NO REGRETS -- WE'D DO IT AGAIN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000301920002-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 27, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: April 19, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
y Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/27: CIA-RDP90-00965R000301920002-8
ART Cif APM
ON PAGE NATION
19 April 1986
MI THE VETERANS SPEAK
No Regrets
We'd Do It Again
HAROLD FEENEY
Tt was like surviving the Charge of the Light Brigade.
"Someone had blundered," as Tennyson put it. This
was Brigade 2506, the Cuban exile force that went
ashore at the Bay of Pigs on April 17, twenty-five
years ago. In a nightmare of fighting against an overwhelm-
ing force, 103 in the ill-equipped brigade were killed and
1,189 were taken prisoner. Four U.S. pilots foresaw a
massacre and, disobeying orders, joined with brigade pilots
and flew into combat in lumbering old B-26s. They were
killed, shot down over the Bay of Pigs by Castro's fighter
planes. In an international embarrassment to the United
States, the prisoners were paraded before television cameras
and the diplomatic corps in Havana. They languished in a
Cuban prison until being freed in December 1962, when Pres-
ident Kennedy arranged payment of $53 million in food
and medical supplies.
Who were these survivors and what has become of them
in the ensuing quarter-century? What happened to the secret
agents trained by the Central Intelligence Agency to operate
in Cuba to prepare an underground network prior to the in-
vasion? Who do they think made the "blunder," and what
lessons do they feel they have learned?
On a recent trip to Miami, I interviewed twenty of the sur-
viving brigade members. At the time of the invasion they
ranged in age from 18 to 40 and were from varied social and
economic backgrounds. Most of the secret agents were be-
tween 19 and 23 years of age. The C.I.A. had put the latter
through a rigorous screening process which included poly-
graph examinations, high-security-clearance investigations
and tests for intelligence and physical ability.
A senior U.S. intelligence officer commented: "I wish
the C.I.A. were as exigent in selecting its own agency per-
sonnel." Of the eighty-two agents, seventeen were either
caught and executed or killed trying to escape. The others
managed to make their way back to the United States. In
addition to carrying out assigned tasks of espionage and
sabotage, they trained many anti-Castro Cubans, who in
turn came under C.I.A. control. Many of those local agents
Harold Feeney, commander, U.S. Navy Intelligence,
retired, was chief of the Cuba Branch of the Defense In-
telligence Agency in 1962 and helped Alexander Haig select
former brigade agents for commissions in the U.S.
armed forces.
were killed when the invasion failed. Some escaped to
Florida and, although not official members of the brigade,
they are regarded by fellow exiles as heroes. A few of the
regular agents and those they trained continued to work for
the agency, but after the missile crisis of 1962 their missions
to Cuba were limited to intelligence gathering. In 1964 some
forty-two brigade members participated in a C.I.A. opera-
tion to support then-Congolese President Joseph Kasavubu
against a communist incursion from Tanzania. Two brigade
pilots were killed during the fighting.
The brigade remained intact in Miami; the 1,800 survivors
were stunned by what had happened to them but remained
convinced that the U.S. government would soon use them
again in a liberation effort. That belief was enhanced when
President Kennedy reviewed. them at the Orange Bowl on
December 30, 1962. Their commander, Dr. Manuel Artime,
presented the brigade flag to the President. The stadium
cheered wildly when Kennedy promised them he would soon
return the flag to them in a "free Havana."
But it was not to be. After the October missile crisis Ken-
nedy promised the Russians he would not intervene in Cuba,
and the brigade became a political embarrassment to the
President. He asked Joseph Califano, at the time a political
adviser on Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's staff, to
break up the brigade's leadership. Califano delegated the
job to Col. Alexander Haig, who arranged commissions in
the U.S. armed forces for more than 150 of them and found
good jobs or educational opportunities for others.
About half of those who received commissions were dis-
charged after a few years, but sixty-three of them went on to
serve with distinction in Vietnam. Of those, four were killed
in action and three wounded. "We could see the irony of
fighting what was perceived to be a Communist threat half-
way round the world while our nearby homeland was in the
iron grip of Fidel Castro," recalled Maj. Modesto Castailer,
now retired. "But in our frustration we were eager to fight
Communists wherever they might be."
