Did JFK's Inflammatory Orange Bowl Speech and Promises Trigger the JFKA?

[Benjamin Cole]

53 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Ben,

   What are your thoughts about Wiesak's analysis on page 200 of America's Last President, and Douglass's analysis on page 337 of JFK and the Unspeakable?

    Based on your glib denigration of these two excellent books as "hagiography," I'm not convinced that you have read, or understood, them.

I do not have the physical books in my possession. I have read both books. I have moved offshore, and moved frequently. Physical books are no longer practical. A hard drive meltdown took care of e-books. 

IMHO, both books were hagiographies---witness, in just one example, their treatment of JFK's Orange Bowl speech. I do not recall either author even mentioning in the speech. Correct me if I am wrong. 

Yet the Orange Bowl speech is a prominent part of JFK's historical record regarding Cuba and Cuban exiles. In a most bellicose manner, JFK vowed regime change in Cuba, and installation of BoP brigade in Havana. This was after the BoP and the shortly after Cuban Missile Crisis. 

You have your views, and I have mine. 

This is from Amazon, re Wiesak's book: 

"The presidency of John F. Kennedy was a unique and promising turning point in history. A young, compassionate, and independent thinker arrived on the scene with great intent to serve his country, his people, and the globe around him. He envisioned a world of decentralized power—from strong, diverse, and independent nations to thriving opportunities for America’s small businesses—a world not led by imperial forces but led by the people. He sought to keep America out of hot wars and to end the Cold War. He reached for peace not only in his time but, as he put it, “in all time” through his thoughtful pursuit of military weapons control. He fought for the rights of every American, from the civil rights struggles in the South to consumer rights and protections from industry corruption. He came up against a myriad of powerful interests with different goals. A battle ensued, and the common man around the globe lost the day John F. Kennedy died.

This book details the story and the struggle, in a way never told before, of a man with the courage to repeatedly take on the most powerful forces on the globe; a man who seemingly had everything—but gave everything—including ultimately his life, in pursuit of creating a better life for us all. Along the way, it asks deep questions about what it all means for our world today."

---30---

Well, let's just say Wiesak's book might be a hagiography, and let it go at that. 

Fitting JFK's florid and bellicose Orange Bowl speech into Wiesak's paean to righteousness, intelligence and virtue...like jabbing a pickled onion into a banana split. The desert chef wants everything sweet. 

Some people eat that stuff up. 

Me? I have become a little more skeptical of hagiographies, whether of Ronald Reagan, JFK, or modern-day snapshots of Kamala Harris. Vice-versa on hatchet-jobs on Nixon, RFK2, or LBJ or LHO. 

But each to his own.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[W. Niederhut]

Ben,

    If you study both books carefully, you will find that JFK was up against some very dark forces in the U.S. military industrial complex.

   In fact, those dark forces came very close to annihilating the human race during his Presidency, as we later learned.  Then they murdered him in Dallas.

   It was JFK's essential humanism-- informed, IMO, by his Catholicism-- that saved the planet in October of 1962.

   Based on your comments, you also don't seem to understand the back story on Allen Dulles' and Bissell's Bay of Pigs swindle-- and how JFK took the fall for refusing to risk starting a war with the Soviet Union in April of 1961.

    The Orange Bowl speech was merely politicized damage control that needs to be interpreted in the context of JFK's negotiations with Khruschev to resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis.  As Wiesak points out, the deal was that JFK would NOT invade Cuba if Khruschev removed the missiles.

    Call it hagiography, if you insist.  It's critically important history, some of which has been distorted by the same forces that murdered JFK.

    Have you read the DiEugenio essay on, The Posthumous Assassination of JFK?

    

[Robert Morrow]

W. Niederhut, exactly WHO were these "very dark forces in the U.S. military industrial complex" who "murdered JFK in Dallas?"

What were their names? What were their motives for murdering JFK?

Please lay out the evidence on this. Thank you.

[Benjamin Cole]

6 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Ben,

    If you study both books carefully, you will find that JFK was up against some very dark forces in the U.S. military industrial complex.

   In fact, those dark forces came very close to annihilating the human race during his Presidency, as we later learned.  Then they murdered him in Dallas.

   It was JFK's essential humanism-- informed, IMO, by his Catholicism-- that saved the planet in October of 1962.

   Based on your comments, you also don't seem to understand the back story on Allen Dulles' and Bissell's Bay of Pigs swindle-- and how JFK took the fall for refusing to risk starting a war with the Soviet Union in April of 1961.

