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Reflections by the Commander in Chief
Sunday is a good day to read something that
would appear to be science fiction.
It was announced that the CIA would be
declassifying hundreds of pages on illegal
actions that included plans to eliminate the
leaders of foreign governments. Suddenly the
publication is halted and it is delayed one day.
No coherent explanation was given. Perhaps
someone in the White House looked over the
material.
The first package of declassified documents
goes by the name of “The Family Jewels”; it
consists of 702 pages on illegal CIA actions
between 1959 and 1973. About 100 pages of this
part have been deleted. It deals with actions
that were not authorized by any law, plots to
assassinate other leaders, experiments with
drugs on human beings to control their minds,
spying on civil activists and journalists, among
other similar activities that were expressly
prohibited.
The documents began to be gathered together
14 years after the first of the events took
place, when then CIA director, James
Schlessinger became alarmed about what the press
was writing, especially all the articles by
Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein published in
The Washington Post, already mentioned in
the “Manifesto to the People of Cuba”. The
agency was being accused of promoting spying in
the Watergate Hotel with the participation of
its former agents Howard Hunt and James McCord.
In May 1973, the Director of the CIA was
demanding that "all the main operative officials
of this agency must immediately inform me on any
ongoing or past activity that might be outside
of the constituting charter of this agency”.
Schlessinger, later appointed Head of the
Pentagon, had been replaced by William Colby.
Colby was referring to the documents as
“skeletons hiding in a closet". New press
revelations forced Colby to admit the existence
of the reports to interim President Gerald Ford
in 1975. The New York Times was
denouncing agency penetration of antiwar groups.
The law that created the CIA prevented it from
spying inside the United States.
That “was just the tip of the iceberg”,
said then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Kissinger himself warned that “blood would
flow” if other actions were known, and he
immediately added: “For example, that Robert
Kennedy personally controlled the operation for
the assassination of Fidel Castro”. The
President’s brother was then Attorney General of
the United States. He was later murdered as he
was running for President in the 1968 elections,
which facilitated Nixon's election for lack of a
strong candidate. The most dramatic thing about
the case is that apparently he had reached the
conviction that John Kennedy had been victim of
a conspiracy. Thorough investigators, after
analyzing the wounds, the caliber of the shots
and other circumstances surrounding the death of
the President, reached the conclusion that there
had been at least three shooters. Solitary
Oswald, used as an instrument, could not have
been the only shooter. I found that rather
striking. Excuse me for saying this but fate
turned me into a shooting instructor with a
telescopic sight for all the Granma
expeditionaries. I spent months practicing and
teaching, every day; even though the target is a
stationary one it disappears from view with each
shot and so you need to look for it all over
again in fractions of a second.
Oswald wanted to come through Cuba on his
trip to the USSR. He had already been there
before. Someone sent him to ask for a visa in
our country’s embassy in Mexico but nobody knew
him there so he wasn’t authorized. They wanted
to get us implicated in the conspiracy. Later,
Jack Ruby, --a man openly linked to the Mafia--
unable to deal with so much pain and sadness, as
he said, assassinated him, of all places, in a
precinct full police agents.
Subsequently, in international functions or
on visits to Cuba, on more than one occasion I
met with the aggrieved Kennedy relatives, who
would greet me respectfully. The former
president’s son, who was a very small child when
his father was killed, visited Cuba 34 years
later. We met and I invited him to dinner.
The young man, in the prime of his life,
and well brought up, tragically died in an
airplane accident on a stormy night as he was
flying to Martha’s Vineyard with his wife. I
never touched on the thorny issue with any of
those relatives. In contrast, I pointed out that
if the president-elect had then been Nixon
instead of Kennedy, after the Bay of Pigs
disaster we would have been attacked by the land
and sea forces escorting the mercenary
expedition, and both countries would have paid a
high toll in human lives. Nixon would not have
limited himself to saying that victory has many
fathers and defeat is an orphan. For the
record, Kennedy was never too enthusiastic about
the Bay of Pigs adventure; he was led there by
Eisenhower’s military reputation and the
recklessness of his ambitious vice-president.
I remember that, exactly on the day and
minute he was assassinated, I was speaking in a
peaceful spot outside of the capital with French
journalist Jean Daniel. He told me that he was
bringing a message from President Kennedy. He
said to me that in essence he had told him: “You
are going to see Castro. I would like to know
what he thinks about the terrible danger we just
experienced of a thermonuclear war. I want to
see you again as soon as you get back.”
“Kennedy was very active; he seemed to be a
political machine”, he added, and we were not
able to continue talking as someone rushed in
with the news of what had just happened. We
turned on the radio. What Kennedy thought was
now pointless.
Certainly I lived with that danger. Cuba
was both the weakest part and the one that would
take the first strike, but we did not agree with
the concessions that were made to the United
States. I have already spoken of this before.
Kennedy had emerged from the crisis with
greater authority. He came to recognize the
enormous sacrifices of human lives and material
wealth made by the Soviet people in the struggle
against fascism. The worst of the relations
between the United States and Cuba had not yet
occurred by April 1961. When he hadn’t resigned
himself to the outcome of the Bay of Pigs, along
came the Missile Crisis. The blockade, economic
asphyxiation, pirate attacks and assassination
plots multiplied. But the assassination plots
and other bloody occurrences began under the
administration of Eisenhower and Nixon.
