Reclaiming History (295 page)

The historian Theodore Draper referred to the invasion as “a perfect failure.” Though many Cuban defenders also lost their lives on and around the beaches known in Cuba as Playa Girón (the main beachhead) and Playa Larga, the battle was a rout. So much so that in documents declassified by Cuba commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the invasion, Castro, who barked out orders to his defenders by telephone from a position near the beach, is recorded as telling his brother, Raul, who was far from the fighting, “You have been missing the party.”
¹⁰⁷

The members of the invading force blamed what happened on Kennedy’s supposed decision (see later text) to withdraw promised air support at the last moment. With the blood of their loved ones, they believed, on Kennedy’s hands, the realistic and not fantastic desire for revenge makes sense. As Warren Commission critic Harold Weisberg has put it, “If any men capable of murdering the President had a motive,” it was the Cuban exiles.
¹⁰⁸

As indicated, Slawson and Coleman called their aforementioned theory “wild speculation,” and there is no evidence to support their theory and scenario. It should be noted, however, that if the Odio incident in fact occurred, neither Oswald (pretending to be anti-Castro) nor the anti-Castro Cubans (pretending to Oswald that if he killed Kennedy they would be of assistance to him) would have to pretend about one thing—their mutual contempt for the president arising out of the botched Bay of Pigs attack, but for different reasons: for Oswald, that Kennedy had authorized the invasion; for the Cubans, that he failed to furnish the air support they believed he had promised them.

Or had he? The brigade of Cuban exiles (mostly recruited from the large Cuban population in Miami) who invaded Cuba, as well as their leaders, have said many times that the failure of the plan was, as previously indicated, a result of the lack of promised air support, and for that they directly blamed President Kennedy. Barry Sklar, a Latin American affairs specialist for the U.S. government’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division, writes that “exile leaders believed that the United States promised air and sea cover for the invasion force and that its failure to materialize was a major reason for the invasion’s defeat.”
¹⁰⁹
But Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., who was a special assistant to the president throughout the entire period, not only participating in most of the administration’s meetings on the invasion but writing a white paper for the president in which he inveighed against the invasion, disagrees. He writes in his book
A Thousand Days
, a friendly but incisive biography of JFK in the White House, that “mythologists have…talked about a supposed presidential decision to ‘withdraw United States air cover.’ There was never, of course, any plan for United States air cover, and no air cover for the landing forces was withdrawn.”
¹¹⁰

Indeed, on April 12, 1961, just five days before the invasion, President Kennedy was asked at a press conference, “Mr. President, has a decision been reached on how far this country would be willing to go in helping an anti-Castro uprising or invasion of Cuba?” (It was public knowledge that an invasion of the island was imminent. What started out as a covert operation had long since become known. Only the date of the invasion—April 17—was unknown.) The president was unambiguous in his reply: “I want to say that there will not be,
under any conditions
, an intervention in Cuba by United States armed forces.” He went on to say that the U.S. government would do everything possible “
to make sure that there are no Americans involved
”
*
in such an action, adding that “as I understand it,
this Administration’s attitude is…understood and shared by the anti-Castro exiles from Cuba in this country
.” And it’s not as if this statement by Kennedy was buried in the media’s coverage of the conference. A front-page headline the following day in the
New York Times
read, “President Bars Using U.S. Force to Oust Castro.” The
Times
reported that elsewhere in the press conference, “the President indicated by indirection that he would continue the Eisenhower policy of supplying aid and military training to refugee groups” seeking to overthrow Castro.
¹¹¹
This, of course, was substantially misleading. More than just “aid and training” was involved. The invasion was CIA-organized, and hence U.S. government–sponsored. But Kennedy made it clear that U.S. military forces would not physically participate in the invasion.

