CHAPTER 18:
KENNEDY AT A CROSSROADS IN CUBA IN NOVEMBER 1963

On November 18, 1963, President John Kennedy delivered a speech to the Inter-American Press Association meeting at the Americana Hotel in Miami Beach on Cuba. The audience listened politely, but unmoved, to the first two-thirds of the speech, in which Kennedy tried to put the best possible face on the Alliance for Progress and its two-and-a-half years of lackluster achievements.

Under the Alliance, the United States had provided $2.3 billion for Latin American economic development. Kennedy conceded that only ten of nineteen nations in Latin America had met or exceeded the Alliance’s goal of 2.5 percent economic growth. He also noted that “unnecessary obstacles” stood in the way of social and economic reforms, referring to ruling oligarchies and military juntas in the Americas. But when Kennedy took a hard line on Cuba, the crowd went wild. The Miami Herald reported, “The President was interrupted by applause three times during the 25-minute speech—each time he spoke of the ultimate downfall of Fidel Castro.”

Kennedy denounced Cuba’s alliance with the Soviet Union. “A small band of conspirators has stripped the Cuban people of their freedom and handed over the independence and sovereignty of the Cuban nation to forces beyond the hemisphere,” he said. Referring to Cuba’s alignment with the Soviet Union, he stated, “As long as this is true, nothing is possible. Without it, everything is possible.”724

Two different messages were embedded in the speech, according to those who drafted parts of it. White House aides Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and Theodore Sorensen, both involved in preparing Kennedy’s Miami speech, said it was designed as a diplomatic “signal” to Fidel Castro. Sorensen later explained, “President Kennedy… was trying to make it clear in that speech that it was only Cuba’s role as an agent of the Soviet Union in the Western Hemisphere that blocked a normalization of relations…”725

But another paragraph in the speech was drafted by the CIA as a signal of support to Rolando Cubela, a Cuban government official with whom the CIA was conspiring to assassinate Fidel Castro. Special Affairs Staff (SAS) Chief Desmond FitzGerald referred to the critical wording in a December 9, 1963 memorandum to Director of Central Intelligence John McCone: “For once Cuban sovereignty has been restored we will extend the hand of friendship and assistance to a Cuba whose political and economic institutions have been shaped by the will of the Cuban people.”

Cubela told his CIA case officer Nestor Sanchez that he was “pleased” by Kennedy’s speech. Sanchez had told Cubela that “James Clark,” an alias used by FitzGerald, had “helped prepare” Kennedy’s speech. The CIA concluded, “Within Cuba, we believe that President Kennedy’s statement probably contributed significantly to providing political assurances to the relatively small number of potential coupsters to whom these remarks are addressed.”726 Secret exploratory talks between the United States and Cuba were already underway before Kennedy spoke in Miami Beach.

For months, President Kennedy, National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, and other administration officials had been discussing the possibility of negotiations with Castro to explore the easing of tension between the United States and Cuba.

National Security Council (NSC) staff member Gordon Chase advocated a flexible approach to talks with Cuba. Chase argued in a March 4, 1963 memorandum that the United States should not make “the breaking of” ties between Havana and Moscow “a nonnegotiable point.” He added, “We don’t want to present Castro with a condition that he obviously cannot fulfill. We should start thinking along more flexible lines.” In an April 11 memorandum to Bundy, he advocated taking a “sweet approach” to Cuba. Chase was an aide to Bundy.

Chase wrote, “If the American people could be shown that the offensive missile threat and the subversive threat are under control, that the Russian presence in Cuba is reduced and that Castro is much more a nationalist than a communist, the selling job necessary for a careful quiet policy turnaround may not be impossible.”

In May, CIA Deputy Director for Plans (DDP) Richard Helms told DCI McCone that Castro was using an interview with ABC News correspondent Lisa Howard to signal his willingness to negotiate. “It appears that Fidel Castro is looking for a way to reach a rapprochement with the United States,” Helms wrote in a May 1, 1963 memorandum to McCone. In the upper right margin of the memorandum are the handwritten notations “Bundy” and “Psaw” (President saw).727

On September 20, U.S. diplomat William Attwood met with Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Attwood told Kennedy about his recent meeting with Carlos Lechuga, Cuba’s ambassador to the United Nations, in Lisa Howard’s Park Avenue apartment in New York. Lechuga told Attwood that Castro was “in a mood to talk.”

