Authors: John Newman
The threads were pulled together by March in a report entitled "A Program of Covert Action Against the Castro Regime," a document to which we will return shortly.
Dulles's remarks to Merchant at the January 13 Special Group meeting have given rise to the notion that Dulles "specifically rejected" King's proposal on "the assassination of Fidel."35 This interpretation is wrong. Dulles's comment that the CIA did not have Castro's "quick elimination" in mind left unsaid the fact that the CIA was planning to develop this capability for use several months down the road, in conjunction with a guerrilla-instigated uprising. In barring Castro's "quick elimination," Dulles had not rejected King's proposal "specifically" or in any other way. We know this because the fact that the Agency was planning Castro's elimination and the fact that Dulles had approved this planning in December 1959 have both long been in the public record.
At an NSC meeting the next day, January 14, Undersecretary Merchant said he viewed "the Cuban problem as the most difficult and dangerous in all the history of our relations with Latin America, possibly in all our foreign relations."36 That comment set off this exchange between President Eisenhower, his assistant Mr. Gray, and CIA Director Dulles:
Mr. Gray said the Attorney General had frequently wondered what our policy was with respect to stopping anti-Castro elements preparing some action against Cuba from American territory. The President said it was perhaps better not to discuss this subject. The anti-Castro agents who should be left alone were being indicated.
Mr. Dulles felt we should not stop any measures we might wish to take in Cuba because of what the Soviets might do. From our point of view, it would be desirable for the U.S.S.R. to show its hand in Cuba; if Soviet activity in Cuba becomes evident, then we will have a weapon against Castro.
Mr. Gray asked whether discussion of this subject should not be treated with the utmost secrecy. At the suggestion of the Vice President, it was agreed that the Planning Board would not be debriefed on the foregoing discussion.
This passage makes clear the importance the administration attached to the secrecy of its mission to topple Castro. The NSC was no longer the place to discuss Cuban operations.
Dulles's remarks suggest that he anticipated-even hoped-that Soviet Premier Khrushchev would cut a deal with Castro. Such a move by the Kremlin would only provide stronger justification for the assassination and insurrection his operatives were planning for Cuba. On March 9, 1960, J. C. King, chief of CIA's Western Hemisphere Division, attended a meeting of Bissell's new Cuban task force. The Church Committee released this part of a memorandum describing the meeting:
That the DCI is presenting a special policy paper to the NSC 5412 [Special Group] representatives. He mentioned growing evidence that certain of the "Heads" in the Castro government have been pushing for an attack on the U.S. Navy installation at Guantanamo Bay and said that an attack on the installation is in fact possible.
3. Col. King stated * * * that unless Fidel and Raul Castro and Che Guevara could be eliminated in one package-which is highly unlikely-this operation can be a long, drawn-out affair and the present government will only be overthrown by the use of force" [emphasis added]."
Thus the idea of assassinating Castro was broadened to include eliminating other Cuban leaders as well. Once assassination is considered an acceptable tool of policy, the list of targets ultimately becomes impossible to control.
A lengthy meeting of the National Security Council on March 10 involved a discussion of American policy to "bring another government to power in Cuba." The minutes of that meeting report that:
Admiral Burke thought we needed a Cuban leader around whom anti-Castro elements could rally. Mr. Dulles said some anti-Castro leaders existed, but they are not in Cuba at present. The President said we might have another Black Hole of Calcutta in Cuba, and he wondered what we could do about such a situation * * * Mr. Dulles reported that a plan to effect the situation in Cuba was being worked on. Admiral Burke suggested that any plan for the removal of Cuban leaders should be a package deal, since many of the leaders around Castro were even worse than Castro [emphasis added)."
