JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters

by James W. Douglass

On June 19, 1963, President Kennedy succumbed to Cold War pressures and stepped backward. He approved a CIA program of sabotage and harassment against targets in Cuba that included electric power, transportation, oil, and manufacturing facilities.[68] Kennedy was responding both to mounting demands in his own administration for increasing pressure on Castro and to the appearance of a more aggressive Cuban government policy of exporting revolution to other Latin American countries. While adhering to his promise to Khrushchev not to launch a U.S. invasion of Cuba, Kennedy nevertheless agreed to a modified version of the covert-action campaign against Cuba that he had endorsed as Operation Mongoose in November 1961. Only nine days after his American University address, Kennedy had ratified a CIA program contradicting it.