les P. Cabell, and the one principally responsible for the operation, Deputy Director Richard Bissell. Kennedy assumed full responsibility for the failure, although he secretly blamed the CIA and ordered a full investigation of the operation. The Bay of Pigs invasion was both a major embarrassment for Kennedy and the CIA and a key issue with which Castro could rally the Cubans against the U.S. Soon after the attempted invasion, Castro formally declared himself to be a Marxist Leninist, thus making Cuba the first communist country in the Western Hemisphere, as well as a tremendous threat to the United States. In addition, the attack set the stage for the major confrontation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union: the missile crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. There are several reasons why the Bay of Pigs invasion was unsuccessful. According to The Inspector General's Survey of the Cuban Operation," a highly critical internal inquiry into the CIA's Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, the agency committed numerous mistakes in both the planning and execution of the plan. First of all, the CIA ignored the fact that there was no controlled and responsive underground movement ready to rally to the invasion force, and that Castro's ability both to fight back and to roll up the internal opposition must be very considerably upgraded. Secondly, the project had become too large for the agency to handle alone, as well as being far too vast to attempt to keep secret. Lastly, the U.S. government greatly underestimated the size and strength of the Cuban military. If the CIA had taken this into consideration, it would not have sent 1,500 inadequately trained exiles against the entire army of Cuba. For the project to have been successful, there should have been greater collaboration between the CIA and the president, as well as a more thorough investigation into the current state of affairs in Cuba. Furthermore, the U.S. shou...
