Generals mocking JFK behind his back during Cuban Missile Crisis caught on tape...

[Octafish]

21. Not exactly. LeMay ordered unauthorizedoverflights of Soviet airspace during Cuban Missile Crisis...

While I trust the Pentagon and the nation's men and women in uniform, as a whole, there are a few exceptions.

Spy Flights of the Cold War

Review by Capt. Troy Thomas, USAF
Book by Paul Lashmar
Naval Institute Press, 118 Maryland Avenue, Annapolis, Maryland 21402, 1996, 256 pages, $29.95.
Document created: 13 May 99

Perceptions of the cold war often focus on nuclear arsenals and Third World surrogate conflicts, overlooking a persistent war of aerial espionage in which hundreds of airmen lose their lives. Spy Flights of the Cold War offers an intriguing yet controversial historical record of US and British aerial reconnaissance against the communist bloc from 1946 to 1963. The author’s research reveals numerous harrowing missions by brave aircrews flying deep into hostile territory on missions previously declared “routine.” Overlaying this operational history is a political account that indicts the US Air Force (USAF) and, specifically, Gen Curtis E. LeMay for exceeding presidential authority, manipulating intelligence estimates, and using the spy flights in an attempt to instigate another world war. Although it is a tribute to individual airmen, the text openly criticizes USAF leadership.

SNIP…

Criticism of the USAF and LeMay is a prominent theme. In addition to questionable evidence that LeMay encouraged unauthorized overflight missions, Lashmar devotes an entire chapter to SAC’s aggressive use of reconnaissance missions as a political tool intent on provoking nuclear war. If successfully implemented, Project Control overflights would “demonstrate the Russians’ military impotency” and possibly create the conditions for a preventive war. In addition to attributing a prolonged cold war to General LeMay and other senior USAF leaders, Lashmar also contends that SAC and the USAF intelligence community inflated Soviet missile, and later bomber, strengths to justify inordinate spending on SAC. Although estimates by the intelligence community later proved high, evidence for a duplicitous USAF agenda is suspect.

CONTINUED…

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/bookrev/lashmar.html

That's why I care, my Friend.