Live by the Sword

by Gus Russo

  Aleman said that he had long known Cubela to be a “closet communist.” He was also aware that after the revolution, Trafficante ran a Havana-based numbers racket, with part of the skim going to Castro’s secret agents. Aleman felt in his bones that, as far as Trafficante and Cubela were concerned, “something was wrong in some way.”

  Aleman’s suspicions were echoed by many others, including agents with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. A Bureau memo of July 21, 1961 reported the possibility that Castro’s brief imprisonment of Trafficante was a ruse designed “to make it appear that he [Trafficante] had a personal dislike for Castro, when in fact, Trafficante is an agent of Castro.” The memo also verified Aleman’s suspicions about Trafficante’s ties with Castro’s numbers racket (bolita). “Fidel Castro has operatives in Miami making heavy bets with Santos Trafficante Jr.’s organization,” the Bureau confirmed.75

  Famed undercover detective Joe Shimon, who had extensive underworld contacts, was likewise concerned. “Suddenly, Trafficante is released [from jail in Cuba] with all his assets. The thought ran through my mind: Trafficante is working for Castro, or he is working through Castro’s agents here. He’s the contact [Castro’s contact in Miami].”76 Anti-Castro activist Gerry Hemming believes Trafficante “sold out the CIA plots to Castro in exchange for a heroin trafficking route through Cuba.”

  Johnny Rosselli also voiced his suspicions about Trafficante. Referring in 1966 to the assassination plots against Castro, Rosselli told Shimon, “This whole thing has been a scam. Santos [Trafficante] never did anything but bullshit everybody. All these fucking wild schemes the CIA dreamed up never got further than Santos. He just sat on it, conned everybody into thinking that guys were risking their lives sneaking into Cuba, having boats shot out from under them— all bullshit.”77

  In 1967, the CIA conducted its own internal review of the assassination projects. Its “Inspector General’s Report” noted that Trafficante’s lawyer, Rafael Garcia Bongo, had been aware not only of the Phase One attempts against Castro, but the Phase Two AM/LASH operation.78 A congressional investigation would point out that attorney Bongo made trips to Cuba in 1962 to represent Trafficante’s Capri Hotel interest in Havana. The committee speculated that “Bongo was involved in approaching the Castro government in 1962 on Trafficante’s behalf for permission to reopen the Capri casino.”79 Two years later, Bongo went to the CIA to say he was aware of the AM/LASH plot. The congressional committee theorized that:

  Bongo’s real purpose in contacting the CIA was to act as a double agent for Castro in ascertaining the nature and scope of the AM/LASH operation. . . Given the extent of Trafficante’s high-level contacts within the exile community and the low-level security in the CIA exile operations, it is therefore logical that Trafficante and other members of the underworld knew, in some fashion, part or all of the AM/LASH plot. . . If Trafficante was a double agent, working for the CIA, but actually supplying information to Castro, then another scenario emerges. It is logical to assume that Castro knew of the AM/LASH and CIA-organized crime operations from their inception. . . Trafficante could have received a sanctuary and assistance in smuggling contraband for such information.80

  This conclusion jibes with the conclusions of anti-Castro activist Gerry Hemming, who states uncategorically, “I know that Trafficante traded intelligence with Castro in exchange for a protected heroin trafficking route.” If true, the Trafficante connection would go a long way to explaining why the Rosselli and AM/LASH plots came up so short.

  William Harvey, who coordinated the Rosselli attempts, later testified, “Given the capabilities of Castro’s security apparata and the general sieve-like character of the Cuban community-in-exile. . . it was quite conceivable that it [the Rosselli plot] had been penetrated.”81 There is no evidence that these warning signs were relayed to either Bobby Kennedy or Des FitzGerald. It was on such shaky ground that U.S. plans involving Rosselli and Cubela were allowed to proceed.

