Secret Intelligence; No. 102; Intervention

Secret intelligence is made possible by public television stations and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding has been provided by United Airlines, rededicated to giving you the service you deserve. This is a contra training camp in Honduras, close to the Nicaragua border. These men are fighting a CIA-supported war against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. Nicaragua, with its communist government, the argument goes, is a threat to America's national security, so the United States intervened to protect its interests. The argument is not a new one.

It's been used by U.S. presidents for over 40 years. There's a saying in Washington, when diplomacy won't work and the Marines are too noisy, the White House turns to the men of the Central Intelligence Agency. We were interested in finding a country to intervene in their affairs, as a young investment banker today is interested in finding out which stock is going to be subject to the next merger. Takeover. The reason a lot of people don't like covert actions is that they don't like the means they're used when one gets involved in the thing of this kind. They think it's nasty. They think it's naughty. I think that a bright young man with language skills and a spirit of gung-ho would be very well advised to apply to the Central Intelligence Agency, because if he has the kind of a life career in it that I did, he'll have all of the thrills and chills and the living experiences that a man could want for a lifetime.

This is as physically close as we were allowed to get to the CIA headquarters outside Washington. But during this hour, we'll get much closer. Step by step. You'll see how the Central Intelligence Agency became America's secret army of intervention. I have received this afternoon a message from the Japanese government. I deem this reply as the unconditional surrender of Japan. Newsmen rush the president's report to a waiting world and through the early evening Tuesday August 14th, the faithful news is flat.

It's official. It's all over. America emerged from World War II, the most powerful nation on earth. Most US troops returned home to peace and prosperity. But even as the hot war ended, a new war was just beginning. A war fought not with bombs and not by soldiers, but by spies. The first fields of battle would be the devastated cities of Europe. It was here in cities like Berlin that the world's secret intelligence empires were born. What happened here was a microcosm of a struggle that was going on throughout the world. There were territories, spheres of influence to be won and lost, protected and exploited. And no one knew that better than Joseph Stalin.

At war's end, much of Stalin's larger army had not demobilized. His worldwide spine that work was equally as formidable. Just a few months after the war ended, the US discovered that crucial atomic secrets had been compromised by an extensive Soviet espionage ring operating throughout the west. Now under domestic pressure to respond to the Soviets, Truman initiated one of the most far-reaching legislative programs in peacetime history, creating the martial plan, the defense department, the NATO alliance. And in this flurry of legislation, one small section of a bill went almost unnoticed. The legislation that would give the United States a foreign intelligence service, the CIA. It was not set up to be run spies. It was not set up to blow up bridges. It was not set up to undermine governments.

It was set up to analyze all fine information coming into the United States government. And then presenting that in a finished form to the policymakers of this government. But Truman would soon want more than just information. At the very first meeting of the National Security Council in December 1947, the CIA's role would change to respond to dramatic developments in Europe. Report from red-dominated Prague, February 21st, and the beginning of the four fatal days that ended freedom in Czechoslovakia. Leaving their factories, Czech Communist Party. In Czechoslovakia, the Communist used intimidation and assassination to rest control from a democratically elected government. And now there was a possibility of a Communist victory in Western Europe. Italy stands at the crossroads of history as her millions of qualified voters streamed

to the polls to determine whether she shall remain a free republic or sink silently behind the iron curtain in the Grey Zone, where slave nations are governed by Moscow's will. Truman's National Security Council wanted to fight back using the CIA in secret. But did the new agency have the authority to carry out covert operations? The CIA's general counsel, Lawrence Houston, said no. I wrote back an opinion saying that I could find no specific authority in the National Security Act to undertake covert action as opposed to intelligence scathing. That was not the answer the National Security Council wanted. Houston was asked to reconsider and find a loophole in the legislation. He sent me another note saying, are there any further considerations? And I wrote a second opinion saying, if the president gives us the appropriate directive and if Congress gives us the funds to carry out that directive, we can undertake the activity.

