T he end of the AMLASH operation in late June 1965, and with it that of Artime’s autonomous group, brought an effective close to nearly six years of covert war against Cuba. The dispatch of infiltration teams for intelligence gathering, psychological, propaganda, and other more passive and peripheral activities continued sporadically for nearly three more years, along with the occasional uncontrolled freelance exile efforts. But officially sanctioned assassination plots, sabotage, and hit-and-run raids were gone. The so-called autonomous groups were dead. While it is now apparent Johnson didn’t have much enthusiasm for the secret war, the circumstances existing when he took office made change inevitable. The Venezuelan arms cache issue that was headed to the OAS for debate meant lowering the volume of U.S. covert activities. Vietnam was heating up. And in early January 1964, violent anti-American rioting in Panama diverted attention from Cuba to a more immediate crisis. In late April 1965 civil war exploded in the Dominican Republic. Even more importantly, the mutual antipathy between Johnson and Bobby Kennedy meant that the most influential advocate for an aggressive covert action program against Cuba had lost his voice.
The changing atmosphere in Washington after Kennedy’s assassination became quickly apparent to those on the front lines of the secret war. “There was less enthusiasm after Johnson became president,” said Shackley, the JMWAVE chief. “We were still putting out plans but not getting agreement for paramilitary activity. As a result, we were having trouble keeping the troops motivated. We never got any specific orders to shut down. We just started cutting back, getting out of some of our leases,” added Shackley, who departed Miami in mid-1965. 1
Bradley Ayers, the Army Ranger captain detached to JMWAVE for training purposes, told a similar story. “While the nightmarish events continued to unfold in Dallas and Washington in the days following the assassination, we tried to continue our work as it had been before the
President’s death,” recounted Ayers. “Two things became obvious almost immediately. One, at our operational level there was a total vacuum of policy. As a result, virtually all paramilitary activity remained frozen, and no one could even guess when or in what way station operations would be resumed. Two, an undercurrent of suspicion and paranoia developed at headquarters as a result of the official and semiofficial witch hunts that were being conducted throughout various government agencies. As conspiracy rumors swept the nation—many of them connecting the assassination with Fidel Castro and the Cubans—the CIA, especially the Miami station, found itself in a particularly sensitive position.” 2
At CIA headquarters Sam Halpern remembered that after lohnson became president, “the pressure gradually disappeared, just stopped. Suddenly we weren’t getting telephone calls anymore that said we had to get rid of Castro. We felt it in terms that there was nobody screaming at us every day of the week. It wasn’t the same after Johnson took over. He had other things to think about.” 3 The same thing happened at the coordinator of Cuban affairs office where John Crimmins remembered “before the assassination, [McGeorge] Bundy would call every other day, either pleased or indignant about something. Under Johnson, I’d get a call a week, then a call every two weeks from Gordon Chase [Bundy’s aide]. That just sort of withered away, petered out.” 4
Rafael Quintero also sensed the difference. After President Kennedy’s assassination, said Quintero, “Bobby still kept putting pressure on but as soon as Johnson took over you could see it, you could feel that things were not the same as before. There was not that support as before. We knew it was going to be the end of it. You read any of Johnson’s speeches and you’ll see he doesn’t mention Cuba at all. I guess he was too busy with the Vietnam problem. . . . The Cuban problem wasn’t important enough.” Henry Heckscher, their CIA case officer, “sort of let us know,” said Quintero. “He told us this guy [Johnson] is not going to continue with this operation. He’s not that kind of guy. And at the time there were a lot of people against it. They didn’t think after Kennedy that it was going to last very long. It was a nonissue for Lyndon Johnson. The only guy that kept it alive was Bobby Kennedy.” Quintero said he supported Bobby Kennedy in his 1968 presidential bid, and “I firmly believe, and I’m probably the only Cuban who believes, that if he had been elected president he would have done something regarding Castro, something final.” 5
As vice president, Johnson had played virtually no role in formulating
foreign policy, let alone dealing with Cuba. Once he became president he was more disposed to listen to his advisers, particularly those in the State Department, who opposed the covert Cuba policy but previously had been silenced by Bobby Kennedy. “Nothing underscored Johnson’s limited role in foreign policy-making more than his silence during White House deliberations on the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962,” wrote historian Robert Dallek. “During the two weeks that JFK held meetings on how to settle the greatest post-1945 crisis in Soviet-American relations, LBJ was a shadow figure, expressing few opinions and asserting himself only on the afternoon of October 27, when the President was not present.” 6
Johnson started thinking about Cuba when he became president, however, as indicated by a December 1 conversation with Senator J. William Fulbright, a conversation which also reflected concerns about Vietnam. Johnson asked Fulbright what he should be doing about Cuba. Fulbright said he didn’t think “we ought to stir that up any. I think this election sounds good—what I heard of it today—in Venezuela. I think the goddamned thing ought to be let alone, as of the moment. I think if you stir it up . . .
Johnson interrupted: They’re shipping arms all over the damned hemisphere. [Helms had shown him a Cuban rifle two days before that had been seized as part of the Venezuelan arms cache.]
Fulbright: That we ought to stop. I thought you meant about going into Cuba.
Johnson: No, I’m not getting into any Bay of Pigs deal! No, I’m just asking you what we ought to do to pinch their nuts more than we’re doing. Why don’t you give me a one-page memo on what you’d do, if you were President, about Cuba?
Fulbright: You mean, exclusive of any direct interference?
Johnson: I mean what you’d do, if you were President, about Cuba. Inclusive or exclusive of anything. Just what you’d do. And get your good brain to working. I’d like to look at it and see.
Johnson then asked about Vietnam, to which Fulbright responded: “I just think that is a hell of a situation. . . . I’ll be goddamned if I don’t think it’s hopeless.” 7
As president, Johnson’s first serious formal session on Cuba policy came December 19, 1963, with a high-level briefing in the White House. The meeting generated an advance flood of papers from various agencies
and departments, recommending everything from a presidential statement supporting the internal dissidents to tightening the economic embargo, sabotage air strikes, and accelerating efforts at rapprochement. The CIA, in a status report, defined U.S. policy as one of isolating Cuba “from the Western Hemisphere and the rest of the Free World and to exert maximum pressures, short of open and direct US military intervention, to prevent the consolidation and stabilization of the Castro-Communist regime.” The agency’s covert action program, according to the report, “is designed to support other governmental measures to proliferate and intensify the pressures on Castro to encourage dissident elements, particularly in the military, to carry out and eliminate Castro and the Soviet presence in Cuba.” The report saw the “ultimate objective” as replacing the Castro regime “with one which will be fully compatible with the goals of the US and will cooperate with US efforts to establish friendly and stable regimes throughout Latin America.”
The CIA report acknowledged that current U.S. programs “at their present levels” were not likely to “result in the early overthrow of the Castro/Communist regime,” thus it “would seem timely to examine what additional covert and overt measures can be taken to quicken the pace of events.” Among these measures, it cited, “expanding and intensifying the category of sabotage and harassment at least for the next year.” To do so, two courses of action were suggested: (1) relax the crackdown on nonCIA controlled Cuban exile maritime raids and air strikes from U.S. territory while urging the British to do likewise from the Bahamas, and (2) authorize CIA autonomous groups to conduct air strikes against major economic targets such as power plants and oil refineries. The advantages and disadvantages of each were offered. Still, the CIA concluded: “In the last analysis . . . there are only two courses which would eliminate the Castro regime at an early date: an invasion or a complete blockade.” 8
McGeorge Bundy, who had remained in the White House as Johnson’s national security assistant, laid out for his new boss a comprehensive, twenty-two-page paper on Cuba policy in advance of the December 19 meeting. Its elemental nature clearly indicated the new president had only a basic knowledge of the Kennedy administration’s Cuba policy. In contrast to the CIA’s status report, Bundy said, “the bare minimum of our policy is a Cuba which poses no threat to its neighbors and which is not a Soviet satellite. In moving towards this objective we have rejected the options of unprovoked U.S. military intervention in Cuba and an effec
tive, total blockade around Cuba—primarily because they would risk another US/USSR confrontation.”
