“I don’t understand your insistence on making sure the assassination bear the mark of anticastristas,” I told him, “and that there be no sign of the CIA anywhere. People are always going to blame the United States. If a jealous woman kills Fidel one day, people around the world will still believe it was the work of the CIA.”
He laughed but remained firm. Exiles must bear the blame, not the CIA.
Beyond that, though, little more existed of the “plan.” Still, I returned to La Paz practically floating on air. I had another opportunity. All I needed was the means. Bishop had planted the seed. The details fell to me.
I envisioned speeches. Photo ops. Press conferences. Chances.
But how?
Press conferences involved clusters of people, and strict security checks. Photo ops, as impromptu as they might seem to the uninitiated, tended to be carefully choreographed, quick-moving, and swathed in equally tight security measures. Speeches presented the same opportunities as the attempt at the Presidential Palace in Havana. Maybe.
We discarded the idea of a sniper. We believed Fidel wore a bulletproof vest. If so, success would require a headshot, from a hundred yards away. Maybe more.
Also, the balconies on the Presidential Palace in downtown Santiago, known as La Moneda, were very small. It seemed unlikely Castro would appear on such a cramped stage for one of his multi-hour speeches.
But I knew that Fidel loved press conferences. He’d spend hours talking to reporters. If we could get our people into a press conference, they could kill him. They could get right next to him. They’d be too close to stop, and too close to miss.
Bishop liked it.
Now all I had to do was figure out how to infiltrate two assassins into the press corps covering Castro’s visit. And how to get their weapons in with them, undetected.
Bishop and I met again. In Lima. In Miami. We still didn’t have the assassination plot figured out, but Bishop was pleased to learn that I had addressed another of his concerns.
Even though he gave me more than enough money for the mission, I still collected donations from groups of Cubans in Venezuela and in Puerto Rico—for the “cause.” They did not know what was being planned, or where, but raising funds from them would make it easier to link the assassination to exiles when it did happen.
I continued traveling to Chile, spreading Bishop’s cash, buying favors and information, making contact, retrieving packages. The trips gave me valuable opportunities to study the workings of Santiago and, importantly, to gauge the efficiency and effectiveness of state security.
So I knew how capable the Chilean Carabineros were. They were no-nonsense, highly trained, and well equipped, and I knew that for our plan to succeed we had to get through that cordon of armed and astute protectors.
The right men could do it.
With a great sense of expectation, I went looking for them. In Miami. I was certain that’s where I would find the men I needed—men of action, men of daring, and Cuban.
It was important to recruit Cubans, and not just to give the CIA its plausible deniability. Exiles had the motive. They, like me, had lost their homeland to Castro. They, like me, wanted it back, and they wanted it free. The only way to do that was to eliminate Castro. Their hearts would be in it. That, I believed, was vital. They would be willing to commit. I wanted dedicated men, not mercenaries.
They were harder to find than I expected.
First I spoke with the people from Alpha 66, because they were men of action. I went see one whom I knew to be a courageous fighter, a man who had fought at the Bay of Pigs and in various Alpha 66 paramilitary attacks against Cuba. He turned me down.
“I don’t understand,” I told him. “You’ve been to military actions where you could die.”
“Yes,” he said, “but those had many chances to escape. Here there is no chance. I’m married. I have children. I have responsibilities. I can’t just go and give my life, no matter what it would accomplish.”
Another concocted an absurd story, apparently hoping to save face. He said he would do the job, but only with this special rifle that he had. Unfortunately, he said, the rifle was lost in the Bahamas, and until it appeared he couldn’t do the job. It was just ridiculous.
I left, wondering if I would ever find the men I needed. I told Andrés Nazario, the head of Alpha 66, “We need to look for two people. I need two or three who are willing to do the job.”
Then I went back to Bolivia to wait.
I hadn’t been back long when I got a telegram from Nazario. In those days it was like that. A telegram. With a message only I would understand.
During my time as a promoter in Puerto Rico, I had represented the famous singer Raphael. Everyone knew it. The telegram I got contained a single sentence: “Raphael is ready to sing.”
That meant that they had the people for the assassination. I flew back to Miami.
“We weren’t able to find anybody in Alpha 66,” Nazario told me. “But there are two people in El Poder Cubano who are willing to do it.”
El Poder Cubano was another exile paramilitary group, headed by a pediatrician, Orlando Bosch. Bosch would later gain international notoriety after he claimed responsibility for bombing a Cuban passenger plane. All seventy-three aboard, including the entire Cuban national fencing team, died. It was a terrible thing. I would not have ordered it—all that carnage. I could not have lived with myself if it had come as a result of one of my plans.
But that bombing was yet to come. For now, the group’s most recognizable act was firing a 57 mm recoilless rifle at a Polish freighter at the Port of Miami. It was intended as an attack on a vessel doing business with Cuba. The mission failed. The shell plinked off the ship harmlessly. Bosch and eight members of his group, though, were arrested and convicted of conspiring to bomb foreign ships.
One of the men who took part in the attack was Marcos Rodríguez. Now, as his lawyer appealed his conviction, he stepped forward to take part in my assassination plan.
