of Vice President Lyndon Johnson, but opponents to the choice within Kennedy's circle, led by Harris Wofford, killed his chances. Dean Rusk was chosen instead. In April 1961, Fulbright advised Kennedy not to go forward with the planned Bay of Pigs invasion. He said, "The Castro regime is a thorn in the flesh. But it is not a dagger at the heart." In May 1961, Fulbright denounced the Kennedy administration's system of having diplomats rotate from one position to another as an "idiot policy." Fulbright provoked international controversy on July 30, 1961, two weeks before the erection of the Berlin Wall, when he said in a television interview, "I don't understand why the East Germans don't just close their border, because I think they have the right to close it." His statement received a three-column spread on the front page of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany newspaper Neues Deutschland and condemnation in West Germany. The U.S. embassy in Bonn reported that "rarely has a statement by a prominent American official aroused so much consternation, chagrin and anger." Chancellor Willy Brandt's Press Secretary Egon Bahr was quoted, "We privately called him Fulbricht." Historian William R. Smyser suggests that Fulbright's comment may have been made at President Kennedy's behest, as a signal to Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev that the wall would be an acceptable means of defusing the Berlin Crisis. Kennedy did not distance himself from Fulbright's comments, despite pressure. In August 1961, as the Kennedy administration held firm in its commitment to a five-year foreign aid program, Fulbright and Pennsylvania U.S. Representative Thomas E. Morgan accompanied Democratic congressional leadership to their weekly White House breakfast session with Kennedy. In delivering opening statements on August 4, Fulbright spoke of the program introducing a new concept of foreign aid in the event of its passage. Fulbright met with Kennedy during the latter's visit to Fort Smith, Arkansas in October 1961. After the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Fulbright modified his position on the Soviet Union from "containment" to détente. His position drew criticism from Senator Barry Goldwater, now the leader of anti-communists in the Senate. In response to Goldwater's call for a "total victory" over communism, Fulbright argued that even "total victory" would mean hundreds of millions of deaths and an impossible, prolonged occupation of a ravaged Soviet Union and China. Chicken war Intensive chicken farming in the United States led to a