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The Bay Of Pigs documentary PBS (1997)
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00:00Funding for this program has been provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by annual support from viewers like
00:07you.
00:15I have said very clear that we are not coming. Very clear.
00:31There is a limit to what the United States, in self-respect, can endure. That limit has now been reached.
00:39I, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, do solemnly swear that this government will not hesitate in meeting its primary obligations, which are
00:48to the security of our nation.
01:00The Bay of Pigs has been called a lot of things. Mostly, it's referred to as the fiasco, right?
01:12It wasn't a fiasco. It wasn't a tragedy.
01:20It was a very flawed plan, which had not been thought out politically and therefore made no sense.
01:28I cannot call it anything but a betrayal.
01:35We could have won that battle.
01:36We could have won that battle.
01:54Hooray!
01:55Aeeeuu!
02:01In the 1950s, Havana and Varadero Beach
02:06were the great playgrounds for the American rich and middle class.
02:16The scenes in Godfather II set the stage very, very well.
02:21Cuba was wide open, the mafia was there, of course, the casinos were open,
02:29but there was also a sense of joie de vivre.
02:36Cuba was a fun place.
02:38If you had lots of money and you were an American and you wanted to gamble,
02:42you wanted to have a little kinky sex, Cuba was perfect.
02:45You wanted to have the nice beach, good service, good food.
02:49That was the Cuba that Americans saw.
03:05The rest of Cuba wasn't quite like that.
03:14Rural Cuba was terribly underdeveloped.
03:19There was tremendous illiteracy in the countryside.
03:25The small farmer didn't have machines,
03:27oftentimes didn't have even animals, to work the land.
03:33Cane cutting was the largest single occupation in Cuba.
03:36It's terrible work.
03:38It only lasts for a few months a year.
03:41For people who had money or had a profession that you could practice,
03:44Cuba was a really good place.
03:46But that was not the majority.
03:49The Cuban economy was a classical dependent economy.
03:54Much of the ownership was not in Cuban hands.
03:57Telephone, the utilities, the mines, the best land,
04:02the largest sugar mills, the foreign trade and the banking system.
04:07All of this was in the hands of U.S. companies.
04:10Cuba's strong man who appeared with his family at a press reception
04:13seemed untroubled by Castro's mounting offensive.
04:16Beneath that, though, there was a political dictatorship.
04:19Batista seemed upset about reports in the American press
04:22of police brutality and corruption.
04:24His government was terribly corrupt.
04:26When Batista fell in January of 1959,
04:30there was no question as to who was going to dominate
04:34the political landscape in Cuba from that point forward.
04:43Fidel Castro's revolution arrived with the promise of widespread social reform.
04:48Peasants would get land, health care and education would be free,
04:52and everyone would be taught to read,
04:54as long as they were loyal to the revolution.
04:57Decades of poverty and corruption seemed finally to have come to an end.
05:13Fidel Castro had a terribly charismatic personality.
05:17If there had been any doubt while he was in the mountains,
05:21once he was on that political stage and in front of the TV cameras,
05:24there was none at all.
05:26On January the 9th, when he gave his first nationwide televised speech,
05:33they released a flight of white doves as a symbol of peace.
05:38And they all flew up into the sky except one,
05:40which landed on Castro's shoulder, fluttered up, then came back
05:44and remained on his shoulder during much of the speech.
05:49In the Santeria religion, the white dove is the messenger from the gods
05:54to indicate the anointed one.
05:57Well, the gods had indicated it was Castro.
06:00You could hear gasp in the crowd and people falling to their knees.
06:11Castro was tremendously popular.
06:13I would say that he had the overwhelming support.
06:17Ninety percent of the Cuban people,
06:19and perhaps more, had full confidence in him
06:22and supported him without question.
06:33The cry in Havana is Cuba.
06:35See, the Yankees know.
06:37The trucks belong to the American-owned Cuban Electric Company,
06:40recently nationalized by the government,
06:42along with the telephone company, also American-owned.
06:45Along towards the end of the summer of 1959,
06:48Castro decided it was time to begin moving toward the left.
06:54And among the things he did, among the many no-no's,
06:57was the expropriation of property.
07:00Not only Cuban property, but U.S. property.
07:03His latest blow against the United States,
07:05the seizure of three-quarters of a billion dollars
07:08of American-owned properties in Cuba.
07:10There was always a question as to whether he was a communist.
07:14The information was ambiguous.
07:17I have been very clear, but we are not coming.
07:24Very clear.
07:25Eisenhower finally came to the view, reluctantly,
07:30that Castro was an adversary and a danger,
07:34and that something had to be done about it.
07:37In January 1960, the Soviet deputy premier,
07:40Anastas Mukayan, came to Havana.
07:43The stage had been set for him.
07:45With the Cold War, the pretext for all intervention now
07:48was anti-communism.
07:50When the United States ordered its oil refineries,
07:53Texaco and Esso at the time, in Cuba,
07:56not to refine Soviet oil, Castro nationalized the refineries.
