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Speaker 1: I'm George Severis and I'm Julia Claire and this is

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Speaker 1: United States of Kennedy, a podcast about our cultural fascination

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Speaker 1: with the Kennedy Dynasty. Every week we go into one

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Speaker 1: aspect of the Kennedy story, and today we are talking

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Speaker 1: about the Bay of Pigs.

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Speaker 2: The nineteen sixty one debacle was one of the most

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Speaker 2: humiliating moments in jfkse presidency that took place just four

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Speaker 2: months after he took office.

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Speaker 1: Dreamed Up by the CIA and approved by two presidents,

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Speaker 1: the Bay of Pigs was a covert plot to remove

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Speaker 1: Fidel Castro from power in Cuba using a ragtag band

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Speaker 1: of American trained Cuban defectors.

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Speaker 2: The Bay of Pigs was an abject two front military

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Speaker 2: and political failure. The military operation was botched from the start,

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Speaker 2: a consequence of bad intelligence, poor planning, and even poorer execution.

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Speaker 2: The political failure stemmed from the fact the the invasion

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Speaker 2: was sold to the world as a homegrown Cuban led

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Speaker 2: revolt against Castro. It was painfully obvious from the outset

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Speaker 2: that the American government was behind the whole endeavor.

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Speaker 1: Not only did America fail to achieve its goal of

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Speaker 1: toppling a Nasson communist regime, but it also openly lied

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Speaker 1: to the United Nations and then abandoned loyal Cuban allies

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Speaker 1: when the invasion started going awry.

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Speaker 2: For President Kennedy, the Bay of Pigs was a major

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Speaker 2: black eye in the first months of his administration, just

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Speaker 2: when he was trying to prove himself to the American people,

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Speaker 2: and its effects reverberate to this day.

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Speaker 1: To unpack all of this, today, we're joined by doctor

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Speaker 1: Stephen Wilkinson, chairman of the International Institute for the Study

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Speaker 1: of Cuba at the University of Buckingham. Steve, Welcome to

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Speaker 1: the United States of Kennedy.

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Speaker 3: Thank you, thanks for having me.

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Speaker 1: So we have a lot to get to, so let's

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Speaker 1: get right into it. I want to first situate our

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Speaker 1: listeners in space and time. Where we are in history

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Speaker 1: right now. The Bay of Pigs happened in nineteen sixty one,

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Speaker 1: approximately a year after Castrotrik power. So can you walk

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Speaker 1: us through what Cuba was like during this time?

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Speaker 3: Okay, well, you've had the revolution. So January the first,

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Speaker 3: nineteen fifty nine, the Batistic dictatorship has completely collapsed. Battista

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Speaker 3: has fled the country, and the country's taken over by

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Speaker 3: this group of fighters that have been led by Fredo

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Speaker 3: Castro and a considerable number of others that were supporting them.

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Speaker 3: The country is in a state of rapid change and transformation.

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Speaker 3: Because of that fact, the government is carrying out a

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Speaker 3: series of reforms which it promised it would do, things

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Speaker 3: like the Agrarian Reform law, which was to distribute land

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Speaker 3: to landless farmers. It started an education reform, started a

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Speaker 3: literacy campaign where young people are being sent out into

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Speaker 3: the distant sort of reaches of Cuba where there are

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Speaker 3: no schools and there's very high high literacy rates, and

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Speaker 3: they're teaching people how to read and write. There's the

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Speaker 3: beginnings of a new cultural policy with the foundation of

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Speaker 3: the Institute for Cinematographic Arts e Kayak, which is a

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Speaker 3: very famous institution in Cuba. The establishment of the medical system,

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Speaker 3: a free universal healthcare system is beginning at this time.

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Speaker 3: Rent controls bringing down the rent on private landlords, how

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Speaker 3: much private landlords can charge for rent, and so on.

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Speaker 3: So all of these rapid social transformations are taking place.

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Speaker 3: So the country is in a state of flux, and

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Speaker 3: the upper classes and the middle classes have largely begun

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Speaker 3: to leave the island. Most of the very rich people,

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Speaker 3: the bourgeoisie of Cuba were basically living most of the

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Speaker 3: time outside of the country anyway. They all had property

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Speaker 3: and land already in places like Florida and the Bahamas

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Speaker 3: and so on. Increasingly larger numbers of wealthy Cubans and

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Speaker 3: the upper classes were leaving the country. At the same time,

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Speaker 3: you've had the United States government under Eisenhower taking a

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Speaker 3: decision in nineteen sixty to overthrow the government secretly, so

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Speaker 3: the Bey of Pigs plan was part of that plan.

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Speaker 3: But at the same time, what they're doing is bringing

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Speaker 3: in the first measures of sanctions, and the consequence of

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Speaker 3: that is that the country is moving further and further

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Speaker 3: into the sphere of the Soviet Union, which at the time,

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Speaker 3: of course the height of the Cold War. But because

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Speaker 3: the United States is beginning to restrict the amount of

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Speaker 3: sugar it will buy from Cuba, which before, of course

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Speaker 3: it brought most of the sugar that the island produced,

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Speaker 3: so the Soviet Union steps in and proposes to buy

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Speaker 3: the sugar themselves. So this begins this process of the

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Speaker 3: government moving closer to the Soviet Union, which of course

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Speaker 3: producers there are great alarm bells in the United States.

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Speaker 3: So what's happened in the most recent moment before this

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Speaker 3: invasion takes place is a complete sort of worsening of

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Speaker 3: the relationship between the United States government in Cuba because

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Speaker 3: the Soviet Union has decided that it will swap oil

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Speaker 3: for the sugar. So Cuba is beginning to receive Soviet

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Speaker 3: oil shipments. And the refineries in Cuba are owned by

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Speaker 3: American companies and the US government instructed them not to

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Speaker 3: refine the Soviet oil, and as a consequence of that,

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Speaker 3: Castro took the decision to nationalize the American companies, and

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Speaker 3: that is a cardinal sin to commit against the United States,

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Speaker 3: and that really sets the seal on the relationships. So secretly,

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Speaker 3: the CIA has been instructed to set up what is

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Speaker 3: essentially a couatin, which is the bay of pigs in

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Speaker 3: Asian plan. So it's quite a complicated plan which may

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Speaker 3: need to be explained to the listeners or viewers because

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Speaker 3: people have a vague idea about it, but the actual

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Speaker 3: sort of details are very important.

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Speaker 2: So, Steve, you mentioned that this plan was set in

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Speaker 2: motion during the Eisenhower administration, and I was interested if

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Speaker 2: you could talk about Eisenhower's involvement, how that came about,

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Speaker 2: and why we don't hear as much about Eisenhower's involvement

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Speaker 2: in the popular history of Bay of Pigs.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, well, this is an interesting story because Fido Castro

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Speaker 3: was very popular in the United States during the revolutionary

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Speaker 3: period between nineteen fifty six and nineteen fifty nine in

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Speaker 3: terms of the position that he was taking against the dictatorship.

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Speaker 3: A lot of people in the United States, particularly the

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Speaker 3: ordinary citizenship, were really quite anti Battista. They saw him

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Speaker 3: as a dictator or anti democratic, and they thought it

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Speaker 3: was shameful that the United States would be supporting him.

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Speaker 3: So there was actually quite a large campaign, a popular

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Speaker 3: campaign in the United States, particularly amongst as you can imagine,

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Speaker 3: students and people broadly on the left side of politics,

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Speaker 3: but liberals and Democrats, you know, also were very sympathetic

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Speaker 3: towards Fredol Castro because he wasn't a communist, you see.

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Speaker 3: And the thing is that he was invited to come

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Speaker 3: to the United States after the victory, and he made

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Speaker 3: a visit to the United States very early in nineteen

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Speaker 3: fifty nine, and he actually did a college speaking tool

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Speaker 3: and he was very popular I'll give you an example

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Speaker 3: of the popularity. I mean, the popularity was fostered by

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Speaker 3: some very prominent people. Errol Flynn, for example. One of

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Speaker 3: the last things Errol Flynn did before he died, and

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Speaker 3: he was dying of cancer when he did it, he

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Speaker 3: went to the Sierra Meister and interviewed Fidel Castro and

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Speaker 3: produced a program for television and went on TV. I

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Speaker 3: think he went on The Morrow Show and talked about

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Speaker 3: what a wonderful guy Fredel Castro was. So Castro was

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Speaker 3: very popular. He goes to the United States in nineteen

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Speaker 3: fifty nine with a bunch of actually very rich Cuban

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Speaker 3: business people that were supporting him at the time on

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Speaker 3: a kind of trade delegation to try and develop a

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Speaker 3: relationship with the United States. And one of the things

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Speaker 3: he did was when he went to Washington and rocked

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Speaker 3: up at the White House to see Eisenhower. Well, the

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Speaker 3: truth of the thing is that he broke protocol because

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Speaker 3: he wasn't an official state visit, and as the head

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Speaker 3: of State, Eisenhower had no obligation diplomatically to meet him,

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Speaker 3: and he didn't. He went to play golf instead. The

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Speaker 3: person that interviewed him was none other than Richard Nixon,

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Speaker 3: the Vice president. Nixon, as you know, was a very

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Speaker 3: vehement anti communist and took the decision after meeting Castro

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Speaker 3: that Castro was a dangerous communist and had to be

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Speaker 3: gotten rid of. So the origin of the decision to

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Speaker 3: overthrow Castro comes really from this really rather unfortunate meeting

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Speaker 3: that Castro had with Nixon. So the administration takes the

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Speaker 3: decision to engineer and overthrow. Now they'd already done this

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Speaker 3: once before in Guatemala in nineteen fifty four. So the

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Speaker 3: CIA had planned the coup with some exiled officers from

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Speaker 3: the Guatemalan army and supported a coup attempt over the

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Speaker 3: democratically elected president of Guatemala, cooboar Events, and that was

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Speaker 3: very successful in nineteen fifty four in removing Bens. And

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Speaker 3: they decided that they would try something similar in Cuba,

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Speaker 3: and they instructed the CIA to do it. Interestingly enough,

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Speaker 3: they also instructed the CIA to deny that they had

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Speaker 3: been instructed by the president to do it. It was

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Speaker 3: based on this principle of plausible deniability, so they had

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Speaker 3: to devise a way of making it appear as though

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Speaker 3: the Cubans had overthrown their own government, and so the

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Speaker 3: plan was complet The secret had to be kept secret

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Speaker 3: and the CIA's involvement had to be kept secret. So

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Speaker 3: a great deal of attempts were made to do that,

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Speaker 3: which ultimately failed. They failed for a number of reasons

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Speaker 3: which I can explain later, and the fact that they

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Speaker 3: failed to keep it secret was one of the reasons

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Speaker 3: why it didn't work so well. The same team that

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Speaker 3: carried out the successful coup attempt in Guatemala in nineteen

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Speaker 3: fifty four were the people that were appointed to carry

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Speaker 3: out this attempt as well. The head of it was

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Speaker 3: a guy called Richard Bissel. This team was set up

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Speaker 3: to devise a way of overthrowing the government. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So one of the things that keeps coming up is

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Speaker 1: the tension between Americans wanting credit and then also wanted

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Speaker 1: it to be a complete secret that they are involved

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Speaker 1: at all. One of the things I found interesting was

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Speaker 1: that when Nixon was running against Kennedy, he wasn't allowed

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Speaker 1: to talk about the plan in Cuba, so he actually

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Speaker 1: came off week with regards to communism and JFKK him

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Speaker 1: off stronger. But then when Kennedy was in office, this

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Speaker 1: plan was passed down to him, and he also had

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Speaker 1: to suddenly keep it a secret. I would love to

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Speaker 1: know what would have been the best case scenario for

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Speaker 1: both doing this covertly and also getting credit for it.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it would seem like the revolution was homegrown,

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Speaker 1: and then after the fact, the Americans would ally with

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Speaker 1: anti Castro forces.

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Speaker 3: So I have to confess some limits to my knowledge

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Speaker 3: at this point. So some of the things I'm saying

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Speaker 3: there may be information that I'm not aware of that

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Speaker 3: would fill in the gaps. But there are some very

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Speaker 3: moot points still in this story as far as I know.

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Speaker 3: One of them is the extent to which the CIA

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Speaker 3: knew exactly what was happening in Cuba. Most people, I think,

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Speaker 3: are of the opinion that the CIA were very well

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Speaker 3: aware that Fido Castro was fucked by far and away,

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Speaker 3: a very very popular figure in Cuba amongst the Cuban people.

