Office of the Historian

366. Memorandum From the Chief of Operations, Operation Mongoose (Lansdale) to the Central Intelligence Agency Operations Officer for Operation Mongoose (Harvey)0

Washington, August 6, 1962.

SUBJECT

  • CIA Draft Operational Plan B+1

As requested by you in our meeting Monday afternoon, I have read your draft operational plan. In reading it in the light of making recommendations [Page 898] to higher authority, I found little basis to say that these were either additional or possible within the context of contributing to the mission as stated. The policy level must have proposals which have been assessed as do-able in the current state of foreign affairs and likely to contribute to the desired goal.

Rather than go down point by point and page by page, let me point out three items you list as appropriate possibilities:

a.
III A 1, paragraph 1 on page 2: Helping State with use of OAS for Mongoose goals. In the first place, you know that State sees little hope of further use of OAS for our goals, so why be “pie-in-the-sky”? One of our original aims, as you know, was to activate operations from individual Latin American countries. [1 line of source text not declassified] Why is this not proposed as desirable and do-able?
b.
Item III B 3 on page 2: You note an economic blow by causing the diversion of Cuban resources from production. If it is possible, why isnʼt this being done now? It needs no new policy approval to my knowledge.
c.
IV B on page 6: You suggest that raising the noise level is needed for you to generate strikes inside Cuba. Can CIA actually hope to generate such strikes? I recall discussions on this very point when you felt that it was impossible to get to the action groups, such as labor unions, to obtain such results. [2-1/2 lines of source text not declassified] If we have no assets inside Cuba, then why is this now called a possibility?

For my use, the most helpful thing as I make proposals to higher authority would be to have you initial each of the items in your paper which you, as the DCIʼs representative in this field, believe is really possible (do-able and sensible). I would appreciate such an indication from you by noon today, since I plan to pull together the team proposals this afternoon, for your further comments and suggestions.2

  1. Source: Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Meetings and Memoranda Series, Special Group (Augmented), Operation Mongoose, 8/62. Top Secret; Eyes Only; Noforn; Special Handling.↩
  2. See Document 367.↩
  3. On August 7 Lansdale sent a handwritten note to McGeorge Bundy relating to the Mongoose planning exercise in which he wrote, in part: “Itʼs no easy thing to make the big organizations come up with practical answers, although Iʼll keep trying.” (Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Meetings and Memoranda Series, Special Group (Augmented), Operation Mongoose, 8/62)↩