Seek meaning and transformation. It alienates them in certain ways. So, bell is writing in 1960 that theres this ongoing problem of alienation, of a lack of full illment. And the parameters there, when we move from the realm of formal politics, political parties, political philosophy into the world of personal politics and personal experience, i think will also be reflected in our discussions in the second half of the semester. Sound good . All right. Well, i look forward to those conversations in a couple of weeks. Have a good spring break. Youre watching American History tv. Every weekend on cspan3, explore our nations past. Cspan3, created by americas Cable Television companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Weeknights this month, were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan3. Tonight, San Diego State University Professor lectures on the vietnam war. He looks at the conflict from u. S. Military escalation in 1965 to the fall of saigon 10 years later and the competing interests of the americans, chinese and soviets in the region. Watch tonight beginning at 8 00 eastern. Enjoy American History tv this week and every weekend on cspan3. American history tv on cspan3, exploring the people and events that tell the american story every weekend. Coming up this Labor Day Weekend, saturday at 6 00 p. M. Eastern on the civil war, historians kevin levin and Hillary Greene discuss how we remember the civil war and whether to remove or contextualize confederate monuments. Sunday at 6 00 p. M. Eastern, well preview photographs of native americans from the smithsonian collection. At 8 00 p. M. On the presidency a look at president ial retreats including abraham lincolns summer cottage, herbert hoovers fishing camp, and stories of marthas vineyard. Monday night, august marked the 75th anniversary of the bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki. Look back at the events that led to the bombing and their legacy with author ian toll and president s grandson. Watch American History tv this Labor Day Weekend on cspan3. The new York State Republican Convention is attended by a former Vice President Richard Nixon and governor as they help choose a senatorial candidate. Also on hand, his one time president ial candidate thomas dewey. Before nominations are called before, the convention plead for unity. She wants to run as a conservative, but withdrew to throw her support to senator keating. Senator keating has refused to endorse the goldwater ticket but new york state republicans nominate him. New york race has drawn national interest. Opposing mr. Keating is a famous name. When the democrats meet at convention the next day, the support is for the nomination, stage a demonstration. They are swamped by the forces bhiepd the candy of the attorney general robert f. Kennedy. There have been cries of carpet bagger for mr. Kennedy took up residents in new york to run. And the mayor introduces the candidate to the commission. And outlander to republicans and a political giant to democrats, mr. Kennedy begins a campaign that will be watched from coast to coast. Up next on lectures in history, catholic University Professor and former cia historian Nicolas Dujmovic teaches about the bay of pigs, the cuban missile crisis, and other covert operations during the cold war. His class is just over an hour. In this introductory course, were continuing our Historical Survey of american intelligence under each president ial administration. And now weve come to the presidency of john f. Kennedy. January 1961 to november 1963, kennedy was a former naval office e so he thought he knew something of intelligence. He also was a big fan of the james bond novels written by ian fleming. Ive pictured him with his Brother Robert kennedy because the brothers together had great influence on u. S. Intelligence. Theres a lot to say about u. S. Intelligence under kennedy even though he served less than a full term because of course he was assassinated by a procuban american leftist, a disturbed former marine named lee harvey oswald. At the end ill have reflections of the assassination. Before we get to the main events of the administration, i want to mention a couple of other developments that are not spectacular but deserve to be remembered as important milestones in u. S. Intelligence legacy. One of them is the president s daily brief which was created for kennedy as the president s intelligence checklist. When i first came to cia in 1990, i was i learned that one of the nicknames that insiders used was the pickle factory. They never used the company, but they used the term the pickle factory. I couldnt figure out what it was until i heard of a cia. I heard of the pickle, the president s intelligence checklist. It was renamed the president s daily brief. Every president has used it and most have benefitted from it. It was new in the sense that well, i mean, president truman started the tradition of cia presenting to him a daily intelligence summary. But the pickle and later the pdb, was the first specifically president ial product that was tailored to the president s agenda, his style and his interests, with extremely limited distribution. So, this was a major intelligence legacy from the Kennedy Administration. Another very Important Development was the creation of the Defense Intelligence agency in october of 1961, further expanding this constellation of agencies we know as the intelligence community. As weve learned in previous class that Community Around the time of the end of world war ii, the state department, fbi, and the Military Branch intelligence organizations and then with cias creation, cia becomes central to the community. President truman added the National Security agency in 1952. President eisenhower added the National Reconnaissance office to coordinate cia and air force activities regarding imagery from spy planes and satellites coming online. Under kennedy, the Defense Department gets its own Intelligence Agency. Dia today is a Major National agency of the u. S. Intelligence community. As weve discussed doing important work in human intelligence and also specialized technical intelligence. So, i got those Important Developments out of the way, and i want to focus on the two biggest