A Thousand Days

by Arthur M. Schlesinger

  Late in February the Chiefs sent an inspection team to the Guatemala base. In a new report in early March, they dropped the point about external support and hinged victory on the capacity of the assault to produce anti-Castro action behind the lines. From the viewpoint of the Joint Chiefs, then, the Cuban resistance was indispensable to success. They could see no other way—short of United States intervention—by which an invasion force of a thousand Cubans, no matter how well trained and equipped nor how stout their morale, could conceivably overcome the 200,000 men of Castro’s army and militia.

  The pace of events was quickening. Roberto Alejos, the Guatemalan planter whose finca had been sheltering the Brigade, arrived in Washington in early March with a letter from President Ydígoras to President Kennedy. Ydígoras wrote that the presence of the Cubans was a mounting embarrassment and that he must request assurances that they depart by the end of April. For its part, the CIA reported that the Cubans themselves were clamoring to move; the spirit of the Brigade had reached its peak, and further postponement would risk demoralization. Moreover, the rainy season was about to begin, the ground would turn into volcanic mud, and training would have to stop. And there was another potent reason for going ahead: Castro, the CIA said, was about to receive jet airplanes from the Soviet Union along with Cuban pilots trained in Czechoslovakia to fly them; once the MICs arrived, an amphibious landing would turn into a slaughter. After June 1, it would take the United States Marines and Air Force to overthrow Castro. If a purely Cuban invasion were ever to take place, it had to take place in the next few weeks.

  By mid-March the President was confronted, in effect, with a now-or-never choice.

  3. CUBA IN THE CABINET ROOM

  On March 11, about a week after my return from Latin America, I was summoned to a meeting with the President in the Cabinet Room. An intimidating group sat around the table—the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, three Joint Chiefs resplendent in uniforms and decorations, the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, the chairman of the Latin American Task Force and appropriate assistants and bottle-washers. I shrank into a chair at the far end of the table and listened in silence.

  I had first heard of the Cuban operation in early February; indeed, the day before leaving for Buenos Aires I had sent the President a memorandum about it. The idea sounded plausible enough, the memorandum suggested, if one excluded everything but Cuba itself; but, as soon as the focus was enlarged to include the rest of the hemisphere and the rest of the world, arguments against the decision gained strength. Above all, “this would be your first dramatic foreign policy initiative. At one stroke you would dissipate all the extraordinary good will which has been rising toward the new Administration through the world. It would fix a malevolent image of the new Administration in the minds of millions.”

  It was apparent now a month later that matters were still very much in flux. No final decision had yet been taken on whether the invasion should go forward at all and, if so, whether Trinidad should be the landing point. It fell to Allen Dulles and Richard M. Bissell, Jr., as the originators of the project to make the main arguments for action.

  I had known both men for more than fifteen years and held them both in high respect. As an OSS intelligence officer in London and Paris during the war, I had admired the coolness and proficiency of Dulles’s work in Bern; and, meeting him from time to time in the years after the war, I had come greatly to enjoy his company. Years in the intelligence business had no doubt given him a capacity for ruthlessness; but he was urbane, courtly and honorable, almost wholly devoid of the intellectual rigidity and personal self-righteousness of his brother. During the McCarthy years, when John Foster Dulles regularly threw innocent State Department officials to the wolves, Allen Dulles just as regularly protected CIA officers unjustly denounced on the Hill.

  Richard Bissell, whom I had known as an economist in the Marshall Plan before he turned to intelligence work and became CIA’s deputy director for operations, was a man of high character and remarkable intellectual gifts. His mind was swift and penetrating, and he had an unsurpassed talent for lucid analysis and fluent exposition. A few years before he had conceived and fought through the plan of U-2 flights over the Soviet Union; and, though this led to trouble in 1960, it still remained perhaps the greatest intelligence coup since the war. He had committed himself for the past year to the Cuban project with equal intensity. Yet he recognized the strength of his commitment and, with characteristic honesty, warned us to discount his bias. Nonetheless, we all listened transfixed—in this meeting and other meetings which followed—fascinated by the workings of this superbly clear, organized and articulate intelligence, while Bissell, pointer in hand, would explain how the invasion would work or discourse on the relative merits of alternative landing sites.

  Both Dulles and Bissell were at a disadvantage in having to persuade a skeptical new administration about the virtues of a proposal nurtured in the hospitable bosom of a previous government—a proposal on which they had personally worked for a long time and in which their organization had a heavy vested interest. This cast them in the role less of analysts than of advocates, and it led them to accept progressive modifications so long as the expedition in some form remained; perhaps they too unconsciously supposed that, once the operation began to unfold, it would not be permitted to fail.

