Legacy of Secrecy (5 page)

rebelled against Fidel. Two recently declassified memos, first published

in 2006, show that the CIA was aware more than two months prior to

the 1961 Bay of Pigs disaster that Almeida “was disgusted with the com-

munistic situation” in Cuba and wanted to defect. However, top CIA

officials didn’t pursue Almeida’s offer then, apparently because they

felt confident their plot with Mafia bosses Santo Trafficante and Johnny

Rosselli would result in Fidel’s assassination prior to the invasion at

the Bay of Pigs. Not only did the CIA-Mafia plots fail to kill Fidel, but

Almeida wound up being assigned the defense of the one-third of Cuba

that included the landing site for the US-backed Cuban exiles at the Bay

of Pigs. If the CIA had been working with Commander Almeida during

the invasion, the resulting disaster might have been avoided.

The opportunity arose again in May 1963, because Almeida learned

from an American newspaper article that the CIA was backing “a new

all-out drive to . . . topple the Fidel Castro regime.” The May 10, 1963,

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LEGACY OF SECRECY

Associated Press article went on to say that “the plan calls for a junta in

exile [with a goal of] ultimate invasion [and] seeking to put together the

junta was Enrique Ruiz-Williams, a Bay of Pigs veteran and friend of

US Attorney Robert F. Kennedy.”13 Almeida had first met Ruiz-Williams,

a successful mining engineer, in Cuba in the early 1950s. (Enrique Ruiz-

Williams told us, and several Kennedy associates we interviewed, that

he preferred to be called “Harry,” so that is the name we will use for

him.) Harry had provided supplies to Almeida when the revolution-

aries were still in the mountains, but after the Revolution, Harry turned

against Fidel and his increasingly repressive regime. He eventually fled

Cuba with his family, and by 1960 was living in Miami, where he decided

to join the Cuban exiles being recruited by the CIA to invade their home-

land. Harry fought heroically at the Bay of Pigs until he was grievously

wounded by an exploding shell, and Almeida had visited the recover-

ing Harry in a field hospital. Harry was one of sixty injured prisoners

released by Fidel in April 1962, to persuade JFK to free the remaining

1,113 Bay of Pigs prisoners from their deplorable prison conditions.

Harry grew close to the Kennedys, especially Bobby, while working

to get the prisoners released by Christmas Eve 1962. After the prisoners’

triumphant return and welcome at a huge ceremony at Miami’s Orange

Bowl, Bobby began to work with Harry on ways to deal with Castro. In

Bobby’s oral history at the Kennedy Presidential Library, Bobby says that

Harry was “very brave” and “very bright,” and had “very good judg-

ment.”14 Their mutual friend, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Haynes

Johnson, said that “Bobby trusted Harry. He loved it that Harry was full

of shrapnel from the Bay of Pigs.” Haynes, and no doubt Bobby as well,

liked the fact that “Harry was bluff, candid, blunt.” In addition, unlike

many Cuban exile leaders in the US, who were content to sit safely in

offices and collect support from the CIA and their fellow exiles, Haynes

said that “Harry was willing to die at any moment.”15

When Commander Almeida learned from the May 1963 news-

paper article that his old friend was working for the Kennedys to topple

Castro, he decided to contact Harry. Initially, Bobby and Harry had been

angry the article had revealed so much information, but that changed

when they learned of Almeida’s interest. Thus began several months of

secret negotiations and planning, with Harry acting as an intermediary

between Bobby and Almeida, while Bobby kept JFK (and a handful of

other officials) up to date. Bobby’s official phone logs document some

of these calls. For example, on May 13, 1963, at 5:50 PM, Bobby took a

call from JFK. The next call Bobby took, at 6:05 PM, was from Harry. On

June 25, 1963, Bobby answered a call from CIA official Richard Helms

at 10:15 AM, followed by a call from Harry at 10:25 AM.16 Three days

later, the CIA issued a memo establishing their largest operation to sup-

port the JFK-Almeida coup plan, code-named AMWORLD, a name so

secret it had never appeared in any government report or book until we

revealed it in 2005 in our previous book,
Ultimate Sacrifice
.

