>> this event was hosted by the national world war ii museum in new orleans. and to find out visit ddaymuseum.org. >> this evening books and books is excited to interview our author, america's doomed bay of bhigz he 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 greatest skyline. in this book he 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. to tell us more about it, please give a warm welcome to our author. [applause] >> thank you for that introduction. thank you to books and books for having me. this is a wonderful bookstore. i had not been here. i came here earlier today.

and it is fantastic. so i urge you to buy a book tonight. it doesn't have to be my book, but if you want it to be, that's fine with me. as i'm sure all of you know by now this is on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the bay of pigs launch in cuba and i can't think of launching my new book here with you. 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 time. there's a number of reasons i wanted to tell you for the long time. 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. and 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 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 for given. you're not forgiven you're not forgiven for being younger but you're forgiven of not knowing what had happened before you were born. for those who are not familiar, let me go for 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 who are mad men fans i think that's just after season 1 if that helps orient you. [laughter] >> that april a group of cuban exiles, trained and supplied and backed by the united states government attempted to invade

cuba and overthrow fidel castro. the attack began on april 15th, 1961, when a fleet of eight e20 bombers flew by pilots. they bombed in the air fields intending to destroy fidel's castro's air force. a few days day after midnight after april 17th, the invasion itself began. about 1400 men again cuban exiles known collectively as brigade as 2956 got on the cuban coast called the bay of pigs. the plan was to establish and hold a spark an uprising against fidel castro. that was the plan anyway and it didn't work out that way. brigade got into trouble almost immediately. and within two days of landing,

it was over. 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 swamps. there was a vast everglade inland from the bay of pigs and they were rounded up by castro soldiers and threw into cuban jails. for castro who looked like the david who slayed the yankee goliath and i was in cuba almost exactly a year ago and it's remarkable around havana and the bay of pigs there are billboards all over the place celebrating the victory over yankee imperialism and this 50th anniversary they will be parked with a parade and a celebration. 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 exiles had gone in on their own but that charade didn't last very long and soon the whole world knew the truth which was that the brigade had been trained by cia and been provided with american equipment and the invasion had been approved by the u.s. joints chief of staff, 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 says it was the worst defeat the u.s. had suffered of the war of 1812. that was by 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 made the same mistakes in other parts of the world. an era we're still in today. not given all these other interventions since the bay of pigs, you should be asking yourself, why should we still care about the bay of pigs, it seems like a fairly minor event an appetizer before this few

feast of government intervention and it lasted five days and it cost a few $46 million, that's about less than the average budget of a hollywood movie day and then, of course, the fact it was an embarrassment and it has everything to recommend it for oblivion. here's the thing, it changed this country in some very important ways. it changed how the americans looked at their government and how the rest of the world looked at us. prior to that it was a cynical american who doubted he lived in a mighty nation engaged in worthy debates. after world war ii. the bay of pigs made that view a lot harder to hold on to. it had the distinction of making the united states look both strong and weak. this is what kennedy's aide

arthur schlesinger wrote in his journal. we look like imperialists we look like ineif he can actual imperialists and we look stupid ineffective 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, how much vietnam itself owes to the bay of pigs. i want to go back a bit in time, back a few years before the bay of pigs and look at the causes of the invasion because here's really the central question and one we don't even have a good answer to yet. how does something like that happen?

i want to go back and look at these events as clearly as possible. with no ax to grind, 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 arrived to the united states for a visit. this is his first visit of the united states before he'd taken over cuba. dwight eisenhower was still president. richard nixon was a vice president and john kennedy was

still a senator in massachusetts. after he came to deliver a speech to some newspaperairies and to visit with something more like an invasion in its own right, a charm offensive, he and his bearded entourage loaded with cuban cigars and cuban rum and castro spent most of his visit hugging and smiling saying the right things. there were some in the eisenhower administration including dwight eisenhower himself. he had a lot to worry about castro but some thought he was charismatic and charming. after a few days in washington, castro took a train to new york city. immediately when he went to penn station where he was greeted by 20,000 people,'d grand old time. he went to the top of the empire state-building, he went to columbia university and he left

