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International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence

ISSN: 0885-0607 (Print) 1521-0561 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ujic20

Revisiting the Bay of Pigs Jim Rasenberger: The Brilliant Disaster: JFK, Castro, and America's Doomed Invasion of Cuba's Bay of Pigs Scribner, New York, 2011, 460 p., $32.00

Robert D. Chapman

To cite this article: Robert D. Chapman (2012) Revisiting the Bay of Pigs, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 25:1, 178-184, DOI: 10.1080/08850607.2012.623008

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/08850607.2012.623008

Published online: 08 Dec 2011.

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BOOK REVIEWS

Revisiting the Bay of Pigs

ROBERT D. CHAPMAN

Jim Rasenberger: The Brilliant Disaster: JFK, Castro, and America’s Doomed Invasion

of Cuba’s Bay of Pigs

Scribner, New York, 2011, 460 p., $32.00

On the one hand, we are a people convinced of our own righteousness, power, and genius—a conviction that compels us to cure what ails the wor ld . On the other hand, we are stalked by deep insecurities: our way of life is in constant jeopardy; our enemies are implacable and closing in.

—Jim Rasenberger

I worked in the Bay of Pigs task force and looked forward to reading Jim Rasenberger’s remarkably detailed The Brilliant Disaster, which is based

on long-hidden Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents.

The Bay of Pigs operation played a major role in the 1960 presidential campaign between Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy. The American people, although armed with nuclear weapons, were fearful of a growing Communist presence in Cuba, and the candidates played upon their fears.

Cleverly, Kennedy drew first blood: ‘‘We must attempt to strengthen the non-Batista democratic anti-Castro forces in exile, and in Cuba itself, w h o o f f e r e v e n t u a l h o p e o f overthrowing Castro.’’ Since such a program of sorts already existed,

Robert D. Chapman, a retired Central Intelligence Agency operations officer, saw extensive duty in a variety of overseas assignments, including Cuba at the time of the 1958 revolution. A lawyer before entering the CIA, he became a consultant to the private insurance sector upon his retirement from government service.

International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 25: 178–215, 2012

Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0885-0607 print=1521-0561 online

DOI: 10.1080/08850607.2012.623008

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Nixon had but one choice, which was to protect its security by speaking out against the United States openly aiding anti-Castro forces inside and outside Cuba. Later, as the Bay of Pigs operation

unfolded, and Kennedy became more uncer ta in of i t s consequences , Rasenberger writes, ‘‘Kennedy had himself mainly to blame for his predicament. He had backed himself into a corner with his anti-Castro statements during the campaign, tenaciously and profitably exploiting the issue of Cuba and the previous administration’s missteps.’’ CIA Director Allen W. Dulles

appointed Richard Bissell to direct the operation. An Ivy Leaguer, Bissell was socially one of the elite Kennedy crowd. Previously, he had supervised building the U-2 spy plane. His team completed the project in record time at an under- budget cost of $1 million per plane. He made a name for himself as a doer .1 He was also a snake oi l salesman who, if he believed in something, could convince all who listened. The plan to invade Cuba had a

dead ly , fundamenta l f l aw . I t s planners reasoned that the Cuban people, learning of the invasion, would rise up and oust Fidel Castro. Against all logic, they envisioned that an unarmed people would rebel aga ins t a 30 ,000 -man army , a people’s militia of 200,000, and a national police force. That is not what unarmed people do. From the very beginning, the conceptual flaw was fatal.

Kennedy’s advisors, reputedly the cream of Washington society and the brain trust from Ivy League colleges, fell for the plan hook, line, and sinker; there is no other way to put it. There were several exceptions. One was presidential aide Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. and the other, U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright (D– Arkansas). Schlesinger doubted, but when the showdown came, he voted in favor of the invasion. Fulbright was adamantly opposed. He said, ‘‘If one has faith in the human values of the United States, and if that faith is supported by vigorous and intelligent action, then there is no need to fear compet i t ion from an unshaven megalomaniac.’’

SHIFTING LOCATIONS AND TACTICS

The original landing site for the invasion was the City of Trinidad. The community had a strong anti-Castro sentiment, and importantly, it also had an escape hatch for the invading force. Thus, if the plan failed, the invaders had a route to escape to the nearby Sierra Escambray Mountains where they could exert ‘‘continuing pressure upon the regime.’’ Kennedy ruled out the Trinidad site. ‘‘Too spectacular,’’ he told Bissell. ‘‘It sounds like D-Day. You have to reduce the noise level of this thing.’’ In other words, find a new beachhead. The order stunned the planners.

