FKG

The CIA & Pentagon were furious when the Cuban Missile Crisis ended peacefully. Both wanted war with Castro. Bill Harvey, head of the CIA's Task Force W, sent raiding teams into Cuba during the Crisis, in direct defiance of RFK's order to stand down. The Joint Chiefs unanimously pushed for immediate air strikes on Cuba, followed by a ground invasion. When JFK chose a naval quarantine, General LeMay compared it to Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler at Munich. A week after the Crisis, the CIA's "favorite young Cubans" - the Cuban Student Directorate (DRE) - hit the media circuit, claiming Castro & the Soviets had hoodwinked JFK, maintaining enough nuclear missiles in Cuba to "destroy half the American continent." CIA covert action officer David Phillips built the DRE into a propaganda weapon. In 1963, George Joannides served as its case officer. That summer, these same young Cubans would have multiple encounters with Lee Harvey Oswald. Hours after the assassination, the DRE released its propaganda files declaring Oswald was a Castro agent. Washington Evening Star, Nov. 6, 1962