David Talbot: Allen Dulles, CIA and Rise of America's Secret Government

[Greg Burnham]

“I am one of those who feel it is very wrong to pick too much on Jack Kennedy because it was Nixon who, if we had kicked off [the Bay of Pigs] as we had hoped for, between November and January of 60-61, it might not have worked, but it would not have been a major disaster.” — Jake Esterline

[Chris Newton]

"..because it was Nixon who,.."

Greg, I wonder where that train of thought that was going...

Pure speculation, but do you think Ike would have gone "all in" with full US military support had "Trinidad" gone off while he was still in office? That intervention would have probably guaranteed success militarily, but maybe not politically.

[Greg Burnham]

Nixon was the person tasked by Eisenhower with oversight of the planned operation against Castro. It became apparent to Nixon that Kennedy had bested him in the debate--partly due to JFK having criticized Ike's Cuba policy--knowing full well that Nixon could not reveal any Top Secret plans that were in the works (Trinidad) due to National Security constraints. This is more than likely what caused Nixon to delay the operation by ordering a build up of the invasion forces beyond anything that the CIA is capable of handling. It served the purpose of creating a "tar baby" for JFK.

As for Eisenhower, the answer is absolutely no. He would not have approved Trinidad if it had grown to the scope of the Bay of Pigs while he was President. This is from my website:

Subsequent to the Bay of Pigs President Kennedy arranged a briefing for former President Eisenhower by General Maxwell Taylor who was heading up the Cuban Study Group to find answers as to the cause of the failure. During that interview, Eisenhower unequivocally denied having ever set such an amphibious assault plan in motion. The notes from that meeting end at item six (6) and the last sentence reads: 6. “As the visitors left he [Eisenhower] reiterated his appreciation to President Kennedy for the briefing.”

That is where the typed interview notes ended.

However, there is a footnote:

1 “General Taylor added a final handwritten paragraph [number 7 below] to the typed text that reads:

7. General Eisenhower expressed the feeling that the US would have to get rid of Castro preferably using as a reason for intervention some Castro mistake. As the visitors left he [Eisenhower] reiterated his appreciation to President Kennedy for the briefing.

An additional footnote from the State Department reads:

2 The final sentence had been typed as the closing sentence to paragraph 6 before Taylor crossed it out and revised the text [by adding the handwritten comments about having to get rid of Castro].

========

So after this meeting, in which Ike denied he ever supported such a plan, Taylor "revised" his notes to reflect that Ike nevertheless supported action against Castro even though that is not what Ike said.

[Chris Newton]

I hate making guesses so I went back and reviewed some information.

Dulles stated that formally or informally the "Trinidad" plan was not discussed with Ike, that it was not put to paper before JFK took office but within days afterward.

From Dulles' Oral history at the JFK library: http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKOH-AWD-01.aspx

I also reviewed all of RFK's notes (the typewritten copies anyway) pertaining to the crisis as it happened and it's immediate aftermath. He makes note of many of the tactical errors I noted above and is absolutely astounded by conclusions made at JCS and CIA.

He clearly spells out State's (re: Rusk's) ignorance of the importance of air cover and the issue of the cancelled air strikes.

I highly recommend reviewing all the documents at this link: http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/RFKAG-215-003.aspx

[Steven Gaal]

Nixon was the person tasked by Eisenhower with oversight of the planned operation against Castro. It became apparent to Nixon that Kennedy had bested him in the debate--partly due to JFK having criticized Ike's Cuba policy--knowing full well that Nixon could not reveal any Top Secret plans that were in the works (Trinidad) due to National Security constraints. This is more than likely what caused Nixon to delay the operation by ordering a build up of the invasion forces beyond anything that the CIA is capable of handling. It served the purpose of creating a "tar baby" for JFK.

As for Eisenhower, the answer is absolutely no. He would not have approved Trinidad if it had grown to the scope of the Bay of Pigs while he was President. This is from my website:

Subsequent to the Bay of Pigs President Kennedy arranged a briefing for former President Eisenhower by General Maxwell Taylor who was heading up the Cuban Study Group to find answers as to the cause of the failure. During that interview, Eisenhower unequivocally denied having ever set such an amphibious assault plan in motion. The notes from that meeting end at item six (6) and the last sentence reads: 6. “As the visitors left he [Eisenhower] reiterated his appreciation to President Kennedy for the briefing.”