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Speaker 3: One of the things they tried to convince Kennedy of,

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Speaker 3: and would seemingly appear to have done, was to convince

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Speaker 3: him that he wasn't so popular and that when these

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Speaker 3: people landed in Cuba, the population in Cuba would rise

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Speaker 3: up in support of the invasion and oppose Castro, and

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Speaker 3: Castro would be toppled by a popular uprising behind the invaders. Now,

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Speaker 3: the original plan, it would appear, relied on that appenstance

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Speaker 3: considerably less, because the idea was that there was a

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Speaker 3: kind of government in exile waiting to be planted in Cuba.

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Speaker 3: So the original plan was to establish a bridgehead, in

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Speaker 3: other words, a territory that would be liberated vertic commerce

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Speaker 3: from the Castro government, and the government would be flown

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Speaker 3: in and would claim to be the legitimate government of Cuba.

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Speaker 3: And then the United States was going to recognize that

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Speaker 3: officially as the legitimate government of Cube and even propose

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Speaker 3: a resolution of the United Nations in support of this

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Speaker 3: new government of Cuba, and then it was going to

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Speaker 3: invade the island. So, in other words, these invaders were

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Speaker 3: never intended to actually take power themselves. They were just

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Speaker 3: merely to establish a bridgehead, which would then produce the

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Speaker 3: pretext for a full blown US military invasion of the island.

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Speaker 1: The hope was that Cubans that were not in cahoots

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Speaker 1: with the US would just join in because the US

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Speaker 1: overestimated anti Castro sentiment.

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Speaker 3: So the idea was that there would be a popular

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Speaker 3: uprising of sorts in behind this new government, and the

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Speaker 3: American troops would be arriving as kind of liberatus from

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Speaker 3: this dictatorship. So, in other words, the United States would

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Speaker 3: then appear to be freeing Cuba from this terrible government

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Speaker 3: that was oppressing its people. So that was the story,

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Speaker 3: and it was pretty theatrically designed because at the beginning

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Speaker 3: of the invasion they staged this bombing of the Cuban

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Speaker 3: airfields and then these planes landing in Miami and pilots

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Speaker 3: getting out and declaring that they were Cuban pilots who

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Speaker 3: had bombed their own airfields that morning and defected to

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Speaker 3: the United States, and that they were actually Cuban Air

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Speaker 3: Force officers that had attacked their own air bases. But

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Speaker 3: in fact that wasn't true. This was fake and it

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Speaker 3: was all faked up by the CIA to make it

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Speaker 3: appear as though there was this swelling up of anti

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Speaker 3: Castro feeling within the country. So that was the original plan,

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Speaker 3: but a number of things went seriously wrong with the plan.

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Speaker 1: We'll be back with more United States of Kennedy after

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Speaker 1: this break.

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Speaker 2: And we're back with more United States of Kennedy.

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Speaker 1: Two things I want to get to are Kennedy saying

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Speaker 1: the plan was too ambitious and wanting to tone it down,

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Speaker 1: which ultimately had detrimental effects on.

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Speaker 3: The whole thing.

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Speaker 1: And then I also want to talk about just the

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Speaker 1: very basic logistics of what the plan was.

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Speaker 3: Okay, Well, to go back to Kennedy, the point that

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Speaker 3: you made was absolutely right that Kennedy went into the

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Speaker 3: campaign trying to out anti communize Nixon, and he did.

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Speaker 3: He came over stronger against communism than Nixon did. And

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Speaker 3: one of the things that he picked up on was

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Speaker 3: the fact that apparently the United States was doing nothing

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Speaker 3: about this guy Castro in Cuba, where in fact they

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Speaker 3: secretly were, but they couldn't admit it, Okay, and that

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Speaker 3: did make Nixon look weak, and it was one of

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Speaker 3: the factors that possibly worked against him in the election. However,

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Speaker 3: you also have to remember that the United States had

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Speaker 3: gotten itself a really bad name in the neighborhood because

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Speaker 3: of what it had done previously. So this coup attempt

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Speaker 3: in Guatemala made the United States look like the bully

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Speaker 3: in the backyard, the imperialist colonizer of Central America. Because,

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Speaker 3: of course, one of the things about the Guatemala. Thing

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Speaker 3: was that our ben did which upset the United States

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Speaker 3: was nationalized land which belonged to a United Fruit company

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Speaker 3: and was giving it to peasants. And that was the

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Speaker 3: thing that they didn't like. They took against him for that.

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Speaker 3: So the thing was this made the United States look

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Speaker 3: really bad in the eyes of Latin America, and at

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Speaker 3: the same time they were facing an upswelling of support

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Speaker 3: for leftist governments, and in the context of the Cold War,

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Speaker 3: something serious had to be done about that. So one

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Speaker 3: of the key elements of the Kennedy approach to dealing

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Speaker 3: with communism in the Hemisphere was the Alliance for Progress,

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Speaker 3: and the Alliance for Progress was the kind of opposite

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Speaker 3: attempt to deal with the situation. The United States was

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Speaker 3: going to use aid established us AID as an institution

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Speaker 3: to alleviate the conditions of the poor in Latin America,

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Speaker 3: with the view that this would remove the popularity of

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Speaker 3: leftist ideas amongst the population. In other words, do something

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Speaker 3: about the wealth disparities in these countries which was leading

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Speaker 3: to the growth of left wing governments. So Kennedy wanted

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Speaker 3: to take a much more progressive and friendlier policy, very

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Speaker 3: much like the one that FDR brought in in nineteen

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Speaker 3: thirty three, which was called the Good Neighbor Policy. So

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Speaker 3: the Alliance for Progress was another attempt by the United

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Speaker 3: States government to recover some of the lost ground that

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Speaker 3: it had from acting in a very militaristic way in

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Speaker 3: the past. So Kennedy was bringing in a fresh race,

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Speaker 3: and he wanted to diss himself from the kinds of

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Speaker 3: activities that the eyes in our administration had gotten up to,

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Speaker 3: overthrowing governments with coups, like in Guatemara in fifty four.

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Speaker 3: So he inherits exactly the same kind of plan, and

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Speaker 3: he doesn't like it, and his advisors, particularly people like

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Speaker 3: Arthur Selezender Junior, the historian who was in the White House,

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Speaker 3: who was one of the chief proponents of the Alliance

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Speaker 3: for Progress, was saying to him, don't touch this plan

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Speaker 3: with a barge pole. You know, this is the exact

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Speaker 3: opposite of what we want to do. You're going to

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Speaker 3: wreck all of the good work that you're trying to

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Speaker 3: do with the Alliance for Progress. You can't do both things.

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Speaker 3: He can't be trying to be kind and at the

305
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Speaker 3: same time do something like this. So you've got to

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Speaker 3: distance yourself from this, which gave the CIA a big

307
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Speaker 3: problem because the US government support and the US Air

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Speaker 3: Force's support and the Marines in the end were going

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Speaker 3: to have to go in and win this. So they

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Speaker 3: blied to Kennedy. You see, they told Kennedy that, oh,

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Speaker 3: this thing will be okay, this will be fine. These

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Speaker 3: people will land, and the Cubans hate feed or Castro

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Speaker 3: and they're going to rise up and overthrow him, and

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Speaker 3: so on and so on and so on, and Kennedy

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Speaker 3: Boss and the more or less told the well, if

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Speaker 3: that's the case, go ahead, but it's you guys that

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Speaker 3: are going to have to do it. Don't expect support

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Speaker 3: from us. He didn't want to have anything to do

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Speaker 3: with it. And that's one of the key reasons why

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Speaker 3: it failed, because it didn't have the support of the

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Speaker 3: White House. So the change in the presidency did change

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Speaker 3: the outcomes of foreign policy planning. Because this was a

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Speaker 3: plan that was hatched by one administration inherited by another.

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Speaker 3: You have to take into account the fact that Nixon

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Speaker 3: expected to win. That was another thing. It was a

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Speaker 3: shock victory. Kennedy was in the White House against all

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Speaker 3: of the odds.

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Speaker 1: So was there just a complete lack of agreement on

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Speaker 1: what the plan was. It seems like either they should

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Speaker 1: have committed to the super robust CIA plan and just

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Speaker 1: really gotten in and done exactly what America always does

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Speaker 1: when they invade other countries, or they should have given

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Speaker 1: up and actually tried a friendlier, less aggressive plan. But

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Speaker 1: it seems like what happened was the CIA was proposing

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Speaker 1: something really robust to Kennedy. He was getting cold feet

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Speaker 1: about it. He was saying, no, this is too spectacular.

337
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Speaker 1: He doesn't like the shock and aw language. But rather

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Speaker 1: than him calling it off or trying to figure it out,

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Speaker 1: he'll say, what if we send half of the number

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Speaker 1: of airplanes, or what if we try to make it

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Speaker 1: more covert. So he's in a very clear way setting

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Speaker 1: himself up for failure.

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Speaker 3: So yeah, I mean, the plan was well in progress

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Speaker 3: when he inherited it, and it took place in April

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Speaker 3: of sixty one, and he only got into the White

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Speaker 3: House in January, so you're talking about a few weeks

347
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Speaker 3: and this is landing on his desk as a new president,

348
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Speaker 3: and it's like, wow, you know this is important. And

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Speaker 3: of course what they've done is they've taken fifteen hundred guys.

350
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Speaker 3: These guys are Cuban exiles, they've left Cuba, and they

351
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Speaker 3: are some of the richie people in Cuba. So you

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Speaker 3: look at the breakdown of the people that have been

353
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Speaker 3: recruited into this brigade that is going to invade Cuba.

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Speaker 3: They are the sons of owners and owners sometimes of

355
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Speaker 3: the biggest ranchers and farms and businesses, and shareholders of

356
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Speaker 3: banks and all kinds of people, and also people that

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Speaker 3: were very high in the military during the Batista junter

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Speaker 3: and very very prominent people. And they're in this brigade

359
00:21:25,359 --> 00:21:28,680
Speaker 3: and they've been in Guatenala, training in the jungle there

360
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Speaker 3: for months, and they've been fully expecting to go ahead.

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Speaker 3: And this plan is already heavily invested and it's too

362
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Speaker 3: late to pull out. So the thing is Kennedy is

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Speaker 3: in between a rock and a hard place. So he

364
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Speaker 3: has to make a judgment, and it seems that he

365
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Speaker 3: makes the judgment that I'm not going to support this.

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Speaker 3: Let it happen. If it works, great, If it doesn't,

367
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Speaker 3: I won't but dirty my hands with it. But because

368
00:21:51,920 --> 00:21:54,960
Speaker 3: he couldn't actually escape that in the end either, he

369
00:21:55,080 --> 00:21:58,400
Speaker 3: had to take responsibility for it and it be smirched

370
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Speaker 3: his character and his presidency, and of course it had

371
00:22:01,520 --> 00:22:05,560
Speaker 3: a knock on effect because it made him look rather

372
00:22:05,640 --> 00:22:08,840
Speaker 3: stupid and weak. And then when the missile crisis comes

373
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Speaker 3: around a year later, he's got to look tough because

374
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Speaker 3: he's already been burned by Cuba once. So the Bay

375
00:22:15,600 --> 00:22:18,920
Speaker 3: of Pigs is quite an important event because it actually

376
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Speaker 3: has a bearing on what happens just a few months

377
00:22:22,520 --> 00:22:25,960
Speaker 3: later with the missile crisis. But to come back to

378
00:22:26,040 --> 00:22:30,800
Speaker 3: the plan itself, the CIA lied to Kennedy. I mean,

379
00:22:30,880 --> 00:22:33,840
Speaker 3: Kennedy realized that afterwards because he had a report written

380
00:22:33,880 --> 00:22:38,119
Speaker 3: into the failure, and this report is pretty damning of

381
00:22:38,160 --> 00:22:41,399
Speaker 3: the CIA and the way they operated. And famously, Kennedy

382
00:22:41,520 --> 00:22:44,800
Speaker 3: is said to have angrily told people that he was

383
00:22:44,840 --> 00:22:47,360
Speaker 3: going to smash the CIA into a thousand pieces when

384
00:22:47,359 --> 00:22:50,240
Speaker 3: he got a second term. So he was pretty much

385
00:22:50,440 --> 00:22:54,080
Speaker 3: hoodwinked by the CIA because they didn't give him the

386
00:22:54,119 --> 00:22:57,159
Speaker 3: full picture. Now, to go back to the plan, you

387
00:22:57,200 --> 00:22:59,639
Speaker 3: wanted to go through the plan a little bit, Yeah.

