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Fidel Castro: Supermole
by Servando Gonzalez
The past telescopes into the present. - James Jesus Angleton
In November 1959, less than a year after Fidel Castro took power
in Cuba, Alexandr Ivanovich Alexeyev arrived in Havana,
ostensibly as a correspondent for the Soviet news agency TASS.
But Alexeyev, whose real name was Alexandr I. Shitov, had other
duties to perform. He was also a senior KGB officer with a long,
successful career. As a Soviet intelligence officer Alexeyev had
been previously deployed, under different covers, in France (1946-
51), the Netherlands (1946-51), and finally in Argentina (1954-
58),[1] where he polished both his proficiency in the Spanish
language and in the mastering of "tradecraft".[2]
The fact that Alexeyev was sent to Cuba at such an early date
clearly indicates that, from the very beginning, the Soviets saw
Cuba and Castro as fundamentally an intelligence operation. With
this in mind, and in order to do justice to the Soviet approach, let's
analyze the unconventional beginnings of the Castro phenomenon
the way the Soviet counterintelligence would have: with extreme
suspicion, almost to the point of paranoia.
The hypothesis[3] of this study, however, is not to prove that
Castro is or has been a mole,[4] but to suggest that, at least for a
time, Soviet intelligence had strong suspicions that he was a mole -
an enemy agent infiltrated into the Soviet bloc. To be sure, this is a
highly speculative hypothesis, but, considering the elements of
suspicion involved in espionage and counterintelligence work, not
a farfetched one. Like all counterintelligence cases, the Castro
affair is a maze of contradictions that invite alternative
explanations.
Was "The Horse" a Trojan Horse?[5]
As Khrushchev admitted later in his memoirs, at the time Fidel
Castro took power in Cuba, the Soviets had little contact with the
island and, therefore, very little knowledge of what was happening
there. (Diplomatic relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union
had been severed since 1952, when Batista took power). To the
Soviet intelligence Fidel Castro was a strange and enigmatic figure.
By late 1959 they had gathered many fragments of information
about him, but had not been able to put all the pieces together into
a meaningful whole.[6]
The proverbial inefficiency of the Soviet system had perhaps only
one exception: its intelligence apparatus. If anything seemed to
work smoothly in the Soviet Union it was its intelligence services.
But, even for them, Fidel Castro was certainly a riddle wrapped in
an enigma.
A characteristic common to all intelligence officers, East and West,
is that they have a special open-mindedness. For them nothing is
impossible just because it is improbable.[7] Moreover, Russians
have always been paranoid about secrecy and betrayal - an attitude
that has nothing to do with Communism, it goes back to Tsarist
days. Consequently, it is safe to surmise that, as Americans had a
James Jesus Angleton - a former CIA's chief of counterintelligence,
who firmly believed Tito was Stalin's Trojan horse and that the
Soviets had been successful in infiltrating a mole into the CIA - the
Russians should also have had their KGB's Ivan Ivanovich
Angletonovich, Chief of the Second Directorate[8] -
counterintelligence - who firmly believed that Fidel Castro was a
super mole, an enemy agent infiltrated into the Communist
camp.[9]
An issue of the secretive magazine "Intelligence Articles",
published and almost exclusively read by CIA personnel, featured
an anonymous article explaining the difference between a "write-in"
and a "walk-in." According to the article, the agent of a rival service
who wishes to approach another intelligence service can choose
between either presenting himself physically as a "walk-in" or, if he
wants to retain a certain anonymity, sending a message as a "write-
in". Both are volunteer spies, but the term identifies the way in
which they offer their services.[10] If the Russians were to accept
the terminology advanced by the anonymous author of the article,
they would have had a new term to add: a "speech-in", and as clear
an example as Fidel Castro they could not have cited.
A simple rule-of-thumb for all intelligence work is that the
intelligence officer must always suspect any outside approaches.
An intelligence officer needs to be absolutely sure that the initiative
on all new contacts is his. In Castro's case, he was the one who
approached the Russians, presenting them with his ready-made
"Marxist" revolution. Yet, if anything characterized Soviet
intelligence, it was not its gullibility. Fidel's advances and his self-
proclaimed Marxist faith made red lights flash in Moscow and put
the Soviet intelligence services on extreme alert.
After studying in detail Fidel Castro's case, the first thought that
struck our hypothetical Soviet Angleton was that the Cuban leader
was insane. In the intelligence world agent recruiting operations are
long, tedious affairs in which hundreds of specialists work long
hours over tiny bits of information, forming a single piece of a
jigsaw puzzle that might - or might not - fit into some larger
picture. As a rule, strangers simply don't walk in off the street and
offer you the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Wittingly or
unwittingly, a walk-in could be a provocateur or a plant sent by an
enemy service to make you swallow false information. Security
applies to all echelons of command. Laxness has no place in it,
even if it may seem overbureaucratic and ridiculous. The
application of security measures has to be executed ruthlessly,
precisely and in every detail. There is no place for overconfidence
in friends or old acquaintances, and even less in newcomers.
The basic job of all intelligence services is to penetrate foreign
services - hostile and friendly alike. And yet, one of the many
misunderstandings of the intelligence job is that no service will
accept an agent who volunteers his services. In the convoluted
world of espionage, volunteers have produced some of the best
results. As some intelligence officers put it, "It's the walk-in trade
that keeps the shop open."[11] But anyone volunteering
information is suspect until his data and sources have been
identified and tested.
During the thirties, when Hitler was on the rise and the economic
depression in the West was at its peak, the Soviet intelligence
services recruited scores of young men and women, trained them,
and instructed them to go underground and conceal their
sympathies.[12] For years the Soviet intelligence services knew of
similar American intelligence efforts in recruiting young promising
leaders in Latin American and elsewhere.[13] Particularly
important to American intelligence was the early detection and
recruiting of people who could be used immediately as agents of
influence, or later, as sleepers, who could, when the necessity
arose, be called up for collecting specific information or performing
specific tasks. Those penetrations - human "moles" - were directed
not only against the enemy, but also against potential enemies and
even against key friendly countries. The recruiting process was so
subtle that most often the people recruited would not feel they were
acting as agents.[14] This activity gave the U.S. a sophisticated
"Trojan Horse" capability inside the host countries.[15]
The accepted intelligence formula for dealing with a walk-in is very
simple: he must answer the four classical questions - who, what,
when, and why. Who is he?, What does he have to offer?, How did
he get it?, and Why is he offering it? Only after these questions
have been answered satisfactorily is the walk-in accepted.
Yet, there were too many unanswered questions about Fidel Castro
that made some Soviet intelligence officers nervous. Who -
reasoned the Russian intelligence analysts - was this son of a
wealthy landowner, educated in the best Jesuit schools? Who was
this sometime brother-in-law to a wealthy member of Batista's
cabinet, heir to a fortune, eligible for the best salons of Havana and
Santiago? Who really was this privileged darling of the Cuban
oligarchs, who had a degree in law - the theology of Capitalism?
What were Fidel's true links to William Wieland, a U.S. "diplomat"
- first in Havana, and later in Colombia during the Bogotazo?[16]
Why was the CIA Station Chief in the U.S. Embassy in Havana so
overtly pro-Castro? Why did the New York Times, through Herbert
Matthews, contribute so much to the spread of the Fidelista myth to
the world?
On October 12, 1948, while still a law student at Havana
University, Fidel Castro married Mirtha D¡az Balart. A few months
later he had a violent argument at the university with a man named
Camaid. To avoid problems with Cuban authorities, he flew to the
U.S. with his wife and voluntarily exiled himself in New York city
for about a year and a half.[17] Nothing is known of his
whereabouts during that long stay in the U.S., and he carefully
avoids any mention of that period of his life when he practically
disappeared into thin air. Nobody, including close friends and
relatives, seems to know what he did, where he lived or how he
made a living. That a man like Fidel, who had always tried to attract
attention to himself, had disappeared for a year and a half in the
U.S. was very suspicious for the Russians.
It is the KGB's standard operational procedure to no longer trust
any of its officers who, for any reason, had been serving time in a
foreign jail or stayed for any unaccounted time in a foreign country.
They were very nervous, for example, when somebody discovered
that Hafizollah Amin, the puppet they had put in power in Kabul,
had resided in the United States as a student. For an intelligence
operative to be trusted, all of his time has to be accounted for. How
were they to put their trust in Castro, whose life was full of long
unaccounted periods of time?
One constant concern of the Soviet intelligence services was the
possibility of being penetrated by the West.[18] Indeed, this Soviet
concern about enemy penetrations was a legitimate one. CIA
operations against the Soviet Union have been carried out mainly
within a counterintelligence framework, converting them to double
agent operations wherever possible. The CIA's main objective has
always been to penetrate the KGB or GRU in order to have inside
information about what the Soviets were interested in.[19]
As events in Cuba continued developing, Alexandr Alexeyev
became the de facto case officer for "running" the newly recruited
agent Fidel Castro. But this case was very unusual, because the
defector was the country's leader.
As a rule, case officers don't like ideologically motivated agents.
They agree that the best agents are the ones motivated by purely
personal considerations. But, even though the Soviets never fully
believed Castro's Marxist claims, he insisted on repeating over and
over the old Communist slogans. A further reason to be cautious
was the professional way Castro had approached the Soviets,
offering his services, but setting his own terms. Once the initial
contact with the Soviets was made, Castro made clear that the
Soviet intelligence could take him or leave him. This was an
unmistakable sign of professionalism and that he had some
previous intelligence training. The Soviets, however, swallowed the
tempting bait hook, line and sinker. But things in Havana very soon
seemed not to be running as smoothly as they should.
According to the rules of tradecraft, once the walk-in is accepted,
the case officer must do everything necessary to run the operation
as if the walk-in had been recruited at the service's initiative. Even
though walk-ins usually try to sell their information, not
themselves, the case officer must initiate the routine procedures of
agent management which over time have been found effective in
controlling the agent rather than his material. But, from the very
beginning, the whole Castro operation had turned into a big flop.
Alexeyev had proved unable to "run" Castro, who was not only
"running" himself but sometimes seemed to be the one actually
"running" Alexeyev. Reports began piling up in KGB files
informing them that the Soviet intelligence officer had even become
Castro's personal friend. They had been seen drinking and
womanizing together and apparently Alexeyev had fallen under the
spell of the Cuban leader.[20]
Also, under ideal circumstances the agent's only contact with the
intelligence service that recruited him must be his case officer.
Involving other persons dilutes the case officer's necessary
authority and gives the agent a chance for second-guessing. In the
case of Fidel Castro, the essential rules of Soviet tradecraft were
constantly violated. This diffused authority was one of the many
weaknesses of the Castro operation that worried the Russian
counterintelligence officers.
At the KGB's Second Directorate our hypothetical Russian
counterpart to Angleton felt highly displeased with Alexeyev's
unprofessional work. An effective intelligence officer has to keep
in mind that, whatever his motives may be, the role of the recruited
agent is to betray trust. Consequently, a man who had committed
treason could not logically be trusted again. Every aspect of an
agent's relationship with his case officer stems from this basic
premise. The case officer's first task when dealing with a new agent
is to maneuver him into a position where there is nothing he can
hold back - not even the smallest bit of information nor the most
intimate detail of his personal life. Until this level of control has
been achieved, the agent cannot be said to have been fully
recruited. But Alexeyev proved absolutely incapable of controlling
his agent. Our Angleton's mirror image began producing report after
report to the KGB Director, asking for the immediate replacement
of Alexeyev as Castro's case officer.
Our Soviet Angleton found that some fellow officers were also
expressing their doubts about Castro. But he found unexpected
opposition among other KGB officers. The sole idea that Castro
may be a plant struck them as insane. There were also many others
at high levels inside the Soviet intelligence and the Communist
Party who could not bring themselves to conceive of Castro as a
fake, if only because, after having accepted him as the greatest
Western defector ever, their professional reputation was bound up
with his integrity.
Still, our Soviet Angleton was not satisfied. To him Fidel Castro
was the main pawn of an extraordinary disinformation scheme
devised by the American intelligence services to carry out their
most cherished dream: penetrating Soviet intelligence.
Did Americans Give Cuba to Castro?
In 1961 the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee issued a 12-
volume study entitled "Communist Threat to the U.S. Through the
Caribbean." The study features the testimonies of some senior U.S.
government officers who firmly believe that Castro could not have
been brought to power in Cuba without the continued assistance of
the U.S. State Department.
The subject came up again in the course of a press conference held
by President Kennedy on January 24, 1962. President Kennedy was
asked about the security risks involving State Department employee
William A. Wieland, who had helped Castro come to power
according to three American ex-ambassadors in testimony before
the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. Though Kennedy
denied that Wieland was a security risk, doubts about him
persisted.[21]
As a "proteg" of Sumner Welles, William Wieland was promoted
four times in just nine months in the State Department, and later
was assigned to Brazil in 1948 as a press attach. During his stay in
Brazil, the American ambassador to that country, William Pawley,
filed reports on Wieland's "leftist" ideas and activities, after which
Wieland was promoted again and transferred to Colombia as Vice
Consul.[22]
Wieland joined the Foreign Service in a very irregular way.
