Setting the Scene: JFK and the Bay of Pigs

For the sixteenth installment of “50 Weeks That Shaped America” we go, for the first time to the Cold War. It’s April 1961, and the US is concerned about Cuba’s new leftist leader, Fidel Castro. The US has a new leader of its own, JFK, who adopts - and adapts - a plan from Eisenhower’s CIA to send a group of renegade Cuban dissidents into the Bay of Pigs to spark a revolution. It does not go well! We get into the botched plans, the rogue CIA, and why you can’t drive a boat over a coral reef.

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Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Audrey Mardavich is our Executive Producer at Radiotopia.