Blowback - S2 Episode 9 - "Cuba Libra"

Episode Date: August 30, 2021

Castro, Khrushchev, and Kennedy take tentative steps toward the path of peace post-Crisis. Cuban exile groups, and their CIA sponsors, are not pleased. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Here is reporter Lisa Howard. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We thought you might want to hear some of the events surrounding my interview with Fidel Castro. In spring of 1963, for the first time in over three years, millions of Americans turned on their TV sets to see Fidel Castro interviewed on a major network. Fidel Castro made no request to see my questions prior to the interview. The voice of the Cuban interpreter, Dr. Rene Vallejo, was inaudible at times, so we've replaced him with an American interpreter.

But Fidel Castro's answers have not been altered or edited in any manner. The Cuban leader spoke to Lisa Howard of ABC News. And less than six months out from the crisis over missiles in Cuba in 1962, Fidel Castro sounded optimistic. In the United States, they use certain slogans, certain cliches, certain ideas, that they accept almost as though they were axioms or truisms. But I believe that what is thought in the United States and the way things are analyzed there

will finally lead them to understand exactly how and why Cuba is acting as she is. We are merely and completely exercising our rights to self-determination. Episode 9, Cuba, Libra. Last episode, we talked about the climax of the October crisis. We talked about the diplomatic back channels that were key to winding down tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Of course, there were the times we came close to Armageddon, ex-com's deliberations over Khrushchev's two letters, and the heroism of Soviet submarine captain Vasily Archev

that prevented a nuclear exchange. The dust has settled somewhat. For the moment, there is a mutual appreciation between Kennedy and Krushchev for a steady hand post-crisis, perhaps toward a less apocalyptic future. Cuba, meanwhile, nervously assesses whether this new day means greater peace for the superpowers and business as usual for the smaller countries in the developing world. within the U.S. military and intelligence establishments deep resentment simmers over Kennedy's refusal to use the missile crisis as a final blow

against not only Cuba but communism worldwide. And the hardline Cuban exiles, who thought this whole crisis was their moment to finally bring about a U.S.-backed war against Cuba, they are ready to keep the crisis going. With a media campaign alleging that Soviet missiles are actually still there, hibernating in Cuban caves underground. And it looked like John Kennedy, for his part, was now keeping two sets of books. Kennedy's commencement address at American University in spring of 1963

best represents the spirit of what historians call JFK's peace track, which we'll see will mature over the next several months. I have therefore chosen this time and place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth too rarely perceived. And that is the most important topic on earth, peace. What kind of a peace do I mean and what kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana, enforced on the world by American weapons of war, not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave.

I am talking about genuine peace. only two weeks later, Kennedy gave another speech, this one in West Berlin. There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future, let them come to Berlin. A Cold War stemwinder, this speech featured his more famous line, I bin Ain Breliner. Quite unlike the American University speech, this was Kennedy doubling down on the same outlook and policy that led to the crisis in the first place. These two tracks, the war track and the peace track, will coexist in the coming months of 1963. But they cannot coexist forever.

Prior to the Cuban missile crisis, John Kennedy's poll numbers were actually slipping, but much like his recovery after the failure of the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy's number shot up to the mid-70s after America almost brought the world to the brink of annihilation. Capitalizing on this, the Kennedy administration plants the official story of the missile crisis with Kennedy's old friend Charles Bartlett in an exclusive to the Chattanooga Times. Like any official history, it made the American protagonist look quite good, but it went a bit further than that. Knowing that it would eventually leak that America decided to trade Jupiter missiles in Turkey for Khrushchev to remove the missiles in Cuba, the Kennedy team decided to get ahead of the story

and blame it on UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson. It was all Adlai's fault, said one assistant on background. Indeed, Kennedy himself literally marked up the final article and gave his suggestions. quote, he wanted a little stir over Adelaide Stevenson to distract people from asking whether there had been a trade. Also burned in the official history put out by Kennedy was the Soviet operative Georgie Bolshekhov, who had quite come in handy at certain moments of the crisis as a go-between for the Kennedy brothers and Moscow. His exposure in the article essentially terminated his career. Remember that during the summer and fall of 1962, New York Senator Kenneth Keating banged the drum on missiles in Cuba,

partly drawing on sources in the DRE, the CIA-funded terrorist Cuban exile group responsible for the most dramatic episodes of sabotage, murder, and terror. The group was by now considered a, quote, mob-controlled organization, according to FBI records, while also taking money from legitimate businesses such as the Bacardi Rum family. Well, just after Khrushchev had gotten Kennedy to step back from the brink, in early November 1962, a fresh series of news reports citing DRE intelligence about missiles in Cuba began appearing. Article after article began showing up that early November. In the New York Times, the Delaware News Journal, the Associated Press, the Washington Evening Star, There were stories in these papers and others,

claiming that there were ballistic missiles still being hidden in Cuban caves. So, as JFK is winding down the crisis, the Cuban exiles, the DRE in particular, are going on a press offensive. They are trying to prolong the crisis by saying that there are still missiles in Cuba, tucked away in caves not visible by photographs and thus unknown to the Americans. These stories weren't true, and JFK viewed them as a deliberate provocation to force the U.S. to do something militarily about Cuba. In mid-November, the DRE's Luis Fernandez Roca made an appearance on The Today Show, and he said that he himself had seen the missiles in caves, which led JFK to directly address these untrue stories being circulated by the DRE.

At an ex-com meeting on November 12th, according to the meeting's record, JFK brought up Roka's Today Show appearance and said that, quote, within 24 hours, our officials interrogate every Cuban refugee who is making statements about arms going to Cuba. The refugees are naturally trying to build up their story in an effort to get us to invade. The missiles in cave stories didn't stop that November in 62, despite JFK's clear instructions. articles about the hidden missiles continued popping up throughout 1963. The issue was even debated on the floor of Congress as a litmus test for how committed Kennedy was to overthrowing Castro.

The DRE cave stunt shows that while Kennedy sympathized with the anti-Castro cause, post-crisis, he had a limit to how many of their provocations he could take. So as Kennedy was ordering CIA assets in the media to be muzzled, what was the CIA doing? And with a possible post-crisis thaw, what would happen to Operation Mongoose? A November 1962 memo written by Richard Helms' assistant on Cuba shows that the CIA's Directorate of Planning was well aware that the writing was on the wall for Operation Mongoose. quote, Mungoose can only live again

through resurrection. At the end of November 1962, William Harvey, assassination's guru and head of Task Force W, wrote a memo for CIA director John McCone,

passed through Harvey's boss, the phantom menace, Richard Helms. The memo was titled, Operational Plan for Continuing Operations against Cuba. Harvey concluded that, with U.S.-Cuban relations possibly warming up after the crisis, quote, commando and sabotage operations, except in rare selective instances, will serve little purpose. Given Harvey's aversion to blunt language, the historian David Kaiser writes,

