"To sin by silence when we should protest makes cowards of men." - Ella Wheeler Wilcox...

[first lines] title card: "To sin by silence when we should protest makes cowards of men." - Ella Wheeler Wilcox President Eisenhower: ...We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. And to do this three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishement. We annually spend on military security alone... Narrator: January, 1961. President Dwight D. Eisenhowers's Farewell Address to the Nation. President Eisenhower: ...This conjunction of an immense military establishment and arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence - economic, political, even spiritual - is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office in the federal government. We must guard against the aquisition of unwarranted influence - whether sought or unsought - by the military-industrial complex. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. M. L. King, Jr.: ...that "All men are created equal." JFK: Every degree of mind and spirit that I possess will be devoted to the cause of freedom around the world.

January, 1961: President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Farewell Address to the Nation. Now, this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence, economic, political, even spiritual, is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the federal government. We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought by the military-industrial complex. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. November, 1960: Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy of Massachusetts wins one of the narrowest election victories in American history over the Vice President Richard Nixon by a little more than 100,000 votes. Alongside his beautiful and elegant wife, Jacqueline Bouvier, Kennedy is the symbol of the new freedom of the 1960s, signifying change and upheaval to the American public. "That all men are created equal." Every degree of mind and spirit that I possess will be devoted to the cause of freedom around the world. Today, the proudest boast is: "Ich bin ein Berliner!" He inherits a secret war against the communist Castro dictatorship in Cuba, a war run by the CIA and angry Cuban exiles. Castro is a successful revolutionary frightening to American business interests in Latin America. This war culminates in the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion in April, 1961, when Kennedy refuses to provide air cover for the exiled Cuban brigade. Kennedy, taking public responsibility for the failure, privately claims the CIA lied to him and tried to manipulate him into ordering an all-out American invasion of Cuba. In October, 1962, the world comes to the brink of nuclear war when Kennedy quarantines Cuba after announcing the presence of offensive Soviet nuclear missiles 90 miles off American shores. Soviet ships with more missiles sail towards the island, but at the last moment, they turn back. The world breathes with relief. In Washington, rumors abound that JFK has cut a secret deal with Russian Premier Khrushchev not to invade Cuba in return for a Russian withdrawal of missiles. Suspicions abound that Kennedy is soft on Communism. Kennedy also finds himself embroiled in Laos and Vietnam. We've got our difficulties there, quite obviously. Unless a greater effort is made by the government to win popular support, I don't think the war can be won out there. In the final analysis, it's their war. They're the ones who have to win it or lose it. Early that fateful summer, Kennedy speaks of his new vision at the American University in Washington. What kind of peace do I mean, and what kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war.