that as much as a partisan hacks like you may describe them as james o'keefe and andrew breitbart who are not extreme. they are running -- they are rushing into this void. talking about this a little bit in the book. i want to end on an optimistic note, which is, i think this idea about market fell year and public subsidies, it's never so much about protecting the incumbents or just shoring up the status quo. it's about transforming the entire system. ..

>> as victor wrote, in short, just about everything rides on how this crisis in journalism pans out. if you are interested in further -- further in our work on these issues, please go to media policy.new america.net, and if you have some time, please, join us at the back of the room, we will have some wine and cheese, and there are copies of the book for sale. if you're lucky, i think you could snag at least six signatures. [laughter] thank you all again to our panel, if you'd like to put your hands together, and we'll take a break. [applause] thank you all for coming. [inaudible conversations] >> is there a nonfiction author or book you'd like to see

featured on booktv? send us an e-mail at booktv@cspan.org, or tweet us at twitter.com/booktv. >> get the booktv schedule e-mailed to you. to sign up, use our web site, booktv.org, and press the alert button. or text the word book to 99702, standard message and data rates apply. >> up next on booktv, jim rasenberger presents a history of the bay of pigs crisis, the failed military invasion of cuba in 1961 that was supported by the united states government and resulted in the capture or death of over a thousand men. this lasts about an hour. >> this evening books and books is very pleased to welcome mr. jim rasenberger and his new book "brilliant disaster: jfk, castro and america's doomed invasion of cuba's bay of pigs."

mr. rasenberger has written for "the new york times," "vanity fair", smithsonian and the wilson quarterly among many other publications. his most recent book was "america, 1908," and he is also the author of "high steel: the daring men who built the world's great skyline." in this book mr. rasenberger examines the u.s.-backed military invasion of cuba in 1961, one of the most ill fated blunders in american history. he draws on long-hidden cia documents and delivers as never before the vivid truth and consequences of those five pivotal days in april '61. please give a very warm welcome to mr. jim rasenberger. [applause] >> yeah, perfect, perfect. thank you. thank you for that introduction, and thank you to books and books

for having me. this is a wonderful bookstore. i had not been here before i came earlier today, and it is fantastic. so support it. i urge you to buy a book before you leave tonight. it doesn't have to be my book, but if you want it to be, that's fine with me. [laughter] as i'm sure all of you know by now, this is on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the bay of pigs invasion of cuba. and i can't think of a better place to launch my new book than here with you. i know, i'm sure many of you have some personal history of the event and some deep knowledge of it, and i thank you for coming. i'm honored to be here. now, this is a story that i've wanted to tell for a long. for a long time. there are a number of reasons, but the main reason is i think it's one of the most fascinating and important stories in modern american history, and i hope if you read the book you'll share

that opinion with me. before i go into any detail, i should probably give a brief overview of what the bay of pigs was for those of you who don't know. if there are any of you. i, i'm suspect anyone my age or older, i was born just after the bay of pigs, is pretty familiar with it simply because we grew up hearing about it. those of you who are younger are forgiven. you're not forgiven for being younger, there's no forgiveness for that. [laughter] but you are forgiven for not knowing much about something that happened before you were born. so for the sake of those not familiar, let me go through a brief overview and a few basic facts. the bay of pigs was a five-day event that occurred in april of 1961. for those of you who are "mad men" fans, i think that's just after season one if that helps orient you. [laughter]

that april a group of cuban exiles trained, supplied and backed by the united states government attempted to invade cuba and overthrow fidel castro. the attack goon -- began on april 15, 1961, when a fleet of b-26 bombers flown by cuban pilots attacked castro's airfields. they bombed and strafed the airfields attempting to destroy fidel castro's air force. two days later just after midnight of april 17th, the invasion itself began. about 1400 men, again cuban exiles known collectively as brigade 2506, came ashore at the southern coast of cuba at an area called the bay of pigs. the plan was to establish and hold a beachhead and eventually spark an uprising against fidel castro. that was the plan anyway, but it didn't quite work out that way.

the brigade ran into trouble almost immediately. and within two days of landing, it was over. of the 1400 men who came ashore, over 100 were killed, and the rest were sent fleeing either to sea -- some tried to escape in boats -- or into the swamps. there was a vast everglade just inland of the bay of pigs. and there they were rounded up by castro's soldiers and thrown into cuban jails. well, for fidel castro who looked like the david who slayed the yankee goliath, this was a supreme victory, and it is still a victory that cuban's celebrate today. i was in cuba exactly a year ago for the 49th anniversary, and it's remarkable how around havana and down at the bay bay f pigs there are billboards all over the place celebrating the victory against yankee imperialism. and this 50th anniversary they will be marking with a parade, with all sorts of celebrations.

i'm not expecting too many celebrations here, and that's, of course, because for the united states it was a disaster. it was a personal tragedy for the men who took part in the invasion, of course, and it was a humiliation for the kennedy administration which had only been in power less than three months. at first the administration tried to insist that the united states had nothing to do with this, that it was just the exiles had gone in on their own, but that charade did not last very long, and very soon the whole world knew the truth which was that the brigade had been trained by the cia, had been supplied with american equipment, and the invasion had been approved by the joint chiefs of staff, the state department and, ultimately, the president of the united states. in short, this had been a united states operation, and its failure was a distinctly american embarrassment. one american general said it was the worst defeat the u.s. had

suffered since the war of 1812. that was about the kindest thing anybody said. everyone agreed that it was a mistake that they would never forget and they must never repeat. but they were wrong. not only is it largely forgotten, maybe not here but in much of america it is. but we went on to repeat some of the same mistakes that we made in cuba in the other parts of the world. in fact, the bay of pigs turned out to be sort of a curtain raiser on a whole new era of troubled interventions, an era we're still in today. by one count the united states engaged in no fewer than two dozen forceful interventions after 1961, and that's not including our 21st century entanglements in the iraq, afghanistan and libya. now, given all these other interventions since the bay of pigs, you may be asking yourself why should we still care about the bay of pigs? i mean, next to vietnam and iraq it seems like a fairly minor

event, perhaps, an appetizer before this huge feast of troubled interventions. and aside from the fact that it lasts just five days and cost a mere $46 million, that's about, i think, less than the average budget of a hollywood movie these days. and then, of course, the fact that it was an embarrassment, and it has everything to recommend it for oblivion. but here's the thing, it changed this country in some very important ways. it changed how americans look at their government, and it changed how the rest of the world looked at us. prior to the bay of pigs, it would have been a cynical american who doubted that he lived in a good and mighty nation led by competent men and engaged in worthy exploits. that was certainly a plausible view for americans 50 years ago after world war ii. the bay bay of pigs made that va lot harder to hold on to. it had the distinction of making

the united states look both -- [inaudible] and weak. this is what kennedy's aide, arthur schlesinger jr. wrote in his journal. we look like ineffectual imperialists, and we look like stupid ineffectual imperialists which is worst of all. in many ways the 1960s, that decade of questioning authority, began with the bay of pigs. this was the first step into the vietnam era even before vietnam. actually, what you may not realize, what i did not realize until i wrote the book is how much the vietnam war itself owes to the bay of pigs. if we have time, aisle delve into that -- i'll delve into that more later on, but right now i want to go back a few years before the bay of pigs and focus on the causes of the invasion. because here's the really central question and one we don't have a good answer to even yet: how does something like

this happen? my ambition in this book beyond telling what i think is a fascinating story as well as i could was to go back once more and look at these events as clearly as possible. with no axes to grind, with no finger pointing, not trying to blame anyone, not trying to exonerate anybody, just trying to find out as best i could the truth. so with that goal in mind i begin my narrative well before the invasion because i think to understand it, you need to know not just what happened, but the context in which it happened. so i began two years before the bombs began to fall on cuba, exactly two years, in fact, to the day. april 15th, 1959. that evening fidel castro's --

[inaudible] dwight eisenhower was still president, richard nixon was vice president, john kennedy was still the junior senator from massachusetts. castro came to deliver a speech to newspaper editor, but it was a charm offensive. he and his bearded entourage arrived in washington loaded with cuban cigars and cases of cuban rum, and castro spent most of his visit hugging and smiling and saying all the right things. there were some americans, including some in the eisenhower administration -- including dwight eisenhower himself -- who had pretty serious concerns about eisenhower, mainly that he was a communist in the making. but many found him quite charming and certainly charismatic. after a few days in washington, castro took a train to new york city. from the moment he arrived at penn station where he was greeted by 20,000 people, he had a grand old time. he went to the top of the empire state building, he shook hands

with jackie robinson, he went down to city hall, went up to columbia university. having less fun in new york city were the policemen who were assigned to protect him because there were all these assassination plots surrounding castro, and these were reported in the press every day. and none of these turned out to be real, but the police didn't know that. and castro was completely impossible to protect. he'd throw himself into crowds hugging and can kissing people with no concern for his safety. and one afternoon on a whim, he decided to go to the bronx zoo. the press followed, federal agents followed, the new york city police followed, and castro did what everybody does at the zoo; he ate a hot dog, he fed peanuts to the elephants, he rode a miniature electric train, and then before anybody could stop him, he climbed over a protective rail anything front of the tiger cages and stuck his fingers right through the cage and petted a bengal tiger on the

head. this was the sort of thing that made people think he was a little crazy. [laughter] besides trying to save castro from assassins and tigers, americans spent much of his visit trying to decipher his politics which meant answering the following question: was fidel castro a communist? you have to recall in the late 1950s and early 1960s the battle against the so-called international communist conspiracy was the organizing principle on which american foreign policy was based. and it wasn't just the spread of communism that was so feared, it was the fact that the communists had nuclear webs. weapons. and given the rhetoric coming out of the kremlin, khrushchev was saying all sorts of things like, we will bury you, and those were literally his words. they seemed more and more willing to use this. i emphasize this to point out that the specter of a communist country 90 miles from american shores was simply intolerable and not just to barry goldwater,

