The National Security-State and John F. Kennedy, Part 2 by Jacob G. Hornberger!!
(2017-12-16 at 10:30:06 )

The National Security-State and John F. Kennedy, Part 2 by Jacob G. Hornberger

In 1970 - twenty years after the election of Jacobo Arbenz as president of Guatemala - the Chilean people did what the Guatemalan people had done. They democratically elected a self-proclaimed socialist and communist named Salvador Allende to be president of their country. Since Allende had received only a plurality of votes, the election was thrown into the Chilean congress. However, traditionally the congress had voted to confirm as president the candidate who had the highest vote total in the general election, which was Allende.

Alarm bells immediately went off in Washington, D.C., where the president and the State Department were located, and Virginia, where the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency were based.

Allende was immediately viewed as a grave threat to United States national security, not only because of his socialist economic views but especially owing to his reaching out to the Soviet Union and communist Cuba in a spirit of peace and friendship, just as Arbenz had done.

The notion was that the United States and the rest of the noncommunist world were locked in an intractable war with the Soviet Union and the communist world, one in which the very survival of the United States was at stake.

Given the unbridgeable ideological differences between the two countries, United States officials were convinced that there could never be peaceful coexistence between the two countries. It was going to be a war to the finish, one in which only one victor would be left standing at the end.

In this war to the death, neutrality of other countries was not considered an option. The United States mindset was: You are either with us or you are with the communists.

Immediately after Allendes election in 1970, United States officials conspired to prevent him from assuming the Chilean presidency by coming up with a plan that operated on two tracks. One track involved the bribing of Chilean congressmen into voting not to confirm Allende as president. The other track involved persuading the Chilean national-security establishment to oust Allende in a coup and establish an unelected military dictatorship in his stead.

There were some serious problems with this two-track plan.

One problem was the United States Constitution, the document that called the federal government into existence and limited its powers to those enumerated in the Constitution. The Constitution did not contain any enumerated power authorizing United States officials to bribe foreign officials or to orchestrate a coup in a foreign country.

That did not stop United States officials, including those within the Central Intelligence Agency, which was spearheading the regime-change operation. The position of United States officials was that the Constitution was not a suicide pact. That meant that if the nation was going to fall to the communists if United States officials did not break the law, then they had the authority to break the law to save the nation.

That mindset was reflected in a top-secret United States government report published in 1954, the same year the Central Intelligence Agency engineered a coup in Guatemala and the same year that the top-secret Central Intelligence Agency assassination manual mentioned in Part 1 of this essay was published. The report, known as "The Doolittle Report," was a comprehensive study of the operations of the Central Intelligence Agency conducted by United States Air Force Lt. Gen. James H. Doolittle.

In his report, Doolittle emphasized the dire threat that communism and the Soviet Union supposedly posed to the United States. He wrote, "It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination by whatever means and at whatever cost. There are no rules in such a game…. If the United States is to survive, long standing concepts of fair play must be reconsidered."

Kidnapping plot

This "break the rules" principle was demonstrated not only by the Central Intelligence Agencys bribery scheme in Chile but also by a scheme to violently kidnap the commanding general of Chiles armed forces, a man named René Schneider.

A man of personal integrity, Schneider refused to go along with the United States plan to prevent Allende from assuming the presidency. His position was quite simple: He had taken an oath to support and defend the Chilean constitution, and he intended to honor that oath. The constitution of Chile, like the Constitution of the United States before the 25th Amendment was added, provided only two ways to remove a president from office: through the next election or through impeachment. The constitution of Chile, Schneider pointed out, did not authorize a coup as a third way to prevent a person from becoming president or removing a president once he assumed office.

Realizing that a coup to prevent Allende from assuming the presidency was impossible with Schneider as commander of the Chilean armed forces, United States officials in Washington and Virginia conspired to have him kidnapped and removed from the scene. The task was placed into the hands of the Central Intelligence Agency.

There was obviously a big problem here. Kidnapping is a felony. So is conspiracy to kidnap. Even though the actual felony was to be carried out in Chile, there is no doubt that the conspiracy to kidnap originated in the United States.

Moreover, at the risk of belaboring the obvious, the Constitution did not delegate to United States officials the power to kidnap people. In fact, the Fifth Amendment specifically prohibited federal officials from depriving any person of his life or liberty without due process of law.

But this was the new Cold War way of thinking that was described in the top-secret 1954 Doolittle Report. To save the United States from an eventual communist takeover, it was considered permissible, even necessary, for the United States government, operating through the national-security establishment, to break the law, even by committing violent felonies against innocent people.

And it is very important to remember that Schneider was an entirely innocent person. He was not even a communist. He was simply a military man who was doing his duty. But because he was doing his duty, he had to be eliminated: by preventing the coup from going forward, he had supposedly become a threat to United States " National Security ".

