{"article":{"id":11635,"heading":"The So-Called Evidence Is a Farce(narconews.com)","author":"narconews.com","created":"2001-10-12 00:55:50","modified":"2005-08-15 00:40:39","last_modified":"Mon, 15 Aug 2005 07:40:39","article":"

Narco News Publishes Sgt. Stan Goff on Immediate History\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Sign\r\n Up for Free Mailing List\r\n October 10, 2001\r\n \r\n \r\n Narco News 2001<\/i>\r\n The\r\n So-Called\r\n Evidence\r\n Is a Farce\r\n By Stan Goff\r\n \r\n Stan Goff Joined\r\n the U.S. Armed Forces in 1970 and Left in 1996\r\n To Read\r\n More About the Author,\r\n Click\r\n Here\r\n \r\n Narco News Commentary:\r\n The following text\r\n has been circulating as an e-mail for some hours now. It has\r\n found a home at Narco News<\/i>.\r\n About two years ago, Stan\r\n Goff came to our attention when he wrote a brilliant\r\n critique of U.S. policy in Colombia and its narco-pretext for\r\n other agendas.\r\n This essay, like his previous work, is a \"must read\"\r\n for anyone attempting to understand the immediate historical\r\n situation that all the world today faces. Unfortunately, we have\r\n been unable to make contact with Stan Goff, and if readers can\r\n help us with a current email address or phone number, please\r\n send it along to narconews@hotmail.com. We believe that his message is\r\n of great urgency and importance, and the fact that it is already\r\n circulating by email suggests a desire by the author to have\r\n it read by the widest possible readership. We hope we are correct\r\n in that assumption. Thus, we publish it here.\r\n Goff writes, specifically\r\n relevant to Our América, that \"wars on terrorism\"\r\n are \"far better\r\n than drug wars as a rationalization, and the drug war thing was\r\n being discredited in any case. Leftists are regaining power and\r\n popularity in Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Colombia,\r\n the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Brazil, and Argentina. Cuba has\r\n gained immense prestige over the last few years. The empire is\r\n beginning to unravel....\"<\/i>\r\n Like Goff, who understands\r\n how recent events in this hemisphere have pulled the thread that\r\n was on the verge of unraveling the drug war - the prior pretext\r\n for squelching true democracy, human rights and peace with justice\r\n at home and abroad - we don't believe that governments are telling\r\n us the truth right now. We don't accept the party line. We demand\r\n better evidence from Power.\r\n Goff cites two premises\r\n that should not, that must not, be accepted at this hour without\r\n more convincing proof: \"One,\r\n there is the premise that what this de facto administration is\r\n doing now is a 'response' to September 11th. Two, there is the\r\n premise that this attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon\r\n was done by people based in Afghanistan. In my opinion, neither\r\n of these is sound.\"<\/i>\r\n At Narco News<\/i>,\r\n having reported on the corrupt and dishonest behavior of the\r\n U.S. government in all América with the \"war on drugs,\"\r\n we, too, distrust the official agenda claimed by its \"war\r\n on terrorism.\" We don't have to agree with every single\r\n conclusion reached by Goff to know that he is asking the right\r\n questions. He walks in the traditions of Thomas Paine and Simón\r\n Bolívar by stating his questions and conclusions clearly,\r\n boldly, and without equivocation. Averaging between 25,000 and\r\n 35,000 hits per day, we felt a moral duty to share his words\r\n with our readers, and hope his essay succeeds in widening the\r\n inquiry beyond the commercial media's currently limited discourse.\r\n The fate of all América, of all the peoples of the world,\r\n is at stake. His questions demand answers not just from Power,\r\n but from all of us.\r\n \r\n The\r\n So-Called\r\n Evidence\r\n Is a Farce\r\n By Stan Goff\r\n \r\n \r\n I'm\r\n a retired Special Forces Master Sergeant.\r\n That doesn't cut much for those who will only accept the opinions\r\n of former officers on military matters, since we enlisted swine\r\n are assumed to be incapable of grasping the nuances of doctrine.\r\n But I wasn't just in the army. I studied\r\n and taught military science and doctrine. I was a tactics instructor\r\n at the Jungle Operations Training Center in Panama, and I taught\r\n Military Science at West Point. And contrary to the popular image\r\n of what Special Forces does, SF's mission is to teach. We offer\r\n advice and assistance to foreign forces. That's everything from\r\n teaching marksmanship to a private to instructing a Battalion\r\n staff on how to coordinate effective air operations with a sister\r\n service.