history tv, only on c-span3. next on lectures in history, catholic university professor and former cia historian nicholas dujmovic teaches a class about national intelligence during president kennedy's administration. he talks about the bay of pigs, the cuban missile crisis, and other covert operations during the cold war. this class is just over one hour. this introductory course, we are continuing our historical survey of american intelligence under each presidential administration and now we come to be presidency of john f. kennedy. january 1961 to november 1963. kennedy was a former naval officer, he was also a big fan of the big -- of the james bond novels. withe pictured in the air his brother robert kennedy,

because the brothers together had great influence on u.s. intelligence. there's a lot to say about u.s. intelligence under kennedy. termrved less than a full because he was assassinated of course, by a pro-cuban american leftist, undisturbed former marine named layer because want. named leee some -- harvey oswald. i want to mention a couple other developments that are not as spectacular, but they deserve to be remembered. they are important milestones in u.s. intelligence history and they leave a legacy to this day. one is the president's daily brief, which was created as the president's intelligence checklist for kennedy. when i first came to the cia in 1990, i learned one of the nicknames insiders used was the pickle factory. we never used the company, but

we used the pickle factory. i could never figure out what it was until i heard about pickle, the president's intelligence checklist. it continues to this day. every president has used it, and most have benefited from it. --was new in the sense that well, president truman started the tradition of cia presenting to him a daily intelligence summary, but the pickle, and later the pbd was the first specifically presidential product that was tailored to the president's agenda, his style, and interests, with extremely limited distribution. this is a major legacy from the kennedy administration. another important development was the creation of the defense intelligence agency, further expanding this constellation of agencies we know of the

intelligence community. as we have learned in a previous class, that community around the time of world war ii comprised just at the state department, fbi and the military intelligence organizations. in 1947, the cia becomes central. president truman added the national security agency 52. president eisenhower added the national reconnaissance office activitieste regarding imagery from the spy planes and satellites. under kennedy, the defense department got its own intelligence agency. major national agency of the intelligence immunity. as we discussed, it does important work in human intelligence and specialized technical intelligence. i have got those intelligence developments out of the way, and

i will focus on the two biggest intelligence subject of the kennedy administration, which are the two major historical episodes that people remember. the bay of pigs fiasco and the .uban missile crisis we have a fiasco and a crisis. both big problems. what they have in common is cuba. otherwise, they are vastly different problems. the bay of pigs fiasco was a cia ,overt paramilitary operation specifically a regime change operation that went very badly. the cuban missile crisis, by contrast, was a confrontation of superpowers, the united states and the ussr, over nuclear weapons. what they have in common, other than cuba, is that both were largely the result of shortcomings in american intelligence.

in both situations, bad intelligence analysis was at work. the bay of pigs operation was an example of faulty planning to be sure, but that includes seriously flawed analysis. likewise, the cuban missile crisis begins with that analysis, but in the context of intelligence collection both human and technical. cases, the intelligence shortcomings were made worse by executive decisions. alike inrises are also that the ic learned a lot from both. let's turn to the bay of pigs. revolutionary leader fidel castro turned his insurgency against the cuban dictator batista into a government when he ousted him during the eisenhower administration. castro quickly declared himself

a communist, aligned with the presentedon, and this to the eisenhower administration a more dire situation than what they faced in guatemala a few years before. eisenhower wanted something done about castro. the cia proposed covert action to destabilize the cuban economy with economic sabotage. eisenhower said he wanted something more drastic. historians disagree over whether eisenhower meant that the cia should assassinate castro. to cia officials at the time, it seemed clear that eisenhower, who clearly would not use words , it isd like assassinate i still clear that he wanted him removed from the scene by whatever means necessary. just as they believed that eisenhower had expressed the eader behat an african late

removed and killed if necessary to keep the congo from becoming communist. there is no smoking gun on either. eisenhower was concerned about castro for the same reasons he had authorized the cia to topple the elected government of guatemala. he believes that once communism was established in the western hemisphere, it would spread by soviet supported subversion and revolution. this is a communist governments do. i did my dissertation on the revolutionary government of grenada. communistshave the inng helped by the cubans order to spread communist revolution to other island nations in the caribbean. that example shows that in the 1950's, eisenhower was onto

