LAST WEEKEND, Senate minority leader Tom Daschle spent seven hours talking to Fidel Castro in Havana. U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Thomas Donohue spent three days there last month. In June, low-level State Department and Coast Guard officials met with their Cuban counterparts to discuss the potential for collaboration on drug interdiction operations. More and more officials, it seems, are pursuing a dialogue with Castro's government.
But not the White House. Fearful of a right-wing attack at the first sign that Washington might engage in diplomatic discussions over its long-standing differences with Castro, the Clinton administration has rejected all high-level talks with the Cuban government.
A diplomatic dialogue with Cuba should not be considered heresy. Every president since John F. Kennedy has attempted -- in secret -- to discuss U.S.-Cuban relations with Castro. Indeed, according to recently declassified documents, Kennedy was seeking to negotiate a rapprochement before he was assassinated in Dallas. The details of this long-hidden history carry immediate relevance to current policy toward Cuba.
John F. Kennedy would seem the most unlikely of presidents to seek an accommodation with Fidel Castro. His tragically abbreviated administration bore responsibility for some of the most assertive U.S. efforts to roll back the Cuban revolution: the Bay of Pigs invasion, the trade embargo, Operation Mongoose and a series of CIA-Mafia assassination attempts against the Cuban leader.
Unknown to all but Robert Kennedy and a handful of advisers, John Kennedy began pursuing an alternative tact on Cuba in 1963: a secret dialogue toward a rapprochement with Castro. To a policy built upon "overt and covert nastiness," as Top Secret White House memorandums characterized U.S. operations against Cuba, was added "the sweet approach," meaning the possibility of "quietly enticing Castro over to us."
In a memorandum on "The Cuban Problem," Kennedy's National Security Adviser, McGeorge Bundy, provided the rationale for this type of initiative:
"There is always the possibility that Castro or others currently high in the regime might find advantage in a gradual shift away from their present level of dependence on Moscow. In strictly economic terms, both the United States and Cuba have much to gain from re-establishment of relations. A Titoist Castro is not inconceivable and a full diplomatic revolution would not be the most extraordinary event in the 20th century."
