“MARTINO…ASKED [LORAN] HALL IF HE MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN SOMETHING BIGGER THAN A RAID, BACKED BY ‘PEOPLE’ FROM CHICAGO AND MIAMI.”

—DAVID KAISER, HISTORIAN AND PROFESSOR,
NAVAL WAR COLLEGE1

In early 1963, almost two years after the disastrous Bay of Pigs mission, William Pawley was at the center of arguably one of the most bizarre episodes of the secret war, one that ended so tragically and mysteriously that he was very reluctant to discuss it with me in our 1974 interview.

The new mission began when a flamboyant anti-Castro fighter with the war name Eddie Bayo passed around exile circles a smuggled letter supposedly written by a cell inside Cuba. It stated that three Soviet missile technicians stationed on the island wanted to defect, offering to reveal the location of hidden offensive missiles in exchange. Frank Sturgis thought it was the genuine article, while Gerry Patrick Hemming urged caution: “The Russians might have made some remark about wanting to see the night life of Miami that was overinterpreted,” he said.² “And it might be an elaborate trap.”

As it was backdoored through Senator James O. Eastland, chairman of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and leading troglodyte of the era, the plan was for anti-Castro Cuban commandos to be smuggled into Cuba using Pawley's yacht, the Flying Tiger, to rescue the two Russian technicians.³ The techs would then be transported to Eisenhower's estate in Gettysburg and exhibited at a press conference to embarrass Kennedy by proving that Soviet missiles were still located on Cuba. According to David Kaiser, historian and professor at the Naval War College, Nixon's friend Pawley “immediately recognized that this information would utterly discredit the Kennedy administration,”4 thus helping Nixon's political future in the 1964 election.

It was beyond belief that people who were normally levelheaded could ring themselves in on a venture as wild as this one. But the overpowering hatred of Fidel could overcome one's common sense. In late February or early March 1963, an FBI memo reports that Pawley met with Richard Nixon and Charles “Bebe” Rebozo, just as Pawley was planning a new Cuban operation with Johnny Rosselli.⁵ This was probably Nixon's attempt to secure inside information that could help in his quest for the White House. The question of whether all the Soviet missiles had been removed from Cuba was already a hot topic in Republican circles and would be a major issue for the 1964 presidential campaign. If Nixon had the inside story on Soviet missiles still in Cuba, he would have an edge over his Republican rivals.

For this operation, Pawley would be working closely with Rosselli and Trafficante's operative John Martino,⁶ an electronics expert who had been imprisoned for transporting counterrevolutionaries out of Cuba and had been released from a Cuban prison only five months earlier. John Martino was extremely bitter over his imprisonment and what he felt were inadequate efforts by the Kennedy administration to win his release. A pilot who first met Rosselli in the late 1950s told the FBI that he flew into Tampa, where he met Rosselli, and then flew him and John Martino from Tampa to Rivera Beach, Florida. The pilot said that during the flight “he learned that one Ambassador Pawley…was trying to arrange a raid to remove (Soviet) missile technicians from Cuba.”⁷ He was under the impression that Pawley was organizing the raid through Rosselli and Martino.

Pawley was in radio contact with his good friend Marshall “Pat” Carter,⁸ a CIA deputy director, who saw to it that there were three CIA men along for the ride, including Eugenio Martinez, the future Watergate burglar. The CIA's premier “boat man,” Martinez had most recently been the chief pilot for the Operation Mongoose infiltration missions, and he would be the navigator and coastal guide for the invasion team.⁹ Carter supplied weather data en route to Cuba. Life magazine got wind of the caper and paid $15,000 for a piece of the action, sending reporter Richard Billings along to document the story for later publication10 The scenario sounded plausible to CIA officials and Life because thousands of Soviet technicians and troops remained in Cuba. Fidel had never allowed the UN weapons inspections, so there was no way to prove with absolute certainty that some missiles weren't hidden in caves or underground.¹¹

The anti-Castro commandos were part of the anti-Castro network of paramilitaries, led by Eddie Bayo, named for a famous Spanish commando well known in counterrevolutionary circles. When the Flying Tiger reached the drop-off coordinates off Baracoa, Eddie Bayo asked Pawley for his watch, saying he would be back “the day after tomorrow.”¹² His watch was a Rolex, identical to those issued to all CIA operatives. Pawley gave it to him and never got it back.

