THESE DAYS...........BY JOHN CHAMBERLAIN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP70-00058R000300030012-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 24, 2000
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: October 26, 1964
• Content Type: NSPR

WASHINGTON POST
AND TIMES HERALD
Approved For Release 2000/05/23 : CIA-RDP70-000
OCT 2 6 1964
hese Days ft, nk Before Voting
EVERY CITIZEN ought
to go to the polls. But be-
fore going, the voter ought
to look carefully in the look-
ing glass,and
ponder the
state of his
own ignor-
ance. T h i s
might lead to
less cock-
sureness
about certain
Issites.,..A
humble vote
is apt to be
sounder' than Qhaitiberlain
a vote registered in arro-
g;ance.
These thoughts are.
prompted by an article by
Richard Nixon on "Cuba,.
Castro and John F. Ken-
nedy" that is scheduled for
appearance in the forth-
coming November issue of
The Reader's Digest. Nixon,
as he has been reminding
Republican audiences in his
whirlwind campaign on be-
half of the Goldwater can-
rlidacy, lost the 1960 election
:,y the margin of a gnat's
whisker. As he looks back
an things in his article, he
thinks lie was beaten when
John F. Kennedy plastered
him With a "soft on Castro"
charge just prior to the
fourth. and last TV debate
between the candidates.
There was a tremendous
irony in this, for Nixon was
powerless to combat the ab-
solutely baseless charge for
reasons that had to-do with
the 'security of a top-secret
CIA project for invading
Cuba that had already been
set In motion by the Eisen-
hower Administration.
NIXON ADMITS that the
controlling elements inside'
the Eisenhower Government
had goofed in their original
estimate of Castro's char-
acter, although he himself
hltd sent: a memorandum to
By " John Chamberlain
Allen Dulles, boss of the
Central Intelligence Agent,
concluding that--l astro is
either incredibly naive about
communism or is under
Communist discipline." Re-
gardless of the original mis-
take, however, Eisenhower
had decided by early 1960
that Castro was a Commu-
nist agent. Says Nixon, "In
a top-secret 'meeting . . . at
which I was present, Eisen-
hower authorized the CIA
to organize and train Cuban
exiles for the eventual pur-
pose of freeing their home-
land from Castro's Commu-
nist rule."
It .was ;just six months
later that John F. Kennedy
leveled an attack on Nixon
for being a. member of a
"soft-on-Castro" . Administra-
tion. Said Kennedy, "We
must attempt to strengthen
the non-Batista, democratic,
anti-Castro forces in exile
and in Cuba itself who offer
eventual hope of'overthrow-
ing Castro. Thus far, these
fighters for freedom have
had virtually no support
from our Government."
. The Kennedy charge left
Nixon in a "heads-he-wins,
tails-I-lose" situation. If, in.
the next TV debate, Nixon
were to tell the American
public about the existence
of the program for prepar-
ing the Cuban exiles for an
invasion of their homeland,
pointing out that he was one
of its strongest advocates in-
side the Administration, it
"would pull the rug out
from under Kennedy's posi-
tion." "But," says Nixon, "if
I did so, the project would
be doomed, and also the
lives of brave men, both in-
side and outside of Cuba,
who were receiving training
and assistance."
the air with what could
easily be' twisted into a
"soft-on- C. a s t r o" position. '
Kennedy proceeded'to reap
the advantage, which was
probably crucial In view of
the fact that "a shift of less
than one-half a vote a pre-
cinct" would have made
Nixon the winner a few days
later.
Nixon's 1960 agony recalls
that of Thomas Dewey in
1044, when the ftepublienns
knew practically all the de-
tails about the surprise at
Pearl Harbor yet were loath
to put the issue into the
campaign lest they reveal to
the Japanese that the U.S.
had broken a critical code.
This columnist vividly re-
calls riding in a car from
Elmira to Geneva, N.Y., in
August of 1945 with Dewey
and listening to his rueful
account of the decision to
say nothing about Pearl
Harbor. The' worst of it,
from Dewey's standpoint, is
that he had a suspicion that
the Japanese had changed
their codes long before 1944,
,which would , have' made
campaign revelations about
Pearl Harbor harmless to
the U.S. from a military
standpoint.
WHEN I talked to Tom
Dewey in 1945 he thought
he might have been cheated
out of a winning, issue in
1944. ! And today we .. have
Nixon asking, "Now the
question was, did John Ken-
nedy know of (the CIA)
project?"
Well, what the voter
doesn't know may be every-
thing. Or it may be noth-
ing.'But the voter who real-
izes his possible ignorance
will be a more careful man
SO, FACING his own con- when he pulls that lever.
science, Nixon had to go on ? 1964, King Features Syndicate, Inc.