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| Alliance with a Scoundrel: How the CIA's Reputation Was Shredded in Cuba's Bay of Pigs |
| 2026-04-18 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited by Ol'ga Kuznetsova [REGNUM] On April 17, 1961, units of Brigade 2506 landed on the Bay of Pigs on the southern coast of Cuba. Formally, it was an organization of Cuban exiles who had declared war on Fidel Castro. In reality, the brigade was created by order of the US President and under the supervision of the CIA. The events of 60 years ago have not been consigned to history. The current American administration clearly has no intention of avoiding its own Cuban Missile Crisis, so it's worth remembering what actions were taken to attack Cuba in the past and whether the CIA truly embarrassed itself before the world in 1961. Spoiler: yes. But first things first. THE RISE OF PLUTO The plan to overthrow Fidel Castro began as early as April 1959, several months after guerrillas led by the Castro brothers and Che Guevara took Havana. The new government's first act was nationalization, including the transfer of foreign property to the control of the Cuban state. American interests were most affected. Before the Revolution, the United States owned up to 50% of the sugarcane plantations, 40% of raw sugar production, approximately 70% of mining assets, and 90% of the shares of electric and telephone companies. Among the victims were not only the agricultural United Fruit Company, but also the oil industry: Texaco and Esso owned Cuban refineries. Negotiations between Washington and Havana reached a dead end, and Republican President Dwight Eisenhower gave the go-ahead for an operation against Castro. In March 1960, a plan was approved to organize an armed opposition from among the émigrés settled in Florida. Simultaneously, orders were given to deploy intelligence and sabotage networks in Cuba, and radio broadcasting systems for informational and psychological manipulation in the United States. There was no shortage of personnel. Functionaries of the fallen regime of dictator Fulgencio Batista —civil servants, diplomats, and officers— were ready to participate in the "restoration of democracy." Anti-Castro armed units were formed, among other things, by young Cubans. The Eisenhower administration promised them American student visas and full legalization for all family members who had fled to the United States. But the core of the "guerrillas" were mercenaries. By the fall of 1960, CIA Director Allen Dulles' office had concluded that disparate guerrilla groups would be difficult to manage. The Operation Pluto plan called for a large force to be deployed for the invasion. The militants, trained in CIA camps in Nicaragua, Guatemala and in the United States itself (in New Orleans and Florida - in Miami and Fort Myers), were brought together into a brigade of 1,500 people. To deliver the landing force, a CIA naval task force was formed in the Nicaraguan port of Puerto Cabezas. It was assigned five civilian vessels previously "confiscated" in Cuba and seven US Navy ships—five tank landing ships and two infantry landing ships. According to the Operation Pluto plan, after landing troops in the occupied territory, a provisional government would be proclaimed (or rather, transported from the United States). It would call for a mass uprising and simultaneously appeal to Washington for assistance. But American democracy intervened in the “restoration of Cuban democracy.” DULLES REWRITES THE PLAN In November 1960, the US presidential election was held, in which Republican candidate Richard Nixon (Eisenhower's vice president) lost to Democratic nominee John F. Kennedy. The new president had a different vision for the Cuban issue: to intensify the information war against Castro and support guerrilla groups on the island. But without attempting a direct invasion, which would clearly "show off" American ears. Allen Dulles, who remained Director of Intelligence, did not cancel the operation, not wanting to show weakness in the face of the "communist threat." But constant revisions of the landing plan and air strikes began. In March, the first sabotage groups carrying Cuban émigrés departed for Cuba. But the final balance of forces was finalized on April 10, 1961. The question of additional airstrikes on the island remained in limbo until April 17. On April 14, the Americans conducted aerial surveys of Cuban airfields and located Castro government aircraft. The following day, three airfields were attacked. However, the Cuban authorities managed to receive information about the impending strikes and disperse most of the aircraft (according to official Cuban data, almost all of it, but this is most likely not the case). On the night of April 15-16, the landing of a “special forces unit” near the province of Oriente, which was intended to distract the Cuban coast guard, was thwarted. However, due to the airstrike situation and the international scandal that erupted in connection with it, coastal patrols were intensified. On the afternoon of April 16, American ships escorted Brigade 2506 to the Bay of Pigs and stopped 65 km from the shore. EVERYTHING WENT WRONG The plan began to unravel at midnight on April 17, when the landing took place. The transport ship entered the bay and ran aground during a firefight with Cuban militia and self-defense forces. An entire battalion was forced to flee. Ammunition and heavy weapons were simply abandoned. The element of surprise didn't work either. The militias entered the battle and—albeit with heavy losses—held out for several hours until the regular troops arrived. And yet, the landing site had been initially planned with the understanding that "Castro's men" wouldn't arrive quickly. The mercenaries' biggest surprise lay ahead. Brigade 2506 was expecting the additional airstrikes promised by the Americans, which would significantly weaken the Cuban Air Force and ground forces and facilitate the "rebellion." But Kennedy vetoed the air attack at the last minute. However, the Cuban Air Force aircraft, which were never destroyed, did their job. Diver Eduardo Sayas-Basan, who participated in the invasion, recalled : during the firefight, a B-26 bomber appeared on the shore. At first, the mercenaries thought they were "friends," but they were immediately attacked from the air. A second B-26 appeared, followed by other aircraft, which