A different man opened the door. Not Melton. This man was taller, older. He had gray hair and thick glasses. Very thick. I don’t know why, but I got the impression that he might be a doctor.
Bishop introduced him as John Smith, which I immediately took to be fictitious.
“Smith” spoke Spanish, too. Pretty well. But it was clear that he was a gringo.
“Please,” he said, “have a seat.” He signaled toward a La-Z-Boy recliner.
They didn’t connect me to a lie detector this time, nor to any kind of equipment. This time, Smith handed me a little white pill.
“Take this,” he said. “It will relax you.”
I held it between my fingers a moment, thinking. I wondered what, exactly, I was being given. I was just beginning to recognize that the CIA revels in using euphemisms. For an agency that calls murder “wet work,” I was sure “relax” didn’t mean I was being given a tranquilizer. I suspected it was some kind of truth serum, meant to lower my inhibitions so that I would answer questions without thinking, without resisting, without deception.
“Would you like something to drink?” Smith asked. “Some water, or a soft drink?”
“No, thank you,” I said. I popped the pill in my mouth and swallowed.
He waited about twenty minutes before he started asking questions. I guess they were waiting for the pill to take effect. I didn’t recline. I just sat. Smith stood, chatting with me amicably about meaningless things—the weather, my drive out to the house.
After a while, he asked how I was feeling.
“Good,” I said.
Actually, I felt dizzy. I hadn’t thought about it until he asked, but now I realized that he had been right. I felt relaxed. Very. Woozy, yet conscious.
“Then let’s begin,” Smith said.
This time the questions were much more personal. There were a lot about my sexuality. Did I like women? Did I go out with women? Did I have a girlfriend, or a lover? Was I attracted to men?
“What?” I asked. “I don’t understand.”
“Men,” Smith said. “Do you like men? Physically.”
“No.”
“Not at all? You don’t feel anything when you see a really handsome man? Or when a very good-looking man invites you to lunch?”
“No.”
He continued that way for a while. I don’t remember for how long. I just remember feeling uncomfortable. I couldn’t understand why he kept pressing the issue. I began to wonder if maybe Smith was attracted to men and was projecting his sentiments on me.
Suddenly, he changed tack. He began asking if I liked to drink, or do drugs. Had I ever? Did I want to? What about gambling? He asked me if I went to the casinos. I said no. I didn’t believe in the lottery or any of that stuff. I would go to Club Náutico on occasion. But I didn’t frequent clubs. I wasn’t that kind of guy.
He asked me questions about religion. I answered honestly. I wasn’t a fanatic, but at that time I still believed very strongly. I don’t remember the questions clearly, but I remember they seemed to go on for a very long time. It seemed he kept asking the same things over and over again, about religion, about family, about politics, about my feelings about Cuban sovereignty.
Finally, the questions ended.
I looked at my watch. We had been at it for nearly three hours. My head was clearing. I no longer felt drunk or light-headed. I felt like I was waking from a deep sleep and that, with each passing minute, I was blinking away the grogginess of slumber.
After we finished, Bishop drove me back to the bank. We didn’t talk much. He probably thought I was still feeling the effects of the drug. In fact, I kept reviewing the parts of the interrogation I recalled. Fragments of the session bubbled up in my memory, like broken pieces of flotsam rising in the sea.
By the time we reached the bank, my head was completely clear. As I stepped from the car, Bishop began to speak. I stopped him.
“I know,” I said. “You’ll be in touch.”
He smiled.
“Yes.”
TWO WEEKS LATER, Bishop called. He said he needed to get together with me in a quiet place to discuss the results of the tests. He rented a room at the Hotel Riviera. He said the meeting would probably take about two hours. It lasted more than six, until six in the afternoon. We ordered room service and ate as Bishop continued to go over my answers to the questions in minute detail.
My life was now an open book. He ticked off parts of my history that reflected his interest—delving into all the factors that influenced my personality. He commented on the different stages of my life: about my leadership in the Catholic Youth group, and my abandoning religious fanaticism.
He wanted to know what caused me to lose that faith. He asked about my affiliation with the Radical Liberation political movement I had been part of, along with several of Fidel Castro’s current advisers. He asked about my time at university and about friends from my youth. He asked about my social circle, about the places I frequented, and about my work. I was perplexed about the granular detail he dredged through about my sentiments and inclinations.
After lunch, Bishop shared his concerns.
“Tony, you’re an interesting case,” he said. “But there are some disturbing factors.”
“Like what?”
“Don’t get me wrong,” he answered. “You’re a good prospect. You have natural talent. You have the stability and the courage to deal with difficult situations. You have the creativity to be able to switch gears when you have to, to come up with a new plan as circumstances require. You have a spirit of sacrifice, resolve, will, and ideals.”
He paused.
“That last is important. We don’t want to simply use people. We want to call upon men of thought and action.”
“Maybe I’m not understanding,” I said, “but those don’t sound like negatives.”
“Those aren’t. Your fanaticism about family, religion, and nationalism are.”
“Fanaticism?” I protested. “I don’t think I’m a fanatic.”
