MORE RUTHLESS THAN THE ENEMY: 29: Strange Dreadfellows: Citizens Committee for a Free Cuba

On December 29, 1962 at the Orange Bowl in Miami, President Kennedy told Manuel Artime (center) and other Brigade 2506 members that their "flag will be returned to them in a free Havana." The attendees clapped and cheered believing JFK was prepared to go to war.

But as 1963 unfolded, a more diplomatic approach was taking place, involving negotiations with Cuba and the Soviet Union. Soon a group of prominent U.S. citizens decided it was time to turn up the heat on Kennedy. Freedom House, headed by Leo Cherne called upon Americans on March 25, 1963, to unite in a movement for a Free Cuba, without communist influence.1 In May, his rallying cry would lead to the formation of the Citizens Committee for a Free Cuba. Cherne himself had been trying, like Pawley, to organize exiles for several years.2

Politically, Cherne had begun as a Wendell “Willkie Republican.” Willkie had switched from Democrat to Republican in 1939 as Hitler moved across Europe. With conservative Republicans viewing him as an “internationalist,” he lost the 1940 Presidential election to the re-elected Democrat Franklin W. Roosevelt. Willkie then helped Roosevelt push through the Lend-Lease policy to aid Great Britain and the Allied nations. Before dying in 1944, Willkie also served as FDR's liaison to Chiang Kai-shek which reportedly evolved into an affair with Madame Chiang. At the same time, Mrs. Willkie became a member of The Committee to Defend America by Aiding Anti-Communist China along with Clare Boothe Luce.

As director of the Willkie Memorial, Leo Cherne undoubtedly knew Willkie’s aide-decamp, Lamoyne (Lem) Jones, who in the 1960's became spokesman for the CIA's Cuban Revolutionary Council.3

Cherne in 1951 received “Covert Security Clearance to provide cover under Project BLANKET”—a program permitting “the subject to receive information about National Security Council 5412/2 matters on a need-to-know basis.” The CIA viewed individuals with international contacts as assets that could be tapped for gaining foreign country insights and for making contacts with potential informants, opinion influencers and future leaders. In 1954, Cherne received “Covert Security Clearance for use by Central Cover Division in providing cover under Project QKENCHANT.”4 This provided “Provisional Covert Security Approvals (PCSA) and Covert Security Approvals (CSA), with the Office of Security in connection with acquisition of Corporate Cover for Action.”5

A 1952 memo about using the Research Institute of America to provide cover for agents revealed that “Leo Cherne and Carl Novgard have been given covert operational clearances.”

Within less than a week of President Kennedy cutting funds to the Cuban Revolutionary Council, newspapers announced the establishment of the Cherne’s Citizens Committee for a Free Cuba (CCFC), comprised of prominent Americans with backgrounds in the academia, the military, news, labor, science, religion, government, and other walks of life.

Lyle C. Wilson’s article in The Oakland Tribune referred to it as a blue-ribbon committee on Cuba and stated the “CCFC is nonpartisan.” Its sponsors intended “to develop considerable political muscle, however” and had already developed an eight-page mimeographed pamphlet. The organization’s Executive Secretary, Daniel James, was listed as Editor in 19636 and served until Paul Bethel became Editor the following year. Bethel was a friend of the CIA’s anti-Castro propagandist in Mexico, David Phillips, who oversaw the activities of the exile student movement, Directorio Revolutionario Estudiantil (DRE), which the agency referred to by the cryptonym AMSPELL, according to Jefferson Morley’s Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA.7

The Free Cuba News (FCN) Vol. 1, No. 1 pamphlet dated May 4, 1963, stated that the Citizens Committee for a Free Cuba saw an urgent need for an effective U.S. Cuban policy embracing a method of freeing the island from communism.” Adding to the dread of communism in Cuba was the assertion that “the enslavement of 6 million Cubans may now lead to the enslavement of 200 million persons in the remaining 19 Latin American republics” which is “wholly part of an offensive designed to enslave the United States.”

The pamphlet also promised a “punishing non-partisan attack” on President Kennedy whom “does not now have an effective U.S. Cuban policy.” The group believed it could rally Democrats against JFK, noting that it was “evident that the 1964 Republican presidential and congressional campaigns will make Cuba a major issue.”

The first issue of FCN further asserted that the overall situation in Latin America is much worse than the American people realize. “What CCFC is trying to tell Americans is not merely that it can happen here but that it probably will happen here unless Americans move to defend themselves now.”8

The American public however had faith in JFK’s handling of the Cuba situation. Nearly six out of ten polled believed that a war over Cuba in the next five years was unlikely.9

Among the fear-mongering Citizens Committee for a Free Cuba sponsors listed were former Bay of Pigs invasion co-planner, Admiral Arleigh Burke, and Pawley’s old friend Clare Boothe Luce.10

At the time that the CCFC was formed, the public would not know that Luce, Leo Cherne, Jay Lovestone, Irving Brown and Ernest Cuneo, had connections with the CIA. Nor would many be aware that Cherne, Luce, Lovestone, Christopher Emmet, Dr. Sidney Hook, Sal B. Hoffman, and Edgar Ansel Mowrer had previously supported the pro-Chiang Kai-shek China Lobby11 that had long benefited from Pawley’s activism. Two decades earlier, Mowrer had been the reporter who was hired to draft a final report for “Colonel William J. Donovan, U.S. Coordinator of Information concerning a mission to the Far East in autumn of 1941” prior to setting up a U.S. intelligence infrastructure there after getting input from Colonel Chennault of the Flying Tigers.12

On June 3, 1963, the CCFC listened to 35 recommendations Freedom House made on how to accomplish its mission and then condemned the Kennedy administration for procrastination.13 The 44 members of the CCFC who publicly condemned JFK for allowing Cuba to become a communist sanctuary were a mix of liberals and conservatives, some supporters, others opponents:

~ LEO CHERNE (CIA pseudonym BRUCE G. MASTROCOLA)14

Director and Vice President of Freedom House from 1946 on.
Willkie Memorial board member.
China Lobbyist.
CIA Covert Security Clearance in 1951 to provide cover (Project BLANKET)
Founder of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), an organization that finds refuge for victims of political repression, and IRC Chairman since 1953.
Recipient of CIA Covert Security Clearance to provide cover (Project QKENCHANT).
Cleared for CIA OOC routine source of foreign intelligence in 1956.
Recipient of Operational Approval for use by CIA Western Hemisphere Division as a Political and Psychological Staff agent in Cuba in 1959. A CIA contract with Cherne (using the pseudonym Bruce G. Mastrocola) as an independent contractor for one-year at no more than $265 per week was dated June 5, 1959.
From 1961 to 1965, the IRC was a conduit for CIA funds. (IRC’s PR-man, Harold Oram, signed up the Diem Government of South Vietnam as a client in the early 1960’s. Oram also did PR work for the China Lobby.)
September 8, 1961 Cherne offered to construct within 90 days “a solid revolutionary front out of the several Cuban exile groups and movements” while indicating a previous relationship with CIA personnel including “RUDY.” (Possibly paramilitary operative Rudolf A. Enders— aka Marvin A. Laurenkus aka Alan Barton—who two years later is involved with Pawley in Operation TILT.15)

