Jack Kennedy

by Chris Matthews

  On April 12, 1961, the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth. It was the first time in human history that man had gone beyond our planet’s atmosphere. Having beaten the United States into space with their first unmanned craft, the satellite Sputnik 1, back in 1957, the Russians once again had surpassed us. That first victory had come on President Eisenhower’s watch, but this one was on Kennedy’s.

  But April, the “cruelest month,” held further setbacks, ones that would leave even more serious political scars. On April 17, more than 1,400 anti-Castro Cuban exiles—trained, equipped, transported, and given limited air cover by the CIA—landed on a Cuban beach bordering an inlet now known as the Bay of Pigs on the island’s south side. The disembarking Cubans had been assured by Agency officials they’d have full U.S. military support were they to encounter trouble on landing, but this turned out to be a false promise.

  As Kennedy famously quoted at the time, “Victory has a hundred fathers; defeat is an orphan.” The best way to look back with full understanding at the debacle known as the “Bay of Pigs” is to get an idea of how it appeared going forward.

  There were several factors contributing to the pressure put on the new president to approve this ostensibly secret plan. Kennedy had himself called for such an action during the campaign, having gotten a tip-off from, if not others, Governor John Patterson of Alabama, who knew his National Guard units were helping the CIA invasion effort. He felt another spur to action. Once he’d taken the oath of office, and had it confirmed that the operation was already well into its planning stages, he understood that to back off and shut down the preparations would paint him as a soft-liner.

  Driving him the hardest were his new colleagues. Somehow, the people directing “Operation Zapata,” the invasion’s CIA code name, fully believed their plan could succeed. They were encouraged by the success Allen Dulles, the brother of the late John Foster Dulles, President Eisenhower’s secretary of state, had had in pulling off what was regarded as a similar scheme back in 1954, when a coup d’état had been stage-managed in Guatemala.

  Richard Bissell, Dulles’s chief of operations, had slyly arranged, while Kennedy was still a candidate, to meet him at a Georgetown party, and the two Ivy Leaguers had hit it off. Not only was Bissell a persuasive and convincing supporter of Operation Zapata, but so were key Kennedy people, such as Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy.

  But what really clinched it for those men sitting safely in faraway Washington was the escape hatch many were led to believe was built into the plan: if the exiles found themselves unable to hold a beachhead once they landed, they could then retreat to the Escambray Mountains only eighty miles away, where they’d be able to join up with counterrevolutionary forces hiding out. Unfortunately, it was a very long eighty miles, across nearly impassable swamp—and getting even to that point meant eluding a Castro force vastly larger than the exile group. Obviously—had he known, and he should have known this—instead of signing off on it, Kennedy should have shut Zapata down while it was still possible.

  Instead, there on the sands of that Cuban bay, every member of the invading Brigade 2506—mostly middle-class professionals recruited in Miami with little idea how to defend themselves against Fidel’s soldiers—was captured or killed. Quickly, in the aftermath, Kennedy asked for the resignations of both Dulles and Bissell. “In a parliamentary government, I’d have to resign,” JFK told Bissell. “But in this government, I can’t, so you and Allen have to go.”

  In the end, even from this distant vantage point, nothing is perfectly clear about that ill-conceived CIA operation except for the fact that, once it was launched, it was bound to fail.

  It’s hard to say just why Kennedy went along with his advisors, most of whom seem to have either had their heads in the sand or were otherwise enacting agendas of their own. Yet what does a president have such military and intelligence experts for if not to listen to them? JFK had been in office only three months, and however quick a study he was, he was still learning on the job. He was also used to being entirely his own boss, his own skipper, his own engine of accomplishment—from the Muckers to PT 109 to his extraordinary campaigns. The scope and scale, the sheer bulkiness of the apparatus around him made a difference to his sense of maneuverability. Now he’d signed on, not just to an operation, but to a government. He was surrounded by a government establishment he himself had no hand in forging.

