Operation Gold And The Bay Of Pigs

The Cuban Revolution was touchy topic for the United States and Cuba. America’s alienation of Cuba didn’t help when communism from the USSR was brewing over the revolution. When the revolution gained Castro as its leader, the worry and hatred from the United States was unbearable, especially when the Soviet Union landed in Cuba to interest Castro in its aid. The US’s fear of communism, Fidel Castro, and aid from the Soviet Union was significant because it changed the US’s political role in Cuba during the Cuban Revolution.

The Invasion was destined to fail from the beginning due to the CIA’s plan being backed on false intelligence. From the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the mass exchange of communist ideas would begin, deepening the Cold War and attributing to the pressure and strain placed upon the United States and Russian foreign relations. Failure and doubt in the United States lead to the exploration of new policy and political ideology, as well as a new era in intelligence, political, and military fields, that continues to affect the domestic and foreign policy of today's

The Bay of Pigs fiasco, the Challenger Disaster, and the U.S. failure to anticipate the attack on Pearl Harbor – all notable examples of how groupthink tends to plague groups with high cohesiveness (What is Groupthink, n.d.). Oxford Dictionaries defines groupthink as “the practice of thinking or making decisions as a group in a way that discourages creativity or individual responsibility” (Groupthink, n.d.). With this in mind, it is no surprise that groupthink is going to be a major problem in an organization, such as the military, that values uniformity and a strict chain of command. There is a lot of research on groupthink and evidence of groupthink is apparent in nearly every social group, no matter the size. So, how does a junior officer in the military go about minimizing groupthink among his subordinates and peers without affecting values such as uniformity and chain of command? In order to minimize groupthink, you must minimize the symptoms by encouraging honesty, accountability, and differing opinions. This paper will demonstrate how a junior officer can combat groupthink within the decision making process, standard operating procedures, and the culture of the command.

To do this they needed a way to help the Cuban rebels successfully oust the Spanish control of Cuba. To accomplish this they would need the United States military to intervene. This would be a different type of war than then the United States had ever fought before. It was not a war for freedom or to protect the United States domestically. Rather, this was a foreign war to liberate a foreign country for greater expansion and influence on the world. This type of mission set would come with limitations in the way the U.S. fought the war. To be successful they not only had to win the war, but they had win it while keeping relationships intact. They also had to keep the lands resources intact in order to reap the benefits from fighting this type of war. In the coming years the United States would grow accustom to this type of war, but public opinion was and has always been a difficult hurdle in these types of

From this, we can see that if were not for America’s actions and paranoia, Cuba would not have asked the USSR for help, and the Cuban Missile Crisis might have been averted altogether. However, America was not solely to blame, for Cuba effectively manipulated USSR-American rivalry to obtain missile defense from USSR against America. Cuba, being unable to defend herself against an American attack, therefore sought the help of its enemy’s enemy, for the enemy of one’s enemy is one’s friend. This in turn blew the whole conflict out of proportion.

The first operation, the Bay of Pigs, happened in 1961 in Cuba. The process of the operation was that the U.S.A had to send troops of Cuban exiled. With the support of the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A), the process of the operation was separate in three steps; they needed to invade Cuba, then ally with the existing guerrilla band and finally, take down the communist government and establish a provisional government. The last step was the accord of the president. Kennedy, hesitant about the plan, gave his agreement. Unfortunately, Cubans foiled Americans when they tried to invade the country and as a result, 114 men were killed, 1,179 were captured and Kennedy refused to rescue the hostages. The other fiasco was the Mongoose operation that took place in 1963. This operation was meant to assassinate Castro and destroy the Cuban economy. The actions to the plan include sabotage, psychological warfare and intelligence collection. All

Cuba is the country best known for being at the center of the Cold War conflict between the U.S. and Russia because of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviet Union’s strategy, and the anticipated U.S. response to the Russian strategy, is described in an October 19, 1962 telegram from Andrei Gromyko, Russia’s Foreign Minister, to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union [Virtual Archive]. The Central Committee was the highest organization within communist Russia. Gromyko seems to have written the telegram to inform the Central Committee that the Russian strategy in aligning itself with Cuba seemed to be working. In the telegram Gromyko expressed his belief that “a USA military adventure against Cuba is almost impossible to imagine” because of “assurances given to us that the USA has no plans for in Cuba (which undeniably commits them in many respects)” (Gromyko). Instead, Gromyko believed that the U.S. efforts would be to try weakening Cuba by obstructing its economy, thinking that over the long term Russia would not be able to continue supporting Cuba with foreign aid in order to offset U.S. economic sanctions against Cuba (Gromyko).