Bundy outlined what he called “offensive and defensive” measures against Cuba within the new policy framework of January 1963. “Offensively,” said Bundy “our ultimate minimum target is to remove the Soviet satellite from the Hemisphere.” Success was hoped for “by concentrating on three intermediate targets—intensifying Cuba’s already-serious economic difficulties; increasing the cost and unpleasantness to the Soviets of maintaining Cuba; and stimulating direct and indirect internal resistance to the regime. Our chief weapons for achieving these offensive targets are two—isolation measures and covert measures.”
The covert measures, said Bundy, “covered essentially six areas.” The first four were identified as (1) intelligence gathering for “both U.S. strategic and operational requirements”; (2) CIA-controlled propaganda directed at Cuba; (3) cooperation with the State Department and other agencies to “deny Cuba commodities which it urgently needs”; and (4) identification and establishment of “contact with potentially dissident non-Communist elements in the power centers of the regime” in an effort at stimulating an internal coup. And, added Bundy, “we currently are in direct contact with several people in Cuba who may be of significance.” The remaining two “offensive measures” were the four smallscale CIA-controlled sabotage operations (Commandos Mambises) “for the purpose of stimulating resistance and hurting Cuba economically,” and aid for “the autonomous groups and individuals, who will probably be ready to begin infiltration and sabotage in mid-January, and who will not necessarily be responsive to our guidance.”
Bundy acknowledged that the covert program’s “potential for bringing about a basic change in Cuba is still largely unknown” and was limited by current policy that “prevents covert air attacks on Cuban targets and prevents free-lance exile raids on Cuba from U.S. territory.” Bundy concluded his Cuba primer by telling the president that “the general consensus in the Government is that we should try to find ways of stepping up our pressures against the Castro regime.” He cited seven possible ways to do so: air attacks, unleashing of exiles, military feints, low-level flights, free world shipping to Cuba, public presidential statement, and talks with Soviets and Cubans (in an attempt to drive a wedge between them). 9
The December 19 White House briefing brought together such ranking officials as George Ball and U. Alexis Johnson of the State Department, Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon, Deputy Defense Secretary Roswell
Gilpatric, along with ranking representatives of the CIA, USIA, and the National Security Staff. Bobby Kennedy was conspicuously missing. Desmond FitzGerald recorded that “the President appeared interested in the number of agents inside Cuba but made no particular comment concerning the program until the subject of economic denial was introduced.” He wanted to know what additional measures could be taken. In a discussion of “promoting disaffection among the Cuban military, the President said it did not seem we had gone very far along this line.” FitzGerald responded that “the program being presented was, with the exception of the economic denial item, entirely a covert program and, if run at full capacity, would tax the capabilities of the clandestine services—in other words, if new and broader measures against Cuba were to be undertaken, they would have to be within the overt field.”
The discussion turned to sabotage, harassment, and a proposed raid against the refinery at Matanzas, on Cuba’s north coast. “After hearing the pros and cons, the President stated that he did not feel that the present time was a good one to conduct an operation of this magnitude which carried less than 50 percent chance of success,” but said planning should continue. “Recognizing that a cessation of raids would have a bad morale effect within Cuba, he agreed that low risk operations, with admittedly lower economic and psychological impact, should be conducted.” 10
A memo for the record of the same meeting by Gen. Earle Wheeler of the joint Chiefs of Staff reflected again that the president had particular interest in the exploitation of discontent within the Cuban military. FitzGerald told him it was a “long term undertaking. While there are disaffected Cuban military men in important posts, they have not, to date, made any contacts with each other nor formed any sort of group.” FitzGerald added that Castro’s overthrow from within would have to be supported by the Cuban military to have any chance of success. During discussion of sabotage and harassment, reported Wheeler, “the President expressed his reluctance to undertake high risk actions at this time for two reasons: (1) Current attempts to get OAS agreement to various actions directed against Cuba might be jeopardized; and, (2) The Soviets seem to be watching closely the new administration’s policies toward Cuba, and it might influence unfavorably the success of our efforts to achieve further reductions in Soviet military personnel in Cuba.” The meeting concluded with “discussion of further actions we might take to increase pressure and harassments at an appropriate time. . . . While the President did not express disapprobation, neither did he express
approval. In fact, no real decisions were taken at this meeting which must be regarded, I think, as being an important orientation session.” 11
Nine days into the New Year Bundy advised the president that “three small-scale sabotage operations have been approved by the Special Group, but this recommendation is based on a routine continuation of broad policy guidance which I think you may wish to review.” The three operations involved a coastal warehouse and pier, a naval or patrol vessel in a harbor, and a fuel barge in coastal waters. Bundy noted that all three operations had been approved three months earlier, including one that was rescheduled because of high seas. He said the operations were comparable to “the small attack on a Cuban naval patrol in late December which Castro promptly blamed on you.” That apparently referred to the Commandos Mambises’s December 23 sinking of a Russian-made Cuban patrol boat docked at the Isle of Pines, since renamed the Isle of Youth. Bundy said that operation was planned before Kennedy’s assassination and “not cancelled thereafter because it seemed to fall within the guidance you expressed in your ... review of the Cuban problem.” The policy question faced now, observed Bundy, is: “If we condone these even small sabotage operations, Castro will certainly know it. Equally, if we call them off, he will know it, and so will the Russians. We thus have an opportunity to choose.”
Bundy said he didn’t think “the choice should be made on momentum alone. I therefore recommend a Cabinet-level review of the whole principle of covert sabotage against Cuba. I know that Rusk has never liked it and that McNamara thinks it does very little good. McCone and the CIA are for it, and so are most of the middle-level officers dealing with the Castro problem. I myself consider the matter extremely balanced, but before hearing full argument, my guess is that in your position I would stop sabotage attacks on the ground that they are illegal, ineffective, and damaging to our broader policy. I might then wish to make a little capital from this decision with the Soviet Union.” 12 The raids were never approved.
Two new sabotage proposals were brought before a Special Group meeting the next day, January 10, for approval. The first targeted a petroleum refinery and storage facilities near Santiago, in eastern Cuba. It was rejected. The second proposed target was a sawmill located on the north coast of Oriente Province. “The attack,” said the proposal, “is to be conducted by a commando team which will place incendiaries and demoli
tions at critical locations throughout the installation. A second target, which may be attacked as security factors permit, is a large floating crane which has been anchored in the area and which appears to be used in loading ore from a near-by mine. This operational proposal with its two targets was approved subject to the concurrence of higher authority. Also, it was the consensus of the Group that the views of higher authority should be obtained on what is desired generally in the field of sabotage activities in Cuba.” The memo for the record of the meeting shows Bobby Kennedy attended while the sabotage proposals were discussed. 13 There is no indication the CIA went ahead with the second proposal. Although no document was found specifically suspending CIA-controlled sabotage operations, other documents suggested a suspension of such operations was imposed in January and the program was eventually terminated. 14 That would mean the December 23, 1963, raid by the Commandos Mambises was the last CLA-controlled sabotage operation of the secret war.
One of the early indicators that Johnson leaned to curtailment of the Cuba program came in mid-to-late January and related to the Cubans in the U.S. military. Erneido Oliva, the deputy commander of the Bay of Pigs and by then a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army, had come to Washington from Fort Sill, Oklahoma. He wanted to know where his proposal—with Bobby Kennedy’s endorsement—to unite all Cubans within the military into a cohesive unit stood. Oliva was in his hotel when Bobby Kennedy’s secretary called. She said a friend of the attorney general’s would pick him up and take him to the White House where Kennedy was in an important meeting with President Johnson. Kennedy met Oliva outside the White House, telling him “the President has made his decision, final decision” to end the Special Presidential Program for Bay of Pigs veterans in the U.S. military, a program President Kennedy had announced the previous March designating Oliva as its special representative. A few minutes later Kennedy and Oliva were taken into the White House library, “and Johnson came in and he flatly told me my program with the Cubans had to be terminated. Bobby didn’t say anything. You know they didn’t get along well. He told me before that he had tried to persuade him . . . but he didn’t try and persuade the president of the United States in front of me. He was only listening, his head bowed, pretty sad.” Oliva said the meeting lasted sixteen minutes and at its end President Johnson asked them to go to the Pentagon.
