The Bahia De Cochinos Invasion : Who Carries The Blame?

The planning for the Bay of Pigs began under President Eisenhower’s administration. President Eisenhower approved the CIA’s Bay of Pigs plan to oust Fidel Castro and overthrow Cuba’s communist government on March 17, 1960. The planning and preparation continued throughout the rest of the year. On January 20, 1961, John F Kennedy became the President of the United States. He had learned of the Bay of Pigs plan months earlier, and now as President, after consulting with his advisors, also approved the CIA planned Bay of Pigs

On April 17, 1961, 1400 CIA-backed Cuban exiles launched a botched invasion at the Bay of Pigs on the south coast of Cuba. This invasion was called The Bay of Pigs Invasion. This invasion "Was intended to provoke popularity for an uprising against Fidel Castro, who had overthrown American-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista" (Web).The goal of the unfortunately failed invasion was the overthrow of Castro and the establishment of a non-communist government friendly to the United States. Before John F. Kennedy took office, he was informed of this plan by the CIA. Developed during the Eisenhower administration, the plan was to train Cuban exiles for an invasion of their

The Bay of Pigs is on the coast of Cuba. The Americans sent Cubans, that wanted American citizenship, to Cuba, fighting against their home country. The Cuban immigrants were extremely outnumbered by the entire Cuban army. We fought hard but lost in the end. The C.I.A promised an easy victory, but we got the opposite. By the end of the fight, all our troops were either dead or captured.

CIA director Allen Dulles ensured to Kennedy that this was going to be the perfect invasion. On April 17, 1961, the invasion of Bay of Pigs had begun. The invasion was a total failure, since nobody in the island showed any interest of joining the coup against Castro. Castro's men captured 1189 prisoners and ransomed them for ten million dollars. It was the first major step for Kennedy during his administration, which gave him total humiliation. Later in his term, Kennedy refers to Bay of Pigs "Cuba was a hell of a time." This convinced Kennedy never to trust anyone ever again. Moreover, maybe perhaps, this was why he was successful during the Cuban missile crisis.

The Bay of Pigs was a failed invasion by the United States to overthrow the communist government in Cuba run by the infamous Fidel Castro. The CIA-operated campaign attempted to use Cuban exiles as a Guerilla army in hopes of conducting a secret invasion. The objective was to remove the Cuban leader and establish a non-communist government that would benefit the United States. President John F. Kennedy, Commander in Chief during this time, wanted to prove to China, Russia, and even pessimistic Americans that he was determined to win the Cold War. Unfortunately, the campaign was extremely underprepared, which led to a disastrous outcome with Castro’s troops having the aggressors pinned on the beach under heavy fire. Soon after, the exiles surrendered in less than a single day of fighting, making the assault widely known as the CIA’s “perfect failure”. This topic was selected because the Cold War era intrigues me greatly; there is an abundance of covert operations, heightened tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as technological competitions such as the space race. The Bay of Pigs ties into all of this, which led to the Cuban missile crisis, causing one of the closest calls in history in regards to nuclear war. The information found for this paper is from sources including the History Chanel website, the JFK Library, the CIA website, and the United States History website.

     The CIA was furious but went ahead with the invasion. It failed due to poor intelligence. It had landed on a the worst beach killing 15 of the CIA’s best men with another 1100 in Cuban prisons.

“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 Cold War, Bay of Pigs Invasion began on April 17, 1961 and has had an everlasting effect on the history of the United States and the world. The Bay of Pigs Invasion was an encounter between Cuban exiles, armed and trained by the American Central Intelligence Agency and the military forces of Fidel Castro. The failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion proceeded to unite the Soviet Union and Cuba to create mass terror in the United States and for its allies. The belief was that if the Soviet

During the same time as Cuba and the Soviet Union's relationship, the significant events of the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis brought in the United States, Cuba, and Soviet Union into conflict. John F. Kennedy believed that Castro was becoming a threat and that he would become to powerful. So on April 16, 1961, the CIA launched the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Over 2,000 "Anti- Castrolies" stormed up the Bay of Pigs in Southern Cuba. In fact, most of the Anti- Castrolies were Cuban exiles who disagreed with Castro's ideas for Cuba. For some months prior, the CIA had gathered these people to train for an assassination attempt on Castro. This group was given the codename "Brigade 2506," and in less then 24-72 hours 100 were dead and 1,189

