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Castro's Secrets: Cuban Intelligence, The CIA, and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy
Castro's Secrets: Cuban Intelligence, The CIA, and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy
Castro's Secrets: Cuban Intelligence, The CIA, and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy
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Castro's Secrets: Cuban Intelligence, The CIA, and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy

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In CASTRO'S SECRETS, highly acclaimed author and intelligence expert Brian Latell offers a strikingly original view of Fidel Castro in his role as Cuba's supreme spymaster. Based on interviews with high level defectors from Cuba's powerful intelligence and security services, long-buried secrets of Fidel's nearly 50-year reign are exposed for the first time. They include numerous assassinations and attempted ones carried out on Castro's orders, some against foreign leaders. More than a dozen ranking Cuban secret agents embraced by the CIA and FBI speak in these pages; some have never told their stories on the record before. Latell also probes dispassionately into the CIA's most deplorable plots against Cuba - including previously obscure schemes to assassinate Castro - and presents shocking new conclusions about what Fidel actually knew of Lee Harvey Oswald prior to the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateApr 24, 2012
ISBN9781137000019
Castro's Secrets: Cuban Intelligence, The CIA, and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy
Author

Brian Latell

Brian Latell is the author of After Fidel, which has been published in eight languages. He began tracking the Castro brothers for the CIA in the 1960s. His articles have appeared in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Time, The Miami Herald, and The Washington Quarterly. Currently senior research associate at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies at the University of Miami, he previously taught for a quarter century at Georgetown University. He lives in Lancaster, Virginia.

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  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Author Brian Latell has added an new introduction to his compendium of conjectures about the assumed conspiracy surrounding the assassination of JFK. If you are new to this tempest in a tea pot then read the intro and skip the rest of the book--mostly anecdotes and stories told by Cuban defectors. Ask yourself: what do the 50-year-old, self-serving statements of Cuban defectors have to tell us today? Better yet, wait a few years to 1917 when the court will unseal the assasination records and historians will have a field day.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    In Castro's Secrets, Brian Latell, former CIA agent, describes the clandestine war between the United States and Cuba waged by the CIA and its anti-Castro Cuban auxiliaries and associates in organized crime against the intelligence service of the Castro regime. The spies and saboteurs on Castro's side were much better at their jobs, while those enlisted in the service of the CIA were often inept. Only with the defection of high-ranking Cuban intelligence chiefs, such as Antonio "Tiny" Aspillaga in the late 1980s did the CIA gain an accurate window into the world of Cuban spycraft. Only then did the North Americans learn how badly they had been deceived and manipulated by Cuban double agents and false leads over the years. Aspillaga also provided missing pieces in the history of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, such as the so-called "Armageddon letter", a message from Fidel Castro to Premier Khruschev demanding that he unleash the Soviet nuclear arsenal against the United States if the Yankees invaded his island. In Latell's account, the Castro regime was well aware of the campaign of small raids to sabotage crops, transportation links, factories and other facilities and to infiltrate agents and guerillas into Cuba. Some of these activities crossed the line into terrorism, and most of them constituted acts of war, so they were, of course, disavowed by the U.S. government. Castro was also well-informed of CIA plots on his life. These plots sound like they were inspired by Ian Fleming's James Bond but hatched under the influence of Timothy Leary's LSD. Latell writes that the Cuban regime knew about Lee Harvey Oswald but apparently didn't regard him as having much potential in their service. He made a trip to Mexico City in the autumn of 1963 and demanded to be admitted to the Cuban consulate. He spoke of his devotion to Fidel and brandished documents showing his membership in Fair Play for Cuba committees in Dallas and New Orleans and news clippings from those cities, but the consulate guards still wouldn't let him in. Frustrated and hurt, he stormed off but shouted something to the effect of "I'm going to shoot Kennedy when he comes to Dallas!"According to Latell, Aspillaga says the consulate took note of Oswald's outburst. He was still a young spy in training in 1963. One of his duties was to monitor Voice of America and CIA broadcasts from Florida, but he claims that on the morning of November 22, 1963 he was instructed to drop all that and focus exclusively on commercial broadcasting from Texas.Latell states that there is no evidence that Castro had a hand in the assassination of President Kennedy, but he suggests that the Cuban leader knew of Oswald's threat to the President's life and failed to warn him. But how credible was Oswald and was it Castro's responsibility to warn Kennedy? Given that the FBI had a file on Oswald and didn't see fit to share it with the Secret Service, we can hardly blame Fidel Castro, a target of our assassination plots, for not warning JFK. Latell's book is entitled Castro's Secrets, but it might more aptly be named The CIA's Secrets. He speculates that President Kennedy and his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy must have known and approved of the clandestine operations against Cuba, but that is by no means certain. It's entirely possible the Agency conducted the most sensitive operations without Presidential authorization for the sake of plausible deniability. After the Bay of Pigs, President Kennedy would never again place complete trust in his intelligence chiefs. And after the Cuban Missile Crisis it seems highly unlikely that he would promote any action that would risk going to war over Cuba and violating the deal he had made with Khruschev to avert World War III. We must extend Latell the benefit of the doubt, but the CIA is in the business of deception, as is the Cuban intelligence service. While the clandestine war may be less bloody as the Castro brothers approach the end of their lives, by natural means, there is still a state of conflict between the United States and Cuba that makes objective accounting difficult. Twenty or thirty years hence, it may be possible to collect enough factual evidence to create an accurate account.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    ***SPOILER ALERT***Current/Former G-man and author Brian Latell promised his readers a book that would provide "the first penetrating look into the workings of one of the world's best and most aggressive intelligence services, now known to have been personally led for nearly fifty years by Fidel Castro, acting as Cuba's supreme spymaster" (pg. vii). The book's "Forward" was powerfully written and created an expectation of excellence that I had hoped would be maintained through the rest of the text. Castro's Secrets: Cuban Intelligence, the CIA and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy delivered everything that the author had promised to his reader(s) and every extra little bit that I had hoped for as well.