“Most fanatics don’t.”
I nodded. “Agreed, but still …”
He stopped me.
“Here’s what worries me,” he said. “First, religion.” He raised a finger, like he was counting off a list.
“Is it a handicap that I’ve cooled on religion?” I interrupted.
“It’s not the chilling that’s unsettling,” he said. “Quite the opposite. What worries me is the warmth that remains. Religious ardor can be damaging. Espionage requires an appreciation of religion. Certainly the sermons are beautiful. Religion encourages men to uphold the good and reject the bad. I agree with that.”
“Then it can be a good thing.”
“It can be,” he said with a wry smile. “For people in other professions. A counterrevolutionary needs to be part spy, part saboteur. Scruples get in the way.”
I waited for him to go on.
“We need to be able to lie, steal, and, if it comes down to it, kill.” He took a swig of his drink. “And there’s probably at least three or four more commandments I’d put on shaky ground. If push comes to shove.”
He sighed heavily.
“You have to be willing to do whatever it takes,” he continued. “Whatever. Without question. Without doubt. Without hesitation.”
“I can,” I said instantly, almost before he finished. “I can.”
He looked at me, appraising me. Finally, he nodded.
“OK.”
He raised a second finger.
“Nationalism,” he said. “You wrote that article, saying the U.S. should get its stinking paws off of Cuba.”
“That’s not what it said,” I interjected. “I was talking about the banks. I said the U.S. doesn’t allow foreign banks to control its currency, for good reason. But in Cuba, they expect us to allow them. I don’t think that’s right. But I don’t think that’s nationalism. That’s just good economic sense. And fair.”
This time, Bishop nodded.
&
nbsp; “Fair enough,” he said. “But …”
He raised another finger.
“One more. Family.”
“What about it?” I asked.
“What would happen if you have to go away from them for extended periods of time?”
“That’s not a problem,” I said. “I already do. Part of my duties as the bank’s comptroller is to perform audits on all of our branches. All over the country. That takes me away for a week, two, sometimes longer.”
He nodded again.
“But you already knew that,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “I just wanted to be sure you did.”
He smiled.
“Our tests show that you’re a very passionate person,” he continued. “That’s good, as long as you don’t lose sight of the way the world really is. Religion blinds. Family blinds. Nationalism is a dangerous devotion.”
He let it sink in a moment. “You might be right when it comes to banks, but don’t forget that it was the nationalist spirit of the Germans and the Japanese that led the world into the worst war man has ever known. Hitler was a nationalist fanatic.”
It had obviously struck a chord. I didn’t know then that as a young nose gunner on a B-17, Bishop had been shot down during World War II and wound up spending more than a year in a German prisoner-of-war camp. I didn’t know that that was where he got his introduction to intelligence work, as part of the camp’s escape committee. Nor that he had escaped himself and, with the help of a simple French villager, had finally made his way back to the American line.
“The nationalist philosophy is for the blind. The shortsighted. The feeble—in body or mind,” he continued. “In 1952, Stalin ordered the Communists to use the nationalist flag, and ever since then they have been using it to hide behind and to confuse the gullible throughout the world.”
“Maurice,” I said, “just as you’re proud of your country, I’m proud of mine. That is why I want to help you.”
“I repeat,” he responded, “it’s not bad to be patriotic. But it can be dangerous to be a patriot.”
He paused, choosing his words carefully before he continued.
“The first demonstrates loyalty and principles. What’s bad is if it goes to excess. We can’t lose sight of the fight the world is facing. These are historic times. Either we defend the man who aims for the summit of science and dignity based on honest effort, or the other side, the ones who want to impose their absurd egalitarian philosophy on the world.”
“I don’t see that much of a difference in our thinking, Maurice,” I said. “In fact, I don’t see any divergence at all.”
“I just want us to be absolutely clear and avoid any misunderstandings,” he said. “This is precisely the moment to put everything in its place. Later on, any discrepancies could be harmful for both parties.”
He looked at his watch.
“It’s late,” he said.
“Wait. I have a question,” I said. “If something happened to me while I’m doing my duties for you—if I had a serious accident, or died—what happens to my family? Will they get some kind of compensation, some money to take care of my kids?”
“Of course,” Bishop said. “You can be sure they will be taken care of.”
“I thought so,” I said. “I just wanted to hear you say it.”
“OK,” he said. “Now go home. Think about it. I will, too. There’s a lot in the balance. I’ll be in touch.”
NOVEMBER ARRIVED BEFORE I heard from him again. In the meantime, I thought. As he had said I should. I worried about my family. About my children. About what life would be like for them if their father wound up dead, lined up in front of a firing squad and shot as a spy, or thrown into one of Cuba’s squalid prisons, never to see the light of day again.
In the end, though, I have to confess I thought more about me than about them. I felt the call of adventure, the thrilling lure of danger, the overpowering desire to overcome a childhood of slights, of standing on the sidelines wishing to be on the field, and the sense of inferiority it produced. Sadly, I admit, it was my ego that decided.
