FIASCO OF 1961 REGRETTED BY NEW YOUNG PRESIDENT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605270002-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 2, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: April 17, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release
0111FICLc
ON P,.!V
2012/05/02: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605270002-3
WASHINGTON LIMES
17, April 1986
Fiasco of 1961
by new, young
,J rBy Matthew C: Quinn
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
On April 17, 1961, a ragtag force of 1,400 Cuban exiles
- financed and trained by the CIA - landed on the
southern coast of Cuba intending to liberate their home.
land from communism, only to be routed in the
mosquito-infested swamps by Cuban forces under the
personal command of Fidel Castro.
"How could I have been so stupid to allow them to go
ahead?" President John F. Kennedy said afterward of the
event that jolted his 3-month-old administration and,
many believe, helped spawn the Cuban missile and Ber-
lin crises.
There is agreement inside and outside of government
that the humiliating episode gained absolutely nothing
for the United States and in fact made things worse.
Castro was bolstered abroad for defeating America 90
miles from its shore, consolidated his power at home
with a death knell to whatever resistance was left and
was driven further into the Soviet orbit.
"I think the Bay of Pigs is one of the few oddities of
history that's very rare - a perfect failure," said histo-
rian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who as a White House aide
to Mr. Kennedy argued against the invasion. Like others,
he closed ranks with his colleagues once the "go" de-
cision was made.
Debate still is heard on whether the CIA's invasion
plan was a losing proposition from the start, or whether
American air strikes canceled by Mr. Kennedy would
have boosted the chance of success.
Both sides in the current debate over American sup-
port for the Contra rebels battling in Nicaragua cite the
Bay of Pigs. Critics of the Reagan administration's plans
to give military aid to the rebels charge that Nicaragua
is a Bay of Pigs replay; supporters say the United States
should not make the same mistake in Nicaragua and
should give the Contras all the support they need.
The CIA has never fully recovered from the fiasco, its
worst failure ever.
The episode is seared in the memory of Cubans who
remained on the Communist-run island and those who
left.
"I don't blame President Kennedy," said Erneido
Oliva, second-in-command of the Cuban exile brigade
and who led a small contingent that fought valiantly in
the Cuban swamps for 10 days. "It was a political de-
cision.
"I never thought about defeat. I am a professional
soldier," said Mr. Oliva, who is thought to be the last of
the invaders to surrender. "I accomplished my mission.
I am proud of what I did. I'm proud of what the men who
fought with me did:'
Mr. Oliva was one of 1,189 Brigadistas taken prisoner
by Mr. Castro. Another 114 of the invaders died and
about 1S0 never made the landing. Che Guevara visited
Mr. Oliva in prison and told him he would be executed;
he still does not understand why he was not.
regretted
president
Mr. Castro ransomed the prisoners to the United
States after 20 months for $53 million. They were met by
Mr. Kennedy at the Orange Bowl in Miami, where Mr.
Oliva presented Mr. Kennedy with the Brigade's flag
that had flown for three days at Giron, at the mouth of
Bahia de Cochinos - the Bay of Pigs. "I can assure you
that this flag will be returned to his brigade at a free
Havana," Mr. Kennedy promised the, Cubans.
But 25 years later, Mr. Oliva, 53, a brigadier general
in the District of Columbia National Guard and a D.C.
government official, has given up on the idea of organiz-
ing an invading force, instead hoping that "someday
Cuba could be freed from the inside."
E. Howard Hunt, the CIAs pre-invasion liaison with
Cuban exile politicans who later plotted the Watergate
break-in, said the brigade had been evaluated by the
Pentagon as "the finest, most capable fighting force in
the hemisphere.
"I know it's an unfashionable word;' Mr. Hunt said,
"but they were betrayed by America."
But Mr. Oliva, who once said he would have swum to
Cuba with 50 men to strike at Mr. Castro, with or without
American help, insisted, "I never ever, not even when I
was in prison, felt betrayed by the United States"
Since the Bay of Pigs, U.S. administrations have alter-
nately sought to assassinate Mr. Castro, isolate him, ne-
gotiate with him, improve relations, threaten or just
plain ignore him. But the basic equation has been static.
With massive Soviet assistance, the bearded, charis-
matic leader has stayed a thorn in Washington's side with
his support of leftist national liberation movements
worldwide, including Nicaragua.
"He has made his whole career of standing up to the
United States, like [Libyan leader Muammar] Qaddafi,
from 90 miles away," said a State Department official
who requested anonymity.
