Month: June 2020

William P. Clark Oral History

[…]
Knott:

You mentioned Suriname in your answer. Are you willing to talk a little more about what happened in Suriname?

Clark:

Yes. We had intelligence requiring, we felt, some immediate action regarding this little Caribbean country on the north shore of South America of 250,000 people as I recall.[Desi] Bouterse, a treacherous person, who like Sergeant [Samuel] Doe liked to line up his Cabinet and shoot them occasionally, was in direct communication with [Muammar] Gaddafi and Cuban intelligence directorates. It was once known as Dutch Guiana. The Netherlands had an interest in it, a paternal and economic one, even though they’d pulled out, leaving Bouterse to his own ends. But we had intelligence that planes were actually loaded in Libya with arms and communications gear prepared to go to Paramaribo and set it up as a new Cuba.

The Soviets had planned and were prepared to open an embassy, the only embassy as far as I can recall, on the South American continent. The President determined among a very small group—Shultz, Weinberger, Clark, and Don Regan, the latter who happened in accidentally to one of our conferences—a daring plan. It was a war plan, a false one but looking very real on paper, by which, as the President said, “the great colossus of the north” would invade Suriname to stop all of this, including a parachute drop and Weinberger’s ships sailing in. So with that information, John Poindexter, General [Paul] Gorman, I forget who from the agency, and I got into a plane at Andrews Air Force Base in the hangar, late at night, having made appointments with the Presidents of Venezuela and of Brazil to ask to meet with them or their representatives three days hence. We considered this an emergency situation to stop a new Soviet foothold in our front yard, giving the Soviets a chokehold on the mouth of the Caribbean.

So we flew into Venezuela and met with the President. Our message was, “Look, either you take care of the situation, of the Soviet foothold, the Cuban foothold—” Cuba was behind it. [Fidel] Castro’s number one intelligence director had orchestrated all of this. “Either you take care of it down here or we’ll have no alternative but to do so ourselves,” and then laid out our war plans in front of them. He turned pale, and before I left his office said, “Talk to Brazil, they’re closer. I don’t want anything to do with it right now, I’m in enough political trouble.”

So we flew into Brasilia, not to meet with the President but his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and military leaders. We parked at the end of the runway, it was after dark. As John Poindexter reminded me, upon perceiving the air drop and the Navy coming in, the Chairman ran to the men’s room and threw up, he was so frightened. But the long and the short of it, our approach worked and Brazil moved in with a carrot and stick to Bouterse with social programs and stopped the Soviet incursion into Paramaribo. As far as I know, they still don’t have a Soviet representative there. So our plan worked. If it hadn’t succeeded, I’m sure we would have been called up before some Senate committee to explain why we would have attempted such a foolish thing.

Knott:

So this was one instance where secrecy was maintained.

Clark:

Absolutely and necessarily at the President’s order.

Knott:

I don’t think it’s ever been—

Clark:

Absolutely. Secrecy was maintained—from the Netherlands press there were several stories touching on it, but no one has really pressed it. When I returned to Washington, my staff met me saying, “Where in the world have you been? You’re in trouble.” I said, “What do you mean?” They said, “Well, the Baker group feels that you’re off starting World War III and you took Air Force One.” The President insisted that we take not number two or three but the plane that we took. I’d forgotten which one it was, but in any case Jim was in charge of all White house aircraft. We hadn’t asked his permission because the President told us that we weren’t to discuss this project, if it could be called that, with anyone other than those in the room. Oh, by the way, I missed mentioning Casey earlier. He was obviously involved in this.

Knott:

Was he on this trip that you referred to?

Clark:

No, Dewey Clarridge came along, that being his region for the agency. Anyway, the networks had that Sunday aired the fact that I was away on a mission without authority, that the White House had lost confidence in the National Security Advisor for doing things out on his own. Lesley Stahl, I recall, let it out early, I saw a rerun of it. So I had to assure our own staff people, who didn’t know about the project, that as far as I knew I still had a job. It all died down and went away in a day or two. But it was an interesting little project. We were gone actually just two and a half days on the weekend.
[…]

[Samual Doe was een Liberiaanse sergeant, die in April 1980 een coup pleegde in Liberia, waarbij leden van de toen zittende regering werden geexecuteerd.]

