JFK: Bay of Pigs Declassified

The Bay of Pigs fiasco marked the first foreign policy defeat for the new Kennedy administration and the first time a CIA covert operation had been exposed to public scrutiny. More than one hundred U.S. backed invaders died at the Bay of Pigs and more than one thousand were captured. Kennedy called the invasion "the worst experience of my life". Military and political analysts called it "the perfect failure". It was one of the most extraordinary debacles of the Cold War. What exactly went wrong on that day in April, 1961 - the day America lost its first and most humiliating battle against Communism? This programme draws heavily on top secret documents which have been uncovered for the first time, almost 40 years after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Among them, the CIA's own scathing post mortem on the invasion. We look at the untold history of the Bay of Pigs and its importance on the evolution of covert operations, the Cuban Missile Crisis and recent U.S. relations with Castro's regime.