388
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Speaker 2: I think that's the next thing that we would love

389
00:23:01,359 --> 00:23:03,879
Speaker 2: to ask you about is the nuts and bolts of

390
00:23:03,920 --> 00:23:06,119
Speaker 2: the plan and how it actually unfolded.

391
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Speaker 3: Right, So, The idea is that they train up this

392
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Speaker 3: force and secretly pretend that they have trained themselves. They've

393
00:23:16,240 --> 00:23:21,720
Speaker 3: got themselves together, and they have planned to invade Cuba.

394
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Speaker 3: The plan is to establish a bridgehead and a free

395
00:23:25,560 --> 00:23:29,600
Speaker 3: territory of Cuba and plant a government that they've got

396
00:23:29,680 --> 00:23:33,159
Speaker 3: in exile waiting to land in Cuba and declare itself

397
00:23:33,160 --> 00:23:36,000
Speaker 3: to be the legitimate Cuban government, which then would be

398
00:23:36,000 --> 00:23:38,119
Speaker 3: recognized by the United States, and that would serve as

399
00:23:38,160 --> 00:23:39,240
Speaker 3: a pretext for invasion.

400
00:23:39,520 --> 00:23:41,680
Speaker 2: Classic US regime change.

401
00:23:41,480 --> 00:23:46,119
Speaker 3: Yeah, and basic regime change plan. Now, the original plan

402
00:23:46,320 --> 00:23:49,240
Speaker 3: was to land not at the Bay of Peaks, but

403
00:23:49,560 --> 00:23:54,679
Speaker 3: in Trinidad. So Trinidad is a sizeable city on the

404
00:23:54,760 --> 00:23:58,240
Speaker 3: southern coast of Cuba, further down the coast from the

405
00:23:58,280 --> 00:24:02,400
Speaker 3: Bay of Peaks. But the advantage of Trinidad it was twofold.

406
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Speaker 3: First of all, it was a sizeable town, so there

407
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Speaker 3: would be a population there that would declare itself free.

408
00:24:09,440 --> 00:24:13,320
Speaker 3: And it was a town that was not particularly revolutionary.

409
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Speaker 3: In fact, it had been rather counter revolutionary and was

410
00:24:17,680 --> 00:24:20,359
Speaker 3: not a big supporter of fid or Castro. Now, the

411
00:24:20,400 --> 00:24:24,399
Speaker 3: reason for that is historical and geographical. Trinidad is a

412
00:24:24,640 --> 00:24:27,719
Speaker 3: town which is more or less separated from the island

413
00:24:27,760 --> 00:24:31,280
Speaker 3: by a mountain range, the Escambre Mountains, which means it's

414
00:24:31,400 --> 00:24:34,639
Speaker 3: very difficult for people to get to it. You have

415
00:24:34,680 --> 00:24:37,159
Speaker 3: to go through road paths from the other side of

416
00:24:37,200 --> 00:24:40,879
Speaker 3: the mountains, and it means that historically this population was

417
00:24:40,920 --> 00:24:43,360
Speaker 3: cut off from the rest of the island, which means

418
00:24:43,359 --> 00:24:46,840
Speaker 3: that it's really rather You know, every country has jokes

419
00:24:46,880 --> 00:24:50,200
Speaker 3: about people who are living in isolated communities as being

420
00:24:50,240 --> 00:24:54,040
Speaker 3: in bred. Well, the Cubans make jokes about Trinidadians in

421
00:24:54,119 --> 00:24:56,600
Speaker 3: the way that you would make jokes about people from

422
00:24:56,640 --> 00:24:59,720
Speaker 3: the Kentucky or somewhere. I don't you know what I'm saying.

423
00:24:59,800 --> 00:25:03,240
Speaker 3: It's kind of like a city that is separated geographically

424
00:25:03,800 --> 00:25:07,360
Speaker 3: and historically socially from the rest of the island. So

425
00:25:07,440 --> 00:25:10,720
Speaker 3: it's a place which is not particularly revolutionist, very very

426
00:25:10,720 --> 00:25:14,080
Speaker 3: devoutly Catholic, and so therefore the CIA knew that they

427
00:25:14,119 --> 00:25:16,960
Speaker 3: would have support there. Now. The thing was, the other

428
00:25:17,040 --> 00:25:20,119
Speaker 3: advantage for the CIA was that there was a rebel group,

429
00:25:20,560 --> 00:25:26,400
Speaker 3: a breakaway group from Castro's Gorilla Column that had gone

430
00:25:26,480 --> 00:25:30,560
Speaker 3: up into the Escambray Mountains on the outskirts of Trinidad

431
00:25:31,040 --> 00:25:33,600
Speaker 3: and was carrying out a kind of guerrilla war against

432
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Speaker 3: Freidel Castro, and the CIA were supplying this group. It

433
00:25:37,800 --> 00:25:40,520
Speaker 3: was led by a man called Alloy gutierism Annoya, quite

434
00:25:40,560 --> 00:25:43,280
Speaker 3: a famous character who crops up later in the history.

435
00:25:43,359 --> 00:25:47,440
Speaker 3: But Gutieri's Manoya was a Democrat who was upset by

436
00:25:47,480 --> 00:25:51,320
Speaker 3: Castro when he didn't declare elections immediately and set about

437
00:25:51,640 --> 00:25:54,359
Speaker 3: opposing Castro. And he was a leader of a gorilla

438
00:25:54,400 --> 00:25:56,679
Speaker 3: group and they went up into the Escambray Mountains and

439
00:25:56,680 --> 00:26:00,760
Speaker 3: they were carrying out raids against Castro, and the CIA

440
00:26:00,920 --> 00:26:04,520
Speaker 3: was supplying him with weapons and food, dropping it into

441
00:26:04,560 --> 00:26:09,720
Speaker 3: the Escambray Mountains. So the CIA anticipated that this group

442
00:26:09,840 --> 00:26:14,119
Speaker 3: would be able to also be appearing to be on

443
00:26:14,280 --> 00:26:18,520
Speaker 3: the side of the invaders. Now, Castro was astute enough

444
00:26:18,520 --> 00:26:22,639
Speaker 3: to deal with this, so he sent in a militia

445
00:26:22,920 --> 00:26:26,920
Speaker 3: in early nineteen sixty into the Escambray Mountains. He sent

446
00:26:26,960 --> 00:26:30,920
Speaker 3: twenty thousand men into the Escambray Mountains and they captured

447
00:26:31,400 --> 00:26:35,920
Speaker 3: Routiera's Menoia, which removed him from the scene. The militia

448
00:26:35,960 --> 00:26:40,240
Speaker 3: were then sent to occupy Trinidad. So suddenly Trinidad became

449
00:26:40,560 --> 00:26:44,720
Speaker 3: completely impossible because there were twenty thousand Cuban militia men

450
00:26:44,880 --> 00:26:48,600
Speaker 3: sitting in Trinidad, so they switched to the Bay of Pigs. Now,

451
00:26:48,600 --> 00:26:51,919
Speaker 3: the Baypigs is not the best place to land. It

452
00:26:52,080 --> 00:26:54,800
Speaker 3: has the advantage of being cut off from the rest

453
00:26:54,880 --> 00:26:59,200
Speaker 3: of Cuba because there's a swamp that separates the area

454
00:26:59,280 --> 00:27:02,760
Speaker 3: by the coat from the rest of the country, and

455
00:27:02,800 --> 00:27:07,320
Speaker 3: that's one is pretty impassable, and the community there is

456
00:27:07,400 --> 00:27:10,200
Speaker 3: cut off from the rest of the island. But it's

457
00:27:10,240 --> 00:27:14,040
Speaker 3: a very small community and it's a very rural community.

458
00:27:15,119 --> 00:27:18,840
Speaker 3: And the problem they have there is and this is

459
00:27:18,840 --> 00:27:22,760
Speaker 3: something that apparently the CIA were not paying particular attention to,

460
00:27:22,880 --> 00:27:27,800
Speaker 3: I think, was that this particular community was the poorest

461
00:27:27,920 --> 00:27:32,800
Speaker 3: community in Cuba. You're talking about people that had a

462
00:27:32,840 --> 00:27:36,960
Speaker 3: life expectancy of something like thirty five. They lived a

463
00:27:37,040 --> 00:27:42,000
Speaker 3: completely subsistence kind of lifestyle. They eked out in existence

464
00:27:42,080 --> 00:27:44,639
Speaker 3: in the swamp, and if you've ever been to that swamp,

465
00:27:44,720 --> 00:27:48,240
Speaker 3: the mosquitoes are like hornets. It's like the last place

466
00:27:48,240 --> 00:27:50,000
Speaker 3: on earth you would want to live. They made a

467
00:27:50,040 --> 00:27:53,040
Speaker 3: living from charcoal burnie and there was a guy that

468
00:27:53,160 --> 00:27:56,400
Speaker 3: had a train that was passable. When the swamp filled

469
00:27:56,440 --> 00:27:59,320
Speaker 3: up with water, the railway was submerged, so there was

470
00:27:59,320 --> 00:28:01,199
Speaker 3: one time of the year when it was the dry season,

471
00:28:01,520 --> 00:28:04,479
Speaker 3: the guy would drive his train down into the swamp

472
00:28:04,480 --> 00:28:08,520
Speaker 3: and swap for the charcoal for stuff with the people.

473
00:28:08,560 --> 00:28:11,000
Speaker 3: Of course, he was ripping them off massively. They had

474
00:28:11,040 --> 00:28:16,920
Speaker 3: no schooling, no sanitation, lived in huts with thatcheris earth floors.

475
00:28:17,240 --> 00:28:22,760
Speaker 3: They were the most pitiful people in Cuba. And Celia Sanchez,

476
00:28:22,800 --> 00:28:28,120
Speaker 3: who was Fido Castro's secretary, was aware of the terrible

477
00:28:28,240 --> 00:28:31,520
Speaker 3: conditions in which these people lived, and very shortly after

478
00:28:31,560 --> 00:28:35,120
Speaker 3: the revolution, she insisted on taking Fidel Castro down there

479
00:28:35,720 --> 00:28:38,560
Speaker 3: to show him, and when he saw the conditions in

480
00:28:38,600 --> 00:28:40,440
Speaker 3: which these people live, he said, we've got to do

481
00:28:40,520 --> 00:28:44,120
Speaker 3: something for these people. And the first thing they did

482
00:28:44,240 --> 00:28:47,160
Speaker 3: was build a road. So they built a road down

483
00:28:47,360 --> 00:28:51,200
Speaker 3: to the Bay of Pigs, and they decided to build

484
00:28:51,360 --> 00:28:55,520
Speaker 3: a holiday camping center and a hotel so that it

485
00:28:55,520 --> 00:28:58,320
Speaker 3: would become a tourist place. And the idea was that

486
00:28:58,400 --> 00:29:00,640
Speaker 3: local tourism Cubans would take their holidays there and it

487
00:29:00,680 --> 00:29:03,080
Speaker 3: would provide a better employment for the people that lived

488
00:29:03,120 --> 00:29:05,480
Speaker 3: down there. And the very first people that were sent

489
00:29:05,560 --> 00:29:08,280
Speaker 3: out on the literacy campaign were sent to that place.

490
00:29:09,000 --> 00:29:15,880
Speaker 3: So these people had benefited immediately from the change in government,

491
00:29:16,480 --> 00:29:20,040
Speaker 3: and rather than being a gainst Castro, they were at

492
00:29:20,080 --> 00:29:23,800
Speaker 3: one hundred percent behind it, and they had formed a

493
00:29:23,840 --> 00:29:27,840
Speaker 3: militia to defend the country, so part of the civil

494
00:29:27,840 --> 00:29:29,960
Speaker 3: defense that had been set up. Now I'm getting ahead

495
00:29:29,960 --> 00:29:31,760
Speaker 3: of myself a little bit, because one of the crucial

496
00:29:31,840 --> 00:29:36,239
Speaker 3: aspects of this is the impossibility that the CIA had

497
00:29:36,480 --> 00:29:39,959
Speaker 3: of keeping the plan secret. The reason for that was

498
00:29:40,600 --> 00:29:44,200
Speaker 3: that although relations between the United States and Cuba had

499
00:29:44,200 --> 00:29:49,600
Speaker 3: gotten worse, they hadn't become completely destroyed. So there were

500
00:29:49,640 --> 00:29:54,479
Speaker 3: still airplane flights between Cuba and the United States. There

501
00:29:54,560 --> 00:29:57,719
Speaker 3: was still a postal service and telephone service. People had

502
00:29:57,760 --> 00:29:59,480
Speaker 3: left the island, but of course there were still members

503
00:29:59,480 --> 00:30:01,720
Speaker 3: of their family living on the island. Not everybody in

504
00:30:01,760 --> 00:30:03,959
Speaker 3: the family had gone, so there were relatives on the

505
00:30:03,960 --> 00:30:08,080
Speaker 3: island with whom they were communicating. People were telling their

506
00:30:08,160 --> 00:30:11,560
Speaker 3: family on the island that you know, Pepe, Uncle Pepe

507
00:30:11,600 --> 00:30:14,560
Speaker 3: has gone down to Guatemala and he's being trained by

508
00:30:14,600 --> 00:30:17,280
Speaker 3: the CIA to invade Cuba. Well, of course, people in

509
00:30:17,360 --> 00:30:20,440
Speaker 3: Cuba talk to one another and they tell each other

510
00:30:20,520 --> 00:30:23,920
Speaker 3: what's going on, and then would get to the leadership

511
00:30:24,000 --> 00:30:27,000
Speaker 3: that they're planning to invade Cuba. So they knew that

512
00:30:27,120 --> 00:30:30,680
Speaker 3: this plan was in motion, but they didn't know when

513
00:30:30,680 --> 00:30:31,800
Speaker 3: it was going to take place.

