Even if there were only one communist in the state department,
that'd still be one communist too many.
Everywhere I look around the world, the question is,
what -maybe- we gonna lose next?
This is the first intercontinental conference
of so-called colored people
We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry
of vast proportions.
Do you want a man for president who's seasoned through and through
but not so doggone seasoned that he won't try something new?
A man who's old enough to know and young enough to do
Well, it's up to you, it's up to you it's strictly up to you.
The 1960 presidential election was fought primarily on the issue of
communism.
Above everything else, the American people want leaders
who will keep the peace without surrender for America and the world.
Positioning himself like Barack Obama in 2008
as the candidate of change
young challenger John F. Kennedy was able to take the strongly
anti-communist republican Richard Nixon to task for failing to prevent
a missile gap and for permitting the establishment of a communist regime
only 90 miles from the Florida coast line.
It certainly appears that the 34th man to occupy the white house will be
43 year old John Fitzgerald Kennedy
to those nations who would make themselves our adversary,
we offer not a pledge, but a request
that both sides begin anew the quest for peace
before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science
engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction.
Kennedy, America's first catholic president, won a narrow and, perhaps a stolen, election.
But he did take Washington and the world by storm with his wits and
graceful elegance.
His administration was nicknamed Camelot, after king Arthur's mythical
round table of peace.
His opportunistic but politically astute choice of Lyndon Johnson of Texas as
vice-president confirmed the liberal wing of the party's distrust of him.
Elected to the senate in '52, Kennedy had been a cold war liberal who had
avoided criticizing Joseph McCarthy, an old family friend.
His younger brother, Robert, had even served on McCarthy's staff.
Alluding to the title of his Pulitzer prize winning book Profiles in Courage,
Eleanor Roosevelt said she wished that Kennedy had had a little less profile
and a little more courage.
His team, a combination of insiders from foundations, corporations and
Wall St. firms as well as progressives and intellectuals, was labeled the
best and the brightest for their intelligence, achievements and can-do spirit
typified by national security advisor McGeorge Bundy, the first applicant
to get perfect scores on all 3 Yale entrance exams.
At defense, Kennedy brought in a civilian outsider, Robert McNamara
renowned for his computer-like mind in leading the Ford Motor Co.
he quickly earned the immediate distrust of his generals by putting
the Pentagon under microscopic scrutiny.
A devastating nuclear war plan had been handed down to them
from Eisenhower. McNamara was appalled by what he found:
a culture of paranoid, worst case scenarios.
When Kennedy asked the statistically minded McNamara
to ascertain just how big the missile gap really was, it took
3 weeks to confirm that there was no gap, and several months to
find out that there was quite a huge difference:
The US had approximately 25,000 nuclear weapons, the Soviets 2,500
the US 1,500 heavy bombers 1,000 of them in Europe within Soviet range
the Soviets, 192.
the US 45 ICBM's the Soviets 4.
This is Cuba, where communism has established its first rich head in the
western hemisphere. It provides communism with a convenient
arsenal of planes, tanks and modern weapons just 90 miles from American shore,
only 7 minutes by jet.
Kennedy was briefed on Eisenhower's invasion plan for Cuba by Allen Dulles
who assured "off-led, the Cuban people would rise in support".
Several civilian advisors took sharp issue with the plan.
but the inexperienced president feared blocking an operation backed
by Eisenhower and the Joint Chiefs.
3 days before the operation, in April 1961, 8 US B-26 bombers flown by Cuban exiles
incapacitated half of Castro's air force.
The US has committed no aggression against Cuba and no offensive has been
launched from Florida or from any other part of the US.
Ambassador Adlai Stevenson, in an embarrassing prequel to Colin Powell's
performance at the UN over Iraq in 2003, showed a photograph
of a plane supposedly flown by a Cuban defector, but quickly exposed
as belonging to the CIA.
The assault has begun on the dictatorship of Fidel Castro.
Almost 1600 Cuban exiles arrived at the Bay of Pigs in 7 ships, 2 of them
owned by United Fruit. But Cuban troops were ready.
And no popular uprising ever occured.
The invaders begged for direct US support, and much to the shock of the CIA,
Kennedy refused this support, as he warned he would, fearing a Soviet counter move
against west Berlin.
At a midnight meeting military leaders and the CIA's chief of clandestine services
pressed Kennedy for 3 hours to send ground and air support. They expected it.
Eisenhower would've done it. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
said it was reprehensible, almost criminal, to pull the rug out.
But Kennedy stood his ground.
