John F. Kennedy on War & Peace

FactCheck: RFK hid truth of Cuban Missile Crisis until 1997

In fact, JFK accepted the "second unfavorable message," which would remove Soviet missiles in Cuba in exchange for removing US missiles in Turkey. RFK negotiated that secret deal with his Soviet counterpart; that deal remained secret until 1997. But because the book was published in 1969, and the secret kept for decades, our generation was taught that falsehood as political fact. OnTheIssues calls this "biggest lie perpetrated by the American government on the American people in the 20th century" with full details in our book review.

Any Cuban missile launched anywhere is an attack on the US

I have directed that the following steps be taken immediately:
1. A strict [naval] quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba.
2. Increased close surveillance of Cuba and its military buildup.
3. It shall be the policy of this Nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response.
4. As a necessary military precaution, I have reinforced our base at Guantanamo
5. We are calling for an immediate meeting of the Organization of American States, to consider this threat to hemispheric security.
6. We are asking that an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council be convoked.
7. Finally: I call upon Chairman Khrushchev to halt and eliminate this clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat to world peace.

1963: Negotiated first, limited Nuclear Test Ban

Since the advent of nuclear weapons 18 years ago, all mankind has been struggling to escape from the darkening prospect of mass destruction on earth. Both sides have come to possess enough nuclear power to destroy the human race several times over.

Yesterday, negotiations were concluded in Moscow on a treaty to ban all nuclear tests in the atmosphere, in outer space, and under water. For the first time, an agreement has been reached on bringing the forces of nuclear destruction under international control--a goal first sought in 1946.

The treaty is a limited treaty which permits continued underground testing and prohibits only those tests that we ourselves can police, [in the air or under water]. It requires no control posts, no onsite inspection, no international body. Nevertheless, this limited treaty will radically reduce the nuclear testing which would otherwise be conducted on both sides.

1961: U2 spy planes spotted offensive missile sites in Cuba

Commercial air travel to Cuba was suspended. The world was on the brink of nuclear war for another 6 days, until Soviet premier Nikita Krushchev announced that the missiles would be removed.

Commanding PT-59 in WWII, sank three Japanese barges

Kennedy had 6 weeks of action on PT-59, on one occasion sinking 3 Japanese barges. Finally, he was no longer able to walk without the aid not only of a back brace but of a cane as well, he was terribly thin, and his stomach pain had become so intense that he had to see Navy doctors, who found "a definite ulcer crater." X-rays of his back found a chronic disk disease that had obviously been aggravated by the pounding inflicted in the boats. Shipped home, he had his back operated on in June 1944.

1962: Rejected faking Gitmo attack as war pretext with Cuba

Here was the background: At a White House meeting in Feb. 1962, when various covert action plans seemed to be going nowhere, Robert Kennedy ordered a stop to all such anti-Castro efforts. The Joint Chiefs decided the only option was to trick the American public and world opinion into a justifiable war.

When the document was presented that March, JFK [concluded] that there was virtually no possibility of our using overt force to take Cuba. So operation Northwoods remained secret for 35 years.

It seems that all through history, wars and takeovers are started with false flag operations: the Reichstag fire, the Chinese supposedly attacking Japan, the Gulf of Tonkin incident with Vietnam. The list goes on and on. History has a way of repeating itself, like that old cliche: if it works once, let's try it again.

1963: Planned to remove all troops from Vietnam by 1965

When the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) official file from those years was declassified in 1997, it contained a memorandum of conference on May 6, 1963. That one and a follow-up memo from late October (less than a month before JFK was assassinated) clearly show we were starting to get out of Vietnam and leave matters in the hands of the South Vietnamese, where they belonged. Unfortunately, this is again a case of misleading the people for years, by keeping the true thoughts of John F. Kennedy out of the public realm.

1940: best-seller, "Why England Slept"

1943: PT-109 rammed; crew rescued from South Pacific

On Aug. 2, as part of a squad of 15 such craft sent to intercept a Japanese convoy, PT 109 was rammed by an enemy destroyer and sliced in half. Two of the 13-man crew were killed. My brother exhorted the survivors to swim toward a flyspeck island, personally towing the badly burned engineer for 5 hours by clamping the man's lifeboat straps in his mouth. Jack then swam back out into the ocean to try and signal a passing boat. Unsuccessful, he swam back to his men half unconscious. The ordeal continued for a week, with Jack directing swims to larger islands. On Aug. 9, the party made contact via a message Jack had scraped into a coconut shell. (That coconut is now in the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston.) The message made it to an American base, which sent a PT to rescue the men.

1961: Accepted sole responsibility for Bay of Pigs disaster

Each of these moves accelerated the collision course of Castro's regime with American security interests. Eisenhower had approved a CIA-drafted paper, "A Program of Covert Action Against the Castro Regime" [which Jack inherited].

