at least 1964, probably right up until his death.
RFK requested he go down to Louisiana as the President's envoy during the Freedom Rider murders case because he was the only person with stature that they trusted.
It was Lemnitzer.
He was fired, demoted and sent to Portugal, where he repeatedly attempted to murder DeGaulle.
“Here was a president who had no military experience at all, sort of a patrol-boat skipper in World War II,”
Former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Lyman Lemnitzer
He was demoted down from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs down to Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), the same job Haig held during the Carter years, before resigning to run against him.
There was almost a Revolution in France in 1968 - over nothing.
That was Lemnitzer (with the help of McGeorge Bundy).
This was GLADIO writ large.
Lemnitzer was the one who took GLADIO operational and applied Northwoods to Europe - he decided not to wait for the Soviets to arrive and in 1969, launched "The Hot Autumn" in Italy, commencing the infamous "Years of Lead".
That was Lemnitzer.
It's a fair bet that most Americans, both in 1967, or now, don't give a fuck what happens in Belgium.
In 1967, when Jim Garrison discovered PERMINDEX, he assumed that it was a CIA Operation, and that Clay Shaw was primarily an agent of the CIA - because what else would it be?
But PERMINDEX wasn't a CIA operation (primarily) - it was a NATO Intelligence Operation, and always was.
And this is where the Corsicans come from.
PERMINDEX was all Fascist money:
"A group of Fascist French generals dedicated to keeping Algeria as a French colony were the middle group in the 1961 and 1962 assassination attempts on French General DeGaulle. A French colonel, Bastien Thiery, commanded the 1962 group of professional assassins who made the actual assassination attempt on DeGaulle. Colonel Thiery set his group of assassins up at an intersection in the suburbs of Paris in this final attempt in 1962 to kill DeGaulle. The gunmen fired more than one hundred rounds in the 1962 Colonel Thiery assassination attempt. But General DeGaulle, traveling in his bullet proof car, evaded being hit, although all of the tires were shot out. The driver increased his speed and the General was saved.
Colonel Bastien Thiery was arrested, tried and executed for the attempt on DeGaulle's life but he was the breaking point between the operating level of that assassination attempt and the people financing and planning it and he went to his death without revealing the connection. General DeGaulle's intelligence, however traced the financing of his attempted assassination into the FBI's Permindex in Switzerland and Centro Mondiale Comerciale in Rome, and he complained to both the governments of Switzerland and Italy causing Permindex to lose its charter and Centro Mondiale Comerciale to be forced to move to Johannesburg, South Africa."
There were only three nuclear powers in NATO, and only one with a declared independent nuclear deterrent.
It's absolutely unthinkable that the anti-Gaullist Generals would even consider an attempt on the Head of State's life without the approval of NATO Command.
(Remember, about a third of NATO has either been a fascist dictatorship (Spain and Portugal), or a military Junta (Greece and Turkey) during the lifetime of the Alliance)
I mean, what if the SACEUR concluded that the KGB did it and the French Nuclear Football was in play?
Of course, this was never even contemplated.
Because NATO Command knew that it wasn't true, even before it occurred.
Why do Americans always ignore the fact that NATO exists?
Most American nuclear weapons are NOT on US soil, and never have been....
The SACEUR (Eisenhower, Lemnitzer, Alexander Haig and others) are in the perfect position to start World War III via an Able Archer '83 style exercise or GLADIO False Flag stunt any time they like....
"The NATO commander, General Lauris Norstad, and two Air Force generals, Curtis LeMay and Thomas Power, stubbornly opposed White House directives that reduced their authority to decide when to go nuclear.
The 54-year-old Norstad confirmed his reputation as fiercely independent when two high-profile Kennedy emissaries, thought to be Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, visited NATO’s strategic military command in Belgium.
They asked whether Norstad’s primary obligation was to the United States or to its European allies.
“My first instinct was to hit” one of the Cabinet members for “challenging my loyalty,” he recalled later. Instead, he tried to smile and said, “‘Gentlemen, I think that ends this meeting.’ Whereupon I walked out and slammed the door.”
