Site change called fatal to invasion
Bay of Pigs bad choice, planner says
BAY OF PIGS PLANNER: Retired Col. Jack Hawkins.
"Landing at the Bay of Pigs could not possibly succeed and was going
to end in disaster. That's the word I used."
JACK HAWKINS, invasion planning chief
When Kennedy vetoed the original landing site, invaders `had no chance,' an ex-CIA officer says.
Did switch doom Bay of Pigs?
By DON BOHNING
Herald Staff Writer
Breaking a 35-year silence, the chief of the CIA's planning staff for
military aspects of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion says the effort was doomed
from the day, a month before the
operation, when President Kennedy ordered the landing site changed
to one that would attract less attention.
Jack Hawkins, a retired Marine Corps colonel, said in an interview that
after he and his staff drafted the new plan, shifting the landing
from the city of Trinidad, on Cuba's south coast,
about 80 miles westward to the Bay of Pigs, he had "decided this plan
has no chance. It is going to fail.'' He said efforts to convince superiors
of that were of no avail.
What eventually became known as the Bay of Pigs began in January 1960
when the Eisenhower administration decided that Cuban leader Fidel Castro
should be ousted, an effort
Kennedy continued after becoming president. It evolved from sending
in teams of agents to develop resistance, into a small guerrilla-type infiltration
of 200 to 300 men to join existing
guerrillas, and, finally, into a full-scale landing at the Bay of Pigs
by a CIA-sponsored Cuban exile brigade of about 1,500 on April 15, 1961.
The hope was not for Castro's immediate overthrow but to seize a beachhead,
generate morale problems and defections within the Castro forces and eventually
provoke a general
uprising.
Instead, the landing ended in disaster when B-26 air strikes reduced
by Kennedy failed to knock out Castro's air force. Castro forces captured
1,189 exile invaders, 114 others died and
150 were unable to land or never shipped out. The captured invaders
were ransomed by the Kennedy administration for $53 million in food and
medicine. They returned to Miami on
Dec. 23, 1962.
The paramilitary staff, which Hawkins headed, was responsible for organizing,
training and equipping the Cuban exile brigade and preparing the plans
for its landing in Cuba. Although
staff personnel changed at times, said Hawkins, they averaged six U.S
military and 18 CIA officers. Hawkins reported directly to Jake Esterline,
the CIA's project chief for the invasion.
The interview with The Herald was the first Hawkins has given to a daily
newspaper journalist since the Bay of Pigs, although he wrote a first-person
article in the year-end edition of The
National Review, a conservative journal published by William
Buckley.
In the wide-ranging December interview at his home in Fredericksburg, Va., Hawkins also:
"I didn't know what Castro's attitude might be, and I was wary of that,'' he said.
In addition, said Hawkins, "I was really disgusted. I thought the United States had acted in an almost contemptible way about this whole thing. . . . I just sort of washed my hands of it and put it behind me, went on with my life and tried not to think about it. It was one of the most disappointing things that I ever had to do with in my life, professionally.''
Time to speak out
He said he decided to speak out when the CIA's Esterline "got in touch with me [early last year] and said he thought it was time that we told the truth about some of these things.''
Hawkins, who retains his native Texas drawl at age 80, joined the Marines
in 1939 after graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy. He was assigned to
the Cuba project on Sept. 1,
1960, as Bissell began to expand it from a guerrilla infiltration into
a larger-scale operation involving an amphibious landing, with which Hawkins
had considerable experience.
As a Marine officer in World War II, he was captured by the Japanese
at Corregidor in the Philippines and spent 11 months as a prisoner of war.
He escaped with several other
Americans and two Filipino convicts who served as guides, and joined
a guerrilla unit for seven months before getting to Australia via submarine
in November 1943.
He later played significant roles in preparing for the U.S. invasion
of Okinawa in 1945 and the Inchon landing during the Korean War, then served
for three years as an instructor on
amphibious landings in Marine Corps schools.
