Authors: Lamar Waldron
well to an unexpected crisis, removing Cuba as a liability to his 1964
presidential campaign. Part of their publicity plan included a Kennedy-
backed book and television project about the Bay of Pigs, though the
JFK-Almeida coup plan was unknown to the journalists involved.
While it may seem odd for JFK and Bobby to have wanted to remind
voters of their biggest disaster, it makes sense given the individuals
involved in the projects. Bobby was friends with Washington reporter
Haynes Johnson, who was working on a book with the help of four Bay
of Pigs veterans trusted by the Kennedys, including Harry Williams
and Manuel Artime. Chet Huntley, another Kennedy friend and one of
the top news anchors of the day, was handling the TV project. Along
with David Brinkley, Huntley anchored America’s most popular news
broadcast each weekday evening on NBC. Bobby knew that Huntley’s
Bay of Pigs special was slated to run after the coup, allowing the pro-
gram to end with the triumphant return to Havana of Bay of Pigs heroes
like Harry and Artime.16
Harry Williams usually shied away from publicity, but at Bobby’s
request he was involved with both the book and TV projects. The per-
sonable Harry became close friends with journalist Haynes Johnson and
friendly with Chet Huntley. Both men admired Harry for his bravery,
as did JFK and Bobby. Harry had distinguished himself not only in
fighting at the Bay of Pigs, but also even as he lay gravely injured in a
field hospital after his capture. In a well-documented encounter, when
Fidel showed up unexpectedly to visit the wounded captives, Harry
weakly pulled a pistol out of his boot, pointed it at Fidel, and squeezed
the trigger.
But Harry’s pistol only clicked—his fellow prisoners had removed
the bullets because they were worried Harry might use them on himself,
due to his capture and grievous injuries. Coupled with Harry’s agree-
ment with Castro—to return to his Cuban prison if he were unable to
get JFK and Bobby to make a deal to free the remaining prisoners—his
actions cemented his heroic stature in the eyes of Cuban exiles, Bobby,
and JFK. Journalists from Haynes Johnson to
Newsweek
editor Evan
Thomas have written about the close personal relationship that devel-
oped between Harry and Bobby by 1963, which is why Bobby and JFK
put Harry in charge of the exile side of the JFK-Almeida coup plan.17
It was up to Harry to recommend a handful of “selected Cuban exile
leaders” who would become part of the coup plan, subject to approval
from Bobby and JFK. Most of Harry’s recommendations were accepted,
and five groups were selected. The hundreds of other Cuban exile
groups, many of whom had received lavish support from the CIA for
years, had their financial aid cut back severely or cut off completely,
creating much resentment.
The exile leaders and groups Harry, Bobby, and JFK chose were:
• Manual Artime, the extremely conservative former Bay of Pigs
leader and best friend of CIA agent E. Howard Hunt.
• Tony Varona, a former Cuban senator who had recently headed
the largest US-backed Cuban exile group, the CRC (Cuban Revo-
lutionary Council).
• Manolo Ray, head of JURE (Junta Revolucionaria Cubana), con-
sidered one of the most liberal exile groups, and hence distrusted
and disliked by Artime and Hunt.
28
LEGACY OF SECRECY
• Eloy Menoyo of the SNFE (Second National Front of Escambray),
also seen as very liberal; Harry called him “a man of action” because
(unlike many office-bound exile leaders) he had been willing to
personally lead raids into Cuba the previous year.
• The Cuban American US Army troops in officer training at Fort
Benning, Georgia, considered the cream of the Bay of Pigs veterans
from a military standpoint. This multiracial group of Cuban exiles
would be the first US troops into Cuba after the coup.
Many of these men had worked with Fidel and Almeida during the
Revolution and its immediate aftermath. One by one, they left Cuba or
were forced to flee. Now, Harry was trying to meld them into an effective
group that could help to rule Cuba after the coup, during the transition
to democracy and eventual free elections. But this goal proved difficult,
because their political differences were so great. Recently declassified
memos show the scope of Harry’s problem: As of June 26, 1963, an FBI
informant reported that “Menoyo would not be welcome” to work with
Ray’s JURE group, and on September 26, 1963, Artime told one of his
AMWORLD CIA case officers that “Menoyo . . . is indeed a traitor.”
