Authors: Lamar Waldron
casino, around the time that both mob bosses first became involved in
the 1960 CIA-Mafia plots. Diaz had left Cuba in July 1963, first going to
Mexico City, where David Atlee Phillips ran Cuban operations. After
arriving in the US, Diaz told the CIA in September 1963 that he wanted
to assassinate Fidel—and that he knew about Commander Almeida’s
and Rolando Cubela’s dissatisfaction. By October 1963, a CIA memo
confirms that Diaz had captured the interest of Desmond FitzGerald and
Ted Shackley, Chief of the CIA’s Miami station, where Rosselli regularly
visited David Morales. In the 1990s, a former Cuban official claimed that
Herminio Diaz had been in Dallas for JFK’s assassination; if true, Diaz’s
work on the Castro assassination plots might have simply been a cover
for his role in JFK’s murder.49
The December 6, 1963, attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro involving
Herminio Diaz was first documented in 2006 by author Larry Hancock.50
More CIA files have since been discovered, reporting the “wide rumor
of [an] assassination attempt against Fidel Castro after his TV appear-
ance Dec. 6, resulting in [the] killing of [a] man next to him. Castro [was]
uninjured. Would-be killer at large.”51 Hancock quotes a CIA cable to
LBJ’s national security advisor, McGeorge Bundy, that described “an
assassination attempt on Fidel Castro after his TV appearance on 12/6,”
reported by the wife of a Havana diplomat. CIA headquarters, likely
FitzGerald or one of his men, added a comment linking that attempt to
“continuing rumors of a plot to assassinate Castro which is connected
with Herminio Diaz.”52
The CIA comment about Diaz is important, since FBI files show that
Diaz was trafficking narcotics for Trafficante around that time. CIA
records released so far about Diaz are clearly incomplete, raising the
possibility that Diaz was involved in activities involving the CIA that
Helms decided to keep hidden.53
Reports of an attempt to assassinate Fidel so soon after JFK’s mur-
der, especially one involving Trafficante’s bodyguard, raise several
possibilities. By December 6, it was clear that the US was not going to
be rushed into a quick invasion of Cuba because of Oswald’s seeming
ties to Cuba and Russia. Some Cuban exiles, and CIA personnel like
Morales, may have decided to remove Fidel themselves. Diaz still had
ties to Cuba, and Morales’s Mafia-linked operative Tony Sforza could
travel freely in and out of Cuba. If Diaz was involved in the December
6 attempt, his participation could be seen as part of the unauthorized
CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro.
Likewise, if Herminio Diaz was involved in JFK’s assassination, link-
ing him to the December 6, 1963, attempt to kill Fidel could inoculate him
and his associates against scrutiny regarding JFK’s murder. FitzGerald
and Helms would worry that it might appear that an assassin trained
by the CIA to kill Fidel had instead killed JFK. Even if the two CIA offi-
cials had not engaged Diaz directly, they would still worry that one of
their operatives might have, and that anyone digging too deeply might
uncover their unauthorized operations. From Trafficante’s perspective,
any of those possibilities were good. Even if Diaz’s involvement, or the
attempt itself, were just rumors, having them circulating at CIA head-
quarters and the White House was still a plus for Trafficante.54
depended on how he and a few trusted subordinates handled several
crucial matters. These ranged from continuing the CIA’s operations
against Castro to dealing with streams of suspicious information flow-
ing through the CIA pipeline from Mexico City, stories that tried to link
Fidel to JFK’s assassination. Those tales were eventually discredited and
Helms viewed them skeptically from the start, unlike high officials such
as President Johnson and McCone. In the tense times following JFK’s
death, Helms may well have helped the US avoid a potentially deadly
confrontation with Cuba and the Soviets. On the other hand, one has
to wonder if he ever questioned the central role his Cuban operations
chief in Mexico City, David Atlee Phillips, played in many of the suspi-
cious stories.
