141
“that little son of a bitch is breaking my balls”: Quoted in Rappleye, 231.
141
“we felt that we could not look to the FBI”: Author interview with John Cassidy.
141
“we formed our own intelligence unit”: Author interview with Guthman.
142
“it is such nonsense to…waste time prosecuting the Communist Party”: Quoted in Summers, J. Edgar Hoover, 327.
142
“My father would send us kids into Hoover’s office”: Author interview with Joseph Kennedy II.
142
“And having Brumus”: Author interview with Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.
142
“he was saving everything he had on Kennedy”: William Sullivan, The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoover’s FBI, 50.
142
Bobby said that…[Hoover] was…a “menace to democracy”: Quoted in Jack Newfield, Somebody’s Gotta Tell It, A Journalist’s Life on the Lines, 162.
143
“He’s rather a psycho”: Quoted in Summers, J. Edgar Hoover, 323.
143
we “thought we could control him”: Edwin O. Guthman and Jeffrey Shulman, editors, Robert Kennedy In His Own Words, 134.
143
the Kennedy brothers knew Hoover “wore funny clothes”: Author interview with Kenny O’Donnell Jr.
143
“I think you should know that [the Kennedys] are fags”: Quoted in Salinger oral history, JFK Library.
144
“something at the core of our society was beginning to rot”: Quoted in Sheridan, xxxi.
144
some studios were under the direct control of the Mafia: Ibid, xv.
144
One star…told the screenwriter he was afraid: Ibid.
145
He confronted the military man with…evidence of his treason: Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II, Seven Days in May, 313.
146
Knebel…got the idea…after interviewing…LeMay: New York Times, February 28, 1993.
147
“Stock, do you think I’ll be assassinated?”: Blair interview with Grant Stockdale’s widow, Blair papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming. Stockdale himself met a tragic end ten days after Kennedy’s assassination when he fell to his death from his thirteenth floor Miami office. He did not leave a suicide note but his friend, Senator George Smathers, said he was deeply depressed by JFK’s death. Some assassination researchers, however, have suggested that he was pushed out his office window because he knew too much about his friend’s murder. Before his death, Stockdale was caught up in a scandal with Washington lobbyist Bobby Baker, with whom he was partners in a vending machine company that had government contracts. The company was also tied to mobsters, including Sam Giancana. The day before he died, an anxious Stockdale spoke with his attorney, William Frates. “It didn’t make much sense. He said something about ‘those guys’ trying to get him. Then about the assassination.” 147 Knebel was sharply challenged by [Kennedy] on the facts: Knebel oral history, JFK Library.
148
“Kennedy wanted Seven Days in May to be made as a warning”: Author interview with Schlesinger.
148
“The Pentagon didn’t want it done”: Quoted in Schlesinger, 450.
149
JFK “was really interested in the facts of the project”: Sinatra interview, 1988 video release of Manchurian Candidate.
149
“The Secret Service was alarmed”: Look, November 19, 1963.
149
The studio yanked the ad: Variety, December 4, 1963.
150
“The world is on too short a fuse”: Quoted in Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, March 5, 1964.
150
Quoting…Arleigh Burke to support his case: Los Angeles Times, February 6, 1964.
150
Melvin Laird…called for the movie to be clearly labeled fiction: Variety, May 13, 1964.
150
American democracy “as an excitingly perilous arena”: New York Times, September 14, 2003.
150
“Paranoia only exists if the circumstances are totally untrue”: HBO Web site interview with John Frankenheimer, http://www.hbo.com/films/pathtowar/artist_inter views.shtml.
151
Could a military coup really happen here?: Fay, 162.
151
“I haven’t had such an interesting time since the Bay of Pigs”: White House recording quoted in Jonathan Rosenberg and Zachary Karabell, editors, Kennedy, Johnson and the Quest for Justice: The Civil Rights Tapes, 66.
152
“Stay right by Meredith”: Ibid., 78.
