Operation Mongoose

This article is about the terrorism and sabotage campaign carried out by the US Government in Cuba. For other uses, see Operation Mongoose (disambiguation).
Operation Mongoose
The Cuban Project
Operation Mongoose Memorandum
October 4, 1962
First page of a meeting report
United States involvement in
regime change
20th century
21st century

The Cuban Project, also known as Operation Mongoose, was an extensive campaign of terrorist attacks against civilians, and covert operations, carried out by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in Cuba.[10] It was officially authorized on November 30, 1961, by U.S. President John F. Kennedy. The name "Operation Mongoose" was agreed to at a White House meeting on November 4, 1961.

The operation was run out of JMWAVE, a major secret United States covert operations and intelligence gathering station on the campus of the University of Miami.[11][12] The operation was led by United States Air Force General Edward Lansdale on the military side and William King Harvey at the CIA and went into effect after the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion.

Operation Mongoose was a secret program against Cuba that aimed to remove the Cuban government from power, and to force the Cuban government to introduce intrusive civil measures and divert precious resources to protect its citizens from the attacks. The removal of the Castro government was a prime focus of the Kennedy administration.[4][13][14]

  1. ^ Bacevich, Andrew (2010). Washington rules : America's path to permanent war (First ed.). New York: Henry Holt and Company. pp. 77–80. ISBN 9781429943260. Retrieved 2 February 2020. In its determination to destroy the Cuban Revolution, the Kennedy administration heedlessly embarked upon what was, in effect, a program of state-sponsored terrorism... the actions of the United States toward Cuba during the early 1960s bear comparison with Iranian and Syrian support for proxies engaging in terrorist activities against Israel
  2. ^ Franklin, Jane (2016). Cuba and the U.S. empire : a chronological history. New York: New York University Press. pp. 45–63, 388–392, et passim. ISBN 9781583676059.
  3. ^ Prados, John; Jimenez-Bacardi, Arturo, eds. (October 3, 2019). Kennedy and Cuba: Operation Mongoose. National Security Archive (Report). Washington, D.C.: The George Washington University. Archived from the original on November 2, 2019. Retrieved 3 April 2020. The Kennedy administration had been quick to set up a Cuba Task Force—with strong representation from CIA's Directorate of Plans—and on August 31 that unit decided to adopt a public posture of ignoring Castro while attacking civilian targets inside Cuba: 'our covert activities would now be directed toward the destruction of targets important to the [Cuban] economy' (Document 4)...While acting through Cuban revolutionary groups with potential for real resistance to Castro, the task force 'will do all we can to identify and suggest targets whose destruction will have the maximum economic impact.' The memorandum showed no concern for international law or the unspoken nature of these operations as terrorist attacks.
  4. ^ a b Domínguez, Jorge I. (April 2000). "The @#$%& Missile Crisis" (PDF). Diplomatic History. 24 (2). Boston/Oxford: Blackwell Publishers/Oxford University Press: 305–316. doi:10.1111/0145-2096.00214. Archived (PDF) from the original on September 7, 2020. Retrieved 6 September 2019 – via Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University. On the afternoon of 16 October... Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy convened in his office a meeting on Operation Mongoose, the code name for a U.S. policy of sabotage and related covert operation aimed at Cuba... The Kennedy administration returned to its policy of sponsoring terrorism against Cuba as the confrontation with the Soviet Union lessened... Only once in these nearly thousand pages of documentation did a U.S. official raise something that resembled a faint moral objection to U.S.-government sponsored terrorism.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference Rabe was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ International Policy Report (Report). Washington, D.C.: Center for International Policy. 1977. pp. 10–12. To coordinate and carry out its war of terror and destruction during the early 1960s, the CIA established a base of operations, known as JMWAVE
  7. ^ Miller, Nicola (2002). "The Real Gap in the Cuban Missile Crisis: The Post-Cold-War Historiography and Continued Omission of Cuba". In Carter, Dale; Clifton, Robin (eds.). War and Cold War in American Foreign Policy, 1942–62. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 211–237. ISBN 978-1-4039-1385-2.
  8. ^ Erlich, Reese (2008). Dateline Havana : the real story of U.S. policy and the future of Cuba. Abingdon/New York: Routledge. pp. 26–29. ISBN 9781317261605. Retrieved 2 February 2020. Officially, the United States favored only peaceful means to pressure Cuba. In reality, U.S. leaders also used violent, terrorist tactics... Operation Mongoose began in November 1961... U.S. operatives attacked civilian targets, including sugar refineries, saw mills, and molasses storage tanks. Some 400 CIA officers worked on the project in Washington and Miami... Operation Mongoose and various other terrorist operations caused property damage and injured and killed Cubans. But they failed to achieve their goal of regime change.
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference Schou11 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  10. ^ [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]
  11. ^ Cold War in South Florida: Historic Resource Study Archived 2016-12-21 at the Wayback Machine, Steven Hach (ed. Jennifer Dickey), National Park Service Southeast Regional Office, U.S. Department of the Interior, October 2004
  12. ^ Spymaster: My Life in the CIA, Theodore G. Shackley, 2005, Brassey's, ISBN 1-57488-915-X
  13. ^ Bolender, Keith (2012). Cuba Under Siege: American Policy, the Revolution, and its People. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. x, 14, 18–20, 53–57, 63–64, et passim. doi:10.1057/9781137275554. ISBN 978-1-137-27554-7. While there are multiple layers of complexity to the encirclement of Cuba, the most violent facet rests with the hundreds of acts of terrorism inflicted against civilian targets...The most infamous offshoot of the Project was Operation Mongoose...Headed by Air Force general Edward Lansdale, the operation coordinated hundreds of acts of terrorism, sabotage against Cuban industrial targets, increased propaganda efforts, and the tightening of the economic blockade...by the late 1960s it had shifted to terrorist organizations in South Florida made up of the extreme right-wing opposition that had left the island. In between were the murders, bombings, and sabotage of the terrorist program Operation Mongoose...American officials understood the acts of terror during the early years were specifically designed to disrupt, destabilize, and force the Cuban government to divert precious resources, as well as induce intrusive civil measures.
  14. ^ Lansdale, Edward (January 18, 1962). Smith, Louis J. (ed.). Program Review by the Chief of Operations, Operation Mongoose. Foreign Relations of the United States (Report). 1961–1963. Vol. X, Cuba. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office. Retrieved 19 February 2020.