    The Orange Bowl speech was merely politicized damage control that needs to be interpreted in the context of JFK's negotiations with Khruschev to resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis.  As Wiesak points out, the deal was that JFK would NOT invade Cuba if Khruschev removed the missiles.

    Call it hagiography, if you insist.  It's critically important history, some of which has been distorted by the same forces that murdered JFK.

    Have you read the DiEugenio essay on, The Posthumous Assassination of JFK?

    

I am no fan of the US military intel-globalist complex, 1960s version (or later versions, through the picture becomes complicated in the present).

You realize the JFK said was willing to wage a nuclear war on Cuba and Russia, if they did not agree to remove missiles from Cuban  sovereign territory? JFK himself called the odds of a nuclear war "50/50" under his CMC leadership. Brinksmanship, and all that. 

That was a Catholic thinking?

Thank goodness Moscow agreed to a transactional deal, removing the Cuba-based missiles in exchange for US-Turk missile drawdown.  And sure, there were hawks in the Pentagon who absolutely wanted a first-strike nuke war.  

I  throughly understand the wretched BoP event---an event JFK vowed to re-stage, in his Dec. 1962 Orange Bowl speech, except successfully on the second try. That is what JFK promised that day, without qualifications.

Was JFK really so duplicitous as make that speech insincerely? 

 

[Benjamin Cole]

An interesting story from USA Today, Back in 2017. I didn't know they ever wrote longer than six paragraphs. 

I guess we can comb through some of this JFK Records Act disclosures ourselves, if we can figure out how to do it, on this topic. Has anyone posted on EF-JFKA about this before? 

Interesting that just weeks before JFK vowed to retake Havana with the Bay of Pigs brigade, in his bellicose Dec. 1962 Orange Bowl speech, the JFK Administration was ginning up plans for a large-scale invasion of Cuba.  

Was JFK referring to these invasion plans, while speaking in the Orange Bowl? 

U.S. planned a 261,000-troop invasion force of Cuba, newly released documents show

Ray Locker

USA TODAY--Oct. 30 2017 

 

WASHINGTON — U.S. military planners estimated they would need 261,000 troops and between 10 to 15 days to invade Cuba, oust its dictator, Fidel Castro, and take control of the country, an Aug. 8, 1962, memo for the John F. Kennedy administration shows.

"In order to seize control of key strategic areas in Cuba within 10-15 days with minimum casualties to both sides about 261,000 US military personnel would participate in the operation," said the memo addressed to the "Special Group" developing plans to remove Castro.

The memo was one of almost 2,900 files released Thursday by the National Archives as part of the final disclosure of files collected in the investigation of Kennedy's assassination on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas. 

While this and other documents had nothing to do with the actual assassination, it was included in the files because of the connection between Kennedy's desire to remove Castro from power, his support of Cuban exiles to help him and the affinity of assassin Lee Harvey Oswald for the Castro government. 

Parts of many of the documents released Thursday had been disclosed before, but not in their totality. The memo about Cuba invasion planning had specific troop numbers, the duration of the invasion, the type of weapons and military units to be used and the location of forces censored when it was released previously.

Castro assumed control over Cuba on Jan. 1, 1959, after a protracted guerrilla war against dictator Fulgencio Batista. At first, Castro had the support of the United States, but as he increasingly leaned toward communism and the Soviet Union, many Cubans fled to the United States and the U.S. government turned against him. 

Operation Mongoose

A failed invasion of Cuba by exile soldiers in April 1961 embarrassed the new Kennedy administration, and the president chose his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to lead a series of operations aimed at destabilizing or overthrowing the Castro regime. 

Perhaps the most significant plan was a covert plan involving the Kennedy administration called Operation Mongoose, which was detailed in many of the documents included in the latest release. They include:

• A March 12, 1962, memo that spelled out some of the forces to be used to invade Cuba, which included Navy landing craft to back CIA crews, Air Force cargo aircraft manned with "sheep-dipped" crews of airmen wearing non-military outfits, and submarines used for "black broadcast operations."

• A March 14, 1962 memo from Air Force Brig. Gen. Edward Lansdale, a key figure in Operation Mongoose, that detailed the need for the special Air Force cargo planes and crews and Navy PT boats, the type of ship John Kennedy served on during World War II, for raids on Cuban coastal positions.

• A March 1962 briefing paper for Robert Kennedy that warned of possible Soviet military bases in Cuba. "They can make the decision to establish military bases in Cuba at their will and pleasure and if they exercise this option, we would likely be unable to remove them without initiating World War III."