Norstad was so clearly reluctant to concede his commander in chief’s ultimate authority that Bundy urged Kennedy to remind the general that the president “is boss.” "
In 1962, President Kennedy watches B-52 bombers in FLorida as their pilots show their readiness for war. General Curtis LeMay, the Air Force chief of staff and JFK's frequent antagonist, looks over his shoulder. (Associated Press)
Every enlisted man dreams of it: pulling rank on the military’s highest brass. The heroics of John F. Kennedy, lieutenant, junior grade, in the South Pacific after his PT‑109 was sunk in 1943 eased his way, 17 years later, to being elected the nation’s commander in chief. In the White House, he fought—and defeated—his most determined military foes, just across the Potomac: the members of the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Here was a president who had no military experience at all, sort of a patrol-boat skipper in World War II,” Joint Chiefs Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer later said of Kennedy. Mutual respect, from the first, was in short supply.
In comparison, Nikita Khrushchev was a pushover, at least during the events that brought President Kennedy’s most-notable achievements. By persuading the Soviet leader to remove missiles from Fidel Castro’s Cuba and agree to a ban on nuclear tests in the atmosphere, underwater, and in outer space, Kennedy avoided a nuclear war and kept radioactive fallout from the air and the oceans, thereby earning the country’s enduring regard for his effectiveness as a crisis manager and negotiator. But less recognized is how much both of these agreements rested on Kennedy’s ability to rein in and sidestep his own military chiefs.
From the start of his presidency, Kennedy feared that the Pentagon brass would overreact to Soviet provocations and drive the country into a disastrous nuclear conflict. The Soviets might have been pleased—or understandably frightened—to know that Kennedy distrusted America’s military establishment almost as much as they did.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff reciprocated the new president’s doubts. Lemnitzer made no secret of his discomfort with a 43-year-old president who he felt could not measure up to Dwight D. Eisenhower, the former five-star general Kennedy had succeeded. Lemnitzer was a West Point graduate who had risen in the ranks of Eisenhower’s World War II staff and helped plan the successful invasions of North Africa and Sicily. The 61-year-old general, little known outside military circles, stood 6 feet tall and weighed 200 pounds, with a bearlike frame, booming voice, and deep, infectious laugh. Lemnitzer’s passion for golf and his ability to drive a ball 250 yards down a fairway endeared him to Eisenhower. More important, he shared his mentor’s talent for maneuvering through Army and Washington politics. Also like Ike, he wasn’t bookish or particularly drawn to grand strategy or big-picture thinking—he was a nuts-and-bolts sort of general who made his mark managing day-to-day problems.
To Kennedy, Lemnitzer embodied the military’s old thinking about nuclear weapons. The president thought a nuclear war would bring mutually assured destruction—MAD, in the shorthand of the day—while the Joint Chiefs believed the United States could fight such a conflict and win. Sensing Kennedy’s skepticism about nukes, Lemnitzer questioned the new president’s qualifications to manage the country’s defense. Since Eisenhower’s departure, he lamented in shorthand, no longer was “a Pres with mil exp available to guide JCS.” When the four-star general presented the ex-skipper with a detailed briefing on emergency procedures for responding to a foreign military threat, Kennedy seemed preoccupied with possibly having to make “a snap decision” about whether to launch a nuclear response to a Soviet first strike, by Lemnitzer’s account. This reinforced the general’s belief that Kennedy didn’t sufficiently understand the challenges before him.
Admiral Arleigh Burke, the 59-year-old chief of naval operations, shared Lemnitzer’s doubts. An Annapolis graduate with 37 years of service, Burke was an anti-Soviet hawk who believed that U.S. military officials needed to intimidate Moscow with threatening rhetoric. This presented an early problem for Kennedy, in that Burke “pushed his black-and-white views of international affairs with bluff naval persistence,” the Kennedy aide and historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. later wrote. Kennedy had barely settled into the Oval Office when Burke planned to publicly assail “the Soviet Union from hell to breakfast,” according to Arthur Sylvester, a Kennedy-appointed Pentagon press officer who brought the proposed speech text to the president’s attention. Kennedy ordered the admiral to back off and required all military officers on active duty to clear any public speeches with the White House. Kennedy did not want officers thinking they could speak or act however they wished.
