Obama: Cool, Charismatic and Likable, but the most Corrupt and Power-Hungry President in U.S. History

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."
- Lord Acton

When Obama first appeared on the national stage, I liked him. He was cool, likeable and a good speaker. However, just like I would any candidate running for major political office, I investigated him extensively. Even when my research turned up a troubling background, I still gave Obama the benefit of the doubt.

However, after ever more troubling info turned up about our President, I found myself obligated to share my findings about our President's involvement with members of the Bilderberg Group and the New World Order, by writing the article, The Corruption of Barack Obama, an unbiased and comprehensive report about Barack Obama. 

When ever more disturbing info turned up about Barack Obama, I found myself obligated to share my findings about our President's involvement with members of the Bilderberg Group and the New World Order, by writing a few articles, the most damning and comprehensive of which was The Corruption of Barack Obama, which I published over a year ago, Sunday, January 1, 2012.

Still I gave Barack Obama a chance to do the right thing, also realizing that there really were no better alternatives. There are no real options for President Obama at this stage of the game. If Obama were impeached, Biden would become President!

Obviously, most people are now aware of the Bengazi, IRS and NSA scandals. Many may believe the President when he says "he knows nothing", but if that were the only suspicious incidents he may have been involved in, I might even give him the benefit of the doubt. I'll give everybody a fair chance to prove themselves. But then I came across some damaging evidence about our President that made me wonder how this man could stoop so low. How he could even be walking around free, much less be the President of the United States? Are Americans really that blind?

These findings prompting me to launch yet another investigation into the life of Barack Obama. 

Obama's Lying  
 
Barbara Walters during her painfully fawning interview with Barack and Michelle Obama last Dec. 23, asked Obama “Mr. President, on what occasion do you lie?”

“Usually, the only time I lie,” responded Obama, “is very personal interactions with family members..."

Welcome to The Matrix – where the elite media specialize in creating virtual reality scenes like this one, which are so pleasant and seem so real … except that they bear virtually no resemblance to reality.

Barack Obama, the man whose entire presidency has been a seamless fabric of deception and duplicity, tells Barbara Walters and the American people that the only time he lies is to protect a family member?

The correct answer to Walters’ question is obvious. When does Obama lie? Every single time he speaks to the American people.

The level of corporate media dishonesty in covering Barack Obama is unbelievable.

It is no longer the question if the Obama Administration has influence over the networks, but merely how much influence the Obama Administration has influence over the networks.

But let us now again focus our attention on the man who will undoubtedly go down in history as the most dishonest person ever to occupy the White House.

Obama is a Narcissist and Sociopath 

Obama delayed the fifth game of the 2008 World Series, so he could broadcast a 30-minute infomercial for his campaign. He threw out the first pitch at the Major League Baseball All-Star Game in 2009. He did a 10-minute interview with Katie Couric during the 2010 Super Bowl broadcast. In both 2009 and 2010, he did interviews with ESPN to tell the world about his NCAA tournament brackets. In 2010, Obama showed up on "American Idol." As commander-in-chief, he's hit "The View," "The Tonight Show," "The Late Show" and "Jersey Shore." OK, he hasn't hit "Jersey Shore" ... yet.

Obama doesn't just crash other parties -- he spends hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to throw parties of his own. Not that Obama cares; as he put it, "This is a pretty big house so we get lonely. It's hard for me to move around out there sometimes, so I got to bring the world to me."

But Obama's desperate need for attention is clearly a psychological condition. He drinks in applause like a washed-up movie star. It is usual for neglected children to develop narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), typically characterized by an inflated sense of self-importance, a strong sense of entitlement, preoccupations with utopian fantasies, elitism, manipulative tendencies and pathological need for praise.

The narcissistic personality is defined by characteristics such as an inflated sense of one’s importance, unrealistic fantasies of power and success, the need for constant approval and acceptance, and difficulty handling criticism from others. Narcissism is different from healthy self-esteem; people who simply have strong self-esteem can realistically evaluate their shortcomings as well as their strengths. Such people are not likely to describe their impact upon the world in messianic terms, as Obama did during the 2008 campaign when he prophesied that his election would be remembered by future generations as “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.

