PAWLEY CONFRONTS JFK

Fear of retaliation was a concern as the CIA planned the demise of two Western Hemisphere leaders, Castro and Trujillo. According to the CIA’s Deputy Director for Support, Col. L.K. White, on March 22, 1961, the CIA’s Sheffield Edwards and Jack Earman met with CIA Deputy Director General Charles Cabell “to point out to them that we were not furnishing the Director the personal protection which we should be furnishing in these critical times.”1

On April 4, 1961, President John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic president whose mother, Rose, prayed the rosary throughout his life, heard about the “immorality” of an invasion of Cuba voiced by Senator William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. While Fulbright “denounced the proposition out of hand,” Adolphe Berle declared his belief that “a ‘power confrontation’ with Communism in the Western Hemisphere was inevitable.” Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Thomas C. Mann, “who previously had been on the fence, now spoke up for the operation.”2 Rose’s son’s march toward disaster proceeded headlong with the momentum created by Pawley-intelligence-exile axis.

QDDALE, identified only as William Pawley, on April 15th sat down with FBI agents Leman L. Stafford, Jr. and George E. Davis, Jr. for an interview that Pawley had requested. He let them know he was “a personal friend of the Director of the FBI, as well as of President Eisenhower, former President Truman and many other influential people in the United States and Latin America.” Pawley then voiced “that he is deeply concerned about the communist trend in Cuba and its effects on other Latin American countries, and that he has been in close contact with the U.S. State Department and the CIA relative to the situation.”3

Manuel Ray Rivero “took the view that the internal resistance was so strong that Castro could be overthrown without an ‘invasion’ from the outside.” (In truth, there was only insignificant damage from the 110 insurgent bombings between October 1960 and April 17, 1961,4 when Jose A. Perez “Pepe” San Roman led the Bay of Pigs invasion.)5

Ray’s wishy-washy stance on the need for an invasion did not sit well with Pawley, and in the weeks before the invasion Ray complained that assertions that he favored Cuba maintaining relations with the U.S.S.R. “were not true and part of a ‘campaign against him by Mr. Pawley of the Miami City Transit Company.’”6

Despite the desire to make it look like a Cuban led invasion, among the first men ashore were two non-Cubans, Grayston L. Lynch (aka Gray) and William “Rip” Robertson, who had been among those suggested as possible assassins of Castro. Lynch, a fearless veteran of the D-Day invasion at Normandy Beach, the Battle of the Bulge, and Heartbreak Ridge in Korea, would survive the debacle at the Bay of Pigs and go on to direct and participate in hundreds of more clandestine operations against Cuba. A decade before dying in 2008, Lynch published his account of the invasion imbued with anger at the failure of the Kennedy Administration to provide the essential air cover titled Decision for Disaster: Betrayal at the Bay of Pigs. Rip Robertson’s passion for adventure ended a decade later when he “died in 1973 of malaria in Laos.”7

The CIA’s post-operation analysis of the Bay of Pigs project by Piero Gleijeses suggested that its failure was rooted in errors in U.S. government planning beginning with “the lack of any real effort to outline and assess the consequences that would follow from a failure of the Brigade to hold its lodgment.” The CIA leadership “accepted two general assumptions: that Castro was too weak to crush the invaders, and that President Kennedy would land the marines and finish Castro once and for all if it seemed the Brigade was doomed.”

Bissell believed it was “pointless” to make specific plans because the outcomes of paramilitary operations are “‘usually so difficult to predict (especially in operations like PBSUCCESS and the Bay of Pigs, in which there is very heavy reliance on psychological warfare) that it wouldn’t have seemed sensible to have planned later stages. One can plan the first phases, but not what happens next.’”

In the case of PBSUCCESS in Guatemala, “‘Headquarters had all but lost hope that the CIA-trained invading force could overthrow the leftist government of Jacobo Arbenz, when suddenly the Guatemalan Army turned on Arbenz, who stepped down and fled.’” During the JMATE invasion of Cuba, 30,000 unarmed Cubans were expected to get “‘through the Castro Army and wade into the swamps to rally the liberators,’ noted the IG Survey with a hint of sarcasm.”8

In reflecting years later on the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Pawley, the Flying Tiger founder, focused on the lack of air cover and, like Grayston Lynch, blamed President Kennedy for the disastrous outcome. “Kennedy knuckled under. Operation Pluto was doomed.”

