4. Going guerrilla
A second prong of the invasion strategy was that if the expected uprising failed to take place, the landing force would "go guerrilla," even though the troops had not been trained in guerrilla tactics and the area was highly unsuitable for them. There was no place to hide, no way to communicate, no food, and no inhabitants to support them. Aguilar quotes Maximo Gomez, the master tactician of guerrilla warfare during Cuba's war for independence, as referring to the Zapata Peninsula as a "geographical and military trap" (p. xiii). Yet this was the area the CIA picked for the invasion, and they again succeeded in convincing the military, McNamara, and Rusk of the feasibility of the plan. Admiral Burke told the Taylor committee that "if there were opposition and they could not hold it [the beach], they would slip through and become guerrillas" (p. 112). Slip through to where? McNamara said "They would be split up into a guerrilla force and moved into the Escambrays" (p. 202), despite the fact that the Escambray mountains were 60 kilometers east of the landing point. How would they get there? No motorized vehicles were landed with the troops. Rusk is even less well informed:
Question: What was expected to happen if the landing force effected a successful lodgment but there was no uprising?
Sec. Rusk: In that case they would commence guerrilla operations, move into the swamps and then into the hills. This swamp area was stated to be the home of guerrillas.
Question: Was the point made that this area had not been used for guerrilla operations in this century?
Sec. Rusk: I don't recall (p. 220).
Gen. Lemnitzer makes it clear that the CIA was the source of the plan:
It was our understanding of the plan without any doubt that moving into the guerrilla phase was one of the important elements of the plan, and any idea that the Chiefs considered that they were making an indefinite lodgment on the beachhead is not right. Every bit of information that we were able to gather from the CIA was that the guerrilla aspects were always considered as a main element of the plan (p. 318).
During this same discussion (on May 18), Lemnitzer replies to an unidentified speaker who makes the statement:
Statement: The President had the same impression that you did --that if worse came to worst, this group could become guerrillas, but as we've gotten into it, it’s become obvious that this possibility never really existed.
Lemnitzer: Then we were badly misinformed (p. 318).
Everyone was misinformed, but in opposite ways. The President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Joint Chiefs were told that the guerrilla option was real and that the troops were prepared for it. McGeorge Bundy says in his letter to Taylor:
The President repeatedly indicated his own sense that this [guerrilla] option was of great importance, and he was repeatedly assured that the guerrilla option was a real one...My point is simply that the President steadily insisted that the force have an alternative means of survival, and that he was steadily assured that such an alternative was present (p. 178).
Bundy, of course, as Kennedy's National Security Advisor and liaison with the CIA, would have been the responsible person to give the President these assurances. Yet on April 19, two days after the landing, Lemnitzer and the President learned to their surprise that the troops were in fact not prepared to go guerrilla:
Lemnitzer: On the morning of D+2, I made a comment to the President that this was the time for this outfit to go guerrilla.
Question: How were your comments received?
Lemnitzer: I received a surprise when Mr. Bissell said they were not prepared to go guerrilla.
Question: This was the first time you'd known about that?
Lemnitzer: Yes (p. 330).
Admiral Burke received the same surprise:
Question: What was your impression of what would happen if the landing was made but there were no uprisings?
Burke: It was my understanding that the landing force would go guerrilla. I never knew they had orders to fall back to the beachhead. The first time I knew that they were not prepared to go guerrilla was when Mr. Bissell made this point on the night of D+1 (p. 331).
The troops, however, were told the opposite:
Question: Was there ever any mention of your becoming guerrillas?
Mr. Estrada: No, we had no plan to go to the mountains (p. 296).
Question: Was there ever any talk, when it appeared things were becoming critical, of going guerrilla?
Mr. Betancourt: Not that I know of. Question: During your training, was there any talk of this?
Mr. Betancourt: No (p. 310).
When confronted with this fact, that the CIA had made plans for the troops to go guerrilla without so much as telling the "guerrillas" about it, much less training them, Dulles takes his characteristic weasel's position:
Statement: Without training and instruction, they would never have gone guerrilla.
Dulles: I wouldn't wholly buy that. These people had a cadre of leaders--20percent to 30 percent would be the leaders. They knew about guerrilla warfare. The guerrillas in WWII never had any training until they got into a guerrilla operation.
I think this statement reveals a lot about the way Dulles thought. People are to be manipulated and, if necessary, sacrificed. It doesn't matter if the baby can’t swim: throw it in the pool and it will learn; if not, tough. I think this was the way Dulles saw not only the guerrilla option but the entire operation, as I will try to make clear.