  But the contradictions buried in the Bay of Pigs scheme echoed Kennedy’s own. It was the old “two Jacks” problem. He was an idealist pursuing a new foreign policy he hoped would transcend the Cold War. He was also a Cold Warrior who had promised in the recent campaign to back “fighters for freedom” against Fidel Castro. Here he was caught going down the one road while signaling the other.

  Just a month earlier, at a White House reception for Latin American diplomats, Kennedy had delivered his “Alliance for Progress” speech. In it he’d vowed to abandon the gunboat diplomacy engaged in by the “Goliath of the North” for generations, as the United States intervened at will in countries such as Cuba. This declaration of Pan-American mutual respect would be tarnished by U.S. efforts to overthrow Castro. Only too aware of the hypocrisy it revealed, Kennedy insisted that the Cuban invasion be carried out in the absence of direct U.S. military action, on the principle of what’s known in dark diplomacy as “plausible deniability.”

  To achieve this goal, Kennedy had instructed the CIA’s Bissell, whose baby the operation really was, to see that it was carried out with the minimum of “noise.” For this reason he ordered the landing point shifted from Trinidad, a busy port city, to the desolate Bahía de Cochinos. As a result, the invasion inevitably lost what chance it might have had of triggering a countrywide rebellion, with citizens coming out to join the “liberators.”

  Kennedy’s conflict in purpose continued as he sought to reconcile his aggressive Cold Warrior stance, which had seen him denouncing the Truman administration’s “loss” of China, with his newly emerged recognition of postwar nationalism. The incredibly tricky challenge of toppling a despot on foreign soil by supporting an invasion was dealt another blow when Kennedy called off two of the planned air strikes in the midst of the operation. For the anti-Castro force to hold the beachhead, the small Cuban air force needed to be knocked out of action. In the event, it suffered only limited damage.

  By the third day, the battle was lost. The mountains with their promise of sanctuary were little more than a mirage, real but impossible to reach. The eyes of the world were watching as Castro rounded up the poorly served and even more poorly supported surviving combatants, who would not return home to Florida for twenty more months, not until the United States bartered for their freedom with more than $50 million worth of medicine and baby food.

  In the aftermath, there was certainly enough blame to go around, as JFK ironically suggested. But that mattered little in the face of such headlines as the one that ran in the New York Times on April 21: “CUBA SAYS SOVIETS SCARED OFF U.S.; Asserts Washington Feared ‘Superior’ Russian Arms.”

  The question must be asked: What was Kennedy thinking? Why did he sign off on an invasion offering so slender a possibility of success? What about the thought he never seemed even to take into account: What would success actually look like? Could anyone seriously imagine the people of Cuba overthrowing Fidel Castro—or attempting to—upon hearing news of a 1,400-man invasion force landing on a remote beach? And given the strong chance of the mission’s failure, how did he imagine the United States would then appear to the world, both in Latin America and around the globe?

  Those questions having been put on the table, there are others equally important. Why didn’t Dulles or Bissell tell JFK he was compromising the invasion by changing the landing area, and that the air strikes—all of them—were essential? Why had they maintained that there would be a widespread Cuban uprising against Castro? Why did they lie in saying the members of Brigade 2506 could
escape into the mountains if they failed to secure a beachhead? Bissell, the chief instigator, would later admit to having misled Kennedy into believing that option was a viable one. But why hadn’t General Lyman Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoken up to warn the president that the invasion plan was a fool’s game? Why had Secretary of State Dean Rusk not expressed his own doubts about the Cuban people’s willingness to embrace a general revolt? Far more important, why hadn’t Kennedy asked the right questions, and made sure to have the solid answers such a risky undertaking demanded? Beyond the human toll, the collateral damage, after all, would be to his administration’s credibility.

  To his credit, Kennedy kept disaster from becoming calamity. He decided at the most critical moment to cut his losses, refusing to send in U.S. forces, and that may have been the crucial decision of the entire episode. He took charge—far too late, admittedly—but with executive firmness. He told the military and the intelligence brass that the United States would not openly attack the island of Cuba. He would let those men meet their fate on the beach rather than commit his country to possible direct confrontation with the Soviet Union. Who knew how many Russians were on the island, how many would be killed by a U.S. air attack on Castro’s forces?

