Regime Change: JFK and Allende, Part 2

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In 1961, John Kennedy came into the presidency as pretty much a standard Cold Warrior. There were two exceptions, however, both of which made the national-security establishment suspicious of Kennedy. One exception was that Kennedy sided with African independence movements, which he believed were simply intended to throw off the shackles of imperialist rule. The national-security establishment, on the other hand, was convinced that such movements were communist-driven. The other exception was that Kennedy believed that Martin Luther King and the U.S. civil rights movement were simply trying to secure equal rights for blacks. The FBI, which had become a de facto member of the national-security branch, was convinced they were a communist front.

After Kennedy became president, the CIA presented him with a regime-change plan for Cuba, one that would entail an invasion of Cuba by U.S.-trained Cuban exiles. Buying into the notion that Fidel Castro’s communist regime posed a grave threat to U.S. “national security,” Kennedy agreed to the plan, but only on the condition that the United States play no overt role in the operation.

The CIA assured JFK that no U.S. intervention would be needed, including air support. It was a lie. Believing Kennedy to be just a naive, womanizing, neophyte president, the CIA believed that once the invaders were being killed or captured by Castro’s communist forces, JFK could be manipulated into changing his mind and ordering the air support and possibly even a full-scale military invasion of Cuba.

The invasion began, and soon, it was going down to defeat. The CIA approached Kennedy and said that the invaders needed the air support after all. Fully expecting Kennedy to say yes, the CIA was shocked to learn that Kennedy stuck by his guns. He let the Cuban exiles be killed or captured by Castro’s communist forces.

Needless to say, Kennedy was livid. He realized that the CIA had lied to him in the hopes of manipulating him into ordering the air support. He is reputed to have said that he would like to tear the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter them to the winds. For its part, the CIA was equally livid. For them, Kennedy had displayed cowardice in the face of the communist enemy and had left Cuba as a communist dagger pointed at America’s neck.

It was the beginning of the war between the national-security branch of the U.S. government and the executive branch — the same type of war that would take place several years later in Chile.

Operation Northwoods and the Cuban Missile Crisis

After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the Pentagon began pressuring Kennedy to order a full-scale invasion of Cuba. The military mindset was the same as that of the CIA — that America was at grave risk with a communist outpost only 90 miles away from America’s shores.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff presented Kennedy with what is one of the most shocking plans in U.S. history — Operation Northwoods. It was a plan that the Pentagon would keep secret from the American people until the Assassination Records Review Board ordered it to be released in the 1990s, as part of its enforcement of the JFK Records Act, which mandated the release of the national-security establishment’s JFK assassination-related records.

Operation Northwoods called for plane hijackings and acts of terrorism, in which real Americans would be killed, by U.S. government agents who would be secretly posing as agents of communist Cuba. President Kennedy would then blame the attacks on Cuba and use the attacks as a justification for a U.S. invasion of the island, under the rubric of “self-defense.”

By this time, Kennedy had as little trust in the military establishment as he did in the CIA. Perhaps one reason was his rejection of a Pentagon proposal to initiate a surprise, Pearl-Harbor type of nuclear attack on Russia. To his everlasting credit, he also rejected Operation Northwoods.

But then the Soviets installed nuclear missiles in Cuba. It is not difficult to imagine the reaction of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to that discovery. In their minds, if Kennedy had adopted and implemented Operation Northwoods, there would now be another pro-U.S. puppet regime ruling Cuba and no Soviet nuclear missiles pointed at American cities from only 90 miles away.

The military’s attitude toward Kennedy was reflected by what Gen. Curtis LeMay, a member of the JCS, said to him during the Cuban Missile Crisis: “You’re in a pretty bad fix at the present time.” It was an amazing thing for a subordinate officer to say to his commanding officer. Kennedy would have been perfectly justified in firing LeMay on the spot for insubordination. Instead, Kennedy simply responded, “You’re in there with me.”

At the height of the crisis, the president’s brother Robert F. Kennedy was trying to arrive at a negotiated resolution of the crisis with Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin. Kennedy advised Dobrynin that JFK was under a severe threat of being removed from power by the military establishment. It was a reminder of what President Eisenhower had pointed out in his Farewell Address — that the “military-industrial complex,” which was his term for the national-security establishment — posed a grave threat to America’s democratic processes. If the military had decided to take Kennedy into custody at the height to the missile crisis, there is nothing anyone could have done to stop it.