The 114 rebels were killed, roughly 1200 captured.
It was to be a chilling beginning to one of the most turbulent decades of
whatever changed the world in 1960s.
Heads up America Let's stand, be brave, keep our defenses high
Heads up America A land that is prepared can never die
There's an old saying that, a victory has a 100 fathers and defeat is an orphan
through the statements, detailed discussions on not to conceal responsibility,
because I'm the responsible officer of the government
The entire sordid affair had a profound effect on the president, who told
an influential journalist friend: The first advice I'm going to give
my successor is to watch the generals and to avoid feeling that, just because
they were military men, their opinions on military matters were worth a damn.
He seemed to begin to understand what Eisenhower was warning about, but his
learning curve would need to be a sharp one to escape the steel trap of cold war thinking.
Publicly, Kennedy took full responsibility for the fiasco, privately he was furious at
the Joint Chiefs sons of bitches and those CIA bastards, threatening to
Incredibly, he fired Allen Dulles, albeit diplomatically, and two other top officials
and all CIA overseas personnel were placed under state department control
Kennedy's growing mistrust of his military and intelligence advisors made it easier to
rebuff their pressure to send troops in 1961 into the tiny landlocked Asian nation of Laos
something that Eisenhower had warned him might be necessary to defeat the communists.
Laos, strategic buffer state between the red block and free Asia is watched
with concern by all the world.
The Joint Chiefs wanted Kennedy to give prior commitment to a large scale
invading force. Arthur Schlesinger, an aide and respected historian, later said:
After the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy had contempt for the Joint Chiefs. He dismissed them as
a bunch of old men. He thought Lemnitzer was a dope.
And as a result, Kennedy opted for a neutralist solution which angered the Pentagon.
It would come back to haunt him.
The mood was dark when Kennedy travelled to Vienna to meet Khrushchev
at their first summit conference at June of '61
Khrushchev berated the young president for America's global imperialism:
We in the USSR feel that the revolutionary process should have a right to exist
The major issue for Khruschev was Germany.
What terrified him was the prospect of west Germany finally getting control
over US nukes deployed so close to the Soviet union.
And also by 1961, approximately 20% of east German population, some 2.5 million people
had fled through the open borders seeking a better life in west Germany.
It was an open sore humiliation for the Soviets who now wanted
a treaty recognizing 2 separate Germany's and the withdrawal of western forces
from west Berlin.
Khruschev explained to an american journalist:
We have a much longer history with Germany. We have seen how quickly
governments in Germany can change, and how easy it is for Germany to become
an instrument of mass murder. You like to think...
we have no public opinion. Don't be sure about this.
We have a saying here:
Give a German a gun, sooner or later he will point it at Russians,
that we could crush Germany, in a few minutes.
But we fear the ability of Germany to commit the US to start a war,
an atomic war.
How many times do you have to be burned before you respect fire?
Kennedy's parting comment to Kruschev was: I see it's going to be a very cold winter.
We have wholly different views of right and wrong,
of what is an internal affair and what is an aggression.
And above all, we have wholly different concepts of where the world is
and where it is going.
Later that summer, Kennedy intensified the crisis with a sabre-rattling speech
The source of world troubling tension is Moscow, not Berlin.
And if war begins it will have begun in Moscow, and not Berlin.
increasing the army by 300,000 men tripling the draft, and called for a
national program to construct public and private fallout shelters,
he reminded citizens: In the thermonuclear age,
any misjudgements on either side about the intentions of the other
could rain more devastation in several hours than has been wrought
in all the wars of human history.
The Warsaw pact nations responded in dramatic fashion.
On August 13, east German troops began erecting barricades and road blocks
all across Germany to shut off the stream of escaping east Germans.
The barb wire was soon replaced with concrete.
Kennedy, in defiance, sent 1500 US troops by road from west Germany into
west Berlin where they were met by vice-president Johnson.
That's a month Khrushchev resumed nuclear testing.
When Kennedy learned of this he erupted,
fucked again.
Despite the US's nuclear superiority the Air Force wanted to increase
the missile count to 3,000
McNamara fought them down to 1000 as the compromised number.
The Soviets by October were detonating a 30 mega ton bomb
the biggest yet exploded.
And the next week, a 50+ mega ton bomb, over 3,000 times as powerful
as the one dropped on Hiroshima.
Kennedy had inherited by now the full route of Dulles' brinksmanship.
To an outside observer, it might have seem that Americans had taken leave of their senses
in the summer and fall of '61 as the nation conducted an extended conversation
on buidling fallout shelters in their homes, as well as the ethics of killing neighbors
or friends to protect their shelter.
