The 1960 Campaign -- And Now
UNKNOWN to the American people, the Bay of Pigs invasion plan played a crucial role in the 1960 presidential campaign.
Despite the fact that millions of persons watched the four televised debates between Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy, the voters went to the polls without knowing the secret reasons for the public positions the candidates took on Cuba. Behind the scenes, on both sides, there was deep concern over the pending CIA invasion.
To understand the secret drama that unfolded inside the Nixon and Kennedy camps in 1960 over the planned invasion, one must go back to a tradition that began in 1944.
In that year, wartime intelligence reports were made available to Thomas E. Dewey, the Republican presidential candidate, by President Roosevelt. Mr. Dewey received similar information in 1948. In 1957. President Truman made CIA data available to General Eisenhower and to Adlai Stevenson.
In 1956, following what by now had become an established custom, Eisenhower arranged CIA briefings for Stevenson. And in 1960 Eisenhower sent identical telegrams on July 18 to Kennedy and to Senator Lyndon Johnson, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, offering them "periodic briefings on the international scene from a responsible official in the Central Intelligence Agency ... Because of the secret character of the information that would be furnished you," said Eisenhower "it would be exclusively for your personal knowledge."
Kennedy and Johnson accepted Eisenhower's offer. On July 23 Allen Dulles, then Director of Central Intelligence flew to Hyannis with two aides, James Brooke and Gate Lloyd. The CIA men arrived in an Aero Commander that had the markings of a private plane. Brooke and Lloyd carried secret papers in two slim dispatch cases.
In a two-and-a-half-hour conversation at Senator Kennedy's summer home, on the brick terrace overlooking Nantucket Sound, Dulles briefed the Democratic presidential candidate on what Kennedy described afterward to reporters as "a good many serious problems around the world." Kennedy said these had been discussed "in detail' and indicated particular emphasis had been placed on Cuba and Africa.
On July 27 Dulles flew to the LBJ Ranch in Texas and remained overnight to brief Johnson. Dulles briefed Kennedy once more during the campaign, on September 19.
A few days after this second briefing, in a reply published on September 23 to a series of questions from the Scripps Howard newspapers, Kennedy said: "The forces fighting for freedom in exile and in the mountains of Cuba should be sustained and assisted ..." [2]
Then, on October 6, in Cincinnati, Kennedy delivered his major speech on Cuba. "Hopefully," he said, "events may once again bring us an opportunity to bring our influence strongly to bear on behalf of the cause of freedom in Cuba." Meantime, he called for "encouraging those liberty-loving Cubans who are leading the resistance to Castro." [3]
These sentiments were making the Nixon camp increasingly edgy. Nixon and his aides did not know exactly how much, if anything, Kennedy knew about the invasion plan. They did not know if Dulles had told him about it. They certainly did not want the Democratic candidate to be able to claim credit for an invasion that might be launched by a Republican President. It was President Eisenhower, after all, who had ordered the CIA to arm and train the exiles in May of 1960. Nixon and his advisers wanted the CIA invasion to take place before the voters went to the polls on November 8.
A top Nixon campaign adviser later privately confirmed this. He explained that Nixon was hoping for an invasion before the election because "it would have been a cinch to win" the presidency if the Eisenhower Administration -- in which Nixon was the Number 2 man -- had destroyed Castro in the closing days of the campaign.
The best documentation of this is an article by Herbert G. Klein, press secretary to Vice-President Nixon during the 1960 campaign. On March 25, 1962, writing in the San Diego Union, of which he was the editor, Klein revealed what had been going on behind the scenes in the Nixon camp in 1960. It was a candid and most interesting news story that did not gain the wide national attention it merited:
"From the start of the 1960 campaign many of us were convinced that Cuba could be the deciding issue in a close election. Certainly, in retrospect, it was one of the decisive factors in what was the closest presidential election of modern history ...
"Only four of us on the Nixon staff shared the secret that refugees were being trained for an eventual assault on Castro and a return to Cuba. We had stern instructions not to talk about this, and, despite many temptations, we protected security by remaining silent.