Obama's excessive self-regard was shown in his speech at the funeral for the late Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, where President Obama mentioned himself approximately 63 times. Watch "Obama's Speech at the Funeral Service for Senator Daniel Ken Inouye", here: http://bit.ly/18D6Oqq

Obama is an elitist through and through, disdaining ordinary Americans as "bitter [people who] cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them." He is manipulative in the extreme, seeing every crisis as an opportunity to magnify his personal power.

Most dangerous, he requires a constant stream of paeans to his persona. He resembles a once-abused puppy; he doesn't care who pets him, so long as he receives the petting.

Pulitzer prize-winning columnist George Will, pointed out recently in the Washington Post: “Barack Obama’s intellectual sociopathy – his often breezy and sometimes loutish indifference to truth – should no longer startle.”

“Sociopaths are often well-liked because of their charm and high charisma, but they do not usually care about other people. They think mainly of themselves and often blame others for the things that they do. They have a complete disregard for rules and lie constantly. They seldom feel guilt or learn from punishments.”

Remind you of anyone?

Obama's Solyndra Scandal 

When talking about Obama corruption, it doesn't get any more embarrassing than Solyndra. Solyndra, once the Obama administration's massive "green energy" initiative, has become the poster child for the corruption occurring when the government interferes in the private sector. Thanks to an Obama administration's stimulus loan guarantee, 1,100 workers were left without jobs, while American taxpayers were left holding the bag for $535 million dollars when Solyndra filed for bankruptcy in September 2011.

Regardless of the Obama administration's reserve to release details of the scandal, a lot is known about the scam. Even though White House officials warned the president of the dangerously short due diligence of the Department of Energy's loan guarantee program, Obama officials rushed the Solyndra loan through the approval process to make a splash with the scheduled press. As it turns out, a major Obama campaign donor named George Kaiser was the company's main financial backer who discussed the loan with White House officials against regulation.

The White House tried to cover this up, demonstrating the political nature of the Obama administration's activities, while the Energy Department pressured Solyndra to delay the layoffs  announcement until after the 2010 elections. Despite public outcry at this scandalous waste of public tax dollars, President Obama continues to defend the scam, refusing to fire or even blame anyone over the Solyndra swindle.

But the Solyndra con was just one of the many con-jobs President Obama continues to pull off. Digging ever deeper into our Presidents dealings, I find ever more damning evidence of fraud and swindle committed by Barack Obama. 

Lets take a closer look at some of the actions of our President, his appointees and associates and how they undermine the rule of law and constitutional government:

ACORN Obama caricature joke

Despite a funding ban that Obama himself signed into law, his administration continued to fund the crooked, obsolete and non-operational organization, ACORN. Still, a $79,819 grant to AHCOA (Affordable Housing Centers of America) which is nothing more than the new name for ACORN, was uncovered by Judicial Watch in July 2011. ACORN which has a long history of corrupt activity only changed its name to AHCOA so it could continue its crooked business dealings. Judicial Watch has since confirmed that the Obama administration has funneled $730,000 to the ACORN network, in violation of the funding ban.

Check out the free 28 page PDF report, "The Rebranding of ACORN," which shows how the ACORN network is alive and well under the AHCOA name. You can download it as a pdf file, here.

Continuing with my investigation of Barack Obama, it is evident that our President believes it is his "right" to ignore the Constitution when appointing Czars. Politico states, "President Barack Obama is planning to ignore language in the 2011 spending package that would ban several top White House advisory posts." 

Obama responded that this ban on "czars" would undermine "the President's ability to exercise his constitutional responsibilities and take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Indeed, President Obama refused to eliminate several "czars" who were cut in the fiscal 2011 spending bill, calling the provision a violation of the separation of powers. This implies that Barack Obama believes he must ignore the Constitution to protect the Constitution!

So Obama administration czars have not been subject to confirmation by the Senate as required by the Constitution. Last count, Obama had 45 czars in his regime, accountable to nobody but him.

Check out this free, 42 page Judicial Watch Special Report called, "President Obama's Czars," detailing Obama's Czar Scandal. You can download it as a PDF file, here.

Thanks again to Judicial Watch, a federal court ruled on August 17, 2011 that Secret Service White House visitor logs are subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. The Obama administration will now have to release all records of all visitors to the White House. Yet the White House continues to fight full disclosure, stalling the release of records by appealing the lower court decision. What visitors or dealings does our President not want us to know about? What is he trying to hide?

