JFK & the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters (30 page)

“What did Kennedy say to Adzhubei? Now listen to this carefully,” Castro urged Daniel, “for it is very important: he had said that the new situation in Cuba was intolerable for the United States, that the American government
had decided it would not tolerate it any longer
; he had said that peaceful coexistence was seriously compromised by the fact that ‘Soviet influences’ in Cuba altered the balance of strength, was destroying the equilibrium agreed upon and [at this point Castro emphasized his statement to Daniel by pronouncing each syllable separately]
Kennedy reminded the Russians that the United States had not intervened in Hungary
, which was obviously a way of demanding Russian non-intervention in the event of a possible invasion. To be sure, the actual word ‘invasion’ was not mentioned and Adzhubei, at the time, lacking any background information, could not draw the same conclusion as we did. But when we communicated to Khrushchev all our previous information, the Russians too began to interpret the Kennedy-Adzhubei conversation as we saw it and they went to the source of our information. By the end of a month, the Russian and Cuban governments had reached the
definite conviction
that an invasion might take place from one moment to the next. This is the truth.”

At this point Castro was speaking to Daniel as if he were Kennedy himself.

“What was to be done? How could we prevent the invasion? We found that Khrushchev was concerned about the same things that were worrying us. He asked us what we wanted. We replied:
do whatever is needed to
convince the United States that any attack on Cuba is the same as an attack on the Soviet Union.
And how to realize this objective? All our thinking and discussions revolved around this point. We thought of a proclamation, an alliance, conventional military aid. The Russians explained to us that their concern was twofold: first, they wanted to save the Cuban revolution (in other words, their socialist honor in the eyes of the world), and at the same time they wished to avoid a world conflict. They reasoned that if conventional military aid was the extent of their assistance, the United States might not hesitate to instigate an invasion, in which case Russia would retaliate and this would inevitably touch off a world war . . .

“. . . Soviet Russia was confronted by two alternatives: an absolutely inevitable war (because of their commitments and their position in the socialist world), if the Cuban revolution was attacked; or the risk of a war if the United States, refusing to retreat before the missiles, would not give up the attempt to destroy Cuba. They chose socialist solidarity and the risk of war.

“. . . In a word, then we agreed to the emplacement of the missiles. And I might add here that for us Cubans it didn’t really make so much difference whether we died by conventional bombing or a hydrogen bomb. Nevertheless, we were not gambling with the peace of the world. The United States was the one to jeopardize the peace of mankind by using the threat of war to stifle revolutions.”
[168]

In the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis itself, Kennedy had had sufficient detachment to understand Khrushchev’s position so as not to back his adversary into a corner. Would he have also been able to understand Castro’s counter-challenge to his understanding of the cause of that crisis?

Castro went on to discuss Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress in Latin America with surprising sympathy. “In a way,” he said, “it was a good idea, it marked progress of a sort. Even if it can be said that it was overdue, timid, conceived on the spur of the moment, under constraint . . . despite all that, I am willing to agree that the idea in itself constituted an effort to adapt to the extraordinarily rapid course of events in Latin America.”
[169]

Castro added, however, his political assessment that “Kennedy’s good ideas aren’t going to yield any results. It is very easy to understand and at this point he surely is aware of this because, as I told you, he is a realist. For years and years American policy—not the government, but the trusts and the Pentagon—has supported the Latin American oligarchies. All the prestige, the dollars, and the power was held by a class which Kennedy himself has described in speaking of Batista.”

Kennedy’s statement that “Batista was the incarnation of a number of sins on the part of the United States” that “now we shall have to pay for” inspired Castro to an understanding of how dangerous life was becoming for Kennedy. “Suddenly a President arrives on the scene,” he said, “who tries to support the interests of another class (which has no access to any of the levers of power) to give the various Latin American countries the impression that the United States no longer stands behind the dictators, and so there is no more need to start Castro-type revolutions. What happens then? The trusts see that their interests are being a little compromised (just barely, but still compromised); the Pentagon thinks the strategic bases are in danger; the powerful oligarchies in all the Latin American countries alert their American friends; they sabotage the new policy; and in short, Kennedy has everyone against him.”
[170]

Fidel Castro saw the isolation in which John Kennedy had been placed by even the moderate reforms of his Alliance for Progress. And he understood the much deeper waters Kennedy was negotiating by his beginning détente with Nikita Khrushchev, and by his now initiating a dialogue with Castro himself. Kennedy’s courage gave him hope. As the hand of the clock in Daniel’s hotel room neared 4:00 a.m. on November 20, Castro expressed his hope for Kennedy:

“I cannot help hoping that a leader will come to the fore in North America (why not Kennedy, there are things in his favor!), who will be willing to brave unpopularity, fight the trusts, tell the truth and, most important, let the various nations act as they see fit. Kennedy could still be this man. He still has the possibility of becoming, in the eyes of history, the greatest President of the United States, the leader who may at last understand that there can be coexistence between capitalists and socialists, even in the Americas. He would then be an even greater President than Lincoln.”
[171]

Castro’s view of Kennedy was changing. He had been influenced especially by his pro-Kennedy tutorial in the Soviet Union with Nikita Khrushchev. “I know,” Castro told Daniel, “that for Khrushchev, Kennedy is a man you can talk with. I have gotten this impression from all my conversations with Khrushchev.”
[172]

Like Khrushchev, Castro hoped to work with the U.S. president during his second four-year term to fulfill a vision of coexistence. He joked with Daniel that maybe he could help Kennedy’s campaign for reelection. He said with a broad, boyish grin, “If you see him again, you can tell him that I’m willing to declare Goldwater my friend if that will guarantee Kennedy’s re-election!”
[173]

