Documents / FOIA release
This is Volume II, Part 1 of the CIA History Staff's Official History of the Bay of Pigs Operation, a Top Secret history dated October 1979 and approved for release in July 2011. It looks at how the Agency took part in shaping US foreign policy toward Guatemala and Nicaragua during the anti-Castro program. It covers dealings with President Ydigoras Fuentes and Roberto Alejos, training sites such as Retalhuleu, cover stories, and negotiations with the Somoza brothers for an air base and port. It contains no UFO material.
“Nevers”12 pages
key figures in the FRO. According to Esterline's report of the meeting "it was never said in so many words that CIA, in effect, is supporting these people, it was implicit in President Ydigoras's attitude that he well understood that support is being given to these people through indirect means."* In playing his own game of plausible deniability, Ydigoras point~d out that the less he knew of the operation, the better would be his denials to the Organization of American States (OAS) or others who were concerned that anti- Castro activities were being mounted within his country's borders. It was also during this first session between Chief, WH/4 and the Guatemalans that plans were made to introduce Esterline to the Guatemalan ambassador * Arthur Schlesinger put the situation quite accu- rately in the following comment: \ The Frente was appropriately named: it was a front and nothing more. While its members talked among themselves, CIA was engaged in a recruiting drive among Cuban refugees in Florida and Central America. It had also persuaded President Ydigoras of Guatemala to permit the estab- lishment of a secret training camp and air base in the Guatemalan mountains."3a/ - 5 - TO~CRET
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 179 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.