CHAPTER 13:
CIA PASSES MORE POISON CAPSULES TO THE MAFIA

The overweight, pear-shaped William Harvey wanted to make an impression on Johnny Rosselli when they met in Miami in April 1962. Harvey pulled a revolver from inside his rumpled suit jacket and thumped it down on the table in the cocktail lounge of the Miami airport. As he knocked back a double Martini, Harvey explained that he had replaced Jim O’Connell as Rosselli’s CIA case officer. From now on, Rosselli would work directly with Harvey. Sam Giancana, Santo Trafficante, and Robert Maheu had been eliminated, to make the covert operation to assassinate Fidel Castro more secure. Rosselli, elegantly attired in a hand-tailored suit, alligator shoes, and a $2,000 watch, savored a Smirnoff on the rocks as he listened to Harvey.

Harvey handed Rosselli four capsules filled with poison developed by the CIA’s Technical Services Division (TSD) to kill Castro. He said the capsules “would work anywhere and at any time with anything,” according to CIA Inspector General J. S. Earman’s “Report on Plots to Assassinate Fidel Castro.” Harvey went over with Rosselli how the “lethal material” would be “introduced into Castro’s food” by a Varona “asset” connected to a restaurant where Castro frequently ate.

Rosselli updated Harvey about developments on the Miami end of the CIA-Mafia assassination operation. As we have seen, Antonio Varona joined the operation in April 1961 when Juan Orta failed to make the necessary arrangements in Cuba to poison Castro. Rosselli had already been in touch with Varona. He also reported the assassination target list had been expanded to include Raúl Castro and Che Guevara.

Harvey replied, “Everything is all right, what they want to do.” He gave Rosselli the keys to a U-Haul rental truck for Varona in a nearby parking lot, loaded with $5,000 worth of explosives, sniper rifles, handguns, and a boat radar. Varona had requested the arms and military equipment as the “price” for his role in the CIA-Mafia assassination operation. Varona became more deeply involved in the CIA-Mafia assassination operation when he became discouraged by “ineffectual progress of the Frente Revolucionario Democrático,” according to notes taken from Varona’s CIA security file by HSCA investigators.

Harvey briefed CIA Deputy Director for Plans (DDP) Richard Helms on his upcoming meeting with Rosselli before he left for Miami. Harvey briefed Helms after his meeting with Rosselli and kept him informed about the progress of the CIA-Mafia assassination operation.534 Likewise, Rosselli kept Harvey up to date on the Florida end of the poison pill operation, according to Earman.

“Harvey and Rosselli arranged a system of telephone communication by which Harvey was kept posted on any developments,” Earman wrote. “Harvey, using a pay phone, could call Rosselli at the Friars Club in Los Angeles at 1600 hours, Los Angeles time. Rosselli could phone Harvey at his home in the evening. Rosselli reported that the pills were in Cuba and at the restaurant reportedly used regularly by Castro.”

But Harvey got little operational information from Rosselli. In May, Rosselli informed him that the poison pills had been delivered to Cuba. A month later he told Harvey that Varona had sent a three-man team to Cuba on an ill-defined assassination mission.

“Harvey said that they appeared to have no specific plan for killing Castro,” Earman reported. “They were to recruit others who might be used in such a scheme. If an opportunity to kill Castro presented itself, they or the persons they recruited were to make the attempt—perhaps using the pills. Harvey never learned their names or anything else about them.” At the last minute, Rosselli brought a mysterious Cuban named “Maceo” into the operation. All Harvey knew was that Maceo spoke Italian and used the aliases “García-Gómez” and “Godoy.”

In September 1962, Rosselli reported to Harvey that Varona was getting ready to send another three-man team to Cuba. The goal of the team was “to penetrate Castro’s body guard.” But the team never left the Florida Keys.

It was highly unusual for a case officer to know as little about a CIA covert operation as Harvey knew about the plot to poison Castro. The Harvey-Rosselli collaboration violated the basic rules of intelligence tradecraft.535 From the start, Harvey had misgivings about the CIA-Mafia assassination operation. He warned DDP Richard Helms there was a “very real possibility” the Mafia gamblers or Cuban exiles would use their knowledge of the assassination plots to blackmail the CIA. He later called the assassination operation “a huge hand grenade” waiting to explode.

Nonetheless, Harvey’s ambition caused him to put his misgivings aside, according to his biographer David Martin. He was dissatisfied with his position as head of the CIA’s super-secret Foreign Intelligence/Staff D. “He was not happy in Staff D, which did little more than provide technical assistance for eavesdropping operations requested by the National Security Agency (NSA),” Martin writes. “Harvey thought he deserved better. He longed to become head of the Soviet Bloc Division and made no secret about it. Perhaps if he performed well in the Cuban task force, his wish would not be denied a second time.”536 Harvey’s initial misgivings about the CIA-Mafia assassination operation were prescient. The operation would soon be compromised.