 

• The minutes of a March 21, 1962, meeting of the Caribbean Survey Group that included Robert Kennedy and top CIA and military officials. Newly revealed sections of that document include Kennedy asking about kidnapping "some of the key people of the Communist regime," the risks involved in using unmarked Air Force planes for supply drops and whether "British-controlled and other foreign areas" could be used to stage U.S. forces to invade Cuba.

By August, the administration had a more detailed invasion plan. The Aug. 8, 1962, plan included using 71,000 soldiers and 35,000 Marines on the ground in Cuba and another 29,000 soldiers in support positions. Major units involved would include two Army airborne divisions, an infantry brigade, an armored combat command, a naval amphibious attack force and 17 Air Force tactical fighter squadrons and 53 troop carrier or transport squadrons. 

Cuban Missile Crisis

On Oct. 16, 1962, President Kennedy was informed that U.S. military reconnaissance planes flying over Cuba detected signs of Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles, armed with nuclear warheads, on the island. 

That precipitated a 13-day crisis in which the Kennedy administration wrangled over the fate of the missiles with the Soviet Union. In the end, the United States declared a naval blockade, the Soviets agreed to remove the missiles, and the United States removed its own nuclear-tipped missiles in Turkey.

As he debated the U.S. response with his key advisers, Kennedy had military plans for a Cuban invasion at the ready. They also included using the Guantanamo naval base on the eastern tip of Cuba as a staging area "for limited covert operational purposes including agent infiltration/exfiltration, support for clandestine maritime operations, and for holding and interrogating Cuban agents and suspects who enter the case," according to an Aug. 14, 1962, plan.

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The Guantanamo portions of that memo were released Thursday and showed that the Pentagon and State Department objected to the CIA's plans to use the base. 

On Nov. 17, 1962, after the crisis had passed, an Air Force plan showed the extent of attack aircraft available to attack Cuba. Gen. Curtis LeMay, the Air Force chief of staff, had argued for a U.S. attack on the missile bases. His post-crisis plan showed there were 1,456 aircraft and 355 missiles, including 80 Polaris missiles on nuclear submarines, available to strike Cuba. 

Those aircraft, the memo showed, were available "for selective attack in graduated increments from two to twelve hours, according to the application of force desired."

Contributing: Adam Woodard, Matthew Coyne, Andrew Yawn, Robin Buchanan, Stacey Barchenger, Jason Noble, Algernon D’Ammassa, Matthew Miller, Mary Helen Moore, Mike Ellis, Bianca Medious, Robert King, Kayla Daugherty, Tovah Olson, Kevin Crowe, Bill Theobald, Cayce Berryman, Susanne Cervenka, Lucas Daprile, Doug Schneider, Dana Williams, Emily Bohatch, John Moses, Richard Wolf, David Jackson, Jessica Estepa, Julia Fair, and Helen Parshall from the Capital News Service.

[Gerry Down]

I think what could have been in the works here was to send in a few Amworld boats from central America filled with Cuban exiles, the US would pretend this was another bop invasion, and then send in the military to actually do the invading because the Amworld people were too few in numbers to actually do anything meaningful once they landed ashore in Cuba.

[W. Niederhut]

It would be interesting to hear from James DiEugenio on this subject.

My understanding is that JFK had promised Khruschev, in October of 1962, that he would not invade Cuba, in exchange for Khruschev withdrawing Russian nukes from Cuba.

The Orange Bowl speech was delivered in December of 1962.

 

[W. Niederhut]

8 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

W. Niederhut, exactly WHO were these "very dark forces in the U.S. military industrial complex" who "murdered JFK in Dallas?"

What were their names? What were their motives for murdering JFK?

Please lay out the evidence on this. Thank you.

Robert,

      Have you read The Devil's Chessboard, JFK vs. Allen Dulles,  and America's Last President?

      JFK was, certainly, up against Dulles, Angleton, the Cabells, Ed Lansdale, and several of the Joint Chiefs.

       Many of those guys were vehemently opposed to JFK's policy decisions in Cuba, Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia (including Indonesia.)

      Are you familiar with JFK's confrontations with the General Curtis "Bombs Away" LeMay and the Joint Chiefs during the Cuban Missile Crisis?

[Benjamin Cole]

1 hour ago, Gerry Down said:

I think what could have been in the works here was to send in a few Amworld boats from central America filled with Cuban exiles, the US would pretend this was another bop invasion, and then send in the military to actually do the invading because the Amworld people were too few in numbers to actually do anything meaningful once they landed ashore in Cuba.