P. Kengor and P. Clark Doerner

Once the Reagan team decided that they needed to turn back the Soviet-Cuban presence in Suriname, Clark and his staff considered courses of action that for the most part had been developed by the CIA. The agency had been examining options for several months in consultation with various departments of the government.

Sources say that it was Duane “Dewey” Clarridge, the chief of the CIA’s Latin American Division in the Directorate of Operations and Bill Casey’s “right arm” for Latin America, who came up with the idea of using South Koreans–a suggestion met by mirth and wonderment inside the agency. Yet, Clarridge’s suggestion was not without merit: he argued that the South Koreans had a large fishing fleet operating off northern South America, which occasionally sailed into Paramaribo to replenish supplies.

Also the South Korean government was very friendly with the United States, and the Korean Marine Corps was tough and well trained. Clarridge proposed that two companies of South Korean Marines be transferred at sea to the South Korean fishing fleet, where they would be concealed. The fleet would make a routine stop in Paramaribo and, once darkness settled, would undertake the assault on the compound.

For support, the CIA dispatched paramilitary officers undercover to Paramaribo to reconnoiter compound headquarters, an adjacent garrison, the airfield, and the road to Paramaribo. The plan did not envisage the use of U.S. military personnel, but would be supported by a few CIA experts and would have American backing financially and politically. The Department of Defense was, however, drawing up a contingency plan for the evacuation of U.S. citizens from the embassy in Paramaribo and from the ALCOA plant.

The plan, the national security advisor told the President, was to move into Suriname with a paramilitary force and “carry out a rapid operation to seize the Surinamese military headquarters[ the compound], the military garrison and the international airport and remove Bouterse”.

by H.W. Brands( 2016)

Hours after hearing the terrible news from Beirut, Reagan launched a military operation that seemed to have nothing to do with the conflict in Lebanon. Most Americans had never heard of Grenada before Reagan became president; even American newscasters required time to get the pronunciation right( gre-NAY-da). The invasion of this tiny island country in the eastern Caribbean took the American people by such surprise that Reagan’s critics hardly had time to react before the deed was done.

Reagan intended things that way. Since entering office, he had been looking for an opportunity to demonstrate his and America’s decisiveness in foreign affairs, in particular to exorcise the ghost of Vietnam and dispel the impression that the United States would not act forcefully in defense of its interests. Latin America seemed a likely place for the kind of demonstration Reagan intended. Fidel Castro and his leftist allies in the region needed a chastening, Reagan judged, and in Latin America the United States enjoyed an overwhelming military advantage over any conceivable foe.

Suriname briefly caught his eye. In December 1982 soldiers in the service of military strongman Desi Bouterse killed fifteen political dissidents in that former Dutch colony. Bouterse then made statements that struck Reagan’s ear as suggesting he was cozying up to Castro. “This must not be allowed,” Reagan wrote confidentially. “We have to find a way to stop him.” The president considered sending in the marines but decided against it. “We’d lose all we’ve gained with the other Latin American countries.”

So instead he plotted covert warfare. In the spring of 1983, Reagan’s national security team developed a plan for neutralizing or toppling Bouterse. “Based on the President’s directives at the NSPG meeting yesterday, we suggest the following possible actions,” staffers Alfonso Sapia-Bosch and Oliver North wrote: “That a Presidential emissary travel to Venezuela and Brazil this week to meet with the respective presidents to brief them in detail on what is now taking place in Suriname and what the result is likely to be, e.g., the Cubanization of Surinamese society. Furthermore this will allow the establishment of a Cuban and Soviet base on the tip of South America that will give improved access to the South Caribbean and a base from which to extend their influence with South America. Northeastern Brazil will then be open to propaganda infiltration at the very least. Venezuela will have another unfriendly country near its border.”

