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.
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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.
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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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
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.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
NO, this book is not perfecto, it has a few warts and some may argue it lacks "completeness" - a perception with which I strongly disagree. But overall it is a piece of recent history which the true U.S. citizen, interested in how "past is prologue" needs to have in his or her library.
Start with the fact of how much of the historical record is set straight, even for the intransigent historical revisionists. For example, "Operation Zapata" (aka 'The Cuba Project') was actually initiated and developed during the Eisenhower administration and pushed on Kennedy. (Telling him it was in the "national security interest" to do it) Most of this didn't come to light until the discovery of an internal CIA Report on the "Cuba Project", which had been kept hidden for over 35 years. I first saw it in a Baltimore Sun article(, p. 6A, Feb. 22, 1998.), headlined 'Internal Probe Blamed Bay of Pigs Fiasco on CIA'
The Sun article went on to state:
"The 150-page report, released after sitting in the CIA Director's safe for nearly three decades, blames the disastrous attempt to oust Fidel Castro not on President John F. Kennedy's failure to call airstrikes, but on the agency itself.
The CIA's ignorance, incompetence, and arrogance toward the 1,400 exiles it trained and equipped to mount the invasion was responsible for the fiasco, said the report, obtained by the Associated Press yesterday.
The document criticized almost every aspect of the CIA's handling of the invasion: misinforming Kennedy administration officials, planning poorly, using faulty intelligence and conducting an overt military operation beyond 'agency responsibility as well as agency capability'."
The actual materials which appeared in the book, 'The Bay of Pigs Declassified', edited by Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archive, gave all the sordid details behind the scheme and how Kennedy got sucked into it. In particular, the Report noted (Re: Agency (CIA) dysfunction (p. 53)) that The Agency committed at least four extremely serious mistakes:
i)Failure to subject the project, especially in its latter, frenzied stages to a cold and objective appraisal by the best talent available before submitting the final plan to Kennedy
ii)Failure to advise the President, at an appropriate time, that the mission's success had become dubious- and to recommend the operation therefore be canceled.
iii)Failure to recognize the project had become overt and that the military effort had become too large to be handled by the Agency alone
iv)Failure to reduce successive project plans (dating back to 1959) to formal papers and to leave copies with the President and his advisors, to request specific written approval, confirmation thereof.
The section goes on to note:
"The timely and objective scrutiny of the operation in the months before the invasion - including study of all available intelligence- would have demonstrated to Agency officials that the clandestine paramilitary preparations had almost totally failed and there was no responsive underground Cuban force ready to ally with the invaders."
The commentary is even more critical of the CIA after noting (ibid.) that the United States Intelligence Board, the Office of National Estimates, and Office of Current Intelligence **all provided clear warning** that a careful reappraisal was needed. Kennedy's error was in assuming the CIA had done such reappraisal to its best professional ability, but they did not.
RE: Cancellation (p. 55), we read:
"Cancellation would have been embarrassing. The Brigade could not have been held any longer in ready status, probably not held any longer at all. Further, its members would have spread their disappointment far and wide. Because of multiple security leaks in the huge operation, the world already knew about the preparations, and the Government's and nation's embarrassment would have been public"
Re: The Choice (ibid.)
"The choice was between retreat without honor and a gamble between ignominious defeat and dubious victory. The Agency chose to gamble, at rapidly decreasing odds."
The consensus position of the Archivists was that JFK was misled by the Agency's arrogance, hubris and incompetence. Depending on the CIA for guidance as to intelligence about this operation - in preparation for more than two years, the Agency blew it and big time. JFK took the blame, yes, but the CIA ultimately was responsible for not advising cancellation when they had the opportunity to do so.
As one reads through the rest of the book, one sees the possible links to the Kennedy assassination, and the putative role of the CIA (JFK fired Top Spook Allan Dulles right after the fiasco and vowed to smash the Agency into a "thousand pieces") as well as disaffected Rightist Cuban hirelings, po'd that Kennedy didn't provide air cover. In fact, any added air cover would have made virtually no difference and Cuban anti-aircraft batteries would plausibly have simply fired on any attacking planes, adding to the death toll.
Hence, JFK made the right decision but an enclave of Miami's anti-Castro Cubans (mainly) still hold him responsible and surely did at the time, making it highly probably they may have provided one or more 'mechanics' for the Dealey Plaza takedown which officialdom (to save its political hide) pinned on the poor little, sheep-dipped (by the CIA) patsy Oswald. (See also my book: 'The JFK Assassination: The Final Analysis', Chapter Five: 'The CIA's Cuba Caper' - wherein I show how CIA psychological warfare specialist George Joannides and Maurice Bishop set Oswald up as the perfect fall guy))
As for me, I got my wake up call on how the anti-Castro Cubans could be when two of them assisted in blowing a Cubana Airlines plane out of the skies off the coast of Barbados on Oct. 6. 1976. I was at Paradise Beach with my five nieces when the explosion occurred and to this day we recall the body parts washing up. If those anti-Castroites could take 73 lives out just like that, they'd have no qualms helping to knock out Kennedy.
But don't take my word for it, get this book, as well as another, 'JFK and the Unspeakable' which puts the Kennedy years and these events in their proper context.
Don't be misled by the revisionists on the Right.
