Michael Moore challengs Fred Thompson to a debate

[Donkey®]

Originally Posted by 7960

You've provided a track record that american can (and do) watch cuban TV.

But keep patting yourself on the back for your "in depth investigative spying"

So when exactly did we stop spying on Castro? Link to documents or statement by government official?

[JaJae]

Originally Posted by Donkey®

That's not true at all. It was a "breaking story" before Cuba announced anything through their official media channels. Still not the point.

It is the point. You said as proof we're watching ever move Castro makes that we knew he was ill before we should have. I have a genuine interest in reading that story because I haven't heard it before and the subject fascinates me.

Even if it was his butler calling into CNN...I have provided a long and concise track record showing the US spies on Castro.

That wouldn't show our spies knew of Castro's illness. And you've shown that the CIA has faulty intelligence on Castro. If they were following every move he made and had a concise track record, why is every example something we're guessing or didn't didn't know about Castro?

What you've shown is that the CIA had faulty intell on Castro, most likely because they weren't that interested in him. And you've shown the CIA thinks based on the symptoms provided that he has Parkinson's. From your articles.. why do they think he has Parkinson's?

The CIA believes Fidel Castro has Parkinson's Disease. The agency says that according to observations of his recent public appearances he does seem to have Parkinson's and his condition has progressed.

Because of his public appearances... that doesn't mean he's being spied on. It means people they're watching TV.

I haven't seen you or your buddy provide ANYTHING showing that policy changed in some way, shape or form. Just because you say so isn't "official."

What policy are you referring to. I didn't know I was trying to prove anything.

[7960]

Fidel Castro has Parkinson's Disease, thinks the CIA

The CIA believes Fidel Castro has Parkinson's Disease. The agency says that according to observations of his recent public appearances he does seem to have Parkinson's and his condition has progressed.

Of course, they're lying. The CIA was really in his doc's office when he got the diagnosis




damnit, JJ beat me to it.

[Donkey®]

Originally Posted by JaJae

It is the point. You said as proof we're watching ever move Castro makes that we knew he was ill before we should have. I have a genuine interest in reading that story because I haven't heard it before and the subject fascinates me.


That wouldn't show our spies knew of Castro's illness. And you've shown that the CIA has faulty intelligence on Castro. If they were following every move he made and had a concise track record, why is every example something we're guessing or didn't didn't know about Castro?

What you've shown is that the CIA had faulty intell on Castro, most likely because they weren't that interested in him. And you've shown the CIA thinks based on the symptoms provided that he has Parkinson's. From your articles.. why do they think he has Parkinson's?

The CIA believes Fidel Castro has Parkinson's Disease. The agency says that according to observations of his recent public appearances he does seem to have Parkinson's and his condition has progressed.

Because of his public appearances... that doesn't mean he's being spied on. It means people they're watching TV.

First, let's just break down the basics. The whole Parkinson's thing started in October 2005. There was nothing negative about Castro's health on Cuban TV or any other TV until August 2006. Second, if the CIA isn't spying on Castro, why are they writing reports about him? I didn't know the CIA was askjeeves.com. They are an intelligence gathering agency. Just because they gathered the wrong intelligence doesn't mean they aren't gathering intelligence. It just means they got it wrong (which they have done many times before.)

Originally Posted by JaJae

What policy are you referring to. I didn't know I was trying to prove anything.

The well known and documented policy that the US spies on Cuba and Castro? I have provided links to released CIA documents spanning 60 years of said policy. So...if the CIA and the FBI admits they spy on Castro, even cooking up plots to kill him, and there's 60 years of documentation to back that policy up...why am I going to take the word of you and tweedle dumb that the US is no longer spying on Castro? If you have PROOF to back up your contention that the US no longer spies on Castro...you know, some kind of document or interview or news story showing that policy has changed, evolved or ceased to exist...I would love to see it. Until then, you guys are just running your mouths.


Let's even say we throw out the whole Parkinson's thing (which I am not because the fucking CIA wrote a whole report about it)...I would still love to see SOMETHING backing up your contention that the US no longer spies on Cuba. Something? Anything?

