Felix I. Rodriguez – “Shadow Warrior – The CIA Hero
of a Hundred Unknown Battles” (w/John Weisman, Simon and Schuster, Rockefeller
Center, NY, 1989)
(BK NOTES: Just as Sylvia Odio, the favored daughter
of one of the richest men in Cuba, attended a private Catholic high school in
Philadelphia and Villanova University – a Catholic college in Philadelphia,
Felix Rodriguez attended the private Perkiomen Academy just northwest of
Philadelphia before embarking on his covert commando activities. )
p. 46
I recovered from hepatitis and went back to
Perkiomen for my final semester at my parent’s request. They insisted I
graduate…By the time I left for Pennsylvania I was already in contact with
another anti-Castro group, the Cruzada Cubana Consitucional (CCC). Unlike the
anti-Communist League of the Caribbean, this one was made up of people more my
age. It was headed by Pedro Luis Diaz Lanz, a pilot and chief of Castro’s air
force who defected to the U.S. after making off with a plane and showering
Havana with anti-Castro leaflets.
One of Diaz Lanz’s top officers in the CCC was a man
named Frank Sturgis, who would later become well known for his participation in
the Watergate burglary; but back then he was known as a weapons instructor,
having gained his expertise as a major in Fidel Castro’s guerrilla army before
he defected….
.
I graduated from Perkiomen in June 1960 and was
accepted as an architecture student at the University of Miami…..
What we knew was this: you showed up at a storefront
in Miami, and you gave your name and filled out an application, and then you
were told that you’d be called when you were needed. The instructions were
simple: When you receive the call, you show up at a designated place. Don’t
bring any clothes, or radios, or even a suitcase. Nothing but a toothbrush and
razor. It all sounded intriguing.
I made my preparations to go secretly – not saying a
word to my mother and father…
Finally I was picked up – one of three or four
people – and we were driven by car to the Homestead area, south of Miami, where
we were taken to an empty house out in the middle of the woods. First we were
assigned registration numbers. Mine was 2718. Later I learned that the numbers
for infantry personnel began at 2500, so that if Castro found out about our
brigade, he’d believe it was larger than I actually was.
….The officer in charge, a former Cuban colonel
named Martin Elena,….told us that we were about to go to a secret location, a
training camp outside of the U.S. that was being financed by a rich Cuban who
used to own sugar mills before Castro…..
The plane was a C-54, and inside we sat on canvas benches
that ran the length of the aircraft – just like paratroopers. There were
windows, but they had been painted black…..
We looked at what the CIA called Trax base….a real
military training camp….We would become known as 2506 Brigade, named after
volunteer number 2506, Carlos Rodriguez Santana, who shortly before I arrived
at Trax camp had been killed during a training hike….It was at Trax that I
first met Nestor Pino, who is now a colonel in the U.S. Army (and one of the
best). And Jose Basulto, the radio oprator who would later teach me
communications skills over pancakes at his mother’s house….
Our instructors were mostly foreigners, led b a U.S.
trained Filipino colonel named Napoleon Valeriano whom we code-named El Chino
Vallejo. Valeriano was a West Point graduate – or so we were told - who during WWII had been infiltrated by
submarine to conduct guerrilla activities In the Philippines against the
Japanese, and later, after the war, against the Huks, communist-led terrorists
based on Luzon. He was very young at the time, in his twenties probably….So he
invented a character named Colonel Volcano, an elderly, wise, and very
experienced officer, who, he explained to everyone, was the head of the unit.
He, Valeriano, was Volcano’s young assistant.
No one ever saw Colonel Volcano, of course. But
Valeriano was always on hand to explain what the wise old officer wanted, and
help get it done. It was an effective ruse….
And we were given instructions in explosives and
military techniques, and of course in such areas as first aid, communications,
and basic survival. We were even taught how to do things like gauge distance by
timing muzzle-flash and sound. To do that, our instructors took us to a
precipice high above the camp at night. We were instructed to watch the crest
of a mountain a couple of miles away. There was a flash of gunfire – and then
the sound of the shot rolled toward us a few seconds later.