The National Labor Relations Board sought to prevent Seattle-based Boeing from opening a $750 million dollar non-union assembly line in South Carolina, to manufacture its Dreamliner plane in 2011. Obama bypassed Congress and appointing his buddy, Craig Becker, who is connected to the AFL-CIO, SEIU and NRLB.

This lawsuit was politically motivated according to uncovered documents showing NLRB staff cheerleading for Big Labor, mouthing Marxist, anti-American slurs, attacking members of Congress and showing contempt for congressional relations to the agency's lawsuit against Boeing.

Obama Chicago roots

Obama's corrupt, scandalous ways go back all the way to his Chicago roots. Fortunately for America, Obama's real estate partner, campaign fundraiser and Obama pork receiver Antoin "Tony" Rezko was finally sentenced to jail this year along with former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who is to serve 14 years for  trying to sell Obama's former Senate seat to the highest bidder.

Barack Obama as President of the Harvard Law Review

Then there is the alleged relationship between Barack Obama and dangerous militants, particularly the infamous extremist, Derrick Bell. Although Bell was a respected academic and an influential figure in the Civil Rights movement, there are those who would label him a dangerous frothing radical and racial instigator.

BuzzFeed published an article with the title, At Harvard, Obama Dived Into Diversity Fight, that includes a video which was not previously available online, showing a speech made by Barack Obama in 1991, at a campus protest organized to demand tenure for minority and female law professors. 

As President of the Harvard Law Review, it was perhaps Barack Obama's most intense politics of the late 80s and early 90s, as  he aligned himself with Professor Derrick Bell's dramatic protest for diversity on the faculty of Harvard Law School.

Bell was a pioneer of "critical race theory," which controversially focus on issues of race and power into legal scholarship. He protested Harvard's denial of tenure to a black woman professor, Regina Austin, telling Harvard he would "strike" by taking a take a leave of absence "until a woman of color is offered and accepted a tenured position on this faculty," launching a hunger strike to drive home his point.

There is still a lot of dirt to be uncovered about our President, with many believing there is more to Barck Obama than meets the eye. It is just a matter of time before the rest of America sees him for what he is: a lying cheating, scandalous crook.

Obama makes "Ten Most (Corrupt) Wanted" list 

To top it all off, President Obama has made Judicial Watch's "Ten Most Wanted" list... again. In fact, the former Illinois Senator has made Judicial Watch's "Ten Most Wanted" list for a fifth consecutive year!

The Judicial Watch's "Ten Most Wanted" list, which is widely distributed in the press, puts the spotlight on some of DC's most immoral politicians who undercut the rule of law and abused the public trust. The list is a powerful tool to educate Americans about the bipartisan problem of corruption, fraud and lies in Washington,l as well as Judicial Watch's critical work in holding these crooked politicians accountable.

Judicial Watch also gave Obama a "failing grade" on transparency. You can watch the archived webcast, White House Transparency, Visitor Logs and Lobbyists, here.

If you want to learn the truth about Barack Obama, I suggest you watch the Obama Conspiracy video bellow, following up with any one of the other 5 videos on the Conspiracy Watch video tab, starting with the Obama Deception, then make up your own mind as to what you want to believe. 

Unfortunately for me (and probably you), my investigation and the findings of Judicial Watch have soured me to politics. My trust and respect for politicians has been shattered perhaps beyond repair. I will never look at politicians the same way again. The only politician I still trust and respect is Ron Paul.

Unfortunately for America, I am not alone disgusted with US politicians. I would not at all be surprised if sometime soon a total non-politician gets elected President. Preferably, someone with no prior dealings with any politics whatsoever, period. Maybe a businessman, preferably a small business owner.

This article is meant as a call to action. Maybe its time we put a small business owner, doctor or professor into office. If you are ready to fight for America, I strongly suggest you sign-up for the Free Conspiracy Watch Newsletter to get more free ebook offers and important updates.

What do you think, America? Should we fire everyone in Washington and start over?

Written By: Tom Retterbush
Email: tomretterbush@gmail.com

Culture of Corruption
Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies
Never have a media-anointed American President fallen so fast and hard. Weary of the corruption that gushes from the White House faster than a Gulf Coast oil spill, voters are tired of the schemes. In her latest investigative tour de force, New York Times bestselling author Michelle Malkin delivers a powerful, damning, and comprehensive indictment of the culture of corruption that surrounds Team Obama's brazen tax evaders, Wall Street cronies, petty crooks, slum lords, and business-as-usual influence peddlers.

