Legacy of Secrecy (4 page)

Bobby’s covert Cuban operations, and each group had crucial informa-

tion the other needed.

In addition to Bobby’s focus on the Mafia and Hoffa, the early 1960s

were a turbulent and transitional time in the area of civil rights. This

was the era of segregated schools in many parts of the country, though

racial discrimination was worst in the South, where even public drink-

ing fountains and movie theaters were often still segregated. Most state

legislatures had no blacks or Hispanics, and all-white juries were the

norm. Bobby and his Justice Department played a leading role in the

growing civil rights movement, enforcing the law when local or state

officials refused, or even broke the law themselves.

In June 1963, Governor George Wallace had stood in the doorway

of the University of Alabama to block admittance to a black student,

only weeks after Birmingham Police Chief Bull Connor had turned

attack dogs and fire hoses on peacefully protesting children. A few days

after that attack, the motel where Martin Luther King was staying was

bombed, and JFK had to call out troops to maintain order in Birming-

ham. Though King was able to marshal two hundred thousand people

to Washington in August 1963 to hear his “I Have a Dream” speech, civil

rights crusaders faced a constant threat of violence. Mississippi civil

rights leader Medgar Evers had been assassinated by a sniper in June

1963, and in September four little girls died when Birmingham’s 16th

Street Baptist Church was bombed.

Prosecutions for such crimes were largely local matters in 1963, since

the comprehensive federal civil rights legislation sought by JFK and

Bobby was proving problematic. Even with the help of Vice President

Johnson, a consummate dealmaker when he had led the Senate in the

late 1950s, passing such legislation would be difficult because of resis-

tance from powerful conservatives in Congress, mostly from the South.

Building Southern political support for JFK and his policies would be

one reason for the President’s open motorcades in Florida (on November

18, 1963) and Texas (on November 21 and 22).

Bobby would have had his hands full if he’d done nothing but focus

on civil rights, the Mafia, and Hoffa, as well as his extensive advice to

JFK about political and personal affairs, but there was still more on his

plate. Bobby also had a hand in foreign policy, which included being

one of several advisors to JFK about the growing problem of Vietnam.

The country’s dictator had been killed on November 2, 1963, following

a coup by military officers. JFK had approved the coup to remove the

corrupt dictator and his family from power, but hadn’t expected them

to be killed; a famous photo captured JFK’s anguish when he first heard

the news of their death. It’s important to remember that in November

1963, there were officially no US combat troops in Vietnam (only several

thousand “advisors”), and US casualties under JFK totaled less than

a hundred. Even with that relatively low level of commitment, most

scholars and former officials agree that JFK had decided to reduce US

forces in Vietnam in 1964.

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LEGACY OF SECRECY

Of more immediate concern to Bobby Kennedy was Cuba, a problem

in which he had taken a leading role that went far beyond just giving

advice to JFK. In fact, Bobby’s involvement surpassed anything that

could remotely be considered the role of an Attorney General. JFK had

delegated to Bobby the primary responsibility for defining and imple-

menting Cuban operations, because the CIA had so badly bungled the

Bay of Pigs operation in 1961 that JFK wanted someone he trusted to be

in charge. JFK felt uncomfortable leaving Cuban operations entirely to

the US military, since some of his Joint Chiefs had indicated an eagerness

to attack Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Of the military

brass, JFK fully trusted only his new Joint Chiefs Chairman, General

Maxwell Taylor; Defense Intelligence Agency head General Joseph

Carroll; and Secretary of the Army Cyrus Vance.

The complex, covert operations that made up the secret war against

Cuba couldn’t be delegated to cabinet officials like Defense Secretary

Robert McNamara or Secretary of State Dean Rusk for several reasons.

First, Defense and State had their own large bureaucracies, subject to

Congressional oversight, a situation that wasn’t conducive to their mak-

ing quick decisions about complicated, top-secret operations where the

hand of the US had to remain hidden. They also had their hands full with

Vietnam, and the rest of the Cold War with Russia and China, whose

fronts ranged from Eastern Europe to Asia to the Middle East. Finally,

Rusk and McNamara were the administration’s highest-profile officials

to the press and public, which was hardly compatible with overseeing

the Kennedys’ highly secret operations against Cuba.

While the Joint Chiefs, Defense, State, and the CIA all had input

into Cuba policy and operations, declassified files and former admin-

istration officials make it clear that JFK delegated control to his trusted

brother, Bobby. Selected officials in those agencies participated in three

subcommittees of the National Security Council (the Standing Group,

the Special Group, and the Interdepartmental Coordinating Commit-

tee of Cuban Affairs), whose organization and responsibility were so

confusing that detailed charts had to be prepared just to sort things

out. Though Bobby Kennedy appeared on none of the charts, decades

later Alexander Haig said that when it came to Cuban operations in

1963, “Bobby Kennedy was running it—hour by hour.” Haig stated

emphatically that as far as Cuba was concerned, “Bobby Kennedy was

the President. He was the President! Let me repeat, as a reasonably close

observer, HE WAS THE PRESIDENT!”5 (Emphasis in original.) In 1963,

Haig was the aide to Joseph Califano, the assistant to Army Secretary

Cyrus Vance. Haig’s comments were confirmed in Califano’s autobiog-

raphy, as well as by a confidential source we interviewed who served

on two of the three Cuba committees, and by other Kennedy associates.6

CIA official Richard Helms told
Newsweek
editor Evan Thomas that “you

haven’t lived until you’ve had Bobby Kennedy rampant on your back

[about Cuba].”7

For his secret Cuba operations, Bobby worked directly with officials

like Helms and Vance, often bypassing their superiors, such as CIA

Director John McCone and Defense Secretary McNamara. Bobby also

dealt directly with several Cuban exile leaders he trusted, much to the

resentment and frustration of CIA officials who had previously been in

charge of controlling US-backed exile leaders.