The initial compromise of the CIA-Mafia assassination operation was the result of a collision between the CIA covert operation and Attorney General Kennedy’s war against organized crime in the United States. Robert Kennedy turned up the heat on FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to investigate Mafia figures, including Sam Giancana and Johnny Rosselli. From the 1930s through the 1950s, Hoover had been famously indifferent to the Mafia.537

In May 1962, the FBI provided a report to the United States Attorney in Los Angeles on Rosselli’s recent activities. Rosselli had made three trips between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. He was also reported to have been in Miami during the first two weeks of April.538

FBI Special Agent Sam Papich warned Harvey the Bureau knew about his meetings with Rosselli in Miami. Papich, the FBI’s liaison with the CIA, said he would have to report Harvey’s contacts with Rosselli to FBI Director Hoover. Harvey promised to report future meetings with Rosselli to the FBI. But he divulged little about his business with Rosselli, saying he would continue to maintain an “open relationship” with Rosselli for operational reasons.539 Hoover’s curiosity was aroused by reports linking President Kennedy to Judith Campbell, who was also a paramour of Giancana and Rosselli. On March 22, 1962, in a private luncheon, Hoover informed Kennedy that the FBI knew about his sexual trysts with Judith Campbell in the White House. A FBI briefing memorandum for Hoover’s meeting with Kennedy stated, “Information has been developed that Judith E. Campbell… has been associated with prominent underworld figures Sam Giancana and John Rosselli of Los Angeles.” The FBI was monitoring Campbell, who was designated an “associate of hoodlums,” as part of its crackdown on organized crime.

The FBI discovered John Kennedy’s secret liaisons with Campbell when it reviewed her telephone records, which revealed phone calls to the White House. Campbell made seventy calls to President Kennedy’s secretary Evelyn Lincoln in 1961 and 1962. Kennedy family friend Frank Sinatra had introduced Judith Campbell to John Kennedy at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas in February 1960, when the Massachusetts senator was campaigning for president. According to an FBI memorandum, a Bureau informant overheard Sinatra say Campbell was “shacking up with John Kennedy in the East.” Hoover would use his knowledge of John Kennedy’s affair with Campbell as leverage against the Kennedy brothers, who wanted to replace him as FBI director.

In the meantime, the CIA was still anxious about the Las Vegas wiretap case. Attorney General Kennedy’s official inquiry had effectively put the case on hold in October 1961, as we have seen. But the Las Vegas sheriff breathed new life into the case when he pressed ahead with his investigation and requested assistance from the FBI in March 1962.540 CIA Director of Security Sheffield Edwards met with FBI Special Agent Papich to discuss the case. Colonel Edwards told Papich, “Any prosecution in the matter would endanger sensitive sources and methods used in a duly authorized intelligence project and would not be in the national interest.”

In April 1962, CIA General Counsel Lawrence Houston conferred with Assistant Attorney General Herbert J. Miller, head of the Criminal Division. After the meeting Houston told Edwards that Miller anticipated “no major difficulty in stopping action for the prosecution.” FBI Director Hoover agreed it would be unwise to go ahead with the Las Vegas wiretap case. He pointed out to Assistant Attorney General Miller that prosecution of the case “undoubtedly would lead to the exposure of most sensitive information relating to the abortive Cuban invasion in April 1961, and would result in most damaging embarrassment to U.S. Government.”541

On May 7, 1962, Edwards and Houston met with Attorney General Kennedy on the Las Vegas wiretap case. As Edwards put it, he and Houston briefed Kennedy “all the way,” tracing the origins of the case to the CIA-Mafia assassination operation. Kennedy responded angrily, “I trust that if you ever try to do business with organized crime again—with gangsters—you will let the Attorney General know before you do.” But Kennedy did not tell the CIA to cut off contact with the gangsters or terminate the CIA-Mafia assassination operation. At the end of the meeting, Kennedy informed Edwards and Houston the Department of Justice would not proceed with the Las Vegas wiretap case. It was in the mutual interest of the CIA and the Kennedy brothers to keep the CIA-Mafia collaboration secret.

Kennedy’s flash of anger did not stem from his opposition to the CIA-Mafia plotting to assassinate Castro, however. He was upset because the wiretap case interfered with the Justice Department’s prosecution of Giancana, according to a memorandum by Hoover. “The Attorney General stated that he felt notwithstanding the obstacle now in the path of prosecution of Giancana, we should still keep after him,” Hoover wrote in a memorandum after meeting with Kennedy. “He stated of course it would be very difficult to initiate any prosecution against him because Giancana could immediately bring out the fact that the United States Government had approached him to arrange for the assassination of Castro.” Subterfuge and duplicity were the order of the day in the meeting between Kennedy and the CIA men.

For his part, Edwards spun a web of deception for Robert Kennedy about the current status of the CIA-Mafia collaboration. He told the attorney that the assassination operation had been terminated, and even agreed to alert Kennedy to CIA-Mafia plotting if it were to occur in the future. But the CIA-Mafia assassination operation had not been shut down; the Office of Security had merely turned over the covert operation to William Harvey. Jim O’Connell introduced Harvey to Rosselli at a meeting at the Savoy Plaza Hotel in New York in April 1962.