It seems that the "package" concept was contagious, Admiral Burke using it in an NSC meeting only a day after King used it in a CIA Cuban task force meeting.39
By mid-March all the threads, as Dulles had promised, had been pulled together and were ready for the Special Group. It met on March 15, 1960, and Cuba was the exclusive subject of the gathering. All present read a paper entitled "General Covert Action Plan for Cuba." The President's Assistant for National Security Affairs, Gordon Gray, "expressed concern over the time stipulated in the paper before trained Cubans would be ready for action, and asked what were the capabilities for a crash program."40
The Program document has been released with some deletions, but Gray's concern over the timetable was likely a reference to this subparagraph of the Summary Outline, which said:
b. Preparations have already been made for the development of an adequate paramilitary force outside Cuba together with mechanisms for the necessary logistic support of covert military operations on the island. Initially a cadre of leaders will be recruited after careful screening and trained as paramilitary instructors. In a second phase a number of paramilitary cadres will be trained at secure locations outside of the U.S. so as to be available for immediate deployment into Cuba to organize, train and lead resistance forces recruited there both before and after the establishment of one or more active centers of resistance. The creation of this capability will require a minimum of six months and probably closer to eight."
The six-to-eight-month time projection fell conveniently just before the election, obviously timed to give the Republicans a boost at the polls.
The minutes of the March 15 Special Group meeting preserved in the Church Committee index include this passage:
2. "There was a general discussion as to what would be the effect on the Cuban scene if Fidel and Raol Castro and Che Guiev- erra should disappear simultaneously [sic]." Admiral Burke feared that since the Communists were the only organized group in Cuba "there was therefore the danger that they might move into control. Mr. Dulles felt this might not be disadvantageous because it would facilitate a multilateral action by OAS [emphasis added]."'
On January 14 Dulles had opined that it would be helpful if the Soviets showed their hand in Cuba. Now, on March 15, he felt that Communist control would provide a pretext to justify intervention.
Gordon Gray ended the March 15 Special Group meeting by remarking that he would "like to submit later this week to his associate (apparently the president) the paper entitled General Covert Action Plan for Cuba but modified on the basis of [the Special Group meeting's] discussion."" Two days later, on March 17, Eisenhower saw the Covert Program, and he assembled those advisers he wanted for a special meeting in the White House. After a brief opening by Secretary of State Herter, CIA Director Dulles briefed the president on the Special Group's plan for "covert operations to effect a change in Cuba." The first steps, Dulles said, would be to form a "moderate opposition group" in exile whose slogan would be to "restore the revolution" betrayed by Castro, to begin operating a radio station on Swan Island for "gray or black broadcasts into Cuba," and to establish a "network of disaffected elements within Cuba." Dulles said it would take "something like eight months" to train a paramilitary force outside of Cuba.'
The minutes of the White House meeting, prepared by White House Staff Secretary Brigadier General Andrew J. Goodpasture, show that Eisenhower had this exchange with Dulles and Bissell:
The President said that he knows of no better plan for dealing with this situation.45 The great problem is leakage and breach of security. Everyone must be prepared to swear that he had not heard of it. He said we should limit American contacts with the groups involved to two or three people, getting Cubans to do most of what must be done. Mr. Allen Dulles said [ 1'/2 lines not declassified]. The President indicated some question about this, and reiterated that there should be only two or three governmental people connected with this in any way. He understood that the effort will be to undermine Castro's position and prestige. Mr. Bissell commented that the opposition group would undertake a money-raising campaign to obtain funds on their own-in the United States, Cuba and elsewhere.46
After some discussion of the danger to Americans in Cuba, Eisenhower approved the plan: "The president told Mr. Dulles he thought he should go ahead with the plan and the operations." Eisenhower also directed that the CIA and other agencies involved "take account of all likely Cuban reactions and prepare the actions that we would take in response to these."
