Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (63 page)

Critics, on the other hand, claim the permanent war economy has
actually been a drain on America's economic life-with its production of
nonusable goods and its penchant for inefficiency.

Even young Senator John Kennedy parroted the Pentagon line during the
campaign of 1960, promising increases in military spending.

Once in the Oval Office-and with access to other sources of information-Kennedy changed his attitudes toward the military. Earlier he had
echoed Pentagon figures showing that the Soviet Union possessed between
five hundred and one thousand intercontinental ballistic missiles. Accord ing to later reports, the number was more like fifty. Kennedy complained
that he had been ill-informed as to the actual number of missiles and
suggested that this exaggeration was part of Pentagon strategy.

This complaint has been repeated over and over through the years, most
recently by former CIA director William Colby in comments about the
book The Myth of Soviet Military Supremac_y, which he called, ". . . the
greatest intelligence gap of all: the exaggeration of Soviet power in comparison with America's, which fuels the wasteful and dangerous nucleararms race."

Kennedy also became concerned with the $3 billion federal deficit of his
time-a paltry sum compared to today's near $200 billion-and feared it
would present a threat to the U.S. dollar. Accordingly, Kennedy named a
Ford Motor Company executive, Robert McNamara, as his secretary of
defense and changes began to take place.

On March 28, 1961, Kennedy told Congress:

In January, while ordering certain immediately needed changes, I instructed
the Secretary of Defense to reappraise our entire defense strategy, capacity,
commitments, and needs in light of present and future dangers... .

Kennedy began to significantly modify the way defense and intelligence
operated.

Presidents Truman and Eisenhower had depended greatly on the National Security Council (NSC), a creation of the National Security Act of
1947. In 1963 the NSC consisted of the president, the vice president,
secretary of state, secretary of defense, and the director of the Office of
Emergency Planning.

Theoretically, the CIA was to be controlled by the NSC. But Kennedy
had another way of getting things done. Accustomed to the quick-acting,
hard-hitting world of political campaigning, Kennedy neglected the NSC
method. Instead, he would call upon his friends and family to get things
done. While this may have been effective at the time, it left both the
Pentagon and the CIA largely to their own devices-a circumstance Kennedy came to regret.

During this same period, the foreign policy of the United States was being
greatly influenced by a new vision of the role of the military in the world.
This vision was codified in a May 15, 1959 document written by Gen. Richard
Stilwell as a member of a special presidential committee. Innocuously entitled
"Training Under the Mutual Training Program," this document offered nothing
less than a plan to protect the noncommunist world by having nations ruled
by a military elite with training and ideology supplied by Americans.

Initially Kennedy was fascinated by this concept, since by nature he was
a strong believer in negotiation and limited response rather than simply
using military options. Words such as counterinsurgency, pacification,
and special forces began to creep into our political language.

Following the disastrous Bay of Pigs Invasion, a special board of
inquiry was convened to learn what went wrong. It was here that both John
and Robert Kennedy began to learn what the new military doctrines of
counterinsurgency, flexible response, civic action, and nation building
really meant. They learned how the obsession with secrecy had completely
changed the way the military and intelligence operated. Everything was on
a "need-to-know" basis, with fewer and fewer responsible leaders included on the "need-to-know" lists.

After the Bay of Pigs inquiry Kennedy became convinced that the CIA
and the Pentagon had misled him terribly, and from that point on he was
highly skeptical of information from those sources.

Moreover, the inquiry showed the Kennedy brothers how powerful the
military-industrial complex and its intelligence-security force had become.

Kennedy learned something from this coalition, too: how to concoct a
"cover story"-which may account for his public support of the CIA at a
time when his private comments and actions showed otherwise.

The blending of the military and the political was seen clearest in
Vietnam, where it was the U.S. ambassador who was in charge, not the
senior military commanders.

War should be the last resort of politicians. But once war is inevitable,
then it should be fought by professional soldiers with clearly defined goals
and objectives.

After the CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs fiasco Kennedy began to see that
this nation's paramilitary and undercover operations were getting out of
hand. He made an attempt to stem this trend by issuing two National
Security Action Memoranda (NSAM) in June of 1961. NSAM 55, signed
personally by Kennedy, basically stated that he would hold the chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff personally responsible for all activity of a
military nature during peacetime, the same as during wartime. In other
words, Kennedy wanted all cloak-and-dagger operations as well as military
expeditions under the control, or at least under the scrutiny, of the chairmanand hence under his control.

NSAM 57 attempted to divide paramilitary activity between the military
and the CIA. Basically, this document stipulated that the CIA would be
allowed only small covert operations, while any large operations must be
studied and approved by the military. It seemed a reasonable division of
responsibility. However, there were men in both the CIA and the Pentagon
who did not appreciate this attempt to curb their power and prerogatives.

Not only did Kennedy attempt to curtail the power of both the military
and intelligence. On November 16, 1961, Kennedy told a Seattle audience:

We must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent nor
omniscient-that we cannot impose our will upon the other 94 percent of
mankind-that we cannot right every wrong or reverse every adversity-and
that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem.

With his words and actions, Kennedy became the first U.S. president
since World War II to address the myth of America's infallibility.

This did not sit well with the military-industrial complex, which had so
much to gain-including profits-by controlling the raw resources of other
nations.