  The determination to keep the scheme alive sprang in part, I believe, from the embarrassments of calling it off. As Dulles said at the March 11 meeting, “Don’t forget that we have a disposal problem. If we have to take these men out of Guatemala, we will have to transfer them to the United States, and we can’t have them wandering around the country telling everyone what they have been doing.” What could one do with “this asset’’ if not send it on to Cuba? If transfer to the United States was out, demobilization on the spot would create even greater difficulties. The Cubans themselves were determined to go back to their homeland, and they might well forcibly resist efforts to take away their arms and equipment. Moreover, even if the Brigade were successfully disbanded, its members would disperse, disappointed and resentful all over Latin America. They would tell where they had been and what they had been doing, thereby exposing CIA operations. And they would explain how the United States, having prepared an expedition against Castro, had then lost its nerve. This could only result, Dulles kept emphasizing, in discrediting Washington, disheartening Latin American opponents of Castro and encouraging the Fidelistas in their attack on democratic regimes, like that of Betancourt in Venezuela. Disbandment might thus produce pro-Castro revolutions all around the Caribbean. For all these reasons, CIA argued, instead of turning the Cubans loose, we must find some means for putting them back into Cuba “on their own.”

  The contingency had thus become a reality: having created the Brigade as an option, the CIA now presented its use against Cuba as a necessity. Nor did Dulles’s arguments lack force. Confronted by them, Kennedy tentatively agreed that the simplest thing, after all, might be to let the Cubans go where they yearned to go—to Cuba. Then he tried to turn the meeting toward a consideration of how this could be done with the least political risk. The first step was to form a more liberal and representative exile organization, and this the President directed should be done as soon as possible.

  Bissell then renewed the case for the Trinidad plan. Kennedy questioned it as “too spectacular.” He did not want a big amphibious invasion in the manner of the Second World War; he wanted a “quiet” landing, preferably at night. And he insisted that the plans be drawn on the basis of no United States military intervention—a stipulation to which no one at the table made objection. Thomas Mann seconded these points, stressing the probability of anti-American reactions in Latin America and the United Nations if the American hand were not well concealed. He was especially worried that the air strikes would give the show away unless they could seem plausibly to come from bases on Cuban soil; and the
Trinidad airstrip could not take B-26s. The President concluded the meeting by defining the issue with his usual crispness. The trouble with the operation, he said, was that the smaller the political risk, the greater the military risk, and vice versa. The problem was to see whether the two risks could be brought into reasonable balance.

  For the next three days the CIA planners canvassed alternative landing sites, coming up with three new possibilities, of which the most likely was about 100 miles west of Trinidad in the Zapata area around Cochinos Bay—the Bay of Pigs. The Joint Chiefs, examining these recommendations on March 14, agreed that Zapata, with its airstrip and the natural defense provided by its swamps, seemed the best of the three but added softly that they still preferred Trinidad. When we met again in the Cabinet Room on March 15, Bissell outlined the Zapata plan. The President, listening somberly, suggested some changes, mostly intended to “reduce the noise level”—such as making sure that the invasion ships would be unloaded before dawn. He then authorized CIA to continue on the assumption that the invasion would occur. But he repeated his decision against any form of United States military intervention and added carefully and categorically that he was reserving his final decision on the plan itself. The expedition, he said, must be laid on in a way which would make it possible for him to call it off as late as twenty-four hours before D-day.

  4. THE CUBAN REVOLUTIONARY COUNCIL

  In the meantime, the CIA had been carrying out Kennedy’s instruction to bring representatives of the new Cuba into the Frente. Bender, reversing his earlier position, told the Frente that it must come to an agreement with Manuel Ray and his MRP. But, though Bender changed his line, he did not change his manner, nor were the more conservative members of the Frente themselves eager to embrace Fidelismo sin Fidel. Representatives of the Frente and the MRP engaged in complex and acrimonious negotiations. After persistent CIA pressure persuaded the negotiators to return to their groups with a draft agreement, the Frente rejected the common program as too radical.

  The CIA now decided on direct intervention. On March 18 at the Skyways Motel in Miami a CIA operative—not Bender, whom the CIA belatedly concluded was not the man for the job—told the Frente that the two groups must unite, that they must together choose a provisional president for Cuba, and that if these things were not done right away, the whole project would be called off. The Frente finally caved in and reluctantly submitted a list of six possibilities for the presidency. For its part, the MRP was no happier about this coerced alliance. Ray and his people liked neither the CIA control nor the idea of an invasion, but, supposing that United States backing guaranteed success, they wanted both to defend the interests of the Cuban underground and to assure their own part in a post-Castro future. Accepting the list, they chose Dr. Miró Cardona as provisional president.

  Miró, a lawyer and professor at the University of Havana, had been a noted leader in the civil opposition to Batista. He had inspired many students to work for the revolution, and Castro made him the first prime minister of the revolutionary regime. Though Miró did not last long in the government, Castro as late as May 1960 designated him ambassador to the United States. But by July, as the process of communization advanced, Miró who had not gone on to Washington, resigned his ambassadorship and sought refuge in the Argentine Embassy. He finally came to the United States as an exile in the winter of 1960–61. He was a man of dignity and force, who faithfully represented the liberal ideals of the Cuban Revolution.

