Intel Today

April 17 2025 — The Bay of Pigs invasion, launched on April 17, 1961, was a failed CIA-backed attempt by Cuban exiles to overthrow Fidel Castro’s communist government in Cuba. Roughly 1,400 exiles, trained and armed by the United States, landed at Playa Girón on Cuba’s southern coast, expecting to ignite a popular uprising against Castro. But the plan quickly unraveled: Cuban intelligence had anticipated the attack, the invading force was outnumbered and outgunned, and Kennedy-approved U.S. air support was miscoordinated. Within three days, Castro’s forces had crushed the invasion, capturing or killing most of the exile fighters and dealing the U.S. a major Cold War embarrassment. The CIA quickly blamed the lack of air cover for the invasion’s failure, and this explanation has been widely accepted—even by the families of the American volunteers who died during the mission. But this is not the truth. A simple 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. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY