I confess that many
times I have meditated on the dramatic story of John F. Kennedy. It was
my fate to live through the era when he was the greatest and most
dangerous adversary of the Revolution. It was something that didn’t play
a part in his calculations. He saw himself as the representative of a
new generation of Americans who were confronting the old-style, dirty
politics of men of the sort of Nixon whom he had defeated with a
tremendous display of political talent.
He
had behind him his history as a combatant in the Pacific and of his
adroit pen.
Because he was over-confident, he was dragged into the Bay of Pigs
adventure by his predecessors, since he had no doubts about the
experience and professional capacity of all those men. His failure was
bitter and unexpected, a scant three months after his inauguration. Even
though he was on the point of attacking the Island with his country’s
powerful and sophisticated weaponry, on that occasion he didn’t do what
Nixon would have done: use the fighter-bombers and land the Marines.
Rivers of blood would have flowed in our Homeland where hundreds of
thousands of combatants were ready to die. He controlled himself and
came up with a categorical phrase that is hard to forget: “Victory has a
thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.”
His
life continued to be dramatic, like a shadow that accompanied him at all
times. On the strength of wounded pride, he again succumbed to the idea
of invading us. This brought on the October [Missile] Crisis and the
most serious risks of thermonuclear warfare that the world has ever
known until the present day. He emerged from this test as an authority
thanks to the mistakes of his chief adversary. He seriously wanted to
talk with Cuba and that’s what he decided to do. He sent Jean Daniel to
talk with me and return to Washington. His mission was being carried out
at that moment when the news of President Kennedy’s assassination
arrived. His death and the strange way in which it was orchestrated and
carried out, was truly sad.
Later
I met close family members who visited Cuba. I never mentioned the
unpleasant aspects of his policy against our country, nor did I refer at
all to the attempts to eliminate me. I met his son when he was an adult,
who had been a young child when his father had been the president of the
United States. We got together as friends. His own brother Robert was
also assassinated, multiplying the drama shadowing that family.
At
the distance of so many years, information arrived about a gesture that
impressed me.
These
days, while so much was being said about the lengthy and unfair blockade
of Cuba in the upper echelons of the continent’s countries, I read a
news item in Mexico’s La Jornada: “At the end of 1963, the then Attorney
General Robert F. Kennedy sought to overturn the ban on travel to Cuba
and today his daughter, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, wrote that President
Barack Obama ought to take this into account and support legislative
initiatives that would allow all Americans to travel to the island.
“In
official documents declassified by the National Security Archive
research centre it is recorded that on December 12, 1963, less than one
month after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Attorney General
Robert F. Kennedy sent a communication to Secretary of State Dean Rusk,
urging the removal of regulations prohibiting Americans from traveling
to Cuba.
“Robert Kennedy claimed that the prohibition violated American freedoms.
According to the document, he affirmed that the current restrictions on
travel are inconsistent with traditional American freedoms.
“That
position was unsuccessful inside the Lyndon B. Johnson administration
and the State Department decided that to suspend the restrictions would
be perceived as a softening of the Cuban policy and that they were part
of the joint effort made by the United States and other American
republics to isolate Cuba.
“In an
editorial article by Kathleen Kennedy printed today in The Washington
Post, Robert’s daughter expresses her wish that her father’s position be
adopted by the Barack Obama government, and that this should be the
position promoted by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. while the Obama
government weighs the next step it will take with Cuba, one that should
be pushing for allowing more than just Cuban-Americans to travel freely
to the island and dealing with the rights of all Americans, most of whom
are not free to go.
“Kathleen Kennedy writes that just as Obama found out at the summit
meeting last week-end, Latin American leaders have adopted a coordinated
message on Cuba: the time is here to normalize relations with Havana. By
keeping on trying to isolate Cuba, they essentially told Obama,
Washington has only succeeded in isolating itself.
“Thus, the niece of the president who attempted to invade and overthrow
the Cuban Revolutionary government and impose the blockade, adds her
voice now to the ever-growing chorus in favor of reversing these
policies which were put in place half a century ago.”
''The present travel restrictions are inconsistent with
traditional American liberties,'' the then-U.S. attorney general argued in a
behind-the-scenes debate over the ban on U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba. I hope
that this will soon be the position advanced by Attorney General Eric H. Holder
Jr. as the Obama administration ponders its next step on Cuba -- which should be
to move beyond allowing only Cuban Americans to travel freely to the island and
to address the rights of all Americans, most of whom are still not free to go.
In fact, this position was put forth by the attorney general in
1963, my father, Robert Kennedy. The history of his efforts to end prosecutions
of U.S. citizens who challenged the travel ban, and to rescind those
restrictions altogether, supports including travel-for-all as part of the ''new
beginning with Cuba'' that President Obama commendably announced at the Summit
of the Americas last weekend.
