Guantánamo

  The Eisenhower administration spent much of the next two years trying to get a bead on Castro (as late as June 1960, a National Intelligence Estimate conceded that it was “unable to answer the simplified question ‘Is Castro himself a Communist?’”).46 At stake was nearly $1 billion in U.S. investment in Cuba. U.S. businesses produced 40 percent of Cuba’s sugar; owned two out of three of Cuba’s oil refineries, 90 percent of its public utilities, and half of its railroads and mines; and, through the likes of Meyer Lansky and his mob associates, dominated Cuban tourism. Cuba, in turn, counted on a U.S. sugar subsidy worth $150 million, which constituted 80 percent of its foreign exchange.47 When, on January 9, 1959, U.S. national security officials first broached the question of how Castro’s rise would affect the status of the Guantánamo naval base, they assumed Castro would do nothing to jeopardize the two nations’ intimate relationship so long as the United States still held the chips in Cuba.48

  By May 1959, Castro had begun to put that assumption to doubt. As early as February, Castro set aside the 1940 constitution that had once restored democratic government and to whose resurrection he had once committed himself. In March he reduced rents by 50 percent, thereby signaling to foreign and domestic property owners an end to the status quo. In April, while on a trip to Washington, D.C., he alarmed U.S. officials by never bringing up the subject of U.S. aid, as if he did not need it. In May he introduced an agricultural reform bill that limited farm holdings to under a thousand acres, directly threatening U.S. sugar producers on the island, some of whom owned 400,000-plus-acre estates. Confronted by these and other developments centralizing and nationalizing Cuba’s politics, industry, and services while targeting foreign businesses and upper-class Cubans, Cubans began to depart for the United States as early as June 1959, just as moderates abandoned Castro’s government. Meanwhile, Castro steeled himself for battle, creating the citizen militia that galvanized the lower classes in defense of the revolution.49 Just over a year after first raising the subject of intervening in Cuba to stop the revolution, the CIA director, Dulles, called for Castro’s overthrow. Castro was a “madman,” President Eisenhower declared in January 1960; he “is going wild and harming the whole American structure.”50

  From January 1960, when Dulles and Eisenhower decided that Castro must be overthrown, to President Kennedy’s pledge not to intervene in Cuba, which precipitated the withdrawal of Russian missiles from Cuba in October 1962, U.S. officials’ sense of the strategic value of the Guantánamo naval base underwent a curious evolution. In the first year and a half or so after Castro’s rise, U.S. officials appear to have been genuinely concerned that Castro might attack the base. By September 1960 that concern yielded to a conviction that should he do so, U.S. forces would go “all the way to Santiago,” as Joint Chief of Staff Arleigh Burke put it. Not to be outdone, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Livingston T. Merchant remarked that if Castro attacked Guantánamo, “that’s it—we are at war. We would move on Havana.”

  No sooner had Burke and his associates come to realize Guantánamo’s potential value as bait than they were forced to acknowledge that Castro was not so stupid as to invite an American invasion. At the very meeting in which Burke and Undersecretary Merchant first raised the rhetoric on Guantánamo, the participants were informed that the State Department considered a Cuban attack on the base unlikely. Guantánamo was too valuable to Castro as a source of anti-American propaganda.51 In that case, U.S. intelligence and military officials would have to precipitate a Cuban attack on Guantánamo or conjure one up on their own. “We should stage an attack on Guantánamo,” Secretary of State Christian Herter told President Eisenhower on November 1, 1960. Contemplating cutting off diplomatic relations with the Castro government, Eisenhower himself argued that “the quicker we do it, the more tempted Castro might be to actually attack Guantánamo,” a prospect that intrigued the president, who would then have had the provocation to depose Castro “with force.”52

  The evolution of U.S. thinking on Guantánamo is also plain in the minutes of the National Security Council. In March 1960, National Security Council officials spoke uncertainly about Guantánamo’s status. Confident that the United States occupied the base legally, Eisenhower officials were less certain of political support at the United Nations should Castro ask the Americans to leave; typically the United States did not like to occupy the territory of another nation without the host nation’s consent. Moreover, at this stage in the getting-to-know-you with Castro, U.S. officials could not be sure that Castro wouldn’t target the base. While Admiral Burke was confident that American marines could repel an armed attack on Guantánamo, he was less sure about the integrity of the water supply, which was piped in from the nearby Yateras River.53

  Throughout this period, the naval base served as a barometer of U.S.-Cuban relations. As early as January 9, 1959, just a few days after the Revolutionary Army’s triumphant arrival in the capital, a meeting of U.S. national security officials acknowledged that the revolutionary turn in Cuba had clouded the future of the base. At a minimum, the officials concluded, Castro was likely to want to renegotiate the lease as well as to end the apparent discrimination against Cuban workers. Still, they did not expect Castro to threaten the base and thereby jeopardize the two nations’ intimate economic relationship.

