The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [399]
Bobby had a devastating impact on the morale of the men who attempted to implement his desperately flawed initiatives. He would have been dismayed to know that one of his many critics was General Maxwell Taylor, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “I don’t think it occurred to Bobby in those days that his temperament, his casual remarks that the president would not like this or that, his difficulty in establishing tolerable relations with government officials, or his delight in causing offense was doing harm to his brother’s administration,” reflected Taylor.
From his perch at the CIA’s Cuban desk, Halpern observed a swaggering Bobby who was as dangerous in his ignorance as Lansdale. Halpern happened to be in the office of William Harvey, when the new head of the Cuba Task Force was talking to Bobby on the phone. The obese Harvey was one of the CIA’s few full-blown characters. He fancied ivory-handled pistols stuck in his belt and masked his brilliance as a covert operative behind a flamboyant, foulmouthed manner. Harvey was the kind of daring character whom Bobby might have been expected to admire, but the attorney general had as low and disdainful an opinion of Harvey as Harvey had of him. On that score Harvey was the winner, for in calling Bobby a “fag” he had struck upon an epithet that Bobby probably dreaded above all others.
The CIA had just run an operation in Cuba that had merited headlines in the Cuban papers and stories in Florida newspapers. Bobby had wanted the agency to blow up bridges and burn sugarcane fields, but without any notice. He not only blamed the CIA for the press coverage but was deeply suspicious that the agency had acted as its own publicist. Harvey despised Kennedy, but he sat there muttering “yes sir” and “no sir” into the phone. “If you’re going to blow something up, it’s going to make a noise,” Harvey said, as Halpern stood listening. “And if it makes a noise, you’re going to get publicity.”
Bobby had relationships with a number of the Cuban exiles. This intense, passionate man cared not simply about the details of laws and legislation but about the details of individual human lives. Yet Bobby was like a doctor who was so emotionally involved with his patients that at times he could not distance himself enough to make dispassionate judgments.
It was only natural that many of these patriotic Cuban exiles became involved with Operation Mongoose. It was only natural too that they would pick up the phone and talk to their friend Bobby. That they could do so created morale problems in Florida for those planning operations. Bobby, however, felt for these men and their struggle. In a sense, he was as much a hostage to these feelings as the Brigade 2506 members in Cuban prisons were hostage to Castro. Bobby cared about the brigade members languishing in Cuban prisons in a way the president did not—and truly could not given his immense concerns.
By the end of July 1962, Operation Mongoose had managed to place only eleven covert teams on the island, less than half the projected infiltration plan. In the previous four months, nineteen of its maritime operations had either failed or aborted. As bright a veneer as the agency attempted to paste on its failures, the CIA admitted that even if it continued fomenting resistance at a high rate, there would most likely not be a revolt until the end of 1963, and that would be successful only with an American military force backing up the rebels. That distressing reality faced Bobby and his brother in the summer of 1962 as they were confronted with new civil rights dilemmas as well.
“Which one is Meredith?” asked Governor Ross Barnett of Mississippi as he stood blocking the entrance to room 1007 at the Woolfolk State Office Building in Jackson on September 25, 1962. James Meredith stood there with Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Doar and Chief of the U.S. Marshals Jim McShane. Sixty-four-year-old Barnett had much more in common with twenty-nine-year-old Meredith