The Inheritance
Eisenhower’s March 1960 authorization for small teams and a resistance that never materialized — handed to a new president who was never asked, on the record we have, whether he wanted an invasion at all.
Season 1 · One documentary · Ten chapters · Complete
The Bay of Pigs
One documentary in about ten chapters — not a loose episode feed. What the program was authorized to do, what the Agency built instead, and what the files still will not settle. Listen down this page in order; open show notes when you want the citations.
Season 1 is complete — all ten episodes available below.
Cited document bundles by email. Get the cables and record numbers as you listen — facts first, no hype.
New here? Start with one of these three files
Three document-led entries — then listen down the season in order.
-
FRUS 1958–60 Vol. VI Doc 481
Authorization — March 1960 paper
Small teams and a resistance that never materialized — the founding paper authorized no invasion.
-
FRUS Supp. Doc 261
Cancelled strike — dawn D-day air cover
The night Washington cancelled the dawn strikes while pilots sat in cockpits at Puerto Cabezas.
-
IG copies · casualty fog
What the files don’t settle
Destroyed survey copies, disagreeing casualty figures, and the questions Season 1 leaves open.
Preview all eight starter citations: The Bay of Pigs file.
The Secret Army
Guatemala camps, the November pivot to amphibious assault, and five contradictory answers to what the exiles were promised about American backing.
The Cover Story
The staged defector flight, Stevenson at the UN, and a denial written in Washington before the ambassador who would speak it was told what it covered.
The Cancelled Strike
The night Washington cancelled the dawn D-day air strikes — Rusk’s recommendation, pilots already in cockpits, and the sentence that cancelled it missing from the files.
Playa Girón
D-day at the Bahía de Cochinos: the landing, the Houston and Río Escondido, and four investigations that never pick one cause.
The Navy That Watched
Task Group 81.8, the Essex, and orders designed to keep the fleet out of the fight — through the six unmarked jets and the missed rendezvous the Taylor Committee could never explain.
The Inspector General
Kirkpatrick’s survey, the Barnes/Bissell rebuttal, McCone’s unreconciled binder, and 19 of 20 copies destroyed — the Agency’s only internal investigation of the Bay of Pigs.
The Official History
Colby’s 1973 mandate, Pfeiffer’s five volumes, the missing 70 pages, and an unfinished draft the Agency refused to sign — official history, or one man’s dissent?
The Taylor Committee
Four days after the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy’s Cuba Study Group sat with Dulles, Burke, and Robert Kennedy in the room — the jury was the defendants. Honest autopsy, or whitewash?
What the Files Don’t Settle
The season finale: five hard-won certainties, five open questions the record still will not answer, and the door to Season 2. Method notes: How We Know.
Cited document bundles by email. The cables, the memos, the record numbers — facts first, no hype.