The Bay of Pigs

Summary

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United States of Kennedy: "The Bay of Pigs"

iHeartPodcasts | November 17, 2025
Hosts: George Civeris & Julia Claire
Guest: Dr. Steven Wilkinson (Chairman, International Institute for the Study of Cuba)

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Main Theme

This episode delves into the infamous Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961, examining it as a defining humiliation of the Kennedy presidency and a consequential flashpoint in US-Cuba relations. With expert insights from Dr. Steven Wilkinson, the hosts dissect how a covert US-led operation to topple Fidel Castro dramatically failed—shaping Cold War tensions and the Kennedy legacy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Setting the Stage: Revolutionary Cuba & US Policy (05:10–09:18)

• Post-revolution Cuba: Castro-led government embarks on sweeping social changes: agrarian reform, literacy campaigns, cultural and healthcare reforms.
• Flight of the elite: Wealthy and upper-middle-class Cubans flee, mostly to the US.
• US-Cuban relations: Rapidly sour after US imposes sanctions; Cuba moves closer to the USSR for economic survival.

  "The government's carrying out a series of reforms... The country is in a state of flux, and the upper classes and the middle classes have largely begun to leave the island." — Dr. Wilkinson (05:10)

• Nationalization triggers US wrath: Castro’s move to seize US refineries after US companies refuse to process Soviet oil is a "cardinal sin" (08:10).

Eisenhower Origins & CIA Covert Planning (09:18–14:27)

• Popular Castro: Initially celebrated in the US for overthrowing Batista and is welcomed by liberals.
• Bad blood with Nixon: Vice President Nixon, after a frosty and suspicious meeting, becomes convinced Castro must be ousted.

  "Nixon, as you know, was a very vehement anti-communist and took the decision after meeting Castro that Castro was a dangerous communist and had to be gotten rid of." — Dr. Wilkinson (11:34)

• Plausible deniability: The CIA is ordered to keep US involvement hidden, drawing on the Guatemala coup playbook; secrecy proves impossible.

The Kennedy Dilemma: Inheriting—and Retooling—Disaster (21:40–27:11)

• Political corner: Kennedy must appear tough on communism yet is skeptical of inherited covert plans; wants to distance US from coup tactics.
• Internal conflict: Advisers urge caution, fearing a reversal of goodwill via the Alliance for Progress initiative.

  "You can’t do both things. You can’t be trying to be kind and at the same time do something like this.” — Dr. Wilkinson (24:24)

• CIA manipulations: The agency oversells the project, insisting Castro is unpopular and Cubans will rise up against him.
• Reluctant green light: Kennedy allows the invasion but restricts overt US military support—setting the stage for failure.

The Plan Evolves: Logistics, Secrecy, and Poor Intelligence (29:38–38:01)

• Planned in Trinidad: Chosen for anti-Castro sentiment and potential for "legitimate" government installation.
• Switched to the Bay of Pigs: After Castro quashes nearby counter-revolutionaries, the ill-suited, impoverished, and staunchly pro-Castro local community at Bay of Pigs becomes the destination.

  "They were 100% behind Castro... they had formed a militia to defend the country." — Dr. Wilkinson (33:40)

• Secret's out: Family connections, media leaks (notably the New York Times), and loose lips doom any real operational stealth.

  "Kennedy actually said Castro doesn’t need any spies when he’s got the New York Times." — Dr. Wilkinson (38:01)

Execution: A Botched Invasion (43:20–57:38)

• Initial bombardment: A CIA-arranged false-flag air attack falls flat, with Cubans quickly identifying the ruse.

  "[Adlai Stevenson] is the guy that is given the job of going to the UN ... the Cubans basically blow him out of the water because they point out... it’s a fake." — Dr. Wilkinson (49:03)

• Kennedy calls off further airstrikes: After Stevenson embarrassingly presents fake pilots at the UN and protests.
• Failed landings: The community is well-prepared, and Castro’s regime preemptively neutralizes any anti-government element through mass detentions.

  “When the invasion started... Castro ordered the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution to make citizens arrests of every single person they suspected might be supportive of the Americans.” — Dr. Wilkinson (47:02)

• Logistical nightmares: Coral reefs, mis-timed airstrikes (due to time zone errors), and the well-defended, swampland landing zone doom the brigade.
• Rapid defeat: Within 72 hours, the invading force is battered, cut off, and surrenders; about 200 killed, 1,200 taken prisoner.

Aftermath & Historic Legacy (57:38–75:12)

• Captured exiles traded for supplies: Castro negotiates their release in exchange for baby food and medicine.
• Dueling narratives:
  • Cuban perspective: "First defeat of Yankee imperialism"—site now memorialized, veterans honored as heroes.
  • Cuban exile/American perspective: Seen as betrayal by Kennedy and the US government. Veterans of Brigade 2506 often blame the CIA now, but Kennedy’s public acceptance of blame shaped the popular narrative.
• Long-term impacts: The disaster cements hostility and hardlines on both sides, producing ripple effects through Cuban-American activism (including involvement in Watergate and anti-Castro terrorism).

  “For the Communist Party in Cuba and the supporters of the revolution, this is a very, very proud moment in their history... whereas, of course, in Miami, this is remembered as a betrayal of great magnitude by the American government.” — Dr. Wilkinson (64:44)

• Enduring chill: Relations remain strained, with US-Cuba antagonism persisting through decades.

  “...this breakdown of the relationship between the United States and Cuba ... is a very, very important event in creating that division.” — Dr. Wilkinson (68:08)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the era’s failed secrecy:
  "You can’t train 1,500 Cubans secretly because they’re going to communicate with their family and their families are going to talk to other people.” — Dr. Wilkinson (38:06)

• On Kennedy’s balancing act and the CIA’s duplicity:
  “[The CIA] lied to Kennedy ... they told Kennedy that, 'Oh, this thing will be okay, these people will land and the Cubans hate Fidel Castro.' ... And Kennedy, more or less, told the CIA, 'Well, if that’s the case, go ahead, but it’s you guys that are gonna have to do it. Don’t expect support from us.'" — Dr. Wilkinson (24:40)

• Describing the disastrous landing:
  “They thought it was seaweed or something and it was a very sharp coral reef. So immediately they had to get off the vessels earlier than they normally would and walk in the water and carry whatever they could on their back.” — George Severis (61:52)

• Summing up the complete failure:
  “I mean, yeah, what could go wrong seemed to go wrong partly through bad luck, mismanagement, hubris ... It was that rare thing in history, the perfect failure, this kind of oxymoronic expression.” — Dr. Wilkinson (63:02)

• On the Cuban and Cuban-American memory:
  “In Cuba, this is the first victory of Yankee imperialism in the Western Hemisphere... Whereas, of course, in Miami, this is remembered as a betrayal of great magnitude by the American government.” — Dr. Wilkinson (64:44)

