In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba. Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities. The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's ... Fidel Castro. America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba,"
The story of the failed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs , located on the southern coast of Cuba about 97 miles southeast of Havana, was one of mismanagement, poor judgment , and stupidity ( " Bay Pigs " 378). The blame for the failed invasion falls directly on the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) and a young man by the name of President John F. Kennedy. The whole purpose of the invasion was a communist assault Cuba and Fidel Castro ended . Ironically , thirty nine years after the Bay of Pigs , Fidel Castro remains in power . First, we need to analyze why the invasion happened and then why it did not work .
It seems that the United States has been one of the most dominant, if not the most dominant, countries in the world, since the Declaration of Independence. Yet, on Monday, April 17, 1961, our government experienced incredible criticism and extreme embarrassment when Fidel Castro, dictator of Cuba, instantly stopped an invasion on the Cuban beach known as the Bay of Pigs. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, his advisors, and many Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials, made the largest error of their political careers. Once the decision was made to invade Cuba, to end Castro and his Communist government, Kennedy and his administration were never looked at in the same light nor trusted again. Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev was affiliated with Castro, and the two countries made many military decisions together. As Kennedy and the United States tried to stop Cuba and Russia from becoming a threat to the world, an invasion was planned out and executed. The results were a disaster. The Bay of Pigs invasion was the largest military mistake ever made by the United States government and the CIA in the 20th century and brought America to the brink of war with Cuba and Russia. The Bay of Pigs invasion was not a quick decision, many hours of meetings and conferences occurred before President Kennedy gave permission for the attack. President Kennedy was inaugurated on January 20, 1961, and immediately wanted to take the initiative with the Soviet and Cuban governments (Pearson 12). Russia was already under Communist control, and Fidel Castro took over the Cuban government with heavily armed troops and policeman. Castro’s policemen filled the streets, and he ran the newspapers, as well as many assembly buildings (Frankel 60). At the beginning, Castro did not run a Communist government, but once he began to meet with Russian leader, Nikita Khrushchev, Castro started a Communist government (Crassweller 23). Max Frankel, writer for the New York Times, summarizes the situation in Cuba by saying, “Little by little, the vise tightened. Little by little the free people of Cuba came to realize it could happen there. The grim facts of life on an island that became a police state” (Frankel 59). Every day, Castro came closer to controlling every aspect in life in Cuba. Fidel Castro even took control of the schools in Cuba, throwing out any teacher who he thought...
United States spy planes found Soviet missile hangers being constructed throughout Cuba with the missiles being capable of reaching various targets in the United States. Panic raced throughout the Kennedy administration. Kennedy’s defense advisors urged for increased force, with options ranging from invading the island to destroying the hangers with bombs. Kennedy, who feared the possibility of nuclear war, wanted a solution without escalation. The solution was to put a quarantine on Cuba.
On New Year’s Day, 1959, Cuban Rebel forces, led by Fidel Castro, overthrew the existing government led by Fulgencio Batista. Castro immediately reformed Cuba’s economic policy, reducing the power of American companies over Cuba’s industry, as well as threatening American profits and influence in the area. This greatly irritated the United States as a whole, and caused the government, under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, to turn hostile towards Castro. Just a year after Castro’s rise to power, President Eisenhower was convinced that if the best interests of the United States were to be fulfilled, the new Cuban government would have to be abolished. On March 17, 1960, he approved the Central Intelligence Agency’s plan, entitled “A Program of Covert Action Against the Castro Regime.” This program’s purpose was to “bring about the replacement of the Castro regime with one more devoted to the true interests of the Cuban people an...
In an attempt to over throw the Cuban government the United States fully funded and planned the invasion of southern Cuba also know as the Bay of Pigs Invasion. The U.S. had landed armed Cuban exiles in southern Cuba in attempting to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro in 1961.this marked the climax of anti Cuban U.S. actions. The failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion was caused by misinformation lack of strategic planning and mismanagement, the consequences of that was 2x4 to the face for the Americans and a major increase in tensions between the two super powers of the world during the cold war.
Operation Northwoods was perhaps known to be a false flag used to help the U.S. get the power they wanted from different counties. Although the year of 1962 seemed to busy, on March 10 Lincoln E. Bloomfield of MIT turned in a a report entitled “A World Effectively controlled by the United Nations: A preliminary study of one form of a Stable Military Environment” (Grigg). General Lyman Louis Lemnitzer, a worker of the joint chiefs, filed and said that “Operation Northwoods,” was intended to create pretexts providing justification for U.S. military intervention in Cuba. Using a false flag, such as Operation Northwoods, the government has the ability to play to get what they want by using fake attacks, hijacking airplanes, torching a naval base,
According to Premier Nikita Khrushchev's memoirs, in May 1962 he conceived the idea of placing intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Cuba as a means of countering an emerging lead of the United States in developing and deploying strategic missiles. He also presented the scheme as a means of protecting Cuba from another United States-sponsored invasion, such as the failed attempt at the Bay of Pigs in 1961.
