I recently read a jaw-dropping chapter in Thurston Clarke's JFK's Last Hundred Days. Historians are fairly unanimous in appraising the Cold War stakes of October 1962 as bordering on nuclear holocaust. The issue was over revelations that the Soviet Union was installing nuclear-tipped warheads in bases in Cuba. What is new in Clarke's account (to this reader at least) was just how worried President Kennedy was over the likelihood of a military coup in Washington resulting from the Cuban crisis.
Kennedy's top negotiator with the Russians was his own brother, Attorney General Robert (Bobby) Kennedy. Bobby told his Russian counterpart, “The President is in a grave situation, and he does not know how to get out of it. We are under very severe stress. In fact we are under pressure from our military to use force against Cuba.”
Bobby urges the Russian ambassador (Dobrynin) to accept the president's offer (U.S. will remove its missiles from Turkey if the Russians do the same in Cuba) or else,
"If the situation continues much longer, the President is not sure that the military will not overthrow him and seize power. The American army could get out of control.”
Now, as I was reading this passage I thought the Kennedys were trying to scare the Russians into removing the Cuban missiles with the dreaded specter of a hard-lined military coup in the U.S., a coup that would place trigger-happy generals in power, who would then invade Cuba and nuke the Soviet Union. Surely this was a scare tactic not out of tradition for an American president? (Eisenhower had threatened to use nukes when negotiating with the North Koreans to agree to a ceasefire. Later, Nixon would successfully convince the North Vietnamese that he was a madman in order to get them to sign a ceasefire.)
Just when the author allowed me to travel down this line of reasoning, he abruptly blew my mind:
"But what is certain is that by the fall of 1962 the president not only believed a coup was possible, but had repeatedly discussed its likelihood."
As an avid reader of presidential history, that notion is shocking. You will not find another biography of another American president who was as concerned about being overthrown by a military coup as Kennedy. To my present knowledge Kennedy was the only one with the slightest worry about a coup.
Thurston Clarke takes the reader through a list of prominent journalists, government officials, and even Hollywood actors with whom Kennedy openly shared his fear of the military taking over the country. Shortly after the Cuban crisis, a novel called Seven Days in May was released and made into a major Hollywood film starring Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, among other big names. Its author, Fletcher Knebel, was inspired by discussions with high ranking officials in the army and air force who openly discussed their own concern that a military takeover could be in the offing. Kennedy met with the author and the producers of the film to implore them to use the project as a means to warn the American people.
What made John F. Kennedy uniquely afraid of a military coup?
Kennedy got off to a bad start with the military (and CIA) early in his presidency. He reluctantly signed off on the disastrous Bay of Pigs operation that involved an amphibious invasion of Cuba using a mere 1,500 or so exiles provided with air cover, which Kennedy cancelled at the last minute. It was a huge failure and an awful beginning of a presidency. Kennedy blamed the generals and they blamed him (for nixing the air support).
In the year and months separating the Bay of Pigs and the Missile Crisis, the highest ranking military officials drew up detailed plans for the overthrow of Castro, the most insidious of which can not be summarized or paraphrased. It was called Operation Northwoods. Here's an excerpt of Clarke's analysis:
On March 13, 1962, six months before the publication of Knebel’s book, the Joint Chiefs of Staff had sent Secretary of Defense McNamara a top-secret memorandum proposing Operation Northwoods, a program of clandestine actions designed to provide what the chiefs called “adequate justification” for the United States to invade Cuba. It resembled the incursions by German troops dressed in Polish uniforms that Hitler used as a pretext for invading Poland. The chiefs recommended a “logical build-up of incidents” that would “camouflage the ultimate objective and create the necessary impression of Cuban rashness and irresponsibility of a large scale,” and “place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba.” To accomplish this, they suggested “well-coordinated incidents” at the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, in the airspace over Cuba, and on the U.S. mainland. At Guantánamo, anti-Castro Cubans dressed in Cuban Army uniforms would be “captured” by U.S. forces after pretending to attack the base. “Blow up ammunition inside the base,” the Northwoods memorandum recommended. “Burn aircraft on air base (sabotage). . . . Lob mortar shells from outside of base into base. . . . Sink ship near harbor entrance. Conduct funerals for mock victims.” The chiefs also proposed what they called a “Remember the Maine” incident that involved blowing up a U.S. ship in Guantánamo Bay or destroying an unmanned drone vessel in waters off Havana, and blaming Castro. “The U.S. could follow up with an air/sea rescue operation . . . to ‘evacuate’ remaining members of the non-existent crew,” they suggested. “Casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.” The memorandum’s most disturbing paragraph began, “We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington,” which might entail “exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots.” It continued, “The terror campaign could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States. We could sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated). We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized.”
Wow, try to let that sink in for a moment - the joint chiefs of staff - the highest ranking military officials submitted a plan that proposed fomenting terrorism - murder - against people living in America, all in the name of creating a pretext for regime change in Cuba? I had to re-read that passage several times in order to believe it!
I just have to say, I am not a reader who cares for conspiracy theories. I have nothing but contempt for such books and television documentaries. I think they reveal more about the psyche of the people writing them than they do about the subjects they portray. Conspiracy theory prays on the gullible and the under-educated.
Regardless, there is nothing theoretical about Operation Northwoods and it reveals a lot about the psyche of our nation's top military leadership during the most dangerous period of the Cold War. Kennedy not only rejected this abomination of memo, he fired the chairman of the joint chiefs.
After reading these unspeakable passages of non - theoretical conspiracy to commit murder on the American people, it is not a huge leap of the reader's imagination to understand President Kennedy's fear of a military coup to topple him from power. If the top brass of the United States military was willing to murder and otherwise terrorize innocent Americans in the name of patriotic duty, what would restrain them from contemplating the assassination of a president standing in their way?
I happen to believe the United States had ample justification for regime change in Cuba, but Kennedy was facing a real threat to American freedom and security coming directly from those who swore oaths to protect and preserve it. Thank God for leaders like him and Eisenhower who preceded him. Lesser men may have altered the course of American freedom for ill.
Does any of this shed light on why Kennedy was murdered in Dallas? If we haven't found out in fifty years, I doubt we ever will, in spite of all the phony books and videos out there claiming they know. It may have been the result of a higher conspiracy or it may simply have been what the known facts show - a hit job by a nutcase with a high-powered rifle, shooting from a window at a slow-moving target in an open car.