“Ok,” the instructor said, “What you do is, when you
see the muzzle flash, you start counting in seconds – a thousand one; a
thousand two; a thousand three – until you hear the sound of the weapon. Every
second that the shot takes to get to you means the muzzle is a half a mile
away. One second, a half a mile. Two seconds, a mile. There seconds, a mile and
a half, and so on.”
p. 63-64:
We were also instructed in tradecraft, which is the shoptalk word used by agents for describing the art of surviving in hostile territory. The truth of the mater is that despite all the instructions, all of the books and pamphlets, and all the classwork, tradecraft is only really learned by experience. It is not an exact science, but what I like to think of as survival science. There is only one rule: If it works, use it. If it doesn't work, you are usually dead or captured.
Mostly tradecraft is common sense and instinct. You have to be able to blend into your surroundings so as not to attract the attention of hostile intelligence or police agents. For example, clothes can be a problem. You can follow all the rules and still get caught because you're wearing a pair of obviously American shoes....
Our instructors were veterans of World War II European resistance movements. They taught us some of the more technical aspects of tradecraft, such as passing messages or moving sizable quantities of equipment and weapons without being detected.....
(p. 65):
One day I was talking to a friend of mine with whom I had served in the Diaz Lanz group. I knew his family, which had also come from Las Villas Province. We were talking about the probability of success our infiltration teams would have, and I suggested that by assassinating Castro I might be able to save lives. He agreed, and I took the plan to the acting group commander, an American we knew as Larry, and volunteered our services.
Soon thereafter Larry told me my idea had been accepted by the people in charge. Early in January (1961) we were all flown to Miami where we were assigned a third Cuban to be our radio operator, and where I was given a weapon. And what a weapon it was: a beautiful German bolt-action rifle with a powerful telescopic sight, all neatly packed in a custom-made padded carrying case. There was also a box of ammo, twenty rounds.
I was told that I wouldn't have to sight the rifle, as it had already been zeroed in. Apparently the resistance had obtained a building in Havana facing a location that Castro frequented at the time, and they'd managed to presight the rifle.
The Americans moved the entire infiltration until to a place in the Homestead area while we waited for our boat. It looked like an old motel, although it was out in the boondocks, right near a bunch of tomato fields. The place had a pool, where we practiced paddling the rubber rafts we'd use to go from our boat to the shore. From our "headquarters," we drove by car down into the keys, where at a predetermined spot we'd blink the headlights and a small boat would come to shore, retrieve us, and carry us to the yacht that would take us to Cuba.
Three times my friends and I tried to infiltrate Cuba with that damn rifle, and three times we failed. The boat we used was a power cruiser, maybe forty feet long, with air conditioning and luxurious appointments and fancy cabins. The captain was an American, but our crew were all Ukrainians. They spoke no Spanish - at least not to us - and they were tough-looking s.o.b.s. who carried Soviet bloc automatic weapons.
Our problem was, we never managed to get ashore. We were supposed to debark onto a Cuban boat near Varadero Beach, an area I knew from my childhood. From there we would be taken to rendezvous with members of the anti-Castro resistance and be driven to Havana. We would be provided a safe house, then move to the room where we'd be able to shoot Fidel, do it, and then try to escape somehow.
It sounds like a suicide mission. The truth is that escape meant very little to us. We were young, committed, and idealistic enough to try anything.
On our first try, we never saw a boat in our area. After about a week, we tried again. That time we sailed right up to the contact point - but discovered a huge ship, perhaps a hundred feet long. We sailed to within fifty or so feet of it, and checked it out with our spotlight. It was much too large to be our rendezvous boat - in fact, it looked like a ghost ship, because we couldn't see anyone aboard. We scrubbed again.
We were already well on our way to Cuba for the third time when the American captain canceled the mission. The reason he gave us was a hydraulic failure. When we got back to Florida, they took away the rifle and the ammunition, and said that they'd changed their minds about the mission.
I was tremendously disappointed and felt that the Americans let us down. I had volunteered to kill Castro, not because I was working for any American intelligence agency - which, as a matter of fact, I didn't know at the time - but because I was a Cuban soldier. I considered myself at war with Fidel, and he was a legitimate military target as far as I was concerned. And, as far as I am concerned, he still is a legitimate military target even today. My colleagues and I couldn't understand why the Americans were denying our initiative. After all, it was our war, and it was our lives. And if we were willing to risk getting ourselves killed, it was our business.
Much later I heard about the CIA's various assassination and destabilization plans organized against Fidel under the umbrella name of Operation Mongoose. These included such inanities as exploding cigars, poisoned Scuba gear, and a chemical to make his beard fall out. The plans also included supposed Mafia "hits." Operation Mongoose shows how little the Americans understood us Cuban freedom fighters. There was no need to go outside for anti-Castro activities. Anything the U.S. wanted to do would have been happily undertaken by people like me.