Bobby sought out people he had confidence in, or felt he could con-

trol, because the Cold War was at its height and the stakes were high:

It was just a year after the tense nuclear standoff of the Cuban Missile

Crisis of October 1962, and thousands of Russian personnel were still

in Cuba. A recently declassified “Top Secret . . . briefing for Mr. Robert

Kennedy,” makes it clear that one wrong move would result in “World

War III.”8

One reason for the Kennedys’ secrecy and tight control was that

America, and the world, were under two misimpressions at the time

that remained in place for decades. As Secretary of State Dean Rusk

revealed to us in an interview, JFK never made an ironclad pledge that

the United States would not invade Cuba, in order to end the Cuban

Missile Crisis. Rusk’s revelation was later confirmed by hundreds of

pages of formerly secret files published by the National Security Archive

at George Washington University. As shown by these memos, and by

JFK’s own public statements to the press and on TV, his offer of a “no

invasion” pledge depended entirely on Fidel Castro’s allowing “UN

inspections” for “weapons of mass destruction,” to ensure that all the

missiles had been removed.9 Fidel never allowed UN inspectors into

Cuba, so JFK’s pledge never took effect. However, JFK was so anxious

to avoid returning to the almost unbearable tension of the Missile Crisis

that, during 1963, he and his top officials deliberately refrained from

making Castro’s failure to allow UN inspections an issue to the public

or the media.

In stark contrast to the way Cuba had dominated the headlines

and nightly newscasts in October and November 1962, by November

1963 Cuba was rarely front-page news. The relatively few stories that

appeared focused mainly on the JFK administration’s crackdown on

10

LEGACY OF SECRECY

most Cuban exile groups, dozens of which had formerly received lavish

support from the CIA’s huge Miami station. One could get the impres-

sion from media accounts in the fall of 1963 that Cuba was no longer

much of an issue for JFK, despite growing attempts by his potential

Republican opponents in the upcoming 1964 election to call attention to

it. Republicans like Richard Nixon, Barry Goldwater, and Nelson Rock-

efeller tried to make the point that Soviet missiles might still remain in

Cuba, or that they could be reintroduced as long as Fidel was in power.

Though JFK refused to be drawn into public debate about hypothetical

Cuban missiles, he knew such accusations would gain greater attention

once the next presidential campaign officially began in January 1964.

JFK and Bobby were desperately trying to resolve the issue of Cuba

by the end of 1963, so that it didn’t become what two Kennedy aides

called “a political football” during the 1964 campaign.10 Because JFK and

his officials had been vague to Soviet inquires about JFK’s “no invasion”

pledge and the lack of UN inspections, the Kennedys’ actions had to be

undertaken in utmost secrecy, even within their own administration. US

involvement in the toppling of Fidel could never be revealed. The level

of fear and mistrust between the United States and the Soviet Union in

1963 was extremely high. A direct “hotline” to the Soviet leader Nikita

Khrushchev in Moscow had been installed in August 1963, but it was

far more complex than the simple phone system depicted in popular

movies. It involved encoded messages using wire and radio telegraph,

with translators at each end.11 If the Soviets felt betrayed over any obvi-

ous US intervention in Cuba, such a cumbersome system would be of

limited use as JFK tried to explain the nuances of his justification for US

action. The situation could quickly spiral out of control, and the earlier

cited memo’s prediction of “World War III” could well come to pass.

But one of the passages in that same memo provided the seeds of the

plan JFK and Bobby started developing in May 1963:

The [US] military could intervene overtly in Cuba without serious

offense to national or world public opinion if we moved in response

to a humanitarian requirement to restore order within Cuba [and

announced we would] hold free elections; and that we would with-

draw from Cuba as soon as the new government advised that they

had the capability to maintain order without further assistance

from OAS [Organization of American States] nations. [Also,] if the

operation was conducted as quickly as possible and with sufficient

force . . . 12

What JFK and Bobby lacked when that memo was written was a logi-

cal reason for the United States to go into Cuba to “restore order.” In

mid-May 1963, the Kennedys finally got the opportunity they needed

when one of the most powerful officials in Cuba—Commander Juan

Almeida, the head of Cuba’s army—contacted Bobby’s top Cuban

exile aide, Enrique “Harry” Ruiz-Williams. Commander Almeida told

Ruiz-Williams that he would be willing to stage a coup to overthrow

Fidel, if the Kennedys would back him. JFK and Bobby’s acceptance of

Commander Almeida’s offer began a chain of events that would have a

tremendous impact on the US presidency and American policy toward

Cuba, one that still persists today.

Commander Almeida was a founding father of Castro’s Cuba, one

of the revered twelve who had gone into the Sierra Maestra mountains

with Fidel to begin the Revolution. Almeida saved Che Guevara’s life

in the first battle of the Revolution and had gone on to found Cuba’s

Revolutionary Army. While Almeida’s friend Che was a struggling

economic bureaucrat by 1963, Almeida still commanded the loyalty of

most Cuban troops, and was one of the most admired and respected

officials in Cuba after Fidel and his brother, Raul. However, both Che

and Almeida resented the increasing Soviet influence in Cuba, as well

as Fidel’s ongoing consolidation of his own personal power. In addi-

tion, Almeida was the highest-ranking black official in Cuba in 1963, an

important consideration for a country in which, by some estimates, 70

percent of the population is of at least partial African descent.

Almeida’s May 1963 offer to the Kennedys wasn’t the first time he had