In 1959, Fidel Castro became leader of Cuba and aligned himself with the Soviet Union who at the time were still involved in the Cold War with the United States. A pilot of a U-2 spy plane photographed a Soviet SS-4 medium range ballistic missile being assembled. President Kennedy got word of this and assembled a team of advisors and officials known as “ExCom”. The threat came from the fact that nuclear missiles were being assembled so close to US soil. On October, 24 Soviet ships headed to Cuba, but encountered a blockade from US ships. After President Kennedy and Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev went back and forth, Nikita agreed to dismantle all Russian missiles based in Cuba and send them back to the Soviet Union. President Kennedy had agreed that the US would not invade Cuba and would eventually lift the US naval blockade imposed on the island. The blockade continued until effective UN inspection ensured that the missiles in Cuba were dismantled.”1962: World relief as Cuban missile crisis
In 1954 the CIA carried out a covert operation in Guatemala to overthrow the government. This operation involved training a group of 480 personnel and an extensive psychological warfare campaign. The Guatemalan military eventually succumbed to the tactics used and refused to fight, leaving no one to defend their country against the attackers. This lack of protection encouraged the president of Guatemala to resign and soon after enabled the invading forces to claim victory and elect a new president. Enthusiastic over their success in Guatemala, the CIA employed the same tactics in Cuba. However, they failed to consider the different the culture and how prone to talking the Cuban exiles would be. Not long after the training started, newspapers had front page headlines talking about a secret plan to attack Cuba. Despite the growing public knowledge of the operation, the CIA continued as planned, assuming that what had worked in the past was sure to be successful
By the early 1960’s the U.S. had cut off ties with Cuba and was engaging to overthrow the Castro regime. In 1961 the Bay of Pigs Invasion, a fumbled CIA attempt to crush the government, inflamed
Cuba does not mean to get involved in the Cold War. ”(Beck 551) The United States had a U-2 plane fly over Cuba and found missiles and missile bases being made in the country. Americans were threatened by this scheme....
The U.S. had just elected President Kennedy two years prior to this very threatening occasion, and every nation thought he was a weak leader who just craved attention. During this time, the Soviets and the U.S. were right in the middle of the Cold War (1947-1991): the period of time when both nations were trying to spread their type of government and become superior, making us enemies. Just a year before the Cuban Missile Crisis, the U.S. had made a failed attempt at invading Cuba at the Bay of Pigs to overthrow their communist dictator, Fidel Castro. Once Russia caught wind of this failed invasion, they quickly jumped at their chance at becoming allies with Castro, and started building nuclear bombs in Cuba. Kennedy had recently placed bombs in Turkey, Russia’s neighbor probably leading the soviets to place some of theirs in Cuba, because of how close it was to America; one nuclear bomb could reach Washington D.C. in 30 minutes.
Kennedy warned that if Khrushchev fired missiles from Cuba, the result would be “a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union. ”(Goldman, 4). If it wasn’t for the smart, rational decision making by President Kennedy and his staff, the world would have gone to World War III and possibly would never have been the same again. This analysis explains the Cuban rebels in the Bay of Pigs invasion, the importance of the great leaders of the United States, the important decision making by the U.S. leaders, and the crazy leaders of the Soviet Union and Cuba.
Terrorism will happen again regardless of how prepared the U.S. thinks it may be. This means that it is the country’s job to ensure that there is a continuation of measures that should be taken to fight against terrorism. Others believe that the U.S. is fully prepared for another terrorist attack and that enough has been done. The question at hand is, should the U.S. still be concerned about terrorism. The United States needs to be concerned about terrorism to prevent tragedies like 9/11 from happening again, to address problems with domestic terrorism, and to improve homeland security.
The tropical island of Cuba had been an object of empire for the United States. Before the Missile Crisis, the relationship between Castro and the US were strained by the Bay of Pigs occurrence in 1961. This was where counterrevolutionary Cubans were American funded and tried to invade Cuba and overthrow Castro. However, the counterrevolutionaries failed. Castro then found an alliance with the Soviet Union and an increase of distrust that Castro had on the US. On January 18, 1962, the United States’ Operation Mongoose was learned. The objective would be “to help the Cubans overthrow the Communist regime” so that the US could live in peace. Consequently, Castro informed the Soviet Union that they were worried about a direct invasion on Cuba, thus longed for protection against th...