FROM THE BAY OF PIGS ARCANA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302360008-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 25, 2012
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: April 23, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

II 1 1 11 111'1111111[111 111 1111111 1111
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/09/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302360008-3
6?47.
WASHINGTON TIMES
23 April 1986
From the By of Pigs arcana
or,?Eammikimaii.f
Just as the Bay of Pigs veterans
were meeting in Miami to ob-
serve the 25th anniversary of
that attack on Cuba, there
happened to come into my hands
from the Kennedy Library in Massa-
chusetts some just-released doc-
uments on that important event.
The Pane . bittersweet !int!
t? ;littet; famous "CIA
informs Gen.
MaXWOU D. lor about the last-
minute and lely crucial de-
cision not o at, utk IAN- Lunen
rakes any American kr coven
'Al about 9:30 p.m. on April 16,1
was called in the CIA headquarters,'
Gen. C.P Cabell, of the U.S. Air
Force, wrote in the memo. At that
time, he was notified by White
House aide McGeorge Bundy "that
we would not be permitted to launch
air strikes the next morning. . . . "
U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson
had been strenuously against the air
cover for "political" reasons, the
memo says, before Gen. Cabell de-
lineates how they then needed to dis-
patch the orders with speed "to stop
the planned air strike and to require
replanning and rebriefing of crews:'
The order virtually "caught the
crews in their cockpits."
The papers are filled with inter-
esting tidbits, even instructive rev-
elations, both of policy and of char-
acter, for today's not dissimilar
world.
There is John E Kennedy top ad-
viser Adolph Berle, considered by
many to have been one of the real
wise men around Washington, say-
? Lag that the United States was quite
within its rights in backing the Bay
of Pigs operation against Fidel Cas-
tro's regime.
"The conventions protecting
against intervention did not apply:'
Mr. Berle argued, "because the
Communists had intruded into this
hemisphere and, second, because
Castro's government was an openly
constituted totalitarian government
which is clearly outside the provi- .
sions of the treaty of Rio de Janeiro."
Then, Mr. Berle added pro-
phetically, "Some sort of clash was
bound to come, and it was probably
better if it came with one country,
rather than later with two or three
countries."
In yet another part of the fascinat-
ing papers, titled A Program of Co-
vert Action Against the Castro Re-
gime, approved by President
Eisenhower as early as March 16,
1960, the objective of the Bay of Pigs
operation was couched in what we
now can see were suicidally impos-
sible terms:
"The purpose of the program out-
lined herein is to bring about the re-
placement of the Castro regime with
one more devoted to the true inter-
ests of the Cuban people and more
acceptable to the United States in
such a manner as to avoid any ap-
pearance of U.S. intervention."
Finally, a note both of levity and of
sobriety was found in the U.S. Navy's
name for the bungled operation:
"Bumpy Road:'
Those were prescient words, in-
deed. On April 17, 1961, the
1,450-plus Cuban exiles landed in
Cuba's Bay of Pigs. In less than three
days, the operation that was to
"free" Cuba was crushed. President
Kennedy appointed a board of in-
quiry to "study our governmental
practices and programs in the areas
of military and paramilitary and
guerrilla and anti-guerrilla activity
which fall short of outright wan with
a view to strengthening our work in
this area:'
In effect, it all really started
there: America's twisting and
bumpy relationship with the rev-
olutions of the world; America's un-
willingness to appear the direct "ag-
gressor" or "interventionist" and
thus its support of imperfect exile
groups; America's unwillingness to
intervene decisively in these
revolutionary situations that have
strained us as a nation from Cuba to
Vietnam, and now to Libya.
? The Bay of Pigs became a kind of
metaphor, but for what?
It symbolized America's self-
righteousness in backing off and let-
ting the people it supported swing in
the wind, whether they be Bay of
Pigs exiles, Laotian tribesmen in
Laos, or (perhaps at this moment)
Nicaraguan "contras."
When I ask myself what are the
lessons, I see a half-impulse and a ,
half-imperative on the part of the
United States to intervene but never
enough really to win a decisive bat-
tle.
Isee a lot of wishful thinking, such
as the belief that, even after a
charismatic leader like Fidel
Castro or Muammar Qaddafi is in
place, those men can be replaced
easily by some remote, exiled leaden
And I see a belief that single for-
ays ? forays without using the deci-
sive power, for instance, of air cover
? can solve problems or swing his-
toric events.
But I also see some changes in
American perceptions along these
lines since that ill-fated Bay of Pigs
debacle in 1961. There is today a
deeper understanding than in 1961
that the United States is in these sit-
uations, in Libya and in Nicaragua,
for instance, for the long run. There
had better be.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/09/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302360008-3