Rumsfeld's Plan to Provoke Terrorists
"Proactive Preemptive Operations Group" (P2OG)
http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2004/4.html
http://tinyurl.com/7wj3f
Source:
CounterPunch (www.counterpunch.org/floyd101.html)
November 1, 2002
Title: "Into the Dark"
Author: Chris Floyd
Evaluator: Catherine Nelson Ph.D., Meri Storino Ph.D.
Student Researcher: Jennifer Scanlan
Corporate Media Coverage:
Los Angeles Times, October 27, 2002, "The Secret War", by William
Arkin
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According to a classified document, "Special Operations and Joint
Forces in Countering Terrorism" prepared for Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, a new organization has
been created to thwart potential terrorist attacks on the United
States. This counter-terror operations group? the "Proactive
Preemptive Operations Group" (P2OG) will require 100 people and at
least $100 million a year. The team of covert counter-intelligence
agents will be responsible for secret missions designed to target
terrorist leaders. The secret missions are designed to "stimulate
reactions" among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing
violent acts which would then expose them to "counterattack" by U.S.
forces.
This means that the United States government is planning to use
secret military operations in order to provoke murderous terrorist
attacks on innocent people. In a strange twist of logic, it seems
the plan is to somehow combat terrorism by causing it. According to
the report, other strategies include stealing money from terrorist
cells or tricking them with fake communications. The Defense
Department already maintains a secretive counter-terror operations
group known as Delta Force that is called in when a crisis happens.
Exactly what type of actions would be required to "stimulate
reactions" by terrorist groups has yet to be revealed. When asked
questions regarding what measures would be taken, Pentagon sources
responded with, "Their sovereignty will be at risk."
The current P2OG program is not entirely new to the United States.
One similar program was Operation Northwoods. In 1963, America's top
military brass presented a plan to President John Kennedy that
called for a fake terrorist campaign ? complete with bombings,
hijackings, plane crashes and dead Americans ? to
provide "justification" for an invasion of Cuba, a Mafia/corporate
fiefdom which had recently been lost to Castro. Kennedy rejected the
plan, and was killed a few months later. Now Rumsfeld has
resurrected Northwoods, but on a far grander scale, with resources
at his disposal undreamed of by his predecessors, and no
counterbalancing global rival to restrain him.
Former president Nixon wanted such a group, but congress denied it;
President Reagan tried to use the National Security Council instead,
but ran into trouble with the Iran-Contra affair. Now, President
Bush may finally realize the dream.
UPDATE BY CHRIS FLOYD
Appropriately enough for a story about the deepest possible covert
operation ? penetrating terrorist cells and provoking them into
action ? the saga of the Pentagon's "Proactive, Preemptive
Operations Group" (P2OG) went straight back into the dark after
strutting its brief hour upon the stage. There has been no new
information about the group since it was first mentioned nationally
in the Los Angeles Times as part of a larger story on Pentagon plans
for new "secret armies." Was it funded? Is it operational? Has
it "flushed out" any terrorists lately by goading them
into "action"? Are any of the post-Iraq War spate of terrorist
atrocities linked to P2OG activities? We don't know. And with Donald
Rumsfeld's openly avowed penchant for "strategic misinformation,"
how will we ever know? Certainly the mainstream press has done
nothing to enlighten us. Although the CounterPunch article (which
appeared simultaneously in The Moscow Times) provoked a lively
response in the "alternative" media (print, web and radio), there
has not been a single subsequent mention of the group in the U.S.
national press. In the UK, John Pilger has raised warning flags
about P2OG in The New Statesman and the Daily Mirror, while The
Ecologist also ran a version of the CounterPunch article. The rest
is silence. At first glance, this decided lack of interest might
seem a curious reaction, given the American media's insatiable?and
profitable?obsession with terrorism. But the media's equally
intense, and equally profitable, abhorrence of moral ambiguity?
especially when it involves possible American complicity in mayhem
and murder?makes the silence easier to understand.
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For more information see:
"The Secret War," by William Arkin, Los Angeles Times, Oct. 27,
2002, at http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1028-11.htm.
"P2OG Allows Pentagon to Fight Dirty," David Isenberg, Asia Times,
Nov. 5, 2002, at
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/DK05Ak02.html.
At excerpt from the partially classified Defense Science Board
briefing that proposed the creation of P2OG at
http://www.serendipity.li/more/dsbbrief.ppt.
"Friendly Fire: Operation Northwoods,"
ABCNews.com, May 1, 2001, at
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/jointchiefs_010501.html.
John Pilger, The New Statesman, Dec. 12, 2002,
http://pilger.carlton.com/print/124759.
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