Cuba: The Massacre

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Cuba's provisional government and the elections that would come afterward, in which (as part of the bargain) he agreed not to be a candidate. But neither the president nor his council had much to say about the military campaign that was gathering force. All now say that the timing was wrong, that an invasion should not have been mounted until after a revolutionary mood had been established inside Cuba by a growing wave of sabotage and underground organization. Nevertheless, they went along. The day they elected Miró, Frente members asked him: "Do you think we are going to know the plan?" Miró assured them, "Yes, we will know the plan." One of the Frente members asked Miró, "Do you think the U.S. will back us with troops if necessary?" Said Miró: "Yes, they promised me they will use the troops."

Of Miró's Revolutionary Council, only the ambitious Artime agreed with the Pentagon-CIA decision to invade immediately. ("He's my golden boy," a top-level CIA man said.) Artime agreed that something had to be done or morale among the Cubans, chafing under discipline in the Guatemalan camps, would begin to deteriorate. He also agreed that time would only favor Castro, enable him to root his dictatorship even more firmly in Cuban soil. When President Kennedy also agreed on the timing, it was Artime who was permitted to break the news for the new Cuba, while his fellow council members—including Mir—were held incommunicado by the CIA.

On the evening of the first day of last week's ill-fated expedition to the Bay of Pigs, Artime's taped voice was heard coming over Miami's WMET. Introduced as "Commander in Chief of the Army of Liberation," Artime announced: "I am in Cuba again after my promise last year that I would come back." By battle's end, he reportedly lay dead in the sunken radio ship. There were rumors that there might be important casualties on the other side as well. Ernesto ("Che") Guevara was reported gravely wounded in the head, the result of a suicide attempt following an argument with Castro over command of the armed forces. And the persistent absence of Castro himself from the early victory celebration gave weight to reports that he had been hurt in a bombing attack on Jagüey Grande.

The defeat caught up everybody concerned—Artime, the CIA, the Pentagon planners, President Kennedy, Miró and the Revolutionary Council. At the news, Bender and Carr broke down and cried.

Before news of the disaster arrived, some 15,000 wives, mothers and friends of members of the wiped-out invasion forces gathered in Miami's Bayfront Park for a scheduled "Thank Kennedy" meeting. But under the impact of tragedy, the women, faces wet with tears, screamed instead, "Kennedy! Help!"

In the aftermath, Cubans bitterly blamed the U.S. and were less inclined to acknowledge the harm done by their own internecine quarreling. But they had paid dearly, too. Miró's own son was Castro's prisoner. Varona's son, two brothers and one nephew were missing. So was Council Member Antonio Maceo's son. The Revolutionary Council held a funereal press conference in the tinseled gaudiness of the Moderne Room of Manhattan's Belmont Plaza. Still playing by the rules, Miró gamely denied that the