Decision for Disaster: Betrayal at the Bay of Pigs

Grayston Lynch was one of two American "advisors" who stormed the Bay of Pigs with the 2506 Assault Brigade on April 17, 1961. In Decision for Disaster, Lynch attempts to set the record straight on what caused the mission to fail. He offers a unique perspective in that his position privileged him to the inner happenings of CIA and White House planning, yet he can also give a firsthand account of the battle itself, having fired the first shots of the invasion himself. Lynch is clearly not content in the contemporary historical account of the Bay of Pigs, proclaiming in the preface that "the true story has never been told, until now." Lynch goes on to tell his story with reasoned contempt for Castro and Camelot, and a deep reverence for the 2506 Assault Brigade. Lynch became a player in the Bay of Pigs in December 1960. The Texan had just retired from a 22 year career with the US Army, most recently as the captain of a US Army Special Forces A-Team in Laos. He had seen combat and was wounded at Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge and Heartbreak Ridge in Korea. He was awarded two Silver Stars and a Bronze Star with Valor. The Cuban cause was something that Lynch took to heart; even after the Bay of Pigs he continued to play a major role in anti-Castro commando raids. His decision to write this book now came from the recent passing away of his fellow "advisor" William "Rip" Robertson and the declassification of items essential to the telling of the story. Besides using his first-hand account, Lynch enlisted the knowledge of commanding officers and 2506 Assault Brigade survivors in writing this book. Lynch had his book published by Potomac Books which was founded in 1983 as a part of British publishing house Brassey's. Since this books publishing, Potomac was purchased by American book distributor Books International. Potomac has strong roots in military history, but has broadened its range to include general history, world affairs, foreign policy, intelligence, memoirs, biographies, and even sports. Its most successful book to date was Michael Scheuer's American Hubris. Potomac's usual offerings come with a strong dose of realism backed with a healthy dose of knowledge and first hand experience; Decision for Disaster is no exception. Lynch gets off to a rough start in his account. He attempts to weave together several concurrent stories that will eventually lead to the invasion. A difficult enough task by itself, he attempts to do it as a flashback story while on his voyage to invade Cuba. This continued flashback-fastforward-recollection-juxtaposition can give the reader a mild case of mental whiplash. His constant foreshadowing and alluding to the invasion gave me a strong case of deja vu by the time he was invading in real time. However, whatever Lynch lacks in authorship, he makes up for in laying out an intriguing fact-laden journey through all relevant events leading up to the invasion. One o

As a Cuban, I always knew that the U.S. governments theories on the failed invasion were a total and complete cover-up. After reading this book, it shows how correct I was. This book takes you through the story of the doomed 2506 Brigade from the training in Nicaragua to the desprate search for survivors. The book is written by one of the two American CIA agents sent with the Brigade to maintain communications between the Brigade and Washington. The book is devided into three main parts. The first part describes Castros Revolution, the planning for the attack, and the training of the Brigade. The second part describes the actual attacks on the two landing sites, Blue Beach and Red Beach.The final part of the book compares the government explinations for the faliure against what really happend, showing how the Kennedy administration betrayed not only the doomed men of the Brigade, but the American people, for had the Brigad succeded, there would have been no Cuban Missle Crisis, no civil wars in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Colombia, and the Soviet threat would have been eliminated much earlier. I would recomend this book to anyone willing to learn how their government is betraying them.

This book is honestly one of the best political books that I have read to date. Well written, never wanted to put the book down!

During the invasion of Girón, the truth was twisted, and facts hidden. Mr. Lynch's accountability, as one of the first men on the beach at Girón and one of the last out of the surrounding swamps, gives us the details that have been denied by the US government. I, as a Cuban, appreciate how he describes the folks that doomed our nation and handed over the island to the communists. Much blood was shed, much blood continues to be shed, all do to the one fact which stands out clearly from Mr. Lynch's statement: a `Decision for Disaster'. Thank you Gray!. ¡Viva Cuba Libre!.

I read this book with an insider's knowledge based upon the 18 years it took my family and I to recover my father's remains, which laid frozen in a Havana morgue, hidden by Washington and the Kennedy Administration. My father, Thomas "Pete" Ray was one of the American CIA B-26 pilots who gave his life attempting to save the "Bay of Pigs" invasion. My thanks go to Grayston Lynch for telling the true and compelling story of how Jack and Robert Kennedy betrayed so many in the planning and execution of the invasion, then falsely placed the blame for failure on the CIA and the brave men who actually went into harm's way. Washington even went so far as to terrorize the families of the four lost CIA pilots into silence. This book should be required reading for any politician or senior military officer before they are allowed to commit men or women to combat or covert operations.