[Donkey®]

Originally Posted by 7960

Fidel Castro has Parkinson's Disease, thinks the CIA

The CIA believes Fidel Castro has Parkinson's Disease. The agency says that according to observations of his recent public appearances he does seem to have Parkinson's and his condition has progressed.

Of course, they're lying. The CIA was really in his doc's office when he got the diagnosis




damnit, JJ beat me to it.

Who said the CIA was in the Dr's office? Not me. By the way, did those "observations" come via the TV or did they have someone there in person?

Also...I'll once again provide more evidence to back up my point (something which you have none of strangely enough)


Castro has Parkinson's disease, CIA has concluded

Originally Posted by article

Rumors that Castro suffers from Parkinson's have been around since the mid-1990s. In 1998, he even jokingly challenged journalists to a pistol duel at 25 paces to show the steadiness of his hands.

But the Central Intelligence Agency began briefing senior members of the State Department and lawmakers about one year ago that its doctors had become convinced that Castro was diagnosed with the disease around 1998, said two longtime government officials familiar with the briefings. Both asked for anonymity because leaking the contents of the classified briefing could violate U.S. laws.

''About one year ago, we started seeing some pretty definitive stuff that he had Parkinson's,'' said one of them.

There has been no independent confirmation of Castro's illness, or any indication of how the CIA came to its conclusion. The State Department and the CIA declined to comment for this story.

Why oh why is the CIA giving BRIEFINGS on Castro if they don't pay any attention to him?

You've been owned left and right in this thread. I don't know why you keep coming back for more but feel free to continue. Making you look like the asshole you are makes me forget about food.

[7960]

Originally Posted by Donkey®

First, let's just break down the basics. The whole Parkinson's thing started in October 2005. There was nothing negative about Castro's health on Cuban TV or any other TV until August 2006.

<donkadonk type post>

You watch cuban TV? Link showing there was nothing about this on cuban TV.

Second, if the CIA isn't spying on Castro, why are they writing reports about him?

Spying? They're watching what other country's news is reporting.

They are an intelligence gathering agency. Just because they gathered the wrong intelligence doesn't mean they aren't gathering intelligence. It just means they got it wrong (which they have done many times before.)

No, it just means the bolivian anchor got it wrong

...I would love to see it.

Here it is.

The agency says that according to observations of his recent public appearances he does seem to have Parkinson's and his condition has progressed.

They saw him on TV and took a guess. THEY admit it's based on observations of his public appearances. Using your thinking I'm spying on the English Queen because I watched her on the evening news.

Originally Posted by Donkey®

I don't know why you keep coming back for more but feel free to continue. Making you look like the asshole you are makes me forget about food.

I'm sure you've eaten enough dick this week to help you forget about food

[JaJae]

Parkinson's is an observable disease. You don't need to spy on the leader of a neighboring country to think they may have Parkinson's.

[Donkey®]

Originally Posted by 7960

<donkadonk type post>

You watch cuban TV? Link showing there was nothing about this on cuban TV.

Worthless.

Originally Posted by 7960

Spying? They're watching what other country's news is reporting.

No, it just means the bolivian anchor got it wrong

Wrong.

Originally Posted by 7960

Here it is.

The agency says that according to observations of his recent public appearances he does seem to have Parkinson's and his condition has progressed.

They saw him on TV and took a guess. THEY admit it's based on observations of his public appearances. Using your thinking I'm spying on the English Queen because I watched her on the evening news.

Wrong.


BBC NEWS | Americas | Castro has Parkinson's says CIA

Let's try to keep things in proper context...

Originally Posted by article

Castro has Parkinson's says CIA


The CIA has concluded that Cuban leader Fidel Castro is suffering from Parkinson's disease.

The US agency is reported to have based its analysis on a variety of evidence, including observations of Mr Castro's public appearances.

Hmmm...so NOT JUST TV??!?!?!? There goes YOUR whole theory...for which you still haven't provided an ounce of proof.


I'll ask one more time, do you have ANY proof that the 60 year policy of the US spying on Cuba and Castro has changed in any way , shape or form?

[Donkey®]

Originally Posted by JaJae

Parkinson's is an observable disease. You don't need to spy on the leader of a neighboring country to think they may have Parkinson's.

