The failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 was a critical moment that catalysed Cuba’s emergence as an important global geopolitical player. This article highlights two factors that contributed to this failure. The failure of the American intelligence community in conjunction with President Kennedy’s lack of communication and utilization of existing intelligence and national security infrastructure in the leadup to the Bay of Pigs invasion led to the failure of the American invasion of Cuba and the declaration by Castro of Cuba as a Marxist state.
The Cuban Revolution
Cuba took a distinctive path to national independence. As Hugh Thomas observes, its “independence from Spain in 1898 had, in effect, been secured for it by the United States as a result of the Spanish-American War.”[1] However, this did not result in full Cuban sovereignty, as the 1901 Platt Amendment strictly protected the American ‘right’ to intervene in the island’s affairs as it saw fit.[2] In the first decades of the twentieth century, the United States gradually pulled back from direct intervention in Cuba, retaining influence through its support of leaders such as President Fulgencio Batista, who first came to power in 1933. Batista consolidated power in various roles for decades, including as duly elected president between 1940 and 1944, with significant support from the Cuban police and military. In 1952, Batista ran for President once more but seized power in a coup d’etat three months before the elections. Thomas analyses the 1952 coup d’etat as “a lazy protest by a man who seemed certain to be about to lose an election.”[8] The coup eradicated any last semblance of Cuban democracy. In 1953, a small group of revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro attacked the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba, an assault which failed and culminated in the imprisonment of Castro.[9] Batista extended a blanket pardon to the prisoners in 1955, which enabled Castro to build up his 26th of July Movement, a revolutionary group named after the date of the failed assault on the Moncada Barracks. The insurgents began to wage guerilla warfare on the Batista regime in 1956 across Cuba, alongside other guerilla militants such as the Second National Front of Escambray. By 1958, Batista was certifiably “losing a guerilla war” [10] to Castro’s insurgents. Castro had emerged as the popular leader of the movement, and the United States was thus on the precipice of losing its puppet dictatorship to an unknown factor in Castro. As published in Umoja Sasa in 1977: “On January 1, 1959, Batista fled the country and the rebel army and the 26th of July Movement came to power.” [11] Other guerilla groups that had helped to oust Batista were sidelined in discussions of the new governmental system of Cuba, and the Castro regime began to take shape on the Caribbean island.
The Castro Regime
Many precursors to the socialist sentiments of Castro’s movement can be seen in the Provisional Revolutionary Government back in early 1934. This government briefly “granted autonomy to the University of Havana, women obtained the right to vote, the eight-hour day was decreed, a minimum wage was established for cane-cutters, and compulsory arbitration was promoted.” [12] As such, the agrarian reforms, economic reforms, and efforts to push for racial equality in Cuba were not entirely novel. During the Batista regime, “Cuban trade unions and the Communist Party were allowed to organize legally for the first time", [13] a notable point of ideological continuity between the Provisional Revolutionary Government, Batista, and eventually Castro. There was, aside from general American surveillance of Castro and his revolutionary movement and early government, significant reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering conducted in Cuba prior to the failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. Congress was torn over what to do with Cuba, so as Castro’s more communist-leaning actions came into focus, additional pressure was placed on Kennedy to do something to address the seeming encroachment of Communism into the western hemisphere. In the spring of 1959, just months after the rise of Castro, the new land reforms were “followed by the seizure of property belonging to wealthy Cubans and U.S. firms.” [14] At this point, the United States and its intelligence agencies in particular began to devise plans to assassinate Castro. These varied attempts were remarkably unsuccessful for the well-renowned American intelligence community, and have been the source material for much creative literature on the topic as well as a point of mockery for the CIA’s abilities. The assassination attempts intensified after the failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs in 1961.
