“I will splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.”

President John F. Kennedy
following the failed Bay of Pigs invasion
(April 1961)

November 20, 2024 — The CIA quickly blamed the lack of air cover for the Bay of Pigs invasion’s failure, and this explanation has been widely accepted, even by the families of the American volunteers who died during the mission.This is not the truth. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY

RELATED POST: On This Day — Remembering the Bombing of Cubana Flight 455 (October 6 1976)

The belief that President Kennedy completely withheld air support is a misconception, likely stemming from the broader narrative of Kennedy’s cautious stance on overt U.S. involvement in foreign conflicts.

In reality, while Kennedy did limit the scope of the operation, he understood the importance of air support and did authorize some.

Leo F. Baker (STAR 7), Wade C. Gray (STAR 8), Thomas W. Ray (STAR 9), and Riley W. Shamburger (STAR 10) were among approximately 100 members of the Alabama Air National Guard who volunteered as contract employees with the CIA’s Directorate of Plans. These four men died on the third day of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. Theses four men are honored by a star on the CIA Memorial Wall.

The real issue wasn’t a lack of authorization but a failure in execution. The CIA and U.S. Navy failed to properly coordinate the operation.

“History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.”

Napoleon Bonaparte

A time zone mix-up between Nicaragua (where the CIA-backed forces were launching) and Cuba resulted in U.S. air support arriving too late to effectively assist the invasion forces.

This lapse in coordination proved disastrous and was one of the key factors behind the operation’s collapse. This mistake caused the death of the four US pilots.

This failure is meticulously documented in the declassified CIA history of the Bay of Pigs invasion, which highlights both logistical oversights and communication breakdowns.

The CIA worked hard to keep this information secret. In fact, the CIA Inspector General Lyman Kirkpatrick’s report, which is highly critical of the agency, remained locked in a safe for 37 years.

The 150-page report places blame not on President Kennedy, but on the CIA itself, criticizing its arrogance, poor planning, and what amounts to “willful bungling.”

And here is the absolute insanity. The ‘time zone’ mistake was still uncorrected in their official tables NINE years later! Some people learn nothing from History…

Checking on ChatGPT

I wanted to know if AI was aware of this incredible error. Here is the answer:

“This event is meticulously recorded in the declassified CIA history of the Bay of Pigs invasion, highlighting both logistical oversights and communication issues.

The widely held belief that Kennedy refused any air cover is one of the persistent myths about the Bay of Pigs fiasco. The misconception that he completely withheld air support likely grew out of the larger narrative that Kennedy was cautious and wary of overt U.S. involvement. In reality, while he did limit the scope of the mission, he understood the importance of some level of air support and authorized it.

The time zone error leading to the delay is such a small yet critical detail, and it’s exactly the type of operational snafu that’s easy to overlook in public discourse. Many assume that the failure was purely due to political hesitation rather than a tactical miscalculation like this.

This subtle piece of history underlines how easily strategic plans can unravel due to what might seem like a minor logistical error. It’s also a reminder of how history often simplifies complex events into straightforward narratives—sometimes overlooking the details that can change our understanding of the decisions made.”

“Perfect Failure”

Despite his private anger, Kennedy took full responsibility for the failure in public. In a press conference on April 20, 1961, just days after the invasion, he stated:

“There’s an old saying that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan… I am the responsible officer of the government.”

This act of taking responsibility helped Kennedy politically, portraying him as willing to accept blame, although tensions between the White House and the CIA continued to simmer behind the scenes.

Following the invasion, Kennedy forced the resignation of CIA Director Allen Dulles in November 1961 and Richard Bissell, one of the key figures behind the operation’s planning, in February 1962.

There is evidence that Castro had advance knowledge of the invasion. The information likely came from Soviet signals intelligence and Cuban infiltration of exile groups.

The possibility of a high-level insider at the CIA has been suspected but was never substantiated, not even by post-Soviet evidence.

Dark Truth or Conspiracy Theory?

CIA Stan Beerli had strong suspicions about the role of the US Defense Department during the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.

“There was a great deal, in my opinion, of reservation on the whole part of the JCS on this operation. If you ask if I felt personally that they had given it their wholehearted support and enthusiastic desire to see it succeed, I would have said, ‘No.’ In fact,  I felt that there was a lot of negative feeling in the Defense Department.  That they hoped that the whole thing would back-fire in the CIA’s face.

I could not prove it to you.  But in talking to officers… even like Fletch Prouty… there was always this uppity tone… ‘Well, you non-experts are in something that we should be in, and you are going to have trouble.’

I think a lot of the senior military officers felt that by not getting too involved, they could not be blamed. This is a real frank talk, but I feel that is exactly the case. They gave it the minimum of scrutiny and therefore hoped that they would have the minimum amount of having to step up and say, “’We were part of it.’

They did just what was necessary and nothing more. So I feel that they did not provide… if you say a real hard look… as if it was one of their own operations… but they didn’t do that at any time.”

“The Kirkpatrick report wounded me. A number of his critical comments were, or may have been, valid, but that didn’t make them any more welcome to me.”

Richard Bissell
CIA planner of the Bay of Pigs Invasion
Memoirs

In his memoirs, Bissell explicitly reexamines the question of whether “we [would] have succeeded if the air strikes had not been cut back and the supply ships had not been sunk in the attack.”

Here is his conclusion:

“I believe that, even if the supply ships had been able to continue to resupply the brigade, the brigade might not necessarily have established and held the beachhead. Even in the best scenario, the air arm would have been stretched to the limits of its capabilities, and while there would have been no problem in purchasing more B-26 bombers to increase its strength, there were no additional qualified Cuban pilots to recruit. In the latter weeks of the operation it became clear that the only way to bolster the air force was to use U.S. volunteers, but doing so meant violating Kennedy’s mandate against involving U.S. military personnel.”

There is no doubt that this is the correct conclusion. So, we are left with one question. Why was this operation not aborted when it is clear that it had zero chance to succeed?

References

Bay of Pigs Victory Coin, CIA website.

Note – The quote from Kennedy has a long history. The first use can be tracked back to Tacitus, Agricola 27:1, which was written around 98AD.

“Inquissima haec bellorum condicio est: prospera omnes sibi indicant, aduersa uni imputantur,” translates to: “This is the unfair nature of wars: everyone claims the successes for themselves, but only one person is blamed for the failures.”

In 1942, the Italian Diplomat, Count Galezzo Ciano (Mussolini’s son-in-law) was almost certainly quoting a local proverb when he said: “La victoria trova cento padri, a nessuno vuole riconoscere l’insuccesso.” (“Victory has a hundred fathers, but no one wants to acknowledge the failure.”)

In 1961, responding to a question by a journalist about the Bay of Pigs, JFK put it: “Victory has 100 fathers but defeat is an orphan.”

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Bay of Pigs — The Enduring Myth of the No Air Cover Excuse