Washington, D.C., April 14, 2011 - Fifty years after the failed CIA-led assault on Cuba, the National Security Archive today filed a FOIA lawsuit to compel the Agency to release its “Official History of the Bay of Pigs Invasion.” The suit charges that the CIA has “wrongfully withheld” the multi-volume study, which the Archive requested under the FOIA in 2005.
Havana, Cuba: Documents discussed on the second day of an historic meeting of former adversaries in Havana show that CIA officials believed that the Cuban people would welcome a U.S.-sponsored invasion and spontaneously rise up against the Castro regime. CIA officials also expected that Cuban military and police forces would refuse to fight against Brigade 2506, the CIA's 1400-man mercenary invasion force.
Havana, Cuba: Documents released this afternoon on the second day of an historic meeting of former adversaries in Havana highlight missed opportunities for U.S.-Cuban rapproachment following the failure of the U.S.-sponsored invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.
Havana, Cuba: British documents released on the first day of an historic conference on the Bay of Pigs show that CIA Director Allen Dulles hoped that British refusal to sell military items to Cuba would force the Cuban government to request arms from the Soviet bloc, providing a pretext for U.S. intervention.
Havana, Cuba: On the eve of an historic meeting in Havana, former combatants, covert operatives, policy makers and Cuban government officials gathered to discuss one of the most infamous episodes in the Cold War—the April 1961 invasion at the Bay of Pigs. The three-day international conference, “Bay of Pigs: 40 Years After,” which includes former officials from the Kennedy Administration, the CIA, and Brigade 2506 members, and their counterparts in the Cuban military and government of Fidel Castro, opens tomorrow, March 22.
Washington, D.C., May 3, 2000 – Shortly after the CIA's botched paramilitary invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, President John F. Kennedy established a commission to investigate the failure and to consider whether the United States should conduct similar covert operations in the future.
Washington, D.C.: Thirty-seven years after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, the CIA today released a secret after-action report entitled "Record of Paramilitary Action Against the Castro Government of Cuba." The May 5, 1961 report was written by Colonel Jack Hawkins, the operation's paramilitary chief. His 48-page report cites poor CIA organization, and "political considerations" imposed by the Kennedy administration, such as the decision to cancel D-day airstrikes which "doomed the operation," as key elements of its failure.
Washington D.C.: A key document in the history of covert warfare, the CIA's own internal investigation into the April 1961 debacle at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba, was made public today.