The Invasion
Among the reasons for the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion are that first and foremost, the Cuban people did not rise up alongside the American-backed insurgents, and second, that American intelligence failed to fully grasp the scope and likelihood of success of the invasion. As such, much of the responsibility for the failure of the invasion rests not on misunderstandings of the political situation on the ground but on the “deleterious effect of extreme covertness, as the CIA, concerned with preserving secrecy, shielded operational plans from scrutiny by relevant experts.” [15] A significant failure of the Kennedy administration along the lines of national security and governmental operations resulted from the fact that “when Kennedy dismantled President Dwight D. Eisenhower's national security decision-making structures, a disorganized and collegial system remained; this prevented policy from the rigorous analysis institutionalized by Eisenhower's procedures.” [16] The political shift from the Eisenhower Republicans to the Kennedy Democrats led to Kennedy’s restructuring of the Eisenhower system of national security officials and decision-making policies in the executive branch. This aspect of the failure of the United States in achieving the ouster of Castro at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 rests squarely upon Kennedy and his confidants, not the United States intelligence community. As such, it is important to note the personal failure of Kennedy not just in the spring of 1961 and the failed invasion of Cuba, but as a whole in managing the United States’ colossal national security apparatus and sweeping intelligence services.
In 1972, Professor Lyman Kirkpatrick of the Naval War College lectured on how the misconceptions of United States policymakers on paramilitary operations and the applicability of various strategies in covert operations lead to operational failures, utilizing the Bay of Pigs fiasco as a case study, stating that “experiences like the Bay of Pigs merely underline the fact that policymakers must be educated as to what is possible, and the responsibility for this lies with the career intelligence community.” [17] It is imperative that intelligence officers and agencies within the United States intelligence community utilize their expertise in communicating with political policymakers about the realistic capabilities of operations in order to boost the chances of their success, and given that Kennedy effectively shredded the established structure of the American intelligence community upon the presidential transition in January 1961, the communication between the Oval Office and the intelligence community was insufficient.To understand the seeming obsession of the Kennedy administration with the removal of Castro, it is crucial to understand his motivations for American intervention in the domestic politics of Cuba. In short, prior to the Bay of Pigs invasion “Kennedy's overarching objectives were to resist Communist encroachment in Latin America and to pursue multilateral cooperation through the Organization of American States (OAS).” [18] American hegemony in the Western Hemisphere was dependent upon an absence of communist political power in the Americas. As such, the emergence of Castro as a political unknown in the region with a heavy military presence in Cuba concerned the Americans, as Castro was not under the influence of the United States in the way Batista was. Two plans were considered for an American-organized insurgent invasion of Cuba: firstly, capturing the town of Trinidad on the central part of the southern coast of Cuba, and secondly, landing at the sparsely populated Bay of Pigs which was further west and closer to Havana. [19] The invasion of Trinidad was scrapped due to the population in the area posing a threat of early pushback to the advancement of the insurgents and creating too much noise early in the invasion. This was one of the first major failures of the planning of the invasion. DCI Director Alan Dulles later wrote that President Kennedy “failed to appreciate the implications of the change”. [20] As such, very little of the overall plan of attack changed once the Bay of Pigs was selected as the new landing site. This plan posed other problems: the interior of the landing was “swampy, and there was a limited road network”. [21] Much of the plan for the invasion at the Bay of Pigs hinged on airborne support, with paratroopers securing key junctions to set up defensive positions and two waves of airstrikes meant to decimate the Cuban air force. The first air raid, meant to draw out the Cuban air force, went off the day before the Bay of Pigs invasion. The second was never authorized by Kennedy. On the American side of the invasion, “President Kennedy’s decision to cancel the second air strike against Castro’s air force was likely the mistake that doomed the invasion". [22] American bombers had hit Cuban bases the day before the invasion, but as it quickly became clear that the success and rapid advancement of the insurgents that the Kennedy administration had hoped for would not materialize, Kennedy quickly became reluctant to commit additional resources to the invasion. As such, his withholding of support and denial of requests both by his own Central Intelligence Agency and the American-backed insurgents on the ground for air support likely doomed any fleeting chance that the invasion had of success. On the day of the invasion, April 16th, 1961, “President Kennedy was under pressure to call off the invasion”. [23] The global press had caught wind that preemptive strikes on Cuban bases were perpetrated by the Americans, and the use of Cuban expatriates as an insurgent force was less than convincing as cover for an American-backed invasion of Cuba. [24] The band of exiles who landed on the Cuban shore were quickly stifled, arrested, and in some cases, eventually executed.
