Hiram Huesca

Hello Mr. Burton, I'm sorry I took so long to reply. I just looked in here now. SETI was great, while it lasted. A New Democrat Congress Critter decided to make a name for himself by killing our project after we had endured numerous flip-flops on this, the most economical way to search for alien technology, by many orders of magnitude. Eventually, SETI went private, with the generous donations by Barney Oliver, Steve Balmer, Steven Spielburg, and many others. By that time I had found employment elsewhere. We did state-of-the-art research and development in signal processing and detection of unimaginably weak signals buried in enormous levels of radio noise; natural and man-made. My location was at Moffet Field ( civilian side ) home of the late P3 Orion planes that patrolled our coast line to monitor ships that spied on our Silicon Valley electronics industry. The work was challenging and tedious. But from time to time, while I waited for the main-frames ( named Mars, Venus, etc. ) to finish my latest batch of nested-loop convolution integrals , I had a chance to go outside our little trailer and lie back on my car to look at the stars, by the droning of the Orion planes as they feathered their props, and realize what it was that I was doing ( Radio-astronomical Archaeology / Anthropology ) and that made me feel great. There have been some detections that were extremely suggestive of ET technology, like the famous "WOW!" signal of early SETI Researchers. But, unless these are sustained and recorded, they cannot be further analyzed for content. Many of these are from secret spy satellites and their exclusion depends on the cooperation of our national alphabet soup agencies to confirm that they come from their "birds " . The project has moved far beyond its former limits, as computers have advanced and as analytical mathematics has developed from Fast Fourier Transforms to Wavelet analysis ETC. Also, the introduction of optical frequency signal detection has opened a new frontier to exploration. You may want to look up S.E.T.I. Institute, in Palo Alto and peruse their web site. There is even a distributed computing screen saver that lets you participate in the actual search when your computer is idle. Of course, they would love a donation as much as anyone. As for the significance of water seeping in the Martian soil, I find it very exciting. But we must categorize this as a necessary but not sufficient precursor to biologicals. I just hope they find a bug before I kick the bucket. And I am always frustrated that they won't slap a freaking microscope on a lander and dang well LOOK !!! But what do I know ?

Sure .... And I mistook Gerry for a palm tree and Davy for a fire plug?

Thank you Chris. If you go to YouTube and look for LoranHall_01 and 02 , you will see Hall without the goatee but with mustache. It is a vinyl scratcher of a talk he gave to the John Birch Society. It is difficult to date these memories perfectly and the originals seldom have a date stamp. But I am pretty certain that these meetings, numbering three or four, began in mid-September and ended in late October 1962. Gerry and Davy were at the first one when Gerry gave his speech and Hall, Seymour, Davy, and my uncle Pancho unloaded the C4, rifles, etc. to hide under our house ( houses near the Bay sat on pilons ). This was the height of the Missile Crisis and I just cannot forget the Klingon B-52 belching black kerosene smoke onto our neighborhood as it went overhead so low that it covered most of the sky. There were also test firings of Nike-Hercules interceptors and many, many diamond formations of needle-nosed, F-104 Starfighters, from Homestead Air Force Base. This was resolved just before Halloween. Fonseca and his crew were captured and announced shot within a couple of weeks. Then all, except Fariñas, disappeared from our lives as Pancho came down with that 28-day lung cancer. I noticed that Hall, on the easy chair, has removed all the hair from his hands to just under his watch band. Any idea why? I am thinking something to do with latex gloves? The man leaning forward, whispering to Yarey, I have not been able to identify. Anyone not captioned is yet to be identified, if dead. I have a shot of Yarey and some unidentified men, in the kitchen of the house visible through the door, across the street. They are in the process of manufacturing and assembling improvised, lead-balloon grenades that look like WWII pineapples. They have burners and pots with lead, molds, and composition B on the counter top. But until I find out if any of them ( Yarey was executed in a round-up of the Escambray, by Fidel's guys. ) still live and who they are, I won't post their photos, albeit their faces are turned partially away from the lense, except for Yarey.

http://s977.photobucket.com/user/gooddog9/media/Hermandad%20Cubana/169%20LIVING%20ROOM%20ANNOTATED_zps6awpr1s3.jpg.html

Working on it ...

