How the US military and CIA deceived JFK: The Bay of Pigs

[Gil Jesus]

 

[Michael Griffith]

For many years, I regarded JFK's handling of the Bay of Pigs as cowardly and shameful, even for a number of years after I came to believe he'd been killed by a conspiracy. Many, if not most, conservatives still feel this way. This is one of the first things that most conservatives will mention to support their claim that JFK was weak and timid in dealing with communism. 

 

[Matthew Koch]

1 minute ago, Michael Griffith said:

For many years, I regarded JFK's handling of the Bay of Pigs as cowardly and shameful, even for a number of years after I came to believe he'd been killed by a conspiracy. Many, if not most, conservatives still feel this way. This is one of the first things that most conservatives will mention to support their claim that JFK was weak and timid in dealing with communism. 

 

Michael I've read almost every book on the Bay of Pigs and that is a extremely generalized point of view that the media sold the public. I've even gone to Cuba and visited the museum and went to the beach that is now a resort. I see BOP as an example of Kennedy's courage, he didn't compound the sin by trying to save face, which always makes things worse. Kennedy did the right thing and let it fail and attempted to rescue the guys which further exposed the hidden American hand. 

Kennedy wanted the event to be more of an infiltration instead of an invasion and tried to quit it down, this was allowed by higher ups in the CIA even though they knew it would go bad, the Kirkpatrick Inspectors General report backs that up imo. The Bay of Pigs was sold as an invasion of Cuba that was going to oust Castro by blowing up his airforce. In reality it was a plan to hold a beach head long enough to fly in a provisional government and declare that area to be Free Cuba. The result would at minimum trigger a civil war at maximum would generate calls for the United State Military to come in and restore peace. This would have cased Berlin to be taken which would have lead to nuclear war. (Something we see wanted by people in Kennedy's Military at the time) The plan changed while the Government was in transition and was set up to undermine Kennedy's foreign policy in a fait accompli for the president. It's an extremely nuanced event where Air Cover wasn't called off, McGeorge Bundy declined to authorize a second strike. The invasion should have been aborted and wasn't, that is the real story of the BOY imo those Cubans were used as cannon fodder by the CIA and Military. 

[James DiEugenio]

There was never any plan for the American forces to intervene that I have seen.

If there was, I would like to see it.

What angered Kennedy was that the vote to launch the Bay of Pigs was almost unanimous.  

So clearly, the JCS had not examined the plan in depth.  Plus there were too. many contingencies involved.  Would there be no patrol there, would there by large amounts of defections? Could the troops go guerllla if need be?  These all turned out to be negative.

Lyman Kirkpatrick's IG report was simply devastating to Dulles, Cabell, and Bissell. And Bobby Kennedy used it to grill witness after witness for the Taylor Commission.

And as time has gone on the CIA has looked even worse.

[Larry Hancock]

I'm guess I'm going to have to say this again, but if  someone has not read the section on the Cuba Project in my book In Denial I honestly don't think you have the full details that are now available to us for a better historical picture of how things came down and the extent to which Richard Bissell knowingly lied to both JFK on one side and two his own military commanders on the other. Or the extent to which JFK did change certain rules of engagement literally on the fly during the three days at the beachead to support the Cuban force and then ordered it to be extracted - in a contingency plan which he had ordered in writing but one which the Navy had not prepared for and which had never been briefed to the Cuban Brigade, just as they had never been briefed or equipped to move into guerilla warfare as JFK had also been assured.

And to Jim, there is circumstantial evidence discussed in the book that Commander in Chief Atlantic had dispatched a super-carrier strike group off the coast of Cuba, equipped with enough air power to literally destroy the Cuban military - and did so without informing JFK.  That force was entirely independent of the Essex Navy support group - which JFK was aware of - and both forces contained Marine landing elements, which had also not been briefed to the president.  The Essex also carried a ground attack air group with specialized ordinance, again not briefed to the president and way outside of the purported support role of that ship.

Even more interesting is the circumstantial evidence that a false flag attack on Guantanamo was in play by Navy Intelligence and CIA officers at Guantanamo, an effort that only aborted because the ordinance to be used in the effort literally blew up after it was transported outside the base. If the attack had occurred the pressure from Commander In Chief Atlantic for massive retaliation would have been difficult for JFK to resist. The presence of the second task force, the ordinance smuggled out of Guantanamo and the abortive explosion are matters of record....as we can imagine there is no written record of the sort of false flag mission I just described, although the Nino Diaz abortive mission is another strong suggestion that such a plan was in play.

 

[James DiEugenio]

Yes, the military might have had some operational plans, but JFK never approved these.

How could he when he had said two weeks prior that there will be no American intervention in Cuba on his watch.  

 

 

[Larry Hancock]

That was one of the points I was making Jim, that there were a great many things going on that JFK was not briefed about and beyond that was overtly lied to about by Bissell.   JFK apparently was not even told about the mainline American Army tanks deployed at the beach head with the Brigade (only one source for those - direct from the US Army), something that would have instantly voided all the deniability he was demanding - and for that matter the deniability Eisenhower had demanded when he ordered the Cuba project in the first place.

[Allen Lowe]

11 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

For many years, I regarded JFK's handling of the Bay of Pigs as cowardly and shameful, even for a number of years after I came to believe he'd been killed by a conspiracy. Many, if not most, conservatives still feel this way. This is one of the first things that most conservatives will mention to support their claim that JFK was weak and timid in dealing with communism. 