intelligence subjects of the Kennedy Administration, which often are the two major historical episodes that people remember from this period. The bay of pigs fiasco and the cuban missile crisis. So, we have a fiasco and we have a crisis. And theyre both big problems. What they have in common is obviously cuba. Otherwise, they are vastly different kinds of problems. The bay of pigs fiasco was a cia covert paramilitary operation, specifically regime change operation that went very badly. The cuban missile crisis, by contrast, was a confrontation of super powers, the United States and ussr over Nuclear Weapons. What the two big problems have in common, other than cuba, is that both, largely, were the result of shortcomings in american intelligence. In both situations, bad intelligence analysis was at work. The bay of pigs operation was an example of faulty covert Action Planning, to be sure, but that includes some seriously flawed analysis as well see. Likewise, the cuban missile crisis begins with bad analysis. But in the context of intelligence collection, both human and technical. In both situations, the intelligence shortcomings were made worse by executive decisions, by policy makers. And the two crises also are alike in that the ic learned a lot from the mistakes of them both. So, lets turn to the bay of pigs. Revolutionary leader fidel castro turned his insurgency against the cuban dictator bautista into a government when he ousted the dictator in early 1959. This is during the the Eisenhower Administration. Were dropping back a bit for context. Castro quickly declared himself a communist, aligned with the cove yet union. And this presented to the Eisenhower Administration a more dire situation than what they faced in guatemala a few years before. Eisenhower wanted something done about castro. The cia proposed cokrert action to destabilize the cuban economy. Eisenhower said he wanted something more drastic. Historians disagree on whether eisenhower meant that cia should assassinate castro. To cia officials at the time, eisenhower who would clearly not use words out loud like assassinate and murder it was clear to the officials that eisenhower wanted castro removed from the scene by whatever means necessary, just as they believe that eisenhower had expressed the desire that an african leader be removed, killed if necessary, to prevent the congo from going communist. Theres no smoking gun on either, on whether eisenhower really wanted them assassinated. Now, eisenhower was concerned about castro for the same reasons he had authorized cia to topple the elected government of guatemala in 1954. He believed that once communism was established in the western hemisphere, it would spread by sovietsupported subversion and revolution. And this is what history teaches us. This is what communist governments do. I did my dissertation on the revolutionary government of grenada, 1979 and 1983. There you have the communist grenadians being helped by the communist cubans in order to spread communist revolution to other island nations in the caribbean. That example from the 80s shows that in the 1950s, eisenhower was on to something. He was right. This was a threat. Eisenhower planned covert action to remove castro from power. I want to remind you of our discussions in this class about covert action as an intelligence function. The purpose of covert action is to influence Political Economic military conditions abroad in a way, in such a way, that the hand of the United States is not apparent, the involvement of the u. S. Government is not evident to people or it can be denied, plausibly denied. The original cia plan for cuba under eisenhower was to infiltrate some 30 cuban agents, cia trained agents, to create resistance groups within cuba. I think someone noticed that cuba is a real big place. It doesnt really stretch from washington past chicago. Its obviously located south of florida, but you can see how big it is here. And so the plan quickly grew from 30 to about 500 ciatrained cuban exiles would infiltrate the country and link up with the anticastro forces that were believed to be operating in cuba. Cia propaganda efforts including a clandestine station would help build internal cuban support for opposing castro. And this is where it helps to have a knowledge of history, even when youre planning a covert action. Essentially, cia was using the example of its predecessor, the office of strategic service, oss, sending agents into nazioccupied france, where the population didnt like the nazis and was willing to take risks to support these commandos, these covert operatives. Cia remembered that and remembered the positive aspects of the 1954 guatemala operation. And in your reading, professor Christopher Andrew points out that eisenhower and the cia ignored other relevant historical precedence, including the negative lessons of guatemala. Guatema guatemala barely succeeded even against a weak and hapless government that basically lost its nerve and allowed a success for covert action hike operation in indonesia, where the people that we were helping in their military rebellions turned out to be weak and ineffectual. To i would add that they also ignored the lessons of many covert action operations involving the insertion of ethnic agent teams trained by cia into places like china and the ussr. Put these showed, if somebody had been paying attention, these showed that fully three quarters of these teams were caught. Paul the principle was established but not really acted on that you are going to lose three quarters of your penetration agents if you send them into denied areas. And they also demonstrated that the estimates of local opposition to communists was usually overinflated. Paul cia started infiltrating and by the way, on the bottom right there, those are cia trained tibetan commandoes getting ready for an air lift into chinese occupied to bet. The cia started infiltrating a few cuban agents into cuba and soon found out that there really wasnt an underground resistance and most of their penetration agents were caught, which again, history might have taught them, if they had been paying attention to it. The instead of recalculating the or rethinking the whole plan, the cia shifted its plan instead to