Why the Communists are Winning as of 1976...

Author: William D. Pawley & Richard R. Tryon

Chapter Twenty-two
THE KENNEDY PART IN THE CUBAN CATASTROPHE

President Frondizi of Argentina promised to help us in the plan to overthrow Fidel Castro, without specifying just how. He emphasized the groundlessness of the U.S. fears of adverse Latin reaction, and offered to enlist his ambassador to Washington as my contact. He could not have been more cooperative or cordial.
Frondizi also offered to send a young congressman to my hotel the following morning. He would brief him to be on call to fly to the United States immediately if I needed him to confirm what he had just offered on behalf of the Cuban exiles.
I met him and reviewed the entire program of the invasion for his benefit, and informed him that it would probably be necessary for him to come to the United States. I wanted to make doubly sure that all of my assertions could be promptly corroborated, should I meet the skepticism or roadblocks back at the State Department.
Stopping off en route home in Lima Peru, Edna and I enjoyed reunions with old friends, in addition to my mission of seeing President Prado, and my good friend Prime Minister Pedro Beltran. Both were enthusiastic about my overtures. They had recently discovered by a raid on the Cuban Embassy that Castro had been sending large sums to Peru for the subversion of key officers in the military, the bribery of civilian politicians, the sowing of unrest and communist propaganda, and the preparation of the country for violent social revolution. Prado had already decided to break relations with Cuba. He said that his government would be delighted to cooperate in overthrowing Castro in any way possible, but that Peru would need advance warning and time for preparation.
Returning to Washington, I met first with Dulles and Gates on December 27th. Early next day I met with President Eisenhower. I gave each a full report on the success of my mission. The President promptly implemented Frondizi’s request for advance notification of our severing of diplomatic relations with Cuba by giving instructions that Thomas Mann, assistant secretary of State for Latin American Affairs, notify the President of Argentina without fail two or three days before we were to take action.
Eisenhower then phoned Dean Rusk, Kennedy’s secretary of State-designate, who was occupying an office at State for carryover briefings, and arranged an appointment for me properly to inform the incoming administration. That afternoon, I met first with Rusk and then with Allen Dulles. The former refrained from questions or comments, the responsibility not yet being his, but listened attentively. I also briefed Secretary of Defense Gates, Under Secretary of State Livingston Merchant (Herter being out of town), and Ambassador Willauer, our able former ambassador to Honduras, who had played such a valuable role in our Guatemalan operation. I summarized Frondizi’s and Prado’s analysis of the situation.
2
It is interesting to recall that during his campaign for the Presidency, Kennedy had made a forthright statement on Cuba.
“We must attempt to strengthen the non-Batista democratic anti-Castro forces in exile, and in Cuba itself, who offer eventual hope of overthrowing Castro,” he was quoted as saying. “Thus far, these fighters for freedom have had virtually no support from the Government.” The first statement expressed truth. The second was false.
What I did not know at the time was that this declaration was drafted by one of Kennedy’s advisers and released to the press without having been cleared, since Kennedy’s aides did not wish to disturb his sleep. Far from reacting with enthusiasm to the initiative of his self-appointed spokesmen, Kennedy told Richard Goodwin and Ted Sorensen:
“Okay, if I win this election, I will have won it myself; but if I lose, you fellows will have lost it.”
Kennedy won the election, with the help of delayed vote-counting in Chicago, St. Louis, and a few other places. He won also because of the incredibly stupid decision by Richard M. Nixon to engage in a series of nationally televised debates with Kennedy. The debates gave Kennedy precisely the public exposure he needed to overcome his handicap of being lesser known than Vice President Nixon.
Having campaigned for Nixon in Florida, I had no rapport with the new Administration. However, I continued to work for the liberation of Cuba after Kennedy’s inauguration.
On January 30, 1961, I submitted to Rusk “a list of names of outstanding Cubans who might be considered in trying to fill the principal positions in a provisional government.” I further stated that “a group of reactionaries would be totally unacceptable,” and also warned that “a leftist provisional government” would alienate our Latin American friends who opposed socialistic measures. A postscript to the note read:
“I am enclosing a brief history of Jose Miro Cardona. This man’s name is frequently mentioned in connection with the presidency of a provisional government. In my judgment, this would be a great error.”
Miro Cardona had been Fidel Castro’s first Prime Minister. A professor of criminal law at the University of Havana, he signed the Communist decrees which imposed the death penalty for political offenses and applied these laws retroactively, thus permitting the execution of thousands of men and women for acts which had been legal when committed.
