Larry Hancock

I wanted to provide everyone a bit of information on JFK Lancer's November virtual conference. Several of us have been working on it and pre-recording sessions for some time now. Details on the conference format, the initial speakers list and registration are available at the following links. The first link takes you to a current flyer on the conference while the second link is to the actual conference website, where tickets may be purchased and the conference will be be carried out. http://jfklancer.com/Dallas2020/index.html and http://www.assassinationconference.com/ As for myself, I will be doing presentations on JFK and Cuba, on my new work "Tipping Point", and conducting a virtual walking tour of the Plaza as I have done in person in past years. It's great to have several Ed Forum and DPUK members at the virtual conference in what certainly is a very challenging year.

Fantastic song, I posted it as lead on my Facebook page yesterday!

John was a great help in my early years, not only did he share a large number of pictures (an education it itself), but he even provided an introduction for me to Brad Ayers, leading to some informative exchanges with Ayers himself. I wish John would have been more involved with the broader community, but he never wanted to be credited and was not nearly as well known as many others. I'm sure his work "in the trenches" was always much appreciated by those he did assisted; it certainly was by me.

The Compuserve JFK forum was pretty lively with no apparent moderation and a lot of name calling, libel and some rather nasty comments. It was educational but you needed to learn who was who quickly. I don't recall posting much but also downloaded tons of stuff off it though. Halcyon days... On a side note, at the time I was working with Hayes microcomputer and computer modems n 1992and very active with much of the BBS community including doing BBSCON events....maybe we passed each other without knowing.

And I remember Vince's first work...issued on CD...or was it floppy disc...grin. And Groden's first picture books in book stores. Not to mention the Compuserve JFK forum. Its been a long road and people with expertise like Sherry's are sorely missed.

First on Ron's question - all I can say is that Dulles was copied on Cuba Project memos if they were from Bissell, but generally not at all on those from within the project such as from Esterline or later Hawkins. For example Esterline's memos of concern about air cover and Hawkins memos on timing never made it above Bissell. Of course strictly in terms of chain of command and management terms, J.C. King was actually responsible since it was a Western Hemisphere project. There is no sign at all that Dulles was involved in operational decision making. But to some extent that was SOP for the agency, you could likely say the same for the Guatemala project and others. Dulles was usually involved in getting projects approved or in supporting them at the highest levels if there were problems. You see that in the Indonesia project. Dulles talked with the President or NSC and relied on information from the project manager - we see in the initial Kennedy Administration meetings that Dulles actually knew few details about the state of the Cuba project and gave very broad responses. And later in the inquiries much of what King and Cabell and Dulles said in those meetings often proved to be wrong or misinformed. Jim, its important to remember that the proposal for an major amphibious landing project was only seriously floated in December; Hawkins had begun working on the proposal for what became the Brigade only in late October and that is when the training began to switch from a guerilla focus to preparing the volunteers to perform as a regular infantry brigade. The bulk of the Cuban volunteer force was only recruited in December and January and one unit was so new it was given weapons training on the ships as they sailed to the landings. The CIA began some logistics work in December but its true Jack Scapa did not get assigned until relatively late, after the overall plan had been developed without the Navy or the military in general. He had at best a couple of months serious involvement with the maritime planning side of the project - primarily working on the Trinidad plan and the Navy's support for it, which was largely supplying the right type of equipment, training frogmen, and then setting up the screening force to accompany the Brigade ships and support them in international waters. And once the force was assembled and sailed Scapa really had nothing to do with it; he did not sail with the Navy group covering it and the CIA sent a liaison officer of its own to sail with the Essex - that proved to be a fiasco all by itself. As to who was the amphibious assault expert, that would be Marine Col. Hawkins, who did prepare the landing plan. However Hawkins was not in charge of the Brigade Air Group or air operations, a critical point of failure. Bissell refused all his requests for that - as well as his request not to deploy tanks in the landing.

In regard to Scapa Its probably not as strange as it sounds - in those days new assignments were often made by literally typing up a set of criteria on a punch card and running a stack of personnel files though an IBM sorter to get a handful of folks available for the assignment. You had to have the right career field, assignment history, and be serving in a command that made you readily available. Just standard personnel stuff - you see that sort of thing in very old movies from the fifties and sixties. And he did have the right career set and was in a training command which made him more readily available than if he had been operational with a fleet unit, at sea, etc. I'm not sure the request was given that much attention other than to fill a slot since the military was at arms length from the project. Col. Hawkins later stated that when he had been selected for his assignment the Commandant of the Corps had just told him the CIA was trying to land some people inside Cuba and needed some advise. Not exactly a full brief - as he quickly found out. As you say though, its a good example of the last minute and relatively ad hoc relationship between the military and the project.

