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The truth and bare facts about the Bay of Pigs - Scott Kaiser - 27-05-2014
How stupid of me, yes! The CIA did recommend the landing to be at Trinidad Cuba, code-named Operation Pluto.
Why? Here's the pros and cons -
Pros, Trinidad had good port facilities it was closer to many existing counter-revolutionary activities it had an easily defensible beachhead, and it offered an escape route into the Escambray Mountains.
Cons, Rejected by Kennedy, but why? He (Kennedy) wanted a scaled down invasion, with scaled down offenses (planes, ships, support etc.), which would make any future denial of direct US involvement more plausible.
Training was carried out at various bases including Homestead AFB until moved to Guatemala. That may be one of the reasons my father was stealing classified documents at Homestead AFB when he was poking his nose into Kennedy's assassination.
The men in charge of the Bay of Pigs operation are but not limited to E. Howard Hunt, Gerry Droller (who by the way I have pointed out in this film), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csuXXHfnSEY Jacob Esterline, Jack Hawkins, Stanley W. Beerli, Richard Bissell, Tracy Barnes and Allen Dulles. All of which disliked Kennedy.
My apologizes for not understanding your meaning of beachhead, my mind went blank while thinking of those men under capture of Castro's forces, all you needed to do was use the word "secure" and I would have understood. I wasn't thinking military terms.
In January 1960 the Cuban government proclaimed that each newspaper would be obliged to publish a "clarification" written by the printers' union to the end of any articles which were critical of the government. This would prove to be the start of press censorship in Castro's Cuba which allowed them to infiltrate not only our invasion forces, but our pentagon, CIA, news radio and or television.
There's an old saying that says there isn't a place where the sun didn't shine that wasn't owned by the British. That doesn't go without saying that Castro did the same thing. The truth is, Castro first received word though their secret intelligence network by the members of the brigade, some of which was heard in Miami, and this vital information was repeated in US and foreign newspaper reports. (Who the hell announces to the enemy I'M COMING!).
That's how Castro first found out (scott p. i don't know yet kaiser). The airstrip which would have been suitable for the B-26's at Playa Giron would have been ideal had Castro not controlled it.
Why did he control it? And, with only three or four fighter planes along with his tanks and infantry, because the CIA had no more planes to drop bombs, they couldn't re-supply the men with ammunition, the planes were all shot down.
The plan was scaled down, the United States wanted future denial of direct US involvement more plausible. Or, I should have said, Kennedy wanted future denial of direct US involvement more plausible.
The original invasion landing at Trinidad appeared to be more promising then the moss bit swamp they were faced to land at. And, you have the gull to say this operation was "Designed to fail", gee I wonder why [scott p. i don't know yet kaiser].
The truth and bare facts about the Bay of Pigs - Jim DiEugenio - 27-05-2014
By the way, Rex Bradford liked my work on the Bay of Pigs so much he excerpted it at MFF
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=1620359
For this chapter, I used both the declassified Kirkpatrick Report and the Taylor Report.
I think this is the most current treatment of the subject in chapter form available today.
And I must add, even though this incorporates much of the declassified record, its still not everything. Why?
Because there are two aspects that we do not really understand fully today. I did what I could with Operation Forty in this chapter. But I could only piece it together from an incomplete record. The reason being that to this day, the CIA has not acknowledged, let alone declassified, the after action report they did on the subject.
How do we know there is such a a thing? Because Dan Hardway went looking for it with the HSCA. He found out that it was commissioned by--get this--Richard Helms! That is very interesting. Because the story for Dirty Dick (which is what Nagell called him) is that he had little or nothing to do with the project.
But if that is not enough for you, guess who Helms ordered to write that report? Sam Halpern! Now, this gets really interesting because Halpern, like McCord, was one of Dick's most trusted officers. For instance, he was entrusted to do all he could to smear the Kennedys, and he did actually lie his head off about this. And Talbot caught him redhanded. As I did. But the point is, if Helms told Halpern to do this then it must have been a very sensitive report for him.
How sensitive? According to Hardway, only one person outside the CIA has ever seen it: Andrew St. George. Again, this is interesting. St. George is a conservative oriented writer who, unlike many of those guys, actually does good research and has some scruples. For instance he was one of the first to expose the fact that the CIA had a much larger role in Watergate than the media or Sam Ervin let on.And that McCord was a suspicious character in the whole thing. That he saw the report, but never wrote anything about it, tells us something.
