US Air Force, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
This report, written in July of 1962 by Major General Edward Lansdale, summarizes the first phase of Operation Mongoose, another attempt to sow chaos in Cuba and overthrow its government after the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion. Lansdale was serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Special Operations, Staff Member of the President’s Committee on Military Assistance, and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations, and summarized the operation’s first year before the second phase was initiated in August of 1962. The CIA and Joint Chiefs of Staff were tasked with gathering intelligence and potential assets, assessing the possibility of fomenting a guerilla warfare campaign in Cuba, and even determining the capability of direct U.S. intervention.
This report shows the U.S. reaction as the tensions with Cuba nearly reached their peak. This summary by Lansdale shows the lengths the U.S. was preparing to go to in order to destabilize Cuba and the Castro government. This was, of course, not the first or last time the U.S. tried to covertly overthrow another country’s government. But it is important to understand how relations between the two countries had deteriorated since Castro took power barely three years prior. Economic action was not enough for the U.S. and even the embarrassing failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion was not a deterrent.
“Our probes of the guerrilla potential inside Cuba have been hampered by similar morale factors. Cubans sent to risk their lives on missions inside Cuba feel very much alone, except for their communications link back to the United States. They are unable to recruit freedom fighters aggressively by the time-proven method of starting an active resistance and thus attracting recruits; U.S. guidelines to keep this short of a revolt have made the intention behind the operation suspect to local Cubans. The evidence of some
intent is seen in the recent maritime re-supply of the team in Pinar del Rio.
We brought in extra weapons, for which there were immediate recruits; if we were to exploit the evident guerrilla potential in this province, it appears likely that we would have to furnish supplies by air and probably open the United States to strong charges of furnishing such support to Cuban resistance elements. Therefore, we have been unable to surface the Cuban resistance potential
to a point where we can measure it realistically. The only way this can be done, accurately, is when resistance actually has a rallying point of freedom fighters who appear to the Cuban people to have some chance of winning, and that means at least an implication that the United States is in support.
Word-of-mouth information that such a freedom movement is afoot could cause the majority of the Cuban people to choose sides. It would be the first real opportunity for them to do so since Castro and the Communists came to power. There was little opportunity for the Cuban people to join an active
resistance in April 1961; there is less opportunity today. If the Cuban people are to feel they have a real opportunity, they must have something which they can join with some belief in its success.”
Lansdale, Edward. “Operation Mongoose.” In The Cuba Reader: History, Culture, Politics, edited by Aviva Chomsky, Barry Carr, Alfredo Prieto, and Pamela Maria Smorkaloff, 476–79. Duke University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11smxrz.102.