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

against Puerto Barrios had been flown by Guatemalan
pilots, Jake
was challenged several times by people
from the United Fruit Company who were
there at Puerto Barrios at the time, and
they said "look, we have been living a-
round Guatemala for years and we have
never seen Guatemalan pilots fly or shoot
with the precision that these fellows
shot. They didn't kill anybody." (Any-
body that they weren't supposed to kill,
I guess is the way to put it.) There
wasn't a stray bullet anywhere, they
strictly hit military targets. But
there was a case of a green light from
State Department, and then they said
they didn't mean it. It was academic,
because it was done. 47/*
* Esterline's additional comments are indicative of
the confusion that one faces in trying to sort out
details of the Bay of Pigs, 16 years after the event.
In contrast to Bissell's previously noted remarks
with reference to the cable requesting permission
to act in response to Ydigoras's request, Jake noted
that:
We got this urgent call requesting the
use of our troops. We got it, and we looked
at it and didn't know what to do with it.
We called State Department and said, "We
suppose this is critical. The whole thing
is going to pot." I suppose that it was
Rubottom or somebody at that level over
there, that we called. They said "Well, I
guess you had better give him what he wants."
-So we gave him what he wanted, and that
was about the time that it was in motion;
and we got a call back from State Depart-
ment saying they'd checked, and they didn't
mean it, but it was in motion at that point. 48/