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February 28, 1998, in the Miami Herald
By DON BOHNING
Herald
Staff Writer
Unlike old
soldiers who, it is said, never die but simply fade away, the debate over who
and what is responsible for the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba does
neither.
Thirty-seven years later, the issue was fueled anew with the release last
week of the lone remaining copy of a tightly held and scathing indictment of the
Central Intelligence Agency's role in the invasion project by Lyman Kirkpatrick,
the CIA's inspector general at the time.
Although its existence—and the fact it was critical of the agency—had
long been known, few thought the report would ever be released. Only 20 copies
were made; 19 were recalled and destroyed. The only remaining one was said to
have been kept locked in the office safe of the CIA director.
The six-month study, ordered immediately after the April 1961 invasion by
1,500 CIA-trained and backed Cuba exiles, criticizes virtually every aspect of
the project's planning and execution.
But initial news accounts have largely overlooked another 300 or so pages
released with the report, including a lengthy rebuttal to the Kirkpatrick survey
by Richard Bissell, the CIA's deputy director for clandestine operations at the
time of the Bay of Pigs and directly responsible for the invasion's planning and
execution.
Taken together, the two documents offer a posthumous glimpse at what many in
the agency, including those not associated with the Bay of Pigs project, believe
were the rival ambitions of the two men—Kirkpatrick and Bissell—to
become CIA director.
Also released were numerous memos and letters—all critical to some
extent of the Kirkpatrick study—from various ranking CIA officials,
including outgoing Director Allen Dulles, incoming Director John McCone, and Air
Force Gen. Charles Cabell, the agency's deputy director.
Jake Esterline, project director for the Bay of Pigs and the highest
surviving agency officer directly involved with it, said in an interview that "any
good that could have come from the report was lost because of the vitriolic
manner in which Kirkpatrick wrote it.''
A litany of lament
Esterline, 78, was among the few to whom the report was distributed upon
completion.
The 150-page document is a litany of lament about the CIA's role in the
invasion.
"The fundamental cause of the disaster was the agency's failure to give
the project, notwithstanding its importance and its immense potentiality for
damage to the United States, the top-flight handling which it required—appropriate
organization, staffing throughout by highly qualified personnel and full-time
direction and control of the highest quality,'' Kirkpatrick charged.
Those "insufficiencies'' led to "numerous serious operational
mistakes and omissions'' that resulted "in lack of awareness of developing
dangers, in failure to take action to counter them, and in grave mistakes of
judgment.''
Kirkpatrick dismisses President Kennedy's cancellation of the D-Day
airstrikes as the chief cause of the invasion's failure, suggesting that if the
project had been "better organized, better managed and better staffed,''
Kennedy wouldn't have been faced with the decision.
Kirkpatrick accuses the agency of faulty intelligence on both the strength
of the Castro regime and the opposition to it; reducing Cuban exile political
leaders "to the status of puppets;'' failing to clearly delineate "policies
and operational plans;'' staffing the project with too few Spanish-speaking
officers with a knowledge of Latin America; and lax internal security.
Bissell, in his rebuttal, argues that "a large majority of the
conclusions reached in the survey are misleading or wrong. . . . The survey is
especially weak in judging what are the implications of its own allegations and
. . . is greatly impaired by its failure to point out fully or in all cases
correctly the lessons to be learned from this experience.''
As for the invasion itself, Bissell contends that "there was solid
reason to believe that it had a good chance of at least initial success.''
Bissell also complained that the ongoing clash between maintaining
deniability of U.S. involvement and effectiveness of the operation made prompt
decisions hard to obtain.
Costs vs. benefits
"The constant weighing of costs and benefits in the effort to satisfy
the military requirements for success without excessive impairment of the
political requirement of deniability explains why the final plan . . . was a
compromise,'' writes Bissell.
"The question that is highly relevant to the policy-making process is
how and why the project was allowed to become overt and, when this had happened,
why it remained the responsibility of the agency.''
The Kirkpatrick report stirred a firestorm of internal criticism from the
handful of people who saw it.
In a memo to his boss, Bissell's deputy, Tracy Barnes, characterized the
document as "an incompetent job,'' "malicious'' and "intentionally
biased.''
Cabell, the CIA's deputy director, observed that "this is not a useful
report to anyone inside or outside the agency.''
Even Dulles, the outgoing director, complained in a memo to his successor
John McCone that "at no time during the preparation of his report did the
Inspector General request any information from me and he makes certain serious
errors in areas where my direct responsibility was clearly involved.''
The most measured assessment of the contradicting Kirkpatrick and Bissell
positions came from McCone, a businessman without an intelligence background.
"It is my personal opinion as a result of examinations I have made of
this operation after the fact, that both the report and the rebuttals are
extreme,'' McCone wrote in a letter to the chairman of the President's foreign
intelligence advisory board. "I believe an accurate appraisal of the Cuban
effort and the reasons for failure rest some place in between the two points of
view expressed in the reports.
"I believe it is safe to say the failure of the Cuban operation was
government-wide and in this respect the agency must bear its full share [though
not the entire] responsibility,'' McCone concluded.
Quest for top job
Sam Halpern, a retired senior agency officer who had no role in the Bay of
Pigs but knew Kirkpatrick well and had worked with him, said in an interview
that the report was "basically Kirk's vendetta against Bissell, aiming for
the highest job. He had been a real rising star. Once he had polio he got
sidetracked and became a bitter man.''
To an extent, however, Esterline said the Kirkpatrick report reinforces the
conclusion that he and Jack Hawkins, a Marine colonel detached to the Bay of
Pigs project as its paramilitary chief, had reached in recent years: That
Bissell had lied to them—especially regarding air cover -- and at the least
withheld information from President Kennedy.
"It's now clear, based on documents released to the National Security
Archive over the last few years that Bissell lied constantly or withheld vital
information. We know now that Bissell had already agreed with President Kennedy
that the expected air support would not be forthcoming,'' said Esterline.
The report, Esterline said, "also raises the very strong possibility
that Bissell had not been direct and forthright with President Kennedy in giving
Hawkins' and my own very strong views in what the inevitable result would be if
the project were not fully supported.
"It's difficult to take positions after all these years on people who
are now dead,'' said Esterline, "but what has emerged to me in depth . . .
is the intensity of the rivalry between these two men. That, coupled with my
increased knowledge of both has disillusioned me with both.''
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