OK John, Tell me what you think of this, www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=89714&search=Hermandad_Cubana#relPageId=1&tab=page This memo derives from the CIA TO FBI memo I mentioned earlier. In the memo above, it states that HC no longer exists as of date of same: June 1963. And the bonds were being sold ( by us ) on or before September 1962. This clearly doesn't gibe with De Haro and 1963 date of inception for HC. The other six pages of the link above are new to me and I have not had time to make sense of it. I don't know if $800 ( $8,000 today ) would have bought that cutter with the built-in torpedo ! I think it had a small cannon too. And I am not clear regarding the actual fate and date of demise of Fonseca et al, since some allegations therein suggest that he may have just run off with our money. But I doubt that the Habana broadcast of their execution was a spoof by JM/WAVE or other installation; too much cloak and dagger for a puny group like HC.

I loath the bucket. I guess I'll have to break down and use it. I have just found more files, at ARRB , on Fonseca, Gerry, and others. Curioser and Curioser: Fonseca may not have died and one person claims he used our money for his private needs. A claim is that he used $800 ( about $8000 today ) to buy the cutter ( and torpedo ? ) . If he didn't die in late October 1962, then the broadcast we heard from Radio Rebelde, Habana, Cuba of his execution was a spoof transmission. I would not have guessed that this tiny group would have warranted such a transmission from ??? . Anyway, this new find is very confusing and does not jibe with my very clear memory of what I witnessed. I will post links ETC. ( and bucket ) soon.

Not to my knowledge, in 1962: If you read the memo attached, ( &^&%$^ I am out of KB for attachments ) the organization was not founded in 1963 as indicated in the exile group's web site where a $0.96 donation gets you a poster. http://cuban-exile.com/menu1/!group.html Go to Mary Ferrel's site and look for Argimino Fonseca and Hermandad Cubana, A New Anti-castro Group in Miami ... There is a clear ( no blacked out lines ) version of both pages there. The memo mentions September of 1962 as the time CIA got the "untested source" report., It was founded in my living room, in 169 NW 28 Street, Miami Fla., prior to the Missile Crisis of October of 1962. Fonseca et al left for Cuba in late mid-October and were announced as captured and shot just before Holloween - bummed that holiday out for us. The bonds I attached a copy of, above, were designed at that time ( I had input into their design and I put the dry seal on each of them ); not in 1963. No one I have contacted remembers the name Pedro De Haro. Maybe you can find him in the two pictures I attached above. If you have contemporaneous photos of him or any biographical information, I could use it. -HH P.S., I need more attachment KB's .

John, I just revisited a web site about exile groups that sells a poster , care-of Haro. This site confuses me because we don't recall Pedro nor the photo of him on line. Since the name, bond design, slogans, etc. of our group were decided in my presence, I am sure the HC was born in my house. It is possible that, after my uncle's death, and that of founders Comandante Fonseca, Argüelles, et al, and the scuttling of the cutter, by Fidel, the H.C. somehow continued its life elsewhere. If so, it is news to me. I wish I had more bytes allowed to post photos of the house as it looked at the time, at 169 N.W., 28 Street, Mia, Fla. as well as my folks and me at the Orange Bowl when the prisoners came back for the John and Jackie Show. That photo depicts, as well, Frank Sturgis and some Interpen members sitting, among the prisoners, a few yards in front of us.

I don't know the name. Is he one of the faces in my photo ?

