1- History thread on the Bay of Pigs / Cuban Missile Crises.
The Bay of Pigs started with the Cuban revolution. The Cuban Missile Crises started with the Bay of Pigs.
Both events are relevant to today’s political conflicts.
2- Before the Cuban Revolution, Cuba was a friend of the U.S. and a haven for gambling profit run by the American Mafia.
themobmuseum.org/blog/fidel-cas…
3- Then came the Cuban Revolution. Fidel Castro came to power.
4- Castro was a communist. He was a friend of Nikita Khrushchev and the Soviet Union. This was not good for the U.S.
5- Not to worry, the CIA had a plan – regime change (sound familiar).
The CIA would train anti-Castro Cuban exiles in the U.S. They would be transported to Cuba to lead a counter-revolution. The Cuban people would rise with the anti-Castro exiles. What could possibly go wrong?
6- The plan was hatched under Eisenhower. Young, newly inaugurated President John Kennedy was leery of the plan, but went along with. Because a president should never doubt his intelligence services, correct?
7- Everything went wrong. The war hawks were furious with how JFK handled air support. They advocated full USAF support for the invasion, even after it was apparent the U.S. was behind the invasion. Kennedy did not want to risk war with the USSR over Cuba.
8- Kennedy was furious with the CIA after the debacle. He reportedly said, “I will splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds”. Not sure that’s an accurate quote but suffice it say he never trusted them again.
9- Nikita Khrushchev sized up the young American president as timid and inexperienced. He used they Bay of Pigs fiasco as a pretense to send nuclear warhead capable missiles to Cuba.
10- Most people know what happened next. JFK went public, Adlai Stevenson had his 15 minutes of fame in the U.N., and the U.S. implemented a naval “quarantine” (aka blockade). JFK had to stand up to war hawks, who wanted to use the crises in invade Cuba.
11- Khrushchev stood down and the crises passed. What most people don’t know is that the U.S. secretly agreed to remove nuclear missiles from Turkey.
12- What most people also don’t know is that the secret Cuba missiles for Turkey missiles deal was secretly negotiated through a back-channel between Bobby Kennedy and Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin.
washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-ma…
13- A few things to note here. First, the CIA started this whole mess. Because of their regime change stupidity, we nearly had nuclear war.
14- Note Bobby Kennedy was not a “diplomat” & had no connection to the State Department. For anyone yelling “WHAT IS RUDY GIULIANI DOING!?”, keep this in mind.
15- The “missiles for missiles” deal would have been very unpopular in the U.S. That is why the Turkey missile removal was quietly done months later, and the deal was predicated on Soviet secrecy. Can anyone imagine it NOT leaking if Trump did something like this?
16- Both during the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crises, the war hawks in the JFK Admin pushed him to straight-up invade Cuba. I suspect Trump has pushed back similar pressure on Iran and possibly North Korea.
17- One final note. For anyone who thought the CIA got smarter after the Bay of Pigs, think again. They hatched a loony plan termed “Operation Mongoose” that included enlisting the American Mafia to assassinate Castro. I kid you not.
theatlantic.com/international/…
18- Keep these things in mind as Trump fights the Intelligence communities, most notably the CIA and its former Director: John Brennan.
/end
19- Footnote: Most of the screenshots from this thread were taken from the JFK library web site:
jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jf…
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.