There, McNamara, Vance, Califano, and Haig were waiting. McNa
mara delivered the same message the president had delivered in the White House. Oliva was then asked to visit the military bases where Cubans were stationed, accompanied by Califano and Haig, to inform them of the decision. The Cubans were to be told they could remain in the military if they wished, but not as part of a special program. “At the beginning I said, ‘No, no, I am not going anyplace. I am not helping you do anything. That’s it.’ I was fed up with the whole thing. But Haig, who was really like a friend at the time, persuaded me to recognize the importance of it. If Haig and Califano go around to every base to get together with forty, fifty, Cuban officers and they didn’t see me, they would say, ‘What is going on?’ This is why they needed me.” Haig, Califano, and Oliva made the visits in February. Oliva resigned from active duty in May to join RECE. 15
Later in January the CIA prepared an exhaustive review—and defense—of the current covert action program against Cuba. It again cited the six areas as part of its interdependent courses of action program approved the preceding June. They were: (1) covert collection of intelligence; (2) propaganda actions to stimulate low-risk simple sabotage; (3) economic denial; (4) exploitation and stimulation of disaffection in the Cuban armed forces and other power centers of the regime to encourage these elements to carry out a coup against the Castro/Communist factions; (5) general sabotage and harassment; and (6) support of autonomous anti-Castro Cuban exile groups. The review noted that item five, general sabotage and harassment, “has been the subject of continual review since the inception of the program and is the primary subject of this paper.” The CIA said it believed “there is sufficient evidence to show that sabotage raids, despite the risk involved, are a necessary stimulus to internal action which will need to be continued for a considerable period to permit the tempo of internal acts to reach a point where it can become self-contained.” It argued that ending the raids would send the wrong message to both those inside Cuba and the rest of Latin America where it would be seen as a switch from “aggressive action against the Castro regime to one of ‘coexistence’ and eventual accommodation.” It also anticipated “a new surge of domestic political agitation on the part of the numerous Cuban exiles who have political connections within the U.S.” In conclusion, it recommended that “the covert program be continued in at least its present form and scope.” 16
The new president received his baptism of fire in dealing with the Cuba problem beginning on “a quiet Sunday afternoon, February 2, 1964,” in
the Dry Tortugas, a small group of islands off the Florida Keys. The Coast Guard spotted four Cuban fishing boats in U.S. territorial waters. The four boats and their thirty-six crew members were intercepted and escorted to Key West the next day. “Two of the Cuban captains admitted that they knew they were fishing inside U.S. waters,” Johnson wrote in The Vantage Point, a first-person account of his presidency. “We also learned that before they left Cuba the crews were told they had been selected for an ‘historic venture.’ Their assignment was to ‘test U.S. reactions.’ In other words, the incursion of the Cuban boats was a deliberate confrontation.” The confrontation set off a week of frenzied and confrontational diplomacy. Cuba maintained the fishing boats were in international waters, accusing the United States of “piracy” and “vandalism.” On February 5 the Swiss ambassador in Havana, as the representative of Washington’s interests in the absence of diplomatic relations, was called in and told that Cuba was cutting off the water supply to the Guantanamo Naval Base. It would remain off until the fishermen were released. This action had long been anticipated and contingency plans were made. Tankers began hauling water from Florida, and Johnson made two other decisions: to provide the base with a self-sufficient water supply and to cut back gradually and eventually end the employment of all Cubans on the base. On February 21a Florida court dropped charges against the Cuban crews, fined the captains $500 each, and released all of the fishermen. Castro ordered the water turned back on the same day. He was told that it was no longer needed. 17
John Crimmins, the coordinator of Cuban affairs, recalled the incident as “the first indication of Johnson’s approach” to the Cuba problem.
There was a big furor. . . . The press was all upset. . . . Some voices said we have to do something forceful about this, but he was very prudent and careful, no cowboy stuff, very low key. He didn’t want to provoke anything. It was not the end of the world.” 18
A month later the CIA received a reading on the Cuban reaction to the Guantanamo affair from a source described as “a medium level Cuban government official, who has proved to be a mature, intelligent and astute observer” and another from “a high level government official who is definitely in a position to know Fidel Castro’s expressed views on the matter under discussion.” McCone passed the intelligence report on to Rusk, McNamara, and Bundy. It reported that Castro “sincerely desires to enter into negotiation with the United States with the aim of reducing tension” but “reacts with strong irritation or ‘rage’ to events which
increase tension between the United States and Cuba,” a reaction particularly evident in the case of the four fishing boats. “Despite Castro’s basic concern that the situation not get out of hand, his prestige was obviously at stake in the eyes of the Cuban populace. His irritation at American handling contributed to the forces shaping his response. He was constrained to take action to restore his prestige, and related to a high regime official that he saw three courses of action open to Cuba.” They were to dispatch Cuban MIGs to harass the USS Oxford, stationed in waters off Havana; fire at a U-2 plane as it flew over Cuba; and cut off the water supply to Guantanamo. The intelligence report said that at no time did Castro and leading Fidelistas show concern about a possible U.S. invasion because the Soviet Union would intervene to prevent such action. “Curiously enough . . . Castro and his principle lieutenants more or less lost sight of. . . U.S. reactions” while “imagining what the reaction of Khrushchev would be to the incident. They were convinced that ‘Nikita’ would be panicked at the thought that Guantanamo might confront him with an unpleasant situation vis a vis the United States, and top Cuban leaders generally gave themselves over to amusement at the situation and commented ‘Nikita must be soiling himself with fright.’ ” 19
Sometime in early February apparently, Cyrus Vance, the secretary of the Army who had been designated by President Kennedy under the June 1963 covert action program as the executive agent for the entire federal government in dealing with Cuba, came up with his own ideas for the future of covert action. 20 Vance’s original document was not found, but a February 12, 1964, note on covert activities circulated by Peter Jessup of the White House National Security staff, referred to a paper as “prettymuch a Vance idea and his motivation seems to be to get a fish-or-cutbait decision. Mr. McNamara disliked an earlier longer paper but is fond of this one. FitzGerald registers no dissent because he is of the fish-orcut-bait school.” The implication is that Vance wants either a much more aggressive program of covert action or an end to it. The Jessup memo said that despite the “extreme wariness of higher authority [the president] at this time,” the suggested types of action in the Vance proposal “do include some items of a controversial nature such as placing un-activated devices in ships of foreign flags and then warning the consignee. . . . Equally hairy is the proposal for kidnapping and physical harassment of Peking-oriented trainees while attributing same to Kruschev [sic] supporters.” The memo noted, however, “that if a decision is reached (fol
lowing examination of the Cuba review) to step up activity, such action would come up as a separate operation to the Special Group.” 21 The Special Group met two days later, with the Vance proposals on the agenda. Vance reported that “he could speak for the Secretary of Defense; his attitude had turned toward a much harder line,” but no other detail of the proposed program was included in a memorandum for the record of the meeting. During a more general discussion on covert activities, “the following points were emphasized: Continued covert action received support although divergence on the level of activity was registered. There was a consensus that the present level of operations was no longer effective in attaining the basic objective of toppling Castro but harassment might keep the regime off balance. There was an area of disagreement on proofs of effectiveness of current and past measures. Mr. Bundy summarized the dilemma by noting that the high risk, dangerous operations are the rewarding ones and the low noise, innocuous operations prove to be unrewarding.” 22 Even though the Vance—Defense Department proposal was not found, subsequent events make it obvious it was not approved.
Desmond FitzGerald, in a revealing March 6, 1964, letter to Bundy, summed up the disappointing status of covert activities in the context of the program approved the preceding June. The excerpts below are from FitzGerald’s letter, written the same day he and Helms met with Bundy, while covert action was still being reviewed. Wrote FitzGerald:
The sabotage raids, built into the program as a sort of firing pin for internal unrest and to create the conditions for a coup, which was to be the main force leading to Castro’s defeat, ran only from August to December and only five were actually conducted. The effectiveness of those five raids is debatable; there are strong proponents on both sides of the argument. Regardless of how that debate might come out, however, five rather lowkey raids followed by the present three-month hiatus, the latter clearly noted by pro- and anti-Castroites alike, adds up to a program of much smaller dimension than originally envisioned which could not be expected to have had the desired detonating effect.
