Castro and Kennedy’s death: Connecting the dots?

Posted on Monday, 06.11.12
KENNEDY ASSASSINATION

Castro and Kennedy's death: Connecting the dots?
BY PEDRO ROIG
proig@miami.edu

In 1987, Florentino Aspillaga, the most valuable Cuban intelligence
officer ever to defect, provided the CIA with detailed information that
Fidel Castro's security forces knew and could have directed Lee Harvey
Oswald's plan to assassinate President Kennedy in Dallas. This
potentially provocative news was buried among thousands of documents
written on the tragic subject.

Now this vital piece of information has been made public as the main
thesis of the book Castro's Secrets: the CIA and Cuba's Intelligence
Machine, by Brian Latell, a historian and the CIA's former National
Intelligence Officer for Latin America. The book is a well researched
and factual narrative that unmasks the official secrecy and
ideologically driven theories that for many years have distorted the
fundamental premises of the JFK assassination.

The son of a high-ranking communist official, Florentino Aspillaga was,
in 1963, monitoring Miami radio communications from the CIA and Cuban
exile operations working against Castro's Cuba. This was his only
assigned duty that year, until Nov. 22, around 9 a.m., when he was
instructed to cancel the CIA radio monitoring and redirect his antennas
to Texas. Aspillaga was ordered to immediately report on anything
happening in that U.S. region. About four hours later, President Kennedy
was assassinated in Dallas. Did Castro know that JFK would be killed?

As an expert analyst, Latell makes a cautious distinction between
Castro's advance knowledge and his direct involvement in the plot. But
according to Jack Chiles, one of the CIA's best agents who penetrated
the inner circle of power in Moscow and Havana, Castro stated that
Oswald came into the Cuban Embassy in Mexico and shouted, "I am going to
kill Kennedy." This event is well documented. From that moment on, the
Cuban intelligence agents knew that Oswald was a fanatical and violent
man that had a pathological hatred of JFK.

It is also well established that both John and Robert Kennedy were, at
the time, engaged in the overthrow and demise of Castro. Fully committed
to the task, Robert Kennedy oversaw the CIA clandestine missions to
Cuba, not to be confused with "Operation Mongoose," which was cancelled
soon after the Missile Crisis. The plot to kill Castro was Robert
Kennedy's top priority and involved Rolando Cubela, a high-ranking Cuban
revolutionary leader that, according to Latell, was a double agent that
kept Fidel Castro informed of Kennedy's assassination plots against him.
It is worth noting that the Warren Commission was never made aware of
the critical issue of the attempts against Castro's life.

The profound dislike between Castro and the Kennedys was reciprocal. On
Sept. 8, 1963 — 10 weeks before the Dallas tragedy — Castro spoke openly
at a reception in the Brazilian Embassy, stating, "The United States'
leaders must realize that if they insist in their plan to eliminate
Cuban leaders, they themselves will be in danger, we are prepared to
fight them and answer in kind."

Latell's revelation that Cuban intelligence ordered Aspillaga to monitor
information broadcasts from Texas, a few hours before Oswald's
assassination of the president, opens a new question about Cuba's
awareness of the criminal intent of a hot-headed fanatic that could have
been manipulated by Cuban agents and encouraged to fulfill his plan.
Oswald's brother said that Lee Harvey was easily influenced and that
someone had to put him up to the plan — a possible scenario.

The ideologically driven conspiracy theory, including Oliver Stone's
fictional film on JFK's murder, had discarded the idea that Castro was
behind the assassination, yet Latell's superbly researched book offers
vital information establishing that Cuba's intelligence service had
advanced knowledge of Oswald's criminal intent and Castro's awareness,
through Rolando Cubela, of the Kennedy brothers' plot on Castro's life.

Former President Lyndon Johnson is among several high-ranking U.S.
officials who believed in Cuba's involvement in JFK's assassination. In
a TV interview with Howard K. Smith, Johnson said, "Well, Kennedy tried
to get Fidel Castro, but Fidel Castro got Kennedy first." On this issue,
with the testimony of Florentino Aspillaga, Latell's book opens new and
startling evidence about the Dallas tragedy.

Pedro Roig, former director of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting for Radio
and TV Marti, is a senior research associate at the Institute for Cuban
and Cuban American Studies, University of Miami.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/06/11/2840120/castro-and-kennedys-death-connecting.html