it seems fair to assume that Harvey had in mind a coup triggered by Castro's assassination. In January 1963, Operation Mungoose was officially shuttered. Task Force W's operations were folded into a different office, called the Special Affairs section. The day after the DRE's Luis Fernandez Roca appeared on the Today Show, after Kennedy asked, quote, to check every press, radio, and TV report made by a Cuban exile, CIA Deputy Director of Planning, Richard Helms, took what, according to the journalist Jefferson Morley, was a highly unusual meeting. Helms, an extremely senior agency official, met directly with Luis Rocha in Washington. This was supposed to be a meeting

where Helms reeled the DRE back in. After all, they had just gone on NBC and massively pissed off Kennedy. But as Jefferson Morley explains it, that's not what happened at all. In fact, Helms explained to Roca that the DRE would have a new kind of relationship with the CIA with a new handler, a man named Walter Newby. In December 62 through Newby, the DRE told Richard Helms that they planned to publish an open letter bashing Kennedy for softness on Cuba, unless the DRE and other Cuban exiles got more support. Helms apparently did not stop the letter. The DRE published at two media fanfare, including a huge package in the Miami Herald. Far from piping down after their meeting with Helms,

the DRE, under their handler Walter Newby, only seemed to be getting louder. It certainly looked like a happy new year to the 1113 captives returning from Cuba. Homestead Air Force Base, Florida was their first taste of freedom after being Castro's prisoners for 20 months since the ill-starred invasion of the island. Perhaps it is now time that we check in with some people whom we left behind a few episodes back. The prisoners from Brigade 2506 were still in Cuba. Peter Cornblue and William Leogrand in Backchannel to Cuba, their recently published history of U.S. Cuban secret diplomacy.

They write, quote, within a week of the Bay of Pigs invasion, Cuban officials signaled a deal might be possible. Now, subsequent negotiations were hot and cold on and off for the next year. But in April 1962, after some preliminary talks, the White House tapped a diplomat and one-time OSS officer, James Donovan, the man who had successfully negotiated the release of YouTube pilot Gary Powers. Donovan and Castro worked out a deal in time to get the prisoners back to the U.S. for the holidays that year. On December 21, 1962, an agreement was reached and signed, assuring the delivery to Cuba in stages of $53 million of food, medicine, and

other supplies by the following summer. A few airlifts from Cuba had the thousand-plus Bay of Pigs prisoners back in the U.S. by Christmas Eve. Castro used the prisoners to extort medical supplies and baby food from America to the tune of $53 million. Negotiator of that hard bargain was the attorney James Donovan. Perhaps for the first time in his life, Fidel had met with an honest broker from the U.S. government. Quote, you and I have always dealt together in good faith, Castro reportedly told Donovan at the time of the prisoner release, hoping to negotiate on other prisoners into the future.

I want to express great appreciation to the brigade for making the United States, the custodian of this flag. I can assure you that this flag will be returned to this brigade in a free of anna. It's ironic that this moment, a genuine diplomatic breakthrough between Cuba and the U.S. Small and private that it was would lead to something like JFK's appearance

at the Orange Bowl in Miami on December 29th, 1962, a clip of which you heard just a minute ago. Given that JFK was in Miami, he took a predictably hard line on Cuba. But the crowd, mostly Miami-Cubans, took an even harder line. While JFK waxed poetic about freedom, the audience was more direct. They chanted, geta, geta, war. On January 25th, 1963, a month after the release of Brigade 2506, Donovan went back to Cuba, and Fidel greeted him warmly.

He brought Donovan to a Cuban medical school, where Cornblue and Leo Grande report that, quote, Fidel led 300 students in chanting Viva Donovan. The two agreed on another further prisoner exchange, and Donovan went back to the U.S. with an invitation from Fidel to return in March, and to, quote, talk at length about the future of Cuba and international relations. Donovan was primarily accountable to the CIA, which gave the diplomat three conditions for Castro that would allow for a, quote, softening of relations with the U.S.

One, Castro should be told that he must get the Russians out of Cuba, lock, stock, and barrel. This theme should bear some success with Castro because, he is beyond question disillusioned with his Soviet friends as a result of their removing the missiles and bombers. Two, Castro must agree to stop all communist subversion efforts directed at Latin America. Three, Castro should be persuaded to throw the communists out of his government and to renounce his, quote, Marxist-Leninist thesis. The State Department came up with a softer guidance. JFK didn't want Donovan to pursue either the CIA nor the State Department strategies. Instead, he had Bobby Kennedy tell Donovan on March 12, 1963, two days before the lawyer

was to return to Cuba, that he was to, quote, obtain the release of all U.S. citizens in prison, but to, and this is RFK's emphasis, not initiate any discussions of a political nature. Listen carefully, Bobby told Donovan, but say little. On this Cuba trip, Donovan followed the president's instructions and got what the president wanted. Donovan secured more American prisoners and returned again to Cuba in early April. He had with him a Polaroid camera as a gift for Fidel, and the proofs for an upcoming article

in the Nation magazine titled How Meta Diplomacy Works, James Donovan and Fidel Castro. A piece which led to, as Cormblue and Leo Grand put it, the first serious conversation about how to restore relations between Washington and Havana. Castro said, how would we restore normal relations with the United States of America? And Donovan said to him, Mr. Premier, do you know how porcupines make love? And Castor turned to his translator, René Vallegro, and said, Puercco Spinos, saying el amor, what is that? The answer was no, he didn't know how they made love.

And Donovan said very carefully. By the end of April, Donovan had secured the release of 27 remaining U.S. citizens in Cuban prisons, including three CIA agents. And that same month, the groundwork for another Cuban, American back channel was being laid. On March 19, 1963, Antonio Vessiana, the chief of the CIA-backed Cuban exile terrorist group Alpha 66 held a press conference.

He announced what he claimed was a successful commando raid with, quote, more than a dozen Soviet casualties. Moscow condemned what it called, quote, the latest provocation, as did the state department, which vigorously pointed out that the raid was a violation of the Neutrality Act. Years later, Vesiana said that the press conference had been conjured to create a headache for Kennedy. It had been the idea of Vesiana's CIA handler, a man that Vesiana knew as Maurice Bishop. Max Frankel, a New York Times reporter close to the Kennedys, reported that Vesiana and Bishop's

stunt paid off. Kennedy and his team, who were then in Costa Rica, were, quote, said to have telephoned several times during the day for reports on the situation in an agitated search for more information. Frankl goes on, most officials in Washington were embarrassed by the incident and were disapproving of such action in private, as well as public comments. The State Department's official statement was harsh, declaring that the American government was, quote, strongly opposed to what Alpha 66 had done and other raids like it, but the Kennedy administration's real payback was yet to come. On March 31st, 1963, the Kennedy administration made public a new crackdown on anti-Castro groups

that were using United States territory to launch attacks against Cuba. The largest, most well-funded, and most CIA-connected of these groups being, of course, the DRE. According to the New York Times story from the following day, Bobby Kennedy's Justice Department, quote, placed restrictions on 18 Cubans in the Miami area, including Alpha 66's Antonio Vesiana and DRE members like Luis Fernandez Roca and Isidro Borja. And just below that time story about Bobby Kennedy's new move was an AP wire story from Miami, titled Exiles Erked by Order. These restrictions, quote, convert us into enemies of the American government more than of the very communist government of Cuba we are trying to fight. And this crackdown wasn't a one-off event.