You got a bunch of your neighbors outside who want to stay alive
keep on doing what you're doing and we'll bust out where you're now
Despite media pressure, surprisingly few people actually built shelters
either out of a sense of non-resignation or the recognition of the difficulties of a
meaningful survival.
In hindsight, the construction of the monstrous Berlin wall actually diffused
the immediate threat of war, enabling Khrushchev to appease his hard liners.
Kennedy confided: it's not a very nice solution but a wall is a hell of lot better than a war.
In another part of the world however, Kennedy had given his commitment
to the politically important Cuban exile community in Florida
to overthrow the Castro goverment.
This would spark significant tensions with the Soviet union.
In early November he unleashed operation Mongoose,
a terror campaign overseen by his brother Robert and run by Edward Lansdale,
designed to wreck Cuba's economy and, among other things, secretly continue the
up-to-now bungled assasination attempts on Castro.
Seeking a pretext for military action, the Joint Chiefs approved operation Northwoods
which included a Remember the Maine incident modeled on the ship sinking that triggered
the Spanish-American war in 1898.
Girls delightful in Cuba. stop. Could send you prose poems
about scenery but don't feel right spending your money. stop.
There is no war in Cuba. Signed Wheeler. Any answer?
Yes. Dear Wheeler: You provide the prose poems, I'll provide the war.
This plan included staging a Cuban government hijacking, shooting down of a
civilian airliner, sinking boatloads of Cubans escaping to Florida,
and blaming the communist government.
Kennedy rejected the plan, but US actions throughout 1962
convinced the Soviets that a Cuban invasion was imminent.
In january, the US coerced Latin American countries to suspend
Cuba's membership in the OAS.
The US conducted a series of large scale military execises in the Caribbean in the
spring, summer and fall of '62
one involving 79 ships, 300 aircraft and more than 40,000 troops.
The last one in october with 7500 marines set to participate was codenamed Ortsac
a mock invasion of an island replete with the overthrow of its government.
The message was clear.
Kennedy was equally intent on standing up to the communists in Vietnam.
But as a student of history, he must have harbored doubts about
another land war in Asia.
As a young congressman he'd visited Vietnam in 1951 during the debacle
of the Korean war, and advised against aiding the French colonialists, and
later spoke broadly of needing to win the support of the Arabs, Africans
and Asians who
he had already pointed out the contradiction of supporting the
French empire in Africa and Asia while opposing Soviet moves in Hungary and Poland
But he was now president, and was soon defending a corrupt south Vietnamese
government that was banning public assembly, some political parties and even public dancing
Embracing Eisenhower's dominoe theory Kennedy was now insisting that Vietnam
represented the cornerstone of the free world in south east Asia:
the finger in the dike.
Lyndon Johnson went to Vietnam in May of '61 and annointed Ngo Dinh Diem
and painting a bleak picture pressed for a much larger US involvement.
The generals and even McNamara agreed that only US combat troops could forestall a
communist victory.
However Kennedy, a decorated veteran of WW2, resisted sending in combat troops.
He said to Arthur Schlesinger:
The troops will march in, the bands will play, the crowds will cheer, and
in 4 days everyone will have forgotten. Then we will be told we have to send in
more troops. Well, it's like taking a drink: the effect wears off
and you have to take another.
But he was an admirer of guerilla warfare in WW2, where British and Americans had
fought behind the lines in places like the Burma jungle.
And he did approve his generals' other recommendations expanding military involvement
The US personnel in Vietnam jumped from 800 when Kennedy took office
to over 16,000 advisors in 1963.
He also allowed a growing army of CIA and numerous American civilian
contractors to flock to this new honeypot of enterprise.
Under Kennedy's 3 year watch CIA launched 163 major covert operations
worldwide. Only 7 fewer than had been conducted under Eisenhower in 8 years.
Vietnam in its early stages was sometimes referred as a CIA war.
At West Point, Kennedy reinforced this by saying: it was another type of war
new in its intensity, ancient in its origins war by ambush, eroding and exhausting
the enemy, instead of engaging them.
History knows the contrary proved to be true in Vietnam.
Under Kennedy, and mostly unknown to the American public, the US began
resettling villagers at gun point in barbwire-enclosed compounds
guarded by unreliable south Vietnamese government troops, and
using herbicides to defoliate guerilla areas
the long term environmental and health effects would turn out disastrously
for Vietnamese and Americans alike.