After the Missile Crisis we would have not
refused to talk with Kennedy, nor would we have
ceased being revolutionaries and radical in our
struggle for socialism. Cuba would have never
severed relations with the USSR as it had been
asked to do. Perhaps if the American leaders had
been aware of what a war could be using weapons
of mass destruction they would have ended the
Cold War earlier and differently. At least
that’s how we felt then, when there was still no
talk of global warming, broken imbalances, the
enormous consumption of hydrocarbons and the
sophisticated weaponry created by technology, as
I have already said to the youth of Cuba. We
would have had much more time to reach, through
science and conscience, what we are today forced
to realize in haste.
President Ford decided to appoint a
Commission to investigate the Central
Intelligence Agency. “We do not want to destroy
the CIA but to preserve it”, he said.
As a result of the Commission’s
investigations that were led by Senator Frank
Church, President Ford signed an executive order
which expressly prohibited the participation of
American officials in the assassinations of
foreign leaders.
The documents published now disclose
information about the CIA-Mafia links for my
assassination.
Details are also revealed about Operation
Chaos, carrying on from 1969 for at least seven
years, for which the CIA created a special
squadron with the mission to infiltrate pacifist
groups and to investigate “the international
activities of radicals and black militants”.
The Agency compiled more than 300,000 names of
American citizens and organizations and
extensive files on 7,200 persons.
According to The New York Times,
President Johnson was convinced that the
American anti-War movement was controlled and
funded by Communist governments and he ordered
the CIA to produce evidence.
The documents recognize, furthermore, that
the CIA spied on various journalists like Jack
Anderson, performers such as Jane Fonda and John
Lennon, and the student movements at Columbia
University. It also searched homes and carried
out tests on American citizens to determine the
reactions of human beings to certain drugs.
In a memorandum sent to Colby in 1973,
Walter Elder who had been executive assistant to
John McCone, CIA Director in the early 1970s,
gives information about discussions in the CIA
headquarters that were taped and transcribed: “I
know that whoever worked in the offices of the
director were worried about the fact that these
conversations in the office and on the phone
were transcribed. During the McCone years there
were microphones in his regular offices, the
inner office, the dining room, the office in the
East building, and in the study of his home on
White Haven Street. I don’t know if anyone is
ready to talk about this, but the information
tends to be leaked, and certainly the Agency is
vulnerable in this case”.
The secret transcripts of the CIA directors
could contain a great number of “jewels”. The
National Security Archive is already requesting
these transcripts.
A memo clarifies that the CIA had a project
called OFTEN which would collect “information
about dangerous drugs in American companies”,
until the program was terminated in the fall of
1972. In another memo there are reports that
manufacturers of commercial drugs "had passed”
drugs to the CIA which had been “refused due to
adverse secondary effects”.
As part of the MKULTRA program, the CIA had
given LSD and other psycho-active drugs to
people without their knowledge. According to
another document in the archive, Sydney
Gottlieb, a psychiatrist and head of chemistry
of the Agency Mind Control Program, is
supposedly the person responsible for having
made available the poison that was going to be
used in the assassination attempt on Patrice
Lumumba.
CIA employees assigned to MHCHAOS –the
operation that carried out surveillance on
American opposition to the war in Vietnam and
other political dissidents –expressed “a high
level of resentment” for having been ordered to
carry out such missions.
Nonetheless, there is a series of
interesting matters revealed in these documents,
such as the high level at which the decisions
for actions against our country were taken.
The technique used today by the CIA to
avoid giving any details is not the unpleasant
crossed out bits but the blank spaces, coming
from the use of computers.
For The New York Times, large censored
sections reveal that the CIA still cannot expose
all the skeletons in its closets, and many
activities developed in operations abroad,
checked over years ago by journalists,
congressional investigators and a presidential
commission, are not in the documents.
Howard Osborn, then CIA Director of
Security, makes a summary of the “jewels”
compiled by his office. He lists eight cases
–including the recruiting of the gangster Johnny
Roselli for the coup against Fidel Castro –but
they crossed out the document that is in the
number 1 place on Osborn’s initial list: two and
a half pages.
“The No. 1 Jewel of the CIA Security
Offices must be very good, especially since the
second one is the list for the program
concerning the assassination of Castro by
Roselli,” said Thomas Blanton, director of the
National Security Archive who requested the
declassification of “The Family Jewels” 15 years
ago under the Freedom of Information Act.
It is notable that the administration which
has declassified the least information in the
history of the United States, and which has even
started a process of reclassifying information
that was previously declassified, now makes the
decision to make these revelations.
I believe that such an action could be an
attempt to present an image of transparency when
the government is at an all time low rate of
acceptance and popularity, and to show that
those methods belong to another era and are no
longer in use. When he announced the decision,
General Hayden, current CIA Director, said: “The
documents offer a look at very different times
and at a very different Agency.”
