The story of the failedinvasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs is one of mismanagement, overconfidence, andlack of security. The blame for the failure of the operation falls directly inthe lap of the Central Intelligence Agency and a young president and hisadvisors.
The fall out from the invasion caused a rise in tension between thetwo great superpowers and ironically 34 years after the event, the person thatthe invasion meant to topple, Fidel Castro, is still in power. To understand theorigins of the invasion and its ramifications for the future it is firstnecessary to look at the invasion and its origins. The Bay of Pigs invasionof April 1961, started a few days before on April 15th with the bombing of Cubaby what appeared to be defecting Cuban air force pilots. At 6 a. m.
in themorning of that Saturday, three Cuban military bases were bombed by B-26bombers. The airfields at Camp Libertad, San Antonio de los Ba?os and AntonioMaceo airport at Santiago de Cuba were fired upon. Seven people were killed atLibertad and forty-seven people were killed at other sites on the island. Two of the B-26s leftCuba and flew to Miami, apparently to defect to the United States. The CubanRevolutionary Council, the government in exile, in New York City released astatement saying that the bombings in Cuba were “. .
. carried out by’Cubans inside Cuba’ who were ‘in contact with’ the top command of theRevolutionary Council . . . . ” The New York Times reporter covering thestory alluded to something being wrong with the whole situation when he wonderedhow the council knew the pilots were coming if the pilots had only decided toleave Cuba on Thursday after ” .
. . a suspected betrayal by a fellow pilothad precipitated a plot to strike. . .
. ” Whatever thecase, the planes came down in Miami later that morning, one landed at Key WestNaval Air Station at 7:00 a. m. and the other at Miami International Airport at8:20 a. m.
Both planes were badly damaged and their tanks were nearly empty. Onthe front page of The New York Times the next day, a picture of one of the B-26swas shown along with a picture of one of the pilots cloaked in a baseball hatand hiding behind dark sunglasses, his name was withheld. A sense of conspiracywas even at this early stage beginning to envelope the events of that week. In the early hours ofApril 17th the assault on the Bay of Pigs began. In the true cloak and daggerspirit of a movie, the assault began at 2 a.
m. with a team of frogmen goingashore with orders to set up landing lights to indicate to the main assaultforce the precise location of their objectives, as well as to clear the area ofanything that may impede the main landing teams 2:30 a. m. and at 3:00 a. m.
twobattalions 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 coastand meet with the troops at Playa Larga in the middle of the bay. A small groupof men were then to be sent north to the town of Jaguey Grande to secure it aswell. When looking at a modernmap of Cuba it is obvious that the troops would have problems in the area thatwas chosen for them to land at. The area around the Bay of Pigs is a swampymarsh land area which would be hard on the troops.
The Cuban forces were quickto react and Castro ordered his T-33 trainer jets, two Sea Furies, and two B-26sinto the air to stop the invading forces. Off the coast was the command andcontrol ship and another vessel carrying supplies for the invading forces. TheCuban air force made quick work of the supply ships, sinking the command vesselthe Marsopa and the supply ship the Houston, blasting them to pieces withfive-inch rockets. In the end the 5th battalion was lost, which was on theHouston, as well as the supplies for the landing teams and eight other smallervessels.
With some of the invading forces’ ships destroyed, and no command andcontrol ship, the logistics of the operation soon broke down as the other supplyships were kept at bay by Casto’s air force. As with many failed militaryadventures, one of the problems with this one was with supplying the troops. In the air, Castro hadeasily won superiority over the invading force. His fast moving T-33s, althoughunimpressive by today’s standards, made short work of the slow moving B-26s ofthe invading force. On Tuesday, two were shot out of the sky and by Wednesdaythe invaders had lost 10 of their 12 aircraft. With air power firmly in controlof Castro’s forces, the end was near for the invading army.
Over the 72 hours theinvading 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 werepushed back to their landing zone at Playa Gir¢n. Surrounded by Castro’s forces some began to surrender while othersfled into the hills. In total 114 men were killed in the slaughter whilethirty-six died as prisoners in Cuban cells. Others were to live out twentyyears 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 almostthe first days in the planning stage of the operation. Operation Pluto, as itcame to be known as, has its origins in the last dying days of the Eisenhoweradministration and that murky time period during the transition of power to thenewly elected president John F.
Kennedy. The origins of Americanpolicy in Latin America in the late 1950s and early 1960s has its origins inAmerican’s economic interests and its anticommunist policies in the region. Thesame man who had helped formulate American containment policy towards the Sovietthreat, George Kennan, in 1950 spoke to US Chiefs of Mission in Rio de Janeiroabout Latin America. . By the 1950s trade withLatin America accounted for a quarter of American exports, and 80 per cent ofthe investment in Latin America was also American. The Americans had a vestedinterest in the region that it would remain pro-American.
The Guatemalan adventurecan be seen as another of the factors that lead the American government tobelieve that it could handle Casto. Before the Second World War ended, a coup inGuatemala saw the rise to power of Juan Jose Ar?valo. He was not a communistin the traditional sense of the term, but he “. . .
packed his governmentwith Communist Party members and Communist sympathizers. ” In 1951 JacoboArbenz succeeded Ar?valo after an election in March of that year. The partyhad been progressing with a series of reforms, and the newly elected leadercontinued with these reforms. During land reforms a major American company, theUnited Fruit Company, lost its land and other holdings without any compensationfrom the Guatemalan government. When the Guatemalans refused to go to theInternational Court of Law, United Fruit began to lobby the government of theUnited States to take action. In the government they had some very powerfulsupporters.
