1. Summary of Contact with AMWHIP/1 and AMLASH/1, September 1962, NARA/JFK RIF 1993.07.22.14:25:33:280410, https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=101069Su.
2. Rosa Miriam Elizalde, “¿Le dice algo el nombre de Esteban Ventura?” Dominio Cuba, May 16, 2019, https://medium.com/dominio-cuba/le-dice-algo-el-nombre-de-esteban-ventura-bd9318d431c.
3. Colonel Rico’s troops had recently seized the Directorio’s arsenal of guns. Havana Post, October 30, 1956, p. 4.
4. Letter from Nixon to Col. Antonio Blanco Rico, February 10, 1955, Nixon Pre-Presidential Papers, Central America Trip, 1955, box 1, folder Cuba (2 of 3), Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, Yorba Linda, California.
5. Hugh Thomas, The Cuban Revolution (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 104.
6. Miriam Zito, Asalto (Habana: Casa Editora Abril, 1998), 39.
7. Santiago Morales, interview with the author, July 24, 2021. See also Samuel Cherson, “José Antonio Echevarría, guía del pueblo cubano; A los 25 años de su muerte,” a monograph found in the records of the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil en el Exilio (DRE), Cuban Heritage Collection, University of Miami.
8. José Luis Llovio-Menéndez, Insider: My Hidden Life as a Revolutionary in Cuba, translated by Edith Grossman (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1988), 56.
9. Insider, 56.
10. Jaime Suchliki, University Students and Revolution in Cuba (Coral Cables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1969), 58–75.
11. Jack Colhoun, Gangsterismo: The United States, Cuba, and the Mafia 1933–1966 (New York: OR Books, 2013), 21, citing Foreign Service Dispatch from American Embassy, Havana, to the Department of State, “Decree Creating BRAC Appears in Official Gazette,” May 18, 1955, 737.001/5, and Department of State Instruction, “BRAC Activity,” May 13, 1955, 737.001. “The DR’s theory was that success of the revolution depended on quick and efficient action against the regime,” a CIA study later noted, “and that Castro’s forces alone could not achieve success.”
12. Gangsterismo, vii.
13. Anthony Summers with Robbyn Swan, The Arrogance of Power: The Secret Life of Richard Nixon (New York: Viking, 2000), 179.
14. “Comó se Produjo el Atentado.” Habana El Mundo, October 30, 1956, 1. A diagram of Blanco Rico’s wounds appears on page 8.
15. George Crile III, “The Riddle of AMLASH,” Washington Post, May 2, 1976, p. C1.
16. “I do not know who carried out the assault on Blanco Rico,” Fidel Castro said, “but I do believe that, from a political and revolutionary standpoint, assassination was not justified because Blanco Rico was not a henchman.” “Entrevista con Fidel Castro,” Habana El Mundo, November 20, 1956.
17. Asalto, 39.
18. Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1979), 37.
19. Scott Anderson, The Quiet Americans: Four Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War—a Tragedy in Three Acts (New York: Doubleday, 2020), 448.
20. Richard Helms with William Hood, A Look Over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency (New York, Random House, 2003), 14.
21. A Look Over My Shoulder, 384.
22. Vernon O. Pampell, “Richard McGarrah Helms,” report, December 20, 1947, 1947 Richard Helms FBI file, available at Muck Rock, https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/richard-m-helms-fbi-17637/#file-42377.
23. Tom Bower, The Perfect English Spy: Sir Dick White and the Secret War 1935–90 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 322.
24. Arrogance of Power, 196.
25. Jim Hougan, Spooks: The Haunting of America; The Private Use of Secret Agents (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1978), 11.
26. Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets (New York, Simon & Schuster, 1979), 255.
27. E. Howard Hunt and Greg Aunapu. American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate, and Beyond (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2007), 18–24.
28. Gore Vidal, “The Art and Arts of E. Howard Hunt,” New York Review of Books, December 13, 1973, 6.
29. American Spy, 50.
30. American Spy, 53–64.
31. St. John Hunt, An Amoral and Dangerous Woman, Kindle edition, loc. 608.
32. American Spy, 72.
33. Richard Helms, interview by J. Kenneth McDonald. Transcript of tape recording. Washington, D.C., September 29, 1982 (hereafter Helms-McDonald interview), 26, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/9_29_oral.pdf.
34. Lincoln Cushing, interview with the author, December 11, 2020.
35. Enrique Cirules, The Mafia in Havana: A Caribbean Mob Story (Melbourne, Ocean Press, 2004), 9.
36. David Atlee Phillips, The Night Watch: 25 Years of Peculiar Service (New York, Atheneum, 1975), 66.