JFK assassination: What did Castro know?

Posted on Tuesday, 11.19.13

JFK assassination: What did Castro know?
BY BRIAN LATELL
CTP.ICCAS@MIAMI.EDU

Fidel Castro knew that the CIA was trying to kill him. There was no
doubt; his sources were reliable. "For three years," he told
congressional investigators in 1978, "we had known there were plots
against us."

The most promising of them ripened in a Paris safe house 50 years ago.
Rolando Cubela, known in CIA by the cryptonym AMLASH, had the starring
role. A veteran of the Castro brothers' guerrilla war, he was already an
accomplished assassin. He held high military rank, knew the Castros, and
frequented a beach house next to one that Fidel used. Cubela was
recruited by the CIA, trained in secret communications and demolitions
techniques. He insisted he wanted to kill Fidel. That was music to the
ears of top CIA officials.

On Oct. 5, 1963 he met with his agency handler in a CIA safe house in a
Paris suburb near Versailles. Nestor Sanchez had a stellar career in
covert operations, spoke fluent Spanish, and had taken over the AMLASH
case a month earlier. The Cuban told Sanchez he was not interested in
"unimportant tasks;" he wanted "to undertake the big job."

But first he needed assurances. He demanded a meeting with a senior
Kennedy administration official — but not just anyone. He wanted face
time with the president's brother, attorney general Robert Kennedy.
Sanchez cabled CIA headquarters that Cubela wanted to be sure of
American support "for any activity he undertakes" against Castro.

"We must be prepared to face the request," he wrote. He knew he was
urging something extremely dangerous. Cubela was proposing to entangle
both Kennedy brothers in a murder conspiracy targeting Castro. If the
demand were rejected, Sanchez warned, Cubela might bolt.

Caution should have overwhelmed at that juncture. There were already
many reasons to doubt Cubela's bona fides. Nevertheless, it was decided
at CIA headquarters, probably in consultation with Robert Kennedy, that
a senior agency official would meet Cubela as the attorney general's
representative.

Desmond FitzGerald delighted in the task. A CIA nobleman, East Coast
socialite, and friend of the attorney general, he would go to Paris and
provide the needed assurances. He intended to impress the Cuban, cabling
Paris that the rendezvous should be staged as impressively "as possible."

Sanchez reported back to FitzGerald that the meeting with Cubela was
scheduled for Oct. 29. This unlikely pair — the moody Cuban spy and the
elegant FitzGerald, Bobby Kennedy's understudy — sat side by side and
talked in the safe house. Sanchez translated.

Cubela was satisfied that the man who called himself James Clark was
indeed a top American official close to Robert Kennedy. Almost no record
of their meeting has survived, but it is known that Cubela spoke
repeatedly of his need for an assassination weapon.

CIA made good on its commitment. Sanchez returned to Paris, and on
November 22, 1963 met again secretly with Cubela. He brought with him a
preposterous murder weapon: a pen fitted within a syringe that could be
filled with poison and used to inoculate Castro.

In one of the strangest twists of modern history, Sanchez was explaining
the device as the sun was setting in Paris. He took a call from
FitzGerald in Washington: President Kennedy had just been shot in Dallas.

The Warren Commission knew nothing of the Cubela plot and did not
attribute a single, compelling motive for the assassination to Lee
Harvey Oswald. So, it was not aware that Castro had powerful motive to
retaliate.

Among the Warren commissioners, only former CIA director Allen Dulles is
known to have been aware of early plots against Castro. So, they could
not have known either what has come to light in recent years from Cuban
sources and declassified documents. Rolando Cubela was a double agent
working for Fidel Castro.

It was the Cuban leader who instructed his agent to demand the meeting
with Robert Kennedy. He knew the CIA leadership had him in their
crosshairs. Now he also confirmed that Robert Kennedy was at the top of
the assassination chain of command. It was not unreasonable to conclude
that the president was also involved.

Nearing the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, the question
of possible Cuban government involvement in the president's death has
never been adequately investigated. These details of the Cubela plot
have been gleaned from the half-million pages of declassified CIA
documents related to the Kennedy assassination at the National Archives.
But since official Cuban archives are shut tight, the rest of the story
cannot be told.

Fidel Castro for decades has dissembled, falsely denying any prior
knowledge of Oswald, while pumping out distracting smoke screens and
casting groundless suspicions on alleged CIA and Cuban exile assassins.
But it is now high time for the Cuban regime to come clean, to release
relevant documents and allow former officials who may have knowledge of
Oswald's relations with Cuban intelligence officers finally to speak out.

Brian Latell is the author of "Castro's Secrets: Cuban Intelligence, the
CIA, and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy." A former National
Intelligence Officer for Latin America, he is now a research associate
in Cuban studies at the University of Miami.

Source: "JFK assassination: What did Castro know? - Other Views -
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http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/11/19/v-fullstory/3765073/jfk-assassination-what-did-castro.html