  As for Cubela’s demand for a coup, just such an undertaking had already been in the planning stages. A future investigation would locate at least four secret government documents referring to the upcoming event.82 Those findings were buttressed by the newly-released material on the Artime operation, AM/TRUNK and OPLAN 380-63. Unknown to the Kennedys, Juan Felaifel and his Cuban associates had penetrated even the Kennedys’ coup plans. Felaifel told the Brazilian filmmakers in 1993:

  Cubela had the assassination planned. . . The plan had two phases. Following the assassination, in case there was no immediate supporting coup, they were planning to start an uprising in the Escambray with the support of approximately 1,000 mercenaries Artime had in Central America. They were planning to bring them through Punta Icacos, dividing the road and establishing there a beachhead in order to create a government supported and approved by the Organization of American States. To that end, Artime had already contacted several Central American governments that were going to support them. Now the time came to put together the final information. . . We were able to dismantle [the plan] practically before it was conducted.83

  But if the AM/LASH operation was compromised, the fallout quite possibly jeopardized the other anti-Castro initiative, AM/TRUNK, which was so key to OPLAN 380-63. According to the CIA, Cubela was closely associated with Commandante Ramon Tomas Guin Diaz (Guin), an important early recruit in the AM/TRUNK project. In 1966, Guin was arrested simultaneously with Cubela, by Cuban police, and was a co-defendant at Cubela’s trial.84

  Author David Corn has written that the planned increase in U.S. sabotage operations came as “no secret to Castro, or anyone who bothered to listen to him.” Corn points out that on October 30, 1963, Castro publicly charged that the Agency was using a 150-foot long ship called the “Rex” in operations against Cuba and that the vessel was berthed in Palm Beach, Florida.”85

  Newly released CIA documents disclose that on September 30, 1963, U.S.-backed exiles blew up the Marabi, a Cuban lumber mill. On October 22, 1963, more U.S.-backed exiles blew up two Cuban patrol boats and two oil-storage tanks. In retaliation, one week before President Kennedy’s fateful Dallas trip, Cuba executed thirteen Cubans accused of spying for the CIA. Cuba had concluded, rightly, that the U.S. “peace initiatives” had been a ruse.

  Castro’s Ultimatum

  A CIA operative who by his own admission participated in three Castro assassination attempts, former Castro ally Frank Sturgis had a good perspective on Castro’s psyche. In 1993, he explained, “Kennedy made his attempts with double agents to try and kill Castro.” As to Castro’s response, he said, “You think for a minute they’re going to sit on their ass and not do anything to retaliate?”86

  Rafael Nuñez, a career diplomat who served in Castro’s government for eighteen years, said of Castro, “He is a psychopathic person. He hates everybody who ever acted against him—presidents, anybody.” This intensity, according to Nuñez, led Castro to become obsessed with U.S. activities aimed at Cuba. “I knew many in the counterintelligence sections, and I know of no other leader in the world as updated on U.S. intelligence as Castro,” says Nuñez. “He was pathologically obsessed with what was happening in the U.S. government, and personally read every intelligence report.”87 Even former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, who eventually concluded that Castro was a “hothead,” still was stunned when Castro proposed a preemptive nuclear strike against the U.S. during the missile crisis blockade.88 Author Georgie Anne Geyer, who has conducted a number of interviews with Castro, wrote in her book Guerrilla Prince:

  Castro in truth hated John F. Kennedy. In his speeches, Castro made Kennedy into a monster. Billboards all over Havana derided and abused Kennedy. . . It was part of the long play of hatred between Cuba and America.89

  Fidel Castro had never been easily fooled. Finally, in the Fall of 1963, in response to American actions against him, Castro all but threatened Kennedy’s life. On September 6, 1963, the Cuban Armed Forces Ministry reported one dead and three injured in an air attack on Santa Clara,
Cuba, and charged the United States with responsibility. The next day, while Cubela made his assassination offer to the CIA in Brazil, Castro appeared at the Brazilian Embassy in Havana, and gave an extemporaneous speech to the receptive press. This was not a typical Castro harangue, however. Prominent in it was this threat:

  We are taking into account. . . the Caribbean situation, which has been deteriorating in the last few days due to piratical attacks by the United States against the Cuban people. . . Kennedy is a cretin. . . the Batista of our times. . . If US. leaders are aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe. Let Kennedy and his brother Robert take care of themselves since they too can be the victims of an attempt which will cause their death.90

  This warning was reported in most metropolitan newspapers in the U.S., including the New Orleans Times Picayune, where it was prominently displayed with a three-column headline. Compulsive newspaper reader Lee Oswald, still living in New Orleans at the time, certainly read about the speech. It was three weeks later that Oswald made his appearance at the Cuban embassy in Mexico City, talking about killing “that bastard” Kennedy.

