It was now late Sunday afternoon. When Rusk said that the projected strike was one which could only appear to come from Nicaragua, Kennedy said, “I’m not signed on to this”; the strike he knew about was the one coming ostensibly from the beachhead. After a long conversation, the President directed that the strike be canceled. When he put down the phone, he sat on in silence for a moment, shook his head and began to pace the room in evident concern, worried perhaps less about this decision than about the confusion in the planning; what would go wrong next? Those with him at Glen Ora had rarely seen him so low.
Bundy promptly passed on the word to General C. P. Cabell, the deputy director of CIA, and Rusk sent Bundy off to New York to answer any further questions from Stevenson. Soon Cabell and Bissell, deeply disturbed by the decision, arrived at Rusk’s office—it was now evening—and tried to reopen the case. They argued that both the flotilla and the landing would be endangered if there were no dawn strike. Rusk replied that the ships could unload in darkness before Castro’s planes located them and that after the landing the B-26s could defend the beaches from airstrips on shore. The vigorous discussion gave Rusk the impression that CIA regarded the Nicaraguan strike as important but not vital. He suggested to Cabell and Bissell that, if they wanted to carry their case further, they could appeal to the President, but they declined to do so. Instead, they retired to CIA and dejectedly sent out the stop order, which arrived in Nicaragua as the pilots were waiting in their cockpits for take-off.
At four-thirty the next morning Cabell awoke Rusk with a new proposal—that, if the invasion ships retired to international waters, they receive air cover from a United States carrier nearby. Rusk rejected this as a violation of the ban against United States participation, and Kennedy, to whom Cabell this time appealed at Glen Ora, confirmed the rejection. . . . Already the expeditionary force was at its stations off the Bay of Pigs, and frogmen were beginning to mark the invasion points on shore. The first frogman on each beach was, in spite of Kennedy’s order, an American.
2. FIASCO
The frogmen almost immediately encountered a militia patrol, rifle fire shattered the silence, and hope of tactical surprise was gone. On the ships the Cubans watched wild flashes of lights on shore and then began with uncertain hearts to clamber into landing craft. Some of the small boats, as they made their way through black waters, ran against coral reefs, not mentioned in the briefing, and foundered, the men swimming to other boats or toward land. Gradually the invaders gathered on the beaches and pushed inland. After daybreak paratroops dropped from the skies and seized interior points.
Castro’s air force, alerted by the first clash, reacted with unexpected vigor against both the ships and the men on the beaches. At nine-thirty in the morning, a Sea Fury sank the ship carrying the ammunition reserve for the next ten days and most of the communications equipment: an inexplicable concentration of treasure in a single hull. Other ships suffered damage, and the rest of the flotilla put out to sea. The Brigade’s slow-moving B-26s flew defensive missions over the beachhead, but Castro’s forgotten T-33s, fast jet trainers armed with 50-calibre machine guns, shot four of them down. The fighting went on through a hot, clear day, the invaders digging in behind their tanks, bazookas and mortars, while Castro’s forces, unable to cross the swamps, massed to move down the highways toward the beaches.
In Havana Castro’s police arrested two hundred thousand people, herding them into theaters and auditoriums. Through the island anyone suspected of underground connections was taken into custody. In New York the Cuban Revolutionary Council had become mysteriously inaccessible, for Miró had privately agreed with the CIA that the Council should go into hiding. By Sunday night they were installed in a house in the Opa-Locka airport to await transfer to the beachhead and establishment as the provisional government of a free Cuba. The next morning, as they listened to the radio, they were stunned to hear an announcement “from the Cuban Revolutionary Council” that the invasion had begun. Unknown to them, a New York public relations man who had once worked for Wendell Willkie, Lem Jones, was putting out in the name of the Council press releases dictated over the phone by the CIA.
