Word: ransoms
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...also a grim occasion for the U.S., which somehow found itself offering ransom to the uncouth Communist dictator of an impoverished island less than 100 miles from Florida. That was a grotesquely awkward posture for a nation that cherishes "Millions for defense, but not a cent for tribute" as one of its proud historical utterances.* The ransom negotiations were all the more embarrassing at a time when the U.S. was pressing other nations to halt shipments to Cuba...
...Government to ransom the Bay of Pigs prisoners. But it was neither open nor honest. The Administration put up a strained pretense that Donovan was negotiating as a private citizen on behalf of an organization called the Cuban Families Committee for Liberation of Prisoners of War. Assistant Secretary of State Edwin M. Martin flatly declared that Donovan "has no connection with the Administration." The Justice Department admitted that Donovan had conferred with Attorney General Kennedy several times, but insisted that the visits were merely "courtesy calls...
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...
...deal repugnant. But President Kennedy was dis appointed. The prisoners weighed on his conscience: they had undertaken their invasion under his sponsorship, and his decision not to support them with U.S. air cover doomed whatever prospects for success they might have had. So the President undertook a second ransom effort, with less fanfare, working through the Cuban Families Committee-"Project X." the White House called...
...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. The Families Committee obviously can supply only a picayune fraction of the money. The unavoidable conclusion is that much or most of the ransom money is going to come from the U.S. taxpayers...