--- aliases: - Assault Brigade 2506 category: Paramilitary created: 2026-09-22 location: Miami, Florida relations: - end: 1961 fn: 1 reverse: true start: 1960 type: funded with: '[[Central Intelligence Agency]]' - end: 1961-04-19 fn: 1 start: 1961-04-17 type: participant_in with: '[[Bay of Pigs]]' - fn: 4 role: the brigade's veterans' association was a founding group start: 1976-06-11 type: member_of with: '[[CORU]]' - fn: 6 reverse: true role: veteran type: member_of with: '[[Felipe Rivero]]' - fn: 3 reverse: true role: veteran type: member_of with: '[[Felix Rodriguez]]' start: 1960 summary: CIA-trained Cuban exile force of the 1961 Bay of Pigs landing, whose veterans' association later joined CORU and whose members reappeared in Watergate, the Letelier inquiry and the Contra supply network. tags: - Organization - Paramilitary - Cuba - CIA - CubanExiles updated: 2026-09-22 --- Brigade 2506 was the force of Cuban exiles organized, trained and equipped by the [CIA](/organizations/central-intelligence-agency/) for the landing at the [Bay of Pigs](/events/bay-of-pigs/) on April 17, 1961. It took its name from the membership number of a trainee, Carlos Rafael Santana, who died in a training accident on September 8, 1960. At the invasion it numbered about 1,400 to 1,500 men in six infantry battalions, with five tanks, sixteen B-26 bombers and transport aircraft. Of its members 114 were killed and about 1,179 captured.[^1][^2] On December 21, 1962, the New York lawyer James B. Donovan, recruited by Robert F. Kennedy, signed an agreement with [Fidel Castro](/people/fidel-castro/) exchanging 1,113 surviving prisoners for 53 million dollars in food and medicine. At the Orange Bowl in Miami on December 29, the brigade gave President [John F. Kennedy](/people/john-f-kennedy/) its flag, which he said he would return "to a free Havana."[^2] ### Veterans Veterans of the brigade formed the core of later CIA operations against Cuba.[^3] Bernard Barker, [Howard Hunt](/people/howard-hunt/)'s contact in Miami for the break-ins at the office of [Daniel Ellsberg](/people/daniel-ellsberg/)'s psychiatrist and at the [Watergate](/events/watergate/), had served under Hunt in the Bay of Pigs operation; he and the burglars Eugenio Martinez and Frank Sturgis were Bay of Pigs veterans.[^3][^5] [Felix Rodriguez](/people/felix-rodriguez/), a veteran, took part in the capture of [Che Guevara](/people/che-guevara/) in Bolivia and in the 1980s ran the Contra resupply operation at [Ilopango Airbase](/places/ilopango-airbase/) in [El Salvador](/places/el-salvador/) as "Max Gomez."[^3] [Felipe Rivero](/people/felipe-rivero/), a veteran, founded the [Cuban Nationalist Movement](/organizations/cuban-nationalist-movement/) with [Guillermo Novo](/people/guillermo-novo/) and [Ignacio Novo](/people/ignacio-novo/).[^6] [Luis D. Elizondo III](/people/luis-d-elizondo-iii/), father of [Luis Elizondo](/people/luis-elizondo/), fought with the brigade and was held in Cuba for two years.[^7] ### The Veterans' Association and the Letelier Case The brigade's veterans' association was one of five groups that formed [CORU](/organizations/coru/), the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations, under [Orlando Bosch](/people/orlando-bosch/) in the [Dominican Republic](/places/dominican-republic/) on June 11, 1976, together with Bosch's Acción Cubana, the Cuban Nationalist Movement, the Cuban National Liberation Front and the 17th of April Movement. "We were conspiring there," Bosch later said. "Planning bombings and killings. Everything was planned there."[^4] In early September 1976, three weeks before the assassination of [Orlando Letelier](/people/orlando-letelier/) in Washington, the brigade's president, Roberto Carballo, Manuel Camargo and Bernardo de Torres called on Admiral [Ronald McIntyre](/people/ronald-mcintyre/) of the Chilean naval mission there. They told him the leadership was committed to uniting anti-Castro Cubans and ending the bombings of small groups in Miami; the "only discordant note" was Carballo's feeling "over the detention in Chile and handover to US authorities of the Cuban Otero," meaning [Rolando Otero](/people/rolando-otero/).[^8] An undated memorandum to Colonel [Manuel Contreras](/people/manuel-contreras/) of Chile's [DINA](/organizations/dina/), written after October 1976, reported that "the [FBI](/organizations/federal-bureau-of-investigation/) reached the conclusion that the perpetrators of the attack on Letelier were 4 members of Brigade 2506," naming Roberto Carvallo (Carballo), Carlos Pascual, Vicente Vásquez and Guillermo Novo, who "would have been deceived and paid by a Castro agent."[^9] By May 1977 the Letelier grand jury had summoned Armando López Estrada of the veterans' association among fifteen Cuban exiles.[^6] [^1]: CIA Inspector General. "Inspector General's Survey of the Cuban Operation," October 1961, declassified February 22, 1998, 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, as cited on the Bay of Pigs page. [^2]: Cuba Study Group (Taylor Commission), final report, June 13, 1961, FRUS 1961-1963, vol. X, doc. 169; Wyden, Peter, *Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story,* Simon & Schuster, 1979, as cited on the Bay of Pigs page. [^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. [^4]: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Miami, file 2-471, "CORU," August 16, 1978, National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book 153, doc. 13; Dinges, John, and Saul Landau, *Assassination on Embassy Row,* McGraw-Hill, 1980, p. 250, quoting Bosch to Blake Fleetwood, *New Times,* May 13, 1977. [^5]: U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities. *Final Report,* 1974, section on the Watergate break-in (Barker's background). https://archive.org/details/senatewatergater01unit [^6]: Marina, Gloria. "Citan a Felipe Rivero en el caso Letelier," *El Miami Herald,* May 3, 1977, scan at latinamericanstudies.org/belligerence/Rivero-Letelier.pdf [^7]: Elizondo, Luis. *Imminent.* William Morrow, 2024. [^8]: Fiscalía Militar Ad-Hoc, Santiago, causa 192-78, as reproduced in *Proceso contra Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda y Pedro Espinoza Bravo,* tomo 2, sworn declaration of Admiral Ronald McIntyre, 1978, translated from the Spanish. https://www.latinamericanstudies.org/MNC/Causa-Contreras-Espinoza-1991-2.pdf [^9]: Fiscalía Militar Ad-Hoc, Santiago, causa 192-78, as reproduced in *Proceso contra Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda y Pedro Espinoza Bravo,* tomo 1, memorandum "Caso Letelier" to Colonel Manuel Contreras, undated, translated from the Spanish. https://www.latinamericanstudies.org/MNC/Causa-Contreras-Espinoza-1991.pdf