T he missile crisis was largely resolved by January 1963, after weeks of haggling between Moscow and Washington and resistance from a petulant Castro over the withdrawal verification process. The remaining 1,113 Bay of Pigs prisoners returned to the United States in late December 1962, exchanged for a $53 million ransom of food and medicines. President Kennedy welcomed them in Miami’s Orange Bowl, promising to return the brigade’s flag “in a free Havana.” Mongoose was dead. Ed Lansdale had moved on. So had Bill Harvey. Desmond FitzGerald, an urbane agency veteran comfortable in the Kennedys’ social circle, was soon to be the CIA’s new top gun for Cuba. Task Force W became the Special Affairs Staff.
For the Kennedy administration, it was an opportune time to revamp Cuba policy, newly constrained by the no-invasion pledge given Moscow in return for the missile withdrawal. But the Kennedy obsession for neutralizing or, even better, deposing Castro, remained. President Kennedy already had determined that “an assurance covering invasion does not ban covert actions or economic blockade or tie our hands completely. We can’t give the impression that Castro is home free.” 1
McGeorge Bundy’s post-missile crisis draft proposal for a new Cuba policy reiterated that “our ultimate objective . . . remains the overthrow of the Castro regime. . . . Our immediate objectives are to weaken the regime. ... A policy of containing, undermining, discrediting and isolating the Castro regime through the exercise of all feasible diplomatic, economic, psychological and other pressures will achieve these immediate objectives and could create propitious conditions in Cuba for further advance toward our ultimate objective.” The proposal included a twelvepoint program for covert action, ranging from sabotage to propaganda. 2
The first signs of unhappiness with Mongoose and a new direction in Cuba policy had emerged even before the missile crisis erupted. Proposal for the new direction came from Walter Rostow, chairman of the State
Department’s Policy Planning Council. He suggested, in early September 1962, implementation of a two-track covert Cuba policy, one that would place more of the burden, and the responsibility, on Cuban exiles. As Rostow described it in a memo to the president, “Track One would consist of a heightened effort to move along the present Mongoose lines. . . . Track Two would consist of an effort to engage Cubans more deeply, both within Cuba and abroad, in efforts for their own liberation.” As Bundy saw it, such a policy would call for:
a. Authentic Cuban leadership with a considerable range of freedom to implement ideas and to assume risk.
b. Minimal U.S. direct participation: ideally, one truly wise U.S. adviser—available, but laying back; equipped to provide finance, but not monitoring every move; capable of earning their respect rather than commanding it by his control over money or equipment.
c. Basing outside the United States.
d. A link-up with the scattered and sporadic groups and operations now going forward of their own momentum in Cuba.
e. A plan of operation which aims at the overthrow of Castro primarily from within rather than by invasion from without.
f. A long enough time horizon to build the operation carefully and soundly. 3
Ed Martin, assistant secretary of state for Inter-American affairs, followed with a similar but more detailed proposal, describing “a program of ‘giving Cubans their heads’ in an effort to effect the downfall from within.” In summarizing his suggestion, Martin warned: “We should be cautious about grandiose schemes, a ‘major’ U.S. effort, and deep commitments to the exiles. We should experiment in this new venture on a small scale with patience and tolerance for high noise levels and mistakes.” This warning proved prophetic. 4 The missile crisis erupted and any change of course in long-term Cuba policy succumbed to the immediacy of averting a nuclear holocaust.
The immediate post-missile crisis focus was on intelligence collection to verify the withdrawal of offensive weapons and resolution of the impasse with the Soviets over inspection. Sabotage was on hold. But in late November, President Kennedy asked the State Department “to prepare a plan which would keep the heat on Castro. 5 Bundy drafted a bureaucratic reorganization proposal for dealing with Cuba. The time is ripe for such a reorganization,” wrote Bundy in a January 4, 1963, memo
to the president, “because we seem to be winding up the negotiations in New York [over verification of offensive weapons withdrawal], the prisoners are out, and there is well nigh universal agreement that Mongoose is at a dead end.” 6 The main thrust of the reorganization proposal was to consolidate all Cuba activity—both overt and covert—within the State Department under a new coordinator for Cuban affairs. In his memo Bundy concluded: “The role of intelligence officers needs to be redefined. The large commitment of the CIA to Mongoose activities should be reexamined, and probably substantially reduced, and the role of CIA as apparent spokesman and agent of the United States Government for Cuban affairs should probably be reduced still further—although this in no sense reflects on the Agency, which has been trying to do what it was told to do.”