Worth pondering:

The Kennedy Administration was ginning up plans for a large-scale invasion of Cuba in 1962...keep in mind, every administration gins up contingency plans, or ponders options, and plans do not mean firm intentions. Hard to tell in this case. 

Nevertheless, the Cuban exile community, as noted by Larry Hancock, was especially leaky and flooded with Castro informants.

Castro could have gotten word back from his US informants that the US was planning a large-scale invasion, given that the BoP effort flopped. 

So...reasonably enough, Castro asked Russia to supply it with missiles, so as to defend itself. Conventional troops are obviously not enough.  A sovereign nation has to right to defend itself, and place missiles on its own land, after all. (btw, I loath Castro and the communist regime in Cuba). So Cuba installs the missiles, fearing the US invasion being planned by the Kennedy Administration.

JFK then tells Cuba and Russia unless they withdraw the missiles, he will start a nuclear war. Brinksmanship. 

Fortunately, Moscow is willing for a transactional settlement, and it is agreed the Russia-Cuba missiles will go, and the US-Turk missiles too.  

Close call. That's Oct. 1962. I lived through that chapter, btw. 

As we were wiping our brows....

JFK goes right back on the warpath in Dec. 1962, in his Orange Bowl speech, truculently vowing a regime change op in Havana, led by the BoP brigade. And this vow made while the US in fact ginning up large-scale invasion plans. 

Back to my original question: These florid public vows and demagoguery by JFK in the Orange Bowl...but perhaps facile empty words, following on the heels of the flopped BoP op, which was blamed on JFK's weakness by CIA'ers, exile and mercs...could this have triggered the JFKA? 

In Larry Hancock's SWHT nearly all pre-JFKA and reasonable post-JFKA clues led back to the JMWave station of the CIA, and the Miami miasma. 

 

 

 

 

[W. Niederhut]

Ben,

     You really need to re-read Wiesak's detailed history of the Cuban Missile Crisis, (if you have, in fact, read her book, as you claim.)

     Your concept of how JFK managed that 1962 crisis is completely inaccurate.

     JFK's approach to the crisis was the precise opposite of "brinksmanship."

      He went out of his way to de-escalate the crisis-- giving Khruschev as much room as possible to resolve the crisis peacefully.

[Kevin Balch]

No question there was a carrot (negotiation) and stick (military/assassination) approach with Cuba in the last year of the JFK administration. I think JFK and RFK realized that Cuba could be a problem in the 1964 election if word of the secret missile deal was leaked. I am still surprised LeMay never leaked it. Patrick Sloyan argues that JFK deferred LeMay’s retirement to buy his silence in the matter.

Per Jim D’s suggestion, I consulted Brothers to gain insight on why Lisa Howard was so vehemently anti-RFK in the NY Senate election of 1964. While I didn’t get a satisfactory answer to that question, I noted that even Talbot concedes there was a dual-track policy on Cuba.

Edited August 14 by Kevin Balch

[Kevin Balch]

14 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

In fact, those dark forces came very close to annihilating the human race during his Presidency, as we later learned.  Then they murdered him in Dallas.

Even though those dark forces succeeded in the assassination, they failed to reverse the decline in the US nuclear arsenal while the Soviets continued to expand theirs nor did they reverse the Limited Test Ban Treaty that they considered dangerous to our national security. Further, they got their war in Vietnam and mismanaged it completely.

How do you explain that?

[W. Niederhut]

9 minutes ago, Kevin Balch said:

Even though those dark forces succeeded in the assassination, they failed to reverse the decline in the US nuclear arsenal while the Soviets continued to expand theirs nor did they reverse the Limited Test Ban Treaty that they considered dangerous to our national security. Further, they got their war in Vietnam and mismanaged it completely.

How do you explain that?

1) They killed JFK

2) LBJ reversed JFK's policies.

[Kevin Balch]

37 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

1) They killed JFK

2) LBJ reversed JFK's policies.

What would they have considered a more dire existential threat and why?

[W. Niederhut]

4 minutes ago, Kevin Balch said:

What would they have considered a more dire existential threat and why?

Communism, socialism, and financial losses for Wall Street banks and corporations.

In Indonesia, for example, Allen Dulles and the Rockefellers wanted the gold, and other resources.

That's why LBJ green-lighted the CIA's coup against Sukarno, after JFK's murder.

In the Congo, the Katanga resources were the prize.