Actually what it means is that I can't claim to remember names off the top of my head like I used to....well maybe not even then. So now I'll have to look it up although I doubt it will ring any bells....he was named as a staff member in Bissell's rebuttal to the CIA IG report but got little attention elsewhere that I recall. Bissell did not point out that he only came into the project in its very last stages. OK, its Captain Jack Scapa...and I have blogged about him before so he's not just mentioned in the book. He was not assigned to the CIA as a liaison until February, 1961 and he came from the Atlantic Fleet's amphibious training command.

Dennison had learned of the CIA's project primarily because a couple of CIA officers walked into a Navy base under his command and attempted to requisition a couple of large craft for the project...with no authorizations, only stating the President had approved it. That sort of thing tends to generate conversations and after learning of the project from Bissell (in support of the requisition) he pushed back with his list. Not only did he not get most of his questions answered, it was only later that a single Navy amphibious officer was assigned as liaison to the project, only coming in during its final couple of months - and with orders to talk and coordinate only with Bissell. This all ties into the reality that the military was not even given a plan to evaluate, or brought into the process. until JFK directed that the CIA had to have a JCS review. They only had bits and pieces relating to Bissell's requirements for equipment and support. We are fortunate that the Navy liaison actually wrote an article for a Navy historical digest - which reveals things about the Navy role never shared with any of the inquiries or the Taylor Commission.

Fitzpatrick literally and in detail gutted Bissell's management of the project - which was of course an indictment of Dulles as well, who exercised virtually no oversight of Bissell and appears to have had very limited information about either phase of the project. Doing so exposed some of the fundamental structural problems with the whole organization of the project including J.C. King's and Cabell's involvement. In that regard the CIA Historian did a similar job, including harsh commentary on King and Cabell. The Phase 1 plan called for active air supply and even air strike support beginning by September...neither happened. The few supply drops that eventually did occur not only failed to supply the resistance groups but in several instances exposed them to Castro's security forces. And the maritime effort was totally nonexistent during that period except for a few small boats borrowed locally by CIA officers. It was only in Feb 1961 that a handful of larger boat missions were accomplished. Unlike in earlier projects, most recently in Indonesia, Bissell refused to utilize regular military resources or even contract pilots for the air missions or maritime missions into Cuba. And he insisted on using the Agencie's air arm, which of course he was more familiar with but which had never supported covert operations on the scale as called for in the evolving plan. He may have been a fine manager for a developmental project like the U-2 but when he tried to apply highly structured bureaucratic controls to regime change, he was truly out of his depth.

Ron, I repeatedly asked the same question about Bissell's behavior and you see it discussed from multiple angles in the book. One factor which has to be taken into account was that Bissell had made several project management decisions (against strong objections from Esterline and others) which led the first phase of the project to be carried out in a quite different fashion than either the earlier Guatemala effort or the most recent CIA covert military action in Indonesia. Those decisions had resulted in the total failure of the first phase despite all the promises made to Eisenhower. As of November both he and Dulles had failed to deliver on a what had turned into a huge project, almost totally unlike what Eisenhower had authorized. Its pretty clear Bissell was taking little advice from anyone throughout, certainly not the people with actual military experience. That's not the only factor but a big part of the whole story is that almost all the discussion in the media and the history books about the Bay of Pigs has been in the context of only about three months (or more often three days) in early 1961 - in reality the discussion needs to be about what had been in progress for over a year before the landings occurred.

More detail on this upcoming shortly, with separate tracks down from Washington to Miami (to SAS and JMWAVE personnel) with the JFK backchannel news - and then with the word going two directions from Morales. One direction to very select JMWAVE maritime operations personnel via Robertson, and another going sideways though Martino to Vidal and his associates. Always important to remember that standard practice in CIA political assassination was to use deniable surrogates - as in "yes we knew them but they did it on their own initiative, we didn't order them to do it". Check my most recent blog post for a progress report.....

Not to my knowledge, personally I'm comfortable with the identification of Hemming, Sturgis and Lorenz. Some of the others may have been indetified in the newspaper coverage but if they were that's beyond my memory at this point, The other identifications including Ferri et al on the photo are highly speculative as far as I'm concerned. Given that it was a public INTERPEN public relations gambit to draw donations I can't conceive of what Droller would be there. At that point Hemming and Sturgis were mostly in fund raising mode. For what its worth Hemming was very convincing on television, I've seen a couple of his interviews and I might even have donated.