Jack, feeling his way through the opening weeks of his presidency, grew skeptical of the ever more ambitious and complex Cuba invasion plan: defections from Castro's army would follow; the population would rise up to embrace the invaders; and the hated regime would be ousted with minimal casualties. As history shows, the invasion was a failure.

On April 21, Pres. Kennedy stepped before the microphones at a press conference and accepted sole responsibility for the Bay of Pigs disaster.

OpEd: Vietnam war restored the French colonial empire

1960s: Increased US troops in Vietnam from 900 to 16,000

On May 11, 1961, President Kennedy had issued National Security Administration Memo 52, committing the US to the prevention of the Communist domination of South Vietnam. The President increased the number of US personnel, designated an additional $42 million/year in financial support for the government at Ngo Dinh Diem, and approved the CIA's plans to carry out commando raids in North Vietnam.

The Kennedy administration went on to condone the overthrow of South Vietnamese President Diem, to dispatch the US Army Green Berets to Southeast Asia, and to commit American-manned helicopters and tactical aircraft to help defeat North Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh.

In early 1960s, nobody protested US attacks in Vietnam

Avoid mistake of WWII by stopping Soviet advance in Europe

The stop Stalin, Kennedy accepted the mission to seek out and destroy this allies here in the country.

Pouring money into jungles of Indochina is self-destructive

With France's final capitulation, which forced a division in Vietnam between a Communist North and pro-Western South, Jack Kennedy now saw the non-Communist South Vietnamese as a people worthy of American help. "Vietnam represents the cornerstone of the Free World in Southeast Asia, the keystone in the arch, the finger in the dike," Kennedy said. "It is our offspring. We cannot abandon it, we cannot ignore its needs."

1962: Supported anti-Diem coup as means to win Vietnam War

Diem now posed a double jeopardy to Kennedy. He might lose the war to the Communists. Or he might sign a separate peace with Hanoi, making the US look irrelevant. Kennedy had sized up the predicament. "I can't give a piece of territory to the Communists and then get the American people to reelect me." To ensure plausible deniability, he ordered his people to destroy all records of cable traffic, starting with the fateful Aug. 24 order.

In a press conference Kennedy made the point: "We want the war to be won, the Communists to be contained, and the Americans to go home. Taken from a Catholic church, Diem and Nhu were shot repeatedly.

Defend vital interests while preventing nuclear holocaust

His objective was to force the missiles out of Cuba without war. That objective was accomplished. It was accomplished by a strategy which he helped shape and which his brother directed.

As a matter of fact, it was Robert Kennedy's suggestion, when we received two contradictory messages from Khrushchev, the first favorable and the second unfavorable, that we reply to the first and not the second. He drafted the reply; they were the terms on which the settlement ultimately was based.

Pressure the USSR without causing them public humiliation

This was why he was so reluctant to stop and search a Russian ship; this was why he was so opposed to attacking the missile sites. The Russians, he felt, would have to react militarily to such actions on our part.

Thus the initial decision to impose a quarantine rather than to attack; our decision to board a non-Russian vessel first; these & many more were taken with a view to putting pressure on the Soviet Union but not causing public humiliation.

Trading missiles in Cuba for Jupiters in Turkey is a threat

The fact was that the proposal the Russians made was not unreasonable and did not amount to a loss to the US or to our NATO allies. The Jupiter missiles in Turkey were obsolete, and our Polaris submarines in the Mediterranean would give Turkey far greater protection.

[But with the USSR demanding their removal], the President was angry. He obviously did not wish to order the withdrawal of the missiles from Turkey under threat from the Soviet Union. On the other hand, he did not want to involve the US and mankind in a catastrophic war. He pointed out that, to reasonable people, a trade of this kind might look like a very fair suggestion, that our position had become extremely valuable, and that it was our own fault.

Increased anti-guerilla forces; founded the Green Berets

USSR removes missiles from Cuba; US ends blockade & invasion

"Chairman Khrushchev agreed to remove from Cuba all weapons systems capable of offensive uses, to halt the further introduction of such weapons into Cuba, and to permit appropriate United Nations observation and supervision to insure the carrying out and continuation of these commitments. We on our part agreed that, once these adequate arrangements for verification we would remove our naval quarantine and give assurances against invasion of Cuba."

[OTI note: President Kennedy omitted from this public message that the United States agreed to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey, which threatened the Soviet Union from a similar distance as Cuba was from the U.S.]

Defend Quemoy and Matsu if Communist China attacks Taiwan

KENNEDY: Let me try to correct the record on the matter of Quemoy and Matsu. I voted for the Formosa resolution in 1955. I have sustained it since then. I agree with the Administration policy to defend Quemoy and Matsu even if the attack on these islands, two miles off the coast of China, were not part of a general attack on Formosa [Taiwan]. I indicated that I would defend those islands if the attack were directed against Formosa, which is part of the Eisenhower policy. I've supported that policy.