The JFK-Almeida coup plan was designed to avoid the main prob-

lems that befell the Bay of Pigs operation, which had been a relatively

open secret known to dozens of officials, aides, agents, and military

officers in the US government, as well as to numerous journalists and

even partially to Fidel. This time, any knowledge of the coup plan would

be tightly held and only about a dozen people—including JFK, Bobby,

CIA Director John McCone, and CIA Deputy Director for Plans Richard

Helms—would know the full plan. The United States’ leading role in

the coup plan was never supposed to be revealed, even after the coup

succeeded—and not even years later, since US officials hoped Almeida

and trusted exiles might play roles in Cuba’s new government for many

years to come. If things worked as JFK and Bobby hoped, it would

simply appear as if JFK had responded well to the unexpected situation

of Fidel’s assassination (a term the Kennedys never used with their

aides; they preferred “elimination”).

Almeida would not take public responsibility for Fidel’s death, and

neither would Harry. The Cuban populace could hardly be expected

to rally around new leaders who boasted of having killed Fidel, still

admired by many on the island, so Harry made it clear that a patsy,

someone to take the fall, would be used.17 Evidence indicates that Fidel’s

death would have been blamed on a Russian or a Russian sympathizer,

as a way to help neutralize the thousands of Soviet personnel still in

Cuba.18 Many newspaper accounts noted increasing tension between

Fidel and the Soviets in the second half of 1963. As head of the army,

Almeida knew the locations of all Soviet forces in Cuba, as well as Fidel’s

security plans. Almeida had enough personal prestige that if he went on

Cuban TV and announced that their beloved Fidel had been killed by a

Russian or Russian sympathizer, the people would accept his word, the

same way most US citizens at that time would accept a pronouncement

by a trusted figure like J. Edgar Hoover.

Remembering the debacle of the CIA-run Bay of Pigs, JFK and Bobby

restricted the CIA to only a supporting role in the JFK-Almeida coup

plan. This consisted primarily of providing secret support to a handful

of trusted exile leaders, and getting additional US intelligence assets

14

LEGACY OF SECRECY

into Cuba prior to the coup. The largest part of the exile support opera-

tion, AMWORLD, was run largely out of Washington, with only a small

component at the CIA’s huge Miami station. Even within that facility,

AMWORLD had its own separate communications operation, code-

named LORK.19 The exile leaders were supposed to all be based outside

the United States so that the United States could publicly deny sup-

porting them. Though AMWORLD itself was relatively secret within

the CIA, as a program with a budget of over $7 million, more than a

dozen CIA officials and their aides had to be told about it. However,

most of those officials knew only that AMWORLD was a secret way

for the CIA to provide JFK-approved funding and support to a select

few exile leaders. Only a handful of CIA leaders, including Director

McCone and Helms, knew about Almeida and the full plan to eliminate

and overthrow Fidel.

The CIA was also responsible for helping Harry arrange an initial

payment of $50,000 to Almeida (out of a promised $500,000, almost

$3 million in today’s dollars), and for helping to get Almeida’s wife

and children out of Cuba on a seemingly innocent pretext, prior to the

coup. The US military would officially have the lead role in the coup

operation and its aftermath, though in actuality Bobby would be calling

the shots.

Historians have long known that the Kennedys initiated two sepa-

rate back-channel attempts to negotiate with Fidel in the fall of 1963,

one using pioneering TV journalist Lisa Howard and special UN envoy

William Attwood, and the other through French journalist Jean Daniel.

The JFK-Almeida coup plan finally explains the reason for the urgency

of those efforts. As Dean Rusk explained to
Vanity Fair
magazine, when

talking about the Kennedys’ pursuit of peace negotiations with Fidel

while they were also planning a violent coup to eliminate him: “There’s

no particular contradiction there. . . . It was just an either/or situation.