an Amphibious Landing of some 700. Notice the mission creep. We start with 30, 500, now are up to 700 trained cuban exiles that we are going to land by Landing Craft and paratrooper penetrations, establish a beach head, relocate to the mountains, become a resistance force, attract anti Castro Cubans, the clear themselves to be the legitimate government of cuba and wait for u. S. Support. Part sounds pretty neat. As the planning went on, towards the end of the Eisenhower Administration, the force kept getting bigger. In the planning the. To ensure that when the landing happened, they could actually seize and hold the beach head. When kennedy came into office in january 1961, he planned cuban invasion force at double to about 1500. The panthers, 500, 700, 1500. They would be supported by a rebel air force, again, trained cuban exiles. Pilots of b 26 bombers which were in the cuban inventory. Park he the cia had its own be 26 is that were painted to look like human air force bombers. The story would be that they were Cuban Air Force who had defected and joined the rebellion that. The cuban forces were trained in bases in nicaragua and guatemala. The evasion was planned the originally, can i saw the cia declassified documents, this was the preferred plan, to land at the beach in trinidad. This is considered an anti castro town. Looking for that local support. It had a good port, it had a defensible beach with good maritime approaches. It was close to the mountains. Put the key mistake in planning for this covert action was that for Operational Security, the cias own intelligence analysts were put kept in the dark. The experts on the current experts on the state of cuba had no input. The director of operations did its own analysis that and based. Its optimistic assessments of internal cuban resistance on the initial opposition to castor when he came to power in 1959. Its two years later, and the analysts of the directorate of intelligence, the dni analysts, could have told the d oh the things have changed. That castro had a lot more support. That the internal security was ruthlessly efficient. And that there was essentially no opposition to him. Pat even the Deputy Director for intelligence, the head of the Analytic Branch put, was not informed. He knew what was going on, but he was not consulted, even though he personally had participated in the Pacific Campaign of world war ii and more than two dozen Amphibious Landings that of the scale that a lot more than. The u. S. Marine that they had brought in to plan the operation, colonel jack hawkins. He and all of his analysts were simply cut out for security reasons. Some security. This is a january 10th, 1961 front page above the fold New York Times article. U. S. Help straighten anti castro forces secret Guatemalan Air ground base. Not secret anymore, the another mistake was that this covert action was no longer covert, with this kind of publicity. Human exiles now, the world knows are being trained probably by the u. S. In what a mola for an attack on cuba. Yes . inaudible various sources. When you engage in a large operation, unless you have Operational Security that is very tight, people talk. This happened with the albanian operations in the late forties, early fifties. Various other trying on chinese operations that we mounted in the early to mid 19 fifties. When you get people together they will talk. Castro knows something is up even before this. He is trying to penetrate these operations with his own people. You hire a bunch of cuban exiles, how many of them are 100 anti castro, or has castro sent one or two penetration agents in . Its good counterintelligence. Very good question. Multiple sources. And it gets worse. I will get to that. Another factor in the planning that turned out to be a mistake was the requirement that castros air force be destroyed first. That the cuban exile pilots in their cia provided b 26 is pretending to be Cuban Air Force, would have command of the year. That was a requisite, prerequisite for the success of this operation. The cia recruited some help, they recruited pilots from the Alabama National guard. To assist. There was to be one air attack two days before dday, before the Amphibious Landing, allegedly by these Cuban Air Force pilots who were disgruntled and decided to shoot up their own planes. And that is why these cias b 26 is were painted to look like you can air force planes. The day before the invasion, the b 26 exile force would come back to cuban air bases to destroy the planes that remained. Two airstrikes, commanded the air was essential, and this was one of several things that had to go well. For the success of this operation. Yet another problem came from president kennedys desire to maintain deniability that the u. S. Had nothing to do with this. We didnt like castro, but these are independent, patriotic cubans acting on their own. A month before the invasion, he ordered another landing site be found, away from the town of trinidad, a populated center. People will find out early, this is long before the internet, but they might take pictures, itll be too noisy. The cia had four days to shift all of its planning to another location. They found it at the fairly remote bay of pigs. Its on this map here. Away from populated centers, but closer to havana, closer to the cuban military and air force. Also, it was surrounded by swamps. Let me go to that slowed. Here we go. This is a peninsula that gave this relocated operation its name. This became operation zapata. They had swabs and its far away from the mountains where you hope the exiled force would be able to melt away into become that beacon of freedom for large numbers of disaffected anti Castro Cubans. That is the theory. Unknown to the planners was the fact that the bay of pigs was actually castros favorite place to go fishing, snorkeling, vacationing. You know it very well. Which really helped when he arrived on scene to help lead the defenders. Also unknown was that there were coral reefs and rocks that complicated navigation. The operations planners had look at the imagery and concluded that the darker water with seaweed. They were coral reefs. Thats why castro likes to go snorkeling there. Good place to go. Let me read to you a couple newspaper