  That Castro’s threat at the Brazilian Embassy and Cubela’s offer to kill Castro occurred on the same day, and also in Brazil, is a coincidence that has not gone unnoticed. Historians have pondered the possibility that both events were orchestrated by Castro, with Cubela acting, as suspected, as a witting double agent for Cuba.

  In any case, Castro’s threats were consistent with what the Childs brothers (Solo Source) had been reporting. As leaders of the Communist Party USA, the Childs were trusted confidantes of all the world’s Communist luminaries: Castro, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Mao. Although these leaders regularly denounced the ideology of the United States, Castro’s rantings were unique in that they were clearly personal—and this latest threat was aimed directly, and forebodingly, at President Kennedy himself.

  On October 7, 1963, Carlos Lechuga, the Cuban U.N. representative with whom William Attwood had been discussing normalized relations, let it be known that his country would not be tricked. Lechuga declared that Cuba would not sign the nuclear test-ban treaty so long as the United States continued to wage an “undeclared war” against the Castro regime. The U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Adlai Stevenson, replied that Cuba had “declared war on the Western Hemisphere by its program of infiltration, subversion, and terrorism.”

  On that same day, just three weeks after his very public threat against U.S. leaders, Castro again rattled the sabre. After a typical marathon speech in Havana in which he chastised Kennedy for his “undeclared war” of sabotage against Cuba, Castro warned, “They [Kennedy and his administration] are our enemies, and we know how to be their enemies.”91

  John Kennedy had long been aware of the possibility that his Cuba Project could backfire on him. As early as 1961, Kennedy remarked that if U.S. officials were ever linked to the plotting, “we would all be targets.”92

  Castro’s threats also became a major point of concern for Bobby Kennedy’s Cuban Coordinating Committee. CCC staffer General Alexander Haig recalls:

  We were getting warnings. During the covert operation program, there were messages—arriving at the lower level, but always drifting to the top: “Castro says if this goes on, he was going to take action.” And it did go on, right up until the day Kennedy was killed.93

  Three days after Castro’s first threat, on September 12, 1963, the Cuban Coordinating Committee met at 2:30 p.m. at the Department of State to assess the U.S.’ “contingency plans” for Cuba. The minutes of that meeting demonstrate that the Committee unanimously agreed: “There was a strong likelihood that Castro would retaliate in some way against the rash of covert activity in Cuba.”94

  On September 27, the same day that Oswald made his declaration/offer to the Cubans in Mexico City, the Cuban Coordinating Committee directed its subcommittee on Cuban Subversion to submit, by October 4, papers discussing the possibility that there might be increased assassination attempts on American officials or citizens.95 According to New York Times reporter Tad Szulc, this was no ordinary subcommittee. It “was created by Robert Kennedy, presumably out of concern that Castro might retaliate against CIA attempts on his life,” Szulc wrote in 1976.96 As a highly regarded investigative journalist, Szulc never divulged his sources for this information. Confronted with the question again in 1994, he told the author, “I got it from sources close to Bobby. It was as close as possible, fair enough? That’s all I will say.”97

  Szulc, it must be recalled, was working closely with the White House on the AM/TRUNK operation.

  Countdown to Invasion

  “If JFK was not shot, Castro never would have continued to exist.”

  —Manolo Reboso, exile coordinator for Robert Kennedy98

  “Castro knew Kennedy had to do something before the [1964] election, so Castro had to act first.”

