Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Documents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Intelligence for an American Century: Creating the CIA
- 2 The Development of CIA Covert Action
- 3 A ‘Gangster Act’: The Berlin Tunnel
- 4 The CIA and the USSR: The Challenge of Understanding the Soviet Threat
- 5 Anglo-American Intelligence Liaison and the Outbreak of the Korean War
- 6 The CIA and the Bomber and Missile Gap
- 7 The CIA and Cuba: The Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis
- 8 The CIA in Vietnam
- 9 The CIA and Arms Control
- 10 The CIA’s Counter-Intelligence Conundrum: The Case of Yuri Nosenko
- 11 1975: The Year of the ‘Intelligence Wars’
- 12 Watching Khomeini
- 13 The CIA and the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan
- 14 Martial Law in Poland
- 15 Able Archer and the NATO War Scare
- 16 The Soviet Leadership and Kremlinology in the 1980s
- 17 The CIA and the (First) Persian Gulf War
- 18 A Mole in Their Midst: The CIA and Aldrich Ames
- 19 ‘The System was Blinking Red’: The Peace Dividend and the Road to 9/11
- 20 Reckoning and Redemption: The 9/11 Commission, the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA at War
- 21 The ‘Slam Dunk’: The CIA and the Invasion of Iraq
- 22 The Terrorist Hunters Become Political Quarry: The CIA and Rendition, Detention and Interrogation
- 23 Innovation at the CIA: From Sputnik to Silicon Valley and Venona to Vault 7
- 24 Entering the Electoral Fray: The CIA and Russian Meddling in the 2016 Election
- 25 Flying Blind? The CIA and the Trump Administration
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - The CIA and Cuba: The Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Documents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Intelligence for an American Century: Creating the CIA
- 2 The Development of CIA Covert Action
- 3 A ‘Gangster Act’: The Berlin Tunnel
- 4 The CIA and the USSR: The Challenge of Understanding the Soviet Threat
- 5 Anglo-American Intelligence Liaison and the Outbreak of the Korean War
- 6 The CIA and the Bomber and Missile Gap
- 7 The CIA and Cuba: The Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis
- 8 The CIA in Vietnam
- 9 The CIA and Arms Control
- 10 The CIA’s Counter-Intelligence Conundrum: The Case of Yuri Nosenko
- 11 1975: The Year of the ‘Intelligence Wars’
- 12 Watching Khomeini
- 13 The CIA and the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan
- 14 Martial Law in Poland
- 15 Able Archer and the NATO War Scare
- 16 The Soviet Leadership and Kremlinology in the 1980s
- 17 The CIA and the (First) Persian Gulf War
- 18 A Mole in Their Midst: The CIA and Aldrich Ames
- 19 ‘The System was Blinking Red’: The Peace Dividend and the Road to 9/11
- 20 Reckoning and Redemption: The 9/11 Commission, the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA at War
- 21 The ‘Slam Dunk’: The CIA and the Invasion of Iraq
- 22 The Terrorist Hunters Become Political Quarry: The CIA and Rendition, Detention and Interrogation
- 23 Innovation at the CIA: From Sputnik to Silicon Valley and Venona to Vault 7
- 24 Entering the Electoral Fray: The CIA and Russian Meddling in the 2016 Election
- 25 Flying Blind? The CIA and the Trump Administration
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
If the Berlin Tunnel operation was a career highlight in Allen Dulles’ retirement rear-view mirror, an ill-fated landing on the shores of a nearer communist stronghold must be judged as his nadir, and it cost the long-serving DCI his job. Communist Cuba, floating menacingly in ‘America’s’ own hemisphere’, was perceived both at CIA and in Washington more generally as the alligator nearest the boat, requiring constant attention. In fact, the CIA spent enormous amounts of time, money and effort to dislodge Cuba from its Soviet sponsor, but to no avail. Outrages from the Fidel Castro regime were not limited to leftist rhetoric; Castro expropriated and then nationalised several American assets, including oil refineries. American officials felt that left unchallenged, the communist contagion could spread from Cuba and infect other Latin American countries. Aside from various farcical assassination attempts, the most notorious effort to ‘liberate’ the island from Fidel Castro, encrypted JMATE, was a failed small-scale invasion by CIA-trained and backed Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs on 17 April 1961.
Although it was most closely associated with the John F. Kennedy administration, planning for the Bay of Pigs invasion actually began in 1960, during the waning days of the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration. Seen in global historical perspective, the Eisenhower administration did enjoy a relatively successful track record in the realm of covert action, having orchestrated the overthrow of several odious leaders such as Iranian Premier Mohammad Mossadeq in Iran in 1953 and Jacobo Arbenz nearer to home in Guatemala the following year. It seemed like things were going Eisenhower's way in political subversion, but by his second term things were coming off the rails. Perhaps a harbinger of stormy subversion seas ahead, CIA's effort to topple Indonesian president Achmed Sukarno foundered, as would the Bay of Pigs invasion, between the Scylla of operational insecurity and the Charybdis of wishful thinking.
The failed coup in Indonesia would not be the last time that American policymakers confused nationalism with communism in Southeast Asia, but planning for the invasion of Cuba, under the direction of Deputy Director for Plans Richard M. Bissell Jr, was well under way by the time Eisenhower left office in January 1961.
- Type
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- Information
- The CIA and the Pursuit of SecurityHistory, Documents and Contexts, pp. 112 - 126Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2020