Who Put the Kibosh on the Bay of Pigs Invasion?

Sunday, April 15, 2012 — The following item ran in our “Admiral Fowle’s Piscataqua River Tidal Guide (Not for Navigational Purposes)” for this date:

“1961 — The CIA’s ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion begins as three flights of falsely-marked American B-26s bomb and strafe Cuban airfields.”

While this brief entry is technically correct, we hope to eventually enhance it and all our Bay of Pigs entries by incorporating additional information from Dave Emory’s “Guns of November” Audio Archive.

Two little bits of transcript will demonstrate how daunting a task that will be. First, from 4:44 to 5:00 of Part Two of The Guns of November:

“[L. Fletcher Prouty] maintains that it was the C.I.A. itself, or an element thereof, specifically in the person of General Charles Cabell, who was Deputy Director of the C.I.A. at the time … which deliberately sabotaged its own covert operation in the Bay of Pigs.”

And, from 5:20 to 6:32:

“John F. Kennedy, when he was a presidential candidate, learned of what Prouty terms an “insiders cabal” to launch the Bay of Pigs operation. Now this is important to note because just as we saw with the U-2 incident, the Bay of Pigs operation was undertaken by a group of … Cold War civil servants … on their own against President Eisenhower’s specific directives because he forestalled all action against Cuba until it could be better determined just what nature of fish Castro was. Then this insiders’ cabal, led by Richard Nixon — who was at the time Vice President and in charge of the control group, in charge of all covert operations, basically — this insiders’ cabal went ahead on its own, in direct contradiction of Eisenhower’s wishes, to plan the Bay of Pigs. Now, candidate John F. Kennedy penetrated this insiders’ cabal, to a certain extent learned of some of the impending plans for the invasion, and thereby ran afoul of this insiders’ cabal, including Richard Nixon … even before he became President.”

2 thoughts on “Who Put the Kibosh on the Bay of Pigs Invasion?”

  1. Ike was no pushover. As Batista’s fall became inevitable, he convened the Natl Sec team, mentioned that the likely successor would be Fidel, and directed –BEFORE Batista had even fled the country– that Fidel be removed from the scene. That’s when the CIA started dreaming up the exploding-cigar type of capers. When those failed, he issued an order, about a year before the invasion, for the CIA to proceed with the invasion plan, specifically including making contact and coordinating with anti-Castro forces inside Cuba and also setting up the invasion from outside (recently unclassified docs). He had ordered a similar action in Guatemala in 1954 (that govt was constitutional and elected, however), using the Dulles brothers (State and CIA) who headed up the later Cuba invasion. The expected winner of the forthcoming elections was Nixon; Kennedy’s victory was a surprise. If the invasion were not ready during Ike’s time, Nixon was to take it up.

  2. It would take a book to explain why the term ‘CIA’ is inadequate to describe the informal network that instigates operations such as the Bay of Pigs operation. If mankind survives them, social scientists will have decades of work ahead of them in analyzing the structure and workings of this covert ruling cabal. Emory’s work is dependably un-hysterical in tracking who really runs the country.

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