• Reflections on cultural ties despite politics:
  “Cubans love American culture...The national drink of Cuba is called a Cuba Libre and it's a mixture of rum and Coca-Cola, for God's sake. What more do you need?” — Dr. Wilkinson (75:22)

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Important Timestamps

• Cuba’s post-revolution transformation: 05:10–09:18
• Eisenhower and origins of the Bay of Pigs plot: 09:18–14:27
• Kennedy’s initial position and the CIA’s sales job: 21:40–27:11
• Trinidad plan and switch to Bay of Pigs: 29:45–37:11
• Media leaks & failed secrecy: 38:01–39:31
• Execution of the invasion & three days of fighting: 53:23–57:38
• Aftermath, prisoner swap, and legacy: 57:38–75:12

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Summary

This episode expertly weaves together the policy history, operational comedy of errors, and long-term consequences of the Bay of Pigs debacle. Listeners will understand how a Cold War attempt at regime change, rooted in arrogance, poor intelligence, and institutional inertia, became a legendary failure—one that not only haunted Kennedy but also fundamentally altered the US-Cuba relationship for generations. Dr. Wilkinson’s expertise and the hosts’ sharp commentary make the political drama vivid and relevant, highlighting both the human and historic dimensions of the story.

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Transcript

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[George Severis]

I'm George Severis.

[Julia Claire]

And I'm Julia Claire.

[George Severis]

And this is United States of Kennedy, a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week we go into one aspect of the Kennedy story, and today we are talking about the Bay of pigs.

[Julia Claire]

The 1961 debacle was one of the most humiliating moments in JFK's presidency that took place just four months after he took office.

[George Severis]

Dreamed up by the CIA and approved by two presidents, the Bay of Pigs was a covert plot to remove Fidel Castro from power in Cuba. Using a ragtag band of American trained.

[Julia Claire]

Cuban defectors, the Bay of Pigs was an abject two front military and political failure. The military operation was botched from the start. A consequence of bad intelligence was poor planning and even poorer execution. The political failure stemmed from the fact that while the invasion was sold to the world as a homegrown Cuban led revolt against Castro, it was painfully obvious from the outset that the American government was behind the whole endeavor.

[George Severis]

And not only did America fail to achieve its goal of toppling a nascent Communist regime, but it also openly lied to the United nations and then abandoned loyal Cuban allies when the invasion started going awry.

[Julia Claire]

For President Kennedy, the Bay of Pigs was a major black eye in the first months of his administration, just when he was trying to prove himself to the American people. And its effects reverberate to this day.

[George Severis]

To unpack all of this today, we're joined by Dr. Steven Wilkinson, chairman of the International Institute for the Study of Cuba at the University of Buckingham. Steve, welcome to the United States of Kennedy.

[Dr. Steven Wilkinson]

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

[George Severis]

So we have a lot to get to, so let's get right into it. I want to first situate our listeners in space and time where we are in history right now. The Bay of pigs happened in 1961, approximately a year after Castro took power. So can you walk us through what Cuba was like during this time?

[Dr. Steven Wilkinson]

Okay. Well, you've had the revolution, so January 1, 1959. The Batista dictatorship has completely collapsed. Batista has fled the country, and the country's taken over by this group of fighters that have been led by Fidel Castro and a considerable number of others that were supporting them. The country is in a state of rapid change and transformation because of that fact. The government is carrying out a series of reforms which it promised it would do things like the Agrarian Reform Law, which was to distribute land to landless farmers. It started an education reform, started a literacy campaign where young people are being sent out into the distant sort of reaches of Cuba, where there are no schools and there's very high literacy rates, and they're teaching people how to read and write. There's the beginnings of a new cultural policy with the foundation of the Institute for Cinematographic Arts, icaic, which is a very famous institution in Cuba. The establishment of the medical system, a free universal healthcare system is beginning at this time, rent controls, bringing down the rent on private landlords, how much private landlords can charge for rent, and so on. So all of these rapid social transformations are taking place. So the country is in a state of flux, and the upper classes and the middle classes have largely begun to leave the island. Most of the very rich people, the bourgeoisie of Cuba, were basically living most of the time outside of the country anyway. They all had property and land already in places like Florida and the Bahamas and so on. Increasingly larger numbers of wealthy Cubans and the upper middle classes were leaving the country. At the same time, you've had the United States government under Eisenhower taking a decision in 1960 to overthrow the government secretly. So the Bay of Pigs plan was part of that plan. But at the same time, what they're doing is bringing in the first measures of sanctions. And the consequence of that is that the country is moving further and further into the sphere of the Soviet Union, which at the time, of course, is the height of the Cold War. But because the United States is beginning to restrict the amount of sugar it will buy from Cuba, which before, of course, it bought most of the sugar that the island produced. So the Soviet Union steps in and proposes to buy the sugar themselves. So this begins this process of the government moving closer to the Soviet Union, which, of course, produces great alarm bells in the United States. So what's happened in the most recent moment before this invasion takes place is a complete sort of worsening of the relationship between the United States government and Cuba, because the Soviet Union has decided that it will swap oil for the sugar. So Cuba is beginning to receive Soviet oil shipments. And the refineries in Cuba are owned by American companies. And the US Government instructed them not to refine the Soviet oil. And as a consequence of that, Castro took the decision to nationalize the American companies. And that is a cardinal sin to commit against the United States. And that really sets the seal on the relationship. So secretly, the CIA has been instructed to set up what is essentially a kuatan, which is the Bay of Pigs invasion plan. So it's quite a complicated plan which may need to be explained to the listeners or viewers because people have a vague idea about it, but the actual sort of details are very important.

[Julia Claire]

So, Steve, you mentioned that this plan was set in motion during the Eisenhower administration. And I was interested if you could talk about Eisenhower's involvement, how that came about, and why we don't hear as much about Eisenhower's involvement in the popular history of Bay of Pigs.

