9/18/1963 William Attwood, deputy U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, wrote memo for Adlai Stevenson and other U.S. officials, requesting authorization to make secret contact with Cuba's UN Ambassador Carlos Lechuga. The White House granted permission, and the first discussion took place at the New York apartment of ABC News Anchorwoman, Lisa Howard.
Journalist William Attwood memo on Cuba to the State Dept: "According to neutral diplomats and others I have talked to at the UN and in Guinea, there is reason to believe that Castro is unhappy about his present dependence on the Soviet bloc; that he does not enjoy in effect being a satellite; that the trade embargo is hurting him - though not enough to endanger his position; and that he would like to establish some official contact with the United States and go to some length to obtain normalization of relations with us...All of this may or may not be true. But it would seem that we have something to gain and nothing to lose..." (Plausible Denial p104)
"Although Castro did not like my final article in 1959, we got along well and I believe he remembers me as someone he could talk to frankly. " Attwood had also been a speechwriter for both Adlai Stevenson and John Kennedy. President Kennedy appointed him ambassador to Guinea. Attwood had known Kennedy since their school days. In the fall of 1963, William Attwood was between diplomatic assignments by JFK, serving then for a few months at the United Nations as an African affairs adviser to UN ambassador Adlai Stevenson. Attwood was in a perfect position to be JFK's point man in a secret dialogue with Castro. As he put it in his September 18 memorandum briefing Stevenson and Kennedy, "I have enough rank to satisfy Castro that this would be a serious conversation. At the same time I am not so well-known that my departure, arrival or return [to and from Cuba] would be noticed."
On September 20 President Kennedy went to New York to address the UN General Assembly. He met with Ambassador Stevenson and gave his approval for journalist William Attwood " to make discreet contact" with Dr. Carlos Lechuga, Cuba's UN ambassador, in order to explore a possible dialogue with Castro. At this point Adlai Stevenson said prophetically why he thought such a Kennedy-Castro dialogue would never be allowed to happen. "Unfortunately, " he told Attwood, "the CIA is still in charge of Cuba." Nevertheless, President Kennedy, while knowing the danger of his once again heading upstream against the CIA, had decided the time was right to begin talking with Castro. (William Attwood noted President Kennedy's September 20 approval for him to make the initial " discreet contact" with Cuba's UN ambassador Carlos Lechuga in his November 8 , 1 963, memorandum to Gordon Chase of the National Security Council staff, FR US, 1961-1963, vol. XI, p. 8 80; 90. William Attwood, The Twilight Struggle: Tales of the Cold War (New York: Harper & Row, 1987)
9/23/1963 Journalist William Attwood first met with Carlos Lechuga at a party. The two talked about having secret discussions between Havana and Washington. At a party arranged as a cover by television newscaster Lisa Howard, William Attwood meets Carlos Lechuga. Attwood tells Lechuga he is about to travel to the White House to request authorization from the president to meet secretly with Premier Castro. The meeting's purpose would be to discuss the feasibility of a rapprochement between Havana and Washington. Lechuga expresses great interest. In collaboration with Attwood, Lisa Howard organized a party at her New York apartment on September 23 to serve as the pretext and social cover for a first conversation between Attwood and Lechuga . When she invited Carlos Lechuga to the party, she made sure he would come by saying, in Lechuga's recollection years later, " that Ambassador William Attwood of the u.S. delegation wanted to talk with me and that it was urgent, as he was going to Washington the next day. " (Lechuga, In the Eye of the Storm) Both Lechuga and Attwood later wrote memoirs that included complementary descriptions of their seminal conversation at Lisa Howard's party, Lechuga's In the Eye of the Storm and Attwood's The Twilight Struggle. According to Lechuga's more detailed account, Attwood was introduced to him " in the midst of cocktails, sandwiches, diplomats, and journalists," and " lost no time in saying why he had wanted to meet me. He said that Stevenson had authorized him to do so and that he would be flying to Washington in a few hours to request authorization from the president to go to Cuba to meet with Fidel Castro and ask about the feasibility of a rapprochement between Havana and Washington. " Lechuga was astounded by Attwood's overture. He sensed rightly that not only Stevenson but also the president had already approved their initial contact. He told Attwood that, in view of the conflicts between their countries, " what he was telling me came as a surprise and that I would listen to him with great interest. " Attwood asked if Lechuga felt the chances of the Cuban government allowing him to go to Havana for such a purpose were fifty-fifty. Lechuga said, " That may be a good guess. " The two men agreed that current U.S. policies, with Kennedy's American University address and test ban treaty presenting one aspect, and the CIA's saboteurs in Cuba and spy flights overhead presenting another, had created "an absurd situation. " Attwood told Lechuga " that Kennedy had often confessed in private conversations that he didn't know how he was going to change U.S. policy on Cuba, and that neither the United States nor Cuba could change it overnight because of the prestige involved. However, Kennedy said something had to be done about it and a start had to be made. " William Attwood's account of the same conversation adds a few details. Lechuga " said Castro had hoped to establish some sort of contact with Kennedy after he became president in 1961, but the Bay of Pigs ended any chance of that, at least for the time being. But Castro had read Kennedy's American University speech in June and had liked its tone. I mentioned my Havana visit in 1959 and Fidel's 'Let us be friends' remark in our conversation. Lechuga said another such conversation in Havana could be useful and might be arranged. He expressed irritation at the continuing exile raids and our freezing $33 million in Cuban assets in U.S. banks in July. We agreed the present situation was abnormal [Lechuga thought they had agreed the situation was " absurd " ] and we should keep in touch."