Sapia-Bosch and North recommended briefing not only the president of Venezuela, Luis Herrera Campins, but also his probable successor, Jaime Lusinchi. “Herrera Campins feels very vulnerable because of ineptitude, financial problems, corruption, etc. By bringing Lusinchi into the loop, we would reduce pressure on Herrera Campins.” In Brazil the approach should be straightforward. “President Figueiredo must be made to understand the threat that Cubans and Soviets will present when they are on his northern border. He is an army general and should recognize the problem.”

Sapia-Bosch and North recommended other actions that were deemed too sensitive to reveal when their memo was declassified a quarter century later. But George Shultz, in his memoir, indicated what they had in mind. “The CIA sent briefers to me to outline a plan under which a force of 50 to 175 Korean commandos would stage out of Venezuela and run an assault into Paramaribo to overthrow Bouterse,” Shultz wrote. The secretary of state could hardly believe what he was hearing. “It was a hare-brained idea, ill thought out, without any convincing likelihood of success and with no analysis of the political consequences at home or internationally.” “The whole thing depended on impossibly intricate timing and a presumption that the Koreans would be taken as members of the local population. This was crazy. I was shaken to find such a wild plan put forward seriously by the CIA.”

Reagan nonetheless used the threat of invasion as leverage for diplomacy. He named William Clark as his emissary to Venezuela and Brazil. The journey was secret, but its point was clear. “Our message,” Clark recalled later, “was, Look, either you take care of the situation, of the Soviet foothold, the Cuban foothold…either you take care of it down here or we’ll have no alternative but to do so ourselves.” Clark laid out the American invasion plan to Herrera Campins in Caracas. “He turned pale, and before I left his office, said, “Talk to Brazil, they’re closer. I don’t want anything to do with it right now, I’m in enough political trouble.” Clark proceeded to Brasilia, where he met not with the Brasilian president but with the general who chaired the country’s military chiefs of staff. “We parked at the end of the runway; it was after dark,” Clark recalled. Again he delineated what an American-backed invasion of Suriname would look like. “The chairman ran to the men’s room and threw up, he was so frigtened,” Clark said.

Perhaps Clark misunderstood the cause of the general’s distress. Or perhaps the general did not convey that distress to his civilian bosses. In any event, the Clark mission failed to achieve what Reagan wanted. “Venezuela couldn’t go along, “Reagan noted after debriefing Clark. “The President of Brazil had an idea somewhat different than ours.” What that idea was, Reagan did’t say. But he added cryptically, “So operation ‘Guiminish’ is born. We’ll know before the month is out whether it has succeeded.”

De twee operaties welke Amerika in 1983 tegen Suriname( covert) en Grenada( overt) heeft uitgevoerd, waren het gevolg van het feit dat men dacht dat Moscow missiles in Grenada en/of Suriname wilde installeren als antwoord op het voornemen van Amerika om de Pershing II missile in Duitsland te plaatsen.

“Operation Guiminish” in April 1983, genoemd naar het paard van President Reagan( een cadeau van de President van Brazilie) was volgens de advisor van President Reagan m.b.t. National Security Affairs, William Clark, een succes. I.v.m. deze operatie heeft men een Braziliaanse militaire eenheid aan de noordgrens met Suriname gestationeerd. Maar waarom is JSOC dan tot eind 1983 gewoon doorgegaan met de planning( en oefening) van een carrier-launched full scale invasie van Suriname??

Een Braziliaanse patrouille op de Surinaams-Braziliaanse grens( datum ??)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CX6A2iFTsgs

In politics “carrot or stick” refers to the concept of soft and hard power. The carrot in this context could be the promise of economic or diplomatic aid between nations, while the stick might be the threat of military action.

by Sean Naylor( 2016)

A case in point was the 1981 order the Pentagon gave JSOC to prepare to invade Suriname. The huge bauxite reserves in the former Dutch colony on South America’s northeastern Atlantic coast meant that Alcoa, the massive U.S. aluminum firm, had major holdings in the country. A 1980 military coup that deposed the elected government and installed the brutal Desi Bouterse as a leftist dictator placed those properties—and, more importantly, the Western expatriates who worked on them—at risk.

