The Corporation

by T. J. English

  2

  BIRDS OF A FEATHER

  A FEW DAYS AFTER 1,113 SURVIVING MEMBERS OF THE 2506 BRIGADE WERE RELEASED from prison (six men had died from war injuries or other causes while incarcerated), President John F. Kennedy announced that he and his wife would be attending a ceremony at the Orange Bowl in Miami to welcome the men home and thank them for their service. There was a strong difference of opinion among brigade survivors about whether or not this was a good thing. Some of the men made it known that they would boycott the event. Emotions ran deep. Pepe San Román, one of three commanders in chief of the brigade, years later expressed his feelings in an interview:

  I hated the United States and felt that I had been betrayed. Every day it became worse and then I was getting madder and madder and I wanted to get a rifle and come and fight against the U.S. Sometimes the feeling came very strong to me that they had thrown us there knowing they were not going to help us. Many times I had the feeling that we were thrown there to see what happened, because they were sure that Fidel was going to capture us and put all of us in front of a firing squad and we would be killed and there would be a great scandal in the whole world. Sometimes I felt like that. And sometimes I felt they had changed their minds at the last moment, and they didn’t have time to give us the order to come back. But anyhow I felt that if they had organized us and taken us through a whole year of that training, even if the world was going to fall to pieces, they should not have forgotten us.

  Even so, San Román believed that Kennedy’s visit was a good thing. Not only would he attend, but he would do so as part of a ranking committee that would present to the president the flag of the 2506 Brigade that for three days of fighting had flown over the command post at Playa Girón.

  José Miguel Battle would also be in attendance at the Orange Bowl. In later years, Battle would sometimes express the presentment common to many former brigadistas that the United States had betrayed the brigade and that the main person responsible was Kennedy. But in the days and weeks following his release from prison, he, like many anti-Castro activists, had not yet given up the fight. And whether the Cuban militants liked it or not, the United States was still their best hope for removing Castro and establishing an alternative government on the island.

  It was an overcast day on December 29, 1962, when President Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, were driven into the stadium in a white convertible. The cavernous Orange Bowl was filled nearly to capacity with forty thousand people—brigade survivors and their families, community members, Kennedy supporters, and a huge phalanx of media personnel in place to cover this extraordinary event.

  A platform had been set up at the fifty-yard line, with a podium adorned with the presidential seal of the United States. Before stepping to the podium, Kennedy greeted a line of brigade members, some of whom were missing limbs and others on crutches.

  The first to speak was Pepe San Román. Into a microphone, he said to the large crowd, “We know how precious liberty is and we know that Cuba has no liberty. The 2506 Brigade, we offer ourselves to God and to the free world as warriors in the battle against communism . . . We don’t know how or in what form the opportunity will come for us to fight in the cause of Cuba. Whenever, however, wherever, in whatever honorable form it may come, we will do what we can to be better prepared to meet and complete our mission.”

  San Román turned to the president. “Mr. President, the men of the 2506 Brigade give you their banner. We temporarily deposit it with you for your safekeeping.”

  To thunderous applause, the flag, which had been neatly folded, was handed to the young president. Kennedy unfurled the flag—to even louder applause—then stepped to the microphone. The first thing he said was, “I want to express my great appreciation to the brigade for making the United States the custodian of this flag.” And then, his voice rising with emotion, he declared, “I can assure you that this flag will be returned to this brigade in a free Havana.”

  The entire audience rose to its feet, cheering wildly, with shouts of “Guerra! Guerra! ” and “Libertad! Libertad!” Some of the brigade members had tears in their eyes.

  The president then gave a formal speech, which he addressed directly to the men of the brigade. “Your small brigade is a tangible reaffirmation that the human desire for freedom and independence is essentially unconquerable. Your conduct and valor are proof that although Castro and his fellow dictators may rule nations, they do not rule people; that they may imprison bodies, but they do not imprison spirits; that they may destroy the exercise of liberty, but they cannot eliminate the determination to be free.” He urged the Cubans in exile to uphold the mythology of the brigade. “Keep alive the spirit of the brigade . . . The brigade is the point of the spear, the arrow’s head.”