The CIA initiated the training process by setting up training camps in Guatemala and trained "counter-revolutionary Cubans serving as the armed wing of the Democratic Revolutionary Front, known as Brigade 2506" (The Bay of Pigs Invasion and its Aftermath). Soon, by November the United States had prepared a small army to perform assault landing and guerilla warfare. If the invasion turned out to be a success a former member of Castro's government, José Miró Cardona, was going to take the presidential position of Cuba. However, the plan was already in trouble by October of 1960 when Castro found out about the guerilla training camps that were based in Guatemala. Once John F. Kennedy became president, one of his first decisions in office was authorizing the plan in February of 1961. Although Castro was aware of the United States' intentions, President Kennedy still put in effort to keep the U.S. support disguised. One of the ways he attempted to do this was by assigning The Bay of Pigs as the landing point. "The site was a remote swampy area on the southern coast of Cuba, where a night landing might bring a force ashore against little resistance and help to hide any United States involvement" (The Bay of Pigs). The down side to this was that the Bay of Pigs was 80 miles from refuge in Cuba's Escambray Mountains, giving us an excessive distance which would be a problem if we were faced with an

waffled as to how aggressively to salvage the operation” (Bass). However, this perspective is misdirected as to who to blame. The CIA constructed the Bay of Pigs Invasion, they were the ones who failed to get presidential support for their plan in its entirety, to grasp that they did not have the support of the Cuban people, and to maintain secrecy of the invasion plans, not the Kennedy administration. The CIA had failed to properly inform Kennedy about the necessity of air support, which was a direct cause of the failure of the invasion (Fursenko and Naftali,

The Bay of Pigs took place in April of 1961, and was a failed attempt to overthrow communist dictator Fidel Castro. The American troops split into five groups by boat on April 13, 1961 and had landed by the 16th. At the beginning the Cubans were overwhelmed, but then Castro took over the mission. The US only sent half of the air support that was planned and necessary for the US to claim victory. Because of the lack of air support the American soldiers were captured in three days and sent to Cuban prisons. This was one of the worst losses for the United States military but great for Castro. He felt as though he was on top of the world and much better than the US which led to Cuba to make the call to Khrushchev to import the nuclear weapons. The call that Castro made led the US and Cuba to a 13 day political and military standoff, and the US was not afraid to use massive retaliation. Cuba and the US came to an agreement that Cuba would remove their weapons if the US removed their nuclear weapons from Turkey. Cuba had allied with the Soviet Union while the Cold War was at its climax, the U.S. flew over Cuba and saw that nuclear missiles were being installed which continued the battle. After a long and treacherous 13 days both Cuba and The

War actually began for the U.S. in Cuba in June when the Marines captured Guantánamo Bay and 17,000 troops landed at Siboney and daiquire , east of Santiago de Cuba, the second largest city on the island. At that time Spanish troops stationed on the island included 150,000 regulars and 40,000 irregulars and volunteers while rebels inside Cuba

“First, I want to say that there will not be, under any conditions, an intervention in Cuba by the United States Armed Forces. This government will do everything it possibly can, I think it can meet its responsibilities, to make sure that there are no Americans involved in any actions inside Cuba… The basic issue in Cuba is not one between the United States and Cuba. It is between the Cubans themselves.” These words were spoken by President John F. Kennedy at a press conference on April 12, 1961, just five days before the Bay of Pigs invasion took place. Little did the American public know that in five short days, the United States would support an attempted invasion on the Cuban shore—unsuccessfully. The $46

This invasion occurred on April 17, 1961 when Cuban started one on the south coast of cuba. Castro wanted to get rid of the cubans dictator so he came to power and got rid of him. The cuban military was then told to help with the invasion by the CIA and John F kennedy. The goal of having this invasion was to get rid of Castro because of what he did in the past. The other goal they had in this plan was the making of a non-communist government which was with United States.

D-Day, April 17, 1960; Brigade 2506 lands in the Bay of Pigs, a small beach in southern Cuba. Backed by former president Dwight Eisenhower, endorsed by current president John F. Kennedy, and masterminded by the Central Intelligence Agency, the plan to overthrow Fidel Castro, Prime Minister of Cuba, had been months in the making (Dunne 1). By the summer of 1959, as former Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista was overtaken by Castro, charges of communist takeover in Cuba were rampant in Washington, especially in Congress (Dunne 5). With the United States embroiled in the Cold War, a largely ideological battle between the communist Soviet Union and the capitalist United States, the United