08:02Castro got Soviet oil because he couldn't get any other oil.
08:04So the die had been cast.
08:06Fidel Castro was determined to chart an independent course for Cuba,
08:10independent of the influence of the United States.
08:12And the United States in the 1950s and early 1960s
08:16was simply not prepared to accept that sort of outcome.
08:19So even under the best of circumstances,
08:21I think the relationship would have been a tense
08:24and perhaps hostile one.
08:26Cuba ultimately became a real focal point in the Cold War
08:29because it turned to the Soviet Union for assistance.
08:32Cuba's assigned share of the United States sugar market
08:35has been cut by 95%.
08:37By the end of 1959,
08:39it seemed to the Eisenhower administration
08:41that there was no turning back.
08:43In addition to cutting sugar imports,
08:46the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency
08:47was authorized to conduct a campaign of sabotage
08:50that would include burning sugarcane fields
08:53and a number of bombings.
08:55And as the CIA had done before and would do again,
08:58it planned a covert operation that the president could deny.
09:02French munition ship, La Cobra, blazes at dockside in Havana.
09:06The CIA had hoped that violence would cause panic,
09:10weakening the Castro regime.
09:12But despite the destruction and occasional loss of life,
09:15Cubans rallied behind their government.
09:21Eisenhower felt that that was inadequate,
09:23that there needed to be, the thing needed to be thought through
09:29and there needed to be some kind of a comprehensive plan.
09:34A more comprehensive plan was quickly put together
09:37by Alan Dulles, director of the CIA.
09:40He delivered it to Eisenhower on the 17th of March.
09:44The CIA would begin training large numbers of Cuban exiles
09:47for guerrilla warfare inside Cuba.
09:51Eisenhower considered this and gave it his approval.
09:54And I recall telling him that establishing this force
09:58would develop a momentum and it would have a life of its own.
10:05And he snapped back at me, not while I'm here.
10:08And I then said, well, sir, that's really just the problem.
10:12You won't be here.
10:13And he flashed back with anger initially
10:16and then thought about it and controlled himself
10:20as he always did, controlling his temper.
10:24And he said, I guess you're right.
10:27I guess you're right.
10:28The CIA's efforts to overthrow Fidel Castro
10:31would be headed up by deputy director of plans Richard Bissell.
10:35He was a gentleman.
10:38If you were in his presence for a few minutes,
10:40you would say, classy guy.
10:44No question about it.
10:46Very, very super smart.
10:48Somebody who can make quite an impression
10:53when briefing a president of the United States.
10:57In temporary buildings not far from the Lincoln Memorial,
11:01Bissell gathered a covert operations team
11:03headed by Jake Esterline.
11:05Esterline was later joined by Colonel Jack Hawkins
11:08on loan to the CIA from the U.S. Marine Corps.
11:12This is the first time that either Esterline or Hawkins
11:15have agreed to appear in a television documentary.
11:17My responsibility, as I understood them,
11:21was to provide for the organization, training, and equipment of the force.
11:28And to make plans for landing them in Cuba, if that should be so ordered.
11:37The CIA began recruiting disaffected young Cubans,
11:41targeting the neighborhood known as Little Havana in Miami,
11:44and also anti-Castro student groups in Havana.
11:48Among those recruited was a young attorney named Jose Andreu.
11:52At the time, he was also editor of a student newspaper in Havana.
11:56I started criticizing the government,
12:00which in those days indicated stronger communist influence.
12:05And one day I was stopped by the police and they said,
12:08look, we're going to give you a second chance,
12:10but if you continue with your articles and interviews
12:13and meeting with labor leaders and others,
12:15we're going to slap you in jail and you're going to rot there.
12:19So I took a commercial flight out of Havana,
12:23went to Miami,
12:24where we were extensively interviewed and researched
12:30by a team of CIA experts
12:34who wanted to know about our personalities, background, and capabilities.
12:42From Miami, the recruits were flown in unmarked planes
12:45to a training camp in the mountains of Guatemala.
12:48The training included what we needed to know about radio communications,
12:54about hiding, about moving from safe house to safe house,
12:58about demolition, about intelligence gathering,
13:02about organizing and directing guerrilla groups,
13:08both in urban and rural areas.
13:11I must say the quality of the training was first rate.
13:16The camps were in very bad shape.
13:20The food was not good.
13:22The only thing good about that camp is the high morale
13:25of the people who were there.
13:27We were there for a purpose
13:29and it really didn't matter much to us,
13:31the living conditions.
13:55Morale in the camps was high.
13:58Cuba would be freed from communist tyranny.
14:01The recruits seemed unconcerned about the degree
14:04to which they were dependent on the CIA.
14:06When you want to start a revolution
14:10and you know that your enemy is being supported
14:14by the other major power,
14:19there's no recourse but to having behind you
14:22the number one power.
14:24The limits of the influence of the Americans
14:28were rather well defined.
14:30It was beneficial and it was essential.
