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Book Review: "No Basis for Suspicion Election May Be Rigged": The Johnson Administration, the CIA, and the Caribbean, 1964-1968

The editors-Daniel Lawler, Carolyn Yee, and General Editor Edward C. Keefer-of this new volume in the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series chose to begin their presentation of documents with an essay, "Note on Covert U.S. Actions." The editors wanted to provide readers with "some organizational context on how covert actions and special intelligence operations in support of U.S. foreign policy were planned and approved within the U.S. Government." The editors reviewed the evolution of committees within the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations that approved and monitored covert interventions. The "5412 Committee" of the Eisenhower years became, for example, the "303 Committee" during the Johnson presidency. In providing this historical context to covert operations, the editors made a wise decision. Between 1964 and 1968, U.S. policymaking toward nations in the Caribbean basin-Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Guyana (British Guiana), and Haiti-primarily consisted of covert operations and interventions.

When Lyndon Johnson assumed the presidency in late November 1963, he inherited a violent U.S. policy in the Caribbean. As he would later exclaim in a post-presidential interview, "We were running a damned Murder Incorporated in the Caribbean." [1]The United States had attacked Fidel Castro's Cuba with the Bay of Pigs invasion, Operation Mongoose, and assassination plots. The war against Castro continued after the Cuban missile crisis. President John Kennedy or "Higher Authority" personally approved sabotage and terrorist attacks on Cuba in June and November 1963. On 22 November 1963, CIA agents rendezvoused in Paris with a traitorous Cuban official, Rolando Cubela Secades, code-named AM/LASH, and passed to Cubela a ballpoint pen rigged with a poisonous hypodermic needle. The Kennedy administration had not limited its war to left-wing leaders. It backed various schemes to oust Franois "Papa Doc" Duvalier (1957-1971), the odious tyrant of Haiti, and had assisted Dominican conspirators who assassinated Rafael Trujillo (1930-1961), the vicious and venal dictator of the Dominican Republic. The Kennedy administration also relentlessly attacked the government of Cheddi Jagan (1957-1964) of British Guiana. CIA agents, working through the AFL-CIO labor organization, fomented riots and strikes that precipitated appalling racial and ethnic violence between Guyanese of African and Indian (South Asian) heritages. [2]

The documents in this volume demonstrate that President Johnson continued to use the CIA to achieve U.S. foreign-policy goals in the Caribbean. The United States wanted a secure and stable region and would not permit a second Communist government in the hemisphere, as the president proclaimed in 1965 with his "Johnson Doctrine." But President Johnson seemed to favor less violent measures in his approach toward Caribbean nations. He preferred to apply political and economic pressures on unruly client states, and he counted on the CIA to arrange electoral results that would be salutary to U.S. interests. As Johnson told CIA Director John A. McCone in December 1963, he no longer wanted his CIA chief to have the image of a "cloak and dagger role." [3]

Like its predecessors, the Johnson administration refused to accept the legitimacy of the Cuban Revolution and rejected Cuban offers to begin a dialogue (pp. 592-93). In July 1964, the administration persuaded the Organization of American States (OAS) to support a resolution calling on member states to sever political and economic ties with Cuba. Eventually all Latin American nations, except Mexico, complied with the OAS mandate. The administration also cajoled European allies to join the economic embargo of Cuba. President Johnson made a personal appeal to Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas Home in a meeting at the White House in 1964. The U.S. position was that "economic sanctions against Cuba was the only weapon short of an act of war that could make the support of Castro's Cuba more costly to the Soviet Union." The United States further believed that an embargo of trade might create "conditions of economic stringency that might ultimately bring about the elimination of the Communist regime" (pp. 577, 594-97). The United Kingdom, a trading nation, resisted U.S. pressure, pointing out that if the United Kingdom refused to trade with a nation, others would take the business.

