◆ SpookStack

lnterviewer* You are now referring specifically to Beerli and Gaines? RD Yes, mostly Beerli and Cabell.** Cabell was of no help throughout this thing. He never understood it, as far as I could see, and we had to brief every air drop operation to Cabell. I would go along with some- body from Hawkins's shop, Dave Phillips would go along if it would involve propaganda, and than Beerli would be there. Beerli and Cabell would play Strategic Air Command -- moving their hands around and talking about the angle of vector, and this and that. For example, this is ,where Cabell got his nickname "Rice and Beans," from the project. Once he told us that we were making an uneconomical use of the aircraft in only dropping what we were dropping .•• we must fill our airplane up with,rice and beans and drop that too. We sat there and tried to explain to him the size of the reception party and the nearness of Castro's security force and that we couldn't really linger over those targets for a long time and just drop forever. "God damnit," he says, "I have to defend my expenses against the Bureau of the Budget .•., isn't that right, Stanjri "Yes, Sir, General" •.• So that kind of military assistance was not particularly useful. As a point of fact, we ran about 30 drops and never really achieved a thing. We had all the standard errors, like we dropped once on a string of head- lights coming out of a movie instead * The author of this history. ** Gen. Charles P. Cabell, thenDDCI. 21 -