Pigs crisis. The failed military invasion of cuba in 1961 supported by the u. S. Government and resulted in the capture and death of over 1,000 men. The this was recorded at books and books in corals gable, florida in 2011. Its about an hour. This evening, books books is pleased to welcome Jim Rasenberger and his new book, brilliant diaster. Jfk, castro, and americas doomed invasion of cubas bay of pigs. Mr. Ras also a wrienberger has the New York Times among other mub publications. Heres the author of high steel, the men who built the worlds greatest skyline. In this book he examines the u. S. Backed military invasion of cuba in 1961, one of the most illfated blunders in American History. He draws on long hidden cia documents and delivers as never before the vivid truth and consequences of those five pivotal days in april of 61. Here to tell us more about it, please give a warm welcome to mr. Jim rasenberger. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you for that introduction. Thank you to books books for having me. This is a wonderful book store. I had not been here before i came earlier today. And it is fantastic. So, support it. I urge you to buy a book before you leave tonight. It doesnt have to be my book, if you want it to be, thats fine with me. As im sure all of you know by now, this is on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the bay of pigs invasion of cuba. And i cant think of a better place to launch my new book than here with you. I know im sure many of you have some personal history of the event, and some deep knowledge of it. And i thank you for coming. Im honored to be here. Now, this is a story i wanted to tell for a long time. I think its theres a number of reasons i wanted to tell it for a long time. The main reason is its one of the most fascinating and important stories in modern American History. I hope if you read the book youll share that opinion with me. Before i go into detail, i should probably give a brief overview of what the bay of pigs was for those of you who dont know. If there are any of you. Im suspecting anyone my age or older i was born just after the bay of pigs, is pretty familiar with it simply because we grew up hearing about it. Those of you who are younger are forgiven. Not forgiven for being younger, no forgiveness for that, but youre forgiven for not knowing much about something that happened before you were born. So, for the sake of those not familiar, let me go through a brief overview, a few basic facts. The bay of pigs was a fiveday event that occurred in april of 1961. For those of you who are madmen fans, that is just after season one, if that helps orient you. That april a group of cuban exiles trained, supplied and backed by the United States government attempted to invade cuba and overthrow fidel castro. The attack began on april 15, 1961 when a fleet of eight b26 bo bookers flown by cuban exile pilots attacked castros airfields. These planes bombed and strafed the airfields attempting to destroy Fidel Castros air force. Two days later after midnight of april 17th, the invasion itself began. About 1,400 men, again cuban exiles known collectively as brigade 2506, came ashore at the Southern Coast of cuba at an area called the bay of pigs. The plan was to establish and hold a beachhead and eventually spark an uprising against fidel castro. That was the plan, but it didnt quite work out that way. The brigade ran into trouble almost immediately. And within two days of landing, it was over. Of the 1,400 men who came ashore, over 100 were killed, the rest were sent fleeing to sea, some tried to escape in boats or in the swamps. There was a vast everglade just inland of the bay of pigs. There they were rounded up by castros soldiers and thrown into cuban jails. For fidel castro, who looked like the david who slayed the yankee go lietliath, this was a supreme victory. I was in cuba a year ago for the 49th anniversary. Its remarkable how around havana there are billboards all over the place celebrating the victory against yankee imperialism. This 50th anniversary they will mark with a parade, all sorts of celebrations. Im not expecting too many celebrations here. Thats, of course, because for the United States it was a disaster. It was a personal tragedy for the men who took part in the invasion, of course. And it was a humiliation for the Kennedy Administration which had only been in power less than three months. At first the administration tried to insist the United States had nothing to do with this. It was the exiles who had gone on their own. That charade did not last long. Very soon the whole world knew the truth, which was that the brigade had been trained by the cia, had been supplied with american equipment, and the invasion had been approved by the joint chiefs of staff, the state department and ultimately the president of the United States. In short, this had been a United States operation, and its failure was a distinctly american embarrassment. One American General said it was the worst defeat the u. S. Suffered since the war of 1812. That was about the kindest thing anybody said. Everyone agreed that it was a mistake that they would never forget, and they must never repeat. They were wrong. Not only is it largely forgotten, maybe not here, but in much of america it is. But we went on to repeat some of the same mistakes that we made in cuba in other parts of the world. The bay of pigs turned out to be a curtain raiser on a whole new era of troubled swinterventions. By one count the United States engaged in two dozen force the interventions after 1961, and that the not including iraq, afghanistan and libya. Given these other interventions you may be asking yourself why should we still care about