So, when Bishop called, I was ready.
He told me to come to the building across the street from the Hotel Nacional again, at 23rd and O. Now, though, I was to come inside and up to his office: “The Cuba Mining Co.” I didn’t speak English well enough to get the joke.
“And the taxi …” he began.
“A block away,” I said. “I know.”
The building was open. There was no doorman. I walked right in. There was a Berlitz Language School on the first floor. I didn’t pay very much attention to it then, but years later, it would seem a very important clue in connecting the man who called himself Maurice Bishop and David Atlee Phillips. Even though Phillips insisted to his grave, and under oath, that he had never used that name, and that he didn’t know me, he did know the Berlitz school. As my friend Gaeton Fonzi—journalist, author, and member of the investigative staff with the House Select Committee on Assassinations—wrote in The Last Investigation:
Phillips admitted that after he hung up his shingle as a public relations counselor, “No one rushed the door in any event, nor did I solicit clients.” He noted, though, that he did eventually wind up with at least one client with which he briefly worked a trade for French lessons: the Berlitz language school.
I got on the elevator and rode up to Bishop’s floor. The elevator let out onto a hallway with several offices, connected by a terrazzo floor. I found his a few doors down.
I rang the bell. Bishop opened almost immediately. The only people there were Bishop and Dick Melton. They ushered me into the small vestibule inside and closed the door.
The furnishings were modern. They looked new and rarely used. There were ashtrays around the room, as was the custom in those days, but I never saw cigarette butts in them, nor any papers in the wastebaskets. On only two future occasions, by the change in the placement of the chairs, did I get the sense that others had used the office.
There was a small sofa in the front room, but I never sat there. I got my training in the back room, at a table with two chairs. Sometimes Maurice Bishop participated. At other times he wasn’t even there. Melton rarely sat.
Bishop wore a suit and tie, as usual. Melton didn’t. Ever. He was always dressed casually, in shirtsleeves, with no tie.
“Rule number one,” Bishop said, “try not to be seen coming in. Or leaving. You already know to have the taxi let you off a block or two away. Do the same on your way out—walk a couple of blocks before you flag a cab.”
The training was supposed to take two months. Mine was cut in half. I would arrive at 9:00 a.m. and leave at ten minutes to one. That was early enough to avoid being seen by the lunchtime crowd leaving the building, but late enough that I would quickly mingle into the flock of pedestrians going about their midday business on the street.
They told me to get away from the building rapidly, but not so fast that I would arouse suspicion. They wanted me gone by the time Melton came down so I wouldn’t see who was picking him up. He was a foreigner who didn’t know his way around the city and depended on others for transportation.
Melton spoke a lot of Spanish, but he wasn’t fluent. His language was English, and that’s what he spoke to teach me. I was pretty much the opposite. So, sometimes I had to ask him to slow down so I could understand.
As time went on, it became clear that Melton was not only an educated man, but a man who liked order and thoroughness. He had a folder with all of his notes in it. As we went through each class, he was like a professor, referring to his notes constantly as he explained. In truth, I don’t think he really needed them. He knew exactly what he was explaining. Perfectly. He knew the lessons by heart.
It clearly disturbed him that we had to rush through my training as fast as we did. “I don’t know what kind of operative you’ll be after this course,” he said to me once. “Sorry about that. Maurice and I both are convinced that you have what it takes
to go far. But at this rate, a lot of it is going to be up to you.”
I didn’t ask Melton questions. I was spellbound. Day after day, minute by minute, I listened intently as he reeled out the inner workings of his tradecraft. I was an apprentice to a form of sorcery I had never imagined—part magic, part skill, and part will—as much an art of deception and illusion as precise execution.
Melton was my master, the imparter of the conspirator’s commandments. And I was determined to commit every detail to memory.
“Your job as a conspirator,” he said, “is to use situation-appropriate means to create chaos within the enemy lines. Your job is to both gather information and cause damage. That might come as the result of a bomb, a fire, a bullet, or a carefully placed piece of misinformation that will disrupt the functioning of the government.”
I listened carefully as Melton explained in intricate detail the methods, the tools, and the skills I needed to be effective. He repeated them again and again, like a teacher guiding his students through the alphabet for the first time.
“This is serious stuff,” he said. “This is a grave matter.”
The wording of the commandments was deceptively simple, easily remembered, but loaded with meaning. Each word implied insinuation. Each idea involved tactic. The combination of words and ideas represented the conduct expected of me. The limitations and capabilities were laid out perfectly in simple instructions.
I recognized the importance of each not only by the emphasis that Melton placed on it as he explained, but also later, as I reflected on them. Melton urged me to meditate upon them frequently.
– Achieve favorable opinions for your cause and critical ones for those of the enemy.
– Always maintain a double personality, disguising your real activity.
– Maintain your objectives in missions and absolute secrecy. Never reveal your associations, connections, or collaborators.
– Use whatever is necessary in your battle plan. Your enemy is perverse by nature and will not hesitate to use whatever means necessary against you.
– Mistrust people, situations, and appearances. Be on your guard all the time.
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