So that's how we got into it. The simple is that, with the writing of Lawrence Houston's interpretation, the newly created CIA underwent a fundamental change. It had been created by Congress to collect, analyze, and disseminate intelligence, but now, along with those duties, it was already on its way to becoming America's secret army of intervention. For years, headlines have been made of the CIA, mining harbours, destabilizing governments, plotting assassinations. The history of these covert operations began with the Italian election campaign in 1948. By today's standards, what the CIA did seems almost innocent. Money was secretly channeled to moderate political groups. Demonstrations and rallies were organized on both sides of the Atlantic. Just how influential the new agency's efforts were is debatable. What mattered to the White House was the result.

An anxious world breathes easier. As with incomplete returns tabulated, Italy meets communism's challenge with a resounding knoll. As a result of World War II, the communist writ was running over a whole section of Europe and the people who were running the United States in those days, in fact, public opinion was very much against having a communist government come to power in Italy. And the fact that we intruded in the political process in which you might refer to as a legal way was the United States' way of showing that they didn't want this to happen. With the success in Italy, the White House began to undertake covert operations on a global scale, although some of the earliest operations seemed far from serious. I remember years after the hot times of the Cold War, the early fifties, discovering in our offices in Austria, a whole cache of toilet paper upon each individual piece of which was reprinted a portrait of photographic portrait of Machiaz Rekoshi, the bad guy of

Hungarian communism up until about 1956. And when we found, we asked, you know, what is this stuff? We found that someone had had the idea that we would put covertly, of course, of agents rolls of this toilet paper on the Orient Express as it went through Austria on its way to Budapest. And that Hungarians would have the dubious pleasure of cleaning themselves up after their toiletry with the use of this particular toilet paper. Yeah, in retrospect, you have to say, this is a pretty damn silly, but obviously someone had thought it was a good idea and someone in a position to authorize the expenditure of money to produce this stuff had done so. CIA operations were much more serious in June 1950. The communist invasion of South Korea gave the CIA an opportunity to show what they could do.

While American soldiers fought on the front lines, CIA officers worked behind the lines, training gorillas, and running foreign agents. These paramilitary operations came naturally to the CIA's new director, former US Army General Walter Beatle Smith. Under Smith's leadership, the size and budget of the agency's covert operations grew dramatically. Between 1949 and 1952, the agency's staff and budget for covert operations increased almost 20 fold. The only place in the world that the CIA's charter prevented them from conducting operations was in the United States, where the Red Scare gripped the nation. Communism. Union Square in New York was the backdrop for these scenes of red violence. From their ranks will come the saboteurs, spies, and subversives should world war three be forced upon America, underlining the menace from within.

Rooting out espionage agents at home was the responsibility of the FBI. At times it seemed that communist spies were everywhere and could be anyone. If a person can simply read and advocates the views expressed in a communist publication, he may be a communist. If a person defends the activities of communist nations while consistently attacking the domestic and foreign policy of the United States, she may be a communist. If a person does all these things over a period of time, he must be a communist. In 1952, American voters were promised a tougher fight against communism by Republican candidates Dwight Eisenhower. The popular World War II commander vowed to roll back the red tide. The issues in the case are plain, out in the open, for all to see. They are Korea, communism, corruption, and prosperity based on peace.

Ike, with his tough stand on communism, easily won office, but the five-star general, who had seen so many thousands of soldiers killed under his command, was determined to prevent the outbreak of large-scale war. To change his combative campaign promises into action, he turned not to the Pentagon, but to the CIA, which was then housed in temporary buildings, here along the Washington Law. For years, the popular view of the Eisenhower era has been one of a complacent president presiding over to do nothing administration. We now know differently. Eisenhower, more than any other president, left a legacy of international covert operations and intervention. Ike's foreign policies were shaped by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Many of those policies were then carried out in secret by his brother, Alan, the new CIA director. Well, John Foster Dulles believed that the world was a struggle between the forces of light

