John F Kennedy bought 1200 Cuban cigars hours before he ordered US trade embargo

Daily Mail/ By Lee Moran

 

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.

Order: President John F Kennedy asked an aide to buy him 1,000 Cuban cigars - the day before he authorised the U.S. trade embargo

Accomplices: Pierre Salinger (left) was asked by JFK (right) to buy him 1,000 Cuban cigars the day before he authorised the trade embargo on the communist state

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.

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