JFK and the Assassination Plots Against Castro

John Simkin · September 1, 2005

John, these are the same historians who are still leaning towards the "Oswald-did-it" scenario. They are by nature conservative

This is not true. Several of these historians believe there was a conspiracy to kill JFK. Wayne S. Smith, Richard D. Mahoney, Joseph Trento, Fabian Escalante, Warren Hinckle & William Turner. That is not to say the rest of these historians believe that JFK was killed by a lone gunman.

They refuse to believe what was not so hard for the Senators of the intelligence committee--people who actually had dealings with the CIA-- to believe--that the CIA during the cold war was given a free reign to beat the Reds by any means necessary, and that they failed to respond appropriately when Kennedy came along and wanted to bring them under his control. Since the CIA blamed the interference of the White House and State Department for the Bay of Pigs, they just stopped telling the White House and the State Department what they were up to. It's really that simple.

None of the historians I have listed, except maybe for Victor Lasky, falls into this category. It seems to me that people like Victor Marchetti, John D. Marks, Thomas Powers, John Prados, John Ranelagh, Michael R. Beschloss, David Corn, Evan Thomas, Seymour Hersh, are genuinely looking to discover the truth and in no way could be described as CIA apologists.

The idea that William Harvey would lie to protect Bobby Kennedy's reputation is absolutely ridiculous. By ALL reports, Harvey hated Kennedy with a burning passion. No way in hell would he allow himself and Helms take the heat if Bobby was responsible. It's amazing that someone like yourself who is so willing to consider that men like Helms and Harvey would kill Kennedy is so unwilling to consider that they would refuse to take the blame for decisions he made.

I agree that Harvey hated Bobby Kennedy. I don’t see what this has to do with it. Nor have they tried to defend JFK and RFK. Harvey and Helms have both claimed that RFK put them under extreme pressure to “get rid” of Castro. In his autobiography, Richard Helms states: “With all of the customary Kennedy vigour, and in the most forceful language, Bob informed us that Castro’s removal from office and a change in government in Cuba were then the prime foreign policy objectives of the Kennedy administration.” (page 201)

For the record, I have never accused William Harvey or Richard Helms of being involved in the assassination of JFK. Although I do believe that Helms played an important role in the cover-up.

Dawn Meredith · September 1, 2005

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For the record, I have never accused William Harvey or Richard Helms of being involved in the assassination of JFK. Although I do believe that Helms played an important role in the cover-up.

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Great debate guys. Pat I agree with all of your points.

John: And perhaps this needs its own thread, but just who do you think killed JFk and why? I thought I knew the answer to this, but lately I am finding your posts confusing, due to what appears to be inconsistency, tho you may simply be playing devil's advocate, for sake of debate ??

Dawn

Pat Speer · September 1, 2005

I agree that Harvey hated Bobby Kennedy. I don’t see what this has to do with it. Nor have they tried to defend JFK and RFK. Harvey and Helms have both claimed that RFK put them under extreme pressure to “get rid” of Castro. In his autobiography, Richard Helms states: “With all of the customary Kennedy vigour, and in the most forceful language, Bob informed us that Castro’s removal from office and a change in government in Cuba were then the prime foreign policy objectives of the Kennedy administration.” (page 201)
For the record, I have never accused William Harvey or Richard Helms of being involved in the assassination of JFK. Although I do believe that Helms played an important role in the cover-up.

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John, you are correct of course that I over-generalized when I lumped all the historians into the "Oswald-probably-did-it" camp. This quote from Helms, however, shores up my larger point. Since Helms was willing to say the CIA was under intense pressure from Bobby to kill Castro, and blame him for the atmosphere that led to the assassination attempts, why would he refuse to say that Bobby knew all about the attempts if that was the case? In his Church Committee testimony, Helms pretty much agreed that the concept of Plausible Deniability led to sloppy government. I see no reason to believe he would lie about Bobby's involvement, even when they both were in their graves. Since Harvey didn't tell Bobby and Helms didn't tell Bobby, and there's no evidence Fitzgerald told Bobby about AMLASH, I am at a loss to understand just who would have told Bobby about the Harvey/Rosselli meetings and the murderous planning with Cubela. Consequently, I don't think he knew. While I am basically a fan of Robert Kennedy's, I don't think that, prior to his brother's death, he would have frowned automatically on the CIA's attempting to kill Castro. I think Helms, Harvey, and Fitzgerald kept this from him more to keep his fingers out of the cookie jar than to preserve his "Plausible Deniability." They saw his hands-on involvement in Mongoose more a hindrance than a help.

Don Bohning · September 2, 2005

As a result of this discussion I have consulted all those books that I have that deal with the CIA plots against Castro. This includes, in order of publication: Victor Marchetti & John D. Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (1974), Victor Lasky, It Didn’t Start With Watergate (1977), Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets (1979), Warren Hinckle & William Turner, Deadly Secrets (1981), John Prados, Presidents’ Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations Since World War II (1986), Wayne S. Smith: The Closest of Enemies: US-Cuban Relations Since 1957 (1987), John Ranelagh, Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA (1987), Michael R. Beschloss, Kennedy v Khrushchev, The Crisis Years, 1960-63 (1991), David Corn, Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA’s Crusades (1994), Evan Thomas, The Very Best Men (1995), Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot (1997), Richard D. Mahoney, Sons and Brothers: The Days of Jack and Bobby Kennedy (1999), Joseph Trento, The Secret History of the CIA (2001) and Fabian Escalante, CIA Covert Operations 1959-62 (2004).