and the forces of darkness, and therefore no one could be impartial. If he's not on our side, he can't be impartial. That's ridiculous. No one can be impartial by definition. Therefore, he must really be secretly in league with the Soviet Union and the world communist movement. Soon, the attention of the Dulles brothers was drawn to a troublesome Middle Eastern country. What they did there would have a long lasting repercussion. When demonstrations like these began in Iran in 1979, Americans were stunned to see such outpourings of anti-American outrage. But Iranian hatred of the U.S. did not evolve overnight. It reaches back over 35 years and can be traced to a British American secret operation

codenamed Ajax. In 1951, Iran's Prime Minister Mohammed Musadek nationalized his country's oil fields. The British who had controlled and profited from Iran's oil decided to act. They found an ally in the United States, which was fearful of Musadek's independence and friendly overtures to the Soviet Union. Together, Britain and the United States conspired to overthrow Musadek and replace him in power with the young figurehead of the Iranian government, Mohammed Reza Polavi. What news real audiences of 1953 did not see was this man, Kramit Roosevelt, the grandson of

Theodore Roosevelt, and CIA undercover officer. In 1952, I went to examine the situation and see what might be done and then came back and waited until the Republicans had come into office before proposing it to the State Department because I knew that they wanted to plan. It was the first coup d'état that the agency had ever been involved in and the agency thought that it was possible based upon my reports. Roosevelt's plan for overthrowing the government was simple, like a master parade marshal, Kramit financed mass mob demonstrations against Musadek. Agents were very effective. They had promised that they could produce a mob to go against Musadek and they did. And that mob marched on Musadek's residence and forced him to flee.

The Shaw, in exile during the unrest, returned to claim his throne. America and Britain divided equally 80 percent of profits from the oil fields. The Eisenhower White House was delighted but Kramit Roosevelt was uneasy. In fact, I warned the groups that assembled in the White House to debrief me after the operation. I said, don't make the mistake of believing that this can be done anytime you want to do it. The situation has to be exactly right. You've got to have the people on your side and hopefully the army too. But Roosevelt's success in Iran made the White House anxious to use the CIA's new power to solve other international problems. First of all, I had the theory that anything we wanted to do, if we wanted to do it enough, we could do it. And that was just all wrong in my opinion.

Roosevelt was asked to take charge of a second coup operation. He declined the offer. The CIA went ahead. This is Guatemala, 1950. And this is how America was used to thinking about Guatemala and most of Latin America. A banana republic of hard-working peasants happily harvesting abundant crops. The harvest went to Guatemala's largest landowner, the American-owned United Fruit Company. But that profitable arrangement was threatened in 1951 when this man, Jacobo Arbenz, became Guatemala's second democratically elected president. At the White House, Arbenz and his wife Maria, were under suspicion for their associations with left-wing and communist parties. He was regarded, I think, with pretty solid evidence, as a strongly left-ward leaning president

who had become dependent on the Communist Party and communist controlled organizations for his survival and who, therefore, was giving them and could be expected to give them a steadily larger role in running the country. Like Mossadek and Iran, Arbenz tried to nationalize his country's greatest economic asset. In this case, the plantations of United Fruit, which turned to Washington for help. Several of United Fruit's former associates and future employees held influential positions in the Eisenhower administration. The role of United Fruit in the Guatemala operation is a significant one. Let me put it that way. I had been in an adjacent country sending back reports to Washington on

the increasing level of communist influence in Guatemala. In fact, I had gone up and made a presentation to the then director about the grave situation that was developing in Guatemala and nothing happened. About a year later, as I recall it, Tommy Carcran, who was the lawyer and lobbyist for United Fruit, made his pitch to the then director of CIA and things got moving. Soon, a coordinated White House campaign against Arbenz was underway. So Arbenz, when he decided, listen, Guatemala is going to be for Guantamalans.

