Bay of Pigs Invasion

Covertly funded by the CIA, the three-day Bay of Pigs Invasion would prove to be a disaster for the Kennedy Administration, going down as one of the most glaring failures in CIA history.

In 1952, American ally General Fulgencio Batista led a coup against Cuban president Carlos Prio, forcing Prio to flee the island nation into exile in nearby Miami. The overthrow inspired Fidel Castro to form the 26th July Movement, which would escalate into the Cuban Revolution of December 1958. Once in power, Castro nationalized all American business interests on the island, including banks, oil refineries, as well as sugar and coffee plantations, before severing previously close relations with the United States.

Fidel Castro vs. The United States

In its place, Castro embraced relations with America’s Cold War rival, the Soviet Union. In response, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower allocated $13.1 million to the CIA in March 1960, for direct use against the Castro regime.

The money helped to form a Cuban exile paramilitary group called Brigade 2506, an armed wing of the Democratic Revolutionary Front, whose sole objective was the overthrow of Castro’s increasingly communistic-backed regime.

The Bay of Pigs Invasion Moves Forward

Aided by the CIA and strategic US military personnel, the counter-revolutionary unit of 1,400 Cuban paramilitaries was trained in Guatemala. On April 17th, 1961, the newly-minted president John F. Kennedy allowed the invasion attempt to go forward, however, he stripped the mission of direct support by US air and naval assets, which almost certainly doomed the invasion attempt to failure.

Two days earlier, eight CIA-supplied B-26 bombers had attacked Cuban airfields, allowing the invasion force to land uncontested on a beach at Playa Giron in the Bay of Pigs, where it was soon overwhelmed by local Cuban militias. Within three days, the invaders had been defeated and thrown into Cuban prisons.

The three-day Pay of Pigs Invasion would prove to be a disaster for the Kennedy Administration, going down as one of the most heinous failures in CIA history.

On September 12th, 1962, many historians believe that Kennedy’s Let’s Go to the Moon speech was a belated attempt to deflect attention from his mistakes during the Bay of Pigs invasion, while his inept understanding about the geopolitical importance of Cuba would go on to spawn the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, when the Soviet Union installed nuclear missile batteries on Cuba, aimed directly at the United States, a mere 90 miles away.