"For a long time, as we campaigned across the country, we held the hope that the training would go rapidly enough to permit the beach landing. The defeat of Castro would have been a powerful factor for Richard Nixon ...
"But the training didn't go rapidly enough for a pre-election landing ..."
Klein also wrote that a pre-election Cuban invasion would have made it possible to reveal during the campaign that Nixon had written a confidential memo in 1959, analyzing Castro as "either incredibly naive about Communism or under Communist discipline." [i] Klein added that Nixon had urged a tough policy on Cuba "which led to the training of refugees."
While the Nixon people were hoping the invasion would take place any day, that was exactly what the Kennedy strategists hoped would not happen. They were receiving persistent, and disturbing, reports that some kind of Cuban exile operation was in the works. The reports of invasion training were picked up from several sources, including alert members of the press.
In mid-October, Andrew St. George and Hank Walker went to Florida to shoot pictures for Life magazine of Cuban exiles training to invade their homeland. The Kennedy campaign staff heard about this assignment. While in Miami, St. George received several telephone calls from William Attwood, a member of Kennedy's speech-writing staff. [ii]
Attwood was calling St. George for information on the state of training of the Cuban exiles. According to St. George, Attwood expressed concern that the Republicans would try to launch an invasion of Cuba before election day. St. George said the question, apparently, in the mind of the Kennedy aide was not whether there was to be an invasion, but when.
St. George told Attwood that there seemed little possibility of an immediate invasion, judging by the state of readiness of the exiles. This word was passed on to Robert Kennedy, who was managing his brother's campaign. At one point, there had been discussion among Kennedy strategists of the possibility of the candidate's giving a speech anticipating the invasion that seemed to be brewing, and thereby neutralizing its political effect. The idea of a formal speech was dropped, however, when investigation showed there was little possibility that an invasion could be launched before election day.
However, the Cuban issue was not dropped completely. On October 20 the Kennedy and Nixon campaign trails crossed in New York City, where both were preparing for their fourth and final televised debate the following night. That afternoon, newsmen accompanying the Democratic candidate were alerted for an important statement by Kennedy. The release was delayed, and when mimeographed copies finally arrived at the pressroom in the Biltmore Hotel, it was after 6:00 P.M. On the very last page these key words appeared:
"We must attempt to strengthen the non-Batista democratic anti-Castro forces in exile, and in Cuba itself, who offer eventual hope of overthrowing Castro. Thus far these fighters for freedom have had virtually no support from our government." [4]
At the Waldorf-Astoria, eight blocks away, the effect on Nixon was immediate and explosive.
A year and a half later, in his book Six Crises, Nixon wrote that when he read Kennedy's Biltmore statement, "I got mad." Nixon went on to say that the "covert training of Cuban exiles" by the CIA was due "in substantial part at least, to my efforts," and, that this "had been adopted as a policy as a result of my direct support." Now, Nixon felt, Kennedy was trying to pre-empt a policy which the Vice-President claimed as his own.
Nixon wrote that he ordered Fred Seaton, Interior Secretary and a Nixon campaign adviser, "to call the White House at once on the security line and find out whether or not Dulles had briefed Kennedy on the fact that for months the CIA had not only been supporting and assisting but actually training Cuban exiles for the eventual purpose of supporting an invasion of Cuba itself.
"Seaton reported back to me in half an hour. His answer: Kennedy had been briefed on this operation."
Kennedy, Nixon continued, was advocating "what was already the policy of the American government -- covertly -- and Kennedy had been so informed ... Kennedy was endangering the security of the whole operation ...
"There was only one thing I could do. The covert operation had to be protected at all costs. I must not even suggest by implication that the United States was rendering aid to rebel forces in and out of Cuba. In fact, I must go to the other extreme: I must attack the Kennedy proposal to provide such aid as wrong and irresponsible because it would violate our treaty commitments." [5]
The next night, during their fourth debate from the ABC TV studio in Manhattan, Nixon hopped on the Kennedy proposal as "dangerously irresponsible." He said it would violate "five treaties" between the United States and Latin America as well as the Charter of the United Nations.