153
“Guthman’s so scared”: Ibid., 71.
153
“Well, you know what happened to those guys”: Quoted in Guthman, 204.
154
“we could have a hell of a battle”: Rosenberg, 65.
154
“Damn army!”: Ibid., 73.
155
“we…didn’t have the foggiest idea where the town of Oxford was”: Unpublished Henry Gallagher memoir, courtesy of Gallagher.
155
“I would think they’d be on that fucking plane in about five minutes”: Rosenberg, 74.
155
“People are dying in Oxford!”: Quoted in Doyle, 233.
156
“We are very panicked by all this right now”: O’Donnell oral history, courtesy of Helen O’Donnell.
157
“I could not believe I was on the campus”: Quoted in Doyle, 237.
158
“There was no discussion of Walker’s rights”: Califano, 105.
158
“The president, angry and distraught, goes home”: O’Donnell oral history.
159
“The problem with you people”: Quoted in Rosenberg, 31.
159
“I’m afraid that the moral passion is missing”: Quoted in Wofford, 129.
159
“If Khrushchev was running against Kennedy”: Quoted in New York Times, August 4, 1963.
159
white Southerners would embrace “another Civil War”: Quoted in New York Times, October 7, 1962. Faulkner himself embodied the South’s deep psychological and moral divisions over race. He knew that the region’s racial apartheid was a stain that had to be removed, but he appealed for more time. “Let us sweat in our own fears for a little while,” he wrote in 1956. If he were forced to take a stand at that moment, declared Faulkner, he would “fight for Mississippi against the United States even if it meant going out into the streets and shooting Negroes.” But it is unlikely he would ever have taken up arms for the South’s dying order. A year later, following the federally enforced integration of schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, Faulkner observed in a letter to the New York Times that “white people and Negroes do not like and trust each other and perhaps never can.” But, he added, “what is important and necessary and urgent…is that we federate together, show a common unified front, not for dull peace and amity, but for survival as a people and a nation.”
160
“Later I told the troop of my call”: Quoted in Doyle, 312.
160
primitively racist artifacts: Oxford leaflets and pamphlets, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy files, JFK Library.
161
“One preacher let me into his church”: Author interview with Symington.
162
“I was there as a soldier”: Quoted in Doyle, 295.
162
“I just hope the song could be heard”: Quoted in Perlstein, 169.
163
“I thought it was rather ridiculous”: General David Shoup oral history, JFK Library.
163
LeMay…had been advocating a preemptive nuclear strike on Russia: Thomas M. Coffey, Iron Eagle: The Turbulent Life of General Curtis LeMay, 331.
163
LeMay…recommended that the U.S. “fry it”: Dino A. Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball: The Inside Story of the Cuban Missile Crisis, 265.
164
“Can you imagine LeMay saying a thing like that?”: Quoted in O’Donnell and Powers, 318.
164
LeMay bluntly declared that “we don’t have any choice except direct military action”: White House recording, quoted in Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, editors, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, 113.
166
“what LeMay said is almost out of Seven Days in May: Author interview with Sorensen.
166
“you’re screwed”: May, 122.
166
pouring out in a torrent of “insubordination”: Author interview with Sorensen.
167
“I was sitting next to Bob McNamara in Havana”: Author interview with Schlesinger.
167
The Joint Chiefs…“were certain that no nuclear warheads were in Cuba”: Quoted in “On the Brink: The Cuban Missile Crisis,” JFK Library panel, October 20, 2002.
167
“There isn’t any learning period with nuclear weapons”: Quoted in New York Times, October 14, 2002.
168
“I don’t give a damn what John Paul Jones would have done”: Quoted in Max Frankel, High Noon in the Cold War: Kennedy, Khrushchev and the Cuban Missile Crisis, 127.
168
“Mr. Secretary, you go back to your office”: Admiral George Anderson oral history, Naval Institute.
