James bond novels written by ian fleming. I have pictured him with his brother, robert kennedy, because the brothers together had great influence on u. S. Intelligence. Theres a lot to say about u. S. Intelligence under kennedy, even though he serves less than a full term because, of course, he was assassinated by a procuban american leftist, a disturbed former marine named lee harvey oswald. At the end, ill have some reflections about the assassination. Before we get to the main intelligence events of this administration, i want to mention a couple of other developments that are not as spectacular but still they deserve to be remembered as important milestones in u. S. Intelligence history, and they leave a legacy to this day. One of them is the president s daily brief. Which was created for kennedy as the president s intelligence checklist. When i first came to cia in 1990, i was i learned that one of the nicknames that insiders used was the pickle factory. They never used the company, but they used the term the pickle factory, and i couldnt figure out what it was until later i became a cia historian and heard about the pickle the president s intelligence checklist. It was renamed, of course, the president s daily brief, and it continues to this day. Every president has used it, and most have benefitted from it. It was new in the sense that, well, i mean president truman started the tradition of cia presenting to him a daily intelligence summary, but the pickle and later the pdb was the first specifically president ial product that was tailored to the president s agenda, his style, and his interests, with extremely limited distribution. So this is a major intelligence legacy from the Kennedy Administration. Another very Important Development was the creation of the Defense Intelligence agency in october of 1961, further expanding this constellation of agencies we know as the intelligence community. As we have learned in a previous class, that Community Around the time of the end of world war ii comprised just the state department, fbi, and the Military Branch intelligence organizations. And then with cias creation in 1947, cia becomes central to that community. President truman added the National Security agency in 1952. President eisenhower added the National Reconnaissance office to coordinate cia and air force activities regarding imagery from spy planes and satellites coming online, and then under kennedy, the Defense Department gets its own Intelligence Agency. Dia today is a Major National agency of the u. S. Intelligence community. As we have discussed doing important work in human intelligence and also specialized Technical Intelligence. So i got those Important Developments out of the way, and where want to focus on the two biggest intelligence subjects of the Kennedy Administration, which often are the two major historical episodes that people remember from this period. The bay of pigs fiasco, and the cuban missile crisis. So we have a fiasco and we have a crisis. And theyre both big problems. What they have in common is, obviously, cuba. Otherwise, they are vastly different kinds of problems. The bay of pigs fiasco was a cia covert paramilitary operation specifically a regime change operation that went very badly. The cuban missile crisis by contrast was a confrontation of superpowers, the United States and the ussr, over nuclear weapons. What the two big problems have in common, other than cuba, is both largely were the result of shortcomings in american intelligence. In both situations, bad intelligence analysis was at work. The bay of pigs operation was an example of faulty covert Action Planning, to be sure, but that includes some seriously flawed analysis, as well see. Likewise, the cuban missile crisis begins with bad analysis, but in the context of intelligence collection, both human and technical. In both situations, the intelligence shortcomings were made worse by executive decisions. By policymakers. And the two crises also were alike in that the ic learned a lot from the mistakes of them both. So lets turn to the bay of pigs. Revolutionary leader fidel castro turned his insurgency against the cuban dictator bautista into a government when he ousted the dictator in early 1959, this is during the Eisenhower Administration. Were dropping back just a bit for context. Castro quickly declared himself a communist, aligned with the soviet union, and this presented to the Eisenhower Administration a more dire situation than what they faced in guatemala a few years before. Eisenhower wanted something done about castro. Cia proposed covert action to destabilize the cuban economy with economic sabotage. Eisenhower said he wanted something more drastic. Now, historians disagree on whether eisenhower meant that cia should assassinate castro. To cia officials at the time, it seemed clear to them that eisenhower, who clearly would not use words out loud like assassinate and murder, is still clear to the cia officials that eisenhower really wanted castro removed from the scene by whatever means necessary. Just as they believed that eisenhower had expressed the desire that an african leader be removed, killed if necessary, to prevent the congo from going communist. Theres no smoking gun on either, on whether eisenhower really wanted them assassinated. Now, eisenhower was concerned about castro for the same reasons he had authorized cia to topple the elected government of guatemala in 1954. He believed that once communism was established in the western hemisphere it would spread by soviet supported subversion and revolution, and this is what as history teaches us, this is what communist governments do. I did my dissertation on the revolutionary government of granada, 1979 to 1983, and there you have the