Hoteliers such as John McEntee Bowman, who bought the Hotel Sevilla-Biltmore, had led the way decades before. By the end of the 1950s, though, the lure of gargantuan casino profits under Batista’s contentedly corrupt regime brought a building boom, and Lobo was far too shrewd a businessman to be left on the sidelines. The Banco Financiero played a part in funding the construction of Hollywood actor George Raft’s Hotel Capri and Casino, with its famous rooftop pool nineteen stories in the sky above Havana, and Meyer Lansky’s twenty-one-story, 440-room Hotel Riviera overlooking the seafront Malecón. Designed and built in just six months by one of the founders of the Miami Modern architectural style, the Riviera cost $8 million—nearly $70 million today.
Those were the boom times, when even such an extravagant sum seemed paltry compared to the riches to be reaped over the years to come.
“We close only for revolutions,” José Orozco García, manager of the notorious nightclub Shanghai Theater, told Cabaret magazine writer Jay Mallin in 1956. “We aren’t bothered by anything else.”
He couldn’t have been more prescient.
On the day of Batista’s departure, the casinos were smashed and looted. According to Herbert Matthews, the New York Times reporter who famously met with Fidel and the rebels in the Sierra Maestra early on in the fight, a mob of looters first attacked the Sevilla Biltmore. “Rightly or wrongly, the casinos and slot machines are connected in the public mind with gangsters, police protection and the corruption of the Batista regime and they have also been condemned by Fidel Castro’s rebel movement,” he wrote. A couple of paragraphs later, he continued: “A mob burst into the lobby of the Sevilla Biltmore Hotel and started breaking things up. Then it went outside and began smashing every shop window along the street called Calle Trocadero.”
They smashed some windows at the Hotel Capri, Matthews reported, and a photo accompanying the piece showed a policeman aiming his rifle at two men coming out of the Hotel Plaza, where, the caption said, “a gambling casino was wrecked following flight of Fulgencio Batista.”
I did not read the New York Times article the following morning, but the news of what had happened raced through the streets of the capital. I was not surprised. Matthews was right. The casinos served as a symbol of Batista’s brutal rule for a people who had suffered so much for so long. Now, with the strongman gone, they vented their ire on the businesses connected to his associates.
And Castro took almost no time to satisfy their hunger for revenge. Exactly two weeks after arriving in Havana, he closed the casinos. Permanently.
I had always doubted Fidel, ever since I met him. But in the first glow of the Revolution, nearly everyone saw him as a hero. Even members of my family. I have a daughter who was born in April 1959. The family gave her the name Zoila Victoria. Sounded out, it was, “Soy La Victoria”—“I am the Victory.”
To me, though, Castro seemed to be just a variation of Batista—someone who seized power under the pretense of doing it for the people but who, in the end, only wanted power for himself. Some say Fidel led the assault on Moncada because Batista halted the 1952 election. Castro, then a young lawyer, had been nominated to run as an Ortodoxo Party candidate to Cuba’s House of Representatives. Shutting down the election killed his chance.
Fidel Castro and I were of the same generation. We were in different disciplines at the University of Havana, but I got to know him well. He was one of the student gangsters, a member of the Unión Insurreccional Revolucionaria that was battling for control of the university, and supported violence as a means to that end. One of the directors of the UIR later confessed to me that Fidel participated in various assaults that ended in the death of his student adversaries. The authorities accused him on two different occasions of having participated in the assassination of university leaders. Once he attained power, he cut loose his friends and gangster companions, facilitating their travels outside of the country.
The whole time he lived in Havana, he lived off the money his father sent him and whatever money he could obtain through extortions. He grew accustomed to living without working. He was always distant from his family. He got his education haphazardly in a climate of tension where the strongest bullied and eliminated competitors. At the time, Fidel had more of a Fascist inclination than a Communist one, but his lust for power was obvious. I remained wary.
