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CIA Keeping Secret Report on Bay of Pigs
Newsmax ^ | Sunday, 15 Sep 2013 12:15 AM | George Will

Posted on 09/15/2013 1:56:31 PM PDT by Olog-hai

At 4 a.m. on Jan. 1, 1959, an hour when there never were commercial flights from Havana, David Atlee Phillips was lounging in a lawn chair there, sipping champagne after a New Year's Eve party, when a commercial aircraft flew low over his house. He surmised that dictator Fulgencio Batista was fleeing because Fidel Castro was arriving. He was right. Soon he, and many others, would be spectacularly wrong about Cuba. …

In 1972, the Bay of Pigs made a cameo appearance in the Watergate shambles, which involved some Cubans and Americans active in the invasion. On the June 23 "smoking gun" Oval Office tape, Richard Nixon directs his aide H.R. Haldeman to urge the CIA to tell the FBI to back off from investigating the burglary by saying, “Look, the problem is that this will open the whole Bay of Pigs thing.”

Surely this “thing” should be studied as deeply as possible. Unfortunately, the CIA, which you might think had made every mistake possible regarding the invasion, is now making another. It is resisting attempts to force the release of the fifth and final volume of its official history of it. …

(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...


TOPICS: Cuba; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; Russia
KEYWORDS: bayofpigs; castro; cia; coldwar; cuba; jfk; presidents; secrets
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Being George Will, it is of course grain-of-salt time in terms of importance.
1 posted on 09/15/2013 1:56:31 PM PDT by Olog-hai
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To: Olog-hai

Thanks Olog-hai.
Look, the problem is that this will open the whole Bay of Pigs thing.
The merc who eventually assassinated JFK from the County Records Building had gone onto the beach with the Brigade, realized it was hopeless, and under cover of night swam out and reached one of the US destroyers, which were just out of range of the tracers, with their colors struck and numbers painted out.


2 posted on 09/15/2013 2:02:13 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (It's no coincidence that some "conservatives" echo the hard left.)
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To: Olog-hai
It Was George W. Bush's Fault!
3 posted on 09/15/2013 2:10:36 PM PDT by Old Sarge (Opinions are like orgasms: only mine count, and I couldn't care less if you have one...)
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To: Olog-hai

Good post, but I am utterly amazed that tweed twerp George Will would write for anything really conservative like, Newsmax.

WOW.


4 posted on 09/15/2013 2:13:44 PM PDT by gaijin
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To: SunkenCiv

“The merc who eventually assassinated JFK from the County Records Building...”

Fascinating; I never heard that before.


5 posted on 09/15/2013 2:18:22 PM PDT by Carriage Hill (Peace is that brief glorious moment in history, when everybody stands around reloading.)
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To: Olog-hai
Breaking news 2067: CIA Keeping Secret Report on Benghazi
6 posted on 09/15/2013 2:18:25 PM PDT by Michael.SF. (0bama lied, Stevens died, now 0bama covers up the lies.)
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To: carriage_hill
Fascinating; I never heard that before.

Read "Appointment in Dallas" by Hugh McDonald

7 posted on 09/15/2013 2:21:34 PM PDT by Michael.SF. (0bama lied, Stevens died, now 0bama covers up the lies.)
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To: Olog-hai; All

I’m still trying to rid my mind of the disaster of a sentence that opens this piece. Will should stick to writing about baseball. I’m not suggesting that his musings on the game have merit. Just that, as I have no interest in the national pastime, I won’t see his scribblings.


8 posted on 09/15/2013 2:41:27 PM PDT by pluvmantelo (No blood for Obama's Intemperate Linedrawing)
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To: SunkenCiv

I remember before the Bay of Pigs as a very young aviation
enthusiast with a pilot buddy hearing that someone was
recruiting pilots and crew for I think B-26s down in
Florida. We didn’t know what for, perhaps fortunately
we were too young and my friend was not multi rated so
it never went any where.
He went on to be a crop duster and I went into the Marines.
Heck we even jumped out of perfectly good airplanes too.
None of these fancy chutes then, modified military with
gores cut out to give you some control, some. We used to
practice PLFs by jumping off the back of moving cars.
So long ago...


