num_pages: 352
description: The 1962 CIA invasion of Cuba by anti-Castro exiles at the Bay of Pigs has endured as America's greatest overt covert flop. The planning &amp; misexecution of the project has been covered until now mainly as a subtheme in memoirs &amp; general books about the JFK years. Former Newsweek correspondent Wyden has gathered information from the Cuban exiles &amp; from within Cuba itself--as well as from Washington sources--to uncover "the untold story"; but essentials remain unchanged. His access to Cuban sources has been squandered on eyewitness accounts of the battle, so that we learn more about the minute-by-minute proceedings than anyone could want to know, but little about the impact of the invasion on Cuba or Cuban attitudes toward the USA. He's dealt with CIA reports that accurately gauged the level of Castro's popular support in Cuba, but were bypassed by CIA planners in favor of less accurate ones foreseeing potential success. These, however, are ignored while he gets into the old squabble over the operation's chances had Kennedy not canceled a 2nd air strike aimed at destroying the Cuban air force. His obsession with trivial details--like each person's garb at any given moment--overwhelms any analytic potential. Because Wm Fulbright was the only one in the know who strenuously opposed the operation, he concludes that "groupthink" &amp; "assumed consensus" prevented all these brilliant people--by his reckoning, almost anyone with a Yale background &amp; a position of power qualifies--from realizing that the plan was a mess. Therefore, "it could happen again!" Of course, if all those bureaucrats, lawyers &amp; academics weren't so brilliant, the answer may lie elsewhere; not in why the Bay of Pigs wasn't stopped, but in why it was started. On that, he's not much help.--Kirkus (edited)Plot at the CIA Escalation Reappraisal &amp; momentumAt the watershed The attack beginsInvasion Aftermath Conclusion: It could happen againIndex
language: English
title: Bay of Pigs
publisher: Jonathan Cape (London)