Kennedy, of course, blamed the CIA. He felt, correctly, that he had been lied to. The agency advisors had given him the information they wanted him to have, not a true analysis, and certainly not the facts he needed to make an appropriate assessment to base his decisions on. He felt betrayed. In response, JFK vowed to tear apart the CIA. He began by forcing Dulles, the agency’s legendary spymaster, to resign, along with his two top deputies and others.
That only made Kennedy’s enemies in the CIA hate him even more. And I don’t think that they made much of an effort to hide it.
I had never heard Bishop speak negatively about the president before the invasion. The next time I saw him, the month after I had left Cuba for Miami, his bitterness came through at the mere mention of the president’s name, or of the Bay of Pigs.
He blamed the “immature” and “inexperienced” Kennedy—a “political adolescent”—for the “debacle.”
His disdain for the president extended to the entire Kennedy clan. He disparaged them repeatedly. “Those good-looking boys have forgotten their dark roots,” he’d say. “But the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. John Kennedy’s grandfather was an Irish terrorist. His father made his fortune with Scotch whiskey during Prohibition. It’s easy to be a liberal when your belly’s full. It’s hard to do the right thing when the wrong thing is in your blood.”
Following the failed invasion, his anger boiled over. He sent me a message dripping with disgust. He understood the consequences of the failure, but he needed more information so he could “piece together the puzzle” that would explain the “humiliating defeat.” He asked me to survey the scene of the battle and give him a report on what had occurred.
The site had been declared off-limits to anyone without official permission. I took a chance and got a friend to get me what I needed. It didn’t take me long to recognize that the expedition never had a chance. My report to Bishop was short: “They were outnumbered 100 to 1. Castro’s forces had better weapons and more of them.”
IN HIS BOOK, Phillips recalled his deeply emotional reaction as it became clear the invasion was collapsing. After he finally left the operations center at Quarters Eye in Washington, D.C., and went home, he got drunk in his backyard listening to news reports about Cuba on a portable radio:
Suddenly my stomach churned. I was sick. My body heaved.
Then I began to cry.
I wept for two hours. I was sick again, then drunk again….
Oh shit! Shit!
In our final conversation over lunch before Bishop left for the United States, back in March 1960, he had mused that the situation in Cuba had a simple solution.
“I have this theory,” he said, “that if Fidel died, the revolution would be over.”
At the moment, at least, he didn’t seem to be suggesting that I do it. Just that that’s what would happen.
“Yes,” he continued, as if ruminating out loud. “It all revolves around him. The best way for this to end is for Fidel Castro to die.”
In fact, CIA plans for Castro’s assassination were set in motion that year, while President Eisenhower was still in office. That September, CIA contractor Robert Maheu met with Mafia emissary Johnny Rosselli in New York City, offering him $150,000 for the “removal” of Castro. After the Bay of Pigs, the agency escalated its efforts against Castro. I received a terse message from Bishop printed in invisible ink. He told me that Bernardo Corrales had what I needed to give Cuba its simple solution.
He meant, of course, that I should begin putting together my own plan to assassinate Castro. We would refer to it as Operation Liborio.
“Liborio” is a symbol of national pride in Cuba, like Uncle Sam in the United States. Unlike the U.S. mascot, though, Liborio doesn’t represent the government. He represents the people. Liborio is depicted as a humble and put-upon farmer with a self-deprecating sense of humor and a long dark beard, whose droll observations on politics and politicians make him a voice for the hoi polloi.
By handing me the high-stakes Operation Liborio assignment, Bishop was making a statement. My time had come. With that message, he was telling me that I had graduated. I had already gone from being a simple accountant to a counterrevolutionary leading a propaganda campaign, and then to a bomb maker and terrorist. Now he was saying I could be even more, that I could be someone who could change the course of history.
Before I could make this leap, though, I had one more thing to do. I had to send my family to safety. I had to get them off the island to a new life, not knowing if I would ever see them again.
In the summer of 1961, I took my wife by the hand.
“Sira, my love,” I said. “You and the kids must leave. I have things I must do, missions I must complete.”
She knew, of course, that I was working aggressively against Castro. She didn’t know the details, but she knew.
“I don’t want any harm to come to our children,” I continued. “I know you don’t, either. If you’re all here, it’s very possible that they could try to use you to catch me. It’s better if you leave.”
She was very strong. She didn’t cry. She didn’t argue. All she said was, “Will I see you again?”
I hesitated. I didn’t really have an answer. She was strong. She was also very religious.
“I’m in God’s hands,” I said.
I sent them to Spain, to Madrid, then Barcelona. Cubans could still travel in those days, but not freely. I had to buy them round-trip tickets so that they would appear to be returning. They could take nothing with them, except for a few items of clothes and enough cash for a vacation. The children didn’t know they’d be staying in Spain until after they got there. Tony, the oldest of the three, was five.
Then I went underground.
The government was already clamping down by that point. In February, the Cuban army captured Lino Fernández and five hundred of his men who had taken up arms in Santa Clara. In March, two of Castro’s former military aides, Major Jesús Carreras Zayas and Major William A. Morgan, an American who had led a column of rebels against Batista, were charged with treason and executed. A week later, Humberto Sorí Marín, Fidel’s former agriculture minister and his chief judge at the 1959 war crimes trials, was arrested for conspiring against the government. He was executed the following month.