JSOC began planning an operation to oust Bouterse and free any Western hostages in late 1981, infiltrating operators undercover to reconnoiter possible targets and to photograph the route from the airfield to the capital, Paramaribo, “[Det 1 MACOS] people . . . went down to Suriname and surveyed all the airfields under the guise that they were bird-watchers,” said a JSOC staffer. “We had lots of guys go down there. It was easy to get people in and out.” JSOC was confident it could pull the operation off. “It really would have been a piece of cake,” the staffer said, ““Think of a little town with the worst police force you can think of and that’s what they had.”

But the mission began to expand, particularly when it became clear that Bouterse might take and hold Western hostages in several different locations, “The Rangers and Delta were part of the recovery for these people,” said a Pentagon special operations official. “We’d have to go to several different locations and bring the expats to the airfield. At the same time we’ve got to take over the radio and TV stations in Suriname and grab the president. It was getting kind of complex.” As a result, by 1982 the operation had evolved from one that involved only JSOC to one in which XVIII Airborne Corps would have a major role.

The JSOC tactical command post and representatives from the units in the invasion plan moved to Hurlburt Field, Florida, for six weeks. The Pentagon wanted the Rangers to conduct an airfield seizure, which was becoming their specialty, with XVIII Airborne Corps 82nd Airborne and 101st Airborne (Air Assault) Divisions flowing in behind them. The two divisions were “preparing to move out,” said a senior JSOC official. “I thought we were going to war.” But in a dynamic to which JSOC would grow accustomed during the next two decades, the Reagan administration called off the 1982 operation late in the planning process.

The administration remained interested in overthrowing Bouterse: in late 1983, after the CIA had considered and then dropped a plan to engineer a countercoup to topple Bouterse earlier that year, JSOC was still planning and rehearsing a carrier-launched full-scale invasion. Delta operators visited Suriname undercover on reconnaissance missions before the administration again decided against the operation. However, the prospect of a JSOC-led invasion of Suriname continued to surface for the remainder of the 1980s.” “That was always on the books,” a Delta operator said.

Events in fall 1983 ensured that JSOC’s planning effort for Suriname was not completely wasted, however. When a military coup October 14 in Grenada resulted in hard-line Marxists being replaced by even more zealous Marxists, President Reagan decided to invade the tiny Caribbean island nation. The initial plan had JSOC in the lead, with important roles for Delta, Team 6, both Ranger battalions, TF 160, and Det 1 MACOS. JSOC’s plan borrowed heavily from the command’s Suriname work. “For every target we had in Suriname, there was a like target in Grenada, so that speeded up our operations,” a JSOC staffer said. “Suriname was kind of a big joke to us, but it really turned out to be the Grenada model.”

The Grenada operation, named Urgent Fury, would be JSOC’s first combat mission, but placed the command in a role for which it was not designed: spearheading an invasion, rather than reacting to a terrorist incident. Although ultimately successful, Urgent Fury was a fiasco that, like Eagle Claw, exposed the limitations of even the most elite units and had long-term ramifications for U.S. special operations forces.

De onderstaande figuur bewijst meetkundig dat de knik in de track(2) het verband van de Mamia Pakoro site met Paramaribo geeft. Merk op dat hoek GPN precies 90 graden is.

Voor zo’n krankzinnige plan hebben de domme bakras zo’n laffe cover-up met vier Indianenhutten gedaan.

De bedoeling van de site was om alle commies te vernietigen.

Dit is wat men met Paramaribo wilde doen.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/k_w_b_2011/39040232070/

De GALVANIZED STEEL PIER welke voor de cover-up 30 jaar op Zanderij heeft gestaan is het bewijs dat het LAFFE HONDEN zijn die geen eergevoel hebben.

