A second boat, Sea Gull, became a nightmare. Bought from an oil-rig service outfit for $111,000, the boat broke down within yards of its dock and then spent months under repair, consuming the full effort of one of the Miami base maritime specialists. Repaired just in time for a diversionary mission in conjunction with the invasion, Sea Gull did little for Miami base. A third CIA boat, the 110-foot Tejana, became the workhorse of the effort, though she became active only in February 1961. In one month Tejana carried more materiel to Cuba than all the previous CIA and Cuban exile cruises put together.

  Eisenhower’s August decision upped the ante across the board. Cuban exiles began arriving at Camp Trax only to have to build facilities for the big base the CIA envisioned because the Alejos plantation had none. Thus little actual training had been accomplished when the Eisenhower administration, looking at Castro’s large military versus the small CIA force, decided on something more. Told to set up a dozen infiltration teams to link up with the Cuban resistance, Colonel Hawkins now got orders to form a larger, conventionally armed unit to back up the teams. On August 22 the lead group of infiltration trainees from Panama, including Manuel Artime, Jose Perez San Roman, Rafael Quintero, and others, arrived at Trax base. By the 27th quite a few exiles were present. Soon there were 160. Weapons arrived late in September along with a shadowy staff that included Eastern Europeans, Mexicans, Chinese, and even a Filipino, Jose Valeriano, who had begun his CIA contract work with Ed Lansdale years earlier. Esterline recalls being “knocked off” his original timetable in August or September but not being much concerned.

  In the fall of 1960 CIA analysts reported Soviet-bloc deliveries of equipment to Cuba, including tanks, armored personnel carriers, field guns, and mortars. Castro had increased the size of the Cuban army by half and had a good 200,000 militia.

  Richard Bissell spoke to Jake Esterline and Jack Hawkins, arguing several times that if the project relied so much on a landing force, this needed to be larger. Colonel Hawkins, complacent, agreed. “I would talk it to Esterline and Hawkins, and I don’t think Esterline bought this view, either as completely or as soon as I did,” Bissell told a CIA interviewer later. “I remember the feeling that I was well ahead of King, perhaps—certainly Jake—in the belief that we had to place nearly exclusive reliance for the initial phase on whatever force it was possible to land.” Esterline, also worried about Castro’s military, preferred to go immediately to the active phase, sending in as many Cubans as the CIA had ready, perhaps landing from an LST and marching them into the Escambray. Even if they failed it would simply have been one more round of the resistance war, not an obvious CIA-backed invasion.

  Bissell wanted another thousand or fifteen hundred exile troops and eventually forced that change, but the expansion meant even more CIA people. Bissell recalls, “By late fall 1960, I was greatly concerned that senior officers involved in the operation were overworked and that we were running out of appropriate personnel to fill all the positions.” In fact, by the time the Cuban invasion actually occurred, WH/4 would be staffed by almost six hundred CIA officers.

  On Halloween, over Director Dulles’s signature, headquarters sent revised orders. They contained a new concept: no more than sixty in the infiltration teams; everyone else would join an “assault force” that would consist of “one or more infantry battalions,” its mission “to seize and defend lodgment in target by amphibious and airborne assault.” Instructed to count on fifteen hundred men, and told that WH/4 knew the larger operation needed several more months’ preparation, Colonel Hawkins should tell the Cubans that a “bigger scale strike” would be better. A reserve unit of several hundred Guatemalans with their own officers, who could be landed behind the Cuban assault unit, also figured in the scheme. The cable noted that the concept had tentative approval from Allen Dulles and that White House approval impended.

  On November 3, a few days before the 1960 presidential election, the 5412 Group went over the Cuba project at length. General Cabell attended for the CIA, and Brig. Gen. Edward Lansdale represented the Office of Special Operations of the Pentagon. With his usual care, Gordon Gray pushed members to report status. The Pentagon worried about the large Castro militia, and State’s man conjured the image of a ticking clock—he could foresee, said Livingston Merchant, “that there would occur a point in time beyond which covert intervention would not do the job.” The group also mulled over assassinating Castro, though for security, or because he did not know, or for other reasons, General Cabell gave the impression the agency had nothing afoot in this area.