    The story began with a focus on the unpredictable behaviors and unsuccessful life of Lee Harvey Oswald. This man injected himself into the pro-Cuba/pro-Castro cause, becoming so obsessed with it that he demonstrated classic signs of psychological deterioration. Mr. Latell used Oswald's (and other characters') places of work, travel and residence as a way to help readers connect with the storyline. I connected immediately with Oswald's military stint at the former El Toro marine base, in Orange County, California...the same Orange County as Bravo TV's scandalous "Real Housewives."

    However, the created drama of "The Real Housewives" of Anywhere, USA, fails in comparison to the spying, agent flipping, double agent drama of real-life scenarios in the international intelligence community's normal line of work ("Its just another day at the office, Honey."). Castro's Secret's" revealed an espionage-driven, recruitment triumvirate (Cuba, Russia/Soviets, and Mexico) and provided details that connected the historical data points.

    Oswald connected himself with all three of the aforementioned nations, but he did not seem to be wanted by the Cuban Intelligence "welcoming committee." Latell described the obsession Oswald demonstrated toward the Cuban revolutionary cause, but his affections (so to speak) were truly directed toward begging for love from Castro. Oswald even tried to convince his wife to name their first-born child, "Fidel."

    While Oswald revered Fidel Castro, there seemed to be a lack of respect from the United States's intelligence services toward envisioning the capabilities of Cuba's revolutionary leader. Unfortunately, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) did not seriously consider the speed at which Castro could pull together his own version of such an agency--Direccion General de Inteligencia (DGI). He pulled it together quickly and he had support from Russia's KGB.

    The KGB helped DGI hone its tradecraft and one of Cuba's operatives rose through the ranks to become Castro's head of intelligence--Florentino Aspillaga Lombard, also known as "Tino" and/or "Aspillaga." Latell's interviews with Aspillaga gave way to the latter man indicating that the Cubans exhibited higher caliber surveillance work than that of any other intelligence service, regardless of the competitor's size and resources. He asserted, "I had some friends who were brilliant. No one was better than them, not even the Russians or the CIA, nobody" (pg. 40).

    The author also shared techniques utilized to isolate a non-compliant dictator's country (namely, Castro's Cuba) and how a fiscal chokehold was placed upon it. One such example was called a "preemptive purchase program. 'If there was a single source of supply for a particular good, we would go in and buy it to deny the Cubans that market"--Bill Sturbitts, CIA Analyst (pg. 100). It was fascinating information that I could not recall ever having read prior to learning it in this book.

    As I reached the fifth chapter I began to wonder, "What does all of this fascinating stuff have to do with Oswald." The author did not disappoint; in fact, it was like he knew when the reader had reached a certain saturation point and would want the details brought full-circle. He began to re-deliver on page 102...like an extended, time-release medication...always knowing when your body/brain would need more. "Castro knew...They knew Kennedy would be killed"--Tino (pg. 103).

    Kennedy's assassination made people take a closer look at Fidel Castro. He responded with a thoroughly deflective mass communications strategy, being sure to compliment Kennedy often and acted as though the two leaders were about to reach some sort of comfortable co-existence agreement. Evidence failed to materialize, connecting Cuba with an endorsement of Oswald to assassinate Kennedy. In fact, the assailant's delusional thought process motivated him to commit the atrocity in order to garner the notice, and favor, of Fidel...because "Kennedy had been the revolution's most despised and feared enemy, regularly denounced and reviled" (pg. 137).

    While Castro did not want to be linked to Kennedy's assassination, he took great pride in wanting to be perceived as someone like "The Godfather." Head DGI operative Aspillaga, and others, understood that the assassinations occurred when it was suspected that they would flee to freedom. After Aspillaga's defection, there were two assassination attempts made upon his life. Undoubtedly, the information he shared made for a great book; but it was having the right author, with the right life experience, and the right way to meld so many details that came from simultaneously occurring stories that created this outstanding, five-star book. The reader could only image what else Brian Latell would write if the CIA let him.