Only a few days were left to find a site that would satisfy the President. Eventually, they selected the Bay of Pigs, which was perhaps the best

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of a bad lot. It was 80miles west of T r i n i d ad and t h e E s c amb r a y Mountains . Probably, no more isolated location could be found in Cuba which so permitted a ‘‘reduced noise level.’’ On the negative side, it was surrounded by a swamp, with the only road going straight into Castro’s army. If the invasion failed, no escape was possible. In the meantime, Castro possessed

military tactics to fight a guerrilla force. He had learned from experience. During the 1958 revolution, the Cuban military’s strategy was to encircle the mountainous area in order to contain Castro’s guerrilla force. Little attempt was made to engage the guerrilla force in battle. But the army’s tactic did not work. In 1961, rather than containment,

Castro’s approach was to instead pursue every guerrilla group, no matter how large or small, until every guerrilla was caught and killed. No seed was left from which a larger force could grow. Years later, after his capture in the

ill-fated Bolivian adventure, Ernesto ‘‘Che’’ Guevara was debriefed. He inadvertently mentioned that every guerrilla captured by Castro’s army h a d b e e n s h o t , m om e n t a r i l y forgetting that he, too, was now a captured guer r i l l a about to be e x e c u t e d . H e s m i l e d i n acknowledgment of his mistake. In retrospect, whether the brigade’s

landing site was Trinidad or the Bay of Pigs made little difference. Even if the U.S.-supported invasion force ‘‘faded’’ into the mountains, no escape was possible as Brigade 2506

was no match for Castro’s army. The exile force would be attacked and pursued until it was destroyed. And, as history shows, Kennedy wou ld neve r consen t to the i r evacuation by U.S. hel icopters because their use would show the ‘‘American hand’’ that he had tried so hard to conceal.

UNSAFE SKIES

Brigade 2506 had been promised that the sky over the Bay of Pigs would be theirs. The CIA planners knew this was essential. Without air cover the invasion was doomed.

On 15April 1961 the first planned air strikes began. Eight B-26 bombers took off from a Nicaraguan airf ie ld. Disguised as Cuban Air Force planes, they were supposedly piloted by air force defectors. Their mission was to bomb and strafe three airfields to destroy as many planes on the ground as possible. Any planes left unscathed would be dealt with in follow-up strikes. The reported result of the initial bombing was optimistically exaggerated. Aerial photographs showed that more planes were left undamaged than first reported.

Problems quickly arose. Adlai E. Stevenson, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, was never fully briefed on the air strike, and he vigorously contended that it was the action of defectors from the Cuban Air Force. When informed of the t ruth of the operat ion , he was mortified and threatened to resign. He telephoned Secretary of State Dean Rusk, not knowing that his call

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would set in motion a blow to the Bay of Pigs which would seal its fate. Rusk called the President, who on

being told that additional air strikes were coming up, said ‘ ‘I ’m not signed on to this.’’ No D-Day air strikes. The following morning, presidential aide McGeorge Bundy informed CIA officials that the air strikes were off ‘‘until they could be conducted from a strip within the beachhead.’’ But the airstrip at the Bay of Pigs was not long enough to accommodate the Agency’s planes. Thus, Bundy’s statement was rather preposterous, but it maintained a united presidential front. Rusk said air strikes were not that important— the supply ships could be unloaded under cover of darkness. Reasoning by intelligent men was gone. On a Sunday afternoon, Jacob

Esterline and Jack Hawkins, the top CIA planners, called on Bissell at his home. They believed that with all the administration’s shenanigans and backtracking, they could not continue. The operation was bound to fail, and the administration would allow it to f a i l . T h e y t h e n o f f e r e d t h e i r resignations. Bissell asked that they stay with him until the end, and they agreed.

WADING INTO DISASTER

D-Day was 17 April. As Brigade 2506 m a d e i t s w a y t o s h o r e , t h e y encountered another problem. An undetected coral reef tore the hulls of the landing craft and forced the invaders to wade to shore. Doing so c o n s um e d t i m e a n d e n e r g y .