514
00:30:32,880 --> 00:30:36,120
Speaker 1: So we've switched the plan from Trinidad, where there was

515
00:30:36,160 --> 00:30:39,840
Speaker 1: a community that would be potentially more hospitable to American

516
00:30:39,920 --> 00:30:42,600
Speaker 1: led anti Castro forces, to the Bay of Pigs, which

517
00:30:42,640 --> 00:30:45,840
Speaker 1: is a uniquely bad place in terms of the community

518
00:30:45,840 --> 00:30:48,960
Speaker 1: there because they are not highly educated community that had

519
00:30:49,000 --> 00:30:54,960
Speaker 1: directly recently benefited from Castro policies and community work exactly.

520
00:30:55,040 --> 00:30:57,880
Speaker 1: And on top of all of that, information is flowing

521
00:30:57,920 --> 00:31:01,160
Speaker 1: into Cuba and people know the attack is about to

522
00:31:01,200 --> 00:31:03,560
Speaker 1: take place. But correct me if I'm wrong. It wasn't

523
00:31:03,720 --> 00:31:06,400
Speaker 1: just that people were talking to their own families. Journalistic

524
00:31:06,480 --> 00:31:09,960
Speaker 1: outlets in America were reporting that the CIA slash the

525
00:31:10,000 --> 00:31:13,160
Speaker 1: White House was in the process of planning these things.

526
00:31:13,200 --> 00:31:16,000
Speaker 1: So can you talk a little bit about what the

527
00:31:16,040 --> 00:31:19,920
Speaker 1: media and information ecosystem was like, I mean, it was

528
00:31:19,960 --> 00:31:22,720
Speaker 1: like the worst kept secret in the history of foreign policy.

529
00:31:22,880 --> 00:31:25,600
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, Kennedy actually said, Kastra doesn't need any spies

530
00:31:25,640 --> 00:31:27,920
Speaker 3: when he's got the New York Times. The New York

531
00:31:27,920 --> 00:31:30,080
Speaker 3: Times splashed on it, but they got the news the

532
00:31:30,120 --> 00:31:32,960
Speaker 3: same way as the Cubans did. People were talking about it.

533
00:31:32,960 --> 00:31:35,120
Speaker 3: It was the worst kept secret. You can't train one

534
00:31:35,200 --> 00:31:39,360
Speaker 3: thy five hundred Cubans secretly because they're going to communicate

535
00:31:39,360 --> 00:31:41,040
Speaker 3: with their family, and their families are going to talk

536
00:31:41,040 --> 00:31:45,000
Speaker 3: to other people. Incidentally, this inability to keep a secret

537
00:31:45,200 --> 00:31:47,120
Speaker 3: was a problem in the lead up to the missile

538
00:31:47,160 --> 00:31:50,680
Speaker 3: crisis because the Soviets tried to keep it secret and couldn't.

539
00:31:50,880 --> 00:31:52,800
Speaker 3: And of course, if you asked the right questions in

540
00:31:52,840 --> 00:31:56,320
Speaker 3: the right places, you get the answers you want. So

541
00:31:57,360 --> 00:32:00,480
Speaker 3: pretty much people knew that this plan was being ached,

542
00:32:01,000 --> 00:32:03,640
Speaker 3: but they didn't know when it was going to take place.

543
00:32:04,360 --> 00:32:06,680
Speaker 3: So they knew it was going to be an amphibious landing,

544
00:32:07,200 --> 00:32:12,160
Speaker 3: and they worked out where all the best beaches to

545
00:32:12,400 --> 00:32:16,600
Speaker 3: land the force on around the island, and they put

546
00:32:16,640 --> 00:32:20,880
Speaker 3: a militia control twenty four to seven along those beaches

547
00:32:21,000 --> 00:32:24,680
Speaker 3: so that if they ever appeared on the shoreline on

548
00:32:24,760 --> 00:32:29,200
Speaker 3: the horizon, they would get an immediate alert. So they

549
00:32:29,200 --> 00:32:31,960
Speaker 3: were watching all of the likely beaches, and of course

550
00:32:31,960 --> 00:32:35,160
Speaker 3: that's precisely what happened. There was a guy patrolling the

551
00:32:35,160 --> 00:32:39,280
Speaker 3: beach and he saw them coming, raised the alarm, and

552
00:32:39,600 --> 00:32:42,240
Speaker 3: a guy ran all the way to the nearest telephone,

553
00:32:42,240 --> 00:32:45,120
Speaker 3: which is twenty five kilometers away or whatever, and they

554
00:32:45,200 --> 00:32:47,800
Speaker 3: call Avanna and tell Fredel they're landing at the Bay

555
00:32:47,800 --> 00:32:50,040
Speaker 3: of Pigs. So they got the word out straight away

556
00:32:50,080 --> 00:32:52,360
Speaker 3: because there was this preparation.

557
00:32:52,320 --> 00:32:54,360
Speaker 2: We're going to take a short break, stay with.

558
00:32:54,320 --> 00:33:10,120
Speaker 1: Us, and we're back with United States of Kennedy.

559
00:33:10,760 --> 00:33:13,520
Speaker 2: As you mentioned, the New York Times published an article

560
00:33:13,680 --> 00:33:16,280
Speaker 2: just days before the invasion that the US was planning

561
00:33:16,280 --> 00:33:19,880
Speaker 2: a covert attack on Cuba. How did the Kennedy administration

562
00:33:19,960 --> 00:33:22,400
Speaker 2: respond to that and why did they end up going

563
00:33:22,520 --> 00:33:25,520
Speaker 2: through with it? Everyone was leaking like a sieve. It

564
00:33:25,640 --> 00:33:28,680
Speaker 2: seemed like in Cuba they were more than prepared for it.

565
00:33:29,000 --> 00:33:32,960
Speaker 2: The CIA clearly had a lot of bad intelligence. Why

566
00:33:32,960 --> 00:33:34,720
Speaker 2: did they end up going through with it?

567
00:33:34,880 --> 00:33:38,120
Speaker 3: Well, no, you see, the thing is they softened Cuba

568
00:33:38,200 --> 00:33:42,400
Speaker 3: up pretty much. I mean, they had a massive campaign

569
00:33:42,640 --> 00:33:45,560
Speaker 3: of terrorist attacks in the run up. So at the

570
00:33:45,600 --> 00:33:50,000
Speaker 3: same time as this you got this increasing aggression. So

571
00:33:50,080 --> 00:33:53,920
Speaker 3: there were bombings in department stores in Havana, burning of

572
00:33:54,000 --> 00:33:59,040
Speaker 3: cane fields, and famously the explosion of an ammunition ship

573
00:33:59,160 --> 00:34:03,200
Speaker 3: which you know was carrying weapons. So they tried to

574
00:34:03,720 --> 00:34:08,680
Speaker 3: strong arm the British government into stopping supplying spare paths

575
00:34:08,719 --> 00:34:11,759
Speaker 3: for the planes that they had. Another irony of this

576
00:34:11,920 --> 00:34:16,759
Speaker 3: story is that, under pressure popular pressure from the American population,

577
00:34:17,040 --> 00:34:22,120
Speaker 3: eisen Arad stopped selling weapons to Batista in nineteen fifty eight,

578
00:34:22,200 --> 00:34:25,640
Speaker 3: and the Brits stepped in and sold him some decommissioned

579
00:34:25,880 --> 00:34:30,279
Speaker 3: Sea Fury airplanes from World War II stock and under

580
00:34:30,280 --> 00:34:35,360
Speaker 3: the deal were supplying ammunition, spare parts, and servicing for

581
00:34:35,440 --> 00:34:40,480
Speaker 3: these planes, and Castro inherited the deal. So the Brits

582
00:34:40,520 --> 00:34:44,880
Speaker 3: had this living deal supplying support for the air force

583
00:34:45,040 --> 00:34:49,120
Speaker 3: in Cuba, and the Americans tried to stop macmillan, the

584
00:34:49,160 --> 00:34:54,799
Speaker 3: British Prime Minister, from delivering spare parts and weapons. Interestingly enough,

585
00:34:54,840 --> 00:34:57,400
Speaker 3: he agreed to do that, but he refused to do

586
00:34:57,520 --> 00:35:00,600
Speaker 3: anything else. They wanted him to join in the trade embargo,

587
00:35:00,640 --> 00:35:04,600
Speaker 3: and he refused. He did stop sending weapons and spare

588
00:35:04,640 --> 00:35:07,600
Speaker 3: paths with these planes, and one of those planes was

589
00:35:07,640 --> 00:35:12,000
Speaker 3: still serviceable and was instrumental in the defeat of the landing,

590
00:35:12,840 --> 00:35:16,319
Speaker 3: So they softened Cuba up a lot. They probably had

591
00:35:16,360 --> 00:35:19,920
Speaker 3: a strong feeling that they would be able to establish

592
00:35:19,920 --> 00:35:23,880
Speaker 3: this bridgehead long enough for it to be recognized Once

593
00:35:23,920 --> 00:35:27,880
Speaker 3: it was recognized they would be able to bounce Kennedy

594
00:35:27,920 --> 00:35:33,280
Speaker 3: into committing American troops to supporting it. All they needed

595
00:35:33,280 --> 00:35:36,480
Speaker 3: to do was establish the bridgehead for a reasonable length

596
00:35:36,520 --> 00:35:39,200
Speaker 3: of time a week or so. The fact was it

597
00:35:39,239 --> 00:35:42,239
Speaker 3: was defeated so quickly that they didn't have time to

598
00:35:42,280 --> 00:35:45,319
Speaker 3: do that. That was the reason why it failed. I mean,

599
00:35:45,360 --> 00:35:48,880
Speaker 3: they did land and they lasted seventy two hours. If

600
00:35:48,920 --> 00:35:51,160
Speaker 3: they'd lasted a week or two weeks, things might have

601
00:35:51,200 --> 00:35:55,240
Speaker 3: been completely different, and there probably was a good chance

602
00:35:55,400 --> 00:35:57,879
Speaker 3: of that actually working as far as the CIA were

603
00:35:57,880 --> 00:36:01,239
Speaker 3: concerned in the runner, because they'd and Cuba enough and

604
00:36:01,880 --> 00:36:05,320
Speaker 3: they had infiltrated Cuba and had agents working in Cuba.

605
00:36:05,360 --> 00:36:10,960
Speaker 3: But the problem there was again Fido Castro's amazing acuity

606
00:36:11,320 --> 00:36:15,040
Speaker 3: as a leader. So there was this terrorist campaign which

607
00:36:15,160 --> 00:36:17,759
Speaker 3: was obviously being carried out by agents that had been

608
00:36:17,760 --> 00:36:21,160
Speaker 3: infiltrated into the island. So there were people within Cuban

609
00:36:21,280 --> 00:36:25,560
Speaker 3: society that were working against the revolution, planting bombs and

610
00:36:25,600 --> 00:36:28,200
Speaker 3: so on. So he set up the Committees for the

611
00:36:28,200 --> 00:36:33,120
Speaker 3: Defense of the Revolution. These are neighborhood committees where citizens

612
00:36:33,120 --> 00:36:35,880
Speaker 3: who are in favor of the revolution are encouraged to

613
00:36:35,960 --> 00:36:40,600
Speaker 3: form a neighborhood committee, and they would patrol the streets

614
00:36:40,600 --> 00:36:45,239
Speaker 3: at night and keep a watch out for any suspicious activity.

