Word: castros
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Donovan's mission was made all the more unseemly by other events that took place last week. At the U.N., Cuba's President Osvaldo Dorticos spieled forth a ranting attack, accusing the U.S. of "aggressive hysteria" and "hunger for domination." In Havana, Castro made a chestthumping speech gibing at U.S. fears that an attack on Cuba will lead to nuclear war with Russia. And in the U.S. Congress, New York's Republican Senator Kenneth Keating said that U.S. intelligence had detected six additional missile sites under construction in Cuba. The Administration, charged Keating, was keeping...
Project X. Once before, President Kennedy had tried to make an Administration-sponsored ransom attempt look like a private undertaking. Shortly after the Bay of Pigs disaster, Castro offered to trade the prisoners for 500 tractors. At the behind-the-scenes urging of the President, a group of prominent U.S. citizens formed a committee to raise money to buy tractors for Castro. The deal collapsed when Castro demanded heavy, tank-tread tractors costing several times as much as the wheeled farm tractors the committee had planned to deliver...
What made the Administration's involvement so obvious was the glaring disparity between the size of Castro's demands and the resources of the Families Committee. Castro's last publicly announced price tag on the prisoners' freedom was $62 million, which works out to more than $50,000 per prisoner. He is now demanding drugs and other goods worth a comparable amount at Cuban prices. The Kennedy Administration has been pressuring U.S. drug manufacturers to supply wares for the ransom package at nonprofit prices, but even so the total cost will run to millions of dollars...
Once that conclusion sank in on Capitol Hill, members of Congress erupted with cries of anger and protest. On the floor of the Senate, Mississippi Democrat John Stennis and Delaware Republican John J. Williams declared themselves opposed to the use of any federal funds to meet Castro's demands. Four Congressmen sent the President telegrams demanding to know where the money was going to come from. In a floor speech, Florida's Republican Congressman William C. Cramer said that "this whole deal smells...
...political stake in the outcome. Even the pro-Kennedy Washington Post voiced editorial misgivings about Donovan's "conflict of roles." Said the Post: "Suppose the Cubans are freed before the election. The suspicion will exist, fairly or not, that the United States has paid a bribe to the Castro regime at least in part to help publicize a candidate for office...