The CIA had been suspicious of him for just as long. In the agency’s “Official History of the Bay of Pigs Operation,” CIA historian Jack Pfeiffer wrote: “Fidel CASTRO RUZ was identified in one of the earliest reports in Agency files as ‘one of the young, student leaders in Cuba, who manages to get himself involved in many things that do not concern him.’”
A decade later, Castro was a force to be reckoned with and a growing preoccupation for the CIA. According to Pfeiffer, agency officials primarily wanted to know, “Is he, or is he not, a Communist?”
It was enough of a worry, wrote Pfeiffer, that the CIA infiltrated Castro’s rebel forces in the mountains in order to spy on him: “By early 1958, the Agency had become sufficiently concerned about the pro-communist orientation of Castro’s government, and particularly the pro-Castro proclivities of his two principal deputies, Ernesto Che Guevara and Raúl Castro Ruz, Fidel’s brother, that penetration of the Partido Socialista Popular was a priority concern of the field. At least two agents were successfully placed in PSP ranks, and in March 1958, one Agency officer managed to join the Castro forces in the mountains for a period of two weeks and to observe their tactics in combat.”
Castro, however, kept his true colors hidden—and the CIA guessing. It was only in the days just before Fidel took over, President Dwight Eisenhower later wrote, that the head of the agency, Allen Dulles, told him for the first time that “Communists and other extreme radicals appear to have penetrated the Castro government. If Castro takes over, they will probably participate in the government.”
Still, it took many in Cuba by surprise when it happened.
My generation was the one that came to power with the revolution. I had been part of the civic institutions that were opposed to Batista. I had friends who were in the new revolutionary government. The minister of finance, Rufo López Fresquet, was a friend of mine. He invited me to leave my job with Julio Lobo and join the government. I considered it. But when I told my wife, she said, “Don’t even think about that.”
Government workers in Cuba had always had a bad reputation. Not just the ones in Batista’s administration. There was always corruption. So the people associated with the government were not well regarded. By 1959, I had arrived at a prestigious position in a private institution. Sira was right. It would be crazy for me to leave the bank and join the government because of some idealism.
So I stayed at the Banco Financiero. But I had relations with people in the government, and shortly after Fidel and the rebels took control of the government, party leaders in the July 26 Movement called me. I had been editor of the Professional Accountants’ Association’s magazine. They wanted me to run for head of the association again, as a candidate of the July 26 Movement.
National politics had never played a part in the professional associations. I told them that, and I explained to them that I did not aspire to anything. They insisted. They said I had to be part of the July 26 Movement’s slate of candidates. The pressure was so great that they made me go see the finance minister and the president of the court of accounts so that they could convince me. I said no. But they pushed so hard that it made me angry. I decided that I would stand up to them. I decided to run as the candidate of the party opposing the July 26 Movement.
That created a difficult situation for me with the government.
Worse, when the elections happened, I thought I would lose. I didn’t. I won. Overwhelmingly. I don’t think the people voted for me; they voted against them.
The government reacted by taking over the accountants’ association. They made it and its members part of July 26 Movement anyway, as if that’s what we
had been all along.
I prepared a circular denouncing the takeover. Back then, what we had were mimeograph machines. I wrote that it was unjust for them to take over the association, that we had done nothing but to act in the interest of the professional accountants. I never got to send out my leaflet.
Someone with the bank employees union got his hands on it. He gave it to Cuban intelligence, G2. I was in a meeting at the bank when one of their sergeants came to arrest me. He took me back to his headquarters to see a lieutenant there. The lieutenant went on to be the number three man in Cuba. His name was Carlos Aldana.
He treated me very well.
“What’s happening?” he asked me. “Why are you going against the revolution?”
I said, “Oye, Lieutenant, I’m not going against the revolution. I merely have the interest of my professional organization in mind. That flyer is not a secret. That flyer is public. I’m going to send it to everyone.”
We talked for a while longer.
“Are you married?” he asked. “Do you have kids?”