169
the agency began leaking information about the missiles to friendly reporters like Hal Hendrix: Corn, 114.
169
“Of course, I was furious”: Robert F. Kennedy In His Own Words, 378.
169
“Harvey has destroyed himself today”: Quoted in Thomas, The Very Best Men, 291.
169
“McCone felt it would be appropriate to move Harvey”: FBI memo, October 30, 1962, NARA record number 124-90092-10010.
170
“Who was Brutus?”: Quoted in Trento, 253.
170
Harvey continued to stay in touch with his old Mafia comrade: Rappleye, 225.
170
Johnny Rosselli was a man of “integrity as far as I was concerned”: Harvey testimony, Church Committee, June 25, 1975.
170
“Thank God for Bobby”: Quoted in Dave Powers oral history, JFK Library.
170
“What…gives…any government the moral right”: Quoted in Schlesinger, 529.
171
Bobby Kennedy “was almost crying”: Nikita S. Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, 551.
171
“JFK had a great capacity to resist pressures from the military”: Author interview with Schlesinger.
171
“we had felt there was a danger that the president would lose control of his military”: Khrushchev, 552.
172
“It’s the greatest defeat in our history!”: Quoted in Beschloss, 544.
172
“We had a chance to throw the Communists out”: Quoted in Coffey, 391.
172
“There was virtually a coup atmosphere”: Author interview with Daniel Ellsberg.
173
“Operation Mongoose died”: CIA memo, November 5, 1962, NARA record number 1781-0004-10128.
173
“Talk about the word treason at the Bay of Pigs”: Quoted in Bohning, 125.
173
“People no longer thought that world war”: National Security Archives interview with Sorensen, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/173 it was up to Kennedy and him to stop tugging on the “knot of war”: Khrushchev, 555.
174
his military advisors had “looked at me as though I was out of my mind”: Beschloss, 523.
4: 1963
175
“Don’t go there”: O’Donnell and Powers, 277.
176
JFK went “off script”: Author interview with Goodwin.
176
“it was the worst possible gesture”: O’Donnell and Powers, 277.
176
During JFK’s Orange Bowl appearance, an assassin lurked: Mahoney, 220.
178
A secret Defense Department background sheet on [Artime]: U.S. Army memo, undated, NARA record number 198-1004-10060.
178
[Murgado] and Artime first met with Bobby at the Kennedys’ [Palm Beach mansion]: Author interview with Angelo Murgado.
179
where he came across a curious gringo named Lee Harvey Oswald: Murgado claims that he crossed paths on one other occasion with Oswald, when he and fellow Brigade veteran Bernardo De Torres spotted him while paying a visit to the Dallas apartment of Silvia Odio, a Cuban exile tied to JURE, a left-wing anti-Castro group. “She was a heck of a nice piece of ass, that’s all,” Murgado says bluntly, by way of explaining his visit.
This encounter is laden with significance, and controversy, in JFK assassination research circles. Some claim that De Torres was the infamous “Leopoldo” and Murgado the “Angel” who showed up on Odio’s doorstep on September 25, 1963. Odio told government investigators that the two exiles were accompanied by a man whom she later identified as Oswald. Shortly after the visit, according to Odio,
Leopoldo phoned her and made some chilling remarks. He told her that Oswald was an ex-Marine marksman who thought JFK should have been shot after the Bay of Pigs. “He says we should do something like that,” Leopoldo told her. Some researchers believe the Odio encounter was an attempt to frame Oswald and implicate the left wing of the anti-Castro crusade in the JFK assassination.
Did Murgado and De Torres show up on Odio’s doorstep with Oswald in tow—or was he already sitting in her apartment when the two men arrived? It is easy to understand why neither Murgado nor Odio want to be associated with the man whose name would go down in infamy. But even if Murgado is shading the Odio story for obvious self-serving reasons, there is no indication he is doing the same with his Bobby Kennedy account.