After the Bay of Pigs, it got worse. By the end of April it was estimated that twenty thousand Cubans had been arrested, suspected of “counterrevolutionary activities.”
I wasn’t being followed, but I wasn’t taking chances. I went undercover. I left my house. I had an apartment in the Vedado, the Havana business district, that I used, but I only went there to sleep. And not always. I moved around a lot, to different safe houses. I never spent more than three or four nights in the same place.
I went out as little as possible. When I did, I watched to see if I was being followed. Bishop and Melton had taught me what to look for. If you’re really being followed, they said, it’s never just one car. That’s how they trick you. They use two. One follows you for a little bit, then turns. Everything seems normal. When you see it turn, you think, “Oh, I was wrong. They weren’t following me, after all.” You breathe easy. You don’t even notice the other car, turning at the corner and falling in behind you a couple of cars back.
I only met with one or two people at a time. We’d arrive separately. We’d park our cars at a distance so there wouldn’t be a bunch of cars in front of the place. If we were supposed to meet at seven, one would arrive at 6:05, another at 6:20 or 6:25. Sometimes I’d get there last. Sometimes I’d get there first, and be waiting, so I could be sure the others came alone.
Nobody knew my real name. They knew me only as Víctor.
As soon as it started getting dark, I’d head inside. I spent a lot of time alone. I spent a lot of time reading. I read one book, Orwell’s Animal Farm, again and again. It reminded me of Cuba.
Then, in October, the plan I had been working on failed. My simple solution to the Cuba situa
tion, ending Fidel’s reign with a bazooka in the night, failed. I left, according to plan.
It was the end of my days in Cuba, but not the end of my fight against Fidel—or my attempts to assassinate him.
chapter 7
ALPHA 66 AND A MAN NAMED LEE
THE MONTH AFTER I got to Miami, I heard from Bishop. He wasn’t done with Cuba, or Kennedy.
We met on a street corner downtown and walked a while, talking. The failed assassination attempt in Havana was disappointing, to both of us. He said it looked like the fight against Fidel was going to take longer than either of us had expected, or hoped. He had some ideas about what we should do, he said.
“You know you can count on me,” I said.
“Good,” he said. “It’s important for us to know we can count on each other. And trust each other.”
“I agree,” I said. “I think I’ve always shown you that you can trust me. And I always will.”
Bishop stopped.
“Really?” he asked. “Will you? Right now?”
“How do you mean?”
“Will you sign a contract saying that? Right now?”
Pedestrians flowed past us on the sidewalk.
“Here?” I asked.
“No,” he said, nodding up the street. “Just up ahead.”
He led me to the Pan American Bank Building. We took the elevator up, then he pulled out a key and opened one of the doors in the hall. The door was bare, with no number or sign indicating what type of business might be on the other side. He closed it behind us and asked me to wait a moment, then disappeared through another door inside. He came back with two men, holding several papers.
“Read these and sign them, please,” Bishop said.
The other men stood stiffly as I looked the papers over. They seemed to be contracts, and some kind of formal pledge.
As I later told journalist and congressional investigator Gaeton Fonzi, “It was a pledge of my loyalty, a secret pledge. I think they wanted to impress on me my responsibility and my commitment to the cause.”
After I finished signing, Bishop thanked the two men and led me out of the office. “Now we can talk,” he said. “Let me tell you what I have in mind.”
He was direct, as always. He wanted me to start a paramilitary group, composed of exiles, to carry out attacks against Cuba. He made it clear that he had no respect for the Castro opposition group supported by President Kennedy.
“The Cuban Revolutionary Council is a joke,” he said. “They just do what Kennedy tells them to. You need to form a group that will really do something. That will take action.”
“With men of action,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “And, Tony, just remember, these operations, everything you do, can never connect to us. They are the actions of independent anti-Castro Cuban exiles, acting totally on their own.”
He smiled.
“But if you need any help, let me know.”
He didn’t mean money. That was still our own responsibility. And he didn’t mean he could completely clear the way for us to do as we pleased. But just as in Cuba, he could help us get weapons. And even more than in Cuba, he could help us with information. The rest of the rules remained the way they were when I was back on the island. No one could ever know I was working with the CIA.
I went to Puerto Rico, where a number of CPAs I had known in Havana were now living. They had formed a new accounting association, made up of exiles. I knew they had money and, importantly, connections to powerful and wealthy exile businessmen who would be willing to give money and assistance to the fight against Castro. Plus, they knew me.
The word went out through the exile community. The group that showed up for our first meeting included much more than accountants. Exiles from all walks of life showed up. They must have been waiting for someone like me to step forward, to offer them a chance to take part. I had been in Puerto Rico less than two weeks and already I counted sixty-five people in the room, besides me.
“I didn’t come here to resume my profession,” I told them. “I came here to resume the fight.”
I looked around the room. I saw many faces that were new to me. Most, in fact.