A few of the C.I.A.-trained agents, however, refused to
abandon the fight against Castro. They joined independent
groups of exiles dedicated to carrying out operations inside
Cuba whenever feasible. Without the knowledge of the
C.I.A., according to them, they conducted sabotage in
Cuba and harassed Cuban diplomats in Mexico and other
countries. Those activities created a problem for the Federal
Bureau of Investigation, which is charged with enforcing
U.S. neutrality laws. The Bureau made a concerted effort to
prevent illegal exile activities directed at targets inside as well
as outside the United States. As one F.B.I. agent told me,
"We were sympathetic to the cause of a free Cuba but could
not condone illegal acts." Brigade members did not approve
of acts of violent protest in the United States, believing the
adverse public reaction would be counterproductive.
%,Mtfed
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With respect to operations outside the country, the C.I.A.
had done such a good job of training the agents to work
clandestinely that few were intercepted. Nestor (Tony) Iz-
quierdo, head of a Cuban exile group called the National
Liberation Front (F.N.L.), learned that one of his col-
leagues had been jailed in Mexico for activities against the
Cuban Embassy. In March 1976, Izquierdo flew to Mexico
and, disguised as a police officer, entered the prison and
liberated his comrade. During the Nicaraguan revolution he
was killed fighting as a volunteer against a rebel group that
he identified as a Castro-trained communist faction, leaving
a widow and twin sons. To the brigade and the exile com-
munity he is a hero and a martyr.
In 1967, Castro's chief lieutenant, Ernesto (Che) Gue-
vara, was in Bolivia exhorting the peasants to revolt. One of
the brigade's former agents, who does not wish to be iden-
tified, said he paid his own way to Bolivia and volunteered
to help Bolivian authorities track down Guevara. The
C.I.A. and U.S. military advisers had trained Bolivian
troops in counterinsurgency techniques, but, according to
David Atlee Phillips, a top C.I.A. official, that was the only
official U.S. involvement. A peasant woman revealed the
place where Guevara was hiding. Phillips also said the agen-
cy wanted Guevara alive, but the Bolivian military insisted
on executing him. The former brigade agent, who had talked
to Guevara at length, was in the camp when the revolu-
tionary leader was shot.
Robert (Tico) Herrera, one of the anti-Castro exiles who
had been trained by brigade agents in Cuba, had also been
one of Castro's lieutenants. He joined Cuban Representa-
tion in Exile (RECE), a group founded by Jos?osch
Lamarque, then an executive of the Bacardi rum company.
Based in Florida, Herrera and a team of ten men made
numerous clandestine forays into Cuba, evading Castro's
security forces and, on the return trip, the F.B.I.
Herrera was killed in an ambush in 1969 in Pinar del Rio
Province.
Another who continued his activities was Alonso (El
Curita) Gonzalez, a former Protestant minister. He was
captured and escaped twice. In a desperate effort to get his
wife and child out of Cuba, he learned fo fly in Miami and
in 1967 piloted a light plane to a remote airstrip in eastern
Cuba, where his wife and child waited. Aut an informer had
tipped off the authorities: Gonzalez was arrested and ex-
ecuted on the spot.
One of the most successful exile groups, known as Com-
ando Mambisi, drew on the expertise of the C.I.A.-
trained agents and operated several years after the invasion.
In 1964, some of its members sabotaged"the Matahambre
nickel mines in Pinar del Rio. That same'Year another anti-
Castro group, called Comandos L, infiltrated Cuba and ex-
ploded a mine against the hull of a Soviet merchant ship in
Havana harbor. When one of the group's members, Tony
Cuesta, faced certain capture, he attempted to kill himself
rather than endanger his fellow agents. Although he explod-
ed a grenade two feet from his head, he lived, losing both
eyes and a hand. After spending eighteen years in Castro's
harshest prison, he was freed and now resides in Miami.
The story of Brigade 2506 is one of valor in combat and in
the lonely business of being a secret agent. '1-low would you
feel if your country was in the hands of a Communist dic-
tatorship and you were on the outside? What chances would
you take?" one of the members asked me.