The administration is willing to reach agreements
with Mr. Castro on such minor practical items as immi-
gration. But officials, conceding his popularity, look to
his eventual passing from the scene for a break in the
stalemate. At 59, however, Mr. Castro is well-entrenched
and appears vibrant, despite periodic rumors of ill
health.
fices, but not formal embassies, in each other's capital
since 1979, under an agreement reached during the
Carter administration. And the United States maintains
a trade embargo. President Eisenhower broke diplo-
matic relations as his administration put the forces in
motion for the invasion that Mr. Kennedy failed to halt.
Wayne Smith, who headed the U.S. interests section in
Havana in 1979-82 during the Carter administration,
said that in his dealings with the Cubans, the Bay of Pigs
"is always there."
"They will say, 'You did it once; why not again?' " he
said. "It's ingrained in the Cuban psyche."
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/05/02 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000605270002-3
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The Bay of Pigs also seems ingrained on the American
psyche. It most recently reared its head in the debate
over the Reagan administration's proposal to provide
$100 million in aid - $70 million of it military - to the
some 15,000 Contra rebels seeking to topple Nicaragua's
Sandinista regime.
Mr. Kennedy, during the 1960 election campaign,
called the anti-Castro forces "fighters for freedom." His
opponent, Vice President Richard Nixon, called the Cas-
tro regime a "cancer" that must be removed. The Rea-
gan administration has used the same rhetoric to make
its case for Contra aid.
Administration critics say that in both cases, popular
opposition to the government in power was oversold in
Washington. In the same way that the CIA predicted a
popular uprising against Mr. Castro would follow an
invasion, they say, the Reagan administration is exagger-
ating popular support for the Contras.
"This re-enactment of the Bay of Pigs in Central
America today shows just how short memory is," said
Mr. Schlesinger.
Administration supporters also see similarities, con-
tending the United States showed a lack of will in Cuba
by failing to intervene militarily to help the invaders
secure a beachhead where they could set up a provi-
sional government. They warn this nation should not
make the same mistake in Nicaragua.
"The Reagan people are determined not to make the
same mistake that the Kennedy people did, that is to say
they didn't follow through;' said Mark Falcoff, a Latin
American specialist at the conservative American En-
terprise Institute. "This is not just an exotic group of
people dropped onto the beaches but rather a movement
that has a certain continuity within Nicaraguan society,
and indeed is a threat to the regime in a way I don't think
the Bay of Pigs ever was."
But former U.S. diplomat Smith, who now teaches and
writes on policy issues, believes Cuba is "very
analagous" to the current situation in Nicaragua. "The
Contras can't win unless we go in with our own troops;"
he said.
. George Fauriol, director of Latin American studies at
Georgetown University's Central for Strategic and Inter-
national Studies, said the Bay of Pigs continues to have
a profound impact on U.S. relations with Latin America,
feeding the impression "that when the chips are down,
the United States simply can't really pull it off:"
The lingering impression that the United States "ei-
ther doesn't have the will or the technical expertise or
doesn't use them correctly," he said, makes Latin nations
reluctant to join forces with Washington on such things
as Nicaragua.
"We're still suffering from the consequences of a lack
of will;' said Frank Calzon, executive director of the
Cuban-American National Foundation.
Sen. Claiborne Pell, Rhode Island Democrat, visited
Cuba as a senator-elect shortly before the invasion and
came away with the impression that Mr. Castro was
rather popular and that an invasion would be unwise. "I
reported this back to [CIA director] Allen Dulles and the
high command of the CIA," Mr. Pell recalled. "They all
nodded their heads very sagely and didn't do anything
about it."
After the invasion, Mr. Pell said, he was chastised by
Mr. Kennedy for not bringing his views directly to the
White House. "It taught me a real lesson. On something
of real importance, you didn't settle for anyone below the
top," he said.
Mr. Kennedy, in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs, fired
Mr. Dulles and his deputy, Richard Bissell. They had
overseen the invasion and, Kennedy partisans contend,
railroaded the new president. Mr. Kennedy, who told
aide Theodore Sorenson he had "grave doubts" about the
invasion from the start, also brought his brother, Robert,
into foreign policy deliberations.
The State Department official who requested ano-
nymity said the lesson learned is that "if a state is going
to engage in that, it should do so successfully or not at
all."
Peter Wyden wrote in "Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story,"
the most definitive history, that the invasion was a "wild
gamble" that failed for "altogether human reasons."
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