Hawkins was an instructor at the Marine Corps schools in Quantico, Va.,
when he was told "that the CIA was planning to land some exile troops in
Cuba and they wanted a Marine
officer with background in amphibious warfare to help them out with
this project.''
There were, he said, several "critical junctures'' in the operation
when a "change of course by the decision-making authority at the CIA was
called for if the Bay of Pigs disaster was to be
avoided.''
Number of planes reduced
Among them, he cites the change in the landing site and the reduction
in the number of B-26 aircraft participating in the initial attack in advance
of the landing -- intended to knock out
Castro's planes on the ground -- either of which should have aborted
the operation.
Hawkins has praise, however, for the brigade members, who he says "fought
hard and well and inflicted terrible casualties on their opponents. They
were not defeated. They simply ran
out of ammunition and had no choice but to surrender. And that was
not their fault.''
While Hawkins considers the air support critical to any chance of success
at the Bay of Pigs, he believes failure became virtually inevitable a month
earlier when Kennedy, acting on the
advice of Secretary of State Rusk, rejected the Trinidad landing as
too "noisy,'' one that would attract too much attention to the United States.
The initial plan, beginning in 1960, had been to introduce trained paramilitary
teams, of a few men with special capabilities, into every Cuban province,
which was done. Their purpose
was to develop armed resistance wherever they could and engage in sabotage
and propaganda operations.
Simultaneously, it was planned to organize a small infantry force of
200 to 300 men to be infiltrated in and join 800 to 1,000 guerrillas already
operating in the Escambray Mountains of
Central Cuba above Trinidad.
But, said Hawkins, as the Soviets increased their shipments of arms
and military equipment and Castro began to create a large militia force,
Bissell decided in the fall of 1960 "that he
should have a larger force to get in there, and he hit on the figure
of 1,500.''
It was not until early spring of 1961 that the brigade got up to 1,500 men, according to Hawkins, with Trinidad still the targeted landing site.
Changes ordered
Word came March 11 that the president wanted a new, less "noisy'' landing site and a night instead of a dawn landing, as originally planned.
"We were very surprised when we got word that the president had vetoed
the Trinidad plan, which we thought was the best and probably only place
in Cuba where we had a chance to
pull this thing off,'' Hawkins said. "It was a good plan, I thought,
and we had no idea that it was going to be rejected because it had been
discussed right on up to that time.''
Bissell, he said, advised him as they were standing in the corridor
that the president had given four days to come up with a "quieter operation.
He said this one is too noisy, too much like
an invasion. Of course, it was an invasion.''
Working around the clock, Hawkins and the paramilitary staff pored over
maps and intelligence reports, determining that the Bay of Pigs was the
only alternate place an airfield could be
seized that would support B-26s, a requirement.
Hawkins said he reported this verbally to Bissell, at the same time telling him what was wrong with the site, including its isolation and relative inaccessibility.
"Bissell said right then and there on the spot, without consulting anybody
else, since this is the only place that satisfies the president's requirements,
then we'll go ahead with it on that basis.
You draw up a plan immediately, and we'll present it to the president.''
New plan approved
A sketch of the new plan was drafted, presented to Kennedy and approved March 15, a month before the landing took place.
"After we got to drawing the detailed plan,'' Hawkins said, ``I had
time to do some careful thinking about the thing. Before, I had just been
doing what I was told -- get a plan. So we got
it. But then I decided this plan has no chance. It's going to fail.''
Hawkins said he discussed his concerns with Esterline, the CIA's project director for the invasion, who said, "That's exactly what I think. It can't work. It's not going to work.''
He said they met with Bissell at his home in Georgetown the following Sunday and expressed their reservations.
Hawkins said the main purpose of the meeting was to insist that "if
you want to go ahead with this operation at the Bay of Pigs, we want out.
We just don't want to be part of a disaster,
and that's just what it's going to be."
"We told him in no uncertain terms. . . . He didn't give any indication
at all that he was willing to give up the landing at the Bay of Pigs. He
says, 'Look, you just can't desert me at this
point. I won't be able to carry on without you.' Well, we di dn't like
it, but we agreed . . . we won't quit -- not now, anyway. We left there
thinking that we were headed for trouble,
headed for disaster.