\r\n Based on that experience, and operations\r\n in eight designated conflict areas from Vietnam to Haiti, I have\r\n to say that the story we hear on the news and read in the newspapers\r\n is simply not believable. The most cursory glance at the verifiable\r\n facts, before, during, and after September 11th, does not support\r\n the official line or conform to the current actions of the United\r\n States government.\r\n But the official line only works if they\r\n can get everyone to accept its underlying premises. I'm not at\r\n all surprised about the Republican and Democratic Parties repeating\r\n these premises. They are simply two factions within a single\r\n dominant political class, and both are financed by the same economic\r\n powerhouses. My biggest disappointment, as someone who identifies\r\n himself with the left, has been the tacit acceptance of those\r\n premises by others on the left, sometimes naively, and sometimes\r\n to score some morality points. Those premises are twofold. One,\r\n there is the premise that what this de facto administration is\r\n doing now is a \"response\" to September 11th. Two, there\r\n is the premise that this attack on the World Trade Center and\r\n the Pentagon was done by people based in Afghanistan. In my opinion,\r\n neither of these is sound.\r\n To\r\n put this in perspective we have to\r\n go back not to September 11th, but to last year or further.\r\n A man of limited intelligence, George\r\n W. Bush, with nothing more than his name and the behind-the-scenes\r\n pressure of his powerful father-a former President, ex-director\r\n of Central Intelligence, and an oil man-is systematically constructed\r\n as a candidate, at tremendous cost. Across the country, subtle\r\n and not-so-subtle mechanisms are put into place to disfranchise\r\n a significant fraction of the Democrat's African-American voter\r\n base. This doesn't come out until Florida becomes a battleground\r\n for Electoral College votes, and the magnitude of the story has\r\n been suppressed by the corporate media to this day. In a decision\r\n so lacking in legitimacy, the Supreme Court will neither by-line\r\n the author of the decision nor allow the decision to ever be\r\n used as a precedent, Bush v. Gore awards the presidency of the\r\n United States to a man who loses the popular vote in Florida\r\n and loses the national popular vote by over 600,000.\r\n This de facto regime then organizes a\r\n very interesting cabinet. The Vice President is an oil executive\r\n and the former Secretary of Defense. The National Security Advisor\r\n is a director on the board of a transnational oil corporation\r\n and a Russia scholar. The Secretary of State is a man with no\r\n diplomatic experience whatsoever, and the former Chair of the\r\n Joint Chiefs of Staff. The other interesting appointment is Donald\r\n Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. Rumsfeld is the former CEO\r\n of Searle Pharmaceuticals. He and Cheney were featured as speakers\r\n at the May, 2000, Russian-American Business Leaders Forum. So\r\n the consistent currents in this cabinet are petroleum, the former\r\n Soviet Union, and the military.\r\n Based on the record of Daddy Bush, in\r\n all his guises, and the general trajectory of US foreign policy\r\n as far back as the Carter Administration, I feel I can reasonably\r\n conclude that Middle Eastern and South Asian fossil fuels are\r\n one of their major preoccupations. Not just because this klavern\r\n has some very direct financial interests in fossil fuel, but\r\n because they surely know that worldwide oil production is peaking\r\n as we speak, and will soon begin a permanent and precipitous\r\n decline that will completely change the character of civilization\r\n as we know it within 20 years. Even the left seems to be in deep\r\n denial about this, but the math is available. And, no, alternative\r\n energies and energy technologies will not save us. All the alternatives\r\n in the world can not begin to provide more than a tiny fraction\r\n of the energy base now provided by oil. This makes it more than\r\n a resource, and the drive to control what's left more than an\r\n economic competition.