  The Bay of Pigs cast a long shadow over the Kennedy White House, but the value of the early lessons it provided for Kennedy cannot be underestimated. One of them involved one of his very first presidential acts. “I probably made a mistake in keeping Allen Dulles on,” the president told Arthur Schlesinger just two days later. “It’s not that Dulles is not a man of great ability. He is. But I have never worked with him and therefore I can’t estimate his meaning when he tells me things. We will have to do something about the CIA. I must have someone there with whom I can be in complete and intimate contact—someone from whom I know I will be getting the exact pitch. I made a mistake in putting Bobby in the Justice Department. He is wasted there. Bobby should be in the CIA. It’s a helluva way to learn things, but I have learned one thing from this business—that is, that we will have to deal with the CIA.”

  In a statesmanlike gesture, he soon met with Richard Nixon, who hawkishly urged him to “find a proper legal cover and go in.” Nixon’s idea was to use the defense of our naval base at Guantánamo as a possible excuse. Hearing this, Kennedy pointed to the inherent danger in that plan. “There is a good chance that if we move on Cuba, Khrushchev will move on Berlin,” he said. The former vice president, always touched by any sign of respect from Jack, came away ready to rally support for him. “I just saw a crushed man today,” Nixon told his allies after the encounter, asking them to resist taking easy shots at the demoralized president.

  President Eisenhower was more hard-nosed, wanting to know why Kennedy had called off the air strikes. When the younger man said it was to conceal the country’s role in the operation, Ike was contemptuous. The very concept was obviously contradictory. Here was the United States offering training, equipment, transportation, and air cover to a military operation in which it intended to deny involvement. “How could you expect the world to believe that we had nothing to do with it?” When Kennedy said he feared how the Russians might retaliate in Berlin, Ike’s response was to tell his successor that the Soviets didn’t react to what we did. Rather, they “follow their own plans.” The general, now a partisan proud of his presidential service, refused to allow that Soviet strength and belligerence had grown toward the end of his watch. The new president had to.

  Accustomed to success, Jack took the defeat hard. For the first time, witnesses actually saw him in tears. Yet, recognizing that he’d backed a military effort requiring greater resources than he was ready to commit and greater risks than he, in the end, wanted to take, he accepted the responsibility. “I’m the responsible officer of the government,” JFK assured reporters and the country.

  The American people decided they liked the fact that Kennedy, whatever his failings heading into the disastrous mission, had acquitted himself as a true commander in chief at its conclusion. The record shows that he gained his highest job approval rating—scoring 83 percent in a Gallup poll—in the weeks thereafter.

  Close friends such as Red Fay could see the toll it had taken. “In the months that followed, no matter how you tried to avoid touching on the subject, by one route or another it seemed to find its way back into the President’s conversation.” Even on vacation in Hyannis Port, it obsessed him, much to the distress of Jackie, who was ready to put the nightmarish scenes on that Cuban beach that haunted her husband behind them.

  One of those Cape Cod evenings provided an outpouring Fay never forgot. It was when Jack outlined for him what he believed in: “I will never compromise the principles on which this country is built,” JFK told him, “but we’re not going to plunge into an irresponsible action just because a fanatical fringe in this country puts so-called national pride above national reason.” Then he went on, “Do you think I’m going to carry on my conscience the responsibility for the wanton maiming and killing of children like our children we saw here this evening? Do you think I’m going to cause a nuclear exchange—for what? Because I was forced into doing something that I didn’t think was proper and right? Well, if you or anybody else thinks I am, he’s crazy.”

  When his host reached for his crutches, Fay understood he was finished with him for the evening. “He started up the stairs, straining with every step. He stopped me in the middle of the stairs and looked down at me, his face still inflamed. ‘By God, there will be no avoiding responsibility—nor will there be any irresponsibility. When the decisive time for action arrives, action will be taken.’ Turning, he lifted himself painfully up the rest of the stairs and to his room.”

