Not in Your Lifetime: The Defining Book on the J.F.K. Assassination (63 page)

390
     Nicaraguan agent: CIA memo to White House, FBI, State Department, November 26, 1963, DIR 85089.

Nicaragua: Prouty,
op. cit.
, pp. 29, 41–, 388–.

Artime: “The Curious Intrigues of Cuban Miami” by Horace Sutton,
Saturday Review/World
, September 11, 1973; “Cuba on Our Mind” by Tad Szulc,
Esquire
, February 1974; article by Szulc,
New York Times
, June 9, 1973; (camps) HSCA X.67 & see Scott,
op. cit.
, p. 91,
et al
.; (first) Hunt,
op. cit.
, p. 38.

391
Note 7
: See Chapter 18.

Note 8
: The Warren Commission noted what one member, Gerald Ford, would call “the strong personal feelings of the then U.S. Ambassador to Mexico … that Castro was somehow involved in a plot to assassinate President Kennedy.” (HSCA II.569)

Note 9
: The ancient Alvarado story was resurrected most recently in a much-trumpeted 2006 German television documentary, the thrust of which was that Castro had President Kennedy killed. The film relied on a supposed agent of today’s Russian intelligence service who claimed to have found an old KGB document—dating to Oswald’s time in the Soviet Union—that had suggested the Cubans might have some use for defector Oswald. The film used interviews with four supposed former Castro agents to support its thesis. A document provided by a former aide to both Kennedy and Johnson, Marty Underwood, described a purported November 22 visit to Dallas by a
Cuban intelligence officer. The alleged KGB document was not produced. Underwood, for his part, would acknowledge that he had written his document as late as the 1990s. The key Cuban sources appeared in the program under pseudonyms or with their faces obscured. This author, who conducted a long interview with the film’s director, Wilfried Huissman, found the documentary less than credible.

A key contributor to the Huissman documentary was Gus Russo, a journalist who has worked on the Kennedy case for many years and authored two books on the subject. In the first,
Live by the Sword
, Russo concluded that Oswald “did it for Cuba,” and that leads that indicated “ a possible Cuban conspiracy with Oswald” were never fully followed up at the time. The author has not had the opportunity to study the second book,
Brothers in Arms
, but it appears to credit some of the questionable elements used in the Huissman film.(“Rendezvous with Death,” Westdeutscher Rundfunk, January 2007, int. Wilfried Huissman, convs. Gus Russo; Underwood: AARB Report, p. 136; see also analysis in Bugliosi,
op. cit.
, Endnotes, p. 731; Russo: Gus Russo,
Live by the Sword
, Baltimore, MD: Bancroft Press, 1998—findings at p. 459 & Gus Russo & Stephen Molton,
Brothers in Arms
, New York: Bloomsbury, 2008).

Gutierrez: CD 564; Warren Commission staff memo by Coleman/Slawson, April 1, 1964; CD 566.3–; CD 663.4; CD 896.3; CD 1029; CIA documents 965–927 AK; 972–927 AR; 1179–1995.

Air
Cubana: Sen. Int. Cttee.,
Performance of Intelligence Agencies
, p. 30; HSCA Report, p. 117.

Note 10
: Also in December, another CIA source caused a flap about the supposedly “suspicious” travels of a Cuban named Gilberto Policarpo Lopez. Lopez crossed the Texas border to Mexico the day after the assassination and flew to Havana four days later, reportedly the only person on board the flight. This story was
provocative because—like Oswald—Lopez was affiliated with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and made a stop at the Cuban Embassy before leaving. The Assassinations Committee found that he had plausible personal reasons for returning to Cuba. (HSCA Report, p. 118)

Díaz/Borrell: FBI memos—Director to Legat, Mexico, January 9, 1964, and Miami to Director, February 29, 1964, FBI file no. 105-82555; CIA memo, Curtis as originator, January 14, 1964; ints. Borrell, Señora Díaz Versón & daughter Silvia, 1993.

392
     Luce: ints. Clare Boothe Luce, 1978; HSCA X.83; and int. by Earl Golz of
Dallas Morning News
, 1979;
Washington
Star
, November 16, 1975;
ibid
, January 25, 1976.

393
Note 11
: Texas Governor John Connally, who was wounded on November 22, had been Secretary of the Navy in 1961. Oswald wrote to the Secretary, asking for a reversal of the record of his undesirable discharge from the Marine Corps, when the Secretary in office was Fred Korth. As an attorney, oddly, Korth had represented the husband of Oswald’s mother, Marguerite, during divorce proceedings. (XIX, Fulsom Exhibit 1, p. 61–; Oswald 201 File, Vol. 3, Attachments 1, 7, 2, Pt. 2, p. 92; & Vol. 5, Pt. 1, p. 80 www.maryferrell.org)

Note 12
: Contacted by Committee investigators, Bringuier and other DRE veterans all denied having made the 1963 call to Mrs. Luce.