something. this was a threat. eisenhower authorized the cia to plan covert actions to remove castro from power. at this point, i want to remind you of our discussion in this class about covert action as an intelligence function. the purpose of u.s. covert action is to influence political , economic, military conditions abroad in such a way that the hand of the united states is not apparent. , ors not evident to people it can be plausibly denied. cubariginal cia plan for under eisenhower was to infiltrate some 30 cuban agents, cia trained agents, to create resistance groups within cuba. i think someone noticed that cuba is a big place. it doesn't stretch from , it iston past chicago

obviously located south of florida, but you can see how big it is. grew from 30 to cia trained exiles who would infiltrate the country and link up with anti-castro forces believed to be operating in cuba. cia propaganda efforts based on the guatemala model would help build internal support opposing castro and this is where it helps to have a knowledge of n you areeven wher planning covert action. of cia was using the example its predecessor, the office of strategic services, sending agents into nazi occupied france , where the population did not like the nazis and was willing to take risks to support these

commandos. the cia were numbered that and remember the positive aspects of the 1954 guatemala operation. in your reading, professor christopher andrew points out that eisenhower and the cia ignored other relevant including precedents, the negative lessons of guatemala. guatemala barely succeeded, even against a weakened government. it basically lost its nerve and allowed a success for covert action there. lessons of thee operation in indonesia, where the people they were helping in their military rebellion turned out to be weak and ineffectual. i would add that they also ignored the lessons of many covert action operations involving the insertion of

ethnic agent teams trained by the cia to places like china and the u.s. as our. u.s.s.r. this showed that three quarters of these teams were caught. le was established that you are to lose three quarters of your agents if you send them into denied areas. they also demonstrated that estimates of local opposition to communists was usually overinflated. infiltrating and by the way, on the bottom right there, those are cia trained tibetan commandos getting ready for an airlift into chinese occupied tibet. infiltrating a

few agents into cuba and found out there was not really an underground resistance and most of their agents were caught, which again, history might have taught them, if they had been paying attention. instead of recalculating or rethinking the whole plan, the cia shifted its plan instead to an amphibious landing of some 700. notice the mission brief. we start with 30, now we are up to 700 trained exiles who we are going to land by landing craft and paratroop penetrations, establish a beachhead, relocate , become antains resistance force, attract anti-castro cubans, declare themselves to be the legitimate government, and wait for u.s. support. sounds pretty neat. as the planning went on for the end of the eisenhower administration, the force kept getting bigger to ensure that

when the landing happened, they could actually seize and hold the beachhead. when kennedy came into office, he planned a cuban invasion 1500.of about they would be supported by a rebel air force, again trained cuban exiles. pilots of the 26 -- of b-26 bombers that were in the cuban supply. the story would be that these were pilots who defected and joined the rebellion. trained in bases in nicaragua and guatemala. to landsion was planned

at the beach in trinidad. this was considered an and i town. -- an anti-castro it had a defensible beach with good maritime approaches. it was close to the mountains. was that forke operational security, the cia's own intelligence analysts were kept in the dark. cubaxperts on the state of had no input. the director of operations did its own analysis. it based its optimistic assessments of internal cuban resistance on the initial opposition to castro when he came to power in 1959. it is two years later in the analysts of the directorate of intelligence would have told

them that things had changed. castor had a lot more support. castro had a lot more support. internal security was ruthlessly efficient. nore was essentially resistance to him. the head of the office of intelligence was not consulted, even though he personally had participated in a campaign in with more than two dozen amphibious landings of this scale. a lot more than the u.s. marine they had brought in to plan the operation. he and all of his analysts were simply cut out for security reasons. some security. a january 10, 1961 from

page above the fold new york times article. u.s. helps to train an anti-castro force at secret guatemalan air-ground base. no longer covert, with this kind of publicity. knows, they are being trained, probably by the u.s., in guatemala for an attack on cuba. yes? [indiscernible] there isjmovic: sources. when you engage in a large -- various sources. when you engage in a large operation, people talk. various chinese operations we mounted in the early 1950's.

