Trained to Kill

by Antonio Veciana

  The United States grew increasingly worried about what appeared to be a looming confrontation with the Soviet Union over Cuba. And that played right into Bishop’s hand. The best way to avoid a fight with the Soviets, he said, would be to take Cuba out of the picture.

  “If Castro goes,” he said, “Communism goes. And so do the Soviets. If Kennedy wants to avoid a war with Khrushchev, he’ll have to make one with Fidel.”

  That’s where Alpha 66 came in, he said. But not with guerrilla warfare. With a new hit-and-run approach. That, Bishop believed, would bring quicker results.

  “You don’t hit Castro directly,” he said. “You hit him where it hurts. You hit ships bringing goods to Cuba.”

  “Cuban ships?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “But not just Cuban ships. Any ships. Merchant ships. Russian ships. Ships from the Soviet bloc. If they do business with Cuba, they’re targets.”

  “And then?” I asked.

  “When the Soviets start complaining and rattling their sabers, Kennedy has to act,” he said.

  “What if he doesn’t take aim at Cuba?” I asked. “What if he takes aim at the CIA?”

  “That’s exactly why we have Alpha 66. When they accuse us, we’ll tell him that we had nothing to do with it. It’s a bunch of anti-Castro exiles acting on their own.”

  I didn’t know the term then, but he was talking about something that subsequently turned out to be an all-too-common practice for the agency, “plausible deniability.” It also sounded extremely similar to the kind of thinking that had led to the Bay of Pigs disaster.

  I didn’t say that to Bishop. Instead I said, “Alpha already has other plans in motion. Menoyo is our military chief. He believes we should infiltrate Cuba with a group of men and start a guerilla war.”

  I could see Bishop tensing.

  “Menoyo has a lot of faith in his plan,” I said. “He’s already sent word to some of his contacts in the internal resistance on the island. You’re talking about a complete change of direction. That would be a tremendous obstacle for his plans.”

  Bishop jabbed a finger at me.

  “Please, Tony,” he said, “don’t cause problems. He listens to you. Explain to him that an Army may march on its belly, but Alpha 66 needs cash. And so does he if he wants to be able to fight in the mountains for any length of time.”

  “We’re already raising money,” I said.

  “Yes. And well. But imagine what would happen after people saw Alpha 66 actually taking action. Not just talking about it. High-profile attacks on Soviet ships will be a fund-raising bonanza.

  “Tell him,” Bishop continued, “that holding off on his plans now will only help them in the future.”

  Said, and done. I met with Eloy and told him I thought delaying his plans would be better. I never mentioned Bishop, or the CIA. Not to him, or anyone. Ever. I let him think it was my idea. He bought it. I’ll never forget his ironic smile.

  “That makes sense,” he said. “But I wonder about the consequences of attacking their ships. It may do more harm than good.”

  I started to open my mouth to protest. He stopped me.

  “We need money to buy bullets and boots,” he said. “Not to mention food.”

  WE WENT TO work. We bought boats. We bought guns. We set up bases in the Bahamas, first at Anguilla, then Andros Island. They were remote and sparsely inhabited.

  “There’s more goats than people on Andros,” Eloy once said.

  They were also tantalizingly close to Cuba.

  Our first attack came in September 1962, against a merchant ship anchored in a Cuban port. By mistake, the ship was British. We made the most of it, anyway.

  A Newsweek article later described it:

  Just after 2:00 a.m., the small unmarked craft, a former American PT boat, swerved in near the Cuban port of Caibarien. It fired a few volleys of machine gun fire at two Cuban ships and a British freighter, then fled. Thus, a month ago, Alpha 66 made its first strike against Castro.

  Back at headquarters in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Antonio Veciana, the spokesman for Alpha 66, had only one complaint: He had budgeted the raid at $3,600, but it cost $5,823.

  The FBI had known the attack was coming, and that more were soon to follow. The CIA told them. “The following information concerning Alpha 66, a Cuban counterrevolutionary group, was received on 7 September 1962,” an interagency memo from the CIA’s deputy director (plans) began.

