American History: Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis
19 October 2011
Army officials meet with President John F. Kennedy in the White House in Washington in 1962 to discuss U-2 spy plane flights over Cuba
STEVE EMBER: Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION – American history in VOA Special English. I’m Steve Ember
(MUSIC)
This week in our series, we continue the story of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Kennedy, a Democrat, defeated Republican Vice President Richard Nixon in one of the closest elections in United States history. He took office in January nineteen sixty-one.
After three months, Kennedy faced a major foreign policy failure.
On April seventeenth, armed Cuban exiles tried to invade Cuba, less one hundred fifty kilometers from the American state of Florida. They had been trained by the Central Intelligence Agency. Their goal was to overthrow the island's communist leader, Fidel Castro. In nineteen fifty-nine he and his guerrilla forces had overthrown Fulgencio Batista, the president who was supported by the United States.
The exiles came ashore at Cuba's Bay of Pigs. Most were killed or captured.
The last administration, under President Dwight Eisenhower, had planned the invasion. But Kennedy had approved it. After the failure, some Americans again wondered if the forty-three-year-old president had enough experience to lead the nation.
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