◆ SpookStack

159 ••• T-33 jet trainers which they beefed up, and which were extremely effective•••• We did not know their being with the new armament that they had and they were handled with great skill. We are a little suspicious of this. We cannot prove who were in these T-33s, but I have talked to some of the airmen who fought against them. Their techniques were so different from the techniques of the B-26s that had Cuban crews that we have suspicions, but we cannot prove them, because we never fished anybody out of one of these planes. 152/ In fact, air operations personnel and the Brigade's pilots were well aware of the fact that the T-33s were armed with two .50 caliber machine guns~ and the comparison of "techniques" between B-26s and T-33s is meaningless. By the time of his testimony to the Taylor Committee there was no question that Castro's planes were not being flown by East European or Soviet pilots. The relative merits of Trinidad and Zapata also included a discussion of the feasibility of the in~vading forces going ~ guerrilla. Dulles indicated that a number of the invaders might escape from the Zapata area, but the prospects for the guerrilla option would have been far better from Trinidad. This was contrary to the response which probably was hoped for by one of the committee members (Robert Kennedy most likely) who had asked if Dulles, like the President, believed that the disaster potential for the operation was low because if worse came to worst, the group could go into the hills and become guerrillas?* With respect to the possibility of the * In this instance Dulles apparently had done his homework fol- lowing his session with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 2 May 1961. At that time he had suggested that escape through the Zapata swamps was not an unreasonable prospect in any weather. 153/