by Gus Russo
John Kennedy had concluded what the real mistake had been in the Bay of Pigs operation. The Agency just didn’t have any idea how far the Kennedy brothers wanted to go to “get rid” of Castro. They were soon to find out. The President told aide Kenny O’Donnell, “I should have had Bobby in on that from the start.” Jack also said, “I made a mistake putting Bobby in the Justice Department. Bobby should be in CIA.”4 Kennedy advisor Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. remembered the chain of events, saying, “After the Bay of Pigs, Robert Kennedy took a personal interest in the CIA and became an informal presidential watchdog over covert operations.”5 Bobby became “the untitled overseer of the intelligence apparatus in the Kennedy administration,” as chroniclers of American intelligence activities later put it.6 Soon Bobby Kennedy’s iron grip on CIA covert activities was complete.
The first result of this reshuffling was Bobby Kennedy’s appointment of the Taylor Commission to investigate what had gone wrong at the Bay of Pigs. It consisted of Allen Dulles, General Maxwell Taylor, and Admiral Arleigh Burke, and was overseen by Bobby Kennedy. Six weeks later, Bobby concluded:
We have been struck with the general feeling that there can be no long term living with Castro as a neighbor. It is recommended that the Cuban situation be reappraised. . . and new guidance be provided for political, military, economic, and propaganda action against Castro.7
Aware of the recent coup successes of the previous administration, and with the CIA’s Allen Dulles still on board, the Kennedys were brimming with confidence. Bobby made it clear to his charges that Public Enemy Number One was Fidel Castro. One Kennedy intimate has written, “From inside accounts of the pressure Bobby was putting on the CIA to ‘get Castro,’ he seemed like a wild man who was out-CIA-ing the CIA.”8 The same source concluded that the “Attorney General was the driving force behind the clandestine effort to overthrow Castro.” Dick Bissell said, “That pressure was exerted, all right. I felt that pressure, mainly from Bobby.”9 After a few weeks on the job, Bissell complained, “Bobby is a wild man on getting rid of Castro.”10 Richard Helms, CIA Deputy Director of Operations, also knew what Bissell was experiencing. “My God, these Kennedys keep the pressure on about Castro,” Helms remarked.11
While the Taylor Commission was in session, the assassination plots against Castro, begun before the Bay of Pigs, continued. The CIA later admitted that the plots were never terminated, but were always considered a “going operation.”12 While Phase One of the Cuban Project was failing dismally, Phase Two (post Bay of Pigs) was already in the planning stages.
The second result of this reshuffling was a new operation, overseen by Robert Kennedy and unprecedented in the annals of the American intelligence community. As Bobby instructed his charges, “My idea is to stir things up on the island with espionage, sabotage, general disorder. . .”13 He planned to topple what he considered the Castro “insurgent movement” with his own movement. His idea was not new. In military circles, it was known by its true name—counterinsurgency.
The Kennedys and Counterinsurgency
“Guerrillas must move among the people as fish swim in the sea.”
—John F. Kennedy, giving his “bastardized” version of Mao Tse Tung’s famous maxim14
Since World War II, the U.S. military establishment had been concerned with the possibility that the Soviet Union would eclipse the West in its ability to conduct “special warfare.” Also referred to as counterinsurgency, special warfare allowed a nation to respond to a foreign threat in a manner short of all-out war, and before the threat was fully realized. The Pentagon’s Field Circular for low intensity conflict defines counterinsurgency this way: “The art and science of developing and using the political, economic, psychological, and military powers of a government, including police and internal security forces, to prevent or defeat insurgency.”15 According to a 1947 Army review entitled “A Study of Special and Subversive Operations,” the specific counterinsurgent techniques to be employed included:
The control of movement of civilians, rendering civilian cooperation with our forces desirable, eliminating guerrilla sources of supply, the holding of hostages, reprisals against civilians [etc],. . . In general, means must be devised to remove any guerrilla logistic support, to alienate the civilian population from the guerrillas, to isolate the underground, and to prevent support for them by air, sea, or land.16
Many of these tactics were used against the Castro regime.
