--- aliases: - Bay of Pigs - Operation Zapata - Operation Pluto - Bahia de Cochinos category: Intelligence Operation created: 2026-05-15 end: 1961-04-19 location: Bay of Pigs (Bahia de Cochinos), Cuba start: 1961-04-17 summary: The Bay of Pigs invasion was the CIA's failed April 17-19, 1961 covert operation deploying approximately 1,400 Cuban exiles of Brigade 2506 against Fidel Castro, collapsing after Kennedy cancelled the follow-up air strikes and Castro's forces captured 1,179 survivors - prompting CIA Inspector General Lyman Kirkpatrick's suppressed postmortem conclusion that 'plausible denial was a pathetic illusion.' tags: - Event - CIA - Cuba - ColdWar - 1960s - AntiCastro title: Bay of Pigs Invasion updated: 2026-05-16 --- The Bay of Pigs invasion (April 17-19, 1961) was a [CIA](/organizations/central-intelligence-agency/)-organized covert paramilitary operation that deployed approximately 1,400 Cuban exile fighters of Brigade 2506 against [Fidel Castro](/people/fidel-castro/)'s [Cuba](/places/cuba/), ending in the capture of 1,179 survivors and the most publicly damaging intelligence failure in the agency's history to that date. Authorized under President [Dwight D. Eisenhower](/people/dwight-d-eisenhower/) and inherited by President [John F. Kennedy](/people/john-f-kennedy/), the invasion failed for a combination of operational, political, and intelligence reasons - among them Kennedy's last-minute cancellation of the D-Day follow-up air strikes, the early collapse of the cover story at the [United Nations](/organizations/united-nations/), and systematic G2 infiltration of the exile training program in [Guatemala](/places/guatemala/). CIA Inspector General Lyman Kirkpatrick concluded in his suppressed October 1961 report: "Plausible denial was a pathetic illusion." The invasion's veterans became the organizational core of the CIA's subsequent Cuba operations, and many reappeared in the [Watergate](/events/watergate/) burglary and the [Contra](/organizations/contras/) network of the 1980s.[^1] ### Authorization and Planning The formal authorization was an NSC directive titled "A Program of Covert Action against the Castro Regime," approved by Eisenhower on March 17, 1960, through the 5412 Group (Special Group). It authorized four elements: creating a unified Cuban exile political opposition outside Cuba, a propaganda offensive to the Cuban people, a covert intelligence and action organization inside Cuba, and a paramilitary force for potential future action. The initial budget was $4.4 million; by April 1961 it had grown to approximately $45 million. [Richard Bissell](/people/richard-bissell/), the CIA's Deputy Director for Plans, was designated the operation's principal architect. The operation's early cryptonym was Pluto; after the landing site was changed it became Zapata. Training of the exile force began at Camp Trax (cryptonym JMTRAX), a CIA base at the La Helvetia coffee plantation in the Sierra Madre near Retalhuleu, Guatemala, from approximately July 1960. The exile force was designated Brigade 2506, named for trainee Carlos Rafael Santana, membership number 2506, who died in a training accident on September 8, 1960. By the time of the invasion Brigade 2506 comprised approximately 1,400-1,500 men in six infantry battalions, with five M-41A2 tanks, an exile air force of 16 B-26 bombers, eight Curtiss C-46 transports and six C-54 transports, and naval support. Brigade military commander was Jose "Pepe" San Roman; political leader was Manuel Artime Buesa. On November 29, 1960, Eisenhower met with the 5412 Group and demanded expedited preparations before leaving office. In the final Eisenhower-Kennedy transition meeting on January 19, 1961, Eisenhower urged Kennedy to "do whatever is necessary" and called Cuba the highest priority.[^1] ### The Trinidad Plan and the Site Change On February 3, 1961, the Joint Chiefs of Staff evaluated the original Trinidad landing plan and concluded it "offered the best area in Cuba for the accomplishment of the stated objective," with caveats that success depended on Cuban internal support and that intelligence came from "second and third hand sources." On March 11, 1961, Bissell presented the Trinidad plan to Kennedy at the White House. Secretary of State [Dean Rusk](/people/dean-rusk/) objected to its visibility. Kennedy rejected the plan, saying he "could not endorse a plan that involved the United States so openly" and that it looked like "a World War II assault operation." Bissell simultaneously argued that time