*Includes pictures.
*Includes quotes about the plan and its failure, including from declassified CIA files.
*Includes footnotes and a bibliography for further reading.
"Openly and unabashedly they are organizing training camps; openly and unabashedly they are building air bases and air strips. Everyone knows who is building the strips and buying planes, that mercenaries are recruiting troops. They even have the cynicism to publish photographs." - Fidel Castro, March 1961
Within just a month of becoming President, the issue of communist Cuba became central to John F. Kennedy and his administration. On February 3rd, 1961, President Kennedy called for a plan to support Cuban refugees in the U.S., and a month later, he created the Peace Corps, a program that trained young American volunteers to help with economic and community development in poor countries. Both programs were integral pieces of the Cold War and were attempts to align disadvantaged groups abroad with the United State and the West against the Soviet Union and its Communist satellites. Meanwhile, covert operations were laying the groundwork for overthrowing Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and he knew it. Castro railed against CIA involvement among Cubans trying to overthrow him and his still young revolution.
Matters came to a head that April, when the Kennedy Administration moved beyond soft measures to direct action. From April 17-20, 1,400 CIA-trained Cuban exiles landed on the beaches of Western Cuba in an attempt to overthrow Castro. This plan, known as the "Bay of Pigs," had been originally drafted by the Eisenhower Administration. The exiles landed in Cuba and were expected to be greeted by anti-Castro forces within the country, after which the U.S. would provide air reinforcement to the rebels and the Castro regime would slowly be overthrown.
From the onset, almost every phase of the operation went wrong. Ships were prevented from reaching shore by reefs previously thought to be seaweed beds on the basis of U-2 photographs. Antiquated American bombers missed a high percentage of their targets, and with American involvement already apparent to the world, the second round of air attacks was cancelled. Most of those who reached the beach in the land invasion were killed or captured, and the United States suffered immeasurable embarrassment on the international stage. On April 21st, in a White House press conference, President Kennedy accepted full responsibility for the failure, and over the following year, the U.S. and Cuba negotiated the release of the imprisoned exiles, who were finally released in December of 1962 in exchange for $55.5 million worth of food and medicine. The aborted invasion also became a nationalistic rallying cry for Castro, helping to consolidate public support in favor of his revolutionary government.
According to some, the invasion's famous name comes from a mistranslation for a type of fish found in the bay where the landing eventually occurred: the "Cochinos." Regardless, the Bay of Pigs is viewed historically as one of the most ill-conceived and poorly executed covert paramilitary actions in the history of the United States, or as one historian put it, "the ultimate symbol of boneheaded interventionism." More importantly, the failed invasion motivated Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to attempt to place medium range nuclear missiles in Cuba, due not only to his questioning of Kennedy's resolve but also to placate the concerns of Castro following the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. That would ultimately lead to the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, arguably the closest the Cold War came to becoming a nuclear Armageddon.