On January 30, 1976 President Gerald Ford appointed George H.W. Bush Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), making Bush the first man to hold that title without ever having actually worked for the CIA. That seems odd and there were a number of signs throughout the previous decades that Bush had more than a passing familiarity with the CIA. At least some of those signs appeared during the Bay of Pigs Invasion in April 1961.
“Bay of Pigs” is the English translation of the name given to a beach in southern Cuba. Apart from having a really cool name, it became famous as the location of the failed attempt by the CIA to launch an invasion of Cuba. Fidel Castro came to power in 1959 and began nationalizing the assets of American companies; including casinos owned by the American mafia. US President Eisenhower, responded by approving a budget for the CIA of more than 100 million dollars in today’s terms, to get rid of Castro by any means possible.
Allen Dulles was DCI at the time, and his CIA had been successful in overthrowing elected governments in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954). For several years the CIA had been training Cuban dissidents in Miami and preparing them for the assault on Cuba.
Like all CIA operations, it needed a name more catchy than “Get Rid of Castro” and so became known as Operation Zapata. Enter George Bush Sr.
In 1953 George Bush co-founded the Zapata Petroleum Corporation and its sister company Zapata Offshore, launched in 1954. The company owned an oil drilling rig called Scorpion which sat 50 miles away from Cuba. Incidentally, another company which also used the same oil rig was Gulf Oil. Kermit Roosevelt, who led the CIA overthrow of Iran‘s elected Prime Minister in 1953 was on Gulf Oil’s Board and Allen Dulles was its “Advisor for Latin American Operations”.
According to Bush, his fondness for the name Zapata came from the Marlon Brando film Viva Zapata, about a Mexican Revolutionary, Emiliano Zapata. Bush said Zapata represented the independence their oil company was looking for. Ironically the real-life Zapata had fought for land distribution for peasants, and overthrown an elected government.
To add to the intrigue, two Navy ships used in the Bay of Pigs operation were repainted to non-Navy colors and renamed the Houston and the Barbara.
And the invasion itself? Well, it failed spectacularly. When the uprising of ordinary Cubans that the CIA had predicted did not eventuate, JFK abandoned the very public attempt to overthrow Castro. He forced Allen Dulles to resign from the CIA bringing to an end his long and illustrious career as a spy. Kennedy himself declared he would “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds”. Perhaps he should have added “or die trying”.
References:
Oil, Power and War: A Dark History, Matthieu Auzanneau
The Bay of Pigs Invasion CIA.gov
Bush Family of Secrets, Russell Baker
George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, Webster G. Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin
Pablo Escobar, Shaun Attwood
Real History Views 