Tag: Bay of Pigs

From July 26 to November 22 to today

The cover of a commemorative album about the Cuban Revolution published in Havana in 1959

Cuba celebrates the 60th anniversary of the beginning of its revolution on July 26, 1953. Later this year America will commemorate the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963,

The events are ancient but linked. The connection between Cuba’s revolution and the death of the 35th American president remains a live issue in the political culture of both countries.

The assassination of JFK is one reason why this conflict between the United States and Cuba endures to this day.

The origins of the battle for the soul of the CIA

In a prequel of sorts to the emerging war between President-elect Trump and the CIA, the War on the Rocks blog, reviews the latest revelations from the declassified history of the CIA’s disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961.
Why is something that happened 55 years ago relevant to power politics in today’s Washington?
Because the the power struggle that followed the CIA’s first public defeat would shape and hone the interventionist mission of the secret agency. Now the CIA faces the wrath of a commander in chief who mistrusts its prerogatives and sympathizes with its adversaries in Moscow and, according to the CIA, was aided by them.

Did Allen Dulles know the Bay of Pigs invasion would fail?

In response to the trailer for the CIA movie, “The Good Shepherd,” Dan asks:

Did the Soviets and Cubans know the date and time of the invasion in advance? If yes, is it also true Allen Dulles knew the mission was compromised and went ahead regardless?

Answer: The Cubans knew the invasion was coming but they did not know the date and time. There was no high-level leak, as the movie implies. And, no, Allen Dulles did not know the Bay of Pigs invasion was going to fail.

When the CIA split with JFK

“Harvey approved the dispatch of six three-man teams to Cuba, on either October 21, or 22, 1962, as the missile crisis heated up. The missions were launched at the specific request of the Pentagon, as part of the standing interagency Command Relationship Agreement. The military was reckoning with an invasion of Cuba by air and sea; it’s forces needed support on the ground to help the landings. Harvey did what was right operationally….the climax came at a top-drawer meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House on October 26….Harvey chose to tell the Kennedy brothers what he thought of them and their handling of the situation. “If you hadn’t fucked up the Bay of Pigs, we wouldn’t be in this fucking mess!”

Source: JFKcountercoup: “America’s James Bond” at JMWAVE

JFK on a military coup: ‘It could happen in this country’

“It’s possible. It could happen in this country, but the conditions would have to be just right. If, for example, the country had a young President, and he had a Bay of Pigs, there would be a certain uneasiness. Maybe the military would do a little criticizing behind his back, but this would be written off as the usual military dissatisfaction with civilian control.”

JFK went on:

The whole Bay of Pigs thing

In face of a persistent legal challenge from the National Security Archive, the CIA continues to resist releasing an internal history of the failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs more than a half century ago. The struggle for Volume 5, as the history is known, is an epic legal contest

Why the secrecy about something that happened so long ago?

That question was the subject of a recent historian’s roundtable: National Security Archive v. Central Intelligence Agency.

Nixon asked CIA about the ‘Who shot John angle’

Nixon Helms
President Nixon and CIA Director Richard Helms.

The 42nd anniversary of the Watergate burglary reminded me of  Richard Nixon’s obsession with the “whole of Bay of Pigs thing.”

H.R. Haldeman, White House chief of staff for Nixon, wrote in his memoirs that he had come to the conclusion that his boss used the phrase as a kind of coded reference to the assassination of President Kennedy.

A tape of a conversation between Nixon and CIA director Richard Helms in October 1971 lends credence to the notion. Listen to the tape, published online by Luke A. Nichter, a history professor at Texas A&M University.

Nixon, it is clear, was interested in what he called the ‘Who Shot John?’ angle.

Listen.

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