  —Carlos Bringuier, Cuban Student Directorate delegate99

  Despite the administration’s fears and Castro’s threats, the anti-Castro enterprises only escalated. On September 3rd, the Special Group was told, “Artime is ready to go in November or December.” Des FitzGerald noted in his report of that meeting that “considerable pressure exists in the Special Group at this particular moment for intensification of our raiding program.” On September 23rd, in a futile effort to give RFK some measure of deniability, the U.S. Ambassador to Artime’s host country, Costa Rica, was advised “to state [that] RFK knows nothing of Artime’s plans.”100

  On October 4, 1963, in Washington, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, coordinating with the Departments of Defense and State, submitted its most up-to-date revision of OPLAN 380-63. The new document included the exact timetable for the invasion of Cuba and related goings-on:

  By January 1964, infiltration into Cuba by Cuban exiles (as per AM/TRUNK).

  On July 15, 1964, US. conventional forces would join the fray.

  On August 3, 1964, which was designated as “D Day,” an all-out U.S. air strike would commence.101

  By October 1, 1964, “a full-scale invasion, with a goal the installation of a government friendly to the U.S.,” would be launched.

  The Kennedys’ planned victory over Castro would thus conveniently occur one month before the November 1964 Presidential election.

  About a month after the new timetable arrived, Des FitzGerald placed a friendly wager with Michael Forrestal of the National Security Council staff. The November 13 bet, according to a memo in his files, had FitzGerald predicting the downfall of the Castro regime “during the period 1 August 1964 and 1 October 1964.”102 The wager further stipulated that removal of Castro had to occur during that two-month window. Considering FitzGerald’s inside knowledge of the AM/LASH and OPLAN 380-63 timetables, he may have had an unfair advantage.

  The day before placing the wager with Forrestal, FitzGerald attended a Special Group meeting at the White House. In attendance were Robert Kennedy, his CCC leader Cy Vance, and the CIA’s Richard Helms and Ted Shackley, among others. FitzGerald took the occasion to apprise the group of Artime’s progress in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. He sweetened the outlook by adding that “it was also hoped that the autonomous group under Manolo Reboso [another RFK confidante] would soon get itself established in a working base, possibly Costa Rica.” He added that “much could be accomplished by those autonomous groups once they get established.”103

  After so many fits and starts—the Bay of Pigs, Executive Action, Operation Mongoose, and fragmented exile group efforts in both New Orleans and Miami—the administration’s Cuba Project had seemingly turned the corner. With the impending invasion planned, manned, and financed, with AM/LASH on board, and with the continuing activity of Rosselli & Co., it now appeared that the Kennedy brothers would finally get their wish: a pre-election victory over Fidel Castro. The march toward victory could have started within weeks, but the President insisted on one quick trip to Dallas to stock the war chest for the upcoming presidential c
ampaign.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE EYE OF THE HURRICANE

  “Observing the steady fall of the barometer, Captain McWhirr thought, ‘There’s some dirty weather knocking about.”

  —Joseph Conrad, Typhoon

  One of the many myths surrounding John Kennedy’s assassination is that the president would not have journeyed to Dallas that day if Lyndon Johnson and other Lone Star politicians had not asked him to come and patch-up internal party squabbles. This interpretation was most widely promulgated by William Manchester in his 1967 book The Death of a President. Upon reading Manchester’s manuscript, Lyndon Johnson told Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, “Ninety-five percent of Manchester’s book is completely fabricated.”1

  To be sure, there was party dissension in Texas. However, the White House dispatched aide Bill Moyers, not the President, to attend to it, which he did.2 The fact is that the only person who wanted the trip to go forward was John Kennedy. On this, all the principals agree. The trip was, pure and simple, an effort to fill the party coffers and to improve the president’s standing in Texas.

  By the fall of 1963, the Democratic National Committee was $4 million in debt. In spite of the size of the state and Johnson’s place on the national ticket, Texas was one of the smallest contributors to the national committee. “If we don’t raise money in another state, I want to do so in Massachusetts [his home state] and Texas [Johnson’s home state],” Kennedy told Texas Governor John Connally. “If we don’t carry another state next year, I want to carry Texas and Massachusetts.”3 Kennedy’s friend and Air Force aide, General Godfrey McHugh, recalled that the Texas trip “wasn’t so much for votes as it was for money, because Texas is where the money is.”4