TWELVE
Building to the Final Confrontation
BARELY TWO MONTHS after the humiliating defeat of the Cuban exile brigade on the beaches of the Bay of Pigs, President John F. Kennedy attempted to put a halter on the maverick CIA. On June 28, 1961, three top-level White House directives, National Security Action Memoranda (NSAM), were published.
One of them, NSAM #55, entitled, “Relations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the President in Cold War Operations,”1 was signed by Kennedy and sent directly to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer. This was a most unusual intragovernmental procedure. Ordinarily it would have gone to the chairman via the secretary of defense, with copies to the secretary of state and the director, central intelligence, because of its subject. Without doubt, this directive was the most important single act of the first year of the Kennedy presidency. He had determined to limit the CIA’s role in clandestine activities, perhaps eliminate it altogether. This was the first in a series of such top-level policy directives issued by Kennedy that culminated in NSAM #263, issued one month before his murder.
These papers, and their actual authorship, were concealed for years. Although parts of them appear in the so-called Pentagon Papers, they do not appear there as a unit or with their correct titles and language. As far as I know, they have never before this work been linked with their source document, the Cuban Study Group report contained in a “Letter to the President” from Gen. Maxwell Taylor to John F. Kennedy dated June 13, 1961. This is discussed in greater detail elsewhere in this book.
The White House did make a copy of NSAM #55 available separately to the secretary of defense. No copy was sent to either the secretary of state or to the director of central intelligence. Kennedy’s no-nonsense policy directives marked the first steps in his ambitious plan to change the course of Cold War operations, which, for the most part, had been made the responsibility of the CIA since that agency’s creation in late 1947. These remarkable documents led directly to the later Reagan decision to do away with Eisenhower-period “plausibly deniable” covert operations and to come out into the open with Cold War operations, such as his action against Grenada and the overt F-111 air strikes against Libya. The Bush administration has continued this “overt” policy with its attack on Panama and the Desert Storm operation.
Whether or not this new military policy has been formally proclaimed the official guideline of the United States, it is being practiced today, as evidenced by the Gulf War. This policy means, in effect, that national sovereignty no longer exists and that a nation’s independence and borders are no longer sacred.
As this newer doctrine becomes more widely implemented, the traditional family of nations will dissolve into a shambles of raw power. From now on, no one will be safe. There is no sanctuary. Everyone, everywhere, is someone’s potential target. There is no place to hide.
This doctrine, quite literally adopted from the writings of Mao Tse-tung, first attained prominence and a measure of legitimacy under the signature of John F. Kennedy, who clearly and unhesitatingly stated his intentions in the opening sentences of NSAM #55 to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (To repeat, this directive was not written by JFK. We learned later that it was written by Gen. Maxwell Taylor, who was familiar with the studies of Mao’s writing done by the U.S. Army.)
I wish to inform the Joint Chiefs of Staff as follows with regard to my views of their relations to me in Cold War operations:
I regard the Joint Chiefs of Staff as my principal military adviser responsible for initiating advice to me and for responding to requests for advice. I expect their advice to come to me direct and unfiltered.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff have a responsibility for the defense of the nation in the Cold War similar to that which they have in conventional hostilities.
As used in these directives, the term “Cold War operations” generally referred to covert operations, although it was not entirely limited to secret activities. What was new about this policy was that the President was bringing the experienced military Chiefs of Staff into an area of operation that traditionally, as under the terms of the March 15, 1954, NSC Directive #5412, had been declared to be outside the scope of the uniformed services in peacetime. A first step in this direction had taken place in 1957, when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was made a member of the NSC #5412 “Special Group” that had been empowered to approve clandestine operations.
It must be noted that these policy statements that JFK signed arose directly from a study of the Bay of Pigs operation. President Kennedy had directed an essential, covert air strike against Castro’s last three combat aircraft. As noted, that strike did not take place. Others, unwitting of the stipulations of NSC #5412, have charged that Kennedy ought to have provided U.S. military “air cover” for the Cuban exile brigade on the beach, when it came under attack by Castro’s last three jet aircraft. Those who make this charge do not realize that the NSC had prohibited the utilization of regular military forces in support of clandestine activity and that that prohibition had established the parameters of the overall strategy.
With this in mind, Kennedy emphasized this factor when he stated, “The Joint Chiefs of Staff have a responsibility for the defense of the nation in the Cold War similar to that which they have in conventional hostilities.” He was making it possible, when necessary, to turn to the Joint Chiefs of Staff for just such purposes as had previously arisen at the time of the Bay of Pigs operation.
Thus, his NSAM #55 is an important statement, and much could be said about it as it has reappeared during succeeding administrations. In conventional hostilities, as defined by Clausewitz2 or in the traditional sense, the military establishment takes over from the diplomats and is made responsible for total war against the citizens, territory, and property of the enemy, in every possible way. Converting this doctrine for application during time of peace, albeit during the Cold War, has the effect of raising the Cold War to a higher and more overt level and prescribes a role for the U.S. military that it has never had before. When these three directives hit the Joint Staff,3 the wheels within wheels of the Pentagon began to grind. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that no immediate explanation for this significant policy change had reached the CIA or the Department of State.