Howard wrote, “It is my guess that he [Castro] is… prepared to make substantial concessions.” She added, “[I]n our conversations he made it quite clear that he was ready to discuss: the Soviet personnel and military hardware on Cuban soil; compensation for expropriated American lands and investments; the question of Cuba as a base for Communist subversion throughout the hemisphere.”

Meanwhile, Robert Kennedy told Attwood that he should respond favorably to Lechuga’s invitation to talk further, but he should not travel to Cuba. Lisa Howard telephoned Castro’s personal aide Major René Vallejo. Attwood recalled, “She wanted to make certain, through Vallejo, that Castro knew there was a U.S. official available if he wanted to talk.” Attwood added, “He [Vallejo] said Castro would very much like to talk to the U.S. official any time and appreciated the importance of discretion to all concerned.”728

On November 5, Bundy briefed the Standing Group on Attwood’s exploratory discussions. Bundy recommended that Attwood continue his talks with Cuba, saying, “To hear what Castro has to say and to know on what basis he might wish to negotiate would be of use to the U.S.”729 Bundy met with Attwood on November 12. “I told him that the President hoped he would get in touch with Vallejo,” Bundy wrote in a memorandum. He laid out the preconditions for negotiations. Cuba must reduce its ties with the Soviet Union and end its “campaign of subversion” in Latin America. “Without an indication of readiness to move in these directions, it is hard for us to see what would be accomplished by a visit to Cuba.”

On November 18, Attwood went back to Howard’s apartment. Howard telephoned Vallejo and passed the phone to Attwood. Vallejo invited Attwood to Cuba. Attwood said it was necessary first to agree on an agenda. Vallejo said “we” (Vallejo and Castro) would send a proposed “agenda” to Lechuga. Attwood met again with Bundy on November 19. “He [Bundy] said once an agenda had been agreed upon, the President would want to see me and decide what to say to Castro,” Attwood wrote. “He [Bundy] said the President would be making a brief trip to Dallas but otherwise planned to be in Washington.”730 As the Kennedy Administration explored the possibility of negotiations with Cuba, the CIA resumed active plotting to assassinate Castro.

CIA collaborator Rolando Cubela had long wanted to kill Castro. He first expressed this desire, to a few close associates, in March 1959, before he was appointed military attaché at the Cuban Embassy in Spain. When he returned to Cuba from Madrid, Cubela formulated a plan to overthrow the revolution that included sabotage operations and the assassination of Castro.

Carlos Tepedino González, a Havana jeweler and friend of Cubela, set up a meeting between Cubela and the CIA. Cubela pitched his plan to a CIA officer in a two-hour meeting at the Hilton Hotel in Mexico City in March 1961. Tepedino, a CIA asset since 1957, whose cryptonym was AMWHIP, was a financial and political backer of the Directorio Revolucionario of which Cubela had been a leader. He used his jewelry business and business travel abroad as cover for his role as a “cut-out” between Cubela and the Agency.

According to CIA Inspector General Earman, “Cubela repeatedly insisted that the essential first step in overthrowing the regime was the elimination of Castro himself, which Cubela claimed he was prepared to accomplish,” Earman wrote. “He repeatedly requested that we furnish him with the special equipment or material needed to do the job.”731

In early talks with the CIA, Cubela alternated between soliciting support for his plan to assassinate Castro and requesting help to defect. CIA Counter Intelligence granted him “provisional operational approval” (POA) for use as a possible defector in 1962. But in a meeting with a CIA officer in Helsinki in August 1962 Cubela agreed to remain in Cuba to gather intelligence for the Agency, under the code-name AMLASH. A short time later he met with CIA case officer Nestor Sánchez in Paris. Earman wrote, “Cubela was given S/W [secret writing] training and was issued appropriate S/W supplies,” allowing him to communicate more frequently with the CIA.732 In September 1963, Cubela conferred again with Sánchez in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Earman wrote, “Cubela discussed a group of military officers known to him, and possible ways of approaching them.”