In December 1963, the Justice Department was preparing to
prosecute four members of the Student Committee for Travel to Cuba who had led a
group of 59 college-age Americans on a trip to Havana. My father opposed those
prosecutions, as well as the travel ban itself. The prohibition only enticed
more students to defy the ban, he believed, and more were likely to travel to
Cuba over the coming Christmas vacation.
''There are realistically only two courses open to us in these
circumstances,'' he wrote in a Dec. 12, 1963, confidential memorandum to
Secretary of State Dean Rusk: ``First, to make every effort to curtail trips to
Cuba; two, to withdraw the existing regulation prohibiting such trips. The first
is unlikely to meet the problem and I favor the second.''
My father's principal argument for lifting the ban was simply
that restricting Americans' right to travel went against the freedoms that he
had sworn to protect as attorney general. Lifting the ban, he argued, would be
``more consistent with our views as a free society and would contrast with such
things as the Berlin Wall and Communist controls on such travel.''
Despite its clarity, my father's position did not carry the day.
Instead, the Johnson White House sided with the arguments put forth by the State
Department: ''relaxation would appear as a softening of our policy toward
Cuba''; our travel controls ''are part of a joint effort by the U.S. and other
American Republics to isolate Cuba''; and ``a relaxation of U.S. restrictions
would make it very difficult for us to urge Latin American governments to
prevent their nationals from going to Cuba.''
Forty-six years later, however, none of these arguments remains a
relevant justification for a punitive policy that violates the constitutional
rights of U.S. citizens to freely travel abroad. The original rationale for the
ban -- to ensure the United States did not appear hypocritical when it pressured
Latin American nations to block their youth from flocking to Cuba -- has long
been relegated to the dustbin of history. Since the mid-1970s, when the
Organization of American States voted to lift multilateral trade sanctions
against Cuba, most Latin Americans have been free to travel to the island -- and
many have. In recent months, the presidents of Brazil, Chile, Argentina,
Venezuela, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic, among other leaders, have paid
high-profile visits to Havana to meet with Raul and Fidel Castro -- making very
public statements to their countrymen, and to Washington, that there is nothing
wrong with going to Cuba.
Those same leaders are making a joint effort to engage the Castro
regime and reintegrate the island into the Western Hemisphere. As Obama learned
at last weekend's summit, the Latin American leaders have adopted a coordinated
message on Cuba: This is the time to normalize relations with Havana and take
Cuba off the hemispheric agenda for good. By continuing to try to isolate Cuba,
they essentially told Obama, Washington has succeeded only in isolating itself.
Much as there is no longer an international constituency that
wants the United States to maintain a hard line on Cuba, there is no longer a
domestic constituency. CNN polling this month found that 64 percent of U.S.
citizens support free travel to Cuba and that 71 percent believe that Washington
should fully restore diplomatic relations. More important for the president's
political calculations, 67 percent of Cuban Americans in the Miami area favor
lifting restrictions on travel to Cuba for all U.S. citizens, according to a
Bendixen and Associates poll released this week.
Obama's declaration last weekend -- ''There are critical steps we
can take toward a new day'' in U.S.-Cuban relations -- and his decision to
rescind all restrictions on Cuban American travel could become momentous steps
toward ending five decades of hostility in Washington's approach to Havana. The
next step should be a White House endorsement of the Freedom to Travel to Cuba
Act recently introduced in Congress and a presidential initiative to restore the
constitutional rights of all U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba.
The goal is not only the advancement of democracy in Cuba, but,
as Robert Kennedy believed, a policy consistent with the sanctity of traditional
liberties and the values of a free society -- our own.
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend served as lieutenant governor of
Maryland from 1995 to 2003. The documents cited above can be read on the web
site of the National Security Archive,
www.nsarchive.org.
ROBERT F. KENNEDY
URGED LIFTING
TRAVEL BAN TO CUBA IN '63
Attorney General cited inconsistency with "our views as a free society"
State Department overruled RFK proposal to withdraw prohibitions on travel
Documents Record First Internal Debate to Lift Ban
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 158
Washington D.C. April 23, 2009 - Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sought
to lift the ban on U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba in December 1963,
according to declassified records re-posted today by the National Security
Archive. In a December 12, 1963, memorandum to Secretary of State Dean Rusk,
Kennedy urged a quick decision "to withdraw the existing regulation
prohibiting such trips."
Kennedy's memo, written less than a month after his brother's assassination
in Dallas, argues that the travel ban imposed at the end of the Eisenhower
administration was a violation of American freedoms and impractical in terms
of law enforcement. Among his "principal arguments" for removing the
restrictions on travel to Cuba was that freedom to travel "is more
consistent with our views as a free society and would contrast with such
things as the Berlin Wall and Communist controls on such travel."
