“John and Robert Kennedy knew what they were doing.  They waged a vicious war against Fidel Castro–a war someone had to lose.”

And the loser turned out to be John F. Kennedy.

So writes investigative reporter Gus Russo in Live By the Sword: The Secret War Against Castro and the Death of JFK, published in 1998.

In what is almost certainly the definitive account of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Russo reaches some startling–but highly documented–conclusions:

• Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated Kennedy.
• He did it alone.
• Oswald, a former Marine, was a committed Marxist–whose hero was Castro.
• The CIA’s ongoing campaign to overthrow and/or assassinate Castro was an open secret throughout the Gulf.
• Oswald visited New Orleans in the spring of 1963.
• There he learned that Castro was in the crosshairs of the CIA.
• Oswald told his Russian-born wife, Marina: “Fidel Castro needs defenders. I’m going to join his army of volunteers.”
• Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner, murdered Oswald because he was distraught over Kennedy’s death.
• Ruby was not part of a Mafia conspiracy to silence Oswald.
• Skeptics of the Warren Commission–which concluded that Oswald had acted alone–asked the wrong question: “Who killed Kennedy?”
• They should have asked: “Why was he killed?”
• The answer–according to Russo: “The Kennedys’ relentless pursuit of Castro and Cuba backfired in tragedy on that terrible day in November, 1963.”

Another book well worth reading about America’s Cuban obsession during the early 1960s is American Tabloid, by James Ellroy.

Although a novel, it vividly captures the atmosphere of intrigue, danger and sleaziness that permeated that era in a way that dry, historical documents never can.

“The 50′s are finished,” reads its paperback dust jacket. “Zealous young lawyer Robert Kennedy has a red-hot jones to nail Jimmy Hoffa. JFK has his eyes on the Oval Office.

“J. Edgar Hoover is swooping down on the Red Menace. Howard Hughes is dodging subpoenas and digging up Kennedy dirt. And Castro is mopping up the bloody aftermath of his new Communist nation….

“Mob bosses, politicos, snitches, psychos, fall guys and femmes fatale. They’re mixing up a Molotov cocktail guaranteed to end the country’s innocence with a bang.”

Among the legacies of America’s twisted romance with anti-Castro Cubans:

• Following the JFK assassination, there was a coverup.
• Its purposes: To protect the reputation of the United States government–and that of its newly-martyred President.
• Thus, the CIA and FBI concealed the CIA-Mafia assassination plots from the Warren Commission assigned to investigate Kennedy’s murder.
• Other government officials participating in the coverup included Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and President Lyndon B. Johnson.
• Ironically, this secrecy ignited the widespread–and false–belief that the President had died at the hands of a government conspiracy.
• Robert Kennedy feared that his relentless pursuit of Castro might have led Castro to “take out” JFK first.
• Fearing his own assassination if he continued Kennedy’s efforts to murder Castro, President Johnson ordered the CIA to halt its campaign to overthrow and/or assassinate the Cuban leader.
• The huge Cuban community throughout Florida–and especially Miami–continues to exert a blackmailing influence on American politics.
• Right-wing politicians from Richard Nixon to Newt Gingrich have reaped electoral rewards by catering to the demands of this hate-obsessed voting block.
• As a result, the United States still refuses to open diplomatic relations with Cuba–even though it has done so with such former enemies as the Soviet Union, China and Vietnam.
• These Cuban ex-patriots hope that the United States will launch a full-scale military invasion of the island to remove Castro.
• Having grown rich and soft in the United States, they fear to risk their own lives by returning to Cuba to loverthrow Castro–as he did against Fulgencio Batista.

The United States is fast approaching the 50th anniversay of the most dangerous moment of the Cold War: The Cuban Missile Crisis, when the world stood only minutes away from nuclear Armageddon.

That crisis stemmed from our twisted obsession with Cuba, an obsession that continues today.

So what are the lessons to be learned from that obsession?

• It is long past time to demand major changes in our foreign policy toward Cuba.
• It’s time to end the half-century contamination of American politics by those Cubans who live only for their hatred of Castro–and those political candidates who live to exploit it. 
• (For example: Marco Rubio got elected U.S. Senator from Florida in 2010 by claiming that his parents had been forced to leave Cuba in 1959, after Fidel Castro took power. In fact, they had left Cuba in 1956–during the Batista dictatorship.)
• It’s time to end this wag-the-dog relationship.  A population of about 1,700,000 Cubans should not be allowed to shape the domestic and foreign policy of a nation of 300 million.
• Those who continue to hate–or love–Castro should be left to their own private feud.  But that is a feud they should settle on their own island, and not from the shores of the United States.