1967 subject of “OOC interest in connection with requirements concerning economic and political aspects of Vietnam and other areas of Southeast Asia which he developed as a result of his frequent foreign travel and activities of the International Rescue Committee.”
1973 subject of “OOC interest as a source of foreign intelligence.”
1973 received special clearances to serve as a member of President Nixon’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board along with Clare Boothe Luce and Edward Teller. (Future CIA Director William Casey recommended Cherne to the PFIAB “in return for Cherne’s participation in Democrats for Nixon.” Nelson Rockefeller, another appointee, considered his own membership to be “the single most important service he had ever performed for the U.S. government. Cherne and Rockefeller became close friends.”)
Sculpted bust of William “Wild Bill” Donovan that sits in the CIA lobby in Virginia and a bust of JFK after the assassination commissioned by Berlin, Germany. (Cherne met JFK in 1955, and sent him a sculpture of Lincoln when he became President.)
Member of President Ford's Intelligence Oversight Committee.
On “Patrick Moynihan for Senate Committee” in 1976 along with Edward J. Epstein, author of the KGB-was-behind-the-JFK-assassination book, Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald.
Described by conservative TV host of Firing Line, William F. Buckley as "'one of the most combative men ever bred ... If he thought he was right about something, he would sprnd from now until doomsday pressing his view.'"
Recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Ronald Reagan16

~ CLARE BOOTHE LUCE

Pioneering feminist in 1924.
Playwright of “The Women” about “idle, bitchy, women” as she told Morley Safer of CBS-TV’s “60 Minutes.”
U.S. Congresswoman from Connecticut 1943-47.
Ambassador to Italy (1953-57) while the CIA was financially supporting political candidates to influence the outcome of elections that they feared would be won by communists.17
Author with Leo Cherne and A.A. Berle of Hungary Under Soviet Rule II a Survey of Developments from September 1957 to August 1958 and two other Hungary publications. Luce had communicated with Cherne since 1940s.
On CBS-TV’s “60 Minutes” in the early 1980s, Luce told Morley Safer with disdain in her voice that she didn’t think the American people wanted another presidency, but instead desired “another series of episodes in the greatest soap opera in American history, the Kennedy story ... will Jackie reappear in the White House and meet some great noblemen and marry them. We have come to see government even as entertainment, as fiction as television serials.” She also stated that “I was young at my peak when my country was at its peak in the 1950s.”

Wife of Time-Life publisher, Henry Luce, the pioneer of the China Lobby who wanted the Cold War won by 1965.
President of the Committee to Defend America by Aiding Anti-Communist China.
Attacked JFK for not alerting public of Russian weapons in Cuba in Life magazine, the publication involved in Operation TILT with William Douglas Pawley in 1963.
Life purchased the Zapruder film in 1963 and withheld it from the public for years.
Claimed Cuban exile told her Oswald was sent by Castro.
Member of President Nixon's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board with Leo Cherne and Edward R. Teller.
Co-founder of Ad Hoc Legal Defense Fund for indicted intelligence agents with Senator James Buckley, ex-Secretary of the Treasury William Simon, and Marvin Liebman (China Lobby and Katangan Freedom Fighter propagandist).
Recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Ronald Reagan.18

~ WILLIAM VANDEN HEUVEL

New York lawyer and political figure.
Served OSS founder William “Wild Bill” Donovan when he was Ambassador to Thailand in 1953 and 1954.
Leader of relief programs for Hungarian, Cuban, South Vietnamese and Chinese refugees.
Chairman of the executive body of Cherne’s International Rescue Committee which was

organized in 1933 to assist displaced humanity.
President of the IRC beginning in 1961.
Assistant to U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy on civil rights matters and involved in RFK’s 1964 and 1968 campaigns.19
Recipient of December 5, 1963 urgent teletype from the FBI requesting all of IRC’s files regarding Lee Harvey Oswald which included Oswald’s January 13, 1961 letter to IRC requesting $800.00 for two tickets from Moscow USSR to New York and then to Dallas.20
Father of progressive Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor, publisher, and part-owner of The Nation whose 2022 editorial in the Washington Post on the 60th Anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis emphasized the importance of de-escalation through diplomacy and “dialogue to prevent doomsday” which nearly occurred when nuclear missiles were almost launched “once by the 498th Tactical Missile Group in on Okinawa, Japan, and once by a Soviet submarine in Cuban waters.”21 (Even Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev saw wisdom in avoiding the simultaneous annihilation of both the U.S. and the Soviet Union but provided support to the Cuban revolutionaries when it became evident that the American-supported Cuban exiles would try militarily to topple Castro who begged for Soviet defenses.)22

~ EDWARD TELLER

Nuclear physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb while with the University of Chicago in the 1940s.
Member of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board chaired by General James Doolittle (1955-58).
Joined Radiation Laboratory, Livermore California, in the 1960's.
Member of President Nixon's Foreign.
Intelligence Advisory Board with Clare Boothe Luce and Leo Cherne.
Told Californians in 1978 “the question of safe disposal of radioactive wastes was a ‘phony and dishonest issue’” according to Torn Wicker in The New York Times, March 3, 1978, page 25.
Co-chairman with ex-CIA counter-intelligence chief James Jesus Angleton and other Cold warriors of the American Security Council which was headed by ex-FBI agent John M. Fisher.
One of 141 founders of Committee on the Present Danger along with anti-communist Frank R. Barnett, General Maxwell D. Taylor and Rockefeller Commission panelists General Lyman Lemnitzer and Lane Kirkland.
Member of the American Security Council in 1964.

~ ADMIRAL ARLEIGH A. BURKE

Chief of Naval Operations, 1955-1961, while Doolittle Committee member William Franke was Secretary of Navy.
Office burglarized in Summer of 1963, after he began blaming JFK and the CIA for Bay of Pigs fiasco, while chairman of the Center for Strategic Studies at Georgetown University.
Purportedly supported Operation COBRA, Harold Feeney’s plan “to overthrow the Castro regime of Cuba by utilizing U.S.-made military aircraft operating from Petan Air Base in Guatemala to raid strategic targets in Cuba.”23 Targets were to be identified through exiles who had infiltrated back into Cuba and were coordinated by Office of Naval Intelligence through Guantanamo Naval Base. Files held by Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and CIA indicate multiple infiltration/exfiltration and sabotage efforts continued after the JFK assassination (“Special Group Meeting postponed until late 6 Dec. as interim measure have received approval for COBRA ELEVEN, CLEOPATRA, and AMSAKI.”24 Also “Equipment required for Ops AMWARM, AMTURVEY, AMCOVE, AMVEE, and for RS501 packages used support short-term infil/exfil and sab ops such as CLEOPATRA, AMHICK and AMTRUNK, DUCK and other names.) 25

~ VICE ADMIRAL CHARLES WELLBORN, JR. (retired)

Office of Chief of Naval Operations under Admiral Arleigh Burke.

~ MURRAY BARON

Chairman of the Liberal Committee of New York County.
Labor lawyer who sought to keep unions free of communism.
Worked with Robert Kennedy to expose the corruption of Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa.
Joined the conservative group Accuracy in the Media in 1972.26

~ JOSEPH BEIRNE

President of the Communications Workers of America since 1947.
Vice President of AFL-CIO since 1955.
Involved in the AIFLD (American Institute for Free Labor Development).

~ NICHOLAS DUKE BIDDLE

Son of Anthony J. Drexel Biddle, former Ambassador to Poland.
Working chairman of Boys Harbor, a facility for underprivileged boys.
Member of New York City Youth Board.
Chairman of Caribbean program for the Cherne’s International Rescue Committee (a CIA conduit from 1961-65).

