Bay of Pigs invasion

DATE April 16, 2001 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Peter Kornbluh and Fernando Ramirez discuss the Bay
of Pigs invasion and the 40th anniversary of the invasion
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Tomorrow marks the 40th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion. It was the
event President Kennedy called the worst experience of his life. It still
resonates in the hostile relations between the US and Cuba. Shortly after the
Cuban revolution, which brought Fidel Castro to power, the CIA trained and
commanded a brigade of 1,400 Cuban exiles, mostly living in Florida. On April
17th, 1961, the brigade landed at the Bay of Pigs and invaded Cuba. They were
defeated within three days by the Cuban military.

My guest, Peter Kornbluh, was one of the organizers of a 40th-anniversary
conference that brought together Cubans and Americans in Cuba last month.
Kornbluh also successfully filed to declassify American and Cuban secret
documents about the invasion. He's an analyst with the National Security
Archive. Joining Kornbluh is Fernando Ramirez, chief of the Cuban Interests
Section in the US. That's the position that would be the Cuban ambassador, if
the US recognized Cuba. I asked Peter Kornbluh what the American government
wanted to accomplish by invading Cuba.

Mr. PETER KORNBLUH (National Security Archive): The Kennedy administration
was set on rolling back the Cuban revolution. The Eisenhower administration
had authorized this operation. It started as a smaller infiltration program
meant to drop cadres of guerrilla fighters into Cuba and then supply them so
they could organize an uprising against Fidel Castro's government, and it
evolved between March of 1960 from a $4.4 million smaller covert operation
into a massive $46 million paramilitary assault of the island. And the CIA,
drawing on a kind of arrogant, imperial mentality towards Cuba, simply thought
that by landing 1,500 brigade members on the beach of the Bay of Pigs, the
Cuban population would rise up against Fidel Castro and overthrow him. And
they turned out to be extraordinarily wrong.

GROSS: What are some of the things that went wrong that made the Bay of Pigs
invasion such a failure for the Americans?

Mr. KORNBLUH: Well, quite a few things went wrong. In fact, the Bay of Pigs
has been called the perfect failure because so much of its objectives--every
element of its objectives failed and all the mechanics failed as well. The
first thing that went wrong is that, despite CIA attempts to bomb and destroy
Castro's small air force, several planes survived. And the Castro military
was able to quickly deploy those planes the morning of the invasion and sink,
almost within the first three or four hours of the invasion, two ships, one of
which carried the ammunition and the fuel for the invading force. Once those
ships were sunk, it was very unlikely that the brigade members could hold out,
could be resupplied, could have enough fuel and ammunition to keep fighting.
But the main thing that went wrong for the United States was that the Cuban
military came and fought. And the intelligence reports and the reports to the
president during the battle are rather extraordinary, saying, you know, `The
enemy has proven much more forceful and dynamic than we ever could have
imagined.'

The Cuban government, to its credit, decided to actually declassify a number
of documents. It was the first official declassification of Cuban documents.
A special stamp was even created in Cuba, (Spanish spoken), you know, for
these documents. And I think that was important. I'm hoping that this
conference and dissemination and study of these new Cuban documents is a model
for the future that Cuba will go ahead and release other documents,
particularly from the '60s, relating to the Cuban missile crisis, the 40th
anniversary of which is coming up next year, and other episodes of key
importance in US-Cuban relations.

GROSS: Peter Kornbluh, what are some of the things you learned from these
declassified Cuban documents?

Mr. KORNBLUH: We learned the caliber and breadth of Cuban intelligence
efforts against this operation. Cuba did have some spies, if you will, in
Central America, contacts in Guatemala and certainly people in Washington and
in Florida sending back information on the preparation for this invasion
force. Some of the information that got sent back was incorrect and some of
it was correct. These documents illuminated Cuba's ability to know what was
happening and to prepare itself for the invasion, even if, as we were told at
the conference, there was no Cuban spies actually in the camps themselves,
certainly no Cuban spies in the Kennedy administration, and that Cuba did not
actually know the date or the location of the invasion force.

GROSS: Did the declassified Cuban documents reveal anything about the
Cuban-Soviet relationship at the time of the invasion?

