Richard Goodwin was born
in Boston on 7th December, 1931. He graduated
from Tufts University in 1953. He then went on to study law at Harvard
University. Goodwin joined the Massachusetts State bar in 1958.
He worked for Felix Frankfurter before
being appointed as special counsel to the Legislative Oversight Subcommittee
of the U.S. House of Representatives.
In 1959 John
F. Kennedy appointed Goodwin as a member of his speech writing
staff. The following year he became Kennedy's assistant special counsel.
Goodwin was also a member of Kennedy's Task Force on Latin American
Affairs and in 1961, was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary of State
for Inter-American Affairs, a position he held until 1963. As one
of Kennedy's specialists in Latin-American affairs, Goodwin helped
develop the Alliance for Progress, an economic development program
for Latin America. Goodwin also served as secretary-general of the
International Peace Corps.
After Kennedy's death Goodwin
joined the staff of President Lyndon
B. Johnson
where he worked as a speechwriter
and adviser. Goodwin resigned in 1965 and became a fellow at the Center
for Advanced Studies at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut
and a visiting professor of public affairs at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology.
Goodwin continued to be
involved in politics and wrote speeches for presidential candidates
Robert
Kennedy,
Eugene McCarthy and Edmund Muskie.
He also wrote for several magazines, including The
New Yorker and Rolling Stone.
He also published The Fitzgeralds and the
Kennedys (1986).
In March, 2001, Goodwin
was a member of a United States delegation that visited the scene
of the Bay
of Pigs battle.
The party included Arthur Schlesinger
(historian), Robert Reynolds, (the CIA station chief in Miami during
the invasion), Jean Kennedy Smith (sister of John F. Kennedy), Alfredo
Duran (Bay of Pigs veteran) and Wayne
S. Smith
(Executive
Secretary of his Latin American Task Force).
Open
Debate on the Kennedy Assassination
(1)
Seymour
Hersh, The Dark
Side of Camelot (1997)
Richard N. Goodwin, who
wrote speeches for Kennedy during the 1960 campaign and accompanied
him to the White House, described Robert Kennedy as "completely
his brother's man. He was a guy whose basic purpose in life was to
advance and protect the career of John Kennedy." In an interview
for this book in 1997, Goodwin recalled one meeting between the president
and a group of southern senators on the White House balcony. One of
the senators "leaned forward and said, 'Well, Mr. President,
I'm afraid I'm gonna have to attack you on civil rights: And Kennedy
says, 'Can't you attack Bobby instead?' Bobby played that role,"
Goodwin explained. The younger Kennedy "was always reflecting
his brother's feelings"
Goodwin was
also present at a White House meeting after the Bay of Pigs when Bobby
tore into a senior State Department official who, after the fact,
had told a reporter that he was opposed to the invasion. "I watched
Bobby just lash into him," Goodwin recalled. "`You can't
undermine my brother." And John Kennedy just sat there quietly,
never said a word throughout. But I have no doubt that Bobby was reflecting
conversations that the two of them had.
(2)
Anita Snow, Cold
War Adversaries Gather in Cuba (23rd March, 2001)
President Fidel Castro
sat alongside ex-CIA operatives, advisers to President Kennedy and
members of the exile team that attacked his country four decades ago
as former adversaries met Thursday to examine the disastrous Bay of
Pigs landing.
Dressed in his traditional
olive green uniform, Castro read with amusement from old U.S. documents
surrounding the 1961 invasion of Cuba by CIA-trained exiles, which
helped shaped four decades of U.S.-Cuba politics. Some of the documents
were analyses of a young, charismatic Castro.
Castro arrived in the morning
as protagonists sat down to start a three-day conference on the invasion.
Participants at the meeting - which was closed the media - said he
was still there in the evening.
The Cuban president personally
greeted former Kennedy aide and American historian Arthur Schlesinger,
but made no public statement.
Participants later said
that at one point, Castro read aloud from a once secret memorandum
to Kennedy about his own visit to the United States as Cuba's new
leader in 1959.
"`It would be a serious
mistake to underestimate this man,''' Castro read with a smile, said
Thomas Blanton of the National Security Archive at George Washington
University.
"With
all his appearance of naivete, unsophistication and ignorance on many
matters, he is clearly a strong personality and a born leader of great
personal courage and conviction,''' Castro read, according to Blanton.
'``While we certainly know him better than before Castro remains an
enigma.'''
Blanton said Castro told
the group he believed the actual aim of the invasion was not to provoke
an uprising against his government but to set the stage for a U.S.
intervention in Cuba. Blanton said a member of the former exile team,
Alfredo Duran, agreed.
