How might Bay of Pigs been canceled?

If someone realizes "WTF were we thinking, this is almost as bad as the Unmentionable Sea Mammal?" ;) There's a reason Ike didn't do it- because he knows it's militarily ASB without a politically unsustainable level of support. Even Nixon winning (if the Mayor and LBJ are less successful) does not necessarily butterfly it. Or JFK listens to Rusk, Bundy or the two five-stars, MacArthur and Ike. All of them opposed it IOTL.
 
Perhaps some kind of major operational leak by someone who opposed it could get it cancelled (like the luftwaffe major landing in belgium with Schlieffen 2.0) or what should have happened to the Nivelle offensive after they started talking about it in the papers
 

Dure

Banned
A surgical strike by highly trained Communist Cuban sabotuers destroys the US capability to mount the invasion whilst the ships are in port and the aircraft lined up on the runway. They leave evidence to suggest it was the Belgians.
 

MrP

Banned
A surgical strike by highly trained Communist Cuban sabotuers destroys the US capability to mount the invasion whilst the ships are in port and the aircraft lined up on the runway. They leave evidence to suggest it was the Belgians.

[Wanderlust]Belgians! :mad:[/Wanderlust]

:D
 
If I remember correctly, the Bay of Pigs was a hold-over from th previous administration. Kennedy was furious that he had been left out of the loop about the invasion so he refused to support the invading mercenaries with air-support. Publicly, he took the blame but privately he blamed the CIA and took steps to limit their power.

Conspiracy theorists love to take not of that last part.
 
QPQ: yes, it was an Ike holdover, but he refused it for the reasons I gave earlier. Had it been launched during the campaign, Nixon's losing margin would have been greatly increased. JFK had been briefed on the operation as President-elect by Ike and the NSC. Another consequence of this IOTL was Robert Kennedy becoming a defacto NSC member (he did not get a chair at the table) and Deputy President. "Family members are the only ones you can trust." This led to Mongoose and a few other things.
 
A surgical strike by highly trained Communist Cuban sabotuers destroys the US capability to mount the invasion whilst the ships are in port and the aircraft lined up on the runway. They leave evidence to suggest it was the Belgians.

and then when someone even moderately competent figures out it was the Cubans (no way are they going to be able to hide that), JFK laughs when he realizes that he was just handed a glorious reason to invade Cuba with a full scale US force... plus, we can even get NATO in on it, since a non-NATO nation just attacked a NATO nation. Cuba is going down, and the Soviets won't dare to interfere, unless they want to ignite WW3 by taking on NATO.
 

Dure

Banned
All those fine chocolates, Tintin books and bottles of Chimay are going to convince the CIA's finest no problem.
 

Ibn Warraq

Banned
If someone realizes "WTF were we thinking, this is almost as bad as the Unmentionable Sea Mammal?" ;) There's a reason Ike didn't do it- because he knows it's militarily ASB without a politically unsustainable level of support. Even Nixon winning (if the Mayor and LBJ are less successful) does not necessarily butterfly it. Or JFK listens to Rusk, Bundy or the two five-stars, MacArthur and Ike. All of them opposed it IOTL.

I thought Eisenhower was the one who ordered the CIA to put the operation in place to begin with.
 
I'm not convinced it's a bad plan to begin with, after all, it's a rerun of Castros invasion of Cuba which was sucessful. Only with more soldiers.

Reading up on the background on some Cuban exiles and anti-Castroits, it appears to be a number of ex-Castro supporters who claimed to have stopped supporting Castro and switched sides.

I guess Castro somehow managed to infiltrate the anti-Castroit groups. The outcome point at that if nothing else. So just have whoever with power figure that out and BoP is stopped.

A good selection of anti-Castroits?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_40
 
have a castro sympathiser infiltrate the dissidents while the invasion is being prepared, then have it get found out by the CIA. If the operation is compromised, the operation may very well be canceled.
 
If I remember correctly, the Bay of Pigs was a hold-over from th previous administration.


QPQ,

More like a zombie.

Ike signed off on the planning but was equally firm about the invasion not being launched without his authorization. While JFK was briefed on the operation during the turn-over, the fact that Presidential authorization was required prior to launching the invasion got lost in the shuffle.

Essentially, certain people with certain opinions let the Go decision morph into a No Go decision. JFK thought he alone could say "go" and didn't need to say "no go", while the operation's managers thought they already had a "go" and were waiting for a "no go" the White House didn't realize it needed to issue.

The CIA just kept planning and, absent of a "no go", launched on schedule.

Getting back to the OP's question, the Democrats were perceived has "soft" on Communism since the Truman administration, the "loss" of China, Potsdam, and several other "indications" and JFK worked under that public presumption. It was something that made him a little more eager to prove that Democrats weren't soft on Communism, something that led him to make certain decisions and take certain actions that Republicans wouldn't have to.


Bill
 
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