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By Root 1153 0

of Lansdale’s proposed initiatives treated the Cubans like Latin hayseeds whom he and the other American tricksters could bamboozle with their magic and technology. One scheme was to use chemical weapons to sicken Cuban workers so that they could not harvest sugar cane. The plan was abandoned not because it was stupid and repugnant, but because it was deemed “unfeasible.” Another scuttled plan was to spread the word throughout Cuba that the second coming of Christ was imminent, and that Christ would not like Castro. A submarine was to appear off the coast and send star shells high into the sky, a light show that would be viewed by the superstitious Cubans as a sign that Christ had arrived.

The administration did everything it could to isolate Cuba from the rest of Latin America, using its power over neighbor states to exclude the island from the Organization of American States and instituting a trade blockade as well. It was not only Cuba but the rest of Latin America that Lansdale considered rich territory for his initiatives. When these other governments seemed unwilling to follow the American lead against Cuba, he was all for enacting “a major psychological and political campaign within the country among labor, student and political groups to ‘force’ the government to change its mind.”

“The top priority in the United States government—all else is secondary—no time, money, effort, or manpower is to be spared,” Bobby admonished the top CIA leaders. “There can be no misunderstanding on the involvement of the agencies concerned nor on their responsibility to carry out this job…. It is not only Gen. Lansdale’s job to put the tasks, but yours to carry out with every resource at your command.” Bobby was there dominating meetings that proposed to destroy the Cuban sugar crops, poison shipments of goods coming to Cuba, and induce crop failures.

In April, immediately after the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy gave a speech in which he condemned a “monolithic and ruthless conspiracy” that depended “primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence—on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day.” It was nothing less than tragic to those who cared about American democracy that though the president was describing communism, he might as well have been talking about Operation Mongoose.

Life for him was an adventure, perilous indeed, but men are not made for safe havens,” Bobby wrote in his daybook, quoting Edith Hamilton on the Greek dramatist Aeschylus. Bobby had a compelling need to be part of heroic endeavors, since only in such pursuits could he prove himself worthy. Life at Hickory Hill or in the summer at Hyannis Port was no sedate, mannered respite from the ceaseless battles of Washington, but another arena for challenge and adventure.

One weekend on the Cape, Jose Torres arrived for a visit. Torres was the world light-heavyweight boxing champion, and after the standard regimen of football, tennis, swimming, and sailing, Bobby decided to mix it up with the champ. “Hit him in the head!” the children screamed, exhorting the champ to down their father. “Hit him in the belly!”

“Let me knock you down,” the attorney general whispered to the champ. Bobby threw a haymaker, and Torres fell to the ground, apparently knocked out. Anything was possible to Bobby’s kids if your name was Kennedy, even knocking out the champion of the world. It was a life lesson that was simply wrong, but it was taught again and again—that anyone could do anything, there were no limits, and courage was the trump card besting ability, training, wind and storm, gravity and wisdom.

During one Hyannis Port summer, Bobby imported groups of Green Berets, the army’s elite new counterinsurgency fighters, and had them perform their derring-do in front of the Kennedy children. The young, would-be heroes in the war against communism swung from trees and jumped over barricades. They were intrepid soldiers whose enemy was the routine, the bureaucratic,