Khrushchev understood the gravity of the threat. If the military establishment removed Kennedy and took control, it was a virtual certainty that there would be war —  a nuclear war. After all, throughout the crisis, the military was pressuring Kennedy to bomb and invade Cuba, which almost certainly would have meant an all-out nuclear exchange between the Soviet Union and the United States. What the CIA didn’t realize when they were putting that pressure on Kennedy was that the nuclear missiles on the ground in Cuba were armed and ready to be fired. While the Soviet commanders needed to secure battlefield authority from Khrushchev to fire them, it is entirely possible that at least one of them would have fired them in self-defense if U.S. bombs were falling on them.

Striking a deal

Much to the anger, even rage, of the U.S. national-security establishment, Kennedy and Khrushchev struck a deal that resolved the crisis. The U.S. mainstream press and mainstream historians claim that it was Khrushchev who blinked. Not so. It was actually Kennedy who blinked … and it was a good thing he did.

Contrary to what the U.S. mainstream press and mainstream historians claim, the Soviet missiles were not “offensive” weapons. Yes, they had the capability of reaching American cities, but they were not installed in Cuba in order to start a war with the United States. Instead, they were installed there purely for purposes of deterrence and defense.

Castro knew that the Pentagon and the CIA would not give up trying to remove him from power after the CIA’s failure at the Bay of Pigs. He knew that they would continue pressuring Kennedy into invading Cuba. He also knew that there was no way his military could defeat the U.S. military. Thus, the Soviet missiles were installed simply to deter another U.S. invasion of Cuba or as a means of self-defense if another such invasion were to take place.

In the deal that Kennedy struck with Khrushchev, Kennedy promised that the United States would not invade Cuba. In return, Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles. In other words, Cuba and the Soviets got everything they wanted, which was a pledge not to invade Cuba again.

In fact, the Soviets got even more. At the last minute, Khrushchev insisted on the removal of U.S. nuclear missiles in Turkey that were pointed at the Soviet Union. Recognizing that no nation likes nuclear missiles pointed out it from nearby, Kennedy agreed to Khrushchev’s demand and removed the missiles from Turkey within the next six months.

Needless to say, Kennedy — and the American people — were extremely pleased with the outcome of the crisis. Not so the national-security establishment. They were more livid than they were after what they considered to be Kennedy’s betrayal of the Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs. They compared him to Neville Chamberlin at Munich. They considered him a coward, one who had buckled under communist pressure. Worst of all, Kennedy had struck a deal with the communists that left Cuba permanently in communist hands. Imagine: a permanent grave threat to U.S. national-security.

It is at this point that I believe that the national-security establishment determined that Kennedy posed a grave threat to U.S. national security and needed to be removed from power.

A remarkable breakthrough

In the meantime, Kennedy achieved one of the most remarkable “breakthroughs” in history, one that, in the eyes of the national-security establishment, made him an even greater threat to national security. As detailed in the excellent book Mary’s Mosaic by Peter Janney, Kennedy came to the realization that the Cold War was nothing more than a deadly and destructive racket, one that he was determined to end. Ironically, Khrushchev achieved the same breakthrough, and the two leaders began a personal negotiation that circumvented their respective national-security establishments.

In June 1963, Kennedy went to American University and delivered his famous “Peace Speech.” It was essentially a declaration of war against the national-security branch of the government. In his speech, Kennedy declared that it was time to end America’s policy of permanent hostility toward Russia and the rest of the communist world. From now on, he stated, America and Russia would peacefully coexist notwithstanding their ideological differences. The speech was broadcast all across the Soviet Union. It was the first time that had ever happened.

Kennedy then proposed a joint trip to the moon, which would have meant sharing rocket technology with the Soviets. Over the fierce objections of the national-security establishment, he also secured passage of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. He then ordered a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam, which, the Pentagon and the CIA were convinced would cause the dominoes to begin falling to the Reds, with the final domino being the United States.

Removing a threat to national security

Unlike the situation in Chile several years later, however, it was not necessary for the national-security branch to initiate an overt war against the executive branch of the federal government. That’s because Kennedy’s vice-president, Lyndon Johnson, was on the same page as  the U.S. national-security branch. All that would be needed was to
remove Kennedy and elevate Johnson.

The violent regime-change operation took place with the military-style ambush against Kennedy in broad daylight on the streets of Dallas on November 22, 1963. The reason for removing Kennedy from power was the same as the reason for later removing Allende from power — both men ostensibly posed grave threats to the national security of their respective nations. That’s why both Kennedy and Allende died — to protect “national security.”

Today, that same governmental structure that ostensibly kept America “safe” from a president who supposedly posed a grave threat to national security is still with us. That’s why Kennedy’s assassination still matters today.

This article was originally published in the March 2025 issue of Future of Freedom.

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