I have heard firsthand accounts wherein the CIA agents, on their way back by helicopter, tossed these natives (“mere gooks”) out of the helicopter, alive, “just for the fun of it” and as a lesson to those who remained on board.
In terms of the act and national policy, there is a distinct difference between the meaning and the use of the words “direction of” and “approval.” The National Security Act of 1947 used the word “direction” to mean that the idea for the plan originates with the NSC and, then, that the NSC directs its accomplishment by whatever department or agency, or combination thereof, it may choose. During the Eisenhower days, and with the ease with which the Dulles brothers carried out these things, it was not uncommon for Allen Dulles, the director of central intelligence, to arrive at a meeting with some scheme. He would present this idea to the NSC and then seek its “approval.” This practice generally worked and was deemed permissible in that environment, but that is not how the NSC was intended to work. President Kennedy found it quite difficult to reverse this practice in later years, because the CIA had been able to have its way in these covert matters over the Department or State and the Department of Defense for so many years.
As a result of a presidential directive, a board of inquiry on the subject of the Bay of Pigs failure, and on what should be done in the future in such cases, met in the Pentagon in May 1961. This most unusual “Special Group” consisted of Gen. Maxwell Taylor, Allen Dulles, Adm. Arleigh Burke, and Robert F. Kennedy. A “Letter to the President” was prepared, written by General Taylor. The existence of this letter has been denied for years by various administrations and by the board members. However, it does exist. I have had a copy of this rare and most important “letter” for years, and it now appears verbatim in a book called Zapata.
As will be seen, this approval included the purchase of new helicopters.
Allen Dulles’s favorite expression for military-type operations by the CIA, or a joint CIA/Defense Department effort, was “peacetime operations‘—an Orwellian twist typical of the Dulles turn of mind.
A slang expression within the intelligence community for the practice of establishing one or more parallel identities, or covers, for someone engaged in intelligence work.
Dulles’s statement may be found on page 287 of the Report of the Executive Sessions of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, volume 12, which was not made public until November 1982. Printed by the U.S. Government Printing Office.
I was there at the time these Cuban exile leaders were in Senator Kennedy’s office. After that meeting, these Cubans traveled to the Pentagon from Capitol Hill, in a military vehicle with me, to meetings that were held in the Office of Special Operations.