Chris, Keeping in mind that, at the age of eight, I was just a nipple-level, silent witness, I can only "know of" persons rather than know them as I knew my nine-year old best friend. There are, as you may verify, six permutations of the initials in "Inter-american Affairs Commission". And one of those permutations was already taken. When I first entered the Internet around 1998, I began searching names of old friends, grade-school crushes, etc. For several years, I got only one return, whenever I searched Fonseca or Fariñas, or Arguelles: it was a mention of Fariñas being arrested in Mexico along with his boss Wendell Rollason, for falsifying papers to get children out of Cuba. He had told us all about this upon his return from prison. When I got around to glancing at the source of the web story, I was extremely surprised and intrigued to find that it was a JFK assassination site. There was nothing new there for years. Then, one day, I searched again and the first thing that popped on the screen was the afore-mentioned CIA to FBI memo concerning Hermandad Cubana. Apparently, in the intervening years, some records were released by ARRB. I soon discovered that Gerry had been blogging extensively and was far from dead until 11 months before I found his blogs. As I frantically zipped from one link to another, I once came upon a link that I have never been able to find again: I did not write it down. In it, it was claimed that there were five groups with IAC permutations. Each one was private and featured by-laws that delineated their goal of rescuing 100,000 children and relatives who could not get visas to enter the U.S., and to knock off Fidel. * Each one was headed by a tall Anglo philanthrope. Said philanthrope was purportedly employed in import-export to Latin America. Each one was a CIA cut-out with individuals sharing confusingly similar names and backgrounds. When I saw the film JFK in the theatre, I whispered to my friend, next to me, that Stone was an excellent producer because his Cubans were absolutely perfect in dress, demeanor, phraseology, appearance, etc. And I suddenly exclaimed, at one point, "Look at that, they even have a very tall Americano in fatigues, cap, boots, and pistol strapped on ... just like our group had !!! I had been disappointed so many times by films that jumbled together many Latin cultures; not caring enough to acknowledge our distinctive characteristics. Thus, one might see a sarape paired with a Cuban straw hat, a flask of gaucho mate, and a Puerto Rican asopao dinner. But not Stone! I did not learn that the head Cuban conspirator was not actually Cuban, until many years later. That was excellent as was the depiction of the crates of rifles etc. In the years since Dallas, Gerry had gained weight and aged so I had not recognized him in his cameo appearances. The film's furor died down. I got busy with my career, and time passed. Decades later, on this forum, I discovered that there was a good reason for the similarity; it was no coincidence; it was Gerry ! The man who was a close friend of my family for decades, Anthony Fariñas, was married to a woman from New Orleans. He ran an export-import business to Latin America. He made his first money in the Hotel Workers business, by coordinating labor, from Central America, and arranging conventions to Miami from said countries and from South America, during the tourism off-season. He did not want to tell me what he did when I asked him, one day, after he finished teaching me the rudiments of chess. He held an index finger to his zipped lips and said, " We won't talk about that. " and smiled mysteriously. I asked him because he seemed to be so adventurous that I thought I might want to follow his foot steps when I grew up. Gerry blogged somewhere of a trip that included a Tony Fariñas, along with other tough guys. I searched images and found that this Tony was not our Anthony Fariñas,, but was and organized crime figure. However, this Tony did make his money as a Union leader for the same Hotel workers that our guy organized. And one son's name is also Tony Fariñas. I am intrigued by this but have not been able to form any conclusion about the apparent coincidences. As I mentioned, I met Gerry, who was definitely involved in setting up the Pontchartrain training camp. One reason for swampy terrain is that the Bay of Pigs is hard by the Zapata swamps of Cuba. BTW, Zapata Oil may not be the only link to the failed operation. A perfectly reasonable source of the term "Operation Zapata" is in reference to the Cuban swamps. I think those swamps are named after the Mexican rebel Emiliano Zapata who was routed hence by Teddy Roosevelt, but I may be wrong. An alternative swampy training ground was, of course, the Florida Everglades. Certainly, Gerry trained others there and, what is more, not only did I know of others, as you say, but it would be difficult to not know several young men who where training there for a second invasion: it was as secret as a regional Boy Scout Jamboree. My first real USMC water canteen was given to me by one such trainee. He taught me to scrub the corrosion out of the inside of it by using raw rice and water as a shake scrubber. He took pity on me when he saw me spit the hot water from my toy, toxic plastic canteen, as I played war with my Peanuts Gang friends in the stifling Florida sun. Everybody and their dogs, in Miami of the 1960's, knew groups who trained in the Everglades and in New Orleans. As a student in Miami High (SW 7th Street) many of my classmates were the children of BOP veterans. There was absolutely nothing remotely secret about these operations. I opine that it was meant to be that way by Dulles et al. When our Government teacher, one day, explained to the class that the U.S. had nothing to do with the BOP operation because it would have violated the Neutrality Act, most of us glanced at eachother in disbelief and could not contain muffled guffaws, if you will forgive the oxymoron. BTW, immediately after Fonseca and Arguelles were executed in Cuba, our group dissolved like an Alka-Seltzer and we were ostracized by most of our neighbors for some time. My uncle immediately came down with a type of lung cancer that was repeatedly described, by his doctors, at Jackson Memorial Hospital, in Miami, as "the most amazingly rapid and aggressive cancer they had ever seen; unheard-of in their experience ..." ... etc. Every time someone came by from visiting him, they had identical descriptions of the doctors' comments to them. He went, from the man you see next to Fonseca, to a living skeleton, in twenty-eight days. Once, I accidentally stepped into his sick room at home and I stumbled back three steps: I did not recognize him; he had been transformed so quickly since I last saw him two weeks before. I have trouble with the film Altered States, because it has a scene where the hero is turned into a mass of burning lava as he slammed his arms, fists clenched, against the walls of his home's hall way. My uncle was delirious with horrible, searing pains and he slammed his arms against the walls in a similar fashion while shaking his fist up to a god who did not help him. We had not street smarts enough to procure him some morphine. Those were terrible days for us. I have read the pro's and con's regarding Mary Vary Baker. Can you blame me for harbouring some suspicion that some of her story might be all too veridical ? --HH