richard nixon but really to everybody. so fidel castro was interrogated on the subject of communism everywhere he went on his visit. by vice president nixon, by congressional subcommittee, by scores of journalists. everybody asked him the same question, dr. castro, are you a communist? and he answered the same, no, he was not a communist, never had been, never would be. when castro finally left new york on april 25th, the police were relieved to see him go, but most new yorkers were happy that he'd come to visit. an editorial in "the new york times" summed up the general attitude toward castro as he left, quote, he made it quite clear that neither he nor anyone of importance in his government, so far as he knew, was a communist. by the same token, it seems obvious that the americans feel better about castro than they did before. well, that changed. that changed very fast. in the book i go into some detail regarding what happened after castro returned to cuba

after his american visit, how things went sour so quickly. for the sake of time, i'm going to jump ahead a bit. suffice it to say that castro immediately began behaving very much in a manner that seemed almost designed to provoke the american government. he started appropriating american property in cuba, delivering speeches filled with anti-american rhetoric, cracking down on cubans who made anti-communist statements and most worrisome of all, began accepting overtures from the soviet union. altogether, in other words, acting exactly like the profo-communist that the administration feared he was. by the end of 1959,less than a year after castro came to power in cuba, the eisenhower administration was taking aggressive steps against him. the great irony is that after devoting millions of dollars and hundreds of men to protect him

against assassins, the united states government now began plotting his demise. generating these plots was the central intelligence agency. with encouragement from president eisenhower. some of the early ideas explored by the cia were quite interesting. one was to place a drug in castro's food that would make him behave strangely in public and make him appear true -- truly insane. the drug wasn't specified, but it was probably lsd which the cia had done quite a bit of work with in the '50s. if that sounds something like inspired by james bond, alan dulles, the director of the cia, was a big james bond fan and, in fact, at one point that march as the cia was casting about for ideas, ian fleming happened to be visiting washington. he had dinner at the home of jack and jacqueline kennedy, and somebody asked him sort of

tongue in cheek if he had any ideas for offing fidel castro, and he came up with this crazy plot that he would drop leaflets over havana advertising that radiation was in the air and that radiation tended to cling to men's beards. the only way to get rid of the radiation would be to shave the beards so, therefore, all of castro's minions would shave their beards and supposedly lose their mystical power. some tried to take this seriously, in fact, he tried to track down ian fleming while he was still in washington, but he'd already flown back to london. one idea was to assassinate not just fidel, but also his brother raul and kay guerrera, a sort of trifecta. a more serious cia plan was approved by dwight eisenhower later in the month, march 17th, 19 of -- 1960.

the plan developed was to use some of the cubans who had been fleeing castro -- mainly to florida -- to return to cuba and overthrow him. originally, the idea was to infiltrate the men onto the island in small groups, but that was something more like a world ii-style amphibian invasion. the plan was not to somehow defeat castro's army of 25 or 30,000. rather, it was to land the brigade on a significant piece of cuban real estate and hold it far length of time, maybe a week, up to ten days, and at some point the brigade would fly in a provisional government which the cia had i semibled in missouri -- had assembled in miami. and then this government would set up shop on the beach and declare itself the rightful government of cuba, and the plan sort of sputtered out after

that. one hope, as i mentioned earlier, is the cuban population would rise up in support to have brigade and help overthrow castro. another possibility was that this provisional government after establishing itself in cuba could invite the united states to assist much the way the rebels in libya invited the united states to assist recently, and then the united states could come in overtly and legally, or at least quasilegally and settle the matter. not long after eisenhower approved the plan, the cia set up camp in the mountains of guatemala on a coffee plantation and built an airstrip nearby. in late spring the agency began to recruit cuban exiles mainly in miami and to transport, assemble and train them in guatemala. these exiles came from an array of backgrounds, some were former soldiers who'd served in batista's army, others were students, many were moderates or even leftist who had even supported castro but then grown

disenchanted with him as he became increasingly left and more and more acting like a communist. later there would be lawyers and doctors and farmers, whites and blacks, young and old o, rich and poor, a pretty fair cross-section of the cuban population. while the military operation was coming together in guatemala, the presidential campaign of 1960 was heating up in america. in a close contest between richard nixon and john f. kennedy. from the outset, nixon realized that fidel castro was either going to be an opportunity or a problem for him depending on whether castro was still in power or gone by election day. now, in the fall of 1960 john kennedy was beating the eisenhower administration over the head with fidel castro. kennedy had realized that no subject roused the american voters more than the specter of a communist cuba, and at every whistle stop he reminded voters that the island was, quote, a mere eight jet minutes away, and he plameed eisenhower -- blamed

eisenhower and company, including vice president nixon, for letting this happen. imagine being in the shoes of richard nixon. he had a pretty well-earned reputation as a communist buster, one of the premier communist busters in america, and along comes this democrat from massachusetts suggesting that he, richard nixon, was not quite anti-communist enough. it was galling. kennedy had somehow managed to outflank nixon. probably the best example occurred in the one of the new york stock exchange son/kennedy television debates, not the first which is most famous, but the fourth debate. this debate may have been the most important in the campaign. at the very least, it offered a glimpse into the wonderful strangeness that was richard nixon. kennedy had come out in the press the previous day with a statement about cuba, and in his statement kennedy suggested that the eisenhower administration was being negligent about castro and that they really ought to find some way to help anti-castro cubans take up arms

against castro. of course, this was exactly what the eisenhower administration was trying to do. when nixon saw this in the newspapers, he was outraged. somebody in the cia, he thought, must have told kennedy about the cia's plan. and now kennedy was claiming this as his own idea when, in fact, he, richard nixon, had been pushing for this operation for months. but nixon couldn't say that because the a covert operation, so he just had to shut up and let kennedy pretend the whole thing was his idea. well, that's probably what he should have done, but that is not, n., what nixon did. instead, in the fourth debate he lashed out at kennedy's statement denouncing it as irresponsible and foolish. he gave a long, thoughtful argument as to why a covert military operation against the castro regime was a terrible idea, dangerously irresponsible as he said in the debate. nixon later explained that this lie of his was very painful, but

that-his, quote -- it was his, quote, uncomfortable and ironic couth. duty. and then he added from that point on i had the wisdom and wariness of someone who had been burned by the kennedys. i vowed i'd never be vulnerable to them or anyone on the level of political tactics. it's a lesson that nixon learned well, a lesson that led him straight to watergate. that's a story for another time though. as we know, john kennedy got what he wished for, he became the 35th president of the united states, and no sooner did he enter office on january 20th then he was handed this plan that had been developed under the eisenhower administration. he'd been brief inside detail by dulles and bissell after he won the election, so he knew something, but still it came as quite a shock to discover, first of all, how big the operation was and, secondly, that he had to deal with it immediately. the cia told him that the cubans

were about to get a large arms shipment from the soviets including mig fighter jets which would make it much more difficult to get rid of castro in the future. this was true, by the way. so from day one the pressure was on kennedy to decide what he wanted to do and to decide quickly. it's fair to say that john kennedy was not thrilled by the cia's plan. his main concern was that the involvement of the united states would not be hidden enough, and if it were not, it could very well provoke castro's new friends, the soviet union, to take retaliatory action, most likely in west berlin, a city that khrushchev had been threatening to cut off from the west. kennedy did not want to get in a risky game with the soviets was he knew that could escalate to nuclear war. then again, like everybody else, he wanted castro gone. in fact, since he'd run for president criticizing eisenhower about castro, he needed to do something.

if he canceled the plan, he'd look like a hypocrite. worse, he'd look soft on communism which was the last thing john kennedy wanted to see. conventional wisdom has it that the cia misled kennedy about the essentials of the operation, that they really tricked him into going ahead by misleading him, for example, about the chances of the cuban population rising up against castro. i don't think the cia was totally up front. in fact, richard bissell later claimed, later admitted, rather, that they told too hard. but i don't believe kennedy was fooled either. i think he knew more or less what he was getting into, and he got into it anyway because he didn't know how not to get into it. he'd painted himself into a corner during the campaign. and by the way, most americans were in that same corner with him. everybody wanted castro gone. the operation moved forward almost inexorably through february and march, and finally

in early april after weeks of hemming and be hawing, president kennedy gave it the thumbs up. he still held out the possibility of can canceling it, but he never did, and i don't think there was ever a good chance that he would have. and so back to where we began. april 15th, in the opening attack on the cuban airfields, the attack that was meant to destroy fidel castro's air force. i cover the ip vegas and aftermath in great detail in the book, but it's hard to do it justice in a few minutes, so i'm afraid you're going to have to read the book if you want to find the full story. but for the moment i'll just say about those air attacks on april 15th is they did not completely take out castro's air force. they left about half a dozen of his planes intact. that was half a dozen too many. the following evening, april 126th, president kennedy canceled the second round of air strikes that were scheduled for the morning of april 17th.

these strikes were meant to complete the job of destroying castro's air force. now, why kennedy canceled them is a mystery. he had become, the most common explanation is he'd become very concerned about the public and international reaction stirred up by the first round of air strikes. it had become clear to the whole world that the united states was behind the air attacks almost the moment those first arms fell on the 15th. and kennedy, as always, was very concerned about provoking something big, about lighting a match that would lead to a great nuclear con from auation. conflagration. so with the advice of his secretary of state, dean rusk, he called off these air strikes. now, among the cia planners when they discovered this on the evening of april 16th, they were horrified. it had always been understood that for the invasion to have a chance castro's air force had to be taken out.