The CIA’s own history covering Pluto, released in 2005, found that the planners believed the invasion would “be unachievable, except as a joint Agency/DOD [CIA/Pentagon] action.''9

On six ships—Atlantico, Barbara J, Blagar, Caribe, Houston and Rio Escondido—the Cuban Freedom Fighters of Brigade 2506 left Nicaragua on a mission to land before dawn. As they neared the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban exiles wondered why they weren’t hearing the B-26 bombers helping clear the way by eliminating Castro resistance. “Actually, the strike was canceled, on direct orders from President Kennedy.”10

Decades later, it was revealed that one pilot, Pete Ray of the Alabama Air National Guard, had been shot down, and his body had been kept in a morgue in Havana for 18 years.11

Despite assurances from CIA Director Allen Dulles “that the risk would be only moderate, Fabio Freyre, together with the great majority of the Cuban Brigade, was captured. Denied air cover and abandoned by direct order of President Kennedy, these men had fought magnificently” killing some “1,600 of the enemy.” The bungling moved Admiral Arleigh Burke to profanity, and to argue for a military attack, which Bissell supported but the “young, weak and inexperienced President of the United States took a position just the opposite to what had been a basic policy of the U.S. government since the announcement of the Monroe Doctrine,” Pawley wrote.12

Freyre and 213 other Bay of Pigs survivors were confined in prison on the Isle of Pines. In addition to Freyre, Pawley in his book immortalized George Govin and Tomas Cruz who behaved with valor equal to Freyre’s in withstanding interrogation that tried to paint capitalism as evil. He shot back that in a democracy “‘hundreds of thousands of people own stock in these corporations and freely elect directors.’” Pawley wrote that Govin told Fidel to his face that he came to kill him, and that Cruz ignored Fidel’s needling about “’discrimination against blacks’”—like Cruz himself—in the U.S.

Freyre’s passion to journey to the Bay of Pigs was spurred a month earlier by being named along with others in commercial litigation involving a shipment of sugar from Compania Azucarera Vertientes-Camaguey, a Castro nationalized company, in which Banco Nacional de Cuba was the plaintiff. The sugar shipment was seized in Cuban waters. It became a test case on expropriated property that dragged on for years. Meetings with Pawley emboldened Freyre to join the Bay of Pigs invasion force in the mortar squad.13

In Washington, on April 22, 1961, President Kennedy established the Taylor committee, chaired by General Maxwell Taylor to study what went wrong at the Bay of Pigs. In attendance at the first meeting were Attorney General Robert Kennedy; Admiral Arleigh Burke; CIA Director Allen W. Dulles; Major General David W. Gray; Colonel C. W. Shuler; Commander Mitchell from the Department of Defense; and the CIA’s General C.P. Cabell; C. Tracy Barnes; Colonel J.C. King; Jacob D. Esterline; [a name not declassified]; and Colonel Jack Hawkins.

According to Taylor, the Cuba Study Group was asked “to take a close look at all our practices and programs in the areas of military and paramilitary, guerrilla and anti- guerrilla activities which fall short of outright war. I believe we need to strengthen our work in this area. In the course of your study, I hope that you will give special attention to the lessons which can be learned from recent events in Cuba.” In his opening remarks, Director Dulles cited NSC 5412/2 the secret directive issued under President Eisenhower in March 1954 which authorized CIA to conduct paramilitary operations under the general supervision of the National Security Council. Hence, the oversight committee for covert operations was referred to as the 5412 Committee.14

Luce’s Time magazine focused its April 28th issue on the Bay of Pigs invasion under the headline, “The Massacre.” It detailed the utter failure of the invasion that only numbered 1,300 men which resulted in the capture of hundreds of exiles.

Secretary of State Dean Rusk tried to spin Pluto as a minor operation, not a “full- scale invasion.” José Miró Cardona, head of the Cuban “Revolutionary Council of anti- Castro exiles in whose name the landing was made” met with President Kennedy.

According to Time, the choice of the Bay of Pigs, 90 miles southeast of Havana as the invasion point, “came as a surprise to a military expert of the Revolutionary Council, onetime Cuban Army Colonel Ramón Barquín.” There also was too much CIA meddling during the planning along with excessive paperwork demanded if the Frente requested weapons and supplies. And there was internecine jockeying for leadership, pitting Tony Varona’s leadership against Manuel Artime’s hunger for power, exemplified by the fact that he solely agreed with the CIA-Pentagon’s “decision to invade immediately.” For Varona the defeat was a family affair; his “son, two brothers and one nephew were missing.”15

William Douglas Pawley had staked his reputation and his dreams for a communist-free Cuba on his skills as an organizer. He had worked over a year helping the CIA identify leaders amongst the thousands of Cuban exiles and reportedly had been aboard a ship in the waters off the Bay of Pigs guiding the invaders.16

After the invaders were captured, Pawley immediately fired off a telegram to President Kennedy urging him “to immediately overthrow Fidel Castro and rescue the imprisoned Cuban exiles.”17

In his autobiography, however, he laid the blame not on himself or the inability of the exiles to form a cohesive force, but on Kennedy’s failure to provide air cover and to listen to the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA. To Pawley “the machinery of government merely has to drag its feet, as in the sabotage of Eisenhower’s meticulous plan for the Bay of Pigs invasion, the irony being that the military were ultimately blamed by the liberals for the failure of a sound plan which the liberals themselves never followed.18

Writing 13 years after the invasion, Pawley, who described himself in the title of his manuscript as a “Former Ambassador, Trouble-Shooter for Presidents,” detailed how he grabbed the bull by the horns and went right to the top to tell the young President on May 6, 1961, what the next step should be. Eisenhower had “paved the way for our meeting ... in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs; I had requested the appointment in a letter to Kennedy two weeks earlier.” The outcome was as bad as the invasion itself. “It is with a sense, even now, of incredulity, that I report to you my one conference with President Kennedy and its abrupt termination.”

