Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, & the Garrison Case

by DiEugenio, James

  The progress toward Mongoose was accelerated at a meeting of the National Security Council on the fifth of May. There it was decided that the CRC would be continued, that the aim of American foreign policy should be to oust Castro, and that Cuban nationals should be encouraged to enlist in the U. S. armed forces.1 That same day McNamara wrote a memo suggesting Special Forces training for these Cuban volunteers. On May 9, Barnes, Bissell, and J. C. King met to discuss where this training would take place and what the plans for sabotage and raiding would be. Incredibly, even though Manolo Ray had the best underground movement in Cuba, it was agreed that the CIA would have no dealings with Ray unless the CRC membership approved. On May 19, members of the CRC met at the State Department where they were advised that they would continue to be supported in their various endeavors. But further, that a program for exile paramilitary training was being worked out. On that same day, the CIA submitted a paper entitled “Program for Covert Action aimed at weakening the Castro Regime.” In essence, this five-part paper was to become the operational outline for Mongoose. By June 22, Dean Rusk was in receipt of a memo which outlined the recruitment and training of the exiles to be used in Mongoose. Yet in this memo, it appears that Ray had decided to leave the CRC. As the memo describes it, the withdrawal of Ray “deprived it of its most liberal … element and has shifted its center of political gravity appreciably to the right.” In July a report was delivered stating that Castro had received much military supply from Russia. Therefore, this had contributed to a “major buildup of ground and air forces there.”

  By November, after seven months of a memo frenzy over the “Cuban problem,” Kennedy seems to have decided on a middle ground between those who wanted a full-scale invasion and those, like Chester Bowles, who wished to do little or nothing. It is around November 3 that the project got its code name Mongoose. In his notes entered for November 7, Robert Kennedy described the planned action as “espionage, sabotage, general disorder run and operated by Cubans themselves. … Do not know if we will be successful in overthrowing Castro but we have nothing to lose in my estimate.” The man who Maxwell Taylor and Robert Kennedy chose to run Mongoose was the legendary Edward Lansdale, the Air Force Brigadier General who had made a huge name for himself in Asia and the Pacific as a covert operator of boldness and imagination. The operation was to be supervised by a committee called the 5412 Special Group helmed by Maxwell Taylor and RFK. It was a multi-department operation between State, Defense, and the CIA. The main CIA representative on the Special Group was William Harvey. The Cubans were to be stationed on the campus of University of Miami, the station itself was code named JM-WAVE. Day to day operations there were to be run by station chief Theodore Shackley and his Chief of Staff, David Morales. Lansdale’s intent was to build a resistance movement in Cuba, step by step, and by different means: propaganda, infiltration, exfiltration, surveillance, spies, raiding attacks, etc. Lansdale felt that within a year he could pinnacle the operation into a general uprising. Kennedy authorized the plan on November 30.2 In February of 1962, Ted Shackley arrived in Miami to begin the program.3

  By all accounts, Lansdale’s campaign—in which he had tens of millions of dollars, and hundreds of Cubans to call upon—was not successful. As Clark Clifford once noted, “We sent teams at one time or another into Cuba to try to get information. They were all rolled up…. and we never heard from them again.”4 The effort was further hindered not just by Castro’s internal security forces, but by the fact that there was no American embassy on the island. In Agency vernacular, Cuba was therefore a “denied area,” with no diplomatic base. As one commentator noted, “The people inside the country were not in a position to really change the course of the Cuban Revolution. Without an embassy, without being able to talk to people outside” their usefulness was limited.5 Another problem Lansdale could not surmount was that Castro had delivered on many of his promises. Therefore the masses of the public were not dissatisfied with him. Or as one CIA report stated, “the Castro regime has sufficient popular support and repressive capabilities to cope with any internal threat likely to develop within the foreseeable future.”6 Further, some of the operations were bungled. A raiding party to destroy a bridge was met by Castro forces. An attempt to blow up a copper mine was deterred by a leaky ship.7 Some of Lansdale’s more ambitious schemes were to poison the turkey population and incapacitate sugar harvest workers via chemical warfare.8 Another was to fire star shells into the night sky from a submarine as part of a plan to stage a Second Coming of Christ. This was to inspire the Catholics to overthrow the communist, possibly atheistic, Castro. But none of it seemed effective.9

