With just over a month left before Castro’s visit, I moved the men into place.
I sent Domínguez ahead with his TV camera and his fake credentials. He had no weapons. That way he would get there clean.
I gave him the key, the address, and instructions. “When you get to Chile, you take a taxi,” I told him. “You wait there until Marcos Rodríguez gets there.”
Then I went to see an engineer I knew in Lima. I felt I could trust him. But I’ll tell you something, in this kind of thing, it’s risky. You have to take your chances.
“I need you to do me a favor,” I said. “Someone is going to come to see you from Caracas. His name is Marcos Rodríguez. I need you to receive him and attend to him because he knows nothing about Lima.”
He didn’t object. I continued.
“I need you to facilitate the way for him to go by highway from there to Arequipa, in Peru.”
“OK.”
“Also,” I said, “you will receive a package that has weapons in it.”
He nodded.
“When you get the weapons, you take care of them. You hide them in a suitcase. You tell me how much it costs for the suitcase, a very well made one, disguised with clothes in it. I’ll pay you.”
Again, he said nothing. I went on.
“And you give it to him and you set it up so he can make it to Arequipa. With the suitcase.”
He met Marcos Rodríguez at the airport in Lima. I believe he even took Rodríguez to stay at his home for one or two days, until he got in touch with me by telephone in Bolivia. Then Rodríguez took the weapons, in the suitcase, and went by bus to Arequipa.
I met him there, with my family, all loaded into my American government-issued light blue 1968 Chevy Impala, U.S. Embassy license plate number 137. When my children and wife weren’t looking, I slipped the suitcase under the back seat. Out of sight, but definitely not out of mind.
Then we headed south on the winding road out of Peru’s famous “white city,” away from its perfectly square city blocks and the unique lava-stone buildings that earned it its nickname, and away from the soaring volcanoes dominating its skyline. We were on the way to meet my destiny, in Santiago. Our route took on us on a meandering, and spectacular, drive from the rugged, lava-covered western edge of the Andes, and down into the jagged strip between the coast and sea that was the Atacama.
Later on, when I took the time to think about it, I thought about how irresponsible I had been. At the time, all I thought was “I have to do this.”
It’s like a horse with blinders on, only able to look straight ahead to where it has to go. You never stop to analyze the consequences. The person who stops to analyze the consequences never does anything.
So I followed the two-lane strip south from Aqueripa, in Peru, across the border to Arica, in Chile. Neither the killer nor I blinked when the border guard checked our IDs. I shook my head innocently when he asked if I had anything to declare. I offered only a simple smile as he waved us through.
I left my wife and children in Arica—a vacation, we told the kids.
“Daddy has to drive this man a little farther. You stay here with your mother until he gets back. Then we’ll all go to the beach.”
Miguel Nápoles flew to Arica and met us there. Then Miguel, Marcos, and I drove the narrow highway from there to Santiago, all through the night, the road blanketed in fog.
It took a long time. I ate dinner and breakfast still on the road. Then we drove on, all through the next day, mile after mile after mile after mile after mile, without ever seeing another car.
We got to Santiago at about 9 p.m., hungry. We ate, then went to the apartment on Calle Huérfanos at about 10:00. We parked on the street, with the weapons still in the suitcase under the seat.
“Let’s keep an eye on the street,” I told Miguel and Marcos. “When nobody’s coming, we’ll take the weapons up.”
Domínguez was already there, waiting. He had the camera. We put the suitcase in the closet, talked a little bit, then slept. In the morning, I took Domínguez and Rodríguez aside.
“You have to get established here,” I told them. “You have to go to the presidential secretariat and get credentials.”
They nodded.
“Then you have to use them,” I said. “You have to interview people here. You have to go talk to government officials. Tell them that you are here from Venevisión. Ask about the economic situation. Ask about agriculture. Ask about the changes they’ve made since Allende took office last year.”