In April 2nd headline in the Tampa Tribune, quote, British Cs 17 anti-Castro raiders acted on tip from U.S. officials. On April 21st, the Associated Press reported on the recent resignation of Jose Miro Cardona from the Cuban Revolutionary Council, one of the original CIA puppet groups.

Cardona was bemoaning the diplomatic turn of the Kennedy administration, including Donovan's successes in getting the Bay of Pigs Prisoner, released. A sense of crisis was now coming over many Cuban exile leaders. Quote, members of those fighting groups, and indeed a large number of the exile community, are boiling with resentment. The spring and summer of 1963 were in extremely active time for anti-Castro exile groups, especially the DRE. Its $50,000 a month CIA budget per instructions from high levels of the

agency remained intact. In September 1963, a jam wave cable noted, the DRE took out an ad in the softcore porno tabloid C magazine toting the group's $10 million bounty on Castro's head, and the group's handler Walter Newby, meanwhile, was promoted to chief of siops at the Miami Station. He still worked with the Cubans. This just meant that the DRE was now being run by one of the agency's top propaganda and disinformation specialists.

Are you telling me, Dr. Castro, that there are no Soviet troops in armaments in Cuban soil? You call Soviet troops. We call technical. You understand? In April 1963, ABC News journalist Lisa Howard took a crew and flew to Havana to film a rare interview with Fidel Castro himself. And Howard was a trailblazer, one of the first prominent American women in TV news. She had once been a soap opera star in the 1950s, but by this point her journalistic bona fides were indisputable. Peter Cornblue writes, quote, Howard emerged on the media scene in 1960, covering the United Nations. She became the first journalist to score an interview with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. After ABC News hired her to cover the 1961 Vienna summit between Khrushchev and Kennedy,

she became one of the first women to anchor a television news program. Her one-hour special, Fidel Castro, self-portrait, which aired in May of 63, marked a definitive and public overture for something like peace. Tell her that it is true. But when the United States suspended the sugar quota of Cuba, When the United States closed all the doors to trade between Cuba and the United States, Cuba had no other alternative from the economic standpoint

than to tighten its economic relations with the Soviet Union. She now wants to know what would have happened if those measures had not been taken. If the United States had accepted expropriation, well, I don't know. But I don't believe that you can answer a question, like that, just categorically. We can't know exactly how events would have followed if such a stand had been taken by her country. But I do believe, and of this I'm convinced, that relations would have been very different.

Fido Castro's message wasn't lost on the press. Perhaps the bluntest headline reaction was from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, quote, Castro would like to talk with Kennedy. In spring of 1963, Fidel Castro stood next to Nikita Khrushchev and Anastas Mikhailian, waving on the Mayday parade in Moscow's Red Square. Days earlier in the same spot, to Soviet citizens waving the Cuban flag, Fidel declared, long live the Soviet Union.

Khrushchev had invited Castro to the USSR as a part of his effort to patch things up after the tensions that came out of the missile withdrawal. Fidel and the Cuban leadership, we remember, had been troubled by the way the October crisis was resolved. Khrushchev had sped through an agreement with Kennedy to simply withdraw the missiles from Cuba without running it by Castro.

From Khrushchev's perspective, this was due to the urgency of avoid avoiding a nuclear-tipped standoff that could have happened any minute. But from the Cuban's perspective, they had been prevented from weighing in on their own country's defense and deeply resented the missiles going back to the USSR. The Soviet leader wanted to be able to talk to Fidel in person, sort out their disagreements, talk about their differences,

but ultimately grow closer and build up the Soviet-Cuban relationship. He also had a personal affinity for Fidel. Christchyev's son would later record, quote, he had given his heart to the bearded leader. In addition, the Soviet Union, as we've previously mentioned, was increasingly in competition with the People's Republic of China for moral leadership in the communist world. In the latest chapter of the Sino-Soviet split,

the Chinese Communist Party had accused the Soviets of virtually abandoning Cuba. Back home, post-crisis, Fidel was dealing with increasing sympathies for the Chinese criticism of the USSR, from no less than Che Guevara, for example. Luckily for Khrushchev, Castro really liked him too. And the two struck a deal for more Soviet tanks and aircraft for Cuba, though the deal was a tad more conservative considering the recent missile snafu. Krischov had more or less successfully handled the rift with the Cubans. Now, both the Soviets and the Cubans hoped for some progress with the United States of America.

I am talking about genuine peace, not merely peace for Americans, but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time, but peace in all time. On Monday, June 10, 1963, JFK delivered to the commencement address at American University. As you heard at the start of the episode, he declared the topic right out of the gate. I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age where great powers can maintain large

and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. Kennedy asked his audience, as Adelaie Stevenson once had asked him to consider things from the Soviet Union's perspective. Some say that it is useless to speak of peace or world law or world disarmament, and that it will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it. But I also believe that we must re-examine our own attitudes.

as individuals, and as a nation, for our attitude is as essential as theirs. And in a first for any U.S. president, Kennedy recognized the huge sacrifice paid by the Soviet Union in the war against Hitler, which the American public had always been told was a happy ending that we brought about. As Americans, we find communism profoundly repugnant, as a negation of personal freedom and dignity. But we can still hail the Russian people, for there are many achievements in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture, in acts of courage. Among the many traits the peoples of our two countries have in common, none is stronger than our mutual abhorrence of war. And no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more

than the Soviet Union in the Second World War. At least 20 million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and families were burned or sacked. A third of the nation's territory, including two-thirds of its industrial base, was turned into a wasteland. A loss equivalent to the destruction of this country, east of Chicago. Kennedy's American University speech was about as close as a U.S. President's speech could get to being a hit in the Soviet Union? In fact, the USSR unjammed some of the usual Western channels so as to let people hear Kennedy's speech read in full. Chairman Khrushchev, Prime Minister McMillan and I have agreed that high-level discussions

will shortly begin in Moscow looking towards early agreement on a comprehensive test-banned treaty. Our hope must be tempered. Our hopes must be tempered with the caution of history, but with our hopes go the hopes of all mankind. Off the buzz from JFK's American University's speech, a month afterward, U.S. and Soviet representatives were able to come to terms on a limited test ban treaty in July 1963. Moscow signed it into law the next month, and J.F.K. handheld the Senate into passing it in September. On October 7th, the president officially ratified the nuclear test ban treaty. More privately, other significant diplomatic breakthroughs were taking place at the same time.

ABC journalist Lisa Howard, who had continued the cause of normalizing relations with Cuba after her TV interview with Fidel, had a word with her friend William Atwood. Atwood was U.S. ambassador to Guinea and also an advisor to Adelaide Stevenson. In a fun fact, before his diplomatic career, Atwood had been a journalist,

and in fact was the guy we mentioned in the very beginning of this season, who had traveled to Cuba after the revolution and heard open talk of assassinating Fidel. So Lisa Howard persuaded Atwood to draft a memo that, as Peter Cornblow and William Leo Grand describe it, laid out the rationale for a low-profile contact with Cuban authorities.