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At one time over the past five years, I have read virtually all the books, etc., that you cite, or at least the pertinent parts of them, plus a few others. That includes Evan Thomas, Haynes Johnson, Richard Helms, Dave Phillips, John Prados, Sy Hersh, David Corn, Richard Mahoney, Michael Beschloss, John Raneleagh, Joseph Trento, Wayne Smith, Thomas Powers, Joseph Trento, etc., as well as the CIA Inspector General's report, the Church Committee Report, the fully declassified Taylor Commission Report, Hinckle and Turner, Howard Hunt, and Fabian Escalante, the various FRUS volumes related to Cuba. I add to that Bissell's memoirs (for what it doesn't say), Spymasters: Ten CIA Officers in Their Own Words, and Kennedy's Wars by Lawrence Freedman.

I know - or have known - personally, Wayne Smith (a long time friend), Sy Hersh (slightly), Dave Phillips (moderately), Tad Szulc, Manuel Artime, Rafael Quintero, Henry Hoecksher, Sam Halpern, Ted Shackley, Jake Esterline, Tom Parrott and others.

Among them, and off the top of my head, I consider the best sources the books by Thomas Powers, Evan Thomas and Sy Hersh (although Sy sometimes has a tendency to push the envelope in his conclusions a bit more than I would), along with the Church Committee report, the CIA IG's report on assassinations, and Beschloss' The Crisis Years.

The problem I had with the Hinkcle/Turner book, The Fish is Red and the updated version, Deadly Secrets, is it was done before many documents were declassified. Contains several factual errors. It also accepts at face value the information from interviews with people I knew and also knew to be inveterate liars.

Neither was I particularly impressed with Richard Mahoney's book, even though he taught at Thunderbird, my old alma mater. I know enough about Howard Hunt to discount much or most of what he says without independent confirmation.

I just reread Fabian Escalante's book within the last two weeks and think it is just awful; as noted previously he has a tendency to blame everything on the CIA, whether true or not. One example, and the one thing I did considerable research of old files and in interviews on was the explosion in March 1960 of the Le Coubre in Havana harbor. There is ABSOLUTELY no evidence that was anything but an accident.

In that regard, I have just reread another really awful book entitled ZR Rifle: the plot to kill Kennedy and Castro, by Claudia Furiati, a Brazilian, with most of the information comes from Escalante.

Don Bohning · September 2, 2005

Hinckle & Turner also make the point that Frank Church's committee did not clearly state that JFK had not known about the plots to assassinate Castro. The committee concentrated on the CIA-Mafia plots and did not look at all at the Guantanamo, Amblood and Veciana plots. Hinckle and Turner point out that the committee's "Democratic majority managed to preserve unsullied the reputation of a Democratic administration". (page 117)

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You mention the Hinckle/Turner book, and the fact they say the Church Committee didn't concentrate on the on the Guantanamo, Amblood and Veciana plots. Again it is a question - at least in the case of Guanatamo and Veciana - as to whether the CIA was involved in these plots, or they were freelance ventures by exiles or the dozens of mercenaries - such as was so often the case during, as I know from having lived through those days in South Florida. Bottom line is I thought Hinckle and Turner were a bit loose with some of the facts.

Tim Gratz · September 2, 2005

I am sure members are aware of the theory that during the Church committee proceedings the CIA concentrated attention on the sensational mafia plots expressly to divert attention from other assassination plots with which it was involved.

An interesting theory.

For the life of me, I cannot remember who first advanced the theory. Fonzi or Scott perhaps?

Tim Gratz · September 2, 2005

Mr. Bohning wrote:

You mention the Hinckle/Turner book, and the fact they say the Church Committee didn't concentrate on the on the Guantanamo, Amblood and Veciana plots. Again it is a question - at least in the case of Guanatamo and Veciana - as to whether the CIA was involved in these plots, or they were freelance ventures by exiles or the dozens of mercenaries

I believe Veciana reported that Bishop assisted him with the Veciana plot--the plot in connection with which Odio's parents were arrested, of course.

Query to Mr. Bohning: did you ever meet or interview Veciana?

William Turner · September 3, 2005

Eisenhower authorized the assassination capability now known as ZR/RIFLE with Bill Harvey as a key operative. It is unlikely that the Kennedy administration was briefed on this in the transition. Harvey and Roselli were using Cuban exile groups to carry it out. RFK found out. But he didn't tell the CIA to cut it out, he simply wanted to be informed if his archenemy the Mafia was involved in the future. So he wasn't opposed to assassinations in principle, but there is no evidence that he himself ordered an assassination.

RFK was planning a second invasion of Cuba, using Harry Williams, whom I interviewed, to strike at the east end of Cuba, and Manuel Artime to go ashore at the "soft underbelly" of the island. Simultaneously, Roland Cubela was to assassinate Castro. This was set up by Desmond FitzGerald and I doubt JFK knew anything about it although they were using his name to Cubela. The infiltrations were set to begin in mid-December 1963. Joe Califano was RFK's key man in arranging training and logistical support by U.S. military. I tried to interview Califano. At the time he was a law partner of my attorney Edward Bennet Williams. Ed tried to get him to submit to an interview, but to no avail.

Pat Speer · September 3, 2005

Eisenhower authorized the assassination capability now known as ZR/RIFLE with Bill Harvey as a key operative. It is unlikely that the Kennedy administration was briefed on this in the transition. Harvey and Roselli were using Cuban exile groups to carry it out. RFK found out. But he didn't tell the CIA to cut it out, he simply wanted to be informed if his archenemy the Mafia was involved in the future. So he wasn't opposed to assassinations in principle, but there is no evidence that he himself ordered an assassination.
RFK was planning a second invasion of Cuba, using Harry Williams, whom I interviewed, to strike at the east end of Cuba, and Manuel Artime to go ashore at the "soft underbelly" of the island. Simultaneously, Roland Cubela was to assassinate Castro. This was set up by Desmond FitzGerald and I doubt JFK knew anything about it although they were using his name to Cubela. The infiltrations were set to begin in mid-December 1963. Joe Califano was RFK's key man in arranging training and logistical support by U.S. military. I tried to interview Califano. At the time he was a law partner of my attorney Edward Bennet Williams. Ed tried to get him to submit to an interview, but to no avail.