While JFK said “I take full responsibility for the mistake at the Bay of Pigs” Pawley felt that a “chief culprit was Adlai Stevenson” but did not voice his opinion. Instead, Pawley, whose nickname was “Cuba,” laid out his belief that “we are facing a major crisis in Cuba and that my knowledge of the country, after residing there off and on for the better part of my life, may be useful to you.” Moreover, “I’ve had the privilege of working with several of your predecessors on some very critical problems.”

Pawley then expressed his opinion that one failed invasion needed to be followed by a bigger invasion: “there are no alternatives ... we have to drop ten thousand Marines in the environs of Havana. There is a sugar plantation on the outskirts of the city that would be an excellent assembly area. The Marines should go into the city, take the Palace, release the Bay of Pigs prisoners and the other political prisoners, and we should establish a provisional government. I have brought with me a list of outstanding Cubans who would, in my opinion, command confidence in such a government.”

As the President listened “warily” Pawley detailed how the “Hemisphere will be stabilized; the danger will be over.” The President retorted “firmly, ‘I don’t intend to spill one drop of American blood in connection with this matter. I don’t intend to put any Marines in Cuba.’” Instead, Kennedy wanted to offer $10 billion to the Alliance for Progress, which Pawley begged him not to do, “‘what counts with Latins is results. That, not our money, is what they respect.’”

The elder Cuban expert, global entrepreneur and the young President also disagreed on what caused the revolution. Pawley blamed the Russians. JFK said the fault lay elsewhere. “‘You’re mistaken. There is no country in the Western Hemisphere that has been exploited as badly by the American businessman’” as Cuba which “really threw me.”

Pawley responded that pre-Castro Cuba “‘was one of the most prosperous countries in the Western Hemisphere! It stood fourth in per capita income and ranked close to the top in education, literacy, social services and medical care. They have more maternity hospitals free than we will ever have.’” Pawley suspected the 28-year-old Presidential adviser on Latin America affairs, Richard Nathan Goodwin, was feeding JFK “‘all this false data.’”

With the mention of Goodwin’s name “the atmosphere suddenly chilled” and President Kennedy showed Pawley the door. Before leaving for the first and last time from JFK’s White House, Pawley—who had the ear of presidents Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower, as well as kind words from Joseph P. Kennedy two decades earlier, shot back—“‘Mr. President, for God’s sake look into the real facts before you take action based on glaring misinformation ... please don’t offer them money ... unless the Castro regime is rooted out first.’” Bold emphasis added by D.P. Cannon.

“‘Thanks for coming in,’ he repeated, even more coldly.” The war between Pawley and President Kennedy had begun.

In retrospect, Pawley in his autobiography justified his confrontation with JFK by citing that Richard Nixon weeks earlier on April 20, 1961, had not only urged invasion but pledged “the full support of the Republican party.” Further, Pawley notes that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev later wrote in his memoir how easy it is to invade Cuba “‘especially if the invader has naval artillery and air support.’” According to Pawley, Khrushchev further commented that if Castro was toppled “‘it would have been a terrible blow to Marxism-Leninism. It would gravely diminish our stature throughout the world, but especially in Latin America.’”19

Pawley’s autobiography, written in 1974 and 1975 prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, had the fatalistic title Russia Is Winning. In discussing his own failure to get Batista to step aside so Castro could not come to power, Pawley let it be known that he felt you can disobey the Commander-in-Chief in the name of fighting communism. “When I reflect upon all of this today, and the narrow margin between the success or failure of my mission, I often wish that I had violated my instructions, as I believe that the Admiral commanding at the Bay of Pigs should have violated the orders he was to receive from President Kennedy.”20 Bold emphasis added by D.P. Cannon.

In the mind of the man who concurred with General Doolittle that the CIA needed to be “more ruthless than the enemy,” mutiny against the Commander-in-Chief of the United States was not out of the question.

Pawley insinuated in his autobiography that Kennedy’s action, or lack thereof, gave comfort to the communist enemy. “When he discovered that the young American President had no intention of taking any effective steps to protect the vital Caribbean area, Nikita was fulsome in his praise of Kennedy.”