Among them were Foster Dulles, Secretary of State who had once beentheir lawyer, his brother Allen the Director of Central Intelligence who was ashare holder, and Robert Cutler head of the National Security Council. In whatwas a clear conflict of interest, the security apparatus of the United Statesdecided to take action against the Guatemalans. From May 1st, 1954, toJune 18th, the Central Intelligence Agency did everything in its power tooverthrow the government of Arbenz. On June 17th to the 18th, it peaked with aninvasion of 450 men lead by a Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas.
With the help ofair support the men took control of the country and Arbenz fled to the MexicanEmbassy. 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 onanyone who interfered with American interests. Castro overthrew Batistain 1959. Originally Castro was not a communist either and even had meetings withthen Vice-President Richard Nixon.
Fearful of Castro’s revolution, people withmoney, like doctors, lawyers, and the mafia, left Cuba for the United States. Toprevent the loss of more capital Castro’s solution was to nationalize some ofthe businesses in Cuba. In the process of nationalizing some business he cameinto conflict with American interests just as Arbenz had in Guatemala. “. . .
legitimate U. S. Businesses were taken over, and the process of socializationbegun with little if any talk of compensation. ” There were also rumours ofCuban involvement in trying to invade Panama, Guatemala, and the DominicanRepublic and by this time Castro had been turn down by the United States for anyeconomic aid. Being rejected by the Americans, he met with foreign ministerAnasta Mikoyan to secure a $100 million loan from the Soviet Union.
It was inthis atmosphere that the American Intelligence and Foreign Relations communitiesdecided 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. Bythe fall, the plan was changed to a full invasion with air support by exileCubans in American supplied planes. The original group was to be trained inPanama, but with the growth of the operation and the quickening pace of eventsin Cuba, it was decided to move things to a base in Guatemala. .
It was now fall and a newpresident had been elected. President Kennedy could have stopped the invasion ifhe wanted to, but he probably didn’t do so for several reasons. Firstly, he hadcampaigned for some form of action against Cuba and it was also the height ofthe cold war, to back out now would mean having groups of Cuban exilestravelling around the globe saying how the Americans had backed down on the Cubaissue. In competition with the Soviet Union, backing out would make theAmericans look like wimps on the international scene, and for domesticconsumption the new president would be seen as backing away from one of hiscampaign promises. The second reason Kennedy probably didn’t abort the operationis the main reason why the operation failed, problems with the CIA.
The failure at the CIAled to Kennedy making poor decisions, which would affect future relations withCuba and the Soviet Union. The failure at CIA had three causes. First the wrongpeople were handling the operation, secondly the agency in charge of theoperation was also the one providing all the intelligence for the operation, andthirdly for an organization supposedly obsessed with security the operation hadsecurity problems. National Estimates could have provided information on the situation inCuba 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 ofStaff who could have provided help on the military side of the adventure. In theend, the CIA kept all the information for itself and passed on to the presidentonly what it thought he should see.
Lucien S. Vandenbroucke, in PoliticalScience Quarterly of 1984, based his analysis of the Bay of Pigs failure onorganizational behaviour theory. For an organization thatdeals with security issues, the CIA’s lack of security in the Bay of Pigsoperation is ironic. Security began to break down before the invasion when TheNew York Times reporter Tad Szulc “. .
. learned of Operation Pluto fromCuban friends. . . ” earlier that year while in Costa Rica covering anOrganization of American States meeting.
The conclusion one can draw from the articles in The New York Times isthat if reporters knew the whole story by the 22nd, it can be expected thatCastro’s intelligence service and that of the Soviet Union knew about theplanned invasion as well. In the administrationitself, the Bay of Pigs crisis lead to a few changes. Firstly, someone had totake the blame for the affair and, as Director of Central Intelligence, AllenDulles was forced to resign and left CIA in November of 1961 Internally, the CIAwas 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 SenateCommittee on Intelligence, future operations were “. .
. to nourish aspirit of resistance and disaffection which could lead to significant defectionsand other by-products of unrest. ” The CIA also now came under thesupervision of the president’s brother Bobby, the Attorney General. According toLucien S. Vandenbroucke, the outcome of the Bay of Pigs failure also made theWhite House suspicious of an operation that everyone agreed to, made them lessreluctant to question the experts, and made them play “devil’sadvocates” when questioning them. In the end, the lessons learned from theBay of Pigs failure may have contributed to the successful handling of the Cubanmissile crisis that followed.
The long-termramifications of the Bay of Pigs invasion are a little harder to assess. Theultimate indication of the invasions failure is that thirty-four years laterCastro is still in power. This not only indicates the failure of the Bay of Pigsinvasion, but American policy towards Cuba in general. The American policy,rather than undermining Castro’s support, has probably contributed to it.
Aswith many wars, even a cold one, the leader is able to rally his people aroundhim against an aggressor. BibliographyFedarko, Kevin. “Bereft of Patrons, Desperate to Rescue his Economy,Fidel Turns to an Unusual Solution: Capitalism. ” Time Magazine, week ofFebruary 20th, 1995. Internet, http://www. timeinc.
com, 1995. Meyer, Karl E. and Szulc, Tad. The Cuban Invasion: The Chronicleof a Disaster.
New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Publishers, 1962 and 1968. Mosley, Leonard. Dulles: A Biography of Eleanor, Allen, and JohnFoster Dulles and their Family Network. New York: The Dail Press/James Wade, 1978.
Prados, John. Presidents’ Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon CovertOperations Since World War II. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc. , 1986.
Ranelagh, John. CIA: A History. London: BBC Books, 1992.