Evidence shows that he lied in his application forms. The fact that
Wieland had no problems in advancing his career despite grave
accusations about his alleged pro-Communist leanings was
interpreted by Soviet intelligence analysts as a sign that his
diplomatic position was a cover for intelligence work. Moreover,
the impetuous fashion in which President Kennedy denied that
Wieland was a security risk was, in Soviet eyes, further evidence
that he was not what he seemed to be. But there were more strange
things about the Castro-Wieland connection that made him even
more suspicious to the Soviet intelligence.
While the American Consul in Bogot in 1948, Wieland must have
known about Fidel Castro. Castro was in Colombia at the time and
participated in the Bogotazo riots during the Foreign Ministers
Conference in Bogot in 1948. Both Wieland and Roy Rubbotom,
Assistant Secretary of State and Wieland's chief at that time, were
in Bogot during the riots and must have known about Castro's
activities.[23] Moreover, before joining the Foreign Service during
World War II, Wieland had lived in Cuba under the alias of Arturo
Montenegro.[24] Some people claim that Wieland met Castro while
living in Cuba and was on friendly terms with him. There is also
good reason to believe that, during his fight against Batista, Castro
received support from Wieland when Wieland was the head of the
Caribbean Desk in the U.S. State Department.
Something that attracted the attention of the Soviets was the
American haste to recognize Castro's government after Batista's
escape on January 1, 1959. This haste was not only surprising to
the Soviets, but also to some American diplomats. According to
Ambassador Smith, the U.S. was very hasty in its recognition of the
Castro government. Usually the U.S. withholds recognition from a
new government until it is formally established and operating.
Normally, the U.S. does not want to be among the first nor among
the last to recognize a new government. The U.S. usually waits
until assurances are given that the new government will honor its
international obligations. In Latin America it was the custom for
the U.S. to wait until several Latin American countries had
recognized the new government. However, in January 7, 1979, just
six days after former President Batista fled from Cuba and one day
before Fidel Castro arrived in Havana, the U.S. officially
recognized the Castro government.[25]
Soviet suspicion was also aroused by the CIA's behavior toward
Castro. In his well read column Drew Pearson revealed, on May 23,
1961, that persistent rumors in the diplomatic corps indicated that
the CIA had been helping to put Castro in power for years. The
rumors had further stated that the CIA agents, in their efforts to get
rid of President Batista, had supplied arms and ammunition to
Castro during his guerrilla war in the mountains.
There are more reasons to believe that the CIA, in fact, delivered
weapons to Fidel. When he was in the Sierra Maestra fighting
Batista's troops. Castro received some weapons delivered by the
International Armaments Corporation, the company that sent
weapons to Guatemala, under the CIA's orders, to overthrow Jacobo
Arbenz's government, and also because the Company was organized
by Samuel Cummings, a former CIA operative.[26] Also, there is
evidence, that between October 1957 and the middle of 1958, the
CIA gave no less than fifty thousand dollars to Castro's men in
Santiago de Cuba.[27]
On February 24, 1957, the New York Times published the first of a
series of three articles written by its correspondent Herbert L.
Matthews, who had interviewed Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra
mountains in eastern Cuba.[28] He depicted Castro as a liberal and
a folk hero - a Latin American Robin Hood crusading against evil.
Matthews' articles gave Fidel instant international publicity. One of
Fidel's closest followers, Armando Hart, commenting about the
coverage and the high impact of Matthews articles, told Mario
Llerena, the M-26-7 public relations man in the U.S., that both
Matthews and the New York Times could be considered practically
in their pockets.[29] Knowing of the connections between the CIA
and the New York Times, the Soviet intelligence analysts were
understandably uneasy.
Matthews' articles in the Times were just the beginning of a barrage
of information about Castro. On February 4, 1958, Look published
an extensive interview with Castro. On February 25, 1958, the
Times continued giving coverage to Castro and published an
interview with the Cuban leader conducted by its correspondent
Homer Bigart.
Herbert Matthews put Llerena in contact with CBS,[30] which was
also interested in an interview with Fidel. Some weeks later CBS
broadcast a special program by Taber and Hoffman entitled "The
Story of Cuba's Jungle Fighters." On May 27, Life published a
long, illustrated article about Fidel and his struggle against Batista,
and a much longer Spanish version, directed to Latin America,
appeared two days later in Life en Espa¤ol.
As 1958 advanced and the situation in Cuba tilted toward Fidel
Castro and his guerrilla fighters, outside Cuba things also seemed
to be going Fidel's way. In the United States both the government
and the press were becoming more and more favorably disposed
towards Fidel Castro and his men. Thanks mainly to the selling of
Fidel Castro by the American media, people all over the world were
being conditioned to see Fidel's guerrillas of the Sierra Maestra as
legendary liberators of an oppressed people. Thus, Castro's road to
power was conveniently paved by the American government and
media.
When Ambassador Earl T. Smith was preparing to assume his new
post as Mission Chief in Havana, no one in the State Department
ever mentioned Fidel's involvement in the Bogotazo to him.
Rubbotom and Wieland arranged to have Smith briefed on Castro's
virtues, not by the exiting ambassador, as it was the common
practice, but by Herbert Matthews, whom they portrayed as an
expert in Cuba affairs. Nor was Ambassador Smith told that both
Rubbotom and Wieland were in Colombia during the
Bogotazo.[31]
It is customary in the U.S. diplomatic service, when a man-on-the-
spot returns from his post abroad, to be questioned by the State
Department as to his latest views and his estimate of the situation.
This process is called debriefing. After Ambassador Smith resigned
in January 10, 1959, he was never debriefed. His predecessor,
Ambassador Gardner, testified that he was also not debriefed at the
end of his mission in Cuba.[32]
U. S. Ambassador Smith commented that, during his mission in
Havana, the pro-Castro leanings of the CIA station chief at the
embassy were so evident that from time to time he asked him in jest
if he was not a Fidelista.[33] Testifying before the Senate Internal
Security Committee on August 30, 1960, Smith affirmed that the
chief of the CIA section in the American Embassy in Havana was
pro-Castro, and that the number 2 CIA man in the embassy
encouraged a revolt of Cuban navy officers against Batista in
September, 1957.[34] Ambassador Smith went further and accused
the United States government, i.e. certain members of the Congress,
the CIA, the State Department, as well as some segments of the
press, of being directly responsible for Castro coming to power.
"Castro never won a military victory," declared Smith. "The fact
that the U.S. was no longer supporting Batista had a devastating
psychological effect upon the Cuban armed forces and upon the
leaders of the labor movement. The U.S. actions were responsible
for the rise of Castro to power."[35]
In October, 1957, one of three young American navy men who had
joined Fidel that summer, was designated to go back to the U.S. in
a propaganda mission on Castro's behalf. The American entered the
U.S. through the U.S. naval base at Guant namo, with the full
approval of American authorities, and received considerable
publicity in the U.S. media.[36]
During his visit to the United States in April, 1959, Fidel received
a lot of coverage in the American media. What the media barely
mentioned, however, was that Castro visited the headquarters of the
Council on Foreign Relations in New York, where he spoke on
"Cuba and the United States."[37] Nor did the media cover Castro's
meeting of over an hour with a friendly, persuasive, and fluently
Spanish-speaking representative of the CIA. According to some
witnesses, the CIA man emerged in a state of ecstasy over Castro's
receptivity, responsiveness and understanding. The subject of the
conversation still remains a secret.[38]
As our Russian Angleton knew quite well, the real profession of a
counterintelligence officer is not espionage, but gamesmanship. In
the intelligence game, first, you figure out what the enemy service
is doing. Then, they figure out what you are doing. Next you try to
figure out what they think you are doing. Then they try to figure out
what you think they think you are doing. And so it goes ad
infinitum. That is why Angleton (the American one) called
counterintelligence a "wilderness of mirrors."
One thing that seemed very suspicious to Soviet intelligence was
the sudden American efforts to prove that Castro was a Communist.
The Americans, who before Castro took power denied he was a
Communist, now had changed their minds, and were accusing him
of being a Communist. To top all, Castro himself was telling
everybody that he was a Communist. But no one knew better than
the Soviets that this was far from being true. According to the
information the KGB had gathered, Fidel Castro never joined the
Cuban communist party, nor any of the Communist front
organizations. He was not a crypto-Communist, nor was he ever
recruited by the Soviet intelligence services. So, why were the
Americans so eager to prove he was a Communist?
In the convoluted world of counterintelligence the American
actions were interpreted by the Soviet intelligence as efforts to
convince the Soviets that Castro was real. Of course, if the
Russians suspected that Castro was not real, the American
intelligence must have expected that the Soviets were going to
interpret these blatant efforts as deception, a proof that he actually
was not real. But the CIA must have assumed that the Soviets were
going to think that the American efforts were too crude to be a
deception and, therefore, that Castro was real.
Suspicious Snafu at the Bay of Pigs.
Four days after Yuri Gagarin went into outer space, just three
months after Kennedy's inauguration, on the morning of April 7,
1961, 1,400 Cuban exiles sent by the United States were wading
toward disaster at a beach called Playa Gir¢n, near a bay south of
the central part of the island - the Bay of Pigs. The first news about
the invasion that appeared in the Soviet press reflected the general
consensus that Fidel's revolution was living its very last hours in
the face of an American direct invasion.[39] But then, the Soviet
leaders and the intelligence analysts watched in disbelief as John F.
Kennedy, with enough military force at hand to destroy the world,
did nothing as Fidel Castro rounded up prisoners off the beach. A
few days after Castro declared his victory, a small team of KGB's
counterintelligence officers were assigned the difficult task: to
analize the whole Bay of Pigs operation and "walking back the cat,"
a counterintelligence term for taking a failed operation apart piece
by piece looking for mistakes, leaks or enemy penetrations.
Normally, the technique is applied to your own failed operations,
but it can also be applied to the analysis of an opponent's
operation. The findings by the KGB team were extremely
disturbing.
While CIA officials were privately assuring the Eisenhower and the
Kennedy administrations that Cuba would become another
Guatemala, as early as March, 1960, Castro began warning publicly
that Cuba would not be a Guatemala.[40] Castro's intelligence
sources inside the CIA must have been quite efficient, for it was in
March, 1960, that President Eisenhower approved the invasion
plan.[41]
The original invasion plan, on which the Joints Chiefs of Staff and
the CIA had agreed, involved a one-shot confrontation of Castro's
already formidable armed forces with a vest-pocket-sized force of
Cuban exiles trained in regular WWII combat techniques rather
than in guerrilla operations and political subversion. The plan
amounted to asking the fifteen hundred patriots landed at the Bay
of Pigs to seize control of seven million fellow citizens from over a
hundred thousand relatively well-trained, well-armed Castroite
soldiers and militia.[42]
It was clear beforehand that, in the event that the invasion failed,
Castro's prestige and strength were going to be greatly enhanced.
Undersecretary of State Chester Bowles, who had heard of the plan,
expressed precisely those concerns to Secretary of State Rusk.[43]
Yet, to the suspicious Russian eyes the evidence pointed to the
puzzling fact that the whole operation had been planned to fail.
In the first place, the American government supplied the Cubans
with obsolete aircraft and decrepit ships allegedly chosen with the
idea that such equipment would not be identified with the ones
used by American regular forces. That justification must have
seemed unconvincing to the Russians, because the Americans
would never be able to hide their participation in the invasion, even
if it was indirect.
Second, when President Kennedy approved the initial plan he had
promised that air cover to the invasion would be provided by the
American forces. Two U.S. carriers were to stand by, within easy
range, their decks loaded with armed fighter planes, to secure the
vital air cover for the invasion. Confident in this assurance from the
highest American levels of government that air support would be
provided, the invaders disembarked. Castro hurriedly sent his tanks
and infantry, and the invasion force fought valiantly while waiting
for the U.S. air support to arrive. But that very Sunday evening,
against the advice of his surprised advisors, President Kennedy
made the fateful decision to prohibit the U.S. planes from providing
the vital air cover. Without that support, the invasion could only
fail.[44]
Several authors have popularized the notion that the failure of the
invasion was not due to President Kennedy's order proscribing U.S.
air cover, but because of lack of Cuban popular support to the
invaders, a key assumption in the CIA's invasion plans.[45] The
invasion failed, they conclude, because the people stood for Castro
instead of turning to back the invaders as expected. These authors
seem to forget, however, that, because of the gross error of alerting
Castro two days in advance by way of an ill planned and ineffective
air attack on his planes, the Cuban dictator was put on alert. After
the air raid Castro moved quickly, sending all potential enemies to
jail and also avoiding any internal upheaval. People usually support
a winning invasion, not a failed one, and just a few hours after the
invasion began it was evident that it had failed. As a matter of fact,
in the first hours of the invasion some peasants of the region,
including a few of Castro's militiamen, voluntarily joined the
invading forces. The invasion did not fail for lack of popular Cuban
support; it failed because Kennedy, the very commander and chief
of the operation, refused to support it.
Kremlim "Americanologists" followed with extreme interest the
heated controversy that started behind closed doors in
Washington.[46] Intriguing details on why the Bay of Pigs invasion
had failed began to appear through the dust clouds of official
accusations, counteraccusations, admissions, denials and
contradictions. Controversy raged for several months over whether
or not air cover was originally planned and later withdrawn from
the invasion. Then, in the last months of 1961, the Russians
obtained some amazing information about the testimony given to a
U.S. Senate committee by Whiting Willauer three months after the
failed invasion attempt.