struck the "brigade's" vessel carrying fuel and ammunition. The mercenaries were shocked, as they were sure that all of Castro's planes had been destroyed. At the critical moment, the marines promised by the Americans did not arrive either. By April 19, the landing force had been pushed back to Playa Girón beach. Cuban forces shot down two American B-26s and prevented the destroyers Eaton and Murray from evacuating the attackers from the bay. By 5:30 PM, the shooting had ceased. Officers from "Brigade 2506" abandoned their futile attempts to contact their handlers, destroyed the radio, and surrendered. The invading forces lost over 100 men killed. Some were shot while standing knee-deep in water, before they had even made it to shore. Most of the mercenaries – 1,189 people – were captured. A year later, Fidel Castro sent them to the United States, but not for free. The Cuban authorities estimated the damage from the invasion at $53 million. The US was supposed to pay this money for the mercenaries' freedom, although it was demanded to be provided in the form of medicine and food. This strengthened Fidel's domestic political position and cemented his image as a fighter for Latin American freedom from "Yankee imperialism." THE DECEIVER AND THE THIEF For CIA leadership, the Bay of Pigs incident was a blow to their reputation. Declassified data added further detail to the story of the failure. In 2021, the independent research center National Security Archive released a portion of declassified CIA documents. They revealed that in August 1960, a "secret mission requiring gangster-style action" was included in the plan. The plan was to hire mafiosi who would plant poisoned pills prepared by CIA chemists on Castro. Tim Weiner's 2013 book, "The CIA: A True Story," quotes Jacob Esterline, head of the CIA's Cuba task force in 1960–61. Mafia agents delivered the poison to one of the "CIA's loyal" Cubans, Tony Varona. Esterline himself described Varona as a "deceiver, a thief, and a scoundrel." As it turned out, it was not in vain – the poison never made it into Castro’s dessert, but Cuban intelligence discovered the vial frozen in the refrigerator door of a Havana restaurant. Evidence has also surfaced in modern times that the Bay of Pigs landing site was chosen based on maps drawn up as early as 1895. In 1961, the coastline was impassable, with mangrove thickets. Those landing on the beach became bogged down, but Cuban tanks had no trouble getting there. The fairway was also poorly studied, as a result of which the transport ship ran aground during the landing. The book cites evidence that the final plan for the operation was hastily approved by Kennedy and the intelligence agencies. Moreover, Dulles's department simply concealed part of the plan from the White House. The CIA presented a cover story: on April 15, Cuban airfields were bombed by a deserter from Castro's air force who had flown to Florida and requested political asylum. The story was passed on as an official intelligence report to the US Ambassador to the UN, who relayed it to journalists. A day later, the lie was exposed and reached Secretary of State Dean Rusk. He was just trying to resolve another scandal involving the revelation of CIA interference in Singapore affairs and was, to put it mildly, displeased with Dulles. There is a theory that it was Rusk who negotiated with Kennedy the ban on further attacks on Cuban airfields. It was this decision that doomed the entire operation to failure. Moreover, having overestimated its own strength, the CIA underestimated the intelligence capabilities of the Cubans. Among those training at the Guatemala base were Castro's agents, who alerted Havana to the attack plans. It is believed that Moscow began providing active assistance (including intelligence) to Cuba in May 1961, when Fidel announced a course towards building socialism. But it is obvious that the 1959 revolution had already placed the Island of Freedom in the sphere of special interest of the USSR. Moreover, the series of sabotage operations carried out by the CIA in Cuba deprived the Bay of Pigs landing of its surprise. According to some historians, this was one of the reasons Kennedy lashed out at the intelligence agency's leadership. Be that as it may, in November 1961, the president fired Allen Dulles. The former intelligence chief blamed Kennedy for the operation's failure—he allegedly failed to allocate sufficient funds for preparations. IMPORTANT CONSEQUENCES Grayston Lynch, one of the CIA agents who participated in the operation "on the ground" and fired on Cuban planes, confirmed Dulles's point, saying that "for the first time in his thirty-seven years he felt ashamed of his own country." In response to these accusations, representatives of Kennedy's team said that they were merely cleaning up the mistakes of the Eisenhower administration, which had put pressure on Cuba and had itself pushed it into the arms of the USSR, creating a "hotbed of communism" on its own shores. The Bay of Pigs adventure had two important consequences. One was obvious. By the early summer of 1961, Castro (who was not considered an unambiguously pro-Soviet politician and whose entourage during the revolution included not only communists but also people of other persuasions) had made an open choice in favor of an alliance with Moscow. This backfired in 1962 with the Cuban Missile Crisis. But even after its resolution, socialist Cuba remained within the USSR's orbit. In 1972, the country joined the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. In 1979, under the auspices of the Warsaw Pact—of which Cuba was not formally a member—elements of the global electronic intelligence system, the Joint Data Accounting System (JDAS), were deployed on the island. The second consequence of the failed operation of April 1961 was tension between the top brass of the American military and intelligence agencies and the Kennedy administration. The Bay of Pigs affair is the source of numerous theories about the CIA's involvement in the assassination of the 35th US President. The manipulation of declassified files on this issue continues to plague American society to this day, no less than the Epstein Island affair. Be that as it may, in 1961 the world saw that a superpower could resolve its geopolitical problems head-on and without proper preparation. And this was far from the last such adventure. |
| Posted by:badanov |