Official History of the Bay of Pigs Operation- Volume 2- Part 1

The clearest case to me of the CIA
affecting directly negotiations with
another Chief of State was Ydigoras.
I think that was frankly unavoidable
and inescapable, because we had almost
constant problems of a kind of opera-
tional nature. Here we were training
a force that [Col.] Jack Hawkins once
characterized to me as the most powerful
military force from Mexico to Colombia
in his [Ydigoras's] country. He himself
faced a lot of domestic opposition --
at one time they tried to overthrow him,
as you remember. He wanted to get this
[Cuban] group out of there as soon as
possible, and I am sure that you have
seen a lot of the traffic and memoranda
of discussion; but it seems to me really
to characterize especially the period in
November-December (1960) when Torn Mann
wanted to get the Brigade the hell out
of Guatemala and Ydigoras would have
welcomed it. There was no place for
them to go. I still remember that we
even talked about ferrying them to that
training site I lin
I ~ which was a measure of the des-
peration -- or desperate desire -- to
get them out of there [Guatemala]. We
talked again about trying to find a remote
site in the continental US., but Tom Mann
with the State Department would have none
of that. In that period when sort of
cQnstant operational problems with Ydigoras
were all wrapped up in the larger question
of where this training activity could be
carried on and how it could be made less
obtrusive -- I think it was just inevi-
table that Agency representatives found
themselves dealing directly with Ydigoras.
Richard M. Bissell
to Jack B. Pfeiffer
17 October 1975
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