Note 13
: In a major article on CIA manipulation of the media, Carl Bernstein reported, there was close liaison between the Agency and Time-Life, of which Mrs. Luce’s husband, Henry, was publisher. In 1962, Mrs. Luce had authored a
Life
magazine story about her exile fighter protégés. (Bernstein:
Rolling Stone
, October 20, 1977; story: HSCA X.83)

Note 14
: In this mosaic of apparent disinformation, a false trail about Oswald may also have been laid in Miami, the main base of CIA-backed anti-Castro activists. Before the assassination, according to a witness, one Jorge Martínez had talked about an American acquaintance named Lee who spoke Russian, was as usual a brilliant marksman and talked of President Kennedy and “
shooting between the eyes.” Martínez was eventually identified as an exile brought to the United States by Mike McLaney, one of the old Havana casino bosses. McLaney and his brother William appeared earlier in this book. (See Chapter 18.)

On November 26, while Alvarado the Nicaraguan was spinning his fable in Mexico, Florida’s Pompano
Sun-Sentinel
ran an allegation that Oswald had previously been in Miami, had contacted “supporters of Fidel Castro,” tried to infiltrate an anti-Castro group, passed out Fair Play for Cuba Committee leaflets, and gotten into a fight with anti-Castro militants—just as in New Orleans. Oswald had also supposedly had “telephone conversations with the Cuban government G-2 Intelligence Service.” The
Sun-Sentinel
article named Frank Sturgis, the future Watergate burglar, as being a member of the Florida anti-Castro group Oswald had supposedly tried to infiltrate. Sturgis had once been an overseer at Havana’s Tropicana casino, managed at the time by Lewis McWillie, a close friend of Oswald’s executioner, Jack Ruby.

The FBI found no evidence that Oswald had ever been in Florida. Other fabrications purporting to link Oswald to Castro’s Cuba were also blatantly false. The Secret Service intercepted a letter to Oswald mailed from Havana on November 28, 1963 and signed by one “Pedro Charles.” “Charles” indicated in the letter that Oswald had been hired by him to carry out a mission involving “accurate shooting.” Meanwhile, a letter sent to Robert Kennedy appeared to corroborate the supposed Oswald-Charles plot. “Charles” was identified as a Castro agent. Examination quickly established that the letters were mischievous—they had been written on the same typewriter. (Martínez: CD 829; CD 246; Pompano story/Sturgis:
Sun Sentinel
, November 26 & December 4, 1963; CD 59; CD 395; CD 1020; CD 810; L. Patrick Gray to H. R. Haldeman, June 19, 1972 [Gray hearings, p. 47]; “Charles”: XXVI.148; other letters: HSCA III.401–).

394
Note 15
: See Chapter 19.

Mirabal: HSCA III.177.

Rodríguez:
Dallas Morning News
, September 24, 1975, reprinted from
Los Angeles Times.

Note 16
: This individual may perhaps have been Ernesto Rodríguez Cue, who in 1962 was a Cuban Embassy employee in Mexico City. He was not, apparently, one and the same as the Ernesto Rodríguez, an anti-Castro militant who operated a language school in New Orleans, mentioned in Chapter 17. (Cue: Foreign Political Matters—Cuba, memo of May 28, 1962, CIA file 80T01357A).

395
Note 17
: Veciana’s claim to have seen Oswald with “Bishop” was described earlier, in Chapter 18.

Ruiz: HSCA X.41; ints. Ruiz.

Note 18
: The Assassinations Committee talked to Veciana’s cousin Ruiz in Cuba, who suggested Veciana had had psychiatric problems and referred the Committee to another Veciana relative, a doctor, who—Ruiz said—would attest to Veciana’s psychiatric trouble. The Committee found to the contrary that the doctor attested to Veciana’s “sound mental condition.” He knew, in addition, that Veciana had had to undergo vigorous tests for his work in the banking business. Another family member confirmed Veciana’s mental health, and there was no evidence of any disorder of the sort implied by Ruiz. Veciana alleged that Ruiz was once approached for recruitment by the CIA, and his slandering of Veciana may have been an overkill reaction to that. (HSCA X.45)

“honesty”/ “straightest”: HSCA X.42.

Note 19
: In Spanish, MRP stands for Movimiento Revolucionario del Pueblo. (HSCA X.137)

396
Note 20
: Allegations directly incriminating Castro aside, alternative versions have suggested the Cuban leader had foreknowledge but did nothing about it. Chronologically, this theme tracks back to information received from a leading member of the U.S.
Communist Party, Jack Childs, who for years fed information to the FBI after meetings with Communists abroad. Following a May 1964 meeting with Castro in Havana, Childs reported to the FBI that the Cuban leader “stated that when Oswald was refused his visa at the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City, he acted like a real madman and started yelling and shouting and yelled on his way out, ‘I’m going to kill that bastard. I’m going to kill Kennedy.’ ”

The alleged outburst has been used—most recently by Brian Latell in his 2012 book
Castro’s Secrets
—to suggest that Castro knew in advance what Oswald intended. The FBI summary indicates, rather, that Castro spoke “on the basis of facts given to him by his Embassy personnel who dealt with Oswald and apparently had made a full, detailed report to Castro
after
President
Kennedy
was
assassinated
[author’s emphasis].”