    The aforementioned opinions are purely my own and not reflective of author nor publisher bias; but, as mandated by Federal Law of the United States of America, I am required to advise that I received this book, free of charge, as a giveaway from the GoodReads FirstReads Program.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This book provided an interesting viewpoint of Cuba’s intelligence system from the perspective of those who worked in it. The introduction could have been more concise as to not make it feel like you didn't even need to read the rest of the book. It would have also have been nice to have included an interview or two portraying Cuba in a more positive light. I really enjoyed how the author captured the personalities of those he interviewed and think that it really helped you identify with those who defected.I received this book for free from the publisher for evaluation purposes. Regardless, all opinions expressed are still 100% my own.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I've never done any looking into the Kennedy assassination previously, I'd simply heard the same bits and pieces everyone hears growing up. So this book was incredibly enlightening to a whole world of stuff I didn't know about. It also went nicely in hand with a previous Early Reviews book I read about the American propaganda war against Cuba. The two of them together give a very informed picture of what went on in those days.It's stunning how much information has come to light in recent years, and that it's still being ignored by most people. Brian Latell did a great job at painting a clear picture, providing witness accounts and bits pulled from the declassified files.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book tells how badly the CIA underestimated the abilities and talents of Cuba and their spy networks. The CIA wrongly assumed that the Cubans were not capable of a highly complex and multi-faceted operation to spy and run agents. The information is based on a few people that were highly placed in the Cuban version of the CIA who defected and some de-classified CIA documents. It was written by an ex CIA analyst who started tracking the Castro brothers since 1960. The books discusses the CIA knowledge of how Castro came into power, the means Castro used to try to over throw certain South American countries to make them communist countries, how Castro used fear and intimidation to rule. It also tells how much Castro and the Kennedy brothers hated each other and the means they used to try to get rid of Castro.This book gives a good explanation of how and why Cuba always knew what was being planned and how the CIA was fooled into thinking that Cuba didn't have the networks for spying.A really good read!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I am usually quick to dismiss conspiracy theories about President John F. Kennedy's assassination. JFK was murdered by a lone gunman on November 22, 1963. I am convinced of that. But an intriguing book about the ties between Lee Harvey Oswald and Cuba convincingly surmises that Fidel Castro had to know of Oswald's intentions to kill Kennedy. Kennedy's killer adored the Cuban leader. Now a book details the ties between Oswald, who harbored deep contempt for the United States, and the Cuban dictator. Brian Latell tracked Cuba for the Central Intelligence Agency beginning in the 1960s. His knowledge of Castro is extensive. In Castro's Secrets: Cuban Intelligence, the CIA and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, Latell details Oswald's obsession with Castro.Latell tells of Oswald's visit to the Cuban consulate in Mexico City, and is convincing in the belief that Oswald talked with the Cubans about his plans to kill JFK. The book documents how Cuban monitoring of radio transmissions emanating from the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters at Langley, Virginia stopped for a few hours on the fateful morning of the assassination. The monitor was directed to point receivers towards Texas instead. There's much intrigue in this book about espionage activities both by the CIA and its Cuban counterpart. The General Directorate of Intelligence, commonly known as the DGI, was involved in monitoring United States government activities long before CIA awareness of it. When John Kennedy became president, he and his attorney general brother Robert wanted to topple the Castro government. It was an obsession. The Bay of Pigs fiasco happened in April 1961. In that well-publicized failure of the CIA, a paramilitary group invaded Cuba with full intentions of overthrowing the government. The failure preceded the Cuban Missile Crisis of the following year. There was great fear that missiles which had been given to Cuba by the Soviet Union would be launched towards cities in the United States. Castro's reaction at the time will shock you. Whether the whole truth about what Castro knew when JFK was shot dead in Dallas may never be known. Speculation about it is certainly fair game though, and it seems safe conjecture that the Warren Commission investigation into the killing missed the mark when it came to Fidel Castro. This is a timely book to read as we approach the 50th anniversary of John Kennedy's tragic death. There will be much media coverage of the half-century mark since the killing, and it is doubtful that many of the stories you hear will touch on the subject that Latell covers very eloquently. I highly recommend it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Castro's Secrets examines the intelligence/counterintelligence conflict between the United States and Cuba. It started when Castro took power and continues to this day. It was particularly nasty during the Kennedy administration. Much of the book is based on author interviews of Cuban intelligence defectors, which adds a sense of authenticity to the book. The author also weighs in on alleged Cuban involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy. Overall a good book, however, it did seem a little disjointed in a couple of spots.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Excellent book on Cuba Castro Oswald and Kennedy. Also very insightful regarding the missile crisis and what could have happened. The book also contains lots of information regarding the CIA and the Cuban intelligence - spy's clock and dagger. While very well written, it does tend to skip from past to present and back, but the writer keeps you on track. Lots of footnotes and supporting docs. Thank you for the opportunity to read and review.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    When starting this book I wasn’t sure if the world needed another volume on the Kennedy assassination. However, Brian Latell (a former CIA analyst) provides some interesting background on the capabilities of the Cuban General Directorate of Intelligence that should come as a reminder that you can never under estimate your enemy. It appears for decades the US was infiltrated with a number of Cuban moles and double agents engaged in games of deception we (the US) believed they were incapable of committing. Too bad for us. As far as Castro’s secrets are concerned, I don’t leave convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald was some type of Cuban agent and that Castro knew or should have known that Oswald was going to murder the President. There is lots of conjecture, some breath-taking (but single-sourced) witnesses that the author believes points a knowing finger toward Castro and the DGI, but it remains just another assassination theory. The book also provides some more detail on the type of information that was withheld from the Warren Commission that might have caused them to make some different conclusions (and then again, maybe not). Still, an interesting tale about Cuban intelligence that has largely escaped our understanding of the Cold War intelligence battles. They were a formidable opponent from the 60s to the 90s (and maybe even today). We underestimated them at our own peril.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Brian Latell has written a wonderful book which makes the claim(or does it?) based heavily on the word and recollection of defectors from Cuba’s intelligence agency. Their stories form the basis from which Latell, a former CIA analyst makes the case that Fidel Castro may well have had prior knowledge of Lee Harvey Oswald’s intention to kill U.S. President John F. Kennedy. In Latell’s book, both Kennedy and Castro come off badly. Our CIA looks bush league in its underestimating the Cuban intelligence(DGI) agency. One should look at this book and decide for themselves whether they believe the case made by Brian Latell. Did Fidel Castro know on the Novevember day that Oswald would fire the shot when he ordered listening devices turned to Texas to listen or just a rogue order? Please read this wonderful book and decide for yourself.

Book preview

Castro's Secrets - Brian Latell

CASTRO’S

SECRETS

CUBAN INTELLIGENCE,

THE CIA, AND THE ASSASSINATION

OF JOHN F. KENNEDY

BRIAN LATELL

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views the CIA or any other US Government agency. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying US Government authentication of information or Agency endorsement of the author’s views. The material has been reviewed by the CIA to prevent the disclosure of classified information.

