Citation Needed - Bay of Pigs

Episode Date: April 29, 2020

The Bay of Pigs invasion (Spanish: invasión de bahía de Cochinos; sometimes called invasión de playa Girón or batalla de Girón, after the Playa Girón) was a failed landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba in 1961 by Cuban exiles who opposed Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution. Covertly financed and directed by the U.S. government, the operation took place at the height of the Cold War and its failure led to major shifts in international relations between Cuba, the United States, and the Soviet Union.

But then the tube, it locks, right? So you just, you keep one, maybe two kids max in the tube. Like if you push real hard, so you can have some alone time. Which I don't think the fact that it's a tube really changes the situation though. I don't think it's, oh it changes it. Believe me, that's a game changer. How do they breathe?

Right, right. I know the kids carefully, shallowly, whatever. What? What? Good evening, gentlemen. What? Eli, what is this? What's going on?

It's a machine ant against this week's episode. They've found a Eli, what you, no, no, no. The Bay of Pigs was an attempted coup in Cuba. It has nothing to do with Pigs. Oh, it, it doesn't? It does not. No, no, I know that. How do I know that?

Well, my pick guy is a dick about refunds. So, you know, if there's an angle that we can make this work with, I really need us to, there's literally no angle. No. What? Nope. Hey, question, did you buy a giant cake?

Oh, as part of this? Yeah, I did, but whatever you do don't try to Salprise Got it. It is going Say I like the misdirection on this. This is right right like I didn't know did you say salprise? Sal Proud man, man, that's how much respect bro. There's a great pun Proud of you really good pun his blood is funny So, bro. I get mad. I did, so much respect, bro. There's a great pun. Bro, bro. It's a really good pun.

His blood is funny. Hello and welcome to Citation Needed. Podcasts where we choose a subject read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we are experts because this is the internet and that's how it works now. I'm Cecil and I'll be commanding this special forces mission. So let's introduce the first squad, the fighting follicles, member of the 101st Airborne Division, Eli Noah and Tom. Ah, okay, you last, Cecil, but while everyone else is stuck at home alone,

I'm making new friends out of beard hair. Every single day. Okay. Cracks. Whoa, okay. Yeah, I will say say not everybody's tough enough to just strand the trending it takes to make the- What is happening?

Oh, that's a- Oh, that's a- Coming at you from different directions on that one. So much shit on so much dance. So good. So good. God, it's like overachieving. Absolutely not.

You know, man, the oil in my beard used to be worth something, you know, now it's like about five bucks a barrel. Actually, it's about five, five, oh three. Today, there's one more person left to introduce the man with the high pitch laugh and a proud member of squeal team sex, Keith. They call me shrill sergeant Cecil. Tril means I'm here. Folks, the board of defense budgets getting low here.

And we don't have a Senate full of hawks to just write us a blank check. So become a Patron in these trying times is more important than ever. If you'd like to learn how to become a patron, be sure to stick around until the end of the show. And with that out of the way, tell us, Heath, what person place thing, concept, phenomenon, or event will we be talking about today? We're going to be talking about the Bay of Pigs invasion. I know better than to jump the gun and just ask what the topic is with your essay. So tell me, no, what tangential event, 500 years earlier, would you like to start with?

He's got this. I know he's got this. Well, it was 469 years earlier. Actually, you see, so Spanish colonization of Cuba for a hundred. Damn it. You said the sex number. Okay. So,

I need to go for a second. You have to go for another person in the bed ignoring you. I'm not sure why every goddamn historical source uses exactly that phrasing, but they do so I will too. Spucking jewel in Spain's imperial crown. Now this worked out great for Spain, not so much for Cuba. So from early on in this relationship, the Cubans set about trying to throw off Spanish rule.

