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Published Wednesday, June 10, 1998, in the Miami Herald

  THE AMERICAS

WROTE REPORT: Former Marine Col. Jack Hawkins.

'61 report: Castro ouster would need U.S. force

Marine officer wrote after Bay of Pigs

By DON BOHNING
Herald Staff Writer

Three weeks after the U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the chief of the operation's paramilitary staff concluded that direct U.S. military action was the only way Fidel Castro would be ousted, according to newly declassified Central Intelligence Agency documents.

``A Communist-style police state is now firmly entrenched in Cuba, which will not be overthrown by means short of overt application of elements of United States military power,'' Marine Col. Jack Hawkins wrote in a secret after-action report.

``Further efforts to develop armed internal resistance, or to organize Cuban exile forces, should not be made except in connection with a planned overt intervention by United States forces,'' Hawkins warned in his 48-page post-mortem.

The Kennedy administration took no heed, however, and within less than a year was engaged in Operation Mongoose, another covert action program relying heavily on Cuban exiles, designed to both gather intelligence and destabilize the Castro government.

Hawkins' report, dated May 5, 1961, and titled Record of Paramilitary Action Against the Castro Government, was among 3,200 pages of material related to the Bay of Pigs invasion that was declassified last week by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The Hawkins report was the most significant of the documents declassified. They did not include a four-volume history of the aborted invasion by the late Jack Pfeiffer, a CIA historian, which remains secret.

A copy of the Hawkins report was made available to The Herald by the National Security Archive, an independent research organization and library located on the campus of George Washington University in Washington.

The declassified documents include photographs, Brigade 2506 training files and National Security Council briefing papers.

In his conclusions, Hawkins cited the incompatibility between political considerations and military objectives and declared that ``civilian officials of the government should not attempt to prescribe the tactics of military or paramilitary operations.''

Political-military conflict

In such a Cold War paramilitary operation as the Bay of Pigs, Hawkins said, there was ``a basic conflict'' between military effectiveness and political considerations.

And, he added, unless immediate survival is at issue, ``political considerations tend to dominate, with the result that military measures are progressively restricted and subordinated.''

``Experiences of the past few years,'' he said, ``indicate that political restrictions on military measures may result in destroying the effectiveness of the latter, and the end result is political embarrassment coupled with military failure and loss of prestige in the world.''

Hawkins, 81, retired and living in Virginia, said in a telephone interview Tuesday that he believes that what he wrote 37 years ago remains valid.

``I think I was exactly right but I did not know, of course, back in those days that the Kennedy administration resumed covert operations under the name Mongoose,'' Hawkins said. ``If I had known it, I would have been quite disappointed.''

``What happened with the Bay of Pigs, conflict between political and military considerations, was carried on in Vietnam by the same key people, namely [Secretary of State Dean] Rusk and [Secretary of Defense Robert S.] McNamara, with the same results,'' Hawkins said. ``There were lessons learned by them, at least from the Bay of Pigs.''

Hawkins also concluded in his report that ``civilian officials of the government should not attempt to prescribe the tactics of military or paramilitary operations.''

Policy restrictions

He cited seven ``significant'' policy restrictions placed on the Bay of Pigs operation -- largely at the urging of the State Department in the ``interest of non-attributability'' -- which he said hampered its effectiveness.

The restrictions prohibited:

  •  Use of bases in the United States for training paramilitary forces.

  •  Use of an air base in the United States for supply flights in support of guerrilla forces and of the strike force when landed.

  •  Use of American contract pilots for aerial supply of guerrilla forces.

  •  Use of a base in the United States for tactical air operations in support of the amphibious landing.

  •  Use of American contract pilots for tactical air operations.

  •  Use of more effective tactical aircraft than the B-26 bomber.

  •  The full application of the tactical air power available.

    ``Cancellations at the last moment, while the troops were already off the beaches preparing to land, of the air attacks . . . against Castro's remaining tactical aircraft, doomed the operation to failure,'' Hawkins wrote.

    ``Paramilitary operations cannot be effectively conducted on a ration-card basis,'' Hawkins said. ``Therefore, if political considerations are such as to prohibit the application of all military measures required to achieve the objective, then military operations should not be undertaken.''

    Neither, said Hawkins, can ``paramilitary operations of any appreciable size be conducted on a completely covert basis, and the requirement for non-attributability introduces tremendous complications in the accomplishment of what would otherwise be simple tasks.''

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