  When Lansdale specifically mentioned the October 1962 target date for an uprising, an officer working under Richard Helms—who had replaced Bissell as Director of Plans—wrote on the timeline, “With what? We haven’t got any assets. We don’t even know what’s going on in Cuba.”10 In this way, many CIA officers now began to resent Lansdale. They thought of the former advertising man as something of a “con man” and a mystic. As Cuban scholar Morris Morley states, through 1962, Mongoose “performed largely as an intelligence collection body by infiltrating teams into Cuba.”11 After another thwarted operation in late August, Lansdale presented a plan to the Special Group to target strategic production in mineral areas like copper, nickel, and petroleum. His memo also suggested, “encouraging destruction of crops by fire, chemicals, and weeds, hampering of harvest by work slowdown, destruction of bags, cartons, and shipping containers.”12

  By this time, the Special Group had become skeptical about Lansdale’s grandiose designs and his ability to fulfill them. Therefore the committee had now become apprehensive about sabotage proposals. But the CIA representative on the Special Group, William Harvey, now grew angry with the Kennedys. Harvey began to see that Mongoose was not going to be successful. (As David Talbot writes in his book Brothers, this may have been the Kennedys’ concept from the start.) In fact, Harvey thought the brothers were “fags.” And after serving on the Special Group, he grew resentful about RFK and called him the “little fucker.”13 Eventually the conflict grew to “the point where Harvey considered RFK’s ‘amateur’ actions were endangering operations and lives.” Harvey came to despise Bobby Kennedy, because he began to feel that some of his acts were actually not just counterproductive, but those of a traitor. He concluded that the Kennedys should not be running Operation Mongoose.14

  It was probably these feelings toward RFK and Lansdale that caused the CIA to reactivate the plots to kill Castro. According to the CIA’s Inspector General Report, this happened in April of 1962. The report states that Harvey got in contact with two CIA officers associated with the first phase of the plots and asked to be introduced to Johnny Roselli.15 Harvey seems to have been prompted for this by Deputy Director of Plans Richard Helms in early fall of 1961. Harvey was to formalize a plan to deniably assassinate foreign leaders. One of the first things Harvey did was to arrange two meetings with British Counter Intelligence Officer Peter Wright. Harvey was joined at these meetings with a man we have yet to encounter, but who will strongly figure in our narrative: CIA Chief of Counter Intelligence James Angleton. Both men began to quiz Wright about “delivery mechanisms” for assassinations. Wright recalled that Harvey asked him what he personally thought of Castro, while Angleton took copious notes.16 In fact, the reason Angleton was there is contained in Harvey’s notes of his meeting with Helms, where Helms originally tasked him with the function. After noting that the planning should include angles for blaming the Russians or Czechs, and how a phony CIA 201 personality file had to be set up, forged, and backdated, Harvey concluded the review of his conference with Helms with the note to talk to “Jim A” about the matter.17

  Harvey then arranged to have poison pills to be picked up by him at CIA HQ. His accomplice, Roselli, then had them delivered to Tony Varona, who allegedly had contacts in Cuba. Varona also asked for arms and equipment needed for support of his end of the operation. Harvey pass
ed this request to Ted Shackley, Chief of JM-WAVE. Shackley procured the equipment. This included explosives, detonators, 30 rifles, 25 handguns, 2 radios, and 1 boat radar set.18 For several months, from May of 1962 to February of 1963, Roselli and Harvey waited for any positive word of success from Varona. But none ever came. Harvey then asked Helms if he could have one last meeting with Roselli to close out the arrangement. In June of 1963, Roselli visited Harvey in Washington, stayed as a guest in his domicile, and went out with Harvey and his wife for dinner.19 As the reader can see, even though the operation did not succeed, the two became friends. This has led some people to believe that this relationship was maintained through the fall and winter of that year. And may have been of use in the murder of President Kennedy.

