Page 24 - Gobierno ivisible

Date: 4/5/2011 Page: 24 of 237

Corps -- would not be used in the invasion. His decision, of course, did not apply to covert forces, including the
B-26s, guns, ships and Cubans under the control of the CIA. These could and would be used.

Since the operation was secret, or was supposed to be, it remained under Bissell's and the CIA's direction and
control. The Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon, the nation's top military commanders, were consulted as the
plans developed, but they did not have primary responsibility.

The Joint Chiefs were briefed on the operation for the first time in January, 1961, although the Office of Naval
Intelligence had earlier stumbled on the fact that some kind of CIA operation was under way. The ONI did not
know exactly what the CIA was up to, however.

The CIA's proposal for a landing at Trinidad was sent to the Joint Chiefs for their consideration. After studying it,
they submitted an opinion signed by General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, saying that
the plan for a landing at Trinidad would have an even chance of success. *

***

Among the Cubans sent to Guatemala after the decision to increase the size of the invasion force was Mario Abril,
the private in E Company who on April 15 was to watch the B-26s droning overhead from the deck of the
Houston.

He and his family had fled Cuba in 1960. A sensitive youth of nineteen, Mario had soft brown eyes and a quiet
nature. But he was determined to join the fight against Castro. His experience was typical:

"I met a CIA man named Roger at La Moderne Hotel, South West 8th Street on the [Tamiami] Trail. Many of my
friends from Cuba were getting training and I heard about it and that's how I got into it. Roger gave us training in
explosives and in underground propaganda. Sometimes he did it right in the hotel, and sometimes he took us to
the Everglades to shoot with .45-caliber guns. He was about forty years old and he was good, he knew his stuff.

"In January [1961] I heard about the training camps. I went to the recruiting office for those camps at 27th
Avenue and 10th Street, South West."

"One night, March 13, they took us to an old house in Coconut Grove and we put on khaki uniforms there with
blue baseball caps, boots and duffel bags. It was at night, about 8:00 P.M. We got taken into a truck and we went
to Opa-locka. There was about a hundred of us and we waited there for a while. Two Americans joined us. They
were dressed just like the rest of us, khaki uniforms and blue baseball caps. So they took us to a DC-4. It had no
seats, you know, just seats along the side, and we were packed in on the sides. When there was no more room,
they put the rest of them on the floor of the plane.

"When we arrived at Retalhuleu, it was around dawn on March 14. We had a real good breakfast there, bacon,
ham, everything we wanted. That felt real good, so I began to like the looks of this place, you know, because we
had such a good breakfast."

"About noon we reached camp and we got field mess, dishes and jackets, and I thought, well, we traveled all
night, so maybe we rest today. But no, the same day we started shooting with M-1 rifles and they took us up eight,
nine thousand feet to practice. There were clouds all around us. So that night I thought we were going to bed,
because we started out the whole day before with no rest, but we had lessons in machine guns. So finally they let
us go to bed and we slept a long time."