Bay of Pigs
The story of the failed invasion of Cuba at the Bay ofPigs is one of mismanagement, overconfidence, and lack of security. The blame for the failure of the operation falls directly in the lap of the Central Intelligence Agency and a young president and his advisors. The fall out from the invasion caused a rise in tension between the two great superpowers and ironically 34 years after the event, the person that the invasion meant to topple, Fidel Castro,is still in power. To understand the origins of the invasion and its ramifications for the future it is first necessary to look at the invasion and its origins. The Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961, started a few days before on April 15th with the bombing of Cuba by what appeared to be defecting Cuban air force pilots. At 6 a.m. in the morning of that Saturday, three Cuban military bases were bombed by B-26 bombers. The airfields at Camp Libertad,San Antonio de los Baos and Antonio Maceo airport at Santiago de Cuba were fired upon. Seven people were killed at Libertad and forty-seven people were killed at other Two of the B-26s left Cuba and flew to Miami,
In competition with the Soviet Union, backing out would make the Americans look like wimps on the international scene, and for domestic consumption the new president would be seen as backing away from one of hiscampaign promises. Firstly, he had campaigned for some form of action against Cuba and it was also the height of the cold war, to back out now would mean having groups of Cuban exiles travelling around the globe saying how the Americans had backed down on the Cuba issue. This not only indicates the failure of the Bay of Pigsinvasion, but American policy towards Cuba in general. . carried out by 'Cubans inside Cuba' who were 'in contact with' the top command of the Revolutionary Council . The Cuban forces were quick to react and Castro ordered his T-33 trainer jets, two Sea Furies, and two B-26s into the air to stop the invading forces. As with many failed military adventures, one of the problems with this one was with supplying the troops. With some of the invading forces' ships destroyed, and no command and control ship, the logistics of the operation soon broke down as the other supply ships were kept at bay by Casto's air force. First the wrong people were handling the operation, secondlythe agency in charge of the operation was also the one providing all the intelligence for the operation, and thirdly for an organization supposedly obsessed withsecurity the operation had security problems. The failure of the CIA to give the new president good intelligence information led to Kennedy making poor decisions which would affect future relations with Cuba andthe Soviet Union. Over the 72 hours the invading force of about 1500 men were pounded by the Cubans. Firstly, someone had to take the blame for the affair and, as Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles was forced to resign and left CIA in November of 1961 Internally, the CIA was never the same, and although it continued with covert operations against Castro, it was on a much reduced scale.
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