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.
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through either report or responses, yet libraries with special collection and study interests may want these essential historical documents.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
From Kirkus Reviews
A look at spooks in action that does not resemble a Tom Clancy novel. A lingering question about the Bay of Pigs operation has always been how anyone could ever have thought it would work. Somehow presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, with the input of their military and intelligence advisers, approved an invasion plan that projected the victory of a 1,400-man exile force over the 25,000-man Cuban army. Moreover, they did so while implausibly insisting that the action must not be traced back to the US. Until recently, the cloak of secrecy has restricted efforts to explain this planning and decision-making process to idle speculation; with the publication of this volume, somewhat informed speculation is now possible. Through the Freedom of Information Act, the National Security Archive (a public-interest group), with which Kornbluh is affiliated, has obtained the CIA's internal and very critical report on the Bay of Pigs and a lengthy response from the CIA officer in charge of the operation. Edited by Kornbluh (Nicarauga, 1987), the volume includes an analytical introduction, an interview with two CIA men involved in the planning of the operation and a detailed timeline of events. This mass of information provides insight into shifting objectives, ambiguity over responsibility and accountability, and the momentum that precluded halting or even seriously reconsidering the operation. Most striking, however, is the vigor with which those involved seek to hide behind presidential cancellation of an air strike in explaining the failure. The impulse to deflect blame clearly overrides any self-analysis that could lead to institutional learning from the experience despite the absurdity of claiming that one decision was the turning point in an operation riddled with problems. What remains unexplained is the failure of American political leadership, a puzzle that may be beyond the potential of historical documents to solve. An eye-opening account, regardless of one - s political convictions. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Peter Kornbluh directs the Chile Documentation Project at the National Security Archive. He is the author of Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba and The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability and a co-author (with Laurence Chang) of Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962: A National Security Archive Documents Reader and (with Malcolm Byrne) of The Iran-Contra Scandal: The Declassified History, all published by The New Press. He lives in Washington, D.C.
From The Washington Post
This book will not likely restore any faith in the political system, but it should serve as a welcome reminder of the folly of covert operations carried out by unaccountable and over-zealous national warriors with a penchant for exploding cigars, poison pills and other tactics against communist foes.
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