CHAPTER 12:
OPERATION MONGOOSE: “LIBERAL THEORY OF COUNTERINSURGENCY”
In the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs, President Kennedy was more determined than ever to topple the Cuban revolution. He told his brother Robert, “The final chapter on Cuba has not been written.” He stressed Cuba was “the top priority of the United States Government—all else is secondary—no time, money, effort or manpower is to be spared.”
On November 3, 1961, President Kennedy approved Operation Mongoose, a new covert operation to organize a popular uprising on the island, which would serve as a pretext for U.S. military intervention in Cuba. Mongoose would use CIA personnel and resources but would not be run by the CIA. President Kennedy chose Brigadier General Edward Lansdale as Mongoose’s chief of operations; he would work closely with the attorney general.
Lansdale was a CIA officer on loan to the Air Force, but he was intensely disliked inside the Agency, because he had operated outside the CIA’s chain of command for much of his career. In 1955, he won the National Security Medal for counterinsurgency missions in the Philippines and Vietnam on special assignment for Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Allen Dulles. Lansdale was a legend in his own time, having inspired characters in The Quiet American by Graham Greene and The Ugly American by William Lederer and Eugene Burdick, two popular novels of the late 1950s.496 Lansdale was a proponent of what Special Assistant to the President Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. called the “liberal theory of counterinsurgency.”497
Robert Kennedy’s notes from the November 3 meeting on Mongoose offer insight into his frame of mind. They suggest Mongoose was more of a gamble, born of frustration, than a sound plan with a good chance of success. “My idea is to stir things up on the island with espionage, sabotage, general disorder, run & operated by Cubans themselves with every group but the Batistaites & Communists,” Kennedy wrote. “Do not know if we will be successful in overthrowing Castro but we have nothing to lose in my estimate.”
Lansdale outlined Operation Mongoose in a January 1962 program review. In the initial phase, a nucleus of thirty CIA-trained Cuban “political action agents” would be covertly infiltrated into twenty localities in Cuba to form underground cells. Agent cells, with their own communications capabilities, would organize political actions and sabotage raids inside Cuba. “The political actions will be assisted by economic warfare to induce the failure of the Communist regime to supply Cuba’s economic needs, psychological operations to turn the people’s resentment increasingly against the regime, and military-type groups to give the popular movement an action arm for sabotage and armed resistance in support of political objectives.”
Commando raids by CIA-backed Cuban exile action groups in the United States would complement Operation Mongoose. “Special support projects will be readied for use on call.” Lansdale wrote in a December 1961 memorandum, “These projects (such as operations to scuttle shipping and otherwise hamper the regime) will be timed to support actions by the movement [inside Cuba] and to permit the movement to take credit for them.” In this scenario, local political actions and sabotage operations would culminate in a popular uprising in October 1962, just before the congressional elections in the United States. Action agents would seize territory and issue an urgent “appeal” for help. Lansdale wrote, “The United States, if possible in concert with other Western Hemisphere nations, will then give open support to the Cuban people’s revolt.”498
The “Guidelines for Operation Mongoose” predicated success explicitly on U.S. military intervention in Cuba. “In an undertaking to cause the overthrow of the target government, the U.S. will make maximum use of indigenous resources, internal and external, but recognizes that the final success will require decisive U.S. military intervention,” the Mongoose guidelines stated. “Such indigenous resources as developed will be used to prepare for and justify this intervention, and thereafter to facilitate and support it.”
President Kennedy’s new military adviser General Maxwell drafted the guidelines with input from National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy and DCI John A. McCone. Meanwhile, Lansdale set an overly ambitious timeline for Operation Mongoose: political action groups on the island were to be up and running by July 1962. Intelligence gathering in target areas was a top priority in the first phase of the covert operation. All actions were designed to stop short of inciting rebellion.
In August, the Special Group (Augmented) would review the progress of Mongoose before deciding whether to move to the next phase, the instigation of open revolt. The revolt phase was scheduled for early October, to be followed by U.S. military intervention. Under Lansdale’s timeline, a new, pro-U.S. regime would be in power in Havana by the end of October 1962.499
From the beginning, the new DCI John McCone was “skeptical” about Operation Mongoose, according to a draft CIA history of the McCone’s tenure at the Agency. McCone thought the Kennedy brothers were “obsessed with Cuba.” But he was also committed to working closely with Robert Kennedy on Mongoose, noting the “CIA had a special responsibility so far as Cuba was concerned.”
McCone had good reason to be cautious. He was sworn in as DCI on November 29, 1961, one day after the publication of Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE) 85-61, which cast doubt on the premise that a rebellion could be organized in Cuba—the very goal of Mongoose.