You don't have to be Dr. House to know that Parkinson's looks like any NUMBER of diseases to someone just "looking at TV". They chose Parkinson's for MANY reasons...not just watching TV. I'll invite YOU, again, to show me when and where the US policy of spying on Cuba has changed. Link? Evidence? Proof?

[JaJae]

Originally Posted by Donkey®

Hmmm...so NOT JUST TV??!?!?!? There goes YOUR whole theory...for which you still haven't provided an ounce of proof.

People have thought Castro had Parkinson's for 20 years. He slurs his words, goes off on tangents during speeches and twitches. He has been accused in the past and he has made some silly claims to defend himself. There's a lot of evidence to point towards Castro having Parkinson's. Not just from public speeches, but also his behavior for the past 20 years.

[JaJae]

Let's end the back and forth guys. Thread cleaned up... posts were reported and we'll be discussing them as all the mods become available. Any continuation will result in thread bans.

[Donkey®]

Originally Posted by JaJae

People have thought Castro had Parkinson's for 20 years. He slurs his words, goes off on tangents during speeches and twitches. He has been accused in the past and he has made some silly claims to defend himself. There's a lot of evidence to point towards Castro having Parkinson's. Not just from public speeches, but also his behavior for the past 20 years.

Again...answer my question. I provided you with plenty of proof to defend my arguments. You have nothing.

[7960]

Originally Posted by Donkey®

Again...answer my question. I provided you with plenty of proof to defend my arguments. You have nothing.

It's nearly impossible to prove something ended, and I never said it ended. I said all along we've been watching/keeping an eye on cuba. You've been saying "we have our spies looking at Castro's every move..."

Sure we do.

We're interested in what's going to happen when (if?) he dies. You have yet to show we're doing more than watching the news from other countries. I'm still waiting for proof we have "spies watching his every move."

[JaJae]

Originally Posted by Donkey®

Again...answer my question. I provided you with plenty of proof to defend my arguments. You have nothing.

Castro denies CIA Parkinson's diagnosis

The Miami Herald, quoting an unnamed source, said on Wednesday that CIA doctors were convinced Castro was diagnosed with the disease in 1998, and had begun briefing senior officials and lawmakers about it a year ago.

This isn't new. Since the early 90s we started questioning whether or not he had Parkinson's and had been looking for anything that backed it up.

[Donkey®]

Originally Posted by 7960

It's nearly impossible to prove something ended, and I never said it ended. I said all along we've been watching/keeping an eye on cuba. You've been saying "we have our spies looking at Castro's every move..."

Sure we do.

We're interested in what's going to happen when (if?) he dies. You have yet to show we're doing more than watching the news from other countries. I'm still waiting for proof we have "spies watching his every move."

I have done it with many different links and sources. You are either not reading them or trolling as usual.

I'll ask some easier questions to you...

1: Why is the CIA issuing reports on Castro?

2: Why is the CIA giving briefings to administration officials on Castro?

3: Do you understand what the CIA's function is?

4: When it is said "The US agency is reported to have based its analysis on a variety of evidence, including observations of Mr Castro's public appearances." You do realize what the words VARIETY OF EVIDENCE means?

5: Did this link Fidel Castro FBI - CIA Files show you a clear and evident program of spying by the FBI and CIA against Castro for 60 + years?


Here's another article by a former CIA agent that probably knows more than any of us about Castro...

Originally Posted by article

For almost 50 years, Fidel Castro has relished telling audiences large and small of the hundreds of assassination attempts he has survived. Most recently, in June 2005, he regaled a crowd in a Venezuelan port city, saying it may have been the only time he has traveled abroad when there was no plan afoot to kill him. Such hyperbole has always been an essential ingredient in the imagery of invincibility and cunning that he promotes about himself.

Castro has had no higher priority from the outset of his revolutionary career than his personal security. Once in power he set out immediately to create intelligence and security services, both within and independent of the armed forces controlled by his brother Raul, that have reliably made him one of the world’s most physically invulnerable leaders. When traveling abroad he typically surrounds himself with an entourage of hundreds of elite security and support personnel. Cuban intelligence has long been among the best in the world with a demonstrated ability to ferret out potential threats well before they coalesce.