\r\n I further conclude that the economic colonization\r\n of the former Soviet Union is probably high on that agenda, and\r\n in fact has a powerful synergy with the issue of petroleum. Russia\r\n not only holds vast untapped resources that beckon to imperialism\r\n in crisis, it remains a credible military and nuclear challenger\r\n in the region.\r\n We have not one, but three members of\r\n the Bush de facto cabinet with military credentials, which makes\r\n the cabinet look quite a lot like a military General Staff. All\r\n this way before September 11th.\r\n Then there's the subject of the North\r\n Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO might have expected consignment\r\n to the dustbin of the Cold War after the Eastern Bloc shattered\r\n in 1991. Peace dividend and all that. But it didn't. It expanded\r\n directly into the former states of the Eastern Bloc toward the\r\n former Soviet Union, and contributed significant forces to the\r\n devastation of Iraq-a key country in the world oil market, over\r\n which control translates into the ability to manipulate oil prices.\r\n NATO is a military formation, and the\r\n United States exerts the controlling interest in it. It seemed\r\n like a form without a function, but it remedied that pretty quickly.\r\n Then when Yugoslavia refused to play ball\r\n with the International Monetary Fund, the US and Germany began\r\n a systematic campaign of destabilization there, even using some\r\n of the veterans of Afghanistan in that campaign.\r\n NATO became the military arm of that agenda-the\r\n break-up of Yugoslavia into compliant statelets, the further\r\n containment of the former Soviet Union, and the future pipeline\r\n easement for Caspain Sea oil to Western European markets through\r\n Kosovo.\r\n You see, this is important to understand,\r\n and people-even those against the war talk-are tending to overlook\r\n the significance of it. NATO is not a guarantor of international\r\n law, and it is not a humanitarian organization.\r\n It is a military alliance with one very\r\n dominant partner. And it can no longer claim to be a defensive\r\n alliance against European socialists. It is an instrument of\r\n military aggression.\r\n NATO is the organization that is now going\r\n to thrust further along the 40th parallel from the Balkans through\r\n the Southern Asian Republics of the former Soviet Union. The\r\n US military has already taken control of a base in Uzbekistan.\r\n No one is talking about how what we are doing seems to be a very\r\n logical extension of a strategy that was already in motion, and\r\n has been in motion for two decades. Once we recognize the pattern\r\n of activity designed to simultaneously consolidate control over\r\n Middle Eastern and South Asian oil, and contain and colonize\r\n the former Soviet Union, Afghanistan is exactly where they need\r\n to go to pursue that agenda.\r\n Afghanistan borders Iran, India, and even\r\n China but, more importantly, the Central Asian Republics of the\r\n former Soviet Union, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan.\r\n These border Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan borders Russia. Turkmenistan\r\n sits on the Southeastern quadrant of the Caspian Sea, whose oil\r\n the Bush Administration dearly covets.\r\n Afghanistan\r\n is necessary for two things: as a base\r\n of operations to begin the process of destabilizing, breaking\r\n off, and establishing control over the South Asian Republics,\r\n which will begin within the next 18-24 months in my opinion,\r\n and constructing a pipeline through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan,\r\n and Pakistan to deliver petroleum to the Asian market.\r\n The BBC was recently told by Niaz Naik,\r\n a Pakistani Foreign Secretary, that senior American officials\r\n were warning them as early as mid-July that military action for\r\n mid-October was being planned for Afghanistan. In 1996, the Department\r\n of Energy was issuing reports on the desirability of a pipeline\r\n through Afghanistan, and in 1998, Unocal testified before the\r\n House Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific that this pipeline\r\n was crucial to transport Caspian Basin oil to the Indian Ocean.\r\n Given this evidence that a military operation\r\n to secure at least a portion of Afghanistan has been on the table,\r\n possibly as early as five years ago, I can't help but conclude\r\n that the actions we are seeing put into motion now are part of\r\n a pre-September 11th agenda. I'm absolutely sure of that, in\r\n fact. The planning alone for operations, of this scale, that\r\n are now taking shape, would take many months. And we are seeing\r\n them take shape in mere weeks.