Though Adlai Stevenson personally liked the proposal, He was skeptical it would fly, saying, quote, unfortunately, the CIA is still in charge of Cuba. But Kennedy gave a green light, make contact with the Cubans at the UN. Here's the account of Carlos Lachuga, then the Cuban ambassador to the UN. The General Assembly of the United Nations began its new session on the second Tuesday in September, 1963. That was the setting JFK chose for initiating a rapprochement with the Cuban. At midday on September 23rd, Lisa Howard came up to me and told me that Ambassador William Atwood of the U.S. delegation wanted to talk with me and that it was urgent as he was going to Washington the next day.

The journalist invited me to a party at her home that evening and said that it would be the best opportunity I would have for meeting with Atwood. The U.S. ambassador was introduced to me in the living room of Lisa Howard's home, in the midst of cocktails, sandwiches, diplomats, journalists. He lost no time in saying why he had wanted to meet me. He said that Stevenson had authorized him to do so, and that he would be flying to Washington in a few hours to request authorization from the president to go to Cuba to meet with Fidel Castro and ask about the feasibility of a rapprochement between Havana and Washington. Atwood, who had until recently served as the ambassador to the West African country of Guinea, told Lichuga that he had two pictures on his office wall.

One was of Fidel, waving from a plane, and the other was of Fidel and Atwood's wife. He told Lachuga that, quote, many members of the U.S. government were convinced that they could still undo the Cuban revolution. And he suggested that Cuba should imagine what Kennedy's next likely presidential opponent Barry Goldwater might do as commander-in-chief. Lisa Howard, William Atwood, and James Donovan weren't JFK's only conduits to Fidel. On October 24, 1963, JFK, at a meeting set up by Atwood, spoke to the French journalist Jean Danielle. At this meeting, JFK reportedly told Danielle, I believe that there is no country in the

world, including any and all the countries under colonial domination, where economic colonization, humiliation, and exploitation were worse than in Cuba, in part, owing to my country's policies during the Batista regime. Now, we shall have to pay for those sins, Kennedy said to Danielle, before telling him to come back to the Oval Office, once Danielle had spoken with Fidel Castro. On November 19, 1963, in Cuba, Danielle related to Fidel what J.FK had said just four weeks earlier.

Fidel sounded overjoyed. Here's Daniel quoting Fidel directly. Kennedy still has the possibility of becoming, in the eyes of history, the greatest president of the United States. I know, for example, that for Khrushchev, Kennedy is a man you can talk with. I have gotten this impression from all my conversations with Khrushchev. Other leaders have assured me that to attain this goal, we must first await his re-election. But I will say this. He has come to understand many things over the past few months.

then Fidel added with a broad and boyish grin If you see him again You can tell him that I'm willing to declare Goldwater my friend If that will guarantee Kennedy's re-election As he would say in 1992 Fidel was aware of the bizarre nature of this moment Of the powerful forces pulling things in opposite directions Quote

Look at the paradox, the contradictions and coincidences On the same day and at the same day and at the same hour that Jean Danielle was giving me Kennedy's message, an agent of the United States was handing over a fountain pen with a poisoned dart to be used in an assassination attempt against me. Look at how many paradoxes and how many crazy things there are in this world. Lisa Howard set up a time for Atwood to phone Castro's aide, René Vallejo, to officially get the ball rolling.

Here's Peter Cornblum, describing the scene. When Atwood arrived at Howard's residence at midnight on the evening of November 18th for the call, Howard greeted him wearing a lavish dressing gown. As she dialed Cuba again and again, attempting to track down by Yeho, they listened to jazz, drank bourbon, and discussed French philosophers. In her diary, Howard recorded this dramatic turning point in her protracted efforts to connect Washington and Havana. D-Day for the telephone appointment. We put through the call.

No Vallejo. Placed at least seven calls. Read Camus out loud, me on the bed in a lacy panoir, at wood sipping bourbon and shy, but dying to slip into bed with me. And there was that white phone, mute, tense. Our link to our secret and oh-so-longed-for mission.

We do have a deep, common bond, an inexorable conviction that this can be an honorable rapprochement between Cuba and the U.S. At around 3 a.m., Howard managed to reach Vallejo and put Atwood on the line to discuss arrangements for the two to meet clandestinely. This was the moment Howard had long awaited. Quote, at last, at last, that first halting step, contact has been established. She rejoiced in her diary. I feel strongly this is only the beginning. A long, frustrating, tension-filled, but exciting experience lies ahead. When William Atwood passed along the news shortly thereafter to McGeorge Bundy, he was told, quote, the president wanted to see me at the White

House and decide what to say and whether to go to Cuba or what we should do next. Few signs and evidence among the crowd and mostly friendly. President arrived last night in the Dallas-Forth area at Caraswell Air Force Base. He was scheduled for arrival tentatively at 1045 that got in a little later than that, but was met by a very large crowd. November 2nd, 1963. JFK was scheduled to appear at the Army. Air Force football game in Chicago.

At the last minute, he didn't show up. That's because two major threats had been uncovered against the president's life. Abraham Bolden, a secret service agent on JFK's presidential detail, reported receiving a phone call from a motel manager. The motel manager had seen something disturbing in a room that he had rented to two Cuban guests, quote, several automatic rifles with telescopic sites, with an outline of the route that President Kennedy was supposed to take in Chicago that would bring him past that building. The other threat was in the form of the arrest of Thomas Arthur Valley.

Valley was a 30-year-old ex-marine and photolithographer who worked in a building along Kennedy's motorcade's route. An informant had told the FBI that Valley had a lot of guns, and after Valley was interviewed by the FBI, Valley was tailed by the Chicago police. Federal authorities had observed the ample ammunition and firepower in Valley's home. Chicago PD used a traffic violation as a pretext to arrest Valley and charge him with assault with a deadly weapon, and they found hundreds of rounds of ammunition in his car. According to a write-up of the Chicago event from the FBI's special agent in charge,

quote, it appears that Valley is a loner, that he was classified by an Army Veterans Hospital as a schizophrenic, that he is an active member of the John Birch Society, that his feelings have been much influenced by that society and that he has a silver plate in his head as a result of his injury and service. But the president, of course, is going to go on that motorcade when he arrives here and takes off through downtown Dallas.

He'll go down Lemon Avenue, Cedar Springs, Harwood to Maine, and a big portion of it, right down Main Street in Dallas, from Harwood, which is right at the police department and city hall area, all the way down Main Street past the courts, building where he'll turn on Houston to Elm, go under the triple underpass, and then shoot on out Simmons to the Mart where he will speak at moon.

On November 17, 1963, the FBI sent out a warning concerning a threat to President Kennedy in Dallas, from right-wing militants connected to the National States Rights Party. Air Force number one, ladies and gentlemen, carrying the President of the United States with a seal On November 18th, JFK went to campaign in Miami and spoke publicly a few different times. Quote, JFK tags all bases in talk here tonight, ran the headline that day in the Miami Herald. The next day, the paper approvingly noted the strident tone JFK took at the Inter-American Press Association dinner. Quote, the president was interrupted by applause three times during the 25-minute speech, each time he saw. spoke of the ultimate downfall of Fidel Castro.