In 1987 I was asked by the independent counsel investigating the Iran/Contra affair. "Did you participate in Operation Mongoose to kill Castro with an exploding cigar?"
"No sir, I did not," I answered. "But I did volunteer to kill that son of a bitch in 1961 with a telescopic rifle." I got a friendly laugh and a "You are crazy, Felix!"
My rifle team was not disbanded, however. The Americans brought in two others, Edgar Sopo Barreto (with whom I visited Jack Anderson), and Pepe Gonzalex Castro, and told us we would become the infiltration team for Las Villas Province. Our mission would be to develop a resistance movement, stockpile weapons and explosives, and prepare to attack the Castro infrastructure when the invasion finally came.
There were thirty-five of us in all - seven five-man teams. While we remained at our mote-like safe house, the CIA tried to keep us Cubans from finding out where we were - the Homestead area, southwest of Miami. How? Every scrap of garbage or old newspaper gave away our area, if not our exact location.
We were given more instructions in landing techniques, using rubber rafts and paddling back and forth across the swimming pool. Those exercises were useful - we learned to paddle. But we also learned that while it's easy to "land" a rubber raft at the edge of swimming pool, it's much harder to do the same thing when you're fighting a wicked surf and trying to control a raft filled with ammunition, grenades, explosives, rifles, and other weapons, all the while attempting to watch out for people who want to kill you....
(p. 71)
The first infiltration team left for Cuba on Valentine's Day - February 14, 1961. We were to be the second to go. We went in on February 28. We were driven to Key West, then we transferred to our boat. It was a rough trip. The heavy seas tossed our boat (it was perhaps twenty-five feet long and filled to the gunwales with weapons and explosives). The trip took about four and a half stomach-wrenching hours, and at about six in the afternoon we saw the Cuban shoreline ahead. It was a tremendously emotional moment for me as I caught my first glimpse of the Cuban shoreline. I was returning to my country the way I wanted to: with a weapon in my hand, to fight the communist dictator.
We had drifted to the west of our planned landing zone at Arcos de Canasi, which is close to the border between Matanzas and Havana provinces. Our capatin was named Kikio Llanso; his second in command was a stocky man named Rolando Martinez, who has now become a close friend of mine and who would become well known as one of the Watergate "burglars" working for E. Howard Hunt. After plotting our position they turned us toward the east, and in the darkness we ran parallel to the beach perhaps one hundred meters from the sand, cruising slowly and watching for the signal to land.
To me, the whole experience was incredible, as if I were taking part in a movie. We could hear sounds from the shore as we moved slowly, silently in the darkness. We passed fishermen casting their lines off piers, watching people strolling around a small town square by the ocean, and even saw families enjoying a late picnic. We could see the lights of the houses, and an occasional car as our muffled motor chugged evenly along. Then, finally, we saw the recognition signal - three flashes of light in sequence - and the boat stopped.
We loaded our rubber dinghies, trying hard not to lose control as they rose and fell under our feet, lashed to the powerboat. We had our weapons and backpacks, but we also had to land two tons of equipment - explosives, grenades, machine guns, ammunition, and communications equipment. The landing would not be easy, either: instead of a sandy beach, we had to steer around jagged rocks and land the rafts at the base of a long, steep hill.
Once we made it ashore, we found roughly two dozen people waiting for us: local farmers and workers from the local sugar mill. Things became tremendously disorganized, which made me a little nervous. The whole operation was not-too-secure clandestine lading, with the campesinos smoking cigarettes in the darkness as they helped us unload the rafts and carry our equipment. Finally, we stood there sweating, everything we'd brought from Florida on the sand at our feet....
The anti-Castro resistance known as the MRR was in charge of moving us from Matanzas to Havana. They knew our approximate time of infiltration....
My team split into two groups on the highway. Three of us, Segundo Borges, Javier Souto, and Pepe Gonzalez, went straight to Las Villas Province. Borges was to instruct the resistance on how to receive air drops and maritime pickups. Pepe's assignment was action and sabotage, and Javier was the communications man - the link with Miami. Edgar Sopo and I would first go to Havana to link up with resistance leaders. From there we would go to Camaguey, where we'd coordinate the reception of a large shipment of arms - one thousand weapons were expected from the Americans....
