He sighed. “I’ve spent a good part of my life trying to learn to do things the military way. They won’t move in the military unless you back them up with clear orders on paper. Harvey, obviously, is accustomed to the opposite.”
“Yessir.”
“Tell Harvey I said that I would like him to remember I am not the enemy.”
“Fuck he isn’t,” said Harvey on receiving this message.
When next I visited the General, he said, “Harry, I like to know where I stand. I will underline my next remark. I believe in getting along with people. If I ask you to pass this on to Bill Harvey, what reply will he give?”
“I can’t answer that, General.”
“Well, you just have, in fact.”
“Yessir.”
“I’m going to lay something out for you. So you can still communicate my point of view.”
“I will try.”
“I certainly hope you will. Because what JM/WAVE is doing now in Cuba amounts to no more than random hit-and-run raids. No overall strategy. No reaching out. I don’t know what anyone expects these stunts to accomplish. The other day, a bridge was blown up. ‘Why’d you do it?’ I asked Harvey. ‘What communications were you trying to destroy?’ Do you know what he answered? ‘You never told us not to blow the bridge.’ Hubbard, that’s the wrong kind of independence. I want to put an end to all this aimless sabotage. I want to save Cubans from pointless death. I cannot repeat it often enough: Americans who go abroad must possess a real dedication to the highest principles.”
He had been speaking with such self-absorption that only at the end did he notice I was taking notes. “Oh, you don’t need points of reference,” he said. “Just tell him that I have been gentle beyond reason, but that next week will see some changes.”
“Yessir.”
“If you have an opportunity, pass those same sentiments along to Montague.”
I would not. I could predict Harlot’s reaction. Cuba was a morass. The actions chosen by Harvey would at least reduce the danger implicit in the Kennedys’ enlightened notions of war. Prevention of leaks was worth more than the dubious search for illumined results. Indeed, Kittredge had written as much. “Hugh, you see, is convinced that Castro’s intelligence will always be superior to ours. He has the power to kill his traitors; we can merely cut ours off from the weekly paycheck. Our agents are fighting for freedom, yes, but also for future profits in Cuba. Greed does make for corrupt intelligence. Whereas a lot of Castro’s people believe they are in a crusade. Besides, Castro knows Cubans better than we do. Castro has KGB methods to guide him. We have politicians to satisfy. So when it comes to Cuba, his DGI will always be superior to our CIA. Conclusion: Cut the losses. Of course, Hugh doesn’t talk that way around President Jack, just tries to nudge him a little in the proper direction. I, being a woman, and therefore not wholly responsible, can twit Jack about Cuba. I do. ‘Oh,’ I say, ‘don’t you think Castro is holding trumps?’ and then I pass on Hugh’s analysis as mine. But lightly. Ladies are there to relax the President, not to confound him. I will say for Jack that he does listen carefully. He is not gross in his political passions. I wish I could say the same for Bobby, who is much more emotional. Perhaps in another letter, I will try to describe Bobby for you.”
Lansdale’s counterattack soon arrived. If he had expressed contempt for military methodology, he knew how to employ it. Daily questionnaires now came to the basement. Soon after we returned them, secondary questionnaires brought follow-up queries. Harvey sent memos to McCone full of complaint:
We are required to furnish Special Group, Augmented, in nauseating detail such irrelevancies to the purpose of an operation as the gradient of the landing beach and the composition of the sand. We are asked to specify times of landing and departure, which times are often impossible to predict or coordinate. Full listing of ordnance employed is supposed to be attached to each plan even though said battle plan may consist of no more than six Cubans armed to the teeth out in a rubber boat trying to slip by Castro’s coast guard. They are doing everything possible to make it impossible for us to accomplish anything. Then they complain that nothing is happening. Can matters be made less restrictive and stultifying?
The questionnaires kept coming. Through January and February of 1962. Once, taking the noonday flight of Eastern Airlines to Miami on what we called “the milk run” (since you could always pick out new Agency men moving down to JM/WAVE with the wife and kids), King Bill turned to me and said, “I’ve got the troops, and he’s sitting next to nothing but a desk. I’ll show the son of a bitch what dirty fighting is.”
