Larry Evans is The Free Lance–Star’s editorial page editor.

COL. JACK HAWKINS, a good Marine, kept silent for 35 years about his knowledge of a disastrous military operation known as the Bay of Pigs invasion. That amphibious assault involved 1,500 exiled Cuban patriots who went ashore in April of 1961 with the intention of sparking a revolution against dictator Fidel Castro.

Col. Hawkins could not talk about that important incident in Cold War history because he had sworn an oath not to reveal classified material that the Central Intelligence Agency wanted to keep a lid on. Then late in 1996, a former CIA official contacted Col. Hawkins and told him it was OK to talk now because the material had been declassified.

And Col. Hawkins, now an 80-year-old resident of Spotsylvania County, has a lot to say.

Col. Hawkins’ knowledge eventually led him to a last-moment belief that the mission was doomed, that the Cuban patriots could not possibly succeed. He says he and a CIA co-worker tried to get the invasion called off in the final days before it began.

“My interest” in talking now, Col. Hawkins said during a recent interview, “is historical.”

He wants the truth known about the roles played by presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, by Secretary of State Dean Rusk, by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, by CIA employees Richard Bissell and Jacob Esterline—and by him.

Col. Hawkins told his version of events in a still-classified after-action report filed in 1961 with the Marine Corps. He said nothing more until last year when Mr. Esterline contacted him and said that it was now OK for the two of them to provide their version of events for historians.

In a Dec. 31 article in the magazine National Review, Col. Hawkins outlined what happened and stated his opinions as to why the Bay of Pigs invasion went so terribly wrong. Subsequently, he was featured in stories in the Miami Herald, a newspaper read by many veterans of the invasion. He recently provided a four-hour videotaped interview for the National Security Archive, and a London-based film crew recently came here to record his comments for use in a history of the Cold War that is scheduled for broadcast late next year.

During his interview with me, his recollections bore the inflections and accent of his native Texas and were recounted in the even-toned, articulate and organized way of a man for whom mental discipline is as important as physical discipline. Although he retired from the Marine Corps in the 1960s, Col. Hawkins retains the no-nonsense bearing of an officer. He is also gracious and impeccably mannered.

He was captured by the Japanese at Corregidor and spent 11 months as a prisoner of war. Then, with 10 Americans and two Filipinos, he escaped and spent two weeks fleeing through unmapped, mountainous jungles before linking up with a Filipino guerrilla unit. He fought with that group for seven months until catching a U.S. submarine for Australia.

It was that experience, along with helping plan the amphibious invasions at Okinawa and Inchon, that qualified him for his top-secret planning job with the CIA. Col. Hawkins’ memories of those later days in the bureaucratic jungles of Washington seem less pleasant to him than his time in the Philippines. He has little good to say about the outcome of his assignment with the CIA.

In his article in National Review, headlined “Classified Disaster,” Col. Hawkins wrote that President Kennedy was right to publicly take the blame when the invasion failed because the president was a huge part of the problem.

Congressional criticism of the CIA at the time was also justified, wrote Col. Hawkins.

But he says historians now need to focus more on the role played by the late Richard M. Bissell Jr., who has been called “the most important CIA spymaster in history.”

At the CIA, Col. Hawkins was responsible directly to Jacob Esterline, chief of the Cuba Project. As the planning unfolded, those two men found themselves increasingly in agreement on strategy—and increasingly less comfortable with the way Mr. Bissell handled his duties as the liaison with the State Department and the White House.

Richard Bissell “made some horrible errors,” said Jack Hawkins when I interviewed him. He added, “I’m sure his motives were not evil.”

Col. Hawkins thinks Mr. Bissell, although a man of great intelligence, wasn’t as smart as he believed himself to be. Coupled with that flaw, he said, was Mr. Bissell’s penchant for secrecy—a trait that ran so deep, he said, that Mr. Bissell didn’t even keep Mr. Esterline and Col. Hawkins adequately apprised about important changes in the mission in the hours before it unfolded.

Nor, said Col. Hawkins, did Mr. Bissell let the president know that Col. Hawkins and Mr. Esterline both strongly thought that the impending invasion should be called off because last-minute changes in the plan would guarantee disaster.

In late 1960 and 1961, teams of paramilitary agents were sent ashore at many places in Cuba. Some of those agents were captured and never heard from again, but others made radio contact with the CIA and reported that many men throughout Cuba would fight against Fidel Castro if they could get weapons.

Subsequently, the only way the CIA succeeded in getting weapons into Cuba was through a group of about 1,000 guerrillas in the Escambray Mountains of central Cuba.

After President Kennedy took office in January of 1961, there was a series of meetings at the White House involving Secretary of State Rusk; Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara; the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer; and Mr. Bissell. Each of them had assistants in tow, and Col. Hawkins usually accompanied Mr. Bissell.

The president said he wanted Cuba invaded in such a way that U.S. involvement was “plausibly deniable.”

