A Cuban exile brigade, trained and commanded by the CIA, invades Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. As the Cuban army led by Premier Fidel Castro surrounds the invading force, President Kennedy refuses to send in U.S. combat forces. The exile brigade surrenders, and more than one thousand of its members are taken prisoner. President Kennedy realizes he has been drawn into a CIA trap designed to force him to escalate the battle by ordering a full-scale invasion of Cuba by U.S. troops. Kennedy says he wants “to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.”

April 15-19, 1961