Operation Mongoose was the Kennedy administration’s covert program to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro, run from November 1961 until it was shut down during and after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Its planning documents, published in 1997 in the State Department’s Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series, set a target date for an uprising in Cuba in October 1962. U.S. reconnaissance found Soviet missile sites on the island in the middle of that month.
A presidential memorandum, Nov. 30, 1961
The program followed the failed Bay of Pigs landing of April 1961. On Nov. 30, 1961, President Kennedy issued a Top Secret, Eyes Only memorandum to the secretaries of State and Defense, the director of Central Intelligence, the attorney general, Gen. Maxwell Taylor, Gen. Edward Lansdale and Richard Goodwin. It recorded the decision to “use our available assets to go ahead with the discussed project in order to help Cuba overthrow the communist regime” (FRUS 1961–63, Vol. X, Doc. 278).
The memorandum named Lansdale “Chief of Operations.” It restricted knowledge of the operation to its recipients, the NSC 5412 group that oversaw covert action and the senior representatives each department would appoint. According to the FRUS editors, an earlier version dated Nov. 22 had placed the program under Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, with Lansdale as his chief of operations. The editors note that internal evidence points to McGeorge Bundy as the drafter (Doc. 278, source note).
The Cuba Project and its six phases
On Jan. 18, 1962, Lansdale circulated a program review titled “The Cuba Project.” It defined the objective as helping “the Cubans overthrow the Communist regime from within Cuba” and described a concept built on political action inside the island, supported by economic warfare, psychological operations and “military-type groups” for sabotage and armed resistance (Doc. 291). The same day, he assigned 32 tasks to departments and agencies to assess U.S. capabilities (Doc. 304).
Lansdale’s Feb. 20, 1962, review turned the answers into a schedule. It described the plan as “a series of target actions and dates, not a rigid time-table,” aiming for “a revolt which can take place in Cuba by October 1962” (Doc. 304):
| Phase | Target date | Planned action |
|---|---|---|
| I, Action | March 1962 | Start moving in |
| II, Build-up | April–July 1962 | Activate operations inside Cuba; outside political, economic and military support |
| III, Readiness | Aug. 1, 1962 | Check for final policy decision |
| IV, Resistance | August–September 1962 | Move into guerrilla operations |
| V, Revolt | First two weeks of October 1962 | Open revolt and overthrow of the regime |
| VI, Final | October 1962 | Establishment of a new government |
The March 1962 guidelines
The schedule did not survive in that form. Guidelines dated March 14, 1962, drafted by Gen. Taylor according to the FRUS editors, limited the first phase chiefly to “the acquisition of hard intelligence on the target area.” Political, economic and covert actions would continue, but short of anything “reasonably calculated to inspire a revolt” or to require U.S. armed intervention (Doc. 314).
The guidelines also set out the program’s governing assumption. The United States would make maximum use of Cuban resources, “but recognizes that final success will require decisive U.S. military intervention.” Those resources were to be used “to prepare for and justify this intervention.” The Joint Chiefs of Staff were to continue planning for a “decisive U.S. military capability for intervention” (Doc. 314). Lansdale remained chief of operations, reporting to the Special Group (5412) “augmented by the Attorney General and the Chairman, JCS,” known in the documents as the Special Group (Augmented).
Phase I review, July 1962
Lansdale reported to the Special Group (Augmented) at the end of Phase I on July 25, 1962. He restated the four objectives set in March and assessed the effort as “a remarkably quiet operation, well within the ‘noise’ and ‘visibility’ limits imposed” (Doc. 360).
A National Intelligence Estimate on Cuba, NIE 85-2-62, was submitted alongside the report.
According to the National Security Archive’s 2019 review of the CIA records, the Special Group (Augmented) met on Aug. 16, 1962, to consider the CIA’s stepped-up “Course B” plans, and President Kennedy approved them on Aug. 20. Robert Kennedy told the group on Oct. 4 that the president was concerned about the program’s meager results.
The missile crisis and the stand-down
On Oct. 14, 1962, a U-2 photographed Soviet missile sites under construction in Cuba. The National Security Archive’s review of CIA records describes what followed for Mongoose. An Oct. 26 point paper for the Special Group (Augmented) found that the CIA had little or no capability to carry out many of its assigned tasks. One previously postponed CIA sabotage mission, against the copper mine at Matahambre, went ahead during the crisis, and the team was not recovered. On Oct. 30, CIA Director John McCone forwarded the president’s order to halt missions against Cuba.
In the following months the CIA deactivated Task Force W, its Mongoose unit, and moved its chief, William Harvey, to Rome. Desmond FitzGerald took over Cuba operations under a renamed Special Affairs Staff. Lansdale acknowledged in January 1963 that Mongoose would be phased out, and the Special Group (Augmented) went with it. Cuba policy passed to an NSC Standing Group chaired by Bundy, according to the Archive’s review.
Release of the record
Parts of the program’s record first became public in 1975, through the Senate’s Church Committee investigation of intelligence activities.
The core planning documents cited here were published in FRUS 1961–1963, Volume X, Cuba, January 1961–September 1962, issued by the State Department’s Office of the Historian in 1997. Additional CIA and Special Group (Augmented) records appeared in releases under the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 and were compiled by the National Security Archive in its Digital National Security Archive collection, described in a 2019 briefing book.
The Joint Chiefs’ March 1962 Operation Northwoods proposals, prepared in answer to a request from Lansdale, are covered in a separate DeClassified Now entry, Operation Northwoods.
Operation Mongoose: Kennedy’s Cuba Project
Sources
- FRUS 1961–1963, Vol. X, Doc. 278: Memorandum from President Kennedy (Nov. 30, 1961)
- FRUS 1961–1963, Vol. X, Doc. 291: Program Review by the Chief of Operations, Operation Mongoose, “The Cuba Project” (Jan. 18, 1962)
- FRUS 1961–1963, Vol. X, Doc. 304: Program Review by the Chief of Operations, Operation Mongoose, “The Cuba Project” (Feb. 20, 1962)
- FRUS 1961–1963, Vol. X, Doc. 314: Guidelines for Operation Mongoose (March 14, 1962)
- FRUS 1961–1963, Vol. X, Doc. 360: Memorandum from the Chief of Operations to the Special Group (Augmented), “Review of Operation Mongoose” (July 25, 1962)
- FRUS 1961–1963, Vol. X, Cuba, January 1961–September 1962 (Office of the Historian, 1997)
- “Cuban Project” (Wikipedia). Used for: the 1975 Church Committee disclosure.
- National Security Archive, “Kennedy and Cuba: Operation Mongoose” (Oct. 3, 2019). Used for: the August 1962 Course B decisions, the Oct. 4 meeting, the missile-crisis stand-down, the Matahambre raid, the phase-out and the release history of the CIA records.