In Washington President Kennedy arrived back by helicopter from Glen Ora early Monday morning. Dean Rusk told a press conference later that morning, “The American people are entitled to know whether we are intervening in Cuba or intend to do so in the future. The answer to that question is no. What happens in Cuba is for the Cuban people to decide.” An angry diplomatic note came in from Khrushchev, denouncing the invasion and pledging “all necessary assistance” to Castro. During the day the news from the beaches was confused and fragmentary as a result of the loss of communications facilities; but Washington could still remain hopeful. In the late afternoon a new bulletin announced in the name of the Council, “The principal battle of the Cuban revolt against Castro will be fought in the next few hours. Action today was largely of a supply and support effort.” It concluded by calling for “a coordinated wave of sabotage and rebellion.”
That evening José Figueres came to my house for dinner with Berle and Mann. I had never seen him so despondent. Afraid that the invasion would fail, he resented the fact that the United States government had not taken him or Betancourt into its confidence. “How can we have an alliance,” he said, almost bitterly, “if even our friends will not believe that we can be trusted with secrets? I may disagree with something, but I still can be trusted to keep quiet about it.” It was a glum party, shadowed with apprehension.
By early Tuesday it was clear that the invasion was in trouble. An attempt to knock out Castro’s planes by a B-26 raid that morning had been frustrated by heavy haze over the airfield. I noted later that day: “The T-33s turned out to be far more effective than any of us had been led to suppose. This created havoc. . . . In addition, Castro tanks reached the beachhead sooner than had been expected. And the landings failed to set off mass uprisings behind the lines.” The President asked me to luncheon with James Reston. In spite of the news, Kennedy was free, calm and candid; I had rarely seen him more effectively in control. Saying frankly that reports from the beaches were discouraging, he spoke with detachment about the problems he would now face. “I probably made a mistake in keeping Allen Dulles on,” he said. “It’s not that Dulles is not a man of great ability. He is. But I have never worked with him, and therefore I can’t estimate his meaning when he tells me things. . . . Dulles is a legendary figure, and it’s hard to operate with legendary figures.” As for CIA, “we will have to do something. . . . I must have someone there with whom I can be in complete and intimate contact—someone from whom I know I will be getting the exact pitch.” He added, “I made a mistake in putting Bobby in the Justice Department. He is wasted there. Byron White could do that job perfectly well. Bobby should be in CIA. . . . It is a hell of a way to learn things, but I have learned one thing from this business—that is, that we will have to deal with CIA. McNamara has dealt with Defense; Rusk has done a lot with State; but no one has dealt with CIA.”
Could anything be done about the invasion? Kennedy seemed deeply concerned about the members of the Brigade. They were brave men and patriots; he had put them on the beachhead; and he wanted to save as many as he could. But he did not propose to send in the Marines. Some people, he noted, were arguing that failure would cause irreparable harm, that we had no choice now but to commit United States forces. Kennedy disagreed. Defeat, he said, would be an incident, not a disaster. The test had always been whether the Cuban people would back a revolt against Castro. If they wouldn’t, the United States could not by invasion impose a new regime on them. But would not United States prestige suffer if we let the rebellion flicker out? “What is prestige?” Kennedy asked. “Is it the shadow of power or the substance of power? We are going to work on the substance of power. No doubt we will be kicked in the can for the next couple of weeks, but that won’t affect the main business.”
That afternoon we met in the Cabinet Room to consi
der a reply to Khrushchev. Rusk and Bundy were there, with some new faces—Charles E. Bohlen and Foy Kohler, the Soviet experts, and Harlan Cleveland to cover the United Nations. Bohlen wrote the original draft, and the President amended it to his satisfaction. “I believe, Mr. Chairman,” the message finally said, “that you should recognize that free peoples in all parts of the world do not accept the claim of historical inevitability for communist revolution. What your Government believes is its own business; what it does in the world is the world’s business. The great revolution in the history of man, past, present and future, is the revolution of those determined to be free.”
It was a long and grim day—the longest and grimmest the New Frontier had known. The reports from Cuba continued sketchy, but whatever news there was was bad. Hour after hour, hope steadily drained away. By late afternoon we learned that twenty thousand government troops with artillery and tanks were moving toward the water to encircle the invaders. Yet the Brigade fought on, its leaders still sustained by the dream of United States intervention—a dream stimulated, they later said, by assurances from Americans in the ships offshore.* We could not rid our minds of the thought of those brave men, running short of ammunition, without adequate air cover, dying on Cuban beaches before Soviet tanks. That morning, when CIA had assured San Román he would be taken off the beach, the Brigade commander replied: “I will not be evacuated. We will fight to the end here if we have to.”
