e the actual invasion, Stevenson claimed that they gave him only a partial briefing (Salinger 147).
The Bay of Pigs invasion began on Monday morning, April 17, 1961, when Cuban Brigade 2506 landed at the Bay of Pigs. But the invasion ended almost as quickly as it began. By Wednesday afternoon, April 19, 1961, the Cuban Brigade was defeated. Unfortunately, Castro captured
1,113 members of the Brigade and held them for ransom- which was finally raised in December 1962 (Larson 3).
The failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion was a good example of Murphy's Law: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. If Khrushchev was unaware of the Kennedy administration's foreign policy with respect to Cuba before the invasion, he certainly was aware of it afterward (Khrushchev 540-546). After the Bag of Pigs fiasco, Khrushchev believed that the U.S. intended to invade Cuba and that Kennedy was also very concerned about the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba.
According to Salinger, the Bay of Pigs invasion was Kennedy's first major defeat as President (149). And, af
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