The reorganization was set forth in a January 8, 1963, National Security Council memorandum. The first of two key documents in 1963 that shaped Washington’s revamped approach to Cuba, the memo reflected the constraints imposed by the no-invasion pledge and Castro’s refusal to allow on-site inspection to verify missile withdrawal. The other key document was the June 19 approval for an integrated covert operational program against Cuba drafted by the CIA.
The January bureaucratic reorganization gave the “day-to-day coordinating responsibility” to the newly created coordinator of Cuban affairs within the State Department who was to chair an Interdepartmental Committee on Cuba. The committee would consist of representatives from the Defense Department, the CIA, and other departments “as necessary in particular cases. The reorganization also gave the new coordinator “the same responsibility for covert actions as well as overt actions.” But it still required covert activities to be approved by the Special Group “which will be guided by broader policy established by the President through the Executive Committee.” 7 Sterling Cottrell, a career Foreign Service officer heading the Vietnamese task force but with broad experience and background in Latin America, became the first coordinator. Bob Hurwitch was his deputy.
An Office of the Coordinator opened in Miami a few weeks later, headed by John Crimmins, who soon replaced Cottrell as the top coordinator in Washington. The Miami office essentially served as a de facto embassy to the Cuban exile community and coordinated all the federal agencies there involved with Cuba. The CIA remained the principal instrument for covert activity, with the Defense Department playing a
supporting role. But Bobby Kennedy was still the unofficial overseer, particularly of the covert program, constantly on the telephone with anyone and everyone involved, both U.S. officials and Cuban exiles.
“He was really running it,” Tom Parrott said of Bobby. “He was a thorn in the side of FitzGerald and to some extent Helms. I knew FitzGerald extremely well, and he would just be seething sometimes about this.
. . . Bobby was, as we all know, arrogant and overbearing, prone to hint not too subtly that if you don’t do what I say, I’ll tell my big brother on you . . .just generally difficult. I think he drove poor Des crazy. Was Bobby Kennedy obsessed? Absolutely. Oh, absolutely. He was particularly riding the people at the CIA all the time. No question about it, obsessed is the right word.” 8
Sam Halpern, who retained his position as executive assistant under FitzGerald in the revamped program, said the CIA’s role remained essentially the same as under Mongoose, “except more sabotage, this time under the hand of Bobby Kennedy. He steps in and starts directing it, instead of indirectly; instead of doing it through Lansdale, he is doing it directly.” 9
Although the new policy theoretically was designed, in Martin’s words, to “give Cubans their heads,” it did not apply to those exile groups based in South Florida who were waging their own freelance war against Castro. And it especially did not apply in the still sensitive post-missile crisis period. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara raised the problem of the militant Alpha 66 group in an October 30, 1962, Ex Comm meeting, just as the agreement with Moscow was culminating. According to notes of the meeting, President Kennedy “stated that insofar as we had any control over the actions of Alpha 66, we should try to keep them from doing something that might upset the deal with the Russians.” 10
As Sam Halpern described it, “there were all these Cuban exile groups who were doing things all over, and we couldn’t work with all these groups. We didn’t try to. One of the first things Des had to do under Bobby’s direction in January of 1963 was go down to Miami and, with the help of all the other government agencies in town . . . the Coast Guard, Immigration, Customs, the local police, FBI, everybody... the whole idea was to really put the clamps on all of these various Cuban exile groups who were doing things on their own because they were interfering with some of our activities. And you can’t have boats at sea running across each other, going after the same targets. We didn’t know what the hell they were doing. They didn’t know what we were doing. So the whole