“The Castro regime has sufficient popular and repressive capabilities to cope with any internal threat likely to develop in the foreseeable future,” stated SNIE 85-61. “It is highly improbable that an extensive popular uprising could be fomented.” The report also pointed out that Cuban opposition groups had not yet “recovered from the blow dealt them” by the revolution after the failed Bay of Pigs landing.500 The U.S. intelligence community’s assessment of the political situation in Cuba confirmed what Che Guevara told White House aide Richard Goodwin in Punta del Este in August 1961: The revolution’s hold on power had been strengthened by the Bay of Pigs debacle.501
Meanwhile, the CIA had little respect for Lansdale, and worked with him at an arm’s length, according to CIA officer George McManus, executive assistant to Richard Helms, who replaced Richard Bissell as Deputy Director for Plans. McManus described Mongoose’s leader as “Kook,” “wildman,” and “just plain crazy,” and told the Church Committee “Lansdale was similarly viewed by most others at the Agency.” But he added that the CIA had no choice but to cooperate with Lansdale given he was “sponsored by the Kennedys.”
The CIA resented the star status Lansdale enjoyed in the White House. President Kennedy once referred to Lansdale as Washington’s answer to James Bond, and Robert Kennedy was equally starstruck. “You don’t seem to understand,” he told an aide of Lansdale, “This man is a great warrior.”
Lansdale demonstrated his optimistic “can-do” attitude when he summarily dismissed SNIE 85-61 in a memorandum to Robert Kennedy on November 30, 1961. He did not offer an alternative analysis of the political situation in Cuba, having neither the time nor the expertise to do so. Instead, Lansdale played to the Kennedys’ post–Bay of Pigs distrust of the CIA. Lansdale held out hope that Mongoose would be more successful than a covert operation run by the CIA. “The key factor… must be our own ability to take action,” he wrote Kennedy in a memorandum. “It is the heart of our proposal that we can take effective action if proper management is provided.”502
The Mongoose organization chart bore a resemblance to the model recommended to President Kennedy by Richard Goodwin in November 1961. Goodwin proposed a “command operation” run by Robert Kennedy. The attorney general would become the driving force of Mongoose, working closely with Lansdale to compensate for his own inexperience with intelligence operations. Lansdale would also report to the Special Group (Augmented), a new National Security Council committee created to monitor Mongoose, which included the members of the Special Group set up by the Eisenhower Administration to oversee covert operations, plus Robert Kennedy and General Maxwell Taylor, who was chairman.
As the Kennedy Administration geared up for Operation Mongoose, the CIA chain of command for Cuba operations was reorganized. John McCone made Richard Helms his “man for Cuba” in November 1961. McCone forcefully reminded Helms of President Kennedy’s intense desire “to be rid of Castro.” In December 1961, Helms selected senior CIA officer William Harvey as the chief of Task Force W, a new Agency entity created to implement Operation Mongoose. CIA officers were assigned to Task Force W at the Agency’s new headquarters and the CIA Station in Miami, code-named JMWAVE. Harvey selected his protégé Theodore Shackley as the chief of the Miami station. Mongoose would become one of the CIA’s largest covert operations of the Cold War.503
From the start, Lansdale and Harvey were at odds over the strategic conception of Operation Mongoose. Lansdale complained that the CIA was “out of phase” with the goals of Mongoose in a December 1961 memorandum. “CIA has concluded that its realistic role should be to create at least the illusion of a popular movement,” Lansdale wrote, “to create a climate which will permit provocative actions in support of a shift to covert action. This outlook, although arrived at thoughtfully within CIA, is far short of the Cuba Project’s goals.”
Lansdale’s own plan was based on organizing an actual movement on the island opposed to the revolution: “The U.S. will help establish a Cuban nucleus within Cuba, which will work for activating a genuine popular movement to overthrow the regime…” He added, “The regime is to be overthrown by a popular movement of Cubans from within Cuba.”504
At the same time, Lansdale was also frustrated by President Kennedy’s refusal to commit himself in advance to the authorization of U.S. military intervention in Cuba, which Lansdale considered essential to toppling the revolution. Kennedy was reluctant to spell out the circumstances under which he would order U.S. military intervention. He reserved to himself the authority to make that decision when the time came.505
Lansdale pressed the government departments represented on the Special Group (Augmented) to submit plans for “the use of open U.S. force” in the revolt phase of Mongoose. He said without advance commitment to U.S. military intervention, it would be difficult to get “the deep involvement of Cubans” in Mongoose.506
Brigadier General William H. Craig wrote “Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba,” for the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the request of the Special Group (Augmented). The Joint Chiefs approved the report in March 1962. Craig was the Department of Defense/Joint Chiefs representative on the Caribbean Survey Group, which managed day-to-day Mongoose operations, and included representatives from Foggy Bottom, the Pentagon, and United States Information Agency. The Joint Chiefs’ contingency plan, code-named Northwoods, recommended the fabrication of an international incident to justify U.S. military intervention in Cuba. “A ‘Remember the Maine’ incident could be arranged in several forms,” the Craig report stated. “We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantánamo Bay and blame Cuba. We could blow up a drone (unmanned) vessel anywhere in the Cuban waters. We could arrange to cause such incident in the vicinity of Havana or Santiago as a spectacular result of Cuban attack from the air or sea or both.” Northwoods even raised the possibility of shooting down a civilian airliner and blaming Cuba: “It is possible to create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner en route from the United States to Jamaica, Guatemala, Panama or Venezuela.”
