Cosmetic changes in the CIA after Bay of Pigs 1961
THE failure of the CIA-organized Bay of Pigs invasion represented the political retirement of
Allen Dulles, but not that of the agency’s shady objectives and methods.
It was known in Washington in July 1961 that Dulles’ post as CIA director was in crisis. The
confirmation came in a news report published by The New York Times, announcing that the
Agency was being reorganized and that Dulles and his second in command, Richard Bissell,
who personally directed the Bay of Pigs operation, were to be replaced. It added that the
reshuffle was scheduled to take place a few months ahead so that it would not appear directly
related to what was described in the United States as a fiasco.
With much fanfare, Dulles and Bissell were effectively removed. On November 28, the
President flew by helicopter from Washington to the new CIA building in Langley, Virginia to
take part in its inauguration.
Dulles and the 700 employees of this central building received him in the lobby. Kennedy
presented him with the National Security medal and noted that his successes had been silenced
and his failures widely stated. However, the following day he appointed business executive
John McCone as director to replace the man he had wanted out since the previous April. He did
not dismiss him at that point because while he kept Dulles as chief there the Republicans
wouldn’t be too inclined to attack his administration over the Cuba failure. (1)
In fact, Kennedy had always mistrusted Dulles and his counterpart in the internal secret
services, J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, who had secret files on all of the nation’s political
men, including the President’s family. Hoover supplied Dulles with information on the relations
of the father, Joseph Kennedy, with mafia capos like John Roselli, and even the sexual affairs of
the current head of state, when he spent a few months of every year in Hollywood flirting with
young and beautiful actresses like Marilyn Monroe. In that period he was a legislator in the
House and she was plain Norma Jean. The FBI files also included John F. Kennedy’s links with
1/3
Cosmetic changes in the CIA after Bay of Pigs 1961
Frank Sinatra, his group and other artists who worked on his presidential campaign and also
contributed their mafia connections.
The almost ferocious criticism of the organization of the invasion, compiled by CIA Inspector
General Kirkpatrick in his report handed to Kennedy four days previously, convinced the
President that Dulles’ ousting was necessary. McCone was a Republican as well, and thus
would to some extent neutralize members of that party. But in spite of everything, the new
offensive against the revolutionary government assumed the same premises as those of Dulles
and repeated the major error of the CIA chief: that of trusting in the extreme likelihood of
popular uprisings against the government of Fidel Castro.
Bissell was kept on for a few months to aid in the transfer of powers; however, the President
continued making bad decisions, such as placing the agency and Operation Mongoose in the
hands of Richard Helms, by appointing him to Bissell’s post as second to McClone, although he
did ask his brother Robert to keep an informal watch on the intelligence community.
But he could not avoid both of them being fruitless in their supervision of a deputy director as
experienced and perverse as Helms, a veritable espionage professional who started out in the
Office of Strategic Services – the infamous OSS created by Bill Donovan – as chief of
operations in Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Then the OSS was
directed by General Hoyt Vandenberg, who turned it into an intelligence center, although
without the name of the CIA, given it by its first official director, Allen Dulles.
Kennedy also changed other intermediate chiefs in the shadowy company. But he hadn’t
abandoned his anti-Cuban obsession; on the contrary, it became more acute. The decision he
made was that the CIA should continue its actions against Cuba, in particular those of
sabotage. The Prensa Libre newspaper of Mexico exposed that groups which took part in the
Bay of Pigs were being trained as special saboteurs in the U.S. Fort Bragg base in North
Carolina.
This was the beginning of Operation 40. There, in addition to a full education in terrorist
practices, ways of killing, sabotaging machinery , blowing up boats, aircraft, cars and trucks,
falsifying documents and a whole unimaginable gamut of "dirty work," they were provided with
U.S. army stripes.
2/3
Cosmetic changes in the CIA after Bay of Pigs 1961
The 40 men of the operation later swelled to 70. Trained at Fort Bragg were killers such as Luis
Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch; mafia capos like the godfather José Miguel Battle, Jose
Medardo Alvero Cruz and Juan Restoy, which latter was accused of trafficking 30% of the
heroin and 75% of the cocaine entering the United States; drug traffickers like Frank Castro,
accused of trafficking one million pounds of marijuana; Alfredo Caballero, accused of trafficking
cocaine and money laundering; Ricardo Morales Navarrete, Félix Rodríguez Mendigutía, the
capo who worked alongside Posada Carriles himself in trafficking coca to finance the war
against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, on behalf of the CIA. And what is even worse, many of
them were noted as suspects – together with a group of CIA agents – in the Congress
Committee report into the Kennedy assassination, a report truncated since 1978 on account of
the unmovable CIA position of refusing to declassify its most important files.
Plots against Cuba were once again being hatched in Washington, as a rehearsal in response
to the hail of criticism by Republicans, especially Senator Barry Goldwater, an aspiring
presidential candidate for his party. Kennedy returned to an undertaking to annihilate the Cuban
Revolution with two significant orders to the Defense Secretary Robert McNamara: 1) To create
a task force to execute an action program to prevent communist domination of South Vietnam
and 2) To draw up a plan to defeat Fidel Castro. This time he yielded to the demands which he
refused to countenance in relation to the Bay of Pigs invasion, given that he authorized the use
of any means necessary, with the overt use of U.S. military forces. (2)
1. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Los mil días de Kennedy, published by Ayma S.A. Barcelona. 1965,
P.217.
2. Jim Rasenburger, Brilliant Disaster, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2011, P.317.
By Cosmetic changes in the CIA, Granma International, 2012
3/3