Comedian Mike Donovan

The USA in the Time of John F. Kennedy
                                    1961-1963

                              By Mike Donovan

                            Based on a True Story

Four times read his last rites before 1963 - “Helmet-Head” - First Catholic President – Clintonian Philanderer - VP Lyndon Johnson – Defeated Richard Nixon in microscopic close race in 1960 – Or did he? – PT 109 – “Moonbeam” – On The Hot SEATO – “We are all Berliners” – Two years, ten months, and two days in office - Princeton 35 – Stanford 40-41- Irving Street – Melbourne – Donated his salary to charity - Destroyed the American hat industry

   The Electoral College score was 303 for Kennedy and 219 for Nixon. Dixiecrat Harry Byrd won the state of Mississippi and a few other scattered EC votes for a total of 15. Byrd had never actively campaigned for top dog, but a lot of angry Southern Democrats voted the Byrd as a defiant gesture.

   “Democracy is not perfect. But we don’t have to build a
    damn wall to keep our people in.”
                                                     From the 1962 Berlin speech

   Personally, in all honesty, I hated John F. Kennedy. Couldn’t stand that man. I was six years old and he kept interrupting my cartoons. Every time you turned around, the regularly scheduled cartoon show was being interrupted by a boring speech from this very tiresome old man. Just the sight of his face brought me down. I had no idea that I was witnessing great events in American History. Who cares about the Freedom Riders or nuclear war when the Flintstones were being pre-empted?
   Kennedy is a president whose era has been almost neglected by history because interest in the person far surpasses interest in the events of the era. Most American can tell you a great deal about the Kennedy family history, but with the exception of the Cuban Missile Crisis, can tell you little of American history in the years 1961-63. Documentaries on the personal Kennedys abound, while the documentaries on the world in 1963 are hard to find. Does anyone even know that there was a Congo Crisis that the USA became deeply involved in, or that our relations with France were strained over an Algeria in revolution? What does the average US citizen today know about the steel strike, the crisis in Laos, or troubles with Sukharno in Indonesia? What about the wave of third world countries gaining their independence and changing the entire dynamic of international relations? The crisis of colonialism in Angola and Gao (India), both with intense NATO and Cold War implications, are in a history shroud. Hardly anyone knows that Iraq made a serious threat to invade Kuwait in 1961. But the tragedies that have plagued the Kennedy family, the plane crashes, the philandering, the drugs, the dirty power politics of the Father Joe, of these things we all know plenty. The murder of President Kennedy has been given more historical attention by the American public than all the events of his administration combined.
   The most important thing in Kennedy's time to recent historians seem to be his women and his concealed health problems, not his ideas for national health care. They write 80 pages on his false front of robust health to mask his brutal back problems, his Addison’s disease, and possibly his venereal disease. There is a lot of research about all the meds that he guzzled down.
   An important visitor from Africa walked out of a private meeting in the Oval Office and exclaimed to his friend, “That man in there. He is electric. There are sparks shooting out from everywhere.”

   Kennedy is like Obama in some ways. He is the dynamic young lefty replacing a right-wing Republican. But the more important similarity is that the radical left was all exited when Kennedy came in and then felt betrayed once they saw what his actual policies were. Same with Obama. President Kennedy took more heat from the betrayed left than he did from the dependably hostile right. Same with Obama. Kennedy's campaign rhetoric of change did not match his record of change once he got in. Same with Obama. Kennedy turned out to be a practical centrist politician, much to the dismay of the left who thought he was a loyal liberal. Same with Obama. Kennedy was a talented and and good man. Same with Obama. Kennedy was handed the presidency on a platter by his filthy rich father. We'll stop the comparison there.
    Kennedy didn't feel very powerful as a member of Congress from 1947 to 1960. But when he became President he discovered the true power of Congress. As one small part of a larger unit he didn't appreciate what power it had as a collective unit. as President he saw that power in action.
   The bottom line on Kennedy was that he believed in the art of the possible. That's why the left hated him more than the right. Here he was, the liberals great hope, and all he seemed to want to do was water down the proposals of the left and take them in the most friendly manner over to the right. The lefties are watching Kennedy pal around with their arch-enemies like Ev Dirkson or Chuckie Halleck, and thinking, “whose side is this guy on?” Of course, Kennedy was doing more for the left than the stubborn squids could even begin to appreciate. The left proposals had zero chance to get passed. Kennedy moderated these proposals and them brought them over to Ev and Chuck and they were passed. The left got half its loaf of bread, instead of the empty hands they would have walked away with if the great conciliator hadn't worked his magic. And the left never gave him the credit he deserved for this positive compromising mind-set.
   When the left made proposals that Kennedy knew could never pass, he refused to even present them. Some would argue that even if the proposals were defeated, it would plant the seed for their passage later on. But Kennedy almost always felt that not only would they not pass, but they would generate a spirit of ill-will that would prevent the passage of all moderate liberal bills in the future. Deny the left it's moment of defiant morality today, and the concrete improvements in American society will still be open for realization tomorrow. Critics called him cool and uncaring, but maybe only a cool guy could create progress out of the current divisive partisan political structure. He didn't wear his liberal heart on his sleeve like his brothers did, and that enabled him to accomplish some left-wing change with begrudging right-wing support. And it made the Stevenson, Eleanor Roosevelt wing of the Democratic Party hate his guts.

    Popular vote 1960--------------------------Kennedy D) 34,226,000
                                                                   Nixon R) 34,108,000
                                                                   Byrd Dx) 502,000

   The worst thing that anyone can say about Saint John Kennedy is that he may have stolen the election of 1960. Powerful Democratic Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago probably fraudulently altered the voting results in Chicago and thus gave Kennedy that state by a mere 8,800 votes.
Nixon supporters wanted Dick to challenge the Ill. ill-smelling voting results. But Nixon declined to demand a recount, possibly because an investigation may have revealed similar low down dirty deeds on his side of the ball.

WITH GREAT VIGAH
   Kennedy had quite the Boston accent. One time he was giving a passionate speech to a convention of Wisconsin farmers. Showing his concern for them he said, “And what is the condition of today's Wisconsin fahmas?” - A heckler in the balcony with perfect timing and a booming voice shouted, “They're staaaaavin!” - The whole audience erupted in a long rolling thunder of a laugh as JFK walked around the podium laughing hahdah than anyone else in the room.
   Even though I didn't grow up rich and wasn't from his generation, I still feel that as a lifelong Bostonian I have a better feel for his personality than a history student from Montana or Saudi Arabia. He grew up about 2.8 miles from where I grew up. We were world's apart, but in some ways there is a cultural connection. I think the region has its own special sarcastic understated humor, and that Kennedy had it plenty. Bill Clinton idolized JFK, but there was a huge difference. Bill Clinton could produce a tear for cameras at the funeral of some 96 year old poet. Obama can do that too. John Kennedy not only couldn't do it, he wouldn't do it if he could. You couldn't force him to do that if the destruction of the world were at stake. John Kennedy would avoid any church where there were reporters, exactly the opposite of Bill and Barak.
    Jack and Bobby absorbed and inherited some of their father's rough edges. None of the three were famous for saying 'please and thank you.' Even people that liked Jack had to concede that he could be rather short with people once he got the information he wanted, and Bobby was far worse.
    Kennedy was light-hearted in his default setting. Considering that the guy was in charge of the nukes, it is amazing to read close friends of Kennedy say that “the guy definitely never took himself too seriously.” The actor who played JFK in the movie Thirteen Days did a fine job but he didn't capture any of the smart-alec twinkle in Kennedy's eye that was always there, just an inch below the surface, even when he was being serious.
   A little tip. If you are in Hyannis, find tiny Irving Street on a map and drive down it. The house on the right close up on the street with a white picket fence was the one in which John Kennedy lived before and during his presidency. Don’t try to drive down the little streets that lead into the Kennedy compound though, otherwise a burly young man will approach your car and tell you sternly to turn around and leave. Trust me on that one.

Kennedy’s cabinet;

    Secretary of State-----------Dean Rusk ---------1961-1963

    Secretary of Defense-------Robert McNamara-1961-1963

    Sec. of Money-------------C. Douglas Dillon---1961-1963

    Att. General---------------Robert F. Kennedy—1961-1963

Lyndon Johnson hated the Attorney General. He resented the fact that the President's little brother had more power than he did as VP. but it is difficult to argue that Robert Kennedy was not a diligent and intelligent AG who did his job well.


BIO
    Everyone can name President Kennedy’s death day but few can name his birthday. JFK was born on May 29, 1917 on Beals Street in Brookline, Mass, about a 15-minute walk from where I am writing.
   Brother Robert was born about two blocks away after the family moved within the neighborhood. Four front runners for President grew up within two miles of each other in Brookline; John and Bobby Kennedy, Michael Dukakis and John F. Kerry.
   Kennedy’s grandfather on his mother’s side was ‘Honey’ Fitzgerald, a Mayor of Boston and United States Congressman.
   Kennedy’s father Joseph P. Kennedy is remembered historically as a ‘bootlegger’ during prohibition in the 1920’s but there is no proof that he did anything illegal. He speculated in booze legally in the 1920’s anticipating the end of Prohibition sooner or later. It was perfectly legal to import and own stocks of liquor during Prohibition. What was illegal was drinking it or selling it. History has steadily bashed Dynasty Dad the bootlegger, but where’s the 80 proof?
   Father Joe was so smart with his money that he dumped all his stocks just before the Great Crash of 1929, investing it in bonds. One of the myths of American history is that the Stock Market Crash of 1929 took everyone by surprise. Joseph Kennedy was one of many businessmen who saw the signs of an impending stock bust and acted according.
   Joe became a very successful and innovative movie financier and producer in Hollywood in the 1930’s. He then moved on to a position of great importance in world politics when he became United States ambassador to Great Britain during the rise of Hitler. Kennedy was an isolationist at a time when FDR was dreaming of intervention.
   Joseph’s record as Ambassador considering the course of WWII is, quite simply, a bad one. The British did not like him one bit, and thought that Joe knew nothing of history or international relations. Joe Kennedy was walking about London openly predicting that after the Fall of France, Britian would lose the war with Hitler. He thought that Britian should make a deal with Hitler while it still could, and that the United States should not get involved in this losing cause. JPK was making such public statements while the bombs were falling on London. Try to imagine how that sat with his British hosts. They also resented Joe for leaving London during the Blitz to stay at safe distant aristocratic locations.
    JPK had a combative relationship with FDR. Joe Kennedy Sr. wanted to be President in 1940 and was hoping that FDR would not seek a third term. He really thought he had a chance.
    When late in 1940 Joe Kennedy finally agreed to take some heat off of FDR and resign the post of Ambassador to the court of St James, Roosevelt invited him to Hyde Park for dinner. After some small talk with several people the two men went into Franklin's study for a private talk. Kennedy came out ten minutes later and left the building and the grounds in a brisk huff. Roosevelt had thrown Joe Kennedy out of his house! FDR told his wife that “I don't ever want to see that scoundrel again as long as I live!” Eleanor Roosevelt testified that it was the most angry she ever saw her husband get in his entire life. Not even the fascist dictators ever made Franklin so furious. One rarely hears a Kennedy boasting of the great heritage of Joseph Kennedy the Ambassador to England.
   For all his faults, the Kennedy kids loved their cutthroat father a great deal. He was doing it all for them.
   Little Johnny Kennedy was a good student and a superior marbles champion. JFK went to the Edward Devotion School and the Dexter School in Brookline. I lived for 12 years on the site. It had since been replace by the Dexter Park Apartment complex. I lived there for 12 years and parked my Oldsmobile for 14 years in the lot where JFK once played football on grass (excluding the three weeks it was repossessed.)
   The Kennedy’s bought a better home one block from the old one. Author Geoff Perret writes that this was a calculated move to a much more fashionable and upscale neighborhood. It was a block away, pal. I drive past both houses every time I cut through Brookline’s back streets to beat the red lights.
The K's bought their third home on Cape Cod, but this was not the nucleus of the Kennedy Compound. That would come later. The Kennedy’s then moved to Riverdale NY in 1927. John Kennedy was placed in Riverdale Country School, making average grades and not reading a lot. He grew to love books as the years went by. He also liked to argue with writers in the margins, something John Adams also did.
   JK's high school years were at two exclusive and expensive schools, Canterbury at New Milford Connecticut, and then at the famous Choate, in Wallingford Conn. (although he probably made it more famous than it ever could have become without him. - Don't tell Dean Gregg I said that – It costs $43,000 a year to go Choate today.)
   JFK entered Harvard University in the fall of 1936. He often walked on JFK Street, although it went by another name at the time. Jack played for the JV football team. One day his dad was visiting and Jack, who was still in his football pads got into a friendly wrestling match with Joe's chauffeur, who had parked the car in Harvard Yard. The big man in a suit spun the much thinner Jack over his shoulder and slammed him into the turf of Harvard Yard. Kennedy’s back was hurt and would never be the same for the rest of his life.
   In the summer of 1937 Kennedy went to Europe with a close friend for a driving vacation. Did he pay for it with the tips he had saved as a newspaper delivery boy? No, Jack was rich enough to take a fancy new Ford convertible all over Europe and stay at the best hotels. The two young men chased tourist spots and women. They picked up hitchhikers as they drove around a western Europe filled with political and military tension. The thumbers often gave them insights that professional writers never could. A German soldier in Italy hopped into their car near Milan. He told them that ‘yes, of course there is going to be a war. That’s because nothing is going to stop Hitler from attacking Russia. Nothing.”
The two Yanks drove along the beautiful Loire river in France, stopping at Amboise and at the chateaux of Chenonceaux. This isn’t important information except that I vacationed there with my wife and was exited to read that we had been to the same two spots. (I still have a cigarette lighter from Amboise but it only has a few lights left. The bottle of wine we purchased in the cool musty and historical Chenonceaux cellar is long gone.)
   One day, Jack was driving way too fast on a little French highway. His friend in the passenger seat was begging Kennedy to slow down. Jack told him to “stop ah being such a ah milqutoast.” Five minutes later Jack braked too late around a curve and the car flipped over three times and went skidding and spinning 200 feet down the road on its roof. The car finally came to a stop and Kennedy looked at his friend and said, “This is ah not going to ah sit very well with my ah dad ....oow!” Jack had further hurt his back in the accident and would be in physical therapy for the rest of the vacation.
   Joe Jr. was already attending Harvard when Jack enrolled. His big brother cast a big shadow over Jack for most of their young lives. Joe Sr. was grooming Joe Jr. for the Presidency of the United States. This was an open fact in the Kennedy home. Joe Jr. went to Harvard knowing full well that some day his dad expected him to become the President. This took a lot of pressure off of Jack in some ways but put more pressure on him in others. He didn’t have to climb the mountain that Joe was supposed to but it made him want to climb it anyway just to prove he could.
   John was a big man on campus because he was charismatic and because his father's movie star friends stopped by at Harvard keg parties (they were called 'smokers' at the time. In South Boston they are now called 'times.')
   John became an author as a senior in 1940, publishing a book called Why England Slept. It earned the young man royalties and was critically successful. It is a good book, but his connections helped. What college senior gets a major book published on foreign policy? He could have added that England slept “because my old man hindered any attempts by America to back England up.”
   After Harvard, Jack audited classes at Stanford Business School for a half a year, where he was quite the celebrity. The school newspaper found any reason to write up a new story about his latest activities. John then took a tour of South America to party. When World War II broke out, Kennedy enlisted in the Navy.
    Lieutenant Kennedy was a famous war hero in the Pacific theatre. The Japanese destroyer Amagiri rammed his PT-109 in half in the dark of night in the Solomon Islands Campaign. It happened in the New Georgia phase of the Solomons operations in 1943.
   Mr. Kennedy showed great courage and stamina in the ensuing survival and rescue ordeal. The collision killed two of Kennedy’s men. Jack though injured, led the group swim of 11 other survivors to an uninhabited island from which friendly natives rescued them 8 days later. For a good book on the 109 see the one by Robert Donovan (with a name like that, it’s got to be good.) For a mediocre movie, see PT-109 starring Cliff Robertson. The island on which the 109 crew held out is now named Kennedy Island and is a part of the independent nation of the Solomon Islands (ruled of course by King Solomon.)
   When the United States entered the war, Joe Senior had fascist egg on his face, but his two sons made up for it with their service valor, and sacrifice.
   Joe Jr. volunteered for a dangerous mission. He would pilot a plane loaded with high-test conventional explosives and a homing device. Pilot Joe was to bail out just before landfall on the continent and the plane would be guided by radar to crash kamikaze style into a German V-1 rocket base in Belgium. But the plane blew up over the English Channel. Kennedy managed to land in the water, but since he was in 7,892 pieces he did not survive.
   Suddenly Jack Kennedy was the man the family expected to one day become President of the United States. Like comedian Lenny Clarke said to me the day Bob Hope died. “Mike! Everybody moves up a notch!”
   Jack Kennedy ran for Congress in Massachusetts in 1946 and won. In 1952 he was elected Mass. Senator and then he almost was the Vice Presidential nominee at the 1956 Democratic Convention. It might have been a break for Kennedy to be passed over, considering the election of 1956 went so ‘badly for Adlai.’
JFK won the 1957 Pulitzer Prize (non-fiction) with his book Profiles in Courage. It is a good book about politicians who did the courageous and right thing when it went against their own personal political interest. However it is now well-known that much of it was written by Ted Sorenson. John did not live up to the title. PC remained on the best-seller list for some times, partly because Joe Kennedy kept buying thousands of copies to keep his son's fame going strong. JP could afford to eat the money for the political power that a successful author credit for his son meant. Maybe that's why we can still find so many unmarked copies of the hardcover in very good condition at flea markets for a dollar.
In 1958 Jack was re-elected to the Senate. Although he shrewdly denied it at all times, Jack was essentially running for President in 1960 from the day he won the 1958 Senatorial contest.
Critics and Republicans accurately said that JFK was a rich kid whose election was bought and paid for by his father. Kennedy helped to defuse these accusations with his humor. In a 58 post-election speech he told the crowd that on the night before the election he had received a wire from Joseph which read, “Dear Son: Don’t buy a single vote more than is necessary – I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.” It got a big laugh from his audience of supporters, although a Republican audience would have greeted the same line with folded arms.
   Historians generally agree that Kennedy's record in the United Senate was not particularly impressive. In fact his Senate record was possibly even less impressive than that of Barak Obama! Like BO, JFK was only in the Senate long enough to start up his campaign for the Presidency. At least Obama is a self-made political man. Since 1900, the 3 dynasties of Bush, Roosevelt, and Kennedy were the only silver spoon brats to get into the White House. All the others rose from the lower depths. Democracy embraces the poor, but it doesn't shut out the privileged either. It's pretty good on balance.
   Kennedy resigned his Senate seat in 1960 to run for President.

EVENTS
ELECTION OF 1960
THW UN AND AFRICA
CONFLICT IN LAOS
BERLIN CRISIS AND WALL
NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION
BAY OF PIGS 4.61
VIENNA SUMMIT
BERLIN CRISIS
BERLIN WALL
INDONESIA AND SUKHARNO
NUCLEAR TESTING DUEL
CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS
NASA MOON GOAL
STEEL PRICE CRISIS
NEW NATIONS
CONFLICT IN VIETNAM – 16,000 US ADVISORS
IRAQ THREATENS KUWAIT, 1961
CRISIS IN THE CONGO
STOCK MARKET CRASH OF 1962
BOSTON STRANGLER
RACIAL UNREST IN THE SOUTH
ACDA
COUP IN VIETNAM
DEALEY PLAZA

ELECTION OF 1960
   1960 was the second time in a US Presidential Election that a Quaker Republican ran against a Catholic Democrat. The first time was in 1928. That time the Catholic lost.
Considering the tiny margin between victory and defeat, it's safe to say that any key factor against Nixon or in Kennedy’s favor decided the election. If Nixon had looked better on TV he would have won. If Krushchev had released the captured American airmen from the RB-47 incident of 1960, Nixon would have won. If there had never been a U-2 shootdown, Nixon wins. If there were no economic recession in 1960, Nixon wins. If Marylyn Monroe got drunk with the right reporter and caused a “Bimbo Eruption” against Kennedy, Nixon wins. If the Democrats hadn't stolen Illinois and Texas, Nixon's the one. All these little things added up to the winning edge.
The Democrats had a wide open field for 60 with Kennedy, Johnson, Humphrey, and Symington as the major players. The shadow of Adlai Stevenson was all the while hovering over the field pretending disinterest.
   The New Hampshire primary was a cakewalk for Kennedy. No one in the Democratic party was dumb enough to challenge him in the granite state (where recently the Old man in the Mountain fell tragically in a rainstorm. He has a new name ... 'Cliff.') Kennedy's only Democrat challenger in New Hampshire was Fred Fisher, a rich local who made ballpoint pens. Fisher didn't break the bank trying to beat John F. Kennedy in NH. If he had spent all his money on winning he would have used one of his pens to write a suicide note.
   Next the Kennedy camp had to decide whether to campaign for delegates in Ohio or Wisconsin. They didn't have the resources to try to win in both. What happened in Ohio is worth telling. Some think it was as important for victory as the West Virginia primary later on.
   There was a rising Democratic Ohio star from Cleveland named Jay Miller who planned on challenging the sitting Democrat governor Peter DiSalle for his seat in Columbus. Miller was on good terms with Kennedy and pledged to work hard to help Jack win in the primary there. Kennedy in turn had to respectfully support Miller in the governors' race later on. But the Kennedys would rather win the state than one man's freindship, so they aimed to get Governor DiSalle to endorse him Jack, leaving the Kennedy's free to campaign in Wisconsin instead with Ohio in the bag.
   DiSalle was hesitant because he would make enemies if he endorsed Kennedy. DiSalle had already said he would support an Ohio favorite son candidate, and he was afraid of Harry Truman's old political thugs whom he still owed a lot of favors to from way back when and he didn't want to face the wrath of a furious phone call from Truman. Everyone knew that Truman hated John F. Kennedy. Jack flew to the midwest to meet with DiSalle and try some personal persuasion. It didn't work. The Kennedys had to decide soon which state to enter the primary in, and DiSalle wouldn't make a call. Finally Jack sent the deranged doberman after DiSalle. Bobby Kennedy flew to Ohio and Dave Powers along with him to make sure Bobby didn't lose control. Powers later said he was shocked at how violently Bobby threatened DiSalle with how much he would regret it later if he didn't get on board now. DiSalle gave in. Before the primaries began, the governor of Ohio gave a ringing endorsement to John F. Kennedy. The Kennedys betrayed their old friend Jay Miller from Cleveland to get Ohio, and Miller later said he “would like to have a good old fashioned hockey fight with Jack and Bobby at once.” Miller was thrown under the Brookline bus and never did become governor of Ohio. The press and the public didn't take much notice of the winning of a big state with behind the scenes wheeler-dealing, and Adlai Stevenson was too idealistic to even follow the action. But dirty fighters like Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon paid close attention to the triangular diplomacy between Miller, DiSalle and the Kennedys in Ohio in early 1960.
   The battle for Wisconsin was hard fought and Kennedy won. It should have been a glorious upset victory, but the Wisconsin press focused only on how Kennedy had done so badly in the districts which were heavily Protestant. Jack read the newspapers on V-Day and sighed, “Well Bobby, it looks like we're going to have to campaign and win in West Virginia otherwise no one will take our chances seriously.”

WEST VIRGINIA
   Kennedy had to prove that he could win in a predominantly Protestant state and West Virginia fit the bill. When he beat Humphrey in West Virginia, it was the turning point to winning the nomination. But not because Humphrey would have gone on to win. Humphrey was only in it to block Kennedy and turn the nomination over to the convention which would pick Johnson or Stevenson, or possibly Symngton. Kennedy openly said during the West Virginia primary campaign that Humphrey was only in it to stop him, and charged that Humphrey knew full well he could never win the nomination.
   If Humphrey had not entered the West Virginia primary, Kennedy would have probably stayed out, and might never have won the nomination because he never would have proven he could beat a Protestant in a Protestant stronghold. But when Humphrey jumped into it, he set Kennedy up to make the big score he still desperately needed.
   First the Wisconsin press had snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Kennedy still had a few rugged old mountains to climb. When people reminded him that the Klan was still politically powerful, he reminded them that Catholic Al Smith in 1928 had actually defeated Hoover in Mississippi and Alabama and five other Southern Protestant states. It was a great point.
    Kennedy spent a fantastic sum of 2 million dollars to win one state (remember, a fancy hotel room was a nickel back then.) Kennedy beat Humphrey by 83,059 votes. The defeated Humphrey said after West Virginia that he felt “like a small store owner trying to compete with a big supermarket chain.” Hubert was always bitter about Kennedy's dough, joking about Jack's private Corsair plane the so-called Caroline. After Wisconsin when Humphrey announced he would enter the WV primary he told the press, “Maybe I can hitch a ride down there on his private plane.” Hilsman read this and said, “Yeah, strapped to the propellor.”
   It was pointless for Hubert Humphrey to even stay in the race because once HH lost Wisconsin, he never could win the nomination at Los Angeles. Losing in his own back-yard to an East coast Catholic moderate would leave him short in LA no matter if he won or lost in WV. Again, most histories say that Humphrey's defeat in West Virginia, not Wisconsin, ended his strong chance of winning. Kennedy was the only viable candidate in the Democratic primaries after Wisconsin. The others heavies like Johnson and Stevenson were staying home and hoping the nomination would be handed to them in LA after a convention deadlock.
   Joe Kennedy probably bought the West Virginia primary election, but Humphrey would have done the same thing if he had the money that Joe Kennedy did.
   Many observers were completely shocked that Kennedy won in West Virginia, especially that he did it by a comfortable margin. People who were taking informal polls across the state were hearing nothing but “I'm for Humphrey.” Then on election day it all said something else.
   The Kennedy's at first tried to buy every county Democratic chairman for $5,000 cash under the table. But then the Kennedys woke up. Most of these chairmen were just pocketing 90% of the cash. The real way to buy the election was through the sheriffs. These guys had all the juice, not the Democratic chairmen. So every country sheriff got a Sopranos envelope from Joe Kennedy, with Ted and Bobby sometimes personally playing bagman. One guy swore in 1994 that he personally saw a Humphrey man bribed with a shoebox full of $40,000 in green cash to become a Kennedy man.
    The Catholic Church helped fund the Catholic candidate. Hubert Humphrey said that Boston's Cardinal Cushing (I heard his dreadful reciting of the rosary on the radio four thousand times) told Humphry years later that he resented people like Sorenson and Shriver taking all the credit. The Cardinal said that the Catholic Church made generous donations to every Protestant church in West Virginia in order to eliminate their opposition to a Catholic candidate winning the primary. The Cardinal felt that his church money, not Sorenson's idealistic pronouncements, had been the more decisive factor. “We called it the Cardinal's cushion,” the Card told an unamused Humphrey.
   The Wall Street Journal prepared a big expose story about how baldly Joe Kennedy bought the mountaineer election. If the story had been published, Nixon wins the White House.
   After Kennedy won in West Virginia, a group of Journal reporters felt that something just didn't add up. All their polls said Humphrey but the results said Kennedy. So they investigated and came to the conclusion that Joe Kennedy had bought the West Virginia primary in the most unseemly manner. The Journal conceded that politics was a rough game, but that Joe Kennedy had stepped over even that dirty line.
   The Journal team dug it all up, wrote and rewrote the article and had it ready to go, But the editor in chief said that there is no absolute proof to back any of the charges. The executive editor liked the story, but he felt that it's release could determine the outcome of the Democratic nomination in Los Angeles. He didn't want the Wall Street Journal to decide the course of American history. So at the last moment he killed the story and Nixon's chances. The Wall Street editors were like the refs who won't call a penalty with three minutes left in a tied game unless someone stabs the goalie.
    For the record, the Kennedys claimed to have spent only $100,000 in West Virginia. You couldn't even get the Warren Commission to believe that one.
   West Virginia just about settled it. Senator Symington (“simple Symington” as Ethel Kennedy liked to call him behind his back) dropped out after a poor showing in a poor state.

    The sainthood JFK has achieved since his tragic death obscures the bitter resentments of his Democratic opponents in the primaries and the hostility of all conservatives during his race against Nixon. Half the nation voted against him on Election Day, and at least half of the Democrats had supported someone else for the nomination.
   The Gensec of the CPSU, the Tsra of 1960 Russia, Nikita Krushchov also helped to put Kennedy in the White House. Nicky hated Nixon and later confided to Kennedy that he owed his win to Niky personally. ‘How so?’ asked Kennedy by way of a look. The Russians had shot down a conventional reconnaissance plane (after the U-2 affair) and had captured 2 American pilots. In the interest of better relations, Krushchov (I alternate between spellings, Krushchev, and Krushchov are both ok) was planning on releasing them and sending them home to the states. But Nicky delayed the release of the pilots until after the election. The Russian leader did not want to give the Ike-Nixon team a diplomatic success to exploit in the upcoming election. There is little reason to doubt that Khrushchev’s boast was accurate. The US pilots had to sit in Russian jail a few months longer because Krushchov did not want Nixon to win. Even the Communists hate Republicans.

DNCLA
The Democratic Convention opened in Los Angeles.
   Lyndon Johnson was Kennedy’s chief rival for the nomination. Lyndon Johnson put up a fight to block Kennedy.
   Two-time loser Stevenson was definitely unofficially officially in the running for the 1960 nomination, but at crunch time Adlai deferred to the needs of his party and did not become an obstructionist like Teddy I-Me Roosevelt in 1912 (when he walked out of the Republican Convention because it didn't choose him and formed a third party - the baby didn't get his bottle.)
   There was a great deal of support for two time loser Stevenson. Eleanor Roosevelt was on the convention floor with a button supporting a Stevenson-Kennedy ticket. And her naïve friends wondered why it had been difficult for her to get a floor pass from the Kennedy people who were controlling the convention.

   The big criticism of the candidate Kennedy was that he wasn’t the most qualified person for the job, he merely had the best organization to win the nomination. The critics talk of the Kennedy money and power and effective political skills like that is something new and dirty in politics. They're like a hockey fan whose team has bad fighters. They complain about the immorality of fighting in hockey rather than the real issue, that their fighters aren't very good at it, and I promise to lay off the hockey analogies for a while - that is my goal.
   Stevenson’s supporters were especially bitter that they had the better man but he just happened to lose to someone better organized. Stevenson’s supporters led noisy demonstrations on the Convention floor trying to start a stampede for their man like the one that had won a nomination for Wendell Wilkie. It failed and then they made disruptive demonstrations for Stevenson outside the convention hall like a bunch of babies.
   They had only their non-feisty candidate to blame for their failure to win. Stevenson had played the noble 'I am above politics' game and it backfired. Adlai never actively sought the presidency in 1960 yet hoped that it would be handed to him on flatter platter. Kennedy knew he wasn’t loved by millions so he had to win the old-fashioned way, by hard campaigning, a lot of money and promises of support later for political support now. If anyone out there thinks that’s below the belt they should try politics in some other country or some other planet.
    Harry Truman for example, hated fellow-Dem Kennedy and did everything in his power to influence the Party to choose someone else. He took shots at Kennedy from the time it dawned on him that the young whippersnapper was the front-runner. A reporter asked Truman if he was against Kennedy because he was Catholic. Truman, who hated Joseph P. Kennedy because Joe had refused to write him a check to help him win in 1948 said, “I'm not against the Pope I'm against the pop.” When Kennedy won the nomination, Truman shut off his TV in disgust and refused to offer any public statement of congratulations or support. He just sat with angry folded arms and no one dared to approach him for hours.
   Harry said that Kennedy was “the best organized and the least qualified.” Typical Truman. Well look who’s talking. What kind of qualification and experience did Truman ever have to win the presidency? Harry was a pawn of the corrupt Pendergast political machine in Missouri in his early rise to power. Then he was a compromise alternative choice in 1944, his only real virtue being that he was unknown and he wasn’t Henry Wallace. Then he inherited the Presidency because FDR died. Then he barely won re-election in a miracle comeback in 1948. Then he declined to seek the nomination in 1952 because he knew he couldn’t defeat any Republican challenger and his party didn’t want him. Truman left office with the lowest popularity of any president in the century, including Hoover. Now he sat high and morally mighty in 1960 saying that Kennedy had no business running for president. Look in the mirror, four-eyes!
   The Johnson and Stevenson people hurled a lot of hatred at Kennedy at the Convention. Considering how close the 1960 election came out in November its safe to wonder how near they came to sabotaging their own party.
   So Stevenson was the better candidate. Did it not count in anyone’s mind that he had already been thrashed in two consecutive national elections? What’s the matter, was William Jennings Bryan not available to run from the grave? A loser is a loser and a two-time loser had the label and the image, whether his fans liked it or not. Nobody likes a loser except a stubborn impractical liberal. Kennedy was, like Clinton in 1992, a practical centrist posing as a liberal, and like 1992, was using the only path to victory.
   Kennedy did not have a good record on McCarthyism and Lyndon Johnson harped on that. Yes Jack didn’t really know a lot about the plight of the family farmer, and rural newspapers plowed him under for that. Yes, he had a ruthless powerful political machine behind him and he wasn’t the warm and fuzzy guy people were trying to paint him as.
    But JFK had the best answer of all time when people asked him if he was qualified to be president. “No I am not, but when I see everyone else who is running I suppose I am.” I use this same formula when I try to get into new comedy rooms, telling the booker the same thing, “I'm not the best comedian in the world, but when I see some of the other chumps that headline here, I know I am qualified to headline your club.”
   Johnson of all people had the nerve to call Kennedy a dirty fighter. Lyndon Johnson fought as dirty as anyone who ever played the political game. Lyndon only got moral about Kennedy’s morals because Kennedy won the scrum.
   If the old guard Dems wanted to win in 1960 they had best look to someone who could defeat them first. Only someone capable of beating the Democratic old guard first could go on their behalf to beat the Republicans, and Kennedy was therefore their man, even if he wasn't.

Kennedy won the nomination and the election because he was a conservative’s liberal, not a liberal’s liberal. On the night he was officially chosen, daddy Joe was watching the event on TV at the home of publishing mogul Henry Luce. Henry remarked to Joe that John would now ‘have to be to the left of center on domestic affairs.’ Joe Kennedy exploded an angry and profanity-laced rebuttal at Luce, saying that no son of his was going to be to the left of anything.
   Many were shocked when John picked conservative Lyndon Johnson as his VP nominee. After all it was well known that Johnson disliked Kennedy and looked down on him as a “bobby-soxer.” But Kennedy and his dynastic advisors knew that it was more important to win than to be happy, and to win you had to win the South, or at least you had to win Texas. Like Ohio and Florida, Texas is a perennial up-for-grabs swing state. The venerable Johnson would serve as a counter-weight to the too youthful and green Kennedy. Johnson's experience as a leader in Congress would help with the election and then help after victory in getting things done on Capitol Hill.
   Labor and the liberals were especially angry with Kennedy for choosing Johnson. They felt betrayed. Johnson was the least progressive of all the Democrats in the field, especially on civil rights. Later on when he became president, Johnson re-invented himself as the champion of black rights and the author of the so-called “Great Society.” A few million fools, led by Doris Kearns Goodwin bought this line, but a look at the reaction to the Johnson VP nomination in 1960 says all you really need to know about where he really stood. If you gave Johnson enough whiskey he’d yell “yiiii-haaaa! Lets get some rope!” But as a politician he knew what he had to say and do. By the time he left office in 1969 LBJ may well have been converted to sincere liberalism on Cicil Rights, but hell, even George Wallace turned liberal when he had months left to live, so what does that mean really? The LBJ of 1960 had no Doris goodwill to carry him with the sincere left on civil rights.
   The NAACP was furious with the Kennedy’s for choosing Johnson. But the South had to be won and had to be appeased. The solid South of 1960 meant the good old boy South, not the progressive students and their black friends. Voting rights for blacks in the South were still denied in many districts through poll taxes and other methods.
    Black leaders weren't happy when Jack picked LBJ. Baseball pioneer Jackie Robinson said the choice of Johnson on the ticket was “loathsome.” Harry Belafonte said, “LBJ? Good Grief!” Sammy Davis Jr. said, “Hey man, that's not cool.” Malcom X said, “He's got to die.” But Mal said that about a lot of people.
    In the dairy-left strongholds of Wisconsin and Minnesota, the Johnson choice was simply unacceptable.
   On top of this, many of the other candidates for President had been led to believe that they would get the VP spot. They had not only been more civilized in their criticisms of Kennedy, they were moving towards Kennedy in policy as a signal to 'pick me'. Kennedy had always been too left for the rednecks, and too right for the liberals. He, or should we say his dad, had to choose which group to offend in choosing the VP. The Kennedy camp calculated that the liberals would have no choice but to accept Kennedy-Johnson as the lesser of two unsatisfactory evils. They had a larger fear that failing to add Johnson would cost them too many votes in the redneck South and thus the election.
   When Johnson was named there was still the confirmation of the VP choice to go through with at the convention and there was a healthy fear of a rebellion from the lib wings, especially the Stevenson and Stuart Symington people. Symington had been under the impression that he was going to be the VP.
   To avoid a bitter voting fight for Johnson, the Kennedy managers asked the convention floor to declare for Johnson by acclamation. A wide grumbling of boos went up at the idea. To make this official, the chairman had to put the vote to crowd noise and decide that he heard more yeas to boos by at least a two to one margin. He asked the floor to formally declare for Johnson by acclamation and there was a lot of noise. To many observers the boos and the yeas seemed equally mixed. The chairman declared Johnson the VP nominee by acclamation and a wild chorus of boos went up by furious Democrats who didn’t like LBJ then any more than I do 50 years later.
    There are a lot of version as to how the decision was reached to pick Lyndon the rival. Some versions say that Joe Kennedy insisted that this was the only way to win and had to force his opinion on them until they reluctantly accepted his fatherly wisdom. But Bobby Kennedy denied this in a 1965 interview. Bobby said that he and Jack alone made the decision to pick Lyndon.
   Another popular version says that Kennedy planned to offer the job to Lyndon as a showpiece gesture because he knew that Lyndon would not accept. LBJ was more powerful in the Senate than he could be as VP and he hated the Kennedys. But Johnson spoiled their plan by accepting and the Kennedys couldn't back down from their offer.

THE NATIONAL CONTEST
   One of the outstanding things about the 1960 campaign for President was the complete absence of Joseph P. Kennedy. The man who had made it all possible was hiding like a fugitive. It was easier to get picture of Bigfoot than one of Joseph P. All the New Deal and Fair Deal Democrats hated the father so much that if he had just showed his face, they might not have supported his son, “Jack the Knife.” In a refrain similar to the one by Ted Kennedy about George Bush at the 1988 DNC, “Where was George,” the Press of 1960 had columns titled “Where is Joe?” Rose Kennedy was allowed to campaign, but not her husband.
   VP Nixon vs Senator Kennedy. The winning nominees of the two-party system were both Cold Warriors. There wasn’t in this choice the great liberal versus conservative divide that has existed at least since McGovern vs. Nixon in 1972 and has continued since to the present time.
One of the biggest problems for the Democrats was Lyndon Johnson and his split political personality. Johnson was one sort of person in the South, and another in the North. Records of his speeches in Cleveland and Mobile would seem like they were delivered by two different men. It was the same with his voting record on national issues and state issues. In supporting Kennedy he was promoting a relatively liberal DNC platform that contradicted the redneck Texas state political platform that he had all but written in his own hand. The critics in the Senate and sharp political journalists were all over it. LBJ is a hypocrite!
They were right on, but the problem was, the average Kennedy voter didn't think it was that important that it could make them change their mind about the attractive overall ticket.
Johnson was especially a hypocrite when it came to Civil Rights. Lyndon always had a foot in both camps. His rhetoric usually was properly suitable for the ADA (the Americans for Democratic Action – a very powerful group whose name will come up now and then in this story.) But Lyndon's voting record was tailored to please the guy whose son has a Confederate battle flag on his truck .. wouldn't put one on his truck, but he doesn't make his son take his off,... that guy. Johnson more or less stayed out of the North during the campaign. he made a few high-profile appearances to make a mark on the map but that was it. Keeping Lyndon out of the liberal states was high priority in the Kennedy camp.
   Kennedy not only was no anti-militarism lefty, he actually ran on the idea that Ike had weakened the nation’s military strength and he was going to fix it. Kennedy focused on the “missile gap.” Kennedy and the Dems were claiming that the Soviet Union was so far ahead of the USA in missile technology and deployment that the US was vulnerable and it’s security actively threatened. It was quite a charge to make against an Army hero like Eisenhower. Here JFK was running against Nixon, one of the biggest red-bashers of all time and he was saying that the Ike-Nix team had let us down in the Cold War against the USSR. But the missile-gap charge made sense to voters because the launching of the Soviet satellite Sputnik had completely changed the American perception of the USSR. Even though later on it would be proven that the US in 1960 was ahead in military missiles, no one could be sure back then. Who could prove that we weren't behind, especially since the Soviet Union kept its military capabilities top secret?
    But Kennedy's own military advisors told him long before the election that there was in fact no missile gap and that the US was still ahead. But Kennedy decided to ignore the truth. (Bob McNamara later estimated that when Kennedy took office the USA had 6,000 strategic warheads and the Soviet Union had about 200 – but since the stats come from Mac you know they're off at least a bit.)
There were few really combative issues dividing the candidates. The focus of the national campaign was probably Kennedy’s Catholic religion. Some expected Nixon to make an issue of this but that would have been politically foolish. Kennedy’s Catholicism probably added as many votes as it took away. This wasn’t the 1850’s Know-Nothings running against Fillmore, or Al Smith’s America of 1928. Catholics had been pouring into this country and multiplying for 120 years by the time Kennedy ran in 60.
   Nixon may have hampered his chances when in his acceptance speech he pledged to campaign in all 50 states. Kennedy was free to concentrate his efforts on important states in the toss-up column while Nixon piled up frequent flyer miles in order to keep his promise that sounded good when he said it but was not so good in practice.
   Nixon continually accused Kennedy of being not only inexperienced, but also wrong in his statements on foreign policy on three key issues of the campaign, Laos, Cuba, and Communist China. “He’s been up three times, he’s struck out three times, and now he wants to bat cleanup!” shouted Nixon to a supporting crowd. Kennedy responded in his next speech with, “I don't need advice from Ike's bat-boy!”
     What Nixon failed to realize is that Kennedy strategists were baiting Nixon into a personal war of words and Nixon was biting the worm. Democrat think-tanks had surmised that Nixon's best chance to win was to stay above personal rancor, and exploit his experience in the White House and his well-known record on anti-Communism. Nixon could use his maturity and stature as an asset in place as long as he didn't go for the bait. But he did. There's a long list of clips of Nixon fighting back with one personal barb at Kennedy after another, all of them brought on by Kennedy hitting Nixon in a personal manner first.
   In foreign affairs Kennedy mercilessly criticized the Ike/Nixon record on Cuba and on China.
   In China the big issue was the two small islands of Quemoy and Matsu, close to the mainland (call them Leonard Quemoy and Hideki Matsu if that helps you remember them.) This little islands were big pains to Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy. They are largely forgotten now, but in 1960 Quemoy and Matsui were hot stuff and most controversial. They were potentially a trigger setting off a war between the US and Chian.
   When Mao and Red China won its revolution in 1949, the Nationlists fled to the island of Taiwan and called themselves China, even thought they had been kicked out of China. The people of Taiwan were of Chinese stock and spoke Chinese, but it would have been like the Confederates retreating to the Florida Keys in 1865 and then calling themselves the real United States of America. The UN had validated the hoax by refusing to recognize Communist China and seating Nationalist China as the real China which it wasn't. It was delusional Free-World thinking in action.
   Was there to be a showdown over who wins the right to be called the undisputed China? Would the Communists invade Taiwan? Or would the Nationalist with US/UN military backing do the opposite and try to conquer mainland China? Both sides feared the other might attack, and both sides scoffed at the fear of their enemy.
   The United States was long officially pledged to not allow the Communists to invade Taiwan. This was a major Cold War line in the sand. Polls asking Americans to name the place where World War III was most likely to break out picked Quemoy and Matsu as second only to Berlin.
   But Nationalist China also possessed other islands besides the gigantic Taiwan. There were the Chaing-held Pescadores. These were far enough out to sea to not tempt the Commies. But the two islands of Quemoy and Matsu were so close to the Chinese mainland that long range Red artillery could hit them like mortars. That is why they were so controversial. They were so vulnerable.
During the campaign, and throughout his career in the Senate, John F. Kennedy said that Quemoy and Matsu were not essential to United States security, and virtually conceded that the Red Chinese could take them without fear of U.S. retaliation. Kennedy didn't specifically say that the Communist Chinese could take them, but by stating that the United States should not retaliate if China took them, he might just as well as rang the dinner triangle to Mao and yelled “come and get them!” That was certainly the way Nixon interpreted Kennedy's statements on Quemoy and Matsu (and both as Senator and candidate.) Nixon said that if America did nothing and watched China take Quemoy and Matsu it would send a message of weakness and encourage more bold trouble-making moves on the part of Communist states all over the world. Nixon also added that whatever the United States set for policy on the matter, it would be best to keep the Communists guessing. Just the fear that America might intervene was enough to deter Chinese aggression against the islands. Why give that away with such pacifist statements? I'm with Nixon.
   The more they debated the little islands in the “Chicom” gunsights, the more the polls indicated Nixon was winning the argument. Kennedy then changed gears and kept vaguely saying that he had long agreed with President Eisenhower on Quemoy and Matsu (which made no sense) and, always in the same sentence, said it was time for the candidates to move on to subjects more important to the American people like education, health care, and the budget deficit; as though WWIII wasn't terribly relevant to the average citizen. Jack's Matsui strategy was to change the subject.
   Then there was Cuba. Kennedy kept accusing Ike and Nixon of being soft on Communism for doing nothing about Castro. Yet Kennedy's record in the Senate was as a liberal critic of American policies that had led to a justifiable revolution from below against a corrupt dictator Batista we had supported. Jack had blamed big American capitalists for helping Batista exploit the Cuban poor and create a need for a rebellion. The general trend in America was pro-Castro when he first won his revolution, so Kennedy wasn't a bold liberal at that time, he was just rolling with the flow. And like most Americans he changed his mind when Castro changed his act.
Because most Americans had done the same full circle turn on Castro along with Kennedy, it was harder to make that accusation of hypocrisy stick.
   But there is another matter of importance that all of the famous books about Kennedy fail to address. What did he know about the Bay of Pigs plan and when did he know it? In April of 1961 a US-supported invasion of Cuba by an exile army trained by the CIA in Guatemala ended in disaster. All of the books tell the famous story about how when Jack was President-elect, Ike told him about the impending plan to invade Cuba. JFK learned about it after the election. That's the way Richard Reeves and Ted Sorenson tell it. It's the standard version of a school textbook.
    Nixon and Victor Laskey tell another story. They say in their books that Allen Dulles informed Kennedy of the Bay of Pigs invasion plan in plain language in early July 1960, in other words before the election and even before the TV debates. Then during the campaign Kennedy kept saying that if he were elected he would take action against Cuba, as opposed to sitting around and do nothing like Ike and Nixon. He'd get that bum Castro out a there. Kennedy knew that Nixon couldn't say anything about the plan that the Republicans and the CIA had in the works. The CIA-backed conspirators incorrectly thought had an element of surprise. So Kennedy kept harassing Nixon on the Administrations inaction against Cuba, knowing that Ike was planning something major and that Kennedy in reality would choose to do less of he were in power.
    LBJ piled on. Johnson made a speech to cheering supporters in Savannah in which he said that the if the Democrats won he would personally go down to Havanna and force Castro to “first of all take a bath!” - The crowd cheered wildly. “Then I will force him to shave the beard!” - The crowd laughs and cheers more. “Then I will take the big cigar of his and ...” at that point the host stood up and put his hand on Lyndon's shoulder and the two of them gestured good-bye to the bellowing crowd.
   Nixon in Six Crisis thought that Kennedy had exploited a national security issue to help get elected. It was dirty-fighting, and the idea that the liberals should point right-wing fingers at a right-wing administration was not really honest.
   CIA director Allen Dulles was to the one who knew exactly what he had said to Kennedy and he kept changing his story. Dulles later dummied-down what was at first a simple admission that he had most definitely told Kennedy exactly what was going down in Cuba when he went to Hyannisport in July 1960 to brief the candidate. But now under pressure Dulles made it seem as though he had said something vague and there might have been a misunderstanding.
    Another campaign issue was Jimmy Hoffa. Kennedy made the point in several speeches that this country needs better leadership because men like Jimmy Hoffa are, “still at large.” Kennedy made it seem like Hoffa was on the lam and an in inept US Gov was unable to find him. Union leader Hoffa was a free man doing his job and no one had yet to charge him with anything that stuck. Kennedy made it clear that one of his goals was to take care of Jimmy Hoffa by any means necessary as soon as he swore on the Bible to play by the rules of law.
    “Automation” was another issue that came up over and over on the campaign trail. This is the replacement of human jobs with new-fangled machines and the danger it posed to the always delicate employment problem. I have memories of this being feared and discussed when I was little. I don't remember the term “automation” so much as the fear being replaced by a machine was something that was on people's minds in daily conversation. Automation passed the diner test in 1960. They talked about it at the diner.
   It's still important. Last week my gig on the Cape got cancelled and the booker wouldn't tell me why. I went to the club on Saturday night and there was a robot on stage wearing sneakers and a backwards baseball cap working the front tables, “Good evening ladies. Did they cancel bowling night? - Three guys at one table with no women.. what's up with that? - Hey that's a nice shirt. I used to have one just like it. Then my father got a job! - ”
   Pocketbook issues were a tougher target for Kennedy's darts because times were pretty good under Eisenhower. But the Republican economy came under Jack-attack. He said that Russia was growing it's economy by 7% a year and the United States was growing at just over 2% a year. “And I say we have got to get this country moving forward again.” He used that line until people couldn't keep their food down. It's a really lame vague slogan, but it connected, and it worked. In fact that's why it worked. How can you criticize and challenge vagaries?

