FREE ESSAY ON THE BAY OF PIGS INVASION.

THE BAY OF PIGS INVASION.

The story of the failed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs is 
one of mismanagement, overconfidence, and lack of security. The 
blame for the failure of the operation falls directly in the lap of 
the Central Intelligence Agency and a young president and his 
advisors. The fall out from the invasion caused a rise in tension 
between the two great superpowers and ironically 34 years after the 
event, the person that the invasion meant to topple, Fidel Castro, 
is still in power. To understand the origins of the invasion and 
its ramifications for the future it is first necessary to look at 
the invasion and its origins. 
Part I: The Invasion and its Origins. 
The Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961, started a few days 
before on April 15th with the bombing of Cuba by what appeared to 
be defecting Cuban air force pilots. At 6 a.m. in the morning of 
that Saturday, three Cuban military bases were bombed by B-26 
bombers. The airfields at Camp Libertad, San Antonio de los Ba?os 
and Antonio Maceo airport at Santiago de Cuba were fired upon. 
Seven people were killed at Libertad and forty-seven people were 
killed at other sites on the island. 
Two of the B-26s left Cuba and flew to Miami, apparently to 
defect to the United States. The Cuban Revolutionary Council, the 
government in exile, in New York City released a statement saying 
that the bombings in Cuba were . . . carried out by 'Cubans inside 
Cuba' who were 'in contact with' the top command of the 
Revolutionary Council . . . . The New York Times reporter 
covering the story alluded to something being wrong with the whole 
situation when he wondered how the council knew the pilots were 
coming if the pilots had only decided to leave Cuba on Thursday 
after  . . . a suspected betrayal by a fellow pilot had 
precipitated a plot to strike . . . . Whatever the case, the 
planes came down in Miami later that morning, one landed at Key 
West Naval Air Station at 7:00 a.m. and the other at Miami 
International Airport at 8:20 a.m. Both planes were badly damaged 
and their tanks were nearly empty. On the front page of The New 
York Times the next day, a picture of one of the B-26s was shown 
along with a picture of one of the pilots cloaked in a baseball hat 
and hiding behind dark sunglasses, his name was withheld. A sense 
of conspiracy was even at this early stage beginning to envelope 
the events of that week. 
In the early hours of April 17th the assault on the Bay of 
Pigs began. In the true cloak and dagger spirit of a movie, the 
assault began at 2 a.m. with a team of frogmen going ashore with 
orders to set up landing lights to indicate to the main assault 
force the precise 
location of their 
objectives, as well as 
to clear the area of 
anything that may impede [Map of Cuba was here] 
the main landing teams [Link to Map to be added when 
when they arrived. At time permits] 
2:30 a.m. and at 3:00 
a.m. two battalions came 
ashore at Playa Gir?n 
and one battalion at Playa Larga beaches. The troops at Playa Gir?n 
had orders to move west, northwest, up the coast and meet with the 
troops at Playa Larga in the middle of the bay. A small group of 
men were then to be sent north to the town of Jaguey Grande to 
secure it as well. (See figure 1). 
When looking at a modern map of Cuba it is obvious that the 
troops would have problems in the area that was chosen for them to 
land at. The area around the Bay of Pigs is a swampy marsh land 
area which would be hard on the troops. The Cuban forces were quick 
to react and Castro ordered his T-33 trainer jets, two Sea Furies, 
and two B-26s into the air to stop the invading forces. Off the 
coast was the command and control ship and another vessel carrying 
supplies for the invading forces. The Cuban air force made quick 
work of the supply ships, sinking the command vessel the Marsopa 
and the supply ship the Houston, blasting them to pieces with five- 
inch rockets. In the end the 5th battalion was lost, which was on 
the Houston, as well as the supplies for the landing teams and 
eight other smaller vessels. With some of the invading forces' 
ships destroyed, and no command and control ship, the logistics of 
the operation soon broke down as the other supply ships were kept 
at bay by Casto's air force. As with many failed military 
adventures, one of the problems with this one was with supplying 
the troops. 
