JFK: CIA, Vietnam & The Plot to Assassinate JFK

by L. Fletcher Prouty

  The U-2 came down in Sverdlovsk, halfway to its goal. Powers, alive and well, was captured by the Soviets. This incident destroyed the effectiveness of the summit conference and brought about the cancellation of the invitation to President Eisenhower to visit Moscow. It also ended Ike’s dream of the Crusade for Peace.

  The same man who was in charge of the Cuban exile program and the vast overflight program that supported the Khambas, Richard Bissell, deputy director of plans for the CIA, was the man who ran the U-2 program and who, ostensibly, sent the Powers flight over the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960.

  Through this crescendo of events, the CIA kept the pressure on Vietnam8 and moved the Cuban exile project along. On August 18, 1960, the President and a few members of his cabinet were briefed by the CIA on these developments, and a budget of $13 million was approved. Additionally, military personnel and equipment were made available for the CIA’s use. Although the plan devised after Kennedy’s election seemed to be the same as the original one approved by Eisenhower, those familiar with day-to-day developments noted a change. A number of Cuban overflights had been flown, usually in Air America9 C-46 or C-54 transport aircraft. The crews were Cuban exiles. They were scheduled to hit selected drop-zone targets at night, based on signals from the ground. Few of these missions, if any, were ever successful, and reports reaching the Pentagon were that “Castro was getting a lot of good equipment free.”

  There were a number of over-the-beach landings from U.S. Navy ships that targeted sugar refineries, petroleum storage sites, and other prime targets for sabotage. These met with some success. But many exile teams disappeared and were never heard from again. The CIA and Cuban exile leaders either underestimated or did not believe in the total effectiveness of Castro’s “block” system.10 They could not get through its surveillance.

  Faced with the reality of this situation, certain key CIA planners took advantage of the lame-duck administration to change the approved concept for the Cuban paramilitary operations. By midsummer, moves were designed to build a Cuban exile strike force to land on the Cuban coast. The three-hundred-man operation had grown to a three-thousand-man invasion. By June 1960, the CIA obtained a number of B-26 aircraft from the U.S. Air Force, each modified with eight .50-caliber aerial-type machine guns in the nose section. Those aircraft were aerodynamically “cleaner,” with fewer antennas and protrusions to slow them down, and hence faster than the original World War II models. They packed tremendous firepower. Many of these B-26s had been used by the CIA in the aborted Indonesian rebellion of 195811 and were moved from Far East hideaways for use by the Cuban exiles.

  The CIA had already consolidated its rather considerable covert air apparatus from air bases in Europe and Asia to a semisecret facility on Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. While this air force was being assembled at a modification facility in Arizona and an operations base in Florida, the CIA made a deal with Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes, president of Guatemala, and his close friend, Roberto Alejo Arzu, a wealthy landowner, to begin the improvement of a small airport at Retalhuleu in western Guatemala.

  By summer 1960, around-the-clock construction was under way, under the management of a “nonexistent” firm known as the Cornwall-Thompson Company. Before long, a large assembly of C-46s and C-54s from Air America, along with the B-26s, took shape, and all further training was keyed to the landing operation on Cuban soil. While the Cuban program was being escalated, the CIA and its allies in the Pentagon took advantage of the political hiatus. They had so many covert programs under way and so many more planned that they had to make some arrangements for an enormous increase in available manpower.

  The National Security Council’s 5412/2 Committee, which was empowered to direct covert operations, had approved the limited use of military personnel for Cuban training. That approval opened the door to other cases and other clandestine operations. This is what CIA Director Allen Dulles used to call “peacetime operations,” meaning clandestine operations. Some years later the Reagan administration—which included some of the same undercover operatives from the 1950s—referred to these clandestine operations as “low-intensity conflicts” by “special operations forces.”