That went on frequently.” However, Rusk added that by doing so, JFK

and Bobby “were playing with fire.”

While the Kennedys wanted to avoid “a bloody coup” if possible,

neither of their secret peace efforts had produced any breakthroughs

by November 22, 1963. To maintain deniability in case the secret talks

were exposed, JFK had to work through William Attwood, who in turn

talked to Fidel’s doctor, who dealt with Fidel. The parties were wary

of each other, and the negotiations slow. Fidel also had to deal with

factions within his own regime. A November 8, 1963, Attwood memo

to JFK notes that Fidel didn’t want Che Guevara to find out about the

secret talks, because “there was a rift between Castro and the Guevara

[and] Almeida group on the question of Cuba’s future course.”20 JFK

kept his own secrets from Attwood, not telling him that, barring some

dramatic breakthrough in the secret talks, JFK and Bobby planned to

allow Almeida to overthrow Fidel on December 1, 1963.

Frustrated by the slow pace of the Attwood negotiations, yet anxious

to avoid a violent coup if possible, in late October 1963 JFK had asked

French journalist Jean Daniel to talk to Fidel on his behalf. But Fidel had

kept Daniel cooling his heels in Havana for weeks. Daniel had finally

gotten to see Fidel on November 21, the day before JFK’s trip to Dallas.

No real progress was made, but Fidel was intrigued enough by Daniel’s

message from JFK that he invited the journalist to a follow-up lunch on

November 22, at Castro’s villa at Varadero Beach.21 However, Daniel

could not securely communicate directly with JFK or Bobby about his

talks with Castro, so the Kennedys had no way to know that Daniel was

finally speaking with the Cuban leader.

Even while JFK was making his final attempts to reach a peaceful

solution with Castro, he continued his efforts to overthrow the Cuban

leader. As the date for the coup approached, Almeida indicated to Harry

that he wanted JFK’s personal assurance that the President would fully

support the coup once it began. On November 18, 1963, following JFK’s

long motorcade in Tampa, the President had gone to Miami to deliver a

speech, several lines of which were written specifically to reassure Com-

mander Almeida that he had JFK’s personal backing. A CIA report from

1963, uncovered years later by Congressional investigators, confirms

that in “Kennedy’s speech of November 18, 1963 [in Miami], the CIA

intended President Kennedy’s speech to serve as a signal to dissident

elements in Cuba that the US would support a coup.” The CIA report

states the wording was intended for “dissident elements in the Cuban

Armed Forces [who] must have solemn assurances from high-level US

spokesmen, especially the President, that the United States will exert its

decisive influence during and immediately after the coup.” 22

Years later, according to Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Sy Hersh,

CIA officer Seymour Bolten told a Congressional investigator that he

had personally delivered the key paragraph written for JFK’s speech.

Declassified files withheld from Congress and not seen by Hersh con-

firm that Bolten’s supervisor was an important part of AMWORLD and

the JFK-Almeida coup plan.23 (Bolten’s son, Joshua, became a cabinet

official for President George W. Bush.)

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LEGACY OF SECRECY

According to a formerly top-secret memo sent by JFK’s CIA Director

John McCone on the morning of November 22, 1963, the date for the

coup was “scheduled for” December 1, 1963, just ten days later.24 Both

that specific date and the general timing were important. First, as out-

lined by CIA memos and Bobby’s top Cuban exile aide, Harry Williams,

Fidel was launching a military draft around that date that would soon

dilute Commander Almeida’s loyal army units and allow for the intro-

duction of army spies under Fidel’s control. This was part of an ongoing

trend noted in a cable to the CIA’s Director, whereby top Cuban “officers

such as . . . Almeida who [are] not completely reliable politically are

slowly being isolated from troops [by the] current Regime.”25 Second,

as a Kennedy aide who worked on parts of the JFK-Almeida coup plan

told us, JFK and Bobby were determined to have the Cuban situation