OK, Here goes, Original is much sharper. But I was allowed only 28 KB more. ? Arguelles, Pancho Alba, Argimino Fonseca, Antonio Fariñas, ? Lagos. If anyone recognizes faces in audience (with certainty) I'd like to know more about each person there.

Yes, it was H.K. Davis. He did not say very much, except as I noted. I never saw LaBorde nor that slip. Is it important about HKD ? Gerry blogged that Davy might be working at Miami International Airport Security. I wish I could ask him some questions but these might not be welcomed. He has to be retired by now, don't you think ? I just have to know what was in the steel drum -HH

Thanks for the posts, Hiram. Was the boat called Tejana II, or something like that? BTW, Don't pay any attention to "Null and Void" here. --Tommy Hi Tommy, I did not see the name as we aproached the slip to board. The stern may have been blocked. It was kept in the Intercoastal Boat Yard. I have not had time to learn to post an image. If you have a photo of the Tejana III, you might post it so that I can compare it to my photo. --HH Hiram, The photo of the boat you posted looks like the one I found on the Internet when I was "researching" the Tejana III a couple of years ago. Here's another one, with a list of the crew: According to some sources, Larry Laborde was captain of the ship. Here are two photos of him. Do you recognize him? Do you recognize any of these other "characters' from back in the day? http://spartacus-educational.com/1AAcubans.htm Does this look like the "Davy" who came to your house with Hemming? http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKdavisH.htm He's also in this group of photos: Thanks, --Tommy PS Does this look like the dock you went to? La Borde and boat slip are not the ones. I have seen the INTERPEN page. --HH

