The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir

by John Bolton

On April 17, at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, Florida, I spoke to the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association commemoration of the anniversary of their invasion of Cuba fifty-eight years before, in a failed effort to overthrow the Castro regime. The Brigade 2506 vets were a potent force in Cuban-American politics in Florida and around the country, and this yearly gathering was a big attention getter, something aspiring politicians never missed if at all possible. I was able to bring them news, at long last, of the end of the waivers of Helms-Burton title 2, thus allowing suits against the owners of property expropriated by the Castro regime, and the full enforcement of title 4, which could deny them visas to the US, a major problem for foreign corporations that now owned much of that property. There were a number of other noteworthy measures we were announcing against both Cuba and Venezuela, especially those targeting Venezuela’s Central Bank. The overall impact was to show how resolved the Administration was against the “troika of tyranny,” even though I was the only one in the packed Biltmore ballroom who knew how little resolve there was behind the Resolute desk.