I never knew if Harvey was the author of the next caper, but it was easy enough to suspect him since he seemed to take an artist’s pleasure in telling me the tale. At a joint meeting of Mongoose committees, a Colonel named Forsyte from the Defense Department brought forth the idea of Operation Bounty. “Defense doesn’t even want to take credit for this concept,” Forsyte had said. “We’re just stealing one of Ed Lansdale’s ideas.”
Operation Bounty was a proposition to cover Cuba with hand-out bills announcing that sums from $5,000 to $100,000 would be paid for the deaths of various high Cuban officials. Castro’s life, however, would be given a value of two cents.
Lansdale had come to his feet immediately. “This is awful,” he said. “It’s wholly counterproductive.”
“Why, Ed, are you against this?” McCone had asked. “Isn’t it in line with your principles?”
“Hell, no,” Lansdale had replied. “This idea will boomerang. You don’t deride Castro in ways that are excessively crude. On the contrary, we have to recognize that the Cuban peasant now has better living conditions than before. They are not going to accept such ridicule of Castro.”
Later, Harvey would comment: “With those few words, Lansdale lost McCone, half of State, and half of Defense. You don’t tell McCone what Castro has accomplished. ‘What,’ asks McCone now, tight as a tick, ‘would you say, General, is then the proper note to strike?’ ‘Oh,’ says Lansdale, ‘I would emphasize how the Devil gives you everything but freedom. All the material goods you need, but no, sir, no freedom. We want to get across that we can give them all that they get from Satan, plus freedom in addition.’”
“Jesus on a ham sandwich!” said Harvey. “McCone doesn’t want to hear about Satan, Maxwell Taylor looks embarrassed, Roger Hilsman from State is choking back his laughter. Maybe there were ten principals around the conference table and thirty flunkies back of them, and you could slice the fog with your hand. Lansdale has no sense of when he’s losing a war.”
One week later, a story circulated through Task Force W that Lansdale was looking to seed Cuba with the rumor that Castro was the Antichrist, and the Second Coming was near. It was rumored around the Basement that Lansdale had promulgated this scenario at a National Security Council meeting: On a moonless night, an American sub could surface in Havana Bay long enough to fire star shells into the sky. This would be done on a scale sufficient to suggest that Jesus had risen, Jesus was walking toward Havana by way of the water. Rumormongers in Havana could then disseminate the story that Castro had also been out there patrolling the bay with his Coast Guard cutters and had managed to keep Christ offshore. Done properly, this could ignite an enormous reaction. Conceivably, it could topple Castro.
A man from the State Department was supposed to have remarked, “It sounds like elimination by illumination to me.”
The story kept Lansdale miserable. In a letter from Kittredge, she mentioned in passing: “He called Hugh again last night to complain about the canard. Swore it was not true. Claims nothing of the sort was ever said at NSC and that the foul report came out of the woodwork at Task Force W. Lansdale obviously thinks it’s Harvey. I wonder if it’s Hugh.”
8
ON THE IDES OF MARCH, A NOTE CAME FROM KITTREDGE: “BE A DEAR, Harry. You’ve been telling me a good deal about JM/WAVE, but it’s all in bits and pieces. Can you offer an overview? I’m not sure I eve
n know just what JM/WAVE is.”
March 23, 1962
Dear Kittredge,
I wasn’t sure I could satisfy your request. JM/WAVE is large. Last week, however, on receipt of your letter, I saw it all. It was a most unprecedented place for a vision—I was at a meeting of Special Group, Augmented. I can tell you: Officers on my level don’t usually get near. Can I take it for granted that you’re wholly familiar with Special Group, Augmented, its personnel and protocol? On the chance you’re not, let me say that it is not to be confused with either Special Group or Special Group CI (for Counter-Insurgency). In order, Special Group meets in the Executive Office Building at two o’clock every Thursday with such Presidential Advisers as Maxwell Taylor, McGeorge Bundy, Alexis Johnson, and John McCone. They review the new (since last Thursday) military events in the world. When they are done with business, Robert Kennedy comes over from Justice, and Special Group CI takes over. That has to do with Special Forces. That is, the Green Berets. The final meeting of the day, usually in late afternoon, is Special Group, Augmented, and that is devoted wholly to Cuba.