Get Culture of Corruption directly from Amazon, HERE

Please help promote Conspiracy Watch... by clicking the ff  Like and .+1. bellow!

Operation Northwoods: the Proof that US Government Could Harm Americans

Most Americans believe our government would never harm its own citizens. They would never believe that US leaders could actually be capable of instigating attacks like those of 911. 

Many people believe that the Bush administration took advantage of 9-11 in order to launch the war and impose repressive measures at home. In reality Washington did not just take advantage of 9-11, rather, it instigated 9-11!

Just as the Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed instigating fake attacks on Americans in 1962, the 9-11 attack was justifiable to these twisted people - to create a climate where military action- though I'm not sure they anticipated 3 towers coming down. As for the campaign of repression at home - with its nightmarish Homeland Security, its assault on legal guarantees, and its star chamber Military Tribunals - this campaign is in part intended to silence the millions of people who suspect that Bush and other top leaders were involved in some way in making 9-11 happen. People ask me, how can you believe that our leaders are capable of such cynicism, murderous cruelty, ruthlessness and dishonesty? That is why Operation Northwoods is so important. For we now know that in 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed staging phony attacks to destroy U.S. property and killing Cuban refugees and U.S. citizens, in order to create a wave of indignation and rage, to justify an invasion of Cuba that could have killed hundreds of thousands of people and possibly led to nuclear war.

Code named Operation Northwoods, the plan, which had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war.

The idea may actually have originated with President Eisenhower in the last days of his administration. With the Cold War hotter than ever and the recent U-2 scandal fresh in the public's memory, the old general wanted to go out with a win. He wanted desperately to invade Cuba in the weeks leading up to Kennedy's inauguration; indeed, on January 3 he told Lemnitzer and other aides in his Cabinet Room that he would move against Castro before the inauguration if only the Cubans gave him a really good excuse. Then, with time growing short, Eisenhower floated an idea. If Castro failed to provide that excuse, perhaps, he said, the United States "could think of manufacturing something that would be generally acceptable." What he was suggesting was a pretext a bombing, an attack, an act of sabotage carried out secretly against the United States by the United States. Its purpose would be to justify the launching of a war. It was a dangerous suggestion by a desperate president.

Although no such war took place, the idea was not lost on General Lemnitzer But he and his colleagues were frustrated by Kennedy's failure to authorize their plan, and angry that Castro had not provided an excuse to invade.

The final straw may have come during a White House meeting on February 26, 1962. Concerned that General Lansdale's various covert action plans under Operation Mongoose were simply becoming more outrageous and going nowhere, Robert Kennedy told him to drop all anti-Castro efforts. Instead, Lansdale was ordered to concentrate for the next three months strictly on gathering intelligence about Cuba. It was a humiliating defeat for Lansdale, a man more accustomed to praise than to scorn.

As the Kennedy brothers appeared to suddenly "go soft" on Castro, Lemnitzer could see his opportunity to invade Cuba quickly slipping away. The attempts to provoke the Cuban public to revolt seemed dead and Castro, unfortunately, appeared to have no inclination to launch any attacks against Americans or their property Lemnitzer and the other Chiefs knew there was only one option left that would ensure their war. They would have to trick the American public and world opinion into hating Cuba so much that they would not only go along, but would insist that he and his generals launch their war against Castro. "World opinion, and the United Nations forum," said a secret JCS document, "should be favorably affected by developing the international image of the Cuban government as rash and irresponsible, and as an alarming and unpredictable threat to the peace of the Western Hemisphere."

Operation Northwoods called for a war in which many patriotic Americans and innocent Cubans would die senseless deaths, all to satisfy the egos of twisted generals back in Washington, safe in their taxpayer financed homes and limousines.

One idea seriously considered involved the launch of John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth. On February 20,1962, Glenn was to lift off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on his historic journey. The flight was to carry the banner of America's virtues of truth, freedom, and democracy into orbit high over the planet. But Lemnitzer and his Chiefs had a different idea. They proposed to Lansdale that, should the rocket explode and kill Glenn, "the objective is to provide irrevocable proof that . . . the fault lies with the Communists et al Cuba [sic.]"

This would be accomplished, Lemnitzer continued, "by manufacturing various pieces of evidence which would prove electronic interference on the part of the Cubans." Thus, as NASA prepared to send the first American into space, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were preparing to use John Glenn's possible death as a pretext to launch a war.

Glenn lifted into history without mishap, leaving Lemnitzer and the Chiefs to begin devising new plots which they suggested be carried out "within the time frame of the next few months."

Among the actions recommended was "a series of well coordinated incidents to take place in and around" the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This included dressing "friendly" Cubans in Cuban military uniforms and then have them "start riots near the main gate of the base. Others would pretend to be saboteurs inside the base. Ammunition would be blown up, fires started, aircraft sabotaged, mortars fired at the base with damage to installations."

The suggested operations grew progressively more outrageous. Another called for an action similar to the infamous incident in February 1898 when an explosion aboard the battleship Maine in Havana harbor killed 266 U.S. sailors. Although the exact cause of the explosion remained undetermined, it sparked the Spanish-American War with Cuba. Incited by the deadly blast, more than one million men volunteered for duty. Lemnitzer and his generals came up with a similar plan. "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," they proposed; "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."

There seemed no limit to their fanaticism: "We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington," they wrote. "The terror campaign could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States.

We could sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated). . . . 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."

Bombings were proposed, false arrests, hijackings:

*"Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, the arrest of Cuban agents and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement also would be helpful in projecting the idea of an irresponsible government."

*"Advantage can be taken of the sensitivity of the Dominican [Republic] Air Force to intrusions within their national air space. 'Cuban' B-26 or C-46 type aircraft could make cane burning raids at night. Soviet Bloc incendiaries could be found. This could be coupled with 'Cuban' messages to the Communist underground in the Dominican Republic and 'Cuban' shipments of arms which would be found, or intercepted, on the beach. Use of MiG type aircraft by U.S. pilots could provide additional provocation."

*"Hijacking attempts against civil air and surface craft could appear to continue as harassing measures condoned by the Government of Cuba."

Among the most elaborate schemes was to "create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner en route from the United States to Jamaica, Guatemala, Panama or Venezuela. The destination would be chosen only to cause the flight plan route to cross Cuba. The passengers could be a group of college students off on a holiday or any grouping of persons with a common interest to support chartering a non-scheduled flight."

Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs worked out a complex deception:

An aircraft at Elgin AFB would be painted and numbered as an exact duplicate for a civil registered aircraft belonging to a CJA proprietary organization in the Miami area. At a designated time the duplicate would be substituted for the actual civil aircraft and would be loaded with the selected passengers, all boarded under carefully prepared aliases. The actual registered aircraft would be converted to a drone [a remotely controlled unmanned aircraft]. Take off times of the drone aircraft and the actual aircraft will be scheduled to allow a rendezvous south of Florida.

From the rendezvous point the passenger-carrying aircraft will descend to minimum altitude and go directly into an auxiliary field at Elgin AFB where arrangements will have been made to evacuate the passengers and return the aircraft to its original status. The drone aircraft meanwhile will continue to fly the filed flight plan. When over Cuba the drone will be transmitting on the international distress frequency a "May Day" 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 ICAO [International Civil Aviation Organization radio stations in the Western Hemisphere to tell the U.S. what has happened to the aircraft instead of the U.S. trying to "sell" the incident.

Finally, there was a plan to "make it appear that Communist Cuban MiGs have destroyed a USAF aircraft over international waters in an unprovoked attack." It was a particularly believable operation given the decade of shoot downs that had just taken place.

In the final sentence of his letter to Secretary McNamara recommending the operations, Lemnitzer made a grab for even more power asking that the Joint Chiefs be placed in charge of carrying out Operation Northwoods and the invasion. "It is recommended," he wrote, "that this responsibility for both oven and covert military operations be assigned to the Joint Chiefs of Staff."

At 2:30 on the afternoon of Tuesday, March 13, 1962, Lemnitzer went over last-minute details of Operation Northwoods with his covert action chief, Brigadier General William H. Craig, and signed the document. He then went to a "special meeting" in McNamara's office. An hour later he met with Kennedy's military representative, General Maxwell Taylor. What happened during those meetings is unknown. But three days later, President Kennedy told Lemnitzer that there was virtually no possibility that the U.S. would ever use overt military force in Cuba.