But, it would be the Cuban missile crisis in Oct 1962 that trully impressed upon Kennedy
the potentially disastrous repercussions of his hardlined cold war policies.
On a sunday Oct 14th, a U2 surveillance plane brought back photographic evidence
of Soviet medium range ballistic missiles in position in Cuba.
It was quite a shock.
Khrushchev had lied to him, promising no offensive weapons in Cuba.
But he was making a blunder of epic proportions.
The last thing Soviets wanted in 1962 was a direct military confrontation with the US
With little more than 10 ICBMs that could reliably reach US soil and fewer than 300
nuclear warheads, they stood no change against the US's 5000 deliverable
nuclear bombs and nearly 2000 ICBMs and bombers.
Why did Khrushchev do this?
The American public never understood.
The media presented Soviet actions in Cuba as a case of outright Soviet aggression.
But from the Soviet point of view, it was a reasonable response to
repeated signs at the US was preparing a first strike against the Soviet union.
The missiles might also deter the... invasion of Cuba,
which in a sense had now become a pawn in the game.
The missiles would make US think twice before attacking, as Khrushchev said
giving the Americans
There was also no question that Khrushchev genuinely admired Castro
who had come to power on his own without outside help,
and had enormous symbolic value in the third world.
Finally, the missiles were an inexpensive way for Khrushchev to placate those who
questioned his leadership in the communist world.
But it was so dangerous what he did.
So dangerous.
In his thinking, Khrushchev had intended to announce the presence of
the nuclear missiles on Nov 7th at the 45th anniversary of the
Bolshevik revolution.
But as military analyst Daniel Ellsberg
has pointed out, by keeping secret the fact that he had delivered tactical
cruise and ballistic missiles along with their nuclear warheads,
Khrushchev had transformed a potentially effective means of deterring a US invasion
into a destabilizing provocation that backfired.
The US never understood the warheads had already arrived.
The whole point of the doomsday machine
is lost, if you keep it a secret
why didn't you tell the world, eh?
It was to be announced at the party congress on monday
as you know, the premier loves surprises.
Even today, few realize the gravity of the Cuban missile crisis, and
even fewer seem to grasp its enduring lessons.
Dulles' legacy of brinksmanship of going to the edge had
finally spawned its Frankenstein monster.
Two days later, Kennedy met with his key advisors in a top secret
meeting hoping to stop the missiles before they were fully installed.
3 days later on Oct. 19th he met with his Joint Chiefs.
They pushed for a surgical airstrike without warning to remove the missiles
followed by an all-out invasion of Cuba.
Lemay assured Kennedy that the Soviets would not respond.
Lemay welcomed nuclear war as inevitable, and a war that
his country was currently in a position to win.
There might not be a second opportunity.
He fulminated against the Russian bear:
Let's take his leg off, right up to his testicles
at second thought, let's take his testicles too.
After the meeting, Kennedy remarked to his aide Kenneth O'Donnell:
If we listen to them and do what they want us to do, none of us
will be alive later to tell them that they were wrong.
With US missiles in Turkey, so close to the Soviet union, McNamara contended
that the strategic balance of power was not changed.
Kennedy agreed. But,
understanding the political symbolism, said that allowing the missiles to stay
would weaken the perception of the US across the world, and
especially in Latin America.
He confided to his brother Robert that if he didn't take strong action now
after what he did at the Bay of Pigs, he'd be impeached.
This moment became a crucial test of Kennedy's character.
In the context of building that character, he'd fought bravely and
saved men's lives as a Naval lt. in the south pacific
and now was no longer as intimidated by uniformed generals.
In the coming days, he would reject the advice of such older men
as well as Paul Nitze, Dean Acheson and even Dwight Eisenhower
He opted instead for a blockade, which he referred to as a quarantine
to downplay the fact that this too was an act of war.
on Oct. 22, 8 days after the pictures were taken, Kennedy solemnly informed
the American people:
All ships of any kind bound for Cuba
from whatever nation or port
will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back.
He portrayed the US as an innocent victim of unprovoked Soviet aggression
not revealing that we've been fighting a terrorist war against Cuba since late 1959.
I know that some action should be taken, but
he's gonna have to tread very lightly, short of war.
I think it's high time we stop Russia and have things our own way.
The temperature of the world shut up
People were on edge, transfixed to their TVs and radios
children watched the news with their parents full of fear
that same day the Strategic Air Command went to Defcon 3
2 days later, for the first time in history, to Defcon 2
prepared to strike targets in the Soviet union.
