LETTER TO EARL E. T. SMITH FROM WILLIAM J. CASEY

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• Collection: General CIA Records
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• Document Page Count: 17
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 28, 2010
• Sequence Number: 40
• Publication Date: January 14, 1985
• Content Type: LETTER

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Washington.D. 20505
14 January 1985
Dear Earl,
Here's the article from the magazine,
Diplomatic History which I promised to send you
on Allen Dulles' private 200 page justification
of the Bay of Pigs operation which, pursuant to
his Will, was deposited in Princeton. There is
also a current commentary on the matter by
Dick Bissell who, as you recall, was his operating
officer at the Bay of Pigs.
Best regards.
Yours,
William J. Casey
The Honorable Earl E. T. Smith
Attachment:
As stated
cc: DCI
DDI
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Published by Scholarly Resources Inc. for
The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations
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V
The "Confessions" of Allen Dulles:
New Evidence on the Bay of Pigs
In November 1961 Allen W. Dulles resigned from the Central Intelli-
gence Agency (CIA), ending a tenure as director that had spanned nearly a
decade. On 17 April of that year, a brigade of Cuban exiles, armed and
directed by the CIA, had landed at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba in an effort to
topple the regime of Premier Fidel Castro. Within days, however, Castro's
forces crushed the invasion, killing or capturing almost the entire brigade.
Stunned by the disaster, newly elected President John F. Kennedy began to
reconsider the advice that he had been receiving. Upon taking office from
President Dwight D. Eisenhower only a few months before, Kennedy had
asked Dulles, who had directed the CIA throughout the previous administra-
tion, to remain at the head of the agency. But in the wake of the Cuban
debacle, Kennedy decided that it was time for the director of central intel-
ligence (DCI) to go, and Dulles left quietly.'
In the following years, Dulles wrote and said little about the Cuban
affair. His book The Craft of Intelligence, for instance, published in 1963,
contained merely a few lines on the Bay of Pigs.2 But the publication of
separate accounts of the episode by former White House aides Arthur
M. Schlesinger, Jr., and Theodore C. Sorensen in 1965 jolted Dulles out of
his reserve. Deeply disturbed by writings that blamed the disaster primarily
The author wishes to thank Richard K. Betts of the Brookings Institution and Thomas
G. Paterson of the University of Connecticut for their comments. Special thanks are due to J.
Garry Clifford, also of the University of Connecticut, for help and advice. This article was
written while the author was a research fellow at the Brookings Institution.
'Ralph G. Martin, A Hero for Our Time: An Intimate Story of the Kennedy Years (New
York, 1983), p. 333.
'Allen W. Dulles, The Craft of Intelligence (New York, 1963). On occasion, however,
Dulles confided in friendly journalists. See Hanson W. Baldwin Oral History, p. 679, United
States Naval Institute, Annapolis, Maryland; and Walter Lippman, diary entry, 13 May 1961,
Box 329, Walter Lippman Papers, Sterling Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.
What Dulles said in these encounters is largely unknown.
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V U
366 DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
on Kennedy's intelligence and military advisers, Dulles decided to reply 3
For the next several months, he worked on an article entitled "My Answer
to the Bay of Pigs," writing numerous drafts that total
several hundred pages. Dulles worked carefully, using personal notes from the period and consul
former CIA associates, particularly Richard M. Bissell
who '
h
,
as t
e ages
deputy director for plans (clandestine action) in 1961 had been the chief
architect of the operation.
As his manuscript neared completion, however, and despite harper',
desire to publish it, Dulles finally decided to maintain his silence. The reasons
for his decision remain unclear. According to his widow, her husband chose
not to publish the article, "because there was so much more in his favor he
could have said, if he had been at liberty to do so, that the material [therein]
was inadequate." There is no doubt that Dulles felt seriously constrained in
his reply. He believed strongly that former government officials should avoid
discussing any aspect of an operation that remained classified. He also con-
sidered himself honor bound to respect the confidential nature of his coal.
munications with the late President Kennedy. As the former director emphasized
in his final draft, "I have served under nine Presidents, from Woodrow Wilson
to Lyndon Johnson, and under no circumstances would I feel justified in
revealing Presidential confidences, or making public information which the
government holds as classified."s Even though he ultimately decided against
publication, Dulles nonetheless kept his manuscript and numerous drafts. Now
filed among the Allen W. Dulles Papers at Princeton University's Seeley
'See Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., "The Bay of Pigs: A Horribly Expensive Lesson," Lqe
59 (25 July 1965): 62-70; and Theodore C. Sorensen, "Kennedy's Worst Disaster: Bay of Pigs,"
Look 29 (10 August 1965): 43-50. Dulles's anger at these versions of the events is evident in
a memorandum of a telephone conversation he had with former President Eisenhower shortly
after the articles appeared: "Called and talked with Allen Dulles. Discussed falsity of Schlesinger
and Sorensen articles and book . . . Mr. Dulles ... said Sorensen completely misrepresented
the talk we (Dulles and Eisenhower) had together about Guatemala ... Mr. Dulles said they
did not have the stomach for the plan. In talking about Mr. Kennedy Mr. Dulles said that he
was very uncertain and surrounded by pessimists ... Dulles said some of 'these people' are
admirers of Castro."Calls and appointments, 23 August 1965, appointment books, Box 2, Dwight
D. Eisenhower Post-Presidential Papers, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Abilene,
Kansas.
