Authors: Lamar Waldron
the JFK-Almeida coup plan.
Helms chose to protect himself and some of his associates by with-
holding important information from the CIA Inspector General’s inves-
tigation, and thus from LBJ and any later president who might ask to
see the Report. From Helms’s perspective, he had no other choice if he
wanted to keep his job—and he had several ways to control, restrict, and
direct the Inspector General’s investigation. First, it was up to Helms
to verbally convey LBJ’s request to the Inspector General. By choosing
his words carefully, Helms could shade his request so that it generated
a lengthy report that addressed some of LBJ’s concerns, while avoiding
sensitive subjects that could cost Helms his career.
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Like a savvy politician talking to a journalist, Helms relied on the
strategy of not answering the question that was asked, but instead
answering the question he wished had been asked. Peter Dale Scott has
pointed out that the final Inspector General’s report (henceforth called
the IG Report) devoted scant attention to what LBJ had wanted inves-
tigated, which was primarily the story in Jack Anderson’s columns on
March 3 and March 7. Scott points out that the IG Report itself admits
that Anderson’s March 7 column “refers to a reported CIA plan in 1963
to assassinate . . . Castro,” but Scott notes that less than 10 percent of
the IG Report refers “to a 1963 plot at all, and that one is not the one
Anderson was writing about.”4
According to Scott, “less than a dozen lines” in the 133-page report
“are devoted to” the main point of Anderson’s columns, the “political H-
bomb” about the alleged “counterplot by Castro to assassinate President
Kennedy.” He notes that the IG Report “wholly fails to investigate . . .
the central theses [of the Anderson articles:] that Robert Kennedy autho-
rized a CIA plot which then ‘possibly backfired’ against Kennedy.”5
Instead of focusing on the main point of the Anderson articles as LBJ
had wanted, Helms apparently directed the IG to focus on finding out
who had leaked the information to journalists Anderson and Pearson,
and what could be done about it.6 Helms also worded the request—or
controlled access to information—so that the investigation focused only
on the summer 1960–1962 plots, which were made to look as if they
had essentially ended by early 1963—well before JFK’s assassination.
That approach was safer for Helms than focusing on operations Bobby
Kennedy had authorized, or the unauthorized CIA-Mafia plots Helms
was running into the late fall of 1963.
LBJ no doubt hoped Helms would turn up information he could use
against Bobby Kennedy to stop him from entering the race for presi-
dent, but the IG Report is devoid of information that reflects badly on
Bobby. In fact, there isn’t much about Bobby in the IG Report at all, since
Helms knew that the young Senator could become president at some
point in the future. Evan Thomas talked to one of the two CIA staffers
assigned to actually write the IG Report, a man who was definitely not
a Kennedy partisan. The CIA man said he “simply never heard [Bobby]
Kennedy cited as a mastermind [of operations to eliminate Castro] by
any of the CIA officials he interviewed.” Then again, Helms himself,
who had much contact with Bobby about Cuban matters in 1963, was
never interviewed for the IG Report.7
In protecting Bobby, Richard Helms was also protecting himself.
Helms couldn’t allow the IG Report to include information about the
Mafia’s penetration of the Almeida coup plan if he wanted to keep his
job. Thus, the entire coup plan with Almeida is missing from the IG
Report, as are the 1963 portions of AMWORLD (the code name appears
nowhere in the Report) and the CIA’s extensive support for Manuel
Artime and Manolo Ray in the last six months of JFK’s presidency. Omit-
ting all of that information made it easy for Helms to hide the fact that
Artime had been working on the CIA-Mafia plots at the same time that
he was working on AMWORLD and the Almeida coup plan.
Richard Nixon had made a remarkable political comeback by 1967,
and Helms knew he had an excellent chance of running for president
in 1968. Hence, the IG Report does not mention Nixon’s push, in 1959,
for the CIA to find ways to eliminate Fidel. Also missing is any indi-
cation of Nixon’s leading role regarding Cuba policy under President
Eisenhower, or why the CIA-Mafia plots were ramped up so extensively
three months before the 1960 election, when Rosselli, Trafficante, and
Giancana were brought in. Ironically, throughout Nixon’s presidency, he
would press Helms and the CIA for information they had about those
and related events, not realizing he had nothing to worry about from
Helms’s whitewashed IG Report.
Even after Helms assigned the report to the CIA’s Inspector General
on March 23, 1967, Helms had many ways to control and limit its con-
tent. In consultation with Desmond FitzGerald, Helms could withhold
certain information and witnesses while making others more easily
available. This tactic would ensure that the two IG investigators covered
easily documentable high points, especially those the FBI already knew
about, while steering the IG investigators away from information that
could expose the extent of Helms’s unauthorized plans or the Mafia’s
infiltration of Almeida’s coup plan.
For example, even though CIA officer E. Howard Hunt was very
active in the coup plan with Almeida, one of the two IG investigators
would later testify to Congress that “at the time of our investigation in
1967, Howard Hunt’s name did not come up.”8 Also, many CIA per-
sonnel who should have been interviewed were conveniently out of
the country during the IG investigation, including David Morales, Ted
Shackley, AMWORLD case officers like Henry Heckscher, and CIA
employees who had worked closely with Artime like Rafael “Chi Chi”
Quintero. Even though the IG Report mentions Artime’s contacts with
Rolando Cubela in late 1964 and 1965, Artime was not interviewed for
the IG Report, even though he was still living in Miami. As a result, the
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investigators didn’t learn about Artime’s massive, $7 million AMWORLD
effort or his Mafia ties. Manolo Ray wasn’t interviewed, and his con-
tacts with Cubela—first documented in
Ultimate Sacrifice
—are missing
from the IG Report, even though recently declassified CIA files and Ray
himself have now confirmed such contact. Especially glaring is that fact
that investigators didn’t talk to Tony Varona, though he and his contact
with the Mafia were mentioned many times in the report. The Report
contains no mention of the $200,000 Varona received from the Mafia in
the summer of 1963.9
Helms may have felt entitled to withhold the material relating to the
Almeida coup plan (such as AMWORLD, Hunt, and Harry Williams)
because part of it was still technically an ongoing, highly sensitive opera-
tion. Almeida was still unexposed and in power (and soon to get a major
promotion), and his family was still outside Cuba, receiving secret CIA
support. Excluding current operations from the investigation on the
basis that they could be disrupted enabled Helms to steer investiga-
tors toward older CIA operations that had originated before he became
responsible for them.
