Background: The Bay of Pigs and Operation Mongoose

Hello. My name is Mark White.

I'm professor of American history at Queen Mary University of London,

and I'm going to be talking about the Cuban missile crisis.

There's a way in which historians understanding of the

Cuban missile crisis has changed over the years.

If you look at the early books that were published on the Cuban missile crisis,

they tended to focus on those 13 days in October 1962

when the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war.

So the period from the 16th of October to the 28th of October 1962.

But I say over the last 25 30 years, historians have become as interested

in the causes of the Cuban missile crisis, the background,

the Cuban missile crisis,

the question of why it happened,

as well as the question of how it was diffused, how it was ended.

So I'm going to talk about

John Kennedy and his policies towards Cuba in 61 in early 62.

I'm also going to talk about Nikita Khrushchev

and his decision to put missiles in Cuba.

It's a decision he made in the spring of 62.

Um,

so let me start by talking about John Kennedy and his early policies towards Cuba.

Now this is important because what some historians feel is that

those policies influence crushed jobs decision to put missiles in Cuba.

So, in other words,

without Kennedy's policies towards Cuba in 61 early 62

Castro may well have not put missiles in Cuba,

and therefore there would have been no Cuban missile crisis.

The hallmark of Kennedy's policy towards Cuba,

which was led by the revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, uh, was one of hostility

and an important

issue. Here is the 1960 presidential election.

John Kennedy was running against his Republican opponent,

Richard Nixon was known as a hardline anti Communist,

and Kennedy was determined that Nixon wouldn't be able

to accuse him Kennedy of being soft on communism.

So during the campaign, Kennedy accused Nixon

of failing to prevent

the advent of Castro to power in Cuba. Castro had come to power in 1959

at the time, which Nixon was vice president of the United States,

and Kennedy made the argument that Nixon had been soft on Castro.

Elect me, President Kennedy suggested,

and I'll take a much more hard line approach,

and Kennedy wins the 1960 election by a very narrow margin in the popular vote.

And when he becomes president,

he the 1st 15 months or so he carries out a policy of unremitting hostility.

The first thing he does is to try to topple Fidel Castro via an invasion,

the Bay of Pigs invasion.

Now this was a C. I A plan,

and the idea was to take Cuban exiles.

Cuban emigres train them, equip them and send them back in Cuba

to launch a coup d eight r two to overthrow Fidel Castro.

Kennedy gave the go ahead for an invasion at the Bay of Pigs UH,

which takes place in the middle of April 1961.

And it's a total disaster.

Castro's army militia soon round up the invading Cuban emigres,

so Kennedy's attempt, made three months into his presidency to overthrow Castro,

had failed.

The question for Kennedy then was What do I do about Castro now?

Some of his liberal advisers, like Adlai Stevenson,

who was his ambassador to the United Nations,

encouraged him to adopt a more patient approach diplomacy, for example, Um,

but Kennedy made the decision, uh,

which was ratified at the National Security Council meeting on the fifth of May

that he would continue to work for the overthrow of Castro.

The decision he made on the fifth of May was to do everything in his power

to overthrow Castro.

Um, apart from a direct invasion by US forces,

although even that was to be retained as a policy option.

Six months later, in November 61 Operation Mongoose was launched,

and this was the centrepiece of Kennedy's effort to get rid of Fidel Castro.

It was the largest CIA operation in history

up to that point in time,

and the aim of the operation

was ultimately to trigger

an uprising, an anti Castro uprising in Cuba,

Um, and then sending US forces to make sure that uprising succeeded

and that Castro was overthrown.

Bobby Kennedy, JFK's brother John Kennedy's brother closest adviser,

who was attorney general that's head of the Justice Department,

came to play a major role in Operation Mongoose.

He was determined to exact revenge on Castro for what he regarded

as the humiliation inflicted on his brother at the Bay of Pigs.

Operation Mongoose has launched in November 61

Um, and it involves things like acts of sabotage,

improving intelligence collection to find out what was happening in Cuba.

But the ultimate aim, as I say, was to trigger an anti Castro uprising.

In addition, in early 1962 in February,

60 to the United States arranged for Cuba to be ejected

from the Organisation of American States to isolate Cuba diplomatically,

uh, within the Western Hemisphere.

Also, Kennedy imposed strict economic sanctions on Cuba

in February 62.

At the same time, secretly,

he is updating contingency military plans for an air

strike on Cuba or an invasion of Cuba,

Um, so that if he did decide to attack Cuba, those plans were ready to ready to go.

So as as of the spring of 1960

to Kennedy had carried out a multi faceted, multi faceted anti Castro policy.

And there's one other thing

that is assassination.

During the final year of Dwight Eisenhower's presidency in 1960 the C. I. A.

Developed plans to assassinate Fidel Castro, uh, the phrase that that was used and,

uh, executive action executive what it meant.

Assassination.

And the way in which it worked was the CIA hired an ex

FBI agent who in turn hired mobsters

to carry out the assassination. Sam Giancana, the head of the Chicago Mafia,

and Johnny Rosselli, Las Vegas mobster uh, one there,

obviously very good at killing people.

And secondly, uh, they had extensive interests in pre Castro Havana.

Kennedy inherited those assassination plans as president.

Years later, in 1975 the U.

S Senate carried out an investigation into

alleged assassination attempts made against foreign leaders,

including Castro.

And what that

a Senate report in the mid 19 seventies established was that at

least eight assassination plots had been devised by the CIA against Castro,

a number of them during the Kennedy years.

We know that at least one,

maybe two assassination plots were scheduled around the time of the Bay of Pigs.

That might well explain why Kennedy gave the go ahead for the Bay of Pigs invasion.

If you assume he knew about the assassination attempts,

he thought Kennedy would be Castro be assassinated.

That would create a political vacuum in Cuba, and in that context,

the Bay of Pigs invasion could be successful.

So this was another element in Kennedy's effort to get rid of Castro.

Um, in the early part of his presidency.

The one other thing he did, which is significant

in terms of the whole question of Cuba and the Cold War

and this is one of the little known facts about Kennedy is he carried out

the largest peacetime increase in military spending in U. S.

History, up to that point in time to be exceeded later in the Reagan years.

As a student, as the Harvard student,

Kennedy had studied the British appeasement of Nazi Germany,

and it was published. His first book, in 1940 called Why England Slept.

You can still learn a lot about John Kennedy's foreign

policy by reading that first book Why England Slept.

And what he argued was that the mistake that the British made in dealing

with Hitler was was that they did not prepare militarily to confront him.

And from that point on,

that's always the basis of Kennedy's approach to foreign policy,

the importance of military preparation.

So it's no surprise that when he became president,

he carried out this huge military build up.

So by early 62 Kennedys carried out that huge build up,

and it's also made a sustained effort to get without Fidel Castro.

In the spring of 1962 Nikita Krushchev would respond to those two things