LBJ

by Phillip F. Nelson

  When Kennedy responded to a question about whether the premise of a coup d’état in America, as presented in the movie Seven Days in May, was realistic, he used an analogy about how many times as a young president he could repeat the disaster of the Bay of Pigs before his own military would remove him from office. He regarded the proposed Nuclear Test Ban Treaty—opposed by most conservatives, the military, and the intelligence communities—as being one such test. He had become pessimistic that it could be done, based upon resistance by not only prominent Republicans but by many within his own party. Senator Everett Dirksen said of Kennedy’s efforts, “This has become an exercise not in negotiation but in giveaway.” The Joint Chiefs of Staff declared themselves “opposed to a comprehensive ban under almost any terms.”81 When asked about it at a press conference on March 21, 1963, Kennedy replied, “Well, my hopes are dimmed, but nevertheless, I still hope.”82 Ten weeks later, his response had dimmed even more, to the point that he answered essentially the same question with “No, I’m not hopeful, I’m not hopeful … We have tried to get an agreement (with the Soviets) on all the rest of it and then come to the question of the number of inspections, but we were unable to get that.”83 However, though not hopeful, he was determined to see it through despite the low chances of doing so successfully. He realized that the testing was not simply escalating the arms race with ever higher destructive potential but the radioactive fallout from these tests was poisoning the world. He took a keen personal interest in this issue and worked directly with Ambassador Averell Harriman, who he had appointed his top negotiator with Moscow, during July 1963. This initiative was being pushed aggressively throughout Kennedy’s last summer, the pinnacle of which was his speech on June 10 at American University, when he introduced the topic as the most important one on earth: “World Peace.”84

  The hard-liners in his administration had a quite different take on these events. Although they conceded that the public record was that JFK won the missile crisis by negotiating through strength, it was actually resolved through secret agreements to give Khrushchev what he wanted originally: a promise that the United States would not invade Cuba and the removal of U.S. missiles from Turkey. A week after the missile crisis ended, the Democrats had a successful midterm election, including the election of Ted Kennedy to his first term in the Senate. Lyndon Johnson probably did not understand the situation clearly—Robert Kennedy didn’t think so at least—but he would have certainly seen the positive political aspects of this showdown and have come away with the resolve that his own administration would need a similar boost to ensure that his own presidency would be similarly cast.

  Post–Missile Crisis Polarization

  The resolution of the missile crisis did not deter the Kennedys in their efforts to rid themselves of Castro, but major organizational changes would be made, including the firing of Bill Harvey. Anti-Castro exile groups continued to be funded by the CIA, and provided with arms and oversight under the overall direction of Robert F. Kennedy. While many of the exile groups were gradually assimilated into American society, mostly in Miami, the most militant were consolidated into well-organized and well-trained mercenary groups operated with military precision. In fact, these groups carried on attacks against Cuban and Soviet facilities even while the White House was promising the Soviets that these attacks would be stopped.85 Fifteen years later, the HSCA examined these groups and found that the most violent and powerful of them, called Alpha 66, had conducted the most daring raids against Castro. Despite Kennedy’s appeal to the exiles to stop their attacks, the leader of Alpha 66, Antonio Veciana, “snubbed the President and said that Alpha 66 would continue. If anything, the activities of Alpha 66 were stepped up.”86 The problem was that Veciana and Alpha 66 were not just autonomous, swashbuckling soldiers of fortune operating outside U.S. control. They were acting on instructions from the CIA, specifically under an agent who used the code name Maurice Bishop, who has been identified as none other than David Atlee Phillips.87 Veciana claimed that “‘all the trouble caused by Alpha 66 to disrupt JFK’s diplomatic overtures was instigated by Maurice Bishop. At the height of the missile crisis,’ Veciana says, ‘Bishop told him to step up his raids on Soviet and Cuban vessels. Other examples of such seeming insubordination are reported during this period when certain elements of the CIA appeared to be acting contrary to the policies of the government.’”88 In September 1963, Veciana met Bishop in the lobby of a downtown Dallas office building and saw him talking to Lee Harvey Oswald. He never asked him about this meeting and didn’t recognize Oswald until his face appeared in every newspaper and television news program after his arrest for the murder of Police Officer J. D. Tippit and John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.89