The decision to go to the precipice of nuclear war was made under
the authority given by Eisenhower, by SAC commander Gen. Thomas Power
without consulting the president.
Thereafter, the SAC fleet remained airborne refueled by aerial tankers.
It was Power who, in 1960, told a defense analyst:
the whole idea is to kill the bastards
look, at the end of the war if there are 2 americans and 1 russian, we win
the analyst reponded:
well, you better make sure there are a man and a woman.
The series of heroine incidents occured, anyone of which could have triggered
a holocaust.
The SAC test missile was launched from US towards the Marshall islands, and officials
mistakenly reported that Tampa and Minnesota were under attack.
on Oct. 25 the Soviet leaders decided that they would have to remove the missiles
but still hoped to trade them in Cuba for US Jupiters in Turkey.
Before they could act on that decision, Khrushchev received faulty information
that the invasion of Cuba was beginning.
By the 26th of Oct. american planes were flying over Cuba at tree-top level
250,000 troops were assembled off the Florida coastline ready to move
2000 bombing sorties were planned.
Castro predicted a US strike within 72 hours.
The 42,000 strong Soviet force, commanded by a Stalingrad veteran,
and backed by 100,000 Cubans
possessed, unknown to American int., approx. 100 battlefield nuclear weapons.
Khrushchev was losing control of the situation.
In amazing moment he asked his generals if they could guarantee that holding
this course would not result in the death of 500 million people:
What good would it have done me in the last hour of my life to know that
though our great nation and the US were in complete ruin, the national honor of
the Soviet union was intact?
In what McNamara described as the
Khrushchev sent Kennedy an urgent letter asking simply for a promise
not to invade Cuba.
He warned that the 2 countries were heading inextricably towards war:
It would not be in our power to stop that
war ends when it has ruled through cities and villages everywhere sowing death
and destruction.
on Oct. 27th an incident occured that Schlesinger described as:
not only the most dangerous moment of the cold war, it was
the Russian ships were heading toward the quarantine line
one of four Soviet submarines sent to protect the ships was being hunted all day
by the carrier USS Randolf
More than 100 miles outside the blockade the Randolph began dropping depth charges
unaware the sub was carrying nuclear weapons:
The explosion rocked the submarine which went dark, except for emegency lines
The temp. rose sharply, the CO2 in the air reached near lethal levels
and people could barely breathe.
Men began to faint and fall down.
The suffering went on for 4 hours. Then, the americans hit us
with something stronger. We thought that's it, the end.
Panic ensued. Commander Valentin Savitsky tried
without success to reach the general staff. He assumed the war had already started,
and that we were gonna die in disgrace for having done nothing.
He ordered the nuclear torpedo to be prepared for firing.
He turned to the other 2 officers aboard.
Fortunately for mankind, the political officer Vasili Arkhipov was able to calm him down
and convince him not to launch,
probably single-handedly preventing nuclear war.
In the midst of this heroine confrontation the break point came when the national
security council received word that a U2 plane had been shot down over Cuba.
Khrushchev had not authorized this.
The Joint Chiefs wanted to act immediately and take out all the firing sites and missiles.
Kennedy said: no.
The shooting down of the U2 made both Kennedy and Khrushchev realize
they were losing control of their enormous military machines.
Americans receiving continual TV broadcasts were paralyzed in the grip
of something they had only dreamed about.
Robert McNamara later said, as he watched the sunset come over the
saturday night the 27th of Oct: It was a beautiful fall evening
height of the crisis
and I went up into the open air to look and to smell it
because I thought it was the last saturday I would ever see.
Soviet diplomats were burning their files in Washington and New York
Washington insiders had begun to quietly evacuate their families from the capital
telling wives and children to drive as far south as quickly as possible.
In a last desperate effort, Kennedy sent his brother to meet with the Soviet ambassador
Anatoly Dobrynin on that saturday to tell him the US was about to attack
unless it received an immediate Soviet commitment to remove its bases from Cuba.
the US will pledge to never invade Cuba or aid others in that enterprise.
If your Jupiter missiles in Turkey were removed also
such an accommodation could be reached
That's not possible
The United States cannot agree to such terms under threat
Any belief to the contrary was in error
You want war?
However, while there can be no quid pro on this issue
the United States can offer a private assurance
Our Jupiter missiles in Turkey are obsolete
and have been scheduled for withdrawal for some time
This withdrawal should take place, within,say, six months
Of course, any public disclosure of this assurance would negate the deal
and produce the most stringent denials from our government
This private assurance represents the word of the highest authority?
