Status Updates From Regime Change: The JFK Assa...

Most important, Johnson left the national-security establishment as a permanent and ever-growing part of the federal government structure.

The fight against communism was considered a fight to the finish. America’s national-security state Cold Warriors had a fanatical mindset. To them, the war on communism was akin to a holy war. In the eyes of national-security officials, there could be no compromises or halfway measures. In the war between good and evil, there could only be a winner and a loser.

Much more significant, however, was another promise that Kennedy made to the Soviets to resolve the crisis. He promised them that the United States would never invade Cuba again.

At worst, the military told Kennedy, the United States would lose only a few cities and a few million American lives. But given that Russia would be totally obliterated, the United States would clearly come out the winner in the conflict.

He also wasn’t too happy over the fact that the CIA had lied to him that U.S. air support would not be necessary, planning to later manipulate him into providing it. It had also lied to him about the likelihood of a spontaneous uprising against Castro. While he publicly took responsibility for the debacle, Kennedy vowed to break the CIA into a thousand pieces.

And it would have been Kennedy’s role under the plan to lie about the whole thing, thereby making him the nation’s liar-in-chief, something that the CIA would obviously have had over him for the rest of his term in office.

The second lesson is that the U.S. national-security establishment, through its actions in Chile, conclusively demonstrated its conviction that saving the country from a president whose policies are threatening national security is the solemn responsibility of the national-security establishment of a country.

Never mind that Allende had won the presidential election in 1970, never mind that articles of impeachment had failed to garner a sufficient number of votes in the Chilean congress, and never mind that a new presidential election would be held three years later. The Chilean military concluded that compliance with Chile’s constitution would be equivalent to national suicide.