The Craig report also proposed staging incidents of Cuban “aggression” in Latin America. “A ‘Cuban-based, Castro-supported’ filibuster could be simulated against a neighboring Caribbean state,” according to the Joint Chiefs’ plan. “‘Cuban’ B-26 or C-46 type aircraft could make cane-burning raids at night. Soviet bloc incendiaries could be found. This could be coupled with ‘Cuban’ messages to the Communist underground in the Dominican Republic and ‘Cuban’ shipments of arms which would be found, or intercepted, on the beach.”
Another proposed project involved perpetrating acts of terror against Cuban exiles but planting evidence and blaming Cuba. “We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington,” the Joint Chiefs’ report stated. “The terror campaign could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States. We could sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated). We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States, even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized. Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, and the arrest of Cuban agents and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement also would be helpful in projecting the idea of an irresponsible government.”507
Nonetheless, the Special Group (Augmented) was not prepared to support U.S. intervention in Cuba except under more politically ideal circumstances than those suggested in the Joint Chiefs’ report. Robert Hurwitch, head of the Department of State’s Office of Cuban Affairs, outlined the conditions Foggy Bottom believed would justify U.S. military intervention in Cuba in a February 26 memorandum to Deputy Under Secretary of State U. Alexis Johnson: “Military intervention in Cuba by U.S. forces should be considered when it is clearly apparent to the world that such action is justified by international law, treaty commitments, or on moral grounds as support for a revolt by the Cuban people as contemplated in the Cuba Project.”
Secretary of State Dean Rusk suggested a possible pretext for U.S. intervention in a March 5 meeting of the Special Group (Augmented). The minutes of the meeting stated, “Mr. Rusk pointed out that if it should be possible to prove Castro’s involvement in efforts to subvert other Latin American countries then this might present an excuse to intervene either unilaterally or multilaterally.”
A month later Rusk had second thoughts. The minutes of the Special Group (Augmented) meeting on April 11 reported, “The Secretary of State said that, at this time, he can see no way in which an organized invasion of Cuba could be justified.” The minutes stated, “He, supported by the Secretary of Defense, took the position that the U.S. should ‘play for the breaks,’ and should take necessary steps so as to get into a position which would afford the U.S. a maximum number of choices of action.”508
Meanwhile, Task Force W Chief Harvey became frustrated by the unwillingness of the Special Group (Augmented) to commit itself unambiguously to U.S. intervention in Cuba. “Even if the current operational plan attains maximum success, it is our firm conclusion that it will not lead to the overthrow of the Castro regime,” Harvey wrote in a memorandum to McCone in April 1962. “[I]f that overthrow is a serious objective of the U.S. Government, it will be necessary at the conclusion of the present plan to face the decision of military intervention, then prepare for it and intensify the preparation for any necessary revolt or provocation upon which it is based.”509
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lyman Lemnitzer pressed the Kennedy Administration to acknowledge that U.S. military intervention would be needed to overturn the Cuban revolution. “The Joint Chiefs of Staff believe that the Cuba problem must be resolved in the near future,” General Lemnitzer wrote in an April 10 memorandum to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. “Further, they see no prospect of early success of overthrowing the present communist regime either as the result of internal uprisings or external political, economic or psychological pressures. Accordingly, they believe that military intervention by the United States will be required to overthrow the present communist regime.”
Lemnitzer addressed the Cold War implications of the revolt phase of Operation Mongoose. He assessed whether U.S. intervention in Cuba would lead to a military confrontation with the USSR. “The Joint Chiefs believe that the United States can undertake military intervention in Cuba without the risk of general war,” Lemnitzer wrote. “They also believe that the intervention can be accomplished rapidly enough to minimize communist opportunities for solicitation of UN action. Force available would assure rapid essential military control of Cuba. Continued police action would be required.”510
In a related development, Sherman Kent, Chairman of the CIA’s Board of Estimates, also assessed the Soviet Union’s likely response to U.S. military intervention. Kent concluded in an April 10 memorandum to McCone, “The USSR would have no means to intervene effectively in Cuba with its own forces, and almost certainly would not resort to general war for the sake of the Castro regime.” But he thought that the USSR would “make threatening references to Soviet missile power,” adding “There would probably be a first-class war scare, with panic among the neutralists and a high state of alarm in NATO.”