And that is why he was overthrown, not because he was a communist. Former Marine Philip Rettinger was a CIA officer assigned to the Guantamala operation. When I was there, they knew that they couldn't convince Eisenhower to overthrow the government just because of the United Fruit Company. So they said he was a communist. And Eisenhower was a dedicated anti-communist. So he said, okay, the word is gold. The agency's plan for Guantamala, select a new leader acceptable to Washington. Devise his strategy of psychological warfare, back it up with a small rebel army and air force, then invade. And we went to Tegosigalpa and set up our little office there, our little safehouse, to train a group of Guantamalans exiles who were discontented with their lot in Guatemala and left Guantamala. I'm going to Honduras. And I had a sneaking idea at that time with this little army we had was certainly not going to be the key to the whole thing.

There must be something else going on, which of course I found out later. We also had there in Tegosigalpa, our candidate for the new president of Guantamala. And when I first met this little guy, I was staggered. I said, you need to tell me that we're going to make this little fox-based guy nervous little fellow president of Guantamala. The CIA's choice to run Guantamala was Castillo Armas. Three years earlier, Armas had unsuccessfully attempted to overthrow the Guantamala government. Now, with the CIA's backing, he was ready to try again. At all they went and we said these guys in to Guantamala and they ran into a Guantamal army patrol and quit right on the spot. With the rebel forces stalled on the border, the coup was in danger of collapsing. It was then that the CIA turned to Eisenhower for additional air support. What was President Eisenhower's reaction?

Well, he was, he had of course authorized the operation at a crucial point when we needed three or four, I think it was four more aircraft. He personally authorized their movement at Tegosigalpa against the recommendation at that time of the Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs. We had had three old U.S. fighter planes, two P-47s and a P-38. They had American pilots which was not supposed to be revealed of course. And they flew up to Guantamala City and strafed the military, prayed ground and dropped leafless and dropped a few bombs. I don't think they ever heard anybody, frankly, but they sure scared a bunch of people and gave the impression that there was a military attack against the government of Guantamala, which of course there was not. Crucial to the success of the CIA engineered attack was propaganda. Signs appeared threatening death to the supporters of our bends, while CIA officers

beamed deceptive radio reports of war and upheaval throughout the country. In the overthrow of our bends, my principal job was chief of the propaganda task force. That is to say, creating the radio broadcasts, the leaflets that were dropped into the city, creating with the Dave Phillips, the climate of fair and apprehension that preceded the actual small-scale invasion that was run by Colonel Castillo Armas. In the beginning at least, all propagandists, no Mr. Goldblolt rule, if you're going to tell me to be big lies, wait till the time comes. In the beginning, this radio station gained credibility. It never broadcasts things that were untrue. It would say, for instance,

we cannot confirm the report that there has been a battle at Escapulos and 5,000 people are dead. We have no facts one way or another, but of course the word then spread there must have been a tremendous battle. The radio would say, to Commander X, please send us 500 soldiers. Commander X would reply, I cannot send you 500 soldiers, all I can spare is 300 soldiers. In fact, there was no Commander X and there weren't even three soldiers. Isolated in the National Palace and shaken by the CIA campaign against him, Arbenz, the legally elected president of Guatemala, resigned and fled the country. Castillo Armas was flown by the CIA to Guatemala City to replace the remnants of the Arbenz government. Carlos Castillo Armas now speaks of the future. The aim of his government will be to restore the civil rights of the people,

to establish a true democracy based on the principles of his movement of national liberation. Truth, justice and honest labor. And Eisenhower was absolutely elated, but there was a question of a president saying, I want something done. It was done and he was pleased as punch. As he put it in my presence, he said he thought it was just dandy. It was a new weapon for him, what's it? It was so obviously an easy way to do things. There was no public accounting either of the action or the funds needed for it. It was too a way to avoid asking the opinion of the public as to whether it should be done or not. It was the easy course. But in the long run, there was a blood bath, a succession of military governments that began with Castillo Armas has given Guatemala one of the worst records of human rights in the Western