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As I recall the story, the CIA had an assassination capacity since its inception. The ZR/Rifle program, on the other hand, of having a permanent and ongoing capacity-a hit man on retainer--was something that Bundy brought up to Bissell and Bissell brought up to Harvey. Admittedly, I'm confused about this because I believe QJ/WIN was sent to the Congo to take care of Lumumba, and Lumumba was killed before Bundy took office. Perhaps the Bundy/Bissell talks took place just after the November, 1960 election, while JFK was preparing his Best and Brightest for the road ahead. Or perhaps the use of QJ/WIN in the Congo pre-dated his involvement in ZR/Rifle. I'll clear this up once I get home.

Meanwhile, I'm intrigued by Mr. Turner's relationship with Edward Bennett Williams.

Mr. Turner, what was your take on Williams? Did he have an agenda? Or was he just a hired gun? One minute he'd be representing the Democrats in the Watergate break-in, the next he'd be sending messages to Nixon advising him to burn the tapes. What was he like? What was his vision of America?

Chris Cox · September 4, 2005

Bill, a few quick questions: Did Guantanamo have role in this '63 east end operation? Did Harry ever use the name "Frank Williams?" One more: Is it possible, because there are numerous accounts there might have been, other Cuba operation(s) in play in Dallas that afternoon? Tosh made comment of a connecting apt (Beckley or Elsbeth not sure) to a safehouse housing Cubans and Chauncey Holt accounts for his presence as forger/tramp with Masferrer somewhere in there. If there is evidence there were other operations involving Dallas, would they connect to RFK? Thanks.

Dawn Meredith · September 4, 2005

THE INSPECTOR GENERAL'S REPORT: AN INTRODUCTION

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Peter Dale Scott

English Dept., University of California, Berkeley 94720

(510) 642-2762; Fax 642-8738

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DRAFT DATE: DECEMBER 20, 1994

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The Inspector General's Report of 1967 on CIA Plots to Assassinate Fidel Castro is probably the most important CIA document ever released by the Agency. The document that neither Johnson nor (apparently) Nixon was allowed to see in its entirety, despite their asserted interest, the document so tightly held that only a single ribbon copy was retained even within the CIA, is now available to everyone.

Many of the IG Report's most important revelations have been known for two decades, but the release of the full text is nonetheless important. Although many of its key statements were transmitted by Congressional Committees in the 1970s, the document as a whole tells us far more than any of its parts. It is informative in What it chooses to tell us about the CIA's conscious collaboration with (its phrase) the "criminal underworld" (p. 15). But it is also informative in the facts which it strives to disguise or suppress. These include key events in the immediate context of President Kennedy's assassination.

The IG Report was the result of an investigation ordered in 1967 by President Johnson, after a Drew Pearson-Jack Anderson column of March 7, 1967, had published for the first time details of "a reported CIA plan in 1963 to assassinate Cuba's Fidel Castro."(l) However Johnson never got to see the actual report: Helms merely spoke to him from a set of notes which excluded the key events of late 1963. President Nixon never got to see it either, although it would appear that he had his aide John Ehrlichman try over many months to pry it out of CIA Director Richard Helms.(2)

The Report's story of CIA-underworld assassination murder plots will startle no one in the 1990s. In 1967 it was so explosive as to be virtually unmentionable in the public arena for another eight years. Even the Anderson column. Which told only a small part of what Anderson would eventually reveal, was published four days late by the Washington Post, by which time the column's references to the recruitment of "underworld figures" had been edited out, presumably after checking with the CIA. We shall see that a follow-up column by Jack Anderson in 1971 was likewise edited. Not until the 1975 reports from the Rockefeller Commission and the Senate Church Committee did the press treat the story of CIA-Mafia murder plots as more than a wild left-wing allegation.

And if that story is by now familiar, there is still plenty more in the IG Report to engage and even shock ordinary readers in the 1990s. I shall focus on four major issues:

The CIA's conscious efforts to restore organized crime elements, including drug traffickers, to their traditional position of influence in Cuba.

The CIA's pronounced hostility to presidential policy directives and controls, including its willingness to act controversially without consultation in the Kennedys'' name.

The indications that the ClA's AMLASH assassination project in 1963 was designed to frustrate a presidentially authorized exploration of accommodation with Castro, in a project from which the CIA had been excluded.

The IG Report's total and suspicious evasion of the major question raised by the unedited Anderson column: that the CIA's plots against Castro had possibly "backfired" in such a way as to cause the president's murder.

In the interests of expanding the boundaries of what we now know, I shall focus on some of the limitations of the Report. This is not meant to discredit it as a significant source of historical information. Even when I talk below of misrepresentations in the IG Report, one can assume that much of this came from key witnesses (such as Sheffield Edwards) who had clearly something to hide, rather than originating with the Report's authors. But on the fourth topic (the murder of JFK) we find more continuous evasion and false logic, enough to raise questions about the purpose of the Report itself.

CIA-Underworld Plots and the Restoration of Organized Crime to Power in Cuba

Perhaps the most astonishing section of the IG Report tells the story of how the CIA allied itself with those whose motives (the FBI had warned them) were to reestablish the pre-Castro Cuban drug traffic. More specifically, the CIA was guided by the advice of Mafia leader Santos Trafficante, and entrusted the assassination plot to Tony Varona, the Cuban leader of their own political creation for the Bay of Pigs, the Democratic Revolutionary Front:

Varona was the head of the Democratic Revolutionary Front, [redacted] part of the larger Cuban operation. [CIA officer Jim] O'Connell understood that Varona was dissatisfied [redacted].

