President Kennedy was made well aware of the perils of the Bay of Pigs invasion as diminished in scope, secrecy, support and chances of success; he nevertheless opted to proceed with it in the forlorn hopes on the one hand that it would work and on the other that U.S. participation would not be discovered. Although consistent with, if not mandated by, his earlier campaign oratory, it was a disaster of the first order.
Following the Bay of Pigs disaster, various additional attempts were made by the Kennedy administration, under the lead of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, to dispose of the Castro regime.
Operation Mongoose, implemented after the Bay of Pigs, consisted of some thirty separate plots.
The preparation phase must result in a political action organization in being in key localities inside Cuba, with its own means for internal communications, its own voice for psychological operations, and its own action arm (small guerrilla bands, sabotage squads, etc.). It must have the sympathetic support of the majority of the Cuban people, and make this fact known to the outside world. (It is reported that the majority of Cubans are not for the present regime, but are growing apathetic towards what appears to be a hopeless future or the futility of their status.)Various tasks were assigned. Among these wereThe climactic moment of revolt will come from an angry reaction of the people to a government action (sparked by an incident), or from a fracturing of the leadership cadre within the regime, or both. (A major goal of the Project must be to bring this about.) The popular movement will capitalize on this climactic moment by initiating an open revolt. Areas will be taken and held. If necessary, the popular movement will appeal for help to the free nations of the Western Hemisphere. The United States, if possible in concert with other Western Hemisphere nations, will then give open support to the Cuban peoples' revolt. Such support will include military force, as necessary.
Task 5: CIA to submit plan by 1 February for defection of top Cuban government officials, to fracture the regime from within. The effort must be imaginative and bold enough to consider a "name" defector to be worth at least a million U.S. dollars. This can be the key to our political action goal and must be mounted without delay as a major CIA project.
Article comments
1 - bliffle
Good article. I'll look it over more carefully later, just had a moment to scan it, but it coheres with what I remember from those days and what followed.
2 - James F. Grant
I think perhaps you have finally realized that JFK made no promise to invade Cuba during the 1960 debate with Mr. Nixon. Had you consulted the debate transcript before writing your blog you would have had your answer: no such promise was made. The second problem you have is a continued insistence that JFK alone is to blame for the Bay of Pigs failure. Your discussion here of Kennedy's alterations to the original plan are simply irrelevant for one reason: CIA itself knew in November 1960 that the operation was doomed. This conclusion is clear from the report of CIA's inspector general on the matter. In a report ordered by Allen Dulles himself, it is clear that the CIA blamed itself for its failures.
"Five months before the Bay of Pigs invasion, the CIA task force plotting to overthrow Fidel Castro concluded that the invasion was ``unachievable'' as a covert paramilitary operation, according to a newly discovered unclassified document. Indeed, historians have documented individuals expressing doubts at various times ahead of the ill-fated mission. But the document, a 300-page internal CIA history, reveals for the first time that the architects themselves foresaw failure during a Nov. 15, 1960, meeting to prepare a briefing for President-elect John F. Kennedy and recorded it in a memo. "There will not be the internal unrest earlier believed possible, nor will Castro's defense permit the type of strike first planned," say notes of the meeting, according to the official CIA historian, Jack Pfeiffer. ``Our second concept (1,500-3,000) man force to secure a beach with airstrip is also now seen to be unachievable, except as a joint Agency/DOD CIA/Pentagon action."
" It reads like a 300-page chronicle of mission creep and misadventures in the embryonic effort to oust Castro - from proposals to stage dirty tricks to early talks in Miami and New York between CIA agents and American executives on how to foil the young Cuban revolution. In it, Pfeiffer writes of the Nov. 15, 1960, session of the CIA task force code-named Western Hemisphere Branch Four (WH/4), which met to prepare a summary for the deputy director for plans, Richard M. Bissell Jr., to help Dulles brief Kennedy on foreign affairs. But no historical account shows that Bissell, who ran the project, ever told Dulles. Or that either man told Kennedy when he got his first in-depth national intelligence briefing on the Cuba crisis on Nov. 18 - by the swimming pool at the Kennedy family's Palm Beach vacation home. "If they thought it was unachievable, one could argue that Bissell owed it to JFK to tell him what they thought. There is no evidence that he did," says Barrett, who found the document while researching his latest book, "The CIA and Congress: The Untold Story From Truman to Kennedy."
