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• #Batista y eisenhower full#

The President responded, "First, I want to say that there will not be, under any conditions, an intervention in Cuba by the United States Armed Forces. government had made preparations to stage an uprising in Cuba. The accusations flew around Washington, as well as Havana, in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs and an administration struggled to retain its credibility.įive days before the date of the invasion, on April 12, the White House Press Corps pointedly asked President Kennedy if the U.S. There they remained for 22 months, until the Kennedy administration paid more than $50 million in food, medicine and cash for their release. When the smoke cleared, 114 died and 1,189 lauguished in Cuban prisons. Without resupply or air support, the men of 2506 Assault Brigade managed to hold out for two days, until nearly all were either killed or captured by pro-Castro forces.

One ship sank and the remaining three barely made it out to sea. The Cuban Air Force rallied to strafe the landing site and the supply ships moored in the bay. Cuban army and militia units, organized by Castro himself, swarmed the invasion site to block the rebels from gaining the interior of the island. President Kennedy, anxious to cover up America's role, inexplicably called off all American air support, leaving the rebels stranded on the beach. However, the tide quickly turned on the insurgents. Initially things looked promising, American planes struck at Cuban air force bases and destroyed Cuban planes on the ground. The invasion force, with four supply ships, landed at dawn, with a strength of 1,400 men. The Bay of Pigs invasion quickly overrode the former successes the CIA had in the previous decade with the planting of the Shah of Iran back in power in 1953, toppling a democratic government, and a coup in Guatemala in 1954. The slapdash invasion took place on April 17, 1961, and the comedy of errors that played out in the marshy, mosquito-infested inlet on Cuba's southern coast constituted a low-water mark for the CIA that still has not been forgotten by the agency. Few of the CIA operatives and advisors assigned to Operation Zapata, as it was called at Langley, spoke Spanish or evinced any type of willingness to learn the language. Though a competent and willing force, cracks in the strategy quickly began to show. Christened "2506 Assault Brigade," the insurgents under the eye of their CIA advisors trained in small arms weapons, demolitions, communications and insurgency techniques necessary to pull off an invasion.

#Batista y eisenhower full#

This provisional government would immediately request recognition and military support from the United States, leaving the stage set for a full scale "intervention" and mass uprising to rid Cuba of communism.Īfter setting up special training camps in Florida, Alabama and Louisiana, the CIA set out to recruit Cuban exiles to fill the ranks of the invasion force. Upon securing the bay, a provisional Cuban government, sanctioned by the United States could be landed there to take over the island when the Castro regime crumbled. Ironically, as it turned out later, CIA advisors pointed out that this site afforded a suitable air-strip to fly bombers against the Communists. Citing the need for "plausible deniability" for America's role in the invasion, the Kennedy administration changed the plan to a nighttime landing at Playa Giron, also known as the Bay of Pigs. The plan originally called for a daylight assault of the southern coastal city of Trinidad, near the Escambray Mountains. to speak at the American Society of Newspaper Editors, "If he's not a communist, he certainly acts like one." By Maa plan prepared by the CIA entitled, "A Program of Covert Action Against the Castro Regime," received a stamp of approval by President Eisenhower. Vice President Richard Nixon said of Castro, on a visit to the U.S. At the end of 1958, American backed Cuban strongman Fulgencio Batista y Zaldivar's struggled to keep power as the well financed rebel army led by former the New York Yankee's pitching hopeful turned revolutionary, Fidel Castro, moved virtually unopposed out of the Sierra Maestra mountains into Havana.Įven as early as April 1959, the tide of American foreign policy was turning against Castro.