The Cover-Up

This Government will do everything it possibly can, and I think it can meet its responsibilities, to make sure that there are no Americans involved in any actions inside Cuba.

So said President Kennedy just five days before the Bay of Pigs invasion. But some Americans did participate in that invasion--and the deaths of four U.S. flyers made belated headlines last week.

The case of the four flyers was brought up by Senate Republican Leader Everett Dirksen, who for weeks had been conducting a personal investigation, and now revealed some of the details. Democratic Leader Mike Mansfield confirmed Dirksen's story, said that he had been told of the deaths in a secret briefing at the time. Since Dirksen had dug up the story on his own, Mansfield no longer felt bound to secrecy. "It is known," he said, "that a few experienced American airmen were employed to train Cuban pilots, navigators and radio operators. Several of these Americans volunteered to fly combat missions. Apparently a decision was made to accept their offer. Several planes were attacked, and four of these Americans lost their lives."

The Job. Actually, the story of the four flyers had been told before; a Birmingham newspaper carried an account on May 4, 1961 that was picked up by the Associated Press. It passed almost unnoticed at the time, and it is a mark of the steadily heightening tensions over Cuba that it should have caused a commotion last week.

All four flyers were Alabamans, residents of the Birmingham area and onetime employees of the Hayes Aircraft Corp. there. Riley Shamburger, 36, was a major in the Alabama Air National Guard and a World War II veteran, with more than 12,000 flying hours. Thomas Willard Ray, 30, was a former Air Force staff sergeant. Leo Baker, 35, had been an Air Force tech sergeant and a flight engineer for Hayes. Wade Carroll Gray, 38, had been a Hayes test pilot.

The four were approached just after New Year's, 1961, by Miami Attorney Alex E. Carlson, 38, head of a firm known as the Double-Check Corp.--ostensibly an aviation procurement company (the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency last week was busily denying that it had anything to do with it). The Alabamans and at least 14 other recruits were given contracts to go to Central America and train Cuban exiles in flying B-26s. As it turned out, they were to do a job that a lot of U.S. citizens wish many more Americans had been involved in.

"Where Is My Son?" The pay was good. Shamburger, as a pilot, got about $2,100 a month; the others received $1,900. The four Alabamans left their homes in mid-January, telling their families that their mission was secret. In proper cloak-and-dagger style, their mail was sent and received through a general-delivery box in Chicago. Most of them returned to Birmingham only once, for a single day in March. The next month came the invasion. According to Mansfield, the four volunteered to replace exhausted Cuban pilots during the Bay of Pigs struggle, and were killed when their bomber was shot down by Cuban T-33 jets.

A few days after the invasion fiasco, Carlson appeared in Birmingham and informed the airmen's wives that their husbands were lost and presumed dead. He provided few other details. "I had no idea my husband was even down there," recalls Mrs. Wade Gray. "I was looking for him to come home any day." Adding to the Administration cover-up try was Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who last January flatly denied that any Americans had been killed in the Bay of Pigs invasion. Hearing that, Shamburger's mother wrote President Kennedy: "If no Americans were involved, where is my son?" She got a remarkable reply from the President's Air Force aide, Brigadier General Godfrey T. McHugh, stating that "if any information is ever obtained on the circumstances surrounding the loss of your son, you will be informed immediately. Unfortunately, at present, neither the CIA nor any other Government agency possesses the slightest pertinent information on your son's disappearance." Unmollified, Mrs. Shamburger said: "I'm not going to give up. They take your boy away and never let you know what happened.''

Confusion Through Sensitivity. The attempted concealment of the flyers' deaths is just one example of the Kennedy Administration's acute sensitivity on all matters involving U.S.-Cuba relations--and that sensitivity often leads to confusion. Thus, speaking in Houston last week. Secretary of State Dean Rusk insisted that "Cuba will not be permitted to use any of its arms outside Cuba. A Soviet military presence on that island cannot be accepted." That brought a wry retort from Vermont's Republican Senator George Aiken. "I wish," said Aiken, "that Secretary Rusk could make that determination retroactive, because the Russians apparently are occupying Cuba in force, and I understand Soviet-made weapons are showing up in considerable quantities in other Latin American countries."

Appearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Central Intelligence Agency Director John McCone did little to clear up the confusion. Between 1,000 and 1,500 Latin Americans last year traveled to Cuba for sabotage and guerrilla training, and many more have gone in the first two months of this year, said McCone. The largest contingents, he reported, came from Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador. Argentina and Bolivia. "One group of trainees was asked to mark bridges and other similar demolition targets on detailed maps of their country."

McCone insisted that the CIA has no evidence to indicate that Cuba is shipping any great quantity of Soviet arms to other Latin American nations. "But." he said darkly, "we have no reason to believe that they will not or cannot do so, when so doing serves their stated purposes of creating uprisings in Latin America." What does the Administration plan to do if that happens? Well, that seems to be another secret.

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