Anyway, let me add one other facet that I myself found out about Helms and his so called "hands off" policy on the Bay of Pigs. I interviewed a Cuban exile in LA many years ago about this subject. He absolutely hated Kennedy. Because he swallowed the whole Hunt-Dulles canard about the cancelled D Day air strikes. (Which as I note in my chapter, Kennedy stripped Charles Murphy of his Air Force reserve status over. But Murphy said to Lansdale, that was OK since his loyalty was not to Kennedy but to Allen Dulles.) This Cuban exile was exfiltrated into Cuba on the eve of the operation along with a demolition team. Their purpose was to blow a bridge leading to Playa Giron. I asked him if he blew the bridge. He said no he did not. I asked him why. He said the order never came. I asked him who was supervising his team and had the ultimate responsibility for it. He said it was Helms. Which startled me.
The whole cover story for Dirty Dick is that he stood idly by and watched the thing go down the drain. Because he did not think it had a snowball's chance in Hades of succeeding. By keeping his hands off, he thought that 1.) Bissell, who he hated, would take the blame, and 2.) He might get his job and this would help him perhaps to the Directorship one day. Well, he was correct. Except, if this story is true--and I had no reason to suspect the man was lying to me since it was an admission against interests--Dick did not just sit idly by. He gave the project a little boost toward failure. Not that it needed any. And Helms also kept secret perhaps the very worst part of the whole operation. IMO, even worse than the fact Dulles and Bissell knew it would fail. Namely that, even if it succeeded, the new government of Cuba would not be run by the Kennedy Cubans e.g. Manuelo Ray. But by the Howard Hunt Cubans e.g. Artime. In fact, even after he resigned over the Ray issue, Hunt was still slated to fly into Havana to help with the new government in case the operation succeeded.
The whole dirty truth about the Bay of Pigs has yet to be fully revealed.
The truth and bare facts about the Bay of Pigs - Scott Kaiser - 27-05-2014
Yeah, I know, you've hung your thesis on the Kirkpatrick and the Taylor Report. Andrew St. George? Can you please refresh my memory, is he the same guy who said he has/had a 20 page confession from Frank Sturgis, but this confession has never surfaced? I don't know if I have the same guy or if I'm thinking of someone else.
Tricky Dick, Helms and all those guys you just didn't want to get yourself involved with is pointed out in my upcoming book.
Yeah, I have a lot to say, and by the looks of it, I will be greatly criticized for speaking the truth, but that's okay. I'm okay with it, so long as what I say is not based off third party hearsay, theories or observations. I prefer first hand knowledge, and that's just my two cents, which is not worth two cents.
The truth and bare facts about the Bay of Pigs - Albert Doyle - 27-05-2014
Scott, just because CIA was taking action against Castro doesn't mean Kennedy was behind it. You don't seem to register that there was an internal war going on between JFK and CIA. Kennedy placated CIA up until he could get his bigger picture solution in place. CIA and their sponsors answered this power struggle on November 22 1963.
The truth and bare facts about the Bay of Pigs - Scott Kaiser - 27-05-2014
Hi Albert,
I don't disagree with you, and there is a lot of information that Jim writes I do agree with, Jim is a very talented and gifted researcher. I am not. Saying that, I would be the first person to stand up and "admit" it was the CIA who took Kennedy out.
On FB, I have had to argue with other's who believe the mob did it, the mossed did it, the bankers did it, the oilmen did it, the Secret Service did it, the Masons did it, Jackie did it, the police officer did it, Jack shot himself.
It's crazy crap out there, my argument with Jim was the fact that the Bay of Pigs operation was NOT a operation drawn up and "Designed to fail". That is what I was arguing, now, because he may have his point of view that I may not understand his definition when he says the project was designed to fail, as I mis understood his beachhead word.
There could be something there I'm overlooking, please don't get me wrong and think that I don't like the Kennedy's because that's the furthest from the truth. I truly believe that both Jack and his brother Bobby were the best this country could have had. Too bad that it stopped with John-John as the last Kennedy that ever ran for office.
The Kennedy's as a whole, and I mean the entire family has done an enormous amount of work for humanitarian efforts.
