April 17, 1961:
(4:30 AM)
Gen. Charles Cabell, deputy director of the CIA, calls the White House,
has
Dean Rusk awaken JFK with a request for new air cover for Bay of Pigs
invasion.
The request is for U. S. planes -- which are not “deniable.”
Cabell is told no.
(Despite the cancellation of the dawn air strikes, the B-26s actually did fly in from Nicaragua to cover the landing beach
throughout the rest of D-Day.
A total of 13 combat sorties were flown on D-Day, in the course of which 4
B-26s were lost to Cuban T-33 action.)
The Cuban Brigade lands at Bahia de Cochinos, or Bay of Pigs -- located about forty
miles west of Trinidad along the Zapata peninsula.
Of the 1600 men,
114 are killed, 1,189 are
captured by Castro’s forces, and 150 either never land or make their way back to safety.
It is a humiliating defeat for the CIA planned invasion.
JFK is blamed for not coming to their aid.
Head of the CIA,
Allen Dulles, is
out of the country during the invasion. Gen. Charles Cabell acts as CIA coordinator during this time.
In the CIA and some military circles the President is
accused of vacillation at the moment of crisis. The CIA’s reaction following the Bay of Pigs fiasco
suggests strongly that the Agency knew in advance the operation could not succeed without U.S.
military support, and had banked on being able to pressure the President into direct intervention.
CIA Director Dulles had encouraged the President to believe the landing would be followed by a
mass popular uprising -- a prospect CIA intelligence reports indicated was wholly improbable.
Contrary to the President’s express orders, CIA officers had landed on the beach with the exiles.
CIA agents had earlier told their Cuban proteges that they should go ahead with the invasion
even if the President called off the landing at the last moment.
JFK, LBJ, Rusk, McNamara, Lemnitzer, Burke, Bundy, Bissell, Walt Roston and Authur
Schlesinger, Jr. meet today in the President’s office.
The reports are bad. Bissell and Burke
propose a concealed U.S. air strike from the carrier Esses lying off Cuba. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
and James Reston lunch with JFK. Schlesinger remembers him as being “free, calm, and candid;
I had rarely seen him more effectively in control.” JFK says: “I probably made a mistake in keeping Allen
Dulles on. It’s not that Dulles in not a man of great ability.
He is. But I have never worked with him, and
therefore I can’t estimate his meaning when he tells me things . . .
Dulles is a legendary figure, and it’s
hard to operate with legendary figures . . .
I made a mistake in putting Bobby in the Justice Department.
He is wasted there . . . Bobby should be in CIA . . . It is a hell of a way to learn things, but I have learned
one thing from this business -- that is, we’ll have to deal with the CIA.”
Referring to the Bay of Pigs, RFK says: “The shit has hit the fan. The thing has turned sour in
a way you wouldn’t believe.” Kenny O’Donnell remembers JFK being “as close to crying” as
I’ve
ever seen him. RFK privately tells JFK: “They can’t do this to you. Those black -bearded communists
can’t do this to you.” RFK remembers JFK as being “more upset at this time than he was at any other.”
To summarize the Bay Of Pigs invasion:1. The crucial D-Day dawn strikes are canceled, supposedly by the President, without
the CIA attempting to consult him directly, because there would be “no point” in it.
2. The same strikes are made on D-Day evening, when it is too late, again without
consulting the President.
3. The crucial D+2 ammunition resupply convoy is stopped, without consulting the
President, because it would be “futile.”
4. The resupply is attempted by air on D+2, when it is too late, this time consulting the President.
NOTE:Immediately following the Bay of Pigs disaster, the CIA begins to plan a second
invasion, training Cuban exiles and soldiers of fortune, on No Name Key in Florida, in
Guatemala, and on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana.The CIA, theoretically more tightly controlled under the eye of RFK, also sets up
an extraordinary new center of operations. Code-named “JM/WAVE”, and situated in
Miami, it is, in effect, the headquarters for a very public “secret war” against Cuba.
This is the most ambitious CIA project ever, and comes to involve seven hundred CIA and coopted Army officers recruiting,
training, and supplying thousands of Cuban exiles.
The nerve center of the new struggle is set up in Miami, where the vast majority of the exiles
are concentrated.
There, in woods on the campus of the University of Miami, the CIA
establishes a front operation in the shape of an electronics company called Zenith
Technological Services. In 1962, at the height of its activity, the “JM/WAVE” station
controls as many as 600 Americans, mostly CIA case officers, and up to 3000 contract
agents. Internally, the JM/WAVE station is also a logistical giant.
It leases more than a hundred staff cars and maintains its own gas depot.
It keeps warehouses loaded with
everything from machine guns to coffins.
It has its own airplanes and what one former
CIA officer calls “the third largest navy in the Western Hemisphere,” including hundreds of
small boats and huge yachts donated by friendly millionaires. One of the more active
sites, used by a variety of anti-Castro groups, is a small, remote island north of Key West
called, appropriately enough, No Name Key.
It is home to a group called the International
anti-Communist Brigade (IAB), a collection of soldiers of fortune, mostly Americans, who
are recruited by Frank Fiorini Sturgis and a giant ex-Marine named Gerry Patrick
Hemming.
(Like LHO, Hemming has been trained as a radar operator in California. Hemming
will later claim that LHO once even tried to join his IAB group.)
Also at this time it is worth noting that Carlos Bringuier is the chief New
Orleans delegate of the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil, known simply as the DRE or
the Directorio.
The Directorio is headquartered in Miami under the wing of the CIA’s
JM/WAVE station.
Bringuier and LHO will have several public encounters in the future.Also, following the disaster of the Bay of Pigs,
McGeorge Bundy’s status as
national security adviser is sharply upgraded.
He is moved from the relatively humble
Executive Office Building, on the other side of West Executive Avenue, to the West Wing.
There, much closer to the President’s oval office, Bundy begins presiding over regular
morning meetings of his National Security Council staff.
In addition he extends his sway
over the White House war room, with its huge maps and brightly colored telephones.
Wikipedia