Abstract

In “The ‘Confessions’ of Allen Dulles: New Evidence on the Bay of Pigs,” Lucien Vandenbroucke has performed a scholarly service. He describes and analyzes successive drafts, which he unearthed from the former CIA director's papers in Princeton, of what was to be a magazine article defending the agency's conduct of that operation. Vandenbroucke's analysis of this fascinating material is focused on the question of what President Kennedy was led to understand during his first three months in office by his intelligence and military advisers about the nature of and the prospects for the impending operation and whether he was misled by them, deliberately or not, in an effort on their part “to steer past” him a project he deeply mistrusted. Essentially, the writer concludes that he was. The thesis is that the promoters of the operation deliberately allowed Kennedy and his senior political advisers to ignore major weaknesses in the invasion plan by making no effort to dispel serious misconceptions about it which became current in the White House and contributed to wrong decisions about whether to proceed and how the operation was to be conducted. At least four major misconceptions held in varying degrees and at different times by the president and some, or all, of his advisers are identified.

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