14:33We had no qualms.
14:35The CIA had located the training base in Guatemala
14:38as part of its effort to hide the U.S. role in the operation.
14:42This was something Eisenhower had insisted on from the beginning.
14:46He followed the rule that the president should never tell
14:50the American people or the American Congress an untruth.
14:53But his people might.
14:57It's comparable perhaps to the deception that he carried out,
15:03he was involved in, as to where the invasion landing would be in Normandy.
15:09And this was part of the Cold War, so-called.
15:13And one of the tools of the Cold War, like it or not,
15:18was this covert activity.
15:28You're candidates for the most important office in the free world.
15:31In the fall of 1960,
15:33Vice President Richard Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy
15:36were locked in a heated campaign for president.
15:39Unaware of what the CIA was planning,
15:42Kennedy attacked the Eisenhower administration
15:44for doing too little about Cuba.
15:46While the candidates argued, the CIA escalated its plans once again.
15:52Instead of training exiles for guerrilla warfare,
15:55they were now planning an amphibious assault on the Cuban mainland.
16:03Eisenhower also wanted the invasion linked to a popular uprising against the government.
16:08The Cuban exiles in Guatemala had no doubt it would happen.
16:14Fiel Castro had been losing his aura of invincibility and power.
16:25There had been wave after wave of sabotage, which he was not able to control.
16:32Most of the population was, to some extent, ambivalent.
16:38And we believed they would go with the winner.
16:41It is expected that these operations will precipitate a general uprising throughout Cuba
16:47and cause a revolt of a large segment of the Cuban army and militia.
16:51In January of 1961, Jake Esterlein and Jack Hawkins co-authored a memo
16:57that has only recently been declassified.
16:59In it, they predicted that an invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles
17:03would trigger a popular uprising against the government.
17:08Some analysts in the government knew that Fidel Castro's regime
17:12was quite widely popular on the island.
17:15But the people who were organizing the operation
17:18and dealing primarily with Cuban exiles
17:20had convinced themselves that Castro was widely hated
17:24and the population would rise up against him in the event of this invasion.
17:30The opposition to Castro was in Miami.
17:34These are the guys that had left.
17:36There were a lot of people who had risen up against Castro.
17:39Yup.
17:40But they were no longer there.
17:45The CIA had assembled a fractious group of anti-Castro politicians in Miami.
17:49under the leadership of a Cuban attorney named Jose Miro Cardona.
17:54They called themselves the Cuban Revolutionary Council,
17:57and they were central to the CIA's strategy.
18:00If the popular uprising against Castro should fail,
18:03there was another, quite different scenario.
18:07Hawkins and Esterlein at the CIA outlined that scenario in a memo.
18:11If matters do not eventuate as predicted above,
18:16the lodgement established by our force can be used at the site for establishment of a provisional government,
18:24which can be recognized by the United States, and hopefully by other American states,
18:30and given overt military assistance.
18:33The way will then be paved for United States military intervention,
18:38aimed at pacification of Cuba.
18:40And this will result in the prompt overthrow of the Castro government.
18:44The invaders had to hold a small piece of territory for a couple of days.
18:49Then the United States would recognize them as the new provisional democratic government of Cuba.
18:55This new government of Cuba would immediately call upon the President of the United States to give them military support.
19:03The President would authorize the military support.
19:05I would assume naval, air, and land forces.
19:09And you would have a U.S. invasion of Cuba.
19:12Castro marks the second anniversary of his revolution with the biggest military parade ever staged in Cuba.
19:19Shortly afterwards, Castro demanded the United States Embassy drastically reduce its staff to 11 persons.
19:24President Eisenhower broke off diplomatic relations with a message read by Press Secretary Haggerty.
19:31There is a limit to what the United States, in self-respect, can endure.
19:36That limit has now been reached.
19:39En route to their new address, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
19:42By the time John F. Kennedy was sworn in as President of the United States on January 20th,
19:48the CIA plan to invade Cuba was nearly complete.
19:51But the idea was viewed skeptically by the State Department.
19:55In a memo to the President, State Department officials argued that no popular uprising against Fidel Castro was likely,
20:02and that the U.S. role in the invasion was bound to become apparent, damaging the United States' reputation worldwide.
20:09While Kennedy shared these concerns, he seemed unwilling to call it off.
20:14Kennedy felt politically compelled to do something, to act, again, for political reasons.
20:22He did not want to be seen as weak or soft on Castro's communism, weak on the Castro threat.
20:29Combined Kennedy's inexperience, the send-off from Eisenhower, the persuasive powers of Bissell,
20:39the fact that a lot had already been done, the thing was rolling.
20:44You know what happens when something has anything, has achieved momentum.
20:50Calling things off usually goes against the grain.
20:55In March of 1961, Bissell and his team presented Kennedy with a detailed plan for the invasion of Cuba.
21:03They recommended a daytime landing at Trinidad, a Cuban coastal town of 18,000 people,
21:10where there was reported to be anti-Castro sentiment.