when you get people together, they will talk. castro knows something is up even before this. he is trying to penetrate these operations with his own people. you hire a bunch of cuban exiles, how many of them -- are 100% anti-castro, or has castro sent one or two agents? so, multiple sources. and a gets worse. another factor -- and it gets worse. another factor that turned out to be a mistake was the requirement that castro's air force be destroyed first. that the cuban exile pilots pretending to be cuban air force would have command of the air. prerequisite for the success of this operation. pilots fromuited

the alabama national guard. attackas to be one air two days before the amphibious landing, allegedly by these cuban air force pilots who were disgruntled and decided to shoot up their own planes. -26s werehy the painted to look like cuban air force planes. the day before the invasion, the exile force would come back to destroy the planes that remained. two airstrikes, command of the air was essential, and this was one of the things that had to go well. fromnother problem came president kennedy's desire to maintain deniability that the u.s. had anything to do with us. castro, but these are independent, patriotic cubans acting on their own. one month before the invasion, he ordered another landing site

be found, away from trinidad, a populated center. this was long before the internet, but they might take pictures, it would be too noisy. the cia had four days to shifted planning to another location. -- to shift its planning to another location. they found it at the fairly remote bay of pigs, away from centers, but closer to the cuban military and air force. also, it was surrounded by swamp. let me go to that slide. this peninsula gave the relocated operation its name. the bay of pigs was surrounded by this swamp, far from the mountains where you hoped the exile force would be able to

melt away to become that beacon of freedom for large numbers of disaffected anti-castro cubans. that is the theory. unknown to the planners was the fact that the bay of pigs was castro's favorite place to go fishing, the kitchen. he knew it -- go fishing, vacationing. he knew it very well. also unknown is that there were coral reefs and rocks that complicated navigation. planners looked at the imagery and concluded that the darker water was seaweed. they were coral reefs. that is why castro liked to go snorkeling there. it was a good place to go. let me read you a couple newspaper reports. this is the line new york, april

10. 10.ateline new york, april mystery of coming invasion. another three-hour harangue from castro has failed to clear up the mystery of the coming invasion. who is training it, where will it be mounted? what will the united states administration do about it? also in the guardian that day was an editorial, since president kennedy came to power, he has done much to restore american prestige. if recent reports of a projected invasion of cuba launched from american soil and carried out with the connivance of the american intelligence service come true, then much of president kennedy's labor will have been in vain. that a groupelieve of cuban exiles could assemble a force of sufficient size and with sufficient quit meant

unless they had the backing -- sufficient equipment unless they had the backing of the united states government. reports from authoritative american sources suggest that this is not true. the head planner for the operation said a few years later , we did not realize the extent to which it was believed by everyone else that this was a u.s. government operation. apparently, cia was not reading the newspapers. i am being critical of my former agency, the cousin deserves to be criticized on this. on april 15, 1961, two days before the invasion, the first wave of air attacks by fewer planes than planned for damaged

met -- damaged many cuban planes, but failed to destroy them all. , gotttack alerted cubans the intention of the united nations, where the u.s. ambassador -- the u.n. ambassador found himself to be lying about u.s. noninvolvement. had orderednnedy the first airstrike to be smaller than planned for, then he canceled the second. the cia was afraid to recommend at that point that the invasion be canceled. everyone on the cia side new that without command -- knew that without command of the air, the invasion would fail. intelligence is in the bad news business, but this is a case where they call it falling in

love with your operation. they had all fallen in love with it and they were not willing to end it. when the invasion force arrived on april 17, it faced a fully mobilized cuban military. command of the air as well. castro was, commanding defenses. a landing craft made it a sure and put a small exile force on the beach where they fought for three days. kennedy refused the cia's request to have u.s. aircraft provide combat air support. two cia chartered airplanes dropped munitions and supplies on the beach for the rebels. those were shot down. the pilots between the two four pilots between two aircraft died.

