Customer Reviews

Psywar on Cuba : The Declassified History of U.S. Anti-Castro Propaganda

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The hours of research that the author of Psywar on Cuba must have spent in pursuit of the declassified US government documents pertinent to this book is a mission in itself. The bombardment of propaganda and psycological trickery that the CIA exercised against Cuba is all layed out thouroughly by Mr. Elliston. I recommend this book to anyone interested in Cold War madness. Additionally, the book contains some wonderful examples of leaflets and posters from the CIA's crusade that are sure to amuse and dismay!

The US state's 40-year war against Cuba has included an unprecedented campaign of psychological warfare. This extremely useful book presents hundreds of newly declassified US Government documents detailing this psywar.

The US Joint Chiefs of Staff defined psywar as "Planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, or individuals." But the US state also targeted the American people. The campaign included rumour campaigns, posters, newspapers, books, comics, newsreels, leaflet drops, forgeries and radio and TV broadcasts. The usual US Government message was `Castro betrayed the revolution'.

In March 1960, President Eisenhower approved a plan to overthrow Cuba's Government `in such a manner as to avoid any appearance of US intervention.' Government representatives would describe any `alleged CIA personnel' as `soldiers of fortune working on their own'. The attack was based on `the Guatemala scenario' when the CIA overthrew Arbenz's democratically elected Government in 1954.

The American people opposed a US armed intervention in Cuba by 65-24%. Nonetheless in November President Kennedy approved the attack, the `top priority in the US government'. Jacqueline Kennedy visited refugee camps `to demonstrate concern for civilian refugees, particularly parentless children'.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff produced a paper bluntly titled `Pretexts to Justify United States Military Intervention in Cuba'. They planned a fabricated attack on the Guantanamo Bay base (like a fake attack triggering the invasion of Yugoslavia?). Also, "We could sink a boatload of Cubans enroute to Florida." We could "create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civilian airliner enroute from the United States." In response, Cuba accepted Soviet weapons to defend itself; which Kennedy unblushingly called `offensive'.

The US Government now uses these methods all over the world: never believe anything it, or NATO, says!

Jon Elliston's 'Psywar on Cuba' is a wonderful resource for anyone researching the US involvement in Cuba. Whilst it is perhaps lacking in enough narrative and giudance, it succeeds in bringing a wide range of sources together, such as media broadcasts and CIA declassified documents. It works well with Fabian Escalante's 'The Secret War'.

Just another "evil America" book. The breathless revelations are old news, and the basic premise stems from the same old Castro-versus-Goliath shtick that got old when thinking people finally woke up from the "Sick-sties." Had this been written from the opposite point of view - an inside look at the campaign of unbridled hate, disinformation and hysteria put out by Castro's propaganda machine (of which this may very well be a part) - THEN it might be an interesting piece of work.