Operation 40

Operation 40
Active	1961–1970
Country	United States of America Cuba
Branch	Central Intelligence Agency
Type	Paramilitary force Guerilla warfare organization
Role	Black operation Sabotage Targeted killing Covert operations Guerilla warfare Asymmetric warfare Espionage Counter-intelligence
Size	2-7≈
Engagements	Bay of Pigs Invasion
Commanders
Director of the Central Intelligence Agency	Allen W. Dulles
Vice President of the United States	Richard M. Nixon
Chief of Naval Operations	Arleigh Burke
National Security Advisor	Gordon Gray
Secretary of State	Livingston T. Merchant

Operation 40 was the code name for a Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored counterintelligence group composed of Cuban exiles.

It was approved by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in March 1960, after the January 1959 Cuban Revolution, and was presided over by Vice President Richard Nixon.

Origins

On 11 December 1959, following the Cuban Revolution of January 1959, Colonel J.C. King, chief of the CIA's Western Hemisphere Division, sent a confidential memorandum to CIA director Allen W. Dulles. King argued that in Cuba there existed a "far-left dictatorship, which if allowed to remain will encourage similar actions against U.S. holdings in other Latin American countries."

The group was presided over by then-Vice President Richard M. Nixon and included Admiral Arleigh Burke, Livingston Merchant of the State Department, National Security Adviser Gordon Gray, as well as Dulles himself.

Tracy Barnes functioned as operating office of the Cuban Task Force. He called a meeting on 18 January 1960, in his temporary office near the Lincoln Memorial.

On 17 March 1960, President Eisenhower signed a U.S. National Security Council directive on the anti-Cuban covert action program authorizing the CIA to organize, train, and equip Cuban refugees as a guerrilla force to overthrow the government of Cuban prime minister Fidel Castro.

Operations

Operation 40 was not only involved in sabotage operations. One associate of the group, although never a member, Frank Sturgis, allegedly told author Mike Canfield: "this assassination group (Operation 40) would upon orders, naturally, assassinate either members of the military or the political parties of the foreign country that you were going to infiltrate, and if necessary some of your own members who were suspected of being foreign agents...We were concentrating strictly in Cuba at that particular time." The group sought to incite civil war in Cuba against the government of prime minister Fidel Castro. When Operation 40 failed in accomplishing this goal, then in October 1960, Brigade 2506 was created, a CIA-sponsored group made up of 1,511 Cuban exiles who fought in the April 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion.

On 17 April 1961, Vicente León León, with other members of Operation 40, landed at the Bay of Pigs via the CIA-chartered freighter Atlántico. He was killed in action.

See also

• Brigade 2506
• Assassination attempts on Fidel Castro
• Richard M. Bissell, Jr.
• Cuban Power
• Cuban Project
• Echo 31
• Guillermo Hernández-Cartaya

Bibliography

• Bohning, Don. 2005. The Castro Obsession: U.S. Covert Operations Against Cuba, 1959–1965. p. 303 ISBN 1-57488-676-2
• Rodriguez, Juan Carlos. 1999. Bay of Pigs and the CIA. Ocean Press Melbourne. ISBN 1-875284-98-2

External links

• Bay of Pigs, 40 Years After: Chronology at The National Security Archive via George Washington University