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Machine Gun .]] The 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion was an unsuccessful attempted invasion by armed Cuban Exile s in southwest Cuba , planned and funded by the United States . An attempt to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro . This action accelerated a rapid deterioration in Cuban-American Relations , which was further worsened by the Cuban Missile Crisis the following year. NAME AND TOPONOMASTICS The invasion was named after the ). BACKGROUND On 1965 Eisenhower stated it was the policy of the U.S. government to aid anti-Castro Guerilla Forces . The CIA began to recruit and train anti-Castro forces in the Sierra Madre on the Pacific coast of Guatemala .. It has been claimed by one biographer that the main drive behind the invasion scheme was Vice President Richard Nixon . The famous tapes from the time he was President seems to indicate that he was deeply involved. The CIA was initially confident it was capable of overthrowing Castro, having experience assisting in the overthrow of other foreign governments such as the government of Iran ian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 and Guatemala n President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in 1954. Richard Mervin Bissell Jr. , one of Allen Dulles 's three aides, was made director of ''Operation Zapata'', the CIA's codename for the operation. The original plan called for landing the exile Brigade 2506 in the vicinity of the old colonial city of Trinidad, Cuba , in the central province of Sancti Spiritus approximately 250 miles (400 km) southeast of Havana at the foothills of the Escambray Mountains . The Trinidad site provided several options that the exile brigade could exploit during the invasion. The population of Trinidad was generally opposed to Castro, and the rugged mountains outside the city provided an area into which the invasion force could retreat and establish a guerrilla campaign if the landing faltered. Throughout 1960, the growing ranks of Brigade 2506 trained throughout southern Florida and in Guatemala for the beach landing and possible mountain retreat. On February 17 , 1961 , U.S. President John F. Kennedy asked his advisors whether the toppling of Castro might be related to weapon shipments and if it was possible to claim the real targets were modern fighter aircraft and rockets that endangered America's security. At the time, Cuba's army possessed Soviet tanks, artillery and small arms, and its air force consisted of A-26 Invader medium bombers, Hawker Sea Furies (a fast and effective British propeller-driven Fighter-bomber capable of downing a MiG-15 in combat) and T-33 jets left over from the Batista Air Force.http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/baypigs-airforce.htm As Kennedy's plans evolved, critical details were changed that were to hamper chances of a successful mission without overt U.S. military support. These revised details included changing the landing area for Brigade 2506 to two points in Matanzas Province , 202 km southeast of Havana on the eastern edge of the Zapata peninsula at the Bahía de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs). The landings would take place on the Girón and Zapatos Larga beaches. This change effectively cut off contact with the rebels of the " War Against The Bandits " uprising in the Escambray Mountains. The Castro government also had been warned by senior KGB agents Osvaldo Sánchez Cabrera and "Aragon", who died violently before and after the invasion. The U.S. government was aware that a high casualty rate was possible. . Through their secret intelligence, as well as loose talk in Miami , the Cuban security apparatus knew the invasion was coming. More than 100,000 Cubans suspected to be security threats or "politically unreliable" were rounded up and arrested throughout the island by the political police in anticipation of the invasion. The arrests were facilitated by informants and the diligent work of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs) working in conjunction with the secret police, the G-2s. Nevertheless, days before the invasion, multiple acts of sabotage were carried out, such as the bombing of the El Encanto department store in Havana, desultory explosions, and arson.
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