In eastern Cuba just before the invasion, Rodolfo (Sea
Fury) Hern?ez volunteered for an important mission,,
although he was told his chances of surviving it were only
one in ten. He knew he was most familiar with the terrain to
be covered. He now works for the U.S. Postal Service
in Miami and is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army
Reserve. "Yes, I'll be ready if they call me," he told me.
The four pilots who died trying to save the beachhead oc-
cupy a special place in the hearts of brigade members, who
also feel a bond with other U.S. agents, from the C.I.A. and
U.S. Navy Intelligence, who risked their careers and
sometimes their lives for the cause. To this day those agents
are referred to by their old code names?Pecos Bill, Qui-
xote and Tobacco.
Under the leadership of Miguel M. Alvarez, who became
president of the Association of Combatants of the Bay of
Pigs in 1978, former brigade members adopted a policy of
giving international support to any organization fighting
Cuba-directed actions worldwide. A team of six brigade
members went to Zaire that year and signed a mutual aid
pact with former Angolan President Holden Roberto, now
leader of the National Liberation Front of Angola. While
there, they carried out psychological warfare to induce some
of the 20,000 Cuban troops stationed in Angola to
defect. Roberto agreed to help liberate Cuba after achieving
victory in his own country. Before they could have any
significant success, pressure created by the Clark amend-
ment, which barred military assistance to antigovernment
rebels in Angola, put a stop to their activities. The amend-
ment has since been revoked, and the brigade has again
begun to aid Angolan rebels. Last September 28, Roberto
and brigade leaders met in Miami and renewed their original
agreement. On that occasion, the brigade petitioned
Representative Claude Pepper of Florida to include Rober-
to's forces among the beneficiaries of the aid package for
Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi now before Congress.
The brigade's help for the contras in Nicaragua has been
more concrete. Miguel Alvarez led a delegation to Central
America last August and met with Enrique Bermudez, a
military leader of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, and one
Comandante Aureliano, an F.D.N. political leader, to co-
ordinate delivery of medical supplies, food and clothing.
Aureliano visited Miami last September to take part in fund-
raising drives, which netted about $50,000 for supplies.
In Miami former agent Jose Basulto keeps in touch with
contra leaders by short-wave radio to coordinate shipments
of what he says are nonmilitary supplies. Brigade members
told me they purchase the supplies with their own funds and
money donated by the Cuban community in Miami.
Gabriel Gomez del Rio, a brigade survivor and a retired
major in the U.S. Army, served as executive director for
Latin American Affairs on the National Defense Council, a
nonprofit anticommunist foundation based in Alexandria,
Virginia, run by Andy Messing and Representative Rob st t
Dornan, which provides aid to the anti-Sandinista fightFts
in Nicaragua. Gomez resigned from the group in January
and has formed the National Defense Council Agency,
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which he says does not send aid to the contras.
"We see the same tragic thing happening in Nicaragua
that happened in Cuba," says Alvarez. "Their revolution
has been stolen by Castro and the Soviets. We feel it is our
duty to help the Nicaraguans recapture the revolution."
Nevertheless, brigade members are worried that the U.S.
government might lead the contras to believe they have its
full support, then abandon them as it did the brigade.
The former secret agents meet at irregular intervals, but
each December there is a dinner in Miami for all members
from the United States and abroad. At the most recent din-
ner, Santiago Morales, now 44, who spent eighteen years in
a Cuban prison, joined his comrades in an emotional re-
union. He had not been executed, he said, "because I was
only 18 when I joined the brigade as an agent and looked
like a young boy. When I was caught I had been operating
alone and they could not relate me to a specific incident."
Most of the brigade members, now middle-aged, have set-
tled down to life in the United States, where they have pur-
sueil successful careers, particularly the former agents. They
include doctors, lawyers, engineers, a Florida State Repre-
sentative, a vice president of the World Bank, an Army
general, a vice president of Eastern Airlines and a host of
successful businessmen. One is chief of President Reagan's
bipartisan advisory commission on Radio Marti. They say
they are willing to fight again under the right circumstances,
but some have reasons different from those they had
twenty-five years ago. Captain Eduardo B. Ferrer was one
of forty-four pilots and air crew members of Brigade 2506
and a hero of the air battle. Now a senior pilot with Eastern
Airlines, he says he would fight again for the cause of liberty
for his former homeland, but his life and work would remain
in this country. He had flown for Cuba's civil airline, Cubana
de Aviacion, and is the only commercial pilot ever to hijack
his own aircraft to defect from a Soviet-bloc country.
