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b. Memorandum No. 2 "Immediate Causes of Failure of the Operation Zapata" is a four page, eleven paragraph segment which repeats almost in toto the causes of failure which w~re given in the 11 May 1961 "Study of the Anti-Castro Invasion (Zapata)" and which was the basis for the 16 May "preliminary" briefing of President Kennedy on the findings of the Taylor Committee. The memorandum began by listing the "proximate" cause for the failure of the invasion as the shortage of ammunition which developed from D-Day forward. The reasons the CSG presented to explain this shortage were the lack of ammunition discipline, the loss of the Rio Escondido and the Houston which carried reserve supplies of ammunition and other Dlaterie1, and the flight of the Brigade vessels to the open sea in order to escape the attacks of Castro's aircraft. Al L110ugh excusable because relatively few Cubans from the invading force were available for interrogation and de- briefing at the time that the Taylor Committee report was written, none of the "popular" volumes which have been written on the Bay of Pigs subsequent to the release of the prisoners in 1962 have challenged the "proximate" cause of the failure as anything other than the ammunition shortage. As suggested in a