(Comment [by CIA]: Reports from the FBI suggest how Trafficante may have known of Varona. On 21 December 1960 the Bureau forwarded to the Agency a memorandum reporting that efforts were being made by U.S. racketeers to finance anti-Castro activities in hopes of securing the gambling, prostitution, and dope monopolies in Cuba in the event Castro was overthrown. A later report of 18 January 1961 associates Varona with those schemes. Varona had hired Edward K. Moss, a Washington public relations counselor, as a fund raiser and public relations adviser. The Bureau report alleged that Moss' mistress was one Julia Cellini, whose brothers represented two of the largest gambling casinos in Cuba.) (29-30)

Comment by PDS: one of these was Meyer Lansky's Tropicana, where the manager was first Dino Cellini and then his and Jack Ruby's mutual friend Lewis McWillie, who arranged Ruby's mysterious trips to Cuba in 1959.3 Then Dino and Eddie Cellini (with a third brother, Goffredo or Girodino Cellini) managed the casino at Lansky's 514 million dream palace, the Riviera, which opened in 1957. Thanks to the presence of top international couriers like Giuseppe de Giorgio, Havana casinos served as way-stations in the transfer of large heroin shipments from Europe to the United States.(4)

According to the IG Report,

The Cellini brothers were believed to be in touch with Varona through Moss and were reported to have offered Varona large sums of money for his operations against Castro, with the understanding that they would receive privileged treatment 'in the Cuba of the future.' Attempts to verify these reports were unsuccessful.(5) (There is a record of CIA interest in Moss, but there is no indication that the Agency had any involvement with him in connection with Cuba. [Long redaction]...). (29-30)

I shall argue later that the most sustained misrepresentation in the IG Report is this pretense that the CIA did not understand (or could not "verify" reports on) the complex crime world others (like the FBI) were telling it about. However, even taken at face value, it is a shock to see the IG Report's lack of hypocritical surprise or concern about an FBI report that the CIA's efforts to install Varona in the place of Castro would serve the purposes of those mobsters who had "hopes of securing the gambling, prostitution, and dope monopolies in Cuba." Apparently it was accepted that the CIA's efforts would have the effect of restoring the tyranny of the U.S. mob in Cuba, whose presence had been one of the chief factors mobilizing Cuban middle-class revulsion against Batista.

On reflection, this should appear brazen, but not surprising. The mob had functioned as enforcers of U.S. interests in Cuba since the repeal in 1934 of the Platt Amendment which had "legalized" U.S. interventions in Cuba. Their corruption of Cuban politicians like Carlos Prio Socarras (Varona's patron), or Fulgencio Batista helped reduce these men (whatever their original ambitions) to the role of docile feeders at the U.S. capitalistic trough.

There may have been politics behind the March 1961 decision of the CIA's Office of Security to follow Trafficante's guidance and give a murder role to Varona. At the time Varona's influence in the Frente had been undercut by the incoming Kennedy Administration's stated preference for younger and less reactionary political leaders, notably the young engineer Manolo Ray, who had served briefly as a Minister under Castro. Bowing to the inevitable, senior CIA officials like Richard Bissell had made this leftward adjustment. After removing the right-wing Howard Hunt as the Frente's political liaison, on March no they appointed the more neutral Miro Cardona to be head of the CIA's "provisional government" with Ray and Varona as his lieutenants.(6)

The political difference between Marina and Ray was significant, at least from the point of view of the CIA. Varona was explicitly in favor of restoring the land, banks, and industries that had been nationalized under Castro to their original owners; Ray (whose political slogan was Fidelismo sin Fidel) accepted this part of the Castro revolution.(7)

Trafficante as well as Varona could correctly interpret the Kennedys' leftward move towards Ray as a threat to their influence in a post-Castro Cuba. Varona's and Trafficante's interests were not identical -- indeed Varona had once denounced mob influence in Cuba -- but Varona in exile depended on the funds and other resources of the mob-tainted Prio. The even more right-wing ideologue Hunt preferred the young Catholic leader Manuel Artime over Varona; and in January took steps to counter a leftward shift of the Frente by increasing the status of Artime (who by now was a Varona ally) in the CIA invasion forced All three men, Varona, Trafficante, and Hunt, had reasons to oppose the Kennedy-backed forces of social democracy.

O'Connell's decision to involve Varona in a sensitive and central murder operation, at a time when his status and influence in the Bay of Pigs Operation was diminishing, reflects at a minimum the kind of bureaucratic inertia that has made the CIA such a reactionary force throughout the Third World But what are we to make of his decision to do so without seeking guidance from Bissell or higher authority? Other considerations suggest that his decision, like Hunt's promotion of Artime, and indeed the whole CIA-Mafia collaboration to kill Castro, was not just insensitive to the Kennedys' political directives but consciously and actively opposed to them.

The CIA's Hostility to the Policies and Directives of the Kennedys

Under the guidance of Kennedy aides Richard Goodwin and Arthur Schlesinger, the New Frontier was a perceived threat to those like Varona and Hunt (and presumably O'Connell) who wished to return Cuban politics to the status quo ante. Also threatening was Robert Kennedy's avowed opposition to mob political influence, whether in Cuba or in the United States.

It is important to understand that CIA-underworld collaboration was an established and continuing mode of operation going back to the suppression of Sicilian and French Communism after World War II.(9) The Kennedy family had their own well-established mob connections, dating back to Joseph Kennedy's liquor operations during and after prohibition.(10) Almost certainly the mob helped elect Kennedy in 1960, as it has frequently helped to elect Presidents (and more importantly advance them through the primaries) before and since.(11)

And yet Bobby Kennedy was undeniably (and dangerously) committed to the goal of reducing the power of organized crime in America. Both in his years with the McClellan Rackets Committee and then in his book The Enemy Within, published in February 1960, Kennedy specifically targeted both Santos Trafficante and Sam Giancana along with Jimmy Hoffa (almost certainly another CIA asset, and possibly involved in the murder plot, although unnamed in the IG Report).12 And when as Attorney General Bobby drew up a list of the hoods he wanted to go after, "heading the list was none other than Sam Giancana."(13) In fact the Parade article and photographs which allegedly revealed to O'Connell he was dealing with Giancana and Traffficante (IG Report, 19) were later recalled by O'Connell as describing "Bobby Kennedy's ten most wanted individuals" (5 AH 249).(14)

The truth is that in 1960 Trafficante and Giancana were relatively little known, apart from Robert Kennedy's pursuit of them. It can hardly be a coincidence that in August 1960, shortly after John Kennedy secured the Democratic nomination, Bissell and Edwards took steps to create (via Roselli, Giancana's subordinate) a CIA connection to these two men, effectively conferring on them a CIA immunity, or "get-out-of-jail free" card, that Giancana, in particular, would use dramatically on two occasions when his nemesis was Attorney General (IG Report, 57-60, 67-70).