CIA Inspector General Earman took note of the deception. “In fact, however, at the time of the May 7, 1962 briefing of the Attorney General on ‘Gambling Syndicate Phase One,’ Phase Two under William Harvey was already under way,” Earman wrote. “When the Attorney General was briefed on May 7, Edwards knew that Harvey had been introduced to Rosselli.”542

The CIA-Mafia assassination collaboration was a compartmented covert operation. From time to time, however, Kennedy Administration officials outside the intelligence loop, would suggest the assassination option. Officials like Mongoose Chief of Operations Edward Lansdale.

Lansdale proposed “exploiting the potential of the underworld in Cuban cities to harass and bleed the Communist control apparatus” in a December 7, 1961 memorandum to several members of the Special Group (Augmented). “This effort may, on a very sensitive basis, enlist the assistance of American links to the Cuban underworld. While this would be a CIA project, close cooperation of the FBI is imperative.” Lansdale, who had collaborated with the Binh Xuyen criminal underworld when he was in Vietnam on assignment for the CIA in the mid-1950s, believed that the United States was running out of options in Cuba.

A few weeks later he discussed using Mafia gamblers to gather intelligence in Cuba with FBI Section Chief Sterling B. Donahoe. “[T]hought was being given to utilizing gambling interests in the U.S. to establish contact with gambling elements in Cuba to acquire intelligence inside Cuba.” Donahoe wrote, “I pointed out there would be serious pitfalls in such a scheme since utilization of the U.S. gambling element would put them in the precarious position of being obligated to such individuals. Sooner or later they would be faced with a gambler who was in trouble with the law and who would want to reveal his cooperation with the U.S. as a mitigating factor.”543

On August 10, 1962, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s made an off-the-cuff remark about Castro’s assassination in the Special Group (Augmented). This caused an awkward moment for Harvey, who had not informed the group about his highly compartmented assassination operation.544 He moved immediately to shut off the discussion.

McCone telephoned Lansdale and told him that assassination could never be condoned. “I intend to have it expunged from the record,” he said referring to Lansdale’s memorandum on the August 10 meeting. At the same time, McCone, a recent convert to Roman Catholicism, tried to insulate himself from the CIA-Mafia assassination operation, telling McNamara, “I could get excommunicated for something like this.”

Helms later insisted that McCone knew about the CIA-Mafia assassination plotting. “He was involved up to his scuppers just the way everyone else was,” Helms stated in testimony to the Church Committee. “He had access to Harvey and everybody else just the way I had and he had regular access to the Attorney General.”545

When Harvey read Lansdale’s memorandum on tasks assigned at the August 10 Special Group (Augmented) meeting and saw the phrase “Mr. Harvey: Intelligence, Political (including liquidation of leaders),” he flew into a rage. Harvey told Lansdale in no uncertain terms that nothing about Castro’s assassination should ever be put in writing. As we have seen, Harvey had a minimalist philosophy: “Kill the person, bury the body, tell no one.”546

Even before the assassination controversy erupted in the Special Group (Augmented), Harvey confided little to Lansdale about Cuba. Lansdale later said, “Harvey seldom really talked to me.” Lansdale added, “He would never initiate conversations. It was very hard to get information from him…. I’d ask him for a full explanation and I’d get one sentence back.” George McManus, Richard Helms’ “eyes and ears” on Cuba, also found Harvey incommunicative. According to a CIA report, “McManus understood that part of his job was to keep track of Harvey, who was ‘quite an independent fellow,’ and not ‘extremely forthcoming with information.’”

Harvey had a strong dislike for government bureaucracy. He bristled at the Special Group (Augmented)’s requirement that he submit detailed operational plans in advance for approval, and complained bitterly that the approval process was restrictive and stifling.547 As Harvey, Lansdale, and McNamara squabbled over open discussions of Castro’s assassination, the CIA geared up for Mongoose.

In Miami, there was a flurry of activity as the CIA station installed the “plumbing,” or infrastructure, for Operation Mongoose. JMWAVE operated under the cover of Zenith Technical Enterprises on a former U.S. Navy base for blimps at Richmond Field, which was under the jurisdiction of the University of Miami. The JMWAVE campus included seven buildings, three warehouses, and three ammunition dumps. Investigative reporters Taylor Branch and George Crile wrote, “In addition to Zenith, the Agency operated another fifty-four dummy corporations—boat shops, real-estate firms, detective agencies, travel companies, gun shops—as proprietary fronts to give cover employment for the case officers and agents outside Zenith headquarters.”

Spymaster Richard Helms described the scale of Operation Mongoose in his posthumously published memoir. “Some 600 CIA staff employees and between 4,000 and 5,000 contract personnel were involved,” Helms wrote. “At one point, the secret CIA navy was the third largest in the area. Yachts, fishing craft, speedboats, and supply vessels were modified for our purposes.”548

Paramilitary (PM) officers, assigned to the CIA’s Special Operations Division (SOD), worked closely with Cuban exile commandos. The SOD organized the infiltration of Cuban agents and delivery of arms and ammunition to counterrevolutionaries in Cuba. PM officers also supervised the planning and execution of hit-and-run raids in Cuba by CIA-backed Cuban exile action groups. Grayston Lynch and William “Rip” Robertson, two of JMWAVE’s dozen or so PM specialists, had already gained notoriety as covert warriors willing to push the envelope. Lynch and Robertson, Army officers on loan to the CIA, went ashore with Brigade 2506 at the Bay of Pigs, in defiance of President Kennedy’s orders barring U.S. personnel from taking part in the amphibious landing.

