The infamous E. Howard Hunt directed the CIA's Cuban exile front group.
3: The Propaganda War
The CIA unleashed some veteran propaganda specialists to influence Cuban and international opinion about the invasion. Among the Agency staff who handled propaganda work was E. Howard Hunt, who years later would come to fame as one of the Nixon White House's undercover operatives for conducting illegal break-ins. David Atlee Phillips, who along with Hunt had run the clandestine radio station supporting the CIA's 1954 Guatemala operation, was placed in charge of propaganda.
During the invasion, Hunt and Phillips wrote press releases in the name of the Cuban Revolutionary Council, an exile political front group the CIA had established to claim responsibility for the operation. The statements were issued through Lem Jones Associates, Inc., a small, CIA-hired public relations firm in New York City.
In effort to veil the CIA's role in the air strikes accompanying the invasion, Phillips staged the apparent defection of pilots from Castro's air force, by having Agency planes painted with Cuban markings land in Florida. Brought briefly before the media, the "defector" pilots (in fact exiles working for the CIA) denounced Castro and declared they had bombed Cuba with their planes before fleeing to the United States. The complicated cover story quickly came under scrutiny; its credibility, like the invasion effort itself, would crumble entirely in a just a few days.
