Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (72 page)

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OTHING EXPOSED THESE TENDENCIES
more clearly than Kennedy's attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro. The scheme that he and his zealous advisers ultimately carried out, an invasion at the Bay of Pigs on Cuba's southern coast, took place on April 17, fewer than three months after inauguration day. The invasion was one of the most disastrous military ventures in modern American history.

Kennedy had uncomplicated motives for approving the attack. Like Eisenhower, who had cut off diplomatic relations with Cuba in January, he was angered by Castro's volatility, his virulent anti-American rhetoric, and his growing rapprochement with the Soviet Union. People close to Kennedy, notably his father and Senator George Smathers of Florida, urged him to get rid of Castro before the Soviet Union set up a virtual satellite off the Florida coast. Columnists and editorial writers further raised a din for action. Moreover, Ike had authorized the training of attackers. To Kennedy, activist by temperament, it was tempting indeed to deploy them.
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As advisers planned an assault on Cuba, a few government officials raised doubts. Among them were liberals such as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Adlai Stevenson, whom Kennedy had named as United States Ambassador to the UN. Another doubter was Bowles, who wrote Rusk, "Our national interests are poorly served by a covert operation. . . . This . . . would be an act of war." Marine Corps Commandant David Shoup warned presciently that Cuba was a large island (800 miles long) that would be very hard to conquer. Schlesinger directly conveyed his doubts to Kennedy. So did J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who insisted that an American invasion would violate the charter of the Organization of American States (OAS). "To give this activity even covert support," he said, "is of a piece with the hypocrisy and cynicism for which the United States is constantly denouncing the Soviet Union."
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Cuba, Fulbright observed, was "a thorn in the flesh, but not a dagger in the heart."
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Most of Kennedy's high command, however, were in no mood to listen to doubters. They were energetic, self-assured, and anxious to prove themselves. Kennedy's free-wheeling administrative style, moreover, removed institutional checks that might have curbed impetuousity. McNamara approved of a plan of attack, as did Robert Kennedy. Although the Joint Chiefs had reservations, especially about the option of landing at the Bay of Pigs, they did not oppose the venture. The CIA led the enthusiasts. CIA director Allen Dulles and his number two man, Richard Bissell, were confident that their plans to assassinate Castro could be timed and coordinated with an invasion of exiles from Central America. The United States would lend naval and air support to the effort but would do so covertly. The exiles would land, whereupon anti-Castro rebels in Cuba—presumed to be chomping at the bit—would rear up and drive the dictator from office.

What Kennedy knew about the assassination plans remains unclear. Although critics assume that Judith Campbell served as a courier who kept him informed of the plots, no documentary evidence exists to connect him with planning or knowledge of such plots prior to the invasion. On the other hand, it is doubtful that the CIA would have dared to kill a head of state on its own. It was also no secret to presidential advisers, including Dulles and Bissell, that JFK wanted Castro dead. Nothing that the President did or said deterred them from urging strong action.
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The operation began with an air strike on April 15 by American planes based in Nicaragua. They were painted over to look as if they were Cuban aircraft stolen by the exiles. Meanwhile United States destroyers escorted an invasion fleet, and United States navy jets accompanied United States bombers to within five miles of the landing site. According to the original plan, planes were to launch a second air strike at the time of the invasion, thereby providing all-important cover for the amphibious operation. American frogmen, disguised as Cubans, were to be the first ashore. Kennedy and the CIA imagined that ruses such as these would hide the fact of American involvement.

Most things that could have gone wrong did. The first air strike knocked out only a few of Castro's planes and tipped him off that an attack was imminent. Indeed, well-publicized activities of Cuban exiles both in Central America and in Florida had already made it apparent that Kennedy was about to do something. News stories were full of predictions that invasion lay ahead. Pierre Salinger, Kennedy's press secretary, later observed that the invasion was the "least covert military operation in history." He added, "The only information Castro didn't have . . . was the exact time and place of the invasion." Kennedy, Salinger noted, was upset by the lack of secrecy. "I can't believe what I'm reading," he complained. "All he [Castro] has to do is read our papers. It's all laid out for him."
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Despite these potentially disastrous developments, the President determined to go ahead. But he altered earlier plans by refusing to authorize a second air strike to accompany the invasion. He feared that some of the planes in such a strike might be hit, thereby exposing the involvement of the United States. So it was on April 17 that the invaders, a brigade 1,400 men strong, began landing at the Bay of Pigs. Only 135 of them were soldiers by profession. A radio station on the beach, overlooked by the CIA, reported the assault. Coral reefs, also unforeseen, sank some of the landing craft. A drop of parachutists did not land near enough to cut off a main road to the beach. Castro's fighter planes, armed with rockets, tore into the ships and landing craft. Within twenty-four hours, fifty-four Soviet-made tanks were on the field of action. Castro went to the area and personally took charge of a counter-attack.

Well before then it was obvious that the venture was doomed. The Bay of Pigs, as some military advisers had recognized, proved a poor choice of site, for it was a swampy region from which soldiers, once trapped, could not melt away or find refuge. Instead, the brigade was pinned down near the beach and badly exposed to enemy fire. Desperate, they called for air support from fighter planes on the aircraft carrier
Essex
, some ten miles offshore. But Kennedy again demurred, and the invaders soon surrendered. In all, 114 members of the brigade lost their lives. A total of 1,189 exiles were taken prisoner.

