it did not go well. a bunch of them, a bunch of rebels were killed. fidel was actually sentenced to 15 years in prison for that. did not quite serve 15 years in prison, so less than a year in prison, 11 months altogether. with that, he was on the run, he was in exile. he went to mexico. his brother, raul, as well. they would eventually come back and try to recommence the revolution, taking over in january, 1959. that is about where we left off. one thing i didn't mention the last class, but you're going to read the article on this, it's the herb matthews piece in the new york times. if you have not read it yet -- if you have, you have probably been shocked, right? by this article, you are thinking what is this? what is this piece? so herb matthews was a reporter for the new york times. he wrote a february 24, 1957 front page piece for the new york times. major, major, major piece. and books have been written about this. herb matthews and the york times and what it did with fidel castro. and the piece is called "cuban rebel is visited in hideout." the article is about 4300 words in length. now, most newspaper articles are not that long. in fact your typical op-ed piece in a newspaper, a column today is 600, 700, 800 words, in some cases like 500 words. this is a 4300 word article. it says this is the first of three articles by a correspondent of the new york times that has just returned from a visit to cuba. and i will just quote a couple of items from here. matthews wrote, "fidel castro and his 26th of july movements are the flaming symbol of this opposition to the regime." that would've been the batista regime. "the organization which is apart from that university students' opposition is formed of youth of all kinds, a revolutionary movement that calls itself socialistic. it is also nationalistic," which generally, in latin america means anti-yankee. matthews says about castro, "the program is vague and couched in generalities, but it amounts to a new deal for cuba." so this was framed as a new deal for cuba, small and, small d. -- small n, small d. but at that point in the history of americans. the new deal is fdr. the new deal. "it amounts to a new deal for cuba, radical, democratic, and therefore anti-communist." that is how herb matthews was describing what fidel and his movement was about. the real core of its strength is that it is fighting against the military dictatorship of president batista. but note that again, democratic, radical and therefore anti-communist, as he put it. put it this way. so, matthews is there, he is interviewing castro and the people around castro. "senor castro speaks some english but he prefered to talk in spanish, which he did with extraordinary eloquence. his is a political mind rather than a military one." this country becomes one of the most militarized in latin america after castro takes over. he -- castro -- has strong ideas of liberty, democracy, social justice, and the need to restore the constitution, to hold elections. this is 1957, castro took over 1959. it is 2019 and we are still waiting for the elections. "he has strong ideas on economy too, but economists would consider them weak. the 26th of july movement talks of nationalism, anticolonialism, anti-imperialism. i asked señor castro about that. he answered, you can be sure we have no animosity toward the united states and the american people. above all," said castro to herb matthews of the new york times, "we are fighting for a democratic cuba. an end tond -- and the dictatorship. where not antimilitary, that is why we let the soldier prisoners go." he repeats, "when we win, that soldiers working for batista, we will give them about $100 a month." that is about what everyone in cuba has gotten since, $100 a month. "and they will serve a free, democratic cuba." so that is the herb matthews piece. you cannot begin to understand this is why so many people of talked about it over the years, how crucial that article was in helping to resurrect fidel castro. in fact, che guevara would put it this way. "when the world had given us up for dead, the interview with matthews put the lie to our disappearance." so imagine that. imagine that. so they eventually hear castro in a small group escaped from cuba's eastern mountains. and they come back, they establish a stronghold, seize power when batista fled. batista fled on new year's day, january 1, 1959. i talked about that at the end of class. castro's forces took a fan of that day and created a new government on january 5. and castro himself entered havana on january 8. january 1959. here we are six decades later still waiting for those elections and that free democratic cuba, as are the people of cuba. shortly after this, castro comes to the united states. so this was april 1959, this was a 12-day tour to the united states. visited new york where they rolled out the red carpet. it was practically a tickertape parade, went to washington, dc, did a number of really