Pawley then quoted page 23 of Mario Lazo’s book Dagger in the Heart in which Lazo details a letter Pawley wrote to JFK following “my curt dismissal from Kennedy’s office.” In the letter Pawley asserts that most Americans feel the way he does, “disturbed over the great humiliation that our great country is having to take,” and tries to convince President Kennedy that a military operation could gain strong backing and that Pawley himself had the credentials to take charge. “I am confident, Mr. President, that in a week’s time a special envoy could enlist the support of four or five Latin American countries which would participate in a military operation.” He encouraged JFK to “consider the approach adopted by President Roosevelt when he permitted us to organize the American Volunteer Group (Flying Tigers), who, as civilians, worked directly for the Chinese Government in doing the job that the U.S. Government did not feel it could undertake.” Pawley then got to his objective. “I had the privilege of initiating and carrying out that effort. A group of Americans capable in this field are prepared to offer our services to the Cubans in exile.”

Pawley’s “letter spurred no discernable reaction” nor response from the Oval Office. “I had suggested that we turn over a powerful radio station in the United States to Cuban Freedom Fighters to prepare the ground for liberation.”21

Undeterred by President Kennedy’s rejection of his recommendations, Pawley formed his own exile force—“I turned over the ground floor of my office building to Cuban matters. Here we held meetings of several hundred Cubans three times a week ... to form a Government in Exile ... which the United States might be persuaded to recognize. Unfortunately, factional strife between various expatriate groups was so intense and bitter that, after persisting for two years, we were finally forced to accept defeat.”22 Bold emphasis added by D.P. Cannon.

E. Howard Hunt later testified that “upon my withdrawal from the FRD connection in, I guess, early April 1961, I came to Washington to work with Dave Phillips, or for Dave Phillips at headquarters.” Hunt withdrew from FRD rather than help President Kennedy’s administration supplement it with more progressive Cuban exiles, a move which brought about the evolution of the FRD into the Cuban Revolutionary Committee. Phillips would run the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE). “Dave Phillips ran that for us,” Hunt testified.23

A July 17 memorandum for the chief of WH/4 notes that Bernard Barker (AMCLATTER-1), “an operational asset of both Havana station and JMATE, is currently in the Washington, D.C. area at the suggestion of Mr. Howard Hunt, in an effort to resolve his citizenship status.” Barker was born in Havana to a Russian-American father and Cuban mother. As a member of the “U.S. Army Air Corps, [he] was shot down on his 12th mission over Germany and was a prisoner of war for 16 months.” In the 1950s, he was in the Cuban police force and worked with FBI agent Spears at the Havana American Embassy and assisted the Treasury in breaking up a Cuba-Florida narcotics ring. Barker escorted President Truman’s wife and daughter on their trip to Cuba. Following questions about his citizenship, Barker was sent by Spears to Havana attorney Dr. Mario Lazo who retained Washington attorney Edward Bennet Williams. His case went into limbo as Barker fell on financial hard times and became a tractor driver. “Currently, Barker is traveling on a Cuban passport and is in the U.S. as an ‘SP’ paroled to Bernie Reichardt” of the CIA.24 A decade later, Barker and Hunt would become infamous as Watergate burglars.

In Miami, in July 1961, “goon squads run out of WH/D rather than out of WH/4” disrupted “400 Castro sympathizers gathered to celebrate the 26th of July movement through the use of stink bombs.”25 It was not the only domestic disturbance the Kennedy brothers had to confront. Earlier in the year, President Kennedy had ordered Secretary of Defense McNamara to dismiss General Edwin Walker from the military because he had been promoting to the troops the extremist anti-communist views of the John Birch Society. Conservatives within the military-industrial complex began to question whether the Kennedy brothers had gone soft on communism.26

Kennedy, angered by the failings of CIA leadership in running the Bay of Pigs operation, forced CIA Director Allen Dulles, his Deputy Director Charles Cabell and Deputy Director of Plans Richard Bissell to resign. Eleven days before John McCone took the reins of the CIA, on November 29, 1961, Dulles wrote a memo commending the JMATE team for its performance, specifically naming David Phillips, Gerard Droller and 13 others—including two whose names remained classified.27

Jake Esterline blamed the bad invasion outcome on Cabell for failing to convince the young, inexperienced President of the importance of a second airstrike. According to David Phillips, Esterline almost immediately typed up multiple resignation letters while downing a bottle of whiskey, but “Bill [Pawley] tore them up as soon as they were typed.”28

With the exception of documents regarding the release of hostages, there is a dearth of information on Pawley’s activities in the second half of 1961 after he failed to get Kennedy’s backing on running a new invasion and the assassination of his longtime friend Trujillo. Yet, we know he was meeting in his office regularly with hundreds of Cuban exiles.

