OPERATION MIRAGE
Fighters scored a small win against Che Guevara in the invasion plot
Fifty years after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, a veteran shares
details about a little-known success that fooled Fidel Castro's top rank.
By LUISA YANEZ
lyanez@MiamiHerald.com
History confirms that iconic Cuban revolutionary leader Ernesto "Che"
Guevara missed the Bay of Pigs invasion, the CIA-debacle that Cuba
proclaimed as Latin America's greatest victory over "Yankee imperialism."
But few know precisely how a group of Brigade 2506 members and their CIA
advisors pulled off the ruse that duped Cuba's charismatic rebel
commander into missing the momentous event.
The CIA-backed Brigade 2506 invaders — who sailed out from Fisher Island
— managed to briefly trick Guevara to fall for a false invasion
approaching the island's western tip, miles from the actual battlefield
at the Bay of Pigs.
They called it " Operación Espijísmo," or Operation Mirage. The 13
brigadistas who took part in the decoy were sworn to secrecy by the CIA
for 25 years, and few details of the mission have been made public.
One Miami-Dade brigadista who helped carry out the operation agreed to
reveal the details to The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald as part of
the 50th anniversary of the event.
"I think it's fitting to tell the story on the 50th anniversary,'' said
Miguel Del Valle, 73, a veteran of the Brigade's clandestine marine
unit. "The invasion was a failure, but this one mission was a total
success and people should know it.''
Operation Mirage was a decoy invasion concocted by the CIA with a simple
goal: to briefly fool Fidel Castro into thinking that the invasion
forces were headed to Cuba in a naval convoy via different directions,
in this case to the western coast near Pinar del Río.
"Fidel knew the invasion was coming; he just didn't know from which
coast,'' said Del Valle, a former directorate member of the Assault
Brigade 2506' Veterans Association, who provided an 8-mm film he
secretly shot the night of the mission, photographs of the Seagull boat
the unit sailed on and a list of the crew.
Del Valle said the CIA capitalized on the surprise factor.
The day before the invasion — on April 16,1961 — fake radar readings
gave the impression to Cuba that the attack was headed to an area near
Mariel harbor. The decoy appeared to work.
Castro sent his best fighter, Guevara, and his troops in that direction,
some 300 miles away from where the real invading brigadistas would land.
For the better part of the three-day invasion, Guevara was chasing ghost
invaders or traveling, missing the real fighting at the Bay of Pigs.
'SAVED LIVES'
"It saved lives on the battlefield at the Bay of Pigs. I believe troops
led by Guevara, and maybe even Raúl Castro, were distracted and sent to
battle us, but there was nothing there. We were a mirage."
In his diary, Guevara mentions how he savored killing enemies of the
revolution he helped launch. He salivated at the chance to kill
U.S.-backed Cubans who had rejected communism, but he missed the date.
That Guevara arrived after the dust had settled has always been
downplayed by Cuba in the aftermath of the invasion. Castro did make it
to the battlefield and is photographed inside tanks and directing the
troops.
Dozens of books and magazine articles have been written about the 1961
invasion, only a handful allude to decoy missions off the coast. Best
known and often sited is one led by Nino Diaz near Guantánamo Naval
Base, which failed.
Even brigadistas are not familiar with Operation Mirage. "I would say 80
percent haven't heard about this mission,'' Del Valle said.
One who has heard of it is Esteban Bovo, the Assault Brigade 2506's
official historian. "There have been rumors and whispers about this
mission, but since so few men took part in it not much is known, but I
believe it occurred.''
How the small brigade unit pulled its deception is the stuff of Mission
Impossible movies. Basically, it used a floating contraption, armed with
a radar deflector.
For the brigadistas aboard the Seagull, the mission began on April 15,
1961. Assigned to the clandestine unit of the brigade, the Seagull had
often take anti-Castro infiltration teams into the island. Before the
invasion, those missions heightened. Del Valle was the boat's gunner and
frogman.
On that morning of April 15, Del Valle and the other brigadista members
were told to board on a strip of waterfront land that is now Fisher
Island. They headed for Key West where they received their orders. This
time, the boat was also loaded, not with infiltrators, but 15 to 20
large floating contraptions , which consisted of a tire, a platform and
a radar reflector attached to a pole.
At noon, on April 16, the vessel sailed out of Key West, headed for Cuba.
Del Valle secretly shot the video of the boat making its way on the
Florida Straits with a Kodak camera borrowed from a friend: "If the CIA
found out I did that, I would have been in trouble."
The footage shows the crew of the Seagull casually walking on the deck
and sailing south.
At around 9 p.m., the boat reached its coordinates about a mile and half
off the Cuban coast, Del Valle said. By now, one large U.S. Navy ship
had moved alongside them. In the dark, he almost fired on the vessel
thinking it was Cuban. He was quickly told: "They're with us.'' He knew
there was something special about the mission. The Seagull then began to
run a course parallel to the coast, headed east, across a field of Cuban
radar on land. "My crew began to assemble and throw the floating
contraption into the water,'' he said.
RADAR REFLECTORS
"Now, if you know boating, you know radar reflectors are used to find
lost boaters because it kicks back a signal that makes them appear
larger in the water than they are. That was the principal used in this
mission,''' he said. As the Seagull moved east, the radar deflectors
were dropped every few miles. The Navy ship, Del Valle believes, was
magnifying the reading from the reflectors and creating fake chatter.
To a radar operator on land that night, the floating radar reflector in
the water and their magnification must have appeared like an entire
fleet headed their way — and reported it to commanders.
Del Valle knows troops were alerted: "Before long, the Cubans started
firing at us from land, but they were off the mark because it was all a
mirage. They were really fooled into thinking an invasion was headed
their way."
The Seagull started heading back to Key West in the early morning. With
daylight, the gig would be up, but by then Cuba troops would have been
committed. By then — April 17 — the real invasion was in full-swing on
the opposite side of the island. The Seagull's job that night had been
to serve as a decoy. Del Valle said he only realized that later. Though
the invasion failed, the CIA gave him and brigadistas on the Seagull a
commendation, he said.
Today, Del Valle believes the operation that night neutralized Guevara's
unit from the fighting on the beach, and in the process, likely
preventing a bloodier battle and larger losses for the brigadistas.
"Not even Castro knew how we did it,'' Del Valle said. "He might read
this story and get his answer.''
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/14/v-fullstory/2168113/fighters-scoerd-a-small-win-against.html
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