21:14If things went wrong, the brigade could retreat to the Escambra Mountains just a few miles away.
21:20But after hearing the plan, Kennedy rejected it.
21:23In his words, it was far too noisy.
21:27This was a blatant invasion where the American hand was very evident.
21:33He preferred to see all of this done covertly, quietly.
21:37Let's try to keep the American profile low.
21:40Bissell and his team came up with a revised plan for a nighttime landing at an isolated spot called the
21:46Bay of Pigs.
21:47But there were risks.
21:49There were only two roads to and from the beach, and they were surrounded by impenetrable swamps.
21:55This would make it hard for Castro to reach them, but equally hard for the brigade to fight its way
22:00out.
22:01Coral reefs offshore would make a nighttime landing dangerous.
22:05Once the beach was secured, the invasion force of 1,200 men would move inland to secure a nearby airfield
22:12in the small town of Palpite.
22:14They would continue down the road to the Australian sugar mill and the highway that runs the length of Cuba.
22:20From there, they would move towards either end of the island, gathering support as they went.
22:25The invasion would be preceded by a series of bombing attacks that would destroy the Cuban Air Force.
22:31Then, when Castro's forces moved to counterattack, they would be hit by the CIA bombers.
22:38In describing this plan to the President, however, Bissell neglected to tell Kennedy that the Escambray Mountains were 80 miles
22:45away from the new landing site,
22:46making an escape there no longer possible.
22:50He also made no mention of the CIA's assumption that under certain circumstances, the U.S. military would be called
22:57on for assistance.
22:59Despite his lingering reservations, Kennedy agreed. The operation could go forward.
23:05This is about the last thing in the world a new president would want.
23:08That's what he felt, I think, but couldn't force himself to simply tell the CIA and the Pentagon,
23:16look, you've organized it, now disorganize it.
23:21On April 4th, Kennedy and his top advisers met to review the plan one last time.
23:27Kennedy had invited an old friend, Senator William Fulbright.
23:32Fulbright had found out about the plans for invading Cuba and had given Kennedy a memo attacking it.
23:38The memo was drafted by Fulbright's chief foreign policy assistant, Pat Holt.
23:42It was illegal under U.S. law, under international law, and we would be stuck with what amounted to a
23:52civil war in Cuba.
23:56And even if our side won the civil war, we would be stuck with rebuilding Cuba.
24:07Despite what Fulbright had said, one by one, Kennedy's advisers voted to go ahead with the invasion.
24:13The momentum of events was such and the political entrapment as we thought of inheriting this from Eisenhower was so
24:22great that he couldn't call it off.
24:27Presumably, evidently, said to himself, all things considered, what the hell, let's do it.
24:32It was just that stupidly simple.
24:36Then on the morning of April 7th, the New York Times ran a front page story by Tad Schultz.
24:43It described the planned invasion of Cuba in detail.
24:47Through sources in Washington and Miami, Schultz had learned nearly everything.
24:52After reading the article, Kennedy tossed the paper to the floor.
24:56What's the use of planning a covert operation, he muttered, when Castro can read about it in the New York
25:01Times?
25:02What is important about this is not so much what I knew or the New York Times knew,
25:08but if we did, every Cuban Castro agent in Miami had to know it too.
25:15Despite the fact that the details of the operation were widely known, both in the U.S. and Cuba,
25:21neither the CIA nor the White House ever seriously considered calling it off.
25:26These are men who are supremely confident that they could manage things.
25:33If something went wrong one day, well, they could recoup and figure out another way to bring it to fruition.
25:43On April 12th, Kennedy held a press conference.
25:46Well, first I want to say that there will not be under any conditions
25:51be an intervention in Cuba by United States Armed Forces.
25:54For the Cuban exiles in Guatemala and the CIA planners in Washington, the question was, did he mean it?
26:01To ensure that there are no Americans at all?
26:04Fidel Castro whips up a furor in Cuba, charging the United States with arming and training mercenary forces for an...
26:11Despite Kennedy's denials, the Cubans knew an invasion was coming and they had begun to prepare.
26:19We already had information about what was going on and we were creating files on the people who were conspiring.
26:28As the Cubans prepared for invasion, the CIA readied a fleet of 16 B-26 bombers on an airfield in
26:35Nicaragua.
26:37The planes had been bought and refurbished by the CIA, but would be flown by Cuban exiles.
26:44The deniability aspect became the main theme.
26:47We saw tanks and so forth all lined up, just beautiful targets, you know what I mean?
26:52Just spread out that way, which an attack with napalm or something like that
26:57would have really wiped it out and neutralized that aspect of it.
27:00But they said, no, that's too much.
27:02That looks too much like U.S. presence.
27:04We've got to keep this thing look like it was a group of Cubans that did it.
27:10The first wave of bombers took off on April 15th, two days before the invasion was scheduled to begin.
27:17By late morning, bombs had fallen on three Cuban airfields.
