Joseph Califano Jr. has written a new memoir, “Inside: A Public The idea that Castro had a hand in Kennedy’s assassination is not new. Given the mountain of
\nand Private Life,”<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> which makes some startling claims about the
\nassassination of President John F. Kennedy. A longtime political insider who started out as one of
\nRobert McNamara’s Pentagon “whiz kids,” Califano was privvy to much that is still not
\ncompletely understood about the Kennedy years. Califano was interviewed last Sunday by Brian
\nLamb on C-SPAN’s Booknotes<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A>. Here’s
\nthe relevant exchange about the assassination: <\/P>
\nLAMB:<\/B> I want to ask you if this has ever been printed before.
\n“Years later when I was on the White House staff, Lyndon Johnson told me, quote, ‘Kennedy
\ntried to kill Castro but Castro got Kennedy first.'” Have you ever reported that
\nbefore?
CALIFANO:<\/B> I think this is the first reporting of that. I may — I may have
\ntalked to people about that.
LAMB:<\/B> You go on to say you agreed with Lyndon
\nJohnson that Castro through Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy?
CALIFANO:<\/B> I
\nhave come to believe that, Brian. Today I — I — when I was in the Pentagon, I was — I served on
\na super secret committee on Cuba, set up, set up in January of 1973 [sic, he must
\nhave meant 1963], under President Kennedy. The objective was to overthrow Castro, to
\nget rid of him. What’s in the book about those events — most of that has never been published
\nbefore. I fought to get these documents declassified when I was doing the memoir.
It was
\nwild. And we were going — we were going to do all kinds of things. We were going to put — we
\nwanted sugar in their gasoline. We were going to tell the Cubans all to turn the water on at the
\nsame time to drain their water. At one point, we considered whether we should tie incendiary
\ndevices to the feet of bats, drop the bats over Cuba at night. They would fly into the attics of
\nhouses and buildings; the incendiary device would go off and the island would go up in flames.
\nBut there were clearly — Robert Kennedy was determined to assassinate Castro. It was — it was
\n— The Kennedys were obsessed with it, and …
LAMB:<\/B> What did you do when you
\nwere confronted with it yourself?
CALIFANO:<\/B> Well, the first time — it came up
\nonce at one of our committee meetings. The committee was the CIA, the Defense Department,
\nthe State Department and the Justice Department. And State was not only in charge but Robert
\nKennedy was in charge. And when — when it was — the only time it was discussed in a formal
\nway in that committee, I opposed it, and Joe Dolan (ph), who was the Justice Department, a
\nyoung Justice Department lawyer at the time, also opposed it.
The remarkable thing in
\nretrospect is the CIA was completely silent during that whole discussion. But if you’re Castro, just
\nthink now about November, the fall of 1963. There had been several attempts on your life. The
\nmob, the poison pens, the crazy stuff. And in September, Castro told a reporter for Associated
\nPress, you know, the American leaders ought to be careful because if they’re going to try to kill
\nme, they’re not immune from — from being killed.
November 1, Diem is killed, the head of
\nthe South Vietnam [government], is killed in a coup that we sponsored, that was approved by
\nPresident Kennedy. So you’re sitting there and you’re Castro, and you’ve got to say, these guys
\nare going to get me. November 22, President Kennedy is assassinated.
And I think the
\nparoxysms of grief — I mean — unbelievable grief of Robert Kennedy — this is a personal view,
\nbut I really do believe the unbelievable grief is — was driven in good measure by the fact that he
\nthought some of the things he was doing are what may have killed his brother. …
And think
\nabout this. When you think about commissions and the commissions we have today, the Warren
\ncommission never talked to me or anybody else involved in the covert Cuban program in the
\ncourse of their investigation about that.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n
\nJFK conspiracy theories, it’s hard to conceive of any idea that would be new. But it’s striking to
\nhear one of the era’s insiders say that Lyndon Johnson thought it was payback, that he suspects
\nRobert Kennedy believed that, and that he believes it himself. Califano is not some kind of flake,
\nafter all. He was a top domestic adviser to LBJ, the attorney who represented The Washington
\nPost and the Democratic Party during the Watergate years and Secretary of Health, Education
\nand Welfare in the Carter administration.<\/P>
\n