Although maintaining the policy of unremitting hostility toward Cuba, Johnson largely shut down the dirty war against Castro. Attacks on the Cuban economic infrastructure and maritime raids on coastal targets were designed to spark a mass uprising in Cuba against Castro. But Johnson, unlike John and Attorney General Robert Kennedy, conceded that Fidel Castro enjoyed widespread popular support. In December 1963, at his first comprehensive briefing of CIA operations in Cuba, Johnson asked the pointed question "whether there is any significant insurgency within Cuba." Desmond Fitzgerald, the CIA officer who directed the Cuban campaign, admitted that "there is no national movement on which we can build." President Johnson thereafter ruled that the CIA's next attack on a major target-the Matanzas power plant-would be cancelled. [4] President Johnson wanted to "get rid of" Castro. But as Johnson's new assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs, Thomas Mann, explained about Castro, "as long as that army is loyal to him, he is going to be there until he dies" (pp. 658-60).

Over the objections of the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff but with the support of Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Johnson had, by mid-1965, terminated paramilitary efforts against Cuba (pp. 609-706). The currents of international affairs forestalled any resumption of the program. As Secretary Rusk reasoned on 30 August 1965, the United States could not afford another crisis in view of the intervention in the Dominican Republic and the war in Vietnam (pp. 727-28). The United States would pursue "containment" policies against Cuba. The CIA was authorized to limit itself to disseminating propaganda, covertly collecting intelligence and counterintelligence, and waging economic warfare against Cuba (pp. 734-36).

In the case of Haiti, the Johnson administration again stayed the hand of the CIA. As did the Kennedy administration, the Johnson administration deplored the Duvalier regime. The "economic deterioration, moral decay and despair" that characterized Duvalier's tyranny worked "to the advantage of the communists" (pp. 779-82). Duvalier harassed U.S. diplomats, stole U.S. economic aid, and blackmailed the United States, demanding money in return for favorable votes at the OAS. The 303 Committee repeatedly reviewed options-"a plan for pre-emptive action"-to intervene in Haiti. The CIA's search for an exile army proved, however, fruitless. Haitian politicians deemed "best-suited, in terms of U.S. interests, for inclusion in a post-Duvalier provisional government" lacked the power to seize control of the nation (pp. 793-97). A CIA field officer reported in mid-1967 that the murderous Duvalier was in "total" control of the country, "ruthlessly and bloodily" crushing all opposition (pp. 841-42).

Whereas the Johnson administration failed to overthrow Haiti's Duvalier, it successfully used covert measures to entrench Forbes Burnham (1964-1985) in power in British Guiana (Guyana). Through its destabilization campaign in British Guiana and intense diplomatic pressure, the Kennedy administration had forced Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's government to concede that the United States would determine the future of the British colony. The Macmillan government had reluctantly agreed to establish a shameless proportional representation electoral scheme designed to deprive Cheddi Jagan and his People's Progressive party of power. [5] Accepting the dubious proposition that an independent Guyana led by Jagan posed a dire threat to U.S. national security, the Johnson administration implemented the Kennedy policy. It insisted that the new Harold Wilson government honor the proportional representation scheme. In opposition, the Labour party had sharply criticized President Kennedy's intervention in the colony (pp. 852-55, 885-92). Having secured the prime minister's acquiescence, the Johnson administration continued to funnel funds into British Guiana. The editors of the volume report that the 303 Committee approved $2.08 million for covert action programs (pp. 851-52). U.S. labor unions also lavishly funded Burnham.

Prime Minister Burnham oversaw Guyana's independence in 1966. But his and the CIA's dilemma was that the Indo-Guyanese population, the base of Jagan's support, was growing and would soon represent more than 50 percent of the electorate. Burnham also alienated the junior partner in his government, the United Force, with his mendacity, corruption, and racism. The U.S. ambassador in Georgetown, Delmar Carlson, and the 303 Committee unabashedly discussed how to "rig" future elections. Carlson recommended that "particular attention should be given to the absentee ballot which would seem to lend itself to manipulation." Carlson also suggested "the possibility of buying East Indian votes" (pp. 924-28). Indeed, the CIA worked with Burnham on absentee ballots and in creating voter lists of fictitious Guyanese living abroad (pp. 930-35, 951-54). Burnham would subsequently win a series of elections by ludicrous margins and tyrannize the Indo-Guyanese, depriving them of their basic human rights.