Once given political power, Miro Cardona proceeded to violate the principles which he had taught his law school students. Although in my opinion this alone should have disqualified him, the Kennedy Administration, for reasons best known to itself, went right ahead and selected him to be its liaison between Washington and the Cuban Community in the United States.
3
On January 2, 1961, Castro peremptorily ordered the United States to reduce its Embassy staff in Havana to eleven persons within 48 hours. He alleged that we had over 300 persons attached to the Embassy, and that 80% of them were spies. Actually, we had exactly 87 persons, more than half of whom were Cubans.
We countered by breaking off relations with Cuba immediately. The day afterward, President Frondizi phoned me at Miami. He was up in arms because he had not been notified as agreed and asked me for an explanation.
“I’m as shocked as you are,” I told him. “I’ll get in touch with Washington and call you right back.”
When I reached Tom Mann, he blandly informed me that the matter slipped his mind. The answer left me speechless, for the President had given specific instructions to Mann. I had to force myself to return Frondizi’s call with the feeble excuse of Mann’s “oversight” and the prospect of a serious impairment of further Argentine cooperation. Frondizi had calmed down enough to agree to send his representative anyway.
He and his wife arrived in Miami, and during four days of sessions in my office, briefed the five Cuban exile leaders previously listed. At my request, he then proceeded to Washington in keeping with the plan to insure corroboration at State of my Frondizi report. I notified Dean Rusk that he “is being sent to this country by President Frondizi to confirm the Argentine Government’s willingness to cooperate fully in whatever needs to be done.”
To my mortification and outrage, President Frondizi’s representative was allowed to cool his heels for three days in his hotel, fearful of leaving lest he miss a call, without a single call from State. I immediately got in touch with former Ambassador “Whitey” Willauer, still with State, who was as hot under the collar as I was at so flagrant a discourtesy to the personal representative of a friendly chief of state. Willauer made at least partial amends by calling on him and listening to his message.
If the purpose of the State Department all along had been to repel Argentine cooperation by preposterous unexplained insults in a procession of similar incidents, it could now say “mission accomplished”.
On the eve of the Bay of Pigs, President Kennedy directed his close adviser Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., to draft a “White Paper” on our relations with Cuba. Spruille Braden, a former ambassador to Cuba, later characterized it as “One of the most indefensible documents I have ever seen issued by a presumably responsible official, adding: “The best that can be said for it is that it displays such ignorance and lack of understanding as to explain in considerable measure the tragic bungling of the catastrophe in Bahia de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs).”
The White Paper advocated what it called the “authentic and autonomous revolution of the Americas,” meaning that the Castro program of expropriation and socialism was free of the Soviet taint. It repeated the myth that Castro was a “traitor to the (Communist) revolution,” ignoring that his movement had been Moscow-inspired from the first. Likewise out of ignorance, the authors heaped praise on David Salvador, a notorious Communist labor leader.
As Braden pointed out: “to speak, as the White Paper does, of the ‘rapacity of the (Batista) leadership’ and damn such splendid characters as Saladrigas and hundreds of others like him, is calumny, cheap demagoguery and a despicable act, unworthy of a responsible government and foreign office.”
Even the U.S. Information Agency found this Schlesinger document “too racy and liberal.” the Harvard professor, however, was armed with White House authority. Schlesinger said that when he brought his manuscript to Kennedy, the latter was “generous in his comment, but wanted to eliminate one observation because it might be offensive to Castro.”
In their conferences with the new Commander-in-Chief, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA discovered that at every possible point on the conduct of the plan to free Cuba from the Castro regime, Kennedy whittled down the invasion operation and narrowed its prospects for success. In a desperate effort to salvage the plan, Allen Dulles told the President on March 11th:
“Don’t forget that we have a disposal problem. If we have to take these men out of Guatemala, we will have to transfer them to the United States (if the invasion plan is scrapped - WDP), and we can’t have them wandering around the country telling everyone what they have been doing.”
The point evidently made a big impression. In his last-minute decision to go ahead with the invasion Kennedy told Schlesinger that he had pared down the project to such an extent that “the cost, both military and political, of failure was now reduced to a tolerable level ... if we have to get rid of these 2500 men it is much better to dump them in Cuba than in the United States, especially if that is where they want to go.”
4
Meantime, our preparations for the invasion, called “Pluto”, had gone on successfully. Our efforts had resulted in the enlistment of about 2500 Cuban men, exiles from their homeland. They were sent first to Opa-Locka, to an abandoned Navy air base in Florida, refurbished and equipped for the invasion. From Opa- Locka the recruits went to the air base at Retalhuleu, Guatemala, by agreement with that Central American country. There they were given extensive training for the mission.