That is where the typed interview notes ended.

However, there is a footnote:

1 “General Taylor added a final handwritten paragraph [number 7 below] to the typed text that reads:

7. General Eisenhower expressed the feeling that the US would have to get rid of Castro preferably using as a reason for intervention some Castro mistake. As the visitors left he [Eisenhower] reiterated his appreciation to President Kennedy for the briefing.

An additional footnote from the State Department reads:

2 The final sentence had been typed as the closing sentence to paragraph 6 before Taylor crossed it out and revised the text [by adding the handwritten comments about having to get rid of Castro].

========

So after this meeting, in which Ike denied he ever supported such a plan, Taylor "revised" his notes to reflect that Ike nevertheless supported action against Castro even though that is not what Ike said.

GREG WHAT DID Eisenhower say about the BAY of PIGS latter. THANKS gaal

Edited August 28, 2015 by Steven Gaal

[Chris Newton]

Hey Greg,

I guess we were "replying" simultaneously. There you have it. Dulles confirms what Ike said because the plan before Trinidad was purely an infiltration of paramilitaries and not an invasion. CIA didn't show Trinidad to Ike.

Is it known when Taylor's notes were written and/or revised, wether it was contemporaneous with events or later?

[James DiEugenio]

CN: Once Kennedy cancelled the plan to use Trinidad, the CIA should have stepped up to the plate and cancelled the whole thing. That they did not and instead blamed Kennedy's restrictions on the failure is an obfuscation of the basic facts.

I think this is true. Also, I think that the idea of the CIA building up a beachhead is not what they do. This had morphed into military operation. And I think this is why JFK issued those NSAM's afterwards. He did not think the Pentagon gave him enough honest input about its chances of success when he asked for it. This is why he was so upset after the fact, at one point screaming words to the effect: Every SOB who had a look at this thing said it would work.

Which, for all intents and purposes is true. I mean McNamara volunteered to resign.

But I still disagree with you about the air aspect. Castro just had too many men and supplies he could get to the front. Kirkpatrick said that the invasion force would have eventually been outnumbered by something like over a hundred to one. Which, for an amphibious operation is just ridiculous.

[James DiEugenio]

BTW, there seems to be a dichotomy between what Ike said to the briefers vs what he said before and after.

According to Larry, Ike was going to allow wider rules of engagement and more direct naval support.

Also, in a call to Kennedy he was almost sneering of JFK's insistence at keeping the operation essentially a Cuban invasion, not an American one.

[Larry Hancock]

One benchmark on this is that reportedly when Ike talked to JFK after the election he admonished JFK to do whatever it took to make the operation work...and in December, Ike went so far during

a briefing as to propose creating some sort of incident which would immediately engage the US with Cuba. But, given all that, Ike still referred to the project as a "guerrilla" operation when talking with

JFK. So even in December, when the Special Group had been briefed on the change in the operation, was Ike misled to the point that he did not realize that the landing had come to involve tanks, tank landing craft, a heavy weapons

unit and paratroop drops. Was that all withheld from the sitting President?

And per Jim's reference, in my blogs I've discussed remarks from the Navy liaison to the CIA which describe Navy destroyer and air cover for the Brigade into the landings itself, which certainly would

have led to Cuban engagement with American forces....those rules of engagement were rejected and changed repeatedly once JFK forced things to be documented and reviewed.

[James DiEugenio]

Larry:

Why don't you make a link to that blog entry?

[Greg Burnham]

I think it is worth remembering that one hallmark of the Eisenhower presidency was his absolute commitment to being a peacetime President. He saw that as a worthy legacy for history to record. Ike had seen war. Fought in wars. Commanded during wars. Ike knew war and he loathed it. He committed himself to keeping the US out of war for the entire 8 years of his presidency and he succeeded...although barely, at times. The methods he chose to accomplish this ranged from almost arrogant displays of military might, to the development of extremely sophisticated spying capabilities, to a very accomplished propaganda apparatus, including various rhetorical devices employed by administration spokespersons, among others. Eisenhower was no fool. He would never have risked American security to protect his preferred legacy, but he was convinced that by fulfilling that legacy he would also best serve not only American security, but the security of the planet's population. That was his ultimate goal and the yardstick by which all foreign policy decisions were measured.