CONTENTS

Author’s Note

Introduction

1 Better Than Us

2 On Fidel’s Orders

3 Rooftop Stories

4 Come to Cuba

5 At Daggers Drawn

6 Tyrannicide

7 Mouth of the Lion

8 Whiplash

9 The Big Job

10 Great Minds

11 Conspiracy of Silence

Afterword

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

Four pages of photographs appear between pages 148 and 149.

This book is also for Jill

and

for our sons

Jerome Simon Jerry Latell

and

John Wray Latell

AUTHOR’S NOTE

MORE THAN A DOZEN DEFECTORS FROM CUBA’S ELITE INTELLIgence and security services speak in these pages. They worked during different eras for the Castro brothers, with bare-knuckled dedication, dueling with the CIA from the dawn of the Cuban revolution through the late 1990s, until each made the dangerous decision to flee into the welcoming arms of American officials. A few of these brave men must live obscurely with new identities assigned by federal authorities because they are under Cuban government death sentences.

Florentino Aspillaga Lombard, the most knowledgeable Cuban defector ever to change sides, appears here with his true name, although he has lived with a new one since 1987, surviving two assassination attempts by Cuban operatives. Aspillaga agreed to share his personal saga with me during about fifteen hours of recorded interviews. He also gave me a copy of a revealing personal and professional memoir written soon after he arrived in the United States. Until now scarcely any of his memories have appeared on the public record. He has asked nothing of me in return for his remarkable story, has put no limits on how I tell it, and has no stake in the publication of this book.

I have also interviewed other ranking defectors from the Castro brothers’ intelligence and counterintelligence agencies and their personal security and commando squads. Some of these men speak in true name, others I have had to disguise for their protection. (When names are changed, readers are told.) All of the defectors knew that my purpose in meeting with them was to write this book unveiling the mysteries and crimes of Cuban intelligence over the last half century. They too asked nothing of me other than a cafecito now and then, and that I retell their stories accurately.

All of them knew of my own three-and-a-half decades of foreign intelligence work for the CIA and the National Intelligence Council. Most had read my earlier book, After Fidel, and were comfortable conferring with me, most of them on numerous occasions. I had never met any of them during my years in government, although I was familiar with much of their reporting and experiences. In almost every instance, I knew, for example, how highly they were regarded by American intelligence authorities, and how thoroughly their bona fides had been verified.

Nevertheless, in our meetings I applied most of the same debriefing rigors that are standard for intelligence and law enforcement officers. In some instances I was able to confirm what one defector told me by asking another who had not worked closely with him in Cuba. My knowledge as an historian of the Castro brothers and their revolution—as a CIA Cuba desk analyst, National Intelligence Officer for Latin America in the early 1990s, and a university lecturer for 30 years in Washington and Miami—permitted me to pose questions to them with authority. When recounting an especially interesting story in response to a question, one defector told me, No one ever asked me that before.

Their recollections have also been checked against the memories of many former CIA officers I interviewed. Nearly all of them have requested anonymity, but they spoke to me candidly and in numerous meetings, phone conversations, and correspondence. I also had the good fortune to know many of the now-deceased senior CIA officials whose curious and controversial roles in the Cuba wars of the early 1960s are described here. I interviewed several of them before their deaths.

My research inevitably led me to the hundreds of thousands of pages of declassified CIA documents stored at the National Archives. There is no other trove of American intelligence history as brutally revealing of once highly sensitive operational secrets as these records related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Legislation passed by Congress, and signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1992, created the Assassination Records Review Board. The members had the authority to require the declassification of all U.S. government documents considered relevant to the assassination in Dallas. In my last position at CIA, when I served as Director of the Center for the Study of Intelligence from 1994 to 1998, officers of the Center’s Historical Review Group—mostly Agency retirees working on contract—were responsible for declassifying the CIA documents. The CIA History Staff was also part of the Center I managed.

Since my own retirement I have read thousands of those historical records— headquarters assessments by analysts and operatives, field cables, debriefing and polygraph reports, assessments of spies working for CIA, and revealing Agency histories—many of which were released to the Archives with the greatest reluctance and concern. Readers will learn for the first time the identities of secret CIA agents, successful deception operations run against Fidel Castro and his intelligence chieftains, the inner workings of Cuban intelligence, and previously unknown details of the Kennedy-era CIA assassination plotting against Castro.

It was an extraordinary revelation by Aspillaga during my first meeting with him that led me down the circuitous path this narrative pursues. He told me of the order he received early on the morning President Kennedy was shot that strongly suggests prior Cuban government knowledge of what Lee Harvey Oswald would do. Skeptical at first, my research over the last few years led me to declassified reporting from two other reliable American intelligence community sources—both deceased—whose stories about Oswald and Cuban intelligence officers lend significant weight to what Aspillaga told me.

But this is not just a book about the most notorious and documented crime of the twentieth century. It is the first penetrating look into the workings of one of the world’s best and most aggressive intelligence services, now known to have been personally led for nearly fifty years by Fidel Castro, acting as Cuba’s supreme spymaster. The defectors all agree that almost nothing of importance in Cuban intelligence operations against the United States happened without Castro’s involvement. So this is really a many-layered story about him; his character, conspiratorial instincts, audacity, devious brilliance, and hatred of the United States. His many secrets exposed here for the first time reveal Fidel Castro in ways never before fully appreciated.

INTRODUCTION

AT ABOUT 10 A.M. ON SEPTEMBER 27, 1963, THE FLECHA ROJA (Red Arrow) bus pulled into the main transit hub in downtown Mexico City after a seven hundred mile trip from Nuevo Laredo, across the Rio Grande from Texas. Twenty-four-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald, lugging a cheap zippered bag, was one of the first passengers to step off into the crowded, high-ceilinged terminal. He loitered there only briefly, ignoring other passengers he had chatted with during the journey south. There was no time for small talk now. He was in a hurry to move on with a scheme he hoped would give him the chance to start a new life.