American support for the insurgents never came, and the Bay of Pigs fiasco became infamous as one of the most significant failures of American intervention in Latin America in the modern era.
Aftermath
In the aftermath of the failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs, Castro clearly defined Cuba as a socialist state, for myriad reasons. The Soviet Union had been cautious to get too close to Cuba in the aftermath of the 1959 ouster of Batista, although diplomatic relations were established with the new government of the island in 1960. The American attempt at removing Castro pushed the Cuban government to seek defense and military support from another hegemonic power, namely the USSR. Samson writes that, “Fidel Castro understood that Moscow would defend Havana only if Cuba was on the list of Soviet foreign policy priorities.” [25] As such, it made sense for Castro to declare Cuba a socialist state in April 1961, defined for the first time in this way a day prior to the Bay of Pigs invasion and clarified far more so afterwards. The rapid transition of Cuba towards socialism and communism spun Cuba out of the orbit of the United States and increased tensions in the Caribbean for decades after. The American embargo of Cuba stands to this day. In November of 1961, Alan Dulles, the head of the American intelligence community, resigned. A holdover from the Eisenhower administration, Kennedy asked him to leave his position in the wake of intelligence failures surrounding the “Cuban debacle.” [26] He wrote an unpublished response to accusations that intelligence failures and faulty assessments of the situation on the ground in Cuba were false and overblown, surmising that “CIA planners never told the President that the mere landing of an exile force in Cuba was likely to trigger massive uprisings throughout the island and bring down the Castro regime”. [27] Much of the fault for the failures of what happened in Cuba were due to Kennedy’s overfixation on the island, his dismantling of the Eisenhower administration’s national security apparatus, and failure to consult with and rely on his existing intelligence services to make informed decisions about how to address the emerging Communist problem in Cuba.
Around the same time as Dulles’ resignation, President Kennedy solidified his resolve to remove Castro from power in Cuba. Attempting to avoid the drastic military failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, he “authorized Pentagon Joint Chiefs of Staff to develop a plan for dealing with Fidel Castro,” [28] effectively giving the Department of Defense and the United States Intelligence Community free reign to assassinate the Cuban leader. This approved operation, known as Operation Mongoose, has been tied to eight separate assassination attempts on Castro, and alleged to have been responsible for hundreds more. As such, this period after the Bay of Pigs invasion is significant as it expanded the United States’ efforts to oust Castro from the Intelligence Community to the Pentagon. Davis argues that, “The Joint Chiefs were motivated by the desire to prevent Castro from spreading Communism elsewhere in Latin America”. [29] This idea is crucial to understanding the impact that the Bay of Pigs invasion had on American intervention in the region; the failures of the Kennedy administration and of the American intelligence community to remove Castro precluded and were directly related to increased American involvement in Latin America during the Cold War, in an effort to prevent the spread of communism outside of Cuba in the Americas. A little over a year after the events at the Bay of Pigs, in October 1962, an American spy plane discovered evidence of ballistic missiles and likely nuclear warheads being installed in Cuba. The prevailing theory was that the Soviet Union was placing its own nuclear weapons in Cuba just a few hundred miles off the coast of Florida. Such a provocative move was unprecedented in the Atomic Era, and as such sent the American military into a state of high alert, followed by the rest of the world. President Kennedy ordered a blockade of Cuba on October 22nd, 1962, and the standoff of the Cuban Missile Crisis commenced. [30] In the weeks that followed, the tension that the Soviet relationship, both politically and militarily, caused between the Communists and the West brought the threat of nuclear war closer to reality than at any other point in world history. The happenings at the Bay of Pigs and the resulting declaration of Cuba as a socialist state pushed the island nation straight into the arms and sphere of influence of the USSR, heightening tensions and threatening to turn the Cold War hot. The impact of the failure of the United States to overthrow Castro by proxy in 1961 was widespread, and negatively impacts the legacy of the American intelligence community during the Cold War as well as the presidency of John F. Kennedy in regards to Latin American intervention.
This piece was written by Simon Rosenbaum, and edited by Aristides Hall.