In 1898, the US decides that they won in on that shit so they declare war on Spain in an ostensible effort to aid Cuba in its bid for independence. And to America's credit, once we won that war, we handed Cuba over to local leaders. Well, to a Cuban-born American citizen, but we did let them run their own country. It provided that well, most, most of their own kind, we had a bay that we wanted and then they had to still make all the decisions that we wanted. But still, but they got to, my point is we hardly ever intervened in their domestic affairs. And when we did, it was sometimes at the Cuban governments, perhaps.

So yeah, America, the A H 64 Apache helicopter parent, that's what. That's so much better than E plurum bassoon. Okay, so you are totally in charge of all the decisions that you make that I like also. Where do you think you're going dressed like that? You slut. That's the right. Yeah, that was the relationship. So for several decades, the Cuban government is somewhere between US puppet and independent

body leaning towards puppet. But then in 1952, a Cuban general by the name of Fulgincio Batista, stages of military coup, deposes the president, declares himself president, cancels the upcoming election and describes his new governmental system as disciplined democracy. As an if you try to vote, he's going to punish your ass. Yeah. Georgia's got a similar thing going on actually. Also disciplined democracy, one of my favorite porn deaths. I know it's all Hillary Clinton spanking non-voters.

It's great. Yeah. This also called 50 shades of democracy. From here, shit gets complicated. A bunch of different revolutionary groups start to bubble up around the country. And by the time any of them is strong enough to push back against, but these two, they're also fighting with each other. But the one that came out on top was the 26th of July movement, which despite its name existed on all the days. And that was led by a young lawyer by the name of Fidel Castro. Oh, that's the guy on my shirt who I've never read about or done any research on. Oh my God.

I have so much. It's nice. You don't even have it right. God damn it. Okay. So for three years, Castro led a guerrilla army against Batista. That's not what a guerrilla army is. Oh, on gas, on gas.

Because it was a gas. Yeah. So for three years, Castro led a guerrilla army against Batista. And the harder Batista came down on the revolutionaries, the more local support Castro got. By 1958, Batista's armies and full retreat and he the more local support Castro got. By 1958, Batista's armies and full retreat and he resigns, fleeced to the US with a reported portion of something like $300 million US. But once he was in control, Castro didn't like reschedule those elections that Batista had canceled or anything. Instead, he appointed

a self prime minister. Well, no, so he proclaimed his new regime to be something called direct democracy, meaning, really shit, you're not, that he'll be in charge, but people can come directly to him and tell him what they think he should do. That's what I'm like. He's like, so everyone, I'm in charge of everything, but there's a suggestion box now,

and it's trying to sit a guy with a machine gun, but don's a suggestion box now. And it's trying to say the guy with the machine gun, but don't be allowed by him. He's quality control. Your suggestions are very important to us, very important. Yeah. Do you have to stand on that one square that he controls with the lever that turns into a trap door like he's the only one whose novelty grenade, pole pin complaint department take a number thing didn't use the novelty grenade. Exactly right. Right. No, no, go ahead.

It's one of those jokes. No, go ahead. Now, to be clear, Castro was a kind of a step up from Batista or actually a pretty solid step up from Batista. And Castro was way less torturing and murdery, but the US didn't generally judge foreign leaders on shit like that. It tended to judge him more on the, will they do what the fuck we tell them to scale?

And Castro ranked pretty low on that scale. Now, this all came to a head when Castro ordered Cuban oil refineries that were controlled by US corporations to process crude oil from the Soviet Union. Under intense pressure from the US. The company's refuse. So Castro nationalizes the refineries.

Okay. Uh, I have questions. Do you have like the secret for magic oil refining? Nobody else can. He was 7,000 miles from the USS. All right. Just I got to think they could build their own refinery like on the same continent. Yeah, we released this you would think.

What can you think? Well ours wouldn't be in Hurricane Ali then. Well, yeah, there's another. I don't know. I just love it. The US was like, hey, oil profiteering is unethical. So, you know, all right. So now this leads to a big tip for tat escalation where the US keeps saying, Hey, well, then we're going to stop by an ex from you and Castro is like, Okay,

then I'm going to nationalize why and pretty soon the US is enforcing a pretty much in total embargo against the island nation and every remnant of an American asset therein has property of Fidel hastily scribbled across it. I don't see your name. Okay, never mind. All right. Stop looking all the oil. Stop it. Stop it.