pressure made cancellation infeasible: it was "infeasible to hold all these forces together beyond early April." By March 12, Kennedy had ordered the plan redrawn. The Bay of Pigs - a sparsely populated swamp on Cuba's south coast approximately 80 miles west of Trinidad - was selected partly because it had an airstrip that could theoretically support B-26 operations while preserving the fiction that air support originated from within Cuba. The CIA produced the Zapata Plan on March 15; Kennedy approved it. What the site change eliminated: the escape route to the Escambray Mountains available from Trinidad, coordination with existing Cuban resistance groups, and population center proximity that might generate a local uprising. The JCS reviewed the Zapata Plan and determined it was "feasible" but noted "inaccessibility of the area may limit the support anticipated from the Cuban populace" - and that none of the available alternatives was as likely to succeed as the original Trinidad Plan.[^1] ### Air Operations and the Cover Story Collapse The original air plan called for over 40 sorties before the invasion. Kennedy approved only one initial strike reduced to eight B-26 bombers targeting Castro's main airfields. The April 15 strikes (Operation JM/Fury) flew from Puerto Cabezas, [Nicaragua](/places/nicaragua/), targeting Campo Libertad, San Antonio de los Baños, and Santiago de Cuba. The CIA's initial assessment claimed the strikes destroyed 50 percent of Castro's offensive air; subsequent analysis showed considerably less damage. Castro's surviving air force at the start of the invasion included approximately two B-26s, two Sea Furies, and three T-33 jet trainers. The cover story required that the attacking aircraft appear to be defecting Cuban air force pilots. Exile pilot Mario Zuñiga was presented to the media as a Cuban defector who had participated in the attack. The story collapsed within hours: journalists noticed the B-26 had a solid metal nose cone with gun mounts, while Castro's B-26s used plastic nose cones with wing-mounted guns, and the guns were sealed with masking tape. Adlai Stevenson, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, had been deliberately kept uninformed and had brandished CIA-provided photographs at the UN General Assembly insisting the raids were carried out by defecting Cuban pilots. When the Soviet ambassador exposed the deception, Stevenson was furious and pressed Washington to stop the operation. His exposure as an unwitting instrument of a collapsed cover story became a significant factor in the decision to cancel the D-Day follow-up strikes.[^1] ### The D-Day Air Strike Cancellation On April 14, Kennedy directed Bissell to reduce the follow-up strikes to "minimal." On the evening of April 16, approximately 9:30 PM, National Security Adviser [McGeorge Bundy](/people/mcgeorge-bundy/) telephoned CIA Deputy Director General C.P. Cabell to inform him that the dawn April 17 strikes "should not be launched" until they could be conducted from a secured beachhead airfield. (Source: Cabell's May 9, 1961 memorandum to the Taylor Commission, FRUS Vol. X, Document 108.) Cabell and Bissell went to Rusk's office around 10:15 PM and argued for proceeding. Rusk refused, citing "political considerations" and Stevenson's insistence "that the air strikes would make it absolutely impossible for the U.S. position to be sustained." At approximately 4:30 AM on April 17, Cabell phoned the White House requesting fighter cover for ships withdrawing from the beach; Kennedy disapproved after consulting Rusk. Colonel Jack Hawkins, the CIA's chief paramilitary officer for the operation, testified to the Taylor Commission: "The curtailment of tactical air must be regarded as the one factor which insured failure." Bissell later characterized the cancellation as "certainly the gravest contributory factor in the operation's failure."