Excerpts from Mounting Evidence
Chapter 2: How America Starts Its Wars
by Dr. Paul W. Rea
© 2011 Do not sell, distribute, or publish without author's permission
____________________________________________________
© 2011 Do not sell, distribute, or publish without author's permission
____________________________________________________
No people can be both ignorant and free.
—Thomas Jefferson
As many of us have sensed for some time, American democracy remains in serious, even critical condition. Yet more than most of us have acknowledged, the cumulative symptoms of the malaise are deeply disturbing: the concentration of wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands; a bloated military-industrial complex; normalized torture; extraordinary renditions; secret prisons; military tribunals; detainments without legal recourse; increasing concentrations of media ownership; invalid or stolen elections; faulty voting machines; plus attacks on personal privacy, political expression, and other civil liberties. Many of these violate our Constitutional rights, and all degrade our democracy.
While most politicians and pundits remain in denial about the seriousness of the crisis, several of our most perceptive voices are speaking out. Legendary defenders of democracy Bill Moyers, Glenn Greenwald, Chris Hedges, and Thom Hartmann have pointed to the fragility of democracy and how easy it is to lose it (www.commondreams.org/views03/0316-08.htm). Similarly troubled by what’s gone on since 9/11, social critic Naomi Wolf has turned to neglected American history for meaning and guidance: “I could no longer ignore the echoes between events of the past and forces at work today” (Wolf End of America p. xi).
Why Pay Attention to Precedents?
Responding to these threats to American democracy, we’ll examine precedents from its history. Though not well-known, these precedents have everything to do with understanding our present predicament. As Mark Twain sagely noted, “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme” (www.quotedb.com/quotes/3038).
In these opening chapters, we’ll look at patterns among historical precedents, at the crucial functions served by an awareness of history in a democracy, and at the role of media in the mythmaking that often follows traumatic events. As we’ll see, historical ignorance and amnesia inhibit critical thinking, jeopardize democracy, and facilitate acceptance of war. It’s a sure way for citizens to give away their power (www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html).
Fellow citizens often remark, “Hey, forget the history; it’s a thing of the past. That was then, this is now.” When they do, they’re showing a naïveté that must amuse those in government who understand that knowledge is power—and who may prefer that citizens don’t have much of either. The National Security Agency (NSA), for instance, has long resisted any declassification of materials on the Gulf of Tonkin “incident” of 1964, which led the United States into the Vietnam War. Despite repeated requests by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for declassification, senior NSA officials continued, fully 44 years after the hoax, to block release of key information. Only persistent use of the Freedom of Information Act would finally drag the facts into the light of day (UPI 1/9/08).
Why should the Feds be so stubborn? Reporting on the blockage, New York Times reporter Scott Shane revealed that NSA higher-ups were “fearful that [declassification] might prompt uncomfortable comparisons with the flawed intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq” (NYT 10/31/05). History is threatening to those who don’t want citizens making meaningful connections; that’s one reason it’s so often trivialized into lists of dates, kings, and battles.
Information and Empowerment
Now that concern might seem overblown, given that most Americans are already aware of the bogus justifications for the attack on Iraq. But if we look to more direct parallels, NSA’s fears become more understandable. If we recall that the Gulf of Tonkin incident involved supposed attacks by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on US Navy vessels, we get a bingo. What if, when Iranian swift boats supposedly buzzed navy ships in the Persian Gulf early in 2008, citizens (and even the news media) were empowered to ask, Is this another Gulf of Tonkin? Now that’s a question the Pentagon doesn’t want us asking. However uncomfortable these precedents may make those in power, informed comparisons are crucial. They they encourage critical thinking, a key step in creating the possibility for a democratic process.
What if, while Washington and the mass media were flooding the airwaves with reports of events that never happened and weapons that didn’t exist, more of us could have drawn on the many relevant precedents within American experience? Would a fully informed American public have been so easily suckered into the Vietnam quagmire or the Iraq fiasco? What if more of us were able to say, “Hey, that’s war propaganda, just like …”?
To catch up on our relevant but forgotten history, let’s take a brief look at some schemes that weren’t highlighted in history textbooks: how the US precipitated its involvement in five major conflicts: the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, and Vietnam. As we discover how and why the country got into these wars, the historical “rhymes” will ring loud and clear. This won’t be pop history, full of bubbles and sweeteners. But armed with greater insight, wiser in the ways of the world, we’ll become more empowered as citizens.
1846: The Mexican-American War Enables Major Land Grab
After annexing the Lone Star Republic of Texas, which pushed the US border with Mexico southward, President James Polk turned his sights toward Mexico’s vast lands in the West. These included California, which Polk, an expansionist, had long wanted to “appropriate” (H. Zinn People’s History of the US p. 150). To justify an invasion of Mexico, the president needed a pretext, an incident enabling the United States to invade a far weaker country and seize much of its land. To generate such an incident, he sent an army led by Gen. Zachary Taylor on maneuvers south of the Rio Grande. The provocation drew a predictable response. As the Mexicans tried to repel the foreign troops, they killed or captured American soldiers. Once the Mexicans fired the first shots, the war was on. Taylor wrote to Polk that “hostilities may now be considered as commenced.” After claiming that an enemy had launched an aggressive attack that had to be avenged, the president waged the war he’d wanted (Zinn People’s History pp. 150-51).
Although Polk was the one who’d initiated the deception, he nonetheless sent an indignant message to Congress demanding a declaration of war. (This was back when presidents still observed such Constitutional niceties.) The war found support among Americans propelled by a belief in Manifest Destiny. The war was short, but the gains were huge. As a price for halting its drive southward, the United States forced Mexico to sign over a vast area, which included all of what is now New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, California, and part of Colorado (E. Foner Give Me Liberty! Vol. 1 pp. 402-405).
Extending the American tradition of protest, men of conscience dissented. Henry David Thoreau, who strenuously opposed war and oppression, sensed that an expansion of slavery lurked behind the quasi-religious justification for expansion. In a one-man protest, Thoreau went to jail rather than pay his War Tax (Thoreau “Civil Disobedience”). Just half a century after its founding, the young Republic was heading toward repeated provocations and pretexts for war.
1898: Sinking of the Maine Triggers Spanish-American War
On the night of February 15, 1898, the US Battleship Maine rested at anchor in Havana harbor, its white hull gleaming above the black water. A month before, as Cuban rebels renewed their fight for independence from Spain, President McKinley sent the warship on a “friendly visit” to demonstrate the American desire for order in Cuba and to “protect American interests” (D. M. Kennedy Brief American Pageant p. 382). To the Spanish, struggling to retain their colonies, the ship signified American support. To the independence-minded Cubans, however, it was a floating fortress intruding into their affairs.
As “taps” approached on the Maine, an explosion shattered the silence. Fires engulfed the vessel, casting an eerie glow on the rippled water. Although nearby Spanish ships rescued some survivors, 266 American seamen were dead with 59 more wounded (www.smplanet.com/imperialism/remember.html). Four major inquiries into the disaster concluded that an explosion in the forward ammunition magazines caused the sinking. Exactly why those magazines exploded no one has determined. Little evidence has ever supported the widely trumpeted allegation of sabotage by the Spanish.
First Journalists, Then Politicians Fan Flames of War
Back home, big-city and small-town newspapers were indulging in an orgy of patriotic bloodlust. For more than two years, backed by bankers, the “yellow” press had been beating the drums for war against Spain. The spectacular sinking of the Maine provided a new opportunity to wave the bloody flag. With war fever rising, a battle cry resounded: “Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!” The sinking was immediately blamed on a mine detonated by the Spanish; it became unpatriotic to even question whether something else might have caused the explosion (hnn.us/articles/1009.html).
Beginning in 1896, two years before the Maine exploded, newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst employed an illustrator to supply drawings favorable to the Cuban insurrection against Spain. After a year on assignment in Cuba, the illustrator reported “there is no trouble here. There will be no war.” Hearst shot back with a now-famous telegram, “You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war” (www.smplanet.com/imperialism/remember.html).
To its credit, Washington didn’t initially jump at the prospect of the war. Though public sentiment increasingly ran in favor of the Cuban rebels, the administrations of Grover Cleveland and William McKinley remained steadfast in wanting to see the war in Cuba end. Despite hesitation at the White House, powerful interests combined to thrust the country into war—and into empire. Sensing Spain’s weakness, expansionist banking, business, and military interests became increasingly keen to access additional resources (J. Combs History of American Foreign Policy pp. 142, 144-45).
With war-fever rising, the sinking of the Maine stirred passions that swept a republic toward empire. Major commercial interests intended to instigate a war that would allow the United States to seize Spain’s empire. In The Spanish-Cuban-American War and the Birth of American Imperialism, prominent historian Philip S. Foner argued that from the outset, Washington’s intention was to control the Philippines, which promised cheap labor, markets for manufactured goods, a rich array of resources, and an ideal location for a naval base. These amenities became available only after a long and bloody occupation.
But the Maine would hardly be the last time that an accidental or a contrived or staged event would serve to justify a major military action.
1915: The Lusitania Sinking, Another “Trigger Incident”
Because Americans remained largely ignorant of how their government had manipulated events to start earlier wars, few questioned official accounts about why their country entered World War I. If more Americans had understood how pretexts trigger military campaigns, more might have raised questions about the sinking of the luxury liner Lusitania.
In May 1915, before the United States entered World War I, the Lusitania set out from New York. When a German U-boat “lurking beneath the surface” sank the great Cunard liner, 1195 passengers and crew were lost. These included 112 Americans, “mostly women and children.” In the ensuing months, public outrage at the German atrocity mounted, effectively propelling the US into World War I. Unbeknownst to its passengers, however, the liner was “secretly carrying munitions in its hold” (T. DiBacco History of the United States p. 486).
Although the official narrative mentions that the Lusitania carried munitions, the emphasis usually falls on how the “barbaric Huns” attacked and sank a defenseless passenger liner. What most histories don’t say is that the British Admiralty had secretly installed several six-inch guns on the passenger ship. Nor do they inform readers that the Germans had learned, unbeknownst to passengers, that the Lusitania would sail with 4,200 cases of Remington rifle cartridges (at 1,000 rounds to a box) plus 1,250 cases of shrapnel shells (K. Allen Lusitania Controversy Part 4). Nor does history mention that these stowaway munitions—hundreds of tons of them—were expressly intended for English forces fighting the Germans (Zinn People’s History p. 362).
Contrary to the official narrative, the stowaway cargo revealed a major effort to support the British, an attempt to deliver militarily significant quantities of munitions under cover of a passenger ship. When the German Embassy learned of this huge shipment, it attempted to place 50 newspaper ads warning passengers not to book passage on the Lusitania. However, the State Department blocked the ads. And when members of Congress tried to issue a public warning to avoid ships carrying military cargo, President Woodrow Wilson quickly quashed their plan. Since only one such warning slipped by the government agents, hundreds of unsuspecting passengers booked passage on the doomed liner.
These developments illustrate the power of government to suppress information that doesn’t suit its purposes. It’s still little known that to make sure the Lusitania would be a floating duck crossing an area infested with U-boats, lord of the British Admiralty Winston Churchill ordered the escort ship Juno back to port (J. Kenworthy and G. Young Freedom of the Seas p. 211). It’s hardly common knowledge that American and British officials falsified the ship’s packing list, omitting the secret munitions. Their intent was both to establish “plausible deniability” when the liner was torpedoed and to kindle the fiery passions of war. Although the US didn’t immediately enter the conflict, the deliberate German sinking of a British ocean liner created a political climate that made war more likely. Above all, the official story doesn’t let on that British and American governments together planned and helped orchestrate the attack on the Lusitania, that it was financed by major banking houses, or that Wilson and Churchill personally arranged for the luxury liner to carry weapons (www.teachpeace.com/teachpeacemoment9.htm).
The United States’ entry into World War I provides an example of how insightful historical accounts are sometimes developed and actively applied to the present, only to eventually slip down the memory hole. During the 1930s, the (Gerald P.) Nye Committee (or Senate Munitions Investigating Committee) studied the causes of US involvement in World War I. After holding 93 hearings and questioning more than 200 witnesses, including J. P. Morgan and Pierre DuPont, the Committee found that bankers had pressured President Wilson to protect their loans abroad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nye_Committee).
Bankers were deeply invested in the war. Between 1915 and April 1917, US banks had loaned the United Kingdom and its allies $2.3 billion (Nye Report 1933). The bankers couldn’t allow the British to lose the war. The munitions industry also exerted “excessive influence on American foreign policy leading up to and during World War I.” In short, the Committee concluded that the US entered the war largely because it was in bankers’ and munitions makers’ best interest for the Western allies to win—assuming there were any real winners in World War I. The mass carnage approached nine million dead (P. Fussell Great War and Modern Memory pp. 8, 18).
Although the Nye Committee didn’t achieve its goal of nationalizing the arms industry, it did expose how the War was driven by banking and industrial interests.
1941: The “Sneak” Attack on Pearl Harbor
For most Americans, Pearl Harbor remains an emotionally charged event. Because of Japan’s “Black Sunday” attack, 2,403 Americans lost their lives and another 1,178 were wounded. Moreover, Japan’s gamble triggered “the Good War,” which was fought to victory by “the Greatest Generation” and led by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, often revered as the greatest president of the twentieth century. Though layers of hallowed mythology have obscured many key facts, when they’re finally presented they’re very persuasive.
In his well-documented study Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor, historian Robert Stinnett demonstrated that the president provoked war with Japan (Stinnett Day of Deceit pp. 171ff). By enforcing an embargo on oil and steel, FDR ensured that Japan would attack the United States. In fact, FDR ordered “eight specific measures which amounted to acts of war, including an embargo on trade with Japan, the shipment of arms to Japan’s adversaries, the prevention of Tokyo from securing raw materials essential for its economy, and the denial of port access, thus provoking a military confrontation” (www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9063).
Pearl Harbor: Little-Known Events Leading to the Attack
Whether FDR’s decision is viewed as tactical or treasonous, it certainly extended an American tradition of using deception to foment public outrage and generate support for wars.
1962: Operation Northwoods: A “False-Flag” Operation against Cuba
As just shown, American history reveals instances in which Washington either treated an accident as a provocation or generated events intended to provoke public indignation. However, the history has also involved the deliberate staging of “false-flag” attacks in order to justify military actions. A “false flag” attack is perpetrated by one party but designed to be blamed on another.
Backdrop: Fiasco at Bay of Pigs
In April of 1961, a new Kennedy administration had supported an abortive invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. This plan, secretly authorized by President Dwight Eisenhower and implemented by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), called for arming and training anti-Castro Cuban exiles. Though Kennedy was hesitant to commit American forces, he did approve the use of some unmarked warplanes. The plan was for the exiles to land and kindle a general uprising, but Castro’s forces defeated the CIA-trained invaders in just three days (Zinn People’s History of the US p. 440).
Ultraconservatives at the Pentagon were hardly chastened, however. In 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the generals commanding the entire US military, came up with Operation Northwoods, a much more ambitious scheme against Cuba. This new plan, which again involved the CIA, called for staged attacks that would “justify” a US invasion of Cuba. A “false-flag” operation, it featured several alternative schemes. The schemes ranged from having boatloads of Cuban émigrés “ruthlessly” sunk by “communist Cubans” to having a decoy passenger plane shot down by “Russian-made MiG fighters” and then telling the world that the empty drone had been full of “civilian victims” (J. Bamford Body of Secrets pp. 82-89).
The Joint Chiefs’ ingenious plan for “provocations” reads like the script for a low-tech Dr. Strangelove. Its objective, as rendered in unusually clear “Pentagonese,” was “to camouflage the ultimate objective and create the necessary impression of Cuban rashness … to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances … and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere”(Joint Chiefs Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense 3/13/62 pp. 3, 5, 12). The intent then was to use a series of outrageous deceptions to generate a pretext for an unprovoked war on Cuba.
Operation Northwoods was plotted down to the most minute details. In one scenario, attacks led by the Cuban expatriates would be staged around Guantánamo Bay to give the “appearance of being done by hostile Cuban forces.” Provocations were to “include starting rumors by clandestine radio, landing allied Cuban expatriates (in Cuban military uniforms) . . . , and burning aircraft inside the base. . . . A ‘Remember the Maine’ incident could be arranged. . . . We could blow up a US ship in Guantánamo Bay and blame Cuba.” This initial deception was intended to “provoke Cuban reactions.” At that very moment, American forces would be conducting “war games” in the area; if the Cubans fought back, the exercises would be changed into actual attacks (Memo for Secy. of Def. pp. 7-8).
Knowing what we do about the Maine, the plan to “blow up a ship” is particularly intriguing. On one hand, it suggests that military planners, unlike the general public, do recall the events that launched earlier campaigns. On the other hand, the plan illustrates a principle that informs much of this analysis: that tactics which have worked tend to stay in the bag of tricks, ready for Pentagon tricksters to use again. Informed citizens need to have some idea of what they’re likely hiding in that bag.
Staged Events at Home and Abroad
But the Guantánamo deception was just the beginning. Beyond staging events on foreign shores, the Joint Chiefs also planned provocations on US soil: “We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington.… 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 …” (Memo. to Secy. of Def. pp. 7-8). The Joint Chiefs apparently anticipated no problems getting full cooperation from journalists.
But the electronic coup de theatre was still to come. The Joint Chiefs planned deceptions in the skies that involved substituting a drone aircraft for a commercial flight and then destroying it through remote control. The plan called for staging “an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner ….” With CIA agents posing as “passengers,” an airliner was to head for Cuba. But the plane would secretly land at a CIA airfield; here it would receive a new tail number, making it seem like a different airliner. Then it was to take off, ready to veer off when a duplicate but unmanned airliner took its place in midair. The substitute drone airliner would be flown by remote control toward Cuba, sending back prerecorded calls for help.