We'll send the fucking X-Men. We'll do it. We have sex men. No, of course, the US has a playbook for situations like this one. They dealt with unfriendly Latin American leaders before. And when I say dealt with, I mean that in the Mafioso kind of way. So they go to the god damn Mafia. What?

For realsies. In August of 1960, they call up I guess Kosa no strah, each cue and they try to work out a deal where the Mafia will assassinate Fidel Castro, his brother Raul and Shaykabara, and in exchange the CIA will guarantee them a monopoly on Cuban gambling prostitution and drugs. I don't understand this. Like some mafia guys in that meeting with the CIA, he's like, oh, you don't know what a killer guy? You just sneak up behind him and shh.

Don't know. We're gonna contract. Shut up. How fucking embarrassing is it that the CIA has to outsource assassinations? Like, were they worried they were going to sell the pristine reputation of the CIA? Okay, Tom, to be fair, by the time they do get around to killing someone, even Oliver Stone knows they did it.

So, you know, they don't do the great on their own. So, the Smovia plan didn't go anywhere, but the idea of knocking off Castro would remain a US obsession for decades to follow. And the first US president to salivate over that possibility was Eisenhower. Castro rose to power in his second term, and all the embargo shit happened in 1960. That's Eisenhower's last year in office. In March of 1960, that's when the CIA puts forward the plan that would eventually grow into the Bay of Pigs invasion and Eisenhower signs off on it right away. The objective

is to quote, bring about the replacement of the Castro regime with one more devoted to the true interests of the Cuban people and more susceptible to the US in such a manner to avoid any appearance of US intervention. And quote, yeah, American foreign policy. The thing that's best for you is also coincidentally best for us. You could thank us later. You could bring it. Yeah.

You could thank us later. Yeah. For fucking say, this is like the least successful three-some sales pitch ever. It's like, okay. Honey, so we'll like and fight one of your friends over. Maybe have a couple of drinks, you know, really make the night about It's about you who knows you might find yourself Like discover some truths of who you are and

Also be really great if you both took turns sucking my dick for a while That's just If the plan was to murder your wife and have the two friends you invited over blow bang you but yeah, yeah, it's and have the two friends who invited over Blobang you. But yeah, yeah, it's, yeah, it's not. That's my point. Okay. I think that's what he meant. I thought it was baked in.

I thought it was baked in. Yeah, I was implied time. I agree. So in August of that year, I sent Howard to both of them, so whopping $13 million to this operation. That's like $113 million in today's money. The idea is to trade a certain difference in Guadalajara.

Yeah, well, yeah. No, I just thought that maybe the calculator that I was using was bullshit, but no, it doesn't work out to that. So they train up some Cuban dissidents in Guatemala. So they supply them with some weapons that the US can at least theoretically pretend to came from somebody else. And then they send those guys into do the CIA's dirty. And then teenage Oliver North takes out a giant bag of guns. He's like, Hey, here we go. Made in USB. There you go. Like he's, he's got to scratch off that triangle. Made it into B. So it's worth noting, by the way, that 1960 is an election year in Cuba as a huge issue. Eisenhower is at the end of turn number two. So he's leaving one way or the other. The contest now is between his vice president Richard Nixon and famous rich guys kid, John

F. Kennedy. Well, we're at the height of the Cold War at this point. Castro has seen his dangerously pro-Russian and the American people want this, try to 100 miles south of our border neutralized. Kennedy is hitting the campaign trail. Bitching that the US government is not doing enough to support Cuban dissidents. Now Nixon, meanwhile, right. Well, yeah, I was saying Nixon knows exactly how much the US is doing, but he can't say

anything about it because of all that plausible deniability that they're going for. There should be like a David Attenborough special about the habits of the United States government. And here we see it shake off three years of stalemate hibernation. And it begins its forensic activity to pretend that it's useful uh... you can even see the blame shifting as a uh...

so okay so here's what's going on behind the scene still the cia has recruited hundreds of counter revolutionaries and because the state department will let them trade on US oil, they trade them up in Mexico City and then Guatemala. Now at first, they tried to trick even their allies into not knowing the US was involved. Early on, the cover story was that this was all being financed by an anonymous Cuban millionaire.

