You know the the conventional wisdom about Kennedy is that he learned his lesson in the
Bay of Pigs and that lesson was don't listen to the CIA take the advice of the Joint Chiefs
with a grain of salt uh listen to your closer advisors listen to Bobby he really became
close to Bobby Kennedy after this or people like Ted Sorensen people that he'd worked
with before knew and trusted and that this prepared him for the Cuban Missile Crisis
so that when the Cuban Missile Crisis came along during those famous thirteen days he
knew to ignore the Joint Chiefs of Staff when they said go in invade or go and bomb uh that
he kept his own counsel and the counsel of those closest to him well that's true that's
sure history but what people don't sometimes recognize about the link between the Bay of
Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis is how those eighteen months intervening led to those thirteen
days uh immediately after the Bay of Pigs in fact the day after the Bay of Pigs invasion
ended this is April twentieth nineteen sixty one John Kennedy did a number of important
things one was he uh put together a commission led by Lyndon Johnson to look into ways to
put a man on the moon that one worked out pretty well another one was that in part attributable
to the Bay of Pigs absolutely he needed a victory over over uh the Soviets so the same
day he does that and then he also appoints a task force in the Pentagon to look into
ways to hold back Communism in south east Asia South Vietnam uh which had really been
a back burner issue until this day uh but that task force was appointed it comes back
a week later and suggests putting in more advisors into Vietnam and this is really the
first step in the escalation into Vietnam and thirdly what he does that day is he appoints
a task force in the Pentagon to look into ways to overthrow Fidel Castro rather than
back off of trying to overthrow Castro his reaction was to double down to go back so
while the Pentagon is looking into ways to overtly throw Castro uh Bobby Kennedy becomes
the point man for a covert operation called operation Mongoose to find covert ways to
overthrow Castro a lot of sabotage assassination plots all sorts of mayhem now the problem
is that Castro knew about Operation Mongoose he knew about all these plans to overthrow
him and to kill him how did he know that he knew because because everyone every Cuban
exile in Miami knew and Castro had spies in Miami so uh he had no trouble knowing all
the details he knew a lot about the Bay of Pigs invasion prior to it being launched as
well Khrushchev knew about uh Mongoose Khrushchev also Castro has suggested in interviews the
Khrushchev knew about the Pentagon planning as well that there was a Pentagon plan to
overthrow Castro uh at least a contingency plan so the point is that Castro and Khrushchev
had every reason to believe that John Kennedy was trying was continuing to try to overthrow
Fidel Castro because he was uh so it it makes you even though what what Khrushchev did obviously
was was reckless and dangerous uh it didn't come out of nowhere he felt provoked that
he was going to lose Cuba to the United States if he didn't do something about it uh so so
that's you know it it's Kennedy I think you know we can compliment him for his behavior
during the thirteen days but he was somewhat complicitous in the circumstances that led
to the Cuban missile crisis is that a point which has been not exactly lost in the welter
of history but been downplayed well it has been and part of that is the early histories
didn't know about Operation Mongoose the historians didn't know about it so that those eighteen
months were kind of a blank nobody really understood how much the Kennedy's had been
provoking Khrushchev and Castro uh now a lot has come out in the intervening years about
Operation Mongoose but what's incredible to me is how even though it's in history books
now uh it still gets downplayed I mean still the story about the Cuban Missile Crisis is
always about those thirteen days and uh Kennedy's uh wise behavior during that uh but I I'm
still surprised that it hasn't gotten more attention uh from from historians who really
know the facts uh because it's really indisputable uh and by the way it's it's it's the same
thing you set of circumstances you have to think about when you start talking about Kennedy's
assassination this provocation of Castro and the Soviet Union and the Kennedy administration
didn't really want that information out obviously because they didn't want it to look like Kennedy
was provoking Castro that might have set up a circumstance where Castro would try as Lyndon
Johnson once said I think his phrase was something like he knew that Kennedy was trying to get
him so he came and got him first yeah yeah uh not to say that Castro did that but you
can you know there's a logic to these things the Kennedys were very provocative they were
very aggressive after the Bay of Pigs uh they had been not only had the country had been
hurt but they the Kennedy name had been hurt and they fought back relentlessly and I think
you could argue uh a bit recklessly This excerpt is brought to you by the Massachusetts School
of Law