JFK and the Cuban Exiles

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JM/WAVE:  Code-name for CIA operation in southern Florida that coordinated anti-Castro activities. The installation was set up in a secluded wooded area that encompassed an old Naval Air station and part of the University of Miami's South Campus; there the Agency set up a front business called Zenith Technical Enterprises Inc. This site became the largest CIA facility in the world (except for the Langley headquarters.) Hundreds of American operatives handled thousands of Cuban exiles, and ran numerous front businesses in the area. It had its own air force and navy, weapons and fuel depots, plus numerous safe houses nearby. In the Florida Keys and the Everglades were paramilitary training camps. One of the most active sites was No Name Key, a small island north of Key West, home to the International Anti-Communist Brigade (IAB), run by Frank Sturgis and Gerry P. Hemming. JM/WAVE also did everything it could to sabotage Cuba economically, including getting foriegn companies to manufacture defective products for Cuba to buy. (The Last Investigation 46-7)

"The operational level of the Agency was also - without Kennedy's knowledge and, it now appears, without even the knowledge of the Agency's newly appointed Director John McCone - continuing its program of assassination attempts against Castro. In giving the CIA new life, immense funding, and incredible power and influence to conduct effective large-scale secret operations, Kennedy had created a force over which he could not maintain control." (Ibid. 47) By the summer of '62, these operations were taking their toll on Cuba, and when the missile crisis began, the Cuban exiles and the CIA were sure Kennedy would use the opportunity for an invasion. When JFK agreed with Khruschev not to invade the island in exchange for withdrawal of the missiles, the anti-Castro forces were shocked. Exile attorney and CIA associate Mario Lazo (who once called E. Howard Hunt "one of the great men of our time") called it a "soul-shattering blow." (Ibid. 48-9) The government now began shutting off funding for the Cuban exiles and closing their camps; the Cuban Revolutionary Council's president declared that JFK had become "the victim of a master play by the Russians." The State Dept tipped off the British police so they could raid a training site in the Bahamas 3/1963; the Coast Guard and Customs Service began raiding the camps (including No Name Key) and arresting Cuban exiles. The Coast Guard helped the British Navy arrest another group of exiles in the Bahamas. The FAA issued "strong warnings" to Frank Sturgis and five other US pilots who had been involved in anti-Castro flights. A prominent exile leader was arrested by the SS for conspiring to counterfeit Cuban currency that was to be used by rebels inside that country. Cuban exiles continued to raid against Cuba, though. At the height of the missile crisis, Alpha 66 launched a major strike at a major port, killing at least 20 people, including Russians, and then sank a Cuban patrol boat. 10/31/1962 the group launched another raid. After the missile crisis ended, Alpha's leader, Antonio Veciana, pledged more attacks. 4/1963 the Cuban Freedom Fighters group bombed an oil refinery outside Havana. The CIA denied any association with the ongoing raids. 

1/6/1961 The FRIENDS OF DEMOCRATIC CUBA was formed on January 6, 1961, a mere two weeks prior to the Bolton Ford Dealership incident where not only the name "Oswald" was being used, but in fact Oswald was being impersonated, and, W. Guy Banister, ex-FBI man who was once recommended by Hoover while he headed the Chicago FBI Office, was on the Board of Directors for this newly-formed organization.

1/20/1961 "Oswald" visits a Ford dealership in New Orleans to buy trucks for Friends of Democratic Cuba. Two salesmen at the Bolton Ford dealership in New Orleans are visited by a "Lee Oswald" in the company of a powerfully built Latino. "Oswald" is looking for a deal on ten pickup trucks needed by the Friends of Democratic Cuba. The real Oswald is in the Soviet Union.

7/2/1961 The right-wing Manion Forum radio show read a letter from the father of two Cuban exiles lost in the invasion: "all of us who once believed in the greatness of the United States feel that they and all of us have been the victims of gross, high official treason." (None Dare Call it Treason p60)   

