1961: the Bay of Pigs: a force of Cuban exiles trained and equipped by the U.S. invaded Cuba in a failed attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro.

Well before dawn on Monday, April 17, 1961, a brigade of 1,500 Cuban exiles landed on the beaches of the Bay of Pigs in southern Cuba. They hoped to trigger a counter-revolution that would overthrow the fledgling socialist and pro-Soviet regime headed by Fidel Castro.

Instead, within three days almost all of the exiles who formed Brigade 2506 were dead or captured. The United States, which had sponsored their invasion, was reeling from a major diplomatic and military embarrassment.

The increased mistrust between the two countries would contribute one year later to the Cuban missile crisis, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. Forty-five years later, the repercussions are still being felt in Washington's relations with Cuba and with Latin America.

Two years before the Bay of Pigs invasion, Castro's rebel army had toppled the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and seized power. Though Castro quickly nationalized U.S. corporations in Cuba, few people were certain whether he was a revolutionary populist or a full-fledged communist.

COMMUNIST THREAT?

President Dwight D. Eisenhower didn't want to take any chances on Soviet-sponsored communism gaining a foothold in Cuba, just 90 miles from Florida: The U.S. feared Cuba would serve as a beachhead for Soviet expansion in the Western Hemisphere, a base for exporting communist revolution to Latin America.

Planning for an operation that would overthrow the Castro regime began in April 1960. The blueprint for an invasion by Cuban exiles, many of whom had fled to the U.S. when Castro seized power, was already in place when President John F. Kennedy was inaugurated in January 1961.

Looking back, the warnings of a disaster in the making seemed to have been everywhere.

It was almost an open secret that Cuban exiles were being trained, armed, and directed by America's Central Intelligence Agency in Florida and Guatemala to invade Cuba. In a decision that would be debated for years, the Times published a story about the preparations early in April 1961. But, because of concerns about national security, references to the C.I.A. and an impending attack were deleted.

President Kennedy, who was angry that any story at all had been published before the invasion, would later confide to a Times editor: "If you had printed more about the operation, you would have saved us from a colossal mistake."

'ENEMY CLOSING IN'

The Bay of Pigs was apparently named for the fierce animals that once inhabited its swampy shores on Cuba's south coast (see map, p. 22). The 1,500 fighters who slipped ashore on landing craft from five freighters in darkness that April 17 had hoped to be greeted as heroes and ignite a coup or an uprising against Castro. Instead, without the element of surprise, unable to destroy Castro's air force, and out-numbered 10-to-1 by Castro's soldiers, they were crushed within 72 hours.

A brigade commander radioed these final messages: "Out of amino. Enemy closing in," and "Help must arrive in next hour." It never did.

Of about 1,500 commandos, 114 died and 1,189 were captured. (In December 1962, Castro released 1,113 in exchange for $53 million in food and medicine; the money was raised in the U.S.)

From a military standpoint, without support from American warplanes and troops, the mission was doomed. From a diplomatic perspective, the prospects for success weren't much better. The C.I.A. itself, in a scathing self-examination (made public in 1998 in response to a Freedom of Information Act request), concluded that the operation suffered from ignorance and incompetence, and that once "success had become dubious," the agency should have recommended to the President that the invasion be canceled.

Tad Szulc (pronounced Shultz), the Times correspondent who covered the Bay of Pigs invasion, would later write that Brigade 2506 was the "pathetically brave and pathetically inadequate" force enlisted in "one of the worst conceived, planned, and executed military-intelligence operations in modern history."

Szulc compared their crusade to that of the fictional Don Quixote, who dressed as a knight and attacked windmills. "Like Cervantes's hero, the brigade was possessed with lofty, idealistic, and visionary aims in the best Spanish tradition--to liberate Cuba from the totalitarian Castro regime," Szulc wrote. "And, like Don Quixote, it approached its enterprise in the most impracticable way imaginable."

SOVIET MISSILES

After the invasion, Castro's acceptance of a Soviet offer of nuclear missiles ignited another crisis with the U.S. that could have resulted in nuclear war. In October 1961, after tense negotiations over 13 days and an American naval blockade of Cuba, the Soviet missiles were withdrawn (so were American missiles in Turkey, near the Soviet border). Washington vowed never again to invade Cuba.

But the U.S. government would continue to pursue a covert campaign to eliminate Castro or topple his pro-Soviet dictatorship. Those efforts would include burning fields of sugar cane to create economic chaos and even attempts to assassinate Castro. (His chief lieutenant, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, was said to have been executed in 1967 by U.S.-trained government forces in Bolivia, where he was fomenting a communist revolution.)

POVERTY & REPRESSION

Castro survived not only the U.S. campaign to undermine him, but also the collapse in 1991 of the Soviet Union, Cuba's chief economic and political patron. Castro is now tangling with his 10th American president.

Though Castro has greatly expanded his nation's education system, Cuba's economy is dismal, and poverty and political repression are rampant.

Today, the beaches abutting the Bay of Pigs are tourist resorts. An American economic embargo against Cuba, put in place by Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, continues. But a Cuban baseball team was granted an exception to participate in this spring's World Baseball Classic in the U.S.

Veterans of the Bay of Pigs invasion reunited in 2001 in Cuba at an unusual conference of soldiers, spies, and scholars.

"Good thing you didn't shoot me," Castro told Alfredo Duran, who was a 24-year-old member of Brigade 2506 in 1961 and later became a lawyer in Miami. "My guys would have shot you," Castro said, "and neither of us would be here."

Sam Roberts is urban affairs correspondent for The New York Times.

BACKGROUND

Fidel Castro's overthrow of dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959 was followed by the implementation of socialist policies, including expropriation of foreign industries. Thousands of Cubans fled. In 1961, Castro declared himself a Marxist-Leninist and sided with the Soviet Union, raising great concern in the United States.

CRITICAL THINKING

* Note the intelligence failure alluded to on page 25, where it states that the invaders hoped to be greeted as heroes.

* Then refer students to the CIA report that characterized the invasion as the product of "ignorance and incompetence."

* Ask students what clues the article offers to help explain this colossal mistake," as President Kennedy termed the invasion. (Did the invaders "lofty, idealistic, and visionary aims" cloud their better judgment? Why did the Americans, who presumably had a better understanding of military tactics, not understand the problem more cleary?)

* Link the 1261 intelligence failure to a more recent event. Can students identify a major intelligence failure associated with Iraq? (U.S. and other intelligence services believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.)

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

* Should the U.S. have come to the aid of the invaders with warplanes and troops?

* Why do you think the U.S. did not aid the invaders? (News analyses later said the U.S. hoped to present the invasion as a purely Cuban exile venture.)

* Should the U.S. have later carried out its own invasion of Cuba? What would have been the pros and cons?

WRITING PROMPT

The U.S. allows tourists to visit Communist China but bans visits to Cuba. Write a brief essay explaining why the U.S. should continue this policy or should allow visits to Cuba.

FAST FACT

* Four days before the Bay of Pigs, Castro had thousands of potential opponents arrested.

WEB WATCH

www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/bayofpigs/ Primary source documents about the Bay of Pigs invasion. Includes links to phone calls by President Kennedy, statements by Fidel Castro, and much more.