Having initiated a $17 billion nuclear missile program a month before the Bay of Pigs, he returned a month afterward to deliver a special State of the Union address in which he called for twelve thousand new Marines, the training of new anti-guerrilla units that came to be known as Special Forces or Green Berets, and a tripling of funds for fallout shelters and other civil defense programs. Moreover, he made the electrifying announcement that the United States was undertaking to place a man on the moon “before this decade is out.”