Col. Hawkins, in his National Review article, says, “This was the fundamental mistake underlying the other fatal errors that led to the failure of the operation.”

As a map-carrying military officer at those meetings, Col. Hawkins didn’t get to say much. But he wished his superiors would not have naively tried to pursue a plan that would enable the United States to play a totally covert role. Because everyone in the world would realize that the United States was involved in an invasion of Cuba, thought Col. Hawkins, why not do everything possible to ensure success?

In two memos to the CIA early in 1961, Col. Hawkins emphasized that it was vitally important that air operations be used to wipe out Fidel Castro’s small air force. Otherwise, he said, Cuban planes could repel an amphibious invasion.

Secretary of State Rusk subsequently voiced opposition to air attacks. He said that would make it obvious that the United States was involved.

During White House meetings, neither Gen. Lemnitzer nor Defense Secretary McNamara offered any rebuttal to Secretary Rusk.

Col. Hawkins and members of his Paramilitary Staff continued planning through that winter and into spring. They concluded that a place called Trinidad on the southern coast of Cuba was the best—and possibly only—location that a landing force could gain a foothold for the eventual overthrow of Fidel Castro.

There were beaches there where men could land and carry weapons to the guerrillas back in the Escambray Mountains. Intelligence also indicated that many of the 18,000 residents of Trinidad would welcome the returning patriots.

When that plan was taken to the president, Dean Rusk opposed it. He said it would look too much like a U.S.-backed invasion.

President Kennedy told the CIA to come up with a plan that would be “less noisy.”

In an effort to do that, Col. Hawkins and the Paramilitary Staff settled on another place on the Cuban coast, the Bay of Pigs.

Col. Hawkins told Mr. Bissell that the invaders could hold that area for only a short time and that they would have difficulty getting across an almost-impassable swampy area between there and the Escambra Mountains, 80 miles away.

It would be absolutely necessary, he told Mr. Bissell, to destroy the Cuban air force before the amphibious assault started. Sixteen B–26 bombers were part of the plan devised by the Paramilitary Staff. Air attacks were set for April 15 and April 17.

President Kennedy approved the plan, but said he would not finally make up his mind until 24 hours before the scheduled April 15 invasion.

Several days before that deadline, Col. Hawkins recalled, “Esterline and I talked and we both agreed that the invasion was going to be a disaster—and that’s the word we used.

“We called Bissell, and we went out to his house on a Sunday and we laid it all out that there was no hope of overthrowing Castro and the invasion would be a disaster.”

According to Col. Hawkins, Mr. Esterline exacted a promise from Mr. Bissell that he would not let the president withhold enough air support to destroy the Cuban air force.

Col. Hawkins doesn’t think Mr. Bissell ever told the president about that Sunday-afternoon visit by his colleagues.

“He was keeping us in the dark and he was also misinforming the president about what was going to happen.”

Mr. Esterline reportedly remembers the meeting at Mr. Bissell’s house the same way.

On April 14, the president told Mr. Bissell to proceed with the plan, but to cut the number of B–26’s to the bare minimum needed. Mr. Bissell said eight would be enough.

Early on April 16, after 1,500 Cuban patriots had gotten ashore and courageously engaged soldiers in battle, Col. Hawkins was in the CIA operations room waiting for the second round of air attacks to begin. An ashen-faced Mr. Esterline came in and told him the president had canceled the second round of air attacks.

Col. Hawkins telephoned Mr. Bissell and said it was imperative that the second round of air attacks proceed as scheduled.

“I told him that to save the lives of the Cuban troops you’ve got to do this. It’s not fair to them” to hold back the bombers.

Mr. Bissell passed that word on to Secretary of State Rusk—who called the White House and said he didn’t think the air attacks should occur.

After a couple of days of denying involvement in the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Kennedy administration acknowledged its role. Subsequently, the United States sent $53 million in food and medicine to Cuba as ransom for the 1,189 invaders who were captured. Not among them were the 114 who were killed at the Bay of Pigs.

Another 150 exiles never even made it to the beach because the operation was such a bust.

He blames President Kennedy, Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara—and Richard Bissell.

As I sat listening to Jack Hawkins talk about his days inside the decision-making process in Washington, it occurred to me that some of the same cast of characters were still on the scene a few years later and made fatal mistakes in Vietnam. The phrase “arrogance of power” came to mind.

I asked Col. Hawkins what he thought of that observation.

A few years after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, he said, he went on to an assignment that involved writing briefing papers for Secretary of Defense McNamara. He said his task was to provide Mr. McNamara arguments in favor of expanding the Vietnam War.

“I had to swallow my cud a lot of times,” says Col. Hawkins, who from early on thought that Washington lacked a clear idea of what it wanted to accomplish.

“We are in a war that cannot be won,” he once told a fellow officer “because we are in a war without an objective. And a war without an objective cannot be won.”

Spoken like a Marine.