THE BAY OF PIGS: 25 YEARS LEAVE HATE UNDIMMED

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706800001-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 13, 2011
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: April 17, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706800001-3
17 April 1986
The Bay of Pigs:
25 Years Leave Hate Undimmed
IT- By JOSEPH B. TREASTER
Special to The New York Times
PLAYA LARGA, Cuba - Whitecaps
ripple across a sandbar in the shim-
mering waters of the Bay of Pigs, a
short distance off a beach where young
Cubans play frisbee and stretch lan-
guidly under a baking sun.
Twenty-five years ago, on Monday,
April 17, a brigade of 1,500 Cuban
exiles, organized, trained, supplied and
directed by the United States, splashed
ashore here in a disastrous attempt to
overthrow Fidel Castro.
Within 72 hours the invaders had
been defeated, most of them taken pris-
oner, vastly enhancing Mr. Castro's
prestige and yielding worldwide em-
barrassment and scorn for the United
States.
It was a spectacular case of misman-
agement, historians say, laced with
faulty assumptions and faulty informa-
tion, ultimately hobbled by the United
States' fruitless effort to maintain the
fiction that the invasion was entirely
the work of anti-Castro exiles. In pur-
suit of "plausible deny-ability" Presi-
dent John F. Kennedy limited air sup-
port and ordered nearby United States
Navy units not to help the exiles, who
had landed believing they had the full
backing of the United States.
'A Tragic Episode'
Many of the invasion veterans, now
United States citizens living in Miami,
find themselves still struggling with an
enormous affection for their new coun-
try and an ineradicable sense of be-
trayal.
"It was a tragic episode," a senior
State Department official said the
other day.
These days, Playa Larga and the
other Bay of Pigs landing beach, Playa
Gir6n, are quiet resorts that only
faintly suggest the scene of an agoniz-
ing defeat that influenced American
foreign and domestic affairs for years
and left wounds that are still raw.
The hostility that the leaders of the ?
United States felt toward Mr. Castro in
1961, as he guided Cuba into the Soviet
orbit, has not cooled. In turn, the Cuban
leader, who Senate investigators say
was the target of eight C.I.A. assassi-
nation plots, has developed an unre-
lenting enmity for the United States.
Today the two countries remain in a.
state of undeclared war, backing op-
posing armies in Central America and
Africa, undermining each other diplo-
matically wherever possible and often
exchanging accusations and insults.
A United States trade embargo im-
posed six months before the Bay of
Pigs remains in effect and most Amer-
icans exceptions are journalists, re-
searchers and those with relatives on
the island - are barred by the Treas-
ury Department from visiting Cuba.
In the Aftermath
In May 1962, a little more than a year
after the Bay of Pigs and a bit more
than three years after Mr. Castro and
his guerrillas had toppled the regime of
Fulgencio Batista, Cuba and the Soviet
Union announced an alliance in which
the Soviet Union now provides Cuba
with $4 billion a year in aid - more
than any other Soviet ally. The aid has
enabled Mr. Castro to build the largest
and best equipped military force in
Latin America.
On an island that once seemed like an
offshore province of the United States,
the Russians have stationed a brigade
of combat troops and scores of advisers
and technicians. Soviet warships visit
Cuban ports and TU-95 Bear reconnais-
sance planes refuel near Havana for
flights along the United States coast-
line.
Some historians say they believe the
United States' seeming lack of resolve
at the Bay of Pigs encouraged the
Soviet Union to install the ballistic mis-
siles in Cuba that led to the chilling su-
perpower confrontation known as the
Cuban missile crisis 18 months after
the invasion. The historians also say
they believe that to some extent the
eagerness of American leaders to af-
firm their resolve after the Bay of Pigs
failure helped propel the United States
into the Vietnam quagmire.
Many of the veterans later served in
the United States armed forces. Some
have become prosperous businessmen
and a few have served in public office
in the United States.
Four Bay of Pigs veterans were con-
victed of the burglary at the Watergate
Hotel in Washington that led to presi-
dent Richard M. Nixon's resignation in
1974. Other veterans of the invasion
have been involved in terrorist bomb-
ings in New York and Miami and at-
tacks on diplomats of the Castro Gov-
ernment.
A Memo From Nixon
Sixteen months ago the United States
and Cuba signed an important immi-
gration agreement and relations be-
tween the two countries seemed to be
improving. But a short time later, in
the spring of 1985, the United States
began a new broadcasting service to
Cuba called Radio Marti that anti-Cas-
tro Cubans in Miami, including many
Bay of Pigs veterans, hoped would un-
dermine the Havana Government.
Mr. Castro angrily suspended the im-
migration agreement and, since then,
relations between the two countries
have been, in the words of the Cuban-
born Harvard historian Jorge Domin-
guez, "dead in the water."
The first recommendation that the
United States overthrow Mr. Castro
came in early 1959, a few months after
he had taken power, in a memorandum
from Mr. Nixon, who was then Vice
President. The C.I.A. set to work on
plans that, with the endorsement of
both President Eisenhower and Presi-
dent Kennedy, evolved into the Bay of
Pigs invasion.
The Cuban Government says it lost
161 dead in the invasion, including 5
civilians. In Miami, the exiled veterans
say they lost 107 dead. Four American
airmen were also killed.
Twenty months after the invasion,
Mr. Castro traded the freedom of
nearly 1,200 exile prisoners for $53 mil-
lion worth of food and medicine from
the United States. Veterans in Miami
say he kept 10 prisoners and is still
holding two of them.
For several years survivors of the
Bay of Pigs and other exiles, continu-
ing under the direction of the C.I.A.,
turned Miami into a seething clandes-
tine base for scores of paramilitary or-
ganizations bent on killing Mr. Castro
and ridding Cuba of Communism.
A few months before the invasion,
the United States had broken diplo-
matic relations with Cuba. In 1977, dur-
ing the Carter Administration, there
was a thaw in relations and the two
countries opened offices in each other's
capitals, providing limited diplomatic
contact. Lately, however, contact has
been extremely limited.
No Resentment, He Says
Jorge Mas, a Bay of Pigs veteran
who is now a wealthy building contrac-
tor in Miami, says he harbors no re-
sentment for "the lack of support that
was so many times promised to all of
us."
At the time of the invasion, Mr. Mas
says, "we were just a bunch of young
Cubans" who "lacked the contacts and
influence that would have guaranteed
what had been agreed upon."
But that has changed. A few years
ago Mr. Mas, now in his mid-40's,
helped establish the Cuban American
Foundation, which lobbies journalists
and Washington officials and has be-
come a potent political force with ac-
cess to the White House.
"Had the Bay of Pigs taken place to-
day," Mr. Mas said, "I'm just about
certain that the backing would have ar-
rived as promised."
Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706800001-3