Artime also disliked Ray, and memos from the summer of 1963 show
CIA officials lying to Artime, telling him “that [Ray] is not one of [the
CIA’s] chosen” leaders, when the CIA had actually being supporting
Ray with an average of $25,000 a month since late June 1963.18 If it had
been up to CIA officials like Richard Helms and E. Howard Hunt, Artime
would have been the sole exile leader receiving support, but that wasn’t
what the Kennedys wanted. After much work by Harry, by November
1963 Menoyo and Ray had met to reach a “working agreement,” and
exile informants began to report that Artime had reached an accommo-
dation with each man. Also on board were Tony Varona and the leader
of the Cuban exile troops at Fort Benning.19
The five were not a cohesive group, and their level of commitment to
Harry and Bobby varied. This was partially because Harry felt he had
to withhold some information about the coup plan from them (such as
Almeida’s identity), until the exile leader was fully committed to the
operation. For example, newly released CIA files cited here for the first
time confirm Harry’s account of meeting with Manolo Ray in September
1963. Shortly after that, Almeida’s name came up in a meeting between
Ray and his CIA case officer, but they both talked so cautiously that it’s
hard to tell just how much Harry or Bobby had told Ray about Almeida.
Menoyo was even more problematic, and as late as mid-November, after
months of wooing, Harry Williams was still trying to get him fully on
board.20
Tony Varona had been eager to join Harry’s plan—perhaps too eager.
Unknown to Harry and Bobby, Varona had ties to mob bosses Santo
Trafficante and Johnny Rosselli. When the first round of CIA-Mafia plots
to assassinate Castro in 1959 failed, the CIA began greatly ramping up
their efforts in the summer of 1960, three months before the presidential
election. Richard Nixon had been Eisenhower’s point man for Cuba,
and Fidel’s death was apparently supposed to be the original October
surprise that would propel the incumbent vice president to victory. The
CIA admits they brought Varona into the plots at that time, along with
Santo Trafficante, Johnny Rosselli, and his boss, Sam Giancana.21 Carlos
Marcello told an FBI informant that he joined the operation at a later
date. Despite a series of failures, the CIA continued their work with the
Mafia. Bobby Kennedy was told about some aspects of the CIA-Mafia
plots in May 1962, after they threatened to interfere with the prosecu-
tion of Giancana. However, the CIA admits they told Bobby the plot-
ting had stopped, when in actuality it continued. Without telling Bobby,
JFK, or his own CIA Director, Richard Helms continued having Rosselli
work with Varona on the project, through the rest of 1962 and into June
1963, under the supervision of William Harvey, Desmond FitzGerald’s
predecessor. The rotund, hard-drinking Harvey was sometimes called
America’s James Bond, though he was replaced after clashing with
Bobby Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Evidence indicates
that the CIA-Mafia plots were still going on in the fall of 1963, and that
Miami CIA Operations Chief David Morales grew close to Rosselli in
the process.22
JFK, Bobby, and Harry were determined to exclude the Mafia from
their coup plans and from any role in post-coup Cuba: The Mafia would
not be allowed to reopen their casinos after Castro was eliminated. But
Trafficante and Rosselli had other ideas. The Kennedys and Harry were
never told that in August 1963, the CIA learned that Varona received
$200,000 from associates of Rosselli. A few weeks later, CIA files show
that Varona secretly aligned himself with Trafficante associate and for-
mer death-squad leader Rolando Masferrer, whom Harry had banned
from the coup plan and who had once been arrested on orders from JFK.