7/22/1962 The Miami Herald July 22, 1962 - Anti-Castro War Camp Ruled Out by Exiles  By James BUCHANAN Herald Staff Writer
Anti-Castro Cubans and their American supporters have been forced to drop plans for a large guerrilla warfare training camp near New Orleans, The Herald learned Saturday.
The site, on the north edge of Lake Pontchartrain 40 miles north of New Orleans, was donated this spring by an anonymous U.S. businessman. The training of anti-Castro Cubans and the camp itself, were to have been commanded by Gerald Patrick Heming, a 25-year-old soldier of fortune well known to Cubans here. The "stop order" came from the Cuban Revolutionary Council's Miami headquarters, which advised its New Orleans associates they could not support any clandestine training sites in the United States. Preparations for activating the guerrilla warfare school were begun last February as New Orleans' Cuban colony began rounding up arms, ammunition and money for the Venture. Reportedly, they were successful in raising large sums of money and acquiring large stocks of late model weapons. Patrick made Innumerable trips between Miami and New Orleans during the past four months preparing the site, which is complete with an airstrip, for July occupancy. Plans had called for the training of 50 to 75 Cubans in classes lasting from six to eight weeks. At the completion of the "courses" the guerrilla fighters would have been ready to infiltrate Cuba where they would work with local underground leaders in sabotage and operations against Castro's army and militia. Louis Rabell, the New Orleans representative of the Cuban Revolutionary Council headed by Dr. Miro Cardona, confirmed the Council had ordered the camp closed before it opened. In Miami it was said that public knowledge of the proposed camp became too widespread and the Council wanted, to dodge any connection with a large scale operation on which the U.S. State Department and Central Intelligence Agency would frown. Hemming who operates under the name Jerry Patrick, has been active in anti-Castro activities here since late 1960. He had been active in Cuba since 1958 with Castro's forces and defected. Leading first one group and then another, Patrick' finally settled upon the name International Penetration Force" for his organization and began guerrilla training of Cuban refugees here with money supplied by the Cuban colony. A 6-foot, 5-inch, 231 pounder, Patrick has abandoned the long hair, pointed beard, and Australian bush hat he wore for more than a year during his early activities here. A veteran of four years with the Marine Corps, he now dresses as unobtrusively as possible and is still considered one of the most ardent and effective Americans working with the anti-Castro forces.

8/24/1962 Attempted assassination of Castro by CIA-backed Cuban Student Directorate fails. (The Fish is Red) Two exile motorboats had slipped into Havana Bay at night and shelled the Hotel Icar where Castro was known to have dinner.

12/1962 After the missile crisis, Cuban exile groups were refused time on Florida radio stations to make anti-Castro speeches, and remarks attacking Castro were deleted from Spanish language newscasts on Miami radio stations WGBS, WCKR, and WMIE. (News & Courier, Charleston, 12/10/1962; St. Louis Globe Democrat 12/13/1962; St. Louis Post Dispatch 4/3/1963)

12/4/1962 U.S. Customs officers capture twelve anti-Castro guerillas, mostly American soldiers of fortune trained by the CIA, at a secret training base called No Name Key, north of Key West, as they are about to embark on a raid to Cuba. They are charged with violation of the Neutrality Act. Among those arrested is Gerry Patrick Hemming, founder with Frank Sturgis of the International Anti-Communist Brigade. (FBI Memorandum 105-1198, Miami Field Office, Jan 20, 1963, National Archives; Hinckle and Turner, pp154-157; Fonzi chronology p 418)

12/27/1962 In Palm Beach for a working vacation, JFK receives officers of Brigade 2506. JFK spends an hour in Palm Beach with brigade leaders Manuel Artime, Pepe San Roman, Enrique Ruiz-Williams, and a half-dozen others. They personally invite the president to the rally so he changes his mind and attends. (Mahoney p220)

12/29/1962  JFK and Jackie went to Miami's Orange Bowl Stadium to greet the freed Bay of Pigs veterans.
At RFK's insistence and over Kenny O' Donnell's objections, JFK attends welcoming ceremony for exiled prisoners at the Orange Bowl saying the exiles would return their flag to a free Cuba. Schlesinger observed later that "both the Brigade and Castro received the wrong message." (Schlesinger p580)
Pepe San Roman gave Kennedy the flag of Brigade 2506, and the President said, "I can assure you that this flag will be returned to this Brigade in a free Havana...The Cuban people were promised by the Revolution political liberty, social justice, intellectual freedom, land for the peasants, and an end to economic exploitation. They have received a police state, the elimination of the dignity of land ownership, the destruction of free speech and of free press, and the complete subjugation of individual human welfare to the service of the state and of foreign states." Jackie spoke in Spanish to the crowd. Howard Hunt later wrote, "Artime told me the flag was a replica, and that the Brigade feeling against Kennedy was so great that the presentation nearly did not take place."
O 'Donnell told JFK that it would "look as if you're planning to back them in another invasion of Cuba." The president concurred, "You're absolutely right. I shouldn't do it." (O'Donnell and Powers, p312-313) A Cuban man identified only as 'Chino' was taken into custody and questioned concerning an assassination plot planned against Kennedy while at the Orange Bowl engagement. A scheduled [exile] plot against JFK does not proceed. Note: The Secret Service and the Miami Police are tipped off about his presence. "A Cuban male, 25 yrs. 5 '4", 135-155 lbs., strong muscular build, known only as CHINO" for questioning. (Mahoney p220, endnote 231, p407)