Mr. KORNBLUH: Cuba did not, at this point, declassify any documents on its
relations with the Soviet Union which, as Fernando Ramirez can comment, was
not as advanced a relationship as after the invasion. One of the ironies of
the invasion and the counterproductive nature of it is, of course, it helped
push Cuba into the Soviet orbit in terms of gaining diplomatic, political and
military support from the Soviet Union to counter the aggression of the United
States. Let me just say there was one very interesting document that the US
delegation brought, a document discovered in the British archives by a
colleague of mine, historian James Herschberg, which showed that the CIA
director, Allen Dulles, had sat down with the British authorities in late 1959
and said, `Please don't sell advanced fighter aircraft to Cuba. If you don't
sell these weapons to Cuba, then they will be forced to go to the Soviet Union
to buy them and'--and now I'm quoting, "then we will be able to do something,"
unquote. And this was an extraordinary document. It kind of showed the
Machiavellian approach of the CIA to try and create a propaganda peg to
overthrow the Cuban government by pushing it into the Soviet orbit.

GROSS: When Dulles, the head of the CIA, said, "Then we will be able to do
something," he meant that if the Cubans were deeply into the Soviet camp,
there'd be an official, legit US reason...

Mr. KORNBLUH: Right.

GROSS: ...to intervene in Cuba.

Mr. KORNBLUH: He tells the British that in the case of Guatemala, where the
CIA had covertly intervened to overthrow the government in 1954, they'd used
as a justification the fact that the Arbenz government had purchased arms from
Czechoslovakia and, in fact, it was the same thing. The CIA had blocked
Arbenz's ability to buy any arms from the West. And I have to say, at the
conference, Fidel Castro spoke to this issue of purchasing Soviet arms and
said that, initially, the Cubans had not really wanted to have arms from the
Eastern Bloc, but when it became apparent that they would need to defend
themselves, they went ahead and got them.

GROSS: Fernando Ramirez, do you think that the Cubans strengthened their
alliance with the Soviets as a result of the Bay of Pigs?

Mr. FERNANDO RAMIREZ: That was one of the results, without any doubt,
because we didn't have any choice. Because as Peter said before, the first
weapons that we tried to buy to defend Cuba at that time, what we thought was
the Batista people who were plotting here in the United States against
Cuba, we tried to buy from the western European countries. In the case of
England, the United Kingdom, the response was ...(unintelligible). In the
case of France, they sold us some weapons, like in the case of Belgium, but
that was our approach, because really what we really want to def--at the
beginning, we want to defend Cuba from the Batista people that, unfortunately,
received support from the United States. And for that reason, because of the
invasion, because what--everything happened after that, we didn't have any
other choice to--really to receive the weapons and to receive the military
assistance from the former Soviet Union.

GROSS: Peter Kornbluh, what have recently released documents in the United
States shown about the relationship between the CIA and the Kennedy
administration on the Bay of Pigs invasion?

Mr. KORNBLUH: There are many, many documents about the relations between the
Kennedy White House and the CIA leadership, particularly the architect of the
invasion, Richard Bissell. And it is clear from the documents and from his
memoirs that Bissell and other CIA officials are simply not fully candid with
the president of the United States. The declassification of the CIA's own
internal after-action report on the Bay of Pigs invasion makes it clear that
the CIA leadership grossly misled the president on whether this operation
really had any possibility of success.

GROSS: Now my understanding of some of the newly released American documents
is that some of these documents show that the CIA never really believed or
didn't fully believe that this invasion was going to succeed in overthrowing
the Castro government. What the CIA was hoping was that it would
provide--that some of the Cubans would be inspired to work against Castro and
that this invasion would also cause the kind of turmoil that would provide an
excuse for the United States to intervene in a more overt way.

Mr. KORNBLUH: Bissell had an assassination track going against Fidel Castro.
He had authorized the CIA in August of 1960, as the invasion force was being
created, to work with the Mafia to create poison pills for Mafia contacts
inside Cuba to try and slip into Castro's food. These pills were passed in
March of 1961, only weeks before the invasion, into Cuba in hopes that Castro
would be assassinated and that chaos would ensue and that this would help the
invasion actually succeed. The idea here was to land a force on the beach,
have them hold this area for three or four days, fly in a provisional
government of exiled leaders, have the United States recognize this small
group that the CIA had hand-selected as the new government of Cuba, and supply
them with open military support to continue the fight militarily to overthrow
the Cuban government.

GROSS: My guests are Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archive and
Fernando Ramirez, chief of the Cuban Interests Section in the US. More after
a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guests are Peter Kornbluh, one of the organizers of last month's
Bay of Pigs 40th anniversary conference in Cuba, and Fernando Ramirez, chief
of the Cuban Interests Section in the US.

