Happy Bay of Pigs Day

[Ron Bulman]

23 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

Ron, In Denial does make it clear that Barnes and Bissell, regardless of motive, lied to both JFK - and to Hawkins and Esterline at the same time.  Unfortunately Hawkins and Easterline believed him before hand and afterwards and repeated Barnes' lies to the field officers at JMWAVE...who repeated it to the Cubans.   It was only decades later when they were shown actual documents and transcripts that they Hawkins and Easterline realized the truth...way to late at that point.

In Denial makes it clear how far JFK actually went to resend certain of his rules during the three days of the on the beach and authorize more American involvement; it also makes clear which of his directives were never complied with at all - including his order that it operation had to happen entirely at night with all ships out in international waters by  daybreak and that the Brigade and Navy be fully prepared for an immediate evacuation if the landing was opposed.

The story  is actually much more tragic when you realize who should actually bear the blame for the disaster.

 

Thank you, Larry.  I do have SWHT, Nexus and Tipping Point.  I thought I'd read Dulles later admitted he knew the operation would fail without the air support JFK "withheld".  But he did nothing to end the CIA operation as soon as they were trapped on the beach.  Didn't he also later claim that he'd left the operational planning to Bissell and was unfamiliar with the details? 

So, Barnes and Bissell actually bear the blame?   

[Larry Hancock]

Dulles was so disassociated from the entire Cuba project much less the landings its hard to tell what he knew - he had left the whole thing under the direct supervision of Barnes working under WestHem Director J.C. King...whose testimony after the fact showed his almost total lack of any detailed knowledge as well. The IG report states it was virtually unique in CIA history at that point because of its strange organizational structure - which allowed the Air Operations to be run completely independently than the ground operations or the sea operations for that matter.  At the Bay of Pigs Air, Ground and Sea ops did not even use the same radio frequencies and their were not forward air controllers on the beach set up to direct Brigade or Navy air strikes in real time. 

Yes, Barnes and Bissell and King were responsible; I can't really get across in limited forum posts how much so.  The IG report captured a good deal of it but even the IG and the CIA historians work doesn't tell the full story because they did now know how consistently Barnes had lied to Hawkins and Esterline. Why can be debated forever but clearly Barnes and had an ego and degree of hubris - and afterwards went into a state of obsessive denial, personally acting to place the blame on JFK.

 

[Cliff Varnell]

In Denial, pg 204:  <q>

While purely speculative, any telephone dialog which could have occurred between Bissell and the president would have had to cover some very dicey issues in respect to Kennedy’s orders — including the fact that the complexity of the amphibious landing, the Navy landing craft involved, and the quantity of tanks, trucks and a massive amount of cargo had actually precluded any real chance of completing the landing and withdrawing all ships (including the command LCI’s) by dawn.  The true extent of the remaining Cuban air threat would have also had to be disclosed, no doubt raising further questions of the plans for resupply of the beachhead over the longer term, which involved extensive flights out of the Nicaraguan base, something which would almost certainly demonstrate American involvement.  The issue of the contingency plans for guerrilla action or even re-landing the force, directed as backup options by the president, might also have been raised by President Kennedy.  If that sort of dialog had occurred there is certainly a possibility that the president might have aborted the landing, as he had continually reserved the right to order.  At the point in time when Bissell and Cabell determined not to talk to President Kennedy the landing force was still some two to two and a half hours from its scheduled deployment off the transports. </q>

[Ibid, pg 158]

<q>

Based on Kennedy’s directives about lowering the visibility of the landings, Richard Bissell, apparently with Director Dulles’ support, did indeed go back to his military officers and craft a less visible plan for inserting the expeditionary force.  In only three days the daylight landing at Trinidad, a town with a port and docks available, and with unencumbered access to the Escambry Mountains, was changed to a night landing which required all men, material, and supplies to be directly on the beaches.  To some extent the plan offered more geographic protection for a lodgment given that the beaches were surrounded by swamps, with only a few undeveloped roads offering access to them.  However, the location selected moved the force well away from the mountains and effectively eliminated the guerrilla option that President Kennedy still seemed to anticipate.  It also made it significantly more difficult for any indigenous fighters to link up with the volunteer force unless they quickly broke out and moved beyond the swamps, something not anticipated in the lodgment plan...