THE GREAT DEBATES
    On September 26 1960 the first TV debate for President was held at a CBS studio in Chicago. Kennedy won the debate because the tie goes to the challenger. The American people knew far more about Nixon and were watching Kennedy to see what kind of man he was. One pollster later said that “The two men might as well have been talking about the World Series. It wasn't about what they were saying, but how they were saying it.”
   Nixon lost the war of TV good-looks to Kennedy, who was not only handsome, he also fit perfectly with the good-guy image of the average TV show or movie. Nixon looked bad in the TV lights. Joe Kennedy must have paid off Nixon's make-up team because the Republican looked pale and seemed like he had a five o'clock beard. Kennedy looked like a game show host compared to Nixon.
   The TV audience gave the match to Kennedy. Jack stayed on the attack and kept Nixon off-balance with one slick political accusation after another. Nixon defended them fairly effectively but Kennedy was setting the agenda.
   However the radio listening audience gave the debate to Nixon by 9%. That shows how much it was about looks. The way Kennedy pretended to be hard-hitting while being insufferably vague and non-committal was easier to spot with the ear than with the eye. They say the camera never lies. That's a lie. Its the ear that never lies.
    There were three more debates after the one on September 26. The third debate was held the night that Bill Mazeroski hit a home run to win the World Series. Nixon said that “On Election Day I will emerge as victorious as Bill Mazeroski.”
    Kennedy got mad and said, “Senator, I know Bill Mazeroski. Bill Mazeroski is a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Bill Mazeroski.”

A famous phone call to Coretta King helped to elect Kennedy. Her husband Marty had been thrown in jail on a flimsy charge. Kennedy called her and pledged his moral support. It was a controversial call and angered many white racists, but did much more good than harm. It showed that the new guy had the backbone to take a moral stand at the risk of political backlash, a genuine ‘profile in courage.’ For a more cynical view of the call see the excerpt from the always rough Richard Reeves.
   The Republicans tried to make health care an issue. Not affordable national health care, I mean how much health care Kennedy needed all the time. JFK was a wreck. How could this man take on the Presidency in such poor health? According to the Republican press, Kennedy had Addison’s disease, a bad back, had spells of memory loss plus nightmares that made him wake up screaming every night, and was on way too many mind-numbing meds. Not only that, his VP had suffered a major heart attack. Nixon went public with his medical report, why wouldn’t Kennedy do the same? Jack ignored the critics and did his best to keep his genuinely frail health a state secret through the campaign and then again during his presidency.
   One of the crucial turning points of the campaign came at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas. Lyndon was going there to give a speech on November 4. The polls were indicating that his presence on the ticket was actually not helping in Texas. The Democrat rednecks were mad at him for accepting the number 2 spot from the upstart Yankee liberal, and the Republican rednecks were what they were. So Johnson had to go down and campaign hard in Texas as E-Day closed in.
   Johnson was scheduled to stay at the Baker Hotel across the street from the Adolphus. His handlers warned him that a nasty anti-Lyndon demonstration was underway both on the street between the hotels, and in the lobby of the Baker. Johnson rejected advice to sneak in and out of the Baker through back pantries. “If the time comes when I can't walk through a Dallas hotel lobby, I want to be the first to know,” he said.
   Sure enough, the crowd in the Baker lobby gave Lyndon and Ladybird a heap of sociopathic abuse, uncalled for in any era by any standards. One woman grabbed Ladybird's arm and literally ripped off her white glove, then threw it to the ground and stomped on it. Signs were everywhere calling him “Judas Johnson”, and saying he had sold his soul to the Pope. “Lyndon the Liar,” read another, although no one knew exactly what he was being accused of lying about.
   Johnson could have walked through the Baker Hotel lobby in three minutes. Instead he stood around for nearly 30, inviting abuse, the more the merrier. Ladybird was furious and began screaming back in self-defense at the taunting and jeering, which was, from what I have read, even worse than what I took at a Fitchburg State College gig in 1978. Lyndon knew that news cameras and reporters were all about and that this abuse was a gift from the Gods of Olympus. He couldn't have staged a more beneficial political event if he had Cecil B DeMille bankrolling it.
   Lyndon made his way across the street through more jeering white people who hated the Dem lib who had betrayed the Lone Star State by not being a low-life redneck. A Republican Congressman named Alger led the hissing and booing. He had his own home-made hate sign. This bum had actually organized the entire demonstration.
    Alger did his cause much more harm than good. The fallout from the Adolphus and Alger incident was a significant boost for the Kennedy ticket. Southerners were ashamed at the way Mrs. Johnson had been treated and the rude behavior of its citizens. A large percentage of Lyndon haters in both parties were flipped to supporting him, if only out of embarrassment. Those who still hated him were shamed into keeping quiet about it. Liberal Democrats in the North were won over to Kennedy. They had though of Jack as too centrist and conservative. Now they dropped their bitterness over not seeing lefties like Adlai, Hubert, or Stu on the ticket. Lyndon was being abused because he was supporting an extreme liberal, John Kennedy. The crowd at Adolphus and Baker had crowned Kennedy the liberal prince he was not. Several key “players” in the Election of 1960 have asserted that while the public thinks that the TV debates with Nixon were decisive, they think it was the incident at the Adolphus Hitler Hotel on November 4. Without it, they think that Nixon would have won both Texas and Illinois and with that the White House.
   One of the oldest political tricks in the book is to firebomb your own headquarters on Election Eve and blame the opposition (I tried it when I ran for Class President in 1972.) The Texas toughs had done that for Jack and Lyndon free of charge and risk.

RUMP SESSION
   Just after winning the nomination of his Party Kennedy had to go back to work in the Senate for a short summer or “rump” session. He was not always in attendance, and the Republicans made the most of it. They made plenty of speeches mocking him and exposing is absence for all the nation to appreciate when considering him for President.
    Excerpts of these Senatorial dart boards with JFK on the bulls-eye show quite a few zingers about his record going all the way back to 1947. The trouble was that in the middle of August it is hard to find one in a thousand Americans who give a damn what is going on in Congress. Most Americans didn't even know that Congress was in session. Most of the time I don't know when Congress is in session and least of all in the middle of the summer.

ELECTION RESULTS
   Illinois went for the Democrats but J. Edgar Hoover helped cook the books in Cook County and this enabled Kennedy to take this key state by a tiny margin. But even if Nixon had won in Illinois, Kennedy would still have won in the Electoral College with 7 votes to spare so I don’t understand why the charge is so often made that Hoover's corruption in Illinois gave the election to Kennedy. It is even suggested that Kennedy let Hoover get away with abusive actions from 1961-1963 because Hoover held this on Kennedy in his back pocket. In other words if Kennedy blew the whistle on Hoover's corrupt FBI, Hoover would blow the whistle on Kennedy's corrupt election.

The defeat was a bitter one for the touchy Nixon. Because the result was so close, it became Republican sport in the winter of 1960-61 to blame Nixon very personally for the defeat. Like a close sporting event, the close score led to the emergence of a million experts each of whom knew exactly which mistake had been made and what should have been done instead that would have made the difference. Instead of giving Nixon credit for putting up a fine and close battle against a rich slick charming good-looking Dem, they clobbered Dick with a storm of second-guessing and criticism. The liberal Republicans said that Nixon had been too conservative. The conservative Republicans said that Nixon had been too liberal (similar to the Republican analysis of John McCain's defeat in 2008 – although I say he lost because he was personally discourteous to his opponent during all the debates.) Professional pundits explained for months why Nixon lost and what he could have done to win. Some even tried to blame the referee who counted the votes in Cook County.
   Richard M. Nixon ran for Governor of California in 1962 and lost another close one. It was at this press conference on election night that he made his famous angry statement to the press that ‘you no longer have Nixon to kick around any more.’ The events of 1968 to 74 would prove otherwise. By August of 74 Nixon had become a human soccer ball.

“NO LITTLE KIDS!” - DECEMBER 1960
    One of the most popular movies ever made, and deservedly so, is Scarface, starring Al Pacino as a small time hit-man who rises to drug kingpin. A famous and memorable scene (spoiler alert) involved an assassination attempt on a reporter who is making too many waves against the drug lords. A hit man had been sent to NYC from Columbia to do the job and Scarface is to serve as his guide and driver. They have stuck a bomb to the chassis and the hit-man riding shotgun will blow it up by radio control. But Tony Montana is very upset because the mark has his wife and kids with him. Scarface wants to call it off.
   “I tol you man, No little keds! I don't need that in my life!”
    The hit man tells Tony to shut up and they argue over 15 blocks of Manhattan driving.
   “What it make you feel like big man? Killing a woman and little kids? No way!”
   “Shut up!” says Eduardo.
    Finally Tony calls off the hit by pulling a pistol and shooting the hit man in the head.
   “I tried to tell you! No little kids! But you wouldn't listen. Look at you now!”
   A remarkably similar scene happened to John Kennedy when he was President-elect in December of 1960 at Palm Beach.
   A 73 year old man from Belmont New Hampshire hated Kennedy because he felt that father Joe had bought him the election. Richard Pavlick worked against Kennedy in New Hampshire to no avail and now he decided that if he couldn't prevent-his election, he would prevent his Inauguration.
   Pavlick stuck seven sticks of dynamite on the bumper of his car with a contact trigger. He waited outside of the Kennedy home in Palm Beach Florida. At 8:33 a.m. John walked outside towards his car to drive to Mass at Saint Edgar's Church. Richard Pavlick started the engine. It was going to be an assassination suicide. Tense scary movie music please.
   Just as Pavlick was about to put the engine into drive and do a fast turn and ram Kennedy's car before he had the chance to sit down inside, Jacqueline walked out carrying the crying newborn John John. Pavlick knew he had to call it off, just like Scarface.
   If Jack had been alone he would have died. If Pavlick has the conscience of Eduardo, JFK would have died.
   It had been only after some debate that Jacqueline had even agreed to make the trip from Georgetown to Palm Beach, so Jackie and a few loud “waaahs” from the baby saved the President-elects' life.
    The scene is so close to the Scarface scene in NYC that I have to wonder if Oliver Stone based it on Pavlick. I certainly wouldn't put it past 'The Stoner.' And we all know that Oliver Stone had an avid interest in JFK.
   You'll never guess what job Richard P. Pavlick was retired from. Post Office Worker. Yes, the madman was a POW. There are so many violent incidents with US POW's that its now part of the lexicon to refer to someone who snaps and hurts innocent people as “going postal.” I recently invited John Schneiderman my mailman to my next comedy show at the IBEW Hall in Dorchester. He's already on the guest list. I'm wondering if I made a mistake....

JANUARY 19 1961, A DATE THAT WILL LIVE IN INFAMY
    Democrats like to say that it was Ike that got us into Vietnam. Republicans like to say that it was Kennedy who got us in. They take these historical positions for partisan reasons. I say that Kennedy got us in but that Ike shares the blame equally, especially for the way he pushed Kennedy into thinking it was his patriotic duty to not only continue the US commitment in Southeast Asia, but to step it up a bit.
    The meeting on January 19 between President-elect Kennedy and lame duck President Eisenhower was the exact moment when the United States became committed to a long and losing war in Vietnam.
    Kennedy had already visited the White House on December 6, 1960 as President-elect, and that meeting was cordial and general. The incoming Kennedy team was not there on December 6, as most of them hadn't been appointed yet.
    On the day before the Inauguration the Inauguration Ike invited Kennedy back to the White House for a final round of important talks. By now, this January 19, the Kennedy team was ready,
   MacNamara, Rusk, and Clifford went with Kennedy. Secretary of State Christian Herter and others were there with Eisenhower. It was quite the pow-wow with the big chiefs. History could use a recording of this meeting because accounts differ as to exactly what was said. All agree that the pow-wow was very important, very intense.
   Eisenhower and Herter took complete control of the meeting. They did pretty much all the talking. This wasn't a meeting it was a classroom. It was a dramatic sit-down about Southeast Asia. No one was smiling. The subject matter came a complete surprise to the Kennedy group.
   Ike and Herter took turns preaching in the most solemn imploring tones about the need to meet the threat of Communist aggression in Southeast Asia.
   The key was Laos. The Communists, with the support of China and Russia were threatening to take over Laos. If Laos fell, the surrounding nations would be threatened. Once Laos went down, Thailand would fall too. So would Vietnam, Burma, Cambodia, Pakistan, and possibly Malaysia. Even Rhode Island might be threatened.
   Ike told Kennedy that the United States was going to have to send ground forces into Laos, and the sooner the better!
   Rusk, MacNamara, Kennedy and Clifford more or less turning red from trying to keep a straight face in the face of these awful statements.
    If he failed to act, the new president would soon be taking the blame for “the Laos loss.”
   Kennedy, Mac, Rusk and Cliff were numb. They had arrived at the White House in a festive mood on Election Eve and now they were being handed a confused uncertain US casualty-guaranteed war that none of them had been contemplating at all. This was a real buzz-kill.
   None of the new guys knew enough about Southeast Asia and Laos to argue with Eisenhower. In addition, the weight of Eisenhower's prestige, charm and experience overpowered the incoming minds, adding magic to the points raised by Christian and Dwight. Who dared to argue with these guys? Little people were dazzled by Camelot, but Camelot was dazzled by General Eisenhower and Secretary of State Herter.
   The Kennedy youth were listening too well to their elders. They weren't challenging Ike on any of this. Eisenhower was selling the Kennedy team the idea that we absolutely had to intervene and win the civil wars of Southeast Asia.
   Kennedy and his brains trust were brainwashed. Two months later there stood President Kennedy on national TV, pre-empting Gunsmoke (my father was furious), telling Americans that the preservation of a non-Communist government in Laos was crucial to the security of the United States, and that we probably were going to have to go in, just as we did in Korea.
   Americans looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders,
    “Hey Joe, did you ever hear of a country called Laos?”
   “Yeah, it's in Africa you dummy.”
    If Ike doesn't have this big sit-down with Kennedy's boys on Election Eve a lot of the Nam nightmare might never have gone down. It was here on 1/19/61 that the USA crossed the Mekong.
    Bob MacNamara's best-selling memoir on the Vietnam War, In Retrospect, says in retrospect that he begs to differ with most of the other famous accounts of this January 19 meeting. MacNamara did not get the impression that Ike was specifically saying that the United States should intervene militarily in Laos. He thought Ike was making it vague as to exactly how the United States had to prevent the loss of Laos. Bob says that Ike definitely said that Laos must not fall and if it did it would lead to the fall of all of Southeast Asia. One other source agrees with Mac on this. But most of the other players heard Ike say that the United States must intervene with military force, including ground troops to prevent the fall of Laos.
    Mac thought that Ike and Herter seemed to gloat a little about handing over a problem that could not be solved, yet had to be solved at once.
    Kennedy left the meeting and said to Powers, “Can you believe that guy, telling me I have to do the one thing he's been afraid to do for 8 years?”

THE JFK DREAM TEAM
   First of all, no. Stevenson doesn't get Secretary of State. That's what Adlai wanted. That's was what his millions of supporters wanted. But when Kennedy had needed Stevenson's support during the campaign against Nixon, it wasn't there. Now comes payback time. You can have the UN, Adlai. The Stevenson cult of millions was livid that Saint Steven didn't get State. Too bad.
   Besides, Kennedy wanted someone more pliable than this ego.
   There was talk about putting little brother Bob in the cabinet, but he wanted no part of it. RFK wanted to run for Senate. But after a lot of back and forth and and forth they gave RFK the Justice Department, an injustice to more qualified people.
   Superlawyer Clark Clifford heard that Robert Kennedy was going to be named Attorney General and he spoke frankly to the President-elect about the accusations of nepotism that would surely arise. Robert Kennedy had passed the bar but he had never actually practiced law and now he was going to become AG just because he was John Kennedy's little brother. “You've got to admit, Jack. It looks pretty bad.”
   To Clifford’s surprise, John agreed. The problem was Kennedy senior. Joe Kennedy was determined that his son Bobby was going to be AG and that was that. Kennedy asked Clifford to go see Joe Kennedy and “talk my old man out of it,” a strange assignment.
   Cliff went to JPK's crib. Joe listened patiently to Clifford’s pleas that naming Robert Kennedy Attorney General would be a huge political mistake. Joe then thanked Cliff for stopping by, and said that Bobby Kennedy will be Attorney General. Clifford left in a huff. And to think how the Dems accused George W. Bush (at first) of being too dominated by his father.
   Contrary to a common historical perception, LBJ rates highly in the Kennedy cabinet. Presidents may relegate their VP to insignificance, but Kennedy relied on Lyndon often. This is not to say that Johnson didn't always remain a petulant baby, feeling insecure and resentful because he thought the Yankee establishment liberals looked down on him. But when crucial decisions had to be made, John Kennedy wanted Lyndon there and he was always permitted to speak frankly.
   Of course many of Kennedy’s political intimates disliked VP LBJ, possibly in part because he hated them. Kennedy reminded his brains trust not to look down on Lyndon B. Johnson. Jack defended Johnson against the bad-mouthing,

   “Remember, he looks down on you. None of you were elected to dog-catcher and he was the most powerful Senator in the Congress. If he thinks he’s better than me that’s my problem, but don’t get the idea that you’re better than him.”

     That's a good one.
     For Secretary of State, Kennedy chose Dean Rusk, a man he had never met. Walt Rostow had highly recommended Rusk, and that was good enough for Kennedy which says a lot about what an important historical figure was Walter Rostow. Rusk was President of the Rockefeller Foundation at the time of his appointment, but he was no Clark Rockefeller. “Deano” came from a poor boyhood in Georgia. Rusk is always described as “soft-spoken.” Like George Schultz, Rusk made a lot of violent decisions in a soft voice.
    Rusk initially turned down the State job because he couldn't afford the pay cut. Kennedy contacted the Rockefeller Foundation to get this problem solved. A “generous” termination settlement for Dean was arranged. That's the term they always use, but they never say how much. In any case the Rockefeller equivalent of “two weeks pay” made Rusk a Richie Rich before he read his first State Department memo.
    Clifford says that he was disappointed in the choice of Rusk because it showed that Kennedy intended to run his own foreign policy. In other words, CC thought of Rusk is a bit of a 'yes man.' Why would Clark Clifford want Kennedy to turn over the helm to the Secretary of State? I think the Secretary of State should be a yes man or woman, whose opinions are respected in private discussions with the President but the President still controls all important decisions. I don't think the State Department should be coming up with innovations, and then trying to get the President to sign on. I guess that's the way Clark Clifford would have liked it.
   David Halberstam is very cruel to Rusk in his book, The Best and the Brightest. In a four-page tirade, Dave made it seem as though Rusk had nothing going for him at all. No one survives Halberstam's standards except Halberstam.
    For Secretary of Defense Kennedy decided upon a man who had zero experience in defense issues, Robert MacNamara, and it showed in his performance. 'Big Mac' gave vague windy interviews right up to his death in 2009. I read his boring useless book Out in the Cold, then tossed it into a snowbank so it could live up to the title. Give it a rest, Mac. You messed up. All the philosophizing and pontificating about the dangers of nuclear war does not make up for your disastrous decisions in Vietnam. I saw him interviewed at least a hundred times. He talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and never says a damned thing.
    When Kennedy asked him to serve in his cabinet Mac was the newly appointed president of President of the Ford Motor Company. Henry Ford III was ungraciously angry at both Kennedy and MacNamara for taking his key leader away. A lot of strings had been pulled and a lot of publicity had been given to MacNamara as being the first person not named Ford to head the Ford Motor Company. In one short year MacNamara had clearly helped with the Ford profit margin and showed a real genius with stats and management. Mogul Ford was steamed that Kennedy had asked Bob to leave the private sector for public service and that Bob had said yes. But after a couple of weeks Ford cooled his engine and gave his blessing.
   At least MacNamara actually lost money to take the job with the government, unlike the Dean Rusk buyout that Kennedy squeezed out of The Rockefeller Foundation. MacNamara had to divest himself of large holdings in Ford stock because Ford did major business with the Defense Department. Congressional hearings on Robert's appointment led to further demands that he get rid of stocks he owned in any company that did more than $10,000 worth of business with the US government. Mac friends protested that this was extreme; that there were too many ways to measure how much business is done between a company and a country. MacNamara gave in completely, lost 4 million bucks, and the little controversy about his investments died on the vine. When Kennedy introduced MacNamara to the nation as his new Secretary of Defense he mentioned in the very first sentence that “he is coming on board at great personal financial sacrifice.”
     Kennedy had more room than most presidents to pick his cabinet personally in whatever way he saw fit. It's usually hard to win the the Presidency without the help of key Congressional leaders, and you have to pay them back with cabinet appointments. But most Congresspersons resented Kennedy, the rich spoiled brat who never worked a day in his life. They didn't help him much in Congress, and in fact he had few close friends in the Dome. His father's money had paved the way to his success both in Congress and to the White House so when he took over he didn't owe many favors. He could pick his brother for AG, and he could name several cabinet members who were personally total strangers and were from outside government.
    All in all it was a fine collection of talent, the sarcastic title of The Best and the Brightest notwithstanding.
    Lyndon Johnson bragged to Speaker of the House Rayburn about how brilliant the new Kennedy team was.
   “They might be bright, Lindy. But I'd feel a lot better if at least one of them had run for dog-catcher one time.”
     President Kennedy later missed Johnson's help in the Senate. The Democrats had a time of it getting many of Jack's Bills passed because Johnson was not longer running the show there.

“Mr Union Lawyer” - Kennedy picked a rich Jewish lawyer Arthur Goldberg for Secretary of Labor. Big business wasn't particularly thrilled with this choice, not because they were anti-Semitic, but because Goldberg had amassed his personal fortune as a Union lawyer. Kennedy was going to insure strong union support for his Administration and his party by naming a man who was so pro-union that some big business leaders refused to speak to him except at formal negotiations. Some magnates literally wouldn't give Artie the time of day on the street. Now he was going to be Kennedy's man in labor-business disputes.
   Goldberg was certainly one of the 'best and brightest.' He finished first in his class at Northwestern University Law School (where he earned the nickname “Goldie,”) and later became a member of the US Supreme Court.
   Goldberg was making more than $125,000 a year as a union lawyer when Kennedy asked him to come on board at $24,000 a year.

INAUGURAL 1-1961
A major league snowstorm hit D.C. on Inauguration eve 1961. More than 11 inches of snow fell on a city that can't handle three. People from Boston who visit D.C. and see how it reacts to a minor snowstorm have to just laugh. But this one was big even by Buffalo standards. lasting through the night, ending just in time for a panic clean up around the Capitol steps and the thing going off as planned.
   The night before was party time for Jack and friends. He attended an Inaugural ball with famous show biz people singing and dancing and making speeches. Kennedy chain-smoked Cuban cigars and applauded everyone. The fat lady even sang for Jack. Ethel Merman was there. Also on the bill was Ella Fitzgerald, Harry Belafonte, Bette Davis, Leonard Bernstein, Dave Brubeck, and Gayle Ga Ga (Lady Ga Ga's mom.) When it got late, someone slipped word that across the street Frank Sinatra was throwing a much better private party for an even more impressive list of celebs. JFK slipped out on Jackie, leaving her with Lyndon Johnson and Lady Bird for four hours. When he returned just after 11:30 he made a lame excuse about a meeting with Paul Nitze, but she knew better. Jacqueline gave him a dirty look. You can't blame her. Not because he had done a Presidential version of boys night out in Vegas, but because he had made her hang out for four hours with Lyndon Johnson, the only U.S. president who doesn't pass the butcher test (over and above politics, you'd like him if he was the butcher.)
   Early on Sunday morning Washington was at a snowbound standstill. The snow was still falling, but lightly. There was virtually no traffic and clean-up crews were sleeping in. The snow was deep and the sidewalks were an obstacle course. At 7:30 a.m. President-elect John Kennedy made his way all alone across several Georgetown blocks to the Saint Thomas Church on J Street. When he walked in there were about 20 people compared to a usual crowd of about 400. Over on the left side about halfway up he saw his mother, Rose Kennedy who had also managed her way through the snow alone on foot. She smiled warmly at him, not so much because she was happy to see him, but more because it meant a great deal to her to see that her son felt it was that important to get to church at a time like this.
Kennedy’s inaugural speech has been reduced to a sound byte and has been overplayed in this country for almost 50 years. This was a hawkish Cold Warlike speech in which Kennedy tried to make it clear that he was no liberal when it came to foreign policy. The US under him was going to “pay any price” and “meet any burden” in the defense of liberty. In other words he would use our nukes if Krushchov tried to take all of Berlin by military force.
   Kennedy recruited the famous poet Robert Frost was to read to the Inaugural crowd. Kennedy was fond of Frost, but later on in the Administration would have a major falling out with the useless poet.
   The weather was very cold and very sunny and Frost was very old. 'Frosty' was shaking from the cold and couldn't see the paper for his old eyes and the bright sun. So Frost apologized to the crowd, explaining that he couldn't finish the new material he had written just for the occasion and instead fell back on one of his oldies but goodies that he knew by heart. Frost got a nice applause when he finished delivering the 'greatest hits' poem with expertise.


GOLF STORIES
   Kennedy knew that in taking over for the heroic Dwight David Eisenhower he had big golf cleats to fill. How could he forget? Ike had done so much putting in the Oval Office that the floors were severely damaged with cleat marks. Kennedy used to sit in his rocking chair, pondering critical decisions and have to look down and see Ike's cleat marks, the old man's shadow. Sometimes visitors would point out the cleat marks and say mean things about Ike, thinking that would work. But that was a turn-off, like when people put down one of the other comics a show I am a part of. Ike was a colleague in a rare office. When these coy snipers would leave JFK would remark that “They'd lick Ike cleats for him if he were still President.”
    One day while he was running for President, JFK was golfing in Maryland with RFK and a famous reporter, Joe Alsop. Jack hit a ball that was headed straight for a hole-in-one. Alsop and the Kennedys watched in awe as the ball was about to go in.
   “Get out! Get out! Get outa there!” Jack yelled.
   The ball hit the pole with too much force and rolled away.
   Also asked him why on earth he was rooting against making a hole-in-one. Kennedy said, “That's just what I need to read in the press, another golfer in the White House.”
   Ike's excessive golfing was a major negative for his public image, and that legacy still haunts him. A radio talk show host bully will still rant, pretending to know history, that Ike was “more like Mr Golf than Mr. President.” Kennedy knew that the race would be close, and who knows, maybe missing that shot did make a difference. The golf shot that changed history by not going in.
    In any case, it is not well known that Kennedy was actually a pretty good golfer, and was better than Ike. I don't know much at all about golf, but I am sure that both were better golfers than Bill Clinton. I know baseball swings and can take a pretty good guess at golf swings, and Bill's is fairly bad. John Kennedy was a good all-round athlete. He was an excellent swimmer, could throw a pretty good long football pass and place a line single to the opposite field in a soft ball game. But he drew the line at polo. Jackie tried to talk him into learning polo but he just looked at her in disbelief until she gave up. Football was by far his favorite sport to watch. Kennedy was at least as knowledgeable about the college game, as he was of the NFL.

NEW COLD WAR THINKING
   Jack and his and advisors saw the Eisenhower years as being too focused on a simple black-white perception of Cold War alliances. To Eisenhower, foreign nations were either for us or against us. The US under Ike therefore saw ‘neutralism’ as an act of open hostility. The ‘non-aligned’ states, with India the most important example, were therefore “tilting” towards Communism.
   The term ‘free world’ under the lecturing skills of John Dulles had taken on capital letters, much to the dismay of many prominent Democrat liberals. To divide the world between the Communists and the Free World was going too far. Why should there be no middle ground? Why did every nation no matter how small or how distant or how poor have to pick a team?
    The Kennedys, Dick Goodwin, Ted Sorenson and Artie Schlesinger all preferred a new reality, especially in light of the proliferation of new nations arising from the fall of western colonialism. To their mind, the world was no longer locked into a Cold War tug-of-war in which one side was going to have to let go of the rope and suffer complete collapse. Neutralism did not have to been as an act of hostility against the United States. Nations were allowed to take slices of US philosophy and combine it with some elements of socialist philosophy if they wanted to. They didn’t have to be totally Free World or totally Communist in their outlook and government. They could practice cafeteria democracy if they chose to.
   The perceived split between China and Russia helped propagate the new thinking. If the Communist bloc was no longer monolithic, then there was no reason why we had to be monolithic in defense. “Against the world of coercion,” announced Secretary of State Rusk, “we affirm the world of choice.”
    This is stimulating talk, but in actual practice Ike was more pluralistic and tolerant than the Kennedy team implied, and the Kennedy team was more strictly Cold War orientated than their own rhetoric implied. It was Ike who had refused to undertake a Cold War military intervention in the Suez Canal Crisis when the momentum of the times urged him to, and it was Kennedy who chose to risk World War III with a Cold Warrior all-or-nothing stance in the Cuban missile crisis when the momentum of the times urged him not to.
   Apparently this new wave of freedom of choice didn’t apply to a Cuba which had chosen socialism pluralistically.

HAM IN SPACE - JANUARY 31 1961
   Kennedy' tenure wasn't two weeks old when the United States sent a rocket into outer space with a living creature on board. It was the USA that sent the first mammal into outer space, not the Russians. On January 31 a Sammy Redstone rocket sent a chimpanzee by the name of Ham into a low earth orbit for 16 minutes.
   Actually, the animal didn't have a name until he returned safely. NASA had reasoned that if the chimp got a name, became a national celebrity, then died in a mission failure, the results would have been quite damaging. So an unknown chump chimp went up and a returned a champ chimp named Ham. The creature back alive after mission accomplished.

MAN IN SPACE APRIL 12 1961 – VOSTOK 1
A few weeks later the Russians sent a human named Yuri Gargarin into full orbit making the Ham mission look rather useless and laughable by comparison. Gargarin later toured the world and gave so many so many self-glorifying interviews that he turned out to be a bigger ham than Ham.
   On April 12, 1961 the USSR made real space history when it sent Gargarin into outer space. We don't like to admit it, but he is the Christopher Columbus of space travel, not Neil Armstrong.
   The United States had to pretend it was happy when the Soviet Union shocked the world by sending Yuri Gagarin into outer space and around the globe, returning him home to Moscow safely.
   Gagarin was basically riding in a little broom closet on top of an ICBM SS-6 missile. He traveled at 18,000 miles and hour and 187 miles high on April 12, 1961.
   As his VOSTOK-1 craft began to fall to earth Gagarin ejected and spent the last 7 kilometers floating down by parachute. One Russian farmer woman and her plain granddaughter watched as the first astronaut fell safely back home.
The USA sent its congratulations but the smile was fake. It was the same smile you gave your grandmother when you got socks for your eighth birthday. This was a real setback for U.S. national defense. Kennedy's team couldn't put a positive spin on this one. In 1957 it was a Russian dog Latka, today a man, tomorrow a nuke warhead. For the first time Kennedy's campaign lie that the Soviets had a commanding lead in missiles and missile technology might be true after all.
   Within three months Kennedy saw to it that the budget for NASA was doubled. The Russians were up 2-0 in the space race, first with Sputnik, now with Vostok 1.
   The worst thing about the Gagarin space flight was that it put Kennedy's macho ego on the defensive and helped lead the United States into the Vietnam War. The manned Soviet space lead was a defeat for Kennedy in the Cold War, and it would be followed by an ever greater setback later the same month at the Bay of Pigs. Krushchov would then bully Kennedy at the Paris summit. It is no exaggeration to say that Kennedy made the American commitment to Vietnam partly as a compensation for a series of defeats elsewhere, including space. He wanted to get re-elected in 1964 and had to stand up to the Communists somewhere, and that place was Vietnam. More on that later of course.
Yuri Gagarin became a hero all over the world. A story went around that his first words when he looked out the window a the earth below were, “I don't see any God up here.” Actually his first words were, “This is one small step for Russia, One giant leap for Communism.”
    Gagarin was elected to the Soviet legislature in Moscow in 1962. He died in a jet plane crash in May 1968. Yuri was testing a Mig-15 fighter when it crashed. Garagin is buried in the High Kremlin Walls.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS – DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
    Kennedy inherited an unhappy situation in the nearby Dominican Republic. A dictator ruled there who was not friendly to the United States, a little unusual for the region. The rough customer's name was Hector Miguel Torrez Trujillo and he was a rough customer with his own people.
    On February 15, 1961 Secretary of State Dean Rusk informed Kennedy that if we didn't sweeten our sugar trade policies towards the Dominican Republic it was far too possible that a Communist dictatorship could take control there. Kennedy snapped at Rusk, “Come on Dean, I have enough on my plate without having to panic over the stupid Dominican Republic!” Rusk turned white with disbelief, but before he could say anything Kennedy broke into a laugh and said, “I'm just kidding. Of course it's important.”
    Rusk was not yet used to the famous 'Kennedy wit.'
    The State Department's Bureau of Inter-American Affairs and the CIA were in favor of inspiring a revolution to overthrow Trujillo. Rusk on the other hand, was trying to caution Kennedy that a little rebellion could result in a pro-Communist reactionary regime taking Trujillo's place. It was too rusky.
     In the DR the CIA continued to conspire, and Rusk continued to perspire. Then the Dominican people “took matters into their own hands and overthrew Rafael the dictator.” On May 30 1961 a military coup put Trujillo into an early grave and ignited a crisis. Dominican leftists and rightists both presumed that the United States was responsible for the assassination of Trujillo. The reputation for coups and CIA conspiracies was hard to live down. In denying responsibility for murder and revolution in the DR, the United States was the wolf who cried wolf.
    Rusk and Kennedy both tried to convince the public that the USA had taken no part in the rebellion/coup. They both were embarrassed to learn that the CIA, without White House or State Department support, permission, or even knowledge had indeed been assisting the Dominican conspirators. The CIA had not planned, inspired or launched the coup, but CIA assistance certainly constituted a flashing neon green light for anyone sitting on the fence. John Kennedy had aided and abetted the assassination of a foreign leader without even knowing about it. It was in some ways similar to the coup Kennedy would later reluctantly approve in Saigon in November 1963.
   The US suggested a certain Mr. Joseph Marco Belanger to replace the fallen Trujillo. Belanger had been the powerless President of the DR while Trujillo had been King. The US saw the seating of Marc Belanger to lead the DR as the least volatile solution. But an election in late 1962 put a man named Juan Bosch in power. We didn't want this guy in there. Bosch's claim to fame was as a writer. Talk about weak.
    He didn't save the day. Juan bosched things up in the DR big time. Things would not settle down in the DR in Kennedy's time. LBJ sent the US Marines “down there” to settle things in 1965.

COLONIALISM - THE BAD GUY
   From 1960 to 1963 the explosive birth of new nations was the talk of the earth, and deservingly so. What is less remembered is the struggle against colonialism in the areas where independence was desired but blocked by stubborn mother countries who didn't get the memo that it was time to let their old provinces go free.
    There was one colonialist power above all others that was the bad guy in all of this anti-colonialism fervor. Take a guess as to which country was the villain.
    No, it was not the Soviet Union. In fact the USSR led the cry against colonialism all over the world. It was arguably the most effective weapon that Communist propaganda used to win young and small nations to Communist ideology. The Soviet Union was a real buddy to all the small oppressed nations of the third world, or at least it pretended to be rather effectively. Opposition colonialism was a pillar of Communist ideology and put Kennedy at a disadvantage in the Cold War.
   Guess again. Who was the one that all the new little nations hated, the one that was the subject of one protest petition at the UN after another. No it wasn't the United States. Sure, we owned Guam and Samoa and colonial possessions like Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Sure, the USA was vulnerable to colonial accusations in places like Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, and Germany. But the UN and the Third World were not really pointing the main finger at Sam.
   No, it wasn't Great Britain, the nation that colonialism is practically synonymous with. The mother country was getting with the liberal program and divesting itself of its colonial possessions in gradual stages and had been doing so since the end of World War One. There were plenty of left wing critics of Great Britian, but they were scattered and ineffective considering the record. No, Great Britain was not the colonialism Great Satan.
    Maybe France? France was bogged down by anti-colonial revolution, more of a war really, in nearby French Algeria, but on the other hand it had pulled its flag out of Vietnam and seemed to be going the same road as Great Britian towards gradual emancipation of its colonies.
    How bout China? Nope. - India? Nope. - Spain? Nope. - Israel? Nope. All right we give up.
   Portugal.
   The little Iberian nation of Portugal, one eighth the size of the BP oil slick of 2010, was the bad guy of the anti-colonialism movement.
Its historically perfect that Portugal was the last colonial power to hold out. After all it had started the whole crazy trend of little Europe colonizing the entire big world in the late 1400's. Now after Diaz and De Gama started it, Doc Salazar, the President of Portugal was determined not to by the one that ended it. Portugal would not budge on its colonial possessions when the entire rest of the world was doing so to some degree or another. Even the Soviet Union had withdrawn from Austria in 1955.
   Portugal had a significant little empire overseas, primarily in Africa. It had overseas possessions that added up to many times more land than Portugal itself. We can understand why Portugal was reluctant to surrender its empire to progressivism with no compensation. It needed the dough from the colonies in order to thrive at home. Great Britain and France were rich countries who could afford to let its colonies go. Portugal was no France or England and it held out when everyone else gave in. It also was not very democratic except in a plastic way. Like Spain next door, it was dictatorial. In the cause of hanging on to colonialism stubbornly, this helped.
   The United Nations was mad at Portugal (and South Africa) for every day of the Kennedy Administration. Every few months some third world country sponsored a new resolution call on Portugal to give up its overseas colonies, and they usually passed handily.
An important issue is the very world “colonies.” Portugal did not recognize that what it owned in Africa and Asia were “colonies.” The very word implied unfair subjugation. Portugal insisted that what it legally owned were “provinces.” In other words, to Lisbon, the thousands of square miles in Portuguese Africa were actually a part of Portugal. So when some UN heavy asked President Salazar why he would not let go of his colonies like every other old power was doing these days, Salazar could answer, “Colonies? I don't know what you're talking about?” Colony vs province was a heavy semantic issue.
   Let's have a look at the Portuguese “provinces.”
   The most important province/colony was Angola. A violent revolution against the mother country erupted there just two months into the Kennedy Administration. Angola would be a plague on international relations for 30 years beyond Kennedy. The problem wasn't so much that Angola was a Portuguese colony, and outmoded for the times. That was a serious contentious political issue per se, to be sure. The real problem was that Portugal treated the native African like second-class citizens, and that's being kind. There wouldn't have been a violent revolution in Angola at the beginning of Kennedy's terms if Portugal had only treated the Africans in Angola better. Portugal was not just an outmoded colonial power, it was an outmoded racist neanderthal colonial power in an age of progressive change. Native blacks allegedly had some voting rights and some voice in the Lisbon Parliament, but it was all a hoax. Out of millions of blacks in Angola about 389 passed all the requirements for the franchise. Basically for a black to qualify to vote the test was to recite Homer's Ilyad backwards in four languages, then capture three lions. But for a white to qualify for the vote, one had to be able to say the word, “Howdy.”
The second enormous Portuguese African colony/province was Mozambique. (My dad told me he once had a blind date with a Mozambique. I asked him what he meant my that. He said “That's a woman that when you wake up with her the next morning, you wish you were in Mozambique.”)
    The oppressive situation in Angola and Mozambique wasn't as bad for blacks as South African apartheid (we'll get to that), but it was close. It wasn't as bad as pre-1939 Nazi Germany, but it was close enough that an angry college student would make the comparison in an emotional moment. The economy of Mozambique was not as positive as that of Angola (although certainly the economies of both Angola and Mozambique in 1961 were better than the Obama economy today .... I'm kidding.)
   Third there was Portuguese Guinea. This small colony was more close to Portugal economically. 90% of little PG exports went straight to the mother country.
   The Cape Verde Islands are of less importance in the colonial debate. The economy there is very weak, as weak as my left ankle (tendonitis.) The tendoncy is to want to get out of there. Today in my home state of Massachusetts there is a remarkably high percentage of immigrants from the CVI. One friendly Cape Verdian lady is a toll collector on the Mass Pike.
    Portugal's has an island colony of Sao Tome and Principe. The principe industry there is cocoa. When the price of cocoa goes down, the suicide rate skyrockets in Sao Tome. Enough said.
   In Asia there was Portuguese Timor in the Indonesia region. There have been many horrible mass murders there over the past several decades. Timor is a complex political issue but lets just mark it on the Portuguese empire map for now.
   Last but least is the little island-city of Macao, across the waterway from Hong Kong. Portuguese Macao did most of its trading with Communist China rather than with “the metropole” as the mother country is often called in the books.
   So a map shows quite an impressive little empire for Portugal in 1961. It was better suited for 1891 when empires were the current craze. 70 years later the two world wars, the League of Nations, the United Nations, and the emergence of African solidarity (or at least the beginning of it) put the writing on the wall for Portugal. Unfortunately, it was written in a language everyone could read except the governing powers in Lisbon.
    In March 1961 a Nat Turner style rebellion swept Angola putting 1,345 ruling whites and 232 black Uncle Toms to the sword. This violence got the attention of all of Africa, the UN and the USA. The Angolan revolution had to be addressed. The end result was the UN Angola Resolution. Before we get to detail there, lets back track to the key set-up political conference which more or less enabled the rebellion of 3-61. That would be the United Nations “Declaration on Colonialism” of December 1960.

DECLARATION ON ANTI-COLONIALISM 12-60
    18 African nations became independent in 1960!
    In 1960 the entire demographic of the United Nations changed in favor of what later became known, perhaps condescendingly as “The Third World.” The idea behind the term was that there was the “First World” of the USA and the older powers of Western Europe. Then there was the “Second World” of the USSR, China Yugoslavia and the Communist movement everywhere. And by default, all the smaller and the forgotten nations were called the “Third World.” It almost is a euphemism for the “Poor World.”
    In any case, by whatever collective name, the nations outside the Cold War alignment were going to be heard from more and more from now on at the UN, and they were going to organize outside the UN too. Step aside Uncle Sam. Step aside Karl Marx. Togo is standing tall and has some things to say now.
    The explosion of new countries didn't change the balance of military power on the planet, but it decisively changed the balance of voting power in the UN General Assembly. From now on the “Afro-Asian bloc” could introduce resolutions condemning the great powers and could get those resolutions passed at will. The problem for the AA Bloc was that important resolutions could not be converted into concrete action until the UN Security Council approved, and every member of the UN Security Council had the veto. And you could never pleas all the powers that had veto powers.
    So the little nations became paper tigers with all bark and no bite, but that was a huge step up from being nothing at all. The Afro-Asian power to make rhetorical waves in the UN was not exactly insignificant. These UN progressive resolves political and moral pressure on the big powers to get with the program or at least own up and admit that they were sticking to outmoded forms of thought and progress, which none of them cared to do. So UN General Assembly resolutions that accomplished nothing accomplished plenty. The first good case in point was the “Declaration on Colonialism” of 12-60 which I re-name the “Declaration of Anti-colonialism,” which is what it was.
    The Declaration said that the time when colonial powers could rule overseas empires was over. No longer could a Portugal or a France keep foreign colonies against the expressed will of the natives. There were implied threats of boycotts and perhaps even military action against bully nations who refused to de-colonize.
   The vote in the General Assembly was 90 to 0 in favor of the Declaration with nine abstentions. Guess which nine abstained. The nine colonial powers abstained. Or eight colonial powers plus the Dominican Republic I should say) They didn't want to vote no and admit that they were bad, so they abstained to minimize the political damage.
    Of all the colonial abstainers, the United States was the least guilty, and I'm not saying that because I'm an American citizen. The US overseas possessions of Puerto Rico, Samoa and the like were not pining for independence. They were enjoying the tremendous economic benefits of dependence. Except for a few extremist donkeys, the progressives of the third world were not pointing furious fingers at the United States for its colonial oppression of overseas American provinces. They were mad at the United States for consistently refusing to properly condemn the other bullies.
   And why was the USA so morally defunct on this, especially since the US since FDR had been consistently opposed to colonialism, arguably as much so as the new Afro-Asian bloc of 61?
   That's an easy one. Cold War prism. Just because the Ghanas and the Swazilands of the world decided to see themselves outside of the context of the Cold War didn't mean the United States had the luxury of that approach. America was in Cold War water up to its neck. Senegal didn't have any Soviet missiles targeted at them so it was easier for them to ignore the Cold War and start up trouble with Free World colonialist powers.
   Most of the colonialism bad guys were NATO allies of the United States. This put the US in a bad spot in the middle of the anti-colonialism fever. Ike and Christian in December of 1960 decided it wasn't worth condemning our important NATO allies on an issue which was morally important but chump change compared to the threat of nuclear annihilation?
   Senator Wayne Morse said that Ike came close to approving a yes vote but was talked out of it by the right-wing in his cabinet, which does indicate that the United States sincerely wanted to vote with the Third World in its infancy. Portugal was an important NATO ally and we had a naval base in the Azores, and unfortunately that counted more at the moment. Kennedy inherited the same dilemma that Ike faced in December of 1960.
    One clause in the Declaration of Anti-colonialism of 1960 that bothered both Ike and Kennedy, and influenced the choice to abstain on more than one vote was the one that said that it should count for nothing at all whether a given province/colony was properly prepared for independence. It was to be independence for all the old colonies immediately with no timetables, no conditions, and no preparations. That seemed unwise to many American leaders whose opinion counted. There was already a disastrous example of what could go wrong in play and that was what happened in the Belgian Congo in 1960-61. Instant independence led to an international disaster and a horribly bloody civil war that could have been avoided if the path to independence had been better managed in careful stages.
   The bottom line for the Angola situation is that the Declaration on Colonialism of 1960 gave moral justification to the the violent revolution of March 1961. It was like the Brothers Karazimov. That Russian novel had one intellectual brother advocating violence and revolution in his egghead writing. Then his little brother actually went out and killed people for the cause and the older brother said “What the hell did you do, oh my God!” To which the little brother said, “I read your book and you told me to do it! Besides, I thought you said you didn't believe in God.” To which the older brother said, “Maybe I do right now. Why did you take me so literally. I'm just trying to make a buck as a writer.” I'm paraphrasing the story just a bit, but the point is that verbiage of the 1960 UN resolution led to the guns and knives of the 1961 Angolan revolution, and would carry over into many other deadly places before long.

SOUTHWEST AFRICA
   Bordering Angola is another huge oppressed colony and that is Southwest Africa. SWA in 61 is not really a colony, it's a more of an abused and antiquated fascist mandate. Today this land is the nation of Namibia. Back then it was owned by the nation of South Africa and had to live under the horrible laws of apartheid.
    The ruling white minority the African people of Southwest Africa treated the black majority even worse than the arrogant Portuguese treated blacks in Angola.
    The UN passed many a resolution condemning South Africa for the way it treated its own people. But life in SWA was worse. South Africa was imposing this evil state system on a foreign territory. The UN considered South Africa to be a usurper.
    After World War One the League of Nations had handed Southwest Africa to South Africa as part of the so-called Mandate System. The victors shelled out the spoils in terms of “Mandates.” This was a vague enough term but basically it meant that you govern the place and you own the place but you have to play nice with the inhabitants because some day the ideal goal is to grant these places independence, but by then you have established such positive economic and cultural ties with these states that they are your permanent allies on the globe. In the meantime you can exploit them for economic gain, and you can use it as a military base, but you explicitly agree to try and be good to the people. Give them hospitals and schools and bridges and rights, and you can own them in the name of the UN. That was the Mandate system employed by the League of Nations between the World Wars.
    Most nations lived up to these obligations to some significant degree. Iraq was a Mandate nation. France and England had mandates in Syria and Palestine. Even when mother mandate states failed, they at least made an attempt to promote and develop the well-being of the governed territories.
    But South Africa had never even pretended to try to be nice to its mandate. It instituted rude apartheid immediately. It was an 'in your face' defiance of the League of Nations and then the clenched too bad fist was waved at the United Nations later. The League of Nations and the the UN was not going to invade South Africa over apartheid, and South Africa knew it and exploited this fact for more than half a century. It did as it pleased and it did the same to Southwest Africa as it did to its own. The United Nations passed one resolution after another ordering South Africa to get out of Namibia, but South Africa recalled JFK's favorite Chinese proverb, “There is a lot of noise in the hall. But no one comes in the room.”


