‘Operation Mongoose’: Washington’s secret war on Cuba [Socialist History: S1 Episode 2]
In 1961 the United States launched the largest covert operation of the Cold War against a single country, a campaign of sabotage, terror, and assassination aimed at destroying the Cuban Revolution ninety miles from Florida.
In 1961 the United States launched the largest covert operation of the Cold War against a single country, a campaign of sabotage, terror, and assassination aimed at destroying the Cuban Revolution ninety miles from Florida. It was code-named Operation Mongoose. Alongside it, the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up Operation Northwoods, a plan to stage terrorist attacks on American citizens and blame them on Havana in order to manufacture a pretext for a full-scale invasion. In this episode we take a deep dive into how Mongoose and Northwoods were conceived and authorized at the highest levels of the US government and how the embargo and regime change logic still operate today.
This is part of the first season of Socialist History, our new series on The Socialist Program. In each episode we unpack a different CIA or Pentagon operation, each of which was given its own code-name as Operation Mongoose was.
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