"But,'' said Hawkins, "it's a difficult thing for a Marine officer or
a CIA officer to ask to be relieved of his duty. It's a serious thing to
do and you don't like to do it, so we stuck with him,
and the results you know.''
Site change 'critical'
"The change of site was the critical thing that made it unlikely of
causing the overthrow of Castro,'' Hawkins believes. "I always thought
that it was going to take some time. If we got the
brigade up into the Escambray [Mountains] and they could coordinate
the other guerrillas up there and maybe get new forces, new people, out
of Trinidad into the Escambray and then
continue the air operations with Castro having no air, they could stay
up there a long time.''
Hawkins' account differs somewhat from Bissell's, as recounted in his memoirs, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, published posthumously last year.
Bissell wrote that he remembered "meeting with Hawkins at the headquarters
after a long weekend and his saying, `Well, we have developed an alternative
plan to meet the president's
desire for a quieter landing and we think that you will like it and
approve of it. We do, and I think in some ways it's better than the original.''
Hawkins says "that's a lie, absolutely false. Jake and I told him that
the plan could not succeed, landing at the Bay of Pigs could not possibly
succeed and was going to end in disaster.
That's the word I used.'' Esterline recalls the meeting the same way.
Bissell did not mention the Sunday afternoon meeting at his home with Hawkins and Esterline, which most Bay of Pigs historians now consider a key event.
Bissell acknowledged in his memoirs, however, that "there is no doubt that failure to question the viability of the move [from Trinidad] had serious repercussions.''
'No chance to escape'
"They had no chance to escape out of the Bay of Pigs,'' Hawkins said.
"We told Bissell that. I told him that. They can't get out of there. Maybe
a handful or a few individuals could get out
of there and sneak away, but the bulk of them were trapped there. They
can't get out.''
As for Hawkins, the change in landing sites was just one more indication of Kennedy's lack of commitment to the entire project.
"I felt that he was not strongly committed to the operation at all.
When he first was briefed about it and I began to observe him when I went
to these meetings, he didn't seem enthusiastic
about it, but he seemed interested.''
Hawkins describes the weekly White House meetings with Kennedy on the
Bay of Pigs as "essentially discussions'' that "did not resolve questions
of policy. . . . As policy questions arise,
they should be resolved decisively and quickly. This was not done for
the Cuba Project.''
Much later, Hawkins said, when he learned "about the efforts that [Kennedy]
and his brother [Attorney General Robert Kennedy] were making to assassinate
Castro . . . it has occurred
to me that Kennedy thought he was going to solve the problem by this
method, disposing of Castro through the Mafia. And that would make the
Cuban operation unnecessary, he
thought.
"That's just a surmise on my part. That could have influenced him to
delay. In fact, I have heard since, I don't know how reliable the information
is, that the assassination was supposed to
come off not long before the invasion.''
State Department's role
He also believes that Kennedy was unduly influenced by Rusk and the State Department.
"The first time I ever saw him [Rusk] at one of the presidential meetings,
he made it abundantly clear that he was opposed to the operation completely.
And he didn't want any air
operations whatsoever.''
"I always felt that the Department of State came away from this thing without being blamed as much as they should have been blamed for what happened,'' Hawkins says now.
All of that said, Hawkins still places primary responsibility for failure with Bissell.
"I think that the primary fault must be placed at Bissell's door. It
really was Bissell's operation. Mr. [CIA Director Allen] Dulles was just
sort of on the fringes of this thing. He gave Bissell
free hand to do what he wanted throughout this operation.''
The landing went ahead, and the invasion failed. Hawkins went back to the Marine Corps, but not before drafting an "after-action'' report on the operation that remains classified.
"It was very comprehensive, included everything that I knew about that
was done, and drew some conclusions about it,'' Hawkins remembers. "I recommended
among many other things
that no further effort should be made to overthrow Castro in this manner,
by these covert means, because he is now already too strong to be overthrown
by paramilitary operations.''