  There can be no doubt the revised CIA plan amounted to an invasion. The 5412 Group resisted it, making the issue one of a CIA operation as against a combined agency-military one. But the invasion plan went forward, restricted to about half the several thousand Bissell had pushed for. Eisenhower approved. Trax learned the news on November 4. When CIA first briefed the navy on the plan just before 5412, it was the combat unit option that the secret warriors described. Dwight D. Eisenhower, not John F. Kennedy, holds the responsibility here.

  A “third force” in the Cuban context meant moderate July 26th Movement adherents who rejected Castro’s move to the left. It so happened, however, that WH/4’s political action chiefs held opposing views. For Project Ate/Pluto, Howard Hunt wanted no M-26 people no matter how moderate. Gerry Droller, on the other hand, did not much care about the political coloration of recruits. There was continual friction between the two on the subject of whom to enlist, and personal antipathy between them. Droller held the title as WH/4 political action chief, but Hunt had the forward assignment and a reputation honed not just in Guatemala but in Lansdale’s Philippines project and elsewhere. Droller got a leg up when Hunt visited Mexico City to meet with the FRD there and lost a briefcase full of secret documents (Hunt blamed one of his agents, but that hardly mattered). On the other hand, Hunt actually visited Havana that summer, which the headquarters-bound Droller could not do.

  The search for a surrogate Cuban political movement centered in Miami. Robert Reynolds opened the CIA base there on May 25, 1960. Known as JM/Ash, the base masqueraded as the Coral Gables branch of a New York headhunter firm with a Pentagon contract. Reynolds had to play the buffer between Hunt and Droller. An eleven-year agency veteran, Reynolds had served in Mexico and Argentina, spoke Spanish, and headed the Cuba branch of the DO’s Western Hemisphere Division when Castro took power. He knew Esterline from the OSS in Burma in World War II, a nexus that united many on this project. Among the first people selected for the WH/4 task force, Reynolds had another headache besides the Hunt-Droller conflict—a second-in-command who outranked him—but Bob had been Esterline’s original deputy and the acknowledged area expert. The arrangement worked fine.

  Hunt and Droller were something else. Howard Hunt, a contemporary, had entered on duty at CIA in 1949 just a month after Reynolds. The senior of two political officers at Miami base, Hunt held the reins. Gerry Droller worked out of Washington, liaising to the supposed committee of interested businessmen, and posed as a steel tycoon when visiting Miami. Droller’s crude behavior and plantation-master style, with his Teuton accent and specialty in European operations, gave Hunt excuses to put Droller on a tight leash. That applied especially after Droller, as “Frank Bender,” held a meeting in a Miami hotel room so boisterous that the next-door neighbor, a stenographer whose brother worked for the FBI, took full notes. The FBI then asked the CIA about this plotting. Meanwhile Hunt exercised his political proclivities. Droller alienated some Cubans, Hunt cut off others. All this did not add up to a happy political alliance. Esterline favored Droller, whom he considered much more reliable than Hunt, but thought Droller his own worst enemy.

  Critics of the Cuban fiasco point out that the selection of the FRD excluded more than a hundred other factions. Even so, the Frente were an acrimonious bunch, hardly less contentious than Hunt and Droller themselves. When the CIA helped Manuel Ray flee Cuba, the Frente split fiercely over whether Ray should be included. The FRD leadership also wanted huge amounts of money. Their budget demands added up to $740,000 a month.

  Political action people at the agency guided the Frente. Control became a critical issue among the Cuban exiles, leading to the very divisiveness the CIA had sought to avoid. Howard Hunt despised “Manolo” Ray and tried to minimize CIA support for Ray’s political group. Washington had to knock heads both to bring the Cubans together and get Hunt to stand aside. With CIA pouring $130,000 a month into the Frente alone—a lot less than the Cubans wanted—and a total action budget of perhaps a half-million, there was plenty to fight over.