On October 22, 1962, President John F. Kennedy went on nationwide TV to announce the discovery of the missiles and his blockade of Cuba.

He warned that any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation would be regarded as an attack on the United States by the Soviet Union–and would trigger “a full retaliatory response” upon the U.S.S.R.

And he demanded that the Soviets remove all of their offensive weapons from Cuba:

“The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are, but it is the one most consistent with our character and courage as a nation and our commitments around the world.

“The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender or submission.”

On October 26,  the United States raised the readiness level of SAC forces to DEFCON 2–the step just short of war.  For the only  time in U.S. history, B-52 bombers were dispersed to various locations and made ready to take off, fully equipped, on 15 minutes’ notice.

Other measures taken included:

• One-eighth of America’s 1,436 bombers were on airborne alert.
• About 145 intercontinental ballistic missiles stood on ready alert.
• Air Defense Command redeployed 161 nuclear-armed interceptors to 16 dispersal fields within nine hours with one-third maintaining 15-minute alert status.
• Twenty-three nuclear-armed B-52 were sent to orbit points within striking distance of the Soviet Union.

An invasion date was set for October 29.  But the Kennedy Administration–and the American military–didn’t know that the Russian soldiers guarding the missiles had been armed with tactical nuclear weapons.

Had the Marines gone in, those mini-nukes would have been used.  And a fullscale nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union would have almost certainly followed.

At the height of the crisis, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy offered a solution.

Khrushchev had sent two teletypes to Kennedy.  The first had agreed to remove the missiles, but the second had demanded that the United States remove its own missiles from Turkey, which bordered the Soviet Union.

Robert Kennedy’s solution: The administration should ignore the second message–and announce that it had accepted Khrushchev’s offer to remove the missiles.

After this announcement was made, President Kennedy said to his advisors: “It can go either way now.”

John F. Kennedy

The crisis ended on October 28.  Under enormous pressure, Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles from Cuba.

Behind his decision lay a secret promise by the Kennedy administration to remove its obsolete nuclear missiles from Turkey.  And a public pledge to not invade Cuba.

On the night the crisis ended, there occurred a prophetic exchange between the two Kennedy brothers.

JFK:  “Maybe this is the night I should go to the theater”–a reference to Abraham Lincon’s fatal attendance of Ford’s Theater at the end of the Civil War.

RFK:  “If you go, I want to go with you.”

John F. and Robert F. Kennedy

But President Kennedy was not finished with Castro.  While continuing the campaign of sabotage throughout Cuba, the Kennedys were preparing something far bigger: A fullscale American invasion of the island.

On October 4, 1963, the Joint Chiefs of Staff submitted its latest version of the invasion plan, known as OPLAN 380-63.  Its timetable went:

• January, 1964:  Infiltration into Cuba by Cuban exiles.
• July 15, 1964:  U.S. conventional forces join the fray.
• August 3, 1964:  All-out U.S. air strikes on Cuba.
• October 1, 1964:  Full-scale invasion to install “a government friendly to the U.S.”

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Robert Kennedy–referring to the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor–had resisted demands for a “sneak attack” on Cuba by saying: “I don’t want my brother to be the Tojo of the 1960s.”

Now the Kennedys planned such an attack on Cuba just one month before the November, 1964 Presidential election.

Then fate–in the unlikely figure of Lee Harvey Oswald–intervened.

On November 22, 1963, while the President rode through Dallas in an open-air automobile, a rifle-wielding assassin opened fire.  He scored two hits on Kennedy–in the back of the neck and head.  The second wound proved instantly fatal.

The nation and the world were shocked–and plunged into deep mourning.

But for some of those who had waged a secret, lethal war against Fidel Castro for the previous two years, Kennedy’s death–at least in retrospect–didn’t come as a surprise.

Robert Kennedy, in particular, spent the remaining years of his life agonizing over the possibility that his highly personal war against Castro had backfired.