Beginning anew was a recurring preoccupation through much of Oswald’s tortured existence. He had joined the Marine Corps in October 1956 days after his seventeenth birthday, hoping to escape his bizarre and controlling mother.¹ After finagling an early discharge, he set out again in September 1959, boarded a ship to Europe, and defected to the Soviet Union. He lived in Minsk for nearly three years, where he worked in a factory and married. But, disenthralled with the monotony and rigors of Soviet life, he returned home with his wife Marina and infant daughter in June 1962. Now, in 1963, it was Cuba that promised another new start, and this time, he thought, the decision would be irreversible. A failure at virtually everything he had ever tried to accomplish, Oswald intended to stay in Mexico only as long as it took to arrange onward travel to Havana. He was in the thrall of his idol, Fidel Castro. The plan was to defect again.

The Cuban revolution had beckoned and intrigued Oswald since the last year of his military service. He was assigned before Christmas in 1958 to Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, near Santa Ana in Southern California, just as Fidel Castro was seizing power in Cuba. Oswald spent the next nine months at El Toro, becoming progressively more enamored of his bearded hero even as Castro’s revolution was spiraling into greater violence and confrontation with the United States. It was a transformational period for the impressionable young Marine. He delved deeper into Marxist literature, became more alienated from the country where he sensed he could never fit in, and immersed himself in news coming out of Havana. Cuba interested him more than most other situations, a Marine officer who had a degree in international relations recalled. He was fairly well informed.²

The interest was not just academic. Oswald and Marine buddy Nelson Delgado dreamed of going to Cuba to take up arms for Castro. They would fight for him, either in defense of his revolution or in a guerrilla incursion of the kind being sponsored by Cuba to topple rival Caribbean dictatorships. The two young Marines were following the exploits of William Morgan, an American army veteran and adventurer who became a high-ranking commander in Castro’s insurgent forces and, after their victory, went on to help defeat a counterrevolutionary plot against Fidel. Oswald was remarkably like Morgan. Both were brooding social misfits, high school dropouts and dreamers—wanderers attracted to high-risk, violent conflicts. They had both been court-martialed and delighted in rebelling against authority. Morgan redeemed himself, however, by starting a new life when he committed to Castro in early 1958. A year later Oswald hoped to do the same. He fantasized that he might become famous too: Morgan had attracted considerable attention as the swashbuckling Americano in a cast of colorful comandantes led by Fidel and Che Guevara.³

Delgado may not really have intended to follow in Morgan’s footsteps, but Oswald was dead serious. They had quite many discussions regarding Castro,

Delgado said. They talked [about] how we would like to go to Cuba. . . . [Oswald] started making plans. He was a complete believer that our way of government was not quite right. . . . He was for . . . the Castro way of life. Delgado’s testimony before the Warren Commission, established to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, shows that he had a keen understanding of the nineteen-year-old Oswald he had known. Kennedy’s assassin was enthralled with the tropical, exuberant Cuban revolution and its charismatic leaders. He wanted to become a warrior for Fidel. Delgado said his friend:

started actually making plans, he wanted to know . . . how to get to Cuba. . . . He kept on asking me questions like how can a person [like him] . . . be part of that revolution? . . . He bought himself . . . a Spanish-American dictionary."

Later, he brought it with him on the bus to Mexico, although he could never speak more than a few words of Spanish. Soon, nonetheless, Oswald was making a determined effort to ingratiate himself with representatives of the Castro regime. Delgado testified that Oz, as most of the Marines called him, developed contacts with Cuban government officials in Los Angeles.

He kept on asking me about how . . . he could go about helping the Castro government . . . so I told him the best thing that I know was to get in touch with a Cuban Embassy. . . . After a while he told me he was in contact with them.

At first Delgado was skeptical of the claim, but when asked under oath if he had concluded it was true, he said, Yes, I did. Oswald told him he was receiving mail from Cuban officials. Although the Warren Commission was remiss by assigning no relevance to these contacts, Delgado had been unequivocal. He remembered going into Oswald’s quarters in the barracks one day, hoping to borrow a tie. It was then that he saw a distinctive envelope addressed to his friend with what he described as an official seal on it. It had been mailed from Los Angeles. There were other letters too. And, Delgado recalled, soon after they started arriving, an unknown visitor came to see Oswald at El Toro. It was a man . . . a civilian . . . and they spent about an hour and a half, two hours talking.

At that time, travel to Cuba was legal for the thousands of Americans who went as tourists, many of them, like Oswald, eager acolytes of Castro’s regime. There is no reason to believe that he was ever among them, but sustained contact with Cuban representatives of the kind Delgado described was all too easy. There were two Cuban consulates in California in 1959. The closest one to Oswald was in Los Angeles, on Sunrise Drive, in the Monterey Park area of the city. It was only about 35 or 40 miles from his barracks.

Manuel Velazquez y Blanco was the consul general and possibly the Cuban in contact with Oswald. Getting to know a well-informed American Marine enamored of Cuba’s revolution, and volunteering like the heralded William Morgan to fight for it, would have been within the expected range of responsibilities for a consul. Velazquez may have thought Oswald had the potential to become another celebrity volunteer like Morgan. In any event, it is now known with near certainty that the consulate opened a dossier on their enthusiastic young contact. It would have included copies of the letters sent to Oswald and summaries of their conversations. I believe that later it must have been transferred to the Cuban espionage service—the Dirección General de Inteligencia (DGI)—after the consulate closed when diplomatic relations were severed in January 1961.