Within the bureaucracy, whenever a major shift in policy occurs, the first thing that is done is to dispatch secret investigators in all directions to discover the origin of the new policy and to determine what the change means. A new President and a new presidential staff rarely come equipped with insiders of sufficient experience to produce such major changes on their own in one swift stroke. It was thought that Ted Sorensen, the President’s counsel, and Bobby Kennedy must have been the source of these directives. This was not so.
The Pentagon, the CIA, and the Department of State—each for its own reasons—probed the White House. They were unable, however, to find any person, or any prior work, that gave clues to the origin of these very special papers. The problem was made worse by the fact that very few copies of these NSAMs had been made available to anyone. The true source was not discovered for many years, and therein lies a story of great importance, one that has threaded its way through the Cold War era for decades. During this period the whole concept of warfare, the role of the military, and the nature of the modern nation-state have been drastically altered, at a cost, to United States citizens alone, of no less than $3 trillion.
In the process of attempting to implement the policy he had promulgated with these three directives on June 28, 1961, President Kennedy created an explosive force within the environs of the government and its allies such that the resulting mass went critical on the streets of Dallas on November 22, 1963.
It all began with one of the best-kept secrets of World War II. As this secret is exposed, it will reveal how it happened that select elements of the U.S. Army and their CIA associates became interested in the undercover warfare tactics written and prac
ticed by the Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-tung.
This secret originated from the fact that while historians have openly revealed that Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt had gone to the Tehran Conference in late November 1943 to meet with Joseph Stalin for a discussion of grand strategy for the prosecution of the war against Nazi Germany, they have failed to note that Chiang Kai-shek and his wife, May Ling, and a special Chinese delegation had accompanied them from Cairo,4 where Churchill, Roosevelt, and Chiang had been meeting. This was a most important summit meeting not only for the purposes of advancing war planning in Europe but for much longer range planning in the Far East, planning that has spilled over into the Cold War era with the Korean and Indochinese warfare of later years.
This select Chinese delegation had a delicate task to perform that involved Stalin and could not be made public for several reasons. Whereas the Soviets, British, and Americans were locked in battle against Germany in Europe and the Chinese, British, and Americans opposed the Japanese on the mainland of China and in the Pacific, the Chinese forces of Chiang Kai-shek had a more complex problem. While Chiang was faced by an external force from Japan, his men were threatened also by the formidable Chinese Communist army under Mao Tse-tung. The British and Americans wanted Chiang to put more pressure on the Japanese on the mainland. But if he moved troops facing Mao, in China, to engage the Japanese, he would expose the rear elements of his army. Therefore, he could not move his army from its positions against Mao’s forces in order to aid the Allies against the Japanese and hope to survive the threat of the Chinese Communists.
The other part of the problem was that as British and American forces were moved in increasing numbers onto the mainland of China to help Chiang against the Japanese, it was inevitable that somewhere along the line they would encounter Chinese Communist forces that were ideological allies of the Soviets—who were, in turn, the military allies of the British and Americans.
Such complex affairs do not digest well in time of war, when the friend-versus-enemy scenario is supposed to be as clear as black and white. This is why the four powers could not meet publicly at one time in one place, and this explains why there had to be two conferences, one in Cairo and one in Tehran. And it further explains why the Chinese met secretly with Stalin in Tehran and how the three Pacific allies—the United States, Great Britain, and Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese—won a concession from Stalin to have him prevail upon his ideological ally, Mao Tse-tung, to withhold his forces from further pressure on Chiang, at least until the war with Japan ended. (Mao finally defeated the Nationalists in Nanking in 1949.) Such intricate diplomacy in the heat of the war demanded true statesmanship all around.
It is not within the scope of this book to venture into the areas of diplomacy and political intrigue that grew out of this most important meeting. Rather, we shall pursue its impact upon the development of a new trend in U.S. military doctrine that emerged and shaped itself during the Cold War years. Elements of this doctrine became evident in the NSAM #55, #56, and #57 series of presidential directives that John F. Kennedy issued in June 1961 as he initiated his objective of bringing the CIA under his effective control by putting the military into the “Peacetime Operations” (clandestine) business.
Following the Tehran and Cairo conferences, American military aid to and participation with the Chinese on the mainland increased enormously. A group of B-29 Super Fortress bombers was flown from the United States via Africa and the Middle East to bases in the Assam Valley wartime airport complex of eastern India. From there they were flown to advance bases in China for direct operations against the Japanese home islands.