There's Mrs. Kennedy, and the crowd yells, and the president of the United States. And I can see his sun's hand all away from here. On November 19th, Dallas club owner Jack Ruby, who'd been at war with the Internal Revenue Service for a while now, told his lawyer not to worry. He said he had a lot of money now. Shaking hands now with the Dallas people, Governor and Mrs. Conley. Governor Connolly on your left.

That same day, writes Jefferson Morley, Luis Fernandez Roca, DRE member, was called in to receive the news that the CIA was cutting off the DRE's support. The president now partially obscured behind his wife and a big bouquet of flowers. November 22nd in the morning, Jack Ruby called up a friend.

This is Kennedy stepping in the car first. Now the president, they both in the back seat now. He invited them to go downtown to watch JFK's motorcade come through on the president's campaign stop in Dallas. Presidential car moving out. The president and first lady. Big, beautiful Lincoln. What Ruby couldn't know was that his friend

would eventually be revealed as an informant for the IRS, who would later write in an official report to his handlers that what Jack Ruby specifically asked was, would you like to watch the fireworks? That motorcade will swing way around, go by the continental airline's maintenance hangar, head out for downtown Dallas, where thousands should already be on the street right now, waiting for a view of the president and his wife. The motorcade is coming by here. There's a secret service man, spread eagle over the top of the car.

We understand Governor and Mrs. Connolly are in the car, with President and Mrs. Kennedy. We can't see who has been hit if anybody's been hit, but apparently something is wrong here, something is terribly wrong. A crowd is gathering outside Parkland Hospital in Dallas. Both women, meaning Mrs. Kennedy and Mrs. Connolly, disappeared into the emergency section of Cochland Hospital to await news of their husbands. Four minutes. Mr. John F. Kennedy died at approximately 1 o'clock, central standard time. Today, here in Dallas.

He died of a gunshot wound in the brain. I have no other details regarding the assassination of the president. Just a few minutes before this report, we heard from one of our newsmen in Dallas on the scene, James Kerr, who said that a Dallas policeman, J.D. Tippett, was shot to death by an unknown man in a car minutes after the president and Governor Connolly were shot. The officer was shot about two miles from the scene of the presidential assassination. Has the gentleman been identified? Yes, sir. He's been identified for killing the officer. Right. Has any identification been attempted for the killing of the president? Not yet.

I don't shoot the president. I didn't shoot anybody, sir. I haven't. been told what I'm here for. Do you have a lawyer? No, sir, I don't. I don't know what this is all about. Kill the president? No, sir, I didn't. I'm just a taxi. It was a calculating man who slew the presidents of these United States today. He had to be. The shots that killed the president and severely wounded the governor of Texas came from a predetermined spot, a clear view of the motorcade as it passed. In Dallas, the prime suspect still is being questioned. He is 24-year-old Lee Oswald of Dallas, a former Marine, who spent some time in Russia, who at one time had applied for Soviet citizenship. He has been associated with the fair play for Cuban committee.

He said himself, and Dallas police chief just Curry describes him as a stoic individual who admits nothing. He believes he's being held because he once lived in Russia. Oswald, who said two years ago he wanted Russian citizenship was fined $10 recently in New Orleans for distributing communist literature. He's married to a Russian woman who was brought to the police station with their small daughter, and his mother, who lives in a Dallas suburb. Oswald's only comment to the world at large since his arrest has been a denial. I fanatically deny these charges. Oswald has hustled through a doorway.

Monday, November 25th, 1963. There is Leah. He's been shot. He's been shot. Lee Oswald has been shot. There's a man with a gun. Absolute panic, absolute panic, here in the base with Dallas Police Headquarters, detectives have their guns drawn.

Oswald have been shot. There is no question about it. Oswald has been shot. Mr. Hoover on 2383. Mr. Hoover, 2383. At 10 a.m. on the morning after Kennedy had been shot, FBI director Jay Edgar Hoover rang up his new ball. President Lyndon Johnson, who'd been sworn in on Air Force One the day before, to give

LBJ an update on the case. Hoover said to Johnson that while they had the physical evidence to charge Oswald with murder, they didn't have enough to get a conviction. And they didn't understand a visit that Oswald had reportedly made to the Soviet embassy and Cuban consulate in Mexico. Hoover said that a preliminary investigation had shown that the person making some of these visits, well, he didn't appear to be the Lee Harvey Oswald presently in custody in Dallas.

Then, at 1221 p.m. the next day on November 24th, Jack Ruby shoots Lee Harvey Oswald live on national television as Oswald is being escorted by Dallas police. Investigators would later discover that Ruby, who was tight with many

Dallas cops, had actually tried to slip into the room where Oswald had been held. A reporter who knew Ruby said that he'd seen him at the hospital around the time that JFK was pronounced dead. In the following days, President Johnson complained over the phone about the pressure building for an independent commission to investigate Kennedy's murder. Johnson feared that this would make things needlessly messy. On November 25th, the day of Kansas, Kennedy's funeral.

Johnson phoned Jay Edgar Hoover with bad news. Someone in the Justice Department had gone to the Washington Post and convinced them

to write an editorial demanding an independent commission. Apparently some lawyer and justice is lobbying with the post because that's

where the suggestion came from to this presidential commission which we think would be very bad who would have in the White House

and we can't be checking up on every every shoot scrape the country but they've gone to the post now I'd get them an editorial. The post is calling up saying they're going to run it up door if we don't

do things. Now we're going to do two things. We believe the way to handle this is as we said yesterday your suggestion that you whatever facilitate your command and making a full report the Attorney General and then they make it available to the country in whatever form may seem desirable.

That same day, Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach sent a memo formalizing LBJ's sentiment. This is known as the Katzenbach memo. It read, The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin,

that he did not have Confederates who are still at large, and that evidence was such that he would have been convicted at a trial. Speculation about Oswald's motivation ought to be cut off, and we should have some basis for rebutting the thought

that this was a communist conspiracy, or, as the Iron Curtain press is saying, a right-wing conspiracy to blame it on the communists. Unfortunately, the facts on Oswald seem about too pat, too obvious, Marxist, Cuba, Russian wife, etc. The Dallas police have to put out statements on the communist conspiracy theory, and it was they who were in charge when he was shot and thus silenced. Even though Oswald had been shot,

the new marching orders were to, quote, rebut any idea that it was a conspiracy. But Johnson did not get his wish to simply have the FBI make a report to the Attorney General. On November 29th, Johnson approved the creation of the so-called Warren Commission, named after its chair, Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, a liberal, whose position put him above reproach. The final Warren report that was issued in September 1964 laid down exactly what Lyndon Johnson had wanted the official line to be, as expressed in the Katzenbach memo, which was written only hours after Jack Ruby had killed Lee Harvey Oswald.

Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone. Jack Ruby had killed him on a spontaneous impulse. The physical evidence and FBI investigation, the commission claimed, proved as much. Josiah Tink Thompson is a private eye and one-time philosophy professor who joined the Life magazine team that first acquired the Zeprooter film in the late 1960s. Thompson wrote a book in 1967 titled Six Seconds in Dallas.

It is considered a landmark reassessment of the physical evidence of the case as presented by the Warren Commission. Thompson suggested Kennedy was not, in fact, killed by a lone gunman. In 2021, Thompson published another book, Last Second in Dallas, and based on a forensic evaluation of an audio recording captured by a Dallas cop's hot mic, Thompson stood by his original conclusion. Thompson's conclusion, he writes in his newest book. the restored acoustic evidence now provides a matching soundtrack to the Zapruder film. Its echo patterns of recorded gunshots track the origin of the lethal shot to a precise location, to the right front of the president's limousine.

Jack Ruby is one of the two people who, in the opinion of the U.S. government, is definitively tied to the JFK assassination. After all, he shot Lee Harvey Oswald. Ruby would go on to claim that he did this out of admiration and love for President Kennedy. Ruby was a wannabe gangster from Chicago, and in 1959, he visited Cuba, one of the many underworld figures interested in making money off the island's troubles. The historian David Kaiser writes that, according to a British journalist who was imprisoned there, along with Santo Traficante, Traficante was visited by, quote, another American gangster type

named Ruby. Traficante was released 10 days after Ruby's arrival. Later that year, Ruby opened his strip club in Dallas. Jack Ruby's strip club in Dallas, the Carousel Club, worked as part of a national network that was linked with organized crime. Strippers would be shuttled from location to location on a regular circuit between different cities. In Ruby's case, Dallas and New Orleans, his business relied critically on paying off local cops and paying off the mobsters who had staked his club in the first place.

And in the weeks leading up to JFK's assassination, Robert Kennedy had been increasing the temperature on organized crime. Carlos Marcello, Santo Traficante, and Sam Giancana were all feeling the heat. Ruby's considerable IRS debt likely amounted to around a year's worth of revenue at his club. In the weeks before his murder of Lee Oswald, Ruby was calling mobsters across the country. country. After the shooting, Ruby's assistant later said, Ruby instructed him to take a pile of cash hidden at the Carousel Club to Ruby's business partner. The assistant complied with the request. The following was recorded on August 17, 1963, by William K. Stuckey in New Orleans,

Louisiana. This is the first of a series of Latin listening post interviews with persons more or less directly concerned with a conflict between the United States and Cuba. In subsequent programs, we will present talks with people who are connected with the Cuban refugee organizations, people who are connected with President Batista, and U.S. citizens with direct stakes in the outcome of the Cuban situation. Tonight, we have with us a representative of probably the most controversial organization connected with Cuba in this country. The organization, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. The person, Lee Oswald, Secretary of the New Orleans Chapter to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. The 24-year-old ex-Marine accused of killing the president, Lee Harvey Oswald.

didn't live long enough to give his side of the story before being shot to death in custody by Jack Ruby. Shortly after JFK was shot, Oswald was seen on the second floor of the Texas book depository standing near a vending machine. After heading back to his boarding house, Oswald allegedly grabbed his pistol, with which he was accused of having killed Dallas officer J.D. Tippett, who allegedly stopped Oswald less than a mile away from the boarding House shortly after Oswald left. To this day, it has not ever been established why Tippett stopped Oswald or why the officer didn't immediately respond to dispatch calls to go downtown after the president was shot. As with Oswald's final days, much of the ex-Marine's

story, particularly the last two years of his life, remains difficult to decipher. Lee Harvey Oswald was born in New Orleans in 1939. His father died before Lee was born, and Oswald grew up with his mother between New Orleans, New York City, and the Dallas area. As a teenager in New Orleans, he joined the Civil Air Patrol, a civilian air training ROTC sort of thing, where in 195 he was photographed in a group with David Ferry, the personal pilot of Carlos Marcello, the mafayadon of Dallas and New Orleans. Shortly after his 17th birthday in 1956, Oswald joined the Marines. He was later trained. as a radar operator in Japan. Oswald's brother, who also served in the Marines,

later testified that Lee had joined the Marines in order to get away from their mother. Supposedly while in the Marines, Oswald developed left-wing political leanings, or at least he began announcing himself as an avowed Marxist. After claiming that he needed to care for his mother, Oswald received a discharge from the Marines. Before his 20th birthday in the fall of 1959, reportedly after having a having learned basic Russian, Oswald traveled to the Soviet Union, arriving in Moscow that October. This was identified as a defection to the USSR. The American consul in Moscow, who officially received Oswald's attempt to renounce his American citizenship, was puzzled by the

man. Though Oswald claimed to be defecting on Marxist principles, the consul later told the Warren Commission in a cable that, quote, I recall a strong impression that he used to simple Marxist stereotypes without sophistication or independent formulation. In the age of the U2 spy plane, which we've heard was quite important to the U.S. in the Cold War, naval intelligence didn't think that a radar technician previously stationed in a Soviet border country was worth the extra bother. Shortly before Oswald's departure, CIA Deputy Director of Planning Richard Bissell, remember him, He wrote a memo dated September 2nd, 1959, titled Operations Against Soviet Targets.

And what Bissell said the Cold War demanded was a, quote, coordinated clandestine attack by all operating elements of the clandestine service which have operational opportunities. While in the USSR, Oswald was assigned to live in the city of Minsk. the KGB was wary of him on arrival. Oswald worked in a factory, he dated around, and said infamously little, though it has since been established that his Russian was fluent, a proficiency that had to have been mostly acquired before his arrival in the Soviet Union. On May 1st, 1960, as we mentioned several episodes ago,

the Soviet Union shot down Gary Powers' U-2 spy plane, And near the end of that year, the former Marine radar technician Oswald would begin making inquiries about reclaiming his U.S. passport. At a dance in March of 61, the 21-year-old Oswald met 19-year-old Marina Prusikova, who lived with her uncle, a colonel in Soviet domestic intelligence. Oswald and Marina married six weeks later and had a daughter who was born in February, 1965. Oswald, with his new family, moved back to the United States in the summer of 1962, which was easier than you might expect, considering Oswald had been labeled the defector to the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War. You might think that Oswald would have been counting his blessings, that the U.S. government wasn't going after him. But in fact, Oswald wrote to Texas Governor John Connolly asking that his dishonorable district,

charge, which Oswald had earned after the fact with his defection, be overturned. After returning from his defection to America's enemy in the Cold War, Oswald and his new Russian wife even received a small loan from the U.S. government. Oswald and Marina, now back in the U.S. of A, settled in Dallas, where Lee's mother and brother were living. They began socializing with Russian emigres who lived in Dallas. This was a notoriously anti-Soviet bunch, whose flagship group had once been aligned with Hitler and later took CIA funding, and Oswald made one good friend among this set in particular. Fifty-one-year-old George Demorinschelt. Through DeMorin Schultz ex-CIA turned defense industry friends, Lee Harvey Oswald got a job working in sheet

medal. In February 1963, Marina Oswald met Ruth Payne. The Payne family would also later get Lee Harvey Oswald his job at the Texas Book Depository. Payne lived with Oswald's wife at the time of the assassination and became Marina Oswald's de facto conduit to the outside world for months afterwards. It's perhaps worth mentioning that Ruth Payne hailed from a long line of CIA and other three-letter agency spooks. When Oswald arrived in New Orleans in May of 1963, he first visited his uncle Dutz Murrett, who was later established to be a bookie working for, as historian David Kaiser describes it, one of the closest associates of Carlos Marcello, the New Orleans Mafia Don. Within two weeks of his arrival, Oswald,

