◆ SpookStack

With reference to the question on non-attribution secretary Rusk seemed to be confused. He noted that the hope was for non-attribution in the fullest degree, but he realized after the fact that this was a somewhat naive conception. One of the members of the Committee suggested that the push for non-attribution was one of the costliest mistakes that the Government had made, particularly as it imposed a requirement "not to have the air strikes even by Cubans." Secretary Rusk went into his thesis of the necessity to capture an airstrip in order to have one or two of the B-26 touch down so that the US could claim that the B-26s were operating from within Cuba. Inasmuch as it had already been publicized by the Cubans that the B-26s involved in the 0-2 activity were not flown out of Cuba and since Stevenson had been burned at the UN on Saturday (0-2), the insistence by Secretary Rusk and President Kennedy that this fiction be continued even on D-Day is beyond comprehen- sion--the more so inasmuch as the cancellation of the D-Day strike insured, as the air operations people knew it would, 101/ the presence of Castro's T-33s and Sea Furies. --- During the COUrse of his testimony Secretary Rusk also stated 102/ that the operation had been blown. This charge would be made in later years by others who eve~ claimed that the invasion date had been passed on to the Cubans by the Soviets who had picked up the information in Mexico. Even if the Soviets were aware that 17 April 1961 was the planned date for the invasion, there is no indication that they transmitted this information 103 ",