Last week, Bill Harvey had to give a presentation, and brought me along as his back-up. The task can be onerous. You hover over two jumbo-width attaché cases filled with documents Harvey might conceivably have to refer to: I am the man in the chair behind him, poised to keep his continuity fumble-proof. If anyone around the table brings up some matter discussed in the last six months, I have to be ready to provide the relevant document. When you have time to organize the filing partitions yourself, as I did, it is not quite as difficult as it sounds, so the meeting was worth it for me, no matter how charged up I was feeling under the pressure of my task and the formidable heft of the officials present. I confess to feeling the real weight of human gravity when I find myself in the same room with McNamara, McCone, Helms, and Maxwell Taylor, and this formidable sense of sharing the air with heavyweights is always present, no matter how they banter with each other. Their badinage, in fact, is about as friendly as a sharply angled tennis game. All the same, no question, it was worth it. How many times have I passed the bay windows and balconies of the old Executive Office Building and wanted to see it from the inside? Although our conference room is about what you would expect—heavy leather seats with upholstered arms for the principals, an Irish hunt table for the conference, and a set of hunting prints (Potomac steeds, circa 1820)—I felt as if I had passed a milestone in my career.
Harvey’s attendance at the meeting took up about forty-five minutes. He was nervous while waiting with me in the secretary’s anteroom, nervous as only I can tell (by the new load of gravel just dumped into his voice). God, but the man has two voices; there is the not so little one he reserves for working staff, and the quiet-in-public presentation in Wild Bill’s low, deep, all-but-inaudible burble. No one can come up with a longer train of words to transport a simple thought than William King Harvey when he does not wish to be understood too clearly. Today he had been asked to give a report on agent activities for Mongoose and relevant installations around the world. Since I have gone into some detail with you on many of these, I will merely enumerate them now. He began by spending a few minutes on the Frankfurt operation. That, if you recollect, Hugh had his hand in. A large hand. It involved convincing a German industrialist whose code name is SCHILLING (an old friend, apparently, of Reinhard Gehlen’s) to ship out-of-round ball bearings to a Cuban machine-tool plant. I remember you wondered at the ethics of that, whereas I was impressed with Hugh’s skills in convincing a German, whose company reputation has been built on high-precision bearings, to debase his standards in the name of the-threat-that-is-Cuba. I mean, I don’t like it particularly, but have come to the grim conclusion that one long-term way to defeat Castro is to wear him out. Harvey also mentioned the English buses that we were able to doctor up on the Liverpool docks. (Early breakdown in Havana is the prognosis, he announced to the SGA members.) He also expatiated on our credit operation which is using advanced banking techniques to block Cuban credits. Do you remember? We have banking agents in Antwerp, Le Havre, Genoa, and Barcelona. You said you couldn’t follow the technical aspects. Well, I just about can. Most Cuban consignments do not get sent out now from Europe and most of South America unless there is payment in advance. “This,” he informed the SGA, “is the fruition of an Agency directive sent out by me, with the concurrence of Mr. Helms and Director McCone to every one of our eighty-one Stations abroad. Said directive assigns a minimum of one Agency officer at each Station to focus on Cuban affairs.” He pointed at one of my attaché jumbos. “In that file, pursuant to said project, are the 143 separate operations already activated in consonance with our paradigmatic advisements.”
I must say Harvey does it with his own kind of skill. He gave fifteen minutes to descriptions of “hardcore work,” citing more than a hundred of our commando raids in Cuba, and the progress of a major plan to blow up the enormous Matahambre copper mine works. Then, since this happened to be the one meeting at which Lansdale was not present, Harvey delivered “our implementation of the Lansdale Program.”
That consisted of “saturated leaflet drops” on Camaguey, Cienfuegos, Puerto Príncipe, and Matanzas. The leaflets invite the Cuban people to carry matches for impromptu sabotage attempts. Unguarded cane fields, to cite one instance, can be burned. Telephone receivers can be left off their hooks in telephone booths. “Done at peak traffic hours in enough places, communications can be affected.”
That all of this was penny-ante, Harvey knew all too well, but he chose to deliver it as, indeed, the Lansdale Program.