In 1947, U.S. military planners studied guerrilla movements in the Philippines, the Balkans, and the Soviet Union to formulate their policy. It became clear that effective counterinsurgency demanded a capability for sabotage, hit-and-run raids, control of the airwaves, arson, terror, and assassination.
These studies led to the formation of the Army’s elite Special Forces unit. Although clearly concerned with the new dimension of statecraft, the military remained reluctant to elevate pre-emptive counterinsurgence to the strategy of first choice. With centuries of proven tactical warfare theory, the military planners felt more secure in devoting their continued energies to the tried and true methods of full-scale war. (This kind of thinking precipitated America’s all-out involvement in Korea in the 1950s and Vietnam in the late 1960s.) Sensing what full-scale war would mean with either Cuba or Vietnam, President Kennedy knew there had to be another answer, and he believed he found it in counterinsurgency. The Special Forces had been a small, highly trained, and rarely used cadre. That would change almost immediately after Kennedy’s inauguration.
On February 1, 1961, ten days after assuming office, President Kennedy met with his National Security Council (NSC) to formulate National Security Action Memorandum 2 (NSAM2). The document called for “an expanded guerrilla program,” the addition of 3,000 men to the Army’s 1,000-man Special Forces, funded by a budget increase of $19 million, and a re-allocation of $100 million within the Defense Department for “unconventional wars.” Historian Michael McLintock observed:
The counterinsurgency era began with John F. Kennedy’s call for a radical reappraisal of US. special warfare. His fascination with the Special Forces and the idea of American guerrillas meshed neatly with his Cold War view that the small wars of subversion and insurgency on me periphery of me “Free World” posed me greatest challenge to our national security. In particular, Kennedy emphasized counterinsurgency’s use for political and economic reform.17
McLintock points out that NSAM2 was just the beginning. In his March 28 message to Congress (just prior to the Bay of Pigs invasion), the President delivered what the historian referred to as Kennedy’s “seminal statement” on counterinsurgency. On this occasion, Kennedy declared:
The free world’s security can be endangered not only by a nuclear attack, but also by being nibbled away at the periphery. . . by forces of subversion, infiltration, intimidation, indirect or non-overt aggression, internal revolution, diplomatic blackmail, guerrilla warfare or a series of limited wars. . .
Much of our effort to create guerrilla and anti-guerrilla capabilities has in the past been aimed at general war. We must be ready now to deal with any size of force, including small externally supported bands of men; and we must help train local forces to be equally effective.
But it was clear that Kennedy wanted to go beyond merely training “local forces.” America, the President went on to say, had an obligation to contribute “highly mobile forces trained in this type of warfare.” On May 11, in the wake of the Bay of Pigs embarrassment, Kennedy issued National Security Action Memorandum 52. Its first and keystone clause stated that the U.S. objective (preventing a Communist takeover in South Vietnam) had caused the White House “to initiate, on an accelerated basis, a series of mutually supportive actions of a military, political, economic, psychological and covert character designed to achieve this objective.” The practical result was that CIA Saigon station chief William Colby formed the highly secret Special Operations Group (SOG), which infiltrated saboteurs and agents into the sovereign nations of Nor
th Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.18
On May 25, Kennedy addressed a joint session of Congress and requested a one-half billion dollar increase in the Defense Department budget to further this new strategy. Elaborating to the Congress on the “type of warfare” he was talking about, Kennedy spoke of the enemy using “guerrillas striking at night, by assassins, acting alone.” By employing “this type of warfare,” Kennedy was letting the world know that the United States was preparing, in his words, to “respond in kind.” The United States was about to enter not only the “counterinsurgency era,” but also the assassination era. Stung by the Bay of Pigs one month earlier, Kennedy was informing the world (and especially Cuba) that America’s gloves were off.19
Throughout the summer of 1961, the U.S. mounted a series of disorganized offensives against Cuba (details to follow) that went nowhere. It wasn’t until then that a frustrated Bobby Kennedy suggested putting some shape to the amorphous policy.