  It is traditional that the uniformed armed forces of one nation are not to be used in or against another nation, except in time of war, without some specific agreement, such as the NATO plan. This generally means in time of a declared war. Up to 1960, as a result of the specific prohibitions of NSC 5412, the U.S. government honored this tradition, with very few exceptions, and limited the use of arms to specific actions. This is one reason why the Bay of Pigs tactical plan did not include any reference to “air cover” to be provided by U.S. forces.

  Nations, and nationalism, survive because of the existence of the fragile structure called sovereignty. True sovereignty must be absolute. If sovereignty is not recognized by the entire family of nations—large and small, rich and poor, developed and underdeveloped—nationalism will crumble, and the larger nations will devour smaller ones before the last act, when those left will begin to devour each other, like scorpions in a bottle.

  To be practical, we must admit that true.sovereignty no longer exists. No nation today is free and absolutely sovereign. To be truly sovereign, a state must in no way be limited by external authority or influence. The United States is, in one way or another, under some degree of influence from other nations every day, and vice versa. The fact of the existence of the H-bomb and its uncontrollable power denies sovereignty to all nations. This fact has eroded sovereignty to the point that a small country, such as Israel, can boldly destroy a nuclear power plant in Iraq and a revolutionary camp in Tunisia, and demolish Lebanon, at will.

  In today’s matrix of nations, the power elite controllers12 are attempting to structure something to take the place of nationalism and sovereignty in a “New World Order.”

  Thus, we have had the increasing use of military forces in nonmilitary roles, as in the indiscriminate carpet bombing of defenseless Cambodia. The CIA has been the leading edge of this change, and by 1960, during the transition period, it saw a way to make elements of the military available to itself for its ever-increasing “covert” operations. Of course, in this context the whole idea of “covert,” “clandestine,” or “secret” operations became ridiculous. Such operations could not be kept secret; they were called “secret” to avoid accounting for the vast sums of the “black” budget expended to support them and as a means of disciplining the media and any possible whistle-blowers.

  The first step in this move for military support was for the CIA to join with the Office of Special Operations in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, where Lansdale and other CIA agents were assigned, to completely rebuild and enlarge the army’s Special Forces units—the Green Berets of Vietnam in the 1960s. The army’s Special Forces units had been allowed to decline, and morale had deteriorated at Fort Bragg.

  Then a sudden change occurred. Lansdale, who had returned from Vietnam after completing his job as chief of the Saigon Military Mission and confidant of President Ngo Dinh Diem, found a way to bypass the conventional U.S. Army channels to reinvigorate the army’s Special Forces with the help of the CIA and friends in the Defense and State departments. He won approval to activate a new Special Forces school and to increase the size of the Special Forces center at Fort Bragg for U.S. troops and selected personnel from foreign armies.

  He could not be sure of top-level U.S Army approval and support for his bold plan, so he went around them. While everyone else had become occupied with the final days of the presidential campaign, Lansdale, his longtime associate Col. Sam Wilson, and this writer flew to the U.S. Army Civil Affairs and Military Government School at Fort Gordon, Georgia, in October 1960, for a meeting with its commanding officer. During this meeting, Lansdale arranged to get a copy of the curriculum of that school, which—in the space of one week—we converted into a “Cold War” curriculum for use at the Special Forces center.

  Lansdale, the CIA, a
nd their Special Forces associates rushed this curriculum into print. The then deputy secretary of defense, James Douglas, cut the ribbon for the center, which became known as the Army Special Forces John F Kennedy Center. The President-elect, ironically, had nothing to do with it.

  This ceremonial opening was so hurried that “instructors” were reading and “teaching” from lesson guides they had never seen before, and the foreign “students” were so few in number that they were rushed from one classroom to another while Deputy Secretary Douglas was being shown Special Forces weapons—the longbow, the crossbow, flechettes,13 and so forth.

  Not to be outdone during this crucial lame-duck period, the CIA’s deputy director for plans, Richard Bissell, made more moves. The departing members on the 5412/2 Committee would no longer have any interest in the covert Cuban exile training program. They would be glad to forget the many failures as the Cuban exiles, time after time, did not accomplish their projected goals in Cuba.