Oswald had begun work at a coffee company owned by brothers known for their support of the anti-Castro cause. Oswald also made a new friend in New Orleans, according to multiple witnesses who saw them together. Private investigator Guy Bannister, a former FBI agent who had been used by intelligence agencies in the past for infiltrating, quote-unquote, subversive organizations. The Fair Play for Cuba Committee. This organization has long been on the Justice Department's blacklist and is a group. which is generally considered to be the leading pro-Castro body in the nation. August 5, 1963.

Oswald walks into a clothing store in the French quarter of New Orleans called Casa Roca. Oswald was there to see Carlos Bringare, a Cuban exile who ran the store with his brother. Carlos Bringare was also the DRE's man in New Orleans. Here's how Bringare described the encounter in his test. testimony to the Warren Commission the following year. Oswald told me that he had been in the Marine Corps and that he had training in guerrilla warfare, and that he was willing to train Cubans to fight against Castro.

Even more, he told me that he was willing to go himself to fight against Castro. That was on August 5th. I turned down his offer. I told him that I don't have nothing to do with military activities, that my only duties here in New Orleans are propaganda and information and not military activities. That was my answer to him. He insisted, and he told me that he will bring to me next day one book as a present, as a gift to me to train Cubans to fight against Castro.

So this guy is introduced to Lee Harvey Oswald as an anti-Castro militant. But then, he says, he saw Oswald in a very different context. Later, on August 9th, I was coming back to the store at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, and one friend of mine with the name Selso Hernandez came. came to me and told me that in Canal Street, one block over from where they were standing, there was a young man carrying a sign saying Viva Fidel in Spanish and something else about Cuba. But my friend doesn't speak anything in English. And the only thing that he understood was the Viva Fidel in Spanish.

Oswald was now passing out leaflets for the fair play for Cuba Committee. We've mentioned this throughout the show. It was an American support organization for the Cuban Revolution. And now, Oswald, who had approached this Cuban exile about supporting the fight against Castro, was passing out flyers saying hands-off Cuba. He was confronted by these exiles, and the situation escalated until Oswald and the Cubans he was fighting with were arrested for disturbing the peace. Upon his arrest, Oswald requested to speak with an FBI agent,

to whom he described himself as a member of the local fair play for Cuba. committee, which added a few dozen members. This was not true. Anyone could apply to create an FPCC branch, and Oswald was the only member of the branch that he had created in New Orleans. As a reporter of Latin American Affairs in the city for several years and aft, your columnist has kept a lookout for local representatives of this pro-Castro group. None appeared in public view until this week when young Lee Oswald was arrested and convicted for disturbing the peace. A week after his arrest, on August 16th, Oswald was filmed by a local TV station, passing out leaflets again, in the same location.

The following day, he was interviewed by that TV station's radio affiliate. Some of the pamphlets Oswald passed out during this period were stamped with an address for the New Orleans Fair Play for Cuba Committee branch. This address happened to be for one corner of a building that had previously housed offices for the CIA puppet group, the Cuban Revolutionary Council, and at the time of Oswald's pamphleteering, it housed the offices of Guy Bannister, the spook for hire, who was Oswald's associate. Mr. Roswell, if I may, how long has the fair play for Cuba Committee had an organization

in New Orleans? We have had members in this area for several months now, up until about two months ago, however, we have not organized our members into any sort of an active group. Until, as you say, this week, we have decided to feel out the public what they think of our organization, our aims. And for that purpose, we have been, as you say, distributing literature on the street for the purpose of trying to attract new members and feel out the public. On August 21st, Oswald went on the radio again. This time to debate the DRE's Carlos Bringer and a colleague of Oswald's friend Guy Bannister. This guy ran an anti-communist group, and two of the members happened to own the radio and TV station that had featured Oswald so prominently over the past week.

A CIA memo written in 1970 described this guy as a very cooperative contact of the agency. Do you have any other activities other than distributing literature at the present time? Well, I assume you mean, do I have any organizational duties myself? Yes. Uh, yes, as secretary, I, uh, I am responsible for the, uh, the keeping of records and the, uh, protection of the members' names so that undue publicity, our, uh, our attention will not be drawn to them if they do not desire it. Jefferson Morley, the journalist we've mentioned a bunch on the show, he told us about the intelligence service practice of creating a legend. Creating a legend is one essential technique of psychological warfare, which is to create a public identity or persona for somebody that can be used. And in the counterintelligence program of the FBI and CIA, these kind of operations were standard to penetrate a target organization who would infiltrate it and take over its identity,

take on its functions. This was done with the W.E.B. Du Bois Clubs in the Civil Rights and Black Nationalist Movement. And it was done with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New Orleans as well. And the idea is to, because you know the organization, you understand it, you've infiltrated it, you know how it works, you can adopt its procedures and act accordingly. The Cuban consulate in Mexico City was one of the CIA's most heavily surveilled foreign diplomatic postings because of its reputation as a waystation of sorts for American leftists headed for Cuba. In late September 1963, Ruth Payne came to New Orleans to pick up Marina Oswald and the Oswald's daughter. Oswald and Marina had been separated once before earlier in the year,

and now Ruth was taking Marina and her daughter back into the pain home in Dallas. Oswald's exact movements at this moment are difficult to track. But according to the Warren Commission, Oswald eventually made his way to Mexico City. And then Oswald allegedly shows up at the Cuban consulate in Mexico City on September 27th. Oswald told a Mexican woman working there, according to her later testimony, that he was a supporter of Fidel Castro. He showed her his fair play for Cuba committee card, and he gave an account of his tussle with the DRE in New Orleans.

