A look at spooks in action that does not resemble a Tom Clancy
novel. A lingering question about the Bay of Pigs operation has
always been how anyone could ever have thought it would work.
Somehow presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, with the input of their
military and intelligence advisers, approved an invasion plan that
projected the victory of a 1,400-man exile force over the
25,000-man Cuban army. Moreover, they did so while implausibly
insisting that the action must not be traced back to the US. Until
recently, the cloak of secrecy has restricted efforts to explain
this planning and decision-making process to idle speculation; with
the publication of this volume, somewhat informed speculation is
now possible. Through the Freedom of Information Act, the National
Security Archive (a publicinterest group), with which Kornbluh is
affiliated, has obtained the CIA's internal and very critical
report on the Bay of Pigs and a lengthy response from the CIA
officer in charge of the operation. Edited by Kornbluh (Nicarauga,
1987), the volume includes an analytical introduction, an interview
with two CIA men involved in the planning of the operation and a
detailed timeline of events. This mass of information provides
insight into shifting objectives, ambiguity over responsibility and
accountability, and the momentum that precluded halting or even
seriously reconsidering the operation. Most striking, however, is
the vigor with which those involved seek to hide behind
presidential cancellation of an air strike in explaining the
failure. The impulse to deflect blame clearly overrides any
self-analysis that could lead to institutional learning from the
experience despite the absurdity of claiming that one decision was
the turning point in an operation riddled with problems. What
remains unexplained is the failure of American political
leadership, a puzzle that may be beyond the potential of historical
documents to solve. An eye-opening account, regardless of one's
political convictions. (Kirkus Reviews)
For decades, the CIA's top secret postmortem on the April 1961 Bay
of Pigs invasion has been the holy grail of historians, students,
and survivors of the failed invasion of Cuba. But the scathing
internal report on the worst foreign policy debacle of the Kennedy
administration, written by the CIA's then–inspector general Lyman
Kirkpatrick, has remained tightly guarded—until now. Dislodged
from the government through the Freedom of Information Act, here is
an uncompromising look at high officials' arrogance, ignorance, and
incompetence, as displayed in their attitude toward Castro's
revolution and toward the Cuban exiles the CIA had organized to
invade the island. Including the complete report and a wealth of
supplementary materials, Bay of Pigs Declassified provides a
fascinating picture of the operation and of the secret world of the
espionage establishment, with stories of plots, counterplots, and
intra-agency power struggles worthy of a Le Carré novel. Includes:
the complete text of the CIA report; a critical introduction; the
newly declassified response to the report from Richard Bissell, who
masterminded the operation; the first joint interview with the
managers of the invasion, Jacob Esterline and Colonel Jack Hawkins;
a comprehensive chronology; and biographies of the key
participants.
General
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