At the present time, as a result of a number of circumstances well known to you, Castro is in a strong upswing and the spirit of resistance within Cuba is at a very low point indeed. In my estimation, a covert program at this time designed to overthrow Castro is not realistic. Acceptance of risks and noise level of a greater magnitude than we had in mind in June would be needed to stand a chance in view of the developments since last June. This then raises the question of what should happen now to the vari
ous bits and pieces of the June program. I would like to mention these separately and refer to some of the considerations typical to each.
The sabotage raids are conducted by Cuban exile groups [apparently refers to Commandos Mambises] trained in Florida and entirely subject to our planning and control. There are three of these groups totaling approximately 50 men. To place them in position and recover them there requires an extensive maritime apparatus in Florida, which likewise serves intelligence agent infiltrations and exfiltrations. To maintain the raiding capability on a stand-by basis is expensive but, more importantly, the raiding groups themselves have a relatively short shelf life; if not employed their morale deteriorates and some of the members, usually the best motivated, drop out. Replacements can be acquired and trained but their caliber and morale is in large part determined by the morale of the exile community as a whole. We probably can retain the present raiding groups at roughly their current capabilities for another month or two, although the wellknown Cuban volatility is capable of causing sudden and more rapid deterioration.
In short, we will need to know within a reasonable time whether we should continue to effect repairs to and keep in being our sabotage raiding apparatus. The dismemberment of these raiding teams could be accomplished without too much shock to the exile community. It would be noticed, but, if done carefully, particularly if it coincided with the commencement of ‘autonomous’ operations, it should not cause undue repercussions and polemics against U.S. policy.
The remainder of the letter dealt with the Ray and Artime autonomous groups, plus Menoyo’s activities; the possible consequences of suspending autonomous operations; “a capacity which is increasing, to sabotage Cuban ships in foreign ports”; economic warfare; contact with and subversion of Cuban military and other ranking officials; and intelligence collection.
In conclusion FitzGerald asked for advice as to “which of the above lines of action we should continue, which we should try to retain as a shelf capability and which to abandon. (Of course, intelligence collection would continue.) As parts of an integrated national program designed to get rid of Castro, they seemed to us to make sense; as separate pieces they can serve to exert some braking effect on Castro’s program, but that is about all.” 23
Decision day came April 7 with a White House meeting convened to discuss the covert program against Cuba. Among those present, in addi
tion to the president, were Bundy from the White House; Rusk, Undersecretary Alexis Johnson, Assistant Secretary Tom Mann, and John Crimmins from the State Department; McNamara and Vance from the Defense Department; General Taylor from the Joint Chiefs; and McCone, Helms, and FitzGerald from the CIA. Again, Bobby Kennedy was not listed among the attendees. The seven items on the agenda which required “discussion and decision at a higher level,” were familiar: (1) collection of intelligence; (2) covert propaganda to encourage low risk forms of active and passive resistance; (3) cooperation with other agencies in economic denial; (4) attempts to identify and establish contact with potential dissident elements inside Cuba; (5) indirect economic sabotage; (6) CIA-controlled sabotage raiding; and (7) autonomous operations. Approval was recommended for the first five items. It was noted after the last two items that “opinion was divided and it is recommended that higher authority hear their arguments.” 24
At the meeting, Rusk came down hard against CIA-controlled raids, arguing that “two things presently militate against a resumption of the program: (a) the pending OAS matter with respect to the Venezuelan arms cache which may be strengthened by discovery of arms in the Argentine [sic] as well as in Brazil, and (b) the prospective turnover of the SAM sites by the Russians to the Cubans in April or May.” Bundy also said he had “come to the conclusion that it is unlikely an effective sabotage program will be conducted.” Policy makers, he said, “each time for good reasons, had turned sabotage operations on and off to such an extent that a program of the type envisioned in the June paper simply does not . . . appear feasible.” McCone defended the program, arguing that five relatively low-key operations” since the previous June “didn’t constitute a test of the program.” McNamara said, “It was his opinion that the covert program has no chance of success in terms of upsetting Fidel Castro.” Rusk recommended “that we keep the raiding assets in being for the next two months and that the question be discussed again following the resolution of the OAS events and the Cuban use of the SAM sites. The President accepted this recommendation.” 25 By contrast, the Church Committee report said, “According to the minutes of the Special Group meeting on April 7, 1964, President Johnson decided to discontinue the use of CIA-controlled sabotage raids against Cuba.” 26 That does not appear to be the case. Nor was it a Special Group meeting on April 7, but a special high-level White House meeting. Although no document was found confirming the Church Committee report, neither was docu
mentary evidence found of any further CIA-controlled sabotage raids. Such raids were “stood down” the previous January and apparently never resumed.
Two weeks later Gordon Chase followed up with a memo to Bundy, responding to his request that “the staff think about studies which can be done now but which might bear fruit in 1965.” Chase suggested that “one aspect which could profit from further study between now and November” was the question of rapprochement with Castro. “To get the most out of such a study,” said Chase, “the drafters should probably start with the hypothesis that in January, 1965, the U.S. Government decides that the Castro regime is here to stay and that it is desirable to try to reach an acceptable rapprochement with Castro.” Chase then suggested several questions for the drafters to address. 27 Nothing indicated any follow-up. An April 23 speech by Undersecretary of State George Ball, which was widely touted by Johnson administration officials, appeared to signal the subtle shift in policy toward Cuba that was occurring. “Foreign policies are rarely full-armed like Minerva,” Ball began. “More often they evolve in response to events and circumstances. In such cases there is the danger that the assumptions on which policies are founded may become obscured.” That had happened with policy toward Cuba, said Ball. “Some of the public discussion that has surrounded that policy has involved misapprehensions on a number of fronts; misapprehensions as to the nature of the danger posed by the present and potential activities of the Castro Government, misapprehensions as to the range of policies available to counter that danger, and misapprehensions as to the objectives that we can expect to accomplish by the policies employed.” 28
The main weapons left in Washington’s covert arsenal after April 7 were the Ray and Artime autonomous operations over which the United States had no tactical control. Both Cuban leaders by then had stoked the emotional fires leading up to May 20, Cuba’s Independence Day. Artime had just carried out the first raid against the Cabo Cruz sugar mill. Ray was poised to fulfill his promise of returning to Cuba to light the flame of his supposedly formidable underground ground network, which proved an illusion. Some fifteen journalists from major newspapers in the United States and London poured into Miami. “Most of the exiles believe that Castro’s end is near and that an undefined ‘something’ big is on its wa y—a something which is expected to solve all their problems and allow them to return to liberated Cuba in the next 30 or 60 days,” said a May
21 CIA report prepared by JMWAVE in Miami. 29 Little did the exile community know that President Johnson already had made the decision to cut bait, rather than fish. Ray, his credibility destroyed, sputtered ineptly along until sometime in 1965. Artime’s group shot itself in the foot with the mistaken attack on the Spanish freighter, but then managed to stay on life support via the Cubela plot, a long shot at best. For all practical purposes the secret war had sputtered to an end by June 1965. Or so everyone thought.
Suddenly, Adm. William Raborn, the newly named CIA director, made an abortive effort to resurrect the program, just as the Artime-Cubela plot gasped its last. In a June 26 memo to the president, Bundy advised him that Raborn “has recommended reactivation of a paramilitary effort against Cuba. . . . Tommy Thompson, Cy Vance and I are against the recommendation, but, along with Raborn, we have agreed to report the matter to you in case you want to pursue it further.” Among the operations Raborn proposed were: (1) maritime raids by commando teams against coastal targets; (2) use of an underwater demolition team to blow up ships in Cuban ports; (3) night attacks on major Cuban merchant vessels while in Cuban territorial waters; (4) air bombing of selected targets in Cuba by covert aircraft; and (5) deception operations designed to give the impression of imminent invasion by U.S. forces. “The trouble most of us see in such operations,” said Bundy, “is that their international noise level outweighs their anti-Castro value. Especially with the Dominican problem before us, most of us do not recommend visible violent actions against Cuba. I believe this is also the opinion of Dean Rusk and Bob McNamara. But if you feel differently, we can have the matter examined again.” 30 Johnson obviously did not feel differently. The only thing left to do was clean up the residue from six unsuccessful years trying to dump Fidel.