On the afternoon of November 22, Jean Daniel was having lunch with Fidel Castro in the living room of his summer home on Varadero Beach. It was 1:30 p.m. in the time zone Havana shared with Washington. While Daniel questioned Castro again about the missile crisis, the phone rang. A secretary in a guerrilla uniform said Mr. Dorticos, President of the Cuban Republic, had an urgent message for the prime minister. Castro took the phone. Daniel heard him say,
“Como? Un atentado?”
(“What’s that? An attempted assassination?”). He turned to tell Daniel and the secretary that Kennedy had been struck down in Dallas. Castro returned to the phone. He exclaimed loudly,
“Herido? Muy gravemente?”
(“Wounded? Very seriously?”).
[174]

When Castro had hung up the phone, he repeated three times, “
Es una mala noticia.”
(“This is bad news”). He remained silent, waiting for another call with more news. As he began to speculate on who might have targeted Kennedy, a second call came in: The hope was that the president was still alive and could be saved. Castro said with evident satisfaction, “If they can, he is already re-elected.”
[175]

Just before 2:00 p.m., Castro and Daniel waited by a radio for more news. Rene Vallejo, Castro’s liaison for the Kennedy negotiations, stood by. He translated the NBC reports coming in from Miami. Finally the words came through: President Kennedy was dead.

Castro stood up, looked at Daniel, and said, “Everything is changed. Everything is going to change.”
[176]

After the death of JFK, Lyndon Johnson put on permanent hold any dialogue between the White House and Fidel Castro, who kept seeking it. On December 4, William Attwood was told by Carlos Lechuga at the United Nations that “he now had a letter from Fidel himself, instructing him to talk with me about a specific agenda.”
[177]
Attwood asked the White House for its response to Castro. Gordon Chase said all policies were in the course of being reviewed by the new administration and advised patience.
[178]
Attwood did not know that, with the lightning change of presidents, former rapprochement proponent Chase had felt a corresponding change in the political climate and was now among those who were already turning Kennedy’s policy around. On November 25 Chase had written a memorandum to National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy that stated: “Basically, the events of November 22 would appear to make accommodation with Castro an even more doubtful issue than it was. While I think that President Kennedy could have accommodated with Castro and gotten away with it with a minimum of domestic heat, I’m not sure about President Johnson.”
[179]

Chase also recognized that the pro-Castro image of Oswald was not helpful: “In addition, the fact that Lee Oswald has been heralded as a pro-Castro type may make rapprochement with Cuba more difficult—although it is hard to say how much more difficult.”
[180]

Therefore, Kennedy’s former dialogue advocate wrote, “If one concludes that the prospects for accommodation with Castro are much dimmer than they were before November 22, then Bill Attwood’s present effort loses much of its meaning.”
[181]

After being put off by Chase for two weeks, Attwood finally had a chance to hear from President Johnson himself, when Johnson visited the U.S. delegation to the United Nations in New York on December 17. Attwood was simply told by Johnson at lunch that “he’d read my chronological account of our Cuban initiative ‘with interest.’”
[182]

“And that was it,” Attwood wrote two decades later in describing the end of “the Cuban connection.”
[183]
It had in fact died on November 22, 1963, with John Kennedy. It would not be revived by any other U.S. president in the twentieth century.

Against increasing odds, the Cuban side of the connection had still not given up. Inspired by his progress with Kennedy, Castro continued to seek a dialogue with the United States, in spite of President Johnson’s silence in response to his overtures. In February 1964, Lisa Howard returned from another news assignment in Cuba carrying an unusual memorandum, a “verbal message” addressed to Lyndon Johnson from Fidel Castro. In his message Castro went to extraordinary lengths to encourage Johnson to emulate Kennedy’s courage in attempting a dialogue with their number one enemy, himself. That enemy had been won over to the dialogue, first, by the counsel of Kennedy’s other enemy Khrushchev, then by the courage of Kennedy himself. Now Castro was using the example of Kennedy to encourage Johnson simply to talk with the enemy. He was also speaking much less like an enemy than a potentially helpful friend. It was as if Kennedy, in crossing a divide, had taken Castro with him. Castro said to Howard:

“Tell the President that I understand quite well how much political courage it took for President Kennedy to instruct you [Lisa Howard] and Ambassador Attwood to phone my aide in Havana for the purpose of commencing a dialogue toward a settlement of our differences . . . I hope that we can soon continue where Ambassador Attwood’s phone conversation to Havana left off . . . though I’m aware that pre-electoral political considerations may delay this approach until after November.

“Tell the President (and I cannot stress this too strongly) that I seriously hope that Cuba and the United States can eventually sit down in an atmosphere of good will and of mutual respect and negotiate our differences. I believe that there are
no
areas of contention between us that cannot be discussed and settled in a climate of mutual understanding. But first, of course, it is necessary to
discuss
our differences. I now believe that this hostility between Cuba and the United States is both unnatural and unnecessary—and it can be eliminated . . .

“Tell the President I realize fully the need for absolute secrecy, if he should decide to continue the Kennedy approach. I revealed nothing at that time . . . I have revealed nothing since . . . I would reveal nothing now.”
[184]

Just how far Castro was willing to go to promote a dialogue with Kennedy’s successor was shown by his willingness to help Johnson’s presidential campaign, even by calling off Cuban retaliation to a hostile U.S. action:

“If the President feels it necessary during the campaign to make bellicose statements about Cuba or even to take some hostile action—if he will inform me, unofficially, that a specific action is required because of domestic political considerations, I shall understand and not take any serious retaliatory action.”
[185]