new york city where 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 and the police didn't know and castro was completely impossible to protect and he would threw himself in the crowd kissing and hugging people with no concern on his safety and on a whim he decided to go to the bronx zoo and federal agents, the new york city followed and 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 railing in front of the tiger cages and stuck his fingers right through the cage and petted a benefit gal tiger on his head. and this is what he did that made people think he was a little crazy. besides trying to save castro from assassins and tigers, many

were trying to decipher his politics. which was the following question, was fidel castro a communi communist? you have to realize in the 1940s, and '50s that the battle of the 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 weapons. and given the rhetoric coming out of the kremlin can khrushchev said we will bury you. i point this out that the specter of a communist country 90 miles from american shores was involumable not like the conservatives like barry grandfather and richard nixon, everybody. fidel castro was interrogated on the subject of communism

everywhere he went on his visit. by scores of journalists, everyone asked him the same question, dr. castro, are you a com any of the and he answered the same every time, no, he was not a com any of the, 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 had come to visit. an editorial "new york times" summed up the general attitude towards castro as he left, quote, he made it quite clear that neither he nor anyone of importance in his government, as far as he knew was a communist and it feels americans feel better about castro than they did before. well, that's 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 began behaving 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 anticommunist statements and most worrisome of all began accepting overtures from the soviet union, all together again acting like the protocommunist that the eisenhower administration feared that he was. but in months washington decided that good relations with castro were going to be impossible and by the end of 1959, less than a year than castro came to power in cuba, the eisenhower administration was taking aggressive steps. after devoting millions of dollars and hundreds of men to protect him from assassin, 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 was quite interesting. one was to place a drug in castro's food that would make him behave strangely in public and make him appear truly insane as so many people thought he was. the drug wasn't specified in cia but it was probably lsd which the cia had done quite a lot of work in the '60s. allen dulles, the director of the cia was a big james bond fan as were many people in the cia 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 kennedy and jacqueline kennedy and somebody asked him, you know, tongue and cheek if he had any ideas for offing fidel castro and he came up with this

crazy plot and drop leaflets in the air and there was radiation in the air and the only way to be rid of the raidiers and all the castro's minions would shave their beards and lose their mystical power. he tried to track down ian fleming while he was still in washington. it was too late. fleming had already flown back to london. another method the cia considered was assassination. one idea was to assassinate not just fidel but also his processor raul and chi rivera. a more serious cia plan was approved by dwight eisenhower later in the month, march 17th, 1960s. the plan developed by richard biffle, the cia's famously brilliant who planned that some

of the cubans who had been fleeing to florida was to return and overthrow him. and it was like a world war ii-style amphibious invasion. the plan was never that the 1400 men of the brigade were supposed to overrun cuba and somehow defeat castro's army of 20 or 30,000 rather it was to land the brigade on a significant piece of real estate and hold it for a length of time, maybe a week, up to 10 days. and at some point the brigade would supply in a provisional government which the cia had assembled in miami which which was being kept in a faith house at the time and then the government would set up shop on the beach and declare the itself the rightful government on cuba and what was to happen after that it was not clear. one hope as i mentioned earlier that the cuban population would rise up, support the brigade and

help overthrow castro. another was this provisional government would invite the united states to assist much the way the way the rebels in libya invited the towns assist and the united states could come in overtly or legally 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 late nearby. in late spring the agency companion to recruit cuban exiles and train them in guatemala. these exiles came franchise array from backgrounds and some were soldiers who served in bautista's army, some were students and others were moderates or leftists who even supported castro until he got in power and became more increasingly disenchanted with him as he got more to the left.

there were whites and plaques, young and old, rich and poor. and the 1960s campaign was heating up. and a close contest between richard nixon and john f. kennedy. from the outset nixon he would be an opportunity or a problem for him depending whether castro was in power or gone by election day. now, in the fall of 1960, john kennedy was just beating the eisenhower administration over the head with fidel castro. and no subject roused american voters more than the specter of a communist cuba and he reminded viewers that it was eight minutes away and he plame 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 busters in america and along comes this democrat from massachusetts suggesting that he richard nixon was not anticommunist enough. it was galling. kennedy somehow managed to outflank nixon with the antimost of the talk. one of the best examples heard in the nixon-kennedy television debates, not the first debate the one that was most favorite but the next debate. this debate may have been very important in the campaign. it was the wonderful strangeness that was richard nixon. kennedy had come out in the press the next day with a statement about cuba. and kennedy suggested that the eisenhower administration was being getting about castro and that they really ought to find some way to help anticastro cubans pick up arms against castro. this is exactly what the eisenhower administration was