9 posted on 09/15/2013 2:46:34 PM PDT by tet68 ( " We would not die in that man's company, that fears his fellowship to die with us...." Henry V.)
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To: Michael.SF.

Thanks. Interesting reader comments downpage.

http://www.amazon.com/Appointment-Dallas-Final-Solution-Assassination/dp/0821738933


10 posted on 09/15/2013 2:46:55 PM PDT by Carriage Hill (Peace is that brief glorious moment in history, when everybody stands around reloading.)
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To: carriage_hill

Well, the JFK assassination has produced more tinfoil headwear material than anything besides UFOs, so it’s risky to even bring up either one. :’)

http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh16/pages/WH_Vol16_0331b.jpg

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1551438/posts?page=183#183

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1016623/posts?page=24#24


11 posted on 09/15/2013 2:55:26 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (It's no coincidence that some "conservatives" echo the hard left.)
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To: Michael.SF.

Thanks, that’s the book.


12 posted on 09/15/2013 2:56:31 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (It's no coincidence that some "conservatives" echo the hard left.)
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To: tet68

My sister was working as a clerk/typist during Summers while she was in college. This was in the very early 60s at Hurlburt Field, then an auxiliary field of Eglin. We all called it Field 9.

I can remember those B-26 bombers with 8, .50 caliber machine guns in the nose. There were Cubans all over the place. Those planes were excellent for ground attack but could not survive attacks from Cuban jets.


13 posted on 09/15/2013 2:57:49 PM PDT by yarddog (Romans 8: verses 38 and 39. "For I am persuaded".)
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To: Olog-hai

They keep these secrets because our gov has been up to no good for a very long time. There can be no other reason.


14 posted on 09/15/2013 2:58:31 PM PDT by DonaldC (A nation cannot stand in the absence of religious principle.)
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To: tet68

Yeah, recruitment for what became the Bay of Pigs started a few weeks after Castro took over. You probably are better off not having gone. :’)

The training camp was in Central America somewhere, got exposed by a US newspaper (probably out of Miami?), and then was moved to Nicaragua, which was the point of departure. Reportedly, the elder Somoza arrived at the last minute to see them off, saying, “bring me some hairs from Castro’s beard”.

A former coworker who was on a destroyer off Cuba for both Bay of Pigs and the missile crisis, when asked about anyone who swam to safety, said, they didn’t get anyone, but another destroyer (he named it, but I don’t remember now) did.


15 posted on 09/15/2013 3:00:26 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (It's no coincidence that some "conservatives" echo the hard left.)
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To: SunkenCiv

Thanks; I don’t suppose we’ll ever know the real truth, just a lot of interesting theories.

That pic still has me laughing. Haven’t seen it in years.


16 posted on 09/15/2013 3:24:13 PM PDT by Carriage Hill (Peace is that brief glorious moment in history, when everybody stands around reloading.)
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To: DonaldC

“They keep these secrets because our gov has been up to no good for a very long time. There can be no other reason.”

Who was President? Enough said.

If Nixon was President, the Rats would be bringing it up every election cycle. Just like they do Watergate.


17 posted on 09/15/2013 3:26:20 PM PDT by EQAndyBuzz (Make today a great day. Insult a liberal.)
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C.I.A. Is Still Cagey About Oswald Mystery (from a few years back)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2364514/posts


18 posted on 09/15/2013 3:28:42 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (It's no coincidence that some "conservatives" echo the hard left.)
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To: carriage_hill

There are things that can be ruled out, such as “Grassy Knoll” shooters — police officers thought the shots came from there (it was due to the echoes) and found no one, smelled no gun discharge, and no casings. The X-Files had an interesting twist, putting the Cigarette Smoking Man in a street drain on the hillside, but the two shots that actually hit JFK came from behind — from the Country Records Building.


19 posted on 09/15/2013 3:31:53 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (It's no coincidence that some "conservatives" echo the hard left.)
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To: EQAndyBuzz

Well said.


20 posted on 09/15/2013 3:34:56 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (It's no coincidence that some "conservatives" echo the hard left.)
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