Useppa Island Secret: CIA training camp for invasion of Cuba

60 years ago, the CIA-backed invasion of Cuba failed. All sources of the attack started right on the island of Useppa (Florida, USA).
The author of this article is Tony Perrottet (the character proclaimed me), a writer specializing in many excellent articles in famous newspapers such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, who is also the author of 6 bestsellers, can be mentioned as “Cuban Freedom: Che: Fidel and the incredible revolution that changed the history of the world”; “The Secular Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Olympics and Napoleon’s Amusement: Rewriting History After 2,500 Years” …

Useppa Island, a secret place On the small island of Useppa, I was sleeping with the CIA, at least the decor in my bedroom had that nuance. I grabbed the big bedroom at the Collier Inn, an recreational fishing mansion set in a mangrove forest on the Florida Bay coast that was once involved in the dark conspiracy of the Cold War. One of the unprecedented twists in the history of American tourism reveals that CIA agents took over the Collier Inn from a former millionaire in the spring of 1960, then Useppa Island (a resort). normal cool) has been converted into a secret training camp used for the invasion of Cuba during leader Fidel Castro, a shocking event known as the Bay of Pigs. The assault on the southern coast of Cuba on April 17, 1961 was an utopian attempt to bring down the leftist revolutionary (Fidel), but it has become a scorn for the United States. After three days of fighting, the 1,200 CIA-trained force failed under the Fidel Castro administration. That failure was hard to imagine when the CIA first chose Useppa. At that time, the small island lived in a precious calm atmosphere. Across the horizon, the cool green islands of mangrove trees glow in the sunset. It is that serenity that has fostered sinister intrigue against the small island. President John F. Kennedy and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy welcomed veterans (lost) at the Orange Bowl (Miami, Florida) in December 1962. Photo source: Flip Schulke / Getty Images. When I read about the Cold War period in Useppa the details were so gale, I figured the only way to solve the problem was to get there myself. Clearly Useppa has not lost its classic ambience, cars are banned from use on the island, and only a few people (mostly elderly and have tanned skin), residents only have can use electric cars (for golfers), friendly space. On the path lined with roses, running through the island is flanked by coconut trees and many banana bushes. “This is the beginning of it all,” said Ms. Rona Stage, museum director at Useppa. The entire Useppa island is only 1 mile long, less than 3 miles wide, and the CIA’s secret base is only 274.3 square meters wide. The first highlight is the 4 small bungalows where the 66 recruits used to live, they are Cuban descent and in their 20s, some of them are in their teens. Houses are built from pine cores to prevent decay. At the Collier Inn, where CIA agents used to be a hideout, I spent the night here in the very renovated dining room into the hall for the recruits. The store located near the building’s swimming pool was a place where spies and doctors previously conducted a series of tests for participants in training, including how to combat lie detectors, and Rorschach ink-based tests to determine their solid political stability, intelligence assessments, and comprehensive fitness tests. In the museum in Useppa there are historical artifacts such as costume uniforms, and dramatic photographs of the war. There is a photo of CIA-trained soldiers on the island of markers showing those killed, executed, killed during training or taken prisoner in Havana. The museum also teases Useppa’s thrilling storyline, which turns out to be the CIA’s pick and intent to vanish it on the map. In April 1961, survivors of the 2506 Attack Brigade were taken prisoner during the Bay of Pigs incident. Photo source: Miguel Vinas / AFP via Getty Images. Plan to set up a CIA training camp Since the 1870s, the small island of Useppa has been a fisherman’s paradise, and its heyday began in 1911 when a Florida millionaire named Barron Collier spent $ 100,000 to buy the island. a place for him and his friends to relax, partying away from prying eyes. In the early 20th century, millionaire Collier built houses, golf courses, palaces and a luxury hotel. The romantic millionaire secretly set up a lot of “second rooms” in the hotel, and his wife and his children slept in houses scattered on the island … Millionaire Barron Collier died in 1939. , and Useppa fell into disrepair. During World War II, the large hotel on the island was smashed by storms and eventually burned to the ground, but the Collier family maintained the plantation-style mansion and today it bears the name. Collier Inn. In 1960, the tropical island