trying to do. but when nixon saw this in the newspapers he was outraged. someone must have told kennedy about the cia plan and kennedy way claiming this his own idea when he richard nixon had been pushing for this operation for months. but nixon couldn't say that because it was a covert operation so he just had to shut up and prevent kennedy it was his whole idea. that is what he should have done but that is not competent nixon did. he lashed out at kennedy's statement denouncing it as irresponsible and foolish. he give a long thoughtful speech why a covert operation was dangerously irresponsible as he said in the debate. nixon later explained that this lie of his was very painful but that it was his, quote, uncomfortable and ironic duty and then he added, from that point on i had the wisdom and

wariness as someone who had been burned by the kennedys. i vowed i never again would enter an election at a disadvantage by being vulnerable to them or anyone on the level of political tactics. it's a lesson 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 the president on january 20th than he handed this plan developed under the eisenhower administration. kennedy did know something about it by the time he got in office. he had been briefed by biffle and dulles after he won the election but it came as quite a shock to discover 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 including mig fighting jets which would help to get rid of castro out of power. and it was on kennedy decide. john kennedy's 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 friend the soviet union to take retaliatory action most likely in west berlin, a city that khrushchev who had been threatening to cut off the west. he did not want to get in a tit for tat. and since he ran for president criticizing eisenhower about castro he needed to do something. if he cancelled the plan he'd look like a hypocrite and if not

he would look like a castro which is the last time he wanted to see. and there was talk 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 upfront. in fact, richard biffle later admitted that they sold 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 to get into it. he painted himself into a corner in the campaign and by the way most americans were in that same corner with him. everybody wanted castro gone. but the operation move forward through february and march. and finally in early april after weeks of heming and hawing, president kennedy gave it the thumbs up. he still held out the possibility of canceling it but he never did.

and for reasons that i've mentioned, i don't think there was ever a good chance that he would have. and so back to where we began april 15th and the opening attack on the cuban air fields. the attack that was meant to destroy fidel castro's air force. i cover it and the aftermath and it's hard to do it justice. and i'm afraid you're going to have to read the book if you want to find the full story. for a moment i'll just say the important thing about those air attacks on april 15th is that they did not completely take out castro's air force. they left half a dozen intact, half a dozen in his planes. that was half a dozen too many. on april 16th, president kennedy cancelled the second round of air strikes it was scheduled for the morning of april 17th. these strikes meant to complete the job of destroying castro's air force. why kennedy cancelled them is a

mystery. he had become the most common explanation is that he became very concerned about the public and international reaction that had been stirred up by the first round of air strikes, among other things it had become clear to the whole world that the whole world realized that the united states was behind the air attacks almost the moment those first bombs fell on the 15th. and kennedy was very concerned about provoking something big, about lighting a match on the 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 i think of april 16th, they were horrified. it's always been understood for the invasion to have a chance, castro's air force had to be taken out. in the moment kennedy cancelled those follow-up strikes everybody involved in the

operation instantly understood what it meant. the brigade was doomed. this was confirmed the following morning before the brigade had even completed its landing. castro's claims showed up over the bay of pigs and completely sunk two supply ships. the other brigade ships also under attack fled for international waters. and away with those other four ships was 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 the second air strikes had not been cancelled, the invasion would have ultimately achieved what either the cia or the brigade wanted it to achieve but there's no question that at the moment those air strikes were cancelled, it was over. which is why to this day many cuban exiles who fought at the

bay of pigs voted deep animosity for john f. kennedy even 50 years later. the bigrade was essentially stranded there without ammunition and with a bombardment with castro. by the 18th, the brigade was withering on the 19th, it came to an end and the brigades scrambled for the swamps 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 brigade air base in nicaragua to cuba. they did this because they had flown nonstop and had suffered casualties and those brigades agreed to fly in their place and all four were killed including a

