Freddie Ponton21st Century Wire
More than a month afterCuba charged six exiles with terrorismover the attack and publicly tied at least two of them to a prior terrorism list shared with Washington, Trump’sState Departmentis still “reviewing” the case whileFBI agentsmove quietly in and out of Havana. At the same time, newly declassified Bay of Pigs files from theNational Security Archive (NSA)lay bare an earlier era of U.S. covert war against Cuba built on wishful thinking and deniable violence, casting a long shadow over how this latest incident is understood in Havana. In Miami and Washington, officials talk about “clarifying events.” In Cuba, people talk about aFlorida based militant networkthat used aU.S.registered boatto launch an armed infiltration under the cover of theblockadethat is choking the island.
A stolen speedboat left theFlorida Keysbefore dawn, crossed into Cuban waters, and turned a quiet stretch offVilla Clarainto a battlefield on 25 February 2026. Cuban authorities said the vessel carried rifles, pistols, scoped AR-style weapons, night optics, radios, body armour, a drone, and nearly13,000 rounds of ammunition, while international outlets later confirmed the Florida origin, the stolen registration, and the presence of U.S. citizens among the dead and wounded. At least one of the dead and one of the injured were confirmed by U.S. officials asAmerican citizens, all ten men aboard wereCuban nationals living in the United States, and aneleventh alleged accomplicewas arrested on land after reportedly coming to meet them on the beach.
IMAGE: Cuban Coast Guard vessel (Source: El Artemiseño newspaper via Facebook)
This article places that raid besidenewly releasedBay of Pigs invasionrecordsby the National Security Archive (NSA), which show how Washington’s covert war on Cuba was built on fantasy, deniability, and a willingness to gamble with Cuban lives. It also documents something more immediate and damning. Years before the Villa Clara clash, Cuba had already identifiedAutodefensa del Pueblo (ADP),Amijail Sánchez González, andLeordán Cruz Gómezin official counterterrorism files shared with the United States, yet the men still lived, organised, and sailed from U.S. soil.
DOCUMENT: National Security Archive – CIA, Report, “Inspector General’s Survey of the Cuban Operation and Associated Documents,” Top Secret, October 1961, and Che–Goodwin memo (Source:NSA)CIA ReportWhat follows is not a nostalgic Cold War story. It is an account of how that war against Cuba shrank and mutated inside a permissiveexile ecosystem in Florida, and how a country suffocating under sanctions and ade facto oil blockadebecame the stage for one more armed fantasy of regime change. It is also a story about ordinary Cubans paying the price for a siege they did not choose, while militants and politicians in the United States treat the island’s crisis as an opening.
The new Bay of Pigs material is truly a jewel because it exposes the inner logic of the invasion more clearly than the mythology ever did. TheCIA Inspector General’s surveyconcluded that the Agency had no solid intelligence showing that Cubans would rise up to join the invaders, that key assumptions about internal revolt were wishful thinking, and that the fantasy of plausible deniability collapsed before the first shot at Playa Girón. The report depicts an apparatus that preferred to double down on false hopes rather than admit the operation should be halted.
Arthur Schlesinger’s memorandaare just as revealing. They show that after the disaster, PresidentJohn F Kennedyconsidered stripping theCIAof much of its covert action role, moving key functions under tighter civilian control, and separating intelligence collection from paramilitary operations because the Bay of Pigs invasion had exposed an agency acting like a state within a state. For a moment, the U.S. political establishment admitted to itself that permanent covert war-making might be incompatible with democratic accountability.
The release also exposes the moral rot beneath the operation. One highlighted document ties invasion‑period funding streams toCIA–Mafia assassination plottingagainstFidel Castro, while theGuevara–Goodwin memorandumshows that Havana understood the failed invasion not just as an attack survived but as a political turning point that strengthened the revolution from within.Che Guevaratold presidential adviserRichard Goodwinthat the fiasco allowed Cuba to consolidate internally and to negotiate with Washington as an equal, not as a pleading victim.
For readers interested in the Bay of Pigs invasion, these details matter because they strip away the fairy tale of a bungled but benign policy. The record shows an operation driven by self-deception at the top, byexile militarismon the ground, and by a covert bureaucracy that kept feeding presidents optimism when honesty would have required killing the mission. The file trail from 1961 shows how Washington once orchestrated an invasion. The file trail from Havana shows what happened when Florida militants tried to do it themselves.
Source: 21st Century Wire