“We begin in Venezuela,” I told him. “Then we go to Chile.”
“I’ll do it,” he said, “if you can get me there. They took my passport. I’m under orders not to leave while my case is on appeal.”
“It will be taken care of,” I assured him.
The other man was Antonio Domínguez. They called him “El Isleño” (“The Islander”). He also had a reputation of being a man of action. I told him, vaguely, what the plan was. He agreed.
I was relieved, but we had to hurry. The clock was ticking. We had six months to go.
I went to Caracas to look for help. Venezuela’s capital was home to many Cuban exiles, including the general manager of one of the country’s television networks, Venevisión, Canal 4.
I had met Enrique Cuzcó during my days as a promoter, when I arranged for the Cincinnati Reds and Pittsburgh Pirates to play three exhibition baseball games in Caracas. Cuzcó paid for the games to be televised.
Now, on my way back to Bolivia from Miami, I went to him again.
I told him about the plan to kill Castro.
“I can’t give you the details,” I said, “but the idea is that the people would pass themselves off as journalists, as a cameraman and a reporter.”
He eyed me, waiting.
“I need to get them trained,” I continued, “so that they’re credible. I need you to recommend someone of confidence who can do it.”
Cuzcó gave me the name of another Cuban in the city, a man with decades of experience as a cameraman in Cuba and Venezuela.
I checked him out through another well-connected friend. Then, sure of him—or at least as sure as I could be—I went to see him.
“It’s expected that Castro will go to a country,” I said, “and he’ll give a press conference. I want to train two people. When they are there, they need to appear to be journalists.”
I could see he was interested.
“I think if we can get close to Fidel, we can kill him,” I continued. “But I
don’t know anything about how those things work. I need to know. Is it possible?”
He paused. Then he nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “I participated in the press conference that Castro gave when he came to Venezuela. You can buy a camera and you can hide a small pistol inside.”
I leaned closer.
“Go on,” I said.
“Before a press conference,” he said, “the cameramen have to hand over their credentials and they have to leave the camera. Then the Cuban security people examine the camera to see if there’s anything hidden in it.”
“Then they’ll find it,” I interrupted. “What good is that?”
“With a small pistol, you could hide it in a place inside that they’ll never find.”
I reeled at the possibility. This was it! It could work.
“I’ll show you how,” he said.
He didn’t fail me.
The trainer told me that when Fidel speaks in a press conference, he generally stands a step above, on a raised platform of some kind. The stage—with Castro in the center, surrounded by Chilean and Cuban officials—would be bathed in the bright lights of the cameras, the flashbulbs, and the reflectors. The press pack, however, would be standing in the dark. Here in the shadows, among the crowd of journalists, the assassin could get the gun out of the camera. He could move closer to Fidel. He could get within ten or even five meters, maybe closer. Then he could fire. And not be seen.
But only if he could pass himself off as a journalist and get into the press conference in the first place.
The man I spoke with agreed.
“I will show them how,” he said.
The assassins couldn’t pose as just any journalists, though. They had to be Venezuelan. That meant they needed to know Venezuela, and they couldn’t make the same mistake I had made in Chile. They couldn’t use a Cuban idiom. They needed to sound and speak like Venezuelans. They had to say things like vale and chamo.
They also had to know things about Venezuela, like the cities, important country leaders, and some of the history. That way, they could be believable as Venezuelans if somebody asked them a question.
That would take training. And time.
First, I needed to get the men from Miami to Caracas.
Luckily for me, Venezuela was a corrupt country. We got each man a blank Venezuelan passport, with a fake name. It was easy. The people from Alpha 66 arranged it. In Caracas, I put the two men in an apartment together and put them to work. They learned to work the camera. They learned to behave as journalists. They learned to “be” Venezuelan.
I went back to Bolivia. Secundino Álvarez, the head of Alpha 66’s Caracas branch, sent letters letting me know how things were going.
Three months later, the assassins were ready. I went back to Caracas, to see Cuzcó.
“They’re ready,” I said. “I need you to give them credentials, identifying them as employees of Venevisión.”
“I can’t,” he said. “I want to help, but if they’re caught, or this is discovered—I can’t allow the network to be implicated.”
My mind raced. Now what?
“But,” he said, “here’s what I can do: I’ll show you what the credentials look like, but you’ll have to find a printer and make your own. You take them to a printer, you falsify the signatures, but I don’t ever want it to come out that I gave you the credentials.”
I arranged to have the fake credentials made, including counterfeit signatures authorizing them. Then I went to see Bishop in Lima. He confirmed that Fidel would be in Chile in September.
“Are you sure that these people will go through with it?” he asked. “You know what happened in Havana.”
“I know,” I said. “It won’t happen again.”
He studied me, his unspoken doubts visible in his eyes.
“But,” I continued, “I need to give them some kind of a guarantee.”
“What?”
“I need to assure them they won’t be killed as soon as they do it.”
He looked at me for a long time before answering.
“Well,” he said, finally, “I’ll talk to the Carabineros. I’ll have them go and see you in Bolivia, and you can work out the details. They’ll call you when they’re in La Paz and you meet with them.”