In the air, Castro had easily won superiority over the 
invading force. His fast moving T-33s, although unimpressive by 
today's standards, made short work of the slow moving B-26s of the 
invading force. On Tuesday, two were shot out of the sky and by 
Wednesday the invaders had lost 10 of their 12 aircraft. With 
air power firmly in control of Castro's forces, the end was near 
for the invading army. 
Over the 72 hours the invading force of about 1500 men were 
pounded by the Cubans. Casto fired 122mm. Howitzers, 22mm. cannon, 
and tank fire at them. By Wednesday the invaders were pushed back 
to their landing zone at Playa Gir?n. Surrounded by Castro's forces 
some began to surrender while others fled into the hills. In 
total 114 men were killed in the slaughter while thirty-six died as 
prisoners in Cuban cells. Others were to live out twenty years or 
more in those cells as men plotting to topple the government of 
Castro. 
The 1500 men of the invading force never had a chance for 
success from almost the first days in the planning stage of the 
operation. Operation Pluto, as it came to be known as, has its 
origins in the last dying days of the Eisenhower administration and 
that murky time period during the transition of power to the newly 
elected president John F. Kennedy. 
The origins of American policy in Latin America in the late 
1950s and early 1960s has its origins in American's economic 
interests and its anticommunist policies in the region. The same 
man who had helped formulate American containment policy towards 
the Soviet threat, George Kennan, in 1950 spoke to US Chiefs of 
Mission in Rio de Janeiro about Latin America. He said that 
American policy had several purposes in the region, 
. . . to protect the vital supplies of raw materials 
which Latin American countries export to the USA; to 
prevent the 'military exploitation of Latin America by 
the enemy' [The Soviet Union]; and to avert 'the 
psychological mobilization of Latin America against us.' 
. . . . 
By the 1950s trade with Latin America accounted for a quarter 
of American exports, and 80 per cent of the investment in Latin 
America was also American. The Americans had a vested interest 
in the region that it would remain pro-American. 
The Guatemalan adventure can be seen as another of the factors 
that lead the American government to believe that it could handle 
Casto. Before the Second World War ended, a coup in Guatemala saw 
the rise to power of Juan Jose Ar'valo. He was not a communist in 
the traditional sense of the term, but he . . . packed his 
government with Communist Party members and Communist 
sympathizers. In 1951 Jacobo Arbenz succeeded Ar'valo after an 
election in March of that year. The party had been progressing with 
a series of reforms, and the newly elected leader continued with 
these reforms. During land reforms a major American company, the 
United Fruit Company, lost its land and other holdings without any 
compensation from the Guatemalan government. When the Guatemalans 
refused to go to the International Court of Law, United Fruit began 
to lobby the government of the United States to take action. In the 
government they had some very powerful supporters. Among them were 
Foster Dulles, Secretary of State who had once been their lawyer, 
his brother Allen the Director of Central Intelligence who was a 
share holder, and Robert Cutler head of the National Security 
Council. In what was a clear conflict of interest, the security 
apparatus of the United States decided to take action against the 
Guatemalans. 
From May 1st, 1954, to June 18th, the Central Intelligence 
Agency did everything in its power to overthrow the government of 
Arbenz. On June 17th to the 18th, it peaked with an invasion of 450 
men lead by a Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas. With the help of air 
support the men took control of the country and Arbenz fled to the 
Mexican Embassy. By June 27th, the country was firmly in control of 
the invading force. With its success in Guatemala, CIA had the 
confidence that it could now take on anyone who interfered with 
American interests. 
In late 1958 Castro was still fighting a guerilla war against 
the corrupt regime of Fulgencio Batista. Before he came to power, 
there was an incident between his troops and some vacationing 
American troops from the nearby American naval base at Guantanamo 
Bay. During the incident some US Marines were held captive by 
Casto's forces but were later released after a ransom was secretly 
paid. This episode soured relations with the United States and 
the chief of U.S. Naval Operations, Admiral Burke, wanted to send 
in the Marines to destroy Castro's forces then but Secretary of 
State Foster Dulles disagreed with the measures suggested and 
stopped the plan. 