Peter Kornbluh, on the National Security Archive Web site, you have a couple
of excerpts of phone conversations between President Kennedy and his brother,
Bobby Kennedy, who was the attorney general at the time of these
conversations. And these are conversations about the Bay of Pigs invasion but
these are conversations that were recorded two years later. We're gonna play
an excerpt of the first conversation on this Web site. Peter, would you give
us the context for this conversation? Tell us what's happening here.

Mr. KORNBLUH: During the battle at the Bay of Pigs, which lasted a little
short of three days, the president did authorize US military aircraft from the
destroyer Essex to fly air cover for planes from the invading force, to help
the battle advance. And the planes flown for the brigade force were actually
flown by American pilots who were working with the CIA and the Cuban exile
brigade members in Nicaragua. And one of the extraordinary debacles of the
invasion militarily was that these planes arrived from Nicaragua and the air
cover arrived too late. There was a time zone change. There was an altitude
difference and they missed each other, and there was no US military air cover
and two of these planes were shot down and four American pilots killed.

And two years after the invasion, even though John Kennedy had maintained
publicly that there were no American personnel involved in this invasion, the
Senate was sniffing around and was learning the truth about this and that
prompted a call between the president and his brother to try and deal with how
they were going to continue to cover up the fact that Americans were involved.
One of the interesting things about the Bay of Pigs invasion is that the very
first person on the beach was a CIA official named Grayston Lynch, and he got
off the boat and put a lighted beacon on the beach so that the rest of the
small boats would know where to land in the darkness. It was a fiction at the
time that the United States was not directly involved with support training
and actual personnel in leading this invasion force.

GROSS: The United States was trying to make it seem like it was just Cuban
exiles who were going in there...

Mr. KORNBLUH: Exactly.

GROSS: ...on their own volition.

Mr. KORNBLUH: That's right. The cover story was that, you know, so-called
freedom fighters from Miami and Central America, Cuban exiles, had organized
themselves, trained themselves, armed themselves and were now invading Cuba to
save their homeland from communism. But the truth was that this was a
US-initiated, organized, supplied and led operation.

GROSS: Well, let's hear that phone call between John Kennedy and Bobby
Kennedy, recorded in 1963, two years after the Bay of Pigs invasion.

(Soundbite of 1963 phone call)

President JOHN F. KENNEDY: We're just talking about the fact that, in an
interrogation last week of the Senate committee, Senator Goldwater asked some
questions about the use of carrier aircraft--the aircraft from the carrier
Essex...

Mr. ROBERT KENNEDY (Attorney General): Yeah.

Pres. KENNEDY: ...with their markings painted out.

Mr. KENNEDY: Yeah.

Pres. KENNEDY: Well, we figure that somebody over there has told him about,
you know, that thing on Wednesday morning...

Mr. KENNEDY: Yeah.

Pres. KENNEDY: ...and that, therefore, either Dirksen's gonna spring it or
Goldwater's gonna spring it and they're gonna try to spring it in such a way
that it looks like there was US air cover and that you were wrong and I was
wrong in saying there wasn't. Now the question is how--what exactly is
it--we're gonna get Max Taylor to look up exactly--or are you familiar with
what--what happened in that? Did we paint out the markings?

Mr. KENNEDY: Yeah, we painted out the markings on the planes.

Pres. KENNEDY: How many planes?

Mr. KENNEDY: And I think there were three planes.

Pres. KENNEDY: Yeah.

Mr. KENNEDY: And they flew air cover for an hour.

Pres. KENNEDY: Yeah. They didn't see anybody.

Mr. KENNEDY: Over the beach.

Pres. KENNEDY: Yeah.

Mr. KENNEDY: And they were supposed to give air cover to the B-26s that were
coming in.

Pres. KENNEDY: Yeah.

Mr. KENNEDY: And, unfortunately, between all of them, they got the hours
mixed up. I think you gave them from seven to eight or something.

Pres. KENNEDY: Yeah.

Mr. KENNEDY: And they must have thought it was seven--CIA thought it was
seven to eight Central American time.

Pres. KENNEDY: Yeah.

Mr. KENNEDY: So the result was that the B-26s came in an hour...

Pres. KENNEDY: Late.

Mr. KENNEDY: ...late and were all shot down.

Pres. KENNEDY: Yeah.

Mr. KENNEDY: Or two of them shot down.

Pres. KENNEDY: Yeah. Yeah.

Mr. KENNEDY: I think that's probably the ones that had the Americans.

Pres. KENNEDY: Yeah.

Mr. KENNEDY: I think that has been in the paper about the fact that they flew
this air cover for an hour.

Pres. KENNEDY: Has that been in the paper?

