by Gus Russo
“An attack on Cuba is being prepared,” Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev said. “And the only way to save Cuba is to put missiles there.” It was May 27, 1962 and Khrushchev was addressing a Soviet delegation on its way to Cuba to convince Castro of his need for Soviet nuclear weapons.127 Khrushchev continued, “For the salvation of the Cuban revolution, there is no other path than one which could equalize the security of Cuba with the security of the United States. And this logically could be done only by our nuclear missiles, our long-range missiles. So try and explain it to Fidel.”128 With Castro’s rapid concurrence, Soviet missiles, in what was called Operation Anadyr, began arriving in Cuba in mid-July 1962. A Soviet bonus, as Khrushchev later wrote, was that the U.S. now would have to reappraise a worldwide missile imbalance favoring the West—and its response could specifically affect the U.S. deployment of missiles on the Soviet border, in Turkey.
Serge Mikoyan, son of Khrushchev’s Deputy Premier, Anastas Mikoyan, summed up the Soviet apprehension: “In the Spring of 1962, we in Moscow were absolutely convinced that a second Bay of Pigs was at hand—that a new military invasion of Cuba was at hand—but this time with all the American military might, not only with proxy troops.”129 The U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, recently stated, “If I had been a Cuban leader at that time, I might well have concluded that there was a great risk of a U.S. invasion. And I should say, as well, if I had been a Soviet leader at the time, I might have come to the same conclusion.”130
At the end of the summer of 1962, it was clear that Mongoose was having no effect on Fidel Castro’s regime. Bobby Kennedy was now frantically trying to be creative. At the August 21, 1962 SGA meeting, the CIA gave the group an update on the unsuccessful sabotage operations. With Bobby’s frustration mounting, he reintroduced the idea of instigating a fake Cuban provocation. The previous March, Bobby’s Mongoose coordinator, Edward Lansdale, had asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff to prepare a report entitled “Justification for U.S. Intervention in Cuba.” One of the JCS’s recommendations was a scenario in which the U.S. would blow up one of its own battleships at Guantanamo and place the blame on Cuba.131
According to CIA Director John McCone’s notes, Bobby now asked the SGA to consider “what other aggressive steps could be taken, questioning the feasibility of provoking an action against Guantanamo which would permit us to retaliate, or [of] involving a third country in some way.”132 This gambit recalled the Nino Diaz’ Santa Ana mission prior to the Bay of Pigs invasion.133 The idea went nowhere fast, though for Bobby, the provocation ploy was far from dead.
As Mongoose and the assassination plots proceeded into the fall of 1962, the Kennedy brothers apparently gave little heed to the possible reaction of the Soviet Union, and less still to that of Fidel Castro—this despite CIA intelligence reports showing thousands of Soviet military and technicians arriving on the island. Instead of slowing the anti-Castro fervor, these reports played into the hands of the most hawkish Kennedy plans for a full-scale re-invasion of Cuba. Despite earlier warnings that the Soviets might respond to the U.S.’ anti-Cuban escalation, the Kennedy administration continued to push the envelope.
On October 6, 1962, thousands of troops were positioned, along with support equipment and planes, prepared to implement military OPLANS being considered by the President. In charge of the operation was Admiral Robert “Denny” Dennison, Commander in Chief of the North Atlantic Fleet (CINCLANT). The plans called for everything from small amphibious landings, to a full-scale invasion by over 18,000 U.S. troops. On October 10, the White House obtained permission from the British government to use the Bahamas as an invasion base camp. D-Day was to be October 20, 1962.134
In 1986, Admiral Dennison’s account of the OPLANS was released under the Freedom of Information Act. The report leaves little doubt that the Kennedy administration was going to make its move against Cuba in October 1962. However, something even bigger intervened. It became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis.135 Thus, on the morning of October 16, 1962, the Kennedys awoke to find out how the Soviets were responding to their Cuba policies. Although the administration had been receiving intelligence reports for many months, the CIA now supplied clear U-2 photos that told the President nuclear missiles were in Cuba.