'Note signed by Mrs. A. W. Dulles, Box 138, Allen W. Dulles Papers, Seeley G. Mudd
Manuscript Library, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey (hereafter cited as Dulles
Papers).
'Allen W. Dulles, "My Answer to the Bay of Pigs," (final), Box 244, p. 2, Dulles Papers.
In keeping with his beliefs, Dulles almost never refers in his drafts to the White House official
postmortem on the operation, despite the fact that he had been a member of the board of inquiry.
The findings of this board, or "Taylor Report," remained officially classified at the time Dulles
was writing, even though parts of the report had found their way into articles by other com-
mentators on the event. Another reason why Dulles may have decided against publication was
Kennedy's assumption afterward of full responsibility for the fiasco, and his instructions to the
White House and government agencies involved to refrain from controversy over the operation.
Kennedy maintained this stance, in public at least, until his death. Dulles admired this attitude
and thus was reluctant to contravene the deceased president's instructions. Ibid., Box 244,
pp. 3-5.
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CONFESSIONS OF ALLEN DULLES 367
G. Mudd Library, these documents provide invaluable new insights into the
Bay of Pigs affair.'
Least surprising is Dulles's final draft. For the most part it answers
Schlesinger and Sorensen's charge that the intelligence advisers misled the
president about key features of the plan. Dulles insists that the CIA planners
never told the president that the mere landing of an exile force in Cuba was
likely to trigger massive uprisings throughout the island and bring down the
Castro regime. According to the former DCI, the planners believed that the
invasion might prompt anti-Castro revolts, but only after the brigade had
proved its staying power by seizing control of a solid beachhead. Likewise,
Dulles continues, he never assured the president that the plan had an excellent
chance of success. Instead, Kennedy was told that the exiles had a "good
fighting chance, and no more."'
According to this draft, then, it is simply untrue that the Cuban venture
failed because the intelligence advisers misled Kennedy into approving an ill-
conceived plan. Instead, the real cause of the disaster was the White House's
lack of "determination to succeed." Fearing "some unpleasant political reper-
cussion" from the invasion, Dulles explains, the president consistently strove
.to reduce the visibility of the undertaking. Therefore, rather than authorize
whatever effort was required to succeed, Kennedy "whittled away" the scale
of military operations, in the end fatally weakening an otherwise sound plan."
Dulles's final manuscript therefore mostly repeats the familiar arguments of
these who remain skeptical of the Kennedy administration's version of the
affair and instead place much of the blame for the fiasco on timidity in the
White House.'
Far more interesting and revealing, however, are Dulles's drafts and
notes. These pages, often handwritten and sometimes coffee-stained, bear the
mark of strong emotions as well. Here Dulles freely vented his anger and
frustration; he also wrote more candidly, at times making startling admissions.
Kennedy's ambivalent feelings about the Cuban invasion emerge clearly
from these notes. While some observers have argued that the president found
the plan appealing,10 Dulles confirms that Kennedy and many of his close
advisers had grave misgivings about it, but believed that they could not stop
an operation that was practically under way. "It was a sort of orphan child
JFK had adopted (from the Republicans)-he had no real love and affection
for it. [He] proceeded uncertainly toward defeat-unable to turn back-only
half sold on the vital necessity of what he was doing, surrounded by doubting
'Dulles'" drafts, background material, and correspondence related to the article are in
Boxes 138 and 244, Dulles Papers.
'"My Answer to the Bay of Pigs," (final), Box 138, pp. 15-16, 22-25, Dulles Papers.
`'My Answer to the Bay of Pigs," (galleys), Box 244, pp. 49-52, Dulles Papers.
'For similar views, see Hanson W. Baldwin, "The Cuban Invasion," parts I and 2, The
New York Times. 31 July and I August 1961; Richard Nixon, off-the-record press briefing,
21 April 1961, in staff memoranda, Arthur Schlesinger file (5/61-6/61), Box 65, John F. Kennedy
Presidential Library, Boston, Massachusetts.
'*See for example Hugh Sidey, John F. Kennedy, President (New York, 1963), p. 127.
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368 DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
Thomases among his best friends."" Elsewhere, Dulles adds: "Among the
Pres[idential] advisors there were enough doubting Thomases to dull the
attack, but not enough to bring about its cancellation.""
Similarly, in his earlier drafts Dulles acknowledges that the White House
had serious misconceptions about the plan. Kennedy, the former DCI explains,
"had views of [the plan] that were not consistent with the realities of the
situation."" Dulles notes, for instance, that when the president, concerned
about the operation's visibility, decided against the original landing place by
the coastal town of Trinidad in favor of the CIA's alternative site at the Bay
of Pigs, he failed to appreciate the implications of the change. In particular,
Kennedy continued to believe that, should the brigade run into unexpected
trouble, the exiles could always evade defeat by seeking refuge in the moun-
tains and pursuing their struggle as guerrillas. Nor did the president perceive
how the new landing site would affect the likelihood of rebellions within
Cuba. As Dulles writes:
The preferred landing site at Trinidad had been changed ... without a
full realization at the top that this greatly reduced the "guerrilla" alter-
native since it was far removed from the area in the Escambray, the best
guerrilla territory, and also by being a mere quiet landing reduced the
chance of bringing about a revolt or defections to the landing places. In
fact the [invasion) required a well-publicized landing so that the people
of Cuba ... could have a clear knowledge of what was in progress."
