The Bay Of Pigs Invasion
...and lack of security. The blame for the
failure of the operation falls directly in the lap of the Central
Intelligence Agency and a young president and his advisors.
The fall out from the invasion caused a rise in tension
between the two great superpowers and ironically 34 years
after the event, the person that the invasion meant to topple,
Fidel Castro, is still in power. To understand the origins of
the invasion and its ramifications for the future it is first
necessary to look at the invasion and its origins. Part I: The
Invasion and its Origins. The Bay of Pigs invasion of April
1961, started a few days before on April 15th with the
bombing of Cuba by what appeared to be defecting Cuban
air force pilots. At 6 a.m. in the morning of that Saturday,
three Cuban military bases were bombed by B-26 bombers.
The airfields at Camp Libertad, San Antonio de los Ba¤os
and Antonio Maceo airport at Santiago de Cuba were fired
upon. Seven people were killed at Libertad and forty-seven
people were killed at other sites on the island. Two of the
B-26s left Cuba and flew to Miami, apparently to defect to
the United States. The Cuban Revolutionary Council, the
government in exile, in New York City released a statement
saying that the bombings in Cuba were ". . . carried out by
'Cubans inside Cuba' who were 'in contact with' the top
command of the Revolutionary Council . . . ." The New
York Times reporter covering the story alluded to something
being wrong with the whole situation when he wondered
how the council knew the pilots were coming if the pilots had
only decided to leave Cuba on Thursday after " . . . a
suspected betrayal by a fellow pilot had precipitated a plot
to strike . . . ." Whatever the case, the planes came down in
Miami later that morning, one landed at Key West Naval Air
Station at 7:00 a.m. and the other at Miami International...
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