How the assassination of JFK put Fidel Castro in a delicate spot

Posted on Saturday, 05.12.12

How the assassination of JFK put Fidel Castro in a delicate spot

The Cuban leader's protestations that he knew nothing about Lee Harvey
Oswald ring hollow.
Pedro Portal / EL Nuevo Herald
By Brian Latell

It was only about 30 hours after John F. Kennedy's death in Dallas on
Nov. 22, 1963, when Fidel Castro took to the airwaves to deny any
knowledge of the president's assassin. The Cuban leader was unequivocal
about Lee Harvey Oswald: "We never in our life heard of him."

Castro delivered another speech four days later at the University of
Havana. A CIA assessment described it as "a carefully prepared
refutation of charges of complicity . . . [with] Oswald." Fidel insisted
that he had known nothing of the assassin.

Speaking of Oswald's mysterious visits to the Cuban consulate in Mexico
City in late September, Castro issued a second critical denial. "We did
not know about it." Then, he went further out on that limb. "We have no
other background for the accused . . . other than what has been
published in the press."

But research I have conducted over the last five years for Castro's
Secrets: The CIA and Cuba's Intelligence Machine, my new book, reveals
that in all these respects, Castro lied. Evidence I have culled from
tens of thousands of pages of declassified U.S. government documents,
and from the reporting of two defectors from Cuba's General Directorate
of Intelligence, the DGI, proves his duplicity beyond any doubt.

Fidel first spoke about Kennedy's assassination for about two hours from
a Havana television studio. Oswald by then had been charged with the
president's murder and also for killing a Dallas police officer less
than an hour later. Fidel had no idea what the young former Marine might
confess to as he was being interrogated at Dallas police headquarters,
or what he might say about his contacts in Mexico City with Cuban
intelligence officers. And, Castro could not be sure how much American
authorities had already learned about the gunman, a professed Marxist
who adored Castro and revolutionary Cuba.

The Cuban leader was profoundly worried. He warned his people to be
"cautious and vigilant and alert," describing the assassination as a
"dangerous Machiavellian plot against Cuba." The CIA reported that the
speech reflected his "apprehension that U.S. policy toward Cuba may now
become even tougher."

'A dirty maneuver was afoot'

It was known in Washington that "immediately after the news of President
Kennedy's death," Castro ordered an island-wide "defensive military
alert." By nightfall, Cuban military units had been deployed to
strategic positions around Havana and on the north coast. American
intelligence had intercepted Cuban communications showing that Fidel
"was frightened" the United States "might invade."

Che Guevara expressed acute alarm in a speech a day after Fidel first
spoke. He warned that "the peace of the world will be threatened for
years to come." The Cuban Communist Party newspaper summed up the fear
festering at the highest levels of the regime: "A dirty maneuver was
afoot . . . making Cuba the perpetrator of the crime."

These were not paranoid overreactions. The regime knew that while in
Mexico City Oswald had tried to defect to Cuba so he could become a
warrior for the bearded man he worshipped. The assassin was known to
Cuban intelligence as a radical militant who had previously defected to
the Soviet Union where he lived and married.

He had been arrested that summer in New Orleans after handing out
pro-Cuban leaflets and engaging in a street brawl with anti-Castro
exiles, whose group he had apparently tried to infiltrate.

Cuban intelligence knew that in New Orleans he had created a notional
chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee — a pro-Castro cheerleading
group headquartered in New York. Oswald claimed that the fictitious A.
J. Hidell was his chapter's president. Hidell, the alias Oswald used to
purchase the rifle he fired at Kennedy, was devised to rhyme with Fidel.

Much more eventually became known about Oswald's Cuba obsessions. He had
tried to persuade his pregnant wife to help him hijack a plane to the
island, so, she recalled him saying, he could fight for "Uncle Fidel."
She later said Castro "was his hero . . . he was a great admirer . . .
in some kind of revolutionary mood . . . he would be happy to work for
Fidel Castro's causes."

Telltale talk from a trusted source

The first reliable indication that Fidel lied about his knowledge of
Oswald came from Vladimir Rodriguez Lahera — codenamed AMMUG by the CIA.
He was described by a top Agency officer as "an operational gold mine"
when, in April 1964, he was the first to defect from the DGI. Rodriguez
had worked at its headquarters in Havana and briefly at its Mexico City
Center.