Bibliography
1 Thomas, Hugh. “Cuba: The United States and Batista, 1952-58.” World Affairs 149, no. 4 (1987): 169.2 Ibid.
3 Whitney, Robert. “The Architect of the Cuban State: Fulgencio Batista and Populism in Cuba, 1937-1940.” Journal of Latin American Studies 32, no. 2 (2000): 435.
4 Whitney, Robert. “The Architect of the Cuban State: Fulgencio Batista and Populism in Cuba, 1937-1940.” Journal of Latin American Studies 32, no. 2 (2000): 436.
5 Thomas, Hugh. “Cuba: The United States and Batista, 1952-58.” World Affairs 149, no. 4 (1987): 169.
6 Whitney, Robert. “The Architect of the Cuban State: Fulgencio Batista and Populism in Cuba, 1937-1940.” Journal of Latin American Studies 32, no. 2 (2000): 436.
7 Ibid.
8 Thomas, Hugh. “Cuba: The United States and Batista, 1952-58.” World Affairs 149, no. 4 (1987): 170.
9 Editorial Board of Umoja Sasa. “Cuba: The Revolution Begins: Part II.” Umoja Sasa 3, no. 2 (1977): 11.
10 Thomas, Hugh. “Cuba: The United States and Batista, 1952-58.” World Affairs 149, no. 4 (1987): 169.
11 Editorial Board of Umoja Sasa. “Cuba: The Revolution Begins: Part II.” Umoja Sasa 3, no. 2 (1977): 11.
12 Whitney, Robert. “The Architect of the Cuban State: Fulgencio Batista and Populism in Cuba, 1937-1940.” Journal of Latin American Studies 32, no. 2 (2000): 436-37.
13 Thomas, Hugh. “Cuba: The United States and Batista, 1952-58.” World Affairs 149, no. 4 (1987): 170.
14 McKercher, Asa. “Steamed Up: Domestic Politics, Congress, and Cuba, 1959–1963.” Diplomatic History 38, no. 3 (2014): 603.
15 Friedman, Rebecca R. “Crisis Management at the Dead Center: The 1960-1961 Presidential Transition and the Bay of Pigs Fiasco.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 41, no. 2 (2011): 308.
16 Ibid.17 Kirkpatrick, Lyman B. “Paramilitary Case Study: The Bay of Pigs.” Naval War College Review 25, no. 2 (1972): 32.
18 Friedman, Rebecca R. “Crisis Management at the Dead Center: The 1960-1961 Presidential Transition and the Bay of Pigs Fiasco.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 41, no. 2 (2011): 310.”
19 Kirkpatrick, Lyman B. “Paramilitary Case Study: The Bay of Pigs.” Naval War College Review 25, no. 2 (1972): 35.
20 Vandenbroucke, Lucien S. “The ‘Confessions’ of Allen Dulles: New Evidence on the Bay of Pigs.” Diplomatic History 8, no. 4 (1984): 368.
21 Ibid.
22 Friedman, Rebecca R. “Crisis Management at the Dead Center: The 1960-1961 Presidential Transition and the Bay of Pigs Fiasco.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 41, no. 2 (2011): 308.
23 Friedman, Rebecca R. “Crisis Management at the Dead Center: The 1960-1961 Presidential Transition and the Bay of Pigs Fiasco.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 41, no. 2 (2011): 307.
24 Ibid.
25 Samson, Anna. “A History of the Soviet-Cuban Alliance (1960-1991).” Politeja, no. 10/2 (2008): 92.
26 Vandenbroucke, Lucien S. “The ‘Confessions’ of Allen Dulles: New Evidence on the Bay of Pigs.” Diplomatic History 8, no. 4 (1984): 365.
27 Vandenbroucke, Lucien S. “The ‘Confessions’ of Allen Dulles: New Evidence on the Bay of Pigs.” Diplomatic History 8, no. 4 (1984): 367.
28 Davis, Tracy C. “Operation Northwoods: The Pentagon’s Scripts for Overthrowing Castro.” TDR (1988-) 50, no. 1 (2006): 134.
29 Ibid.
30 Pollard, Robert A. “The Cuban Missile Crisis: Legacies and Lessons.” The Wilson Quarterly (1976-) 6, no. 4 (1982): 149.