Of course, it was never really made clear how Chile under Allende posed a threat to the United States. It was not as if there was any danger that the Chilean army was going to start marching forward through South America, Central America, and Mexico and then cross the Rio Grande at Brownsville, take over Texas, and then start heading up to conquer Washington. Instead, it was that general sense, which psychiatrists might have labeled extreme paranoia, that communism and the communists were moving closer and closer to the United States, threatening to ultimately envelop the nation.

Pursuant to the Central Intelligence Agency conspiracy to kidnap Schneider, the Central Intelligence Agency secretly smuggled two high-powered weapons into the country in a diplomatic pouch, which would seem to make the State Department complicit in the felony. Rather than do the kidnapping themselves, Central Intelligence Agency officials hired local thugs to do it for them. While the Central Intelligence Agency has long claimed that it was not the kidnapping team they had hired but rather another one that ended up doing the kidnapping, the denials are not credible, especially since the Central Intelligence Agency has lied about almost everything else relating to the Chilean regime-change operation.

In fact, in sworn testimony to Congress, Central Intelligence Agency Director Richard Helms stated unequivocally that the Central Intelligence Agency had played no role in the events in Chile leading up to the eventual coup in 1973. It was a direct violation of perjury law. It was another example of the principle set forth in the Doolittle Report - that sometimes it is necessary to break the law to save the country. Helms obviously thought he would never get caught or, if he was caught, that no one would do anything about it. And neither did any other Central Intelligence Agency official, many of whom knew he had committed perjury and remained silent about it.

When it was later discovered that Helms had lied under oath to Congress about the Central Intelligence Agencys involvement in Chile, he was given a sweetheart deal that permitted him to plead guilty to a misdemeanor with no jail time and a nominal fine. When he returned to Central Intelligence Agency headquarters after his sentencing, Central Intelligence Agency personnel gave him a round of applause and passed a hat to collect the money for the fine. In their world, Helms lies to Congress under oath about the Central Intelligence Agencys actions in Chile made him a patriot and a hero.

Schneider was, of course, armed when his vehicle was ambushed by the kidnapping team. Undoubtedly believing that te kidnappers would ultimately kill him, he fought back by firing his sidearm at his attackers. They filled his vehicle with bullets, gravely wounding him. Schneider died a few days later, leaving a wife and two small sons.

Later, the Central Intelligence Agency was caught having paid hush money to the kidnappers and purchasing back its high-powered weapons that had been secretly shipped into the country under cover of a diplomatic pouch.

The Central Intelligence Agency has always denied that its kidnapping conspiracy included the assassination of Rene Schneider. But of course, the Central Intelligence Agency would deny that anyway. After all, the top-secret Central Intelligence Agency assassination manual published in 1954 showed that the agency was studying ways to assassinate people while keeping its own role in the assassination secret or, at the very least, difficult to prove.

Moreover, as a practical matter, there was no way the Central Intelligence Agency and the kidnappers could ever permit Schneider to return to Chilean society after a coup. Thus, it is a virtual certainty that the plan called for the kidnappers to kill Schneider, at which point the Central Intelligence Agency, if caught, would feign shock and outrage and deny that murder was part of the plan.

In what United States law calls the felony-murder rule, the Central Intelligence Agency and the rest of the United States government were criminally liable for Schneiders murder even if they intended only to kidnap him. Under the felony-murder rule, conspirators and participants in felonies are criminally responsible for murders committed in the course of committing the felony.

No United States officials were prosecuted for the kidnapping and murder of René Schneider. The episode demonstrated the new order of things in the United States, one that was ultimately confirmed by the United States Supreme Court, which, in a series of rulings in subsequent years, effectively immunized United States officials from civil liability for illegal actions committed in the name of " National Security ". Operating through the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency, and, later, the National Security Agency, United States officials were now authorized to do whatever was necessary, no matter how illegal, to protect national security, including kidnapping and assassinating officials of a foreign government, communist and noncommunist alike.

The coup

Schneiders assassination boomeranged on the Central Intelligence Agency. The anger generated by the assassination was so overwhelming that the Chilean congress confirmed Allende as president. The bribery scheme in track one of the Chilean regime-change operation had failed.

That did not stop United States officials, however. They became more determined than ever to remove Allende from office through a military coup, especially after he reached out to the Soviets and the Cubans, as Arbenz had done. It is not difficult to imagine the reaction of the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency when Allende hosted Cubas communist leader, Fidel Castro, as an official guest in Chile.