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4/29/1963 New York Times, 4/29/62: "MIAMI, April 25 - The fear that the United States Government is moving toward some form of coexistence with the Fidel Castro regime is growing among Cuban exiles in Miami.    Pedro Diaz Lanz, chief of the Cuban Air Force until he defected in 1959 and fled to the United States, declared today that "coexistence is already here."  He said not a single supply boat for the Cuban underground had been able to evade the United States authorities and reach Cuba for many months. "The Cuban underground is without any help or support from Cuban exiles here," he said. Senor Diaz Lanz pointed out that recently twenty-seven Cubans on two yachts were halted by a United States Coast Guard vessel several miles off the coast of Florida and ordered back to port despite the fact they had no arms, ammunition or supplies aboard. In this case the officials on the Coast Guard vessel, who included civil authorities, told the Cubans the orders come "directly from Washington," Senor Diaz Lanz said. He also declared that recent reports that Cubans were training in Florida and in one of the Latin-American countries for action against Dr. Castro were untrue. Col. Ramon Barquin, recently depicted in press dispatches as the leader of a group of Cubans who were training for an invasion of Cuba, has little following, according to Senor Diaz Lanz. Various groups of Cubans here have expressed similar views but none of them wishes to be quoted. The warm reception given in Washington to president Joao Goulart of Brazil and the announced visit of president Kennedy to Mexico are cited by exiles as a demonstration of the trend of United States policy towards coexistence with Cuba. A report published in the Miami press that Richard Goodwin, Deputy Assistant Secretary of States for Inter-American Affairs, was in contact with the Castro regime through the Brazilian Government has greatly agitated Cuban exiles. The prompt release by Dr. Castro of seven Americans whose yacht was wrecked on the Cuban coast and the return by Dr. Castro of the Americans who hijacked a plane recently, are regarded by Cuban exiles as a maneuver by Dr. Castro to obtain some form of understanding with the United States in his desperate need for supplies, especially food. One Cuban pointed to reports that Dr. Castro was moving away from the Communists as showing the change in United States policy.  The recent purge of Anibal Escalante, a Communist leader in Cuba, was a "party purge" and "meaningless," according to this exile."

In April 1963 an inflammatory flyer was sent to Cuban exiles in Miami which said in part: Only through one development will you Cuban patriots ever live again in your homeland as freemen . . . if an inspired Act of God should place in the White House within weeks a Texan known to be a friend of all Latin Americans.

3/30/1963 The Kennedy administration restricted prominent Cuban exile leaders to Dade County, and announced efforts to shut down all exile raids against Cuba.

3/31/1963 On March 31, Robert Kennedy's Justice Department took its first step in implementing a policy of preventing Cuban refugees from using U.S. territory to organize or launch raids against Cuba. The Justice Department ordered eighteen Cubans in the Miami area, who were already involved in raids, to confine their movements to Dade County (or in some cases, the U.S.), under the threat of arrest or deportation. One of them was Alpha 66 leader Antonio Veciana. ("U.S. Curbs Miami Exiles t o Prevent Raids on Cuba, " New York Times (April 1, 1963). Antonio Veciana told journalist Dick Russell that he was among those whom President Kennedy had ordered confined to Dade County. (The Man Who Knew Too Much (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1992), p. 297.) Within a week, the Coast Guard in Florida, working in concert with British officials in the Bahamas, seized a series of Cuban rebel boats and arrested their commando groups before they could attack Soviet ships near Cuba. The initial arrests and boat confiscations resulted in confusing news reports that mirrored the internal government conflict between Kennedy and the CIA. The owner of one of the confiscated boats, Alexander I. Rorke, Jr., told the New York Times that " the United States Government, through the Central Intelligence Agency, had had advance knowledge of the trips " of his boat, the Violin III, into Cuban waters. Rorke also said that "the C.I.A. had financed trips of the Violin III. " He added that his boat, if released, " would be used in future Cuban operations. "  ("Seized Boat's Owner Says U.S. Knew in Advance of Cuba Raids , " New York Times (April 3, 1963) 

Spring, 63 - Life magazine editorially adopts the cause of the exiles as its own with photo essays. Clare Luce Booth, wife of Time-Life magazine publisher Henry Luce, former congresswoman, and U.S. ambassador, helped finance an anti-Castro platoon. The Luces walk out of White House luncheon with JFK after refusing to tone down coverage of the exile raids and leave Cuba to the devices of the president. Luce calls meeting at Time-Life headquarters in New York, stating Time, Inc. was declaring war on Cuba. Contact was to be made with principal exile groups to arrange for reporters and photographers to go along on raids. Time, Inc would provide logistical and financial assistance. Note: Life purchased ship-to-shore radios for Alpha 66 and paid commandos for exclusive stories; it also provided life insurance for commandos and correspondence. (Turner and Hinckle, p186-187)