reports. From the day, this is dateline new york, april 10th. This is a week before the invasion. And cook is writing for the guardian of the united kingdom, mr. Coming invasion, another three hour harangue from castro in havana last night has failed to clear the mystery of the coming invasion. Who is training it where it is to be mounted from, where is all minute exile and what is the United States administration going to do about it . To . Also in the guardian that day was an editorial since president kennedy came to power, he has done much to restore american prestige in the uncoated world. This but if recent reports of a projected invasion of cuba launched from american soil and carried out with a connivance of the American Intelligence Service come true, that much of president kennedys labor will have been in vain. Paul no one will believe that a group of cuban exiles, however burning their grievances, could assemble a force of sufficient size and with sufficient equipment unless they had the backing of the American Government paul. The leader of the anti Castro Cubans has denied the central Intelligence Agency is implicated in its plants. This may be true but reports from authoritative american sources suggest that it is not paul richard. Thistle, the head planner for the operation said in 1967, two years later, we didnt realize the extent to which it was believed by everyone else that this was a u. S. U. S. Government operation. Apparently, cia wasnt reading the newspapers. Paul im being critical of my former agency because it deserves to be criticized on this. Put on april 15th, 1961, two days before the invasion, the first wave of air attacks by six be 26 fewer than planned for damaged many cuban planes on the ground it failed to destroy them all. The attacks alerted the cubans, than its coming, got the attention of the united nations, where the un ambassador found himself to be lying about u. S. Not involvement. In this operation. President kennedy had ordered the first air strike to be smaller than planned for, and then he canceled the second planned air strike. Cia was afraid to recommend at that point that the invasion be canceled. Even though everyone knew at least on the cia site, that without command of the, air the invasion was doomed. They were afraid to give that kind of bad news, which if you think about it, is uncharacteristic. Intelligence is in the bad news business, but this is a case where they call it falling in love with your operation. They had all fallen in love with it and were not willing to ended at that point. Whether evasion force arrived on april 17th, it faced a fully mobilized cupid military with command of the air as well. Castro on scene, effectively directing the defenses his forces quickly disable the two supply ships. A Landing Craft that made it ashore, put a small exile force on to the beach where they fought valiantly for three days. Kennedy refused cias requests to have u. S. Navy aircraft provide combat support. Calm better support. Two cia chartered airplanes from the Alabama International guard dropped munitions and supplies on the beach for the rebels. But those were shot down. The four pilots between the two aircraft died, they are stars on cias memorial wall. Of regatta two 5 06 surrendered and about 1200 survivors were taken captive. Taken prisoner. Paul its a debacle. Afterwards, this is humiliating for the United States government and personally for president kennedy. It was a great victory for fidel castro, there was a lot of bitter recriminations and finger pointing going on. Kennedys advisers and pro kennedy historians ever since have placed all the blame on the cia. Pay for its mistaken assumptions in planning, for deceiving the president about its chances for success. And on the other hand, cia people at the time and cia defenders ever since, but not me, have admitted that there were planning errors but insists the invasion could have been successful put if it had been allowed to work as. Plant its failure, they say, was kennedys fault for canceling that second airstrike, for refusing u. S. Military support. He is blamed for moving the landing site and even for liking covert action too much. The chief cia planner that was a brilliant man who is also the project manager for the you to aircraft and also the follow on the a 12. He and the director had to resign. It has memoirs, he says, i sincerely believe that even with the plans faults, as long as we were able to move ahead with the airstrikes and destroy castros air force, the parade would still win the day. At least to the extent of establishing a beach head and then what . It is also possible, he wrote, that we in the agency were not as frank with the president about further deficiencies as we could have been. To there is a telling admission. There was an internal report by the Inspector General of the cia saying that if the cia had been more careful and its planning, it wouldve realized there was no Effective Organization organized resistance to the castro regime that could have rallies to help the invaders. Castros forces were firmly in control of Cuban Society there. Vastly outnumbered any invasion force and the terrain offered no help itll. He said that cia should have canceled the invasion council, the operation, even though it would have been embarrassing to the agency. He said cancellation would have been embarrassing, but it wouldve averted failure, which brought even more embarrassment, and carried death and misery to hundreds, destroyed millions of dollars worth of u. S. Property and seriously damaged u. S. Prestige. He was right about that. There was an internal rebuttal to the Inspector Generals report. The directorate of operations said the airstrikes were crucial. To success, without them, there could be no success. The defeat was attributable to a long series of washington policy decisions. Pat there you have a fairly common situation. Something goes wrong, Something Big goes wrong, the intelligence folks blame the policy makers, the policy makers blamed the intelligence folks. Thus was fulfilled the ancient saying in washington, there are no policy failures, there are only policy successes and intelligence failures. My view is that there is plenty of blame to go