it was axiomatic. and the moment kennedy canceled those follow-up strikes everybody involved in the operation instabilitily understood what it meant. the brigade was doomed. this was confirmed the following morning before the brigade had even completed its landing. castro's planes showed up over the bay of pigs and very quickly sunk two supply ships. the four ore brigade -- other brigade ships fled for international waters. with those two sunken ships and away with those other four ships went the brigade's ammunition, much of its food and medical supplies, much of its communications equipment and virtually any fighting chance the brigade had. now, this is not to suggest that if secondary strikes had not been canceled the invasion would have ultimately achieved what east -- either the cia or brigade wanted it to achieve,

but there was no question at the moment those air strikes were canceled it was over which is why to this day many cuban exiles hold a deep animosity for john kennedy, even 50 years later. the brigade was essentially stranded there on the beaches running out of ammunition and under constant bombardment as castro sent his army in column after column. and he had about 30,000 to draw from. by the 18th the brigade was withering, and on the 9th it came -- 19th it came to an end. castro's troops swept in but not before one last tragedy. the final morning, april 19th, four american pilots from the alabama air national guard who had been brought in to help train the brigade pilots flew from the base in nicaragua to cuba. they did this because the brigade pilots had been flying virtually nonstop and had suffered numerous casualties,

and these americans volunteered to fly in their place. that morning their planes were shot down over cuba, and all four were killed including a 30-year-old pilot named thomas p. ray. thomas ray's daughter, janet ray, is here with us tonight and was a big help to me when i was writing this book as were veterans of the o brigade when i visited them two years ago over the 48th anniversary of the bay of pigs invasion. so i'm grateful for your help and for their help, and i'm grateful to all of you for coming in and listening to me tonight, and what i want to do now is give you a chance to ask any questions that you might have or make any brief comments. we've got c-span here with us, so you, please, wait for the microphone to come over before you speak and, please, because there are so many of us here tonight try to keep it brief so that everybody gets a chance who wants to say something will get a chance to do so, okay? thank you very much. [applause]

>> okay, thank you. thank you. i'm going to start this since the boom is already there with this gentleman right here. go ahead. i think we'll -- >> your book is the first one of many, i've read them all, that mentions the meeting of january the 28th when alan dulles briefed kennedy and his entire team for the first time. at the end -- >> can't hear the question. >> >> at the end of the memo, the question will come in a moment. at the end of the memo that was prepared by bissell, it comes out that the end of the operation would be for the u.s. to come in after the beachhead had been established. >> uh-huh. >> my question to you is, i know because i've read it that that n

the first plan, the trinidad plan. were you able to find that anywhere else, and were you able to find mention of that anywhere else after that? >> what specifically do you mean? >> >> the fact that the u.s. was going to come in after the beachhead -- >> yeah. that was always part of the original plan, that, again, the idea was never that these 1400 men were going to take over cuba. some people seem to think that, but that wasn't the plan. the plan was that they would set up this beachhead, and then they would call for help. and that's why i haven't mentioned this, but there was a fleet of american aircraft just over the horizon during the brigade, an aircraft carrier and seven destroyers. they were there to help out when they were called upon. one of those ships had 30,000 rifles to give to any cubans who would want to join in the invasion. there were tanks on those ships, there were trucks on those ships, they were set just

waiting for the word go to bring this equipment in and help the brigade out. janet, yes. i mentioned youment. >> okay. good enough. i have a question. >> yeah. >> the decision that john f. kennedy made at the bay of pigs, do you think that resulted in his assassination or played a part in that decision? >> i think probably lee harvey oswald's mind it did. there's, of course, a question of whether fidel castro ordered it. lyndon johnson said castro knew kennedy wanted to kill him, so he wanted to kill kennedy. there was a lot of speculation that castro may have ordered this himself. castro denies it vehemently. we do know that oswald visited the mexican embassy -- i'm sorry, the cuban embassy shortly before the assassination and perhaps got some sort of signal or communication there. but what we know for sure is

oswald, he was in the sow yet union when the -- soviet union when the bay of pigs happened and was infuriated by it and thought he was doing fidel castro a favor by going after john kennedy. so indirectly, yes, i do think the bay of pigs definitely leads to the assassination of kennedy. it may have had a more direct link, but that's very difficult, maybe impossible to prove. over here, please. i'll come to you in a second. yes. >> what's confusing to me is if after the first day of the invasion it became very clear that the u.s. was behind it and then if it was known that without the secondary air strikes on the 17th the invasion was doomed, are you basically saying that because kennedy was afraid of lighting the match against the soviet union that he was willing to sacrifice the 1400 men for the good of the big

or picture? because -- >> it's a haunting question. >> because how you portrayed this -- >> yeah. >> -- whether we're in favor or not in favor of war or in favor or not in favor of getting with castro, by putting the plan in place we had already committed. and anything short of of that though you said there was no guarantee it would work, anything short of that would be a disaster. so it's hard to imagine that 1400 lives would be sacrificed for whatever bigger picture. >> i'm sure john kennedy never thought in those chilling terms. i'm sure he never thought, well, i'll just sacrifice those 1400 lives. i think what he wanted was to have his cake and eat it too. he wanted to have sort of an immaculate invasion, you know? he wanted to invade cuba, he wanted to get castro out, but he didn't want to start anything with the soviet union.

