18 & a half minutes

I remember, one of the stories about the CIA's anti-Castro efforts which came out in the 1970s was, that the Agency had had a plan to sprinkle a special powder into Castro's boots which would cause his beard to fall out.  The idea being that if his beard fell out, he would be deprived of his charisma, and power.

Honestly.

Oliver Stone's film Nixon shows a theory where -- there were "special operations" begun in the 1950s when Nixon was Vice President, to do secret things against communist take-overs in various parts of the world, and to try, secretly, to somehow topple Castro.  In the movie, they call it "Track 2."  Three components in Track 2 --
some Wall Street,
some Mafia, and
some CIA folks, planning and strategizing and carrying things out.  (Would have included some of the recruited Cubans....) 

Pres. Nixon, in the film, describes it in this hurried, nervous way, as "this -- thing, that doesn't even know it exists, and just eats people when it doesn't need them anymore...."

"His death was awful.  An awful thing for this country,"
is what movie-Nixon says about the 1963 assassination.

Haldeman asks the pres., "If Kennedy was so clean in all this why didn't he do something about Track 2?"
Nixon:  "Because he didn't even know about it!  I -- didn't want him to get the credit."

In a "Haldeman-Ehrlichman" conversation, one of them suggests, "Regarding the Kennedy assassination, I don't think the old man knows the details, but he believes one of the Track 2 anti-Castro excursions got fouled up and it somehow got turned back on Kennedy."

Like -- some would-be Castro-assassins kept trying to get the Cuban leader, and couldn't, and somehow went after Kennedy instead.  (Which would make no sense to me, or any other regular humans, but in the world of double- and triple-agents and para-military adventurers carrying a grudge, roaming the planet, feeling all James Bond-ish because they're workin' for the CIA -- a person could see where it could have happened that way.  When I "Googled" one of the Watergate burglars, reading along, it sounded like he was pro-Castro, then anti-Castro, and -- it was very confusing....That's, like, a different world.)

In the film, when Pres. Nixon is listening to his tapes, he finds a conversation where he talks about Track 2 and the above sequence of ideas and theories, and he erases it, creating the
famous,
notorious,
unforgettable, and
un-find-able

18-and-a-half-minute gap,

on one
of
the tapes.

(Whew!  exhausting....)

======================
In 1976, during a time when hyper-criticism of JFK had become the trend, Hubert H. Humphrey wrote,
------------ [excerpt]------ 

The ideals of the U.S.A. and, indeed, our accomplishments remain a beacon in darkness.  In the life of humanity, it is still the dawn's early light.

If nothing else has demonstrated that identification with America, reactions to the death of John F. Kennedy should have.  Jack and those of us in his party, those in his administration, those of us in the Congress, had displayed many faces to the rest of the world:  we had done things wise and decent,

thoughtful or rash,

statesmanlike or stupid. 

Yet people wept in villages of Africa and Asia, in barrios of Latin America, in cities everywhere.  The legacy of our President and my friend has been a mixed one, and historians will go on sorting it out eternally.  But the life of the man, what he meant to us, was a beacon.  If the hopes of the world were diminished by his death, America remains, and must remain, the hope of mankind.

...That day had begun like many other days:  breakfast at home with Muriel, orange juice, two fried eggs, crisp bacon, toast and coffee, the Washington Post, the New York Times.  Then to my Capitol office and the morning hour in the Senate, kidding, chatting with my colleagues....

Muriel and I arrived at the Chilean embassy about 1:10 P.M., joining about forty other guests....Presently Ed Morgan was called to the phone, came back quickly, obviously upset.  He whispered in my ear that the President had been shot in Dallas but was still alive....

I went out to my car in front of the embassy to listen to the radio for a moment.  I heard that two priests had gone into the hospital and the thought pounded into my consciousness that the President was dying or already dead.

John Kennedy was my colleague, my opponent, my President, and my friend.  As a colleague in the Senate, I had sometimes resented him and been angry with him for doing less than I thought he could and should in the tough work of getting legislation passed.  As an opponent in the presidential primaries, I had envied him -- his charm, his grace, his money, his success. 

As President of the United States, I grew to respect his intelligence and how he put it to work, his commitment and how he stuck by it, his vision and how he communicated it to our people.  As a friend, I grew to love him for his warmth and wit and compassion, and for what he gave to me personally by sharing those qualities.

...Muriel and I rode together...to Andrews Air Force Base to join others waiting for Air Force One....Jackie Kennedy, blood-splattered still, moving in shocked grace...Kenny O'Donnell, Larry O'Brien, and Dave Powers, tenderly watching over and handling the casket as it was lowered from the plane and moved into the ambulance.

Lady Bird Johnson came down the ramp and walked to where we stood, kissed us both, and said quietly, "We need you both so much."

...Jack Kennedy -- like any man -- had shortcomings, to be sure, but he did enunciate and articulate a beautiful dream and vision for this nation.  He gave young people inspiration and strength....

What Adlai Stevenson gave in depth to limited parts of our society, John Kennedy gave to a broader audience: 

a belief that politics and government could be an honorable calling, worthy of the best of us, producing light and hope and joy and compassionate concern for the least of us.  Not many men in our history have been able to do that, and particularly not when times are relatively good.  Some called it charisma,

but that is an inadequate description. 

Possibly, like love or jazz, it is something felt, which to the unfeeling cannot be explained.    [end excerpt]---------------

===================
{Book excerpts from The Education of a Public Man, by Hubert H. Humphrey.  Copyright, 1976.  Doubleday.}

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