around. The historical record shows that there were plenty of failures on both sides. For intelligence people, i think there are some clear lessons from the bay of pigs. The policy people can come up with their own, before intelligence people, one of the Lessons Learned is do not plan for a covert action or any kind of intelligence operation clandestine, collection, human intelligence, technical intelligence, that requires every part of it to go perfectly for any of it to succeed. Secondly, do not undertake covert operations that have already been described in the New York Times. Panther, make sure your agencies experts are involved in the planning. The ones who know the most about the area you are going into. If they are not cleared for the project, you should them well clear them. Do not be afraid of communicating clearly to the policy people the risks and consequences of failure of every part of the plan. Paul this takes courage but intelligence people should be prepared to stand down and walk away from any operation that does not make sense. Operationally or even politically. Please remember, the policy maker may want to deniability more than the conditions you have established for success. On the policy side there were huge, implications. U. S. Prestige was damaged, to be sure. The soviet union tried to take advantage. The soviet premier, khrushchev, concluded that kennedy was weak and indecisive, and so demanded that the western powers abandon berlin. Paul as you know, at the end of world war ii, berlin was divided into east and west. Between the soviet union and the western allied powers. Said that west religion was a threat to the east germany. Kennedy himself blamed the cia for putting him into that position. He briefly considered breaking up cia into its various missions or business areas and distributing it throughout the government. Put that was justifiable anger on his part but he got over that. He also considered replacing allen with his own Brother Robert, Robert Kennedy liked working with the agency but g7 of politician to realize that that wouldnt work very well. It is not really career enhanced thing for politicians to pca directors. Paul he turned that down. Just a few months after the bay of pigs debacle, kennedy is meeting with the soviet premier in the anna at their summit. Khrushchev braided kennedy for american imperialism and said the soviets are going to get tough regarding berlin. In august, four months after the bay of pigs, the east germans, acting on orders from moscow, erected the berlin wall, cutting off east berlin from west to berlin. The communists called it the anti fascists protective wall. But it was really meant to prevent east germans from escaping to freedom in the west. Put this is what communists do. The u. S. Consider this an illegal act but did not risk war to stop it put. Kennedy however, renewed the u. S. Commitment to the freedom of west berlin and khrushchev having built the wall, he backed down. On any further threats. This became yet another cold war standoff. Khrushchev was looking for a way to advance the soviet position in the cold war. Some sort of fait accompli, a surprise move that would change the strategic balance in moscows favor. As we all know, and this is the accelerated history of that, he did that by putting soviet missiles in cuba, secretly believing that by the time the United States discovered them, it would be too late for the americans to do anything about it. But as you know, the u. S. Government did discover them. Discovered them early. Kennedy told khrushchev to take them out or else. After some tense days, khrushchev back down. Nuclear war was averted and kennedy was the hero. Only to be tragically cut down by an assassins bullets a year later. And that is a history most people remember. Poor and by large, its true. And its highly dramatic. But this dramatic story is largely an intelligence story. It begins with the soviet military Intelligence Officer who volunteered to put work and provide intelligence for cia and the british service, and my six. His intelligence began as the bay of pigs operation was ending. He continued as an espionage asset well into that summer of 1961 that is cold war tensions are mounting. He was a wellplaced colonel in the soviet military Organization Called the path gru. He reports on what he learns in meetings about soviet strategy towards the u. S. He photographs secret soviet military documents. Including probably the most helpful one, this art to missile manual point. The r2 is a mediumrange Ballistic Missile. He passes these things to cia and mi6 case officers. He provides highlevel soviet policy papers. He even tries to warn the u. S. Ahead of time about the berlin wall going up but again he cant do so in time. Above all, he conveyed his impressions that the soviet leadership is not as confident as they appear. They are blustering from a position of weakness and they know it. They worry about provoking the u. S. To war, they know they do not have strategic superiority in Nuclear Weapons plus the national. Intelligence estimates at the time, the u. S. National intelligence at the time assessed that the soviets have far fewer Nuclear Missiles than they were claiming. It was bluster. Paul and then khrushchev backs down on berlin and then seems to confirm the intelligence. At the same time, he says that khrushchev might do something desperate. The cia gave him the code name hero, of the vast documentary intelligence that he provided it was marked with a code word iron mark. And the oral de briefings he gave, that was the chicken he intelligence. This is what we do that, we give multiple code names to mask the source with this intelligence. Colonel clint ski who spied for cia in 1970s, his code name was gall and the intelligence from him was called chrysanthemum. Can meanwhile, the kennedy brothers, the president and the attorney general are pressuring cia to do something about the castro regime. Pit exuberanceing. It looks like they want revenge. They dont like being humiliated. They like to covert action. Christopher andrew mentions that they approved, president kennedy approved were covert action operations than even eisenhower. They especially like covert action against castro. Infiltration