(Ibid, pg 159)

...A very brief Joint Chiefs assessment of the new plan limited itself to declaring that in its essentials it still did appear feasible that a force could be landed and sustained for some limited time, but that the isolated location could well restrict any indigenous support.  In turn President Kennedy’s National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy praised the CIA for the steps towards making the revised plan quiet and less “spectacular.”  He also described it as “plausibility Cuban” in its essentials, with no elaboration on that point.  To some extent Bundy appears to have fallen back on the standard concept of deniability, which had been in play since the CIA began its covert actions — if Americans are not involved in the combat then its not officially an American intervention.  </q>

 

Edited April 22 by Cliff Varnell

[Ron Bulman]

Wow.  So, Bundy, Bissell, Barnes and King took down Dulles, Bissell and Cabbell with the Bay of Pigs with JFK "cleaning house" (ha) afterwards.  And at the same time they set up JFK for failure to start out his administration.  He did take full responsibility publicly though it was Ike/Nixon's lame duck.  Labeled by some as weak on Communism.  It ultimately had far reaching, deadly effects.

[Larry Hancock]

Ron, I think the argument - and the mystery - will always be how much of their behavior was intentional versus pure incompetence (magnified by hubris and career chasing by  Barnes).  Basically Barnes and Bissell had been hugely successful in the Guatemala project, so much so that Dulles gave them their head on Cuba and Barnes proceeded to set up and run the Cuba Project in a totally different manner than Guatemala or even the earlier failed effort in Indonesia. He totally changed all the operations practices the CIA had used and then when his new structure failed to produce results by the target date in October,  moved from a low profile infiltration project to a D Day, hail Mary, full scale invasion - at the relatively last minute - with no experience and no resources for any such thing inside the CIA.  That is why both the CIA IG report and separately the CIA historian effectively laid the blame internally on the Agency and specifically on his methods.

I'm really not trying to pitch In Denial but in this instance the matter is so complex that a few sound bytes cannot describe something that happened not over three days on the beaches but an entire year.   And of course the other factors that have to get some attention  were the "wild cards" that Barnes put into play that totally failed - but which he of course could never talk about - the Castro assassination efforts only being part of that story. None of the wild cards being things that were ever conveyed to or discussed with JFK.

What is not in doubt and is in the records is that in the weeks before the landings, the Joint Chiefs pointed out that even successful landings would be unsustainable without a major Cuba uprising occurring at the same time - that was discussed in several of the planning meetings and Barnes and company chose not bring up the point that Castro had crushed the changes of that by rolling up all the opposition groups some two/three months prior to the landings. In fact, nothing about the landings was coordinated or supported by any the counter revolutionary groups the CIA had been trying to support over the preceding  year - Barnes chose to keep them out of the equation, supposedly based on security concerns. 

What is also not in doubt is the Joint Chiefs had pointed out that the landing would be in grave jeopardy if any Cuban military aircraft were operating over the beached - and Barnes was well aware of the fact that the latest estimates the day before the landings were launched showed that the pre-landing air strikes had been far less successful than previously thought - with much of the Cuban Air Force sill very much alive and operational.  Yet he and Cabell failed to raise that as a critical issue the night they chose not to argue the issue of more air strikes with JFK - who very likely would have aborted the landings at that point.

 

Edited April 23 by Larry Hancock

[Cliff Varnell]

Richard Bissell, Deputy Director for Plans, Yale '31 (turned down Skull & Bones)

Tracy Barnes, Assistant Deputy Director for Plans, Yale '33 (Scroll & Key)

McGeorge Bundy, National Security Advisor, Yale '40 (Skull & Bones)

Either the Yale crew royally screwed the pooch with the Bay of Pigs -- or the long knives were out for Princeton Allen D.

Either way, Dulles never saw it coming.

[Ron Bulman]

An interesting tidbit from Alan Kent's essay A Well-Concealed T near the end of Hank Albarelli's Coup in Dallas.

"Barnes and Angleton were both Yale men, and both had attended Harvard Law School, although Angleton did not graduate.  Barnes, a few years older than Angleton, did not attend these institutions at the same time as did Angleton, but both men were members of Yale's secret society "Scroll and Key", the major rival of the more famous "Skull and Bones" for the souls of young Yale men.  To surmise further for the moment, they and their wives were part of the Georgetown Set.

[Kevin Balch]

22 hours ago, Cliff Varnell said:

Richard Bissell, Deputy Director for Plans, Yale '31 (turned down Skull & Bones)

Tracy Barnes, Assistant Deputy Director for Plans, Yale '33 (Scroll & Key)

McGeorge Bundy, National Security Advisor, Yale '40 (Skull & Bones)

Either the Yale crew royally screwed the pooch with the Bay of Pigs -- or the long knives were out for Princeton Allen D.

Either way, Dulles never saw it coming.

Why would it be expected that Ivy League adventurers born with a silver spoon in their mouths would be competent at covert and paramilitary operations? I think Barnes was the only one that had any military experience in WW2.

[Cliff Varnell]

1 hour ago, Kevin Balch said:

Why would it be expected that Ivy League adventurers born with a silver spoon in their mouths would be competent at covert and paramilitary operations?

The CIA didn't conduct any successful covert operations under Allen Dulles?

I guess Joe Kennedy and Robert Lovett got worked up over nothing, eh?