Did JFK’s Clash With CIA, Military and Hoover Lead to His Death?

By Dave O’Brien

If you think President Donald Trump got off to a rocky start with his own intelligence apparatus, that’s nothing compared to the tangled web of mistrust that developed between the military-intelligence complex and the JFK presidency.

The comparatives are eerie, but with the 35^th President’s administration tragically cut short to just over 1000 days, there are still lessons to be learned by the 45^th President of the United States.

With Trump approaching his first year in office at the time of this writing, the ‘Cold War’ that Kennedy inherited in 1961 is threatening a sequel in 2017.

However, the approaches to the Communist threat by the two Commander-in-Chiefs are vastly different.

In this new Trump era, Russian President Vladimir Putin has America seething over his efforts to keep the Democrats and Hillary Clinton out of the White House – everyone except Donald Trump, of course.

To Trump, Putin is “a great leader” worthy of admiration and imitation. Just like Putin’s solitary focus on Russia’s interests, Trump triumphed into the Oval Office on his nationalistic promise to “Make America Great Again!” – Even at the expense of time-honored ties to economic allies or treaties like the Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement.

So far, President Trump has alienated countries and even some of his fellow Republicans with an Executive Order to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border at a staggering price tag that Trump may have to foist onto American taxpayers after all.

And then there were two separate travel bans against certain Muslim nations that has caused some questionable deportations, as well as rebukes by Republican and Democratic judges alike.

Trump’s coziness with Putin even has his own Military and Intelligence communities feeling uneasy. Not any of a significant increase in military spending by Trump’s first budget was earmarked toward the revitalized Russian adversary.

NOT SO INTELLIGENT INTELLIGENCE

Despite a shared dedication to halt ISIS and terrorism against America, Trump has managed to alienate his own intelligence network.

It all started as President-elect when he declined the daily intelligence briefings that President Obama receives.

And without those briefings to help guide his thinking on global issues, the non-informed President had less than harmonious phone calls with world leaders like Australia’s Malcolm Turnbull and Mexico’s Enrique Pena Nieto.

Even more alarming, Trump became the ‘Twitter President,’ tweeting his reckless innermost thoughts on a myriad of subjects that managed to ruffle the feathers of all but his most faithful followers.

He saved his biggest unforced error once in office for the departed President Obama, accusing him of ‘wiretapping’ his posh residence at Trump Tower in New York during the election campaign.

When all the intelligence agencies at his disposal reported no evidence to back up their President’s audacious claim, Trump essentially dismissed them as incompetent and double-downed on his accusation.

The internal war between Trump, his FBI, CIA, National Security Agency, the Attorney General’s Justice Department and other agencies under the Homeland Security umbrella raise a frightening scenario that was all too real during the Kennedy administration.

A CRISIS WITHIN A CRISIS

What happens when President Trump needs all the intelligence he can get during a crisis in America or elsewhere in the world that impacts the United States?

Does he dismiss his intelligence reports and make important decisions based on his gut feelings or the equally uninformed thoughts of his inexperienced inner circle like daughter Ivanka or his son-in-law Jared Kushner?

This happened early in the Kennedy White House when there was no war of words expressed or any public indication of distrust between the President and his key advisers.

After just two months in office, JFK inherited a plan hatched by President Eisenhower and Vice President Richard Nixon in cahoots with the CIA to invade Cuba and depose its dictator Fidel Castro.

At the time, Castro was spewing anti-American rhetoric and was buddying up with Soviet Union Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The thought of a Communist state just 50 miles off the shores of Florida was unacceptable.

At first, Kennedy green-lighted the plan of his legendary military predecessor, but wanted less of an ‘official’ U.S. profile associated with the invasion. He began questioning the intelligence provided by his own CIA clandestine unit.

He was particularly angry that the CIA had trained anti-Castro rebels in ground combat and knowingly went ahead with the mission despite admitting to needing nearly double the combatants.

Additionally, the President was not pleased to learn that the rebels were promised U.S. naval and air force support, as well as ground forces as a follow-up to the initial incursion at the Bay of Pigs.

This would clearly implicate the U.S. in the invasion, so President Kennedy ordered his military to stand down, essentially leaving the anti-Castro freedom fighters on their own.

Dozens of them were killed and hundreds were captured and imprisoned by the superior Castro forces, handing the United States an embarrassing defeat.

Although Kennedy publicly took full responsibility for the Bay of Pigs failure, his mistrust of CIA intelligence was set in stone. Shortly afterward, he fired CIA Director Allen Dulles and his Deputy Director of Plans, Richard Bissell.

JFK follows up the firings by declaring he would “Splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the wind.”

As a direct result of this early fiasco, a form of nepotism emerges that we see once again in the Trump presidency – Kennedy relies less on the CIA for foreign intelligence and instead looks to family for support, namely his Attorney General brother Robert F. Kennedy.

And then something even worse happens:

THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

Cuba continues to be a thorn in President Kennedy’s administration that reaches a crescendo in October of 1962.

U.S. reconnaissance flights over Cuba show a disturbing development. The Soviets are arming Cuba with long-range ballistic missiles that can deliver a nuclear assault virtually anywhere in America.

It would set the stage for an even greater inner-government confrontation that would bring the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation.

For 13 nail-biting days, the world was on edge as the two Superpower leaders traded public and private threats of military action.

Behind the scenes, the youthful President was also at war with his own military.

His hawkish advisors were strenuously pushing for a military attack against the new bases in Cuba even though hundreds of Soviet troops were constructing the missile launchers on the island.