idea was to shut them down. And hold them. Don’t let them out. They were screaming bloody murder and they blamed CIA for it. But we were not the guys. . . . We were not involved. . . . We were involved only as far as the U.S. government, but it was Bobby Kennedy who wanted to clamp everything down. If there was going to be any activity against Cuba, he wanted to be the guy running it. He didn’t want all these extra hangers on, not knowing what the hell they were up to.” 11
Despite the crackdown, the freelance exile raids remained an ongoing concern into the spring. The problem came to a head the night of March 17-18, 1963, when Alpha 66, along with the Second National Front of the Escambray, mounted attacks on a Soviet ship and Soviet installations in Cuba, drawing protests from both Moscow and Havana. This time the State and lustice departments went public in a joint March 30 statement announcing the crackdown, declaring that “law enforcement agencies are taking vigorous measures to assure that the pertinent laws of the United States are observed.” 12
The relationship was always a fitful one between the militant groups and the U.S. government, as described by Enrique Baloyra, a onetime member of the exile Student Directorate: “There is,” he said, “a certain psychology involved in all this business, a psychology shared by groups like Alpha 66, and, later on, Omega 7. The basic assumption these people make is that you cannot trust the Yankees, so you have to operate in the shadows and totally disconnect yourselves from any American agency. Their philosophy was: ‘We were not going to follow what you tell us to do. What is sensible for you is not necessarily sensible for us.’ ” 13
If there was mistrust of the U.S. government, and particularly the CIA, on the part of the more militant exile elements, there was considerable disdain and frustration in Washington regarding South Florida’s exile community. That disdain and frustration was reflected in various memorandums, including one by Gen. Chester Clifton, President Kennedy’s military aide, to Bundy following a December 29, 1962, meeting of the Joint Chiefs in Palm Beach. The meeting was held the same day Kennedy paid tribute to the Bay of Pigs Brigade in Miami’s Orange Bowl.
Clifton noted that the question had arisen regarding future dealings by the U.S. government with the 100,000 Cuban refugees already in the South Florida area. “It was suggested,” wrote Clifton, “that whatever we do in Washington it is essential to establish a ‘focal point’ in the Miami area. Right now these various groups sit down there, stew in their own juice, elect committees, become emotionally upset, and then finally call
upon somebody in Washington to let off steam. If we are to get any benefit for future operations with this large group of people, it was suggested that we have a continuing office down there so that these committees could be guided and they would have a place to put in their requests and let off steam before they get to such an emotional pitch.” 14 Such attitudes contributed to the approval a few days later for a State Department coordinator’s office in Miami under the bureaucratic reorganization of Cuba policy.
Although now cast in a revamped framework with new leaders, the first few months of reorganization were devoted more to defining and refining the new policy than reactivating covert operational activities, particularly sabotage. The emphasis remained on intelligence collection and tightening Cuba’s international isolation. Additional constraints were imposed by the ongoing efforts of New York attorney James Donovan—who had successfully negotiated the release of the Bay of Pigs prisoners—to gain freedom for twenty-two natural-born American citizens still jailed in Cuba. There was concern as well about provoking a surface-to-air missile shoot-down by Cuba of U-2 surveillance flights over the island, which were made in lieu of on-site inspections for weapons withdrawal.