communist grenadians being helped by the communist cubans in order to spread communist revolution to other island nations in the caribbean. So that example from the 80s shows that in the 1950s, eisenhower was on to something. He was right. This was a threat. So eisenhower authorized cia to plan covert action to remove castro from power. Now, at this point, i want to remind you of our discussions in this class about covert action as an intelligence function. The purpose of u. S. Covert action is to influence political, economic, military conditions abroad in a way, in such a way at the hand of the United States is not apparent. The involvement of the u. S. Government is not evident to people or it can be deniedenied plausibly denied. The original cia plan for cuba under eisenhower was to infiltrate some 30 cuban agents, ciatrained agents, to create resistance groups within cuba. I think someone noticed that cuba is a real big place. It doesnt really stretch from washington past chicago. Its obviously located south of florida, but you can see how big it is here. And so the plan quickly grew from 30 to about 500 cia trained cuban exiles would infiltrate the country and link up with the anticastro forces believed to be operating in cuba. Cia efforts including a clandestine rodio station, would help build cuban support for opposing castro, and this is where it helps to have a knowledge of history. Even when youre planning a covert action. Essentially, cia was using the example of its predecessor, the office of strategic services, oss, sending agents into nazi occupied france, where the population didnt like the nazis. And was willing to take risks to support these commandos, these covert action operatives. Cia remembered that and remembered the positive aspects of the 1954 guatemala operation, and in your reading, professor Christopher Andrew points out that eisenhower and the cia ignored other relevant historical precedents, including the negative lessons of guatemala. Guatemala barely succeeded, even against a weak and hapless government. Basically lost its nerve and allowed a success for covert action there. They ignored the lessons of the hike operation in indonesia, where the people we were helping in their military rebellions turned out to be weak and ineffectual. I would add that they also ignored the lessons of many covert action operations involving the insertion of ethnic agent teams trained by cia in places like china and the ussr. These showed, again, if somebody had been paying attention, these showed that fully three quarters of these teams were caught. The principle was established but not really acted on that youre going to lose three quarters of your penetration agents when you send them into denied areas. And they also demonstrated the estimates of local opposition to communists was usually overinflated. So cia started infiltrating, and by the way, on the bottom right there, those are ciatrained tibetan commandoes getting ready for an air lift into chineseoccupied tibet. So cia started infiltrating a few cuban agents into cuba and soon found out there really wasnt an underground penetrat caught, which again, history might have taught them if theyve been paying attention to it. But instead of recalculating, or rethinking the whole plan, cia shifted its plans to an Amphibious Landing of some 700. Notice the mission creep. From what we have to 700 that will land by aircraft and para troop and establish a anticast re cubans and wait for u. S. Support. Sounds pretty neat. Now as the planning went on toward the end of the Eisenhower Administration, the force kept getting bigger in the planning. To ensure that when the landing happened, they could actually seize and hold a beach head. Now when kennedy came into office in january, 1961, he planned cuban invasion force had doubled to about 1500. So again, 30, 500, 700, 1500. They would be supported by a rebel air force, again, trained cuban exiles, pilots of b26 bombers which were in the cuban inventory, which cia had their own b26s painted to look like Cuban Air Force bombers. So the story would be that these were Cuban Air Force officers who defected and then joined the rebellion. The cuban invasion forces were trained at cia bases in ni nicaragua and guatemala. It was planned, in the cia documents, this was the preferred plan to land at the beach after trinidad. This was considered an anticastro town. Again, looking for that local support. It had a good port. It had a defensible beach with good maritime approaches and was close to the mountains. A key mistake in planning for this covert action was that for Operational Security, cias own intelligence analysts were kept in the dark. The experts on the state of cuba, they have no input. The director of operations did its own analysis. And based its optimistic assessments of internal cuban resistne resistness on the initial administration in 1959. The di analysts could have told the d. O. That things had changed. That castro had a lot more support. That the internal security was ruthlessly efficient and that there was essentially no opposition to him. Even the Deputy Director for intelligence ahead of the analytic branch, a man named robert amory was not informed. He knew what was going on but he was not consulted even though he personally had participated in the Pacific Campaign of world war ii in more than two dozen Amphibious Landings of this scale. A lot more than the marines that they had brought in to plan the operation, colonel jack hawkins. Amory and his analysts were simply cut out for security reasons. So some security. This is a january 10th, 1961 front page above the fold, New York Times article, u. S. Helps train an anticastro force at secret guatemala base. So not a secret any more. This covert action