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

and the President says,
all right, I order it."
nothing happened.
"Is that so ...
And, again,
I checked with Yarborough, and it hasn't
dropped down his tube yet ... and find out
that the Secretary of the Army has said
that even though "directed," he has to, as
a statutory matter, assure that something
equal to the Status of Forces Agreement is
in effect with the host country, lest there
be a court martial proceeding .. , or some
host country .•. da, da, da ... and it goes
back to the President again. "Willyou
authorize or direct that this be done, in
the absence of a special Status of Forces
Agreement," and the President of the United
States says ... "Goddamnit ... Blankety-
blank ... you do it!" So Mr. Barnes
"negotiated" it, and he came back saying
that if President Ydigoras will sign the
document that says that the Status of
Forces will apply -- even though not
technically in force --then the Secretary
of the Army will let this go forward.
So, I worked with TSD to see if we could
come up with some paper which, after a
certain amount of time, whether exposed
to light·or not, would just disintegrate.
Whether we actually typed it on such paper
or not, I don"t know; but I wrote up a
very learned piece of paper, and goddamned
if Jake Esterline didn't have to drop every-
thing else that he was doing and go down and
get the old Indian to sign this thing. 69/
In response to the query of the origin of the
idea for the Status of Forces Agreement, Drain explained
this as follows:
Well, now, I remember -- and I haven't
thought about it until this moment -- that