Mr. KENNEDY: I've seen references to it in the paper. I don't know if any
formal story's been written on it, but it's been in the paper that--it's been
in US News & World Report that they specifically--I'm almost sure. I've read
it someplace in the last couple of months.

Pres. KENNEDY: OK. Yeah.

Mr. KENNEDY: About the fact that they flew for that hour.

Pres. KENNEDY: Well, my guess is it's gonna come out. We're just trying to
figure out how to get it out if we can play it from ...(unintelligible).
Otherwise Dirksen will announce that United States planes, with their
paintings marked out, flew over the Bay of Pigs and were only used for an hour
and, therefore, either you were wrong or I was wrong in not using them more
and so on and so forth, so we're trying to think about how to...

Mr. KENNEDY: Well, I think if somebody can look up where it's appeared in the
newspapers--you got that kind of people over there?

Pres. KENNEDY: I would think that's a rather difficult assignment.

Mr. KENNEDY: Not really.

GROSS: It's an excerpt of a conversation recorded in 1963 between President
Kennedy and his brother, Bobby Kennedy, who was the attorney general at the
time. And you can find a longer version of this on the National Security
Archive Web site.

Peter Kornbluh, it's just kind of amazing that the people organizing this
didn't know about the time zone change and that really screwed up the whole
invasion.

Mr. KORNBLUH: I think there were several key factors. But this was one of a
long line of problems in the military deployment of this invasion. I can tell
you, from looking at the broader history and certainly from the history that
came out of this conference held in Havana just several weeks ago, that it
would have made no difference if the air cover had been there or not; that on
the ground, the correlation of forces was extraordinarily weighted toward the
side of Castro's military. And they were there fighting hard. As Gene
Atchison, former secretary of State, said to John Kennedy after the invasion
failed, `It doesn't take Pricewaterhouse to tell you that 1,500 Cuban exiles
aren't as strong as 25,000 Cuban military soldiers.'

GROSS: I believe some of the documents that the Cuban government released for
this Bay of Pigs 40th anniversary conference were transcriptions of phone
calls and walkie-talkie conversations by Fidel Castro during the Cuban
counterattack against the invading force, when Castro was leading the Cuban
army against the invasion. Fernando Ramirez, what are some of the
revelations, do you think, in these transcriptions of Castro's commanding
conversations?

Mr. RAMIREZ: Well, first place, Terry, the fact that Fidel, by himself,
directed all the operations from the ground--that was something that I think
is very important. All the offensive, all the military operations in detail
was directed by him. And secondly, they were very colorful and really he know
how to command all of them and in a way that really all the forces move
forward and they have very clear instructions to try to defeat as soon as
possible the military invasion and in that way to defeat the military plan for
the United State against Cuba.

GROSS: When you say they were colorful, do you mean that he cursed a lot?

Mr. RAMIREZ: Oh, yes.

GROSS: OK.

Mr. KORNBLUH: And let me just say, Terry, in its infinite wisdom, the CIA
picked a spot at the Bay of Pigs that was the area of Cuba that Fidel Castro
was most familiar with. He had spent a tremendous amount of time there
fishing, vacationing, working, knew the area, all the roads, all the beaches
almost like the back of his hand. And that enabled him to be really a
hands-on immediate military commander and, I think, from the transcripts, a
rather effective one.

Mr. RAMIREZ: Yes, but on the other hand, Peter, from a military point of
view, the location was very good, considering that the military goal was to
establish a beachhead just for a few days and then to ask for US intervention
because, Terry, it was a very isolated area, very poor, by the way, with a
very scarce population. There were swamps all over. The troops from the
west, from Havana, from Odessa(ph), they used, were just one highway, the only
way to reach the beach. And from that point of view, from a military purpose,
it was very well designed.

GROSS: Peter Kornbluh is an analyst with the National Security Archive;
Fernando Ramirez is chief of the Cuban Interests Section in the US. I'm Terry
Gross. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: Coming up, we continue our look at the Bay of Pigs with Alfredo Duran.
He was a member of the Brigade of Cuban Exiles that invaded Cuba under the
leadership of the CIA. And we'll hear from Robert Reynolds, the CIA's Miami
station chief at the time of the invasion.

