Shortly after the Bay of Pigs disaster, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas said, “This episode seared him [Kennedy]. He had experienced the extreme power that these groups had, these various insidious influences of the CIA and the Pentagon, on civilian policy, and I think it raised in his own mind the specter: Can Jack Kennedy, President of the United States, ever be strong enough to really rule these two powerful agencies?”
The President’s brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (lower left), a member of the Cuban Study Group, scrutinized Allen Dulles’s (lower right) every move during the post-Bay of Pigs investigation.
This historical and seldom cited document, signed by President Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs investigation, was sent directly to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, bypassing the Secretary of State and the Director, Central Intelligence. The Secretary of Defense was given a copy.
As can be noted, the President made the Joint Chiefs of Staff his advisor in peacetime replacing the CIA. This one order created as much opposition to Kennedy as anything else he did during his administration.
The original memorandum was on two pages, in precisely the language shown here.
The Cairo Conference, Nov. 22-28, 1943, featured, seated from left, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston L. S. Churchill, and Madame Chiang. Madame Chiang not only traveled to Cairo with her husband, but participated in the sessions. Her brother, T.V. Soong, was reported to be the wealthiest man in the world at the time, and the man who kept the generalissimo in power. The author was in Cairo at the time and served as a pilot for American and British delegations.
Premier Josef Stalin, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston L. S. Churchill met publicly at Tehran, November 28-December 1, 1943. Historians have failed to note that Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek were in Tehran and both participated in the conference. On November 27th, the author flew the military aircraft that transported their staff delegates from Cairo to Tehran. Because of the strong Chinese representation in Tehran the agenda of the conference had much to do with Far East planning.
Significant elements of the McNamara-Taylor Report on the situation in Vietnam, given to President Kennedy on October 2, 1963, became White House policy with the official publication of National Security Action Memorandum #263, October 11, 1963. Most important was that which promised to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel by the end of 1965.
Had John F. Kennedy lived, Americans would not have fought and died in Vietnam during that terrible 1965-1975 warfare. The cost: up to $550 billion and 58,000 American lives.
General Maxwell Taylor (left) and Secretary of Defense McNamara discuss their “Vietnam Trip” report with the President, October 2, 1963. It is the leather binder under the file folders.
The President approved “presently prepared plans to withdraw 1,000 military personnel by the end of 1963” and to “train Vietnamese so that essential functions now performed by U.S. military can be carried out by Vietnamese by the end of 1965. It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel by that time.” These quotations, which prove that President Kennedy positively planned to get all Americans out of Vietnam, are from the official White House document, National Security Action Memorandum #263, October 11, 1963.
The New York Times and Bantam Book version of the Pentagon Papers totally reverses this to read, “President Kennedy, who inherited a policy of ‘limited-risk gamble,’ bequeathed to Johnson a broad commitment to war.” There is no reliable basis for that revision of Kennedy’s policy.
In an action unprecedented in U.S. history, almost the entire Kennedy Cabinet had flown to Hawaii, en route to Japan, for a series of conferences, November 20, 1963. Those shown here are (left to right) Orville Freeman of Agriculture, Douglas Dillon of the Treasury, Dean Rusk of State, Stewart Udall of Interior, Luther Hodges of Commerce, Walter Heller of Council of Economic Advisors, and Willard Wirtz of Labor. Others who attended the Honolulu conference were McNamara of Defense, McGeorge Bundy, National Secruity Advisor, and Presidential Press Secretary Pierre Salinger. Looking back at that meeting and at the list of those in attendance, it appears that somehow something most important, other than the conference agenda, must have caused them all to leave Washington at that crucial time, i.e., two days before the President’s death.
This famous photo of the “tramps” picked up by Dallas “police” shortly after the assassination of President Kennedy is, according to the author, one of the most important bits of evidence of the nature of that crime and coverup of November 22, 1963.
Note that (a) the two “policemen” carry shotguns, not rifles, (b) their caps are different (one white chinstrap, one black), (c) both of their caps differ from a true Dallas policeman’s. In addition, one has a Dallas police shoulder patch (not visible in this photo) and the other does not. These “policemen” and the “tramps” are actors in neat clothes and new shoes. In this photo, one of a set of four pictures, these “police” were leading the men to the sheriff’s office at Dealey Plaza. City cops have nothing to do with sheriff’s offices. These “cops” have not handcuffed these dangerous presidential killers.
During 1959, the author received an urgent request from the Director, Central Intelligence, Allen W. Dulles, to provide support and assistance to prevent the overthrow of a friendly Far East government. This secret operation proved to be a success. The CIA sent a commendation to the Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force, for Lieutenant Colonel Prouty that resulted in the award of the Legion of Merit citation and medal. This was presented by Lieutenant General John K. Gearhart.
Soon after, the author was promoted to the grade of colonel, and assigned in 1960 to the Office of Special Operations, a section of immediate office of the Secretary of Defense, where he became the senior Air Force officer responsible for the provision of military support of the clandestine activities of the CIA, among other duties. This office was headed by General Graves B. Erkstine, USMC (Retired), and was the office of assignment for Edward G. Lansdale of the CIA.
