Interesting account of JFK affair, Gore Vidal

[Cliff Varnell]

On 11/23/2022 at 6:24 PM, James DiEugenio said:

JFK was trying to kill Lumumba?

Allen Dulles pushed the button on Lumumba a few days before JFK’s inaugural.

That was the CIA chief’s way of welcoming the new Administration— especially JFK’s kitchen cabinet, Robert Lovett and Joseph Kennedy Sr., who had spent Ike’s second term trying to get Dulles fired.  

https://cryptome.org/0001/bruce-lovett.htm

After the ‘60 election Joe told his son to give Lovett any post he wanted.  Lovett wanted Dean Rusk at State, McGeorge Bundy as National Security Advisor, Robert McNamara at Defense, and C. Douglas Dillon at Treasury.

Lovett and Bundy were Skull & Bones Yalies.  The CIA Deputy Director for Plans Richard Bissell was a Yalie who’d been tapped for S&B but turned them down.  

Rusk and Bissell insured the failure of the Bay of Pigs with constant changes to location and scope.  There was very little outreach to in-country allies who might lead a pro-American uprising — even though the success of the operation depended on it.

Dulles was gone in November.  Bissell had a nice career in government and the corporate world.  JFK gave him a medal even though he bore the greatest responsibility for the BOP failure.

But if the idea was cripple and dispose of Allen Dulles the BOP was a raging success.

Edited December 1, 2022 by Cliff Varnell