important interviews. who is president at that point in time, 1959 in the united states? >> eisenhower. dr. kengor: eisenhower. eisenhower, dwight eisenhower. who was his vice president? richard nixon. richard nixon was vice president. so he is in the united states, and eisenhower, eisenhower was not totally sure exactly what to think about castro at that point. so this idea that eisenhower, in particular, right, or the administration at that time was pushing castro toward the soviets -- not eisenhower, at the very least not eisenhower. he is not exactly sure. you can look online and watch eisenhower interviewed about this. there was an old series done by abc television in the 1960's called the eagle and the bear where eisenhower is talking about, some people thought that castro might be the new liberator of cuba, especially after the years of batista, right? they were optimistic. castro spoke to the national press club in washington, april 17, 1959. his cia director, allen dulles, was not exactly sure how to respond to this either. eisenhower, eisenhower was bothered by the fact that he had read about how castro and che in particular dealt with opponents. and you guys are reading this in your articles on che guevara, very brutal. and this bothered him. eisenhower, eisenhower was not any intense firebreathing anti-communist. he did not like mccarthy. he did not like joe mccarthy. i think was james burnham of the national review who said, made a kind of a snide comment when people on the far right in the united states were saying, oh eisenhower's procommunist. i think was burnham who said eisenhower is not a communist, he is a golfer. all right, he is a golfer. there's nobody more apolitical than eisenhower. so eisenhower, wanting to try to get a sense of what castro was all about, took his vice president. eisenhower did not want to meet with him himself, so he delegated the vice president, richard nixon, to meet with castro. this was april 19, 1959. and this was probably the single -- in fact, jeffrey stafford, who wrote on this, said that of all the meetings castro had during his washington visit, the one with nixon was the "most significant" of these meetings. eisenhower really trusted nixon to give honest appraisals of people. one of the reasons that eisenhower picked nixon is he was impressed with how nixon handled the alger hess case. and how fair nixon had dealt with that. so nixon met with him. he wrote a memo that for a long time was classified. it had -- there were four or five main recipients, and distribution was limited to allen dulles of the cia, the state department christian herder, john foster dulles at the state department, mike mansfield, who was probably the top latin america expert in the senate. and nixon said this about castro -- so they meet for two and half hours. two and a half hours one-on-one. nixon wrote this in the memo, "castro is either incredibly naive about communism or he is under communist discipline. my own appraisal of him as a man is mixed. whatever we may think of him, he is going to be a great factor in the development of cuba and very possibly in latin american affairs generally." pretty good prediction. "he seems to be sincere." here's that quote again. "he is either incredibly naive about communism," right? "or under communist discipline." my guess is the former. the former, incredibly naive about communism. i have already applied his ideas of how to run a government or an economy are less developed than those of almost any world figure i have met in 50 countries. 50 countries. also when he is in washington, he was on "meet the press," which was around even way back then. lawrence spivak was the host, and spivak asked castro this question. "i want to know where your heart lies in the struggle between communism and democracy?" castro's answer, "democracy is my ideal, really." his word, really. "i'm not communist, i am not agreed with communism. there is no doubt for me between democracy and communism." so that is where he was or where he said that he was. so that is 1959. all right -- what happened in november 1960? presidential election, right? between one of our guys, nixon, and kennedy. vice president richard nixon and john f. kennedy. kennedy was an intense anti-communist, all the kennedys were. his father, his brother, robert f. kennedy. in fact they were supporters of joe mccarthy. bobby kennedy, who became attorney general under his brother, actually worked for mccarthy. mccarthy, mccarthy is godfather to rfk's oldest daughter. mccarthy dated one of the kennedy girls. he had been at the kennedy compound in hyannis port. they were really close. they were intense, irish catholic anti-communists, the kennedys and mccarthy. so kennedy really wants castro out. and by that point, in 1960, so did nixon. nixon became convinced that this guy had to go. he had to be removed. eisenhower, however -- so the world does not know this, but the eisenhower administration was