SPANISH COLONY SITUATION
   Spain could afford to take a slightly more liberal approach to the wave of world-wide anti-colonialism since it had far less to lose.
   Getting small now we get to Ifni, sometimes known as Spanish Sahara, a colonial enclave in the Morocco region. Then there is Fernando Poo, too.

ANGOLA RESOLUTION
    The United States abstained from the vote on the first Afro-Asian resolution condemning Portugal and blaming Lisbon for the rebellion in Angola.
    As always there was no pleasing anyone with policy. The pro-Africa group at the State Department were mad at Kennedy for telling Stevenson to abstain when he should have voted yes. The military hawks were angry that Kennedy hadn't stood more behind our NATO ally and voted no. They were even angrier when they learned that Kennedy allowed American experts to help draft the resolution even though abstaining on the vote. The idea was to get inside the angry Afro-Asian movement and tone it down. In this case participation was more productive than defiance. The generals had a tough time with that logic, but I don't. I think its great. That's why I'm a registered Republican even though I hate a lot of things about them. Infiltrate and tone these one-sided psychos down.
There was some disagreement within the Administration as to exactly how important the Azores air base was to American security. For one thing the strip was going to become a free-agent at the end of 1962 and when Doc Salazar started reading US press concerns about this he quickly made the US lease long-term.
   The Afro-Asian bloc drafted a second UN resolution on Angola a few weeks later and this time the US voted yes, to the disdain of the “Europeanists” in the State Department.

CLOSING THE FICTIONAL MISILE GAP
     In his farewell speech, Eisenhower warned of the dangers from our nations "military-industrial complex." That line gets quoted by the tens of thousands. Ike had kept a tight lid on defense spending, but somehow kept U.S. defenses strong.
     Kennedy campaigned on an alleged "missile gap" between the USSR and the USA. John spoke as if America was way behind the Soviet Union in missiles and missile technology just because of Sputnik. In fact both empires were beginning to deploy ICBM land-based missiles in approximately equal numbers in 1960 and the USA had a definite lead in submarine missiles. NATO also had medium range missiles in Europe.
   As President he would have to back up his pledge to rebuild our supposedly depleted national defense. After those charges against Ike for letting our national defense go to rust, Kennedy had no option to cut defense spending like some presidents do. Kennedy was forced by his political posturing to have to raise the ante in the arms race.

   From the first day he was President, Kennedy knew the true extent of American nuclear superiority. It was an even bigger US lead than he had imagined when he claimed the Russians had it in the 1959-60 campaign. If the missile gap was what he claimed it was on the campaign trail, Kennedy never would have been able to stand up so boldly to Krushchev in the two major confrontations of Berlin and Cuba.
   By the time Kennedy lost his mind the United States had almost 1,800 strategic (very large) nuclear warheads locked and loaded. The liberal Democrat had out-militarized the US Army Republican Dwight Eisenhower.

ACDA
   To try and get a grip on the rising threat of nuclear armageddon
the Congress formed the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in 1961.
   The whole ICMB business was new. Analysis and decision making was 'learn-as-you-go,' like the nukes themselves. The State and Defense Departments were arguing with each other, Administration advisors were debating nuclear strategy with Kennedy, think-tanks from Rand and others were pitching in and stirring up the pot. It was time to get the nuclear mushrooms under an organized intellectual umbrella. From now on Armageddon analysis had to take place under the direct or indirect auspices of the ACDA.
   One of the most deadly debates concerned “first strike capability.” There are two definitions of first strike capability. The first is the ability to hit the other side with a nuclear strike without the other side being able to prevent it. Both sides had it by Kennedy's time. Conventional bombers could get some nukes through. ICBM's did not start the threat of nuclear war.
   The second definition of “first strike capability” is when the other side is TKO'd and unable to deliver an effective “second strike.”
   No one in the collective JFK nuke brains trust thought that the Soviets lacked the first definition of first strike talent. The second was a subject of debate.
    Famous Vulcan Paul Nitze told the others what they did not want to hear. Nitze argued that the Soviets were close to achieving the second definition, while the United States had only the first definition and not the second and was not about to acquire the second. If the pessimists were right, then the United States would in the very near future be vulnerable to losing a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Then, even without a war there would be nuclear political intimidation. The Soviets could win one victory after another in the Cold War by holding the threat of emerging victorious in any hot one. If, for example, North Korean invaded South Korea again, the UN might be scared to come to the military rescue like 1950.
    It all added up to more nuclear missile money for research and development.

BAY OF PIGS FIASCO APRIL 1961
It wasn’t enough that Ike dropped an impossible Laos crisis on Kennedy's lap as an 'I'm going away present.' Eisenhower also gave him Cuba and a CIA sponsored pending invasion there that no one knew about. It was another hot potato for young John to juggle with his tender hands. Cuba would plague Kennedy’s entire presidency and may have had something to do with his death in Texas.
    In these dark years of the Cold War any nation that went Communist was placed in the ‘L’ column for the sitting US President. Truman had already ‘lost’ China and had paid the price in 1952 when he declined to run in a race he couldn’t win. The hero Eisenhower had taken the still pending ‘L’ for Cuba.
   The Cuba invasion plan was close to operational when Ike had to leave. But he still wanted the ‘L’ taken off his record.
Ike briefed Kennedy on the Cuban operation before the Inaugural. An army of Cuban exiles, now stationed in Guatemala, trained and supplied by the CIA were to hit the beach at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba and march on Havana while at the same time a general uprising of right-wing spontaneous Cuban revolutionary support would sweep the island. Like John Brown arming the slaves through Virginia, the counter-revolutionary army would grow as it marched to victory.
   The idea for this blockbuster was so far-fetched that Nicholas Cage would turn down the script. Cubans either feared or loved Castro. Iconoclasts were dead or in jail. There weren't a million rebs hiding in the bushes.
   Kennedy could have stopped the invasion from proceeding but many military and CIA leaders told him the plan had an excellent chance for success. The President was especially impressed by an eyewitness report from a Marine colonel in Guatemala stating that the brigade of exiles was well trained, ready to go and very impressive.
   Kennedy had some instinctual misgivings but was not in an easy position to say no. He certainly respected Eisenhower, and didn’t perceive the plan as partisan political. This wasn't some Republican scheme that he should squash as a Democrat. Both parties were Cold Warrior, and the CIA, the father of the plot, was neither Republican nor Democrat.
   Kennedy had to be cautious though, because he had pledged during the 1960 campaign not to use US troops to overthrow Castro, a slick piece of speechwriting.
   Kennedy wanted the Administration to keep a safe distance from the blame if the thing failed. He would not promise anything but token clandestine air support. But Kennedy did want the Cuba W for his presidency. Getting a Communist country back into the freedom pack would make him a cinch in 64, and saying no to the mission could be politically risky. If word leaked out that Kennedy had nixed a viable plan to re-take Cuba from the Communist bloc, it would be a happy day for whoever was running against him in 1964. It might be politically safer to try and fail, than to fail to try.
    Kennedy maintained room at all times for ‘plausible denial.' To win his OK, the operation would have to be done in such a way that the United States could plausibly deny official involvement, no US forces openly committed. John was determined to minimize any political risk, even if it meant maximizing risk for the military operation.
    In trying to have it both ways President Kennedy ended up having neither. The political risks were there anyway. The impending invasion was about as secret as the location of the sun. People were chattering about it all over the streets of Havana. US mags and newspapers reported the training, arming and deployment of the “Cuba invasion force out of Guatemala” like they were reporting sports scores. Kennedy called several editors asking them to kill the stories, but the New York Times for one, virtually laughed in his face and hung up. Jack Paar was making jokes about the exile army bound for Cuba on The Tonight Show.
Diplomatically, invasion wasn’t as far out of the bounds as it might seem. When the United States had severed diplomatic relations with Cuba, Ike had declared in effect that the US was close to war with the Cuba. The severance of diplomatic relations is well understood to be a prologue to the start of war, so it might not have been so necessary for Kennedy to have been so fearful of direct US involvement. But he was stuck with his liberal campaign pledge and didn’t want to look like a liar four months into his term. He also really didn’t want any blood on his hands. Johnny was a good Catholic boy.
   The army of Cuban exiles would be 2,000 strong at the most. The CIA had trained them well in Nicaragua. But they were doomed; too little a force with too little support. Two thousand soldiers with small arms can't capture Bridgeport Connecticut when the bars close on Friday night, yet somehow these 2,000 were going to conquer the Island of Cuba, at the time ruled by military dictator with weapons supplied by the USSR.
   General Max “Max Force” Taylor, a friend of Kennedy later estimated that if he if Kennedy had assigned him the Bay of Pigs alone as a conventional military target, he would have requested a full division of Marines, more than 14,000 men. These 2,000 Cuban exiles were going to conquer the entire island. Castro had a militia of 200,000 troops.
   The new team at the State Department could have protested the project vigorously and provided Kennedy with an excuse not to act. But the clandestine elements of the government helped to quash any efforts to evaluate the plan objectively. The CIA told Kennedy that there were so many Cuban exiles and other mercenaries being trained in Guatemala already for this operation that if the operation was scrapped there would be a ‘visibility problem.’ All these tough hombres would drift back into the states and begin talking. The Guatemala government was pressuring the US to get these rogues out of here before the end of April. They were everywhere, like sailors about town when the Tall Ships visit a coastal city, and their spy-novel presence was making the host government at Guatemala City very uncomfortable. The CIA also pointed out that Russian Mig Fighters were expected to arrive in Cuba very soon. Cuban pilots had been trained in Eastern Europe and would be coming home Cuba to fly these jets. The time to act was now, before the Migs arrived in Havanna on Russian freighters. The point about the Migs had a big impact on the Kennedy team.
   From Kennedy’s perspective the choice was only whether to accept or reject the CIA/Ike plan. No alternative Cuba ideas were fleshed out. As Sorenson puts it,

“The problems of turning back a preconceived project ready to go, supposedly without overt American involvement seemed much more difficult than permitting it to go ahead.”

    Most of the cabinet was not much involved the project, and a few complained later. Kennedy was a great man, but only he and Bobby ruled the world, and often excluded the other 30 people who later wrote memoirs of being with Kennedy.
    The misreading of Cuban counterrevolutionary fervor was the key to failure. Many people were telling Kennedy that Cuba was a boiling cauldron of insurrection. Angry mobs were attacking government installations, and the Cuban Army was disloyal and rebellious. They would be as likely to support the invaders as to point their rifles at them.
   All of this was not logical. A dictator’s first order of business is to put away all political opponents. Castro had not missed his cue. The CIA seemed to think that the Cuban civil war was not actually settled in 1958-59. The CIA calculated that Cuban people would be delighted to welcome back the people they had already thrown off the island.
     Kennedy was later shocked to learn that, in fact, there had never been a coordinated and planned uprising within Cuba if and when the initial landing had succeeded. The CIA had lied to him. They only hoped it would happen. It wasn't planned. The Cubans were expected to support the uprising spontaneously, ignoring their survival instincts warning them of dire consequences if they backed a loser. Even the few organized Cuban opposition groups within Cuba did not even know of the attack until they heard of its failure on the news!
   There was a contingency plan to have the invaders escape into the Escambria Mountains and wage a guerilla war if they took the beach but invasion did not succeed, but that too was a fantasy.
   Later Kennedy said that only one person in or outside of his cabinet that knew of the Bay of Pigs plan had advised against it, and that was Democratic Senator William Fullbright of Arkansas (Sorenson includes Assistant Secretary of State Walter Rostow.) Senator Fullbright thought the whole exile army scheme hopeless from the start, and said so emphatically.
There were others who later claimed that they did not like the Pigs invasion idea for any of a number of good reasons, but they either kept quiet about it or expressed their misgivings so meekly that they had no right to say ‘I told you so’ when it flopped.
     The decision to go ahead and Pig out was made after a major meeting of the big security people on April 4 1961 in the office of the Secretary of State, Dean Rusk. According to Paul Nitze who was there, Fullbright objected not on the grounds of feasibility, but on the grounds of morality. Fullbright didn't care one way or another whether it could or would work. He just thought it was morally wrong for the United States to attempt to overthrow a sovereign state because we didn't like its form of government. Good for Billy.
    Nitze had spoken with right-wing nut CIA guy Edward Lansdale a few days earlier. To Nitze's surprise, Lansdale was against the plan. Lansdale wasn't on the same liberal page as Fullbright but by accident they were both against the invasion. It was Lansdale, not Fullbright who insisted to Nitze, that the plan was doomed to disastrous failure. There wasn't enough military power, and no, there was no political support worth mentioning inside Cuba. Since Lansdale was a CIA and a military guy, his negative word was quite impressive.
    When Kennedy went around the table on April 4, Fullbright made his case. Other than that no one really objected. Nitze openly supported the plan and criticized Fullbright's objections. Nitze later admitted he was wrong in neglecting to mention Lansdale's opinion at this meeting. Kennedy had every right, judging by what he heard here, to presume that the plan was bound to succeed.

BRIGADE 2506
     On D-Day April 17, “Brigade 2506” was only 1,400 strong. About 12 of the 1,400 troops were spies in the service of Castro. The element of surprise was not only lost, it was a disadvantage because the enemy knew their every move while 2506 was acting as though they had the advantage of secrecy.
   On the morning of the invasion air strikes by CIA planes disguised as Cuban defector planes (they had mustaches painted on the wings) tried to destroy the Cuban Air Force on the ground but fell far short of their goal. Then the men of Brigade 2506 hit the beach at the Bay of Pigs without air cover. Castro only had to send in two old US-made 'Sea Fury' fighters and three US made T-33 trainers, converted for combat. These five Cuban jets stole the show and kept 2506 pinned to the beach. They also sank two small freighters off the coast that were the supply lifeline for the brigade.
   The 2506’ers radioed frantically for air support. A US aircraft carrier the Essex was 50 miles off the coast and could have scrambled up some serious news help in a short time. But Kennedy was not going to commit US forces openly. He had said so from the start and did not budge when it meant life or death for the exiles on the beach. Brigade 2506 took a beating on the beach. Those that were not killed were captured and imprisoned. Kennedy took the blame for the failure because of the decision not to call in air strikes. He may have paid for this failure with his own life.
    A crucial element in this whole affair, largely ignored by the history books, was the instant negative international reaction to the initial air strikes against the Cuban Air Forces on the ground. At that moment, it certainly looked like the United States was using its air power to simply attack Cuba without provocation. The world did not know that the Bay of Pigs invasion was coming within a matter of hours. The USA seemed to be launching unprovoked air attacks on Cuba with no apparent purpose except to be bullies and thugs. A storm of international chastisement fell upon the Kennedy/Rusk team over these attacks.
    Without this firestorm reaction to the initial air strikes, Kennedy might have authorized air support for 2506 when it hit the beach. But JFK didn't want another round of even worse protests.
    The invasion may have failed even if it had the air cover. With air support, the invasion may have succeeded initially and failed later, with repercussions even worse for the United States.
   UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson was officially denying US involvement in the Bay of Pigs invasion during the whole thing. Kennedy had kept the poor guy in the dark. The country was humiliated even further by Stevenson's shallow transparent denials at the UN.
   The Kennedy foreign policy team had played it's first match and gave up six goals in the first half to a weak team, losing 8-0. A post-game political cartoon showed the Bay of Pigs fiasco as an exploding Cuban cigar in Kennedy’s mouth. The humiliation may have made John excessively truculent later when there was a second Cuban Crisis, the one over nukes missiles. Pigs made Kennedy more trigger-happy over Berlin and Vietnam later. It may have been for his personal psyche reasons as much as for the defense of freedom and liberty, that America made its first deep commitments to Vietnam. The pride of Kings has caused half as many wars as religion.
   The fallout from Pigs was bad across the board. The left was mad at Kennedy for doing it, the right was mad at him for not doing it well, the world was mad at him for violating international law, the Russians were dancing in the Kremlin, and the Cuban rightists were so mad at him that their response may have come in Dealey Plaza.
   Kennedy took the fall for a plan he didn’t like by Ike and the CIA, but a plan that he could not bring himself to say no to. He was caught in the classic Democratic Party trap. Wanting to be liberal and conservative at the same time. A true conservative would have provided air support and more. A true liberal would have rejected the plan from the start. ‘One bad general is better than two good ones,’ said Lincoln. That sometimes applies to political principles.

   One result from the disaster was that Kennedy changed his ways about foreign policy advisors. From now on he would take his worldly advice from his inner circle of close friends, even if few of them had any formal expertise in the field. Instead of the CIA and the generals the President would take his counsel with Sorenson, Salinger, Davey O’Brien, Theodore H. White, and last but not least, Bobby.
    Kennedy’s rejection of the further advice of the CIA, and reducing its power as punishment may have given that organization the motive to remove him. A substantial number of people in America consider the CIA a prime suspect in Kennedy’s slaying. The Langley Bunch had by May of 1961 lost all influence at 1600 Pennsylvania and Kennedy's four year term was just beginning. If he were re-elected it would mean seven and a half years without power for the CIA.
   Kennedy was disgusted with himself for even having listened to the CIA in the first place. He was heard mumbling to himself repeatedly, “How could I have been so stupid. Why did I listen to them?”
    Incredibly, JFK later suspected that the whole invasion plan was designed to fail. Kennedy came to believe that the CIA and the military, when they proposed the Pigs Op, had never even sincerely believed that it had a serious chance of success, at least not as it was originally structured. The vulcans of 62 were just leading Kennedy on in order to to get the US involved. When the operation stalled, and men were dying and radioing for help the President would be forced to commit more US forces to finish the job right in an over the top invasion and the removal of Castro from power.
They sold Kennedy that the idea that a Castro take-down was a safe gamble, a 2-5 in Vegas. But the true odds were probably 150-1, and even with air support only 40-1. Kennedy learned the hard way to never trust a gambler betting with his heart with other people’s money.
   According to the 2004 book A Patriots History of the United States, the Pigs plan failed primarily because the first step was supposed to be the assassination of Fidel Castro. Without the icing of the king as the first act of the play, the whole operation was not tenable, even in the minds of the invader leaders. With Castro dead just as the anti-Communists were hitting the beach, maybe there would have indeed been a spontaneous uprising supporting these filibusterers. US Mafia hit men were supposed to whack wacko and that was supposed to start the whole thing rolling. The hit men never even got close enough to see the spit flying out of his mouth while he yelled (Fido always did that.).

LEMNUTZ AND NORTHBRIDGE
   Time to meet an important character.
   His actual name was General Lyman Lemnitzer but he was such a right-wing nut that one of Kennedy's aides (Schlesinger) referred to him behind his back as “General Lemnutz.” General Lyman Lemnitzer was a hawk's hawk.
   How complicit was General Lemitzer in the Bay of Pigs conspiracy? A lot of people would like to know.
   Lemnitzer is quite an important and mysterious fellow. The right seems to think he's a hero. Lyman was awarded a lot of medals by Nixon and others.
   But seen from the left, Lyman is a very bad character. The left thought that Lyman was Lie-man.
   Lemnitzer was allegedly one of the main masterminds behind something called Operation Northbridge, and it's so evil I don't even want to tell you about it.
    After the Bay of Pigs, the United States would need an extra good pretext to invade Cuba without looking like imperialist bums. Lemnitzer and other right-wing military scoundrels had an idea. The plan was to commit acts of terrorism against United States citizens and blame it on the Cubans! Some versions of the plan had fake sailors sinking to a Potemkin Village death on an empty US warship, but others included major bombings of government buildings in which citizen casualties were not only unavoidable, but essential! They were worth the price. Some woman and her baby carriage might get blown to bits outside a Minneapolis Naval recruiting station, but that was ok because the ends justifies the means. Instead of conducting a war on terror, the United States would be conducting terror to provoke a war.
    Lemnitzer openly proposed this to Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs, and proposed it again after the Missiles of October. Kennedy eventually fired Lyman upstairs to NATO Commander in Europe (summer of 1962.) He had to get the right wing lunatic out of his ample hair.
   Lemnitzer was one of the militarists that Kennedy had the habit of storming out of rooms on. Kennedy would met with Le May, McCone, and Lemnitz, and then get up and walk out in anger saying, “I thought we were supposed to be a civilized nation!” Its a scary scenario, these angry gargoyles with a sack of nukes, exasperating the charming Kennedy with their lust for war to the point of making Mr. cutiepie furious. He walks away down the hall and as his footsteps fade, they look at each other and say, “What a wimp. When do we get to use these things?” Thank God we had a strong and God-fearing man in power who didn't let the military do whatever it wanted to, because what it wanted to do was go to war.
    The story of Lemnitzer and the Northbridge conspiracy is in the book, Body of Secrets, by Chuck “Bam-Bam “Bamford. I don't know what to believe. There is a major NATO foundation and egghead research op named after Lemnitzer today. Lemnitzer served bravely at Sicily in World War II and led NATO forces in the 50's and again in the sixties. I want to like the guy. But if these Northbridge charges are true, then Lyman is one of history's bad guys.
    Northbridge would mean mass murder of American citizens, and the needless deaths in war of all the casualties of an invasion. What may be worst, it would have established a new American foreign policy approach, and a very bad one. If Kennedy had said one word, the slaying of American citizens by American spies as a false pretext for war against Cuba would have gone down.
   It is also alleged in the Bam book that the Lemnitz plan to attack ourselves was first proposed to Eisenhower and that he did not reject it. Ike oversaw feasibility studies on the awful scheme.

CORCORAN'S TAKE ON THE BAY OF PIGS
   Tim Corcoran was a close advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt, a member of the famous “Brains Trust” (not Brain Trust.)
   Corcoran's take on the Bay of Pigs was that it was partly the fault of the Kennedy style of leadership. He felt that FDR would never have allowed such a plan to get off the ground, because Franklin wouldn't have got involved until the last moment. He would have played with his stamp collection while the scheme was developing and then rejected it when the cooks presented him with the meal at zero hour. Corcoran felt that Kennedy worked too hard and became too closely involved in every project. By involving himself in the Bay of Pigs fiasco from the earliest planning stages, Kennedy couldn't see the forest for the trees. If he had backed off and let the lower levels work out the details and then they had approached him with the final plan he would have said “What? are you guys out of your mind? This thing will never work.” But since he had his personal mitts on it from the start, he never had a moment of clarity when he needed it.
   What is certain from all accounts is that the Camelot giggles festival ended with the Bay of Pigs. The new breed had arrived thinking they were going to change the world and make new rules. Then they went along with a plan that was developed by the old school before they got in. The old school dragged the new school so far down that it became old school too. The Kennedy team lost that bounce in their step. From now on they realized they had to watch their step just to survive. There were sharks in their own tank.

OPERATION SHAVEBEARD
    After losing in the Bay of Pigs it was time to figure out a new way to win.
    Some say it was the CIA that proposed it. Other historians say that JFK personally proposed it and told the CIA to look into it. If they couldn't overthrow him, maybe they could kill him. The CIA came up with all kinds of assassination plots to kill Castro. I guess it didn't work out because as I sit here in 2010 he is still alive.
   There were all sorts of plans, including several that involved hiring the US Mafia to do it. There were plans to poison Fidel's nachos, poison his cigars, cut the breaks on his limo, shoot him from a passing plane, bomb his bathroom, and a most cruel plan to pipe bagpipes and opera into his room until he committed suicide.
    A few people tried to make Kennedy understand the foolishness of the idea. Even if it succeeded it would fail, they tried to tell him. If anyone murdered Castro, it would be impossible to deny American involvement even if there was no evidence linking the slaying to the USA. It would just be too obvious who had the motive and the passionate will to do it. If Castro got in the box, his brother Raul would take over and would have a reactionary attitude. The new Cuba would be even more an enemy of the United States. The entire world would see the United States as guilty of villainy. The slaying of FC would generate sympathy for Cuba, and make the dead Fidel an inspirational martyr and hero the living Fidel could never dream of being.
   It is the same argument I tried to make to anyone who would listen when in the 1990's there was endless talk of solving the crisis in Iraq by assassinating Saddam Hussein. It was astonishing how many ostensibly intelligent and educated people spoke this way on my TV. “How do we deal with Sadaam? I say to you, we simply have to kill him.” I'd just shake my head. Uday Hussein takes over, and things are even worse. The people who said this had simply been watching too many movies. You kill the bad guy near the end, and then comes the witty epilogue and everyone lives happily ever after.
   Kennedy approved plans to assassinate Fidel Castro. A poison cigar actually made it to Castro's villa in Havanna, but an orderly stole it, paying for petty theft with his life. After that Fidel hired a brave taste-tester and a smoke-smoker.

CIVIL RIGHTS/FREEDOM RIDERS MAY 1961
   Civil Rights was never really very high on Kennedy’s priorities. The martyr gets way more credit than he deserves on this score. JFK always believed in equality and was always against segregation, but his efforts to achieve gains in this field always seemed rather perfunctory. To those around him it usually seemed like Jack was seeking the right moral choice on race issues with more focus on winning the negro vote than on any special passionate compassion for a persecuted minority.
   Kennedy was preparing for a summit meeting with Krushchov in the spring of 1961 when he had to face racial crisis in the South. This was a pattern throughout his tenure. Every time he was bogged down with some serious foreign policy crisis of stimulating interest, a racial crisis would erupt in his big back yard, annoying him to no end.
    Throughout the Freedom Riders Crisis of 1961 Kennedy acted as though these liberal whites and persecuted blacks were just a big pain in the lower back, when the foreign policy field was fraught with danger in Laos, Cuba and Berlin. It would be the same during the Jimmy Meredith Crisis of 62.
   The Freedom Riders were some 13 young whites and blacks who teamed up to challenge segregation by challenging it in the transportation industry. They would leave Washington DC as a two team unit and ride through the South on Greyhound and Trailways buses. They had no final destination, they were just joy riding through the South to establish that they could. Seven blacks and six whites went on their bus tour of the deep South. Their trip wasn’t to visit the old Civil War battlefields, it was to establish new Civil Rights battlefields. These warriors for justice stirred up deep trouble, crossing state and social lines.
   A recent federal ruling had declared segregation illegal in facilities that involved interstate transportation. The individual states and towns could still mistreat (a more accurate word than 'discriminate') blacks on local municipal transportation systems, but the Greyhound bus terminals fell under federal jurisdiction.
    The new desegregation laws had yet to be really enforced or tested. Southern walls still had a million signs separating the races.

   At one point a caravan of racists punks followed their Greyhound bus out of Montgomery Alabama. They had slashed the tires on the Greyhound just enough for the bus to get out on the highway before it broke down in the small town of Anniston Alabama.
    One of racists yelled “Leave the driving to us!” and threw a Molotov cocktail through one of the Greyhound’s open windows. The bus caught fire and the young crusaders were forced out of the bus. The mob of racist whites beat them up with fists, clubs, soda bottles, the legs of broken baby-dolls, and other weapons of class destruction. The racists were hopelessly outnumbered in morals, but the liberals were outnumbered. No one died but one poor heroic soul suffered permanent brain damage from the assault. Which wasn't fair since the ones who beat him were already brain damaged to begin with.
Another white gang attacked The Freedom Riders when the convoy reached Birmingham. Bama Police and FBI did nothing but sip coffee as the rednecks beat up the liberals (and there wasn't even anything in the cups.)
    The brave liberals, with bandaged heads like a cartoon guy after an explosion, were ready to continue on, but no bus driver would take them any further.
   Being stranded in Birmingham is no treat in any era, but in May of 1961 it was an especially bad spot for a white liberal crusader or a black political activist.
   Black leaders pleaded with President Kennedy to send in the US Army. But Jack did not want a repeat of Little Rock 1957. So instead of troops he sent a personal representative, a Mr. Sigenthaler to the Southern crisis zone. Critics charged that Kennedy was copping out. Kennedy desperately hoped that the whole thing could be settled at the state level. The governor of Alabama had been the only Southern politician to support him in 1960 and he now assured Jack that the crisis could be contained without Federal help.
    John and his brother Bobby telephoned Sigenthaler down in Alabama for his first report. While on the phone, Sigenthaler yelled “Holy mackeral Jack, there’s a negro getting beaten up by four white guys outside my window the parking lot! I’ve got to go down and help.” Sig scurried down the stairs and out the door. Someone else picked up the phone and described to the President the wild melee in the parking lot. This phone call had an effect on the Kennedy men, as you can imagine.
   Bobby Kennedy was active throughout this crisis and there is little question that he did feel genuine passion on the Civil Rights issue. Bobby compensated the nation somewhat for any shortage of concern for racial justice in the heart of the President. And also it compensates for Bobby's personality defects which many historians spotlight so ably. RFK may have been an arrogant little insufferable spoiled bully of a politician. But in the big moments of history, when things really mattered, Bobby always seemed to come down on the side of good, the side of God. He was a rude man in the service of the greater good.
   John Kennedy was always seeing things politically. It wasn't just the election of 1964. He needed the support of white Southern Democrats on a daily basis to enact legislation, and if he humiliated them now, he would lose that political leverage.
   Jack also feared that Southern Democrats might ask for Republican support to stop Kennedy from taking aggressive action to solve the crisis. Then the Southern Dems would owe the Republican a log-roll favor, and he could lose some major piece of progressive legislation to a combined Republican/Southern Democrat block. So ironically, standing up for right at this time might do more harm than good for progressive legislation, at least as Kennedy saw it.
    JF Kennedy was always determined to be a uniter, not a divider, and always wanted the half a loaf he could achieve on Capitol Hill, rather than risk probably losing the whole loaf. He was a great compromiser. Now with the Civil Rights Crisis he was being forced to do the opposite of his nature, both with Congress and in the immediate scene in the South. He had to pick a team.
   Black leaders asked him to propose dramatic desegregation legislation now. Black people in the South were asking for Federal troops, both for protection and for a political demonstration of the new national will.
    The Alabama National Guard was called out to give the Greyhound and Trailways buses an escort and get these poor liberals out of Dodge. The State Department intervened. It flew the bus-riders to New Orleans at taxpayer expense just to get them out of Alabama before they were all killed.
    So it turned out it was like Little Rock all over again. But Ike had gotten more humanitarian and liberal credit for sending in the federal troops in 57 than Kennedy did for letting the state troops handle it in 61. Some black leaders were very unhappy with Kennedy over the lack of Presidential intervention in the Freedom Rider Crisis. Sigenthaler hadn’t done much, unless you count giving play-by-play of a beating.
   Kennedy's excuse was always that extreme legislation was not doable, and a compromising gradualism was better because it could actually happen. But even if Kennedy knew that bold legislation on Civil Rights could not have passed the Congress, he could have proposed it anyway. Making a showcase of an issue in a losing cause is a stepping stone to victory. A more passionate liberal or a more intrepid integrationist would have done more, but Kennedy was neither. If he had been, he couldn’t have been elected in the first place in 1960.

SUKHARNO
    Most Americans today have never heard of this famous historical man. But President Sukharno of Indonesia was very famous in the Kennedy era. The average housewife in Muncie knew who Sukharno was.
   One of the most volatile and difficult countries that Kennedy had to deal with in foreign affairs was Indonesia. It is a huge country made up of 8.2 trillion islands in South Asia. Indonesia was at a crossroads in geography and ideology. 'Indo' wasn't Communist, but it had a big Communist movement. It had the largest Moslem population in the world (and still does,) but was not exporting radical Islam. Indonesia also had enormous Christian and Hindu populations. It claimed to embrace democracy, but it was ruled by a dictator. There was a lot of political trouble in Indonesia in the Kennedy thousand days.
    Indonesia was a prize. It was coveted by the east, the west, and to a lesser extent, by the Indonesians. This country didn't want to be a pawn in the Cold War. It was too strong and powerful want to to play that role, but on the other hand the role was hard to avoid since it was a fact, not a choice. But Indonesia was also definitely “neutral,” which in Kennedy's time was not a good thing. Neutral to Washington meant tilted against the United States, in spite of your pleas to the contrary. Kennedy's globe was like the W Bush globe. You were either for us or against us, in spite of pleas by cabinet liberals to change that thinking.
    President Sukharno made a state visit to Washington in early 1961 and shocked the Kennedy team with his arrogant attitude. He arrived at the airport and immediately asked to have prostitutes sent to his hotel. Folks, I am not making this up. When Rusk and Hillsman wanted to discuss South Asian politics, Sukharno changed the subject to the nice-looking figures of movie stars Marylyn Monroe and Gina Lollibridgida. It never stopped. “All the guy wanted to talk about,” complained Hillsman later, “was dames.”
   Then Sukharno had the audacity to suggest to Dean Rusk that Jacqueline Kennedy pay a state visit to Indonesia and it must be without President Kennedy. I'm completely serious. Rusk sent a crisp note to Kennedy saying that he was not about to authorize such a trip. Kennedy did not respond to the Rusk memo, which indicated he agreed with its delicate content.
    This is a unique story in American history, a famous foreign President arriving to improve international relations in a dangerous region and wasting the whole trip in a sexual blackout.
     The Kennedy team was elated to drive Sukharno to the airport and put him on a plane back to Indo.
    Kennedy told Powers that he was shocked at Sukharnos bad behavior. “I'm not as pure as a Vermont snow,” Kennedy said, “But how can a man let the ladies interfere with his ability to conduct international relations? It's beyond me.”
   Hilsman chimed in, “Man cannot live by broad alone.”
      Just for the record the United States government denied Sukharno's request for prostitutes.
     Former President Bill Clinton is currently writing a biography of Sukharno titled, “Sukharno the Great.”


PARIS IN THE SPRING
   Kennedy and his First Lady stopped in Paris on the way to meet Krushchov at the Geneva Summit of 61. Jacqueline was a very lovely 30, spoke fluent French, and wore the finest French designer clothing. She was the toast of gay Paree. Her husband was only stopping by for an unofficial chat with De Gaulle, so she was feted more than he was. “I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris,” Jack quipped to the delight of newspaper editors all over the world.
   Kennedy got along surprisingly well with De Gaulle, a man that Truman and Ike had not been fond of at all. Kennedy reassured Charlie that he would make it clear to Krushchov that the US would fight to defend Europe with same ferocity that it would defend the United States. As long as Krushchov understood that, Kennedy was willing to negotiate the status of Berlin. De Gaulle liked the first part but not the second. He told Kennedy that under no circumstance should Kennedy offer to negotiate on Berlin. It would lead to needless concessions and would show weakness.
   As for the USSR, the problem was that it was Russia. De Gaulle said Kennedy's perception of Communism as the threat was off the mark. The real threat was Russia, and Russian nationalist aspirations. The Russian threat would have existed with or without Communism.
    Charles De Gaulle had the hots for Jackie and there can be no doubt that her good looks improved Franco-Americans relations in Kennedy's time. De Gaulle had de gall to stare at Mrs. K and talked to her like John Kennedy wasn't present or President. JFK put up with it for the good of the country.
   She was a Bouvier and her French was flawless. She served as Kennedy's interpreter with De Gaulle. Charles and Jacqueline talked more than Charles and Jack did. So many Frenchmen were infatuated with Jacqueline during the visit that they had to laugh about it later, how they had ignored their own lovely women and just stared at Mrs K. all night.

KRUSHED IN VIENNA 1961
The Cold War now became a duel between Kennedy and General Secretary of the Communist party of the Soviet Union Nikita Krushchev (or ‘Krushchov’ - either spelling is acceptable.) The two men met in Vienna in early June of 1961, but it was not officially a Summit Meeting, just an informal get together among friends who might destroy the earth. It has come down to history as a “summit meeting” but it wasn't really.
   Kennedy was very much opposed to summits unless convened to solidify agreements already reached. Otherwise he felt that they raised false expectations. They were an invitation to the image of failure.
   In Paris Krushchev stared at Jacqueline a lot. It was De Gaulle syndrome all over again. Nicky kept a steady of stream of light humor directed at Mrs. Kennedy who laughed and smiled back at the flirty Communist dictator.
   Later on the big men had a private formal one-on-one meeting. Kennedy kept warning Nikita about the dangers of Soviet ‘miscalculation’ until the Russian lost his temper,
   “Miscalculation! Miscalculation! All I ever hear from you is this stupid word over and over. Miscalculation! Miscalculation! Enough already, I heard you the first 400 times!”
   Krushchev wanted to know if the US was suggesting that the USSR should sit at its desk with folded hands like a scared schoolchild.
   Kennedy argued for a status-quo world where neither side tried to expand its way of life at the expense of the other. In offering to pledge America to not try to win the Cold War, Kennedy was taking a politically liberal stance, compared to, say, a Ronald Reagan. But Krushchev didn't recognize the concession, and still acted as though Kennedy was being belligerent. Nicky wanted to know if Kennedy was saying that only in Russia could the socialist experiment be developed. To which Kennedy said, “What does that have to do with anything?”
Kennedy kept returning to the goal of avoiding nuclear war. Krushchev showed him his medal, The Lenin Prize for Peace. “Lets hope you get to keep it,” said Kennedy. This line is quoted my most historians of the era as an example of the fabulous Kennedy wit. Kennedy was funny the way the Beatles were funny – If they weren't super-famous and adored in another field, they never would have been considered funny at all.
Vienna eyewitnesses were in general agreement (Sorenson and Powers excepted) that the Vienna exchange did not go well for Kennedy. He seemed to be on the defensive while the experienced warrior from the coal mines of the Donets browbeat Jack with facts and philosophy. 'Cue-ball' hardly let the young Kennedy even get a word in, let alone a win the argument. Kennedy himself later confided in despair to a close aide, “That man treated me like a child. ... Like a child!”
    A rumor went around Eastern Europe that Krushchov was boasting that he had taught the young freshman a lesson in the meaning of fear. Gromyko stated in public that Kennedy had been left without an answer when Nicky demanded to know why the US had so many military bases overseas and asked against whom were they directed.
The experienced State Department hands thought that Krushchev had bested Kennedy badly. Most European leaders were downtrodden by Kennedy's pathetic efforts against “Special K” which was the CIA code-word for Krushchev. (It was Dave O'Brien who coined the nickname 'Cue-ball') The US press overwhelmingly thought that Kennedy had been verbally humiliated by the Gensec from the Donets.
   European Allies were reeling from the unfavorable comparison between Ike and Kennedy. They trembled that they had to live with 3.7 more years of this skinny American weakling. Harry MacMillan of the UK wrote in his diary that, “JFK makes Neville Chamberlain look like Joe Louis. We're in a fine mess.”
   MacMillan thought that Kennedy had been bullied into taking too tough of a stance on Berlin. The world was on the brink of nuclear war because a second-string wide receiver had to prove he was man enough to match the bully coal miner, so he had drawn a NATO line in the sand that was too provocative.

NUCLEAR RECONSIDERED
   Kennedy returned from Vienna all shook up and asked for an estimate on how many people would die in a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The number reported was 70 million Americans, or every American who had watched him debate Nixon.
   Kennedy returned from Vienna in a valley of despair. He knew that fatso had bested him, absolutely punked him. Nothing in American experience could have trained Kennedy to argue with a man who had climbed the ranks of vicious dialectic Russian argument festivals on Marx, labor and capitalism. Nikita was a battle tested Communist professorial level arguer. It was Andre the Giant vs. Don Knotts.
   Tony Dobrynin was struck by how individualistically Kennedy conducted the debate. President Eisenhower had never run the risk of taking a beating in arguments with foreign leaders because he consulted with his team before he responded to anything. He slowed it all down and let the Administration speak as a group through him. It was annoying, but safe. Like FDR, Kennedy was conceited about the power of his charm and intellect, and it backfired from time to time on both of them (it certainly worked for both of them too.)
   Kennedy had come to Vienna planning to more or less intimidate Krushchev but ended up in a half-nelson. Harvard was going to stare down Krushchev over Berlin and Laos, especially Berlin. He wanted to make sure that there be no “miscalculation.” He would make sure that Krushchev understood that if he closes off Berlin there could be war. This was what De Gaulle had coached him to do and Kennedy had told De Gaulle, “Don't worry, I was planning on doing exactly that.”
   Kennedy was shocked and did not know what to do when Krushchev called his bluff and said, “OK, big tough guy, then there will be a war, because we are going to do what you are warning us that we not dare do, that is, cut off access to Berlin, and you do what you have to do.”
    Kennedy was shaken up by having to return home with the prospects of World War III looking much more likely than it had looked when he left D.C. Some productive summit that turned out to be. The President told a prominent national writer that he though there was a one in five chance of a nuclear war over either Berlin or Laos. He gave the same assessment to Bobby who passed his brother's grim analysis on to others.

PEACE MEANS WAR
    The irony of the Berlin crisis is that the trip-wire that had the potential to start World War III was actually a peace treaty. Krushchev repeatedly threatened to sign a Peace treaty with East Germany, and both sides knew that this might mean war. Of all the Nobel Prize ironies (Nobel invented dynamite.)
   The war with Germany had ended in a May 1945 armistice but the formal settlement was still unfinished 16 years later. The status of Germany was a helter-skelter solution of pure expedience between the big powers. Germany was still technically at war with the Allies. If the Third World War had broken out over Berlin, one could argue that it wouldn't be WWIII, but rather the final chapter of World War II.
     The Soviets were threatening to make a separate peace treaty with the portion of Germany they occupied, in defiance of the other Allies who controlled the other half. All sides were supposed to agree on a peace treaty for all of Germany. That was agreed from the beginning. But agreeing to agree wasn't the same as agreeing. Berlin was still divided, its status ever-unofficial. By making a separate peace treaty, as Krushchov threatened to definitely do by the end of 1961, the Russians would be declaring to have ended the Second World War on its controlled German territory and that this territory was now a country. That was a big step. The Russians would then be able to dictate conditions inside Berlin, while claiming the sanction of international law.
   The first thing the Soviets said they would do is declare that Berlin was a closed city, controlled by the Communist government of East Germany. The Western Allies would be denied permission to travel in or out of there. Those inside would have a few months to get out or stay trapped there. The USA said no way, the USSR said watch me, and the world held its breath. If the USSR signed a peace treaty with East Germany, it might man war.

GIMMIE NUCLEAR SHELTER
    Prior to the Vienna meeting Kennedy had paid little attention to the senators who were clamoring for nuclear fallout protection plans for American citizens. Kennedy thought it was insane to plan for a nuclear war and thought that even preparing for one was inviting one, and a sick idea. He was still the college philosopher thinking that a nuclear war must never be fought.
    After Vienna Kennedy took the whole idea of saving a few extra million American lives more seriously. A nuclear war most certainly could be fought. Kennedy accepted that there was a difference between 30 million Americans dying in a nuke war and 60 million. Political poets could write that there was no difference, but Jack finally faced up the the horrible fact that there was.
At first the United States government suggested that each person should build his own private nuclear shelter. This set off something of a panic. An entire industry sprang up overnight. Companies began to manufacture your own do-it-yourself nuclear fallout kit with shovels and rations and supplies to build your own underground bunker. The subject was on everyones lips. The Twilight Zone made several episodes based on people selfishly fending off their neighbors with shotguns in the wake of a nuclear attack. Father McHugh, gave his well publicized blessing to the idea that a small-f father was entitled to defend with families with deadly force in such a situation, and God would understand. This gave Kennedy the creeps. People began complaining that the poor were being written off. Those living in big tenement buildings couldn't build their own nuclear shelter. The rich would be hiding in a rural bunker or setting off in their yachts thumbing their nose at the doomed left behind. Kennedy changed the national strategy to large shelters in public buildings for everyone to hide in while the nuclear rains came. There was a new program set up where non-profit building construction would get a federal subsidy if it included a substantial nuclear shelter. In other words, new churches would make some extra dough if it included community think on nuclear war.
   I got caught up in it as a school-child. I walked past my old Catholic grammar school recently. It closed three years ago. The sign was still there. Still standing on the cement wall with orange on black letters, the nuclear fallout shelter sign. The entire Gate of Heaven School was air-raid sirened into the basement bathrooms twice a week from the time I was 8 until at least the time I was 10 (1963-65). Every other day we heard the sirens at the school at the most unexpected time and we all rushed in orderly fashion down to the basement. We never did the more famous “duck and cover.” Sometimes we heard air raid sirens at home in the neighborhood. We did the school drill so often that it became second nature, just a normal part of life. We didn't know we were in the middle of a political drama about the threat of nuclear annihilation, and that there had been some controversy about setting up these fallout shelter systems. We certainly had no thought that if nuclear war had broken out, that adults by the thousand from all over the crowded neighborhood of three deckers were supposed to be joining us in the shelters. The big modern cement school with the deep basement was the mother ship for that neighborhood of Boston if the bombs came. If course, if an RB-4 Soviet Army nuke of 1965 hit Boston from Stasnoyarsk after a two hour flight at 2,300 mph, the Gate of Heaven School basement would have been a long forgotten part of a giant crater. Only a missile that missed Boston by 15 miles would have made the Gatey shelter useful.

TALK SOUP
    Over the next year, from the middle of 1961 to the middle of 1962, the Berlin crisis stalled. Some of Kennedys advisors thought Kennedy shouldn't meet with the Russians at all. They felt that it that would be a signal to Krushchev that he could intimidate Kennedy to the negotiating table. Kennedy's brains trust believed that Krushchev saw negotiations per se as a victory for the Soviet Union and for Krushchev personally. The worst thing Kennedy could do to the Russians would be to ignore them. But Krushchev was not going to let that happen.
   Dean Rusk suggested that the US-USSR talks drop down to the the State Department level where he could stall them indefinitely. Rusk met with Gromyko in all sorts of places worldwide, including some long afternoons in New York. They even went to a Mets game together (Gromyko reportedly wore a Reds cap.)
    The press reported for a year that talks with the Russians were going nowhere. The tone was critical, implying a major administration failure. But that was part of Rusk's plan. He was all in favor of freezing the situation for he felt that western Europe with its superior economy and political system would win, given time. Deano was proven right of course, but he didn't figure it would take 28 years. Rusk was assuring Kennedy discreetly that he would to keep the talks going just to stall everything where it stood. Rusk wanted to bend Gromyko's ear in 27 countries and in turn be a great listener when Gromyko talked and talked. Rusk wanted to turn the Berlin crisis into talk soup. His plan actually worked well until Raoul Castro visited Moscow in the summer of 62 and negotiated for Soviet nuclear-tipped missiles going to Cuba.

CUBA + BERLIN = VIETNAM
   “I have to take a stand somewhere,” Kennedy griped to Dean Aecheson. “This guy bullied me in Vienna, he's bullying me on Berlin. He's bullying me on Laos, and he's rubbing my nose in the Bay of Pigs. They're beating us in outer space. I've got to take a stand somewhere and I think I know where it is.
   “You mean Vietnam.”
   “Yes Dean, I mean Vietnam.”
   “I couldn't agree more, Mr President.”
    If Krushchev hadn't laughed in Kennedy's face at Vienna the United States might never have been bogged down for 15 years in Vietnam. Kennedy felt so personally humiliated that he decided to first make Berlin a high-nuke-noon, and also to take a bold interventionist fighting stance on Vietnam. If Krushchev had behaved like a gentleman at Vienna instead of a crass disagreeable blowhard, (“I never expected him to be such a barbarian,” Jack told Rusk) the whole Vietnam mess might have been avoided.
   A Republican could allow for a few little foreign policy defeats defeats and stay politically viable, but Kennedy was in no such position as the inheritor if FDR's liberal torch. So JFK dragged us into Nam because he had lost too many little ones in other spots and he had to show that his administration was not weak on Communism. Like Iraq from 1991 to the present, once a President commits US forces to a region, its hard for succeeding presidents to get us out of there without seeming wimpy, unpatriotic, and unchivalrous towards their predecessors. Once Kennedy got us in to save his and American's pride, the boots were in the quicksand.
    I blame Krushchev's bullying far more than Kennedy's weakness. Jack had actually been well prepared for Krushchev's nasty deportment. I'm not about to call Jack Kennedy weak. John Kennedy fought in WWII and played football in college. I fought in the fourth grade and played ping-pong in college. Kennedy wasn't bullied in deportment. Krushchev's bullied Kennedy with his more experienced way with political words. John was not prepared for the depth of knowledge and debating skills Krushchev possessed on various political points, such as colonial revolutions, labor relations, Marxism, disarmament, and the recent history of events all over the world. Kennedy was ready in a personal sense to take on Krushchev's bullying, but when Krushchev began besting him on specific issues the former Senator was knocked off balance and could not recover from the endless rain of Krushchev's uppercuts and left hooks. He couldn't very effectively stand up to Nick's personalty while getting knocked down on specifics.
       At one point in Vienna, for example, Krushchev complained about the United States continued support for the colonial empires of Britain and France. It was a new day, argued Krushchev. These relics of old colonialism were doomed to the Marxian 'ash heap of history.' Look at Algeria! They are obviously going to win against imperialist France. It is only a matter of time before Algeria becomes independent, so why was the United States continuing to support France in this hopeless cause?
   Kennedy responded with a reminder that he had voted in favor of Algerian Independence when he was a senator in 1956. In response, Krushchev laughed heartily in Kennedy's face.
   Moments like these can change the course of history. This was a new role for Kennedy, who was usually the one using the smile, the laugh, and the charm to woo the American press. But this wasn't James Reston he was dealing with, this was more like Jesse James. Kennedy didn't smile much at Vienna.