Much appreciated Robert, too be honest its a bit of a slog in places but it was a challenge to capture the minutia and the give and take of the various meetings and memos. On the other hand some of that is necessary to contrast with how simplistic the common historical treatments have been. As an example, the dialog about air strikes has been portrayed almost entirely in terms of the exchanges (or lack thereof) of Day 1. But when you dig into the memos you find Hawkins and Esterline arguing for the necessity of extensive strikes and air cover as early as December. In fact those exchanges were so ongoing and so heated that it becomes clear that Esterline's suspicion he was pulled from the highest level meetings during the last few weeks in order for Bissell to minimize the issue is well justified. Outside of that, I was intrigued to find the Navy liaison writing that the rules of engagement (ROE) for the Trinidad plan called for Navy air over the ships as they came in to port to offload - it appears to have assumed Navy combat air patrol over the harbor itself. That level of CAP was dramatically reduced during the shift of the plan to Zapata and there were constant changes to the Navy ROE - its unclear how far down the operations chain from Bissell the ROE changes were communicated but those directly in contact with the Brigade clearly expected far more air support than Bissell was authorizing. Grayston Lynch also wrote that the Navy totally failed to provide the authorized combat air protection for the Brigade's ships that retreated to sea under Cuban air attack - which in turn led them to flee so far that the authorized return for a second attempt at resupply the night of Day 1 never materialized.

The picture was taken during a press event Hemming had set up to show off Interpen, during the period he and Sturgis were cooperating. Its described in a couple of Miami news stories. The Hemming and Sturgis identifications are certainly correct and the other folks are likely from the Interpen group of that period, which included Seymour and a couple of others who do resemble Oswald. The press event didn't go off quite as planned because one of the fellows who jumped muffed his landing and either twisted or broke an ankle - not quite the example of showing off the skills of the groups purported highly experienced paramiliary operators, which was the intent of the outing.

Check this list, the individuals assigned for OP40 / Cuban intelligence groups would be among the master list - as well as individuals designated for other aspects of the project including the Brigade and the Nino Diaz mission: https://cuban-exile.com/doc_026-050/doc0034.html

Ron, for the full details on the evolution and chains of decision making I really have to refer you to the book where I go through its backstory and inception. The project itself began with a proposal from JC King as head of the Western Hemisphere Directorate. King proposed launching a formal covert action program against Castro - King had earlier recommended to Dulles that Castro simply be assassinated. Eisenhower had already tasked the CIA with the Castro problem and they had been active in intelligence work on the island already. The CIA initially took that proposal to the Special Group which referred it up to the NSC and Eisenhower as standard practice. Eisenhower approved it as strictly a deniable project - leaving it under Special Group oversight. At that point Bissell was given high level project responsibility under Dulles, while the project itself ran under Western Hemisphere (J.C. King) and was operationally tasked to Esterline. A very unusual management arrangement which the CIA IG faulted for many of the project's problems. In its first phase it was largely propaganda and political action with a modest paramilitry effort involving only 100 trained Cuban volunteers to be inserted to stimulate on island resistance. An air element was not added until summer of 1960. When phase 1 totally failed, it was reconstructed by Bissell and Hawkins as the amphibious insertion of a heavy infantry Brigade...what followed was very much an iterative process with Bissell interacting with both the Special Group and members of the NSC as well as Eisenhower's national security council following the election. Eisenhower never really engaged with the phase 2 proposal nor did he issue another National Security Directive approving it. Ultimately JFK did issue a directive but it was very limited and only talked about supporting the return of Cuban volunteers to Cuba. In Denial has the timelines, the details of the project evolution, and citations; I will also be covering this in an upcoming JFK Lancer virtual conference presentation.

Grayston Lynch (who sailed along with Robertson on command ships for the Brigade - at Bissell's direction but against JFK's directives that no American's would be involved with the actual landings) later wrote that they were assured that there would be no Cuban air to oppose the landing and described being shocked when they were radioed at sea that they would be facing air attacks at the beach head. He wrote of trying to advise the Brigade commanders about tactics to cope with that and of course he and Robertson manned the fifty caliber machine guns on the command ships, the only real anti-aircraft weaponry available. He and Lynch had mounted the guns prior to sailing, apparently at their own initiative, in order to provide suppression fire during the landings. Lynch was also adamant that given the heavy equipment and tanks being landed their was no way they could ever have offloaded and had the ships away and out of Cuban waters by daybreak - which had been one of JFK's primary demands for the operation.