[Dr. Steven Wilkinson]

Yeah, well, this is an interesting story because Fidel Castro was very popular in the United States during the revolutionary period between 1956 and 1959. In terms of the position that he was taking against the dictatorship, A lot of people in the United States, particularly the ordinary citizenship, were really quite anti Batista. They saw him as a dictator or anti Democratic, and they thought it was shameful that the United States would be supporting him. So there was actually quite a large campaign, a popular campaign in the United States, particularly amongst, as you can imagine, students and people broadly on the left side of politics. But liberals and Democrats, you know, also were very sympathetic towards Fidel Castro because he wasn't a Communist, you see. And the thing is that he was invited to come to the United States after the victory. And he made a visit to the United States very early in 1959. And he actually did a college speaking tour and he was very popular. I'll give you an example of the popularity. I mean, the popularity was fostered by, by some very prominent people. Errol Flynn, for example. One of the last things Errol Flynn did before he died, and he was dying of cancer when he did it, he went to the Sierra Maestra and interviewed Fidel Castro and produced a program for television and went on tv. I think he went on the Ed Morrow show and talked about what a wonderful guy Fidel Castro was. So Castro was very popular. He goes to the United States in 1959 with a bunch of actually very rich Cuban business people that were supporting him at, on a kind of trade delegation to try and develop a relationship with the United States. And one of the things he did was he went to Washington and rocked up at the White House to see Eisenhower. Well, the truth of the thing is that he broke protocol because it wasn't an official state visit. And as the head of state, Eisenhower had no obligation diplomatically to meet him, and he didn't. He went to play golf instead. The person that interviewed him was none other than Richard Nixon, the Vice president. Nixon, as you know, was a very vehement anti communist and took the decision after meeting Castro that Castro was a dangerous communist and had to be gotten rid of. So the origin of the decision to overthrow Castro comes really from this really rather unfortunate meeting that Castro had with Nixon. So the administration takes the decision to engineer an overthrow. Now, they'd already done this once before in Guatemala in 1954. So the CIA had planned a coup with some exiled officers from the Guatemalan army and supported a coup attempt over the democratically elected President of Guatemala, Kobol ar Benz. And that was very successful in 1954 in removing ARDBENZ. And they decided that they would try something similar in Cuba, and they instructed the CIA to do it. Interestingly enough, they also instructed the CIA to deny that they had been instructed by the President to do it. It was based on this principle of plausible deniability. So they had to devise a way of making it appear as though the Cubans had overthrown their own government. And so the plan was completely secret. It had to be kept secret, and the CIA's involvement had to be kept secret. So a great deal of attempts were made to do that which ultimately failed. They failed for a number of reasons which I can explain later. And the fact that they failed to keep it secret was one of the reasons why it didn't work so well. The same team that carried out the successful coup attempt In Guatemala in 1954 were the people that were appointed to carry out this attempt as well. The head of it was a guy called Richard Bissell. This team was set up to devise a way of overthrowing the government.

[George Severis]

Yeah, so one of the things that keeps coming up is the tension between Americans wanting credit and then also wanted it to be a complete secret that they are involved at all. One of the things I found interesting was that when Nixon was running against Kennedy, he wasn't allowed to talk about the plan in Cuba. So he actually came off weak with regards to Communism and JFK came off stronger. But then when Kennedy was in office, this plan was passed down to him and he also had to suddenly keep it a secret. I would love to know what would have been the best case scenario for both doing this covertly and also getting credit for it. I mean, it would seem like the revolution was homegrown and then after the fact the Americans would ally with anti Castro forces.

[Dr. Steven Wilkinson]

So I have to confess some limits to my knowledge at this point. So some of the things I'm saying, there may be information that I'm not aware of that would fill in the gaps. But there are some very moot points still in this story as far as I know. One of them is the extent to which the CIA knew exactly what was happening in Cuba. Most people, I think, are of the opinion that the CIA were very well aware that Fidel Castro was by far and away a very, very popular figure in Cuba amongst the Cuban people. One of the things they tried to convince Kennedy of and would seemingly appear to have done, was to convince him that he wasn't so popular and that when these people landed in Cuba, the population in Cuba would rise up in support of the invasion and oppose Castro. And Castro would be toppled by a popular uprising behind the invaders. Now the original plan, it would appear, relied on that happenstance considerably less, because the idea was that there was a kind of government in exile waiting to be planted in Cuba. So the original plan was to establish a bridgehead, in other words, a territory that would be liberated vertex commas from the Castro government. And the government would be flown in and would claim to be the legitimate government of Cuba. And then the United States was going to recognize that officially as the legitimate government of Cuba, and even propose a resolution at the United nations in support of this new government of Cuba. And then it was going to invade the island. So in other words, these invaders were never intended to actually take power themselves. They were just merely to establish a bridgehead which would then produce the pretext for a full blown US military invasion of the island.

[George Severis]

The hope was that Cubans that were not in cahoots with the US would just join in because the US overestimated anti Castro sentiment.

[Dr. Steven Wilkinson]

So the idea was that there would be a popular uprising of sorts in behind this new government and the American troops would be arriving as kind of liberators from this dictatorship. So in other words, the United States would then appear to be freeing Cuba from this terrible government that was oppressing its people. So that was the story, and it was pretty theatrically designed because at the beginning of the invasion they staged this bombing of the Cuban airfields and then these planes landing in Miami and pilots getting out and declaring that they were Cuban pilots who had bombed their own airfields that morning and defected to the United States and that they were actually Cuban Air Force officers that had attacked their own air bases. But in fact that wasn't true. This was fake and it was all faked up by the CIA to make it appear as though there was this swelling up of anti Castro feeling within the country. So that was the original plan, but a number of things went wrong, seriously wrong with the plan.

[George Severis]

We'll be back with more United States of Kennedy after this break.

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[Julia Claire]

And we're back with more United States of Kennedy.

[George Severis]

Two things I want to get to are Kennedy saying the plan was too ambitious and wanting to tone it down, which ultimately had detrimental effects on the whole thing. And then I also want to talk about just the very basic logistics of what the plan was.

[Dr. Steven Wilkinson]