615
00:36:45,719 --> 00:36:49,640
Speaker 3: And they were also instructed to keep surveillance of the

616
00:36:49,719 --> 00:36:53,439
Speaker 3: people in their neighborhood who might be suspected of being

617
00:36:53,480 --> 00:36:56,880
Speaker 3: an agent for the United States. In other words, anybody

618
00:36:57,200 --> 00:37:01,200
Speaker 3: who didn't express support for the government or seemed to

619
00:37:01,280 --> 00:37:04,960
Speaker 3: be not so keen on doing things. They had a

620
00:37:05,000 --> 00:37:10,520
Speaker 3: record of suspects. Okay, Now, what happened was when the

621
00:37:10,560 --> 00:37:14,279
Speaker 3: invasion started. It started with a bombing raid. So that

622
00:37:14,520 --> 00:37:17,120
Speaker 3: was the announcement that the invasion was imminent. Was when

623
00:37:17,719 --> 00:37:21,440
Speaker 3: suddenly the Cuban airfields were bombed. That was on April

624
00:37:21,480 --> 00:37:26,080
Speaker 3: the fifteenth, And on that morning Castro ordered the Committees

625
00:37:26,120 --> 00:37:29,760
Speaker 3: for the Defense of the Revolution to make citizens arrests

626
00:37:30,160 --> 00:37:35,520
Speaker 3: of every single person they suspected might be supportive of

627
00:37:35,680 --> 00:37:40,120
Speaker 3: the Americans. So they arrested tens of thousands of people,

628
00:37:40,600 --> 00:37:43,640
Speaker 3: and they basically locked them into cinemas and theaters and

629
00:37:43,640 --> 00:37:48,000
Speaker 3: played Charlie Chaplin movies to them for the whole period.

630
00:37:48,600 --> 00:37:54,400
Speaker 3: So essentially what happened was everybody in Avana, for example,

631
00:37:54,480 --> 00:37:57,000
Speaker 3: who might possibly have gone out on the street with

632
00:37:57,040 --> 00:38:00,360
Speaker 3: a placard in support of the invasion was locked in

633
00:38:00,400 --> 00:38:01,200
Speaker 3: a cinema.

634
00:38:01,320 --> 00:38:04,360
Speaker 1: So it wasn't just that they underestimated the level of

635
00:38:04,360 --> 00:38:06,839
Speaker 1: support they would have had. And then on top of that,

636
00:38:06,960 --> 00:38:09,600
Speaker 1: relatively few people that would have joined in were then

637
00:38:09,880 --> 00:38:10,399
Speaker 1: locked up.

638
00:38:10,640 --> 00:38:13,440
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there was a plan to have demonstrations in

639
00:38:13,480 --> 00:38:17,560
Speaker 3: support of the invasion, but none of that materialized because

640
00:38:17,600 --> 00:38:23,880
Speaker 3: it was preempted by this mass arrest of these people. Incidentally,

641
00:38:24,120 --> 00:38:26,520
Speaker 3: they were all released afterwards, right, it was just for

642
00:38:26,600 --> 00:38:29,240
Speaker 3: the period of the invasion that they would.

643
00:38:29,040 --> 00:38:31,840
Speaker 1: Kept right to recap. I mean, it's like one of

644
00:38:31,840 --> 00:38:35,760
Speaker 1: those things where there's nothing that went right. Every single

645
00:38:35,800 --> 00:38:38,560
Speaker 1: thing on all levels were wrong. So they are invading

646
00:38:38,600 --> 00:38:41,960
Speaker 1: the wrong place. The intelligence is flowing freely in and

647
00:38:41,960 --> 00:38:44,759
Speaker 1: out of Cuba. Everyone knows the invasion is coming. They

648
00:38:45,000 --> 00:38:47,439
Speaker 1: underestimated the number of people that would join in. Even

649
00:38:47,520 --> 00:38:49,440
Speaker 1: of those people, the ones that would have joined in

650
00:38:49,480 --> 00:38:51,040
Speaker 1: that they planned were locked up.

651
00:38:51,080 --> 00:38:54,799
Speaker 3: Okay, this is important, and this is how certain conjunctions

652
00:38:54,840 --> 00:38:59,240
Speaker 3: in history changed things. The Ambassador to the United Nations

653
00:38:59,239 --> 00:39:02,640
Speaker 3: for the United States, Adaly Stevenson, I'd like Stevenson. There's

654
00:39:02,680 --> 00:39:05,719
Speaker 3: your man, So I'd like Stevenson. If you remember was

655
00:39:05,800 --> 00:39:08,480
Speaker 3: the guy that was beaten in the primaries by Kennedy

656
00:39:08,600 --> 00:39:13,960
Speaker 3: to be presidential candidate. He's given the job of ambassador

657
00:39:14,000 --> 00:39:17,200
Speaker 3: to the UN. Now, I'd like, Stephenson is that rare

658
00:39:17,239 --> 00:39:21,880
Speaker 3: specimen in America, the very very honorable man in politics.

659
00:39:21,920 --> 00:39:25,560
Speaker 3: He is super honorable guy. He's the guy that he

660
00:39:25,719 --> 00:39:28,440
Speaker 3: is given the job of going to the UN on

661
00:39:28,480 --> 00:39:31,680
Speaker 3: the morning of the air raid with a photograph of

662
00:39:31,800 --> 00:39:36,160
Speaker 3: this guy claiming to be a Cuban pilot who has

663
00:39:36,320 --> 00:39:40,319
Speaker 3: defected and bombed his own airfield. And he goes to

664
00:39:40,360 --> 00:39:44,239
Speaker 3: the United Nations and remonstrates with the Cubans and so

665
00:39:44,360 --> 00:39:48,879
Speaker 3: on about this and look, and the Cubans basically blow

666
00:39:48,920 --> 00:39:51,400
Speaker 3: him out of the water because they point out to

667
00:39:51,480 --> 00:39:55,080
Speaker 3: him that that aeroplane is not one that the Cuban

668
00:39:55,120 --> 00:39:58,400
Speaker 3: Air Force has. So Cilia has painted up at B

669
00:39:58,520 --> 00:40:01,360
Speaker 3: fifty two to make it look like Cuban plane, but

670
00:40:01,400 --> 00:40:04,400
Speaker 3: the Cubans don't have any of them, so it's obviously

671
00:40:04,440 --> 00:40:08,640
Speaker 3: a fake. And I'd like Stevenson is shown up and

672
00:40:08,760 --> 00:40:12,319
Speaker 3: he phones Kennedy and tells him, if you think I'm

673
00:40:12,360 --> 00:40:15,360
Speaker 3: gonna be put in that position again, you're joking. That's it.

674
00:40:15,440 --> 00:40:18,000
Speaker 3: I'm done with this. You just made me look a fool.

675
00:40:18,120 --> 00:40:21,520
Speaker 3: You know you can forget it, and that prompts Kennedy

676
00:40:21,600 --> 00:40:25,080
Speaker 3: to instruct the CIA that there's gonna be no more

677
00:40:25,120 --> 00:40:27,759
Speaker 3: air rates. And the thing was, the first air raid

678
00:40:27,880 --> 00:40:31,240
Speaker 3: didn't knock out all of the planes, so the second

679
00:40:31,280 --> 00:40:34,200
Speaker 3: air raid didn't happen, so Cuba still had two planes

680
00:40:34,200 --> 00:40:37,839
Speaker 3: that worked, and those two planes were decisive in being

681
00:40:37,880 --> 00:40:40,720
Speaker 3: able to stray the beach, and one of them sank

682
00:40:40,960 --> 00:40:45,120
Speaker 3: one of the ships. The guys that landed blame Kennedy

683
00:40:45,200 --> 00:40:48,560
Speaker 3: for it because they didn't get the second air strike.

684
00:40:48,920 --> 00:40:52,359
Speaker 3: If they didn't have those planes attacking them, they would

685
00:40:52,400 --> 00:40:55,919
Speaker 3: have been able to establish the bridgehead and things would

686
00:40:55,960 --> 00:40:58,919
Speaker 3: have been different. Castro had control of the air.

687
00:40:59,640 --> 00:41:02,920
Speaker 1: The air strikes were incredibly important from the beginning because

688
00:41:03,080 --> 00:41:05,759
Speaker 1: it was a non negotiable in the SAA plan that

689
00:41:06,120 --> 00:41:09,160
Speaker 1: the Cuban air force needed to be taken out first

690
00:41:09,400 --> 00:41:12,359
Speaker 1: so that the landing could be successful. If there were

691
00:41:12,400 --> 00:41:15,600
Speaker 1: planes that were able to counterattack, then it would never work.

692
00:41:16,080 --> 00:41:20,720
Speaker 1: And somehow one of Kennedy's non committal decisions is rather

693
00:41:20,840 --> 00:41:22,960
Speaker 1: than either committing to it or calling it off, he

694
00:41:23,040 --> 00:41:26,800
Speaker 1: basically did half of the areas that the planned initially

695
00:41:26,840 --> 00:41:30,560
Speaker 1: called for, which is why they were left completely vulnerable

696
00:41:30,600 --> 00:41:31,640
Speaker 1: to the Cuban air force.

697
00:41:31,760 --> 00:41:34,879
Speaker 3: Well, something else that is quite important. So I've got

698
00:41:34,920 --> 00:41:37,880
Speaker 3: here if you can see this, it's the International Herald Tribune,

699
00:41:39,160 --> 00:41:41,799
Speaker 3: which is the American paper that's published in.

700
00:41:41,800 --> 00:41:46,400
Speaker 1: Paris, Anti Castro Cubans invaded by Darren.

701
00:41:46,200 --> 00:41:49,320
Speaker 3: See And there's Adlai Stevenson holding up the photograph. But

702
00:41:49,440 --> 00:41:53,120
Speaker 3: what's really interesting about this is this is published in

703
00:41:53,239 --> 00:41:56,600
Speaker 3: Paris on the morning of the invasion. So what you've

704
00:41:56,680 --> 00:42:00,879
Speaker 3: got at the bottom here is a map showing where

705
00:42:00,960 --> 00:42:04,759
Speaker 3: the Cubans have landed, and there are three sites, not one.

706
00:42:05,040 --> 00:42:05,279
Speaker 1: Wow.

707
00:42:05,760 --> 00:42:08,000
Speaker 3: And according to the new story that's published in the

708
00:42:08,040 --> 00:42:11,760
Speaker 3: Herald Tribune, the Cubans are already sixty kilometers from Havana.

709
00:42:11,920 --> 00:42:15,840
Speaker 3: So this story is completely fabricated and planted in the

710
00:42:16,040 --> 00:42:19,560
Speaker 3: Eryl Tribune by the CIA in advance of the invasion

711
00:42:19,640 --> 00:42:23,680
Speaker 3: taking place. And what it shows you is the two

712
00:42:23,760 --> 00:42:25,480
Speaker 3: other sites which are in the eastern part of the

713
00:42:25,560 --> 00:42:29,960
Speaker 3: island where there were supposed to be decoy landings. So

714
00:42:30,080 --> 00:42:32,959
Speaker 3: there was three landings planned. Two of them were fake

715
00:42:33,040 --> 00:42:37,920
Speaker 3: ones that were to distract the Cuban government. They didn't

716
00:42:37,960 --> 00:42:41,560
Speaker 3: happen because they were small groups and there were these

717
00:42:41,640 --> 00:42:45,040
Speaker 3: militias on the beach and they started firing at them.

718
00:42:45,400 --> 00:42:48,000
Speaker 3: So these guys just turned around and didn't land. But

719
00:42:48,160 --> 00:42:50,280
Speaker 3: in the Herald Tribune they did.

720
00:42:51,000 --> 00:42:54,120
Speaker 2: Wow, we're kind of setting the scene for mister Magoo

721
00:42:54,640 --> 00:42:59,960
Speaker 2: style CIA debacle. And that's just like an incredible background

722
00:43:00,120 --> 00:43:03,160
Speaker 2: to be going into the invasion. Walk us through. I

723
00:43:03,239 --> 00:43:05,880
Speaker 2: know you said it was seventy two hours. Walk us

724
00:43:05,920 --> 00:43:10,360
Speaker 2: through the actual execution and the three days of the invasion.