The actual number of assassination attempts against Castro is unknown, but surely many times smaller than the impression he encourages of CIA and Cuban exile rogues perennially plotting against him. Not a single foreign-based assassination plan is known to have come close to succeeding and most, including all of those hatched in the CIA under pressure from the Kennedy administration, were laughably inept.

These are among the main themes that Don Bohning develops in The Castro Obsession, an excellent and much needed illumination in a single comprehensive volume of all the strange and counterproductive American covert schemes that Castro has survived. A Latin America reporter and editor for 40 years with the Miami Herald, Bohning documents the Kennedy administration’s efforts, beginning with the Bay of Pigs and continuing until the assassination in Dallas, to bring Castro down. He is balanced and nuanced, especially when describing some of the zanier ideas that were bandied about at Agency headquarters—an exploding seashell assassination device, a depilatory to root out Castro’s signature beard, LSD to cause him to flail into delusional gyrations during a public appearance.

Other authors and congressional investigators—notably the Church Committee in 1976—have covered portions of this ground, but none has tied all the threads together so neatly or made the case with such an abundance of declassified CIA documents and interviews with retired Cuba hands. Bohning quotes several ranking headquarters- and Miami station-based officers who were intimately involved in the 1960s covert campaigns, as well as another who was detailed to the Kennedy White House as a staff coordinator for special operations. Some of them apparently reminisced on the record for the first time.

Bohning’s sources were unanimous in their disparagement of Robert Kennedy, and the author clearly sympathizes with them. The attorney general was “obsessed” with Cuba after the Bay of Pigs, a view that White House aide Arthur Schlesinger and other biographers have disputed even while admitting that the anti-Castro Operation MONGOOSE was Bobby Kennedy at his inexplicable worst. It was “his most conspicuous folly,” Schlesinger has written. Tom Parrott, the CIA officer detailed to the White House, is quoted scorning the younger Kennedy as “arrogant and overbearing.” Bohning adds that Bobby, as the unofficial overseer of Cuba clandestine operations, was “constantly on the phone with anyone and everyone involved, both US officials and Cuban exiles.”

The author and his Agency sources are equally critical in describing the air force general whom the Kennedy brothers selected as day-to-day manager of MONGOOSE. Edward Lansdale, who had extensive covert action experience in the Philippines and Vietnam but no knowledge of Cuba, was a “quirky and flamboyant officer” with a chaotic management style. Sam Halpern, a respected senior operations officer who worked on MONGOOSE, told the author that Lansdale was “a con man.” Former CIA Director Richard Bissell is quoted from his memoirs commenting that Lansdale’s “ideas were impractical” and that he “never had much faith they would be successful.” Bissell said: “I was under stern injunction, however, to do everything possible to assist him. The Kennedys wanted action, they wanted it fast.”

Former Secretary of State Alexander Haig, who became involved in covert Cuba operations in February 1963 as an aide to the secretary of the army, told the author that Lansdale was “the strangest duck I ever talked to. He was telling me about the Philippines. That’s all he wanted to talk about. I didn’t get anything on Cuba.” Haig said he told his boss, Cyrus Vance, who later also served as secretary of state, that Lansdale was “a dingbat.” But Bohning writes that Lansdale nonetheless “moved ahead self-confident and unfazed.” He never lost the trust of the Kennedy brothers that he would somehow manage to bring Castro down.

Most in the CIA and the Pentagon had recognized by the middle of 1961, however, that nothing short of American military intervention could achieve that. National intelligence estimates and CIA current analysis had been making the point that Castro’s position was rapidly consolidating as pockets of opposition to him were being wiped out. He still enjoyed strong popular support and the Cuban uniformed services had become ruthlessly effective. Previously, many scholars believed that CIA analysts and operations officers were working with profoundly differing sets of assumptions about Castro’s staying power after the Bay of Pigs. But Bohning does a good job of showing how skeptical and reluctant most senior operations officers involved in MONGOOSE in fact were as they obediently carried out the administration’s designs. Halpern is quoted telling the author that its planning “made no sense at all . . . . It’s crazy.” Few really thought that the covert operations would have much impact, and certainly not enough to bring down the regime.

