William Harvey’s indefatigable work on setting up Task Force W – the team that would implement Operation Mongoose – was more or less complete by the beginning of February 1962. Task Force W became officially operational on 1 February.

The operational element was based in Building 25 on the South Campus of the University of Miami. This CIA station, code named ‘JM/WAVE’, became the largest CIA station in the world apart from its headquarters in the Virginia suburb of Langley, near Washington D.C. The abysmal Bay of Pigs invasion had been planned in this building but now, with Harvey in charge at Langley and Ted Shackley in charge at JM/WAVE, there was a revitalised team that at one stage numbered more than 300 full-time staff and agents, up to 100 of whom worked ‘behind enemy lines’ in Cuba.* In addition, JM/WAVE was giving financial and practical support to nearly 15,000 anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Florida.

The existence of the JM/WAVE station was supposed to be secret and to this end there were front companies based in Building 25. The main one was Zenith Technical Enterprises, famous for making what were generally acknowledged to be the best mass-produced portable short-wave radios in the world. (Penkovsky specified a Zenith model when he asked the MI6/CIA team to supply him with a short-wave radio.) This cover was of little avail as the size of the JM/WAVE work force and their big budget spend (US$50 million) created a localised miniature economic boom. It was also difficult to hide the commando, espionage and seamanship training provided to the Cuban exiles.

But acute frustration had started to set in within a couple of months. Harvey took stock of the difficult situation.

Operation Mongoose was being controlled by a committee: the Special Group Augmented. (He probably had a few choice words to say about that name.) The SGA was chaired by Attorney-General Robert Kennedy, whom Harvey considered to be a bit of an ass when it came to project management. Kennedy insisted that Task Force W had to take stronger, more decisive action, but without making any ‘noise’ or doing anything that could possibly be attributed to the government: a virtual impossibility in the present situation.

As Harvey was not a member of the SGA he had to put his ideas and proposals to General Edward Lansdale, who would present them to the group. He had no gripe about Lansdale, who was sensible and appeared to do his job quite well, but Harvey’s proposals were usually rejected by the SGA or returned in a diluted form. Maybe the new CIA Director, John McCone, did not carry enough weight to defend Harvey’s proposals.

McGeorge Bundy seemed to be the main stumbling block in the SGA. He wanted to leave Cuba alone as long as Castro did not do anything to threaten the United States, and he believed that Khrushchev would never put nuclear or any other offensive weapons in Cuba.

The latest assessment of the National Intelligence Board did nothing to lighten Harvey’s mood. According to their assessment:

Harvey had to accept that all of this was bad news for Task Force W. It meant that much of the work they had been doing to encourage and assist insurrection had been, and continued to be, ineffective. Some of it could be construed as direct criticism of Task Force W’s work and Robert Kennedy would not let that go by without a mention.

But there was one encouraging piece of news. The SGA had now set a target date of October to create some kind of an eruption in Cuba: any kind of flare-up would do as long as it moved Cuba significantly towards ending the Castro regime. It could take the form of a rebellion from within Cuba, an invasion, an economic meltdown fuelled by tighter trade sanctions and effective sabotage such as bombing Cuba’s harbours and other strategic targets affecting the economy.

The other item weighing on Harvey’s mind was the absence of a result on the ‘executive action’ against Castro. Harvey had been in touch with Roselli from time to time. Numerous plots were hatched; some, such as deploying explosive seashells in places where Castro was known to scuba dive, stretched the boundaries of possibility, but most of the ones they had tried used the more traditional method of poisoning. The CIA had given Roselli poison pills and even a box of cigars laced with lethal bacteria, but nothing, so far, had been successful. Roselli insisted the Mafia had the right contacts and that Trafficante was still enthusiastic and the right man to take the lead in this project. He was determined to kill Castro so that he could get back into Cuba and reopen his casinos. They were going to stick at it. Something was bound to get through to Castro sooner or later.

Harvey was frustrated by the lack of progress and by the shackles Attorney-General Robert Kennedy had put on Task Force W’s modus operandi, but he was not demoralised. It was not in his character to do anything other than fight on with determination and hard work.

He went down to Florida and had a meeting – a pep talk – with Shackley, David Morales (chief of operations), Gordon Campbell (chief of maritime operations) and George Joannides (chief of psychological warfare).

He sympathised with their frustration at the lack of action and progress and, no doubt using the kind of foul language that was his hallmark, he explained the problems facing them. They must not allow themselves to be disheartened by the difficulty of the operation, but use it as a spur to greater action. They still had a job to do and were more than capable of doing it, if only the SGA would let them.

For three days Harvey, Shackley, Morales, Campbell and Joannides brainstormed new ideas to fulfil the aims of Operation Mongoose, and prepared a list for Harvey to take back to General Lansdale. Some of the ideas even involved acts of sabotage and terrorism against American targets in Florida and among the Cuban exiles, for which Castro would get the blame, thus supplying cause for robust retaliation.

Johnny Roselli called a meeting with Santo Trafficante, Carlos Marcello and Salvatore ‘Sam’ Giancana to discuss the failure of their attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. Trafficante said he was mystified. He would trust his contacts in Havana with his life. They assured him the poison was getting as far as Castro’s living quarters or his office, but never made it past his personal staff. Fabian Escalante, Castro’s personal minder, seemed to be able to smell a rat from a mile off. Maybe there were straightforward house rules dictating that absolutely nothing was given to Castro – food or otherwise – unless its origins had been thoroughly checked and approved.

They considered other approaches. Why not kill Raúl Castro (the Minister of Defence and Fidel’s brother) or Che Guevara (now in charge of the economy)? If they took either or both of them out it would destabilise Fidel and his government. After some consideration they decided such a course of action would only anger Fidel Castro and bolster his determination. Why did they not just kill him in the traditional Mafia style? No, they had already put that to Harvey and he was strongly opposed. The CIA and Kennedy administration would be blamed and it was no longer acceptable for officialdom in one country to assassinate a foreign head of state.

