The Brilliant Disaster

The Brilliant Disaster: JFK, Castro, and America’s Doomed Invasion of Cuba’s Bay of Pigs by Jim Rasenberger, Scribner, 2012. 

Summary

During the transition from the hawkish Eisenhower administration to the dovish Kennedy administration there was carried over a plan to invade Cuba and overthrow Fidel Castro. What emerged was a hybrid plan that attempted to be both effective and deniable, but which ended up being neither. 

The man running Cuba prior to Fidel Castro, General Fulgencio Batista, was widely known for being corrupt, and for allowing American organized crime to run Cuba. Nevertheless, he had the support of the United States government. Although most Cubans were poor, there was a large and prosperous middle class, and the standard of living in Cuba was substantially higher than that of most of Latin America. 

Timeline Before the Bay of Pigs Invasion

• January 1959: Batista fled Cuba, and Fidel Castro’s rebels took control of Havana

• April 1959: Fidel Castro visited the United States at the invitation of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Those who spoke with him had mixed views on whether he is a closet Communist agent of the Soviet Union, or a democratic nationalist fighting for the freedom of the Cuban people

• October 1959, Castro arrested Huber Matos, who had fought with Castro against Batista, because Matos had objected to the growing influence of the Communists in the revolutionary government of Cuba. Matos subsequently spent twenty years in a Cuban prison.

• February 1960: Fidel Castro and Anastas Mikoyan, vice-prime minister of the Soviet Union, sign a trade agreement.

• Summer 1960: Castro nationalized the Texaco and Esso (Exxon) oil refineries in Cuba

• September 1960: Castro visited New York to address the United Nations, and hugged Nikita Khrushchev

• January 1961: Castro ordered the staff of the U.S. embassy in Havana to leave Cuba

• Early 1961: Soviet and Chinese arms poured into Cuba

Reasons Why the U.S. Action was Covert

• An open military invasion would violate U.S. law

• An open military invasion would violate international law

• Fear of international criticism 

• Fear of accusations of gunboat diplomacy 

• Fear of nuclear war with the Soviet Union

Eisenhower Administration

During the Eisenhower Administration, the CIA’s original plan was to make the invasion of Cuban anti-Castro forces appear to be an internal rebellion.  The invasion planes would be flying from American bases in Central America. But the CIA disguised these American B-26 bombers to look like Cuban Air Force B-26 bombers, so that it would appear that pilots in the Cuban air force had defected. The plan was for the aircraft to destroy or neutralize all Cuban military aircraft and naval vessels so that they would not be a threat to the invasion force. The original site for the amphibious landing was Trinidad, where, if things went bad, the anti-Castro forces would be able to escape to the nearby Escambray Mountains. 

Kennedy’s Changes

When Jack Kennedy became president in January 1961, he made some changes to the CIA plan that he inherited from the Eisenhower administration. Jack Kennedy was concerned with the diplomatic repercussions that would result if the involvement of the United States in the invasion became known.

Kennedy changed the landing site from Trinidad to the Bay of Pigs, because Trinidad did not have a landing strip long enough for the B-26. Kennedy wanted the B-26 planes to land and then take off from within Cuba, to make it appear that the B-26 planes were a part of the Cuban air force that had turned against Castro. But with this revised landing site, there was no escape valve to the Escambray Mountains. The mountains were too far away from the Bay of Pigs. 

Kennedy questioned Bissell on the need for air strikes. Kennedy told Bissell to reduce the number of the original sixteen B-26 to a minimal number, so Bissell reduced it from 16 to 8.

Invasion Timeline for April 1961

• April 15 morning: air strikes destroyed only part of Castro’s air force

• April 15 afternoon: air strikes cancelled

• April 16: more air strikes cancelled

• April 17 morning: yet more air strikes cancelled; in fact, Kennedy claimed at the time that he had not previously agreed to the April 17 air strikes.

• The air strikes were cancelled for political considerations, to maintain deniability of U.S. military involvement in the Cuban invasion

• Brigade 2506 invasion forces came under attack by tanks and Soviet MiG jets

• Brigade 2506 ran out of ammo

• The U.S. failed to resupply or rescue the Cubans of Brigade 2506, so they were captured by Castro’s forces. The men of Brigade 2506  spent 20 months as prisoners of Fidel Castro before the United States ransomed them.