  “It is dedicated to sabotage, harassment and similar hit and run type commando operations against the Castro regime in Cuba,” it continued, “and intends to carry out six to eight such forrays [sic] in the coming months. The first of these is reportedly already planned in detail and will go into effect in the not too distant future, stemming from some undisclosed island base in the Caribbean.”

  The memo added that we had “enough supplies to carry out their first operation successfully and maybe one other,” along with about $30,000 remaining in various bank accounts. It went on to describe some of our fund-raising efforts and noted: “As ex-CPA’s their very businesslike manner requires them to give receipts for any funds received for help.”

  The CIA fanned the flames even more three days later. “SUBJECT: POSSIBLE IMMINENT STRIKE AT HABANA, CUBA BY ALPHA 66 ORGANIZATION,” the flash message began. Its recipients included officials in the FBI, the State Department, and the Defense Intelligence Agency, as well as the Army, Navy, and Air Force. The message revealed that the attack was scheduled for 2:00 a.m. on September 10 or 11, and it mentioned me by name: “Veciana has had no sleep during the past 48 hours due to his listening for news and making contacts in preparation for future operations.”

  Much more important, the agency message revealed some of the depth of the CIA’s information about the operation. It said the crew consisted of five men, with at least one “Anti-tank type” weapon, and that the boat was hiding among the keys near Cuba.

  A separate teletype added “two fifty caliber machine guns” to the armaments.

  “The original plan for the strike … included the boat captain’s suggestion that an American flag be flown by the boat …” it continued. “But Veciana vetoed this with words ‘Not Yet’ …”

  WE WEREN’T ALONE. I don’t know how many other groups were working with the CIA or on their own, but the armed fight against Castro involved many actors. They were stopped by the U.S. Coast Guard setting out from the Florida Keys, or caught loading weapons onto boats. They issued press statements contending they’d been fired upon by Cuban forces, and offered breathtaking accounts of their exploits.

  The Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE), Revolutionary Student Directorate, carried out what they described as a commando attack on a hotel and theater in the beachfront Miramar section of Havana, blasting the buildings with a 20 mm cannon from a boat two hundred yards offshore.

  One of the boat’s gas tanks began to leak just as they “got close enough for the raiders to see the lights of Cuba,” the Associated Press reported. “We didn’t know what to do,” said the gunner, a “young, slender” José Basulto. “The gas was right under the cannon, and I was going to shoot it. We were afraid the shots might spark and cause an explosion.

  “But there was Cuba …” he said.

  Basulto, who would later go on to found Brothers to the Rescue, an exile group dedicated to aiding Cuban rafters spotted on the dangerous trek across the Florida Straits, didn’t hesitate: “When the word came, I opened up on the hotel dining room, where Castro was supposed to be holding the meeting with the Russians. We could only hope he was there, too,” he said. “I must have shot about twenty-six times. It was really something. I could see the shells break into the hotel windows, and then all the lights went out.”

  I don’t know if Bishop worked with the DRE as well. But the announcement they released had all the earmarks of his strategy. The purpose of the raid, it said, was to “denounce the arrival of increasingly large contingents of Russian troops to our island.”


  And, with words that sounded as if they were coming straight from Bishop’s mouth, the DRE challenged President Kennedy to remember his promise “that Cuba would never be abandoned.”

  “We will not tolerate peaceful coexistence,” the DRE statement continued. “We are not concerned with interested groups or long-range tactics of large powers. We are concerned only that over the tombs of Martí and Maceo they do not raise the soiled banners of the hammer and sickle.”

  In Bishop’s view, putting pressure on the Soviets was justifiable. But once again, he didn’t anticipate Kennedy’s obstinacy. We continued with our plan to attack Soviet merchant ships in Cuban ports. And with making sure the world, and Kennedy, would know.

