JFK Most Wanted: The Schlesinger Memo

Trump's order on assassination files will reveal an origin story of Kennedy's alienation from the CIA

Arthur Schlesinger, JFK adviser who wrote a censored memo critical of the CIA (Credit: Bernard Gotfryd)

[Editor’s note: This is the second installment of JFK Most Wanted: The Series, prompted by President Donald Trump’s executive order to release all files related to the JFK assassination. The series will identify a dozen specific documents covered by Trump’s order and what they will reveal about the events of 1963. Read the introduction to the series here. And the first installment The Joannides File]

In April 1961 President John F. Kennedy was seething with regret. The CIA’s invasion brigade had been smashed at the Bay of Pigs. In Cuba, impudent leader Fidel Castro burst forth as a revolutionary David who had defeated the American Goliath. In a mortifying press conference, Kennedy, the youngest man ever elected to the office, took sole responsibility. “Success has a hundred fathers,” he observed stoically. “Failure is an orphan.”

The Schlesinger memo is one of many origin stories of the tragedy of November 22, 1963, found in the new JFK files.