Kennedy’s biggest worry about the military was not the personalities involved but rather the freedom of field commanders to launch nuclear weapons without explicit permission from the commander in chief. Ten days after becoming president, Kennedy learned from his national-security adviser, McGeorge Bundy, that “a subordinate commander faced with a substantial Russian military action could start the thermonuclear holocaust on his own initiative.” As Roswell L. Gilpatric, Kennedy’s deputy defense secretary, recalled, “We became increasingly horrified over how little positive control the president really had over the use of this great arsenal of nuclear weapons.” To counter the military’s willingness to use nuclear weapons against the Communists, Kennedy pushed the Pentagon to replace Eisenhower’s strategy of “massive retaliation” with what he called “flexible response”—a strategy of calibrated force that his White House military adviser, General Maxwell Taylor, had described in a 1959 book, The Uncertain Trumpet. But the brass resisted. The stalemate in the Korean War had frustrated military chiefs and left them inclined to use atomic bombs to ensure victory, as General Douglas MacArthur had proposed. They regarded Kennedy as reluctant to put the nation’s nuclear advantage to use and thus resisted ceding him exclusive control over decisions about a first strike.
The NATO commander, General Lauris Norstad, and two Air Force generals, Curtis LeMay and Thomas Power, stubbornly opposed White House directives that reduced their authority to decide when to go nuclear. The 54-year-old Norstad confirmed his reputation as fiercely independent when two high-profile Kennedy emissaries, thought to be Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, visited NATO’s strategic military command in Belgium. They asked whether Norstad’s primary obligation was to the United States or to its European allies. “My first instinct was to hit” one of the Cabinet members for “challenging my loyalty,” he recalled later. Instead, he tried to smile and said, “ ‘Gentlemen, I think that ends this meeting.’ Whereupon I walked out and slammed the door.” Norstad was so clearly reluctant to concede his commander in chief’s ultimate authority that Bundy urged Kennedy to remind the general that the president “is boss.”
General Power, too, was openly opposed to limiting the use of America’s ultimate weapons. “Why are you so concerned with saving their lives?” he asked the lead author of a Rand study that counseled against attacking Soviet cities at the outset of a war. “The whole idea is to kill the bastards … At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win.” Even Curtis LeMay, Power’s superior, described him as “not stable” and a “sadist.”
The 54-year-old LeMay, known as “Old Iron Pants,” wasn’t much different. He shared his subordinate’s faith in the untrammeled use of air power to defend the nation’s security. The burly, cigar-chomping caricature of a general believed the United States had no choice but to bomb its foes into submission. In World War II, LeMay had been the principal architect of the incendiary attacks by B‑29 heavy bombers that destroyed a large swath of Tokyo and killed about 100,000 Japanese—and, he was convinced, shortened the war. LeMay had no qualms about striking at enemy cities, where civilians would pay for their governments’ misjudgment in picking a fight with the United States.
During the Cold War, LeMay was prepared to launch a preemptive nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union. He dismissed civilian control of his decision making, complained of an American phobia about nuclear weapons, and wondered privately, “Would things be much worse if Khrushchev were secretary of defense?” Theodore Sorensen, Kennedy’s speechwriter and alter ego, called LeMay “my least favorite human being.”
The strains between the generals and their commander in chief showed up in exasperating ways. When Bundy asked the Joint Chiefs’ staff director for a copy of the blueprint for nuclear war, the general at the other end of the line said, “We never release that.” Bundy explained, “I don’t think you understand. I’m calling for the president and he wants to see [it].” The chiefs’ reluctance was understandable: their Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan foresaw the use of 170 atomic and hydrogen bombs in Moscow alone; the destruction of every major Soviet, Chinese, and Eastern European city; and hundreds of millions of deaths. Sickened by a formal briefing on the plan, Kennedy turned to a senior administration official and said, “And we call ourselves the human race.”
FIASCO IN CUBA
The tensions between Kennedy and the military chiefs were equally evident in his difficulties with Cuba. In 1961, having been warned by the CIA and the Pentagon about the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro’s determination to export communism to other Latin American countries, Kennedy accepted the need to act against Castro’s regime. But he doubted the wisdom of an overt U.S.-sponsored invasion by Cuban exiles, fearing it would undermine the Alliance for Progress, his administration’s effort to curry favor with Latin American republics by offering financial aid and economic cooperation.
