Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba (National Security Archive Documents) [Paperback]

Peter Kornbluh (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1565844947 | ISBN-13: 978-1565844940 | Publication Date: October 1, 1998 | Edition: 1

Now available for the first time, "one of the most secret documents of the Cold War" (New York Times): the government's own report of the Bay of Pigs fiasco. For decades, the CIA's top secret postmortem on the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion has been the holy grail of historians, students, and survivors of the failed invasion of Cuba. But the scathing internal report on the worst foreign policy debacle of the Kennedy administration, written by the CIA's then-Inspector General Lyman Kirkpatrick, has remained tightly guarded--until now. Dislodged from the government through the Freedom of Information Act, here is an uncompromising look at high officials' arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence, as displayed in their attitude toward Castro's revolution and toward the Cuban exiles the CIA had organized to invade the island. Including the complete report and a wealth of supplementary materials, Bay of Pigs Declassified provides a fascinating picture of the operation and of the secret world of the espionage establishment, with stories of plots, counterplots, and intra-agency power struggles worthy of a Le Carr novel. Peter Kornbluh directs the Cuba Documentation Project at the National Security Archive. The Archive serves scholars, journalists, Congress, public interest organizations, and citizens by obtaining and disseminating internal U.S. government documentation that is indispensable for informed public debate. Includes: the complete text of the CIA report; a critical introduction; the newly declassified response to the report from Richard Bissell, who masterminded the operation; the first joint interview with the managers of the invasion, Jacob Esterline and Colonel Jack Hawkins; a comprehensive chronology; and biographies of the key participants.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

If the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was the most dire event of the Cold War, then the Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961 was the most absurd. Kornbluh (director, Cuban Documentation Ctr. Project of the National Security Archive; Politics of Illusion: The Bay of Pigs Invasion Reexamined, Lynne Rienner, 1997) includes the tedious but informative report of Inspector General Lyman Kirkpatrick, which largely blames the CIA for misleading President Kennedy. Richard Bissell, the CIA's deputy director for plans, responds with a similarly oppressive rebuttal that attributes the failure to Kennedy's need to ensure plausible deniability?to hide America's obvious role by committing limited, insufficient air support and troops. Additional supporting documents and an interview with the invasion planners show the Bay of Pigs fiasco to be what historian Theodore Draper calls "a perfect failure." For a narrative overview, see Ale Fursenko's One Hell of a Gamble (LJ 3/15/97). Primarily for specialists in the era.?Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

For nearly a year after the CIA-sponsored invasion of Cuba's Bay of Pigs in April 1961, memos flew back and forth challenging the objectivity and appropriateness of criticism of the agency's performance in the official report of its own inspector general, Lyman Kirkpatrick. For nearly 40 years thereafter, the CIA fought to keep the report and responses by operatives involved in the fiasco secret. The Freedom of Information Act, a CIA "openness" campaign, and a 1995 executive order finally made the documents available. It is clear why the report generated controversy: at a time when the agency was trying to shift responsibility to others in government, especially President Kennedy and the Defense and State departments, Kirkpatrick outlined CIA errors, from bad planning, poor staffing, and faulty intelligence to "failure to advise the President that success had become dubious." Most general readers won't care to wallow through either report or responses, yet libraries with special collection and study interests may want these essential historical documents. Mary Carroll

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Product Details

• Paperback: 339 pages
• Publisher: New Press, The; 1 edition (October 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565844947
• ISBN-13: 978-1565844940
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #319,995 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A typical 'government' job, February 13, 2001

By 

Harry Pandolfino (York, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba (National Security Archive Documents) (Paperback)

A fascinating post-mortem on the Bay of Pigs operation and all the more so because it was done internally by the CIA Inspector General. Suppressed for three decades because of its remarkably blunt honesty this book will have you shaking your head. A perfect example of why the 'best and the brightest' are not always so. I found it enlightening and humorous at the same time. Not one of the best run CIA operations by any means.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Bay of Pigs Declassified - review, December 9, 2010

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Destroyer Veteran "TL" (Lansdale, Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba (National Security Archive Documents) (Paperback)

In Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report of the Invasion of Cuba (National Security Archive Documents) is edited by Peter Kornbluh who has assembled from released documents a detailed picture of the thinking of the period following Fidel Castro's conquest of Cuba and his unexpected turn to a Marxist/Leninist government. America was still smarting from the McCarthy era and communists of any sort were feared and loathed. It was intolerable that a communist government could be installed a mere 90 miles from the United States of America but here it was. The leaders of the Central Intelligence Agency were convinced there was a way to remove Castro without the U.S. appearing to be involved. Here are official documents detailing what was planned and why and the thinking behind the cruel method of cutting the nation's losses when it all went so disastrously wrong. President Kennedy was in many ways brilliant but about being talked into approving the CIA invasions plan he said, "How can I have been so stupid....?" Those who love American History will want to have this book on their shelves.

5 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The CIA sabotaged their own invasion, September 30, 2010

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Michael David Morrissey (Germany) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba (National Security Archive Documents) (Paperback)

The authors fail to notice the most important thing the official report itself reveals, namely the real plan of the CIA, which was to sabotage their own invasion, making sure that it would fail, and sandbag JFK into a full-scale invasion. My argument (proof, I think) for this thesis has been available on the net ("The Bay of Pigs Revisited") since it was written in the mid-90s, and it is also in my book "Looking for the Enemy," an early version of which was also available in the late 90s.