9/24/1963 On September 24 William Attwood met Robert Kennedy in Washington and reported on his meeting with Lechuga the night before. RFK thought Attwood's going to Cuba was too risky- " it was bound to leak," provoking accusations of appeasement. He wondered if Castro would agree to meet somewhere outside Cuba, perhaps at the United Nations. He said Attwood should continue pursuing the matter with Lechuga.
9/27/1963 William Attwood met Lechuga at the UN Delegates Lounge, " always a good place for discreet encounters, " Attwood noted, " because of its noise and confusion. " He told Lechuga it would be difficult for him as a government official to go to Cuba. However, "if Castro or a personal emissary had something to tell us, we were prepared to meet him and listen wherever else would be convenient. " Lechuga said he would pass on the information to Havana. Lechuga then warned his secret dialogue partner that he'd be " making a tough anti-American speech on October 7, but not to take it too seriously. " When Adlai Stevenson replied to Lechuga on October 7 with his own anti-Cuban speech, it had been written by Attwood-and was in turn taken with a grain of salt by Lechuga, in view of his knowledge of John Kennedy's turn toward a dialogue with Fidel Castro. U.S.-Cuban polemics at the UN now served as a cover for a beginning Kennedy-Castro dialogue.
10/24/1963 French reporter Jean Daniel, conducts a brief interview with JFK before setting off on an assignment in Cuba. Though JFK is critical of Castro, he suggests Daniel broach the subject of reestablishing U.S.-Cuba relations with Castro, asks Daniel to report back to him. (Daniel, "Unofficial Envoy: A Historic Report from Two Capitals," New Republic, Dec 14, '63)
10/24/1963 JFK meets French journalist Jean Daniel, who is in transit to Cuba, and asks Daniel to be a go-between in re-establishing back-channel contacts with Castro. The president was interviewed at the White House by French journalist Jean Daniel, editor of the socialist newsweekly L'Observateur. Daniel was an old friend of William Attwood, who knew he was on his way to Cuba to interview Castro. Attwood had urged Daniel to see Kennedy first. Kennedy granted the interview as a perfect way for him to communicate informally with Castro, through pointed remarks that Daniel would inevitably share with his next interview subject. Daniel realized that Kennedy, who asked to see him again right after he saw Castro, wanted to know Castro's response. The president was making Daniel his unofficial envoy to the Cuban prime minister. In the New Republic article he wrote on his historic interviews with Kennedy and Castro, Daniel stressed the emphasis with which Kennedy spoke about the Cuban revolution: "John Kennedy then mustered all his persuasive force. He punctuated each sentence with that brief, mechanical gesture which had become famous. " " From the beginning, " Kennedy said, " I personally followed the development of these events [in Cuba] with mounting concern. There are few subjects to which I have devoted more painstaking attention . . . Here is what I believe. " Then came the words that could have become the seeds for a just peace between the United States and Cuba. Just as Kennedy's American University paragraphs on Russian suffering had profoundly impressed his Russian enemy Nikita Khrushchev, so would the president's next words to Jean Daniel on Cuban suffering, repeated to Fidel Castro, break through the ideological resistance of his Cuban enemy: "I believe that there is no country in the world, including all the African regions, including any and all the countries under colonial domination, where economic colonization, humiliation and exploitation were worse than in Cuba, in part owing to my country's policies during the Batista regime . . . I approved the proclamation which Fidel Castro made in the Sierra Maestra, when he justifiably called for justice and especially yearned to rid Cuba of corruption. I will go even further: to some extent it is as though Batista was the incarnation of a number of sins on the part of the United States. Now we shall have to pay for those sins. In the matter of the Batista regime, I am in agreement with the first Cuban revolutionaries. That is perfectly clear. " Kennedy looked at Daniel in silence. He noticed his surprise and heightened interest. Then the president went on to define in Cold War terms what he saw as the essence of his conflict with Castro: " But it is also clear that the problem has ceased to be a Cuban one, and has become international-that is, it has become a Soviet problem . . . I know that through [Castro's] fault-either his 'will to independence' [Kennedy had just spoken with Daniel on General Charles de Gaulle's 'will to independence' for France, a psycho-political strategy requiring a constant tension with the United States] , his madness or