But when CIA operatives heard the recruits referring to said millionaires, uncle Sam, they dropped the kid, the charade, all the gatherers. Suddenly, you're semi sam starts showing up at the meetings in a some braaro. Yo soy, T.O. Sam, you have real vanish Mexican Guatemalan Cuban. Now, training or no, soldiers wouldn't be enough to pull this off.

Cuba didn't have much of an air force or much of a navy, but it had an air force in the navy. So the CIA also had to hook the rebels up with something to counter that. Ultimately, they managed to secure a half dozen B26s that were sanitized in Mexico, meaning that like anything that could be used to trace them back to the US supplier was removed. And to be clear, it's a US made plane, but B26s were sold all over South and Central America in a various country. So it was at least plausible that a well-financed group of rebels could get their hands on a few. How? Like, sometimes they misplace a few of them just like, actually, yeah, they do because right like so drug dealers and shitter constantly getting their hands on them

So the government have to like sell them to like we should know how many they're Not give them to those guys right Can we just have a tally sheet in a little It is that's a bomber we keep track the library books better than this. Right. There's just like that card that you got to sign out your beat. So it's all mad. You come back in you to stamp the B 22's ring and something. Well, so clear though, like once some other country buys an airplane, we don't have any control with what they do with it.

Right. So, but they also put together this makeshift navy comprised of regular cargo ships with guns mounted on them basically. But apparently that's going to be sufficient to land the invading force and resupply in with ammunition once they'd secured a beachhead or two or, or at least they would have been if the rebels had ever been able to secure a beachhead or two. Well, we got through Einstein, James James Dean Brooklyn's got a winning team David Crockett Peter Disneyland join us after the break to see where this goes next

Yes, the easiest goddamn lyrics in the history of music I knew someone was gonna bitch about it. I figured it was no, but I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure. I wasn't gonna talk about all of American history, but I made that fight. I was like, ha!

Ha! Thank you for joining me. I really do apologize for the way we all had trouble hitting in through that whole door today. Turns out you need to pull it. Oh, pushing extra hard. Yeah, me too. Me too. Opposite.

Well, you know, we at the C CIA, we are the best of the best. That's that's all that's all right. Sorry, sir, sir. Sorry, sorry, we at the CIA are medium with strong currents of white supremacist influence because of project paperclip. That's what we are. Yeah, you know, that sounds about right. We gave Nazi as a bunch of money and

new jobs. Good job. But this will be our toughest assignment yet. We are going to kill a guy. On a kill a guy. Okay, um, but if we give him, uh, exploding cigar or is the fatherland? Okay. All right, thank you. Dave Smith. Smith. Yes. Yes.

From Miss Conson, I think, said, yes, there is much. She's, okay, looking for something less cartoon villain though, anything less. Yeah, Tim Wilson, dumb 1960s guy who somehow ended up here because our admittance policy is based on how closely you match the wall paint. Why don't we poison a lady's vagina and have her fucking. Okay. Still very cartoony, though admittedly,

dumber and much pornier cartoon. And I'm a Russian spy. That's fair. Okay. Yeah. Thought that would be it. Yeah. Excuse me. I'm one of the hundreds of CIA members who will eventually turn out to be part of the KKK. What if we scraped the A at all our army stuff and we just invade, can we do that? Because then they would be... Yeah, they would think they were being attacked by the... Er-me. Yeah, the Ramee.

The Ramee, yeah. I love it! Yes! Ha! I'm in the KKK. I'm a Russian spy still. I haven't changed from earlier. I'm a Nazi.

