...RU SIRIUS: Your book shows that there was a terrible relationship between JFK and some members of his administration and the entire National Security establishment. It's all of a piece, but I think the situation with Joint Chiefs of Staff and the military really stands out...
DAVID TALBOT: They were his nemesis.
RU: They were very frightening.
DT: Yeah. The Kennedy administration was beleaguered and besieged by its own government. That was a revelation for me. After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, when Kennedy refuses to reinforce the CIA with U.S. troops and the Air Force, the government was pretty much at war with itself. Up to that point, they believed that Kennedy was a weak President – he was in over his head. And they were determined to run the country the way they wanted to.
RU: They suckered Kennedy into letting this invasion happen. Apparently, there was a fairly recent revelation that the CIA knew the Bay of Pigs wasn't going to work and they were sure that Kennedy would be forced to mount an invasion.
DT: That's right. I think they were trying to sandbag him. They knew he was young and inexperienced. According to the CIA's own internal history of the Bay of Pigs, which was released and de-classified in 2005, they knew that it would fail. They knew that their own motley brigade of Cuban exiles weren't sufficient to defeat Castro, and they thought that Kennedy's hand would be forced to send in the Marines and Air Force once these guys were pinned down on the beaches. But he didn't. He was very loath to widen the war. He knew — as the CIA itself later determined in an intelligence estimate — that if we were to do that, it would end up like what we're seeing today in Iraq. U.S. forces would have quickly swept aside Castro's military, they'd have marched on to Havana and then they would've gotten bogged down in a long and bloody occupation...
[thanks to the heretik and John Amato]
Unlike the stories of Saddam being behind 911 and Al Qaeda everywhere except of course, Saudi Arabia, this is doubtless baseless conspiracy theory.
After all, the D.o'D. and their Company backers for Viet Nam would never have lied to LBJ about Viet Nam. Just ask 'em, they'll tell you.
Likewise, Carter had the best possible advice from Boykin and Ollie North during the Iran hostage crisis. They would never have manipulated the situation and placed American citizens' lives in danger. Or risked the lives of the soldiers who tried, and failed, with fatal results, to rescue the hostages.
And Bill Clinton's love life was certainly never targeted by some shadow government that brought him down because the average 'Merikan was too prosperous, or because he targeted the tobacco companies and Microsoft and wanted to tax the rich to promote education and health.
Such baseless conspiracy theories, unlike the current information about how the Shiite Iranians are using the Wahhabi Al-Qaeda to fight us in Iraq and Afghanistan and building nukular missiles to target Peoria, Illinois, have no basis in fact.
Besides, who would profit from such actions?
Who, indeed?
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