|
|
|
Review
| The Castro Obsession: U.S. Covert Operations Against Cuba, 1959–1965, by Don Bohning. Washington, DC: Potomac Books, Inc., 2005. 307 pages. $29.95, cloth.
|
| Since 1959, nine American presidents have come and gone. Fidel Castro has outlasted them all. How has the ruler of one of the last communist states managed to frustrate, outfox, and repel the efforts of the United States over the last forty-six years to undermine his regime? Journalist Don Bohning, in his interesting account of covert American actions against the Castro regime during the first years of his rule, strongly suggests that presidential paranoia, inadequate (or ignored) intelligence, and "secret" operations so inept that they make the Keystone Kops look like James Bond all contributed to the colossal failure of America's covert war against the Cuban dictator and may, in fact, have helped to solidify his hold on power. |
1
|
|
Bohning focuses much of his book on the covert operations undertaken against Castro during the presidency of John F. Kennedy. Obsession does not begin to describe the depth of the young president's determination to unseat Castro, and his fury at being unable to do so was matched only by that of his younger brother (and attorney general) Bobby's. Using a variety of sources, including published and unpublished government records, secondary sources, and lengthy interviews he conducted with some of the participants in the covert war against Cuba, the author draws together the strands of the multifaceted campaign against Castro. Most of the early chapters are taken up with an in-depth look at the Bay of Pigs fiasco in April 1961. Bohning puts much of the blame for the disaster squarely on President Kennedy who, he argues, botched the operation by insisting on last minute changes to the strategy and calling off crucial air strikes against Castro's air force. As Bohning illustrates, the failure at the Bay of Pigs seemed to incense the Kennedy brothers even more, and their determination to unseat Castro reached truly manic proportions. In subsequent chapters, the author recounts the schemes planned (and sometimes launched) under the auspices of "Operation Mongoose," the name given to the covert program to topple the Cuban ruler. These ranged from the silly (trying to spike Castro's cigars with hallucinogenic drugs), to the truly absurd (putting incendiary devices on bats in the hope that they would nest in attics in Cuba and then cause conflagrations), to the sinister (dealings with the Mafia to assassinate Castro). Following the tense standoff during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, covert operations were scaled back but never really ended. Right up to 1965, Kennedy and then Lyndon Johnson directed the Central Intelligence Agency to get rid of Castro. Plans were laid, massive amounts of money were spent, some Cuban exiles were smuggled back into Cuba for sabotage and intelligence gathering, but in the end it all came to naught. As the Vietnam War absorbed the Johnson administration the "Castro obsession" slowly died down and Operation Mongoose withered away. |
2
|
|
Bohning has performed a valuable service by bringing all of the anti-Castro plots together in one book. It certainly reminds us of the terrific paranoia of the Cold War years and how during that time reasonable and sane American policymakers engaged in behavior that was often bizarre and sometimes bordered on the criminal. Scholars, however, may find the study lacking on several levels. Bohning provides little in the way of context. Cuba exists as an isolated battle in the Cold War and its connections to larger Latin American or world issues are largely ignored. His evidentiary base is suspect. Many chapters rely almost entirely on well known published documents or on interviews. The interviews, conducted with individuals thirty or more years after the fact, are sometimes substantiated by documentary evidence, sometimes not. The reader must be suspicious of individuals who are constantly declaring that they almost resigned in protest or almost took their complaints to higher authorities. Bohning also has a tendency to be a bit overdramatic at times, such as when he suggests that if a high-ranking CIA official had only listened to two of Bohning's interviewees this "could have altered the course of history" (p. 32). Finally, his bibliography contains several notable omissions including all of the work by Louis Pérez and Thomas Paterson's fascinating book Contesting Castro. Despite these problems, Bohning has written a fast-paced, interesting, and exhaustive study of the American covert war against Castro during some of the hottest years of the Cold War. It should find a wide audience beyond scholars and students and will no doubt provoke more debate on the nearly fifty-year-old battle between the United States and Fidel Castro. |
3
|
| | |
| Appalachian State University |
Michael L. Krenn |
|
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|