As Maxwell Taylor’s “Letter to the President” on the Cuban disaster later stated: “There was no single authority short of the President capable of coordinating the actions of the CIA, State, Defense, and the USIA [U.S. Information Agency].”
Because of the absence of its director, the CIA’s secondary leaders—officials with no combat or command experience—made “the operational decisions which they felt within their authority.” For decisions above them, they were supposed to go to the President. “Mr. Bissell and General Cabell were immediately available for consultation” but, it is crucial to note, there “were usually emissaries sent to obtain” higher approvals. “Emissary” was a far cry from “commander,” as Dulles’s responsibilities required. This task fell far short of effectiveness, as the Taylor letter noted: “Finally, there was the failure to carry the issue to the President when the opportunity was presented and explain to him with proper force the probable military consequences of a last-minute cancellation. ”
In his letter, General Taylor suggested forcefully that after General Cabell had received the call from McGeorge Bundy to cancel the bomber strike planned for dawn on the seventeenth to destroy the last three combat aircraft in Castro’s skimpy air force, someone ought to have gone directly to the President to explain the absolute necessity of the air strike against these three T-33 jet trainers.5
That was the issue. In its guarded language, Taylor’s letter never mentioned the Dulles absence, but it discussed this “breakdown of leadership” during the study group meetings with both Allen Dulles and Bobby Kennedy present. We may be sure it did not go unnoticed by the President during those after-hours meetings with Bobby and his other “Irish Mafia” friends.
At about 9:30 P.M. on April 16th, Mr. McGeorge Bundy, Special Assistant to the President, telephoned General C. P. Cabell of the CIA to inform him that the dawn air strikes the following morning should not be launched. . . .
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br /> In that volatile environment of the Cuban study group, the direct relationship between the failure of the CIA command element to cope with the air strike issue and the absence that weekend of Dulles, the man responsible for the success of the anti-Castro program, became the biggest issue.
For the study group, the sequence of issues became quite clear:
The President had approved the landings and the air strike to destroy the last three combat aircraft in Castro’s air force at dawn before the brigade hit the beach.
Later that evening, McGeorge Bundy had canceled the air strike by calling Cabell. (There is a school of thought that raises the possibility that it was Cabell himself who canceled the air strike, for reasons that quite ominously have an impact upon plans for the President’s assassination in Dallas in 1963.)
Cabell and Bissell, in Dulles’s absence, were inherently unqualified to carry the issue back to the President to “explain to him with proper force the probable military consequences of a last-minute cancellation.”
The Cuban Study Group added: “This failure was a consequence of the restraints put on the anti-Castro air force in planning and executing its strikes, primarily for the purpose of protecting the covert character of the operation. These restraints included the decision to use only the B-26 as a combat aircraft because it had been distributed widely to foreign countries; the limitation of prelanding strikes to those which could be flown from non-U.S. controlled airfields under the guise of coming from Cuban strips, thus eliminating the possibility of using jet fighters or even T-33 trainers; the inability to use any non-Cuban base within short turnaround distance from the target area (about nine hours were required to turn around a B-26 for a second mission over the target from Nicaragua); prohibition of use of American contract pilots for tactical air operations; restriction on ammunitions, notably napalm; and the cancellation of the strikes planned at dawn on D-Day. The last mentioned was probably the most serious as it eliminated the last favorable opportunity to destroy the Castro air force on the ground. The cancellation seems to have resulted partly from the failure to make the air strike plan entirely clear in advance to the President and the Secretary of State, but, more importantly, by misgivings as to the effect of the air strikes on the position of the United States in the current UN debate on Cuba. Finally, there was the failure to carry the issue to the President when the opportunity was presented and explain to him with proper force the probable military consequences of a last-minute cancellation.”
The members of the study group saw this cancellation as the clear cause of the failure of the whole anti-Castro program that had been initiated in March 1960. To fortify their own professional findings, they called before them a man who had been instrumental from the earliest days in these decisions. This man was a key Cuban exile named Manuel Antonio de Varona, premier of Cuba before the Batista regime.6
The CIA tried to monopolize him. Nixon wooed him, as did Kennedy. Finally, he came to the Cuban Study Group and told the whole story. Needless to say, he played all sides, as all “contras” do.
De Varona made the following statement before the Cuban Study Group: “I would like to state that we would be in Cuba today if it was not for the lack of air support that our forces suffered. All those who’ve returned said that but for three airplanes,7 they would have been successful in their invasion attempt.”
Dulles was the man on the spot. There is no record of what he said behind those closed doors, but a record was unnecessary. Bobby Kennedy was always there. Despite this maneuver by the Kennedys, however, Dulles still controlled the moves. Few people have the experience to know how such things work under the cloak of secrecy. This is the great weapon of the CIA, and it is why the CIA cannot be stopped—short of eliminating all of its money. All the people who worked on the Bay of Pigs project—Cuban and American—did so under deep cover. CIA agents and military supporting-cast members all had pseudonyms and lived cover-story lives. The Cubans with whom they worked had no idea who these agents were, and their own American associates did not know their true names and identities.
