Did Fidel Kill Kennedy?

[Tim Gratz]

Responding to Ron's post #252, I certainly concede the possibility that the assassination may have involved persons still upset with JFK over the Bay of Pigs fiasco (several sources indicate there were people who considered Kennedy's decision not to provide air cover as tantamount to murder), although I think the probability is greater that Castro assassinated JFK "in the Gratzian sense" and his motive was as simply as self-defense.

Regardless of which scenario, I think it fairly clear that the Cuban politics played the most significant role in the assassination, one way or the other. So in essence I agree with Ron's post.

[Guest Stephen Turner]

Responding to Ron's post #252, I certainly concede the possibility that the assassination may have involved persons still upset with JFK over the Bay of Pigs fiasco (several sources indicate there were people who considered Kennedy's decision not to provide air cover as tantamount to murder), although I think the probability is greater that Castro assassinated JFK "in the Gratzian sense" and his motive was as simply as self-defense.

Regardless of which scenario, I think it fairly clear that the Cuban politics played the most significant role in the assassination, one way or the other.  So in essence I agree with Ron's post.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Just so newcomers to these threads dont get the wrong impression, Members of the Forum who believe "Castro did it" 1, Members of the Forum who dont believe " Casro did it "Everybody else. Its just that Tim is such a pasionate advocate for his theory,that it can sometimes seem like there's more.

[Tim Gratz]

Indeed, Ron has even coined a new word: Did Castro do it in the "Gratzian sense"?

Maybe I'll ask John to change the name of this thread accordingly!

Edited July 25, 2005 by Tim Gratz

[John Simkin]

Tim Gratz has always refused to believe that JFK was serious about negotiating with Castro. The person who really knew what was going on was William Attwood. He was the man who arranged the negotiations between the JFK administration and Castro in 1963. He wrote about this in his little known book, The Twilight Struggle: Tales of the Cold War (1987). I have therefore decided to post a long extract from this book to explain what was taking place in 1963. I believe this document helps to understand why JFK was assassinated. Take a close look at the last two paragraphs.

On April 21, 1963, McGeorge Bundy, Kennedy's national security adviser, wrote a memorandum entitled "Cuban Alternatives" that made the point, heretofore overlooked, that Castro's death would lead to "singularly unpromising" consequences for U.S. policy, since he would almost certainly be succeeded by his brother Raul. And there was little doubt that Raul was far more likely than Fidel to follow the Soviet script to the letter.

Bundy's memorandum also identified three possible alternatives to continuing futile plots and pinpricks indefinitely: (i) forcing "a nonCommunist solution in Cuba by all necessary means"; (ii) insisting on "major but limited ends"; (iii) moving "in the direction of a gradual development of some form of accommodation with Castro."

The last alternative, which grew out of a January proposal from Bundy to Kennedy about exploring the possibility of communicating with Castro, was then accepted by a new committee, the Special Group, which had assumed responsibility within the White House for reviewing and approving covert actions in Cuba. Sabotage had all but ceased early in 1963. Yet in June-the same month Kennedy delivered his famous speech on making the world "safe for diversity"-a sabotage program designed to "nourish a spirit of resistance and disaffection" was approved in the White House, and thirteen major operations planned for the November 1963 January 1964 period.

What could we-or should we-have been doing instead?

Four realities had to be kept in mind, and weren't:

First, Fidel Castro's one-man revolution was improvised, erratic, whimsical at times, but pervasive - and fueled by passionate popular support. Politically, he was an impetuous radical revolutionary - too undisciplined to be the Communists' satrap but not averse to using them and parts of their doctrine, nor to turning to the Soviet Union for the aid and trade he needed to keep going. His avowal in December 1961 that he'd always been a Marxist was believed by no one who knew him well; but his pride compelled him to say he was neither an opportunist nor some wet-behind-the-ears recent convert to Lenin's teachings.

Second, the revolution he'd set in motion could never be reversed after 1959. To turn the clock back, as the exiles hoped to do, would have meant closing schools and clinics, taking shoes away from children, returning most sugar plantations to absentee landlords, reopening Havana's casinos and notorious brothels and denationalizing expropriated firms whose owners had by now fled. There was just no way. The social and economic transformation of Cuba was too far advanced. Even if the revolution was mismanaged, as it was, the Soviets seemed willing to bail out their protégée indefinitely by buying his sugar above market prices and selling him oil below market prices. As a result, Castro has cost them billions of rubles over the past quarter century; but why should this concern us?