\r\n It defies common sense. This administration\r\n is lying about this whole thing being a \"reaction\"\r\n to September 11th. That leads me, in short order, to be very\r\n suspicious of their yet-to-be-provided evidence that someone\r\n in Afghanistan is responsible. It's just too damn convenient.\r\n Which also leads me to wonder-just for the sake of knowing-what\r\n actually did happen on September 11th, and who actually is responsible.\r\n The\r\n so-called evidence is a farce. The\r\n US presented Tony Blair's puppet government with the evidence,\r\n and of the 70 so-called points of evidence, only nine even referred\r\n to the attacks on the World Trade Center, and those points were\r\n conjectural. This is a bullshit story from beginning to end.\r\n Presented with the available facts, any 16-year old with a liking\r\n for courtroom dramas could tear this story apart like a two-dollar\r\n shirt. But our corporate press regurgitates it uncritically.\r\n But then, as we should know by now, their role is to legitimize.\r\n This cartoon heavy they've turned bin\r\n Laden into makes no sense, when you begin to appreciate the complexity\r\n and synchronicity of the attacks. As a former military person\r\n who's been involved in the development of countless operations\r\n orders over the years, I can tell you that this was a very sophisticated\r\n and costly enterprise that would have left what we call a huge\r\n \"signature\".\r\n In other words, it would be very hard\r\n to effectively conceal.\r\n So there's a real question about why there\r\n was no warning of this. That can be a question about the efficacy\r\n of the government's intelligence apparatus. That can be a question\r\n about various policies in the various agencies that had to be\r\n duped to orchestrate this action. And it can also be a question\r\n about whether or not there was foreknowledge of the event, and\r\n that foreknowledge is being covered up. To dismiss this concern\r\n out of hand as the rantings of conspiracy nuts is premature.\r\n And there is a history of this kind of thing being done by national\r\n political bosses, including the darling of liberals, Franklin\r\n Roosevelt. The evidence is very compelling that the Roosevelt\r\n Administration deliberately failed to act to stop Pearl Harbor\r\n in order to mobilize enough national anger to enter the World\r\n War II.\r\n I have no idea why people aren't asking\r\n some very specific questions about the actions of Bush and company\r\n on the day of the attacks.\r\n Follow\r\n along:\r\n Four planes get hijacked and deviate from\r\n their flight plans, all the while on FAA radar. The planes are\r\n all hijacked between 7:45 and 8:10 AM Eastern Daylight Time.\r\n Who is notified?\r\n This is an event already that is unprecedented.\r\n But the President is not notified and going to a Florida elementary\r\n school to hear children read.\r\n By around 8:15 AM, it should be very apparent\r\n that something is terribly wrong. The President is glad-handing\r\n teachers.\r\n By 8:45, when American Airlines Flight\r\n 11 crashes into the World Trade Center, Bush is settling in with\r\n children for his photo ops at Booker Elementary. Four planes\r\n have obviously been hijacked simultaneously, an event never before\r\n seen in history, and one has just dived into the worlds best\r\n know twin towers, and still no one notifies the nominal Commander\r\n in Chief.\r\n No one has apparently scrambled any Air\r\n Force interceptors either.\r\n At 9:03, United Flight 175 crashes into\r\n the remaining World Trade Center building. At 9:05, Andrew Card,\r\n the Presidential Chief of Staff whispers to George W. Bush. Bush\r\n \"briefly turns somber\" according to reporters.\r\n Does he cancel the school visit and convene\r\n an emergency meeting? No.\r\n He resumes listening to second graders\r\n read about a little girl's pet fucking goat, and continues this\r\n banality even as American Airlines Flight 77 conducts an unscheduled\r\n point turn over Ohio and heads in the direction of Washington\r\n DC.\r\n Has he instructed Chief of Staff Card\r\n to scramble the Air Force? No.\r\n An excruciating 25 minutes later, he finally\r\n deigns to give a public statement telling the United States what\r\n they already have figured out; that there's been an attack by\r\n hijacked planes on the World Trade Center.