The existence of the file is important because for 50 years Fidel Castro has denied that he and the DGI knew anything about Oswald before the assassination. We never in our life heard of him, he insisted in a speech about 30 hours after Kennedy’s death. Four days later he spoke again, at the University of Havana, and his denials were even more robust. As described in chapters one and two, for about 48 years Castro was Cuba’s supreme spymaster, making every key decision, managing the minutest details of important operations, even hosting friendly meetings with his most outstanding foreign penetration agents. It would therefore have been characteristic for him to have insisted on knowing everything he could about Oswald as he prepared to deliver those speeches. In all likelihood he demanded to see everything the DGI had collected about the assassin.

One proof of Fidel’s duplicity is a telephone conversation between two Cubans, secretly recorded by the CIA station in Mexico City. On the evening of November 22, 1963, a few hours after Kennedy was murdered, a man—seemingly a DGI officer—placed a call to Luisa Calderon at the Cuban consulate in the Mexican capital. The CIA had installed a number of taps on embassy phone lines and transcribed the most important conversations. The young and ebullient Calderon was of interest; she was known by the CIA to be a DGI officer. The CIA’s transcript includes the following incriminating comment about Oswald by the caller: "Oh yes, he knows Russian well, and also this fellow went with Fidel’s forces into the mountains, or wanted to go, something like that."

Calderon responded with a single exclamatory word: Serious! The caller then abruptly changed the subject, also with just one word. Enough! he said, as if he had already revealed too much over a phone line that Cuban intelligence surely suspected was tapped. A question never previously asked: How could the caller have known that Oswald "wanted to go . . . with Fidel’s forces into the mountains"? There had been no media coverage of any such talk by the assassin before Calderon’s conversation. He is not known to have confided those plans with anyone other than Delgado, Marina, and apparently the Los Angeles Cubans. The caller could only have known this by reading the secret DGI files.

Four other sources have confirmed that Fidel and the DGI had advance knowledge of Oswald. Vladimir Rodriguez Lahera, the first important defector from Cuban intelligence—fully trusted by the CIA and used in sensitive operations—told his handlers in May 1964 that Castro had lied. The defector was at DGI headquarters in Havana when news of Kennedy’s death was broadcast. It was there that he heard other officers discussing what they already knew about Oswald.⁹ Alfredo Mirabal, an intelligence officer under consular cover at Havana’s Mexico City embassy, inadvertently revealed in 1978 that in September 1963 he had informed headquarters about Oswald. Jack Childs, a trusted FBI agent in its highly sensitive Operation SOLO, also provided reliable information proving that Castro knew about Oswald before November 1963. Childs’s undercover work included a meeting with Castro in Havana in May 1964 that is described in chapter seven. Remarkably, Castro revealed to Childs that he had been aware that, while at the Cuban consulate in Mexico City, Oswald had threatened to murder Kennedy. And finally, Florentino Aspillaga, the highest-level, most-decorated officer ever to defect from the DGI, is convinced that Fidel had advance knowledge of the assassination in Dallas. Aspillaga’s story is told throughout the following chapters.

Yet these indicators of Cuban regime deception—and apparent DGI engagement with Oswald—have never been properly evaluated.

• The Los Angeles consulate contacts were overlooked by the FBI and the Warren Commission.

• The CIA did not inform the commission of Calderon’s November 22 phone conversation. ¹⁰

• Rodriguez Lahera’s knowledge that Castro had lied apparently was not shared with the commission.

• Mirabal’s incriminating error went unnoticed.

• In June 1964 FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover submitted a report that minimized and distorted the meaning of the Operation SOLO information acquired from Castro.

• Aspillaga’s story was not publicly revealed until the initial publication of this book.

UNTIL OSWALD’S OWN DEATH two days after Kennedy’s, the allure of Castro’s revolution never faded. Yet after leaving the Marine Corps, Oswald decided, impulsively it appears, to defect to the Soviet Union rather than to live in Cuba. During his last months at El Toro, he was straddling the two competing impulses. Delgado remembered that every so often, after [Oswald] started to get in contact with these Cuban people, he started getting little pamphlets and newspapers, and he always got a Russian paper. Another Marine, his roommate, remembered Oz spending a lot of time studying Russian, reading Russian-language books, and becoming better versed in Marxist ideology.¹¹ Soon to be a civilian, he was considering these two alternatives for starting a new life.

Why he chose Moscow will never be known. There is no reliable evidence, for example, that he ever felt an abiding attraction to the Soviet Union similar to what thrilled him about Cuba. Marguerite Oswald, his mother, who knew his quirks and needs better than anyone, understood how easily he might have gone in the other direction. She told an FBI agent in 1964 that she was surprised and upset after learning he had gone to Russia. It would not have surprised her at all, she said, if he had instead defected to Cuba. If the Warren Commission had asked Nelson Delgado he might have said exactly what Marguerite did. She obviously had heard her son speak adoringly of Castro.¹²

Back in the United States after the failure of his Soviet sojourn, Oswald was scathing in his criticism of what he had experienced.¹³ He convinced himself that Cuban communism was pure and dynamic, more revolutionary in its jousting with Yankee imperialism. Castro appeared to be all things the elderly and plodding Soviet hierarchs were not. They had capitulated to Kennedy in the October 1962 missile crisis, while Castro had stood his ground in refusing to allow inspectors on Cuban soil. Oswald was aware too that his hero was fending off predatory American campaigns to oust him from power. In a speech on July 26, Castro enumerated some of the worst offenses of the covert war that are described in chapters five and nine. He told how the Kennedy administration and the CIA were mobilizing for new aggressions. . . . They bombed and killed defenseless families. The imperialists sent pirates. . . . They committed acts of sabotage. It was Kennedy, Castro said, who fathered and developed aggressions against Cuba. . . . Let the [Cuban] people and the world know it. Oswald by then had persuaded himself that Castro needed his help.¹⁴