After the Bay of Pigs, Lynch and Robertson organized commando units in Florida under the command of Roberto San Román and Miguel Orozco. San Román was the brother of Pepe San Román, commander of Brigade 2506. Orozco, a Batistiano, had fought against the July 26th Movement in the Sierra Maestra as a lieutenant in the Cuban army. After the triumph of the Cuban revolution, Orozco fled into exile where he joined Brigade 2506. The Cuban exile commandos and their PM trainers were frustrated by White House priorities for Mongoose, which stressed the infiltration of Cuban agents and arms caching over sabotage operations.

Deputy Under Secretary of State U. Alexis Johnson, a member of the Special Group (Augmented), recalled, “Though he [President Kennedy] stood strongly behind Mongoose and encouraged Lansdale to use his ingenuity, when it came down to approving specific covert actions that had fairly high ‘noise’ levels, he would often draw back.”

Miguel Orozco said, “When we didn’t go, Rip would feel sick and get very mad.” Robertson liked “to crank up” his Cuban commandos for missions. He once offered Orozco a reward if he returned with the ear of a Cuban. When Orozco came back from a mission with two ears, Robertson gave him $100. Orozco recalled the pace of hit-and-run attacks picked up in summer 1962. “We would go on missions to Cuba almost every week.”549 But the Mongoose commando operations and U.S. military exercises related to Cuba did not go unnoticed in the Soviet Union.

In Moscow, Chairman Nikita Khrushchev received fragmentary intelligence reports on Operation Mongoose. Khrushchev’s son Sergei writes, “Information came through secret channels about President Kennedy’s adoption of a wide-ranging plan, ‘Mongoose,’ to destabilize the situation in Cuba.” The younger Khrushchev adds, “Every day the Cubans expected a new invasion, this time not just by émigrés but by the U.S. Army.”550

The KGB was also picking up intelligence about large-scale U.S. military exercises rehearsing an invasion of Cuba. KGB Chief Vladimir Semichastny wrote in a February 21, 1962, report, “Military specialists of the USA had revised an operational plan against Cuba, which according to the information, is supported by President Kennedy.” The new KGB chief stated U.S. Army and Navy personnel would “be supported by military air assets based in Florida and Texas.”

In Washington, the Navy Commander-in-Chief, Atlantic (CINCLANT) issued planning directives for U.S. operational plans (OPLANs) for an invasion of Cuba in a February 14, 1962 telegram. OPLANs 314-61 and 316-61, joint Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps operations, were detailed plans for an amphibious landing of ground forces supplemented by air strikes. OPLAN 316-62 included a ground combat force of 150,000 troops. The Pentagon estimated that it would take ten days of heavy combat and 18,500 U.S. casualties to drive the Cuban revolution from power with an occupation of the island to follow.551

In spring 1962, the United States conducted military exercises to test the readiness of its Cuba OPLANs with a series of military maneuvers in the Atlantic Ocean from North Carolina to the Caribbean Sea. Historian James Hershberg writes that Lantiphibex 1-62 included “40,000 marines and navy personnel and hundreds of ships and aircraft, and culminated in the dramatic, beach-storming landing of a 10,000 man attack force on the tiny island of Vieques off Puerto Rico.” In May 1962, there were two other multi-service exercises. “Quick Kick” involved 40,000 military personnel in an exercise including air strikes and an amphibious Marine Corps assault of an island. “Whip Lash” was a CINCLANT dress rehearsal for an invasion of Cuba.552

In the meantime, Castro dramatically declared his Marxist credentials in a speech in Havana on December 1, 1961. “I am a Marxist-Leninist, and I shall be until the last days of my life,” Castro asserted. He had first declared that the Cuba revolution was socialist in April 1961.

“I believe absolutely in Marxism,” Castro stated. “Did I understand it [at the time of the assault on the Moncada Barracks] as I understand it today after ten years of struggle? No, I didn’t understand it then as I understand it today.”

National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) 85-62 assessed the political significance of Castro’s speech. “It seems established that he did not make his revolution as a disciplined Communist.” But the estimate also called Castro’s speech an effort to associate the Cuban revolution more closely with the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc.“From expediency, and probably from conviction as well, he has identified himself with the Communists and evidently now wished to be regarded as fully committed to their cause,” the March 1962 estimate stated. “He probably hoped that his speech would facilitate Cuba’s acceptance into the ‘socialist camp,’ thereby increasing the Soviet strategic commitment to Cuba.”

NIE 85-62 also noted the radical changes in the Cuban economy since 1959. “The past year has witnessed the increasing open identification of the Castro regime with communism and the Soviet Bloc,” the report stated, pointing out the increasing role of the state in the Cuban economy. “It monopolizes banking, foreign trade, wholesale trade, transportation, communications, and utilities, and constitutes a substantial part of retail trade. State operated enterprises account for 90 percent of the value of the gross industrial product. The state directly controls 40 percent of all farmland.”