Dulles also suggests that the White House failed to realize the importance in
the plan of protecting the invasion force from enemy air attack: "I didn't see
to it," he writes, "that everyone understood beyond [undecipherable word]
of a doubt, that air cover for the landing was an 'absolute' prerequisite.""
How Kennedy could have been so mistaken about key aspects of the
plan remains to this day a matter for debate. A mere glance at a map, for
instance, would have revealed that the change in landing site had all but ruled
out any "guerrilla option." While the Escambray mountains, Cuba's traditional
insurgent stronghold, were close by the Trinidad landing site, eighty miles
of often impassable swamp separated the Bay of Pigs from the mountain
"Dulles, handwritten notes, Box 244, p. 2, Dulles Papers.
'=Ibid., Dulles, handwritten notes, Box 244, A.
"Ibid., Dulles, handwritten notes, "Conclusion," Box 244.
"Ibid., Dulles, handwritten notes, "Conclusion," Box 244, d-c (emphasis added).
"Ibid., Dulles, handwritten notes, "Disclosures," Box 244. As Dulles readied his man-
uscript for publication, however, he progressively downplayed some of Kennedy's misperceptions
about the plan. In his earliest and most spontaneous handwritten notes, Dulles concedes that the
president misunderstood the importance of air cover. But in subsequent drafts, he becomes more
circumspect. One typed draft states more vaguely that "[the need] for protection of the brigade's
flotilla from hostile air attack should have been quite obvious to everyone involved in making
the final decisions." Eventually, Dulles changed this to "[the need] for protection . . . was quite
obvious," the phrasing that appears in the final draft. Ibid., "My Answer to the Bay of Pigs,"
Box 138, p. 27 (emphasis added).
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CONFESSIONS OF ALLEN DULLES 369
refuge. No doubt the imprecision of the planners' oral briefings, the inade-
quacies of the new administration's procedures for considering national secu-
rity affairs, and the president's inattention to details and unwillingness to face
uncomfortable realities all contributed to the White House's misconceptions.16
Dulles himself, however, suggests an additional explanation for Kennedy's
confusion: apparently, the DCI and other key intelligence advisers opted not
to dispel several of Kennedy's illusions.
Indeed, the former director indicates that unlike White House decision-
makers, the intelligence operatives were aware of the negative effect of the
change in landing site on the "guerrilla alternative" and the prospects for a
revolt of the Cuban people. Most of the planners also seemed to realize that
the operation had ballooned to the point where Kennedy's belief that it could
be "quiet" and covert and that U.S. involvement could be concealed had no
basis in fact." It appears, however, that the planners chose not to dispel the
president's misconceptions on most of these scores. As Dulles explains with
remarkable frankness:
[We] never raised objections to repeated emphasis [by the President] that
the operation: a) must be carried through without any "combat" action
by U.S.A. military forces; b) must remain quiet [and] disavowable by
[the] U.S. gov[ernment]; c) must be a quiet operation yet must rouse
internal revolt vs. Castro and create a center to which anticastroites will
defect. "
Dulles then explains why he and key associates preferred not to alert the
president to "the realities of the situation"-particularly the contradiction
between a discreet landing and the expectation of revolts, as well as the
implausibility of denying that the United States had engineered the invasion:
[We] did not want to raise these issues-in an [undecipherable word]
discussion-which might only harden the decision against the type of
action we required. We felt that when the chips were down-when the
crisis arose in reality, any action required for success would be authorized
rather than permit the enterprise to fail.
In a sense we were right. If only half the military help had been made
available to get the brigade and its equipment safely ashore, that was
later shown in trying to rescue and later liberate the brigade, there would
have been a good chance of success.
"on these points, see for instance Paul L. Kesaris, ed., Operation Zapata: The "Ultra-
sensitive" Report and Testimony of the Board of Inquiry on the Bay of Pigs (Frederick, MD,
1981), pp. 16-39; and Lucien S. Vandenbroucke, "Anatomy of a Failure: The Decision to Land
at the Bay of Pigs," forthcoming in the Political Science Quarterly.
"Commenting on Kennedy's insistence that the Cuban operation be "a quiet penetration
yet [cause] an uprising [and] mass defections," Dulles writes: "but the very fact of a quiet landing
tendered both impossible. Revolt and defection required the utmost possible 'noise' to the people
of Cuba." Handwritten notes, "Conclusion," Box 244, Dulles Papers. Dulles also notes that
"even after wide publicity had deprived the operation of much of its covert character [and] the
USA interest in it was disclosed, there was no lifting of the restrictions imposed on the planners."
Ibid., handwritten notes, Box 244.
