“Your enemy’s best weapon is to infiltrate someone into your group,” Bishop said. “They’ll offer some of your associates their lives in exchange for telling them where to find you. You’ll learn that silence is the friend that will never betray you.”
He warned me never to fall to the temptation of expanding my circle. “You’re not competing to be Miss Congeniality. Your friend and associate today could be your betrayer tomorrow.”
In the eventuality that someone in my group got captured, he said, “they will be tortured. You must anticipate that they will tell everything they know. If someone you work with is arrested, you need to take every precaution. Immediately.”
Your cause needs to come first, before any sentimentality.
– Be bold in your objectives. Anything is possible if you plan well enough.
– Anticipate the personal risks you’re willing to take, and the cause they represent.
– Be disciplined in doing exactly the work assigned, in accordance with the instructions received.
– Maintain strict silence about your superiors and collaborators from other countries.
– Use the services of your friends and acquaintances to achieve your goals. Unscrupulously if necessary. The ends justify the means.
“Your position, your personality, your contacts,” Bishop said, “could be very useful to help prevent these people from consolidating their power.”
Neither Melton nor Bishop ever spoke to me about being a spy. They didn’t think of me as someone who would plant bombs or anything like that. What they wanted of me was for me to wage a psychological war against the government. They didn’t call it that. They called it a “propaganda campaign.” To discredit the government. To disrupt the government. That was their goal.
“You’re a man who can organize a resistance to disable the government,” Bishop said. “So that the people understand what this government is.”
I knew that was valuable, too. Because there was great confusion in the populace. I saw it in my own family. Some of my relatives, when I started expressing my doubts about the direction the government was taking, or the danger of the “socialist ideal” it was beginning to impose, called me a fool.
“You only think that way because you work with a millionaire,” they said.
I did work with a millionaire. A multimillionaire. And Bishop and Melton knew that my position at Julio Lobo’s bank allowed me to learn certain things about the government, and then to use that information against them. I had access, and I had the ability. I could do things to undermine them. I could use ideas to counter their ideas. Often enough, I ended up using their own ideas against them. That’s what Bishop wanted. More than for me to be a terrorist. I became a terrorist later. They didn’t even want to teach me about weapons. I had to ask them to.
“You’re not in the military,” Bishop said. “You need to be what you are—a person who knows many people and can influence many more.”
“But I need to be able to defend myself, don’t I? To protect myself?”
Despite the oft-repeated saying that it’s better to fight and run away, Bishop insisted, “It’s better not to fight at all. Avoid a direct confrontation with your enemy any time you can. Almost always, when someone in the resistance has to shoot it out with the authorities, they lose. There’s more of them than there are of you.”
Eventually, though, I persuaded them. A little at a time.
At first they just showed me how to break down a pistol and put it back together. Later, they taught me about explosives, and how to use them. C3, C-4, firebombs the size of cigarette packs. Easy to transport. Easy to conceal. I learned about timed fuses and detonators. How to arm and set off a bomb.
Still, I don’t think they ever expected me to become a man of action. I’m not sure I did, either. Circumstances took me there.
The training they gave me prepared me. And it served me well.
Melton and Bishop insisted on offering me practical advice that they had gained through their own experience, which they knew was vital for an intelligence agent’s success. I never forgot them. Abiding by those rules can save your life.
– Stop going to the places you normally frequent. If you’re being followed, avoid any of the places you previously visited.
– When you walk on the street, go counter to traffic.
– Avoid meetings with more than two people.
– Don’t go out at night. Don’t transport weapons or explosives at night. When it’s necessary, do it by day, moving during the busiest hours.
– When you travel by car, do it accompanied by a woman. Don’t travel with men.
– Develop and rely on your memory. Do not take notes. If you’re stopped, a little piece of paper could incriminate you.
If I did write things down, or if it was necessary to communicate in writing, they instructed me in the use of invisible ink and simple codes to obscure the information. For example, my telephone number in Cuba was 649-1226. Using one of the codes, I might reverse it and add a one to each number. Encoded, it would become 733-2057.
They also taught me that the voice is the last thing that changes in a person. People sound the same for a long time. Their looks change. Their faces change. They may gain or lose weight as they age. Their hair color changes, or their style does. They wear it longer or shorter, or they may have less of it. They wear glasses, or they replace the glasses they had with contacts. Men grow beards or mustaches, or shave them off. Ears and noses grow. But the voices rarely change. At least not until many, many years have passed.
They told me that if I wanted to remember the way someone looked, I should key in on distinctive features. Notice if someone has a mole, or a birthmark. Large ears, a large or oddly shaped nose, very close-set eyes. It not only helps your recall, it allows you to describe them to someone else succinctly. If someone told me that one of Castro’s agents was missing his ring finger on his right hand, I’d be looking for it every time I shook hands with a stranger.
There were other important instructions:
– Don’t take or make incriminating phone calls. Don’t speak over the phone with anyone you don’t know.
