“When the Legend Becomes Fact, Print the Legend”. Near the end of the classic western movie, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”, the newspaper editor finds out that it was really John Wayne not Jimmy Stewart who killed the bad guy, Liberty Valance, played by Lee Marvin. Stewart was a milk-toast good guy. He and everyone else thought he had shot Liberty Valance. He rode to fame doing lots of good deeds and becoming a U.S. Senator based on that belief .
In October, 1962, the world stood on the edge of nuclear war. U.S. spy planes had photographed the construction of Russian missile sites in Cuba. President John F. Kennedy demanded that the missile sites be removed. He ordered a naval embargo of Cuba to prevent the delivery of missiles. For 13 days, Kennedy stood face to face with Soviet Premier Khrushchev and threatened nuclear war. At that time, the U.S. nuclear arsenal was much larger than that of the USSR.
Khrushchev blinked. He dismantled his missile sites and the crisis ended. News media around the world lauded Kennedy for having stood up to Kruschev and won. That is not what really happened. In fact, a secret deal was reached with the Russians. A deal which would remain secret for 20 years. In exchange for removing the Russian missiles from Cuba, the U.S. agreed to remove 45 nuclear tipped Jupiter missiles from Turkey and Italy. The Jupiters had a range of over 1500 miles bringing Moscow and many other Russian cities within range. They were topped with a 1.44 megaton nuclear warhead.
Cuban President, Fidel Castro, had good reason to want nuclear weapons in Cuba. He knew that no country with nuclear weapons was likely to be invaded. That remains a fact today when eight countries have nuclear weapons. The U.S. had already sponsored a failed invasion of Cuba at the disastrous Bay of Pigs in April, 1961. Our CIA had organized and funded the invasion by Cuban exiles convincing President Kennedy that the Cuban people would rise up and overthrow Castro when the invasion began. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Castro was in fact a popular hero among the Cuban people. He and his rag tag army had overthrown U.S. backed Fulgencio Batista and his American mafia allies in 1959. Batista, a.k.a. “Batista the Butcher”, then fled to Spain and the mafia closed their casinos and returned to Miami. Having survived a number of CIA assassination attempts and one U.S. invasion, Castro feared another invasion and reasoned that if he had nuclear weapons that would prevent any future invasion.
Like the newspaper editor said, “When the Legend Becomes Fact, Print the Legend”.
Legendary radio broadcaster, Paul Harvey, was famous for relating interesting stories of events we thought we knew well. At the end of each of his stories, he would reveal an unexpected twist. Some fact which greatly changed or expanded what we thought we knew. His closing line was “and now you know the rest of the story”. Now you know the rest of the story…… They both blinked.
Author: Staff
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