Nonetheless, under pressure from the administration, wishful thinking about Castro’s vulnerability was indulged. CIA Director John McCone—normally skeptical about the prospects for covert action success in Cuba—told a White House planning meeting that more acute economic hardship on the island would cause the military to oust Fidel. It is not clear if that was his personal opinion, or if analysts had briefed him along those lines, but no such thing was possible then, or at any time since Raul Castro took control of the armed forces in October 1959. Under his leadership, the Cuban military has been the most effective, loyal, and disciplined among all its counterparts in Latin America. Over the four and a half decades of the Castro brothers’ political hegemony, there has never been a credible report of coup plotting.

Bohning has done a useful service in bringing together nearly all of the relevant declassified information about covert operations against Castro from 1959 into the second year of Lyndon Johnson’s administration. The author cites numerous documents declassified for the Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board and the Church Committee hearings, and other records extracted through Freedom of Information Act requests. He has missed very little in this admirable work.

One interesting bit of missile crisis history that had long baffled scholars, but was finally clarified several years ago with released CIA documents, did not come to Bohning’s attention, however. During the run-up to the missile crisis, New York Senator Kenneth Keating was shrill in denouncing the Kennedy administration for minimizing the intensifying Soviet military build-up in Cuba. He insisted on the Senate floor that he had inside information that strategic missiles were being introduced. Bohning did not discover that it was noted playwright, former member of Congress, and ambassador Clare Booth Luce who was Keating’s source.

Another, more pivotal, issue that Bohning makes little effort to explain is why the Kennedy brothers became so obsessed with Castro and Cuba. In all fairness to the president and the attorney general, it should have been emphasized that the Cuban leader posed a threat of almost incalculable dimensions to John Kennedy’s reelection prospects and to critical American interests throughout Latin America and beyond. With the launching of Kennedy’s ambitious Alliance for Progress just a month before the Bay of Pigs, his administration went head-to-head with Castro throughout Latin America with competing visions of progressive democratic reform, on the one hand, against violent revolutionary upheaval, on the other.

CIA Director McCone testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in February 1963 about Cuban government efforts to promote and support revolution in the region. He said that between 1,000 and 1,500 Latin Americans had traveled to Cuba the year before for ideological and guerrilla warfare training and that more had already gone in early 1963. “In essence,” McCone said, “Castro tells revolutionaries from other Latin American countries: ‘Come to Cuba: We will pay your way, we will train you in underground organization techniques, in guerrilla warfare, in sabotage and terrorism. We will see to it that you get back to your homeland.’”

Information from Soviet records has recently expanded our knowledge of the enormous scope of Cuban intelligence and subversive activities in Latin America. In the second volume of the Mitrokhin Archives, Cambridge professor Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin reveal that from 1962 to 1966 a total of 650 Cuban illegals were dispatched through Prague, most of them enroute to Latin America. During those years, powerful guerrilla movements, often employing terrorist methods, became entrenched in several countries.

Bohning might also have emphasized Castro’s strategic and military alliance with the Soviet Union as a cause of the Kennedys’ obsession. It was not until early December 1961 that Fidel announced he was a Marxist-Leninist, although by then the alliance with Moscow was well advanced. Soviet military supplies were pouring into Cuba during the summer of 1962 just as Operation MONGOOSE was reaching a crescendo. It was not a coincidence. Rather, it may have been inevitable, because of the miscalculations in the White House and the Kremlin, that the superpowers would face off in a nuclear showdown, all because of the Kennedys’ Castro obsession.

Don Bohning is not the first author to argue that, through their anti-Castro militance, the Kennedy brothers were responsible for provoking the Cuban missile crisis. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev once ruminated about the new Cuban regime to members of his inner circle: “We must not allow the communist infant to be strangled in its crib.” Khrushchev went to his grave insisting that he had made the decision to install the missiles in Cuba to defend the revolution against the determined efforts by the Kennedys to overthrow it. Bohning demonstrates with overwhelming evidence the extent to which Castro indeed was in the American crosshairs.

His credentials: Brian Latell, a former CIA officer and past chairman of the Editorial Board of Studies in Intelligence, is a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and Intenational Studies in Washington and author of the recently published book, After Fidel. Copyright© 2005 by Briean Latell.


I don't know what else to tell you guys. You're ignoring my posts basically to snipe at things inconsequential to the facts on hand.