Third, the Cuban exile community, augmented annually by Castro's shrewd policy of letting the disgruntled leave-with one suitcase each created a voting bloc in Florida and some northeastern states that soon carried weight with politicians. Denouncing Castro became a ritual for candidates in certain congressional districts, even though there were more brutal and corrupt dictators then in power all over Latin America.

Fourth, the only identifiable U.S. interests in Cuba were to retain our naval base at Guantanamo Bay (which we have) and to prevent Cuba from becoming a center for Soviet subversion of Latin America.

As it turned out, the Soviets preferred using traditional (and obedient) Communist parties for this purpose, and Castro's forays in the area were such failures that he all but gave up trying to export his revolution in mid-1964, by which time it had become somewhat tarnished by economic failures. Che Guevara, more restless and romantic, carried his revolutionary torch a while longer until his death in the jungles of Bolivia in 1967.

My hunch, buttressed by what I've read and heard, is that by mid 1959 it was too late for us to influence the course or the pace of the Cuban revolution. Castro, like a runaway horse with the bit in his teeth, was going all out. He barely found the time to see our able and generally sympathetic new career ambassador, Philip Bonsal, who replaced two successive pro-Batista political envoys, Arthur Gardner and Earl Smith. Bonsal hadn't given up on Castro in July, as I said earlier, but that was before Cienfuegos's mysterious disappearance, Urrutria's ouster and Matos's arrest and conviction.

In 1958, imaginative diplomacy on our part might have succeeded in persuading Batista to leave (as Marcos was persuaded twenty-eight years later) and allowing the democratic reformists to set up a government while Castro was still in the mountains-a government, backed by the army, in which his 26th of July Movement could play a role but not a commanding one-certainly until elections were held. I was told just such a course of action was proposed in Washington but flatly rejected by Ambassador Smith.

But if Fidel Castro was in fact committed to an anti-American policy, why did he sound so conciliatory in his talk with me? Indeed, why did he even bother to see me? The answer, I think, is that he had not yet turned against us (as he did, understandably, in 1960, when he learned of the Eisenhower Administration's preparations for the Bay of Pigs). He plausibly wanted normal diplomatic and trade relations with us, provided we didn't interfere with his revolutionary programs or even protest-as we did in May 1959 - the seizure of U.S. property without compensation under the new Agrarian Reform Law. Castro was erratic and, as he confessed to me, emotional. It was in character for him to say, "Let us be friends" - and mean it - even while taking economic and political actions in the name of the revolution that were certain to anger us.

My own view today is that our wisest policy would have been to accept the fact that Castro was firmly in control and treat him with benign indifference, letting him know our door was open if he wanted to talk (as I once told Sekou Toure). Harassing or insulting him served no American purpose and was also an unbecoming stance for a great power. After all, we held on to Guantanamo, even though he refused to accept the annual rental payment; we didn't need his sugar, and he was never a threat to our security except in our fevered political rhetoric. The missile crisis was a U.S.-U.S.S.R. stare-down, with Fidel as a bystander, furious when Khrushchev backed off; it was never a Cuban-American crisis. As for the lure of Castroism in Latin America, his efforts in that direction finally fizzled out in Caracas, and Castro turned his attention to agronomy. Look, which had opened a South American bureau in 1963 to cover the expected Fidelista penetration of the continent, closed it down two years later. Absent the specter of Fidelismo, readers of American mass magazines couldn't care less about that part of the world.

To sum up, our national interest was not served by a policy of unremitting hostility any more than it was in the eighties in Nicaragua. It merely isolated us progressively from the Organization of American States and, on the trade embargo, from our European allies, who continued to do business with Cuba. Even the Vatican has kept a papal nuncio in Havana through the years. We have managed to look both surly and scared and, since the Bay of Pigs, vengeful. Europeans often told me we kept slapping at Castro because he'd had the effrontery to thumb his nose at us, just ninety miles from our shores. All we really accomplished was to dispel the myth (to which some Americans still cling) that we are both innocent and omnipotent.

