Camelot's Court: Inside the Kennedy White House

by Robert Dallek

  Kennedy liked Bundy’s plan, and when he discussed Soviet-American relations with Vasily Kuznetsov, Moscow’s deputy foreign minister, at the White House on January 9, he urged him to remove Soviet troops and armaments from Cuba; it would further relax tensions over the island and lessen areas of disagreement with the Soviet Union. Kennedy emphasized that the United States had no intention of invading Cuba and explained that his speech to the exiles in Miami signaled nothing more than a hope for a change in Cuban conditions. But he also described speeches by Castro and Che Guevara urging “armed struggle in Latin America” that would take “power from the hands of the Yankee imperialists” as provocative and a source of ongoing friction.

  Kennedy wanted to reduce chances for an incident with Castro’s government by replacing U-2 surveillance flights over the island with reports from the representatives of friendly countries stationed in Havana and from visitors to Cuba with access to members of the Cuban government. CIA and Pentagon officials were unhappy with the possibility that Kennedy was ready to live with or reach some accommodation with Castro. They favored no letup in the battle to bring down Castro. The Pentagon wished to plan for undisguised, full-blown military support of any anti-Castro uprising. The Chiefs continued to believed that “we had missed the big bus” by not destroying Castro’s government during the missile crisis.

  Kennedy was torn between proposals for passive acceptance of Castro and plans for renewed efforts to eliminate his regime. On one hand, he was mindful of how close they had come to a nuclear war over Cuba and was determined to avoid another such crisis. Moreover, in January, when one of Castro’s trusted advisers told James Donovan, a New York lawyer who was in Havana negotiating the release of Americans in Cuban prisons, that they should discuss reestablishing diplomatic relations and Castro invited Donovan to return in March “to talk at length . . . about the future of Cuba and international relations in general,” Kennedy was interested in the possibility of some sort of rapprochement.

  On the other hand, Kennedy was wary of the political pressure that Republicans, led by Senator Kenneth Keating of New York, were generating over the failure to bring down Castro’s communist government. At an NSC meeting on January 25, Kennedy complained that “Keating was alleging that there is now in Cuba ten times as much [Soviet] equipment as there was.” But when McCone publicly acknowledged that Moscow was not “withdrawing their sophisticated equipment from Cuba” and told a Senate committee that “there is about twice as much Soviet equipment in Cuba as there had been prior to the Russian buildup,” Kennedy could not ignore demands for renewed efforts to oust the communists from the island. The anti-Castro hawks constantly reminded the press and public that the communists were now “only ninety miles from our shores.” Kennedy also worried that Castro continued to promote subversion in the hemisphere and might succeed in creating other communist regimes in the region, which would threaten U.S. interests and become a new point of Republican attack on his administration.

  Kennedy told the NSC that “the time will probably come when we will have to act again on Cuba.” He was interested in the possibility of using the island as a counter to threatened Soviet control of Berlin. “We should be prepared to move on Cuba if it should be in our national interest,” he said. “The planning by the US, by the Military in the direction of our effort should be advanced always keeping Cuba in mind in the coming months and to be ready to move with all possible speed. We can use Cuba to limit Soviet actions just as they have had Berlin to limit our actions.”

  At an NSC meeting on January 25, the issue of Cuba provoked heated discussion between Llewellyn Thompson and John McCone. Thompson complained that Cuba was eclipsing larger foreign policy goals. An American obsession with Cuba was taking precedence over more important relations with the Soviet Union: specifically, efforts to negotiate a nuclear test ban treaty and a possible chance to take advantage of a developing Sino-Soviet split. Thompson acknowledged that domestic politics, particularly congressional agitation about Cuba, stood in the way of more rational calculation, but he urged the need to educate congressmen about the country’s greater interests. Taylor doubted the likelihood of altering Congress’s focus. He complained at the next week’s NSC meeting that congressional hearings on the defense budget had turned into an investigation on Cuba. “Most of the time Secretary McNamara has spent on the Hill was taken by Cuban questions rather than military budget problems,” he told Kennedy.