30-year-old pilot named thomas pete ray. on this day janet ray was here with us today and was a big help when i was writing the book as well as the veterans of the brigade when i visited them over the bay of pigs invasion and i'm grateful for your help and their help and i'm grateful for coming 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 everybody gets a chance who wants to say something will get a chance to do so, okay? thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you. thank you. i'm going to start there since

the boom is already there. with this gentleman right here. go ahead. >> your book is the first one -- i mean, i've read them all that mentions from the meeting on the 28th when allen doyes briefed kennedy for the first time -- >> i 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 biffle, it comes out. the end of the moment was when the u.s. came when it was established. my question to you is, i know because i've read it, we're now watching the first plan instead of that plan. were you able to find out any of these? and were you able to find

mention of that anywhere else after it. >> what specifically do you mean? >> the fact that the u.s. was going to come in after the beach ahead -- >> yes. that was always part of the orn plan -- again, the idea was never that these 1400 men were going to take over cuba. some people seem tomorrow morning that but that wasn't the plan. the plan was they would set up this beachhead and then they would call for help. and that's why i had to mention this 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. ye yes. >> i have a question. >> yes. >> the decision 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 in lee harvey oswald's mind it did. lyndon johnson said castro knew kennedy wanted to him so he went and killed kennedy. there is a lot of speculation that castro may have ordered him himself. castro denies it vehemently. we do know oswald did visit the cuban embassy in mexico city shortly before the assassination and perhaps got some sort of signal or communication there. but what we know for sure oswald, he was in 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. 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. >> what's confusing to me is if after the first day of the invasion it became very clear that the u.s. is behind it, and then if it was known that without the secondary air strikes on the 17th, the invasion was doomed, are you basically stating that because kennedy was afraid of light the match against the soviet union that he was willing to sacrifice the 1400 men for the good of the bigger picture? >> it's a haunting question.

>> how you portrayed this, whether we're in favor or not in favor of war or in favor or not in favor of getting rid of castro by putting the plan in place, we had already committed. and anything short of that, though, you said there's no guarantee that it would work, anything short of that would be a disaster. so it starts to imagine that what happened in july would be sacrificed or whatever the bigger picture. >> i'm sure john kennedy never thought in those killing 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. he wanted to invade cuba and he wanted to get castro out but he didn't want to start anything with the soviet union. did he sit on the evening of the 16th and say to himself, too bad for those guys, you know, i'm

canceling the follow-up air strikes? i don't think so. i think the conflict within himself that he 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 had always been conconflicted about it but that's what he did. 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 feel very truly depressed about it. after that he went into a deep depression and that's because he had done something pretty terrible. i think he did it in his own mind for the right reasons but clearly he knew he set these guys up to fail. i'm going to come to this side of the room, please. >> i'm told there were american

warships that are ready to assist in the invasion. there were tanks and professional weaponry that was brought into cuba. in a large scale invasion how can anyone talk a president into the united states into saying we could deny that we were behind it? even if we had won the wash, the invasion, how could anybody talk him into that. >> yeah, this goes gets into the oddness of plausible denial of the cold war. my idea of plausible denial was not a total denial. it was that you could hide behind this covert front and it lowered the heat. it lowered the stakes. for example, the u2, u2 spy plane, we were flying a u2 over the soviet union.

the soviets knew we were flying the u2 over the soviet union and we knew they knew but nobody said anything because nobody wanted to admit weaknesses. so to go back to your question, i don't think anyone thought we'll be able to completely deny this but the hope was we can plausibly deny it. we can say, 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 that they could deny key parts of it and while accepting other parts. does that answer the question? this gentleman here. and i'll come to you. >> 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 had supervise in miami so he certainly knew what was going on with supervise in miami, and he had supervise in guatemala and he could pick up the newspaper to find out 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 there were these training camps in guatemala. it ended up being not bad for the day because the "new york times" reporter was kind of fooled and thought that these soldiers were guatemalans rather than cuban exiles but castro could read between the lines and he knew something was coming and right before the invasion said there would -- should there be

an invasion of cuba there would be no american involvement in it. in castro that said it all. clearly, these guys were coming in at any second and you may know there's a story that somebody leaked to soviet intelligence -- the actual invasion day. that's probably true. there seems to be a lot of evidence of that. i don't know if it made any difference. castro had been on high alert all winter all spring. he was ready. he didn't sleep he stayed up all night smoking cigars waiting all night for this to happen. when it did happen he sprang to action. and he didn't know where that was going to happen and as soon as he found that out, he was ready to go. this woman here. [laughter] >> i'm the godmother of alan dulles's great godson and my