hemisphere. In the last 13 years, 150,000 people have been killed. Another 40,000 have disappeared without a trace. But I do know that as a result of his overthrow, there have been a series of repressive military dictatorships who caused the death of over 100,000 Guatemalans. And that is on our collective conscience. I will tell you that right now because I know that that would not have happened. On balance, I think that we should not intervene in the affairs of any country overseas where there has been a democratically elected government. And that was the case in Guatemala. So on balance, if I had choose today, thinking the way I think today, I would probably say we shouldn't have done it. However, Joseph Stalin was still alive when someone tapped me on the shoulder and said,

would you like to get into this business? The Cold War was a very serious thing indeed. There was no question about who had the white hat and who had the black hat. In the 1950s, men like Phillips still dreamed of rolling back the iron curtain. They saw a chance when masses of Hungarians revolted in October 1956. This was just the kind of anti-Soviet uprising the CIA had been encouraging in Eastern Europe for years. But Eisenhower refused to help, supporting the revolt might have meant war with the Soviets. The message for the rest of Eastern Europe was clear. The United States might encourage

revolts, but do little else. The CIA's activities were not so limited in elsewhere. The agency expanded its operations throughout Latin America, Africa, and especially the Far East. When I joined the Far East Division, I found that we had a plan for every country, the plans that we had were very like military plans. We had courses of action, and we had specific propaganda themes that we're going to play for specific audiences. It was a feeling, I think, that the communists were coming, and we had to stop them wherever they may show their ugly heads. The newly emerging nations of the post-war world were targets of opportunity for both the U.S. and the USSR. Leaders of these new independent nations, like Sukarno of Indonesia, were invited to Washington and encouraged to ally themselves

with the West in the global superpower struggle. But behind the scenes, secret intelligence officers were plotting less diplomatic methods of gaining Sukarno's support. He had a lifelong ambition to sleep with Marilyn Monroe, so considerable thought was given, and as far as I know, even an attempt was made to arrange for this. We would have then had Sukarno under our control. Of course, this never came off. Despite Washington's attempts, Sukarno, as a leader of the newly emerging Third World, chose to remain nonaligned. Now, this Mr. Dollars could not stand, and so we were given the mandate to, as it was sort of picturesquely put, the whole Sukarno's feet to the fire. We thought we could make a film that would show the

Indonesians and the world that he was dominated by a Soviet spy. So we produced a pornographic film using film from the Los Angeles Police Department. We had to get a mask to cover the male actor, because we couldn't find an actor who looked like Sukarno, and we also tried to fix up the blonde to look as good as we could. The CIA's experiment in pornographic film production seemed to have little effect. What the agency did in the Philippines was much more successful. Using a combination of political, psychological, and military methods, they ensured the election of Democratic leader Raymond Magsysa.

We went in there with the military advisors who were sent in to help. We also developed techniques of psychological warfare, flying airplanes over the villages with mysterious voices. These techniques that subsequently became known as winning the hearts and minds of the people were a major part of the program, and they were successful. The new President-elect of the Philippine Republic, Raymond Magsysa, seen here as he conducted his strenuous campaign for the nation's highest office. The 46-year-old former Minister of Defense and ardent anti-communist led his Nationalista Democratic Party to victory over his liberal party rival, President Alpedeo Carino. In some sections... So, Magsysa was elected and began a program of really, of social revolution. I feel it was one time when the agency was on the side of the angels.

Not only did CIA officers have a plan for every country, but a secret White House report issued in 1954 encouraged them to explore every possible scientific and technical approach to the intelligence problem. Whatever they could imagine, they tried. The agency started a drug program to study the feasibility of mind control. Here in Berlin, the CIA, with the assistance of the British, built what was supposed to be a huge radar facility. Actually, it hid the construction of a secret tunnel that reached several hundred yards underneath the border, where they placed a massive telephone tap on Soviet communications, routed through East Berlin. Just getting rid of the dirt was impressive. The tap lasted 11 months before it was discovered. The Soviets filled in the tunnel. The Americans tore down the facility, and all that's left is the dirt.

