After the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, getting even with Cuban leader Fidel Castro became an obsession for President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Robert, according to a top CIA official of that era.
"The president and his brother were ready to avenge their personal embarrassment by overthrowing the enemy at any cost," wrote Richard M. Bissell, a former deputy CIA director who was a principal architect of the invasion.Even though Robert Kennedy was attorney general at the time, his involvement in organizing and directing a guerrilla operation against Castro was so intense that he "might as well have been deputy director of plans for the operation," Bissell said.
The account appears in Bissell's posthumous memoirs, "Reflections of a Cold Warrior," published by Yale University Press, which made excerpts available on Wednesday, the 35th anniversary of the invasion.
The post-Bay of Pigs guerrilla operation, known as Operation Mongoose, sought to infiltrate Cuba with exiles to organize cells and initiate guerrilla activity.
It was almost a duplicate of the original CIA plan drawn up in 1960, which ultimately was scrapped in favor of an invasion.
Bissell said he recalled telephoning Robert Kennedy in Hyannis-port, Mass., several times over Thanksgiving weekend in 1961 to reassure him that the CIA was doing everything possible to assist veteran guerrilla expert Edward Lansdale, head of the operation.
Impatient with the progress, the Kennedys "wanted to get more saboteurs, more trained guerrillas who could be infiltrated sooner and, most important, results," Bissell wrote.
President Kennedy persisted, notwithstanding intelligence reports that Castro was getting strong despite American efforts to depose him, Bissell said. He added that Kennedy's personal involvement debunks the notion of some that Operation Mongoose was carried out without authorization.
"All actions received his explicit authorization," Bissell wrote.
The Kennedy's anti-Castro fever was matched, according to Bissell, by that of President Eisenhower during his final days in office.