loan fromthe Soviet Union. It was in this atmosphere that the American Intelligenceand Foreign Relations communities decided that Castro was leaning towardscommunism and had to be dealt with. In the spring of 1960, President Eisenhower approved a plan to sendsmall groups of American trained, Cuban exiles, to work in the undergroundas guerrillas to overthrow Castro. By the fall, the plan was changed to afull invasion with air support by exile Cubans in American supplied planes.The original group was to be trained in Panama, but with the growth of theoperation and the quickening pace of events in Cuba, it was decided to movethings to a base in Guatemala. The plan was becoming rushed and this wouldstart to show, the man in charge of the operation, CIA Deputy DirectorBissell said that, . . . There didn't seem to be time to keep to the original plan and have a large group trained by this initial cadre of young Cubans. So the larger group was formed and established at La finca, in Guatemala, and there the training was conducted entirely by Americans . . . . It was now fall and a new president had been elected. PresidentKennedy could have stopped the invasion if he wanted to, but he probablydidn't do so for several reasons. Firstly, he had campaigned for some formof action against Cuba and it was also the height of the cold war, to backout now would mean having groups of Cuban exiles travelling around theglobe saying how the Americans had backed down on the Cuba issue. Incompetition with the Soviet Union, backing out would make the Americanslook like wimps on the international scene, and for domestic consumptionthe new president would be seen as backing away from one of his campaignpromises. The second reason Kennedy probably didn't abort the operation isthe main reason why the operation failed, problems with the CIA.Part II: Failure and Ramifications. The failure at the CIA led to Kennedy making poor decisi...
