by Gus Russo
After the Mongoose operation began in early 1962, the concerned agencies brainstormed repeatedly on the Castro problem. By May 1963, the CCC was handed a list of options from which to choose. Among them were:
Operation Free Ride—Free one-way airline tickets out of Cuba were to be air-dropped by the thousands on the island. Special note was made that the tickets would not bring the Cubans to the United States.
Operation Dirty Trick—Should one of the Mercury manned space shots fail, it would be blamed on Cuban sabotage, thus justifying a U.S. invasion.
Operation Bingo—A simulated attack on the U.S. forces at Guantanamo would likewise be used to justify a U.S. attack.
Operation Good Times—To be fabricated was a photograph of a fat Castro living lavishly with two “beauties.” A suggested caption would say, “My ration is different.” The Department of Defense author added, “This should put even a Commie Dictator in the proper perspective with the underprivileged, masses.”19
Operation Invisible Bomb—Air Force F-101’s would fly early mornings over Havana, creating sonic booms to blow out “all the windows” in Havana. The attack simulation would cause great apprehension among the populace, and cause “malicious damage.”
In charge of filtering these reports for the CCC was Secretary of the Army Cyrus Vance, assisted by General Alexander Haig, and Vance’s assistant, Joseph Califano. These men saw to it that the reports were forwarded to Bobby Kennedy for potential action. In Haig’s view, the Kennedy brothers so disdained the bureaucracy that they felt the need to run the CCC directly. Haig later wrote:
By reaching down into the government and setting up ad hoc operations, they were able to make certain that projects that were important to them were administered by one or more of the Kennedy loyalists who had been stationed at nearly every function box in the government. . . In this case, the junction box was the office in which I worked under Vance and Califano.20
In a 1997 interview, Haig elaborated on Bobby’s role:
Bobby Kennedy was running it—hour by hour. I was part of it, as deputy to Joe Califano and military assistant to General Vance. We were conducting two raids a week at the height of that program against mainland Cuba. People were being killed, sugar mills were being blown up, bridges were demolished. We were using fast boats and mother ships and the United States Army was supporting and training these forces. This was after the Missile Crisis when the Cuban Coordinating Committee was set up [in 1963]. Cy Vance, the Secretary of the Army, was [presiding] over the State Department, the CIA, and the National Security Council. I was intimately involved. It was wrong-headed, I’m sorry to say. Weekly reports were rendered to Bobby Kennedy—he had a very tight hand on the operation.21
Recently, Haig was shown an organizational chart of the numerous Cuban committees at various government agencies. At the top was the President; nowhere on it did the Attorney General, Robert Kennedy, appear. Viewing the chart, Haig chuckled and exclaimed, “Bobby was the President. He was the President! Let me repeat, as a reasonably close observer, HE WAS THE PRESIDENT!”22
General Haig recalled that his tenure on the CCC was marked by “the impatient prodding of Robert Kennedy and the frequent invocation of the President’s name.” Clandestine activities, including acts of economic sabotage, always went to Bobby Kennedy’s office for final approval. On October 3, 1963, the Cuban Coordinating Committee approved nine operations, several of which involved sabotage. On October 24th, thirteen major operations, including the sabotage of an electric power plant, an oil refinery, and a sugar mill, were approved for the period from November 1963 through January 1964.23 Haig points out that CCC leaders reluctantly followed Bobby Kennedy’s imperative. “Cy Vance was very unhappy with it. He’s a decent human being—not a fellow who would ever be comfortable with operations that were covert. Califano the same.”
Los Amigos de Roberto
Six months before JFK’s eloquent Peace Speech directed at the Soviets, Bobby Kennedy lustily embraced not only his “bad cop” role in his brother’s administration, but also his new friends in the Cuban exile community. The potential success of the Kennedys’ plans to train Cuban exile soldiers for a second invasion hinged on the abilities of the “White House Cubans,” so-named by the FBI’s William Turner. According to the CIA, Bobby’s Cuban allies, who would soon be massing in Central America, referred to themselves as “Los Amigos de Roberto” (friends of Robert), for a sort of secret password when traveling.24
The exiles’ embrace of the White House was strongly encouraged when the Attorney General personally sought to finalize back-channel negotiations with Castro to release all the remaining Bay of Pigs hostages. Manolo Reboso and Roberto San Román also tell of Bobby’s personal assistance in obtaining hospitalization for a child of a Brigade member who needed heart surgery. 25
But other Bobby contemporaries claim his personal interests in Cuba’s leadership radiated beyond anything that could be remotely referred to as “humanitarian.” RFK often brought freed members of Brigade 2506 to his home in McLean, Virginia, or treated them to ski trips in New Hampshire, where a darker agenda began to be formulated. The key actors in this play included Harry Williams, Manuel Artime, and Rolando Cubela. Williams would recruit Cuban exiles for training, and Artime and Cubela would be useful later on (as described in the next chapter).