27:31When bombing started at the three Cuban installations, two air bases and a civilian airport,
27:38it became obvious that this was the beginning of an invasion.
27:43Fidel ordered the complete mobilization of the armed forces to await the invasion.
27:55It could have been one or two in the morning.
27:57They called from security headquarters and gave the signal, the saint,
28:03which meant detain all the counter-revolutionaries that were on the lists.
28:09The Castro repressive forces arrested tens of thousands of people,
28:16locked them up before the invasion, so that the CIA knew at the time of the invasion
28:23that there would be no uprising on the island.
28:31Following the airstrike on the 15th, two of the CIA's bombers landed in Florida.
28:36The pilots claimed to be defectors from the Cuban Air Force,
28:39making it appear that the bombings had been carried out by Cubans against their own government.
28:45Cuba's ambassador to the United Nations accused the United States of bombing Cuba.
28:50U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson made a passionate response.
28:55These charges are totally false, and I deny them categorically.
29:03The United States has committed no aggression against Cuba,
29:08and no offensive has been launched from Florida or from any other part of the United States.
29:15Stevenson was unaware at the time of the extent to which the CIA was involved,
29:19but it quickly became apparent when reporters in Miami revealed the defection story was a hoax.
29:25The plane, which had been painted as Cuban Air Force, this was supposedly a defecting pilot who had done the
29:31bombing,
29:32that the paint was very fresh.
29:34Stevenson was furious and called Kennedy.
29:37It was Stevenson's anger at being deceived, and as he saw it made a fool of in the eyes of
29:44the world,
29:46that led Kennedy to scrub the second airstrike.
29:56When Bissell's staff received word that the bombings had been canceled, they were livid.
30:01I talked to Mr. Bissell on the phone and made it clear to him how truly disturbed we were about
30:08this thing,
30:09and I described to him what I thought would now happen.
30:13I said, as soon as it's light tomorrow morning, Casper's aircraft are going to be over the beachhead area.
30:22They're going to attack those ships all day, and we'll be lucky if they're not all sunk.
30:27When Bissell went to see Dean Rusk to plead with him, Rusk called President Kennedy.
30:33Kennedy said no, he wasn't going to change his mind, and Rusk offered the phone to Bissell.
30:39You talk to him, you convince him, and Bissell said no.
30:43The first airstrike had destroyed a number of Cuban planes.
30:47Castro hurried to the scene, assuming that more airstrikes would follow.
30:54I told him of the mistake I'd made of having moved the pilots away from the planes,
30:59and he told me, well, Carreras, now you give the order to have the pilots sleep under the wings.
31:06And so we put a cot, a small bed, under the wing of each plane.
31:15They would bring out breakfast as we were sitting in the cockpit with our parachutes, helmets, and oxygen masks on.
31:23I was flying a T-33, which was a jet aircraft.
31:28We would remove our mask and eat our breakfast, but we would remain in the cockpit.
31:34Fidel Castro wanted to make sure his pilots took off the instant the enemy was sighted.
31:39He ordered his remaining planes dispersed and brought in additional anti-aircraft guns.
31:45For 30 years, the arguments have continued.
31:49Had the bombing not been canceled, would the CIA have destroyed the Cuban Air Force,
31:54or would Cuban jets have shot down the brigade's bombers?
31:58Either way, how might the outcome of the battle that followed have been different?
32:03If I would have delayed that order to cancel a half hour, they would have been off.
32:10And everybody said, well, why didn't you stumble? Why didn't you get stuck in the elevator?
32:14You know, if you had just waited, that airstrike would have taken place and may have been the difference.
32:20Castro, after the first strike, had dispersed his planes and brought in anti-aircraft guns,
32:26so that the second strike would not have had the same effect.
32:33Had we known that those airstrikes were going to fail, we would have postponed the invasion.
32:38It would have been absurd for us to allow our men to land knowing that the skies were under Castro's
32:43control.
32:45Bissell accepted the cancellation of the second airstrike and allowed the invasion to go forward.
32:51He thought, once the brigade was on the beach, that Kennedy would be forced to change his mind and use
32:57U.S. troops.
32:58It was old, beat-up cargo banana boats.
33:02We didn't know what time we were supposed to land or arrive or anything.
33:06The only thing we knew was that we were on our way.
33:15The brigade would be commanded by a young former sergeant in the Cuban army, Pepe San Roman.
33:22But behind the scenes, the operation would be controlled by two American CIA officers
33:27stationed on a command ship named the Blagar.
33:31One of the officers, Greyston Lynch, would go ashore with a team of Cuban frogmen to place landing lights on
33:37the beach.
33:38On the way, there was an unexpected mishap.
33:42One of our lights that we used to mark the beach flared up until we could cover it up.
33:51Well, a militia saw it, so they came with a jeep and turned their headlights on us.
33:56We had to smoke them up. That started the whole thing.
34:07You could see about three lights. They looked like fishing boats, so no one could tell that it was the
34:12landing coming.
34:13Some of my friends shot at them from behind that wall.