(Soundbite of music)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Alfredo Duran and Robert Reynolds discuss the Bay of
Pigs invasion and the 40th anniversary of the invasion
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Forty years ago tomorrow, my guest, Alfredo Duran, invaded Cuba as a member of
the Brigade of Cuban Exiles under the leadership of the CIA. The brigade was
defeated by Cuban forces within three days. Duran was one of the more than
1,000 exiles taken prisoner by the Cubans. After his release, he returned to
Florida, where he now practices law. He's the former chairman of Florida's
Democratic Party and past president of the brigade's Veterans Association.
Also with us is Robert Reynolds. He was the CIA station chief in Miami at the
time of the invasion. Both Reynolds and Duran attended the Bay of Pigs 40th
anniversary conference in Cuba last month.

I asked them each to describe a high point of the conference. Here's Alfredo
Duran.

Mr. ALFREDO DURAN: At one point, I had just finished explaining on the board
what the battle plan was, the actions that the brigade was taking at a little
town called San Blas when we had been under artillery fire for 48 hours. And
after I finished our battle explanation, the artillery officer who was
commanding the batteries against us came up to the board to explain their
position. And there have been many, many people who had died at that battle
during the past 48 hours, and as he approached me, we looked at each other in
the eyes and we instinctively shook hands. That was a very intense moment.
Most of the people of the audience stood up and applauded, and I felt that, at
that very moment, the ice had broken in the relationship that had existed up
until that point between the brigade members and the colonels and generals who
had fought against us.

I think that it dissipated a great deal of tension, and from that moment on,
the whole convention took a different type of atmosphere, at least between the
Cuban participants and the brigade members. And I thought that it became, all
of a sudden, more relaxed, more open, and we started, to some extent, trusting
each other more.

GROSS: Bob Reynolds, as the CIA station chief in Miami at the time of the Bay
of Pigs invasion, what was a high point for you of the recent Bay of Pigs
anniversary conference?

Mr. BOB REYNOLDS: Well, I think I'd start with the same incident that Alfredo
just described. Watching the first reconciliatory gesture by the
representatives of the two sides was a very emotional experience. Apart from
that, I'd like to say that meeting Fidel Castro was quite an experience for
me. As I made the point in the conference itself, for four years that man
dominated my life. I started following his progress through the Sierra
Miestra in 1957 and stayed pretty close to Cuban affairs right up through the
Bay of Pigs until sometime late in '61.

So coming face-to-face with the man, having several verbal exchanges with him,
shaking hands, being his guest at lunch and, later, at this sumptuous farewell
dinner was quite an experience for me.

GROSS: If you don't mind my asking a very forward question, were you in on
plans to try and assassinate Fidel Castro?

Mr. REYNOLDS: Not at all, and thanks for asking. I'm grateful to say that I
was far away from any of that.

GROSS: What was your role in the Bay of Pigs invasion?

Mr. REYNOLDS: It was extremely marginal. We, in Miami, were responsible for
recruiting, in large measure, the people, like Alfredo, who formed the brigade.
Once we recruited them, we flew them down to training camps in Central
America, and that was the end of our responsibility. From that point on, they
were under the control or management of other people.

GROSS: Bob Reynolds, when you and your men were recruiting Cuban exiles
living in Miami, recruiting them to join this invading force, what were you
telling them about what to expect of the invasion?

Mr. REYNOLDS: At the very beginning, when we began recruiting people, we
didn't really have yet a plan for the invasion. We were just pulling together
a force and getting it trained as planning progressed. Originally, as I
recall, we had in mind a much smaller force, not a brigade, but just maybe a
couple of hundred people who would actually sort of do a Castro. They would
become a guerrilla force in the mountains; we'd drop them in some way and keep
them resupplied and let them work their way up the island, the same way Fidel
did. That concept, though, was replaced by the one of a larger body and an
invasion force. But at the beginning, we didn't tell anybody anything very
specific about what was going to happen with them because we didn't really
have a firm plan.

GROSS: Alfredo Duran, when you were recruited by the CIA to join this brigade
that was going to invade Cuba, did you know that the CIA was trying to make it
seem as if they had nothing to do with this; that the Cuban exiles in Miami
were on their own organizing this invading force? That's how the CIA wanted
to make it seem.

Mr. DURAN: Yeah. The...

GROSS: Were you aware of that?

Mr. DURAN: Yeah, I was. First, I was really not recruited, I enlisted; I
sought out the recruitment offices and I joined. And I knew and everyone knew
that the CIA was behind it. Miami, in that year, was almost like
"Casablanca"; everybody was talking invasion, revolution, guerrilla terrorism,
everything else. Miami was quite an active place. So everybody knew what was
going on.