The foregoing considerations made me receptive to some signals I began picking up in September 1963 at the United Nations, where I was assigned to our delegation as special adviser on African affairs. Among my duties were keeping in touch with African delegates and trying to mitigate the effects of our frequent votes in favor of South African or Portuguese positions. (The lawyers who dominated our delegation persisted in viewing the General Assembly as a tidy parliamentary chamber or judicial body, which it certainly wasn't, instead of an unruly political convention where no one ever got nominated and scoring publicity points was the name of the game (along with letting off steam.) Even President Kennedy questioned our almost automatic support of Portugal, something the Pentagon insisted on to safeguard our bases in the Azores. (When I once mentioned to him that backing Portuguese colonialism hurt us in Black Africa, he mused aloud, "The navy keeps saying the Azores are vital to our security. But I bet they'd find an alternative if the Azores disappeared in a tidal wave.")

Anyway, on September 5, I was talking Africa with Lisa Howard, an ABC correspondent, who told me she'd recently interviewed Castro in Havana and was convinced he'd like to restore communications with the U.S. She offered to arrange a social gathering at her apartment where I could meet casually and informally with Carlos Lechuga, Cuba's representative at the U.N.

I told her I'd let her know, on the understanding that she would keep all such contacts confidential in exchange for exclusivity if there should be a story to be told somewhere down the road. But her impression reminded me of something Sekou Toure said to me during the 1962 missile crisis: "I'm sorry for Castro. I think he is a nationalist and a neutralist at heart, whatever he sometimes says. But he had neither the intellectual training nor the ideological experience to understand the Communists. I did-in the trade union movement-so I know how they operate. But Castro is naive and has allowed himself to be used by them. Even so, if you are flexible, I think he can be brought back to a neutralist position."

This could be the moment to be flexible, and in Washington a week later I mentioned the possibility of sounding out Lechuga to Averell Harriman, then an assistant secretary of state. He was intrigued and asked me to do a memo on it. Ken Galbraith, back from India and returning to Harvard, told me Harriman, rather than Stevenson, was the man to see in order to get the president's attention.

On September 17, I ran into Seydou Diallo, Guinea's ambassador to Cuba, in the Delegates' Lounge, and he volunteered the information that Cuba's economy was in a slump and Castro would soon be amenable to some sort of agreement with us. "He is salvageable," he said. "Give him another three months." Other Africans I talked to expressed generally the same view.

That day I wrote a "Memorandum on Cuba," based on the premise that the policy of isolating Cuba not only intensified Castro's desire to cause trouble but froze the United States before the world "in the unattractive posture of a big country trying to bully a small country."

The memo went on:

According to neutral diplomats I have talked to at the U.N., there is reason to believe that Castro is unhappy about his present dependence on the Soviet Union; that he does not enjoy in effect being a satellite; that our trade embargo is hurting him-though not enough to endanger his position; and that he would like to establish some official contact with the United States and would go to some length to obtain normalization of relations with us-even though this would not be welcomed by most of his hard-core Communist entourage ...

All of this may or may not be true. But it would seem that we have something to gain and nothing to lose by finding out whether in fact Castro does want to talk and what concessions he would be prepared to make ...

What I am proposing is a discreet inquiry into neutralizing Cuba on our terms. It is based on the assumption that, short of a change of regime, our principal political objectives in Cuba are: i. The evacuation of all Soviet bloc military personnel. ii. An end to subversive activities by Cuba in Latin America. iii. Adoption by Cuba of a policy of nonalignment.

I suggested the time and place for this inquiry were the current session of the U.N. General Assembly and that, having visited Cuba and talked with Castro in 1959, it would be natural for me to meet informally with Lechuga. If Castro was interested, one thing might lead to another: "For the moment, all I would like is the authority to make contact with Lechuga. We'll see what happens then."

The next day, I showed the memorandum to Stevenson, who liked it. "Unfortunately," he said, "the CIA is still in charge of Cuba." But he offered to take it up with the president. Harriman was in New York on the nineteenth, so I gave him a copy too. He said he was "adventuresome enough" to be interested but urged me to see Bob Kennedy, whose approval would be essential. I called Kennedy and got an appointment to see him on the twenty-fourth.

Meanwhile, Stevenson told me he had talked to the president about the Cuban initiative when he came to New York on the twentieth to address the General Assembly, and got his agreement to go ahead. For some reason, Stevenson was not keen on my seeing Robert Kennedy, but I trusted Harriman's instincts. Bob had been deeply involved in our Cuban relations and would expect to be consulted about this gambit; also, he had his brother's ear as did no one else.

