Pascual Enrique Ruedolo Gongora -- an untold story behind the story

[Greg Doudna]

A detail on the case of Pascual Enrique Ruedolo Gongora

He was the Cuban who was in the custody of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in New York City on Nov 22, 1963 and claimed Castro had sent in six to eight hit teams of four persons apiece, to assassinate President Kennedy, and that he was a member of one of them. He had mental issues and had written a rambling, incoherent letter to RFK demanding to be deported back to Cuba. INS arranged to have him sent to Spain to go back to Cuba but Castro would not accept him, so he was returned to the US and committed to a mental institution in New York where he may or may not have lived out his days. 

https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh22/pdf/WH22_CE_1444.pdf

https://ia601301.us.archive.org/23/items/nsia-RossStanley/nsia-RossStanley/Ross Stanley 02_text.pdf 

https://ia801301.us.archive.org/23/items/nsia-RossStanley/nsia-RossStanley/Ross Stanley 05_text.pdf

Harold Weisburg discusses the Ruedolo Gongora story in chapter 11 in Oswald in New Orleans (1967). https://archive.org/details/OswaldInNewOrleansByHaroldWeisberg1967/page/n227/mode/2up 

My only reason for this note is to bring a fact to notice that has not been realized all this time, simply for the record. In all of the past discussions of Ruebolo Gongora--the FBI report which can be found on the MFF site, the reporting of El Tiempo, the National Enquirer major article in the link above, the discussion of Harold Weisberg ... one significant detail has been missed in all of these prior discussions, this part of his story never told:

Ruebolo Gongora was a combatant and survivor of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. Of the 1000-plus members of Brigade 2506, all were either killed or captured except for only 12 who escaped, on a boat, 12 survivors of 22 originally on that boat in an ordeal at sea so horrific that there was cannibalism on that boat. The story of the cannibalism was told in the 1990s by one of the survivors and confirmed by others in the know. 

Ruebolo Gongora was one of those 12. Unheralded, never noted in all of the later stories about him. 

He would not have been crazy at the time he participated in the Brigade 2506 landing and invasion. But it would not surprise me that an ordeal ending up in cannibalism could be a factor in him becoming crazy afterward. 

As a member of Brigade 2506, he would no way have been any Castro agent either. 

I discovered this of Reubolo Gongora by accident. Following is the evidence:

First, he appears by name, Pascal Escuante Ruebolo Gongora, in the "2506 Members Supplemental List" of Bay of Pigs participants on the "cuban-exile.com" website, name #99 in the list here: https://cuban-exile.com/doc_026-050/doc0036.html 

And his name appears as a Brigade 2506 member on the list of members of the Brigade 2506 website: https://www.bayofpigsbrigade2506.com/the-members. 

The Warren Commission Exhibit 1444 (22H860-7), which is an FBI document quoting from an INS file, says only that Ruedolo entered the US April 28, 1961 "as a refugee", giving no prior history or information before that. The Bay of Pigs invasion was April 17, 1961. The only ones I could find of Brigade 2506 who were not killed or captured by Castro was one boat of 22 which made it to the US with only 12 of those living. Conditions were so bad on that boat that one of the survivors told of cannibalism, verified by another and not denied by any in the know, who said it was a secret kept out of respect for the conditions; this was told in news stories in April 1998 such as this one: https://latinamericanstudies.org/bay-of-pigs/baypigs2.htm. I could not find the names of the other 10 of the 12 (two are named in those articles). According to survivor Julio Pestonit's story, the survivors were in that boat 16 days, a "16-day ordeal at sea". That conflicts with the date in Ruedolo Gongora's INS file of April 28 which is only 11 days. But it must be the same and therefore the 16 days must be an exaggeration told and remembered by Pestonit. (I can see no other source in those news stories for the 16 days number than the oral history version of Pestonit 35 years later.) The date of entrance to the United States "as a refugee" on April 28, 1961 of Brigade 2506 member Pascal Ruebolo Gongora according to INS records I believe reflects the true date those 12 survivors on that boat made it to the mainland U.S.

Why this history of Ruebolo Gongora never was told in any of the reporting about him, I do not know. I can only think of that old saying about being slow to condemn someone if one has not walked in their shoes. I do not know what became of Ruebolo Gongora. I cannot find an obituary or notice of death for him, no information on whether he remained confined for life or was ultimately released. It is possible he could still be alive but that is unknown.