Nuclear tensions, and the bumbling at the bay of pigs, convinced Kennedy that a primary task of his presidency was to bring the military under strict control.
The overriding question for Kennedy at the start of his term wasn’t whether to strike against Castro but how. The trick was to topple his regime without provoking accusations that the new administration in Washington was defending U.S. interests at the expense of Latin autonomy. Kennedy insisted on an attack by Cuban exiles that wouldn’t be seen as aided by the United States, a restriction to which the military chiefs ostensibly agreed. They were convinced, however, that if an invasion faltered and the new administration faced an embarrassing defeat, Kennedy would have no choice but to take direct military action. The military and the CIA “couldn’t believe that a new president like me wouldn’t panic and try to save his own face,” Kennedy later told his aide Dave Powers. “Well, they had me figured all wrong.” Meeting with his national-security advisers three weeks before the assault on Cuba’s Bay of Pigs, according to State Department records, Kennedy insisted that leaders of the Cuban exiles be told that “U.S. strike forces would not be allowed to participate in or support the invasion in any way” and that they be asked “whether they wished on that basis to proceed.”When the Cubans said they did, Kennedy gave the final order for the attack.
The operation was a miserable failure—more than 100 invaders killed and some 1,200 captured out of a force of about 1,400. Despite his determination to bar the military from taking a direct role in the invasion, Kennedy was unable to resist a last-minute appeal to use air power to support the exiles. Details about the deaths of four Alabama Air National Guard pilots, who engaged in combat with Kennedy’s permission as the invasion was collapsing, were long buried in a CIA history of the Bay of Pigs fiasco (unearthed after Peter Kornbluh of George Washington University’s National Security Archive filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in 2011). The document reveals that the White House and the CIA told the pilots to call themselves mercenaries if they were captured; the Pentagon took more than 15 years to recognize the airmen’s valor, in a medal ceremony their families were required to keep secret. Even more disturbing, this Bay of Pigs history includes CIA meeting notes—which Kennedy never saw—predicting failure unless the U.S. intervened directly.
Afterward, Kennedy accused himself of naïveté for trusting the military’s judgment that the Cuban operation was well thought-out and capable of success. “Those sons of bitches with all the fruit salad just sat there nodding, saying it would work,” Kennedy said of the chiefs. He repeatedly told his wife, “Oh my God, the bunch of advisers that we inherited!” Kennedy concluded that he was too little schooled in the Pentagon’s covert ways and that he had been overly deferential to the CIA and the military chiefs. He later told Schlesinger he had made the mistake of thinking that “the military and intelligence people have some secret skill not available to ordinary mortals.” His lesson: never rely on the experts. Or at least: be skeptical of the inside experts’ advice, and consult with outsiders who may hold a more detached view of the policy in question.
The consequence of the Bay of Pigs failure wasn’t an acceptance of Castro and his control of Cuba but, rather, a renewed determination to bring him down by stealth. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, the president’s younger brother and closest confidant, echoed the thinking of the military chiefs when he warned about the danger of ignoring Cuba or refusing to consider armed U.S. action. McNamara directed the military to “develop a plan for the overthrow of the Castro government by the application of U.S. military force.”
The president, however, had no intention of rushing into anything. He was as keen as everyone else in the administration to be rid of Castro, but he kept hoping the American military needn’t be directly involved. The planning for an invasion was meant more as an exercise for quieting the hawks within the administration, the weight of evidence suggests, than as a commitment to adopt the Pentagon’s bellicosity. The disaster at the Bay of Pigs intensified Kennedy’s doubts about listening to advisers from the CIA, the Pentagon, or the State Department who had misled him or allowed him to accept lousy advice.