The CIA had already made contact with disgruntled Cuban army officers as part of Operation AMTRUNK, the objective of which was to cause “a split” in the leadership of the Cuban revolution.733 CIA-trained Cuban assets were infiltrated into Cuba to make “initial contacts among select high-level military figures in Havana,” according to a CIA memorandum. In October and November 1963, Cubela met several more times with Sánchez in Paris. Cubela requested a meeting with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and on October 29, 1963, SAS Chief FitzGerald met with Cubela in Paris, using an alias claimed to represent Robert Kennedy. Earman noted, “FitzGerald recalls that Cubela spoke repeatedly of the need for an assassination.” Earman added, “In particular, he wanted a high-powered rifle with a telescopic sight or some other weapon that could be used to kill Castro from a distance.”

When the United States failed to supply Cubela with a sniper rifle, he objected bitterly, complaining to Tepedino about the CIA’s foot-dragging. A November 20, 1963 CIA memorandum stated, “AMLASH also talked about going to the French terrorist group, the OAS, in order to get the materials and guidance he needs.” FitzGerald relented. “C/SAS (FitzGerald) approved telling Cubela he would be given a cache inside Cuba,” another CIA memorandum stated. “Cache could, if he requested it, include… high power rifles w/scopes.”

In the meantime, FitzGerald provided Cubela with an unrequested assassination instrument. FitzGerald biographer Evan Thomas writes, “At the last minute FitzGerald decided to throw in another offering to Cubela: a poison pen.” Thomas adds, “Cubela was looking for some small ‘exotic’ weapon… he could use with deadly effect in close quarters.”

On November 22, Cubela met with Nestor Sánchez in Paris. Sánchez handed him the poison pen and showed him how it worked. He told Cubela to fill the pen with Black Leaf 40, a common insecticide utilizing a lethal forty percent concentration of nicotine sulfate. Sánchez wrote, “Cubela said that he was returning to Cuba fully determined to pursue his plans to initiate a coup against Castro.” Cubela asked again for two high-powered rifles with telescopic sights, grenades, and C-4 explosives.

As the meeting broke up, Cubela and Sánchez learned that President Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas. A sniper shot Kennedy with a rifle in Dealey Plaza at 12:30 pm (Central Time). He was pronounced dead at Parkland Hospital thirty minutes later.734 In Havana, Castro learned about the assassination as he was talking to a French reporter about the possibility of a thaw in diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States.

French journalist Jean Daniel started his interview with Fidel Castro on November 19 at his hotel in Havana, but the conversation continued over the next three days. Castro invited Daniel, a reporter for the left-of-center L’Express news magazine, to join him at his residence in Varadero Beach east of Havana. Castro was interested in learning what Kennedy said about Cuba in his recent interview with Daniel, especially his remarks about past U.S. support for Batista.

According to Daniel’s account of his interview with Castro, he recalled Kennedy’s comments about Cuba: “I believe that there is no other country in the world… where economic colonization, humiliation, and exploitation were worse than in Cuba, in part owing to my country’s policies during the Batista regime,” Kennedy told Daniel. “I believe that we created… the Castro movement out of whole cloth and without realizing it.”

Castro told Daniel that although he had not forgotten U.S. counterrevolutionary efforts and invasion attempts, he still held out hope that Kennedy would come to terms with the Cuban revolution and the harsh realities of Latin America: “He still has the possibility of becoming, in the eyes of history, the greatest president of the United States, the leader who may at last understand that there can be coexistence between the capitalists and the socialists, even in the Americas. He would then be an even greater president than Lincoln.”

Daniel told Castro that Kennedy had invited him to the White House for a second conversation upon his return to Washington, and Castro asked him to deliver a message. “[I]t is my duty to indicate what the basis for understanding could be,” Castro said. “I ask for nothing: neither dollars nor assistance, nor diplomats, nor bankers, nor military men—nothing but peace, and to be accepted as we are.”