  Before leaving the subject of Mongoose, mention should be given to another operation that—as with the Castro assassination plots—the Kennedys did not sanction. This was Operation Northwoods. It was proposed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in March of 1962. It was to be planned and implemented as part of Mongoose. It was to be carried out by the Pentagon. The Northwoods proposal was finally declassified in November of 1997 by the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB). This was the body set up by the executive branch and congress to declassify all records related to President Kennedy’s murder. Northwoods is what is known in spy jargon as a “false flag” operation. That is, provocations would be performed by disguised American agents, and the resultant violent actions would then be blamed on your targeted enemy, in this case Cuba. The purpose being to cause enough popular support for an armed intervention to depose Castro.20 The ideas offered up to do so were to stage a phony attack on the U.S. military base at Guantanamo on the west end of Cuba; blowing up an American ship in Cuban waters; sinking a boatload of Cuban refugees off the south coast of Florida; and having a jet disguised as Cuban shoot down an American jet liner.21 The list went on for pages. As the reader can see, some of these seemed to entail the killing of innocent civilians. Kennedy rejected it out of hand. But it is important to remember the “false flag” concept: using American agents disguised as Cubans in a violent act to provoke retaliation against Castro. As the reader will eventually see, that is what seems to have happened in the Kennedy case.

  As noted, the Special Group was growing disenchanted with Lansdale’s grandiose schemes, which did not come close to achieving the objective of unseating Castro. But Mongoose was actually terminated by something unforeseen when the project originated: the attempt by the Russians to insert nuclear weapons into Cuba.

  1962: Kennedy Avoids Armageddon

  In July of 1962, the Defense Minister of Cuba, Raul Castro, had visited Moscow for two weeks. Afterward, the CIA received reports of Soviet freighters arriving in Cuba with military cargo on board. They then got reports of “military equipment arriving at Cuban ports and moving to interior areas under Soviet guard.”22 In August, there were reports of a military parade in which Castro had displayed Soviet built MIG fighter aircraft.

  In September, there were more reports of Soviets moving around equipment. CIA Director John McCone thought these may have been defensive Surface to Air Missiles (SAMs). But he cautioned President Kennedy that it was hard to distinguish SAMs from medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs), which were offensive. When asked about this issue, the Russian ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin told Robert Kennedy that the Soviets had no intention of placing offensive missiles in Cuba.23 But then, Republicans in the Senate began to state on the floor that the administration was looking the other way as the Soviets made a forward rocket base out of Cuba. Kennedy was forced on the defensive by these charges to explain what he would do if this was the case. On September 13, he said that if Cuba “should ever … become an offensive military base of significant capacity for the Soviet Union, then this country will do whatever must be done to protect its own security and that of its allies.”24 And, in fact, contingency plans were then drawn up by the Defense Department for an invasion of the island.

  On October 14, at the request of John McCone, a U-2 reconnaissance aircraft flew high over Cuba snapping photographs of the terrain below. McCone wanted more data to determine if the Soviet materials were for defensive or offensive missiles. On October 15, the analysts at the CIA’s photographic analysis center examined the photos and began to discern missiles that looked more like MRBMs than SAMs. By late that afternoon, the determination was made that they were MRBMs. This information was then passed on to the top level of the CIA, and McGeorge Bundy was alerted to the discovery. The deliberations concerning what to do about the missiles began on October 16 at 11:45 A.M.