Kent also predicted there would be protests in Latin America. “Latin American political opinion generally would be shocked by a U.S. intervention in Cuba, regardless of sympathy or antagonism toward the Castro regime,” Kent wrote. “Most Latin American governments would be glad to see Castro effectively disposed of, but would be constrained by domestic opinion to deplore publicly the U.S. action.”511
In the meantime, Robert Kennedy rode herd on the CIA. But Kennedy did not have the expertise or the time to run a complicated intelligence operation, according to Special Assistant to the President Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. “He [Robert Kennedy] wanted it to do the terrors of the earth, but what they were he knew not,” Schlesinger wrote. “Castro was high on his list of emotions, much lower on his list of informed concerns. When he was able to come to meetings of the Special Group (Augmented) …, he made up in presence for what he lacked in knowledge. His style there, as everywhere, was to needle the bureaucracy. If there were a problem, there had to be a solution. He conveyed acute impatience and urgency.”
Despite Robert Kennedy’s pressure, Mongoose got off to a rocky start. In April 1962, Lansdale wrote in a memorandum to the Special Group (Augmented), “The past 3 weeks have been marked with bad luck in CIA’s infiltration and exfiltration of agent teams… Most of the operations aborted. Bill Harvey is now in Florida initiating a new series of agent infiltrations and is hopeful of closing up with the schedule in May.”
When problems arose in Mongoose, Kennedy often pointed the finger of blame at Task Force W Chief Harvey. Harvey biographer David Martin writes, “Bobby Kennedy browbeat Harvey and his aides so relentlessly after one session [Maxwell] Taylor turned to him and said, ‘You could sack a town and enjoy it.’” Harvey would become furious when the attorney general bypassed him in the CIA chain of command or got directly involved in operational matters. He considered Kennedy a meddlesome amateur. Both men were proud, strong-willed, and volatile.512 A tempest was likely when they were both in the same room.
On April 5, John McCone also expressed his “discouragement” about Mongoose’s slow progress in a memorandum for the record. He urged “more aggressive action including direct military intervention.” But the Special Group (Augmented) put off making a decision about U.S. military intervention in Cuba.513 As the Kennedy brothers played for a break in Cuba, the administration developed a contingency plan for U.S. action on the island in the event of Castro’s assassination.
Cuba was on President Kennedy’s mind as he settled into his rocking chair in the Oval Office on November 9, 1961, a gray, windy, and unseasonably cold day in Washington. Seated across from Kennedy was New York Times reporter Tad Szulc. Kennedy had invited Szulc to the White House ostensibly to talk about Fidel Castro, whom Szulc had interviewed several times. Kennedy asked Szulc what Castro was like. Was he serious about establishing a dialogue with the United States?
But the conversation changed abruptly when Kennedy rocked forward in his chair and asked, “What would you think if I ordered Castro to be assassinated?” Szulc replied that he was “against political assassination as a matter of principle.”
“I’m glad you feel the same way,” Kennedy said as he rocked back in his chair. “I agree with you completely.” He added that he was under pressure from his advisers to authorize Castro’s assassination.
Szulc recalled, “He then went on for a few minutes to stress how strongly he and his brother felt that the United States for moral reasons should never be in a situation of having recourse to assassination.” As Szulc walked out of the Oval Office, Kennedy told Richard Goodwin, “We can’t get into that—we’ll all be targets.” Goodwin sat in on the meeting between Kennedy and the Times correspondent.
A week later, in a speech at the University of Washington, Kennedy declared, “We cannot, as a free nation, compete with our adversaries in tactics of terror, assassination, false promises, counterfeit mobs and crises.” Three decades later, Goodwin suggested that Kennedy may have been using Szulc in the mysterious Oval Office meeting.514 Kennedy “may have been laying down a disclaimer… The only explanation was that he didn’t want Tad to think he was involved” in plotting to kill Castro. Kennedy may have been counting on Szulc to write that he ruled out assassination when the two men talked in the Oval Office.
Goodwin suggested another factor was also at play in the meeting. Goodwin had recommended Szulc for a job as a propagandist for Operation Mongoose in a memorandum to the Kennedy brothers on November 2. “As for propaganda, I thought we might ask Tad Szulc to take a leave of absence from the Times and work on this one.” At the November 9th meeting, then, “Tad was auditioning for a job and Kennedy was recruiting him,” he noted. When it came to Cuba, Szulc was a partisan. Diplomat Robert Hurwitch later disclosed that “my journalist friend” [Szulc] was an advocate for Manuel Ray. Hurwitch remembered attending a meeting in the White House in which Szulc lobbied for Ray’s plan to wage “a war of liberation” in Cuba.515
Szulc was a cause of concern for the CIA. The Agency had monitored Szulc’s activities as a reporter for the New York Times in Latin America in 1959–1961, taking note of Szulc’s “frequent contacts with Communist Party leaders and functionaries.” The CIA suspected that Szulc was tied “to a hostile intelligence service.” The Agency’s animus toward Szulc intensified when it learned that the reporter had falsely told U.S. officials in several Latin American countries he had been “cleared” by the CIA. Szulc used the ploy to gain greater access to U.S. sources. The CIA put out a “beware of Szulc” warning to U.S. embassies in the Western Hemisphere. The Agency grew increasingly uneasy when the Times transferred Szulc to Washington in April 1961. A CIA document stated, “In a very short time Szulc claimed that he had a standing invitation to go directly to the President, the Vice President, the Attorney General, McGeorge Bundy, and Robert Hurwitch on Cuban matters.”516
In retrospect, President Kennedy’s meeting with Szulc in the Oval Office appears to fit a pattern of steps taken by the Kennedy brothers related to Castro’s assassination. On October 5, 1961, Attorney General Kennedy made an official inquiry into the legal status of a wiretap case in Las Vegas. The Las Vegas wiretap case involved key figures in the CIA-Mafia assassination plotting to kill Castro, as we have seen. Kennedy’s inquiry cooled the enthusiasm of federal prosecutors in the case. For the time being, the wiretap case was put on hold.517
On the same day, President Kennedy ordered the Department of State to take the lead in the development of an interagency contingency plan for U.S. action in Cuba in the event of Castro’s assassination. National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy issued National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 100 on October 5. The text of NSAM 100 was as simple as it was evasive: “In confirmation of oral instructions conveyed to Assistant Secretary of State [Robert] Woodward, a plan is desired for the indicated contingency.”