Daniel was playing the role Kennedy had hoped he would. Kennedy had agreed to talk to Daniel at the urging of his friends William Attwood and Ben Bradlee, then Washington bureau chief of Newsweek. Attwood and Bradlee knew that Daniel planned to interview Castro, and they wanted Kennedy to use Daniel to sound out the Cuban leader.

On November 22, Castro and Daniel were having lunch in Castro’s residence at Varadero Beach when a telephone rang. Castro excused himself to take the call in another room. When Castro hung up, Daniel heard him repeat three times, shaken, “Es una mala noticia” (“This is bad news”).

When Castro returned, he informed Daniel that President Kennedy had been assassinated. For a few moments, the two men sat in a stunned silence. Then Castro spoke. “Everything is going to change,” he said, worried the window of opportunity for negotiations with the United States had slammed shut with Kennedy’s passing. “The Cold War, relations with Russia, Latin America, Cuba… [A]ll will have to be rethought.”

As they listened to radio news updates from Dallas, Castro became more apprehensive. Kennedy’s alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was described as a member of the “Fair Play for Cuba Committee,” a pro-Castro Marxist whose wife was Russian. “If they had had proof, they would have said he was an agent, an accomplice, a hired killer,” Castro said. “In saying simply that he is an admirer, this is just to try and make an association in people’s minds between the name of Castro and the emotions awakened by assassination. This is a publicity method, a propaganda device. It’s terrible.”

Nerves were also frayed in Moscow by Kennedy’s assassination. The news hit Nikita Khrushchev as “a personal blow,” according to Oleg Troyanovsky. Khrushchev biographer William Taubman writes, “Khrushchev suspected American reactionaries had killed the President to torpedo a U.S.-Soviet detente.” Khrushchev dispatched his troubleshooter, Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan, to Washington to assess the intentions of Lyndon Baines Johnson, the new president. On November 26, President Johnson met with Mikoyan in Washington for nearly an hour. Johnson assured Mikoyan that he did not plan to change the basic course of U.S. foreign policy. The United States, he said, “was not planning to invade Cuba,” according to a memorandum of the conversation between the two men. But, Johnson added, “The Cuba problem was a very serious one.” He raised the subject of Cuba’s support for revolutionary movements in the Americas. “This inevitably and invariably gave us strained relations.”735

In June, Kennedy had escalated the covert war against Cuba after a post-missile crisis lull. But he had deliberately kept his options open, on the one hand approving new covert operations against Cuba, funding for autonomous operations by two Cuban exile action groups, and sanctioning CIA plotting with Rolando Cubela to assassinate Castro (a passage designed as a signal of support for Cubela was included in Kennedy’s November 18 speech in Miami Beach), and on the other, exploring the possibility of negotiations with Cuba.

As he assumed the reins of power, Lyndon Johnson was in no hurry to make basic policy decisions about Cuba. DCI John McCone gave President Johnson an initial briefing on Cuba on November 28, since Johnson had not played an active role as vice president in the Administration’s deliberations on Cuba.736 At Johnson’s first in-depth intelligence briefing on Cuba on December 19, SAS Chief FitzGerald reviewed the CIA-directed sabotage program, describing five recent raids, and outlined the CIA-funded autonomous operations of Manuel Artime and Manuel Ray. Johnson asked if there were an active counterrevolutionary movement on the island. FitzGerald replied, “There is some but there is no national movement on which we can build.”

But FitzGerald did not discuss the CIA’s plotting with Rolando Cubela to assassinate Fidel Castro. Helms later testified to the Church Committee that he did not recall informing President Johnson about Operation AMLASH.737 As President Johnson reviewed U.S. policy, he showed little interest in pursuing high-risk covert actions against Cuba. Gordon Chase reported that Johnson was, however, even less interested in normalizing diplomatic relations with Cuba. “Bundy described briefly the very tenuous, sensitive, and marginal contacts we have established with Castro himself,” Chase wrote. “The initiative is on Castro’s part and we are essentially faced with a decision as to whether or not we are prepared to listen to what Castro has to say.”

