Blunders by Men Wearing Blinders

By Ed Magnuson

BAY OF PIGS: THE UNTOLD STORY by Peter Wyden Simon & Schuster; 352 pages; $12.95

Peter Wyden is one of those veteran journalists who scoff at the notion that historians can gain insights into past events by poking around in faded documents. To be sure, Wyden fought for release of every official paper that might illuminate America's most humiliating pre-Viet Nam military fiasco: the 1961 invasion at Cuba's Bay of Pigs. But he also spent several years assaulting the still sensitive memories of the CIA's chastened plotters; interviewing the bitter Cuban exiles who had watched their comrades die on the beach; quizzing Fidel Castro and dozens of his victorious defenders. The result is truly The Untold Story: an infuriating tale of blunders by bureaucrats and a young President who was too dazzled by the CIA and the Pentagon to redesign--or abandon--a hopeless project.

Outlines of what went wrong have been sketched before, most notably by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. in A Thousand Days. But Wyden, a former editor at the Saturday Evening Post, McCall's and Ladies' Home Journal, is not satisfied with shadows and rumors. He retraces every false step, sparing no one and no institution. The plot was conceived and crafted at the CIA largely by a cerebral chief of covert operations, Richard Bissell Jr. It had been passed on to President Kennedy by an unenthusiastic--but not disapproving--President Eisenhower. In the naive belief that U.S. involvement could be concealed, Kennedy kept telling the CIA to "reduce the noise level" of the planned air strikes, and he kept scaling down the air cover. Not even highly skeptical military chiefs, secretly relieved to let the CIA run the project, had the nerve to inform Kennedy that the operation had grown too large to hide its origins, yet remained too limited to succeed. Looking back, one CIA official told Wyden, somebody "should have said, 'Mr. President, this is going to create one hell of a lot of noise!' "

It did. With relentless reporting, pursuit of detail and narrative skill, Wyden recalls and amplifies the anguish of men caught in chaos. Though the whole concept was fatally flawed, specific botches stand out. The CIA's aerial photoanalysts had dismissed some dark blotches off selected landing sites as either "seaweed" or "clouds." They turned out to be coral reefs, which ripped open the hulls of landing craft. The Bay of Pigs had been chosen partly for its assumed isolation from Castro's defending army. As they churned toward shore, the invaders were startled to find part of the beach bathed in light from huge lamps installed by the Cubans against precisely such a pre-dawn strike. Later, they even discovered two microwave radio towers alongside the bay. Far offshore, the U.S. Navy maneuvered four destroyers in a manner designed to scare Cuban radar operators into thinking that a massive Normandy-style landing was under way. As it happened, Castro had no radar capable of detecting the ruse.

Obsession with secrecy was equally futile. Commanders on the carrier Essex won permission to let their pilots overfly the beach only after the aircraft insignia were obliterated with gray paint. But only the U.S. Navy flew the A-4D jet fighter, whose distinctive silhouette was instantly recognizable. Similarly, a crew was sent over the side of the destroyer U.S.S. Eaton to paint out the ship's name. Yet the vessel's outline could be clearly identified as that of a U.S. warship; at binocular range, even the raised lettering could be read.

To keep any crew members from knowing that the Essex was heading toward Cuba to watch over the invasion, no detailed maps of the island were available. The carrier's frustrated flyers picked out towns and roads by the lines on a tattered Esso road map. Forbidden to fire, they could only watch helplessly as Castro's jets strafed the invaders and gunned down the ponderous B-26 bombers flown by American and Cuban-exile pilots.

Trapped on the beach, watching the American naval vessels sailing serenely away, some Cuban exiles who thought that the mighty U.S. would never start a military operation without meticulous planning and an unshakable commitment to win, fired their guns in rage at the departing ships. Incredibly, none of Kennedy's CIA or military advisers had warned him that, faced with disaster, the invaders could not simply slip into the Escambray Mountains and carry on as anti-Castro guerrillas. The mountains were too far away, separated from the landing site by swamps, and the invaders had been given no training in survival tactics.

Despite the debacle, General George R. Doster, an Alabama Air National Guard commander who had taken part in what he called the most "asinine operation I ever saw," later was summoned to CIA headquarters in Virginia and permitted to read a letter commending him for his clandestine help. As he started to put it in his pocket, it was snatched away. Oh, no, he was told, it was secret and could only go in his files. He felt "like a dumb ass," Doster told Wyden.

Far greater stupidity prevailed in high offices in Washington, where bright individuals let egos, ambition and bureaucratic momentum cloud their collective judgment. Worse yet, Wyden believes that "it could happen again."

Excerpt

"On Tuesday Commander Mike Griffin landed his 'Blue Blasters' A-4D jet on the flight deck and came up to the bridge to report to Captain Searcy. Griffin had just overflown the beach area and helplessly watched the Brigade being driven back to the sea. Searcy was shocked by the pilot's appearance. Griffin's face was blue. Tears were running down it without restraint. He was so angry and upset that it took a couple of minutes before he could utter a word. 'I hate to see a grown man cry, but I didn't blame him,' Searcy said later. The captain was 'surprised' that some of the pilots didn't take the battle into their own hands and drop bombs against orders."He 'wouldn't have blamed them.'

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