The innocuous “Eisenhower policy” referred to by Kennedy was much more muscular than he had indicated. Indeed, the institutional stem for the eventual Bay of Pigs invasion goes back to the Eisenhower administration. What Eisenhower authorized and approved of on March 17, 1960, was a March 16, 1960, “Top Secret” CIA document drafted by CIA wunderkind Richard Bissell and titled “A Program of Covert Action against the Castro Regime.” The very first words of the document read, “Objective: The purpose of the program outlined herein is to bring about the replacement of the Castro regime with one more devoted to the true interests of the Cuban people and more acceptable to the U.S. in such a manner as to avoid any appearance of U.S. intervention. Essentially, the method of accomplishing this end will be to induce, support, and so far as possible, direct action, both inside and outside of Cuba, by selected groups of Cubans,” the type who could be expected to undertake such a mission “on their own initiative.” Paragraph d provides that “preparations have already been made for the development of an adequate paramilitary force outside of Cuba…A number of paramilitary cadres will be trained at secure locations outside of the United States so as to be available for immediate deployment into Cuba.”

Although invasion plans under the auspices of the CIA and the U.S. government gained speed, momentum, and force under the Kennedy administration, culminating in the Bay of Pigs invasion on April 17, 1961, there is no question that not only did it all start under Eisenhower, but Eisenhower was not just a passive signatory to the plans. Eisenhower was arguably almost as obsessed as the Kennedys with removing Castro from power.
†
So committed that he called a meeting in the Oval Office on January 3, 1961 (a little over two weeks before he left office), attended by, among others, the CIA chief, Allen Dulles; chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lyman Lemnitzer; and the secretary of defense, Thomas Gates. The main topic was Cuba, and when to sever diplomatic relations with Castro. Eisenhower opened the meeting by saying he was “constantly bombarded by people outside of government as to the situation in Cuba.” So committed that although the record of the long meeting doesn’t indicate there was any serious follow-up to his seemingly offhanded remark, Eisenhower said that he “would move against Castro before the 20th” (when he would be leaving office) if he were provided a really good excuse by Castro (note this would not appear to be referring to the upcoming Bay of Pigs invasion by
Cuban
exiles in April—since the exile force, on January 3, was in no operational position to invade in less than three weeks—but to an invasion by
U.S.
forces), and then actually adding that “failing that, perhaps we could think of
manufacturing
something that would be generally acceptable.” Later in the meeting Eisenhower spoke knowledgeably about the training of the exile force and how to make it stronger, as well as whom to recognize as the new leader of Cuba if the invasion by the exiles was successful.
¹¹²

Although Kennedy made it clear that the U.S. military would not actually participate in the invasion itself, he did authorize a preinvasion air strike on Cuba’s air force. In the early morning hours of April 15, two days before the invasion, CIA-directed Cuban exile pilots flew eight U.S. planes (war surplus B-26s, light bombers) to attack three Cuban airfields (one on the outskirts of Havana, one at San Antonio de los Baños, thirty miles south of Havana, and one at Santiago de Cuba, over four hundred miles southeast of Havana). Why only eight of the twenty-two B-26s available at the brigade’s Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, air base (code-named “Happy Valley”) were used has never been satisfactorily answered. One aircraft was shot down, one lost an engine from ground fire and landed at Key West, and another, low on fuel on the return flight, was forced to land at Grand Cayman Island. The rest returned to Puerto Cabezas.
¹¹³
The returning exile pilots estimated that they had destroyed twenty-two to twenty-four of Castro’s planes, believed to be over half of Castro’s air force. The estimate was inflated. Based on all sources, including aerial photography, Cuba’s air force prior to D-day consisted of thirty-six planes, eighteen of which were believed to be operational. During the Bay of Pigs invasion, Castro had seven aircraft in the air, the conclusion being that eleven operational aircraft had been taken out by the U.S. air strike on April 15.
¹¹⁴

Kennedy originally had authorized a second air strike on Castro’s planes at Cuban airfields (this is not to be confused with air support and cover for the invading forces at the time of the invasion), hoping to finish the job of neutralizing the Cuban air force, thereby greatly enhancing the invading brigade’s chance of success by eliminating air assaults on the landing force. The strike was to occur at dawn on April 17, 1961, coinciding with the landing of the exile invasion force on the three beaches (denominated Red, Blue, and Green, though landing on Green was canceled at the last moment) at the Bay of Pigs.
*
Late in the day on April 16, Kennedy did, in fact, withdraw this second air strike after Secretary of State Dean Rusk advised him that a second strike would put the United States in an untenable position internationally.
¹¹⁵

What makes the withdrawal of the second air strike difficult to understand is the question of how much worse could a second air strike (which might have finished off Castro’s remaining air force) be in the eyes of the international community than the one that had already taken place?