I could tell this seemed like too much bother for them, so I pressed on. I wanted to be clear.
“We have a month before Fidel arrives,” I said. “You have to establish yourselves as journalists. You have to use those credentials, and you have to get to know the entire city.”
I gave them my phone number, with instructions to give me regular reports.
Then Miguel Nápoles and I left for the long drive back.
CASTRO ARRIVED IN Santiago on November 9, 1971, a revolutionary rock star, making his first visit to South America in more than a decade. It was a chance for him to bask in the adulation of the country’s leftists, and for Allende to show that his nonviolent “road to socialism” approach had Fidel’s seal of approval.
Fidel landed, however, hoarse with a cold. I got my first frustrated call from his would-be assassins.
“There was no press conference,” Domínguez complained.
“There will be,” I said. “Be patient. And be ready.”
Castro, however, seemed intent on appearing at public rallies, which allowed him to play for an adoring audience but kept the covering press at a distance.
Castro was scheduled for a ten-day visit, and as the first week ticked by, I began to worry that he would leave without giving my team its chance. But Bishop’s information that the sojourn would last weeks proved correct as Castro announced extension after extension.
Press conferences, however, remained elusive. Fidel headed off to the country’s mining and agricultural regions, donning a miner’s helmet for a descent into a coal mine, and a fedora at a farm. He played basketball with nitrate miners in one city and chatted until 3:00 a.m. with army officers in another.
As much as he longed to be the exclusive center of attention, however, Fidel found himself competing with protests and strikes in the politically divided country. Marxist and anti-Marxist youth groups clashed in the streets. Police fired tear gas to disperse a crowd of five thousand women protesting food shortages. The Carabineros arrested more than one hundred rock-throwing rioters in a single night, and Allende declared a state of emergency as the street fights intensified.
I began getting information in advance about Fidel’s itinerary as he bounced from factory visit to factory visit, Marxist meeting to Marxist meeting, and rally to rally. Finally, as his stay stretched into its third week, I learned that there would be a press conference in an enclosed place before he departed. The date: less than a week away.
The delay, I felt, was to our advantage. By then, I reasoned, the assassins would have gained the confidence of the security teams, who would consider them true journalists.
I would never find out.
Barely a week before Fidel’s scheduled press conference, Marcos Rodríguez called. He told me that Domínguez was abandoning the mission. He was going to Lima. I called a longtime associate, Antonio Arocha, immediately.
“I need you as quickly as possible in Lima,” I told him. “I’ll meet you there.”
Arocha was at the airport when I got there. We waited for Domínguez’s plane. We wanted to surprise him. We did. We caught him as he came off the plane.
“Domínguez,” I asked, “why did you leave? What happened?”
He clearly hadn’t expected to see me there. His answer proved it.
“I had to,” he said. “Some of Fidel’s security detail knows me. Several of them. If they saw me, they would grab us. It would ruin everything.”
I glanced at Aro
cha. I could read the doubt on his face.
“I didn’t want the mission to fail because of me,” Domínguez continued. “So I left. But it’s okay, because Marcos has already found a Chilean man who is anti-Communist to help him.”
“But you two were supposed to do it. It was all planned. You trained for it. How could he go and find somebody else on such short notice?”
“It’s all arranged,” Domínguez insisted nervously. “He already took care of it.”
He looked at Arocha for support, found none, and jabbered on defensively.
“What do you want, for the whole thing to be ruined? At least now we still have a chance.”
I was in shock. I didn’t know what to say. Arocha and I walked away.
“You can tell he just made that all up,” Arocha said. “There’s no Chilean. The whole thing is collapsing.”
I knew he was right. And I felt myself collapsing, too. After so much planning, after so much preparation, it had come down to the men I had chosen, again. And again, they were failing me. I was powerless to prevent it. There was nothing I could do but wait.
Three days later, I got a call from a doctor in Santiago.
