Kennedy Fought "Terrific Pressure" to Kill Fidel Castro

By Desmond Okafor · August 8, 2026

CIA officials pushed John F. Kennedy to authorize the murder of Fidel Castro, leaving the President to view his own security apparatus as "a problem in government."

On November 9, 1961, Tad Sulz sat on a white sofa in the White House. Next to him was Dick Goodwin; across from them, President John F. Kennedy. The setting was deceptively casual. Miss Lincoln had just brought in photographs for the President to autograph—one showing Kennedy in a rocker. But the conversation, as recorded in the notes of the meeting, quickly abandoned the domesticity of photo-signing for the cold calculus of regime change.

Kennedy had invited Sulz at the suggestion of Robert Kennedy. Sulz was not a career spook or a military strategist; he was a man who had been in Cuba in May of that year, delivering tractors and spending time with Fidel Castro. He had seen the man, the movement, and the mood of the island. For a President grappling with the wreckage of the Bay of Pigs, Sulz represented a rare point of direct, non-intelligence contact with the enemy.

"What would you think?"

For over an hour, Kennedy played the role of the student, asking questions about Castro’s personality and the stability of his regime. He wanted to know if new guerrilla operations would be effective. But the meeting took a sharp, sudden turn when the President leaned forward. He asked Sulz a question that stripped away the diplomatic veneer: “What would you think if I ordered Castro to be assassinated?”

Sulz did not hesitate. He told the President it would be a "terrible idea." His reasoning was two-fold: pragmatically, he argued that such a move would likely strengthen the Cuban regime rather than dismantle it; morally, he stated that the United States had "no business in assassinations."

Kennedy’s reaction was not one of disagreement, but of relief. He told Sulz he was "testing" him and added, “I’m glad you feel the same way.” He explicitly stated that the U.S. "morally must not be party to assassinations."

Taming the Agency

While the President’s moral stance appears resolute in this record, the most revealing part of the exchange is why the question was asked in the first place. Kennedy admitted he was under "terrific pressure from advisers" to authorize the murder of Castro. While the notes don't name every individual, Sulz recalled that these were likely "intelligence people."

This is the most damning admission in the document. It depicts a Commander-in-Chief who felt besieged by his own security apparatus. Kennedy described the CIA not as a tool of the state, but as "a problem in government." He and Robert Kennedy, according to the notes, wanted to "deal with it" in order to control the agency more effectively.

The subtext is clear: the CIA was not merely suggesting options; it was exerting pressure on the elected executive to commit a war crime. Coming just months after the disaster at the Bay of Pigs, the conversation suggests a White House terrified that its intelligence agency was operating on its own trajectory, viewing the President as an obstacle to be managed rather than a leader to be served.

The Guantanamo Thing

Kennedy’s anxiety about the CIA’s autonomy was not unfounded. The record indicates he was desperate to ensure the agency wouldn't "construct another operation like Bay of Pigs." The "terrific pressure" to kill Castro was not happening in a vacuum; it was part of a broader, aggressive push by the intelligence community to escalate the conflict in the Caribbean regardless of the legal or moral cost.

Dick Goodwin, who was the only other person present in the room, noted that the push for assassination may have been linked to "the Guantanamo thing we been hearing about." The record does not elaborate on the specific nature of this "thing," but the connection implies that the drive for murder was tied to specific tactical maneuvers or provocations centered around the naval base.

In response to this internal instability, Kennedy mentioned the possibility of setting up a "special group on Cuba." The goal was to take a "new look at whole Cuban thing from all points of view." There were no details provided on where this group would be housed or who would staff it, only that the President felt the need to create a new layer of oversight to buffer himself from the rogue impulses of his own intelligence services.

The notes end there, leaving the resolution of that "terrific pressure" an open question. It remains unclear if the "special group" ever succeeded in taming the agency, or if the moral line Kennedy claimed to draw on November 9 held firm against the people he had hired to protect him.