On December 8, 1961, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sent a thank you note to Pawley at his Miami Transit Company address. “Last night’s Criss Award ceremony will always be among my most vivid memories, and I want to tell you how pleased I was that you were present. My enjoyment of the event was heightened with the realization that friends such as you were sharing the occasion with me.” While signed off “Sincerely yours,” it seemed to lack sincerity except to Pawley who treasured his relationship with the FBI Director.29

Throughout 1961, protracted negotiations and contract approvals were carried on regarding Dade County's purchase of Pawley’s Miami Transit Company and the Miami Beach Railway. On January 15, 1962, Pawley’s employees were given a notice by Dade County. “All employees of the company who fail to report for work at their regularly established time and place during the 48 hours following the takeover shall be considered as having voluntarily left their employment and thereby forfeited their claim to comparable positions in the county service along with their pay status, seniority, vacation and other benefits.”30

Labor did not accept the takeover well. On February 19, 1962, a bomb exploded outside the home of Miami Herald editor Don Shoemaker who had been editorially supporting “Dade County’s takeover of the four struck bus lines—a move opposed by the striking union.” Only 20% “of a total of several hundred are operating since the county took over the four bus lines from William Pawley.”31

In the first week of 1962, The Sunday News and Tribune of Jefferson City, Missouri ran a lengthy article on how the State Department was failing America. It had first appeared in Reader’s Digest and was written by Frank L. Kluckhohn, a one-time assistant to the late Secretary of Defense James Forrestal. He pointed out how patriots like 1959 Ambassador to Mexico Robert C. Hill and the embassy’s secretary for political affairs had tried to alert the State Department to the rising dangers of communism. “In Costa Rica, U.S. Ambassador Whiting Willauer from January 1959 through July 1960 wrote 11 letters to the State Department sounding the alarm about communism entrenching itself in Cuba. The FBI also funneled information to State ... These reports, too, failed to get through the lower levels of the bureaucracy.”

Willauer had eventually been named a special assistant to work on the tentative plans to invade Cuba. However, when the Kennedy Administration took over the planning in 1961, Willauer “found himself strangely cut off from his CIA contact.” His “painstaking effort went for nothing, while less knowledgeable practitioners at State and the White House scuttled the plan to use effective U.S. force if needed. And so the Cuban invasion was doomed in advance.”

The article also quoted another critic of State’s shortcomings. “‘No one ever puts a name on a document,’ says William Pawley, who during his 5 1/2 years with the Department served first as an ambassador and later as Special Assistant to the Secretary of State. ‘I made a point of trying to find out who makes policy, and it's a very difficult thing.’”32

At month’s end, columnist Holmes Alexander dissected President Kennedy’s 21st presidential news conference on January 24, at which acerbic reporter Sarah McClendon brought up the names of “two well-known security risks.” Alexander asserted that JFK blundered in defending William Arthur Wieland— “whatever his official security rating, is almost indefensible as a State Department public servant.” Alexander pointed out that “former ambassadors—Smith, Pawley, Gardiner and Hill— have denounced Wieland by name as instrumental in the fall of Cuba to Communism.” He then questioned his credentials. “Wieland is an ex-newpaperman who left journalism and entered diplomacy under circumstance that the President of the United States ought not to be defending.”33

McClendon in her questioning of President Kennedy asserted that “two well known security risks have recently been put on a task force in the State Department to help reorganize the Office of Security ... William Arthur Wieland ... J. Clayton Miller. The President rejected her assertion. “In my opinion, Mr. Miller and Mr. Wieland, the duties that they have been assigned to, they can carry out without detriment to the interests of the United States—and I hope without detriment to their characters by your question.

Alexander claimed that JFK’s press “conference was abruptly terminated five minutes ahead of the customary half-hour.” It was a false impression. The President in fact answered a dozen questions after McClendon’s questions on topics including strontium 90 levels in milk, education for GIs, economic integration of Western Europe, and racketeering on stock exchanges.34

Far from being rattled by McClendon’s question about Pawley’s greatly detested Wieland, the President stood firm and did not send Wieland off to the American equivalent of Siberia. It did not sit well with Pawley.

FOOTNOTES:

1 CIA Official History of the Bay of Pigs. Pages 278-281. 

2 Clandestine Services History. Page 12. www.foi.cia.gov/docs/DOC_0000132097/0000132097_0083.gif

3 NARA 124-90124-10082 ~ 4/29/1960 FBI Memorandum. To: HQ. From: MM. Subjects: Anti-Fidel Castro Activities; Mitchell Livingston WerBell III. Released 10/5/2017 (two pages missing).

4 CIA Review of Bay of Pigs Project. Page 11. www.foi.cia.gov/docs/DOC_0000129913/0000129913_0085.gif

>> Manuel Ray Rivero’s “view was not officially accepted ... Sabotage from October 1960 to April 1961 was evidence of internal opposition activists even though ... the sabotage caused insignificant damage ... 300,000 tons of sugar cane destroyed ... 110 bombings, including Communist Party offices, Havana power station, two stores, railroad ...”

5 “Jose A Perez San Roman, 58, Led Bay of Pigs Invasion.” San Jose Mercury, September 14, 1989. Page 5B.
>> San Roman killed himself in September 1989 with an overdose of medication, in his trailer at Courtly Manor Mobile Home Park in northwest Dade County. A handwritten note was found but was not released.

