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Showing posts with label CIA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CIA. Show all posts

Thursday, February 10, 2011

50th Anniversary of the Bay of Pigs: Eisenhower tramples right to travel to Cuba

• Granma International is publishing a series of articles on the events leading up to the April, 1961 battle of the Bay of Pigs. As we approach the 50th Anniversary of this heroic feat, we will attempt to recreate chronologically the developments which occurred during this period and ultimately led to the invasion. The series will be a kind of comparative history, relating what was taking place more or less simultaneously in revolutionary Cuba, in the United States, in Latin America, within the socialist camp and in other places in some way connected to the history of these first years of the Cuban Revolution

By Gabriel Molina


• THE unprecedented prohibition of January 17, 1961 – three days before the presidential inauguration of John F. Kennedy – was an attempt to close off a source of income to the island and force its surrender through hunger. The plan to launch an invasion during the 1960 electoral campaign so that Vice President Nixon could take advantage of the result was postponed when it was realized it needed to be further developed. Up until that point there was confidence that a repetition of the successful 1954 CIA operation against President Arbenz of Guatemala would be enough for Nixon to beat the charismatic Senator Kennedy.

But Kennedy’s victory in November 1960 made it more urgent to activate the operation before Cuba’s rapid military strengthening progressed any farther. Hence the measure breaking off diplomatic relations signed by Eisenhower on January 3, 1961, less than three weeks before his presidential term ended.

A meeting at CIA headquarters attended by Tracy Barnes, assistant deputy director for plans under Richard Bissell, and J.C. King, chief of the Latin America Division, had approved the idea of infiltrating an agent into Havana’s military leadership to provoke an accident leading to the death of Raúl Castro, the second leader of the Revolution. According to the U.S. Senate Church Committee, the order was given in a cable datelined July 21, 1960 to the CIA center in Cuba. (2)

The attack on freedom of movement represented by the travel ban was concealed under the pretext that normal security services could not be provided to U.S. citizens after the breaking off of diplomatic relations. Prior to this a series of measures, both secret and public had led to virtually eliminating U.S. tourism to Cuba. But the government feared visits by groups traveling to the island despite the adverse propaganda.

Having seen that Cuban realities were did not match what was being said in the United States, these groups of liberal and progressive Americans condemned the anti-Cuban campaigns and made statements of solidarity with Cuba.

Meanwhile, it was announced that U.S. National Airlines was suspending flights to Cuba.

Fidel clarified the underlying reason for the measure: the Revolution constituted an example, not only for the peoples of Latin America, but also for the U.S. people.

When the measure came into effect, The New York Times published a letter on the ban from Alice Hussey Balassa, an American citizen who had returned to her country after a short vacation in Cuba. Her letter referred to signs of material progress among the many benefits achieved by the population: ending extreme poverty in the barrios, reducing illiteracy, increasing housing for workers and campesinos and building schools and campesino cooperatives.

Official documents declassified by the National Security Archive revealed that on December 12, 1963, less than one month after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy, still U.S. Attorney General at the time, sent a communiqué to Secretary of State Dean Rusk urging him to withdraw the regulations on U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba. On that occasion, Robert Kennedy described the limitations on travel to the island as a violation of American liberties. In those same documents, found in the Congressional library and in that of President John F. Kennedy and declassified June 29, 2005, the Attorney General added that it was impractical to arrest, bring charges and commit to prosecutions in bad taste against citizens wishing to travel to Cuba.

Kennedy’s initiative was supported by McGeorge Bundy, National Security adviser, who also described them in another memo as inconsistent with traditional American liberties.

However, on December 13, 1963, the day after Robert Kennedy’s appeal, George Ball, under secretary in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, discounted any relaxation in the restrictions. The decree was maintained by President Lyndon Johnson, who alleged that a decision on Cuba during the 1964 elections would hurt him. Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy after his assassination, also rejected subsequent action by the Attorney General to normalize relations.

A meeting about the measures did not include any representative of Robert Kennedy, although he had initiated the proposal to withdraw them. Instead, Ball proposed to warn people considering a trip to the island that, if they did so, their passports would be invalidated and they could face prosecution.

