Fabian Escalante Options

[John Simkin]

Fabian Escalante was born in Cuba in 1941. A supporter of Fidel Castro he worked for the country's state security department. Later he became head of Cuba's Counter-Intelligence Unit (1976-1982). In 1978 he agreed to provide information to the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

In 1978 President Jimmy Carter arranged for a group of imprisoned exiles to be released. This included Tony Cuesta who was involved in an attack on Cuba on 29th May, 1966. A member of his team, Herminio Diaz Garcia, was killed during the raid. Cuesta, who always vowed that Castro would never take him alive, attempted suicide by setting off a grenade, which blinded him and blew off his right hand. Cuesta spent a long time in hospital as a result of his serious injuries.

Just before leaving Cuba Cuesta asked to see Escalante. Cuesta told Escalante that he had been involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He also named Herminio Diaz Garcia and Eladio del Valle as being involved in the conspiracy. Cuesta asked Escalante not to make this information "public because I am returning to my family in Miami - and this could be very dangerous."

In 1982 Escalante became a senior official in the Interior Ministry. By this time Escalante was considered to be Cuba's leading authority on the history of CIA activities against his country.

In a Cuban television documentary broadcast on November 26, 1993, Escalante named the gunmen who killed John F. Kennedy as three Chicago mobsters (Lenny Patrick, David Yaras, and Richard Cain), and two Cuban exiles (Eladio del Valle and Herminio Diaz Garcia), but said that many in the CIA and elsewhere knew what was going to happen.

In 1995, Wayne Smith, chief of the Centre for International Policy in Washington, arranged a meeting on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, in Nassau, Bahamas. Others in attendance were: Gaeton Fonzi, Dick Russell, Noel Twyman, Anthony Summers, Peter Dale Scott, Jeremy Gunn, John Judge, Andy Kolis, Peter Kornbluh, Mary and Ray LaFontaine, Jim Lesar, John Newman, Alan Rogers, Russ Swickard, Ed Sherry, and Gordon Winslow.

Some high-level Cuban officials attended the conference. This included Fabian Escalante, Carlos Lechuga, a former Cuban diplomat, and Arturo Rodriguez, a State Security official. Escalante revealed details of Cuesta's confession. He also informed the group they had a spy in the anti-Castro community in Miami and knew about the plot to kill JFK.

Fabian Escalante is the author of The Secret War: CIA Covert Operations Against Cuba, 1959-62 (1995) and CIA Targets Fidel: The Secret Assassination Report (1996).

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