That Castro, fed up with the CIA’s assassination plots against him, had retaliated with one of his own.

Robert Kennedy’s fears and guilt were compounded by the fact that, while waging war on Castro, he had waged an equally ruthless crusade against organized crime.

And some of the mobsters he had done his best to put into prison had played a major role in the CIA’s efforts to “hit” Castro.  Had the Mafia–believing itself the victim of a double-cross–put out a “contract” on JFK instead?

October 16-28 will mark the 50^th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis—universally regarded by historians as the single most dangerous moment in the Cold War.

For 13 days, President John F. Kennedy faced off with Nikita Khrushchev, chairman of the Soviet Union.

John F. Kennedy

Nikita Khrushchev

The Soviets had shipped nuclear missiles to Fidel Castro, the “Maximum Leader” of Communist Cuba—and Kennedy demanded their removal.

To secure this, he ordered the United States Navy to impose a blockade of Cuba.  And to back up that threat, he put U.S. military forces on “DefCom 2”—the stage just below that of launching all-out nuclear war.

And the Soviets, with the second-largest nuclear arsenal in the world, were equally poised to launch Armageddon.

For almost two weeks, the world held its collective breath.

Would the Soviets try to run the Navy’s blockade of Cuba?

If so, would a shooting incident between American and Russian ships in the Pacific lead to all-out nuclear war?

Would the Soviets launch a pre-emptive strike against the United States?

Had any one of an infinite number of miscalculations happened, life as we know it would have vanished.

Historians generally agree that the crisis was resolved successfully, but its legacies remain furiously alive.  Fifty years later:

• Cuba remains legally off-limits to American tourists and is widely seen as an island of terror, and
• The Cuban refugees who have flocked to south Florida since 1959 have long imposed a blackmailer’s stranglehold on American Presidential politics.

Few American politicians have had the moral courage to openly acknowledge the latter.  One of these is Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul, who realizes that the Cold War is over-–and the United States should recognize it.

This rare moment of political courage came during the GOP Presidential debate in Tampa, Florida, on January 23, 2012.

Moderator Brian Williams: “Let’s say…that Fidel Castro has died.  And there are credible people in the Pentagon who predict upwards of half a million Cubans may take that as a cue to come to the United States. What do you do?”

Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum played to the huge-–and politically influential-–Cuban community in Florida, and especially Miami.

All three pledged to continue the decades-old policy of refusing to trade with Cuba or open diplomatic relations while it was ruled by a nominally Communist government.

And all three draft-dodging “chickenhawks” were eager to prove how “tough” they were–at the risk of other men’s lives.

Former Speaker of the House Gingrich: “A Gingrich presidency will not tolerate four more years of this dictatorship.”

Former Massachusetts Governor Romney: “I will work very aggressively with the new leadership in Cuba to try and move them towards a more open degree than they have had in the past.”

And former U.S. Senator Santorum: “The sanctions have to stay in place, because we need to have a very solid offer to come forward and help the Cuban people.”

But Texas Congressman Ron Paul had a vastly different answer:

Ron Paul

“No, I would do pretty much the opposite.  I don’t like the isolationism of not talking to people. I was drafted in 1962 at the height of the Cold War when the missiles were in Cuba. And the Cold War’s over.

“And I think we propped up Castro for 40-some years because we put on these sanctions, and this–only used us as a scapegoat. He [Castro] could always say, anything wrong, it’s the United States’ fault.

“But I think it’s time…to quit this isolation business of not talking to people. We talked to the Soviets. We talk to the Chinese. And we opened up trade, and we’re not killing each other now.

“We fought with the Vietnamese for a long time. We finally gave up, started talking to them, now we trade with them. I don’t know why…the Cuban people should be so intimidating.

“I don’t know where you get this assumption that all of a sudden all the Cubans would come up here.

“I would probably think they were going to celebrate and they’re going to have a lot more freedom if we would only open up our doors and say, we want to talk to you, and trade with you, and come visit….

“I think we’re living in the dark ages when we can’t even talk to the Cuban people. I think it’s not 1962 anymore.

“And we don’t have to use force and intimidation and overthrow of a–in governments. I just don’t think that’s going to work.”

Paul’s answer reveals–and leaves out–a great deal.

Those truths will be explored in detail throughout this series of articles on the American obsession with Cuba.