THE FULBRIGHT 'FIXATION'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000200940027-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 21, 1999
• Sequence Number: 27
• Publication Date: August 1, 1961
• Content Type: NSPR

~~~~5~~tt~~c~~1oN ~TATINTL
DA]I.1' lived For Release 1999/09/17 : C A-~Ft,DP75j001
The FulbrightFixation'
F we are to knew what is happening to us
we have to knew that fixations do grip
relatively unknown men whose influence on
our country is enormous. Consider the idea
that _ America must not defend herself any
place on her own-which was at the root of
a
the Cuban debacle. Inrt-~Vaur so-c~a~11~Q
Fulbright of Arkansas, and he is as wran~..
But ideas can get`-into
91'~ter
as
SUmr~e'b'
,-,:
.
a,..
men's minds and all circumstances and his-
tory .does not seem able to blow bhem out.
,,._
They just think something and that is all there is to it.
Fulbright is chairman of the Senate Far-
Because Sen
.
sign Relations Committee he effects promotions within the
State Department, its congressional relations and budget
prospects and, thus, most importantly, America's policies
not alone thru the committee's statutory authority but
merely an the basis of his own thinking.
We do not have collective security. We have collective
Insecurity. We are wise to be attached firmly to the grinci-
ple. Often it is indispensable, as in NATO. But there is na
NATO in Latin Ame~acl~, for example, and depending an
collectivity wherever tt1~ involves numerous weak and
shaky countries mean~we .flounder into exactly what hap-
pened in Cuba.
Sen. Fulbright opposed any kind of intervention there
unless we could waltz in with a w h o I e group of Latin-
American states, as if our nation could order such a .tidy
state of affairs.
P~Iany much more knowirvg, practical and tested observers
than Sen. Fulbright find we are not b 1 a m e d in Latin
America far the intervention but, instead, for allowing the
intervention to fail.
We gat slight, if any, credit for our Government's self-
defined morals in non,i~nterventian, even within the Organi-
ton of Amerbcan States. For all grows worse by our
By Henri J. Ta~l~r
remedy. Everywhere southward most of our neighbors real-
ized that bath under the benefits to them of the Monroe
Doctrine-and because of Castro's relentless and psychopathic
provocations an intervention was carzipletely justified an
moral or any other grounds, And is it, in truth, really moral
not to intervene in a murder unless you can locate your
cousins to walk with you? Or if you have no cousins, to
turn your back? _
There is widespread canvictlon the United States failed to ,
intervent ~15enly in Cuba, not for a moral reason, but be-
cause our Government feared that this would provoke war
between the powerful Soviet Union and the United States.
Countless millions thruout Latin America who love free-
dom would have welcomed U. S. intervention in Cuk~a (and
-still .would) because they fear the expansion 'af Castroism
into their .homelands and doubt it will ' be stopped without
intervention. These millions cannot dream in Sen. Ful-
bright's office and telephone thunderbolts to the State De-
partment.. They have to live (or die) with what they get. ',
Their only test of the intervention is that it succeed; -and
when it did nat_they are the victims in all the shame and
despair of this sickening tragedy along with the entire free '
world.
How could America conceivably "lase mare in other co~n-
tries," in Latin America ar anywhere, than we last by the
effect of this d e b a c 1 e on Khrushchev's estimate of the '
United States? Isn't Russia acountry? -The result ,there
alone .can mistalceniy rationalize. Russia into such pressure.
on us that, God forbid, `there is a war. Meanwhile, our
no-matter-what n~an-intervention. pblicy frees Soviet strategy
to pillage like a leopard turned from the cage.
Sen. Fulbright can sit frozen by his fixation and wrap a
moral toga around himself if he prefers, but it does not fit..
When the Cuban intervention design was allowed to be so
di astrously frail to ,conform to our policy-and even than
the dribble that was laid an for this was drawn back half-
way our countryy suffered a disaster far, far greater than
Pearl Harbar~ We knew how to tighten our belts a.nd, like
Approved For Release 1999/09/17 :CIA-RDP75-001498000200940027-1