They would try to be patient, but time was running out. Harvey had intimated to them that the job had to be completed by October.

They discussed another problem: there had been something of a moratorium on law enforcement against Mafia tax evasion and gambling activities, but it seemed that Attorney-General Robert Kennedy had given the nod to the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service to start to hound some of the Mafia leaders again. Roselli may have promised to broach the subject with Harvey, and Harvey may, or may not, have brought it to Robert Kennedy’s attention, but there is no doubt that this matter contributed to a worsening relationship between the Mafia and the Kennedys. Harvey, inevitably, was caught up in this.

For the next six months Harvey’s team at JM/WAVE worked hard to destabilise Cuba but most of the ideas he felt would have made a real difference continued to be watered down or rejected outright by the SGA. There were a few courageous acts of sabotage but the relentless improvement in the Castro regime’s policing and military capabilities made such acts more dangerous and many of them failed, with dire consequences for those involved. The actions that did succeed contributed little to the objective of destabilisation.

The training programme for anti-Castro exiles continued, so that there was now a more disciplined, more capable and better equipped force than the cadre that had been decimated in its painful attempt to establish a bridgehead at the Bay of Pigs, but there was no sign of the SGA authorising an attack supported by American forces.

The news from Harvey’s agents within Cuba was soul-destroying, if not frightening. There was a relentless build-up of Eastern Bloc armaments – mostly defensive, but now with some reports of offensive weapons arriving. There were reports of sightings of Soviet SS-2 surface-to-air missile units, of Soviet MiG-21 fighter aircraft and even of Soviet IL-28 bomber aircraft.

In the middle of August, CIA Director John McCone received intelligence of substantial ship movements from the Black Sea and the Baltic to Cuba. He went out on a limb and expressed his suspicions in a memorandum to President Kennedy that medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) were being sent to Cuba. The President’s advisers – particularly McGeorge Bundy – ridiculed the suspicion, saying that Khrushchev would not dare to place MRBMs, or any other strategic attack weapons, in Cuba.

McCone repeated his suspicions at a meeting of the SGA, this time saying he had circumstantial evidence that the Soviet military were constructing offensive missile installations in Cuba; he was knocked down once again by Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara who maintained the installations were purely defensive.

A week later, Harvey again vented his frustrations on Lansdale who in turn spoke to General Maxwell Taylor, bypassing Attorney-General Robert Kennedy. Taylor sent a memorandum to President Kennedy saying the Castro regime could only be overthrown through direct United States military intervention. The President responded and Lansdale brought the news to Harvey. He reported that the President said he had been disappointed that Operation Mongoose had so far met with virtually no success. He authorised the CIA to develop ‘with all possible speed’ more aggressive plans to get rid of Castro. He still insisted, however, that there had to be no overt US military involvement in any of the plans.

How, wondered Harvey, could the CIA do any more without overt military action?

Harvey’s frustrations on this score came to an end within a month because, in the light of the now very evident build-up of Soviet military hardware and personnel in Cuba, the United States Congress authorised the use of military force in Cuba if American interests were threatened.

While Harvey and his Task Force W were concentrating on Operation Mongoose, other parts of the CIA, and the FBI, were dealing with what might be described as routine matters to guard against Communist subversion.

When Lee Harvey Oswald arrived in Fort Worth, Texas, on 13 June 1962, his file was passed to FBI agent John Fain whose duty it was to interview him. It was a difficult interrogation that only added greater confusion to Oswald’s Communist history and his future intentions. Oswald was unpleasant and arrogant. He refused to answer many of the questions put to him or to submit to a polygraph test. He denied that he had collaborated with the Soviets and passed secrets to them. He started to shout, growing so belligerent that at one stage agent Fain thought Oswald was going to punch him.

A second interview, on 16 August, proved to be even less productive. Fain decided to waste no more energy on Oswald for the time being and moved the file to ‘inactive’ status. When Fain retired in October, Oswald’s file was officially closed instead of being passed to agent Hosty.

The Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC), based in the United States, was established in the summer of 1960, overtly to support the right of Castro and his regime to govern Cuba without let or hindrance from the United States. Behind the scenes it had close connections with the American Communist Party, with the Communist-oriented Patrice Lumumba (the leader of the Congo), and of course with the Castro regime, which provided it with crucial financial support.† For these reasons the FBI took the FPCC seriously and appointed two of their best agents – James McCord and David Phillips – to monitor its activities and the people who supported it.

On 18 July 1962, the KGB’s Vladimir Kryuchkov sent a telegram to Ramiro Valdés, the head of Cuban intelligence, suggesting that they contact Oswald with a view to using him.‡

On the surface this might appear to be quite unremarkable: one Communist national security organisation giving the nod to a fellow Communist state. That would have been normal practice had Oswald been in Cuba, but he was not. He was residing in the United States and one would have expected the KGB – thick on the ground in America –automatically to maintain communications with Oswald themselves. Were the KGB trying to lay a false trail, trying to place some distance between themselves and Oswald?

With the FBI monitoring the activities of the FPCC and its members, it was not long before they spotted Oswald and reopened his file. They discovered he was purchasing Communist books and periodicals, attending FPCC meetings and distributing leaflets.

* Ted Shackley had also worked under Harvey in Berlin.

† Lumumba and Castro were both CIA assassination targets.

‡ The same Vladimir Kryuchkov who had given much help to Serov during the Hungarian Revolution when he (Kryuchkov) had been the Third Secretary at the Soviet Embassy in Budapest.