Castro overthrew Batista in 1959. Originally Castro was not a 
communist either and even had meetings with then Vice-President 
Richard Nixon. Fearful of Castro's revolution, people with money, 
like doctors, lawyers, and the mafia, left Cuba for the United 
States. To prevent the loss of more capital Castro's solution was 
to nationalize some of the businesses in Cuba. In the process 
of nationalizing some business he came into conflict with American 
interests just as Arbenz had in Guatemala. . . . legitimate U.S. 
Businesses were taken over, and the process of socialization begun 
with little if any talk of compensation. There were also 
rumours of Cuban involvement in trying to invade Panama, Guatemala, 
and the Dominican Republic and by this time Castro had been 
turn down by the United States for any economic aid. Being rejected 
by the Americans, he met with foreign minister Anasta Mikoyan to 
secure a $100 million loan from the Soviet Union. It was in 
this atmosphere that the American Intelligence and Foreign 
Relations communities decided that Castro was leaning towards 
communism and had to be dealt with. 
In the spring of 1960, President Eisenhower approved a plan to 
send small groups of American trained, Cuban exiles, to work in the 
underground as guerrillas to overthrow Castro. By the fall, the 
plan was changed to a full invasion with air support by exile 
Cubans in American supplied planes. The original group was to 
be trained in Panama, but with the growth of the operation and the 
quickening pace of events in Cuba, it was decided to move things to 
a base in Guatemala. The plan was becoming rushed and this would 
start to show, the man in charge of the operation, CIA Deputy 
Director Bissell said that, 
. . . There didn't seem to be time to keep to the 
original plan and have a large group trained by this 
initial cadre of young Cubans. So the larger group was 
formed and established at La finca, in Guatemala, and 
there the training was conducted entirely by Americans . 
. . . 
It was now fall and a new president had been elected. 
President Kennedy could have stopped the invasion if he wanted to, 
but he probably didn't do so for several reasons. Firstly, he had 
campaigned for some form of action against Cuba and it was also 
the height of the cold war, to back out now would mean having 
groups of Cuban exiles travelling around the globe saying how the 
Americans had backed down on the Cuba issue. In competition 
with the Soviet Union, backing out would make the Americans look 
like wimps on the international scene, and for domestic consumption 
the new president would be seen as backing away from one of his 
campaign promises. The second reason Kennedy probably didn't abort 
the operation is the main reason why the operation failed, problems 
with the CIA. 
Part II: Failure and Ramifications. 
The failure at the CIA led to Kennedy making poor decisions 
which would affect future relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union. 
The failure at CIA had three causes. First the wrong people were 
handling the operation, secondly the agency in charge of the 
operation was also the one providing all the intelligence for the 
operation, and thirdly for an organization supposedly obsessed with 
security the operation had security problems. 
In charge of the operation was the Director of Central 
Intelligence, Allan Dulles and main responsibility for the 
operation was left to one of his deputies, Richard Bissell. In an 
intelligence community geared mainly for European operations 
against the USSR, both men were lacking in experience in Latin 
American affairs. Those in charge of Operation Pluto, based 
this new operation on the success of the Guatemalan adventure, but 
the situation in Cuba was much different than that in Guatemala. In 
Guatemala the situation was still chaotic and Arbenz never had the 
same control over the country that Castro had on Cuba. The CIA had 
the United States Ambassador, John Puerifoy, working on the inside 
of Guatemala coordinating the effort, in Cuba they had none of this 
while Castro was being supplied by the Soviet block. In 
addition, after the overthrow of the government in Guatemala, 
Castro was aware that this may happen to him as well and probably 
had his guard up waiting for anything that my indicate that an 
invasion was imminent. 
The second problem was the nature of the bureaucracy itself. 