This document, and others relating to the first internal debate over lifting
the Cuba travel ban, are quoted in an opinion piece in the Washington Post
today, written by Robert Kennedy's daughter, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. Her
article argued that President Obama should consider her father's position
and support the Free Travel To Cuba Act that has been introduced in the U.S.
Congress.
Robert Kennedy's memo prompted what senior National Security Council
officials described as "an in-house fight to permit non-subversive Americans
to travel to Cuba." Several State Department officials supported Kennedy's
position that "the present travel restrictions are inconsistent with
traditional American liberties," and that "it would be extremely difficult
to enforce the present prohibitions on travel to Cuba without resorting to
mass indictments." But in a December 13, 1963 meeting at the State
Department, with no representatives present from the Attorney General's
office, Undersecretary of State George Ball ruled out any relaxation of
regulations on travel to Cuba.
A principal argument, as national security advisor McGeorge Bundy informed
President Johnson in a subsequent memorandum on "Student Travel to Cuba" was
that "a relaxation of U.S. restrictions would make it very difficult for us
to urge Latin American governments to prevent their nationals from going to
Cuba-where many would receive subversive training."
The ban on travel was maintained until President Jimmy Carter lifted it in
1977; but restrictions were re-imposed during the Reagan administration and
were tightened further by the Bush administration in 2004. President Obama
recently announced he was lifting all restrictions on Cuban-Americans who
want to travel to the island. The vast majority of U.S. citizens, however,
still face stiff penalties if they travel to Cuba.
According to Peter Kornbluh, who directs the Archive's Cuba Documentation
Project, the documents "shed significant light on the genesis of the travel
ban to Cuba, and the first internal debate over ending it." The original
rationale for the ban "is no longer applicable," he noted, "but RFK's
arguments remain relevant to the current debate over the wisdom of
restricting the freedom to travel."
The documents were found among the papers of State Department advisor
Averill Harriman at the Library of Congress and in declassified NSC files at
the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. The Archive first posted
them in April 2005.
KATE DEFENDS UNCLE JACK
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend stood for no
phonusbolonus during a Summer TV Press Tour 2013 discussion about
her uncle,
President John F Kennedy. Earlier in the day, PBS announced details
of a series of primetime programs airing November 11-13, commemorating the 50th
anniversary of JFK’s assassination. Among them, American Experience franchise is airing a four-hour,
two-part JFK biography,
which takes a new look at the enigmatic president. During that program’s Q&A,
historian Tim Natfali said JFK “was a very smart man who was not an ideologist.
He was a problem solver” and that “given that our world today is so ideological,
it’s refreshing to meet a self assured leader who didn’t have to pretend to be
an ideologue.”
Townsend,
appearing via Skype, objected in a pretty big way, saying Natfali’s description
makes her uncle sound as though he didn’t have a view of the world in which he
had “a moral vision.” “He had a real vision,” she insisted, ticking off his work
and positions about building democracy in Latin America, the “moral issue” of
civil rights, etc. Naftali wilted. “That’s a very good point to raise,” he said
obsequiously, adding, “We ‘ve forgotten you can be a pragmatist with values. In
my humble estimation, Kennedy was a pragmatist with values.” That seemed to
settle Townsend down. But, a few minutes later, a TV critic in the room said he
was taken aback by reports of Kennedy’s womanizing and asked the panel on stage,
“Can you put any of that in perspective in terms of how common or uncommon that
was, and what impact it did or did not have on his presidency?”
“It was not
just at that time,” Townsend snipped. “It’s been true since Troy!” That ended
that line of talk. Later, another TV critic, who said he was old enough to
remember Kennedy’s assassination, said that when he speaks to young staffers in
his office, their understanding of Kennedy is “assassination, and Marilyn
Monroe.” Someone on stage made a dismissive comment about our culture’s
“tremendous ability to distill, down to inanity,” setting Townsend off again.
“I have a
point to say about this,” she jumped in. “When I’m with African-Americans of any
age, they clearly have a very strong sense of President Kennedy, and my father
{Robert Kennedy] and what they did for the civil rights movement. That’s the
conversations I have…with so many different people I talk to. They have a much
richer understanding and sense of history,” she sniffed, ending that line of
talk
Popular on the London social circuit and admired by many for her
high spirits, Kathleen eventually became romantically involved with
Peter Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, 8th Earl Fitzwilliam.[2]
The couple planned to wed after Lord Fitzwilliam's divorce; however,
while on a trip to the south of France, both were killed as the
result of an airplane crash in
Saint-Bauzile, Ardèche,
France.
Only Kick's father represented the family at her funeral. Rose
did not attend and, allegedly, discouraged her daughter's siblings
from attending as well. She was later quoted as saying her
daughter's death was "God casting a finger."
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