Ferrer, like all the brigade survivors I interviewed, feels
no bitterness toward the C.I.A. Debates may continue
elsewhere, but for the brigade leaders the blame rests with
one man, President John Kennedy. Ferrer says Kennedy
made several mistakes, the most egregious being the
cancellation of a second planned air strike, which was to
have completed the destruction of Castro's military aircraft
on the ground. The change in plans allowed Castro's re-
maining airplanes to sink the invading ships and pin down
the beachhead. Kennedy also insisted on a more difficult
and dangerous nighttime assault and made an eleventh-hour
change in the planned landing site to a much riskier one.
Moreover, the President insisted that the C.I.A., rather than
the military, direct planning and operations.
Ferrer agrees with Adm. Arleigh Burke, then the head of
the U.S. Navy and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
that cancellation of the air strike was tantamount to a death
warrant for the brigade. When the invasion was in its final
throes, Admiral Burke begged the President to let him save
the effort with a few Navy aircraft from a U.S. carrier that
was in sight of the battle. Kennedy refused, saying he did
not want the United States to be involved. Burke cried out in
frustration, "Goddamn it, we are involved, Mr. President,
and there is no way we can hide it!" In 1980 Burke told brigade
leaders that the invasion taught one not to accept without
question orders from a national leader because of being
overawed by his position. "We should have questioned his
judgment when we saw he was wrong."
Brigade association president Alvarez believes that the
United States should not undertake programs that could
become half-measures. -Half-measures are worse than
none because they nullify other options. I resent the fact
that those who did the fighting were not allowed to par-
ticipate in the planning."
Now brigade members live with a dream tempered by reali-
ty. As time passes they realize that their chances of deposing
Castro have become remote. Some find this truth painful.
Jose Basulto says: "I am financially successful, with all the
worldly possessions I need. Yet I can never be completely
happy until Cuba is liberated. We made a tremendous psy-
chological commitment and this has caused a great deal of
stress for years." The lesson of the Bay of Pigs, according to
Basulto, is that the United States must know what it wants
and go for it openly instead of using covert operations.
"The C.I.A. was not entirely competent, but they are not to
blame. It was the White House. The saddest message I re-
ceived from the C.I.A. on my radio was the final one on
April 17: `Do not transmit any more. SURVIVE.'"
At almost the same time on the beachhead at Playa Giron,
the brigade military commander sent a last emotional mes-
sage to the C.I.A. base in the United States: "I will not be
evacuated. We shall fight to the end. This is where we have to
die. We shall never abandon our homeland."
Recently, the brigade built a $250,000 permanent head-
quarters and museum in Miami. Some of the money came
from the city but most of it was donated by members and
admirers. The museum will be dedicated on April 17.
Former U.N. ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick will give the
main address; the Mayor of Miami and several members of
Congress will also speak.
Many in the brigade feel that in addition to fighting for
their homeland they served as U.S. military forces carrying
out the policy of this country. Claude Pepper and Represent-
ative Mark Siljander of Michigan, a member of the House
Foreign Affairs Committee and an adviser to the National
Defense Council, have promised to introduce legislation giv-
ing the survivors the same benefits U.S. veterans receive.
Three recent events have brought cheer and renewed hope
to the brigade members:
? The invasion of Grenada.
? President Reagan's declaration of "no more Cubas in
the hemisphere."
? The establishment of Radio Marti, the U.S. Informa-
tion Agency station broadcasting to Cuba.
But in their heart of hearts they surely know that an inva-
sion of Cuba is not likely to occur. What might have taken
only a battalion of marines in 1961 would now require as
many as seven divisions and entail immense losses: it would
be a Pyrrhic victory. Also, in the absence of a casus belli, the
dream of overthrowing Castro remains what it was twenty-
five years ago?a dream.
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