  After the president finished his short speech, the First Lady stepped to the microphone. In Spanish, she said to the brigade survivors, “It is an honor for me to be today with a group of the bravest men in the world, and to share in the joy that is felt by their families who for so long lived hoping, praying, and waiting. I feel proud that my son has met the officers. He is still too young to realize what has happened here, but I will make it my business to tell him the story of your courage as he grows up. It is my wish and my hope that someday he may be a man at least half as brave as the members of the 2506 Brigade. Good luck.”

  By appealing to the men’s virility, Jackie Kennedy had charmed the crowd. Raul Martinez, the paratrooper whose life was saved by José Miguel Battle, spoke for many when he said, “Most of my attention that day was spent looking at the First Lady. She spoke in a very sexy Spanish.”

  The arena was filled with emotion. In the opinion of some, Kennedy had declared that la lucha—the struggle—was not over. It was a reaffirmation of his commitment to unseat Castro. Others viewed the president’s words with deep cynicism. Said one brigadista, “Kennedy stopped by and shook my hand. I shook his hand and all that, but under my breath I muttered, ‘son of a bitch.’ ”

  Another who was not in attendance stated, “I did not go to the ceremony. I repudiated the act . . . I thought it was demagoguery for Kennedy to [say that he would] give the flag back to the Cubans after he had betrayed us.”

  Grayston Lynch, a CIA agent who had been a key organizer of the invasion, said of the event, “It was the first time it ever snowed in the Orange Bowl: Kennedy gave them a snow job.”

  The feelings toward the president were complicated, to say the least. Certainly the overwhelming majority of the men of the brigade felt deep in their hearts that they had been betrayed by the U.S. government. The initial response was that this betrayal must have started at the top. Subsequent dissections of the invasion, in detailed media accounts, book-length investigations, and oral histories, shifted some blame to the CIA. In particular, Deputy Director Richard Bissell, who ran the operation for the CIA, had been asked by the president, “If I call off air cover for these men, can they still win?” Bissell said, “Yes.” The fate of the brigade was sealed. Attempts by Kennedy supporters to shift blame to the CIA, and thus rewrite history, were resented by the CIA and its acolytes. But on the day of Kennedy’s appearance at the Orange Bowl, there was a softening of the animosity toward him as an individual, a sense that the betrayal experienced by the brigade went beyond Kennedy and was somehow attributable to the vicissitudes of fate, or the gods, who for some reason had left them stranded on the beach.

  One thing seemed clear: the guilt that Kennedy felt for whatever role he may have played in the failure of the mission was genuine. And guilt could be a powerful motivator. For some in the still flourishing antiCastro movement, Kennedy’s guilt was seen as a factor to be harnessed and manipulated.

  The president sought to make amends through an unprecedented offer: since the men of the brigade had been trained by the U.S. military, he announced that any and all members of 2506 Brigade could enter any branch of the U.S. military, and in doing so, would be given status as citizens of the United States. All they had
to do was apply.

  Many former brigadistas jumped at the chance: nearly half of the brigade, including men who had been seriously wounded, enlisted in the U.S. armed forces just two months after their liberation. One of those men was José Miguel Battle.

  For Battle, it was an obvious choice. Arriving in Miami after his release, like most of the prisoners, he had no job or profession to speak of. He was a former Havana cop, perhaps tainted by associations with the notoriously corrupt regime of Fulgencio Batista. He could return to Union City, where he still had partial ownership in a bar, but what was being offered by the president was a higher calling. Not only that, if he joined the armed forces and became a legal citizen, his wife and son in Cuba would be able to secure U.S. visas and finally join him in the land of milk and honey.