TAKING CONTROL
During the early weeks of his presidency, another source of tension between Kennedy and the military chiefs was a small landlocked country in Southeast Asia. Laos looked like a proving ground for Kennedy’s willingness to stand up to the Communists, but he worried that getting drawn into a war in remote jungles was a losing proposition. At the end of April 1961, while he was still reeling from the Bay of Pigs, the Joint Chiefs recommended that he blunt a North Vietnamese–sponsored Communist offensive in Laos by launching air strikes and moving U.S. troops into the country via its two small airports. Kennedy asked the military chiefs what they would propose if the Communists bombed the airports after the U.S. had flown in a few thousand men. “You [drop] a bomb on Hanoi,” Robert Kennedy remembered them replying, “and you start using atomic weapons!” In these and other discussions, about fighting in North Vietnam and China or intervening elsewhere in Southeast Asia, Lemnitzer promised, “If we are given the right to use nuclear weapons, we can guarantee victory.” By Schlesinger’s account, President Kennedy dismissed this sort of thinking as absurd: “Since [Lemnitzer] couldn’t think of any further escalation, he would have to promise us victory.”
The clash with Admiral Burke, tensions over nuclear-war planning, and the bumbling at the Bay of Pigs convinced Kennedy that a primary task of his presidency was to bring the military under strict control. Articles in Time andNewsweek that portrayed Kennedy as less aggressive than the Pentagon angered him. He told his press secretary, Pierre Salinger, “This shit has got to stop.”
Still, Kennedy couldn’t ignore the pressure to end Communist control of Cuba. He wasn’t ready to tolerate Castro’s government and its avowed objective of exporting socialism to other Western Hemisphere countries. He was willing to entertain suggestions for ending Castro’s rule as long as the Cuban regime demonstrably provoked a U.S. military response or as long as Washington’s role could remain concealed. To meet Kennedy’s criteria, the Joint Chiefs endorsed a madcap plan called Operation Northwoods. It proposed carrying out terrorist acts against Cuban exiles in Miami and blaming them on Castro, including physically attacking the exiles and possibly destroying a boat loaded with Cubans escaping their homeland. The plan also contemplated terrorist strikes elsewhere in Florida, in hopes of boosting support domestically and around the world for a U.S. invasion. Kennedy said no.
Policy toward Cuba remained a minefield of bad advice. By late August 1962, information was flooding in about a Soviet military buildup on the island. Robert Kennedy urged Rusk, McNamara, Bundy, and the Joint Chiefs to consider new “aggressive steps” that Washington could take, including, according to notes from one discussion, “provoking an attack against Guantanamo which would permit us to retaliate.” The military chiefs insisted that Castro could be toppled “without precipitating general war”; McNamara favored sabotage and guerrilla warfare. They suggested that manufactured acts of sabotage at Guantánamo as well as other provocations could justify U.S. intervention. But Bundy, speaking for the president, cautioned against action that could instigate a blockade of West Berlin or a Soviet strike against U.S. missile sites in Turkey and Italy.
The events that became the Cuban missile crisis triggered Americans’ fears of a nuclear war, and McNamara shared Kennedy’s concerns about the military’s casual willingness to rely on nuclear weapons. “The Pentagon is full of papers talking about the preservation of a ‘viable society’ after nuclear conflict,” McNamara told Schlesinger. “That ‘viable society’ phrase drives me mad … A credible deterrent cannot be based on an incredible act.”
The October 1962 missile crisis widened the divide between Kennedy and the military brass. The chiefs favored a full-scale, five-day air campaign against the Soviet missile sites and Castro’s air force, with an option to invade the island afterward if they thought necessary. The chiefs, responding to McNamara’s question about whether that might lead to nuclear war, doubted the likelihood of a Soviet nuclear response to any U.S. action. And conducting a surgical strike against the missile sites and nothing more, they advised, would leave Castro free to send his air force to Florida’s coastal cities—an unacceptable risk.
Kennedy rejected the chiefs’ call for a large-scale air attack, for fear it would create a “much more hazardous” crisis (as he was taped telling a group in his office) and increase the likelihood of “a much broader struggle,” with worldwide repercussions. Most U.S. allies thought the administration was “slightly demented” in seeing Cuba as a serious military threat, he reported, and would regard an air attack as “a mad act.” Kennedy was also skeptical about the wisdom of landing U.S. troops in Cuba: “Invasions are tough, hazardous,” a lesson he had learned at the Bay of Pigs. The biggest decision, he thought, was determining which action “lessens the chances of a nuclear exchange, which obviously is the final failure.”