[^1] ### The Battle (April 17-19) Brigade 2506 landed at Blue Beach (Playa Giron) as the primary landing and Red Beach (Playa Larga) to the north on the morning of April 17. Castro's surviving air force attacked the landing fleet at dawn: a Sea Fury struck the transport Houston below the waterline; the transport Rio Escondido was sunk, destroying the brigade's communications van, all aviation gasoline, and 72 tons of ammunition. CIA supply ships carrying weapons for an additional 1,500 men were ordered to withdraw beyond the horizon and never returned to the beach. Planning had also failed to account for submerged coral reefs and razor-sharp crabs piled several feet deep, damaging landing craft approaching shore. Castro mobilized approximately 20,000 troops under field commander Jose Ramon Fernandez. The 339th Battalion was already positioned near Central Australia, close to the Bay of Pigs - directly contradicting CIA assessments that no Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces were in the area. Pre-invasion arrests by Cuban G2 had neutralized an estimated 20,000 to 250,000 Cubans in the days before the invasion, eliminating the internal uprising that the entire operation's political logic required. By April 19 the brigade was surrounded and its ammunition exhausted. San Roman's final transmission to CIA forward officer Grayston Lynch: "Am destroying all my equipment and communications. Tanks are in sight. I have nothing to fight with. I cannot wait for you." San Roman was captured in the swamps on April 25. Four American volunteers flying B-26 combat missions were killed on April 19: Major Riley Shamburger, Wade Gray, Captain Thomas W. Ray, and Leo Baker. All four are honored on the CIA Memorial Wall in Langley. Their presence, long officially denied, was publicly acknowledged only years after the fact.[^1] ### How Castro Knew The invasion was compromised through multiple simultaneous channels. Cuban G2 had penetrated Brigade 2506 training camps in Guatemala with double agents who filed detailed intelligence reports from at least January 1961. The scale of the Camp Trax operation could not be concealed from local populations or regional intelligence services. The Miami exile community was equally porous. Plans were "common knowledge" among Cuban exiles and Havana's intelligence had ready access to refugee networks in [Miami](/places/miami/). On January 10, 1961, the New York Times published an account of exile training in Guatemala. On April 7, 1961, reporter Tad Szulc filed a story - toned down at Kennedy's personal request - reporting U.S. experts were training an exile invasion force. Kennedy's private reaction: "I can't believe what I'm reading! Castro doesn't need agents over here. All he has to do is read our papers!"[^2] ### The Kirkpatrick IG Report and Its Suppression CIA Inspector General Lyman Kirkpatrick completed "The Inspector General's Survey of the Cuban Operation" in October 1961, a 150-page classified postmortem delivered to incoming DCI [John McCone](/people/john-mccone/) on February 16, 1962. Its central conclusion: "Plausible denial was a pathetic illusion. The Agency failed to recognize that when the project advanced beyond the stage of plausible denial it was going beyond the area of agency responsibility as well as agency capability." Among the report's documented findings: the operation received the CIA's "lowest-ranked case officers"; staffing was insufficient at all levels; Spanish-language deficiencies plagued the training program; the CIA treated Cuban exile leaders as "puppets" rather than building genuine partnership; and the agency had "conducted an overt military operation beyond Agency responsibility as well as Agency capability." Kirkpatrick distributed copies to [Allen Dulles](/people/allen-dulles/), McCone, the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and [Robert Kennedy](/people/robert-kennedy/) - circumventing normal IG channels and causing what witnesses described as an "extremely stormy session" between Dulles and Kirkpatrick. McCone ordered all but one of approximately 20 copies destroyed; the surviving copy remained locked in the DCI's safe. [Tracy Barnes](/people/tracy-barnes/), Bissell's deputy and the operation's Washington coordinator, authored a formal response characterizing the report as "an incompetent job," "biased," and "malicious." Bissell argued that political deniability requirements and senior policy makers bore primary responsibility. McCone bound both documents together as a paired submission to the PFIAB. CIA historian Jack Pfeiffer's five-volume internal history (written 1979-1984) sided against Kirkpatrick across all five volumes, alleging he was motivated by desire for Bissell's position. CIA Chief Historian David Robarge, authorizing the 2016 public release of Pfeiffer's Vol. V, acknowledged Pfeiffer's draft suffered from "serious shortcomings in scholarship" and a "polemical tone." The Kirkpatrick report remained classified for 36 years, declassified on February 22, 1998, following a two-year FOIA effort by the National Security Archive. It was published in full as Kornbluh, Peter, ed. *Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba* (New Press, 1998).