  On March 17, 1963, two and a half months after being released from the Isle of Pines prison, Battle enlisted in the U.S. Army. He was allowed to join at the same grade, or rank, he had had while in the brigade— second lieutenant. It was noted on his enlistment form that he had been an infantry unit commander. He was stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he was able to forgo basic training, which he had already received at Base Trax in Guatemala. He was enlisted as a fully commissioned officer, and would be receiving advanced military training at the U.S. Army Infantry School.

  Just as important to Battle, he was able to get his wife and son out of Cuba. They traveled to Georgia and were able to live on the base, in a complex of homes specifically designed for soldiers and their families.

  At Fort Benning, Battle was stationed with other Cuban exiles, many of whom had served with the brigade. Included in this group was Angel Mujica, Battle’s prison mate from the Isle of Pines.

  The CIA had a strong presence at the base and had already begun a vigorous recruitment campaign of Cuban exiles to serve in a newly christened covert scheme to kill Castro. The plan to take back Cuba was an anticommunist operation. It was made clear that by enlisting in the clandestine war against Castro, the exiles would become soldiers in the Cold War, which would involve proxy undertakings in other countries—especially in Latin America—that were in danger of falling under the thrall of Castroism.

  Over the next twelve months, Fort Benning would serve as a nexus and incubation chamber for this “holy war.” CIA agents and operatives, along with Cuban exiles in training, came together in a spirit of purpose and camaraderie. The overall mission may have been philosophical and global, defined by the parameters of communism versus capitalism, but the number one bullet point on the agenda remained the need to kill Castro and reclaim Cuba.

  THE U.S. GOVERNMENT’S EFFORTS TO ASSASSINATE FIDEL CASTRO HAD RUN PARALlel with the Bay of Pigs invasion. Cuban exiles were always a central element in the assassination plots, though the overall plan had grown out of an alliance between the CIA and a group of American mobsters that the Agency designated in its internal communications as “the gambling syndicate.” These were men who had been deeply invested in the casinos and nightclubs in Havana during the Batista era of the 1950s. Ever since Castro marched into the capital city, they had harbored dreams of exacting revenge and restoring Havana to its former “glory.”

  The key man was Santo Trafficante, José Miguel Battle’s Mafia contact back in his days as a cop in Havana. Since leaving Havana, Trafficante had been absorbed in efforts to overthrow Castro. He had cofinanced and partnered with co-conspirators in assassination schemes devised by Cuban exiles, fellow mobsters, counterrevolutionaries, and at least two Cuban ex-presidents, Fulgencio Batista and Carlos Prío Socarrás.

  By the time Trafficante met with a representative of the CIA, at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach in October 1960, training of the 2506 Brigade was under way. The CIA plot to overthrow Castro was a two-track operation. Track one was the invasion. Track two was the assassination of Castro, which would pave the way for a new president and government council chosen by the CIA to be put into place. A cadre of high-ranking CIA officials had been selected by director John Foster Dulles to oversee what was initially referred to as “the Cuba Project.”

  Secretly, the U.S. government had allied itself with gangsters at various times as deemed necessary. During World War II, U.S. Naval Intelligence had enlisted the aid of the Mob in ferreting out German spies and saboteurs in various ports along the eastern seaboard. Meyer Lansky had been a primary liaison between the Navy and the Mob, most notably by making it clear that Charles “Lucky” Luciano, who was in prison on prostitution charges, was the only person powerful enough to authorize the Mob’s cooperation. Out of what they called “patriotism,” Lansky and Luciano agreed to aid the war effort. They also manipulated the relationship to bring about the commutation of Luciano’s prison sentence.

  So the U.S. government was not above partnering with professional hoodlums. But in initiating a program that included the use of the Mafia to carry out a political assassination, the CIA was entering new territory. It was the beginning of an expedient alliance between the CIA, the Mob, and Cuban exiles that would last for half a century and change the course of U.S. history.