\r\n There's a hijacked plane bee-lining to\r\n Washington, but has the Air Force been scrambled to defend anything\r\n yet? No.\r\n At 9:30, when he makes his announcement,\r\n American Flight 77 is still ten minutes from its target, the\r\n Pentagon.\r\n The Administration will later claim they\r\n had no way of knowing that the Pentagon might be a target, and\r\n that they thought Flight 77 was headed to the White House, but\r\n the fact is that the plane has already flown South and past the\r\n White House no-fly zone, and is in fact tearing through the sky\r\n at over 400 nauts.\r\n At 9:35, this plane conducts another turn,\r\n 360 degrees over the Pentagon, all the while being tracked by\r\n radar, and the Pentagon is not evacuated, and there are still\r\n no fast-movers from the Air Force in the sky over Alexandria\r\n and DC.\r\n Now, the real kicker: A pilot they want\r\n us to believe was trained at a Florida puddle-jumper school for\r\n Piper Cubs and Cessnas, conducts a well-controlled downward spiral,\r\n descending the last 7,000 feet in two-and-a-half minutes, brings\r\n the plane in so low and flat that it clips the electrical wires\r\n across the street from the Pentagon, and flies it with pinpoint\r\n accuracy into the side of this building at 460 nauts.\r\n When the theory about learning to fly\r\n this well at the puddle-jumper school began to lose ground, it\r\n was added that they received further training on a flight simulator.\r\n This is like saying you prepared your\r\n teenager for her first drive on I-40 at rush hour by buying her\r\n a video driving game. It's horse shit!\r\n There is a story being constructed about\r\n these events. My crystal ball is not working today, so I can't\r\n say why.\r\n But at the least, this so-called Commander-in-Chief\r\n and his staff that we are all supposed to follow blindly into\r\n some ill-defined war on terrorism is criminally negligent or\r\n unspeakably stupid. And at the worst, if more is known or was\r\n known, and there is an effort to conceal the facts, there is\r\n a criminal conspiracy going on.\r\n Certainly, the Bush de facto administration\r\n was facing a confluence of crises from which they were temporarily\r\n rescued by this event. Whether they played a sinister role or\r\n not, there is little doubt that they have at the very least opportunistically\r\n pounced on this attack to overcome their lack of legitimacy,\r\n to shift the blame for the encroaching recession from capitalism\r\n to the September 11th terror attack, to legitimize their pre-existing\r\n foreign policy agenda, and to establish and consolidate repressive\r\n measures domestically and silence dissent. In many ways, September\r\n 11th pulled the Bush cookies out of the fire.\r\n And given them the green light to begin\r\n constructing a long-term scenario within which to establish fascistic\r\n control measures at home and abroad as a citadel for the ruling\r\n class in the catastrophic conjuncture that we are entering based\r\n on the end of oil.\r\n This elephant in the living room is being\r\n studiously ignored. In fact, the domestic repression has already\r\n begun, officially and unofficially. It's kind of a latter day\r\n McCarthyism. I participated in a teach-in at Chapel Hill, North\r\n Carolina, on the 17th of September, and though not a single person\r\n on the panel excused or justified the attacks, and every person\r\n there offered either condolences and prayers for the victims,\r\n we were excoriated within two days as \"enemies of America.\"\r\n Yesterday an op-ed called for my deportation (to where, one can\r\n only guess). Now Herr Ashcroft is fast tracking the biggest abrogation\r\n of US civil liberties since the so-called anti-terrorism legislation\r\n after the Oklahoma City bombing - which by the way hasn't resulted\r\n in anti-terrorism but in the acceleration of the application\r\n of the racist death penalty. The FBI has defined terrorist groups\r\n not by whether any given group has ever acted as terrorists,\r\n but by their beliefs. Some socialists and anti-globalization\r\n groups have already been identified by name as terrorist groups,\r\n even though there is not a single shred of evidence that they\r\n have ever participated in any criminal activity. It reminds me\r\n of the Smith Act that was finally declared unconstitutional,\r\n but only after a hell of a lot of people served a hell of a long\r\n time in jail for the crime of thinking.