  McCone was pleased to see Congress maintain a steady drumbeat about Castro’s dangerous ties to Moscow. During congressional testimony, he foresaw the continued presence of Soviet troops in Cuba as well as sophisticated military equipment. He speculated that Castro wanted Russian troops as an insurance policy against an internal revolt encouraged by U.S. subversion. In White House meetings, Secretary Dillon weighed in with objections to unrealistic hopes of wooing Castro away from the communists, urging instead a renewed commitment to overthrow his government. Bobby Kennedy sided with the hawks pressing the struggle against Castro. He acknowledged that another invasion of Cuba was currently out of reach, but thought that the United States needed to work more effectively with Cuban brigade members by encouraging them to use sabotage to weaken the communists.

  Kennedy, trying to square national security concerns with domestic political pressures, sought a middle ground between his advisers’ conflicting policy suggestions. Eager to keep Cuba from poisoning Soviet-American relations, he postponed orders that barred all U.S. flagships from carrying goods to Cuba and that closed U.S. ports to ships involved in trade with the island. He also rejected using balloons to drop propaganda leaflets over Cuba and refused to authorize landing groups in Cuba for intelligence gathering unless it was essential. Kennedy also wanted military and civilian officials to mute their complaints about the continuing presence of 4,500 Soviet troops in Cuba. He thought it useful to suggest that the Soviets might be acting as a check on possible reckless actions by Castro. At the same time, he was responsive to political pressure to remove Soviet forces from the island. On February 5, he gave in to congressional pressure to encourage U.S. allies to reduce trade with Havana and agreed to have reconnaissance overflights of Soviet ships leaving Cuba to track their departing troops.

  It was clear to Kennedy that he could not ignore a domestic political problem over Cuba, which was partly the result of McCone’s press leaks that the situation in Cuba was more ominous than the White House believed. McCone mainly directed his fire at McNamara, who closely reflected the president’s wishes. Bundy noted that McCone “was something between concerned and angry” and feared that the conflict could become “the first big, internal, high-level personality clash of this administration. . . . McCone is afraid of the military situation in Cuba while McNamara is not.” Bundy was not unmindful of other internal conflicts between Sorensen and O’Donnell, Bobby Kennedy and Chet Bowles, Bobby and Johnson, but Cuba was an explosive issue that would command widespread public attention should the extent of their internal arguments about Cuba become fully known.

  Because Rusk was much more cautious about coming down on either side of the argument, McCone felt that he could enlist him as an ally in a campaign to stiffen Kennedy’s resolve. In mid-February, he told Rusk, “I am growing increasingly concerned over Soviet intentions in Cuba.” He saw fresh signs of Soviet plans to reintroduce “an offensive capability.” He believed it “highly dangerous” for the intelligence community to make “categoric” judgments about what they were dealing with unless there were “penetrating and continuing on-site inspection.”

  By March, Kennedy was finding it impossible to keep the lid on administration infighting over Cuba. He told McCone that “an attempt . . . to drive a division within the Administration, most particularly between CIA on the one hand and State and Defense on the other . . . worried him and he hoped we could avoid any statements on the Hill, publicly or to the Press, which could exacerbate the situation.” McCone saw “no reason for all the furor” but describe
d the problem in the CIA as resulting from a concern with “an inhibiting policy” limiting overflights of Cuba. Kennedy acknowledged that he had been “one of those who did not think the Soviets would put missiles in Cuba,” but, without conceding any compelling need for a more aggressive program of U-2 missions, he urged McCone to “minimize” their “internal problem” and “not permit it to get into an interdepartmental row.”

  At an NSC meeting on March 13, Kennedy was principally concerned with congressional pressure to drive out Castro. McCone reported that he had fended off such demands for anti-Castro measures by explaining that once Soviet troops had left the island, they could look forward to a military coup serving U.S. aims. Kennedy wanted to defend the White House from congressional demands for action if all the Soviet troops didn’t leave Cuba. He said that “we should protect ourselves as best we can” by emphasizing efforts to isolate Cuba, mainly through trade and shipping policies and pressure on Latin American governments to prevent students and subversives from going to Cuba.