of agents, propaganda, sabotage and though it was never mentioned out loud, assassination plots. The code name for all of these efforts was mongoose it mostly included plans to. Destabilize the cuban government but includes some ideas about how to kill castro. That cia, theres a leadership change. The leadership fallout from the bay of pigs fall squarely on cia. President kennedy told director dulles if this were parliamentary system, i have to resign, my government would fall. Its not, so you have to leave he was allowed to retire for his own dignity a few months after the bay affix in november of 61. His replacement is john mccone. One of the great state directors. The agency at this time is monitoring soviet shipments of weapons to cuba can so if you can defend itself against another invasion. You two flights over cuba began in february of 1962. Macomb in that summer of 62 first raises the possibility that you know, moscow might send missiles to cuba he grasps that moscow might make this bold move in order to put Ballistic Missiles into cuba to overcome its strategic inferiority in missiles and bombers. Two at the end of august, the u2 imagery shows that there are surface to air missile sites in cuba. Sam sites, surface to air missiles meant to bring down aircraft. Mccone is alone in the u. S. Government and believing that they wouldnt do this unless theyre defending something important from aerial attack. And perhaps, that something would be Ballistic Missile sites. And also to shoot down Reconnaissance Aircraft with the americans will find out about it. They would be blind over cuba. What does the Kennedy White house to . The sam cites spooked them. The Kennedy Administration orders a moratorium on flights, severe drawdown. It allows only three flights in september all of them over eastern cuba away from the known sites. That month of september, two things happen. There is a special National Intelligence estimate we talked about analytic products, the special intelligence National Intelligence agents. Offered by sherman cant, this head analyst. He says that it would not make sense for the soviets to play Strategic Missiles in cuba, because its too risky. Plan we had discussed analysis, we had talked about coming into challenges too analysis, cognitive by a seasoned mindsets. We discuss how a big one among them is mirror imaging. This idea that the other side is going to reason and figure out things like we would. This is an it just makes sense to him. From september to october there is a fiveweek period in which practically know u2s fly. The ones that do stay away from the same sights. They are largely on the periphery of cuba. Even though mccone is making these appeals, meanwhile, there is human intelligence and espionage assets in cuba. They are telling cia that they see some mysterious, secret work going on and western cuba. Including some of them see long, cylindrical objects being towed by military trucks. Mccone insists and kennedy allows a single u2 flight over the san crystal ball area of western cuba on october 14th. Going straight across the island from south to north. That would be this flight here. And it discovers in plain sight, nmr b and site, medium range Ballistic Missile. Kennedy authorizes unlimited u2 flights. The recent book called blind over cuba shows that Kennedy Administration apologized and friendly historians ever since have blamed cia or the bad weather for this fiveweek gap in effective overhead imagery collection. When effected resulted from white house policy makers. So the cuban missile crisis begins with an analytic failure, that sneaky, that estimate. And a collection failure caused by policy and then you have a collection success. The eu to seized whats there and using also penned cough skis intelligence and human intelligence, the analysts are able to warn kennedy about the situation. I want to point out to the previous slide that this is a soviet sam site which has a distinctive star of david kind of pattern and it. Over the next week, you two flights imagery that identify 24 Medium Range Missile sites at a range of about 1000 miles. And also intermediate range Ballistic Missile sites. And they have about a 2000mile range, roughly. Pen cough skis intelligence on the soviets am rv adams gives the president some indication of how much it would take friday at the sings operational. Kennedy has the time to deliberate instead of simply to react. The initial impulse and everyones part is to take these things out. Militarily, with a strike. But upon deliberation, he decides to impose a naval blockade and use hard nosed diplomacy. Tell the soviets to get the missiles out. Its a good thing he decided on the blockade rather than attacking cuba. It was revealed years later in 1990 the soviet forces in cuba actually had tactical Nuclear Weapons that they would used against an american attack. So thats good. Thankfully, the Washington Post got it wrong about the invasion of cuba, the New York Times got it right, regarding a naval blockade. Kennedy goes on national tv on the 22nd of october and announces the situation, declares the blockade. He makes it clear that any missile attack from cuba would be considered an attack from the ussr and would be answered. The naval blockade over the next 12 days of the crisis works and to the nsa intercepts confirmed at the soviet ships are turning back. You too imageries used publicly at the un to embarrass moscow. Who deny that such work was going on. The soviets back down. Imagery intelligence and signals intelligence monitor the removal of soviet missiles from cuba. During the crisis, a u2 was shot down. Kennedy refuses to escalate. Instead, he responds to khrushchevs proposal that in exchange for removing the soviets missiles, the u. S. Pledges not to invade cuba. So the human missile crisis comes to a satisfactory ending, which means the world did not end. Thats good. But the kennedy brothers obsession with castro continues. The momentum continues to pressure the cia to get rid of castro. A senior cia official met with a cuban agent in paris. On the 22nd of november, 1963, to give him poison to kill castro. Of course that was the day that kennedy was in dallas and was killed. In the time we have left, i want to address the