Dean Rusk reflects on the
Invasion at Bay of Pigs
Brief Excerpts From: As I Saw It, Dean Rusk
As Told to
Richard Rusk
WW Norton & Company, New York
© 1990 Richard Rusk
Pg 211-212:
Kennedy knew of my doubts. Yet in replaying and rethinking everything, I wished that I had pushed my reticence aside and organized resistance to the invasion or at least insisted that the Joint Chiefs come clean with an honest, professional, military judgment regarding its probability of success.
Richard Bissell and Charles Cabell of the CIA came to my office and asked my permission to launch a second B-26 strike against Cuban airfields. They claimed the second strike had already been authorized. My impression was that this had not been part of the plan, although I wasn't sure because I never had a written copy of the plan. I told them I couldn't authorize the strike. They persisted, and I invited them to call President Kennedy and ask him personally. They elected not to do so but later claimed that had that strike gone ahead, Castro's plans would not have hit the landing ships.
That was nonsense. A handful of obsolete B-26's could not have provided air cover for the landing or destroyed Castro's entire air force, as small as it was. Even if American planes had flown the mission, as some were advocating, a sustained and systematic operation would have been required; we didn't even know where Castro had hidden all his planes.
Pg 212:
Although I deeply regretted not forcefully opposing the Bay of Pigs, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, I didn't let any blue sky show between me and the president. My opposition was not known even within the Department of State. Many of my colleagues, including Chester Bowles, believed that I favored the invasion. But when it came time to close ranks with the president, that I did.
Pg 216:
I have always marveled that the Bay of Pigs fiasco did not inflict greater damage upon the Kennedy administration than it did. We survived that episode better than we had any right to expect.
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