\r\n I think this also points to yet another\r\n huge problems that the Bush regime was facing. Worldwide resistance\r\n to the whole so-called neoliberal agenda, which is a prettied\r\n up term for debt-leverage imperialism. While debt and the threat\r\n of sanctions has been used to coerce nations in the periphery,\r\n we have to understand that the final guarantor of compliance\r\n remains military action. For a global economic agenda, there\r\n is always a corresponding political and military agenda.\r\n The focal point of these actions in the\r\n short term is Southern Asia, but they have already scripted this\r\n as a worldwide and protracted fight against terrorism.\r\n It's\r\n far better than drug wars as a rationalization,\r\n and the drug war thing was being discredited in any case. Leftists\r\n are regaining power and popularity in Venezuela, El Salvador,\r\n Nicaragua, Ecuador, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Haiti,\r\n Brazil, and Argentina. Cuba has gained immense prestige over\r\n the last few years. The empire is beginning to unravel. We can\r\n hardly justify intervention in these places by saying they are\r\n not towing the economic line by allowing the absolute domination\r\n of their societies by transnational corporations. That exposes\r\n the agenda. So we simply claim they are supporting terrorism.\r\n It's for all these reasons I say the left\r\n has missed the boat on this one, by allowing them to get away\r\n with rushing past the question of who did what on September 11th.\r\n If the official story is a lie, and I think the circumstantial\r\n case is strong enough to stay with this question, then we really\r\n do need to know what happened. And we need to understand concretely\r\n what the motives of this administration are.\r\n And we need to understand more than just\r\n their immediate motives, but where the larger social forces that\r\n underwrite our situation right now are headed. I do not think\r\n this administration is engaged in the deliberative process of\r\n a political grouping that is on top of their game. They are putting\r\n together some very deliberative technical solutions in response\r\n to a larger situation that it slipping rapidly out of their control.\r\n Like clear cutting. There's a very smart technology being employed\r\n to do a very dumb thing.\r\n What they are responding to is not September\r\n 11th, but the beginning of a permanent and precipitous decline\r\n in worldwide oil production, the beginning of a deep and protracted\r\n worldwide recession, and the unraveling of the empire.\r\n This brings me to a point about what all\r\n this means for Americans' security, which they are perfectly\r\n justified to worry about. The actions being prepared by this\r\n administration will not only not enhance our security, it will\r\n significantly degrade it. Military action against many groups\r\n across the globe, which is what the administration is telling\r\n us quite openly they are planning to do, will put a lot of backs\r\n against the wall. That can't be very secure.\r\n The concept of war being touted here is\r\n a violation of the principles of war on several counts, and will\r\n inevitably lead to military catastrophes, if you're inclined\r\n to view this from a position of moral and political neutrality.\r\n And the people who are now in possession\r\n of half the world's remaining oil reserves are subject to destabilization\r\n for which we can't even pretend to predict the consequences-but\r\n loss of access to critical energy supplies is certainly within\r\n the realm of possibility. Worst of all, we will be destabilizing\r\n Pakistan, a nuclear power in an active conflict with its neighbor,\r\n and we will be provoking Russia, another nuclear power. The security\r\n stakes don't get any higher, and Americans can ill afford to\r\n ignore nukes.\r\n And I think that this domestic agenda\r\n is a tremendous threat to the security of anyone who is critical\r\n of the government or their corporate financiers, and we already\r\n know that the real threats are against populations that can easily\r\n be scapegoated as the domestic crisis deepens.\r\n There\r\n is a very real threat right now of\r\n creeping fascism in this country, and that phenomenon requires\r\n its domestic enemies. Historically those enemies have included\r\n leftists, trade unionists, and racially and nationally oppressed\r\n sectors. This whole \"state of emergency\" mentality\r\n is already being used to quiet the public discourses of anti-racism,\r\n of feminism, of environmentalism, and of both socialism and anarchism.