In March 1960, President Eisenhower approved a covert program to overthrow Fidel Castro. Within that program, the CIA created Operation 40 — a specialized unit of approximately 40 Cuban exiles trained in assassination, sabotage, and psychological warfare. The unit operated under deep cover during the Bay of Pigs invasion and continued covert activities throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Declassified documents, congressional testimony, and participant memoirs reveal an organization whose members appeared in subsequent operations across Latin America — and in locations that raised questions investigators could never fully answer.
On March 17, 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed off on a covert action program to remove Fidel Castro from power. The directive authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to create a paramilitary force of Cuban exiles, establish an intelligence network inside Cuba, and develop a propaganda apparatus. Within this broader program, the CIA created a specialized unit with a specific mission: assassination, sabotage, and the elimination of key Castro government officials.
That unit became known as Operation 40.
The name allegedly derived from the approximate number of Cuban exiles recruited into the program's core team, though the exact roster has never been fully declassified. What is documented is the unit's purpose. According to testimony before the Senate Church Committee and declassified CIA memoranda, Operation 40 was designed to conduct "special operations" — Agency euphemism for activities that included targeted killings, demolition of infrastructure, and psychological warfare designed to destabilize the Castro regime from within.
The unit operated under deep cover during the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. Members were embedded within Brigade 2506, the 1,400-man exile force that landed at Playa Girón. While the public narrative focused on the beach assault, Operation 40 personnel had specific assignments: secure key installations once the beachhead was established, identify and neutralize Castro loyalists, and prepare for the provisional government that was supposed to arrive once Castro fell.
Castro didn't fall. The invasion collapsed within 72 hours. Of the 1,400 men who landed, 114 were killed and 1,189 captured. But Operation 40 didn't disband.
Following the public humiliation of the Bay of Pigs, President Kennedy launched Operation Mongoose in November 1961 — a massive program directly overseen by his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Mongoose was designed to accomplish what the Bay of Pigs had failed to achieve: Castro's overthrow. The program employed over 2,000 Cuban agents and CIA officers, with an annual budget exceeding $50 million, making it the largest covert operation in CIA history to that point.
Many Operation 40 veterans found new employment within Mongoose's structure, working out of JM/WAVE, the CIA's Miami station that became the largest Agency outpost outside headquarters. JM/WAVE operated from the University of Miami's south campus, employing approximately 300 officers and coordinating a fleet of boats, aircraft, and safe houses throughout South Florida.
"We took care of that son of a bitch, didn't we?"
David Sanchez Morales, alleged statement in 1973 — Reported by attorney Robert Walton in 1994, two decades after Morales's deathThe operational record of what happened next is documented through declassified CIA cables, congressional testimony, and the memoirs of participants. Felix Rodriguez, one of the confirmed Operation 40 members, was deployed to Bolivia in 1967 as part of a team hunting Che Guevara. On October 9, 1967, Rodriguez was present when Guevara was captured and executed in the village of La Higuera. Rodriguez kept Guevara's Rolex watch as a trophy — a fact he confirmed in his 1989 autobiography "Shadow Warrior" and displayed in subsequent media interviews.
Luis Posada Carriles, another Operation 40 veteran, continued anti-Castro operations throughout the 1970s. On October 6, 1976, Cubana Airlines Flight 455 exploded nine minutes after takeoff from Barbados, killing all 73 people aboard. Among the dead was the entire Cuban national fencing team. Barbadian authorities arrested two men whose luggage contained bomb components. Under interrogation, they named Posada and Orlando Bosch as the masterminds.
On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested inside the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. Four of the five were Cuban exiles with documented Bay of Pigs backgrounds: Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez, and Frank Sturgis. They were led by E. Howard Hunt, the CIA officer who had served as political coordinator for the Bay of Pigs operation and worked directly with Operation 40.
The connection was not coincidental. Hunt had recruited the team through the same Miami networks he had cultivated during anti-Castro operations a decade earlier. Senate Watergate Committee investigations revealed that Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy had previously used the same Cuban exile team to break into the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist in 1971, demonstrating that this was an established operational capability, not an ad-hoc arrangement.
Bernard Barker, one of the Watergate burglars, had worked under the CIA cryptonym "Macho" during the 1950s, serving as a recruiter and paymaster for anti-Castro operations in Cuba. After fleeing to Miami in 1959, he became a key liaison between the Agency and the exile community. His bank account was used to launder $114,000 in Nixon campaign funds that financed the Watergate operation.
The most controversial aspect of the Operation 40 story involves not what is documented, but what has been alleged without conclusive proof: a connection to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.
