Bay of Pigs, 1961

To summarize the Bay of Pigs event it was "an unsuccessful invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles, supported by the U.S. government. On Apr. 17, 1961, an armed force of about 1,500 Cuban exiles landed in the Bahía de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs) on the south coast of Cuba. Trained since May, 1960, in Guatemala by members of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with the approval of the Eisenhower administration, and supplied with arms by the U.S. government, the rebels intended to foment an insurrection in Cuba and overthrow the Communist regime of Fidel Castro.


The Cuban army defeated the rebels and by Apr. 20, most were either killed or captured. In Dec., 1962, Castro released 1,113 captured rebels in exchange for $53 million in food and medicine raised by private donations in the United States."*1


"As a result of the U.S. failure at Bay of Pigs and the diplomatic embarrassment that ensued, President Kennedy fired long-time CIA Director Allen W. Dulles, Deputy Director Charles P. Cabell, and the one principally responsible for the operation, Deputy Director Richard Bissell. Publicly, Kennedy assumed full responsibility for the failure, but he secretly blamed the CIA and ordered a full investigation of the operation. The resulting report, written by CIA Inspector General Lyman Kirkpatrick, upset the new CIA director John McCone (who replaced Allen W. Dulles) so much that all but one of the 20 copies produced were destroyed, and the report stayed classified until February of 1998.


The controversial Inspector General's report concluded that ignorance, incompetence, and arrogance on the part of the CIA were responsible for the fiasco. It criticized nearly every aspect of the CIA's handling of the invasion: misinforming Kennedy administration officials, planning poorly, using faulty intelligence and conducting an overt military operation beyond "agency responsibility as well as agency capability." The report also said that, "The agency reduced the exile leaders to the status of puppets." Aside from being at once a major victory for the Cuban Revolution and a major embarrassment for Kennedy and the CIA, the attack at the Bay of Pigs set the stage for the major confrontation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union: the missile crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war."*2

kristen

sources:
*1 http://isshinryu.wordpress.com/2008/02/21/bay-of-pigs-april-1961/
*2 http://www.historyofcuba.com/history/baypigs/pigs.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion