LIVE w/ PETER KORNBLUH - Bay of Pigs 65th anniversary. Lessons (not ) Learned! History Repeating?

The Bay of Pigs is usually remembered as a botched landing and a political embarrassment, but the deeper story is about how covert operations get sold as “clean,” how propaganda gets built in real time, and how blowback reshapes the world. We sit down with Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archive to trace the invasion from the opening air strikes and staged cover story to the moment the United States found itself defending a narrative at the United Nations that simply wasn’t true.

From there, we zoom out to the machinery behind regime change: why the CIA and the White House believed they couldn’t coexist with Fidel Castro, how John F. Kennedy inherited an Eisenhower-approved plan, and what assumptions were used to convince a skeptical president it would work. Peter walks us through the CIA Inspector General’s internal “autopsy” report and why its findings still matter for anyone trying to understand intelligence failures, secrecy, and accountability.

We also dig into the post-Bay of Pigs world: Operation Mongoose, newly released JFK files, and one jaw-dropping covert action involving Cuban sugar headed to the Soviet Union. Along the way we connect the dots to U.S.-Cuba relations, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the hard limits Cuba draws around sovereignty and governance even when it signals openness on economics. If you care about declassified documents, Cold War history, CIA covert action, and the lasting risks of intervention, this conversation will stick with you.

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Chapter Markers
0:00. Propaganda Newsreel Opens The Story
1:59 Meet The Historian Behind The Files
3:57 CIA Cover Story At The UN
6:26 Why Kennedy Thought It Would Work
10:33 Inside The CIA Inspector General Report
14:55 Firing Dulles Then Operation Mongoose
17:56. Sugar Sabotage And JFK File Revelations
23:10 Kennedy's Brief Plan To Reform
26:40 Oswald And The Mexico City Secret
28:59 Bay Of Pigs Leads To Missiles
33:17 Back Channel With Che Guevara
34:53 Submission Diplomacy And Modern Threats
37:33 Can Cuba Avoid A New War
39:13 Wrap Up And What To Read

Видео LIVE w/ PETER KORNBLUH - Bay of Pigs 65th anniversary. Lessons (not ) Learned! History Repeating? канала Trip the Beltway Fantastic Podcast