Despite Robert Kennedy’s continuing attempts to rescind them, the measures were upheld by President Johnson, until they were left without effect by James Carter during his 1976-80 presidential term. But the restrictions were re-imposed by President Reagan, who succeeded Carter in January 1981. At the beginning of his second term in office (1996-2000), Clinton allowed travel endorsed by licenses for religious, academic and other purposes. After that, Bush Jr. reinstituted the ban during the 2004 electoral campaign. This year, the Obama administration reversed the measures returning to the situation established by Clinton in the context of his Track II policy: granting licenses for person to person contact. In essence, they make no dent whatsoever in the blockade.

On the same afternoon following the assassination of the President, Robert Kennedy asked John McCone, who replaced Allen Dulles as CIA director, if the agency was responsible for the crime against his brother. Robert knew that the CIA was controlled by Richard Helms, an intelligence professional appointed as its Deputy Director and Director of Plans, who always regarded Robert’s activities with scorn.

In the following months, still as Attorney General in the Johnson administration, Robert was quietly investigating groups of CIA officers and Cuban gangs, whom he got to know and to suspect of involvement in his brother’s death.

Five years later, at the point of contesting the presidency against Richard Nixon, he was even more convinced that attempts to blame Cuba for the assassination were part of a CIA-Cuban gang conspiracy.

When Robert stated for the first time during an electoral meeting, in response to a question on the issue, that if he won the presidency he would reopen an investigation into the assassination, he was endangering the CIA’s well-guarded secret.

The conclusions of the Congressional Special Committee which investigated the assassination of the president from 1976-1978 included a demand that the Justice Department reopen the investigation. But the CIA refused to open the files on the case, which it concealed from the House Select Committee chaired by Democrat Louis Stokes.

In the spring of 2007 it was announced that members of a group of CIA officers suspected of having participated in the assassination of the President, including George Joannides, chief of Psychological Warfare at the JM/WAVE station, were present, outside of their functions, in the hotel where Robert Kennedy was assassinated, after his bid for the presidency was secured. Since then, new evidence revealed by investigators points to reopening the case, but the CIA has remitted files on the tragic events to a period of 50 years before they can be opened.

According to the book Brothers… by researcher David Talbot, diplomat and journalist William Attwood, a participant in the negotiations authorized by the President a few days before the assassination and some close friends of Robert Kennedy, revealed that "Helms put an intercept on [eminent journalist] Lisa Howard’s telephones." (3) For this reason, the Attorney General also suspected that the CIA group and the Cuban mafiosi with whom they were working in relation to conspiracies against Fidel, were also conspiring to perpetrate the assassination.

Given that Robert was John’s right-hand man and the actor of his ideas and actions, "some close Democrat friends of the Attorney General nicknamed Bobby ‘Raúl’ (4) joking about a certain similarity to Fidel and Raúl in his missions. •

(1)Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960, Volume VI (Cuba)

(2) Church Committee Report. Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders. B-Cuba, Pp 71.

(3) David Talbot. Brothers. The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years. Simon & Schuster. 2007, P. 233.

(4) Ibid. Pp. 92.


Havana. February 10 , 2011

granma.cu

Friday, January 21, 2011

50th Anniversary of the Bay of Pigs: The CIA Nostra (10)

On October 26, 51 years ago, Fidel announced the creation of the Revolutionary National Militia • Granma International will be publishing a series of articles on the events leading up to the April, 1961 battle of the Bay of Pigs • As we approach the 50th Anniversary of this heroic feat, we will attempt to recreate chronologically the developments which occurred during this period and ultimately led to the invasion • The series will be a kind of comparative history, relating what was taking place more or less simultaneously in revolutionary Cuba, in the United States, in Latin America, within the socialist camp and in other places in some way connected to the history of these first years of the Cuban Revolution



By Gabriel Molina



• THE Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) allied itself with two of the 10 most dangerous criminals in the United States in an attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro in 1960.

