On Edwin Kaiser and Related Topics

[Cliff Varnell]

All of this misses the bigger problem - that an invasion of Cuba was doomed to fail because the revolutionary regime was popular with most Cubans, and had a large, combat-experienced army with ideal terrain to defend. It's the reason why JFK didn't want to invade Cuba during the Missile Crisis. As Marine Corps Commandant David Schoup pointed out by displaying a map of Cuba with a small red dot overlaying it. He said that the red dot represented the island of Tarawa, which took three days and 18,000 Marines to capture.

I couldn't agree more -- as a military operation Op Zapata was doomed all along.

However, as a bureaucratic operation designed to get rid of Allen Dulles it was a smashing success.

[Scott Kaiser]

All of this misses the bigger problem - that an invasion of Cuba was doomed to fail because the revolutionary regime was popular with most Cubans, and had a large, combat-experienced army with ideal terrain to defend. It's the reason why JFK didn't want to invade Cuba during the Missile Crisis. As Marine Corps Commandant David Schoup pointed out by displaying a map of Cuba with a small red dot overlaying it. He said that the red dot represented the island of Tarawa, which took three days and 18,000 Marines to capture.

I couldn't agree more -- as a military operation Op Zapata was doomed all along.

However, as a bureaucratic operation designed to get rid of Allen Dulles it was a smashing success.

I'm not certain if the reason JFK didn't invade Cuba was because of Cuba's combat experience and ideal terrain to defend, or because Russia had just shown signs of defending Cuba, either way, JFK avoided WWIII saving lives.

[Tracy Riddle]

All of this misses the bigger problem - that an invasion of Cuba was doomed to fail because the revolutionary regime was popular with most Cubans, and had a large, combat-experienced army with ideal terrain to defend. It's the reason why JFK didn't want to invade Cuba during the Missile Crisis. As Marine Corps Commandant David Schoup pointed out by displaying a map of Cuba with a small red dot overlaying it. He said that the red dot represented the island of Tarawa, which took three days and 18,000 Marines to capture.

I couldn't agree more -- as a military operation Op Zapata was doomed all along.

However, as a bureaucratic operation designed to get rid of Allen Dulles it was a smashing success.

I'm not certain if the reason JFK didn't invade Cuba was because of Cuba's combat experience and ideal terrain to defend, or because Russia had just shown signs of defending Cuba, either way, JFK avoided WWIII saving lives.

Yes, Russia and its troops and missiles on the ground was an obvious factor too in the Missile Crisis, but because so many people were telling him how easy it would be to invade and occupy Cuba, Shoup's warning made him JFK's favorite general.

[Scott Kaiser]

Congressman Donald J. Irwin who was my father's cousin through marriage had this to say about Kennedy during the Cuban missile Crisis:

Donald J. Irwin has declared that the "courageous" stand taken by the late President John Kennedy at the time of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 led to Russian agreement to the nuclear test ban treaty. In a year-end newsletter sent to every postal patron in the Fourth Congressional District, Mr. Irwin said that President Kennedy "showed intelligence, judgment courage and leadership" in his confrontation with the Russians in the Cuban missile crisis. Mr. Irwin dedicated the newsletter to President Kennedy's memory at the time of the third anniversary of the President's assassination in Dallas.


Highlighted in the newsletter, distributed to 180,000 postal patrons in the district, was a photo of the late President taken by Mr. Irwin during Mr. Kennedy's last visit to Connecticut during the 1962 congressional campaign. Mr. Irwin called attention to this "critical period in our history" by recalling the events surrounding President Kennedy's campaign visit to Connecticut. "On Wednesday, October 17, 1962."


Mr. Irwin wrote in his newsletter, "the President arrived at the Bridgeport airport on his way to Waterbury and New Haven. On the previous Tuesday, he had been shown the first pictures of the Russian missile sites in Cuba. Because he had an appointment with Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko for Thursday the President had decided to keep campaign commitments in Connecticut and Illinois so as not to betray his knowledge. As you will remember his trip to Chicago was interrupted by his return to Washington on Saturday with what was said to be a cold.