Both Trafficante and Maheu, along with Maheu's mentor Edward Bennett Williams (through whom Maheu had met Roselli), were allied to Bobby Kennedy's arch-enemy, Jimmy Hoffa.(15) Using Maheu as his investigator, Williams had performed a number of favors for the CIA in the past, as well as Hoffa. So, according to his biographers, had John Roselli.(16) It is thus understandable, and hardly treasonable, that the CIA should have taken these steps to protect their underworld assets, before the Kennedys came to power.

By contrast, the revival of the plan with Varona, probably in March 1961 (IG Report, 29; Assassination Plots Report, 82), set the CIA in clear and witting alliance with the underworld, in opposition to the policy priorities of the new Attorney General, backed by the President of the United States.

What was really being protected by the CIA here was not so much the underworld per se, but the political life of Washington in which the underworld, with its lobbyists and call girls and cash, was an integrated part.(17) Perhaps the most revealing clue to this is the Report's startling digression (IG Report, 30) on the Cellini brothers (who were top Lansky lieutenants) and the Washington p.r. man Edward K. Moss, a man so powerful (especially among Democrats) that all reference to him has been deleted in the Church Committee's extended (and Democratic) Assassination Plots Report.

Whether or not Moss actively represented the Cellinis, he did for years represent a number of far more famous people who were simultaneously CIA assets. One of these in the 1970s was Adnan Khashoggi, then known as "the richest man in the world." (Khashoggi's kickbacks on lucrative defense contracts with Saudi Arabia generated a slush fund for such intelligence-driven operations as the Iran-Contra affair.) We learn from Khashoggi's biography that in 1954 Moss, a Yale man and former assistant to the president of the American Management Association, "started Moss International Inc., which has advised nineteen countries, helped the Democratic National Committee organize conventions, and represented the National Coffee Association and the Bank of America.''(18)

It is striking that one of Moss's acts for Khashoggi was to secure for him the legal services of Edward P. Morgan, the attorney whom Maheu had previously hired for Howard Hughes (another source of funds for CIA operations) and who turns up in the IG Report (p. 36) as attorney for John Roselli. As Ron Kessler remarks in his Khashoggi biography, Morgan was the kind of man who knew that clients and issues come and go, but the powers in Washington remain. largely unchanged." (19)

The chief result of the so-called assassination plot of 1960-61 was not to threaten Castro. It was to preserve the dubious underpinnings of the world that made men like Maheu and Moss and Morgan (and their friends in the CIA) enduringly powerful.

One can indeed surmise that this was not only the result, but for some, and above all Maheu himself, the conscious aim of the operation. For the CIA gained no protection whatsoever by introducing such sinister outpours as Roselli, Giancana and Trafficante. Far from suppressing the involvement of the CIA, these men advertised it whenever it suited them, as even the IG Report is aware.(20) Even riskier, from the point of view of the CIA's security, was the fact that by 1961 Trafficante was widely suspected of being a double agent. reporting to Castro's DGI as well as the CIA.(21)

The plot makes much more sense, however, if one imagines that the initiative for it came from below; and that the purpose was to protect. not the CIA, but the mob and its allies. This is quite possible, for Edwards, O'Connell, Maheu, and Roselli were more clannish than the IG Report lets on. The sentence "Edwards consulted Robert A. Maheu...to see if Maheu had any underworld contacts" (IG Report, 15) is particularly misleading. Edwards, O'Connell, Maheu, and Roselli had already dined together in Maheu's home the previous spring.(22) Maheu claims that Edwards and O'Connell originally met and talked with Roselli at a party Maheu threw for an ex-FBI agent, Scott McLeod, when he left the State Department s Office of Security in 1957.(23) Nor did Maheu open his Office with a CIA subsidy in 1956, as the IG Report claims (15); he opened it in 1954.24 In the next six years he had done a number of jobs for the CIA, and O'Connell in particular. In this time period the Maheu office, which Jim Hougan characterizes as one of the CIA's "deniable proprietaries," had been involved in the 1956 kidnap-murder of a leading intellectual from the Dominican Republic, Jesus de Galindez, in collaboration with the mob figure Bayonne Joe Zicarelli.(25)

Could the four men who dined together at Maheu's house have dreamed up this escapade to reinforce their alliance against Bobby' s house-cleaning? It is striking that (according to the IG Report, 16-18) Edwards took this; step on his own initiative, merely informing his superiors of a fait accompli. What increases the possibility of that Edwards was using the CIA to help the mob (rather than vice versa) is the fact that so many of those involved (O'Connell, Maheu, Morgan, and others) were, as the IG Report notes (15) former FBI men. For the mob had been receiving the same privileged treatment from some high officials in the FBI, and from J. Edgar Hoover in particular, for many years.(26)

Another possibility, not inconsistent. is that the plot was intended to fail, and that Trafficante, the suspected double agent, was in fact supposed under CIA direction to leak some of the details to the Cuban DGI. This would haste the effect of increasing Trafficante's credibility and utility to the Castro intelligence forces, and thus help open a window for the CIA inside Cuba. One of the IG Report's authors, Scott Breckenridge, later maintained to a Senate staff member "that Trafficante had been providing Castro with details of the plot all along".(27)

