THE TRANSFORMATION OF BOBBY KENNEDY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01350R000200340015-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 5, 2004
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: October 12, 1978
• Content Type: NSPR

,ART I GLt; Ar
ON PAGE 12 October 197$ 5a c,
WWI
he ffi ran.-aform, *on,
obby Kennedy
Marshall Frady
,roved For l $ /QtlliY3>atC F - -0I350F 000 3~4OQ1~5~412, . "i'
Robert Kennedy and His Times
by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
Houghton Mifflin, 1,066 pp., $19.95
.I .
They were, to be sure, spectacularly
flawed-of an ore much mixed with
brazen, base elements. But if nothing
else, it can be'said that the Kennedys af-
forded this society of the common' man
and the commonplace with something
very close . to its first national mythic
saga-a line of jaunty, and 'audacious,,
but strangely star-crossed princes in an'
American house of Atreus:. "I guess the l
.only reason we've survived," the third
.dryly quipped, with .his:; ;two older;
.brothers already gone and his younger
brother having just capsized in a small;
plane, "is that there are more- of us
.than there is trouble."
(EXCERPT)
But . Cuba, presents, perhaps, their
most puzzlingly consistent and profound
failure of historical perception. What-
ever else it was,* and however authori-
tarian it turned out to be, the Cuban
revolution seemed the most original and.
dramatic.: political, event. to have oe-
curred in this ' hemisphere in this cen-
tuty, with Castro himself an almost Tol
stoyan figure in the. profusion of his ex-
uberance and imagination-Shelley, in-
deed Byron, could. have, dreamed him
up. Among all the premiers and states-
men over the. globe, he was at least the.
one figure who seemed unquestionably,
tumultuously alive. But he also, along
with his revolution, hugely traumatized
the proprietorial interests in the United
States, as the weary and meager spirit of
constricted self-interest is liable to be I
critically intimidated by the sudden ad-
vent of a larger vitality, and driven to
extinguish it. It was a trauma that even-
tually became a? kind of accelerating
hysteria, growing out of that sensation
of helplessness, of being outside history,
of the apparent impossibility of unmak-?
ing the historical reality of Castro and
Cuba. now. That hysteria generated be-
fore. long covert deployments into Cuba
of "nonlethal. chemicals to incapacitate
sugar workers," as Schlesinger recites it,.
schemes for "spreading word that Cas-
tro was anti-Christ and that the Second
Coming was imminent-an event to be"
verified by star.shells sent up from an
American ' submarine off the 'Cuban
coast.,.
What is particularly bizarre, though,
is that the Kennedys would have been
caught up to 'such' a degree in this,
mentality-a blind credulousness 'in full
play through the bloody fantasy of the
Bay of Pigs,: when, as Robert Kennedy
recorded, "We kept asking them when
the uprisings were. going to take. place.,
Dick Bissell [of, the CIA] said it was
going to take place during the night.".
Even after the missile crisis, this
oblivious fixation persisted, with Robert
Kennedy urging that they "must do
something against Castro, even though
we do not. believe our actions would
bring him down."
Nevertheless, Schlesinger would seers
to exempt them convincingly from' any .
complicity in. actual initiatives. to execute
Castro-.perhaps most persuasively' in'.`,
his exposition of the staggerin extent tsr'
which the CIA by then had ramified into-
.a virtually unmanageable and rampant
phenomenon of myriad bootlegs twilight '
o perationS, free-lance arrangements.witlr
-Cuban exiles,. the. Mafia.. In the course
of this account, what is displayed is the
true secret- phantasmagoria-Mafia cog.-
tracts with the CIA, government wiretaps .
on Dan Rowan's Las Vegas telephone-
that decade in America had come to.
CONTINt3 /I
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 Approved For Release 2005/01/13 : CIA-RDP88-0135OR000200340015-1
It .was, in a way, like some climax' of
America's passage, after World War II,
from the last vestiges of its parochial in-
nocence into a full -lusty involvement at
last in the complex and possibly Mephis-
tophelean exhilarations of global power.
The Sixties then became a kind of
decade of, judgment, visiting a sudden
bedlam on' America, a berserkness, an
uncontrollability of after-effects. Castro,
alluding to "terrorist plans-to eliminate
Cuban leaders," warned, "We are pre-
pared to... answer - in kind," and
disgruntled Mafia intermediaries vowed,
"Mark my words, this man. Kennedy is
in trouble.... He is going to be hit."
Cuban exiles, after what they regarded
as- the double betrayals of the Bay of
Pigs and then . the -consolidation. of
Castro's reign in the missile crisis
resolution, distributed manifestoes that,
"only one development" would redeem
them now, "if an inspired Act of God
should place'in the White House within
weeks a Texan known to. be a friend of
all Latin Americans."-
Maxwell Taylor. recounted to Schle-
singer how, when Jack Kennedy was in-
formed of ? the execution of Diem in
Vietnam, he lurched to his feet and
"rushed from the room with a took of
shock and dismay on his face -which I
had never seen before," and Schlesinger
himself adds, "I had not seen Kennedy
so' depressed . since' the Bay of Pigs."
Several months later, Schlesinger says,
"on the day after Kennedy's funeral,
Johnson, showing , Hubert Humphrey
the portrait of Diem hanging in the
hallway of his house, said, `We had a
hand in killing him.. Now it's happening
here."' .
(EXCERPT)
Approved For Release 2005/01/13 : CIA-RDP88-0135OR000200340015-1