“This is almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich.”
- Air Force General Curtis LeMay, to JFK upon being told that the US would respond to Soviet missiles in Cuba with a blockade, not an invasion. The reference to British Prime Minister Chamberlain’s attempts to get along with Hitler was a special dig given that JFK’s father Joseph Kennedy had opposed the US entering World War II. LeMay’s comment reflected a widespread belief in the U.S. military and intelligence circles that JFK’s foreign policy posed a threat to U.S. national security.
Recorded on the White House recording system on Oct 19 1962, listen to audio at the Miller Center or see this transcript.
If you have a chance, it’s worth visiting the Cuban Missile Crisis exhibit currently on display at the National Archives on the Mall in Washington. It includes recorded snippets of discussion that took place in the White House during those tense days. One of the more interesting exchanges occurs between LeMay and JFK. At one point LeMay says “you’re in quite a fix, sir.” Kennedy replies, “what?” LeMay: “I said you’re in quite a fix.” And Kennedy replies, “Well, you’re right there with me…”
It is worth pointing out that some of Lyndon Johnson’s closest and most influential inner circle supporters were men such as H.L. Hunt and D.H. Byrd, both of whom were close personal friends of Gen. Curtis LeMay. H.L. Hunt, along with LBJ and Hoover, has long been a prime suspect in the JFK assassination. D.H. Byrd was a founder of the Civil Air Patrol which had such members as David Ferrie, Lee Harvey Oswald and a young Barry Seal who later became a legendary CIA drug smuggler and pilot.
D.H. Byrd also employed Malcolm Wallace, LBJ’s personal hit man, at his company LTV. Byrd was both an oil man and a military contractor and his company received a large military contract in early, 1964. Billie Sol Estes, who is still alive today in 2012, admits planning murders with LBJ, Cliff Carter and Malcolm Wallace. One murder that stands out is the June 3, 1961 murder of Ag Dept. official Henry Marshall who was investigating Billie Sol Estes and his ties to LBJ. LBJ said in early 1961 “Get rid of him” referring to Marshall and the need to murder him.
H.L. Hunt later gave $1 million to Curtis LeMay and supported him when he ran for VP under the American Independent ticket with George Wallace. George Wallace later said that his money men insisted that Curtis LeMay be on the ticket as VP.
D.H. Byrd, a big LeMay supporter and friend, was the one who owned the Texas School Book Depository building. D. H. Byrd later wrote an autobiography “I’m An Endangered Species” in which he does not mention the JFK assasination. Byrd later had the so-called “sniper’s window” of the 6th floor of the TSBD removed as a memento.
Gen. Edward Lansdale, an Air Force general with a deep CIA background was photographed 5 feet west of the TSBD on 11/22/63 and he was identified by both his peers Col. Fletcher Prouty and Gen. Victor Krulak.
LBJ’s military attache was Co. Howard Burris. Gen. Charles Cabell was an Air Force General who was appointed deputy director of the CIA in 1963. Cabell was latered fired by JFK. Charles Cabell’s brother was Earl Cabell, the Mayor of Dallas at the time of the JFK assassination.
Pretty much all those Air Force men mentioned and those Texas oil men and military contractors hated both JFK and Robert Kennedy with a white hot passion. Ditto LBJ and Hoover who were tight with these same circles.
And how about LeMay’s reaction once the Cuban Missile Crisis was settled?: “The biggest defeat in our nation’s history!”
As I do JFK research, I have come to the conclusion that CIA/military/shadow government rage over Cuba policy was a far, far bigger reason for the JFK assassination than Vietnam policy.
That is why Nixon would refer to it the JFK assassination as the “whole Bay of Pigs thing” and not the “whole Saigon thing.”
Here are some more Cold Warrior quotes, which in retrospect from what we know now, seem pretty stupid, even dangerously stupid.
We locked Castro’s communism into Latin America and threw away the key to its removal,” growled Barry Goldwater.
“Kennedy pulled defeat out of the jaws of victory,” wrote Richard Nixon. “Then gave the Soviets squatters rights in our backyard.”
“We’ve been had!” yelled then Navy Chief George Anderson upon hearing on October 28, 1962, how JFK “solved” the missile crisis. Adm. Anderson was the man in charge of the very “blockade” against Cuba.
“We missed the big boat,” said Gen. Maxwell Taylor after learning the details of the deal with Khrushchev.
“It’s a public relations fable that Khrushchev quailed before Kennedy,” wrote Alexander Haig. “The legend of the eyeball to eyeball confrontation invented by Kennedy’s men paid a handsome political dividend. But the Kennedy-Khrushchev deal was a deplorable error resulting in political havoc and human suffering through the Americas.”
Even Democrats despaired. “This nation lacks leadership,” said Dean Acheson, the Democratic elder statesman whom Kennedy consulted on the matter. “The meetings were repetitive and without direction. Most members of Kennedy’s team had no military or diplomatic experience whatsoever. The sessions were a waste of time.”
http://frontpagemag.com/2011/humberto-fontova/the-cuban-missile-crisis-myth-49-years-later/
Here is what LeMay was thinking in 1961:
“At a Georgetown dinner party recently, the wife of a leading senator sat next to Gen. Curtis LeMay, chief of staff of the Air Force. He told her a nuclear war was inevitable. It would begin in December and be all over by the first of the year. In that interval, every major American city — Washington, New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles — would be reduced to rubble. Similarly, the principal cities of the Soviet Union would be destroyed. The lady, as she tells it, asked if there were any place where she could take her children and grandchildren to safety; the general would, of course, at the first alert be inside the top-secret underground hideout near Washington from which the retaliatory strike would be directed. He told her that certain unpopulated areas in the far west would be safest.” –Marquis Childs, nationally syndicated columnist, Washington Post, 19 July 1961