~ IRVING BROWN

European representative of AFL-CIO since 1955.
United Nations representative for the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.
Recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Ronald Reagan27

~ ERNEST CUNEO

Law secretary to Fiorello LaGuardia, 1931-32.
Associate counsel to the Democratic National Committee, 1936-40.
White House liaison officer to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and OSS liaison to the British Security office, 1942-45.
Chairman of the Board of the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), 1951-63, during which time NANA reporter Patricia Johnson McMillan (co-author with Marina Oswald of Marina and Lee) interviewed Lee Harvey Oswald in Russia.
As a columnist, wrote in Apri1 1977 “the not-so-great mystery of the mysterious murder of John F. Kennedy is that the Democratic House doesn't want to solve the mystery at all” because of JFK’s involvement with organized crime “in a first degree murder plot” against an unnamed “chief of state of' a foreign nation.” (Cuneo never mentions Castro by name. Perhaps, because someone might remember Cuneo had plotted against him, too, with the other CCFC members.)

~ CHRISTOPHER EMMET

Writer.

China Lobbyist.

~ DR. BUELL G. GALLAGHER

President of City College of New York since 1952.
Director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Director of Union Theological Seminar.

~ DR. HARRY GIDEONSE

Associate Professor at the University of Chicago, 1930-38; Professor of Economics at Columbia University 1938-9; and President of Brooklyn College of the City of New York since 1939.

Member of Council on Foreign Relations.
Brother, Max, previously served in State Department as assistant chief and adviser to the Office of Special Political Affairs 1945-6; on NJ State Mediation Board; Professor at Rutgers University.
Chairman of Freedom House since 1942; retired, as President 1977.

~ MISS FRANCES R. GRANT

Editor of Hemispherica (monthly review directed at Latin America).
Secretary-General of Inter-American Association for Democracy and Freedom.

~ PAUL HALL

President of Seafarers International Union.
Member of Citizens Committee Free China.

~ SAL B. HOFFMAN

President of Upholsterers International Union since 1939.
China Lobbyist.

~ DR. SIDNEY HOOK

Communist Party member during the Depression.
Professor of Philosophy New York University, since 1939.
China Lobbyist.
Author of, among other books, Heresy, Yes – Conspiracy, No (1953).
Contributing writer to William F. Buckley’s National Review. (Buckley, who died in 2008,had worked with CIA Agent E. Howard Hunt in Mexico City and was godfather to Hunt’s two daughters; he also paid some of Hunt’s legal fees following the Watergate burglary. Hunt, who died in 2007, also had a son whose godfather was Cuban exile leader Artime.)28
As a Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, argued on The New York Times Op-ed Page, October 26, 1977, page 27, that the issue is not socialism or capitalism, “but the freedom to choose between them”—a freedom that depends on "the human will to fight for it to the end.”

~ BRIGADIER GENERAL FRANK L. HOWLEY (retired)

U.S. Military Government, Berlin 1945-49.
Founder of Free University, Berlin 1948.
Vice President of New York University.
Permanent panel member of “Answers for Americans” (WABC-TV).
Author of, among other books, Four Year War with the Reds (1950) and Formosa War or Peace (1956).

~ DANIEL JAMES

Columnist and author of Cuba: The First Soviet Satellite in the Americas.

~ REVEREND JOHN LA FARGE

Roman Catholic clergyman and editor.

~ JAY LOVESTONE

Director of International publications for the merged AFL-CIO labor movement until 1974.
Supporter of international labor organizations used by the CIA; closest ally of Counterintelligence Chief James Angleton.29
China Lobbyist.

~ BENJAMIN F. MC LAURIN

Vice President of the International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

~ BRIGADIER GENERAL S.L.A. MARSHALL

Military critic for the Detroit News covering the Spanish Civil War and Latin American uprisings.
Rejoined Army in 1942 and became the foremost military historian, writing the definitive work on General James H. Doolittle's Japanese raid, the Korean War epic Pork Chop Hill, and other works on military operations in the Belgian Congo, Lebanon and Vietnam.
Freelance writer for Life and other magazines.
Critic of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's peace negotiations in Vietnam and the Middle East.
Died at age 77 on December 17, 1977 of cardiopulmonary arrest in El Paso, Texas after a stroke hospitalized him in June 1976.

~ DR. HANS J. MORGENTHAU

Professor of Political Science University of Chicago, since 1940s.
Director of Center for Study of American Foreign Policy since 1950.
Associated with the New School for Social Research in 1970s.
Co-founder, after the 1973 Middle East War, of National Committee on Foreign Policy, Inc., which received a $25,000 gift from the Jacob Kaplan Foundation, a fund exposed in the 1960s as a conduit for money going to the CIA's front organization that groomed Juan Bosch to succeed assassinated Dominican Republic leader Rafael Trujillo Molinas.

~ EDGAR ANSEL MOWRER

World War I correspondent for Chicago Daily News.
Deputy Director of Office of War Information, 1941-43.
China Lobbyist.
Trustee Freedom House.
American editor of Western World International magazine since 1956.
Member of the American Security Council in 1964.

~ BONARO OVERSTREET

Author of books on poetry, adult education and such titles as What We Must Know About Communism (1958), The War Cal1ed Peace: Khrushchev’s Communism (1961), The Iron Curtain (1963).
Co-author with her husband Harry Overstreet of The Strange Tactics of Extremism (1964) and The FBI in Our Open Society (1969).

~ BISHOP JAMES A. PIKE

Episcopal Bishop of California 1958.
Became lost and died in the Judean desert in 1969.

~ VIRGINIA PREWETT

Latin America news reporter for Washington Daily News and Ernest Cuneo's North American Newspaper Alliance.

~ DR. FRANK TANNENBAUM

Lecturer on Latin American affairs.
Professor of Economics at Columbia University since 1945.
Council on Foreign Relations member.

~ DR. ARTHUR P. WHITAKER

Professor of Latin-American history at University of Pennsylvania since 1936.
Council on Foreign Relations member.

~PAUL BETHEL

Served in the Diplomatic Service Corps for 12 years including the Press Office of the
U.S. Embassy in Havana until 1961.
Left the U.S.I.A. because he refused to work in Washington “on a matter related to the Peace Corps.”
October through December 1961, paid $1,000 a month by JMWAVE to provide “detailed analysis overt Cuban press,” but terminated for poor effort.30
In 1964, he stated on Barry Gray’s WMCA radio show on February 6th that Jack Ruby, killer of Lee Harvey Oswald, had traveled to Cuba three times in 1959 or 1960 “since we broke relations with Cuba” making it clandestine travel. These “trips to Cuba might have been centered around the Hotel Capri, in Havana, Cuba, whose front man was said to be George Raft, the movie actor. Bethel’s sources were Jose Lanuza of the DRE who could also provide information on Oswald’s attempt to infiltrate the DRE.31
Bethel’s second Ruby-Cuba source was Dr. Salvador Lew who worked with CIA’s George Joannides in early 1963 through BINAURAL (cryptonym for a CIA radio propaganda and PW asset) using WRUL in New York to implement a declaration from Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRC) head Jose Miro Cardona (AMBUD-1).32 Lew also provided publicity for Juanita Castro who opposed her brother Fidel and the CIA’s Commandos Mambises led by Major Manuel Villafana which had Kennedy backing and launched an October 22, 1963 Cuban naval raid onboard the Rex which resulted in the capture of four crewmen by Castro’s troops.33

The FBI agent investigating the claim found that one of Bethel’s sources had no knowledge of Ruby’s trips to Cuba.34
In March 1967, made charges that there were Soviet missiles in Cuba to which Special Assistant to President Johnson, Walter Rostow, sent a note to Richard Helms at CIA stating “know that Paul Bethel is a propagandist who for the past five years has traded on his brief experience in our Embassy in Havana to make a living on the Cuban issue. What he told the Subcommittee today is the same tale which he has repeatedly published in his newsletter ... The sources for his charges are the same Cuban refugees who passed through our intelligence screening process in Miami ... Bethel accepts the stories without critical evaluation.” He promised to have State assess Bethel’s charges and Helms “will see from this how wild and irresponsible Bethel can be.”)35
1969, author of The Losers, Arlington House, New Rochelle, NY, which published E. Howard Hunt’s Give Us This Day four years later.