I did tell Lisa to organize her cocktail party, and on the twenty-third Lechuga and I found ourselves talking about Fidel and the revolution in a corner of her apartment. He said Castro had hoped to establish some sort of contact with Kennedy after he became president in 1961, but the Bay of Pigs ended any chance of that, at least for the time being. But Castro had read Kennedy's American University speech in June and had liked its tone. I mentioned my Havana visit in 1959 and Fidel's "Let us be friends" remark in our conversation. Lechuga said another such conversation in Havana could be useful and might be arranged. He expressed irritation at the continuing exile raids and our freezing $33 million in Cuban assets in U.S. banks in July. We agreed the present situation was abnormal and we should keep in touch.

On the twenty-fourth I flew to Washington, gave Bob Kennedy my memo, which he read, and told him of my talk with Lechuga the night before. He said my going to Cuba, as Lechuga had mentioned, was too risky-it was bound to leak-and if nothing came of it the Republicans would call it appeasement and demand a congressional investigation. But he thought the matter was worth pursuing at the U.N. and perhaps even with Castro some place outside Cuba. He said he'd consult with Harriman and McGeorge Bundy.

On the twenty-seventh I met Lechuga in the U.N. Delegates' Lounge-always a good place for discreet encounters because of its noise and confusion-and said it would be difficult for me, in my present capacity as a government official, to accept an invitation to Cuba; however, I was authorized to talk to anyone who came here from Havana. He said he'd pass my message along. Meanwhile, he warned me he'd be making a tough anti-American speech on October 7, but not to take it too seriously.

On October 2, Bundy called to say that Gordon Chase, one of his deputies, would be my White House contact and to keep him informed.

The next day, I lunched with an old friend, Jean Daniel, the editor of the French socialist newsweekly L'Observateur, who said he was going to Washington and then Havana to see Castro, who he had reason to believe would now be receptive to some bold diplomacy from our side. I called Ben Bradlee, then Newsweek's Washington bureau chief, who knew Daniel, and suggested he try to get him an appointment with the president.

On the seventh, Lechuga made his speech, denouncing our trade embargo and the exile raids as warlike acts. It got a lot of applause, even from the moderates, who instinctively sympathized with a small country standing up to a superpower. Stevenson had asked me for a draft of a reply, in which he said that Castro could have peace with all his neighbors if he stopped trying to subvert other nations and taking orders from Moscow and instead started honoring the original democratic pledges of his revolution.

On October 19, a Greek town planner named Doxiades, just back from Havana, dropped in to tell me Castro was sincerely interested in normalizing relations with us.

Two days later Chase called and I told him the ball was still in Lechuga's court.

On the twenty-fourth, the president saw Daniel after Bradlee told him of his forthcoming trip to Cuba. Kennedy blamed our pro-Batista policy in the fifties for "economic colonization, humiliation and exploitation" and added, "We'll have to pay for those sins." But he said the Cuban problem now had a Soviet dimension in that Castro was doing the Kremlin's bidding and acting as its agent in Latin America: "The continuation of our economic blockade depends on his continuation of subversive activities." But as Daniel wrote later, "I could see plainly that John Kennedy had doubts and was seeking a way out."

On the twenty-eighth, Lechuga told me Havana didn't see how formal talks could be useful just now but he'd be glad to continue chatting with me anyway. Lisa Howard had meanwhile been in touch by phone with Castro's personal aide, Major Rene Vallejo. He told her Castro did want to talk personally and privately to us about improving relations and was glad we were ready to listen. She told him about our proposal for a meeting at the U.N., but Vallejo said Castro couldn't leave Cuba just now.

On the thirty-first, Vallejo called her back and said Castro would like a U.S. official to come and see him alone. He appreciated the importance of discretion and therefore offered to send a plane to fly the official to a private airport near Varadero, where no one else would see him. She told him I was the official concerned and would get in touch.

I kept Stevenson informed and also called Chase, who told me on November 4 to come to the White House the next day. There, I briefed him and Bundy on Vallejo's message to Lisa. Bundy said the president was more interested in this Cuban exercise than was the State Department. (I knew he could see the political advantage of possibly weaning Castro away from the Soviet fold.) He asked for a chronological memorandum describing all the exchanges that had taken place since my first talk with Lisa.

