◆ SpookStack

the most vociferous in his assertions that the President had been led down the primrose path on this matter. Where the committee failed in this instance was in not suggesting that all parties-- the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of State, and the Department of Defense--were remiss for not having made specific studies of developments which had taken place in the Zapata area since Castro's take over. This point had been ignored during the course of the hearings, but had such studies been undertaken they would have revealed the great interest which Castro had taken in developing the area--and consequently winning strong support from the area's inhabitants. * Moreover they also chose to ignore testimony which stressed that the guerrilla option was realistic only in terms of the Trinidad plan 'where refuge in the Escambrays was possible. If the CSG had done its homework it also could have pointed out that even cursory exmination of a map of Cuba should have made it clear to the poorest military planner--and White House "experts"-- that to exercise the guerrilla option to get from Zapata to the Escambray through a hostile countryside was unrealistic. To *Castro made a point of this in his 23 April 1961 TV special on the Bay of Pigs. 214