27-05-2014, 02:21 AM
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/archi...Id=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.
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archi...Id=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.