The primary initiative involved a 1961 CIA backed attempted large scale operation titled the Bay of Pigs invasion, that involved an the landing of 1,400 Cuban Guerilla exiles which subsequently failed. The CIA then oped for a more covert, assassination route and contacted their sources within the Mafia. The plan was to have Fidel Castro ingest a poison capsule through the help of old Mafia contacts in Cuba who opposed Fidel. Their man for the job was the prominent Chicago and Vegas Mob Boss Handsome Johnny Roselli; however, after failed attempts in both late 1961 and 1962 the program was shut down and the Mafia assets were put on notice. (Gangsterismo: The United States, Cuba, and the Mafia: 1933 to 1966, Chapter 2, Location 4871). The reasoning behind this is because the CIA began to fear that Roselli and other associates were gathering information to expose the American Government for working with criminals, using that as future information blackmail.

“One of our greatest assets is that all men aspire to be equal and free. This fact haunts the rulers of the Kremlin today for they cannot change the law of nature and they know it.” stated Allen Dulles, the fifth director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Bay of Pigs Invasion was an encounter that occurred on April 17, 1961, between Cuban exiles, armed and trained by the American Central Intelligence Agency and the military forces of Fidel Castro. With the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion the United States found itself more involved in the Cold War and experienced a new era in the military, political, and intelligence fields as well as the exchange and exploration of communist ideology.

The United States has had a long and complicated journey with intelligence. Throughout its early history, the United States had a sporadic relationship with the intelligence community, only utilizing intelligence during wartime. After World War II, it became clear that the United States needed to enhance its intelligence gathering systems in order to prevent another disaster of this magnitude. Reacting to this pressure, policymakers soon drafted and passed the National Intelligence Act of 1947, creating the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the United States’ first peacetime intelligence agency. Though not always entirely authorized to do so, the CIA has carried out many covert operations with varying levels of success. Despite the fact that some of these operations have been a success, covert operations have largely been a detriment to the United States; covert operations hurt the United States’ public image, rarely fix the original problem entirely, and were not meant, by those who drafter the National Intelligence Act of 1947, to be carried out by the CIA.

as Kennedy wanted to avoid military confrontation with the USSR, due to the failing of the Bay of Pigs invasion to remove Fidel Castro from power, and he felt that an "air attack was the wrong way to start", he authorized a naval blockade of the island ha called a "quarantine." This act would be avoiding any hostile action that might trigger nuclear war. On the 22nd of October, Kennedy addressed the nation via television and announced the "quarantine," and also that his "administration would regard any missile attack launched from Cuba as an attack by the USSR, and that the US would therefore retaliate against the

Fast-forward to 1959, Fidel Castro seized control of Cuba with the help of Che Guevara, his brother Rual Castro and a couple thousand loyalists after the former dictator President Batista’s government was overthrown and he fled the country. Fidel Castro seized all U.S. assets and converted Cuba into a communist state, implemented a Civil Law System, and in 1961 when the U.S. tried to evade Cuba with the assistance of Cuban exiles, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) sponsored assault was met with a more formidable adversary and consequently defeated. The result of the failed attempt sparked a newfound alliance between Cuba and the Union of Soviet Social Republics (USSR), the construction of Soviet missile bases, and beginning of the Cuban Missile

Many believe that the United States of America came with the resolution for the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 rather than the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and that they were to blame. However the soviets placed the nuclear missiles on Cuba because President Kennedy authorised the Bay of Pigs operation earlier that year to oust Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, leading to the crisis that arguably represents the closes time where humanity nearly wiped itself out with the power of the atom. The two countries both saw the crisis very differently as well.

Many good points on the Berlin Tunnel. Indeed, the Berlin Tunnel was a massive undertaking by the U.K. and the United States, taking multiple years to plan and construct and in turn was capable of providing significant amounts of intelligence from intercepting opposing countries’ communications. Even though the operation has been considered a failure due to the Russians having a secret agent, George Blake, embedded in the British intelligence agency and having full knowledge of the mission, the operation also was successful. All the resources that went into constructing the tunnel, translating the intercepted transmission, and analyzing information, was all for not. Had the Russian forces used deceitful tactics, the operation may have been

Castro intended on helping Cuba’s high poverty, but Castro did not turn Cuba into a democracy like he said he would (“Cuban missile Crisis”2). In 1960 the soviet premier attempted to convince Castro to become communist, soon after this castro became communist, probably influenced by the soviet premier (“Cuban missile Crisis”3). A new american president, that could probably change the war, was coming into office around this time, President Kennedy. The new president would take on the problem of this new cuban leader (International Encyclopedia of the… 1). Before him, Eisenhower trained about 1,500 Cuban Exiles in secret to try to take over Cuba, Kennedy allowed this to go on. On april 17, the exils attempted to invade Cuba(“Cuban missile Crisis”3). Since Castro had found out about the invasion, he was ready and defeated the the incoming force easily(“Cuban missile Crisis”3-4). The failed invasion seemed to help the Cuban opinion of Castro. He was now an obvious threat and so the U.S. decided to start operation Mongoose. Operation Mongoose was a secret operation to get rid of Castro, it was an operation where the U.S. would try to sabotage Cuba, but Operation Mongoose never ended up happening. The U.S.S.R. did not want to lose Cuba so they decided to secretly send weapons into Cuba, including nuclear weapons (“Cuban missile Crisis”4). These arm shipments would lead to one of the