Desmond FitzGerald’s Special Affairs Staff, an independent unit handling Cuba at CIA headquarters, reverted back to being a part of the Western Hemisphere Division in 1965. Shackley left Miami in mid-June 1965, after beginning the scale-down of what had been the frontline command post for the secret war. By late 1966 a further substantial cutback and reorganization of JMWAVE was under way. “Many covert entities were terminated and personnel reassigned,” according to the Miami Station review of operations.
By early 1968 “it became apparent that as a result of sustained operational activity ... in the Miami area over a period of years the cover of the Miami Station had eroded to a point that the security of our opera
LBJ CASHES OUT
tions was increasingly jeopardized,” added the station review. “This erosion was more significant following the Ramparts exposure of CIA operations and the possibility that the location of our Station on property leased from the University of Miami might be especially embarrassing to the University.” It was clear. The South Campus station was obsolete, the CIA had outstayed their welcome, and the University of Miami wanted them to leave.
The decision was made to deactivate JMWAVE and replace it with a smaller operation “which would be better able to respond to current needs.” By then CIA personnel at the station—still operating under commercial cover—had been reduced from a peak of some four hundred to one hundred fifty.
The new station began operation—this time under official cover—with about fifty persons in August 1968 at a U.S. Coast Guard facility in what then was described as a “run-down” part of Miami Beach. Today the area is part of the booming South Beach nightlife scene. The station housed, according to the review document, “a new and much smaller media operation. ... Intelligence collection was expanded to include the Bahamas and Lesser Antilles. Increased emphasis was given to third-country Cuban operations [agent recruitment and technical operations against Cuban embassies abroad] under the guidance of the new Station. The Cuban emigre organizations supported by the Station were drastically reduced and activities were phased down. [Word blacked out] responsibility for the residual covert operations was transferred to Headquarters and the remaining Cuban emigre operations were terminated.” 31
The secret war against Castro had come full circle. Jake Esterline returned to Miami in early 1968 to preside over the reorganization, reduction, and relocation of JMWAVE. He had been deputy chief of the Western Hemisphere Division when he volunteered for the Miami job. “I felt a sense of obligation to the Cubans after the failure of the Bay of Pigs,” said Esterline. “If it was going to be done, I wanted to see it done right. I thought, ‘Really, my heart will always be with these people, these Cuban exiles in all these years, starting with the Bay of Pigs, and I don’t want to see them cast in the cold.’ ” In returning to Miami, he posed as a business consultant working for a company called Consultech, operating from a small office located—ironically—on the John F. Kennedy Causeway. In addition to arranging for the station’s relocation, Esterline further reduced its assets, closing front companies, canceling lingering leases, and the most difficult of all, laying off the several hundred Cubans still on the
THE CASTRO OBSESSION
payroll, while trying to avoid an embarrassing public scandal. “Obviously the agency didn’t want a big explosion in South Florida in terms of dropping everybody. Some of the diehard ones who felt they had to get to Castro were very unhappy. They accepted the fact... but were not happy that we were giving up the fight, in their words. Well, I wasn’t very happy about that either.” But, said Esterline, “in that context one recognized the inevitability that the total U.S. involvement in Vietnam precluded anything being done in terms of Castro. Since the missile crisis, there didn’t seem to be anything new and different that would warrant any diversion from Vietnam.” 32
ft
T he legacy of the unsuccessful six-year secret war against Fidel Castro—a legacy that belongs mostly to the Kennedy brothers—is not an admirable one. Among the war’s many negative consequences were the consolidation of Castro’s hold on Cuba, contributing to the Soviet decision to install offensive missiles on the island and spawning a cadre of Cuban exile terrorists perpetrating murder and mayhem far in excess of their relatively small numbers.
Historian Robert Dallek, in his biography of John F. Kennedy, rightly wrote that “the Bay of Pigs failure followed by repeated discussions of how to topple Castro show Kennedy at his worst—inexperienced and driven by Cold War imperatives that helped bring the world to the edge of a disastrous nuclear war.” In a more debatable observation, Dallek added that “the almost universal praise for his restraint and accommodation in the missile crisis, followed by secret explorations of detente with Havana more than make up for his initial errors of judgment. Indeed, a second Kennedy term might have brought resolution to unproductive tensions with Castro and foreclosed more than forty years of CubanAmerican antagonism.” 1
The praise for the president’s “restraint and accommodation” doesn’t take into account that Operation Mongoose, the program of covert action and overt saber rattling, most certainly contributed to the Soviet decision to install the missiles. And the argument that a second Kennedy term “might have brought resolution to unproductive tensions” and ended forty years of antagonism, is purely speculative; just another what-if in a landscape littered with what-ifs related to Cuba. What if Kennedy hadn’t changed the landing site for the Bay of Pigs? What if he had not curtailed the air cover? What if U.S. troops had been ordered in as the exile invasion collapsed? What if he had called the invasion off? What if an assassination attempt against Castro had succeeded? What if the Kennedys, rather than becoming obsessed with removing Castro after the Bay of Pigs
defeat, had forgone Mongoose and the other covert programs? There might not even have been a missile crisis. The list goes on.
Richard Goodwin, the Kennedy aide who met secretly with Che Guevara at Punta del Este, Uruguay, in August 1961—even as he was presiding over the task force that created Mongoose—wrote in his memo to Kennedy of his meeting that Guevara “wanted to thank us very much for the invasion—that it had been a great political victory for them—enabled them to consolidate—and transformed them from an aggrieved little country to an equal.” 2
In fact, the Kennedy vendetta against Cuba mirrored, in some ways, the methods employed by America’s Cold War enemies. In a speech a week after the Bay of Pigs collapsed, Kennedy argued that communism relied “primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence—on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day.” 3 Similar methods, in part, were used during both the Bay of Pigs and Mongoose operations.
At the international conference in Havana marking the fortieth anniversary of the missile crisis, Robert McNamara remarked that he “didn’t think Mongoose was worth a damn, but I didn’t say ‘don’t do it.’ ” One of the major themes underlying the two days of discussions at the conference was the role of Mongoose as a catalyst for the missile crisis. Symbolic of the Cuban’s emphasis on Mongoose was the publication, coinciding with the conference, of a book entitled Operacion Mangosta: Preludio de la Invasion Directa a CUBA (Operation Mongoose: Prelude for the Direct Invasion of Cuba) by Jacinto Valdes, a researcher for State Security’s Center for Historic Research. Both the Russian and the Cuban delegations left little doubt that they saw in Operation Mongoose—as the book title suggests—the prelude for a U.S. invasion.
Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who also opposed the Bay of Pigs invasion, offered his view of Mongoose as “silly and stupid,” while acknowledging that “it’s well understood that as a consequence of Operation Mongoose that the Cubans had a legitimate fear of an American invasion.” Richard Goodwin said, “it was clear what the President wanted, and the attorney general, whom I assume spoke the President’s mind, but much less charmingly, was what could we do about getting rid of a Communist government in Cuba?’ And out of that came Operation Mongoose ... the success of that operation can be seen right here.”