The tortured loner, unnaturally enamored of Cuba’s revolution, felt a compelling need to help protect the bearded man he worshipped. That spring and summer, living in New Orleans, Cuba was seemingly always on his mind. Marina recalled that he used to talk to me endlessly about Cuba.¹⁵ He read two American Marxist tabloids that regularly ran translations and summaries of Castro’s speeches along with venomous attacks on Kennedy. He listened to Radio Havana propaganda tirades. Marina wrote in a personal narrative she shared with the Warren Commission that he became conceited about doing such an important job and helping Cuba.¹⁶ He wanted her to help him hijack a plane to go there. A picture of Castro was hung on the wall where they lived. He began publicly advocating pro-Castro causes, gaining exposure on local radio and television. He tried, with no success, to form a chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC), a cheerleading group covertly funded by Cuban intelligence.¹⁷ His hatred of his own country was deepening: he told a Cuban exile in New Orleans that if Cuba were invaded by the United States, he would fight on Castro’s side.¹⁸

In early August, acting out a feckless plan to spy for Cuba, he tried to infiltrate a militant anti-Castro exile group in New Orleans and had several encounters with Carlos Bringuier, its local representative. Bringuier wrote that Oswald came into his store in the French Quarter, introduced himself, and stayed to talk about Cuba for about an hour. He asked the Cuban émigré "for literature against Castro."¹⁹ Bringuier told the Warren Commission that:

Oswald told me that he had been in the Marine Corps, . . . had training in guerrilla warfare and . . . was willing to train Cubans to fight against Castro. . . .He . . . was willing to go himself to fight against Castro. I turned down his offer. . . . He insisted, and he told me that [he would bring me a book] . . . to train Cubans to fight against Castro.²⁰

Bringuier, previously an attorney in Havana, was suspicious and concluded that his visitor was a provocateur. He was right. Oswald was trying to gather information about the group’s membership and plans that he intended to share with Cuban officials. He had no doubt learned from reports in the New Orleans media about the FBI’s seizure a few days earlier of bomb-making materials stored by militant Cuban exiles outside of the city. If he could learn more about such commando operations and their leaders, he was sure he would be more attractive to the Cuban regime as a defector.

Unsuccessful, however, he almost immediately abandoned the pose. Shortly after meeting with Bringuier, he was arrested in New Orleans during a street scuffle with exiles who discovered him passing out pro-Castro leaflets. Oswald spent a night in jail. Interrogated by a police lieutenant, he made up a transparent lie, claiming to have been born in Cuba. He said he had been interested in the Fair Play for Cuba group since his time in California, though it was not formed until after he left.²¹ These and other lies were evidence of his increasingly compulsive fantasizing about Cuba. He wished to be a Cuban. Priscilla Johnson McMillan, Marina’s biographer, concluded he was deteriorating psychologically.²² By early September, according to her interviews with Marina, he was increasingly concentrating on one thing—Cuba. . . . He was anxious to be on his way.²³

He was already planning his route when Fidel provided another inducement. On September 9, the New Orleans Times-Picayune published an account of an interview Castro gave to journalists in Havana two days earlier. Oswald was known to be an avid newspaper reader and would have been drawn to the story by its dramatic headline. The Cuban leader revealed he was aware of assassination plots against him. It was even more striking that he also warned that American leaders would be in danger themselves if they helped in any attempt to do away with leaders of Cuba.²⁴ Assuming that Oswald knew of this threat and believed Castro was in danger, he would have brooded yet more about trying somehow to defend him. A week or so earlier Marina twice saw Lee playing with the rifle he would use to kill Kennedy two months later. On one of those occasions he told her that Fidel Castro needs defenders. I’m going to join his army of volunteers. I’m going to be a revolutionary.²⁵

Oswald had already acted with murderous intent in Castro’s defense. That was his motive on April 10 in Dallas when he attempted to kill retired army general Edwin Walker. He used the same rifle, but missed the general’s cranium by a fraction of an inch. One of Castro’s most aggressive, extreme right-wing American adversaries, Walker had attracted a substantial following traveling the country and advocating military intervention to overthrow Castro’s communist regime. He called his crusade Operation Midnight Ride. By Oswald’s twisted logic, murdering the general would have safeguarded Castro from an evil enemy. He told Marina it would have been as justifiable as assassinating Hitler.²⁶

Stirred by the manic desire to defend Castro, on September 17 Oswald visited the Mexican consulate in downtown New Orleans and obtained a tourist card. On September 23 he sent Marina and their daughter to Dallas to live. One or two days later he vacated his apartment on Magazine Street without paying and started on his journey of discovery. He was ready to begin the new life that had eluded him since his days at El Toro. Marina did not expect ever to see him again.

She was sworn to protect the secret of his odyssey. Until she testified before the Warren Commission, it was a trust she refused to violate even when FBI agents repeatedly interrogated her about it after her husband was dead. The extreme sensitivity of his Mexico-Cuba mission was also evident during his interrogations at Dallas police headquarters on November 22. He was enraged when confronted with the Mexico trip that he must have thought had not come to the attention of authorities. He jumped up, slammed his fist on a table, and denied he had gone there. Police Captain Will Fritz, the chief interrogator, testified that Oswald beat on the desk and went into a kind of tantrum. This was the only time during his questioning that Oswald reacted with fury. It suggested that he was trying to conceal something much more sinister than just having visited Mexico City as a tourist. When asked by the Warren Commission about Oswald’s motive for killing the president, Fritz said because of his feelings about the Cuban revolution . . . I think that was his motive.²⁷

IN MEXICO CITY HE WALKED A FEW BLOCKS from the bus depot and booked room eighteen at the Hotel del Comercio for $1.28 a night.²⁸ A modest four-story brick building, it was near two of the city’s main thoroughfares and not far from his quarry, the walled compound that enclosed the Cuban embassy and consulate. Oswald stayed five nights at the hotel, leaving October 2 at about 7 A.M., when he boarded a bus bound for Texas. What he did during most of the time he spent in the Mexican capital remains perhaps the most important unsolved mystery of the Kennedy assassination.

