◆ SpookStack

-pel) SECRET I have read the portions of Mr. Nixon's book with regard to the intel- ligence briefings which he understood Senator Kennedy had been given by me with respect to Cuba during the campaign. I have also seen the White House state- ment issued today on this subject. There has been here,. I believe, an honest misunderstanding. This was probably due to the nature of the mes- sage Mr. Nixon writes he received as to these briefings. The Cuban situation was, of course, dealt with in the briefings I gave to Senator Kennedy. The last briefing I gave him was over a month before the debate...~in which the issue arose. My briefings were intelligence brief- ings on the world situation. They did not cover our own Government's plans or programs for action -- overt or covert. 311 As previously noted, however, by 1964, if not earlier, Mr. Nixon had accepted the fact that he had made an ,. error in assuming that Kennedy had received a more detailed briefing than in fact he truly had. By way of concluding this segment on Richard Nixon's involvement in the Bay of Pigs activity, it should be clear that by no stretch of the imagination was Nixon "the architect of the Bay of Pigs."* 32/ * A statement made to DCI Stansfield Turner by Fawn Brodie who attributed it to Tom Braden, an old CIA man, in a TV documentary on the CIA made by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. - 274 - Tc() F ~ EeRE t