In October 1961, two momentous events occurred. First, the CIA, ostensibly corroborating the allegations of exile leader Miro Cardona of a planned second invasion of Cuba, was instructed by President Kennedy to conduct a study which would be called “If Castro Were to Die.” If Fidel were removed “by assassination” or other causes, what would be the effect on his regime? The CIA response: “If Castro were to die by other than natural causes, the U.S. would likely be charged with complicity.” As will be seen, this conclusion would have no effect on the assassination plotting that was to follow.
Secondly, Kennedy asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff to prepare an invasion plan for Cuba. The top secret plans, months in the preparation, said the military could be mobilized within eight days of the go-ahead.20 All that was needed now was a White House coordinator for the intensified Cuba Project. The man President Kennedy chose was Brigadier General Edward Lansdale.
Edward Geary Lansdale
“Robert Kennedy was the driving force behind a continued operation against Castro, and Edward Geary Lansdale was his official instrument”
—Richard Bissell21
The subject of two best-selling novels (Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, and The Ugly American, by William Lederer and Eugene Burdick), Lansdale had become a mythic figure by the time John Kennedy assumed the presidency in 1961. As one of the few military men to champion the use of counterinsurgency, he was consistently considered an “outsider” by his Pentagon peers. Lansdale, however, had established a record of success that spoke for itself. Former CIA Director William Colby wrote of Lansdale:
Lansdale was a maverick, and big bureaucrats do not suffer mavericks kindly. . . . When an order appeared wrong, he simply ignored it and went on doing what he thought was right (and frequently it was). His style made him few friends among the more traditional bureaucrats and, more seriously, kept him from appointment to the kind of leadership where he might have been able to make major changes in American foreign policy. . . But he left a legacy. He inspired many with his empathy for Asians, particularly with the simplest Asians in the rice paddy or in the street stall. He was a patriot for all that is best in America. . .22
Lansdale had a strong ally at CIA: director Allen Dulles became his patron, eventually intervening with the Air Force to have Lansdale promoted to Brigadier General.23 In 1951, Edward Lansdale was thus inducted into the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination, where he was assigned the task of assisting the Philippines’ Minister of Defense, Raymond Magsaysay, in suppressing a rebellion by the Communist Huk guerrillas. Against great odds, Lansdale won over the peasant population with a program of road building, health center construction, and improved agricultural programs. In time, the Huks were defeated, with Lansdale and Magsaysay becoming popular heroes. (Lansdale incurred the wrath of fellow CIA officers by acquiring such a heroic public persona. Magsaysay went on to win the Philippine presidency by a landslide.)
Lansdale’s next challenge was Vietnam. President Eisenhower had hoped that Lansdale would have similar success assisting South Vietnam’s President Ngo Dinh Diem in repelling a similar Communist insurrection. Diem, however, was no Magsaysay. Lansdale’s techniques of reform and tolerance were not appreciated by Diem, who was intolerant of any opposition.
