American Citizen’s View of the Bay of Pigs Invasion

The Bay of Pigs Invasion was a failed attempt by the US to overthrow Fidel Castro's regime in Cuba. The invasion, which took place in 1961, resulted in the capture of Cuban rebels trained by the CIA. The US media's coverage of the invasion compromised its secrecy. Despite the defeat, the American public had a positive perception of the government's efforts to retrieve the captured rebels. However, in the following years, there was an increase in skepticism and distrust towards the government and the CIA. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the History Podcast, where we delve into the historical and political events that have shaped our world. Today we're exploring the Bay of Pigs Invasion, a pivotal moment in the Cold War era. Our discussion will be based on extensive research and analysis of various sources, including declassified CIA documents, newspapers, peer-reviewed articles, and a presidential speech, shedding light on the public perception and government response to this significant event. The Bay of Pigs Invasion, a failed attempt by the United States to overthrow Fidel Castro's communist regime in Cuba, had a profound impact on American citizens and the government. The invasion, which took place in 1961, was a covert operation that ultimately resulted in the capture of Cuban rebels trained by the CIA. But before we can get into the events and resulting effects of this attack, we must first cover some background information about Fidel Castro and Cuba at the time. The Cuban Revolution saw the overthrowing of Fulgencio Bautista, the US-allied Cuban president and military dictator at the time, by Fidel Castro, who assumed the position of the leader of the Cuban army and later the position of prime minister as well. Not long after, Castro became the real leader of the country and began to enact a large amount of new policies that at first seemed beneficial, such as new schools and hospitals, but quickly shifted to the nationalization of US companies and lands in Cuba, which angered the United States and reduced their hold on political influence in Latin American countries. Castro began to enact much more extreme measures using his power, including publicly executing political rivals, censoring public press, and banning political parties, highlighted by Thomas Patterson's article, Contesting Castro, the United States, and the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution. With this ramping up of communist agenda and abuse, many Cubans, still loyal to Bautista, created the Escrambe Rebellion and found allies in the United States, as the US was concerned by the actions being taken by Castro, so close to home. If anyone listening is interested in a more in-depth look into the Escrambe Rebellion and their work with the US, Don Boying covers the first-hand accounts from one of these Cuban rebels in his article, Rafael Quintero, Cold War Warrior, From the Bay of Pigs to Iran-Contra. Soon after this alliance formed, President Eisenhower called out Castro for his crimes and ordered the CIA to convertly, quote-unquote, remove Castro. After the CIA failed to assassinate Castro, and he was then seen conversing with Khrushchev, the Soviet Union leader, Eisenhower considered the country to have fallen completely into communism and greenlit the invasion of Cuba in hopes of defeating Castro and implementing a non-communist leader loyal to the US, which is a practice that the US implemented all over Latin America during the Cold War era, and can be seen in Dune's work titled Perfect Failure, The USA, Cuba, and the Bay of Pigs, 1961. Despite attempts at concealing the US's involvement in the Bay of Pigs invasion, the embarrassing defeat was tracked back to the United States, now led by President Kennedy, and garnered lots of public opinion on the subject. As we continue, we will be examining the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion and how the United States citizens perceived the outcome of the attack through the scopes of news coverage of the event, government trust, and public opinion. Now let's first cover the secrecy of this invasion and the US media's role in the event. After deciding to intervene in Cuba through invasion, the United States wanted to remain invisible in the conflict. Eisenhower believed it was of utmost importance that the US was not discovered to be behind the attack, due to the extremely high tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union during this time, worrying that the uncovering of US involvement could result in the Cold War becoming much hotter. To achieve this goal, the US planned to use the Escrambe rebellion and around 1,500 Cubans residing in Florida that had escaped there from Castro's tyranny to hide the US's involvement. In order to prepare the small armies for the invasion, the US used the CIA to train these Cubans in US military bases stationed in both Guatemala and Nicaragua, which is further examined by Harvard University in their analysis of the Bay of Pigs and Operation Mongoose. As an added measure of deception, the US also supplied the invaders with weapons, ships, and planes that could not be directly linked back to America. This level of secrecy was not that effective, though. For one glaring reason, the news coverage from the US press. The US news outlets had reported on multiple aspects of the planned attack months before the CIA implemented them in the invasion, including the training of these Cuban rebels at US military bases. Alan Doles, the former CIA director, comments on the US media's coverage of the events leading up to the Bay of Pigs invasion, stating, quote, even after the exiles were on the beach, Castro could read about them in the American newspapers. On the 7th of April, 1961, ten days before the Bay of Pigs invasion, the New York Times ran a story on its front page that reported the buildup of Cuban exile forces in Florida and Guatemala preparing for an intimate attack, as seen in Wilmette's 2015. Those accounts of the US media influence in the secrecy of this attack highlights the involvement of the public news and brings up the awareness that the American people had of the upcoming conflict. While most of the media coverage of the Bay of Pigs was relatively kind to the US at the time, due to the overall Cold War consensus, as seen through Keith Bolander's Manufacturing the Enemy, the media war against Cuba, this event also sparked large distrust of the government and questioning on the CIA's covert actions through journals, books, and TV documentaries that were highly critical in decades following. Up next, let's take a look at how much trust the American people had in the US government at the time. The Bay of Pigs invasion was enacted during the height of the Cold War, when tensions between the US and the Soviet Union were extremely high, but so were the tensions between any countries allied with either force, as proxy wars were very common at the time. With the urge to intervene in foreign affairs to stop the spread of communism, especially when the threat was close to home, the US government was able to take action against the communist regimes