Saving the Bay of Pigs Prisoners: Did JFK Send a Secret Warning to Fidel Castro - through Brazil?
President Kennedy receives the flag of the 2506 Brigade
President Kennedy receives the flag of the 2506 Brigade during a ceremony at the Orange Bowl in Miami on December 29, 1962. (Credit: ST-19-3-62, Cecil Stoughton, the White House, JFK Library)
Published: Apr 29, 2021
Briefing Book #758
Edited by James G. Hershberg, George Washington University
President Kennedy receives the flag of the 2506 Brigade during a ceremony at the Orange Bowl in Miami on December 29, 1962. (Credit: ST-19-3-62, Cecil Stoughton, the White House, JFK Library)
60 years after failed invasion of Cuba, new questions about unexplored backchannel dialogue with Castro over release of 2506 Brigade survivors
Brazilian, U.S. declassified records point up Brazil’s role as U.S.-Cuba intermediary in early 1960s
Washington, D.C., April 29, 2021 – John F. Kennedy may have secretly warned Fidel Castro against executing survivors of the Bay of Pigs invasion 60 years ago this month while also dangling a pledge of strict non-intervention if the Cuban leader spared their lives, according to new evidence posted today by the nongovernmental National Security Archive. Kennedy’s secret channel to Castro, the records suggest, was the president of Brazil, João Goulart.
The declassified Brazilian and U.S. documents, along with a provocative journalistic report from the period, help to illuminate a residual mystery linked to that iconic event in Cold War and U.S.-Cuban history. The episode is a fresh case of "back channel" communications between Washington and Havana at a time when they lacked direct diplomatic relations, and a new instance of Brazil acting as a third-party mediator, or at least a communications conduit, in that relationship. Brazil’s role climaxed during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Compiled and edited by George Washington University historian James G. Hershberg based on his research on Brazil, Cuba, and the Cold War, today’s posting examines a tense moment in the Kennedy Administration's more than twenty-month struggle to gain the release of the nearly 1,200 CIA-trained, financed, and equipped anti-Castro Cuban exiles between their failed April 1961 invasion attempt and their release by Fidel Castro in December 1962.
In late March and early April 1962, the captives went on trial in Havana for treason, and U.S. officials feared they might receive harsh punishments, or even be executed – triggering an untimely crisis, sharply intensified public pressure on the Cuban issue, and even a possible U.S. military intervention.
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On April 17, 1961, about 1400 anti-Castro Cuban exiles, secretly armed, equipped, trained, financed, and organized by the Central Intelligence Agency, landed on Cuba's southwestern coast. The operation, approved a year earlier by Dwight D. Eisenhower and inherited (and then slightly scaled back) by Kennedy when he became president in January 1961, failed abysmally: Castro's armed forces pinned down the invaders at Girón Beach (Playa Girón), killed over a hundred, and captured the bulk of the survivors. (About 175 of Castro's soldiers, and hundreds more militia fighters, also died in the intense combat.)
More:
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/cuba/2021-04-28/saving-bay-pigs-prisoners-did-john-f-kennedy-send-secret-warning-fidel-castro-through-brazil?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=6792ec89-c302-4b83-bc05-fa77caec3cd8