[Greg Doudna]

Could this quotation further developed in the Hancock and Boylan paper, "Red Bird Airfield Leads" (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rODOLtGaAe0cni6N5rBnmgmwC71N2hpN/view), be a possible context for why a half-crazed Bay of Pigs survivor might be picked up in NYC on Nov 22, 1963 raving about six to eight teams of Cubans were in cities intent on killing JFK? This from David Boylan:

"[T]he initial legwork on the Cuban mechanic was done by Matthew Smith in his interviews with Wayne January. This was the Red Bird Airport.

Quoting January's talk with the Cuban:

“[Wayne], I tell you. I was a mercenary pilot, hired by the CIA. I was involved in the Bay of Pigs planning strategy which was operated by the CIA. I was there involved with many of my friends when they died, when Robert Kennedy talked John Kennedy out of sending in the air cover which he agreed to send. He cancelled the air cover which he agreed to send. He cancelled the air cover after the invasion was launched. Many, many died. Far more than was told. I don’t know all that was going on but I do know that there was an indescribable amount of hurt, anger and embarrassment of those involved in the operation. … They are not only going to kill the President; they are going to kill Robert Kennedy and any other Kennedy that gets into that position. …You will see…They want Robert Kennedy real bad.” - Cuban pilot.

We believe that this was Manuel Villafana who was the nominal head of the Commando Mambises run by Grayston Lynch who was tasked by David Morales.

He [the Cuban] became comfortable with January after working with him over several days of working together and spoke further about his experience. He was particularly outspoken in relating that his friends had died during the Bay of Pigs landings because JFK had not delivered the promised air cover for them. During their conversations, talk of the President coming to Dallas apparently agitated the Cuban, and he related to January that JFK would be killed in revenge for his comrades' deaths. He stated that “they” were also going to kill RFK because he had convinced his brother not to send planes to support the landings at the Bay of Pigs, and because the Kennedy’s were now in the way of efforts to overthrow Castro. 

(8/4/22, 5th post down at https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/28004-oswald-tippit-and-carl-mather-connecting-some-dots/)

 

[George Govus]

it was my understanding that Kennedy never committed to U.S. air cover. He distinctly forbid U.S. explicit participation no matter what. The opposite was communicated to the Brigade by the C.I.A.

Is that your understanding of the matter, Greg?

[Greg Doudna]

1 minute ago, George Govus said:

it was my understanding that Kennedy never committed to U.S. air cover. He distinctly forbid U.S. explicit participation no matter what. The opposite was communicated to the Brigade by the C.I.A.

Is that your understanding of the matter, Greg?

Yes.  

[David Boylan]

Photo of Villafana and friends before the BOP. Gus Villoldo was instrumental in the capture of Che in Bolivia.

 

 

Edited August 24, 2023 by David Boylan

[Gerry Down]

So we have at least 3 cases where someone was trying to use the JFK assassination as a way to kick the U.S. into a war with Cuba:

Gongora

Alverado

The DRE

And all these 3 incidents took off within hours and days after the assassination.

[Greg Doudna]

1 hour ago, Gerry Down said:

So we have at least 3 cases where someone was trying to use the JFK assassination as a way to kick the U.S. into a war with Cuba:

Gongora

Alverado

The DRE

And all these 3 incidents took off within hours and days after the assassination.

Exactly. Except in Ruedolo Gongora's case, it was never known, even including to those who suspected he was being framed and silenced by the US government, that he was a former Brigade 2506 (Bay of Pigs) member. Ruedolo Gongora himself was (reportedly) saying he was a Castro agent intent on killing JFK and that he had knowledge of wide-scale plotting by Castro to kill JFK. How does a "lone nut", who does not himself disclose to anyone that he is a Bay of Pigs veteran, act out in a way that agrees so well with Alvarado and DRE (the "Pedro Charles" letters) and those apparent attempts to set up the original patsy, Castro? 

The FBI did not interview him, but did investigate and wrote up a report, failing to discover or report in that report, whichever it was, that he was a Bay of Pigs veteran, member of Brigade 2506.