Then came the climactic blowout of the plot. “When over Cuba,” the generals proposed, “the drone will begin transmitting on the international distress frequency a ‘MAYDAY’ message stating he is under attack by Cuban MiG aircraft. The transmission will be interrupted by destruction of the aircraft, which will be triggered by radio signal. This will allow Latin American radio stations to tell the United States what’s happened to the aircraft instead of the United States trying to ‘sell’ the incident” (Memo. to Secy. of Def. pp. 9ff). Having blamed Havana for the atrocity, Washington could proceed with the invasion it had longed to execute (Harper’s 7/01).
“Buck Rogers” schemes aside, it’s worth noting that the Northwoods plot reveals how, nearly 40 years before 9/11, Americans had seriously considered relying on high-tech deceptions.
Civilians Assert Control, Planners Plot On Admiral Lyman Lemnitzer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the main proponent of the Northwoods plot, presented it to Defense Secretary McNamara and President Kennedy. After both rejected the scheme, Admiral Lemnitzer sought to destroy all evidence of the Northwoods plan (Baltimore Sun 4/24/01). Undeterred, the Pentagon continued to plan other “false flag” or “staged pretext” operations through 1963, when JFK was assassinated, and in 1964, its Gulf of Tonkin scheme “justified” a massive escalation of US bombing of North Vietnam. The JFK assassination itself enabled a sharp escalation of the Vietnam War and must be considered, along with 9/11, as a pivotal covert action or trigger event (P. D. Scott American War Machine pp. 22, 171).
1964: A Gulf of Tonkin “Incident” That Never Happened
Whereas the Mexicans had struck back at an American incursion, the North Vietnamese—whose leader, Ho Chi Minh, had studied American history—were more savvy. They didn’t respond to provocative American attacks along their coast. As a result, American officials had to fabricate a Vietnamese response and then use it as the pretext for war.
Today, most historians believe that by the last few months of his life, Kennedy had decided to phase out of Vietnam. In October 1963, the president seemed to lean toward withdrawing US troops from Vietnam, a plan he didn’t intend to implement until after the 1964 elections. That November, Kennedy made his fateful visit to Dallas. While President Johnson initially assured a stunned nation that he intended to carry out his predecessor’s agenda, Johnson promptly rescinded Kennedy’s order to have American troops start coming home. Just three days after the assassination, the new president met with Henry Cabot Lodge, US ambassador to Vietnam. Johnson told Lodge that “Saigon can count on us.” Just four days after Kennedy’s death, Johnson authorized plans to bomb North Vietnam, a drastic shift in policy (J. Galbraith Boston Review 10/03 & 11/03).
It seems unlikely, however, that LBJ had drawn up these plans by himself.
Beginning a Full-Scale War in Vietnam
Trying to ready the public for war, Johnson, McNamara, and other top officials concluded that some flash point would be needed to trigger public outrage. American planners executed provocative raids along the North Vietnamese coast, but American ships took no return fire (www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9063).
Soon the nonevents flashed across the airwaves. On August 2, 1964, the destroyer Maddox was supposedly attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats but drove them off, sustaining only the slightest damage. “The destroyer maneuvered to avoid torpedoes and used her guns against her fast-moving opponents, hitting them all. In turn, she was struck … by a single 14.5-millimeter machine gun bullet.” Two days later, the Pentagon announced the North Vietnamese had attacked a second American ship (US Naval Hist. Center USS Maddox 1944-1972). Although the Pentagon insisted that its warships were on “routine patrol,” it’s more likely that they entered the Gulf to provoke or spy on North Vietnam .
From the onset, military professionals in the field tried to tell the Pentagon brass that the attacks didn’t occur. Capt. John J. Herrick, the task force commander in the Gulf, dismissed the reports as the work of an “overeager sonar man.” Captain Herrick concluded that “torpedoes fired appear doubtful” and advised “complete evaluation before any further action.” Years later, Herrick recalled that “our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets—there were no PT boats there” (D. C. Hallin Uncensored War pp. 16-17).
But Washington didn’t want the facts. Presenting the United States as the innocent victim, Johnson claimed that the United States had to “retaliate” against “communist aggression.” McNamara rushed to Congress, charging that he had “unequivocal proof” of an “unprovoked attack.” An officer at the Pentagon told Sen. Wayne Morse (D-Ore.) about the hoax, but Morse couldn’t persuade his colleagues in Congress to halt the rush to war. Within hours, Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, plunging the country into a disastrous “police action” that lasted a decade (S. Karnow Vietnam: A History p. 375).
Both the war’s tactics and their effects proved genocidal. Even McNamara, architect of the massive “carpet” bombing campaigns, would acknowledge that two million Vietnamese were killed, most of them noncombatants (E. Morris film Fog of War). The actual toll probably ran closer to three million dead—including 58,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of additional Asians, most of them killed by US bombs in Laos and Cambodia (D. Model Lying for Empire p. 138).
Another Preplanned War
Were the results not so terribly tragic, it might seem comic for a superpower to make so much of so little—to launch a war over a single bullet, assuming there actually was a bullet (Bamford Puzzle Palace p. 294). Legendary independent journalist I. F. Stone characterized the Gulf of Tonkin incident as a “question not just of decision-making in a crisis, but of crisis-making to support a secretly prearranged decision …” (NY Review of Books 3/28/68).
We’ve been looking at history here. Does that mean contrived provocations and false-flag operations are a thing of the past? Hardly. It’s no secret that during the later years of the Bush regime, administration hawks were looking for a pretext to attack Iran. Never caught without a scheme, Dick Cheney did not disappoint. Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh and MSNBC both reported that Cheney had proposed to the Pentagon a plan to have the US Navy deploy fake Iranian patrol boats that would stage an “attack” on US destroyers in the Strait of Hormuz. This “act of aggression” was to be blamed on Iran and used as a pretext for war (New Yorker 7/7/08).
If the people understood the history of pretexts for war, would Cheney have been as likely to imagine that the US could get away with such a scheme?
Although this chronology of American foreign-policy malfeasance rests on solid historical facts, some readers may find it disturbing and difficult to accept. It’s unsettling to realize that, with the exception of the Civil War, deception and trickery have helped the US to launch or enter every major war in its history. This is worked out in John Quigley’s The Ruses for War—which, after examining the 25 most prominent US military actions since World War II, demonstrates how each was promoted by deception. Becoming more specific about the typical mechanism, political analyst Peter Dale Scott concludes that “nearly all of America’s foreign wars since 1959” were “disguised as responses to unprovoked aggression” (Scott American War Machine p. 195). Even the “UN intervention” in Korea likely resulted from provocations; see I. F. Stone, Hidden History of the Korean War.
Presentation of these deceits can dent egos and undercut national pride; it also threatens the powers that be, who frequently denounce it as “unpatriotic.” It’s tempting to ignore the evidence or to dismiss this history as distortions by radicals who don’t love their country. However, some of America’s sharpest critics do so from a commitment to the core American value of facing and telling the truth. Examples include Mark Twain, legendary analyst Noam Chomsky, and widely published theologian David Ray Griffin, who offers a historical overview similar to this one (Griffin Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11 pp. 3-15).
It’s Hardly Unique to the United States
Following this survey of “trigger” events in American history, most of them state crimes against democracy (SCADs), let’s look at other highly instructive precedents from recent history beyond the United States. Again, we’ll find parallels to the present. These precedents include planned provocations, false-flag operations, “shock-and-awe” events, or simply traumas exploited for a political takeover. The famous Reichstag Fire falls in the latter category.
Arson at the Reichstag: A Fiery Path to Power
In January of 1933, fires erupted at the Reichstag (German parliament), and the conflagration soon consumed the building. The actual perpetrators, beyond confessed Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe, remain uncertain. On this question, heavyweight historians have tilted both sides of the scale. In The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William L. Shirer believed that the Nazis did burn the building; yet in Hitler: 1898-1936: Hubris, British expert Ian Kershaw concluded that the Nazis didn’t help the Dutch firebomber burn the Reichstag.
For now, it seems, we’ll have to ride the paradox, accepting the ambiguity.
What is beyond dispute, though, is that the Reichstag fire provides a classic example of Klein’s Shock Doctrine. The Nazis were amazingly quick to exploit a trauma that soon catapulted them into power. The day after the fire, as Berliners gazed at the smoldering ashes of a building that symbolized their democracy, the Nazis were busy drafting their Reichstag Fire Decree. Immediately exploiting a weakness for authority in the German character, President Paul von Hindenburg and Chancellor Adolph Hitler invoked the Constitution to issue a decree permitting suspension of civil liberties in a “national emergency.” With the public still in shock,the Nazis began to ruthlessly suppress all opposition (www.weyrich.com/political_issues/reichstag_fire.html).