  Bobby Kennedy urged his brother to go beyond these actions. He wanted him to think of ways that the United States could facilitate the military uprising McCone had predicted. If there was “evidence of any break amongst the top Cuban leaders and if so, is the CIA or USIA attempting to cultivate that feeling? I would not like it said a year from now that we could have had this internal breakup in Cuba but we just did not set the stage for it.” When Kennedy failed to offer any reply, Bobby asked: “Did you feel there was any merit to my last memo?” He added, “In any case, is there anything further on this matter?” Again, Kennedy didn’t answer: He wanted no additional aggressive action that could trigger a new crisis with the Soviets.

  But he had limited control over Cuban problems. The crosscurrents were a constant source of irritation that exasperated him. He found himself caught between the Cuban exiles supported by McCone and the CIA, and White House advisers sympathetic to Soviet complaints that Cuba kept getting in the way of reducing tensions with the United States. On March 18, Cuban exiles describing themselves as Alpha 66 attacked Soviet ships and installations in Cuba. Although the State Department, with Kennedy’s approval, condemned this hit-and-run raid as doing more to strengthen than weaken Castro’s government, Castro and the Soviets blamed Washington for facilitating it.

  The raids opened a new round of arguments about Cuba. Kennedy complained to the NSC that despite State Department condemnations, Havana and Moscow refused to believe that the exiles weren’t supplied by Washington, even if they weren’t launching the raids from U.S. bases. Kennedy wanted to cut off their supplies or at least advise them not to attack any of the Russians on the island. He thought the raids would then “draw less press attention and arouse less acrimony in Moscow.”

  McCone defended the exiles. It “would be extremely difficult to control them because they are brave men fighting for the freedom of their country,” he told Kennedy at an NSC meeting. Besides, “the raids would cause trouble inside Cuba and would discredit Castro in Latin America if he were unable to prevent them.” The Soviets then might have second thoughts about backing Castro. Should the United States try to stop them, it would provoke widespread press criticism as well as congressional objections. He suggested officially condemning the raids while not barring the raiders from using the United States as a base. Rusk saw nothing but trouble in McCone’s recommendations. But characteristically walking a middle ground, he suggested that the administration plan the raids if they were worthwhile. Dillon, who had consistently sided with advocates of militant action toward Cuba, wanted simply to accept the raids as impossible to control.

  Kennedy was unconvinced by McCone and Dillon. He said, “These in-and-out raids were probably exciting and rather pleasant for those who engage in them. They were in danger for less than an hour. This exciting activity was more fun than living in the hills of Escambray, pursued by Castro’s military forces.” He then read a dispatch describing the Soviet protest, underscoring the damage the raids were doing to relations with Moscow. At the same time, he didn’t want the public to think that the United States was “prosecuting Cuban patriots.” And he hoped to blunt domestic criticism by letting the exiles strike at Cuban but not Soviet targets. In short, he was eager to make this issue disappear from Soviet-American relations as fast and fully as possible, but without provoking a public outcry against appeasing communists.

  Under pressure from the CIA and the Florida exile community, the administration continued covert operations against Castro and did little to halt raids striking Soviet as well as Cuban targets. Kennedy acknowledged that sabotage aimed at disrupting the Cuban economy and promoting Soviet-Cuban tensions and exile attacks would not bring down Castro. Nevertheless, he felt compelled, if simply to answer domestic pressures and boost the morale of the exiles, to maintain some kind of “noise level” in anti-Castro operations.

  As a consequence, Cuba remained a serious irritant in relations with Moscow. On April 3, Soviet ambassador Dobrynin visited Bobby Kennedy at the Justice Department, where he presented a twenty-five-page paper describing Khrushchev’s anger toward the president for allowing Cuba to remain an obstacle to improved Soviet-American relations. Khrushchev complained that the United States was dismissive of Soviet concerns, that McNamara was making “warlike pronouncements,” and that “the United States was only interested in . . . building up their efforts to dominate the world through counter-revolutionary activity. . . . We should understand that we could not push the Soviet Union around.” For Khrushchev, the raids and sabotage were like rubbing salt in open wounds. The retreat in Cuba had humiliated him: The Chinese snidely described his response to the quarantine as “capitulationism” and reported Kennedy as saying, “I cut his balls off.” Press stories saying that Castro described Khrushchev as a man with “No cojones [balls]” and a “Maricón [homosexual]” enraged the Soviet leader.