Undeterred, Lemnitzer and the Chiefs persisted, virtually to the point of demanding that they be given authority to invade and take over Cuba. About a month after submitting Operation Northwoods, they met the "tank," as the JCS conference room was called, and agreed on the wording of a tough memorandum to McNamara. "The Joint Chiefs of Staff believe that the Cuban problem must be solved in the near future," they wrote. "Further, they see no prospect of early success in overthrowing the present communist regime either as a result of internal uprising or external political, economic or psychological pressures. Accordingly they believe that military intervention by the United States will be required to overthrow the present communist regime."

Lemnitzer was virtually rabid in his hatred of Communism in general and Castro in particular "The Joint Chiefs of Staff believe that the United States can undertake military intervention in Cuba without risk of general war" he continued. "They also believe that the intervention can be accomplished rapidly enough to minimize communist opportunities for solicitation of UN action." However; what Lemnitzer was suggesting was not freeing the Cuban people, who were largely in support of Castro, but imprisoning them in a U.S. military-controlled police state. "Forces would assure rapid essential military control of Cuba," he wrote. "Continued police action would be required."

Concluding, Lemnitzer did not mince words: "[T]he Joint Chiefs of Staff recommend that a national policy of early military intervention in Cuba be adopted by the United States. They also recommend that such intervention be undertaken as soon as possible and preferably before the release of National Guard and Reserve forces presently on active duty."

By then McNamara had virtually no confidence in his military chief and was rejecting nearly every proposal the general sent to him. The rejections became so routine, said one of Lemnitzer's former staff officers, that the staffer told the general that the situation was putting the military in an "embarrassing rut." But Lemnitzer replied, "I am the senior military office--it's my job to state what I believe and it's his [McNamara's] job to approve or disapprove." "McNamara's arrogance was astonishing," said Lemnitzer's aide, who knew nothing of Operation Northwoods. "He gave General Lemnitzer very short shrift and treated him like a schoolboy. The general almost stood at attention when he came into the room. Everything was 'Yes, sir' and 'No, sir.'

Within months, Lemnitzer was denied a second term as JCS chairman and transferred to Europe as chief of NATO. Years later President Gerald Ford appointed Lemnitzer, a darling of the Republican right, to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Lemnitzer's Cuba chief, Brigadier General Craig, was also transferred. Promoted to major general, he spent three years as chief of the Army Security Agency, NSA's military arm.

Because of the secrecy and illegality of Operation Northwoods, all details remained hidden for forty years. Lemnitzer may have thought that all copies of the relevant documents had been destroyed; he was not one to leave compromising material lying around. Following the Bay of Pigs debacle, for example, he ordered Brigadier General David W Gray, Craig's predecessor as chief of the Cuba project within the JCS, to destroy all his notes concerning Joint Chiefs actions and discussions during that period. Gray's meticulous notes were the only detailed official records of what happened within the JCS during that time. According to Gray, Lemnitzer feared a congressional investigation and therefore wanted any incriminating evidence destroyed.

With the evidence destroyed, Lemnitzer felt free to lie to Congress. When asked, during secret hearings before a Senate committee, if he knew of any Pentagon plans for a direct invasion of Cuba he said he did not. Yet detailed JCS invasion plans had been drawn up even before Kennedy was inaugurated. And additional plans had been developed since. The consummate planner and man of details also became evasive, suddenly encountering great difficulty in recalling key aspects of the operation, as if he had been out of the country during the period. It was a sorry spectacle. Senator Gore called for Lemnitzer to be fired. "We need a shake up of the Joint Chiefs of Staff" he said. "We direly need a new chairman, as well as new members." No one had any idea of Operation Northwoods.

Because so many documents were destroyed, it is difficult to determine how many senior officials were aware of Operation Northwoods. As has been described, the document was signed and fully approved by Lemnitzer and the rest of the Joint Chiefs and addressed to the Secretary of Defense for his signature. Whether it went beyond McNamara to the president and the attorney general is not known.

Even after Lemnitzer lost his job, the Joint Chiefs kept planning "pretext" operations at least into 1963. Among their proposals was a deliberately create a war between Cuba and any of a number of .n American neighbors. This would give the United States military an excuse to come in on the side of Cuba's adversary and get rid of "A contrived 'Cuban' attack on an OAS [Organization of Americas] member could be set up," said one proposal, "and the attacked state could be urged to 'take measures of self-defense and request ice from the U.S. and OAS; the U.S. could almost certainly obtain necessary two-thirds support among OAS members for collective action against Cuba."

