First-Hand Witness Richard Billings on CIA-Backed Mission to Cuba in Summer of '63

Secret operation to infiltrate Cuba involving LIFE Magazine five months before the assassination of JFK exemplifies need for thorough declassification

Photos taken by British photographer Terry Spencer of the ill-fated CIA-backed “Bayo-Pawley mission” to Cuba in June 1963 (Credit: Dealey Plaza UK)

Malcom Blunt’s recent piece in JFK Facts refers to the “Bayo-Pawley mission,” a sort of hybrid, public-private partnership in June 1963. The operation, supported by the CIA, aimed to exfiltrate rumored Russian military defectors from Cuba who would declare publicly that Soviet nuclear missiles still remained on the island in violation of the agreement between Moscow and Washington at the conclusion of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. That, it was hoped, would prompt a reversal of U.S. policy, and an invasion.

The Bayo-Pawley mission was a failure, and the Cubans sent in to retrieve the Russians were never seen or heard from again after they landed on the beach. The abortive raid remains one of the mysteries of the Cold War in the Western Hemisphere.

What follows is an interview I conducted with LIFE staff writer Richard Billings, who took pa…