Page 14 - Gobierno ivisible

Date: 4/5/2011 Page: 14 of 237

In retrospect, some CIA officials felt Bissell should have hopped into a car and driven to Glen Ora to plead with
the President; because the operation was secret he would have been able to speak more freely in person than he
could have over a telephone wire, and he might have been able to present his case more fully. But it would have
been close to midnight before he could have arrived at Middleburg, and D-Day would then have been at hand.

Or Bissell and Cabell might have gotten on the telephone in Rusk's office and pleaded with the President directly
at this point. They did not.

Bissell returned to his office from the State Department, and about 11 :00 P.M. he flashed the word to Happy
Valley that the B-26s were not to strike at Castro's air bases. Messages flowed back and forth between Nicaragua
and Washington, and as it was finally resolved, the bombers were only to try to fly support missions over the
beaches. At Happy Valley the change in orders caused dismay and considerable confusion.

***

So secret was the Bay of Pigs operation that many high officials of the government were not let in on it. Robert
Amory, Jr., the CIA's deputy director for intelligence (DDI ), had not been officially informed of the plan even
though on this Sunday he was the senior staff duty officer at the CIA. Roger Hilsman, the director of the State
Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, had also been kept in the dark. But the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
headed by General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, had been consulted and had given their qualified approval. The second
as a vital part of the plan that had been approved by the Joint Chiefs. Now that element was being removed by the
President, acting in the isolation of Glen Ora; and Admiral Arleigh Burke, Chief of Naval Operations, whose
ships were deployed off the Bay of Pigs, did not learn of the cancellation of the second air strike until ten hours
later, at 7:00 A.M. Monday.

As the first tense hours of April 17 slipped by, Bissell and Cabell remained in touch with Happy Valley and
waited uncertainty for the dawn. At 4:00 A.M. Cabell could stand it no longer. He decided to appeal again to
Rusk.

Cabell drove through the darkened capital to Rusk's hotel. (Rusk, Secretary of State for less than three months,
had not yet moved into a home in Washington; he had an apartment at the Sheraton Park Hotel on upper
Connecticut Avenue.) In Rusk's apartment he again expressed his fears over the cancellation of the air strike.
Despite the hour the Secretary of State called the President once more in Middleburg. This time Cabell did speak
directly to him. In answer to the CIA official's pleadings, the President's reply was still negative.

The light burned late in Rusk's suite K-608 in the otherwise quiet Sheraton Park. Outside, the capital's streets were
deserted as the city slept. A light spring breeze caressed the pale, new green leaves on the trees. In the Bahia de
Cochinos the men were now going ashore. But Castro still had planes, and they were about to raise havoc with the
exile brigade on the beaches.

It was forty-eight hours since Mario Zuniga had taken off from Happy Valley. The invasion was just beginning.
In reality, it was already over.

_______________

* Former head of the Cuban Air Force.

* When the Times story appeared the next day, it particularly irritated President Kennedy. He was angered
because he felt it had systematically listed flaws in the CIA cover.