Start with the fact of how much of the historical record is set straight, even for the intransigent historical revisionists. For example, "Operation Zapata" (aka 'The Cuba Project') was actually initiated and developed during the Eisenhower administration and pushed on Kennedy. (Telling him it was in the "national security interest" to do it) Most of this didn't come to light until the discovery of an internal CIA Report on the "Cuba Project", which had been kept hidden for over 35 years. I first saw it in a Baltimore Sun article(, p. 6A, Feb. 22, 1998.), headlined 'Internal Probe Blamed Bay of Pigs Fiasco on CIA'
The Sun article went on to state:
"The 150-page report, released after sitting in the CIA Director's safe for nearly three decades, blames the disastrous attempt to oust Fidel Castro not on President John F. Kennedy's failure to call airstrikes, but on the agency itself.
The CIA's ignorance, incompetence, and arrogance toward the 1,400 exiles it trained and equipped to mount the invasion was responsible for the fiasco, said the report, obtained by the Associated Press yesterday.
The document criticized almost every aspect of the CIA's handling of the invasion: misinforming Kennedy administration officials, planning poorly, using faulty intelligence and conducting an overt military operation beyond 'agency responsibility as well as agency capability'."
The actual materials which appeared in the book, 'The Bay of Pigs Declassified', edited by Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archive, gave all the sordid details behind the scheme and how Kennedy got sucked into it. In particular, the Report noted (Re: Agency (CIA) dysfunction (p. 53)) that The Agency committed at least four extremely serious mistakes:
i)Failure to subject the project, especially in its latter, frenzied stages to a cold and objective appraisal by the best talent available before submitting the final plan to Kennedy
ii)Failure to advise the President, at an appropriate time, that the mission's success had become dubious- and to recommend the operation therefore be canceled.
iii)Failure to recognize the project had become overt and that the military effort had become too large to be handled by the Agency alone
iv)Failure to reduce successive project plans (dating back to 1959) to formal papers and to leave copies with the President and his advisors, to request specific written approval, confirmation thereof.
The section goes on to note:
"The timely and objective scrutiny of the operation in the months before the invasion - including study of all available intelligence- would have demonstrated to Agency officials that the clandestine paramilitary preparations had almost totally failed and there was no responsive underground Cuban force ready to ally with the invaders."
The commentary is even more critical of the CIA after noting (ibid.) that the United States Intelligence Board, the Office of National Estimates, and Office of Current Intelligence **all provided clear warning** that a careful reappraisal was needed. Kennedy's error was in assuming the CIA had done such reappraisal to its best professional ability, but they did not.
RE: Cancellation (p. 55), we read:
"Cancellation would have been embarrassing. The Brigade could not have been held any longer in ready status, probably not held any longer at all. Further, its members would have spread their disappointment far and wide. Because of multiple security leaks in the huge operation, the world already knew about the preparations, and the Government's and nation's embarrassment would have been public"
Re: The Choice (ibid.)
"The choice was between retreat without honor and a gamble between ignominious defeat and dubious victory. The Agency chose to gamble, at rapidly decreasing odds."
The consensus position of the Archivists was that JFK was misled by the Agency's arrogance, hubris and incompetence. Depending on the CIA for guidance as to intelligence about this operation - in preparation for more than two years, the Agency blew it and big time. JFK took the blame, yes, but the CIA ultimately was responsible for not advising cancellation when they had the opportunity to do so.
As one reads through the rest of the book, one sees the possible links to the Kennedy assassination, and the putative role of the CIA (JFK fired Top Spook Allan Dulles right after the fiasco and vowed to smash the Agency into a "thousand pieces") as well as disaffected Rightist Cuban hirelings, po'd that Kennedy didn't provide air cover. In fact, any added air cover would have made virtually no difference and Cuban anti-aircraft batteries would plausibly have simply fired on any attacking planes, adding to the death toll.
Hence, JFK made the right decision but an enclave of Miami's anti-Castro Cubans (mainly) still hold him responsible and surely did at the time, making it highly probably they may have provided one or more 'mechanics' for the Dealey Plaza takedown which officialdom (to save its political hide) pinned on the poor little, sheep-dipped (by the CIA) patsy Oswald. (See also my book: 'The JFK Assassination: The Final Analysis', Chapter Five: 'The CIA's Cuba Caper' - wherein I show how CIA psychological warfare specialist George Joannides and Maurice Bishop set Oswald up as the perfect fall guy))
As for me, I got my wake up call on how the anti-Castro Cubans could be when two of them assisted in blowing a Cubana Airlines plane out of the skies off the coast of Barbados on Oct. 6. 1976. I was at Paradise Beach with my five nieces when the explosion occurred and to this day we recall the body parts washing up. If those anti-Castroites could take 73 lives out just like that, they'd have no qualms helping to knock out Kennedy.
But don't take my word for it, get this book, as well as another, 'JFK and the Unspeakable' which puts the Kennedy years and these events in their proper context.
Don't be misled by the revisionists on the Right.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
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.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Explanations required
All of this can be explained, once the government releases Dr. Pfeiffer's last volume. Here's the issue: Nobody told Dulles that Kennedy was the President. Read more
Published 15 months ago by southasia
2.0 out of 5 stars
The CIA sabotaged their own invasion
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... Read more
Published on September 30, 2010 by Michael David Morrissey
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bay Of Pigs Declassified 2
this is my second report on the book bay of pigs declassified as I don't think my first was quite fair I found fault in that he didn't say any thing about my unit of 45 people I... Read more
Published on February 9, 2000 by Joe H. Hill
3.0 out of 5 stars
It is a very good book but it didn't tell the hole story.
the book Bay of Pigs Declassifieied is very good it don't have quit all the facts in that it don't say one word about the small unit of guerrillas that I was in charge of we worked... Read more
Published on January 10, 2000 by Joe Hill
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