 

So you believe that any country has the right to invade any other sovereign country? So the Russians are doing the right thing in Ukraine? And I guess you do also believe, as you’ve implied , that Vietnam was a noble venture? I mean, after all, we only killed about 3 million Vietnamese. 

 

[James DiEugenio]

Larry,

 

Is the whole five volume CIA history out now?

Man talk about an assassination record!

Edited December 28, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Larry Hancock]

It is, so we have the CIA IG's report which was initially suppressed and Bissell's response to that....and we have the CIA historian's full and extensive report.  The last section of that was most recently released by but not fully endorsed by the Agency as a historical document given its rather obvious attitude and finger pointing (with a special indictment of the Navy).

Then we have the Taylor Commission report, well actually we don't have the full report itself, but the CIA historian had access to it and cites and quotes it repeatedly so we have a great deal of information from it.  One of the things that stands out from that was just how totally out of it J C. King, Western Hemisphere chief was largely uniformed about operations even though the operational people (not Bissell and Barnes but the field people) where under his area of responsibility.

All in all its a massive and damming set of documents on the entire Cuba Project, especially the first 8 months under Eisenhower that really does not receive much attention compared to the Bay of Pigs.

[James DiEugenio]

I thought the Taylor Commission Report was available as a separate volume.

Twyman actually had a copy of it for his book.

 

[Karl Kinaski]

It is a letter to the president and four memos, isn't it?

Letter

Memo No. 1

Memo No. 2

Memo No. 3

Memo No. 4

 

 

 

 

 

 

[David Boylan]

From letter 1 above. It was Col Frank Egan (see below) that promised the training force that they would have an "umbrella of protection" from above once they were on the beach. 

 

[Larry Hancock]

In regard to the Taylor Commission, I was not precise enough....what I was referring to was the actual transcript of the hearings, not the report per se.   The transcript is extremely important in being able to access which principals knew about certain things or their opinions on issues......the historian had access to at least portions of the transcript as he quotes individuals such as J.C. King and others - which reveals what they did and did not know in some areas.  For example King knew that JFK had actually approved US Air Force transports to conduct air drops over the landing zone on the second night...a major change in the order of engagement.  Yet King did not know the mission was not carried out due to the lack of cargo riggers and air force preparation for any such directive, in fact it appears that he thought it had been carried out until the dialog in the hearings....a pretty sad indication of his involvement considering how critical the air resupply missions were.  Such a mission was definitely not not in the original plan and yet one more area where JFK allowed American action in support of the Brigade which is never really discussed in the histories.

I'm not sure the full transcript has resurfaced even at this date; I relate how the historian appears to have gained access in the book but I'm not up to citing that sort of detail from memory.

On another note, the material we have now clearly shows two things:  The Joint Chiefs agreed that the landing could likely succeed but specified that due to logistics problems in the plan, it would be almost impossible to hold the beachhead unless there was a major uprising and revolt against Castro at the time - which the CIA knew was virtually impossible but made no comment on.  The second is that the air staff section of their response clearly states that if a single Cuban military aircraft was operational over the beachhead the likelihood of losing one or more supply ships and dooming the landing was almost certain.

JFK had directed the landing be totally done and ships back in international waters by daylight but we know from the officers involved that was never communicated to them or part of their plan.  We also know that Bissell was very much aware that perhaps half the Cuban air force was till operational and ready to engage the landing and did not brief JFK or advise him of the risk....just one of Bissell's major sins.

[Gil Jesus]

6 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

In regard to the Taylor Commission, I was not precise enough....what I was referring to was the actual transcript of the hearings, not the report per se.   The transcript is extremely important in being able to access which principals knew about certain things or their opinions on issues......the historian had access to at least portions of the transcript as he quotes individuals such as J.C. King and others - which reveals what they did and did not know in some areas.  For example King knew that JFK had actually approved US Air Force transports to conduct air drops over the landing zone on the second night...a major change in the order of engagement.  Yet King did not know the mission was not carried out due to the lack of cargo riggers and air force preparation for any such directive, in fact it appears that he thought it had been carried out until the dialog in the hearings....a pretty sad indication of his involvement considering how critical the air resupply missions were.  Such a mission was definitely not not in the original plan and yet one more area where JFK allowed American action in support of the Brigade which is never really discussed in the histories.

I'm not sure the full transcript has resurfaced even at this date; I relate how the historian appears to have gained access in the book but I'm not up to citing that sort of detail from memory.

On another note, the material we have now clearly shows two things:  The Joint Chiefs agreed that the landing could likely succeed but specified that due to logistics problems in the plan, it would be almost impossible to hold the beachhead unless there was a major uprising and revolt against Castro at the time - which the CIA knew was virtually impossible but made no comment on.  The second is that the air staff section of their response clearly states that if a single Cuban military aircraft was operational over the beachhead the likelihood of losing one or more supply ships and dooming the landing was almost certain.

JFK had directed the landing be totally done and ships back in international waters by daylight but we know from the officers involved that was never communicated to them or part of their plan.  We also know that Bissell was very much aware that perhaps half the Cuban air force was till operational and ready to engage the landing and did not brief JFK or advise him of the risk....just one of Bissell's major sins.

Larry, how much credence ( if any ) can we give Col. Prouty's account that it was Gen. Cabell who delayed the B-29s from taking off from Guatemala ? He claims the second air strike against the T-33s should have lifted off at midnight, but Cabell held them on the ground till around 4am. He makes it sound like Cabell deliberately sabotaged the invasion in order to force the President to use US Forces.

Any ideas on this ? Thanks in advance.