John F. Kennedy Quotes

The Bay of Pigs is one of America's most infamous Cold War blunders, and it has been studied, debated, and dramatized endlessly ever since.

Despite the President's orders that no American forces be used, the first two people who landed in the Bay of Pigs [in 1961] were Americans. The CIA sent them in.

The consequence of the Bay of Pigs failure wasn't an acceptance of Castro and his control of Cuba but, rather, a renewed determination to bring him down by stealth.

The CIA's official history of the Bay of Pigs operation is filled with dramatic and harrowing details that not only lay bare the strategic, logistical, and political problems that doomed the invasion, but also how the still-green President John F. Kennedy scrambled to keep the U.S. from entering into a full conflict with Cuba.

Castro doesn’t need spies. All he has to do is read the newspapers.

In the Bay of Pigs, President Kennedy learned that the Generals are not always right.

If the CIA did find out what we were doing this would have trickled down to the lower echelon of activists, and Cuban exiles, and the more gung-ho CIA people who had been involved since the Bay of Pigs….I can understand why they would have reacted so violently. This was the end of their dreams of returning to Cuba, and they might have been impelled to take violent action. Such as assassinating the President.

The Bay of Pigs was an operation the United States endorsed. That was a preventive operation. We were afraid that Castro was going to subvert the hemisphere.

A great many people simply do not at this moment see that Cuba presents so grave and compelling a threat to our national security as to justify a course of action which much of the world will interpret as calculated aggression against a small nation.

Central Intelligence Agency’s Intention To Send Hoodlums to Cuba to Assassinate Castro

I think a policy of isolationism toward Cuba is misplaced and hasn't worked.

There's some new evidence that has just come out about the CIA planning terrorist attacks on U.S. soil in the '60s and how they were going to set up Castro for it in order to get America behind a war in Cuba.

The power of the periodical press is second only to that of the people.

Our Cuba policy didn't make much sense during the Cold War and makes even less sense now.

The press ... is but the servant of human intellect and its ministry is for good or evil, according to the character of those who direct it. The press is a mill that grinds all that is put into its hopper. Fill the hopper with poisoned grain and it will grind it to meal, but there is death in the bread.

Precisely fifteen years ago, at this very hour, you could still hear the echoes of the last shots of the battle that smashed one of Yankee imperialism's most sinister and traitorous actions against a Latin American people. Giro'n went down in history as the first defeat of Yankee imperialism on this continent …. The option between the past and the future, reaction or progress, treason or loyalty to principles, capitalism or socialism, imperialist domination or liberation, was what was decided at Giro'n on April 19, 1961.

…as the Cuban exiles intensify their activities aimed at overthrowing Castro, the more difficult it will become to conceal the U.S. hand..

The Castro regime is a thorn in the flesh, but it is not a dagger in the heart.... I have no evidence that the Cuban people are able and willing at this time to assist any invasion from the outside.

This story going around about the CIA … sending in folks to get Castro, It’s incredible. They have a man that was involved that was brought into the CIA, with a number of others, and instructed by the CIA and the Attorney General [then Robert F. Kennedy] to assassinate Castro after the Bay of Pigs.

We suffer quite as much from exaggerated, hysterical, and untruthful statements in the press as from any wrongdoing by businessmen or politicians.

It’s about time we talked to Cuba instead of fighting a war that is 40 years old.

The Bay of Pigs became a metaphor for feckless folly and failure.

Cuba has become a symbol of courageous resistance to attack. Since 1959, Cuba has been under attack from the hemispheric superpower.

For more than fifty years, the United States pursued a policy of isolating and pressuring Cuba. While the policy was rooted in the context of the Cold War, our efforts continued long after the rest of the world had changed.

To-day a democrat of the old school would demand, not freedom for the press, but freedom from the press