Okay, we heard about our government filing the serial numbers off of airplane and hiding it behind a toilet tank and a crappy Italian restaurant on the other side of town. Next, Noah. Little rock. All right. So sometime in between the training up of all these rebel forces, the US switches presidents, Kennedy won the 1960 election and assumed the president of the city of Nigeria on January 20th of 1961.

And by the time he did, he'd been brought up to speed on this operation. Dwight Eisenhower brought it up in one of the transition meetings the two of them had so that Kennedy would know that it had his approval. Uh, but wouldn't it just be a good assumption that anything that previous administrative started was approved by that administrative? That's why they started. See, you sound like Chris Christie just before Trump fired. Yeah, that's a really good question though, because a lot of times like

the CIA and, and the intelligence agencies, the, the, the Army groups, they'll like try to treat the new president like a substitute teacher like, no, the last guy always loves to do this on a Friday. You know, we're, that's how they talked Trump into that. When it was a dumb ass fucking thing, he didn't Africa right at the beginning. Anyway, so it is a casual assassination Friday is that what they're doing exactly yes exactly jeans and murder we get to our jeans and murder on Fridays and leave it to 30 exactly

I Do it I'm gonna look stupid do it and I do it. I'm going to look stupid. I'm running a diet. All right. At 11.07, we're all going to drop bombs on Afghanistan. So now Kennedy had been campaigning pretty fucking hard on the Cuba issue. He'd been publicly endorsing something very much like the Bay of Pigs invasion, a US finance rebellion of Cuban dissidents. Of course, strictly speaking, that's against international law, right? So they had to make it look like the US wasn't directly involved or at least they had to kind of make a show of pretending they weren't involved, but they still wanted everybody to know they were involved. But that ultimately would doom this operation, even if it hadn't come if you elect me, I promise I will definitely not invade Cuba.

Wink wink. That's a pro, or nothing. My head moves in the direction I get shot from just. Okay, because you're Jesus Christ. Explode out the other side. I'm going to make the worst Kennedy impressions ever. I've ever done. Yeah. And what do you guys expose that you're back your head and shoot your brains out? I'm going to get it in the impressions. Ever.

Yeah. When you guys expose your back of your head and shoot your brains out, I just want to see if when you can do it. Did Markey market shot in the head? Not against that. Now, I should point out by the way, the Cubans know all of this shit is coming

and they pretty much know when. were increasingly allied to the USSR at this point. The Soviet intelligence networks had picked us all up long ago. In fact, on April 13th, English language newscast from radio Moscow predicted an invasion of Cuba headed by the CIA would take place within a week. The invasion took place four days later. We're all like, fuck, all right. Do we push it back a week or like, I don't know those are group on like we're put down in the positive.

Now we look going to check out all those B26s again. I don't think so. They won't let you check them out twice in a row. Now, okay, before they could land their rebels at the Bay of Pigs, they had to soften up their target a little. So they sent out four of their B26 bombers, which had all been painted now to look like Cuban Air Force bombers. Three of the side bombers?

Three of the side bombers? Well, check this out. I actually like this one. So three of them hit different airfields on the island and take out damn near half of Castro's modest Air Force. Now, this is important later, the crews of those bombers would go back and report much better results than that, which again, would have doomed this thing if it hadn't arrived pre-do.

Yeah. Over promise and under liver has always been a U.S. policy. Always. Yeah. Right. Well, in this case, not even in that order, but yeah. So what was this? Was this mission accomplished? Was this you're doing a hell of a good job? Is this it's going to be a great invasion? You're going to be tired of all the invasion. I didn't know which slow. Exactly. Just looking at how the patch affect this. Are there? Well, are they looking at it? Like there, they're like, no, it's got a cigar on the side. That's one of ours. Like what? Okay. So yeah, no, that's actually the next paragraph here. So the fourth plane, and this