Meanwhile, Castro welcomed a Soviet delegation to Cuba in June 1962. In meetings with the Soviets, he stressed the importance of a formal Cuba-USSR defense treaty. Castro asserted, “If the United States knows that an invasion of Cuba would imply war with the Soviet Union, then, in my view, that would be the best way to prevent an invasion of Cuba.”553 Khrushchev dispatched a delegation to Cuba because he was worried that the United States would intervene militarily to roll back the revolution. Khrushchev’s foreign-policy aide Oleg Troyanovsky remembers, “Khrushchev constantly feared that the United States would compel the Soviet Union and its allies to retreat in some region of the world.” Troyanovsky notes, “Not without reason did he believe he would be held responsible for that.”

As Khrushchev turned over in his mind what to do about Cuba, he was haunted by Joseph Stalin’s deathbed prediction. Troyanovsky writes, “In conversation he sometimes recalled the words supposedly spoken by Stalin not long before his death: ‘When I am not around, they [the West] will strangle you like kittens.’” Stalin did not consider any of his colleagues a worthy successor.554 At the same time, however, the Kremlin was unnerved by Castro’s “I am a Marxist-Leninist” speech. KGB Chief Semichastny believed that Castro was moving too quickly toward socialism. In an April 1962 memorandum, Semichastny faulted Castro for “intensifying the class struggle in Cuba” without “sufficient preparation of the laboring classes.”

Khrushchev worried that Castro’s speech would deepen Washington’s antagonism toward the Cuban revolution. Khrushchev told Castro in 1963, “[N]o one thought that when you won and opted for the course of building socialism America would tolerate you.”555 While Castro and Khrushchev braced themselves against U.S. intervention in Cuba, the Kennedy Administration evaluated the progress of Mongoose.

Over dinner on July 18, Attorney General Kennedy and DCI McCone assessed the disappointing progress of Operation Mongoose. McCone wrote, “AG expressing the opinion that the last six months’ effort had been worthwhile inasmuch as we had gained a very substantial amount of intelligence which was lacking, but that the effort was disappointing inasmuch as the program had not advanced to the point we had hoped.”

The same day, Department of State Deputy Director of the Office of Caribbean and Mexican Affairs Robert Hurwitch raised questions about U.S. military intervention in the revolt phase of Operation Mongoose. As he wrote to Assistant Secretary of State for Interamerican Affairs Edwin Martin, “There is clearly a gap between the present CIA estimate of what we can accomplish and what we feel should be the minimum condition in Cuba where we might consider using U.S. military force.”

Task Force W Chief William Harvey offered a watered-down definition of “revolt” at a meeting on Mongoose in July. According to the Mongoose guidelines, a popular revolt would be the trigger for U.S. military intervention in Cuba. Hurwitch pointed out that Harvey had given up on organizing an actual popular revolt in Cuba in favor of a CIA orchestrated attack. “By revolt… he meant an assault upon a number of Cuban government installations…” Hurwitch added, “He did not think that such assaults could be organized in a fashion where anti-Castro forces held territory for any length of time or could overthrow the regime without outside military assistance.”

A week later Lansdale conceded that Mongoose had failed to organize a movement capable of instigating a popular uprising in Cuba. “The CIA plan has been to set about doing this through introducing small teams into the Cuban countryside, ‘over the beach’ from boats,” Lansdale wrote. “Each team is tasked first to stay alive, while getting established in an area. Once able to live in an area, it then starts a cautious survey of potential recruits for a resistance group. Names of such recruits are sent to CIA for checking.”

By the end of July, Lansdale reported that only one of eleven action teams had been able to mobilize “a sizable guerrilla group.” He predicted there would be “viable teams” in eleven target areas by October. Under his original timeline, popular counterrevolutionary movements were to be organized in twenty localities by July. Ever the optimist, Lansdale insisted that it was too soon to judge the potential for counterrevolution in Cuba. He explained, “Cubans sent to risk their lives on missions inside Cuba… are unable to recruit freedom fighters aggressively by the time-proven method of starting an active resistance and thus attracting recruits; U.S. guidelines to keep this short of revolt have made the intention behind the operation suspect to local Cubans.” He continued, “Therefore, we have been unable to surface the Cuban resistance potential to the point where we can measure it realistically.”

The CIA was more pessimistic about the potential for popular revolt in Cuba. Hurwitch reported in a July 26, 1962, memorandum to Assistant Secretary Martin, “CIA believes that if assurances were given of U.S. intervention, a revolt could be mounted by late 1963, but would be destroyed within a matter of a few days if it is not supported by substantial military force.”556 On August 10, the Special Group (Augmented) met for its midcourse evaluation of Mongoose, to decide whether to authorize the transition to Course B, the phase designed to inspire open revolt. The group decided not to.

Maxwell Taylor reported the Special Group (Augmented)’s assessment of Mongoose to President Kennedy. “[I]n spite of some progress in intelligence collection, the Special Group (Augmented) does not feel that the information obtained has been adequate to assess accurately the internal conditions,” Taylor wrote in an August 17 memorandum. “[F]rom what we know we perceive no likelihood of an overthrow of the government by internal means and without the direct use of U.S. force.” Kennedy was unhappy with Mongoose’s lack of progress, but he was determined to press ahead. Kennedy promulgated National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM)-181, which stated, “The lines of activity projected for Operation Plan B-plus should be developed with all possible speed.”

