Existing comment:
A Threat 90 Miles from Home:
"This nation... must take an even closer and more realistic look at the menace of external communist intervention and domination in Cuba. The American people are not complacent from Iron Curtain tanks and planes less than 90 miles from our shores."
-- President John F. Kennedy, April 20, 1961
The United States watched the Cuban Revolution with growing concern. Relations between the two countries deteriorated as the Cuban government expropriated U.S. properties, repressed all dissent, escalated its anti-American rhetoric, and built an alliance with the Soviet Union. "Cuba appears to be in the process of falling under the domination of International Communism," warned the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, and that would present "a direct threat to the security of the United States." In March 1960, President Eisenhower approved a $4.4 million program whose purpose was to "bring about the replacement of the Castro regime with one more devoted to the interest of the Cuban people and more acceptable to the United States." President Kennedy continued and expanded that program, which was ultimately codenamed "Operation Mongoose." |