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a o_o cal 27. The Agency was matching the 1,500-man brigade, after an amphibious landing, against Castro's combined military forces, which the highest-level U.S. intelligence (USIB reports entitled "The Military Buildup in Cuba", dated 30 November 1960 and 9 February 1961, respectively) estimated as follows: The Revolutionary Army - 32,000 men; the militia - 200,000 men; employing more than 30 to 40 thousand tons of Bloc-furnished arms and heavy materiel of the value of $30,000,000. 28. It is difficult to umderstand how the decision to proceed with the invasion could have been justified in the latter stages of the operation. Under the Trinidad plan (Annex C), access to the Escambray Mountains for possible guerrilla existence might have constituted some justification for the enormous risks involved. This justification did not apply to the Zapata area which was poor guerrilla terrain and offered little possibility for the break-out of a surrounded invasion force. The lack of contingency planning for either survival or rescue of the brigade has never been satisfactorily explained. 29. The argument has been made that the Agency's theory of an uprising to be set off by a successful invasion and the maintenance of the battalion for a period of a week or so has not been disproved. It was not put to the test, this argument goes, because the cancelled D-Day air strikes were essential - 55 -