Enrique “Harry” Ruiz-Williams
Among the first Brigade 2506 members to be released from Cuban prison were those wounded in the Bay of Pigs invasion. One of these unfortunates, Enrique “Harry” Ruiz-Williams, was permanently crippled, courtesy of one of Castro’s bombs. Williams had been riddled with more than 70 pieces of shrapnel, smashing both feet, and leaving one hole in his neck, and another near his heart.26 In April 1962, the last man off the plane in Miami, Williams was said to have fallen into the arms of his former commander, Roberto San Román, who had become fast friends with Robert Kennedy after the invasion. Now San Román headed straight for the phone. He told the Attorney General, “I want you to meet this guy who can tell you what the hell is going on out there.” Bobby Kennedy, who had been watching everything on TV, told San Román, “Bring him to me.”27
Only three days after his release from a Cuban prison-hospital, a nervous Harry Williams arrived in Washington with his friend Roberto San Román, and met with Bobby Kennedy. Williams, a geologist by profession, had much in common with Bobby and they got on famously. Former FBI agent William Turner wrote:
Harry Williams was a Kennedy kind of man, tough and liberal, and ferociously anti-communist Burly, round-faced and handsome, he combined the geniality of a Lions Club toastmaster with a tough-minded singleness of purpose.28
“We’ve selected you to be, let’s say, the man we trust most in the exiles,” Bobby told Williams. Bobby Kennedy later said of Williams, “He was very brave and had very good judgment.”29 Harry was thus drafted onto RFK’s hand-selected Cuban team.
Williams recalls what happened next: “It was my idea to physically eliminate Castro. I suggested it to Bobby.”30 The Attorney General responded by telling Williams that their goals were the same—the elimination of Fidel Castro, and that when the President was ready, they would strike. He assured Harry not to worry, saying, “We’re going to go.”31
Thus began a series of meetings between Bobby and Harry Williams. After the Bay of Pigs, Williams, like many exiles, had been suspicious of Kennedy intentions. There was every reason, even now, to doubt that Bobby would follow through on his promises. Bobby, however, impressed Williams with his unceasing effort to free the rest of the Brigade members. By the time they were finally released on Christmas eve, 1962, Williams was won over. As their friendship grew, Williams was often invited to spend weekends at Bobby’s Hickory Hill home, where he shared a guest room with Bobby’s head of security, Rarer Johnson.
“I worked for Bobby. I was his number one man on Cuba,” says Williams. “He was my friend. I got into a lot of trouble with the Cubans who hated the Kennedys. They
called me ‘Bobby’s Boy.’”32 Williams’ contention is buttressed by a perusal of RFK’s phone logs, which show 36 phone conversations between Williams and RFK at the Justice Department. These would be in addition to any calls from RFK’s home in Virginia. According to Williams, the Cuba Project went into high gear when he became “Bobby’s Boy”:
Bobby called the shots in the Cuba Project. In my opinion, Bobby ran the CIA. Bobby’s anti-Castro campaign continued right up until the assassination. We had camps in the Dominican Republic, in the jungles of Guatemala, in Costa Rica. What we wanted to do was keep the thing going. Everything was geared to eliminate Castro. . . At the camps, the CIA guys would try to give me orders, but I would just laugh and say, “I don’t work for you. You work for me.”33
Williams’ CIA case officers were E. Howard Hunt and Bernard “Macho” Barker. For years, Hunt had functioned as the Agency’s chief liaison to the anti-Castro Cuban exiles. He became particularly close not only to Williams, but to such other Kennedy confidantes as Manuel Artime and former CIA Director Allen Dulles. (Hunt’s affection for Kennedy-loyal exiles like Artime strained relations with many of his fellow CIA officers.) In addition, Hunt served as the Agency’s advisor to the Kennedy-backed Cuban Revolutionary Council, with its headquarters in Miami and New Orleans.34 It has been widely reported that Hunt was the first person to propose to Allen Dulles that Castro be assassinated.