Every possible effort was made to cover the recruitment and training of the Cuban patriots with secrecy.
At a press conference in Washington on January 10, 1961, ten days before Eisenhower was to leave office, newsman asked about the “activities” taking place among Cuban exiles in Guatemala. The State Department press officer, R. Lincoln White, replied with a straight face:
“As to the report of a specific base, I know absolutely nothing about it.”
Obviously, secrecy about the Cuban Brigade could not be maintained forever. More and more news seeped out from the two bases, which by this time were infiltrated with Castro agents.
The original plan was to have an amphibious landing at Trinidad, a city of 20,000 population, about 100 miles east of the Bay of Pigs. Trinidad had both a good harbor and an air field. A valley, about twelve miles wide, extended north from Trinidad between mountain ranges. In addition, the city was selected because it would have permitted invasion forces to move quickly into the mainland of Cuba, taking over or destroying communication and transportation systems as they advanced.
It was originally planned that once Trinidad was occupied by the Cuban Brigade, the city would become the seat of the government in exile - the beginning of a new Cuba, freed from the Red dictator. All our advisers had agreed upon Trinidad. President Eisenhower had himself endorsed it as the landing site.
The Bay of Pigs, on the other hand, was fronted by high coral reefs, which would make the landing of barges for troops and materiel extremely difficult. The Bay was surrounded by wet marshlands over which invasion forces could not march.
If a plan had been made to insure the failure of the invasion mission, changing the landing site from Trinidad to the Bay of Pigs would have been a major factor.
But we were overruled on using Trinidad. From the time he inherited the project, President Kennedy was obsessed with the fear that disclosure of the invasion would damage America’s - and his own - “image”. He insisted that the role of the United States, including that of the CIA, be kept secret. He had the fantastic idea that he could misinform the American people, the Latin American countries, Fidel Castro and everybody else, as to the true nature and purpose of the project. He wanted it believed that this was entirely a matter to be handled by the Cuban exiles.
Ample evidence came to light after the disaster that Kennedy was under heavy pressure of such advisers as Schlesinger and of all the leftist bureaucrats in the State Department, and especially, of his brother Robert Kennedy, to call off the whole campaign as late as mid-March, 1961. Robert had been appointed U.S. attorney general, the top legal office of the nation, despite his inexperience as a practicing lawyer, prosecutor, or judge.
5
Although aware of these handicaps, the leaders and men of Cuban Brigade 2506 made ready for the crusade to retake their homeland from Communist control. They would rely heavily upon the seventeen B-26 planes and their intrepid pilots to knock out Castro’s small air corps. In addition, they were assured that if help was needed after the landings and after the advance had begun, the U.S. flat top Essex and helicopter ship Boxer would be but twelve miles out from the beach, ready to send in swarms of fighter and bomber planes.
In the plan, the seventeen aircraft were to fly three strikes each. Their targets would be Castro’s air fields and military staging areas. The third strike would be sent in to mop up any Cuban jet fighter-bombers not destroyed by the first two raids. All hands had in mind the emphatic words of Kennedy’s predecessor, President Eisenhower, one year earlier, when he stressed the paramount importance of total control of the air over Cuba before the invasion forces were sent to the beaches.
As planned, during the first week of April the entire Brigade, under command of Colonel San Roman, was moved by air from Guatemala to the beach at Puerto Cabeza, Nicaragua. By this time, the purpose of the recruiting and training of the Cuban exiles was common knowledge among all Latin American officials and their governments. President Kennedy may as well have tried to hide the Washington monument. Still, he insisted upon maintaining the fiction that only Cuban exiles were involved.
President Ydigoras of Guatemala and his officials were understandably embarrassed by the presence of the Cuban Brigade and all its war materiel, and was relieved to find that plans were moving ahead to get these Cuban invaders out of his country.
On Thursday morning, April 13th, a Lockheed Constellation flew in from Washington and landed at the Puerto Cabeza airport. It was a military plane, but its markings had been hastily painted over. A delegation of about a dozen men was aboard - some civilians, the others military officers. The latter changed into civilian clothes before leaving the plane. Presidential adviser McGeorge Bundy, and Richard Bissell, in charge of the project for the CIA, were recognized among the civilians. All were whisked to a top-secret meeting with the American CIA officials and other leaders of the project. The purpose of the delegation was kept a dark secret from personnel at the base. It became known after the betrayal of the men of the Cuban Brigade.
