Documents / FOIA release

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

Central Intelligence Agency · 179 pages · text from the file's own layer

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.

  • p. 89 …strictly enforce the Pan American instruments governing terri- torial asylum. Whenever these have been overlooked or…
time that serious thought was being given to the
possible removal of the Cuban trainees from Guate-
mala, the DOD representative was much concerned about
the actual base at which it was intended to station
the Special Forces trainers. Until this matter could
be cleared up to the satisfaction of DOD~ Captain
Spore assumed the position that no further action
would be taken with regard to the Special Forces
personnel. Jake Esterline, Chief, JMATE, made a
strong plea to the DOD representative based on the
argument that the question about the actual site of
the training activity was up in the air as a result
of Department of State cautiousness; and Esterline
expressed the opinion that as a result of State's
greater interest in the program of economic strangula-
tion of Cuba, the situation for the United States and
for other Latin American governments friendly to the
United States would grow increasingly desperate. He
further suggested that the Department of Defense was
being tainted by State's opposition rather than by
realistic appraisal of the situation in Cuba, and he
volunteered to brief senior DOD personnel at a time
convenient to them. 64/

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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 179 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.