others were taken prisoner. this was humiliating for the united states government and personally for president kennedy. it was a great victory for fidel castro. there were a lot of bitter recriminations and finger-pointing going on. kennedy's advisers and pro-kennedy historians have placed the blame on the cia. mistaken assumptions in planning, for deceiving the president about chances for success. cia defendersand, at the time and ever since, but not me, have admitted they were planning errors, but insists the invasion could have been successful if it had been allowed to work as planned. its failure, they say, was kennedy's fault, for canceling

the second airstrike, for refusing u.s. military support. he is blamed for moving the landing site and for liking covert action too much. was aief cia planner brilliant man who was also the project manager for the u2 aircraft and its follow-up. the director had to resign. said, iemoirs, he sincerely believe that even with 's faults, but if we have been able to go ahead with the plan, we would have won the day, at least in establishing a beachhead. it is also possible, he wrote, that we in the agency were not as frank with the president as we could have been. there is a telling admission. there was an internal report by the ciaector general of saying that if the cia had been more careful in its planning, it would have realized there was no

effective organized resistance to the castro regime that could have rallied to help the invaders. castro's forces were securely in control of cuban society. they vastly outnumbered any invasion force, and the terrain offered no help at all. he said the cia should've evenled the invasion though it would have been embarrassing to the agency. he said cancellation would have been embarrassing, but it would have averted failure, which brought even more embarrassment, and carried death and misery to hundreds, destroyed millions of dollars of u.s. property and damaged u.s. prestige. he was right about that. there was an internal rebuttal to the report. the directorate of operations said the airstrikes were crucial. without them, they could be no success. the defeat was after google -- butable to a long line

of decisions. something goes wrong, the intelligence folks blame the policy makers, the policymakers blame the intelligence folks. there's an old saying in washington, there are no policy failures, there are only intelligence failures. my view is that there is plenty of blame to go around. the historical record shows there were plenty of failures on both sides. for intelligence people, there are clear lessons from the bay of pigs. the policy people can come up with their own, but for intelligence people, one lesson learned is do not plan for a covert action or any intelligence operation that requires every part of it to go perfectly for any of it to succeed.

secondly, do not undertake covert operations that have already been described in the new york times. agency'ake sure your s experts are involved in the planning. cleared for the project, you should clear them. do not be afraid of communicating clearly to the policy people the risks and consequences of failure of every part of the plan. but takes courage, intelligence people should be prepared to stand down and walk away from any operation that does not make sense. operationally or even politically. remember, the policymaker may want deniability more than the conditions you have established for success. side, there were huge applications.

implications. u.s. prestige was damaged and the soviet union tried to take advantage. the soviet premier demanded that western powers abandoned berlin. as you prof. dujmovic: khrushchev said that west berlin was a threat to east germany. kennedy blamed the cia for putting him into that position. he briefly considered breaking up cia into various missions or business areas and distributing it throughout the government. that was justifiable anger on his part. he also considered replacing alan dulles with his own brother, robert.

robert kennedy liked working with the agency. but he was a savvy enough politician to realize that what would not work very well. it is not really career enhancing for politicians to be cia director. so he turned it down. just a few months after the bay of pigs debacle, kennedy is meeting with the soviets premier indiana at their summit. khrushchev buried to kennedy for american imperialism. he said the soviets we get tough regarding berlin. in august, four months after the ,ay of pigs, the east germans acting on orders from moscow, directed the berlin wall, cutting off east and west berlin. the commonest called it the anti-fascists protective wall. it was meant to prevent escaping east germans. --is what communist there

communists do. kennedy renewed american commitment to the freedom of westmoreland. -- west berlin. this became another cold war standoff. khrushchev was looking for a way to advance the soviet position and the cold war. some surprise move that would change the strategic balance in moscow's favor. and this is the accelerated history of that, he did that by putting soviet missiles in cuba, secretly believing by the time that americans would discover them, it would be too late. but the american government did discover them. early. kennedy told him to take them out or else. days,some tense

khrushchev backed down. nuclear war was diverted. kennedy was a hero. this dramatic story is largely an intelligent story. begins with a soviet military intelligence officer who volunteered to work and provide intelligence for cia and the bridges service, mi six. his intelligence began as the bay of pigs was beginning. he was a well-placed colonel in the soviet military organization the gru. he reports on what he learns in meetings. he photographs secret soviet military documents.