And there was internal wrangling between the diplomats and the soldiers, with State wanting to exploit “appropriate opportunities” and Defense favoring a more aggressive approach of applying “increasing degrees” of pressure, including “open military support upon request of indigenous forces” inside Cuba. A peripheral and ongoing debate centered on how best to utilize the returned Bay of Pigs invasion brigade, with Bobby Kennedy pushing for an activist role, including the brigade’s participation in “selection of targets and methods of operation.” 15
“The brigade was the object of massaging all the time,” recalled John Crimmins, who succeeded Cottrell as Cuban affairs coordinator in April of 1963. “They were always being sort of promised stuff then something would go wrong. The brigade people would get restive, then have to be cajoled, and conned again.” 16
In March 1963 President Kennedy formally designated Erneido Oliva, the second in command at the Bay of Pigs, as the brigade’s official representative. His liaison at the Pentagon was a young army officer named Alexander Haig Jr. Haig had been assigned in February as military assistant to Secretary of the Army Cyrus Vance and worked directly for Joe Califano, the army’s general counsel. “The job included the duty of acting in loco parentis to the rescued Cubans,” wrote Haig. Califano “let me
know early on, in our first meeting on the subject, that the President himself and, even more to the point, his brother Robert, were taking a close personal interest in the rescued Cubans. Apparently one Kennedy or the other called Califano nearly every day to inquire about their welfare. It was their wish that every veteran be given a new start in life in the United States.” His job, said Haig, “was to make sure they got it.” 17
In the meantime, thrust by the missile crisis into a broader international context, contingency plans for an invasion of Cuba had to be reconsidered. “The time will probably come when we will have to act again on Cuba,” President Kennedy told his National Security Council. “Cuba might be our response in some future situation—the same way the Russians have used Berlin. We may decide that Cuba might be a more satisfactory response than a nuclear response.” 18
By early April, documents reflect a renewed interest—with apparent pressure from above—in stepped-up covert activities, particularly sabotage, and in more clearly defining the Cuba policy within the new bureaucratic framework. President Kennedy and his brother convened a White House meeting about Cuba on April 3 with a group from State, CIA, and Defense, including Cyrus Vance and the CIA’s Richard Helms, along with McGeorge Bundy. The president pointedly asked FitzGerald if the exile raids accomplished anything. FitzGerald responded that they probably did nothing but “bolster morale.” The president said he didn’t object to such raids but so far they seemed to amount to nothing more than “froth,” adding, “we cannot condone the holding of press conferences by exiles after such raids.” Kennedy then asked if sabotage operations were under consideration. Bundy said no because “the Special Group had decided . . . that such activity is not worth the effort expended on it, in relation to the results that could be obtained in the intelligence field.” Others at the session thought sabotage might have some impact in terms of economic damage and psychological effect. Bobby Kennedy, reflecting his fixation with paramilitary operations, wanted to know “whether it might be useful to consider commando-type raids by groups of from 100 to 500 men.” FitzGerald said that “even if such groups could be landed it would probably be impossible for them to survive for any length of time.” Kennedy then urged that the “CIA survey all possibilities for aggressive action in Cuba over the next six months.” 19
On April 11 the Cuba Coordinating Committee dedicated a session to covert operations. FitzGerald presented three sabotage targets for approval during April and May: a railway bridge, some petroleum storage
facilities, and a molasses storage vessel. In the discussion approving the targets it was concluded:
a. This will meet the President’s desire for some noise level and for some action in the immediate future.
b. These are relatively soft targets. They will not hurt the Cubans terribly much. (Unfortunately, this is usually the case with soft targets—the ones that really hurt are hard and require extensive planning.)
c. These targets will not be attacked before April 22, if it looks like the American prisoners will be released on that date.
d. The Special Group should be aware of the consequences of these raids. For example, raids from outside may prompt Cuban firings near or at American ships.
Sabotage of Cuban shipping came up again in the discussion, as did intelligence operations and attacks both from inside and outside Cuba. Notes of the session concluded that Desmond FitzGerald “feels that the President wants some action. Dez [sic] is working on a program which will show continuous motion. The soft targets, which are generally unimportant, will be first because they require the least preparation. As time goes on, however, we will be hitting some harder and more important targets.” 20
Covert activity—including the problems posed by the March 30 announcement of the crackdown on exile raids—dominated the discussion during a Special Group meeting that same day, April 11. “With respect to external operations to be mounted by exile groups, it was agreed that this poses a real dilemma,” read notes of the meeting. The publicly announced crackdown on the raids had made it “increasingly difficult” to plausibly disavow responsibility for them without appearing to be either ineffective in controlling them or of being suspected of “active involvement in the operations.” 21
In an April 18 memo to the Special Group, the new Coordinator of Cuban Affairs, Sterling Cottrell, offered a “Proposed New Covert Policy and Program Towards Cuba,” which called for placement of explosive devices with time delays on Cuban ships; surface attacks by “maritime assets” on Cuban ships in Cuban waters; externally mounted hit-and-run raids against land targets in Cuba; and support for internal resistance elements in carrying out a variety of sabotage and harassment operations. He concluded with the observation that “when the policy and guidelines
of the overall sabotage program are established, it will be possible progressively to develop up to a limit additional covert assets and support capabilities. However, materially to increase the pace of operations, a period of four to six months is required.” 22
Two days later, on April 20, President Kennedy told a meeting of the National Security Council that he “wanted to raise the pressure somewhat in Cuba. He felt that we could hardly carry out a mild policy in Cuba at a time the Communists are carrying out an aggressive policy in Laos.” 23 By April 23 Bobby Kennedy was proposing three studies on Cuba: “a. A list of measures we would take following contingencies such as the death of Castro or the shooting down of a U-2. b. A program with the objective of overthrowing Castro in eighteen months, c. A program to cause as much trouble as we can for Communist Cuba during the next eighteen months.” 24 There is no indication any of the studies were ever prepared.