In May 1963, while the CCFC was formulating its campaign against JFK’s Cuba policy, the AVBC, a Bay of Pigs invasion veterans’ association, “initiated a recruitment program to determine the number of qualified personnel available for military service.” The AVBC planned to establish training bases in a Central American country by October. They were discussing plans with former Nicaraguan President Luis Somoza, for a naval operation against the Cuban regime that would include infiltration and sabotage activities, supported by air attacks.

At the end of May, Pawley fired another volley at the administration. The News-Tribune of Ft. Pierce, Florida carried the eight-column, page-two story headlined “Ex-Envoy Pawley Flays ‘Pattern Of Defeat’ In U.S.” Pawley’s attack on President Kennedy was given in a speech before the Rotary Club of Stuart, Florida where a year earlier he asserted that “the Bay of Pigs invasion failed because President John F. Kennedy failed to provide air cover.” Pawley now foresaw a “bleak future for the United States in Cuba and South America” and “blasted State Department delays and stupidity, advice from the ‘boys at Harvard’ rather than the joint chiefs of staff and Communist tactics for what he termed ‘desperate problems which are not being taken care of.’”

Pawley said that after years of warning about communism “he quit the Democratic party, became a Republican, worked for the Eisenhower administration and now is outspokenly a supporter of Sen. Barry Goldwater. He called Goldwater ‘our only hope.’” Seeing a “pattern of defeat” Pawley predicted that the communists would take over Laos, and that South Viet Nam was “very shaky. The Reds know we can't win logistically in those far away places.” Twelve years later, he was proven to be correct.

Pawley vented that just 90 miles away, Castro had been victorious. “After the Bay of Pigs, I told President Kennedy that there was no choice but to go in with U.S. forces, that we could take Cuba in 24 to 36 hours and had to if we didn’t want Communists in the Western Hemisphere.”

But Kennedy felt it would take more than a month to defeat Castro’s forces, and Pawley saw his ambivalence as a threat to South America. “Today 500 Venezuelan young men are training in Cuba. In four years of Betancourt’s regime, we have given one billion, 800 million dollars in U.S. aid, but Betancourt is doing nothing about Communism. Many believe him to be a Communist.” Pawley saw these threats as “desperate problems and they are not being taken care of. I am considered an extreme right winger for wanting to do something to defend this great country.” In his mind, a loss of Venezuela or Brazil to communism would lead to missiles being installed and “there will be no end short of atomic war. We can blockade Cuba because it is an island, but we cannot blockade the South American continent,” he concluded.36

On June 10, 1963, President Kennedy gave the commencement speech at American University in the dogwood-tree-lined northwest section of Washington, DC. The topic was not one Pawley wanted to hear from a President who had become his obstacle to overthrowing communism in Cuba to protect the Western hemisphere. “I have, therefore, chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived—yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace.”

It was not the kind of peace envisioned by Pawley. Kennedy explained, “Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children—not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women—not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.”

President Kennedy expounded that nuclear weapons were ten times more powerful in 1963 than when dropped on Japan in World War II—and that “deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.”

As if talking directly to Pawley and the hawkish Citizens Committee for a Free Cuba supporters who saw peace with communists as a “dangerous, defeatist belief,” Kennedy asserted that “every graduate of this school, every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward—by examining his own attitude toward the possibilities of peace, toward the Soviet Union, toward the course of the cold war and toward freedom and peace here at home.”

The President believed “problems are manmade—therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.

Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable--and we believe they can do it again.”

The President called on Americans to “reexamine our attitude toward the Soviet Union.” He voiced frustration that Soviet propagandists and military strategists were spreading allegations “‘that there is a very real threat of a preventive war being unleashed by American imperialists against the Soviet Union.’” He implored “American people not to fall into the same trap as the Soviets, not to see only a distorted and desperate view of the other side, not to see conflict as inevitable, accommodation as impossible, and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats.”

While Pawley believed that the US had to be “more ruthless than the enemy,” President Kennedy proclaimed, “No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. As Americans, we find communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity. But we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements—in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture and in acts of courage.”

Both countries share “our mutual abhorrence of war. Almost unique among the major world powers, we have never been at war with each other. And no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union suffered in the course of the Second World War. At least 20 million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and farms were burned or sacked. A third of the nation's territory, including nearly two thirds of its industrial base, was turned into a wasteland—a loss equivalent to the devastation of this country east of Chicago.”

In a hot war, Kennedy foresaw that “all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first 24 hours. And even in the cold war, which brings burdens and dangers to so many nations, including this Nation's closest allies—our two countries bear the heaviest burdens. For we are both devoting massive sums of money to weapons that could be better devoted to combating ignorance, poverty, and disease. We are both caught up in a vicious and dangerous cycle in which suspicion on one side breeds suspicion on the other, and new weapons beget counterweapons.”

Whether living in the US or the Soviet Union, “in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.” To not pursue peace “in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy—or of a collective death-wish for the world.”

Kennedy asserted that “America’s weapons are nonprovocative, carefully controlled, designed to deter, and capable of selective use. Our military forces are committed to peace and disciplined in self-restraint. Our diplomats are instructed to avoid unnecessary irritants and purely rhetorical hostility.”

The United States “can seek a relaxation of tension without relaxing our guard. And, for our part, we do not need to use threats to prove that we are resolute. We do not need to jam foreign broadcasts out of fear our faith will be eroded. We are unwilling to impose our system on any unwilling people—but we are willing and able to engage in peaceful competition with any people on earth.”

Kennedy sought more funding for the United Nations “to make it a more effective instrument for peace, to develop it into a genuine world security system—a system capable of resolving disputes on the basis of law, of insuring the security of the large and the small, and of creating conditions under which arms can finally be abolished.”

He clarified to those in attendance at the American University commencement, “We are bound to many nations by alliances. Those alliances exist because our concern and theirs substantially overlap. Our commitment to defend Western Europe and West Berlin, for example, stands undiminished because of the identity of our vital interests. The United States will make no deal with the Soviet Union at the expense of other nations and other peoples, not merely because they are our partners, but also because their interests and ours converge.”

Nonetheless, he asserted that the desire of “Communists to impose their political and economic system on others is the primary cause of world tension today. For there can be no doubt that, if all nations could refrain from interfering in the self-determination of others, the peace would be much more assured.”

The President proposed “a new effort to achieve world law—a new context for world discussions. It will require increased understanding between the Soviets and ourselves. And increased understanding will require increased contact and communication. One step in this direction is the proposed arrangement for a direct line between Moscow and Washington, to avoid on each side the dangerous delays, misunderstandings, and misreadings of the other's actions which might occur at a time of crisis.”

He revealed that talks had been going on “in Geneva about the other first-step measures of arms control designed to limit the intensity of the arms race and to reduce the risks of accidental war. Our primary long-range interest in Geneva, however, is general and complete disarmament—designed to take place by stages, permitting parallel political developments to build the new institutions of peace which would take the place of arms. The pursuit of disarmament has been an effort of this Government since the 1920's. It has been urgently sought by the past three administrations. And however dim the prospects may be today, we intend to continue this effort—to continue it in order that all countries, including our own, can better grasp what the problems and possibilities of disarmament are.”

