US secret domestic terror plans

[Guest guest]

New Book on NSA Sheds Light on Secrets of US Army and Intelligence : THE

BALTIMORE SUN

U.S. terror plan called invasion pretext

Scott Shane and Tom Bowman (Sun Staff)

Updated on 2001-09-17 12:53:00

 

WASHINGTON - U.S. military leaders proposed in 1962 a secret plan to commit

terrorist acts against Americans and blame Cuba to create a pretext for

invasion and the ouster of Communist leader Fidel Castro, according to a new

book about the National Security Agency.

 

"We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami

area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington," said one

document reportedly prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "We

could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," the

document says. "Casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a

helpful wave of indignation."

 

The plan is laid out in documents signed by the five Joint

Chiefs but never carried out, according to writer James Bamford

in "Body of Secrets." The new history of the Fort Meade-based

eavesdropping agency is being released today by Doubleday.

 

NSA regularly picks up the conversations of suspected terrorist

financier Osama bin Laden, says Bamford, and has monitored

Chinese and French companies trying to sell missiles to Iran. He

provides new details about an Israeli attack on a Navy

eavesdropping ship in 1967, suggesting that the sinking was

deliberate. And he reveals the loss of an "entire warehouse"

full of secret cryptographic gear to the North Vietnamese in

1975, at the end of the Vietnam War.

 

Bamford, a former investigative reporter for ABC News who wrote

"The Puzzle Palace" about the NSA in 1982, said his new book is

based mostly on documents obtained through the Freedom of

Information Act or found in government archives. "NSA never

handed me any documents," he said. "It was a question of

digging."

 

He said he was most surprised by the anti-Cuba terror plan,

code-named Operation Northwoods. It "may be the most corrupt

plan ever created by the U.S. government," he writes.

 

The Northwoods plan also proposed that if the 1962 launch of

John Glenn into orbit were to fail, resulting in the astronaut's

death, the U.S. government would publicize fabricated evidence

that Cuba had used electronic interference to sabotage the

flight, the book says.

 

A previously secret document obtained by Bamford offers further

suggestions for mayhem to be blamed on Cuba.

 

"We could sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or

simulated). ... We could foster attempts on lives of Cubans in

the United States, even to the extent of wounding in instances

to be widely publicized," the document says. Another idea was to

shoot down a CIA plane designed to replicate a passenger flight

and announce that Cuban forces shot it down.

 

Citing a White House document, Bamford writes that the idea of

creating a pretext for the invasion of Cuba might have started

with President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the last weeks of his

administration, when the plan for an invasion by Cuban exiles

trained in the United States was hatched. Carried out in April

1961, soon after Kennedy became president, the Bay of Pigs

invasion proved a fiasco. Castro's forces quickly killed or

rounded up the invaders.

 

Army Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs,

presented the Operation Northwoods plan to Kennedy early in

1962, but the president rejected it that March because he wanted

no overt U.S. military action against Cuba. Lemnitzer then

sought unsuccessfully to destroy all evidence of the plan,

according to Bamford.

 

Lemnitzer and those who served with him in 1962 as chiefs of the

nation's military branches are dead. But two former top Kennedy

administration officials said yesterday that they were unaware

of Operation Northwoods and questioned whether such a plan was

ever drafted.

 

"I've never heard of Operation Northwoods. Never heard of it and

don't believe it," said Theodore Sorenson, Kennedy's White House

special counsel. "Obviously, it would be totally illegal as well

as totally unwise."

 

Robert S. McNamara, Kennedy's defense secretary, said: "I never

heard of it. I can't believe the chiefs were talking about or

engaged in what I would call CIA-type operations."

 

Bamford writes that besides the Joint Chiefs, then-Assistant

Secretary of Defense Paul H. Nitze also favored "provoking a

phony war with Cuba."

 

"There may be a piece of paper" on Northwoods, said McNamara. "I

just cannot conceive of [Nitze] approving anything like that or

doing it without talking to me."

 

The book contains many other revelations in its detailed account

of NSA, the biggest U.S. intelligence agency and Maryland's

largest employer, with more than 25,000 personnel at Fort Meade,

site of its global eavesdropping efforts.

 

Among them:

 

In recent years, NSA has regularly listened to bin Laden's

unencrypted telephone calls. Agency officials have sometimes

played tapes of bin Laden talking to his mother to impress

members of Congress and select visitors to the agency.

 

In the late 1990s, NSA tracked efforts by Chinese and French

companies to sell missile technology to Iran, particularly the

C-802 anti-ship missile. The eavesdropping led to U.S. protests

to the Chinese and French governments.

 

When U.S. troops evacuated Vietnam in 1975, "an entire warehouse

overflowing with NSA's most important cryptographic machines and

other supersensitive code and cipher materials" was left behind.

It was the largest compromise of such equipment in U.S. history,

Bamford writes, but the agency still has not acknowledged it.

 

When Israeli fighter jets attacked the NSA eavesdropping ship

USS Liberty in the Mediterranean in 1967, killing 34 Americans

and wounding 171, an NSA aircraft was listening in and heard

Israeli pilots referring to the American flag on the ship. U.S.

officials, including President Lyndon Baines Johnson, decided to

forget the matter, Bamford writes, because they did not want to

embarrass Israel. To this day, Israeli officials say their

forces mistakenly attacked the U.S. ship.

 

Bamford says the reason for the strike was Israel's desperate

effort to cover up its attacks on the Egyptian town of El Arish

in the Sinai. The Liberty was sitting offshore and the Israelis

feared that the ship would detect the operation, which included

the shooting of prisoners.

 

Yesterday, an NSA spokesperson questioned a point made in the

book about the USS Liberty.

 

"We do not comment on operational matters, alleged or otherwise;

however, Mr. Bamford's claim that the NSA leadership was

`virtually unanimous in their belief that the attack was

deliberate' is simply not true," the spokesperson said.

 

When he wrote "The Puzzle Palace" in 1982, Bamford was attacked

by some NSA officials, who said his revelations gave the Soviet

Union and other U.S. adversaries too much information on the

secret agency. One former director referred to him as "an

unconvicted felon."

 

With the end of the Cold War, the agency has been less guarded.

NSA's current director, Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden,

has granted a number of interviews. Hayden "cracked the door

open a tiny bit," said Bamford, partly to burnish NSA's public

image and correct misconceptions.

 

[sun staff writer Laura Sullivan contributed to this article.

Copyright ?2001, The Baltimore Sun - http://www.sunspot.net ]

 

INFOTIMES EDITOR's NOTE: James Bamford is the author of The

Puzzle Palace, a national bestseller when it was first published

and now regarded as a classic. He was until recently Washington

Investigative Producer for ABC's World News Tonight with Peter

Jennings and has written investigative cover stories for The New

York Times Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine and the Los

Angeles Times Magazine. He lives in Washington, DC.

 

Praise for James Bamford's first examination of the National

Security Agency, The Puzzle Palace: "There have been glimpses

inside the NSA before, but until now no one has published a

comprehensive and detailed report on the agency Mr. Bamford has

emerged with everything except the combination to the director's

safe."

-- New York Times Book Review.

 

Bamford's new book "Body of Secrets" went on-sale on April 24,

2001 in the USA.

http://www.randomhouse.com/features/bamford/home.html

 

INFOTIMES INTERNET-WEB LINKS:

 

 

 

 

THE BALTIMORE SUN (Maryland, USA)

http://www.sunspot.net

Originally published April 24, 2001

http://www.baltimoresun.com/bal-te.md.nsa24apr24.story

 

 

 

U.S. Military Could Be Behind The Sept. 11 Terrorist Attacks

InfoTimes/message/1048

 

James Bamford's New Book: "Body of Secrets"

http://www.randomhouse.com/features/bamford/home.html

 

"Body of Secrets" by James Bamford

http://www.salon.com/books/review/2001/04/25/nsa

 

U.S. Government is the World's Largest Terrorist Organization

http://geocities.com/americanterrorism/Amerikan_Terrorism.html

 

Civilized World Should Oppose U.S.-Israeli Terrorism

InfoTimes/message/1036

 

U.S. Government Must Stop its Barbaric Terrorism

InfoTimes/message/1033

 

Did Israel Attack the Pentagon and World Trade Center?

InfoTimes/message/1032

 

The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) Website

http://www.nsa.gov