After a time, catching my second wind, I began to feel secure enough about the contents of my file case to drift off. Harvey was droning on about our JM/WAVE “maritime capability,” which sounds respectably beefed-up because we refer to recreational yachts as “mother ships” and pleasure craft as “gunboats.” The naval problems that we had at the Bay of Pigs are going, of necessity, to be repeated now. All our boats and ships are comparable to agents, in that they have to be able to live two lives at once. How simple if we could just use the U.S. Navy, but we can’t, not on raids, and so an endless masquerade goes on with our boats being repainted every few weeks, and their registrations switched. A “gunboat” is really no more than a pleasure craft with a couple of .50-caliber machine guns in the bow, but all this flimflam is, believe it if you will, highly necessary, since every one of our craft leaving for Cuba is breaking the Neutrality Act. The FBI, Customs, Immigration, and even Treasury (supposed to be on the lookout for drug smugglers) are getting kinks in their necks from not looking in our direction.
At any rate, I had an epiphany in the midst of these prestigious surroundings. As Harvey talked on, I began to think of one of our bases in Miami, 6312 Riviera Drive, a modest mansion like many another in Coral Gables, stone wall, iron gate, two-story red-tile quasi-Spanish hacienda—a nice, cool, handsome house when all is said—a cupola for philosphers graces the roof. Nothing remarkable about it until you move into the backyard, but that sits on the Coral Gables Waterway, which at this point is hardly more than a canal that leads to Biscayne Bay and, with patience, the Gulf Stream. Kittredge, it is hard to believe. Cubans going out on missions that could leave them dead in the Cuban mangrove swamp come in through the front door like handymen, pick up their ordnance inside, including the black hoods they will wear on the trip so that the Cuban pilot, if captured at some later date, cannot identify them, and as soon as darkness comes, they take off in what looks to be a high-speed, luxury-equipped fishing boat, but, no, it’s our concealed gunboat. What a peculiar war. It is hard to conceive of battle when the houses on the waterways from which these boats go forth are pink stucco or canary yellow, cobalt blue or lime green, and their gardens and flowering trees are a riot of magenta and red, while the palms offer that enervated languor I so often feel in the tropics. Has it taken all of the life-force in these scabrous trees merely to stand erect under the heat?
We have obtained such
a collection now of safe houses, naval bases (6312 Riviera Drive), dumps, and fancy living quarters that I am tempted to describe the extremes. For instance, we keep a hunting camp in the Everglades which amounts to no more than a Quonset hut on a hummock in the swamp with a clearing for a helicopter to bring in VIPs like Lansdale, Harvey, Helms, McCone, your own Montague, Maxwell Taylor, McNamara, or for that matter, the President and his brother. Waloos Glades Hunting Camp it is called, PRIVATE PROPERTY, NO TRESPASSING, and the place exists solely to set up meetings between people who do not want to be seen in public. If Bobby comes down to Miami, for instance, it is a media event. This way, he can fly into Homestead Air Base, then helicopter over to Waloos Glades for a meeting with some Latin American leader he may not wish all of southern Florida and the DGI to be witting of.
Another installation: An ugly dirt road bearing the lovely name Quail Roost Drive leads through a pinewood to a weather-beaten Florida bungalow up on stilts with a wraparound porch. It is the tradecraft school that focuses on radio transmissions. Others teach guerrilla tactics. I have visited ten such spots. At Elliot Key, for example, the dock itself is hidden in the mangroves. The Boston whaler that gets you in and out, a sixteen-foot job, has to push through mosquito-choked foliage merely to enter the four-foot-wide riverlet that leads upstream one hundred yards to the dock, from which a coral road wide enough for a Jeep transports supplies back through the thicket to a slatternly old house surrounded by jungle. Inside is a barracks dormitory—sixteen cots—a good-sized kitchen, and a shrine. No latrine, just an outhouse. Fresh water comes in by boat and Jeep. Add an equipment shed for arms, fatigues, jugs of mosquito repellent, and a couple of outboard motors, and you have a training camp, wholly isolated, to weld Miami exiles who want action into a force of “strike-brothers,” an odd phrase, but the military mind, I am beginning to decide, is not entirely without acumen when it comes to understanding how to motivate a combat man.
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