The Kennedy Half-Century (99 page)

30
. Stephen G. Rabe, “Controlling Revolutions: Latin America, the Alliance for Progress, and Cold War Anti-Communism,” in
Kennedy’s Quest for Victory: American Foreign Policy, 1961–1963
, ed. Thomas G. Paterson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 105–7. Rabe believes that the United States’ Cold War policies undermined the effectiveness of the Alliance for Progress program. “Through its recognition policy, internal security initiatives, and military and economic aid programs, the [Kennedy] Administration demonstrably bolstered regimes and groups that were undemocratic, conservative, and frequently repressive. The short-term security that anti-communist elites could provide was purchased at the expense of long-term political and social democracy.”

31
. The historical context is instructive. In early 1961 the Communists appeared to be winning the Cold War. They could boast of major economic and technological triumphs and were poised to take control in countries such as Laos and the Congo. Many Americans wanted their government to take a tougher stand against Communism, especially in the Western Hemisphere.

32
. Thanks to an FOIA lawsuit filed by the National Security Archive, scholars now have access to four volumes of the CIA’s “Official History of the Bay of Pigs Operation.” As of August 2011, the CIA has refused to release volume 5, which contains “a rebuttal to the stinging CIA Inspector General’s Report done in the immediate aftermath of the paramilitary assault, which held CIA officials accountable for a wide variety of mistakes, miscalculations and deceptions that characterized the failed invasion.” See Peter Kornbluh, “CIA Forced to Release Long Secret Official History of Bay of Pigs Invasion,”
Global Research
, August 2, 2011,
 
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25864
 [accessed August 2, 2011].

33
. “Report of the Committee on National Security Policy,” November 9, 1960, Paul H. Nitze Papers, Box 141, Folder 8, Library of Congress Manuscripts Division, Washington, DC.

34
. Bowles landed in hot water when he talked to the press about his opposition to the plan. He was eventually sent packing from the State Department and replaced by George W. Ball.

35
. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.,
A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), 240–51; Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., “Memorandum for the President,” February 11, 1961, National Security Archive, The George Washington University,
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/bayofpigs/19610211.pdf
 [accessed on October 13, 2010].

36
. Peter Kornbluh, ed.,
Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba
(New York: New Press, 1998), 2; R. Hart Phillips, “A ‘Fight to Death’ Is Feared in Cuba,”
New York Times
, April 9, 1960.

37
. Kennedy made some changes to the original CIA plan. He moved the landing site from Trinidad to the Bay of Pigs and reduced the number of airstrikes in order to make the operation “less noisy.” Like Eisenhower, Kennedy thought that he could somehow conceal the United States’ role in the operation.

38
. Kornbluh,
Declassified
, 2–3; Robert Dallek,
An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–63
(Boston: Little, Brown, 2003), 363; Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali,
“One Hell of a Gamble”: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–64
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 95. Stephen Rabe says that an additional airstrike would not have made a difference since Cuban pilots were “prepared to take off at a moment’s notice” after April 15. James N. Giglio and Stephen G. Rabe,
Debating the Kennedy Presidency
(New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 34. The CIA and Cuban exiles were counting on Kennedy to intervene even though the president had made it clear that U.S. forces would stay on the sidelines.

39
. Eisenhower was proven correct. The failure at the Bay of Pigs strengthened the resolve of Nikita Khrushchev, who stiff-armed Kennedy at the Vienna summit and then deployed nuclear weapons to Cuba. The worst consequence may have been that Kennedy decided to take a stronger stand in Vietnam to show the Communists that he meant business, accelerating what was to become the greatest American miscalculation of the postwar period.

40
. Stephen A. Ambrose,
Eisenhower: The President
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), 638–39.

41
. Kennedy was also deceived by the Central Intelligence Agency. “Despite repeated White House instructions to keep U.S. forces from directly participating in order to preserve plausible deniability of American involvement, the CIA ultimately gave permission for U.S. pilots to fly aircraft over the beaches. The aviators were told that, if they were shot down and captured, they should describe themselves as mercenaries and the U.S. would ‘deny any knowledge’ of them.” Four U.S. airmen were killed in the fighting. It is also clear that top CIA officials did not believe that the invasion could succeed without U.S. military involvement. See Robert Dallek, “Untold Story of the Bay of Pigs” and Peter Kornbluh, “Bay of Pigs
History Held Hostage,”
Daily Beast
, August 14, 2011,
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/08/14/bay-of-pigs-newly-revealed-cia-documents-expose-blunders.print.html
 [accessed August 25, 2011].