6 NARA 180-10143-10456 ~ Betsy Palmer’s May 2, 1978 Review of Files—Manuel Ray y Rivero. TheBlackVault.com. Page 12 of 47.

7 “CIA’s Man at the Bay of Pigs.” By John Barry The Miami Herald, July 16, 1998.

8 CIA Review of Bay of Pigs Project. Page 74 www.foi.cia.gov/docs/DOC_0000132099/0000132099_0007.gif

The basic error in the US Government’s planning ... was the lack of any real effort to outline and assess the consequences that would follow from a failure of the Brigade to hold its lodgment ... The agency’s principals accepted two general assumptions: that Castro was too weak to crush the invaders, and that President Kennedy would land the marines and finish Castro once and for all if it seemed the Brigade was doomed ... Bissell later explained to Gleijeses, specific planning was pointless ...

 ... The outcome of the first stages of the [paramilitary] operation is usually so difficult to predict (especially in             operations like PBSUCCESS and the Bay of Pigs, in which there is very heavy reliance on psychological warfare) that  it wouldn’t have seemed sensible to have planned later stages. One can plan the first phases, but not what happens next.

This is what indeed had happened in Guatemala in 1954; Headquarters had all but lost hope that the CIA-trained invading force could overthrow the leftist government of Jacobo Arbenz, when suddenly the Guatemalan Army turned on Arbenz, who stepped down and fled ... [in JMATE] “Arms were held in readiness for 30,000 Cubans who were expected to make their way unarmed through the Castro Army and wade into the swamps to rally the liberators,” noted the IG Survey with a hint of sarcasm. “Except for this, we were unaware of any planning by the Agency or by the U.S. Government for this success.”

9 “Bay of Pigs plotters predicted failure.” By Carol Rosenberg, Miami Herald. August 11, 2005. 10 Pawley, Russia Is Winning, Chapter 22.

In the dead of the night of Friday, April 14th, six ships left the Nicaraguan staging area, loaded with the Cuban Freedom Fighters. They were the Houston, the Rio Escondido, the Atlantico, the Barbara J, the Caribe, and the Blagar. Their departure was timed to land the men of Brigade 2506 before daylight on Monday morning.

As the ships neared the landing area near the Bay of Pigs, the troops aboard expected to hear announcements that the B-26s would be making the second strike at first daylight. But there was only silence from Puerto Cabeza.

“Why do we not hear from the planes?” was the question of the Cuban exiles. Then came word that the strike was “delayed”.

Actually, the strike was canceled, on direct orders from President Kennedy.

11 “Bay of Pigs: the Secret Death of Pete Ray.” By Mark Fineman and Dolly Mascarenas, Los Angeles Sunday Times, March 15, 1998.

12 Pawley, Russia Is Winning, page 424, 429, 441 & 442, and Chapter 22.

13 “Fabio Freyre, Exile Who Defied Castro After Invasion.” The Palm Beach Post, August 21, 1997. Page 10A.

Banco Nacional de Cuba, Plaintiff, v. Peter L. F. Sabbatinos as Receiver, and F. Shelton Parr, William F. Prescott, Emet Whitlock, Lawrence H. Dixon, H. Bartow Farr, Elizabeth C. Prescott, Fabio Freyre and Helen G. Downs, copartners doing business as Farr, Whitlock & Co., Defendants. United States District Court S. D. New York. March 31, 1961.

14 Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-63, Volume 10, Cuba, 1961-62.

>> Fabio Freyre was ransomed back from Cuba and lived out his life in Greenwich, Connecticut until 1997, eight years after his Pawley-backed associate Padilla died.

Also http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/ops/intro.htm

The Truman administration's concern over Soviet ‘psychological warfare’ prompted the new National Security Council to authorize, in NSC 4-A of December 1947, the launching of peacetime covert action operations.” On June 18, 1948, NSC 4-A was superseded by NSC 10/2, which called for “covert” rather than “psychological” operations and said they must be planned and executed so “that any U.S. Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the U.S. Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.”

... these clandestine activities included: “propaganda; economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberations [sic] groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world. Such operations should not include armed conflict by recognized military forces, espionage, counter-espionage, and cover and deception for military operations ... President Eisenhower approved NSC 5412 on March 15, 1954, reaffirming the Central Intelligence Agency's responsibility for conducting covert actions abroad.

15 The Massacre, Time, April 28, 1961.

Tony Varona's Frente complained that the CIA was too meddling during the planning, “Suppose you ask for 100 rifles. They want to know to whom, what for, where they will be used—in triplicate.”

>> Time also made note of the jockeying for power among the exiles, led by Manuel Artime.

The Frente representative was removed when he tried to exert some authority, and the Batista followers in the camps moved toward the leadership, working with a militant young opportunist named Manuel Artime, 28, onetime Catholic student leader at Havana University and a Frente subchief who schemed to leapfrog into supreme power ...

