Was assassinated by a procuban american leftist a disturbed former marine named Lee Harvey Oswald at the end. Ill have 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 theyre not as spectacular, but still they deserve to be remembered as important milestones in Us 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 use the company, but they used the term the pickle factory and i couldnt figure out what it was until later. I became a ci historian and heard about the pickle. The president s intelligence checklist. It was renamed. Of course the president s daily brief and continues to this day. Every president has used it and most have benefited from it. It was new in the sense that well, i mean president truman started the the tradition of cia presenting to him a daily intelligent 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 is the Intelligence Community as weve learned in previous class that community of around the time of the end of World War Two comprised just the state department fbi in the Military Branch intelligence organizations, and then with cias creation 1947 cia becomes central to that Community President truman added the National Security agency in 1952. To president eisenhower added the National Reconnaissance office to coordinate cia and air force activities regarding imagery from spy planes and and satellites that were coming online and then under kennedy. The Defense Department gets its own Intelligence Agency dia today is a Major National agency of the Us Intelligence community as weve discussed doing important work in human intelligence and also specialized Technical Intelligence. So i got those Important Developments out of the way, and i want to focus on the two. Biggest intelligent 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 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 operations 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 with the two big problems have in common other than cuba. Is that 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 intelligent shortcomings were made worse. By executive decisions by policymakers and the two crisis also are also are alike and that the ic learned a lot from the mistakes of 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. Now cia proposed cover action to destabilize a 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 believe that eisenhower had expressed the desire. That in african leader, Patrice Lamumba 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 sovietsupported subversion and revolution and this is what as history teaches us. This is what communist governments do did my dissertation on the revolutionary government of grenada, 1979 and 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 80 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 us covert action is to influence Political Economic military conditions abroad in a way in such a way that the hand of the United States is not apparent. The involvement of the Us Government is not evident to people or it can be denied plausibly denied. The original cia plan for cuba under eisenhower was to infiltrate some 30 cuban agents cia trained 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 at cuban exiles would infiltrate the country and link up with the anticastro forces that were believed to be operating in cuba. Cia propaganda efforts including a clandestine radio station. This is all on the guatemala model would help build internal cuban support for opposing castro. And this is where it helps to have a knowledge of history, even when youre planting 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 these commandos these covert action operatives. Cia remembered that and remember the positive aspects of the 1954 guatemala operation. And youre in your reading professor Christopher Andrew points out that eisenhower and cia ignored other relevant historical. Precedence including the negative lessons of guatemala guatemala barely succeeded even against a week and hapless government. That basically lost its nerve and allowed a success for covert action there. They ignored the lessons of the hike operation and indonesia where the people that 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 a places china and the ussr. These showed again, if somebody been paying attention these show that fully three quarters these teams were caught the principle was established but not really acted on that. Youre going to lose three quarters of your penetration agents you send them into denied areas. And they also demonstrated the estimates of local opposition to communists was usually over inflated. So cia started infiltrating and by the way the on the bottom right there. Those are cia trained tibetan commandos getting ready for an airlift into chinese occupied tibet so ci started infiltrating a few cuban agents into cuba and soon found out that there really wasnt an underground resistance and most of their penetration agents were caught which again history might have taught them if theyve been paying attention to it. But instead of recalculating a rethinking the whole plan cia shifted its plans instead to an Amphibious Landing of some 700 notice the Mission Creep here. We start with 3500 now, were up to 700. Trained cuban exiles that were going to land by Landing Craft and paratroop penetrations establish a beachhead relocate to the mountains become a Resistance Force attract antiCastro Cubans declare themselves to be the legitimate government of cuba and wait for us support. Sounds pretty neat. Now as a planning went on towards the end of the Eisenhower Administration the force kept getting bigger. In the planning to ensure that when the landing happened that they could actually seize and hold a beachhead. Now when kennedy came into office in january 1961 the planned cuban invasion force had doubled to about 1500. So again 3,500 700 1500 they would be supported by a rebel air force again trained. Cuban exiles pilots of b26 bombers which were in the cuban in inventory. We see i had its own b26 is that were painted to look like human air force bombers. So the story would be of these were air force Cuban Air Force officers who defected and then join the rebellion. The cuban invasion forces were trained at cia bases in nicaragua and guatemala. The invasion was planned originally i saw in the cia declassified documents. This was the preferred plan to land at the beach at. 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. The key mistake in planning for this covert action was that for Operational Security cias own intelligence analysts. Kept in the dark the experts on the current experts on the state of cuba. They had no input the directorate of operations. Did its own analysis . And based its optimistic assessments of internal cuban resistance on the initial opposition to castro when he came to power in 1959. Well, its two years later and the analysts of the directorate of intelligence. The di analysts could have told the do 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 Two in more than two dozen Amphibious Landings. Of this scale more a lot more than the marine the us marine that they had brought in to plan the operation colonel jack hawkins. Amory and all of 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. Us helps train and anticastro force at secret Guatemalan Air ground base. Now secret anymore so another mistake was that this covert action was no longer covert. With this kind of publicity cuban exiles now the world knows are being trained probably by the us in. Guatemala for an attack on cuba yes. Like how it is out here. Various sources when you engage in a large operation unless you have Operational Security. Thats very tight people talk. This happened with the albanian operations in late 40s and early 50s various other operations that chinese operations that we mounted in the early to mid1950s when you get people together, they will talk and castro is know 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 it has castro sent one or two penetration agents in its good counterintelligence. So very good question so multiple sources. And 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 cia provided b26s pretending to be Cuban Air Force. Would have command of the air that was a requisite that was prerequisite for the success of this operation. Cia recruited some help. They recruited pilots from the Alabama National guard. To assist there was to be one air attack. Two days before dday before the Amphibious Landing allegedly by these Cuban Air Force pilots who were disgruntled and decided to shoot up their own planes and thats why these the cias b26s were painted to look like human air force plans the day before the invasion the b26 exile force would come back to cuban air bases to destroy any planes that remain so two airstrikes command of the air was essential and this was 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 us had nothing to do with this, you know, 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. Its populated center, you know, people will find out early, you know, this is long before the internet, but they might take pictures. Too noisy. Cia had four days to shift all of its planning to another location. And theyve 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 with surrounded by swamps let me go to that slide. There we go. The zapata peninsula gave this relocated operation its name. So this became operation zapata and again, they a big surrounded by the zapata swamps. Its far away from the mountains where you hope the exile force will be able to melt away into to become that beacon of freedom for large numbers of disaffected antiCastro Cubans. Thats the theory unknown to the planners was the fact that the bay of pigs was actually castros favorite place to go fishing snorkeling. Vacationing he knew it very well, which really helped when he arrived on scene to help 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 those that darker water were that was seaweed. Well, no, they were reefs. Thats why. Castro like to go snorkeling there. Its a good place to go. Let me read to you a couple newspaper reports from the day. This is a date line. New york april 10th, so this is a week before the invasion. And its Alistair Cooke is writing for the guardian of the United Kingdom mystery of coming invasion another three hour harangue from castro and havana last night has failed to clear up the mystery of the coming cuban invasion who is training it where it is to be mounted from whose is the dominant power and 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 he has done much to restore american prestige in the uncommitted world. But if recent reports of a projected invasion of cuba launched from american soil and carried out with a connivance of the American Intelligence Service come true then much of president. Kennedys labor will have been in vain. Um, no one will believe that a group of cuban exiles. However burning their grievances could assemble a force of sufficient size and with sufficient equipment unless they had the backing of the american government. Dr. Cardona the leader of the anti Castro Cubans has denied that the central Intelligence A