◆ SpookStack

of the two plans. with no one challenging the serious differences 119/* that in fact did exist b~tween tbe two proposals. The thirteenth meeting of the Cuban Study Group on the lOth of May 1961 took brief testimony from General Walter Bedell Smith, former Director of Central Intelligence. General Smith's testimony was devoted exclusively to the larger picture of the position of the United States in the world situation and he took a very hard line about the need for the US to understand that covert operations were a tough, dirty business, and concerns about morality were going to have to be put aside in order to 121/ meet the communist challenge in this arena. * According to Arthur Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy was extremely upset by the testimony of the Joint Chiefs, having written: "What really bad work the Joint Chiefs of Staff did on this whole matter Ithe Bay of Pigs Operation]. The plan as they approved it Ithe Trinidad plan] would have been even more catastrophic than the one that finally went into effect." Schlesinger cites as the source .for this and other derogatory comments about failures by the JCS as "RFK handwritten notes after Cuban Study Group meetings of May·l and 11, 1961, RFK papers." 120/ The meeting of 1 May 1961 was the 7th meeting and that of 11 May was the 14th meeting, but there was no testimony by any representatives of the JCS at either of the meetings specified by Schlesinger. The members of the JCS were witnesses at the 12th meeting on 8 May 1961 and the 17th meeting on 18 May. 127 i;