Posted on Mon, Sep.
10, 2012
Did U.S.
leaders discuss murder of Fidel Castro?
BY DAVID BARRETT
David.barrett@villanova.edu
David.barrett@villanova.edu
It only took half a century, but we finally have direct
evidence of U.S.
government leaders cryptically discussing ideas about assassinating Fidel
Castro just months before the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Due to congressional investigations in the 1970s, we have
long known of (unsuccessful) Central Intelligence Agency plots to kill Castro
in the Eisenhower and Kennedy eras. And, based on what various CIA
people later testified, it has also been believed that, strangely, John McCone,
who headed the CIA for the last two years of
the Kennedy presidency, did not want to discuss or even hear about
assassination plots.
Earlier this year, I came across a document at the National
Archives that seems to confirm this. But what I find most remarkable
is that the document even exists. We have never seen any sort of documentation
from the actual time of a high-level conversation about the taboo topic.
But there it was in State Department records from a late
summer day in 1962: Secretary of State Dean Rusk had met at 11:30 a.m. with McCone, Bobby Kennedy (who told the CIA
he wanted to attend), Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, and other advisers to
JFK. The meeting was devoted to Castro’s Cuba ,
where intelligence showed the Russians pouring in men and military equipment.
McCone’s notes of the meeting show participants agreeing that strong measures
against Castro’s government were needed. But what kind? The notes show that
participants couldn’t agree on that.
Only because Rusk’s secretary at the State Department was
listening and taking notes when McCone called later that day, do we know much
more about what came up in the meeting. Her notes show an upset CIA
leader: “M[cCone] said the question came up this a.m. in connection with an
individual that should not come up in m[eetin]gs. M[cCone] does not think we
should countenance talking or thinking about that.”
A little context is needed to make sense of the telephone
call.
• First, the “individual” who was the overwhelming
focus of the meeting was Castro.
• Second, those meetings in the office and presence of
the secretary of state were the policymaking elites of the Kennedy
administration.
• Third, the Republican McCone was a tough Cold
Warrior. That’s why JFK chose him as CIA
head. McCone favored almost anything anyone proposed to deal with Castro,
except murder. McCone was said to have been against anyone even raising the
topic in his presence. “I could get excommunicated!” the Catholic McCone said.
The notes made as the telephone conversation unfolded show
just that sort of abhorrence.
In contrast, Secretary of State Rusk was less agitated over
the topic, saying “he would not worry about it,” given the reliable people at
the meeting. But the CIA director brushed
off that assurance: He and Rusk could sit down and “talk privately,” presumably
about the forbidden topic, but the “Sec[cretary] should take the posture of not
countenancing it.” Without elaboration, the “Sec[retary] agreed.”
The words “Castro” and “assassination” are not there in the
telephone conversation notes, but — given the morning meeting’s agenda and
McCone’s notes of it — it is very hard to believe that the “individual”
referred to in the subsequent phone call was anyone but Castro. The
notes seem to be concrete evidence supporting stories from across the decades
that McCone did not want others even to raise the idea in his presence of
killing Castro.
Of course, the Central Intelligence Agency did try to kill
Castro during the Kennedy era. How that could happen when the agency’s leader
didn’t want the subject discussed in his presence has been the subject of many
an author, but is still debated. I’m just amazed finally to see a
contemporaneous record actually showing the forbidden topic being raised and
then banished, at least for meetings with the CIA
leader there.
And I’m struck by the irony: JFK, RFK, McCone, Rusk —
they’re all long gone. Castro, the individual about whom those men obsessed,
lives on.
David M. Barrett is a professor of political science at Villanova
University and co-author, with Max
Holland, of "Blind Over Cuba: The Photo Gap and the Missile Crisis,"
which is soon to be published.
1. The first is a memo from State Dept. records dated to the late summer of 1962. It memorializes a meeting between John McCone, RFK, Robert Macnamara and Dean Rusk at which they purportedly discussed assassinating Fidel Castro.
The document was
recently located by historian David Barrett (see article here:http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/09/10/v-print/2990646/did-us-leaders-discuss-murder.html)
The memo reads in part : “M said the question came up this a.m. in connection
with an individual that should not come up in m[eetin]gs. M does not think we
should countenance talking or thinking about that.”
AGENCY INFORMATION
AGENCY : CIA
RECORD NUMBER :
104-10135-10328
RECORDS SERIES :
JFK
AGENCY FILE
NUMBER : 80T01357A
DOCUMENT INFORMATION
ORIGINATOR : CIA
FROM :
JAMESON, DONALD, CHIEF, SR/CA, CIA
TO : [No To]
TITLE :
CONTACT REPORT - MEETING WITH PRISCILLA JOHNSON ON 11
DECEMBER 1962.
DATE : 12/11/1962
PAGES :
2
DOCUMENT TYPE :
PAPER - TEXTUAL DOCUMENT
SUBJECTS :
CONTACT REPORT; INVESTIGATION; JONSON, PRISC.
CLASSIFICATION :
SECRET
RESTRICTIONS :
OPEN IN FULL
CURRENT STATUS :
OPEN
DATE OF LAST REVIEW : 05/03/1994
COMMENTS :
JFK49 : F106 : 1994.05.03.17:41:26:750028 :
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