This shocking news was made public in an official U.S. Senate report, but only in recent years has it been possible to reach an understanding of that aberrant fact, with the declassification of secret documents.

The report from the then U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy quoted by name Sam Giancana and Santos Trafficante, who were invited to take part in the CIA operation approved by Dwight Eisenhower, U.S. President at the time and CIA director Allen Dulles. The information was confirmed thanks to a report from the Special Committee chaired by Senator Frank Church, which states textually: "In August 1960 the CIA took steps to enlist members of the criminal underworld with gambling syndicate contacts to aid in assassinating Castro." (1)

On the summer morning of August 18, 1960, Richard Bissell, CIA Deputy Director of Plans, and very close to Allen Dulles, summoned Colonel Sheffield Edwards, director of the Agency’s Security Office, responsible for handling everything and from which nothing leaked, and told him that he had Dulles’ express instructions to do away with Fidel Castro. The decision had been approved by President Eisenhower after a meeting at the White House with Dulles and Bissell himself.

The committee headed by Democratic Senator Frank Church affirms that a number of CIA agents were in contact with the Cosa Nostra.

Robert Maheu, an agent specializing in shady dealings, was incorporated and asked by the CIA central command to contact John Roselli "to determine if he would participate in a plan to ‘dispose’ of Castro." (2)

Those assigned to the operation had to find somebody who could execute it in Cuba and who would appear to have no involvement with the Agency, the reason for the instructions that it should be somebody from outside. Given his contacts in Cuba, Colonel Edwards proposed the utilization of the Cosa Nostra. The essential details of the CIA-Cosa Nostra are included in the special Senate Committee report of 1975.

The first association between the U.S. government and the Italian-American mafia was with Lucky Luciano, head of the committee directing the various family gangs throughout the country, who was serving a sentence of 30-50 years, handed down on June 18, 1936, in the Dannemora high security prison. Mayor Lansky, Jewish, an astute man and a friend of Luciano and in fact his consigliere, negotiated with Commander Charles R. Haffenden, a superior officer in the Third Naval District Intelligence Office, an alliance to utilize the mafia in counterintelligence work in the New York docks, a target of Nazi agents; and intelligence on the landing and taking of Sicily by U.S. troops. In that way, Luciano was released, deported to Italy and all the associates came out winning.

The Special Military Plan for Psychological Warfare in Sicily reached the hands of Army Chief of Staff George Marshall and, with his recommendation, was approved in Washington on April 15, 1943. It was sent to Algiers and handed to Eisenhower, general in charge of the theater of operations in North Africa. The message was very clear; the Allies were going to utilize the mafia to win Sicily. (3)

Given that close connection, in a matter of hours Maheu had arranged a meeting with Roselli in the Brown Derby restaurant in Beverley Hills, base of the gangster, one of the most important mafia capos in California and Las Vegas, with wide-ranging relations with artists such as Frank Sinatra, Debbie Reynolds and Dean Martin.

Maheu flew to California in September 1960 and met with Roselli in the Brown Derby on the 14th of that month. Roselli was receptive when Maheu informed him that senior government officials were interested in eliminating Fidel Castro, that the assassination could be based on Castro’s Cuban enemies, and offered him $150,000 for the contract. Roselli realized that, in addition to the money, the relationship would help him elude the threat of deportation hanging over him.

In Havana, that same September 14, it was announced that Fidel Castro, Prime Minister of the Revolutionary Government, would head the Cuban delegation to the UN General Assembly, and so Maheu and Roselli went to New York to contact a high-ranking CIA official in the Plaza Hotel. There, Roselli proposed including in the conspiracy his friend Sam Giancana, Al Capone’s successor, on account of his proven organizational skills in this type of operation and, to set up the necessary contacts, Santos Trafficante, who had many interests in Cuba expropriated by the Revolution and strong links with the island. Giancana then traveled to Miami to meet with them.

Giancana agreed, while discounting the possibility of a mafia-style hit. Nobody could be recruited to undertake it, there being such a slim chance of surviving it. He said that the only way to successful and protect lives would be to use a lethal poison that could be placed in a drink of Fidel Castro.

