Pigs, Bay of

Inlet on the south coast of Cuba about 145 km/90 mi southwest of Havana. It was the site of an unsuccessful invasion attempt to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro by some 1,500 US-sponsored Cuban exiles 17–20 April 1961; 1,173 were taken prisoner. The failure of the invasion strengthened Castro's power in Cuba and his links to the USSR. It also sparked the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.

The creation of this antirevolutionary force by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had been authorized by the Eisenhower administration, and the project was executed under that of J F Kennedy. In 1962 most of the Cuban prisoners were ransomed for US$53 million in food and medicine. The CIA internal investigation report in the 1960s into the Bay of Pigs disaster was released for the first time after 36 years in February 1998. It blamed the agency for the failure, contending that Kennedy had been misinformed and poorly advised.

Relations between the USA and Cuba had quickly began to deteriorate after Castro overthrew the government of Fulgencio Batista in 1959. Under President Eisenhower the USA curbed trade and cut off diplomatic ties with Cuba, and in 1960 the CIA planned the invasion. On 15 April CIA-trained Cuban pilots began air strikes to destroy Castro's air force, but they were ordered to halt by President Kennedy. Two days later the armed exile force landed at the Bay of Pigs, where they hoped to rally local support and travel to Havana. By 19 April, however, they were defeated by Castro's army. Of the exile army, 114 died and the rest were taken prisoner.

The report into the Bay of Pigs invasion was released under the Freedom of Information Act after a request by the National Security Archive, a nonprofit organization in Washington, DC. The investigation found that it had been the CIA's ignorance and incompetence that caused the disaster. Reasons stated for the failure included inadequate security measures, a poor understanding of conditions in Cuba, logistical breakdowns, an overestimation of the level of popular support in Cuba, and an underestimation of Castro.