Okay, well to go back to Kennedy, the point that you made was absolutely right that Kennedy went into the campaign trying to out anti communize Nixon. And he did. He came over stronger against communism than Nixon did. And one of the things that he picked up on was the fact that apparently the United States was doing nothing about this guy Castro in Cuba. But in fact they secretly were, but they couldn't admit it. Okay? And that did make Nixon look weak and it was one of the factors that possibly worked against him in the election. However, you also have to remember that the United States had gotten itself a really bad name in the neighborhood because of what it had done previously. So this coup attempt in Guatemala made the United States look like the bully in the backyard, the imperialist colonizer of Central America. Because of course one of the things about the Guatemala thing was that Arbenz did, which upset the United States, was nationalized land which belonged to United Fruit Company and was giving it to peasants. And that was the thing that they didn't like. They took against him for that. So the thing was this made the United States look really bad in the eyes of Latin America. And at the same time they were facing an upswelling of support for leftist governments. And in the context of the Cold War, something serious had to be done about that. So one of the key elements of the Kennedy approach to dealing with communism in the hemisphere was the alliance for Progress. And the alliance for Progress was the kind of opposite attempt to deal with the situation. The United States was going to use aid, established US Aid as an institution to alleviate the conditions of the poor in Latin America with the view that this would remove the popularity of leftist ideas amongst the population. In other words, do something about the wealth disparities in these countries, which was leading to the growth of left wing governments. So Kennedy wanted to take a much more progressive and friendlier policy, very much like the one that FDR brought in in 1933, which was called the Good Neighbor Policy. So the alliance for Progress was another attempt by the United States government to recover some of the lost ground that it had from acting in a very militaristic way in the past. So Kennedy was bringing in a fresh face and he wanted to distance himself from the kinds of activities that the Eisenhower administration had gotten up to overthrowing governments with coups like in Guatemala in 54. So he inherits exactly the same kind of plan and he doesn't like it. And his advisors, particularly people like Arthur Schlesinger Jr. The historian who was in the White House, who was one of the chief proponents of the alliance for Progress, was saying to him, don't touch this plan with a barge pole. You know, this is the exact opposite of what we want to do. You're going to wreck all of the good work that you're trying to do with the alliance for Progress. You can't do both things. You can't be trying to be kind and at the same time do something like this. So you've got to distance yourself from this, which gave the CIA a big problem because the US Government's support and the US Air Force's support and the Marines in the end were going to have to go in and win this. So they lied to Kennedy, you see, they told Kennedy that, oh, this thing will be okay, this will be fine, these people will land and the Cubans hate Fidel Castro and they're going to rise up and overthrow him, and so on and so on and so on. And Kennedy, Borson More or less told the CIA, well, if that's the case, go ahead, but it's you guys that are gonna have to do it. Don't expect support from us. He didn't wanna have anything to do with it. And that's one of the key reasons why it failed, because it didn't have the support of the White House. So the change in the presidency did change the outcomes of foreign policy planning. Because this was a plan that was hatched by one administration, inherited by another. You have to take into account the fact that Nixon expected to win. That was another thing. It was a shock victory. Kennedy was in the White House against all of the odds.

[George Severis]

So was there just a complete lack of agreement on what the plan was? It seems like either they should have committed to the super robust CIA plan and just really gotten in and done exactly what America always does when they invade other countries, or they should have given up and actually tried a friendlier, less aggressive. But it seems like what happened was the CIA was proposing something really robust to Kennedy. He was getting cold feet about it. He was saying, no, this is too spectacular. He doesn't like the shock and awe language. But rather than him calling it off or trying to figure it out, he'll say, what if we send half of the number of airplanes? Or what if we try to make it more covert? So he's in a very clear way setting himself up for failure.

[Dr. Steven Wilkinson]

So, yeah, I mean, the plan was well in progress when he inherited it. And it took place in April of 61, and he only got into the White House in January. So you're talking about a few weeks. And this is landing on his desk as a new president. And it's like, wow, you know, this is important. And of course, what they've done is they've taken 1500 guys. These guys are Cuban exiles, they've left Cuba, and they are some of the richest people in Cuba. So you look at the breakdown of the people that have been recruited into this brigade that is going to invade Cuba. They are the sons of owners and owners sometimes of the biggest ranches and farms and businesses and shareholders of banks and all kinds of people. And also people that were very high in the military during the Batista junta and very, very prominent people. And they're in this brigade and they've been in Guatemala, training in the jungle there for months. And they've been fully expecting to go ahead. And this plan is already heavily invested and it's too late to pull out. So the thing is, Kennedy's in between a rock And a hard place. So he has to make a judgment. And it seems that he makes the judgment that I'm not gonna support this, let it happen. If it works, great. If it doesn't, I won't dirty my hands with it. But of course, he couldn't actually escape that in the end either. He had to take responsibility for it. And it besmirched his character and his presidency. And of course, it had a knock on effect because it made him look rather stupid and weak. And then when the missile crisis comes around a year later, he's got to look tough because he's already been burned by Cuba once. So the Bay of Pigs is quite an important event because it actually has a bearing on what happens just a few months later with the missile crisis. But to come back to the plan itself, the CIA lied to Kennedy. I mean, Kennedy realized that afterwards because he had a report written into the failure. And this report is pretty damning of the CIA and the way they operated. And famously, Kennedy is said to have angrily told people that he was going to smash the CIA into a thousand pieces when he got a second term. So he was pretty much hoodwinked by the CIA because they didn't give him the full picture. Now, to go back to the plan. Do you want me to go through the plan a little bit?

[Julia Claire]

Yeah, I think that's the next thing that we would love to ask you about, is the nuts and bolts of the plan and how it actually unfolded.

[Dr. Steven Wilkinson]

Right. So the idea is that they train up this force and secretly pretend that they have trained themselves, they've got themselves together, and they have planned to invade Cuba. The plan is to establish a bridgehead and a free territory of Cuba and plant a government that they've got in exile waiting to land in Cuba and declare itself to be the legitimate Cuban government, which then would be recognized by the United States, and that would serve as a pretext for invasion.

[Julia Claire]

Classic US Regime change.

[Dr. Steven Wilkinson]