Aided by the mainstream press, the Nazis were able to blame the fire on the Communists. The resulting backlash against opposing parties on the left allowed the fascists to assume totalitarian power in the elections of March 1933.
The causes behind the takeover hold implications for today. Ian Kershaw points out that Hitler rose to near-total power under a liberal constitution, albeit one that was never accepted by the Nazis’ strongest supporters—the military, aristocracy, and big industry (NYT Book Review 2/3/08). To this list of contributing causes, one could add failures by the press, the churches, the courts, and many intellectuals to investigate or critique (www.alternet.org/story/71881). Ultimately, however, it was the apathy, conformity, dissipation, cowardice, and ignorance of history among most Germans that allowed the Nazis to seize power.
To what degree might the fears stirred by the 9/11 trauma and a similar lack of political sophistication have contributed to similarly uncritical public acquiescence?
It’s difficult to ignore parallels to both the US Patriot Act, passed less than a month after 9/11, and to the immediate spike in popularity for President Bush. Regardless of whether political leaders played a part in a politically pivotal event, what they do after it occurs usually reveals prior intentions. This is the “priority principle,” which states that the first things politicians do in office usually reveals their agendas. Solidifying their power by crippling competitors is typically a high priority. Ironically, soon enough the voters who elected the officials may also be seen as adversaries. Such attitudes suggest one motivation for officials to commit SCADs, which compromise the democratic process.
Parallels to the ascending corporate control in the United States indeed are deeply troubling. However, it’s too glib just to say, “it’s Germany in 1933 all over again.” Historical analogies are never exact. When we note sobering parallels to the rise of fascism in Germany, we also need to recall that Americans enjoy one great advantage—a history of democracy and long exposure to its ideals—if only they will bring the best of their past to bear on the present.
Fear Mongering: Conjuring “Barbarians at the Gate”
Another dependable power play is to conjure the “boogie man.” Never ones to miss a trick that worked, the Nazis relied heavily on imagined, inflated, or contrived enemies. At the Nuremberg Trials, Luftwaffe Commander Hermann Göring explained how Nazi leaders exploited the fears they’d fabricated: “it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.… Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger” (http://www.wisdomquotes.com/001993.html).
Could Göring’s candid disclosure also characterize White House pronouncements during the leadup to recent wars?
In practice, the Nazis magnified external threats (England, France, and Soviet Union) and conjured internal threats (communists, socialists, and Jews), using these not just to control the population but to motivate external and internal aggression. Jews in general were seen as threats to Aryan racial purity, and “Jewish bankers” were scapegoated for the sins of bankers more broadly, blinding the public to the role of bankers in calamitous German militarism. The passivity and miseducation of the populace proved colossally costly: forty million people lost their lives.
How could this have happened in a highly cultured industrial democracy? If we pose this question, we rarely get much beyond stock footage of storm troopers goose-stepping through the Arc de Triumph. Rarely is Göring’s revelation either taught or quoted, probably because powerful interests don’t want us to wonder whether it might apply elsewhere.
Despite many Americans’ ongoing fascination with their country’s role in World War II, how many know that war began with a false-flag operation?
Heinrich Himmler’s Schemes: A Classic False-Flag Operation
Like many of the American administrations we’ve looked in on, the Third Reich also needed a pretext for an attack. In August 1939, German soldiers disguised as Polish troops staged an assault on a German radio station near the Polish border. Adding realism to the stagecraft, German political prisoners dressed in Polish uniforms were killed as they “attacked.” After German SS personnel dressed as Polish troops “captured” the station, they delivered an anti-German broadcast in Polish. On the same day, other staged incidents provided additional pretexts for vengeance and war. Reacting to such “aggression” against the Fatherland, Hitler wasted no time; he ordered a “defensive” invasion of Poland to begin the very next day (B. Lightbody Second World War p. 39).
Governments and political groups use contrived events so frequently because they evoke powerful emotions. We’ve just seen that the dramatic nighttime conflagration at the Reichstag, whether or not deliberately set by the Nazis, left most Germans in shock, vulnerable to the ascendant fascists. Again, civil authority and order seemed to be going up in flames, and the Nazis promised a strong Father to fill the void.
But more than “allowed” or “assisted” events, carefully staged provocations are apt to evoke the strongest reactions, especially when combined with a psychological operation—a “PSYOP,” or “psych-war”—designed for maximum impact. As Zwicker observes, “the false-flag op is the indispensable, most dependable device rulers use to mobilize their populations behind wars …” (Zwicker Towers of Deception pp. 260-61). Despite the great impact of such events, “shock and awe”—even when intensified by a PSYOP— usually isn’t trusted to carry enough impact; it’s immediately framed within narratives that spin the event and promote political agendas, usually those of the perpetrators. Thus such provocations are often followed by scary stories or shocking images, such as the propaganda newsreels of the Reichstag on fire.
Any parallels to the seemingly perpetual replays of the burning and disintegrating Twin Towers weren’t coincidental, regardless of who was responsible for their destruction. Public outrage propelled the country toward a revenge attack on Afghanistan—which, as we’ll see, was probably less involved with the attacks than Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. But Pakistan had nuclear weapons, and Saudi Arabia supplied much of America’s oil, so the bombs fell on Afghanistan.
Even today, planned provocations, false-flag operations, and PSYOPs remain a mystery to most Americans. So why don’t even educated people know more about these sinister schemes? Why aren’t staged deceptions included in mainstream renderings of history, such as realistic war movies and TV documentaries? Why doesn’t the public learn about these events in history classes, on the History Channel, or from The War, Ken Burns’s thirteen-hour documentary about World War II? The answer may lie with other questions: If a documentarian had covered these false-flag operations or how Pearl Harbor had actually come about, would he retain his corporate sponsorship? Would his series have aired at all?
So there‘s a lot of information which should be common knowledge that just hasn’t been readily available. Similarly, there’s a lot of information about unsolved traumas that needs to come into the national conversation. That will be one of the subjects of the next chapter.
Back to Excerpts
—Thomas Jefferson
As many of us have sensed for some time, American democracy remains in serious, even critical condition. Yet more than most of us have acknowledged, the cumulative symptoms of the malaise are deeply disturbing: the concentration of wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands; a bloated military-industrial complex; normalized torture; extraordinary renditions; secret prisons; military tribunals; detainments without legal recourse; increasing concentrations of media ownership; invalid or stolen elections; faulty voting machines; plus attacks on personal privacy, political expression, and other civil liberties. Many of these violate our Constitutional rights, and all degrade our democracy.
While most politicians and pundits remain in denial about the seriousness of the crisis, several of our most perceptive voices are speaking out. Legendary defenders of democracy Bill Moyers, Glenn Greenwald, Chris Hedges, and Thom Hartmann have pointed to the fragility of democracy and how easy it is to lose it (www.commondreams.org/views03/0316-08.htm). Similarly troubled by what’s gone on since 9/11, social critic Naomi Wolf has turned to neglected American history for meaning and guidance: “I could no longer ignore the echoes between events of the past and forces at work today” (Wolf End of America p. xi).
Why Pay Attention to Precedents?
Responding to these threats to American democracy, we’ll examine precedents from its history. Though not well-known, these precedents have everything to do with understanding our present predicament. As Mark Twain sagely noted, “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme” (www.quotedb.com/quotes/3038).
In these opening chapters, we’ll look at patterns among historical precedents, at the crucial functions served by an awareness of history in a democracy, and at the role of media in the mythmaking that often follows traumatic events. As we’ll see, historical ignorance and amnesia inhibit critical thinking, jeopardize democracy, and facilitate acceptance of war. It’s a sure way for citizens to give away their power (www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html).
Fellow citizens often remark, “Hey, forget the history; it’s a thing of the past. That was then, this is now.” When they do, they’re showing a naïveté that must amuse those in government who understand that knowledge is power—and who may prefer that citizens don’t have much of either. The National Security Agency (NSA), for instance, has long resisted any declassification of materials on the Gulf of Tonkin “incident” of 1964, which led the United States into the Vietnam War. Despite repeated requests by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for declassification, senior NSA officials continued, fully 44 years after the hoax, to block release of key information. Only persistent use of the Freedom of Information Act would finally drag the facts into the light of day (UPI 1/9/08).
Why should the Feds be so stubborn? Reporting on the blockage, New York Times reporter Scott Shane revealed that NSA higher-ups were “fearful that [declassification] might prompt uncomfortable comparisons with the flawed intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq” (NYT 10/31/05). History is threatening to those who don’t want citizens making meaningful connections; that’s one reason it’s so often trivialized into lists of dates, kings, and battles.