On December 10, 1960, Willauer was recalled from his
ambassadorial post in Honduras and charged with planning an
invasion of Cuba in conjunction with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and
the CIA. According to his plans, air cover, both for low-level and
high-level support, was to be provided by Cuban-flown B-26
bombers and by carrier-based Navy jets.[47]
Willauer's job in the White House began before President Kennedy
took office. He held the title of Special Assistant to Secretary of
State Christian Herter. After Kennedy's inauguration, Dean Rusk
asked him to continue in this capacity. But, within two weeks, he
was "frozen out," his CIA contacts were ordered to avoid him and
he was completely ignored in the State Department. For 30 days,
his immediate superior, Chester Bowles, refused to see him. He was
never debriefed by a successor for the useful information he could
have passed on. After nearly two months in "isolation," Willauer
received, on April 16, 1961, the day before the Bay of Pigs
invasion, a telephone call dismissing him from the State
Department.[48]
Though the story was largely ignored by the American press, Soviet
intelligence found the disturbing information they gathered about
the Bay of Pigs invasion extremely significant. Was the whole
event planned to fail? Were the invaders deliberately sent onto the
Cuban beaches to die? At the trial in Havana of 1,179 captives of
the failed operation, some of them reportedly said that false
intelligence, presumably by the U.S., led them to disaster.[49]
Plans for an underground uprising, coordinated with the invasion,
were so mismanaged as to indicate deliberate sabotage. To be
successful, even with air cover, such a small force had to be
supported by uprisings all over Cuba. Some of the reasons why the
uprisings never occurred were that the underground was never
alerted about the landing date and did not know whether the Bay of
Pigs operation was a real or a diversionary invasion. The CIA's
short wave broadcast station (Radio Swan) failed to broadcast the
prearranged signals to trigger the waiting underground into action.
Instead the station broadcasted a series of conflicting and false
reports of uprisings in Cuba.[50]
In 1960 Richard M. Bissell, Jr., a Deputy Director of the CIA, was
made responsible for the unification of the exiled anti-Castro
Cubans under a single leadership movement called the "Cuban
Revolutionary Council."[51] Just before the invasion began, the
coordinators of the Cuban Revolutionary Council, based in the
U.S., and of nearly 100 underground anti-Castro organizations in
Cuba, together with the invasion leaders, were rounded up by CIA
agents and held incommunicado at a secluded spot on an American
military base in Florida. They were not alerted that the invasion had
started until it had already failed and were in that way prevented
from alerting their contacts in Cuba.[52]
The Bay of Pigs invasion presented the skeptical and suspicious
Soviet intelligence officers with an incredible collection of
mistakes - perhaps too many to be real. First of all, the operation
was one of the worst kept secrets in the recent military history of
the United States. The CIA plans were exposed in the press more
than a month before the actual invasion began. It started, in fact,
when Professor Ronald Hilton, editor of Stanford's authoritative
Hispanic American Report, called attention to the anti-Castro bases
in Guatemala. In due course the New York Times, Time magazine,
UPI and AP were leading the press barrage about the coming
invasion. The Soviet counterintelligence officers suspected that the
CIA had used Hilton's newspaper as a "mighty Wurlitzer"[53] to
blow the whistle about the invasion.
On April 15, 1961, rebel planes struck Havana and Santiago de
Cuba. The ineffective air strike two days before the invasion had
only the effect of alerting Castro about the coming invasion.[54] As
in a classical example of Murphy's Law in action, everything that
could possibly go wrong went wrong in the Bay of Pigs. Calamity
followed calamity to turn the invasion into a real fiasco.
Among the most incredible blunders, the following were
paramount: In an effort to avoid identifying the invasion force with
the U.S. the CIA armed the 1,400 men with weapons requiring 30
different types of ammunition. The invaders made the big mistake
of placing most of the ammunition and communication equipment
in a single ship, the Houston. By a strange coincidence the Houston
was sunk at the very beginning of the landing, and the vital
communication and ammunition cargo in it was lost.
An aerial photograph of the Bay of Pigs taken from a U-2 plane at
an altitude of more than 70,000 feet shows coral reefs clearly
visible off the beaches. The photograph and several others, were
actually used for intelligence purposes in the invasion operation. It
is therefore difficult to explain how the photo analysts didn't detect
the dangerous reefs and alert the invaders.[55] The invaders
discovered the coral reef when most of their landing crafts had been
destroyed by it. Soviet intelligence also knew that, early in
November 1960, just six months before the invasion, Castro and
Major Flix Duque had carefully inspected the Bay of Pigs area.
Was this another coincidence?[56]
On June 11, 1961, a New York congressman and Chairman of the
Republican National Committee, charged that the Bay of Pigs
invasion had failed because Kennedy rescinded and revoked the
Eisenhower plan to have the invaders protected by American air
power. Almost two years later, in January, 1963, Robert Kennedy
denied the accusation in interviews with the Miami Herald and U.S.
News and World Report. According to Robert Kennedy, his brother
never withdrew U.S. air cover.[57] Admiral Arleigh Burke,
however, believed that the invasion very nearly succeeded and
probably would have if the President had not cancelled the second
air strike. The invasion might have worked even without air support
of any kind, the admiral argued, if the first strike had not been
scheduled two days in advance of the landing, eliminating the
element of surprise.
To the Soviet intelligence analysts it seemed little short of amazing
that Kennedy could ever have embarked upon the ill-fated Bay of
Pigs venture. It was poorly conceived, poorly planned, poorly
executed, and apparently undertaken without adequate knowledge -
if it was what it seemed to be. Soviet intelligence could not have
but remembered that in his book The Strategy for Peace, published
in 1960, Kennedy compared the Castro revolution to the American
revolution, saying also that Castro was part of the legacy of Sim¢n
Bol¡var. They also had information that Kennedy had been in Cuba
a number of times in 1957 and as late as January, 1958, when Fidel
was fighting in the Sierra Maestra, to visit his good friend and Palm
Beach neighbor Earl T. Smith, U.S. Ambassador in Havana.[58]
Were Kennedy's visits to Cuba in any way related to Castro's
revolutionary activities?
The Bay of Pigs adventure was not merely a military disaster; it
strengthened enormously Castro's iron grip over the island. The
U.S. had given Castro a legitimacy he could not have won any other
way. No other American act could have helped him any more. In
addition, the invasion struck a mortal blow to the anti-Castro
underground movement in Cuba. The invasion allowed Castro to
easily neutralize his most active opponents without raising any
criticism, because he seized the opportunity to appeal to the
Cubans' nationalistic sentiments. Since the image of the opposition
to Fidel has always been an American one, with Cubans in the U.S.
appearing to participate in a subordinate capacity, the harsh
treatment given to the anti-Castro underground appeared to be
justified by the circumstances. All opposition to the regime had
been identified in the Cuban mind as American-inspired and
counterrevolutionary, thus playing right into Fidel's hands. The
most important underground movement among the many destroyed
was the People's Revolutionary Movement, of whom Manuel Ray
was one of the key leaders. Later CIA intrigues, which had always
been intent on dividing the anti-Castro forces so as to control them,
completed the destruction of the PRM.[59]
One might agree that it was CIA's wishful thinking to believe that a
force of 1,400 men could seriously threaten a regime with a military
force of upwards of 400,000. But at least the invasion would have
had a better chance if the CIA had supported the underground
organization that had the most popular appeal among Cubans. The
CIA people, however, disliked Manuel Ray from the very
beginning. The most widely accepted explanation for this is that
they thought Ray was too tilted to the left, and so sabotaged his
organization. But this may not be the real explanation. Knowing
first hand that lying was an important part of their jobs, Soviet
intelligence always suspected the motives of CIA explanations.
In October 1959, Huber Matos, a Rebel Army major in charge of
Camagey province, was accused of treason and condemned to 20
years hard labor. The prosecution of Huber Matos stirred strong
opposition among several anti-Communist leaders in the Rebel
Army. Some months after Matos was sentenced, several anti-
Communist clandestine groups became active in the cities and in
the countryside. By mid 1961 the Escambray Mountains in the
central part of Cuba were teeming with anti-Castro rebels. For a
while the Escambray guerrillas were a virtual focus of anti-Castro
resistance, but they were desperately asking for military supplies.
But the CIA apparently had decided some months before the Bay of
Pigs invasion that the guerrillas were not useful to American
objectives. At the beginning of the operations the CIA supplied
them with 30.06 caliber ammunition, but their M-3 grease guns
fired .45 caliber bullets. In other areas the CIA supplied .45 caliber
ammunition to accompany Browning Automatic Rifles which shoot
30.06 caliber bullets. Finally, the CIA stopped sending supplies
and urged the rebel leaders to stop fighting and wait for the
invasion that was about to take place. In this way the CIA paralyzed
the ongoing guerrilla campaign and the spontaneous opposition
against Fidel's regime and brought about the guerrilla's defeat.[60]
Why did American intelligence seem to be helping Castro?
Castro's Strange Connections.
As soon as Castro took power in Cuba, a special KGB section
began collecting information about him and putting it together, bit
by bit, in his Comprehensive Personality Profile. And what our
hypothetical Russian Angleton found in Castro's CPP was not
reassuring. Among other things, the Russians' antihomosexual
biases had been awakened, and they began having serious
suspicions about Fidel's strange relationship with homosexuals.
Was Castro a homosexual himself?
Soviet intelligence knew about Fidel's special appeal to
homosexuals. During his early days as a law student in the
University of Havana a group of known homosexuals made up some
of his closest friends. The most prominent of these friends, and the
one closest to Fidel, was Alfredo Guevara (no relation to Ch
Guevara). He traveled with Fidel to Colombia in 1948, was with
him during the Bogotazo, and was now holding an important
position in Castro's government.
Ra£l Castro, the only one of his brothers that Fidel seemed to get
along with, was rumored to be a homosexual. Some of his ex-
classmates affirm that Ra£l had been expelled from Beln High
School, allegedly for engaging in homosexual acts. Among the
attackers of the Moncada barracks and later in the guerrilla war in
the Sierra Maestra homosexuals were Fidel's closest associates.
Some of them - Celia S nchez, Armando Hart, Melba Hern ndez or
Jos Mart¡nez P ez - came from the "exploited masses," but were
members of a small elite segment of Cuban society; pro-American,
well educated and affluent. None of them - perhaps with the
exception of Alfredo Guevara - were known for their Communist
faith or had been members of the Cuban communist party. When
Fidel began to emerge as a political leader they were attracted to
Fidel's personal magnetism and drifted to his side. Almost
overnight they became fanatical radicals of Fidelismo and active
leaders in the revolution. Their very intellectual background and
their easy life acted, paradoxically, as fertile soil for the seeds of
radicalism to germinate.[61]
In 1960, two young mathematicians working for the National
Security Agency, William H. Martin and Bernon F. Mitchell
defected to the USSR. They were soon discovered to be
homosexuals. The fact lead indirectly to the resignation of the
NSA's Personnel Director, and the firing of twenty-six other
employees for sexual deviation.[62] Was it just by chance,
reasoned the Soviet intelligence analysts, that Fidel's access to
power coincided with the existence of this group of homosexuals in
the U.S. State Department and in American intelligence?
Though there was no direct evidence that Fidel was a homosexual,
some of his actions seemed a little odd, such as his efforts to
impose in the 26th of July Movement strict sexual discipline. If a
member was known to be drinking he was punished with separation
from the Movement. When Fidel's group was in Mexico preparing
for the invasion, heterosexual abstinence was enforced, sometimes
with angry protests from some Movement members.[63]
As Nikita Khrushchev later admitted, at the time Fidel Castro took
power in Cuba the Soviet Union had little contact with the island
and very limited knowledge about what was happening there. The
information they had gathered about Castro, mostly through
members of the old Cuban communist party, was fragmentary and
contradictory.
The Soviet Premier met Castro for the first time in New York in
September, 1960, when both leaders were visiting the United
Nations. Khrushchev invited Fidel to a dinner at the Soviet U.N.
mission in New York. Castro, as usual, was a half hour late and
kept Khrushchev waiting.[64] We don't know what Khrushchev's
first impression of Fidel was, but it is probable that it was not too
different from the one Fidel made on other world leaders. After
meeting Fidel for the first time Richard Nixon said that Castro had
a compelling, intense glance, with sparkling black eyes, and that he
radiated vitality. "He was intelligent, shrewd, at times
eloquent."[65] Also, George McGovern affirmed that, "In private
conversation, at least in a diplomatic setting, because in his
intimate circle he is known by his temper tantrums and bad temper,
he is soft-spoken, shy, sensitive, sometimes witty, sometimes
slightly ill at ease."[66]
But not everybody, particularly the people who knew him better,
had fallen under Castro's spell. Dr. Manuel Antonio de Varona, a
Cuban politician, told about Fidel's "ambition, unscrupulousness,
opportunism, lack of principle and known amorality."[67] "I can
affirm that Fidel Castro had the mentality of a gangster," said his
onetime good friend Luis Conte Agero.[68]
Fidelo-Communism or Fidelo-Fascism?