Needless to say that everything described
here is still being done, only in a more brutal
manner and all around the planet, including a
growing number of illegal actions within the
very United States.
The New York Times wrote that
intelligence experts consulted expressed that
the revelation of the documents is an attempt to
distract attention from recent controversies and
scandals plaguing the CIA and an Administration
that is living through some of its worst moments
of unpopularity.
The declassification could also be an
attempt at showing, in the early stages of the
electoral process that the Democratic
administrations were as bad, or worse, than Mr.
Bush’s.
In pages 11 to 15 of the Memo for the
Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, we
can read:
“In August 1960, Mr. Richard M. Bissell
approached Colonel Sheffield Edwards with the
objective of determining whether the Security
Office had agents who could help in a
confidential mission that required
gangster-style action. The target of the mission
was Fidel Castro.
“Given the extreme confidentiality of the
mission, the project was known only to a small
group of people. The Director of the Central
Intelligence Agency was informed and he gave it
his approval. Colonel J. C. King, Head of the
Western Hemisphere Division, was also informed,
but all the details were deliberately concealed
from officials of Operation JMWAVE. Even though
some officials of Communications (Commo) and the
Technical Services Division (TSD) took part in
initial planning phases, they were not aware of
the mission's purpose.
“Robert A. Maheu was contacted, he was
informed in general terms about the project, and
he was asked to evaluate whether he could get
access to gangster-type elements as a first step
for achieving the desired goal.
“Mr. Maheu informed that he had met with a
certain Johnny Roselli on several occasions
while he was visiting Las Vegas. He had only met
him informally through clients, but he had been
told that he was a member of the upper echelons
of the 'syndicate' and that he was controlling
all the ice machines on the Strip. In Maheu's
opinion, if Roselli was in effect a member of
the Clan, he undoubtedly had connections that
would lead to the gambling racket in Cuba.
“Maheu was asked to get close to Roselli,
who knew that Maheu was a public relations
executive looking after national and foreign
accounts, and tell him that recently he had been
contracted by a client who represented several
international business companies, which were
suffering enormous financial losses in Cuba due
to Castro. They were convinced that the
elimination of Castro would be a solution to
their problem and they were ready to pay $
150,000 for a successful outcome. Roselli had to
be made perfectly aware of the fact that the
U.S. government knew nothing, nor could it know
anything, about this operation.
“This was presented to Roselli on September
14, 1960 in the Hilton Plaza Hotel of New York
City. His initial reaction was to avoid getting
involved but after Maheu’s persuasive efforts he
agreed to present the idea to a friend, Sam
Gold, who knew “some Cubans”. Roselli made it
clear that he didn’t want any money for his part
in all this, and he believed that Sam would do
likewise. Neither of these people was ever paid
with Agency money.
“During the week of September 25, Maheu was
introduced to Sam who was living at the
Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach. It was not
until several weeks after meeting Sam and Joe
–who was introduced as courier operating between
Havana and Miami –that he saw photos of these
two individuals in the Sunday section of
Parade. They were identified as Momo
Salvatore Giancana and Santos Trafficante,
respectively. Both were on the Attorney
General’s list of the ten most wanted. The
former was described as the boss of the Cosa
Nostra in Chicago and Al Capone's heir, and the
latter was the boss of Cuban operations of the
Cosa Nostra. Maheu immediately called this
office upon learning this information.
“After analyzing the possible methods to
carry out this mission, Sam suggested that they
not resort to firearms but that, if they could
get hold of some kind of deadly pill, something
to be put into Castro’s food or drink, this
would be a much more effective operation. Sam
indicated that he had a possible candidate in
the person of Juan Orta, a Cuban official who
had been receiving bribery payments in the
gambling racket, and who still had access to
Castro and was in a financial bind.
“The TSD (Technical Services Division) was
requested to produce 6 highly lethal pills.
“Joe delivered the pills to Orta. After
several weeks of attempts, Orta appears to have
chickened out and he asked to be taken off the
mission. He suggested another candidate who made
several unsuccessful.”
Everything that was said in the numerous
paragraphs above is in quotes. Observe well,
dear readers, the methods that were already
being used by the United States to rule the
world.
I remember that during the early years of
the Revolution, in the offices of the National
Institute for Agrarian Reform, there was a man
working there with me whose name was Orta, who
had been linked to the anti-Batista political
forces. He was a respectful and serious man.
But, it could only be him. The decades have gone
by and I see his name once more in the CIA
report. I can’t lay my hands on information to
immediately prove what happened to him. Accept
my apologies if I involuntarily have offended a
relative or a descendent, whether the person I
have mentioned is guilty or not.
The empire has created a veritable killing
machine that is made up not only of the CIA and
its methods. Bush has established powerful and
expensive intelligence and security
super-structures, and he has transformed all the
air, sea and land forces into instruments of
world power that take war, injustice, hunger and
death to any part of the globe, in order to
educate its inhabitants in the exercise of
democracy and freedom. The American people are
gradually waking up to this reality.
“You cannot fool all of the people all of
the time”, said Lincoln.
Fidel Castro Ruz
June 30, 2007
6:45 p.m.
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