By late April the proposed new policy/program for Cuba had come up for discussion before the Special Group with no decision taken but “preliminary reactions,” which were summarized by Tom Parrott:
a. The proposition for dealing with selected exile groups is a good one, but the method of dealing with them will have to be more carefully defined.
b. There is no objection to limpets, subject to further technical studies.
c. Surface attacks on Cuban ships do not appear particularly attractive, nor do shore-based attacks of a similar nature.
d. Externally mounted hit-and-run attacks against land targets appear worthwhile. The operations in this category which can be run in May, will be discussed with higher authority. Refineries and power plants seem to be particularly good targets. Operations of this kind will be especially valuable if done in conjunction with other resistance activities.
e. Internal resistance should be stimulated, again in conjunction with related operations. 25
There were other problems. Jose Miro Cardona resigned as president of the exile Cuban Revolutionary Council, blasting U.S. government inaction against Cuba. Several other affiliated organizations and personalities also quit the council, initially created as the front for the Bay of Pigs invasion. The council, known originally as the Democratic Revolutionary Front, continued in its exile-front role post-Bay of Pigs, receiving a $137,000 U.S. monthly subsidy, with another $103,000 monthly going to seven other exile groups, including some affiliated with the council. The
council’s money flow stopped with the resignations, effectively ending its usefulness. 26 As Hurwitch put it, “the exile community in Miami became restless; their political leaders could not survive stagnation.” 27
The groping for a coherent Cuba policy continued for several more weeks, with discussions of contingency plans for Castro’s death or defection from the Soviet bloc, the response to a Cuban shoot-down of a U-2 reconnaissance plane overflying the island, and the prospects of forging exile unity.
The indecision at the top clearly was taking its toll on the secret war soldiers, as indicated in a CIA paper taking note of “two rather thoroughly worked out sabotage proposals” rejected by the Special Group. “In order to alleviate the problem of agent morale, which cannot be kept constantly at an optimum level in the face of repeated turndowns, the Agency now proposes to follow a new system.” It would develop plans for multiple, rather than individual, sabotage targets, and submit them to the Special Group in hopes of getting “approval for one or more of them for planning purposes. With this in hand, they can then proceed with more detailed planning.” 28
Two weeks later a May 28 meeting of the National Security Council’s Standing Group again reflected the differing views over Cuba policy. Bundy insisted the United States didn’t have the ability to overthrow Castro. McCone, who supported stepped-up covert operations, argued that increasing economic hardship on Cuba would cause the Cuban military to oust the dictator. McNamara wanted to know what specific economic or covert policies would get rid of Castro. Bobby Kennedy argued that the United States must do something against Castro, even if “we do not believe our actions would bring him down.” 29
Finally, on June 8, the CIA presented a Proposed Covert Policy and Integrated Program of Action toward Cuba to the Standing Group. 30 President Kennedy approved the program, including accelerated “sabotage and harassment,” on June 19. The stated objective was “to encourage dissident elements in the military and other power centers of the regime to bring about the eventual liquidation of the Castro/Communist entourage and the elimination of the Soviet presence from Cuba.” Power plants, transportation facilities, fuel production and storage operations, and production processing and manufacturing plants were the priority sabotage targets. “Higher Authority [Kennedy] showed a particular interest in proposed external sabotage operations” and wanted to know how soon they could begin, said FitzGerald of the high-level meeting that approved the
plan. Kennedy was told they would begin by the “dark-of-the-moon period” in July. 31
The major components of the program were:
A. Covert collection of intelligence, both for U.S. strategic requirements as well as for operational requirements . . .
B. Propaganda actions to stimulate low-risk simple sabotage and other forms of active and passive resistance . . .
C. Exploitation and stimulation of disaffection in the Cuban military and other power centers . . .
D. Economic denial actions . . .
E. General sabotage and harassment.
F. Support of autonomous anti-Castro Cuban groups to supplement and assist in the execution of the above courses of action . . .
Cited as “sabotage considered appropriate” under the category of “general sabotage and harassment” were:
(1) Simple low-risk sabotage on a large scale stimulated by propaganda media (approved and being implemented).
(2) Sabotage of Cuban ships outside Cuban waters (approved and being implemented).
(3) Externally mounted hit-and-run attacks against appropriately selected targets.
(4) Support of internal resistance elements, providing material and personnel to permit them to undertake a variety of sabotage and harassment operations.
“During the first six months of 1963, little, if any, sabotage activity against Cuba was undertaken,” noted the Church Committee, but after President Kennedy’s approval of the new covert program, “specific intelligence and sabotage operations were submitted to the Special Group for authorization. On October 24, 1963, thirteen major sabotage operations, including the sabotage of an electric power plant, an oil refinery, and a sugar mill were approved for the period from November 1963 through January 1964.” 32
Stepped-up sabotage and harassment activity meant renewed pressure on JMWAVE, where Shackley already was having difficulties with the station’s paramilitary operations. “There were always problems,” he said, adding “you need to divide it into several pieces in talking about paramil
itary operations.” They included the dropping of supply caches for people inside, infiltrating teams for intelligence purposes and, finally, sabotage. It was the latter—known as “boom and bang”—that was most frustrating. “On the one side,” said Shackley, “were the people in Washington, Bobby Kennedy, and so forth, who wanted to go after the big targets, strike major economic blows. People were looking at Matahambre [the copper mine in western Cuba] and Nicaro [nickel facility in eastern Cuba]. But some big targets did not lend themselves to boom and bang. They were inland. Target selection for the big targets was a real problem.” 33
The alternative, said Shackley, was “to go after low economic targets, but do more of them .. . the pinprick approach. If you do enough, it will have the same effect. They [Cubans] will have to deploy resources and it will cost them as much as big targets. Bridges close to the coast, storage areas, fires in sugarcane fields; that was the other part of the equation. But we also seemed to have a lot of difficulty making pinprick operations go with a lot of regularity. There were enough problems we had to ask ourselves, ‘is there something wrong with our operation . . . our formula?’ ”
Among the problems, and a perennial complaint heard among various officials involved in covert activities, was the propensity of Cubans to talk too much, comprising operations. As an example, Shackley said, if you “put some guys into Oriente Province, they would drop out of sight in Miami. Then word would go out, ‘oh, that group is on a mission.’ The guys disappear then everybody starts clacking their mouths. So we took a look at the decision-making process.”
Around this time word came down from Washington for more sabotage. Shackley huddled with Dave Morales, the station’s paramilitary chief. “We spent a whole day talking about what can we do about giving away information. We had a guy on our staff who had been talking about using the UDTs [underwater demolition teams] more exclusively. It had value and we would have gone for it before but it had very high risk,” said Shackley. “We took the guy with our assets and put them in the boonies; put the guy to work training them. We put him together with fifteen or sixteen of these guys, outstanding, very well educated, who handled equipment well. He trained them all over South Florida.”