Of Miró’s Revolutionary Council, only the ambitious Artime agreed with the Pentagon-CIA decision to invade immediately. [He was later heard on radio, introduced “as ‘Commander in Chief of the Army of Liberation.’”].

>> In the aftermath, Cubans bitterly blamed the U.S. and were less inclined to acknowledge the harm done by their own internecine quarreling. But they had paid dearly, too. Miró’s own son was Castro's prisoner. Varona’s son, two brothers and one nephew were missing. So was Council Member Antonio Maceo’s son.

16 Burton Hersh, The Old Boys: The American Elite and the Origins of the CIA (Tree Farm Books, January 15,2001).

17 “Telegram from William Douglas Pawley.” 1961. Contributed by Evelyn Lincoln. Series Name: General Correspondence. Series Number: 01. Collection: Papers of John F. Kennedy. Presidential Papers. President’s Office File. www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKPOF-004-010.aspx

Description: This folder consists of correspondence between the office of President John F. Kennedy's secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, and individuals and organizations both known and unknown to the President. Materials are mainly expressions of and responses to public opinion. Of note is a letter from writer and actor George Plimpton thanking President Kennedy for kind words regarding Plimpton's baseball book, Out Of My League; a telegram sent shortly after the Bay of Pigs by William D. Pawley, a former United States Ambassador and State Department consultant, urging President Kennedy to immediately overthrow Fidel Castro and rescue the imprisoned

Cuban exiles; biodata on Peace Corp Representatives in South America and Asia; and a letter from writer Katherine Anne Porter. This folder contains some foreign language material.

18 Pawley, Russia is Winning. Page 452.

In some instances, as I have described in the Brazilian wheat negotiation, presidential orders are flouted deliberately and countermanded by underlings. In other instances, the machinery of government merely has to drag its feet, as in the sabotage of Eisenhower’s meticulous plan for the Bay of Pigs invasion, the irony being that the military were ultimately blamed by the liberals for the failure of a sound plan which the liberals themselves never followed.

19 Pawley, Russia is Winning. Page 431. “Nation: Out of the Manual,” Time, Jan. 11, 1963.

20 Pawley, Russia Is Winning, Chapter 19.

When I reflect upon all of this today, and the narrow margin between the success or failure of my mission, I often wish that I had violated my instructions, as I believe that the Admiral commanding at the Bay of Pigs should have violated the orders he was to receive from President Kennedy. Either violation could have saved Cuba from Communism. Under normal conditions, a government official is honor-bound to abide by his instructions. But in a time of such unusual crisis, the admiral could have answered Kennedy, “Sir, I didn’t get your message in time.”

21 Pawley, Russia is Winning. Pages 438, 439.

22 Pawley, Russia is Winning. Pages 440 & 441, and Chapter 23.

Miami Park to Honor Bay of Pigs Veteran with Special Section by Sandra Dibble, Miami Herald, October 2, 1983, Page 6.

Ten years after Bay of Pigs veteran Tomas Cruz was killed in a car accident, his spirit will return to a small Miami park where he spent time with his son. On Thursday, the Miami City Commission agreed to install tables and barbeque grills in a section of Coral Gate Park, SW 16th Street and 32nd Avenue. It will be called the "Tomas Cruz Picnic Area." "He would be so proud," said his widow, Ester Vina Cruz, who still lives near the park.

23 “Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Deposition of E, Howard Hunt, Washington, D.C. Part II – 3:30 pm. Friday, November 3, 1978.” House Select Committee on Assassinations.

24 NARA104-10163-10146 ~ Memorandum “AMCLATTER/1 [Bernard Barker]” From: WH/4/Security July 17, 1961.

25 CIA Bay of Pigs History. Page 238.

26 Bamford, William Body of Secrets Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency From The Cold

War through the Dawn of a New Century, Doubleday (New York). Page 79.
27 NARA 104-10194-10035 ~ 11/18/1961 Memorandum “Subject: JMATE—Commendation.” For: Chief,

Western Hemisphere Division. From Director Allen Dulles.

>> Individuals named to receive the commendation letter were: 

                                                    Parent Office

Edward A. Stanulis         WH 

William E. Eiseman         CL

Carl E. Jenkins                 FS 

Robert Reynolds              WH 

Arthur L. Jacobs               FE 

Ralph W. Brown               OL 

Joseph F. Langan             OS 

David A. Phillips             WH 

Gerard Droller                 WH 

Michael J. King               Comp. 

W. Scudder Georgia         OC 

Redacted                           OC 

Redacted                            OC 

Kenneth D, Thetford (P)   DPD 

Nathaniel D. Katukla (P)   DPD

28 Official History of the Bay of Pigs Operation, Volume I: Air Operations, March 1960-April 1961, Section C: The Stevenson Story and the Second Strike. Page 321 of 394. Mary Ferrell Foundation website: MaryFerrell.com.

