JFK RFK MLK Assassination Forum

I've read quite a few accounts of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, disaster, cock-up; whatever you want to call it. They've all been basically the same: Kennedy 'inherited' this operation from Eisenhower; he wasn't particularly happy about it, but eventually approved its go-ahead with the proviso that he wouldn't provide USAF cover for the anti-Castro Cuban exile brigade carrying out the operation. The CIA believed, and assured the Cubans, that JFK would have no choice but to go back on his word and provide the air cover once the beach invasion started. He didn't; the invasion failed; Kennedy publicly took responsibility but sacked CIA Director Allen Dulles and privately swore to smash the CIA into a thousand pieces.Colonel L Fletcher Prouty, in his book JFK: The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy tells a slightly different story. According to Prouty, on April 16 Kennedy had approved an initial air strike at dawn, before the land invasion started, to wipe out Cuba's air power and facilitate the land invasion. That air strike was cancelled in a phone call that night from McGeorge Bundy, Special Assistant to the Pres, to General CP Cabell of the CIA, and that was the reason the operation failed.Any thoughts?

That means the hatred of the Cuban exile fighters for Kennedy was unfounded?

I've heard the Prouty story before. I have an immense amount of respect for Prouty as well. Bottom line, JFK felt like he was pushed into the "invasion" (he was), and thought it was poorly planned no matter how it turned out. In terms of being the guy who was blamed for the ill fated endeavor, JFK became the fall guy for the anti-Castro Cubans and the right wing militant types. Ironic, because Lee Harvey Oswald was blamed in a similar manner after JFK was murdered. There is ALWAYS a fall guy.

Bay of Pigs:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D22Nv6nn ... re=related

KatishaExploring that last raid.In Hunt's 1973 Give Us This Day, it was to be done with a few of the B-26 twin-engine bombers fitted with eight .50 cal. in the nose, in order to take out the three jet trainers, T-33s, which had also been fitted with .50 cal. guns.The planes were ready to go, and it was decided to get a final approval--but that approval was denied. It seems Adlai Stevenson, Ambassador to the United Nations had been "embarrassed" and "humiliated" by Fidel Castro displaying photos discounting the renegade Cuban status of these B-26s.Based upon that, the T-33s survived. The invasion force was chopped up. Douglass relates the conversation after Kennedy read Seven Days In May. Was asked, could it happen here. Answered, Yes, if the American president had a Bay of Pigs, that would be strike one; then if he made a second, and a third such blunder.Douglass posits no fewer than five such: Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis, withdrawing from Vietnam, cancelling A-tests, American University speech June 63 and perhaps a sixth and seventh with the attempts at detente with Khruschev and demarche with Castro.It was certainly a national security hit.Add some additional perspective:In the campaign, Kennedy warned of a missile gap—yes there was one, but we were at the advantage, not the Soviet Union as he said.The Joint Chiefs wanted to take out the Soviet Union before they caught up. He wanted to conduct a secret correspondence with Khruschev. He campaigned on a hard line with Castro, calling for more action than was being done by the Eisenhower-Nixon Administration—he could afford to talk tough; they had to remain silent. When he'd won and Nixon had lost he did not deliver. That must be added to the dark view taken of him.When the Secret Team had eliminated him, when Johnson had delivered them their war through the contrivance of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, he would not allow them to win the conflict.They came to him November 1965 (See The Day It Became the Longest War http://hnn.us/articles/34024.html ) to ask permission to mine Haiphong Harbor and bomb Hanoi. He cursed them and threw them out after fifteen minutes, screaming about World War III and involving the Soviet Union and China, something which gave Ho Chi Minh and his mates no end of chuckles.Johnson micromanaged the conflict, ran the numbers up to 550,000 in country, and then quit in a public boo-hoo March 1968.Waldron and Hartmann's epic double snooza-palooza to the contrary notwithstanding, neither JFK nor RFK nor LBJ nor anyone contemporary or subsequent had any intent of expelling Castro.What a loss, the botched invasion, the botched war which followed.

Gerry Patrick Hemming:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYNFvpFd7vwJudyth Vary Baker on Gerald Patrick Hemming:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQHGbeAF3gg

JFK And the Cuban Connection:http://www.dickrussell.org/articles/jfkcuban.htm

A good site about the Bay of Pigs:http://library.thinkquest.org/11046/day ... _pigs.html