VULCANS OF 61
   The Vulcans of 1961 were urging Kennedy to prepare for nuclear war as the only way to stand up to Krushchev. Men like Aecheson, Le May, Lemnitzer, Lansdale, Allen Dulles, Walter Rostow, and Paul Nitze were of the same mind. They told Kennedy to ship two new U.S. Army divisions into West Berlin for starters. Nuclear weapons should be flown to WB also, and with much publicity. The US could even resume nuclear testing as a warning.
    On the other side were a few sane men protesting that Kennedy was presuming that the only contingency the US should prepare for was a Soviet blockade of West Berlin 1948 style, and a military showdown.
   Halfway between hawk and dove, a few ravens asked Kennedy to consider other possibilities. They reminded the President that the Communists might only seal off their own East Berlin without blockading access to West Berlin. This would give Kennedy options besides threatening nuclear war. It wouldn't be a good situation, but it would be short of cause for war.
   The calm-down advisors included Dean Rusk, George Ball (as always) Chip Bohlen (big time), Averell Harriman, Ted Sorenson, the bow-tied historian Art Schlesinger, and Chester Bowles. Ball, Bohlen and Bowles were three liBBBerals that history can look back on fondly in the time when even the Dems were too gung-ho for military adventurism. Bowles bragged to the press later about how he had advised Kennedy and it cost him his job.
    As for the hawks, they were so prevalent at every level of government that it would have been difficult for Kennedy to have maintained a moderate foreign policy even if he had definitely decided on it. Rusk was reasonable, but the hawks dominated the military, the CIA, the FBI, and the United States Congress. Even the State Department had its hawks, although Rusk at the top was not. Most of the American press was hawk.
    Generals like Lemnitzer and Lansdale made Kennedy sleepless. The President worried that low-level hawks out in the field could start a nuclear war without his personal permission.


DO NOTHING DO MUCH
     Rusk concluded that Krushchev was a position where the status quo was a defeat for Russia. The Commie-Tsar was simply trying to stir up the pot for the sake of doing so. Krushchev had everything to lose if things stayed the way there were in Berlin.
   Rusk believed that if Kennedy took any action on Berlin, he would be playing into Krushchev's hands. In fact, Rusk felt that Krushchev was playing a game with Kennedy, just seeing if he could make him jump. If Kennedy did nothing, Rusk believed, Krushchev would be punching the Kremlin walls in frustration. If Kennedy reacted at all to Krushchev's threats it would be a signal to Krushchev that he could play with Kennedy like a puppeteer.
    Krushchev had bluntly told more than one international reporter that Berlin was “the testicles of the west.” He could squeeze them anytime he wanted to and make Kennedy and the west scream in pain and do his bidding. Squeezing Berlin also gave Krushchev the boost he needed at home, a 'wag the german shephard' tactic to make sure no one tried to overthrow him in the CPSU. It might also help the Russian people kept their morale high. As long as he was seen in Russia as the tough Communist hero, he could keep his job.
   Rusk could not persuade Kennedy to do nothing and let Kruschchev do the squirming.

BERLIN CRISIS SUMMER OF 61
   In the summer of 1961 the USA and the USSR were apparently preparing to go to war over Berlin.
    Kennedy went on national television on July 25 and outlined his positions regarding Berlin, stating bluntly that the United States would go to war with the Soviet Union if it tried to forbid western access to West Berlin.
    One of Kennedy's top aides was mortified when Kennedy mentioned in the speech “our legal rights to be in West Berlin.” At that time there was no such physical political entity, not officially, although people did call it that. Krushchev was threatening to make the division in Berlin permanent between east and west and here was Kennedy unwittingly validating the separation by referring to a “West Berlin” that was not on the Rand-McNally maps.
   Johnny K told TV world (and Special K at his Crimean dacha) that the United States was going to increase the defense budget overnight to a staggering $47.5 billion. He was going to call up the reserves and triple the percentage of draftees that were actually called to serve. He did not announce that the United States was going to resume nuclear testing, something many of the hawks had advised him to do.
   After Kennedy's call to arms speech of July 25, the Soviets began dropping hints through lower level channels that Krushchev was not so much thinking of blocking off West Berlin as he was thinking of blocking off East Berlin.
    That changed everything.
    Refugees from East Berlin had been fleeing to West Berlin for months. In the 24 hours after Kennedy's speech, more than 3,000 East Berliners “voted for democracy with their feet.” A thousand a day for months were splitting “Eastie” (East Berlin.) What was worse for Krushchev, it was generally the talented and the reasonably well off that were leaving town. These were the best and the brightest East Germans going over to the capitalists; The people a society cannot afford to lose: Teachers, doctors, stand-up comedians, lawyers, business owners, scholars, stand-up comedians, technicians, i.e., nothing but the best that society had to offer were leaving by the tens of thousands.
    Kennedy and his people saw that this was creating a crisis for Krushchev, and in a way, they wished it wasn't happening. With his population choosing West Berlin, Krushchev's East Berlin would soon be a ghost town if something weren't done. The refugee problem made for a situation where the status quo was becoming a personal humiliation for Dr. Bombast. Krushchev used the threat to block off West Berlin as a fat-face saving device in response to the flight of the refugees. But the problem was out of control.
    The Soviet ambassador in D.C. quietly told the Yanks that the Soviets and their East Germans allies were going to seal off East Berlin, not West.
   This was something the Kennedy team had not anticipated, and they were in fact relieved. Kennedy had never threatened nuclear war over the blockading of East Berlin from West. Both men could save face. JFK could look like he had not backed down on his threats, and N. S. K. could look like he had made good on his threats. Both macho egos were now satiated and the world could go to sleep for the night.
    On August 7 Krushchev went on chintzy Soviet national television and told the Soviet people and a world wide monitoring audience that the 1945-46 agreements between the Soviets and the other war allies were hereby abrogated unilaterally, and that the East Germans were legally in change of their own territory. He was showing off how bad he was.
    But then Nikita added a not so bad obverse side of the coin,

“We do not intend to infringe upon any lawful interests of the Western Powers. Barring access to Berlin or a blockade of West Berlin are entirely out of the question.”

Hal-le-lujah.
    In one sentence Slick Nick had taken that size 10 shoe he had so famously rapped on the desk at the UN over the Congo, and had used it instead to step on the fuse that was sparkling its way up the line towards igniting WWIII. He made himself eligible for a Nobel Peace Prize nomination with two sentences.
    In Washington, Krushchev's speech was cause for celebration. Kennedy broke out the Chataneuf du Pape and called Judy Campbell for a date. If the East Germans wanted to lock the East Berliners up inside forever in Berlin, that was ok by him.
    The American press saw it as a victory for the Russians, but Kennedy could handle it. The President would rather face the wrath of the St. Louis Post Dispatch than Russian nuclear bombs.

WALL STREET
    On Friday the 13th of August, 1961 the Berlin Wall went up. It started with 27 miles of barbed wire and some wall here and there and eventually grew up to become the famous Berlin Wall.
     When the news reached the Oval Office Kennedy was mad but his aide Kenny O'Donnell went berserk. O'Donnell told Kennedy that he had to respond, but Kennedy calmed the hothead down. The President told him, “Better a damned wall than a damned war.” That put Kevin Kostner in his place.
     The Berlin Wall took the the US intelligence community by surprise. That what most accounts say. One source says that the Kennedy administration had discussed the possibility of a wall going up for many months and that they were politically prepared for it. I never know what to believe.
   The construction of the wall was so secret it even took most East German Communist officials by surprise. Only those at the very top knew about it until the last moment. That explains the complete intelligence failure on the part of the USA. We had electronic and human intelligence (including a certain Colonel Oleg Penkovsky inside the KGB) in place at many useful locations, but how can you obtain information from the enemy that is as yet unknown to the enemy? The Russians hadn't even told the East Germans what they were going to do to them, understandably enough.
    Only after the wall became general knowledge was the barbed wire wall upgraded, and cement and other materials brought in to make it permanent. If they had brought the heavy materials into Berlin first, it would have been a tip-off.
    The Berlin Wall kept an entire nation under house arrest from 1961 until 1989.
    Some histories make it seem as though Kennedy was despondent over the news of the Great Wall of Berlin. Not true. Now Krushchev could stop the refugee problem that was a trigger for nuclear war. Kennedy knew that he wouldn't have to conduct a 1948 Berlin air lift. Freedom for West Berlin was now not only assured, but it had now been assured quite publicly on TV in an absolutely official policy speech by the Gensec himself. It was an early Christmas present from the jolly fat man.
    But Kennedy's ecstasy was cut short when the reaction from West Berlin came in. Kennedy hadn't given much thought to how the citizens of West Berlin would react to sealing off Eastie.
    First there was panic. A new refugee problem emerged overnight. This time it was West Berliners fleeing greater East Germany while the travel zones were still open. These volk didn't trust Krushchev's word further than a four-year-old could throw Jackie Gleason.
   Kennedy was dismayed by the overreaction of West Berlin. He felt sure that the Communists would never seal off West Berlin. This was easy for him to think while sailing on the Marlin in Hyannisport, or playing whist in the White House basement with Evelyn Lincoln and Kathy Graham. But the threat was real enough to the average West Berliner.
    The people in West Berlin were mad at Krushchev for sealing off East Berlin, but they got even madder at Kennedy when they learned that the United States gave the wall its tacit seal of approval. The US definitely acquiesced.
    Two days after the speech Krushchev made some blustering belligerent remarks for western consumption, but perhaps more for eastern. He wanted to make sure on his side of the fence that he was not admitting any Communist military inferiority, and that he had not been intimidated. He warned Konrad Adenauer, the West German Chancellor to watch his step,
   “If Comrade Adenauer thinks he can achieve unification of the German nation by war, he is crazy. Germany will be reduced to dust.”
   Two days later Krushchev went public trying to scare all the rest of the countries of free Europe along the same lines. He started by threatening to vaporize the art treasures of Italy and Greece, “they will all be destroyed along with the nations that housed them.” The Red nukes would destroy Norway, Belgium, Holland and Denmark also. The nuking of Great Britian and France went without saying. The world hadn't heard such threats since Hitler needed elbow room in 1939.
   But it was all a rhetorical compensation for Krushchev's essential retreat on Berlin. Kennedy had called his bluff on nuclear war and had won. Johnny would do it again in 1962 over Cuba. It wasn't so much that Krushchev was a man of peace, it was a matter of a 17-1 nuclear superiority of US over the USSR in 1961.
   And Krushchev could still make good his threat to sign a “peace” treaty with East Germany. He also had the resumption of nuclear testing up his sleeve for further dignity.

BERLIN POLICY MOLDED IN CLAY
   Kennedy took some showy steps to try and answer Krushchev's threat to finalize that peace treaty with East Germany. If Kennedy allowed Krushchev to do this, it would be a political defeat for the United States.
   The President sent Lucius Clay to take command in Berlin. That was a big signal to the Russians. Clay had fought in World War II and was the big boss in Germany in the immediate post-war years. Clay was MacArthur west. A good percentage of Germans respected Clay as fair man and some Germans even considered him a friend and a leader. One German citizen told NBC news, “They broke the mold when they made Clay.”
    Clay was a high-profile Republican, and he hated Jack's brother Bobby and didn't hide the fact from anyone. John F. called him and asked him to take over in Germany.
   “I'll do my duty Mr. President, but I won't take any orders from your little punk brother.”
    Kennedy defused it by laughing into the phone saying, “Don't worry Lucy, sometimes I can't stand the little punk either.” Bobby was standing next to the phone and he was not amused. In fact he stormed out when Jack hung up. But Clay was soon on the way to Berlin to save the day.
    Also on the way was LBJ. The Vice President was more or less ordered to go after he kicked and screamed that, “what if a bunch of shooting breaks out. I'll be right in the middle of it!” LBJ wasn't acting like the Lyndon who had won a Silver Star in WWII. The people of West Berlin received him has a hero and LB ended up enjoying himself.
    The other defiant US gesture was the creation of a large heavily armed convoy of tanks, and all sorts of rolling US Army weaponry. This battalion size convoy would start out from the eastern border of West Germany and defiantly roll east across Communist controlled East Germany to West Berlin.
    The convoy would militarily re-enforce the garrison in West Berlin, which would still be heavily overmatched by the Soviet forces in the area. But the big convoy would send a loud political message of defiance.
   Communists slowed the convoy down a couple of times, a few guards and sentries causing some tension, but it made it to the western part of Berlin without shots fired. Johnson was there at the border to welcome the Yanks.
   The press generally interpreted Kennedy's moves as something to
celebrate. He was hailed in US headlines as a tough guy.
   But part of the press saw the bigger truth and it wasn't pretty. Krushchev had already said that he was not going to block western access across east Germany to west Berlin (no caps yet.) So Kennedy's convoy was a gust of wind against a stone wall. The appointment of Clay was an egg thrown against a tank. LBJ was an arrow shot at a plane. Krushchev had taken complete political control over the eastern half of Germany and the eastern half of Berlin. In doing so he had seized the rightful claims of the west to take part in the final determination of eastern Germany and eastern Berlin. Nicky had successfully abrogated the understandings from the war meetings of Yalta and Teheran, set a new foreign policy for the USSR in Europe, and had defied Kennedy to do something about it. Kennedy was so busy being relieved that he did not have to start World War III over access to west Berlin that he was willing to let Krushchev get away with all of it.
    The Berlin wall went up, but that wasn't the big thing. What hurt was Krushchev concluding his treaty of Peace and Friendship with the GDR, the German Democratic Republic.
    It had taken 16 years to settle the matter, but now Germany was divided into two fake countries, each with the special foreign policy agendas of outside states, not their own. And these two foreign policy agendas were mutually hostile.

TESTING ONE TWO – IS THIS ARMS RACE THING ON?
    The Soviet Union resumed above-ground nuclear testing on August 30, 1961.
    Kennedy responded by resuming American nuke testing too. A single bomb was detonated underground in Nevada, but it was strictly a political gesture. The United States had no practical military intelligence reason to resume testing. In fact, the equipment to measure and analyze the blast was not even set up and could not be for two weeks. But Kennedy wanted the blast to get into the papers. The scientific gain wasn't expected to be very useful anyway. So the Nevada bomb was set off without any information available on the results, unless you count the fact that it detonated.
   Krushchev responded with two more above ground nuclear detonations, a week after the boom of 8.30.
   Late in 1961 Russia exploded a 50-megaton bomb in Siberia. That's a big one. To put it in perspective, Nagasaki was 20 kilotons. To this day it is one of the top ten nuke blasts ever.
    One of JFK's liberal friends, I think it was Teddy White, told him not to respond tit-for-tat, mushroom for mushroom. By not responding with it's own nuclear tests, the United States could look like the good guys in the eyes of the world, and the Soviets would be made to play the bad guys.
   “That's a good ah argument Teddy, responded Kennedy to White. “But you ah know ah damn well that I'm ah not going to do that. You ah know I cannot do that. It ah sounds ah pretty good on papah, but I'm ah just not going to ah do that.”
So America began detonating more above ground nukes in response. They were like two gunfighters at high noon shooting warning shots into the sky and staring at each other after each warning shot. It was Shane vs. Jack Wilson, but extra dangerous because these were nuclear six-shooters, and each side thought that the other side was Jack Wilson. (Apologies if you never saw the best western ever made, Shane. Find it, watch it then re-read the sentence. You won't be sorry.)


DEAR JOHN LETTERS
   In top secret private, Krushchov became pen pals with Kennedy after Vienna. The Gensec began writing Kennedy long handwritten personal letters, and Kennedy would read them on Cape Cod and write him back. These letters were delivered in cloak and dagger fashion. One was handed to Sorenson by a Soviet contact, hidden inside a newspaper. The exchanges were kept from the public and from all but top-level officials on both sides. Kennedy was afraid to tell his European allies about the correspondence because he did not want to seem that he was working with the Soviets without consulting them. But he felt that if he told the West Euros about the letters then the letters might stop, and he felt they were a positive development in the quest to avoid World War III. K and K agreed to refrain from the usual political and historical name-calling and rhetoric in their correspondence.

DOGS OF WAR
   The Soviet Ambassador dropped by the White House one day late in 1961 with a gift for the Kennedys. Nick said that Mrs. Kennedy had asked for it when they were in Vienna. It was a dog, the offspring of a Russian dog named Strelka, the intrepid pooch that had circled the globe in outer space and returned alive with its tail wagging.
   The gift dog was named “Pushinka,” which means “Fluffy” in Russian. Jack looked at Jacqueline in borderline displeasure, as if to say, 'what did you get us into with your loose talk.' She looked at him with an equal sense of 'what are we supposed to do now?' dismay and apologized, saying 'Jack I was just making conversation with the old guy.' The two eventually shook their heads and laughed. They put off a decision for the moment and Fluffy was left to the care of a White House servant for the day.
    The Kennedys gave in as the days passed. Caroline and John made friends with the animal. The First Family adopted Fluffy as a beloved member of the Kennedy clan. Fluffy even learned to add 'ah' between barks.
   It said a lot about the President's personality that they kept and loved the dog. He was just a mongrel, and not the prettiest dog of all time, but a nice bloke from all accounts.
    Father Joe Kennedy had earlier given the First Family a highbrow pure Welsh terrier named Charlie. What a combo, the Prince and the Pauper, two Cold Warriors snuggling by the warm Kennedy fireplace
     Joe Kennedy was hoping that the friendship between Charlie and Fluffy could remain platonic, but once it became a Kennedy it was too late. Four Kennedy puppies were born in the White House and spent some quality time making everyone laugh and smile in Hyannisport, while the photographers ate it up.
   No doubt Krushchev was double-dealing in his generosity. he was rubbing it in Kennedy's face that Russia was ahead of the United States in space technology. The dog's dad had gone into orbit and returned safely and that was the major point of the gift. Part of the gift was sincere, part of it wasn't. But it could have backfired. Kennedy might have spent many a winter night with Fluffy on his lap, staring at it, remember the point Krushchev was making, and then picking up the phone and calling some influential Senator with a, “I ah think its ah time we ah tripled the budget on our ah apace program.”
     Charlie and Fluffy's four new puppies were named Bronco, Rex, Fido, and Lashua. Reporters nicknamed them “pupniks.” The joke was of course a reference to the first Russian satellite, Sputnik.
    Many accounts say that John Kennedy was the one that called them “Pupniks,” I'm going with the version that says the reporters named them that. I think the joke is too corny for a man of his urbanity. It wouldn't be too corny for a reporter, or me, but I don't think it fits in with the Kennedy wit. And a reporter has a motive to try and think of a clever joke on the matter, whereas Kennedy had more things on his mind.
   It is often written that Pushinka was a gift from the Soviet for Caroline Kennedy. Not so.
   Dave Powers was there when the dog was delivered as a gift for Mrs. Kennedy, and Jackie admitted the conversation with Krushchev where she had inadvertently asked for it in Vienna.
   Caroline was a little young to be owning a dog. I think the historians are projecting the Nixon Checkers speech into the Kennedy facts (In his famous 1952 speech defending his slush fund as legal, Nixon spoke of a gift arriving in the mail because his daughter Tricia had said on the campaign trail that she wished she had a dog. The gift arrived in a crate, a spotted spaniel, and Tricia named it 'Checkers.'
   Pushinka died of natural causes in John John's home in 1976.
   The first time Charlie brought her home to meet his Welsh Terrier parents they barked at him, “You can do better than that!”

THANKSGIVING DAY MASACRE – NOVEMBER 1961
    This was what they called around D.C. for a couple of years, but compared to the “Saturday Night Massacre” under Nixon, it was mild. Kennedy shook up the cabinet and the list of appointments to the State Department. A few people had to go, so a general shake-up make these firings less visible. The main thing was that Under (Assistant) Secretary of State Chester Bowles was too liberal for Dean Rusk and for a lot of other important people. Plus he had leaked to the press how he had been right in his advice to Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Nobody likes a braggart. Kennedy had to get this Henry Wallace lefty out of his hair. The Eleanor Roosevelt wing was unhappy when Bowles was fired.
    He wasn't exactly fired, of course. Bowles was re-assigned
to an unimportant diplomatic mission in remotest central Asia.

GOA CONSTRICTOR DECEMBER 1961
   The United States was not happy with India for what it did in December of 1961. India decided to celebrate the UN Declaration against Colonialism by invading the Portuguese possession of Goa. This little Portuguese colony was an irredentist thorn in the side of India for centuries. It was like Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, except that India had more power to do something about it than Cuba.
   India overran Goa in about 30 hours and celebrated like it had just upset a champion. India cited recent UN Declarations against colonialism as justification for the action. President Kennedy curtly reminded India that all of these UN resolutions against colonialism were predicated on solving all issues by peaceful means.

   “The idea that the United Nations would approve of any nation taking military action against any other nation to resolve a colonial dispute shows a constricted sense of fairness and honesty on the part of the aggressor nation, no matter how wrong the colonial power being challenged. India has re-invented the United Nations to suit its own needs,”

    U Thant, the UN Secretary General concurred with Kennedy. The UN General Assembly passed a resolution condemning the action of India.
    It was about as effective as Obama's declaration in 2010 that he “would not tolerate” any more oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico. All this hot air meant nothing. No one was going to put together a 'Ganges Storm' UN military force to invade India and force it to return Goa to Portugal so that Portugal would later give it back to India after two years of diplomatic negotiations. That would be like performing open heart bypass surgery on a death row inmate with three days left. India fully appreciated that fact and that's why India dared to invade Goa in December of 1961. Cuba would do the same thing in an instant if it could at Guantanamo. China would have done the same thing a long time ago in Hong Kong if Hong Kong was a possession of Ecuador instead of Great Britain.

DECEMBER 1961 HELSINKI – THE GREATEST SPY STORY EVER TOLD BEGINS
    No question about it. It is the greatest spy story of all time. It's the most important study project of my life. It makes a James Bond film look like an episode of Survivor Gabon. It is that serious and that dramatic. In show business, this is called “good hype.” That is, you can hype it up all you want and it will live up to it. The Bealtes were “good hype.” So is this story,
   A Soviet KGB agent named Anatoly Michael Golitsyn walked into the American consulate in Helsinki saying he wanted to defect to the United States, and that he had a lot of hot information to deliver to the authorities in Washington D.C.
   “Twist my arm,” said the American consul sarcastically. “And welcome aboard!”
    Within a week Golitsyn was happily living in the DC area meeting with agents of the CIA and spilling his guts about Soviet spies in the United States. These Russian (or pro-Russian) spies weren't just private sleeper-cell civilians finding out what they could with limited means. Golitsyn was naming names and revealing spies with jobs inside the United States government in almost all branches. There were Soviet spies in the military, the State Department, and double agents inside the American intelligence community.
Its important now to jump way ahead of the story and then come back to 1961. In 1984 Golitsyn wrote what I consider to be the most important political book ever written, New Lies For Old. This is his grand thesis that the USSR and China had combined since 1959 to stage a great disinformation campaign about Communist disunity in order to disarm and lull the west to sleep regarding the threat of Communist world domination. He claimed that the disinformation campaign had worked so well that it grew magnificently, and was still ongoing as he was writing in 1984. He boldly predicted that a new young dynamic leader would soon arise in the Soviet Union and bedazzle the west. He predicted that the satellite states of Eastern Europe would become independent, and that the USSR would break up. He predicted a series of revolutions that would appear to be spontaneous events from below, from the streets and farms, but that the entire thing would be staged from above while made to appear that it was arising from below. He predicted that the Soviets would tear down the Berlin Wall. All of his predictions came true, yet he has been completely discredited, as though all these predictions were just a lucky coincidence.
   Why would the USSR do all this? Why would it stage revolutions from below from above? Because it wanted the West to both disarm and give Russia billions and billions of dollars to re-arm and take control of the world's economy in tandem with China after the west had been lulled to sleep by the great liberal wave.
   Today, in 2010 pundits are talking about the new unity between China and Russia after all those decades of being close to war. They talk about how China is buying up all the US bonds and threatening to strangle America economically by owning it. If the Golitsyn thesis is true, this was long ago planned, it was the inspiration behind the velvet revolution of 1989. It means that China and Russia were never really close to war at all; That impending war between Russia and China was all a very unfunny joke, possibly even more unfunny than the new one I tried last night at Motley's in Fanuel Hall (there were only 17 people there, that's my excuse.)
    In spite of these amazing predictions, Golitsyn has been almost completely discredited by the academic community of the world. Their explanation is that he was “paranoid.” Never mind that he predicted all these things in Nostradamus fashion. That doesn't matter. All that matters is that he was “paranoid.” Rather than try to discredit his work, they discredit the person. They use a one-word epithet to dismiss his awesome thesis.
   Golitsyn didn't believe in Jesus but Jesus believed in Golitsyn. James Jesus Angleton is the next important figure in this amazing story. Angleton liked the angle. He had no trouble believing that the Soviets and the Chinese could do this, and he bought Golitsyn's story completely. And what do the scholars say about it? They dismiss Angleton totally because he too was “paranoid.”
   That's interesting because at least six others in the CIA believed it too and began to work hard on developing information and plans of action based on the Golitsyn consensus. Apparently they too were “paranoid.” What are the odds that all eight people I have mentioned were simultaneously clinically paranoid? If you think Golitsyn had a far fetched theory, how bout this idea than anyone who listened to him and take him seriously all happened to be clinically paranoid? That is more of a reach than the idea that two Communist nations would engage in a major disinformation plot to fool the west. That latter may be right or wrong, but at least it's logical. It makes sense. The Communist bloc had much to gain by convincing the west that there was no Communist bloc.
   If you study the world politics of the period form 1960 to 1990 you will find that this idea that only a naive person believed there was a Communist united bloc comes up thousands of times. It throws a monkey wrench into every study of Cold War events and politics. Everyone who took a conservative view of a untied Communist threat in those 30 years was ridiculed as foolish and naïve because the enmity between the USSR and China is proof that there is no bloc at all, and only a blochead could even think so.
   I direct you to two video history books for the point of view that I am a blockhead too. One is called Yuri Nosenko KGB, starring Tommy Lee Jones. The other is a Frontline PBS documentary called Spyhunter. Both of these videos will tell you that Golitsyn was paranoid and awful and so was Angleton of the CIA and all of his buddies.
I am so confident I am right, that I will not hesitate to direct you to any video or book that tells you I am wrong. Hit me and Jesus and Anatoly with your best shots. Wear yourself out with your blows and I'll just play rope-a-dope and come back with my side of the argument after you've exhausted yourself calling Jesus a fool.
   Now lets go back to 1961-2. Golitsyn has just defected. All of his leads turned out to be accurate. No one in the CIA ever claimed otherwise. Tony busted a whole bunch of Communist spies in the United States. Some were arrested, some were expelled.
   It is interesting to note that no one claimed that Golitsyn was paranoid back then. Those who only believe what they want ot believe only decided that Golitsyn was clinically paranoid after he developed his thesis about a global Communist disinformation plot. My question is, if Golitsyn was “paranoid” when he wrote New Lies For Old in 1984, why didn't anyone notice that he was clinically paranoid back in 1962? He developed the illness only when it suited those who didn't want to believe in his work decades later. Somehow he only developed paranoid schizohphrenia when he wrote what a lot of people didn't want to hear. In an era of detente and give peace a chance, and if only both sides would just sit down and talk we'll find that after all, people are just people, along comes Golitsyn to warn that we're all being duped and just as fast as he gets the word out it turns out that he is clinically paranoid. Darn! Just when he was starting to make startling sense, it turns out the guy's paranoid.
    And so what if he was. If a mentally ill painter creates a masterpiece, do you dismiss the quality of the work? Just because Tony G was paranoid (if he was) doesn't therefore mean he was wrong. Poe was on some bad drugs when he wrote a lot of his best stuff. No one is taking his books out of the schools.
   The Soviet Union took Tony plenty seriously when he defected. Russia issued statements denouncing him and saying he was just a “careerist” who was bitter because he had been passed over for promotion and he wanted to strike back at the Soviet Union by defecting and stirring up trouble. Again, so what if that's true. What do I care what his motive was, or what kind of a person he was? Anatoly might have been a selfish knave from hell. That doesn't matter to me. What does matter is that he understood the Soviet Union better than any American expert could ever dream of. His intel was better than any native born CIA agent could hope for. As Churchill once said, “Few are so gifted as to understand the politics of their own country. None are so gifted as to understand the politics of another.”
   Those who call Golitsyn paranoid are typically liberal British authors and extremely liberal American movie producers. They have a selfish partisan interest in discrediting him. They hate what he has to say so they hate him. By hating him, and bashing him personally they think they prove him wrong. They just use the same trick that Robert Kennedy used to arrest Edwin Walker in 1962. Since we think his political views are extreme and against everything we stand for we will avoid answer his arguments by declaring him mentally unfit.
   In the late 1970's the controversy over Golitsyn reached climax within the CIA. This happened at the height of left liberalism in the USA. The conservative perception of the Communist threat was at the bottom of a pit and couldn't climb out. Many CIA lifetime career officers were expelled from the CIA because they refused to stop believing in Anatoly Golitsyn. That had a chance to say “I will keep quiet on this in order to keep my job at the CIA.” Instead at least six CIA officers didn't tow the new wave liberal left line on the Cold War and the united Communist monolith. They could have saved their jobs but they thought the principle was too important and they were fired. Right or wrong, this proves that I am turning the reader on to something very important.
   This left Golitsyn frustrated. He no longer had support from the CIA so he wrote went public and wrote New Lies For Old. And in 1993 he wrote an astounding sequel called The Prestroika Deception.
   There is a great deal more to this spy story, but it began in December 1961 in Helsinki.
   You cannot appreciate my take on foreign affairs in the Kennedy era unless you understand that I believe in these paranoid men. The disinformation campaign was already working when Golitsyn defected. Kennedy and his State Department completely believed that Russia and China had become enemies in 1959 and that it was getting worse by the week in his time. That changes everything in the Cold War story. The Kennedy team actually believed, to cite one example, that the USSR was desperately trying to stop China from acquiring nuclear weapons. Kennedy thought he could play off Russia and China against each other to draw concession from either or both of them. Kissinger would buy into this approach big time in the Nixon years, and its exasperating to read about when you believe in Jesus the way I do.
   For the record, one of the most highly respected political authors of our time, Jay Edward Epstein, wrote a book called Deception in 1989 in which he takes my side completely! I should say, I take his.
   A note from the future as we think about 1961. In 1989 there was a revolution from below in Romania. The dictator Cecescau was toppled in a glorious revolt of the masses. Communism fell as statues tumbled before the invigorated freedom-loving mob. The Romanian government fought back. There was fighting in the streets. People died. I was watching it at home in frustration thinking its all pre-planned but I can't prove it.
   A week later I'm watching the ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. Just before he goes to a commercial he reads a story with no b-roll about Romania. It seems that several eyewitness reports from Romania claimed that bodies were being dragged out of the local morgues and placed in the streets to appear that they had died in the street fighting. There was never any follow up and the next image was an ad for a product to relieve constipation.
   Think about what you are saying about all Communists if you think that Golitsyn's thesis is a joke. You are saying that you agree that there was never a united international Communist movement. What an insult to a couple of billion intelligent people who believed this in 147 nations all over the world including the
United States. If the prospect of united Communism transcending traditional nationalist boundaries was a laughing stock, then a billion or more people were laughing stocks, and I don't really think you want to say that. I studied Marxism and Communism for ten years and I can safely say that there is something worthwhile and viable to their philosophy. I don't agree with it, but it was a very powerful and real force to be reckoned with. The true believers were ready to die for Communism. The international communists of Kennedy's years sincerely believed in the ultimate victory and you can't indirectly dismiss them by dismissing anyone who fears them as a fool. Give the Communists a little credit, will ya? Class struggle is not nothing. There were a hundred Universities from Moscow to Peking to Cairo teaching this stuff in Kennedy's time. You're laughing off Golitsyn and all anti-Communists as naïve, yet a billion people believed what he is saying they believed.
   Since you don't want to believe that they believe, then they therefore don't believe, and anyone who thinks they believe is unbelievable and paranoid. That is the anti-Angleton thesis.
    Just so you know, William Colby of the CIA casually wrote in his Vietnam War history that the Sino-Soviet split was largely a disinformation campaign, and then didn't develop the point, and historian Michael Lind says that the Sino-Soviet split was disinformation in the 1960's, but became real in the 1970's. Its not the crackpot theory of a paranoid defector and a paranoid comedian. Its a real and viable opinion of great seriousness.

LAOS 1961-62
To give you some idea of the depth of knowledge within the Kennedy Administration of the complexities of the situation in Southeast Asia, it is worth noting that the President usually mispronounced Laos, the country that the United States was ready to intervene to save. He usually called Laos “Lay-os.” That says a lot to me about what went wrong in Southeast Asia. It reminds me of the Carter Administration when Cy Vance wrote of the Iran Hostage Crisis years later that, “The problem was that none of us at the top knew anything about Islamic fundamentalism.”
   Well someone should have!
    We spend billions on moon missions and can't spend 1,500 to fly natives to DC for brain-picking. Every nation should have an intelligent native representing its concerns and its culture informally to the President in regular private meetings. There should be unofficial representatives to compliment the work of the Ambassadors. Highbrow diplomats are sometimes as far removed from the ground level feelings in their own country as foreigners. Instead of speaking at the dedication of a new volleyball stadium in New Orleans, President Obama should be wining and dining some normal person from Nepal or Togo with his precious time.   Then if something breaks out in Togo or Nepal, he will have a referent to work with and a person to consult with for a true insiders perspective to providing a key supplement to the other work by the top State Department officials. The meetings could be held at night after official business was completed so as not to offend State Department sensibilities. Then a Kennedy wouldn't get caught dead mispronouncing the name of Laos and no one in the Carter Administration would have had any excuse to say later that none of us understood Islamic fundamentalism. One foreign native is worth a thousand domestic experts. The same formula could even work at home. The Justice Department could have spent $300,000 on a study of race relations in South Boston on the eve of the 1974 busing crisis, but if you paid me $300 I could have written a better report, hands down.)
The problem with the Vietnam War is that we sent American experts on fact finding missions to Vietnam and they came back with a naïve report every time. Instead of sending Max Taylor and Bob MacNamara to Vietnam to report on what was happening on the ground, they should have shipped 15 local Vietnamese people back to Washington, reversing the shuttle and saving a lot of time and money for better results. They could be from all walks of life and as many locations as possible. A meeting with these 15 people plus four or five top US officials including the President lasting three hours would have produced and developed far more productive information that any US fact finding mission could ever dream of. The whole Vietnam fiasco could have been avoided, because the 15 would just speak the truth as they saw it, as oposed to saying whatever the US leadership wanted to hear, which is, after all, was the real goal of all US fact finding missions to Vietnam in the sixties.
   Because the Vietnam problem became the scourge of the sixties, the perception of Kennedy years is that he was plagued by the burgeoning problem of Vietnam. But in the first two of his three years in office Vietnam was a minor problem compared to the immediate crisis in Laos. For most of his term it was landlocked Laos dominating the headlines, not Nam. Kennedy didn't consider intervention in Nam until after Vienna.
   As mentioned earlier, Kennedy met the day before his inauguration with the outgoing President Ike. The number one topic of conversation was Laos, not Vietnam. Eisenhower said that Laos was the ‘cork in the bottle’ in Southeast Asia. If you uncork Laos, you expose the border of Thailand and invite the decline and fall of Cambodia, South Vietnam and Burma as well. “If a political settlement cannot be reached in Laos,” he told Kennedy, “then we must intervene.”
    This was an unfair equation to drop on Jack’s lap. Eisenhower had refused to intervene in the Suez Canal Crisis in spite of pleas from allies and conservatives at home, and had repeated the all-talk no-action performance with the French at Dien Bien Phu.
   Ike hesitated in Laos because with him it was a toss between full-scale intervention and no intervention at all. This is an admirable conservative formula but also a permission-slip to not act on Laos and then leaves the no-win dilemma to the next President. To top it off he gives the new guy a stern advisory that he would have to intervene. In other words he told Kennedy which decision to make regarding the decision that he had refused to make himself.
   Kennedy bluntly asked the grandfather, “If the situation is so critical, why didn’t you decide to do something in recent days.” Ike replied that he did not feel it was right to act on Laos with a new administration coming in. Eisenhower apparently was too busy ‘waging peace.’
   The Communists of Laos under the military-political group, the Pathetic Lao (actually the “Pathet Lao” – I can't resist the twist), were fighting a civil war with the right-wing forces under General Phil Nosovan. The United States gave the rightist Laotians $300 mil during the Ike years. Now Kennedy was being asked to insert troops.
The Communists controlled the northern areas of Laos closest to the two Communist supporting states of China and North Vietnam.
The Pathet Laos won a key victory over the Royal Laotian Army on the Plain of Jars a month after Kennedy took office. Jack asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff what it would take to save Laos from the Commies. The reply was 250,000 ground troops and a threat to use nukes in necessary.
   But Laos presented too many difficulties. Our allies in the Royal Laotian Army were of little help. For one thing there were consistent reports that the Laotians were so passive and gentle a race of people that it was hard to motivate personnel on either side to fight hard. Opposing forces took breaks and went swimming in the same ponds. These were not the troops to back for the big fight.

   In 1985, Nixon asserted that the Vietnam War was essentially lost when we did not intervene in Laos during the Kennedy years. Nixon believed that if Kennedy had extended the DMZ westward well into Laotian territory, the Ho Chi Minh Trail could have been effectively blocked. In Richard’s opinion, once the trail grew in strength and resilience in the mid-1960’s the war was lost. There was no way the US and its South Vietnamese allies could defend their entire long western border against attacks from both Laos and Cambodia. The VC supply line ran right up into China proper. The back door was limitlessly stocked with goodies.
A Laotian cease-fire agreement was reached, to the dismay of the hawks in the Pentagon who wanted victory, not a truce. By this new Geneva agreement, Laos would be ‘neutralized.’ The cease-fire in Laos deteriorated until by the end of the Kennedy era, the neutrality was clearly a sham that was favorable to the Communist cause. Of course the liberal history books only stress that the CIA conducted a secret war in Laos during these years, while completely omitting the Communist violations that were not even secret. The other side was blatantly violating Laotian neutrality with open armed attacks by both regular and guerilla units. The USA was trying to keep up the image of respecting the agreements while secretly assisting the conservative side through the CIA. The Communist side never had to worry about respecting treaties so they had no need to resort to covert operations.

    Kennedy wanted to get tough in Laos but after the Bay of Pigs fiasco Kennedy began to back off on intervention. He told advisors that he had learned two lessons from the Cuban disaster. One was to never trust the advice of the CIA or his military again, and the other was to never commit US armed forces except in decisive force. For both these reasons Kennedy did not take Eisenhower’s 1-19-60 advice and jump into the Laos fight. Kennedy asked the generals sharply, “How can I ask the American people to support a fight 9,000 miles away when they had not supported an operation against a Communist threat 90 miles away.” The setback at the Bay of Pigs had tied Kennedy’s hands in Laos. “Without the Bay of Pigs, we would have troops in Laos right now,” he told a cabinet member in the fall of 61. But he could not risk another failed intervention when the heat was still on over the last one.
   On the other hand he couldn’t afford to continually look weak and retreating against Communist expansion. These were macho times and he knew he had to make a stand somewhere. He could not afford to look weak on anything, especially against Communism, unless of course he wanted to be a one-term president and hand the keys over to Goldwater or Lodge in 1964.

   But Kennedy in 61 nevertheless threatened intervention in Laos as openly as possible. He moved American divisions from Okinawa to Thailand and airlifted a brigade right next to the Laotian border. The radio transmissions of the military movements were sent out over un-coded channels so the Commies would get the message. It was a bluff and to some extent it worked.
   Just in time came a breakthrough towards a settlement. Soviet leader Khrushchev became willing to see a neutralist solution. He didn’t want a ground war in Asia, at least not one dependent on his Pathet Laotian allies who could not be counted on. Besides, if Krushchov could prevent American military intervention in Laos through a negotiated settlement, he could always use Laos as a base of guerilla operations later against Vietnam, where Soviet eyes were genuinely focused. Besides, they could use the ‘settlement’ as a cover for continued aggressions. Tie goes to the Communists because they never honor their agreements while we at least try to.
     A cease-fire agreement was reached, to the dismay of the hawks in the Pentagon who wanted victory in Laos, not a truce. By this new Geneva agreement, Laos would be ‘neutralized.’ The cease-fire in Laos deteriorated until by the end of the Kennedy era, the neutrality was clearly a sham that was favorable to the Communist cause. Of course the liberal English language histories stress only that the CIA conducted a secret war in Laos during these years, while completely omitting the Communist violations that were not even secret. The other side was blatantly violating Laotian neutrality with open armed attacks by both regular and guerilla units. The USA was trying to keep up the image of respecting the agreements while secretly assisting the conservative side through the CIA. The Communist side never had to worry about respecting treaties so they had no need to resort to covert operations.

   Krushchev and Kennedy agreed to the ‘neutralization and independence” of Laos and both knew that in doing so the west was virtually conceding Communist preeminence there.

EVIAN WATER ACCORDS - MARCH 19 1962
    Near the water of Lake Geneva is the French town of Evian les Bains. It was here in 1962 that the treaty was signed between Algerian rebel organizations, and Colonialist France. Algeria wanted independence from father France. France answered with strafing attacks from P-47 fighter-bombers left-over from World War II. But against the Arab rebels, they were effective enough.
    The settlement was not that unkind to the loser, France. The Rebels had never actually won anything strategic on the battlefield. They had just proven that they could never be controlled. France was in a guerilla war that would never end so it granted conditional independence. But Algeria had shown that it couldn't win either. It was a bad war and it was on the front pages of the news for much of Kennedy's time although is largely forgotten now.
    Algeria after Evian was still in the French “sphere of influence.” French warships and warplanes were still on Algerian bases for a fee of about three Francs a year. The Evian Water Accords of March 1962 was not a bad settlement for France. It was far better than the 1954 settlement in Vietnam when the Communists came to the Geneva Conference with smiles, and the French plenipotentiaries with frowns.
   Evian was load off Kennedy's mind. He had made his mark in the Senate with his speech supporting the Arab Rebs and calling on France to grant independence to Algeria. It had endeared him with liberals and progressives all over the world. Now as President his famous Algerian stance made it hard for the U.S. to maintain good relations with France, although he actually got along pretty good with De Gaulle personally. Now that that sore spot was settled JFK hoped to improve relations with France, maybe getting them to join NATO or the Common Market.
   The Algerian War had been going on since 1954. Algeria was France's Second Vietnam. 28,434 brave Frenchmen died in Algeria between 1954 and 1962. That was about half of what the USA lost in Vietnam from 1962-1973.

WASHINGTON OVER STEELERS IN 1962 SUPER BOWL
    Jack Kennedy gave what may have been his all-time angriest press conference on April 11, 1962. He let the big US Steel producers have it with a roundhouse right followed by a left hook. Kennedy thought that he had worked out a solid steel compact between US Steel and United Steelworkers two months earlier.
   US Steel was the big steeler and set prices. No small company wanted to buck the big monster, so whatever US Steel says goes for the second-stringers. Kennedy didn't care much for governmental control over free enterprise when he was in Congress, but as President he liked to be on control of everything. Kennedy was alarmed at inflation and was not averse to wage and price controls to stop it. Of course, it was important to try and get industry to co-operate with his wage and price controls voluntarily, so that he wouldn't look like some sort of big government dictator like FDR.
    The administration worried about inflation as well as deflation. Wages shouldn’t rush ahead of productivity, and prices shouldn’t rush ahead of purchasing power. That included overseas purchasing power. Rising prices in the US could affect the balance of trade and create a deficit there which could affect the entire economy.
     In April of 1961 JFK personally wrote to the chiefs of several of the largest steel firms asking them to hold the line on prices. He also wrote the president of the Steelworkers union asking them for the most modest wage increases they could possibly live with. It took a year but on April 3 1962 the steel workers and US Steel reached a settlement. King Solomon Kennedy had done his magic.
    The President of US Steel, a Captain Bligh by the name of Roger Blough agreed to grant this very small raise to his labor. Labor in turn agreed not to strike. Business agreed not to raise steel prices. Labor signed an official contract that won a tiny raise instead of the big one they wanted. JFK felt really good about this deal. There would be no increase in the price of steel. Kennedy declared that it was everyone's patriotic duty to do whatever was necessary to curb inflation, and to help the American consumer.
    But there was a problem. Labor had given its contract. Business had only given its word.
    One month later Blough walked into the Oval Office while Kennedy was eating a meatball spuckie (a long-breaded hot sandwich in Boston) and announced that US Steel was going to raise its prices starting tomorrow by $6 a ton. Roger was not the least bit apologetic in tone or substance. He felt that the government had no authority on the matter, any more than it could tell the woman selling rusty chairs at a yard sale what prices she could set.
    Kennedy rose from his chair in such sudden anger that he rolled a meatball on the rug. While wiping hot tomato sauce off his white collar he exploded at Blough to “Get out of my office! You have double-crossed me, and I won't take this lying down!” Blough later recalled that Kennedy was so mad he'd inadvertently, “'spit a tiny stain of tomato sauce right onto my $87 tie.”
     Two days later Bethlehem Steel, the next largest company, raised its prices too. Then four other big boys raised the steel bar as well. Kennedy fumed that their greed exceeded their sense of public duty, and that they had obviously not put their hearing aids in when they listened to his command at the Inaugural. They apparently only heard him say “Ask only what your country can do for you.”
   Now began a war between Kennedy and US Steel. Kennedy ordered his Attorney General of a brother to get the FBI to start tapping the telephones of the Steel executives. Kennedy then turned the IRS on the lot of them. It was unfair and illegal to selectively enforce the laws of the land even if US Steel was betraying the public interest. It was totally Nixonian behavior but he got away with it for a number of reasons and has gotten a free pass from most historians for a number of other reasons.
    In the middle of this bitter fight Kennedy held the mother of all angry press conferences. Reporters were accustomed to the charming jokester, even on some fairly serious matters. But out strode a Kennedy breathing fire. Reporters were literally gasping during portions of the two long statements and short answers to two questions. He really stuck it to the steelers, invoking the KIA's in Vietnam to shame them.
    Here is an abridged version of the molten steel JFK 4.11.62 press briefing,

“Simultaneous identical actions of United States Steel and other leading steel corporations, increasing steel prices by some 6 dollars a ton, constitute a wholly unjustifiable and irresponsible defiance of the public interest.

In this serious hour in our nation's history, when we are confronted with grave crises in Berlin and Southeast Asia, when we are devoting our energies to economic recovery and stability, when we are asking Reservists to leave their homes and families for months on end, and servicemen to risk their lives -- and four were killed in the last two days in Viet Nam -- and asking union members to hold down their wage requests, at a time when restraint and sacrifice are being asked of every citizen, the American people will find it hard, as I do, to accept a situation in which a tiny handful of steel executives whose pursuit of private power and profit exceeds their sense of public responsibility can show such utter contempt for the interests of 185 million Americans.
   Some time ago I asked each American to consider what he would do for his country and I asked the steel companies. In the last 24 hours we had the answer. They have given the America people the steel shaft.”


Then in an informal remark to his cabinet that leaked to the press he said,

          “My father always told me that all businessmen
            were sons-of-bitches, but I never believed it
            until now.”

