The switch to the Bay of Pigs moved the scene of action to the sparsely populated Playa Girón. And by the same token that Castro’s troops could access the site only along a few roads, it would be virtually impossible for any campesinos who wanted to join Brigade 2506 to reach it. The depth of optimism in the plans is nevertheless shown by the fact that CIA’s two LCIs carried weapons for an additional fifteen hundred recruits while a merchant vessel scheduled to arrive a fortnight after the landing bore arms for thirteen thousand more fighters. In actuality perhaps fifty Cubans joined the assault unit once it landed.

  When Cubans (on all sides) thought about the resistance, they generally focused on either the fighters in the Escambray or the underground in Havana. “Ojeda,” Lino Fernandez, ran from pillar to post to coordinate, especially once Castro’s security services captured his chief “Francisco.” The latter, not overly pleased with the American support resulting from his 1960 mission to Miami, did the best he could. The internal resistance developed suspicions of the CIA greater even than those of Brigade 2506. Supply deliveries (or the lack of them) were suspect, so too the radio plan, in which all operators communicated exclusively to Miami, where Bob Reynolds held all the threads in his hand. According to Jose Basulto, who ran a network around Santiago de Cuba, radio operators began making private arrangements, complete with rudimentary codes, so that if necessary they could cut the CIA out of the loop.

  Operating in Havana had its advantages. The big city made it easier for resistance members to get around. In addition, boats and planes still maintained travel schedules from Havana to the United States. That made it possible to infiltrate agents legally and created a ready escape route. Carlos Gonzalez Vidal, the rebel who firebombed the El Encanto department store, carried out that action on condition he be evacuated to the United States immediately afterward. His capture at Barracoa Beach in the middle of the night resulted from suspicions of local militia when they saw a flashlight shined out to sea. Felix Rodriguez, among those Cubans who infiltrated on behalf of the CIA, stayed clear of the security services. Enrique Baloyra ran the intelligence section of the student group DRE and saw Castro’s State Security officers on the street all the time. The resistance had to work clandestinely, burrowing deeper as its net of safe houses shrank. Baloyra believed the resistance was not able to rise up but saw no reason to think time was on Fidel’s side.

  A rough index of the degree of opposition to Fidel may be its size, though that is virtually impossible to determine. A figure of 5,000 to 6,000 seems to encompass the estimates of observers ranging from Lino Fernandez to Castro himself. The CIA’s final pre-invasion policy paper puts the number at 7,000. On the other hand, one measure to indicate support for Castro might be the “committees for the defense of the revolution,” which the fidelistas set up as mobilization and surveillance mechanisms feeding information to State Security. More than 100,000 of these committees were created, down to where each big building in Havana had its own.

  There were resistance networks within Cuba. The first CIA agent to return to Cuba (he entered legally), Manuel Reyes Garcia, managed to operate freely right through the invasion. Similarly, Felix Rodriguez worked around Santa Clara and persisted for five months past the failure at Playa Girón, finally escaping to the Venezuelan embassy where, accorded immunity, he stayed until permitted to leave Cuba. Miguel Orozco Crespo headed the infiltration teams the CIA simultaneously formed when it decided to expand the exile force to a brigade. Eighty men were earmarked for the teams. The first infiltrated on February 14, 1961. Two more were to have entered toward the end of that month, but trouble aboard the LCI Barbara J—a sit-down and hunger strike—aborted the mission. Most of Crespo’s teams did try to infiltrate, and other singleton agents were dispatched direct from Miami. According to official CIA records, as of March 10, 1961, thirty-two men of this unit had entered Cuba. Four more agents went through Guantanamo on March 29. Around the time of the invasion, the CIA believed it had put in the field some thirty paramilitary people, thirty-one intelligence agents, and thirteen active (plus four reserve) radio operators. They covered much of the island of Cuba.

  Castro’s security services worked around the clock. Police ranged throughout Havana, backed by militia. The secret service were the iron fist. State Security is a bit of a misnomer—that organization would be created only after the CIA invasion—but the G-2, an artifact of the FAR, already had a reputation for dedication and relentlessness. Grayston Lynch called the G-2 “almost a Caribbean branch of the KGB,” trained and equipped by the Russians and a first-rate service. That would be true only later. Richard Helms had a better characterization: “Cuban intelligence was not world class but it had the significant advantages of area knowledge, a level of domestic political support, the latent ethnic loyalty of some Cubans living abroad, and the excellent help offered by the KGB and GRU officers on assignment in Havana.”