Communism-the world was on the verge of nuclear war in October, 1 962. The Russians understood this very well, at least after our reaction; but so far as Fidel Castro is concerned, I must say I don't know whether he realizes this, or even if he cares about it. " Kennedy smiled, then added: " You can tell me whether he does when you come back. " After his ringing endorsement of the Cuban revolution, Kennedy's argument with Castro rested on Cold War assumptions that Kennedy himself was beginning to doubt but had not yet discarded. Even after his American University address, he was still unable to see that it had been the ongoing threat of a U.S. invasion of Cuba (provoking the Soviet-Cuban decision to deter that invasion by nuclear missiles) that had caused the Cuban Missile Crisis, not Castro's " 'will to independence,' madness, or Communism. " Yet at the same time Daniel could see Kennedy was distinctly uncomfortable with the dead end where his assumptions led for the revolution he had just endorsed. His last comment to Daniel was: "The continuation of the blockade [against Cuba] depends on the continuation of subversive activities....He meant Castro's subversive activities, not his own, but as Daniel said to his readers, "I could see plainly that John Kennedy had doubts, and was seeking a way out. " (Jean Daniel, "Unofficial Envoy: An Historic Report from Two Capitals, " New Republic (December 14, 1963)
10/28/1963 After three weeks without a reply from Havana, with Attwood's approval Lisa Howard began phoning Rene Vallejo, Castro's aide and confidant, who favored a U.S .-Cuban dialogue. Howard doubted the message from Lechuga had ever gotten past the Cuban Foreign Office. She wanted to make sure through Vallejo that Castro himself knew there was a U.S. official ready to talk with him. For another week she and Vallejo left phone messages for each other. On October 28, Attwood was finally told by Lechuga in the UN Delegates' Lounge that Havana did not think " sending someone to the United Nations for talks" would be " useful at this time. " Like Howard, Attwood felt that Lechuga 's message had never even reached Castro through an unsympathetic Foreign Office. (William Attwood, The Reds and the Blacks: A Personal Adventure ( London: Hutchinson, 1967)
10/29/1963 Desmond FitzGerald, a senior CIA official, meets AM/LASH. Fitzgerald tells him that a coup against Castro would receive U.S. support. Fitzgerald is introduced to AM/LASH as a "personal representative of Attorney General Kennedy." The Church committee found no evidence that RFK authorized, or was aware of this representation. Helms testified he did not seek the AG 's approval because he thought it was "unnecessary." (Book V Final Report of the [Senate] Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities, 4/23/76;Helms, 6/13/75, pp 117-118)
10/29/1963 On October 29, after a week of leaving phone messages for Lisa Howard, Castro's aide Rene Vallejo finally reached Howard at her home. He assured her that Castro was as eager as he had been during her visit in April to improve relations with the United States. However, it was impossible for Castro to leave Cuba at that time to go to the UN or elsewhere for talks with a Kennedy representative. Howard told Vallej o there was now a U.S. official authorized to listen to Castro. Vallejo said he would relay that message to Castro and call her back soon. (Attwood's Memorandum to Chase, FR US, 1961-1963, vol. XI, p. 8 8 2 .)
10/31/1963 On October 31, Rene Vallejo phoned Lisa Howard again, saying " Castro would very much like to talk to the U.S. official anytime and appreciated the importance of discretion to all concerned. " The phrase " to all concerned " was significant. At this point Castro, like Kennedy and Khrushchev, was circumventing his own more bellicose government in order to talk with the enemy. Castro, too, was struggling to transcend his Cold War ideology for the sake of peace. Like Kennedy and Khrushchev, he had to walk softly. He was now prepared to negotiate with a peacemaking U.S. president just as secretly as he had plotted guerrilla warfare against Batista. Thus, Vallejo said Castro was "willing to send a plane to Mexico to pick up the official and fly him to a private airport near Varadero, where Castro would talk to him alone. The plane would fly him back immediately after the talk. In this way there would be no risk of identification at the Havana airport. " Howard told Vallejo she doubted if a U.S. official could come to Cuba. Could Vallejo, as Castro's personal spokesman, come to meet the U.S. official at the UN or in Mexico? Vallejo replied that " Castro wanted to do the talking himself, " but wouldn't rule out that possibility if there were no other way to engage in a dialogue with Kennedy. Howard reported the Vallejo calls to Attwood, who in turn relayed the information to the White House.