From the File

Season 1, Episode 2 · The Bay of Pigs

The Secret Army

Runtime 19:09

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Show notes

The secret army began as a trespass. Before the end of February 1960, Guatemala’s President Ydígoras offered the CIA training facilities in the Petén; project chief Jacob Esterline flew in illegally to draw up what he called a Status of Forces Agreement — on “specific instruction from Bissell and Dulles,” he later said. When Dulles briefed the government’s oversight group, “the Petén area in Guatemala” became “a secure remote area of a friendly Latin American country.” The text of that base agreement is not in the record; it survives only as Esterline’s recollection in the CIA’s official history, written nineteen years later.

The camps rose in 1960 — Retalhuleu’s runway expanded to five thousand feet of asphalt; the infantry camp at Finca Helvetia, in Colonel Jack Hawkins’s description, “a small shelf of land on the side of a volcano barely large enough for comfortable accommodation of 200 men.” Recruitment ran through the exile front, the FRD, masked so the Cubans believed the money came from private businessmen. The brigade took its name from the first trainee to die in Guatemala — Carlos Rodríguez Santana, number 2506 (the Agency’s own history spells him “Carlos Rafael Santanya”; we use the congressional name). On 4 November 1960 headquarters cabled Guatemala: it “directed a reduction of the guerrilla teams in training to 60 men and the introduction of conventional training for the remainder as an amphibious and airborne assault force”; eleven days later a staff paper declared the beachhead concept unachievable “except as a joint Agency and Defense Department action.”

Assessments in the confident period read as inventories of reasons not to go: Hawkins’s 4 January 1961 warning that without Special Forces teams “we will be courting disaster”; the Joint Chiefs’ February inspection finding surprise odds about 85 to 15 against, with Castro presumed to know “practically all about the operation except when, where, and in what strength.” What the exiles were promised about American backing has five answers in the file and no contemporaneous paper from the camps themselves. On 29 March 1961 Kennedy instructed that brigade leaders be told U.S. strike forces would not participate — and asked whether they still wanted to go. The answer that came back was yes. The paper trail is complete at both ends and silent in the middle.

Citations

Reading-room pointer: CIA Electronic Reading Room — Bay of Pigs. Individual documents are cited by record number and title. The CIA reading room publishes no stable per-document page URLs; none are invented here.

  1. CIA 03241934 — “JMARC Meeting with DDP” — memorandum of a meeting between the JMARC principals and the Deputy Director of Plans — 16 November 1960.
  2. CIA 00734484 — “Project JMATE” — staff memorandum, EYES ONLY, 8 March 1961.
  3. CIA 00735492 — “Support Requirements to DOD” — 22 March 1961.
  4. CIA 00136743 — Brigada de Asalto special-service order (Spanish) — 28 March 1961.
  5. CIA 00137410 — Brigada de Asalto personnel and weapons orders (Spanish) — 30 March 1961.
  6. CIA 0000132539 — Aerial photographs of Finca Helvetia — undated, estimated 1961 (CIA Historical Review Program, release in full 1997).
  7. FRUS, 1961–1963, Vol. X, Cuba, Document 9 — Jack Hawkins, “Policy Decisions Required for Conduct of Strike Operations Against Government of Cuba” — Washington, 4 January 1961. Volume: history.state.gov.
  8. FRUS, 1961–1963, Vol. X, Cuba, Document 48 — Editorial Note on the 18 February 1961 White House meeting. Volume: history.state.gov.
  9. FRUS, 1961–1963, Vol. X, Cuba, Document 56 — JCSM-146-61, “Evaluation of the CIA Cuban Volunteer Task Force” — Washington, 10 March 1961. Volume: history.state.gov.
  10. FRUS, 1961–1963, Vol. X, Cuba, Document 58 — CIA Paper, “Proposed Operation Against Cuba” — Washington, 11 March 1961. Volume: history.state.gov.
  11. FRUS, 1961–1963, Vol. X, Cuba, Document 74 — Editorial Note on the 29 March 1961 White House meeting, based on Secretary McNamara’s “Notes Relating to Instructions on Bay of Pigs Invasion,” 9 February 1963. (A 1963 recollection, not a contemporaneous 1961 record.)
  12. FRUS, 1961–1963, Vol. X, Cuba, Document 174 — Cuba Study Group, “Second Meeting of the Green Study Group” — Washington, 24 April 1961.
  13. CIA C06828873 — Jack Hawkins, “Record of Paramilitary Action Against the Castro Government of Cuba, 17 March 1960–May 1961” — prepared 5 May 1961.
  14. CIA Inspector General — Survey of the Cuban Operation — October 1961. The Survey itself contains conflicting strength figures; figures are cited by source and date, never merged.
  15. Jack B. Pfeiffer, Official History of the Bay of Pigs Operation — Vol. II, “Participation in the Conduct of Foreign Policy” (DCI-8) — October 1979; Vol. IV, “The Taylor Committee Investigation of the Bay of Pigs” — 9 November 1984. Vol. II’s “Carlos Rafael Santanya” spelling for the first fallen trainee is a single-source outlier; the episode uses “Carlos Rodríguez Santana” per the congressional record.
  16. FRUS, 1961–1963, Vol. X, Cuba, Document 98 — Memorandum Prepared in the Central Intelligence Agency to General Maxwell D. Taylor — Washington, 26 April 1961. Quotes the 13 April 1961 precedence cable from the Project Chief to Col. Jack Hawkins at Puerto Cabezas (“The President has stated that under no conditions will U.S. intervene with any U.S. forces”) and Hawkins’s same-day reply.

Further reading

  • Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume X, Cuba, January 1961–September 1962 (Office of the Historian): history.state.gov.
  • Jack B. Pfeiffer, Official History of the Bay of Pigs Operation, Vols. I–IV (CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence; declassified and released 2011–2016).
  • Peter Wyden, Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story (Simon & Schuster, 1979).

What the files don’t settle

We cannot tell you what Esterline’s “Status of Forces Agreement” with Ydígoras said. The text is not in the record; it survives only as his oral-history recollection inside the official history written nineteen years later. The 21 December 1960 secret agreement, signed by Guatemalan Ambassador Carlos Alejos, is likewise text-absent.

We cannot tell you when the force took the name Brigade 2506. The naming origin — the fallen trainee’s dog-tag or serial number — is verified; the date of adoption is not found in the corpus.

We cannot tell you what any CIA officer told the brigade’s ground-force men, in the Guatemala camps, about American backing. No promise on paper from the training period; no denial on paper from the training period. The paper trail is complete at both ends and silent in the middle.

We cannot tell you what John F. Kennedy heard on 18 November 1960. The briefing paper is missing; the only account of what was planned is a later reconstruction, and the 1961 and 1979 accounts disagree on whether he “first learned of the existence of a plan” or was “fully briefed.”

We cannot tell you what the brigade leaders said on 29 March 1961 in their own words. The 1963 recollection says they were told no U.S. forces would support them and chose to proceed — but no contemporaneous 1961 record of their response exists.

We cannot tell you the exact size of the force at any single date. The official texts give conflicting figures across January–April 1961, so no single figure is quoted.

We cannot quote the text of the 4 November 1960 headquarters cable that ordered the assault force built. The cable itself is not in the corpus; its meaning is described only secondhand. We do not quote what we have not read.

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