34:17But when daylight came, over there was an entire flotilla.
34:22There wasn't just one boat or two. There was a flotilla.
34:25There was a flotilla.
34:30The brigade began coming ashore in small boats powered by outboard motors.
34:36Those boats were so full, you would just, don't move, otherwise water would get in.
34:45The night was very dark. There was no moon. It was very confusing.
34:49As we got closer to shore, they started firing tracer bullets from shore.
34:55At that point, I think we really mentally went into battle.
35:05At 3 a.m., Fidel Castro was awakened in Havana and told that the enemy had landed at Playa Giron.
35:13Castro immediately dispatched troops under the command of José Ramón Fernández, now the vice president of Cuba.
35:20Castro ordered Fernández to seize the town of Palpite.
35:23He knew that if his troops held there, the invaders would be trapped.
35:30And that's why Fidel, when I told him we took Palpite, he said, we've already won the war.
35:39Castro was also on the phone to his pilots.
35:45He told me to leave as soon as possible, to be over Playa Girona at daybreak, and surprise the landing
35:51there,
35:52and to attack the boats transporting the troops.
35:57I got a radio message to report back out to the ship immediately.
36:01When I got out there, I got the message that said that you're going to get hit at daylight by
36:07Castro planes.
36:15I flew over the first boat that I saw that was a little separated from the other ones.
36:20And later, I learned that it was the Houston.
36:26I launched state rockets, and the impact of one of them started the boat leaking petroleum.
36:33Finally, they allowed our planes to come up two at a time to the bay.
36:40And two at a time, they were shot down.
36:50We lost eight planes that day.
36:54We never could get all of the ammunition ashore.
36:58They attacked us all day on.
37:02By mid-afternoon on the first day of fighting, Fidel Castro arrived to take personal command of his forces.
37:14The commander-in-chief laid out for us that the defeat of the mercenary invasion had to be accomplished in
37:20less than 72 hours.
37:23Under no circumstance were we to allow them to establish themselves on Cuban soil and create a provisional government.
37:41That night, they came in with tanks, and it was a tremendous tank battle.
37:53The tanks and artillery were located in that little forest.
37:57They destroyed one of our tanks around this area.
38:00This was practically face-to-face combat.
38:03Our tank operators were not well trained.
38:06They had courage, they had advanced, but they did not know how to accurately fire their guns.
38:10Many of our men died right there in the trench beside the enemy.
38:15They were farmers, campesinos, students, workers.
38:25The death of my comrades affected me a lot because they were so young.
38:30Some were teenagers, 15 and 16-year-olds, 17.
38:34And it hurt a lot to see those young boys laying in the battlefield.
38:38There was dust everywhere, bullets flying everywhere.
38:41We went all over the place and we stood up and kept going.
38:44And I stopped for a moment to look at a man that had gotten up and was crying, a peasant.
38:53And I went to see what had happened to him.
38:55And he was carrying a baby, his son, that had been shot through the chest by the airplane.
39:05And it seemed at that point that the price, that price, was too much and was not worthwhile.
39:16Throughout the battle, Pepe San Roman sent message after message asking for help.
39:22To base, where are F-51s and transports, enemy tanks attacking?
39:27To base, request air cover, attacked by enemy jets.
39:32To base, tell Cuban pilots we are fighting last-ditch stand.
39:37To base, do you people realize how desperate the situation is?
39:42Do you back us up or quit? Tanks will hit me at dawn.
39:48Our message was basically air support, which we were supposed to receive.
39:58We were out of ammunition. Our tanks had no .50 or .30 caliber ammo.
40:02Our machine guns were empty. Our entire arsenal was depleted.
40:08I think at that point in time, the third day, the only thing that could have saved the day would
40:12have been a landing by American troops.
40:16A large U.S. naval force was stationed just outside Cuban territorial waters.
40:20If the President gave the word, U.S. ships and jet aircraft were prepared to join the battle.
40:26A contingent of Marines was on alert in Puerto Rico.
40:30We had to have meaningful support from the U.S. military because those few remaining Cuban planes had the absolute
40:40power to destroy us.
40:41They assumed that how could any President bear to suffer this kind of humiliation?
40:47He would have to send in troops and air support, at least, naval support.
40:54I mean, American ships were waiting out there. The planes were on alert.
40:58The CIA and the White House were closely monitoring the deteriorating situation in Cuba.
41:04On the evening of Tuesday, April 18th, following a formal reception at the White House,
41:10Kennedy called a meeting of his advisers to consider what ought to be done.
41:14I think what the CIA had in mind was once the thing started, that if it began to fail,
41:22that the United States, having gone that far, would have no choice but to commit U.S. troops and send
41:29in the Marines.
41:31But Kennedy had made clear that he would not do that.
41:36They thought that the force of events would compel him to do that, but he stuck to what he originally
41:42said.
41:43This would have been a very complicated landing from sea, facing troops that were highly motivated as it turned out,
41:54and people who believed they were defending their homeland.
