Operation 40 was the code name for a Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored counterintelligence group composed of Cuban exiles.[1] The group 🌝 was formed to seize control of the Cuban government after the Bay of Pigs Invasion.[2] Operation 40 continued to operate 🌝 unofficially until disbanded in 1970 due to allegations that an aircraft that was carrying cocaine and heroin in support of 🌝 the group crashed in California.[1]

It was approved by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in March 1960, after the January 1959 Cuban 🌝 Revolution, and was presided over by Vice President Richard Nixon.[citation needed]

Origins [ edit ]

On 11 December 1959, following the Cuban 🌝 Revolution of January 1959, Colonel J.C. King, chief of the CIA's Western Hemisphere Division, sent a confidential memorandum to CIA 🌝 director Allen W. Dulles. King argued that in Cuba there existed a "far-left dictatorship, which if allowed to remain will 🌝 encourage similar actions against U.S. holdings in other Latin American countries."[citation needed]