The Assassinations Committee also considered an allegation that surfaced late in 1964, suggesting Oswald had compromising links with Cuban Embassy staff. Mexican writer Elena Garro claimed that Oswald and two companions had attended a party at the home of a relative of Sylvia Durán, the secretary from the Consulate. Oswald and Durán, Garro said she later learned, were sexually involved with each other. The story emerged through a CIA informant named June Cobb. Author John Newman, who studied this complex story within the story, surmised that it may have been “invented to falsely implicate the Cuban government in the Kennedy assassination.”

In his 2012 book, meanwhile, author Brian Latell used the statements of Cuban defectors to suggest Castro had foreknowledge. He cited one, Vladimir Rodríguez Lahera, as being convinced that Castro had lied when he said he knew nothing about Oswald before November 22. The CIA record shows that—under interrogation—Rodriguez in fact said he did not know “whether information on Oswald’s visit to the Cuban Consulate in Mexico … was relayed to any Cuban service.” As mentioned in
Chapter 19, the incoming Cuban Consul in Mexico City, Alfredo Mirabal—who was also an intelligence officer—acknowledged that he wrote a “footnote” about the Oswald visit in his routine report to Havana. There is no evidence that this was reported to Castro before the assassination.

Latell cites a claim by a defector named Florentino Aspillaga about an order he said he had received on November 22, about three hours before Kennedy was shot. Aspillaga, who in 1963 was a sixteen-year-old working on intercepts of covert CIA communications, said he was told to abandon routine work and listen to “all conversations” for “any small detail from Texas.” “They knew,” said Aspillaga, referring to his superiors, “Kennedy would be killed.”

Latell draws the same inference, and that seems a stretch. So close is Cuba to Florida that far easier than tasking signal intercept operators—had Castro’s people known in advance of an assassination attempt—would have been to listen to ordinary radio broadcasts. A high-level Cuban interest in Texas, moreover, could have reflected not so much foreknowledge of the assassination but an interest—following Kennedy’s loaded “signal” speech of November 18 in Miami—in what the President might say in Dallas, the next stop on his known schedule.

Latell also took seriously the first public emanation of supposed Castro foreknowledge of an Oswald threat against Kennedy in Mexico City—a story that was long ago exposed as fraudulent. In a 1967
National Enquirer
article, a British reporter named Comer Clarke claimed to have visited Havana and secured an impromptu interview with Castro. According to Clarke, Castro told him that, “Lee Oswald came to the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City twice. The first time, I was told, he wanted to work for us. He was asked to explain, but he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t go into details. The second time he said something like: ‘Someone ought to shoot that President Kennedy.’ Then Oswald said—and this was exactly how it was reported to me—‘Maybe I’ll try to do it.’ This was less than two months
before the U.S. President was assassinated… . Yes, I heard of Lee Harvey Oswald’s plan to kill President Kennedy. It’s possible I could have saved him. I might have been able to—but I didn’t. I never believed the plan would be put into effect.”

Castro told the Assassinations Committee that he gave no such interview. Clarke had been an inveterate purveyor of sensational and sometimes dubious stories—headlines included “British Girls as Nazi Sex Slaves” and “German Plans to Kidnap the Royal Family.” Clarke’s widow said in an interview that her late husband never mentioned having interviewed Castro, an event any reporter would have considered a scoop. Clarke’s former assistant Nina Gadd, moreover, said
she
generated the story—without going anywhere near Cuba—drawing on claims made by a “Latin American foreign minister.” (Childs: SAC, New York to Director, June 12, 1964, FBI 100-HQ-428091, Pt. 63, p. 58–; Latell used to suggest: Latell,
op. cit.
, pp. 140–, 225, 231; Garro
et al
.:
HSCA Report, p. 124, HSCA III.285; Newman,
Oswald and the CIA
,
op. cit.
, p. 377–, & June Cobb refs. Robbyn Swan ints. Manuel Calvillo and Deba Galvan Debaki Garro, 1993; Rodríguez: Latell,
op. cit.
, p. 128–, Rodríguez calling card, with cover ident as AMMUG 1, NARA 104-10185-10260, Notes
re
debriefing of Cuban source on Oswald Case, May 1, 5 & 6, 1964, & Dooley to Rocca, June 19, 1964, NARA 1993.06.12.08.26.02.650000, Swenson to Rocca, May 8, 1964, NARA 104-10054-10412, Swenson to WH, May 14, 1964, NARA 104-10225-10072; Mirabal: HSCA III.176, April 1964 debriefing of Rodríguez, NARA 104-10183-10284; Aspillaga: Latell,
op. cit.
, pp. 103, 8-3; Latell took seriously:
ibid
. p. 145–; Clarke:
National Enquirer
, October 15, 1967, referring to a July interview; HSCA III.283; HSCA Report, p. 122–, ints. Mrs. Clarke and Nina Gadd by Stephen Dorril. Reporter Comer Clarke’s name is often rendered as “
Clark.” The author has used “Clarke,” the spelling used on the jacket of the reporter’s book
England Under Hitler: The Shocking Plans for Britain Under Nazi Rule
, London: New English Library, 1972.)