At the White House it was the night of the annual Congressional Reception. The President lingered in the West Wing until the last possible minute, still hopeful for a turn in the news, still determined to bring out as many survivors as he could. Then he went somberly back to the Mansion to put on white tie and tails. A few moments later, his head high, he entered the East Room and mingled serenely with the guests.
In the meantime, I had gone home dead tired to Georgetown. Around one in the morning, as I was getting into bed, the phone rang. It was Mac Bundy. He said, “I am in the President’s office, and he would like to have you come down here as soon as possible.” When I arrived, I found the President, the Vice-President, Rusk, McNamara, Lemnitzer and Burke, all resplendent in full dress, along with Bissell, Bundy and Walt Rostow. They were gloomily reading dispatches from the beachhead. Mac said to me as I entered: “We have no real news, but we fear that things are going badly. In anycase, the Revolutionary Council is very upset. Some of its members are threatening extreme action. The President wants Berle to go down and talk with them. If we can’t find Berle, he wants you.”
In a moment the President took charge. He was objective and trenchant in his questions; but absence of information made decision difficult. Bissell and Burke were proposing a concealed United States air strike from the carrier Essex lying off Cuba. This, they said, could knock out the T-33s and free the Brigade’s B-26s to deal with Castro’s tanks. The group discussed this proposal in a desultory and rather distracted way; it seemed to be a renewal of a debate which had begun before I arrived. Finally the President evolved a compromise. He decided to authorize a flight of six unmarked jets from the Essex over the Bay of Pigs for the hour after dawn Wednesday morning. Their mission would be to cover a B-26 attack from Nicaragua. They were not to seek air combat or ground targets, but could defend the Brigade planes from air attack; it seemed a somewhat tricky instruction, since it meant that the Castro planes would either have to let the B-26s go or invite return fire from the jet convoy. The President probably permitted this single relaxation of his ban against the use of United States armed force in the hope that it might make possible the evacuation of the Brigade from the beachhead. (In Puerto Cabezas, the Cuban pilots were in a state of exhaustion from 48 hours of nearly continuous runs over the beachhead. A few now declined to go out on what seemed a suicide mission. Some American civilian pilots, under contract to the CIA, agreed, however, to fly sorties. Both the B-26s and the Navy jets started out later that night, but through one more mix-up in this doomed adventure—this one as elementary as a mix-up between the Nicaraguan and Cuban time zones—the B-26s arrived over the beachhead an hour ahead of their jet support. Without cover, the B-26s ran into sharp enemy fire, and four Americans were killed.)
In a short while Berle arrived. The President then turned to the problem of the Revolutionary Council. “One member is threatening suicide,” he said. “Others want to be put on the beachhead. All are furious with CIA. They do not know how dismal things are. You must go down and talk to them.” Berle said, “Yes,” then added wryly, “I can think of happier missions.” As the meeting broke up around two in the morning, Kennedy called me over and said, “You ought to go with Berle.” Later that night, when the group had left his office, the President walked alone in the desolate silence of the White House garden.
3. MISSION TO MIAMI
A military plane was waiting when Berle and I arrived at National Airport. In a few minutes we were heading south. For a while we discussed the strategy of the morrow. Adolf’s voice was low, and I could hardly hear him over the roar of the engines. Then we went into our berths for fitful sleep. Very soon we were awakened with word that we were approaching Miami.
About seven o’clock we debouched into a hot, clear Florida day. The famous Bender met us and took us with conspicuous stealth to an automobile parked nearby. We drove for a while; then stopped at a hamburger stand, where we met a second car. One began to feel like a character out of a Hitchcock film. Then we started driving again, through mile after mile of sterile Miami landscape. Eventually we reached the deserted airbase of Opa-Locka.