In fact, the White House ignored early attempts by Castro to jump-start the stalled back-channel discussions with the United States. A few days after President Kennedy’s assassination Castro authorized Ambassador Carlos Lechuga to meet with William Attwood. Chase reported in a November 25, 1963 memorandum, “Lechuga wondered how things now stood.” Chase noted, “Bill [Attwood] thinks we have nothing to lose in listening to what Castro has to say.” But Chase recognized that the domestic political calculus for diplomacy with Cuba had changed with Kennedy’s assassination.

“While I think President Kennedy could have accommodated with Castro and gotten away with it with a minimum of domestic heat, I’m not sure about President Johnson,” Chase wrote to Bundy. He continued, “The fact that Lee Harvey Oswald has been heralded as a pro-Castro type” will make accommodation more difficult.738 In February 1964, Castro sent a message to President Johnson via Lisa Howard: “Tell the President (and I cannot stress this too strongly) that I seriously hope that Cuba and the United States can eventually sit down in an atmosphere of good will and negotiate our differences.” But, as historian Peter Kornbluh points out, “Bundy’s office did not officially respond to this message…”739

Meanwhile, the momentum of ongoing CIA covert operations carried over into the Johnson Administration. The last CIA commando operations in Cuba authorized by the Standing Group included the sabotage of an electric power plant, an oil refinery, and a sugar mill. There was one major change to the deliberations on Cuba in the Johnson Administration: Robert Kennedy no longer played a role. As he mourned his brother’s death in the weeks following November 22, Kennedy did not take part in Cabinet or NSC meetings. It wasn’t just out of mourning however, according to historian Jeff Shesol. “Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy loathed each other.”740

Ever since his first days in the House of Representatives in 1937, Johnson had been a hawk on national security policy, pressing for greater military spending. When the USSR launched Sputnik, Senate Majority Leader Johnson called it “a disaster… comparable to Pearl Harbor.” Johnson ordered the Senate Preparedness Subcommittee’s hearings that had popularized the notion of a “missile gap” in November 1957.

But Johnson worried that his limited experience in international affairs made him vulnerable politically. According to historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, Johnson’s foreign-policy insecurities caused him to retain President Kennedy’s senior foreign policy advisers as a political insurance policy. National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and Secretary of State Dean Rusk kept their posts in the new Johnson administration.741

Meanwhile, William Attwood would learn that Johnson attached less importance to Cuba than the Kennedys did. The November 1964 presidential election cast a shadow over the Johnson administration’s Cuba policy. In January 1964, Johnson picked Attwood as his new ambassador to Kenya. Attwood later wrote, “[D]uring my Washington briefings, I saw Chase, who told me there was apparently no desire among the Johnson people to do anything about Cuba in an election year.”

In the meantime, the tide turned against the CIA’s hit-and-run raids in Cuba among Johnson’s foreign-policy advisers. SAS Chief FitzGerald pressed Bundy to continue to support the CIA’s covert action program. He conceded that the effectiveness of the raids was debatable. But he noted that the original plan, approved by the Standing Group in June 1963, called for a greater number of raids and more robust operations. Only five low-key sabotage actions had actually been authorized between August and December 1963. FitzGerald stressed that the CIA’s capability for covert operations against Cuba would erode unless the commando teams were kept busy. He wrote, “We probably can retain the present raiding groups for another month or two.”

Nonetheless, Johnson terminated the CIA-controlled sabotage operations on April 7, 1964.742 Adding to the woes of the covert war against Cuba, Cuban exile autonomous operations got off to an inauspicious start.

The CIA deposited several million dollars in a secret Swiss bank account to underwrite the autonomous operations of Manuel Artime’s Movimiento de Recuperación Revolucionaria (MRR) in 1964. An unsigned memorandum for a June 18th meeting of the Standing Group—renamed the “303 Committee” in the Johnson administration—reported, “CIA has put $4.6 million into this operation this year—the future bill will be large, but not as great.” The Agency also put Artime on its payroll. An unsigned memorandum in Artime’s CIA file described an “oral contract” between Artime and the Special Affairs Staff. The CIA hired Artime as an “action indicator,” beginning in February 1963, at $400 a month. The money was charged to JMWAVE’s “overhead.”