Manipulating and rigging elections in Latin America proved an essential feature of the Kennedy-Johnson approach to Latin America. The new FRUS volume on South and Central America and Mexico provides intriguing detail, for example, on the CIA's massive spending in Chile to ensure the election of the Christian Democrat, Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964-1970), and the defeat of Socialist Salvador Allende. [6]Perhaps less known to historians is the CIA's electoral campaign for Joaquín Balaguer in the Dominican Republic. Approximately half of the documents in the volume focus on the Dominican crisis. Documents confirm, enrich, and alter scholarly accounts of the decision making that led President Johnson to invade the Dominican Republic in 1965. [7] General Bruce Palmer, Jr., who commanded U.S. troops in the Dominican Republic, later claimed that the U.S. military and international observers oversaw "a truly honest election" which resulted in the victory of Balaguer over Juan Bosch, the deposed president. [8] To some, "the largely fair presidential contest" of 1966 appeared as a model for how the United States might extricate itself from the contemporary imbroglio in Iraq. [9]

President Johnson would have nothing of democracy in the Dominican Republic. As Richard Helms, the deputy director for plans of the CIA, informed colleagues, the president repeatedly told him and Director McCone that the candidate favored by the United States would win the Dominican election. Helms added: "The President's statements were unequivocal. He wants to win the election, and he expects for the Agency to arrange for this to happen" (p. 358). The U.S. embassy in Santo Domingo coordinated with the 303 Committee, spending "substantial" sums of money on the Balaguer campaign, constantly polling the Dominican electorate, and increasing the covert electoral aid whenever Bosch appeared to be gaining popular support. Washington also brazenly ordered its embassies to assure skeptical Latin Americans "there is no basis for suspicion election may be rigged" (pp. 357-417). On 1 June 1966, Balaguer won a smashing victory. Balaguer, an authoritarian and arch-conservative, dominated the nation's political life for the next three decades. U.S. officials realized that Dominicans would pay a high price for the stability and security that Balaguer could deliver to the United States. A month before the election, National Security Adviser Walt W. Rostow "hoped that Balaguer could be persuaded to shift his philosophy somewhat closer to modern times" (pp. 405-6). By September 1968, Ambassador John Hugh Crimmins lamented that a second Balaguer term "would jeopardize our hopes for real economic development because of his lack of instinct for and knowledge of the measures required for development" (pp. 534-36).

The Historical Office has again produced a superb volume. Substantial analyses of Johnson administration policies in the Western Hemisphere have not yet been written. The documents in the two volumes on U.S. relations with hemispheric nations during the Johnson years point to many of those unexamined issues. [10]

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[1]Quoted in Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA (New York, 1979), 157.

[2]Stephen G. Rabe, "After the Missiles of October: John F. Kennedy and Cuba, November 1962 to November 1963," Presidential Studies Quarterly 30 (December 2000): 714-26; Stephen G. Rabe, The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts Communist Revolution in Latin America (Chapel Hill, NC, 1999), 34-55; and Stephen G. Rabe, U.S. Intervention in British Guiana: A Cold War Story (Chapel Hill, NC, 2005), 75-123.

[3]Johnson quoted in an editorial note on a meeting between Johnson and McCone, 27 December 1963, FRUS, 1961-1963 XI:911.

[4]CIA memorandum of meeting with President Johnson, 19 December 1963, FRUS, 1961-1963 XI:904-9.

[5]Rabe, U.S. Intervention in British Guiana, 116-23.

[6]See, for examples, telegram from embassy in Chile to State Department, 5 May 1964, FRUS, 1964-1968 XXI:568-70; editorial note on 23 July 1964 meeting of 303 Committee, ibid., 582-83.

[7]Piero Gleijeses, The Dominican Crisis: The 1965 Constitutionalist Revolt and American Intervention (Baltimore, 1978); Abraham F. Lowenthal, The Dominican Intervention (Cambridge, MA, 1972); and Jerome Slater, Intervention and Negotiation: The United States and the Dominican Republic (New York, 1970).

[8]General Bruce Palmer, Jr., Intervention in the Caribbean: The Dominican Crisis of 1965 (Lexington, KY, 1989), 133-34.

[9]Alan McPherson, "How to Intervene and Get Out," History News Service, 29 March 2005. Available from http://www.h-net.org/ hns/articles/2005/032905a.html.

[10]Michael L. Krenn, " 'Among the Highest Concerns': LBJ and Latin America, 1964-1968," Diplomatic History 30 (June 2006): 549-52.

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