The Bay Of Pigs Invasion Of Cuba

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

It seems that the United States has been one of the most dominant, if not the most dominant, countries in the world, since the Declaration of Independence. Yet, on Monday, April 17, 1961, our government experienced incredible criticism and extreme embarrassment when Fidel Castro, dictator of Cuba, instantly stopped an invasion on the Cuban beach known as the Bay of Pigs. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, his advisors, and many Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials, made the largest error of their political careers. Once the decision was made to invade Cuba, to end Castro and his Communist government, Kennedy and his administration were never looked at in the same light nor trusted again. Russian leader Nikita

Before John F. Kennedy moved into the White House, President Eisenhower approved the CIA’s plan to overthrow Castro. John F. Kennedy was informed on the plan during his campaign, but recently after he was briefed on the new information, the CIA abandoned the plan. Even though Eisenhower approved of the 13 million plan, John F. Kennedy was unaware of the restrictions and requirements Eisenhower agreed on. Once elected, Kennedy was briefed in the details and plan for the invasion, already feeling the stress and pressure. If the plan for the invasion did not change so much without Kennedy’s knowledge, the process of the invasion may have been successful. Kennedy’s lack of experience with invasions made the plan get on a bad start. With his suggestion

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.

The Bay of Pigs invasion into Cuba can be seen as one of the most important political decisions in the history of the United States. Four months after John F. Kennedy took office as the thirty fifth President of the United States, he was blamed for the failed invasion of the Bay of Pigs. The failure was due to the lack of bad advice he received and then used to put into making his decision to invade. The decisions he made showed that the United States President and his Joint Chiefs were far from perfect. Bay of Pigs was a secretly organized coup in Cuba that resulted in many consequences that Kennedy would be forced to face. Politically, Kennedy decided to pursue the foreign policy decision to invade in order to stop the spread of

Over 1400 exiles from Cuba trained in the US were sent back home to the country’s coast of Bahia de Cochinos (the Bay of Pigs), to overthrow Fidel Castro, from office. Additionally, over 1400 military personnel had assembled in Guatemala to strategize before setting out for the invasion in 13th April (JFK n.p).According to (Central Intelligence Agency) Once the troops arrived at the destination they received training in weapons, infantry tactics, land navigation, assault tactics, and Para trooping. They were instructed by Army Special Forces, Air Force, Air National Guard, and the CIA. Thirty nine of the recruits were pilots who had flown in Cuba’s military or as commercial pilots. The pilots were trained at an air training base in Guatemala. Initially, the plan was to use Cuban exiles during Castro’s revolution to hit back at him (Central Intelligence Agency).

After Fidel Castro overthrew Cuban strongman Fulgencio Batista, expropriated American economic assets and developed links with the Soviet Union, President Eisenhower authorized the CIA in March 1960 to develop a plan to overthrow Castro. The agency trained and armed Cuban exiles to carry out the attack. Shortly after his inauguration, John F. Kennedy learned of the invasion plan, concluded that Fidel Castro was a Soviet client posing a threat to all of Latin America and, after consultations with his advisers, gave his consent in February 1961 for the CIA-planned amphibious assault.

From there, the initial training for the invasion began. The CIA set up training camps in Guatemala, and within a couple of months, the operation had trained a small army for an assault landing and guerilla warfare. José Miró Cardona led the anti-Castro Cuban exiles in the United States. Cardona was a former member of Castro's government. After leaving Castro’s

The United States planned the Bay of Pigs invasion which was an attempt to overthrow Castro. The plan was to arm Cuban exiles living in Florida and once they had made an appearance in Cuba, unhappy Cubans would want to join them and help take down Castro. The Bay of Pigs was a failure, because Castro’s forces had stopped the plan. The Cuban Missile Crisis was a 13 day confrontation between the U.S. and Soviet Union. Castro has a target on his back after the Bay of Pigs

