Caribian Crisis
Outline A. Introduction 1. Topic 2. Topic question - Give evidence - Give
examples of other ideas 3. Thesis B. Batista/Castro Government 1. Before
Castro’s reign - conservative at first - turned communist 2. USSR stayed ally
with Castro C. U-2 Spy Plane Incident 1. Francis Gary Powers - USA’s excuse -
1958 incident 2. Note to the US government - air space violation - Cuba 90 miles
off the cost of Florida 3. Rejection of open skies’ proposal - Eisenhower left
for the summit conference - no more U2 flights over the USSR 4. Powers tried and
convicted of espionage by the supreme court of the USSR - Castro seized all
American-owned properties - oil refineries - sugar mills - electric utilities -
USA very angry D. Summary of The Inspector General's Survey of The Cuban
Operation 1. Freedom of Information Act to the National Security Archives -group
that publishes declassified government documents -the porpoise of document 2. A
Program of Covert Action Against the Castro Regime - Cuban exile organization -
propaganda offense - clandestine intelligence - paramilitary force E. The CIA's
Plan of Invasion 1. The bay of Pigs - Cuban exile organization - propaganda
offense - clandestine intelligence - paramilitary force 2. Budget approved -
Political action - propaganda - paramilitary - intelligence collection F. What
Went Wrong In The Bay of Pigs Invasion 1. The actual Plan 2. The Inspector
General’s conclusions - The Central Intelligence Agency - failures with the
project and agency G. What Actually Happened In The Bay of Pigs Invasion H.
Conclusion The invasion at the Bay of Pigs has raised many questions and many
interesting things have come out of it. What people want to know is, why it
happened, or what caused it, but the most important question that is not
commonly asked is what was the main affect of the invasion? Some say that the
affects are not many. People believed for a while that there was no way that the
united states could suffer from the invasion on Cuba, they were wrong.
The main
affect was that Cuban leaders feared another direct US invasion, and so they
allowed the USSR to place nuclear missiles in Cuba, aimed at the United States,
this is called the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviet Union offered military aid
to Cuba, and Cuba agreed to let the Soviet Union send missiles and materials to
build launch sites. In October 1962, the United States learned that Cuba had
nuclear missiles in place that could be launched toward American cities.
President John F. Kennedy ordered a naval blockade to halt the further shipment
of arms. He demanded that the Soviet Union remove all missiles from the island
and dismantle the remaining missile bases. For several days, the world stood on
the brink of nuclear war. Finally, the Soviet Union removed the weapons under
protest from Castro. The Soviet action came after Kennedy privately agreed not
to invade Cuba. Kennedy also agreed to remove U.S. nuclear missiles from Turkey,
which the Soviets considered to be a threat. All because of the invasion on Cuba
at the Bay of Pigs. Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar became the dictator of Cuba in
1952. The United States had been kind to Batista. Shortly after, Fidel Castro,
became the leader of an underground antigovernment group. After leading several
failed uprisings, and being arrested for leading those revolts, Castro finally
lead a successful rebellion against Batista. In 1959, Castro became the Premier.
At first, Castro was very conservative, but after he realized how much power he
had gained, he started abusing it, being very hostile to both the Cuban people,
and the United States. The United States, who had been very good to Cuba, but
the U.S. started to get angry when, in 1960, Castro seized American oil
refineries, sugar mills, and electric utilities. In the early 60s, he also
started to welcome communism and formed close ties with the USSR. In 1959, when
Castro became premier, the Central Intelligence Agency, (CIA) started planning
an invasion near Guantánamo Bay, a US naval base in Cuba, in the Bay of Pigs, in
southern Cuba.
The CIA set up a small sub-organization with the sole purpose of
planning the invasion. Despite the propaganda, intelligence planning, counter
intelligence planning, and paramilitary planning, the mission still failed. In
February 1962, the Inspector General wrote a document called The Inspector
General's Survey of the Cuban Operation. This was deemed top secret until 1997.
Inside it tells many reasons for the failure. Why didn't the CIA think of these
problems ahead of time? Before Castro's reign over Cuba, a man named Fulgencio
Batista y Zaldívar was the Premier from 1952 to 1959. Castro was against
Batista's ideas, so he joined an underground anti-Batista group. Fidel Castro
went up through the ranks of the group, until he was the leader. He led several
rebellions, and was arrested for them. Seven years later, he led a rebellion
that was successful, and overthrew the Batista administration. Since he was the
leader of the group, he became the new dictator of Cuba. At First, he was a very
conservative dictator. He was liked by the Cuban people, and by other countries,
including the United States of America. This did not last long, when he soon
realized how much power he had. He immediately seized American-owned properties
in Cuba. This made him lose the United States as an ally. However, Khruschev's
United Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR), stayed as an ally, and influenced
Castro to gradually change Cuba in to a communist state. This also scared the
Pentagon, because a communist country not far from the coast of Florida was
created. On February 21st, 1998, The New York Times reported that the Inspector
General's Survey of the Cuban Operation was released under the Freedom of
Information Act to the National Security Archives, a non-profit group that
collects and publishes declassified Government documents.