  On March 22 Varona for the Frente and Ray for the MRP signed an agreement conferring on Miró Cardona authority to organize the Cuban Revolutionary Council. The document also pledged the Council to give “maximum priority’’ to the resistance inside Cuba, declared that no one who “held an objectionably responsible position with the criminal dictatorship of Batista” was to be admitted into any armed forces organized outside Cuba and said hopefully that the military command of such forces must pledge “their full deference” to the Council’s authority. Miró then held a press conference to announce the formation of the Council as the basis for a provisional government of Cuba once it had gained “a piece of Cuban soil.” This was all very well, but the CIA regarded the agreement as no more than a placebo, and the CRC’s charter meant very little next to Bender’s checkbook. Bender now asked Miró to ratify the selection of Artime as commander of the Brigade. When he did so, Ray, Varona and Carrillo all protested; but Miró wearily explained that he had no alternative: this was what the Americans wanted, and the Americans would make the invasion a success.

  While this reorganization was going on, I learned that my assignment was to help clarify the new political objectives by preparing a White Paper on Cuba. The President told me that, if the invasion took place (the emphasis was his own), he wanted everyone in the hemisphere to know that its intent was not to bring back the old order in Cuba. “Our objection isn’t to the Cuban Revolution,” he said; “it is to the fact that Castro has turned it over to the communists.”

  Setting to work, I buried myself under a mass of papers and came up with a draft in a few days. The paper sought to explain, with documentation, the United States attitude toward the Cuban Revolution and the Castro regime. The thesis was that the first had been betrayed by the second, and that the result offered “a clear and present danger to the authentic and autonomous revolution of the Americas.” It endorsed the original aims of the Cuban Revolution and said:

  The people of Cuba remain our brothers. We acknowledge past omissions and errors in our relationship to them. The United States, along with the other nations of the hemisphere, expresses a profound determination to assure future democratic governments in Cuba full and positive support in their efforts to help the Cuban people achieve freedom, democracy and social justice.

  The White Paper concluded:

  We call once again on the Castro regime to sever its links with the international Communist movement, to return to the original purposes which brought so many gallant men together in the Sierra Maestra and to restore the integrity of the Cuban Revolution.

  If this call is unheeded, we are confident that the Cuban people, with their passion for liberty, will continue to strive for a free Cuba.

  There followed my introduction to one of the ordeals of bureaucratic Washington—the process of interdepartmental clearance. Actually Berle and Mann in State and Tracy Barnes in CIA applauded the general tone of the document and confined themselves to helpful factual suggestions. But USIA, which Edward R. Murrow had not yet succeeded in shaking loose from the platitudes of the Eisenhower era, found the piece altogether too racy and liberal. “We” could not condemn the Batista regime, they said; after all, “we” had supported it. I pointed out that the “we” in question had changed on January 20 and that it surely was not necessary for Kennedy to identify himself with all the errors of his predecessor. Similarly, I was told, “we” should not admit error in our dealings with Latin American countries; it was unbecoming, and they would not respect us in the future. But I took full advantage of the White House leverage and the presidential mandate, and the document emerged from this agony substantially intact.

  It went to the President over the weekend, and we discussed it on the following Tuesday, March 28. He was, as so often, generous in his comment but had a number of specific suggestions, mostly designed to increase the magnanimity of the text. Where, for example, I had written that the initial Castro programs were progressive in conception “if not in execution,” he wondered whether this last phrase was not “snide” and proposed its omission.

  As we finished, I said, “What do you think about this damned invasion?” He said wryly, “I think about it as little as possible.” But it was clear, as we talked, that he had of course been thinking about it a good deal. In his judgment, the critical point—the weak part of the case for going ahead—lay in the theory that the landings would touch off a mass insurrection against the regime. How unpopular was Castro anyway? I mentioned a series written by Joseph Newman, who h
ad just visited Cuba for the New York Herald Tribune, citing a piece which reported the strength of sentiment behind Castro. Kennedy said quickly, “That must have been the fourth piece—I missed it. Could you get it for me?” I sent it over that evening. In a short while he called back to ask that I talk to Newman and obtain, as hypothetically as possible, his estimate about Cuban responses to an invasion.

  We all in the White House considered uprisings behind the lines essential to the success of the operation; so too did the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and so, we thought, did the CIA. It was only later that I learned about the Anzio concept; it certainly did not come across clearly in the White House meetings. And it was much later that Allen Dulles wrote; “Much of the American press assumed at the time that this action was predicated on a mistaken intelligence estimate to the effect that a landing would touch off a widespread and successful popular revolt in Cuba. . . . I know of no estimate that a spontaneous uprising of the unarmed population of Cuba would be touched off by the landing.”* This statement plainly reflected the CIA notion that the invasion would win by attrition rather than by rebellion. It also, strictly construed, was accurate enough in itself—if due attention is paid to such key words as “spontaneous,” “unarmed” and “landing.” Obviously no one expected the invasion to galvanize the unarmed and unorganized into rising against Castro at the moment of disembarkation. But the invasion plan, as understood by the President and the Joint Chiefs, did assume that the successful occupation of an enlarged beachhead area would rather soon incite organized uprisings by armed members of the Cuban resistance.