The fire in Yellowstone National Forest in 1988, the Exxon Oil spill of 1989 and now the War on Drugs are all examples of the military participating in operations that are inter-agency. This operational environment is truly joint in nature, and an environment in which the military will find itself many times in the future if the past is any indicator. One such inter-agency operation was the Cuban Refugee Operation of 1980 (known by some as the Mariel Boat Lift). It involved the Army, the Air Force, the Marine Corps, the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Department of Justice, the Department of State, the Red Cross and a number of volunteer agencies. The study of the Cuban Refugee Operation raises some interesting questions in such a joint operation. Could the Army have reasonably anticipated the mission as it developed by June, 1980? To what extent did the Army relate with civilian agencies in this operation? And how effectively did the Army organize itself to meet the mission? To facilitate this study, we limit it to three of the four refugee sites, viz. Fort Chaffee, Arkansas; Fort McCoy, Wisconsin and Fort Indiantown Gap. At each of these sites, the Army was not only the largest force, but in many ways functioned as the executive agent. The scope of this study is further limited to only two areas that highlight the lessons: the understanding of the operation's mission and the organization to meet this mission.

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