Word: wyden
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...Peter Wyden is one of those veteran journalists who scoff at the notion that historians can gain insights into past events by poking around in faded documents. To be sure, Wyden fought for release of every official paper that might illuminate America's most humiliating pre-Viet Nam military fiasco: the 1961 invasion at Cuba's Bay of Pigs. But he also spent several years assaulting the still sensitive memories of the CIA's chastened plotters; interviewing the bitter Cuban exiles who had watched their comrades die on the beach; quizzing Fidel Castro and dozens...
Outlines of what went wrong have been sketched before, most notably by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. in A Thousand Days. But Wyden, a former editor at the Saturday Evening Post, McCall's and Ladies' Home Journal, is not satisfied with shadows and rumors. He retraces every false step, sparing no one and no institution. The plot was conceived and crafted at the CIA largely by a cerebral chief of covert operations, Richard Bissell Jr. It had been passed on to President Kennedy by an unenthusiastic-but not disapproving-President Eisenhower. In the naive belief that U.S. involvement could...
...With relentless reporting, pursuit of detail and narrative skill, Wyden recalls and amplifies the anguish of men caught in chaos. Though the whole concept was fatally flawed, specific botches stand out. The CIA's aerial photoanalysts had dismissed some dark blotches off selected landing sites as either "seaweed" or "clouds." They turned out to be coral reefs, which ripped open the hulls of landing craft. The Bay of Pigs had been chosen partly for its assumed isolation from Castro's defending army. As they churned toward shore, the invaders were startled to find part of the beach bathed...
...Virginia and permitted to read a letter commending him for his clandestine help. As he started to put it in his pocket, it was snatched away. Oh, no, he was told, it was secret and could only go in his files. He felt "like a dumb ass," Doster told Wyden...
...greater stupidity prevailed in high offices in Washington, where bright individuals let egos, ambition and bureaucratic momentum cloud their collective judgment. Worse yet, Wyden believes that "it could happen again...