A CIA cable says Varona told Masferrer that he could become part of the
coup plan once certain “obstacles” were removed.23
CIA files withheld from Warren Commission and Congressional
investigators, and not published until 2005, confirm that Manuel Artime
was also part of the CIA-Mafia plots in 1963. Neither Harry nor the
Kennedys were aware of Artime’s work with the Mafia. CIA memos
show that Artime planned to use funds provided by the Kennedys to
30
LEGACY OF SECRECY
obtain an airplane in Dallas in the summer of 1963, with the assistance
of Frank Fiorini, a bagman for Trafficante’s organization. Also that
summer, Artime briefly operated a minor-league exile training camp
just outside of New Orleans, an operation that reportedly involved two
associates of Carlos Marcello: Marcello’s pilot, David Ferrie, and a low-
level “runner” for Marcello’s organization named Lee Oswald.24
Though Menoyo had been involved with Santo Trafficante in a 1962
arms deal that went awry, Menoyo was generally considered honest
and was not actively involved with the Mafia by the fall of 1963. How-
ever, he was closely aligned with one of the most violent Cuban exile
groups, Alpha 66, which JFK had denounced for mounting unauthor-
ized attacks against Cuban ships earlier in 1963. Alpha 66 was not part of
the JFK-Almeida coup plan, but it was so closely aligned with Menoyo’s
SNFE that the FBI considered them practically one group. The leader
of Alpha 66, Antonio Veciana, told us that he was receiving aid from a
CIA agent named “Maurice Bishop,” who had introduced him to Lee
Harvey Oswald in the summer of 1963 in Dallas; Veciana said he and
Oswald discussed “killing Castro.” Congressional investigator Gaeton
Fonzi investigated the incident extensively and found it credible, iden-
tifying “Maurice Bishop” as CIA officer David Atlee Phillips. CIA files
confirm that Phillips was assigned to support AMWORLD at that time,
and used a variety of aliases and cover identities, at least one of which
he withheld from Congressional investigators.25
Manolo Ray, of JURE, was considered by the Kennedys and Harry to
be of very high integrity, and a natural leader. A CIA cable describes Ray
as having the “highest intellect, sincerity, and conviction,” though some
CIA officials, like E. Howard Hunt, didn’t like Ray’s liberal politics.26 In
addition to the Kennedys’ insistence on including Ray in the coup plan,
Richard Helms knew that Ray was also in touch with Rolando Cubela
and Cuba’s top journalist, Carlos Franqui, connections that could also
prove useful. While Ray had no known Mafia connections, two months
before JFK’s murder, three associates of Santo Trafficante (including
Rolando Masferrer) were involved in a deliberate effort to link Ray’s
JURE to Oswald and the assassination. In that September 1963 effort,
a JURE supporter in Dallas named Silvia Odio received a visit from
two exiles, accompanied by a man said to be Lee Harvey Oswald. This
incident, detailed in Chapter 13, would take on a huge significance for
investigators after JFK’s murder.
While that effort was a deliberate attempt to stage an encounter
that would taint Ray and JURE after JFK’s murder, another incident
is not so clear cut. A CIA report from October 29, 1963, says that Ray’s
second-in-command boasted that “JURE had obtained military equip-
ment through robbing unidentified [US] installation,” a military base of
some sort.27 This didn’t seem to alarm Ray’s CIA case officer, because it
was one way to equip US-backed Cuban exiles with “deniable” weap-
ons. In a Texas incident involving arms stolen from a US military base,
an exile had apparently hinted at the JFK-Almeida coup plan, according
to FBI and Treasury Department reports from October 1963. The exile
told a Dallas gun dealer that in “the last week of November 1963 . . .
a large-scale amphibious operation would take place against the Cuba
mainland [and] United States military forces or Government agencies
would possibly be involved [as well as] rebel Cuban forces.” (Jack
Ruby’s auto mechanic was involved in this gun-theft ring, and another
Ruby associate had similar dealings.) FBI reports say that the Dallas
gun dealer was probably the source of the bullet found in Oswald’s rifle
after JFK’s assassination.28 Thus, even Oswald’s bullets were linked to
pre-assassination reports of the JFK-Almeida coup plan.