Later I would learn that he lied to me. There was no chance that the CIA—or the Chilean security officials involved in the assassination plot—were going to let the shooters live to tell the tale.
Nonetheless, after my meeting with Bishop, two people dressed as civilians came to see me. We met at a cafeteria that catered to the well-to-do, executives, and diplomats, a few blocks from the U.S. Embassy in La Paz. They said they were from Chile.
“They sent us to talk to you,” one said. “We are with the government, but we are anti-Communists. Tell us about this assassination attempt on Fidel, where and when it’s going to happen.”
I smiled.
“Well,” I began, “if I tell you …”
I shook my head.
“It’s not that you guys will betray me,” I went on, “but if the word gets out …”
“No, no, no,” the first one said. “We’re here because they sent us. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here.”
“Still,” I said, “no matter where or when it happens, my men need to know that your men won’t kill them.”
The one who did the talking looked me in the eye.
“You can tell those men that the chance of them getting out alive is going to be very good,” he said. “There’s always the possibility that after they’ve killed Fidel, Fidel’s security people will kill them. But that’s not logical for them to do. What’s logical is that they will want to arrest them.”
He anticipated my question.
“There’s no way they’re going to escape,” he continued. “But I think they have a very good chance of not dying.”
“Prison?” I asked.
“For a while. We will worry about saving their lives and keeping them in prison until the situation changes in Chile and they are released. But the thing is that they won’t die.”
He paused, sensing my doubt.
“They won’t. Because they will be the most important prisoners in the world.”
That’s what I told the men. They would be the most important prisoners in the world. They would be famous.
It was time to move them to Santiago, and to wait for Fidel.
Bishop let me know Fidel’s trip had been postponed to November. We put the men in place a month and a half before that. We rented the apartment they would work from even earlier.
Another Cuban I knew in La Paz, Miguel Nápoles, was married to a Bolivian woman. They both helped me.
“You know that your friend is crazy,” I told him. “We’re going to try to kill him.”
“Damn!” he said. “How?”
“That’s not important. But I need your help,” I said. “I need the three of us—you, your wife, and me—to go and rent an apartment so that when your friend arrives, we’ll already have it. If they go to rent it after he gets there, it’s going to draw a lot of attention.”
The three of us flew to Santiago together. We were there about a week trying to find the apartment. It needed to be in the center of town, not too luxurious and not too miserable. We finally found a place not too far from the Presidential Palace, on Calle Huérfanos, Orphan Street. Since Nápoles’s wife was Bolivian, not Cuban, I sent her to rent it.
“Tell the owner that you have some nephews who are coming to live there and that’s why you’re paying the rent for them.”
Then we went back to La Paz, with the key.
With that taken care of, I went to see Bishop in Lima.
I told him I needed a small pistol, two revolvers, and a rifle with a telescopic sight. The pistol was for the camera. The revolvers were backups, in case the men needed them to escape. They could stash them in the apartment, or a car, and use them if they needed to.
The sni
per rifle was a different kind of backup. In addition to the apartment, I wanted one of the men to rent a room at the Hilton, across from the Presidential Palace. On the off chance that they heard that Fidel would be speaking there, or even if he launched unexpectedly into one of his marathon speeches on one of La Moneda’s balconies, they could go to the hotel, sight the rifle, and, if the conditions were right, take their shot.
Otherwise, they should go with their primary plan.
Bishop told me there were two ways to get the weapons to me. He asked if he could mail them to me at the embassy. He could send them to me in a package mixed with clothes.
I told him no.
“It’s too risky,” I said. “If they open it for any reason, then what?”
“Well, then,” he said, “I can give them to you here in Lima.”
“What then?” I asked. “What do I do from there? I don’t have anybody in Lima to give them to.”
“That’s your problem,” he said. “I’ll let you know so that you can come and pick them up.”
I accepted. I had no choice.
Meanwhile, unknown to Bishop, I had gone even further to deflect blame for the assassination from the CIA. He wanted the assassination linked to Cubans. Fine. I wanted it to go beyond that. I would implicate the Soviets.
One of my friends in Caracas learned that a professor who was there from the Soviet Union had actually been a spy in other countries. I sent Domínguez, on a pretext, to meet with him at his home. While they spoke in the garden outside, I had a photographer with a telephoto lens capture their seemingly friendly meeting.
Then I arranged for a fake dossier documenting some of the professor’s activities in Venezuela and other places. In it, as well, I included papers giving the instructions for Castro’s assassination, apparently on Kremlin orders.
If the assassins died, I’d see to it that the documents were leaked. That way, I presumed, the Soviets would be permanently stained. They’d be suspected of killing one of their allies. I’d sow mistrust, and, with Castro’s killers dead, there’d be no one to disprove the Kremlin’s role in his murder. The mistrust, I figured, would lead to a breakdown in relations. Without the economic and political support of the Soviets, Cuba would be weakened, and lose its great defensive shield against the United States. Combined with the death of the regime’s charismatic head, Fidel, a break with the Soviets would almost certainly ensure the collapse of Cuba’s Communist government.
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