   When the business community raised a fuss about the sensational quote, Kennedy refused to retract the Adam Clymer moment, without taking it up a notch either. If fact, the curse word he used to describe them was worse than sob's. The press 'cleaned it up' a bit.
    Kennedy kept a molten heat on US Steel. He hit em where it hurt when he ordered the US government to turn give all federal contracts to the six small steel companies that had not not followed US Steel and raised their prices. He met with the smaller companies and urged them to do their part and pledged to them that he would help them hang on. The country backed Kennedy and new orders for steel began pouring into the smaller companies.
   Between public humiliation, labor pressure, lost government contracts, IRS pressure, wire-taps, and the Justice Department in charge of a Kennedy, Capatin Blough swallowed his scotch and his pride and called the Kennedy's in Hyannisport and offered to rescind half of the $6 a ton increase. The Kennedy's laughed and hung up. Two drinks later, Blough called them up and conceded the full refund. There would be no price increase. Blough then added a few personal remarks about how the Kennedy's had behaved like bullies and he was offended and disappointed that they would resort to everything they did to win. US Steel had never played touch football with these lunatics before. The only morality to winning was winning.
    The Kennedy's celebrated with a few cocktails with family. JFK mocked the way Blough was moaning about how he had been bulldozed and bullied. Then Bobby jumped up grinning and said “Those guys were mean to my brother! I'm not ah gonna stand for a that! Don't ah you be mean to my brotha!”
    Everyone laughed at the joke, but every joke is based on the truth. The joke is the mirror mirror on the wall that sees through all. Bobby's joke was exactly what had happened.
   The economic gain was a political loss. Big business was bitter towards Kennedy. Business had long favored the Republican Party and Kennedy was trying to get them to trust him. There goes that support system for 1964.
    People get whacked of for stealing three grand from a bookie. Kennedy was taking millions out of the pockets of big steel and humiliating their leaders publicly as traitors to the flag. If the JFK Assassination was a who-dun-it crime drama on NBC, one of the suspects they'd be talking to right after Dealy Plaza would be Roger Blough. Many of the books written about the JFK assassination include US Steel as a suspect with a motive to hire someone to kill Kennedy.


SINATRA - JUDY – CASTRO – SAM - AND DAN ROWAN
   FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was forever trying to drop hints to President Kennedy that he should stop having cheater sex with the girl-friends of known mobsters. It was dangerous business and it might even involve some national security risks.
    Finally Hoover went to White House in February of 1962 and had what is today called “an intervention” with JFK.
    The number one problem babe was Judy Campbell. She was a Catholic schoolgirl grown up but she wasn't as pure as June Gregg (I went to Catholic School with June Gregg.) Judy slept with mobster Sam Giancana, Frank Sinatra, and President Kennedy. Not all at once of course, but that's quite a Kingston Trio. Hoover's FBI had wiretaps on so many people in the country that it was easy to prove his concerns about Kennedy. Jack at first denied to Hoover that he was “shacking up” with Judy Campbell, but Hoover produced telephone records of her calls to the White House, where Evelyn Lincoln played the Betty Curry enabler.
    Where the FBI didn't have wiretaps with CIA did, and the two were tapping in secret competition with each other. A stand-up comedian from LA named Dan Rowan (later of the famous Laugh-In TV show) was sleeping around with some celebrity chicks and even his phone was tapped. The FBI socked it to Rowan in order to find out what was going on with his show biz pal Sinatra.
   The Kennedy's had a two track relationship with the mob. They tapped their phones and they tapped their girlfriends. The FBI was trying to break down the mob but the mob was protected by the CIA. That's because the CIA top mobsters hired top mobsters to try and assassinate Fidel Castro.
    When Castro took over in Cuba the mob was deeply embedded in Cuba via the casino gambling business (see Godfather II for some edifying moments.) The mob had a stake in restoring Cuban democracy and free enterprise, and they were still stinging from Castro's expropriation without compensation of large mob properties. So the mob and the CIA had the common goal of killing Castro and getting a friendly Cuba back on the map. In the meantime the FBI as trying to prosecute these gangsters at face value, not knowing of the secret deals made with the CIA. And in the middle of all this the carnal President is having sex with mob girlfriends throwing a distressing and complicating factor into the situation for all parties.
   The press knew all about Kennedy cheating on his wife seven days a week with seven different women, but back then they protected him. It wasn't so much patriotic duty as cultural conformity. You just didn't write about stuff like that back then. Now you seek it out.
    Hoover was fed up and told Kennedy to stay away from 'mobbed up' Frank Sinatra, and stay away from mob kingpin mistresses. It was getting to be too much for the FBI to keep quiet. .
   When Hoover left, Robert Kennedy came in and took Hoover's side. “Stay away from Sinatra!” shouted the Attorney General at his brother. “We don't need no Judy Campbell. Hell, we got Marylyn Monroe and Anglie Dickenson in the bullpen. We can drop that peasant Judy. Next thing you know you'll be tagging chunky 20 year old interns with a childish crush on you.” “Don't be ridiculous,” said John Kennedy to his brother Bobby.
    Kennedy was soon scheduled to leave for a short vacation in Florida where he was planning to stay as Sinatra's place. Instead he stayed at the home of Bing Crosby, and Sinatra toned it down big time.

POOL PARTY SCANDAL JUNE 1962
Critics of the Kennedys were quick to find fault. The Kennedy ‘Hollywood on the Cape’ lifestyle was nauseating to a lot of people. The hip writers, cello players, sculptors, movie stars, and Indian poets coming in and out of Hyannisport were a far cry from the tough leaders that Ike used to hang with, or the poker players chain smoking in Truman's lair. For the most part it was his wife that brought these uppity artists to Camelot. Jack pretended to like Stravinski, and Picasso but really was not all that taken with art. He'd listen to a poet and then excuse himself to go play a Chuck Berry album in the den.
   A story made the rounds about a June 62 swimming pool party at Bobby’s place in the Hyannis compound. The party may have gotten a little out of control. I guess some distinguished guest in a thousand dollar suit got very drunk and jumped into the pool fully-clothed yelling ‘yiiii-haaaa!’ Then everyone started laughing it up and jumping fully clothed into the swimming pool. The Kennedy crowd, these so called new leaders of America splashed drinks and pool water till dawn and who knows what hanky-panky went on there too. It was a mockery of the dignity of their station. A couple of newspapers mentioned the notorious pool party. The general public soon heard the saucy tale too.
   It was in fact just a young wives tale. The real story was that Mrs. Bobby Kennedy slipped and fell into the pool and the tuxedoed white-haired historian/advisor Art Schlesinger jumped in to pull her out. Many hours later a second person slipped on the smooth tile near the edge and also took the ‘Nestea Plunge,’ but pulled herself out quickly without assistance. That's all that happened. But you know how it is when a story makes the rounds. By the time the story was passed on for the 20th time the whole Kennedy party guests were jumping into the swimming pool in expensive tuxes and gowns and the Russian Ambassador was drunk in the shed making out with the maid.

POLITICAL HUMOR - THE FIRST FAMILY
   Everyone adult I knew had the comedy album The First Family. It was the Saturday Night Live of its time. Impressionist comedian Vaughn Meader and a studio troupe spoofed the Kennedy dynasty on vinyl. It was recorded before a live love audience, and it was very good, very funny, very well written and the impressions were better than good.
    The First Family was good for the Kennedy’s because it neutralized their negatives by making fun of them. The Kennedys thoroughly enjoyed the album, or at least that's what they went out of their way to tell the public.
    FF humor had some bite, but it never hit below the belt,

“The following is a public service announcement;’
   Election Day is near.
   Go to the polls and vote.
   Vote for the Kennedy of your choice, but vote!”

   You’d seldom such nice comedy at your expense nowadays in politics, (although Obama gets an absurd free pass, but that is a separate issue.) In 1992 the Dana Carvey impressions of a vacillating verbal stumbler hurt George Bush Sr., and in 1976 those Chevy Chase slapstick send-ups hurt Gerald Ford. But Vaughn Meader was helping John Kennedy. People who voted for Kennedy probably thought The First Family was funnier than those who did not vote Kennedy. That's the complete opposite of today's political comedy.
   Naturally Kennedy helped Meader too. That superb impression of John F. Kennedy made Meader a big overnight star. But it was his only great impression. Meader had a lot of other impression but they were meaderocre. Then Kennedy got shot and Vaughn fell off the planet. 34 years later we're co-headlining at Bootlegger's Lounge in Caribou Maine (one show Friday - two shows Saturday.) I got his autograph on an album cover and still have it.
    I never heard a stand-up comedian take a real shot at Kennedy on a record, and I've heard close to a hundred stand-up comedy albums from the early sixties. Comedians Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce loved him and they were the only two political comedians at the time. Ike before him and Nixon after him, got plenty of stand up barbs, but John Kennedy got the Obama pass.

LENNY
   Comedian Lenny Bruce of New York was arrested for obscenity four times during the Kennedy presidency. One time he was arrested on a stage in Greenwich Village for using the yiddish word “schmuck,” and no, I'm not making that up, you schmuck.
Talk show hosts say much bigger swears than that all the time now. Here was a guy going to jail for saying curse words in a New York City nightclub at three a.m. in front of 80 adults all of whom had to be at least 21 to get into the room, most of whom were lit.
   Lenny Schneider (his real name) was also arrested in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Chicago. The Philly bust was prescription drug related, but the other two big liberal cities busted him for swearing on stage.
   The Lenny Bruce fight with local and federal authorities over obscenity lasted from 1961 to 1966 and was more than a cultural sideshow of show business. He was on page two every here and there in the biggest newspapers of America for his ongoing legal battles. The entire issue of freedom of speech and the definition of obscenity was centered on this one stand-up comedian from New York City who was just trying to make a living.

TEDDY MALO
   When John Kennedy ran for president he resigned the Senate seat he held is Massachusetts. The governor named a replacement who agreed not to seek re-election when the time came. That role was being reserved for Theodore Kennedy. (Shades of 2010 when the Democrats appointed a temporary replacement when Ted Kennedy died.)
    A Ted Kennedy scandal broke in late 1961 that was politically dangerous and had to be controlled. I know that is hard to believe, but it really happened.
    It seemed that ten years earlier, young Ted Kennedy had been expelled from Harvard for cheating! How was he going to win the 1962 Massachusetts Senate seat with such a scandal available for his opponent to explore and exploit?
    A meeting of the JFK brains trust kicked the matter around, and they decided that Ted could win anyway and lets go ahead with it. Clifford said, “As long as Teddy didn't violate the first rule for a political man, he'll weather the storm.”
    “And what's the first rule for a political man,” asked Sorenson?
    “Never get caught in bed with a live man or a dead woman.” Clifford gave a self-satisfied smile around the room. Sorenson gave Clifford back a profile in frowning.
     The tale that “Kennedy got kicked out of Harvard for cheating” is told often by Kennedy and Dem-haters, but as usual it deliberately omits important exculpatory things (that's as big a word as I'll drop.)
    Ted Kennedy was asked to resign from HU, which is not the same as being expelled. It leaves the door open to return some day.
    The crime: Back in 52, Harvard freshman Kennedy had let another student, William Lashua take his Spanish exam for him. The co-conspirator had to fake being a Kennedy for an afternoon. Lashua gargled with whiskey, put some red lipstick on his collar, borrowed a $4,600 suit, didn't tip his cab driver, and went off to the Harvard Spanish exam room. The poor kid even had to learn to fake the Kennedy speech quirk, inserting 11 needless ah's when he asked the professor for a number 2 pencil.
   When Kennedy and Lashua got caught the dastardly duo were asked to leave Harvard yard for a few years.
   Ted Kennedy then enlisted in the U.S. Army for two years. When he was honorably discharged, Kennedy re-applied for Harvard and was accepted. He graduated four years later with a degree in mixology.
    I know I'm taking the cheap shots, but at least I'm defending his reputation overall against these now famous but chiseled-in-bias charges.
    Later on Kennedy would violate the Clark Clifford Barnes rule for a political man, and still survive as a Senator. But the dead woman did ruin his insider chance at the Presidency in 1972.
   Kennedy refused to ever speak to William Lashua again after the Spanish exam incident. Lashua wrote him an angry sheet in 1975, calling “TK” a hypocrite because they were both in on the fraud. Kennedy wrote him back. “I'm not mad because you got caught and got me in trouble. I'm mad because you got a C- on the exam!”

VIETNAM 1961 - 62
   Laos was an insoluble failure for the Kennedy Administration. They conceded it to the Communists. But Nam was different. Here the US Air Force and Navy could use international air space and waters to come and go freely. South Vietnam also happily had no border with China. Laos did, and that border was a virtual trip wire that could turn a victory there into a bigger problem than a defeat. The South Vietnamese had better and more clearly defined leadership, and more vigor for a fight, at least compared to the recreation minded Laotians. It was frustration over the Bay of Pigs, Berlin, and Laos that led directly to out commitment to war in Vietnam.
   After China had switched over to Communism in 1949 the Democrats had been lambasted for the strategic setback. The charge the Truman Administration had “lost” China helped to put a Republican in the White House in 1952. Kennedy and his team were well aware that if Vietnam fell to Communism on his watch the political price would be steep. At least JFK hadn’t “lost” Cuba, he had just failed to take it back. But losing Vietnam would be a stark Cold-War defeat and Kennedy was not about to let that happen.
   Kennedy decided that he would indeed make a stand in Southeast Asia; it just was not going to be in Laos. So after the Russians agreed to stop airlifting 4 tons of military supplies per day to Laos, and agreed to its neutralization, Kennedy put us on the ground in Vietnam.
President Diem of South Vietnam had in late 61 formally requested US assistance after shunning such overtures before, for reasons of national pride, personal power, and political expedience. When asked why he had changed his mind Diem replied, “Laos.”
   Diem wanted US ‘advisors’ but forever remained opposed to regular US Army troops in force coming to his country. He felt (correctly) that once the US sent in large numbers of troops there would be political conditions attached and he would no longer be in control of his own country politically or militarily. That’s part of the reason he had to later be removed from power, so we could send in as many troops as we wanted whenever we wanted. America had to destroy Vietnams independent leadership in order to protect its independence.
   George Herring has another version of why Diem did not want masses of US troops in South Vietnam,

       “Diem apparently feared that the introduction of large
       numbers of American troops would not only give the
       Vietcong a powerful rallying cry but would also give
       the non-Communist opposition critical leverage.”

   Professor Herring believes that the US made itself an obvious bad guy by entering the war, which would presumably raise VC morale or something. I'm not exactly sure what he means by the second point.
   It was a coincidence of fate that just when Diem was ready to ask America to put up or shut up, Kennedy was searching for a place to show military strength in the name of freedom. Laos put the squeeze on both Kennedy and Diem to initiate a military working alliance in South Vietnam.
Diem was a major problem for the USA because he was perceived here as being a puppet of the United States. In fact he was stubbornly independent in all areas. It was his unwillingness to be a US puppet that caused most of our problems with him.
Diem was a Roman Catholic President, and for that had many enemies at home. Only 10% of South Vietnam was Catholic but 90% of its top leadership was. That's a dangerous equation. Buddhist opponents thought him a dynastic dictator. But his unpopularity went far beyond religion. The people resented in particular his brother Ngo head of homeland security for South Vietnam who had too much power that he had not earned. When Robert Kennedy and Jerry Van Dyke heard about this they were furious.

An important watershed in the US participation in Vietnam’s war was a National Security Memorandum of December 20, 1961, which recognized subversive warfare as a legitimate national security threat and recognized the right to counteract unconventional aggression with unconventional counter-force. Laos and Vietnam were specifically named as theatres of operation for US response. Action followed words. There were just short of 3,000 Americans on the ground in Vietnam at the end of 1961.
On December 22, 1961 an American advisor/soldier named Davis was killed on the ground in combat in Vietnam. He was the first KIA. There would be more than 54,000 more to come. If Kennedy, or anyone in Kennedy’s cabinet, including Caroline or John John, or even Bushniki the Russian dog had known that this many would die, they would have pleaded with the President not to commit any troops.
   But by the same logic of later omniscience if the Kaiser had known how many Germans would die for nothing on the stalemated Western Front, he never would have mobilized in 1914. No one knows what’s going to happen in war and dice.

   In Kennedy’s time Americans were not officially fighting alongside South Vietnamese troops. We just happened to have a few thousand “advisors” over in the jungle. These advisors had a lot of pretty good ordnance on their person at all times. The advice they gave the South Vietnamese was to kill the enemy and here are the weapons to do it with.
   By the end of 1962 the number of fighting American advisors was 9,000. They were organized under the acronym MAAG, the Military Assistance Advisory Group. Among the MAAG soldiers was a young Army man named Colin Powell the future Chairman of the US JCS and Secretary of State under George W. Bush. Powell arrived in Saigon on Christmas morning 1962. Three weeks later he was dropped off in a hot zone near the Laotian border and asked himself, “What the hell am I doing here?”
   MAAG men gave advice and assistance to their counterparts in the ARVN, the Army of the ‘Republic of Vietnam.’ The North of course called itself the ‘Democratic Republic of Vietnam.’ The less democratic the country, the more certain they call themselves democratic in their title. East Germany too was called the Democratic Republic of Germany. Take a guess what the official title of North Korea is to this day?
   The armed services chiefs of the USA were pestering Kennedy to send more men and material to the Vietnam. He resisted, and some people today believe this is why he was killed in Dallas, so that the US militarist-industrialist machine could have its way in Vietnam.
Critics say that we had no real goal in Vietnam. But that is not true. The goal from the start was the cessation of the infiltration of the South from Communists of the North. Oh, sorry; that’s too simplistic and unsophisticated. I'll fall in line with the orthodox version for now. Vietnamese Communists were not trying to spread their philosophy to the South. In fact, Vietnam and China were old enemies.

Kennedy lost Laos and Vietnam became un-winnable, but for military, not political reasons. The demonstrators of 1968 would never have been there if we had won on the ground from the start. But we couldn't win because the Laos neutrality agreements of 1961 were not adhered to by the Communists and they used Laos to outflank South Vietnam. Laos was the key to defeat in Vietnam. The end-around route through Laos meant that we had to defend South Vietnam the long way, which was impossible.
    The short way we had covered, the DMZ. The east coast we had covered with superior naval forces. But it was naïve to think that the long length of the western political South Vietnam boundary would be respected or could be protected. It was a losing proposition. The Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos prevented victory. We didn’t lose the Vietnam War, we Laosed it. Laos made the Ho Chi Minh Trail an immovable object, a supply line we could not break.

SUPPORT FOR KENNEDY ON NAM
   Nevertheless whenever Kennedy asked his advisors where in Asia should the United States take a stand against Communism the answer always came back, “Vietnam.” There was division over intervening in Laos, but virtually none on Nam. Kennedy did not lead an unwilling nation into an unpopular war. The Cold War was on and he had run for Prez as Cold Warrior. The fight had to take place somewhere.
    The US press was very hawkish on Vietnam in the Kennedy years. He didn't lead us blindly into a silly war no one wanted, although some revisionists try to paint it that way.

THE FIRST KUWAITI CRISIS – SUMMER OF 61
The First Crisis in Kuwait was a dress rehearsal for the Kuwaiti Conflict of 1990-1991.
In 1961 the tiny but oil rich state of Kuwait gained its independence from the United Kingdom. At the same time that Britain was granting this freedom to Kuwait it was informing the United States and others that it was withdrawing from the Middle East entirely. From this point on, Gulf security would be up to the Arab States or perhaps even the USA. The British Navy had protected the western oil supply since the Second World War. Now they were downsizing and cuts were made in the sand states. They were getting out.
    As soon as Britain cleared out, the Iraqis threatened to move in. On June 23, 1961 the President of Iraq, a Mr. Kassem spoke of acquiring Kuwait. He said that Kuwait was part of Iraq, the same threat made in 1990 by someone else. The Iraqi Army mobilized for a strike and a well-equipped Iraqi army brigade was placed near the Kuwaiti border.
On June 27th the Amir of Kuwait put out an SOS. Kuwait was asking the Arab League and the United Kingdom for military help. Iraqi troops could overrun the country in a matter of hours.
   In the emergency the UK changed its mind. The military was mobilized and by July 1, a half a brigade of British Army troops were in place in Kuwait with more soldiers on the way.
   By Halloween of 61 the Arab League had enough military force in Kuwait to enable to the British to pull out for good. Or so they thought. Iraq backed down, for now.

MR DOBRYNIN GOES TO WASHINGTON 3 62
    The Soviets sent a new Ambassador to the USA, replacing the retiring Vladimir Ustenkoff. The new guy's name was Anatoly Dobrynin. “Tony D,” (as Mort Sahl referred to him on his fourth album,) was supposed to represent a sort of thaw in US-USSR relations, being more urbane and conversational than previous thugs like Molotov.
   Dobrynin had spent much time in America in previous years, having been head of the America department in the Soviet Foreign Affairs Bureau.
   When Dobrynin first went to the White House to present his credentials to the Kennedy administration, he was surprised to find himself alone in the Oval office with the affable new leader of the free world. Kennedy told him to dispense with the formalities. Dobrynin spoke perfect English and the two of them hung out informally for an hour or so and made small talk about everything but the threat of nuclear war between their two nations.
   Kennedy took Tony on the tour, making vicious wise-cracks about everyone he introduced to the Soviet Ambassador. It said a lot about the edgy wit from Brookline,

       “Mr Dobrynin, this is McGeorge Bundy. The ah
        last time he smiled was ah when he saw his great
        grandmother fall off a pair of water skis on Lake
        Keuka in 1934.”

       “Now this here is ah, Ted Sorenson, my ah so-called
        speechwriter. If any of my ah rhetoric causes ah
        trouble in the Kremlin, here is ah your culprit.”

        “Now ah I'd like to introduce you to ah my press
         secretary, Pierre Salinger, all ah six hundred pounds
         of him.”

    Dobrynin finally couldn't hold it in and burst out laughing, to the surprise of Kennedy.
    Tony Dobrynin would last as Soviet Ambassador to the United States through 8 administrations and until the coming of Mikhail Gorbachov and the beginning of the end of the Cold War.
    Dobrynin and Dean Rusk used to get together and hang out privately every couple of weeks. They went out of their way to not discuss politics and just try to get along. Rusk used to drink whiskey and Dobrynin had to lear to pretend to like whiskey if he wanted to keep the “talks” going. After a few drinks they'd occasionally talk politics and it turned out that there was little disagreement between the two diplomats except for one thing; Berlin. Rusk and Dobrynin thought that all the other problems were just more an excuse for both sides to blow off a lot of hostile rhetoric than seriously divisive issues. But Berlin could not be solved and they two would end up getting mad at each other. One night both men talked about how “love is the answer,” and after that they set a limit on how much whiskey each could drink.
    I consider Dobrynin to be a first-class liar like most Soviet Ambassadors, his statements and later accounts of the Cuban Missile Crisis proving it. But many Presidents really liked Tony D personally, to the point where they called him friend. 'Acquaintance softens prejudice,' and lulls politicians to vulnerability, as we will se with the case of another Russian friend of Bobby Kennedy named Bolshakov.

SUPREME COURT OPENING 1962
   Chuck Whittaker resigned from the Supreme Court in March of 1962. Kennedy had his chance to appoint a new Justice and show off some wisdom. Perhaps he could make up for some of his setbacks with a winner now. Kennedy sought advice on the choice. He certainly didn’t want to do anything hasty. Robert Kennedy recommended William Henry Hastie for the position but John had to decline. Hastie would have been the first US Supreme Court Justice of African-American heritage. Bobby wanted this but John F hesitated. Part of the problem was that Hastie was quite the conservative, and naming him just because he was black might be unfair to capital D democratic principles. Two of the most famous Justices asked Kennedy privately not to name Hastie.
   Kennedy named Byron White to the Supreme Court instead in March of 1962. White was Deputy Attorney General at the time.

KKKK 1962
    The Cuban Missile Crisis is all about four men whose name begins with K. Three of them are household names, one is not, but the fourth man was special to the story also. Jack and Bobby Kennedy and Nikita Krushchev will be famous for along time, but Senator Kenneth Keating is forgotten. One-hit wonders from the pop charts of 1962 are immortal in our entertainment worshipping culture, while a man like Keating is one millionth as famous as he should be.
    Keating was the one person who saw the whole Cuban Missile Crisis coming before it happened. He tried to warn the Kennedys, he tried to warn the Congress, he tried to warn the public, that the Soviets were conducting a potential offensive military in Cuba and that the United States had better do something about it now, not later. Keating warned over and over that if America did not nip this in the bud it will be a major international crisis and could lead to war between the United States and the Soviet Union because the Russians will have too much to lose later on after they have the military force in place.
The problem with Keating was that he was a Republican. The Democrats had a knee-jerk reaction to his warnings. Keating was not criticizing, he was warning, but in response he came under personal attack by the Kennedys and their friends. Keating was just a “reactionary” that did not have to be listened to, unless you're a right-wing lunatic.
Between July 1 and October 1 1962 Senator Kenny Keating made ten speeches on the Senate floor in which he warned of a dangerous Soviet military buildup taking place in Cuba, and asking at what point the Kennedy Administration was going to take note of it and do something about it. The response was always an attack on Keating personally. Dismiss the person, not the points he is making. If a smelly wino tells me my shoe is untied, I'm not going to ignore the warning just because he is a loser. If I do, I might be at the dentist next week replacing my front teeth. Kennedy and the world almost got their teeth knocked out in October 1962 because no one listened to that no-good reactionary Republican Keating two months earlier.
   To make sure that his warning were not limited to the senate floor, he gave many interviews to newspaper reporters saying the same thing. These were printed. The ever un-vigilant New York Times scoffed at his warnings, saying that these were the result of reports from biased Cuban exiles who saw only what they wanted to see, and that Keating's scouts had obviously mistaken “sewer pipes” for nuclear missile launchers.
   Later on, when it was all over, Kennedy got all the credit for winning the Cuban Missile Crisis and the voters rewarded the Keating Republicans by tossing them out of office in the November mid-term elections.

KENNY O'DONNELL AND THE CUBAN ALARMISTS
   Keating prescience was forgotten when Kennedy's own sources began to back up Kenny's warnings.
   Close confidant Kenneth O'Donnell admits his poor judgement in his memoir of the Kennedy years, Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye. Every time Senator Keating, or his accomplice Senator Capehart warned of a Soviet military build-up in Cuba. O'Donnell told Kennedy to pay no attention, that it was just a man playing politics to win the next elections in his home state for the Repubicans. Kennedy listened to O'Donnell. Caprehart made a speech demanding that the United States invade Cuba before Cuba became strong enough to attack the United States. Kennedy responded with a speech in which he called Capehart and Keating, “Self-appointed generals who want to send someone else's son to die in a needless war.” O'Donnell told Kennedy that the speech was perfect. “Mr. President (he got away with calling him Jack exactly one time after the Inauguration) the people in Pittsburgh and Peoria care about jobs and Medicare, not whether there are medium range missiles in Cuba.” Kennedy looked at him doubtfully, but wanted to believe him. “Kenny, he said “I hope you're right.”
   Three days later JFK figuratively dragged O'Donnell into the Oval Office by the scruff of the neck and said, “Do you still think this isn't important in Peoria?” and showed him the photographs of the missile sites under construction in San Cristobal Cuba. O'Donnell was stunned and embarrassed. Kennedy poured it on half joking. “Thanks buddy. We just re-elected 15 Republican Senators and made Ken Keating the next President of the United States.” My favorite part of this story is that O'Donnell ahd the strength of character to choose to tell it in detail in his book, when he didn't have to. After the dozens of conceited 'I was perfect' political memoirs I have read, it is a breath of fresh air to read someone showing genuine story-telling humility with no redeeming side to the story. Kennedy read Ike's memoirs when they were first published and said to O'Donnell, “Apparently this guy never made a mistake.” (It is a proper criticism of Ike's two-volumes book. They are great books, but the point is true. It was even worse with Truman who made a mockery of 'The Buck Stops Here' with his nauseating pass the buck memoirs.)
   Kenny O'Donnell is played by Kevin Costner in the movie about the Cuban Missile Crisis, Thirteen Days. Its a great movie but the whole time I'm watching it I'm thinking, 'There's no way that Kenny O'Donnell played a central role in decision making during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He wasn't an expert on foreign policy or military matters. It would have been totally irresponsible for President Kennedy to let a man without cabinet status make the tough calls whenever Jack was not present at the Ex-Comm meetings. If anyone played that role it was Bobby. That portrayal of O'Donnell is absurd.'
    A month later I find an interview with Bob McNamara (one of 23 million he gave in his elderly years) and he verifies with first-hand expertise what I was thinking instinctually. Here is what McNamara said about the movie,

    “There's no way that Kenny O'Donnell played a central role in decision-making during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He wasn't an expert on foreign policy or military matters. It would have been totally irresponsible for President Kennedy to let a man without cabinet status make the tough calls whenever Jack was not present at the Ex-Comm meetings. If anyone played that role it was Bobby. That portrayal of O'Donnell is absurd.”


EXCOMM – THE TWELVE APOSTLES OF J. K.
    Throughout the Cuban Missile Crisis there was a think-tank called Ex-Comm, short for the Executive Committee of the National Security Council. Ex-Comm was a pretty good roll-call of the big whigs in the Kennedy Administration, the one who were called in when the money was all riding on the line. Here is Ex-Comm, the Cuban Missile Crisis Playbill,

John F. Kennedy – The Boss. The President stopped in at St Matthews Church to pray whenever it was nearly empty and he happened to be riding by. Imagine being the old woman saying a quiet prayer and lighting a candle and looking next to you and seeing the President.

Lyndon Johnson – The Vice President did not speak very often, but when he did he made it count. It wasn't fluff. he only spoke up once every few meeting when he felt like it was something that had to be said either because it hadn't been said, or he wanted to make his position clear on a crucial issue. I think LBJ performed well during it all. He was never in favor of rash military actions against Cuba. He was ruled by his proper fear of war, not a hawkish desire for it. It would indicate that he probably was very torn up inside by his later role in escalating the Vietnam War.
   The irony of his Vice Presidency is that Johnson always felt that the Kennedy's didn't want to hear his opinion, didn't respect his opinion, and had a Yankee prejudice against him as a man with a Southern-accent who went to an obscure and tiny college. But the more you read about Kennedy the more it comes out that the opposite was true if only Johnson could have overcome his insecurity and realized it. John and even Bobby, respected and admired Johnson's talent, intellect, stature and maturity. LBJ, Powers and Bobby were the only three who were allowed to walk into the front door of the Oval Office unannounced (Powers and Bobby were the only two allowed to walk in the back door unannounced from the lawn.) Johnson could have been one of the most active Vice President if only he had spoken up more. I can relate. I got fired from a talk-radio job because on the three man team “You aren't jumping in enough and your comments are too short. We don't even know you're there.” The anchorman was a local giant and I felt intimidated and had no desire to jump in when he was talking and talking. I thought he didn't like me, and when I got fired I was doing the 'funky-chicken' all over my house.

Robert Kennedy – The nepotism Attorney General dropped the attorney part and just became the general whenever Jack was out, which he was often enough. The President kept all his appointments and speech-making trips throughout the Crisis in order to not give away that the United States knew what was going on in Cuba. Whenever John was away, Robert Kennedy became acting President more or less. Some have suggested that Jack left town in order to give Ex-Comm a chance to speak openly without Kennedy's intimidating presence, but I doubt it. I think Kennedy was just too political a man to cancel a bunch of political fundraisers for fellow Democrats, and there was the concern that the Russians and the press not notice anything was up.
    So Bobby took control of Ex-Comm meetings when Jack was out of town, which is not to say that he didn't let everyone speak their mind, nor that he blabbed and blabbed just to hear himself talk, like the radio guy that fired me. But Bobby did seem to enjoy playing President, according to some writers anyway.

Dean Rusk – The soft-spoken Secretary of State was more hawkish than I would have figured. Rusk took some heat after the Crisis
for not being there at so many of the Ex-Comm meetings. But 'The Dean' had an even busier speaking schedule than his boss, and he was playing the same game as Jack, keeping to his travel schedule normal so as not to alarm the Soviets that we knew. I think if Jack and Lyndon died in a plane crash during the Crisis and the job went to Rusk, there would have been a war. He seemed cavalier about advocating massive air strikes on Cuba and if that didn't work, an invasion should follow. Gee, what could possibly go wrong with that plan?

McGeorge Bundy – The Harvard and Yale hawk genius from Boston - To political scholars, this is a household name, but in most US households, McGeorge Bundy is not that famous. Bundy had many titles, but basically he was the ranking genius of the Brains Trust, and in that role he was an especially respected personal advisor to John F. Kennedy.
   Halberstam rakes him over the coals in his condescending best-selling book The Best and the Brightest. Halberstam is so mean and slick about it it makes me feel sympathy for him. Bundy was the only student to score a perfect 300 in his Yale entrance exam. It gets better. McGeorge Bundy became the Dean of Harvard University at the age of 27! He was on various jobs at State and Defense, but settled in as the Special Counselor to the President, an all-purpose high-power job that would later belong to Henry Kissinger, who would make it even more powerful than Bundy made it. And Bundy made it powerful.
    Everyone listened to “Little Mac.” (6 ft 2 Robert MacNamara was “Big Mac” – McGeorge was 5'9.) Little Mac Bundy is considered one of the true “goats” of the Vietnam War. You could always depend on Bundy to recommend something all-American and truculent after a brilliant dissertation on politics. Little Mac usually said, “Use force first and ask questions later.” Not in those exact words, but that is definitely what Bundy always said. Some called it “Christianity with muscles.”
   There's a snooty poindexter look to him, but by most accounts he was personable and respectful, and could be a good listener and supportive friend. But his hawkish views on Vietnam haunt his legacy now. Who has a first name of McGeorge?

Averill Harriman – Governor Harriman – Formerly in charge of New York State.
   The guy by all accounts was a big-mouthed bully with background, talent, education, and influence. I'm liking him less the more books I read where he's in the index. There's too many stories where this guy loses his temper and yells rude put-downs at someone below him in power. He doesn't yell at President Kennedy though.

PHOTOS REVEAL
   In August of 1962, US intelligence based on U-2 recon plus eyewitness reports from Cubans disloyal to Castro revealed that the Soviet Union was sending many big ships into Cuba and dropping off some major cargos of a secretive military nature.
   At Mariel (site of the later Mariel Boat Lift that sent Tony Montana to Miami) ten Soviet freighters were stopping off every 20 days to do business. In normal times one Soviet freighter landed there every four months. Something was going on.
    Cubans against Castro were reporting back to the States that native Cubans were being removed from the docking area, and entire nearby towns were evacuated of Cubans to set up living quarters for Russians only. Huge wall were being built around the docking areas so no one could see in and report what was happening. Clearly, something was.
   By 1962 the United States had already deployed two nuclear submarines armed with nuclear missiles. This had changed the entire dynamic of the Cold War. The USSR had Sputnik, but the USA had Polaris. Were the Russians planning of regaining nuclear military parity by placing medium range missiles in Cuba?
    By all indications, that was not happening. All intelligence confirmed that the Russians were almost certainly installing, not nuclear missiles, but SA-7 surface to air missile batteries.
   However, the news led to more questions than answers. Were these SAM's being set up to defend Cuba against US air strikes down the road? Were they being set up to shoot down U-2 recon planes, like they had done over Sverdlovsk in 1960? Or were the SAM's being set up to protect medium range nuclear missiles that had not been shipped over yet. Surely that was a real danger. The Rooskies were not so dumb that they would just set up nuke missiles that could threatened to hit the United States without first establishing a means to protect those missiles. Krushchov and company knew that the US would probably pull an Orisak and destroy those missile sights as soon as they got anywhere close to operational. They would set up the defense first, then add the offense.
    That's exactly what was going on in August 1962 as the reports came in about Cuban port activity. State Department man Roger Hillsman (author of To Move a Nation) dismissed suspicions of ICBM bases as baseless. It wasn't the first time “Hilly” would be wrong, but in Move he was always right.

FROSTY SEPTEMBER 1962
    The official poet laureate of the Kennedy Administration was Robert 'Miles to go before I sleep' Frost. He is still one of the household names among the poets, ranking up there with Rod McKuen, Hank Longfellow, Shelly, Leonard Nemoy, and Paco Serpico (see his latest poem protesting the US bombing in Afghanistan called 'Barak O-Bomber.')
   In the first week of September 1962 Frost accepted an invitation from Nikita Krushchev to visit the Soviet Union. Krushchev claimed to be a fan of the Frosty poetry. Bobby Frost asked Bobby Kennedy to ask Jack if it would be ok, the word came back that a meeting in Russia between Frost and Krushchev could do no harm and might offer some valuable insight into Russian thinking, especially regarding the growing crisis over Cuba. Perhaps Nicky would let his guard down when talking to famous artist. The Frost trip to Russia was front page news for 10 days in America.
   But Frost got fairly ill when he arrived in Russia, which was logical since he was in his 80's and only had a year left to live, a half a mile before he sleeps. Krushchev actually visited him by his bedside and had three long chats with the great poet. Nicky knew that Frost was an ear to Kennedy so he told the Yankee that the USSR felt very threatened by American missiles all around them. Frost listened with all the political insight of a poet.
    When Mo and Frost landed at Idlewild Airport on September 9, 1962 Kennedy was watching it on TV. Frost and Udall gave an airport press conference about the trip to Russia. Frost said,

“Krushchev told me that you liberals in America will never fight. You'll stand around for years deciding what to do and in the end you'll do nothing.”

    Kennedy was watching this on TV with Sorenson at the White House and he hit the roof. He got up from his rocking chair and tore into Frost.

   “Why did Frost have to say that? What the hell is wrong with him? That's exactly what my critics are saying about me over here. I send him over there to help us and he comes back and says this? Is he addled or something?”

   This is funny to me, the President of the United States furious with a famous poet he had tried to use. Bad-backed John Kennedy ready to get his hands around 82 year old Robert Frost's neck and start shaking him saying, “What the hell is wrong with you?”
    John, that's what you get for putting a delicate political mission in the hands of a useless poet. You got what was coming to you. Obama hired Maya Angelou for the Inaugural but he didn't send her to Afghanistan to try and scout the situation, or have her poetry read over loudspeakers until Bin Laden came out and surrendered.
    The big stars of the press and film and the arts were of course ostentatiously frequent guests at Camelot. Sinatra stops by to say hello, that sort of thing. But Robert Frost lost his key to the kingdom with his 9-62 Idle wild talk. The next several times he tried to see Kennedy in person he got a Frosty reception. One time Evelyn Lincoln told Frost that Kennedy was on a trip to the Congo, when Frost could see Kennedy in his rocking chair in the second story window talking to someone. When Frost turned to ice in January of 1963 Kennedy did not attend the funeral and said a short perfunctory few words to the press expressing formal praise.

JAMES MEREDITH
We interrupt this Cuban Missile Crisis program for a major sideshow of importance.
In 1962 a 29-year old African-American student at jackson State University named Jim Meredith applied for transfer to the University of Mississippi. He was refused because his skin-grades were too low. It became a national crisis. History books fail to mention that he was 29 and was an Air Force veteran and was already in college. They always make it seem as though JM was a 20 year-old wanting to go to college for the first time. This isn't a matter of bias, either way, just a cheap trick to make the story more exiting.
   Smack dap in the middle of the Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy had to deal with this major racial crisis. It annoyed him more than inspired him. Kennedy was never anywhere near the friend of African-Americans, never the crusader for their cause that American political history gives him credit for. JFK's closest black friends served him dinner and drove his car. Kennedy was the whitest white guy that ever whited his way down the white turnpike. He was a man of his rich exclusive white society, and no stories exist to match those of Reagan and Carter's early years, where their families cared for black people down on their luck and stuck up for them bravely in the face of local racial oppression. Joe Kennedy was no crusader for blacks and his passed this passive insensitivity on to Jack. Bobby and Ted Kennedy own a much better life record on the subject than Joe Sr or Jack. The Kennedys were not racists. But they were not brave bold liberals fighting the good fight on race either.
    So when Meredith applied for admission to the long-segregated all-white University of Mississippi and started a mud-storm, Kennedy from the get-go was just exasperated that it had to happen at a time like this, in the middle of all his problems with Cuba. He wished the black-white problem would just go away for a few months.
   The irony of it all is that it was that it was Kennedy's famous Inaugural Address that inspired Meredith to challenge white supremacy in the Mississippi educational system in the first place. The very morning after the ask-not speech, Meredith applied for admission to U-Miss (Not to be confused with U-Mass - Meredith had earlier applied to U-Mass which rejected him because he had good grades and did not have a long criminal record for public disorderly conduct.)
    There was so much racism in Mississippi in 1962 that not only was the University of Mississippi all-white for no legal reason, just cultural consensus, but out of a million blacks of voting age, only 60,000 were registered to vote! That was not out of apathy, that was out of poll tax and other evil methods used to enforce white racism. For example, in many counties in Louisiana (parishes) there was a slick law that said that each new voter had to be “identified” by three other registered voters. Since all the registered voters were white racists (or decent whites afraid to act otherwise) no new black voters could ever be registered.
    Meredith was not poor. He was feeling high on life when he registered. The Justice Department contacted him and asked him if he knew what kind of trouble he was in for. He said he did and that he was planning on driving to school on the first day of class in his brand-new Ford Thunderbird. The Justice Department said that things would go much better if Jimmy kept the T-Bird away.
   On September 25, 1962 Meredith went to Jackson Mississippi to register for classed at Oxford. He needed a two-man celebrity escort of Jimmy Doerr from Justice and a US Marshall McShane just to get past the taunting mob of 2,000 white scums half-trying to block his black path and yelling bad things. Unlike the South Boston High School mobs of 1974, this one in 1962 included a healthy number of state legislators helping out with the racial epithets and the Governor of the State was not only on the mob's side, he had appointed himself leader of the band. Governor Ross Barnett gave himself the job of Registrar of the University of Mississippi for one day just to be a bigot. Barnett stood in the doorway and physically blocked the way.
    Barnett pretended not notice that there was only one chocolate chip in the cookie packed around the doorway. “Which one of you is Meredith?” Ross asked sarcastically. He looked around pretending not to notice that Meredith was a foot from his face. The racists then had a huge potbelly laugh at the arrogant race joke. Meredith should have replied, “Bravely spoken.” (That's what the Arab in Ben Hur said to the Roman who bragged to him in Rome that 'One Roman can beat ten Arabs.')
   On September 26 Meredith tried to show for classes at Oxford Mississippi and learned that Mississippi was divided by classes. Here the Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi Paul Johnson did his Ross Barnett impression. PJ blocked the entrance personally and Meredith, Doar and McShane had to retreat for a second time.
    Now there some intense three-way consultation between Meredith's federal friends, Governor Barnett, and Robert F. Kennedy at the Justice Department in D.C. Barnett and Kennedy were more friendly than most people would have guessed. Both wanted the thing settled for predominantly political reasons. Barnett couldn't betray his white voting base, but he knew the momentum of the time was against him and he would have to give in or go out of office fighting. Kennedy didn't want to go so left on race that he lost the moderate whites, nor so far right via inaction that the Kennedy's began to look like double-crossing windbags to the liberals and the blacks. The Kennedys also desperately wanted the racial crisis out of their abundant hair so they could concentrate on the Vietnam and Cuba issues.
    There was a series of serious negotiations for Meredith to get in, but with Barnett looking like he hadn't backed down. The idea was to get a federal official to actually pull a gun on the governor and point it at his belly and order him to step aside. Barnett was like the informant who makes sure the police rough him up a little so as not to draw suspicion. RFK went along with the pull the gun plan. Then Barnett called Bobby back and said, (I kid you not)

    “Do you think we could get all the federal marshalls do draw their guns. That would make it look a lot better for me.”

“Now you're being ridiculous, Ross. Lets not make this a fisasco.”

   They argued over this, and the deal fell through because Governor Barnett wanted 25 guns drawn on him instead of only one.

WALKER TAKES A WALK IN A STRAIGHJACKET
    General Edwin Walker arrived on the scene of the Meredith riots and took a right-wing redneck stand on behalf of the angry white protestors. That is not surprising since he was one of the most famous right-wing rednecks of his era. What is surprising is that Attorney General ordered him arrested on charges of conspiracy ot overthrow the United States government.
    The rest of the story is even more “insane.”
    Walker, a United States Army General, a veteran of Anzio and Korea, was flown in chains to a mental institution in Missouri for observation to make sure he was mentally competent to stand trial. American history has swept this bizarre and amazing story under the rug, in the unfair name of the saint Kennedy halo. Good luck trying to find any mention of it in any political history of the nation or the Kennedy years.
   Five days later he was released. Walker might have held some disgraceful political opinions, but the way he was treated in this case is far more so. The KGB would have applauded the techniques used by the Justice Department to get this man out of the way, but no thinking citizen of this country should have, then or in retrospect today.
   Walker is best known for his connection with Lee Harvey Oswald, who took a shot at him in his home month before he shot Kennedy (or shot at Kennedy.)

MO MAKES CUBAN WAVES
   Senator 'Mighty Mo' Udall accompanied the Frost on the vacation to Russia. Krushchev told Udall bluntly that the United States was placing atomic bombs in Japan so don't point fingers at Russia. Castro had asked the USSR for help and was going to get “whatever he needs to defend himself.”
    Krushchev was skirting the issue of potential offensive nuclear missiles in Cubs, by saying that whatever Cuba gets from Russia it gets for defense. He probably knew that the entire Kennedy Administration was hedging over the definition of offensive or defensive weaponry. It's all semantics really as all weapons help both offensively and defensively since the two are intertwined. Yet there are differences. Kennedy and then LBJ sold to Taiwan, a lot of Northrup fighters that had only enough range to defend Taiwan and not enough to reach the Chinese mainland. That's a fairly clear case of weapon being clearly defensive in nature, but a SAM-7 can defend against attack but also protect offensive offensive missiles, so is a SAM really just defensive in nature?
   Kennedy and his team engaged in a lot of wishful thinking from August to October about the SAM's. Most of the reports concluded that the USSR was just trying to protect against air attack in case the US invaded the island. The idea that the Soviets were planning on bringing in offensive threatening medium range missiles was discussed, but the consensus was that the Russian weren't that stupid. They would have to know that that the United States would not tolerate it; would respond. Surely the USSR didn't want to start World War III. It was a little bit of “Pearl Harbor Syndrome.” There was plenty of evidence that the Zekes Kates and Vals were closing in on Oahu, but the Kennedy men decided that this had to be an exercise. Those ships leaving the Black Sea couldn't really be sending medium range nuclear tipped missiles to Cuba.
   They didn't really even decide what they would do if this were so because they preferred to proceed on the basis that this couldn't be so. They were thinking, “No way they are sending nuke missiles to Cuba. No way.”
    The Russians might have had a better chance of getting away with doing this if a Republican hawk was in the White House. But Kennedy could not afford to look “soft on Communism.” He had to show his 60 million critics on the right that he was just as tough as Ike or Truman. Ironically, a young liberal Democratic regime could never allow Soviet missiles in Cuba.

THE CRISIS BEGINES OCTOBR 15
   On October 15, 1962 a U-2 reconnaissance aircraft piloted by Major Brian Anderson photographed missile silos in Cuba. They were camouflaged but the U-2 photos were technically better than the disguise. It was conclusive. The Cubans were preparing for the arrival for Soviet S-4 intermediate range missiles with a reach of 1,100 miles. Florida is only 90 miles from Cuba. The White House and the Empire State Building were within range. Caroline and John John were in range. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was under way.

JUMPIN JUPITER
   Before we begin, it should be kept in mind that the wild card in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was the 'Jumpin Jupiter' missile. In 1959 Eisenhower had put 15 US medium range “Jupiter” nuclear missiles on the ground in Turkey, a NATO ally That was quite a direct threat to the Soviet Union. These shorter range nukes had the range of a much larger and more expensive ICMB launched from the Dakotas. Krushchev spoke often of these missiles as a provocation against his nation by NATO. The Jupiter missiles would factor in to the final settlement of Cuban Missile Crisis.
   The Jupiters were considered obsolete. I read that often. But tthe Russians feared them the Turks did not think of them as laughable.
   Kennedy on his own had six months ago discussed unilaterally removing them in the interests of better relations with the USSR. But now he did not let the Russians know this. If he did remove the Jupiters, he wanted to get something in return. Since he knew he wanted to remove them anyway, he preferred to hold that card as a bargaining chip. The Jupiter missile was an inaccurate first-generation nuke missile. If you set one up in New Haven and aimed it at Yankee Stadium, you'd be just as likely to hit the Vince Lombardi rest stop on the Jersey Turnpike and ruin my nap. The Jupiters were highly vulnerable. Small arms fire could detonate them before they got off the ground. A punk with a 22 pistol could take out a Jupiter.
   The Turks and the Russians took the Jupiters far more seriously than the Americans. The Turks considered them status symbols of the highest order. They had just come on line in recent weeks and the Turkish leaders were pretty exited about it.
    Krushchev hated the Jupiters with a passion. When Robert Frost was a guest at the dacha in the Crimea, Krushchev handed him binoculars and told him to look out at the Black Sea.
   “What do you see?”
   “Well, Mr Krushchev, my eyes aren't so good, but I only see the peaceful shining glittering sea, coated by a refreshing natural sweep of winds.”
   “Well put,” replied Krushchev, “Now let me have a look.”
   Krushchev took the binoculars and stared out to sea.
   “That's not what I see, Bobby. I see American Jupiter missiles pointed right at my dacha!” It turns out that this was a standard act-out Nikita did with all his guests. Krushchev was permanently steamed about the Jupiters.
   During the Cuban Missile Crisis, both UN Ambassador Stevenson and a couple of reporters make Kennedy mad by suggesting that the US offer to remove the Jupiters from Turkey if in exchange, the Cubans agreed to remove their SS rockets from Cuba. Kennedy wanted to use Jupiter removal as a bargaining chip to be played at as late a moment as possible, or not at all. Or in secret. He was having trouble controlling Stevenson's liberal instincts. In the interest of international progressive good-will, the egghead was going to give away all of Kennedy leverage with the Jupiters.

REVERSE PEARL HARBOR
   What was Kennedy to do? It seems scary in retrospect, but one of the serious options, one that the United States came very close to choosing to do was bomb the hell out of Cuba from one end of the island to the other. America would destroy every SAM site and every place where missile launching pads were under construction.
Strike first and talk later. This was to be no surgical strike, unless you count the bombing of Dresden as surgical too.
    The other options were to blockade Cuba, try limited surgical strikes, do nothing, or bomb and then invade and conquer. All of these options were considered.
    Kennedy's think tank was divided on the bombing option. Dean Aecheson, the old snob cold warrior from the Truman cabinet was in favor of massive bombing to pre-empt the ability of the Soviets to make these missiles operational. Most of the military men were more than happy to recommend this, but Maxwell Taylor warned that this might have limited results no matter how unlimited the strikes. This is a little ironic from an historical perspective because
films like 13 Days and The Missiles of October show Max Taylor as the right wing nut that wants the military option employed to the Max. There is some truth to this, but in fairness, Taylor consistently warned Kennedy that air power was totally effective only in theory and not in practice. A massive perfectly executed air strike across Cuba would only wipe out 90% of the missile threat. No matter what, Max warned, the Cubans would be able to launch a few of them at the United States after all the smoke had cleared from the US attacks. Air strikes were 100% certain to do a good job, and 100% certain to not do it absolutely. Only a voluntary removal of the missiles by their owners would 100% remove them. Some of the political men didn't want to hear the hard reality from the military man. It was just too much fun to play toy soldier commander and order the United States to teach Cuba a lesson it would never forget. The gold epaulettes general was trying to tell the striped-pants set that this was not the time to play stupid tough guy. If we want to play tough we would have to follow up the air attacks with invasion, or else that approach should be rejected.
   And it seemed logical that a Cuba that would not actually launch these missiles if left alone would definitely launch them if we tried to wipe out the military arm of their country. In trying to deter the deployment of the missiles, we might be triggering their launch. We would create a use it or lose it for them plus an emotional motive as well.
Bobby Kennedy was one of the only peace-niks in the bunch. That is, he was peace-nik relative to a bunch of White House brainiacs deciding what to do about Cuban missiles. Robert Kennedy pleaded passionately more than once that bombing Cuba was not right. “This would be a reverse Pearl Harbor. Now I know how Tojo felt when he planned December 7.”
   Aecheson, and a few others were annoyed by Bobby's naivete. This was a new world. Soviet nukes under discussion could destroy Washington DC in 20 seconds. Besides, the United States was not doing anything threatening to Japan in December 1941.
John Kennedy later repeated the line to Aecheson about Cuba being a “reverse Pearl Harbor.” Aecheson snapped at the President that, “We all know where you heard that line and its not applicable here.” (Maybe, maybe not. Many new history books now claim that the United States did indeed deliberately provoke Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor. Some very responsible scholars now claim that Japan had no choice but to take out the US Pacific Fleet since it was essentially an offensive force that was only moved from San Diego to Hawaii to threaten the Japanese in the Pacific.)
    The Cuban missile sites were still a public secret but Kennedy trusted a British diplomat with the situation and the options being discussed. The Englishman told Kennedy that blockade was the only choice. “The rest of the world will side against you if you bomb Cuba because the rest of the world is accustomed to feeling threatened by its neighbors. To France or Togo or Jordan, that's life. Only the United States thinks it is entitled to never feel threatened. The rest of the world isn't going to presume that SS 4 and 5 missiles in Cuba meant missiles that were going to be used. Even if you win you lose.” That bloke had it right.
    Dillon from treasury was a conservative Republican, in fact the token conservative republican in the 'K-cab.' If he was a lib Democrat he wouldn't have been there. The K's needed to show off their bi-partisanship and Dillon held the tent corner down. At the earlier 13 days meetings Dillon was disgusted with Booby Kennedy for his immature emotionalism. Dillon thought Bobby K was acting foolishly with his 'reverse Pearl Harbor' arguments. After the early meetings Dillon bad-mouthed Bobby Kennedy behind his skinny back.
   But then at one of the final and more crucial meetings, Dillon had an epiphany. There was RFK once again passionately debating CIA chief McCone, Max Taylor, Paul Nitze and the other bomber barons. They were saying that if the United States merely blockaded Cuba, that would still give the Communists the option of launching all 24 of the SS-4's that were already there (the longer range SS-5's were on the way.) The only way the hawks felt that the Cuban missile threat could be eliminated was by physically destroying them. MacNamara and Lewellyn Thompson disagreed firmly but did not take the floor and speak like some orator in the final scene of a Frank Capra film. But Bobby did. Bobby was on the verge of tears as he spoke of how this was not what this country stood for, Even if we had sound military strategic reasons for pounding Cuba from the air, it still nullified everything the United States was supposed to stand for. Liberty and justice for all apparently didn't include the Cuban civilians. Did the United States only care about Americans? Was Uncle Sam that self-centered that its principles of liberty and mercy had no meaning for Cuban innocents? On and on went Bobby fighting it out with the hawks.
    Dillon watched in silence, staring at RFK and had an internal sea change. Dillon thought, “My God! Look at that man! He really means it. He's not a 'Bobby soxer' after all. The little punk is a real and a brave man, and if he has this much sincere passion, who am I to scoff at his point of view just because I'm an older man with a better self-made resume. He is persuasive. ...... What the hell was I thinking? He's right! It is reverse Pearl Harbor! What kind of a country are we if we rain death on Cuba from one end of the Island to the other. We will indeed look like Tojo in 1941. I feel ashamed that I ever spoke up for such a policy.”
    Dillon asked for the floor and floored everyone by announcing in no uncertain terms that he had changed his mind and that Bobby Kennedy was right. It was like the climax of 12 Angry Men. What America is supposed to stand for is more important than the immediate gains of an air strike. It was a fine moment in American history and Douglas Dillon had the guts to change his mind.
   At the end of this meeting President Kennedy asked speechwriter (and bookwriter) Ted Sorenson to write two speeches. One announced to the nation that the USAF was hitting Cuba with massive air strikes as he spoke, the other announcing a blockade of Cuba pending further developments. After John left the room RAFK declared that since Dillon had changed his mind the consensus was now clear. There was no longer any question that the blockade option was the only sane one. BK virtually overruled his brother the president and told Sorenson, “You get to work on one speech and one speech only. The President is going to choose the blockade option. We are not going to invade Cuba, and we aren't going to bomb Cuba. If you don't like it you can go to John right now and tell him what I just told you.”
   Sorenson wasn't offended. Ted was close to John Kennedy and he was on the same page with Bobby anyway. Both men understood that the two-speech order was more to appease the hawks in the room. Bobby didn't care about anyone's wounded feelings and he was executing a decision Kennedy had already made but didn't have the heart to tell the hawks to their face.
Sorenson went off and wrote one speech.
   Historian Tom Schoenbaum gets it wrong when he writes of the Excomm meeting when Pearl Harbor was mentioned, “The analogy of the surprise air strike on Pearl Harbor came to everyone's mind.” No. It came to Bobby Kennedy's mind and some agreed and most did not.

QUIET TIMES
    This argument about blockade versus air attack versus invasion went on for “13 days.” In meeting after meeting, the famous minds of the times slugged it out in debate. And speaking of the times, the New York Times was learning more than it as supposed to know about everything that was going on. Kennedy had a good enough personal relationship with the publisher that he talked the Times into keeping quiet. The country, in fact, was essentially unaware of the entire Cuban missile crisis until the night of October 22 when Kennedy went on national TV and told all. Such patriotic co-operation from the media would be a little more difficult to obtain if a similar crisis arose today.
    It was even worse back in the USSR. When Krushchev capitulated at the last moment and he announced the terms of the settlement, the pedestrians of Moscow were learning for the first time (October 28) that there was any missile crisis at all. While US diplomats were preparing to hide in caves and move the women and children to the country, the Russian people thought that life was normal. They never had the chance to experience the terror of impending WWIII the way the Americans did. Russian totalitarianism controlled the press, and there was no public pressure in Moscow for a solution. Russian peasants and streetcar drivers didn't learn of the Cuban Missile Crisis until the danger had passed.

TIME TO TELL THE CONGRESS
   The Times knew what one one or two key men in the Congress knew, and the Times was keeping it quiet. But as the 13 days went by it was time to tell all of the Congressional leaders the scoop. One Louisiana Congressman was fishing in the Bayou country. A helicopter actually tracked him down and dropped him a note in a bottle. The man followed the copter to a landing spot and was soon on an air force jet for the emergency meeting with Kennedy.
   At this meeting Kennedy explained the situation, the options and the decision that had been made to go with the blockade. He used the word 'quarantine' because a blockade was illegal international law (unless the states were at war.) There was no law pertinent to a clever semantic entity called a 'quarantine.' Kennedy went over all the details like a schoolteacher with a pointer like a schoolteacher, showing the maps and the charts.
   Senator Humphrey leaned over to Robert Kennedy and whispered, “Now I'm glad I didn't win the nomination.” RFK whispered back, “Now I wish you had.”
   It may surprise many readers to know that at this meeting Senator Fullbright of Arkansas, the love dove of the Vietnam era, the stand-up lefty icon, the idol of Bill Clinton, was furious with Kennedy for not invading Cuba! Fullbright was a Lemitzer-LeMay madman at the moment no truth in Cuba.
   The Congressmen got the impression that Kennedy was not consulting them, he was just informing them. They were correct. Congress had no more say in the matter than my Aunt Winnie. There was a considerable amount of resentment in the room that Congress was not consulted on this gravest of decisions.

NOT YET MR NYET – 10 18 62
   On October 18 Kennedy had a private meeting with Soviet UN Ambasador Andrei Gromyko, the liar's liar and the most profound exponent of the Soviet system in Kennedy's time. Gromyko was a true believer, in the Soviet experiment and managed to make six presidents mad on a regular basis in his nasty lifetime.
   Kennedy mentioned the Soviet military buildup in Cuba. Gromyko, who was testy in his sleep, suddenly had an unusually pleasant and charming demeanor, assuring Kennedy that there was no need for alarm, that no weapons of any kind were being shipped to Cuba let alone nuclear missiles. Any military equipment going to Cuba was strictly defensive in nature. He also lied when he said that Cuba only wanted to be left alone, and had no intention or desire to export revolution to Central or South America.
   By this time the United States was fully aware from the U-2 photos that there were nuclear missile sites under construction and that Gromyko was lying. But the President did not tip his hand and acted as though he was not too upset. Then he gave Gromyko a calm but stern warning that the United States would not tolerate Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. Gromyko kept his stone face (a photo of him smiling once sold for $35,000 at Sotheby's) as though Kennedy had said nothing special, but Andy's Russian interpreter nearly jumped out of his seat, tipping Gromyko's hand.
   Some have criticized Kennedy for not telling Gromyko then and there that we knew everything. That Kennedy could have given Krushchev a chance to back down with dignity through quiet diplomatic channels. Perret and Dobrynin both hit Kennedy hard for this. But that's presuming that Krushchev would act that way, which is 20-20 hindsight. For all Kennedy knew, Krushchev could use the US tip as a sign to make a new bold aggressive move and maintain the initiative. As long as Kennedy knew and the Russians thought he didn't, he felt that he had the secret trump card to seize the initiative at the moment of his own choosing.

OCTOBER 25 ADLAI CONFRONTS ZORIN AT UN
     Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin claims that neither he, nor the Soviet Ambassador to the UN Val Zorin knew anything about the nuclear missiles in Cuba until the world knew. In other words, the Soviets were practicing disinformation on their own diplomats. Disinformation begins at home, eh? Doby is lying or he is proving the depths of Soviet disinformation. The entire Golitsyn thesis is founded on this. First deceive everyone in your own camp at levels 2, 3 and 4. People only at level 1 are to know all. Deceive your own assistant Secretaries and the rest will be easy. The enemy can spot a liar, so make your liars think they are really telling the truth. So if Dobrynin is right, he proves Golitsyn. If Dobrynin is lying then he proves the Russians were liars then and still lie in their post Cold-War memoirs now. A few new books scoff at things that Dobrynin says in his hot modern memoir, In Confidence.
   So in the famous confrontation between Stevenson and Zorin at the UN, Zorin really didn't know about the missiles in Cuba, and was really an innocent victim. Maybe.
    It was time for team JFK to show the world and the Soviets what the United States knew at last. Kennedy was finally going to put his caads on the table. UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson, the liberal's liberal who almost became president several times went before the United Nations and confronted Soviet UN rep Zorin with the photographic evidence of Soviet Missiles in Cuba.
    Presidents Kennedy (Bobby and Jack were co-presidents according to some critics) were watching on TV, while Jacqueline was fuming in a corner of the room because she wanted to watch As the World Turns. John told her that the world would stop turning if this wasn't settled.
   The Kennedys were worried about Adlai because they thought he was a wimp. They weren't sure he was man enough to stand up the the belligerent Soviets in this time of crisis. It was major as to how and where and when the United States was going to let the world know that they were on to what was going on in Cuba. Some debate went on about allowing Stevenson to be the bag-man on the big one.
   Adlai passed the test with flying macho colors. The interaction between them has become sound-byte famous.
    Stevenson gave an angry speech and showed the UN General Assembly the photographic evidence from the U-2 overflights.

   Stevenson: “Ambassador Zorin, do you or do you not admit that the Soviet Union is placing offensive nuclear missiles in Cuba?”
   Zorin: “I do not have to answer questions posed to me as though I am on trial in an American court of law.”
   Stevenson: “It is a simple question, Mr Zorin yes or no; Do you deny that the Soviet Union is placing nuclear missiles in Cuba. Do not wait for the translation!”
   Zorin: “You shall have my answer in due time.”
   Then Stevenson came back with the zinger that will be remembered for a thousand years.
   Stevenson: “Mr. Zorin I am prepared to wait until the Washington Senators win the World Series in a four-game sweep, if that's how long it takes! Give me your answer now!”

    Jack Kennedy looked at Bobby and said, that If Adlai had been that tough in 1956 he might have made President. He's doing great!” The other Excomm members watching in the Oval Office literally cheered their approval for Adlai.

    Now the world and the USSR knew that the United States knew.
    Americans have seen that footage a hundred times because it makes the US look like tough guys. It satisfies the movie mentality Americans lust for macho answers to everything. By contrast, Jimmy Carter signing the fabulous peace treaty with Sadat and Begin in 79 never gets more than a fleeting video clip with no audio. Stevenson browbeating Zorin at the UN is played over and over. We give Jimmy credit but we don't care to relive the moment in our video history programs. And for every person reading a rich and sophisticated history book, there's 500 Americans watching superficial history video.

U-2 DOWN
   For more than a week Kennedy had a standing order that if one of the new Russian built Cuban SAM sites shot down a US aircraft, the USAF was supposed to respond by taking out that SAM site and then going after all the others. It was an order that, if carried out, could start World War III before the missiles controversy was settled or even addressed.
    Wouldn't you know it, just at the moment of truth in the crisis a SAM shot down a US U-2. The pilot was the same man who had first photographed the SAM sites and the SS-4's and had heroically got the pics back to DC. Now Major Anderson was dead and his U-2 sent down to Gary Powers' locker. When Robert McNamara read about the downed recon plane on the teletype he burst out the door in a panic and walked down the hall of the Pentagon exclaiming, “Sweet Jesus! This means war with the Soviet Union!”
    Calm down, Rob. The USAF did not act instinctually on the earlier contingency order and waited to be specifically ordered to strike. Kennedy did not order his earlier order to be carried out. Fortunately. The United States had to eat the casualty in the name of Peace.

NICKY'S TWO LOVE LETTERS
    Krushchev sent a 6 page very private letter to Kennedy that pleaded with him on a personal level that we two wre the only ones that can start this war and the only two men that can prevent it. The letter was so all over the road that Washington concluded that it must have been unedited and uncensored, a genuine personal letter. Nick said everything that was on his mind with no proofreader to filter out the mistakes. Much of it was rambling and almost irrelevant to the Cuba crisis. But one thing did come through in all the rambling; Krushchev was offering to back off on the missiles if the United States would give its word never to invade Cuba. It was a good start towards a settlement but unfortunately the United States was being asked to back off too, and a little too demonstratively. Krushchev was suggesting that if the United States Navy would turn around and go home to Miami, he would in turn only allow non-military Russian supply ships to continue on to Cuba. The quid quo pro was sound enough, but in it's act-out, the United States was going to have to make the humiliating move on the high seas while Russia could move its ships through the blockade, provided those ships weren't loaded with missiles. It was good but not good enough.
    The next morning Krushchev issued another letter. This one had obviously been properly edited for content behind the high Kremlin walls. This one was speaking for the USSR, not for one man. This letter was sent to all the news agencies of the world the UN and to Kennedy. This time the Russians were offering to turn back the missiles, but the United States was supposed to make two concessions, not one. The USA was to pledge never to invade Cuba, and it was to remove the Jupiter missiles from Turkey.
    The Kennedy team was in a dilemma. They didn't want to give up the Turkey missiles unless it seemed that it was an initiative of NATO, the US and Turkey, thus saving face for Turkey and removing the image of the US giving in to a Soviet demand. Kennedy suddenly liked the offer made in the Dear John letter, much more than they Hey Sam letter that was now public. But the public didn't know of the first letter. Maybe Kennedy could make the first letter public, ignore the second as if it had never happened, and settle the crisis by pledging never to invade Cuba, leaving the Turkey missiles in his pocket. This was Bobby's suggestion, and as it turned out, a good one.
    More negotiations revealed that neither side could come to a understanding, although both sides accepted the idea of a US pledge never to invade Cuba as a workable starting point. But the idea of how the deal was implemented was not acceptable to Kennedy. The Russian ships moved closer and closer to the ring of quarantine. The US fighter bases and Army bases geared up for an impending war that could literally break out at any moment.

BERLIN
   Kennedy presumed that if the United States bombed and invade Cuba, the USSR would attack Berlin. He just presumed this. He understood and made clear to everyone advocating invasion, that when the United States conquers Cuba, World War would probably break out in Europe soon thereafter. “Gentlemen,” he told one Excomm meeting, “once this thing ignites, Cuba will be the least of our worries.”

ABC NEWS SAVES THE WORLD
   The world held its breath as showdown time closed in. No one was apparently going to blink. Then an ABC News reporter named John Scali was called to a phone and told that a Soviet official wanted to speak to him with a personal message from Krushchov. Sure enough this ABC guy brought the latest offer to the White House. This was the settlement. The guns were drawn and it was one minute to high noon. Krushchov would remove the missiles if the United States would pledge to not invade Cuba and remove the missiles from Turkey.
    Kennedy was annoyed because he was willing to deal away either one of these cards, not both. The United States was at high military alert and prepared to invade Cuba if this or that scenario development. It wasn't just a viable option, it was at some moments the more likely than not development. Krushchev was asking Kennedy to disarm the Cuban threat from the USA, in exchange for him disarming the SS rockets and the SAMS. Plus the US had to throw in the Jupiters. Kennedy didn't think he liked the deal, but he got word back to Scali that Kennedy would use that as a good starting point in the solution and hoped that both nations would avert war. A qualified yes.
   Scali got the word back to his Russian contact to get word back to Moscow in a hurry that there was no need to start any shooting. These men were just ironing the details of a settlement.
   But all the normal secret lines to Moscow were either down or inaccessible and the response from Kennedy had to be sent openly over Western Union. A minimum wage courier took the message off on bicycle as Scali wondered what it would mean is this teen-ager stopped for a soda and had some beers with his hoodlum friends and didn't get the message through in time. The whole world could be ruined if this one kid goofs off.
    Dobrynin says that the Scali connection was a lot of overblown nonsense because he and Robert Kennedy were engaged in private hard-hitting discussion of the same things that Scali supposedly had some scoop on. He say that he and RFK were working out the same details and their channel was much higher, so the Scali incident was redundant. Anatoly scoffs at the Washington restaurant owner who has a booth with plaque that say this is where the Cuban Missile Crisis was solved, where Scali met his Russian spy. Yet most of the memoirs by US participants say that the Scali connection was a key turning point in the affair.

NUCLEAR FORCE CAPABILITIES 10-62
First of all, what were the nuclear force capabilities of both sides in October of 1962? It was said then and is said now that the world was on the brink of nuclear destruction during this crisis. The adults around me were in physical fear for their lives. I saw it with my own eyes.
How did the two teams line-up in October of 1962?
The US had about 20 land-based Atlas nuclear tipped ICBM’s capable of hitting Soviet cities at the turn of a key and the push of a button. The Soviets had none in Russia with that kind of range. But they did have a couple of subs with nuclear missiles. Not as many as we had, but enough to destroy the main cities on our coasts, and invulnerable to preemptive destruction. The United States had more submarine nukes, probably a hundred missiles to about 25 for the Russians.
    In bomber nukes, the US had the decided advantage because our bombers could refuel in the air and reach the USSR non-stop, while the Russians at the time could not. The USA also had medium range nuclear-armed rockets in England, Italy and Turkey, all capable of striking inside Russia.
   So the United States had about a 20-1 advantage in nuclear force delivery capability. The Soviets had the medium range missiles capable of retaliating against our allies in Europe, but except for a few sub launched rockets, could not do much more to America than wipe out seaboard cities like New York, Boston, Washington and Seattle. We, on the other hand could destroy 200 or more cities and bases deep inside the Soviet Union, and we could do this after they had hit us with everything they had. So in real military terms in 62 Kennedy was holding the cards and was not bluffing. He was willing to fight the Russians down to the last Italian.
So the fictitious ‘missile gap’ that Kennedy had exploited to win the election was now working for him in its honest dimensions. It was a missile gap in our favor.
   Many war planners at the Pentagon welcomed the crisis as a good excuse to launch the Third World War, They welcomed it. Better to fight now while we had the advantage, than years later when the Russians had nuclear equality. These hawks felt that the showdown was inevitable. The Vulcans of 62 can be summed up by paraphrasing George B. Shaw, 'Some people see the prospect of a nuclear with the USSR and ask, why. We see a nuclear war as unavoidable and ask, why not.
    The showdown over Cuba in 1962 has been called “The Gettysburg of the Cold War.” (The Gettysburg of the Cold War was the Gulf War of 1991.)
   The controversial “missile gap” created Cuba crisis and then decided it. The leader in the Kremlin, the bombastic Nikita Krushchov knew that the US could strike the USSR from German bases with nuclear bombs but that the Russians had no answer in the American theatre. So he hoped to use new friend Cuba as a base for the exiting new Russian S-4 missiles that could reach most of the prime targets in the eastern United States including the cities on the Great Lakes.
   But the missile gap that Krushchev was trying to close with this deployment was the same gap that enabled Kennedy to play nuclear truth or dare in a way that could not have been played by any president after him. The Cuban Missile Crisis and how the USA handled it was a one shot deal. The USA would never have another showdown with Russia while holding such a nuclear advantage.

   On October 15, 1962 U-2 reconnaissance aircraft pictures revealed missile silos in Cuba. They were camouflaged but the U-2 photos were technically better than the disguise. It was conclusive. The Cubans were preparing for the arrival for Soviet S-4 intermediate range missiles with a reach of 1,100 miles. Florida is only 90 miles from Cuba. The White House and the Empire State Building were within range. Caroline and John John were in range.
   On October 22 Kennedy went on national television, interrupting my cartoons with an unveiled warning to the Soviet Union; that any missile launched from Cuba would be interpreted by the United States as a direct attack upon itself by the Soviet Union! And would be responded to with a “full retaliatory response,” not on Cuba, but on the USSR! It was blunt. It was specific. Some historians now believe it was reckless.

Kennedy also declared quarantine around the island of Cuba. From now on all ships bound for Cuba would be stopped and boarded by US warships and inspected for cargo. Any ships intending to supply Cuba with military weapons or systems supplies would be seized. The United States was going to treat the Soviet Union in 1960 the way England's Royal Navy treated the world in 1760.
    Kennedy furthermore demanded the removal of all offensive missiles from Cuba. There was nothing in international law to justify these demands. Kennedy as simply using the elastic power of the presidency to do what he felt he had to do in foreign policy. He certainly didn't get a Congressional Resolution first, assuring majority support of his nuclear High-Noon scene with Krushchev.
   Kennedy told his close aides that he expected Krushchev to soon make a similar speech and declare that any American attack on Cuba will be interpreted as a direct attack on the Soviet Union. this never happened, but it does show that Kennedy was playing with the fate of the world when he prepared full scale air strikes and an invasion of Cuba if he did not get his way. Just because he was not going to let a Cuban war remain localized, he presumed Krushchev would do the same.

NONE OF YOUR GODAAMN BUSINESS, MR SECRETARY
    The superb movie Thirteen Days, indulges in a little too much tonal military bashing as it covers the events of 10.62. But the unfair bashing only comes with style, not substance. In the movie the brass are laughable dumb buffoon over the top cartoon characters who want to irresponsibly launch WWIII. In reality they were better men than that in style, but not in substance. The movie accurately makes them the bad guys. US military leadership was simply hell bent for war, and there is no excuse for that. It's that kind of extremism that caused the reactionary left to thrive in the sixties.
   Bob MacNamara met with the Secretary of the Navy looking for answers so he could dictate policy. The Secretary of the Navy acted like he was the one who was dictating policy. MacNamara was wisely worried that when the US Navy physically enforced the blockade, there had to be behavioral guidelines to ensure that WWIII isn't triggered by a needlessly truculent moment from one American ship captain.
   What the Navy man said to Mac is unbelievable.
   “You do your job Mr. MacNamara and I'll do mine. This is none of your business.”
   None of my business?” snapped MacNamara. “You're telling the Secretary of Defense that how the Navy behaves is none of his business?”
   It really got hot. Both men were going at it like two cats hanging upside down over a clothesline tied at the tail.
   “That's right Mac! We know how to handle the Navy and you don't. Let us do our job! Its none of your goddamn business and you stay out of it!” He actually said that to Secretary MacNamara. Can you believe that?
    Mac went to Kennedy and the formal Naval Lieutenant took the side of civilian leadership over military. JFK instructed the Navy to shoot across the bow, but do not actually attack and sink any ships.”
     The Navy guy passed MacNamara in the hall later that day and said, “You and me, Mac. Any time you're ready.” MacNamara shook his head at how immature the man was acting. Here he was trying to save the world and this wounded bully wants to fight him like this was junior high.

MARUCLA
   The showdown reached a point on Friday October 26 1962 where a US Navy ship, the Joseph P. Kennedy stopped and boarded the Soviet freighter Marucla. The ship contained no armaments or missiles, but the principle was established that the blockade was real and would be enforced. This was the only instance of actual enforcement of the 'quarantine.'
   It was just one of the interesting coincidences of history that the ship that stopped a Soviet ship and boarded it during zero hour of the Cuban Missile Crisis was named after the dead brother of the President of the United States. Jack knew that people would probably think he did it on purpose but he did not.

OCTOBER 28 1963 – BLINK 182
   Sunday morning October 28 could have been a date which lived in infamy. Instead it was date that dodged disaster with one second left on the time bomb, the climax of a blockbuster movie; except it was real.
   It was 9 a.m. eastern time when Kennedy got word that Krushchev was backing down. The President didn't get the word from any of a hundred inside sources. He heard it on the radio like everyone else in the country. First came word from Radio Moscow that an important announcement was coming soon. It six in the evening Moscow time Radio Moscow broadcast a serious letter from Krushchev to Kennedy for world consumption. In the middle of the rhetoric of peace and reason were the key phrases that saved the world,

“In addition to previously issued instructions on the cessation of further work at building sites for the weapons, the Soviet Government has issued a new order on the dismantling of the weapons which you describe as “offensive” and their crating and return to the Soviet Union.”

Wow!

   As for the missiles in Turkey, again, were the big wild card. Kennedy privately agreed to remove the missiles as part of the quid pro quo. It was an important condition that they were removed quietly and later on. Kennedy needed to save face too, both with the voters, with NATO, and with the USSR. He could not make it seem that he was trading both a promise not to invade Cuba and an agreement to remove the Jupiter missiles in Turkey (and Italy) for Soviet co-operation in dismantling its offensive missiles in Cuba. Yet at the same time that is exactly what the deal was. It just had to be done in a way that made it seem like Krushchev was backing down.
   Krushchev had underestimated the spoiled Harvard brat. Kennedy was a madman. Who knew? It was like the bully that pushed the poindexter until the nerd puts up his dukes and it turns out he's been taking boxing and karate lessons for 12 years. This made up for Vienna. Krushchev had previously complained in private that he could not take seriously an American president young enough to be his grandson. But at crunch time, Nick took Jack plenty seriously enough.
    Maybe Krushchev forgot that both of them had already seen war. They say that once you've seen war, you never want to see it again. True, but on the other hand, it can make people slightly less terrorized by the idea because they have experience. Kennedy had seen it in PT-109, and while he no doubt was terrified of another war, he did have an earlier referent. Death and war is less unthinkable to a middle-aged combat vet than it is to a 20 year old student. Death also held less terror personally for a 46 year old man in very poor health, and in excruciating back pain all the time, and as one who has had a few years at the chiropractor, I take this as a legitimate factor in the equation. His brother was dead, his sister had died in a plane crash, his father was a helpless paraplegic, he received 10 assassination threats a day in the mail a day, three times in his youth he had been read his last rights ... yeah, Kennedy might have had a recklessly fatalistic streak in play at the time.

CBS NEWS ALMOST RUINS THE DEAL
    As soon as the news got out, CBS put on one news report after another calling Krushchev a featherweight blowhard who had backed down before US might. One report after another rejoiced at how tough-guy Kennedy had “put the cue-ball in his place.”
   Kennedy got on the phone to CBS news and spoke to the top executive.

“What the hell are you doing? If you keep embarrassing him with the tone of these reports he might change his mind! Didn't you people ever stop to think of that. He's been humiliated enough! Don't rub his nose in it or we might have to do this all over again and it will be your damned fault! 'The cue-ball?' Knock it off!”

   And with that he slammed down the phone. CBS toned it down in a hurry and informed the other networks what was in store for them if they did not do the same.

MITROKHIN ARCHIVE
   According to the secret KGB files revealed after the fall of the Soviet Union, the downing of the U-2 was the key to the US victory in the CMC.
   According to historian Chris Andrew, when the Cuban SAM shot down the US U-2 at the height of the crisis, Krushchov panicked because he presumed this meant war. Nikita concluded that Kennedy would respond with an immediate invasion of Cuba. According to the “Mitrokhin Archive,” in which the old USSR in 1998 opened up all its top secrets from 1917 to 1991, this was the true and in fact the only reason that Krushchev caved in and sent a hurried message to Kennedy that the USSR was going to dismantle and withdraw all its ICMB's in Cuba.
    If this passing two paragraph passage in the 1999 book The Sword and the Shield is true then it revises the entire history of the Cuban Missile Crisis in a big way.
   The Mitrokhin Archive also claims that the entire Cuban Missile Crisis was the result of faulty and paranoid Soviet intelligence work. The USSR was under the impression that the United States was absolutely plotting to launch an unprovoked nuclear war against the Soviet Union while it still had a clear advantage in nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. If America waited too long it would miss the window of opportunity for nuclear victory. That was supposedly why Krushchev felt that he had to get those ICBM's into Cuba as soon as possible. Only by gaining some military nuclear equilibrium via Cuban intermediate missiles could the USSR forestall the impending USA nuclear first strike.
    Professor Andrew laughs off the idea that the United States was actually planning a first-strike full-scale nuke attack. On the other hand the bitter and brilliant left-extreme book To Win a Nuclear War, by Brad Axelrod says that this is exactly what the USA was up to in the Kennedy years! If To Win is correct, and the US was indeed planning a nuclear first strike, then why does the book about the Mitrokhin archive say that believing this was proof of poor and faulty Soviet intelligence work? If Axelrod is right then Soviet intelligence on this was excellent, and Krushchov in putting missiles into Cuba was doing the only sane thing to do if one were in charge of protecting the Russian people.
    Theoretically way the world came close to actual nuclear warin 62 made American leadership rethink allowing the lunatic military to instigate a first strike, or even propose it. If Axelrod's book is right then the Cuban Missile Crisis saved the world from American nuclear aggression, not Soviet.
   For the record I despise the authors of that book for their tone. If style is substance I would dismiss their work as garbage, but the matter is too serious and they might be right in spite of their disgusting hatred for the USA. They hate the United States viscerally, and if they wrote a book about any aspect of American foreign policy, it would be bashing America from the intro to the index. They are absolutely prejudiced. The book doesn't seem to think that Kennedy or any other president has ever had any control over military hawk pigs. If they are misrepresenting the facts then they are the pigs. In any case, this fairly obscure book is a must read for American history.

ERNIE MAY TAKE
   Ernest May says that the whole thing really had very little to do with Cuba! It was all a test of wills with Cuba just a secondary staging ground for the arm wrestling contest to see who was stronger. It was all about who would win in Berlin. If Krushchov could make Kennedy back down on Cuba he would therefore know he could follow up by making Kennedy back down on Berlin. If Kennedy won the testy test of testosterone in Cuba, Krushchov would know that he had better be cautious on Berlin.
   Unlike the unique and spectacular Mitrokhin Archive take, Ernie May's version is shared by a few scholars, and some of them were there. Kennedy certainly made a few comments along those lines that this was all really about Berlin. He spoke of Cuba as if it was a smokescreen for Berlin both during and after the crisis. Even if a mere conventional war broke out over Cuba, the President presumed that the Soviets would then attack West Berlin. So the idea that the whole showdown on Cuba was the ultimate showdown on Berlin is probably on target. However if the Cuban missiles had been launched, that larger point would have been beside the point in the US mushroom field.

WHO WON?
Krushchov backed down, turned 26 ships with SS-5's in the cargo hold around, and removed the S-4 missiles already on the ground in Cuba.
    The United States honored that no invasion, and has continued to honor that pledge to this day. Cuba is still a sore spot for the US. The Cuban Missile Crisis was not the one-way victory for the US over the USSR that it is usually thought to be. Not only did the US have to promise not to invade Cuba, but also by formally agreeing to do so, we were sort of acknowledging that we were about to. The no-invasion understanding was also an admittance that the Monroe Doctrine was not sacred, nor was the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. Cuba was getting a Monroe pass from now on. The USA had to put away the TR Caribbean big-stick for one country. Kennedy personally claimed to consider the Monroe Doctrine a bunch of irrelevant paper nonsense, but he would have been in a tougher spot diplomatically in his handling of the Crisis if that doctrine had not existed. The Monroe Doctrine took itself seriously even if Kennedy didn't.
The Soviet Presidium gave a sound censure to Krushchev for backing down to Kennedy and it marked the beginning of the end of his supremacy in reindeer-land. But what else could he do? The United States had a 20-1 superiority in nuclear warheads and was ready to fight. Kennedy displayed cowboy belligerency worthy of George W. and his henchmen on Iraq. Krushchev walked into the street at high noon with his nuke gun-belt on, and then in stepped the captain of PT 109 who said “Go ahead, make my day.”
    Kennedy had campaigned on the premise that Ike had been lax, if not quite weak, on defense. Now he was backing up his campaign rhetoric with a staggering display of nuclear brinkmanship. The world trembled. And everything worked out fine and we’re all living happily ever after. The good guys won without firing a shot.
   But what if Krushchev had ordered his ships to defy the blockade in spite of common sense? Kennedy might have been the guy remembered in history as the instigator of World War III. It would have been a thousand World War II’s in about 12 hours. And I never would have written this sentence and you might never have read it.
As a result of this crisis a so-called “hotline” was established between Washington and Moscow so that the leaders of both countries would be a moments reach for the phone away from direct contact with each other. By this it was hoped that the chance of war through misunderstanding could be forever avoided.
Russia felt humiliated and angry after backing down. They accelerated their end of the nuclear arms race with a vengeance in response to the CMC. Both sides were building fast and furious.
The USA did not make minor concession. Some historians dismiss the missiles in Turkey as not important because they were old and obsolete anyway, but Russian Gensecs hated and feared these missiles in Turkey, and getting them removed made them feel safer and boosted their pride. If I had hostile nuclear missiles pointed at Boston from New Brunswick, it wouldn't count for much reassurance to me that they were 1974 models powered by 1975 technology. Its easy for a history professor in 2010 to write that these Jupiter missiles in Turkey were turkeys. Put that writer guy in their target path and they might sing a different tune.

KENNEDY BLEW IT
   A few days later Kennedy called in his military chiefs to thank them for how they had helped win a great victory. Two of them jumped on this angrily telling him,

“Victory? You blew it! We lost! We had a golden opportunity to bomb and invade Cuba and you threw it away!”

    That really happened. Again, that's the kind of insanity on the right that created 30 million hippies on the left in reaction. Sometimes when I hate the new left I have to remember where and how and why it was born, and that I became part of it around 1971 for some fairly logical reasons. So 99% of the world considered Kennedy a tough guy in the way he handled the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, but the men in charge of The US armed forces thought he had behaved like a wimp. In light of this story, should it come as any surprise that the United States committed half a million troops to Vietnam within the next three years?
    The US armed forces in this era were like a hockey goon who is called up from the AHL because the team scorers are being intimidated by goons on other teams. The coach tells him, “Look, we're in the playoff hunt and we don't really want no trouble that might cost us the season. But we need you here to make sure the other teams doesn't get the idea they can intimidate us.”
   As soon as the game starts and one of his teammates takes a check in the corner, the good goes over to the other teams bench and puts a beating on the 70 year old coach and starts a free-for-all from hell that forfeits the game and eliminates the team from the playoffs. The US military was trigger happy, and with a nuclear six shooter in one of the holsters.

SEYMOUR HERSH WRESTLES WITH THE TRUTH
   You want to hear a major-league negative take on Kennedy's performance in the Cuban Missile Crisis? Listen to famous author Seymour Hersh as he wrestles Kennedy in the historical ring by picking him up, holding him up over his head, twirling him around and hurling him deep into the crowd.
     From The Dark Side of Camelot,

“Over the 'Thirteen Days,' the president eschewed diplomacy and played a terrifying game of nuclear chicken, without knowing all of the facts. For the first time in his presidency, Kennedy brought his personal recklessness, and his belief that the normal rules of conduct did not apply to him, to his foreign policy. Jack Kennedy's deceits about his personal life and the corruption of the 1960 election pales beside the false legacy he and his brother manufactured in the days and weeks after the missile crisis. Kennedy brought the world to the edge of nuclear war to gain a political victory.”

    The crowd gasps in horror as skinny Kennedy lands on his bad back in the 20th row. Hersh raises his arms to the crowd in defiance as the crowd boos. They can't believe that any historian would be so mean as to treat Saint John this way.
   Hersh wrote a couple of very lefty books in his time about My Lai and KAL 007, so he doesn't have a right-wing Vic Laskey type bias. Maybe he just wants to keep his name at the top of the best-seller list so he is going with an extreme negative take on everything Kennedy to attract agents and readers. Hersh says that the entire Cuban Missile Crisis was Kennedy's fault to begin with because he was “obsessed with Cuba.”
   For the record the always stimulating leftorian I.F. Stone wrote a brave article while Kennedy was still alive in which he also said that Kennedy had needlessly brought the world to nuclear war for political and personal reasons. Stone wrote that Jack had to make up for Krushchev's earlier bullying at Vienna and put the old man in his place, and he would not risk having his Democratic party lose big in the 1962 mid-term elections because he had “lost Cuba.” But Stone did not go so far as to say that Kennedy had brought the entire crisis on because of his obsession with Cuba.
   Hersh provided much original valuable research, including previously buried treasure in the form of a terrifying telephone conversation between Kennedy and former President Eisenhower at the 11th hour which has the two men casually discussing the possible nuclear war about to erupt as if they were discussing how bad the Washington Senators were. Eisenhower notably did not think the whole Cuba thing had very much to do with Berlin! So whom should we give more credibility to, President Eisenhower or Ernest May?
   Hersh also asserts rather angrily (you've seen the sample of his tone) that Kennedy had a lot of nerve when he met with Gromyko not to inform the Russian that the United States had all the photographic proof of the missile launch pads under construction. Hersh's position is that Kennedy had a moral obligation to quietly let the Russians know through this diplomatic window that we knew the truth and there was no point in trying to lie about it. The reason Kennedy supposedly should have done this was to provide Krushchev a chance to save face and withdraw the missiles without being humiliated in doing so.
   I couldn't disagree more. For one thing, letting Gromyko know would force a showdown sooner than would have been healthy for anyone. The United States wanted to buy some more time to debate its options in private, and to make military preparations for possible war. Besides, who was being duplicitous, the United States or the USSR? Who was putting missiles in and claiming that they were only bringing in tofu delivery trucks to feed the poor with? Why should such treachery be rewarded with generous honesty. It seems to me that Hersh never played Texas Hold' Em ... Come to think of it, neither have I. Whatever the card game, no one is obliged to expose his hand when the other one is playing a dishonest ruse. Why should Kennedy reward a card cheat with such a generous offer to let the slime-bucket walk out without paying the smallest price? Gromyko thought he was playing Kennedy like a violin. Kennedy had the bull artist by the horns, and why should he let go just to please Seymour's moral qualms 50 years hence?

SHOENWEISS TAKE
   Stuffy Shoenweiss is one historian who says that the whole thing happened because of the failure at the Bay of Pigs. He says that Krushcov became overconfident that he could push Kennedy around after Kennedy had shown such weakness at the Bay of Pigs, and that's why Nickita became so foolishly bold as to put missiles in Cuba. I agree that it had everything to do with the Bay of Pigs, but I disagree with why.
    Kennedy intimidated Krushchev at the Bay of Pigs and that's why Krushchev had to strike back. Even though the Bay of Pigs invasion was a pathetic failure it was still a startling warning that the United States was going to find a way to conquer Cuba one way or another. The Bay of Pigs was a signal that there was a hot war going on for Cuba and that todays failure would probably only mean a better and bigger military operation in the near future, and there was a lot of truth to that too. The US military had all kinds of plans to take Cuba, and if Krusschev didn't know it in 1960, he certainly knew it in 1961. The Bay of Pigs was a flare gun of danger to the Commies and Krushchev felt he had to get those missiles in to fend off the next attack he was sure was coming. It was done out of fear, not arrogant confidence.
    The idea that Kennedy's failure at the Bay of Pigs was a signal of weakness and an in invitation to intimidation is like a man who opens his mailbox and a bomb goes off but he is not harmed in the explosion. Now he know he can go intimidate the people who put the bomb in the mailbox because they have showed such ineptitude in their attempt to kill him.

WERE THRERE NUKES IN CUBA?
   The more I study the more conflicting accounts there are. What else is new? The Kennedy's planned to invade Cuba on the presumption that there were no nuclear warheads in Cuba just yet, so there was no risk of nuclear retaliation from there. Perhaps the Soviet Union would launch its submarine nukes in retaliation for a US invasion designed to wipe out Communist leadership in Cuba and prevent nukes from arriving, but it was presumed that there were no nukes ready to go on October 27 when the U-2 was shot down and we almost invaded.
    It now seems from newly revealed Soviet documents that there were about a deadly dozen nuclear warhead already on the island during all of the famous 13 days. If the United States had begun a conventional invasion, these two-kiloton warheads could have been mounted and fired on the missiles already there and fired at America in about four hours of prep time. Kennedy and company were not looking at a straight up conventional invasion of Cuba if they went that route.
   It is also possible that even if Krushchev had begged Castro to not fire them, the beard would have done it anyway. He was probably looking at the end of his life anyway, so why not go out with a bang. There was a Soviet general in charge of the nukes, but Cubans could have tied him up and proceeded with the launch anyway. Then there would have been a world War III apparently started by the Soviet Union, but actually initiated by Castro in response to the provocation of an American all-out attack on Cuba.

MY TAKE – MY HERO
   The one thing I believe is not considered often enough in evaluating the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis is the larger global historical Cold War. Sure, Kennedy was needlessly belligerent, sure he played nuclear chicken, and arguably did not have to. Its certainly true, as many revisionist cynics point out, that Soviet Nuclear subs could have destroyed every major city in the United States in 1962 and still have a few guns left in the chamber, so the charge the Cuban medium ICBM's posed a sudden danger to American that had not previously existed is bogus.
   But to ascribe Kennedy's motives strictly to macho and political reasons is missing a larger framework, that of the totality of the Cold War between Communism and freedom. The left always laughs at all those who once thought the Commies were no good, but Kennedy gets a pass. It was ok for him to think that way, but everyone else is a joke. So I ask, if Kennedy gets a pass, and he was actually correct in thinking there was a Communist drive for world domination, and that freedom had to stand up to that drive, then can't we reconsider all over again, his truculent conduct in the missile crisis?
    If the Soviet Union had been behaving itself and acting like it wanted to be a key member of the peaceful family of nations, then I.F. Stone and Seymour Faults are both right on, and the spoiled brat intentionally played with a billion lives merely to win the next election, and deserves condemnation.
   But the Soviet Union had enslaved all of Eastern Europe and was trying to install fascist Communism through more revolutions in Eastern Europe since 1946. The Soviet Union had put millions of people in political prison 'gulags' and had a record of mass murder against its own people that made American lynchings in the South look like small change. The Soviet Union was trying to install Communist totalitarian regimes in Southeast Asia, in Africa, and in Central America. The Mitrokhin Archives confirms definitely that the main point of the Soviet buildup in Cuba was to use it as a launching pad, not to send missiles to Washington DC, but to export Communist revolution to all the nations south of the United States border. So the real context of Soviet missiles in Cuba was not Berlin, and not Cuba, but the larger context of the Cold War. Kennedy was taking a stand in Cuba to draw a line in the entire Cold War sand, not the sands on the beaches of Havanna. Seen in that context, he was the hero who grabbed the Cold War bull by the horns at the great divide and won it, just as surely as GHW Bush won it finally in 1989. If Krushchev had put those missiles in Cuba, the rest of the world would have taken notice that freedom was not about to stand in the streets at high noon and say enough is enough to atheist fascistic Communism (and after 1989 even the Communists admitted that Communism had been fairly bad at best.) Nations on the fence trying to decide which team to back would see a thriving Cuba armed with nuclear missiles, intimidating the United States symbolically, and the result might have been a damned successful movement to export more Communist revolution in Central America just for starters.
   Kennedy might have been playing nuclear chicken, but the Soviet Union had been playing World War III chicken since it betrayed all the agreements at Yalta and Potsdam beginning in 1946. The west had been showing as much restraint as it could muster in trying to merely contain Communist aggression since 1946. For the first time, in the nuclear chicken of October 1962, the west was declaring that enough was enough, this is as far as it goes. He had a good heart and believed in America, and there is no way that he played nuclear chicken just to win the next two elections for himself and the Democrats. No way. There ae all kinds of accounts that say from the get-go that Kennedy made up his mind that we had to get those missiles out of there, no if ands or buts about it. They would not stand. No one ever quotes him as saying why, and no one quotes him as saying it was to win the next election. That's convoluted conclusion of over-analysts trying to sell books. Kennedy knew he had to get those missiles out of there the same way Bush St had to get the Iraqis out of Kuwait. He knew his duty as he saw it and he done it. John F. Kennedy was my hero!

WHAT'S GOING ON WITH YEMEN?
    The little Arab country of Yemen was also problematic for Kennedy in 1962, and like James Meredith, had to add to his leadership burden just as the Missiles of October were in high crisis mode. The situation might lead to the Egyptian Air Force intervening to help the side the USA was against, and somehow US supplied weapons downing Egyptian planes. It was a complex and dangerous situation in the Yemen, as it always seems to be in that mountainous dry land.
    One day Dean Rusk knocked on the door of the Oval Office. Little five year old Caroline Kennedy opened the door.
   “Is your daddy there?” Dean asked with a charmed smile.
   “What's going on in Yemen?” she asked the Secretary of State. I don't understand all the trouble going on in Yemen.”
   Rusk began to give her a wise and studied answer when a burst of laughter came from behind the curtain where the President was hiding, having put her up to it. She cared about cartoons and candy, not Yemen, and Rusk fell for it like a fool. And this was the guy making key decisions on Vietnam?

A GALLING THOUGHT
   An unexpected fallout from the un-detonated missiles of October came from perceptions in Europe. Since the end of WWII Europeans wondered if the United States would really risk nuclear war and the destruction of American cities in order to defend western democracies in Europe. Would NATO (the USA plus others in essence) really go to war to defend Paris and Berlin?This is what the Europeans wondered. Would an Ike or a Kennedy really risk New York and Chicago to defend the freedom of London and Brussels?
   President Kennedy had answered that in the affirmative during the ongoing crisis over Berlin.
    Now with the Cuban missile crisis, men like De Gaulle and Adenauer had been shown an unexpected plot twist, one they weren't too sure they were fond of. Apparently the USA was capable of reversing the equation. The United States was willing to risk London and Paris in order to protect it's interests anywhere in the world. De Gaulle might die in a nuclear holocaust because the United States stood up to the Russians in Laos or Cuba, areas that had little or nothing to do with the lives of Europeans.
   This was a galling thought, and after Cuba, the European NATO members became a little more cautious in asking the United States to act tough with the Russians. This new rethink Euro-policy continued indefinitely to the end of the Cold War in 1989. If the United States and the USSR had gone to war in 1962, the United States would have emerged the victor. Many US cities would have been destroyed, but many more would have been defended and spared. On the other hand, Europe's cities were sitting ducks for short range nukes, tactical Russian nukes, plus the full force of Soviet conventional military power. Europe would have paid a heavier price for war with Russia than America would have. That's for sure. Krushchev was always threatening the destruction of Western Europe as the first answer to an American attack on Russia, and that crazy cue-ball porker meant every word of it.

JAMAICA NO PROBLEM WITH INDEPENDENCE, MAN
   The British Commonwealth had a wealth of small self-governing but non-independent states. Jamaica was one of the larger of these small states and in 1962 Great Britain let Jamaica go to complete independence. I was married there in Ocho Rios in 1998, which is obviously the most important political event to mention for the reader.
    What I'd like to know is, was reefer the way of life there in 1961, or did that really break out and go off the scales after only after independence? Did the British tolerate open reefer salesmen on every street-corner in 1961?
    When I vacationed there I couldn't go anywhere or do anything without someone trying to sell me reefer. I went to Mass and the priest ended the ceremony with “The Mass is ended. Go in Peace. Psst. I have some good smoke, man.” A cop gave me a warning for an illegal turn and said, “Drive careful next time. I have some great ganja, man.” Jamaican winos panhandle for rolling papers instead of spare change. Even they have plenty of weed they can't sell because everyone on the island had four pounds in his desk drawer.
    Other British possessions aren't in so light-headed a situation in 1962. The self-governing British territory of Southern Rhodesia in the heartless heart of Africa is ruled by an oppressive white majority and they have the audacity to demand complete independence while refusing to liberalize racist Rhodesian laws. Blacks outnumber whites by 14 to one and whites have 14 times the rights of blacks. Not good. The Rhodesia problem was to be a curse on the world for decades past 62 and was not easily solved.
    Britian had granted independence to honky-tyranny South Africa in 1910 and was not about to make the same mistake in 1962 with Southern Rhodesia. Things were a bit more liberal in Northern Rhodesia.
   Britain is less reluctant to grant independence to Aden in the Persian Gulf region. The reason of course is that Aden is in the Persian Gulf region. Progressivism meets its match when oil is on the line.
   Its hard to imagine today how difficult it was for the western powers to keep a physical foothold anywhere in the Persian Gulf in these earlier times. Today the US controls Iraq, and Kuwait, and is battling foolishly for Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia has been more friendly since the 1991 Gulf War. Organized hostility to the west is now in the lower depths of society while the ruling class can be overtly friendly. US military forces are welcome in many parts of the Middle East now, but before 1991, it was all that could be done to find tiny footholds in the sand where NATO power ships and planes could refuel or troops could bivouac.
   Britian was different from Portugal or Spain in that it did not consider overseas territories a part of Great Britain. Jamaica wasn't a “province” of Great Britain in 1961 as Angola and Mozambique were provinces of Portugal. Most of the British far away empire was self-governing and either autonomous or heading that way. There wasn't the Portuguese heartbreak from loss of personal territory in the idea of letting them go. But it was to be done on Britain's timetable, not that of the UN or the angry leftist bloc of Afro-Asian states, many of whom were flirting with Marx and Krushchev. Britian didn't like to be lectured and reprimanded to let its colonialism go, since it had been doing so in carefully planned stages since long before the tiny nations with big mouths started yelling at it to do so. For example, Britain let Jamaica go free in 1962 and let Hong Kong go back to China in 1999. Each possession was an individual situation to be settled on individual terms.
    Analysts of the Kennedy era presumed that most of the tiny British island dependencies would never choose independence, because they would be much worse off on their own. That turned out to be true on some cases but not in others. The Solomon Islands, where the number one industry was praying for a lucky break, opted for independence and is one of the world's smallest countries today. Not as small as Tonga, but its small. I'd very much like to go there to visit the Henderson Field shrine.

MID-TERM ELECTIONS OF 1962
   The mid-term 1962 elections went generally well for the Democrats. Kennedy was popular, and had just won the big one in Cuba. His approval rating had jumped from 66 to 77 percent from October 1 to October 30. The Dem spike came just in time. The Democrats won only a small amount of new seats in Congress, but considering that the opposition party usually wins in the mid-term elections, a small win was really a fairly big one.
   The negative for the Democratic Party in 11/62 was in the “solid south.” The Republicans gained significantly throughout the South, even in elections they lost. Prior to the Kennedy era, Republicans didn't even contest many of the seats, they just let the Dem run unopposed. But a lot was changing in the iron mail of the southern knight. There was a crack in the cracker armor.
   Up in Massachusetts they held an election for Senator. Edward M Kennedy won over Cormier McCormack who happened to be related to John McCormack.

NO MORE ELEANOR
   The biggest celebrity death of the Kennedy years came one day after Election Day 1962 when Eleanor Roosevelt died at the age of 78.
   The former First Lady of the Depression was no great friend of John Kennedy. In fact she had been bugging him with criticism since the day he won in 1960, in spite of her. Eleanor had been a rabid supporter of Adlai Stevenson for the Democratic nomination for President. When Kennedy won in Los Angeles, Eleanor stormed out in anger and caught a cab to the airport. The Kennedy team tracked her down at the airport asking her to come back and get on board the Kennedy team. She told them to “desist with these weak importunities” and she got on board the plane.
   At the Ask Not, Inaugural address, Eleanor turned down an invitation, a plea really, to sit with the other dignitaries on the ceremonial platform. Eleanor stood in the cold in a fur coat with the rest of the crowd, wiping a tear from her eye with her middle finger when Kennedy looked down at her pleadingly.
    Kennedy had given several charming press conferences. Eleanor wrote him a letter of back-handed support at the end of 1961,

   “Your press conferences aren't bad, but they can't hold a candle to Franklin's Fireside Chat's. You need to bring more warmth and resonance to your speaking voice. If only Franklin were still alive to teach you.
                    Best Wishes,
                    Eleanor”

   Kennedy wrote her back that he would try to take her advice and improve his performance, but that was just to prevent her from causing any further trouble. What he should have written was,

   “I liked your husband a hundred more times than I like you. No one wants this kind of criticism. Now leave me alone you ... you ... I don't want to even say it!”
                   Sincerely,
                     John”

    Three Presidents attended the ER funeral at Hyde Park NY on the Hudson.
   Adlai Sevenson said of Mrs R,

   “What other single human being has ever done so much for so many people?”

    Can I take a shot at this one? Abraham Lincoln? Mahatma Hghandi? Dr. Jonas Salk, Winston Churchill?

THE SINO-SOVIET BANANA SPLIT
    One of the supposed results of Krushchev losing the Cuban Missile Crisis showdown was a permanent split between the USSR and Communist China. The Chinese were allegedly so mad at the Russians for losing to America that they didn't want to be their friend anymore. The two top Commie bananas now mistrusted each other because the USA had humiliated the Soviet Union, and China no longer felt it could look up to it anymore. That makes no sense to me. But it is widely accepted as logical chain of events.
   There was talk of an impending Soviet invasion of Sinkiang Province in the Mongolian region of China.
   From now on American schoolchildren would be taught that the Soviet Union and China were enemies. My schoolteachers taught me this, and I always scratched my head on that one even as a boy. It never made sense so I gently disbelieved, but never spoke up. My friend Fred Wilson told me that his teacher reprimanded him in front of the class in the seventh grade for his insisting that the Russians and the Chinese were allies.
   I’ve read a lot about it but I still can’t see the remotest genuine reason why they would have been enemies at any point in time in the Cold War. Yet we have had national news magazines headlining the real possibility of full scale, and even nuclear, war between the USSR and China since the early sixties and into the 1990’s.
   This takes us back to Tony Golitsyn the defector of KGB December. When the post Cuban Missile Crisis split became big news he warned that the Sino-Soviet split was a disinformation campaign designed to weaken and divide the west its effort to fight Communism. Golitsyn also warned that the KGB would send a false defector to the US with the primary mission of discrediting him.
    Sure enough, a KGB captain defected to the USA named Yuri Nosenko. Golitsyn insisted that Yuri Nosenko's mission was to discredit him and convince the USA that any talk of a disinformation campaign was ridiculous. Two armed camps began to grow within the CIA, one of which believed Golitsyn, the other which believed Nosenko. Later of course, the Nosenko believers would have their way. Otherwise why would we have failed to ever consider the possibility of disinformation from the Communist bloc all these years?

   The split has taken on the authenticity of an historical fact. Any book, any writer, indeed any politician who bought it, is at the very least irresponsibly ignoring the possibility that it was all disinformation. That is one point that Golitsyn stresses in his book. The west never even considers the possibility!

    Every time the Russians and the Chinese have a disagreement of any kind the story gets high publicity inside and outside the Communist bloc. Does that make any sense to anyone? They control the press, but no squabble is ever kept secret. In fact secret squabbles are spread out for the public to see. It only makes sense if its disinformation.
   If a Chinese ambassador wants to protest a Russian action, there are many quiet ways to do it. But no, it will always be some big party conference meeting scene where the Chinese guys storms out while western reporters scramble for the phones.
   The whole idea is to disarm the west by making it plain that the world of Communism is not monolithic. That way, all the Cold Warriors like Nitze Kissinger and Kennedy look ridiculous. US defense spending is reduced, (or not increased) by billions, and the United States sees local revolutions as local revolutions.

SANTA STEPS OFF THE SCALES
    On Christmas Eve 1962 President Kennedy pardoned Junius Scales who had served 15 months as an an American political prisoner.
   Scales was arrested in 1954 for advocating the violent overthrow of the United States government under the bad ol' Smith Act of 1940. In other words, Junius had been a memberof the American Communist Party. Smitty 1940 was about Communism, not any general attitude really. If a member of the American Legion wrote an article saying that FDR or Ike must be violently overthrown, it wouldn't have been a good thing for that person but he wouldn't have been suddenly facing jail time.
    The Smith Act of 1940 was a reaction to the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 and Stalin's swallowing up of Poland and the Baltic States. It never would have been passed in 1944 when the US propaganda machine was telling its people that the Soviet Union was unspeakable admirable in every way, in order to help win WWII. The Smith Act was a dead letter until the Cold War broke out in 1946 and then it was used to indict a few people but only one was ever convicted and that was Scales.
   The Scales trial lasted seven years. The liberals defended him and kept him out of the can until 1961 when the US Supreme court upheld his conviction in a 5-4 decision. He was put in a cell just after Kennedy took office and was a thorn in the side of an administration that wanted to be seen as liberal and hip, at least relative to the times. A lot of these delicate Presidential pardons are made on Christmas Eve or Christmas day, or on the day before the President leaves office. Its hard to be mad at the President when he pardons someone on Christmas. Kennedy made a list, checked it twice and decided that Scales hadn't been that naughty after all, especially since Junius had renounced his Communist ties after Krushchev denounced Stalin in 1956.
    Scales was formerly a big fan of Stalin, and had a life sized poster of him in his bedroom, but when even the USSR decided it no longer loved Uncle Joe, Scales had an epiphany and disowned his fanship. It was convenient, since he was already under indictment, and may have been just expedient, especially when you consider that the Krushchev speech denouncing Stalin also praised him in many ways, and was a typical We Hate America speech in all its other aspects.

SPRING THAW
   Between January 1 and March 31 of 1963, President Kennedy's approval ratings dropped from 77 to 66%. One of the reasons was that people began to re-think the Cuban Missile Crisis. They decided that maybe we didn't win a big one after all. Castro the Commie was still in charge in Havana. Soviet ICBM's were gone, but Red Army troops and conventional bombers were still there. Some victory.

“MOONBEAM” - VOSTOK 5 AND 6
   Early in his administration President Kennedy told Congress that the United States should set for itself the goal of sending a man to the moon and returning him or her safely. Critics in Republican press called the goal a “science fiction publicity stunt,” and the Congressman Donald McColgan called the President a “space cadet.” One famous editor referred to JFK derisively as “moonbeam” in private conversation.
NASA would have the last laugh on the critics when Neil Armstrong hopped off a ladder and landed on the moon just before the end of the decade.
   But in Kennedy's time it was Soviet achievements in space, not American thirst for knowledge, that got the US Space program going on all engines.
   In June of 1963 the Soviets launched two fantastic manned space missions two days apart. One actually was manned, the other was womaned. Cosmonaut Mick Bykovsky was sent into space on June 14 1963 and then two days later the first lady in space made her feminine catwalk down the space exploration road. Valentina Tereshkova went into orbit for three full days, which was more space time that all the previous American right stuff boys combined. Bykovsky's five day flight is still the world's record for solo space missions. They both landed on the same day and were communicating with each other while in the heavens. Kennedy wasn't thrilled when he had to call and congratulate Valentina on the hot line a week later. He kept it short. It was 19 years before the world saw another female space cadet.

AID EPIDEMIC
   “Too much foreign aid.” I heard adults bitterly griping about that all throughout my childhood. It is one of my earliest ‘political’ memories, beginning with the Kennedy years. “Too much foreign aid.”
   Foreign aid was the New Deal dole for the whole world. Uncle Sam wasn’t even going to ask for the money back. If you were a small and poor country then the USA would just give you lots of money for food and what not. For fiscal year 1963 the Kennedy Administration asked for 4.9 billion for foreign aid. It settled for $3,200,000,000 which, in spite of the griping of the man and woman on the street, represented a slight reduction than that in any of the last few Eisenhower years.
   Part of the reason for our generosity was Cold War calculation. Any country living in poverty would almost certainly face resultant political chaos and vulnerability. The newly independent third world nations were especially vulnerable to the political instability of poverty. In other words, these nations were ripe for Soviet infiltration, domination and loss to the free world camp. It was better to shore up the economy of Mali than to see it turn to Communism. This was part of the thinking behind ‘Foreign Aid.’ The Marshall Plan had stabilized the economies of the have nations in the late 1940’s. Under Ike and Kennedy, American financial gifts were now being offered to stabilize the have-nots. We’d saved Greece and Turkey from falling to the Communists with the help of several bil. For a few dollars less would could start rolling up the smaller swing states into the red white and blue column.
   Various agencies for US foreign help distribution were combined under Kennedy into one larger oversight institution called AID, the Agency for International Development. The Peace Corps almost was included under the AID umbrella but managed to survive as an independent department.

THE PEACE CORPS
One of the outstanding successes of the Kennedy Administration was undoubtedly the Peace Corps. American volunteers would travel to the poorest places in the world and help those in need. American know-how and hard work would teach them to fish instead of giving them fish.
   The Peace Corps was our antidote to accusations of American militarism and evil imperialism. But ironically, the Peace Corps had something to do with the Cold War.
   It seemed that when it came down to grass-roots village level hard political effort, the Communists had been setting the global standard since the end of WWII. This ‘voice of the people’ quality had won China for Communism and a lack of it had lost it for capitalism and democracy. The PR tide of Communism had to be stemmed as well as it’s physical aggressions. Communism was campaigning like Jimmy Carter, while democracy was campaigning like Alan Keyes. America needed a Peace Corps to help win a ‘hearts and minds campaign’ all over the world.
   Hubert Humphrey and a couple of lesser known Senators had proposed the basic idea for the Peace Corps in 1958. In 1960 Humphrey submitted a formal bill to Congress to form the Peace Corps.
    The Peace Corps began in March 1, 1961 when Kennedy signed an executive order creating it. The first volunteers were trained and exported within a few weeks. The PC began with 500 people and by March 1963 had expanded to 5,000. Brave and selfless Americans were toiling in the fields of 40 countries, teaching the illiterate to read and instructing occasionally in democracy as well.
   Kennedy appointed his brother in law to the head of the Peace Corps. Sergeant Shriver later said that Jack picked him because it was safer for Kennedy to fire a relative than a friend. If things went wrong with the Peace Corps, ‘the Sarge,’ as Kennedy liked to call him, could take the fall. Shriver is being unfair. Kennedy could have given him no important job at all.
   But nothing really went wrong and the USA can present the Peace Corps if it ever gets stuck playing ‘defending your life.’ How could anyone ever say anything bad about the Peace Corps?
   I thought seriously about joining when I was around 30. But I was too selfish to actually do it. I can live in disease-riddled poverty-stricken areas in dangerous revolution wracked countries and help others, or I can continue to hang out in comedy clubs in America's big cities and sleep till two in the afternoon every day in an air-conditioned luxury condo for thirty years. My contribution is that I make a saint a saint.

BIRMINGHAM 63
Of all the racially segregated cities in the USA, Birmingham Alabama was probably the worst. Alabama had the only state University in the country that was still legally segregated.
   The Reverend Martin Luther King went to Birmingham in 1963 to lead “Project C.” The C stands for confrontation. King was to lead and organize a demonstration against Bama segregation. The targets were the department stores where blacks were relegated to their own section at the lunch counter.
   The mayor of Birmingham was Bull Connor, one of the true and deserving 'bad guys' of American history. BC was a white supremacist down to every last white bone in his bully body.
   But was he really the Mayor? Birmingham had recently passed laws changing the governmental structure of the city to a City Council type system with a mayor presiding who had no dictatorial power. But that change had not been officially implemented when the race riots of 1963 broke out in 'Birm.' Connor went out of way to assert that he was still acting mayor, as in acting like a neanderthal racist. The head of the new council system has been described as a 'moderate segregationist,' an oxymoron if there ever was, but compared to Bull Connor, “Humpty' Henderson was the preferred lesser evil to most decent folk.
   Birmingham hosted many protests over the course of 62-63, but the big one was the one in the spring of 1963 when white cops turned fire-hoses on little girls and old men, and threw Marty King in jail.
    The world was horribly exited by the film of clear police brutality against a race, not an individual.
    All of this was quite a dilemma for President Kennedy. He had a decent heart and he knew what was right and wrong in what was going on down there, but with him it was always politics first and morals second. He wanted to expend his presidential power on Berlin, Cuba and Vietnam, not on domestic racial disturbances. He believed that a president only had so much power to persuade Congress, the people, the press and other powerful people, and that when you empty the gas tank on one issue you lose the ability to have your way in others. At some point you might just run out of power and find yourself like Truman in 52, choosing not to run for re-election because you know you can't win. If Kennedy had nine lives he probably would have intervened in the Birmingham crisis of 1963 more quickly and forcefully. But he figured he had three or four lives at best and had already spent one on the fight with the big steelers.
    Kennedy also knew that these images hurt the United States in the Cold War. How could America be a crusader for democracy and freedom in lands like Vietnam when there was no real freedom for black people in America? Birmingham was embarrassing to Kennedy and the Soviet Union made the most of it with its daily propaganda. Since the entire Communist ideology was based on class struggle and oppression of the poor, the events of Birmingham was a win for the Communist bloc. It is not surprising that a lot of black people embraced Marxism as a reaction to this oppression. Wherever there is strife and poverty and class violence, there you will find Marxism.
Throughout the Birmingham crisis a lot of people close to Kennedy were begging him to get out in front and take a moral leadership stand. But he didn't want to lose the white southern voting block in the next election.
   John asked Lyndon Johnson's opinion. LBJ had been waiting patiently to be consulted on this, being a southerner and all, and he was quick to spill his guts. He told Kennedy that the critics were right on target. You have to get out in front on this. If you merely tell the black people that you agree that the federal laws must be enforced, it makes it seem that you are only falling in with whoever has the authority at the moment and that your support for them is an accident of expedience. Nothing is preventing you from going on national TV and taking a moral stance in favor of black civil rights and their movement. If they feel that they have no support at the top, we may be looking at a long summer of racial violence, and it might not be confined to Southern cities alone.
“You're the one who always talks about the power of the presidency, “he told him bluntly, “Its time to back that philosophy with action in this time of crisis.”
    “But what about 1964? How are we going to win in 1964 if we lose the South?”     “Things are changing so fast down there that the Democrats might not win the South in 1964 no matter who's running and no matter what we do. We can't be held hostage by Southern Electoral votes of tomorrah. We have to do what's morally right today. Besides, you will win as many white liberal votes in Northern states as you will lose white redneck votes in Southern states. There's a lot of big battleground states outside the South,” he reminded the President.”
   That's how cold and political Jack could be. He could paint himself into such a selfish corner that Lyndon Johnson became his moral superior.
   Kennedy was impressed with Johnson's arguments. He'd heard them before from others, but coming from a political man he respected to the point of admiration, and a southerner who knew the terrain, it had more effect than the same thought coming from a white newspaper columnist in New York or a black protestor sending an angry post card to 1600 Pennsylvania from Birmingham. He told Johnson to go and repeat the same arguments to his speechwriters.

CLARENCE GASTON MOTEL
   They tried to kill Marty's brother in Atlanta. If you've seen the movie Scarface, you know that the lead star refused to carry out a hit because the mark had his wife and kids with him. It made him almost likable. These bigots were just the opposite. They set off a bomb just as Reverend A. D. King walked out of his front door with his wife and kids. No one was killed in the near-miss.
   Three thousand blacks gathered at midnight around the A.D. King place. He came out and tried to calm them down, urging them to not fall for the bait. “They want you to react. Do not play whitey's game!” Just then another bomb went off three blocks away. Everyone heard it. Ten minutes later word got out what had happened. An assassination attempt had ben made on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Most people know that Martin Luther King was slain at the Lorraine, but whitey first tried to kill him at the Gaston Motel in 1963. They blew out the first floor where he was supposed to be staying. But the perps got the wrong floor. No one was killed by the blast.
    The crowd at the home of A.D. dispersed in anger and it was a night of rioting.

Martin Luther King was arrested in April of 1963 as part of an effort to protest with passive aggression. King would get as many innocent black people arrested as possible.
   King said that if necessary he would fill up all the jails in Alabama with black people. Malcolm X, on the other hand, said that if necessary he would fill up all the cemeteries in Alabama with white people. These were two different approaches to problem solving.

APARTHEID AND SOUTH AFRICA
   The United States was ever willing to give lip service condemnation to the racist policy of Apartheid in South Africa. Apartheid was as if conditions in 1930 Birmingham were applied to the entire country with federal county and local law strictly enforcing it. But what made it most bizarre was that Blacks were the vast majority and they were ruled by whites.
It was hard for America to show too much outrage with South Africa with conditions being as they were here. But the real problem for America as usual was the Cold War. South Africa was very cooperative in anti-communism issues, and had become an important ally in international relations with the US. Its strategic location at the naval crossroads of the Indian and Atlantic Ocean made it’s good will something that could not be dismissed lightly. Racism was bad, but the Gulag Communism of Soviet Russia and the mass murder in China were at least as evil and a threat to our national security that African apartheid was not.
    South Africa was the lesser of two evils and was a thorn in the side of America’s self-image for most of the 20th century. Unfortunately for progressivism, Communism in Africa was showing signs of sprouting all over the place. Just when we would have liked to let go of South Africa politically, the Cold War made its friendship critical in global thinking.
   This pattern of ‘waltzing with dictators’ plagued US foreign policy for the length of the Cold War. It’s easy to condemn now from the perspective of a world without the threats of advancing Communism and nuclear destruction. But from 1945 to 1991 the Cold War placed American leaders in no-wins situations all over the world.
   The rest of Africa was showing signs of united political action. The OAU (Organization of American States) was formed in 1963 and met at Addis Ababa Ethiopia. Its first act was to recommend that the UN expel South Africa from the organization. It also called for a complete embargo against South Africa by the entire world unless and until Apartheid came to an end.
   The best the US could consider was an arms embargo against SA or the threat of one. America even planned to ban arms that could be used to enforce Apartheid, while allowing arms that could be used to fight Communism, as if bullets had a political conscience.
   Portugal was the second biggest villain on the OAU list of bad guys. The little nation still had big possessions in Africa and was not willing to get with the program of allowing African colonies their independence. The US did not want to put political pressure on Portugal because we were using the Portuguese Azores as a naval base. Portugal was helping us fight the cold war and getting a pass on colonialism in exchange.

LET'S BOLT
    The United States had to run out of the restaurant without paying the bill when it came to the nuclear weapons system Skybolt it had promised to Great Britian. The system was a way that Britian could theoretically afford its own private strategic nuclear force capability, as opposed to be tied in with the United States nuclear forces only.
   The USSR and the USA had ICMB's on land and under water. Skybolt was like a portable ICMB for the upper middle-class who couldn't afford the top shelf nukes like Atlas, but wanted to know it could defend itself by was of a nuclear deterrent force it had command of, not NATO. The idea was a mini-nuclear missile carried under the wings of conventional jet bombers. It wasn't far from the concept of the successfully researched and deployed ALCM's (Air Launched Cruise Missiles) of the 1980's and beyond. But in 1963 it was too far ahead of it's time and Skybolt ended in material and political failure. Nearly a billion dollars was wasted in developing a system that simply did not work well enough to approve for further development and deployment.
    That would be typical enough for military weapons development, and not that significant, except for money lost, if not for the political situation in Great Britain, France and NATO.
   Eisenhower had promised Skybolt to Great Britain in 1960 and it was supposed to be delivered within three years. By the beginning of 1963 Prime Minister MacMillan was bragging to his people about Skybolt and what it was going to do for English national security. Meanwhile, Kennedy was privately trying to warn him that the damn thing might not work and test firings weren't going all that well. Mac was getting back to Kennedy with the word that, “It better work or else I'll be skybolting out of the Prime Ministers office on a rail.” Kennedy was writing back that, “Like I said, Harry, you can't afford to bank your political survival on the Skybolt because if it might not work.”
   “I already have,” wrote back MacMillan, “So I'm afraid it better work.” Like I do with annoying e-mails, Kennedy did not respond any further for now.
   Then the Skybolt failed like a new WB sit-com and Kennedy had a problem on his hands with his NATO relationship with the Brits.
    The big problem really was France, a nation as stubborn and impossibly uncooperative as my first wife. If France had been willing to join NATO and the European Common Market, Britian and McMillan would have felt secure knowing that France was the second line of defense after West Germany, and that the three great powers of Western Europe, in tandem with big brother USA collectively were a mighty deterrent against Soviet ambitions. But France stood alone and refused to join any larger collective security system in Europe, leaving open the distinct possibly that he largely socialist France could cut a separate deal with Russia with frightening similarities to the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact. The analogy is extreme, but fear is extremist by nature and France was turning on the fears of its British neighbors. Britian felt it needed Skybolt because it could not count on any help from the French if the Soviets attacked in Western Europe. London might be a lake while Paris, as usual was preserved at the sacrifice of honor. Remember, the French love Paris at least as much as they love France and that is largely why they surrendered when they didn't have to in World War II. They couldn't bear the thought of Paris in ruins, so they surrendered before the Nazis could march in Triumph under a destroyed Arch de Triumph. The famous film of Nazi's marching through a perfectly intact Arch says a great deal about the entire French fall of 1940. The Arch de Triumph was screaming down at the French people silently watching Nazi columns march through, “At least change my name! This is embarrassing!”
    So Skybolt was the answer to De Gaulles's chauvinist obstructionism, but the damn thing didn't work.
    Kennedy knew this was a situation he couldn't smooth over with a phone call so he asked MacMillan to meet him in the Bahamas and they would work things out in the Summer sun. I wish I could do that when I have a dispute with a booker over a gig that was double-booked and someone has to get pulled. “Meet me in the Bahamas Mike, and we''ll work things out.” A Kennedy has options that a Donovan does not.
   Kennedy and MacMillan met and talked. The Prime Minister made it clear that his career was on the line over this Skybolt mess. “Can't you just keep on with development until it does work?” pleaded Mac. “I can always buy time and tell the British people that Skybolt is coming but it's just taking longer than expected.”
   “No. That will just paint us both deeper into a corner and increase our humiliation when we have to tell them it failed. I have to tell you. Look at me. Look into my eyes. Skybolt is as dead as Eleanor Roosevelt. It's not happening.”
    So Mac and Jack had to come up with something to appease the British people and save MacMillans skin. The idea that sort of saved the day was a rainbow coalition nuke sub. This would be a nuclear powered submarine armed with a full load of Polaris missiles commanded equally by British, American and Italian crew. The British could feel that they had one nuke sub for personal use if it felt threatened by a Soviet attack. It was sort of lame, but in the end it worked. The British people were a little bit let down and angry when they finally learned that America had bolted on Skybolt but they bought the idea that a nuke sub c-commanded by British and American military men meant that Britian had its own personal strategic nuclear deterrent. Needless to say, if in point of actual practice Britian wanted to launch the “Polars” at the Soviet Union and the the United States did not want them launched, the missiles would stay under the sea and the British officers would be bound and gagged in the mess quarters. MacMillan wasn't so naïve as not to realize this as well but he went along with the publicity campaign of the rainbow nuke and it saved his Prime Ministry.

EUROPEAN VACATION JUNE 1963
    Kennedy visited the capitals of Western Europe in June of 1963 with a stopover in a villa on Lake Como in Italy for a Bill Clinton with a famous European woman.
   He stopped off at Bonn Germany where the reception was overwhelming. People lined the streets four deep to cheer for him wherever he moved. This was a far cry from losing the Bay of Pigs and taking the daily beating in the press from Reston and Laskey. He told Powers that, “Every time a US President is feeling low he should go to Germany.” Yeah, tell that to FDR.
    Then it was on to West Berlin for one of the most famous speeches of his career. The crowd in Johann Himmler Square was more than 200,000 strong. They absolutely adored him. The cheers were so prolonged that he wondered if he would ever have time to finish the speech. The long ovations gave him a chance to ad lib a little, perhaps a little too much.
    On the way across the Atlantic Kennedy was showing off his German, impressing many with full sentences in the language of my great grandparents (everyone thinks I'm pure Irish.) Powers overheard him repeating a sentence with Kurshchev's name and the germanized 'Missiles of October' and then the word, 'shaizercufal.' Finally Powers asked him what 'shaizercufal' meant. Kennedy replied, 'cue-ball.' Powers gasped. “You mean to tell me you're going to refer to Krushchev as 'cue-ball' in a speech in Berlin? Are you crazy, Kennedy! Are you crazy!”
   “Conyo,” replied Jack, now showing off his Spanish. “I'm just fooling around.”
   “Well remember,” Powers reminded him, “We just made a lot of public statements practically begging the Soviets to meet us half way on a nuclear test ban treaty. You just made a speech in which you said that we had to change out attitude towards the Soviet Union. This is no time to take cheap shots in from of the home team crowd. You'll ruin the test ban treaty with your blasted oratory. Don't do it.”
   “Don't worry Dave, I wont.”
   “Well don't.”
   “Ok, I won't.”
   “All right then.”
   But JFK did get carried away with a spit and vinegar speech in from of the adoring Berliners. He didn't use the c-word (cue-ball) but in the middle of the famous “Let them come to Berlin” speech, in which he said this in German as a running mantra like a bad DNC call-back, he ad-libbed an extra line that courted trouble,

   “And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere that we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin.”

   The crowd cheered while some of his smarter advisors turned as pale as a Muncie housewife in March. Kennedy got off stage all lifted with happy energy when Powers grabbed him by the arm and wouldn't let go.

    “Do you realize what you said up there?
   Kennedy replied that he had kept his promise not to refer to Krushchev as 'cue-ball.'
   “No stupid, not cue-ball. You just told the Russians that you don't think anyone can work with them. You just undid all the good-will you created with the American University speech.”
“Oh Christ, you're right.” Powers was. The Russian reaction to that one line was worse than the reaction to the rest of the entire speech. He might have done less damage if he had called Krushchev cue-ball but not said the line about no one can work with the Communists.
   Later that night Kennedy walked into Power's hotel room and said, “Dave it's great to have a no-man on my team. I need someone like you to keep me in line now and then when I am losing perspective. .... But if you ever call me stupid again you're fired.”
   Right on time, Krushchev complained two weeks to 'Harry Mac' (UKPM Harold McMillan) that “This Kennedy fellow has quite a split personality. The fellow that gave the speech to American University is not the same chap that rallied the West Berliners.”

MR. POTATO HEAD
    The second stop on Kennedy's four-nation European vacation was the old country of Ireland. When the trip to Europe was originally planned, Kennedy told his personal secretary Powers to include Ireland on the trip. Powers told him that would not be productive. There was no reason to go. Kennedy told him to just do it. Powers had no intention of arranging the trip but thought he would check with some other people first.
   A day later Powers came back and told John firmly. “I have talked it over with Rusk, Schlesinger, and O'Donnell and we all agree you definitely should not go to Ireland. There is nothing to be gained politically, we might antagonize the British, and more importantly it would appear that you were just taking a pleasure trip.”
      Kennedy lifted himself angrily from his back massage, startling the young Pakistani woman with the coconut oil and barked at Powers, “That is exactly what it is, a pleasure trip to Ireland. And I don't care who knows that's what it is. I'd also like to remind you Mr. Powers, that I am the President of the United States and what I say goes.”
    It was very rare for Kennedy to refer to his old pal Dave as “Mr. Powers.” Dave got the message and arranged the pleasure trip to Ireland. Powers grumbled to O'Donnell like a wounded third-grader that, “It looks we have to do what Mr. Potato Head says.” The President would meet with Irish President Patty McGillicutty and Prime Minister Sean O'Sweeney to make it look official, but the trip was a vacation.
    I really admire JFK's “what I say goes” attitude. It's inspirational. I tried it with my wife last night regarding a shower curtain issue and it didn't go work so effectively.
    JFK's trip to Ireland was a great success. The Irish cheered him as if he had recently tried to blow up Big Ben.
    The trip was marred by a hundred recitals of Irish poetry both by Kennedy and by his loving hosts. I have read many accounts of the exiting trip to Ireland and if I have to suffer through one more half-page quote of an Irish poem I am going to change my name to Michael Goldberg.
    In Dublin, Kennedy stood before the Irish Parliament and gave a an excellent speech. Then the Prime Minister O'Sweeney asked him to come back up and tell his favorite two Irish jokes he had ever heard in Boston. The crowd stirred happily. Kennedy whispered to O'Donnell and Powers to “help me out, for God's sake.” Powers told him, “Sorry Jack, you are the President, so what you say goes.” Kennedy gave him an “I'll get you back for this later you rat” look and went back up do the open-mic two minute set for the Irish Parliament,

   “Two Boston Irish were reading gravestones of the dead from the Battle of Bunker Hill. One read aloud 'Here lies and Englishman and a good man.' The other replied, 'That grave doesn't seem big enough to hold two people.'”

   That got a mediocre laugh. Kennedy heard one heckler yell, “When's the show start?” So he reached back for the fastball.

   “A Dublin man had a fifth of whiskey in his back pocket. He stumbled backwards and landed on his fanny. When he got up he felt liquid running down his leg and exclaimed, 'Please dear God...Let it be blood!' ”

   For a moment the crowd was stunned and offended. But when both McGillicutty and O'Sweeney on the dais doubled over in a screaming guffaw the crowd ignited in a side-splitting mass laugh that lasted longer than the demonstration for Stevenson at the 1960 DNC. A grinning satisfied Kennedy sat down and listened to the laughs ricochet around the room. Don Rickles never got a laugh that big at Caesar's Palace. Of course, if Kennedy wasn't the famous American Irish president, it would have got a chuckle at best.

ON TO ENGLAND AND ITALY
    JFK was eager to go to Rome and meet Pope Pius XII, who had been in charge of the great cult since 1958. But just as Kennedy was packing his bags, Pius packed his permanently. The death of Pius put a damper on Kennedy's plans for another triumphant march through cheering throngs. The Catholic Church let him know that he was still welcome, but Kennedy and his advisors all thought it best to stay away until the new Pope was crowned. He didn't want to upstage the Pope's funeral with his glamorous high profile visit. It would be weird to ask the Catholics to cheer through their tears. Boston's Cardinal Cushing gave him the same advice. Kennedy instead went to have a quick affair with a famous Euro dame in a villa in Northern Italy. Then he went to Rome to meet the new Pope John XXIII, or as he was officially called for some reason, The Blessed Pope John 23. No other Pope has the word Blessed for his first name and you can look it up if you think I'm pulling your holy robe.
    The Pope died just as Kennedy was getting ready to visit Italy. Bad timing. He cancelled his trip to Rome because

TEST BAN ROLL ON – CHICOM GAMES – JULY 1963
    The Cuban Missile Crisis made the world want to put an end to nuclear weapons proliferation and development. The conclusion of a nuclear test ban in the summer of 63 was celebrated all over the world as though it was a big step in that direction. The history books still treat the treaty as though it was this gigantic gold star on the record of the Kennedy Administration. Didn't anyone notice that the nuclear arms race continued on as if nothing at all happened? Within four years the power of the world's nuclear arsenals doubled, and doubled again later and doubled again later and doubled again later until by 1984 there were 50,000 nuclear warheads ready to drop, each at least ten times more powerful than the one that flattened Hiroshima in 45. But oh wow, what a man of peace was this Kennedy. Look at the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963! What a great step in the direction of peace and mutual respect and co-operation between the USSR and the USA.
The test ban treaty negotiations rolled on for three months before the serious meetings for concrete agreements began in Moscow on July 14, 1963.
    Averill “Avy” Harriman was the personal representative of President Kennedy at many meetings with Premier Nikita Krushchov. Harriman had a hot line back to Washington the whole time he was in Moscow. He was three minutes away from talking to John at all times and many a time he excused himself in the middle of an intense discussion and came back five minutes later to tell Krushchev, “yes, that wording would be acceptable.” The Russians were supposedly amazed that Kennedy didn't have to get the approval of the American bureaucracy first before he could make decisions, but I doubt that. That's what I've read, anyway.

NO F.U. - NUCLEAR TEST BAN TREATY 8.5.63
   No first use of nuclear weapons was the next mushroom to pick off.
    Kennedy was the president when the world crossed the threshold to a point where a full-scale war could destroy the world. Mr Kennedy formed the ACDA, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, to create an arm of the government dedicated full time to addressing this terrifying issue.
   In August of 1963 the United States and the USSR signed in Moscow a treaty banning nuclear testing in the atmosphere and under the sea. Underground testing could still take place but the days of the big explosions on film were over.
    The NTBT of 8.5.63 has remained in force to the current day, and is respected by almost all nations. Russia may have cheated a few times, but this has not been proven. In 2006 North Korea detonated a nuclear weapon in the atmosphere setting off an international crisis. The 1963 treaty was cited as part of the international outrage against NK.
   Just after the TBT signing Krushchev invited Secretary of State Rusk to the Crimea for informal talks. There he cornered Rusk on the “no first use” issue that seemed for some reason far more important to the Soviets than it did to the Americans.
   “No first use” was a pledge by both nuclear powers to not be the first to use nuclear weapons in the event of a military clash between the USSR and the USA. The Russians were always fast willing to make the pledge and the Americans were not. This made the USA seem like the bad guys to most foreign eyes and the virtually foreign left at home. If the Russians could pledge not to be the first to use nuclear weapons, why shouldn’t we be able to make the same commitment to an obviously worthy cause?
   Answer? Because only one side would honor their pledge. The Russians could lie and get away with it at home and abroad while the US would have to honor it’s word to it’s people and it’s allies or face political fallout over the threat of nuclear. The USA would be giving the USSR a free pass to start a conventional war wherever it felt it had the ad (the advantage) in the right place at the right time.
   Most important, the only logical place where either side would be apt to introduce tactical nuclear weapons would be in Europe and that would obviously be in response to a Soviet invasion of West Germany. This was the ‘big one’ that everyone feared. The West Germans, supported by the Americans were not about to launch a full scale invasion of East Germany, but the reverse was a real threat from the other direction (unless it was up to Curt LeMay, but thankfully, it wasn't.) And since nukes would be ‘first use’ deployed in a desperate defensive situation rather than an offensive one, the Soviets had nothing to lose by offering ‘no first use’ while our side had very much to lose. They knew that the west would be on the defense in the event of a third Twentieth century war in Germany. Conventional equaled Soviet victory, so no first use equaled Soviet victory. Since the Soviets had a clear advantage in conventional weapons and ground forces in central Europe while NATO’s military might depended on nuclear weapons and the threat of their use to counterbalance that conventional edge, 'no first use' was a NATO no-no.
   The USSR was trying to trick NATO into disarming itself from the right to use it’s only deterrent in the event of war while draping itself in the holy robes of peacemakers. 'No first use' was a gang of bank robbers trying to negotiate a deal with the bank guards to pledge not use their guns first in case of a robbery. The robbers would even be willing to agree that both sides would keep their bullets locked in a neutral vault.
   In the Crimea in August of 63 Krushchev reminded Rusk that the Prime Ministers of France and Great Britain had assured him that they would not use nuclear weapons first. Nicky wanted to know why the US couldn’t pledge the same thing if it’s allies could. Rusk was on his own and had to think fast. He couldn’t pretend he needed to use the bathroom nor could he whip out his cell phone and talk to Kennedy for a quick answer. Dean told Nikita that the Russian leader would just have to presume that the USA just might be crazy enough to use nuclear weapons first and he couldn’t assuage any of Nikita’s fears to the contrary.
   Bravissimo!
   The no-first-use issue continued to be a hot topic in politics until the end of the century and is not a dead letter even today. In the stellar 1984 Democratic debate for the parry’s Presidential nomination, 8 of the 9 candidates pledged not to pledge no-first-use for the USA. Jesse Jackson said he would promise not to use nuclear weapons first, unless it was a case of a weapon targeted against a large convention of US conservatives.
   The Test Ban Treaty had a tough time getting through the Houses of Congress. Poll in the first days after the August 5 signing showed the public 14 to 1 against the ratification. Kennedy was now victim of his own exaggerations made during the campaign. With the public fearful of the supposed ‘missile gap’ in which the USA was frightfully behind the USSR, Kennedy’s proposal to ban nuclear atmospheric testing seemed to most American to be the wrong call at the wrong time.
   Kennedy quickly tried to get the Joint Chiefs of Staff to announce their support as publicly as possible in open hearings with all their reservations aired fully also. He felt wisely that it would have been more damaging for them to give their statements in a closed hearing and then have the public learn through press leaking of their secret reservations.
   Then he had Defense Secretary McNamara go public as to just how awesome was our current stockpile of nuclear warheads. Contrary to Kennedy 1960 campaign propaganda, the United States was more than equal to the Soviet Union in Nuclear defenses and the test ban treaty was a reasonable deal. We had no less than 7,000 strategic nuclear warheads with deadly long range delivery systems attached to them. We also had a fantastic 25,000 tactical nukes capable of changing battlefields in shorter range launch systems such as conventional artillery or short surface to surface strike missiles.
   The test ban treaty was ratified.

RUSSIAN REFLECTIONS
    Dobrynin in his memoirs (1995) is critical of the Kennedy team. The long-time Russian ambassador to Washington negotiated with all the Presidents from Kennedy to Reagan. Dobrynin claims that there was never any hope for improved relations because everything went through Bobby Kennedy and that Bobby's idea of diplomacy was to simply present a complaint or an ultimatum and walk out. There was never any sense of trying to negotiate nor to try and find common ground in order to improve the relationship. Thats what Anatoly said.
    A lot of people couldn't stand or get along with Bobby Kennedy. I'm not taking any sides on this one either, ... I'm just saying.

THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON 8.63
   Kennedy wanted the blacks to wait. Martin Luther King told King Kennedy that “wait means never.”
   CORE, the NAACP, the SCNC, and the AARP together planned a big protest march on Washington for Civil Rights. Kennedy tried to talk the black leaders out of it on the grounds that if anything went wrong, if there was any violence, then his Civil Rights Legislation Bill would lose in the Congress. A temporary high would produce a long-term buzz-kill for black progress. The black leaders, King, and Roy Wilkins, told him they respect his concerns but that the time ot act and march was now, not later. They had waited 400 years, that was quite long enough, Democrat Bill or no democrat Bill.
   When Jack and Bobby knew they could no longer block the March on Washington they decided to get out in front and lead it, or at least appear to. The tone of the impending march seemed to have a dangerous tone to it that it was a protest march against the government, and that meant, by implication against the Kennedys.
   Bobby and John met with King, Wilkins and A. Philip Randolph to help make the event a cooperative effort between the government and the people who were planning to protest against it. The Kennedy team set a goal and achieved it. They wanted to turn it from a protest march to a demonstration march. If the government was clearly on the side of the marchers it could hardly be a protest march against the government.
    Robert Kennedy took over the planning of the event from the city standpoint. He managed to get all the bars and liquor stores to close for the day. That move has to be one of the great unsung deeds of American history. Alcohol is a dangerous ingredient for any race. I'm from South Boston where there's a bar every three blocks, and I've seen plenty of poor Irishmen on the sauce. In fact that's why they allegedly designed the streets of Southie in Alphabet and numerical grid orders. So the drunks can find their way home. “H and 4th.... hmmm let me figure this out. I'll be home soon Mary – Hope you're awake!” So I'm not being racially condescending when I say that if the liquor stores and the bars had been open that day the whole history of this country might have taken a slightly different turn in 1963. As it turned out there was not one single arrest in Washington that day. Imagine if 30 drunks had ruined it for everyone with high profile fights or rinky-dink robberies? One fourth of the marchers were white anyway, but even if the whites had caused the 30 theoretical drunk incidents, it still would have marred the event (one of the biggest myths of stand-up comedy, one that the civilians say to us all the time is 'you must love it when the crowd gets liquored up. Then they really start to laugh.' No, pinhead, that's when they can't control their tongues and ruin one punch line after another with their lack of social control.)
   On August 28, 1963 it happened. The March on Washington. The right to protest for rights. The African-American leaders asked Kennedy to speak at the rally, but he felt that he could not find the right words that could please the crowd and not cause him political damages with the TV viewers in the 50 states. Either that or he just didn't feel like it for some other reason. Kennedy actually had the situation in South Vietnam on his mind more that day than the March. He was running in and out of several very crucial meetings over what to do about and the coup that was brewing against “the Nhu-nut” and Diem. He'd watch a few minutes of the speeches at the March and then hustle back down to a meeting in the basement where people were debating about whether the United States should assassinate a foreign president or just withdraw from Vietnam and “Leave it to Communist Beaver” as Hillsman quipped with a cross-reference to the popular TV sit-com. It was a double-crisis day for JFK.
    Malcom X later said that many of these people were “bourgeois blacks using the march as a status symbol.”

VIETNAM 1963
LIAR, LIAR, MONKS ON FIRE – MAY-JUNE 1963
One of the most horrid and politically important episodes of the Vietnam War was the self-immolation of a Buddhist monk on the streets of Saigon in 1963. Few Americans have not seen the spectacular footage of the poor suicidal monk sitting in the lotus position calmly dying in a ball of fire. It is always shown on any documentaries on the war, even if it’s a three-minute piece on a 30 minute broadcast.
The suicide exposed the corruption of the Diem regime. Our allies in South Vietnam were repressive in so many ways that we were supporting a side just as evil as the one we were fighting. Diem was repressing religious freedom in Vietnam. It was so bad that Buddhist monks were driven to high profile suicides. What kind of war was this? The good guys are destroying religious freedom and we have the nerve to call the Communists on their atheism.
   This anti-war version is still told today even though it is inaccurate. For one thing, if this was such a big issue, how come it never resurfaced as a major problem when the war escalated later on? The flames of the Buddhist suicides died down literally as fast they did figuratively.
But according to the historian Richard M. Nixon, the truth is that Buddhists were free to worship as they pleased within their own temples and outside of them with one condition. Diem did not think it was right to fly the Buddhist flag above the national flag in public processions, and a law was passed forbidding this. The flag rule was instituted because Diem first observed Catholics displaying the Vatican flag above the national flag, and Diem was a Catholic. The application of the new rule to the Buddhists came later.
   A Buddhist leader delivered a rousing speech against the Diem government and a recording was scheduled to be played at a Hue radio station. A crowd of Buddhists had gathered outside the station for the event when a bomb exploded in their midst killing eight. Diem was blamed but the bomb was later proven to have been detonated by the National Liberation Front, the Communist political organization in the South. Tensioned flared.