Hiram, Good stuff. Much appreciated. I know it's probably just a coincidence, but the guy wearing sunglasses looks a little like this mystery man with James Files: credit: jfkmurdersolved.com --Tommy Tommy, Sun glasses man is William Seymour. He looks radically different in each of his photos; like a changeling. Hall: even more so. And neither one remotely resembles LHO as many have claimed. A few years ago I finally found a shot of the Orange Bowl welcome-back JFK speech. The usual shot is of JFK at the podium. But the one of the audience was a treasure because it shows my uncle, aunt, me , and cousin in the seats. My uncle Pancho said JFK would be shot there that day. He chose the seats early and instructed us on how to jump the rail and run away when the shooting started. I sat next to my aunt Ina because I was scared to death. My uncle kept standing up and calling JFK an SOB. Aunt Ina was mortified. Nothing happened. A few months ago I lerned that there had been a scuffle and arrest afterall, in the parking area where we were going to escape. The suspect was a man called "Chino". Any further info on this would be appreciated. The photo of the people at our meeting, at the table are, from left to right : Combat photographer Arguelles, My uncle Pancho, my aunt Ina, Comandante Fonseca, Anthony Fariñas ( Inter-American Affairs commission ), land owner Lagos. A few yards below us, among the returning prisoners, you will find Frank Sturgis, Bayo, a man from my livingroom wearing sunglasses, Hargraves, Collins. OOPS! looks like I ran out of room -- what , for this thread? for topic? forever? Any workaround for this ? -HH

Tommy, Here is the cutter and its sister ship. Coming too are some photos of 169 NW 28 St. , Miami, Fla in 1962 before the neighborhood was demolished. The persons shown in the photos range from INTERPEN and Bay of Pigs veterans to just patriotic neighbors and relatives of mine who are totally innocent of any wrong doing. What is more, one of the men seated at the table essentially saved my life by helping to get me and mine out of Cuba before I wound up in Fidel's youth indoctrination camps. He was a friend of the family for many years. I believe he has passed away since. I am grateful to him. He looks like Elliot Ness of the Untouchables TV series. I was shocked to find his name on a web site relating to the JFK assassination, a decade ago. Cubans talked of JFK with shifting admiration and hatred. HC was all about knocking off Fidel, as were all the other hundreds of CIA funded groups. But serious talk of JFK assassination was not part of it in this group (that I remember). In the photo of the livingroom audience, you may enjoy looking for the "Waldo"s from INTERPEN. Use my montage of INTERPEN members found in this site and meeting audience members. The montage of Loran Hall shows that he is a dead ringer for the character of Gunnery Sgt. Hartman of Full Metal Jacket and TV fame. There are two YouTube's of Hall delivering a speech to a meeting of the John Birch Society that shows he also sounds just like the Sgt. The actor and Hall are from the same area of Kansas. If they did a film of Hall's doings, this actor would be the best casting choice ever. I will post more images to your reply, because I ran out of room. -HH

The Tejana III does not match the boat. I will post another that does. Yes, that is Davy (Howard Kenneth Davis). I did a match-the-face montage years ago for INTERPEN correlation: will post. --HH

Tommy, I just learned, from Kathy, how to attach files. Thank you Kathy. Revisit my original post to see images. --HH

Thanks for the posts, Hiram. Was the boat called Tejana II, or something like that? BTW, Don't pay any attention to "Null and Void" here. --Tommy Hi Tommy, I did not see the name as we aproached the slip to board. The stern may have been blocked. It was kept in the Intercoastal Boat Yard. I have not had time to learn to post an image. If you have a photo of the Tejana III, you might post it so that I can compare it to my photo. --HH

I think Gerry did not like to be photographed. I think Davy did not like to be photographed. I'm pretty sure jesus was not there either. I will try to post an image ... URL ??? I'll have to learn how to post images later. I like your quotes -- mosaic.

