John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as the thirty-fifth President of the United States on 20 January 1961. Prior to his inauguration there had been growing opposition to the proposed invasion of Cuba in some government circles, but Kennedy had made it clear he supported the plan and the voices of caution were drowned out.
In April, as the time for the invasion approached, the President asked CIA Director Allen Dulles for a full briefing on the plan. Dulles recapped that President Eisenhower had given approval for a programme of covert action against the Castro regime. The CIA set up a unit called Operation 40, which was based in the CIA’s covert Miami station (JM/WAVE). He explained the complexities of dealing with thousands of Cuban expatriates who were anxious to have Castro removed as soon as possible, but the CIA had to train them first, and at the same time try to ensure that the US administration had plausible deniability of all aspects of Operation 40.
Dulles continued to give background information so that the new President would fully understand the problems. The eighty CIA operatives at JM/WAVE had to deal with more than 2,000 Cuban exiles who were to be involved in the planned invasion. In effect, the exile invasion force – called Brigade 2506 – was an extension of Operation 40. The CIA supplied Brigade 2506 with aircraft, boats and weapons and gave them training, mostly in Guatemala and Nicaragua.
Eventually, Dulles started to brief the President on the plan itself. Preliminary action – the bombing of airports – was scheduled for 15 April, with the invasion slated for the 17th. The ground and air forces would all embark from Nicaragua.
The President asked questions. The 15th was just a couple of weeks away: would everyone be ready by then? Two thousand seemed a very small number for an invasion force: would they be strong enough to carry out a successful invasion?
Ideally, they would like more time and more men – answered Dulles – but CIA intelligence reports from Cuba indicated a rapid build-up of Soviet bloc weapons for Castro’s forces, and there was also an influx of Spanish-speaking military trainers and advisers from the Soviet Union. The longer they delayed the invasion, the greater the opposition would be.
The order of battle was to send over two waves of planes, starting two days before the actual landing. They would bomb Cuba’s airports and destroy or ground the Cuban Air Force, thus enabling US air and sea cover for Brigade 2506. Some US Navy vessels and aircraft would be on standby, outside Cuba’s three-mile territorial water limit, to intimidate the Cuban forces and encourage Brigade 2506. They would not be brought into action unless that was thought desirable in the light of the situation on the ground. Dulles assured the President that this was the method they had used – successfully – in 1954 to overthrow Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala.
With regard to numbers, 2,000 was really a decent-sized force for a landing in one location. As planned, 300 men would be parachuted in to secure the roads for the sea-borne force. CIA intelligence indicated that once they secured a foothold on land, most of the population and many in the armed forces throughout Cuba would give immediate support to the counter-revolution and it would not be necessary to fight all the way to Havana.
The CIA also supported a number of anti-Castro counter-revolutionary groups within Cuba. For reasons of secrecy they were not part of the invasion plan, but once Brigade 2506 had landed they would be expected to help stabilise the situation.
The President queried the support that would be given by US forces, saying that it transgressed the precept of plausible deniability. He was on record as supporting President Eisenhower’s policy of removing Castro and Communism from Cuba, and he was also on record for criticising Eisenhower’s apparently leisurely approach to the issue. Kennedy now found himself morally committed to allowing the plan to invade Cuba to go ahead. He asked for written details of the battle plans, which he would return to Dulles within forty-eight hours.
On 4 April President Kennedy approved the plan, having made only one major change to it. The original plan was for a daytime landing at the town of Trinidad on Cuba’s southern coast but the President, who had commanded motor torpedo boats on night-time operations during his time in the US Navy, said he did not like the idea of landing in a heavily populated area where there were bound to be widespread civilian casualties. Instead, he suggested a night-time landing on the beaches in the Bahía de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs).
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The Bay of Pigs was a humiliating disaster for the Americans. There was only one air strike on Cuban airfields before the landing and it did not inflict sufficient damage to prevent Cuban Air Force fighters from attacking the invading Brigade 2506. President Kennedy vetoed further strikes because of promises made at the United Nations to the effect that the US would not take an active part in any attack on Cuba.
The landing craft approached three beaches just after midnight on the night of 16 April. As dawn arrived, Cuban Air Force fighters started to attack them. Brigade 2506 aircraft counterattacked, bringing some relief and a beach-head of sorts was made. However, the invading forces came under attack from increasing numbers of Cuban ground forces and the battle was lost by the middle of the third day (19 April).
Of the 1,700 Cuban exiles and sympathisers in Brigade 2506, 114 were killed in action and many more injured. Casualties in Castro’s forces were heavier. More than 1,100 members of Brigade 2506 were taken captive.†
The acutely embarrassed Kennedy administration laid the blame fairly and squarely on the CIA. A report on the Bay of Pigs operation, issued in November 1961 by the CIA’s Inspector-General, cited nine major deficiencies in its management and execution. They included insufficient employment of high-quality staff and failure to collect and analyse intelligence competently.
Responsibility within the CIA fell on Director Allen Dulles, Deputy Director Charles Cabell, and Deputy Director for Plans Richard Bissell. President Kennedy required all three of them to resign over a period of nine months following the catastrophe.