   Then on June 11,1963 a hot sunny day in Vietnam got even warmer when a Buddhist monk doused himself with gasoline and flicked his Bic lighter. He sizzled for a while and then doubled over and died while many horrified onlookers took pictures. In fact Buddhist leaders had told the press in advance exactly what when and where was going to happen.
There suppression of Buddhist religious freedom was very exaggerated. For example, in South Vietnam Catholics had no choice but to serve in the army when drafted, but Buddhists were allowed to decline military service on conscientious grounds. Eight Buddhists were in Diem's cabinet. His Vice President and his Foreign Minister were Buddhists. None of the other Vietnam War history books mention these items.
So why the hoax and who could convince a monk to kill himself if the cause were not legitimate?
   The Xi Lao pagoda in Saigon was one of many in that city. But XL in particular was a religious front for political activity. Of the 4,777 pagodas in South Vietnam, only a dozen were under the hidden control of the National Liberation Front. The NLF was not Buddhist, but the Xi Lao pagoda was NLF. Some men with shaved heads and monks robes were not real monks. Xi Lao was filled with machines churning our propaganda sheets against the Diem government. The western press eagerly waited outside Xi Lao for the latest scheduled protest or self immolation. They bought all the lies about religious repression. For example the press reported that South Vietnam was 80% Buddhist when the figure was below 50%. Again, this is all according to Professor Nixon.
   The United Nations later investigated the Buddhist suicides (the famous guy Quang Duc wasn’t the only one, just the best filmed). Two men testified that they had been lied to by the Xi Lao Buddhists. These were young idealist Buddhists and they were given a lot of bad info. One swore that he was told that all the pagodas in Saigon had been burned to the ground and the worshippers killed and tortured. He was given the robe, the gasoline, the Bic, and the specific route to the place where he was to set himself on fire. He made a wrong turn and saw a Buddhist temple completely intact and Buddhist worshippers going about their business unruffled by anybody. He knew he was duped and then went to the authorities with his story.
   The leader of Xi Lao was a man named Tri Quang, supposedly an innocent moral Buddhist. But Quang had been arrested twice on charges of Communist complicity. He had studied religion in North Vietnam under a Buddhist branch that openly endorsed both Ho and Communism.
   The monks who burned themselves were sincere fools and dupes in the service of Communism They were not proof of Diem’s corruption. The left still interprets these events today only within the framework of their prejudiced historical slant.
   The left bias was and still is dependable on the Buddhist Crisis of 1963. They mock how “Madame Nhu laughed off the suicide, calling it a barbecue”

I have the footage of an interview in which she uses that word. She is very angry and serious and as she defends her family against the charges of religious oppression. When she begins to refer to the monk’s suicide she gropes for the right word in her broken English and comes up with “barbecue.” It is admittedly a bad and insensitive choice of words, but she is not ‘laughing off’ the suicide. Not at all. She is angry and disdainful, and there isn’t a distant dream of a smile in her face and voice, let along a laugh.
The Horowitz book claims that Madame Nhe joked that she would “gladly provide the mustard if any more monks wanted to join the barbecue.” If that's true, then maybe she's just a sadistic nut after all, but I'd have to see the footage. The clip I saw made it seem as though she was groping for something disdainful to say and it was just something that came out, not a hatchet wielding calculated vicious crack.
   And now a personal note about the protest-suicide concept. If I had a serious enemy and he came to my house and said, “Oh yeah Donovan, you no good arrogant squid, I’ll show you!” and then he whipped out a can of gasoline and set himself on fire, I’d be a dancin’ man. I’d get on my cell phone and call everyone I know, then hold the phone out so they can hear the snap crackle and pop. If only today’s Arab terrorists could learn from these wise Buddhists. Maybe we can send Al Qaida some footage of the 6/11 monk so they can play Frank Gorshen.

HILLSMAN WANTS DIEM OUT
    According to Robert MacNamara, it was Roger Hillsman who instigated the events that led to the downfall and murder of South Vietnamese President Diem.
   Hillsman was an assistant secretary of state for far eastern affairs and wrote a fine book about American foreign policy in the Vietnam era called To Move a Nation. Roger doesn't say very much about his own role in bringing Diem down. MacNamara describes him as a “sharp and abrasive man who had fought in WWII.”
When Diem cracked down on the Buddhist temples, Hillman took it on himself to declare that the United States could no longer support the South Vietnamese President..
   Hillsman hated Diem's brother Nhu almost as much as the South Vietnamese people did. Diem played bad cop and his brother played much worse cop. Even people who liked Diem hated his brother Nhu, who was in charge of the secret police. Nuff said.
    Hillsman cabled Ambassador Lodge and told him that if Diem would not get rid of Nhu, the United States would have to get rid of Diem. He didn't spell out how we had to get rid of Diem, he didn't say we had to kill him nor that we had to support a coup that killed him, but “Hilly” made it clear that we had to say no to Nhu.
   According to MacNamara, Hilman's initiative then went out to all the big players but most of them were either on vacation or out golfing. They didn't want to be bothered with the implications of the Hill cable, so they one by one gave it the ok, without really weighing its content responsibly. One important person would mention that some other person had already approved it, thus leading another important person to approve it. When it finally reached Kennedy sailing off Cape Cod, he gave it a casual nod.
    And that's how the George Ball got rolling (one of the key men approving the note was George Ball) to topple Diem. It just kind of found its own momentum based on Hillman's opening initiative and when it became real and serious, the Kennedy team reluctantly did nothing to stop it. When it was too late everyone looked at each other as if to say, “what just happened and how did we get so involved without thinking it over?”
   This is the MacNamara version which is always suspect at this typewriter.

BUDDA-BATTLE
    The entire coup against Diem was based on reaction to his repression of the Buddhists in Vietnam. Religious repression struck a chord with the Catholic Kennedys who knew the meaning of religious discrimination. The irony is that Kennedy and Diem were Catholics and I know more Buddhists than Kennedy did (two of my sisters are Buddhists, and my brother-in-law is a Vietnamese Buddhist who was born in Saigon when the bombs were falling in May of 1975.) It was the same irony of the 1990's when the Christians under Milosovich were oppressing and murdering Balkan non-believers and the US under Clinton intervened to stop Christian oppression.
   Every cable sent to South Vietnam from Washington from August to November 1963 had something to say about the Buddhist oppression as the key element in the situation. This is what convinced kennedy and Rusk that Diem had to go. So here we have a President who presided over the water-hosing of African-American children in Alabama telling Diem that he has to die because the Vietnamese Buddhists were being denied full religious freedom to worship in peace.
   Ambassador Lodge took over in mid-August from outgoing Fritz Nolting. Fritz held the opposing view that Diem was the only leader strong enough to maintain order in South Vietnam and that if the United States encouraged, supported or created a coup to remove him it would be a mistake. Some of the big US Generals agreed with that, but they were not calling the shots anymore, especially after the way they had behaved during “Cuba I” and “Cuba II.” The State Department, the CIA, and most of the Kennedy brains trust felt it was time for Diem to go or else perhaps the United States should withdraw from Vietnam completely.
    Diem had an “out” all along if he wanted to avoid being toppled by his generals with US backing. All he had to do was remove his brother and his sister-in-law (“The Nooz”) from power and stop breaking into Buddhist pagodas and cracking the skull of these innocent lovable pacifists.
    But Diem would not budge and insisted that the pagodas he had raided were heavily infiltrated by Communists. Historians mock him for saying this and mock anyone who suggests that there is any truth to that at all. Yet Richard Nixon says the same thing unequivocally in his book, No More Vietnams. I don't know what to believe so I just keep studying and reserve the right to change my opinion on a dime when the right information comes my way, and then to change it again when I read opposite information the next day.
   What is certain is that the Kennedy Administration was not receiving very much information along the lines that the Buddhist pagodas were fronts for Communist activities like the spuckie joint in the North End in the late 1970's that sold three stale subs a week and ran numbers from the back room. Most of the Kennedy Nam Counsellors were of the same mind. The Diem repression of the Buddhists indicated that he did not have the support of the Vietnamese people and there was no sense sending US troops to assist in keeping a regime in power that was despised by the majority of the population and was engaging in fascist religious oppression.
   At one of these meetings, someone mentioned to Kennedy that ex-Ambassasdor Nolting did not agree with the consensus, but what did he know?
   “What does he know anyway?” snapped Kennedy. “Why isn't he at this meeting. I don't want a consensus I want some damned arguments. Who needs a pack of yes-men?”
    The next day Fritz Nolting went at it with Harriman, Ball, and Rusk. It was three against one with Kennedy sitting back and watching the fireworks. Nolting was like Stevenson at the Cuban Missile Crisis the one wolf stiffening his back and standing up to all the heavy hitters, having the courage of his convictions.
   “Diem is a lot of things we don't like,” said Nolting, but he is the only strong leader over there. You aren't going to look through the bushes and find a Vietnamese George Washington just because we decided Diem must go. Who do you think is strong enough to replace him?”
    The argument got down to a sadly vicious clash between Harriman and Nolting. Harriman thought he had Kennedy completely convinced that Diem had to go by hook or by crook (preferably by crook) and along comes this ex-Ambassador to mess things up at the last moment and place doubts in the Presidents mind as the the wisdom of supporting or instigating the overthrow of the sovereign ruler of a foreign nation.
   “You might get what you want and wish you could get him back,” warned Ambassador Nolting.
    Harriman then responded with one of the most immature comments ever uttered in an important situation.
    “No one cares what you think!”
     Averill Harriman actually said that.
     Nolting was so cool that he didn't even answer with the obvious point that, “Well obviously the President of the United States cares what I think, otherwise he wouldn't have asked me here.” But Nolting didn't even go there, showing ten times the sophistication of Harriman by just shaking his head a little and letting the remark look even more foolish by letting it simmer as everyone rolled over the moment in their minds.

KITTENBURG CONFERENCE - AUGUST 31 HYANNISPORT
    There was an interesting meeting at the ol compound on the last Saturday in August. JFK, Rusk, Mac, BK, LBJ and Ball were there to discuss the fate of Vietnam over hot dogs and Narragansett Beer while smelling the sea air and enjoying the refreshing Cape Cod breeze. All of these men either favored removing Diem and continuing the fight in Vietnam or of sticking with Diem and continuing the fight in Vietnam. President Kennedy invited Paul Kattenburg to the elite 8-31-63 'hot dog safari' (Jackie served dogs to her guests in absolute horror. She was always appalled at her husband's commoner tastes in food and literature. LBJ joked that she was “our Madame Nhu, helping out with barbecue and providing the mustard.” Jackie smiled and then turned away with her eyes rolling.)
   Mr. Kattenburg was an experienced diplomat. Kennedy had named PK to head the Interdepartmental Task Force on Vietnam, a hi-fallutin name which clearly meant that its chief was something of an expert on the Vietnam situation. Kattenburg had just interviewed Diem at length in person three days earlier and his input was eagerly anticipated by all. Kattenburg was something of the star guest speaker.
    As so often happens, the man had been hired to come to once conclusion and came back with another. It was like when Nixon ordered a study on how marijuana led to higher crime and it came back saying the opposite. “Throw that damn stupid report away!” said Nixon,” what do they know anyway?” Well it was the same with with Kattenburg. He ruined the hot dog party at the Hyannisport Compound. He pulled out a can of black mist and sprayed it all over the yard.
    After an hour and a half of Vietnam small-talk, as in going over the same arguments that had been gong on for a month about the coup and Diem and the Buddhists, and the Strategic Hamlets, and Lansdale, and China, and Ho, and Big Mihn, and Bernie Fall, and the Cau Mau Peninsula, and Madame Nhu's impending speaking tour of the United States which everyone was dreading, there was finally a long lull in the conversation. Kennedy took over,

   “I ah thinks its ah time we give the floor over to Paul whom you've all met. Paul you've been awfully quiet. Don't be ah afradi to ah speak your mind.”

Kattenburg;
   “As you wish Mr. President. You people are all out of your skulls. I've never heard so much ignorance in all my life. The only clear choice is to get out now, honorably, while there's still time to cut our losses without enormous political and diplomatic damage. We have to be completely out of there in a year at the most. The South Vietnamese are going to lose the war with Diem or with someone else in there, including us. Everyone loves a winner. Once the common people see that the Communists are winning the war they will gradually go over to that side and we will be obliged to leave.”

   Everyone was stunned. President Kennedy had an angry face and so did everyone else. After about ten seconds MacNamara shouted at him. “Wrong, Paul. We are winning this war!”
   Rusk was red with rage, “You're just guessing! You can't say that, anymore than you can say that the Senators will lose the next ten ball games in row. You don't know the future and it belongs to freedom.
   The United States is not going to get out of Vietnam until the war is won!”

   “Lot's o luck,” said Paul as he began to look around for his things. Kennedy made a perfunctory remark that Paul was just the kind of man everyone needed to hear from and that if only we had less yes-men around here and more men like Paul Kattenburg, the nation would be in better shape, and all that good stuff, but the fact of the matter was that Paul was on the mark when he looked around for his things. Kattenburg left the party quite early after that little dressing down of the top men in the nation right to their face. As soon as he left, Rusk began referring to him as 'Kittenburg.' They should have called him Lionburg. Paul also got demoted to a lesser job in a small African nation.
    So Kattenburg gets the I Told You So Medal of Freedom for the Vietnam War. Two others were Freshman Senator George McGovern and Senator James Derek of Idaho who both voted in 1963 against any more military appropriations for South Vietnam. They were lone wolves like Jeanette Rankin in 1917

CABLE WARS
     There are a few hundred pages in the books about the confused series of cables back and forth from Washington to Saigon and back again during the two months before the South Vietnamese generals murdered the President of South Vietnam with United States support. The order to Lodge to go ahead and tell the generals to go ahead is surrounded by controversy. Who told what to whom, who wrote back what, misled whom, and who is responsible for murder on this side of the fence? Did Kennedy personally order the assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Diem? If so then there are moral implications for what happened in Dallas a 20 days later. That's a short window and why I have always felt that if Dealey Plaza was a paid hit and the guy who did it didn't know or reveal to anyone who hired him (presuming Oswald was a patsy) then we can logically suspect the South Vietnamese rich and powerful secret police or relatives of Diem who wanted Kennedy to get an eye for an eye justice. Every other movie plot is someone who loves someone who gets murdered then gets violent revenge for the next 70 minutes, thus justifying murder. Murder is bad, ... but ... its for righteous revenge, that's the message of half of our movies. Why wouldn't rich and dangerous friends of Diem feel the same way?
    One definite factor in the story of the cable wars is the fact that powerful politicans apparently took a snobby week-end back in those days. A series of cables went to Saigon on the week-end of 23 August, with a lot of assistant secretaries making big decisions for their famous bosses who were either on a distant golf course, cruising in Barbados, or sitting behind the plate in the second row watching the Yankees whip the Indians.
   The Assistant Secretaries of several departments were more gung-ho about removing Diem than their famous bosses so they were putting out cables while the chiefs were putting.
   On Tuesday Kennedy read the go-ahead green light cables that had been sent to Vietnam and he was not happy. Kennedy was at the end of the chain of misleading cables and phone calls. On Sunday night he got a call that said that Rusk, MacNamara, Ball, and McCone are all on board. That meant that his assistants were playing substitute teacher and setting their own agenda and making it seem to be the work of their superiors with powerful names. So Kennedy gave a reluctant “Ok, go ahead and send the cable” as he toweled the sand and sea off his shorts with his free arm. In that casual moment he was killing Ngo Diem, putting a bullet through his head. Maybe JF didn't realize it, but that was the moment when the order went out to whack Diem.
   At that same meeting, most of the famous names actually backed their assistants up, even if they had been a little our of line in procedure. One or two flat out backed them up, and four more said, “Yes, they did start the ball rolling too soon, but now it would be worse to try to pull it back in. We know were going to have to remove Diem, no one is disputing that [this was before Nolting showed up] So lets just do it.”
    Kennedy was troubled, and ordered that if we do it, we do it with “a minimum of bloodshed.”
     The big leverage the United States held was money, not troops. Diem was generally opposed to the United States sending more troops. He wanted American money and political support, and he wanted guns, and planes. But he was consistently against troops. The United States responded consistently with, if you take out money you will take our troops. Diem felt that would rather risk losing his country in a foreign war than see it slowly changed culturally and politically until it became an American satellite state
of which he was only titular head.
President Diem was a brutal and repressive tyrant who represented the lesser of two evils in Vietnam. He was a Catholic and an anti-Communist. Most who knew him testify that he was an honest and sincere man.

ASSASSINATION ANALYSIS
My question is, how brutal was Diem as compared with the Vietnamese Communists, both North and South. Was there enough of a disparity in his favor to justify our support for him? This is a key question in evaluating America’s decision to support him between 1956 and 1963. If he was just as bad or worse than the Commies then we might have been the bad guys in the Vietnam War just for butting in without a good and moral cause. If Diem was clearly the lesser of two evil and if the Communists were the focus of evil in the modern world in 1963, then maybe we intervened with moral backing.
   Author Al Kendrick claims that in the early 1960’s Diem purged local Communist leaders in the villages of South Vietnam to the tune of 75,000 executed and 50,000 thrown into jail. This is a high-end claim but liberal writers run with it and then say that these atrocities then created a leadership vacuum that attracted the North Vietnamese to move in. In other words, the North Vietnamese Communists (NVC’s) would not have attacked South Vietnamese villages and would not have begun their systematic assassination of village leaders if Diem’s Catholic regime hadn’t started the whole thing by murdering South Vietnamese Communist just for being Communists.
   All this supposedly meant that the Communists had moral reasons for their next offensive against South Vietnamese villages. These villages were under the rule of Diem’s murderous puppets and the leaders of such places deserved no sympathy. It was like a movie where the good guys finds his family slain and then spends the rest of the movie killing the bad guys while the audience eats popcorn and cheers the righteous violence of revenge. The Communist were the Charles Bronson after the treatment they got under Diem, goes the thinking.
   Communism in 1963 was grounded in adamant atheism, and an atheist has no cause to fear the spiritual consequences of murder, torture and repression. Therefore the Communist is ten times more likely to commit an atrocity than a Catholic, even though we all know of the wicked stains on the Catholic record.
   The behavior of the Communists when Nam and Cambodia fell in 1975 trumps all arguments and is the bottom line on the entire war. Even if Diem was the scum the left wants us to believe he was, the Killing Fields trumps Diem. The left never bashes Ho's murders, only Diems. Its rather sickening, actually. They don’t even give us the ‘both sides were bad.’ The left admires Ho. I would like to visit Minh's grave at 3 am after drinking a gallon of lemonade. You will note that liberal historian always represent Ho’s goal as the “reunification” of Vietnam, as if he would ever have accepted any other form of government other than Communism in a united nation. They always use that word. They never write that he wanted to “conquer” or “subjugate” South Vietnam; only “unite.”
   Kennedy and his people knew that Diem was repressive and murderous. They threatened to disconnect the pipeline of US support if he did not reform his government and moderate his behavior. Kennedy was in the classic Democratic bind, he was a liberal hawk. Being a Democrat hawk is about as easy to as being an obese pole-vaulter.
Big John and the CIA had decided by mid 1963 that Diem had to go. There were many reasons, not the least of which was the fear that Diem and his family might strike up a separate peace with the Communists which included expelling the Americans from the land. Rumors of this were reaching Kennedy’s desk throughout 1963.
    Several fact-finding missions to Vietnam led by famous men in 1962 and 63 had concluded that Diem was more of an obstacle to victory than an aid. He had too many negatives. It was even confirmed that Diem had never had sexual relations with a woman. I am not joking. When Kennedy heard that he realized that Diem was not the kind of man America should trust to run Vietnam. But exactly who and what was to replace him was never really decided upon. Nevertheless, Diem had to make an exit.
   The only way to get rid of this strong leader was by means of a coup. A coup often means that the dethroned leader will be assassinated. Kennedy tried to pretend he didn’t know this as he approved the coup.

TITO TOO - OCTOBER 1963
    We interrupt this program on the impending coup in Vietnam to describe a visit to the United States by President Tito of Yugoslavia, a story complete with a serious assassination attempt upon him at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City.
    Most Americans saw Tito as a Communist dictator, which he was. They saw him therefore as a natural enemy of the United States which he was not. Educated Americans knew that Tito had split with the Soviet Union, and especially with Stalin personally, back in the fifties. Unlike the fake split with China, the USSR was genuinely split with Yugoslavia. This in fact was the bait which enabled the Soviets to pull of the great disinformation act with China. The fact that there was the real precedent with Yugoslavia.
   But the average American simply saw Tito as a no-good commie, pure and simple. Meanwhile Kennedy and Ike before him had wanted to luke-warmly embrace Tito to make sure that the split was cemented by making US-Yugo relations positive and thus angering the petulant Russians. The USA wanted to be friendly with Tito because he had busted up the Communist bloc. But it was politically dangerous to pal around too much with a Tito. Kennedy couldn't bring him to a Senators game, which he could never do in October anyway.
    When Tito visited the Oval Office Kennedy treated him cordially but with a cool unfriendliness unnatural for any president meeting a foreign leader, let alone a charmer like Kennedy. Tito got it. He understood what was going on and why Kennedy wouldn't smile and offer up a pre-sanctions Cuban cigar as he did with other dignitaries.
   Tito walked out to the Oval Office window and saw a group of demonstrators from the American Nazi party picketing the gates of the White House with signs calling Tito a 'Dangerous Commie Dictator.' Tito was ticked. These Americans allow Nazis to demonstrate in front of the White House and here he was, a man who had won his fame by defeating the Nazis in WWII being given a cold shoulder.
    Kennedy knew that Tito had just toured the capitals of South and Central America. Jack asked him what the political situation was down there. Tito gave him a grouchy short response that he never talks about politics when he is traveling. In other words, go to hell.
    Then Kennedy pushed a magic button. He acted informal, put his arm and his charm on Tito's shoulder and spoke to him in respectful words. “C'mon Tito, big time politicians like us need to know what's going on all over the world. You tell me what's going on in South America and I'll tell you what's going on in Vietnam.”
   That got Tito feeling welcome and he talked a blue streak about every Latin nation and the situation there regarding Communist influences. Tito said that Chinese Communists were more active than Soviet Communists in Central and South America. He thought the wave of the future in the South-Central was Chinese-led Communist revolutions. But that doesn't mean he said that Soviet and Chinese Communism were enemies.
    From Washington, Tito went to New York City where an attempt was made on his life.
   It was yet another moment on American History for Waldorf. Tito had just returned to his room 774 when two hit men from the old Balkan homeland were knocking on his door claiming to be delivering the ice bucket courtesy of the management. The men had guns. They were trying to put Tito on ice and make him kick the bucket. Just in the nick of time the elevator door opens, and who comes out but Sargent New York City police Sargent Jack Langton. It was like a scene out of an old black and white gangster film,
   “Hey you guy's! What the hell's going on here!” he said this as he was lunging at them.
    Langton slugged it out with them in a fast and furious fight in the Waldorf hallway and Langton won, one on two. Good work, O'Flannigan! When it was over he had both men completely subdued. Bluecoat Sarge JL had taken them both down faster than they could get into their pocket and draw their guns.
This really happened (all right I made up the part about the ice bucket, but I think it adds a nice touch to the story.) Why hasn't someone made that a famous scene in a film? That's an important moment in American history. Imagine the Cold War repercussions if Communist Dictator had been assassinated at the end of October 1963 in New York. Apparently is was the opening of hunting season on Presidents. If Tito died at the Whaldorf it would have amounted to three whacks in leas than a month.

THE WORST AND THE BRIGHTEST
    In the middle of the Nam coup mess Kennedy met with the new publisher of the New York Times, Claude Van Salzburger at Glen Ora, Virginia. Kennedy went over the usual stuff about how the Times should recognize its patriotic duty to call Kennedy on the phone before it prints anything, just in case Kennedy decided it was the paper's patriotic duty not to print it. Kennedy was the last president who really managed to control the press. By the last year of his term the power to quash a story with one angry phone call was beginning to erode. Salzburger argued gently with the President.
   Then Kennedy laid it on the line about one certain whippersnapper he was fed up with.
   “You've got to pull that David Halberstam off the Vietnam beat. He gets his facts right then distorts them as he pleases.”
    “Twain!” said Salzburger, pleased that he knew the quote.
    “No, Voltaire.” said Kennedy
    “How much you wanna bet it was Twain?” said Salzburger
   “Then Twain stole it from Voltaire,” said an irritated Kennedy. “What's it matter who said it? What matters is that this Halberstam is hurting our chances to win in Vietnam by giving one-sided biased negative reports. Halberstam always quotes unnamed lower sources, and anonymous government officials. He hides behind the privacy of his sources to give partisan reports following his own agenda, rather than analyzing his information fairly. Remember Claude, I was a reporter before and after World War II and I know what's right and wrong when you do that work. What he's doing is wrong. If the Times wants the United States out of Vietnam why don't you write it yourself in a banner headline editorial on page one. Don't hide behind Halberstam's skirts.”
    That line angered Salzburger as he stirred his rum and coke with a cool face masking his rage. Who feels comfortable yelling back at an angry US President. And Salzy was new on the job. He was no stubborn old Ben Bradlee who could be frank with his long acquaintance. So Salzy left the meeting more or less resigned to having to pull Halberstam out of the Vietnam beat.
    Salzburger came back to Times Headquarters and talked to managing editor James Reston about it. Reston said, “Well to hell with him. We'll do as we please here. That's journalism. The fact of the matter is, Jimmy is feeling a little ill right now and had asked to come home. We were going to pull him out of there but now I've changed my mind. He stays. We are going to tell Davey to stick it out and check in to a Saigon hospital for his flu medicine. David Halberstam will be the last reporter we will pull out of Vietnam coverage from here on in.”
   It was the worst attempt at press management ever. Kennedy had won a lot of major press suppressions over his three years. Some of them are very disturbing to read about. They were a disgrace to the whole concept of protest-freedom of the press. If Howard Zinn ever really studied the Kennedy incidents, where John picked up a phone and killed a fair story, or how John did an interview and then after he didn't like the way he spoke either demanded the interview be quashed or actually controlled the editing, Howie would have written about it in a rage. Bu with the 8 zillion things he was already working on, HZ never got around to ripping Kennedy for outrageous press censorship through personal intimidation. This time, with Halberstam, it not only failed the brat, it boomeranged completely, turning Halberstam in an even more powerful critic, and a world famous author of The Best and the Brightest. (I am sorry to report that I have not read more than 40 pages of that important work. It's the one book on Vietnam that millions of American have read who have never read more than one book on Vietnam so if I can dig it out of my condo full of six thousand tumbling all over each other books, I will try to read it. As of this moment I don't know where it is. On the other hand I do know for a fact that I didn't love his writing when I read the 40 pages, and that's why I let the book get misplaced, but I do like his writing very much in his final recent book, Clinton and the Generals. Unlike athletes, hookers, and singers, the trend for authors is to get better as they get old, right up to the day they get into the back of the SVG APC – That's a hint about the next chapter describing the death of Diem.)

MURDER OF DIEM AND THE NHU'S - NOVEMBER 1963
   There was one last item to debate once it was decided that Diem had to get rid of the Nhu's or the United States would give the go-ahead to the generals to get rid of Diem and the Nhu's. Diem had his chance and he ignored it. He had the chance to save himself if he had paid more attention to the reality of what was unfolding around him. The imminent coup, with the support of the United States was all over the front pages of the New York Times, and the Times of Saigon. This was no secret or sudden surprise coup. It was one of the most obviously telegraphed coups of all time.
   But Diem always held out hope that all these were rumors, and that the United States would not help to murder him. He just didn't think Kennedy and America would do it. Or he wanted to retire at the top of his game like Jim Brown, instead of hanging on as an exiled shadow of his old power like Willie Mays.
   The last item to debate was whether to make it crystal clear to Diem that the end was near for him if he failed to get rid of the Nhu's and their ruthless secret police, and continued to suppress the Buddhists. This was decided against for two reasons. Knowing the end was near would give Diem a chance to take other drastic actions to save himself. Ngo could go and cut a major diplomatic deal with North Vietnam or he could use the short window where he knows he's up against it to counter-attack against the Vietnamese Army with his own praetorian guard, thus stopping the coup because we gave him a chance to live. So that was it, once the coup started, the United States could only hope that the generals don't actually kill the guy but hey ... he was warned. The United States did always maintain a certain level of plausible denial through the whole coup, but it was as transparent as the denials at the Bay of Pigs.

THE COUP BEGINS
   Diem got a hundred chances to save himself and rejected them all. It was just his nature to go down to the end as the King. He'd rather be dead than be dethroned, apparently. Even on the very eve of action General Big Mihn (“Big Man” as Colby caled him) called Diem and Brother Nhu answered the phone,

“If you and Diem do not surrender in five minutes an attack in going to take place upon the Presidential Palace and the house of the Presidential Guard. You will be granted safe passage out of the country if you surrender. Do it fast. You have five minutes.” Diem then heard the click as Big Man slammed the phone down on him.
   With one minute left, Big Man called back and this time Diem answered.
   “Well?” asked Man, “Have you decide....” Before he could finish the sentence Diem slammed the phone down on Big Man. It was the last act of authority Diem would ever perform.
    Within five minutes a major military assault by land and air commenced against the House of the Palace Guards which was 700 feet from the Presidential Palace. The people of Saigon watched as planes circled around the Guards shack and strafed and bombed at leisurely pace. Diem and Nhu were no longer in a position to make insensitive barbecue jokes. Now they were the ones on the rotisserie being greased for flavor. The two falling leaders beat it out of there through a deep underground passage that led from the King's compound to a residential section of the city.
     They hid in a Catholic Church in the Chinese neighborhood of Saigon, wearing robes of a priest and nun! Of all the low tricks!
   Coup troops knew where they went and surrounded the church and went inside to look around for them. It was like the Texas Theater a month later when the DPD went in looking for Oswald. A special mass was being celebrated for All Souls' Day (or All Saint's Day, depending on which version of Catholic brainwashing you were subjected to for ten years at mine it was called “All Soul's Day – It's worth noting because it helps mark the date for history.) One spotted the badly disguised Nhu nun who looked even more stupid-obviously a man dressed as a woman than Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie (if that's possible). Nhu spoke in a high pitched woman's voice and said, “Please, officers, you have the wrong person!” At which point the Vietnamese Colonel ripped off the outfit and yelled “Aha!”
    Diem and Nhu were put into the back of an American made APC. This heavily armored vehicle was not designed to protect anyone from shots fired from the inside.
   The Coup kings told Diem and Nhu were told they were going to be allowed to leave the country and live in exile somewhere, but their rule was over. Their hands were being tied behind their back as they were told this, not a good sign.
   The man that was to keep and eye on them while they were supposedly being driven to an airport to leave the country was a notorious hit-man for the South Vietnamese military, a certain Mr. Pohn Tang. PT hated Nhu more than a hundred Diems, and in this he was typical, not exceptional. Remember, if Diem had only agreed to get rid of Nhu, he could have remained President of South Vietnam with American backing, even if he had not lifted the persecution of dissidents and Buddhists. The USA had a lot of objections to Diem policies but most were negotiable. getting rid of Nhu was never negotiable. It was he, not Diem, that was ruining the War for the United States. But either Diem got rid of Nhu, or a US backed coup would get rid of them both. There were only a few critics of Diem who would say he had no integrity and was a back-stabbing murderous snake. Everyone in South Vietnam felt that way about Nhu except his wife and mother. Perhaps it was largely a mater of family loyalty, since Nhu was his brother-in-law.
    The way the killing finally went down says it all about Nhu. The man had his hands tied and was in an APC and all he did was yell insults at the famous killer Pohn Tang. If that was me I'd say for openers, “Whatever I said, I take it back. Whatever I did I'm sorry.” Instead we have this irrepressable Nhu screaming insults at Tang as if Tang was the one tied up. Tang began shouting insults back. The two of them are going over bumpy roads around Saigon while Diem is watching these two devils having a classic 'rank-fight.' Surely Diem must have been thinking, 'Nhu, my brother, my friend, this is not the time and the place... cool it!' Nhu was a scum with guts, more than Saddaam displayed when he acted meekly when captured. Nutty Nhu was still in command from the steps of the gallows!
   There is a slight chance that Tang was not pre-ordered to kill the two men on the ride to the airport. Tang later claimed that he just couldn't take any more of Nhu's brutal insults and just snapped. When Nhu made one too many vicious cracks about Tang's mother
the hit-man pulled a knife out and began stabbing Nhu several times in a most unstudied fashion. Then he shot Nhu in the head. Diem watched and knew that it was time to meet Jesus. Tang shot Diem twice in the head, then stabbed him a few times, reversing the sequence he had laid on Nhu. Diem died a little more painlessly because he was who he was and Nhu was who he was.
   The first bulletins out of Saigon said that Nhu and Diem had committed suicide (yeah, like Pugo in 1991.) Kennedy and the US Press were happy to pass this along to the public. It was what they would have preferred anyway. But then an enterprising Vietnam reporter out of Paris got a hold of photos of the two men hacked up and shot in the head with their hands behind their back, and he sold them for good money. The photos were traveling the world while the reports were still being disseminated about the suicides. Apparently Nhu and Diem had tied each other's hands behind their backs, stabbed themselves 40 or fifty times and then shot themselves in the head.

REACTION
Kennedy instructed everyone in the know in South Vietnam to not recognize the new government of South Vietnam until at least a few other foreign nations had done so. Quick recognition would make it look a little too obvious that the United States was behind the coup. Then Kennedy issued a very public official statement that the United States had played no part whatsoever in the coup. Then he issued another order to Lodge at the Saigon Embassy to make sure that the Coup leaders didn't show up at the door to report the good news. That would look very bad.
The CIA, Kennedy and even many of the coup leaders were shocked and saddened by the killing of Diem and Brother Nhu. They weren’t supposed to die. But things like that happen when kings are replaced, and it is weak to deny awareness of this probable consequence. JFK was at an NSC meeting when he was handed a telegram informing him of the killing of the Diems. He said nothing and rose from the table and left the room in a state of nervous agitation. General Taylor whispered disparagingly to Hillsman, “What did he expect?”
   By the end of the month Kennedy had gotten the same treatment.
   Ambassador Lodge cabled Kennedy that there was absolute euphoria in Saigon over the death of Diem. Saigon was Oz.   “Ding-dong with witch is dead.” Lodge wrote Jack that everywhere he went people saw the US flag on his car and broke into smiling waving and cheering. Everyone seemed to think that all of the troubles in Vietnam were over because this main bad guy and his even worse brother were finally iced. Even the Buddhist pagodas were pacified and happy at long last.
    One concern of Kennedy and the State Department was that the US approval of the coup would be a signal to Latin America that coups were ok. Memos went out all over the world to publicly stress that this was a very special situation in Vietnam and this in no way meant that the forced overthrow of established governments was an acceptable solution in American eyes. It was expedient hypocrisy of course, and hopefully I didn't have to really write that.
    Kennedy and State also started a major publicity campaign on the theme that Diem and Nhu were on the verge of cutting a separate deal with the Communists and that was the main reason the coup had to happen when it did. There was a grain of truth to that, there were rumors and there were fears along those lines but that this was the main reason for the coup was not true.

POST DIEM – PRE-DALLAS
The death of Diem left a leadership hole in Vietnam, a chaos of non-leadership that made things worse, rather than better for all concerned. Foreign diplomats had tried to warn American diplomats and reporters that this would happen. But their advice was dismissed by the Lodge-Hillsman-Harriman troika that led the way to making the coup inevitable. The emptiness would not be filled until President Thieu took over in 1965. Maybe Fritz was right!
   With no strong leadership in place in South Vietnam, the United States had to fill the vacuum, thus entrapping the USA into full responsibility for the conduct of the war.
   Why the coup if there was no plan to replace Diem with something or someone better? By 1963 the USA was drunk with the coup mentality. America had become too accustomed to overthrowing any government not to its liking, nuclear powers excepted of course. Qualified coup success like the ones in Guatemala and Iran were creating an ingrained and poisonous political mindset. The murder of our staunch ally Diem was not only counterproductive on its face, it also sent a chilling message to other states that might be thinking of joining up with the US in the struggle for freedom and democracy.
   Only one side seems to have gained anything from the Diem demise, the Communists. They benefited from the coup much more than South Vietnam or the USA did. One NVA leader called it a ‘gift from heaven.’ Morale among the enemy skyrocketed and new calls were sent out for more infiltration and direct attacks on the land and forces of South Vietnam.
   The assassination of Diem was not only morally wrong on general principles, it was a foreign policy catastrophe for the United States on many levels, and more than any action of Johnson, pulled us knee-deep into the trap of the Vietnam War.
   Kennedy by the time of his death had authorized the sending of 16,000 fighting advisors in South Vietnam, and we had taken over 500 casualties.

WHAT WERE KENNEDY'S REAL PLANS FOR NAM?
   Was Kennedy really going to withdraw from Vietnam? Did his assassination prevent this? Some historians seem confident that the answer is yes but how can they be so sure?
One thing was sure, if Kennedy was going to take the United States out of Vietnam he was not going to do it until after the 1964 Presidential election. He knew the political cost of losing Vietnam in the era of the Cold War. But after his likely re-election he would then have four years to repair the damage, and leave the party in good shape for ’68.
   Even if he did make a decision to withdraw he would have to run it past every level of advisor and was certain to face strong opposition. Kennedy might have made such a decision and then backed off after pleas by the military, the CIA, the State Department, various anti-Communist Allies and his close friends. Only his brother Bobby and Chet Bowles seemed to be seriously suggesting that Vietnam was a loser and it was best to get out, no matter what the political cost, and Robert was the Attorney General not the Chairman of the JCS. It would have seemed out of place to make a crucial foreign policy decision based on the opinion of the Attorney General, even if he was his brother.
   Kenneth O'Donnell says that Kennedy told him that after he is re-elected he was going to take the United States out of Vietnam. But a statement made to a friend while adjusting his tie in the morning, as Kenny shined his shoes is not the same as an official declaration of future policy, and even if it was, its flexible enough. Kennedy according to many analysts, was one of the most flexible politicians of all time. He always did what was expedient first, and what was a firm moral decision only when pained into a corner. No matter what he told O'Donnell, no one knows that Kennedy would have withdrawn the USA from South Vietnam.

UGLY HOLLYWOOD
    Kennedy allegedly had affairs with several movie stars, including the likes of Angie Dickenson, Marylyn Monroe, and Irene Ryan. He used his father's connections as a movie producer to help out along that way.
    One movie that came out in 1963 was called The Ugly American, starring Marlon Brando. The movie was based on the book of 1958 by the same ugly title. It was an early marker in the rising trend of American self-flagellation in the arena of world politics.
   Ugly is based on an American CIA agent who is overseas stirring up trouble in a third world country. The idea is that the Communists are trying to take over a fictional Asian country, a noble and charismatic Communist leader is waging war against colonial oppression, and the United States, the Ugly Nation, interferes in the name of what it thinks is freedom, and actually only helps the Communist cause by making all the locals angry about American interference.
   The obvious take on it is that it was based on Vietnam, but when the book was written in '58 we weren't really in Nam yet. It's more likely that this was based on our interference in Indonesia, and its Civil War of the 1950's.
   Brando is good, but Pat Hingle steals the movie as the gun runner from Argentina.

THE SAD HATTERS
    John F. Kennedy decimated the hat industry in America. In every photograph of a crowd at the ball game in 1959, you can't spot a single man without a dopey expensive hat. It was conformist central. Then you see pictures of a crowd in 1965 and only the older guys have hats. Then you see a picture of a crowd at the ballpark in 1975 and only two guys are wearing those formal hats. Today about a third of the guys at the park have hats but they are cheap baseball caps to represent sports, not the same felt hats they wear to a meeting.
    John Kennedy was the turning point. I do not agree with the website that claims this is completely false, a myth. The web site starts with a false myth and then debunks that. The myth is supposedly that when Kennedy did not wear a hat at his Inaugural, it ruined the hat industry in America. That's a straw man of a myth that I had never even heard before. What I did read in several memoirs was that Kennedy throughout his Presidency, rarely wore a hat and he was so popular that it had a seriously negative impact on the hat industry. None of these books ever claimed this foolish extremist myth that one man appearing at a podium on one-day single-handedly killed the men's hat industry.
   The website shows photos of Kenndey at the Inaugural in a top hat and they cite this a proof that the legend of false. Doyeee! There was never a popular trend in super-expensive top hats at any time in world history ya dopes.
   They point out that the trend away from men's hats was happening before he became president, therefore the idea that JFK ruined the hat industry is demonstrably false. I say the debunk is more false than the myth. Kennedy going hatless everywhere he went put a major torpedo into the hat industry and all the participants in the Kennedy White House mention that in their books, I think that counts for more than what some smug web-site asserts 50 years later. I say that JFK was a catalyst in dumping the stupid social custom of every guy at the ballpark has a dopey hat. People who follow the crowd will never be followed by a crowd. Kennedy marched along without a hat and the world marched behind him leaving a trail of discarded hats. Today, cool formal hats are reserved for middle-aged musicians who can't face being bald.


KENNEDENOMICS
   The stock market was struggling during the election year of 1960 and continued on in a bad way for most of 1961. One week was so bad on Wall Street that they started calling it “The Kennedy Crash.” So much for getting this country moving forward. But in 1962 it picked up again in a big way and the young prez found himself presiding over a boom cycle. The inflation rate in 1961 was 1%. You read that right. That was not a typo. But the growth rate was slow also. Unemployment in the Kennedy years was around 5% as the Administration strove for 'double-fours.' The goal was an unemployment rate and a growth rate of four per cent.
   Back in 61 there was much debate within his advisory council about how to help jump start the economy. Tax cuts seemed an obvious call. Only one advisor was against it and that was the famous economist John Kenneth Galbreath.
Galbreath felt that tax cuts only helped people spend more money on toys, but that the important things like better schools, hospitals, water resources, law enforcement, and transportation infrastructures were not helped one whit by the cuts. JKG was not in favor of what would later be dubbed “trickle down economics.” Galbreath would rather take some risk of inflation by pumping government money into fields of action that improved the real quality of life, not just its peripheral moments of recreation. Butter, not toy guns. Economically Galbreaths’s influence pushed Kennedy closer to FDR than the Ron Reagan his other advisors were steering him towards.
   The big arguments among Heller and Dillon and Galbreath and Kenneth Lashua was whether a certain amount of federal deficit might not actually be good for the economy, or was a balanced budget the only true goal for all. Tax cuts for the wealthy might stimulate job growth, but it also reduced federal revenues. The other side was that short term loss in federal revenues might then lad to long term gains for federal revenues because of the rise in consumer confidence and spending, the result of all these new jobs created by the tax cuts on the rich. Any tax cuts for the wealthy had political risks. The country loves jobs but hates job creators. We love poor people who get rich by winning a lottery, but hate rich people who worked their way to the top by fighting and winning fair and square and risking it all several times along the way.
   I have read at least 40 long chapters about the Kennedy economy and how the K-boys handled it, and have come to one certain conclusion. It's boring.

CLINTON'S IDOL
    I've tried to keep the womanizing stories out of the regular chronology of political events. The Kennedy scandals never broke out and hurt him, although there were enough close calls to make an Indiana Jones movie sequel. John dodged one arrow after another in the nick of time, especially during the election campaign of 1960 when any scandal released to the public with proper timing could have tipped the balance for Nixon.
    Anyone who would cheat on 31 year old Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy is a first class idiot.
    There is no doubt that Kennedy had a serious affair with Marylyn Monroe. Kennedy was a candle in her wind. I'm sure it never occurred to either of them in bed that they would both be dead within two years. Marylyn used to get drunk and threaten to go public with her relationship with Kennedy. The family lawyers and errand boys had to go visit her and calm her down. It was a close call. That white dress rising up over the sidewalk vents almost put Nixon in the White House.
   The woman that most nearly ruined JFK did not go to bed with him. Her name was Florence Naze Kater and she just happened to be in the right place at the wrong time when Kennedy was just gearing up to run for President.
   Who was Flo Naze? She was a small time landlord in Washington who just happened to rent her upper flat to a young lady that Kennedy was tapping. Florence would see the famous Senator climbing the middle class stairs with his lady friend. She'd hear the naughty noises, and then she'd see Kennedy sneaking out at 3 a.m. like a wayward college boy “out galavanting.”
     Flo felt hurt because she was a sincere Catholic who had supported Kennedy, and now she knew what the country did not. Kennedy was a cad. And he was a disgrace to the Catholic faith he so publicly proclaimed.
   One morning she confronted Kennedy at dawn on the stoop as he tried to flee the scene of the crime of infidelity one more time. She broke out a camera with a flash and popped. Kennedy tried to cover his face with a hankie, but the picture that came out was clear enough to suit her taste.
    Florence began mailing the picture to prominent politicians and newspaper editors, with a story to explain the circumstances. If that had been done in today's political environment, Flo would have ended Camelot on the camera lot. Magazines and newspapers would have bid on the picture and made her almost rich.
   But back then, reporters just looked the other way on things like that. The reason they looked the other way was because it was 1959 and that's just the way things were. I was four, so I can't testify, but that's just the way things were. Florence couldn't get any satisfaction because, just because. The proof didn't count because you just didn't report things like that.
    When Kennedy got the nomination Florence got even madder and when he became President she went berserk. She made a placard of the picture of Kennedy trying to hide his face and marched in front of the White House on a regular basis. The Kennedys could have made a big mistake and denied the charge, but instead they shrewdly paid no attention to her except to occasionally say she was some nut-cake. No one took her seriously.
   Kennedy almost got caught with a Radcliffe college student he was making it with. The Washington Star got pictures of him picking her up and dropping her off. Once again the editor killed the story at the last minute, and by many accounts, if they had not, the man would never have made President. When one of his insiders tipped him off the that the Star was on to him he gasped, “My God they even got her name!”
    Then there was Alice Darr. Kennedy and Alice had an affair, but this time it was more dirt than normal. Alice Barr was a full time prostitute and madam who claimed that Kennedy was in love with her in the 1950's and had begged her to marry him.
    But there is some dirt involved that is sealed up in a lawyer's office and even Seymour Hersh couldn't get it opened in the 1990's. Its a complex story, but the gist of it is that there is something spectacularly scandalous that the sleuths of the world have never found out, and Alice threatened to go public in 1960 and scared the daylights out of Clifford and the other Kennedy lawyers. They simply said that if this gets out, it's all over. There's no way to use damage control on this one. Maybe he violated the other half of the Clark Clifford Barnes rule of politics. Or he liked to get rubbed down with peanut butter and jelly before he made love. It was something you couldn't talk your way out of. Even Clinton's formula of “as long as everybody's on record denying it you got no problem,” couldn't have plugged the dike.
    The best vague evidence seems to be that Kennedy had an illegitimate child by Alice Darr. There was a lot of intrigue in 1960 about past scandals and payoffs to keep things quiet. Kennedy got max Raab, a member of the Eisenhower Administration to play the middle and go the The Republicans and tell Nixon to “stop spreading rumors that I am a philanderer.” Nixon trusted Raab (who had no idea that kennedy actually was a philanderer) and gave instructions to the party to stop spreading rumors that Kennedy was a philanderer. It may have cost Nixon the election.
   One thing was sure. Several women were paid off by the Kennedys to keep quiet. Clark Clifford adamantly denied later on that he ever played that role, but in denying it he's admitting that it was done by others.

THE FIRST LADY
   When Bill Clinton became President he put his wife in front of a national health care initiative. When JFK took over he put his wife in charge of redecorating the White House. Actually Jacqueline took the initiative and she would have been annoyed to hear her changes describes as 'redecorating.' She just thought the building had been overrun with tacky furniture and a lot of knock-off art works that were embarrassing to a connoisseur like herself. She managed to get the White House declared a national museum. That way it could legally accept gifts from private persons and companies alike. She started working on getting new art and furniture into the building, especially working artifacts that were not just sterile decorations. A top example would be the Resolute Desk that was featured in the Movie National Treasure II. The desk, made of oak from the British Frigate HMS resolute, was sitting in the dusty White House basement covered with an old sheet. She found it and had it polished and brought into the West Wing.
   When Jaqueline restored the White House she gave a tour of the new decorations on national television. It was a successful show, but her voice was idiosyncratic. It was raspy and quirky, “like a starlet with no talent,” according to one critic. The First Family comedy album made mince-meat out of her voice in one memorable satire.
My favorite moment that describes the First Lady (and she hated being called that) was in a TV interview when a reporter asked her “are you in love with him?”
   In a nano-second she said, “Oh no.”
   “You're not in love with your husband?”
    She just looked at the reporter and smiled with a half shake of her head. She was saying, 'Oh no. I can't believe you would expect me to answer such an unsophisticated question, and I absolutely refuse to do it. You've put me on the spot between looking like a naïve schoolgirl in a bad movie or seeming disloyal to my husband. I refuse to make that choice.' I don't think a man like John Kennedy would marry a woman who would answer such a dopey plastic question in any other manner. He was truly a sophisticated man, and water seeks its own level. Good for her for answering “oh no.”
    There is one story that proves that they were only human, if its true, and it comes from one of man the recent throw dirt on the poor man's gave books, of course.
    Kennedy was meeting with Sorenson and Powers over some serious matter when Jackie walked in and he began to ask her about all these bills.
   “Jackie, these bills are not going to look good if the press gets a hold of them. You're spending too much money on frivolous things. Everyone thinks we're spoiled brats and you're going out of your way to validate that image. $7,400 on shoes? $22,000 on Caroline's birthday party? You're killing me!”

Mikedonovan

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