  Agency officers plugged potential leaks in Florida. Already Manuel Artime’s MRR efforts had threatened disclosure. In the summer of 1960 local residents near Homestead saw Cubans drilling and heard their loudspeakers at a farm. As a joke someone threw firecrackers into the compound. The exiles thought they were under attack and poured forth, guns blazing. After one prankster was wounded and several Cubans arrested, only federal intervention convinced local officials to drop charges. But a Miami newspaper got wind of the episode, including CIA’s connection to the exiles. In Washington, Allen Dulles received reporter Stanley Karnow and his bureau chief and induced them to kill the story.

  The press also learned of the CIA communications complex, opened in June at the former Richmond Naval Air Station, leased from the University of Miami. This became a hugely visible element. For instance, where Bob Reynolds, even by the fall, had only a couple of political action people and a couple of paramilitary experts, he had forty-four communications specialists at Opa-Locka, more than the rest of the CIA base altogether.

  Meanwhile, with growing numbers of exiles and trainers the CIA’s cover story broke down elsewhere too. Early recruits dealt with Americans who insisted they were working privately. After August the scale of Trax, the activities there, and the close cooperation of U.S. officials in Panama and Guatemala made an official connection impossible to deny. By late August New York Times reporter Tad Szulc, in Costa Rica covering an OAS conference, learned of the CIA project from Cuban friends. Dissuaded from writing a story once he checked with the State Department, Szulc stayed interested. On October 30 the Guatemala City daily La Hora published an article based on bragging by Cuban exile political types that revealed Trax’s existence. Picked up by Hispanic American Report, a regional studies newsletter by Ronald Hilton of Stanford University, the report tipped off Havana. The Stanford piece, in turn, led to an editorial in the November 19, 1960, issue of The Nation.

  Miami base had other problems too. Bob Reynolds received his basic instructions in early October. Supposed to personally supervise any project activities in the area, and draw on any CIA facilities, personnel, or resources there, Reynolds had responsibility but vague authority. The Droller-Hunt fight reflected the basic dynamic—key activities were reserved to WH/4 while Miami repeatedly found itself relegated to a support role. The boat operations ran out of Miami, for example, but headquarters, not Reynolds, decided when and how they would be carried out. For air operations Miami functioned only as a letter box, recording resistance requests, passing them up to Esterline, then informing the Cuban resistance of the response. In fact staff sections in Miami had their own channels to headquarters, bypassing the base chief entirely.

  On agents the standards were even more confusing. Since most Cubans belonged to one or another group, lines of communication ran to Camp Trax, Miami, and Cuba. Howard Hunt had a claim to use agents as political operatives rather than spies. And Quarters Eye had its call as well—when the U.S. embassy pulled out of Havana, Miami base got orders to take over its networks, but instead they were run directly out of WH/4. No doubt this related to the fact that Jim Noel had gone to Washington. Once again Miami became a letter box. Morale suffered accordingly. Many felt Miami should be a true CIA station, with support from Quarters Eye rather than the other way around: Miami performing menial tasks to backstop the Cuba task force.

  Personnel at the Miami base were fewer than needed even to cope with the jobs it did have. Reynolds got his first paramilitary expert in June and a second that summer. Richard Bissell repeatedly questioned why Miami needed any at all, suspicious that Reynolds merely duplicated work elsewhere. Late in August Bissell asked Barnes and Helms to look into whether Miami (and Panama) were over-staffed. Only in September did Miami base get an intelligence specialist, and there would be a long lag in running up the counterespionage section. Reynolds got no photo intelligence because no one at JM/Ash held the necessary clearances. His two maritime specialists were overwhelmed with the boats and infiltrators.

  Bob Reynolds repeatedly pressed WM/4 for clarification of his mission, or sufficient authority to execute it. By December he was begging for “discretion for operational action.” Several months later, “the base would welcome more precise requirements for its agents . . . in the interest of making more efficient use of them.” In his eventual end-of-mission report the Miami chief observed that future denied-area operations should either be firmly vested in a forward base or run from headquarters, but that divided command during Ate/Pluto resulted in competitive relationships to no purpose. By then Reynolds had 160 CIA officers on his rolls, almost half communications people, many of the rest spinning their wheels. The one key relationship that did exist remained that between CIA’s political action officers and the Cuban exile leaders.

