The CIA’s invasion against Cuba
Dong il, KIM
Introduction
In the age of the Cuban revolution, the Unite States(U.S.) government worried two primary matters. The first one was the interests of the U.S. corporations and investors. Just after the Cuban revolution, the U.S. ambassador in Havana said that the most important thing is the private interests of a lot of Americans in the Cuban revolutionary government (Bonsal 42-43). The second concern was the impact of revolution. If the Cuban revolution and economic revolution of redistribution became popular, it could stimulate other Latin American countries to challenge to the U.S.’s political and economic influence (Chomsky 116). Contrary to all expectations of the U.S. government, the Castro
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The U.S. president Kennedy had inherited Eisenhower’s CIA action to instruct and equip a guerilla army of Cuban exiles. He wanted direct and overt involvement by the U.S. military because he had some suspicion about the perfection of the plan. However, the CIA persuaded Kennedy that the CIA could the operation secretly and, if all went according to plan, it would promote an anti-Castro rebellion in Cuba. The plan’s first part was to crush the Cuba’s air force, making it impossible for the Cuban military to revolt the invaders. On April 15, 1961, some of Cuban exiles departed from Nicaragua in a squadron of the U.S.’s B-26 bombers, painted to look like stolen Cuban planes, and carried out an air raid against Cuban airfields. However, it turned out that Castro and his staffs knew about the attack and had transferred their planes out of harm’s way. Frustrated, Kennedy started to doubt that the mission the CIA had promised would be “both confidential and successful” might in fact be “too large to be confidential and too small to be …show more content…
government were nervous about Castro and they had a pressure of doing something against him (U.S. congress 158). Just after the defeat, the CIA established a new base in Miami for a secret war toward Cuba (Corn ch.4). Annual budget for maintaining the base was over 50 million dollars and there were over 300 full time workers who supervised thousands of Cuban action staffs. Also, the base possessed training fields, vessels and arms for army and navy. It supported the salaries and military supplies.
The CIA’s primary activities were punitive economic sabotage. Agents in Europe disrupted shipments to Cuba and persuaded ship-owners not to go Cuba. Some agents put pollutants on the Cuba’s sugar cargo ships and broke up machinery which was imported to Cuba (Rodriguez and Weisman 52). One action staff said that his mission were not only taking off the action teams to the Cuban coast, but also massive bombing to demolish refinery equipments and chemical plants in Cuba (Chomsky 124). Another staff revealed that his task was to destroy the Soviet Union’s ships and railway bridges in
One reason for this is that “...the CIA felt that Kennedy was going to disband them.” The reason for this is because the CIA wanted the Cuban leader dead, but JFK disagreed (“The one JFK conspiracy”). The CIA planned to invade Cuba, but Kennedy had assured the Cuban leader that he would not invade his country, ruining the CIA’s plan. Another reason the CIA might have wanted JFK dead was because “President Kennedy told Senator Mike Mansfield of his plans to tear the CIA “into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the wind” (Hager). The CIA had a reason to be worried about Kennedy’s plans to shut down their agency. The CIA looks very suspicious including the circumstances of their problem.
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...
Along with the above mention things, the U.S. disrupted trade with Europe and outright requested that Europe not trade with Cuba. Also during this period, the CIA began to plan assassination operations against Cuban Leaders, and have eight separate plots to assassination Castro (Perez 252).
1 The missiles were being brought to Cuba by Russian leader, Nikita Khrushchev, who guaranteed President Kennedy that the missiles would never be used as a weapon against the United States. This is a lie. Khrushchev fully intended to use the missiles as a mechanism of defense against the United States and as a way to further pursue a relationship with Fidel Castro, who was the President of Cuba at the time. The United States needed to find a way to stop the development of missile sites without causing a break out of violent warfare.
Though many would doubt that the president's own government would conspire to murder him; there are several possible reasons for their potential participation in an assassination plot. The Bay of Pigs was the spark that ignited the devastating fire. 1500 CIA trained anti-Castro expatriates were sent to seize Cuba. At the critical last moment President Kennedy cancelled the air strikes which were supposed to disable Castro's air force. As a result more than 100 of the CIA's men were killed; the remaining agents surrendered. (Morrissey)
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...
The United States embargo of Cuba has its roots planted in 1960, 53 years ago, when “the United States Congress authorized President Eisenhower to cut off the yearly quota of sugar to be imported from Cuba under the Sugar act of 1948… by 95 percent” (Hass 1998, 37). This was done in response to a growing number of anti-American developments during the height of the cold war, including the “expropriation of United States-owned properties on the island… [and] the Soviet Union [agreeing] to purchase sugar from Cuba and to supply Cuba with crude oil” (Hass 1998, 37). Bad sentiments continued to pile up as Cuba imposed restrictions on the United States Embassy and especially when, after the United States “officially broke off diplomatic ties with Cuba, and travel by United States citizens to Cuba was forbidden ... Castro openly proclaimed his revolution to be ‘socialist’” (Hass 1998, 38). The day after this, the Bay of Pigs invasion occurred, but it failed in its job to topple Castro (Hass 1998, 38). Left with no diplomatic options and a failed military attempt, the United States decided that the only way to end Castro’s socialist regime was to sever all ties, and from 1961 to 1996, a series of acts were passed prohibiting the majority of trade and interaction with Cuba. (Hass 1998, 38).
Kennedy proposed this cooperative program to replace prior failing efforts of the United States to aid Latin America. The intended alliance marked a shift toward a policy of expanded U.S. economic assistance to Latin America in the wake of Fidel Castro’s successful Communist revolution in Cuba. The United States was fearful of a communism spread due to the poverty and social inequities of the Latin American nations. The U.S. felt that the southern continent was ripe for violent radical political upheaval, which would eventually bring forth the spread of communism.
In 1959, Fidel Castro had become the powerful leader of Cuba. Castro was a communist and became hostile to the Unite States two years after he became Cuba’s leader (Encarta). People associated with Castro had taken ownership over United States companies and Eisenhower was forced to put in place a trade embargo. Cubans during this time had gone to the United States to escape the communist leadership that Castro was imposing on people. When Eisenhower had told the CIA to train Cuban exiles, they were planning on an invasion when Kennedy became president (Encarta).
The Cuban revolution was one that transformed Cuba into an independent socialist society. This revolution sent a message around the globe. The message: “ Socialism can be achieved and capitalism, with its culture stripping mechanism’s can be supplemented”. However, the revolution did leave its mark on Cuba. This can be seen in the events that took place during the early stages of the revolution. The effects of the revolution were positive for certain sections of the population and negative for others.
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
However, the US played a much larger role in Cuba’s past and present than the building of casinos and the introduction of the first taints of corruption. In the past, even before Batista, Americans were resented by Cubans because the Americans made a lot of Cuba’s decisions. Under Batista, 80% of Cuban imports came from the US, and the US controlled at least 50% of sugar, utilities, phones and railroads. If Cuba was a business in the stock markets, then the US would have been close to owning 50% of its shares. When combined with a long history of US-backed leaders, and US involvement, it is understandable that Cubans begrudged the Americans....
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...