The Third Field

Cases from the record · 1961 – 1962

Bay of Pigs → Cuban Missile Crisis

The same leaders, a different way of deciding

Eighteen months apart, one administration faced two crises over Cuba. The record shows how the way it reached decisions changed between them.

Process lens Prepare → Proposals

1,511men in the 1961 brigade (CIA Inspector General survey)
3 daysfrom landing to the end of resistance, April 1961
2working groups in October 1962, each writing the case for a different course

What happened

In April 1961 a brigade of Cuban exiles organized by the CIA landed at the Bay of Pigs. The plan had been reshaped late, the dawn air strikes were cancelled the night before, and resistance ended within three days.

President Kennedy commissioned a review, the Cuba Study Group, within a week. In October 1962, when reconnaissance photographs showed Soviet missile sites in Cuba, several of the same advisers deliberated again. This time they worked in smaller groups, wrote competing plans, and met at times without the President in the room.

  1. The President declines the larger landing plan as too “spectacular” and asks for a quieter alternative.

  2. The landing plan is approved at midday; that night the dawn air strikes are cancelled.

  3. Landing and fighting. Resistance ends by nightfall on the 19th.

  4. The Cuba Study Group is charged with finding out what went wrong.

  5. A new directive asks that military advice reach the President “direct and unfiltered.”

  6. Reconnaissance photographs of missile sites are shown to the President; deliberations begin.

  7. With the President away, two working groups draft competing plans: blockade and air strike.

  8. The President hears both cases and chooses a “quarantine.” The Executive Committee is formalized the next day.

What the record shows

  1. 01

    No single point of coordination.

    The Cuba Study Group found “no single authority short of the President capable of coordinating” the agencies involved. Direction came through ad hoc meetings with no written conclusions.

  2. 02

    Silence read as approval.

    The Joint Chiefs, the review found, “did not oppose the plan and by their acquiescing in it gave others the impression of approval.” The final plan had been presented to them orally.

  3. 03

    A premise nobody outside the team examined.

    The CIA Inspector General found that the expectation of a popular uprising had become “an essential element in the decision to proceed,” and that it should have been analysed by someone outside the team preparing the operation.

  4. 04

    Options developed independently.

    In October 1962 two groups each wrote the strongest case for a different course. The Secretary of State, chairing one session, told the meeting that “this group could not make the decision as to what was to be done; that was for the President in consultation with his constitutional advisers.”

  5. 05

    A leader who stepped out.

    One adviser later recalled noticing that subordinates spoke more frankly when the President was not in the room, and that “there was some value in his absenting himself from time to time.”

Our reading · Prepare → Proposals

Several of the same leaders were involved, yet the deliberation changed. The comparison invites closer attention to when perspectives form, who examines a premise, and whether silence is mistaken for agreement.

Context and limits

This case contrasts two decision processes. The outcome in 1962 also turned on diplomacy and factors well beyond process; the record supports the contrast, not a single cause. The popular claim that named advisers were formally assigned as “devil’s advocates” rests on later memoirs and secondary analysis rather than the contemporary record.

From the record to a design question

Before a preferred plan takes hold, who has developed a different view—and who can challenge its premises?

What this asks of the process

Give people space to form their own first view. Release contributions before comparing proposals; use structured exploration to examine competing courses. Keep the authority to decide explicit.

What we do not conclude

The historical comparison suggests questions about deliberation. It does not isolate a causal effect of independent preparation, and it cannot establish that a modern workspace would have changed either crisis.

This is our design inference from the case. The case does not test Sikizana. See the research that informs the sequence

Sources

  1. Cuba Study Group, Memorandum 1 (narrative), 13 June 1961 — Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–63, vol. X, doc. 231
  2. Cuba Study Group, Memorandum 2 (conclusions on coordination), 1961 — FRUS vol. X, doc. 232
  3. CIA Inspector General, survey of the Cuban operation, October 1961 — FRUS vol. X–XII supplement, doc. 273a
  4. National Security Action Memorandum 55, 28 June 1961 — FRUS vol. VIII, doc. 32
  5. Record of meeting, 19 October 1962 — FRUS vol. XI, doc. 31
  6. Minutes, 21 October 1962 — FRUS vol. XI, docs. 36 and 38
  7. National Security Action Memorandum 196, 22 October 1962 — FRUS vol. XI, doc. 42
  8. Interview with a presidential adviser, National Security Archive, Cold War series, episode 10

Based on the linked official record, participants’ accounts and original research. Retrospective accounts and investigations have different limits; they are not controlled tests of a decision method. No organization named here is presented as a customer, partner or endorser of The Third Field.