“Nothing but refugee rumors,” sneered Mc George Bundy, JFK’s National Security Advisor, on the October 14, 1962 edition of Sunday morning chat show “Issues and Answers.” Bundy had been questioned about some crackpot exile rumors of Soviet Missiles in Cuba.
For months, Cuban freedom-fighters (mostly youths and college kids with the the Directorio Estudiantil Revolucionario and other groups) had been risking death by torture and firing squads by infiltrating Cuba to obtain these eyewitness reports of missiles and passing them to the CIA and U.S. State Dept.
“Nothing in Cuba presents a threat to the United States,” continued Bundy, barely masking his scorn for the crackpot rumors. “There’s no likelihood that the Soviets or Cubans would try and install an offensive capability in Cuba,” he stressed.
“There’s fifty-odd-thousand Cuban refugees in this country,” snorted JFK himself the following day, “all living for the day when we go to war with Cuba. They’re the ones putting out this kind of stuff.”
Exactly 48 hours later U-2 photos sat on JFK’s desk revealing those “refugee rumors,” sitting in Cuba, nuclear armed, and pointed directly at Bundy, JFK and their entire staff of sagacious Ivy League wizards.
From, here.
Very good article, Mr Fontova. It’s surprising how even back then people saw Cubans as “crackpots”. Websites like Babalublog prove people wrong.