I told him I was, and that we had three.
“You don’t need to be in politics,” he said.
And he let me go.
THE GOVERNMENT HAD not taken over the bank yet, and I kept on working as its comptroller. Lobo wasn’t political. His party was money. When others started leaving Cuba, he stayed. He had no choice. He had built up many debts outside of the country to buy assets in Cuba, so he couldn’t leave the country. All of his wealth was in Cuba. If he came to the United States, he would find himself buried in debt. He’d be ruined. Plus, I think he honestly believed Fidel wouldn’t last.
Journalist William Attwood later said that when he traveled to Cuba for Look magazine in July 1959, “I was told quite flatly by Julio Lobo … that Castro would not live out the year, there was a contract on him.” Attwood, who later served as a diplomat in the Kennedy administration, went on to tell the Church Committee in the 1970s that “assassination was in the air” during his trip to Cuba after Castro’s victory. At a party where he saw some CIA officers, he testified, guests talked “quite openly about assassinating Castro.”
That same month, Cuba’s president, Manuel Urrutia, resigned over concerns about Communist influence in the government. By the end of the year, Castro’s Communist leanings were increasingly apparent, and more of his ministers quit or were ousted. Huber Matos, Castro’s military leader in Camagüey, resigned in October. He was arrested the following day, charged with treason, and sentenced to twenty years in prison.
What I had suspected all along was coming true. Fidel burned with desire for political power. He achieved it in the bloom of youth. And once achieved, he longed to enjoy it until the last day of his existence. In order to perpetuate his hold on power indefinitely, he fathered a Communist revolution in Cuba. He applied terror, mercilessly ordering death or prison for his opponents. The abuses, insults, and tortures those political prisoners suffered was only part of their horrible sentence. The worst punishment was to rob them of the best years of life.
Unbeknownst to me, another part of this story was playing out in Havana that summer. It was a distant and tangential incident, but it involved someone whose role in history would intersect with mine later, and with Kennedy’s assassination. Jack Ruby, whom the world would come to know as the man who killed Lee Harvey Oswald, was visiting Cuba in the summer of 1959. Cuban immigration records showed Ruby “entered Cuba from New Orleans on August 8, 1959, and left on September 11, 1959.”
This was a hot time for Ruby’s associates in Havana’s criminal underworld. Castro had done more than just close the casinos. He wanted to rid the island of the mob bosses who ran them. In June, he ordered the arrest of all foreign citizens connected to the gambling industry. One of them was Santo Trafficante, Jr., the Tampa mobster who ran the Sans Souci and was widely believed to manage all the syndicate-owned casinos in Havana. After the Kennedy assassination, a British journalist named John Wilson Hudson called the U.S. Embassy in London to report that he had been jailed in Cuba in the summer of 1959. While behind bars, Hudson told embassy officials, “an American gangster called Santo [had been] visited by an American gangster type named Ruby.”
CURIOUSLY, ALTHOUGH PROBABLY only coincidentally, David Phillips came to meet me for the first time just a few days after Jack Ruby departed Cuba. I was in my office at the bank, on the top floor, when I got a call from the receptionist. “There’s a gentleman here to see you,” she said. “A Mr. Maurice Bishop. He wants to speak with you.”
The name meant nothing to me.
“All right,” I said. “Send him up.”
He wore a gray suit with a tie. I would later come to know that he always dressed sharply. His hair was always neatly trimmed and perfectly combed. He had rugged good looks, an actor’s face, and a salesman’s smooth grace. He spoke perfect Spanish, but with an American accent.
“How may I serve you?” I asked.
He handed me a business card. I don’t remember the company’s name, but I know it was Belgian. Some sort of mining firm.
He told me he wished to speak with me about a very important matter that required strict confidentiality.
“Is this a business or personal matter?” I asked.
“I want to explain who I am and why I’m here.”
His answer made him seem mysterious. It piqued my interest. That may have been his intention. I waited for him to go on.