bit I think is super clever, is diverted before it ever gets to Cuba. So before they launch the strike, they intentionally shot this plane all up, but in such a way that it would still safely be able to fly. And this one diverged north request permission to land in Miami. It's crude by X Cuban Air Force personnel that were loyal to Batista. But the story that they sell is that they're part of a coup against Castro and that this dude and several other conspirators hijacked four of Castro's own planes to use against the regime. Right? Here's your plausible deniability. And I like that's not going to fool Cuba, right? They know that they're not missing four planes,

but it's enough to muddy the waters when this video starts showing up and other countries are trying to figure out who's behind this shit. Yeah, fun fact, we also sent a hockey team on roller skates through the middle of Havana, singing O'Canon. I just love that the Russian is new. So this whole thing is pointless,

and we thought we were gonna to save it with a strong Performance by our army's Daniel Daylil is just like All right, so all of that happens on Saturday the 15th of April after a couple of diversionary fates the invasion force moves in in the middle of the Night of the 16th and 17th. Like one guy on the beach and fatigue just juking randomly back and forth. I'm going to go left. I'm going to go right and move. All right. So now the landing spot they chose was the Bahia deco chinos or Bay of pigs largely chosen

because it's far enough away from major population centers to keep witnesses That could call out US involvement to a minimum. They drop forces on three beaches designated blue beach red beach and green beach And these are major fucking operations. They're unloading tanks and medical tests the whole night problem is they're not doing it fast enough Well, that's what you get when you hire a union a lot of breaks Wow Someone isn't getting their Instacart this week. I'm just kidding. It's all of us. All of us aren't getting our Instacart. All right. So, see, again, the Kilpins knew this shit was coming, right?

So, on the advice of Che Guevara, they'd basically arm the entire country. They said, hey, be on the lookout for CIA-backed invaders. So, as soon as this amphibious landing starts, it's picked up by local militia. And yes, they can't do much more than harass this well-trained paramilitary force, but they can't tell Castro where the fuck the landings happening, which they do. So almost right away, the Cuban army springs into action. This well-armed militia is second-elementing. so fucking hard right now. Oh, so you're just dream of this shit. So fucking hard.

Okay, so the CIA knew all of that was going to happen, right? They predicted that they'd get spotted really quick. Cupid's a small fucking island, so it's not going to take long to muster your forces to wherever that landing happens to be. So part of the plan is that they've got several paratrooper teams that are going to drop in and they're supposed to take control of major roads and block those off. But these drops are universally a fucking disaster. Not a well organized.

No, not in this case. No. So half the equipment is dropped in swamps and shit or they can't retrieve it. There's almost no ability to communicate. The paratroopers are way too spread out after they drop to organize fast enough. It's basically a shit show. Just calling on the radio, sir, sir, my tank is in literal quick sand. I don't even know what the fuck.

I don't even know what the real thing. Did you know what the real fuck? What happened? The USS R is watching all this unfold. Just like, we have overestimated the enemy. That was not. Yeah, we wasted so much money on submarines. Yeah. Well, you know, they destroyed our federal government with tweets and a Facebook ad four years ago. So I think they have the level now, yeah. It just took them 60 years to figure it all out. Yeah. Okay. So what's more,

like I said before, the pilots in the preliminary rating exaggerated their success quite a bit. They overreported the number of planes they took out, like some out of pride, others out of ignorance, as apparently at least one of them took out a bunch of non-functional airplanes that were like up on concrete blocks or some shit. What is that? They actually miscuba entirely this bomb bomb the shit out of a trailer park in South Florida. Did you just anywhere in South Florida? Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. That was redundant.

Yeah, but like much to the surprise of the amphibious assault, Cuba's got planes in the air pretty much right away to harass these ships by 6.30 in the morning. They're like getting steadily strafed by the Cuban air force. Hey, Dave, didn't you say you destroyed all those planes earlier? Huh? Yep, yeah, we did. They just got better. No.