Nadat de Ethiopische coup van 13 December 1960 was mislukt verklaarde de C.I.A. op 20 December 1960 in een NSC Briefing het volgende:

Motivation of Ethiopian coup leaders, who are now all dead, is obscure,

Bodyguard commander Menghistu Neway and his brother Germame probably acted to sieze power for personal aggrandizement.

1. Germame, a relative political unknown, is reported to have been a Communist sympathizer and to have been a frequent visitor at the Soviet Embassy.
2. Director of Security Workneh Gabeyhu may have been forced to cooperate.

In deze briefing aan de National Security Council stelt men dus dat de coupplegers puur uit eigen belang( macht, rijkdom) hebben gehandeld, en dus niet volgens een politieke ideologie. Deze NSC Briefing is op internet beschikbaar( pas na 40 jaar declassified).

Is er dus een verband tussen de mislukte coup van 13 December 1960 in Addis Abeba en de Mamia Pakoro site.

BOB MARLEY( “JAH LIVE ” ) “AFRICA UNITE” who laugh last children, Is he who win.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE6WZfn0O6M

The next day, on the 14th, crown prince Assfa Wossen went on the radio to announce the coup and the formation of a new government and a pay raise for the armed forces. Whether he did this willing or by force has remained a topic of controversy. Marcus points out that it was to his “advantage to cooperate…he could always claim, if the coup failed, that he had acted under mortal threat.” The conspirators hoped the crown prince’s speech would buy them the support of the Army and the Air Force while also gaining support from the populace of Addis Ababa. However, the speech did not have the intended effect. Most felt that the crown prince gave the speech under duress. Imperial Body Guard troops, the majority of whom learned for the first time that they were fighting against the emperor when they heard the radio broadcasts, lost their will to fight. By this time the Air Force had decided to join the group loyal to the emperor. Troops were being recalled and were pouring into Addis Ababa. Another important player in town were the Americans. The conspirators asked that the new government be given recognition by the United States government. However, the Americans were also in contact with the loyalist camp and had not yet decided on which side they would give support.

(bron: https://thehaileselassie.com/)

Volgens sommige Ethiopische bronnen werd de mislukte coup van 13 December 1960 door de Amerikaanse ambassade in Addis Abeba ondersteund. Dit is gebasseerd op verklaringen van een van de coupplegers Generaal Mengistu Neway welke zijn afgelegd bij ondervragingen na zijn arrestatie. Het onderstaande relaas wordt o.a. als een bevestiging van het verhaal van Mengistu Neway aangedragen.

In de hoop dat door Amerikaanse bemiddeling het leven van de gegijzelde ministers en ambtenaren van de koninklijke regering beschermd zou worden, begaf de Amerikaanse ambassadeur L. Richards vergezeld door de C.I.A. station chef W.M. McGhee en de attache van het Amerikaanse leger W.H. Crosson Jr., zich naar het paleis van Haile Selassie, waar deze gevangen werden gehouden. Daar ontmoetten ze de leiders van de staatsgreep, die werden geconfronteerd met de eisen van het loyalistische leger om zich over te geven.

Met de oprukkende eenheden van het leger aan de poorten van het paleis( die direct begonnen het paleis te beschieten), werd de C.I.A chef W.M. McGhee door zijn rebellencontact gewaarschuwd om het paleis onmiddellijk met de ambassadeur te verlaten. Het voortdurende schieten op de voorkant van het paleis dwong de Amerikanen door het dichtsbijzijnde raam te springen, om te ontdekken dat ze gestrand waren, hun ambassade auto was verdwenen. Na een paar zeer spannende minuten in een gehurkte vlucht, vond het trio een auto in de garage van het paleis met de sleutels nog in het contact. Met de opgeeiste auto vluchtten ze door de achterpoort van het paleis naar de veiligheid.

Momenten nadat de Amerikaanse delegatie was vertrokken, voerden de coupplegers de beruchte Green Room Massacre uit. Hierbij werden 15 van de gijzelaars geexecuteerd.

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