  Alpha 66 made the news again a month after our first raid, this time under the dramatic headline: “We’ll Hit All Ships to Cuba, Alpha 66 Threatens.”

  “Cuban exile commandos declared ‘war’ today on all shipping to Cuba and boldly announced that raids like that in which 20 Russians and Cuban militia were killed this week will be repeated,” read the opening to the October 11, 1962, Miami News story.

  Then the newspaper account paraphrased me, saying I vowed that Alpha 66 “fighters will attack any and all vessels taking supplies to Castro—not just those from Iron Curtain countries.”

  The article reminded readers of the September attack, then added, “Veciana, a certified public accountant, said his force of 30 men killed ‘no fewer’ than 20 Russians and Cubans in a raid on a Cuban north coast fishing village Monday night. He said the commandos suffered five casualties but declined to say if any were killed.”

  I said it. But it never happened.

  Bishop had told me to embellish, exaggerate, outright lie if I wanted to, all for the sake of making our belligerence seem more capable, and more threatening. I agreed because, let’s face it, a boat with three or four guys shooting at the side of a massive iron ship—what could that possibly do?

  One objective was to let the Soviets know that we weren’t happy about them making a continued military and economic investment in Cuba. The other was to force Kennedy to stop ignoring the Cuban situation. So we inflated our numbers, aggrandized our accomplishments, and reported losses to keep things from seeming too one-sided.

  An Associated Press story dated October 30 carried the headline: “2 Alpha 66 Boats Lost on Cuba strike.” Followed by: “Alpha 66, militant anti-Castro band, today reported that two of its vessels on a mission to attack a military objective in Cuba sank in heavy seas last week…. All 11 members of the expedition escaped, it was reported.”

  No one questioned the timing of the reported attack, nor how it would have been possible for a group of exile commandos to thread their way through waters filled with U.S. and Soviet naval ships, pierce an ironclad naval blockade, and slip, sight unseen, toward Cuba. Nor did they wonder how we could have then foundered in the “heavy seas,” radioed for help, and had more of our paramilitary craft—PT boats, mind you—get through the same barriers to pick us up and carry us back home, with neither them nor our radio communications attracting attention.

  Because, at that very moment, Cuba had just brought the world to the brink of disaster.

  A week before the story about our boats appeared, John Kennedy went on television and told the nation that America and the Soviet Union were in the midst of a tense stalemate at sea—what history remembers as the Cuban Missile Crisis.

  In a brazen show of bravado, the Soviet Union, with the approval and complicity of Castro, had established a massive military base on the island, just ninety miles from the United States. By the end of the buildup, it held more than sixty thousand soldiers, officials, and technicians. Of much greater concern to the United States, though, was the construction of a nuclear missile base and an electronic listening post for eavesdropping on American military communications.

  For thirteen agonizing days in October, the world hung in the balance, teetering on the edge of a nuclear war between its two most potent superpowers as Kennedy and Khrushchev played a dangerous game of brinksmanship. Most certainly, neither wanted to cross the line into atomic conflict, but neither could they find a way to back down. Kennedy called for a strict naval blockade around the island, and the world watched as massive destroyers locked in a dangerous game of dodge-and-parry, with the Soviets determined to punch through and the Americans equally determined to fend them off.

  The standoff only served to increase tensions between Kennedy and the military, which advocated an immediate offensive strike against Cuba. They were convinced that a direct showdown with Castro was the better course of action. Kennedy, however, kept his own counsel. He wanted to avoid a war with the Soviets, especially one with the possibility of turning nuclear, with catastrophic consequences for mankind.

  Finally, using back-channel communications involving his brother Robert, the attorney general, and the Soviet ambassador, the two world leaders found a way to defuse the situation and still save face. The world could breathe a sigh of relief. So, too, could Castro. He may have seemed merely a pawn in the contest between the two great powers, but he managed to secure a win that would keep him in power for more than fifty years.