"Ibid., Dulles, handwritten notes, Box 244, x (emphasis added).
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370 DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
We believed that in a time of crisis?we would gain what we might
lose if we provoked an argument."
From the standpoint of the intelligence advisers who were vigorously
promoting a plan they were anxious to see proceed, it made sense to avoid
fanning the president's fears by pessimistic arguments about the prospects for
rebellion and plausible denial. As things stood, Kennedy already had grave
misgivings about the plan. At times he seemed ready to stop it, and he had
explicitly reserved the right to call it off up to the last minute. Had the planners
provided the president with additional reasons for concern, his doubts might
have grown to the point where he canceled the operation altogether.20
There may well have been, however, yet another reason why Dulles
and other senior planners ignored some of the president's misconceptions.
The intelligence advisers had learned long before that no matter how carefully
plans were drawn up prior to the event, once a covert operation was under
way it often took on a life of its own. As Dulles comments in his draft: "I
have seen good many operations which started out like the B of P-insistence
on complete secrecy-non involvement of the U.S.-initial reluctance to
authorize supporting actions. This limitation tends to disappear as the needs
of the operation become clarified."21 Moreover, as noted above, the former
spymaster raised no objections to the limits Kennedy sought to place on the
Cuban operation because he was convinced that once the invasion began the
president would end up approving anything required for success. Such evi-
dence suggests that Dulles and key associates may well have had an additional
cause to disregard Kennedy's misunderstanding of the plan presented to him,
with, for instance, its careful exclusion of direct U.S. military participation.
Indeed, the plan submitted to the White House for approval may not have
been the scheme these intelligence advisers actually expected to carry out
once the operation had been approved and the dynamics of the invasion started
to unfold.
'"Ibid. (emphasis added). While conceding that the planners let the president delude
himself about the chances for rebellion and the covert nature of the operation, Dulles writes that
the intelligence advisers made it clear on the other hand that the change in landing sites would
severely affect the brigade's ability to escape as guerrillas. Ibid., "My Answer to the Bay of
Pigs," (final draft), Box 244, p. 7. Dulles's deputy Richard Bissell, on the other hand, acknowl-
edges that "the implications for the 'guerrilla option' of the shift from Trinidad to the Bay of
of Pigs," Strategic Review 12 (Winter 1984): 69-70. Bissell's statement is corroborated by the
Taylor Report. Kesaris, Operation Zapata, pp. 18, 41-42.
"Dulles, handwritten notes, Box 244, Dulles Papers.
"Interestingly, quite a few others besides the CIA's top leaders appear to have viewed
the plan the president approved as less than binding. Agents in the field displayed an initiative
of their own. Political officers in Miami long ignored the plan's emphasis on broadening the
Cuban Frente, the coalition of Cuban exile groups the United States intended to recognize as
the legitimate government of Cuba in the early days of the invasion. Instead, the field officers
deliberately favored right-wing exile leaders and excluded liberal groups. Tad Szulc and Karl
 CONFESSIONS OF ALLEN DULLES 371
At best then, by consciously allowing Kennedy to ignore central weak-
nesses of the invasion plan, Dulles and other key intelligence advisers sought
to steer past him a project he deeply mistrusted, but that they nonetheless
wished to carry out. At worst, these advisers may have hoped to draw the
president into a situation where he would be forced to abandon the policy
limits he had been so eager to preserve, granting the covert operators instead
the latitude to conduct the operation as they saw fit, in order to succeed.
Whatever the intelligence advisers' exact intentions, it seems clear that they
failed to perform their responsibility of giving the president their candid and
best advice. Instead, they appear to have assumed the unauthorized role of
de facto policymakers, acting as if, in the covert war against Castro and
communism, key decisions rested with them rather than with the nation's
elected leaders.
Without a doubt, such behavior was wrong. In the context of the early
1960s, however, it was understandable. Throughout the previous decade the
agency's clandestine service had grown accustomed to operating with limited
outside control. Eisenhower used covert action extensively as an instrument
of American foreign policy. Most often, however, he chose to ignore many
of the details of such operations so that he could deny more easily any
knowledge of the venture if the necessity arose. Nor did the presidential Board
of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities or Congress exert any great
degree of control." The result, in the words of a 1956 study mandated by
the Board of Consultants, was: "the increased mingling in the internal affairs
of other nations of bright, highly graded young men who must be doing
something all the time to justify their reason for being. . . . Busy, moneyed
and privileged, [the CIA] likes its `king making' responsibility." The report
went on to say, with some dismay: "No one, other than those in the CIA
immediately concerned with [the] day to day operations [of covert operations]
has any detailed knowledge of what is going on."''
The clandestine operatives, moreover, had no difficulty justifying to
themselves their ventures into quasi-autonomous policymaking. Locked in a
constant, secret war against Communist forces, they found it easy to believe
that they understood better than any outsider the special requirements of this
E. Meyer, The Cuban Invasion: The Chronicle of a Disaster (New York, 1962), pp. 92-106.
Later, American trainers of the brigade's air wing flew combat missions over Cuba, in violation
of orders. And, unknown to the White House or the agency, Chief of Naval Operations Adm.
