Operation Mongoose
The policy assessment initiated in May 1961 led in November of that year to a decision to implement a new covert program to undermine and overthrow the Castro government in Cuba. This program was codenamed Operation Mongoose and much of the remainder of the volume after November 1961 is devoted to documenting Operation Mongoose. Oversight for Operation Mongoose was provided by the 5412/Special Group expanded to include General Taylor and Attorney General Kennedy. Planning for Operation Mongoose was given additional impetus in the spring of 1962 by reports of expanded arms shipments from the Soviet Union to Cuba.
In November 1961 Kennedy approved Operation Mongoose, a secret plan aimed at stimulating a rebellion in Cuba that the United States could support. From November 1961 to October 1962 a Special Group (Augmented), whose membership was the same as the Special Group plus Attorney General Robert Kennedy and General Taylor (as Chairman), exercised responsibility for Operation Mongoose, a major covert action program aimed at overthrowing the Castro regime in Cuba. When President Kennedy authorized the program in November, he designated Brigadier General Edward G. Lansdale, Assistant for Special Operations to the Secretary of Defense, to act as chief of operations, and Lansdale coordinated the Mongoose activities among the CIA and the Departments of State and Defense. CIA units in Washington and Miami had primary responsibility for implementing Mongoose operations, which included military, sabotage, and political propaganda programs.
Bill Harvey was a legend in the Clandestine Service by this time. He had been in Berlin when the Berlin Tunnel was built to tap into Soviet communication lines in East Berlin, and he was picked to head Operation Mongoose, the attempt to undermine Fidel Castro's regime.
Throughout 1961 and 1962, US policy was to subject Cuba to economic isolation and to support stepped-up raids by anti-Castro guerrillas, many of which were planned with the assassination of Castro and other Cuban officials as a probable consequence, if not a specific objective. The Cuban Government, in turn, assumed often correctly-- that the raids were instigated and directed by the US Government. In preparation for another large-scale attack, the Castro regime sought and received increased military support from the Soviet Union.
While the Kennedy administration implemented Operation Mongoose, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev secretly introduced medium-range nuclear missiles into Cuba. U.S intelligence picked up evidence of a general Soviet arms build-up during routine surveillance flights, and on September 4, 1962, Kennedy issued a public warning against the introduction of offensive weapons into Cuba. A U-2 flight on October 14 provided the first proof of Soviet medium-range ballistic missiles in Cuba. Kennedy called together 18 of his closest advisers to try to resolve the most dangerous US-Soviet confrontation of the Cold War. Some advisers argued for an air strike to take out the missiles and destroy the Cuban Air Force followed by a US invasion of Cuba; others favored warnings to Cuba and the Soviet Union. The President decided upon a middle course. On October 22 Kennedy ordered a naval quarantine of Cuba. Kennedy responded on October 27 to the first of two letters sent by Khrushchev on October 26 and 27 proposing various settlements of the crisis. Kennedy accepted the Soviet offer to withdraw the missiles from Cuba in return for an end to the quarantine and a US pledge not to invade Cuba. The same day Attorney General Robert Kennedy told Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin that if the Soviet Union did not remove the missiles the United States would do so. Robert Kennedy also offered an assurance that Khrushchev needed: several months after the missiles were removed from Cuba, the United States would similarly remove its missiles from Turkey. On the basis of those understandings, the Soviet Union agreed on October 28 to remove its missiles from Cuba. The quarantine and the crisis lingered until the removal of the Soviet missiles was verified at sea on November 20, and the Soviet Union agreed to remove the medium-range Il-28 bombers it had also introduced into Cuba.
When it became known to anti-Castro Cuban exiles that Kennedy had agreed to stop the raids on Cuba, the exiles considered the Kennedy-Khrushchev deal anything but a victory. To them, it was another betrayal. By 1963 also, Cuban exiles bitterly opposed to Castro were being frustrated by the Kennedy administration. Many of them had come to conclude that the US President was an obstacle requiring elimination even more urgently than the Cuban dictator.
There is evidence that by the fall of 1963, informal overtures for better United States-Cuban relations had been authorized by President Kennedy. Talks between United States and Cuban officials at the United Nations were under consideration. In addition, the United States had attempted in the period after the missile crisis to stem the anti-Castro raids by, at least publicly, refusing to sanction them. But covert action by the United States had neither ceased nor escaped Castro's notice, and the rhetoric indicated that the crisis could explode anew at any time.
