Haynes Johnson (1931–2013)

One can only imagine while reading this what Haynes Johnson would think about where we are in 2023 as we cycle yet again through a difficult period of time for the U.S., followed by an increase in right-wing character assassination and authoritarianism.

The book itself is an easy read, very narrative in nature. It lays out the roots of McCarthyism and traces those threads into what was the present at the writing of the book, post 9/11.

The value of the book is more in the history of McCarthyism than in the final chapters about post-McCarthy politics and what we might look forward to in the future. No one in 2005 could foresee the advent of an Donald J. Trump. That said, I think Arthur Schlesinger's comment that while history doesn't repeat itself, it often rhymes was never truer than the parallels between McCarthy and Trump. Oddly enough both men shared Roy Cohn as an adviser.… (meer)

The "Bay of Pigs" was the invasion of Cuba sponsored by the CIA and the US government in 1961, during John F. Kennedy's presidency. The goal of the invasion was to overthrow Fidel Castro's "communist" regime and re-establish a government that the US could control. History has judged the invasion as a disaster in every way -- ineptly conceived, badly planned and underfunded, with a small contingent of disaffected Cubans who could not possibly have achieved their military objective. Worst of all, they were implicitly promised US military support by the CIA, support that was never provided. Further, Castro knew the rebels were coming and his troops were waiting for them; and those invaders who weren't killed were captured and imprisoned. The fiasco was a public relations disaster for the US and for the Kennedy administration, and helped set the stage for the Cuban Missile crisis of 1962.

Haynes Johnson's reconstruction of the Bay of Pigs invasion was published in 1964, when the episode was still raw. It drew heavily on first- hand accounts provided by the invaders themselves, who naturally were bitterly resentful of how they had been used. Thus it offers a useful historical perspective that benefits from the immediacy of the events recounted. It was left to later accounts to offer a fuller portrayal of what was behind the invasion. Rather than being planned by low level CIA agents, we now know that the invasion had high level support throughout the US government, in administrations of both Eisenhower and Kennedy. A more complete (and more dispassionate) account can be found in Jim Rasenberger's "The Brilliant Disaster: JFK, Castro, and America's Doomed Invasion of the Bay of Pigs," among other recent sources.… (meer)