#: 499667 S7/JFK Debate  [POLITICS]
    07-Mar-96  14:56:59
Sb: Prouty Critique #8
Fm: D.T. FUHRMANN 71301,527
To: ALL

Critique of Chapter 3, continued.......

This is all very interesting, but doesn't offer much in the way of evidence
that the CIA has been creating "phony" wars to whip up "allegiance," though
Mr. Prouty has already informed us this is where he is heading. He declares:
"...as we shall see in the Spanish example, the existence of 
"insurgents" lent validity to the charge of a Communist-supported" 
insurgency, even though the scope of the "conflict"---that is, the "mock 
invasion of the town"---was purely local." (p.31)

Wait a minute?  What charge of a communist supported conspiracy?  The 
Spanish example doesn't seem to prove his point, because there was no 
effort to charge the existence of a communist-supported insurgency in 
Spain. All there was is a couple of over-zealous officers. What he 
actually seems to mean here is that in the fancifully embellished 
"Spanish example" which he is creating for us we will see exactly the 
sort of nefarious machinations which he wants us to see. The reader is 
informed that Mr. Prouty has been to training bases where such "mock" 
battles" have been staged (keeping in mind that Mr. Prouty retired from
the military in 1963).  Everyone who was ever in the army participated in
exercises.  In most exercises, someone played the opposing force.  
Training is more realistic done that way.  Playing the bad guys was 
usually the most fun (though the powers that be really didn't like it if 
you were TOO good at it......<g>)

Second only to the Central Front stand-off in Europe, the US military's most
difficult challenge during the Cold War was combating guerrilla wars. 
Doesn't it make sense that training exercises would be designed to 
practice exactly this sort of operation? And during the last decade of 
Mr. Prouty's military career, the late 1950s and early 1960s, the focus 
of the US military was very much on trying to cope with the tactics of 
guerrilla insurgency. So it should be no small surprise that he 
personally witnessed exercises in which US forces practiced coping with 
guerrilla insurgents.  But does this reality actually demonstrate that 
the CIA and the US military carefully CREATED all those nationalist 
movements around the world; that without the direct involvement of the 
CIA there would have been no insurgencies in Vietnam, Malaya, Thailand, 
the Philippines, Laos, Indonesia, Angola, South Africa, the Congo, El
Salvador, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Somalia, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan,
Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Morocco, etc., etc., etc.?  (For those 
interested in the history of US Counterinsurgency theory and practice, 
there are a couple of good books which will be referenced below.)

It was an exercise.  In the Spanish case (at least to judge by the only
"evidence" we have been shown, the brief newspaper story) there was no claim
of an insurgency actually going on, no effort to mislead or misrepresent the
exercise.  Certainly nothing remotely like that in the newspaper article
quoted, or in anything offered here.  What the heck is Mr. Prouty talking
about?  Well, what he's talking about he now states categorically: "the only
military objective of the battles, and of this type of global conflict, 
is to create the appearance of war itself." (Page 31)   This is what was 
going on and we know it is so because Mr. Prouty has told us it is so.

Mr. Prouty talks about flying in and out of the Philippines during 
1952-1954, when Lansdale and Magsaysay were fighting the Huks. As Mr. 
Prouty describes it, there was no serious rebellion, only an illusionary 
insurgency created by Lansdale, of the CIA:

"Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the Ambassador [Myron] Cowen and [George] Aurell
[CIA Chief of Station in Manila], the CIA slipped into the Philippines an
undercover team headed by one of its superagents, Edward G. Lansdale. 
Although the true reason for his presence in Manila was not divulged to 
these senior Americans, this agent had access to certain anti-Quirino 
[President of the Philippines] Filipinos." (P 35)

Whether Aurell or Cowen was unaware of these activities is not clear, 
however, as the following excerpts suggest:

"George Aurell, who took over as Far East Division chief in 1952, just after
the OPC-OSO merger, could never understand Lansdale's methods.  One CIA
operative in Washington at the time remembered that Aurell "never felt
comfortable about any of this. He used to come over to our Plans office and
unburden himself....'What in hell is an intelligence agency doing running a
rural resettlement program' he used to ask.  I'm glad to help fight the 
Huks, but is it our job to rebuild a nation?'" [SOURCE: John Ranelagh, 
"The Rise and Decline of the CIA," p 225]

Why was Lansdale there and who knew?  Faced with a "corrupt, inept, and
infuriating" Philippine President Quirino, Secretary of State Dean Acheson
told Truman:

""If there is one lesson to be learned from the China debacle it is that 
if we are confronted with an inadequate vehicle, it should be discarded or
immobilized in favor of a more propitious one."[footnote in source text]
Acheson wasn't the only person bending Truman's ear and suggesting that
Quirino be removed from office (and their reasoning was pretty rational, the
guy was not only corrupt and inept, he was losing control over the country).
Among the others was Ambassador Cowen, who supposedly didn't know about the
effort to remove Quirino.  In June [1950] Ambassador Cowen tool up the
refrain: "Granting that survival of Philippine Government appears 
incompatible with Quirino's serving out...his current term and that he 
will use any means---good or evil, but usually the latter---to remain in 
power, it is probably necessary that the strategy employed against him be 
plotted by a remorseless mind."  He suggested that the United States 
support Vice President Lopez whose "brainier brother Eugenio" was a 
"cold-blooded strategist"....In short, Cowen wanted to replace Quirino 
with his functional equivalent, as if the failure of leverage and reform 
were due to no more than this one man's personal quirks." But the real 
point here is that Ambassador Cowen was arguing for an effort to replace 
Quirino....which is exactly what Lansdale was sent to help accomplish. 
[SOURCE: Shafer, p 229....Shafer provides a well-researched, detailed 
analysis of these events and their relationship to the evolution of
US counter-insurgency doctrine].


continued in #9........