gh-ranking CIA officials have attempted to frustrate presidential policies and have initiated or sanctioned illegal operations, to include working with organized crime. JFK and the CIA were in a virtual state of war from the moment of the Bay of Pigs disaster until the day he died. JFK did not trust the CIA and he reportedly intended to dismantle it after the 1964 election. In Vietnam, the CIA refused to carry out instructions from the ranking American official in the country. The CIA ignored President Kennedy's directive that it not initiate operations requiring greater firepower than a handgun. It also ignored JFK's orders to stop working with the Mafia. When Kennedy heard the news that South Vietnam's dictator Ngo Diem had been murdered by a CIA-backed coup, against his expressed wishes, he was outraged. Kennedy blamed the CIA for Diem's murder. Kennedy said he had to "do something about" the CIA and that the Agency should be stripped of its exorbitant power. On another occasion, Kennedy reportedly said he would scatter the CIA "into a thousand pieces." One of the more troubling cases of CIA disobedience to presidential authority was its behavior in relation to Cuba. In September 1963, long after President Kennedy had ordered a halt to the covert campaign against Castro, senior CIA staffers, including the deputy director, Richard Helms, and Desmond Fitzgerald, the head of the Agency's Cuba unit, approved plans to kill Castro, without seeking presidential authorization. They also continued other covert operations against Cuba in violation of the President's instructions. Needless to say, these CIA officers did not inform the President of their activities; nor did they inform Congress or the Attorney General, Robert Kennedy. They didn't even tell then-CIA director John McCone, probably because President Kennedy following the Bay of Pigs disaster appointed him. In short, as Anthony Summers has observed, "in September and October 1963--...
