(These missiles are) “nothing but refugee rumors. Nothing in Cuba presents a threat to the United States. There’s no likelihood that the Soviets or Cubans would try and install an offensive capability in Cuba.” (a sneering National Security Advisor, McGeorge Bundy, on ABC’s Issues and Answers, October 14, 1962.)
“There’s fifty-odd-thousand Cuban refugees in this country, all living for the day when we go to war with Cuba. They’re the ones putting out this kind of stuff (about missiles.)”( a sneering President John F. Kennedy, Oct. 15th 1962.)
“In Washington, as throughout his life, he was noted for his brisk intellect and self-assurance. Journalists at the time overworked adjectives like “brilliant” and “aggressive.” (New York Times on Mc George Bundy upon his death in 1996.)
For months prior to Bundy and Kennedy’s scoffing against the Cuban missile-mongers, dozens of Cuban exiles had been risking their lives by infiltrating Cuba and bringing out eyewitness reports of what remains the biggest military threat to the U.S. in its history. In the process, some of these Cuban boys were also dying by firing squad and torture at the hands of Castro and Che Guevara’s KGB-tutored secret police.
Exactly 24 hours after President Kennedy’s sneer against these Cuban exiles, U-2 photos sat on his desk showing those “refugee rumors,” pointed directly at Bundy, JFK, and their entire staff of Ivy League wizards.
Bundy may well have been aggressive, but hardly brilliant. Just another puffed-up asshole in love with his presumed cleverness who turned out to be useless, if not worse. In other words, spare me.
I find the Marilyn Monroe “Happy birthday, Mr. President” thing not only cheesy but infra dig–and I mean the dignity of the office, not JFK’s. It makes Monroe look pathetic, which she probably was, but more importantly it shows Kennedy in a very poor light. Here we have the POTUS and presumed leader of the free world, not to mention a supposedly model husband and father, acting like a high school boy showing off his trophy bimbo. It’s not just juvenile and cheap, it’s offensive in its self-centered vulgarity, oblivious to the propriety required by the office–at least in public. What a conceited, spoiled jerk (though I’m sure the business would have done his father proud).