The planes of the first air strike roared away from Puerto Cabeza at 3:30 in the morning of Saturday, April 15th. But instead of the 22 planes available, or the 16 planes already selected to go, only nine B-26's took off on that fateful morning. Several American pilots had been hired to begin the air raids, but only Cuban pilots were used on that initial flight. The American pilots cooled their heels in their tents.
Before the flight began, in a closed hangar one of the planes was punched with several holes and its fabric torn in places as though it had been in combat. This plane was flown directly to Miami, landing with one of its propellers “feathered” (out of action), to support the deception, hatched by Schlesinger and others in the White House, that only Cuban exiles were engaged in the plan to overthrow Castro.
The eight planes broke through the cloud cover over Cuba. Three attacked Camp Columbia in Havana. Three others bombed another airfield near Havana. The two others hit the airport at Santiago on the southeastern coast.
Castro’s defenders had long expected the attacks. One of the planes was shot down and lost in the waters of the harbor. Another flew to Key West, refueled and returned to Puerto Cabeza. A third plane landed at British Grand Cayman Island.
More than half the Communist air power in Cuba was destroyed in this first strike. Castro still had three jet planes, used as “trainers”, ready to take up the fight. According to the plan, a second strike on Monday morning would finish them off.
In the dead of the night of Friday, April 14th, six ships left the Nicaraguan staging area, loaded with the Cuban Freedom Fighters. They were the Houston, the Rio Escondido, the Atlantico, the Barbara J, the Caribe, and the Blagar. Their departure was timed to land the men of Brigade 2506 before daylight on Monday morning.
As the ships neared the landing area near the Bay of Pigs, the troops aboard expected to hear announcements that the B-26s would be making the second strike at first daylight. But there was only silence from Puerto Cabeza.
“Why do we not hear from the planes?” was the question of the Cuban exiles. Then came word that the strike was “delayed”.
Actually, the strike was canceled, on direct orders from President Kennedy.
The skipper of the Houston brought his vessel close to the shore, where the ship ran aground. The men of the Cuban Brigade jumped into the sea.
Some reached the beach, where they began to make formation. Two of Castro’s jets made direct hits upon the Rio Escondido, and the transport went down with all supplies.
The other ships were able to land their troops, but with great loss of supplies and materiel. Then they quickly withdrew from the Bay. Cuban crews on the vessels stormed at their American officers in near mutiny - but to no avail. The Americans had been given their orders.
To the north of the Bay was Playa Larga. One paratroop unit of the Brigade was dropped near the town, but their heavy equipment, essential for combat, fell into a swamp and was lost. Several other units sloughed around in the swamps before daylight revealed their dismal surroundings.
The invaders were finally able to form a three-pronged attack. One unit took up positions around the town of Giron, at the eastern edge of the Bay. Another started its advance to the north between the mountain ranges. The third followed the roadway to the northwest. Although abandoned to the Castro jet planes, the Freedom Fighters were determined to make a brave stand.
Meantime, Castro’s militia had formed to meet the invasion. Well armed, they filled the roads converging on the Bay of Pigs. They had ample ammunition and supplies. If American and Cuban exile airplanes had been allowed to support the invasion, their bombing and strafing could have cut the defenders to pieces. Despite their losses and the handicaps of the terrain, with such help the men of Cuban Brigade 2506 could have advanced to Havana.
An example of the determination of the Brigade to attain the objective of ridding its homeland of the bearded Marxist dictator is related in the words of Albert C. Persons, an American pilot who waited at Puerto Cabeza vainly hoping he could come to the rescue of the fighting exiles:
“One battalion of the Cuban fighters under the command of Ernesto Oliva occupied the town of Playa Larga. This battalion held against overwhelmingly superior forces until the last round of ammunition had been fired. Armed with tanks, 75 and 57 millimeter recoilless rifles, mortars, bazookas and automatic weapons for each soldier, Oliva’s force fought a battle that is a lasting testimony to his leadership and to the training and determination that had been instilled in the men at their training base in Guatemala.
“On the eastern front an equally courageous and determined battle was waged at Covadonga, and on the road south of Yaguaramas, and later at San Blas. In the end, superior numbers, the unchallenged freedom of the skies, and the final exhaustion of the Brigade’s ammunition, prevailed. By Wednesday afternoon the Brigade’s line of defense had shrunk to a perimeter less than three miles in diameter around Giron. The battle was ended. The invasion had failed.”
6
On Saturday, after the strike of the eight B-26s, the Cuban representative to the United Nations had delivered a fiery oration, accusing the United States of planning and executing the invasion. In answer, Adlai Stevenson, head of the United States delegation, made a vigorous speech of his own. He declared that the affair was strictly of and by Cuban “defectors”, that the pilots that bombed Castro’s airfields were Cuban, and that the United States was not involved at all.
