The "Confessions" of Allen Dulles: New Evidence on the Bay of Pigs

Abstract

In November 1961 Allen W. Dulles resigned from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), ending a tenure as director that had spanned nearly a decade. On 17 April of that year, a brigade of Cuban exiles, armed and directed by the CIA, had landed at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba in an effort to topple the regime of Premier Fidel Castro. Within days, however, Castro's forces crushed the invasion, killing or capturing almost the entire brigade. Stunned by the disaster, newly elected President John F. Kennedy began to reconsider the advice that he had been receiving. Upon taking office from President Dwight D. Eisenhower only a few months before, Kennedy had asked Dulles, who had directed the CIA throughout the previous administration, to remain at the head of the agency. But in the wake of the Cuban debacle, Kennedy decided that it was time for the director of central intelligence (DCI) to go, and Dulles left quietly.1