– Don’t show up for an appointment without first reconnoitering the location to be sure everything is OK. Never go to a meeting unless you’re absolutely sure that there is no problem.
That meant that even if I didn’t see anything, I still wouldn’t just go and knock on your door. If I needed to see you, I would communicate with you before I got there. A few minutes ahead, I might call.
I learned the value of that one within just a couple of months.
Orlando Castro, a former Communist revolutionary who fell out with Castro, was one of the people I worked with on some clandestine things. If he called me at home—this was in the days before cellular phones and caller ID, of course—he would let it ring three times, hang up, and then call back. That way I knew it was him before I picked up. If someone just let it ring and ring, I knew it was someone who didn’t know me.
I also gave Orlando a countersign. If I called him, I might say something like, “May I speak with Roberto López, please?”
If he answered, “Who’s calling?” I knew he wasn’t alone.
One time, I was supposed to meet Orlando at one of our safe houses. Some people who had gone into exile left me the key so that we could use it. I stopped at a store with a pay phone a few blocks away and called the house. A woman answered.
I said, “May I speak with Roberto López?”
She said, “I can help you.”
I hung up and walked away fast.
I went back to my car, and as I was leaving, I drove past his street. Up the block, in front of his house, I saw several patrol cars. He had been arrested. Someone in his group had tipped off state security.
The government agents were playing it smart. They knew he wasn’t working alone. So they had someone sitting by his phone, taking calls, looking to see who else they could round up.<
br />
I never went back to that house.
– Dress in a normal, unassuming fashion. Don’t wear clothes or colors that call attention to you. Don’t wear dark glasses.
– Wear a hat or a cap to hide the shape of your head, but don’t make it a very conspicuous one.
– Learn to disguise yourself with a mustache or a beard that you can grow or change. The same man can look completely different with a goatee, a full beard, or an Amish one. The same with a pencil mustache, or a thick one.
One day, after my lesson ended and I was getting ready to leave, Bishop asked me to wait. He spoke very somberly as he said, “Tony, you need to understand that this isn’t about showing how brave you are. For an undercover agent, there are times that the best route is to run away. Even if they call you a coward. You cannot let them arrest you.”
He took a capsule from his pocket and handed it to me.
“If your capture is inevitable, take this. It’s poison. Deadly in seconds. We’ll take care of your family.”
I took the capsule and nodded. “I will. I swear.”
chapter 5
PATIENCE AND TIME DO MORE THAN VIOLENCE
I CARRIED THE suicide pill with me at all times. If anybody had seen it and asked, I probably would have told them it was heart medicine. It was. To stop it.
So it rested safely in my pocket as I completed my training, and after, as I went about my duties at the bank. Bishop and I agreed that my position was of the utmost importance to accomplish the mission expected of me. It gave me access to valuable economic information and allowed me to maintain contact with powerful members of the financial community.
We didn’t know then that it would also bring me face-to-face with Che Guevara, and his gun.
TO MINIMIZE THE chance of being discovered, my meetings with Bishop became increasingly infrequent once my training ended, until they were virtually nonexistent. We communicated only when absolutely necessary, and then mostly through messages written in invisible ink, hidden in letters sent to an intermediary’s address in the name of Caridad Rodríguez. Anyone reading any of them would have been impressed at how dutiful and loving Caridad and her cousin Adolfina, who lived in the United States, continued to be with each other, and how lovely their handwriting was. As I ironed them, though, the heat brought out Bishop’s hidden message.
After I read them, I destroyed the letters.
That became our only means of communication barely six months after I first met him. Bishop came and went from the island somewhat frequently during those months. In March 1960, he left Cuba for good.
“It’s getting too hot,” he told me as he prepared to leave. He didn’t mean the temperature. Tensions between Cuba and the United States were increasing steadily. And as opposition against the government grew, so did the repressive security aimed at stopping it.
Before he left Cuba—I’ll never forget—he tore twelve American dollar bills in half and handed one set of the halves to me.
“Hold on to those,” he said. “If someone comes to you and they say they’re speaking for me, or they have a message from me, they’ll have to give you one of these halves. If they don’t have one, or if the one they give you doesn’t match one that you have, they’re lying. It’s a trap. Don’t tell them anything, and get away as fast as you can.”
BISHOP HAD READ the tea leaves well. Not too long after he left, Castro’s agents arrested two FBI agents assigned to the U.S. Embassy, Edwin Sweet and William Friedemann, as they left a meeting of counterrevolutionaries. They were charged with “encouraging terrorist acts,” among other things, and expelled immediately.
Things were indeed getting hot. But, as usual, there was another reason Bishop pulled up stakes so suddenly. One he kept secret from me. In fact, Bishop had been summoned back to Washington to begin preparations for an operation that would go down in history as one the most colossal CIA failures of all time, the Bay of Pigs. The failed invasion would also put him on a collision course with the man who would soon be the country’s next president, John F. Kennedy.