Thomas Parrott, secretary of the Special Group, briefed Woodward on NSAM 100. Parrott also informed Woodward that President Kennedy had a personal interest in the memorandum. Parrott was an assistant for executive branch matters to the CIA deputy director for plans. He also served as the special assistant to General Maxwell Taylor, the president’s military adviser. In an October 5 memorandum, Parrott wrote, “What was wanted was a plan against the contingency that Castro would in some way be removed from the Cuban scene.” Parrott continued, “[T]his was an exercise that should be under the direction of State with participation by Defense and CIA.”
However, Parrott’s timing was bad. At the last minute, Taylor decided it was best to conceal the president’s role. Parrott explained, “I had mentioned to Mr. Woodward the President’s interest in this matter, before General Taylor told me he preferred this not be done.” Parrott subsequently told Woodward’s assistant Wymberley Coerr to keep this aspect of NSAM 100 “completely out of the picture.” Interestingly, Parrott noted Richard Goodwin was “aware” of President Kennedy’s interest in the post-Castro assassination contingency plan for Cuba.
On October 6, Albert C. Davis, chief of intelligence of the CIA’s WH/4, responded to NSAM 100. “It would be wishful thinking to believe that the Cuban people would immediately rise up and overthrow the regime, now that Castro departed the scene,” Davis wrote. “In order to be effective such a [assassination] program should be coordinated with a well-organized resistance movement capable of providing a simultaneous internal uprising.”
In October 1961, there was no “well-organized resistance movement” in Cuba. Sherman Kent, head of the CIA’s Board of National Estimates, also analyzed the likely outcome of Castro’s assassination. In a November 3 memorandum to DCI Allen Dulles, Kent wrote, Castro’s death “by assassination or natural causes” would not be “fatal” to the Cuban revolution.
Kent reasoned, “The revolution is by now institutionalized; the regime has firm control of the country; its principal surviving leaders would probably rally together in the face of a common danger. Indeed, a dead Castro, incapable of impulsive personal interventions in the orderly administration of affairs, might be more valuable to them as a martyr than he is now.” Kent added, “[T]he great bulk of the population still accepts the regime and substantial numbers still support it with enthusiasm.”
On November 3, President Kennedy was briefed by the Department of State on the contingency plan he sought for Cuba. According to the briefing paper, “We have tentatively concluded that the major internal political result of Castro’s disappearance from the Cuban political scene would be to consolidate complete communist control in Cuba.” The memorandum added, “We do not feel that there would be any other immediate developments stemming from Castro’s death that would significantly alter the basic situation in Cuba.”
Foggy Bottom expressed concern about an international political backlash. “The use of military force to intervene in Cuba under these circumstances for the purpose of replacing the successor with one friendly to the U.S. would, we believe, so seriously damage the U.S. world position, particularly in the UN and in Latin America, that we question the wisdom of this course of action.”518 As President Kennedy assessed what might happen in Cuba in the wake of Castro’s assassination, Harvey continued his work on the CIA executive-action capability.
As we have seen, Deputy Director for Plans (DDP) Richard Bissell had instructed Harvey to assess the feasibility of setting up a CIA “executive action” capability in early 1961. So assassination was on Harvey’s mind in October 1961 when he met with Peter Wright, a senior British intelligence official from the MI-5 agency, with knowledge of British assassination operations. Harvey sought out Wright at a cryptology conference sponsored by the National Security Agency (NSA) at Fort Meade, Maryland. He wanted to know what lessons the British had learned from MI-5 assassination planning operations in Cyprus and Egypt in the 1950s.
Harvey was curious about “Sunshine,” a British counterinsurgency campaign against Greek Cypriot leader Colonel Grivas, which included a MI-5 plan to assassinate Grivas. Wright later wrote, “Harvey listened to my Cyprus experiences, he was struck by the parallels between the two problems: both small islands with a guerrilla force led by a charismatic leader. He was particularly struck by my view that without Grivas, EOKA [the Cypriot guerrilla army] would have collapsed.” However, a negotiated settlement resolved the crisis in Cyprus before the MI-5 assassination plan could be executed.