The AMLASH 1963 Project as a CIA Revolt Against Presidential Policy

Much has been written (albeit inconclusively) about Robert Kennedy's angry reaction on learning that the CIA had used Giancana in an operation, how he ordered CIA in May 1962 to clear such operations in future with the Justice Department, and how the CIA failed to do so.(28) The Democratically-controlled Church Committee assembled much evidence on the question of Bobby Kennedy's knowledge but was inconclusive. We shall soon see that the issue is an important one. From my own reading of the evidence I would conclude:

Robert Kennedy (and probable his brother John) had known of these plots from as early as May 22, 1961, if not earlier.(29)

It is possible, if not certain, that both Kennedys, although not officially informed of these assassination plots, continued by their non-intervention to tolerate them, up to March 1963.(30)

After March 1963, and particularly after a new Cuban policy memorandum of April 21, 1963, the Kennedys neither knew of nor sanctioned by silence such plots. On the contrary, Bobby's Justice Department warned on March 30 it would crack down hard on Cuban exile activities launched from U.S. territory. And a new set of Presidential policy options explored in April and May led to the reasonable finding, by a committee of the National Security Council that U.S. interests were not likely to be served by Castro's death.(31)

This does not seem to have deterred the CIA. On the contrary, the ClA's conduct of the Cubela (GOULASH) operation in late 1963, unambiguously, has the earmarks of a hostile revolt against Presidential authority and policy.

Not mentioned in the IG Report, but crucial to understanding the AMLASH operation, are the secret contacts in 1963 between representatives of the Kennedys and of Castro. The CIA, now deeply distrusted by the White House, was pointedly excluded from these secret negotiations; but almost certainly it had knowledge of them. The CIA's assassination initiatives in 1963 seem completely bizarre, and irrational, unless we consider that they were designed to prevent these secret contacts from succeeding.

Normal to any CIA illegal operation, and indeed dictated by the CIA's charter, is the condition that it must be plausibly deniable. In 1963 the CIA flagrantly violated this elementary rule, as if deliberately. whereas in 1960 it had brought in the mob as a means of concealing government responsibility, in 1963 it repeatedly sought to establish a convincing trail of responsibility leading into the Kennedy White House.

In 1962, for example New York attorney James Donovan, accompanied by John Nolan of Robert Kennedy's staff. had negotiated smith Castro the return of the Pay of Pigs prisoners. In April 1963 the two men returned to Cubela for more negotiations which, even if not conclusive, were fruitful in opening a doorway for further talks towards possible normalization.(32) The CIA was informed of this mission but did not take part in it.

Desmond FitzGerald of the CIA's SAS staff does not appear to have looked favorably towards this step on the accommodation track. In early 1963 the staff arranged for the CIA's Technical Services Division to purchase a wet suit, and contaminate it with tuberculosis bacilli and the spores for a disabling skin disease. The plan Was for Donovan (who was not informed of the plot) to give the suit to Castro, his companion in scuba diving.(33)

It is not hard to see that this wild proposal violated "the most elementary considerations -- for example that it [i.e. the suit] was in effect a gift from the United States, while the idea was to keep it secret; or, then again. Donovan's feelings about being the gift-giver in this plot. If he wasn't let in on the plot, after all, he might try on the suit himself."(34)

We can see the same CIA antipathy to the accommodation track in October 1963. By this time (thanks in part to the Donovan-Nolan mission) there had been presidentially authorized meetings at the UN between William Attwood. a Special Advisor to the U.S. Delegation, and the Cuban UN Ambassador, Carlos Lechuga. The President' s authorization specified that Attwood would report directly to McGeorge Bundy in the White House; the CIA and the State Department were to be excluded. The talks began in September and soon involved others, including the French journalist Jean Daniel. On November 18 Attwood finally reported to Bundy that Castro would be sending Lechuga instructions for the agenda of a meeting with Attwood in Havana. Bundy replied that the President would see Attwood after a brief trip to Dallas. With the President's death, the project for normalization lapsed.(35)

The time frame of the short-lived. Attwood initiative fits closely with the 1963 Cubela assassination plot. The go-between who arranged for Attwood to meet Lechuga (the American journalist Lisa Howard) told Attwood of her intentions on September 5. Two days later, on September 7, the CIA resumed contact with Rolando Cubela. a member of Castro's entourage whom the CIA had first contacted in 1961, and then dropped in 1969, after proof of his notorious inability to keep a secret.(36) Attwood himself comments that the CIA must have had an inkling of what he was up to, from their phone taps and surveillance of Lechuga.(37)

This first coincidence of dates may have been fortuitous. Less excusable is the unauthorized decision of Richard Helms and Desmond FitzGerald to have FitzGerald present himself to Cubela on October 29 as a personal representative of Robert Kennedy, especially since FitzGerald proceeded to discuss an assassination plot against Castro which the Kennedys almost certainly knew nothing about. October 29 was just five days after the President had met personally with Jean Daniel, and given him a personal message to transmit to Fidel Castro. Robert Kennedy had just authorized the Attwood accommodation initiative from which the CIA was being excluded. Crudely put, Helms and FitzGerald chose unilaterally to represent Robert Kennedy, precisely at a time when they could not know what he wanted, or was up to: a time when there was a distinction and potential divergence between CIA and Kennedy interests.

That the CIA was well aware of this distinction was unconsciously revealed in 1976 by FitzGerald's assistant Samuel Halpern. Halpern was deposed by the Schweiker-Hart Subcommittee, who had learned that two senior CIA officers had counseled FitzGerald against the security risk of a personal meeting with Cubela. Halpern discounted the danger that the FitzGerald-Cubela meeting "exposed the CIA to possible embarrassment, because Fitzgerald had not used his real name and, therefore, AMLASH would have been unable to identify Fitzgerald as a CIA officer."(38)

Only Robert Kennedy would be embarrassed, in other words. This indeed would seem to be the most rational intention of such an unprofessional and disloyal meeting. Both Kennedys were lending support to explorations which promised (or alternatively, threatened) to lead to an accommodation with Castro. Those initiatives could only be harmed by FitzGerald's discussion of assassinating Castro with a suspected leaker or double-agent, while claiming to be a representative of Robert Kennedy.