That following Monday he made his famous speech demanding the withdrawal of the missiles." Mr. Irwin maintained that "the American people with practical unanimity supported the President as he risked the possibility of a nuclear war in his insistence that the missiles be removed. Many people agreed," Mr. Irwin said, "that this was President Kennedy's greatest week in the Presidency." He pointed out that in displaying this leadership in the missile crisis President Kennedy demonstrated anew that "leadership is a lonely business for the person bearing its mantle. The decision that was made (in the Cuban missile crisis) and the action that was taken those were for John F. Kennedy and John F. Kennedy alone to make," Mr. Irwin said. "He had to do as he did or abdicate the role of leadership." Mr. Irwin asserted that "if the American people can convince the aggressors in Viet Nam that our determination today is as strong as it was at the time of the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, then peace in the world is not merely an idealistic aspiration." Was President Kennedy's trip to Chicago interrupted due to a cold? Or a possible plot to assassinate him there? "I asked myself? Do I have to see New York, Chicago or Dallas Texas?" Information on this page is provided by the Norwalk Hour.

[Scott Kaiser]

Kennedy, eager to limit U.S. involvement in the plot, made clear that he would allow only eight planes to provide air cover not enough to knock out Castro's air force and would under no circumstances order U.S. Air Force planes to support them.

Lets read that again shall we? "Kennedy, eager to limit U.S. involvement in the plot, made clear that he would allow only eight planes to provide air cover," however, we now know that those eight planes were increased to twelve in total. Kennedy then had second thoughts about the "air cover," had the A4 Skyhawks involved in firing back at Castro's T-33's then how could Kennedy explain no American involvement? You see, what you will find in the fifth volume of the Bay of Pigs is that Kennedy asked Bundy to place a call to the CIA having the A4 Skyhawks to stand down, however, the call came in late, lucky the Skyhawks arrived an hour late right? Now, can you imagine had the Skyhawks involved themselves and engaged Castro's T-33's?

What would Russia have done? How could Kennedy explain his public announcement of no american military involvement, and then the Skyhawks shot-down all of Castro's planes? And, the truth shall set me free!

[Scott Kaiser]

Please, don't tell me that Kennedy would allow eight B-26's to provide air-cover for the other B-26's, that's like the blind leading the blind.

[Scott Kaiser]

Here goes! There was no screw up in time, everyone knew exactly what the time differences were between Washington DC and where the Essex was docked. Any military man knew how to sequence their time no matter where they were, they knew that when Castro engaged the Brigade that it would all be over with in an hour, it was then those A4 Skyhawks were sent out to make it appear there would be air-cover, Kennedy needed to find away out of this yet act concerned enough for the Brigade, and the Brigade knew it, I know it, and now, so do you. Yes, they did get even with Kennedy, yes, the CIA allowed them to run-a-muk all the while taking the lead investigation from the FBI by hindering, lying and spying on every open investigation that was conducted to look into Kennedy's assassination.

I told you, I will expose Kennedy's assassination in full in my next update as well as fully exposing Watergate, and I don't mean to say this in a sarcastic way, I just need the truth to be told, mostly, on behalf of my father who he had himself very very incriminating evidence.

[Jim DiEugenio]

All of this misses the bigger problem - that an invasion of Cuba was doomed to fail because the revolutionary regime was popular with most Cubans, and had a large, combat-experienced army with ideal terrain to defend. It's the reason why JFK didn't want to invade Cuba during the Missile Crisis. As Marine Corps Commandant David Schoup pointed out by displaying a map of Cuba with a small red dot overlaying it. He said that the red dot represented the island of Tarawa, which took three days and 18,000 Marines to capture.

I couldn't agree more -- as a military operation Op Zapata was doomed all along.

However, as a bureaucratic operation designed to get rid of Allen Dulles it was a smashing success.

LOL, ROTF, LMAO

This has gotten to be one of the most absurdly humorous threads I can recall here.

Like I said, there is nothing more grotesque than one lame theorist teaming up with another to advance ideas that simply are not justified by the evidence, and which ignore certain key facts.

