Tag Archive for Pentagon

Pentagon history documents hostility to JFK in 1963

August 24, 2018Assassination, Presidency, Review37 comments

Michael Swanson, an investment adviser turned JFK researcher, called my attention to “Council of War,” a fascinating official history of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which documents the Pentagon’s resistance to, and resentment of, President Kennedy’s foreign policy, especially on Cuba and Vietnam.

Published by the JCS, the study presents an unvarnished view of an unprecedented mistrust between White House and Pentagon in the year before Kennedy was violently removed from power.

“Read this book and you are reading a real history of the American empire and defense establishment written for future leaders of the Pentagon and armed forces,” writes Swanson, who plans to publish his own study of the Cold War from 1945-1963 in the fall.

Some highlights from “Council of War:”

Read more

Who was responsible for the wrongful death of JFK?

November 19, 2014Assassination26 comments

Before I try to answer this most complex of questions, let me say a couple of things.

First, let us stipulate that 99.99 percent of JFK conspiracy theories are BS. Let me repeat that: 99.99 percent of JFK conspiracy theories are BS.

Read more

What was Operation Northwoods? Was it connected to JFK’s assassination?

November 16, 2014Assassination, Experts, From the Files, Presidency, Question31 comments

Operation Northwoods was a Pentagon plan to provoke a U.S. invasion of Cuba in 1963 through the use of deception operations. First disclosed by the Assassination Records Review Board in 1997, the  Northwoods plans are among the most significant new JFK documents to emerge since Oliver Stone’s “JFK” movie.

Operation Northwoods envisioned U.S. intelligence operatives staging violent attacks on U.S. targets  and arranging for the blame for the mayhem to fall on Fidel Castro and his communist government. The idea, wrote one planner, was to creates a “justification for U.S. intervention in Cuba,” by orchestrating a crime that placed the U.S. government “in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government” in Cuba.

These plans included the use of violence on American soil against American citizens.

Read more

Annals of secrecy: At height of missile crisis, Pentagon proposed assassination of Cuban officials

February 21, 2014Assassination, Presidency9 comments

A newly declassified Pentagon study, published today by the non-profit National Security Archive, sheds new light on the thinking of U.S. military leaders at the height of the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962.

As President Kennedy searched for a solution that did not involve a war that might have gone nuclear, the Pentagon was itching to escalate.

Read more