File:CrimeSoImmense.pdf

A Crime So Immense

An article By James K. Galbraith which first appeared in the Texas Observer in 2000.

It concerns the the declassification of a special report by General Maxwell Taylor from June 1961 concerning the 'Bay of Pigs' Invasion of Cuba.

Extract

One of the great travesties of the Cold War surfaced on 29 April 2000 when the Washington Post reported the declassification in full of General Maxwell Taylor’s June, 1961 special report on the Bay of Pigs invasion. Partial versions of this document have been available for decades. But only now did its darkest secret spill.

Here is what Taylor reported to Kennedy. The Russians knew the date of the invasion. (Therefore, Castro also knew.) The CIA, headed by Allen Dulles, knew that the Russians knew. (Therefore, they knew the invasion would fail.) The leak did not come from the invasion force; it had happened before the Cuban exiles were themselves briefed on the date. Kennedy was not informed. Nor, of course, were the exiles. And knowing all this, Dulles ordered the operation forward.

Was this incompetence? I think not. The evidence points, rather, to treachery.