Bay Of Pigs

1960: Soviets hit U-2 spy plane1961: Bay of Pigs1961: Washington, D.C., gets vote1963: Friedan's "Feminine Mystique"

WASHINGTON -- Now that a massive U.S. bombardment of Iraq has been put on hold, the Iraqi opposition in exile and powerful supporters in Washington have another suggestion: an insurrection supplied with U.S. weapons.With an eagerly anticipated $97 million worth of U.S. anti-tank weapons, rifles, artillery and training, the Iraqi opposition aims to insert 5,000 warriors into southern Iraq who would encourage defections from Saddam Hussein's army. With American air cover, the forces would launch insurrections from this "safe haven" aimed at replacing Hussein with a broad-based democratic government.

PARIS -- It is a useful coincidence that while Kofi Annan was negotiating the agreement ending, or suspending, the Iraq crisis, the CIA's internal inquiry on the Bay of Pigs fiasco appeared in the press.Both were consequences of the reality that overturning a government is not as simple as many in Washington think -- or thought in 1961, and thought again during the weeks that led up to the United Nations secretary-general's trip to Baghdad.A Wall Street Journal editorial on the agreement negotiated by Mr. Annan, representative of much Washington opinion, deplores the fact that the secretary-general has provided a new obstacle to the United States in taking "decisive action against Iraq," so that Saddam Hussein can no longer defy "the civilized world."

IF AMERICANS have learned anything from the political traumas of the last 30 years -- the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the war in Vietnam, the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard M. Nixon, the Iran-contra scandal that almost did the same for Ronald Reagan -- it is that their government has much to hide. The final words of Oliver Stone's controversial film, "Nixon," tell us that the former president spent the last 20 years of his life fighting for control of 4,000 hours of conversations secretly recorded during his years in the White House, and that all but 60 hours remain locked up. What secrets are hidden in that vast archive of Nixon's compulsive talk with the handful of men he trusted about his fears, his enemies, his plans, his past?

"Oswald and the CIA," by John Newman. 627 pages. New York: Carroll & Graf. $28In his current book, John Newman, a military intelligence officer for 20 years, subjects to minute examination some 2 million pages of documents released under the JFK Records Act of 1992.Mr. Newman makes clear that his larger purpose is to "restore faith in government." He is at pains to pay tribute to the CIA and its "greatest accomplishments" and to his colleagues in the NSA, CIA and DIA.It is from this vantage that Newman unfolds how the files on Lee Harvey Oswald were concealed, falsified and altered by a labyrinth of agencies each engaged in clandestine operations.

CLERMONT, Fla. -- For 33 years, Jose Miro Torra has been haunted by the unfinished battle.The retired, 66-year-old Cuban exile stormed the beaches of his homeland on April 17, 1961, as part of the aborted Bay of Pigs invasion. He spent 22 months in a Cuban prison, a memory he sums up with one sentence: "Do you like macaroni?"After 29 years as an insurance salesman and lawyer in Puerto Rico, Mr. Torra returned to Florida in January with a goal: to organize another invasion.Yesterday, the newly elected president of the 1,098-member 2506 Brigade Bay of Pigs Veterans Association spoke from a small upstairs office in a sign shop in the foothills of Lake County, where he came to recruit a new, younger soldier.

James Buchanan, 77, a Miami Herald reporter who was jailed by Fidel Castro in the Cuban leader's first year in power, died Saturday in Miami of a stroke. He was 77. In 1959, Mr. Buchanan was arrested after he interviewed and gave supplies to an American mercenary who was being sought by Mr. Castro's revolutionary government. He was tried and sentenced to 14 years in prison but was freed 12 days later on the condition that he never return to Cuba. He was part of the Herald team that covered the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.

As America's young president took office, he inherited a awkward commitment from his predecessor. The outgoing administration initiated a policy to confront an aggressive foreign adversary. The new president was dubious about the plan, but endorsed it because he feared cries of weakness from the opposition party.Against his own better judgment, John F. Kennedy approved the invasion of Cuba's Bay of Pigs. The attack, which was supposed to unleash a massive rebellion against Fidel Castro, instead embarrassed the United States at a particularly difficult time -- and may have encouraged the Soviets to place nuclear missiles in Cuba.

WASHINGTON -- When the mission approved by the new, young president turned into a disaster, he told a press conference: "There's an old saying that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan . . . I am the responsible officer of the government and that is quite obvious."But afterward, talking to his chief White House confidante, he asked: "How could I have been so far off base? All my life I've known better than to depend on the experts. How could I have been so stupid, to let them go ahead?"

GIRON, Cuba -- Photos of the dead hang in three rows in the museum that stands a block from the Bay of Pigs. There is Ulloa the pilot and O'Connor the soldier and Moreno the 15-year-old boy. There is a carpenter, a medical student, a reporter. And there is Garcia, the 26-year-old with the light mustache and the haunting eyes, the one who wrote in blood a name on a door: Fidel.Thirty years later, they still celebrate a victory and mourn for the dead at Bahia de Cochinos, a tongue of turquoise sea hemmed in on three sides by sandy white beaches.