The Nixon camp was elated. All the next day, as the Republican candidate barnstormed through eastern Pennsylvania, members of the Nixon staff let it be known that they felt Kennedy had finally made a serious error.
That night, October 27, in the crowded gymnasium at Muhlenberg College in Allentown; Nixon attacked:
"He [Kennedy) called for -- and get this -- the U. S. Government to support a revolution in Cuba, and I say that this is the most shockingly reckless proposal ever made in our history by a presidential candidate during a campaign -- and I'll tell you why ... he comes up, as I pointed up, with the fantastic recommendation that the U. S. Government shall directly aid the anti-Castro forces both in and out of Cuba ...
"You know what this would mean? We would violate right off the bat five treaties with the American States, including the Treaty of Bogota of 1948. We would also violate our solemn commitments to the United Nations ..." [6]
Kennedy was campaigning in Missouri and Kansas that day. By the time he reached Wisconsin the next day, he was feeling the heat of the Nixon attack.
In North Carolina, Adlai Stevenson, campaigning for Kennedy, was alarmed at Kennedy's stand on Cuba. Stevenson had spoken at Duke University on October 21, and now he was at his sister's plantation in Southern Pines, North Carolina. He placed a long-distance call to Kennedy in Wisconsin. When he got through, Stevenson warned that the statement urging aid to the exiles could develop into a political trap for Kennedy if he were elected. He expressed strong opposition, and urged the Democratic standard-bearer to back off slightly from his New York statement.
In their conversation, Kennedy seemed embarrassed about the statement and implied it had been issued without adequate clearance. He told Stevenson he would pull back from it, and regain a safer position. Accordingly, Kennedy dispatched a telegram to Nixon that day in which he said he had "never advocated and I do not now advocate intervention in Cuba in violation of our treaty obligations." And he said no more about aiding Cuban exiles.
Three days later, the October 31 issue of Life appeared with St. George's and Walker's pictures of Cuban exiles in training.
The campaign was now rushing to a climax. On November 2 Kennedy had his last CIA briefing, this time from General Cabell, rather than from Dulles. Kennedy had requested this briefing in order to be brought up to date on any last-minute international developments.
The CIA deputy director flew to Los Angeles and talked with the candidate aboard the Caroline, Kennedy's Convair, during a flight from Los Angeles to San Diego. The two men were alone in the rear compartment of the plane. Cabell left Kennedy at San Diego.
In March of 1962, when Nixon charged in his book that Kennedy had been briefed about the Cuban invasion and had deliberately endangered its security, the White House issued an immediate denial, which was backed up by Allen Dulles. Pierre Salinger said Kennedy "was not told before the election of 1960 of the training of troops outside of Cuba or of any plans for 'supporting an invasion of Cuba.'" Nixon's account was based on a "misunderstanding," Salinger said. Dulles' campaign briefings had been general in nature, he added. He said Kennedy was first informed of the Cuban operation when Dulles and Bissell came to see him in Palm Beach on November 18, 1960, ten days after the election. [iii]
Dulles, too, attributed Nixon's version to "an honest misunderstanding ... My briefings were intelligence briefings on the world situation," he said. "They did not cover our own government's plans or programs for action, overt or covert." [7]
And in fact, Nixon did not explain how Seaton, by telephoning the White House, had learned what had transpired between Kennedy and Dulles. He did not say to whom his adviser had talked. Seaton has declined to shed any further light on this. "It was an appropriate White House official, a man who would be in a position to get the answer," was all that he would say. "It certainly was not the White House janitor." [8]
In fact, Seaton talked to Brigadier General Andrew J. Goodpaster, the White House staff secretary and President Eisenhower's link with the CIA. But there is no indication that Goodpaster checked with Dulles, or that Nixon or Seaton ever checked with Dulles directly.
