"CIA GIVING MILITARY TRAINING TO ANTI-CASTRO CUBAN EXILES"

NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL DISCUSSES  CUBA WITH JFK

Washington, D.C. (JFK+50) On January 28, 1961, President John F. Kennedy met with Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, CIA Director Allen Dulles*, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Cabinet Room in the West Wing of the White House. 

The focus of the meeting, which took place just 8 days after JFK's inauguration, was the situation in Cuba.   Mr. Dulles* reported that Cuba was a communist controlled state and that Fidel Castro was in the process of building up his military.  

Dulles also reported that there was increasing opposition to the Castro regime on the island and that the CIA was in the process of giving military training to anti-Castro Cuban exiles.

As the meeting ended, it was agreed that the Agency would continue its activities in regard to Cuba and the Department of Defense would review proposals for the active deployment of anti-Castro Cuban forces in Cuban territory.

*Allen Welsh Dulles (1893-1969) was born in Watertown, NY.  His older brother, John Foster Dulles, was Ike's Secretary of State.  AWD graduated from Princeton & became a diplomat.  He was chief adviser to NY Gov Thomas E. Dewey in his 1948 presidential campaign.

In 1953, Dulles became CIA Director, a position he held until Sept 1961 when JFK forced his resignation after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.  LBJ appointed Dulles to serve on the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. 

SOURCE

White House Document (declassified) issued by McGeorge Bundy, National Security Advisor

                         

NSC-68

JFK+50:  Volume 5, No. 1919

TRUMAN RECEIVES NSC-68 ON COLD WAR POLICY

Washington, D.C. (JFK+50) Sixty-six years ago today, April 14, 1950, President Harry S Truman received a long awaited report from the National Security Council on the topic of American cold war policy.  The 58 page report, titled NSC-68, had been completed on April 7th.

Four months earlier, the President had requested a review of United States foreign policy by the council.  The report was not made public, however, until declassified in 1975.    

NSC-68 called on the government to pursue a policy of containment of communism.  This policy, which marked the administrations of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan is known in history books as the Truman Doctrine.

The report advocated a large expansion of the military budget, development of the H-bomb and increased military aide to U.S. allies.  President Truman hesitated its approval, however, because it lacked specificity and called for excessive spending.  He sent the report back for revision and finally gave approval in 1951.

NSC-68 is described as "among the most influential documents composed by the U.S. government during the Cold War."

SOURCE

"NSC-68, 1950," Office of the Historian, www.history.state.gov/

PRESIDENT LINCOLN SHOT AT FORD'S THEATER

Washington, D.C. (JFK+50) One hundred fifty-one years ago at 10:15 p.m. this evening, April 14, 1865, a single pistol shot was fired at President Abraham Lincoln as he was sitting in a rocking chair in a box above the stage at Ford's Theater here in the Nation's Capital.

Some witnesses said they saw a man, later identified as the actor and Southern sympathizer John Wilkes Booth,  leap to the stage below the box shortly after the shot was fire and scramble out the rear of the theater.

One of the doctors attending Mr. Lincoln,  Dr. Charles A. Leale, was heard to say "the wound is mortal".  The bullet entered the back of the President's head.  Major Henry Rathbone, a guest in the President's box, was badly wounded in the arm as he grappled with the assassin.  

Not wanting to worsen Lincoln's condition any more than necessary, doctors ordered he be moved to the nearest bed. Mr. William Petersen, who runs a boardinghouse opposite Ford's on 10th Street, offered use of one of his rooms on the 1st floor.  Mrs. Mary Lincoln, in a frantic state, followed her husband into the boarding house.

The President was laid diagonally across the single bed in the room because it was too short for his 6'4" frame.  Dr. Leale was assisted by Dr. Charles Sabin Taft and Dr. Albert F. King who both were in the theater at the time of the shooting.

A hostile crowd gathered outside on 10th Street between the rooming house and Ford's.  Some called for the theater to be torched.

SOURCE

"Bloody Crimes:  The Chase for Jefferson Davis and the Death Pageant For Lincoln's Corpse," by James Swanson, William Morrow, 2010.

Ford's Theater

Photo by John White (2007)