From deep inside the earth to high up in the stratosphere, the presidential report encouraged new ways of peering into the Soviet Union. For aerial surveillance, the CIA developed the remarkable U2 spy plane that penetrated Soviet airspace and brought back a bonanza of intelligence information on their military activities. However, there was a more disturbing message in another part of that same report. The US said, faced an implacable enemy whose a vowed objective is world domination. There are no rules in such a game. Acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. In the last year of Eisenhower's presidency, the new norms of conduct included assassination plots against foreign leaders. The first target was this man, Patrice Lemumba of the Congo. In that turbulent region of Africa, he was feared as a potential pawn for Soviet interests.

He was killed by domestic enemies before CIA agents reached him. Other political targets during this period were Raphael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, and Colonel Abdul Kasem of Iraq. They too would be killed again at the hands of their own countryman. This man was the CIA's main target, yet Fidel Castro grew only stronger after CIA attacks against him. Havana is as scenic today as it was 30 years ago when it was a favorite American resort for vacationing and gambling. But today, the capital, like all of Cuba, is filled with reminders of the bitter U.S. campaign waged against this Caribbean island. American economic trade was cut off in 1960. Signs of that embargo, like frozen time capsules, still rambled through Havana's plaza of the revolution. Throughout the city, billboards exhort the Cuban people to defend their country.

The enemy, of course, is Uncle Sam. This is a museum like no other in the world. On exhibit are abandoned CIA military hardware, like this American-made tank. In the nearby jungle, twisted remains of a downed CIA plane can be found. Mute testimony to this once-secret struggle. This was a war most Americans have forgotten, but not even the youngest Cuban is allowed to forget. A war that began soon after Castro came to power in 1959. One of Castro's first acts was to have communism declared a legal political party. He canceled elections. His economic minister, Che Guevara, nationalized American businesses. And Castro began to form an alliance with the Soviet Union. If communism were intolerable in Iran, Guatemala, and the Congo, a Marxist government only 90 miles from America's shores was unthinkable in Washington.

Fidel Castro would have to go. There is a limit to what the United States and self-respect can endure. That limit has now been reached. The break-in relations was only the public side of the war against Castro. In secret, the CIA was preparing other more serious options. But I had been asked after a trip to Cuba to drop a list of things to do as it were shopping list. And the last one was to get rid of the leader. That is to have Castro assassinated by Cuban patriots. That was the qualifier that I had on there. Richard Bissell was in charge of the CIA's anti-Castro programs. Did President Eisenhower know of the CIA plan the assassination attempts on Castro? That's a matter of controversy. It is my belief that he did.

I'm sure he didn't know about any of the details. I'm sure he didn't want to. I very much doubt if at any time he had expressed acquiescence in a nakedly labeled assassination effort. But what he may very well have done, in this case, as he is documented as having done in another example, is to say I want that man got rid of and in effect any means are legitimate. Besides assassination plots, Bissell became the architect of an invasion plan, similar to the one used in Guatemala. This plan called for the recruitment of Cubans who had fled to southern Florida after Castro's rise to power. This is Brigade 2506, a group of Cuban Americans training outside Miami. Three decades after Castro's rise to power,

they still train in hopes of recapturing their homeland, a place that many in this group now only know from their parents and grandparents stories. In March 1960, Eisenhower gave the CIA permission to begin training this brigade. Among the original members of this unit was 17-year-old Raúl Masvidal. The CIA had an office in what's today a little Havana, and it was a small, very inconspicuous office, and you went in there, gave your name, and then you'll give them a phone number, and a few weeks later you'll hear from them, and they will say you're ready to depart, they won't say for where, in the middle of the night, we were loaded into planes and traveled for hours. Where Masvidal and the others landed was at this secret CIA training facility,

in northern Guatemala. I don't think anybody had a doubt that we were going to succeed, that we were going to get the help that we were promised. Max Cruz was another young Cuban exile, who had signed up with the Brigade. And there was a complete blind trust in the engineering state that you could not, by no way, think that something was going to fail. While the exiles trained in the Guatemalan Highlands, a young Democrat named John Kennedy was running for president. His campaign was based on charges of Republican inactivity in the face of communist advances. It had an ironic similarity to Eisenhower's own campaign 80 years earlier. After winning the election, Kennedy would find out just how wrong he was. As president, he inherited Eisenhower's Cuban invasion plan, a plan that was growing larger