Harvey also wanted to learn about a MI-5 plan to assassinate Egyptian leader Gamel Abdel Nasser, developed but not carried out, during the Suez crisis in 1956. Wright wrote, “Nerve gas obviously presented the best possibility.” He added, “[T]he London Station had an agent with limited access to one of Nasser’s headquarters. Their plan was to place canisters of nerve gas inside the ventilation system…”
Harvey told Wright, “We’re developing a new capability in the Company to handle those kinds of problems,” referring to ZRRIFLE, the cryptonym for the CIA executive-action project. But, Harvey said, he was having a hard time recruiting assassins who could not be traced back to the CIA. Wright suggested looking for recruits among retired personnel from the British Special Air Services (SAS), the elite British counterinsurgency force, or from the ranks of the Italian Mafia.519
Meanwhile, Harvey briefed Bissell and CIA Chief of Operations (COPS) Richard Helms on executive action. Harvey had concluded that it would be “ridiculous” for the CIA to develop a “general reserve capability” for covert assassinations. Harvey told Bissell and Helms, “The possibilities of effective discreet action were slim.” Instead, Harvey recommended creating a tightly controlled assassination capability under the leadership of a “single senior officer.”
Harvey declared, “The one sure way to do it, or at least the only one close to having a chance at secure success, was simply appoint a single senior officer to do everything to run the operation, kill the person, bury the body, and tell no one.”
In November 1961, Bissell put Harvey in charge of executive action and instructed him to take over leadership of the CIA-Mafia assassination operation from the Office of Security. He also ordered Harvey to apply ZRRIFLE to Cuba.520 Harvey had been instructed by Helms to set up Task Force W, a new CIA unit created to run Operation Mongoose in December 1961. But he kept the Castro assassination operation separate and distinct from the task force. He also kept his most trusted CIA aides on Cuba in the dark about the assassination operation.
John McCone was also kept ignorant of the CIA-Mafia assassination plots against Castro when he replaced Allen Dulles as DCI on November 29, 1961. Dulles said nothing to McCone, and neither did Helms, whom McCone designated as his “man for Cuba.” However, Harvey did keep Helms, who replaced Bissell as deputy director for plans (DDP) in February 1962, briefed on assassination developments. Helms later told the Church Committee that President Kennedy never directly ordered the CIA to assassinate Castro. “I remember vividly [the pressure] was very intense,” he testified. “I believe it was the policy at the time to get rid of Castro and if killing him was one of the things that was to be done in this connection, that was within what was expected.”
Senator Richard Schweicker, a Republican from Pennsylvania, observed, “[A]s I understand your position on the assassination of Castro, no one in essence told you to do it, no one in essence told you not to do it… is that correct?”
“Yes, sir,” Helms replied.521 Momentum had carried the CIA’s plotting to assassinate Fidel Castro from the Eisenhower Administration to the Kennedy Administration. In the meantime, the CIA trained Cuban exile action groups for sabotage operations in Cuba.
In November 1961, the CIA informed the Consejo Revolucionario Cubano (CRC) (Cuban Revolutionary Council) and its leader, José Miró Cardona, that member groups were eligible to receive arms and paramilitary training from JMWAVE, the cryptonym for the CIA Station in Miami. According to Miró’s CIA case officer, “I assured Dr. Miró that we are ready to support any group or team that has a good plan that can be approved and will support the teams to execute them by giving training and by providing equipment and material.” The CIA had “operational relationships” with member groups of the CRC.
CRC military coordinator Captain Ernesto Despaigne met with a CIA paramilitary (PM) specialist to set up a training program for Cuban exile action groups. Each group was required to submit its military plan to Despaigne for evaluation by JMWAVE PM specialists. JMWAVE organized covert sabotage raids by exile action groups from small, speedy boats launched from bases in the United States against targets in Cuba.
The first groups to receive CIA assistance included the Movimiento de Recuperación Revolucionario (MRR) (Movement of Revolutionary Recovery); Movimiento Revolucionario 30 de Noviembre (November 30th Revolutionary Movement); Movimiento Democrático Cristiano (MDC) (Christian Democratic Movement); Rescate Revolucionario Democrático (Rescue of the Democratic Revolution); and the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE) (Revolutionary Student Directorate).