Arleigh A. Burke quietly positioned two battalions of Marines on ships cruising off Cuba,
anticipating that U.S. forces might be ordered into Cuba to salvage a botched invasion. Arleigh
A. Burke, interview with author, I October 1983. Bethesda, Maryland; Cuba files, Reference
Section, Marine Corps Historical Center, Washington, DC.
"Dillon Anderson Oral History, pp. 109-10, Eisenhower Library; L. K. Truscott, mem-
orandum to General Taylor, "Points to Consider in a Review of Paramilitary. Guerrilla and
Intelligence Capabilities," 18 May 1961, Walter Bedell Smith Papers, Box 26, Eisenhower
Library.
"David Bruce and Robert Lovett, "Covert Operations," report to the president's Board
of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities, quoted in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Robert
Kennedy and His Times (Boston. 1978), pp. 455-56.
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372 DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
war in the shadows. By the start of the 1960s, covert operations had thrown
leftist forces off balance on enough occasions--Greece in 1948, the Philip-
pines in 1952-53, Iran in 1953, and Guatemala the following year, to mention
only the better-publicized episodes-to give the clandestine service high con-
fidence in its own effectiveness.'
In addition, the Cuban situation gave the covert operators cause for
concern. The intelligence experts had followed with alarm Castro's efforts to
export his revolution throughout the hemisphere. Intelligence officials were
convinced that he had directed insurrections against the pro-American regimes
of Panama, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti in 1959. And in
January 1961 the CIA's Latin American specialists were somberly predicting
that "eight countries may go like Castro in the next few months."
Therefore, in the eyes of Dulles and the clandestine operatives, the
national interest dictated Castro's removal. Thus they were certainly pleased
by the 1960 presidential election, in which the Democratic candidate had
bitterly denounced Castro and called for American support of Cuban "freedom
fighters"-precisely the policy they were eager to carry out.27 When Kennedy
subsequently proved reluctant to sanction in deed what he had called for in
words, the intelligence advisers probably attributed his hesitancy to his youth
and inexperience and his intimidation by the difficult decisions required in
his new role. Thus they probably felt justified in subtly steering past him the
project they believed was necessary, confident that in the end he would realize
the wisdom of the policy.
The intelligence advisers also had historical reasons not to feel bound
by the careful limitations Kennedy sought to place on their plan, particularly
the- ban on any combat role for U.S. forces. For eight years they had worked
under a president who relied heavily on clandestine operations, seeking to
manipulate the internal politics of key foreign countries while avoiding the
condemnation that overt meddling inevitably aroused. Eisenhower's priorities
were clear, however. If during a covert operation it became necessary to
choose between making the American will prevail and preserving the fiction
of U.S. noninvolvement, he had few hesitations. As he explained during the
In a private letter to former President Harry S Truman, for instance, Dulles commented:
"Over the years since 1948 when this program [of covert operations] was initiated by you there
has been a whole series of quiet successes." Dulles to Harry S Truman (undated), H. S. Truman
file 1963, Box 117, p. 5, Dulles Papers.
261NR/ONE Report, "Facts, Estimates and Projections," Annex 1, 2 May 1961, Box 4,
p. 2, Vice-Presidential Security File, Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, Austin, Texas;
diary file, 19 January 1961, Adolf A. Berle Diary, Box 220, Adolf A. Berle Papers, Franklin
D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, New York. Dulles himself had no doubt that
Castro was "a tool of the Kremlin." "My Answer to the Bay of Pigs," (outline, Communism
and Cuba), Box 244, Dulles Papers.
"On Cuba in the 1960 presidential contest, see Kent M. Beck's "Necessary Lies, Hidden
Truths: Cuba in the 1960 Campaign," Diplomatic History 8 (Winter 1984): 37-59.
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CIA's 1954 intervention in Guatemala: "when you commit the flag, you
commit it to win."28
Later in this operation, Eisenhower gave ample proof of his determi-
nation to succeed. When the CIA originally dispatched an exile force into
Guatemala to overthrow the leftist regime of Jacobo Arbenz, careful precau-
tions were taken to conceal American participation. But when the invasion
seemed on the verge of collapse, the president cast aside his scruples about
revealing U.S. involvement. Overruling the strong objections of advisers who
feared this would betray the American role, Eisenhower rushed last minute
aircraft reinforcements to the rebels, who, bolstered by this support, ultimately
prevailed.29
Accustomed for almost a decade to a president who placed such a high
value upon success, the intelligence advisers persuaded themselves that any
president, when put to the test, would share the same concern. Thus they
naturally assumed that once the Cuban invasion began, if faced with the
choice of revealing the American hand or allowing the enterprise to fail,
Kennedy would agree that "you [have] to pay some price for victory. But
[isn't] it better than defeat?"'
In conclusion, Dulles's papers provide good reason to believe that in
the Bay of Pigs the intelligence advisers fell short-of the candor that Kennedy
was entitled to expect. Yet, given the context of the period and the manner
in which the clandestine service had been allowed to operate for almost a
decade, this behavior is not altogether surprising.
