ABSTRACT
There are no exact numbers available of the Cuban exiles that trained for and assisted in the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. There were at least another 1,000 Cuban exiles that had been involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion but that somehow did not land in Cuba. After the failure of the invasion, most of these men returned to the US and many of them put their military training to use conducting attacks against Castro's Cuba infrastructure. The program of having Cuban exile pilots assisting the Congolese armed forces against Soviet- and Chinese- supported guerrillas helped solve two problems for the Kennedy administration. The Cuban exile infantrymen, hired for a specific secret operation, only learned the identities of the other members of their unit when they departed for Congo duty. For the infantry, the CIA and US military made a careful selection of eighteen Cuban exiles.