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was born on August 13, 1926, in
Bir n, a small village founded by the United Fruit Company near
Mayar¡, close to Nipe Bay, on the north coast of the province of
Oriente. He spent his first years at the Manacas Estate, owned by
his father, in Bir n.
When Fidel reached school age his parents sent him to Santiago de
Cuba, the capital of Oriente province, to study at the La Salle
School, operated by the Christian Brothers. Later he was
transferred to the Dolores School, operated by the Jesuits. In 1942,
after finishing grade school, he was sent to Beln High School in
Havana, also operated by the Jesuits.[69]
At Beln Fidel stood out as an athlete, an indefatigable speaker and
a good student - perhaps not too brilliant, but with a photographic
memory. Some of his ex-classmates affirm that at Beln Fidel fell
under the influence of Father Alberto de Castro (no relation to
Fidel), a Jesuit that was a supporter of Francisco Franco's Falange
and harbored strong anti-American feelings.
At Beln High School Father de Castro had founded an elitist
secret society named "Convivio", through which he attracted young
students with leadership qualities. Fidel Castro soon became one of
Convivio's more active members. In 1943 Father de Castro and his
disciples of Convivio signed a pact in which they swore to fight for
a united Hispanic America, large, united, and opposed to the
treacherous Anglo-Saxons' control over the New World.[70]
Fidel graduated from Beln in 1945. The school year book of that
year said of Fidel Castro: "...we do not doubt he will fill the book
of his life with brilliant pages. He has good timber and the actor in
him will not be missing." Jesuit father Armando Llorente, who had
been Fidel's Spanish language and public speaking teacher, as well
as his spiritual adviser, is reputed to have repeated to many: "Fidel
Castro is a man of destiny. Behind him is the hand of God. He has
a mission to fulfill and he will fulfill it against all obstacles."[71]
Dr. Jos Ignacio Rasco, Fidel's schoolmate at Beln, recalls that on
one occasion, during an academic discussion, Fidel defended, as a
thesis, the necessity of a good dictator in lieu of democracy. Fidel
believed that, in the specific instance of Cuba, problems would
remain unresolved unless a strong hand took hold of the island,
since democracy had proved incapable of solving the problems.[72]
The Cuban communists, and later the Russians, must have known
about Fidel's ideas regarding class struggle. He considered that,
instead of an organized proletarian struggle, leadership could
provide the catalyst that would mobilize the masses behind the
revolution.[73] Fidel's axiom "leadership is basic," repeated several
times in his articles, letters and speeches, appeared to the Soviet
analysts more closely related to the Nazi fhrerprinzip than to any
known Marxist principle.[74] Moreover, Fidel's hatred for
capitalism was no evidence that he was either a leftist nor a
Marxist, because Fascists were also known to attack capitalism and
foreign imperialism.[75]
Fidel's last words in his own defense at the Moncada trial,
"Condemn me, never mind, History will absolve me," didn't pass
unnoticed to the intelligence analysts in Moscow. They were too
similar to Hitler's final words in his own defense at the trial for the
frustrated 1923 putsch.[76] The Soviets also noticed that the first
Cuban militia units, formed at Havana's University, wore dark shirts
resembling those of the Nazis. There were also some mass rallies at
Havana University where torches were burnt and people chanted
rhythmically "Fi-del!, Fi-del! Fi-del!," resembling too close for
Russian comfort the Nazi "Zieg-Heil!, Zieg-Heil!, Zieg-Heil!."[77]
Mario Llerena, a prominent member of the M-26-7, claims that
many people have seen in Fidel the characteristics of a Fascist
dictator, and affirms that he often heard it said that one of Fidel's
favorite books was Mein Kampf.[78] Hitler was called "the Fhrer"
(the chief) by his close followers. Among his intimate circle Fidel
is called "el jefe" (the chief).[79] In addition, as Hitler used to
defile his enemies calling them vermin, so Castro describes his
enemies as "gusanos," literally "worms."[80]
It was fashionable in Cuba, particularly during the prewar and war
years, to play with the totalitarian theories espoused by the then
powerful members of the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis. It was only
after WWII, when Fidel Castro was a student at the University of
Havana, that the ideas of Communism began gaining popularity in
Cuba.
Apparently Fidel evidenced from his early days a strong totalitarian
bent. In April, 1948, Fidel took a trip to Colombia together with
his friend Rafael del Pino. Once in Colombia Fidel lectured at the
university in Bogot on the techniques of the coup d'tat.[81]
Knowing Fidel's mind it is easy to conclude that it was just a matter
of political pragmatics as to which of the two ideologies, Fascism
or Communism, would best serve his purposes.[82] Dr. Ra£l
Chib s, a long time political associate of Castro, said that he
believes Fidel was just "utilizing Communism as the most
appropriate system for reaching the objectives of one-man
government." Totalitarian Communism, Chib s believes, was useful
for establishing Fidel's one-man rule in Cuba. "Twenty-five years
ago it could have been Nazism or Fascism."[83]
Castro's revolutionary strategy resembled in fact more Fascism than
Marxism, and from the very beginning the Cuban Communists
noticed the similarities. After Castro attacked the Moncada
garrisons in 1953 they criticized the action and labeled its
participants as "putschists" and "petty bourgeois," terms that in
Communist parlance mean Fascist.[84] Moreover, the revolutionary
movement led by Fidel was never defined by the Cuban
Communists as Marxist or Marxist-Leninist, but "petty bourgeois"
and "nationalist," a characterization that all Marxists have used to
represent Fascism throughout the interwar years.[85]
The similarities between Nazism and Castroism didn't pass
unnoticed to the Russian intelligence analysts in Moscow - as they
didn't pass unnoticed to the Trostkysts. As early as April, 1961,
"The Militant" published an article by Trent Hatter titled "Danger
Signals in Cuba," in which the author pointed out the similarities
between Hitler and Castro.[86] Despite Fidel's later rhetorical
attempts to make the rebellion seem a poor man's revolt, it was in
fact largely a petty bourgeois phenomenon, opposed by most Cuban
blacks, who filled Batista's army, and apathetically watched by the
great bulk of urban poor and rural masses.
On December 2, 1961, Fidel Castro delivered a televised speech in
which he declared to his amazed audience that he had always been
a Marxist-Leninist at heart and would remain so until the last day
of his life.[87] Castro's non-Communist affiliation had been so
widely taken for granted internationally, particularly in the U.S.,
that his speech caused a commotion. It was also received with
extreme suspicion by the Soviet intelligence analysts. Evidently,
Fidel Castro was trying to create for himself, a posteriori, what in
intelligence parlance is known as a "legend."[88]
There is evidence that Castro chose a Marxist path, not because he
had drawn his support from embittered peasants and workers -
middle class disgust was, in fact, Batista's worst problem - but
because it was the only path Fidel knew would allow him to forever
exercise the unlimited power he had suddenly achieved. Fidel's
history shows that he was temperamentally more akin to Fascism
than to Communism. But Fascism, after the defeat of Nazi
Germany, was not fashionable any more.[89] As Professor Paul
Seabury observed, "Under different circumstances of international
conflict a movement such as Castro's in Cuba might well have
simply been an anti-American Fascist one. Castro's philosophy of
revolutionary activism bears closer resemblance to Mussolini's than
to Lenin's."[90]
The decision to declare his revolution Marxist was Fidel's personal
choice. No one else could have made it at the time. He had all the
power, and there was no restriction on how he used it. Faced with
the multiple uncertainties of responsibility, and fearing the loss of
the power he had obtained, he grabbed the only path which seemed
likely to preserve his leadership forever and also deal with the
difficulties.
The Soviet intelligence analysts knew that neither "Yankee
imperialism" nor economic conditions were responsible for Fidel's
alleged turn to Communism. Adding still further to the mystery and
complexity of the enigma was the fact that the Cuban communist
party never really opposed Batista. On the contrary, they opposed
all of the anti-Batista movements, including that of Fidel
Castro.[91] How could Cuba become a Communist state when the
Communists opposed the revolution that produced that state? If
Fidel was a Communist, why had the Communist party initially
made such a contemptuous estimate of his military operations? If he
represented interests which were hostile to the United States, why
did a responsible journalist from the New York Times describe him
as sympathetic to the Americans? If he was a Communist, why did a
CIA officer, testifying before a congressional subcommittee,
declare that the available evidence did not warrant such a
conclusion?[92]
Castro was frantically trying to sell himself to the Soviets under an
image of anti-Americanism, but the facts pointed to the contrary.
The available evidence indicated that, contrary to conventional
wisdom, Fidel, like most anti-Castro Cubans in Miami, was an
admirer of the American Way of Life. His favorite sports were
basketball and baseball. He only watched American cowboy films,
and most of the women with whom he had been involved were of
the same profile: upper-class, Americanized, English-speaking,
most of them blondes.[93] Moreover, when he was just 12 Castro
wrote a revealing letter to President Roosevelt asking for money
and offering cooperation in locating Cuba's mineral resources.[94]
The Soviet intelligence analysts were extremely concerned with the
turn of events in Cuba. And their concern was genuine, because it
was difficult to say that Castro had been forced to trade with the
Soviet Union. Perhaps the United States was not supporting the
revolution as it might have, but it is questionable whether Fidel
explored all the possible avenues of support. For example, why
didn't he ever try to negotiate a trade agreement with Canada, Great
Britain, or West Germany? The fact remains that Cuba and the
Soviet Union signed their first trade agreement on February 13,
1960. Castro consciously chose the support of the Soviet Union, a
support he had been pushing for a long time. Apparently Fidel was
delivering to the Russians what they had never dreamed they of
having.
A parade of Communist leaders all over the Americas had been
preaching Communism for thirty years, and not one of them had
been ever able to attain power. Now Fidel, not a Communist
himself, was gratuitously presenting the Russians with a power
base ninety miles from the Unites States. The Russians had ample
reasons for being suspicious. Why was Fidel delivering Cuba over
to Communism? How could Fidel become a Communist when the
Communists themselves opposed the revolution that brought him to
power?
One may safely guess that our hypothetical Russian Angleton was
at least as distrustful as his American counterpart. He must have
warned the Soviet leaders about never accepting gifts from the
Greeks - particularly when the gift was a Horse!
Marxism-Leninism, the ideology of the Soviet Union, doesn't
officially subscribe to what is called the conspiracy theory of
history, but what we know about Soviet behavior strongly suggests
that, at the more pragmatic level of intelligence work, the Soviet
intelligence services (like all intelligence services around the world
- out of dformation professionnel) are always trying to discover
occult relations and covert identities, and, now and then, they hit
the jackpot.[95] Indeed, intelligence officers all around the world
have enough reasons to believe in conspiracies: their job is
precisely conspiring to manipulate society towards their goals.
It is important to keep in mind that, according to Soviet official
ideology, all politically relevant events were explainable by the
laws of Marxism-Leninism. The Soviets, therefore, rejected the idea
that history could be shaped by accidental events or by chance.
Consistently with this general belief was the Soviet's tendency,
often noted by Western scholars, to perceive hidden connections
between events where we see none; to regard unrelated details as
symptomatic of major political trends; and to believe there is
complicated planning behind events which we suppose to be
fortuitous.[96]
To make things even more complex, it seems that some intelligence
officers in the West share a similar, paranoid view of the world.
Howard Hunt's novel The Berlin Ending, reflects the belief,
apparently widespread in the Western intelligence community, that
Willy Brandt was a Soviet-controlled agent. Some American
intelligence officers have been accusing Henry Kissinger for years
of being a Soviet mole, and some others believe that Harold Holt,
Australia's Prime Minister who disappeared under strange
circumstances on December 17, 1967, was a Chinese mole. Also,
rumors persist that Stalin began his political career as a mole
planted by the Okhrana, the Czarist secret police, in the ranks of
the Bolsheviks.[97]
Soviet intelligence had an almost irrational fear of penetrations by
enemy agents, and they had their own valid reasons for justifying
that behavior: they themselves have successfully penetrated the
higher levels of other intelligence services. It is now widely
accepted by the Western intelligence community, that Sir Roger
Hollis, head of Britain's MI-5 from 1956 to 1973, was a Soviet
mole.[98] On the other hand, accepting that they had been
penetrated would have been a severe blow to the prestige of Soviet
intelligence. It would had been taken as an affront to the Soviet
Union itself. And Soviet intelligence, like all intelligence services,
had a penchant for concealing its own screw-ups.
Castro's Deep Game.[99]
By the end of 1961 a great concern about Fidel and the Cubans had
been raised in Moscow, not only among the intelligence analysts,
but among the Soviet leaders as well. First of all, Cuba under
Castro had become a real economic embarrassment to the Soviets,
who had made a great mistake in trying to undertake the
development of a country whose tastes, needs, and economy had
been modeled on American patterns. Cuba, which was intended to
be a showcase of the Soviet model of development in America, was
in fact quickly turning into a showcase of Soviet inefficiency,
mainly due to the Cuban leader's inability to make good use of
Soviet aid. Furthermore, Cuba was an ideological source of distress
due to the propagation of Fidel's "heretical" ideas and his immature
propensity to preach to the Soviets about how to conduct things in
their own backyard. Fidel's behavior was creating a new focus of
dissent in a field already engaged in internal quarrels. In addition,
his front line position on the Latin American anti-imperialist
struggle put a question-mark on the Russian thesis of peaceful
coexistence, and played right into Mao's hands.
