Nixon and Kennedy: Truth you won't find in most history books

Nixon and Kennedy: The Myths and Reality

Before I have my say on the subject, please read this very good article by Pat Buchanan which he posted last November.

11/19/2013 12:01:00 AM - Pat Buchanan

Had there been no Dallas, there would been no Camelot. 

There would have been no John F. Kennedy as brilliant statesman cut off in his prime, had it not been for those riveting days from Dealey Plaza to Arlington and the lighting of the Eternal Flame. 

Along with the unsleeping labors of an idolatrous press and the propagandists who control America's popular culture, those four days created and sustained the Kennedy Myth. 

But, over 50 years, the effect has begun to wear off. 

The New York Times reports that in the ranking of presidents, Kennedy has fallen further and faster than any. Ronald Reagan has replaced him as No. 1, and JFK is a fading fourth. 

Kennedy is increasingly perceived today as he was 50 years ago, before word came that shots had been fired in Dallas. 

That he was popular, inspirational, charismatic, no one denied. But no one would then have called him great or near great. His report card had too many C's, F's and Incompletes. 

His great legislative victory had been the passage of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. His tax cut bill was buried on the Hill. 

His triumph had been forcing a withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba. But we would learn this was done by a secret deal for the withdrawal of U.S. missiles from Turkey and a secret pledge not to invade Cuba. 

And after the missile crisis, Bobby Kennedy pushed the CIA to eliminate Castro, eliciting a warning from Fidel that two could play this game. Lyndon Johnson said that under the Kennedys, the CIA had been running "a damned Murder Inc. in the Caribbean." 

What caused Nikita Khrushchev to think he could get away with putting rockets in Cuba? His perception that JFK was a weak president. 

Kennedy had denied air cover for the Cuban patriots at the Bay of Pigs, resulting in the worst debacle of the Cold War. He was then berated and humiliated by Khrushchev at the Vienna Summit in June 1961.

In August, Khrushchev built the Berlin Wall. Kennedy sat paralyzed. 

In September, Khrushchev smashed the three-year-old nuclear test-ban moratorium with a series of explosions featuring, at Novaya Zemlya, a 57-megaton "Tsar Bomba," the largest man-made blast ever. 

"Less profile, more courage," the placards read. 

In Southeast Asia, JFK had Averell Harriman negotiate a treaty for neutralizing Laos, resulting in Hanoi's virtual annexation of the Ho Chi Minh trail through Laos into South Vietnam. 

Where Eisenhower had 600 advisers in Vietnam, JFK increased it to 16,000 and gave his blessing to a generals' coup in which our ally, President Ngo Dinh Diem, was assassinated. 

Then and there, Vietnam became America's war. 

Kennedy had made a famous phone call to Mrs. Martin Luther King during the 1960 campaign when her husband had been arrested. Yet, he kept his administration away from the March on Washington and directed J. Edgar Hoover to wiretap Dr. King to learn of his associations with Communists. 

Since his death, Kennedy's reputation has been ravaged by revelations of assignations and mistresses from Marilyn Monroe to Mafia molls to White House interns from Miss Porter's School. 

All of this was covered up by his courtier journalists who would collaborate in perpetuating the Kennedy myth and collude in destroying their great hate object, Richard Nixon. 

Yet, contrast what Nixon did, with what JFK failed to do. 

Where Kennedy managed to get Gov. George Wallace to admit two black students to the University of Alabama, Nixon desegregated 70 percent of all Southern public schools. 

Where the JFK-LBJ administration spent eight years putting 535,000 U.S. troops into a war they could neither end nor win, Nixon withdrew all U.S. troops in four years, brought home the POWs, and left every provincial capital in South Vietnamese hands.
Where Kennedy had the Peace Corps, Nixon ended the draft, gave 18-year-olds the right to vote, created an Environmental Protection Agency and a Cancer Institute and an Occupational Health and Safety Administration. 

Where Kennedy gave speeches about detente, Nixon negotiated the greatest arms treaties since the Washington Naval Agreement -- SALT I and the ABM treaty -- ended decades of hostility between the U.S. and the People's Republic of China, rescued Israel in the Yom Kippur War, and pulled Egypt out of the Soviet bloc into the U.S. camp. 

Creating a new majority that would dominate presidential politics until 1992, Nixon was rewarded with a 49-state landslide in 1972. 

Whereupon a press elite that had maintained a conspiracy of silence on Kennedy's misconduct, seized on Nixon's failure to deal decisively with misconduct in his campaign to bring him down in the first successful coup d'etat in U.S. political history.
The mythologizing of JFK and demonization of Nixon tell us less about respective accomplishments than the moral character of an establishment, which, though it had lost America by '72, still controlled the culture, media, bureaucracy and Congress. 

And as they brought down Nixon with Watergate, they would seek to bring down Reagan with Iran-Contra. But that coup failed.
THE END of Pat Buchanan’s article

The Kennedy-Nixon Debates: JFK Lied, Cubans Died

The last of the four Kennedy-Nixon debates concerned foreign policy, and front and center was the issue of Cuba, where Fidel Castro had seized power less than two years earlier.  Castro had traveled to the US in April 1959 and met with Vice-President Nixon, who famously concluded in a memo that Castro was "either incredibly naive about communism or under communist discipline--my guess is the former."  The following year, Nixon spearheaded the planning for what became Kennedy's botched Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. 

Kennedy opportunistically made hay with the Eisenhower administration's inaction on Cuba; even to the point of issuing an October campaign statement that he favored unilateral intervention in Cuba. 

