Abstract
The day before President-elect Kennedy assumed the duties of his new office, he met with the outgoing chief executive for a briefing on foreign policy issues. If Kennedy’s determination to take action against Cuba had been fashioned in the midst of the presidential campaign against Nixon, his resolve was doubtless fortified by his conversation with Eisenhower on that morning of 19 January 1961. Eisenhower, who a month before had referred sardonically to JFK as a “young whippersnapper,” now advised his successor to support guerrilla activities against Castro “as we cannot let the present government there go on.” Secretary of the Treasury Robert B. Anderson, also present at the meeting, agreed, arguing that “in the final analysis the United States may have to run Castro out of Cuba and wait until the foreign ministers of Latin America countries publicly complain about our action.”1
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Notes and References
Wilton B. Pearsons, memorandum re. discussion between DDE, JFK, et al., 19 January 1961, Post-Presidential Papers, box 2, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas; Norman Brook to William Elliot, 14 December 1960, Prime Minister’s Records (PREM) 11/3608, Public Record Office (PRO), Kew, Richmond. England.
John F. Kennedy, “For the Freedom of Man: We Must All Work Together,” VitalSpeeches of theDay 27 (1 February 1961): 226–7.
Oral history of W. Averell Harriman, 37, JFKL; P.H. Scott, minutes, “Cuban/United States Relations: Decision of United States Government to sever relations with Cuba,” 5 January 1961, Foreign Office Records (FO) 371/156175, PRO; N. Khrushchev and L. Brezhnev, message to the president, 20 January 1961, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1961 (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1962), 3n.
Higgins, Perfect Failure, 70–1, 79–80; Marchant to Foreign Office, 3 January 1961, FO 371/156175, PRO; telegram from Havana to Foreign Office, 21 January 1961, FO 371/156176, PRO; Marchant to Foreign Office, 5 February 1961, FO 371/156176, PRO; I.J.M. Sutherland to R.H.G. Edmonds, FO 371/156177, PRO.
Nikita S. Khrushchev, “Khrushchev Reviews 81-Party Moscow Conference,” Current Digest of the Soviet Press 13 (22 February 1961): 8, 9, 11.
Maxwell D. Taylor, Swords and Plowshares (New York: Norton, 1972), 200; oral history of Walter Lippmann, 9, JFKL; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., “A Biographer’s Perspective,” in Thompson, ed., The Kennedy Presidency, 29; oral history of Rostow, 124, JFKL; Chester Bowles, Promises to Keep: My Years in Public Life, 1941–1969 (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 344–5.
Robert F. Kennedy, Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Norton, 1969), 90; oral history of McNamara, 17, JFKL.
J. William Fulbright to Kennedy, “Cuba Policy,” 29 March 1961, Papers of J. William Fulbright, series 48:14, box 38, University of Arkansas Library, Fayetteville, Arkansas; Higgins, PerfectFailure, 110–11.
Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, 214–17; Schlesinger to Rusk, 7 April 1961, Schlesinger Papers, box WH-5; oral history of Robert Kennedy, vol. 1, 44–5, JFKL; Bowles, Promises to Keep, 327–8; Rusk, As I Saw It, 209–10; Paul H. Nitze with Ann M. Smith and Steven L. Rearden, From Hiroshima to Glasnost: At the Center of Decision (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1989), 184; oral history of Harlan Cleveland, 21–3, JKFL; Martin, Adlai Stevenson and the World, 624; oral history of Acheson, 13–14, JFKL; Peter Wyden, Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), 316; Thomas G. Paterson, “Fixation with Cuba: The Bay of Pigs, Missile Crisis, and Covert War Against Fidel Castro,” in Paterson, ed., Kennedy’s Quest for Victory: American Foreign Policy, 1961–1963 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 135.
Lucien S. Vandenbroucke, “Anatomy of a Failure: The Decision to Land at the Bay of Pigs,” Political Science Quarterly 99 (Fall 1984): 484–5.
Clark Clifford with Richard Holbrooke, Counsel to the President: A Memoir (New York: Random House, 1991), 349; Wofford, Of Kennedys and Kings, 351–2, 354; oral history of Rusk, volume 000 000, “The Kennedy Years,” Rusk Oral History Collection; C. David Heymann, A Woman Named Jackie (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1989), 276; Richard J. Whalen, The Founding Father: The Story of Joseph P. Kennedy (New York: New American Library, 1964), 474; oral history of McNamara, 19, JFKL.
F. Roberts to Foreign Office, 20 April 1961, FO 371/156180, PRO; “U.S.S.R. Government Statement,” 4.
Barry M. Goldwater with Jack Casserly, Goldwater (St. Martin’s: New York, 1988), 170–3. Goldwater recalls his talk with JFK as taking place on 15 April. This seems rather early, though. It was not clear by this point that the Bay of Pigs would fail. Perhaps the JFK-Goldwater meeting took place a little later and Goldwater misremembered.
U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, interim report, S.Rept. 94–465, 94th Congress, 1st session, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 73–82. Historian Michael Beschloss suggests that Kennedy may have authorised the Bay of Pigs, despite the odds against its success (1500 exiles against a Cuban army and militia totalling well over 200 000), because he knew about the assassination attempt, hoped that it would be successfully carried out, and thought that this would give the Bay of Pigs operation a chance to succeed. See Beschloss, Crisis Years, 137–9.
Kelley, “The Dark Side of Camelot,” 111; Goodwin, Remembering America, 189; Lansdale to Harriman, 26 February 1977, Papers of Edward G. Lansdale, box 3, Hoover Institution, Stanford, CA. My thanks to Jonathan Nashel for alerting me to the Lansdale document. Giancana’s brother and godson have recently contended that JFK was in fact transmitting secret FBI memoranda to Giancana, not material about the assassination attempts on Castro. This correspondence, they maintain, was intended to give Giancana a sense of the FBI’s activities ties so that he “would always be one step ahead of the game.” It was assumed the President was doing this in return for the help he had received from organised crime during the 1960 Presidential season. See Sam and Chuck Giancana, Double Cross (New York: Warner, 1992), 411–12.
Jean R. Moenk, “USCONARC Participation in the Cuban Crisis 1962 (U),” October 1963, 1, 3, document no. 3164, NSA; Robert L. Dennison, “CINCLANT Historical Account of Cuban Crisis — 1963 (U),” 29 April 1963, 17–21, document no. 3087, NSA.
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© 1996 Mark J. White
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White, M.J. (1996). Kennedy’s Cuban Policies: Misconceptions and Missed Opportunities. In: The Cuban Missile Crisis. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230374508_2
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