In the midst of Kennedy's reappraisal of U.S. military and intelligence
operations came the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In October 1962, it was learned from satellites and U-2 flights that the
Soviets were preparing offensive missile bases in Cuba, only ninety miles
from the U.S. The military and the CIA were adamant. They prescribed
nothing less than immediate bombing of the missile sites and another
invasion of the island.

Kennedy chose a different approach. He personally struck a deal with
Premier Khrushchev that called for the removal of the missiles in return for
Kennedy's pledge not to support a new invasion of Cuba. The Soviets
backed down and Kennedy's popularity rose significantly, except in offices at the Pentagon and at Langley, Virginia.

The Kennedy administration continued its efforts to reduce military
spending. On March 30, 1963, McNamara announced a reorganization
program that would have closed fifty-two military installations in twentyfive states, as well as twenty-one overseas bases, over a three-year period.

Then on August 5, 1963, following lengthy negotiations, the United
States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union signed a limited nuclear test
ban treaty forbidding the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons.

On July 26, just prior to the signing of the Treaty of Moscow, Kennedy
proclaimed:

This treaty is not the millennium. It will not resolve all conflicts or
cause the Communists to forego their ambitions, or eliminate the danger
of war. It will not reduce our need for arms or allies or programs of
assistance to others. But it is an important first step-a step toward
reason-a step away from war.

As part of this "first step" toward what later would be termed "detente," Kennedy and Khrushchev agreed to the installation of a "hot line"
telephone system between Washington and Moscow.

It was a serious deviation from the hard cold war policies of the past and
military leaders-both retired and active-were not hesitant to voice their
disapproval.

But for all his activities to reduce the risk of war and curtail the military
and intelligence establishments, Kennedy's most momentous-and perhaps
fatal-decisions came when he began to reevaluate United States policy in
Southeast Asia.

From the time Lyndon B. Johnson took over the presidency the afternoon that Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, the idea was encouraged
that he would simply carry on Kennedy administration policies. In many
ways he did. It has been acknowledged that Johnson was able to push
Kennedy's civil-rights legislation through Congress where his predecessor
may have failed. But one emerging Kennedy policy was not continuedthat involved South Vietnam.

Early in his presidency, Kennedy simply went along with Eisenhower's
policy which was to continue sending military "advisers" and materiel to
South Vietnam. In fact, during 1961 and 1962, Kennedy actually increased
the U.S. military presence in that war-torn nation. (This may have been
due to his desire to avoid at all costs another foreign-policy disaster such
as the Bay of Pigs.)

But by summer 1963, Kennedy had begun to reevaluate United States
involvement in Vietnam.

By the time Kennedy became president in 1960, large-scale guerrilla
warfare was being conducted against the South Vietnam regime. But
because of Castro and Cuba as well as Soviet incursions in Berlin and the
Congo, Vietnam was not an issue during the 1960 campaign. Kennedy
barely noticed that, three days after his election in South Vietnam, President Diem was the object of an unsuccessful military coup d' etat.

In December 1960, the Communists announced the formation of the
Vietnamese National Liberation Front, and the internal guerrilla war got
under way in earnest.

During 1961 Kennedy, though distracted by the Bay of Pigs Invasion,
continued to support further U.S. military assistance to Asia, particularly
after Communist forces seized the city of Phuoc Vinh, only sixty miles
from Saigon. On December 11, two helicopter companies arrived in South
Vietnam. It was the beginning of an expanded role for U.S. advisers. By
January 1962, total U.S. military personnel in Vietnam numbered 2,646.
And on January 13, a memorandum from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, entitled
"The Strategic Importance of the SEA Mainland," stated that if the Viet
Cong (Vietnamese Communists) were not soon brought under control, the
chiefs saw no alternative but the introduction of U.S. combat units.

Kennedy continued to hesitate about sending combat units to Vietnam.
At a news conference on May 9, 1962, he said: ". . . introducing American forces . . . also is a hazardous course, and we want to attempt to see if
we can work out a peaceful solution."

According to assistant secretary of state Roger Hilsman, one of Kennedy's key foreign policy planners, Kennedy confided:

The Bay of Pigs has taught me a number of things. One is not to trust
generals or the CIA, and the second is that if the American people do not want to use American troops to remove a Communist regime 90
miles away from our coast, how can I ask them to use troops to remove
a Communist regime 9,000 miles away?

By mid-1963 after receiving conflicting advice and intelligence regarding Vietnam from his advisers, Kennedy began to reassess his commitment
there. He was especially concerned about the treatment of Buddhists under
the Diem government. Thousands of Buddhists were demonstrating for
freedom, and on June 11, the first Buddhist suicide by fire occurred.

Reflecting Kennedy's concern, the State Department notified Saigon:
"If Diem does not take prompt and effective steps to re-establish Buddhist
confidence in him, we will have to re-examine our entire relationship with
his regime. "

Diem became even more unmanageable as the year drew on, staffing his
government with relatives and refusing to listen to the pleas of the Buddhists. Talk began about replacing Diem with leaders more agreeable to
American policy. Disgusted, Kennedy even went so far as to approve a
plan to withdraw one thousand U.S. military advisers from Vietnam by the
end of the year.

The merican government, including Kennedy, left no doubt of its
displeasure with Diem, thus paving the way for yet another Vietnamese
coup, which occurred on November 1, 1963, just twenty-one days before
Kennedy arrived in Dallas.