◆ SpookStack

for the President. Even without an accompanying air strike, how could a landing of 800 - 1,200 men with tanks, heavy machine guns, mortars, and recoilless rifles be considered quiet? Although uncertain concerning the origin of the D-2 and defector plan, both George Gaines and Stanley Beerli of DPD recalled that they were firmly in favor of the idea. Gaines who was Chief of Air Operations for DPD on Project JMATE stated: We wanted something to insure success of the absolute, total annihilation of retaliatory capability when we put our troops ashore. One strike early in the morning we didn't think was sufficient to guarantee the degree of success that we needed. So several schemes were pro- posed, and we checked them; and finally we decided that -- and I think the decision actually was made in Bissell's office -- that what we would do would be to pursue the course of a fake Cuban Air Force defection. We had intelligence enough available to us that we knew the names of the people who still Were active -- even though they may have been part of a dissident element to some degree -- they were still active in [the] Cuban Air Force. So we decided what we would do was stage, very near to the time of the actual strike, a fake defection. Purportedly one of Castro's own pilots would become disgruntled, and take an aircraft, shoot up his own Air Force facilities, and seek asylum in the US. The damage done during that fake strike would give us the insurance that we - 183 -