Hunt’s biographer, Tad Szulc, wrote of him, “His specialty was so-called covert political action. . . black propaganda. . . This was the kind of political groundwork the CIA laid in many instances for a coup d’etat in a foreign country.”35 A gifted writer, Hunt had played key propaganda roles in coups in Guatemala and Panama. (After Dulles left the CIA in the wake of the Bay of Pigs, Hunt assisted Dulles by ghost writing five chapters of Dulles’ 1963 book, The Craft of Intelligence.) Former Batista aide and anti-Castro activist Frank Sturgis has said, “Howard was in charge of a couple of other CIA operations involving disposal, and I can tell you that some of them worked.”36 (“Disposal,” in the CIA patois, meant assassination.) Years later, Richard Nixon’s White House Counsel John Dean would testify that Hunt was hired by the White House to oversee the operation to assassinate Ambassador Moises Torrijos of Panama, because of Torrijos’ opposition to the Panama Canal Treaty. (Dean also brought Hunt in to mastermind the infamous Watergate break-in.)37 Now Hunt was asked to help bring about Castro’s fall.
Starting in early 1963, Williams, Barker, and Hunt would hold dozens of meetings in Washington and New York. Attempting to unite the various exile factions at Hunt’s direction, Harry Williams told Miami Cubans of an impending invasion, with initial infiltrations set to commence in December, 1963. Williams’ recruitment efforts were reported in the Associated Press:
A new all-out drive to unify Cuban refugees into a single, powerful organization to topple the Fidel Castro regime was disclosed today by exile sources. The plan calls for formation of a junta in exile to mount a three-pronged thrust consisting of sabotage, infiltration and ultimate invasion. . . Seeking to put together the junta was Enrique [Harry] Ruiz-Williams, a Bay of Pigs invasion veteran, and friend of US. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. Cuban leaders said intensive sabotage and guerrilla activities inside Cuba might start in a month to spark a possible uprising. Hundreds of exiles, reported itching for action and resentful of U.S. imposed curbs against the anti-Castro raids, will be recruited to infiltrate Cuba, the sources added.38
Williams added the detail that the invasion would be launched from Costa Rica. And anti-Castro CIA contract agent Robert Morrow recalls:
Williams claimed that the Attorney General had promised CIA assistance, arms, and money for the invasion. . . Guerilla warfare, sabotage, and infiltration of Castro’s armed forces would be the means by which the Cuban exiles would prepare for the December 1963 operation.39
The CIA’s Morrow, at the time, was assisting Mario Kohly, the President of the Cuban provisional government-in-exile. Kohly had been involved with the original plans of former Vice President Richard Nixon to oust Castro. Morrow says that Kohly was also aware of the planned December 1963 invasion of Cuba, to be launched from Costa Rica.40
Researcher Lamar Waldron, who has developed strong sources both in the Kennedy sphere and the exile community, learned more about the coup from a Cuban close to Bobby Kennedy. The source told Waldron that Bobby Kennedy personally authorized the source to plan for the violent overthrow of Castro, as a prelude to an American invasion. The source was promised that funds for the operation would be deposited by the Kennedy administration in the bank of a third party nation.41
One of these Cubans, who insists on anonymity, has told how in 1963 another senior Castro official, not Cubela, agreed that—for a large cash payment—he would organize the violent overthrow of Castro and key colleagues for a deposit to be paid into a foreign bank, and by November 22, the operation was imminent. Had the president’s assassination not intervened, the exile go-between would have set off on a secret mission to Havana. The initial coup pre-infiltrations, to be followed by American support, were expected to occur within 10 days.42
The Cuban exiles Williams recruited for this invasion were training in a number of places, including the camps on Lake Ponchartrain, north of New Orleans—the same camps that Lee Harvey Oswald would later attempt to infiltrate. The exile trainees chose as their urban New Orleans hangout a city park two blocks from where Oswald was soon to find employment.
The purpose of all this exile activity in New Orleans was to provide a pipeline of equipment and able bodies to the operational headquarters of the re-invasion effort in Central America. There the plans were overseen by a personal emissary of Bobby Kennedy. His name was Dr. Manuel Artime Buesa.