4/1/1963 The New York Times reports: "Seventeen heavily armed Cuban exiles planning to attack a Soviet tanker off Cuba were seized yesterday by a British force on a solitary islet in the Bahamas chain. The capture was apparently the first result of an agreement worked out late last week by Washington and London to cooperate in preventing raids by opponents of Premier Fidel Castro [In Miami], Cuban exiles reacted with a mixture of anger, defiance and gloom." The anti-Castro raiding party was led by Jerry Buchanan, a member of Frank Sturgis ' International Anti-Communist Brigade. (Fonzi chronology p 419)

4/3/1963 Sabotage operations against Cuba have been discontinued, McGeorge Bundy tells participants in a high-level administration meeting on Cuba, because the Special Group "had decided...that such activity is not worth the effort expended on it." This cessation of sabotage operations is short-lived however; President Kennedy approves a new set of operations on June 19 (Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, 11/20/75, p. 173; Schlesinger 1, p. 544)

4/4/1963 Detective Sgt. C.H. Sapp of the Miami Police Intelligence Unit reported to Asst Chief A.W. Anderson: "For the past three days the Intelligence Unit has been receiving information concerning the feelings and proposed actions of the Cuban refugee colony in Miami. Since President Kennedy made the news release that the United States Government would stop all raiding parties going against Castro's government, the Cuban people feel that the United States Government has turned against them...All violence hitherto directed toward Castro's Cuba will now be directed toward various governmental agencies in the United States." (This memo is from the Garrison investigation files; Yankee and Cowboy War 73-74) Candidate for mayor of Miami Raul Masvidal told author Joan Didion in the 1980s, "I would say that John F. Kennedy is still the number two most hated man in Miami. Castro is of course the number one most hated. Then Kennedy. The entire Kennedy family." Didion comments that "an impressive amount of the daily business of the city is carried on by men who speak casually of having run missions for the CIA." (Miami)

4/6/1963 In response to the exiles' determination to continue the attacks, the president increased his efforts to stop them. Under an April 6 headline, "U.S. Strengthens Check on Raiders," the NY Times reported: "The United States is throwing more planes, ships, and men into its effort to police the straits of Florida against anti-Castro raiders operating from this country. " Coast Guard headquarters announced today that it had ordered six more planes and 12 more boats into the Seventh District to reinforce the patrols already assigned to the Florida-Puerto Rico area. " . . . The action followed the Government's announcement last weekend that it intended to 'take every step necessary' to halt commando raids from United States territory against Cuba and Soviet ships bound for Cuba."

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4/10/1963 The NY Times' Tad Szulc reported that the Florida refugee groups subsidized by the CIA exploded with bitterness, charging the Kennedy administration with engaging in "coexistence" with the Castro regime.

4/11/1963 NYT reports:"MIAMI...The infiltration of Cuban agents...through Miami has increased in the last year...Waiver visas are issued...at the request of the numerous Cuban exile organizations here. These organizations, almost without exception, have been infiltrated by Castro agents."

4/18/1963 After JFK ordered an end to activities against Castro, a tract distributed in the exile community in Miami signed by "a Texan who resents the Oriental influence that has come to control, to degrade, to  pollute and enslave his own people," read: "Only through one development will you Cuban patriots ever live again in your homeland as freemen...if an inspired Act of God should place in the White House within weeks a Texan known to be a friend of all Latin Americans...though he must under present conditions bow to the Zionists who since 1905 came into control of the United States, and for whom Jack Kennedy and Nelson Rockefeller and other members of the Council of [sic] Foreign Relations and allied agencies are only stooges and pawns. Though Johnson must now bow to these crafty and cunning Communist-hatching Jews, yet, did an Act of God suddenly elevate him into the top position [he] would revert to what his beloved father and grandfather were, and to their values and principles and loyalties." (Manchester, Death of a President; FBI Gemberling Report of May 15, 1964).