The same Samuel Halpern has argued that the CIA, far from being disloyal to Robert Kennedy in this operation, had in fact gained his explicit approval informally. In the words of John Davis,

Since Kennedy and FitzGerald often met socially and at work, there was no need for formal authorization. The attorney general's approval could just as easily have been conveyed informally and be far less risky for all concerned. This opinion was confirmed by former CIA official, Samuel Halpern, who in 1963 had been executive assistant to the Task Force on Cuba and one of the four men directly involved in the AM/LASH operation. In an interview on November 18, 1983, Mr. Halpern told me that he was absolutely certain that 'Des" FitzGerald "had full authorization from Attorney General Kennedy and President Kennedy to proceed with the AM/LASH plot against Castro," adding that he always felt that since they often met socially, Bobby Kennedy and "Des" FitzGerald conducted most of their business together at Washington cocktail parties and receptions, rather than in their respective offices.(39)

There is a germ of truth underlying this false allegation. Robert Kennedy had indeed authorized the AMTRUNK political operation which the IG Report relates to the AMLASH (Cubela) initiative. AMTRUNK was an ambitious attempt to promote a military coup within Cuba, using assets such as Major Ramon Guin whom Cubela contacted (IG Report, 86). As Helms rightly testified to the Church Committee in 1975, he "had pre-existing authority to deal with AM/LASH regarding 'a change of government' (as opposed to assassination)."(40)

But Halpern and Davis seem to have missed the point: namely, that FitzGerald and Helms never presented the Cubela initiative to their superiors as an assassination operation. It is indeed likely, almost certain, that the CIA had authorization to proceed with the political initiative. But that it had authorization to involve Robert Kennedy's name and authority in an assassination plot with a notorious leaker, at a time when the Kennedys were attempting to open discussions with Castro, is virtually unimaginable. Both Fitzgerald and Helms later denied that the AMLASH operation contemplated assassination.(4l) It seems clear that Kennedy's authorization for AMLASH would have been limited to what they described it as. an attempt to find a group to replace Castro.

From this point on the AMLASH initiative had the looks of an anti-Kennedy provocation. This was Attwood's retrospective evaluation of the FitzGerald/AMLASH meetings: "One thing was clear: Stevenson was right when he told me back in September that 'the CIA is in charge of Cuba'; or anyway, acted as if it thought it was. and to hell with the president it was pledged to serve."(42) Indeed the conduct of the AMLASH episode as much as of the Attwood initiative, is symptomatic of the mistrust and hostility Which divided the CIA from the Kennedys over Cuba in late 1963.

The Evasiveness of the IG Report With Respect to the Murder of JFK

In light of this hostility, it is striking how unresponsive the IG Report is to the central charge in the Pearson-Anderson column Which it was supposed to investigate. As the IG Report itself admits (p. 6), "Drew Pearson's column of 7 March 1967 refers to a reported CIA plan in 1963 to assassinate Cuba's Fidel Castro." Yet in the Report's 133 pages, only ten and a half (pp. 86-95) refer to a 1963 plot at all, and that one (the Cubela plot) is (we shall see) not the one Anderson was writing about.

But the principal evasiveness of the IG Report is much more striking. In the entire reports less than a dozen lines (pp. 118, 121) are denoted to what Anderson himself called the "political H-bomb" in the second and more important Clause of the quoted sentence, under the heading, "Castro Counterplot: "

The publicity over New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's investigation of a 'Kennedy assassination plot' has focused attention in Washington on a reported CIA plan in 1963 to assassinate Cuba's Fidel Castro, which according to some sources may have resulted in a counterplot by Castro to assassinate President Kennedy.(43)

Even this version of the Anderson "Counterplot" story, as published belatedly in the Washington Post, was a bowdlerized one. Four days earlier Anderson's column, as originally published, contained a much stronger story, not just that Castro had "cooked up a counterplot," but that this counterplot had possibly been executed:

President Johnson is sitting on a political H-bomb -- an unconfirmed report that Senator Robert Kennedy (Dem.-N.Y.) may have approved an assassination plot which then possibly backfired against his late brother....One version claims that underworld figures actually were recruited to carry out the plot. Another rumor has it that three hired assassins were caught in Havana....For weeks after the tragedy, this column was told, Bobby was morose and refused to see people. Could he have been plagued by the terrible thought that he had helped put into motion forces that indirectly may have brought about his brother's martyrdom? Some insiders think so.(44)

Note that p. 118 of the IG Report quotes many of these specific details: "underworld figures," "three hired assassins," "Castro...cooked up a counterplot". Yet the Report wholly fails to investigate, just like the Washington Post, the central thesis that the Robert Kennedy authorized a CIA plot which then impossibly backfired" against Kennedy.

There was a lot of politics to the timing of Anderson's charge, and it involved among other matters the worsening war scene in Vietnam.(45) Both Pearson and Anderson were close to Johnson,who by 1967 was convinced that Bobby Kennedy was the leader of those forces opposing his Vietnam policies from the left.(46) Johnson's almost paranoid obsession with Bobby could only have been enhanced on March 2, 1967, the day before the Pearson-Anderson column appeared, when Robert Kennedy came forward with a controversial proposal for the suspension of bombing against North Vietnam. By this time Johnson's paranoia had also come to embrace the CIA, whose initial support of the escalated war had become much more critical in late 1966.(47)

Hence the Anderson column must have struck Johnson as a convenient opening to gather ammunition against Robert Kennedy and the CIA at the same time. His request to Helms for the facts must have struck Helms too as part of a political strategy against Robert Kennedy, in which the CIA, even if not the primary target, would also get mauled. Assuredly Helms' sense of loyalty to the CIA would have justified in his eves a refusal to become part of this game.(48) But Helms' refusal to execute Johnson's request for information about this sensitive area only makes sense if we accept that there was indeed something to the Anderson story.

