Official History of the Bay of Pigs: Air Operations

[Greg Burnham]

I just uploaded The Official History of the Bay of Pigs Volume 1 Part 3 here. This Volume focuses on Air Operations. The author is obviously a CIA historian, who was in their employ. Pfeiffer gets a lot of this right

as far as reportage goes. However, he continues to obfuscate the record by drawing erroneous conclusions based on faulty, unsupported assertions in key areas. He "almost" gets it right. Unfortunately, he would

apparently prefer to miss the mark rather than allow the real blame to fall where it should: CIA screwed the pooch. When the opportunity to speak to the president was offered to Cabell and Bissell in order to prevent

an imminent disaster that a misconceived instruction from the Secretary of State was about to cause--they declined. [read more]

[David Andrews]

Thanks, Greg! Will be on it.

[Pat Speer]

That Cabell screwed it up was confirmed by, of all people, E. Howard Hunt, in his book Give Us This Day.

And yet, to this day, historians and journalists will write that JFK pulled the air cover from the operation and sent those brave men to their doom.

They make it sound like the anti-Castro Cubans were just wiped out, and that they would have liberated Cuba if not for Kennedy. The reality, of course, is that these men were outnumbered 100 to 1 and that most of them surrendered without putting up much of a fight. Out of 1500, 118 were killed. That's a terrible waste of life, but it pales in comparison to some of the other stupid tragedies of our military. In July, 1945, for example, the U.S.S. Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese submarine. Approximately 900 men survived the sinking and were left floating in the water. Due to some serious stupidity, it was 4 days before anyone noticed that the ship was missing. Another 600 or so perished before they could be rescued.

Edited February 15, 2014 by Pat Speer

[Greg Burnham]

That Cabell was the immediate cause of "why the screw up was not prevented before it was too late" should no longer be in question. However, CIA's Jake Esterline placed most of the blame on...wait for it: Richard Nixon.

I will post a link to a page on my site when I've completed it later today. Stay tuned.

[David Andrews]

Thanks for posting this interview, Greg.