They're fine. They're fine. They're talented enough. Yeah, so the Cubans take one of the supply ships that's carrying the bulk of the Rebels medical equipment. They also lost the bulk of their radio equipment during the landing so their commander could only communicate with the soldiers on his particular beach. And while most of the soldiers were landed before these counterattacks started, the ships that were supposed to resupply them suddenly started

having mysterious mechanical problems and had to stay the fuck out of bomber range for really long periods of time. I guess it's been US policy to lose track of medical stockp arranged for really long periods of time. I guess it's been US policy to lose track of medical stockpiles for a long time too. That's interesting. Guy wants band aids for his almost dead troops. Tell him to ask me nicely. Yeah.

Right. All right. So at 11 o'clock local time, Castro jumps on the radio and tell the Cuban people that they're under attack and they all need to arm up and be prepared to push back the invaders. And I know before I started looking into this, for the episode, I've radically underestimated the size of this invasion. It's something like 1400 people. They have a small air force in Navy.

They have full blown fucking tank battles as part of this. But ultimately, the Cuban forces gained the upper hand and pretty quickly they start pushing the invaders back even by the end of the first day. The fighting goes on for a couple of days, but it's clear right away that the US back rebels are going to lose at 2 p.m. on the 17th, the day of the invasion, Kennedy gets a telegram from Nikita Khrushchev basically telling him, hey, look, man, if US forces enter Cuba, I'm responding with nuclear weapons. At that point, Kennedy backs down entirely

and refuses to offer any additional help to the rebel. I see Ruktarif, raise the end of days. Yeah. That's right. Kennedy's just like, uh, Mr. Kruvschiff, uh, do you accept backsees? You do fantastic.

Yeah, right. Yeah. All right, so this is where it all falls apart. So basically, the CIA knew good and damn well that this plan, as they had presented it, probably would not work. Who's in a better plan? Well, okay, so they couldn't afford one, but their hope was that once there were shots fired and Kennedy knew that his international reputation was on the line, it would be super easy to talk him into doing whatever it fucking took

to win. You know, like they did with Bush. Right? And to be fair, there's no fucking way Krustjev was going to start World War 3 over this, but Kennedy surprised him. He pulled the plug, took the blame, and left the rebels hanging. This was serious. This was the international equivalent of starting a fight with a much bigger guy

and then just hoping your big brother steps in at the last minute to save you, but with tanks. It's the same thing. Yeah, with tanks. Well, as long as it was your big brother's idea, yes. Yeah. So it's hard to say how many people died in this invasion or honestly, it probably isn't.

It's just, it's hard to say that without reading more than just this Wikipedia article, which stubbornly refuses to give a cumulative total and lists several groups multiple times, making it hard to just add them all up. So 67 American back rebels were killed in action. Another 10 were killed by firing squad and another 10 on a boat trying to escape. Nine died in a sealed container when the Cuban government was shipping a bunch of prisoners to have an all at once. And another 10 rebels and four Americans died getting shot down over Cuban airspace.

So the Cuban army lost 176 soldiers killed in action, but the malicious accounted for the lion share of the losses. There were between two and four thousand total casualties, though the article doesn't specify how many of those were killed. The failure severely wounded Kennedy's reputation and obviously made Castro all that much more suspicious of future U.S. intervention. It drove Cuba further into the Soviet sphere of influence. It affirmed Castro as a Leninist Marxist, despite his former ideological flexibility.

And it pretty much directly led to the Cuban missile Crisis in 1962, which was basically, okay, see your end of days, raise also end of days. That's right. This game doesn't really work. It doesn't make sense. Yeah. And by the way, according to most of the Cuban sources, this also cemented Castro's reputation with his people, right?

His revolution didn't have majority support until the Bay of Pigs invasion, but that drew the Cuban people together and what's more, it earned Castro this iron legendary reputation as the guy who beat the U.S. forces and sent them back into the sea. I wonder if there are any counter-cultural Cubans that wore red shirts with general patent silhouette on them. I wonder if that would happen. If there were, they all took up roof diving soon afterwards. So afterwards, a lot of people looked into the whole process of organizing this thing.