Information and Empowerment
Now that concern might seem overblown, given that most Americans are already aware of the bogus justifications for the attack on Iraq. But if we look to more direct parallels, NSA’s fears become more understandable. If we recall that the Gulf of Tonkin incident involved supposed attacks by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on US Navy vessels, we get a bingo. What if, when Iranian swift boats supposedly buzzed navy ships in the Persian Gulf early in 2008, citizens (and even the news media) were empowered to ask, Is this another Gulf of Tonkin? Now that’s a question the Pentagon doesn’t want us asking. However uncomfortable these precedents may make those in power, informed comparisons are crucial. They they encourage critical thinking, a key step in creating the possibility for a democratic process.
What if, while Washington and the mass media were flooding the airwaves with reports of events that never happened and weapons that didn’t exist, more of us could have drawn on the many relevant precedents within American experience? Would a fully informed American public have been so easily suckered into the Vietnam quagmire or the Iraq fiasco? What if more of us were able to say, “Hey, that’s war propaganda, just like …”?
To catch up on our relevant but forgotten history, let’s take a brief look at some schemes that weren’t highlighted in history textbooks: how the US precipitated its involvement in five major conflicts: the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, and Vietnam. As we discover how and why the country got into these wars, the historical “rhymes” will ring loud and clear. This won’t be pop history, full of bubbles and sweeteners. But armed with greater insight, wiser in the ways of the world, we’ll become more empowered as citizens.
1846: The Mexican-American War Enables Major Land Grab
After annexing the Lone Star Republic of Texas, which pushed the US border with Mexico southward, President James Polk turned his sights toward Mexico’s vast lands in the West. These included California, which Polk, an expansionist, had long wanted to “appropriate” (H. Zinn People’s History of the US p. 150). To justify an invasion of Mexico, the president needed a pretext, an incident enabling the United States to invade a far weaker country and seize much of its land. To generate such an incident, he sent an army led by Gen. Zachary Taylor on maneuvers south of the Rio Grande. The provocation drew a predictable response. As the Mexicans tried to repel the foreign troops, they killed or captured American soldiers. Once the Mexicans fired the first shots, the war was on. Taylor wrote to Polk that “hostilities may now be considered as commenced.” After claiming that an enemy had launched an aggressive attack that had to be avenged, the president waged the war he’d wanted (Zinn People’s History pp. 150-51).
Although Polk was the one who’d initiated the deception, he nonetheless sent an indignant message to Congress demanding a declaration of war. (This was back when presidents still observed such Constitutional niceties.) The war found support among Americans propelled by a belief in Manifest Destiny. The war was short, but the gains were huge. As a price for halting its drive southward, the United States forced Mexico to sign over a vast area, which included all of what is now New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, California, and part of Colorado (E. Foner Give Me Liberty! Vol. 1 pp. 402-405).
Extending the American tradition of protest, men of conscience dissented. Henry David Thoreau, who strenuously opposed war and oppression, sensed that an expansion of slavery lurked behind the quasi-religious justification for expansion. In a one-man protest, Thoreau went to jail rather than pay his War Tax (Thoreau “Civil Disobedience”). Just half a century after its founding, the young Republic was heading toward repeated provocations and pretexts for war.
1898: Sinking of the Maine Triggers Spanish-American War
On the night of February 15, 1898, the US Battleship Maine rested at anchor in Havana harbor, its white hull gleaming above the black water. A month before, as Cuban rebels renewed their fight for independence from Spain, President McKinley sent the warship on a “friendly visit” to demonstrate the American desire for order in Cuba and to “protect American interests” (D. M. Kennedy Brief American Pageant p. 382). To the Spanish, struggling to retain their colonies, the ship signified American support. To the independence-minded Cubans, however, it was a floating fortress intruding into their affairs.
As “taps” approached on the Maine, an explosion shattered the silence. Fires engulfed the vessel, casting an eerie glow on the rippled water. Although nearby Spanish ships rescued some survivors, 266 American seamen were dead with 59 more wounded (www.smplanet.com/imperialism/remember.html). Four major inquiries into the disaster concluded that an explosion in the forward ammunition magazines caused the sinking. Exactly why those magazines exploded no one has determined. Little evidence has ever supported the widely trumpeted allegation of sabotage by the Spanish.
First Journalists, Then Politicians Fan Flames of War
Back home, big-city and small-town newspapers were indulging in an orgy of patriotic bloodlust. For more than two years, backed by bankers, the “yellow” press had been beating the drums for war against Spain. The spectacular sinking of the Maine provided a new opportunity to wave the bloody flag. With war fever rising, a battle cry resounded: “Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!” The sinking was immediately blamed on a mine detonated by the Spanish; it became unpatriotic to even question whether something else might have caused the explosion (hnn.us/articles/1009.html).
Beginning in 1896, two years before the Maine exploded, newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst employed an illustrator to supply drawings favorable to the Cuban insurrection against Spain. After a year on assignment in Cuba, the illustrator reported “there is no trouble here. There will be no war.” Hearst shot back with a now-famous telegram, “You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war” (www.smplanet.com/imperialism/remember.html).
To its credit, Washington didn’t initially jump at the prospect of the war. Though public sentiment increasingly ran in favor of the Cuban rebels, the administrations of Grover Cleveland and William McKinley remained steadfast in wanting to see the war in Cuba end. Despite hesitation at the White House, powerful interests combined to thrust the country into war—and into empire. Sensing Spain’s weakness, expansionist banking, business, and military interests became increasingly keen to access additional resources (J. Combs History of American Foreign Policy pp. 142, 144-45).
With war-fever rising, the sinking of the Maine stirred passions that swept a republic toward empire. Major commercial interests intended to instigate a war that would allow the United States to seize Spain’s empire. In The Spanish-Cuban-American War and the Birth of American Imperialism, prominent historian Philip S. Foner argued that from the outset, Washington’s intention was to control the Philippines, which promised cheap labor, markets for manufactured goods, a rich array of resources, and an ideal location for a naval base. These amenities became available only after a long and bloody occupation.
But the Maine would hardly be the last time that an accidental or a contrived or staged event would serve to justify a major military action.
1915: The Lusitania Sinking, Another “Trigger Incident”
Because Americans remained largely ignorant of how their government had manipulated events to start earlier wars, few questioned official accounts about why their country entered World War I. If more Americans had understood how pretexts trigger military campaigns, more might have raised questions about the sinking of the luxury liner Lusitania.
In May 1915, before the United States entered World War I, the Lusitania set out from New York. When a German U-boat “lurking beneath the surface” sank the great Cunard liner, 1195 passengers and crew were lost. These included 112 Americans, “mostly women and children.” In the ensuing months, public outrage at the German atrocity mounted, effectively propelling the US into World War I. Unbeknownst to its passengers, however, the liner was “secretly carrying munitions in its hold” (T. DiBacco History of the United States p. 486).
Although the official narrative mentions that the Lusitania carried munitions, the emphasis usually falls on how the “barbaric Huns” attacked and sank a defenseless passenger liner. What most histories don’t say is that the British Admiralty had secretly installed several six-inch guns on the passenger ship. Nor do they inform readers that the Germans had learned, unbeknownst to passengers, that the Lusitania would sail with 4,200 cases of Remington rifle cartridges (at 1,000 rounds to a box) plus 1,250 cases of shrapnel shells (K. Allen Lusitania Controversy Part 4). Nor does history mention that these stowaway munitions—hundreds of tons of them—were expressly intended for English forces fighting the Germans (Zinn People’s History p. 362).
Contrary to the official narrative, the stowaway cargo revealed a major effort to support the British, an attempt to deliver militarily significant quantities of munitions under cover of a passenger ship. When the German Embassy learned of this huge shipment, it attempted to place 50 newspaper ads warning passengers not to book passage on the Lusitania. However, the State Department blocked the ads. And when members of Congress tried to issue a public warning to avoid ships carrying military cargo, President Woodrow Wilson quickly quashed their plan. Since only one such warning slipped by the government agents, hundreds of unsuspecting passengers booked passage on the doomed liner.
These developments illustrate the power of government to suppress information that doesn’t suit its purposes. It’s still little known that to make sure the Lusitania would be a floating duck crossing an area infested with U-boats, lord of the British Admiralty Winston Churchill ordered the escort ship Juno back to port (J. Kenworthy and G. Young Freedom of the Seas p. 211). It’s hardly common knowledge that American and British officials falsified the ship’s packing list, omitting the secret munitions. Their intent was both to establish “plausible deniability” when the liner was torpedoed and to kindle the fiery passions of war. Although the US didn’t immediately enter the conflict, the deliberate German sinking of a British ocean liner created a political climate that made war more likely. Above all, the official story doesn’t let on that British and American governments together planned and helped orchestrate the attack on the Lusitania, that it was financed by major banking houses, or that Wilson and Churchill personally arranged for the luxury liner to carry weapons (www.teachpeace.com/teachpeacemoment9.htm).