A CIA report stated, “Each [group] expresses deep desire to undertake any action and any risk provided this will not be in vain but be part of an overall plan culminating in a major all-out coordinating action combining efforts of those outside and inside plus U.S. help in force—the latter viewed as imperative for success.”522
According to an FBI report, the November 30th Revolutionary Movement sent roughly two dozen men to a CIA-run paramilitary training camp near Palm Beach, Florida, in November 1961. The CIA had an “interest” in a faction of the November 30th Movement led by Jesus Fernández and provided it with “direct assistance.” The November 30th Movement was also financially supported by Roberto “Chiri” Mendoza, a prominent Batistiano with close ties to the Mafia gamblers. An FBI report noted, “On November 7, 1961, MM T-3 advised that Luis Nodal of the 30th of November Movement said that money had been donated to that organization by one Chiri Mendoza to purchase a machine gun, camera, 500 pounds of dynamite, 30,000 rounds of ammunition and a rifle.” Mendoza was an owner of the casino at the Havana Hilton Hotel, a business partner of Fulgencio Batista and a close associate of Santo Trafficante.523
The November 30th Movement turned to the CIA for support when its underground network in Cuba started to crumble. An FBI report stated, “This group reportedly had a large membership engaged in anti-Castro activities inside Cuba until about October 1961, when it suffered a series of losses due to infiltration by a Castro agent.” In exile, the November 30th Movement split into two factions.524
Another recipient of CIA arms and paramilitary training was the DRE, which was created by the CIA for propaganda operations against the Cuban revolution in 1960. A CIA memorandum on the DRE stated, “Members were used through 1966 as political action agents, for publishing propaganda which was sent out throughout the Hemisphere, attending international student meetings at Agency direction, and producing radio programs and special propaganda campaigns.”
The CIA memorandum added, “While the DRE was set up as a psych warfare outfit, the organization was given a large amount of paramilitary aid in funds and material. After the Bay of Pigs, the DRE engaged in independent military actions…”525
The CIA also worked directly with Cuban exile action groups that refused to join the CRC, like the Movimiento Insurreccional de Recuperación Revolucionario (MIRR) (Insurrectional Movement of Recovery of the Revolution), and the Ejército Cubano Anticomunista (ECA) (Cuban Anticommunist Army). MIRR coordinator Orlando Bosch, joined by Evelio Duque of the Cuban Anticommunist Army, presented a plan to the CIA for hit-and-run maritime attacks on commercial shipping to Cuba in late 1961. JMWAVE approved the plan, and MIRR-ECA fighters were trained by CIA paramilitary specialists at Homestead, Florida. The CIA approved Bosch for “operational” use in March 1962.
According to the CIA, by the time the MIRR began to receive Agency support, Cuban security forces had already broken up its underground network. “The MIRR was a counterrevolutionary group of some consequence inside Cuba during late 1959 and early 1960,” the CIA’s “Counterrevolutionary Handbook” stated. “From this point forward, the MIRR suffered a series of body blows, including the capture and execution of its leader, Sinesio Walsh Ríos in late 1960…. [B]y mid-1961 it was largely moribund.”
Bosch quickly became disenchanted with the CIA. He did not believe that the United States was committed to an invasion of Cuba, or to supporting serious commando attacks on Cuba. He cut his ties with the CIA, which, in turn, canceled Bosch’s operational approval in November 1962.526
Meanwhile, the CIA developed what Assistant Deputy Director for Plans Tracy Barnes called “extreme dissatisfaction” with José Miró Cardona’s leadership of the Consejo Revolucionario Cubano. Barnes said that the CRC was riddled with corruption. According to a CIA memorandum, Barnes was critical of “the manner in which Dr. Miró is using the $90,000 a month budget allotted to him. He [Miró] indicated that over 50 percent of the budget goes into salaries for people whose roles are rather dubious in the program.”527
JMWAVE Chief Theodore Shackley also noted the shortcomings of Miró’s leadership. Shackley wrote in a dispatch to Task Force W Chief Harvey, “Were it not for [CIA] financial support of Miró and his continual publicizing his trips to Washington and his relations with the White House, his support would dwindle more than it already has, since he is by no means the forceful, unifying, leader-type needed to weld the Cubans together.” Miró met with President Kennedy and Attorney General Kennedy several times in 1961 and 1962.
Shackley pointed out that the Consejo was being outflanked politically by Cuban exile groups which had not joined the CRC. In a memorandum to Harvey, Shackley wrote, “The most important rival faction led by Carlos Prío Socarrás seems to be growing in strength although it includes former Batista elements.”
Miró was not the Consejo’s only problem. According to a 1961 FBI report, Antonio Varona, Miró’s principal rival for power in the CRC, was considered by Cuban exiles to be a divisive, corrupt, and unpopular leader with “dictatorial attitudes.” Varona was also tied to Mafia gamblers. Shackley wrote, “The CRC is criticized for being a Miró-Varona coalition which is not interested in the participation of any leader who seriously threatens the prestige of the present leadership.”528
When Miró threatened to resign as leader of the CRC, the Kennedy Administration intervened with the CIA. White House aide Arthur Schlesinger and the Department of State prevailed upon the CIA to address Miró’s concerns. A CIA memorandum stated, “Schlesinger concurred in State’s position that it would be highly undesirable for Dr. Miró to resign at this time, inasmuch as this would create a void which would probably be filled with one or more political undesirables…”529
Miró was unhappy because Joaquín Sangenis was undercutting his leadership with the backing of the CIA. He outlined his complaints in a meeting with Assistant Secretary of State for Interamerican Affairs Robert F. Woodward. Miró charged that Sangenis made derogatory remarks about the Consejo and recruited Cubans for his own independent commando operations against Cuba. Miró also said Sangenis brought Batistianos into Brigade 2506 when he was head of the Operation 40.