  Meeting with the leaders of the Cuban Revolutionary Council, the main exile group, Jack spoke of his own wartime losses, even sharing a photograph of his brother Joe. One of the leaders, who’d lost his son in the invasion attempt, said the exiles had been “taken for a ride.” He suggested Kennedy had been taken for one as well.

  With the wounds from the Bay of Pigs still smarting, another Communist threat suddenly loomed on the horizon. It presented the likelihood of a far more dangerous crisis. Premier Nikita Khrushchev, who’d been making dark utterances for several years about changing the balance of power in Berlin—a city that had become such a symbol—demanded a showdown with President Kennedy in Vienna in early June.

  Before heading to the summit in Austria, JFK took his first foreign trip, to Ottawa, where he and Jackie were welcomed by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker. Fifty thousand people turned out to watch the Kennedys’ arrival. After addressing jointly both houses of Parliament, Jack took part in a tree-planting ceremony. As he lifted a silver shovel of dirt, he suddenly wrenched his weak back so painfully that he grabbed his forehead in anguish. Upon his return to Washington, he needed his crutches—which he used now only in private, in front of family and friends—to walk from the helicopter landing pad on the South Lawn to the White House.

  Jack Kennedy had spent the past decades stoically rising above extreme physical discomfort, and he wasn’t about to change, having now reached the White House. Less than two weeks after their return from Canada, the First Couple flew off to France, where one of the highlights was a luncheon at the Elysée Palace hosted by President Charles de Gaulle. Throughout her stay, beautiful Jackie, with her fluent French and stunning wardrobe, was an unqualified success, both fascinating and delighting the French public. People would remember that her husband joked to the traveling press corps, “I’m the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I have enjoyed it.” But fewer will know that de Gaulle, an entirely formidable figure, had been captivated enough by her on a trip to Washington the previous year to have commented, “If there were anything I could take back to France with me, it would be Mrs. Kennedy.”

  The two leaders got along surprisingly well. During the war, de Gaulle had headed the Free French, symbolizing their country’s resistance to the N
azi occupation. With regard to the American’s coming engagement with Khrushchev in Vienna, de Gaulle was both thoughtful and candid. Urging Kennedy to keep his priorities in perspective, the French president expressed doubts about the ultimate sustainability of the Soviet system. He put little faith in their economic model, and so the Russian tide, he predicted, eventually would recede from Europe. Until that happened, the West, he reminded JFK, must stand firm. The greater threat, he predicted, would come decades later from China.

  De Gaulle, like Kennedy, was able to put himself in the other man’s shoes. Yet even as he could see beyond the immediate conflict to three decades down the road, de Gaulle recognized that such foresight little helped the predicament now. His practical advice, when it came to dealing with Khrushchev over the fate of Berlin, was to avoid even the appearance of negotiating. To do so would mean playing the Soviets’ game.

  Yet, as Eisenhower had been, de Gaulle was somewhat out of step with the times when it came to assessing the Russian mood. It had been one matter to not take the Soviets seriously when Russia, despite its immense size, seemed to lag behind the West. Now, just sixteen years after the war had ended, leaving devastation and demoralization in its wake, the Soviets were gunning their engines, trying to race ahead of the European powers and the United States. Their numerous gains—from their first-in-space status to their successful backing of “wars of liberation” in Africa, Asia, and Latin America—had left them confident, ready to flaunt their new standing vis-à-vis the West.

  Moreover, if the size and power of the Soviet military forces weren’t sufficiently frightening, the fact that the Soviet defense system had come to include a sizable nuclear arsenal surely was. What was bringing President John Kennedy to Vienna with such uncertainty—and foreboding—was Khrushchev’s announced intention to sign a separate treaty between the Soviet Union and East Germany that would have the effect of stranding the city of Berlin 110 miles within the Russian-allied German Democratic Republic. Berlin, split by the Allies into sectors at the end of the war, had become the main escape route for millions fleeing west to escape Communist dictatorship. Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson told the president that the Soviet leader was so personally committed to a solution to the Berlin problem that the chances for either war or an “ignominious” retreat by the West were “close to fifty-fifty.”