The unsigned memorandum stated, “FitzGerald reported that Artime planned one hit-and-run operation a month, but he noted he would be lucky if he could pull off one every three months.” Artime’s force included more than 300 personnel in Florida and Central America. Artime was based in Miami. The MRR had three main bases and an operational headquarters in Nicaragua, and two bases in Costa Rica. But Artime’s autonomous operations posed little actual military threat to Cuba. A report for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) stated, “During the year of his operation, Artime was able to conduct four major operations, three of which failed…”743

The MRR’s most spectacular failure took place in the Windward Passage between the eastern tip of Cuba and Haiti in September 1964. Two MRR speedboats, launched from a mother ship, converged on a merchant vessel in the dark of night. The commandos were able to see only the first part of the ship’s name “Sierra…” and wrongly concluded that it was the Cuban freighter Sierra Maestra. They opened fire for twenty minutes, killing the captain and two of his crew. The vessel caught on fire, and the crew abandoned ship.

A few hours later the commandos went back to the scene of the attack. They now could see the full name of ship was Sierra de Aránzazu; it was a Spanish freighter carrying cork, food, and toys to Cuba. The MRR’s raid sparked international protest. Generalissimo Francisco Franco of Spain was outraged—especially because Spain provided clandestine assistance to the MRR. Felix Rodríguez, who authorized the attack, concedes that the Sierra de Aránzazu incident was a disaster for the MRR.744

Artime suffered another setback when Costa Rican customs officials discovered a whiskey smuggling operation run out of two MRR training camps in Costa Rica. In January of 1965, Costa Rican police uncovered another $23,000 in contraband whiskey loaded in a C-46 aircraft near a MRR camp. Costa Rican President Francisco J. Orlich ordered the MRR camps shut down; MRR camps in Nicaragua were also dismantled in the aftermath of the smuggling scandals.745 According to a CIA memorandum, CIA financial support for Artime dwindled to $3,000 a month by the time it was cut off completely on December 31, 1965.746

Meanwhile, in May 1964, Manuel Ray’s Junta Revolucionaria Cubana (JURE) declared war on the Cuban revolution with great fanfare. A JURE statement proclaimed, “A new war of independence begins on the Cuban soil.” Reporter Tad Szulc, who had previously lobbied the Kennedy Administration on Ray’s behalf, now promoted his promised return to Cuba in three New York Times stories.

“His group’s proclamation stressed the need for social justice and urged all his former companions ‘whatever positions they hold and whatever uniforms they wear’ to recognize that the time has come to rise up again in arms,” Szulc wrote. “His aim was to establish an organization that would bore from within the regime, offering a political alternative to members of the Government, the military and the militias.”

Ray departed for Cuba on May 24. A mothership took Ray and his team to within striking distance of Cuba, at which point they embarked in a twenty-four-foot catamaran powered by twin 100-horsepower inboard-outboard engines. Over the next seven days, Ray used up his fuel supply dodging Cuban coastal patrol boats. Eventually the JURE commandos took refuge in the Bahamas on Anguilla Island, forty-five miles north of Cuba. Ray and his crew were arrested for entering the Bahamas illegally.

Photographer Andrew St. George, assigned by Time magazine to accompany Ray, was dismayed by the failure of the mission. “Manolo Ray… was exposed as a bungler,” Time wrote, based on St. George’s reporting. “[T]he depressing thing about the whole sorry business was that Manolo Ray up until last week was considered a small but genuine threat to Cuba.” St. George told the CIA that Ray’s operation was ill planned and poorly executed. “St. George is of the opinion that Ray has a very small following, if any, and that he is totally inexperienced in this type of mission,” a CIA memorandum reported. “He also stated that Ray is not the underground operator the Cuban people say he is.” But Szulc continued to promote Ray. In a July 15 story, he reported that Ray had left on a second mission to Cuba from a base near Key West. Once again, Ray failed to reach Cuba. A subsequent New York Times report attributed Ray’s failure to “bad luck and bad weather.”747

Luis Posada Carriles, a Ray lieutenant, said JURE suffered a “psychological letdown.” According to JURE board member Rogelio Cisneros, “JURE had not succeeded because Ray… is obsessed with the idea of being the first anti-Castro leader to return to Cuba.”748 In a March 1964, FitzGerald wrote to McGeorge Bundy that Ray had been handled differently than Artime. “We have furnished him money and a certain amount of general advice. He does not possess the physical accouterments that Artime has and is probably not as well equipped in terms of professional planning.”

