Bay of Pigs Invasion in the context of "Cuban Missile Crisis"

A false flag operation is an act committed with the intent of disguising the actual source of responsibility and pinning blame on another party. The term "false flag" originated in the 16th century as an expression meaning an intentional misrepresentation of someone's allegiance. The term was originally used to describe a ruse in naval warfare whereby a vessel flew the flag of a neutral or enemy country to hide its true identity. The tactic was initially used by pirates and privateers to deceive other ships into allowing them to move closer before attacking them. It later was deemed an acceptable practice during naval warfare according to international maritime laws, provided the attacking vessel displayed its true flag before commencing an attack.

The term today extends to include countries that organize attacks on themselves and make the attacks appear to be by enemy nations or terrorists, thus giving the nation that was supposedly attacked a pretext for domestic repression or foreign military aggression (as well as to engender sympathy). Similarly deceptive activities carried out during peacetime by individuals or nongovernmental organizations have been called false-flag operations, but the more common legal term is a "frameup", "stitch up", or "setup".

A clandestine operation is an intelligence or military operation carried out in such a way that the operation goes unnoticed by the general population or specific enemy forces.

Until the 1970s, clandestine operations were primarily political in nature, generally aimed at assisting groups or nations favored by the sponsor. Examples include U.S. intelligence involvement with German and Japanese war criminals after World War II or the botched Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961. Today these operations are numerous and include technology-related clandestine operations.

The Cuban Project, also known as Operation Mongoose, was an extensive campaign of terrorist attacks against civilians, and covert operations, carried out by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in Cuba. It was officially authorized on November 30, 1961, by U.S. President John F. Kennedy. The name "Operation Mongoose" was agreed to at a White House meeting on November 4, 1961.

The operation was run out of JMWAVE, a major secret United States covert operations and intelligence gathering station on the campus of the University of Miami. The operation was led by United States Air Force General Edward Lansdale on the military side and William King Harvey at the CIA and went into effect after the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion.

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban politician and revolutionary who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as prime minister from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 2008. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist and Cuban nationalist, he also served as the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from 1965 until 2011. Under his administration, Cuba became a one-party communist state; industry and business were nationalized, and socialist reforms were implemented throughout society.

Born in Birán, the son of a wealthy Spanish farmer, Castro adopted leftist and anti-imperialist ideas while studying law at the University of Havana. After participating in rebellions against right-wing governments in the Dominican Republic and Colombia, he planned the overthrow of Cuban president Fulgencio Batista, launching a failed attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953. After a year's imprisonment, Castro travelled to Mexico where he formed a revolutionary group, the 26th of July Movement, with his brother, Raúl Castro, and Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Returning to Cuba, Castro took a key role in the Cuban Revolution by leading the Movement in a guerrilla war against Batista's forces from the Sierra Maestra. After Batista's overthrow in 1959, Castro assumed military and political power as Cuba's prime minister. The United States came to oppose Castro's government and unsuccessfully attempted to remove him by assassination, economic embargo, and counter-revolution, including the Bay of Pigs Invasion of 1961. Countering these threats, Castro aligned with the Soviet Union and allowed the Soviets to place nuclear weapons in Cuba, resulting in the Cuban Missile Crisis—a defining incident of the Cold War—in 1962.

In political science, rollback is the strategy of forcing a change in the major policies of a state, usually by replacing its ruling regime. It contrasts with containment, which means preventing the expansion of that state; and with détente, which means developing a working relationship with that state. Most of the discussions of rollback in the scholarly literature deal with United States foreign policy toward communist countries during the Cold War. The rollback strategy was tried and was not successful in Korea in 1950 and in Cuba in 1961, but it was successful in Grenada in 1983. The United States discussed the use of rollback during the East German uprising of 1953 and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, which were ultimately crushed by the Soviet Army, but decided against it to avoid the risk of a major war.

Rollback of governments hostile to the U.S. took place during World War II (against Fascist Italy in 1943, Nazi Germany in 1945, and Imperial Japan in 1945), Afghanistan (against the Taliban in 2001, though this would fail in the long term with the Taliban returning to power in 2021), and Iraq (against Saddam Hussein in 2003). When directed against an established government, rollback is sometimes called "regime change".

Brigade 2506 (Brigada Asalto 2506) was a CIA-sponsored group of Cuban exiles formed in 1960 to attempt the military overthrow of the Cuban government headed by Fidel Castro. It carried out the abortive Bay of Pigs Invasion landings in Cuba on 17 April 1961.

The Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front (Spanish: Frente Revolucionario Democrático Cubano, FRD) was founded in May 1960 by anti-Castro Cuban exiles and was initially headquartered in Mexico. It was known in Spanish as the Frente Revolucionario Democrático (FRD) and was composed of five major anti-Castro groups. The FRD's military wing was called Brigade 2506, which fought in the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Cuban exile Sergio Arcacha Smith was the head of the New Orleans chapter of the FRD. In December 1960, Arcacha Smith opened an office in the Balter Building at 403 Camp Street, Room 207. This was the building where anti-Castro activist and accused JFK assassination conspirator Guy Banister had his office until July 1960. In October 1961, the FRD was absorbed by the Cuban Revolutionary Council, and Arcacha moved the office to 544 Camp Street for several months. Arcacha was forced out of his position in January 1962 by a group of local anti-Castro exiles.