I would agree Gene, which is why I've been so persistent in trying to get attention to the full details as we now know them. There is no doubt at all that Bissell knowingly and repeatedly diverted the blame towards JFK, Esterline in particular felt very badly once he realized how he had been played because he had immediately gone to Florida and essentially told anyone who would listen that JFK had betrayed them. He had no idea at the time how wrong that was. Bissell's failures actually had been going on for months, not just in the last hours in his failure to lobby JFK for the Day 1 air strikes (of course any attempt to do that would have raised questions which very likely would have caused JFK to abort the landings). Months earlier he had rejected Hawkin's request to consolidate command and control for the ground and air elements and that in itself was a critical failure. Interviews with the Brigade air staff confirmed they had been assured no landing would be made if any Cuban aircraft remained operational to oppose them - but the final air strike assessment decisions were being made in Florida and Washington, not at Brigade Air in Nicaragua. Certainly both Bissell and Dulles should have been considered as derelict in their duties, but Bissell's sins were far worse - both in the sacrifice of the Brigade and in putting the responsibility for that onto JFK. Sadly those directly involved at the beachead only knew that what they had expected to happen didn't, they had no idea that it had been compromised over and over again for weeks and once again as the boats loaded to head towards the beaches.

Weisberg obtained the original FBI memo on this, which Matthew Smith came across and followed up on during several years of interviews and contacts with January. It was during those contacts that Smith developed the story of the larger transport aircraft incident flown out of Dallas on November 22 that he and then I followed up on separately. Certainly I can say in regard to that, every piece of information from January in regard to the transport aircraft checked out and was verifiable. Specifically in regard to the couple trying to rent the smaller aircraft, here is a bit more detail - it should be noted that January told Smith that he had tried to focus the FBI on the young couple but that all they appeared to be really interested in was whether he had himself been associated with Jack Ruby. Matthew Smith's discussions with January also turned up the point that the FBI report from his interview was quite inaccurate on a key point as far as January was concerned: Matthew Smith's "JFK: The Second Plot" contains the following FBI memo which Harold Weisberg obtained under the FOIA: "The following interview was conducted by SA's KENNETH B.JACKSON and JOHN V.ALMON on November 29, 1963: AT DALLAS,TEXAS WAYNE JANUARY, owner, American Aviation Company, Room 101, Terminal Building, Red Bird Airport, Dallas, Texas, advised that from February through April, 1963, he, together with several friends, on occasion frequented the Carousel Club, Dallas, Texas, which he understands is owned by one JACK RUBY. JANUARY stated that during February, 1963, he received an anonymous telephone call from a man who offered him the sum of $5,000.00 to fly to Laredo, Texas, and back with no questions asked. JANUARY said that he surmised that this individual planned to transport narcotics to Dallas and for this reason he declined the offer. JANUARY further stated that during March, 1963, he received a second anonymous telephone call from a man who wanted him to fly $12,000,000.00 worth of gold dust to Mexico City where he was to pick up the currency and return with it to Dallas. He stated that this individual offered him $400,000.00 to make this flight which he also declined. JANUARY stated that during the latter part of July, 1963, a man and a woman whom he had never seen before contacted him at his office at which time they inquired about chartering a plane for a trip to "Old Mexico". JANUARY stated that when he asked this man questions essential to such a flight he was definitely evasive in his answers. JANUARY explained that this individual did not appear to know exactly where he desired to go in Mexico but said something about the West Coast. Furthermore, he did not appear to know when he desired to return or or exactly how many passengers could be expected on the flight. JANUARY said that this man, after stating that he did not wish to make the flight for a couple of months, stated that he would consider the information which JANUARY had given him and let him know at a later date. He said that when the couple left he observed a third man who had been waiting in their automobile during the entire conversation, and after observing a photograph of LEE HARVEY OSWALD on television it now seems to him that this man somewhat resembled OSWALD although he was not definitely sure in this respect. JANUARY was unable to offer any additional information which might be of assistance in identifying the man and woman who inquired about the flight to Mexico. He said that they did not appear to him to be persons of sufficient financial means to charter a trip such as the one discussed. JANUARY reiterated the fact that the man, accompanied by the unidentified woman, who made inquiries concerning a chartered flight to Mexico, was not LEE HARVEY OSWALD and said that he has no records or any other method of identifying the persons who contacted him during the latter part of July, 1963. JANUARY further commented that he never visited the Carousel Club when he did not observe several plainclothes officers, and when a friend of his attempted to date one of the performers, KATHY KAY, she informed this friend that she had to go with another man, whom she identified as a plainclothes officer. JANUARY concluded with the opinion that JACK RUBY was not the type of individual who would have killed, or attempted to kill, anyone charged with the assassination of the President. He said that he does not think that RUBY would care that much, even about his own mother." Wayne January had never seen this memo until Matthew Smith showed it to him and "was amazed when this author (Smith) told him the FBI stated he had said his visitors, including Oswald, had called several MONTHS before the assassination, instead of two days before." January said, "How would I have been able to remember the face to compare with the pictures of Oswald I saw on television for that long? It was the Wednesday before the assassination" Smith also says, "As opposed to the uncertain identification stated in the report, January told this author his identification of Oswald was so strong he would give it nine out of ten."