and less secret every day. The entire idea was the following. A section of Cuban territory had to be secured by indigenous Cuban forces, the invasion brigade, whereupon the provisional Cuban government, with myself as the U.S. representative, were to fly there from Miami and land on that clear strip. Whereupon the Cuban representatives would declare themselves a government in arms and our fleet lying offshore under Admiral Burke would then come in with the aircraft and the Marines. I think we had 15,000 Marines waiting offshore. This operation, which I had understood to be a typical guerrilla warfare, psychological warfare type operation involving men who carried their own weapons, was suddenly changed into a military operation, which called for the landing of a brigade of 1,400 troops and a platoon of tanks. Now, there's a maxim in the intelligence

business that you can't hide a hippopotamus with hangarchief. You certainly can't cover a tank on a caribbean beach with one. Well, I was very skeptical. I've never fully stated what my attitude was at that time, but I think I badly served President Kennedy during that affair by not pressing him to ask a question which was not asked. He should have turned to our joint chiefs of staff at one stage and said to them, now, gentlemen, I may want you to do this with American forces. And they would have come in with a plan for a sustained preliminary bombing of Cuba, a landing of not less than two divisions in the first wave backed up by the Navy and Air Force and Army Marines. And it would have been apparent to President Kennedy that the bill presented by our joint chiefs of staff meant that this puny little brigade in Central America didn't have a chance.

Within three months of his inauguration, Kennedy was forced to make one of the most difficult decisions of his presidency. Instinctively, he distrusted the invasion plan, but he had promised during the campaign to do something about Castro. He also worried over the political costs of abandoning the exiles, a concern reinforced by the CIA. But Dulles did not specifically say, but did imply this would also have political repercussions in the United States, where the abandonment of the plan would cause, give ammunition to the Republicans and everyone would say, what does Kennedy attend at J.G. during the war know about least great matters. And if Eisenhower backed the plan, it was a good, great plan. And that made a cancellation difficult. The Cuban exile elements had been persuaded to take a particular stand to act in certain ways by the Eisenhower

administration who had made certain commitments to them. We told the Kennedy White House very clearly, this group is in being now. They've been down here for like six months in the goddamn jungle and they're trained to the teeth. So the proposition was put to Kennedy, use it or lose it. Kennedy decided that canceling the invasion was riskier than going ahead with it. So he opted for action, but he was obsessed with maintaining plausible deniability, that there be no proof of any U.S. involvement. Key to the invasion's success was a surprise air attack to destroy Castro's small air force. Key to maintaining plausible deniability was a disinformation plan to convince the American press and public that this air strike originated from inside Cuba, flown by defecting pilots from Castro's air force. The assault has begun on the dictatorship of Fidel Castro. Cuban army pilots opened the first phase of organized revolt with bombing raids on three military

bases. Two of the B-26 light bombers then seek asylum in Florida. Only part of this story was true. There was an air strike in Cuba, but it was the work of CIA, exiles, not defecting Cuban pilots. This propaganda campaign began to unravel almost immediately when questioned by suspicious newsmen. An even more serious problem was that the surprise air attack reduced in size by Kennedy at not destroyed all of Castro's air force. The decision of the president, which he communicated to me at the end of a meeting in a rather offhand manner, was that we could not make the first strike at full strength. I guess about half of it was destroyed, but unfortunately half wasn't, and that's what did the damage. No one in Washington anticipated the reaction that the surprise air strike would have on the Cuban people. It was there, Pearl Harbor, an act of war committed without warning,

that united the Cuban people behind Castro. I think the presentation we received from the CIA was an incomplete presentation. We were given the impression in the White House that if the that the invasion would set off the defections from the Cuban militia and uprisings behind the line, and even if it failed, the people, the invaders could melt away into the hills and so on, and none of those things were true. Fidel publicly ridiculed the CIA disinformation plot that the bombing had been done by his own pilots. Not even Hollywood, he said, would make up such a story. Any hopes of an internal uprising against Castro were gone. And then, of course, the final blow fell when on Sunday afternoon, with the troops virtually going ashore, what was to have been originally the third strike, and we had counted on as one at full strength, was also scrubbed.

