| Cuban
Provinces & Cities
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In 1961, the United States launched an attack on
Cuba meant to overthrow Castro's
government. Though the aid and training given to the attacking exiles
was substantial, they suffered total defeat and created a humiliating
episode for the United States. Not only was the operation a military disaster,
but it also failed its initial objective: in the end, the attack only
increased Cubans' support of their leader.
On
March 17, 1960, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower agreed to start a program
to overthrow the Cuban Government. Run by the CIA, this program would
train, arm, and recruit Cuban exiles to participate in an invasion of
Cuba. When John F. Kennedy became President, he had to decide whether
or not to go through with the attack. He decided in favor of it, largely
because if he had called off the attack, there would have been more than
a thousand armed, trained exiles who would complain and bring the matter
into public domain.
The
intent of the attack was to take a beachhead, establish a government,
and gain U.S. recognition. They thought that the people would then rise
up and fight with them, overthrowing Fidel
Castro. As Castro expected, the attack began with an air raid. Had
he not hidden and scattered his planes, the small Cuban air force could
have been completely lost. The attacking American planes killed seven
people and destroyed several Cuban planes. Then the invasion, with 1,297
troops, began. As the invaders began to leave their boats, the Cuban air
force attacked. They sunk the Houston and the Río Escondido, cutting
off supplies for the invaders. The other ships carrying backup supplies
quickly left the area fearing the same fate and never returned.
At
that point, military leaders in the United States asked Kennedy for permission
to use the U.S. air force to destroy the Cuban army's planes. He only
permitted them to give cover to planes flown by exiles, which arrived
before the U.S. navy planes, and were consequently shot down. The invading
forces were surrounded, mainly by the militia, and were running out of
supplies. They tried to escape back into the sea, but the US navy had
left the area. Most of them were taken as prisoners. Exact details on
the number of dead and captured differ. According to the Museum of Playa
Girón, 1,197 exiles were captured. Two hundred invaders were also
killed, compared with 156 Cubans killed. A few of the Batistiano criminals
were executed, some prisoners were ransomed, and the rest freed in exchange
for medical and agricultural equipment.
| Books
about the Bay of Pigs |
| Bay
of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion
of Cuba (National Security Archive Documents Reader) by Peter
Kornbluh (Editor) |
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From
Library Journal
If the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was the most dire event of the
Cold War, then the Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961 was the most
absurd. Kornbluh (director, Cuban Documentation Ctr. Project of
the National Security Archive; Politics of Illusion: The Bay of
Pigs Invasion Reexamined, Lynne Rienner, 1997) includes the tedious
but informative report of Inspector General Lyman Kirkpatrick, which
largely blames the CIA for misleading President Kennedy. Richard
Bissell, the CIA's deputy director for plans, responds with a similarly
oppressive rebuttal that attributes the failure to Kennedy's need
to ensure plausible deniability?to hide America's obvious role by
committing limited, insufficient air support and troops. Additional
supporting documents and an interview with the invasion planners
show the Bay of Pigs fiasco to be what historian Theodore Draper
calls "a perfect failure." For a narrative overview, see
Ale Fursenko's One Hell of a Gamble (LJ 3/15/97). Primarily for
specialists in the era.?Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King
of Prussia, PA |
House
of Sugar: The Bay of Pigs and the CIA/Mafia's Assasination
of JFK
by Sheldon Burton Webster |
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|
Reflections
of a Cold Warrior: From Yalta to the Bay of Pigs
by Richard M., Jr Bissell, Jonathan E. Lewis (Contributor), Frances
T. Pudlo (Contributor) |
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Richard
M. Bissel Jr. followed the preferred path to spy superstardom: Groton,
Yale, military service in World War II, and a stint helping to write
the Marshall Plan, followed by time as an operative and then as an
assistant to Allen Dulles, director of the CIA. In 1959, he assumed
the reigns as head of the agency's covert operations. But his career
ran into a brick wall with the ill-fated Bay of Pigs operation. In
Reflections of a Cold Warrior, Bissell, who died in 1994, recounts
his involvement in operations ranging from the overthrow of a democratically
elected government in Guatemala to the creation of the U-2 spy plane
project to the fiasco in Cuba.
|
Politics
of Illusion: The Bay of Pigs Invasion Reexamined
by James G. Blight (Editor), Peter Kornbluh (Editor) |
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| Bay
of Pigs
by Victor Andres Triay |
Book
Description
This is the story of the Bay of Pigs invasion, told for the first
time in the words of the idealistic participants who came together
in April, 1961, to overthrow Fidel Castro's dictatorship. Most of
the approximately 1,500 men of Brigade 2506 were captured by Castro's
forces in Cuban swamps and jailed until December 1962. About 114
died. Combining oral history and traditional narrative form, Victor
Triay tells us who individual members of the brigade were and what
they fought for. |
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| Fidel
Castro on the Bay of Pigs
by Fidel Castro |
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| An
Act of Betrayal: America's Involvement in the Bay of Pigs
by R. J. Schuster, Robert Juran (Editor), Patrick Foster (Illustrator)
|
Book
Description
One of the more controversial and closely guarded secrets of the
early Kennedy administration is the subject for this new novel by
Captain R. J. Schuster USN (ret). Set in the tumultuous 1960s, it
focuses on three individuals and how their lives are affected when
political considerations take precedence over military necessities.
In pursuing the story the reader is taken behind the scenes of the
navy's officer promotion system, into the shadowy world of covert
operations, and on to the shores of Cuba where one of the central
characters, Jake Barnes, is faced with some difficult choices when
his sense of duty and honor conflict with the orders he has been
given. Although a work of fiction, the story is based on fact with
many of the events depicted in the book having occurred as described. |
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