When informed in “detail” of the crisis, the American public was led to believe that the heroic Kennedy brothers had stood at the brink, skillfully defusing the risk of nuclear annihilation in the entire northern hemisphere. The citizenry, however, was not informed of the Kennedys’ anti-Castro plotting—the very reason tens of millions of lives were jeopardized in the first place.
And that risk was quite real. If the U.S. had decided to invade Cuba to remove Castro or Soviet missiles by force, the Soviets might have employed their tactical nuclear weapons (those with a 30-mile range) on the battlefield. The U.S. knew that those weapons were operational.
The Demise of Operation Mongoose
“Mongoose was poorly conceived and wretchedly executed. It deserved greatly to fail. It was Robert Kennedy’s most conspicuous folly.”
—Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.136
The resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis produced the U.S.’ hollow agreement to cease its subversive activities against Cuba, including Operation Mongoose. In later years, Mongoose coordinator General Lansdale would tell General Sam Williams that the Cuba Project was “probably the most frustrating damn thing I’ve ever tackled.” He added that he wished he had never become involved in the Cuba Project.137 The crisis not only ended Mongoose, it also brought about the CIA’s demotion of William Harvey. It was a huge irony: The Mafiosi with whom Harvey dealt were allowed to stay in the U.S. fold, while Harvey himself was sent packing.
It is a matter of some contention as to why Bill Harvey was reassigned so far from the Cold War battlefronts in which the CIA played so large a role. During Mongoose, Harvey had repeated run-ins with the Kennedys, especially Bobby, regarding operational strategy. A typical encounter was described by reporter David C. Martin:
During one meeting, Kennedy rattled off a series of questions to Harvey, finishing with “and I’ve got ten minutes to hear the answer.” When Harvey exceeded his time limit, Kennedy walked out. Harvey kept talking.138
Cuba Project officer Sam Halpern recalls another RFK rant directed at Harvey:
I happened to be in Harvey’s office one day when he got a telephone call from Bobby Kennedy. And he started to bawl Harvey out and point out that he, Kennedy, thought that when we did things secretly, how come it ended up in the press. And Harvey had to explain in words of one syllable that when you blow something up, it’s going to make headlines somewhere. And it was the Kennedy brothers who were demanding the ‘boom and bang’ all over the island.”139
Like Ted Shackley and other officers-in-charge of the Cuba Project, Harvey violently opposed Bobby Kennedy’s personal relationships with the exiles. CIA analyst Dino Brugioni wrote, “Harvey argued unsuccessfully that someone of Bobby’s stature and position should not be known to the covert operatives, much less be seen with them.” Harvey once remarked to a fellow officer that “Bobby was carving a path in the operations so wide that a Mack truck could drive through.”140 Once, when Bobby was visiting the CIA station in Miami, he was, according to one witness, “barking orders at everyone like he knew what the hell was going on.” Later, Kennedy tore a printout from a teletype machine which was connected to headquarters. As he started to walk out the door with a strip of sensitive, coded CIA paper, Harvey screamed, “Hey! Where are you going with that?” walked up to the Attorney General, and tore the paper from his hand. The confrontation most likely sealed Harvey’s fate.141
Harvey was, officially relieved of his command for breaching security during the missile crisis. The Kennedy line was that at the height of the crisis, with delicate negotiations going on between the Soviet Union and the U.S., Harvey took it upon himself to send two-man subs to Cuba to assist, should a possible shooting war break out. At least two teams landed
on Cuban shores while the blockade was in effect. When the National Security Council was advised not only of the landing, but that the men were out of communication and could not be recalled, all hell allegedly broke loose.142 Harvey’s CIA associates recall it differently.
