Rostow annoyed Kennedy as an "idea-a-minute man", causing him to complain that Rostow had too many ideas for his own good and was unable to focus on what was really important. Kennedy's main complaint was that Rostow would in a rapid-fire fashion offer up a deluge of ideas, which made him hard to follow. Kennedy had come into the White House in January 1961 as a confirmed hawk, who during the 1960 election had criticized Eisenhower as "soft on Communism" for not overthrowing Fidel Castro, but the disaster of the Bay of Pigs invasion in April had cooled his martial ardor. After the Bay of Pigs invasion, he came to distrust the hawkish advice he received from the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As a result, Kennedy also rejected the hawkish advice he received from Rostow, charging the experts had all told him that the Bay of Pigs invasion could not possibly fail. Just after the Bay of Pigs invasion, Kennedy rejected advice from Rostow to send U.S. troops to Laos. The economist John Kenneth Galbraith advised his friend Kennedy that Laos was not worth a war, and Kennedy himself noted to supply forces in Laos would present severe logistical problems. Finally remembering how the approach of American forces upon the Yalu river led to Chinese intervention in the Korean War, the president was concerned that intervening in Laos would cause a war with China that he did not want. Instead, Kennedy sent the diplomat W. Averell Harriman to negotiate an agreement to "neutralize" Laos, which marked the beginning of the feud between Rostow and Harriman as the former started to see the latter as an appeaser.