Contrary to popular belief, the crisis did not halt once the blockade was created and the Navy started stopping ships. For the Russians continued constructing the missiles already on the island and, in conjunction, camouflaging the sites. So although the appearance was that the crisis was solved, in reality it was not. And by this time, about ten days into the episode, the tide was turning towards the Joint Chiefs. Even former soft liners like McNamara were talking about dislodging Castro and installing a new government.37 It is important to note here that at around this time, both Khrushchev and Kennedy decided to go around their advisers. (The specially assembled group for Kennedy was called the ExComm.) On October 26, the Russians had a KGB agent under journalistic cover meet with ABC News correspondent John Scali. The message Scali carried was that the Russians were amenable to a diplomatic solution. The core of the deal was that the Soviets would remove the missiles if Kennedy pledged not to invade Cuba.38 About five hours later, a long, emotional telegram was received at State from Khrushchev that generally aligned with what Scali had relayed.39 While this was occurring, Robert Kennedy was meeting privately with another Soviet intelligence agent Georgi Bolshakov, and also Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin.40 Between the assurances given in this back channel and Kennedy’s reply to the Khrushchev cable, a deal was announced. Kennedy would pledge not to invade Cuba, and the Russians would remove the missiles. Kennedy gave assurances through the back channel that he would later remove Jupiter missiles from Turkey and Italy that were aimed at Russia. It is important here to discern a future pattern. For Kennedy also went around his militant advisers when he was formulating his policy to withdraw from Vietnam, and also to create a back channel to Castro in 1963 for reasons of a rapprochement.
Kennedy’s performance—which seems masterful today—was too cautious and diplomatic not just for LeMay, but for William Harvey. As we have seen above, Harvey was in contact with Johnny Roselli through the latter half of 1962—that is, at the time of the Missile Crisis. Although Harvey was not in on the ExComm deliberations, as supervisor of Task Force W, he largely ran the CIA’s part of Mongoose. Therefore he was privy to intelligence surveillance out of JM-WAVE during the Missile Crisis. Roselli left the west coast and was either in Washington or Miami for the week of October 19–26.41 He very likely was meeting with Harvey. These days overlap with the Missile Crisis of October 15–28. And it was during the latter part of the Missile Crisis that Harvey did something baffling. He dispatched three unidentified boat missions into Cuba, to be supplemented by the parachute dropping of 50 Cuban exiles.42 What their purpose was has never been explained. But because of Harvey’s probable meeting with Roselli at the time, one of the boats may have included an assassination team.43 When Bobby Kennedy learned about this, he was enraged. He ordered the boats called back. He was told this was not possible, which reveals that they were probably on some kind of segregated radio frequency. If so, Harvey deliberately arranged this. Robert Kennedy demanded that Harvey be terminated. Harvey angrily retorted that if JFK had not lost his nerve at the Bay of Pigs, the Missile Crisis would not have happened.44 McCone understood that, with that comment, Harvey’s career had just imploded. But Richard Helms decided to soften the blow. He only removed him from Task Force W and then transferred him to Rome. Before departing he had his last dinner with Roselli in Washington. But also, his CIA colleagues had a going away bash for him. One of the party activities was a spoof of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar with Harvey in the lead. When the act concluded, someone asked: Who played Brutus? Harvey replied that it was Bobby Kennedy.45
Before leaving the Missile Crisis we should make two more observations. First, President Kennedy had learned his lesson well from the Bay of Pigs. This time he included persons whom he had the utmost trust in during the deliberations: his longtime assistant Ted Sorenson and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy. When he felt stifled by extreme hawks, he used his brother to create a back channel to the other side. Finally, Kennedy never felt that the reason Khrushchev installed the missiles was to protect Cuba. He always believed that they were a chess piece from which the Soviet premier could demand a deal over West Berlin, which was located inside of the Russian satellite of East Germany. And he voiced this concern several times throughout the deliberations. Further, the sheer size and power of the deployment is out of all order to neutralize either Mongoose or an invasion. The deployment included 40 land based ballistic launchers, including 60 missiles in five missile regiments. The medium range missiles had a range of 1,200 miles, the long-range ones, 2,400 miles. In addition, there were to be 140 air-defense missile launchers to protect the sites. Accompanying them would be a Russian army of 45,000 men with four motorized rifle regiments and over 250 units of armor. There would also be a wing of MIG-21 fighters, with 40 nuclear armed IL-28 bombers. Finally, there was to be a submarine missile base with an initial deployment of eleven submarines, seven of them capable of launching one megaton nuclear warheads. In addition there were low-yield tactical nuclear weapons for coastal defense in case of an invasion. In other words, the Soviets could now hit approximately one hundred American cities with all three legs of the nuclear triad: rockets, bombers, submarines. This, in essence, was a first strike capability. It dwarfed the 15 outmoded Jupiter missiles in Turkey.46 But it would have proved a great bargaining chip to get the U.S. out of West Berlin.