High among his goals was “a treaty to outlaw nuclear tests. The conclusion of such a treaty, so near and yet so far, would check the spiraling arms race in one of its most dangerous areas. It would place the nuclear powers in a position to deal more effectively with one of the greatest hazards which man faces in 1963, the further spread of nuclear arms. It would increase our security—it would decrease the prospects of war. Surely this goal is sufficiently important to require our steady pursuit, yielding neither to the temptation to give up the whole effort nor the temptation to give up our insistence on vital and responsible safeguards.”

He then announced that “Chairman Khrushchev, Prime Minister Macmillan, and I have agreed that high-level discussions will shortly begin in Moscow looking toward early agreement on a comprehensive test ban treaty. Our hopes must be tempered with the caution of history— but with our hopes go the hopes of all mankind.”

In an act of good faith, President Kennedy told the graduates “I now declare that the United States does not propose to conduct nuclear tests in the atmosphere so long as other states do not do so. We will not be the first to resume.”

He encouraged the graduates to demonstrate a dedication to the new peace initiative “by serving without pay in the Peace Corps abroad or in the proposed National Service Corps here at home.”

President Kennedy envisioned a future with “peace and freedom” for all American citizens and “the responsibility of all citizens in all sections of this country to respect the rights of all others and to respect the law of the land.” He raised the question, “is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights—the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation—the right to breathe air as nature provided it—the right of future generations to a healthy existence?”

As he concluded, President Kennedy declared that the U.S. “will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough—more than enough—of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we labor on—not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace.”37

Throughout the summer and into the fall of 1963, the Citizens Committee for a Free Cuba kept pressure on President Kennedy to take a harder line in Cuba.38

Conservative U.S. Senator from Arizona Barry Goldwater who was the front-running Republican candidate for President—with the backing of William Douglas Pawley—denounced Kennedy as being “soft” on the Soviet Union and considered his speech a “terrible mistake.” 39 Goldwater and Kennedy had become friends as Senators and discussed having Lincoln-Douglas style debates before the President was assassinated. Pawley in the previous presidential campaign told Nixon it was “a big mistake to debate” Kennedy.40

JFK’s sin of “abandoning ... ground inspection of the missile sites in Cuba”41 would became an obsession of Pawley’s and bring him to launch his own mission in the summer of 1963 to prove the President was being hoodwinked by the Soviets.

NEXT CHAPTERS

FOOTNOTES:

1 Declaration of Purpose. The Citizens Committee for a Free Cuba has been formed in a response to a statement issued by Freedom House, on March 25, 1963, calling upon Americans to unite in a movement for a Free Cuba.

2 NARA 104-10271-10423 ~ 10/27/1960 Memo for the Record “Contact with Leo Cherne.” Subjects: Cherne, Leo. From: B. E. Reichardt.

Leo Cherne's one-time son-in-law, actor Norman Parker, told me that during the period he knew Cherne there was never a moment when he wasn't talking politics. Interview Elm-Tre Pool and Tennis Club, West Caldwell, NJ, July 12, 1984.

3 “Whose bed am I in? (Wendell Willkie and Franklin Roosevelt's sex lives and media).” By Charles Peters. Washington Monthly, September 1, 2005

Stanley D. Bachrack, The Committee of One Million: “China Lobby” Politics 1953-1971. Page 34.

>> Mrs. Willkie deceased April 15, 1978.

“Willkie on the Overland Limited,” Time, February 21, 1944

NARA 104-10232-10320 ~ January 23, 1962. Memorandum for Record “Lem Jones Associates assists Dr. Miro Cardona in Press Releases of his document to the foreign ministers meeting at Punta Del Este.” Subjects: Miro Cardona. To: No. 182.

“Lamoyne A. Jones Is Dead at 64; Press Aide to Willkie and Dewey,” The New York Times, August 24, 1975. Page 45.

4 NARA 104-10109-10027 ~ Originator: CIA. Subjects: “Cherne, Leo Biographic Data.”

Leo Cherne of International Rescue Committee and Freedom House

1951 - Covert Security Clearance to provide cover under Project BLANKET
1954 - Covert Security Clearance for use by Central Cover Division in providing cover under Project QKENCHANT.
1956 - OOC interest as a routine source of foreign intelligence.
1959 - Operational Approval for use by WH [CIA Western Hemisphere Division] as a PP agent in Cuba.
1967 - OOC interest in connection with requirements concerning economic and political aspects of Vietnam and other areas of Southeast Asia which he developed as a result of his frequent foreign travel and activities of the International Rescue Committee.
1973 - OOC interest as a source of foreign intelligence.
1973 - Special clearances granted as a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

5 NARA 104-10336-10005 ~ Request “CIA-IR-06: QKENCHANT.”

6 “Blue Ribbon Committee on Cuba,” Oakland Tribune. By Lyle C. Wilson, May 9, 1963.

7 Jefferson Morley, Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA, (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2008). Pages 128 and129.

8 “Citizens Committee for a Free Cuba, Declaration of Purpose” Vol. 1, No. 1, Free Cuba News, May 4, 1963. Edited by Daniel James, 617 Albee Building, 1416 G Street, N.W., Washington, DC.

>> Paul Bethel appeared on the organization’s newsletter in February 1964.

CCFC is sparked by several ideas and convictions of much urgency:
—That there is urgent need for an effective U.S. Cuban policy embracing a method of freeing the island from communism.
—That the enslavement of 6 million Cubans may now lead to the enslavement of 200 million persons in the remaining 19 Latin American republics.
—That the Communist achievement in Cuba and plans for the other 19 republics are wholly part of an offensive designed to enslave the United States.
—That communism is making such progress in Latin America that there may be other Cubas there before long. Implicit in the CCFC program is the conviction that the Kennedy administration does not now have an effective U.S. Cuban policy.
If CCFC gets the attention of the U.S. public, the Kennedy administration will find itself under a punishing nonpartisan attack. The political consequences could be very great. It already is evident that the 1964 Republican presidential and congressional campaigns will make Cuba a major issue.

9 “The Polls—Trends, The Cuban Missile Crisis and the U.S. Public Opinion.” By Tom W. Smith, Public Opinion Quarterly, Volume 67: 265-293

10 “Blue Ribbon Committee on Cuba,” Oakland Tribune, May 9, 1963.

CCFC sponsors listed in the Oakland newspaper are: Joseph Beirne, president, AFL-CIO Communication Workers of America; Adm. Arleigh A. Burke, former chief of naval operations: Ernest Cuneo, board chairman, North American Newspaper Alliance; Dr. Buell Gallagher, president, City College of New York; Dr. Harry Gideonse, president, Brooklyn (N.Y.) College; Dr. Sidney Hook, New York University; Brig. Gen. Frank L. Howley; Rev. John LaFarge S.J., associate editor, "America"; Clare Booth Luce; Dr. Hans J. Morgenthau, University of Chicago; John T. O'Rourke, editor, Washington (D.C.) Daily News; Dr. John P. Roche, Brandeis University Edward Teller, physicist; Bishop James A. Pike, California.
Another listing added the names: Hal Hendrix, Latin America Editor, Miami News; Jay Lovestone, Director of International Publications, AFL-CIO; Eugene Lyons, Senior Editor, Readers’ Digest; Episcopal Bishop James Pike; Virginia Prewett, Latin America Columnist, North American Newspaper Alliance; Edward Teller, Physicist; Admiral Arleigh Burke (Ret); Ernest Cuneo; and John Fisher.

11 R. Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America’s First Central Intelligence Agency (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1972).