From the hotel he went to the Cuban consulate, arriving late in the morning. He returned the next day and apparently again on October 1, altogether spending upwards of two hours there. Oswald was in the right place; with at least ten experienced operatives, the consulate provided cover for the largest DGI Center anywhere in the world. Initially he dealt with Silvia Duran, the young Mexican receptionist—a compliant adherent of the Castro regime and a DGI asset.²⁹ One of her Cuban embassy colleagues told the CIA that Duran was very intelligent and quick witted, traits she demonstrated when interrogated on two occasions by Mexican authorities, and again in 1978 when she testified, unreliably, before American investigators.³⁰ Consul Eusebio Azcue, believed to be an experienced intelligence officer, and Alfredo Mirabal, the incoming DGI chief, also encountered the young American walk-in. ³¹

Oswald arrived prepared to showcase his revolutionary bona fides, carrying letters, documents, newspaper clippings, and membership cards to prove his value. He told of his experience in street agitation, and probably of his effort to penetrate Carlos Bringuier’s exile group. He boasted of spending a night in jail for the revolution and carried clippings to prove it. Most likely he complained of being harassed by the FBI, and probably told of his assassination attempt against general Walker. While Oswald lived he was never a suspect in that case but probably thought his ferocity would endear him to the Cubans. John Whitten, a knowledgeable senior CIA officer who was the agency’s initial liaison with the Warren Commission, thought so. During congressional testimony in 1976, Whitten asked rhetorically, Did he use this heroic deed to build himself up in their eyes? . . . Seemed to me exactly what he would do.³²

Yet, despite all this, and after his traveling, conniving, and pleading, the Cubans denied him the visa he so desperately sought. It was a humiliating, enraging end to his long quest. He and Azcue fell into protracted, angry confrontations heard throughout the consulate. Shouting, Oswald slammed the door as he finally departed. It was apparently then, according to Jack Childs of the FBI’s Operation SOLO, that Oswald screamed his intent to kill Kennedy. Castro did not explain why that would have been said, what had transpired in the consulate that must have provoked it. But a CIA Cuba expert with many years’ experience tracking the DGI is quoted in chapter eleven; he believed that consulate operatives planted the seed in Oswald, agitated him, and promoted his violent impulses."

Oswald left few traces during the rest of his time in Mexico. Marina said he mentioned going to a bullfight and museums, but no evidence of either was found. Credible reporting later linked him to pro-Castro university students he sought out thinking they could help him go to Cuba. One of the Mexicans remembered how Oswald kept emphasizing that he had to get there.³³ Oswald was rumored to have attended a party at Duran’s home.³⁴ A relationship with her was confirmed when a trusted CIA agent reported four years later that the receptionist admitted to having had an affair with Oswald; she had gone out with him several times, and liked him from the start.³⁵ At a minimum, it is clear she sympathized with him and went beyond the requirements of her job to help him.

No conclusive evidence has ever surfaced indicating that Kennedy’s assassin had additional contact with the three consulate personnel mentioned, or with any of the other DGI operatives at the embassy. Yet, if he spent time with Duran as the CIA source reported, it is likely he also dealt with other Cuban agents. Vladimir Rodriguez Lahera, one of the DGI defectors, thought Oswald probably met in the consulate with Manuel Vega Perez and possibly with his deputy Rogelio Rodriguez. Described in chapters seven and eleven, they were tough DGI undercover veterans. According to declassified CIA records, they masterminded an assassination attempt against a prominent Nicaraguan leader and were at the consulate when Oswald was in Mexico.³⁶ Rodriguez Lahera, who briefly worked at the Cuban consulate in Mexico before joining ranks with the CIA, also reported that Oswald may have had some sort of contacts with the mysterious Luisa Calderon.

Cuban interest in Oswald would likely have been further stimulated by two visits he paid to the Soviet consulate where he met with KGB officers, one of them an officer of the notorious Department 13, responsible for assassinations and sabotage operations. The Soviets were puzzled by what one described as Oswald’s erratic behavior, and they knew he had been dealing with the Cubans.³⁷ At the time, the KGB was providing valuable training and assistance to the DGI, and agents of both services in Mexico would have wanted to compare impressions of the strange, young American in their midst. Such collaboration could also have later resulted in the DGI acquiring copies of KGB surveillance and other records of the time Oswald spent in Minsk. It seems certain that his intelligence file in Havana was thickening.

IN THE FIRST MONTHS FOLLOWING KENNEDY’S ASSASSINATION, little solid information about Oswald’s Mexico interlude was developed for the Warren Commission. In mid-March 1964 its staff director told a CIA representative that the most significant gap appeared in the Mexican phase.³⁸ Belatedly, in April, even as the Warren report was being drafted, three senior staff investigators arrived in the Aztec capital. They confronted many perplexing issues, but a crucially important one bothered them the most. Their trip report shows they "wanted to learn as much as possible . . . with special emphasis on the Hotel del Comercio."³⁹

Interest in the hotel where Oswald stayed was spurred by Thomas Mann, the American ambassador, who strongly suspected Cuban government involvement in Kennedy’s death. He was asked by the commission staffers to what extent it was known in Mexico City that the Hotel del Comercio was a headquarters for pro-Castro activities. Mann told them that it was not known generally at all . . . [but] only in intelligence circles.⁴⁰ These were stunning revelations. The ambassador obviously believed—based on sensitive information—that the DGI used Oswald’s hotel for intelligence

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