including probably the most helpful one, this are two missile manual. r2 is a medium-range ballistic missile. he passes these things to cia and and by six case officers. he provides high-level soviet policy papers. he even strike to one the u.s. berlinf time about the wall going up, but he cannot do so in time. he conveys his impressions that the soviet leadership is not as confident as they appear. they are blustering from a position of weakness, and they know it. they know they do not have strategic superiority and nuclear weapons. the national intelligence assessed at the time that the soviets had far fewer

nuclear missiles than they were claiming. it was bluster. khrushchev backstab number land. confirm this. but he was worried that khrushchev might do something different -- desperate. the cia give multiple codenames to him to mask the source of the intelligence. meanwhile, the kennedy brothers are pressuring cia to do

something about the castro regime. embarrassing.s they do not like being humiliated. they liked covert action. kennedy approved more covert action operations than eisenhower. they especially liked covert action against castro. , and thoughsabotage it was never mentioned out loud, assassination plots. the codename for all of these efforts was mongoose. it included some ideas for how to kill castro. there is a leadership change at the cia. the fallout from the bay of pigs fall squarely on the cia. thisdy told dulles that if was a parliamentary system, i would have to resign in my government would fall.

but it is not so you have to leave. --les was allowed to require retire with bay of pigs some dignity a few months after in november of 61. his replacement is john mccone. the agency is monitoring soviets shipments of weapons to cuba. u2 flights over cuba began in february of 1962. cone first raises the possibility that moscow might send missiles to cuba. he grasps that moscow might make this bold move in order to put ballistic missiles into cuba to overcome it strategic inferiority in missiles and bombers. u2 the end of august, the

imagery shows there are surface-to-air missile sites in cuba. missiles meant to bring down aircraft. mccone is alone in the u.s. government and believing that they would not do this unless they are defending something important from aerial attack. perhaps that something would be ballistic missile sites. to shoot them or, since aircraft so the americans will find out. so what does the kennedy white house to? them.m sites spooked the organization orders a moratorium on flights. it allows only three flights in september. all of them over eastern cuba, away from the known sam sites.

there is a special national intelligence estimate. we talked about analytic products. sherman kent, the head analyst. he says it would not make sense for the soviets to place strategic he was -- missiles in cuba because it is too risky. we discussed cognitive biases and challenges to analysis. a big one among them is mirror imaging. the idea that the other side is going to reason and figure out things like we would. this is an example of mirror imaging. time, director mccone goes on wave. and he wasdower recently remarried and he took his honeymoon in the south of france.

whenever a cia director, you have communications with you. he is sending cables back to cia saying you have to press the white house for permission to sites.s over those sam figure out what is going on. what they are protecting. he has no evidence. it just makes sense to him. there is a five-week. in which practically no u2s fly. the ones that do stay away from the sam sites. even though mccone is making these appeals, meanwhile, there is human intelligence and espionage assets in cuba. thatare telling the cia they cease a mysterious, secret work going on in western cuba. some of them see long,

cylindrical objects being towed by military trucks. insists and kennedy allows a single u-2 flight over the same crystal ball area -- san cristobal area. a flight discovers a missile site. kennedy then authors -- authorizes unlimited u-2 flights. for thee blamed the cia

or the bad -- weather for this five-week gap and overhead imagery collection. it in fact was due to white house policymakers. the u-2 sees what is there. the analysts are able to warn kennedy about the situation. i want to point out to you that on the previous slide, this is a soviet sam site that has a distinctive pattern and it. week, u-2 flights

provide imagery that identify 24 medium-range ballistic missile sites. they have a range of about 1000 miles. and also intermediate-range ballistic missile sites. they have about the 2000 mile range. the intelligence gives the president some indication of how long it would take to make these things operational. kennedy has the time to deliberate instead of simply reacting. the initial impulse on everyone's part is that we have to take these things out with a strike. but upon the liberation, he decides to impose a naval blockade. and use hard-nosed diplomacy to tell the soviets to get the muscles out. it was a good thing he decided on this rather than attacking

cuba. thats revealed years later soviet forces in cuba had tactical nuclear weapons that they would have used against an american attack. thankfully, the washington post got it wrong about the invasion of cuba. the new york times got it right regarding a naval blockade. tv ony goes on national october 22 and announces the situation. declares the blockade. makes it clear that any missile attack from cuba would be considered an attack from the ussr and would be answered. the naval blockade over the next 12 days of the crisis works. nsa intercept confirmed that soviet ships are turning back. is used publicly at the u.n.