725
00:43:10,520 --> 00:43:13,040
Speaker 3: Well, the first thing is that Cuba had been making

726
00:43:13,080 --> 00:43:18,840
Speaker 3: these reforms, which are socialist policies, right. They produced free healthcare, education,

727
00:43:19,600 --> 00:43:23,880
Speaker 3: rent controls, all of this stuff. They're socialist policies, but

728
00:43:24,000 --> 00:43:27,560
Speaker 3: the government is denying that it is a communist government.

729
00:43:28,040 --> 00:43:32,480
Speaker 3: When the bombing happened on April the fifteenth, Castro declared

730
00:43:32,640 --> 00:43:35,960
Speaker 3: the revolution to be Marxist Leninist, so he used the

731
00:43:36,040 --> 00:43:42,000
Speaker 3: invasion as a way of selling Marxist Leninism to the population.

732
00:43:42,440 --> 00:43:46,439
Speaker 3: They had a slogan prepared, see fidel is communista upon

733
00:43:46,520 --> 00:43:48,840
Speaker 3: me and Lallista. If fidel is a communist, put me

734
00:43:48,880 --> 00:43:53,320
Speaker 3: on the list. So basically the CIA handed Castro on

735
00:43:53,400 --> 00:43:59,000
Speaker 3: a play a fantastic opportunity to radicalize the population, and

736
00:43:59,239 --> 00:44:02,880
Speaker 3: he called on the population in public display in the

737
00:44:03,000 --> 00:44:07,560
Speaker 3: street to take up arms and help defeat this invasion,

738
00:44:08,280 --> 00:44:11,719
Speaker 3: and distributed weapons in the street in Havana right to

739
00:44:12,360 --> 00:44:15,120
Speaker 3: people who just turned up and said yes, I'll go.

740
00:44:15,480 --> 00:44:19,719
Speaker 3: So he mobilized the population and a force of like

741
00:44:19,840 --> 00:44:23,959
Speaker 3: sixty thousand Cubans went down to the Bay of Pigs,

742
00:44:24,000 --> 00:44:27,239
Speaker 3: and of course they built a road so they could

743
00:44:27,320 --> 00:44:30,799
Speaker 3: get down there. The sea didn't seem to anticipate either,

744
00:44:30,960 --> 00:44:34,640
Speaker 3: that the communication to the landing zone was much better

745
00:44:35,239 --> 00:44:37,759
Speaker 3: than they thought, and there was a way through the

746
00:44:37,800 --> 00:44:40,640
Speaker 3: swamp and they could send trucks and artillery down it.

747
00:44:41,560 --> 00:44:44,960
Speaker 3: So they were able to move very quickly and get

748
00:44:45,120 --> 00:44:48,320
Speaker 3: down there fast enough to be able to engage with

749
00:44:48,480 --> 00:44:53,640
Speaker 3: these guys pretty much immediately. And so that was one

750
00:44:53,719 --> 00:44:58,200
Speaker 3: of the reasons why they were defeated so quickly, because

751
00:44:58,760 --> 00:45:04,560
Speaker 3: the attack was met with an overwhelming response from the

752
00:45:04,640 --> 00:45:09,200
Speaker 3: Cuban population behind Castro. And some of the veterans of

753
00:45:09,320 --> 00:45:12,160
Speaker 3: this thing are like kids, I mean, fourteen fifteen year

754
00:45:12,200 --> 00:45:15,920
Speaker 3: old guys picked up rifles and went down in Fort Down. Now,

755
00:45:16,040 --> 00:45:20,239
Speaker 3: the occasion of the bombing also provided a very very

756
00:45:20,320 --> 00:45:26,279
Speaker 3: emotive image that was used very effectively as propaganda for

757
00:45:26,480 --> 00:45:29,879
Speaker 3: the government. A very young, i think fifteen sixteen year

758
00:45:29,920 --> 00:45:32,439
Speaker 3: old boy was working as an apprentice in the Air

759
00:45:32,800 --> 00:45:36,440
Speaker 3: force in the airfield was killed by shrapnel in the bombing,

760
00:45:36,920 --> 00:45:41,000
Speaker 3: but he died from his wounds very slowly, and as

761
00:45:41,040 --> 00:45:43,680
Speaker 3: he died, he used his own blood to daub the

762
00:45:43,840 --> 00:45:47,480
Speaker 3: name of Fidel on the wall next to him, and

763
00:45:47,600 --> 00:45:50,800
Speaker 3: a photograph was taken of this lad and published in

764
00:45:50,880 --> 00:45:55,480
Speaker 3: the newspapers, and it was at the funeral the day

765
00:45:55,560 --> 00:46:00,200
Speaker 3: after that Fidel made this impassioned speech about how the

766
00:46:00,400 --> 00:46:04,160
Speaker 3: revolution was going to be a socialist revolution and so on.

767
00:46:04,600 --> 00:46:09,600
Speaker 3: This event galvanized the population behind the revolution in a

768
00:46:09,680 --> 00:46:13,920
Speaker 3: way that was probably unforeseen. As well. There was a

769
00:46:14,000 --> 00:46:18,040
Speaker 3: parachute landing further up, an amphibious landing on the beach

770
00:46:18,400 --> 00:46:21,120
Speaker 3: further down, at ply a Lager. The Bay of Pigs

771
00:46:21,239 --> 00:46:24,279
Speaker 3: is a kind of narrow inlet, and they landed at

772
00:46:24,320 --> 00:46:27,200
Speaker 3: the head of the bay, and at the mouth of

773
00:46:27,280 --> 00:46:30,920
Speaker 3: the bay. The paratroopers were there to create a kind

774
00:46:30,960 --> 00:46:33,319
Speaker 3: of defensive wall so that the landing could take place

775
00:46:33,360 --> 00:46:36,640
Speaker 3: and they could establish this bridgehead. But they met with

776
00:46:37,400 --> 00:46:43,120
Speaker 3: force immediately from this local militia. They were strafed by planes.

777
00:46:43,800 --> 00:46:46,840
Speaker 3: Their ammunition was cut off because the ammunition ship was

778
00:46:46,920 --> 00:46:49,920
Speaker 3: hit and sunk, so they only had the amount of

779
00:46:50,200 --> 00:46:53,719
Speaker 3: the bullets they could carrying on their backs, so they

780
00:46:53,760 --> 00:46:56,880
Speaker 3: were cut off from their own supplies. Then this force

781
00:46:57,040 --> 00:47:01,080
Speaker 3: came down and arrived within a day and engaged them.

782
00:47:01,800 --> 00:47:05,120
Speaker 3: So in the end they suffered a very very quick

783
00:47:05,200 --> 00:47:08,680
Speaker 3: defeat and they surrendered. About two hundred or so were killed,

784
00:47:08,719 --> 00:47:11,640
Speaker 3: I'm not sure what the exact figures were, and the

785
00:47:11,800 --> 00:47:15,440
Speaker 3: rest surrendered and there was something like twelve thirteen hundred

786
00:47:15,960 --> 00:47:16,920
Speaker 3: prisoners taken.

787
00:47:17,680 --> 00:47:20,359
Speaker 1: Yeah, the twelve hundred prisoners, they were taken, and they

788
00:47:20,400 --> 00:47:26,040
Speaker 1: were eventually returned in exchange for supplies and food and stuff.

789
00:47:26,160 --> 00:47:29,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, they negotiated. In the end, they had to negotiate

790
00:47:29,280 --> 00:47:32,799
Speaker 3: their return and Castro asked for the payment in baby food.

791
00:47:33,120 --> 00:47:35,879
Speaker 2: We'll be back with more United States of Kennedy after

792
00:47:36,000 --> 00:47:53,160
Speaker 2: this break, and we're back with more United States of Kennedy.

793
00:47:53,640 --> 00:47:57,080
Speaker 1: So just to list off a series of other failures.

794
00:47:57,320 --> 00:47:59,680
Speaker 1: When the first ships landed, one of the things that

795
00:47:59,719 --> 00:48:04,000
Speaker 1: see hadn't understood is that there was a really sharp

796
00:48:04,200 --> 00:48:07,040
Speaker 1: coral reef right on the beach, so they thought it

797
00:48:07,160 --> 00:48:09,279
Speaker 1: was seaweed or something, and it was a very sharp

798
00:48:09,360 --> 00:48:12,080
Speaker 1: coral reef, so immediately they had to get off the

799
00:48:12,200 --> 00:48:15,120
Speaker 1: vessels earlier than they normally would and walk in the

800
00:48:15,200 --> 00:48:17,960
Speaker 1: water and carry whatever they could on their back. Finally,

801
00:48:18,400 --> 00:48:21,680
Speaker 1: Kennedy did send an air strike, but the timing was

802
00:48:21,760 --> 00:48:24,439
Speaker 1: somehow off. He allowed the air strike to happen during

803
00:48:24,520 --> 00:48:28,600
Speaker 1: a one hour period, but either they didn't fully take

804
00:48:28,640 --> 00:48:30,640
Speaker 1: into account the time difference, or there was some sort

805
00:48:30,680 --> 00:48:35,400
Speaker 1: of miscommunication and the air strike happened an hour early. Eventually,

806
00:48:35,840 --> 00:48:38,600
Speaker 1: around twelve hundred men were rounded up by Castro's troops

807
00:48:39,160 --> 00:48:42,319
Speaker 1: and were unable to escape through the surrounding swamp lands.

808
00:48:42,400 --> 00:48:45,680
Speaker 3: It was also the fact that the Cubans were aware

809
00:48:45,880 --> 00:48:47,799
Speaker 3: that there was going to be an attack, so they

810
00:48:48,239 --> 00:48:51,600
Speaker 3: prepared their airfields very well, so there were decoy planes

811
00:48:52,000 --> 00:48:54,759
Speaker 3: on the airfields. They had set up the airfield so

812
00:48:54,920 --> 00:48:58,080
Speaker 3: that they would fool anybody who bombed them into thinking

813
00:48:58,160 --> 00:49:00,520
Speaker 3: they were planes on the ground when they weren't, so

814
00:49:00,600 --> 00:49:03,480
Speaker 3: there were these fake planes since they bombed from the

815
00:49:03,560 --> 00:49:06,880
Speaker 3: real planes were hidden away and escaped the bombing. Tia

816
00:49:07,080 --> 00:49:11,720
Speaker 3: was far better prepared for the eventuality than the Cia anticipated,

817
00:49:12,440 --> 00:49:15,480
Speaker 3: and I think your historian Theodore Draper said it, you know,

818
00:49:15,680 --> 00:49:18,560
Speaker 3: very famously. It was that rare thing in history, the

819
00:49:18,640 --> 00:49:23,160
Speaker 3: perfect failure, this kind of oxymeronic expression. I mean, yeah,

820
00:49:23,560 --> 00:49:27,040
Speaker 3: what could go wrong? Seemed to go wrong, partly through

821
00:49:28,120 --> 00:49:33,200
Speaker 3: bad luck, mismanagement. Hubris one would say, you know, that

822
00:49:33,400 --> 00:49:36,960
Speaker 3: classic Greek tragedy of thinking that it's going to work

823
00:49:37,080 --> 00:49:39,920
Speaker 3: just because we're doing it. The guys had been successful

824
00:49:39,920 --> 00:49:43,440
Speaker 3: in Guatemala, they felt that they were clever enough to

825
00:49:43,520 --> 00:49:46,040
Speaker 3: do it again. So eu bris must have played a

826
00:49:46,080 --> 00:49:49,479
Speaker 3: big part in it. But the change of presidency sure

827
00:49:49,560 --> 00:49:52,560
Speaker 3: as hell. If Nixon had been president, I'm sure things

828
00:49:52,600 --> 00:49:55,640
Speaker 3: would have been different. You know, the reaction of the

829
00:49:55,719 --> 00:49:59,479
Speaker 3: United States would have been much more bellicost they would

830
00:49:59,600 --> 00:50:03,200
Speaker 3: have gone in. The air strikes definitely would have happened.

831
00:50:03,840 --> 00:50:07,919
Speaker 3: They would have expressed full support and maybe been much

832
00:50:08,080 --> 00:50:12,920
Speaker 3: more forthright and anti communist. In tucsont Clauw. Kennedy was

833
00:50:13,120 --> 00:50:18,360
Speaker 3: trying to put up a much more friendlier face to

834
00:50:18,520 --> 00:50:22,280
Speaker 3: the Latin Americans, and he didn't want his hands dirted

835
00:50:22,440 --> 00:50:26,680
Speaker 3: by this plan. That's the real kind of croaks of it, really.

