◆ SpookStack

remembrance of the briefing was, according to Hugh Thomas, that it left something to be desired: Tracy Barnes of the CIA came up and briefed us here on the Delegation {to the UN] ••• He assured us -that this was simply a question of helping the exiles and this was not in any way a us operation. In the light of what happened, I suppose this can be regarded as less than candid.* It is not known if Barnes was ever called on to retrace his steps concerning the briefing for Ambassa- dor Stevenson, but if he did so, no written record has been recovered.** As for his comments about setting the date for the D-2 strike, it has already been pointed out that Barnes himself had been involved in promoting such action as early as January 1961, and the need for such a strike had been generally accepted by mid to late March. By 1 April when it was anticipated that D-Day would be 10 April, rather than 17 April, the cable traffic between TIDE and Headquarters indicated that the briefing team that came from Headquarters * Quoted in Thomas, Cuban Revolution (Harper & Rowe, 1977), p. 530 as told to Thomas by Stevenson on 6 February 1963. ** Various attempts to locate the "Tracy Barnes papers," like similar attempts to recover the "J. C. King papers, ,,- have come to naught. -244 -