42:03It would have been a bloody, bloody battle.
42:17I remember receiving a message at dawn on the 19th.
42:21An evacuation was being offered to the members of the brigade.
42:26I received it and passed it on to San Roman, who immediately and violently said,
42:33Tell them that we are here, that we have come to free our country, and that we will never abandon
42:40our territory.
42:42Here we will die.
42:45His exact words were very moving.
42:47I remember gaining an incredible admiration for this man.
42:52The brigade hadn't slept for three days, and they were out of food and water.
42:56Their air force was destroyed, and with Castro's long-range artillery now in place, resupply by sea was impossible.
43:05There was little choice but surrender.
43:09I realized we would not have the support that had been promised.
43:13I realized that for unexplainable reasons, we had been abandoned.
43:17More than a thousand men.
43:19This was the moment I remember the most.
43:23We captured dozens of men, some hidden in houses, some crouched in corners.
43:28No one fired a single shot.
43:30I can assure you we captured practically everyone.
43:33Later on that day, they moved a group of us outside to the beach,
43:38and they line us up there like a firing squad.
43:42And we all thought that we were going to be shot.
43:45Gone.
43:46And we just look at each other like saying goodbye, and stand still, and be brave, and that's it.
43:52And all of a sudden, we were surrounded by photographers and journalists from all over, and we were being displayed.
44:00Then they told us that the order was that we were not to be shot.
44:03After a day and a half or so, put on a bus to Havana, which was stopping in every small
44:09town on the way,
44:10so that people could gather around and shout insults.
44:14Grayston Lynch received word from the White House that he could attempt a rescue,
44:18even though by this time, most of the brigade had already been captured.
44:23Finally, he would have the full support of the United States Navy.
44:27Five destroyers and all the aircraft in the world over us,
44:32the protection if we'd had one of those planes before, we would have won.
44:38Lynch rescued 41 survivors.
44:41Most of them had been hiding in swamps near the beach.
44:44Nearly 1,200 were captured.
44:46The prisoners were eventually subjected to a mass trial and convicted of crimes against the state.
44:52They would be sentenced to 30 years in prison.
44:55Sitting in Cuban jails, the brigade veterans grew increasingly bitter.
45:05How would you feel?
45:07Disappointed?
45:08Betrayed?
45:10Abandoned?
45:11With a total indifference to anything that meant dignity, honor,
45:16that meant believing in an allied government.
45:19All that crumbled.
45:21We went with the idea that we could die.
45:25We did acknowledge that.
45:27We were prepared to die or to conquer,
45:30but never to be abandoned.
45:33Never to be betrayed.
45:35By the time it was over,
45:38185 members of the brigade were either killed or listed as missing in action.
45:42And there were dead on the other side as well.
45:50On the monument is written the account of the deaths here at Playa Girón.
45:56Many died along the road and at other battle sites.
46:00A total of 151 died defending their sovereign land.
46:09In the aftermath, Kennedy struggled for an answer.
46:13How had things gone so wrong?
46:15The United States had suffered a humiliating defeat in the first months of his presidency.
46:21He was agitated in a way that I had never seen him before.
46:25Extremely upset.
46:26And what he said more than once was,
46:28how could I have been so stupid to rely upon these advisors?
46:34He said, we've had a big kick in the ass and we deserved it,
46:38but we're going to learn some things from it.
46:40And one of the things he said he would learn
46:42was that he would never again be overawed
46:44by advice from the Joint Chiefs of Staff or from the CIA.
46:48Four days after the invasion of Cuba had begun,
46:51Kennedy held a press conference to make a statement about its failure.
46:55He took personal responsibility for the defeat.
46:57There's an old saying that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan.
47:03Fidel Castro further humiliated Kennedy in the United States
47:07by publicly displaying the brigade prisoners before the world's press.
47:11The Kennedys who were accustomed to victory not defeat
47:15were, like others, irritated out of proportion
47:22by this man getting away with this kind of mischief.
47:30Kennedy asked his brother Robert, said to be the second most powerful man in Washington,
47:35to head up a new effort to eliminate the Cuban leader.
47:38It would be code-named Operation Mongoose.
47:42We were going to have to come up with a plan to get rid of Castro and the Castro regime.
47:48When I asked Bissell what were the limits on the phrase get rid of,
47:52he said, as far as he knew, none. Get rid of.
47:55Get rid of would include numerous attempts to assassinate the Cuban leader.
48:00There was the poison wetsuit caper because they knew Castro liked diving.
48:06There was a poison cigar.
48:08There was the plot to kill him with a sniper rifle.
48:12The CIA were not the only ones trying to kill Fidel Castro.
48:16An anti-Castro terrorist group called Alpha 66 had formed under the leadership of this man,
48:23Eloy Gutierrez Manoya, who was later captured and spent 22 years in a Cuban prison.
48:29Working with Manoya, Antonio Vesiana personally organized two other attempts to kill the Cuban leader.
48:36This is the first time Vesiana has spoken of this on the record.