did he sit there on the evening of the 16th saying to himself, too bad for those guys? i mean, i'm canceling the follow-up air strikes? i don't think so. but i think the conflict within himself that he'd had from the very beginning came to haunt this operation that evening. in many ways, it had been set up long in advance because he was always conflicted about it. but that's what he did. i mean, he did essentially, the cia knew that's what he'd done. he had, basically, set them up to fail. but i guess i don't, i've never seen anything that makes me think that he was cold-hearted enough to do it intentionally. and we do know he did really feel very truly depressed about it afterwards. he went into a deep depression, and i'm sure it was because he knew he'd done something pretty terrible. i think he did it in his own mind for the right reasons, but clearly he knew he'd set these guys up to fail.

i'm going to come to this side of the room, please. >> i have been told that there were american warships there ready to assist in the invasion. there were tanks coming off carriers. there were, obviously, sophisticated weaponry that was brought into cuba in a large-scale invasion how can anybody talk an otherwise intelligent potential like the president -- person like the president of the united states talk him into that? >> yeah. this gets into the oddness of plausible denial in the cold war. be the idea of plausible denial was not total denial, it was that you can hide behind this covert front, and it lowered the heat, it lowered the stakes. for example, the u2.

the u2, the spy plane, the famous spy plane america flew, we were flying a u2 over the soviet union, the soviets knew it, and we knew they knew, but nobody said anything because nobody wanted to admit weakness. so to go back to your question, i don't think anyone thought, oh, we can -- we'll be able to completely deny this, but the hope was we can plausibly deny it. we can say, oh, yeah, we were there to help out if they asked us to help them, we were there as a friend, but we were in no way behind it. we weren't the ones instigating it, we weren't the ones funding it. so they could deny key parts of it and, while accepting other parts of it. does that answer the question? this gentleman here. and then i'll come to you. >> and yes. aside from the lack of air power and air cover, did you find any information regarding

infiltration of the brigade by castro intelligence officers that already gave up the plan even before they even landed? >> i did not. but it's not, that's not because it's not out there. i think it's commonly assumed that he did know. it's hard to believe -- he had spies in miami, so certainly he knew what was going on among the cuban exiles in miami. he probably had spies in guatemala. and by the way, he really just had to pick up the newspaper if he wanted to know what was going on because there were newspaper reports about the training camps in guatemala. on january 10th "the new york times" ran a story which said that there was these training camps in guatemala it ended up not being that bad for the cia because "the new york times" reporter was kind of fooled and thought these soldiers were guatemalans rather than cuban exiles, but nonetheless, castro could read between the lines. he knew something was coming. and john kennedy made a press

conference on april 12th right before the invasion said that should there be an invasion of cuba, there would be no american involvement in it. well, for castro that said it all, clearly, these guys are coming any second. [laughter] now there's also, you may know, a story that somebody leaked to soviet intelligence, the fact -- the actual invasion datement that's probably true. there seems to be a lot of evidence for that. i don't know who made much of a difference because castro knew anyway. he had been on high alert all winter, all spring. he was ready. he stayed up all night smoking cigars, waiting night after night for this to happen. the only thing he didn't know is where-going to happen, and once he found that out, he was ready to go. this young woman here. >> hi, thank you for calling me young. [laughter] i'm the godmother of alan

dulles' great grandson, and my husband is cuban. and when my, i found out that my friend's last name was actually dulles, and she knew my husband was cuban, she asked me, can we still be friends? so what i'm asking you is how liable is alan dulles for all of this? [laughter] >> um, well, dulles, i don't think that cubans, cuban exiles would be upset with dulles. dulles was on their side. he very much wanted this to go through. he also very much wanted president kennedy to rescue them when it was clear that they were failing. dulles, for odd reasons, was not actually in the country when the invasion occurred, but richard

bissell made a number of attempts to get john kennedy to approve air power. there was an immense amount of firepower just offshore including an aircraft carrier with a-4 fighter jets. so bissell kept saying let us have these to give a little bit of air cover to the brigade. the brigade is there pinned down, begging for help. and if you read the intercept coming in from the beaches, they're just heart remember. ing. please, help us. please come. we're dying here. rescue us. just send in one plane, send in some planes, please. well, kennedy never did, but the cia pushed for it. some people, some people think bissell didn't push quite hard enough, but certainly dulles wanted that. so i think that, certainly, you and this woman could be friends. [laughter] here please.