4/18/1963 While U.S. and British forces continued to round up anti-Castro rebels and boats, Dr. Jose Miro Cardona, head of the Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRC) in Miami, resigned in protest to the shift in U.S. policy. The Cuban Revolutionary Council had been created by the U.S. government prior to the Bay of Pigs as a provisional Cuban government to seize power when Castro was overthrown. It also served as an umbrella organization for the variety of Miami exile groups. The CRC's budget and funding came from the CIA. In the wake of Cardona's resignation, a spokesperson for the Cuban Revolutionary Council stated that the organization received " only " $972,000 a year (rather than $2,000,000 as previously reported) " and this sum is not even distributed by the council but by the Central Intelligence Agency with the help of a public accounting firm. " (" Spending Figure Disputed," New York Times (April 18, 1963)
In his April 18 resignation statement, which the New York Times headlined as an "Attack on Kennedy, " ("Cuban Exile Chief Quits With Attack on Kennedy, " New York Times (April 19, 1963) Miro Cardona said, "American Government policy has shifted suddenly, violently, and unexpectedly-as dangerously and without warning as on that other sad occasion [the Bay of Pigs], with no more reasonable explanation than Russia's note protesting the breaking of an agreement [Kennedy's agreement with Khrushchev, in exchange for the Soviet missiles' removal, that the U.S. would not invade Cuba] . " Cardona concluded from the confinement of Cuban exile raiders and the immobilization of their boats that " the struggle for Cuba was in the process of being liquidated by the Government. This conclusion, " he felt, " appears to be confirmed, strongly confirmed, with the announcement that every refugee has received his last allotment this month, forcing them to relocate." (" Statement by Dr. Miro Cardona on His Resignation From Cuban Exile Council, "published in full in the New York Times (April 19, 1963)

Associated Press reported on April 18 from Miami, "The dispute between the Cuban exile leaders and the Kennedy administration was symbolized here today by black crepe hung from the doors of exiles' homes."

4/20/1963 Nixon, in an address before the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, criticized JFK for stopping the Cuban exile raids.

6/8/1963 William Pawley, of Life magazine, boards a CIA flying boat to rendezvous off the coast of Oriente province with his own yacht, the Flying Tiger II that will be used by exiles for a mission. He is accompanied by Rip Robertson, a Life photographer, Eddie Bayo, a respected veteran anti-Castro raider determined to lead a sortie into Cuba to liberate the Russian officers who supposedly want to defect to the US. These officers were said to know the location of Soviet nuclear missiles on the island, missiles that were never removed by the Soviet Union despite its commitment to do so. The plan is to meet up with the Flying Tiger II two days later with the Soviet officers in hand but Bayo and his comrades were never heard from again. This becomes known as the Bayo-Pawley affair. (Mahoney pp272-273)

6/15/1963 Customs agents arrived at an abandoned airfield south of Miami just before a twin-engine Beechcraft was about to be loaded with explosives, napalm and grenades. Sam Benton and four Cubans later caught at Lake Pontchartrain were briefly detained. (Miami Herald; Deadly Secrets 225)

7/22/1963 As cited in a CIA dispatch in July 1963, Manolo Ray's defensiveness among the exiles for his being a Kennedy ally only made matters worse. He told a presumably anti-Kennedy Cuban that he thought CIA agents "were more dangerous than the Kennedy administration. " He waded into still deeper water by adding, " The Kennedy administration would end but CIA agents always stayed, and their memory was longer than the memory of elephants and they never forgot or forgave. " (CIA dispatch, July 22, 1963; cited by Gaeton J. Fonzi and Elizabeth J. Palmer, "Junta Revolucionaria Cubana (JURE), “Appendix to Hearings Before the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives (HSCA) Vol. 1 0: Anti-Castro Activities and Organizations, Investigation of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979), p. 78.)

7/24/1963 A group of anti-Castro Cubans arrives in New Orleans from Miami and joins a training camp off Lake Ponchatrain. Members are from the International Anti-Communist Brigade, established by Frank Sturgis and Gerry Hemming. The Senate Intelligence Committee Report would later claim that "A," "life-long friend of AMLASH/Cubela," had helped procure explosives for the camp. "A" is Victor Espinosa Hernandez, who obtained the explosives from Richard Lauchli, cofounder of the paramilitary right-wing Minutemen. During the Garrison investigation, reports were received that OSWALD and Ferrie were seen at this camp. (Fonzi chronology p 420)

7/27/1963 St. Louis Globe Democrat reported that Washington had pressured Britain into stopping Cuban exiles from using bases in the Bahamas for raids against Cuba.   