[^2] ### The Taylor Commission Kennedy established the Cuba Study Group on April 22, 1961, chaired by General Maxwell Taylor and including Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Allen Dulles, and Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Arleigh Burke. The group conducted 21 formal sessions and issued its final report on June 13, 1961. The Taylor Commission attributed failure to "a mistaken belief that this large operation could be conducted with plausible deniability; to a lack of coordination among U.S. agencies; to attempt to command from a distance, with headquarters at Washington." It found the JCS had effectively approved the plan by not explicitly rejecting it, though the Chiefs privately assessed the odds of success at 30-70 against, at best. The Taylor Commission's findings led directly to [Operation Mongoose](/programs/operation-mongoose/), approved in November 1961, as the successor anti-Castro covert program under [Edward Lansdale](/people/edward-lansdale/) and Robert Kennedy's Special Group (Augmented). Personnel consequences: Allen Dulles was forced to resign, replaced by John McCone; Bissell resigned in February 1962, receiving the National Security Medal before his departure; C.P. Cabell was forced to resign January 31, 1962. Kennedy privately told aide Richard Goodwin regarding the captured brigade: "They trusted me, and they're in prison now because I fucked up. I have to get them out."[^1] ### The Prisoner Exchange Of approximately 1,400 Brigade members: 114 were killed in battle; approximately 1,179 were captured; 1,113 survived to the eventual exchange. Castro announced in April 1962 that the prisoners faced trial as "war criminals," with sentences of 30 years or payment of $62 million in indemnification. Robert Kennedy secretly recruited New York attorney James B. Donovan - who had negotiated the Rudolf Abel spy exchange - to reopen prisoner talks in June 1962. Donovan worked pro bono. Negotiations were disrupted by the [Cuban Missile Crisis](/events/cuban-missile-crisis/) in October 1962 but resumed. On December 21, 1962, Donovan and Castro signed an agreement: 1,113 surviving prisoners were exchanged for $53 million in food, medicines, and other humanitarian supplies, raised through private donations from pharmaceutical companies and other sources. Kennedy welcomed the released prisoners at the Orange Bowl in Miami on December 29, 1962. Brigade 2506 presented Kennedy with their battle flag; Kennedy stated he would return it "to a free Havana." He never did.[^2] ### Veterans and Later Operations Brigade 2506 veterans became the CIA's organizational core for subsequent Cuba operations and reappeared across later covert programs. [Felix Rodriguez](/people/felix-rodriguez/), a veteran who had participated in the capture of [Che Guevara](/people/che-guevara/) in Bolivia, managed the Contra resupply operation at [Ilopango Airbase](/places/ilopango-airbase/) in [El Salvador](/places/el-salvador/) in the 1980s under the alias "Max Gomez." [Howard Hunt](/people/howard-hunt/), the Bay of Pigs political officer responsible for the Cuban Revolutionary Council exile leadership, recruited Bay of Pigs veterans for the Watergate burglary team. Three of the Watergate burglars - Bernard Barker, Eugenio Martinez, and Frank Sturgis - were Bay of Pigs veterans with continuing CIA relationships. Hunt's Bay of Pigs role, and the CIA's desire to contain investigation into it, was a recurring element of the Watergate cover-up narrative.[^3] [^1]: CIA Inspector General. "Inspector General's Survey of the Cuban Operation." October 1961; declassified February 22, 1998. Published in Kornbluh, Peter, ed. *Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba.* New Press, 1998. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Vol. X (Cuba, January 1961-September 1962), Documents 108, 169, 198. U.S. Department of State, history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10. [^2]: Cuba Study Group (Taylor Commission). Final Report. June 13, 1961. FRUS 1961-1963, Vol. X, Document 169. CIA Official History, Vols. I-V (Pfeiffer, 1979-1984). National Security Archive, nsarchive.gwu.edu, NSAEBB353 (2011) and NSAEBB564 (2016). Wyden, Peter. *Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story.* Simon & Schuster, 1979. [^3]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Hougan, Jim. *Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat, and the CIA.* Random House, 1984.