Lansdale submitted a new plan, “Alternative Course B,” which stressed sabotage operations but stopped short of inciting revolt. Instead, it would use “a pool of twenty to fifty” well-trained commandos to target “major Cuban industries and public utilities with priority attention being given to transportation, communications, power plants, and utilities.” On August 16, the Special Group (Augmented) approved Alternative Course B.

McCone was upset, however, by the group’s failure to resolve its differences. McCone wrote, “The meeting was unsatisfactory, lacked both purpose and direction and left me with the feeling that very considerable reservation exists as to just where we are going with Operation Mongoose.” In a word, Operation Mongoose was a failure. As Special Assistant to the President Arthur Schlesinger later wrote, the “political base” required to organize a popular revolt in Cuba “did not exist.”557

But the Kennedy brothers, desperate for success in Cuba, were not yet willing to pull the plug on Mongoose. Meanwhile, a Cuban exile action group’s attack on a beachfront hotel and a theater in a Havana suburb raised the level of tension between Havana and Washington.

On August 24, 1962, the CIA-backed Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE) (Revolutionary Student Directorate) carried out a high-publicity commando attack on beachfront properties in the Havana suburb of Miramar. The Sierra Maestra Hotel and nearby Blanquita Theater were shelled by a 20-millimeter cannon mounted on a small, speedy boat 200 yards offshore. The Associated Press reported, “Damage was slight, but near-panic swept the hotel as sleeping guests were shaken out of bed by the midnight bombardment.” The DRE boasted the sea-borne raid the was “most dramatic” anti-Castro operation since the Bay of Pigs.

DRE gunner José Basulto was jubilant. “I opened up on the hotel dining room where Castro was supposed to be holding the meeting with the Russians,” he told the New York Times. “It was really something. I could see the shells break into the hotel windows, and then all the lights went out.” DRE official José Antonio Lanuza announced the shelling during a live interview on Barry Gray’s popular WABC radio talk show in New York on August 24. Lanuza was booked on the show by the Lem Jones public relations agency, the same agency CIA propaganda specialist David Atlee Phillips used to issue statements in the name of the Frente Revolucionario Democrático during the Bay of Pigs landing. Lem Jones also did public relations work for José Miró Cardona, head of the Consejo Revolucionario Cubano.

A DRE press statement declared the purpose of the raid on Miramar was to “denounce the arrival of increasingly large contingents of Russian troops to our island.” Soviet military personnel and weapons began to arrive in Cuba in July 1962. The DRE statement also took aim at the Kennedy Administration, saying “The presence of Russian ships in Cuba” called into question “the promises of President Kennedy that Cuba would never be abandoned.” The statement continued, “We will not tolerate peaceful coexistence…. We are not concerned with interested groups or long-range tactics of large powers. We are concerned only that over the tombs of Martí and Maceo they do not raise the soiled banners of the hammer and sickle.”

According to journalists Taylor Branch and George Crile, the weapons for the beachfront attack, “a recoilless rifle, two 50-caliber machine guns, and a 20-millimeter cannon, [were] all purchased from a Mafia gun dealer in Miami.”558 Attorney General Robert Kennedy was furious about the DRE raid in Miramar. An August 25 cable from the CIA station in Miami to Agency headquarters reported that Kennedy telephoned the FBI to “learn what points of law were violated and what legal action could be taken against the participants in this caper.”

The Department of State criticized the DRE’s commando raid as “a spur-of-the-moment raid… [that] does not weaken the Communist apparatus.” Foggy Bottom added, “While we appreciate the strong feelings of this free student group and their hostility to this most oppressive regime, we cannot approve of the use of United States territory as a base for such action.”559 The CIA had funded the DRE, code-named AMSPELL, since its members migrated into exile in the United States in 1960. In August 1962, the DRE was receiving a $51,000 monthly subsidy from the CIA. DRE teams, trained by the CIA, gathered intelligence and carried out paramilitary raids in Cuba. The CIA also used DRE propaganda assets to counter the political appeal of the Cuban revolution at student conferences in Latin America.

AMSPELL had well-placed backers in the Agency, including DDP Helms and David Phillips, who ran covert propaganda operations against Cuba from the CIA station in Mexico City in 1962–1963. The CIA denied that it had approved the DRE attack in Miramar or had advance knowledge of it. An August 1962 CIA memorandum stated that the DRE “is not fully responsive to CIA direction.” “The DRE is perhaps the most militant and most deeply motivated of all the Cuban exile groups,” the CIA memorandum continued. “For this reason it is also prone to undertake independent operations without any warning to or permission from CIA. The raid on Havana on August 24, 1962 was not the first instance of DRE independent action.”560

A memorandum by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover reported that Agrupación Montecristi (Montecristi Group) members, including its chief of operations Leslie Nobregas, also participated in the shelling of Miramar. Two of the boats used in the raid were connected to other CIA-sponsored operations against Cuba.561

According to the FBI, the CIA funneled money to Agrupación Montecristi (AM) through the Consejo Revolucionario Cubano (Cuban Revolutionary Council). The CIA also had an operational interest in Leslie Nobregas, a vice president and copilot for Cubana Airlines, who had defected to the United States after hijacking a Cuban airliner in July 1960. The FBI reported, “Nobregas at gunpoint forced the pilot of a Cubana aircraft to fly to Miami from its intended course of Madrid, Spain to Havana, Cuba.”