7/31/1963 FBI raid seizes more than a ton of dynamite, 20 bomb casings, napalm material, and other devices at the home of William Julius McLaney, a well known Havana gambler (and brother of Mike McClaney, former casino owner in Cuba) at Lacombe, La., in the Lake Ponchatrain, New Orleans area. Loren Eugene Hall, and supposedly, Ferrie is working with this group, not part of the IAB camp. No one is charged. Articles appear in the New Orleans Times-Picayune on Aug 1, 2, and 4, '63. FBI raided a Cuban-exile munitions dump near Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana.  (8/1 Times-Picayune) The FBI arrested eleven men at the site, but they were released without being charged. One was Sam Benton, a middleman between the Mob and Cuban exiles who was known for raising illegal funds. Also arrested was Minuteman Rich Lauchli, and Illinois arms dealer who had ties to the Chicago-based provisional Cuban government of Paulino Sierra. (Deadly Secrets 224-5)
Dave Reitzes: "...declassified documents prove that Lee Oswald was not the informant for the McLaney raid. While the individual's name is still classified, he was reporting to the FBI in Miami -- not to William Walter's New Orleans office -- and is described in one document as "a Miami businessman with numerous contacts among the Cuban population of South Florida . . ." FBI Report of William Mayo Drew, Jr., August 8, 1963, JFK Record No. 180-10076-10241.

Summer-Fall '63 - Raids and seizures apparently are commonplace in this period. Reports in the files of intelligence agencies in mid-1963, document a series of meetings among major leaders of the anti-Castro movement. These reports indicate that some of these leaders claimed the support of the US Govt. Such meetings followed the June '63 decision of the Special Group to step up various covert operations designed to encourage dissident groups inside Cuba, to worsen economic conditions in the country, and to cause Cubans to doubt the ability of the Castro regime to defend the country. (Book V Final Report of the [Senate] Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities, 4/23/76; Memorandum for the Special Group, 6/19/63)

8/5/1963 Oswald first met Carlos Bringuier when he walked into Casa Roca, a retail clothing store. Bringuier was a leader in the anti Castro exile community. Bringuier was the New Orleans delegate of the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE), a group that a 1967 CIA memorandum described as " conceived, created, and funded by CIA . " (CIA memo, CIIR&A, Garrison and the Kennedy Assassination, June 1, 1967; cited by Newman, Oswald and the CIA, p. 325.)
A House Select Committee on Assassinations report said " the DRE was, of all the anti-Castro groups, one of the most bitter toward President Kennedy for his [Cuban Missile Crisis] 'deal' with the Russians. " (Appendix to Hearings before the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives (HSCA) , vol. 10, Anti-Castro Activities and Organizations, Investigation of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (Washington: u.S. Government Printing Office, 1979), p. 82)
Former CIA agent E. Howard Hunt testified before the House Committee that the DRE was "run" for the CIA by David Phillips, (Summers, Not in Your Lifetime, p. 216; citing HSCA testimony of Howard Hunt, Pt. II, November 3, 1978, p. 29, released under JFK Records Act) the same CIA man behind the scenes who as " Maurice Bishop " had directed the Alpha 66 raids designed to push President Kennedy into war with Cuba. Carlos Bringuier's specific duties in New Orleans for the CIA-run DRE were, as he told both Lee Harvey Oswald and the Warren Commission, " propaganda and information. " (WCH, vol. 1 0, p. 3 6)  The story that Carlos Bringuier told the Warren Commission about his interactions with Oswald gave no hint of the CIA background the two men had in common-the key to interpreting the drama Bringuier narrated. He began his account by describing Oswald as a suspicious, unannounced visitor on August 5 to the New Orleans clothing store Bringuier managed. He said Oswald told him he was against Communism, had been in the Marine Corps, and "was willing to train Cubans to fight against Castro . " Bringuier continued his story by saying he turned down Oswald, who he felt might be an infiltrator. Undeterred, Oswald returned the next day, and in Bringuier's absence left Oswald's Marine Corps training manual as a personal gift for the fight against Castro.