  Fidelista security scored its coups. A beach landing by two dozen rebels of Rolando Masferrer’s group in early 1961 was pursued and tracked down by a couple of thousand militia. An airdrop near Trinidad in September 1960 flushed out much of the MRR network in that sector. Prime Minister Castro initiated a program of economic and social development for the Escambray, an indication that security needed help in those mountains. Plinio Prieto’s group fell to the fidelistas in October. Former July 26th figures who had gone over to the anti-Castro forces, Jesus Carreras and William Morgan (an American), were arrested and executed around that time. Another American, John M. Spiritus, condemned as a CIA agent, went to prison. That would be about when Castro had Huber Matos arrested as well. In March 1961 two leaders of an anti-Castro group were apprehended just days after arriving. On March 18 the police arrested “Francisco,” the internal resistance chief Rogelio Gonzalez Corzo. In the last weeks before the invasion, according to a Cuban history of Playa Girón, security captured about two-thirds (twenty-three of thirty-five) of the agents attempting illegal infiltrations. Richard Bissell noted later to a CIA interviewer that Cuban agents were typically caught within a day of landing on the island.

  The resistance did achieve certain results. As the CIA tabulated them, between October 1960 and April 1961 anti-Castro rebels bombed or set fire to the Havana power plant, a major department store and five others, a sugar refinery, two dairies, the railroad and bus terminals, a militia barracks, 40 tobacco drying barns, and “twenty-one Communist homes.” They destroyed a microwave station, derailed half a dozen trains (and bombed another), and hit numerous power transformers. There were 200 bombings in all, mostly nuisances, 800 sugar-cane fires (reportedly destroying 300,000 tons of cane), and 150 other fires. Some of the worst damage, including the firebombing of El Encanto (where an exploded incendiary device found afterward had been stamped “U.S. Army”), a couple of former Woolworth stores, the power station, one of the refineries, and several warehouses, occurred in a wave of violence just before the CIA invasion.

  Key to the prospects for CIA’s Project Ate was the armed resistance, which centered in Las Villas province, especially the Escambray. Member groups of the Cuban front were urged to send people to the Escambray to join the rebel bands while CIA infiltrations inserted agents to organize in towns around the mountains. Las Villas suffered when it came to seaborne supply shipments, but airdrop missions were more numerous. Of course, because many airdrops failed for one reason or another, the bottom line would show the Escambray front generally shortchanged. The CIA sent an agent, “Commandante Augusto” (Jose Ramon Ruisanchez), to coordinate the front, but he passed the assignment to Evelio Duque, whose personality clashed with other leaders, including the commander of the largest rebel column.

  In December 1960, recognizing the growing guerrilla capability, Castro ordered a special pacification campaign in the Escambray. Operation “Jaula” (Cage) involved forty thousand to fifty thousand troops and militia. Fidel wanted the farmers mobilized and ordered new efforts to expand literacy. Volunteer teachers, engineers with electric generators for villages that had never had so much as a lightbulb, propaganda units that showed movies—all contributed. On January 5 CIA weapons dropped to the rebels were successfully recovered by Castro forces. The next day fidelista troops captured a rebel camp. But guerrilla fighters were active too. The rebels in the Escambray gradually grew to number several thousand fighters.

  The fidelistas attempted to accelerate their cleanup of the Escambray so as to avoid facing multiple threats when the CIA invaders arrived. The limitations of the militia precluded success; still, several of the guerrilla columns were smashed (a State Security historian claims twenty-five groups of rebels were defeated by the end of March) while Duque and some of his top officers fled Cuba. But Castro could not keep up the pressure—according to Victor Dreke, among the more ideological fidelista field commanders, many militia were workers and peasants who volunteered and were not paid. Once the workers really needed money, or the peasants’ crops were ripe for the harvest, they needed to return to civil life. In early April the government ordered seventy militia battalions back to their home districts.