Jake Esterline was CIA's project director for the operation. In an interview with the Miami Herald in February 1998 he offered strong criticism of Richard Bissell: "Esterline said the Kirkpatrick report reinforces the conclusion that he and Jack Hawkins, a Marine colonel detached to the Bay of Pigs project as its paramilitary chief, had reached in recent years: That Bissell had lied to them"especially regarding air cover -- and at the least withheld information from President Kennedy.
"It's now clear, based on documents released to the National Security Archive over the last few years that Bissell lied constantly or withheld vital information. We know now that Bissell had already agreed with President Kennedy that the expected air support would not be forthcoming,'' said Esterline.
The report, Esterline said, "also raises the very strong possibility that Bissell had not been direct and forthright with President Kennedy in giving Hawkins' and my own very strong views in what the inevitable result would be if the project were not fully supported."
As noted in my previous post CIA was well aware that the Russians had discovered the plan, but CIA at no time shared this vital information with President Kennedy.
See: http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/bay-of-pigs/soviets.htm
Despite the changes JFK asked for in the plan, Bissell at no time told him the operation was doomed if it went ahead. Kennedy had made it quite clear to all participants from the beginning that the operation would have to succeed or fail on its own, he would not send in the Marines. As Bissell himself admitted in his memoirs he was too afraid the operation would be cancelled to give the President the truth: "Fear of cancellation became-absorbing.... It is-possible that we in the Agency were not as frank with the President about-deficiencies as we could have been. As an advocate for maintaining the President's authorization, I was very much afraid of what might happen if I said, "Mr. President, this operation might as well be made open because the role of the United States certainly cannot be hidden." (p. 173). Bissell realized the issue of air support was irrelevant, "even if more Brigade planes or flights had ever been permitted, there never would have been enough competent, recruitable non-US pilots for probable success" (pp. 170, 173, 187-8, 194-5)("Reflections of a Cold Warrior" Richard E. Bissell, Jr.")
Thus, Bissell's memoirs leave no doubt the issue of air support was essentially irrelevant.
3 - Dan Miller
Mr. Grant,
We could argue these points until long after Fidel Castro's death, and that of his brother as well, but we appear to see things so differently that no useful purpose seems likely to be served. Perhaps what JFK actually offered during his campaign was to hold a bake sale or a car wash to support the Cuban "fighters for freedom" in exile. I suppose that anything is possible.
It is clear to me that JFK had all of the information he needed to decide whether to pursue, modify or abandon an action against Castro's Cuba, which his New Frontiersmen generally opposed and for which opposition they advanced their reasons, as revealed in the National Security Archives which you also cite in an earlier comment on an earlier thread. Instead, JFK elected to pursue a plan which, as drastically weakened at their insistence, had minimal chances of success. After the Bay of Pigs debacle, JFK continued to attempt to overthrow Castro through Operation Mongoose, dealt with briefly in the article.
I would
askbeg you to read Grayston L. Lynch's book on the subject. Mr. Lynch was "on the ground" in Cuba with the invasion force, and wrote a first hand account of what happened, what went wrong and why.As to the after action reports condemning the CIA, a scape-goat had to be found and was. That often happens, and it is a shame that it does.
Dan
4 - Clavos
@#3:
Dan, You're probably right; the two of you may never agree.
But, as I read comments from both of you, it struck me that, whether Kennedy or the CIA, or a combination of elements within the US government, the real tragedy and shame for the USA here is that Americans recruited, trained, equipped and pointed the Cuban exiles at Playa Girón, promising to give them all the support needed, and then withdrawing it at the last minute; after they were committed to the landing.
A shameful chapter in US history, and one which contributed to the ongoing destruction of Cuba and its economy, as well as the demoralization and impoverishment of its people, all at the hands of one of history's worst tyrants, and lasting so far, more than 47 years.