  The extent to which the naval base was involved in U.S. plans for what became known as the Bay of Pigs invasion remained underreported for years. When Admiral Lyman Lemnitzer wondered aloud in March 1961 if the Cuban exiles training in Guatemala might be moved to Guantánamo Bay, he was informed by Admiral Robert Dennison, commander in chief of the Atlantic Fleet, that the base was not suitable for such purposes—first, because Cuba controlled the local high ground surrounding the bay, hence secrecy at Guantánamo was impossible; and second, because the navy did not want to compromise its legal position at the bay. Still, if secrecy at Guantánamo was out of the question, Guantánamo could still be useful in backing up covert actions in Cuba, especially if, as the administration seemed to hope, Cuba struck back somehow at the United States. In the days leading up to the Bay of Pigs, Dennison pledged to have ready all the ships, planes, and combat troops necessary to overthrow the Cuban government should the opportunity arise. And so, in the weeks preceding the operation’s launch, Guantánamo bustled with activity not seen since World War II.

  But Guantánamo had a role in the Bay of Pigs invasion unacknowledged until relatively recently. Unbeknownst to President Kennedy, simultaneous with the training of Cuban exiles in Guatemala, another band of 260 Cuban exiles, under the leadership of the former rebel army commander and now CIA agent Higinio Días Ane, was preparing off the South Carolina coast for an attack on the city of Baracoa, on the southeastern tip of Cuba, intended to distract the Cuban military in advance of the main invasion force. From Baracoa, the group was to proceed to the naval base and, disguised as Cuban Army troops, provoke the base into launching an attack on Cuba. What happened to this second “invasion” is not exactly clear; it remains a blurry sideshow in the bigger fiasco.54

  In his letter to President Kennedy in March 1961, special advisor Arthur M. Schlesinger had tried to warn the president that illegal, ill-advised, and amateurish plans to undermine the Cuban leader could only backfire, galvanizing support for Castro in Latin America and throughout the world while eroding the young president’s moral authority. But the embarrassment of the Bay of Pigs made the president and his administration more determined than ever. July 26, 1961, marked the eighth anniversary of Fidel Castro’s attack on the Moncada Barracks. To coincide with that anniversary, the CIA planned an operation code-named Patty (sometimes Patty Candela), which included the double assassination of Fidel and Raúl Castro, along with a staged attack on the Guantánamo naval base aimed to provoke a full-scale U.S. response.

  The navy’s injunction against using the naval base to train a covert Cuban exile force or to launch an unprovoked assault on Cuba did not extend to cultivating intelligenc
e contacts in Oriente province or even sheltering Cuban exiles on the base. Besides the assassination of the two Castros, Operation Patty called for the firing of four mortar shells toward the U.S. base from Cuban territory, with one more mortar fired at a Cuban military post near the base, as if originating from the U.S. base. The plan also included the arming by the naval base of local Cubans friendly to the United States, who, again disguised as government forces, would help precipitate the American counterattack. Then, a real war having been triggered, the local Cubans could join the liberators in “restoring” democratic rule to Cuba. Like so many other bungled U.S. operations against the Castro government, the Cubans saw this coming. The leaders of the program were arrested in possession of two 57-millimeter cannons, four bazookas, twenty-three Garand rifles, and an assortment of grenades and ammunition. To this seized cache was later added thirty-five Springfield rifles, a 60-millimeter mortar, one .30-caliber machine gun, twelve M-3 submachine guns, two M-1 carbines, and still more ammunition and grenades, all apparently a product of naval base largesse. 55

  It was not long after this that Cuba filed a formal complaint against the Guantánamo naval base at the United Nations, accusing the United States of using the base as a launchpad for attacks in Cuba. “I shall not descend to reply,” said Ambassador Adlai Stevenson in response, “to the argument that the United States base at Guantánamo Bay, which exists by virtue of a valid treaty between the two countries and which has been there for 60 years, is directed against Cuba and … the Western Hemisphere and that it is harboring mercenaries for an attack.” Such “charges are not only false but absurd. The whole history of this century is eloquent testimony that this installation has been maintained for the defense of the hemisphere and not for attack on the hemisphere.” Looking back years later on his time in charge of Guantánamo and the Atlantic Fleet, Admiral Dennison observed that Guantánamo’s role in the region was as “a benevolent presence, surely. Nobody in his right mind would think we were down there for purposes of conquering somebody or taking over countries.”56

  In the summer of 1961, Kennedy authorized Operation Mongoose, a multifaceted program to remove the Castros from power. This time Guantánamo featured prominently in the planning of espionage designed to inspire yet another retaliatory strike by Cuban forces on the base, which would in turn justify a full-scale American response.