Thus, after the anti-Castro program had failed and all participants had been dispersed, they themselves did not know who had been there with them. This gave Allen Dulles the key role within the study group. General Taylor had no alternative but to ask Dulles for the names of people—CIA, military, and Cuban—who could be called to testify before the group.
Dulles weeded out the ones who could tell too much and padded the list with those who knew very little. Although Bobby Kennedy sat there and listened to all of the dialogue, he had no way of realizing that he was hearing a carefully structured scenario. The book he wrote several years later revealed how little he really knew about some of the actual activities.
This advantage enabled Dulles and the CIA to shift the blame to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the military. Dulles kept quiet about the shortcomings of his own agency and made it appear that Kennedy’s denial of the employment of U.S. Navy fighter aircraft as “air cover” was the real reason for the failure of the project. (Since 1961, in fact, the CIA has mounted a vigorous and comprehensive propaganda and revisionist campaign designed to ensure that the public is afforded no opportunity to discover the true facts.)
The CIA had kept the various elements of the Cuban exile groups apart. Many of them were of different political backgrounds and social levels and did not get along with each other. Thus, these diverse groups were trained in widely separated camps. When it came time to set sail for Cuba, the CIA put some units in the forefront of the brigade and landed them on the beach. At the same time, other units were “lost” at sea and never reached Cuba. Obviously they were the first to return to their separate base in Louisiana. Their emotional story of the failure to use their units on the beaches has led to much of the misunderstanding of the tactics of the operation. The CIA played this up and blamed the U.S. military for the oversight.
It happens that the Louisiana elements of the Cuban exile groups and their “mercenary” American trainers became suspect during the investigation of President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. Many of them had been recruited in the later, and much larger, anti-Castro program Mongoose under the CIA’s most experienced paramilitary leader, Gen. Edward G. Lansdale.
All this made a good cover story later, because the individual selected to be the “patsy” in Kennedy’s murder was a former U.S. Marine Corps enlisted man named Lee Harvey Oswald. He was born in New Orleans and had been active there with a Fair Play for Cuba organization during the early 1960s. Many assassination theorists have carried this presumed assassin’s trail from Dallas through the “Oswald” scenario to New Orleans and thence to Cuba and Castro himself. This is a futile exercise, because Oswald was only the “patsy,” not the murderer. Yet this trail of diversionary “golden apples” (as we recall them from Greek mythology) continues to divert the unwary and the overeager.
In an earlier chapter, I mentioned an unusual article that appeared in the Reader’s Digest of November 1964 in which the author, Richard Nixon, tied Cuba, Castro, and John F. Kennedy together. Nixon is one of those, as is Ford, who, for various reasons, want the American public to believe Oswald was the “lone assassin.” A single assassin does not have to have a motive for murder; a conspiracy must have a why. The “lone assassin” scenario is a cover story to preclude a conspiracy and its inevitable why.
At another time, Nixon wanted the American public to believe that he and Henry Kissinger had valid reasons for their genocidal bombardment of Cambodia with B-52s. This decision is also woven into the tapestry of history.
This orchestration of hidden motives and public smoke screens caused Kennedy to underestimate the power and skill of the CIA. He did not get to the root of the disaster of the Bay of Pigs invasion, and as a result he, too, became a victim of the sinister power of those agencies of the government that operate in total secrecy, knowing that they do not have to account to anyone for their actions and expenditures.
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bsp; None of this should be taken to mean that Kennedy was not wise to the ways of Washington or that he could not mount extremely shrewd political maneuvers of his own. He was, and he did—but, despite this experience, he was up against impossible odds.
When he created the Cuban Study Group, he made it appear as if he were investigating a failed operation and nothing more. But this was not quite the case. It was only part of the story. Kennedy’s precise instructions to General Taylor were: “. . . to study our governmental practices and programs in the areas of military and paramilitary guerrilla and antiguerrilla activity which fell short of outright war with a view to strengthening our work in this area.”
It was at this time that Kennedy began his campaign against the CIA and its allies of the military-industrial complex, a campaign that reached its climax with his publication of National Security Action Memorandum #263 on October 11, 1963, and that was aborted by his murder. The above statement was the Cuban Study Group’s real directive, and it is what Kennedy wanted to discover for himself, then and for the future. Kennedy did not like what he found when he came to the White House. As he moved to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, a huge tidal wave that had been set in motion many months earlier loomed up to engulf him and his new administration.
The new President had been critical of the way covert operations had functioned during the 1950s. As a long-term member of Congress, he was fully aware of the record of failed intelligence operations throughout the years. With the Bay of Pigs disaster as a case study, Kennedy directed General Taylor to dissect the entire system and to come up with something better. This was an issue that divided the study group and widened the abyss between Kennedy and Dulles. Yet Kennedy continued to make use of Dulles in his desire to probe the real depths of the murky business of intelligence and clandestine operations.
JFK: CIA, Vietnam & The Plot to Assassinate JFK Page 25