Stanley D. Bachrack, The Committee of One Million: “China Lobby” Politics 1953-1971 (Columbia University Press, 1976) page 34

12 OSS-Correspondence “Regarding Far Eastern Affairs, 1943” CREST OSS Collection. of Edgar Ansel Mowrer report. Pages 22 & 23. https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP13X00001R000100420003-5.pdf

13 “Bold Cuba Policy Urged Upon U.S.; Goal of Liberation Backed in Freedom House Report Question Posed U.S.‘Procrastination’ Scored.” The New York Times, June 4, 1963. Page 7

14 NARA 104-10222-10001~ Mastrocola, Bruce G.

NARA 104-10165-10406 ~ Contract “For Leo Cherne As Independent Contractor.”

15 NARA 104-10312-10361 ~ 6/5/1963 Cable “Op Involving Soviet Defectors Which Mr. William Pawley Has Discussed.” To: OPIM Director. From: JMWAVE. Page 6 of 9.

NARA 104-10194-10009 ~ Memorandum “Subject: Application of Premium Pay for Certain Contract Personnel.” To: Chief, Contract Personnel Division. From: William K. Harvey, Chief, Task Force W. CIA “File On Crozier Ross.” Mary Ferrell Foundation website. Page 8 of 162.

NARA 104-10109-10027 ~ Originator: CIA. Subjects: “Cherne, Leo Biographic Data.”

1/6/1978 Request. To: Patrick Carpentier of the CIA. From G. Robert Blakey, Chief Counsel and Director, Select Committee on Assassinations.

>> Leo Cherne's International Rescue Committee was a significant focus among the documents requested by the HSCA pertaining to James Angleton:

7. Harold Issacs of MIT referred to in Warren Commission Document #942
9. Leo Cherne, Director of Internal Rescue Committee in 1962
12. Silvia Duran: Assistant to the Cuban Consul at the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City in 1963
13. Horatio Duran, her husband
16. Spas T. Raikin: Representative of the Travelers Aid Society who met the Oswalds upon their return to the United States at Hoboken, New Jersey on June 13, 1962
17. William Harvey: Chief of CIA’s Foreign Intelligence Staff during early 1960’s before being assigned to Task Force W, the CIA operations staff for OPERATION MONGOOSE (files for 1959-1964 only).
18. E. Howard Hunt: CIA case officer who was the political officer for the Cuban Revolutionary Front (files 1959-1964 only).
21. Dr. Rex J. Howard
22. Dr. Rex Z. Howard
23. QJ/WIN: CIA operative involved in William Harvey’s ZR/RIFLE Program
27. All materials pertaining to the International Rescue Committee, including those concerning the IRC and anti-Castro Groups and/or Alexander Rorke.
30. Richard Helms, James Angleton and Raymond Rocca correspondence regarding JFK Assassination
36. All materials pertaining to Southern Research Corporation, presently known as Wackenhut Corporation.

16 “Chronological List of Medals Awarded.” The Official Site of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. http://web.archive.org/web/20071018025824/www.medaloffreedom.com/Chronological.htm

Andrew F. Smith, Rescuing the World: The Life and Times of Leo Cherne (Albany, New York: University of New York Press, 2002).

NARA 104-10109-10027 ~ Originator: CIA. Subjects: “Cherne, Leo Biographic Data.”

"Leo Cherne, Refugees' Advocate, Dies at 86." The Washington Post. January 16, 1999 Obituary,

17 “F. Mark Wyatt, 86, C.I.A. Officer, Is Dead” By Tim Wiener. The New York Times, July 6, 2006.

>> Felton Mark Wyatt, who joined the CIA in 1948 and married Ann Appleton Wyatt, a CIA officer, “played a significant role in the agency's first major cold war covert action, an operation to swing the Italian elections of 1948” and “ensure the electoral victory of Italy's Christian Democrats over the Communist Party.” Wyatt helped deliver suitcases filled with “millions of dollars to the eventual victors; the precise cost of the covert campaign has never been declassified...”

>> According to Wyatt’s obituary he spent two decades in Italy where the “CIA’s practice of buying political clout was repeated in every Italian election for the next 24 years, and the agency's political influence in Rome lasted a generation, declassified records show.” He became deputy chief of the Rome station in 1964, where William K. Harvey had been banished. “He worked as a liaison aide with South Vietnam's spies at the Saigon station in 1968 and 1969; at the CIA's New York base, focusing on the United Nations, from 1970 to 1972; and as chief of station in Luxembourg from 1972 to 1975.”

18 “Chronological List of Medals Awarded.”The Official Site of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. http://web.archive.org/web/20071018025824/www.medaloffreedom.com/Chronological.htm

Andrew F. Smith, Rescuing the World: The Life and Times of Leo Cherne. Page 162.

19 Andrew F. Smith, Rescuing the World: The Life and Times of Leo Cherne, Page 152.

20 FBI 105-82555 ~ “Oswald HQ File, Section 44.” Pages 36, 38, 41 of 71.

21 “War in Eastern Europe: Cuban Missile Crisis was 60 years ago, but is urgently relevant today.” By Katrina vanden Heuvel, Washington Post. The Star-Ledger, October 16, 2022. Page D3.

22 “GettingtoKnowtheCubans:KhrushchevMeetstheCastroBrothers:RaulCastrowanteddetailedSovietsecurity assurances, expected U.S. intervention Khrushchev insisted intervention unlikely, urged flexibility on Cuba’s part Soviet leader promised to fully replace U.S. as trade partner.” National Security Archive, George Washington University, Briefing Book #810, Edited by Svetlana Savranskaya. Published October 14, 2022.

“Memorandum of Conversation between Nikita Khrushchev and Raul Castro, Moscow” July 18, 1960. National Security Archive, George Washington University. Source: State Archive of the Russian Federation, GARF; Translation by Svetlana Savranskaya. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/29119-document-1-memorandum-conversation-between-nikita-khrushchev- and-raul-castro-moscow

23 NARA 104-10133-10227 ~ DIA “Memo on Harold Feeney’s [1962] Plan to Overthrow Castro, Operation Cuba. 5/28/69

24 NARA 104-10077-10282 ~ Cable “Special Group Meeting Postponed Until Late 6 Dec.” To: JMWAVE. From: Director [CIA]. Subjects: COBRA. 12/05/63.

NARA 104-10076-10016 ~ JMWAVE Cable “Re WAVE Vessels Scheduled To Run In December.”

25 NARA 1993.08.04.16:38:02:870028 ~ JMWAVE Cables “WAVE 8600 - 8699.” To: Director [CIA]. From: JMWAVE. Pages 25 & 26 of 131.

"Government Burglaries." Los Angeles Free Press, February 4, 1977.

>> Burke's "missing documents had turned up in a secret file of the Naval Investigations Service."

26 “Murray Baron, 94, Labor Lawyer And Head of Accuracy in the Media.” Obituary by Donald Martin. The New York Times, September 26, 2002. Section B, Page 9.

27 “Chronological List of Medals Awarded.” The Official Site of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. http://web.archive.org/web/20071018025824/www.medaloffreedom.com/Chronological.htm

Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient: Irving Brown. Awarded by President Ronald Reagan, October 17, 1988.
“As the European representative of the American Federation of Labor in the late 1940's, Irving Brown played a crucial role in breaking the hold of international communism over postwar Western Europe. By doing so, he can truly be called one of the architects of Western democracy. He has shunned publicity, believing the cause of freedom is far more important than the pleasure of fame. But his modesty cannot obscure the size of his accomplishments, and they have earned Irving Brown the gratitude of his country.” http://web.archive.org/web/20071025113223/www.medaloffreedom.com/IrvingBrown.htm

28 “E. Howard Hunt, Watergate Figure, Dies at 88.” The New York Times, January 23, 2007.