  On November 4, 1960, with the election set to take place four days later, the CIA dispatched a cable to the Bay of Pigs project officer in Guatemala, directing a reduction of the guerrilla training and the introduction of conventional training of an amphibious and airborne assault force. This was named “Operation Trinidad,” after the beach on which the invaders were originally supposed to land.

  CIA officials made this major change on their own, without specific approval. They knew that if Nixon became President, he would go along with their decision anyway, since he had been the most vehement anti-Castro agitator at the top level.14 When JFK reappointed Allen Dulles as CIA director, they figured they could go ahead with invasion planning.

  With Dulles continuing as head of the CIA, agency leaders were confident they could work with, or around, Kennedy, and they contrived to lock him into as many programs as possible. This agency’s momentum accelerated during the postelection period. Dulles briefed the President-elect on November 29, 1960, and the new plan was formally presented to the outgoing NSC 5412/2 Committee on December 8. There is no record of that Special Group’s approval on December 8, but the CIA continued with Operation Trinidad. (This plan was discussed with members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff between January 11 and 19, 1961.)

  I was the last officer to brief the outgoing secretary of defense on the subject of Operation Trinidad on his final day in office, while a major blizzard raged over Washington. It can be stated emphatically that the final tactical plan for the invasion that was approved by President Kennedy on Sunday, April 16, at about 1:45 P.M. could well have succeeded. It was based fundamentally on the prior use of four Cuban exile-piloted B-26s to destroy Castro’s small combat air force. The first attack had been made on April 15 and had put most of those planes out of commission. Only three remained intact.

  The concept behind the Bay of Pigs tactical plan was similar to that of the 1956 British-French clandestine attack on Nasser’s air force in Egypt, which destroyed his entire combat air force first, making it possible for Gen. Moshe Dayan’s Israeli army to dash across the Sinai to the Suez Canal without attacks from the air. This similar plan for the Cuban brigade was sabotaged15 from the inside, however, after JFK had approved it that Sunday afternoon of April 16.

  Zapata, the beach on the Bay of Pigs, had been selected on purpose because there was an airstrip there suitable for B-26 operations against Castro’s ground forces. It was isolated and could be reached only via causeways or the narrow beach itself.

  The brigade could take over the airstrip after securing the beachhead, and B-26s flown by Cuban pilots operating from that strip could have overwhelmed any Castro force approaching via the causeways. But this excellent tactical plan was predicated upon the total destruction of Castro’s entire force of combat-capable aircraft.

  Thus, a second attack was scheduled to knock out Castro’s three remaining aircraft at dawn on Monday before the brigade hit the beach and alerted Castro’s air defenses. It was absolutely essential that those three aircraft be eliminated first. Kennedy understood that key element of the strategy when he made the decision, on Sunday, to proceed with the Monday, April 17, landing, specifically approving the dawn air strike by four B-26 bombers from Nicaragua to wipe out those last three jets.

  The overall second phase of the plan, now called “Operation Zapata,” included a Cuban government-in-exile, on the beach if necessary, after the brigade had held Cuban soil for at least seventy-two hours. It had been planned that the Cuban government-in-exile would call upon the Organization of American States (OAS) for support of the brigade immediately and that the United States, with nominal OAS assistance, would sustain the brigade and its new government.

  With this show of strength and determination, the CIA forecast that tens of thousands of Cubans would rise to join the brigade and revolt against Castro. In short order he would either be killed, flee, or surrender. This was the plan. But between the time of Kennedy’s approval at 1:45 P.M. Sunday and the time for the release of the B-26s from the Hidden Valley base at Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, the vital dawn air strike to destroy Castro’s three remaining T-33 jets was called off by President Kennedy’s special assistant for national security affairs, McGeorge Bundy, in a telephone call to General Cabell.16

  At about 1:00 A.M. , April 17, my home phone rang in Virginia with a call from Nicaragua. It was an old friend, the CIA commander at Puerto Cabezas. He was upset. He told me that the dawn air strike had been delayed. He said, “Anything after a two A.M. departure will destroy the whole plan, because our B-26s will not be able to arrive before sunrise. The brigade will hit the beach at dawn. This will alert the air defenses and the T-33s, and we’ll lose our targets on the ground.”