The group that emerged, said Shackley, was “totally separate from everything else we had working.” It was a “tightly compartmentalized” unit, said Shackley, with himself, Morales, and the UDT specialist the
only Americans at JMWAVE even aware of it. The result was a series of hit-and-run raids on Cuba using small, fast boats and, apparently, even small aircraft. Once trained and ready for action, said Shackley, “we had to find a vehicle for attribution” when they staged an attack. The elite group’s public face became Commandos Mambises, a shadowy organization which news accounts reported as based in Central America. The name came from Cuban rebels who fought against Spain in the late nineteenth century. Rafael Martinez Pupo, a wealthy Cuban-exile businessman living in Guatemala—who Shackley described as a Morales friend and onetime Central American distributor for Uncle Ben’s rice—emerged as the group’s spokesman and public financier. 34 Martinez Pupo identified the group’s action leader as a mysterious Cuban known only as Ignacio.
Although Shackley did not identify the UDT specialist, it may have been Gordon Campbell, the deputy station chief. He was also the head of maritime operations and worked under the cover of Marine Engineering of Homestead, near the JMWAVE station. 35 Campbell is identified as Keith Randall in the “tell all” book by Bradley Ayers. Many Cuban exiles insist that Grayston Lynch, the paramilitary CIA contract employee who went on the beach with the Bay of Pigs invasion force, served as the case officer for Commandos Mambises. But Shackley was adamant in two separate interviews that Lynch had “nothing to do” with the operation. It appears the confusion may have resulted from a successor group to the original Mambises that was devoted to intelligence collection.
Commandos Mambises first surfaced publicly during the last half of August 1963, a bit behind FitzGerald’s July “dark-of-the-moon” timetable. One sea and two air attacks were attributed to the group the last two weeks of August. They included the offshore shelling of a metal processing plant on the north coast of Pinar del Rio Province by two fast boats and a rocket raid from the air on an oil installation at Casilda in Las Villas Province. The Commandos Mambises apparently were not responsible for the third raid attributed to them: the aerial strafing and bombing of a sugar mill in Camaguey Province. A Miami Herald account of the raid on the metal processing plant observed that “because the raid appeared unusually well-equipped and planned, as compared with similar strikes this year, Cuba blamed the U.S. and ‘puppet Central American governments.’ ”
The story added that the boats “escaped under cover of heavy machinegun fire from a larger mother ship which launched them” and
“the three strikes—each on a strategic target, each in a different province, and each well-directed—indicated a stepped-up campaign of such mosquito strikes.
“Refugee sources in Miami said they did not know Martinez Pupo and had not heard of the Mambises. They commented only that the raiders seemed to have unusually good equipment and that it was the first time a raid had been carried out so successfully which had not been followed by a full-scale press conference.” 36
In Guatemala Martinez Pupo was doing his job. He walked into news agency offices in Guatemala City with a communique—presumably written by JMWAVE in Miami—announcing the first attack and declaring the Mambises operated from a secret base in the Caribbean with cells established in Cuba. Martinez Pupo’s communiques were subsequently relayed to media in Miami through Salvador Lew, a Cuban exile newscaster who worked as a paralegal for David Walters, a prominent local attorney active in the Democratic Party. Lew later escorted Fidel’s sister, Juanita Castro, on a hemisphere tour secretly arranged by JMWAVE after her June 1964 defection. 37 He became a prominent commentator on Cuban radio in Miami and, eventually, was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2001 as director of Radio-TV Marti, the U.S. government-financed antiCastro propaganda station.