“The CIA doesn’t have subs. Where do you think we got them?” is the rhetorical question posed by Harvey’s assistant Sam Halpern. “Bill was working with the Joint Staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” he continued. According to Halpern and Cuba Desk Officer Jake Esterline, Harvey was booted for two reasons, the sub uproar and his poor relationship with Bobby Kennedy. Halpern says that at the height of the missile crisis, at an already tense cabinet meeting, Harvey had the effrontery to yell at the President: “If you hadn’t screwed up in the first place [referring to the Bay of Pigs], we wouldn’t be here now.”143
Lest there be any doubt how the protective, thin-skinned Bobby reacted, one witness recalled the expected blast from “little brother.” General Charles Johnson, an SGA member, remembers RFK turning to Harvey and starting on a “damned tirade—a shocking thing.” Johnson said it all stemmed from a failure of a series of “operations by the CIA. Mr. McCone was there and did not say a word in defense of Harvey. The incident lasted quite a while, eight to ten minutes.” When it was over, according to Johnson, Harvey said little in response. “I was surprised at the vehemence of this thing,” Johnson remembered. “It couldn’t have been a tirade for just a failure to make Mongoose succeed, I don’t think. It seemed to be something beyond that—a failure beyond that.”144
According to one high-ranking CIA officer, when Harvey returned to headquarters, he said that he and Bobby had taken turns calling each other liars and sons-of-bitches.
Jake Esterline states what many at the CIA felt: “Bill [Harvey] was seen by the Kennedys as failing in the Castro assassination attempts.”145 John Evans (pseudonym), who worked closely with Harvey on the Cuba Desk, told the author, “Bobby found Bill uncooperative, and Bill was constantly confronting Bobby with what he thought Kennedy was doing that was wrong.”
What Bobby didn’t know (and has not been revealed until now) was that the plots may well have been doomed from the start. And the reason, according to Evans, was that Bill Harvey himself was “sandbagging” them. Evans’ information corroborates Harvey’s own handwritten notes, which said that assassination is “the last resort beyond last resort and a confession of weakness.” As Harvey himself said to his operative/friend Johnny Rosselli regarding the plots, “There’s not much likelihood of this going anyplace.”146 Evans, who insists on anonymity, worked closely with Harvey on the ZR/RIFLE and Rosselli assassination projects. In 1995, he said:
Bill gave the attempts only a half-hearted effort at first, but soon decided against going through with them for a variety of reasons. First, it went against his Hoosier upbringing [Harvey was from Indiana]. I remember Bill pacing the office saying, “Bobby’s plan to kill Castro is the worst thing I’ve seen in my career. How on earth can I convince that idiot that this is so wrong?” Bill used to say that Bobby couldn’t grasp the meaning of ‘unattributable’ operations. . . .[He felt that] the Kennedys thought of it as a game. Bill knew that this was no game. It was serious business. I know that Bill personally stopped the plots in their tracks. Any efforts that continued had nothing to do with Bill Harvey and everything to do with Bobby Kennedy.147
Whatever his role, Harvey certainly had scored no points with the Attorney General. “Bobby was still smarting over the teletype incident in Florida. He never forgave Harvey for it,” says one CIA officer. RFK went to Richard Helms, demanding that Harvey be shipped out. Helms gave Bill Harvey his choice of out-of-the-way assignments, with Harvey selecting the CIA station in Rome. Although Harvey was later made to look like a bumbling buffoon, his co-officers at Langley knew the truth. Allen Dulles would eventually bestow on Harvey the Distinguished Intelligence Service medal. The Cuba Task Force at CIA tried to cheer Harvey up by throwing a going-away party for him. Most there felt Harvey had been “shafted.” His co-workers performed a satire of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. In this version, however, it was Harvey who was stabbed in the back. “When Harvey’s turn came,” recalled one agent in attendance, “he picked up the cue. ‘Brutus was Bobby,’ he said.”148
The folding of Mongoose and the resolution of the missile crisis has long fostered the perception that the efforts to assassinate Castro were put on hold. Harvey had been exiled to Rome, Bissell dismissed for his role in the Bay of Pigs, and Lansdale moved on to other ventures. But, in fact, the plotting was to continue, with only the strategies subject to change. It was these new strategies that ironically placed John F. Kennedy, not Fidel Castro, in mortal danger.
The Kennedys now called upon an old family friend, the head of the CIA’s Far East Division, Desmond FitzGerald, to take over the CIA’s newly-reconstituted Cuban Task Force, now named the Special Affairs Staff or SAS (Task Force W having been disbanded). FitzGerald and Allen Dulles had been old friends and neighbors in Manhattan, and Des was in fact coaxed into the Agency by Dulles. Dulles’ biographer, Peter Grose, notes that FitzGerald “was ready to drop everything to accept Allen’s call to Washington.”149 Like Allen Dulles, FitzGerald became an important ally of the Kennedys in the Cuba Project.