  Khrushchev wasn’t the only one who was angry. The message and Dobrynin’s verbal presentation incensed Bobby Kennedy. He considered them “so insulting and so rude to the President of the United States” that he refused to accept the message or transmit it. He said that he had never “insulted or offended” Dobrynin or “his country or Mr. Khrushchev” and considered such a message distinctly unhelpful in advancing their relations. As a principal architect of the anti-Castro campaign, Bobby took the Soviet rebuke personally and refused to give any ground, despite his brother’s desire to keep Cuba from impeding an improvement in Soviet-American relations. It seems likely, however, that Kennedy endorsed Bobby’s hard line, believing that he could not allow impressions either in Moscow or the United States that Khrushchev could address him in abusive language.

  Had Kennedy’s advisers, including his brother, been of one mind about forcing Cuba off the front pages by ending the raids and subversion, Kennedy might have dropped the anti-Castro campaign. True, the exiles would have howled at his betrayal of their fight against communism, and congressional Republicans would have echoed their complaints. With approval ratings of between 66 and 76 percent, however, he was in a strong position to resist their pressure. But with a divided administration, including a CIA and Joint Chiefs of Staff warning not to be fooled again by Khrushchev, and a need for a cooperative Senate should he win agreement to a nuclear test ban treaty under negotiation, he found it impossible to shelve plans for a change of regimes in Cuba.

  In response to all the cross pressures, Kennedy moved in two directions at the same time. On April 9, he rejected CIA and U.S. Army proposals for radio broadcasts spreading anti-Castro propaganda in Cuba, except for some inciting Cubans to strike out against Soviet personnel in Cuba, and those messages only if they could not be traced back to the United States. He also approved the training of exiles for sabotage in Cuba and for advance attacks within the island should they ever decide to invade. Simultaneously, Kennedy expressed great interest in Castro’s statement to James Donovan, who was discussing the release of U.S. citizens imprisoned in Cuba, “th
at relations with the United States are necessary” and he “wanted these developed.” There is little doubt that Kennedy wanted a resolution of the distracting troubles with Cuba. As he wrote Khrushchev on April 11, “I have neither the intention nor the desire to invade Cuba. . . . The pressures from those who have a less patient and peaceful outlook are very great—but I assure you of my own determination to work at all times to strengthen world peace.” As he had told Bundy after the missile crisis, indulging “his taste for understatement, ‘nobody wants to go through what we went through in Cuba very often.’” Bundy, who was reinforcing the president’s wish to find some way out of the Cuban dangers, added, “We must make it our business not to pass this way again.”

  On the same day Kennedy wrote Khrushchev, the committee charged with planning Castro’s fall reviewed “Black Operations” and “Sabotage Targets” that would meet the president’s demand for “some action” and “a program which will show continuous motion,” but without clear evidence of direct U.S. involvement. On April 15, when McCone met with Kennedy in Palm Beach, he described two possible ways to resolve the Cuban problem: Woo Castro away from the Russians and get him to follow a more benign path in Cuba, or use every possible pressure to get the Soviets out of the island, followed by means to topple Castro. Kennedy “suggested the possibility of pursuing both courses at the same time.”

  In the coming months, Kennedy’s advisers were distinctly unhelpful in suggesting ways to make Cuba a less compelling concern in the reach for some sort of accommodation with Moscow. The U.S. National Archives are awash in boxes of files between 1919 and 1941 about war debts. An argument over how to collect the money owed to the United States and whether to tie it to the reparations payments dictated by the Versailles Treaty proved to be a debate devoid of a solution. Except for Finland, none of the debtor countries ever repaid the loans and the issue disappeared with the onset of World War II.