42
. Dallek,
Unfinished Life
, 365.

43
. Ambrose,
Eisenhower: The President
, 639.

44
. Sorensen,
Kennedy
, 308; Dallek,
Unfinished Life
, 370.

45
. The columnist George Will is among many who has asserted that the Bay of Pigs disaster convinced Khrushchev, “the 67-year-old grandson of a serf and son of a coal miner, that Kennedy, the 43-year-old son of privilege, was too callow to recognize the invasion’s risks and too weak to see it through.” George F. Will, “JFK’s Berlin Blunder,”
Washington Post
, August 12, 2011,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jfks-berlin-blunder/2011/08/12/gIQAGOcxBJ_story.html
 [accessed August 15, 2011].

46
. Kornbluh,
Declassified
, 4.

47
. Schlesinger,
Thousand Days
, 239.

48
. Lucien S. Vandenbroucke, “Anatomy of a Failure: The Decision to Land at the Bay of Pigs,”
Political Science Quarterly 99
(Autumn 1984): 471–91.

49
. America in the early 1960s might reasonably be compared to Athens in 400 B.C. Nicias, one of the Greek city state’s most prominent politicians, made exaggerated estimates about the number of troops and ships that would be required to invade Sicily, attempting to trick the governing assembly into abandoning the expedition. But the Athenians were so consumed with blood lust that they approved Nicias’ faux plan and put him in charge of the invasion. In other words, an absurd military plan took on a foolish life of its own.

50
. Piero Gleijeses, “Ships in the Night: The CIA, the White House and the Bay of Pigs,”
Journal of Latin American Studies
27 (February 1995): 1–42.

51
. In early May 1961, JFK told Schlesinger, “If it hadn’t been for Cuba, we might be about to intervene in Laos.” Herbert S. Parmet,
JFK: The Presidency of John F. Kennedy
(New York: Penguin Books, 1984), 136. “Robert Kennedy recalled that ‘we would have sent … a large number of American troops into Laos if it hadn’t been for [the Bay of Pigs failure] because everybody was in favor of it.’” Giglio,
Presidency
, 66.

52
. Schlesinger,
Thousand Days
, 329, 336; Giglio,
Presidency
, 63–68.

53
. Parmet,
JFK
, 182. Robert Dallek attributes Kennedy’s back problem to his use of steroids. Prolonged steroid use can cause osteoporosis and a weakened immune system. “Navy medical records indicate that back surgery Kennedy underwent in 1944 had revealed clear evidence of osteoporosis. The surgeons removed ‘some abnormally soft disc interspace material’ and anticipated additional problems if he continued to suffer bone loss.” In the early 1950s, Kennedy’s back problems worsened. X-rays from JFK physician Janet Travell’s records show that Kennedy’s L-4 “had narrowed from 1.5 cm to 1.1 cm, indicating” an imminent spinal collapse, and they also showed “compression fractures in his lower spine.” Kennedy’s fifth lumbar vertebra did collapse in the spring of 1954. He opted for a risky operation that never fully solved the problem. See Robert Dallek, “The Medical Ordeals of JFK,”
Atlantic Monthly
290 (December 2002): 49–61,
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2002/12/dallek.htm
 [accessed September 1, 2010].

54
. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, “The Goal of Sending a Man to the Moon (May 25, 1961),” Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia,
http://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/speeches/detail/3368
 [accessed December 16, 2010]; Dallek,
Unfinished Life
, 393. Kennedy’s
support for the space program stemmed in part from his concerns over Gagarin’s flight on April 12, 1961, and the Bay of Pigs fiasco (April 17, 1961). The success of Alan Shepard’s flight on May 5, 1961 proved that the U.S. was still competitive with the USSR in outer space.

55
. “Robert C. Seamans Jr.,” MIT Tech TV,
http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/3083
 [accessed August 6, 2012].