836
00:50:26,800 --> 00:50:30,320
Speaker 2: I think you've spent many decades traveling back and forth

837
00:50:30,719 --> 00:50:34,680
Speaker 2: between Cuba, and I was just wondering if you have

838
00:50:34,800 --> 00:50:39,280
Speaker 2: a sense of how Bay of Pigs is remembered among

839
00:50:39,440 --> 00:50:43,319
Speaker 2: Cuban nationals, and if that differs at all from how

840
00:50:43,400 --> 00:50:45,480
Speaker 2: it's remembered among Cuban Americans.

841
00:50:45,600 --> 00:50:48,080
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I mean that's it. I mean that

842
00:50:48,320 --> 00:50:52,120
Speaker 3: there you have a kind of microcosm of the problem, right,

843
00:50:52,960 --> 00:50:57,280
Speaker 3: because in Cuba, this is the first victory of Yankee

844
00:50:57,360 --> 00:51:01,080
Speaker 3: imperialism in the Western hemisphere, right, that's what it is

845
00:51:01,160 --> 00:51:04,239
Speaker 3: remembered as. If you go to the site today, there's

846
00:51:04,280 --> 00:51:07,759
Speaker 3: a museum and there's a huge billboard which used to

847
00:51:07,800 --> 00:51:10,359
Speaker 3: be an advertising billboard, but now it's got this huge thing.

848
00:51:10,440 --> 00:51:12,400
Speaker 3: It's a picture of Fedale on the tank. There's a

849
00:51:12,480 --> 00:51:15,759
Speaker 3: very famous iconic photograph of Field castro leaping off a tank.

850
00:51:16,200 --> 00:51:19,120
Speaker 3: It is that that photograph, the image, and across it

851
00:51:19,280 --> 00:51:21,640
Speaker 3: says the first They call it player here on, not

852
00:51:21,760 --> 00:51:24,840
Speaker 3: Bay of Pigs. Play it here on the first defeat

853
00:51:24,960 --> 00:51:28,719
Speaker 3: of Yankee imperialism in the Western Hemisphere. And they're very

854
00:51:28,760 --> 00:51:31,600
Speaker 3: proud of the fact that they did this, right. And

855
00:51:31,719 --> 00:51:34,080
Speaker 3: of course it's, like I said, it's a seminal moment

856
00:51:34,200 --> 00:51:37,480
Speaker 3: because it's the moment when the revolution is declared to

857
00:51:37,520 --> 00:51:40,320
Speaker 3: be socialist for the first time. I mean they'd not

858
00:51:40,640 --> 00:51:43,200
Speaker 3: done that, they'd not said that until that moment, and

859
00:51:43,760 --> 00:51:46,800
Speaker 3: so it marked a transformative moment in the history of

860
00:51:47,120 --> 00:51:49,680
Speaker 3: the revolution. So for the Communist Party in Cuba and

861
00:51:50,160 --> 00:51:52,440
Speaker 3: then the supporters of the revolution, this is a very

862
00:51:52,640 --> 00:51:57,000
Speaker 3: very proud moment in their history. And of course the

863
00:51:57,120 --> 00:52:00,600
Speaker 3: veterans of it are remembered. There's an association veterans of

864
00:52:00,640 --> 00:52:03,560
Speaker 3: the Bay of Pigs, and now very old men and women,

865
00:52:04,040 --> 00:52:07,600
Speaker 3: but they are honored as great heroes. And of course

866
00:52:07,680 --> 00:52:09,480
Speaker 3: the people that died. There was about one hundred and

867
00:52:09,560 --> 00:52:12,839
Speaker 3: seventy five Cubans that were killed. The place is where

868
00:52:12,880 --> 00:52:16,279
Speaker 3: they fell is marked by a monument. Each place where

869
00:52:16,440 --> 00:52:19,560
Speaker 3: a body was found of a Cuban that died is

870
00:52:19,640 --> 00:52:23,080
Speaker 3: now marked by a monument. There is a great deal

871
00:52:23,480 --> 00:52:27,759
Speaker 3: of respects given to the memory of these people who

872
00:52:27,800 --> 00:52:31,560
Speaker 3: are now heroes of the revolution Stone whereas, of course,

873
00:52:32,000 --> 00:52:37,320
Speaker 3: in Miami, this is remembered as a betrayal of great

874
00:52:37,560 --> 00:52:42,240
Speaker 3: magnitude by the American government. Kennedy, of course, very famously

875
00:52:42,280 --> 00:52:44,480
Speaker 3: made this wonderful speech. He was a wonderful speech maker.

876
00:52:44,600 --> 00:52:47,120
Speaker 3: Wasn't he he made this wonderful speech where he said,

877
00:52:47,520 --> 00:52:51,040
Speaker 3: they say that victory as a thousand fathers, but defeat

878
00:52:51,120 --> 00:52:53,680
Speaker 3: is an orphan. And he took the personal responsibility for

879
00:52:53,760 --> 00:52:57,880
Speaker 3: the defeat, and he took the flag of the skies,

880
00:52:58,000 --> 00:53:03,800
Speaker 3: and he promised that they would remember their sacrifice. So

881
00:53:04,040 --> 00:53:07,600
Speaker 3: these guys are remembered as dying as martyrs to the

882
00:53:07,680 --> 00:53:12,160
Speaker 3: anti communist course. And of course this is another legacy

883
00:53:12,200 --> 00:53:15,520
Speaker 3: which is very very important. The guys. A lot of

884
00:53:15,600 --> 00:53:19,320
Speaker 3: the guys that were in this group were later recruited

885
00:53:19,400 --> 00:53:23,440
Speaker 3: by the CIA and became CIA operatives. So of Cuban

886
00:53:23,480 --> 00:53:25,960
Speaker 3: American veteran of the Bay of Pigs. Was the guy

887
00:53:26,120 --> 00:53:30,880
Speaker 3: that was with the Bolivian army in Bolivia in nineteen

888
00:53:30,880 --> 00:53:35,239
Speaker 3: sixty seven and was directing the troops and captured Chae

889
00:53:35,320 --> 00:53:40,280
Speaker 3: Gavara and was responsible for his execution. Was a veteran

890
00:53:40,440 --> 00:53:43,680
Speaker 3: of the Bay of Pigs. The guys that broke into

891
00:53:43,800 --> 00:53:48,120
Speaker 3: the Watergate building, Frank Sturgis and his gang, the burglars

892
00:53:48,160 --> 00:53:50,760
Speaker 3: in the Watergate building were veterans of the Bay of Pigs,

893
00:53:51,400 --> 00:53:53,960
Speaker 3: the guy that blew up the airplane, but they were

894
00:53:54,080 --> 00:53:57,000
Speaker 3: not part of the Cuban sort of There were Cubans. Oh,

895
00:53:57,080 --> 00:53:58,760
Speaker 3: they were Cubans.

896
00:53:59,040 --> 00:54:01,200
Speaker 1: Because there are the people that somehow made at home,

897
00:54:01,239 --> 00:54:02,840
Speaker 1: and then there are the people that were taken prisoner

898
00:54:03,239 --> 00:54:06,200
Speaker 1: and then released later when we talk about veterans, it's

899
00:54:06,320 --> 00:54:09,160
Speaker 1: the people that were taken prisoner and Cuban and released.

900
00:54:09,160 --> 00:54:11,520
Speaker 3: They're the Cubans that were captured and then released them

901
00:54:11,840 --> 00:54:14,520
Speaker 3: back to the States. Many of them were recruited into

902
00:54:14,560 --> 00:54:18,800
Speaker 3: the CIA, and these people were kind of doing the

903
00:54:18,880 --> 00:54:21,600
Speaker 3: dirty work of the CIA in lots of different places.

904
00:54:22,320 --> 00:54:25,560
Speaker 3: Nixon on the tapes at one point says, for God's sake,

905
00:54:25,680 --> 00:54:28,040
Speaker 3: keep a lid on all this because if it gets out,

906
00:54:28,080 --> 00:54:30,080
Speaker 3: it'll bring up the Bay of Pigs and the Cuba

907
00:54:30,160 --> 00:54:32,840
Speaker 3: thing all again. Because these guys that were doing the

908
00:54:32,880 --> 00:54:36,640
Speaker 3: burglary were people that had been recruited by the CIA

909
00:54:36,960 --> 00:54:39,920
Speaker 3: to be part of this brigade. There was a famous

910
00:54:40,000 --> 00:54:43,120
Speaker 3: bombing of an airliner in nineteen seventy six which was

911
00:54:43,880 --> 00:54:46,960
Speaker 3: flying out of Barbados and he blew up in Cuban airliner.

912
00:54:47,719 --> 00:54:50,640
Speaker 3: It was blew up in the sky. The bomb was planted.

913
00:54:50,719 --> 00:54:52,879
Speaker 3: The guy that was behind the plot was a guy

914
00:54:52,960 --> 00:54:56,759
Speaker 3: called Luis Posada Carrillis. He was a veteran of the

915
00:54:56,840 --> 00:54:59,280
Speaker 3: Bay of Pigs. He was a guy that was recruited

916
00:54:59,360 --> 00:55:03,120
Speaker 3: by the CIA and continued working for the CIA afterwards,

917
00:55:03,160 --> 00:55:06,200
Speaker 3: and then later on went rogue himself and carried out

918
00:55:06,280 --> 00:55:10,640
Speaker 3: terrorist to tax against Cuba. But he was formerly part

919
00:55:10,760 --> 00:55:13,920
Speaker 3: of the same brigade. So this is like, these people's

920
00:55:14,160 --> 00:55:18,080
Speaker 3: animosity towards the Cuban Revolution was not diminished either, it

921
00:55:18,280 --> 00:55:24,920
Speaker 3: was cemented and became stronger. And so this event spawned

922
00:55:25,040 --> 00:55:30,840
Speaker 3: a whole series of things afterwards and continues to do

923
00:55:30,960 --> 00:55:36,040
Speaker 3: so today because quite honestly, this breakdown of the relationship

924
00:55:36,040 --> 00:55:39,000
Speaker 3: between the United States and Cuba, this is a very

925
00:55:39,160 --> 00:55:44,480
Speaker 3: very important event in creating that division. If the United

926
00:55:44,520 --> 00:55:49,280
Speaker 3: States had not taken the decision to try and overthrow

927
00:55:49,400 --> 00:55:55,520
Speaker 3: Feedol Castro and tried to adopt a more constructive engagement

928
00:55:55,719 --> 00:56:00,840
Speaker 3: with the Cuban government, the whole history might be completely different.

929
00:56:01,320 --> 00:56:05,200
Speaker 3: There were attempts made at different times to find a

930
00:56:05,360 --> 00:56:08,840
Speaker 3: approach one and in fact, towards the end of his presidence,

931
00:56:08,840 --> 00:56:12,440
Speaker 3: see Kennedy himself was trying to do just that other

932
00:56:12,520 --> 00:56:17,000
Speaker 3: people did as well. Nixon tried, Carter tried. It's not

933
00:56:17,160 --> 00:56:21,480
Speaker 3: that the United States has been consistently trying to destroy

934
00:56:21,600 --> 00:56:24,759
Speaker 3: the cashtro government they have at at different times, and

935
00:56:24,840 --> 00:56:30,239
Speaker 3: there were attempts made early on, but the animosity of

936
00:56:30,600 --> 00:56:36,960
Speaker 3: certain individuals at certain times prevented these from coming to fruition.

937
00:56:37,760 --> 00:56:42,160
Speaker 3: And this event was one which made the gap that

938
00:56:42,360 --> 00:56:47,160
Speaker 3: much wider to bridge, okay, because it created this bad

939
00:56:47,360 --> 00:56:50,400
Speaker 3: blood and it is almost a personal thing, you know.

940
00:56:51,200 --> 00:56:55,280
Speaker 3: And of course this hatred of Kennedy amongst the Cuban

941
00:56:55,320 --> 00:56:59,279
Speaker 3: Americans blaming Kennedy of course comes up again in the

942
00:56:59,400 --> 00:57:05,520
Speaker 3: conspiracy theories because there is this feeling amongst some conspiracy

943
00:57:05,680 --> 00:57:08,640
Speaker 3: theorists and or to call them that, I mean, I

944
00:57:08,680 --> 00:57:10,960
Speaker 3: think the conspiracy theorist would rather wish to call themselves

945
00:57:11,080 --> 00:57:15,040
Speaker 3: historians of a very polemical event rather than be conspiracy theorists.

