|
U.S. plans to attack Cuba
in 1976 revealed
• Declassified documents from
the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library revealed
that former Secretary of State, Henry A. Kissinger,
devised secret plans to launch air strikes on Cuba
in 1976
WASHINGTON.— The New York Times published
declassified documents from the Gerald R. Ford
Presidential Library which revealed that former
Secretary of State, Henry A. Kissinger, devised
secret plans to launch air strikes on Cuba in 1976.
 The
documents were declassified following a request from
researchers at the National Security Archive.
This
significant revelation appeared on page A12 of the
October 1, edition of the New York paper.
The
documents explain how Kissinger convened a group of
senior officials to work on possible retaliatory
measures against Cuba for deploying military forces
to Angola, following a request from the country’s
government.
The
New York Times revealed that the officials
outlined plans to attack ports and military
installations in Cuba, including a plan to send
marine battalions to the United States Navy base at
Guantanamo Bay, illegally occupied by the U.S. since
1902.
The
plan concocted by the former Secretary of State,
during President Gerald Ford’s term in office,
suggested the use of dozens of combat aircrafts and
the mining of Cuban ports.
The
New York Times added that the group warned
that the United States could seriously risk losing
its naval base in Cuba, which was vulnerable to
counterattack from the Cuban armed forces.
They
also estimated that it would cost 120 million
dollars to reopen the Ramey Air Force Base in Puerto
Rico, a possible location for the repositioning of
destroyer squadrons.
Kissinger also drafted proposals for an eventual
military blockade of Cuba's coastline, despite
warnings that such moves would most likely lead to a
conflict with the then Soviet Union, a key Cuban
ally at the time.
"If
we decide to use military power, it must succeed,"
Kissinger stated in one meeting, according to the
declassified documents.
"There should be no halfway measures. If we decide
on a blockade, it must be ruthless and rapid and
efficient," Kissinger outlined, almost 40 years
ago. The memos show that Donald H. Rumsfeld, who
was Secretary of Defense from 1975-1977 under
President Ford, and again under President George W.
Bush, was also present at the meeting when Kissinger
ordered the contingency plan against Cuba.
Both
Kissinger, now aged 91, and Rumsfeld, aged 82,
declined to comment following the publication of the
recently declassified documents.
Kissinger’s plans, prepared during the 1976 U.S.
presidential election, went nowhere because the
democrat Jimmy Carter won the election.
The
documents quoted by the New York Times appear
in the book Back Channel to Cuba, written by
U.S. researchers William M. LeoGrande, a professor
at the School of Public Affairs at American
University in Washington, D.C., and Peter Kornbluh,
director of the National Security Archive's Chile
Documentation Project and of the Cuba Documentation
Project. (PL)
|