Dobrynin conveyed the urgency to Khrushchev
who claimed in his memoirs that Robert Kennedy's message was
even more desperate, that the president is not sure that the military will not
overthrow him and seize power.
The next morning, a sunday Oct. 28th dawned with mercy
Soviets announced they would withdraw the missiles.
The world breathed as if there was only one collective breath for all
The crisis would actually continue behind the scenes for 3 more weeks
and finally ended on Nov 22 when the Soviets were able to regain control of
their battlefield nuclear weapons from the Cubans.
The weapons would actually leave Cuba.
It's interesting to note in hindsight that during the entire crisis
Soviet missiles were never fueled, Red Army reservists were not called up
and no threats were made against Berlin
30 years later in 1992, McNamara was shocked when told that
if american troops had invaded,
not only were there 4 times as many armed Soviets in Cuba as reported,
but 100 battlefield nuclear weapons would likely have been used.
Realizing that 100,000 americans would probably have died,
McNamara said the US would have responded by wiping out Cuba with the
high risk of an all-out nuclear war between the US and the Soviet union.
hundreds of millions of people might have perished.
Possibly all mankind.
It is recently been discovered that on the island of Okinawa
a large force of missiles with megaton nuclear warheads and
F-100 fighter bombers armed with hydrogen bombs
were preparing for action.
Their likely target was not the Soviet union, but China.
Military leaders were furious when the crisis ended without an attack on Cuba
McNamara recalled their bitterness:
The president invited the Chiefs in to thank them for their support
during the crisis. It was one hell of a scene.
Curtis Lemay came out saying:
We lost. We ought to just go in there today, and knock him off.
It was Khrushchev, even more than Kennedy, who deserves the
lion's share of credit for having avoided war.
And for this, he was villified, as Mikhail Gorbachev would be
3 decades later when he democratically presided against his will over the
disillusion of the Soviet union.
The Chinese charged Khrushchev with cowardess for caving in
Russian hardliners said he had shit his pants.
Much of the Pentagon however
believing that its willingness to go to war had forced Soviets to back down
determined that superior force would also work elsewhere
especially in Vietnam, where it was necessary once more to make a
stand against communism.
The Soviets drew the oppposite lesson determined never again to be
so humiliated and forced to capitulate for weakness.
They began a massive buildup of nuclear weapons to achieve parity with the US
Weakened by the crisis, Khrushchcev would be forced out of power
the following year.
But first he wrote Kennedy a long letter:
Evil has brought some good. People have felt more tangibly
the breathing of the burning flames of thermonuclear war.
In light of this, he made a series of bold proposals for eliminating
everything in our relations capable of generating a new crisis.
He suggested a non-aggression treaty between Nato and the Warsaw pact nations.
Why not, he said, disband all military blocs
seize testing all nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, in the outer space
under water, and also underground?
He proposed solutions to conflicts over Germany and China.
It's interesting to note that there was a remarkable revival of
christianity at the same time, with the short lived papacy of
Pope John 23rd, one of the most popular popes ever.
He called to gather the 2nd Vatican council which issued a new encyclical
that shook up the catholic world that was called Pacem in Terris
peace on earth
and ushered in a change in thinking
particulary in latin america where its priests, nuns and lay persons took the
message of the gospels to the poor and the persecuted, encouraging them
to take their fate into their own hands to overcome the misery of their existence.
What became known as liberation theology
led to many ensuing problems with Kennedy's successors
in the backyard of the US.
Although more tepid to Khrushchev in his response, Kennedy's thinking
was evolving, and in the year following missile crisis
underwent a remarkable transformation.
He bagan to see Vietnam as one place to step back from the east-west confrontation,
but he knew it would not be easy.
The debate over Kennedy's true intentions in Vietnam has
at times been quite acromonious and his own contradictory statements
and mixed signals have added to the confusion.
Clearly, he was under enormous pressure to stay at the course
and as late as july 1963, Kennedy told a new conference
for us, to withdraw would mean a collapse of not only south Vietnam
but south east Asia.
in private however he was voicing doubts.
in late '62 he asked influential senator Mike Mansfiield to
go there and evaluate the situation.
Mansfield returned with a highly pessimistic assessment
recommending the US withdraw its forces
aide Kenny O'Donnell described Kennedy's reaction:
the president was too disturbed by the senator's unexpected argument
He said to me when we later talked about it:
I got angry with Mike for disagreeing with our policy so completely
and I got angry with myself, because I found myself agreeing with him.
on 11th of June '63 in an image that shocked the world
Vietnamese Buddist monk Thich Quang Duc burned himself to death at a
busy Saigon intersection to protest the corrupt south Vietnamese government
McNamara began pressing the Joint Chiefs for a plan of phased withdrawal
Kennedy approved the plan in May '63 but could not formalize it.