8/9/1963 After a street scuffle with anti-Castro Cubans led by Carlos Bringuier, Oswald was arrested. (H 22; CE 1413 [New Orleans Police report #H-4843-63]) Bringuier and two other Cubans were also arrested. The three Cubans raise bail of $25 each. Weisberg: "This handbill operation seems to have been designed for an arrest and a police record" to create a pro-Castro 'cover.' (Oswald in New Orleans 81)  Officers involved in his arrest: William Gallot, Frank Hayward, Frank Wilson, Horace Austin, James Arnold, Warren Roberts, Lt. Francis Martello, FBI Agent Quigley. (Legend p350)
Bringuier said he was in his store when he was told about a demonstrator on Canal Street carrying a sign saying "Viva Fidel. " He and two Cuban friends rushed out and confronted the Fidel activist, who to Bringuier's anger turned out to be the same man who had been offering to help him fight Castro, Lee Harvey Oswald. Then, as Bringuier described the scene to Warren Commission assistant counsel Wesley J. Liebeler, " many people start to gather around us to see what was going on over there. I start to explain to the people what Oswald did to me, because I wanted to move the American people against him, not to take the fight for myself as a Cuban but to move the American people to fight him, and I told them that that was a Castro agent, that he was a pro-Communist, and that he was trying to do to them exactly what he did. to us in Cuba, kill them and send their children to the execution wall . . ."The people in the street became angry and they started to shout to him, 'Traitor! Communist! Go to Cuba ! Kill him ! ' and some other phrases that I do not know if I could tell in the record. " One of Bringuier's friends snatched Oswald's leaflets, tore them up, and threw them in the air. "And I was more angry, " Bringuier continued, "I took my glasses off and I went near to him to hit him, but when he sensed my intention, he put his arm down as an X. " Bringuier paused in his narrative to demonstrate to Liebeler the X Oswald had made by crossing his arms in front of him. Then Bringuier resumed: " [Oswald] put his face [up to mine] and told me, 'O.K. Carlos, if you want to hit me, hit me. " Ignoring in his story the almost friendly way in which Oswald had provoked him, Bringuier told Liebeler that he realized Oswald "was trying to appear as a martyr if I will hit him, and I decide not to hit him. " A few seconds later two police cars pulled up. The street scene between the coolly controlled "pro-Castro demonstrator" and his three "opponents, " all players in a script they had not written, was suddenly over. The police officers arrested Oswald, Bringuier, and his two Cuban friends, and took all four to a police station, where they were charged with disturbing the peace. Bringuier and his friends were released on bond, and Oswald spent the night in jail. The three Cubans eventually had their charges dismissed. Oswald pled guilty and was fined $ 10.00.

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8/13/1963 National Review reported: "US-based coordinators of the nearly 100 underground organizations in Cuba were rounded up several days before the [Bay of Pigs] invasion by CIA agents and were held incommunicado by US authorities at a secluded spot in Florida. They were not advised that the invasion had started - until it had already failed."

10/1/1963 Meeting of anti-Castro Cubans and right-wing Americans in the Dallas suburb of Farmer's Branch; a recording of the conversation exists. The local John Birch Society hosted three militant Cuban exiles; a member of the audience taped Bay of Pigs vet Nestor Castellanos ranting about JFK. The tape was turned over to the Dallas police; officer George Butler gave Anthony Summers a copy of the tape in 1978, which had not been made public before. The HSCA also obtained a copy of the tape. (Conspiracy 427-8) The HSCA determined that Castellanos was only talking about confronting Kennedy with a demonstration or protest of some kind.
CASTELLANOS. Get him out! Get him out! The quicker, the sooner the better. He's doing all kinds of deals...Mr. Kennedy is kissing Mr. Khrushchev. I wouldn't be surprised if he had kissed Castro, too....we're waiting for Kennedy the 22d, buddy.  We're going to see him in, one way or the other.  We're going to give him the works when he gets in Dallas.  Mr. good ol' Kennedy.  I wouldn't even call him President Kennedy.  He stinks.
QUESTIONER.  Are you insinuating that since this downfall came through the leader there [Castro in Cuba], that this might come to us...?
CASTELLANOS.  Yes ma'am, your present leader.  He's the one who is doing everything right now to help the United States to become Communist.

10/22/1963 UPI in Miami reports that "A big Cuban exile raiding party, heavily armed and accompanied by an American free lance photographer, was intercepted and stopped off Miami Beach Sunday night as it headed for Cuba, US Customs officials announced Monday. There were 21 Cuban men, all members of the Commando L organization...Leader of the raiders was 56-year-old Santiago Alvarez, former governor of Matanzas Province during the Fulgencio Batista regime."

11/5/1963 Colonel William Bishop asserts that, on this date, Rolando Masferrer is given $500,000 by Jimmy Hoffa.
REGARDING ROLANDO MASFERRER, Gerry Patrick Hemming states: "Hall took off with Molina [who was the 3rd occupant of the aircraft that later disappeared during September 1963 - - with Alexander Rorke, Jr. and ex-USAF pilot Geoffrey Sullivan aboard.]! Hall, Molina, et al., soon joined up with yet another Castro spy, who used the name Manuel 'Manolo' Aguilar! I soon discovered that the FBI had assisted in this joinder of Larry Howard, Bill Seymour, et al.; and in their plans for a commando raid on Cuba. Hall and Aguilar failed to bullshit Joe Garman, Steve Wilson, and other InterPen members into joining up with this phony 'Kamikaze Op'! However, ex-Senator [W/Batista] Rolando Masferrer, under CIA orders, promised to supply some weapons from his arsenal. Masferrer's contributions would, ironically, include some of his Italian Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5mm and 7 mm rifles. [many of which were stored at the Fuller family home.]"