all too popular story that candidates assassination in dallas was the result of a cia operation or conspiracy to kill the president. My bottom line opinion, its a myth. A canard. A lie. It is logically almost impossible to prove a negative. But im quite confident that the cia did not kill kennedy. It is quite a widespread story. I do not know how many books are out there making this assertion. Probably hundreds. Maybe a lot more. If you google it, you almost get 3 million hits. It has its own wikipedia article. I am not going to go into all of the aspects and variance of the theory. It is way too complicated and simply not worth consideration. What i will say is this, the ieight idea that cia would murder an american president , to me, as a citizen, is simply unimaginable. And as a career cia officer, its monstrous and obscene in the highest degree this is an extraordinary claim that requires a burden of proof based on persuasive evidence, the socalled evidence ive seen is all influential and highly speculative not persuasive, im sure all here from the conspiracy theories about theorist about this. The alleged motives dont convince me either. As a cia staff historian, for 11 years, i find it impossible in the extreme. Good scholarship over the years has shown that cia always, without exception has considered itself to be the president s agency and has done his bidding. Yes. Robert. What would lead the natural conclusion for people to just say all, it was cia . With as much support as there was with books being released and protests and whatever the picture depicts, why would people people believe it was obviously cia . This seems like a ludicrous idea to just kind of get that much support around. Im not a psychologist. Certainly not a popular psychologist. I think people want to believe that there had to have been a conspiracy, that this park could not kill the president of the United States without help. We could go more indepth as to some of the milestones of this theory, one of which was the movie jfk by all four stone which came out in the 1990s. Which was done very skillfully, propagandistic lee to show a cia conspiracy. After that film comes out, you have at one point a majority of americans polled believing the cia did it. Based on a movie. It had political implications. Congress passes the jfk act which requires a cia to declassify everything it has that could be related to the kennedy assassination. As i was saying, the agency as always, considered itself to be the president s instruments, no matter what was going on. Whether there are intelligence failures, debacles like the bay of pigs, budget cuts, signs of the cold wars dying. All of these are alleged motives. The silliest won among silliest, is that syria kill kennedy because he plans to remove the u. S. From vietnam. The reality is that the cia was not really enamored of operating in vietnam. Maybe a was that the agency was doing the bidding of the Vice President , lyndon johnson, or even sillier that johnson had it done because he was controlled by cia. Which is nuts. Another is that kennedy actually wanted to stop cia from trying to kill castro, against all evidence, and cia did not want to stop. The real cia at the time, the agency i know, from years of study of cia internal documents. Oral history interviews, memoirs memorandums and so forth. Is literally the last group of men and women on the planet. Who would even consider doing such a thing. The most insulting thing i have seen, is they claim that the recently put a star on the memorial war, for the harvey awful. I was a historian responsible for the memorial wall, and i find that funny, and insulting and frustrating all the same time. Yes and on the internet you can find, youtube interviews with men claiming to be the cia assassin, death but confessions. You can also find claims about cias coverup of extra terrestrials, ross will harriet 51, cias experiments in time travel. Till protection. None of those are real either. Sorry to disappoint you. The people who believe these things, are sadly mistaken and many of them are nuts. The sad thing is the conspiracy theorist, the true believers its like youre part of the conspiracy self cause you believe that. Which would come as a surprise to anyone who even knows me, but we live in an age in which logic and evidence, gives way i would say to assertion and identity. If you want to good reliable source, that refutes this idea this theory then you can google the name of max holland, an independent researcher who has been following this for years. I tell all my students. Read everything with due to even when a teacher in class. Check everything on the basis of solid evidence, sound reasoning, and for heavens sake and for your own sanity, ignore the loud voices that make assertions, and see the must be true because there lot of them. Or because of the identity of the person making the assertion. I fully admit, that i could be accused of hypocrisy here, of cia non involvement, i dont have evidence, and im asking you to leave it because of who i am. So in intelligence relationships are everything, so im asking you to trust me. Because thats the best we can do. So that brings us to the end of our treatment of kennedy and intelligence, are there any other questions on the bay of pigs . The missile crisis . The other thing we mention . Yes jeremy . You mentioned the president ial finding, its published of a memo of notification and was any of that in place at the time of the bay of pigs. Its a good question, the discussion about that was based on the recent of developments and the requirement for finding comes from the late 1970s, and the most recent law on this, which was one of the intelligence authorization acts. I think in 1997. It gets into the u. S. Code at the time of the Kennedy Administration, there is no such process. There is executive branch process, but there is no reporting requirement to the congress. With such reporting that was done, was informal and off the record in the case of the development of the youtube spy playing this cia notified one of the houses i think it was the house of representative, or the senate and did not inform the house. So when gary powers was shot down, at least half of congress did know we had