>> i just saw the series on television, "the kennedys," and one of the segments they covered in detail was the invasion. two parts. my first part is how accurate, if you saw that series -- >> [inaudible] >> oh, okay. sorry. one of the things they brought out in that series, and again, i don't know if it's true but they said it was which shocked me, i lived through that invasion, and one of the things they said was that to the present day they acknowledge that one of the mistakes they made was that there was a full moon on the night of the invasion. and i was, i remember -- >> yeah, that was true. >> oh. because that made no especially is. how could they have done that? >> [inaudible] [inaudible conversations] >> they made a big point of that in the -- >> yeah. one of the other, that, on the morning of the 15th the cuban

ambassador to the united nations also made the point that there were sun spots that day, and somehow the cia was so diabolical that they had arranged the invasion to occur while there were sun spots to screw up radio equipment. i don't know that much about the meteorology of the day, but it was intentionally done on a moonless night. >> okay, thanks. >> anybody else? standing back here in the yellow shirt. >> does your book go into how kennedy changed the the invasion plan from trinidad to the bay of pigs? >> yes. >> because that was pivotal. >> that was pivotal, yes. >> and as far as leaks, they rounded up 150,000 people right before the invasion -- >> right. >> -- who were supposed to take part in all kinds of anti-government activities, they filled stadiums in havana and throughout cuba. and that would have been

pivotal, but that was leaked to the castro government. do you cover that also? >> i certainly cover the fact that these people were rounded up, and be it goes to the problem of hoping for a populist uprising against castro in cuba because anybody against castro was either in jail or in miami. [laughter] there weren't many people left who were free in cuba who -- >> we had seven member of our family go to the bay of pigs. >> is that right? >> >> yes, sir. >> they didn't send us because she was 5, i was 5, otherwise we would have gone too. >> [inaudible] 1200 to 1400. i understand landed. my uncle was part of the teams that were supposed to go in ahead of the invasion to help the resistance and, you know, prepare, and he never landed.

they found out about the invasion later. have you looked into that? >> there were many other units. there were false invasions, there were infiltrations, there are a number of things going on at the same time. the actual brigade that landed was about 1400, but, yes, there are hundreds of others who were involved in operations against cuba at the time. >> i've heard that the planes that bombed the airfields the day before the attacks were painted in cuban colors to make it seem as though the plane were cubans themselves, is that true? >> that is true. the whole plan was to try to make those air atracks look as if they had been carried out by castro's own pilots. so part of that plan was to have, now, you had eight b-26 bombers that flew to cuba and bombs three airfields, you also had a ninth b-26 flown by a pilot who flew directly from

nicaragua to miami, landed in the b-26 and claimed that he was part of the conspiracy of cuban pilots who that mooning had bombed their own airfields. and now was coming to the united states. that fell apart very quickly, though, for a number of reasons. for one thing, his b-26 was different than the b-26s in castro's air force and some enterprising journalists figured that out rather quickly. for example, he had his machine guns in the nose cone, castro's machine guns were mounted under the wings. so that was part of how this whole why john kennedy ended up canceling the air strikes on the 16th, because once people realized that this was not true, a charade, they realized, wait a minute, something's not right about this, and they started looking at the americans for answers as to what was going on. so, yeah, they were all marked to look like castro's planes. there was somebody over here,

i'll come to you in a second. yes. >> in your opening remarks, you referred to the fact that kennedy was concerned that, about provoking russia. and by his actions in the bay of pigses, and then the invasion. do you go into that in the book and what subsequently happened? because, you know, four or five months later the berlin wall went up -- >> right. >> -- i'm and sure that was triggered by his weakness in the bay of pigs. eight months later vietnam exploded. that was all in consequence of -- when they detected that he was what they interpreted to be weak, that triggered a lot of problems. >> and john kennedy knew that. he went to a summit in vienna in june with khrushchev, and khrushchev just ate his lunch. and kennedy afterwards said, he thinks i'm stupid and weak because of what happened at the bay of pigs.

and certainly, you can make a connection then to khrushchev making this move to put up the berlin wall, although in some ways the berlin wall diffused the situation in berlin, but that's a rather complicated story. but, certainly -- >> but it triggered the wall being built. >> it did trigger it. >> -- [inaudible] the bay of pigs, and the same thing happened in asia. >> yeah, yeah. well, that's true. and there was certainly, kennedy certainly was very aware of that when he went to the summit with khrushchev. look, the repercussion of the bay of pigs just kept going. i mean, all through -- they really didn't end for kennedy until the cuban missile crisis. but, you know, a lot of things, the vietnam war in many ways started on april 20th, the day after the bay of pigs. john kennedy, needing a victory against the communists, ordered a task force in the pentagon to look for a way to stop communism