“The Kennedys and Des were old friends,” recalls one CIA officer brought in by FitzGerald to assist in this phase of the assassination program.150 They were so close that, though it was not true, many at CIA believed John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Des FitzGerald were related.151
The familiarity of their relationship was underscored by Bill Harvey, who later testified that FitzGerald addressed the younger Kennedy as “Bobby,” not “Mr. Attorney General.” This does not mean to indicate that FitzGerald was as close to Bobby as he was to JFK. Quite the contrary. FitzGerald’s daughter Frances recently recalled that Des thought Bobby was a “young punk.” Barbara Lawrence, FitzGerald’s stepdaughter, recently stated, “[Des] was scared of Bobby’s power. He felt threatened by him. He felt Bobby was there just because he was the President’s brother. He thought he was an amateur.”152 The feeling was mutual. Years later, Bobby recalled, “Des FitzGerald came up with some ideas. At least we got some projects going. But then every time he got a project ready, nobody wants to have a go. Got scared of it.”153
Soon after taking his new post, FitzGerald was asked by a colleague if he was having “any fun.” FitzGerald responded, “All I know is that I have to hate Castro.”154
Like Harvey, FitzGerald’s tenure was met by skepticism by those under him in the operation. But FitzGerald knew something they didn’t know. They were going to get Castro. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he told one of the doubters.155
There is some evidence that the Kennedys had gone back to looking for “James Bond” type gadgets, even now that their “James Bond,” Bill Harvey, had been taken off the project. “I started to get suspicious when I realized that every time Des came in with these weird ideas—exploding seashells, poisoned wet-suits, etc.—it was on a Monday following a weekend off, probably with the Kennedy brothers. I’m sure that’s where the ideas originated,” recalls FitzGerald’s assistant Halpern.156 When Halpern questioned the wisdom of the seashell ploy, FitzGerald shot back, “The President wants this.”157
FitzGerald’s bizarre assassination plans never came close to fruition, but an assassin with a more conventional approach, Rolando Cubela Secades (aka AM/LASH), would be activated by FitzGerald in the fall of 1963.
Unbeknownst to John Kennedy, Castro was not only warned in advance of these plots—official and otherwise—but all those that were to follow. The Church Committee of 1975 stated that it found at least eight CIA plots to assassinate Castro from 1960 to 1965. In 1975, Castro gave Senator George McGovern, who was then visiting Cuba, materials that described 24 incidents, stressing that the 24 were not all-inclusive. In most cases, the plot participants were thrown into Cuban prison, where they divulged the details of their
CIA contacts.158 In November 1993, Castro stated, somewhat ambiguously, that there had been 30 plots and 300 attempts, including those based on “a mask that produces a fungus” and a wide variety of other instruments distributed by the United States.159 The figures differ, but the implications are clear: Castro knew a good deal about the plots, and would have been simple-minded not to take them very seriously. There is now evidence that Castro’s knowledge of those attempts, and the Kennedys’ desire to keep them secret, played a key role in the official whitewash of John Kennedy’s death, if not in the murder itself.
Historian Thomas G. Paterson concluded that Kennedy’s actions regarding Cuba “thus helped create major crises, including the October 1962 missile crisis. Kennedy inherited the Cuban problem—and made it worse.”160 Put another way, although John F. Kennedy is historically praised for peacefully resolving the 1962 Missile Crisis, it might be argued that through his continued antagonizing of Fidel Castro, he pushed the dictator into the Soviet’s nuclear corner in the first place. Though the missiles were in place only from July through October of 1962, the evidence is compelling that the Kennedy administration tried to murder Castro from January 1961 until the president’s last day in office on November 22, 1963. Castro knew about it. And both Robert Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson knew that Castro was so informed. After the 1963 Dallas assassination, that shared knowledge became the foundation upon which future policy would be fashioned. Although the survivors immediately grasped the possibility that Castro had caused Kennedy’s death, it was understood that, for the good of all concerned, the matter should not be pursued.
