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...in pro-American. The Guatemalan adventure can be seen as another of the factors that lead the American government to believe that it could handle Casto. Before the Second World War ended, a coup in Guatemala saw the rise to power of Juan Jose Ar‚valo. He was not a communist in the traditional sense of the term, but he ". . . packed his government with Communist Party members and Communist sympathizers." In 1951 Jacobo Arbenz succeeded Ar‚valo after an election in March of that year. The party had been progressing with a series of reforms, and the newly elected leader continued with these reforms. During land reforms a major American company, the United Fruit Company, lost its land and other holdings without any compensation from the Guatemalan government. When the Guatemalans refused to go to the International Court of Law, United Fruit began to lobby the government of the United States to take action. In the government they had some very powerful supporters. Among them were Foster Dulles, Secretary of State who had once been their lawyer, his brother Allen the Director of Central Intelligence who was a share holder, and Robert Cutler head of the National Security Council. In what was a clear conflict of interest, the security apparatus of the United States decided to take action against the Guatemalans. From May 1st, 1954, to June 18th, the Central Intelligence Agency did everything in its power to overthrow the government of Arbenz. On June 17th to the 18th, it peaked with an invasion of 450 men lead by a Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas. With the help of air support the men took control of the country and Arbenz fled to the Mexican Embassy. By June 27th, the country was firmly in control of the invading force. With its success in Guatemala, CIA had the confidence that it could now take on anyone who interfered with American interests. Castro overthrew Batista in 1959. Originally Castro was not a communist either and even had meetings with then Vice-President Richard Nixon. Fearful of Castro's revolution, people with money, like doctors, lawyers, and the mafia, left Cuba for the United States. To prevent the loss of more capital Castro's solution was to nationalize some of the businesses in Cuba. In the process of nationalizing some business he came into conflict with American interests just as Arbenz had in Guatemala. ".. . legitimate U.S. Businesses were taken over, and the process of socialization begun with little if any talk of compensation." There were also rumours of Cuban involvement in trying to invade Panama, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic and by this time Castro had been turn down by the United States for any economic aid. Being rejected by the Americans, he met with foreign minister Anasta Mikoyan to secure a $100 million loan from the Soviet Union. It was in this atmosphere that the American Intelligence and Foreign Relations communities decided that Castro was leaning towards communism and had to be dealt with. In the spring of 1960, President Eisenhower approved a plan to send small groups of American trained, Cuban exiles, to work in the underground as guerrillas to overthrow Castro. By the fall, the plan was changed to a full invasion with air support by exile Cubans in American supplied planes. The original group was to be trained in Panama, but with the growth of the operation and the quickening pace of events in Cuba, it was decided to move things to a base in Guatemala.. It was now fall and a new president had been elected. President Kennedy could have stopped the invasion if he wanted to, but he probably didn't do so for several reasons. Firstly, he had campaigned for some form of action against Cuba and it was also the height of the cold war, to back out now would mean having groups of Cuban exiles travelling around the globe saying how the Americans had backed down on the Cuba issue. In competition with the Soviet Union, backing out would make the Americans look like wimps on the international scene, and for domestic consumption the new president would be seen as backing away from one of his campaign promises. The second reason Kennedy probably didn't abort the operation is the main reason why the operation failed, problems with the CIA. The failure at the CIA led to Kennedy making poor decisions, which would affect future relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union. The failure at CIA had three causes. First the wrong people were handling the operation, secondly the agency in charge of the operation was also the one providing all the intelligence for the operation, and thirdly for an organization supposedly obsessed with security the operation had security problems. National Estimates could have provided information on the situation in Cuba and the chances for an uprising against Castro once the invasion started. Also kept out of the loop were the State Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff who could have provided help on the military side of the adventure. In the end, the CIA kept all the information for itself and passed on to the president only what it thought he should see. Lucien S. Vandenbroucke, in Political Science Quarterly of 1984, based his analysis of the Bay of Pigs failure on organizational behaviour theory. For an organization that deals with security issues, the CIA's lack of security in the Bay of Pigs operation is ironic. Security began to break down before the invasion when The New York Times reporter Tad Szulc ". . . learned of Operation Pluto from Cuban friends. . ." earlier that year while in Costa Rica covering an Organization of American States meeting. The conclusion one can draw from the articles in The New York Times is that if reporters kne...