  During the missile crisis, Harvey had planned an invasion into Cuba by sixty people, unbeknownst to anyone else. One of the men who was supposed to go on this mission contacted Bobby, saying, “‘We don’t mind going, but we want to make sure we’re going because you think it’s worthwhile.’ [Bobby said that] ‘I checked into it. And nobody knew about it. The CIA didn’t. The top officials didn’t. We pinned it down to the fellow who was supposed to be in charge [William K. Harvey]. He said we planned it because the military wanted it done. I asked the military, and they never heard of it … This other man they put on it was the fellow who’d been the Berlin expert, who had had this great achievement. He ended in disaster by working out this program. Of course, I was furious. I said you were dealing with people’s lives—the best of the Cubans. They’re the ones who volunteer. And then you’re going to go off with a half-assed operation like this. We had a meeting at the Pentagon on it. I’ve never seen him since.’”90 Bobby Kennedy never saw William Harvey again because he ordered him removed, and according to author David C. Martin, Richard Helms decided to never allow him to be “near an operation in which the White House was likely to take an active interest. Helms decided to send him to Rome as station chief. The assignment was stunning in its incongruity. The tough-talking, hard-drinking, gun-toting Harvey would be serving in a post whose chief duties were liaison with the Italian intelligence services. Having offended almost every high-ranking national security official in the Kennedy administration, he would now have a chance to offend almost every high-ranking national security official in the Italian government. ‘They couldn’t have picked a bigger bull for a better china shop,’ one CIA officer snorted. The irony cannot have escaped Harvey that it was he, the loyal government servant, and not Rosselli, the mafioso, who was being deported to Italy.”91

  It was in the wake of the October 1962 missile crisis that the Cuba policy was thrown into complete flux. Although Kennedy had forced Khrushchev to back down on the missiles, he had to make certain concessions, one of which was not invading Cuba. This caused Castro to actually emerge in a stronger position vis-à-vis the United States. Although this caused many in the administration to rationalize a peaceful coexistence with Castro, the majority of people in the upper ranks of the CIA and the military could not accept that premise. Kennedy decided to reorganize the CIA’s Cuban operations by dumping Harvey and bringing in Edward Lansdale and Desmond FitzGerald under the name of the Special Affairs Staff (SAS), dedicated to Castro’s overthrow. It would be overseen by an executive committee of officials from the national security agencies, the ExComm, and very secretly run, with no assistants or deputies to be involved. Bobby was put in charge of the oversight and “came to regard himself as the ‘second commander in chief,’ forging a new Cuba policy and perhaps his own future presidency.”92

  At this point, Harvey was hardly the only one in the CIA who had irreconcilable differences with the Kennedys. Unlike the circumspect Angleton, who was very careful about to whom he divulged secrets, one of his top aides, Nestor Sanchez, could be more open and candid about the specific gripes of the staff in counterintelligence (CI), accusing the Kennedys of initiating big operations only to pull the rug on them when the tough got going: “‘You don’t get involved in covert-type op
erations unless you are willing to go the distance.’ That type of commitment ‘was lacking in the Kennedy administration and it happened twice: the Bay of Pigs and the second one [referring to Operation Mongoose, the secret plan to overthrow Castro that died during the missile crisis]. They backed out of both … The buck stops with the President on operations like that. There’s no one else. He says yes or no. All the other conspiracies of the agency was running amok, that’s baloney … God damnit you do it or you don’t, and if you don’t feel you can do it you either get yourself out, take ’em out, or get someone else.’ By the summer of 1963, he felt Kennedy’s Cuba policy was not serious. Said Sanchez, ‘the waffle was already in there.’”93