On the twelfth, she told me Vallejo had phoned again suggesting I come to Varadero from Key West on an American plane, which was bound to attract less attention than a Cuban plane in Florida. Bundy then called, reiterating that the president favored a preliminary discussion about an agenda, perhaps with Vallejo, at the U.N.-and to call Cuba and tell him so.

During the next four days I tried to reach Vallejo but either the circuit was out or he was. Finally, on the eighteenth, I spoke to him at 2 A.M. and told him the White House position. He said Castro would send instructions to Lechuga to discuss an agenda with me. He spoke fluent English and called me "sir." (Many years later, Castro told me he was listening in on our conversation.)

I reported to Bundy in the morning. He said once an agenda had been agreed upon, the president would want to see me and decide what to say to Castro. He said the president would be making a brief trip to Dallas but otherwise planned to be in Washington.

Meanwhile, in a speech the day before, the president said of Cuba that it had become "a weapon in an effort dictated by external powers to subvert the other American republics. This and this alone divides us. As long as this is true, nothing is possible. Without it, everything is possible." Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who helped in the preparation of this speech, said it was intended to help me by signaling to Castro that normalization was possible if Cuba simply stopped doing the Kremlin's work in Latin America (such as trying to sabotage-vainly, as it turned out-the upcoming Venezuelan elections).

Daniel saw Castro on November 20 and told him of his meeting with Kennedy. He found the Cuban leader thoughtful and attentive; he had Daniel repeat what Kennedy had said about Batista. "He has come to understand many things over the past few months," Castro concluded, adding, "As a revolutionary, the present situation does not displease me. But as a man and a statesman, it is my duty to indicate what the bases for understanding could be."

They met again on the twenty-second, just as the news of Kennedy's assassination was broadcast. Castro seemed stunned. "Es una mala noticia, " he murmured. "This is bad news. This is a serious matter, an extremely serious matter. There is the end of your mission of peace." And later: "At least Kennedy was an enemy to whom we had become accustomed."

He also predicted to Daniel that the Cubans would be blamed for it, as they were for several days after the murder. What Fidel did not know was that Desmond FitzGerald, a senior CIA official, was on that very day, in Paris, giving Rolando Cubela, whose code name was AM/ LASH, a poison pen with which to kill Castro. There is no evidence that Kennedy knew this either. And indeed, what motive would either of them have in plotting the death of someone they were planning to communicate with?

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.

After November 22, the Cuban exercise was gradually laid to rest by our side. On the twenty-ninth, I told Lisa, who was seeing Lechuga, that I had no instructions yet to call it off. On December 2, Lechuga confirmed getting a message from Vallejo authorizing him to talk to me "in general terms"-and had I heard anything from Washington? I called Chase and said the next move was up to us.

Two days later, Lechuga approached me in the Delegates' Lounge to say he now had a letter from Fidel himself, instructing him to talk with me about a specific agenda. I called Chase, who replied all policies were now under review and to be patient.

Jean Daniel returned from Cuba that week, convinced that Fidel wanted to reach a modus vivendi with us. I phoned Schlesinger and Chase at the White House and arranged an appointment for Daniel with Bundy.

On the twelfth, I told Lechuga to be patient and that so far as I knew, we weren't closing the door. (Neither of us knew then that it would be six years before we would meet again-in Havana.)

The General Assembly was coming to an end, and the next day I finally had the satisfaction of casting a vote in the Fourth Committee against South Africa on the question of self-determination for Namibia, which was (and still is) illegally occupied by the South Africans.

President Johnson came to New York and lunched with our delegation after reassuring the General Assembly that he'd be carrying on Kennedy's policies. At lunch, he told me he'd read my chronological account of our Cuban initiative "with interest."

And that was it. I was named ambassador to Kenya in January, and during my Washington briefings I saw Chase, who told me there was apparently no desire among the Johnson people to do anything about Cuba in an election year.

On April 7, Johnson did decide to discontinue the CIA-controlled sabotage raids against Cuba, which John McCone, the CIA director, interpreted as giving up our long-standing objective of overthrowing the regime. Later, Johnson was quoted in an interview as saying that when he took office he had discovered that "we had been operating a damned Murder, Inc., in the Caribbean."