  Secret warriors worried about the internal resistance but stopped air and sea missions that nurtured it during the final weeks before the invasion. Later the CIA took rebel cries for help during those weeks as evidence of the strength of the movement. From March 22 until the day of the landing there were more than a dozen requests from resistance forces for airdrops to an alleged five thousand guerrillas. During the battle and over the next days requests arrived for the support of more than three thousand rebels. Interestingly, only four hundred of these fighters were in Las Villas. There is no evidence on how real these figures were, how much they were exaggerated for the CIA’s benefit, or, for that matter, whether the agency counted troops twice or more when recording these figures.

  Fidel knew of the CIA operation and took steps to find out more. As early as October 1960 a G-2 officer went to Costa Rica to gather data there. Other reports came from Mexico City and Florida. Many were mistaken or exaggerated. In September, for example, Cuban intelligence heard of a mass insertion of CIA agent teams about to happen. It never did. In early November Havana learned that the CIA Cubans were moving from Camp Trax to Puerto Cabezas. That did not occur until April 1961. Numbers were estimated at six thousand, even up to fifteen thousand—ten times Brigade 2506’s true strength. On CIA airplanes the worst exaggerations were that the exiles had jets and B-29 bombers. Other reports were more accurate. One detailed the split among the Kennedy people over moving ahead with Ate, with fair detail on who favored what. A January 1961 report contained more than two dozen pages on CIA preparations. Most disturbing—especially to Jake Esterline, who found out only when it was all over—an April 13 cable from the Soviet embassy in Mexico City reported the invasion imminent, in fact for the 17th, which it was.

  Meeting on April 14 with Soviet Ambassador Sergei M. Kudryavtsev, Che Guevara remarked that “the danger of invasion of the country by large beachheads of the external counterrevolutionary forces has now in all likelihood receded.” Although Che proved wrong, his comment shows Havana to be aware of CIA’s plan for a large-scale invasion. Fidel, his minister of defense Raul Castro, and the Cuban general staff had examined the possibilities in detail, as Castro recounted at the fortieth anniversary conference held in 2001 in Havana. Castro also revealed what he had genuinely feared—a widespread series of guerrilla landings to link up with the resistance. Of course the CIA had abandoned that option months earlier at Richard Bissell’s insistence.

  Cuban military dispositions at the moment of the invasion indicate no knowledge of immediate CIA objectives. The FAR had broken up the huge force it concentrated for the Escambray encirclement. Only a small detachment of militia guarded Playa Girón. The nearest real unit, nothing more than a militia battalion, camped at Central Australia, a sugar refinery more than twenty miles away. In fact, Fidel Castro noted in 2001, the locale and timing of the invasion were excellent.

  The CIA bombing of Castro’s airfields two days ahead of the invasion served as a clear warning to Havana. Castro staged a huge rally in the city, proclaiming Cuba’s determination to stand up to Washington. And for the first time he publicly declared the revolution a socialist one. Simultaneously Cuban security apprehended every dissident and rebel they knew of, along with plenty of Cubans who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Lino Fernandez, coordinator of the resistance after “Francisco,” disappeared into jail. More than 20,000 people were arrested, with estimates as high as 100,000 or 250,000. As a result, internal resistance was swept from the board before the invasion even began.

  Plans for a diversion in Oriente under Niño Diaz might have fooled Castro. With Cuba alerted by the bombing, the Diaz landing would have been the next news, and Havana could have gone for it. But the ploy never happened. The Garcia Lines ship La Plata and the CIA boats Sea Gull and Tejana carried the assault unit. A week before, the frogmen supposed to guide Diaz’s troops to the beach perished in an accident with a hand grenade. Now substitutes approached the shore, thirty miles from Guantanamo, only to see Cuban soldiers on the beach. Another try the next night failed; heavy seas and the rocky beach were blamed. Jake Esterline groused that two men with a canoe had scared Diaz off. (Esterline’s are not the only speculations: Cuban Gen. Fabian Escalante writes that Diaz’s true purpose was to excuse U.S. intervention by making a phony attack on Guantanamo Bay.)

  Another diversion, off Pinar del Rio at the opposite end of Cuba, involved a submarine, flares, a few shells, plus electronic emissions. Castro feared a landing there and would have believed in it. After the big Havana rally on April 16 he sent Che Guevara to rally the defenses. Guevara wounded himself when his pistol discharged by mistake. Later, when Fidel got reports of a landing, he could see Brigade 2506 in front of him at Girón and dismissed them.