It was during the post-Tehran Conference period that selected American military leaders ran up against conditions in China that were totally uncharacteristic of the military practices and doctrine of the United States. In China, military force was deeply involved in a political role at the same time as it was fighting a conventional war against the Japanese and a civil war with Mao. This necessarily political role of the military opened the eyes of the more traditional U.S. military observers.
The United States had sent a number of its finest military leaders to China. The army was under the command of Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell. The air force units were commanded by the legendary Gen. Claire Chennault of “Flying Tigers” fame. A number of these officers and their key subordinates came home from the war in Asia deeply impressed with what they had experienced there. Two things stood out above all others: the impact of the atomic bomb and the writings and revolutionary military doctrine of Mao Tse-tung.
Looking back at World War II, and even before it, U.S. military men—for the most part—regarded warfare as something that took place overseas, beyond our borders. They viewed military service as a totally nonpolitical function. This, they found, was also generally true of the military traditions of our British and French allies in Europe—until, that is, the closing period of the war. Then things began to change.
After the surrender of Italy, the U.S. Army began to help the Italians, who had been under Fascist totalitarian rule for a generation or more. They needed help not only to obtain food, shelter, and clothing but also to restructure local governments.
The U.S. Army began a program of “Civil Affairs and Military Government.” American servicemen, making use of their civilian skills, pitched in to get public water supplies flowing again, to get transportation rolling, and even to form a political structure that could take over the local administrations. This function spread all over Europe as cities and towns were liberated, one after the other, by the advancing U.S. armies.
The U.S. Army was getting into politics. But it was someone else’s politics. This new role for the army came at a fortuitous time. Two cities had been totally leveled by atomic bombs in faraway Japan. If the future of warfare was going to face up to reality, it would have to recognize that whole countries, or at least major regions of countries, would be totally devastated by nuclear weapons and their lethal fallout.
During the late 1940s and early 1950s, the War Colleges, where military doctrine is developed, began the study of nuclear weapons and their immense power, with the idea of placing these weapons into wartime Grand Strategy. If the entire span of the evolution of warfare had created a spectrum based upon weaponry from hand-held clubs at one end across to the B-29 bomber at the other, then it might be said that the nuclear weapon extended that spectrum of power almost to infinity.
The curriculum of each of these schools for senior officers contained major segments on nuclear warfare. “War Plans”—those very formal and fundamental plans designed to implement Grand Strategy and used in the budgeting process to ensure the availability of men, money, and matériel essential to carry out and fulfill those plans in time of war—were being developed that contained major segments dedicated to “poststrike” activity.
This new nuclear-age strategy recognized a type of warfare initiated by a sudden exchange of nuclear weapons, followed by a time of shock and stagnation. The urban areas of the Soviet Union, it was contemplated, would be devastated, and transportation and communications would be totally disrupted. The daily activities of the surviving population would be at a standstill, with no voice of leadership from the Kremlin; the survivors would be on their own. War Plans forecast that the first nation that could introduce, by airlift, its military forces into this shocked and devastated area and that could reestablish law and order, along with a new political and economic system, would seal victory.
For this purpose, the newly established CIA was brought into the war-planning activity and visualized as a fourth force in wartime. The CIA was asked to oversee the development of these special activities in peacetime and to manage their operation in time of war. Similarly, the air force was ordered to create a huge, global air transport system that could be rapidly augmented at the outbreak of war by CRAF (Civil Reserve Air Fleet) aircraft from the airlines. This huge air armada would airlift the army and essential supplies into enemy z
ones that had been specifically avoided by nuclear strikes to be sanctuaries and rallying zones following the nuclear deluge.
Those army “Special Forces” units, created for this purpose to work with the CIA and its “stay-behind” assets, would begin to create a government that would include a new economic and political system. As the lead element of these forces, the U.S. Army was directed to create, in peacetime, a Special Warfare section, to train Special Forces; and, once it had trained them, to disperse them to strategic locations around the world. The CIA had been directed to do everything possible to establish networks of foreign agents, in peacetime, far behind the borders of potential enemy countries. With the outbreak of war, the CIA would activate these “stay-behind” networks in preparation for the arrival of U.S. armed forces.
The air force created Air Re-supply and Communications (ARC) Wings, vast flying organizations trained and equipped to work with the army’s Special Forces and the CIA. These ARC Wings possessed airborne printing facilities that could be operated in flight. They were able to make areawide blanket leaflet drops to provide the psychological-warfare edge and the communications substitute required to reorganize a stunned and disorganized populace. This was the grandiose plan that emerged out of the merger of the World War II atomic bomb and “Civil Affairs and Military Government” experiences of World War II. On reflection, it is amazing to see how these two widely divergent concepts became a Grand Strategy war plan; and how then, by adding the superlative ingredient of elements of the Mao doctrine, they were shaped expertly to become the Cold War doctrine and the tactics of the Vietnam era, among other applications. For example, this planning was behind the “Strategic Hamlet” concept that will be described later.
JFK: CIA, Vietnam & The Plot to Assassinate JFK Page 27