Saying all this, I believe, I too, am entitled to my opinion. I'm just as equal as anyone here without telling anyone what they need to understand, what they have wrong, what they don't get.
Intelligence may run shallow with-in me, however, I always try to make the best decision that suits the topic at hand.
During President Kennedy's first month in office and prior to his inauguration into office President Kennedy was meeting several Cubans at his residence in Palm Beach, Manuel Airtime, Rolando Masferrer and many other's.
There was a time when Mr. Kennedy no longer wanted to meet up with with Mr. Masferrer simply because of Mr. Masferrer radical opinions on how to re-take Cuba.
On November 30, 1961 Mr. Kennedy did approve an aggressive covert operations against Fidel Castro called "Operation Mongoose", many of those men who participated in Mongoose are still very much alive today.
The operation was led by Mr. Lansdale who didn't think highly of either of the Kennedy's and Bobby Kennedy himself.
Many assassination ideas were floated by the CIA during Operation Mongoose. Exploding cigars, poisoning his cigars, exploding seashells to be planted at Castro's diving equipment, a wetsuit impregnated with noxious bacteria etc. Mr. Escalante contends that there has been more than 640 attempts on Castro's life many of which both Bobby and Jack were aware of. It was the Church Committee in 1975 that discovered these plots to assassinate Fidel Castro with Bobby Kennedy at the four front of Operation Mongoose.
But, don't take my word for it.
The truth and bare facts about the Bay of Pigs - Albert Doyle - 27-05-2014
The best way to look at it is JFK had his world perspective going back to Gullion and Viet Nam, the Congo, and Algeria. When he took office he had to figure out how to implement that new world detente while having to deal with CIA aggression and Castro aggression. I think if you want a fuller understanding you should look at how Kennedy resolved those problems. You point to Mongoose, but those actions were under CIA's purview more than Kennedy's. It's always difficult to finesse world peace when you have a nation full of aggressive nuclear bomber war hawks and CIA Gestapo killers. I believe DiEugenio showed CIA faked evidence showing RFK's involvement in that campaign. All part of the Helms subterfuge.
The truth and bare facts about the Bay of Pigs - Scott Kaiser - 27-05-2014
I give up... ::face.palm::
The truth and bare facts about the Bay of Pigs - David Josephs - 27-05-2014
Scott... I feel that way many times as well...
Yet something bothers me in a thread about the "facts" about BoP...
the lack of any mention of McGeorge Bundy... the man who ordered the final air strike cancelled leaving those 3 planes which twarted the entire mission.
Quote: I am so tried of reading the BULLSHIT that the BOP project was "designed to fail". Who the hell designs plans just so they can fail? The plan was never, ever design to fail. Nixon supported the plan, Kennedy wanted Castro dead. The only way that plan would have worked is had American military been used which by the way was apart of the original plan. Kennedy had a change of heart, and he feared what Russia would do in the wake had it be found out that America was behind the operation in the first place, so Kennedy decided there would be no military intervention, so how the hell do you design a plan that's destine to fail? Try having a change of heart! UGH!
Kennedy had NOTHING to do with the cancellation of those planes.
Scott... how about posting what you believe the BoP plans was DESIGNED to accomplish...
Quote: That's exactly what I mean by having a "change of heart" just as Kennedy did in the BOP. And, where did that get him? A shot in the back and one to the head.
Kennedy "tried" having peace talks with Castro, it was Castro who would keep putting them off, talking with Kennedy's (middle men and women) when Castro was good and ready, they weren't getting anywhere. So, Kennedy fired Bill Attwood. It wouldn't have looked good on Kennedy to be having these peace talks with Castro, especially because they weren't going anywhere. Had the anti-Castro Cubans found out Kennedy was doing this, Kennedy would have been long gone before 11/22/1963. Kennedy than started having these talks with Khrushchev in order to prevent war, Cuba was no real threat towards the United States, nor could it pose a communist take over of the United States, but Russia could, which is why Castro got very upset with Russia over having these talks behind Castro's back. Castro didn't really want a relation with the U.S. never.
You seem to be of the impression that the CIA et al did not know about JFK's reaching out in response to Castro's interest in discussion... They knew all too well.
I have my own thoughts on what BoP was designed to do... you appear to be mixing up politics (JFK telling the anti-Castro Cubans what they needed to hear) and reality (JFK was NEVER going to invade Cuba.. neither was Nixon in my opinion...) can we please try an remember that an elite cabal of international bankers and lawyers and CEOs would not want the potential of a nuclear was for ANY reason... compared to the prolonged Cold War expenditures.
When BoP went from Nixon to JFK, all the military solutions of the Joint Chiefs were shelved... there would be no invasion of Cuba with overt US military assistance... only covert, and only because he inherited the situation. As he did with Laos and that entire region.
By 1961 the US had suffered unbelieveable losses in the fight against communism and the infultration of "western" intelligence. Cuba, Russia and Castro were kicking our asses knowing our CI plans before we even implemented them.
I will leave this post with the question that needs answering:
Scott - what was the BoP invasion designed to accomplish?
The truth and bare facts about the Bay of Pigs - David Josephs - 27-05-2014
The CIA wrote the script with very high-placed assistance. the DESIGN of the plan was never to achieve operational objectives but to maneuver JFK...
http://history.eserver.org/bay-of-pigs.txt
1. Responsibility for the operation It is generally knownthat Zapata was a
CIA-planned and CIA-run operation from its beginnings at theend of the
Eisenhower administration, but it is interesting to see howDulles tried to
weasel out of the responsibility. At one point in the testimony,Admiral Burke
reminds Dulles that the actual conduct of the operation"was all in one place
and that was in CIA" (p. 249):
Dulles: But that was done by military personnel.
Burke: But not under our command structure.
Gen. Lemnitzer, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, puts itmore clearly, when he
is asked if he "or the Joint Chiefs were the defendersof the military aspects
of the operation, or was it CIA?" (p. 323):
Lemnitzer: The defenders of the military parts of the planwere the people who
produced it and that was CIA. We were providing assistanceand assuring the
feasibility of the plan.
Admiral Burke's answer the next day is equally clear (p.347):
Question: Did you regard the Joint Chiefs as defenders andspokesmen of the
military aspects of this operation?
Burke: No. That's one of the unfortunate misunderstandings.We sent military
people over to CIA, but CIA gave the orders, and they hadthe people, and they
had control. We examined the plan and that was it.
================
Robert Kennedy pursues him:
Kennedy: Then what was the objective of the operation?
Dulles: Get a beachhead, hold it, and then build it up.
Kennedy: How could you possibly do that--take a thousand or 1,400 men in there
and hold the beachhead against these thousands of militia?
Dulles has no answer to this. If he wasn't counting on an uprisng, everyone
else was, including the Secretaries of Defense and State:
McNamara: It was understood that there was a substantial possibility of
uprisings... (p. 202)
Rusk: There was a very considerable likelihood of popular uprisings.
Question: How essential was such an uprising regarded for the success of the
operation?
Rusk: It was believed that the uprising was utterly essential to success in
terms of ousting Castro (p. 220).
Gen. Shoup, the Marine Commandant, had also been convinced by the CIA that there
would be an uprising:
Shoup: ...The intelligence indicated that there were quite a number of people
that were ready to join in the fight against Castro (p. 243)...My
understanding was that the possibilities of uprisings were increasing, that
people were just waiting for these arms and equipment, and as soon as they heard
where the invasion was that they would be coming after them (p. 245).
Question: The success of this operation was wholly dependent upon popular
support?
Shoup: Absolutely. Ultimate success (p. 253).
Question: You'd say then that they would still be on thebeach if the plan had
been carried out as conceived and depended upon popularuprisings throughout the
island of Cuba? Otherwise they would have been wiped out?
Shoup: Absolutely. I don't think there is any doubt at all.Eventually 1,500
people cannot hold out against many, many thousands.
Question: Would you send 1,200 Marines in there to do that?
Shoup: No, I wouldn't, unless 1,200 Marines are going to beassisted by 30,000
Cubans.
The truth and bare facts about the Bay of Pigs - Lauren Johnson - 27-05-2014
Quote:Shoup: ...The intelligence indicated that there were quite a number of people
that were ready to join in the fight against Castro (p. 243)...My
understanding was that the possibilities of uprisings were increasing, that
people were just waiting for these arms and equipment, and as soon as they heard
where the invasion was that they would be coming after them (p. 245).
And who supplied this intelligence? The CIA? The DIA? Was this really an intelligence assessment or something just invented? Seriously. My guess? Talking points for marketing the invasion.