Because of Kennedy’s withdrawal of a second strike, Castro still had enough planes (T-33 jets, B-26s—given to Batista by the U.S. government—and British Sea Furies) to strafe the beachhead and offshore supply ships, raising deadly havoc with the invading brigade as well as some of its ships. One ship, the
Houston
(which had transported troops and supplies and still had 180 troops aboard), was hit and went aground on the west shore of the Bay of Pigs, five miles from Red Beach. The
Rio Escondido
, carrying ten days of ammunition and other important supplies, was sunk.
¹¹⁶

Haynes Johnson, in his book
Bay of Pigs
, written with four of the brigade civilian and military leaders (Manuel Artime, the civilian exile leader, who was the CIA favorite among all the rebel leaders; José [Pepe] Pérez San Román, brigade commander; Erneido Oliva, second in command; and Enrique Ruiz-Williams, a lower brigade officer), mentions only one lone brigade B-26 (piloted by a Cuban) attempting to provide air cover for the troops landing on the beaches at daybreak on the first day of the invasion. But facing Castro’s faster T-33 jets and Sea Furies, “the slower Brigade plane didn’t have a chance” and was quickly shot down.
¹¹⁷
Without air cover from American jets, which were available on the aircraft carrier
Essex
just fifteen miles from shore, the brigade landing force was essentially at the unchallenged mercy of Castro’s air force, and the fate of the invasion was sealed.

On this very key issue of whether the landing forces had air cover from their own B-26s (not U.S. jets) on D-day, there is some ambiguity. As indicated, Haynes Johnson, speaking from the authority of those who were there, says only one B-26 provided air support and was quickly shot down. Peter Wyden’s very authoritative book
Bay of Pigs
only mentions two brigade B-26s providing air cover four hours
after
large numbers of troops had already started landing at sunup, both of which, after dropping bombs on an enemy column, were quickly shot down by a T-33 and a Sea Fury, and one B-26 providing cover later in the day, which was also shot down. Wyden never explicitly says how many B-26s supplied air cover during D-day, but the implication is very few, and they were not very effective.

The next day, D+1 (April 18), six brigade B-26s piloted by Cuban exiles (and two American CIA contract men known as “Peters” and “Seig,” who were authorized by the CIA’s Richard Bissell without knowledge or approval from the Kennedy administration) successfully bombed a column of Cuban trucks and tanks approaching the beach, destroying seven tanks and inflicting an estimated eighteen hundred casualties, an unrealistically high number. But the efforts of the slower B-26s during the three days of war were virtual suicide missions, with nine of the sixteen being shot down, most by the surprisingly effective Cuban T-33 jets. Here and there over a period of three days, the brigade, ashore and with makeshift command posts established, achieved small tactical successes. But it was clear early on that it was only a matter of time before the brigade, without American air support and outnumbered fifteen to one by Castro’s twenty thousand troops, would succumb. Nonetheless, during most of the battle, the brigade leaders still felt, as Johnson wrote, “that victory was inevitable. [They felt] it was inconceivable that they would be stranded” by the American military.
¹¹⁸

To save the invasion on the second day, April 18, the CIA and Joint Chiefs of Staff had beseeched Kennedy to reverse his publicly stated position and allow U.S. planes and ships to come to the rescue of the brigade on the two beaches. Kennedy wavered for a moment but refused the request. U.S. military forces would not physically participate in the invasion. In the hope that Kennedy just might change his mind, Admiral Arleigh Burke, chief of naval operations, had placed two Marine battalions on ships in his fleet of destroyers and carriers that had accompanied the brigade to the Bay of Pigs and remained offshore to lend logistical support. Later on April 18, Burke made one last plea to Kennedy, who reiterated he did not “want the United States involved in this.”