Erneido Oliva

[Ron Ecker]

Here’s a link to an interesting article by Erneido Oliva, the second in command in the Bay of Pigs invasion, and the man who presented JFK with the brigade flag at the Orange Bowl. (Photos below.) Oliva was one of the BOP veterans who joined the U.S. Army. He became a major general and is now retired.

His article briefly covers Oliva’s and Artime’s relationship with RFK, Oliva’s work with Alexander Haig (then working under Secretary of the Army Cyrus Vance) in the planning of raids into Cuba, and LBJ personally telling Oliva in January 1964 that operations against Castro were over.

http://www.camcocuba.org/2004-05/BRIGADEFLAG.html

Ron

[James Richards]

Thanks for posting that, Ron. Great article.

James

[Tim Gratz]

That LBJ told Oliva in January of 1964 that he was calling off the operations against Cuba demonstrates that the primary beneficiary of the death of Hohn F. Kennedy was Fidel Castro.

And, of course, Oliva's statement is consistent with what Joseph Califano states in his memoirs.

[Pat Speer]

That LBJ told Oliva in January of 1964 that he was calling off the operations against Cuba demonstrates that the primary beneficiary of the death of Hohn F. Kennedy was Fidel Castro.

And, of course, Oliva's statement is consistent with what Joseph Califano states in his memoirs.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

So, why did the AMLASH operation continue for months and months afterwards? There's no escaping it, either LBJ didn't call it off or the CIA was out of control. If the CIA was this out of control, then they certainly could have been behind the JFK assassination.

[Tim Gratz]

Pat, I understand your point and it has been made before.

But it is, of course, a far cry from the CIA deciding to continue the AMLASH operation despite what appears to be clear presidential direction to cease all operations against Castro and the decision to murder the commander-in-chief.

Moreover, it is clear, is it not, that the CIA was carrying out the Kennedys' war against Castro, with which it was in accord, and if any presidential directive was disobeyed it was LBJ's--after the assassination of Kennedy.

In addition, even if it took a year or two to finalize LBJ's orders, there can be no dispute that under LBJ the war shifted from Cuba to Vietnam.

Edited February 19, 2005 by Tim Gratz

[Tim Gratz]

Here is an interesting quote from the Oliva article:

Along with the rest of the country, the assassination of the President on November 22, 1963 came as a tremendous shock to me. I was at Fort Sill, Oklahoma working with another Cuban officer assigned to that military base on a plan to organize a Cuban infantry brigade within the U.S. Army when I heard the news. Our Brigade officers had been already dispersed to different U.S. I didn’t realize at first but as a result of the loss of President Kennedy our plans, efforts and dreams for a free Cuba were about to be ended.

That pretty much sums it up. If indeed, as I believe the weight of the evidence suggests, Castro killed Kennedy to stop the constant US efforts to kill him and to sabotage the Cuban economy, etc., he succeeded.

[Ron Ecker]

Here's an interesting (and very opinionated) piece on Oliva, the Bay of Pigs, and Black History Month.

Blogwonks

MND Guest Commentaries & News

3/10/2006

Black History Month Ignores Genuine Black Heroes

By Humberto Fontova

February, known lately as "Black History Month," has come and gone while the mainstream media showcased quite a cast of worthies for us.

Malcolm X didn't mince words. "I'm not an American!" he sputtered, "America is a nightmare! America practices slavery! The white man is the common enemy!" Naturally, Time magazines heralded him to high heavens during Black History Month.

Harry Belafonte lays it on the line, "Bush is the greatest tyrant in the world--the greatest terrorist in the world!" To commemorate Black History Month, Viacom's TV Land network conducted a reverential one hour chat with Belafonte.

Father of the Black Panthers, Stokley Carmichael was quite explicit: "black people should shoot the hell out of all the white people!" Carmichael got his kudos and high-fives from National Public Radio.

The unenlightened might consider Nelson Mandela an ingrate when a week after President Bush awarded him America's highest governmental award, The Presidential Medal of Freedom, he bellowed: "If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America!" As you might guess, during Black History Month, hosannas to Mandela were all over the place. I can't list them all.

From The History Channel to CNN to A&E's Biography all of these worthy gentlemen and many more from Danny Glover to Louis Farakhan, to P Diddy received reverential treatment during Black History Month. Their ample "contributions" to Civil Rights were all catalogued, their speeches quoted, their "courage," hailed.

No mention by any of the networks of the following however: "Nelson Mandela participated in planning acts of sabotage and inciting violence, so that he could no longer fulfill the criteria for the classification of political prisoners." That's Amnesty International, not exactly an outpost of the racist White Wing Conspiracy.

And no mention that: "The preparation, manufacture and use of explosives, including 210,000 hand grenades, 48,000 anti-personnel mines, 1,500 time devices, 144 tons of ammonium nitrate, 21.6 tons of aluminum powder and a ton of black powder. 193 counts of terrorism committed between 1961 and 1963," is what got Saint Mandela jugged in the first place.

Among other choice Nelson Mandela-ism's, "The cause of Communism is the greatest cause in the history of mankind!" (1961.) "There's one place where Fidel Castro stands out head and shoulders above the rest--that is in his love for human rights and liberty!" Saint Mandela promulgated that gem as Castro awarded him Cuba's prestigious "Playa Giron Award" in 1984. "Playa Giron," by the way, is Cuban for "The Bay of Pigs," which makes the ironies all the more nauseating.

