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Parallels of attitude.

In November 1961 the Kennedy administration instituted Operation Mongoose, a multi-faceted, covert CIA operation to remove Cuban dictator Fidel Castro from power.

Castro had led an armed revolution two years earlier which had removed Cuba’s corrupt dictator, President Fulgencio Batista, from power.

Journalist and television presenter Ed Sullivan interviews Fidel Castro in Havana shortly after Castro’s revolutionaries had taken control of Havana and the Cuban dictator, Fulgencio Batista, had fled the country, Jan. 1959.

Castro had portrayed himself initially as a champion of the poor who wanted to improve social conditions.

For many Cubans, Castro became a national hero.

Fidel Castro (1926 - 2016), shown at a Washington, DC airport in 1959.

But once in power, Castro instituted a communist dictatorship.

He nationalized foreign-owned assets and crushed political dissent.

Cubans arrive in Miami and then wait for immigration processing, c. 1960.

1.4 million Cubans fled the country.

And many settled in Miami.

The presidential transition. December 6, 1960.

President Eisenhower was then in office.

He retaliated by imposing economic sanctions against Cuba and cutting off diplomatic relations.

The CIA trained Cuban exiles for the Bay of Pigs mission in Guatamala.

Eisenhower also authorized the planning of a Cuban invasion by US-trained Cuban exiles to remove Castro from power.

Castro, with glasses, sits in a tank in the opening hours of the Bay of Pigs operation, April 17, 1961.

The invasion, named the Bay of Pigs for the coastal region of Cuba in which the Cuban exiles commenced their amphibious assault, was undertaken early in the Kennedy Administration and it had failed.

Counter-attack by Castro’s forces during the Bay of Pigs invasion, April 19, 1961.

But the Kennedy Administration remained committed to removing Castro from power.

Left: Castro holds American guns seized in the failed invasion. Right: Cuban exiles taken prisoner after the failed invasion.

Under Operation Mongoose, new methods and tactics would be used.

To formulate them, the CIA conducted a classified psychiatric study of Castro’s personality.

Fidel Castro and Che Guevara marlin fishing off the coast of Cuba, 1960.

And here’s the parallel in attitude: the study’s findings about Castro echo the descriptions former staffers and others have made of Trump:

“Although [Castro] depends on the masses for support, he has no real regard for them and does not trust them sufficiently to hold elections.

“…[H]e has no capabilities for organization and administration, nor does he have any concern for the implementation of detailed plans.

“The outstanding neurotic elements in [Castro’s] personality are his hunger for power and his need for the recognition and adulation of the masses.

“Whenever his self-concept is slightly disrupted by criticism, he becomes so emotionally unstable as to lose to some degree his contact with reality.

“When faced with defeat, [Castro’s] first concern is to retreat strategically to a place where he can regroup his assets and personally lead another rebellion.”

And win or lose, that’s where Trump will take us.

To another rebellion.

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I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Brenda

Banner image by YAMIL LAGE (AFP)