14: Pawley's Caribbean Oyster

With his Doolittle Special Study Group’s work done, Pawley continued pursuing his lucrative Latin American activities. He was issued a regular passport on December 14, 1954 “to visit Venezuela for an undetermined stay on personal business.”1 As a teenager, he had ridden a donkey into the Venezuelan jungles “to sell stearic acid and paraffin” and in his early twenties returned “to sell diving suits” to pearl hunters. Two decades later, he and Edna “spent Easter in Caracas, Venezuela with Walter Donnelly and his wife.”2

Like his father, the Caribbean region became the focus of Pawley’s expanding financial wealth. In his autobiography, Pawley detailed how he became entwined in business with Trujillo while the guest of honor at the head table of a large dinner attended by “400 Dominicans and Americans, evenly divided.” He “sat between Trujillo and our Ambassador [William Townsend] Pheiffer.” The discussion turned to “mining and oil ventures which led into the subject of the need for the Dominican Republic to develop its abundant natural resources.” Pawley soon became an adviser to Trujillo on how to profitably exploit the island nation’s natural resources and the “results were spectacular, especially in the development of one of the most valuable nickel mines anywhere.3

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24: Pig in a Poke

According to the CIA Bay of Pigs History, the new president was handed a pig in a poke by the previous administration. As early as November 15th, a CIA briefing statement regarding the Cuban situation was prepared for the newly elected president. It stated that the CIA’s “original concept is now seen to be unachievable in the face of the controls Castro has instituted. There will not be the internal unrest earlier believed possible, nor will the defenses permit the type of strike first planned.” 

The CIA then told Kennedy that its “second concept (1,500-3,000 man force to secure a beach with airstrip) is also now seen to be unachievable, except as a joint Agency/DOD action. Our Guatemala experience demonstrates we cannot staff nor otherwise timely create the base and lift needed.” Within the next half-a-year, this seemingly doomed scenario, was transformed into “the Zapata Plan and the Bay of Pigs operation.”1 During the development, Pawley's friend in State, Thomas Mann, would contemplate the use of a former Pawley
associate in China and Guatemala, Ambassador Whiting Willauer (photo), for a key role.   

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