5 - James F. Grant
Mr. Miller,
I'm afraid your point of view on the failure of the invasion is effectively refuted purely by CIA sources such as Bissell, Esterline and Hawkins. Moreover, this point of view is also held by most other historians. The "after action" reports to which you refer were prepared by CIA itself. But even if we cast those reports aside you are still left with the memo prepared for Bissell in November 1960 which advised him the operation was doomed without massive American support. Nonetheless Bissell pressed on with it. Even with the president's tinkering with the plan, Bissell advised him as late as April 10 that it would succeed as the NS archive shows. And of course, Bissell admits he gave poor advice as I have shown from his memoirs. As to Mr. Lynch, he was further down the chain of command and perhaps has not familiarized himself with what actually happened in Washington at the time. You see only what you want to see. Those of us with training and background in history have to examine all relevant materials. No self respecting historian would rely on the opinion of a single source such as Mr. Lynch. That would represent only one part of the picture and in fact would have no relevance to what happened in Washington, as Mr. Lynch was not there.
For your argument to hold that the invasion would have succeeded without Kennedy's changes there would have to be evidence from someone in CIA itself that they thought so. The memo to Bissell of Nov. 1960 refutes this.
As I have also shown official CIA historians such as Dr. Jack Pfeiffer are also against your point of view. His four volume history of the Bay of Pigs was completed in 1979, long after anyone was looking for "scapegoats" as you say. His perspective is quite different from yours and Dr. Pfeiffer was Chief of CIA history staff from 1976-79. This remark from his history is particularly telling:
" How, if in mid-November 1960 the concept of this 1,500-3,000 man force to secure a beachhead with an airstrip was envisioned by the senior personnel . . . as `unachievable’ except as a joint CIA/DOD effort, did it become ‘achievable’ in March 1961 with only 1,200 men and as an Agency operation?’’
Interested readers will find Dr. Pfeiffer's study at this link: http://www14.homepage.villanova.edu/david.barrett/bop.html
More recently Prof. Robert Dallek's history of the Kennedy administration ("An Unfinished Life" by Robert M. Dallek) points to the fact that JFK instructed CIA to advise brigade leaders that "U.S. strike forces would not be allowed to participate in or support the operation in any way". Kennedy also asked if brigade leaders thought the operation could succeed without such support and they responded that they wished to proceed. (Foreign Relations of the United States: Cuba 1961-62 p.177)
6 - Dan Miller
Clav states,
That, as far as it goes,* is the crux of the problem, which lay not on the ground in at Playa Girón, but in Washington, D.C.I have yet to find any source for a facially absurd notion that President Kennedy was oblivious to the assessments provided to him by his New Frontiersmen that the project would fail absent a degree of U.S. military support inconsistent with plausible deniability. Those assessments were, and proved to be, correct. Instead of crediting the analyzes of Arthur Schlesinger et al and terminating a plan with no reasonable likelihood of either plausible deniability or success, President Kennedy decided to go forward with it.
Why in the world did he do that? Surely, he was aware that the Cuban ''fighters for freedom,'' Bissell, and others within the CIA wanted it to go forward and to succeed; surely if President Kennedy had believed otherwise he should have aborted it. He did not abort it, and they did not want it to fail. Many of them had rather too much at stake; many of them (those on the ground), their lives. The careers of the others were also at stake. There has been no suggestion, of which I am aware, that any of those people wanted to set President Kennedy, his New Frontier and themselves up for failure.
Whatever else he may have been, President Kennedy was not stupid. Even assuming arguendo that Bissell and a cabal of miscreants at the CIA did want to set the Kennedy administration up for abject failure -- which seems an incredible proposition at best and one which I have not, thus far, seen asserted -- President Kennedy had other ample sources of reliable information including Mr. Schlesinger et al whom he apparently chose to ignore beyond giving in to their demands for deniability -- which they acknowledged probably could not be achieved even with the weak thrust upon which they also insisted -- while also complaining that such a plan would be highly unlikely to succeed militarily.