Equipment and ammunition were lost. The timetable fell apart as the supply ships with equipment and ammunition hung offshore. Jim Rasenberger gives a blow-by-

blow description of the fighting on the beachhead. With morning light the Cuban Air

Force arrived. On Castro’s direction, before attacking the invaders, the planes were to sink the supply ships t o l e a v e t h e i n v a d e r s o n t h e beachhead with little ammunition and no chance for resupply. Repeated requests for U.S. air

power to ass i s t the br idgehead d e f e n d e r s w e r e d e n i e d b y Washington. Brigade 2506 fought valiantly, more valiantly than I had ever supposed, to the very end. Then, as prisoners, they were inhumanely treated. Castro took enormous credit for the

victory. Lost or ignored was the fact that he had beaten an army of fewer than 1,500 men with a force of at least 20,000 and had taken heavy casualties. Castro and the Communist world claimed he had beaten America.

NO SYMPATHY FOR JFK

The afternoon of the defeat, Kennedy was greatly distraught. He called his father, former Ambassador Joseph P. K e n n e d y , s e v e r a l t i m e s . A s Rasenberger puts it, ‘‘The proud family patriarch found the effort of buoying Jack’s morale exasperating.’’ He lost his patience and snapped at his son, ‘‘Oh, hell, if that’s the way you feel, give the job to Lyndon,’’ meaning Vice President LyndonBaines Johnson.

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Kennedy was furious with former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, according to Rasenberger, ‘‘not only with the original plan but with the men who came with it. ‘‘My God, the bunch of advisers we inherited,’’ he complained to his wife, Jacqueline. ‘‘Can you imagine being President and leaving behind someone like all t h o s e p e op l e t h e r e ? ’ ’ B u t h e subsequently met with Eisenhower. Rasenberger comments that if

Kennedy ‘‘was hoping for presidential camaraderie or a fatherly pat on the back, he was in for a rude awakening.’’ Eisenhower peppered him with hard questions as though Kennedy were a student. Were there changes to the plan? Why was the air strike called off? After the men were at sea? Then, finally, Eisenhower said, ‘‘I believe there is only one thing to do when you go into this kind of thing, it must be a success.’’

THE AFTERMATH

Publicly, Kennedy accepted the blame for the Bay of Pigs. As James Reston of the New York Times reported, ‘‘He is taking full personal responsibility for the Government’s part in the adventure.’’ As Rasenberger puts it, ‘‘Kennedy’s self-deprecation only barely masked his resentment against those he believed had led him astray.’’ He also notes that ‘ ‘anonymous sources in the White House were feeding the press stories of how the CIA ‘sold’ them the plan; how the Joint Chiefs of Staff had signed off on it; how the president had been ill-advised, duped.’’

Kennedy appointed retired General Maxwell D. Taylor to investigate what went wrong and to lead the inquiry. In addition to Taylor, the members of the group, known as the Cuban Study Group, included Allen Dulles, Admiral Arleigh Burke, and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, the President’s brother and closest confidant.

I was assigned to escort members of the ‘‘Frente,’’ the Cuban politicians who were to govern a free Cuba, to the meet ing room. Ins ide were Taylor, Dulles, and Burke, dressed in dark suits, ties, sitting erectly. Robert Kennedy was slumped in a chair, with shirtsleeves partly rolled up, tie loosened, and his heavy brogue shoes on top of a mahogany table. No one doubted who was in charge.

‘‘The proximate cause of the failure of the [operation] was a shortage of ammunition,’’ the Taylor Report conc luded . Th i s shor tage was partially attributable to a tendency common among troops for ‘‘poor ammunition discipline.’’

I’ve always thought that such blue- ribbon panels are contrived to make certain that no blame falls upon the President. I also found it strange that so many of the advisors he had criticized so harshly over the Bay of Pigs should then follow him into Vietnam, particularly Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara.

Following the Bay of Pigs disaster, o n 2 9 A p r i l 1 9 6 l , K e n n e d y descended into the Vietnam War. He began by ordering four hundred U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Berets) to South Vietnam. ‘‘Though the

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number was still very small,’’ notes Rasenberger, ‘‘Kennedy had crossed a bridge of sorts—a bridge that would end in a quagmire.’’ He came to believe that the conflict between the Commun i s t s i n the Nor th and the Ngo Dinh Diem government in the South was just the place to make a stand against further Red gains in Southeast Asia.