\r\n And while there is token resistance by officials to anti-Muslim\r\n xenophobia, the stereotypical images have saturated the media,\r\n and the government is already beginning to openly re-instate\r\n racial profiling. It is only a short step from there to go after\r\n other groups. We have long been prepared by the ideologies of\r\n overt and covert racism, and racism as both institution and corresponding\r\n psychology in the United States is nearly intractable.\r\n It's for all these reasons that I say\r\n emphatically that we can not accept anything from this administration;\r\n not their policies nor their bullshit stories. What they are\r\n doing is very, very dangerous, and the time to fight back against\r\n them, openly, is right now, before they can consolidate their\r\n power and their agenda. Once they have done that, our job becomes\r\n much more difficult.\r\n The left, if it has the capacity to self-organize\r\n out of its oblivion, needs to understand its critical roles here.\r\n We have to play the role of credible, hard-working, and non-sectarian\r\n partners in a broader peace-movement. We have to study, synthesize,\r\n and describe our current historical conjuncture. And we have\r\n to prepare leadership for the decisive conflict that will emerge\r\n to first defeat fascism then take political power.\r\n Rosa Luxemburg's words are truer than\r\n ever right now. We are not faced with a choice between socialism\r\n and capitalism, but socialism or barbarism.\r\n And what we can least afford are denial\r\n and timidity.\r\n For more Narco\r\n News, click here\r\n \r\n Because\r\n Governments Lie\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/p>\n","contact":"narconews@hotmail.com","link":"http:\/\/www.narconews.com","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/html","summary":"Stan Goff Joined the U.S. Armed Forces in 1970 and Left in 1996","numcomment":1,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/2001\/10\/goff1.html","filesize":"33.0 kibibytes","article_url":"\/news\/2001\/10\/11635.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[{"id":11653,"heading":"U.S. Military Drafted Plans to Terrorize U.S.","article":"\r\n \r\nFriendly Fire\r\n\r\n\r\nN E W Y O R K, May 1 \u2014 In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.\r\n\r\nCode named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban \u00e9migr\u00e9s, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities. \r\nThe plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro. \r\n\r\nAmerica's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: \"We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba,\" and, \"casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.\" \r\n\r\nDetails of the plans are described in Body of Secrets (Doubleday), a new book by investigative reporter James Bamford about the history of America's largest spy agency, the National Security Agency. However, the plans were not connected to the agency, he notes. \r\n\r\nThe plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years. \r\n\r\n\"These were Joint Chiefs of Staff documents. The reason these were held secret for so long is the Joint Chiefs never wanted to give these up because they were so embarrassing,\" Bamford told ABCNEWS.com. \r\n\r\n\"The whole point of a democracy is to have leaders responding to the public will, and here this is the complete reverse, the military trying to trick the American people into a war that they want but that nobody else wants.\" \r\n\r\nGunning for War \r\n\r\nThe documents show \"the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved plans for what may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government,\" writes Bamford. \r\n\r\nThe Joint Chiefs even proposed using the potential death of astronaut John Glenn during the first attempt to put an American into orbit as a false pretext for war with Cuba, the documents show. \r\n\r\nShould the rocket explode and kill Glenn, they wrote, \"the objective is to provide irrevocable proof \u2026 that the fault lies with the Communists et all Cuba [sic].