Within days of Bishop’s departure, the current president, Dwight Eisenhower, officially approved the covert action plan against Castro. In addition to authorizing the buildup of the paramilitary invasion force, Eisenhower approved a “powerful propaganda campaign” aimed at weakening support for Fidel.
The task force to run the anti-Castro operation was formed at a meeting in Washington on January 18, 1960. The attendees included David Atlee Phillips.
In his book, he talks about being called back to Washington in March to take charge of the propaganda phase of the campaign. In doing so, he fell back on tactics that he and his agency colleagues had used to help topple Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz in 1954, establishing a CIA-run radio station to beam anti-Castro messages at the island. Radio Swan went on the air May 17.
Before Bishop left, though, he went to great lengths to impart valuable lessons about his craft, along with lengthy discourses about his views of it.
“The secret agent’s function has taken on an immeasurable worth in modern times,” he told me once, during one of our final training sessions. “The atomic age and scientific espionage techniques have changed the game completely. They’ve also changed the ways of conquering nations.”
“We still use armies,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “Men with guns, yes. But armed conflicts run the risk of escalating. The threat of nuclear war, and the catastrophic devastation that would result, is too great. We start lobbing modern atomic weapons at each other, and the Stone Age will seem like advanced technology.”
“What about Korea?”
“Limited wars are still a possibility,” he said, “but the best option of all is psychological warfare.”
Even before I could consider too deeply the various ways that might take shape, Bishop launched into the core of that day’s lesson.
A conspirator’s duties include a variety of objectives, he explained. His principal work is not gathering intelligence, but more to intelligently influence events to impact public opinion. The goal is to eliminate enemies and benefit friends. Undercover operations are excellent methods for achieving those goals, especially if we’re able to avoid being publicly tied to those efforts.
“The success of a clandestine operation requires just that, that it remain clandestine—secret, invisible, unknown,” Bishop said. “The result should appear completely unconnected to any of our actions. That’s why it’s of the utmost importance to not leave tracks or compromising evidence of any kind.
“But even if you do, remember,” he added, “we will forever deny our involvement. Forever. Even when it’s obvious.”
Secrecy, he insisted, was absolute.
“We don’t get to be heroes,” he said. “No one ever knows what we do. Your triumphs won’t be applauded in the newspapers. The president doesn’t shake your hand on the evening news. Our satisfaction comes from doing our duty. It comes from knowing you helped your friends and hurt your enemies, even if no one else ever knows.”
An operative’s main goal is to divide and confuse the enemy.
To carry out a mission, an agent always needs to think of alternatives. He has to have backup plans. Success depends on his capacity for planning and his capability for execution. He needs to plan, prepare, perform—and expect the unexpected. For that reason, he should frequently evaluate the status of his plan and analyze his progress and consider any obstacles that have arisen.
People are his tools, and his targets. They are to be used as means to his ends. If your interests align, they’re allies. If they have no interest, they’re instruments. If they oppose your interests, they’re enemies.
“It doesn’t matter,” Bishop said. “Any of them can be useful, in the right situation. If you need them, you use them. You just have to find their weakness. Everyone has one. That’s the key.”
He was right. Before I would “work” somebody, I had to prodigiously study their situa
tion, their qualities, their defects. Everyone is penetrable. We just have to discover their weakness. There are those who cooperate because an alluring woman offers her bed. Others can’t resist the temptation of a bundle of cash, or the promise of power. Others just need their egos stroked. One way or another, anyone can be bought.
And once their usefulness is at an end, they can be discarded. Or eliminated.
An operative’s methods should not be classified as dirty or clean, he said. They are simply favorable or contrary to our cause. There are no illegitimate means. Anyone who lets his moral judgment affect his mission is, at best, a bad agent. At worst, he’s a dead one.
His arsenal: lies, deceit, intrigue, theft, kidnapping, bribery, corruption, destabilization, subversion, and murder.
As I listened to his commentaries and observations, I came to understand that Bishop had a disturbingly dark view of the world. It seemed, at times, worse than Machiavellian.
I came to believe that he considered himself above the law, beyond the rules the rest of us are expected to abide by. And I came to suspect that he might have been right, that he knew something I didn’t. I came to think that there is a parallel power at work in empires, that sets its own rules, for its own ends. We’re all aware of the political authority that formally governs the country we live in. But Bishop made me see that outside this traditional, visible authority there is an invisible power acting in the shadows, directing events. These are the true puppet masters on the world stage, shaping the course of history. Political authority changes hands with elections. However, the true power lies in the hands of a hidden consortium that acts as an unseen overlord, watching over and deciding civilization’s destiny. This “invisible directorate,” this “shadow government,” is politically, economically, and militarily powerful. Yet its members are not driven by ostentatious vanity. They see themselves as being tasked with a tremendous responsibility. And they are resolute. They will destroy any of the visible political leaders if they prove inconvenient to what the shadow directorates believe the national destiny should be. This secret empire of power is extensive. And it never ends, unless the country itself is destroyed. It passes from generation to generation, forever hidden, yet forever in control.
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