Why, then, did President Kennedy do it? Solely on the basis of misguided encouragement allegedly offered by an incompetent Mr. Bissell et al? That seems far-fetched. Eisenhower was gone, and with him had gone the idea that deniability or not, the project should go forward. JFK was the President, and one of the jobs of the President is to exercise good judgment. If he was so badly misled by the Eisenhower administration's CIA as to proceed over the protests of his own New Frontiersmen, JFK failed to exercise even mediocre judgment. The Bay of Pigs was in any event an unmitigated disaster.
Perhaps there is a reasonable answer to the question of why JFK failed (a) to maintain plausible deniability, (b) adequately to support an invasion, or to abort the Bay of Pigs disaster; it was his decision to make, and he chose an untenable, mushy, middle ground. If there is a reasonable explanation of why did did what he did, I would very much like to be made aware of it.
Dan
*Grayston L. Lynch, who was on the ground and at least knew what was happening there, observed that (among other failures of promised support) "the cancellation of the only remaining air strike against Castro's [two] jets . . . cost the lives of many good men. . . . The Monday morning raid was cancelled thirty minutes prior to the planes' scheduled departure from Puerto Cabezas. . . . All of the brigade's planes were [later] shot down by the two Castro T-33 jets." Lynch, at pp. 255 - 258.
7 - Clavos
"Kennedy also asked if brigade leaders thought the operation could succeed without such support and they responded that they wished to proceed." (emphasis added)
I have friends who are Brigada veterans who deny that conversation ever took place. They are far more credible to me than government sources trying to cover their own actions.
The US government's actions everywhere in Latin America have been, at best, exploitative and self serving. Its credibility in the region is practically non existent, and deservedly so.
8 - James F. Grant
Clavos,
I think it is likely the Brigade officers were not informed, but the record shows Kennedy wanted them to be so informed.
Mr. Miller,
You are still talking around the issues. My previous posts have more than answered and refuted you. Why did Kennedy allow the operation to go forward? Read my previous posts! Bissell kept telling him the operation would succeed. You say the encouragement of Bissell is "alleged". In fact the documentary record is quite available on this subject and backed up by Bissell's own memoirs! I think you have a lot more reading to do. You can't avoid the fact that CIA's own internal review blamed CIA. That study was ordered by Allen Dulles, not JFK. Small wonder CIA kept the study locked away for decades and even denied its existence repeatedly. I suggest you read that and consult some academic historians on the subject, as well as the material I have already cited which comes almost entirely from CIA sources. CIA is still holding onto some 30,000 pages of documenation so we don't have the full story yet.
No one doubts this was an enormous tragedy and I believe JFK showed poor judgment in going along with this ill fated plan simply because Castro's army vastly outnumbered the invaders. No amount of air support would have helped or changed the ultimate outcome as Bissell admitted in his memoirs referenced in my earlier posts.
9 - James F. Grant
Probably the shortest summation I can make is that JFK would not have gone ahead with the operation if CIA had been straight with him on the chances of success. By constantly reassuring him the operation would succeed CIA served the president badly. Dulles and Bissell simply thought he would send in the Marines if things went badly. JFK had told them from day one he would not do that. They should have listened.
10 - bliffle
As Eisenhower told Dulles, head of CIA, in 1960 "you have left a legacy of ashes".
And they keep doing it. Vietnam. Iraq. Now they want to try again with Iran.
11 - Dan Miller
So then, in a nutshell, it all boils down to:
1. JFK's gullible faith in entrancing assurances from the CIA, the antecedent prophecies of which had been, well, consistently remarkable;
2. JFK's acceptance of his New Frontiersmen's advice to water down the plan to ensure plausible deniability (not so plausible, actually, even well before the invasion) and then to tell a fairy story to his ambassador to the U.N. in the naive hope of keeping deniability, by then far from plausible, on a life-support machine;
3. The inexplicable hope on the part of Bissell and Dulles that President Kennedy would "send in the marines" at the last minute when the situation had deteriorated sufficiently, even though "JFK had told them from day one he would not do that"; and
4. JFK's rejection of his New Frontiersmen's strong advice to abort the invasion even before it had become crystal clear that plausible deniability wouldn't work and that disaster would result. Perhaps President Kennedy should have listened, more attentively.