When Dulles returned to the point that American businessmen in Cuba wanted guidance, the president said "we should be very careful about giving this. Essentially they will have to make their own decisions." Nixon took exception to this, and flatly contradicted the president. The vice president boldly announced what he thought: "We should encourage them to come out. Particularly if they think they should get out and are simply staying there to help the U.S. Government, we should disillusion them on that score immediately."" Bissell ended the meeting by saying it was his "sense of the meeting" that work could get under way. Indeed it did, on its path toward the eventual disaster that would befall the Kennedy administration in its first weeks.48
Marine Lieutenant Colonel Cushman, Jacob "Jake," Engler, and E. Howard Hunt
Though the president's approval had never really been in doubt, such formalities permitted the final go-ahead on commitment of funds and personnel to begin implementation of the new measures against Cuba. E. Howard Hunt, working at the CIA station in Guatemala in March 1960, was urgently recalled to headquarters to "discuss a priority assignment" by a cable that had been signed by Bissell and his new assistant on the Cuban task force, Tracy Barnes." Hunt had worked before with Barnes on the CIA team which had successfully overthrown Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954.50
When Hunt arrived, Barnes told him he would be "Chief of Political Action in a project just approved by President Eisenhower: to assist Cuban exiles in overthrowing Castro." In his book Give Us This Day, Hunt recalls that things were well under way by the time he arrived:
The nucleus of the project was already in being-a cadre of officers I had worked with against Arbenz. This time, however, all trace of U.S. official involvement must be avoided, and so I was to be located not in the Miami area, but in Costa Rica.... We shook hands on it, and Tracy directed me to the project offices which were in Quarters Eye, a wartime WAVE barracks facing Ohio Drive and the Potomac River."
Once in Quarters Eye, Hunt was escorted into the office of the "project chief, a burly ex-ballplayer named Jake whom I had not seen for several years." "Jake" and "Jake Engler" were pseudonyms used by Jack Esterline, who had just taken over Branch 4 in Western Hemisphere (WH) Division. WH/4 handled Cuba.52
Hunt met with Esterline and another man involved in Cuban operations, Gerry Droller. Droller used the pseudonyms "Bender" and "Drecher." Hunt later recalled these details:
As we discussed the project in his office, he outlined the project organization and timetable ... "Now go around and see Drecher. He'll back you up at Headquarters." . . . Drecher greeted me effu- lively, said things were rolling at a great rate and I was needed urgently to take over field management of the Cuban group. We discussed my cover in Costa Rica.... Drecher then told me he had adopted the operational alias of Frank Bender in his dealings with the Cubans whom he told he was the representative of a private American group made up of wealthy industrialists who were determined not to let communism gain a foothold in Cuba.... As we talked, secretaries entered and left, Bender dictated cables, read incoming messages, and informed me that our project enjoyed its own communications center, enabling us to communicate rapidly with any part of the world while by-passing the rest of the Agency. I also learned from him that the project's chain of command began with Bissell and descended through Tracy Barnes to Jake. Colonel King, the division chief, was somewhere on the sidelines, and so far as Bender knew, Richard Helms, then Chief of Operations for Clandestine Services, had not been cut in.
"This was a radical departure from standard Agency procedure," Hunt observed, "but the system had been foreshadowed by the semi-autonomous status of our Guatemalan operation."53 The entire covert side of the CIA was becoming a semi-autonomous operation.
Droller sketched out the project organization for Hunt, dividing it into three basic functions: political action, propaganda, and paramilitary action. Hunt was put in charge of political action, and he met the other two chiefs. First he met "Knight," who handled the propaganda component. Knight was probably David Atlee Phillips. Next he met "Ned," a retired marine officer, who handled the paramilitary component. Hunt recalls:
He eyed me with suspicion and distaste, and muttered that he was going to lead the boys ashore himself, and that the troops, not the politicians, would decide who Cuba's next president would be. Substantively he told me that a recruiting program was getting underway among Cuban refugees who would be polygraphed and checked at Useppa Island, off Fort Myer[s], Florida. At the same time, a training area was being hacked out the mountain coffee finca owned by Roberto ("Bobby") Alejos, brother of Carlos Alejos, Guatemalan ambassador to Washington. All this had the consent of President Idigoras Fuentes. A semi-abandoned airstrip at Retalhulehu in southern Guatemala was being refurbished at considerable expense to handle our heavy C-46 troop and cargocarrying aircraft. Procurement teams were scouting the U.S. and elsewhere for World War II B-25 and B-26 aircraft that would compose the exile Air Force. Small arms and machine guns were enroute from European ordnance dumps and dealers. If all went according to schedule, Ned said, we could expect to be in Havana by next Christmas.'