(p.75)
Then it was time to meet the head of the Cuban resistance and talk over our assignments with him. His code name was Francisco, and he arrived midmorning accompanied by the MRR's chief of security, Cesar Baro.
Francisco's real name was Rogelio Gonzalez Corso.
(p.100) :
Early in 1962, Shackley came from Washington to head Miami Station. One of his lieutenants....was Tom Clines...The MRR leader Francisco was dead, executed by Castro on April 17. His replacements, handpicked by the Americans, were Manuel Guillot Castellanso and Rafael Quintero. Their task was to infiltrate and rebuild the shattered MRR organization inside Cuba.....
Organizationally we Cubans were relegated to positions toward the bottom of the charts. In fact, as far as I can determine, there were no Cuban CIA officers whatsoever at Miami Station. All of the "chiefs" were Americans. There were, of course, lots of Cuban "Indians" - that is to say, agents. The agents were divided into several groups. There were Cubans who worked primarily as paramilitary, or guerrilla, forces. Others did propaganda work, putting out newsletters and doing radio broadcasts. Still others helped develop intelligence by interviewing refugees, or passing on information they had learned from their families.
I became a principal agent. I acted as a cut-out between my case officer, Tom Clines, and the fellow Cubans with whom I worked. When we went on an infiltration, for example, it was the principal agent, not the case officer, who would accompany the team on its missions. A Cuban would drive to our homes and get us early in the morning. Then we would proceed to a rendezvous where Clines or another American would be waiting with an Agency car. One interesting sidelight of Miami Station, inclidently, had to do with the caste system for automobiles. Bottom-rung CIA officers drove Chevys and Fords. Higher-ups got Ponitiacs. And Ted Shackley, the station chief, drove a Cadillac.
Principal agents served as interpreters during meetings with Cubans (only a very few of the Americans spoke fluent Spanish). We also maintained safe houses, making sure there was food, keeping the accounts, and often acting as quartermaster, supply sergeant, and paymaster all in one. When our teams infiltrated Cuba, we went with them on the boats, making sure that they got in - and out - safely.....
But even with its principal agents, the Agency maintained a high level of internal security. I never knew, for example, where Miami Station was actually located until I found out in 1965 - by accident. (It was on the old campus of the University of Miami. I discovered this when I worked as a uniformed guard for a security firm hired by the university, and one night saw my case officer walk into one of the campus buildings.) I never knew the last names of my Agency contacts either. They were addressed by first names, which might have been real or might have been pseudonyms.
p. 63-64:
We were also instructed in tradecraft, which is the shoptalk word used by agents for describing the art of surviving in hostile territory. The truth of the mater is that despite all the instructions, all of the books and pamphlets, and all the classwork, tradecraft is only really learned by experience. It is not an exact science, but what I like to think of as survival science. There is only one rule: If it works, use it. If it doesn't work, you are usually dead or captured.
Mostly tradecraft is common sense and instinct. You have to be able to blend into your surroundings so as not to attract the attention of hostile intelligence or police agents. For example, clothes can be a problem. You can follow all the rules and still get caught because you're wearing a pair of obviously American shoes....
Our instructors were veterans of World War II European resistance movements. They taught us some of the more technical aspects of tradecraft, such as passing messages or moving sizable quantities of equipment and weapons without being detected.....
(p. 65):
One day I was talking to a friend of mine with whom I had served in the Diaz Lanz group. I knew his family, which had also come from Las Villas Province. We were talking about the probability of success our infiltration teams would have, and I suggested that by assassinating Castro I might be able to save lives. He agreed, and I took the plan to the acting group commander, an American we knew as Larry, and volunteered our services.
Soon thereafter Larry told me my idea had been accepted by the people in charge. Early in January (1961) we were all flown to Miami where we were assigned a third Cuban to be our radio operator, and where I was given a weapon. And what a weapon it was: a beautiful German bolt-action rifle with a powerful telescopic sight, all neatly packed in a custom-made padded carrying case. There was also a box of ammo, twenty rounds.
I was told that I wouldn't have to sight the rifle, as it had already been zeroed in. Apparently the resistance had obtained a building in Havana facing a location that Castro frequented at the time, and they'd managed to presight the rifle.
The Americans moved the entire infiltration until to a place in the Homestead area while we waited for our boat. It looked like an old motel, although it was out in the boondocks, right near a bunch of tomato fields. The place had a pool, where we practiced paddling the rubber rafts we'd use to go from our boat to the shore. From our "headquarters," we drove by car down into the keys, where at a predetermined spot we'd blink the headlights and a small boat would come to shore, retrieve us, and carry us to the yacht that would take us to Cuba.
