Conference 6 | May 1996
The Musgrove Conference on the Bay of Pigs Invasion
Reexamined
Following the success of the conference in Havana, there was tremendous
momentum to do more to understand the issues that separate the US and
Cuba. Participants on the Cuban side wanted to collaborate with us and
our colleagues at the National Security Archive to begin a process for
collecting and declassifying Cuban documents. In fact, the government
of Cuba established a new institution -- The Institute for the Study of
the Security of Cuba, with Fabian Escalante as the first director. Escalante
had participated in both the Antigua and Havana conferences and well understood
the practice of critical oral history. He proposed that we work together
on a conference on the Bay of Pigs invasion of April, 1961. This would
be difficult. The Bay of Pigs operation has been called "the perfect
failure," and it is always a challenge to ask people to examine their
failures. In addition, the inclusion of Cuban-Americans who were members
of the invading force presented difficulties for both US and Cuban organizers.
On the US side, who would be willing to go to Cuba for such a discussion,
and on the Cuban side, who would they be willing to invite to Havana for
such a discussion? The obstacles were real, but we worked on them and
made progress -- so much progress that we had the location for the conference
picked and an invitation list agreed upon.
And then, in February of '96, two planes from a group centered in Miami,
called Brothers to the Rescue, were shot down by the Cuban military. The
group claimed to be in international waters; the Cubans claimed they were
in Cuban airspace. US-Cuban relations took a nosedive, and the Havana
conference on the Bay of Pigs was postponed indefinitely.
In the interim, the US organizing team decided to take two steps: 1)
to gather the US participants for a conference to discuss new US documents
including, for the first time, documents from the anti-Castro resistance
in Cuba; and 2) to raise the odds of a subsequent conference in Cuba,
via the generation of new information from the US side. And so, the Musgrove
conference was organized.
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Documents are a crucial ingredient of every critical oral history
conference. For all of our productions, we work with the National
Security Archive, a non-profit organization in Washington, DC, dedicated
to declassifying documents to preserve and support an open society.
Tom Blanton is the executive director of the Archive. Here he is
(on the right) at the Musgrove conference, with Jim Blight (left).
One prominent group in the Cuban resistance was the MRR, the Movement
to Recover the Revolution. Rafael Quintero (left) was a member of
the MRR, as well as a member of Brigade 2506 that landed at the
Bay of Pigs. Lino Fernandez (right), a physician specializing in
psychiatry, was the second in command of the MRR.
Another resistance group was the Students' Revolutionary Directorate
(DRE). Enrique Baloyra worked in the intelligence unit of the DRE.
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Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. represented the view of the Kennedy White
House. Schlesinger was special assistant to President Kennedy, with
oversight of all Latin American initiatives. During the Bay of Pigs
crisis, he was liaison with the Cuban leadership in exile.
Jacob Esterline (right) was a CIA specialist in guerrilla warfare.
He designed the initial plan for the invasion by Cuban exiles. Against
his recommendations, the plan was changed into what became the Bay
of Pigs invasion. Here, Jake is chatting with Dagoberto Rodriguez
(center), the then deputy chief (and current chief) of the Cuban
Interests Section in Washington who attended the Musgrove conference
as an observer, and Peter Kornbluh (left) who is a senior analyst
at the National Security Archive.
One of the distinctive features of our critical oral history conferences
is custom designed t-shirts that we give to all participants at
the opening dinner. The t-shirts for this conference (designed by
Rich Gann) were meant to symbolize the larger goals of the project.
On the front was a CIA aerial photograph of the Bay of Pigs battle
in progress. On the back was the last stanza on the song "Playa
Giron," (the beach by the Bay of Pigs) by Cuban songwriter
Silvio Rodriquez:
Que escrib la historia, su historia
[todos] los hombres de playa Giron.
Well, let them write the history, their story,
[all] the men of the Bay of Pigs.
"Todos/all" was added to embrace the ultimate goal of
the project.
After the first conference session, we asked those who wore the
t-shirts (most but not all of the participants and observers) to
pose for a photograph.
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