Yeah, a basic regime change plan. Now, the original plan was to land not at the Bay of Pigs, but in Trinidad. So Trinidad is a sizable city on the southern coast of Cuba, further down the coast from the Bay of Pigs. But the advantage of Trinidad was twofold. First of all, it was a sizable town, so there would be a population there that would declare itself free. And it was a town that was not particularly revolutionary. In fact, it had been rather counter revolutionary and was not a big supporter of Fidel Castro. Now, the reason for that is historical and geographical. Trinidad is a town which is more or less separated from the island by a mountain range, the Escambray Mountains, which means it's very difficult for people to get to it. You have to go through road paths from the other side of the mountains. And it means that historically, this population was cut off from the rest of the island, which means that it's really rather. You know, every country has jokes about people who are living in isolated communities as being inbred. Well, the Cubans make jokes about Trinidadians in the way that you would make jokes about people from the Kentucky or somewhere. I don't. You know what I'm saying? It's kind of like a city that is separated geographically and historically, socially from the rest of the island. So it's a place which is not particularly revolutionary. It's very, very devoutly Catholic. And so therefore, the CIA knew that they would have support there. Now, the thing was, the other advantage for the CIA was that there was a rebel group, a breakaway group from Castro's guerrilla column that had gone up into the Escambre Mountains on the outskirts of Trinidad and was carrying out a kind of guerrilla war against Fidel Castro. And the CIA were supplying this group. It was led by a man called Eloi Gutierrez Manoyo, quite a famous character who crops up later in the history. But Gutierrez Mannoyo was a democrat who was upset by Castro when he didn't declare elections immediately and set about opposing Castro. And he was a leader of a guerrilla group, and they went up into the Escambray Mountains and they were carrying out raids against Castro, and the CIA was supplying him with weapons and food, dropping it into the Escambray Mountains. So the CIA anticipated that this group would be able to also appearing to be on the side of the invaders. Now, Castro was astute enough to deal with this, so he sent in a militia in early 1960 into the Escambray Mountains. He sent 20,000 men into the Escambray Mountains, and they captured Gutierrez Monoyo, which removed him from the scene. The militia were then sent to occupy Trinidad. So suddenly, Trinidad became completely impossible because there were 20,000 Cuban militiamen sitting in Trinidad. So they switched to the Bay of Pigs. Now, the Bay of Pigs is not the best place to land, okay? It has the advantage of being cut off from the rest of Cuba because there's a swamp that separates the area by the coast from the rest of the country, and that swamp is pretty impassable. And the community there is cut off from the rest of the island. But it's a very small community, and it's a very Rural community. And the problem they have there is, and this is something that apparently the CIA were not paying particular attention to, I think, was that this particular community was the poorest community in Cuba. You're talking about people that had a life expectancy of something like 35. They lived a completely subsistence kind of lifestyle. They eked out an existence in the swamp. And if you've ever been to that swamp, the mosquitoes are like hornets. It's like the last place on earth you would want to live. They made a living from charcoal burning. And there was a guy that had a train that was passable. When the swamp filled up with water, the railway was submerged. So there was one time of the year when it was the dry season. The guy would drive his train down into the swamp and swap for the charcoal for stuff with the people. And of course, he was ripping them off massively. They had no schooling, no sanitation, lived in huts with thatched roofs, earth floors. They were the most pitiful people in Cuba. And Celia Sanchez, who was Fidel Castro's secretary, was aware of the terrible conditions in which these people lived. And very shortly after the revolution, she insisted on taking Fidel Castro down there to show him. And when he saw the conditions in which these people lived, he said, we've gotta do something for these people. And the first thing they did was build a road. So they built a road down to the Bay of Pigs, and they decided to build a holiday camping center and a hotel so that it would become a tourist place. The idea was that local tourism, Cubans would take their holidays there, and it would provide better employment for the people that lived down there. And the very first people that were sent out on the literacy campaign were sent to that place. So these people had benefited immediately from the change in government. And rather than being against Castro, they were 100% behind it. And they had formed a militia to defend the country. So part of the civil defense that had been set up. Now, I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit, because one of the crucial aspects of this is the impossibility that the CIA had of keeping the plan secret. The reason for that was that although relations between the United States and Cuba had gotten worse, they hadn't become completely destroyed. So there were still airplane flights between Cuba and United States. There was still a postal service and telephone service. People had left the island. But of course, there were still members of their family living on the island. Not everybody in the family had gone. So there were relatives on the island with whom they were communicating. People were telling Their family on the island that, you know, Pepe, Uncle Pepe has gone down to Guatemala and he's being trained by the CIA to invade Cuba. Well, of course, people in Cuba talk to one another and they tell each other what's going on and then word gets to the leadership that they're planning to invade Cuba. So they knew that this plan was in motion, but they didn't know when it was going to take place.

[George Severis]

So we've switched the plan from Trinidad, where there was a community that would be potentially more hospitable to American led anti Castro forces to the Bay of Pigs, which is a uniquely bad place in terms of the community there because they are a not highly educated community that had directly recently benefited from Castro policies and community work.

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[George Severis]

And on top of all of that, information is flowing into Cuba and people know the attack is about to take place. But correct me if I'm wrong, it wasn't just that people were talking to their own families. Journalistic outlets in America were reporting that the CIA, the White House was in the process of planning these things. So can you talk a little bit about what the media and information ecosystem was like? I mean, it was like the worst kept secret in the history of foreign policy.

[Dr. Steven Wilkinson]

Well, yeah, Kennedy actually said Castro doesn't need any spies when he's got the New York Times. The New York Times splashed on it. But they got the news the same way as the Cubans did. People were talking about it. It was the worst kept secret. You can't train 1,500 Cubans secretly because they're going to communicate with their family and their families are going to talk to other people. Incidentally, this inability to keep a secret was a problem in the lead up to the missile crisis because the Soviets tried to keep it secret and couldn't. And of course, if you ask the right questions in the right places, you get the answers you want. So pretty much people knew that this plan was being hatched, but they didn't know when it was gonna take place. So they knew it was gonna be an amphibious landing and they worked out where are all the best beaches to land a force on around the island. And they put a militia patrol 247 along those beaches so that if they ever appeared on the shoreline on the horizon, they would get an immediate alert. So they were watching all of the likely beaches. And of course that's precisely what happened. There was a guy patrolling the beach and he saw them coming, raised the alarm and a guy ran all the way to the nearest telephone, which is 25 km away or whatever and they call Ivana and tell Fidel they're landing at the Bay of Pigs. So they got the word out straight away because there was this preparation.

[Julia Claire]

We're going to take a short break. Stay with us.

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[George Severis]

And we're back with United States of America.

[Julia Claire]

Kennedy, as you mentioned, the New York Times published an article just days before the invasion that the US Was planning a covert attack on Cuba. How did the Kennedy administration respond to that? And why did they end up going through with it? Everyone was leaking like a sieve. It seemed like in Cuba they were more than prepared for it. The CIA clearly had a lot of bad intelligence. Why did they end up going through with it?

[Dr. Steven Wilkinson]

Well, no, you see, the thing is, they softened Cuba up pretty much. I mean, they had a massive campaign of terrorist attacks in the run up. So at the same time as this, you've got this increasing aggression. So there were bombings in department stores in Havana, burning of cane fields, and famously the explosion of an ammunition ship, which, you know, was carrying weapons. So they tried to strong arm the British government into stopping supplying spare parts for the planes that they had. And another irony of this story is that under pressure, popular pressure from the American population, Eisenhower had stopped selling weapons to Batista in 1958. And the Brits stepped in and sold him some decommissioned Sea Fury airplanes from World War II stock. And under the deal were supplying ammunition, spare parts and servicing for these planes. And Castro inherited the deal. So the Brits had this living deal supplying support for the air force in Cuba. And the Americans tried to stop Macmillan, the British Prime Minister, from delivering spare parts and weapons. Interestingly enough, he agreed to do that, but he refused to do anything else. They wanted him to join in the Trade embargo, and he refused. They did stop sending weapons and spare parts for these planes. And one of those planes was still serviceable and was instrumental in the defeat of the landing. So they softened Cuba up a lot. They probably had a strong feeling that they would be able to establish this bridgehead long enough for it to be recognized. Once it was recognized, they would be able to bounce Kennedy into committing American troops to supporting it. All they needed to do was establish the bridgehead for a reasonable length of time, a week or so. The fact was, it was defeated so quickly that they didn't have time to do that. That was the reason why it failed. I mean, they did land, and they lasted 72 hours. If they'd lasted a week or two weeks, things might have been completely different. And there probably was a good chance of that actually working as far as the CIA were concerned in the run up, because they'd weakened Cuba enough and they had infiltrated Cuba and had agents working in Cuba. But the problem there was again, Fidel Castro's amazing acuity as a leader. So there was this terrorist campaign which was obviously being carried out by agents that had been infiltrated into the island. So there were people within Cuban society that were working against the revolution, planting bombs and so on. So he set up the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. These are neighborhood committees where citizens who are in favor of the revolution are encouraged to form a neighborhood committee. And they would patrol the streets at night and keep a watch out for any suspicious activity. And they were also instructed to keep surveillance of the people in their neighborhood who might be suspected of being an agent for the United States. In other words, anybody who didn't express support for the government or seemed to be not so keen on doing things, they had a record of suspects. Okay? Now, what happened was when the invasion started, it started with a bombing raid. So that was the announcement that the invasion was imminent was when suddenly the Cuban airfields were bombed. That was on April 15th. And on that morning, Castro ordered the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution to make citizens arrests of every single person they suspected might be supportive of the Americans. So they arrested tens of thousands of people and they basically locked them into cinemas and theaters and played Charlie Chaplin movies to them for the whole period. So essentially what happened was everybody in Havana, for example, who might possibly have gone out on the street with a placard in support of the invasion was locked up in a cinema.