29 December 8, 1961 Letter. To: Honorable William D. Pawley, President, Miami Transit Company, 260 Northeast 17th Terrace, Miami, Florida. from J. Edgar Hoover

My dear Mr. Pawley:

Last night’s Criss Award ceremony will always be among my most vivid memories, and I want to tell you how pleased I was that you were present. My enjoyment of the event was heightened with the realization that friends such as you were sharing the occasion with me.

Sincerely yours,

J. Edgar Hoover

30 Wilson v. State Dept. of Admin., Div. of Retirement, 472 So.2d 525, 10 Fla. L. Weekly 1571 (Fla. App. 3 Dist., 1985). Page 525.

31 “Bomb Rocks Editor’s Home; Believed Linked to Bus Strike.” The Stars and Stripes, February 20, 1962, page 5

32 Close observer of Policy-Makers Speaks Out. Is the State Department Failing the American People, by Frank L. Kluckhohn, The Sunday News and Tribune of Jefferson City, January 7, 1962, page 4 & 5

33 “Kennedy Flubs Answer In Defending Wieland.” Washington Letter by Holmes Alexander, Washington Observer for the The Independent Record, January 31, 1962. Page 4.

My opinion is that Kennedy made one of the big blunders of his White House career. J. Clayton Miller is a new man in town, but William Arthur Wieland, whatever his official security rating, is almost indefensible as a State Department public servant.

No less than four former ambassadors—Smith, Pawley, Gardiner and Hill—have denounced Wieland by name as instrumental in the fall of Cuba to Communism. Both the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations have found Wieland to be an embarrassment and have tried to hide him in the State Department’s organizational maze. Wieland is an ex-newpaperman who left journalism and entered diplomacy under circumstance that the President of the United States ought not to be defending.

Joan Mellen, The Great Game in Cuba, Chapter 4, Page 102.

>> FBI reported that Ambassador Earl E.T. Smith handled Cuban investments for Senator George Smathers and Bebe Rebozo.

34 John F. Kennedy Library Transcript 21st Presidential News Conference, January 24, 1962.

QUESTION [McClendon]: Mr. President, sir, two well known security risks have recently been put on a task force in the State Department to help reorganize the Office of Security.

THE PRESIDENT: Well now, who?

QUESTION: William Arthur Wieland, a well known man, who for over a year the State Department -----

THE PRESIDENT: The thing—Miss McClendon—I think that would you give the other name?

QUESTION: Yes sir. J. Clayton Miller.

THE PRESIDENT: Right. Well now, I don't—I think the term—I would say that the term you have used to describe them is a very strong term which I would think that you should be prepared to substantiate. I am familiar with ---

QUESTION: Well. sir, ---

THE PRESIDENT: --- Mr. Miller's record because I happened to look at it the other day. He has been cleared by the State Department. In my opinion, the duties which he is now carrying out, he is fit for, and I have done that after Mr. Rusk and I both looked at the matter. So, therefore, I cannot accept your description of him.

QUESTION: Did you both look at Mr. William Arthur Wieland, too?

THE PRESIDENT: I am familiar with Mr. Wieland, and I am also familiar with his duties at the present time. In my opinion, Mr. Miller and Mr. Wieland, the duties that they have been assigned to, they can carry out without detriment to the interests of the United States—and I hope without detriment to their characters by your question.

QUESTION: Mr. President, considering that the one ingredient in all these radical right organizations seems to be anti-Communism or possibly super-patriotism, would it be feasible or useful for you, or even for the Republican leaders, to appeal to these people to stop tilting at windmills and to make a common cause against the enemy? My question really is: Do you think there is any merit in this idea?

>> Rather than racing away from the microphone the President responded to the super-patriotism question:

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I did attempt in my speech at Seattle, my speech in Los Angeles, and in other speeches, to indicate what I consider to be the challenges that the United States faces, and I would hope that--there have been others who have done the same thing, and I think we should keep that up. And I am hopeful that we can turn the energies of all patriotic Americans to the great problems that we face at home and abroad. The problems are extremely serious. I share their concern about the cause of freedom. But I do think we ought to look at what the challenges are with some precision and not concern ourselves on occasions with matters such as character integrity of the Chief Justice, or other matters which are really not even in question.

QUESTION: Mr. President, sir, it has been reported that you have indicated an interest in the provision of same sort of scholarship aid, perhaps something similar to the GI Bill, for the Reservists and National Guardsmen that were recently called up. Could you give us a little clearer picture of your views? For example, would you favor something such as Senator Yarborough of Texas' Cold War GI Bill?

THE PRESIDENT: Well now, on the general question of whether we should have a special scholarship program for Reservists or Draftees, this is a matter which is being considered. Senator Yarborough's bill was not in the Administration's program on education this year. It involved a rather large sum of money, 350 million dollars, at a time when we were making rather broad recommendations for our education. But whether there should be some special program of selected scholarships which would be available far competition is a matter which we are looking at, and which I hope to discuss with Senator Yarborough.