Exactly what transpired during Dulles' briefings of Kennedy -- the nuances, the inflections, Dulles' precise words when the question of Cuba arose -- these will never be known for certain, since the meeting was top-secret and unrecorded. The same applies to General Cabell's briefing aboard the Caroline November 2.
But there is some evidence that Kennedy did not want to be told about operational matters -- such as the Cuban invasion -- because of the very fact that this might limit his freedom of action.
In any event, Nixon's dispute with Kennedy and Dulles over who told what to whom missed the point. Regardless of the content of the CIA briefings, the Kennedy camp had learned informally from other sources that an exile invasion was hatching.
The candidates for President of the United States were allowing their campaign strategy and public positions to be influenced by a secret operation of the Invisible Government. (All three major issues debated in the closing days of the 1960 campaign were related to clandestine operations. First, there was Cuba. Second, there was the issue of Quemoy and Matsu. Third, the question of whether President Eisenhower should have "apologized" to Khrushchev after the U-2 flight of Francis Gary Powers in order to save the Paris summit meeting.)
The point is that as a by-product of operations of the Invisible Government the electoral process -- the very heart of democratic government -- was being confused and diluted.
In the case of the Cuban invasion, both candidates were concerned about a secret plan of which the electorate knew nothing. In choosing the man to fill the most powerful elective office in the world, the voters were basing their decision, in part, on misleading statements.
As has been noted, one candidate, Vice-President Nixon, confessed considerably later that he took a false public position during the campaign, exactly the opposite of his true feeling, in order, he said, to protect the CIA invasion plan.
But the minions who watched Nixon and Kennedy argue the Cuban issue on television had no way of knowing that the facts were being distorted or suppressed.
This is not to suggest that the invasion plan should have been announced on nationwide television. But it does seem reasonable to ask how the voter can make an informed choice when a candidate is not telling the truth, for whatever laudable patriotic motivation.
Those who argue against tighter controls over the secret branches of the government are fond of making the case that the American system already has enough built-in safeguards. The people elect a President and place their faith in him. During his term in the White House, he is free to run the government, including its secret machinery, as he sees fit. But if the voters dislike how he is running the country, they can turn him out of office in four years. For during every presidential election campaign, the great issues are debated, there is a full public accounting and the people can look, listen and make their intelligent choice.
So the argument goes. What happens to this theory, however, when the electoral process becomes so enmeshed in the tentacles of the Invisible Government that a candidate tells the voters he stands for one course of action, when he really believes just the opposite? Obviously, the electoral process itself is fundamentally weakened. That is what happened in 1960, and there is no reason to think it could not happen again.
When the public positions of candidates for President are shaped (or reversed) by secret operations which the voters are not entitled to know about, something has happened to the American system, and something for ill.
The Invisible Government participated in the presidential campaign of 1960. It was unseen, but there. It provided a valuable lesson for future presidential campaigns.
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Notes:
i. In April, 1959, after a long meeting with Castro in his office in the Capitol, Nixon drafted a confidential memo for the White House, the CIA and the State Department. Key excerpts said: "As I have already indicated, he was incredibly naive with regard to the Communist threat and appeared to have no fear whatever that the Communists might eventually come to power in Cuba ...
"My own appraisal of him as a man is somewhat mixed. The one fact we can be sure of is that he has those indefinable qualities which make him a leader of men. Whatever we may think of him he is going to be a great factor in the development of Cuba and very possibly in Latin American affairs generally. He seems to be sincere, he is either incredibly naive about Communism or under Communist discipline -- my guess is the former and as I have already implied, his ideas as to how to run a government or an economy are less developed than those of almost any world figure I have met in fifty countries. But because he has the power to lead to which I have referred we have no choice but at least to try to orient him in the right direction."
ii. After the election, Attwood was named Ambassador to Guinea, and in February, 1964, he became Ambassador to Kenya.
iii. Immediately after the election, Dulles went to Eisenhower and urged that the full details of the Cuban invasion plan be laid before the President-elect. Eisenhower authorized Dulles to do so, and the CIA chief, with Bissell, flew to Palm Beach for the November 18 meeting.