Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [144]
To achieve this goal, Kennedy had instructed the CIA’s Bissell, whose baby the operation really was, to see that it was carried out with the minimum of “noise.” For this reason he ordered the landing point shifted from Trinidad, a busy port city, to the desolate Bahía de Cochinos. As a result, the invasion inevitably lost what chance it might have had of triggering a countrywide rebellion, with citizens coming out to join the “liberators.”
Kennedy’s conflict in purpose continued as he sought to reconcile his aggressive Cold Warrior stance, which had seen him denouncing the Truman administration’s “loss” of China, with his newly emerged recognition of postwar nationalism. The incredibly tricky challenge of toppling a despot on foreign soil by supporting an invasion was dealt another blow when Kennedy called off two of the planned air strikes in the midst of the operation. For the anti-Castro force to hold the beachhead, the small Cuban air force needed to be knocked out of action. In the event, it suffered only limited damage.
By the third day, the battle was lost. The mountains with their promise of sanctuary were little more than a mirage, real but impossible to reach. The eyes of the world were watching as Castro rounded up the poorly served and even more poorly supported surviving combatants, who would not return home to Florida for twenty more months, not until the United States bartered for their freedom with more than $50 million worth of medicine and baby food.
In the aftermath, there was certainly enough blame to go around, as JFK ironically suggested. But that mattered little in the face of such headlines as the one that ran in the New York Times on April 21: “CUBA SAYS SOVIETS SCARED OFF U.S.; Asserts Washington Feared ‘Superior’ Russian Arms.”
The question must be asked: What was Kennedy thinking? Why did he sign off on an invasion offering so slender a possibility of success? What about the thought he never seemed even to take into account: What would success actually look like? Could anyone seriously imagine the people of Cuba overthrowing Fidel Castro—or attempting to—upon hearing news of a 1,400-man invasion force landing on a remote beach? And given the strong chance of the mission’s failure, how did he imagine the United States would then appear to the world, both in Latin America and around the globe?
Those questions having been put on the table, there are others equally important. Why didn’t Dulles or Bissell tell JFK he was compromising the invasion by changing the landing area, and that the air strikes—all of them—were essential? Why had they maintained that there would be a widespread Cuban uprising against Castro? Why did they lie in saying the members of Brigade 2506 could escape into the mountains if they failed to secure a beachhead? Bissell, the chief instigator, would later admit to having misled Kennedy into believing that option was a viable one. But why hadn’t General Lyman Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoken up to warn the president that the invasion plan was a fool’s game? Why had Secretary of State Dean Rusk not expressed his own doubts about the Cuban people’s willingness to embrace a general revolt? Far more important, why hadn’t Kennedy asked the right questions, and made sure to have the solid answers such a risky undertaking demanded? Beyond the human toll, the collateral damage, after all, would be to his administration’s credibility.
To his credit, Kennedy kept disaster from becoming calamity. He decided at the most critical moment to