Pat M. Holt was a leading Latin American affairs expert and journalist who served as chief of staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. After earning a master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of Journalism, he began a career as a reporter until he was drafted into the Army in 1943. He then studied Japanese at Georgetown University and worked translating Japanese radio intercepts. Senator Tom Connally of Texas later hired Pat as a staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1950. In 1958, he was put in charge of Latin American affairs as the region assumed an increasingly important position on the committee’s agenda. Just before his ICWA fellowship in Latin America (1961–1962), he wrote a memorandum outlining his thoughts on Cuba to the committee’s chair J. William Fulbright, who objected to the US-backed invasion of Cuba in a memo to President John F. Kennedy shortly before the Bay of Pigs debacle. Later, the president told the senator: “You’re the only guy in town who can say, ‘I told you so.’”