Disinformation involving a young Nicaraguan named Gilberto
Alvarado began flowing through David Atlee Phillips on November
26, 1963. On that day, at the American embassy in Mexico City, Alvarado
claimed that two months earlier, he had seen Oswald receive $6,500
at the Cuban embassy “for the purpose of killing someone.” Anthony
Summers noticed that a phrase Alvarado attributes to Oswald matches
the wording used in the Silvia Odio incident. Alvarado’s accusations
created a huge stir among high officials in Washington for more than a
week, and US ambassador to Mexico Thomas Mann was convinced the
account proved that Fidel was behind JFK’s murder.1
Alvarado soon admitted he was lying—only to then claim that he
wasn’t lying. After failing a lie-detector test, Alvarado finally admitted
that he was really a Nicaraguan intelligence agent. Summers writes
that Alvarado “explains his presence at the Cuban Embassy” around
the same time as Oswald by saying “he had been sent to Mexico to try
to get to Cuba on an infiltration mission.” The Alvarado investigation
was dropped, and even though the CIA concluded that “Alvarado’s
allegation was indeed fabricated,” some who want to blame JFK’s death
on Castro keep dredging it up.2
In addition to Alvarado and Oswald, a third unusual man visited the
Cuban embassy around the same time; Summers says he “behaved as
though he was on some sort of undercover mission in Mexico, and [his]
movements ran parallel to Oswald’s.” Like Oswald and Alvarado, this
individual “tried to get a Cuban entry visa.” The young man then left
Mexico, traveled to Dallas and New Orleans, and had met earlier with
anti-Castro activists. Just as Alvarado worked for Nicaraguan Intelli-
gence, this individual worked for Costa Rican Intelligence, which knew
he “planned to infiltrate Cuba.”3
One thread all three young men had in common was Manuel Artime,
who had camps in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, and ties to their intelli-
gence services.4 Oswald, Alvarado, and the other man were apparently
all on the same type of mission in Mexico City at the same time, trying to
get into Cuba. But who controlled their movements—and gave Alvarado
his phony story? Artime or David Morales (along with their mob associ-
ates) seem to be likely suspects, as does David Atlee Phillips.
Richard Helms received suspicious information about two more
young men who went to Mexico City, trying to get into Cuba—only
this time, the stories tied them more directly to events in Dallas. They
were Tampa suspect Gilberto Policarpo Lopez and Miguel Cases Saez,
the shadowy Cuban who had seemingly followed JFK to Chicago and
Dallas. Helms did not take these allegations as seriously as Counter-
Intelligence Chief James Angleton, who saw Lopez and Saez as part of
a Castro conspiracy involving Oswald.5
Gilberto Lopez crossed the border from Texas into Mexico on Novem-
ber 23, 1963, but he didn’t check into his Mexico City hotel until Novem-
ber 25.6 His whereabouts between those dates are unknown; it was as if
someone kept him secreted away until Oswald was dead and it was clear
no evidence had emerged that required a co-conspirator. (Lopez “entered
Mexico by auto,” even though, like Oswald, he neither owned nor could
drive a car.) An FBI report includes claims that “on November 27 last,
Lopez departed Mexico City by special airplane for Havana, Cuba,” and
that Lopez had “a probable role” in JFK’s murder.7 However, the most
incriminating information came from a “Covert American Source” in a
Mexican ministry involved with the corrupt Mexican federal police (the
drug-connected DFS). The story about Lopez’s being “the only passen-
ger [in a] special plane” to Havana fell apart under close examination
three times: in late 1963, when it surfaced again in the spring of 1964,
and in the late 1970s when it was debunked by the House Select Com-
mittee on Assassinations. Historian Richard D. Mahoney observed that
Lopez’s story seemed designed to trigger “what David Phillips, David
272
LEGACY OF SECRECY
Morales, and Bill Harvey and the thousands of anti-Castro fighters in
their training had demanded: a second invasion of Cuba.”8
Some high US officials knew Lopez had left Tampa just three days
after the attempt to kill JFK there, and that he had contact with the
Fair Play for Cuba Committee, so it’s not hard to see why they took
the reports seriously at first. The FBI even tapped the telephones of
people who had only brief contact with Lopez, which we describe in
Chapter 22.