\" \r\n\r\nThe plans were motivated by an intense desire among senior military leaders to depose Castro, who seized power in 1959 to become the first communist leader in the Western Hemisphere \u2014 only 90 miles from U.S. shores. \r\n\r\nThe earlier CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles had been a disastrous failure, in which the military was not allowed to provide firepower.The military leaders now wanted a shot at it. \r\n\r\n\"The whole thing was so bizarre,\" says Bamford, noting public and international support would be needed for an invasion, but apparently neither the American public, nor the Cuban public, wanted to see U.S. troops deployed to drive out Castro. \r\n\r\nReflecting this, the U.S. plan called for establishing prolonged military \u2014 not democratic \u2014 control over the island nation after the invasion. \r\n\r\n\"That's what we're supposed to be freeing them from,\" Bamford says. \"The only way we would have succeeded is by doing exactly what the Russians were doing all over the world, by imposing a government by tyranny, basically what we were accusing Castro himself of doing.\" \r\n\r\n'Over the Edge' \r\n\r\nThe Joint Chiefs at the time were headed by Eisenhower appointee Army Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer, who, with the signed plans in hand made a pitch to McNamara on March 13, 1962, recommending Operation Northwoods be run by the military. \r\n\r\nWhether the Joint Chiefs' plans were rejected by McNamara in the meeting is not clear. But three days later, President Kennedy told Lemnitzer directly there was virtually no possibility of ever using overt force to take Cuba, Bamford reports. Within months, Lemnitzer would be denied another term as chairman and transferred to another job. \r\n\r\nThe secret plans came at a time when there was distrust in the military leadership about their civilian leadership, with leaders in the Kennedy administration viewed as too liberal, insufficiently experienced and soft on communism. At the same time, however, there real were concerns in American society about their military overstepping its bounds. \r\n\r\nThere were reports U.S. military leaders had encouraged their subordinates to vote conservative during the election. \r\n\r\nAnd at least two popular books were published focusing on a right-wing military leadership pushing the limits against government policy of the day. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee published its own report on right-wing extremism in the military, warning a \"considerable danger\" in the \"education and propaganda activities of military personnel\" had been uncovered. The committee even called for an examination of any ties between Lemnitzer and right-wing groups. But Congress didn't get wind of Northwoods, says Bamford. \r\n\r\n\"Although no one in Congress could have known at the time,\" he writes, \"Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs had quietly slipped over the edge.\" \r\n\r\nEven after Lemnitzer was gone, he writes, the Joint Chiefs continued to plan \"pretext\" operations at least through 1963. \r\n\r\nOne idea was to create a war between Cuba and another Latin American country so that the United States could intervene. Another was to pay someone in the Castro government to attack U.S. forces at the Guantanamo naval base \u2014 an act, which Bamford notes, would have amounted to treason. And another was to fly low level U-2 flights over Cuba, with the intention of having one shot down as a pretext for a war. \r\n\r\n\"There really was a worry at the time about the military going off crazy and they did, but they never succeeded, but it wasn't for lack of trying,\" he says. \r\n\r\nAfter 40 Years \r\n\r\nIronically, the documents came to light, says Bamford, in part because of the 1992 Oliver Stone film JFK, which examined the possibility of a conspiracy behind the assassination of President Kennedy. \r\n\r\nAs public interest in the assassination swelled after JFK's release, Congress passed a law designed to increase the public's access to government records related to the assassination. \r\n\r\nThe author says a friend on the board tipped him off to the documents. \r\n\r\nAfraid of a congressional investigation, Lemnitzer had ordered all Joint Chiefs documents related to the Bay of Pigs destroyed, says Bamford. But somehow, these remained. \r\n\r\n\"The scary thing is none of this stuff comes out until 40 years after,\" says Bamford\r\n \r\n","author":"Clark Kent for David Ruppe","parent_id":11635,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2001-10-12 11:56:06","modified":"2013-11-10 23:38:33","fileurl":""}]}