• 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
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