Three times my friends and I tried to infiltrate Cuba with that damn rifle, and three times we failed. The boat we used was a power cruiser, maybe forty feet long, with air conditioning and luxurious appointments and fancy cabins. The captain was an American, but our crew were all Ukrainians. They spoke no Spanish - at least not to us - and they were tough-looking s.o.b.s. who carried Soviet bloc automatic weapons.
Our problem was, we never managed to get ashore. We were supposed to debark onto a Cuban boat near Varadero Beach, an area I knew from my childhood. From there we would be taken to rendezvous with members of the anti-Castro resistance and be driven to Havana. We would be provided a safe house, then move to the room where we'd be able to shoot Fidel, do it, and then try to escape somehow.
It sounds like a suicide mission. The truth is that escape meant very little to us. We were young, committed, and idealistic enough to try anything.
On our first try, we never saw a boat in our area. After about a week, we tried again. That time we sailed right up to the contact point - but discovered a huge ship, perhaps a hundred feet long. We sailed to within fifty or so feet of it, and checked it out with our spotlight. It was much too large to be our rendezvous boat - in fact, it looked like a ghost ship, because we couldn't see anyone aboard. We scrubbed again.
We were already well on our way to Cuba for the third time when the American captain canceled the mission. The reason he gave us was a hydraulic failure. When we got back to Florida, they took away the rifle and the ammunition, and said that they'd changed their minds about the mission.
I was tremendously disappointed and felt that the Americans let us down. I had volunteered to kill Castro, not because I was working for any American intelligence agency - which, as a matter of fact, I didn't know at the time - but because I was a Cuban soldier. I considered myself at war with Fidel, and he was a legitimate military target as far as I was concerned. And, as far as I am concerned, he still is a legitimate military target even today. My colleagues and I couldn't understand why the Americans were denying our initiative. After all, it was our war, and it was our lives. And if we were willing to risk getting ourselves killed, it was our business.
Much later I heard about the CIA's various assassination and destabilization plans organized against Fidel under the umbrella name of Operation Mongoose. These included such inanities as exploding cigars, poisoned Scuba gear, and a chemical to make his beard fall out. The plans also included supposed Mafia "hits." Operation Mongoose shows how little the Americans understood us Cuban freedom fighters. There was no need to go outside for anti-Castro activities. Anything the U.S. wanted to do would have been happily undertaken by people like me.
In 1987 I was asked by the independent counsel investigating the Iran/Contra affair. "Did you participate in Operation Mongoose to kill Castro with an exploding cigar?"
"No sir, I did not," I answered. "But I did volunteer to kill that son of a bitch in 1961 with a telescopic rifle." I got a friendly laugh and a "You are crazy, Felix!"
My rifle team was not disbanded, however. The Americans brought in two others, Edgar Sopo Barreto (with whom I visited Jack Anderson), and Pepe Gonzalex Castro, and told us we would become the infiltration team for Las Villas Province. Our mission would be to develop a resistance movement, stockpile weapons and explosives, and prepare to attack the Castro infrastructure when the invasion finally came.
There were thirty-five of us in all - seven five-man teams. While we remained at our mote-like safe house, the CIA tried to keep us Cubans from finding out where we were - the Homestead area, southwest of Miami. How? Every scrap of garbage or old newspaper gave away our area, if not our exact location.
We were given more instructions in landing techniques, using rubber rafts and paddling back and forth across the swimming pool. Those exercises were useful - we learned to paddle. But we also learned that while it's easy to "land" a rubber raft at the edge of swimming pool, it's much harder to do the same thing when you're fighting a wicked surf and trying to control a raft filled with ammunition, grenades, explosives, rifles, and other weapons, all the while attempting to watch out for people who want to kill you....
(p. 71)
The first infiltration team left for Cuba on Valentine's Day - February 14, 1961. We were to be the second to go. We went in on February 28. We were driven to Key West, then we transferred to our boat. It was a rough trip. The heavy seas tossed our boat (it was perhaps twenty-five feet long and filled to the gunwales with weapons and explosives). The trip took about four and a half stomach-wrenching hours, and at about six in the afternoon we saw the Cuban shoreline ahead. It was a tremendously emotional moment for me as I caught my first glimpse of the Cuban shoreline. I was returning to my country the way I wanted to: with a weapon in my hand, to fight the communist dictator.