The United States’ entry into World War I provides an example of how insightful historical accounts are sometimes developed and actively applied to the present, only to eventually slip down the memory hole. During the 1930s, the (Gerald P.) Nye Committee (or Senate Munitions Investigating Committee) studied the causes of US involvement in World War I. After holding 93 hearings and questioning more than 200 witnesses, including J. P. Morgan and Pierre DuPont, the Committee found that bankers had pressured President Wilson to protect their loans abroad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nye_Committee).
Bankers were deeply invested in the war. Between 1915 and April 1917, US banks had loaned the United Kingdom and its allies $2.3 billion (Nye Report 1933). The bankers couldn’t allow the British to lose the war. The munitions industry also exerted “excessive influence on American foreign policy leading up to and during World War I.” In short, the Committee concluded that the US entered the war largely because it was in bankers’ and munitions makers’ best interest for the Western allies to win—assuming there were any real winners in World War I. The mass carnage approached nine million dead (P. Fussell Great War and Modern Memory pp. 8, 18).
Although the Nye Committee didn’t achieve its goal of nationalizing the arms industry, it did expose how the War was driven by banking and industrial interests.
1941: The “Sneak” Attack on Pearl Harbor
For most Americans, Pearl Harbor remains an emotionally charged event. Because of Japan’s “Black Sunday” attack, 2,403 Americans lost their lives and another 1,178 were wounded. Moreover, Japan’s gamble triggered “the Good War,” which was fought to victory by “the Greatest Generation” and led by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, often revered as the greatest president of the twentieth century. Though layers of hallowed mythology have obscured many key facts, when they’re finally presented they’re very persuasive.
In his well-documented study Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor, historian Robert Stinnett demonstrated that the president provoked war with Japan (Stinnett Day of Deceit pp. 171ff). By enforcing an embargo on oil and steel, FDR ensured that Japan would attack the United States. In fact, FDR ordered “eight specific measures which amounted to acts of war, including an embargo on trade with Japan, the shipment of arms to Japan’s adversaries, the prevention of Tokyo from securing raw materials essential for its economy, and the denial of port access, thus provoking a military confrontation” (www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9063).
Pearl Harbor: Little-Known Events Leading to the Attack
- May 1940 - January 1941: Seeking “secret entrance” into a war the public doesn’t want, Roosevelt projects American naval power 5,000 miles westward, toward Japan. In this first of several provocations, he personally orders that Pearl Harbor become the new home port for the Pacific Fleet. By January 1941, Imperial Japan has taken the bait; the US learns of its plans to attack the huge new naval base. Over the next few months, the White House devises additional provocations and monitors Japan’s responses to them (www.lewrockwell.com/orig/stinnett1.html).
- May 24, 1941: Washington announces it has sent “numerous fighting and bombing planes” to China, and “Bombing of Japanese Cities is Expected” (NYT 5/24/41).
- June 26, 1941: The Roosevelt administration freezes all Japanese assets, effectively cutting off the island nation’s principal supply of steel and oil. This makes war virtually inevitable (D. Kennedy Brief American Pageant p. 496). FDR’s advisor Harold Ickes assures the president that the embargo could “make it not only possible but easy to get into this war” (W. Thomas Days of Deception: Ground Zero and Beyond pp. 2, 4).
- August 14, 1941: At the Atlantic Conference, Prime Minister Winston Churchill remarks on the “astonishing depth of Roosevelt’s intense desire for war” (www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=6198).
- September 24, 1941: Having “cracked” the top-secret Japanese naval code, US intelligence knows that Japan has opted for war (Kennedy Brief American Pageant p. 496). However, top brass order the decoded warnings withheld from Adm. Husband Kimmel, commander of the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor (Thomas Days of Deception p. 4).
- October 16, 1941: To conceal its intentions, Tokyo enters into prolonged negotiations with Washington (Kennedy Brief American Pageant p. 496). However, FDR deliberately humiliates Japan’s ambassador and refuses to meet with its premier, outraging the Japanese public. The diplomatic slights help General Hideki Tojo’s war party seize power (www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=6198). Washington understands this development as meaning war could be imminent.
- October 20, 1941: When a Soviet spy informs the Kremlin that Japan will attack Pearl Harbor within 60 days, Moscow passes this information on to Washington (NY Daily News 5/17/51).
- November 13, 1941: William “Wild Bill” Donovan, head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, the predecessor of the CIA) describes to FDR the bind in which Japan finds itself: “If Japan waits, it will be comparatively easy for the United States to strangle Japan. Japan is therefore forced to strike now, whether she wishes to or not” (NYT 12/7/08).
- November 19, 1941: A Dutch submarine spots Admiral Yamamoto’s mighty flotilla and alerts American intelligence. However, the Roosevelt administration never relays the sighting report to the Pacific Fleet command in Hawaii (Thomas Days of Deception p. 1).
- November 21, 1941: Admiral Kimmel, the Commander in Honolulu, becomes frantic to locate the Japanese aircraft carriers now heading east. When he launches a task force to locate the Japanese, he receives orders to terminate the mission. Adm. Kimmel is misinformed or otherwise prevented from taking action that could thwart the imminent Japanese attack (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Husband_E._Kimmel).
- November 25, 2001: Exploiting their access to Japan’s code, American cryptographers intercept Adm. Yamamoto’s cable, which implies an imminent attack on Pearl Harbor. When British intelligence comes to the same conclusion, Churchill telexes an urgent warning to Roosevelt, who cables back: “Negotiations off. Services expect [military] action within two weeks” (Thomas Days of Deception p. 2).
- November 26, 1941: After a cabinet meeting dealing mainly with the Japanese, Secretary of War Henry Stimson remarks that “the question was how we should maneuver [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves” (Time 4/1/46).
- November 27, 1941: Washington learns that a formidable Japanese fleet is steaming toward Hawaii. The next day, the Pentagon sends the Enterprise and the Lexington, its new aircraft carriers, out to sea and away from the Japanese. While the departure of these prime assets reduces the already inadequate fighter protection at the base, it also preserves them for the war that’s sure to follow (www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2008/12/07/misallocated-infamy).
- November 28, 1941: After Roosevelt authorizes a warning, Admiral Royal Ingersoll sends a priority dispatch to naval commanders: “HOSTILE [Japanese] ACTION POSSIBLE AT ANY MOMENT. IF HOSTILITIES CANNOT REPEAT CANNOT BE AVOIDED THE UNITED STATES DESIRES THAT JAPAN COMMIT THE FIRST OVERT ACT ….” This warning leaves Pearl Harbor’s command with few options because it’s impossible to hide the aircraft involved in a massive search for the Japanese fleet (Stinnett Day of Deceit p. 171ff).
- Dec. 1, 1941: The Office of Naval Intelligence in San Francisco also locates the missing Japanese fleet (E. Layton And I Was There p. 261).
- Dec. 4, 1941: From Dutch Java, the US chief of counterintelligence sends four messages about an imminent attack on Pearl Harbor. Not only does Washington fail to heed his warnings, it even orders him to stop sending them (NYT 6/29/89). In the final ten days before the Day of Infamy, seven radio intercepts confirm Japanese plans to attack Pearl Harbor (Stinnett Day of Deceit p. 203).
- Dec. 5, 1941: At a cabinet meeting, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox remarks, “‘Well, you know, Mr. President, [that] we know where the Japanese fleet is?” “Yes, I know.” A scowling FDR cuts him off and changes the subject (J. Toland Infamy Ch. 14 Sec. 5).
- Dec. 7, 1941: Roosevelt’s wife, Eleanor, later recalls that after learning of the attack, the president became “in a way more serene” (E. Roosevelt This I Remember p. 233). When, later in the day, FDR meets with CBS reporter Edward R. Murrow, they speak about the tragic news from Pearl Harbor. Then, apparently testing or taunting the press, FDR asks, “Did this surprise you?” After Murrow nods, the president asks, “Maybe you think it didn’t surprise us?” (www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=408).
- Fall 1944: A US Army board of inquiry confirms that, because of American access to the code, “everything the Japanese were planning to do was known to the United States” (Thomas Days of Deception p. 1).
Whether FDR’s decision is viewed as tactical or treasonous, it certainly extended an American tradition of using deception to foment public outrage and generate support for wars.
1962: Operation Northwoods: A “False-Flag” Operation against Cuba
As just shown, American history reveals instances in which Washington either treated an accident as a provocation or generated events intended to provoke public indignation. However, the history has also involved the deliberate staging of “false-flag” attacks in order to justify military actions. A “false flag” attack is perpetrated by one party but designed to be blamed on another.
Backdrop: Fiasco at Bay of Pigs
In April of 1961, a new Kennedy administration had supported an abortive invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. This plan, secretly authorized by President Dwight Eisenhower and implemented by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), called for arming and training anti-Castro Cuban exiles. Though Kennedy was hesitant to commit American forces, he did approve the use of some unmarked warplanes. The plan was for the exiles to land and kindle a general uprising, but Castro’s forces defeated the CIA-trained invaders in just three days (Zinn People’s History of the US p. 440).