But the point is that in this instance—as with the Bay of Pigs—when most everyone urged him to bomb and invade the island, Kennedy did not. This probably harks back to his days in Saigon with Edmund Gullion. Kennedy resisted using direct American intervention in what he considered a country coming out of generations of foreign imperialism. As we have seen, in this instance, much of the imperialism was American in nature. Kennedy was painfully aware of this fact. He brought it up with Fidel Castro the following year in their negotiations over renewed diplomatic relations. But the point should be made: the hawks in this administration—Harvey, LeMay, Dulles—had now seen Kennedy bypass two perfect opportunities to rid America of the “Cuba problem.” By the end of the Missile Crisis, they must have felt that if Kennedy had not acted by then—with Cuba nearly a nuclear base aimed at America— that he was not going to act ever. (As we will see, they were correct.) The Cuban exiles felt the same way. Kennedy’s no-invasion pledge was shattering to them. As one investigator discovered, whenever there were gatherings of exiles in safe houses or at training camps, the word “traitor” was now used in relation to JFK.47 Therefore, if the Castro regime was to be dislodged, they themselves would have to provoke that action.
1963: Kennedy’s Rapprochement with Castro
At the time, and with most historians, the Missile Crisis rated as the high point in Kennedy’s exercise of public foreign policy. He and Khrushchev had used direct and back channel communications to thwart nuclear extermination. And Kennedy now began to build on that development. Notwithstanding the media’s Cold War triumphalism, JFK began to move toward a lowering of the nuclear threat and Cold War tensions with the Soviets. This included establishment of a direct Kremlin/White House hotline and negotiations toward a nuclear test ban treaty. Kennedy had navigated very difficult terrain in reaching an accommodation that managed to remove the missiles and bombers from Cuba. Yet, because there was a rift between Castro and Khrushchev—the Russians barely consulted Castro over the resolution—Castro did not allow on-site inspection of the removal.48 Inspection was to be done by overflight photography. This allowed a loophole for Kennedy’s enemies to launch a provocative and secret operation into Cuba. And finally, within weeks after the resolution of the crisis, Kennedy decided to pull the plug on Operation Mongoose and began moving toward a possible accommodation with Castro.49
As Peter Kornbluh pointed out in late 1999, the origins of the back channel between Kennedy and Castro began with the rift between Cuba and the Soviets after the Missile Crisis. New York lawyer James Donovan had been Robert Kennedy’s chief emissary in negotiating the release of prisoners taken
by Castro at the Bay of Pigs. In January of 1963, he alerted American intelligence officials that he had heard through Castro’s personal doctor, Rene Vallejo, that Castro had broached the topic of establishing diplomatic relations with the USA.50 To show how interested Fidel was in this, Vallejo even invited Donovan back to Cuba for a private visit for extended discussions with Castro himself.51 The State Department told Donovan to tell Castro that if he wanted to proceed with discussions, he needed to break relations with the Soviets first. When Kennedy learned of this request, he overruled it. McGeorge Bundy wrote in a memo, “The President does not agree that we should make the breaking of Sino/Soviet ties a non-negotiable point. He doesn’t want to present Castro with a condition the he obviously cannot fulfill.”52 Bundy added that Kennedy felt we needed to be flexible in our approach to this topic. The memo also stated that Kennedy was really interested in this, and it should be held close to the vest.
Donovan did return to Cuba. When he arrived back in America in April, he was debriefed by the CIA. John McCone then wrote Kennedy that “Castro knew that relations with the United States were necessary and that Castro wanted relations developed.”53 Kennedy was so fascinated by this that he met with McCone privately. The CIA director stated that he would be sending Donovan back to Cuba at the end of April. Following Donovan’s return from this second meeting with Castro, McCone “characterized Castro’s tone as mild, frank, and conciliatory.” He also noted that Castro understood that a viable Cuba, an economically strong Cuba, required conciliation with the United States. This is what he wished, but it was hard to attain. And he could not get any real answers about it from Donovan.54 Castro was obviously hinting that he felt the exploratory stage had ended. He wished to proceed to the second step with someone who actually represented the administration’s wishes on how to get there.
At this stage, the reader should note a potential problem, which more than one commentator has previously pointed out. When Kennedy vetoed the State Department on having preconditions accompany the back channel talks, he requested that these discussions be held close to the vest. But yet, the CIA seems to have been aware of Donovan’s actions from the beginning. And, in fact, had debriefed him on his second return from Cuba. So clearly, the upper echelon of the Agency was aware of the genesis of this potentially epic breakthrough in American/Cuban relations. For what Kennedy was now doing was not just ruling against invading the island, not just dismantling Operation Mongoose. He was now doing something that had been unthinkable a few months earlier. He was exploring ways to reestablish relations with Cuba after four years of nothing but hostilities with the revolutionary government of that communist island. And the CIA, which had sponsored the Bay of Pigs invasion, had a large hand in Mongoose, and, in league with the Mafia, had tried to murder Castro, was now aware of it. They would not take this lying down.