“I was an accountant in Cuba. I worked for Julio Lobo,” I said. “I was also a counterrevolutionary. Some of you here know me. You know that El Encanto no longer exists because of me.”
A murmur ran through the room.
“But I was once like all of you,” I continued, “wanting to stop what was happening in Cuba, wanting to see my homeland—our homeland—free, and not knowing what to do.”
I looked out at the expectant faces before me.
“Now I do. This is the beginning,” I said. “We are the beginning. Of Castro’s end.”
They began to applaud, but I wasn’t done. I remembered my Catholic lessons, of the Greek letters symbolizing eternal salvation, A and Ω, the beginning and end.
“We are Alpha,” I said. Then, quickly adding myself to the number in the room, I continued, “We are Alpha 66—the beginning of the end for Castro!”
Their applause thundered. It shook the walls.
Winning the accountants’ support proved to be easy. They gave money of their own and quickly went out and raised more. Our bank account—our war chest—swelled. El Che would have been proud—from each according to his abilities, they gave. They helped organize, recruit members, schedule meetings. And we grew.
But these were men like me. Planners. Administrators. We were good at building an organization, but we were not “men of action.” For that, I needed to look elsewhere, in the largest Cuban exile community of them all.
I went back to Miami, where Sira and the kids awaited. They had left Spain shortly after I left Cuba. I had sent my parents into exile with them. Now that I had arrived safely, accompanied by my mother-in-law, the family reunited.
Tony and Ana were old enough to go to school, beginning classes in English for the first time. Sira found a job at a shoe factory.
“You have other work to do,” she said.
I was dedicated to Alpha, and turning it into more than a name. We needed brave men, fighting men, who knew weapons and how to use them, and were willing to risk their lives.
Finding the resources I needed among the Miami exiles, though, proved difficult. Both money and men were committed to the Revolutionary Council, or to other anti-Castro groups that had begun to sprout up. To most, I was merely an accountant with his hand out, talking about forming yet another group.
That changed, thanks to a friend. He introduced me to one of the bravest men I have ever known, a simple, soft-spoken man who let his actions speak more loudly than any words ever could. And, like me, he was a man finding a less-than-welcome reception in Miami.
Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo had taken up arms against Batista in Cuba and wound up leading an army. It was, as Bishop said disparagingly about the Kennedys, in his blood. Only his veins, Bishop had to admit, boiled with a fierce Spaniard’s blood.
Menoyo’s oldest brother died fighting the Fascists in Spain’s civil war. After the family moved to Cuba, another brother died fighting Batista. Menoyo took his place. Fidel built his stronghold in the Sierra Maestra mountains far from Havana in Cuba’s east. Menoyo built an army nearly as large as Castro’s in the Escambray, in the island’s center, leading an independent guerrilla battle until finally joining with Castro in the final days of the war.
He could be seen famously marching alongside Castro in Havana after Batista had fled. But he was never a part of Castro’s government; alarmed by the signs of Fidel’s growing dictatorship, he fled Cuba in a boat with eleven supporters at the start of 1961.
Menoyo didn’t take part in the Bay of Pigs. But he was determined to overthrow Castro. Because of his earlier ties to the revolution, however, he found few to help him in Miami.
They didn’t trust him, or they didn’t like him. Neither did Bishop. I did, as soon as I met him. I found him to be quietly confident, unassuming, and refr
eshingly sincere. He had deep convictions and was dedicated to his cause. He was also a staunch leftist who believed firmly in socialist ideals. He was not, however, a Communist. That, to him, was just a form of authoritarian rule, a system that stole the freedom of the very people it purported to liberate.
All that was a fine point of distinction that was lost in the fervor of exile politics. But not on me. I was taken with his honesty and I knew his capacity. Eloy had already seen more battle in a quarter century of life than most of the big-talking exiles ever would. When I met him, he was twenty-seven years old.
I was not mistaken. He always did exactly what he said he would do. Menoyo’s vision was clear. He was determined to lead a landing force in Cuba and head once again into the Escambray to build another guerrilla army and to topple Fidel.
He needed money and weapons, and enough capable men to form its core.
“Together,” I said, “we can do that. I know how to get money and weapons. Together, we’ll get the men.”
Eloy Menoyo became Alpha 66’s military chief. I became its face.
I spent half my time in Miami and half my time in Puerto Rico. Generally, two weeks at a time. I also traveled around the country—Chicago, Texas, L.A. I went to places where Cubans like me were making livings and making lives, but always—always!—dreaming of the day they would return. So they joined. And they gave. And they pointed me to others who would, too.
By July, we had $64,000 in cash on hand, and more coming in.
Bishop was pleased with my progress, but cautious about Menoyo. He had thought more about our tactics, he said, and now knew exactly what we should do.
The CIA’s plan, via Maurice Bishop, had always been to put the fight on Kennedy’s doorstep, to force him to take the offensive to end Cuba’s Communist government.
World events were helping. By the middle of 1962, it was no secret to the CIA that the Soviets were giving Castro military support. Soviet troops disguised as technicians were flooding the island. Despite the precautions taken by the Soviets and the Cuban authorities, the anti-Castro underground was the first to divulge details of what was happening.
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