The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [322]
Kennedy insisted that the brigade leaders be told that U.S. forces would not be taking part and then be asked whether they still wanted go ahead. It was not until the day before they set out for Cuba, however, that the leaders were told that the Bay of Pigs was surrounded by swamps and that in a failed invasion they would either die, be captured, or would have to reembark. For “morale reasons,” the CIA decided not to tell the volunteers themselves that trackless swamps surrounded their destination, and the brigade members packed their kit and shouldered their rifles with no idea that in defeat they would be unable to join their guerrilla comrades by disappearing into the foreboding wilderness.
Mann was not the only disapproving voice that Kennedy heard. When the president flew down on Air Force One to Palm Beach for Easter, he invited Senator J. William Fulbright to join him. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was the most articulate student of foreign policy in Congress, and a persistent critic of America intervention. On the flight down Fulbright handed the president a lengthy memo opposing the operation, arguing in part that “to give this activity even covert support is of a piece with the hypocrisy and cynicism for which the United States is constantly denouncing the Soviet Union.” Kennedy said nothing, but he surely weighed not simply the words but the political weight of their author, an acerbic intellectual who was perfectly capable of standing up in the Senate to condemn him.
For Kennedy, Palm Beach had always been a respite from the work and woes of politics, but the obligations of the presidency never left him even there. He had feared that he might be shut out from a wide range of counsel, but he was hearing at times a cacophony of voices. He had lengthy conversations over the weekend with Smathers, who was in favor of any action that would unseat Castro. Former ambassador to Cuba Earl Smith was at the Kennedy house as well. He was an equally strong supporter of military action against Cuba. Joe talked to his son as well.
On the flight back to Washington on April 4, Kennedy was still so unsettled regarding his course of action that he invited Fulbright to go with him to what would prove to be the decisive meeting of his foreign policy advisers at the State Department. They were all there in the drab meeting room, including three members of his cabinet: Rusk, McNamara, and Douglas Dillon, the secretary of the Treasury; Dulles, Bissell, and Colonel Jack Hawkins, chief of the CIA’s paramilitary staff; and General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
Most major presidential decisions are funnel-shaped. If broad philosophical issues are debated, they are debated first. Then the discussion is limited to general policy matters. In the end, the participants focus on the narrow details of the agreed-upon plan. In this instance Fulbright was bringing up grand moral and political questions that had never been placed openly on the table before, while the military brass and CIA officers sat restlessly wanting to go over the specific derails of an operation that they had believed was already largely decided. To many of the policymakers, it appeared self-indulgent and sloppy that Fulbright should not only be present but endlessly pontificating.
Kennedy went around the table asking each official to vote yea or nay, treating each person as equal in status and equal in vote. If this was a family, it was like the Kennedys, in which some considered themselves the crucial members. Rusk was particularly upset that as secretary of State he did not receive the deference he believed he deserved. Despite all the nervous rumblings and worries, Rusk was the only administration member to voice a dissent, and he did so in the disappointed tones of a spurned lover.
Kennedy said that he preferred to have the brigade