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Fidel Makes A Stop, 1959 

Not On My Watch?   

A sunny side of the Sixties is on display in the film Virtual JFK, portraying a happy time when a wise and unassassinated President Kennedy manages to avoid the Vietnam War.

How’d he do it?     In this happy world Kennedy  apparently emerged sadder and wiser from early stumbling over Cuba, which you can do if you disappear Operation Mongoose.

Still, it would have been a blessing to be spared this. 

Nothing To See Here, Keep Moving

We’ve recently seen release of ever more definitive documents showing that nothing happened in the Gulf of Tonkin, despite the use of the “Incident” as Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam War MacGuffin.

Now we learn that the Kennedy Administration’s finest hour, the storied grace under pressure of a wise beyond his years Jack Kennedy, was kind of a bust too.

Specifically, the moment of high seas drama when Soviet Missile ships turned back from the US Cuba blockade, the Eyeball to Eyeball/Other Fellow Blinked stuff – that didn’t happen either.

Happier Days

The Washington Post’s Michael Dobbs is unleashing his account of the Missile Crisis semi-serially in the paper, with vast companion documents and excerpts available on the National Security Archives website.

Only A Mad Dream

Beginning of the End

A fugitive from American fraud and bribery charges since the 1970s, Robert Vesco may have died in Cuba, which jailed him for a more than a decade.

The Associated Press reports that a Robert Vesco died and was buried last year in Havana, but quotes an American writer who interviewed Vesco as having doubts.

Nixon Man

A $200,000 bribe to Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President over a Securities & Exchange Commission investigation was among the charges that led Vesco to flee the US.

Before the fall Vesco collected the bad seeds of several First Families.

Vesco knew failed restaurateur and Nixon brother Donald Nixon, who testified at the bribe trial, and employed Donald Nixon Jr. One of Franklin Roosevelt’s sons was also charged by the SEC.

Vesco ended up in Cuba after hiding out in several Caribbean nations. Among other dubious schemes he worked with Donald Junior on aids cures before the Cubans jailed him for 13 years. Nixon got off with a month’s house arrest.

One Man, Our Vote

Greg Grandlin offers a roundup of one interested party’s role in the last twelve presidential elections, and perhaps on his last one.

“Fidel Castro, the First Superdelegate” clocks el Lider Maximo’s walk-ons and cameos over five decades.

Vote Early & Vote Often