Author Seymour Hersh, in his recent book The Dark Side of Camelot, a critical look at the Kennedy presidency, most persuasively raises the linkage between the invasion and an assassination plot that began under the Eisenhower administration.
Why was mission canceled?

``One of Kennedy's most controversial and least understood decisions during the Bay of Pigs was the cancellation of the second bombing mission'' Hersh writes. ``. . . The assumption that Castro would be dead when the first Cuban exiles went ashore, and the fact that he was not, may explain Kennedy's decision to cut his losses. The Mafia had failed and a very much alive Castro was rallying his troops.''

Hersh quotes Robert Maheu, a former FBI agent and the link between administration officials and the Mafia for the assassination plot code-named ZR/Rifle, as telling him that ``Taking out Castro was part of the invasion plan.'' Castro's murder, said Maheu, was to take place ``before -- but preferably at the time of -- the invasion.''

Cold feet sink plot

The plot fell apart when Juan Orta, who functioned as Castro's private secretary and was to slip a poisoned pill into a drink, apparently got cold feet and took refuge in the Venezuelan Embassy a few days before the invasion. Orta died several years ago.

Kennedy, Hersh said in an interview, must have known by April 15 -- two days before the invasion -- and perhaps earlier, that the assassination plot had fallen apart and ``he was in real trouble with the operation.''

The question then became, Hersh said, whether Kennedy should ``take a bath by going ahead with it or take a bigger bath politically if he stops it. If he stops it he takes a tremendous hit from the right.''

Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at the National Security Archive, a nonprofit documentation center in Washington responsible for the recent declassification of hundreds of Bay of Pigs-related CIA documents, concurs that the question of linkage between the assassination and invasion is an intriguing one.

``The degree to which it [the assassination plot] was coordinated as part of the planning and whether the President actually knew about it and factored it into the decision-making process'' is a key question, Kornbluh says.

Historian Arthur Schlesinger insisted in at least two appearances at the Miami Book Fair last November that he did not believe Kennedy was even aware of an assassination plot against Castro.

Key planners unaware

If there was a link, key CIA planners for the Bay of Pigs invasion apparently were not aware of it. Jake Esterline, the Bay of Pigs project director, says he learned of the assassination plot by accident when he was asked to approve an unexplained expenditure by the late J.C. King, then head of the CIA's Western Hemisphere division.

``I really forced my way in by refusing to pay unless I knew what I was paying for,'' Esterline said in an interview. ``That got me partially briefed.''

Esterline said he was sworn to secrecy and didn't even tell Jack Hawkins, a retired Marine colonel who headed the Bay of Pigs paramilitary planning staff. Hawkins did not learn about it until long after the failed invasion.

Esterline now believes there ``is no question about it . . . if that whole specter of an assassination attempt using the Mafia hadn't been on the horizon, there would have been more preparation'' for the invasion.

He believes ``Kennedy and his group were not prepared to support the operation and if Bissell and others hadn't felt they had that magic bullet [assassination], I don't think we would have had all the hairsplitting over air support.''

Esterline has no doubt that Kennedy knew of the assassination plot.

Information not shared

The questions surrounding Bissell arose in the spring of 1996 at a conference on the Bay of Pigs attended by former CIA officials, brigade members and academics, following release of documents to the National Security Archive.

Those documents and later information have convinced both Hawkins and Esterline, who worked for Bissell on the Bay of Pigs, that Bissell was not leveling with them and probably was not passing on their concerns to Kennedy over such things as a change in the landing site and air cover.

Hawkins cites a recently declassified briefing paper by Bissell to the President dated April 12, 1961, that he says ``proves that Bissell had agreed with Kennedy several days before the operation began to cut the air support in half.''

Bissell didn't tell Esterline and Hawkins about the decision until the invasion.

``I am sure Bissell never made it clear to the President why it was necessary to eliminate Castro's air force before the landing,'' Hawkins said. ``I gave great emphasis to this. . . . Bissell knew what the military staff's opinion was about this need but . . . Bissell never pressed it.''