The CIA, anxious to make amends for the embarrassment for the Bay of Pigs disaster, sided with its military brethren, leaving JFK in a very lonely position.

October 27, 1962 brought the crisis to a tipping point when U.S. pilot Rudolph Anderson Jr. was shot down and killed by a Soviet missile, a clear act of war.

Kennedy’s youthfulness and lack of experience when compared to the older and more bombastic Soviet leader left Americans stocking up on food supplies and even building bomb shelters.

In the White House, the Anderson incident was being held up as ‘the last straw’ by Kennedy’s military establishment, headed by Air Force hardliner General Curtis LeMay. They were demanding a full military response, reminding the President that he promised just that on national television if there was any Soviet aggression.

Instead, JFK ordered the military on alert, then huddled with his brother Bobby, who saw an invasion against Cuba as a “Pearl Harbor in reverse.”

Along with Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, they settled on a Naval Blockade, declaring that all Soviet ships headed to Cuba would be stopped, searched and turned back if found to be carrying weapons of any kind.

This gave the Soviets one last chance to back off willingly. Khrushchev publicly scoffed at the quarantine and promised his ships would reach Cuban ports.

Within hours, the ultimate confrontation happened.

A U.S. Navy vessel confronted an incoming Soviet supply ship and ordered it to stop and be boarded for inspection or turn around.

Behind the scenes, the U.S. Military was hoping for Soviet defiance, giving them cause to launch an attack on the high seas.

Several nerve-racking minutes passed until the Soviet vessel halted, then reversed its course.

This prompted Soviet Premier Khrushchev to dispatch two conflicting typed messages to President Kennedy, each demanding different concessions by the Americans. To JFK’s military and intelligence inner circle, neither proposal was acceptable.

At Bobby Kennedy’s urging, they ignored the first message and responded only to the second message calling for the U.S. to publicly commit to not invade Cuba in exchange for all missiles being withdrawn.

Much to the chagrin of the U.S. military and the CIA personnel involved in the Bay of Pigs, JFK emerged an international hero for averting a nuclear holocaust, causing his popularity to soar.

Some historians believe that the Cuban Missile Crisis would result in the President’s assassination a little more than a year later. Books such as Through the ‘Oswald’ Window make such a case.

Before that tragic day in Dallas, President Kennedy would encounter yet another enemy from within.

HOOVER’S HAUNTING FILES

Like many Presidents before him, JFK learned the hard way why J. Edgar Hoover was FBI Director for decades regardless of who occupied the Oval Office.

The rumors are legendary. Hoover had embarrassing files on everybody in Washington – EVERYBODY!

This was his job security, making Hoover, in many regards, the most powerful man in the nation’s capital.

This was never more so than when the Kennedy brothers captured the White House. The rancor started from day one.

Hoover hated Robert Kennedy in particular. If Jack Kennedy couldn’t bring in his own FBI Director, he would name his brother as Attorney General, making him Hoover’s direct boss.

Things started out poorly and stayed that way as Hoover’s files contained information about 1960 election fraud involving a pact between patriarch Joseph Kennedy and Chicago top mobster Sam Giancana that delivered Illinois to the Democrats.

Hoover also knew about JFK’s struggle with Addison’s Disease, which he should have revealed as a Presidential candidate.

However, his trump card (no pun intended…well maybe) was the many sexual dalliances the Kennedy brothers had.

President Kennedy was most vulnerable. His sexual adventures included a multiple fling with Ellen Rometsch, an east German Communist spy. Somehow, Hoover talked Kennedy into ending it.

He also bedded Judith Campbell Exner, a knock-out brunette who also shared pillow talk with mafia chieftain Sam Giancana – Yes, the same crime boss that helped get him elected.

But his most famous sexual conquest was Hollywood bombshell Marilyn Munroe (see article on this website titled Did the Kennedy Brothers Have Marilyn Munroe Killed?).

When John Kennedy suddenly had enough of the iconic film star’s frantic phone calls to the White House, brother Bobby stepped in to ‘comfort’ the starlet until her controversial death on August 5, 1962.

As per his modus operandi, Hoover repeatedly bailed President Kennedy out of trouble and possible public embarrassment. He was never shy to hold it against him to get what he wanted for himself and his agency.

All this leads to speculation about a second term in the White House for the Kennedys. Not only did Hoover have enough dirt on the brothers to sink a re-election bid, a mutiny was brewing within the military-intelligence complex.

As it turns out, none of it would matter when President Kennedy decided to go to Dallas on November 22, 1963.

TRUMP’S TRIP DOWN SAME ROAD?

The moral of this story for President Donald J. Trump is that making enemies in Washington is not a good idea.

It’s OK to “clean the swamp,” but you had better be beyond reproach in doing so.

In the first 100 days into his administration, President Trump has managed to:

• Alienate his own intelligence community.
• Call for the resignation of National Security Advisor General Michael Flynn.
• Anger friendly world leaders.
• Polarize the world’s Muslims.
• Threaten to leave up to 26 million Americans without health care coverage.
• Cause entrance and exit chaos for U.S. travelers at airports.
• Belittle Supreme Court Justices.
• Upset the mainstream U.S. media.
• Threaten to fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions for his perceived disloyalty.
• Even cause some fellow Republicans to distance themselves from his policies.
• Box himself into several corners with unsubstantiated nonsensical tweets.

President Kennedy never got the time to work out the issues that could imperil a second term in office.

President Trump might be surprised to realize that he has less time to right his ship than he may think.

Voters don’t have to wait four years to deliver a message. Just ask President Obama what happened after his first two years in office.