husband is cuban. when i found out that my friend's last name was actually dulles and he 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? >> dulles -- i don't think that cuban exiles would be upset with dulles. dulles was on their side. he very much wanted this to go through. he also wanted president kennedy to rescue them when it was clear that they were failing. dulles was not in the country when the invasion occurred. he was in puerto rico. richard biffle made a number of attempts to get john kennedy to approve air cover. now, to go back to the point that was made earlier there was an enormous amount of american

firepower including an aircraft carrier with fighter jets. biffle kept saying just let us have these for a little bit of time. others were saying this as well to give us a little bit of air cover to the brigade. you have to remember the brigade is pinned down begging for help. if you read the intercepts coming in from the beaches, they're just heart-wrenching. please help us, we're dying, send in some planes, please. well, kennedy never did and -- but the cia pushed for it. some people -- some people think he didn't push hard enough but certainly dulles certainly wanted that. so i think you and this woman could be friends. [laughter] >> i just saw the series on television, the kennedy series, and one of the segments they

covered in detail was this information two parts, my first part is how accurate, if you saw the series. >> i didn't. sorry. >> one of the things they brought out in that series and i don't know, too, they said it was would shock me. i lived there. and one of the things they said was through the present day they acknowledged this and one of the mistakes they made was a full moon on the night of the invasion. and i remember going oh, that makes no sense to me. how could they have done that. >> yeah. >> they made a big point of that in the -- >> yeah, one of the other -- that -- on the afternoon -- the morning of the 15th, the cuban ambassadors of the united nations also made a point that there was sun spots that day and

somehow the cia was so diabolical that they had arranged the fight to screw up radio spots. i don't know much about the meteorological day but it was intentionally done on a moonless night. standing back here in the yellow shirt. >> does your book go into how kennedy changed the invasion plan to -- [inaudible] >>io -- yes. >> as far as leaks, they rounded up 150 people right before the invasion who were supposed to take part in all kinds of antigovernment activities, they filled stadiums in havana and cuba and that would have been pivotal and that was leaked to the castro government. do you cover that also. >> i cover the fact that these

people were rounded up and it goes to the problem of hoping for a populace uprising against castro and cuba. anybody against castro are either in jail or miami. there weren't many people left for freeing cuba who were against castro. >> seven members of our family go to the bay of pigs. >> is that right? >> they didn't send us i was 5, 5.5, otherwise, we would have gone too. >> yes. >> my uncle was part of the rebellion 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 -- the landing was about 1400. but, yes, there were hundreds of others who were involved in operations against cuba at the tim time. >> the plan that bombed the air fields in the attack were painted in cuban colors to make it seem for the plan of cuba itself is that true? >> that's true. the whole plan was to try to make those air attacks look as if they were carried out by castro's own pilots. part of that plan was to have -- you had 8b-26 bombers including bomb three air fields and you had one owned by a pilot who flew directly from nicaragua in miami who claimed he was part of the conspiracy of cuban pilots who that morning had bombed their own air fields.

and now was coming to the united states. that fell apart very quickly for a number of reasons. for one thing his b-26 was different than the b-26's in castro's air force and some enterprising journalists figured that out pretty quickly. he had his machine guns in the nose cone and castro's machine guns were mounted under the wings. why john f. 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 is not right about this and they started looking at the americans for answers about what was going on. yeah, they were all marked. they were all marked to look like castro. there's somebody over here and i'll come to you in a second. yes. >> in your open remarks you referred to the fact that

kennedy was concerned about provoking russia and by his actions in the bay of pigs 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 and i'm sure that was triggered by his weaknesses in the bay of pigs, eight months later vietnam exploded. that was all in consequence -- 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 attempt the berlin wall but that diffused the situation in berlin but that's a different story but clearly -- it did trigger -- khrushchev -- >> yeah, yeah. >> that's true. and kennedy certainly was very aware of that when he went to the summit with khrushchev. the repercussions of the bay of pigs just kept going. they didn't really 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 boarded a task force in the pentagon to look for a way to stop communism in south vietnam and very quickly after that, sent more men, 400 more men to vietnam was