What part, if any, our Cuban gambit played in Kennedy's assassination is the kind of question that now seems pointless to raise. While we kept the exercise under wraps (apparently not even the secretary of state was fully apprised), the CIA must have had an inkling of what was happening from phone taps and surveillance of Lechuga. The news could then have trickled down to the frustrated Bay of Pigs veterans still huddled around their CIA case officers, still hoping for another invasion attempt. An accommodation would have dashed these hopes. Many Cuban adventurers like Frank Fiorini, alias Frank Sturgis, who would wind up working the catacombs of Watergate, could easily have been aroused by what Schlesinger has referred to as "a broadside of unknown origin that told Cuban exiles in Miami that `only one development' would return them to their homeland - 'if an inspired Act of God should place in the White House within weeks a Texan known to be a friend of all Latin Americans."'

Aroused enough to help perform the "act"? I don't know and don't care to speculate about it.

[Pat Speer]

Meanwhile, in a speech the day before, the president said of Cuba that it had become "a weapon in an effort dictated by external powers to subvert the other American republics. This and this alone divides us. As long as this is true, nothing is possible. Without it, everything is possible." Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who helped in the preparation of this speech, said it was intended to help me by signaling to Castro that normalization was possible if Cuba simply stopped doing the Kremlin's work in Latin America (such as trying to sabotage-vainly, as it turned out-the upcoming Venezuelan elections).

[/color]

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks, John, for posting this informative excerpt from Attwood's book. I was particularly pleased by Schlesinger's confirmation that the section of Kennedy's speech quoted above was a deliberate message to Castro to let him know accomodation was possible. When I first read this speech I understood it the exact same way. In Bringuier's Red Friday he quotes this speech and claims the exact opposite--that this was the speech of a man determined to overthrow Castro, and that the Castro supporter Oswald killed him as a result. Bringuier, as you know, was DRE, funded and guided by the CIA.

I also find it fascinating that in all the behind the scenes talks the CIA was never consulted. They wouldn't have liked that. Nor would have the JCS.

[John Simkin]

William Attwood, The Twilight Struggle: Tales of the Cold War (1987

That day I wrote a "Memorandum on Cuba," based on the premise that the policy of isolating Cuba not only intensified Castro's desire to cause trouble but froze the United States before the world "in the unattractive posture of a big country trying to bully a small country."

The memo went on:

According to neutral diplomats I have talked to at the U.N., there is reason to believe that Castro is unhappy about his present dependence on the Soviet Union; that he does not enjoy in effect being a satellite; that our trade embargo is hurting him-though not enough to endanger his position; and that he would like to establish some official contact with the United States and would go to some length to obtain normalization of relations with us-even though this would not be welcomed by most of his hard-core Communist entourage ...

All of this may or may not be true. But it would seem that we have something to gain and nothing to lose by finding out whether in fact Castro does want to talk and what concessions he would be prepared to make ...

What I am proposing is a discreet inquiry into neutralizing Cuba on our terms. It is based on the assumption that, short of a change of regime, our principal political objectives in Cuba are: i. The evacuation of all Soviet bloc military personnel. ii. An end to subversive activities by Cuba in Latin America. iii. Adoption by Cuba of a policy of nonalignment.

I suggested the time and place for this inquiry were the current session of the U.N. General Assembly and that, having visited Cuba and talked with Castro in 1959, it would be natural for me to meet informally with Lechuga. If Castro was interested, one thing might lead to another: "For the moment, all I would like is the authority to make contact with Lechuga. We'll see what happens then."

The next day, I showed the memorandum to Stevenson, who liked it. "Unfortunately," he said, "the CIA is still in charge of Cuba." But he offered to take it up with the president. Harriman was in New York on the nineteenth, so I gave him a copy too. He said he was "adventuresome enough" to be interested but urged me to see Bob Kennedy, whose approval would be essential. I called Kennedy and got an appointment to see him on the twenty-fourth.

Meanwhile, Stevenson told me he had talked to the president about the Cuban initiative when he came to New York on the twentieth to address the General Assembly, and got his agreement to go ahead. For some reason, Stevenson was not keen on my seeing Robert Kennedy, but I trusted Harriman's instincts. Bob had been deeply involved in our Cuban relations and would expect to be consulted about this gambit; also, he had his brother's ear as did no one else.