Ultraconservatives at the Pentagon were hardly chastened, however. In 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the generals commanding the entire US military, came up with Operation Northwoods, a much more ambitious scheme against Cuba. This new plan, which again involved the CIA, called for staged attacks that would “justify” a US invasion of Cuba. A “false-flag” operation, it featured several alternative schemes. The schemes ranged from having boatloads of Cuban émigrés “ruthlessly” sunk by “communist Cubans” to having a decoy passenger plane shot down by “Russian-made MiG fighters” and then telling the world that the empty drone had been full of “civilian victims” (J. Bamford Body of Secrets pp. 82-89).
The Joint Chiefs’ ingenious plan for “provocations” reads like the script for a low-tech Dr. Strangelove. Its objective, as rendered in unusually clear “Pentagonese,” was “to camouflage the ultimate objective and create the necessary impression of Cuban rashness … to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances … and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere”(Joint Chiefs Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense 3/13/62 pp. 3, 5, 12). The intent then was to use a series of outrageous deceptions to generate a pretext for an unprovoked war on Cuba.
Operation Northwoods was plotted down to the most minute details. In one scenario, attacks led by the Cuban expatriates would be staged around Guantánamo Bay to give the “appearance of being done by hostile Cuban forces.” Provocations were to “include starting rumors by clandestine radio, landing allied Cuban expatriates (in Cuban military uniforms) . . . , and burning aircraft inside the base. . . . A ‘Remember the Maine’ incident could be arranged. . . . We could blow up a US ship in Guantánamo Bay and blame Cuba.” This initial deception was intended to “provoke Cuban reactions.” At that very moment, American forces would be conducting “war games” in the area; if the Cubans fought back, the exercises would be changed into actual attacks (Memo for Secy. of Def. pp. 7-8).
Knowing what we do about the Maine, the plan to “blow up a ship” is particularly intriguing. On one hand, it suggests that military planners, unlike the general public, do recall the events that launched earlier campaigns. On the other hand, the plan illustrates a principle that informs much of this analysis: that tactics which have worked tend to stay in the bag of tricks, ready for Pentagon tricksters to use again. Informed citizens need to have some idea of what they’re likely hiding in that bag.
Staged Events at Home and Abroad
But the Guantánamo deception was just the beginning. Beyond staging events on foreign shores, the Joint Chiefs also planned provocations on US soil: “We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington.… 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 …” (Memo. to Secy. of Def. pp. 7-8). The Joint Chiefs apparently anticipated no problems getting full cooperation from journalists.
But the electronic coup de theatre was still to come. The Joint Chiefs planned deceptions in the skies that involved substituting a drone aircraft for a commercial flight and then destroying it through remote control. The plan called for staging “an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner ….” With CIA agents posing as “passengers,” an airliner was to head for Cuba. But the plane would secretly land at a CIA airfield; here it would receive a new tail number, making it seem like a different airliner. Then it was to take off, ready to veer off when a duplicate but unmanned airliner took its place in midair. The substitute drone airliner would be flown by remote control toward Cuba, sending back prerecorded calls for help.
Then came the climactic blowout of the plot. “When over Cuba,” the generals proposed, “the drone will begin transmitting on the international distress frequency a ‘MAYDAY’ message stating he is under attack by Cuban MiG aircraft. The transmission will be interrupted by destruction of the aircraft, which will be triggered by radio signal. This will allow Latin American radio stations to tell the United States what’s happened to the aircraft instead of the United States trying to ‘sell’ the incident” (Memo. to Secy. of Def. pp. 9ff). Having blamed Havana for the atrocity, Washington could proceed with the invasion it had longed to execute (Harper’s 7/01).
“Buck Rogers” schemes aside, it’s worth noting that the Northwoods plot reveals how, nearly 40 years before 9/11, Americans had seriously considered relying on high-tech deceptions.
Civilians Assert Control, Planners Plot On Admiral Lyman Lemnitzer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the main proponent of the Northwoods plot, presented it to Defense Secretary McNamara and President Kennedy. After both rejected the scheme, Admiral Lemnitzer sought to destroy all evidence of the Northwoods plan (Baltimore Sun 4/24/01). Undeterred, the Pentagon continued to plan other “false flag” or “staged pretext” operations through 1963, when JFK was assassinated, and in 1964, its Gulf of Tonkin scheme “justified” a massive escalation of US bombing of North Vietnam. The JFK assassination itself enabled a sharp escalation of the Vietnam War and must be considered, along with 9/11, as a pivotal covert action or trigger event (P. D. Scott American War Machine pp. 22, 171).
1964: A Gulf of Tonkin “Incident” That Never Happened
Whereas the Mexicans had struck back at an American incursion, the North Vietnamese—whose leader, Ho Chi Minh, had studied American history—were more savvy. They didn’t respond to provocative American attacks along their coast. As a result, American officials had to fabricate a Vietnamese response and then use it as the pretext for war.
Today, most historians believe that by the last few months of his life, Kennedy had decided to phase out of Vietnam. In October 1963, the president seemed to lean toward withdrawing US troops from Vietnam, a plan he didn’t intend to implement until after the 1964 elections. That November, Kennedy made his fateful visit to Dallas. While President Johnson initially assured a stunned nation that he intended to carry out his predecessor’s agenda, Johnson promptly rescinded Kennedy’s order to have American troops start coming home. Just three days after the assassination, the new president met with Henry Cabot Lodge, US ambassador to Vietnam. Johnson told Lodge that “Saigon can count on us.” Just four days after Kennedy’s death, Johnson authorized plans to bomb North Vietnam, a drastic shift in policy (J. Galbraith Boston Review 10/03 & 11/03).
It seems unlikely, however, that LBJ had drawn up these plans by himself.
Beginning a Full-Scale War in Vietnam
Trying to ready the public for war, Johnson, McNamara, and other top officials concluded that some flash point would be needed to trigger public outrage. American planners executed provocative raids along the North Vietnamese coast, but American ships took no return fire (www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9063).
Soon the nonevents flashed across the airwaves. On August 2, 1964, the destroyer Maddox was supposedly attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats but drove them off, sustaining only the slightest damage. “The destroyer maneuvered to avoid torpedoes and used her guns against her fast-moving opponents, hitting them all. In turn, she was struck … by a single 14.5-millimeter machine gun bullet.” Two days later, the Pentagon announced the North Vietnamese had attacked a second American ship (US Naval Hist. Center USS Maddox 1944-1972). Although the Pentagon insisted that its warships were on “routine patrol,” it’s more likely that they entered the Gulf to provoke or spy on North Vietnam .
From the onset, military professionals in the field tried to tell the Pentagon brass that the attacks didn’t occur. Capt. John J. Herrick, the task force commander in the Gulf, dismissed the reports as the work of an “overeager sonar man.” Captain Herrick concluded that “torpedoes fired appear doubtful” and advised “complete evaluation before any further action.” Years later, Herrick recalled that “our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets—there were no PT boats there” (D. C. Hallin Uncensored War pp. 16-17).
But Washington didn’t want the facts. Presenting the United States as the innocent victim, Johnson claimed that the United States had to “retaliate” against “communist aggression.” McNamara rushed to Congress, charging that he had “unequivocal proof” of an “unprovoked attack.” An officer at the Pentagon told Sen. Wayne Morse (D-Ore.) about the hoax, but Morse couldn’t persuade his colleagues in Congress to halt the rush to war. Within hours, Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, plunging the country into a disastrous “police action” that lasted a decade (S. Karnow Vietnam: A History p. 375).
Both the war’s tactics and their effects proved genocidal. Even McNamara, architect of the massive “carpet” bombing campaigns, would acknowledge that two million Vietnamese were killed, most of them noncombatants (E. Morris film Fog of War). The actual toll probably ran closer to three million dead—including 58,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of additional Asians, most of them killed by US bombs in Laos and Cambodia (D. Model Lying for Empire p. 138).
Another Preplanned War
Were the results not so terribly tragic, it might seem comic for a superpower to make so much of so little—to launch a war over a single bullet, assuming there actually was a bullet (Bamford Puzzle Palace p. 294). Legendary independent journalist I. F. Stone characterized the Gulf of Tonkin incident as a “question not just of decision-making in a crisis, but of crisis-making to support a secretly prearranged decision …” (NY Review of Books 3/28/68).
We’ve been looking at history here. Does that mean contrived provocations and false-flag operations are a thing of the past? Hardly. It’s no secret that during the later years of the Bush regime, administration hawks were looking for a pretext to attack Iran. Never caught without a scheme, Dick Cheney did not disappoint. Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh and MSNBC both reported that Cheney had proposed to the Pentagon a plan to have the US Navy deploy fake Iranian patrol boats that would stage an “attack” on US destroyers in the Strait of Hormuz. This “act of aggression” was to be blamed on Iran and used as a pretext for war (New Yorker 7/7/08).