""Damn Good and Sure," Newsweek 59 (4 March 1963): 19. On Eisenhower and covert
operations, see Stephen E. Ambrose with Richard H. Immerrnan, Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and
the Espionage Establishment (Garden City, NY, 1981); and Blanche Wiesen Cook, The Declas-
sified Eisenhower: A Divided Legacy (Garden City, NY, 1981).
"Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years: Mandate for Change 1953-56 (Garden
City, NY, 1963), p. 426; Richard H. Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy
of Intervention (Austin, TX, 1982), pp. 167-68; Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter
Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (Garden City, NY, 1983),
pp. 173-78.
JDDulles, handwritten notes, Box 244, Dulles Papers. Interestingly, the scenario of the
Cuban invasion had first been explored late in the Eisenhower presidency, which passed the
concept, along with a CIA-sponsored force of several hundred Cuban exiles training in Guatemala,
on to the Kennedy administration in January 1961. As the outgoing administration refined the
scenario that became the Bay of Pigs plan, the priorities of the Eisenhower presidency again
seem to have been very clear. Having evaluated the plan, the Department of Defense, the Central
Intelligence Agency, and the State Department's Bureau for American Republics Affairs con-
cluded that the plan "might not succeed in the objective of overthrowing the Castro regime."
They therefore "assumed that final operations under the December 6 plan (i.e., air attack and
covert landing. etc.) would not be triggered unless the U.S. government were prepared to do
everything else needed overtly or covertly in the light of the existing evaluation in order to
guarantee success." Memo, Ambassador Whiting Willauer to Undersecretary Livingston Mer-
chant, "The Suggested Program for Cuba Contained in the Memorandum to You Dated December
6, 1960," 18 January 1961, White House Office, Office of the Special Assistant for National
Security Affairs, Special Assistant Series, Presidential Subseries, 1960 meetings with the pres-
ident, Volume 2 (2), Box 5, Eisenhower Library (emphasis in original).
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DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
At least as significant, however
is anoth
l
,
er conc
usion that can be drawn
from the Dulles material. Throughout the last twenty years, our knowledge
of the Bay of Pigs has steadily increased. A series of memoirs by participants
and several after-the-event investigations by journalists provided valuable
early insights into the Cuban affair." More recently, the declassification of
certain relevant government documents, particularly key portions of the Ken-
nedy administration's postmortem on the fiasco, the Taylor Report, and the
publication of Peter Wyden's Bay of Pigs have shed much new light on the
episode.32 Despite the importance of the Bay of Pigs for contemporary Amer-
ican foreign relations, in which clandestine operations have played an increas-
ingly significant role, our knowledge of the event remains incomplete. Nowhere,
for instance, does the Taylor Report mention the clandestine operatives' inner-
most thoughts and hidden agenda.
In addition, there remain important unresolved questions. These include,
for example, whether at the time of the 1960 campaign, in which Cuba became
a significant issue, presidential candidate John F. Kennedy had any knowledge
of the CIA's invasion plans. Equally unclear is why at the last minute the
White House called off the air strikes the exiles plannecj to conduct against
Castro's airfields on the morning of the landing, and thereby prevented the
invaders from gaining the control of the Cuban sky that they had expected
to achieve. Similarly, it remains unknown whether key White House decision-
makers were aware that the assassination of Castro was an integral part of
the invasion plan." The major part of the government documents relating to
"The memoirs of Schlesinger and Sorensen offer the most detailed accounts of the Bay
of Pigs by members of the Kennedy administration. See Schlesinger, Thousand Days, pp. 226-
97; and Theodore C. Sorensen, Kennedy (New York, 1965), pp. 291-309. Some of the better
early journalistic writing on the Bay of Pigs, often based on carefully managed leaks by partic-
ipants in the Cuban affair, include Hanson Baldwin, 'The Cuban Invasion," The New York
Times, 31 July and 1 August 1961; Charles V. J. Murphy, "Cuba: The Record Set Straight,"
Fortune Magazine 64 (September 1961): 92-97+; Haynes Johnson, The Bay of Pigs: The
Leaders' Star-., of Brigade 2506 (New York, 1964); and Meyer and Szulc, The Chronicle of a
Disaster.
"The declassified portions of the Taylor Report have been published in Kesaris, Operation
Zapata. While less detailed, the minutes of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's executive
sessions on the Bay of Pigs, declassified in the spring of 1984, also contain interesting information.
U.S., Congress, Senate, Foreign Relations Committee, Executive Sessions of the Foreign Rela-
tions Committee, Historical Series, vol. 13, pt. 1, 87th Cong., 1st sess., 1961. Peter Wyden's
Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story (New York, 1979), based on the Taylor Report , oral histories,
and extensive interviewing, also provides much new information. Wyden, however, made limited
use of available archival material other than the Taylor Report. In addition, it is often impossible
to determine the precise sources for much of the new information that he provides.
"In late 1960 and early 1961, the CIA was actively involved in plots against the lives
of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba and Cuba's Castro. See for example Madeleine G. Kalb,
The Congo Cables: The Cold War in Africa-From Eisenhower to Kennedy (New York, 1982);
and Warren Hincke and William Turner, The Fish is Red: The Story of the Secret War Against
Castro (New York, 1981), pp. 26-95. Richard M. Bissell, who at the time of the Bay of Pigs
was the CIA's deputy director for plans (covert operations), recently confirmed that the plotting
against Castro's life was "intended to parallel" the Cuban invasion project. According to Bissell,
"assassination was intended to reinforce the plan. There was the thought that Castro would be
dead before the landing. Very few, however, knew of this aspect of the plan." Richard M.