Sam "Momo" Giancana inherited Al Capone’s Chicago empire and held it from 1957 through 1966. The press described him as a small, bald man who loved silk suits, head-turning convertibles and even more head-turning women. His associations were equally notable, like the one he had with Frank Sinatra, or with the singer Phyllis McGuire from the Mcguire Trio, who was the first source leaking the assassination plot, when Giancana got the CIA to bug the singer’s bedroom to see if she was being unfaithful to him. The microphones were discovered by the FBI and the operation was about to become a scandal, only halted by an Agency cover up. Giancana’s relationship with Phyllis McGuire was very typical of him. He had her portrait painted. She "lost more than $100,000 at a gaming table in Las Vegas. Momo distracted her with his conversation so that she wouldn’t go on losing. He went to see the casino manager, the famous Moe Dalitz and told him that he would take care of the debt. He simply absorbed it." (4)

Santos Trafficante had been a friend of Giancana for many years. They were together in 1957, when a high-level meeting of the Appalachian mafiosi was uncovered by the police. He also had links with the capos Carlo Marcello, Joseph Bonnano, Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano. The youthful Trafficante began by running Havana’s Sans Souci cabaret. In combination with Lansky, he made other investments in the casinos of the new Havana Riviera and Capri hotels, and thus was surrounded by Cuban gangsters. Lending his services to the U.S. government would always fetch positive dividends.

Michael J. Murphy, chief inspector of the New York police, frustrated the initial attempt of that CIA Nostra. Murphy was responsible for Fidel’s security in the city during the UN General Assembly, and Murphy knew through a member of the CIA that Walter Martino, a member of the local mafia, had been instructed to place an explosive device close to the stage in Central Park, where Fidel was to speak.

The police chief was informed of this by a CIA official in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, where the New York police agents in charge of security for the heads of state attending the meeting had their operational base. Martino was arrested and the plan thwarted.

Walter’s brother, John Martino, one of the members of the Italian-American mafia at Havana’s Hotel Nacional, had been arrested aboard a ferry on October 5, 1959, attempting to smuggle out a suitcase filled with mafia dollars. He later fled and was recruited by Sam Giancana to organize the attempt on the life of the Comandante en Jefe, a contract he gave to his brother Walter.



(1) Church Report: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders.


(2) Ibid.


(3) Tim Newark. Aliados de la Mafia (Mafia Allies. Alianza Editorial. Madrid, 2007.


(4) William Brashner. The Don Ballantine Books. New York, 1978.


(5) Fabián Escalante. Acción Ejecutiva. Objetivo Fidel Castro Executive Action. Target Fidel Castro). Ocean Press Melbourne, 2006.

Havana. January 21, 2011

granma.cu

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Cuba slams book by Castro's sister

HAVANA, Cuba (AFP) -- Cuba's state-run media on Monday condemned a just-published book in which Fidel Castro's sister admits she spied for the Central Intelligence Agency.

The country's media added that the expose proves that the former Cuban leader was a "victim" of decades of US targeting.

"The truth is in full view: Fidel Castro is the victim, the offended person, the individual against whom they conspired," wrote the government-run La Jiribilla magazine, saying the relentless effort to target the Cuban leader was in "bad taste" and "low moral standing."

In acknowledging the cloak-and-dagger story, "the enemies of the revolution for once were casting a spotlight on their misdeeds," the periodical said.

The condemnation by the Havana government follows the admission by Juanita Castro, 76, in her Spanish-language book "Fidel and Raul, My Brothers. The Secret History" that she worked with the US spy agency.

In the book, which went on sale last week, Juanita, the fifth of seven Castro siblings, writes that she aided the CIA during the 1960s, at a time when the United States was plotting to assassinate her brother and replace his Communist regime.

Now a resident of Miami, Juanita Castro wrote that she was contacted in 1964 after she broke with Fidel and Raul, the current president of Cuba, and collaborated with the CIA both inside Cuba and when she went into exile later that year.

November 3, 2009

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