in south vietnam, and very quickly after that sent more money, 400 more men to vietnam really as the first step into vietnam began on the beaches of cuba. this man here and then i'll come over there. >> thank you. in my mind there must have been some sort of, um, cause that caused kennedy to back away from that secondary strike. immediately after that first air strike are you aware, is there any documentation between john kennedy and khrushchev immediately after that first air strike that may have caused john kennedy to back out and continue -- >> no. the conversations were with dean rusk mainly, his secretary of state, who advised him to stop. now, khrushchev did, on the 18th, send a very threatening letter to john kennedy really saying if you value the lives of

your people, you'd better back off. you know, in the cold war the stakes were always so high, and i think that's why we have to have some sympathy for these presidents who served when they were always a few decisions away from nuclear war. at least they thought they were. so kruschev, you know, kruschev said if you -- i can't quote the letter, in the book, but you better get out of cuba, or we're going to come a after you. so there were certainly communications after that, and kennedy then respond today that. responded to that. yes. >> during your research did you come across any documentation that after the election the republican administration either wanted to back off or wanted to accelerate it? or -- >> the, there was a cia history done in the 1970s, and a guy named jack, and he was, he remarked upon the fact that

eisenhower for some reason really seemed to start pushing again after the election just before kennedy took over. and it may be because eisenhower before that was afraid of doing something to muck up nixon's chances. um, it may be that he was just trying to hand kennedy a tough problem. i doubt it. but he did really try to -- i think what they wanted to do was hand off something that was ready to go. now, eisenhower did later say that he never meant this to be a plan. he called it a program. in other words, it was an asset. it wasn't something that had to be done. so he later denied that he really had much responsibility for it. although, remember, for a year this plan lived under eisenhower, and it only lived under kennedy for three months. i think we can take a few more questions. um, somebody who has not asked one. have you asked? no, you have -- go ahead, please. >> can you elaborate on the four

alabama national guards, what's the history behind that? i don't think it was made clear that they had gotten shot down for several years, and what's the status of those gentlemen now? >> well, this woman here knows more about that than i do, her father was one of them. they'd been brought in to train the cia pilots. they weren't meant to fly. i mean, there was always a back-up plan that maybe they would be used to fly, but that wasn't really their main function. and it is true that when they, when they were killed the kennedy administration and then the cia denied that this happened. they came up with a cover story for how they died. and it's really one of the most shameful parts of the whole thing because these men died trying to serve their country, trying to do the right thing, and then their families were lied to about how they died. through the efforts of janet

ray, mainly, and other people that is not, the truth came out. and we now all know what the truth is, that these four men died in battle fighting for their country. let me take one more question. does anybody -- you had one. did you want to ask one? >> you said that president kennedy felt personally guilty for not ordering the secondary strike, but, um, he made it clear that he was upset with the cia over the failure of the bayy of pigs because he fired many of the heads of the cia afterwards. >> that's right. he fired alan dulles, he fired richard bissell, and he fired charles -- [inaudible] who was the second in if command at the cia. he fired the whole top. he was upset with the cia. he thought the cia had misled him. partly, though, you have to understand that was scapegoating, and i don't mean that as being highly critical. look, even before the invasion arthur schlesinger wrote a memo

saying if something bad should happen, somebody's neck has to go on the chopping block, and it can't be the president's. and so it was the cia's, and the -- that's partly the job of the cia, you know? they have to take the heat when things like this happen. and they, they, um, you know, it was, it was their baby, and bissell, it was the end of his career, certainly. he went and worked at a corporation in connecticut the rest of his life, and, um, it changed the lives of many people in the cia whose careers were basically -- not just the top three guys, but ended with that. kennedy's goal was he wanted to shatter the cia into a thousand pieces. he didn't do that, but he was certainly upset. can we have time for one more? let's do one more question here and then we'll -- >> just to ask you, does the book explore the issue of why alan dulles was in puerto rico, left to run probably one of the

highest profile operations the cia had planned in many, many years to joe bissell who was -- >> richard bissell. >> richard business l, rather, who was an underling of his? is there any further delving into that in the book? >> yeah. it was an invitation that had been proved to dulles before, it was from the young presidents' association of america, basically this was a retreat, and they'd invited alan dulles to come talk to them. and dulles went because it was thought if he didn't go, it would be a tipoff to castro that the invasion was about to happen, and that if he did go it would be one more indication that the united states had nothing to do with this. now, in moscow the newspapers immediately, as early as the 18th, were saying alan dulles was intentionally in dulles so he could run the operation from

puerto rico. that's not true. but he did give his speech the same time the chips were exploding in the bay of pigs, and it is rather bizarre, but it was thought to be the right thing to do. he really didn't know much about what was happening until he came back that evening and learned at the airport how badly things were going, and then he told his aide, let's go get a stiff drink, and that's how he handled that. [laughter] i think we need to cut it off here. i'll take your -- can we do any more questions? >> [inaudible] >> okay. yes, all right. >> i just, i don't understand how if everybody in the world knew that this was going to happen the cia didn't know, did they not have any people infiltrated in the capture organization at that time? if everybody knew, how did dull rest not know that -- dulles shot know that everyone knew? >> >> yes. it goes back to the weird