Kennedy was backing away, but no one told that to brigade 2506. The CIA, with the help of the US Navy, would deliver the men to these shores. After that, they were on their own. Initially, in the beach, there was not tremendous opposition. There was very, very light opposition. On the day it went on, we were having more and more, more forces were coming into a rush, and we were fighting, you know, to no end. Our Air Force kept being shut down, and their Air Force was traveling freely through the sky, so I thought wondering what the heck is

going on. The CIA promised the brigade the skies will be yours. Instead, they belonged to Castro. Within hours, his planes had sunk two supply ships, loaded with ammo, fuel, and men. The remaining supply ships steamed out of the bay to safety, leaving over 1,000 Cuban invaders stranded. When we knew that our troops had landed, when we started hearing things over the radio, that one of our ships had been sunk, that some of our troops were running to trouble, there seemed to be a lot of confusion as to why we let us in. I remember that some of the people in my ship started to worry about, hey, we were brought in here just for the parade in Havana, and we're not going to be part of this whole thing after you know, spend so much time in training. Las Vidal and the others did not yet know how desperate the situation was. There was no melting into the mountains. The landing site was surrounded by swamp instead of hills, and the one road

into the area was full of Castro's troops, led by his close lieutenant, Ramón Jose Fernández. In desperation, American CIA instructors flew missions themselves, four of them were shot down and killed. Meanwhile, on Raúl Massoudal's ship, still at sea, a mutiny threatened to break out. When we found out that the invasion had failed, and that our troops had been basically killed or taken prisoners. One of the fears was that the CIA didn't want any witnesses, and here we were dressed in camouflage, we had most of the communications equipment, and we had weapons,

of course we had a lot of ammunition, and we started discussing possibilities of taking over the ship and then heading somewhere. The exile soldiers on shore had no such option. Over one hundred had been killed. The rest, including Max Cruz, had surrendered. I was taken prisoner, I was moved to a house in the same beach where we were. I got there, I said, well, there's no way to get a life from here. I better get ready to die and I tap prepare myself. And I think it's when you have a big brother that is telling you, come on, fight. I'm here. I will defend you, things get bad. And you say, okay, brother, you get in big, getting the biggest fight that you can ever think of because your big brother's there. If I need him, he's going to be there. And after I've been bit to death, you know, he turned around and said, I'm sorry, where I can help you. In Washington, the CIA's stunned planning group, men whose operations had succeeded in Italy,

Iran, and Guatemala. Listen via radio as the disaster unfolded. To Pepe San Roman's last broadcast to us, he was hip-deep in water with a walkie-talkie communicating with a relay point and Admiral Burke's task force offshore. And he cursed us, and many of us burst into tears. I was one of the most tragic events in my life. I couldn't believe that our government would permit a massacre like that to take place. It was devastating. During those moments when that military commander was broadcasting from the shallows at the beach, there was one of the officers in the room who scratched his wrists so nervously. They started bleeding profusely. Another officer, a man who had been the commander of a tank Italian during World War II,

laminated in a waste paper basket. And then he was over, and I got drunk. Drunk was fatigued and drunk with remorse. In human terms, more than 1,000 exiles spent nearly two years in prison. Over 250 Cubans fighting on both sides died. But there were other costs. The United States suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of a small developing country. America trained, equipped, and landed exiles soldiers on these shores, and then simply left them. The White House, through the CIA, tried to keep this act of war a secret, and plausibly deniable, but deniable to whom, not to Cuba, but to the people

of the United States. It's easy to see now that this once bloody beach was a warning of the limits of secrecy and intervention for a democracy. But those lessons were not to be learned until another third-world country, Vietnam. Secret Intelligence

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