Failure at the Bay of Pigs did not deter the Kennedy administration from seeking ways to topple Castro. In November 1961 Operation Mongoose was created to coordinate these efforts. This was not a strictly CIA operation – General Edward Lansdale was tasked with coordinating activities between the CIA, Defense Department, and State Department. The Special Group Augmented (augmented by the President’s brother Robert Kennedy and General Maxwell Taylor) oversaw the program at the White House, and Robert Kennedy played a very active role.
Mongoose entailed a wide range of activities, including intelligence collection, sabotage operations, searching for leaders within Cuba who could overthrow Castro, and more. The Northwoods operation, which contemplated faked and real terrorist activities which could be blamed on Castro and used as an provocation for invasion, were developed in this period with Lansdale’s involvement. Operation Mongoose was the same type of operation.
Whether plots to assassinate Castro were part of this operation, and whether Robert Kennedy or President Kennedy condoned them, has remained a point of controversy. Lansdale himself said that Robert Kennedy was aware of assassination plotting. One memo from Lansdale to RFK in early 1962, uncovered by the Church Committee, says that “we might uncork the touchdown play independently of the institutional program we are spurring.”
“On April 12th, 1962, General Lansdale forwarded to Maxwell Taylor an “advance copy” of the Joint Chiefs paper on “Pretexts” stating, I am informed that the Chiefs approve of this,” reads a document released in Trump’s JFK Files release in October 2017.
Keep in mind that this is an admission that the Pentagon at the time was fully on board with killing Americans if it allowed them to wage war against Cuba.
“We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington. We could sink a boatload of Cubans enroute to Florida (real or simulated),” the false flag plan reads.
“We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized. Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, the arrest of a Cuban agent and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement also would be helpful in projecting the idea of an irresponsible government.”
While it has been long known that Operation Mongoose was a false flag pretext operation to go to war with Cuba, the fact that the CIA was going to murder Americans hasn’t been released although it has been hinted.
As James Bamford reported in his book, Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency From the Cold War Through the Dawn of a New Century, “The U.S. Department of Defense report even suggested covertly paying a person in the Castro government to attack the United States: “The only area remaining for consideration then would be to bribe one of Castro’s subordinate commanders to initiate an attack on [the U.S. Navy base at] Guantanamo.”
This is yet more evidence that the United States government can and does carry out false flag operations, with 9/11 being the most major example of our time. Moving even more into the present, if the government was willing to do this is Miami, why is it so hard to believe they would do the same thing in Las Vegas in 2017?
The placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba, discovered in the fall of 1962, caused a suspension of Mongoose activities, and efforts to deal with Cuba took a different turn.
Sources: Mary Farrell Foundation; Infowars
Additional info:
- VIDEO: Operation Mongoose; Secret CIA Operation
- VIDEO: JFK Files; Operation Mongoose (Young Turks report)
- VIDEO: Infowars Report on Mongoose and JFK Files
- Operation Mongoose on GlobalSecurity.org gives a narrative overview of Operation Mongoose.
- Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Volume X: Cuba, 1961-1962.
- Operation Mongoose: The PsyOp Papers discusses some of the psychological operations contemplated under Mongoose, and reproduces some document pages.
- cuban-exile.com. This website contains a wealth of information on Cuban exiles and anti-Castro operations.
- The American Experience: RFK. The accompanying PBS website has some information on Mongoose.
