How Kennedy bought 1,200 hand rolled Cuban cigars just hours before he ordered blockade of communist state 50 years ago
President John F Kennedy ordered an aide to buy him as many Cuban cigars as he could just hours before he authorised the U.S. trade embargo - which subsequently made them illegal.
Kennedy asked his head of press and fellow cigar smoker Pierre Salinger to obtain '1,000 Petit Upmanns' on February 6, 1962, so he could have them in his hands before they were deemed contraband.
Then, seconds after he was told the next morning that 1,200 of Cuba's finest export had been bought for him, he signed the decree to ban all of the communist state's products from the U.S.
The re-surfacing of the story, initially recounted by Salinger to Cigar Aficionado magazine in 1992, comes with the passing of the 50th anniversary of the embargo yesterday.
JFK, he said, called him into his office and said he needed 'some help' to find 'a lot of cigars'. He wanted '1,000 Petit Upmanns' and needed them by 'tomorrow morning'.
Salinger added: 'I walked out of the office wondering if I would succeed. But since I was a solid Cuban cigar smoker, I knew a lot of stores. I worked on the problem into the evening.
'The next morning, I walked into my White House office at about 8am, and the direct line from the President's office was already ringing. He asked me to come in immediately.
'How did you do Pierre?' he asked, as I walked through the door. 'Very well,' I answered. In fact, I'd gotten 1,200 cigars. Kennedy smiled, and opened up his desk.
'He took out a long paper which he immediately signed. It was the decree banning all Cuban products from the United States. Cuban cigars were now illegal in our country.'
When the embargo began, American teenagers were doing The Twist, the U.S. had yet to put a man into orbit around the Earth and a first-class U.S. postage stamp cost just 4 cents.
The world is much changed since the early days of 1962, but the near-total trade ban has remained the same.
Supporters say it is a justified measure against a repressive government that has never stopped being a thorn in Washington's side.
Critics call it a failed policy that has hurt ordinary Cubans instead of the government. All acknowledge that it has not accomplished its core mission of toppling Fidel and Raul Castro.
'All this time has gone by, and yet we keep it in place,' said Wayne Smith, who was a young U.S. diplomat in Havana in 1961 when relations were severed and who returned as the chief American diplomat after they were partially re-established under President Jimmy Carter.
He said: 'We talk to the Russians, we talk to the Chinese, we have normal relations even with Vietnam. We trade with all of them. So why not with Cuba?'
In the White House, the first sign of the looming embargo came when President John F Kennedy told his press secretary to go buy him as many H. Upmann Cuban cigars as he could find. The aide came back with 1,200 stogies.
Kennedy announced the embargo on February 3, 1962, citing 'the subversive offensive of Sino-Soviet communism with which the government of Cuba is publicly aligned'.
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