26-05-2014, 06:06 AM
Jim DiEugenio Wrote:The following is from Destiny Betrayed, second edition, p. 47. I will denote what I wrote by not using quotation marks. I will denote what Dulles wrote by using quotation marks.
In 1965, Dulles was preparing a magazine memoir about the Bay of Pigs. he got so far as writing some notes about it. He then decided against it. But many years later, his coffee-stained notes were discovered in his papers at Princeton. In them Dulles finally admitted that he had a secret agenda for leaving Kennedy misinformed. He wrote that he never raised any objections when Kennedy insisted that there be no American troop commitment to the operation, or that the invasion be deniable, or quiet, or it should rely on internal uprisings. He then explained why.
"We did not want to raise these issues...which might only harden the decision against the type of action we required. We felt that when the chips were down...when the crisis arose in reality--any action required for success would be authorized rather than permit the enterprise to fail....We believed that in a time of crisis we would gain what we might have lost if we provoked an argument in advance."
In other words, by misleading Kennedy into committing to a project he really did not want to commit to, Dulles would place him in a position where he would either have to swallow a humiliating defeat or reverse his public pledge of April 12: "There will not be under any conditions, an intervention in Cuba by the United States armed forces." In Dulles' eyes, all the deceptions about "going guerilla", about the D Day air strikes, about the Cuban masses rallying to the exile beachhead, these were all justified in his Machiavellian world view. He then tried to rationalize his justification:
"I have seen a good many operations which started out like this B of P insistence of complete secrecy--non-involvement of the U.S.--initial reluctance to authorize supporting action. This limitation tends to disappear as the needs of the operation become clarified."
This essay, by Lucien S. Vandenbroucke, was not published until 1984. At the time, the publication, Diplomatic History, gave Bissell an opportunity to reply. Bissell admitted that he and Dulles, "Had allowed Kennedy to persist in misunderstandings about the nature of the Cuban operation."
Quotes off.
Its not often these guys confess to treachery in print. But this time they did. They couldn't avoid it. Someone stuffed the unfinished manuscript into the files.
You should read some of these things from the actual pens of Dulles and Bissell. This is what the CIA is all about: lies, lies and more lies. Which would have been fine under Ike, Nixon or LBJ. But as Kennedy told Red Fay, Dulles had misjudged him. Which is why Dulles told the author he was working with on this essay, "That little Kennedy, he though he was a god." (ibid, p. 34)
No Allen. He just thought he was president. It was you who thought you were a god.
Quote:In 1965, Dulles was preparing a magazine memoir about the Bay of Pigs.
I believe that, that would have been the most interesting read if it only had been published, we than wouldn't be fighting for the rest of the Bay of Pigs volumes for their release.