The first 1000 man were set to depart at the end of that year.
In september he sent McNamara and his trusted new chief of staff
general Maxwell Taylor on a 10 day fact finding expedition to Vietnam
They gave the president their report on Oct 2, that called for
withdrawing troops before the end of '63
and completing it by the end of '65
Kennedy now formalized his commitment in his national security action memorandum
263, which he signed on Oct 11th then released to the press
Kennedy no doubt was torn
He'd explain to his close aide Kenny O'Donnell:
in 1965 I'll become one of the most unpopular presidents
in history. I'll be damned everywhere as a communist appeaser. But I don't care.
If I try to pull out completely now from Vietnam, we'd have another
Joe McCarthy red scare on our hands. But I can do i after I'm re-elected.
So, we better make damn sure I am re-elected.
The republicans were after his scalp.
NY governor Nelson Rockefeller charged that he was soft on communism,
naively believing the Soviet leaders were reasonable and desirous of
reaching a fundamental settlement with the west
Rockefeller, who was a moderate republican, said
Kennedy hadn't stopped communist aggression in Laos, he had failed to provide
air support during the Bay of Pigs and stood
Coming up behind Rockefeller was extremist republican senator
Barry Goldwater who would actually win the nomination in '64
as late as Oct 1963 in the hope that the situation in south Vietnam
could improve, Kennedy supported the overthrow, but not the assasination
of the oppressive Dinh Diem regime
When the Vietnamese president and his brother were killed by the
south Vietnamese military, Kennedy was visibly and extremely upset.
Nonetheless, his mindset did not change.
Among those who later came forward confirmation of Kennedy's intention to
withdraw were Robert McNamara, Arthur Schlesinger,
senate majority leader Mike Mansfield, and asst. secretary of state Roger Hilsman
Daniel Elsberg later in 1967 interviewed Rober Kennedy, prior to the shift in
public opinion on the war.
Kennedy said his bother was
Elsberg asked him, would his brother have accepted defeat at the hands of
the communists, and Robert Kennedy replied: we would have... it up,
we would have gotten the government in then asked us out
or that would have negotiate it with the other side
we would have handled it like Laos.
Elsberg asked him why his brother was so clear headed when most of his
senior advisors were still committed to prevailing, Robert responded emotionally:
because we were there, we were there in 1951, we saw what was happening to the
French, we saw it. My brother determined, determined never to let that happen to us.
During the remarkable last few months of his life, Kennedy even contemplated
a course reversal on Castro's Cuba,
a relationship in which his policies were consistently wrong headed.
But just as he clung to the hope of victory in Vietnam, while
taking steps towards withdrawal he endorsed a new round of
CIA sabotage in Cuba
while exploring... of discreet contact with Castro himself
He told Jean Daniel, an influential french journalist who was about
to meet Castro: I believe that there's no country in the world
where economic colonization, humiliation and exploitation were worse than in Cuba
in part owing to my country's policies during the Batista regime.
Daniel finally met with Castro 2 days before Kennedy's assasination
Castro expressing criticism of US behaviour but admiring Kennedy's potential
also held out hope for a new departure.
Kennedy in the heart of the cold war was facing the abiding truth of
American politics:
one must be strong, and if one is perceived as soft or weak
one does not endure
and that is the confusing thing about power
Kennedy himself was quite ill from Addison's disease and
effects of spinal operations from WW2 injuries
addicted to pain killers in his own ravenous appetites
finding himself in a cocoon of deceits not only to himself but to his wife
to his Cuba and Vietnam policies and to the country
John Kennedy, yet, seemed aloof from fear
like Roosevelt, he embodied a grace that forgave much in the new era of TV reality
in june of 1963 in a commencement address at American University,
without input from the Joint Chiefs, the CIA or the state department
Kennedy gave one of the most extraordinary presidential speeches of the 20th century
encouraged his listeners to think about the Soviet people in human terms
and called for an end to the cold war
What kind of a peace do I mean, and what kind of a peace do we seek?
not a Pax Americana, enforced on the world by american weapons of war
let us re-examine our attitude towards the Soviet union
it is sad to realize the extend of the gulf between us
and if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help
make the world safe for diversity
For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit
this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future.
