Los Castro frente a la historia y a once presidentes de EEUU (1)

Diego Trinidad, PhD

Castro y Nixon [abril 1959]/ cubaninsider.blogspot.com

El 26 de julio de 1953 un grupo de jóvenes aventureros y confundidos decidieron seguir a un abogado sin experiencia en el derecho, pero muy experimentado en las luchas violentas estudiantiles en la Universidad de La Habana, en un proyecto demencial: un ataque al Cuartel Moncada en Santiago de Cuba (y al cuartel Carlos Manuel de Céspedes en Bayamo).  La idea, pues no se le puede llamar plan, era tomar el cuartel y mediante un levantamiento conjunto en la ciudad (la segunda de Cuba), producir una “revolución” política que eventualmente derrocaría al gobierno dictatorial de Fulgencio Batista.

Batista había interrumpido el corto ritmo constitucional de solo 12 años en Cuba cuando el 10 de marzo de 1952, a tres meses de las elecciones presidenciales, con un golpe militar que dejó un saldo de un muerto, tomó el poder, y decidió a Fidel Castro, que estaba postulado a representante en esas elecciones de 1952 por el Partido Ortodoxo, a encaminarse a la violencia para derrocar a Batista. Pero se debe destacar que la gran mayoría del pueblo cubano recibió el golpe de estado de Batista con indiferencia (excepto los estudiantes universitarios) y hasta con alivio, en el deseo de restablecer el “órden” en Cuba. Pocos querían regresar a la violencia política en 1953.  Batista, en definitiva, había gobernado con “mano dura” desde 1934 a 1944 (los últimos 4 años como presidente constitucionalmente electo) y había traído relativo orden y seguridad a la república, sino libertad política y “democracia”.

Pero ¿cómo explicar que esos 160 jóvenes, mal armados, sin ningún entrenamiento militar y muchos hasta ignorando, hasta la noche ántes, el objetivo del ataque, siguieran a Fidel Castro en su primera gran aventura? Según el historiador Antonio de la Cova, en su gran libro The Moncada Attack: Birth of the Cuban Revolution, Castro no estaba interesado en el triunfo de la operación, sino en el protagonismo, en el hecho que ese ataque lo haría famoso y lo convertiría de pronto en un líder -quizás en El Líder- de la oposición a Batista. De cualquier manera, con ese fracasado ataque en realidad nació la revolución cubana. Por el firme convencimiento de lo que debía ser el “destino” de un hombre: Fídel Castro. Y Fídel Castro ES la revolución cubana.  Por su férrea voluntad.

El 5 de junio de 1958, escribiendo desde la Sierra Maestra, Fidel Castro le envió a su principal colaboradora, Celia Sánchez, la siguiente nota escrita a mano: “Celia: Al ver los cohetes que tiraron en casa de Mario, me he jurado que los americanos van a pagar bien caro lo que están haciendo.  Cuando esta guerra se acabe, empezará para mí una guerra mucho más larga y grande: la que voy a echar contra ellos.  Me doy cuenta que ése va a ser mi destino verdadero”. [1](Énfasis mío).

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Chuck Colson, Former Watergate Figure, Dies

By AssociatedPress

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The Nixon Administration and the Indian Nuclear Program, 1972-1974

http://www.nsarchive.org

Washington, D.C., December 5, 2011 – India's "peaceful nuclear explosion" on 18 May 1974 caught the United States by surprise in part because the intelligence community had not been looking for signs that a test was in the works. According to a recently declassified Intelligence Community Staff post-mortem posted today by the National Security Archive and the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project, Nixon administration policymakers had given a relatively low priority to the Indian program and there was "no sense of urgency" to determine whether New Delhi was preparing to test a nuclear device. Intelligence "production" (analysis and reporting) on the topic "fell off" during the 20 months before the test, the analysis concluded.^[i]

In early 1972, however—two years before the test—the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) had predicted that India could make preparations for an underground test without detection by U.S. intelligence. Published for the first time today, the INR report warned that the U.S. government had given a "relatively modest priority to … relevant intelligence collection activities" which meant that a "concerted effort by India to conceal such preparations … may well succeed."

The post-mortem [see document 21], the INR report [see document 2] and other new materials illustrate how intelligence priorities generally reflect the interests and priorities of top policymakers. The Nixon White House was focused on the Vietnam War and grand strategy toward Beijing and Moscow; intelligence on nuclear proliferation was a low priority. Compare, for example, the India case with that of Iraq during 2002-2003, when White House concerns encouraged—some say even compelled—intelligence producers to cherry pick raw information to demonstrate the development of WMD by the Saddam Hussein regime.

INR prepared its India report at a time when secret sources were telling U.S. intelligence that New Delhi was about to test a nuclear device. The "small spate" of reports about a test had such "congruity, apparent reliability, and seeming credibility" that they prompted a review of India's nuclear intentions by INR and other government offices. In the end, government officials could not decide whether India had made a decision to test although a subsequent lead suggested otherwise.

According to the intelligence community's post-mortem, obtained through a mandatory review appeal to the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP), one of the problems was that intelligence producers were not communicating with each other, so the "other guy" assumed that someone else was "primarily responsible for producing hard evidence of Indian intentions." The analysis was especially critical of an August 1972 Special National Intelligence Estimate for its "waffling judgments" on Indian nuclear intentions.

Other declassified documents reproduced here from 1972 through 1974 illustrate the range of thinking on this sensitive topic: More >>

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Trombay, the site of India's first atomic reactor (Aspara), the CIRUS reactor provided by Canada, and a plutonium reprocessing facility, as photographed by a KH-7/GAMBIT satellite during February 1966. Provided under lax safeguards, the CIRUS reactor produced the spent fuel that India converted into plutonium for the May 1974 test (the heavy water needed to run the reactor was provided by the United States, also under weak safeguards).

Raja Rammana, director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Center at Trombay, played a key role in the production, development, and testing of the May 1974 Indian "peaceful nuclear explosion." In the Spring of 1973, John Pinajian, the Atomic Energy Commission’s representative in India, became suspicious that India was preparing for a nuclear test in part because Rammana rebuffed his requests for access to BARC so he could conduct an experiment which had been approved by the Indian Atomic Energy Commission (see document 17A)

Watergate [Documentary]

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On May 28, 1972, five men broke into the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., and bungled things so badly that they were arrested before they could even take anything. American politics has never been the same since. What seemed like a routine break-in was actually the tip of a mammoth political iceberg, which ran from the intelligence operatives to members of the White House staff and finally to President Nixon himself, a man whose mission to find dirt on his opponents led to his ultimate and extremely public downfall.

Richard Nixon The Guest the Triumph and the Fall[Documentary]

Uploaded by HistoryDocs on Nov 11, 2011

The enigmatic nature of the Nixon presidency combined comparatively progressive legislative initiatives with a flagrant abuse of presidential power and the public trust. His achievements in expanding peaceful relations with China and the Soviet Union stand in stark contrast with his continuation of the war in Vietnam. Finally brought down by scandal and duplicity, his administration did much to erode the citizenry's faith in government.