was no longer covert with this kind of publicity. Cuban exiles now, the world knows, are being trained, probably by the u. S. In guatemala for an attack on cuba. Yes. [ inaudible question ]. Various sources. When you engage in a large operation, unless you have Operational Security that is very tight, people talk. This happened with the albanian operations in late 40s and early 50s and the chinese operations that we mounted in the early to mid 1950s, when you get people together they will talk. And castro is knowing something is up even before this. Hes trying to penetrate these operations with his own people. You hire a bunch of cuban exiles, how many of them are 100 of them anticastro or has he sent one or two penetration in. It is good counterintelligence. And it gets worse. Ill get to that. So another factor in the planning that turned out to be a mistake was a requirement that castros air force be destroyed first. So, that the cuban exile pilots in their ciaprovided b26 pretending to be Cuban Air Force would have command of the air. That was prerequisite for the success of the operation. Cia recruited from help. They cre routed pilots from the Alabama National guard to assist. There was to be one air attack two days before dday, before the Amphibious Landing, alleged by these Cuban Air Force pilots who were disgruntled and decided to shoot up their own planes and that is why these cias b26s were painted to look like Cuban Air Force planes. The day before the invasion, the b26 exile force would come back and destroy any planes that remain. So two air strikes, command of the air was essential and this is one of several things that had to go well for the success of this operation. Yet, another problem came from president kennedys desire to maintain deniability that the u. S. Had nothing to do with this. We didnt like castro but these are independent patriotic cubans acting on their own. A month before the invasion, he ordered another landing site be found. Away from the town of trinidad and the populated center. People will find out early, this is long before the internet but they might take pictures. It will be too noisy. Cia had four days to shift planning to another location. And they found it at the fairly remote bay of pigs. Which is on this map here, obviously. All right. Away from populated centers but closer to havana, closer to the cuban military and air force. Also was surrounded by swamps. Let me go to that slide. There we go. The zep ata peninsula gave this relocated a name which became operation zapata by the swamps, far away from the mountains where you hope the exile force will be able to melt away into becoming that beacon of freedom for large numbers of disaffected anticastro cubans. That is the theory. Unknown to the planners was the fact that the bay of pigs was castros favorite place to go fishing, snorkeling, vacationing, he knew it well. Which helped when he arrived on scene to lead the defenders. Also unknown was that there were coral reefs and rocks that complicated navigation. The operations planners had looked at the imagery and concluded that that darker water were seaweed. Well, no, they were coral reefs. That is why castro liked to go snorkeling there. It is a good place to go. Let me read to you a couple of newspaper reports from the day. This is dateline new york, april 10th, so this is a week before the invasion. And it is Alistair Cook writing for the guardian of the united kingdom. Mystery of coming invasion, another harangue last night has failed to clear ip the mystery of the incoming invasion. Who is training tnd and who is the dominant power in exile and what the United States administration is going to do about it. Also in the guardian that day was an editorial, since president kennedy came to power hes done much to restore american prestige in the uncommitted world. But if recent reports of a projected invasion of cubia launched from american soil and carried out with the American Intelligence Service come true, then much of president kennedys labor will have been in vain. No one will believe that a group of cuban exiles, however burning their grievances could assemble of a force of sufficient size and equipment unless they have the backing of the american government. Dr. Cardona, the leader of the anticastro cubans has denied that the central Intelligence Agency is implicated in his plans. This may be true but reports from american sources suggest that it is not. Richard bissell, the head planner for the operation, said in 1967, a few years later, we didnt realize the extent to which it was believed by everyone else that this was a u. S. Government operation. Apparently cia wasnt reading the newspapers. And being critical of my former agency, because it deserves to be criticized on this. So on april 15th, 1961, two days before the invasion, the first wave of air attacks by six b26s, fewer than planned for, damaged many cuban planes on ground but failed to destroy them all. The attacks alerted the cubans that it is coming. Got the attention of the United Nations where the u. N. Ambassador Eli Stevenson found himself to be lying about u. S. Noninvolvement in this operation. Kennedy had orders the first air strike to be smaller than planned for and then canceled the second planned air strike. Cia was afraid to recommend at that point that the invasion be canceled. Even though everyone knew, at least on cia side, that without command of the air, the invasion was doomed. Theyre afraid to give that kind of bad news. Which is, if you think about it, is uncharacteristic. Intelligence is in the bad News Business but this is a case where they call it falling in love with your operation. It they had all fallen in love with it. When the invasion arrived on april 17th it faced a mull