already working on a plan, a covert action plan, to try to take out castro. but eisenhower did not want to act on it, especially prior to the election, because he thought it would look like they were trying to influence the election. nixon later wrote about this in one of his first memoir books. it is called "six crises," which is a great book, by the way. really, really good. so what did they do? nixon and kennedy had a bunch of debates, right? radio, television. what is the general assessment, who won the debate? [inaudible] dr. kengor: exactly. people who listened to it on the radio said nixon won, and people who watched on tv said kennedy won. kennedy looks better than nixon, right? he looked better on camera. one of the first tv campaigns. so, kennedy is out hawking nixon on this. kennedy is openly against castro, holding nothing back. nixon later wrote this, after the election was over and after nixon lost. "i knew we had a program underway to deal with castro. but i cannot even hint at its distance, much less spell it out. under no circumstances could it be disclosed or even alluded to." by the way, nixon and kennedy were buddies, they were old friends. nixon visited kennedy on kennedy's deathbed, one of the numerous times in kennedy's life when he received last rites of the church, at least a half-dozen times. it is so ironic that he was shot november 1963. he was only 46 years old, if even that, i did my math right. he was already very sick with all kinds of disease and all kinds of health problems. but they were old friends. so he wants to tell kennedy hey, jack, i want castro out too. but we have this plan, we have got this covert plan to get rid of him, but i cannot act on it. the old man does not want to act on it. kennedy wins the election november 1960. at this point, 1959, not so much but 1960, 1961, these are big years where castro moves toward the soviets. and cuba is no longer going to be the number one u.s. ally in latin america. instead it is going to become an adversary of the united states. i have a list here of a bunch of different things. i will not go through all of them, different indicators in the late 1950's, 1960, that it looks like castro was moving toward a communist, pro-soviet government. among these, his brother, raul, whom we knew -- i had a friend who did this intelligence work. we knew raul castro was attending soviet world youth festivals prior to this. in fact, we thought that raul was even more of a communist ideologue than fidel was. at that point. they also had che guevara as part of, part of their group. i have a whole bunch on che that i will probably hit the next class. you guys are going to read up on him. but he and fidel met in mexico city, argentinian revolutionary, born like in 1928, died 1967, who referred to the united states as the "great enemy of mankind." che guevara hated the united states, absolutely hated the united states. 1960, castro's nationalizing property throughout cuba. we now have all sorts of documentation on this, and we have had it for decades actually. in february, 1960, we know that ernestes macoyan, one of the top leaders in the soviet government, had visited cuba at that point. this is from sergei khrushchev, the son of nikita khrushchev, the leader of the soviet union. sergei would become his biographer. by october 12, 1959, 1959, this is sergei, "by october 12, alexander, a top soviet official, was already made with -- meeting with che guevara, and on the 15th he met with fidel castro. in february 1960, he organized the soviet international trade exhibit. so they were already having communications. and it looks like by 1960, there were already soviet military advisers that were in cuba. definitely soviet political officials. and it looks like even way back than in 1960 that khrushchev and others were already talking about putting soviet missiles in cuba at that point. so that is all going on in 1960. all right. so all that happening. here is a date for you. you got it, ready? january 3, 1961. january 3, 1961. that was the date the u.s. formally severed all diplomatic relations with cuba. so if you are looking for kind of a flashpoint, january 1961. now at that point, ike is still president. right? jfk is inaugurated a couple of weeks later around january 17, january 20, 1961. so jfk comes into office, and he finds out -- he is trying to think of what to do with castro, wants to get rid of castro, and finds out the previous administration had developed a covert action plan to overthrow fidel. what is this called? what does this become known as? >> bay of pigs. dr. kengor: bay of pigs. bay of pigs. so that is the bay of pigs invasion, april 17, 1961. which is almost exactly two years to the day that castro gave that interview to lawrence spivak on "meet the press," met with nixon for two and half hours, spoke at the national press club. so kennedy decides to act on this covert action plan, bay of pigs, which is named for a special