“William F. Buckley Jr. Is Dead at 82.” By Douglas Martin. The New York Times, February 27, 2008.

“Conservative William F. Buckley Jr. Dies at 82.” By Bart Barnes. The Washington Post, Wednesday, February 27, 2008.

“Howard Hunt, R.I.P.” By William F. Buckley. National Review, March 5, 2007.

29 “How the reign of counterintelligence chief James Angleton gave birth to the rise of neoconservativism inside the CIA. The Angletonian Afterlife How the CIA counterintelligence chief's supporters rebuilt their influence after the Church Committee.” By Tom Griffon. JFK Facts, June 18, 2023.

30 NARA 104-10103-10110 ~ “Activities of Jorge Volsky.” To: Deputy Chief, WH/SA. From: [CIA] COS, JMWAVE. Subjects: Cuba; Volsky, Jorge; AMTRUNK/1; 201-352252; Szulc, Tad. August 24, 1964. Page 10 of 17.

31 NARA 1993.06.03.09:42:11:210000 ~ 4/29/1964 “Continuing Investigation Of All Phases Of Oswld Case. Info On Declan Ford, Mark Lane, Thorton Caine, Paul D. Bethel, Angel Perez, and John and Katia JACOBS.” To: FBI HQ. From: Morrisey, James F. FBI DC. Pages 33 & 34 of 42.

32 NARA 104-10229-10030 ~ 7/12/1962 CIA Cable: “Following JMWAVE Action to Give Fullest Play AMBUD-1.” To: Director. From: JMWAVE.

33 NARA 180-10073-10072 ~ HSCA “Interview Report William Turner December 22-24, 1977.” Page 87 of 113. Mary Ferrell Foundation website: maryferrell.org

34 NARA 1993.06.03.09:42:11:210000 ~ “Continuing Investigation Of All Phases Of Oswld Case. Info On Declan Ford, Mark Lane, Thorton Caine, Paul D. Bethel, Angel Perez, and John and Katia JACOBS.” To: FBI HQ. From: Morrisey, James F. FBI DC. April 29, 1964. Pages 33 & 34 of 42.

35 “Memo From the President's Special Assistant (Rostow) to President Johnson.” Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, Volume XXXII: Dominican Republic; Cuba; Haiti; Guyana. Section: 312.

36 “Ex-Envoy Pawley Flays 'Pattern Of Defeat' In U. S.” The News Tribune, May 31, 1963.

>> Pawley’s whipping boy, William Arthur Wieland, was born in 1907, four years before his father died. In 1915, Wieland’s mother married Venezuelan-American Manuel Ralph Montenegro (aka Guillermo Arturo Montenegro) who took the family to Cuba in 1907; but William Wieland remained in the U.S. to finish school. He joined his family in 1925 in Havana but soon quit the Ruston Academy for American expatriates, entered Villanova College and then joined the U.S. Cavalry. His mother died in Havana in 1930.

>> At a time when Pawley was running the Cubana National airline, Wieland joined the Havana Post as a reporter. He lost his job five years later for pirating Associated Press stories, joined AP in Washington to cover the State Department. In 1941 he was posted to Rio de Janeiro as press spokesman, and 16 years later rose to a policy job at State in Washington. In 1959, he ran afoul of Pawley for asserting that Castro was a moderate. Following the Kennedy assassination, Wieland was assigned to the embassy in Australia where he eventually served as consul general in Melbourne. He died in Maryland in 1987. The Miami Herald, January 1, 2009.

37 “President John F. Kennedy, Commencement Address at American University, Washington, D.C., June 10, 1963.” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

>> After the customary acknowledgements and opening statements about the importance of education, President Kennedy got to the heart of the speech that would be praised by liberals and loathed by conservatives.