Don't look for this in the MSM, but the second in command who hit that heroic beachhead to free Cuba from Castroism was a black Cuban (and today a proud U.S. citizen and retired Major General of the U.S. Amy) named Erneido Oliva. He was completely abandoned by the Best and Brightest who dumped him and his men on that beachhead with only light arms and no air cover. Oliva's men were outnumbered 30 to one by Castro's Soviet led and supplied troops, who had swarms of Soviet T-34 Tanks and jets overhead.

On the third day of unrelenting battle Oliva's men were virtually out of ammo for their carbines and the battlefield horrors were taking their toll. Crazed by hunger and thirst, they'd been shooting and reloading without sleep for three days. Many were hallucinating. By then they knew damn well they'd been abandoned.

That's when Castro’s Soviet Howitzers opened up, huge 122 mm ones, four batteries’ worth. They pounded 2,000 rounds into Oliva's men over a four-hour period. "It sounded like the end of the world," one said later. "Rommel’s crack Afrika Corps broke and ran under a similar bombardment," wrote Haynes Johnson in his book, the Bay of Pigs. By that time the freedom-fighters were dazed, delirious with fatigue, thirst and hunger, too deafened by the bombardment to even hear orders.

But these men were in no mood to emulate Rommel's crack Afrika Corps by retreating. Instead they were fortified by a resolve no conquering troops could ever call upon--the burning duty to free their nation, to free their very families. They'd seen Communism point-blank: stealing, lying, jailing, poisoning minds, murdering. They'd seen the midnight raids, the drumbeat trials. They'd heard the chilling "FUEGO!" as Castro's firing squads murdered thousands of brave countrymen. More importantly, they heard the "Viva Cuba Libre!" from the bound and blindfolded patriots, right before the bullets ripped them apart.

They set their jaws and resolved to smash this murderous barbarism that was ravaging their homeland. And they went at it with a vengeance. Their commander, Oliva, had to scream over that hellish Soviet bombardment but he made himself heard: "THERE IS NO RETREAT, CARAJO!" Oliva stood and bellowed to his dazed, abandoned and horribly outnumbered men. "WE STAND AND FIGHT!"

And so they did--and wrote as glorious a chapter in military history and the annals of freedom as any you'd care to read.

When his betrayed, decimated, thirst-crazed, and ammo-less men were finally overwhelmed (but NOT defeated!) by Castro’s bumblers at the Bay of Pigs, Oliva snarled at his brainless eunuch of an opponent, Jose Fernandez (a Spaniard, technically), The only reason you’re holding a gun on us right now, Fernandez, is because we ran out of ammo.”

During almost two years in Castro’s dungeons, Oliva and his men lived under a daily death sentence. Escaping that sentence would have been easy: simply sign the little confession (Communists just love b**lxxxx paperwork!) admitting they were mercenaries of the Yankee imperialists!” or otherwise bashing the U.S.

Neither Oliva nor any of his men signed the document. His hundreds of men stood solidly with their commander. We will die with dignity!” snapped Oliva at the furious Castroites again, and again, and again. To a Castroite such an attitude not only enrages but baffles.

"A soldier to the bone," That's former Secretary of State General Alexander Haig referring to Erneido Oliva, whom he worked with in the early 60's. "One of the most fiercely honorable men I have ever known."

Eusebio Penalver suffered three times as long in Castro’s Gulag as Solzhenitsyn suffered in Stalin’s. He suffered longer than Mandela suffered in South Africa's--28 years. He's the longest serving black political prisoner of the 20th century. So you might think he'd been mentioned during Black History Month at least once during the past 17 years, right?

Wrong! He was Fidel Castro's prisoner, you see. And that doesn't count.

Eusebio Penalver could have easily escaped such lengthy suffering by playing Castro’s little game, by agreeing to rehabilitation” classes, by wearing the uniforms of common prisoners, by admitting to being a tool of the "Yankee Imperialists." Castro made the offer often.

Castro got his answer as swiftly and as clearly as the German commander who surrounded Bastogne got his. Eusebio scorned any "re-education" by his Castroite jailers. He knew it was they who desperately needed it. He refused to wear the uniform of a common criminal. He knew it was they who should don it. Through almost 30 years of hell in Castro's dungeons, Eusebio Penalver stood tall, proud and defiant.

It sounds strange but no man in Cuba is as free as a political prisoner in rebellion,” says longtime Castro political prisoner Francisco Chappi. We were tortured, we were starved. But we lived in total defiance.”

"Inside of our souls we were free,” says another former Castro political prisoner (also Black and today a proud U.S. citizen) named Sergio Carrillo, a paratrooper at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and a Catholic priest in America today. We refused to commit spiritual suicide,” Father Carrillo stresses.

Think about it: the very things spouted ( with one eye on the media) for sensationalist value by the Black buffoons hailed to high heavens by the mainstream media--the very idiocies and monkeyshines the MSN hailed as acts of "courage" by these popinjays, had they been spoken in Castro's jails by Oliva, Penalver and Carrillo would have--for all they knew at the time--saved their lives.

Yet they REFUSED! They REFUSED to renounce the U.S.--though a U.S. administration had sold them all down the river! And they imagined they were signing their own death warrants in their defiance! They REFUSED!

If these men don't qualify as American heroes then the term is utterly without meaning. Yet they're ignored (if not actually scorned) by the Mainstream media during Black History Month. And they say what Alice found through the looking glass was incomprehensible and outrageous? To me this is a thousand times worse....I give up.

In a way, though, it's actually fitting. These men have never played the race card. They don't consider themselves "Black Americans." They proudly call themselves "Americans," period.

Humberto Fontova

Posted by Mike LaSalle 3/10/06

[Ron Ecker]

deleted (double post)

Edited March 10, 2006 by Ron Ecker