Mr. Simkin, New member here If you google "Argimino Fonseca", you will find a memo, from CIA to FBI, describing a new anti-castro group in Miami. This group, Hermandad Cubana, was born in my living room when I was eight years old in the NW section of Miami. The memo mentions an attached "thermofax" copy of a fund-raising bond like those being sold. I have never found the attachment (It would be so nostalgic!) but I do have an original that I could post as a jpeg, if only I could find the icon for attachments here I was tasked with pressing an embossed dry seal on thousands of these. My arm nearly fell off ! I sold only one; to a neighbor "gusana" who took pity on me. My afternoon of TV watching was suddenly interrupted, one day, by my uncle and a group of men I had never seen. They recruited me hurriedly to help them move all the furniture into the bedrooms and kitchen. I feared we had been evicted! We set up folding chairs, a card table at the front, a flag pole with gold fringed Stars and Stripes, another, shorter pole with the Cuban flag, numerous booklets (Don't touch them kid!) , several chairs for dignitaries, precious box fans on wheels, Cuban coffee cups, water tumblers, spinning ash tray, etc. What followed, immediately, reminds me of the Unexpected Party at the beginning of The Hobbit. A giant man, name of "Gerry from the CIA" and a nearly mum partner "Davy" came in, wearing fatigues, boots, and Gerry sported a 1911 Colt on his thigh. These were the guests of honor along with a number of "distinguished and valiant veterans of Playa Girón". Among these were Loran Hall, William Seymour, Dennis Harber, Manolo Aguilar, and others I have not yet identified on-line. One of these had sat a few yards from my family and me, at the Orange Bowl stadium, on 29 December 1962, as JFK and Jackie welcomed them back from their Cuban prisons. What he was doing in my living room almost a year prior to said release and ceremony remains a mystery for me to solve: any suggestions would be appreciated; no Twilight Zone solutions accepted. I have very good photographs of one of these meetings, albeit sans Gerry and Davy. I don't know if it would be wrong to post it. Almost every one involved is now dead or in their 90's. I am very curious as to the identities of several faces there. What wisdom can you offer? Gerry gave a long speech, in basso profundo Cubish, with a "gringo" accent but also with perfect grammar. He stressed that, "Mr. Kennedy gives with one hand and Mr. Kennedy takes away with the other hand. But we don't need Mr. Kennedy. We can do this ourselves. All we need is PLATA (silver) and valour." He used the word "plata" many times. I am remembering more of his speech in bits and pieces only after more than half a century. Gerry - "that Americano is a horse"- of the CIA mesmerized all the women there, including my mom and aunts, with his looks and voice. He won us all over, later, in the kitchen, when he declined American coffee from the huge urn and said, "I don't drink that stuff. I want real coffee. I want Cuban coffee." This flowed from the small cafeterita by the kitchen sink. My brother joked "How is the weather up there?" and ran off when Gerry reache out for him. I was left behind and Gerry had me hold my folded arms stiffly at my sides. He then cupped my elbows with his huge hands and lifted me up like a rocket to face level. He smiled and asked, "So, how is the weather up here?" As I could listen to English better than I could summon up the words at that time, I only said, in broken English, "My father six foot." He said, "You are going to be taller ... mas alto." and set me down with a pat to my head. He then engaged in very quiet and fragmented exchanges with Davy : " we can get it later ... might as well now ... etc." In my opinion, and that expressed by my aunt at the time, these bond sales were a cover for the real source of funds. I say this because three of the men came back in rapid succession asking for three booklets, then a box, then all the boxes (twelve and each about three cubic feet in volume). These requests were separated by not more than twenty minutes. It would have been impossible to even hand out bonds that quickly; much less transact the sales. Nevertheless, a brown grocery bag with long, canvas, zippered pouches like those used by banks and merchants, filled with thick rolls of $100 bills appeared in my uncle's hands after the meeting. He showed me one of the rolls and his .38 special, snub-nose "la fookah" in the bag: not a profane word; just Cubish slang for "gun". I cried out, "Tio!, are we rich now ?!!!" and he responded, "Boy, if I touch this, they will shave my head off!" In Cubish this is , "¡Me la sepíllan!". I do not know whence the money came. But I assure you it was not from sales of bonds to our minimum-wage, blue-collar neighbors. Another twist to this is that most of the people sitting in the audience were not neighbors. They were INTERPEN members and BOP veterans. Gerry, Davy et al later came back, in my uncle's Café Pilon delivery van and unloaded a small arsenal of scoped rifles, C4 (two kinds), initiators, and other such things to hide in the crawl space under