56
. Kennedy also proposed a U.S.-Soviet joint lunar program before the United Nations in September 1963. After the assassination, Ambassador Adlai Stevenson reminded the assembly that “President Kennedy proposed … last September to explore with the Soviet Union opportunities for working together in the conquest of space, including the sending of men to the moon as representatives of all our countries. President Johnson has instructed me to reaffirm that offer today …” In his first State of the Union address, President Johnson held out some possibility for such a venture: “We must assure our preeminence in the peaceful exploration of outer space, focusing on an expedition to the moon in this decade—in cooperation with other powers if possible, alone if necessary.” On January 31, 1964, Webb advised Johnson not to propose a “new high-level U.S. initiative” until the Soviets responded to his and Kennedy’s previous proposals. Because the Soviets never did so, the U.S. moved ahead with the Apollo program on its own. See Hirotaka Watanabe, “The Space Policy of the Johnson Administration: Project Apollo and International Cooperation,”
Osaka Law Review
57 (February 2010): 39–64.

57
. Telephone interview with Dan Fenn, December 16, 2010; Mike Wall, “JFK’s Moon Shot: Q&A With Space Policy Expert John Logsdon,” Space.com, May 24, 2011,
http://www.space.com/11762-nasa-kennedy-moon-speech-logsdon-interview.html
 [accessed May 25, 2011]; Carolyn Y. Johnson, “JFK Had Doubts About Moon Landing,”
Boston Globe
, May 25, 2011,
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/05/25/jfk_had_doubts_about_moon_landing/?pi=Local_Links
 [accessed May 25, 2011].

58
. Jacobson’s medical license was revoked by the State of New York in 1975 because of his excessive narcotic prescriptions.

59
. According to historian Robert Dallek, there “is no evidence that JFK’s physical torments played any significant part in shaping the successes or shortcomings of his public actions, either before or during his presidency.” Dallek, “The Medical Ordeals of JFK,” 49–61. It is also true that no one will ever know for sure. Narcotics can have subtle but significant effects on any human being, especially one dealing with the extraordinary stresses of the presidency.

60
. Franklin’s fur cap and spectacles caused a sensation in Paris. “The cap, like that worn by Rousseau, served as his badge of homespun purity and New World virtue, just as his ever-present spectacles (also featured in portraits) became an emblem of wisdom. It helped him play the part that Paris imagined for him: that of the noble frontier philosopher and simple backwoods sage—even though he had lived most of his life on Market Street [Philadelphia] and Craven Street [London].” Walter Isaacson,
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003), 328.

61
. Robert C. Doty, “Kennedy and De Gaulle Agree to Defend Berlin; Discuss Asia and Africa,”
New York Times
, June 1, 1961; Rachel Day, “Suit Worn by Jacqueline Kennedy during Presidential Trip to Paris Now on Display at the JFK Presidential Library and Museum,”
http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK+Library+and+Museum/News+and+Press/Suit+Worn+by+Jacqueline+Kennedy+During+Presidential+Trip+to+Paris+Now+on+Display+at+the+JFK+Presiden.htm
 [accessed December 16, 2010]; Dallek,
Unfinished Life
, 400; Barbara A. Perry,
Jacqueline Kennedy: First Lady of the New Frontier
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 86. In some ways, President Kennedy treated the trip to Paris as a campaign stop to win French favor, not votes. The night before the visit began, the French people watched “a nationwide television program, prepared especially for them,” featuring the president and First Lady. “[T]he president and Mrs. Kennedy expressed their pleasure in the visit.” And “Mrs. Kennedy conducted her part of the proceedings entirely in French. Her accent [as noted by some French observers, was] ‘accurate,’ which is of course several cuts below the ‘flawless’ they had been led to expect.” Kennedy’s PR team weren’t sure whether to release pictures of the president alone or ones which included the First Lady. As a result, the shops on Rue de Rivoli displayed both types of shots. Press secretary for the trip Andrew Hatcher and JFK aide Ted Sorensen were sent to Paris ahead of time to line up interviews and make sure that the visit went smoothly. The careful work clearly paid off. The journalist Mary McGrory witnessed two French women “giggling” as they “went from shop window to shop window bowing to every photograph of the president. ‘How do you do, Mr. Kennedee,’ they said in preparation.” Mary McGrory, Western Union Telegram, May 31, 1961, Mary McGrory Papers, Box 96, Folder 8, Library of Congress Manuscripts Division, Washington, DC.