In mid-March of 1963, the militant Cuban exile group Alpha 66 called a press conference in Washington. They announced an attack on a Russian freighter in a Cuban harbor and a resultant firefight that ensued. Years later, the exile group’s leader Antonio Veciana told House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) investigator Gaeton Fonzi why this had occurred at this time. He told Fonzi that the attack and the press conference had been deliberately planned by his handler, Maurice Bishop. Veciana told Fonzi that “The purpose was to publicly embarrass Kennedy and force him to move against Castro.”55 During and after his tour with the HSCA, Fonzi convincingly demonstrated that Bishop was David Phillips. Phillips had arranged for two government officials to appear with Veciana to give his press conference an air of legitimacy. Phillips arranged for this raid to happen at an opportune time for himself. Kennedy was away from Washington in Costa Rica trying to build support for his new Cuba policy. Therefore, because of the press conference, the New York Times noted that the White House “was embarrassed by the incident.” It further noted that Kennedy’s party in Costa Rica telephoned several times for reports on the situation.56
A few days later, the New York Times reported another attack on a Russian ship near Cuba. The Russians now made a formal protest to Washington and Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin met with Attorney General Robert Kennedy. As a result, it was decided that the Justice Department would aid in an effort to push these kinds of exile raids off the mainland.57 This was also done in furtherance of Kennedy’s pledge taken at the end of the Missile Crisis not to invade Cuba. Therefore, the Justice Department, FBI, Coast Guard, and Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) were employed by the Kennedys to make arrests and seize contraband involved in these raids. Two cities in which these raids were prominently enacted were Miami and New Orleans. These were two cities also heavily involved with both the Bay of Pigs and Operation Mongoose. The Kennedys then beefed up this task force and the Times reported that “The action followed the Government’s announcement last weekend that it intended to ‘take every step necessary’ to halt commando raids from United States territory against Cuba and Soviet ships bound for Cuba.”58
In reaction to these seizures and arrests, in mid-April, Jose Miro Cardona now resigned from the CRC. According to sources around him, the FBI concluded that Miro was disgusted with Kennedy’s new policies toward Cuba. After returning from a high-level meeting in Washington, Miro concluded that “the United States policy is now one of peaceful coexistence with Communist Cuba.”59 Summarizing the CRC’s feelings toward this new turn in policy, Miro said for the record, “To hell with it.” Miro continued that the reaction against the new policy among the exiles “was very bad against the United States” and the exiles now feel that “the U.S. is now committed to a policy of peaceful co-existence with Communist Cuba and have been abandoned in their fight.”60 Miro’s resignation was accompanied by a symbolic gesture reported by the Associated Press on April 18 from Miami: “The dispute between Cuban exile leaders and the Kennedy administration was symbolized here today by black crepe hung from the doors of exiles’ homes.”61
In fact, while Miro was voicing his extreme displeasure with the administration’s turn, JFK was reassuring the Russians he would keep his pledge. In an April 11, 1963 letter from Kennedy to Khrushchev, the president wrote, “I have neither the intention nor the desire to invade Cuba; I consider that it is for the Cuban people themselves to decide their destiny. I am determined to continue policies which will contribute to peace in the Caribbean.”62
In fact, as declassified documents now show, the clandestine effort against Cuba in 1963 was minimal. When William Harvey was sent packing after the Missile Crisis, Desmond Fitzgerald took over the Cuba desk at CIA. In a review of covert operations against Cuba made for the Johnson administration, Fitzgerald stated that there were only five raids authorized against Cuba in the second half of 1963, less than one per month. By the end of 1963 there were only three groups of commandos left, amounting to about 50 men. Fitzgerald admitted that with this size force, any covert operation to impact any real change in the Cuban government was simply unrealistic.63 Fitzgerald later wrote a similar letter to Bundy in which he thoroughly discounted Manuel Artime’s Central American operation against Cuba. Fitzgerald said, if he were lucky, Artime got off one raid every three months.64 It seems that at the very least, if Kennedy was running a two track “carrot and stick” operation against Castro in 1963, there were very few sticks being meted out.
In late spring of 1963, Castro now continued the back channel through a different source, ABC news reporter Lisa Howard. In a very long interview with her, Castro was clear about his desire for some kind of melting of tensions with America. He also approved of Kennedy’s cracking down on the exiles’ raids into Cuba. When asked how any kind of relaxation of tensions could occur, Castro replied that steps in that regard were already being taken. Howard wrote about this interview in an academic journal. In this article she was even more specific about what Castro had said. She wrote that he was willing to discuss the following: Soviet personnel and military hardware on Cuban soil, compensation for nationalized land and
investments, and the question of Cuba as a launch pad for communist subversion in the Americas.65 Howard urged the White House to send a quiet emissary to hear Castro out on even more specifics. Although Kennedy was attuned to doing so, the CIA was not. CIA Director McCone opposed Howard’s approach to Cuba and wrote “that no active steps be taken on the rapprochement matter at this time.”66 McCone may have been influenced in this by Director of Plans, Richard Helms. On May 1, 1963 Helms produced a memo to McCone in which he recorded every step made by Castro to make a détente between the two former belligerents a reality. From McCone’s negative reaction we can see how Helms must have felt about this back channel.
Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, & the Garrison Case Page 11
