When Kennedy entered office, he quickly let it be known he was very interested in a political solution in Laos.63 At his first press conference, Kennedy said that he hoped to establish Laos as a “peaceful country—an independent country not dominated by either side.”64 He appointed a task force to study the problem, was in regular communication with it and the Laotian ambassador, and decided by February that Laos must have a coalition government, the likes of which Eisenhower had rejected out of hand. Kennedy also had little interest in a military solution. He could not understand sending American troops to fight for a country whose people did not care to fight for themselves.65 He later told Richard Nixon, “I just don’t think we ought to get involved in Laos, particularly where we might find ourselves fighting millions of Chinese troops in the jungles. In any event, I don’t see how we can make any move in Laos, which is 5,000 miles away, if we don’t make a move in Cuba which is only 90 miles away.”66
He therefore worked to get the Russians to push the Pathet Lao into a cease-fire agreement. This included a maneuver on Kennedy’s part to indicate military pressure if the Russians did not intervene strongly enough with the Pathet Lao. The maneuver worked, and in May of 1961, a truce was called. A few days later, a conference convened in Geneva to hammer out conditions for a neutral Laos. By July of 1962, a new government, which included the Pathet Lao, had been hammered out.67
In Vietnam, within two weeks of his inauguration, Kennedy encountered a proposal left by the outgoing administration for a stronger commitment to South Vietnam. This was presented to him by two men. One would end up being the resident hawk in the Kennedy White House, Walt Rostow. The other was the man who the Dulles brothers had originally sent to Vietnam to prop up Ngo Dinh Diem, General Edward Lansdale. Lansdale presented to the president a grim report he had prepared for the Eisenhower administration. It painted a dire picture of continuous communist encroachment into South Vietnam.68 This marked the beginning of an unrelenting campaign by several Kennedy advisers to get the new president to commit American combat troops to Saigon. The attempt occurred no less than nine times in 1961. Each attempt was parried by Kennedy.69 It all culminated in a week-long debate in the White House in November, 1961. Kennedy’s response to the fact that all his advisers wanted him to send in combat troops is memorialized in a memorandum made by Vice-President Johnson’s military attaché, Howard Burris. The Burris memo deserves to be paraphrased at length.
After Secretary of State Dean Rusk requested full support for an American commitment to South Vietnam, Kennedy vigorously argued against committing combat troops. Kennedy stated that, unlike with Korea, the origins of the this conflict were unclear. Kennedy said Korea was a case of pure aggression from the north. The conflict in Vietnam was not so clear cut. Therefore, even leading Democrats would have a hard time defending such a position in public. The USA would also need its allies since such a program would undoubtedly lead to much controversy. He then added that much manpower and material had been spent there already and yet there was little to show for it. And, before that, the French had spent even more with very little success. Kennedy explained that this was because guerrilla warfare in the jungle was very difficult to fight, especially with an enemy who was nowhere and everywhere at the same time. When others tried to divert his thought process, Kennedy returned the discussion to what would be done next in Vietnam, not whether or not the U.S. would become involved.70 Kennedy’s ultimate decision was to send in 15,000 American advisers to help South Vietnam fight the war.
Kennedy’s arguments for direct nonintervention clearly hark back to his 1951 conversations with Gullion in Saigon. Interestingly, as Gordon Goldstein points out in his book Lessons in Disaster, when Lyndon Johnson began his policy of escalation in 1965–66—that is, the direct insertion of tens of thousands of American combat troops—he drew succor knowing that former president Dwight Eisenhower would back him in that policy. In fact, Eisenhower wanted LBJ to request that his entire Cabinet resign as soon as he took office.71 Eisenhower then unhesitatingly backed Vietnam commander William Westmoreland’s recurrent calls for more ground troops. Eisenhower even went as far as saying “… he would use any weapons required, adding that if we were to use tactical nuclear weapons, such use would not in itself add to the chance of escalation.”72 This rather shocking contemplation of the use of tactical atomic weapons shows that Operation Vulture was only shelved because Vietnam was a foreign war at the time.
But as several authors have shown, Kennedy was insistent that he was not going to insert American combat troops to fight the Vietnam War. And with Goldstein’s book about National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, we now have on record that all three of Kennedy’s chief military advisers—Bundy, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and General Maxwell Taylor—concurring that this was not going to happen with Kennedy under any foreseeable circumstances. And, in fact, it did not. At the time of Kennedy’s death, there was not one more American combat troop in Vietnam than when he was inaugurated. As we shall see, this changed with remarkable speed once Johnson assumed office.
The giant island archipelago of Indonesia had been colonized by the Netherlands in the late 1500s, and then dominated by the private Dutch East Indies Company for the next 200 years. In 1798, authority over Indonesia was switched back to the Netherlands, which retained control until the Japanese invaded the huge mineral rich country in 1942. When Japan was defeated, nationalist leader Achmed Sukarno declared Indonesia an independent country. But British army units soon began landing in Indonesia. They wanted to help the Dutch restore their colonial empire there. Sukarno and his Moslem Vice-President Mohammed Hatta tried for a diplomatic solution. This proved unpopular and a guerrilla war followed. International pressure finally made the Dutch cede control over to Sukarno in December of 1949. But the Dutch decided to keep hold of the eastern island of West Irian.
Sukarno and Hatta tried to keep Indonesia a neutral in the Cold War. This way, the nation would be free to follow its own interests in its foreign policy. There were two prominent American-based oil companies at work in Indonesia at this time. They were both part of the Rockefeller owned Standard Oil empire: Stanvac and Caltex. Internally, these holdings were balanced by a large communist party called the PKI, which usually was loyal to Sukarno. In 1957 there was an assassination attempt on Sukarno. He blamed this on the Netherlands and used it to take control of the last Dutch business holdings in Indonesia. The CIA, which was already funneling money to the opposition, blamed the murder attempt on the PKI.73
The large influence of the PKI, Sukarno’s seizure of the Dutch interests, and his desire to “go it alone” in his foreign policy now made him a target for another overthrow attempt by the Dulles brothers. As one CIA officer later wrote, the first step was to manufacture intelligence reports about Sukarno in order to generate alarm in Washington.74 When the American ambassador to Indonesia then wrote that he disagreed with these CIA assessments about Sukarno, John Foster Dulles had him removed and replaced with someone more amenable with his brother’s intentions.75 In late 1957, Allen Dulles secretly visited Indonesia to organize support for the upcoming coup attempt. This would use army officers, plus civilians who were bought off by the Agency, in order to arrange attacks on various islands. But the overarching goal was to make it appear as a local uprising. Not one in any way sponsored by the United States.
This cover story was demolished on May 18, 1958. During a bombing run that was part of the phony uprising, CIA pilot Allen Pope was shot down. He had enough American ID on him to prove that he was in the employ of the American government.76 Since Pope’s bombing run had killed many civilians, Sukarno was able to use it as evidence that it was the USA that was killing innocent Indonesians. This helped turn the tide with both the Indonesian populace and the army. Spurred on by this propaganda victory, Sukarnos’s loyal forces now stopped the CIA-led rebellion. Prior to the Bay of Pigs, this was the Agency’s single largest failed operation.
Three months after hi
s inauguration, President Kennedy decided to invite Sukarno to the United States. Sukarno was at first reluctant to come, but he later relented. Since Kennedy wished to discuss the issue of Pope’s imprisonment, he asked Dulles for the report on how Pope became a prisoner of Sukarno. Dulles gave him a redacted copy of the internal CIA report.77 But even in this form, Kennedy understood what had occurred. After reading it, he exclaimed to an adviser, “No wonder Sukarno doesn’t like us very much. He has to sit down with people who tried to overthrow his government.”78 Well prepared, and sympathetic to Sukarno’s dilemma in relation to the USA, Kennedy managed to pull off a mutually beneficial meeting. He broached the idea of Sukarno freeing Pope, and he also arranged for a team of economists from Tufts University to come up with a plan on how economic aid could best be extended to Indonesia in nonmilitary ways.79 When, in 1962, at the direct request of Robert Kennedy, Sukarno agreed to release Pope, President Kennedy now took the lead in helping Sukarno talk the Netherlands into returning West Irian to Indonesia. This was an issue that Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles, in deference to the Netherlands, had kept bottled up at the United Nations.80 President Kennedy now made this transfer to Sukarno a priority. He sent his brother and veteran ambassador Ellsworth Bunker to personally visit both Sukarno in Indonesia and the Dutch at The Hague to hammer out an arrangement. In 1962, this agreement was approved at the United Nations and signed into law.81
As the reader can see, in all four cases—Congo, Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia— not only did Kennedy break with previous policy, but he actually went beyond that. In the cases of Congo and Indonesia, he endangered relations with European allies in order to favor emerging nationalist movements led by local leaders. Movements and leaders who had been perceived by Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers as to be either communist or communist leaning. In the cases of Laos and Vietnam, unlike Eisenhower, he simply did not believe either place was crucial to the national security of the United States. And therefore, neither was worth sending American troops into action. And because of his understanding of the forces of nationalism in emerging colonial nations, Kennedy was not enthralled by the dangerously flawed domino theory. Which, it should be noted, was not actually originated by John Foster Dulles, but by the Democrat Dean Acheson.
CHAPTER THREE
Bay of Pigs: Kennedy vs. Dulles
“That little Kennedy, he thought he was a god.”
—Allen Dulles
The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba was first designed during the last year of the Eisenhower administration. It was meant to be the culminating action of the battle plans that originated in the White House in March of 1960. It was originally drafted by the CIA’s guerrilla warfare expert Jake Esterline as a small-scale infiltration plan.1 The idea was to unite with a larger group of dissidents on the island. It was thought this could be done since there was a group of anti-Castro rebels in the Escambray Mountains that this landing force could locate and unite with.2
This design was called the Trinidad Plan and had been approved by Eisenhower on March 17, 1960. It consisted of a group of 500 trainees and 37 radio operators. The CIA-trained Cuban exiles could be used as an invasion force, or as infiltration teams. But Esterline noted that any successful paramilitary operation would be “dependent upon widespread guerrilla resistance throughout the area.”3 In other words there had to be a significant number of resistance forces already on the island to recruit from. For even if all five-hundred men went in, this would not be nearly enough to combat Castro’s standing army, plus his reserve forces.
Somewhere around the time of Kennedy’s election, this concept was changed. A cable from Washington directed a reduction in the guerrilla teams to only 60 men. The rest of the exiles began to be formed into an amphibious and airborne assault strike force.4 This may have been caused by Castro’s aggressive internal war to eliminate any opposition forces to him inside of Cuba. By the end of 1960, all dissenting newspapers had been closed, and radio and television stations were under strict state control. Neighborhood spy teams had been set up to turn in counter revolutionary suspects. And thousands of them had been jailed.5 The main organized counter revolutionary group on the island, UNIDAD, advised the CIA it was not yet ready to support any large military actions. Another factor impacting this decision was the difficulty the CIA had in supplying dissidents on the island by aerial drops. Only four of the thirty drops were successful.6
Therefore, in late 1960, CIA Director of Plans Richard Bissell altered the concept. It went from a slow, clandestine build-up of guerrilla forces to an overt assault which consisted of an amphibious landing of a strike force accompanied by aerial bombing. The idea now was to trigger an uprising, instead of preparing for one in advance.7 The budget of the operation now tripled.8 As Inspector General Lyman Kirkpatrick noted in his highly critical report: as the operation expanded, it reached a point where it simply was not plausibly deniable.9 But yet, even with this, the departing Eisenhower still recommended the project to president elect Kennedy. He said all was going well with the plan, and he urged Kennedy to continue with it.10 In fact, Eisenhower had broken off relations with Cuba on January 3.
Once this switch in concepts occurred, the preparations now became large scale. Kirkpatrick’s report is highly circumspect of the preparations for the personnel. He criticized the training the Cuban exiles received in advance of the assault. For instance, the supervisor in Guatemala, which was one of the main training bases, never got written instructions from CIA HQ as to what type of training he was supposed to carry out. Kirkpatrick noted that the training in New Orleans was also confused, and the supplies never arrived as planned.11 As we will see, CIA Officer David Phillips was likely involved in the training in New Orleans, as was David Ferrie.12 There was also a diversionary element to the plan. This aspect was also trained in New Orleans.13 Yet, in a mystery that has never been fully explained, this diversionary landing never came off.14
In the face of all these logistical and tactical problems, the CIA was still telling President Kennedy on March 1, 1961 that, “The Cuban paramilitary force if effectively used has a good chance of overthrowing Castro.” And, in fact, one of the techniques used to prod a reluctant Kennedy into going along with the plan was to say that if the USA waited any longer, the Cuban military would be greatly strengthened and much harder to dislodge.15 Another technique the Agency used was to tell Kennedy there would be a “disposal problem” with the Cubans. That is, what would America do with thousands of Cuban exiles who had been primed and ready to invade their homeland and take it from this Communist usurper?16 When a skeptical Kennedy would ask Dulles and Bissell probing questions about tactics, Dulles would ultimately reply that he felt more confident about this operation than he did the operation against Guatemala in 1954.17 (As we will see, there is strong evidence that, not only was Dulles prevaricating here, but he knew he was doing so at the time.) But no matter how hard the Agency tried, Kennedy was never enthusiastic about the plan. When Arthur Schlesinger asked him what he thought about the invasion, Kennedy replied that he thought about it as little as possible.18 And Dulles understood Kennedy’s distance. He later referred to the CIA invasion plan as “a sort of orphan child JFK had adopted—he had no real love and affection for it.”19 Therefore, he and Bissell knew they had to boost his enthusiasm for it, by any means necessary. In the middle of March, about one month before the invasion, the CIA gave Kennedy one of its most boldly tendentious reports of all. It said that Castro’s popularity was diminishing and that only 20 percent of the public supported him. It further said that many Cubans thought Castro would fall soon. Worst of all, it predicted that if a real fight against Castro were to begin, 75–80 percent of the militia units would defect.20 The true facts indicated the opposite: Castro had just rounded up the last of the active resistance groups hidden in the Escambray Mountains.21 Therefore, when the invasion occurred, not one resistance fighter from the island ever got to the beach. In other words, there was no real, organized dissident force fo
r the invasion to unite with at all.
Kennedy also asked: What would the force do if it got pinned down on the beach? Dulles and Bissell replied that they would then “go guerrilla.” But yet, the guerrilla-style training had never really been part of the training camp curriculum. And the new location for the invasion was separated from the mountains by eighty miles of swamp. How could any surviving force trek that far if they were under fire?22 Yet according to Arthur Schlesinger, who was in the White House at the time, it was the contingency of “going guerrilla” that ultimately convinced Kennedy to go along with the plan.23
In the middle of March, Kennedy asked that the original plan, with a landing at Trinidad, be changed. He thought that it too much resembled “a small-scale World War II type of amphibious assault.”24 He requested an “unspectacular landing” with minimal, if any, air support. The idea was to land small groups, or cadres, which were thoroughly prepared for guerrilla operations. In fact, at one meeting in February, Kennedy asked, “Could not such a force be landed gradually and quietly and make its first major military efforts from the mountains—then taking shape as a Cuban force within Cuba, not as an invasion force sent by the Yankees?25 So clearly, Kennedy did not like the CIA’s frontal assault plan. Further, and this was to be a point of heated controversy after the operation failed, Kennedy’s revision envisioned air operations only after the landing force had secured a beachhead.26 In light of this, the CIA therefore switched the landing site from Trinidad, in the center of Cuba on the south coast, to Playa Giron, which was slightly west. One of the specific reasons this site was chosen was because, “The beachhead area contains one and possibly two airstrips adequate to handle B-26’s.”27 But it became obvious that the CIA needed some air cover to land their strike force version of the plan, and they insisted on this. Yet even under those circumstances Kennedy still resisted. He asked Bissell, “Do you really have to have these air strikes?” To which Bissell replied that they would work to have minimum noise from the air and that Cubans on the island would join in an uprising quickly28 Another reason that the Playa Giron site was chosen was because there were no known “enemy forces (even police) in the area, and it is anticipated that the landing can be carried out with few if any casualties and with no serious combat.”29
Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, & the Garrison Case Page 6