to embarrass moscow, who denies that such work was going on. the soviets back down. imagery and signals intelligence monitor the removal of soviet missiles from cuba. crisis, a u-2 was shot down. kennedy refuses to escalate. instead, he responds to curse s proposal that in exchange for removing the missiles, the u.s. pledges not to invade cuba. so, the cuban missile crisi comes to a satisfactory ending. but the kennedy brothers of session with castro continues. momentum continues to pressure the cia to get rid of castro. officials meet in paris.

castro. a plot to kill this is also the day kennedy was in dallas and got killed. address the all too popular story that kennedy's assassination in dallas was the result of a cia operation or conspiracy to kill the president. , it is a line opinion myth. a canard. a lie. it is logically almost impossible to prove a negative. but i'm quite confident that the cia did not kill kennedy. it is quite a widespread story. i do not know how many books are out there making this assertion. probably hundreds. maybe a lot more. if you google it, you almost get 3 million hits.

it has its own wikipedia article. ofm not going to go into all the aspects and variance of the theory. it is too complicated and not worth our consideration. the idea that the cia would , toer an american president me as a citizen is unimaginable. a career cia officer, if this monstrous and abstain in the highest degree. this is an extraordinary claim that requires a burden of proof based on persuasive evidence. the so-called evidence i have seen is all inferential, highly speculative, not persuasive. i am sure i will hear from the conspiracy theorists about this. the allegedly does do not convince me either. as a cia staff historian for 11 years, i find it implausible in

the extreme. the yearsarship over has shown that cia has always considered itself to be the president's agency and has done his bidding. yes, robert? what would lead people to say it was cia? as much support as it was. why would people believe it was obviously the cia? it seems like a ludicrous idea. prof. dujmovic: i am not a psychologist. certainly not a popular psychologist. i think people want to believe that there had to have been a conspiracy. could not kill the president of the united states without help. as told go more in depth some of the milestones of this theory.

one of which was the movie by oliver stone. it was done very skillfully. to show a cia conspiracy. after that some comes out, you have at one point the majority of americans believing the cia did it. based on a movie. implications.al congress passes the jfk act that requires the cia to declassify everything a taz that could be related to the assassination. the agency is always considering itself the president and chairman, no matter what is going on. whether there are intelligence failures. the buckles like the bay of pigs. all of these are allegedly does

-- motives. one of the silliest is that the cia killed kennedy because he planned to pull out of vietnam. the reality is that the cia was not enamored with the war in vietnam. even sillier was that johnson was involved. that he was controlled by the cia. nuts.s not -- kennedy wanted to stop trying to kill castro in the cia did not want to stop. the agency i know from years of study of internal documents, world history interviews, is literallyranda the last group of men and women on the planet who would even consider doing such a thing. the most insulting thing i have the cia putaim that

a star on the memorial wall for .ee harvey a little -- oswald responsiblestorian for the memorial wall. i find that funny and frustrating all at the same time. can findternet, you youtube interviews with men claiming to be the cia assassin. aboutn also find claims coverup of extraterrestrials, experiments of time travel and teleportation. none of those are real either. sorry to disappoint. the people who believe these things are sadly mistaken. many of them are nuts. the truehing that is

believers and the conspiracy theory would say i am part of the conspiracy. which would come as a surprise to anyone who knows me. we live in an age where logic and evidence gives way, is trump ed by, assertion and identity. reliable source that refutes this theory, look holland, an independent researcher who has been following this for years. students to of my treat everything with due skepticism, including what they teach you in class. check everything. for your own sanity, ignore this cacophony of loud voices to make assertions and say they must be true because there are a lot of them. or because of the identity of the person making the assertion.