Inside the article, it
quoted several paragraphs of The Inspector Generals Survey of the Cuban
Operation. The Inspector Generals Survey of the Cuban Operation was the internal
document inside the Central Intelligence Agency explaining the failure. The
document was written by the Inspector General of the Central Intelligence
Agency, and was kept in his files in the Agency's building in Washington. It was
released under the Freedom of Information Act on February 21st, 1998, to an
organization on the World Wide Web called the National Security Archives. This
organization is a non-profit organization that through its web page gives the
public, such as myself, Government documents, some of which, used to have been
top secret. As it says in the introduction of this document, This is the
Inspector General's report on the Central Intelligence Agency's ill-fated
attempt to implement national policy by overthrowing the Fidel Castro regime in
Cuba by means of a covert paramilitary operation.1 It also says that the purpose
of this document is to describe weaknesses and failures disclosed by the study,
and to make recommendations for their correction and avoidance in the future…It
does not describe or analyze in detail the purely military phase of the
effort…In preparing the survey the Inspector General and his representatives
interviewed about 125 Agency employees of all levels and studied a large
quantity of documentary material.2 The Inspector General's Survey of the Cuban
Operation states that President Dwight Eisenhower authorized the following by
approving a paper entitled A Program of Covert Action Against the Castro Regime:
a. Formation of a Cuban exile organization to attract Cuban loyalties, to direct
opposition activities, and to provide cover for Agency operations. b. A
propaganda offensive in the name of the opposition. c. Creation inside Cuba of a
clandestine intelligence collection and action apparatus to be responsive to the
direction of the exile organization d. Development outside Cuba of a small
paramilitary force to be introduced into Cuba to organize, train and lead
resistance groups.
The concept was for the Cuban exile council to serve as cover
for the United States Government by acting as a group of American businessmen.
When the United States Government went along to plan and doing actions making
the actions themselves publicly known, but since there was cover, the hand of
the U.S. Government would not appear3 because of the Cuban exile group, which
would later form a group called FRD. This document states that the reason for
invasion of Cuba by the United States of America was a way to stop communism
from spreading to the Western Hemisphere, near the United States, a world power
and a Democracy. The United States Government felt it was a danger to National
Security, which eventually it was during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which
wouldn’t of even happened if the bay of pigs hadn’t happened. The history of the
Bay of Pigs, or for now the Cuban Operation, began in 1959, shortly after
Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar was overthrown by Fidel Castro. The Central
Intelligence Agency needed a way to accomplish a second revolution in Cuba, this
time a Democratic revolution. The Central Intelligence Agency developed a Branch
of the Western Hemisphere Division, a division of the Central Intelligence
Agency, which handled Intelligence efforts on the Western Hemisphere of the
earth. This branch was named Western Hemisphere Division Branch Four, or WH/4 as
an abbreviation. WH/4 was an expandable task force in charge of the Cuban
Operation, and involved in all the aspects as mentioned in the previous list.
Each aspect of the operation had a different area to work from. The recruiting
center for the Cuban Exile group was in Miami, with a second one in Cuba. The
propaganda aspect was located in several different areas across the continent.
For example, there was one powerful gray radio station in Massachusetts, there
was another radio station posing as a legitimate commercial station on Swan
Island.
A television show in Spanish was created in Miami, and several written
publications were created including a newspaper named Advance, and even an
Anti-Castro comic book! Inside Cuba a clandestine intelligence group was created
with the sole purpose of being responsive to the Cuban exile group. Out side
Cuba there was a small paramilitary group with the plan to enter Cuba when
deemed necessary to organize, train, and lead resistance groups. The Central
Intelligence Agency decided they needed to capture the island to save the United
States of America from attacks by Communist nations. This plan was known as The
Bay of Pigs. In the internal CIA document, The Inspector General's Survey of the
Cuban Operation, the Inspector General refers to the mission as the Central
Intelligence Agency's ill-fated attempt to implement national policy by
overthrowing the Fidel Castro regime in Cuba by means of a covert paramilitary
operation.4 The actual Bay of Pigs Invasion begins in the year 1959, and ends
with the Cuban victory on April 19, 1961. The Invasion became official on March
17, 1960, when President Eisenhower authored a paper titled, A Program of Covert
Action Agency Against the Castro Regime.
|