  Khrushchev agreed to withdraw his nuclear missiles and Il-28 warplanes; Kennedy agreed never to invade Cuba and not to help any anti-Castro exiles who might try. The end result only served to solidify the rancor Cuban exiles had for Kennedy. From what I could tell, it had a similar effect on Bishop.

  I grew to have a more favorable opinion of the young president as the years went by. I began to appreciate the intensity of his efforts to ratchet down the dangers of the Cold War, to bring about the first nuclear test ban, and to lead the United States toward the loftier goals that his successor would proclaim as “The Great Society.”

  At the time, though, I agreed with Bishop that this rich Massachusetts liberal had just handed my homeland to the Communists and left those of us who fought for its freedom in the same position he had the invading exiles at the Bay of Pigs—on our own.

  So we continued our attacks. And our announcements. And our leaked information to the various federal agencies keeping track of our activities.

  Still, nothing from Kennedy.

  Then Bishop had another brainstorm. “Let’s lay it on his doorstep next time,” he said. “Next time, make sure to hit a Russian ship. Hard. Then, you tell the whole world about it—in Washington, D.C.”

  It happened in March 1963. As the night of the 17th gave way to the early morning of the 18th, two of our boats—a wood and Fiberglas twenty-five-foot speedboat and a twenty-one-footer—slid into the harbor at Isabela de Sagua, about 180 miles east of Havana. The bigger boat sported a ninety-five horsepower Mercury engine. The smaller one, fitted with twin inboards, could do better than thirty-five knots on a run. Each carried more than a dozen men with BARs and M1 Garand rifles, along with two moveable 20 mm cannons. One group went ashore to attack the heavily fortified Russian Technical Camp on one side of the harbor; the other moved across the port to shell a Soviet merchant ship, the Lvov, at anchor nearby.

  Somewhere between six and a dozen Russians were wounded; an unknown number were killed. The ship’s smokestack and bridge suffered heavy damage.

  The following day, I faced reporters from around the world in a press conference at the Roger Smith Hotel, one block from the White House. I deliberately used a government translator. Reporters from the New York Times, the Washington Post, and several other major U.S. newspapers showed up. So did representatives of the Soviet news agency TASS. I answered their questions with what I hoped was an appropriate dose of insolence.

  As Max Frankel of the New York Times told it: “Their purpose, they said, was ‘to wage psychological warfare against the Government of Premier Fidel Castro and the Soviet troops supporting him.’”

  And, I said, the raids would continue.

  Bishop believed it would be a direct shot across the bow for the Kennedy administration, and a slap in the face for the
Soviets. He was wrong. It was a dud. Prime Minister Khrushchev doubled down on his Cuba strategy and completely ignored us. So did Kennedy, publicly. The administration issued a statement that allowed it to condemn us while avoiding any responsibility.

  A State Department response claimed to have no knowledge of the raid, but said that it “reinforces our belief that the irresponsible and ineffective forays served to increase the difficulty of dealing with the unsatisfactory situation which now exists in the Caribbean.”

  When pressed, the administration insisted there was nothing they could do. The attacks had all been planned and launched from bases outside of U.S. territorial limits; hence, outside its jurisdiction. Therefore, we hadn’t violated the Neutrality Act. Or any other U.S. law. So, publicly at least, they maintained that they didn’t have any authority to stop us.

  Privately, it was another story. The president directed federal authorities, including the Coast Guard, to shut us down. Working through diplomatic channels, they alerted the British that we were running our commando raids out of bases in the Bahamas.

  The British Navy seized our ships, confiscated our weapons, and kicked us out of our island hideaways with a stern warning to go back to the United States and never return. In April, the U.S. Coast Guard arrested Eloy Menoyo and four other men after a sea chase involving boats and USCG planes. They brought them back to the immigration detention center in Opa-locka, just north of Miami.

  Then the United States imposed its own restrictions on us. All of us were required to register with federal authorities. Our movements were limited. I wasn’t allowed to leave the South Florida county where I lived without prior permission, under penalty of arrest.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Bishop said. “It’s just for show. So they can say they did something to stop you.”