We stopped first at an old hangar now serving as headquarters for the CIA contingent. Here we called Washington to get the latest word. As usual, there was nothing—no report yet, for example, from the air strike scheduled for seven-thirty. More news, we were told, might be available at ten o’clock. Then back to the automobile and on for another two minutes until we came to a stop a few yards from a nondescript frame house deep in the encampment. Young American GIs, their revolvers conspicuous in holsters, were patrolling the grounds. We entered the house. It was about eight-fifteen. A radio was playing in the background. As we stumbled onto the sunporch, a young man lying asleep on a cot stirred uneasily and got up. It was, I soon discovered, Manuel Ray.
Our arrival brought the house to life. In a few moments we were all seated around a plain wooden table. The members of the Council wore khaki fatigues: Miró Cardona, with a son on the beachhead; Tony Varona, with a son, two brothers and two nephews; Antonio Maceo, with a son; Ray; Justo Carrillo; and Carlos Hevia. Bender and two CIA people joined the group.
Miró Cardona looked ten years older than the man with whom Berle and I had lunched at the Century a short week before. He spoke to us with deep earnestness. It was, he said, a life-and-death struggle and not too late to turn the tide. He talked of sending in more contract fliers. In any case, he said, the only excuse the Revolutionary Council could now offer the people of Cuba was to be permitted to die with the men on the beaches. “It is this,” he said with immense gravity, “which I request, this which I beg.”
Miró was followed by Varona. Where Miró was melancholy, Varona was intense, florid and truculent. For five minutes it was hard to make out what he was trying to say. Then there began to emerge from his resonant periods a violent indictment of CIA. CIA, he said, had not consulted with the Council nor coordinated with resistance groups inside Cuba. All it had done was to land 1400 men at the worst possible place. Why no uprisings behind the lines? CIA had entirely disregarded the resistance groups. Why had his own men not been used? (Miró interrupted to say that Manuel Ray’s men had not been used either.) As for the B-26s, the Brigade was now running out of pilots, while thirty experienced Cuban pilots were sitting around Miami yearning for an opportunity to fight for their homeland. Varona said vehemently that he had inspected the camps in Guatemala; that the CIA had deceived him; that on returning to Miami he had urged the sons of his friends to enlist. It was evident that he had condemned t
hese young men, the flower of their generation, to a wretched death.
What could be done now? Evacuation was impossible. The only possible course, Varona said, was to put United States planes into the battle and, if this was not enough, to send the Marines. After all, Castro had Soviet planes, Soviet tanks, Soviet technicians. Why could not the United States do as much for its friends? If this were not done, no Cuban would ever trust the United States again. And, if this were not done, then the great United States would have been whipped by Fidel Castro. The Americans, he said grimly, could not hope to escape responsibility. The men dying on the beaches might be Cuban; but the training, the command, the timing, the decision to invade—all were American. Did not Washington understand that its whole future in Latin America turned on whether it could meet the challenge of Castro in Cuba?
Justo Carrillo spoke next. He said soberly that confidence in the United States depended on its capacity to fulfill its democratic professions. Kennedy’s social and economic program—the Alliance for Progress and the Cuban White Paper—were right, but he had not yet developed the military foundations for his new course. He had revised State Department policy, but he had not yet succeeded in revising CIA policy. Maceo added that the struggle in Cuba was not between two groups of Cubans but between two ways of life; failure on the beaches would mean a world-wide defeat for democracy. If Castro could successfully defy the United States, more and more of Latin America would move into his orbit.
Manuel Ray was next—soft-spoken, direct, non-rhetorical and exceedingly impressive. His group, he said, had argued that the proper strategy was internal insurrection, not external invasion. He had tried in vain to interest the CIA in this approach. “We could get no support for our proposal. There were guerrillas in the Escambray, but they only received help when it could no longer be used. There has never been any serious attempt to support internal uprisings.” Instead, the CIA had gambled everything on invasion. When Miró had communicated this decision to the Council, “we did not like it,” Ray said; “but, if that is what the leading nation of the free world wanted, we saw no alternative to going along with it. We did not wish to do anything which would help the communists. For this reason, contrary to our convictions, we accepted the second strategy.”
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