became the ideal base for the CIA to carry out an ambitious plan to overthrow the Government of Fidel Castro, which President Eisenhower commissioned and his successor John F. Kennedy would. cannot ignore. In May 1960, a Miami businessman named Manuel Goudie y de Monteverde leased the entire island to the CIA, and the agency quickly recruited recruits for the so-called Brigade 2506. Combining documents By reference I looked up in the stories of Mrs. Rona Stage, I chained the events together to get the most general background of the event. Accordingly, the young Cuban youth who were recruited from the Cuban anti-Fidel community in Miami – the name was never touched by the CIA – they were summoned at night to form small groups from 8 to 10 people gathered in the parking lot of White Castle. Without knowing their destination in advance, the people were transported in a van with black doors that flared for three hours across the Everglades swamp to a fishing camp, and then they gathered. Piled up a speedboat. There were three armed Americans who took the youth to a ship port on the dark island and showed them shelter. During the next two months in this unobtrusive training camp, CIA agents diligently performed tests, and trained recruits in coding, radio operations, outdoor survival skills, and demolition technique. The recruits receive mainly weapons from World War 2 and Thompson machine guns to practice guerrilla warfare in the mangrove forest near the golf course. CIA agents are certain that the guns were donated by a wealthy Cuban philanthropist and are certainly not supplied by the US government. The recruits themselves say they are working for a “New CIA”, or “Cuban Invasion Committee”. Even at Useppa, secrets are still revealed. In the entire history of the Useppa Museum, the most interesting thing to me is the correspondence between veterans – who reunited here – and most of them live in Miami. The facade of the Collier Inn mansion, which in 1960 was taken over by the CIA, turned it into a secret training camp for the plan to invade Cuba. Photo source: TripAdvisor. The narrative of veterans I went to a place called “Latin America Capital” to hear witnesses tell about what happened. I stopped at the 2506 Brigade Library (in operation since the 1980s in a house on 9th Street in Little Havana, Miami); Take a taxi to the Hialeah Gardens Museum, which honors Brigade 2506, to see with your own eyes the B-26 bomber is parked on the ground. In Useppa, veterans relive the Bay of Pigs incident in the most authentic way. The ambitious attack had begun before dawn on April 17, 1961 and malfunctioned shortly thereafter, when the lander hit the coral and 13,000 US soldiers waded through the waves to land. Cuban coast. The CIA’s grand scheme turned out to have been terribly wrong. The Americans hope that after the “Liberation Army” takes a foothold, an interim government will be launched, and the Cuban people will rise up against Fidel Castro. But the Cuban people strongly supported the Fidel leader, and thus the US-backed invasion failed. Fearing the Soviet military response, President Kennedy refused to use aircraft or destroyers to attack Cuba. Kennedy limited his air strikes on the first day of the start of the war and on the third day all airstrikes were canceled. The tiny Cuban force counterattacked and harassed landing aircraft and CIA-trained forces on the beaches that the Fidel government had deployed; US aid operations have not materialized. Finally, on April 20, 1961, about 1,200 American survivors threw their weapons; the rest were soon trapped in the Zapata swamps. “The surviving legionnaires” (as Cubans call it) was put on trial in Havana and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Returning to the Hialeah Museum, I ran into veteran Vicente Blanco-Capote, at the age of 17, he was secretly transferred by the CIA to Useppa Island with eight other boys. Mr. Blanco-Capote recalls: “I don’t know where I am, there is a tall, blond American guy that we met on the dock.” There are three CIA employers that are known only by simple names like “Bob”, “Nick” and “Bill”. As for the 82-year-old Cuban veteran, Mirto Collazo, suspects that your move to Miami is a trap. When the rookies settled down, they realized that Useppa was not “Devil’s Island” as it was being stigmatized. Mr. Blanco-Capote exclaimed: “An island full of millionaires. Although there is no air conditioner in the house, they also have enough hot and cold water ”. The days passed in a place like a summer camp. On July 4, 1960, and the CIA transported 66 Cubans to two training camps located in mosquito-infested forests in Panama and a mountain range in rural Guatemala. Places with bad food, shabby and dilapidated housing, a miserable practice regime. After the training, they were assembled to 1,500 people and took the name Brigade 2506. History has correctly memorized the Bay of Pigs event as a bitter defeat.