In every change of policy there's an element of perfidy. I don't know whether to laugh or sob. There's a fine line between courage and stupidity.

Illinois and the election were mine in sixty till Daley ordered ballot tampering by his underworld clods. But in every change of policy there's an element of perfidy:

the gangsters were rewarded with an inquisitor's decree when Jack gave Justice to his brother Bob. There's a fine line between courage and stupidity.

I planned the Cuban invasion meticulously, but the new administration botched the job. In every change of policy there's an element of perfidy:

the president blamed the CIA but postponed its demise out of expediency so as not to improve the Republicans' odds. In the absence of courage what's left is stupidity.

In the crime of the century Jack failed to consider every contingency like an act of self-defense by my pals in Miami, The Company, the mob. In every change of policy there's an element of perfidy and a fine line between courage and stupidity. <>"An Element of Perfidy": Late November 1963. The speaker is former vice-president and failed presidential candidate Richard Nixon, who as vice-president served as CIA White House action officer for the proposed invasion of Cuba. The information on which this poem is based is found in several of the secondary sources cited in the endnotes of the ebook "JFK: Lines of Fire".