The speculation centers on several documented facts. First, Kennedy's relationship with the anti-Castro exile community had deteriorated significantly after the Bay of Pigs. Many exiles believed Kennedy had betrayed them by refusing to provide air support during the invasion. Second, after the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, Kennedy reached a secret agreement with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev that effectively prohibited any U.S.-sponsored invasion of Cuba — ending the exiles' hope of returning to their homeland. Third, in 1963, Kennedy ordered federal law enforcement to crack down on exile groups conducting unauthorized raids from Florida, confiscating boats and weapons.
In 1978, the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigated these connections extensively. The committee interviewed Felix Rodriguez, Antonio Veciana, and numerous other exile operatives. It examined whether anti-Castro networks had the capability and motive to organize an assassination.
"Individual members of anti-Castro groups had the motive, means, and opportunity to assassinate President Kennedy, but the committee was unable to establish evidence of such a conspiracy."
House Select Committee on Assassinations — Final Report, 1979The committee's investigation turned on several specific claims. Antonio Veciana, founder of the militant exile group Alpha 66, testified that in September 1963, his CIA handler — a man using the alias "Maurice Bishop" — introduced him to Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas. Veciana later identified "Bishop" as David Atlee Phillips, the CIA's chief of covert operations in Mexico City, where Oswald had visited the Soviet and Cuban embassies just weeks before the assassination.
Phillips denied the allegations under oath. He testified that he had never used the alias "Maurice Bishop," never met Oswald, and was not in Dallas in September 1963. Polygraph examinations supported Phillips's denials. The committee conducted extensive investigation but could not corroborate Veciana's account. No documentary evidence of a "Maurice Bishop" alias was ever found in declassified CIA files.
Veciana recanted his identification of Phillips, then reaffirmed it, then recanted again over four decades. In his 2017 memoir "Trained to Kill," published shortly before his death, Veciana once more claimed Phillips was Bishop and that the Dallas meeting with Oswald occurred. Investigators found the account compelling but unverifiable.
In 2007, E. Howard Hunt recorded a confession for his son. The audio and a written statement were published by Rolling Stone magazine in April 2007, shortly after Hunt's death at age 88. In the confession, Hunt claimed that Lyndon Johnson had orchestrated Kennedy's assassination, with participation by CIA officers including David Atlee Phillips, David Sanchez Morales, and Cord Meyer.
Hunt provided no documentary evidence. Investigators who examined his claims found numerous problems. Hunt's timeline contradicted established facts. His identification of participants conflicted with documented locations on November 22, 1963. He offered no explanation for how he knew these details or why he had remained silent for over four decades while others were investigated and accused.
The House Select Committee on Assassinations had reached its conclusion a generation earlier: "The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The committee is unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy."
That conclusion was based primarily on acoustic evidence that later analysis disputed. Regarding Operation 40 specifically and anti-Castro networks generally, the committee found capability and motive but no operational evidence of coordination.
What is documented about Operation 40 reveals how covert operations created networks that persisted long after their original missions ended. The unit formed in 1960 to overthrow Castro became a pool of operatives who appeared in Bolivia in 1967, in Barbados in 1976 investigating a plane bombing, at the Watergate complex in 1972, and in El Salvador in the 1980s coordinating Contra resupply.
These are not allegations. They are documented facts confirmed by congressional testimony, declassified CIA cables, criminal convictions, and the autobiographies of participants. Felix Rodriguez's presence at Che Guevara's execution is confirmed by CIA records and his own memoir. The Watergate connection is established by arrest records and Senate investigation. Luis Posada Carriles's involvement in the Cubana bombing is documented in declassified intelligence reports, though he was never convicted.
What remains unresolved is whether these networks operated as coordinated intelligence assets in events beyond their documented missions, or whether their appearance in multiple contexts represents the natural migration of skilled operatives through the ecosystem of Cold War covert action.
The documented history of Operation 40 demonstrates that the CIA created, trained, and deployed a specialized unit of Cuban exiles for assassination and sabotage operations starting in 1960. Members of that unit participated in the Bay of Pigs invasion, continued operations under Operation Mongoose, and appeared in subsequent covert actions across Latin America and in domestic political scandals including Watergate.
Individual members were connected to terrorist attacks including the Cubana Flight 455 bombing that killed 73 people. Others worked on Iran-Contra operations in the 1980s. The networks established for anti-Castro operations became resources for other purposes, some authorized and some not.
Regarding the most serious allegation — involvement in the Kennedy assassination — the investigative record shows that congressional committees with subpoena power, access to classified documents, and years to investigate could not establish evidence of a conspiracy involving these networks. That does not prove innocence; it establishes the limits of what evidence can demonstrate.
Operation 40 existed. Its members conducted documented covert operations on three continents over three decades. Some of those operations were legal. Some resulted in criminal convictions. Some killed innocent people. And some connections suggested by those documented facts have never been proven or disproven to a standard that satisfies either skeptics or believers.
The operation ended. The questions did not.