CIA activities in Nicaragua as well as rebels and Americans who work with them." Five American Contra supporters who worked with the rebels confirmed the charges, noting that "two Cuban-Americans used armed rebel troops to guard cocaine at clandestine airfields in northern Costa Rica. They identified the Cuban-Americans as members of the 2506 Brigade, an anti-Castro group that participated in the 1961 Bay of Pigs attack on Cuba. Several also said they supplied information about the smuggling to U.S. investigators." One of the Americans "said that in one ongoing operation, the cocaine is unloaded from planes at rebel airstrips and taken to an Atlantic
CIA activities in Vietnam had difficulties understanding their politics. This can be attributed to the fact that the CIA did not make a concerted effort to gain a better understanding of the history and people of Vietnam. The CIA instead focused on the military forces occupying the territory instead of the political and economic forces that motivated them. The diplomats were not getting clear information in 1954 and early 1955, but the CIA station "had ... no mandate or mission to perform systematic intelligence and espionage in friendly countries, and so lacks the resources to gather and evaluate the large amounts of information required