United States President Richard Nixon ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to pave the way for preventing Allende from coming to power or for a coup by creating as much economic misery and suffering as possible. His words to the Central Intelligence Agency were "Make the economy scream." And that is precisely what the Central Intelligence Agency did. Even after Allendes socialist policies had begun sending the economy into a tailspin, the Central Intelligence Agency knowingly and intentionally made things worse for the Chilean people. For example, in 1972 it secretly bribed truckers in the country to go on a nationwide strike to prevent food from reaching people all across the country.

Notwithstanding the removal of Schneider from the scene, there was still considerable resistance to a coup within the Chilean military. The United States national-security establishment was finally able to overcome that resistance with one of the most fascinating, important, and revealing arguments in the history of the United States.

What the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency told their military-intelligence counterparts in Chile was this: When the president of a country is threatening national security with his policies and actions, it is the solemn duty of the national-security establishment to save the country by removing him from office.

Now, think about that for a minute. It is a truly extraordinary position. The United States Constitution certainly does not provide for that type of removal action. Neither did the Chilean constitution. That did not matter. In the minds of the national-security establishment, a nations constitution is not a suicide pact. If a president is taking a nation down - if, for example, he is implementing measures that are leading to socialism and communism - or if he is embracing an avowed enemy of the United States - then it becomes the solemn duty of the military-intelligence forces to do what is necessary to save the nation by removing such a president from office. That is the principle that the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency were imparting to their counterparts in the Chilean military and intelligence agencies.

The Chilean coup finally came on September 11, 1973. The national-security branch of the government initiated a military attack on the executive branch of the government. Since Allende refused to surrender, Chilean military officials tried to assassinate him with missiles fired by Chilean Air Force jets at his position in the presidential palace. At the same time, Chilean infantry and armor surrounded Allendes position on the ground and initiated fire on him.

For a while, Allende and some of his aides fought back with guns but it soon became clear that the executive branch of the government was no match for the national-security branch of the government. Allendes aides soon surrendered to the opposing forces and Allende, knowing what might lie in store for him if he were taken captive, apparently committed suicide.

One of the most revealing events that took place after the coup involved two American men, Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, both of whom were leftists or socialists. Teruggi had openly opposed United States involvement in the Vietnam War, something that United States officials had noted about him in a secret file they were maintaining on him back in the United States. Horman had inadvertently discovered United States complicity in the coup, something that United States officials were steadfastly set on keeping secret. (Recall Helms testimony to Congress, in which he stated that the Central Intelligence Agency had played no role in the events leading up to the coup.)

The new military dictatorship, headed by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, immediately began rounding up socialists, leftists, Allende officials, Allende supporters, and people who had voted for Allende, some 50,000-60,000 people in all. Most of them were brutally tortured, raped, sexually assaulted in the most unbelievably horrific ways, executed, or "disappeared," all with the support of United States officials, who immediately began opening up the floodgates of United States foreign aid and international credits.

It was during that time that Horman and Teruggi were executed by Pinochets national-security personnel. Yet, there is no reasonable possibility that Pinochet and his forces did that on their own. After all, the United States government was their partner in the coup. It was the United States government that had exhorted them to act to save their country from communism and, as Horman had discovered, was standing by on the day of the coup with offshore naval forces ready to provide support if necessary. The worst thing they would have done to any undesirable American is deport him. Chilean officials would never have killed Horman and Teruggi without receiving a green light from their partner and benefactor, the United States.

And it had to be more than just a green light. The only way that Horman and Teruggi would have been killed by Chilean personnel is if United States officials asked them to do the killing for them. Recall, once again, the 1954 top-secret Central Intelligence Agency assassination manual, the one in which the Central Intelligence Agency was studying how to kill people and how to keep its role in the murder secret.

Before anyone cries "Conspiracy Theory," a secret State Department investigative report later turned up that revealed that "United States intelligence" played an undefined role in the murders of Horman and Teruggi. The report recommended further investigation. It is no surprise that that recommendation went nowhere. The United States intelligence personnel who conspired to kill Horman and Teruggi got away scot-free. As the Doolittle Report had recommended, the Central Intelligence Agency now wielded the omnipotent power to break the law, including laws against kidnapping and murdering American citizens, to save the United States from COMMUNISM.

We should keep in mind the United States national-security states reason for violently removing Salvador Allende, Jacobo Arbenz, and Rene Schneider from office and for its willingness to kill American citizens, when we later examine the assassination of John F. Kennedy in the context of these Cold War, national-security state regime-change operations.

We have examined the Central Intelligence Agencys regime-change operation in Guatemala in 1954 and its regime-change operation in Chile in 1973. Let us now go to a year between those two operations. Let us go to 1960, to the Central Intelligence Agencys regime-change operation in Cuba.

Printed here with permission from Mr. Jacob G. Hornberger of The Future of Freedom Foundation!! Their Great Website!!