We are under pressure from our military to use force against Cuba…. In his memoirs, Premier Nikita Khrushchev quotes the younger Kennedy as saying: “The President is in a grave situation…. Instead, Attorney General Robert Kennedy was sent to meet with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin. The Joint Chiefs of Staff pressed for an immediate attack. Kennedy’s next major crisis occurred on October 16, 1962, when he was shown aerial photos of missile bases in Cuba. The invasion was so transparent and misconceived that Kennedy refused massive air support and immediately afterward fired CIA Director Allen Dulles, Deputy Director General Charles Cabell and Deputy Director of Planning Richard Bissell. What else could such an inexperienced President have done? Signs of a serious rift, however, first appeared after the Bay of Pigs, a CIA-planned and -executed invasion of Cuba that took place three months after Kennedy took office. “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”Īt the beginning of his administration, Kennedy seems to have followed the advice of his military and intelligence officers. “The conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience,” said Eisenhower. On January 17, 1962, in his farewell address to the nation, Eisenhower spoke to the country and his successor, John F. No one understood the monster better than President Dwight D. By 1960, the Pentagon was easily the world’s largest corporation, with assets over $60 billion. The President’s primary obstacle in this quest was a massive, power-hungry bureaucracy that had emerged after WWII-a Frankenstein monster created by anti-Communist paranoia and inflated defense budgets. Like the majority of people across the planet, they wanted peace. Americans had grown weary of Cold War hysteria. Kennedy was neither a saint nor a great intellectual, he was the youngest president ever elected, which may explain why he was so well attuned to the changing mood of America in the ’60s. Oliver Stone, Mother Jones, March/April 1991Īlthough John F. No one wants to admit that in America, peace is dangerous business.” “No one wants to recognize that somewhere along the line, America has ceased to be the home of the brave and the land of the free, and that only in after-dinner speeches is it still the sweet land of liberty. In conjunction with the anniversary of JFK’s murder on November 22, 1963, we’re republishing the story below. In September, 1991, High Times published Steven Hager’s story “Heritage of Stone,” written in advance of Oliver Stone’s 30-million film on the JFK assassination that implicates the CIA, J.
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