Bissell, interview with author, Farmington, CT, 18 May 1984.
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the invasion remains either classified or buried in private collections, and
scholars and policymakers alike must continue to wait before additional details
of the Cuban episode come to light.
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? ~ nr .'IY~a~
Response to Lucien S. Vandenbroucke,
"The `Confessions' of Allen Dulles:
New Evidence on the Bay of Pigs"
RICHARD M. BISSELL, JR.
In '"The `Confessions' of Allen Dulles: New Evidence on the Bay of
Pigs," Lucien Vandenbroucke has performed a scholarly service. He describes
and analyzes successive drafts, which he unearthed from the former CIA
director's papers in Princeton, of what was to be a magazine article defending
the agency's conduct of that operation. Vandenbroucke's analysis of this
fascinating material is focused on the question of what President Kennedy
was led to understand during his first three months in office by his intelligence
and military advisers about the nature of and the prospects for the impending
operation and whether he was misled by them, deliberately or not, in an effort
on their part "to steer past" him a project he deeply mistrusted. Essentially,
the writer concludes that he was. The thesis is that the promoters of the
operation deliberately allowed Kennedy and his senior political advisers to
ignore major weaknesses in the invasion plan by making no effort to dispel
serious misconceptions about it which became current in the White House
and contributed to wrong decisions about whether to proceed and how the
operation was to be conducted. At least four major misconceptions held in
varying degrees and at different times by the president and some, or all, of
his advisers are identified.
The first, most pervasive, and, I would argue, most damaging was that
the covert character of the operation could be maintained; in other words,
that it could be planned and conducted in such a way as to involve no
observable action or event for which the U.S. government could not plausibly
deny responsibility. It was this misconception that gave rise to a whole sequence
of requirements and limitations on operational flexibility in the interest of
preserving the impression of the operation as a strictly Cuban affair. Thus,
there was to be no use made of facilities, personnel, or up-to-date equipment
which could have been made available only by the U.S. government and
would, if revealed or captured, constitute proof of official U.S. sponsorship.
The second misconception was a failure, in some degree at least, on the part
of the president and some of his cabinet-level advisers to understand the
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? a
378 DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
absolute essentiality of air command and of effective air cover for the success
of an amphibious operation. The third failure was the belief that, if the brigade
encountered heavier conventional military opposition than it could handle
after a landing, it had the option of retreating to the Escambray mountains,
or other suitable terrain, and undertaking guerrilla operations. The fourth and
most discussed alleged misconception was the expectation that a successful
landing would promptly detonate internal revolts within Cuba on a useful
scale, and that these would facilitate consolidation of the beachhead and
ultimate overthrow of the regime.
To what extent were these beliefs, all mistaken as the event proved and
as could have been foreseen at the time, a result of presentations and rep-
resentations by those in charge of the operation which at least passively misled
the president and other senior policymakers by "deliberately allowing them
to ignore major weaknesses in the invasion plan," as charged by
Vandenbroucke?
With respect to disclaimability, it is amazing in hindsight that none of
those concerned with planning and decision making ever said "the king has
no clothes on" or ever recognized as purely wishful thinking the assumption
that official denials of responsibility by Washington would be plausible to
anyone, least of all the U.S. press, given the character and scale of the
invasion. The hope persisted despite the growing volume of both news and
rumor in the press and the conviction in both Miami and Havana that something
big was going to happen soon. Disclaimability, in a technical sense meaning
the suppression of hard evidence of U.S. government sponsorship, was taken
seriously by all concerned and insisted upon as a policy at a significant cost
in operational effectiveness. It was not appreciated that the operation was
bound to be universally attributed to the U.S. government, regardless of hard
evidence, and that all efforts to maintain technical disclaimability would buy
little or nothing in the form of political advantage or more favorable world
opinion. That this was a major mistake is evident, but it was not a mistake
put over on policymakers by operators. Anyone reading the New York Times
should have known better.
That powerful and effective air cover was an absolute prerequisite for
success was clearly understood by the project staff in the CIA, by the three
JCS representatives who worked closely with the project organization, and
most keenly of all by the marine colonel who was the senior military com-
mander. Moreover, this position was repeatedly presented to the president
and the senior policymakers involved at the successive White House review
meetings. It obviously did not carry complete conviction, a failure for which
there were several explanations. At least one cabinet member, drawing on
his World War 11 experience, believed that even a major infiltration might be
feasible without air cover. There was on the part of the president himself and
his political advisers a strong desire not to have the landing look like a
miniature World War II action but to appear instead as a more unobtrusive
guerrillalike undertaking. As the process of whittling away the authorization
for strategic air attacks continued during the planning phase, it was difficult
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 for the operators to specify the exact minimum level of activity that would
be adequate but below which cancellation of the project should be recom-
mended. The inherent margin of error and uncertainty is much too large to
permit such a black or white operational judgment. In the event, the project's
military commander believed after the D-2 strike that the attempt was worth
making, with the one additional full-strength strike planned and authorized
until late on D-1 for D-day. By the time it was canceled, the brigade was
already entering the Bay of Pigs. The Taylor Committee report was probably
correct in concluding that Cabell and Bissell were negligent in failing to make
a last attempt to persuade the president by telephone to reverse his decision.
