Bay of Pigs

Warfare

History Hit

History

4.5 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 27 January 2023

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Bahía de Cochinos, also known as the Bay of Pigs, is a place that lives in infamy for the CIA. On April 17 1961, 1,500 US-trained Cuban exiles launched an unprecedented military landing operation on their homeland there, but how did it go so disastrously wrong? With hundreds of men killed, and even more captured, why did President John F. Kennedy sign off on such a perilous plan - and who really came up with it?

In this episode of Warfare, James is joined by writer Jim Rasenberger to take us through this chaotic moment in history. Looking at the US's relationship with Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro, the logistics that went into the operation, and Jim's personal connection to the story - just what happened at the Bay of Pigs, and who was really to blame?

Senior Producer: Elena Guthrie. Assistant Producer: Annie Coloe. Edited and mixed by Aidan Lonergan.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961 has gone down in history as one of the CIA's greatest failures.
0:07.0	A failure that not only embroiled a new charismatic President John F Kennedy, but it also failed in its core objective to house Cuban
0:16.4	leader Fidel Castro.
0:19.0	Yet while we've all heard of the Bay of pigs, what actually caused this invasion, this coup, to go so horribly wrong?
0:26.0	Well I'm your host James Rogers, this is the Warfare Podcast, and to find out I've invited
0:31.0	the excellent Jim Razzenberger onto the podcast. Jim is the author of the brilliant disaster,
0:37.0	JFK, Castro, and America's doomed invasion of Cuba's Bay of pigs.
0:42.0	Together, we get to the root of how over 1,000 US-trained Cuban
0:46.8	Exiles were left to be killed or imprisoned by Castro's Cuban communists. Hi Jim, welcome to the Warfare Podcast.
0:57.0	How you doing?
1:00.0	I'm doing great.
1:01.0	Nice to be here.
1:02.0	Well, I'm excited to jump in and cover a topic that, well, surprisingly,
1:06.2	we've neglected on the Warfare Podcast.
1:08.8	This is the Bay of Pigs, that disastrous CIA attempt to deploy over 1,000 American-trained Cubans to
1:16.7	overthrow the Communist Revolutionary Fidel Castro. And I am surprised we haven't
1:22.0	covered this because we did an entire CIA month without focusing in on the Bay of pigs.
1:28.7	So to rectify this historical imbalance we've got you on the podcast gym maybe you could take us back to perhaps a little earlier than the Bay of pigs itself in 61 back to 1959 to that moment that Fidel Castro takes power.
1:45.7	How did he come to power in the first place?
1:47.6	And why did the USC Fidel as a threat?
1:50.8	Well, he came to power by overthrowing over a number of years.
1:54.2	Batista had been the dictator of Cuba, and the American press had been covering him
	...

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