beach or area in cuba. i could spend a lot of time on the bay of pigs, but we want to get to the cuban missile crisis. altogether, this was a group, somewhere around 1000, 1100, 1200, maybe as high as 1400 -- around 1000 cuban exiles who wanted to overthrow the castro government. and they were supported and trained by the united states. the idea here was that they would invade cuba at this particular spot, and there would be a series of airstrikes by u.s. forces. and the idea of airstrikes was to clear off the beaches, clear off the area, so these guys could go in, have a clear landing area. they could get out there, the 1000, 1100, 1200, could disseminate into the area. some of the language used was , the hope was they could foment an uprising, get the people of cuba to kind of join in with them. here comes a group to help them overthrow fidel. right? here they come, here are the guys to help us overthrow fidel. did it work? not at all. nasty. wiped out on the beaches. at least 100 killed. many of them taken prisoner. it was, bay of pigs, known as, bay of pigs fiasco. a complete fiasco, a complete embarrassment to the united states. the soviets really made fun of kennedy over that. in fact when kennedy would meet with nikita khrushchev, the soviet leader at geneva in june of 1961, and he was interviewed by james scotty reston of the new york times, the reporter said hey, how did it go? kennedy said, it was awful, the worst moment of my life. khrushchev rolled right over me. he thinks i am weak. because think about this. khrushchev -- the previous president have been eisenhower. eisenhower organized the landing. he was supreme allied commander in world war ii. the first unanimous allied commander of nato, eisenhower, a world war ii hero. ike, patton, mcarthur. and he is replaced by kennedy, who is 43 years old when he was elected, and he was seen as this daddy's boy, right? this, this playboy who had been bought into office in some of the first elections. so for him to be, for him to replace eisenhower, and then they tried the bay of pigs? and it happened like that? soviet officials said, we just looked at this and shook our head and said, how can a military power like united states allow something like this to happen in their backyard and be so impotent? because cuba is how far from the united states? from florida? it is like 100 miles, probably like 70 miles from key west. so close that you could swim from cuba to the united states, right? actually, people have done it. most people have not made it. but a lot of people have tried it. so the bay of pigs failed. that again, that is april 1961. and then the very worst possible thing happened that we were really, really afraid of. this makes cuba even a closer ally of the soviet union. and what we feared the most is not only that cuba will be an ally of the soviet union, but that the soviet union will place not just military advisers there, not just military equipment there, but what? nuclear weapons. that would be a catastrophe. because at that point it probably took soviet missiles fired at the united states about 18 minutes to get there, firing them from soviet territory. and at that point, now if they have missiles on what we call our doorstep, our backyard, in cuba, 70 miles from key west. and how far to the entire east coast? how close to miami and how close to washington, dc? i mean, you have cut delivery time from 18 minutes to a few minutes. so this changes the entire strategic calculus with all the competition with the soviet union. so the one thing you cannot have -- if they were communists, that would be bad enough, but the one thing you cannot have is nuclear missiles there. cannot let soviet nuclear missiles there. so, we start setting u2 spy -- sending u2 spy planes doing reconnaissance, gliding way high up in the sky over the top of cuba, taking pictures. and then one day, october 14, 1962 -- october 14, 1962, a u.s. spy plane discovered that the soviets were building missile bases in cuba. one of the the things that really threw them off, and a good book on the subject was graham allison's book, essence of decision. he goes through the different decision-making. it has to be at least 30 years or 40 years old now, maybe older than that, but it is really good. one of the things that threw off our military advisors, and we saw how the soviet missiles were arranged, they were arranged in a kind of like trapezoidal pattern. which really threw us off because we thought, well, that, that is how the soviets arrange their missiles in the eastern bloc. they must want us to see them. and then later we figured out that no, this was just standard bureaucratic procedure. the soviet missiles division or rockets division, that is how they set up nuclear missiles. so nobody thought to shape them in a different way or camouflage them or put them under tents. they just do them the way they did them in czechoslovakia. this confounded our guys who thought