This is not to say that Lansdale was a pacifist. True to his military calling, the General was not averse to the use of “bullets over butter,” but advocated their use only against an armed and intransigent enemy, not against a wavering populace as an instrument of terror. When Eisenhower refused to pressure Diem into accepting reforms, Lansdale requested a transfer. He was promoted to the influential position of Deputy Director of the Pentagon’s new Office of Special Operations. It was here that he wrote a 25-page study about the Vietnam situation entitled “Binh Hung: A Counter Guerrilla Case Study.” The report, unlike typical upbeat military prognostications, painted a bleak, but realistic, picture of the situation in Asia. As if written by a military heretic, the study advised that the only way to defeat the Vietcong would be by enlisting the sincere loyalty and support of the peasants through agricultural and social reform. Lansdale wrote:
The great lesson [of Malaya and the Philippines] was that there must be a heartfelt cause to which the legitimate government is pledged, a cause which makes a stronger appeal to the public than the Communist cause. . . When the right cause is identified and used correctly, the anti-Communist fight becomes a pro-people fight.24
President Kennedy read the report two days before his inauguration. Impressed by the report’s candor, JFK instructed military advisor Walt Rostow, “Get to work on this.”25
On January 28, 1961, the weekend following his inauguration, John Kennedy summoned Lansdale to a cabinet meeting. The president told Lansdale how impressed he was with the general’s Vietnam study. After the meeting, Kennedy pulled Lansdale aside. “Did Dean [Rusk, the secretary of state] tell you that I’d like you to go over there [South Vietnam] as the new ambassador?” he asked. Although a stunned Lansdale had been lobbying for just such a post, he thought it better to act demure and to decline the offer, hoping the president would insist. He didn’t. Lansdale later recalled, “I still couldn’t catch on that he was being serious about it. I guess he was.”26
Three months later, the Bay of Pigs left Kennedy deeply suspicious of optimistic predictions from both CIA and Defense. The President needed a pragmatist, and in Lansdale, who had strongly objected to the Bay of Pigs invasion, he knew he had one. Like the rest of the Kennedys’ New York-Boston clique, Lansdale fit in nicely. “Ed was another Madison Avenue grey-suiter,” is the way one Cuba Project officer remembers him. It was Lansdale’s influence that led to the President’s demands on Congress for increased funding for counterinsurgency. Kennedy began reading the works of other famous guerrilla leaders, including Mao Tse Tung and Che Guevara. So enthralled was he that Kennedy even began quoting their maxims in public.
Not long after, at Robert Kennedy’s suggestion, the President offered Lansdale the Cuba Project. By 1962, the Kennedy administration had formed the Special Group Augmented (SGA), and made Bobby Kennedy the chairman. Bobby had teamed up with JFK aide Richard Goodwin in suggesting a “command operation” to deal with Cuba. The seminal document was a November 1, 1961 Goodwin memo to JFK proposing the new concept.
“The beauty of such an operation. . . is that we cannot lose,” the youthful Goodwin naively guaranteed. “I believe that the Attorney General would be the most effective commander of such an operation,” Goodwin continued. “The one danger here is that he might become too closely identified” with the project. Therefore, Goodwin advised, “His role should be told to only a few people at the top.”27
Robert Kennedy made his first formal presentation of the proposal to the Special Group on November 22, 1961. On November 30, 1961, President Kennedy issued the following proclamation to the Special Group: “We will use our available assets to go ahead with the discussed project in order to help Cuba overthrow the communist regime. This program will be conducted under the general guidance
of General Lansdale, acting as Chief of Operations.” Lansdale, in fact, had proposed NSAM2 to Kennedy. This new, overarching program, conceived on a scale grander than anything before it, was bestowed the name “Operation Mongoose.”28
Operation Mongoose
“It is the age of arson, sabotage, kidnappings and murder for political purposes; it is the age of hit-and-run terrorist activities coordinated on a global scale.”
—Robert Kennedy, to the first graduating class of the International Police Academy, February 196429
“MONGOOSE: A carnivorous predator known for its lightning-fast reflexes. After killing its prey, it steals its eggs. Also known as “The Perfect Killer.’”
— The Encyclopedia of the Animal World, Vol. 7.
“In keeping with the Presidential memorandum of 30 November 1961, the United States will help the people of Cuba overthrow the Communist regime from within Cuba. . . The U.S. recognizes that final success will require decisive U.S. military intervention.”
— This early guideline written by Lansdale became the mantra for a reckless new anti-Castro program spearheaded by the Kennedy White House30
While Lansdale formulated policy in the White House, the practical logistics, predictably, were to be carried out by the CIA, where the new Cuban “Task Force W” was headed by Bill Harvey. By this time, the White House had removed the Cuban component from where it traditionally resided, in the CIA’s Western Hemisphere Division, run by J.C. King. This allowed Task Force W to come under the direct control of Bobby Kennedy and the Kennedy White House. However, JFK installed a direct “red phone” line to J.C. King’s private study at home to seek his counsel when needed throughout his term. “That phone rang at all hours of the day and night,” King’s daughter Marguerita recently recalled.31
