ating with the Soviets for the military and economic support of Cuba, perhaps recognizing that he was unlikely to receive any serious help from the West and hoping that Soviet sponsorship would deter the United States from any attempt to overthrow his government. By this time, American reservations concerning Castro were so strong that the Eisenhower administration had imposed an embargo upon Cuban sugar. By the summer of 1960, the Cuban-Soviet relationship was open and the superpower war of words over Cuba accelerated (Beschloss 96-98).
Serious consideration for overthrowing Castro began immediately after Castro's April 1959 visit to the United States, at the behest of Vice-President Richard Nixon. After a three-and-one-half hours meeting with Castro during that visit, Nixon was convinced that Castro was either a Communist or under the influence of Communists. Coincidentally, a successful deposition of Castro before November 1960 would virtually ensure Nixon's victory in the presidential elections that month. Influenced by his Vice-President, Eisenhower approved a $13 million budget in August of 1960 for such an operation by the CIA (Wyden 28-30).
Almost from the beginning, the plans resembled those of the successful operation in Guatemala in 1954. That operation successfully overthrew the leftist government in one week, using 150 Guatemalan exiles and a few World War II fighters flown by American contract pilots. The tiny rebel force crossed into the Honduras and after some sporadic actions, during which a single courier was killed, the officer corps of the Guatemalan Army revolted and installed the rebel leader as the new president. The American presence in the operation was limited to CIA organization, training, American contract pilots, and propaganda broadcasts urging the Guatemalans to revolt (Wyden 20-21).
The major actors in the CIA at that time did not fit the stereotype of the psychotic assassins which has become ...