Ted Sorensen, a Kennedy speechwriter, told Castro he knew nothing
about, and had nothing to do with, Mongoose, but apologized anyway. He noted that “President Kennedy, following the Bay of Pigs, approved policies to isolate Cuba, to weaken Cuba as a Soviet outpost in the Western Hemisphere, to diminish its economy, to exclude it from other Latin American regional activities; to de-fang it so to speak, as a military base for the Soviet Union, but it was not his intention to destroy Cuba, much less to kill its leaders ... to the extent that Operation Mongoose exceeded these non-violent objectives of the President, and speaking only for myself, not the U.S. government, not even for President Kennedy, long since dead, to the extent that these non-violent objectives were exceeded by operations of Mongoose, Mr. President, I apologize.” 4
If ever there was a classic case of unintended consequences, it came from the residue of the covert war and its out-of-work veterans. Many, but not all, had been on the CIA’s payroll in some fashion. Others, such as soldiers of fortune like Frank Sturgis/Fiorini, were attracted by the opportunity to ply their trade. Many of those who had worked for the CIA had learned how to fire a weapon, use an explosive, operate a boat, and in some cases, fly a plane. Much of the unused stock of C-4 and other such material was readily available at the right places in Miami and apparently found its way into the hands of would-be terrorists. Explosions rocked Miami with regularity. At least half a dozen exile terrorist organizations emerged, among them Cuban Power, Cuban National Liberation Front, Omega 7, Christian Nationalist Movement, and a coalition called the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU).
A report from the Metro-Dade County Organized Crime Bureau file on terrorism dated June 18, 1979, and posted on the Internet, started by saying that since May 25, 1977, “there had been 24 bombings and attempted bombings” in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. “San Juan,” said the report, “has had 43 Cuban exile terrorist incidents since 1970. Of these, 41 were bombings and 2 were shooting murders. New York City has had 25 of these terrorist incidents since 1970. ... In one 24-hour period in December 1975 a Cuban exile terrorist placed 8 bombs in the Miami, Florida area. Most of these bombs were placed in Government buildings such as Post Offices, Social Security Office, the State Attorney’s office in Miami, and even in the Miami FBI office.” This outburst occurred during a visit by William D. Rogers, the assistant secretary of state for interAmerican affairs, apparently as a protest to the Ford administration’s tentative overtures toward rapprochement.
“For the first few years of the Castro regime,” said the report, “the
United States Government obviously was assisting Cuban exiles in their fight to topple the communist regime of Cuba. The U.S. Government supported the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, and later supported other Cuban exile groups in their missions against Cuba. Because of this U.S. support there was no terrorism as such until the end of the 1960s, when the various Cuban exile groups began to realize that the U.S. Government was withdrawing support for their anti-Castro cause.” 5
Among the more notorious actions attributed to veterans of the secret war were the June 1972 Watergate burglary that eventually ended Richard Nixon’s presidency; the October 1976 midair bombing of a Cuban airliner off the coast of Barbados, killing all seventy-three aboard, including Cuba’s entire junior fencing team; the 1976 assassination of former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt, an American colleague, when the car driven by Letelier was blown up by a bomb as they entered Washington’s Sheridan Circle; the apparent political assassinations of several high-profile Miami exile figures, most among the Cuban community’s more moderate voices; the 1964 firing of a bazooka at the UN as Che Guevara prepared to address the organization; a bomb blast that took both legs of popular Miami Spanish-radio journalist Emilio Milian, who had denounced exile terrorism and intimidation. The reign of terror continued sporadically in Miami throughout much of the 1970s and into the 1980s.
Among the most notorious of the extremists were Orlando Bosch, a pediatrician by profession but terrorist by trade who had no documented CIA link, and Luis Posada, who, according to a 1991 Miami Herald story, “learned the finer points of demolitions from a friend on the CIA payroll. The agent then supplied him with explosives—the cheap stuff that stained your hands—to use in Cuba.” Although a member of the Bay of Pigs Brigade, he sat out the invasion in Guatemala with a never-deployed battalion. Both Bosch and Posada were implicated in the deadly 1976 Cuban airliner bombing and jailed in Venezuela. But the DISIP, Venezuela’s intelligence agency under President Carlos Andres Perez, had come under heavy Cuban exile influence. One of its ranking officers was Posada, who was working with the unit at the time he was implicated in the airliner bombing. Posada escaped, with help, and Bosch, after nine hunger strikes, was acquitted and deported back to the United States. After his escape, Posada fled to Central America where he worked in security for Presidents Jose Napoleon Duarte of El Salvador and Vinicio Cerezo of Guatemala. 6 Posada was held responsible for bombs placed in several Havana
hotels during 1997, one of which killed an Italian guest. He was later convicted and jailed in Panama for plotting an assassination attempt against Fidel Castro during a visit there, but was pardoned in August 2004 and fled to Honduras.
Bosch has a lengthy history of terrorist acts, including firing a .57 mm recoilless rifle at a Polish freighter docked at the Port of Miami, a crime for which he was convicted, along with two members of his Cuban Power group. Granma, Cuba’s state newspaper, published a list in 1980 of nearly fifty terrorist acts in which it claimed Bosch participated, either directly or indirectly. In one of the more absurd episodes, Bosch was arrested for towing a torpedo in a trailer along a busy South Florida roadway. In 1983 the Miami City Commission declared “A Dr. Orlando Bosch Day.”
Not all the unemployed veterans of the secret war turned to terrorism. Some joined the fight against communism in the Congo. Others went to Vietnam. Felix Rodriguez and Gustavo Villoldo, working for the CIA, helped track down Che Guevara in the Bolivian jungles. Rafael Quintero worked with Ollie North’s “off-the-shelf” resupply operation for U.S.backed, anti-Sandinista guerrillas in Central America after Congress shut off their funding. This project led to the Iran-Contra scandal. While it’s easy to agree with Dallek’s assessment that Cuba policy showed Kennedy “at his worst,” many exiles, among them Erneido Oliva and Rafael Quintero, remain convinced that the last best hope for the overthrow of Castro died with the Kennedys.
Finally, following are some personal observations and assumptions based on extensive research—interviews, declassified documents, reading of published material—and a limited firsthand knowledge of the 1959— 1965 period encompassed by this book.
One gets a sense that a potential overt invasion/intervention by U.S. forces was implicit if the opportunity presented itself in all four of the separate identifiable phases of the secret war against Castro—the Bay of Pigs, Mongoose, the post-Mongoose period from the missile crisis to Kennedy’s assassination, and post-assassination activity, mainly by the exile-led and U.S.-funded autonomous groups.
But only at the time of the Bay of Pigs does it appear the overthrow of Castro might have been successful without an accompanying overt and immediate U.S. military action. The scenario appears to have been that if the invasion brigade could seize and hold a beachhead on Cuban territory
for several days, the exile political front would be flown in, declare itself a provisional government and request foreign military assistance. The only other time U.S. intervention was considered—with unknown and perhaps disastrous consequences—was during the missile crisis.
Instead, as is now known, in return for withdrawing the missiles from Cuba, Kennedy pledged to Khrushchev that the U.S. would not invade the island. Despite the Pentagon’s apparent eagerness to find a pretext for an invasion, there is no indication the Kennedys were seriously contemplating U.S. military intervention during Mongoose. The exception: an internal rebellion within Cuba which they had hoped Mongoose would provoke. By the end of the missile crisis, such a rebellion was remote at best, given the decimation of organized anti-Castro resistance as a result of the Bay of Pigs, the increased Soviet Bloc role in Cuba, Castro’s stillsubstantial popular support and an increasingly proficient Cuban security apparatus, augmented by the so-called Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), the block-by-block spy groups whose formation Castro announced in September 1960.
All of these factors make the rationale for the final two phases of the secret war—apparently still largely based on the hope of fomenting internal revolution that might provoke U.S. military intervention—even more puzzling. They may, however, help explain why President Kennedy embarked on the back-channel effort to normalize relations, as Castro’s durability became increasingly evident, despite declining popular support.
In conclusion, it is interesting to note—mostly from declassified U.S. government documents—the assessments of Castro’s popularity and his regime’s increased control from the late 1960 through late 1963 period. The declassified documents serve to dramatize the futility of sparking an internal revolt, a premise on which U.S. covert programs that followed the Bay of Pigs were based. All of the documents—except the first on the early exodus into exile—were available to policy planners. In hindsight, one wonders if they were even read, let alone heeded.
Castro, when he seized power, unquestionably had the overwhelming majority of Cubans with him. But doubts arose quickly with the summary executions of some six hundred “war criminals” within the first three months of his rule, some of whom had certainly been guilty of heinous crimes under Batista. Regardless of the victims’ wrongs, the spectacle of them going to the wall without due process was unnerving for many.