The CIA was a new kid on the block and still felt that it had to 
prove itself, it saw its opportunity in Cuba. Obsessed with 
secrecy, it kept the number of people involved to a minimum. The 
intelligence wing of CIA was kept out of it, their Board of 
National Estimates could have provided information on the situation 
in Cuba and the chances for an uprising against Castro once the 
invasion started. Also kept out of the loop were the State 
Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff who could have provided 
help on the military side of the adventure. In the end, the CIA 
kept all the information for itself and passed on to the president 
only what it thought he should see. Lucien S. Vandenbroucke, in 
Political Science Quarterly of 1984, based his analysis of the Bay 
of Pigs failure on organizational behaviour theory. He says that 
the CIA . . . supplied President Kennedy and his advisers with 
chosen reports on the unreliability of Castro's forces and the 
extent of Cuban dissent. Of the CIA's behaviour he concludes 
that, 
. . . By resorting to the typical organization strategy 
of defining the options and providing the information 
required to evaluate them, the CIA thus structured the 
problem in a way that maximized the likelihood the 
president would choose the agency's preferred option . . 
. . 
The CIA made sure the deck was stacked in their favour when the 
time came to decide whether a project they sponsored was sound or 
not. President Kennedy's Secretary of State at the time was Dean 
Rusk, in his autobiography he says that, 
. . . The CIA told us all sorts of things about the 
situation in Cuba and what would happen once the brigade 
got ashore. President Kennedy received information which 
simply was not correct. For example, we were told that 
elements of the Cuban armed forces would defect and join 
the brigade, that there would be popular uprisings 
throughout Cuba when the brigade hit the beach, and that 
if the exile force got into trouble, its members would 
simply melt into the countryside and become guerrillas, 
just as Castro had done . . . . 
As for senior White House aides, most of them disagreed with 
the plan as well, but Rusk says that Kennedy went with what the CIA 
had to say. As for himself, he said that he . . . did not serve 
President Kennedy very well . . . and that he should have 
voiced his opposition louder. He concluded that . . . I should 
have made my opposition clear in the meetings themselves because he 
[Kennedy] was under pressure from those who wanted to proceed. 
When faced with biased information from the CIA and quiet advisors, 
it is no wonder that the president decided to go ahead with the 
operation. 
For an organization that deals with security issues, the CIA's 
lack of security in the Bay of Pigs operation is ironic. Security 
began to break down before the invasion when The New York Times 
reporter Tad Szulc . . . learned of Operation Pluto from Cuban 
friends. . . earlier that year while in Costa Rica covering an 
Organization of American States meeting. Another breakdown in 
security was at the training base in Florida, 
. . . Local residents near Homestead [air force base] had 
seen Cubans drilling and heard their loudspeakers at a 
farm. As a joke some firecrackers were thrown into the 
compound . . . . 
The ensuing incident saw the Cubans firing their guns and the 
federal authorities having to convince the local authorities not to 
press charges. Operation Pluto was beginning to get blown wide 
open, the advantage of surprise was lost even this early in the 
game. 
After the initial bombing raid of April 15th, and the landing 
of the B-26s in Florida, pictures of the planes were taken and 
published in newspapers. In the photo of one of the planes, the 
nose of it is opaque whereas the model of the B-26 the Cubans 
really used had a plexiglass nose, 
. . . The CIA had taken the pains to disguise the B-26 
with FAR markings [Cuban Air Force], the agency 
overlooked a crucial detail that was spotted immediately 
by professional observers . . . . 
All Castro's people had to do was read the newspapers and they'd 
know that something was going to happen, that those planes that had 
bombed them were not their own but American. 
In The New York Times of the 21st of April, stories about the 
origins of the operation in the Eisenhower administration appeared 
along with headlines of C.I.A. Had a Role In Exiles' Plans 
revealing the CIA's involvement. By the 22nd, the story is 
fully known with headlines in The New York Times stating that CIA 
is Accused by Bitter Rebels and on the second page of that 
day's issue is a full article on the details of the operation from 
its beginnings. 
The conclusion one can draw from the articles in The New York 
Times is that if reporters knew the whole story by the 22nd, it can 
be expected that Castro's intelligence service and that of the 
Soviet Union knew about the planned invasion as well. Tad Szulc's 
report in the April 22nd edition of The New York Times says it all, 
. . . As has been an open secret in Florida and Central 
America for months, the C.I.A. planned, coordinated and 
directed the operations that ended in defeat on a 
beachhead in southern Cuba Wednesday . . . . 
It is clear then that part of the failure of the operation was 
caused by a lack of security and attention to detail on the part of 
the Central Intelligence Agency, and misinformation given to the 
president. 