48:43In the end, they lost courage and didn't do it.
48:47But the men we trained were supposed to attend a press conference
48:50where a weapon would be hidden in a television camera.
48:53Taking advantage of surprise, with 700 journalists present,
48:57they were supposed to take the weapon from the camera and shoot Castro.
49:02None of the assassination attempts were successful.
49:05But Castro assumed that the Americans were unlikely to stop there.
49:09And he was right.
49:11Operation Mongoose also included plans for another invasion of Cuba.
49:16Castro was convinced that if there was going to be a next time,
49:20the next time would not be Cubans from Miami,
49:22there would be Americans from United States Armed Forces.
49:26The Cubans were desperate to find some way to get the Soviet Union to guarantee their survival and their independence.
49:34Accepting Soviet missiles, for them, seemed like a guarantee.
49:38I call upon Chairman Khrushchev to haul and eliminate this clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat to world peace.
49:47Just 18 months after the failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs,
49:51the United States, the Soviet Union, and Cuba confronted each other once again.
49:56This time, nuclear war hung in the balance.
50:01The U.S. blockade forced the Soviets to withdraw their missiles before they became operational.
50:06But what no one knew at the time was that the Soviet troops in Cuba also had short-range tactical
50:13nuclear weapons.
50:14If the blockade had failed, 100,000 U.S. soldiers were prepared to invade Cuba.
50:21This could easily have begun the ultimate confrontation.
50:25They'll be on a 24-hour alert. A first line of defense.
50:29Soviet commanders would have felt they had no choice.
50:31They would have fired their tactical nuclear weapons, and then we would have had no choice but to retaliate,
50:37and then the balloon would have gone up.
50:39So we were that close, you know, to an all-out nuclear war and didn't know it.
50:46In the end, nuclear crisis had been averted, but there were still the prisoners in Cuban jails.
50:52The captives, Cuban patriots who took part in the Bay of Pigs invasion,
50:56had been promised their liberty and returned for $62 million worth of food and drugs.
51:01Kennedy felt terrible about those who were thrown into Castro's prisons.
51:10They were his responsibility, and he was determined upon their release.
51:16Finally, in late December of 1962, a year and a half after they had been captured,
51:22the prisoners were released in exchange for a shipment of food and medical supplies.
51:26They arrived in Miami to a hero's welcome.
51:30It was very emotional.
51:32The Bay of Pigs Brigade was a symbol of the Cuban resistance to the Castro government.
51:37So, indeed, the Cuban community here in Miami saw us as heroes.
51:43Following their return, President Kennedy spoke to the Bay of Pigs veterans
51:47before a large crowd at the Orange Bowl in Miami.
51:52It was probably one of the biggest gatherings of Cuban exiles here that has ever happened.
51:57We gave him the flag of the brigade, and he gave that famous piece
52:02that he would return that flag to us and free Cuba.
52:06It was an emotional moment. The crowd was with him.
52:09But in the months that followed, the feeling towards Kennedy among brigade veterans would begin to change.
52:17President Kennedy's behavior was less than we would expect from the President of the United States,
52:23and we're bitter about that.
52:25The Bay of Pigs, Playa Huron.
52:29For Cuba, a symbol of triumph and independence.
52:32For the United States, an embarrassing defeat.
52:36The legacy of distrust and hostility continues to this day.
52:41Now, more than three decades later, what lessons have we learned from what happened here?
52:47It depends on who you ask.
52:50For the arguments have refused to subside.
52:53It wasn't a fiasco. It was a tragedy.
52:59A tragedy for the United States, and especially for the people of Cuba.
53:06We deserved a victory. Cuba deserved to be free.
53:11And it is a communist crime that continues to this day after 35 years,
53:17that our country continues to suffer and hurt under a communist system.
53:25When they talk about the errors committed, the vitality of the revolution, the support Fidel had,
53:34I think they also underestimated how strongly people would react to an invasion by a foreign power.
53:41Every country has a right to live its own course, to chart its own course, to figure out its own
53:48destiny.
53:48We like it or we don't like it. We support it or we don't support it.
53:53But every time we intervene in the course of that destiny, we produce consequences that are ugly,
54:01and that resonate for many, many generations.
54:04We never get out of these things.
54:06I think that's the lesson, and I think hopefully one day American presidents will learn it.
54:11The only way to resolve the Cuban problem in a mature way is by dialogue and by national reconciliation.
54:19Until we Cubans learn to do that, we really have no future as a democracy.
54:40They wanted to bury all this population.
54:47We want to be a leader and a leader of the Cuban government.
54:48But I was the leader of the Cuban government.
54:51With the Cuban government, I defended the population.
54:58I was the leader of the Cuban government.
54:59With the guitarist, I'm the king.
55:01In this way I'm the king.
55:09Y nadie se quiso oír del combate que tenía
55:14Y yo con mi melodía, con mi clavada cubana
55:24Patria libre y soberana la tenemos hoy en día
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