The woman at the Cuban consulate was suspicious. Ordinarily, somebody from New York would have told her about an American leftist hoping to go to Cuba. When the woman pressed Oswald, he told her that he was going to Cuba en route to the Soviet Union. So she sends Oswald off to the Soviet embassy, and the Soviets tell Oswald to buzz off. off. But when he goes back to the Cuban consulate, Oswald Bluffs, falsely claiming that he got the

Soviet visa. CIA intercepts would claim after these encounters that a pair of phone calls took place between someone claiming to be Oswald and the Soviet embassy and the Cuban consulate. And the CIA intel further tied Oswald to a suspected KGB assassin, whom the CIA and FBI had been tracking. The thing is, the tapes of those calls do not depict Lee Harvey Oswald, as would be found out at the time of the Kennedy assassination. The Soviets denied receiving any follow-up phone call after this encounter, and the Mexican woman at the Cuban consulate later said that she could not have spoken to Oswald that day, because it was a Saturday, and she did not work on Saturdays. Although Lee Harvey Oswald's picture was indeed,

on the visa application to Cuba, the guy speaking Russian on the tapes did not sound like Oswald. And physical descriptions provided by the CIA station in Mexico City, as well as the staffer at the Cuban consulate, their descriptions of the man didn't match with the info that the CIA already had on file on the supposed former defector. CIA officer David Atley Phillips, deeply involved in the Bay of Pigs and operas, Mungoos, he was stationed in Mexico City at the time. Here's what David Atlee Phillips told investigators for the House Select Committee on Assassinations in the 1970s, according to one of the investigators, Gaten Fonzie. He maintained that the surveillance cameras at both the

Soviet and Cuban embassies were not functioning at the time of Oswald's visits. Phillips stuck to the story that the agency didn't maintain an around-the-clock and weekend surveillance of the Soviet embassy. He also said that the Cuban embassy camera happened to be malfunctioning during the time of Oswald's visit. So despite the fact that Oswald had allegedly made at least five visits to the Cuban consulate and the Soviet embassy, there were no photographs to prove it. Ruth Payne, the woman who helped Oswald get his job at the book depository and who took in Marina Oswald. During the proceedings of the Warren Commission, a member of the commission put in a good word for Ruth as a friend of the family. Which member of the Warren Commission? Former CIA director Alan W.

Dulles. Ruth Payne was responsible for turning over much of the evidence against Lee Oswald to the FBI. George DeMorinshilt, Oswald's surprising friend and patron in the Russian emigre scene in Dallas, committed suicide in 1977. He killed himself shortly after he was contacted by Gaeton Fonzie as part of the House Select Committee investigation. After being told that Fonzie had left a message for him, DeMoran Schult reportedly walked upstairs calmly

and retrieved a 20-gauge shotgun. Abraham Bolden was the Secret Service agent who reported the threat against JFK in Chicago at the beginning of November in 63. Bolden was the first black man to serve as a Secret Service agent on the presidential detail. He was arrested before he could testify before the Warren Commission about the Chicago JFK threats.

Bolden was brought up and convicted after two trials on charges of improper conduct. To this day, Bolden maintains the charges against him were false. For years, the true identity of Walter Newby, the CIA case officer of the DRE in the year leading up to the Kennedy assassination, was a mystery. After the Warren Commission, Nuby and his cover to the DRE as Mr. Howard remained intact, even through the 1970s congressional inquiries into the clandestine services.

Here's a couple examples of how the CIA protected Nuby. He was given flawless performance reviews by his bosses for his job managing the DRE, and when the House of Representatives created the Select Committee to reopen the JFK and Martin Luther King Jr. cases in the 1970s. 70s, the CIA tapped one guy to be their point man to the select committee. This guy was responsible for managing all the information the committee officially got from the CIA about the CIA during the JFK assassination. This guy was a buffer. And that guy was named George Joannidis, and he was also Walter Newby. As G. Robert Blakey, the head of the Select Committee investigation would later put it, this man.

that a material witness to the investigation was the conduit of information between the CIA and the investigators. Joe Anidis died in 1990, before his double role as Walter Newby was revealed, a fact that the CIA denied repeatedly until the classified files confirmed that it was true. And according to Jefferson Morley, there's reason to believe that Joe Anidis would have been a very material witness, particularly because of what he told the DRE to do, and the hours after JFK had been shot. When the news comes that the president has been assassinated in Dallas and then shortly after that, that a suspect Lee Harvey Oswald has been arrested, the name rings a bell for the

DRE boys in Miami. They remember, well, that's the guy who we ran into back in New Orleans. They have a file on Oswald with some of his pamphlets and press releases about him. Joannidis told them, and this was told to me by the former DRE leaders, Jonetes told them, sit tight for an hour and then go public. Joannidis wants them to go public with what they have. He doesn't ask what information they have. He's letting them go forward.

And so that's the story. The next day, Red Sniper kills Kennedy, pro-Castro marksman arrested, all these headlines that were generated on November 23. All of Oswald's Castro activism was captivated and publicized by these two front organizations for the CIA. And it started before Kennedy had even been buried, the first conspiracy theory to ever reach public print. George Joannidis was not the only CIA handler for the DRE. One of his predecessors was, you may recall, named Maurice Bishop. While Joe Anitas was handling the DRE at the time of the Kennedy assassination, Maurice Bishop was still handling

Alpha 66. Now, remember, the head of Alpha 66 was a guy named Antonio Vesiana. Later in life, Vesiana had a change of heart about his earlier terrorist activities. In fact, he actually got shot in the head at one point by angry anti-Castro-Cuban exiles who thought Vesiana had gone soft. And part of Vesiana's change of heart involved writing a letter to the widow of Gaten Fonzie, a House Select Committee investigator with whom Vesiana had grown close years earlier. In the 1970s, Fonsie had brought Vesciana to Washington to verify the identity of CIA officer Maurice Bishop. At the time, Vesciana said he couldn't be sure if Bishop was David Attlee Phillips, but in his letter to Marie Fonzie, Gaten's widow, Vessiana had said that he had lied to Gaten back then.

He didn't want to endanger his relationships with the agency. Later in life, he had a change of heart. David Atley Phillips, he said, was in fact Maurice Bishop, his former CIA handler. Vetsiana, years before he IDed David Atley Phillips as Maurice Bishop, said that he once met with Bishop in Dallas, 1963. Vetsiana said that he saw Maurice Bishop in the company of a man Vetsiana would later recognize. Lee Harvey Oswald The day after the assassination, Fidel Castro gave a speech

in which he rebuked anybody celebrating the murder of Kennedy. He said, we hate the imperialist system, we hate the capitalist system, but this does not mean that we hate men as such, as individuals, part of a machine, and more or less important part of a system.

Four days later, Castro spoke again about the assassination. Talking to a crowd of students at the University of Havana, Castro called the assassination a plot against peace, a sinister conspiracy that is increasingly clear in the imagination, as are those responsible. Every day, the public opinion around the world receives more and more more evidence that lays bare that completely unmasks the maneuver that was woven against the world and as part of that world especially against our country there are a whole series of strange things

that become stranger by the day there have been a whole series of events about which the world has begun to think about which everyone has started to think and the more they think about them the less they make sense you know I guess everybody quite literally remembers where they were when JFK was shot can you tell me about your experience of that and just sort of how you what what effect it had on Cuba well I was very young I was 17 years old and you know what at the beginning we said well he deserved that Like he had done something to earn it? Yes.

When you do bad things, something becomes you like that. That was what I was thinking and my classmates were thinking. And the professor that was teaching us, political economy, said, no, no, don't think like that. No, he told all of us, don't think like that. He told us that we were completely in a horrible position.

He made us think. Why did your professor say it was horrible? What did he explain to you? He explained that something even worse was coming to the United States.