  Plans to activate the resistance by inserting coded messages into the broadcasts of David Phillip’s Radio Swan collapsed with the Cuban security crackdown. Phillip’s extensive propaganda program—he had no fewer than twelve million leaflets stockpiled to induce the campesinos to rise and join Brigade 2506 or the resistance—went fallow as the leaflets sat in warehouses. First, on Kennedy’s orders, the CIA canceled its air missions starting several weeks before the landing, then, once the invasion happened, it was entirely preoccupied with air support.

  Networks in Havana were gone, those in the rest of Cuba heavily impacted. All this left fighters like Jose Basulto high and dry. On the day of the bombing Basulto had been at Manzanillo preparing for an expected arms delivery. When he returned to Santiago, avoiding the air base—among CIA’s targets—Basulto found most of his agents arrested. His network had only a few submachine guns and six pounds of explosives, scarcely enough to dent Castro’s army. On the day of the invasion Basulto and his closest remaining companions went on a beach outing to Siboney, cavorting in the waves. They figured they had done what they could. Now everything depended on Assault Brigade 2506.

  Grayston Lynch’s ship Blagar carried the brigade commander and staff. Lynch had not known Jose Peres San Roman, but by the end of the voyage he respected the wiry Cuban commander. They spent much of the night of April 15 closeted in the wardroom talking over the difficulties the brigade faced. Lynch gave San Roman pointers on fighting Castro’s Russian-made tanks, not to mention the use of his own armor. The fleet of four ships and two LCIs arrived off the Bay of Pigs on schedule. There they met the U.S. Navy’s San Marcos. The big Landing Ship Dock launched craft bearing the brigade’s trucks and tanks, and one to pick up the Cuban crews and distribute them to the craft. Then the CIA landing craft operators withdrew to the San Marcos, which steamed away. The Cuban invasion fleet split into elements to approach each of its landing beaches. It was just before midnight and the beginning of April 17, 1961.

  Except for three large craft with the vehicles and four for personnel, all brought by the American amphibious ship, the Cubans relied on small fiberglass boats with outboard motors. These had been a headache for Lynch and Gar Thorsrud, who installed and tested the motors back at Puerto Cabezas, because an officer from the Joint Chiefs insisted on erroneous steering installations and fuel mixtures. Lynch had finally gone along just to get the man off their backs. Now the motors failed and slowed down the operation.

  At least the beaches were marked—against orders that no Americans were to be involved, Rip Robertson and Grayston Lynch led frogmen ashore to accomplish this. As CIA case officer aboard the command ship, Lynch took it upon himself to make the final decision on beach conditions and therefore crewed a launch carrying frogmen. The intruders encountered a reef a foot below the surface about a hundred yards from the surf line. The tide was still coming in. At the landing point it seemed like Cuban locals were partying, so Lynch steered to starboard. As they cleared the coral one of the lights to mark the beach went on, twice, apparently the victim of a short circuit. A frogman finally sat on it to suppress the illumination. But Comrade Mariano Mustelier’s militia post at Playa Girón saw the light and sent two milicianos in a jeep to investigate. The vehicle came up in front of the CIA team and shone its headlights directly at them. Grayston Lynch, agency contract officer, became the first to open fire at the Bay of Pigs, emptying half a magazine into the jeep. His frogmen joined in. Interrogating captured milicianos later, Brigade 2506 intelligence learned that the militia thought they’d seen a lost fishing boat and were trying to guide it in. But the firefight gave away the invasion. Playa Girón went dark. Mustelier radioed the news to Central Australia. So much for the element of surprise.

  At the head of the Bay of Pigs lay the village of Playa Larga. There Jose San Roman hoped to block the causeway across the swamp from Central Australia. The LCI Barbara J and the Garcia Lines ship Houston arrived off Playa Larga about 2 A.M. Rip Robertson and three Cuban frogmen did their own shore reconnaissance, then began landing the Second Battalion. Comrade Gonzalez Sucro, patrolling with five milicianos, saw shadows and demanded a halt. Quickly another firefight began.