I may have misremembered the quote from Schlesinger to JFK. I don’t remember if he was recounting Batista’s Cuba to Kennedy or just generally for historical reasons. Also he was an official in the administration, so it isn’t fair to say this was the official description necessarily, although his letters are now published on the CIA site, JFK’s library site, etc. If you read through them it’s pretty clear JFK’s aides knew how shit it was under Batista, but it was unfair for me to call it “official” since it’s not like JFK had Schlesinger out on TV telling everyone that Batista sucked. I should’ve said “internal descriptions” within the Kennedy administration.

But you can google Arthur Schlesinger and see what he said to JFK at the time of the bay of pigs. A lot of it (including from the CIA, etc.) is pure cartoon evil. It is funny how the CIA basically just says “communism looks really appealing! How the fuck do we explain to Americans that this is bad actually?!” in every document