Batista supporters began to flee almost immediately after Castro took over, although the number of Cuban refugees generally was minimal in the early days of the Castro Revolution. By the middle of 1962 large-scale political and economic disenchantment had set in, with some three thousand potential internal dissidents arriving every week in Miami, a flood curtailed when air service was shut down during the missile crisis. By one estimate, about 215,000 Cubans emigrated to the United States between the latter part of 1958 and early 1963. 7
On December 6, 1960, the U.S. embassy, in a lengthy cable from Havana to Washington, reported “during the past three months the popular support of the Castro regime has dropped markedly.” Conceding that there were no precise figures, it estimated “Castro’s dedicated support stands somewhere between 15 and 25 percent” with the remaining percentage divided between “a firm opposition and a wavering bloc of some 40 to 50 percent,” with a continued downward trend. The cable added: “The government is determined to suppress the opposition at any cost. It has accumulated a substantial quantity of military hardware from the Soviet bloc and is making great efforts to train the military in their use.... It is not likely that the Castro regime will fall without considerable bloodletting and destruction of property.” 8
Two days later, on December 8, 1960, a Special National Intelligence Estimate declared Castro “remains firmly in control of Cuba. His overall popular support has declined ... but as a symbol of revolutionary change he retains widespread support, particularly among the poorer classes. . . . In less than two years the Castro regime has consolidated its hold over Cuban society. New institutions have been created, and others, which have resisted the regime’s domination, have been eliminated or revamped.” It concluded by saying “we believe that during the period of this estimate [six months] Castro’s control of Cuba will be further consolidated,” adding that any major threat to his regime was “likely to be offset by the growing effectiveness of the state’s instrumentalities of control.” 9
And as Marine Col. Jack Hawkins, chief of the Bay of Pigs paramilitary staff, concluded in his after-action report less than three weeks after the failed venture: “Further efforts to develop armed internal resistance, or to organize Cuban exile forces, should not be made except in connection with planned overt intervention by United States forces.” 10
On November 3, 1961, the day Operation Mongoose—a program designed to provoke an internal uprising in Cuba—was unveiled at a White House briefing, Sherman Kent, chairman of the board of National
EPILOGUE
Estimates, began a memo to Allen Dulles, then the CIA director, by saying: “The Castro regime has sufficient popular support and repressive capabilities to cope with any internal threat likely to develop within the foreseeable future. ... At the same time, the regime’s capabilities for repression are increasing more rapidly than are the potentialities for active resistance.” Kent went on to say: “Fidel Castro’s personal prestige and popularity were indispensable to the regime in the earlier stages of its development. None of his lieutenants could have inherited the personal authority which he then exercised. His loss now, by assassination or by natural causes, would certainly give an unsettling effect, but would probably not prove fatal.” 11
On March 21, 1962, another National Intelligence Estimate on Cuba made the following key points:
(1) Forces available to the regime to suppress insurrection or repel invasion have been and are being greatly improved, with substantial Bloc assistance through provision of material and instruction; (2) Castro and the Revolution retain the positive support of at least a quarter of the population; (3) There is active resistance in Cuba, but it is limited, uncoordinated, unsupported, and desperate. The regime, with all the power of repression at its disposal, has shown that it can contain the present level of resistance activity; (4) The regime’s apparatus for surveillance and repression should be able to cope with any popular tendency toward active resistance. Any impulse toward widespread revolt is inhibited by the fear which the apparatus inspires, and also by the lack of dynamic leadership and of any expectation of liberation within the foreseeable future. 12
On June 14, 1963, five days before President Kennedy approved a new, integrated covert action program to topple Castro, another National Intelligence Estimate on Cuba, declared: “After a period marked by bitterness on Castro’s part and by restraint on the part of the Soviets, the two parties now appear to have agreed to emphasize the consolidation of the Castro regime. We believe that the current situation within Cuba favors this consolidation. The mere passage of time tends to favor Castro as Cubans and others become accustomed to the idea that he is here to stay and as his regime gains in experience. It is unlikely that internal political opposition or economic difficulties will cause the regime to collapse. All our evidence points to the complete political dominance of Fidel, whose charismatic appeal continues to be the most important factor in the forward drive of the Cuban revolution.” 13
EPILOGUE
And from a December 12, 1963, CIA “status report” on Cuba, three weeks after President Kennedy’s assassination: “We believe that apathy and resentment are now widespread in Cuba,” but cautioning that “while they might complicate Castro’s problems, they do not represent a serious threat to him or his regime.” The assessment added: “In sum, our present policy can be characterized as one of low risk and low return: we are unlikely to experience a direct confrontation with the U.S.S.R. or to engender political strains with allied or neutral nations. On the other hand, we are still far from accomplishing our objectives of toppling the Castro regime . . . current U.S. programs at their present levels are not likely, barring unforeseen events such as the sudden death of Castro, to result in the early overthrow of the Castro-Communist regime.” 14
This assessment remained valid more than four decades later.
» *
1. Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders. An Interim Report of the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Government Operations, (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976), 71.
2. Ibid., 9.
3. Ibid., 9.
4. Ibid., xxxi.
5. Jake Esterline interview by author May 20-21, 1995.
6. Jake Esterline, audiocassette tape dictated for, and transcribed by, author November 1997.
7. Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), Cuba, 1958—1960, Volume VI, (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991), Doc nos. 64, 173; 271, 281.
8. John Dorschner and Roberto Fabricio, The Winds of Change, (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1980), 284-285, 313-314, 338, 367.
9. Alleged Assassination Plots, 11-12.
10. reign Relations of the United States (FRUS), Cuba, 1961-63, Volume X, (Washington, D. C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1997). Doc no. 57; 302303.
11. Ibid., Doc no. 159; 306-307.
12. Ibid., Doc no. 205; 481-483.
13. Ibid., Doc no. 291; 710-718.
1. Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali. “One Hell of a Gamble ,” (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 15-16.
2. Theodore Draper, Castro’s Revolution: Myths and Realities, (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1962), 56-57, 107.
3. Andres Suarez, Cuba: Castroism and Communism, 1959-1966, (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1967), 18.
4. FRUS, VI, Doc no. 377; 639-640.
5. Ibid., Doc no. 423; 740-746.
6. Taylor Commission, April 22, 1961, 3. From declassified reports [National Security Archive, Washington. D. C.]. Report partially declassified in 1977 and published as Operation Zapata, (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1981).
7. Peter Kornbluh, ed., Bay of Pigs Declassified. The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba, (New York: New Press, 1998), 47-48.
8. FRUS, VI, Doc no. 623; 1178-1184.
9. Wayne S. Smith, The Closest of Enemies, (New York: W.W. Norton, 1987), 64.
10. Philip W. Bonsai, Cuba, Castro and the United States, (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971), 175.
11. Jake Esterline interview by author, May 20-21, 1995, and audiocassette tape dictated for, and transcribed by, author November 1997.
12. Jack Hawkins, letters to author, January 19, 2002, and December 12, 2002.
13. Peter Wyden, Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), 331.
14. Ralph Weber, ed., Spymasters: Ten CIA Officers in Their Own Words, (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1999), 43-45; Evan Thomas, The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 87.
15. James G. Blight and Peter Kornbluh, eds., Politics of Illusion: The Bay of Pigs Invasion Reexamined, (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998), 83.
16. Jake Esterline, audiocassette tape dictated for, and transcribed by, author September 1998.
17. Esterline, interview by author, June 10-11, 1995.
18. Jack Hawkins, Clandestine Services History. Record of Paramilitary Action Against the Castro Government of Cuba. 17 March 1960-May 1961, (National Security Archive, Washington, D.C.; declassified 1997).
19. Kornbluh, Bay of Pigs Declassified, 27.
20. Kornbluh, Bay of Pigs Declassified, 30.
21. Operation Zapata, Memo no. 1; 4-5.
22. Ibid., 6.
23. Hawkins, Record of Paramilitary Action, 9.
24. Operation Zapata, Memo no. 1; 6
25. Richard M. Bissell Jr., Jonathan E. Lewis, and Francis T. Pudlo, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 156-157.
