Benjamin Cole Posted February 12, 2022 Share Posted February 12, 2022 After the JFKA, the Vietnam War very shortly became the focus of US foreign-military operations…and Cuba, all but dropped like a hot potato. Most JFKA researchers are aware that the National Security Action Memorandum 273 (NSAM-273) was approved President Lyndon Johnson on Nov. 26, 1963, scant days after the assassination. The NSAM-273 wording had changed but modestly from that agreed under the Kennedy Administration a few days earlier, in Honolulu on Nov. 21, but the new version opened the door for a bigger role for the US in the SE Asia nation if circumstances warranted it. But after the JFKA, what happened to the Cuba obsession? The communist Castro was still in power, less than 100 miles offshore, and feared by U.S. globalists for exporting red revolution to South America—a reasonable concern, given the Latin tinderbox trifecta of poverty, corruption and income stratification. The island nation had recently hosted Russian-built nuclear missiles pointed at the US, which provoked the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. There was large Cuban population in the US eager for action, and politically active and potent. There were large and powerful businesses that had had interests in Cuba, and a media whipping up concerns as well. Moreover, in 1963, how many American could find Vietnam on a map? No matter. The Cuba issue died. Senator Richard Russell was the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee from 1951 to 1969 (with one brief hiatus), a span of nearly 20 years. Russell was regarded as smart and dedicated to his work (JFKA scholars know Russell for his published dissent from the Warren Commission, in essence that he did not buy the single-bullet theory). If anyone knew the US defense establishment, Russell did. Here is what Russell said on Aug. 1, 1964 on Face the Nation: “I was one of those who didn’t want to go in there (Vietnam).” Russell added that the South Vietnamese, if given a chance to vote, would probably elect Ho Chi Minh (!). Russell went on: “I have never been able to understand the attitude of those who demand an all-out war against communists 10,000 miles away…yet they look with complete indifference on the construction of a great communist bulwark, a fortress, 90 miles off our shore in Cuba. I can’t reconcile that.” Soft Speculation Well, if Russell was mystified in 1964 why Cuba dropped off the defense-intel radar screen, far be it from me, an armchair scholar more than five decades later, to explain it. But maybe there are clues. A lot has been written in recent decades, as pertains to the JFKA, about the gigantic JMWAVE-CIA station in Miami, with 400 officers, and the assembling of several thousand armed and angry Cuban exiles at various locations and within sundry organizations in the US. All roads lead to Cuba, it seems, whenever serious study is done on the JFKA. If only a minute portion of the Castro-haters---who felt betrayed, and badly, at the Bay of Pigs by JFK---decided to seek revenge on the president, well.... Inside the defense-intel bureaucracy, there must have been suspicions, or even more, regarding the JFKA and JMWAVE and Cuban exiles. When documents disappear, as surely many did, underlings might surmise why. Grayston Lynch and many other CIA officers honored Cuban bravery, but complained the Cubans were verbose, and in hushed "confidential" conversations with friends spilled more than a few secrets. In short, whispery word got out in 1964: It was anti-Castro Cuban exiles, and affiliated Miami-CIA personnel, who did the JFKA. Cannot Validate The JFKA This led to a supremely uncomfortable position for the defense-intel community after the JFKA. To go after Cuba would be to reward or validate murder, the assassination of a US President. To invade Cuba and bring about a regime-change would be to honor an assassination of a US President that intended to being about that very policy change. Even in the defense-intel community that was appreciated as a very bad idea, the sort of precedent that can never be tolerated. And so, Cuba dropped off the radar, to the bewilderment of the nearly omniscient Senator Russell, and many other scholars ever since. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od0hqcaFyNc About six minutes in, for Russell quote, but the whole interview is fascinating. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Brancato Posted February 12, 2022 Share Posted February 12, 2022 Interesting speculation, but I have no trouble believing that Vietnam was the target all along, and JFK was in the way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benjamin Cole Posted February 13, 2022 Author Share Posted February 13, 2022 10 hours ago, Paul Brancato said: Interesting speculation, but I have no trouble believing that Vietnam was the target all along, and JFK was in the way. Yes, could be. But Senator Russell could not understand it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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