Bay of Pigs documents

The National Security Archive obtained more declassified documents about the Bay of Pigs invasion, namely the CIA's own official history and some cables. The writing of the history is actually pretty lively. What we find is a mission that was in fact even more ill conceived and mismanaged than we already knew.

Some highlights:

--the CIA knew it would fail without airstrikes, and officials talked about that fact.

--the U.S. approved the use of napalm for the invasion. Further, Cubans training in Guatemala were disrupted by Guatemalan rebels, and so the Guatemalan government also requested napalm to use in its own country. That seems to have been turned down--cables noted that no one in Guatemala had experience with how to deal with napalm anyway.

--for "plausible deniability" the U.S. planes that were used had Cuban markings, which then drew friendly fire.

--Rafael Trujillo wanted to help in exchange for giving him a place to retire, but the U.S. said no and then of course helped assassinate him.

There is still more that remains classified, and I cannot imagine why (see Peter Kornbluh's discussion in the Daily Beast here).  They Bay of Pigs can hardly become more embarrassing for the United States, and the relevant policy makers are dead.  Maybe the CIA feels that bringing up its incompetence of the past will bring new efforts to de-fund it in the present.