“I know that you can be trusted,” he continued. “I’ve reviewed our file on you in detail.”
“File?”
“About your life,” he said. “Who you are. Some of the ideas you’ve expressed.”
My curiosity overwhelmed me. Who was this man? What did he know about me? And why?
For the span of an hour, Bishop provided a detailed account of my life story. He knew the people in my circle of friends, about my family, about my professional triumphs, my political ideas, and my feelings of opposition to the revolutionary government. On this last topic, he seemed to be extraordinarily well informed.
“Where did you get all this information?” I demanded.
He merely smiled.
“And I still don’t know who you are, or why you’ve come to see me,” I continued. “You know a lot about me, and what I think. I’m guessing you’re with the United States government. Am I right?”
He answered unequivocally.
“I’m not here as a representative of the United States government,” he said, “but I am here on behalf of a U.S. intelligence agency.”
Perhaps he learned to be so direct from the agent who recruited him in Chile. I was taken aback.
“What do you want with me?” I asked.
“Cuba is going through challenging times,” he said. “Dangerous times. It’s important for intelligent and determined people to be willing to help prevent it from continuing on its current path.”
He paused, looking me directly in the eyes. Then he smiled again, warmly this time.
“If you’d be willing to listen to a proposition, I’d like to invite you to lunch,” he said. “So that we can continue our conversation.”
I couldn’t just then, but we agreed to meet for lunch the next day at 1 p.m. at the famous Floridita. The iconic bar and restaurant was just a few blocks from the bank, a short walk along old Havana’s crowded principal path, Obispo Street.
The Floridita claimed it was the birthplace of the daiquiri. Whether or not that was true, it was definitely true that the famed author Ernest Hemingway could be found there regularly downing one after another of the frozen drinks. In his book, Phillips claims he saw the writer there once.
It was my drink of choice, too, anytime I went to the Floridita. This time would be no different.
Bishop was already there when I arrived, although it took me a few moments to pick him out, as I stepped out of the blazing midday sun and into the bar’s dark interior.
Once my eyes adjusted to the dim light inside, I sp
otted him at the bar, nursing a martini. He greeted me warmly and asked the bartender to get me a drink. I ordered my daiquiri and took it with me as a waiter led us to a table.
We had barely looked at the menu and ordered when Bishop began. Again, he was remarkably direct.
“I,” he said, “or rather we, are concerned about the direction Cuba is taking. You are, too.”
I nodded.
“Yes,” he continued. “I know. That is why I have come to you and expect that you will accept my proposal to help us in our efforts.”
“Mr. Bishop,” I said, “it is true that I am very concerned about the authoritarian path that Fidel Castro’s government is taking, but surely you must understand that I can’t respond to a proposition without knowing the details.”
“Of course. But not here. Not now. These are difficult times.” He glanced around the bar quickly, now nearly full with lunchtime patrons. “Dangerous times.”
Some might have regarded Bishop/Phillips as unnecessarily fearful. Castro’s regime had not yet cranked up the repressive machinery for which it would become famous later. We did not yet have to worry about the constant vigilance of the government’s network of eyes and ears, the ready betrayals, or the climate of fear. That would come. Fidel would prove himself an eager student of the KGB’s tactics. But it was still early.
Still, the signs were there. The actos de repudio, the ugly, “spontaneous” assaults on “antigovernment” individuals and those perceived to be “enemies of the state,” had begun. Vicious mobs surrounded whoever it was. They screamed insults, shook their fists angrily, and frequently threw garbage or human feces at the accused. People lost their jobs for grumbling about the government, or just because someone said they did.
Also, the executions that had begun with former police, military officers, and government officials accused of brutality, torture, and murder against the populace now continued with others accused of various forms of treason. As the dozens of executions became hundreds, and the enemies from the previous government were eliminated, the regime turned to enemies of the new. They got summary trials and then were lined up to face the firing squads.
Trained to Kill Page 5