“There’s a man here who wants to have his appendix removed,” he told me. “Marcos Rodríguez. He told me to call you and tell you.”
“He has appendicitis?” I asked.
“Well, yes,” the doctor began. “But it’s chronic, not acute. He doesn’t need to be operated on right now. But he wants us to.”
I was devastated. I knew it was an excuse. Rodríguez had concocted an elaborate lie so he could abandon the assassination plot and still save face. They had lost their nerve. I had lost my chance.
“The cost is very low,” the doctor continued. “It’s $300. But he wants to be operated on. I want to know what to do.”
“I’ll pay,” I heard myself saying. What did it matter? Domínguez was gone. Rodríguez was alone. What would I do if I were in his shoes?
Fidel’s luck had held out again. After nearly a month in Santiago, he would be returning to Havana in a matter of days. He had met Peru’s president on his way to Santiago. Now, I read in the newspaper, he planned a stopover in Ecuador on his way back. He would spend three or four hours there.
I was desperate. I raced to Miami to see Andrés Nazario. I tried to put together a last-ditch effort to kill Fidel in Ecuador, before he returned to the well-guarded safety of Cuba.
I couldn’t. It was too late. The security around the airport in Quito would be too tight. There wasn’t enough time to get inside with both weapons and men.
Fidel flew to Havana. I flew to Lima to see Bishop. I had no choice. When I told him what happened, he flew into a rage.
“Cubans have no balls!” he yelled. “They aren’t real men. They’re cowards!”
He went on, lashing me with his words. When he stopped, his face was hard.
“Kill them,” he said. “Make examples of them.”
“What?”
“How much does it cost to have someone killed in Bolivia? Two hundred dollars? Pay it. Invite them there and do it.”
“But I …”
“We can’t afford for them to stay alive,” Bishop continued. “They’re a risk. They can expose the State Department’s involvement. They can connect you to the assassination plot. You, an employee of the U.S. Embassy in Bolivia. Think of the damage that will do.”
I was stunned.
“But,” I said, “we ran the same risk if they had succeeded and survived. They could have talked after they were arrested.”
Bishop chuckled.
“Arrested? Survived?” He shook his head. “They weren’t going to survive. Their deaths were already arranged. I just never told you.”
I don’t know if my answer surprised Bishop. It shouldn’t have. Even before I had begun my training in Havana, he had looked at the results of my lie detector tests and seen the potential for this. Principles, he had said then, can be a good and bad thing.
“No,” I said. “I won’t. I can’t. I can’t order someone’s death when I wasn’t even there. I wasn’t running the risk he was. I don’t have the arrogance to order a man’s death when I stood at a safe distance, nowhere near the danger he faced.”
Bishop looked at me for a long moment. Then he told me to go back to Bolivia.
I didn’t know it then, but that was the end for Bishop and me.
chapter 10
IS THAT YOU, MR. BISHOP?
PERHAPS NOT SO surprisingly, my contract with USAID ended just a few months after my tense showdown with Maurice Bishop.
At the end of June 1972, we packed our bags and moved the family back to Miami. I went back to doing what I had done in Puerto Rico, working as a promoter. I divided my time between Miami and Caracas, and dedicated myself to rebuilding a business booking sporting events and concerts.
I also dedicated myself to Cuba. Castro might have gotten away from me in Chile, but my crusade wasn’t over.
My contact with Bishop had grown virtually nonexistent since I had left Bolivia. Without him to direct me or to make demands on my time, I went rogue. Maybe what hurt Bishop most was that it took him more than a year to find out.
I went back to old goals, with new methods. I set about creating teams of exile fighters in cells across the hemisphere. My work as a promoter served as a cover and gave me the freedom to travel to different locations where I could meet with contacts and make plans. Just as I had done in Cuba, I kept the cells to a handful of members or fewer, each separate and unaware that other cells even existed.