The CIA’s Office of National Estimates under Sherman Kent prepared a memorandum for McCone assessing Castro’s reaction to the steppedup sabotage activity. The memo concluded: “Castro would take a very serious view of continuing acts of sabotage. His reaction would almost certainly include a general increase of internal security controls and defensive capabilities, political moves against the US, and requests to the Soviets for assistance in defense. In addition, there might be direct acts of retaliation against Cuban exile bases. The chances of Cuban-inspired sabotage against US installations would probably increase.” 38
But Washington was pleased with the new operation. McGeorge Bundy told the Special Group members in a September 23 memo: “As you know, in August the U.S. Government directed two ‘exile’ raids against targets in Cuba. From the evidence, now available, it appears that our security, with respect to the U.S. participation in these operations, was excellent. While there will always be public speculation as to the extent of U.S. involvement in raids of this type, I think we would all agree readily that it is important that there be only speculation, and no direct knowledge. . . . I think there are two important, if obvious, security lessons we have
THE CASTRO OBSESSION
learned from the August raids—one, that it is in the nature of the problem that many people probably have to know something about such raids; and two, that these people apparently can maintain adequate security.” 39
News accounts indicate the group carried out three more successful raids before the end of 1963, including an October 1 attack on a lumber mill in Oriente Province; the destruction—by infiltrators into the island a month previously—of a floating barge and crane at Isabela de Sagua in Las Villas Province; and the December 23 sinking of a Russian-made Cuban patrol boat docked at the Isle of Pines. But an October 21 mission to Cabo Corrientes, off Pinar del Rio’s southwest coast, to rendezvous with two commandos infiltrated a week earlier as part of a caching and infiltration mission, was far from successful, resulting in what became a potential international incident. The operation was a trap by Castro forces who opened fire on the raiders. Two were killed, one wounded, and four captured. As the Rex, the mission’s mother ship, fled the area, Cuban planes mistakenly strafed the nearby /. Louis, a Liberian-registered, U.S.-owned bauxite-laden freighter en route from Jamaica to Texas.
Castro followed up a few days later with a news conference identifying the Rex as a CIA vessel and disclosing that it was then docked at the South Florida port of West Palm Beach. The news sent reporters scurrying up and down Florida’s east coast, producing a flurry of speculative stories about the Rex (which also operated as the Explorer II), the Leda, and the Vilaro, all so-called mystery ships sailing from Florida ports. Various port officials acknowledged that the ships came and went without the usual customs and other bureaucratic restraints and said they had been asked not to disclose information about the vessels. Shackley, in an early December cable to Washington, said the Rex and the Leda “would undergo at earliest opportunity [a] paper sale from current corporations to cut-out corporations who would re-register vessels under different flag, change names, change home port, change port of call, repaint, and make whatever modifications possible in superstructure silhouette.” 40
The Mambises were subsequently heard from December 23, with the Isle of Pines attack. A Cuban government communique charged that the action “constitutes the first act of aggression by the United States since President Lyndon Johnson took office.” The Isle of Pines attack had been on a list of eleven “Proposed infiltration/exfiltration operations into Cuba during November 1963,” submitted by the Cuban affairs coordinator to the Special Group on November 8. Identified as Operation 3117, it was described as a “UDT operation designed to sink or damage a Kronstadt
A NEW BEGINNING
or other Cuban patrol craft while in anchorage in Ensenada de la Siguanes, Isle of Pines. The attack will be made by swimmer teams using limpets.” 41
The next raid attributed to the Mambises didn’t come until September 1964, when the group claimed to have successfully sabotaged a seventyfoot Russian-built Cuban ship used for diving operations off the Isle of Pines. The communique again came from Martinez Pupo, through Lew in Miami, and declared “as Cuban patriots who dislike the gifts of the Soviets, the Commandos Mambises sabotaged the ship with the purpose of reminding Fidel Castro that the war of liberation is on and that his days as oppressor of the Cuban masses are numbered.” Given the fact that the Mambises operated out of Florida by JMWAVE and U.S.-directed raids on Cuba had been curtailed, it seems certain that this operation was unauthorized or done by freelance exile raiders under the Mambises banner.
Apart from the Mambises, which provided Washington with its biggest “boom and bang,” Shackley said IMWAVE attempted “in theory” to carry out about fifteen operations a month during 1962 and 1963. With each operation came interminable reports to Washington. “We had to send a report every month; account for everything in excruciating detail when they [the teams] came back,” said Shackley. That included intelligence collection operations, sabotage, arms caches, and hit-and-run raids. The station also supported “team leaders and unit commanders of organized guerrilla teams in the rural areas of Pinar del Rio,” composed mostly of former Batista army soldiers. “We got a guy out of the refugee flow who had leadership potential,” said Shackley. “We trained him and put him back in.” 42
By the time of President Kennedy’s November 22 assassination, JMWAVE station had planned eighty-eight missions to Cuba during the year, fifteen of which were canceled. Of the remaining seventy-three missions, only four directly involved sabotage. Ten others involved direct encounters with Cuban security forces. 43
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