◆ SpookStack

The President's understanding of the guerrilla option and his cancellation of the D-Day air strike were issues that engendered some of the bitterest exchanges between the Attorney General and various witn~sses during the committee hearings. That the President believed that there was a guerrilla option once the invasion site had been shifted from Trinidad to Zapata and that cancellation of the D-Day strike had little or no relation to the failure of the invasion suggests both inattention to--or disregard for--the advice he had been given by the individuals most qualified to make the operational judgments for successful implementation of the agreed plan. The most dramatic evidence of the President's contempt of the experts was provided during a meeting between Kennedy and John McCone a few weeks after McCone had replaced Allen Dulles as DCI. One knowledgeable source has written: In a private meeting with President Kennedy on 7 January 1962, the President told McCone that he, the President, had been persuaded to approve the operation on the basis that if the invasion failed to inspire large-scale defections, then the force which had been put ashore, could retreat into the Escambray mountains and would represent a substantial guerrilla force which would be rather easily reinforced and resupplied from the United States or elsewhere. He said that he learned much to his surprise the operation was so planned and the landing so located that there was no possibility of such an escape. The President made a second point. He had concluded that modest air power, even if successful, would have only postponed defeat for a few days. He said that indeed he doubted if even substantial