it. So things have changed. We will get to that when we talk about accountability, and informing of the 1970s. You said we had an asset, colonel penned cough ski. Did he not inform us about the missiles being brought into cuba . Not specifically, but he gave us the documentary evidence and the manuals, which we were able to use in the during, the crisis and im told one we received all this information, this is great but we dont have a need for it. Then the key will missile crisis happens, and all this and we have a different. This is why Intelligence Officers try to collect everything. Even if it is not totally reverent at this time and save for something that happens in the future. And the future is always uncertain. They know they had the time. They knew they had but they do know how relevant it was, for a missile system, that we dont expect to get close to, but it comes close to us then it becomes relevant. Matthew . Is there any objection made apparent to the cia, by the rebel forces in cuba, and that communist, about choosing bay of pigs as theyre learning site . I dont believe they had any input into that planning, and its a good question but i think as i understand the covert Action Planning now we would ask, cubans and locals about the conditions of that place. The shortcomings there probably could have been easily remedied if they brought in the director of intelligence and analyst. And that was one reform that cohen had when he came in for the directorship. He said the analyst we brought in for the planning of that. Joseph. Did anyone actually think the cubans bombed it sort, to people see right through it . Remember, the requirement of covert action, is not apparent or cant be denied plausibly and sometimes what is plausible its a matter of opinion and i dont think that anybody doubted that once the scooting started who was behind it. If bombing the air force was so crucial, and we didnt finish at the first time, and everyone saying was so crucial we shouldve done it why wasnt done . Like the second air strike . So you fall in love with your operation, and then i wont ask for personal testimony to this but you fall in love you make dumb decisions sometimes and i think its true the cia, and they hinted it in the memoir, that they were afraid to tell the president. And also, there was an understated assumption on the cias part, that if we dont get these airstrikes, the invasion cannot succeed. And the president will certainly allow not to fail, so that he will involve u. S. Military. So thats an assumption on assumption. And kennedy was not willing to go that far, so what we have here is a failure to communicate. To coin a phrase. Sorry eric. What made directoral cone, such a good cia director . He had been a founder of what became u. S. Steel. He was a corporate manager. Much more efficient. Clearheaded. A bit of a visionary. He had created the directorate of science and technology. There is a long biography on him that was done by my boss. It has been largely declassified and is available to you. A good popular biography of mccone i dont think is ever been done. He was only there for four years. But he did a lot of good things. Try to get the place to clean up its act. You said that director dulles had three months to resign, but what about basil was he kicked out . I think he left at the same time that dulles left, he was looking for he it was offered another job the cia but he thought it was a step down. Im getting the question. What was the obsession with castro, from jfk and the attorney general, was it the closeness to the United States or was it the fear of communism im just wondering . All that, you know trying to give you a sense of this course of the cold war, was a deeply serious thing by the participants and the leaders involved, and there was a fear of communism, and in advance of communism anywhere is a defeat of freedom everywhere. That just as eisenhower said we will not tolerate, a country going communist, like guatemala and whatever the merits of that argument were, and castro it seemed to work. Because he openly declared himself to be an ally of the soviet union. And that is the main enemy, and the country we have to worry the most about, its creating so much trouble for us in the world, and threatening our allies. We have to do something. That was the thinking at the time. It became also personal. I think it became personal. So earlier in the course we had discussed espionage, and assets in the handling of those assets, so how did the handling of the case with the soviet colonel, the went. Not well, he was caught and there was different theories about how he was caught, or some other mistakes that was made. But he was caught, and executed. A lot of the, brave soviets, soviet citizens who worked for the cia during the cold war met their fate. A bullet in the back of the head, in the blue bianca prison in the kpmg in moscow. We had been able to get and we talked about exfiltration, many people out. But some of the most prominent ones, unfortunately were martyrs for the cause. What a followup, you just pass back and forth, and if were not mistaken on one of the slides it said that we had oral debrief with the colonel. How did the cia receive those oral debriefs if he was in soviet russia . He got out occasionally, its a great brooke its a great book sorry, and its called the spy who saved the world. Because of the information he gave, and hold on to get rid of this this is obvious. The spy who saved the world, its a story about it, it describes he was ill for colonel he was pretty influential, he had some perks he was part of a soviet military trade mission to britain. He would go occasionally to the west. He went to paris, once and he would get away from his delegation and he would be met in a safe house, by cia and mi6 debris furs. There were extensive debriefings. And that book which is a great book, reveals all that stuff. The there is a story that pent cough ski actually got to meet with kennedy, and that part of history is not true. But pence cough ski considered self a soldier for democracy, so at the point where he asked can you just me up in american kernels uniform, and then a british kernels uniform, so
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