The FBI report stated, “Since June 1961, AM has been operating a 45-foot prowler motorboat and a 78-foot PT boat between the United States and Cuba, delivering arms to the Cuban underground and furnishing transportation for Cubans to infiltrate Cuba.” The report added, “Leslie Nobregas… works under the control of CIA.”562 Nobregas also had ties to the Mafia gamblers through his brother George, who practiced law with Rafael García Bongo in Havana in 1959. Among George Nobregas and García Bongo’s clients was Santo Trafficante. An FBI report noted that George Nobregas “represented [Trafficante] in his fight against deportation from Cuba.”563

Meanwhile, CIA officer David Phillips may have had a hand in the DRE’s provocative attack in Miramar. Author Jefferson Morley asserts, “Phillips… made the whole incident possible.” Morley outlines Phillips’s use of the DRE in highly compartmented propaganda operations against Cuba in the summer of 1962. From Mexico City, Phillips visited Miami, where the DRE was based, and communicated regularly with Bill Kent and Ross Crozier, CIA case officers for the DRE.564

The well-publicized shelling of Miramar ratcheted up the tension in the Caribbean. The escalating tempo of Operation Mongoose and the U.S. military exercises, rehearsing an invasion of Cuba, had already frayed nerves on the island. Soviet military personnel and weapons began to arrive in Cuba, as Havana and Moscow drew closer in a secret military pact to deter expected U.S. intervention.

High-altitude U-2 spy planes detected early manifestations of Nikita Khrushchev’s reinvigorated commitment to defend the Cuban revolution. But U.S. intelligence analysts did not know how to interpret the evidence the U-2s gathered. In July and August, U-2s monitored an unprecedented number of Soviet merchant ships sailing toward Cuba. From 70,000 feet, U-2s photographed vessels as they unloaded mysterious military cargoes in Cuba.

As he puzzled over the U-2 intelligence “take,” DCI John McCone felt a deep unease. He suspected the military deliveries were part of an ominous new development in Cuba, but he lacked evidence to prove it. On August 22, a CIA Current Intelligence Memorandum assessed the Soviet deliveries to Cuba: “Intelligence on recent Soviet military assistance to Cuba indicates that an unusually large number of Soviet ships have delivered military cargoes to Cuba since late July and that some form of military construction is underway at several locations in Cuba by Soviet Bloc personnel who arrived on some of these ships and are utilizing material delivered by the vessels.”

McCone was also briefed on the Soviet military shipments to Cuba by Philippe L. Thyraud de Vosjoli of the Service de Documentación Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (SDECE), the French intelligence service. In the 1950s, De Vosjoli had served in Washington under diplomatic cover as he monitored Soviet activities in the Caribbean and Central America “in collaboration” with U.S. intelligence.565 On August 29, McCone’s suspicion was reinforced by the findings of the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) in Washington. CIA photo interpreters, scrutinizing photographs taken by U-2 spy cameras, identified defensive short-range surface-to-air missiles (SAM) sites under construction on Cuba’s north coast.

McCone had a hunch that the SAMs would be used to shield vulnerable Soviet missiles while they were installed in Cuba. He worried that the United States would face a grim new geopolitical reality when Soviet missiles in Cuba, capable of hitting targets in North America, were operational. Cold War confrontations with the USSR would become more risky. McCone later asserted, “If I were Khrushchev, I’d put offensive missiles in Cuba.” He added, “Then I’d bang my shoe on the desk and say to the United States, ‘How do you like looking down the end of a gun barrel for a change? Now, let’s talk about Berlin and any other subject that I choose, including all of your overseas bases.’”

According to National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, McCone believed that Soviet missiles in Cuba would compromise U.S. strategic superiority. “McCone… was a believer in nuclear superiority and in the high cost of losing it,” Bundy later wrote. “He had been [Assistant] Secretary of the Air Force and chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission… and in these roles he had pressed for the expansion of strategic forces and the increased production of nuclear weapons. He did not believe in stopping the arms race, but in winning it, and he worried continuously about losing it.”

Fresh in McCone’s mind was the recent U.S. deployment of intermediate-range Jupiter missiles on the periphery of the USSR to shore up U.S. strategic nuclear capacity in the aftermath of Sputnik. Between 1961 and 1962, forty-five Jupiter missiles were deployed to Italy and Turkey, despite Chairman Nikita Khrushchev’s bitter protests. The United States constructed SAM sites to defend vulnerable Jupiter missiles as they were installed in Italy and Turkey.

When McCone sounded the alarm about offensive Soviet missiles in Cuba, he was a minority of one. An in-house CIA history stated, “He stood absolutely alone,” pointing out, “The experts unanimously and adamantly agreed that this was beyond the pale of possibility.”566 In contrast, the acting head of the CIA’s Board of National Estimates, Abbot Smith and William Harvey believed the Soviet Union’s “chief motive” in Cuba “to deter an anticipated U.S. military intervention against Cuba.”

