The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [324]
Schlesinger thought it imperative that the president stand back and allow others to lie for him. Nevertheless, there remained the melancholy reality of a free press that had the distressing inability to stay on message. Schlesinger prepared a group of possible questions and answers so that in his press conference Kennedy could dissemble with willful ease.
Truth is democracy’s greatest weapon. It is a painful, difficult weapon that often seems to turn on those who use it, and it is terribly tempting to jettison it in dangerous times. But it was the one unique value that America held in the struggle against communism. In his memo to the president, Schlesinger called in the end for a progressive, liberal, post-Castro Cuba, but the road map he handed the president did not lead there.
As Kennedy contemplated whether to go ahead with the invasion plans, he had two different political constituencies that he had to placate. One was the right wing, which would condemn him if he did nothing; the other was the left-liberal coalition, which might rise up against him if he proceeded with the invasion. The president thought of Schlesinger as Stevenson’s great advocate in the administration, and a bearer of American liberalism. The president considered Stevenson, the UN ambassador, as a man whose weakness and moral vanity made him dangerous. He was the perfect exemplar of everything about liberalism that the president deplored. Kennedy saw that in going ahead with the invasion he would not have to worry about Schlesinger, and perhaps not about Stevenson and other liberals either. Schlesinger, moreover, was telling the president that he could use Stevenson as his agent of deception.
As the plans moved inexorably forward, the most fervent doubters were not liberals like Schlesinger, or the diplomats at the State Department, but the two officers in charge of the operation. Jake Esterline and Colonel Jack Hawkins felt that Kennedy had fatally compromised their plans. Even though Esterline was now a civilian CIA officer, he was, like Hawkins, essentially a military man. They were both part of that sacred unspoken covenant between politicians and the professional military that is one of the glories of American democracy. American leaders do not have to worry that they will be overthrown by a restless military. In exchange, the military expects that the president will call them into combat only when their nation is truly at risk and they have the means to do the job they are asked to do.
Esterline and Hawkins were risking Cuban, not American lives, but they saw no difference between the two, and they felt that what they were being asked to do was wrong. They believed that as the plan now stood they would be leading these men into disaster and death. Over the weekend, they went to Bissell’s home and threatened to resign. Bissell placated his subordinates by promising that he would convince Kennedy to add more air power to protect the brigade.
“Bissell said he felt sure he could persuade the president to increase the air force participation which we said was absolutely essential,” Hawkins recalled. “Instead of doing that, without letting it be known to Esterline and me, he agreed with Kennedy in his private conversations to cut the whole thing even further.”
There was an added urgency to these efforts since the plans to assassinate Castro did not appear to be working out. The Americans had so demonized Castro that they believed that once he was dead, the docile Cubans would line up behind the anti-Communist brigade and its powerful American champion. The CIA gave poison pills to Rosselli, who gave them to Trafficante, who gave them to Juan Cordova Orta, who worked in Castro’s office. Instead of putting the pills in Castro’s drink, the Cuban returned them to his CIA contact. The agency then gave poison pills and probably between $20,000 and $50,000 to Manuel Antonio “Tony” de Varona, one of the five members of the Cuban Revolutionary Council that the American government had