What Ron, Vince and Jim said.... The first edition of the book was at least interesting, mysterious and intriguing...then he literally jumped off the cliff with the second, taking the first edition along with him on the dive.

Dennis, actually Chuck Ochelli had to cancel last weeks show on In Denial and in particular on JFK and the Bay of Pigs due to health problems; we will reschedule as soon as he is feeling up to it. Just a note on the Castro assassinations, the first memo proposing assassination came from inside the CIA before the first Cuba Projet even began - J.C. King was a very early proponent. The order for the poison came from Bissell in mid-1960 so JFK obviously had nothing to do with that...the whole project was just so dysfunctional that they never got around to trying to deliver it for months. The thought that JFK was even aware of it is ridiculous and the same can be said for the series of sniper attack plans generated within the Cuba project. When the original Cuba Project plan totally failed by the end of October, Bissell began to get desperate and turned to a host of new measures strictly at his own initiative. JFK had nothing to do with those actions.

Unfortunately it becomes quite sad when you dig into the details of how the JCS was were briefed, what their staff assessments say and how little response the CIA made. For that matter Burke himself produced a list of over one hundred operational questions/issues- and at best CIA responded to only a handful. After their verbal briefings the JCS staff did do assessments but primarily of two aspects - the size and composition of the force (would the ships and transport craft be sufficient to land it) and the logistics of supplying and sustaining the beachead/lodgement. They judged that it could be landed and the lodgement held for a short time. But it could not sustain itself without a major uprising and a local influx of thousands of resistance fighters to supplement the Brigade and interdict ongoing Cuban attacks. They asserted the uprising point several times. That was brought up during several meetings in which the senior CIA personnel apparently made no comment at all. Their other main point was that they felt the logistics were very questionable - that becomes especially true when you delve into the actual status of the Brigade's air arm and the ratio of certified pilots to aircraft. That concern began to come very real as early as the second day on the beach. In separate comments the JCS air staff warned about the need for total air cover, stating that even a single Cuban aircraft operating over the beach could sink one or more exposed supply ships and literally doom the effort due to the logistics issues - a most accurate warning. But they never even got as far as the operational details such as communications, frequency matching, forward air control or one of the biggest issues - the fact that no beachmasters experienced in amphibious landings were with the force - which as you point out is one of the most challenging of any military actions. As it was there were officially no amphibious ops personnel with the force - the fact that Bissell sent in Lynch and Robertson in with the boats (against JFK's instructions that no American's would participate) did put some experience in play, but it was literally miraculous that the Cuban volunteers were able to perform the operation as well as they did and move the tanks, trucks and heavy weapons onto the beach (the landing itself was quite complex, with three separate landing zones separated by several miles) even though that took far longer than planned. Without digging into the details its really hard to comprehend how nasty it all was - then again the whole Cuba project was that way and its first incarnation had totally failed by October the previous year.

