The official who orchestrated the Chagossian eviction later admitted it was militarily unnecessary

Evidence

Stu Barber also will not see the Chagossians return. Before his death, however, Barber discussed the prospects of a return in a 1991 letter to the Washington Post. “It seems to me to be a good time to review whether we should now take steps to redress the inexcusably inhuman wrongs inflicted by the British at our insistence on the former inhabitants of Diego Garcia and other Chagos group islands,” Barber wrote. … There was never any good reason for evicting residents from the Northern Chagos, 100 miles or more from Diego Garcia. Probably the natives could even have been safely allowed to remain on the east side of Diego Garcia atoll … Such permission, for those who still want to return, together with resettlement assistance, would go a long way to reduce our deserved opprobrium. Substantial additional compensation for 18–25 past years of misery for all evictees is certainly in order. Even if that were to cost 100,000 per family, we would be talking of a maximum of 40–50 million, modest compared with our base investment there. … In yet another letter, to former Alaska senator Ted Stevens, Barber confessed, the expulsion of the Chagossians “wasn’t necessary militarily.” — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 224

Categorization

• XREF: Sits alongside the reader’s stated topic on how US bases harm the world; the eviction was driven by base interests without military necessity, echoing the broader pattern in the book.
• CANDY: The Pentagon official whose decision caused decades of misery later admitted in letters it ‘wasn’t necessary militarily.’
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 224