Or, perhaps, President Kennedy just didn't pay much attention. On 28 or 29 March, "Arthur Schlesinger talks to the President and asks: "What do you think about this damned invasion?" Kennedy reportedly responds: "I think about it as little as possible." Perhaps the operative word is "think."
And then, we have the subsequent Operation Mongoose. . . .
Oh well, I guess arrant
stupidityincompetence or indifference are as good explanations as any. Perhaps the still classified 30,000 pages of documentation still held by the CIA will provide a better explanation; perhaps they won't. I look forward to living long enough to read them.Dan
12 - Clavos
Stupidity (especially on the part of JFK) fits, too.
13 - James F. Grant
Mr. Miller,
My earlier remarks still stand and are as I have said many times simply drawn from CIA sources. You have offered nothing to refute them. Go argue with the CIA historians, as they are the ones you have a real problem with. You are too full of vitriol and venom to write anything remotely resembling history. One needs a certain amount of calm to sort out any historical episode. I have shown you that you are wrong, so you are angry. Too bad.
I didn't even deal with CIA's failure to assassinate Castro which was part of the invasion plan, and they bungled that without any help from JFK. But of course, you haven't read enough to even know that right?
It's interesting and humorous, that you bring up the subject of "Mongoose". CIA had primary responsibility for designing and implementing its operations. It is no surprise that it also failed.
14 - Dan Miller
Mr. Grant,
I am not angry; it takes substantially more than you have offered to make me angry. I am, however, mildly amused; we amateur dabblers in history need amusement.
I pretty much discounted the exploding cigar and related stuff, because much of it appears to be legend, rogue operations and grist for pulp fiction; nevertheless, some attempts probably occurred.
As to Mongoose, that began during the Kennedy Administration soon after the Bay of Pigs fiasco and continued until after JFK's death. JFK authorized it, was kept informed and his brother is said to have played a significant role. If President Kennedy were totally disenchanted with the CIA, perhaps he should not have gone along with it or, for that matter, with his brother Robert.
To quote Douglas Adams, "so long and thanks for all the fish."
Dan
15 - James F. Grant
Oh, you thought they were legends huh Dan? Well, if you don't research or read you can think what you want. That makes life easy. You don't need to "discount the exploding cigar", etc. That is all well documented and dealt with in the Church Committee's investigation of CIA in the 1970's. CIA officials at the time admitted to it as well. See: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/02/19/castro.top10/index.html
The article is by Don Bohning who also helped out CIA in the 1960's when he worked for the Miami Herald. It is also well documented in the CIA's Inspector General's Report of 1967 which you can find here: http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=9983&relPageId=1
The CIA attempts on Castro were not part of Mongoose and the Kennedys did not know of them as is admitted in this CIA report on p.144. As the report states Kennedy "strongly admonished" against its involvement with organized crime.
On p.143 we find: "Can CIA state or imply that it was merely an instrument of policy? Not in this case. While it is true that Phase Two was carried out in an atmosphere of intense Kennedy administration pressure to do something about Castro such is not true of the earlier phase. Phase One was initiated in August 1960 under the Eisenhower administration....When Robert Kennedy was briefed on Phase One in May 1962, he strongly admonished Houston and Edwards to check with the Attorney General in advance of any future intended use of U.S. criminal elements. This was not done with respect to Phase Two, which was already well under way at the time Kennedy was briefed..." I think you can see CIA was a "rogue elephant". Yes, I agree the Kennedys should not have relied on them. Again, you are wrong about JFK being "informed". We do agree on something else, however: You are an amateur.
16 - Dan Miller
Mr. Grant,
Thanks for the insights. As a rank amateur, I do appreciate having the benefit of your wisdom. If I am mistaken and RFK was not adequately informed of Operation Mongoose (1961 - 1965), perhaps just a smidgen of the blame lies with him. Since the exploding cigar scenarios were not part of Operation Mongoose, you might consider the possibility that I decided not to cite them for that very reason. One must wonder just what the Kennedy brothers were doing, however.
Dan