On September 7, 1963, in an interview with Associated Press reporter Daniel Harker, Castro warned against the United States "aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders," and added that US leaders would be in danger if they promoted any attempt to eliminate the leaders of Cuba.
When President John F. Kennedy was struck down by rifle fire in Dallas on 22 November 1963, many people suspected Cuba and its leader, Fidel Castro Ruz, of involvement in the assassination, particularly after it was learned that Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin, had sought to travel to Cuba in September 1963.
The Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) was a pro-Castro organization with headquarters in New York. The FPCC had chapters in many cities, but Lee Harvey Oswald was its founding and, it seems, only member in New Orleans. In the summer of 1963, Oswald distributed handbills that he had printed that advocated “Hands Off Cuba!” and invited members of the public to join the New Orleans chapter of the FPCC. The Warren Commission and the congressional committees that investigated the assassination discuss Oswald’s connection to the FPCC in their respective reports.
In the mid-1970s, the Church Committee publicly revealed what journalists had been alleging since 1967 - that the US government had sponsored assassination attempts at various times against Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Castro presumably knew about these attempts long before the US public, and some historians and researchers have questioned whether he retaliated by assassinating President Kennedy. The Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities was formed to investigate the performance of the CIA and other US intelligence agencies. The Senate committee detailed two general types of operations that the CIA had directed against Castro. One, referred to as the AMLASH operation, involved the CIA's relationship with an important Cuban figure (code-named AMLASH) who, while he was trusted by Castro, professed to the CIA that he would be willing to organize a coup against the Cuban leader. The CIA was in contact with AMLASH from March 1961 until June 1965. A second plot documented by the Senate committee was a joint effort by the CIA and organized crime in America. It was initiated in 1960 in a conversation between the agency's Deputy Director for Plans, Richard Bissell, and the Director of Security, Col. Sheffield Edwards. According to the Senate committee, this operation lasted until February 1963.
The the US government sponsored potential uprisings and military coups within Cuba, and there were possible US plans to invade Cuba by overt military force. Evidence of serious, or imminent, contingency plans to invade Cuba with US military forces during the Kennedy Administration, if found, could provide either a motive for retaliation by Castro or a motive for domestic malcontents who might have been displeased that such plans were not immediately implemented by the administration.
Organized crime probably was active in attempts to assassinate Castro, independent of any activity it engaged in with the CIA. From the time he was a young man, Sam Giancana rose within the Chicago organized crime syndicate until he became syndicate leader in 1957. After an eight-year stint in Mexico, Giancana was deported back to Chicago where he was murdered in 1975, shortly before he was scheduled to testify before the Church Committee. Giancana is of historical interest with respect to the Kennedy assassination for a number of reasons: (1) Giancana was involved in the CIA plots to assassinate Fidel Castro; (2) Giancana expressed hostility t o w a rd the Kennedys because of the Kennedys’ war against organized crime; (3) Giancana had associates in common with President Kennedy (namely, Frank Sinatra and Judith Campbell Exner); (4) Giancana allegedly contributed to Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign; and (5) Giancana was allegedly linked to Joseph P. Kennedy through the illicit liquor trade.
The the Select Committee on Assassinations of the US House of Representatives concluded, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the Soviet government, the Cuban government, anti-Castro Cuban groups, and the national syndicate of organized crime were not involved in the assassination. Further, the committee found that the Secret Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Central Intelligence Agency were not involved in the assassination. Based on the evidence available to it, the committee could not preclude the possibility that individual members of anti-Castro Cuban groups or the national syndicate of organized crime were involved in the assassination.
A force of Cuban exiles that had been trained and equipped by the CIA. made an unsuccessful invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in mid-April 1961 in an attempt to overthrow the regime of Fidel Castro. The person responsible for overall supervision of the operation was Richard M. Bissell, Jr., the CIA's Deputy Director for Plans. Four Americans flying CIA planes, and nearly 300 Cubans died during the invasion. Over 1, 200 survivors were captured by Castro's forces.
Following the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, Cuban exiles were directed and paid by CIA agents to compile secret files on and watch over other Cubans and Americans "who associated with individuals under surveillance. " By the late 1960's such activities were being supported by the CIA in several key American cities -- including Los Angeles, New York and San Juan. Southern Florida was also covered by these Cuban operatives. It was estimated that at the height of these activities, roughly 150 informants were on the payroll of a Cuban "counterintelligence" officelocated in Florida.