SAS Chief FitzGerald did not say how much aid the CIA provided to JURE, but the 303 Committee was more blunt, pointing out that JURE’s paramilitary camps in the United States were a blatant violation of the CIA’s rules on autonomous operations. A memorandum on a June 18, 1964 meeting of the 303 Committee stated, “Ray is acting inconsistently with the agreement with him which was that he would operate outside the United States.” In late 1964, the CIA provided JURE with $75,000 to relocate its operations outside the United States.749 As autonomous exile operations against Cuba faltered, Castro reached out again to ease tensions with the United States.

Fidel Castro offered an olive branch to his neighbors in March 1964 at a gathering of Latin American diplomats in Havana. Castro said his instinct was to lash out at countries in the Americas that collaborated with the United States against Cuba. But he ruled out that option. Instead, he proposed a diplomatic quid pro quo, saying Cuba “wanted to be left in peace.” As Deputy Director for Plans (DDP) Richard Helms wrote to DCI John McCone, “[H]e [Castro] stated, if the Latin American countries would stop ‘conspiring against him,’ he in turn would ‘formally engage’ not to become involved in any revolutionary plots in or against Latin American countries.” Helms added that Foreign Minister Raúl Roa characterized Castro’s offer as “serious.”

On July 6, Castro made a dramatic public offer to ease tensions with the United States in an interview with the New York Times. Richard Eder reported, “Premier Fidel Castro said… Cuba would commit herself to withhold material support from Latin American revolutionaries if the United States and its American allies would agree to cease their material support of subversive activity against Cuba.” In his eighteen-hour interview with Castro, Eder asked about political prisoners in Cuba, an issue that loomed large in the United States. Castro replied that ninety percent of the “something under 15,000” prisoners in Cuba would be released if diplomatic relations with the United States were restored. He drew a connection between U.S. support for Cuban exile action groups and the large number of political prisoners on the island.

On July 10, President Johnson summarily dismissed Castro’s overture, telling reporters, “I am much more interested in the deeds rather than the words.” Johnson was in step with the thinking in Foggy Bottom. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Robert M. Sayre informed McGeorge Bundy that the Bureau of Inter-American Republics had discussed Castro’s comments. “We cannot accept Castro’s promise that he will stop his subversion. In the very same interview he said he would continue moral support to Castro/Communist groups in Latin America,” Sayre wrote in a July 3, 1964 memorandum. “We do not believe a Communist will renounce the world revolution.”750 Cuba remained a low priority for Johnson after his landslide electoral victory over Goldwater in November 1964. Johnson would not spend any of his newly won political capital to seek a diplomatic settlement with Havana.

In contrast, the goal of improved relations between Cuba and the United States was high on the agenda of the meetings between Castro and Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow in January 1964. Khrushchev made it clear to Castro that his overarching objective was a diplomatic accommodation with the United States. But he also reassured him that the Soviet Union’s missile power would deter the United States from intervening in Cuba, and that Soviet economic assistance would sustain Cuba in the face of a continuing U.S. economic embargo of Cuba.

Helms learned from a trusted covert source that Cuban Foreign Minister Raúl Roa had said Khrushchev was emphatic that the Kremlin “wanted nothing to do with” revolutionary movements in Latin America. Helms wrote: “Roa remarked that Khrushchev was to continue his present relations of partial detente with the United States, which would be adversely affected by Soviet backing of Latin American revolutionary activity.”

In a similar vein, National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) 85-64 concluded that Khrushchev was attempting to restrain his Cuban ally. “The Soviets seem to have little choice but to continue their patient support of Castro,” stated NIE 85-64 in August 1964. “They will almost certainly counsel him to caution in dealing with the US and in fomenting revolution in Latin America; they will not, however, be able to compel him to follow such a course.” NIE 85-64 predicted that Castro would use the political leverage available to him to steer an independent course.751