The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [325]
I know everybody is grabbing their nuts on this,” Kennedy told Sorensen, referring to those weak sisters like Stevenson and Rusk who presumably quaked at the thought of combat. Kennedy used profanity like many former prep school boys, as if it stiffened his mettle and reinforced his manhood. He had decided to go ahead, and he gave Sorensen a political reason for doing so: he “felt it was impossible now to release the army which had been built up and have them spreading word of his action or inaction through the country.” Even as he decided to go ahead, the president was attempting to burn any bridges that might still carry American soldiers to the bloody sands of Cuba. At his press conference he pointedly said, “There will not be, under any conditions, an intervention in Cuba by the United States armed forces. The government will do everything it possibly can, and I think it can meet its responsibilities to make sure that there are no Americans involved in any actions inside Cuba.”
In private, Kennedy would not consider supplying American soldiers in a supporting role even after a successful initial invasion. “The minute I land one marine, we’re in this thing up to our necks,” he exclaimed at a high-level meeting on April 12, though if he had looked down he would have seen the muddy currents already lapping around his waist. “I can’t get the United States into a war, and then lose it, no matter what it takes. I’m not going to risk an American Hungary. And that’s what it could be, a fucking slaughter. Is that understood, gentlemen?”
Even as the chartered freighters prepared to embark with their holds full of the young men of the brigade, Kennedy still appeared uncertain; unwilling to give the final go-ahead, he was waiting until the last possible hour to give his assent. Finally, on April 14, Kennedy agreed that the planned air strikes flown by the Cuban Expeditionary Force against Castro’s air force should set off from a CIA base in Nicaragua two days before D-Day.
These planes were part of an elaborate ruse. They were B-26s with Cuban air force markings, piloted supposedly by defectors from Castro’s air force flying one final mission against the Communist regime before heading toward freedom.
“Well, I don’t want it on that scale,” Kennedy told Bissell when he learned that sixteen planes would be taking off from Nicaragua. “I want it minimal.” As he had done in so many other ways, the president once again sought to diminish the risk that American involvement would become apparent. He was tinkering with the number of planes, applying an aesthetic sensibility to the gray art of propaganda, accomplishing nothing but keeping alive for a few more hours his illusion that he could keep the American role quiet.
Although Kennedy was thinking about the propaganda battle, he was making a crucial military decision: cutting in half the surprise attack on the Cuban planes on the ground. Bissell knew that the president might be putting lives in unnecessary jeopardy, breaking the tacit pledge the CIA had given the men of the brigade. He knew too that he had promised Esterline and Hawkins to insist on more air power, not to cave in to more compromises.
The CIA officer said nothing in part probably because he was not about to give Kennedy an opportunity to end the whole operation. Beyond that, the president had made it clear he was a leader who disliked men who “grabbed their nuts,” who whimpered and complained. So far, Kennedy’s decision making had all the vices of the informal—sloppy, improvised, ad hoc—and none of the virtues, such as a trusting congeniality in which the participants felt welcome to say whatever had to be said.
At dawn