The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [319]
Kennedy’s overwhelming concern was not the probability of the invasion’s success or the moral efficacy of America staging an undeclared war, but the secrecy of the administration’s involvement. Kennedy concluded the first NSC meeting on the proposed Cuban operation by saying that he “particularly desires that no hint of these discussions reach any personnel beyond those most immediately concerned within the Executive Branch.”
Kennedy hardly had to remind these men to remain silent. The free press, however, was another matter. In his obsession with keeping the Cuban business confidential, Kennedy devoted much of his energy to a cause that had already been lost. Articles about the training had appeared in such diverse publications as La Hora, a leading Guatemalan newspaper, The Nation, a liberal weekly, the New York Times (“U.S. Helps Train an Anti-Castro Force at Secret Guatemalan Air-Ground Base”), and the New York Herald Tribune (“Invasion Is Planned in Spring”). Beyond the CIA employees, there were 124 members of the National Guard from Alabama, Arkansas, California, and Washington, D.C., directly involved in training the Cubans and working with military supplies. They could not be expected to be quiet forever. Beyond that, the president had memos on his desk telling him that journalists such as Howard Handleman of U.S. News & World Report and Joseph Newman of the Herald Tribune knew specific details of the American involvement. Though the reporters promised not to reveal anything now, that pledge was not open-ended.
The president could look at the headlines on a front page and read the words on a memo and seem to deny what was before his eyes. It was unthinkable that an operation of such magnitude could take place without the United States’ involvement becoming known, and it was the immense failing of the former journalist who sat in the White House to believe otherwise.
Kennedy had concerns far greater than those of the men who advised him. The CIA focused on bringing down Castro. The Joint Chiefs directed their attention to ensuring that the military plans were plausible. The State Department occupied itself primarily with the ramifications of an invasion on the rest of Latin America, world opinion, and the United Nations. The president had to think not only about all those matters but also about the broadest geopolitical concerns. He was hoping that the United States and the Soviet Union might walk at least a few steps back from the nuclear brink, forestalling the confrontation that he had prophesied so long before. In Laos, however, Communist insurgents threatened the government of Prince Souvanna Phouma, and in Vietnam the Communists pressed forward too. West Berlin was, to the president’s mind, the West’s most vulnerable outpost, held hostage behind 110 miles of East German Communist territory. If Kennedy moved too strongly or too obviously against Cuba, Khrushchev could be expected to make his own bold move, and the prospect for detente might well be doomed.
Kennedy also had domestic political issues that hardly concerned the CIA, the Joint Chiefs, or the State Department. During the campaign he had accused Eisenhower and Nixon of not daring to stand up to Castro. If he brought Castro down, he would be lauded by most Americans. If he backed away from plans instigated by the Republican administration, he would surely hear Nixon’s and other Republicans’ righteous rebukes. They would probably point out Kennedy’s duplicities and seeming cowardice, as would many of the presidenr’s former colleagues in Congress.
Dulles and Bissell sensed Kennedy’s political vulnerabilities and his reluctance to approve their plans. Bissell tried to put the president’s very manhood in play, warning that if the United States turned away from the invasion, “David will again have defeated Goliath.”
At another meeting after the president left, Dulles commented about the brigade training in Central America: “Don’t forget that