More Information from Chapter 13
The CIA, which handled the Warren Commission investigation, focused their attention on anti-Castro Cubans just four days after the assassination, which would be November 26, the day that the FBI “substantially completed” its investigation.
A CIA officer at the CIA’s Miami field station wrote that he contacted a “political contact and Cuban exile leader” and several of his “assets,” telling them, among other things: “Get me all possible data on any Cuban exile you know who disappeared just before or right after the Kennedy murder and has since been missing from Miami under suspicious circumstances.
“Give me a list of all Cuban exiles or Cubano-Americans you consider to be capable of orchestrating the murder of President Kennedy in order to precipitate an armed conflict between Cuba and the USA.
“Give me a list of the richest Cubans in exile; Cubans possessing sufficient personal wealth and the possible inclination to bankroll the murder of President Kennedy.”
The CIA officer wrote, “The above questions levied on my agents were not my own invention but were the results of talk sessions held in the FI [Foreign Intelligence] branch of my Station by our Branch Chief and my fellow case officers.”
Anti-Castro Cubans were suspects in the assassination for good reason. The CIA, under the leadership of Soviet KGB officer John McCone, spent considerable time and effort making the anti-Castro Cubans look like they would have a reason to assassinate President Kennedy.
Secretary of State Dean Rusk wrote a letter to President Kennedy in March 1963, stating he was concerned about “hit and run raids by Cuban exiles,” particularly an “exile attack that caused substantial damage to a Soviet vessel.” CIA officers, of course, had to be intricately involved when their assets attacked and caused “substantial damage” to a “Soviet vessel.”
Secretary Rusk’s letter resulted in President Kennedy having the National Security Council Executive Committee meet on March 29 “to discuss the problem posed by Cuban Refugee groups.” Everyone was given a copy of the Rusk letter to use “as a basis for discussion.”
Three weeks earlier, President Kennedy had “approved” actions taken by “several departments and agencies” to “control the movement of subversives and subversive trainees.” Action was also taken to put “controls on movement of propaganda material,” along with “controls on movement of arms” and “controls on movement of funds.”
The CIA, under the leadership of KGB officer John McCone, specifically “increased its efforts designed to control the movement of persons, arms, and propaganda materials to and from Cuba.”
On March 30, one day after the NSC Executive Committee met to discuss the exile “problem,” law enforcement agencies that dealt with the Cuban exiles were directed to take “vigorous measures to assure that the pertinent laws of the United States are observed.”
Two days later, a CIA cable stated that Cuban exile leaders in Florida had been notified that they were prohibited from “travel outside Dade County,” which resulted in the “exile colony” being in an “uproar” over the travel prohibition. The cable stated that exile reaction “appears universal over this issue” and is clearly “anti-U.S. and anti-Kennedy.”
Specific Cuban exile leaders who were being handled by the CIA were extremely vocal concerning the travel prohibition, stating that the United States “cannot be trusted as an ally” and “has abandoned Cuba.” One exile leader told the FBI “to reserve space for him in local jail” as he has “no intention of accepting travel restriction.”
Another exile leader stated, “Elimination of exile action,” combined with Castro’s “crackdown” on guerilla forces in Cuba, will bring “an end to internal resistance” and ultimately lead to the Cuban people’s “acceptance of Castro.”
Cuban exiles saw the travel restriction as an “alliance” between the United States and the Soviets, and a Cuban exile leader “expressed a general opinion” among Cuban exiles that the United States was “protecting” Castro. Another exile leader stated that “it looks like” the United States is now “against the anti-Castro cause.”
A memorandum to KGB officer and CIA Director John McCone in early April 1963 states that the leader of the Cuban Revolutionary Council, Dr. Jose Miro Cardona, was resigning because of “no indication from Washington that there is a definite plan for the liberation of Cuba.” The memo to McCone goes on to cite “great and wide-spread pessimism in exile groups” because of “the restrictions imposed upon Cuban exile efforts to defeat Castro.”
McCone himself wrote a Memorandum for the Record on April 11, 1963, stating that the U.S. government and the CIA “more or less disenfranchised ourselves from the Cuban colony in Miami as a result of the Miro Cardona incident.”
On August 10, just a few months after Soviet KGB officer John McCone’s statement about the United States being “disenfranchised” from the Cuban colony in Miami, an anti-Castro Cuban had specific knowledge of plans to assassinate Fidel Castro, but according to a CIA cable, he would not reveal the identity of the individual in Cuba who was organizing Castro’s assassination because, “These Cubans believe that U.S. policy toward Cuba had been so wrong that U. S. govt agencies must be penetrated by traitors.”
Back in November 1962, funds for Cuban exiles were “reduced or cut off,” and “people were instructed to go out and seek employment.”
In January 1963, two months after the Cuban exiles were told to go out and get jobs and three months after the Cuban missile crisis, a group of exiles planned to use “dynamite” to blow up “cars and buildings in NY and Miami” and blame it on Castro, believing it would “compel” the United States to take “action against Cuba.”
It’s in my book. Click the link.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07V9JT65Y
(More information on anti-Castro Cubans being set up as the patsies will be in the next post.)