If the people understood the history of pretexts for war, would Cheney have been as likely to imagine that the US could get away with such a scheme?
Although this chronology of American foreign-policy malfeasance rests on solid historical facts, some readers may find it disturbing and difficult to accept. It’s unsettling to realize that, with the exception of the Civil War, deception and trickery have helped the US to launch or enter every major war in its history. This is worked out in John Quigley’s The Ruses for War—which, after examining the 25 most prominent US military actions since World War II, demonstrates how each was promoted by deception. Becoming more specific about the typical mechanism, political analyst Peter Dale Scott concludes that “nearly all of America’s foreign wars since 1959” were “disguised as responses to unprovoked aggression” (Scott American War Machine p. 195). Even the “UN intervention” in Korea likely resulted from provocations; see I. F. Stone, Hidden History of the Korean War.
Presentation of these deceits can dent egos and undercut national pride; it also threatens the powers that be, who frequently denounce it as “unpatriotic.” It’s tempting to ignore the evidence or to dismiss this history as distortions by radicals who don’t love their country. However, some of America’s sharpest critics do so from a commitment to the core American value of facing and telling the truth. Examples include Mark Twain, legendary analyst Noam Chomsky, and widely published theologian David Ray Griffin, who offers a historical overview similar to this one (Griffin Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11 pp. 3-15).
It’s Hardly Unique to the United States
Following this survey of “trigger” events in American history, most of them state crimes against democracy (SCADs), let’s look at other highly instructive precedents from recent history beyond the United States. Again, we’ll find parallels to the present. These precedents include planned provocations, false-flag operations, “shock-and-awe” events, or simply traumas exploited for a political takeover. The famous Reichstag Fire falls in the latter category.
Arson at the Reichstag: A Fiery Path to Power
In January of 1933, fires erupted at the Reichstag (German parliament), and the conflagration soon consumed the building. The actual perpetrators, beyond confessed Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe, remain uncertain. On this question, heavyweight historians have tilted both sides of the scale. In The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William L. Shirer believed that the Nazis did burn the building; yet in Hitler: 1898-1936: Hubris, British expert Ian Kershaw concluded that the Nazis didn’t help the Dutch firebomber burn the Reichstag.
For now, it seems, we’ll have to ride the paradox, accepting the ambiguity.
What is beyond dispute, though, is that the Reichstag fire provides a classic example of Klein’s Shock Doctrine. The Nazis were amazingly quick to exploit a trauma that soon catapulted them into power. The day after the fire, as Berliners gazed at the smoldering ashes of a building that symbolized their democracy, the Nazis were busy drafting their Reichstag Fire Decree. Immediately exploiting a weakness for authority in the German character, President Paul von Hindenburg and Chancellor Adolph Hitler invoked the Constitution to issue a decree permitting suspension of civil liberties in a “national emergency.” With the public still in shock,the Nazis began to ruthlessly suppress all opposition (www.weyrich.com/political_issues/reichstag_fire.html).
Aided by the mainstream press, the Nazis were able to blame the fire on the Communists. The resulting backlash against opposing parties on the left allowed the fascists to assume totalitarian power in the elections of March 1933.
The causes behind the takeover hold implications for today. Ian Kershaw points out that Hitler rose to near-total power under a liberal constitution, albeit one that was never accepted by the Nazis’ strongest supporters—the military, aristocracy, and big industry (NYT Book Review 2/3/08). To this list of contributing causes, one could add failures by the press, the churches, the courts, and many intellectuals to investigate or critique (www.alternet.org/story/71881). Ultimately, however, it was the apathy, conformity, dissipation, cowardice, and ignorance of history among most Germans that allowed the Nazis to seize power.
To what degree might the fears stirred by the 9/11 trauma and a similar lack of political sophistication have contributed to similarly uncritical public acquiescence?
It’s difficult to ignore parallels to both the US Patriot Act, passed less than a month after 9/11, and to the immediate spike in popularity for President Bush. Regardless of whether political leaders played a part in a politically pivotal event, what they do after it occurs usually reveals prior intentions. This is the “priority principle,” which states that the first things politicians do in office usually reveals their agendas. Solidifying their power by crippling competitors is typically a high priority. Ironically, soon enough the voters who elected the officials may also be seen as adversaries. Such attitudes suggest one motivation for officials to commit SCADs, which compromise the democratic process.
Parallels to the ascending corporate control in the United States indeed are deeply troubling. However, it’s too glib just to say, “it’s Germany in 1933 all over again.” Historical analogies are never exact. When we note sobering parallels to the rise of fascism in Germany, we also need to recall that Americans enjoy one great advantage—a history of democracy and long exposure to its ideals—if only they will bring the best of their past to bear on the present.
Fear Mongering: Conjuring “Barbarians at the Gate”
Another dependable power play is to conjure the “boogie man.” Never ones to miss a trick that worked, the Nazis relied heavily on imagined, inflated, or contrived enemies. At the Nuremberg Trials, Luftwaffe Commander Hermann Göring explained how Nazi leaders exploited the fears they’d fabricated: “it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.… Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger” (http://www.wisdomquotes.com/001993.html).
Could Göring’s candid disclosure also characterize White House pronouncements during the leadup to recent wars?
In practice, the Nazis magnified external threats (England, France, and Soviet Union) and conjured internal threats (communists, socialists, and Jews), using these not just to control the population but to motivate external and internal aggression. Jews in general were seen as threats to Aryan racial purity, and “Jewish bankers” were scapegoated for the sins of bankers more broadly, blinding the public to the role of bankers in calamitous German militarism. The passivity and miseducation of the populace proved colossally costly: forty million people lost their lives.
How could this have happened in a highly cultured industrial democracy? If we pose this question, we rarely get much beyond stock footage of storm troopers goose-stepping through the Arc de Triumph. Rarely is Göring’s revelation either taught or quoted, probably because powerful interests don’t want us to wonder whether it might apply elsewhere.
Despite many Americans’ ongoing fascination with their country’s role in World War II, how many know that war began with a false-flag operation?
Heinrich Himmler’s Schemes: A Classic False-Flag Operation
Like many of the American administrations we’ve looked in on, the Third Reich also needed a pretext for an attack. In August 1939, German soldiers disguised as Polish troops staged an assault on a German radio station near the Polish border. Adding realism to the stagecraft, German political prisoners dressed in Polish uniforms were killed as they “attacked.” After German SS personnel dressed as Polish troops “captured” the station, they delivered an anti-German broadcast in Polish. On the same day, other staged incidents provided additional pretexts for vengeance and war. Reacting to such “aggression” against the Fatherland, Hitler wasted no time; he ordered a “defensive” invasion of Poland to begin the very next day (B. Lightbody Second World War p. 39).
Governments and political groups use contrived events so frequently because they evoke powerful emotions. We’ve just seen that the dramatic nighttime conflagration at the Reichstag, whether or not deliberately set by the Nazis, left most Germans in shock, vulnerable to the ascendant fascists. Again, civil authority and order seemed to be going up in flames, and the Nazis promised a strong Father to fill the void.
But more than “allowed” or “assisted” events, carefully staged provocations are apt to evoke the strongest reactions, especially when combined with a psychological operation—a “PSYOP,” or “psych-war”—designed for maximum impact. As Zwicker observes, “the false-flag op is the indispensable, most dependable device rulers use to mobilize their populations behind wars …” (Zwicker Towers of Deception pp. 260-61). Despite the great impact of such events, “shock and awe”—even when intensified by a PSYOP— usually isn’t trusted to carry enough impact; it’s immediately framed within narratives that spin the event and promote political agendas, usually those of the perpetrators. Thus such provocations are often followed by scary stories or shocking images, such as the propaganda newsreels of the Reichstag on fire.
Any parallels to the seemingly perpetual replays of the burning and disintegrating Twin Towers weren’t coincidental, regardless of who was responsible for their destruction. Public outrage propelled the country toward a revenge attack on Afghanistan—which, as we’ll see, was probably less involved with the attacks than Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. But Pakistan had nuclear weapons, and Saudi Arabia supplied much of America’s oil, so the bombs fell on Afghanistan.
Even today, planned provocations, false-flag operations, and PSYOPs remain a mystery to most Americans. So why don’t even educated people know more about these sinister schemes? Why aren’t staged deceptions included in mainstream renderings of history, such as realistic war movies and TV documentaries? Why doesn’t the public learn about these events in history classes, on the History Channel, or from The War, Ken Burns’s thirteen-hour documentary about World War II? The answer may lie with other questions: If a documentarian had covered these false-flag operations or how Pearl Harbor had actually come about, would he retain his corporate sponsorship? Would his series have aired at all?
So there‘s a lot of information which should be common knowledge that just hasn’t been readily available. Similarly, there’s a lot of information about unsolved traumas that needs to come into the national conversation. That will be one of the subjects of the next chapter.
Back to Excerpts