What I enlisted for was I believed that we were going to be trained as a
guerrilla force to be dropped in the mountainous areas of Cuba, and from there
on, take the fight on our own. The whole invasion plan developed later on,
which made it much more complicated from the point of view of the United
States because an invasion required tremendous other amount of logistics and
supplies. But at any event, I knew that the CIA was behind it, I knew that
the CIA did not want it to be known that they were behind it, but I also knew
that everybody knew that the CIA was behind it.

GROSS: When you enlisted, how did you know where to go to enlist? Did you
know CIA agents?

Mr. DURAN: Well, everybody in Miami in those days knew where the recruitment
offices were, and every person was sitting in the corner--there actually was a
recruitment office open, where you would go, enlist. You would be given some
sort of medical and taken measurements, and it's pretty much like recruiting
for the Army.

GROSS: Why did you want to return to Cuba and fight against Castro?

Mr. DURAN: Well, you have to understand that we were living right in the
middle of the Cold War. We had just been learning about the Stalinist crime
in the Soviet Union. Many of us were young, idealistic Cubans who did not
want our country to turn into a Communist dictatorship. We believed that that
would be very tragic for the country, and we decided that it was something
that we had to do; we had to come in and try to save the republic. And many
of the people in the brigade--the brigade, you have to understand, also is
like a rainbow of Cuban political thinking and society of that time. A lot of
the people, for many, many reasons, including many of them were very--came out
of the Catholic universities and stuff, and we really believed that we didn't
want Communism in Cuba, and, therefore, we were taking on a crusade.

As a matter of fact, the emblem that we chose to represent the brigade was a
cross surrounded by a Cuban flag. So we actually believed, at that time, that
we were in a crusade to bring Cuba out of what would become a tragic future
with the Communist dictatorship.

GROSS: Tell me more about what you expected to happen after you got to Cuba
as a member of this invading force. What did you think the outcome was going
to be?

Mr. DURAN: Well, the outcome was everything that I did not predict that it
would be. First of all, I thought that we would win or I could die. I never
expected to lose and live. I thought if we would lose, we'd be shot. So the
outcome was completely a surprise to me.

The other thing that was a surprise--and some of these things I learned at the
conference in Havana a few weeks back--is that the plan that was developed,
which was called Plan Plutu(ph), really, from the very first day, was not
adhered to. It was a plan which we were supposed to land at the Bay of Pigs,
which was supposed to have guaranteed some success for a few days at least,
until other things happened. But that plan itself was not ever developed to
its full capacity.

The bombing was stopped on the 15th of April--it did not occur again--which
was supposed to take out Cuban air force. We did not have access to supplies.
We did not have access to have an air cover, which was very much needed. We
could not really advance without air cover and under enemy bombardment. And
so that was a surprise which--you could detect from the very first day that
the plan was not working.

The reason we detected that from the very first day is that, indeed, the
Castro air force was bombarding us around the clock, they sank the supply
ships, and they virtually pinned us down to a point where we could not
advance. And after the third day, of course, we ran out of supplies and
ammunition, and we could not continue to fight. So we had to, basically,
start our withdrawal and, ultimately, go into the swamps. So it was--the
failure of the plan, from the very beginning, was very obvious to the people
the very day that we landed on the beach.

GROSS: Did you feel betrayed that some of the things that you were promised
by the CIA never materialized, like air cover?

Mr. DURAN: Well, I personally didn't feel betrayed. I was a big boy; I knew
what I was doing, I knew what I was going to do there. I was hoping for
support, but if we didn't get it, anyway, I felt committed to the battle, and,
therefore, I don't feel betrayed. At that point, I was thankful that we had
an opportunity to do this. I never felt that I was acting in the interest of
the United States foreign policy. I never felt that I was acting as a
mercenary for the CIA. I never felt that I was doing any other thing than
fighting for the future of my country. So I didn't feel betrayed.

GROSS: Alfredo Duran, were you paid by the American government, and if so,
how much?

Mr. DURAN: When I recruited, I really wasn't expecting to be paid. I think
that they paid a stipend to our family. I think that my wife got about $200
or something a month, in support of my wife and my son, who was born, as a
matter of fact, while I was in jail.

GROSS: Alfredo Duran, when you were fighting in Cuba, as part of the force of
Cuban exiles, did you recognize any of the Cuban soldiers you were fighting
against? I imagine when you left Cuba that you left behind friends and
possibly even family, and maybe some of those friends and family were in the
Cuban military fighting against you.