26. FRUS, X, Doc no. 9; 10-16.
27. Taylor Commission, April 24, 1961 (From declassified report, National Security Archive, Washington, D.C.), 9.
28. Esterline, from audiocassette tape provided author, November 1997.
29. CIA Inspector General, Report on Plots to Assassinate Fidel Castro, May 23, 1967, (National Security Archive; declassified 1993), 14.
30. Bissell, Reflections, 157.
31. Michael R. Beschloss, The CrisisYears: Kennedy and Khrushchev 19601963, (New York: Edward Burlingame Books, 1991), 134.
32. Jack Pfeiffer, Transcript of Oral Interview of Richard Bissell Jr., (Farmington, CT; October 17, 1975), 16.
33. Bissell, Reflections, 157.
34. FRUS, X, Doc no. 339; 807-809.
35. Esterline, from audiocassette tape dictated for author, November 1997.
36. Esterline interview by author May 20-21, 1995.
37. Esterline, from audiocassette tape dictated for author, September 1998.
1. Jake Esterline, from audiocassette tape dictated for, sent to, and transcribed by author, November 1998.
2. Jack Hawkins, letter to author, August 27, 2001.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Bay of Pigs 40 Years After: A Documents Briefing Book for an International Conference: March 22-24, 2001, tab No. 2, item no. 18 . [Briefing Book prepared by National Security Archive, Washington, D.C., which cohosted conference with University of Havana, Cuba.].
6. Bissell, Reflections, 183.
7. Wyden, Bay of Pigs, 170.
8. Esterline, interview by author, June 10, 1995.
9. Pfeiffer, Bissell Transcript, 41.
10. Bissell, Reflections, 171.
11. Hawkins, letter to author, October 3, 2002.
12. Ibid., November 16, 2002.
13. FRUS, X, Doc no. 98; 221-222.
14. Wyden, Bay of Pigs, 168-169.
15. Bay of Pigs 40 Years After. Havana. March 22-24, 2001. From conference videotape transcribed by author.
16. Hawkins, letter to Peter Kornbluh, National Security Archive, March 3, 1998.
17. Ibid., letter to author, March 7, 2002.
18. Haynes Johnson, The Bay of Pigs: The Leaders’ Story of Brigade 2506, (New York: W.W. Norton, 1964), 75-76.
19. Alexander Haig Jr. with Charles McCrarry, Inner Circles: How America Changed the World. (New York: Warner Books, 1992), 106-107.
20. Erneido Oliva. “ General Oliva's Story,” unpublished manuscript, excerpts provided author, 1998.
21. Jack Pfeiffer, Transcript of Oral Interview with Jacob D. Esterline, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, November 10-11, 1975, 33-34.
22. Oliva, interview by author, March 22, 2000.
23. Hawkins, letter to author, June 10, 2001.
24. Jim Flannery, letter to author, June 2002.
25. FRUS, X, Doc no. 193; 412-417.
26. Allen Dulles, The Craft of Intelligence, (New York: Signet, 1965), 175-176.
27. Arthur Schlesinger Jr., A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, (London: Mayflower-Dell, 1967), 206-207.
28. Oliva interview.
29. General Charles P. Cabell, A Man of Intelligence: Memoirs of War, Peace, and the CIA. (Colorado Springs, CO: Impavide Publications, 1997), 366-374.
30. Bissell, Reflections, 184-185.
31. Esterline, tape recordings, November 1997 and September 1998.
32. Manuel Chavez, The Berman Connection, (unpublished memoirs of a retired Air Force Intelligence Officer attached to the Miami CIA station in the early 1960s).
33. Justin Gleichauf, telephone interview with author, May 29, 2002.
1. Tom Parrott, interviews with author, May 19, 1999, and March 4, 2002.
2. Bissell, Reflections, 191. From Box 138, Box 244, Princeton University. Used by permission of Princeton Library.
3. Operation Zapata. The “Ultrasensitive” Report and Testimony of the Board of Inquiry on the Bay of Pigs. Memorandum No.l. Narrative of the antiCastro Cuban Operation Zapata. #75. (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, Inc., 1981), n29.
4. Parrott interview.
5. Operation Zapata, 43.
6. Letter is part of documents declassified in 1998 with CIA Inspector General s Report (Kirkpatrick Report) as provided by National Security Archive, Washington, D.C.
7. Miami Herald, “Bay of Pigs Report Bares Split in CIA,” February 28, 1998.
8. Ibid.
9. Peter Grose, Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), 535.
10. Parrott interview.
11. Weber, ed., Spymasters, 68-69.
12. Ibid., 136-137.
13. Miami Herald, “Bay of Pigs Report Bares Split in CIA,” February 28, 1998.
14. Jake Esterline did talk with Peter Wyden for his 1979 book on the Bay of Pigs. Esterline is identified in the book as Jake Engler, the CIA cover name he often used. Hawkins, in a memo provided the author in 1996, said he had “declined for 35 years to make any remarks at all to any writer or reporter about the Bay of Pigs—until recently when I decided to report a few facts. I have never read any quotation of me in these 35 years which has any basis in fact.”
15. Hawkins, memo to author, February 27, 1997, Covert Operations Against the Castro Government of Cuba. January, 1960-April, 1961.
16. Parrott, letter to author, February 20, 2002.
17. Hawkins, memo to author, February 27, 1997, Covert Operations Against the Castro Government of Cuba.
18. Ibid.
19. Miami Herald, “Revisiting the Failure at the Bay of Pigs,” June 9, 1996.
20. Lawrence Freedman, Kennedy’s Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 133.
21. Jim Flannery, letter to author, June 2002.
22. Jake Esterline, cassette tape sent to author, September 1998.
23. Seymour M. Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot, (Boston: Little, Brown and Company) 186.
24. Jack Hawkins, telephone interview with author, April 1998.
25. Jim Flannery provided copy to author of unpublished paper on the Bay of Pigs written in 2000 for his grandchildren.
26. Thomas, The Very Best Men, 245.
27. Freedman, Kennedy’s Wars, 133.
28. Operation Zapata, 40.
29. Bissell, Reflections, 143.
30. Weber, ed., Spymasters, 50.
31. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, 206-207.
32. Hawkins, undated paper provided author.
33. Esterline, interview by author, June 10-11, 1995.
1. FRUS, X, Doc no. 158; 304-306
2. C. David Heymann, RFK, (New York: Dutton, 1998), 256.
3. FRUS, X, Doc no. 166; 313-314
4. Edwin O. Gutman and Jeffrey Shulman, ed., Robert Kennedy in His Own Words, (New York: Bantam Press, 1988), 239-240.
5. Bissell, Reflections, 201.
6. FRUS, X, Doc no.157; 302-304; italicized sentence underscored and exclamation point added by Kennedy in his own hand.
7. Ibid., Doc no. 157; 302-304.
8. Ibid., Doc no. 184; 397.
9. Ibid., Doc no. 163; 310-318.
10. Ibid., Doc no. 163; 310-312.
11. Operation Zapata, 52-53.
12. Heymann, RFK, 255-256.
13. FRUS, X, Doc nos. 205, 206 and 207; 481-489.
14. Ibid., Doc no. 214; 518-520.
15. Ibid., Doc no. 223; 554-560.
16. Alleged Assassination Plots, 136.
17. Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Robert Kennedy and His Times, Vol. I. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1978), 493.
18. FRUS, X, Doc no. 250; 631-633.
19. Ibid., Doc no. 256; 640-641.
20. Ibid., Doc no. 258; 645-646.
21. Parrott interview.
22. Dino Brugioni; Robert F. McCort, ed., EYEBALL TO EYEBALL, (New York: Random House, 1990), 59-60.
23. Parrott, letter to author, October 2, 2002.
24. FRUS, X, Doc no. 269; 664-665.
25. Ibid., Doc no. 270; 666-667.
26. Ibid., Doc no. 271; 668-672.
27. Ibid., Doc no. 272; 673-674.
28. Ibid., Doc no. 273; 675-677.
29. Robert Hurwitch, State Department Cuba Desk Officer, 1960-64, Most of Myself, unpublished memoirs, 129-130.
30. Alleged Assassination Plots, 138.
31. Richard N. Goodwin, Remembering America, (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1988), 445.