“Victory has a thousand fathers while defeat is an orphan,” remarked John F. Kennedy. The Bay of Pigs invasion code named operation Zapata began in March of 1960 one month and a year before the famed invasion took place. United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to begin a covert operation to bring down the pro-communist Cuban government. Nonetheless Fidel Castro’s potential pro-communist beliefs, the seizure of American owned companies and land lead to extreme concern from United States policy makers and officials. The mission, however would become possibly one of the greatest intelligence failures in the history of the United States. The failed Bay of Pigs invasion lead to a new era in the military and intelligence fields that continues to affect foreign policy

Figure 1The above image is a primary source image of Fidel Castro (right) an infamous Cuban dictator, and Che Guevara who played a number of key roles within the Cuban government. This photo was taken in 1961, during which the Bay of Pigs Invasion took place. The photo was taken by Alberto Korda, a Cuban photographer. This photo allows us to peer into the past and see Castro presumably leading Cuban troops. There is a large possibility of bias when considering that the photographer that took this image, Alberto Korda, was not only Cuban but also a personal photographer and close friend of Castro.

Castro knew well in advance that an American attack was fast approaching Cuba. The front cover of The New York Times ruined the element of surprise when they published information regarding the Cuban exiles stationed in Guatemala and Florida ready to fight Castro’s forces at a moment’s notice. The report was written ten days before the invasion. However, Fidel Castro knew well before that the CIA wanted to overthrow him from power due to the openness of refugees and revolutionaries in Miami. Months before, in November 1960 The Nation described the training operations of the Cuban exiles in Guatemala with a report from the Los Angeles Times that followed shortly after. The media factor was huge in President Kennedy’s calculation of maintaining plausible deniability and ensured premature failure of the covert objectives in Cuba. When eight B-26 bombers carried out there bombing campaign against the Cuban Air Force a day before the invasion, the media ripped through the highly doubtful cover story that this was the feat of a rogue Cuban defector. As a result, President Kennedy ordered the strikes that were planned for the next day to be postponed until after airstrip of the Bay of Pigs was secured. This would prove to be a devastating mistake for the operation. American news stations had exposed the CIA in every phase of covert planning and action right up to the Invasion.

Among the multiple steps taken by the CIA to remove Castro, a squad of approximately 1,400 Cuban exiles were hired to create a large-scale invasion on the island, with the help of its own air force. The assumed result of such actions would trigger mass rising to overthrow Castro's regime. Despite this, Eisenhower, who had been Supreme Allied Commander at D-Day, recognised the risks it posed.

On January 1, 1959, a Cuban nationalist, Fidel Castro took his army into Havana and overthrew General Fulgencio Batista, the country’s American-backed president. For the next two years, the CIA attempted to take Castro down from his reign of power. Finally, in 1961, the CIA launched what they thought would be the strike, an invasion of Cuba by about 1,400 American trained Cubans who had left their homes when Castro took over. But, the invasion did not go well. The attackers were very outnumbered by Castro’s troops, and they surrendered.

The CIA informed John F. Kennedy before his inauguration on the plan to train Cuban exiles for the invasion on their homeland. The ultimate goal was to overthrow Fidel Castro and set up a non-communist government the United States could be comfortable with. The United States wanted the attack to appear as though the revolution was being started by Cuba’s own people to return to a capitalist nation. They also hoped that most of Cuba’s people would join in the revolution and help overthrow Castro. The government wanted to keep this plan as much of a secret as possible, but sure enough Castro discovered the training camps taking place. The original plan involved two air strikes and a 1,400 man surprise attack invasion. The plan in April 1961 went terribly wrong almost from the start. The landing forces went under attack from Castro’s military, the Cuban air force sank supply ships, the United States failed to provide proper air force support, and the grand overthrow from the revolution never appeared to happen. According to Grant (2015), “more than 100 of the invaders died in the attack and 1,189 were taken prisoner”. This ending result made the United States look foolish and weak and made Fidel Castro look even stronger to solidify his power in Cuba. Castro used the United