Editor's Note

This issue begins with an article by David M. Barrett discussing a peculiar aspect of the Kennedy administration's attempt to cope with the failure of the U.S.-sponsored intervention in the Bay of Pigs in Cuba in April 1961. On 24–25 April, barely a week after the operation had collapsed, high-ranking administration officials, including President John F. Kennedy, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles, spent two full days holding confidential, off-the-record briefings for more than 200 journalists. The briefings had been scheduled long before the Bay of Pigs operation occurred and were originally intended as general overviews, but the agenda was hastily adjusted to include coverage of the Bay of Pigs. The policymakers diverged in their views of what had gone wrong and sought to mitigate the public relations damage caused by the fiasco. Although the content of the briefings is interesting in itself, the...