Woodward learned that the CIA had an “operational interest” in Sangenis and used him as a “control” on Miró. Woodward wrote, “It [CIA] utilizes Sangenis for two purposes: gathering intelligence and as a ‘control’ on Dr. Miró… and on other Council members.” According to Woodward, Sangenis’s relationship to the CIA went back to prerevolutionary Cuba. Woodward wrote, “[H]e got himself appointed as Varona’s intelligence chief in the FRD [Frente Revolucionario Democrático] and subsequently proposed to Miró that he organize the intelligence section of the CRC to which Miró assented; but that Sangenis never had given Miró any information.”
To smooth the waters, the White House promised Miró that Sangenis would no longer play a role in Cuban exile politics. In the future, the CIA would direct financial assistance to Cuban exile action groups, unaffiliated with the CRC, through the Consejo to give Miró political leverage. But the Kennedy Administration also claimed the “right to deal directly” with groups outside the CRC to help them conduct commando operations against Cuba.530
As the CIA organized commando raids against Cuba, the Kennedy Administration moved to isolate Cuba diplomatically and undermine its economy.
In January 1962, Secretary of State Dean Rusk traveled to Punta del Este to press for the expulsion of Cuba from the Organization of American States (OAS). By a slim majority, the OAS passed a resolution that declared the Cuban revolution was “incompatible” with the Interamerican System. Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, and Mexico abstained from voting on the “exclusion” resolution.
A month later President Kennedy ratcheted up the U.S. campaign to undermine the Cuban economy. On February 3, Kennedy added cigars and molasses to the list of Cuban products banned in the United States. Administration officials claimed the new trade sanctions would shut off an estimated $35 million in Cuban exports to the United States.
Kennedy asserted in a statement, “The loss of this income will reduce the capacity of the Castro regime, initially linked with the Sino-Soviet bloc, to engage in acts of aggression, subversion, or other activities endangering the security of the United States and other nations of this hemisphere.”531
A cloud of hypocrisy hung over Kennedy’s ban on the import of Cuban cigars. The day before the U.S. embargo on Cuban tobacco products was announced President Kennedy instructed White House press secretary Pierre Salinger to stock up on Cuban cigars. “The President called me into his office in the early evening,” Salinger recalled. “Pierre, I need some help,” Kennedy said. “I need a lot of cigars.” Salinger asked how many. Kennedy replied, “About 1,000 Petit Upmanns.”
The next morning Kennedy called Salinger into the Oval Office. “How did you do, Pierre?” Salinger reported he had obtained 1,200 Petit Upmanns. “He [Kennedy] took out a long paper which he immediately signed. It was the decree banning all Cuban products from the United States,” Salinger writes. “Cuban cigars were now illegal in our country.” Richard Goodwin, another Cuban cigar aficionado, wrote an early draft of the Cuba trade embargo.532
Meanwhile, Fidel Castro responded bitterly in a speech to one million Cubans in the Plaza de Revolución in Havana. On February 4, he declared that the United States was striking out at Cuba “because they are afraid, not of a Cuban revolution, but of a Latin American revolution.”
“The duty of every revolutionary is to make revolution,” Castro declared. “The revolution will triumph in America and throughout the world, but it is not for revolutionaries to sit in the doorways of their homes waiting for the corpse of imperialism to pass by.” Castro’s call for Cuban support of revolution in Latin America marked an about-face. Six months earlier, Che Guevara told Richard Goodwin that Cuba wanted back-channel talks with the United States to ease tensions between the two countries. At that time, Guevara put Cuba’s “activities in other countries” on the table for negotiation.
As we have seen, President Kennedy interpreted Cuba’s willingness to negotiate as a sign of weakness, which he tried to exploit with Operation Mongoose. Castro responded by resuming the promotion of revolution beyond Cuba’s borders. In March 1962, National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) 85-62 assessed the vulnerability of Latin America to revolution, and the political impact of the Cuban revolution on the volatile region. NIE 85-62 declared: “Latin America is ripe for revolution, in one form or another. When Fidel Castro came to power, he regarded himself as the manifest leader of the revolution, not only in Cuba, but in all of Latin America.” The estimate reported that Cuba was bringing left-wing youth from Latin America to the island for political conferences and training in revolutionary activities and guerrilla war.
NIE 85-62 stated, “[I]f the Alliance for Progress should fail to produce its intended social reforms in time to meet rising popular demands, the conviction will grow that Castro’s way is the only way.”533 As the tensions escalated between the United States and Cuba, William Harvey prepared to meet with Mafia gambler Johnny Rosselli.