Among the nations they suggested that the United States secretly were Jamaica and Trinidad-Tobago. Both were members of the Commonwealth; thus, by secretly attacking them and then blaming Cuba, the United States could lure England into the war Castro. The report noted, "Any of the contrived situations de above are inherently, extremely risky in our democratic system in which security can be maintained, after the fact, with very great difficulty. If the decision should be made to set up a contrived situation it be one in which participation by U.S. personnel is limited only to the most highly trusted covert personnel. This suggests the infeasibility of the use of military units for any aspect of the contrived situation."

The report even suggested secretly paying someone in the Castro government to attack the United States: "The only area remaining for ration then would be to bribe one of Castro's subordinate commanders to initiate an attack on [the U.S. naval base at] Guantanamo." The act suggested--bribing a foreign nation to launch a violent attack American military installation--was treason.

In May 1963, Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul H. Nitze sent a the White House proposing "a possible scenario whereby an attack on a United States reconnaissance aircraft could be exploited toward the end of effecting the removal of the Castro regime." In the event Cuba attacked a U-2, the plan proposed sending in additional American pilots, this time on dangerous, unnecessary low-level reconnaissance missions with the expectation that they would also be shot down, thus provoking a war "[T]he U.S. could undertake various measures designed to stimulate the Cubans to provoke a new incident," said the plan. Nitze, however, did not volunteer to be one of the pilots.

One idea involved sending fighters across the island on "harassing reconnaissance" and "show-off" missions "flaunting our freedom of action, hoping to stir the Cuban military to action." "Thus," said the plan, "depending above all on whether the Cubans were or could be made to be trigger-happy, the development of the initial downing of a reconnaissance plane could lead at best to the elimination of Castro, perhaps to the removal of Soviet troops and the installation of ground inspection in Cuba, or at the least to our demonstration of firmness on reconnaissance." About a month later, a low-level flight was made across Cuba, but unfortunately for the Pentagon, instead of bullets it produced only a protest.

Lemnitzer was a dangerous-perhaps even unbalanced-right-wing extremist in an extraordinarily sensitive position during a critical period. But Operation Northwoods also had the support of every single member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and even senior Pentagon official Paul Nitze argued in favor of provoking a phony war with Cuba. The fact that the most senior members of all the services and the Pentagon could be so out of touch with reality and the meaning of democracy would be hidden for four decades.


In retrospect, the documents offer new insight into the thinking of the military's star-studded leadership. Although they never succeeded in launching America into a phony war with Cuba, they may have done so with Vietnam. More than 50,000 Americans and more than 2 million Vietnamese were eventually killed in that war.

It has long been suspected that the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident-the spark that led to America's long war in Vietnam-was largely staged or provoked by U.S. officials in order to build up congressional and public support for American involvement. Over the years, serious questions have been raised about the alleged attack by North Vietnamese patrol boats on two American destroyers in the Gulf But defenders of the Pentagon have always denied such charges, arguing that senior officials would never engage in such deceit.

Now, however, in light of the Operation Northwoods documents, it at deceiving the public and trumping up wars for Americans to fight and die in was standard, approved policy at the highest levels of the Pentagon. In fact, the Gulf of Tonkin seems right out of the Operation Northwoods playbook: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba . . . casualty lists in U.S. newspapers cause a helpful wave of indignation." One need only replace "Guantanamo Bay" with "Tonkin Gulf," and "Cuba" with "North Vietnam" and the Gulf of Tonkin incident may or may not have been stage-managed, but the senior Pentagon leadership at the time was clearly capable of such deceit.

By Thomas Retterbush


SOURCES & RESOURCES


Operation Northwoods - Proof US Government Could Harm Americans
http://rense.com/general18/harm.htm

Operation Northwoods: Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/Northwoods.html


Operation Northwoods Information Center
http://www.wanttoknow.info/010501operationnorthwoods


Book

BODY OF SECRETS, James Bamford, Doubleday, 2001, p.82 and following. Scanned and edited by NY Transfer News.

Book Epigram

"The public has a duty to watch its Government closely and keep it on the right track." --Lieutenant Gen. Kenneth A. Minihan, USAF, Director, NSA, _NSA Newsletter_, June 1997