And a desperate effort to A, figure out what went wrong and B, figure out that it was somebody else's fault. So a JFK commission to panel to look into it and surprise, surprise, they found it. It was pretty much all the CIA's fault, right? The fact that Robert Kennedy was on the panel makes their findings hard to take seriously though. Well, serious enough to murder him.

I don't know. I'm not sure. Pretty serious. So one interesting side note is that these later investigations into the debacle brought the term group think into public consciousness. In retrospect, every military expert that looked at these plans would look at them for like three seconds and say, well, yeah, that's going to fucking fail miserably.

All your equipment's going to end up in swamps and shit. And yet all the military experts involved in the planning managed to miss those various fatal flaws that were so glaring in retrospect. So the Bay of Pigs invasion was so fucked up that psychologists used it to identify a whole new means of being wrong. Wow. Wow. And if you had to summarize what you learned in one sentence, what would it be?

Getting shot ahead probably helped out Kennedy's historical reputation. Allegedly. Thank you, George Bush, senior. Are you ready for close? Oh, please, please, quick before any more that shit. All right. Noah, what should we call the movie version of the Bay of Pigs invasion? a. Chaving private Ryan. The. The vanishing. Be. Be. Cuba to.

Sniper cube. Do. Do. Do. Do. Do. Do. Deliverance.

Or. Never. Chai. Die. Alright close strong. But you know what? I'm going to go with C. to sniper cube because I don't even know what the fuck you're going for 2 hyper cube

Cuban cube 2 you guys didn't watch those a bunch of Anyway, I was right Tom, do you have a question? You were right. I got a question for you. No, I'm right or wrong. It literally doesn't matter. Noah, the Bay of Pigs was a military failure. Why?

A, the US forces were too slow. They really needed to get crackling. B, morale was low. Everyone kept ribbing the troops. C, they just didn't have the chops. Oh, these are pig things. Oh, yeah. Yeah. D, the soldiers needed to toughen up.

They were to tender. Loin, tenderloin. Tenderloin and ribs. No one didn't work his ribs. Interesting. I'm going to go with that. See, they don't have the chops because chops are definitely an actual pig thing. So sure, what I mean, okay, the answer.

All right. No, I got one more for you. What is the Bay of Pigs invasion's sequel going to be called? A, Speed 2, Cruise Chev Control. B, the castronaut farmers. C, gleaming the Cuban or D, high fidelity. Oh, that's a very good. All right, well, I guess I, because I gave Eli some shit for a really obscure goddamn movie reference, I'm the astronaut farmer. It's called the astronaut. I was going to go with C gleaming the cube in the first

time I've heard of gleaming the cube. The huge. It's a movie. It's a some kind of movie with a bike service. Skates. I don't know what your skates. It's one of those two. Yeah, skateboarding, I think. I think it's skateboarding. Rollerblading, you know,

anyway, yeah. Keith, I think cruise chef control is brilliant, so you win this week. Thank you. Thank you. I would like Tom next week, so let's have Tom do some. Okay, well, Tom's gonna have to write it out,

say, all right, for Tom, Noah, Eli and Heath, I'm Cecil, thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week, and then Tom will be an expert on something else between now and then check out our other podcasts at our website. And if you'd like to help us keep waging this war with the dollop stuff you should know and behind the bastards, you can make a more episode donation at patreon.com slash citation pod, or leave a suffice to our review everywhere you can make a more episode donation at patreon.com slash citation pod or leave a suffire store review everywhere you can. And if you'd like to get in touch with us,

check out past episodes, connect with us on social media or check the show notes, be sure to check out citation pod dot com. Stay the fuck on. And so I said, look, we create a series of terror cells around the United States So that's there's nothing to bring down in the first place stop man. That's a fantastic idea That way we can continue to carry on white supremacist terror without ever having to create a public facing Organization stop it stop it. This is gonna be great. It really is Stop it stop it. This is gonna be great. It really is Right or report. Yeah, you go ahead and write a damn report and I'm a Russian spy. I will write a report. You're very good