Since that day, no person has ever revealed whether Adlai Stevenson knew the truth and was continuing the huge deception, or whether he himself had been misinformed, up to the time of his speech, by the President and his advisers. At any rate, it is known that Stevenson carried on a telephone conversation directly with President Kennedy. The call lasted two hours - ample time for Ambassador Stevenson to demand that the whole affair be stopped, even if it meant “dumping” (as Kennedy had called it) the Cubans on the field of battle at the Bay of Pigs. Stevenson’s clincher was the angry threat that if Kennedy did not agree, Stevenson would resign his position in the United Nations. His U.N. statement had received such wide publicity that, caught in a trap possibly not of his own making, he insisted to Kennedy and Rusk that they must back him up by denying that there would be any direct U.S. military intervention.
Terrific pressure was also brought upon Kennedy by his mis-advisers, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., and Chester Bowles. These two rare birds were under some sort of hallucination that we must protect our “world image” of not being a “bully”, at a time when all Western Hemisphere leaders knew all about our role in this affair. What the President’s “liberal” advisers did not comprehend nor foresee was the infinitely worse image we were to earn, and richly deserve, for our self-inflicted failure.
Kennedy agreed to Stevenson’s demands that all U.S. support for the invasion be called off. Late Sunday night the President ordered all further air strikes, and all aid from U.S. ships, immediately halted.
In that final hour of decision Monday morning, 30 American carrier-based jet planes from the Essex were in the air and ready to strike. From the walkie-talkie sets of many officers and non-coms of the beleaguered Cuban exiles, appeals were broadcast for air and sea support. Cubans and Americans manning the B-26s begged the admiral of the Essex and the captain of the Boxer to authorize their jets and helicopters to come to the rescue for the few minutes it would take them to knock out the Cuban air force, consisting of two B-26s, three Sea Furies, and three trainer jets.
The admiral replied that he had received direct orders from the White House not to intervene.
When the news of the imminent collapse of the invasion reached the White House and U.S. officials in general, Richard Bissell of CIA braced himself for a last-ditch attempt to save the day. He sent word to the President that he must see him urgently. According to Mario Lazo, in his book Dagger in the Heart, the ensuing showdown was a humdinger.:
“President Kennedy was holding a reception at the White House for his Cabinet and members of Congress and their wives. But he left the party and joined Bissell in a tense meeting, to which Secretaries Rusk and McNamara, General Lemnitzer, Admiral Burke, McGeorge Bundy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Schlesinger, and Walt Rostow had been summoned.
“Strongly supported by Burke and Lemnitzer, Bissell made an impassioned and fervent appeal for the only thing that could now save the Cuban invasion: use of the U.S. military power available on the ships just over the Caribbean horizon. Rusk and the political advisers opposed him. Secretary of Defense McNamara also opposed the military. The President decided in favor of Rusk and his supporters.
“Next, Bissell and Burke asked that a detachment of Marines be permitted to go into action. This too was refused. All these proposals, they were reminded, would amount to U.S. “involvement” and lower American prestige in “world opinion”.
“The last request made by Admiral Burke was for the use of one U.S. destroyer, to lay down a barrage on Castro’s forces. The President asked, ‘What if Castro’s forces return the fire and hit the destroyer?’ Burke answered, emphatically, ‘Then we’ll knock hell out of them!’ The President said that then the U.S. would be involved. My informants quote, with obvious admiration, Burke’s answer:
“‘We are involved, Sir. God damn it, Mr. President, we can’t let those boys be slaughtered there’!”
With their ammunition spent and all hope of help gone, the bulk of Cuban Brigade 2506 surrendered to Castro’s forces.
The Cuban exiles, and our citizens alike, were filled with disbelief and consternation at our betrayal. All of us took it for granted that Kennedy would either abandon the operation in time to save most of its participants or see the issue through by all and any means. It had been our baby from the beginning and we had solemnly promised to be its steadfast godfather. We had a moral commitment. We had the repeated assurances of President Eisenhower, given to me personally and to others involved in the operation, that all the means needed to insure its success would be forthcoming.
Yet the unthinkable happened. A young, weak and inexperienced President of the United States took a position just the opposite to what had been a basic policy of the U.S. government since the announcement of the Monroe Doctrine, and despite our Latin American backing and the Rio Treaty. He ran out on our nation’s responsibility, abandoning our trusting wards of the Cuban Brigade to death on the beaches, and to capture, torture, firing squads - all courtesy of the so-called “Champion of the Common Man”.