  The top aide to Richard Helms, Sam Halpern, was even more candid about the attitude of the spooks toward their supposed superiors, who they felt were incompetent: “You’re dealing with two guys in the White House who made a botch of things at the Bay of Pigs and haven’t a clue what it means to run clandestine operations or covert operations or whatever you want to call them; They’ve got their fingers all over the place trying to make amends, and the more they try to make amends, the worse it gets. Kennedy wouldn’t listen. They believe in keeping on doing all this, busy-ness, busy-ness, busy-ness.”94 Sam Halpern’s reference to “busy-ness” came from a meeting of the National Security Council in May 1963, at which Kennedy’s NSC adviser, McGeorge Bundy, forcefully stated his doubts about the capability of the U.S. government ever overthrowing Castro. “We should face this prospect,” he said provocatively to the others present.95 Defense Secretary McNamara said one option was to “buy off Castro,” meaning to discontinue the embargo of the Cuban economy if Castro broke the relationship with the Soviet Union. Bobby Kennedy remarked that something needed to be done even if it would not bring Castro down. Bundy responded, saying, “We can give an impression of busy-ness in Cuba and we can make life difficult for Castro.” Halpern was disgusted by what he felt was a prissy word, busy-ness, that reflected the weakness of Kennedy’s Cuba policy, considering that men had their lives on the line trying to take actions which the White House had demanded. They were actually trying to do exactly what JFK had extolled his countrymen to do, “pay any price, bear any burden” to carry out American policy, in this case, getting rid of Cuban Communism. According to the author Jefferson Morley, “Halpern argued that the deceptiveness of Kennedy’s policy virtually justified extra-constitutional correction. ‘I’ll tell you one thing,’ he said, sitting forward in his seat, finger jabbing the air. ‘I didn’t know that word “busy-ness.” It was never mentioned by Des [FitzGerald] when he came back from that meeting, and it was a good thing he didn’t, because you might have had a Seven Days in May at that point … there might have been a revolt of some kind. I might have led it!’”96 The intensity of Sam Halpern’s comment—made thirty five years after this episode—speaks volumes about how he and many of his colleagues in the upper reaches of the CIA organization felt about the conduct of Cuba policy as practiced by John and Robert Kennedy.

  Richard Helms was a very aloof man, some might even have characterized him as smug, but his face evoked a quiet and discreet kind of arrogance; he was not one to use bluff and bluster to express his views. He favored one of the most discreet forms of making his point: His favorite weapon was the newspaper leak, anonymous of course. In his effort to thwart what he considered the Kennedy’s amateurish Cuban policies, he gave key information to a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter for the Knight Ridder newspaper chain in Miami, Hal Hendrix, who used it to write a story called “Backstage with Bobby”:97

  “There is growing speculation here and in Washington that Attorney General Bobby Kennedy has once again donned an invisible warrior’s helmet and is embarking quietly on a new anti-Castro operation with hand-picked Cuban exiles.” He highlighted the fact that the Kennedy administration was backing away from the once-prevalent notion that the United States should simply invade Cuba. “No large invasion force is envisioned … Instead, in line with the Kennedy Administration’s enforcement of the Neutrality Act, hit and run attacks from a base outside the U.S. would be the role of Bobby’s Boys.”

  The Kennedy’s campaign to get rid of the Castro problem was doomed from the start, despite all the investments in men, money, material, equipment, and time. Regardless of what Robert Kennedy, in his background role in the Special Operations Group—Augmented, did or didn’t do to earn the enmity of Bill Harvey and all of his associates and notwithstanding the contradictory stories of dramatic Cuban exploits, the bottom line is clear: Fidel Castro was not assassinated or removed otherwise in 1963 and in fact remained in power for nearly fifty years thereafter, outliving practically all of his enemies. JFK had promised tens of thousands of Cuban exiles that they would eventually return to their homeland as free men and women without the fear of Castro’s prisons, or worse, awaiting their return. Kennedy’s resolve to reform Cuba began dissipating in the year following the Cuban Missile Crisis. He had taken a number of measures that caused many to believe he had experienced an epiphany with regard to much of the foreign policy he originally inherited from Eisenhower and had initially endeavored to maintain; now, it seemed to many that there was never a sincere and meaningful effort to fulfill all of the commitments which had been made; it appeared to them that they were simply hollow promises made for politically expedient reasons.

