WHY BLAME TH ECIA FOR OUR FAILURES IN WILL?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000100250068-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 16, 1999
• Sequence Number: 68
• Publication Date: July 25, 1964
• Content Type: NSPR

Sanitized,- Approve ire l CIA-RDP75`
JUL 2 5 1964
0
0
:For.ourF&iures in i.II
OPYRGHT
By JOHN CHAMBERLAIN
This column does not accept the Mr. Johnson's book, w is is -
"conspiracy theory of history. But it; citing in its descriptions of what hap-
,does think rather well of the contagion pened after the unfortunate Artime bri-
:theory. This can involve conspiracy gade of anti-Castro Cubans had been
at the outset to float rumors, to slander dumped on the beaches, is deficient
;.characters, and to impute motives. The when it comes to exploring the Wash-
'first thing you know everyone and ington angles of the affair. It suffers
his brother are saying something that from our national obsession with the
is either witless or unprovable, orboth. idea of academic "balance" in all
At the present moment the "con- things. And so it misses the big critical
tagion" is spreading. stories designed tthii t-is a athe consci act ous cedeserti n any-
to discredit the U.S. Central Intelli- g
gence Agency. A book has been written "balance." Action is by its nature
about the CIA called The Invisible provocative.
Government, by David Wise and j Mr. Johnson makes the CIA the
Thomas B. Ross. I don't want to de goat in its failure to tell the late Presi-
fend - or attack details in the book, dent Kennedy that control of the
for I hear conflicting stories about beaches by American air power might
the CIA, and I don't know whether be necessary. Bissell, indeed, did ask
Wise and Ross have been guilty of for it after things began to go wrong.
compromising twenty-seven CIA a- At this point Kennedy offered an "air
gents by naming them. But what umbrella" to protect the anti-Castro
bothers me about the "contagion" that Cubans" own planes
a handful of B-
,
currently holds our Central Intelligence, 26s based in Central America. Bu
operatives to be a danger to demo- ! this, on its face, was ambiguous: wer
cracy is that the butts of all the rumors we behind the Cubans, or were w
can't in the nature of things stand up not? Who could have told?
There is the case of Richard Bis-
sell, for instance. Bissell had a lot
to do with planning the Bay of Pigs
operation which failed so lamentably
when U. S. air cover failed to materialize
over the beaches held by the anti-
Castro Cuban invasion brigade. Bis-
sell is the inferential goat of the recent
book by Haynes Johnson called The
In our national fear of any- 1
body with positive convictions'
(they are "extreme," you know),
the point was lost that when you
plan to upset a status quo, you
must will the means to do it. Bis-
sell of the CIA had been told to up-
set the Castroite status quo in ..
Cuba, and, however deficient his
planning may have been in certain
details, he finally asked for the
means to make the Artime invasion
a success. Neither he nor the CIA
should be pilloried because of a
failure of national will.
.Bay of Pigs: the Leaders' Story of
Brigade 2506.
Maybe he deserves criticism. But
the point is that he can't very well
speak up in his_ own defense with-'
On the face of it both the CIA and . because of technical failures We los
the Pentagon did plan for an ineffec- 'because there was no will in Wash
tive invasion of Cuba. The critics say ington to win. If we had stood firrr
that the underground was not alerted, on the Monroe Doctrine .and had ac
that the maps of the Bay of Pigs coast companied the military planning o
did not reckon with the coral reefs-1 the CIA with an announcement tha
that snagged some of the invasion the human brutalities of the Castr
boats, that the anti-Castro Cubans were' regime could not be tolerated, the ex
misled by people who "gave them to pedition would not have been allow
.understand" that the -United States wasr to falL
'
to their success. But
totally committed
'the real failure was one of will, and
this cannot be held against Richard
Bissell and the CIA. r ~; a
CPYRGHT
FOIAb3b
The CIA, as Wise and Ross say'
in their book, may be incompatible
r with the open discussion which is at'
the heart of democracy. But if it is
an "invisible government" in itself,'
it is so only to the extent that we haveI
no real government elsewhere. If the.
CIA operatives are told to march with-
out being provided with marching.
orders, why blame them for anything,
they do? .. . . . ' . j:
1- (Copyright, 1964, King Featurerl8yndkate, inc)
Sanitized Approved 'For Release ::CIA-RDP75-
0001 R0.00100250068-6