with the support of the US population. With the invasion plan being altered several times by the time it reached JFK, JFK's mistrust for the CIA, and the failure to send the additional air support that was originally planned, the Bay of Pigs invasion failed horribly, as highlighted by Meet the Press, 1962, and Covert Action Against Cuba, 1987. Castro and his troops were able to take the initial air support with ease, and did not find much difficulty defeating the ground troops, especially since the hope that Cuban citizens would join the fight and revolt failed completely. We can see through the declassified CIA document, Chronology, The Bay of Pigs, that Castro became in possession of 1,189 rebels. Through negotiations with the United States, a payment agreement was made in order to return the troops to America and avoid the cruel sentencing they would have experienced if the US had not intervened after the devastating loss. The United States agreed to pay Castro a, quote, balance of $62 million, end quote, as seen by Alvaro Sanchez, 1962, and $26 million of agricultural resources in order to free the men. While this was definitely an embarrassing defeat for the United States, citizens saw the US government in a positive light, as it pushed to get the rebels back and avoid the harsh punishments that they were going to face. With the media's coverage of Castro as a communist dictator and the heavy abuse of power he utilized on those who opposed his agenda, it was easy for American citizens to still side with the American government despite their terrible defeat in Cuba. In the decade following this event, however, when the American public was no longer blinded by the Red Scare, there was a large increase in skepticism and distrust for the government, especially in regards to the CIA. Lastly, let's examine the public opinion of the time for American citizens in the wake of the events. One of the most telling signs of how United States citizens perceive the outcome of the Bay of Pigs invasion is by analyzing the public opinion in the country at the time. With the embarrassment received on the world stage as the superpower of the United States failed to defeat the small island of Cuba, it would make logical sense that the public opinion of the Bay of Pigs invasion would be a distrust of the US government's abilities. As Jim Rasenberger explains in The Brilliant Disaster, JFK, Castro, and America's Doomed Invasion of Cuba's Bay of Pigs. This would make sense especially since this event has been used as a staple example of how not to conduct covert operations and foreign policies in the future, which is highlighted in Len Scott's The Wrong Thing at the Wrong Time in the Wrong Way. But in reality, the US public opinion on the event was surprisingly positive in a large way. A substantial factor in this positive feedback on the disastrous failed attempt at a government takeover was due to the efforts of President Kennedy. After initially trying to claim zero involvement in the Bay of Pigs invasion, President Kennedy addressed the US public, Cuba, and the Communist Party in his very powerful speech, The Bay of Pigs and the Future United States Policy Towards Cuba. President JFK breaks his argument down into three sections that illustrate his ideas and feelings towards the event that occurred in Cuba. He first reminds the American public that Cuba is not a state working on its own, but a segment of the larger Communist Party that has plagued vulnerable countries and resulted in the employment of dictators who impose their will through tyranny on their citizens and create a society that is fearful for their life. He brings this idea up to emphasize his point that Cuba and any Communist supported state are not to be underestimated, as they use their unjust power to arrest and abuse those courageous enough to speak out and keep the people down through the purposeful struggles of economics and politics applied to the citizens. President Kennedy then sets straight that this fight against Cuba was not done out of the need for survival or safety in relation to location, but for the protection of freedom for the whole hemisphere, even going as far as to say that any free nation within the hemisphere that faces threats of communism will be met with the readiness of U.S. resources upon request of assistance, which can be seen in John Murphy's writing JFK, Presidential Rhetoric, and The Press in the Bay of Pigs Crisis. This doubling down on the idea that this attack was less of a mistake and more of a way to show others that the U.S. is willing to help, frames this loss received by the United States as a powerful message against the threat of communism. For his third and final point, President Kennedy highlights the lies of the Communist Party, displaying how despite their attempts at presenting themselves as an idealistic cause, the true outcome of communist rule is the abuse of the citizens and the creation of a region of fear. The framing and impactfulness of this speech, after the terrible attempts in the Bay of Pigs invasion, turned an event that should have made the U.S. public question the effectiveness of their government into a moment that rallied public support for the fight against communism. Following this speech, President Kennedy saw increases in both his public approval and the number of citizens who believed the U.S. needed to intervene more against communism. To recap what we've discussed today, after successfully overthrowing the U.S. allied president of Cuba during the Cuban Revolution, Castro gained power over the country and the United States watched closely. Slowly but surely, Castro began to implement communist ideals and abuse his power to create a dictatorship in Cuba. In hopes of overthrowing the Castro-run communist government of Cuba, the United States, and specifically the CIA, planned a covert operation later referred to as the Bay of Pigs invasion. This attack was unsuccessful and in a matter of only two days, Castro had captured the Cuban rebels that the CIA had trained to enact the takeover. While this may have been seen as a huge embarrassment to the United States and other parts of the world, the same cannot be said for the citizens in the U.S. at the time. Through the analysis of public opinion, government trust, and news coverage at the time, it can be seen that the majority of the United States population did not get discouraged by the results of the Bay of Pigs invasion and that instead, the U.S. government was able to turn the event into a positive, gathering more support for the fight against communism. The Bay of Pigs invasion serves as a compelling example of how government rhetoric and media influence can shape public perception, even in the aftermath of a failed operation. It also highlights the complexities of Cold War politics and impact of historical events on public opinion. Thank you for joining me on this journey through the Bay of Pigs invasion. I have been your host, Declan Hanlon, and I hope this exploration has provided valuable insight into the intersection of politics, public opinion, and historical events. Stay tuned for more thought-provoking discussions on the History Podcast.