And we are all mortal.
in september of that year, the senate passed the partial nuclear test ban treaty
by a vote of 80 to 19.
presidential speech writer Ted Sorenson believed that no other accomplishment
in the white house ever gave Kennedy greater satisfaction.
this treaty is for all of us it is particularly for our children
and our grandchildren, and they have no lobby here in Washington
According to the ancient Chinese proverb a journey of a 1000 miles must begin with
a single step. My fellow americans, let us take that first step.
and in another stunning reversal, Kennedy called for replacing the
space race, perhaps his most signature initiative, with joint
US-Soviet exploration of space and an expedition to the moon.
He said: international law, and the UN charter will apply. Why should man's
first flight to the moon be a national competition?
By the time John Kennedy drove into downtown Dallas to begin his
re-election campaign for '64 he'd made powerful enemies
in the upper echelons of the intelligence, military and business commmunities
not to mention the mafia, southern segregationists and
both pro- and anti-Castro Cubans.
in their minds, he was guilty of not following through on the Bay of Pigs
disempowering the CIA, firing its leaders,
resisting involvement in Laos, concluding the test ban treaty,
planning to disengage from Vietnam,
abandoning the space race,
encouraging 3rd world nationalism,
flirting with ending the cold war, and perhaps most damningly
accepting a negotiated settlement in the Cuban missile crisis.
The rage towards him was visceral.
Kennedy had read the best selling 1962 novel Seven Days in May, which
portrays a coup d'etat by a Joint Chiefs of Staff furious
over a liberal president's new nuclear treaty with the Soviets.
Your course of action in the past year has bordered on criminal negligence
this treaty with the Russians is a violation of any concept of security
You're not a weak sister, Mr. President.
You're a criminally weak sister.
He told a friend: it's possible, it could happen in this country.
If there were a 3rd Bay of Pigs, it could happen
This is Walter in our newsroom
there has been an attempt that perhaps you know now on the life of president Kennedy
he was wounded in an automobile driving from Dallas airport into downtown Dallas
A dark page on the annals of America has been written to the crack of an
assassin's bullet. A nation mourns, the world grieves.
The man who became 35th president less than three years ago, is dead.
The Warren commission, strongly influenced by ex-CIA director Allen Dulles,
later concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin
although, unlike most single assassins with a cause, he firmly denied his guilt.
The case against him was made effectively by the national media
but 4 of the 7 Warren commission members expressed doubts.
Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, governor John Connely who'd been wounded
also questioned the findings.
The public found the report unconvincing.
We may never know who was responsible or what their motive was, but we do know
that Kennedy's enemies included some of the same forces who would cut down
Henry Wallace in 1944 when he was trying to lead United States
down a similar path of peace.
Khrushchev would suffer an equally ignominious though less bloody
fate, as he was ousted by Kremlin hardliners the following year.
He became a critic of the Soviet government and smuggled his memoirs
out of the country to be published in the west under the title
Khrushchev Remembers
became a best-seller.
When he died in 1971, he was buried in a corner of a Moscow cemetery.
No monument was erected for years.
Future generations owe an enormous debt and possibly their very existence
to these two brave men, who stared into the abyss, and
recoiled from what they saw.
And they owe a special debt to an obscure Soviet submarine commander
who single-handedly blocked the start of a nuclear war.
With the ascension of vice-president Lyndon Johnson, there would be
important changes in many of Kennedy's policies
particularly toward Soviet union and Vietnam.
I will do my best, that is all I can do.
In his inaugural address, in the morning of that decade in jan 1961
let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike,
that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans
but with his murder, the torch was passed back to an old generation,
the generation of Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Reagan; leaders, who would
systematically destroy the promise of Kennedy's last year,
as they returned the country to war and repression.
Though the vision Khrushchev and Kennedy had expressed would fall with them,
it would not die.
The seeds they had planted would germinate and sprout again
long after their deaths.
For those of us who lived through the 1960's, the Cuban missile crisis
coming on the heels of the war scare over Berlin, was a terrifying event.
It was one of many nightmares, call it
punches to the stomach of a new generation of American people
who had never seen history unfold so quickly, so dramatically and in such a
violent fashion.
It would soon be followed by the invasion of Vietnam, a blood bath
a nightmare of America's own making that would eat Vietnamese and Americans
alive for almost a decade.
More horrifying things were to come by the end of that decade.
But in hindsight, it was on that afternoon in Dallas when John Kennedy's head was
blown off in broad daylight. It was as if a giant, horrific Greek medusa had
unearthed its hideous face to the American people,
freezing us with an oracle of things yet to come.