His assassination is often viewed as the martyrdom of a man of high ideals, a staunch resistor of Communist aggression, and a brilliant advocate of freedom. Kennedy is portrayed as the man who brought us through one of the most dangerous moments in the history of the world, the Cuban Missile Crisis. However, in Grayston Lynch’s book, Decision For Disaster: Battle of the Bay of Pigs, we learn that, without Kennedy, there may not have been a Cuban Missile Crisis.
Grayston Lynch was one of two CIA operatives who went into Cuba with the 2506 Assault Brigade, the detachment of Cubans who hoped to wrest freedom from the manacles of Fidel Castro’s tyrannical regime. Lynch is, and was then, a man with impressive credentials. He served his country honorably in two wars, suffering wounds in Normandy, at the Battle of the Bulge, then in Korea, at Heartbreak Ridge. He served with the Special Forces in Laos, and over his distinguished career received three Purple Hearts, two Silver Stars, and one Bronze Star with a V for Valor. His service in the CIA lasted from 1960 to 1971.
Nearly forty years after the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, Lynch wrote this book, which stands as a devastating critique of the John F. Kennedy administration, and of John F. Kennedy the man.
It would take far too long to go into all the military details which Lynch enumerates in his tale. But, as an insider of the operation, Lynch has facts, and plenty of them, which completely wreck the picture the Kennedy administration tried to paint. First off, we are never told that the CIA recommended a different landing area for the 2506 Assault Brigade, near the city of Trinidad, a hotbed of resistance to Castro. Kennedy officials changed the destination to the Bay of Pigs, a far less favorable objective, but still workable, if supported properly.
The key to winning the battle against Castro’s numerically superior forces was to secure air supremacy. Castro had a small, but potent air force. The Kennedy administration wanted to appear uninvolved in the operation, so as not to suffer international embarrassment, but the original plan called for raids on Castro’s air fields, which would have destroyed his planes on the ground. With complete air cover, the 2506 Assault Brigade could have turned back any ground force Castro sent against them. Indeed, they inflicted horrific casualties on Castro’s army even without proper air cover, and only a lack of ammunition and other supplies caused their disintegration.
To make a long story short, Kennedy, on the strength of objections from the State Department, who warned that strikes on Castro’s air fields would make things “too hot to handle” internationally, canceled most of the air strikes. The few missions that were run were highly successful, but Castro’s intact air force soon swept down to wreak havoc on the assault brigade, and the supply ships sitting off shore. This was the primary cause for the failure of the operation, and the blame lies directly at Kennedy’s door.
Lynch reveals that Kennedy planned in advance to cancel the air strikes. He provides a damning quote, straight from Arthur Schlesinger’s A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy In the White House: “… he (Kennedy) supposed that the cost, both military and political, of failure was now reduced to a tolerable level. He added, ‘If we have to get rid of those 800 men, it is much better to dump them in Cuba than in the United States, especially if that is where they want to go.’”
This, Lynch argues, reveals Kennedy’s true intentions. He did not want to rid Cuba of Castro, but to get rid of the determined anti-Communist Cubans, who were proving a political embarrassment to him. “It seems,” Lynch states bitterly, “that even at this late date, the president was still so unfamiliar with the invasion plans that he was not even aware the brigade numbered 1,447 men. Kennedy, it would seem by his statements, did not send the brigade to Cuba to get rid of Castro. He sent it to Cochinos Bay to get rid of those men!”
The Bay of Pigs invasion, then, was a heartless betrayal by John F. Kennedy, which cost the lives of scores of determined anti-Communist Cubans, and secured a Communist foothold in the Western hemisphere, which remains to this day. That a president of the United States could be so careless with the lives of men who trusted his good intentions is almost as scandalous as intentionally allowing our great enemy, the Soviet Union, to have a satellite a mere 90 miles from our country.
Lynch’s book is a riveting account, delving both into the political and military details of the Bay of Pigs operation. He went ashore with the 2506 Assault Brigade, and he recounts his adventures and those of the brigade, as well as the political betrayal, of which he only learned at a later date. It is a fascinating account, with which every American should make himself familiar, if only to teach us that our politicians, even those we tend to admire, were not always what they seemed to be. In fact, their devious scheming may make us feel as Lynch did after the Bay of Pigs tragedy. “For the first time in my thirty-seven years,” Lynch lamented, “I was ashamed of my country.”
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