[George Severis]

So it wasn't just that they underestimated the level of support they would have had. And then on top of that, relatively few people that would have joined in were then locked up.

[Dr. Steven Wilkinson]

Yeah. So there was a plan to have demonstrations in support of the invasion, but none of that materialized because it was preempted by this mass arrest of these people. Incidentally, they were all released afterwards. Right. It was just for the period of the invasion that they were kept.

[George Severis]

Right. To recap. I mean, it's like one of those things where there's nothing that went right. Every single thing on all levels went wrong. So they are invading the wrong place. The intelligence is flowing freely in and out of Cuba. Everyone knows the invasion is coming. They underestimated the number of people that would join in. Even of those people, the ones that would have joined in that they planned were locked up.

[Dr. Steven Wilkinson]

Okay, this is important. And this is how certain conjunctures in history change things. The ambassador to the United nations for the United States, Adlai Stevenson. Adlai Stevenson. There's your man. So Adlai Stevenson, if you remember, was the guy that was beaten in the primaries by Kennedy to be presidential candidate. He's given the job of ambassador to the UN Now, Adlai Stevenson is that rare specimen in America, the very, very honorable man in politics. He is super honorable guy. He is the guy that is given the job of going to the UN on the morning of the air raid with a photograph of this guy claiming to be a Cuban pilot who has defected and bombed his own airfield. And he goes to the United nations and remonstrates with the Cubans and so on about this. And look. And the Cubans basically blow him out of the water because they point out to him that that airplane is not one that the Cuban Air force has. The CIA has painted up a B52 to make it look like a Cuban plane, but the Cubans don't have any of them. So it's obviously a fake. And Adlai Stevenson is shown up, and he phones Kennedy and tells him, if you think I'm gonna be put in that position again, you're joking. That's it. I'm done with this. You just made me look a fool. You know, you can forget it. And that prompts Kennedy to instruct the CIA that there's gonna be no more air raids. And the thing was, the first air raid didn't knock out all of the planes. So. So the second air raid didn't happen. So Cuba still had two planes that worked. And those two planes were decisive in being able to strafe the beach. And one of them sank one of the ships. The guys that landed Blame Kennedy for it because they didn't get the second airstrike. If they didn't have those planes attacking them, they would have been able to establish the bridgehead and things would have been different. Castro had control of the air.

[George Severis]

The airstrikes were incredibly important from the beginning because it was a non negotiable in the CIA plan that the Cuban air force needed to be taken out first so that the landing could be successful. If there were planes that were able to counterattack, then it would never work. And somehow one of Kennedy's non committal decisions is rather than either committing to it or calling it off, he basically did half of the air raids that the planned initially called for, which is why they were left completely vulnerable to the Cuban air force.

[Dr. Steven Wilkinson]

Well, there's something else that's quite important so I've got here, if you can see this. It's the International Herald Tribune, which is the American paper that's published in Paris.

[George Severis]

Anti Castro Cubans invade by air, sea.

[Dr. Steven Wilkinson]

By air and sea. And there's Adlai Stevenson holding up the photograph. But what's really interesting about this is this is published in Paris on the morning of the invasion. So what you've got at the bottom here is a map showing where the Cubans have landed. And there are three sites, not one.

[Julia Claire]

Wow.

[Dr. Steven Wilkinson]

And according to the news story that's published in the Herald Tribune, the Cubans are already 60 kilometers from Havana. So this story is completely fabricated and planted in the aerial Tribune by the CIA in advance of the invasion taking place. And what it shows you is the two other sites which are in the eastern part of the island where there were supposed to be decoy landings. So there was three landings planned. Two of them were fake ones that were to distract the Cuban government. They didn't happen because they were small groups and there were these militias on the beach and they started firing at them. So these guys just turned around and didn't land. But in the Herald Tribune they did.

[Julia Claire]

Wow. We're kind of setting the scene for a Mr. Magoo style CIA debacle. And that's just like an incredible background to be going into the invasion. Walk us through. I know you said it was 72 hours. Walk us through the actual execution and the three days of the invasion.

[Dr. Steven Wilkinson]

Well, the first thing is that Cuba had been making these reforms which are socialist policies, right? They, they produced free healthcare, education, rent controls, all of this stuff. They're socialist policies, but the government is denying that it is a communist government. When the bombing happened on April 15, Castro declared the Revolution to be Marxist Leninist. So he used the invasion as a way of selling Marxist Leninism to the population. They had a slogan prepared. Si Fidel is communista, pon mien la lista. If Fidel is a Communist, put me on the list. So basically, the CIA handed Castro on a plate, a fantastic opportunity to radicalize the population. And he called on the population in public display in the street to take up arms and help defeat this invasion, and distributed weapons in the street in Havana, right, to people who just turned up and said, yes, I'll go. So he mobilized the population and a force of like 60,000 Cubans went down to the Bay of Pigs. And of course, they built a road so they could get down there. The CIA didn't seem to anticipate either that the communication to the landing zone was much better than they thought. And there was a way through the swamp and they could send trucks and artillery down it. So they were able to move very quickly and get down there fast enough to be able to engage with these guys pretty much immediately. And so that was one of the reasons why they were defeated so quickly, because the attack was met with an overwhelming response from the Cuban population behind Castro. And some of the veterans of this thing are like kids. I mean, 14, 15 year old guys picked up rifles and went down and fought down there. Now, the occasion of the bombing also provided a very, very emotive image that was used very effectively as propaganda for the government. A very young, I think, 15, 16 year old boy was working as an apprentice in, in the airfield, was killed by shrapnel in the bombing. But he died from his wounds very slowly. And as he died, he used his own blood to daub the name of Fidel on the wall next to him. And a photograph was taken of this lad and published in the newspapers. And it was at the funeral the day after that Fidel made this impassioned speech about how the revolution was going to be a socialist revolution and so on. This event galvanized the population behind the revolution in a way that was probably unforeseen as well. There was a parachute landing further up, an amphibious landing on the beach further down at Playa Larga. The Bay of Pigs is this kind of narrow inlet. And they landed at the head of the bay and at the mouth of the bay. The paratroopers were there to create a kind of defensive wall so that the landing could take place and they could establish this bridgehead. But they met with force immediately from this local militia. They were strafed by planes their ammunition was cut off because the ammunition ship was hit and sunk. So they only had the amount of the bullets they could carry on their backs. So they were cut off from their own supplies. Then this force came down and arrived within a day and engaged them. So in the end they suffered a very, very quick defeat and they surrendered. About 200 or so were killed. I'm not sure what the exact figures were. And the rest surrendered and there was something like 12, 1300 prisoners taken.