Eisenhower would never have allowed this operation to proceed. He was first an Army General who had overseen the largest successful amphibious assault (Normandy) that the world had ever seen or has ever seen to this very day! He would not have allowed this failure of a plan to be approved. Period. Moreover, he would never have allowed a plan that was so weak it would have depended on direct US military intervention for it to have had any chance of success. Again, this goes back to his commitment to his own "peacetime President" legacy. Ike would have known that direct US intervention against Cuba would have most certainly resulted in a response from the Soviet Union--very likely in Berlin. That would have been counter intuitive to his entire goal.

When JFK won the election, Nixon, who was still the VP and in charge of the "Castro's just 90 miles off our coast problem," authorized the CIA to develop alternate plans for dealing with Castro's Cuba. During this lame duck period, then, Eisenhower was not particularly focused on what Nixon was up to. This was more or less while Eisenhower was preparing to leave office, play a lot of golf, write his memoirs, preserve his legacy, and pray that history would be kind to him in this life and his creator merciful to him in the next.

As the plan began to grow in scope, it became necessary to delay its implementation on Nixon's orders, as the CIA was ill-prepared (to put it mildly) for such an ambitious operation. Nixon was a spiteful man by all accounts. We know of the ancient practice of salting the land of conquered adversaries in an attempt to make the land uninhabitable. Scipio Africanus salted the city of Carthage during the Third Punic War to that end. Richard Nixon poisoned the Caribbean after he lost the election by "salting" the original Eisenhower "guerrilla action only" approved plan--rendering it too dysfunctional to succeed--all the while knowing full well that by delaying its implantation until after the new president's inauguration, it wouldn't be his problem, but JFK's.

Edited August 29, 2015 by Greg Burnham

[Larry Hancock]

Jim, actually I address this in at least five different blog entries so rather than that I would suggest folks start with the following links:

This one is an excellent chronology of the various meetings and briefings and sets a benchmark for who was told what, when:

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/bayofpigs/chron.html

The following link has an article that discusses the Navy Task Force Alpha at the Bay of Pigs and includes remarks from an interview

with the Navy officer who had served as landing liaison with the CIA for both the Trinidad operation and its sequel. I was able to

track down the author but the officer himself is deceased. I was also able to get more detail from a Naval history with Admiral Burke but

that is only on a rather expensive CD and I can't link to it. Some of the most important observations from the CIA liaison are in this

article:

www.history.navy.mil/museums/hrnm/files/daybook/pdfs/vol9issueone.pdf

[Cliff Varnell]

He clearly spells out State's (re: Rusk's) ignorance of the importance of air cover and the issue of the cancelled air strikes.

Let's see...Rusk owed his job to Robert Lovett who, along with Joe Kennedy and others, wanted Allen Dulles out.

And by sheer incredible coincidence it is Rusk's "ignorance" that dooms the effort!

Yeah, btw, I gotta orange bridge in town here I want to sell, if interested pm me.

[Chris Newton]

I went back and read major parts of FRUS 1958-1960 and 1961-1963 specifically those volumes labeled "Cuba".

I don't wish to walk back my entire statement about what Ike might have known and when he knew it but there are some curious details:

Memorandum of a Meeting With the President, White House, Washington, August 18, 1960

Dulles:

“…training of 20 or 30 instructor cadres has been finished …now go to Guatemala to instruct 500 cubans”

“…need for some air force trainers”

“…some U.S. military who might be involved in going across beaches.”

“…backup force should contain American Officers and possibly men…”

“…acquiring B-26’s. The aircrews for these would be all Cubans.”

https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v06/pg_1057

“On December 8 [1960], the Special Group, or 5412 Committee, discussed plans for an attack on Cuba.” …”described the new concept as one consisting of an amphibious landing on the Cuban coast of 600-750 men equipped with weapons of extraordinary heavy fire power” …”The landing would be preceded by preliminary air strikes launched from Nicaragua against military targets.”

https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v06/pg_1175

Edited August 29, 2015 by Chris Newton

[Chris Newton]

March 15th, 1961 Mac B.'s warning to Kennedy about the need for "prompt action against Castro's air":

https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/pg_158