We had drifted to the west of our planned landing zone at Arcos de Canasi, which is close to the border between Matanzas and Havana provinces. Our capatin was named Kikio Llanso; his second in command was a stocky man named Rolando Martinez, who has now become a close friend of mine and who would become well known as one of the Watergate "burglars" working for E. Howard Hunt. After plotting our position they turned us toward the east, and in the darkness we ran parallel to the beach perhaps one hundred meters from the sand, cruising slowly and watching for the signal to land.
To me, the whole experience was incredible, as if I were taking part in a movie. We could hear sounds from the shore as we moved slowly, silently in the darkness. We passed fishermen casting their lines off piers, watching people strolling around a small town square by the ocean, and even saw families enjoying a late picnic. We could see the lights of the houses, and an occasional car as our muffled motor chugged evenly along. Then, finally, we saw the recognition signal - three flashes of light in sequence - and the boat stopped.
We loaded our rubber dinghies, trying hard not to lose control as they rose and fell under our feet, lashed to the powerboat. We had our weapons and backpacks, but we also had to land two tons of equipment - explosives, grenades, machine guns, ammunition, and communications equipment. The landing would not be easy, either: instead of a sandy beach, we had to steer around jagged rocks and land the rafts at the base of a long, steep hill.
Once we made it ashore, we found roughly two dozen people waiting for us: local farmers and workers from the local sugar mill. Things became tremendously disorganized, which made me a little nervous. The whole operation was not-too-secure clandestine lading, with the campesinos smoking cigarettes in the darkness as they helped us unload the rafts and carry our equipment. Finally, we stood there sweating, everything we'd brought from Florida on the sand at our feet....
The anti-Castro resistance known as the MRR was in charge of moving us from Matanzas to Havana. They knew our approximate time of infiltration....
My team split into two groups on the highway. Three of us, Segundo Borges, Javier Souto, and Pepe Gonzalez, went straight to Las Villas Province. Borges was to instruct the resistance on how to receive air drops and maritime pickups. Pepe's assignment was action and sabotage, and Javier was the communications man - the link with Miami. Edgar Sopo and I would first go to Havana to link up with resistance leaders. From there we would go to Camaguey, where we'd coordinate the reception of a large shipment of arms - one thousand weapons were expected from the Americans....
(p.75)
Then it was time to meet the head of the Cuban resistance and talk over our assignments with him. His code name was Francisco, and he arrived midmorning accompanied by the MRR's chief of security, Cesar Baro.
Francisco's real name was Rogelio Gonzalez Corso.
(p.100) :
Early in 1962, Shackley came from Washington to head Miami Station. One of his lieutenants....was Tom Clines...The MRR leader Francisco was dead, executed by Castro on April 17. His replacements, handpicked by the Americans, were Manuel Guillot Castellanso and Rafael Quintero. Their task was to infiltrate and rebuild the shattered MRR organization inside Cuba.....
Organizationally we Cubans were relegated to positions toward the bottom of the charts. In fact, as far as I can determine, there were no Cuban CIA officers whatsoever at Miami Station. All of the "chiefs" were Americans. There were, of course, lots of Cuban "Indians" - that is to say, agents. The agents were divided into several groups. There were Cubans who worked primarily as paramilitary, or guerrilla, forces. Others did propaganda work, putting out newsletters and doing radio broadcasts. Still others helped develop intelligence by interviewing refugees, or passing on information they had learned from their families.
I became a principal agent. I acted as a cut-out between my case officer, Tom Clines, and the fellow Cubans with whom I worked. When we went on an infiltration, for example, it was the principal agent, not the case officer, who would accompany the team on its missions. A Cuban would drive to our homes and get us early in the morning. Then we would proceed to a rendezvous where Clines or another American would be waiting with an Agency car. One interesting sidelight of Miami Station, inclidently, had to do with the caste system for automobiles. Bottom-rung CIA officers drove Chevys and Fords. Higher-ups got Ponitiacs. And Ted Shackley, the station chief, drove a Cadillac.
Principal agents served as interpreters during meetings with Cubans (only a very few of the Americans spoke fluent Spanish). We also maintained safe houses, making sure there was food, keeping the accounts, and often acting as quartermaster, supply sergeant, and paymaster all in one. When our teams infiltrated Cuba, we went with them on the boats, making sure that they got in - and out - safely.....