  In late 1961, President Kennedy met at the White House with his brother, the attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and General Edward Lansdale, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The purpose of the meeting was to take stock of the Cuban situation. By all appearances, the situation was becoming more dire by the day, as Castro’s grip on power was tightening and as the United States seemed to be at a loss to do anything about it. From that meeting emerged the conviction that deposing Castro would be the “top priority in the United States Government” in the new year. Just the day before, President Kennedy had told his brother that “the final chapter on Cuba has not been written.” Where Castro was concerned, “all else is secondary—no time, money, effort, or manpower is to be spared.”57

  By early the next year, the attorney general was passing out assignments for Operation Mongoose.58 In February, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations Lansdale reviewed plans designed to “lure or provoke Castro, or an uncontrollable subordinate, into an overt hostile reaction against the United States; a reaction which would in turn create the justification for the US to not only retaliate but destroy Castro with speed, force and determination.” One operation, code-named Bingo, called for the U.S. military to use so-called snakes, or U.S. and exiled Cuban forces planted “outside the confines of the Guantánamo Base,” to “simulate an actual fire-fight,” which would give the appearance that the base was under attack. This simulated attack would then inspire a true counterattack, during which the U.S. base “could disgorge military force in sufficient number to sustain itself until other forces, which had been previously alerted, could attack in other areas.” Properly carried out, “the above could overthrow the Cuban Government in a matter of hours.”59

  It is hard to know how literally this and other optimistic plans for Castro’s overthrow were greeted by top Kennedy administration officials. Their willingness to sign off on the Bay of Pigs fiasco suggests a credulous audience. Operation Bingo was just one in a long list of proposed maneuvers designed to bring down Castro that included, among other dubious programs, Operation Good Times, which aimed to sow doubts about Castro’s populism by raining down on the Cuban countryside doctored photographs depicting “an obese Castro with two beauties in any situation desired, ostensibly within a room in the Castro residence, lavishly furnished, and a table brimming over with the most delectable Cuban food with an underlying caption (appropriately Cuban) such as ‘My ration is different.’” A surefire spark to counterrevolution.

  Operation Bingo was meant to convince the Cuban government that a U.S. attack was imminent, in part by evacuating “selected civilians, including dependents,” from Guantánamo and replacing them with a battalion of marines.60 This was as nothing compared to what the Joint Chiefs of Staff had in mind for Guantánamo by the middle of March. A list of “pretexts to justify US military intervention in Cuba” included an elaborate register of potential actions undertaken at or near the naval base. “A series of well coordinated incidents will be planned to take place in and around Guantánamo to give genuine appearance of being done by hostile Cuban forces,” chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lemnitzer informed Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Among ideas intended to create the appearance of a “credible [Cuban] attack” on the naval base, Lemnitzer noted the following: “Land friendly Cuban in uniform ‘over-the-fence’ to stage attack on base”; “capture Cuban (friendly) saboteurs inside the base”; “start riots near the base main gate (friendly Cubans).” Not all the ideas were so benign: “Blow up ammunition inside the base; start fires”; “burn aircraft on air base (sabotage)”; “lob mortar shells from outside of base into base. Some damage to installations”; “capture assault teams approaching from the sea or vicinity of Guantánamo City”; “capture militia group which storms the base”; “sabotage ship in harbor; large fires—naphthalene”; “sink ship near harbor entrance. Conduct funerals for mock-victims (may be in lieu of (10)).”

  That wasn’t all. “A ‘Remember the Maine’ incident could be arranged,” Lemnitzer informed his boss, adding intriguing fuel to undying conspiracy theorizing: “a. We could blow up a US ship in Guantánamo Bay and blame Cuba. b. We could blow up a drone (unmanned) vessel anywhere in the Cuban waters. We could arrange to cause such incident in the vicinity of Havana or Santiago as a spectacular result of Cuban attack from air or sea, or both.” When the Cuban military investigated the presence of hostile Cuban aircraft or naval vessels in the area, it would lend credence to U.S. accusations. And of course “the US could follow up with an air/sea rescue operation covered by US fighters to ‘evacuate’ remaining members of the non-existent crew. Casualty lists in US newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.”

  This was an administration willing to play hardball; the sluices having been opened, the ideas kept coming: “We could sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated). We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized.” Auto-terrorism? “Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, the arrest of Cuban agents and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement also would be helpful in projecting the idea of an irresponsible government.” And on and on it went: simulated hijacking of a U.S. plane; simulated shooting down over Cuba of a U.S. airliner filled with college students on vacation. What alternative was there, given the fact that U.S. intelligence had determined that “a credible internal revolt is impossible of attainment during the next 9–10 months?” Clearly, it was up to the United States “to develop a C
uban ‘provocation’ as justification for positive US military action.”61

  By August 1962 the U.S. State Department and the CIA contemplated for the first time using Guantánamo to mount covert operations into Cuba. Up to this point the Defense Department had shied away from such requests due to the fact of Guantánamo’s exposure to Cuban surveillance and to naval officials’ reluctance to compromise the navy’s legal standing there. In mid-month, Lemnitzer and CIA director John McCone expressed deep reservations about implicating Guantánamo; a week later, Secretary of State Dean Rusk raised the subject of using Guantánamo for covert operations, with vigorous opposition from the Joint Chiefs of Staff.62 As best is known, this is the closest Guantánamo came to being the launchpad of U.S. military activity in Cuba between January 1, 1959, when Castro rose to power, and November 1, 1962, the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis.