The Bay of Pigs and the Cuban
Missile Crisis
Bay of Pigs
The Bay of Pigs
• In March, 1960, President Eisenhower gave the CIA permission to
secretly train Cuban exiles to invade Cuba and overthrow the
Communistic government of Fidel Castro.
• President Kennedy learned about this plan nine days after he
became president. Although he had doubts about the plan, he
approved it because it had been worked on for so long by
Eisenhower and the CIA.
• 1500 Cubans and U.S. military landed on the island of Cuba at an
area called Bahia de Cochinos or Bay of Pigs.
• It was a disaster. Nothing that the CIA planned happened like it was
supposed to and the Cuban exiles were either killed or imprisoned
by Castro.
• Even though Kennedy wasn’t part of the planning, he was blamed
because he was the current president.
Cuban Missile Crisis
Cuban Missile Crisis
• Communist Cuba was promised protection from Russia. In the summer of
1962, the flow of Russian weapons, including nuclear weapons, greatly
increased.
• Because Cuba is so close to the United States, President Kennedy warned
that the United States would not tolerate offensive nuclear weapons in
Cuba.
• Photographs were taken of nuclear weapons in Cuba that were ready to
launch. This caused the United States to go into a panic.
• Kennedy told Russia that any missile attack from Cuba would trigger an
attack on Russia from the United States.
• For the next 6 days, the world waited in fear of a nuclear war. Finally, the
Soviets offered to removed the missiles if the U.S. would promise not to
invade Cuba.
• This crisis causes the U.S. and Russia to install a direct telephone line
between the President of the United States and the leader of Russia in
case they needed to discuss things before things got close to a nuclear war
again.