Jan. 23, 1963 - Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater (left) introduced a resolution today calling for an investigation by the Senate armed services committee of the Bay of Pigs invasion, which he branded one of the nation’s “most inglorious adventures.” Mr. Goldwater asserted in a Senate speech that the Cuba fiasco in April 1961 was a “disgraceful chapter in the history of the Kennedy administration.” He said there are indications that interviews in which Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy gave his version of the invasion were arranged for one purpose — to whitewash the administration. In the interviews, the Attorney General was quoted as saying no U.S. air support had been promised or planned. “It is true,” Mr. Goldwater said today, “that President Kennedy manfully accepted all the blame for the Bay of Pigs fiasco. But it is also true that he never gave the American people a true account of what had been planned and what actually occurred. Now we get from the Attorney General an account which defies belief and runs counter to everything the American people had been led to believe. Does the Attorney General ask us to believe that seasoned military men ever seriously considered that an invasion force of 1,500 men could succeed in establishing a beachhead in Cuba and moving on to join with guerrilla forces to liberate the island from the grip of a fully armed dictator?” The suggestion defies belief, Mr. Goldwater said, because any military man with “10 minutes of experience” knows that air cover and naval support are essential to such a landing.
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