Mr. DURAN: Well, during the battle itself, no, I did not recognize them,
but, you know, after we were captured, many of them came over to where we
were, and obviously I saw and I met with some who had been my friends from my
youth. And it was very emotional. And, as a matter of fact, one of the other
brigadistas was in this conference with us, Mr. Mario Carayu(ph). Two blood
cousins were fighting against him, and his father was on the other side also.
So it was--this whole process of the Bay of Pigs--and that's why it is so
intense for the members who participated. And I don't know if Bob was able to
feel that.

What was happening there between us is that it was very much like a civil war.
We were fighting families. And, obviously, there's a lot of passion and a lot
of tension and a lot of sorrow because we were--everyone who died in the Bay
of Pigs on whichever side had a relative or a friend or somebody close on the
other side. So the suffering was mutual, no matter who won or who lost.

GROSS: Alfredo Duran, you spent, I think, 18 months in a Cuban prison after
the failed invasion?

Mr. DURAN: That's correct.

GROSS: What were the prison conditions like?

Mr. DURAN: To tell you the truth, you know, it was harsh, but we were never
mistreated. We were overcrowded, we were underfed, we were under-cared for,
as far as medical and medicine care. But we were never mistreated. They did
their best to take care of us. Our conditions were not the best in the world,
but at least we felt that we were being treated with respect. They gave us
the condition of prisoners of war immediately, and maybe that had helped along
to have a type of condition within the jail itself which was more respectful
and with more regards to our needs.

GROSS: My guests are Alfredo Duran, a member of the Brigade of Cuban Exiles
that invaded Cuba, and Robert Reynolds, the CIA's Miami station chief at the
time of the Bay of Pigs invasion. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guests are Alfredo Duran--he was a member of the CIA-led Brigade
of Cuban Exiles that invaded Cuba 40 years ago; and Robert Reynolds, the CIA's
Miami station chief at the time of the invasion.

I want to ask you each other question about the Bay of Pigs anniversary
conference in Cuba, which you both just attended. Because of this conference
and because of the anniversary, both Cuba and the United States released a
number of previously classified documents. I'm wondering if you can each
mention something that you learned from these declassified documents that
changes the picture of what really happened for you. Can we start with Bob
Reynolds, who was the CIA chief in Miami at the time of the invasion?

Mr. REYNOLDS: Yeah. I brought with me a book of declassified documents in
case you asked. I think perhaps the most interesting, for me, was this long
memorandum that Vice President Nixon wrote after a long, long meeting he
had--I think three and a half hours--with Fidel Castro; very perceptive and
full of insights, understanding of the man, of Fidel, and probably the
milestone marking the beginning of deterioration of our relations with the
Castro government.

It's, I think, April 1959, and Nixon writes, `My own appraisal of him as a man
is somewhat mixed. One fact we can be sure of is that he has those
indefinable qualities which make him a leader of men. Whatever we may think
of him, he is going to be a great factor in the development of Cuba and very
possibly in Latin American affairs generally. He seems to be sincere. He is
either incredibly naive about communism or is under Communist discipline. My
guess is the former.' So here's an assessment of Castro by our vice president
at the time, which turned out to be pretty accurate.

GROSS: How did that compare to your assessment of Castro when you were Miami
bureau chief for the CIA?

Mr. REYNOLDS: Well, this was written before I went to Miami. I was still in
Washington. But as one who followed Castro's progress through the guerrilla
phase, I was very pro-Castro in those days. He was opposing a dictator, a
corrupt regime, and as I put it at the conference, like most Americans, I was
all for someone who was brave and dedicated to the mission of eradicating this
bad regime and replacing it with his own. So up until the time that he took
power, I describe myself as a Fidelista. And the people I worked with on
Caribbean matters, I think we all felt that way.

GROSS: Wait a minute. It's hard for me to absorb this. CIA guys being
pro-Fidel?

Mr. REYNOLDS: I know. This raised some eyebrows at the conference, too. But
I'm talking now about the period of time when he was working his way through
the mountains in a guerrilla campaign aimed at toppling Batista.

GROSS: Mm-hmm. So what turned you around into the anti-Fidel camp?

Mr. REYNOLDS: Things were edging--from about the time of this interview with
Nixon, things were starting to sour. I don't recall all the details, but
there were lots of nationalization of private property, there were overtures
to the Soviet side. There was a visit by Mikoyan(ph)--and I'm sure I'm wrong;
I don't have all the dates in front of me. But there was a general harshness
developing in the tone of Fidel and his administration toward the United
States, and things were worsening to the point where, a year after his
ascension to power, we had broken relations with him.