Therefore, notwithstanding Castro's continued and persistent
pounding at the Russian gates, the Soviet leadership had some
serious doubts as to where it might lead in the future. Though his
defiance of the United States was according to their interests, the
alliance with Castro presented certain problems. Was he real or was
he the main element of a game of strategic provocation staged by
the CIA? Also, accepting that he was real, were the Soviets able to
contain Castro's ambitions? How far would he embroil the USSR in
Latin America and at what cost? Opposition to Castro was already
strong among the Latin American communist parties; they were
reluctant to endanger their precarious status by taking up arms.
Furthermore, to adopt Castro's tactics would have been an abrupt
shift to "putschist" and "adventurist" policies, denounced by both
Lenin and Krushchev.[100]
As early as mid-1959, the old-guard Cuban communists and the
Kremlin leader were rightfully worried about Castro's radical
theories and concerned with the secret training of revolutionaries in
Cuba for military adventures against Cuba's neighbors.[101] Yet,
having mistakenly come to Castro's rescue - if only for the initial
bait of exploiting the political propaganda opportunities offered by
the US-Cuban dispute - Khrushchev found himself with an
unsolicited client on his hands which he cannot disavow, at least
overtly, without great embarrassment and loss of prestige.[102]
Khrushchev had been caught on the horns of a dilemma:
abandoning Cuba would mean jeopardizing Soviet pretensions of
leadership of the Communist camp; but allowing Cuba to exist
would probably have the same result, because Castro had his own
aspirations for control over the international communist movement.
Fidel's guerrilla activities were also a big concern of the Soviet
intelligence. On the one hand, even if Fidel was real, the Soviet
Union could simply never afford to have a bunch of Castros in
Latin America. A Fidel-style takeover of Bolivia, Guatemala or the
Dominican Republic would suck up Russia's resources like
quicksand, and the resulting fiasco could only hurt the Soviet's and
Khrushchev's prestige. The Soviet Premier was not interested at all
in Pyrrhic victories. On the other hand, there was the possibility
that Fidel was not what he purported to be. If this were the case
Castro was acting as an agent provocateur, pushing the Soviet
Union into unwanted, risky adventures.
Khrushchev's Deep Game.
The sequel to the Soviet commitment in Cuba had been a
calamitous failure. In such circumstances the sensible course for
Khrushchev was to cut his losses and get out of the game,
particularly considering that the Soviet lines of supply to Cuba
were long and extremely vulnerable. But to leave Cuba voluntarily
would have been tantamount to an admission of failure and would
have involved substantial loss of face. If, however, Castro could be
eliminated as a result of American "aggression," then Khrushchev
and the USSR could retreat from Cuba, their honor relatively
untarnished. After an American invasion of the island the failure of
Communism in Cuba could be blamed on deficiencies in Soviet-
style communist management of Cuban affairs, but to "Yankee
Imperialism."[103]
As seen from the Kremlin, Castro was unpredictable, volatile,
undisciplined, and often nonsensical. His wholesale executions,
mass arrests, and terrorist adventures against his Latin American
neighbors, together with the sight of hundreds of thousands of
Cubans attempting to flee his rule, raised the very Stalinist specter
Khrushchev was trying to dispel. Moreover, Castro was making a
shambles of the Cuban economy and neglected to pay attention to
"suggestions" coming from Moscow. Thus, even though
Khrushchev never fully agreed with the theory that Castro was an
American mole, the Soviet Premier decided to follow the KGB's
advice to overthrow Castro and replace him with an old-time
Communist, obedient to the Soviet Union.[104] Now Khrushchev
faced the dilemma of getting rid of Fidel by force, but, given the
Soviet role vis vis the Third World and the Chinese, he couldn't
resort to direct action or threaten him with force. It was less easy,
however, to resist the temptation to proceed to overthrow him by
indirect means, with the help of the KGB's section of Special
Operations.
The first Soviet plan to overthrow Fidel Castro was handed over to
the Soviet Ambassador in Havana, Sergei Mikhailovich
Kudryavtsev, an experienced KGB officer who had been expelled
from Canada accused of heading a Soviet spy ring.[105] Since his
arrival in Havana in 1960, Kudryavtsev had been a conspicuous
figure in Cuban politics. Unlike many Soviet envoys, he never
bothered to conceal his power or to limit himself to behind-the-
scenes activities. Khrushchev's plan consisted in eliminating Castro
and replacing him with An¡bal Escalante, a trusted member of the
pro-Soviet Cuban communist party.
There is evidence that Castro discovered the plot from its very
beginning, early in 1962, but he let it go on for a while, playing a
cat and mouse game with the Russians. Finally, at the end of May,
he decided to move swiftly and detained the plotters and
neutralized Kudryavtsev and his KGB operatives. On May, 30,
1960, Ambassador Kudryavtsev left Havana for good. Some time
later Castro confessed that he "had expelled Kudryavtsev" for
having engaged in "open and excessive political activities".[106]
When Nikita Khrushchev received the news of the failed coup he
was furious. He now tried to find a way to, once and for all, get rid
of his Cuban "Communist." But, if Fidel was in his hands, he was
no less in the hands of Fidel. After the purging of Escalante and
several of the "old line" Cuban communists, some members of the
Cuban communist party, out of fear, were following Fidel's line and
had become an instrument of his policies rather than Moscow's. In
addition, Castro not only had expelled the Soviet Ambassador, but
also had actually handpicked the new Soviet Ambassador:
Alexandr Alexeyev.[107]
This state of affairs highly irritated Khrushchev. Still, the Soviet
Premier could not afford to openly destabilize the Castro
government. The cost in terms of Soviet international prestige - vis
vis Peking, Washington and the Third World - would have been
intolerable. Any direct Russian action against Cuba would have led
to serious political and ideological consequences for the Soviet
Union.
Therefore, after the Kudryavtsev-Escalante frustrated coup d'tat,
Khrushchev conceived another plan.
This plan was simple: it consisted of provoking President Kennedy
to invade Cuba and overthrow Castro. After Kennedy had invaded
Cuba he would find himself empty handed because he would have
no Soviet nuclear missiles to show to the American public. This
would make Kennedy the laughing stock of the world and place the
U.S. in a very embarrassing and difficult position before the world
and its own conscience, as the big, powerful nation that
unjustifiably attacks a very small, innocent one. Thus, President
Kennedy would unknowingly have helped Khrushchev in the dirty
work of getting rid of Castro. With an American invasion of Cuba
Khrushchev would have solved his Fidelista problem and made
good use of the U.S. loss of face. He would, in the end, have
inherited Fidelismo, but without the troublesome Fidel.
According to Khrushchev's own version, it was during his visit to
Bulgaria on May 14-20, 1962, that he conceived the idea of
installing strategic missiles in Cuba - that is, just after he received
the news of Kudryavtsev's failure. Khrushchev was aware that a
large part of the American public and a number of political leaders
were calling for an invasion of Cuba. The American leaders were
hysterical about Castro at the time of the Bay of Pigs and
thereafter. The Kennedys had their Irish up, and were determined to
get even with Castro at any cost.
Khrushchev affirms in his memoirs that his main concern in
sending missiles to Cuba was Castro's fear of an American
invasion. But it is very difficult to believe, however, that
Khrushchev planned to install missiles in Cuba to protect Castro
after he had tried to overthrow the Cuban leader just a few days
earlier.[108] Even if that were not the case, simple logic dictates
that no great power is going to give missiles to any newcomer who
just asks for them. The USSR installed missiles where it wanted,
and nowhere else. When Mao asked for missiles the Soviets turned
him down flat.
Neither before 1962, nor after, did the Soviets deploy nuclear
warheads beyond their borders. It was not until recently, only after
they had developed reliable devices to control their arming, that the
Soviets allowed a limited number of nuclear warheads to cross their
borders, and always under strict KGB control. Why, then, would
the Soviets want missiles so close to the trigger-happy Castro?
Khrushchev rightly believed he could exploit Fidel's megalomania.
Castro would surely accept his offer because the Cuban leader
harbored secret intentions. The Cuban leader believed that, once in
Cuba, it would be easy for him to capture the nuclear missiles and
use them for his own purposes.[109]
At that moment Khrushchev had practically unlimited powers and
the authority to use them as he saw fit, not only at home, but also in
foreign affairs. So he ordered that missiles be sent to Cuba, but
without the nuclear warheads - which he never sent, and never
intended to send to the island.[110] Moreover, there is the
possibility that the missiles themselves, like the ones Khrushchev
was displaying in Moscow's parades, were empty dummies.[111]
To maximize the effectiveness of the missiles as a provocation,
Khrushchev used every possible means to make the Americans
believe that, after the installation and further training of Cuban
personnel, the missiles would be under Castro's control. This is
clearly implied in the Soviets' first statement of the crisis on
October 23 in which they affirmed that Cuba alone had the right to
decide what kind of weapons were appropriate for its defense.
The plan to set up the missiles was carried out in such a way that
they would inevitably be discovered by the Americans. If one
assumes that the antiaircraft SAM's were intended to protect the
installations of the strategic missiles, then they should have been
installed and ready to shoot down the U.S. planes before the
strategic missiles arrived. Actually the SAM's and other associated
antiaircraft nets only became operational when the construction of
the strategic missile sites was well along, and the Soviets employed
almost no camouflage at all to hide either set of weapons. In any
case, since the SAM's could not shoot down planes flying below
10,000 feet, these antiaircraft missiles would not have been useful
in the event of an American invasion.
One of the most commonly accepted myths of the Cuban missile
crisis is that Kennedy's success was mainly because of the
information about the missiles in Cuba provided by Col. Oleg
Penkovsky, a GRU officer recruited by the CIA.
Penkovsky was originally recruited by the MI-5, Britain's
counterinterespionage service, who eventually passed him to the
CIA. He provided his controllers with over 5,000 photographs of
secret documents; economic information; and scientific and
technical data on top secret Soviet weapons systems. According to
Sir Maurice Oldfield, head of the MI-5, Penkovsky was "The
answer to a prayer. What he provided seemed like a miracle, too.
That is why he was mistrusted on both sides of the Atlantic for so
long."
Sir Oldfield, however, apparently forgot the golden rule of
intelligence and espionage work: if it seems too good to be true, it
is too good to be true. In retrospect it seems clear that Penkovsky
was just another key element in Khrushchev's own game of
deception. The Soviet Premier wanted the Americans to know
exactly what type of missiles were supposedly placed in Cuba, their
presumed range, and the danger they apparently posed. Penkovsky
gave them all the "information" they needed.[112]
But Khrushchev's carefully conceived plans had not counted on the
unexpected and apparently irrational behavior of President
Kennedy. All reports received in Washington about the strange
developments in Cuba seemingly aroused less suspicions than
Khrushchev thought they should provoke. Even the CIA, which is
often denounced as unnecessarily alarmist, seemed, in this case,
rather unimpressed.
Finally, Soviet developments in Cuba were so blatant and political
pressure in the U.S. so strong, that Kennedy was forced to act. But,
when he announced the blockade of the island, he unexpectedly
stated that the American actions were not directed against Cuba,
but against the Soviet Union. Kennedy's behavior was so surprising
that Khrushchev was caught completely off balance and panicked
before the possibility of a nuclear confrontation which he had not
anticipated and for which he was not prepared.[113]
Khrushchev's sixth sense, which had always told him just how far
he could safely go, was now telling him that his Cuban gambit must
end. When he realized that he had deceived himself about
Kennedy's response, he retreated and called it a day. Fortunately for
the world, Khrushchev was enough of a political realist to
recognize when a gamble had been lost, and knew how to employ
all of his demagogic arts in patching up the failure. Nikita
Khrushchev never undestood why Kennedy had acted in such an
irrational and foolish way, by not attacking Cuba and, thereby,
allowing Castro to stay in power.
But the hypothetical Soviet Angleton suspected that the American
President was no fool, but rather a clever, tough politician who
knew a lot more than he claimed to know. In addition, Kennedy's
actions during the Cuban missile crisis deepened our Soviet
Angleton's worst fears about Castro even more.
The Cuban missile crisis was a further irritant to Khrushchev's
already risky political situation. Though the state of the Soviet
economy was the main factor in his demotion in October, 1964,
undoubtedly his Cuban misadventure contributed to his fall. A few
days after Khruschev's departure from the scene, our hypothetical
Russian Angleton followed in his steps.
Angleton's Deep Game.
In October, 1983, Harper's magazine published an intriguing article
written by Ron Rosenbaum, titled "The Shadow of the Mole." In
his article Rosenbaum - who is not only a master of this subject,
but also shows he has access to inside sources of information - tells
about the curious relationship that developed between James
Angleton and Kim Philby - the British intelligence officer who
turned out to be a Soviet mole.
The most widely publicized story is that Philby, who trained
Angleton in the double-cross system, somehow managed to outwit
his former student. Some reason that Angleton's later efforts to find
a mole inside the CIA were probably just an embittered reaction to
his failure in detecting Philby. But the counterintelligence
techniques used by Angleton in his fruitless search for the Soviet
mole bordered on paranoia. He created an internal climate of
suspicion that paralyzed the CIA. People believed that Angletonian
thinking was "too convoluted" - 'sick thinking' they called it - and at
that point Angleton was fired.
