NEW FACTS REVEALED ABOUT U.S. INVASION OF CUBA IN 1961
Brig. Gen. (Ret.) S.L.A. Marshall, a military affairs analyst, whose column is syndicated by the Times/Post Service, recently revealed fresh details about the CIA-sponsored invasion of Cuba in 1962.
The information was given him, he says, by the late Luis Somoza, the dictator of Nicaragua whom Gen. Marshall found to be a "warm, congenial man." Somoza asked Marshall to see him on February 2, 1962. The American military analyst reports Somoza's words as follows:
"I am as responsible for that disaster as is your President Kennedy. I mean I share the burden of guilt with hin. He made the main mistakes. My blunder is that I did not turn the whole thing off when I knew that we were going fatally wrong. I had the power. You see, I was coordinator from this end; the show was being staged from our soil. I am not a technician of war. But I know enough to see when technicians are either lacking or mistaken.
"During the time when we were building up to it, I took assurances from the wrong people -- your people -- CIA agents encharged to deal with me. I thought that on operational matters, they spoke for your Government. You had carriers off our coast, covering what we were doing. When I asked: 'Will they be prepared to support the invasion in an emergency?' I was told: 'Certainly.' And I believed it. I did not realize that this was not the White House speaking.
"I was in on the scheme from the beginning. There was need of a base from where we could stage the air strikes against Cuba in secret. You know Puerto Cabezas (population 500) on our east coast, having been there. That was the nerve center. I went to the people there 70 days before the show. I said: ‘Here is our chance to do something for democracy in America, but you will have to make
sacrifices.' They were willing. So for two months they were cut off from the world; no mail or freight moved in or out. No one could leave; security guards saw to that. One pregnant woman had to see a specialist in Managua. I sent him to her in my plane; that's how careful we were. We wanted success and I foolishly thought we had it made.
"There were to be three air strikes out of Puerto Cabezas, timed exactly to help the amphibious landing in the critical hour. The purpose was clear enough -- to knock out the Cuban Air Force as the expedition clawed its way ashore and while it was solidifying the beachhead. Whether we had enough bombers and air crew to be sure of so doing, I had no way of judging, and besides, that was not my problen.
"Well, just before the curtain was to go up, I got a call from Washington. This was on Thursday. The call was from CIA. I was told, 'We are moving up the first two strikes 24 hours; they will go on Saturday instead of on Sunday.' I simply could not believe what I heard. So I protested with all of the force I could muster. Not being a military man, I still knew what the change meant. The two air strikes and the amphibious landing would be 48 hours apart, time enough to serve to get through to the White House to protest; there was no answer. So I had a battle with my conscience and it lost. My brother, Tacho, who commands our forces, was not at hand to advise me. He had been sent on a mission to Formosa, as part of the cover plan.
"Why was the plan changed? I was never told. No one who knew ever tried to talk to me about it. My guilt comes of the fact that knowing we were going on to a catastrophe, and knowing that men would die for no good end in the course of it, I still did not call the whole thing off when I had the power to do so. The only assumption possible for me is that President Kennedy changed the plan to test out national sentiment as revealed by the Sunday newspapers, though none of us will ever know for sure. Then after the first two strikes were re-set, dooming the expedition, the third strike was canceled wholly. Why? Because either the man in the White House or your man in U.N. or both, chickened out. And put me on the list of individuals who chickened out. I have no excuse for myself.
"In the end we were directly defeated and shamed by these mistakes, though there were others. The two strikes missed three fighter planes. We had two communications ships close to the Bay of Pigs -- here was the brain of the operation. The fighters went after them. We also had a U.S. carrier marking time 70 kilometers away from the beachhead. My people had put Nicaraguan panels and synbols abroad that carrier in case of need; I had witnessed it. So I called up Washington and begged that your carrier air power be loosed to stop those three pursuit planes. The carrier was so far out that no one would have known the difference. But Washington said flatly no and that was what killed us before we fairly started -- the three pursuit planes."
Marshall states that there is "much more to the interview, but that is enough for the purpose at hand."
The moral he draws from it all is as follows: "Iuis Somoza had tried hard in effort to cooperate with the United States in an undertaking that so changed the course of our history that why we are in Vietnam cannot be explained without being honest with ourselves about why the Bay of Pigs is something we would rather forget."
In short, Marshall is repeating in this curious way the argument of the war hawks -- that the U.S. should "go in to win"; i.e., absolutely destroy Vietnam and "take on China" if that is necessary to bring "victory."
There is indeed a connection between the U.S. imperialist invasion of Cuba in 1961 and the current U.S. imperialist effort to conquer Vietnam; but it is not the connection claimed by this military affairs analyst.
First of all the same utterly cynical attitude that reeks in every word of Nicaragua's bloody dictator features the calculations of the Johnson administration with regard to Vietnam. To attack a small country in Hitlerite blitzkrieg fashion is quite all right, according to this attitude, so long as the operation succeeds.
One of the reasons the 1961 affair failed was because the Cubans met it instantly and with all their energy. This caught the CIA and the Pentagon completely by surprise.
Once their expedition foundered, it was difficult to immediately repeat it in face of aroused public opinion.
To meet the American thrust in the appropriate way, the Vietnamese people require massive aid from China and the USSR. But Moscow and Peking have reacted passively and not given that aid.
Nevertheless the Vietnamese people are fighting so heroically that it is certain they will win, though at great cost.
When this happens we can expect to hear "explanations" about the U.S. role that will sound like echoes of Somoza's "analysis" of the defeat at Playa Girén.