Jim, it appears that Bissell had a handful of wild cards that were in play right up to the days before the landings - for those interested in this I've been discussing it in my recent blog posts. Actually there were a couple of options including a squadron of fighter bombers on the Essex with the right weapons load for ground strikes- not just air cover. And beyond the Essex there was a supercarrier group built around the Independence that Burke deployed off Florida, towards Cuba, and never mentioned in any of the post landing dialogs and inquiries. More new information involves an explosives cache that ONI and Cuban volunteers were building "outside" the Guantanamo base - and Eisenhower's recommendation to Bissell to stage a provocation so the American military could intervene. As far as the record goes JFK was never briefed on any of those things, and as with the poison attempts and planned sniper attacks, they all went bad only in the last days and weeks. But to your larger point, without those wild cards, the whole darn thing was insane, especially as Bissell admittedly had no intelligence that an uprising was going to happen and had largely backed off contact with the on island resistance groups. There was no covert reconnaissance done with the CIA's Cuban paramiliaries, in fact Hawkins was forced to admit that they had no idea that there was a large body of Cuban troops literally close enough to engage in massive counter attacks within hours. To make one more point, there were concrete plans for D Day air strikes, we have the documents on that including the number of aircraft, targets etc. However there is no sign that JFK was getting operational briefings at that level; the high level meetings that he was brought into only dealt with strategic decisions, not operations. He did give some specific directions - like all boats well at sea by dawn - and if the operations officers had been present they most likely clear that you can't land a heavy combat brigade with tanks and armored trunks across reefs at night in only a few hours. Bissell, Barnes and Cabell simply made no comment to such directives. Finally there is every indication that Bissell made the calls about reducing air strikes and cancelling the last dawn strike at his own initiative...and later lied about it being all JFK. All that was a total surprise to the Air element of the Cuban Brigade and to Lynch and Robertson, all of whom had been told that there would be no landing if a single Cuban aircraft was still operational - and they were depending final strikes to ensure that. The thing is that if Bissell and Cabell had gone on the phone to JFK he surely would have started asking questions which would have raised many uncomfortable questions - like, I told you to have all the ships at sea by dawn and everything landed and under cover, so how many Cuban planes are left and why are they such a risk? My bet is that JFK would have called it off then and there - he had already directed that if the landing were detected and opposed the Brigade should be extracted and saved to be inserted elsewhere. There should have been contingency plans for that; we now know those were never made. Oh, on the plans thing...not only was JFK not given anything in writing, neither were the Joint Chiefs given detailed plans for their study; one of their specific complaints was that they had virtually nothing in writing and their analysis had to be made almost entirely from limited verbal briefings by CIA staff.

Actually Dulles was only minimally involved in the operation discussions, doing little more than head nods or giving very general endorsements. J.C. King (Western Hemisphere) was far more involved in administration meetings, as was General Cabell. The primary briefing officer was Bissell. Col. Hawkins attended a limited number of meetings, generally to comment on the Brigade ground force which was his assignment. The air arm of the Brigade was very under represented with Bissell often speaking for them - a major mistake since he had no relevant experience (and had stonewalled the total separation of the Air arm from the ground forces under Hawkins - something that Hawkins thought might prove fatal, and did). The person that might have made the real difference in the meetings or with JFK was Esterline, the actual operations head, but Bissell began to screen him out of meetings because Esterline was being too hard nosed about the issue of increased air support (which caused he and Hawkins attempted resignation), Bissell promised them he would convince JFK more air was needed and immediately cut it in half without telling them (his own decision, not JFK's). Decades later, with access to documents, Esterline finally concluded that Bissell had made sure he was not in key meetings because his comments would likely have exposed the serious operational risks, and JFK likely would have cancelled the whole thing. Neither of the two operational commanders were in direct contact with JFK as the operation launched, if they had been issues would have come up which would likely have aborted the landings - and ended Bissell's career then and there. And later itwas Bissell and Admiral Burke who first fed negative information to the media, leading to the articles which directed all the blame at JFK - and it was Bissell who lied to Esterline and Hawkins, again placing all the blame on JFK. Iin the highly classified Taylor Commission hearings Dulles actually accepted a good deal of blame. Not that he did not deserve it as being the senior man in charge but his sins were largely of omission. An example shows up in the meetings where the Joint Chiefs point out the logistics were so weak that the beachhead would collapse without a major uprising / resistance campaign. JFK's people heard that and accepted that it was part of the plan. What they did not hear was any specific commentary on that uprising at all from Dulles et al. In reality neither Bissell or Dulles had any intelligence or reason to believe that would happen (later confirmed by both the CIA IG and the CIA Historian) and Bissell had actually ordered contact with the resistance groups for operational security. The CIA's own highly trained Cuban volunteer maritime paramilitary assets were not even deployed to reconnoiter the landing area, much less make contact with resistance groups in the area. .....for those interested, I will be on Chuck Ochelli's show this Thursday evening, 7 PM central time, talking about the Cuba project, these issues and many others. It also gets archived if you can't listen live.