Be that as it may, it can hardly be claimed that those in charge of the operation
either suffered from this particular misconception or tolerated it in policy
discussions. They thought themselves overruled on the basis of political
considerations.
The CIA, and more specifically those in charge of the operation, has
more responsibility for the undoubted misunderstanding about the guerrilla
option. So long as a landing was contemplated near Trinidad on the south
coast, it was realistic to plan for a retreat into the neighboring Escambray
mountains in the event of an impending or actual defeat by Castro's regular
forces. With the change of locale to the Bay of Pigs, this became completely
unrealistic; in any scenario in which the brigade could not hold that beachhead,
there was no possibility that it could reach the Escambray area. It was rather
lightheartedly assumed by the CIA that the swampy regions around the Bay
of Pigs, while utterly different geographically from the mountains near Trin-
idad, could support guerrilla operations. (There was even some historical
evidence from Spanish days to support this view.) The unsatisfactory handling
of this problem reflected a basic deficiency in the operational planning: the
absence of a fallback plan for the contingency of an inability to stabilize the
beachhead. Neither the guerrilla option in the swamps nor possibilities of
exfiltration were carefully explored. The president was thus left with an
impression that a less than disastrous option would be available in the event
of an initial lack of success.
As to the fourth misconception about the prospects for, and probable
timing of, widespread internal rebellion, the evidence is clear. As Allen Dulles
has stated more than once, in other places as well as in his draft of a magazine
article, it was neither his expectation nor that of those in charge of the operation
that extensive internal resistance or uprising was to be expected until a beach-
head had been seized, consolidated, held against attack by conventional forces,
and endured whatever siege Castro could mount for at least some days. What
was contemplated was a period in which the brigade's aircraft would totally
dominate Cuban airspace, operating out of the strip on the beachhead, and
would be used against strategic military targets (any remaining aircraft and
armor), telecommunications (the telephone system relied heavily on micro-
wave towers), and transportation. Radio transmissions from the beachhead
would be used both to create confusion and to advertise Castro's inability to
recapture it. Small diversionary landings would be made at remote locations
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380 DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
bl.
on the island. Only after a week or more of this treatment was it anticipated
that internal resistance might begin to materialize, probably more in the form
of guerrilla action than of an uprising. The president, or other policymakers,
may have formed an exaggerated impression of the contribution to be expected
from spontaneous rebellion on the island, but there is no support in the record
for the view that the CIA indulged in or promulgated such unrealistic optimism.
The thrust of these comments up to this point has been that there was
no negligent failure by the intelligence and military advisers to inform Pres-
ident Kennedy and other senior policymakers about weaknesses in the invasion
plan, with the exception of the absence of a contingency plan for an initial
defeat. There were, to be sure, assumptions which turned out to be inaccurate
but nevertheless represented the best honest judgment of those in charge of
the operation. For instance. the president was never told that the t..
i
a
arm was potentially inadequate for its tasK, but this was because the project
planners' analysis was defective, to their ruin, and not because either facts
or judgments were being concealed. The overriding example was the failure
of the agency to call attention to the absurdity of attempting to maintain
plausible disclaimability, which the policymakers should have been able to
judge for themselves, or the costs in terms of operational effectiveness that
this policy imposed. In short, it has been argued here that the only clear case
of misleading by negligence concerned the guerrilla option.
Vandenbroucke suggests, however, that a much more serious charge
than negligence should perhaps be leveled at the "intelligence advisers" to
the effect that they lobbied for the invasion in the expectation that after it
was launched, operational restrictions laid down by the president would in
the stress of threatened failure be relaxed, and that they did so with the
deliberate intent of drawing the president into a situation where he would be
forced to abandon the policy limits he had been so eager to preserve.
This is an allegation about motives. As such, it can be neither proved
nor disproved, especially since most of the people involved have left the
scene, but one remark will be ventured here by way of commentary. Many
of us, like Dulles himself, believed there was a possibility that, in the event
of trouble, restrictions would be relaxed, possibly even on the use of U.S.
aircraft. The profound hope and the expectation in the CIA was that there
would not be a crisis which would call for such a drastic policy change. There
was never any trace of a conspiratorial alternative operational plan based on
the assumption that the president's hand would be forced.
Vandenbroucke is entirely correct, however, in poidting out that an
eager operational group, presenting a plan of action, can and must be expected
to put on its best face. If there are to be operational plans in government, or
elsewhere, there have to be enthusiastic people to conceive them, develop
them, submit them for approval, and become advocates in the process. For
these people to put their best foot forward in policy discussion, so long as
the facts and the assumptions on which projections rest are honestly and
accurately presented, does not constitute the willful misleading of the poli-
cymakers who must finally decide whether the plans are to be carried out.
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