Profiting from Paranoia

Department of Defense ^ | 03/13/1962 | DOD

[Verax]

"It is possible to create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner enroute from the United States to Jamaica, Guatemala, Panama or Venezuela. The destination would be chosen only to cause the flight plan route to cross Cuba. The passengers could be a group of college students off on a holiday or any grouping of persons with a common interest to support chartering a non-scheduled flight."

a. An aircraft at Eglin AFB would be painted and numbered as an exact duplicate for a civil registered aircraft belonging to a CIA proprietary organization in the Miami area. At a designated time the duplicate would be substituted for the actual civil aircraft and would be loaded with the selected passengers, all boarded under carefully prepared aliases. The actual registered aircraft would be converted to a drone.

[Verax]

Wackos like James Bamford promote a rediculous conspiracy theory alledging that as far back as 45 years ago the Department of Defense could fly unmanned aircraft.

Are authors like Bramford perpetuating a terrible lie? Are they feeding off the paranoid delusions of innocent Americans? Should they be stopped? This is the kind of stuff that contributes to nutbag consipiracy theories and causes people to falsely mistrust our goverment. The question is, should proponents of these fairytales be held accountable under the patirot act or other homeland security regualtion?

Faked Document available here.

[Pontiac]

a rediculous conspiracy theory alledging that as far back as 45 years ago the Department of Defense could fly unmanned aircraft.

I doubt the rest of the this document but the US Army was remotely piloting planes in WW II.

[endthematrix]

So Operation Northwoods has been confirmend as a hoax? What’s next MK-ULTRA?

[Pontiac]

A number of modified Tiger Moths were developed for special roles. A radio-controlled target tug version of the Tiger Moth II called the Queen Bee was built with nearly 300 in service at the start of the Second World War.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Tiger_Moth

[Androcles]

Actually this has been out for years and is readly understandable when you consider that the west had no reason to honour their pledges re Cuba and that it presented a permanent base 90 miles from Florida. Witness the hysteria of the botched assassination attempt on Fidel...no one was thinking too clearly and I must admit that from a strategic point of view, I’d have loved to deny the Russians Cuba.

[Verax]

Just to be clear on your position...was it "not thinking too clearly " or was it "readily understandable"

If you mean "readily understandable", please confirm that you mean that you would have supported a DOD plan to commit acts of terror on American citezens as a false pretense for war.

Thank you.

[Androcles]

Actually, my friend, I don’t condone the murder of innocents to create a causus belli.

However, that being said, consider yourself as planner with the responsibility for safeguarding every man, woman and child in the US from an enemy who had shown themselves to be able, implacable and dangerous. They had already attempted to sneak nukes into Cuba once. I wouldn’t be inclined to trust them and would also have to worry about Cuba’s danger in terms of biowar, electronic and human intelligence work and so forth.

Given that the entire cold war standoff was based on the acceptance of the need to be willing to slaughter whole populations, it is not impossible to see that the sacrifice of a small number of innocents might seem worthwhile if it increased the security of hundreds of millions more.

I’m off to bed now (time difference), but I’m happy to continue in the morning if you have any further questions.

[Androcles]

Oops - re my 1st Post - where it reads "...and is readly understandable when you consider that the west had no reason to honour their pledges re Cuba..." that should be "...and is readly understandable when you consider that the west had no reason to believe the Soviets would honour their pledges re Cuba..."

My bad.

[Verax]

I would brief the office of the President with the expectation that he would engage the Senate for an authorization to go to war based on the evidence of the imminent threat.

[Androcles]

I would brief the office of the President with the expectation that he would engage the Senate for an authorization to go to war based on the evidence of the imminent threat.

He wouldn't have got it nor would he have gone for it. The Generals were nervous because they were planning for the long term. With such a public pledge, the President could have authorised defensive measures to prevent Cuba getting to that state (eg increased intel, covert ops, etc)but a public invasion would have damaged US prestige and trustworthiness in the eyes of the world at a time when America needed to hold the west together.

Personally, I think there is much pride to be found in the fact that the idea was decisively rejected (Twice I think) by the office of the President. Coming up with the idea was understandable for the Generals - implementing it would have been a crime and no President would have done it (I believe).

Personally, I'd be worried if your generals weren't prepared to explore high-gain scenarios, no matter how distasteful. After all, your enemies always will.