He told his CIA handler that Castro had lied when he publicly denied any
knowledge of Oswald. In fact, Rodriguez reported that "before, during
and after" Oswald's visits to the Cuban consulate, "he was in contact"
with the DGI. It is not clear that any of this incriminating information
from a proven and trusted source was shared with the Warren Commission
that investigated Kennedy's murder. Rodriguez's CIA files were not
declassified until the 1990s.

Another reliable covert source, an American Communist Party member
recruited by the FBI to report on his contacts with communist bloc
leaders, provided reliable information showing that Castro had known of
Oswald's hatred of Kennedy weeks before the assassination. Jack Childs,
with his brother Morris and their wives, were codenamed Operation SOLO.
Jack met with Castro in Havana in May, 1964.

Fidel told him that when Oswald was departing the Cuban consulate in
Mexico, he shouted, "I'm going to kill Kennedy. . ." Strangely, the FBI
report of this conversation was never properly shared with the Warren
Commission and remained TOP SECRET for another 30 years. A related
document drafted by the FBI office in New York that I discovered last
year at the National Archives substantially adds to the accuracy of what
Childs reported. I am not aware that any of its contents were ever
shared with Kennedy assassination investigators.

Fidel gets earful from his consulate

The report quoted Childs saying that "Castro had been "in a very good
mood, and was not under the influence of liquor" when they met. Fidel
had spoken "in broken English" and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was told
"there is no question as to the accuracy of what he said [because] the
informant indicated that he had made notes at the time Castro was
talking and he had scribbled down what he considered important."

Jack learned that "Castro received the information about Oswald's
appearances at the Cuban consulate, because he was told about it
immediately." Fidel spoke to him "on the basis of facts given to him by
his embassy personnel, who dealt with Oswald, and apparently made a
full, detailed report." That Castro had publicly lied about that went
unnoticed by American government specialists.

Remarkably, another confirmation of Fidel's deceptions came from a most
unlikely source. Alfredo Mirabal, known to his colleagues by the alias
"Eulogio," was the incoming DGI chief in Mexico City and was present
when Oswald visited. Mirabal was described by the defector Rodriguez
Lahera as an experienced intelligence officer. In Mexico they had worked
together plotting subversive operations in El Salvador.

Mirabal was interviewed by members of the House of Representatives
Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978. In an oddly unguarded
moment, he admitted that he had prepared a report on Oswald for his
headquarters. Apparently he did not realize that he was contradicting
what his commander in chief had solemnly claimed years earlier. As far
as I can tell, this revealing error was never noticed by previous
researchers.

So there can be no doubt: Castro lied egregiously. He knew truths about
Kennedy's assassin that for nearly 49 years he has refused to reveal.
What were his motives for gambling he could get away with such a big
lie? Self-preservation was surely the overriding objective. He had good
reason to worry that emotions in the United States after Kennedy's death
were so inflamed that any evidence, even as CIA analysts wrote, "the
imputation" of Cuban involvement, could lead to war.

He knew he had to calm the ferocious anti-Kennedy hatreds that he had
previously stoked in Cuba. The first reaction of many of his followers
was to celebrate Kennedy's death. A CIA source on the island reported
that spontaneous outbursts occurred at workplaces and neighborhood
defense committees.

In Mexico City, a still mysterious DGI agent was overheard by the CIA
rejoicing in a telephone conversation. When told the news by an
unidentified caller an hour after the assassination, she exclaimed, How
great!" Then, mistakenly informed that "Kennedy's brother and his wife
were also injured," she laughed and again blurted out, "How great!"

Too risky to keep goading Americans

Fidel knew he had to go public to establish new policy and propaganda
guidelines. Orders prohibiting "manifestations of pleasure" were issued.
He began referring to Kennedy with respect, even deference. He knew it
was too dangerous to continue goading the American people as Kennedy was
being mourned nearly everywhere else in the world.

But the most compelling reason for Fidel's decision to put forth such
now transparent lies is that he knew Oswald was going to shoot at
Kennedy that morning. And he chose to remain silent.

Florentino Aspillaga, a highly decorated Cuban intelligence officer who
defected in 1987, told me Castro knew in advance that Oswald would shoot
at Kennedy. Aspillaga is a source who proved so reliable to American
intelligence that one retired officer told me "his value as a defector
was as good or better than any the CIA ever had anywhere. If he had been
a Soviet, it would have been the best by far we had in our entire history."

I believe Florentino Aspillaga had it right: "Fidel knew."

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/12/v-fullstory/2796473/how-the-assassination-of-jfk-put.html