i fully admit that i can be accused of hypocrisy here because i am making an assertion. i do not have persuasive evidence because you cannot prove a negative. and i am asking you to believe me because of who i am. i am asking you to trust me. because that is all week and there. this brings us to the end of our treatment of kennedy and intelligence. any other questions? >> you mentioned the presidential finding. was any of that in place at the time of the bay of pigs? our discussion about covert action as a function of intelligence was, as of now, the recent developments, the requirement for a finding comes from the late 1970's. this,st recent law on

which was one of the intelligence authorization acts, i think it was 1997, all of that goes into title 50 of the u.s. code. at the time of the kennedy administration, there was no such process. there is an executive branch process. but there is no reporting requirement to the congress. such reporting that was done was in formal. in the case of the development of the u-2 spy plane, the cia notified one of the houses. i think it was the senate. and did not inform the house. when francis gary powers was shot down, at least half of the congress did not know we had a u-2. so things have changed. so we will talk about that when we get to accountability and the reforms of the 1970's.

did the russian asset not inform us about the missiles coming into cuba? prof. dujmovic: not specifically, but he gave us the evidence manuals that we were able to use during the crisis. told that when we received it, we would thought it was great, the there was no need for it. cuban missile crisis happens, and all of a sudden there is a need for it. this is why intelligence officers gather everything. they knew what they had that they did not know how relevant it was. we domissile system that not expect to get close to but it becomes goes to us, then it is relevant. was there any objection made

to choosing bay of pigs as a landing site? prof. dujmovic: i don't believe they had any input into that planning. as i understand covert action planning now, we would ask cubans and locals about the conditions of that place. the shortcomings there probably could have been easily remedied if they just brought in the director of intelligence analysts. that is one reform that mccone had. he made it a requirement that the analysts be brought in for operational planning of that sort. does anyone think that the cubans bombed their own air force? prof. dujmovic: no.

the requirements of covert action is that the hand of the united states is not a parent or can be denied plausibly. what is plausible is sometimes a matter of opinion. i don't think, given the publicity, that anybody doubted, once the shooting started, who was behind it. if bombing the air force was so crucial and it wasn't finished the first time, why was it not done? prof. dujmovic: like i said, you fall in love with your operation. and you make dumb decisions. that cia was true afraid to tell the president. uso, there was an unstated -- assumption on the cia's part that if they did knock it these airstrikes, it would not

succeeded. but they thought the president was not allowed to fail. so they assumed he would involve the u.s. military. kennedy was not willing to go that far. so what we have here is a failure to communicate. [laughter] to coin a phrase. >> what made my cone such a good director -- mccone. prof. dujmovic: he had been a founder of what became u.s. steel. he was a corporate manager. much more efficient. clearheaded. a bit of a visionary. he had created the directorate of science and technology. biography on him that was done by my boss.

it has been largely declassified and is available to you. a good popular biography of mccone i don't think is ever been on. he was only there for four years. but he did a lot of good things. try to get the place to clean up its act. >> you said that director douglas got three months to .esign -- dulles was bissell just kicked out? prof. dujmovic: i think he left at the same time that dulles did. he was offered a another job but he thought it would be a step down.

all that.jmovic: the cold war was the deeply serious thing by the participants and the leaders involved. communism, fear of and advance of communism anywhere is a defeat for freedom everywhere. just as eisenhower says we are not going to tolerate a country ,oing communist, guatemala whatever the merits of the argument work, and castro seemed to be worse. he openly declared himself to be an ally of the soviet union. that is the main enemy, that as the country we have to worry the most about and is creating so much trouble for us and threatening our allies, we have to do something. it was the thinking at the time. it became personal, i think it became personal. >> earlier in the course, we discussed espionage and assets

in the handling -- how did the handling of the case with the up?et colonel end not well.ovic: he was caught and there are theories about how you was caught or some other mistake that was made, but he was caught and executed. soviets,the brave soviet citizens who worked for the cia during the cold war met their fate. headlet in the back of the in the kgb prison in moscow. we have been able to get -- we talked about exfiltration, many people out, but some of the most prominent ones were martyrs for the cause. >> a follow-up.

