Logo: Fidel Castro

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Question SA-8. Here is the text reference (p. 207/4):

In its last months the Eisenhower administration had begun to plan covert operations to eliminate Castro. Some of these involved bizarre assassination plots, but the most significant was a greatly amplified version of what had "worked" against the Guatemalan government of Arbenz in 1954. This would involve training, arming and using Cuban exiles to launch an invasion of Cuba in the expectation that there would be an internal uprising that would finally bring Castro down. Incoming President John F. Kennedy, who had talked a tough anti-Castro line in the 1960 presidential campaign against Richard Nixon, reluctantly allowed the plan to go forward, although he cut back the commitment of U.S. combat aircraft, a decision that was to prove fatal. The invasion force, operating from bases in Florida and Nicaragua, sailed into the Cuban Bay of Pigs in April 1961 and encountered a strong and well-trained Castro-led force that quickly defeated it. The uprising within Cuba never materialized, Castro's forces were prepared for the invasion, and without a heavy commitment of U.S. power (denied by Kennedy) there was no chance of success.