One of the key points that Lyman Kirkpatrick made in his report was this: OK, let us assume for the sake of argument that Castro's Air Force was neutralized. What would that have left on the ground?

About 35,000 Cuban regulars supported by Soviet tanks, mortar and artillery and motorized companies, against about 1,100 exiles who already had one supply ship sunk and one stuck on the reef. This meant ammunition, radios and aviation fuel was lost.(What do you think the last was for Scott?) This greatly crippled their ability to communicate, and also to counter the Cuban troops arriving at the water's edge. Kirkpatrick goes on to say that this was made worse since the CIA told Kennedy there was no police force at Playa Giron, but there was! And Castro also knew when the last ship had left Central America. Therefore since he had been on full alert for a week, he was able to get thousands of his troops to the front within hours. This was another lie by the CIA. They had told Kennedy that, because of the element of surprise, Castro would not be able to mass a counterattack for days.

Secondly, there were no defections. Period. So it was Castro's regular army of about 35,000 men, with all of the armored weapons available enabling it to hit the exiles with long range artillery shells and short range mortar shells, and then tanks to push forward and polish them off--against a force of about 1,100 men who had two supply ships already inoperative. Kirkpatrick then adds that this was not the worst part. The worst part was the fact that Castro still had a 200,000 man reserve militia he could call upon if needed. But his implication is that it was not needed here. Because it was all over in about 24 hours. And not because of the air cover issue, but because the CIA had planned this thing so poorly, and had anticipated things that did not happen. Like the fact that Castro had rolled up the last resistance weeks before. Therefore, there was no possibility of getting any support on the island.

But beyond that, there was not any hope of going guerrilla either. Because Playa Giron was 85 miles from the mountains. And that 85 miles was swamp not dirt. But further, to show another lie the CIA dumped on Kennedy, the exiles had no training in guerrilla warfare or how to survive under those conditions. Bobby Kennedy made sure that this got in the record of the Taylor Report by supplying exiles who had been trained by the Agency. You should read Dulles' ridiculous and mendacious response to that testimony.

See, the whole thing about the "cancelled D Day raids" was simply a dual edged myth that the CIA, specifically Dulles, Hunt, and Bissell, manufactured afterwards to cover the fact that they knew the operation could not succeed unless the USA participated directly. In fact, as Talbot discovered, the Pentagon had written a paper saying just that. But Bissell, who controlled the paper flow going to JFK on this, made sure the president did not see it. When I write "dual edged myth" what I mean is this:

1.) There were no cancelled D Day air strikes. There was no beachhead attained--and Kennedy had made it clear he wanted those launched from the island.

2.) They would have made no difference to the ultimate outcome anyway. For the simple reason that Zapata was mismanaged in every possible way you can imagine. And Kirkpatrick takes literally dozens of pages showing how this was the case. Pages that, evidently, Scott wants to ignore. Because it shows that, for the CIA, the Cuban exiles were expendable.

Dulles and Bissell understood that the operation had simply no opportunity to succeed unless American forces were directly involved. And, misjudging Kennedy, that is what they were banking on.

Dulles and Hunt then made up this whole D Day bombing excuse to cover their own butts about the CIA's treachery. And Phillips and Hunt then spread it among the Cubans. And they bought into it. And they are still buying into it. And Scott listens to them.

[Scott Kaiser]

Im sorry Jim, but you really are wrong. By the way, I do have evidence, are you saying that there were no A4s to cleverly not cover the B26s? Yeah, im the first person who can prove it, like the sixth burglar, and so many other things. Don't be mad.

[Anthony Thorne]

Jim mentions the Kirkpatrick report. Googling around for it, I see the National Security Archives eventually obtained most of the Jack Pfeiffer report, linked here

http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB355/

which contains

lengthy and harsh critiques of two previous official investigations of the Bay of Pigs: the report of the Presidential Commission led by Gen. Maxwell Taylor; and the CIA's own Inspector General's report written in the aftermath of the failed assault.

Are the Kirkpatrick and Pfeiffer reports both worth reading? Does anyone have any comments about any pros and cons I might encounter if I dig through both? Just curious, and happy to hear anyone's thoughts.