I did tell Lisa to organize her cocktail party, and on the twenty-third Lechuga and I found ourselves talking about Fidel and the revolution in a corner of her apartment. He said Castro had hoped to establish some sort of contact with Kennedy after he became president in 1961, but the Bay of Pigs ended any chance of that, at least for the time being. But Castro had read Kennedy's American University speech in June and had liked its tone. I mentioned my Havana visit in 1959 and Fidel's "Let us be friends" remark in our conversation. Lechuga said another such conversation in Havana could be useful and might be arranged. He expressed irritation at the continuing exile raids and our freezing $33 million in Cuban assets in U.S. banks in July. We agreed the present situation was abnormal and we should keep in touch.

On the twenty-fourth I flew to Washington, gave Bob Kennedy my memo, which he read, and told him of my talk with Lechuga the night before. He said my going to Cuba, as Lechuga had mentioned, was too risky-it was bound to leak-and if nothing came of it the Republicans would call it appeasement and demand a congressional investigation. But he thought the matter was worth pursuing at the U.N. and perhaps even with Castro some place outside Cuba. He said he'd consult with Harriman and McGeorge Bundy.

I think this account undermine's the view that RFK was still plotting against Castro in November, 1963. I believe he fully supported JFK's attempt to negotiate a deal with Castro. I suspect that these CIA leaks about RFK's behaviour is an attempt to disguise what was really going on between the JFK administration and Castro in those last weeks before the assassination.

[Chris Cox]

Isn't it entirely possible for the JFK admin to have a 'two track" policy? What is our unwillingness to believe this? IMHO I think it dishoners the office of Chief to think they in WH weren't apprised of everything (the big things, like Paris) and taking part in this policy of, for simplicity's sake, "for" and "against" dialog with FC at same time? I think it illustrates an attempt to put the frontier of Cold War at a controllable place and if not, then blast on to next step. I see the stature of JFK admin, not as diminished but powerful. I harp on this because it is a matter of our policy to support and then withdrawl support of regimes over our fp history. Did JFK not know we helped Fidel in the early days? This was known in DC, widely. In papers across the country at time. Our ability to support and withdrawl support a major tool of foreign policy. We see this double bind today, so why was it different then? Am I missing some logic?

[Dawn Meredith]

I think this account undermine's the view that RFK was still plotting against Castro in November, 1963. I believe he fully supported JFK's attempt to negotiate a deal with Castro. I suspect that these CIA leaks about RFK's behaviour is an attempt to disguise what was really going on between the JFK administration and Castro in those last weeks before the assassination.

________________________________-

Disinformation takes many forms and "divide and conquor" is the oldest trick in the book. The plan was to kill JFK and blame Castro. Then kill Castro. God stepped in: LHO was not killed immediately as was planned (by Tippit?); Abe Zaprudra was there with his 8 mm, and yet one more kill- Castro- with- a- poison pen-plan failed!!

So, the CIA disinformation team went to work immediately. Dan Rather, Life mag, all of op Mockingbird.

Sometimes authors are so slick that it's hard to tell which side they are on. I remember loving Henry Hurt's Reasonable Doubt until I got to his insane Chapter 11, The Cuban Connection: Coincidnece or Conspiracy". It begins with LBJ's famous quote about Kennedy trying to get Castro but Castro got him first and ends with "Castro was better served than any leader in the world by the death of (JFK)". His whole argument in ch 11 is that the Kennedy's were trying to kill Castro. Odd thing is the rest of this book- (sans the foolsih Easterling confession)- is PROOF of the opposite. It is actually very good research ON the case.

I cold-called Mr Hurt 5/17/86 to discuss this incredible inconsistancy and thus began a series of letters-arguments over this one point. My point here is that perhaps in 1986 the entire purpose of this book WAS chapter 11: disinformation.

We know just how close JFk and Bobby were: there is NO way they were not in agreement on the Castro issue. IMPO, of course.

Dawn

[Charles Black]

Tim

You posted to the effect that regarding Castro "his motive was as simply as self defense"

Do you consider that murdering the head of what was probably the strongest nation that the world had ever known, which held within its arsenal the weaponry to annihilate not only the island of Cuba, but a greater portion of the globe can be consideed a "self defense" measure?

Are you saying that this is sound "self defense" initative.

Hell Tim, with that kind of thinking I suggest that you apply

to the Cuban defense dept. planning section.

Charlie Black

[Mark Knight]

Since Tim has returned to posting here, I'm still wondering where the damning evidence regarding Castro and the NYC bomb plot is.

Is Tim holding out on us, after telling us how convincing this evidence would be? Or is it that the evidence he obtained doesn't make the case he was trying to make?