  It should be noted here that Kennedy had a taping system installed at the White House in the summer of 1962. The reason being that in the wake of the Bay of Pigs disaster, many people involved had leaked information that was not consistent with what had actually been said and done.25 It took a very long time, but these tapes were eventually transcribed. And today, there are two books based on these transcriptions.26 Consequently, we can base a review of this momentous event on what was actually discussed rather than on the more usual historical standard, personal memoirs. From the beginning, when Kennedy asks Dean Rusk to speak, the options presented to him are military in nature. Rusk states the options are either a quick air strike or a slow build up of troops in Florida.27 Maxwell Taylor, now Chair of the Joint Chiefs, also opted for the surprise air strike. He was then backed by both Secretary of the Treasury, Douglas Dillon, and Bundy. Deputy Secretary of Defense, Roswell Gilpatric, then went even further: “I suggest, Mr. President, that if you’re involved in several hundred strikes, and against airfields, this is what you would do: pre-invade.”28 In other words, in addition to bombing the missile sites, an occupying force would be sent in. The first mention of a blockade was made by Kennedy in relation to stopping further missiles from coming in and therefore limiting the amount of air strikes necessary.29 Robert Kennedy then brought in the issue of how much collateral damage would be done, that is, how many lives would be lost in air strikes. This is a point that JFK returned to in later meetings by asking probing questions about how accurate the bomb runs would be and how many civilians could be killed. Therefore, within two days, a consensus led by McNamara, Rusk, and RFK began to move away from air strikes and invasion to a blockade, which would then leave the next step up to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

  On October 19, Kennedy had a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Kennedy got into a back and forth with the hawkish Air Force General Curtis LeMay. LeMay was infamous for his firebombing strategies of Japanese cities, which left tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of civilians dead. LeMay frowned upon the blockade option. He also looked askance on Kennedy’s worry that if he invaded Cuba, Khrushchev would take over West Berlin. LeMay predicted the opposite effect: “If we don’t do anything in Cuba, then they’re going to push on Berlin and push real hard because they’ve got us on the run.”30 LeMay, who was never one to mince words, then went even further. To show his utter disdain for the blockade concept, the World War II veteran actually brought up something rather bizarre. He said, “The blockade and political action, I see leading into war…. This is almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich.”31 LeMay was now comparing Kennedy’s preference for the blockade with Neville Chamberlain’s giving away the Sudetenland to the Nazis, which encouraged Hitler to invade Poland. Although not expressing themselves in such extreme figures of speech, the rest of the chiefs of staff agreed with LeMay. LeMay then brought up Kennedy’s September 13 comment about how seriously he would take the Russians making an offensive base out of Cuba, “I think that a blockade, and political talk, would be considered by a lot of our friends and neutrals as being a pretty weak response to this. And I’m sure a lot of our own citizens would feel that way too. You’re in a pretty bad fix, Mr. President.”32 To which Kennedy replied that unless he had not noticed, LeMay was in there with him. Before Kennedy left he closed with, “I appreciate your views. These are unsatisfactory alternatives.”33


  As startling as this dialogue was, what followed after Kennedy left the room equaled it. Marine Commandant David Shoup told LeMay, “You pulled the rug right out from under him. Goddamn.” LeMay laughed and said, “Jesus Christ. What the hell do you mean?” Shoup replied with, “He finally got around to the word ‘escalation.’ That’s the only goddamn thing that is the whole trick. Go in and get out and get every goddamn one.” To which LeMay replied, “That’s right.”34

  Many writers have used the LeMay-Kennedy dialogue to show just what a divide there was between the military leadership and Kennedy about Cuba. But what fewer commentators have noted is the meeting between President Kennedy and selected congressional leaders three days later. Kennedy summoned 20 of them to the White House right before he was to go on television and broadcast his implementation of a blockade to the public. Included were Senators William Fulbright and Richard Russell and Representatives Carl Vinson and Charles Halleck. After Kennedy previewed his speech, Russell disagreed with the decision. He said the time had come to “assemble as speedily as possible an adequate force and clean out the situation…. A war, our destiny will hinge on it. But it’s coming someday, Mr. President. Will it ever be under more auspicious circumstances?” Fulbright was also for a full invasion, “an all-out one, and as quickly as possible.” Vinson said that the USA should go in with as much force as possible and get it over with quickly. Only Halleck offered to support whatever decision was made.35 A day after meeting the congressional leaders, Kennedy and his brother met privately. They were clearly shaken by the saber rattling of the Chiefs and the representatives. They agreed that the blockade was the least they could have done. If not, Kennedy would have been impeached on some trumped up charges. JFK also revealed his distaste for the air strikes as needlessly ratcheting up the tensions.36