CHE’S APPROACH

Meanwhile, in August 1961, a strange event took place. Richard Goodwin, a Kennedy adv i sor , a t t ended an Alliance for Progress conference in Montevideo, Uruguay. While there, ‘‘Che’’ Guevara, then still a high- profile Cuban official, called him, wanting to talk privately. Guevara to ld Goodwin tha t the Cuban revolution was irreversible, but he proposed a modus vivendi between Cuba and the United States. Rasenberger writes that Guevara

s a i d ‘ ‘Cuba c ou l d no t r e t u r n Am e r i c a n - o w n e d p r o p e r t i e s expropriated during the revolution but was willing to provide compensation for them. Cuba could also agree not to forge any military or political alliances with the Eastern bloc, and to refrain from fomenting revolution in Latin Ame r i c a . I n r e t u r n f o r t h e s e concessions, the United States would lift its trade embargo and pledge to stop trying to overthrow the regime.’’2

But, shortly after Goodwin’s return to Wash ing ton , t h e Pr e s i den t appointed him to a task force whose express purpose would be Fidel Castro’s overthrow.

THE OBSESSION

The Kennedy brothers were obsessed with killing Castro and pushed the Agency to find the means to do it. The Agency soon tired of the task of the relentless pressure the Kennedys exerted. Rosenberger reports: ‘‘Everyone involved in Mongoose

[the code name for the operation to kill Castro] knew it was a Kennedy operation,’’ said CIA veteran, [the late] Sam Halpern. ‘‘This did not have anything to do with the United States of America; it had to do with the Kennedy name, the Kennedy escutcheon. That reputation was blemished in the Bay of Pigs, and, goddamn it, they were going to get ‘even.’ ’’

THE LEGEND

Rasenberger states, ‘‘History recalls the CubanMissileCrisis as JohnKennedy’s finestmoment, and for good reason . . . . No doubt Kennedy ’ s f i rm and measured performance during the crisis owed something—as Arthur Schlesinger pointed out—to the valuable lessons he had learned during the Bay of Pigs.’’ I think this is a misrepresentation of facts. When the 1962 Missi le Cris is

occurred, John and his brother Robert had lost al l trust in the intelligence and military institutions and secreted themselves in the White House. They had no contact with others and no longer received current intelligence reports. Believing they could do better than anyone else, they conducted secret negotiations with the Soviet ambassador and the

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KGB’s Washington chief. One report stated that they failed to see a cable from the embassy in Moscow that the Soviet missile force was not on an alert status. A s a r e s u l t o f t h e e n s u i n g

negotiat ions, the United States withdrew its Jupiter missiles from Turkey , the reby a l i ena t ing an important ally, much to the anger of the Defense Department. Second, the United States agreed that it would not invade Cuba and that the Soviets could station troops on the island, and in return, the Soviets withdrew their missiles from Cuba, ending the crisis. When Soviet leader Nikita S.

Khrushchev returned to the USSR, he was asked if he had been too soft in his negot iat ions . He repl ied (paraphrased), ‘‘What have I lost? I’ve secured a socialist state in the Caribbean protected by the United States.’’ The nation’s press was and has been

overly kind to the Kennedys. Perhaps the Kennedys realized

what they had done because the operation to kill Castro continued at full clip.

ON JFK’S SHOULDERS

Jim Rasenberger correctly observes:

What h i s to ry some t imes overlooks, though, is the role John Kennedy p layed in

creating the missile crisis in the first place. Starting with the Bay of Pigs and continuing through a succession of covert (but none too secret) actions against Castro’s government, K e n n e d y s u c c e s s f u l l y convinced Castro that the U.S. gove rnmen t i n t ended to destroy him—which of course it did. Before the Bay of Pigs, one might have reasonably dismissed Castro’s concerns about American aggression as paranoid; afterward, to deny them was absurd.

All the while, Khrushchev questioned why the mighty United States should be afraid of little Cuba with its four million people?

REFERENCES 1 Robert D. Chapman, ‘‘Spies Above the Earth , ’ ’ Internat iona l Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol. 24, No. 2, Summer 2011, pp. 401–406.

2 L i s a H o w a r d , a n A m e r i c a n Broadca s t i n g Company (ABC) reporter, interviewed Castro in April 1963 and brought back information of his interest in rapprochement with the United States, but she was stonewalled by the White House . Robert D. Chapman, ‘‘Ghosts of Cuba Past,’’ International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol. 19, No. 2, Summer 2006, pp. 368–376.

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