Smith and Harvey wrote in an August 17 memorandum, “The Soviets regard Castro’s revolution, and his subsequent alignment with the Communists, as one of the most telling blows to the prestige of the U.S. which has occurred in the entire postwar period. In their eyes, it is a compelling demonstration of a major thesis they are urging upon the underdeveloped peoples everywhere: that the ‘colonial’ peoples can throw off the ‘imperialist yoke’ and, with the indispensable help of the USSR, successfully maintain independence from their former masters.”

In the meantime, Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (DDCI) Marshall Carter cabled McCone, in France on his honeymoon, to inform him that a Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE) on the “Military Buildup in Cuba” would be published on September 19. The SNIE concluded that the Soviet Union would not risk a Cold War confrontation by deploying missiles to Cuba capable of striking targets in the United States. “The USSR could derive considerable military advantage from the establishment of Soviet medium and intermediate range ballistic missiles in Cuba, or from the establishment of a Soviet submarine base there.” The estimate added, “Either development… would be incompatible with Soviet practice to date and with Soviet policy as we presently estimate it. It would indicate a far greater willingness to increase the level of risk in U.S.-Soviet relations than the Soviet Union has displayed thus far…”567

To learn more about the SAM sites in Cuba, McCone pressed for new U-2 flights over the island. But President Kennedy, National Security Adviser Bundy, and Secretary of State Rusk opposed more surveillance flights. The CIA’s history of the U-2 states, “Within the Administration, concern mounted about the U-2’s vulnerability to SAMs in Cuba and the possibility that a loss could cause a major diplomatic crisis.” On September 9, a U-2 had been shot down over the People’s Republic of China. The White House did not want to risk the downing of a U-2 in Cuba.

At the same time, however, President Kennedy was determined to keep secret the U-2 evidence of SAM site construction in Cuba. He telephoned DDCI Carter and told him to restrict access to the U-2 evidence of SAM sites in Cuba. Carter wrote in a September 1962 memorandum, “The President said to put it back in the box and nail it tight.” CIA notes of a meeting, in the White House at which new U-2 flights over Cuba were discussed, reveal the political sensitivity of the subject. The CIA note-taker observed that the participants in the meeting “must all have been acutely aware that Cuba was potentially the campaign issue that could most seriously damage the administration in the election campaign then beginning.”568 In spite of President Kennedy’s determination to keep information about the SAMs in Cuba “in the box,” the Soviet military deliveries to Cuba sparked controversy on Capitol Hill.

News reports of Soviet arms and personnel arriving in Cuba generated a new round of political debate about the Kennedy Administration’s policy in Cuba. In August, Senator Kenneth Keating, a Republican from New York, criticized the Administration for its “do nothing” policy in Cuba. Keating asserted he had been “reliably informed” there were 1,200 Soviet army “troops” in Cuba. He called Cuba “a smoking hand grenade in the heart of the Western Hemisphere.” Between August and mid-October, Keating gave twenty speeches on Cuba. Much of the intelligence Keating used in his speeches came from the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil, according to a CIA memorandum.569

Two Republican members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senators Homer Capehart of Indiana and Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin, joined Keating in his criticism of U.S. policy in Cuba. Capehart advocated U.S. military intervention in Cuba. He asserted, “The United States has every right to land troops, take possession of Havana and occupy the country,” unless the Soviet military personnel were withdrawn from Cuba. Wiley pressed for the creation of an Interamerican “peace fleet” to surround Cuba and turn back Soviet shipping headed for the island.570

On September 4, President Kennedy responded to his Republican critics. He announced U.S. intelligence had confirmed that the USSR had installed “anti-aircraft defense missiles” with a range of twenty-five miles in Cuba. He said that there was no evidence, however, of offensive Soviet missiles or organized Soviet combat units in Cuba. He acknowledged that there were 3,500 Soviet army personnel in Cuba, whose mission appeared to be teaching Cubans how to use recently delivered military equipment.571

At a news conference on September 13, Kennedy asserted that U.S. military intervention in Cuba was not “required or justified.” He said, “It is regrettable that loose talk about such action in this country might serve to give a thin color of legitimacy to the Communist pretense that such a threat exists.”

Then Kennedy drew a line in the sand on offensive Soviet missiles in Cuba. “I have indicated that if Cuba should possess a capacity to carry out offensive actions against the United States, the United States would act,” Kennedy asserted. “I’ve also indicated that the United States would not permit Cuba to export its power by force in the hemisphere.”572 National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy had a memorandum prepared for Kennedy on the military and political implications of Soviet missiles in Cuba on August 31.

“Surface-to-surface missiles with nuclear warheads would constitute a very significant military threat to the continental U.S.,” Bundy wrote. “Even short range missiles would be able to reach important population centers and military installations, and missiles of longer range would give the Soviets a capability of attacking substantial numbers of our most important military installations.” Bundy noted that the failure of the Kennedy Administration to respond effectively to the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba would send a negative message to Latin America. He warned, “It would be judged that Castro is here to stay.”573