on one of the slides, it said that we had oil debriefs with the kernel. how did the cia received those oil debriefs if he was in russia? prof. dujmovic: he got out occasionally and there is a great book on him, "the spy who saved the world." that is because of the information he gave -- let me get rid of this, this is odious -- it is a story about spy,ribing an influential he had some perks, part of the soviet military trade mission to britain, and he would go occasionally to the west. he would get away from his delegation and they met and a safe house by cia and mi6 debriefers. that book which is a great book

reveals all of that. that the spyory got to meet with kennedy. that part of the history is not true. he considered himself a soldier for democracy. to the point where he asked, can you dress me up in an american kerne -- american colonel's uniform and then a british colonel's uniform. the things you will do from your assets, you'll do anything from reporting. [indiscernible] think it is a: i netbook, but typically, you give the money but not enough that they could expose themselves by conspicuous spending. we are always trying to preserve our assets lives, telling them they need to dial it back, gifts gave him particular

to give to his superiors, so they liked him, so they would promote him, so they would give him good jobs. at one point, we gave him a bottle ofb -- of brandy that was doctored to make it look like the vintage year of the birth of his boss, a soviet general, just love the that you found this for me. we will do these sorts of things. ok. anything else? ok, next week a, a quiz on thursday and i will see you next time we meet on tuesday. thank you for your attention. >> you can watch lectures and history every weekend on american history tv. we take you inside college classrooms to learn about topics ranging from the american revolution to 9/11.

that is saturday at 8:00 p.m. and midnight eastern on c-span3. ♪ this week, join "washington journal" for authors week beginning at 8:30 a.m. eastern starting on sunday with the author about a book "how to be less stupid about race." and the book, "though -- the once and future worker." on civilrump's war rights." with the work "squeezed: why our families cannot afford america." "sex matters: how modern feminism lost touch with common

sense. flyover view from country." and "american overdose." journalfor "washington their -- >> this weekend on american artifacts, will we visit esto -- the smithsonian's national portrait gallery. here is a preview. first ladyart with michelle obama. you probably have already heard about this picture. it has called quite a lot of discussion across the internet and we have had many visitors come to visit. a portrait by a baltimore artist who a few years earlier had one a portrait competition that happens every three years.

here you will see a fantastic picture of michelle obama inting actually outside -- the fresh air, but you see the blue background, wearing this wonderful dress. the dress was very appealing to the artist because it related to modern art. it looks like a constructivist painting, but also, a quote like affected that made the baltimore artist and michelle obama think that in made by the ancestors of enslaved women. the most interesting aspect of this portrait is in fact of the skintone that the artist used to depict an african-american woman, and she was channeling the history of african american portraiture. you were, when enslaved, you are unlikely to get a portrait of yourself made. it was very expensive. the change happens with

photography. suddenly, black and white photographs is available and families, black families can actually have portraits taken of their friends and beloved that reads initially as black. rold carries around with her a beautiful picture of her grandmother that is a black and white portrait and she said, i think i was unconsciously tapping into that image of this beautiful, self-assured, and very intelligent woman. saying, made a point of i would like to move past questions of racial identity. a large country that of course have people of very different identities and appearances, and she said that this is a portrait of a strong woman who has made a difference and i wanted her to have a universal quality. some people might have actually seen the wonderful moment around

march 2018 where the three-year-old was caught gazing in awe at mrs. obama. later on, when she was asked, she said, i thought she was a queen. >> watch the entire poor of the thisnal portrait gallery sunday at 6:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. eastern. only on american history tv on c-span3. q&a, wall street journal columnist talks about his work and politics. >> politics, he primarily wants to be the center of attention. i do not think he is a racist. i think the way he looks at people, everyone is a friend or enemy and you can change categories easily. he holds no grudges. , the america first

thing is an idea that i think he holds dear that i think our country has been shortchanged in his dealings with the rest of the world and that reflects with his trade policy and immigration policy and in the minds of many of his supporters and middle america have heard, so i think that is to a degree of sincere beliefs. >> holman jenkins, sunday night on c-span's q&a. >> 2018 marks the centennial of u.s. participation in world war i and the november 11, 1918 armistice that finally ended four years of death and destruction. next, on american artifacts, join us for a tour of a u.s. army exhibit featurin