  Bill Harvey Returns

  Robert Kennedy had removed Bill Harvey from his Task Force W immediately after the missile crisis and had him transferred to Rome. But Harvey had unfinished business in the United States and did not remain in Rome for long; it seems that he was actually commuting between Rome and Florida: “He showed up in the spring, summer and fall of 1963 in ominous meetings in the Florida Keys at anti-Castro camps with Johnny Rosselli, David Atlee Phillips and a CIA assassination expert, David Sanchez Morales. Shortly after that, Rosselli met with Guy Banister in New Orleans, and Phillips met with Oswald in Dallas … Harvey may have been the chief planner of Kennedy’s assassination, working with the CIA’s Phillips and Morales and the Mafia’s Rosselli, using recruits from the French Mafia whom Harvey contacted while in Italy.”98

  In addition to the meetings in the Keys, there is evidence that Harvey met with Rosselli in Miami and Los Angeles in February 1963, and in Washington DC in June.99 According to his CIA expense account records, he paid for his own room in the Keys motel as well as someone else’s (unnamed, but whose home address was listed as 56510 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, California, since confirmed to be the Friar’s Club, which was like a second home to Rosselli) and even picked up the charges for renting a boat to go to Islamorada (in the Keys) and a dinner one evening at the Fontainebleau Hotel, the favorite haunt of a number of mafiosi, including Sam Giancana and Harvey’s fast-lane friend Johnny Rosselli.100 Their other favorite, the Eden Roc, was also patronized by this group; the entry simply indicated, “For ops hotel room,” but didn’t include a receipt.101 Another entry for $1,000 was noted: “Termination payment ZR Rifle/MI.” Finally, another entry was for a “First-class plane ticket Miami/Chicago.”102

  For what reason was Bill Harvey back in Florida for so long, and who was his mysterious guest, if not the obvious Johnny Rosselli? And why, after he had been reassigned to Italy specifically to get him off Mongoose and the Castro plot, was he still in contact with him? At this point, the Mafia was no longer involved in plotting against Castro, so what other plots were being hatched by these two? Who had to be flown to and/or from Chicago to Miami, for the sum of $200? (In those days, that probably would have covered a round-trip first-class ticket.) And finally, was there a connection between these meetings and the arrangements, formulated beforehand and publicly announced two days after the meetings had ended, for President Kennedy to visit Dallas in November? It is unlikely that this was all a coincidence, given Harvey’s continuing direct connection to Angleton and Angleton’s direct lines to Hoover and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson.

  Bill Harvey had tea
med up with Johnny Rosselli and the two became fast friends during the CIA’s Operation Mongoose, their joint venture with the Mafia in its (original) plan for assassinating Fidel Castro. The two of them made an odd couple because—compared to the standard description of Harvey as being an obese, sloppily dressed, frog-faced man with crude manners—the sharply dressed, tanned, and good-looking ladies’ man, Johnny Rosselli, seemed to have come from an entirely different civilization, if not planet. It was Bill Harvey who gave Rosselli the cover he needed to expand the Mafia’s influence into many new areas, thanks to his convincing new identification as a U.S. Army colonel. Having complete access to the JM/WAVE headquarters, this world-class (and connected) gangster routinely and often met with a CIA assassin named David Morales, along with Bill Harvey. Another thing the three of them had in common was a vicious hatred of all things Kennedy.

  Specifically what actions Rosselli became involved with, beyond the original plan for murdering Castro, will never be known, but his new military identification and these high-level military and intelligence connections suggest a key role in an expanded and redirected assassination scheme. It was just a matter of time, probably during this period in early 1963 when this team met in the Florida Keys, before the subject of the assassination plot against Castro was redirected to Kennedy; a call from Angleton in Washington to his subordinate Harvey in Florida, possibly advising him that a “green light” was being flashed from the White House (i.e., the vice president’s suite in the EOB next door) would be the only record of the authorization to Harvey to proceed with the planning, and that bit of evidence, of course, will never be forthcoming. Only a relative handful of CIA operatives would be necessary for this special mission, bypassing many of the others already in place, and few auditable paper trails of their planning would be retained for any possible later discovery. But the dots described earlier from the known records hardly need to be physically connected.