Bay of Pigs Declassified

by Kornbluh, Peter

• ISBN13: 9781565844940
• ISBN10: 1565844947
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-09-01
• Publisher: New Pr

Summary

Now available for the first time, "one of the most secret documents of the Cold War" (New York Times): the government's own report of the Bay of Pigs fiasco. For decades, the CIA's top secret postmortem on the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion has been the holy grail of historians, students, and survivors of the failed invasion of Cuba. But the scathing internal report on the worst foreign policy debacle of the Kennedy administration, written by the CIA's then-Inspector General Lyman Kirkpatrick, has remained tightly guarded--until now. Dislodged from the government through the Freedom of Information Act, here is an uncompromising look at high officials' arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence, as displayed in their attitude toward Castro's revolution and toward the Cuban exiles the CIA had organized to invade the island. Including the complete report and a wealth of supplementary materials, Bay of Pigs Declassified provides a fascinating picture of the operation and of the secret world of the espionage establishment, with stories of plots, counterplots, and intra-agency power struggles worthy of a Le Carre novel. Peter Kornbluh directs the Cuba Documentation Project at the National Security Archive. The Archive serves scholars, journalists, Congress, public interest organizations, and citizens by obtaining and disseminating internal U.S. government documentation that is indispensable for informed public debate. Includes: the complete text of the CIA report; a critical introduction; the newly declassified response to the report from Richard Bissell, who masterminded the operation; the first joint interview with the managers of the invasion, Jacob Esterline and Colonel Jack Hawkins; a comprehensive chronology; and biographies of the key participants.

Table of Contents

Introduction: History Held Hostage: The Bay of Pigs Report in Context	1	(20)
The Perfect Failure	2	(2)
Who Lost Cuba?: Invasion Historiography	4	(1)
Revisiting the Bay of Pigs	5	(5)
The Kirkpatrick Report	10	(3)
The Bissell Rebuttal	13	(1)
Lessons Not Learned	14	(7)
Key Actors and Acronyms	21	(2)
Part I. The Inspector General's Survey of the Cuban Operation, October 1961	23	(110)
Introduction	23	(1)
History of the Project	24	(17)
Summary of Evaluation	41	(1)
Evaluation of Organization and Command Structure	42	(3)
Evaluation of Staffing	45	(2)
Evaluation of Planning	47	(11)
The Miami Operating Base	58	(8)
The Political Front and the Relation of Cubans to the Project	66	(9)
Clandestine Paramilitary Operations--Air	75	(7)
Clandestine Paramilitary Operations--Maritime	82	(8)
Clandestine Paramilitary Operations--Training Underground Leaders	90	(5)
Security	95	(3)
Americans in Combat	98	(1)
Conclusions and Recommendations	99	(34)
Part II. An Analysis of the Cuban Operation by the Deputy Director (Plans) Central Intelligence Agency, 18 January 1962	133	(102)
Introduction and Summary	133	(16)
The Survey's Statements of the Operational Concepts	149	(2)
Why a Military-Type Invasion	151	(2)
The Decision Making Process	153	(14)
The Assessment of the Adequacy of the Plan	167	(12)
Organization and Command Relationships	179	(36)
The Political Front and Relations with the Cubans	215	(10)
Air Maritime Operations	225	(10)
Part III. Associated Documents	235	(23)
Part IV. The Bay of Pigs Revisited: An Interview with Jacob Esterline and Col. Jack Hawkins	258	(9)
Part V. The Bay of Pigs Invasion: A Comprehensive Chronology of Events	267	(64)
Source Key	331	(3)
Acknowledgments	334	(2)
About the National Security Archive	336	(1)
Index	337