Recrimination arose immediately and from all sources. The covertness fooled no one: Castro, Khrushchev, and other world leaders recognized from the start that the United States had planned and supported the operation, and they assailed the President. Many critics at home blamed him especially for refusing to provide air cover. General Lyman Lemnitzer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, later called this decision "absolutely reprehensible, almost criminal." Eisenhower was reported privately to have described the military operations as a "Profile in Timidity and Indecision." Later he met with Kennedy and dressed him down for not using the planes.
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Many who emphasized the potential of air support remained convinced that it would have ensured the success of the landing, whereupon the indigenous anti-Castro population would have risen to destroy his government.

Advocates of this course of action reflected a faith in the potential of air power that animated a great deal of American thought in the postwar era: again and again it was assumed—often wrongly—that air power held the key to military success. With regard to the debacle at the Bay of Pigs they were right that failure to provide air support doomed whatever chance the invaders may have had to establish themselves at the site. The critics were also correct to observe that no President would have exposed
American
men (as opposed to Cuban exiles) to devastating enemy fire without supporting them with all he had. No wonder that Kennedy and his advisers felt guilty when the attack was over.

But it is clear that the invasion of Cuba suffered from many deeper flaws of overall strategy and conception. The Bay of Pigs as a site was ill chosen. Military leaders had reservations about this choice and other matters but in their eagerness to undertake the mission mostly kept them to themselves. The CIA brought a buccaneering, can-do commitment to the project without informing others of potential problems. Its hopes for assassinating Castro were pie in the sky. Fearing leaks, the CIA also did a poor job of coordinating the invasion with agents for the anti-Castro underground in Cuba. On this as on other occasions, military leaders as well as American intelligence services poorly served the White House.

Kennedy and his advisers badly underestimated the military capacity of Castro. When the first air strike failed to knock out his planes, Castro protected them from further assaults by dispersing them. It is unlikely, therefore, that a second strike would have given the invaders full control of the air. If it had, the Cuban leader had other military assets, notably a 25,000-man army and a back-up militia force of 200,000. These could easily have overwhelmed the tiny brigade of 1,400. Later writers have concluded that it would have taken at least 10,000 men and open military commitment by the United States for any invasion to have had much of a chance of triumph. And "triumph" would likely have required long-term military occupation of the island—a down-the-road probability that Kennedy and his advisers did not think through.
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American planners failed finally to recognize the political support that Castro enjoyed at home. Having overthrown a hated dictatorship in 1959, he remained popular among many of his countrymen. Cubans in the Bay of Pigs area, where Castro had built schools and hospitals, were especially loyal to him. Many Cubans who disliked Castro nonetheless resented the assault from the overbearing Yankees to the North and rallied to his support. The CIA, anticipating a groundswell of anti-Castro rebellion following a landing, grossly misjudged the political situation on the island. (Dulles and Bissell also guessed wrong about JFK: if push came to shove following the landings, they thought, Kennedy would commit American forces to save the venture.) It was neither the first nor the last time that United States leaders in the postwar era overestimated the potential for American military strength or underestimated the power of nationalism and patriotic fervor overseas.

The legacy of the Bay of Pigs disaster was mixed. Kennedy, having been burned, recognized that a process of unreflective "group-think" had prevailed. He gradually took steps to develop a decision-making process that included more non-military and non-CIA advisers and that required more extensive debate in advance of action. Kennedy also sought to assist social and economic reform in Latin America. The Alliance for Progress, promised during the campaign, was created to help finance such reform. It never received much money, however, and, like other Kennedy-sponsored ventures in foreign aid, such as the Agency for International Development (AID), it tended increasingly to spend for military assistance rather than for social change. In Latin America, as elsewhere in the so-called Third World, the Kennedy administration sought mainly to contain Communism, not to advance social reform.
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The debacle in Cuba also made Kennedy think twice about American military intervention in Laos, where Communists were thought to be on the verge of taking over. Three days after the Bay of Pigs invasion he told Nixon, "I don't see how we can make any move in Laos, which is thousands of miles away, if we don't make a move in Cuba, which is only ninety miles away." In September he told Sorensen, "Thank God the Bay of Pigs happened when it did. Otherwise we'd be in Laos by now—and that would be a hundred times worse." Robert Kennedy later mused, "I think we would have sent troops into Laos—large numbers of American troops in Laos—if it hadn't been for Cuba."
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Instead of pursuing such a course, the Kennedy administration turned to negotiation. In 1962 a fourteen-nation conference worked out a settlement for the time being.

Dealing with the Russians in the months after the invasion, Kennedy was both patient and firm. At the Vienna summit in June, Khrushchev threatened again, as he had in 1959–60, to sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany. Such a treaty would have permitted East Germany to stop a highly worrisome outflow of refugees to West Germany. It would also have encouraged the East Germans (whom the United States did not recognize) to cut off Western access to Berlin. Kennedy, like Eisenhower, refused to budge or even to negotiate. "It will be a cold winter," he told Khrushchev. He then asked Congress for another large hike in defense spending, mobilized 120,000 reservists, and called for a massive fallout shelter program.

Khrushchev responded by ordering large increases in military spending at home and in August by constructing a wall separating the two Berlins and the two Germanys. This provocative decision sparked one of the most inflammatory moments of the Cold War. Hawks in the United States urged Kennedy to challenge the Soviets by stopping the building of the wall. American and Soviet tanks and soldiers confronted each other menacingly at the borders. Kennedy, however, did not overreact. He recognized that the USSR had the right to close off its zones, and he let the construction proceed. Sending in a token force of 1,500 troops through East Germany to West Berlin, he made it clear that the United States would stand by the beleaguered city. Khrushchev then dropped his demands for a separate treaty.
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The Kennedy administration performed more steadily and professionally in its summer war of nerves over Berlin than it had over Cuba in April.