Kennedy told his paramour something he could never have admitted in public: “I’d rather my children be red than dead.”
Kennedy decided to impose a blockade—what he described more diplomatically as a quarantine—of Cuba without consulting the military chiefs with any seriousness. He needed their tacit support in case the blockade failed and military steps were required. But he was careful to hold them at arm’s length. He simply did not trust their judgment; weeks earlier, the Army had been slow to respond when James Meredith’s attempt to integrate the University of Mississippi touched off riots. “They always give you their bullshit about their instant reaction and their split-second timing, but it never works out,” Kennedy had said. “No wonder it’s so hard to win a war.” Kennedy waited for three days after learning that a U-2 spy plane had confirmed the Cuban missiles’ presence before sitting down with the military chiefs to discuss how to respond—and then for only 45 minutes.
That meeting convinced Kennedy that he had been well advised to shun the chiefs’ counsel. As the session started, Maxwell Taylor—by then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—said the chiefs had agreed on a course of action: a surprise air strike followed by surveillance to detect further threats and a blockade to stop shipments of additional weapons. Kennedy replied that he saw no “satisfactory alternatives” but considered a blockade the least likely to bring a nuclear war. Curtis LeMay was forceful in opposing anything short of direct military action. The Air Force chief dismissed the president’s apprehension that the Soviets would respond to an attack on their Cuban missiles by seizing West Berlin. To the contrary, LeMay argued: bombing the missiles would deter Moscow, while leaving them intact would only encourage the Soviets to move against Berlin. “This blockade and political action … will lead right into war,” LeMay warned, and the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps chiefs agreed.
“This is almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich,” LeMay declared. “In other words, you’re in a pretty bad fix at the present time.”
Kennedy took offense. “What did you say?”
“You’re in a pretty bad fix,” LeMay replied, refusing to back down.
The president masked his anger with a laugh. “You’re in there with me,” he said.
After Kennedy and his advisers left the room, a tape recorder caught the military brass blasting the commander in chief. “You pulled the rug right out from under him,” Marine Commandant David Shoup crowed to LeMay. “If somebody could keep them from doing the goddamn thing piecemeal—that’s our problem. You go in there and friggin’ around with the missiles, you’re screwed … Do it right and quit friggin’ around.”
Kennedy, too, was angry—“just choleric,” said Deputy Secretary of Defense Gilpatric, who saw the president shortly afterward. “He was just beside himself, as close as he ever got.”
“These brass hats have one great advantage,” Kennedy told his longtime aide Kenny O’Donnell. “If we … do what they want us to do, none of us will be alive later to tell them that they were wrong.”
BETTER “RED THAN DEAD”
Jackie Kennedy told her husband that if the Cuban crisis ended in a nuclear war, she and their children wanted to die with him. But it was Mimi Beardsley, his 19-year-old intern turned paramour, who spent the night of October 27 in his bed. She witnessed his “grave” expression and “funereal tone,” she wrote in a 2012 memoir, and he told her something he could never have admitted in public: “I’d rather my children be red than dead.” Almost anything was better, he believed, than nuclear war.
Kennedy’s civilian advisers were elated when Khrushchev agreed to withdraw the missiles. But the military chiefs refused to believe that the Soviet leader would actually do what he had promised. They sent the president a memo accusing Khrushchev of delaying the missiles’ departure “while preparing the ground for diplomatic blackmail.” Absent “irrefutable evidence” of Khrushchev’s compliance, they continued to recommend a full-scale air strike and an invasion.
Kennedy ignored their advice. Hours after the crisis ended, when he met with some of the military chiefs to thank them for their help, they made no secret of their disdain. LeMay portrayed the settlement as “the greatest defeat in our history” and said the only remedy was a prompt invasion. Admiral George Anderson, the Navy chief of staff, declared, “We have been had!” Kennedy was described as “absolutely shocked” by their remarks; he was left “stuttering in reply.” Soon afterward, Benjamin Bradlee, a journalist and friend, heard him erupt in “an explosion … about his forceful, positive lack of admiration for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”
Yet Kennedy could not simply disregard their advice. “We must operate on the presumption that the Russians may try again,” he told McNamara. When Castro refused to allow United Nations inspectors to look for nuclear missiles and continued to pose a subversive threat throughout Latin America, Kennedy continued planning to oust him from power. Not by an invasion, however. “We could end up bogged down,” Kennedy wrote to McNamara on November 5. “We should keep constantly in mind the British in Boer War, the Russians in the last war with the Finnish and our own experience with the North Koreans.” He also worried that violating the understanding he had with Khrushchev not to invade Cuba would invite condemnation from around the world.
Still, his administration’s goal in Cuba had not changed. “Our ultimate objective with respect to Cuba remains the overthrow of the Castro regime and its replacement by one sharing the aims of the Free World,” read a White House memo to Kennedy dated December 3, which suggested that “all feasible diplomatic economic, psychological and other pressures” be brought to bear. All, indeed. The Joint Chiefs described themselves as ready to use “nuclear weapons for limited war operations in the Cuban area,” professing that “collateral damage to nonmilitary facilities and population casualties will be held to a minimum consistent with military necessity”—an assertion they surely knew was nonsense. A 1962 report by the Department of Defense on “The Effects of Nuclear Weapons” acknowledged that exposure to radiation was likely to cause hemorrhaging, producing “anemia and death … If death does not take place in the first few days after a large dose of radiation, bacterial invasion of the blood stream usually occurs and the patient dies of infection.”
Kennedy did not formally veto the military chiefs’ plan for a nuclear attack on Cuba, but he had no intention of acting on it. He knew that the notion of curbing collateral damage was less a realistic possibility than a way for the brass to justify their multitudes of nuclear bombs. “What good are they?,” Kennedy asked McNamara and the military chiefs a few weeks after the Cuban crisis. “You can’t use them as a first weapon yourself. They are only good for deterring … I don’t see quite why we’re building as many as we’re building.”
In the wake of the missile crisis, Kennedy and Khrushchev both reached the sober conclusion that they needed to rein in the nuclear arms race. Kennedy’s announced quest for an arms-control agreement with Moscow rekindled tensions with his military chiefs—specifically, over a ban on testing nuclear bombs anywhere but underground. In June 1963, the chiefs advised the White House that every proposal they had reviewed for such a ban had shortcomings “of major military significance.” A limited test ban, they warned, would erode U.S. strategic superiority; later, they said so publicly in congressional testimony.
The following month, as the veteran diplomat W. Averell Harriman prepared to leave for Moscow to negotiate a nuclear-test ban, the chiefs privately called such a step at odds with the national interest. Kennedy saw them as a treaty’s greatest domestic impediment. “If we don’t get the chiefs just right,” he told Mike Mansfield, the Senate majority leader, “we can … get blown.” To quiet their objections to Harriman’s mission, Kennedy promised them a chance to speak their minds in Senate hearings should a treaty emerge for ratification, even as he instructed them to consider more than military factors. Meanwhile, he made sure to exclude military officers from Harriman’s delegation, and decreed that the Department of Defense—except for Maxwell Taylor—receive none of the cables reporting developments in Moscow.
“The first thing I’m going to tell my successor,” Kennedy told guests at the White House, “is to watch the generals, and to avoid feeling that just because they were military men, their opinions on military matters were worth a damn.”
Persuading the military chiefs to refrain from attacking the test-ban treaty in public required intense pressure from the White House and the drafting of treaty language permitting the United States to resume testing if it were deemed essential to national safety. LeMay, however, testifying before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, could not resist planting doubts: Kennedy and McNamara had promised to keep testing nuclear weaponry underground and to continue research and development in case circumstances changed, he said, but they had not discussed “whether what [the chiefs] consider an adequate safeguard program coincides with their idea on the subject.” The Senate decisively approved the treaty nonetheless.
This gave Kennedy yet another triumph over a cadre of enemies more relentless than the ones he faced in Moscow. The president and his generals suffered a clash of worldviews, of generations—of ideologies, more or less—and every time they met in battle, JFK’s fresher way of fighting prevailed.
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