[George Severis]

Yeah, the 1,200 prisoners that were taken and they were eventually returned in exchange for supplies and food and stuff.

[Dr. Steven Wilkinson]

Yeah, they negotiated. In the end, they had to negotiate their return and Castro asked for the payment in baby food.

[Julia Claire]

We'll be back with more United States of Kennedy after this break.

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[Julia Claire]

And we're back with more United States of Kennedy.

[George Severis]

So just to list off a series of other failures, when the first ships landed, one of the things the CIA hadn't understood is that there was a really sharp coral reef right on the beach. So they thought it was seaweed or something and it was a very sharp coral reef. So immediately they had to get off the vessels earlier than they normally would and walk in the water and carry whatever they could on their back. Finally, Kennedy did send an airstrike, but the timing was somehow off. He allowed the airstrike to happen during a one hour period, but either they didn't fully take into account the time difference or there was some sort of miscommunication. And the airstrike happened an hour early. And eventually around 1,200 men were rounded up by Castro's troops and were unable to escape through the surrounding swamplands.

[Dr. Steven Wilkinson]

It was also the fact that the Cubans were aware that there was going to be an attack, so they prepared their airfields very well. So there were decoy planes on the airfields. They had set up the airfields so that they would fool anybody who bombed them into thinking there were planes on the ground when there weren't. So there were these fake planes that they bombed from. The real planes were hidden away and escaped the bombing. Cuba was far better prepared for the eventuality than the CIA anticipated. And I think your historian Theodore Draper said it, you know, very famously. It was that rare thing in history, the perfect failure, this kind of oxymoronic expression. I mean, yeah, what could go wrong seemed to go wrong partly through bad luck, mismanagement, hubris. One would say, you know, that classic Greek tragedy of thinking that it's going to work just because we're doing it. The guys had been successful in Guatemala. They felt that they were clever enough to do it again. So hubris must have played a big part in it. But the change of presidency, sure as hell. If Nixon had been president, I'm sure things would have been different. You know, the reaction of the United States would have been much more bellicose. They would have gone in the airstrikes, definitely would have happened. They would have expressed full support and maybe been much more forthright and anti communist. In tooth and claw, Kennedy was trying to put up a much more friendlier face to the Latin Americans, and he didn't want his hands dirtied by this plan. That's the real kind of crux of it, really.

[Julia Claire]

I think you've spent many decades traveling back and forth between Cuba, and I was just wondering if you have a sense of how Bay of Pigs is remembered among Cuban nationals and if that differs at all from how it's remembered among Cuban Americans.

[Dr. Steven Wilkinson]

Oh, my God. I mean, that's it. I mean, there you have a kind of microcosm of the problem, right? Because in Cuba, this is the first victory of Yankee imperialism in the Western Hemisphere, right? That's what it's remembered as. If you go to the site today, there's a museum and there's a huge billboard, which used to be an advertising billboard, but now it's got this huge thing. It's a picture of Fidel on the tank there's a very famous iconic photograph of Fidel Castro leaping off a tank. It's that photograph, the image, and across it says the first. They call it Playa Giron, not Bay of Pigs, Playa Giron, the first defeat of Yankee imperialism in the West Western hemisphere. And they're very proud of the fact that they did this, right? And of course, like I said, it's a seminal moment because it's the moment when the revolution is declared to be socialist for the first time. I mean, they'd not done that, they'd not said that until that moment. And so it marked a transformative moment in the history of the revolution. So for the Communist Party in Cuba and the supporters of the revolution, this is a very, very proud moment in their history. And of course, the veterans of it are remembered. There's an association of veterans of the Bay of Pigs and are very old men and women, but they are honored as great heroes. And of course, the people that died there was about 175 Cubans that were killed. The places where they fell is marked by a monument. Each place where a body was found of a Cuban that died is now marked by a monument. There is a great deal of respect given to the memory of these people who are now heroes of the revolution, so on. Whereas, of course, in Miami, this is remembered as a betrayal of great magnitude by the American government. Kennedy, of course, very famously made this wonderful speech. He was a wonderful speech maker, wasn't he? He made this wonderful speech where he said, and they say that victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan. And he took the personal responsibility for the defeat and he took the flag of these guys and he promised that they would remember their sacrifice. So these guys are remembered as dying as martyrs to the anti Communist court. And of course, this is another legacy which is very, very important. The guys, a lot of the guys that were in this group were later recruited by the CIA and became CIA operatives. So a Cuban American veteran of the Bay of Pigs was the guy that was with the Bolivian army in Bolivia in 1967 and was directing the troops and captured Che Guevara and was responsible for his execution, was a veteran of the Bay of Pigs. The guys that broke into the Watergate building. Frank Sturgis and his gang, the burglars in the Watergate building were veterans at the Bay of Pigs. The guy that blew up the airplane.

[George Severis]

But they were not part of the Cuban sort of.

[Dr. Steven Wilkinson]

Yeah, they were Cubans.

[George Severis]

Oh, they were.

[Dr. Steven Wilkinson]

They were Cubans.

[George Severis]

Cause there are the people that somehow made it home. And then they're the people that were taken prisoner and then released later. When we talk about veterans, it's the people that were taken prisoner in Cuba and released later.

[Dr. Steven Wilkinson]

Yeah, they're the Cubans that were captured and then released and taken back to the States. Many of them were recruited into the CIA, and these people were kind of doing the dirty work of the CIA in lots of different places. Nixon on the tapes at one point says, for God's sake, keep a lid on all this, because if it gets out, it'll bring up the Bay of Pigs and the Cuba thing all again. Because these guys that were doing the burglary were people that had been recruited by the CIA to be part of this brigade. There was a famous bombing of an airliner in 1976 which was flying out of Barbados, and it blew up in Cuban airliner was blew up in the sky. The bomb was planted. The guy that was behind the plot was a guy called Luis Posada Carriles. He was a veteran of the Bay of Pigs. He was a guy that was recruited by the CIA and continued working for the CIA afterwards, and then later on went rogue himself and carried out terrorist attacks against Cuba. But he was formerly a part of the same brigade. So this is like these people's animosity towards the Cuban Revolution was not diminished either. It was cemented and became stronger. And so this event spawned a whole series of of things afterwards and continues to do so today. Because quite honestly, this breakdown of the relationship between the United States and Cuba, this is a very, very important event in creating that division. If the United States had not taken the decision to try and overthrow Fidel Castro and tried to adopt a more constructive of engagement with the Cuban government, the whole history might be completely different. There were attempts made at different times to find a rapprochement. And in fact, towards the end of his presidency, Kennedy himself was trying to do just that. Other people did as well. Nixon tried, Carter tried. It's not that the United States has been consistently trying to destroy the Castro government. They have at such different times. And there were attempts made early on, but the animosity of certain individuals at certain times prevented these from coming to fruition. And this event was one which made the gap that much wider to bridge, okay, because it created this bag blood. And it is almost a personal thing, you know. And of course, this hatred of Kennedy amongst the Cuban Americans, blaming Kennedy, of course, comes up again in the conspiracy theories because there is this feeling amongst some conspiracy theorists and want to Call them that. I mean, I think the conspiracy theorists would rather wish to call themselves historians of a very polemical event rather than be conspiracy theorists. But there is a very strong collection of, let's say, corroborative evidence that points in this direction. Even though there is no kind of real smoking gun yet or no confession by anybody that would participated in it, it could be that all of those that did participate in it are dead. But the feeling is that the Cuban Americans and elements of the CIA were sufficiently angered and fearful of Kennedy that they removed him. That's one of the arguments. And it's because he said, I will smash the CIA into a thousand pieces because he tried to make some kind of rapprochement that they didn't want to happen. And for the Cuban Americans, it's property. It's about the property. They're descendants of people who owned very large holdings in Cuba which were nationalized by the government. And they basically have never stopped wanting it back. And that's why they were happily in the Brigade 2506, as it was called, attacked at the Bay of Pigs. They were happily in it because they thought they were going to get their property back.

[Julia Claire]

That actually brings me to another question perfectly, because in the decades since the invasion, many of the Veterans of Brigade 2506 have blamed the CIA, not Kennedy, for this whole debacle. And obviously, this is a Kennedy podcast. How did Bay of Pigs come to be seen as primarily Kennedy's fault? Was it just the failure to provide air support, or was there something else?

[Dr. Steven Wilkinson]

So I think he took it on his own shoulders. He probably. He was trying to be, I guess, the bigger man at that point. I mean, at that point, of course, he did appear as though he'd been badly let down. And, of course, it was their homecoming. He negotiated their release. They came back, there was this big gathering in the stadium in Miami, and he made this speech. He took the flag from them, and he kind of pledged to their cause. And so therefore, he kind of made a promise to them that he was going to do the job. And so he kind of took it on himself. So he must have felt some responsibility because he could have inherited the plan and he allowed it to go ahead. He must have felt, you know, like he could have handled. Handled it better himself, I guess. But of course, he had the investigation, and he found out that the CIA had more or less lied to him. He made decisions based upon information that was basically false, which the CIA had given him. And therefore, he was very, very angry. And of Course, then the blame shifts to the CIA because all of these shortcomings and mistakes that the CIA made come out. And of course what you get is mission creep. The people that were making the plan couldn't see beyond their own closed mindset. So they didn't see outside the box. That's kind of group think and mission creep. It had gone so far, they couldn't pull back. Better to let it try and fail than to not try. Because trying to stop it would create bigger problems. What are we going to do with these 1500 guys? How are they going to feel about it if we pull the plug on it? What does that say about us? I mean, there's an awful lot of reputation stuck into this thing. It gets too far, what do you do with it? It also must be taken into account, I think.

[George Severis]

Well, I do want to say they were trying to oust Castro since Eisenhower. He ended up surviving 10 US presidents. So this really is one of the least successful attempts to ask the government in American history.

[Dr. Steven Wilkinson]

But that's the fascinating thing, isn't it? He didn't only survive it, but the thing that he created has survived. I mean, it's kind of creaking right now and it's under an enormous amount of pressure, but they're clinging on.

[George Severis]

And you know, Americans are still not allowed to travel to Cuba. I mean, the general valence of US Cuba relations is still incredibly strained.

[Dr. Steven Wilkinson]

Yeah, and somebody once said, I think they call them the best of enemies. You know, it's like, like they're so close. I mean, you wouldn't believe it. You saw what happened when Obama went down there. The Cubans loved him and they loved baseball. I mean, how American is that? They love jazz music. Jazz, you know, in fact, bebop was a fusion of Cuban jazz and New Orleans jazz. Dizzy Gillespie met with Cuban musicians and they created Bebop. I mean, the Cubans love cake. They make birthday cakes. They don't make tortas like the Spanish do. They make these big sweet American style cakes. Cubans love American culture. Hollywood movies, they watch them all the time. Cuba is culturally very, very close to the United States and still is, despite the political differences. That's one of the remarkable things that Americans go to Cuba and the Cubans welcome them with open arms and they find so many things they have in common. And you have to remember the national drink of Cuba is called a Cuba Libre and it's a mixture of rum and Coca Cola, for God's sake. You know, what more do you need to find a kind of sad schizophrenia, whatever it is, it's some kind of psychological problem you've got. It's not just a political one. I think they call it, I don't know, protection, transference. I don't know. But it's sort of like we gotta.

[George Severis]

Get a Freudian on. We gotta get a Freudian on to discuss.

[Dr. Steven Wilkinson]

I mean, definitely, definitely there is a psychological aspect to this.

[George Severis]

All right. This was incredibly educational, I have to say. Thank you so much for walking us through it all. We really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

[Julia Claire]

That's it for this week's episode, so subscribe and follow United States of Kennedy for all things Kennedy. Every week, United States of Kennedy is hosted by me, Julia, Claire and George Severis.

[George Severis]

Original music by Joshua Tapolsky.

[Julia Claire]

Editing by Graham Gibson.

[George Severis]

Mixing and mastering by Doug Boehm.

[Julia Claire]

Research by Dave Ruse and Austin Thompson.

[George Severis]

Our producer is Carmen Laurent.

[Julia Claire]

Our executive producer is Jenna Cagle.

[George Severis]

United States of Kennedy is a production of I Heart Podcasts.

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