| Summary: | In March of 2001, forty years after the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, five Cuban-American Veterans traveled to Havana for an international conference devoted to the invasion. For some it was the first time they had stepped foot on Cuban soil since their release from Castro's prisons in 1963. But all of them understood that their presence in Havana would put them on a collision course with the often violent Cuban-American political forces in south Florida. A list of notables traveled with them: including Richard Goodwin; Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.; JFK's sister, Jean Kennedy Smith; and Sam Halpern, the ex-CIA operative who ran Kennedy's infamous Operation Mongoose, the goal of which had been the assassination of Fidel Castro. Appropriate counterparts on the Cuban side were expected to attend, including the Commandante himself.
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