On the international scene, the Bay of Pigs invasion lead 
directly to increased tensions between the United States and the 
Soviet Union. During the invasion messages were exchanged between 
Kennedy and Khrushchev regarding the events in Cuba. Khrushchev 
accused the Americans of being involved in the invasion and stated 
in one of his messages that a, 
. . . so-called small war can produce a chain reaction 
in all parts of the world . . . we shall render the Cuban 
people and their Government all necessary assistance in 
beating back the armed attack on Cuba . . . . 
Kennedy replied giving American views on democracy and the 
containment of communism, he also warned against Soviet involvement 
in Cuba saying to Khrushchev, 
. . . In the event of any military intervention by 
outside force we will immediately honor our obligations 
under the inter-American system to protect this 
hemisphere against external aggression . . . . 
Even though this crisis passed, it set the stage for the next 
major crisis over Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba and probably lead 
to the Soviets increasing their military support for Castro. 
In the administration itself, the Bay of Pigs crisis lead to 
a few changes. Firstly, someone had to take the blame for the 
affair and, as Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles was 
forced to resign and left CIA in November of 1961 Internally, 
the CIA was never the same, although it continued with covert 
operations against Castro, it was on a much reduced scale. 
According to a report of the Select Senate Committee on 
Intelligence, future operations were . . . to nourish a spirit of 
resistance and disaffection which could lead to significant 
defections and other by-products of unrest. The CIA also now 
came under the supervision of the president's brother Bobby, the 
Attorney General. According to Lucien S. Vandenbroucke, the 
outcome of the Bay of Pigs failure also made the White House 
suspicious of an operation that everyone agreed to, made them less 
reluctant to question the experts, and made them play devil's 
advocates when questioning them. In the end, the lessons 
learned from the Bay of Pigs failure may have contributed to the 
successful handling of the Cuban missile crisis that followed. 
The long term ramifications of the Bay of Pigs invasion are a 
little harder to assess. The ultimate indication of the invasions 
failure is that thirty-four years later Castro is still in power. 
This not only indicates the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, 
but American policy towards Cuba in general. The American policy, 
rather than undermining Castro's support, has probably contributed 
to it. As with many wars, even a cold one, the leader is able to 
rally his people around him against an aggressor. 
When Castro came to power he instituted reforms to help the 
people and end corruption, no longer receiving help from the Soviet 
Union things are beginning to change. He has opened up the Cuban 
economy for some investment, mainly in telecommunications, oil 
exploration, and joint ventures. In an attempt to stay in 
power, he is trying to adapt his country to the new reality of the 
world. Rather than suppressing the educated elite, he is giving 
them a place in guiding Cuba. The question is, will they 
eventually want more power and a right to control Cuba's fate 
without Castro's guidance and support? If the collapse of past 
regimes is any indication, they will eventually want more power. 
When Castro came to power in 1959, the major opponents in 
America to him, as with Guatemala, were the business interests who 
were losing out as a result of his polices. The major pressure for 
the Americans to do something came, not only from the Cuban exiles 
in Florida, but from those businesses. Today, the tables are turned 
and businesses are loosing out because of the American embargo 
against Cuba. It is estimated that if the embargo were lifted, $1 
billion of business would be generated for US companies that first 
year. Right now, 100 firms have gone to Cuba to talk about doing 
business there after the embargo is lifted. Will American 
policy change toward Cuba because of pressure from business 
interests and growing problems with refugees from Cuba? Given the 
reasons why the United States got involved in Latin American 
politics in the first place, it is very likely that their position 
will change if they can find a face saving way to do so. American 
policy at this time though is still stuck in the cold war, the 
chairmen of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Jesse Helms said 
that, 
. . . Whether Castro leaves Cuba in a vertical or 
horizontal position is up to him and the Cuban people. 
But he must and will leave Cuba . . . . 
The failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion was caused by 
misinformation and mismanagement, the consequences of that was egg 
in the face for the Americans and an increase in tension between 
the superpowers at the height of the cold war. We will only have to 
wait and see if the Americans have really learned their lesson and 
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