As the Lopez story rose through official channels, it was supplemented
by stories about Miguel Casas Saez, who had appeared to shadow JFK
while staying one step ahead of US authorities. Reports from Mexico
said Saez was in Dallas when JFK was shot, then fled to Mexico City,
where a Cubana Airlines plane was held for him for five hours. Saez
then supposedly rode in the cockpit so the passengers wouldn’t see him.
Thirdhand accounts by David Morales’s AMOT Cuban exile informants
said the formerly poor Saez suddenly had money and American clothes
once he returned to Cuba. Like Oswald and Lopez, Saez also had a Rus-
sian connection: He had taken a Russian-language course and “speaks
Russian quite well,” according to a CIA memo. (If true, it meant that like
Oswald and Lopez, Saez would have also made a good patsy for a CIA
assassination of Castro.)
Though the Saez allegations concerned US officials in the crucial early
period after JFK’s death, they eventually fell apart. When the initial
report of the Cubana plane’s being held was finally declassified, it didn’t
mention Saez at all. The most incriminating information in CIA reports
was thirdhand, from sources of questionable reliability whose names are
still withheld today. One CIA memo says that “in view of the vagueness
of the original report [and its] unknown sources . . . I’d let this die its
natural death, as the Bureau [FBI] is doing.”9
Whether Saez was a real person or simply a creation of Morales’s
informants has never been established. If he was real, he might have been
a Cuban on a low-level smuggling mission to the US who was simply
manipulated so that his travels later looked suspicious. Trafficante and
even Jimmy Hoffa engaged in these types of smuggling activities—one
of Hoffa’s lieutenants later wrote about “times when Jimmy asked that
Castro send people over here to do little jobs for him.”10 After reviewing
all of the available information, we conclude about Saez what we did
about Gilberto Lopez: Neither man was knowingly involved in JFK’s
assassination, but their movements were probably being manipulated
by someone who wanted it to appear as if they were.
None of the stories about Saez or Lopez were reported in the news
media at the time. However, one of the long-secret CIA memos about
Saez used wording similar to that from the Odio incident and the
Alvarado allegation, saying that Saez “was capable of doing anything”
after claiming “he had firing practice.” As journalist Anthony Summers
suggests, it was almost as if the conspirators in each instance were read-
ing from the same script. The question is whether the authors were men
like confessed conspirators Martino, Morales, and Rosselli, or whether
they also included far more experienced writers like propaganda expert
David Atlee Phillips and spy novelist E. Howard Hunt.
While dealing with the disturbing information about Saez, Lopez,
and the others, Helms had to continue the CIA’s efforts against Cas-
tro, including his own unauthorized attempts to assassinate Fidel. If
one of his unauthorized attempts was successful, or those plots could
be merged with plans authorized by the new president, it would give
Helms additional cover. At the same time, Helms had to withhold crucial
information from other agencies and investigators that could damage
Helms, his associates, or the CIA.
Just one example among many, the following CIA memo from
November 25, 1963, disproves one of Helms’s cover stories to the FBI,
LBJ, and eventually the Warren Commission: that no one in the CIA had
ever expressed an operational interest in Oswald, even after he returned
to the US with a Russian wife. The CIA agent who sent this still partially
censored memo says that due to “the number of Soviet women marrying
foreigners, being permitted to leave the USSR. . . . we eventually turned
up something like two dozen similar cases [so] we showed operational
intelligence interest in the [Lee] Harvey [Oswald] story.”11
Even as Richard Helms withheld information like that from LBJ and