the bay of pigs . I mean, next to vietnam and iraq, it seems like a fairly minor event, an appetizer before this huge feast of troubled interventions. Add to this the fact that it lasted just five days and cost a mere 46 million. Thats about, i think, less than the average budget of a hollywood movie these days. Of course the fact it was an embarrassment the. It has everything tooblivion. Heres the thing, it changed this country in some very important ways. It changed how americans look at their government, it changed how the rest of the world looked at us. Prior to the bay of pigs, it would have been a cynical american who doubted he lived in a good and mighty nation led by competent men and engaged in worthy exploits. That was certainly a plausible view for americans 50 years ago after world war ii. The bay of pigs made that view a lot harder to hold on to. It had the distinction of making the United States look both bullying and weak. This is what kennedys aide wrote in his journal shortly after the invasion. We not only look like imperialists, we look like ineffectual imperialists, which is worse. And we look like stupid, ineffe ineffectual imperialists, which is worst of all. In many ways the 1960s began with the bay of pigs. This was a first step into the vietnam era, even before eat nam. Actually, what you may not realize, what i did not realize until i wrote the book is how much the vietnam war itself owes to the bay of pigs. If we have time, ill delve into that later on. Right now i want to go back a bit in time. Back a few years before the bay of pigs and focus on the causes of the invasion. Heres the central question and one we dont have a good answer to yet, how does Something Like this happen . My ambition of this book beyond telling what i think is a fascinating story as well as i could, was to go back once more and look at these events as clearly as possible, with no axes to grind, with no finger pointing, not trying to blame anyone, not trying to exonerate anybody, just trying to find out as best i could the truth. With that goal in mind, i begin my narrative well before the invasion. Because i think to understand it you need to know not just what happened, but the context in which it happened. So i began two years before the bombs began to fall on cuba. Exactly two years, in fact, to the day. April 15, 1959. That evening fidel castro arrived in the United States for a visit. This was his first visit to the United States since he had taken over cuba at the start of the year. Dwight eisenhower was still president. Richard nixon was Vice President. John kennedy was still a junior senator from massachusetts. Castro came to deliver a speech to some newspaper editors, but the visit was Something Like an invasion in its own right, a charm offensive. He and his bearded ent raourage arrived in washington with cuban cigars and cases of cuban rum and castro spent most of his visit hugging, smiling and saying the right things. Some americans, including some in the Eisenhower Administration, including Dwight Eisenhower himself had serious concerns about eisenhower, maybe he was a communist in the making. But many found him to be quite charming and certainly charismatic. After a few days, castro took a train to new york city. From the moment he arrived at penn station where he was greeted by 20,000 people, he had a grand oldtime. He went to the top of the empire state building, he shook hands with jackie robinson, he went down to city hall, went up to columbia university. Having less fun in new york were the policemen who were assigned to protect him because there were all these assassination plots surrounding castro, and these were reported in the press every day. None of these turned out to be real, but the police didnt know that. Castro was completely impossible to protect. He would throw himself into crowds hugging and kissing people with no concern for his safety. One afternoon, on a whim, he decided to go to the bronx zoo. The press followed, federal agents followed, new York City Police followed. And castro did what everybody does at the zoo, he ate a hot dog, fed peanuts to the elephants, rode a miniature electric train and then before anybody could stop him he climbed over a protective railing in front of the tiger catches and stuck his fingers through the cage and pet a bengal tiger on the head. Besides trying to save castro from assassins and tigers, americans spent much of his visit trying to decipher much of his politics, which meant answering the following question, was fidel castro a communist . You have to recall that in the late 1950s and the early 1960s, the battle against the socalled International Communist conspiracy was the organizing principle on which American Foreign policy was based. It wasnt just the spread of communism that was so feared, it was the fact that the communists had nuclear weapons. And given the rhetoric coming out of the kremlin, they were saying well bury you, they seemed more and more willing to use them. I emphasize this to point out the specter of a communist country 90 miles from american shores was intolerable. Not just to conservatives like barry goldwater, Richard Nixon, but really to everybody. So, fidel castro was interrogated on the subject of communism everywhere he went on his visit. By Vice President nixon, by congressional subcommittee, by scores of journalists, everybody asked him the same question. Dr. Castro, are you a communist . He answered the same every time. No, he was not a communist. Never had been, never would be. When castro finally left new york on april 25th, the police were relieved to see him go. But most new yorkers were happy he had come to visit. An editorial in the New York Times summed up the