In the debates, Nixon was put in the peculiar position of defending a policy of restraint when he was in fact secretly managing plans for an invasion (Kennedy had been informed of the planning by CIA Director Allen Dulles following his nomination).  Kennedy knew Nixon could not mention this classified information in the debate.

When Kennedy ran for president in 1960, one of his key election issues was an alleged “missile gap” with the Soviets leading.  In fact, the United States led the Soviets by a wide margin that would only increase.  In 1961, the Soviets had only four  (ICBMs).  By October 1962, they may have had a few dozen, although some intelligence estimates were as high as 75.

The United States, on the other hand, had 170 ICBMs and was quickly building more.  It also had eight George Washington- and Ethan Allen-class ballistic missile submarines with the capability to launch 16 Polaris missiles each, with a range of 1,400 miles (2,300 km).  The United States was also keeping B52 bombers carrying MK39 Mod 2 Hydrogen bombs in the air 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Khrushchev increased the perception of a missile gap when he loudly boasted to the world that the USSR was building missiles "like sausages" whose numbers and capabilities actually were nowhere close to his assertions.  The Soviet Union did have a lot of medium-range ballistic missiles, about 700 of them; however, these were very unreliable and inaccurate.  Overall, the United States had a very considerable advantage in total number of nuclear warheads (27,000 against 3,600) at the time and, more importantly, in all the technologies needed to deliver them accurately.

CIA director Allen Dulles had briefed Kennedy on the genuine missile numbers.  But rather than respond to this genuinely outrageous claim, Nixon bit his tongue. 
 Disclosing the real number (that JFK knew perfectly well) in public would alert the Soviets to how we got their number, and jeopardize U.S. national security.  In other words, in order to blindside his Republican opponent Kennedy relied on Nixon’s patriotism. 

"The Republicans have allowed a communist dictatorship to flourish eight jet minutes from our borders!”  Kennedy charged during the second debate.  “We must support anti-Castro fighters.  So far these freedom fighters have received no help from our government."  Here again JFK’s “extremist rhetoric,” was a pre-meditated lie.  JFK lied expertly, with a straight face. 

Short weeks before the debates Allen Dulles (on Ike's orders) had also briefed Kennedy about Cuban invasion plans (what became the Bay of Pigs invasion).  So the “Real Story” is that Kennedy was again lying through his teeth.  He knew damn well the Republican administration was training Cuban freedom fighters.  And since the plans were secret, he knew damn well Nixon couldn't rebut.   So Nixon bit his tongue again.   He could easily have stomped Kennedy on it.   But to some candidates national security trumps debating points.   Four months later, 1,500 of those very Cuban freedom-fighters that "we must support" were slugging it out with 51,000 Castro troops, squadrons of Stalin tanks and his entire Air force at a beachhead now known as the Bay of Pigs. 

JFK was no longer a candidate.   He was now commander in chief.  It was time to put up or shut up.  He'd already done plenty of putting up by forcing the CIA and military planners to change the landing site.  Then by holding up his approval of an invasion which was a year in the making, until 24 hours before the planned D-day.  Then by canceling 80 percent of the planned pre-invasion air strikes.  This last was a vital element of the invasion as planned under Eisenhower.  The Cuban invasion was born under a Republican administration, with Vice President Nixon its main booster.  The man who saw through Alger Hiss was also the first to see through Fidel Castro.  Then it landed in JFK’s lap and he blew it. 

"Where are the PLANES?" kept crackling over the invasion ships' radios.  That was their commander, Pepe San Roman, roaring into his radio from the beachhead between hundreds of artillery concussions from huge 122 mm Soviet Howitzers.  "Send planes or we can’t last!” San Roman yelled while watching the Soviet tanks close in and his casualties pile up. 

The pleas made it to Navy Chief Admiral Arleigh Burke in Washington, D.C., who conveyed them in person to his commander in chief. 

"Two planes, Mr. President!" Admiral Burke sputtered into his commander in chief's face.  The fighting admiral was livid, pleading for permission to allow just two of his jets to blaze off the carrier deck and support the desperately embattled freedom-fighters on that heroic beachhead. 

"Burke, we can't get involved in this," replied JFK. 

"WE put those Cuban boys there, Mr. President!" the fighting admiral exploded.  "By God, we ARE involved!"' 

Interesting match here.  In one corner, the man who blasted almost half the Imperial Japanese fleet to fiery rubble and sent it to the bottom of the Pacific at the Battle of Leyte Gulf.   In the other, the man who managed to get his PT boat Karate-chopped in half by a Japanese destroyer, a feat of nautical ingenuity that still has naval men scratching their heads – and one that almost got him court-martialed.  Only some heavy political pressure saved John F. Kennedy in 1944.   Politics prevailed again that night in April '61. JFK refused to help the freedom fighters.  The election was over, you see.  There is no longer any need to “grand stand”.

"Can't continue," crackled the final message from San Roman a day later.  For three days his force of mostly volunteer civilians had battled savagely against a Soviet-trained-and-led force 10 times their size, inflicting casualties of 20 to 1.  Ammo finally ran out.  "Russian tanks overrunning my position" ... San Roman on his radio again ... "destroying my equipment…How can you people do this to us?"  Finally the radio went dead. 

"Tears filled my eyes," writes CIA man Grayston Lynch, a multi-decorated WWII and Korea vet who took that final message.  "I broke down completely.  For the first time in my 37 years I was ashamed of my country.” 

You have read the truth here in this blog. 

Truth you won’t find in most history books.

Now, I ask you.  How do you compare Kennedy and Nixon?