But again, as in the Bay of Pigs, he blamed the CIA for manipulation, and in this case, assassination. In his anger at the CIA’s behind-the-scenes role in the deaths of Diem and Nhu, he said to his friend Senator George Smathers, “I’ve got to do something about those bastards.” He told Smathers that “they should be stripped of their exorbitant power.”[211] He was echoing his statement after the Bay of Pigs that he wanted “to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.”[212]