GROSS: Alfredo Duran, did you also respect Castro when he was in the
mountains and leading the revolutionary force? Did you think he would be a
good leader, and did you want him to overthrow Batista?

Mr. DURAN: No, I did not, not at that time. I was one of those few Cubans
that was never a Fidelista. I belonged to a family that was politically
allied with the Batista government, and, therefore, I had not good feelings
towards the Cuban revolution at that time. In essence, I was against the
Castro government before he got into power, and maybe that's one of the things
that motivated me also to join the Bay of Pigs, other than my ideals regarding
the future of Cuba.

GROSS: (Technical difficulties) Duran, a member of the Brigade of Cuban
Exiles that invaded Cuba, and Robert Reynolds, the CIA's Miami station chief
at the time of the invasion. We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH
AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guests are Alfredo Duran, a member of the CIA-led Brigade of Cuban
Exiles that invaded Cuba 40 years ago, and Robert Reynolds, the CIA's Miami
station chief at the time of the invasion.

Alfredo Duran, as someone who fought in the Bay of Pigs invasion, what would
you most like to know that you don't know yet about what really happened
behind the scenes?

Mr. DURAN: You know, one of the questions that I did not get a chance to ask,
because the conference took on a long time--and as Bob, I'm sure, remembers,
every time that Fidel Castro intervened, it took several hours of
intervention.

GROSS: He talks a lot.

Mr. DURAN: Sure. So I didn't get--when we were at that stage, I didn't get
to ask what the thought process was to come to the political decision to how
to handle the brigade by the Cuban government. Why did he not put us against
the wall and shoot us? Why didn't he throw us in jail for 30 years, as we
were sentenced to? And why did he decide to trade us for $62 million in food
and medicine? That thought process I would have very much enjoyed to
understand because it sort of defined what the views of Castro, as to his
political future, were and how to deal with his relationship for what happens
to be the next 40 years vis-a-vis the United States.

The Bay of Pigs was a very defining moment in history of Cuba. It defined for
the next 40 years the relationship with the United States. It defined the
political and social divisions of Cubans among ourselves for the next 40
years. And, basically, it defined also, to a great deal, international
relationships in Latin America and almost created also a nuclear holocaust on
the missile crisis. So it was a very important factor, and the aspects of the
political thought process, to me, was of great interest. And I didn't get a
chance to really get into that.

GROSS: And, Bob Reynolds, what would you most like to know about what
happened behind the scenes during the Bay of Pigs invasion?

Mr. REYNOLDS: I would love to know to what extent our forces might have
rallied dissident parts of the populace of Cuba.

GROSS: And that was part of the official intention, was to...

Mr. REYNOLDS: Yes, we had rosy hopes that the brigade, with its initial
successes, would attract other volunteers who would join. Am I right about
that, Alfredo?

Mr. DURAN: Yeah, that's correct. There was expected to be an uprising.

Mr. REYNOLDS: And I don't think we'll ever know. I do know that Castro's
secret police had done a pretty good job of rolling up small groups of
resistance people that we had tried to establish elsewhere on the island that
were not related to the invasion, but the life expectancy of such resistance
groups turned out to be rather short. So big question in my mind is: Would
we have been able to rally behind us--by `we,' I mean the brigade--support
from the populace? And I'd say we'll never know.

GROSS: Alfredo Duran, you are the former chairman of the Florida Democratic
Party, and I'm wondering how much continuing impact the Bay of Pigs invasion
has on Florida politics today.

Mr. DURAN: It has had a great deal. The Cuban-American Republicans, as part
of their recruiting efforts, always bring out the Bay of Pigs, and they call
it `the treason at Playa Giron,' and that has been a powerful motivating
factor to the point that I think that the Cuban Americans are the only
Hispanic group in the United States that are overwhelmingly Republicans. You
have here a registration of probably 75 or 80 percent Cuban Americans
Republicans, and that is almost inversed in every other Hispanic group in the
country. But it is a very powerful motivating factor, and many Cuban
Americans believe that the failure of the Bay of Pigs, basically, condemned
the Cuban nation to be under the Castro government for the past 40 years.

GROSS: I want to thank you both very much for talking with us.

Mr. REYNOLDS: Pleasure.

Mr. DURAN: Thank you very much. Bob, nice talking to you again.

Mr. REYNOLDS: Good talking to you, Alfredo.

GROSS: Alfredo Duran was part of the CIA-led Brigade of Cuban Exiles that
invaded Cuba. Robert Reynolds was the CIA's Miami station chief at the time
of the invasion. Tomorrow marks the 40th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs
invasion.

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.