  He urged me to call General Cabell at the Operation Zapata office and, using OSO/OSD authority, demand the immediate release of the B-26s. I could hear the planes’ engines running in the background of the telephone conversation. He suggested, “If I get on my bike and ride across the field, the Cubans will take off without orders.” Later, we both wished he had done that. I was unable to reach General Cabell, and Allen Dulles was out of the country. The Bay of Pigs operation came that close to a chance for success.

  After that call, I reached the CIA’s Zapata office and suggested they release the B-26s “on Kennedy’s orders” or the whole effort would fail. The CIA’s tactical commander told me that the situation “is in the hands of” the President’s special assistant for national security affairs, McGeorge Bundy; Deputy Director of Central Intelligence Charles P. Cabell; and Secretary of State Dean Rusk.

  We all understood that if the B-26s in Nicaragua did not leave very soon, the entire plan would fail. We learned later that someone else had called Nicaragua and said not to worry, other B-26s would knock out the T-33s. This is one reason so many B-26s were shot down later that day. The pilots believed there would be no air opposition—least of all from those superior T-33s.

  As a result of that top-level cancellation, those three T-33 jets, scarcely to be considered combat aircraft, yet ever so much better in aerial combat than the relatively slow B-26, shot down sixteen brigade B-26s, sank the supply ships offshore, and raked the beach with heavy gunfire. They alone were responsible for Castro’s victory over the brigade. That cancellation of the dawn air strike had created Kennedy’s defeat and brought the whole burden down on the shoulders of the new President.

  There was much about that sabotaged plan, which damaged Kennedy so drastically, that is similar to the sabotaged flight of Gary Powers’s U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960, which destroyed Eisenhower’s Crusade for Peace. Neither defeat had been the result of a normal or expected turn of events. Some of the same men, in high places, were in key positions in both projects, and Nixon had worked closely with all of them. We have wondered why, in 1964, Nixon believed that Castro had “become the most momentous figure in John F. Kennedy’s life” and why he believed that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin and that Castro had been Oswald’s hero. These are important
questions. We have just read how Castro came into JFK’s life; the Lee Harvey Oswald scenario will come later.

  Over the years since that fiasco on the Cuban beaches in April 1961, there have been many explanations for its failure, some reasonably accurate and some totally wrong. President Kennedy was quick to accept overall blame for the failure of Operation Zapata. Some have said that JFK himself caused the failure because “he denied U.S. air cover” for the embattled men on the beach. As part of the objective of this book, it is important to analyze this operation and to get as close as possible to a reasonable and factual answer to the question “Who caused the failure of the brigade’s invasion of Cuba, and how did it happen?”

  First of all, there’s the subject of air cover for the men on the beach by U.S. military aircraft manned by U.S. military personnel. On previous pages I have written with some detail that the National Security Council had established the policy that U.S. military forces cannot be used operationally in peacetime. This was established policy when Kennedy became President, and he knew it. Therefore, the U.S. Marine Corps officers who drew up the invasion plan for the CIA, and for the Cuban exile brigade, were not allowed to include any supporting role for the U.S. military. Still, this posed no real problem for them, as long as they could predicate the tactical plan on the fact that all of Castro’s combat-capable aircraft would have been eliminated before the men hit the beach.

  With this stipulation in the plan, the CIA came to my office in U.S. Air Force headquarters and requested a number of modified World War II B-26 bombers. By means of intelligence data and aerial photographs, it had been determined that Castro had ten combat-capable aircraft. Therefore, on April 15—two days before the landing—a group of these modified B-26s flew over the Havana area and destroyed seven of these aircraft. Three T-33 jet aircraft had flown to a base in the Santiago area. That afternoon one of the CIA’s U-2 spy aircraft located them parked wingtip to wingtip on a small air base.