BERNARD L. BARKER, 92 Watergate burglar Bernard Leon Barker, one of the five Watergate burglars whose break-in led to America's biggest political scandal, died Friday in suburban Miami. The Cuban-born former CIA operative, who also participated in the Bay of Pigs invasion, died at his home after being taken to the Veterans Administration Medical Center the night before, said his stepdaughter, Kelly Andrad. He appeared to have died of complications of lung cancer, and he had also suffered from heart problems.

WASHINGTON -- The first time they came for her, members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia shoved the 31-year-old nurse blindfolded into the back of a green Renault sedan. After a seemingly endless trip, her kidnappers took her to a house and forced her to treat one of their commandants, who was writhing in pain from a bullet wound to the leg. The woman was abducted seven more times in 1997 and 1998 to give medical care to FARC guerrillas. Each time, she said, they warned her not to go to the police.

Almanac April 17--1521: Martin Luther went before the Diet of Worms to face charges stemming from his religious writings. 1961: About 1,500 CIA-trained Cuban exiles launched the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in a failed attempt to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro.

HAVANA, Cuba - Fidel Castro walked into a hotel conference room yesterday morning and sat down across the table from men who had spent years plotting to subvert his government or to kill him for the United States. They were veterans of the Bay of Pigs, the doomed invasion of Cuba by anti-Castro forces backed by the White House, and of Operation Mongoose, the CIA's project to assassinate Castro. Almost exactly four decades after the Bay of Pigs fiasco in April 1961, the two sides pored over a trove of secret documents about the invasion - including the first secret records that Castro has ever declassified - and discussed that rare thing in history: "a perfect failure," as the historian Theodore Draper once wrote.

Robert Morris Coffin, an artist, teacher, CIA officer and wartime cartographer who helped design maps of the French coast at Normandy in preparation for the D-Day invasion, died of pneumonia Tuesday at Calvert Memorial Hospital in Prince Frederick. He was 87. Mr. Coffin was born in St. Mary's, Ohio, the son of a judge. He attended Miami University and University of New Mexico, studying art, anthropology and archaeology. He received a master's degree from Ohio State University, where he met his wife, the former Jane Peter, and where he was teaching when World War II began.

1960: Soviets hit U-2 spy plane1961: Bay of Pigs1961: Washington, D.C., gets vote1963: Friedan's "Feminine Mystique"

WASHINGTON -- Now that a massive U.S. bombardment of Iraq has been put on hold, the Iraqi opposition in exile and powerful supporters in Washington have another suggestion: an insurrection supplied with U.S. weapons.With an eagerly anticipated $97 million worth of U.S. anti-tank weapons, rifles, artillery and training, the Iraqi opposition aims to insert 5,000 warriors into southern Iraq who would encourage defections from Saddam Hussein's army. With American air cover, the forces would launch insurrections from this "safe haven" aimed at replacing Hussein with a broad-based democratic government.

PARIS -- It is a useful coincidence that while Kofi Annan was negotiating the agreement ending, or suspending, the Iraq crisis, the CIA's internal inquiry on the Bay of Pigs fiasco appeared in the press.Both were consequences of the reality that overturning a government is not as simple as many in Washington think -- or thought in 1961, and thought again during the weeks that led up to the United Nations secretary-general's trip to Baghdad.A Wall Street Journal editorial on the agreement negotiated by Mr. Annan, representative of much Washington opinion, deplores the fact that the secretary-general has provided a new obstacle to the United States in taking "decisive action against Iraq," so that Saddam Hussein can no longer defy "the civilized world."

IF AMERICANS have learned anything from the political traumas of the last 30 years -- the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the war in Vietnam, the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard M. Nixon, the Iran-contra scandal that almost did the same for Ronald Reagan -- it is that their government has much to hide. The final words of Oliver Stone's controversial film, "Nixon," tell us that the former president spent the last 20 years of his life fighting for control of 4,000 hours of conversations secretly recorded during his years in the White House, and that all but 60 hours remain locked up. What secrets are hidden in that vast archive of Nixon's compulsive talk with the handful of men he trusted about his fears, his enemies, his plans, his past?

"Oswald and the CIA," by John Newman. 627 pages. New York: Carroll & Graf. $28In his current book, John Newman, a military intelligence officer for 20 years, subjects to minute examination some 2 million pages of documents released under the JFK Records Act of 1992.Mr. Newman makes clear that his larger purpose is to "restore faith in government." He is at pains to pay tribute to the CIA and its "greatest accomplishments" and to his colleagues in the NSA, CIA and DIA.It is from this vantage that Newman unfolds how the files on Lee Harvey Oswald were concealed, falsified and altered by a labyrinth of agencies each engaged in clandestine operations.