our house, in our garage, and in a piano-sized mountain, in our Florida room, covered by a thin layer of coffee bags, chocolate bars, banana chips, etc. I discovered the C4 when I dared to steal some chocolate. But I did not take it off the top where my uncle would notice it gone and polish my rear end with the razor strop. I dug into the center of the pile only to find long gray bars of PlayDough ?? and some plastic-wrapped lumps of stuff that stank like a car engine. I know what that was now. I did not taste any of it. There was also a thirty-five gallon steel drum of something that had to be turned topsy-turvy once every three days. Gerry and Davy showed us how to turn the drum over. For once, Davy spoke! And it was worth the wait. He told us, "If you forget to do this every three days, this whole neighborhood will reach the Moon before the astronauts." To this day, I do not know what was in the drum, even though I have asked friends who were in special forces and trained in demolition. I wish I had discovered Gerry's blog and asked kim. During these block meetings, a skeletal man, in a red MG Midget convertible, would park in front of our house. He would sit stiffly, staring at the windshield of his car. Every ten minutes or so, he would jot down some notes on his little black note pad then pull up a large, wind-up camera with two reels at the back and a long tele-photo lense. He would film our packed Florida room and living room, then set the camera down and resume his wax statue stare at the windshield. My brother and I went out to do a Buckingham Palace Guard number with him. We were told to not bother him. Several of the INTERPEN men and veterans became alarmed. Then Gerry glanced at the man and announced, "Don't worry. He's harmless. He's just FBI doing his job." This man and a partner later visited another uncle of mine, recently arrived from Cuba, at his place of work and interrogated him, unsuccessfully, about the goings on at the house. One day, I returned from school to a strangely roomier and cleaner Florida room: the candy mountain was gone! More than half a century later I have learned that Alpha 66 had retrieved the arsenal while I was at school. We had an 83-foot Coast Guard cutter with a wooden hull. I have photos of it as well. It had been used in shelling operations to kill Fidel. I have to think that innocents must have been hurt instead. But I did not know any of this until six years ago. There is only one other like it remaining, as a floating museum piece, in its original white and shiny state. That old one was the vessel Fonseca et al would go to Cuba with. They were caught and executed quickly, about one week before Dallas, according to executedtoday.com. But I think that the ill-fated raid took place in mid October 1962, during the worst of the Missile Crisis. I wonder if it was related to the Wiliam Harvey raids that got him canned by RFK. My uncle, cousin, and I had been allowed to go below deck very briefly. There was a huge torpedo there and no tube nor catapult to launch it. The cutter, flying American colors, was to be rammed against any Soviet military vessel available to provoke the war everyone else feared. Alternatively, it was to fly a Soviet flag and ram an American ship in Guantanamo Bay. Fonseca was warned repeatedly to not go in this Fidel-killing / ship-ramming raid. He was told there were Castro spies everywhere and he would be found out. And they were. They had barely disembarked when they were met with an unwelcome party. After several days of silence, my aunt got a phone call to turn on our Zenith Trans-oceanic and tune in Radio Rebelde from Cuba. There, a woman was reading off a list of the raiders "esvirros" who had been executed that week. The name Fonseca was read. My aunt covered her mouth and ran out of the room crying. I was surprised at her pity, since she was very upset with her husband for exposing us to possible jail time and removal of us kids. Well this should be enough for a first post, yes? I am still piecing together all of these events that I experienced from two feet below adult eye level. And yet, this was a great vantage point for adults to reveal things they thought I would not remember. If anyone can fill in any of this with your higher knowledge, it would mean the world to me. Sometimes I wish I could file a FOIA request for those FBI movies of my family and our "guests" while they were all young and full of life. Bye! HH

"I was born in Habana, Cuba and became a refugee, in Miami, in 1961, under a U.S. visa waiver program facilitated by the private Inter-American Affairs Commission headed by Wendell Rollason. I graduated, from USF , with a Master of Science degree in physics. I have been a teacher all my life and a scientist for a short stint with NASA's SETI project. I am currently concluding my career as a teacher of mathematics, in Los Angeles, and my loves include Cold War events and realia of the period, Medieval social history, Women’s Studies, cosmology, cooking, and a vicarious, if somewhat pathetic, enjoyment of my nexus ( in Forrest Gump style ? ) with people and jumbled happenings that have long passed into shoddy history books."