What we lost

From JFK and the Unspeakable:

Kennedy says he wants “to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.”

 Meeting, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and CIA director Allen Dulles present a plan for a preemptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union “in late 1963, preceded by a period of heightened tensions.” President Kennedy walks out of the meeting, saying to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, “And we call ourselves the human race.”

 November 21, 1963: Before leaving on his trip to Texas, President Kennedy, after being given a list of the most recent casualties in Vietnam, says to Assistant Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff: “After I come back from Texas, that’s going to change. Vietnam is not worth another American life.”