Che Guevara and the CIA Options

[John Simkin]

In the revised edition of Ultimate Sacrifice, it is argued that in 1963 Juan Almeida and Che Guevara were involved in a CIA plot to overthrow Fidel Castro.

Eighteen years ago, Thom Hartmann and I (Lamar Waldron) began writing a book about the battles of President Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert F Kennedy, against the Mafia and Fidel Castro. In 2005, using new information from almost two dozen people who worked with John and Robert Kennedy-backed up by thousands of files at the National Archives-we exposed for the first time JFK's top-secret plan to overthrow Castro and invade Cuba on December 1, 1963. "The Plan for a Coup in Cuba" (as it was titled in a memo for the joint Chiefs of Staff) would include a "palace coup" to eliminate Castro, allowing a new Cuban "Provisional Government" to step into the power vacuum. The coup would be supported by a "full-scale invasion" of Cuba by the US military, if necessary.

However, even as JFK's secret plan was nearing its final stage, he had two emissaries making last-ditch attempts to avoid a potentially bloody coup and invasion by trying to jump-start secret negotiations with Fidel Castro. One long-secret November 1963 memo about those negotiations states that "there was a rift between Castro and the (Che) Guevara ... Almeida group on the question of Cuba's future course." Che Guevara is still widely known today, perhaps even more than in 1963. But most people in the United States have never heard of Che's ally against Castro, Juan Almeida, even though in 1963 he wielded more power inside Cuba than Che himself. In some ways, Almeida was the third most powerful official in Cuba in 1963, after Fidel and his brother Raul - and even today, in 2006, the CIA lists Juan Almeida as the third-highest official in the current Cuban government.

In this new edition, we can now reveal for the first time that Almeida wasn't just allied with Che against Castro in November of 1963: Almeida was also allied with President Kennedy. In 1963, Juan Almeida was the powerful Commander of the Cuban Army, one of the most famous heroes of the Revolution - and he was going to lead JFK's "palace coup" against Fidel. Commander Almeida had been in direct contact with John and Robert Kennedy's top Cuban exile aide since May of 1963, and both men would be part of Cuba's new, post-coup Provisional Government. By the morning of November 22, 1963, Almeida had even received a large cash payment authorized by the Kennedys, and the CIA had placed his family under US protection in a foreign country.

The "Plan for a Coup in Cuba" was fully authorized by JFK and personally run by Robert Kennedy. Only about a dozen people in the US government knew the full scope of the plan, all of whom worked for the military or the CIA, or reported directly to Robert. The Kennedys' plan was prepared primarily by the US military, with the CIA playing a major supporting role. Input was also obtained from key officials in a few other agencies, but most of those who worked on the plan knew only about carefully compartmentalized aspects, believing it to be a theoretical exercise in case a Cuban official volunteered to depose Fidel.

The declassified documents provided in the revised edition of Ultimate Sacrifice do not prove that Che Guevara and Juan Almeida Bosch were involved in a CIA plot to overthrow Fidel Castro. All they do is to confirm that the CIA was aware that the two men were critical of some of Castro’s policies. Guevara and Almeida might have been willing to take part in a plot against Castro. However, the available evidence does not prove this was the case. Even if the CIA does declassify documents that show that they were in direct contact with Guevara and Almeida, it does not prove they were involved in a plot against Castro. In fact, it would be just as valid to argue that Castro was using the two men to monitor the CIA plots against him.

The main document provided in Ultimate Sacrifice concerning Guevara’s involvement is a CIA memo that Che was placed under house arrest on 30th November, 1963. As this was the day before the coup was originally scheduled to start, Lamar Waldron argues that this is evidence that Castro had discovered details of the CIA plot. That is a large leap of faith. In fact, the evidence that he was placed under house arrest is dubious in itself. It is based on a rumour picked by one diplomat in Havana at the time.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/COLDguevara.htm