But Rosenbaum introduces a new, unexpected angle in his article.
He believes that "James Angleton's thought was not convoluted
enough."[114] According to Rosenbaum, Philby planted in
Angleton's mind the idea of the existence of a high level Soviet
penetration in the CIA. But this was a false idea - a notional[115]
mole. This is what Rosenbaum calls the double-double cross
system. But wait. There is subtle evidence that Angleton, in fact,
detected Philby's treachery. Moreover, according to Rosenbaum, it
is also possible that Angleton, using the double-cross techniques
he had learned from Philby, had turned the Soviet mole into an
American mole. This is what we may properly call the double-
double-double cross system.
Though, like his American counterpart, our hypothetical Russian
Angleton was also fired and accused of being a functional
paranoid, later events seem to confirm his worst suspicions about
Fidel Castro. It was Castro who pushed the Soviet Union into an
African quagmire. It was Castro who tried to push the Soviets into
supporting never-ending guerrilla wars in Central America in an
effort they strongly resisted. As a matter of fact, one way or
another, for many years, Dr. Fidel Castro has been providing the
American military-industrial complex[116] with the medicine it
badly needs: enemies.
In the summer of 1975 Castro moved Cuban troops to Angola with
a swiftness that stunned the Soviet intelligence analysts. It was
simply incredible, reasoned the Soviets, that American intelligence
had failed to detect Castro's bold move. Once in Angola, the Cuban
troops were paid in dollars for protecting Gulf Oil refineries in
Cabinda from the attack of "saboteurs". In 1970 the Soviets tried to
overthrow Agostino Neto, but the Cuban troops openly participated
in crushing the attempt.
A significant detail, not missed by our Russian Angleton, is that
during the time Castro kept a puppet regime in control in Grenada,
the American government paid no attention to his apparently
provocative activities. But just a few days after the Soviets had
overthrown Bishop to replace him with a pro-Soviet man, President
Reagan rushed to order an American invasion of the island.
And yet, apparently the Americans had won the match. There were
unmistakable signs that some senior KGB officers had fallen under
Castro's spell and were accepting Castro's subversive ideas.[117]
Trying to find at least circumstantial evidence to prove his case, our
KGB's Angleton may have analyzed the problem from a very
different perspective. The best approach may have been what in
counterintelligence parlance is known as "walking back the cat;"
taking a failed operation apart, piece by piece, looking for
mistakes, leaks, or enemy penetrations.
One way to do that is by carefully viewing the case from the Soviet
intelligence point of view. If some opposing intelligence service
were running Castro they would have boosted his career with an
occasional success among a long list of failures. Working on that
assumption he may have combed Castro's thick dossier looking for
that particular pattern. If he had done that he may have been amazed
with his finding: the pattern was there for everyone to see.
The balance of more than thirty years of Soviet-Cuban relations
was, on the long term, highly negative for the Soviet Union. All
Castro's theories about anti-American liberation wars erupting all
around the world proved to be wrong - that is, provided we accept
the view that Castro is the person he claims to be. In the eyes of our
now retired hypothetical Russian Angleton, Castro's efforts were
further evidence of an extraordinary exercise in strategic deception
concocted by the CIA's counterintelligence section, that is, by
James Jesus Angleton himself. Moreover, our hypothetical Russian
Angleton is convinced that Fidel Castro was instrumental in the
collapse of the Soviet Union. Adding to their own insurmountable
internal difficulties, Cuba's political and economic cost was too
high for the Soviet Union to pay.[118]
Central to understanding Angleton's fall, is the role played by
Anatoly Golitsin, a KGB counterintelligence officer who defected
to the West in 1961. Golitsin, who was handed over to Angleton to
run the operation, claimed that the KGB had been successful in
planting a mole at the highest levels of American intelligence. This
marked the beginning of Angleton's paranoid search for the mole.
At some point, Golitsin warned Angleton that Soviet intelligence
would attempt to prevent the CIA from discovering the mole by
sending disinformation agents to obstruct the investigation. Soon
after, as Golitsin had predicted, Yuri Nosenko, another KGB
officer, defected to the West. From the very beginning Angleton
was convinced that Nosenko was the disinformation agent sent by
the KGB to obstruct his search for the mole. But the CIA was never
able to prove that Nosenko was a Soviet plant.
While researching for his book about Lee Harvey Oswald, author
Edward Jay Epstein told Angleton about a meeting he was
supposed to have with Nosenko. Angleton gave Epstein a list of
questions that he suggested he ask Nosenko. Among Angleton's
proposed questions for Nosenko is a puzzling one: "Why was a
KGB officer named Shitov sent to Cuba as the first [lit.] Soviet
Ambassador, under the pseudonym Alexeiev?"[119]
One of the most fascinating features of intelligence work is that
sometimes a single and apparently unimportant piece of
information can set a whole bunch of apparently unrelated facts
into a meaningful pattern. If you can find that elusive piece of
information - intelligence officers believe - you can rewrite large
parts of history from a surprisingly different point of view.
Now, why was Alexeyev important to Angleton? Epstein believes it
was because Oswald had tried to obtain a visa to travel to Havana.
But Alexeyev was deployed in Cuba in late 1959, long before
anybody could have planned or even thought about the
assassination of President Kennedy. Therefore, it seems unlikely
that Angleton's interest in Alexeyev had anything to do with
Oswald. Then, was Angleton really interested in Alexeyev because
he suspected that Alexeyev was playing an important role in a
Soviet counterintelligence operation?
I think this is a good point to stop these seemingly never-ending
speculations on the convoluted, paranoid world of espionage and
come back to the real world. But, as is customary in spy stories,
let's end this one with a question: Was Angleton interested in
Alexeyev because he suspected the Soviet intelligence had their
own suspicions that Fidel Castro was a CIA mole?
Copyright c 1995. All Rights Reserved
References:
1.References to Shitov's career in John Barron, KGB. London:
Corgi, 1974, 534.
2.The methods and techniques of intelligence and espionage.
According to CIA veteran William Hood, tradecraft, though
mysterious to outsiders, is just "a little more than a compound of
common sense, experience, and certain almost universally accepted
security practices. . ."
3.An eminent Russian astrophysicist observed one day, in a
conversation with friends, that there are two types of hypotheses:
the working hypothesis, formally read at a scientific congress and
intended to be a point of departure for further study; and the
conversational hypothesis, which serves to pass the time agreeably
between two meetings of the congress. The hypothesis presented in
this paper is a conversational hypothesis - with the potential for
becoming a working hypothesis.
4.The correct intelligence term is "penetration agent." The term
"mole" was introduced by writer David Cornwell (better known by
his pseudonym John le Carr) in one of his spy novels, and it has
been widely adopted by the intelligence community - an
outstanding example of the two-way link between reality and
fiction.
5.Cubans call Fidel Castro "El Caballo" - "The Horse." See Georgie
Anne Geyer, Guerrilla Prince. Boston: Little, Brown & Company,
1991, 205. Also, Servando Gonz lez, "Real History of 'The Horse'."
Impacto Literario, (Miami) Vol. I No. I, Nov. 1993.
6.On the initial reluctance of the Russians to accept Fidel Castro as
a member of the Socialist camp, see Edward Gonz lez, The Cuban
Revolution and the Soviet Union: 1959-1960, Ph.D. dissertation,
University of California, 1966 (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University
Microfilms, 1967; also Andrs Su rez, Cuba: Castroism and
Communism, 1959-1966 . Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1967.
7.Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets . New York:
Pocket Books, 1979, 406
8.KGB's Second Directorate is so secret that it was not until 1960
that the CIA knew about its existence. See Edward Jay Epstein,
Deception. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989, 35.
9.The idea that the Soviets had suspicions that Castro was a mole
came to the author after a conversation with Vadim Lestov, a
Pravda correspondent in Havana. Lestov - actually a KGB officer -
was expelled from Cuba in 1968 accused of participating in the
"microfraction" affair - the third Soviet instigated attempt at
overthrowing Castro. It is also interesting to note that, in the early
seventies, two jokes were going around in Havana. One said that
Face the Nation, the American T.V. program, had announced that a
very important guest will appear in its next program. When the
moment arrived, Fidel Castro appeared on the screen, clean shaved,
sporting a tie and a dark business suit, and said: "Now let me tell
you about my experiences as a CIA agent in Cuba." The other joke
consisted in explaining that the Cuban revolution was just "CIA's
experimental plan to discredit Communism in Latin America." It
seems likely that Soviet intelligence officers in Cuba must have
heard the jokes and must surely have informed Moscow about
them. Also, see Juan Archocha's Operaci¢n Viceversa. Barcelona:
Arcos Vergara, 1983. The novel's plot is about the adventures of a
CIA operative in Cuba trying to save Castro's life from KGB's
assassination attempts. Luis Conte Agero, at one time one of
Castro's closest friends, wrote about Fidel that "So good has been
his work fostering the cause of the "hated Yankee," that it would
not be strange that sometime he would be accused of being a traitor
and a CIA agent." (Castro fostering Yankee cause in Luis Conte
Agero, Fidel Castro: psiquiatr¡a y pol¡tica. Mexico: Editorial Jus,
1968, 18) In the same fashion, Carlos Franqui, writing about the
Bay of Pigs invasion, noticed that, "the CIA, which is overtly
Fidel's enemy, has always been his potential ally." (CIA as potential
Castro ally in Carlos Franqui, Family Portrait with Fidel. New
York: Random House, 1984, 115).
It seems also that at least some anti-Castro Cubans have arrived at
similar conclusions. Physician-turned-terrorist Orlando Bosch, who
has been actively fighting Castro since the mid-sixties, always
cautions Miami Cubans about not trusting the CIA in their war
against Castro. See Taylor Branch and John Rothchild, "The
Incident," Squire, March 1977, 57.
10.Quoted in Wise and Ross, The Invisible Government. New
York: Bantam, 1964, 244-245
11."Its the walk-in trade...," in William Hood, Mole. New York:
Ballantine, 1982, 15.
12.See Miles Copeland, Beyond Cloak and Dagger. New York:
Pinnacle, 1974, 29.
13.On CIA's efforts in recruiting young leaders see Bob
Woodward, Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987. New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1987, 302. On the other hand, some
authors have tried to prove that, when he was a teenager, Castro
was recruited by G. W. Bashirov, a Soviet intelligence officer in
Havana. This is the main thesis of Nathaniel Weyl's Red Star Over
Cuba. New York: Hillman/MacFadden, 1961. Weyl apparently got
his inspiration from an article written by Cuban journalist Salvador
D¡az-Vers¢ns, "Desde 17 a¤os atr s Fidel Castro trabajaba para
Rusia" ("Fidel Castro has been working for Russia for 17 years." El
Mundo in exile, October 19, 1960. The theory, however, has so
many holes that not even the lunatic fringe has tried to pursue it.
14.The Soviet intelligence also knew about CIA experiments
involving the use of powerful drugs. On CIA and mind control see
John Marks, The Search for the 'Manchurian Candidate.' New
York: MacGraw-Hill, 1980; also Walter Bowart, Operation Mind
Control. New York: Dell, 1978.
15.On American recruiting activities in friendly countries see Bob
Woodward, Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987. New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1987, 309.
16.Information about Wieland in State Department Security, The
William Wieland Case. Hearings. Committee on the Judiciary, U.S.
Senate, 87th Congress. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1962;
also in State Department Security, The Wieland Case Updated.
Hearings. Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate, 89th Congress.
U.S. Government Printing Office, 1962.
17.Incident with Camaid and Fidel's self-imposed exile in New
York in Manuel Dorta-Duque, Alejandro (alias) Fidel. Hato Rey,
Puerto Rico: Ediciones Joyuda, 1981, 14.
18.On Soviet penetration fears see Nathan Leites, Kremlin Moods,
Memorandum RM-3535-ISA, the RAND Corporation, January
1964, 282-287.
19.On CIA's interests in penetrating Soviet intelligence services see
Melvin Beck, Secret Contenders: The Myth of Cold War
Counterintelligence. New York: Sheridan Square Publications,
1984.
20.Alexeyev drinking and womanizing with Castro in Arkady N.
Shevchenko, Breaking with Moscow. New York: Ballantine, 1985,
187.
21.Kennedy's press conference in The New York Times, January
25, 1962. In the course of the conference, reporter Sara McClendon
asked the President about the Wieland case. Kennedy was evidently
upset by the question, and emphatically denied that Wieland
constituted a security risk.
22.Wieland's early career in Hearings, Communist Threat to the
U.S. Through the Caribbean, Senate Internal Subcommittee, 86th-
87th Congress, Parts 1-12, 736.
23.Activities of Wieland, Rubbotom and Castro in Bogot ,
Colombia, in Communist Threat, 725, 756, 806.
24.Wieland under alias in Cuba, in Communist Threat, 746.
25.American haste in recognizing the Castro government in Earl T.
Smith, The Fourth Floor, New York: Random House, 1962, 196;
also in Communist Threat, 683.
26.Cummings selling arms to Castro in Alexandra Obrenovich,
Who is Responsible? New York: Carlton Press, 1962. Also, rumors
ran that a CIA agent, known as Robert Chapman, spent a long time
in the mountains with Ra£l Castro. CIA agent with Ra£l Castro,
evidence of Bruce McColm to the author.
