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Bay of Pigs Declassified

The Secret CIA Report

A National Security Archive Documents Reader
Published by the New Press
Edited by Peter Kornbluh

For decades, the CIA's top secret postmortem on the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion has been the holy grail of historians, students, and survivors of the failed invasion of Cuba. But the scathing internal report on the worst foreign policy debacle of the Kennedy administration, written by the ClA's then-inspector General Lyman Kirkpatrick, has remained tightly guarded -- until now.

Dislodged from the government through the Freedom of information Act, here is an uncompromising look at high officials' arrogance, ignorance and incompetence, as displayed in their attitude toward Castro's revolution and toward the Cuban exiles the CIA had organized to invade the island. Including the complete report and a wealth of supplementary materials, Bay of Pigs Declassified provides a fascinating picture of the operation and of the secret world of the espionage establishment, with stories of plots, counterplots, and intra-agency power struggles worthy of a Le Carré novel.

Includes:

the complete text of the CIA report
a critical introduction
the newly declassified response to the report from Richard Bissell, who masterminded the operation
the first joint interview with the managers of the invasion, Jacob Esterline and Colonel Jack Hawkins
a comprehensive chronology
biographies of the key participants

Distributed by:
W.W. Norton and Company
500 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10110
Order Department:
800-233-4830 tel.
800-458-6515 fax

Publication Details:
Paperback, $17.95
ISBN 1-56584-494-7
5 1/2" x 8 1/4", 288 pages
Political Science/American History
Territorial Sales Rights: W
Comments on the CIA Bay of Pigs report:

"The most brutally frank and honest government document ever written." --Evan Thomas, Deputy Managing Editor, Newsweek
"There is little wonder why the spy agency has guarded (this report) so jealously." --Associated Press

"A picture of an agency shot through with deadly self-deception...An untapped well of cold, hard facts."
--New York Times

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