181
The Kennedys had sold out the liberation movement: Newsweek, April 29, 1963.
182
“there is not going to be any invasion”: Quoted in CIA memo, April 7, 1963, NARA record number 104-10233-10029.
182
Miró proudly retorted “that he could never be a traitor”: CIA telegram, April 9-10, 1963, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy confidential file, JFK Library.
182
“a formal request for the return of the Brigade flag”: CIA memo, April 11, 1963, NARA record number104-10306-10015.
182
Nixon chided the White House for its flip-flopping Cuba policy: Newsweek, April 29, 1963.
182
He worked feverishly to make sure that Brigade veterans…were taken care of: RFK memo to Army Secretary Cyrus R. Vance May 8, 1963, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy papers, JFK Library; also State Department memo, June 17, 1963, RFK confidential file, JFK Library; also RFK memo to Goodwin, March 25, 1963, JFK Library.
183
“I do think he felt a sense of guilt or obligation to them”: Author interview with Nolan.
183
The two men were attempting to “organize an exile raid”: State Department memo, July 19, 1963, RFK confidential file, JFK Library.
185
“the Russians would be immediately invited to Goldwater’s ranch”: Nathaniel Weyl, Encounters with Communism, 143.
186
“There are no rules in such a game”: Quoted in Max Holland, “A Luce Connection: Senator Keating, William Pawley and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Journal of Cold War Studies, 1.3, 1999.
186
he blamed the disaster on President Kennedy’s “betrayal”: Thomas G. Paterson, Contesting Castro: The United States and the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution, 211.
186
&n
bsp; “I think we have to drop ten thousand Marines in the environs of Havana”: Quoted in Hollan d.
187
Clare Booth Luce referred to the three-man crew…as “my young Cubans”: Quoted in Warren Hinckle and William Turner, Deadly Secrets: The CIA-Mafia War Against Castro and the Assassination of JFK, 148.
187
“The information they came out with was remarkably accurate”: Quoted in Holland.
187
he had tried to talk his old friend Fulgencio Batista into leaving: Hinckle and Turner, 192.
188
“The Russians would be photographed on board”: Weyl, 143.
188
[the friendship] was undisturbed even when Kennedy slept with Clare: Clarke, 97.
188
“It was a memorable moment in my life”: Henry Luce oral history, JFK Library.
189
“The Kennedy clan is fun to watch”: Quoted in Holland.
189
Clare lectured him that Cuba was an issue…“of American survival”: Hinckle and Turner, 186.
189
If his son ever “shows any signs of weakness”: Luce oral history, JFK Library.
190
“The pain is more than I can bear”: Quoted in New York Times, January 8, 1977.
191
its claim that Kennedy was backing a coup/invasion plan…was unconvincing: The book’s other major conclusion was even less persuasive. Waldron and Hartmann asserted that the Mafia masterminded the assassination of JFK, after infiltrating the Cuba plot, knowing that the government could not prosecute the mob for fear of exposing its top-secret coup/invasion plan. This thesis failed the basic credibility test in numerous ways. One of its biggest puzzles was why the Mafia would choose to knock off Kennedy just as he was preparing to knock off Castro, paving the way for the mob to regain its fabulously lucrative sin franchise in Havana.
191
arousing so much anticipation in his Cuban friend that he began naming Cabinet ministers: Waldron, 145.
191
he asked them to lay off “because of the increasing frequency of rumors”: CIA memo, July 17, 1963, NARA record number 104-10240-10326.
191
was scheduled to meet with them again on November 21 or 22: Army memo, December 11, 1963, NARA record number 198-10004-10011.
191
That is why he continued to believe in the Kennedys: Erneido Oliva, “Why Did the Assault Brigade 2506 Give Its Flag to President Kennedy for Safekeeping?” published on Cuban-American Military Council Web site.
192
He was “also afraid of the dentist”: Quoted in Johnson, 186.
Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years (No Series) Page 61