27.CIA giving money to Castro in Tad Szulc, Fidel: A Critical
Portrait. New York: William Morrow, 1986, 427.
28.Bernstein claims that a senior CIA officer told him that between
1950 and 1966 the NYT provided cover for about 10 CIA
operators.
29.Hart about Matthews and the NYT in Mario LLerena, The
Unsuspected Revolution. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,
1978, 104-105.
30.Accusations that the New York Times has acted as a CIA
instrument are in Daniel Schorr, Clearing the Air. New York:
Houghton Mifflin, 1977.
31.Smith briefed by Matthews in Earl T. Smith, The Fourth Floor.
New York: Random House, 1962, 67-68.
32.Failure of debriefing Gardner in Smith, The Fourth Floor, 231.
33.Smith asking the CIA officer if he was a Fidelista in Smith, The
Fourth Floor, 33.
34.Smith affirmations in Wise and Ross, The Invisible Government,
266.
35.Smith accusations in Smith, The Fourth Floor., 135, 47.
36.American navy men in Mario LLerena, The Unsuspected
Revolution, 144-145.
37.Fidel's lecture at the CFR in Lawrence Shoup and William
Minter, Imperial Brain Trust, New York: Monthly Review Press,
1977, 42, and in Dan Smoot, The Invisible Government. The Dan
Smoot Report, 1962, 18. It is interesting to notice that Castro's visit
to the CFR is one of the best kept secrets of his visit to the U.S. It
is not mentioned in any other source about Castro.
38.CIA's representative talking with Castro in Bonsal, Cuba,
Castro, and the United States. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh
Press, 1971, 64.
39.Soviet consensus about Fidel's revolution living its last hours,
Professor Mikhail Berstram in conversation with the author at
Stanford University.
40.Castro's warnings in Szulc and Meyer, The Cuban Invasion.
New York: Praeger, 1962, 74.
41.President Eisenhower's approval of invasion plan in Szulc and
Meyer, 77.
42.Invasion plan in Bonsal, 183.
43.Bowles concerns to Rusk in David Halberstam, The Best and
the Brightest. Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Crest Books, 1972, 85.
44.Invasion failure in U.S. News and World Report, September 17,
1962.
45.CIA's assumptions about popular support for the invaders in
Daniel M. Rohrer, Mark G. Arnold, and Roger L. Conner, By
Weight of Arms: American Military Policy. Skokie, Illinois:
National Textbook Co., 1969, 44-45.
46.In 1962 FBI's Director J. Edgar Hoover told a House Committee
that "Over the years no phase of American activity has been
immune to Soviet-bloc intelligence attempts. The Soviets have
attempted to obtain every conceivable type of information." House
Subcommittee on Appropriations, testimony by J. Edgar Hoover,
January 24, 1962.
47.Willauer's story in Communist Threat, 874-875.
48.Willauer "frozen out" and dismissed from State Department in
Communist Threat, 875-878.
49.Invasion prisoners' report of false intelligence in The New York
Times, April 1, 1962, 40.
50.Radio Swan's false reports in St. Louis Post Dispatch, April 22,
1961.
51.Bissell reunifies anti-Castro Cubans, in "Inside Story of the
Cuban Fiasco," U.S. News and World Report, May 15, 1961.
52.Invasion leaders held incommunicado in National Review,
August 13, 1963, 106.
53.A disinformation technique consisting in inserting a "news"
notice in a small or cooperative newspaper, in hopes that paper
after paper, and eventually the wire services, would pick up this
item of black information and disseminate it around the world. The
supposed source is soon forgotten as the planted story works its
way to the front pages of the world's leading papers. The technique
was used at one time by the CIA in Italy.
54.Rebel air strike in Szulc and Meyer, The Cuban Invasion, 117.
55.Failure to detect coral reefs, in Peter Wyden, The Bay of Pigs.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979, 219.
56.Castro and Duque inspecting Bay of Pigs area in Wyden, The
Bay of Pigs, 104.
57.Robert Kennedy denied accusation in Wise and Ross, The
Invisible Government, 201-202.
58.Kennedy's visits to Cuba in The Joint Appearances of Senator
John F. Kennedy and Vice-President Richard M. Nixon,
Presidential Campaign 1960, 263.
59.CIA's destruction of anti-Castro underground movement in
Javier Felipe Pazos, The New Republic, November 1962, 17.
60.For an interesting testimony on how the CIA left the anti-Castro
guerrillas in the lurch see the declarations of Air Force Colonel
Fred D. Stevens, "J. F. K. Muzzled Me," The Miami Herald,
December 1, 1961.
61.Background of Fidel's close associates in LLerena, 97-98.
62.Homosexuals in NSA in Wise and Ross, The Invisible
Government, 221.
63.M-26-7's enforced morality in Jes£s Montan Oropesa, "El
estilo de trabajo de los combatientes del Moncada y de Bayamo",
Verde Olivo, 19 July 1964, 8, 9, 52.
64.Fidel attends dinner at Soviet mission in Franqui, Family
Portrait, 86.
65.Nixon's impression of Castro in Bonsal, Cuba, Castro, 283-284.
66.McGovern's impressions in "A Talk With Castro," The New
York Times Magazine, March 3, 1977, 20.
67.Dr. de Varona's characterization of Fidel in Daniel James, Cuba:
The First Soviet Satellite in the Americas. New York: Avon, 1961,
35.
68.Fidel's gangster mentality in Luis Conte Agero, Los dos rostros
de Fidel Castro. Mexico: Editorial Jus, 1960, 222.
69.Fidel's early days in Jules Dubois Fidel Castro. New York:
Bobbs-Merrill, 1959, 14-15; also in Servando Gonz lez, Historia
hertica de la revoluci¢n fidelista. San Francisco: Ediciones El
Gato Tuerto, 1986, 9-12.
70.Convivio secret society in Carlos Alberto Montaner, "Quiere
Castro abandonar a los Soviticos?" La Estrella de Panam ,
February 22, 1985.
71.Belen's Year Book and Father Llorente's prophecy in Dubois,
15, 145
72.Dr. Rasco's comments on Fidel in James, 31-32.
73.Fidel ideas on leadership principles in Luis Conte Agero,
Cartas de presidio. Havana: Editorial Lex, 1959, 60.
74.Fidel's axiom on leadership in Theodore Draper, Castroism,
Theory and Practice. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965, 9.
75.For an example of Fascist attack on capitalism see A. Grandi, La
futura civilt del lavoro nel mondo. Bologna: Stiassi and Tantini,
1941.
76.Fidel's and Hitler's words in their own legal defense in "History
Will Absolve Me," in F. Castro and R. Debr, On Trial. London:
Lorringer, 1968, 40, and in Konrad Heiden, Der Fhrer. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1944, 206. See also William Shirer, The Rise
and Fall of the Third Reich. Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett, 1962,
118.
77.Masses chanting "Fi-del!" in Franqui, Family Portrait., 13; also
in Lee Lockwood, Castro's Cuba, Cuba's Fidel. New York:
Macmillan, 1967, 7, 22.
78.Mein Kampf said to be one of Fidel's favorite books in Mario
LLerena, The Unsuspected Revolution, Chapter 5, note 7.
79.Fidel called "el jefe" in Lee Lockwood, Castro's Cuba, Cuba's
Fidel. New York: Macmillan, 1967, 50, 52, 55.
80.Anti-Castro Cubans called gusanos in Lee Lockwood, Castro's
Cuba, Cuba's Fidel. New York: Macmillan, 1967, 57.
81.Castro lecturing at Bogot 's university in Communist Threat
Through the Caribbean, 544.
82.Fidel's totalitarian bent in Daniel James, Cuba, 33-34.
83.Dr. Chib s words in Daniel James, Cuba, 34.
84.Cuban Communists criticizing the Moncada attack in A. Su rez,
Cuba: Castroism and Communism, 1959-1966, 40.
85.Fidel characterized as a Fascist by Cuban Communists in A.
James Gregor, The Fascist Persuasion in Radical Politics.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1974, 283.
86.Hatter's article in The Militant, April 17, 1961. (According to
some Russian interpretation of History, Hitler was originally a
creation of the right wing of British intelligence. In line with this
view is the belief that he remained a secret agent of British
"geopolitical policies" through 1938. After 1938 certain problems
obscured the relations between Hitler and his British patrons. With
Hitler's strike westward he became not merely London's
Frankenstein's monster, but a monster more immediately dangerous
to its master than to the foe against which the monster had been
originally deployed: The Soviet Union. It could not have passed
unnoticed to Soviet intelligence analysts that the New York Times
was also instrumental in Hitler's rise to power. After a sudden rush
of interest in Hitler, beginning on September 15, 1930, the New
York Times published in the September 21, 1930 issue a feature
article entitled "Hitler, Driving Force in Germany's Fascism."
Contrasting with the year 1929 when the NYT published only one
brief item on Adolph Hitler, in 1931, it ran a score of substantial
articles depicting a favorable image on Nazi Germany, including no
fewer than three "Portraits" of Hitler).
87.For an excellent analysis of Castro's "I am a Marxist" speech,
see Loree Wilkerson, Fidel Castro's Political Programs from
Reformism to "Marxism-Leninism." Gainesville, Fl.: University of
Florida Press, 1965.
88.In intelligence parlance, a false biography or cover story,
supplied mostly to illegals and sleepers, enabling them to live
undetected within a foreign country. A legend may be a false trail
completed to cover a false or notional biography.
89.Castro temperamentally akin to Fascism in Adam B. Ulam, The
Rivals. New York: Penguin, 1976, 315.
90.Seabury's remarks in The Rise and Decline of the Cold War.
New York: Basic Books, 1967, 68.
91.The Cuban Communists never had much faith in what Castro
was to do in Cuba, affirmed former President Carlos Pr¡o Socarr s.
During the two years of Castro's war the 26th of July Movement
never received a single bullet nor a single peso from the Cuban
Communists. Pr¡o Socarr s quoted in James, Cuba: The First
Soviet Satellite in the Americas, 29.
92.CIA officer's testimony about Castro in Communist Threat to
the U.S. Through the Caribbean, 86th Congress, 1st Sess., Part. 3,
Nov. 5, 1959, 162-164.
93.Geyer, Guerrilla Prince, 71.
94.The letter was found among the retained files of the American
Embassy at Havana, and is now housed in the records of the foreign
service posts of the Department of State, National Archives,
Washington, D. C. A facsimile of the letter was published in the
American Archivist, whose editor, Bill Burk, kindly sent me a
copy. See "From the Archives," American Archivist, Vol. 50
(Spring 1987), 284-288.
95.It is surprising to find that, at this pragmatical level of
intelligence work, the Soviets shared an almost identical view of
the world with the American ultraconservatives - exposed in the
theories advanced by Dan Smoot, Phyllis Schlafly, and John A.
Stormer, among others - which see a small group of men secretly
meeting and carefully planning to manipulate society toward certain
goals. In that sense Soviet intelligence was not far from what
Richard Hofstadter calls "the paranoid style" in American politics.
See Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics.
New York: Knopf, 1965. For a detailed account of conspiracy
theories in America see George Johnson, Architects of Fear. Los
Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1983; also Carl Oglesby, The Yankee
and Cowboy War. Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel, 1976; and
William P. Hoar, Architects of Conspiracy. Boston: Western
Islands, 1984. A wealth of information about tongue-in-cheek
conspiracy theories is found in Robert Shea and Robert Anton
Wilson, The Illuminatus! Trilogy. New York: Dell, 1975. On the
other hand, G. William Domhoff cautions about the other side of
the spectrum, which he calls "the compulsive style in American
Social Science." This compulsive style is narrow, restrictive, highly
phobic about flights of fancy, and usually partial to the status quo.
See G. William Domhoff, The Higher Circles. New York: Vintage,
1971, 302-303.
96.The Soviet vision of history in Alexander L. George, "The
Operational Code," International Studies Quarterly Vol. 13, No. 2
(June 1969), 204-205.
97.Stalin as an Okhrana mole in Eric Lee, "A Mole Who Vaulted to
the Top," Military History, April 1987, 66. Holt as Chinese mole in
"Was the P. M. a Spy?," Newsweek, December 5, 1983, 84.
98.Hollis case explained in detail in Peter Wright, Spy Catcher.
New York: Dell, 1987; also in John Costello, Mask of Treachery.
London: Collins, 1988, and in William J. West, Spymaster. New
York: Wynwood Press, 1990.
99.For this part of my paper I have relied heavily on David C.
Martin's Wilderness of Mirrors. New York: Ballantine, 1980.
Martin's book is mainly about James Angleton's struggle to find a
Soviet mole infiltrated in the CIA.
100.See, David D. Catell, "Soviet Policies in Latin America,"
Current History, November 1964, 288.
101.See M. Michael Kline, "Castro's Challenge to Latin American
Communism," in Jaime Suchlicki, ed., Cuba, Castro, and
Revolution. Coral Gables, Florida: University of Miami Press,
1972.
102.See Leon Goure and Julian Weinkle, "Soviet-Cuban Relations:
The Growing Integration," in Jaime Suchlicki, ed., Cuba, Castro,
and Revolution. Coral Gables, Florida: University of Miami Press,
1972, 149.