11/6/1963 Felipe Vidal Santiago, Cuban revolutionist, is in Dallas Texas today through the 11th, during which time he meets with wealthy Dallas oil men. (Vidal has been linked by some researchers as helping to stage the shooting at Gen. Edwin Walker. The link is through a white black-and-white Chevrolet.) Larry Hancock argues in his book, Someone Would Have Talked, that Vidal traveled to Dallas on several occasions between 31st October and 21st November 1963 in order to raise funds for the anti-Castro exiles. This included meeting Edwin Walker. On his return to Miami he "reportedly stated that Walker had no further interest in Cuban affairs." However, Gerry Hemming has claimed that Vidal obtained money from H. L. Hunt, who had been largely responsible for funding Walker's campaign for governor in Texas. Clint Murchison and Gordon McLendon have also been suggested as possible contributors to Vidal's operation.

11/21/1963 A Chicago Secret Service informant has a conversation today with a Cuban activist named Homer S. Echeverria. Echeverria, a member of the 30th of November (Cuban exile) Movement, has been in the United States since 1960 and reportedly works in Dallas for an oil-drilling company. He is quoted as saying that plans for an illegal arms transaction are in place and will go forward "as soon as we take care of Kennedy." This report is never thoroughly investigated by either the Secret Service or the FBI. The HSCA will eventually discover a Secret Service report relating to the incident.

March - April, 1964 Sometime during this period, Felipe Vidal Santiago is executed in Cuba. Before his execution, he reportedly tells his interrogators that in early November 1963 Colonel William Bishop picked him up in a car in Miami and drove him to Dallas where he gave him a room in a second-class hotel. While in Dallas, he said he attended a meeting with a few wealthy people in the Dallas Petroleum Club. One of the men present at this meeting, according to Bishop, was General Edwin Walker. The assassination of John Kennedy was a topic of conversation during this meeting. Santiago said he returned to Miami four days later.

4/17/1964 Letter from Hoover to Rankin: "Carlos Prio Socarras and a number of others including McKeown, was involved in a conspiracy to ship arms, munitions, and other war materials to Fidel Castro to assist him in his efforts to overthrow the Batista regime..." (Coincidence or Conspiracy 513)

4/22/1964 CE 864,868: Rankin letters to FBI and CIA asking for "any information hitherto not disclosed to this Commission concerning the association of Lee Harvey Oswald with any Communist or subversive organization or individual either in the United States or abroad, or with any criminal or criminal groups either in the United States or abroad." No mention was made of Cuban exile groups. (H 17 857,864)

May 1964 Haynes Johnson's book The Bay of Pigs is published by WW Norton, written with help from Cuban exile leaders. RFK, in a 1964 oral history interview, called it "a pretty accurate account."

5/28/1964 An obscure FBI memo titled, "Lee Harvey Oswald, Internal Security - R - Cuba" revealed that "Detective John Caulfield, Bureau of Special Services, York City Police Department" had investigated anti-Castro Cubans in New York during the WC investigation. He provided information on the Cuban Student Directorate, which Oswald had reputedly had contact with. (Coincidence or Conspiracy p519-21)

6/5/1964 The Cuban Revolutionary Council, which launched the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, disbands today and passes the torch of anti-Castro leadership to a new, referendum-backed group -- the Cuban Representation in Exile (RCE), led by a five man board.

3/1/1966 Rolando Cubela and another ex-Cuban Army major are arrested in Havana, Cuba by state security agents, for plotting to assassinate Fidel Castro. A government communique charges that the plot was hatched in Spain with the help of Manuel Artime and the CIA. Nine days from now, Cubela will go before a revolutionary tribunal. No mention will be made of his pre-1964 involvement with the CIA. He will be convicted but not executed, serving some eighteen years in prison before being released. Cubela eventually resides in Madrid, Spain.

5/29/1966 Hermino Diaz, a Cuban agent of the CIA, dies in a gun fight with a Cuban militia patrol while trying to infiltrate the area around the Hotel Comodoro in Havana, Cuba. He undertook the mission, directed by Jorge Mas Canosa, in order to carry out a new attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro. The criminal record of Hermino Diaz is extensive. A paid assassin for the dictator Trujillo, in 1948 he murdered in Mexico a Cuban named Rogelio Hernandez, from whom he took the victim's surname as a pseudonym. In 1957, again under the orders of Trujillo, he attempted to murder the president of Costa Rica, Jose Figueres. He was subsequently detained in that country. Diaz is an expert shooter. Hermino is also a mulatto with an unmistakable bald patch. (Some researchers suggest that Diaz was a participant in JFK's assassination and could have possibly been one of the Latino men seen in and around Deadly Plaza on Nov. 22.)