  At the Fontainebleau, Trafficante was present along with fellow mafiosi Johnny Roselli and Sam Giancana. The CIA representative in attendance was a man named Robert Mahue. Technically, Mahue was a retired agent working as the chief executive of Nevada operations for the billionaire industrialist Howard Hughes. He also had his own investigative agency, which he would many years later admit was a CIA front so that he could undertake “cut-out” assignments—jobs in which the Agency could not be officially involved.

  Mahue’s initial contact had been with Roselli, a West Coast–based mafioso, but Roselli had quickly brought Trafficante into the loop. Santo was the one with contacts in the militant Cuban exile community who could be used to facilitate any assassination plot.

  Various exile groups were already deeply involved in efforts to kill Castro. One of these was Rescate, a counterrevolutionary group that had begun in Havana and was still active on the island. Trafficante had contacts in this group that, he surmised, had spies inside the Castro government who could get close to Fidel.

  Mahue, speaking on behalf of the Agency, told the mobsters they would be paid $150,000 to get the job done. But Trafficante, Roselli, and Giancana made it clear that they did not expect or want to be paid. They were willing to undertake the assignment out of a sense of “patriotic duty.”

  The timing was propitious for the mobsters, and almost too good to be true. The Kennedy Justice Department, led by Attorney General Robert Kennedy, had been hammering the Mafia ever since the Kennedys came into office. During the first six months of 1961, 171 Mafia-related defendants around the United States were given prison sentences, compared to just four in 1960. If Trafficante, Roselli, and Giancana could somehow blunt the Justice Department’s Mafia obsession by helping out another branch of federal law enforcement—the CIA—then it was well worth the effort.

  Over the next few months there would be many assassination schemes facilitated by the CIA’s Technical Services Division (TSD). Many of the most outlandish ideas never got past the planning stage. There was the scheme to plant an exploding seashell near where Castro went snorkeling. The idea was that he would be drawn to the exotic seashell, would bend down to pick it up, and it would blow up in his face. There was the plot to dust Castro’s shoes with thallium salts, a strong depilatory that would cause his beard to fall out, bringing about public humiliation for the dictator. There was the plot to infiltrate Havana’s preeminent broadcasting studio, where Fidel regularly gave speeches over the radio, and spray it with a chemical similar to LSD, causing the dictator to talk gibberish and go mad. There were the exploding cigars, or the cigars contaminated with a botulin toxin so potent that a person would die after putting one in his mouth. There was a plot to insert a syringe containing deadly poison inside a ballpoint pen; if an infiltrator could get close enough to Fidel, they could plunge the syringe into his neck and kill him instantly.

 
; Some of these plots were actually put into action, including one involving Trafficante and Roselli.

  The CIA’s technical lab had created some poison pills that could be dropped into a glass of liquid; they would dissolve and be virtually undetectable. In March 1961, shortly before the Bay of Pigs invasion, the pills were passed along to the mobsters, who informed Robert Mahue that, through their contacts in the Rescate group, they could find someone close enough to Castro to plant the pills in his drink.

  The man who provided the mobsters with this information was Manuel Antonio de Varona, better known as Tony Varona, one of the cofounders of Rescate. An active anticommunist in the United States, Varona had been friendly with Santo Trafficante back in Havana. Since leaving Cuba after the revolution, Varona and others had established a camp outside of New Orleans, aided by the CIA, that was currently training counterrevolutionaries for covert ops and clandestine acts of sabotage, industrial and otherwise. In addition, Varona, along with Manuel Artime, one of the three commanders in chief of the 2506 Brigade, had founded a group in the United States called Movement for the Recovery of the Revolution (MRR). Varona also maintained active contacts among the many underground groups in Cuba.

  Through Varona and his contacts in Havana, the mobsters learned that Castro was known to frequent a Chinese restaurant called Pekín. The idea was to deliver the pills to a worker at the restaurant who could do the deed. Varona informed Trafficante and the others that they would need to pay $1,000 for communications equipment to carry out the plot, and $50,000 to pay the operatives in Havana who would pull it off.