Helms also worked to manipulate the IG investigation to his own
advantage. He would be able to find out which sensitive files the investi-
gators could find on their own, how those files meshed with what the FBI
had, and how people who weren’t involved in the original operations
might interpret them. Helms would also use the IG Report’s preparation
as an excuse to destroy some of the sensitive material the investigators
uncovered.
Essentially, Helms attempted what would later be termed a “limited
hangout,” allowing some negative material about the CIA to be dis-
closed to LBJ, but nothing that could get Helms fired. It’s important to
keep in mind that the Rosselli matter and Jack Anderson’s investiga-
tion were still ongoing at the time of Helms’s IG investigation. It was a
fluid situation that limited what Helms could safely allow the Inspector
General to see or investigate.
The first two weeks of April 1967 saw new developments involving
Bobby Kennedy, Jack Anderson, and former CIA Director John McCone
that further affected Helms and the IG investigation. On April 4, Jack
Anderson told the FBI about his trip to New Orleans and his talk with
District Attorney Jim Garrison. According to an FBI memo, Anderson
had gone to New Orleans skeptical of Garrison, but Anderson “now
believes there is some authenticity to Garrison’s claims.” Anderson said
he had also spoken with LBJ’s press secretary, who “was also convinced
that there must be some truth to Garrison’s allegations.”10
The scenario Garrison outlined to Anderson involved Oswald’s going
to Mexico City in an attempt to get into Cuba for a CIA-approved plot to
assassinate Fidel Castro. Oswald supposedly became “disillusioned and
refused to go through with the plot to assassinate Castro,” and was then
set up to take the fall for JFK’s murder. Garrison correctly linked David
Ferrie to Oswald, but tried to make Clay Shaw the mastermind of the
operation. Although Anderson was in New Orleans for two weeks, he
didn’t find—or at least didn’t write about—the extensive links between
Ferrie and Carlos Marcello in 1963.11
Jack Anderson told the FBI that Garrison was “willing to give the FBI
everything . . . and let them finish the investigation.” However, the FBI
official who spoke to Anderson told the reporter that “the FBI would
not under any circumstances take over the case.” In contrast to Helms
and the CIA, who were very concerned about Anderson, the FBI official
wrote in his memo that there was “no need to make further contact with
Anderson.” Though the FBI appeared to have little interest in Ander-
son, Hoover was following the Garrison inquiry closely and giving LBJ
regular updates.12
Drew Pearson, Anderson’s boss, spoke to President Johnson the fol-
lowing day. LBJ had seen the results of Morgan’s FBI interview and had
talked with Helms, so he admitted to Pearson that “we think there’s
something to . . . Morgan’s information. There were some attempts to
assassinate Castro through the Cosa Nostra [the Mafia], and they point to
your friends in the Justice Department.” Pearson replied, “You mean one
friend”—a reference to former Attorney General Bobby Kennedy.13
It must have been agony for Bobby Kennedy, waiting to see what Jack
Anderson was going to write next and wondering when other news
outlets would start investigating Anderson’s revelations. Unlike LBJ,
Bobby had no special pipeline to Pearson or Anderson to find out what
was going on. Bobby must have been concerned when former CIA direc-
tor John McCone told Bobby that Jack Anderson had just called him.
According to Senate investigators, Anderson told McCone he was “pre-
paring [yet another] column on Castro assassination attempts, implicat-
ing President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy.”14
John McCone and Bobby apparently came up with a response that
would protect both of them, as well as the CIA. McCone then talked
“with Anderson at Robert Kennedy’s request,” after which “McCone
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dictated [an] April 14, 1967, memorandum” to Helms that likely mir-
rored what McCone had told Anderson. In it, McCone admitted only
that in early August 1962, he recalled having heard in Project Mongoose
meetings “a suggestion being made to liquidate top people in the Castro
regime, including Castro.” McCone said he “took immediate exception
to this suggestion.”15
In a small way, McCone and Bobby paralleled Helms’s strategy with
LBJ and the Inspector General, by shifting the focus away from 1963 and
admitting a little in order to hide a great deal. It’s ironic that at that very
moment, Helms was allowing the IG Report to include admissions about
some of the information he had withheld from Bobby and McCone, since
he apparently hoped that neither man would ever see the report.
For reasons that are still unclear, Jack Anderson suddenly dropped
his plans for another article. By then Anderson certainly knew he had
a good story, based on LBJ’s confirmation to Pearson and McCone’s
admission that the subject of assassinating Castro had surfaced during
an official meeting in 1962. The CIA was somehow able to learn that
Anderson and Pearson had additional “information, as yet unpublished,
to the effect that there was a meeting at the State Department at which
assassination of Castro was discussed and that a team actually landed
in Cuba with pills to be used in an assassination attempt.” The CIA’s
IG Report would confirm that “there is basis in fact for each of those . . .