Before proceeding, I should also make it clear that I do not believe (as Jack Anderson apparently still does) that Castro killed Kennedy. Nevertheless I now believe that the March 3 allegation, that the CIA plot "possibly backfired," was suppressed in the Post and the IG Report because it had hit a nerve. That is, it contained an element of truth and people (probably in the CIA) knew it.

The extreme sensitivity of this allegation was demonstrated again in January 1971, when Anderson repeated it. This time Anderson outlined the CIA-underworld plots in some detail, naming Maheu, Harvey, O'Connell, Roselli. the CIA poison pills, and "Cuban assassination teams equipped with high-powered rifles."(49) Once again Anderson asked the forbidden question: 'could the plot against Castro have backfired against President Kennedy?" Once again, predictably, this part of his column was suppressed, not just by the newspapers publishing it, but by the Senate Watergate Committee which found it relevant.(50)

By this time, of course, Robert Kennedy was dead. However most accounts of Watergate agree that by early 1971 Richard Nixon's "abiding nightmare" was that his nemesis Larry O'Brien "would somehow rebuild Teddy Kennedy to be [Nixon's] opponent for the presidency in 1972.''51 Once again Jack Anderson appeared to threatening a Kennedy-Helms area of vulnerability, at a time when the Nixon White House (with a more hard-line Vietnam policy) was hostile to both men.(52)

Not until September 1976, after Roselli had testified and been murdered, did Jack Anderson spell out the "political H-bomb" that he had merely hinted at in 1967. The full Roselli allegation was not just about a "counterplot" or a "retaliation," but an actual turnaround of mob killers from their original target (Castro) to President Kennedy. This time the Washington Post finally ran the full story:

Before he died, Roselli hinted to associates that he knew who had arranged President Kennedy's murder. It was the same conspirators, he suggested, whom he had recruited earlier to kill Cuban Premier Fidel Castro....Snipers were dispatched to a Havana rooftop. They were caught. The word reached Roselli that some of the plotters had been tortured and that Castro had learned about the whole operation....

PDS Comment: This should appear to be the three-man team who on March 13, 1963 set up a sniper's nest at the University of Havana and were discovered by security police just before Castro arrived for a scheduled appearance The location suggests that the men may have been drawn from the university milieu of the old anti-Batista Directorio Revolucionario that produced both Juan Orta (the associate of Trafficante and Varona who was central to the 1960-61 plots) and the 1963 plotter Rolando Cubela, a former DR loader and friend of Orta (IG Report, 80).(54)

According to Roselli, Castro enlisted the same underworld elements who he had caught plotting against him. They supposedly were Cubans from the old Trafficante organization. Working with Cuban intelligence, they allegedly lined up an ex-Marine sharpshooter, Lee Harvey Oswald, who had been active in the pro-Castro movement. According to Roselli's version Oswald may have shot Kennedy or may have acted as a decoy while others ambushed him from closer ranged

Almost certainly the CIA knew of the three-man plot against Castro in March 1963, whether or not it was itself involved. As I has e written elsewhere, there was at least one other three-man assassination team that was sent, this time zenith CIA support, against Castro in 1963. These three men were Eddie "Bayo" Perez and the other two survivors of the so-called Bayo-Pawley mission, sent in the summer of 1963 by Roselli's close friend and room-mate John Martino.(56) The recently released CIA documents confirm "the large amount of assistance from JMWAVE" (the CIA's Miami station) for this mission, and also the efforts of John Martino to exfiltrate Angel Luis Castillo Cabrera, "Bayo"'s brother-in-law, to join them.(57)

This Luis Castillo is the "Castillo" cited by the IG Report on p. 118 as corroboration of the "counterplot." Martino himself claimed before his death to have had special knowledge concerning the Kennedy assassination, to have known Ruby in Cuba, and even to have watched Oswald passing out his pro-Castro leaflets in Nest Orleans.(58) Above all, Martino had already given to the Warren Commission and to tile FBI an earls version of the Roselli-Anderson story, that the Kennedy assassination "had been an act of retaliation for an anti-Castro plot."(59)

The Anderson column was explicitly about "a reported CIA plan in 1963." Thus it is most disingenuous of the IG Report to focus on the reported "rumor" of a three-man team, and conclude that this must refer to an assassination plot in 1962.(60) Not only is such an inference impossible, it is dishonest. Such dishonesty suggests that at least some of the sources and/or authors of the IG Report were suffering from a guilty conscience: they knew there was something to hide.

Whether or not one believes Castro's intelligence networks to have been involved, one can entertain the hypothesis that a shooter team, in effect licensed by the CIA to kill Castro, might then have returned from Cuba and killed the President instead. Such an idea, floated by Martino and later Roselli, would have exerted pressure on the CIA whether true or untrue. The mere appearance that a CIA team had been “turned around” while other killers took care of the actual job, would have been enough to coerce the CIA and its triads into the ranks of those claiming to be true believers in a lone assassin.

Such a possibility is by no means proven. But one is more inclined to take it seriously, once one has been exposed to the evasiveness and false logic of the IG Report. We must add to this the indications we have seen, that the mob and their in-house allies did not merely execute the CIA's assassination plans! but helped originate them to serve their own ends.

Given these Signs of a mob influence within the CIA (as within the FBI), it seems at least possible that the mob could have helped secure CIA authorization for a plot against Castro, which it then exploited to murder the President of the United States.

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(Sources and Notes still under construction - DS)

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Reprinted with permission.

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Peter Dale Scott settles this question for me. RFK is also quoted in a Richard Goodwin book on this issue. Will try to find the exact quote, but he denies authorizing such plots.

Dawn

Dawn Meredith · September 4, 2005