really the first step into the morass in vietnam really started on the beaches of vietnam. >> thank you. in my mind, there must have been some sort of cause that caused kennedy to back away from the air strike. are you aware or is there any documentation of any conversations between john f. kennedy and khrushchev immediately after that first air strike? >> no. >> did john kennedy back out -- >> no, the conversations were with dean ross, his secretary of state who advised him to stop. khrushchev did on the 18th sent a very threatening letter to john kennedy really saying if you value the lives of your people, you 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 with these presidents who served when they were a few decision away from a nuclear war, at least they thought they were. khrushchev said if you -- i can't quote the letter. it's in the book, but you better get out of cuba or we're going to come after you, so there were some communications after that and then kennedy responded to tha that. yes. >> if your research did you come across any document that after the election the republican administration either wanted to back off or wanted to accelerate it or -- >> the there was a cia done and 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. it may be that he was just trying to hand kennedy a tough problem, i doubt it. but he did -- he did really try -- i think what they wanted to do was hand off something that was ready to go. now, eisenhower did later state 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 have a few more questions. someone has not asked one yes. >> can you elaborate on the alabama national guards, what's the history behind that?

i don't think it was made clear that they had gotten down for several years. and what's the status of those gentlemen now. >> this one knows more about it than i do. her father was one of them. they were brought in to train the cia pilots. they weren't meant to fly. there's always a backup that maybe they would be used to but that wasn't really their main function. and it is true that when they were killed the kennedy administration and then the cia denied that this happened. they came up with a story with how they died. it's one of the most shameful thing and these men tried to serve their country and do the right things and then their families were lied to about how they died. through the efforts of janet ray mainly and other people, that the truth came out and we 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 have one. you want to ask one. okay. >> you said presidential kennedy felt personally guilty for not following up with the air strike but he was upset with the cia of not following up with the bay of pigs and he fired many from the cia. >> he hired alan dulles and richard biffle and also the second in command. he fired the whole top. he was upset with the cia. he thought the cia had misled them. partly, you have to understand this was escape going and i don't mean mean this being highly critical. before the final invasion arnold schwarzenegger 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.

.. >> one more question and then -- >> just to ask you, does the book explore the reason 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 --

>> richard bissell. >> richard business l who was an underling of his? >> yeah. in dulles' papers i found the invitation, it was from the young presidents' association of america. basically, this was a retreat for young american executives, 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 to puerto rico, 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 there. that's not true. but dulles did give the speech the same time the chips were

exploding in the bay bay of pig. it was rather bizarre, but it was thought to be the right thing to do. he department know much -- he didn't know much about what was happening until he came back that evening, and he learned how things were going. and he told his aide, let's go get a stiff drink. and that's how he handled that. i think we need to cut it off here. can we do anymore questions? >> [inaudible] >> 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 accuracy toe organization -- castro organization at the time? if everybody knew, how did dulles not know everybody knew? yes. it goes back to the weird psychology of the cold war. everyone knew, but again, it wasn't that they thought they were going to get away and nobody would ever suspected the united

united states, it's just that they wanted enough deniability to hide behind that really so that khrushchev wasn't put in a position where he had to escalate. you understand? because if it was too obvious that the united states was behind this, khrushchev would have no choice for his own political reasons but to escalate probably in west berlin, and then john kennedy would have no choice for his political reasons to escalate somewhere else. so that's how this worked. it worked on so many different levels. if there's one thing i learned writing this book it's that you don't want to be a president certainly during the cold war. you are faced minute by minute with these life and death decisions, and they're incredibly difficult. i'll end by saying the point that i sort of, the moral for me is that when people write about the bay of pigs or talk about the bay of pigses, there's often so much anger involved, and there has been over history, and

a lot of blame goes around. my impression was most of the people involved in this were doing it for what they thought were the right reasons. they were, basically, good people trying to do the right thing for the country. the problem was that it was a very difficult thing to do, and the way they did it was not the right way. and, um, now, you know, what the answer should have been still isn't really clear to me. should john kennedy have thrown in the u.s. military entirely into this? well, we can say, yes, to that, but then we have to ask, well, what would have happened afterwards? what if marines had gone into cuba in april of 1961? it's hard to know how that game would have played out. what we do know is what happened, and what happened was a tragedy. thank you all very much for coming tonight. i really appreciate it. thank you. [applause]