CHAPTER EIGHT
YET ANOTHER INVASION PLAN
Dr. Manuel Artime
Dr. Manuel Artime, the military leader of Brigade 2506, was known as the CIA’s “Golden Boy.” In fact, he was even more so Bobby’s “Golden Boy.” Imprisoned in Cuba for using his organization, the Movement for Revolutionary Recovery (MRR), to oppose the Castro regime in 1959, he escaped the island, and went to Miami, where he directed not only the Brigade, but the parent organization of Sergio Arcadia’s CRC, the Frente Revolucionario Democratico (FRD). After being captured again in the Bay of Pigs invasion, Artime was imprisoned in Cuba.
Artime first met with then-Senator John Kennedy in July 1960, before the Democratic National Convention. The meeting in Kennedy’s Washington Senate office was arranged by the CIA, its purpose shrouded in secrecy.1 Also in attendance was Dr. José Miro Cardona, the president-to-be of the yet to be formed Cuban Revolutionary Council, the man who would later be Sergio Arcadia’s superior. It is believed that Artime, Cardona, and the CIA wanted the Democratic frontrunner (and friend of CIA chief Allen Dulles) to be apprised of the invasion planned for the following spring. Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, the Air Force’s liaison to the CIA, recently recalled his role as the chauffeur assigned to transport the Cuban leaders from Kennedy’s office to the Pentagon.2
Artime went on to become close friends with both Kennedy brothers, for reasons that now seem apparent. “Manolo was not only a revolutionary leader, but a Catholic revolutionary leader,” says his comrade Bernard “Macho” Barker.3 Another exile leader, Justo Carillo, says that Artime’s mentor, a Jesuit priest named Father Posada, was a close friend of Allen Dulles’ cousin Avery Dulles, who was also a Jesuit. According to Carillo, Artime and the Dulleses “created this thesis, followed by the CIA, to bring up [encourage] a young leader, who had been a revolutionary and who was also a Catholic [Artime], and of course, their future presidential candidate [Kennedy].”4 This seems to explain the CIA-arranged meeting between Artime and the young Senator prior to his presidential nomination. Artime’s deputy, Angelo Kennedy, recently recalled, “Everything was happening so fast during the Eisenhower administration. Artime visited Kennedy many times during this period, and I know he told him [Kennedy] of the
invasion plans.”5
Eight months after the release of Harry Williams, Artime and the remaining prisoners of Brigade 2506 were set free in December of 1962. For 20 months after the Bay of Pigs, Bobby Kennedy had worked tirelessly, negotiating with Castro, and raising the $53 million in Pharmaceuticals and farm machinery (Castro’s demand) to release the prisoners. On the day of the release, Williams called RFK at home. The Attorney General said, “You got it, Enrique. This is it. The guy with the beard has accepted.”6 Williams and the other Brigade members were understandably moved by RFK’s efforts.
One wonders, however, how they would have felt had they seen documents, released by the CIA in 1996, which show that Castro had been anxious to complete the prisoner exchange by early September 1962. However, as CIA Director John McCone noted, RFK worried that the ransom issue might be seized upon by the Republicans in the upcoming November elections. The administration thus decided to hold off the exchange until after the balloting, effectively assuring that the prisoners would languish four more months in the infamous Cuban dungeons.7 This was done despite horrendous inside reports of prison conditions. One article prominently featured in Newsweek magazine quoted letters from the prisoners, one of which stated, “We are experiencing such hunger. We often wonder if we can endure two or three more months. . . Tell the ones that can pay the ransom to do so now. If they delay it may be too late.”8
After his release in December 1962, Artime met with President Kennedy, this time at the Kennedy compound in West Palm Beach, Florida. Also attending the late-December meeting were Pepe and Roberto San Román, and Harry Williams.9
Within days, the talks were re-convened in the White House. In his first-ever interview in 1997, Angelo Kennedy, a close aide to Artime and other exile leaders, recalled: “I was with Artime in early 1963 when the call came from the White House. Soon we were brought to Washington to meet with President Kennedy.” Although Angelo would wait in the ante room of the Oval Office, he was well-aware what the topic of discussion would be between Artime and Kennedy: the authorization to train a new invasion force. “I remember Artime leaving Kennedy’s office with a broad grin,” recalled Angelo. “When we got outside, he gave me a huge hug, saying, ‘We got it! We got everything!’” The President and Artime would become fast friends. “They were very close,” remembers Angelo. “Artime used to tell me what a horny Irishman Kennedy is.”10