No Wonder Castro is Still in Power

Recently declassified documents show America’s cock-eyed schemes to topple Castro — including a phony attack on U.S. forces, by U.S. forces.

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Two weeks ago, the Assassination Records Review Board assigned to look into President Kennedy’s assassination finished its work declassifying documents. Not all the documents dealt with the death of Kennedy. For your enjoyment, the MoJo Wire is posting an original memo that details a number of plans to topple the government of Cuban president Fidel Castro.

The 1962 memo, which reads like a bad brainstorming session between two over-zealous College Republicans, was sent by Brigadier General William Craig, a “Department of Defense Representative.” Whether or not Craig was an important figure isn’t clear. (A Nexis search doesn’t turn up any mentions of his name.) But the memo’s recipient, Air Force Brigadier General Edward Lansdale, definitely wasn’t just shuffling papers. Lansdale is considered one of the fathers of “psychological operations” and orchestrated U.S.-friendly coups in both the Philippines and South Vietnam.

It’s unclear whether any of these anti-Castro operations were ever attempted. Here are a few of our favorites, complete with juvenile names like:

 

Operation NO LOVE LOST

 

Operation FREE RIDE

 

Operation DIRTY TRICK

 

Operation BINGO (Most boring name. Also most disturbing plan.)

 

Operation GOOD TIMES (No relation to the sitcom.)

View the full memorandum.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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