In April 1961, President Kennedy authorized an invasion of Cuba by CIA-trained Cuban exiles designed to overthrow Fidel Castro’s Communist regime. The site of the invasion was an inlet on the island’s southwestern coast called the Bay of Pigs. The invasion failed, in part because of poor planning and in part because Kennedy failed to provide adequate air support. This failure, only three months into his presidency, left Kennedy shaken. It also made enemies of both Castro and the CIA. During the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Kennedy came to regard the US national-security establishment as hostile to his administration and thus began to lean more and more on the advice of his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

Camelot is a castle from the medieval legend of King Arthur, a young and accomplished mythological ruler of England during a long-lost golden age. This legend was the inspiration for the 1960 Broadway musical Camelot, which starred Richard Burton, Julie Andrews, and Robert Goulet. The musical won four Tony awards and became a favorite of the first couple. Jackie Kennedy associated the mythical Camelot with the Kennedy White House, and the association has stuck in the popular imagination. O’Reilly and Dugard use this Camelot