I have, therefore, chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived—yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace.
What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children—not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women--not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.
I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.
Today the expenditure of billions of dollars every year on weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need to use them is essential to keeping the peace. But surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles—which can only destroy and never create--is not the only, much less the most efficient, means of assuring peace.
I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war—and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task.
Some say that it is useless to speak of world peace or world law or world disarmament—and that it will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it. But I also believe that we must reexamine our own attitude—as individuals and as a Nation—for our attitude is as essential as theirs. And every graduate of this school, every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward--by examining his own attitude toward the possibilities of peace, toward the Soviet Union, toward the course of the cold war and toward freedom and peace here at home.
First: Let us examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable--that mankind is doomed--that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.
We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade—therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable--and we believe they can do it again.
I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of peace and good will of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal.
Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace—based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions—on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single, simple key to this peace—no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process—a way of solving problems.
With such a peace, there will still be quarrels and conflicting interests, as there are within families and nations. World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor—it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement. And history teaches us that enmities between nations, as between individuals, do not last forever. However fixed our likes and dislikes may seem, the tide of time and events will often bring surprising changes in the relations between nations and neighbors.
So let us persevere. Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all peoples to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it.
Second: Let us reexamine our attitude toward the Soviet Union. It is discouraging to think that their leaders may actually believe what their propagandists write. It is discouraging to read a recent authoritative Soviet text on Military Strategy and find, on page after page, wholly baseless and incredible claims—such as the allegation that “American imperialist circles are preparing to unleash different types of wars . . . that there is a very real threat of a preventive war being unleashed by American imperialists against the Soviet Union . . . [and that] the political aims of the American imperialists are to enslave economically and politically the European and other capitalist countries . . . [and] to achieve world domination . . . by means of aggressive wars.”
Truly, as it was written long ago: "The wicked flee when no man pursueth." Yet it is sad to read these Soviet statements—to realize the extent of the gulf between us. But it is also a warning--a warning to the American people not to fall into the same trap as the Soviets, not to see only a distorted and desperate view of the other side, not to see conflict as inevitable, accommodation as impossible, and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats.
No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. As Americans, we find communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity. But we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements—in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture and in acts of courage.
Among the many traits the peoples of our two countries have in common, none is stronger than our mutual abhorrence of war. Almost unique among the major world powers, we have never been at war with each other. And no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union suffered in the course of the Second World War. At least 20 million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and farms were burned or sacked. A third of the nation's territory, including nearly two thirds of its industrial base, was turned into a wasteland—a loss equivalent to the devastation of this country east of Chicago.
Today, should total war ever break out again—no matter how—our two countries would become the primary targets. It is an ironic but accurate fact that the two strongest powers are the two in the most danger of devastation. All we have built, all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first 24 hours. And even in the cold war, which brings burdens and dangers to so many nations, including this Nation's closest allies—our two countries bear the heaviest burdens. For we are both devoting massive sums of money to weapons that could be better devoted to combating ignorance, poverty, and disease. We are both caught up
in a vicious and dangerous cycle in which suspicion on one side breeds suspicion on the other, and new weapons beget counterweapons.
In short, both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race. Agreements to this end are in the interests of the Soviet Union as well as ours--and even the most hostile nations can be relied upon to accept and keep those treaty obligations, and only those treaty obligations, which are in their own interest.
So, let us not be blind to our differences—but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.
Third: Let us reexamine our attitude toward the cold war, remembering that we are not engaged in a debate, seeking to pile up debating points. We are not here distributing blame or pointing the finger of judgment. We must deal with the world as it is, and not as it might have been had the history of the last 18 years been different.
We must, therefore, persevere in the search for peace in the hope that constructive changes within the Communist bloc might bring within reach solutions which now seem beyond us. We must conduct our affairs in such a way that it becomes in the Communists' interest to agree on a genuine peace. Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy—or of a collective death-wish for the world.
To secure these ends, America's weapons are nonprovocative, carefully controlled, designed to deter, and capable of selective use. Our military forces are committed to peace and disciplined in self- restraint. Our diplomats are instructed to avoid unnecessary irritants and purely rhetorical hostility.
For we can seek a relaxation of tension without relaxing our guard. And, for our part, we do not need to use threats to prove that we are resolute. We do not need to jam foreign broadcasts out of fear our faith will be eroded. We are unwilling to impose our system on any unwilling people—but we are willing and able to engage in peaceful competition with any people on earth.
Meanwhile, we seek to strengthen the United Nations, to help solve its financial problems, to make it a more effective instrument for peace, to develop it into a genuine world security system—a system capable of resolving disputes on the basis of law, of insuring the security of the large and the small, and of creating conditions under which arms can finally be abolished.
At the same time we seek to keep peace inside the non-Communist world, where many nations, all of them our friends, are divided over issues which weaken Western unity, which invite Communist intervention or which threaten to erupt into war. Our efforts in West New Guinea, in the Congo, in the Middle East, and in the Indian subcontinent, have been persistent and patient despite criticism from both sides. We have also tried to set an example for others—by seeking to adjust small but significant differences with our own closest neighbors in Mexico and in Canada.
Speaking of other nations, I wish to make one point clear. We are bound to many nations by alliances. Those alliances exist because our concern and theirs substantially overlap. Our commitment to defend Western Europe and West Berlin, for example, stands undiminished because of the identity of our vital interests. The United States will make no deal with the Soviet Union at the expense of other nations and other peoples, not merely because they are our partners, but also because their interests and ours converge.
Our interests converge, however, not only in defending the frontiers of freedom, but in pursuing the paths of peace. It is our hope—and the purpose of allied policies—to convince the Soviet Union that she, too,
should let each nation choose its own future, so long as that choice does not interfere with the choices of others. The Communist drive to impose their political and economic system on others is the primary cause of world tension today. For there can be no doubt that, if all nations could refrain from interfering in the self-determination of others, the peace would be much more assured.
This will require a new effort to achieve world law—a new context for world discussions. It will require increased understanding between the Soviets and ourselves. And increased understanding will require increased contact and communication. One step in this direction is the proposed arrangement for a direct line between Moscow and Washington, to avoid on each side the dangerous delays, misunderstandings, and misreadings of the other's actions which might occur at a time of crisis.
We have also been talking in Geneva about the other first-step measures of arms control designed to limit the intensity of the arms race and to reduce the risks of accidental war. Our primary long range interest in Geneva, however, is general and complete disarmament—designed to take place by stages, permitting parallel political developments to build the new institutions of peace which would take the place of arms. The pursuit of disarmament has been an effort of this Government since the 1920's. It has been urgently sought by the past three administrations. And however dim the prospects may be today, we intend to continue this effort—to continue it in order that all countries, including our own, can better grasp what the problems and possibilities of disarmament are.
The one major area of these negotiations where the end is in sight, yet where a fresh start is badly needed, is in a treaty to outlaw nuclear tests. The conclusion of such a treaty, so near and yet so far, would check the spiraling arms race in one of its most dangerous areas. It would place the nuclear powers in a position to deal more effectively with one of the greatest hazards which man faces in 1963, the further spread of nuclear arms. It would increase our security--it would decrease the prospects of war. Surely this goal is sufficiently important to require our steady pursuit, yielding neither to the temptation to give up the whole effort nor the temptation to give up our insistence on vital and responsible safeguards.
I am taking this opportunity, therefore, to announce two important decisions in this regard.
First: Chairman Khrushchev, Prime Minister Macmillan, and I have agreed that high-level discussions will shortly begin in Moscow looking toward early agreement on a comprehensive test ban treaty. Our hopes must be tempered with the caution of history--but with our hopes go the hopes of all mankind.
Second: To make clear our good faith and solemn convictions on the matter, I now declare that the United States does not propose to conduct nuclear tests in the atmosphere so long as other states do not do so. We will not be the first to resume. Such a declaration is no substitute for a formal binding treaty, but I hope it will help us achieve one. Nor would such a treaty be a substitute for disarmament, but I hope it will help us achieve it.
Finally, my fellow Americans, let us examine our attitude toward peace and freedom here at home. The quality and spirit of our own society must justify and support our efforts abroad. We must show it in the dedication of our own lives—as many of you who are graduating today will have a unique opportunity to do, by serving without pay in the Peace Corps abroad or in the proposed National Service Corps here at home.
But wherever we are, we must all, in our daily lives, live up to the age-old faith that peace and freedom walk together. In too many of our cities today, the peace is not secure because the freedom is incomplete.
It is the responsibility of the executive branch at all levels of government—local, State, and National—to provide and protect that freedom for all of our citizens by all means within their authority. It is the responsibility of the legislative branch at all levels, wherever that authority is not now adequate, to make it adequate. And it is the responsibility of all citizens in all sections of this country to respect the rights of all others and to respect the law of the land.
All this is not unrelated to world peace. "When a man's ways please the Lord," the Scriptures tell us, "he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him." And is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights—the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation—the right to breathe air as nature provided it—the right of future generations to a healthy existence?
While we proceed to safeguard our national interests, let us also safeguard human interests. And the elimination of war and arms is clearly in the interest of both. No treaty, however much it may be to the advantage of all, however tightly it may be worded, can provide absolute security against the risks of deception and evasion. But it can—if it is sufficiently effective in its enforcement and if it is sufficiently in the interests of its signers—offer far more security and far fewer risks than an unabated, uncontrolled, unpredictable arms race.
The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough—more than enough—of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we labor on—not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace.

>> Four decades later, my daughter graduated from American University while America was at war—not with communists, but with 9/11 Islamic extremists who had brought terror to America with hijacked planes that destroyed thousands of lives on American soil in New York City, Arlington, Virginia and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Ironically the terrorists were led by Saudi Arabian heir-to-a-fortune, Osama Bin Laden, a man who had defeated the Soviet Union when it invaded Afghanistan. The failure did not discourage Russian President Putin from invading Ukraine in July 2022 that threatened to turn into a nuclear war between the communists and the United States which was providing defensive weapons to the Ukrainians.

38 “Report More Anti-Fidel Landings,” The Capital Times (Madison, WI), May 16, 1964. Page 2.
said the landing was an infiltration move, part of a long-range plan to bolster internal guerrilla forces.”

39David Talbot, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years (Simon and Schuster, 2006).

40 Anthony R. Carrozza, William D. Pawley: The Extraordinary Life of the Adventurer, Entrepreneur, and Diplomat Who Cofounded The Flying Tigers. Dulles, Virginia: Potomac Books, Inc. 2012). Page 314.

>>Pawley frequently called Rose Mary Woods to pass on his advice to Richard Nixon.

41 “Ex-Envoy Pawley Flays 'Pattern Of Defeat' In U.S.” The News Tribune, May 31, 1963.

>> Six months after President Kennedy’s assassination, the year-old CCFC confirmed that a group of Cuban exiles had attacked a sugar mill in Cuba and “

Philip A Goduti Jr., Kennedy's Kitchen Cabinet and the Pursuit of Peace: The Shaping of American Foreign Policy, 1961–1963. (McFarland, 2009).

Labels: Arleigh Burke, Bethel, CCFC, Cherne, China Lobby, CIA, Citizens Committee for a Free, Cuba, Edward Teller, Ernest Cuneo, Goldwater, International Rescue Committee, IRC, JFK, Kennedy, Luce, Oswald, Pawley, Vanden Heuvel

MORE RUTHLESS THAN THE ENEMY

December 12, 2009

29: Strange Dreadfellows: Citizens Committee for a Free Cuba

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