The effect within Cuba was to strengthen Castro’s position, to increase the build-up of conventional arms and to improve the training of Cuban forces. On 1 May 1961 – Mayday – Castro declared Cuba a Socialist Republic.
In their defence, the CIA said that Kennedy’s order not to send a second air strike prior to the landings had seriously reduced Brigade 2506’s chances of success. Also, the CIA’s planning had been based on support from US forces immediately after the landings in the event that Brigade 2506 failed to meet its objectives. After all – they argued – President Eisenhower had authorised this in the successful CIA-sponsored coup in Guatemala and virtually all of the planning for the Bay of Pigs operation had occurred under Eisenhower’s presidency.
Kennedy’s decisions not to allow the second wave of air attacks prior to the landing and to forbid the use of US forces in the event of the landings meeting insurmountable opposition incited great resentment within the CIA and anti-Castro organisations. For some individuals, this resentment festered until Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963.
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The chastened President Kennedy was now more than ever anxious to dispense with Castro. He was determined that the next attempt would be properly organised, funded and managed. Within a few days of the failed invasion he appointed General Maxwell Taylor, who had retired as Chief of Staff two years earlier, to lead a task force to investigate the Bay of Pigs shambles. The other members of the task force were Attorney-General Robert Kennedy, Admiral Arleigh Burke and CIA Director Allen Dulles. The inclusion of Dulles appears an odd choice: Kennedy first sacked him over the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion and then appointed him to the task force charged with investigating that failure. Was this some kind of an apology, or was he rubbing salt into the wound?
Taylor presented the report of the task force’s findings to the President in June. It analysed the many reasons for the failure of the invasion in detail and went on to state that developments in Cuba represented a real threat. It recommended a new programme of action employing the full range of political, military, economic and psychological tactics.
Based on this report, Kennedy gave his approval for a covert programme of sabotage and subversion against Cuba. He created a new team called Special Group Augmented (SGA) charged with delivering it. Attorney-General Robert Kennedy was chairman and the other members were Allen Dulles (soon to be replaced by John McCone as director of the CIA), Roswell Gilpatric (Defence Department), McGeorge Bundy (National Security adviser), Alexis Johnson (State Department), General Lyman Lemnitzer (Joint Chiefs of Staff) and General Maxwell Taylor. Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara also attended meetings, though they were not official members of the SGA.
At their first meeting on 4 November 1961, they decided to call the operation ‘Operation Mongoose’. Robert Kennedy also decided that Major-General Edward Lansdale (staff member of the President’s Committee on Military Assistance) should control liaison between the SGA and Mongoose operations.
Allen Dulles’s forced resignation as director of the CIA was scheduled for 28 November. In a surprise move, President Kennedy appointed a businessman, John McCone, to replace him.
It was a busy and sad day for Dulles. He was the father of the new CIA headquarters building in Langley, Virginia. It was he who, when he took up office in 1953, had pressed for a new building to replace the many offices the CIA occupied around Washington. He decided what kind of building would offer the best security and attract the best staff, also selecting its location. He was consulted at every stage of the design and construction. He designed his own office, but said he would not move in until all other staff were installed in their offices. It was harsh enough that President Kennedy required him to resign after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, but discovering that the date of his resignation was also the day the President presided over the dedication of the new building added salt to the wound. There was, however, some consolation during the ceremony when the President presented him with the National Security Medal.
Later that same day Robert Kennedy suddenly called a meeting with Dulles, his successor John McCone, and Major-General Edward Lansdale to discuss the CIA’s role in Operation Mongoose.
Among other things, they discussed who should be in charge of the CIA’s side of the operation. As there had been no written agenda and no time to prepare for the discussions, the only name that came up was Jim Chritchfield, a quietly successful and much respected senior Foreign Intelligence officer in the CIA. He was suggested by Lansdale. Dulles said he thought Chritchfield would serve America better by continuing with his recent appointment as head of the CIA’s Near East Division and that he would like a day or two to come up with an alternative nominee.
Dulles consulted Bissell, who had been allowed to stay on as the CIA’s Deputy Director for Plans for another three months before he, too, resigned. Bissell proposed Bill Harvey to lead the CIA’s side of Operation Mongoose. Harvey was at that time the chief of Division D, which was one of the CIA’s most secret divisions, dealing with political warfare.
Dulles was sceptical. He thought well of Harvey’s work and was satisfied with his competence, but he feared what might happen if – or rather, when – Harvey disagreed with Robert Kennedy.
Lansdale agreed, however, to put Harvey’s name forward and the Attorney-General accepted him after being reminded that it was Harvey who had masterminded the Berlin tunnel. The appointment was approved by the President.
Bissell called Harvey into his office and told him about Operation Mongoose and his (Harvey’s) appointment as leader of CIA operations under Mongoose. He also said that the President wished to meet him in the Oval Office. (Some maintain that Harvey was carrying a firearm when he met the President.)
For the next two months Harvey went into planning mode. Operation Mongoose had precedence over virtually every other CIA operation and this enabled him to raid other divisions for their best staff.
He called his team ‘Task Force W’ and its CIA component moved into the basement of the new headquarters at Langley, Virginia. Task Force W became operational, officially, on 1 February 1962.
† In December 1962, Castro agreed to exchange 1,113 prisoners for US$53 million worth of food and medicines.