Perpetuating the Myth of the Cuba Invasion

...Peter Wyden thinks there is, the subtitle of his book even declares that it tells "The Untold Story " And this frustrating history does indeed give us everything—perhaps too much The most insignificant trifles are mixed together with the most grievous charges, personal statements are interspersed throughout—all, moreover, without the slightest change in emphasis, style or tone Still, Wyden does demonstrate the ineptitude of the U S leadership in general and the CIA in particular He even lists various technical blunders in the operation itself that reveal an incompetence and negligence more appropriate to a corrupt African security service than to the largest intelligence organization in the free world a machine gun's deckplate broke when the gun was test-fired, killing one man and seriously wounding two, wrong ammunition was supplied, wrong radio frequencies were used, there were no life jackets, lifeboats were full of holes caused by rot But despite his own overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Wyden concludes—albeit ambiguously—that the ultimate blame for the failure of the invasion rests not with the Central Intelligence Agency but with the Cuban people, who did not rise up and join the invaders as expected The plan, he writes, "was to capitalize on the Cuban underground and organize a 'typical Latin political upheaval '"He speaks of "the project operator's hope that the Cuban population was eager to stage an uprising against Castro " In the caption of a photo, we read that "Marine Comandant David Shoup thought Cuban civilian uprising were indispensable " Wyden also notes the CIA's "eagerness to 'Cubanize' the expedition " Thus the author perpetuates the myth that has been both a boon to Fidel Castro's propaganda and the CIA's primary defense of its bungling Buried in the facts he indiscriminately presents, however, is proof that the operation was conceived in a manner virtually guaranteed to prevent the Cubans from taking part For example, Marine Colonel Jack Hawkins, who was the military commander, was asked when the Cuban underground would be notified Invoking the necessity for secrecy, he responded "We're not going to advise them at all " Told that everybody in Cuba as well as the U S already knew about the coming "secret"operation, Hawkins, according to Wyden, "barked" "Well, I don't trust any goddamn Cuban " Wyden reports, too, a personal conversation that he had with the CIA man in charge, Richard Bissell "An early large-scale internal uprising had never been in the cards, he [Bissell] insisted ' Nor does Wyden challenge a post-Bay of Pigs exchange that he brings up toward the end of his book, between President Kennedy's emissary, Arthur Schlesmger Jr , and the leader of the popular anti-Castro resistance, Manolo Ray "Citing details," says Wyden straightforwardly, "Ray documented how the CIA ignored sabotage plans readied by the resistance Of the details he quotes Ray telling Schlesmger " 'For over a month we have had a tunnel under the Havana electne-power installation "' In this country, as Wyden himself shows, during the operation U S armed guards held the Cuban Council incommunicado in a hangar at the Opa-Locka airfield near Miami An appeal broadcast in the Council's name and translated into Spanish from the CIA's code was meaningless, since the Cuban underground expected to be alerted at the right time in its own code by its own leaders, and especially Ray's Movimiento Revoluaonano del Pueblo Instead, what they heard were childish imitations of the BBC messages to the French underground during World War II ("Look at the rainbow," "The fish is red,' etc ), which could only appear to the resistance as a Castro-inspired provocation The underground acted as all resistance groups would in such cases They hid arms, destroyed documents and started to lie low—to "disappear into nature," as the French used to say For many, unfortunately, it was too late Before the invasion was announced over the Cuban radio—that's how all Cubans first learned about it—Castro's secret police had already arrested tens of thousands of suspects Even the CIA's own infiltrators, we find out from Wyden, were neither informed nor used One of them, told of the invasion by a neighbor listening to the radio, "did not stop to wonder why he had not been notified " He drove out—in a 1959 Buick, the author finds it indispensable to inform us—to blow up an important bridge near Matan-zas But by the time he reached the bridge, a huge Cuban military convoy was already rolling across it Finally, the choice of invasion beaches —the Zapata swamps—should dispell any doubts about the CIA's objective Wyden, who spent six hours with Castro, tells us the Cuban leader "understood the implication of the choice at once" "The isolated area with its very few roads was topographically 'perfect' for setting up a government " But it was good for little else The miles of impenetrable swamps made contact with the internal resistance impossible Nor could they offer the invaders any possible refuge—and the Escambray mountains were 80 miles away The U S generals were no better at reading maps than they were at understanding people In the midst of the disaster General Lyman Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, thought a guerrilla option was still possible "Nobody realized that the Brigade was a captive of the swamps," Wyden concludes with some amazement, but without deducing from the discovery that the Cuban people had obviously and intentionally been prevented by the U S leadership from playing a part in the CIA operation As for President Kennedy, Wyden doesn't give us a very flattering image when he excuses him by saying that "the President was sure the guerrilla option was open" to the invaders, and that "the CIA had never told him that the guerrilla option was out ' Did the former Navy officer really need to be told...

...It is difficult to believe that Kennedy was ready to imitate Stalin, who, in order to invade Finland in 1939, set up the Kuusinen "government" in Tenjoki...

...Perpetuating the Myth of the Cuba Invasion Bay of Pigs- The Untold Story By Peter Wyden Simon & Schuster 352 pp $12 95 Reviewed by Leo Sauvage Author, "Che Guevara The Failure of a Revolutionary," "Autopsiedu Castroisme" After 18 years, is there really anything left to be said about the Bay of Pigs—the April 1961 CIA invasion of Cuba that managed to permanently consolidate Fidel Castro's shaky regime...

...One look at a map should have revealed the truth Worse, it is not at all clear what Kennedy hoped to achieve bv the invasion Politically, his mam preoccupation was to hide the U S intervention, that is why he didn't allow the second airstrike Yet let us suppose that, with the necessary airpower, the invasion succeeded In other words that the Brigade held the beachhead long enough for a Cuban provisional government to set foot there and ask for the U S Marines Would that kind of intervention have looked better...