Office of the Historian

414. Memorandum From the Assistant to the Presidentʼs Military Representative (Parrott) to the Presidentʼs Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy)0

Washington, September 6, 1962.

SUBJECT

  • Phase II, Operation Mongoose

It seems to me that General Lansdaleʼs paper of 31 August,1 on the above subject, is responsive to the guidelines and subsequent comments. Lansdale has noted in his 4 September memo to you,2 certain numbered activities which he considers might pose possible policy problems. There are 20, 23, 27, 32, 40, 48-50, and 54. I would tend to agree with Lansdale that all or most of these might pose some policy problems in their implementation. A possible exception would be the Swan Radio. On this, USIA at one time said that this Radio had been “discredited”; however, in later papers3USIA reversed this position.

I think there are other numbered activities, in addition to the above, which raise some policy problems. (This is not to say that they should not [Page 1045] all be pursued.) These are: 19 (delivery of propaganda into Cuba), 39 (maintenance of PAA service), 55 and 56 (possible use of submarines or aircraft for caching and infiltration/exfiltration).

I would suggest a couple of additional activities: (a) under number 25, calling for the [less than 1 line of source text not declassified] Bloc arms in Latin American countries, this could be extended to include [less than 1 line of source text not declassified] propaganda materials and perhaps sabotage materials; (b) the possibility of [less than 1 line of source text not declassified] incidents which could lead to the breaking of diplomatic relations by selected countries. (This, of course, would have to be carefully considered in the sense of weighing the intelligence advantages of continued diplomatic representation against the political/psychological gain from severance.)

Obviously our current diplomatic moves, kicked off by the Secretary of Stateʼs conference yesterday,4 will result in the political section of this operation being expanded somewhat.

TAP
  1. Source: Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Meetings and Memoranda Series, Special Group (Augmented), Operation Mongoose, 9/62. Top Secret.↩
  2. Document 399.↩
  3. Document 410.↩
  4. The reference is unclear.↩
  5. See Document 412.↩