More than a few conspiracists have asserted that Marilyn’s knowledge of the Bay of Pigs Invasion, combined with her sensitive diary entries pertaining to that tragic event, played a significant role in her murder. During her press conference, she planned to expose the truth about the Bay of Pigs debacle and the US government’s attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. It has always been accepted as fact that her knowledge of and her plan to reveal the middle Kennedy brother’s Castro and Cuba secrets incited them to act, incited them to have Marilyn murdered, which led, of course, to a massive cover-up.

In his 1974 tarradiddle, Robert Slatzer mentioned an entry in Marilyn’s Little Red Diary regarding the Bay of Pigs invasion. When Slatzer questioned Marilyn about the event, her response suggested that she did not know anything at all about the Bay of Pigs, noting only that the invasion happened in Cuba. In his 2012 memoir, however, Samir Muqaddin contradicted his friend, Robert Slatzer. Muqaddin discussed the Bay of Pigs invasion and the CIA plots to assassinate Fidel Castro at length; and he placed Marilyn in meetings during which John Kennedy and James O’Connell planned not only the American sponsored invasion of Cuba but Fidel Castro’s assassination. Both Slatzer and Muqaddin insinuated that Marilyn’s Little Red Diary entries about the Bay of Pigs played a prominent role in her murder, even though Slatzer presented Marilyn as an ignorant victim engaged in some malignant politics that she did not even understand. Marilyn was only interested in Robert Kennedy’s connubial intentions, according to Slatzer, while Muqaddin presented her as an active participant in dangerous politics with her presidential lover, John Kennedy. So, in order to get a proper perspective on the Bay of Pigs invasion and how it might have impacted Marilyn’s alleged murder, what follows is a brief history thereof.

Fidel Castro assumed power in Cuba following years of rebellion. He was anointed Prime Minister on February the 16th in 1959. During a let’s-get-acquainted-and-be-friends tour that followed his coronation, he visited the United States and met then Vice-President Richard Nixon. The two men immediately disliked one another. It soon became apparent that Castro did not intend to establish a democratic or a representative republic form of government in Cuba; instead, he intended to adopt a system of one party rule like the Soviet Union.

Relations between the US and the USSR, former military allies during the second world war, had grown heated and tense. Since the end of the global hot war in 1945, the governments of the two super powers had been engaged in a massive cold war and one proxy hot war in Korea. Upon the suggestion of Vice-President Nixon, with the approval of President Eisenhower, the CIA, in consult with the military, planned an American sponsored secret invasion by a paramilitary group of CIA-trained Cuban nationals in exile. The CIA intended to depose Castro and incite a rebellion by the Cuban people, after which both a democratic and a capitalistic system could be established.

During the 1960 presidential campaign, the CIA director, Allen Dulles, briefed John Kennedy about the Cuban operation; so when Kennedy was elected president and assumed office in 1961, the American military and the CIA had already formalized the invasion plan. Although the Kennedy administration merely inherited the plan from the Eisenhower administration, John Kennedy reluctantly sanctioned the invasion; but as time passed and the date of the invasion neared, Kennedy remained reluctant. Even so, with a few tactical alterations that he demanded, and assurances from Dulles that American ground forces would not participate in the operation, President Kennedy allowed the invasion to proceed. Dulles believed that the absence of American forces meant the operation was doomed to fail; but he did not express his beliefs to President Kennedy. And, too, the operation had another major problem other than the absence of direct participation by the American ground troops: the pending invasion was not a secret.

According to Lamar Waldron, later plans by the middle Kennedy brothers to depose Castro were designed to avoid the main problems that befell the Bay of Pigs operation, which had been a relatively open secret known to dozens of officials, aides, agents, and military officers in the US government, as well as to numerous journalists and even partially to Fidel (Waldron 208). On January the 10th in 1961, The New York Times ran a front page article with the following headline: “U.S. Helps Train an Anti-Castro Force at Secret Guatemalan Base.” Only by then, the existence of that base was no longer a secret. The Cuban exiles involved in the operation had spoken freely about deposing Castro. In short, the Cubans knew the invasion was coming; but that essential fact, apparently, was not revealed to the White House.

By late October of 1960, Castro’s intelligence agents had learned about the Guatemalan training bases along with the CIA’s involvement. According to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum website:

Despite efforts of the government to keep the invasion plans covert, it became common knowledge among Cuban exiles in Miami. Through Cuban intelligence, Castro learned of the guerilla training camps in Guatemala as early as October 1960, and the press reported widely on events as they unfolded.1The Bay of Pigs.
<https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/jfk-in-history/the-bay-of-pigs>

In 1961, on April the 13th, apparently Radio Moscow broadcast a report, in English, which predicted the invasion, that a plot hatched by the CIA using paid criminals would be launched within a week, a fairly accurate prediction.The CIA launched its secret assault from Nicaragua on the 17th of April in 1961.2More than a few media outlets cite Radio Moscow’s 1961 English language broadcast of April the 13th, but I have not been able to locate the original source for the quotations.

The CIA’s invasion began with ineffective air strikes against the Cuban air force, resulting in the loss of several American bombers and flight crews. John Kennedy panicked and cancelled the planned umbrella air cover for the invasion force. That cancellation resulted in what some media outlets have described as a slaughter of the invaders perpetrated by the Cuban Army.

In real time, while the operation was underway, according to the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, as noted above, the press reported widely on events as they unfolded. On the 21st of April, the military operation ended in abject failure. Afterwards, the US Navy sent four vessels to search for survivors but found only thirty. Over the ensuing months, many of the men involved, the Cuban Nationals who cooperated with the CIA, along with the soldiers captured on the beaches, were either tried and sentenced to lengthy prison terms or executed.

John Kennedy observed, following the failure of the CIA’s military action: Victory has a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan. The president assumed the responsibility for the Bay of Pigs failure; and he ordered that additional statements regarding or discussions about the event should not attempt to conceal his responsibility: as President, he recognized, he was the responsible officer of the Government. Still, John Kennedy declared his dissatisfaction with the military’s leaders; and he intended to advise his successor to carefully observe the generals, noting the following: just because they were military men did not necessarily mean their opinions and advice regarding military matters were worth a damn. Still, John Kennedy did not end the efforts of the CIA, the FBI or the Cuban exiles to overthrow Castro. They began covert operations in Cuba to destabilize the Castro regime, instituted trade and travel restrictions on American companies and American citizens and hatched various secret plots to assassinate Castro under the Operation Mongoose umbrella, all of which failed.

Within a few short weeks of April the 21st in 1961, certainly any person in the United States who was paying attention knew that the US government and the Kennedy Administration had been involved in an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro. By the end of 1961, whispers of the MOB’s involvement with the CIA in Cuba began along with whispers that the MOB had been involved in the 1960 presidential election. In reality, what Marilyn might have revealed in a press conference about Cuba and Castro in early August of 1962 would not have been secrets at all. It is possible that her revelations would have produced mostly yawns and maybe even a few snickers, considering the ineptitude displayed by the CIA. In reality, neither the middle Kennedy brothers nor any of the related acronyms had any motive to murder Marilyn based on her putative knowledge of the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Besides, if Marilyn did not know anything about the Bay of Pigs invasion, as insinuated by Slatzer, how could she have revealed anything that would have harmed the middle Kennedy brothers? Still, this question remains: was Marilyn going to appear before the press on Monday, August the 6th in 1962?