Posted Monday April 17, 2006 07:00 AM EDT
The Fiasco at the Bay of Pigs
Forty-five years ago today, on April 17, 1961, a force of some 1,400 armed Cuban exiles, trained and equipped by the
United States, landed on the shores of their homeland, hoping to start an uprising that would overthrow the Cuban
government.
Their arrival there was preceded by air strikes by exiles against the nation’s air force, and their attack plan had been
developed by the Central Intelligence Agency. President John F. Kennedy had approved the invasion in the first few
months of his administration, at the strong urging of a number of his advisers. It was a daring mission: to launch a
rebellion against Fidel Castro and, winning popular support from the Cuban people, oust his revolutionary government
from power. But by the end of a single day, what came to be known as the Bay of Pigs Invasion had been routed by the
Cuban military, and it left President Kennedy with challenges in foreign policy he had never anticipated.
The plan to depose Cuba’s leader had been developing for a long time before Kennedy put it into action. Castro had
taken over his country in January 1959 following a stunningly quick guerrilla struggle against the dictator Fulgencio
Batista. The administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower had regarded Castro with caution from the beginning, as
his increasingly leftist rhetoric suggested a potential close relationship with the Soviet Union. By the time Eisenhower
left office, in January 1961, the Cuban government was routinely and openly hostile to the United States. Eisenhower
responded publicly by asking Congress to clamp down on Cuban sugar imports; privately he began working with
Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles and Vice President Richard Nixon to create a plan to overthrow Castro. The
plan went through a variety of forms; one version called for as many as 12,000 exile soldiers to invade, heavily
supported by the U.S. air force.
During the 1960 presidential campaign, unaware of the plot that was forming, then-Senator Kennedy harshly criticized
Eisenhower and Nixon for “losing Cuba.” When Kennedy became President, Dulles stayed on as CIA director and
shared with him the invasion plan, as it existed at the time. Kennedy was immediately uncomfortable with it. Though he
was no friend or sympathizer of Castro’s, the young Commander in Chief was wary of committing the United States to
military action in the Caribbean. He was worried by Castro’s antagonism, but he also had to deal with emerging conflicts
elsewhere in the Third World, in Laos and in Vietnam.
Dulles pushed him hard, though, promising that the plan would successfully mobilize the Cuban people to remove
Castro. Also, Kennedy feared that if he canceled the plan, CIA insiders might leak knowledge of it, calling into question
his anti-Communist credentials. He and his secretary of state, Dean Rusk, told the CIA to reduce the scale of the
invasion and make sure that no American military or intelligence personnel were involved. Dulles agreed to do so. In the
early spring Kennedy ordered the attack to go forward.
From almost the beginning, the plan was a failure. The planes sent from Nicaragua to destroy the Cuban air force were
largely unsuccessful. When the invasion forces landed, they found themselves under unexpected assault from above,
unsupported by American aircraft. After a short battle with the Cuban army, most of them surrendered. The Cuban
people didn’t rise up against Castro. It was clear that a far larger force would have been needed to mount a successful
invasion; instead, with just a small militia, the operation resulted in an international embarrassment for the United
States.
The consequences of the fiasco were immediate and far-reaching. In Cuba, Castro openly embraced the Soviet Union
and declared himself a socialist. In Europe, America’s allies responded to the operation as a strategic disaster. The
Financial Times blasted the administration’s “barely credible ineptness.”
Within the White House, the repercussions were similarly severe. Kennedy was permanently alienated from the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, whom he felt had pushed him into the ill-fated endeavor. He began to distrust the Central Intelligence
Agency, which had lobbied for the plan based on faulty assumptions and had disobeyed a direct order by sending in
two American agents with the exiles. Kennedy quickly replaced Dulles with a more trusted director, John McCone, but
he remained wary of the intelligence services. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, in October 1962, he made sure to rely
on a far larger group of advisers, and he regularly consulted personal confidantes like Theodore Sorensen and his
brother Robert in addition to members of the military establishment.
In June 1961, only a few weeks after the failed invasion, Kennedy met with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev at a
summit in Vienna. Khrushchev, emboldened by his impression of Kennedy as young, naive, and weak, adopted a blunt
and confrontational stance toward the American delegation. In one historian’s words, Kennedy felt “humiliated” by their
encounter there. Khrushchev’s negative assessment of Kennedy had its gravest consequences in the summer of 1962,
when the Soviet leader decided to place nuclear weapons in Cuba. Historians debate Khrushchev’s motivations. Some
believe he was attempting to achieve strategic parity with the United States, which had installed missiles in Turkey;
others see him trying to force Kennedy to make concessions in Berlin. They all agree, however, that Khrushchev’s
decision stemmed at least in part from a belief that Kennedy would not be a strong leader in a nuclear standoff.
It was fortunate for the United States and the world that Kennedy learned the lessons of the Bay of Pigs disaster and
proved Khrushchev wrong. With a new method of governing and a new determination to bolster America’s standing in
the world, he succeeded in pushing the Soviets to withdraw their weapons. He regained his stature as a global leader—
stature he never would have lost if not for that bitter day in April.
—Alexander Burns, an undergraduate at Harvard College, is a frequent contributor to AmericanHeritage.com.