general attitude towards castro as he left. He made it quite clear that neither he nor anyone of importance in his government so far as he knew was a communist. By the same token it seems obvious that the americans feel better about castro than they did before. That changed. That changed very fast. In the book, i go into some detail regarding what happened after castro returned to cuba after his american visit, how things went sour so quickly. For the sake of time, ill jump ahead a bit. Suffice to say that castro immediately began behaving very much in a manner that seemed almost designed to provoke the american government. He started appropriating american property in cuba, delivering speeches filled with antiamerican rhetoric, cracking down on cubans who made anticommunist statements, and most worrisome of all, began accepting overtures from the soviet union. Acting exactly like the communist the Eisenhower Administration felt he was. Within months, washington decided good relations with castro would be impossible. By the end of 1959, less than a year after castro came to power in cuba, the eisenhower was taking aggressive steps against him. The great irony is devoting millions of dollars and hundreds of men to protecting him from assassins, the United States government began plotting his demise. Generating these plots was the Central Intelligence agency. With encouragement from president eisenhower. Some of the early ideas explored by the cia were quite interesting. One was to place a drug in castros food that would make him behave strangely in public. And make him appear truly insane as some people already thought he was. The drug wasnt specified, but it was probably lcd, which the cia had done quite a bit of work with in the 1950s. That sounds like something inspired by james bond, it may have been. The director of the cia was a big james bond fan as were many people in the cia, in fact at one point that march, as the cia was thinking about ideas, ian fleming happened to be visiting washington. He had bindinner at the home of kennedy and jacqueline kennedy, somebody asked him tongue and cheek if he had any ideas for aa fshf offing fidel castro, he said he would drop leaflets over Little Havana that there was radiation in the air, and the only way to get rid of the radiation was to shave their beards, so castro s minons would shave their beards. They tried to track down ian fleming while in washington, but it was too late. Another method the cia considered was assassination. One idea was to assassinate not just fiddle but his brother, raul, an assassination trifecta. The more serious cia plan was approved by Dwight Eisenhower later in the month. March 17, 1960. The plan developed by Richard Bissell the director of plans was to use some of the cubans who had been fleeing castro, mainly to florida, to return to cuba and overthrow him. Originally the idea was to infiltrate the men on to the island in small groups, but that shifted into Something Like more a world war ii style infib u usious infibbious infacvasion. It was to land on a significant piece of real estate and hold it for a length of time, maybe a week to ten days. At some point the brigade would fly in a provisional government, which the cia assembled in miami and which was being kept in a safe house at the time. The government would set up shop on the beach, declare its the rightful government of cuba, what was to happen after that was not clear. One hope is that the cuban population would rise up in support of the brigade and help overthrow castro. Another possibility was that this provisional government after establishing itself in cuba, could invite the United States to assist, much the way the rebels in libya invited the United States to assist recently, then the United States could come in overtly and legally or quasilegally and settle the matter. Not long after eisenhower approved the plan, the cia set up camp in the mountains of guatemala and built an airstrip fle nearby. In late spring the agency began recruiting cuban exiles mainly in miami to transport, assemble and train them in guatemala. They came from an array of backgrounds. Some were former soldiers who served in bautistas army, others were students, many were moderates or leftists who had even supported castro when he first came to power, but then h. Later there would be lawyers, doctors, farmers, whites, blacks, young, old, rich and poor, a fair Cross Section of the cuban population. The military operation was coming together in guatemala, the president ial campaign of 1960 was heating up in america. In a close contest between Richard Nixon and john f. Kennedy. From the outset, nixon realized that fidel castro was either going to be an opportunity or a problem for him, depending on whether castro was still in power or gone by election day. By the fall of 1960, john kennedy was beating the Eisenhower Administration over the head with fidel castro. Kennedy realized that no subject roused American Voters more than the specter of a communist cuba. At every whistle stop he reminded voters that the island was a mere eight jet minutes away, and he blamed eisenhower and Company IncludingVice President nixon for letting this happen. Imagine being in the shoes of Richard Nixon. He had a pretty wellearned reputation as a communist buster, one of the premiere communist busters in america, and along comes this democrat from massachusetts suggesting that he, Richard Nixon, was not quite anticommunist enough. It was galling. Kennedy had somehow managed to outflank nixon as an anticommunist hawk. The probably the best example of this occurred in one of the Nixon Kennedy television debates. Not the first debate, the one thats most famous, but the fourth debate. Thi