946
00:57:15,320 --> 00:57:19,560
Speaker 3: But there is a very strong collection of, let's say,

947
00:57:20,200 --> 00:57:25,960
Speaker 3: corroborative evidence that points in this direction. Even though there

948
00:57:26,040 --> 00:57:28,520
Speaker 3: is no kind of real smoking gun yet or no

949
00:57:28,680 --> 00:57:32,240
Speaker 3: confession by anybody that was participated in it. It could

950
00:57:32,320 --> 00:57:34,320
Speaker 3: be that all of those that did participate in it

951
00:57:34,440 --> 00:57:38,480
Speaker 3: are dead. But the feeling is that the Cuban Americans

952
00:57:39,200 --> 00:57:44,840
Speaker 3: and elements of the CIA were sufficiently angered and fearful

953
00:57:45,040 --> 00:57:50,360
Speaker 3: of Kennedy that they removed him. That's one of the arguments,

954
00:57:51,000 --> 00:57:53,840
Speaker 3: and it's because he said I would smash the Cio

955
00:57:53,880 --> 00:57:57,200
Speaker 3: into a thousand pieces, because he tried to make some

956
00:57:57,360 --> 00:58:02,080
Speaker 3: kind of reprochement that they didn't want to happen. And

957
00:58:03,040 --> 00:58:07,000
Speaker 3: for the Cuban Americans, it's property. It's about the property

958
00:58:07,640 --> 00:58:12,680
Speaker 3: their descendants of people who owned very large holdings in

959
00:58:12,960 --> 00:58:16,760
Speaker 3: Cuba which were nationalized by the government, and they basically

960
00:58:16,880 --> 00:58:20,240
Speaker 3: have never stopped wanting it back. And that's why they

961
00:58:20,360 --> 00:58:23,920
Speaker 3: were happily in the Brigade two five oh six, as

962
00:58:23,960 --> 00:58:26,480
Speaker 3: it was called, the attacked the Bay of Pigs. They

963
00:58:26,480 --> 00:58:28,360
Speaker 3: were happily in it because they thought they were going

964
00:58:28,440 --> 00:58:29,680
Speaker 3: to get their property back.

965
00:58:30,280 --> 00:58:34,320
Speaker 2: That actually brings me to another question perfectly, because in

966
00:58:34,440 --> 00:58:37,640
Speaker 2: the decades since the invasion, many of the veterans of

967
00:58:37,720 --> 00:58:43,000
Speaker 2: Brigade twenty five oh six have blamed the CIA, not Kennedy,

968
00:58:44,120 --> 00:58:47,560
Speaker 2: for this whole debacle, and obviously this is a Kennedy podcast.

969
00:58:48,160 --> 00:58:50,560
Speaker 2: How did they have pigs come to be seen as

970
00:58:51,280 --> 00:58:55,240
Speaker 2: primarily Kennedy's fault. Was it just a failure to provide

971
00:58:55,240 --> 00:58:57,080
Speaker 2: air support or was there something else?

972
00:58:58,040 --> 00:58:59,840
Speaker 3: So I think he took it on his own shoulders.

973
00:59:00,200 --> 00:59:02,520
Speaker 3: He probably was trying to be, I guess, the bigger

974
00:59:02,600 --> 00:59:05,200
Speaker 3: man at that point. I mean, at that point, of course,

975
00:59:05,240 --> 00:59:08,160
Speaker 3: he did appear as though they had been badly let down,

976
00:59:08,240 --> 00:59:12,080
Speaker 3: and of course it was their homecoming. He negotiated their release.

977
00:59:12,160 --> 00:59:14,680
Speaker 3: They came back, there was this big gathering in the

978
00:59:14,720 --> 00:59:17,640
Speaker 3: stadium in Miami, and he made this speech. He took

979
00:59:17,680 --> 00:59:20,560
Speaker 3: the flag from them, and he kind of pledged to

980
00:59:20,760 --> 00:59:24,160
Speaker 3: their cause. And so therefore he kind of made a

981
00:59:24,240 --> 00:59:26,400
Speaker 3: promise to them that he was going to do the job,

982
00:59:26,680 --> 00:59:29,400
Speaker 3: and so he kind of took it on himself. So

983
00:59:29,520 --> 00:59:32,360
Speaker 3: he must have felt some responsibility because he could have

984
00:59:32,600 --> 00:59:34,840
Speaker 3: inherited the plan and he allowed it to go ahead.

985
00:59:35,040 --> 00:59:37,640
Speaker 3: He must have felt, you know, like he could have

986
00:59:37,720 --> 00:59:40,480
Speaker 3: handled it better himself, I guess. But of course he

987
00:59:40,800 --> 00:59:45,440
Speaker 3: had the investigation and he found out that the CIA

988
00:59:45,600 --> 00:59:49,800
Speaker 3: had more or less lied to him. He made decisions

989
00:59:49,840 --> 00:59:54,000
Speaker 3: based upon information that was basically false, which the CIA

990
00:59:54,120 --> 00:59:57,800
Speaker 3: had given him, and therefore he was very, very angry.

991
00:59:58,440 --> 01:00:02,000
Speaker 3: And of course then the blame to the CIA, because

992
01:00:02,040 --> 01:00:05,840
Speaker 3: all of these shortcomings and mistakes of the CIA made

993
01:00:06,480 --> 01:00:09,400
Speaker 3: come out, and of course what you get is Mission creep.

994
01:00:09,880 --> 01:00:13,600
Speaker 3: The people that were making the plan couldn't see beyond

995
01:00:14,400 --> 01:00:19,080
Speaker 3: their own closed mindset, so they didn't see outside the box.

996
01:00:19,200 --> 01:00:22,400
Speaker 3: That's kind of group think and mission creep. It had

997
01:00:22,440 --> 01:00:25,320
Speaker 3: gone so far they couldn't pull back. Better to let

998
01:00:25,400 --> 01:00:29,320
Speaker 3: it try and fail than to not try, because trying

999
01:00:29,360 --> 01:00:32,160
Speaker 3: to stop it would create bigger problems. What are we

1000
01:00:32,240 --> 01:00:34,520
Speaker 3: going to do with these fifteen hundred guys? How are

1001
01:00:34,560 --> 01:00:36,880
Speaker 3: they going to feel about it? If we pull the

1002
01:00:36,960 --> 01:00:39,680
Speaker 3: plug on it? What does that say about us? I mean,

1003
01:00:39,720 --> 01:00:42,919
Speaker 3: there's an awful lot of you know, reputation stuck into

1004
01:00:43,000 --> 01:00:45,800
Speaker 3: this thing. It gets too far, what do you do

1005
01:00:45,920 --> 01:00:48,200
Speaker 3: with it? It also must be taken into account.

1006
01:00:48,240 --> 01:00:50,760
Speaker 1: I think, Well, if you want to say they were

1007
01:00:50,880 --> 01:00:54,120
Speaker 1: trying to oust Castro since Aisenhower, he ended up surviving

1008
01:00:54,280 --> 01:00:57,400
Speaker 1: ten US presidents. So this really is one of the

1009
01:00:57,480 --> 01:01:01,800
Speaker 1: least successful to ask the government in American history.

1010
01:01:01,960 --> 01:01:04,959
Speaker 3: But that's the fascinating thing, isn't it. He didn't only

1011
01:01:05,000 --> 01:01:08,440
Speaker 3: survive it, but the thing that he created has survived.

1012
01:01:08,520 --> 01:01:10,880
Speaker 3: I mean, it's kind of creaking right now, and it's

1013
01:01:10,920 --> 01:01:12,480
Speaker 3: under an enormous amount of pressure.

1014
01:01:12,840 --> 01:01:15,640
Speaker 1: But you know, Americans are still not allowed to travel

1015
01:01:15,960 --> 01:01:19,640
Speaker 1: to Cuba. I mean, the general valance of US Cuba

1016
01:01:19,720 --> 01:01:22,320
Speaker 1: relations is still incredibly strained.

1017
01:01:23,240 --> 01:01:26,560
Speaker 3: Yeah, and somebody once said, I think they call them

1018
01:01:26,640 --> 01:01:29,840
Speaker 3: the best of enemies. You know, it's like they're so close.

1019
01:01:30,280 --> 01:01:32,160
Speaker 3: I mean, you wouldn't believe it. You saw what happened

1020
01:01:32,160 --> 01:01:34,720
Speaker 3: when Obama went down there, and that Cubans loved him.

1021
01:01:35,400 --> 01:01:39,320
Speaker 3: And they love baseball. I mean, how american is that

1022
01:01:40,040 --> 01:01:44,760
Speaker 3: they love jazz music, jazz? You know, in fact, Bebop

1023
01:01:45,000 --> 01:01:48,320
Speaker 3: was a fusion of Cuban jazz and New Orleans jazz.

1024
01:01:48,360 --> 01:01:51,800
Speaker 3: Does he Gillespie met with Cuban musicians and they created Bebop.

1025
01:01:52,080 --> 01:01:56,600
Speaker 3: I mean, the Cubbans love cake. They make birthday cakes.

1026
01:01:56,760 --> 01:01:59,920
Speaker 3: They don't make tortoise like the Spanish do. They make

1027
01:02:00,240 --> 01:02:04,800
Speaker 3: these big, sweet American style cakes. Cubas love American culture,

1028
01:02:04,840 --> 01:02:09,240
Speaker 3: Hollywood movies. They watch them all the time. Cuba is

1029
01:02:09,880 --> 01:02:13,400
Speaker 3: culturally very very close to the United States and still

1030
01:02:13,560 --> 01:02:17,280
Speaker 3: is despite the political differences. That's one of the remarkable

1031
01:02:17,360 --> 01:02:21,960
Speaker 3: things that Americans go to Cuba and the Cubans welcome

1032
01:02:22,000 --> 01:02:25,040
Speaker 3: them with open arms, and they find so many things

1033
01:02:25,120 --> 01:02:27,840
Speaker 3: they have in common. And you have to remember the

1034
01:02:28,040 --> 01:02:31,120
Speaker 3: national drink of Cuba is called a Cuba libre, and

1035
01:02:31,240 --> 01:02:34,360
Speaker 3: it's a mixture of rum and Coca cola. For God's sake,

1036
01:02:34,880 --> 01:02:39,960
Speaker 3: you know what more do you need to find a

1037
01:02:40,120 --> 01:02:44,280
Speaker 3: kind of sad schizophrenia? Whatever it is, it's some kind

1038
01:02:44,320 --> 01:02:47,720
Speaker 3: of psychological problem you've got. It's not just a political one.

1039
01:02:48,200 --> 01:02:50,880
Speaker 3: I think they call it. I don't know, projection transference.

1040
01:02:50,920 --> 01:02:52,120
Speaker 3: I don't know, but it's sort.

1041
01:02:51,960 --> 01:02:54,720
Speaker 1: Of like we've got to get a Fredian. We've got

1042
01:02:54,800 --> 01:02:57,440
Speaker 1: to get a Fredia Anna to discuss.

1043
01:02:57,240 --> 01:03:01,040
Speaker 3: I don't know, I mean, definitely, definitely there is a

1044
01:03:01,440 --> 01:03:02,800
Speaker 3: psychological aspect to this.

1045
01:03:03,160 --> 01:03:06,200
Speaker 1: All right, this was incredibly educational. I have to say,

1046
01:03:06,240 --> 01:03:08,720
Speaker 1: thank you so much for walking us through it all.

1047
01:03:08,880 --> 01:03:10,919
Speaker 1: We really really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

1048
01:03:11,240 --> 01:03:14,200
Speaker 2: That's it for this week's episode, So subscribe and follow

1049
01:03:14,240 --> 01:03:17,400
Speaker 2: The United States of Kennedy for all things Kennedy every week.

1050
01:03:17,840 --> 01:03:20,720
Speaker 2: United States of Kennedy is hosted by Me, Julia Clair

1051
01:03:20,880 --> 01:03:21,840
Speaker 2: and George Severes.

1052
01:03:22,080 --> 01:03:26,440
Speaker 1: Original music by Joshua Topolski, editing by Graham Gibson, Mixing

1053
01:03:26,520 --> 01:03:28,120
Speaker 1: and mastering by Doug Bame.

1054
01:03:28,320 --> 01:03:30,800
Speaker 2: Research by Dave Bruce and Austin Thompson.

1055
01:03:31,000 --> 01:03:32,600
Speaker 1: Our producer is Carmen Laurent.

1056
01:03:32,880 --> 01:03:34,640
Speaker 2: Our executive producer is Jenna

1057
01:03:34,720 --> 01:03:38,200
Speaker 1: Cagele United States of Kennedy is a production of iHeart podcasts.