  While exile politicians argued, the Cuban resistance struggled on. At least Ray had a real group in the MRR. Failure to work more closely with him, and with “Francisco,” “Ojeda,” and the MRR underground, proved one more crucial error. Another guerrilla band in the Escambray Mountains of Oriente was led by M-26 veteran Capt. Manuel Beaton. With several hundred men, Beaton might have accomplished something, though critics derided his band as little more than a collection of relatives. The exiles bragged of a thousand or more guerrillas in the Escambray. The first CIA supply drop came by C-54 in early October. This plane was hit, lost an engine, then went off course while the crew slept and its automatic pilot drifted. They barely made a crash landing in Mexico, where the CIA project came close to being blown once more.

  Airdrops into Cuba became the bread-and-butter work of Retalhuleu base. During the first phase of the project there would be thirty supply missions, only four of them judged successful. There were also more emergency landings—in Mexico, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands. In the Jamaica incident the snafu went entirely unnoticed by CIA. Frente radio monitors heard the emergency message, and exiles warned the secret warriors of the disaster. Worse, when the pilot telephoned the agency’s Guatemala emergency number, officers said they had never heard of him. Only swift action by the Frente security chief saved the day: he spoke to the crew in Jamaica and convinced them to return.

  The air system seemed sluggish and lacked responsiveness. Requests went through Miami base, which had no role in the missions but had to hold the bag when it came to smoothing the feathers of enraged guerrilla leaders. Here the WH/4 task force too functioned merely as a letter box. Colonel Beerli’s Development Projects Division had the real action. A month into his assignment, Hawkins had seen enough to write a blistering memo detailing shortcomings and demanding change. Richard Bissell responded with a pair of directives that essentially confirmed the existing setup; Colonel Beerli continued in charge. When Beerli’s people acted on Cuban matters they would be considered part of WH/4, code-named JM/Glow. This simply gave the air staffers extra hats to use rather than subordinating the Beerli unit to Esterline, which had been Hawkins’s recommendation. With its own communications, the air staff acted on its own authority and had access to Bissell independent of WH/4. Bissell routinely dealt with Beerli on the U-2 and SR-71 programs, had no qualms about the arrangement, and felt it preserved the division’s ability to function outside the Cuban context.

  In addition, every proposed flight had to be recommended by General Cabell who had long worked this side of the street, and approved by the 5412 Group, inserting inevitable lags in the CIA’s ability to act in a timely fashion. Only around November did Esterline succeed in getting Beerli to designate a single staffer, George Gaines, as focal point for all project-related air ops matters.

  Success remained elusive, and much of what passed for it really did not make the grade. Pilot Eddie Ferrer flew eleven times to Cuba before registering a good drop. The frustration became palpable. The resistance felt the same. One mission rated successful took place on December 30. Four days earlier Miami base learned that one of the CIA-trained agents who had infiltrated back into Cuba wanted an equipment drop on his finca, or farm, the most convenient location. He specified what he needed and how it should be packed, as well as the location and layout of the drop zone. The request went to Esterline, who passed it to Stan Beerli.

  Approval procedures naturally led to a meeting in General Cabell’s office. Beerli explained the mission and had finished when the CIA deputy director asked how much cargo space the shipment consumed. Told the cargo represented a small proportion of capacity, Cabell ordered the load topped off with rice and beans. Dick Drain, startled, warned Cabell that the plane’s task was to deliver the specific items requested. Propaganda chief Dave Phillips interjected that Cuba had no shortage of rice and beans. But Cabell wanted to be “forward leaning.”

  “Drop the rice and beans,” he ordered Esterline.

  The next day Quarters Eye sent word to tell the agent he would receive the shipment as he had requested. But the air staff, in cables not cleared with Esterline, added allotments of 800 pounds each of rice and beans, and 160 pounds of lard in addition to the 1,500 pounds of weapons the agent needed. They also threw in 200 pounds of leaflets for propaganda. When a C-54 flew the mission, the plane tarried too long in the area, showed lights, loosed leaflets onto the agent’s farm, and dropped almost a ton of supplies the Cubans did not want and could not handle. The agent actually left Cuba in February and went to Miami to denounce the air operation, cancel a follow-up drop, and say he would accept no more CIA airdrops no matter the content. The agent felt the CIA had simply endangered him.