Bishop’s lessons—the conspirator’s commandments—served as my guide. Now, though, I added in elements from the experience I had gained since leaving Cuba. Instead of focusing entirely on a single operation at a time, I set simultaneous plans in motion, with overlapping schedules and, sometimes, even overlapping teams.
Some of the missions aimed to pick up where we had left off in Chile. I scanned news reports and tapped into sources on and off the island, trying to learn of Fidel’s travel plans as far as possible in advance. I knew I couldn’t get to him in Havana, but with some luck and careful preparation, I could be ready for him to come to me. Every state visit, every gathering of leaders became a possibility.
Other missions were intentionally designed with a dual purpose, to inflict damage and to incite outrage. They were what Alpha 66 had done so many times before, aimed at provoking the United States and the Soviet Union into breaking the accord that had brought an end to the October 1962 missile crisis and left Cuba in chains ever since. Kennedy’s promise not to invade Cuba remained in effect nearly a decade after his death. But not for me. The superpowers had called a truce; I remained at war.
Within months, the operations were up and running. There were five in all.
THE FIRST ONE involved an assassination, but not of Castro.
Ramiro Valdés was one of the key figures in Castro’s government and one of the most hated among exiles. He had been with Fidel since the earliest days of the revolution, joining him in the July 26 attack on the Moncada Barracks. He’d been captured and imprisoned, and as soon as he was released, he joined the fight again. He teamed up with Fidel in Mexico, joined him aboard the legendary leaky ship Granma for their invasion of Cuba, and fought alongside him in the Sierra Maestra.
After the revolution’s triumph, Valdés took on a darker role. He joined in the tribunals that sent hundreds to their deaths, presiding at summary trials and the firing squads that followed. Then, Fidel placed him in charge of his intelligence apparatus. In many countries, that might mean gathering information to defend the people from foreign attackers. In Cuba, it meant turning its tools of repression and fear against the people, so the government could tighten its grip. Castro made him his head of G2, and later, chief of its even more powerful and insidious counterpart, the Ministry of Interior. Flush with power and an iron fist, Valdés choreographed witch hunts, purges, and disappearances. And, while the full tally mig
ht never be known, he was responsible for sending hundreds to their deaths and thousands more to prison.
Valdés had never shown mercy for his adversaries, so now there would be none for him.
Now, in the summer of 1973, Valdés had taken up residence in Paris for an extended stay. A group of anti-Castro activists was already plotting to kill him. That’s where I came in.
Carrying it out fell to Juan Felipe de la Cruz and another whom I can’t name. The plan called for placing a bomb at the Cuban Embassy, timed to explode when Valdés was sure to be near. It seemed simple enough, but pulling it off would take nerves of steel, steady hands, and unwavering will.
Juan Felipe de la Cruz was the perfect man for the job. He was athletic, educated, and single-mindedly determined to defeat Castro. Born in 1944, the great-grandson of a celebrated colonel in Cuba’s war for independence, he was one of the Pedro Pan kids, sent alone into exile by his parents after Castro came to power. He vowed to return to a free Cuba.
In 1970, de la Cruz joined the Cuban Revolutionary Directorate, known by its Spanish acronym, the DRC. He wrote for the exile magazine Réplica, took to the airwaves on Radio Mundo, and prepared himself for combat. At the start of 1973, he wrote out his ideology for all the world to see. “There is only one enemy,” he declared. “He who impedes a change in the current situation, and in so doing denies the people their inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness by way of their own free will.”
De la Cruz never mentioned Castro by name in the credo. He wrote about Cuba. But he made it clear that he was willing to go to any lengths in the “service of the sacred fight for Cuba’s freedom…. This is our [only] alternative. War without quarter against the true enemies of the nation, in the country and in the city, in the homeland and beyond. By any means and in every form.”
So it was no surprise that when the idea arose to eliminate Valdés, by planting a bomb at the Cuban Embassy in Paris, it was de la Cruz who volunteered.
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