If the dop believed that the original air plan was

If the DOP believed that the original air plan was adequate--as they
had so stoutly maintained during the course of the Taylor committee
investigation and as they had stated initially in reviewng the IG
report--to suddenly suggest a possible inadequacy in the air arm
raises the question of whether the obfuscation resulted from poor
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editing of the DDP's response or from second thoughts on the part of
the DDP. 14/
In terms of the lessons which it learned as a result of the
Bay of Pigs Operation the DDP analysis philosophized on several
-issues which were more responsive to the Taylor Committee's report
then to the IG's survey. It stated that if the policy of the US was
to use force in a given operation, sufficient force should be
applied to make sure that the operation would be
successful--including if necessary the overt use of US force.
Barring this, the operation should be called off unless -the odds in
favor of success within the politically imposed restrictions are
very great.- In this same context, the DDP analysis suggested that
a department or agency charged with running a given operation had to
learn to live with political decisions, even though such decisions
might be made by unqualified people. In dealing with questions of
policy, another aspect of the problem was whether decisions on major
issues of a policy nature could be handled by an impartial adviser
or whether all such decisions had to be dumped on the president.
This last point, of course, was a direct reflection of the findings
of the Taylor Committee that in the case of the Bay of Pigs, the
absence of any authoritative decision making body led President
Kennedy to support policies of questionable wisdom.
Also in the realm of national policy concerning operational
involveme~t,
realistic assessment needed to be made of the prospects
for keeping a clandestine operation clandestine. Once deniability
started to erode the question should have been asked as to the value
of any degree of deniability that might remain. In the case of
Cuba, for example, the DDP analysis suggested that hindsight
indicated there would have been more to gain if the United states
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had said it was backing
~he
Cuban Revolutionary Council and had
recognized the provisional government. The DDP's report admitted
that the Inspector General's charge that the views of those who were
running the operation might have been given too much weight, but it
raised the question of where the line should be drawn with regard to
getting the opinions of skeptics. 15/ (Particularly if the
skeptics were, as characterized by General Lemnitzer, not only
inexperienced, but crippled -by arrogance arising from failure to
recognize their own limitations.-)*
The second major topic covered by the DDP's analysis of the
Inspector General's survey is called -The survey's Statements of the
Operational Concept.- This four page segment is