Among the newly declassified
documents about the April 17-19, 1961, event was the first known written
statement by the Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites) calling
for the assassination of Castro.
In one document released
Thursday in connection with the conference, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev
warned Kennedy in a letter sent the day after the invasion began that
the "little war'' in Cuba" could touch off a chain reaction
in all parts of the globe.''
Khrushchev issued an "urgent
call'' to Kennedy to end ``the aggression'' against Cuba and said
his country was prepared to provide Cuba with "all necessary
help'' to repel the attack.
Trained by the CIA in Guatemala,
the 2506 Brigade was comprised of about 1,500 exiles determined to
overthrow Castro's government, which had seized power 28 months before.
The three-day invasion
failed. Without U.S. air support and running short of ammunition,
more than 1,000 invaders were captured. Another 100 invaders and 151
defenders died.
Blanton called the conference
"a victory over a bitter history.''
Other key American figures
attending were Robert Reynolds, the CIA station chief in Miami during
the invasion; Wayne Smith, then a U.S. diplomat stationed in Havana;
and Richard Goodwin, another Kennedy assistant, who with Schlesinger
considered the invasion ill-advised.
On the Cuban government's
side were Vice President Jose Ramon Fernandez, a retired general who
led defending troops on the beach known here as Playa Giron, and many
other retired military men.
(3)
BBC
report, Cold
War foes revisit battle scene (21st March, 2001)
Former enemies who fought each other 40 years ago have together revisited
the site of one of the key battles of the Cold War, the Bay of Pigs
in southern Cuba.
The visit was the culmination
of a three-day conference designed to investigate the causes of the
conflict, what went so badly wrong for the US-backed forces and the
lessons to be learnt from it.
Among those taking part
were historians from both Cuba and the United States, Arthur Schlesinger
and Richard Goodwin - both former advisers to the then US president,
John Kennedy - soldiers from both sides and President Fidel Castro
himself.
During the first two days
in Havana previously classified documents were exchanged.
In the Cuban papers were
transcripts of the telephone communications between President Castro
and his military commanders during the battle.
They showed how closely
involved he was, the tension of the moment and the joy when, after
more than 60 hours of fighting, it became obvious that the invasion
had been defeated.
The US documents chart
in detail the humiliation felt at the nature of the defeat and the
embarrassment caused to President Kennedy.
One State Department paper
puts the blame for the debacle squarely on the CIA, which trained
the invasion force.
It said: "The fundamental
cause of the disaster was the Agency's failure to give the project,
notwithstanding its importance and its immense potentiality for damage
to the United States, the top-flight handling which it required."
It added: "There was
failure at high levels to concentrate informed, unwavering scrutiny
on the project."
In the aftermath of the
failed mission, another US paper lays out the early plans to destabilise
the Cuban government - a plan which became known as Operation Mongoose.
This included a number
of bizarre schemes, including one to put powder in Fidel Castro's
shoes to make his beard fall out and another which included exploding
cigars.
The document suggested
that the most effective commander of such an operation would be the
then attorney general, the president's brother, Robert Kennedy.
Among those searching for
answers in Cuba was the Kennedy's sister, Jean Kennedy Smith.
Walking the beaches of
the Bay of Pigs, she said the conference had been a big boost in helping
to bring peace between Cuba and the United States.
Another of the US delegates was Alfredo Duran, one of the invading
force 40 years ago.
He faced the man he tried
to overthrow, Fidel Castro, as well as other Cuban defenders.
As he stood on the beach
he said: "This has been a very emotional time, especially discussing
with the colonel in charge of the operation the very intense fighting
that took place in this spot."
The beaches along the Bay
of Pigs in southern Cuba are now littered with sunbeds and overlooked
by luxury hotels.
But there is plenty to
remind the visitor that this was the scene of an important battle...
as the Cubans see it the victory of a small country against an imperialist
oppressor.
For the Americans it was
a humiliating defeat that helped to shape its Cold War strategy for
the next generation and its policy towards Cuba until now...
There was much talk at
the conference of how President Kennedy was reluctant to back the
invasion.
One of his former advisers
who came to Havana, Arthur Schlesinger, said the president felt obliged
to go ahead since he had inherited the plan from the previous Eisenhower
administration.
"I advised against
it," said Mr Schlesinger, "But my advice was not heeded."
In the aftermath of the
failed invasion, any hopes of reconciliation with the United States
died and President Castro moved closer into the Soviet camp.
The tension increased,
culminating the following year in the Cuban missile crisis when the
Soviet Union tried to station nuclear missiles in Cuba, pointing at
the United States.
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