◆ SpookStack

rejoinder to Dulles was that while that may have been the opinion of some of the, assignees to CIA, the Joint Chiefs never accepted that estimate. In the course of his discussion, Dulles indicated that he was "surprised" about the effectiveness of the Castro 'aircraft, a comment which indicated an unfortunate lack of preparation on his part, particularly inasmuch as the success of the anti-Castro plan was keyed to air operations. As Jake Esterline or the Air Force assignees in charge of the air oper~tions could have told him, once airborne, there was no way that the Brigade B-2Gs could stay ~n a sky protected by both the fastest propeller dr~ven airplane of the time, the Sea Fury, and the T-33s--even, as proved to be the case, if the FAR pilots were inexperienced and rusty. Considering that he had been closely queried about air operations in his 2 May 1961 session with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the DCI appears to have failed to have profited from that less than assured performance. He did know that Castro had no MIGs but he went on to say that the Cubans did have.: "'. - .-