103.For an appealing argument about what the Soviet Union would
have gained with an American invasion of Cuba see John N. Plank,
"Monroe's Doctrine - and Castro's," The New York Times
Magazine, October 7, 1962.
104.Richard Lowenthal, "The Logic of One-Party Rule," in
Abraham Brumberg, ed., Russia Under Khrushchev. New York:
Praeger, 1962, 36. Some people bring out the Brezhnev doctrine of
irreversibility of Communism to argue that Khrushchev would
never have tried to get rid of Castro. But the Brezhnev doctrine
should not be overgeneralized. It is not certain that other leaders
before Brezhnev and Kosygin would have responded in the same
way to Castro's challenges. Stalin obviously felt no hesitation on
cutting Tito off completely from Soviet support - even if that meant
forcing Yugoslavia into the capitalist camp. Similarly, Khrushchev
- despite the lessons of Yugoslavia - did not hesitate to withdraw
support from China in an equally hostile and abrupt manner when
the Marxist leadership dared to challenge his control of the
international revolutionary movement.
105.Information about Kudryavtsev in Barron, KGB,. 26-27.
Sanche de Gramont, however, refers to Kudryavtsev as a GRU
officer. The Secret War. New York: Dell, 1962, 532.
106.But, since Soviet ambassadors do not carry out personal
policies - particularly when they are also high-ranking KGB
officers - it seems likely that Kudryavtsev had enjoyed the full
confidence of the Soviet leadership in performing the difficult task
of taming Castro. On Kudryavtsev's expulsion see The New York
Times, June 5, 1962, 3, also Lisa Howard, "Castro's Overture,"
War/Peace Report, September 1983, 4.
107.Castro selecting new Soviet Ambassador in Arkady N.
Shevchenko, Breaking with Moscow. New York: Ballantine, 1985,
187.
108.Khrushchev was not crazy, nor was he a masochist, so it is
highly improbable that, as he later claimed in his memoirs, he had
decided to give nuclear missiles to Castro just after the Cuban
leader had expelled the Soviet Ambassador and his KGB operatives
from Cuba.
109.There is evidence that Castro has been secretly trying to
develop his own means of mass destruction, through research and
development of chemical, bacteriological and nuclear weapons.
After the missile crisis Castro began experimenting with missile
technology, using modified Mig 21s as a platform for his coming
nuclear bomb. See Juan Vivs, Los amos de Cuba. Buenos Aires,
Emec, 1982, 181-183. For Castro's research for nuclear and other
weapons see John Barron, "Castro, Cocaine and the A-Bomb
Connection," Reader's Digest, March 1990, 69-70.
110.I know about recent claims that nuclear warheads were actually
on the island, and that more were bound for Cuba in Soviet ships.
But CIA reports at the time consistently denied the presence of
nuclear warheads in Cuba. Also, American planes, flying low over
the missile sites and the Soviets ships, never detected any of the
radiation that would be expected from nuclear warheads. The
technology to detect radiation existed at the time. In the 1960s the
NEDS 900 series of radiation detectors had been developed and
deployed in the Dardanelles as a way to monitor the presence of
nuclear weapons aboard Soviet warships transiting the strait from
the Black Sea. It makes sense to believe, therefore, that the
Americans had the means to detect radiation from nuclear warheads
leaving Cuba, without having to board the Soviet ships. But, again,
no mention is made of this important fact in any of the declassified
documents on the Cuban missile crisis. Therefore, either the
Americans detected no radiation from the Soviet ships, and they
kept the fact secret, or they simply forgot that they had the means to
check indirectly the presence of nuclear warheads, or they never
tried to detect radiation from nuclear warheads because they were
pretty sure there never were any in the island.
The main force behind a concerted effort to prove that nuclear
warheads were in Cuba is Robert McNamara, whose main goal is to
justify his policies as Secretary of Defense during the Kennedy
administration. Recently McNamara has found support for his
theories from none other than his former executive action target,
Fidel Castro, and from a group of Russians, among them, Sergei
Mikoyan, an old KGB hand. It is difficult to believe, however, as
some researchers now affirm, that Soviet field officers in Cuba had
been authorized to use tactical nuclear warheads without further
authorization from Moscow, since a single nuclear warhead fired
by Russian troops in Cuba would had been tantamount to nuclear
suicide for the Soviet Union. Also, McNamara, Castro, and the
KGB operatives are a very questionable source of intelligence. The
appraisal or evaluation of items of information or intelligence is
indicated by a standard letter-number system. The evaluation
simultaneously concerns both the credibility of the information
itself - a process involving a check against information already in
hand, and an educated guess as to the new information - and the
reliability of the source. The two cannot be totally separated from
each other. The authoritativeness of the source can never be
ignored, though it is sometimes overdone in the light of the
credibility of the information. The system is shown below:
Reliability of the SourceAccuracy of InformationA- Completely
reliable1- Confirmed by other sourcesB- Usually reliable2-
Probably trueC- Fairly reliable3- Possibly trueD- Not usually
reliable4- DoubtfulE- Unreliable5- ImprobableF- Reliability cannot
be judged6- Truth cannot be judged
Both evaluations should be entirely independent, and they are
indicated in accordance with the system shown above. Thus,
information adjudged to be "probably true" received from a source
considered to be "usually reliable" is designated "B2". To the
question of how reliable is Robert S. McNamara as a source, I
would like to bring this example. In his book Out of the Cold (New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), McNamara claims that "The
Soviet response of the following day [he is talking about October
23, 1962] was menacing: The Ministry of Defense placed its
missile, bomber and submarine forces on alert and cancelled all
leaves," (p. 64). But one of the more striking things of the Cuban
missile crisis is that, contrary to McNamara's claims, the Soviets
never placed their troops, nor the civilian defense, under alert. This
astonishing fact is mentioned on most accounts of the crisis.
Recently declassified top secret CIA documents (CIA, The Secret
Cuban Missile Crisis Documents. Washington, D. C.: Brasseys
(US), 1944) confirm the fact. A top secret CIA memo of October 25
clearly states that "We still see no signs of any crash procedure in
measures to increase the readiness of Soviet armed forces," p. 304.
A top secret memo of October 26 gives the first indications of a
state of alert, but in some european satellite countries, p. 316. It is
only on October 27 that a top secret CIA memo clearly
aknowledges that "No significant redeployment of Soviet ground,
air or naval forces have been noted. However, there are continuing
indications of increased readiness among some units," p. 328. (See
also note 113). Coming from a writer or scholar such false
information as the one brought by McNamara may be attributed to
faulty or sloppy research. Coming from him, who had acces to that
information at the time of the crisis, it is simply a lie. Therefore,
seen under the light of the system for the evaluation of information
given above, McNamara's claim that nuclear warheads were actually
on cuban soil is probably no higher than a D4 - reliability of the
source: not usually reliable / accuracy of information: doubtful. As
of Castro and the Russians I encourage the reader to make his own
evaluation.
The question of what is authoritative and what is not is very
relative. A highly authoritative source may produce credible
information, but the intelligence officer must always ask himself
the question "Why?" The higher the authoritativeness of the source,
the higher the danger of disinformation. There is evidence that the
CIA had recruited scholars at the most prestigious American
universities.
From the point of view of intelligence, a stolen document is often
more valuable than a gratuitously conveyed secret from whatever
source, since it diminishes the risk of deliberately misleading
information. The "why?", however, does not apply only to the
danger of planted information. It must also be asked of the source
whose bona fides is beyond question. The danger here is of an
intelligence service believing what it wants to believe - a problem
that has affected all the world's intelligence services at one time or
another. The problem of the bias of the evaluator is one that is
unavoidable in intelligence; it extends even to information of
fullest credibility from the most reliable sources.
Bias in evaluation can never be fully overcome in an intelligence
service and, more importantly, in high government circles, and it
can only be compounded by creating evaluators to evaluate the
evaluators. Superpatriots, doctrinaire partisans, politicians,
bureaucratic climbers, people of provincial outlook - all are
potential dangers to sound intelligence evaluation. Perspective,
perspicacity, worldliness, a soundly philosophical outlook, the
knowledge and sense of history and perhaps a bit of skepticism -
these are the individual qualities which minimize error in the
interpretation and evaluation of information.
The problem with accepting the fact that there were no nuclear
warheads on Cuban soil, or on their way to the island, is that it
blows away all the grand theories developed and supported by the
American establishment and tacitly accepted by the Soviets. As
James Angleton used to say, "The past telescopes into the present."
There are some researchers who honestly believe the theory - some
of them even claim to have seen the actual Soviet documents - that
proves that nuclear warheads were actually in Cuba. These
researchers are wedded to the theory that "facts explain events"
which, in the last resort, depends on the way in which you choose
your facts. They seem to forget that facts are just information, and
information is not true intelligence until it has been validated. As a
rule, a counterintelligence analysts believe that only information
that has been taken from the enemy and turned over is bona fide
intelligence. But if the enemy had intended it to be turned over, it is
disinformation. Some intelligence officers think that intelligence
could be distinguished from deception by judging how well it fits
in with the rest of the intelligence reports. If it neatly dovetails with
other validated reports, it is assumed to be valid intelligence. The
case for the nuclear warheads on Cuban soil, however, has more
holes than Swiss cheese. First of all, it doesn't fit in with the rest of
the available data. Secondly, it presupposes, among other things,
that Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet military, and the Soviet
intelligence were inept fools. But we know for sure that this was
not the case. That theory is probably good for polishing some egos
at home, but nobody, particularly in the American intelligence
services, is going to buy it. For a fascinating and extremely well
annotated transcription of the discussions this group of
professional liars held in Havana in January 1922, see James G.
Blish, Bruce J. Allyn and David A. Welch, Cuba on the Brink:
Castro, the Missile Crisis, and the Soviet Collapse. New York:
Pantheon, 1993.
111.There are suspicions that, as late as 1960, even some units of
the newly created Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces were not getting
real missiles, but dummies. See Viktor Suvorov (pseud.) Inside the
Soviet Army. New York: Berkley Books, 1983, 69.
112.Strong evidence indicates that Penkovsky was either a Soviet
plant or had been compromised from the very beginning by Russian
intelligence. See, Chapman Pincher, Their Trade is Treachery.
London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1981, 183-187. Also, it seems that
CIA's James J. Angleton was never convinced of Penkovsky's bona
fides. See, David C. Martin, Wilderness of Mirrors. New York:
Ballantine, 1980, 221. Further evidence that Penkovsky must have
been compromised from the beginning are allegations of
questionable tradecraft practices. For example: on his first trip to
London Penkovsky met twenty Soviet defectors; an apartment was
made available to him for an affair with a woman from the Soviet
embassy; a large number of persons met him in Paris and in
England; he not merely photographed top secret documents, but
sometimes actually gave his controllers the original documents. See
Greville Wynne, Contact on Gorky Street. New York: Atheneum,
1968. For an interesting discussion of Penkovsky and the doubts
about his bona fides, see Richard Deacon "C" - A Biography of Sir
Maurice Oldfield. London: MacDonald, 1985, 130-138. Sir
Olfield's words about Penkovsky on p. 131). Also, there is the
possibility that Penkovsky was never shot and was still living in
Russia under a different name. Victor Marchetti claimed that, after
Penkovsky allegedly had been executed, someone in the CIA had
said, "Why don't we try to contact him?" and that this suggestion
had led to the agency's becoming "involved with mediums."
(Marchetti on Penkovsky in Martin Ebon, Psychic Warfare. New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1983, 193-194) But, after knowing the
particularities of the Penkovsky case, one may guess that the CIA
guy may have in fact not been talking about contacting Penkovsky
through any psychic with mediumnistic abilities, but directly in
Russia.
113.At 10:00 in the morning of Tuesday the 23rd of October, CIA
Director John McCone reported a strange thing to the ExComm: no
signs of a general alert of Soviet forces in Cuba or around the globe
had been reported. He also said that the Russians were beginning to
camouflage the missile sites. Nobody could explain why they had
waited so long to do so. As late as Friday, October 26, American
intelligence reported from Cuba, from Moscow, and from the
United Nations, that the Russians were not ready for war.
Surprisingly enough, even at that late date, the Soviets had made no
attempt to mobilize their civil defense nor to prepare the population
for the eventual use of fallout shelters. This was quite significant,
because the Soviets had devoted considerable effort to instructing
their civilian population in civil defense and had invested
considerably in fall out shelters.
114.Ron Rosenbaum, "The Shadow of the Mole." Harper's, October
1983, 5. (Italics in original).
115.The term comes from medieval philosophy, and denotes a class
of entities existing only in the imagination.
116.The term military-industrial complex was coined by President
Eisenhower in his farewell speech in January 1961.
117.KGB accepting Castro's ideas in Shevchenko, Breaking with
Moscow. 187.
118.A 1983 Rand study estimates the Soviet "burden of empire" in
the Third World to have increased from roughly $18 billion in 1971
to $41 billion in 1981. See, Charles Wolf et al., The Costs of the
Soviet Empire. Santa Monica, Calif.: The Rand Corporation, 1983,
9. There is also evidence of Soviet disenchantment over its
involvement in Cuba, Nicaragua, Angola and Ethiopia.
119.Edward Jay Epstein, Deception: The Invisible War Between
the KGB and the CIA. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989, 286.
Copyright c 1996 by Servando Gonzalez.
All rights reserved.
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