The team of ten armed Cuban exiles headed off toward Cuba without Eugenio Martinez, who wisely declined the mission at the last minute as Pawley watched from his yacht.¹³ Flying Tiger waited for two days off Baracoa for Bayo and his men to return. At this point, Pawley radioed Miami and hired aerial surveillance to search for the missing men. After five days of fruitless searching, Pawley sadly ordered the Flying Tiger to set sail. The yacht returned to Pawley's home in Miami, carrying embarrassed CIA operatives, Life magazine staff, and John Martino, the man from the Mob.

But there was a strange twist to the Flying Tiger saga. I was contacted by Loran “Skip” Hall, head of the anti-Castro Committee to Free Cuba, who ran guns to Interpen in No Name Key. I interviewed Hall at the VA Hospital in Los Angeles in 1968. It was clear that he knew practically everyone linked to the anti-Castro activities in Florida. Hall said that in February 1963 he attended a meeting in Miami called by Santos Trafficante and Martino to exploit a legendary commando named Eddie Bayo. It turned out to be an assassination scheme. Sam Giancana, the Chicago Mafia capo, showed up and offered a $30,000 “prize” for killing Castro, and Trafficante pledged $15,000 in advance to Bayo for equipment. Most of the money was used to buy explosives and the components for electronic devices to detonate them from a distance. The kidnapping of Russian technicians was a con job to get the use of Pawley's yacht. Apparently, all Bayo wanted the Flying Tiger for was a ride to Cuba with his equipment, with which he planned to “blow all to hell” buildings like the Ministry of Agriculture and the Presidential Palace—with the president in it.14 It would be up to Martino, an electronics expert, to rig the explosive devices. It wasn't until I ran a story in Francis Ford Coppola's City of San Francisco magazine that I was able to correct the Pawley version of the Flying Tiger story. Hall was relieved that I took action on the information he provided, as most journalists wouldn't blow the whistle on the Mob. He had been slightly peeved with me because in a previous discussion he had in no uncertain terms advised that the Mafia was behind the death of John F. Kennedy and I had not acted.¹⁵

I asked Fabian Escalante, chief of the Cuban security agency G-2 at the time, about the ill-fated voyage. He said the only thing he knew about it was that the small shore boat from the Flying Tiger was found swamped near Baracoa.

Hall provided a conclusion of sorts to the Eddie Bayo saga.¹⁶ He said that Bayo's brother-in-law, Luis Castillo, eventually received word from a source in Cuba that the Bayo group had been ambushed by Cuban militia after landing. Bayo and two of his men managed to get away and arrived in Havana, where they were captured and imprisoned in La Cabaña Fortress. The report seems credible because Castillo had once been a guard at La Cabaña. Hall claimed that he and several of the Interpen Cubans decided to break Bayo out of La Cabaña and blow up Castro while they were there. The mission of mercy came to an inglorious end when Customs agents stopped Hall near the Interpen base at No Name Key and seized his trailer full of munitions.

Pawley probably put the fiasco behind him, at least until he was sued by the Cuban commandos’ families for negligence.¹⁷ In 1987, I met with Rolando Salup in Havana.¹⁸ Salup was Third Secretary to the Cuban United Nations Mission. During our lunch, I told him the Flying Tiger saga and asked him if he could find out about any survivors of the mission who had been captured. I requested their release on humanitarian grounds and mentioned that this would bring closure to the family members. Salup promised that he would look into it, but I never received any more information from him.