Book Review

Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story
Peter Wyden

A couple of months ago, after Fidel Castro "retired" (I use the quotes because I think he had been out of the loop for some time.), all the 90 second news blurbs would talk about was the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban missile crisis. I realized that I pretty much knew what happened in the Cuban missile crisis, but any details about the Bay if Pigs were clouded, if present. I decided it was time to pick up a book on the subject. This book, which I found at the city library, jumped out I think because of the bright yellow cover, and the picture on the back with Fidel Castro and the author, with a caption attributed to Castro that says "He knows more about it than we do."

The author goes into fairly details account of the planning behind the invasion, and what happened during the invasion, both in Cuba and in the United States. The author clearly did very very thorough investigation on the topic. The book was written about 18 years after the invasion, it sounds like his research was done from 76 to 77. It looks like this book is out of print, but if you can find it, and are interested in what happened, this book is sure to answer any and all questions you might have.

Basically, during the Eisenhower presidency, some guys in the CIA worked on some ways to get rid of Castro, when it became clear Communism was the name of his game. Eventually, Cuban Americans were drafted to form an invasion force to take back Cuba. It doesn't look like their plan was ever all that good, (clearly not from the result) and really is kind of sad. The invasion went forward with no backup from American military forces, and the less than 2000 fighters got routed by the Cuban militia.

I was reading the book yesterday at the hospital, we had a resident doctor in the room waiting to make sure that Tara's doctor actually made it to hospital in time to delivery the baby. He started talking about the Cuba and the Bay of Pigs. In his undergrad, he made a trip to Cuba for something or the other, and started talking about a museum they have in Cuba about the Bay of Pigs. (He said he was a PolySci major. Nothing against PolySci majors, some of my best friends were once PolySci majors, but none of them became doctors...) Anyhow, he started talking them having the U2 fuselage there from the U2 that got shot down. I was fairly far into the thing, well into the actual attack itself, more into the retreat, and hadn't yet seen any downed U2, and didn't think 2 U2s were shot down over Cuba. Then he started talking about the movie 13 days. He was talking about the Cuban missile crisis. Maybe he wasn't the best PolySci major after all...

Anyhow, this is a well written that covers just about every detail relating to the Bay of Pigs invasion. If you are interested in the who, what, when, where, and how, pick up this book.