But even with its principal agents, the Agency maintained a high level of internal security. I never knew, for example, where Miami Station was actually located until I found out in 1965 - by accident. (It was on the old campus of the University of Miami. I discovered this when I worked as a uniformed guard for a security firm hired by the university, and one night saw my case officer walk into one of the campus buildings.) I never knew the last names of my Agency contacts either. They were addressed by first names, which might have been real or might have been pseudonyms.
(p. 117)
The first prisoners from 2506 Brigade flew into
Homestead Air Force Base on Sunday, December 23, 1962. They had been ransomed
from Castro for $53 million in food and drugs….Another, less publicized vow was
made by the President that day. It gave the 2506 Brigade officers the
opportunity to become commissioned as regular U.S. Army officers, even though
we were not citizens;….It seemed a good opportunity at the time….But even
before the basic course was completed, I had a visit from Manuel Artime and
Rafael “Chi Chi” Quintero, which changed the direction of my life once again.
We’re going to overthrow Castro – this time we’re
really going to do it,” they said, explaining the President of the United
States himself was sponsoring the liberation movement. Even better, this force
would be entirely Cuban-run and Cuban-led…..This time, Artime promised me, we would
stand or fail or on own.
This operation would be
run out of Central America, utilizing hit-and-run tactics against Castro,
stinging him like a boxer with repeated jabs until he became weak and could
mount a major military attack. They guaranteed the U.S. Government was behind
the plan; that it was sponsored by Robert Kennedy and the President himself.
They asked me to become a high ranking officer in the endeavor, heading up the
communications division. The only hitch was that I’d have to resign my Army
commission. The operation was to be covert.”
“I told them I liked
the army, and that I’d been selected for
intelligence training after my basic course was over. Also I had my doubt. The
U.S. had left us in the lurch before – would that happen again? Moreover I
wasn’t sure that Artime and Chi Chi Quintero spoke for the U.S. authorities…..
Still, I’d known them
both for awhile. I’d met Chi Chi Quintero in 1956. There were three
good-looking sisters from Camaguey who were spending the summer a Varadero Beach
that year. I dated the eldest, Chi Chi the youngest, and his brother dated the
middle sister. I hadn’t seen him since then until just before the Bay of Pigs,
although I knew from mutual friends that he had become close to the political
leadership of the Cuban resistance movement. After Francisco’s death, Chi Chi
was one of the resistance leaders. I infiltrated back inside Cuba – there is a
picture taken of us together on one of those missions.
Now he was Artime’s
deputy. Maunel Artime was one of those charismatic people you get to meet only
once in a lifetime. I’d known him since 1960, when he was the political leader
of the MRR. During one of our first meetings he asked Edgar Sopo and me to help
him set up anti-Castro training camps. Right on the spotwe donated the Diaz
Lanz organization’s Rolodex so he could contact potential sponsors and
soldiers. He engendered that kind of trust in people. Artime was a doctor – a
psychiatrist – and he knew how to play mind games to get what he wanted. But he
was also a good soldier….
A short time afterward,
two civilians who said their names were Mr. Moose and Mr. Flannigan showed up
at Fort Benning to give me and two others communications training, on the base
and in uniform. That convinced me that Artime was planning a bona fide U.S.
Governement-sponsored operation, and I took steps to resign my commission.
I finished my basic
training in early October, and on October 9, 1963, I received an honorable
discharge from the U.S. Army…..
The fact of the matter
was that the fight for Cuba was and remains the central focus of my life. Such
is the case for many of my generation.
The summer of 1963, for
example, marked the end of an era for many Americans – although they didn’t
realize it at the time. In retrospect, it was a summer of unabashed optimism,
during which Martin Luther King made his historic “I have a dream speech” on
the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.
The summer of 1963 was
the last of America’s innocent summers: the summer before JFK was assassinated
in Dallas; the last summer before the name Vietnam insinuated itself into our
national consciousness.
For us, veterans of
Castro’s prisons, fighters since our teens (I was still only twenty-two that
summer), virtually none of these things mattered or existed. We lived outside
the mainstream of American culture – societal orphans, whose one goal was
Castro’s overthrow and the reestablishment of a democratic republic in our
homeland.
For me, the summer of
1963 was infantry training at Fort Benning, followed by Mr. Moose and Mr.
Flannigan’s tutorials in the fine art of clandestine communications…..
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