Seems odd that someone would boast of convincing evidence, pay for it, and then withhold it like that.

Or will it all come out in your book, Tim? [seems everybody is writing a book these days...some just don't know it yet.]

[Mark Knight]

On another thread, in reply to Tim Gratz, Robert wrote:

Back in April, you claimed you would soon supply us with the smoking gun news reports that bolstered your assertion Castro planned to bomb NYC. You needed only to re-type the data you had downloaded from a pay-site. Perhaps you will either provide what was promised, or acknowledge that what you originally claimed just isn't true. Either one would help to salvage your own credibility, which is just as important to readers here as Sprague's own shortcomings.

It's been nearly four months, Tim...my Granny's slow, but she died in 1973, so she has a valid excuse for not moving.

Do you have the information or not? If you have it, what's the delay in posting it?

[Ron Ecker]

While we're waiting, here's a link to an article out of Cuba about the history of Cubans assassinating each other in Miami and elsewhere. It mentions "the attack on November 17, 1962 against Cuban representatives to the United Nations, particularly Roberto Santiesteban Casanova."

This makes it sound like it was not a Castro plot to blow up New York City, but rather a plot against Cuban diplomats at the UN. Or is it referring to Cuban diplomats at the UN being wrongly attacked as plotters? And was Santiesteban an intended victim or a plotter?

The reference doesn't make much sense, but then English is obviously the author's second language.

http://www.ahora.cu/english/SECTIONS/opini...to/16-08-05.htm

[Christopher T. George]

Responding to Ron's post #252, I certainly concede the possibility that the assassination may have involved persons still upset with JFK over the Bay of Pigs fiasco (several sources indicate there were people who considered Kennedy's decision not to provide air cover as tantamount to murder), although I think the probability is greater that Castro assassinated JFK "in the Gratzian sense" and his motive was as simply as self-defense.

Regardless of which scenario, I think it fairly clear that the Cuban politics played the most significant role in the assassination, one way or the other.  So in essence I agree with Ron's post.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hi all

Speaking as a relative newcomer to the JFK assassination debate, it has been my impression that the impetus for an assassination might be more likely to come from the Cuban exiles who were angry that, as they saw it, the Kennedy administration did not fully support the Bay of Pigs invasion and blamed Kennedy for the failure of the operation. This would seem to be the opposite of Tim's scenario. Is that Bebe Rebozo's aftershave that I smell? If there was a Mafia element, as has been posited, it seems to me that they would more likely ally with Cuban capitalists who were involved in the Mob-controlled gambling operations under Batista than with the Communists of Castro's Cuba.

Chris

[Tim Gratz]

Chris, as I recently posted on another thread, if there was Cuban involvement I think the link or nexus was with Santo Trafficante, and I also think he would not necessarily have shared the information even with Marcello or Rosselli.

Allegedly Trafficante and Marcello were urged by Jimmy Hoffa to kill JFK. Trafficante may have also received encouragement (and even compensation of some sort from Castro). And Giancana also wanted JFK dead.

I suggest you read Michael Kurtz's book. He suggests, as incredible as it may at first sound, that there was involvement of both Cuban intelligence and anti-Castro exiles. And perhaps, through Rosselli, of rogue CIA agents.

I posit a rather small conspiracy but one that may nevertheless have been "sponsored" by Cuba, Hoffa and Giancana. It sounds bizarre to have presumably disparate interests involved but Trafficante was in a unique position to put them all together.

[Tim Gratz]

John posted (quoting a Bundy memorandum, I believe):

In 1958, imaginative diplomacy on our part might have succeeded in persuading Batista to leave (as Marcos was persuaded twenty-eight years later) and allowing the democratic reformists to set up a government while Castro was still in the mountains-a government, backed by the army, in which his 26th of July Movement could play a role but not a commanding one-certainly until elections were held. I was told just such a course of action was proposed in Washington but flatly rejected by Ambassador Smith.

John, interestingly, this is just what William Pawley was desperately trying to get accomplished in December of 1958. I think his efforts are summarized in Hugh Thomas' magisterial history of Cuba. Thomas is a fellow Brit as I recall. Pawley may have been concerned with installing someone friendly to American business intererests but I think he recognized the need for a democratic leader who would end Batista's corruption. I think it was the fourth floor of the State Department, not Smith, who frustrated Pawley's efforts.

Edited August 17, 2005 by Tim Gratz