Cuba: The Great Pulverizer

by Servando Gonzalez

"The Soviet government has reached certain accords with the American government. But his does not mean that we have renounced the right to have the weapons we deem convenient and to take steps in international policy we deem convenient as a sovereign country."

-- Fidel Castro, January 2, 1963

In an editorial piece for the U.S. News and World Report, its Editor-in-Chief, Mortimer B. Zuckerman, wrote that "For 33 years America has tried to pulverize Cuba's economy." Of course, Mr. Zuckerman's assertion is true, and it is reprehensible that the United States had engaged in such behavior, but that is also an old story that has been repeated over and over ad nauseam. Instead, I would like to tell you about a less known story, a story that American liberals have been at pains trying to hide. A story about how for 33 years Fidel Castro has been trying to pulverize not the American economy, but America. No, I am not crazy and you have not read wrong. I am talking about Fidel Castro's plans and actions for the effective pulverization of the whole United States of America, from sea to shining sea.

Castro's Attempts to Destroy New York... and Beyond!

In December 1962, the Hearst-owned San Francisco Chronicle and News Call Bulletin published a UPI report informing how Ernesto "Ch‚" Guevara told a reporter in Havana that "to defend against aggression" Fidel Castro had planned a nuclear attack on key U.S. cities, including New York. Though the Chronicle buried the story on page 16, the News Call Bulletin ran a dramatic front-page headline in big, bold letters: "How Castro Plotted Atomic Attack on U.S.!" The Chronicle added that "Secretary of State Dean Rusk called Guevara's remark about a nuclear attack 'just talk'."

But Mr. Rusk was dead wrong. Guevara's remarks should not be dismissed as 'just talk.' In an editorial Guevara published in Verde Olivo, the Cuban Armed Forces weekly magazine during the missile crisis, he made clear his point, exhorting the Soviets to stand by their commitment to Cuba, no matter what the cost:

What we contend is that we must walk by the path of liberation even when it may cost millions of atomic victims, because in the struggle to death between two systems the only thing that can be considered is the definitive victory of socialism or its retrogression under the nuclear victory of imperialist aggression.

It is a matter of public record that Fidel Castro was extremely dissatisfied with the pacific solution of the Cuban missile crisis. The fact that nuclear war had been averted, and the Cubans had received a pledge of no invasion from the American government, was apparently not important for Castro. For him the kind of political solutions possible within the parameters of peaceful coexistence were no real solutions. They merely postponed what he believed was an inevitable final confrontation with American imperialism. Like always, Castro was itching for a fight -- in this case the definitive fight, a nuclear one.

Castro's position was clearly expressed through some of his closest associates. A year after the missile crisis, Ch‚ Guevara wrote: "There can be no bargaining, no half measures, no partial guarantees of a country's stability. The victory must be total." A month later, Ra£l Castro, head of Cuba's armed forces, reiterated his brother's militant opposition to peaceful coexistence, saying, "We must never establish peaceful coexistence with our enemies."

The evidence indicates that, for a long time, Fidel Castro has been dreaming about pulverizing the United States. Not only dreaming. He has taken strong steps to fulfilling his cherished dream. And, don't be misled by the relatively small size of the island of Cuba when compared with the United States. Rest assured that Castro is no small enemy. Herbert Matthews, probably one of the Americans who better knew Castro, once said that "He is the most dangerous enemy that the United States has ever had in the Western Hemisphere."

Guevara's statement about Castro's planned nuclear attack came just a few weeks after the end of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. A careful reading of Khrushchev's memoirs indicate that the Soviet Premier was fully aware of Castro's dreams of nuclear power and Khrushchev tried to use them to his advantage. As a matter of fact, to overcome Castro's initial reticence to accept the farfetched idea of deploying strategic missiles in Cuban soil, Khrushchev enticed him with a tempting nuclear bait, probably suspecting that Castro's plans would contemplate an attempt to grab the Soviet missiles for his own use.

In 1975 Castro told Senator George S. McGovern that, during the crisis, he would have taken a harder line than Khrushchev -- which shows that "Nuke 'em" LeMay was not the only kook at large at the time. Castro went even further and demanded an assurance from Khrushchev that, if the U.S. invaded Cuba, the Soviet Union would launch a nuclear attack against the United States. But, apparently not happy with the Soviet Premier's non-committal answer to his plight, Castro took some specific steps to "help" Khrushchev's finger push the button.

A few days before the onset of the crisis, on October 3, 1962, Castro sent to New York one of his trusted men on a key mission. The man chosen for the job was Roberto Santiesteban Casanova, who had just been appointed to an inconspicuous post at the Cuban mission to the United Stations. His diplomatic passport identified him as an "attach‚" to the Cuban mission. Santiesteban's professional field, however, was not diplomacy. Quite the contrary, he was an expert in terrorist techniques, just graduated from a secret School of terrorism and subversion, not far from Havana.

As soon as Santiesteban arrived in New York, he contacted the rest of his team, including Jos‚ G¢mez Abad and his wife Elsa, both attach‚s at the Cuban mission, and Jos‚ Garc¡a Orellana, a Cuban immigrant who ran a costume jewelry shop in Manhattan. FBI estimates of how many others were involved in the plot range from twenty-five to fifty people. The mission of the terrorist team was to accomplish Castro's orders to blow up a big portion of Manhattan, including the Statue of Liberty, Macy's department store, several subway stations, the 42nd street bus terminal and Grand Central station, as well as several refineries along the New Jersey shore, including the Humble Oil and Refining Company in Linden. To this effect they stored a huge cache of explosives at Garcia's shop.

But the saboteur's plan was too ambitious and included too many people, and soon the FBI got word of it and detained the main conspirators. Had their plan worked out the way it had been conceived, it would undoubtedly have ignited American public opinion and asked for retaliation against Cuba. Had it occurred during the tense days of the crisis it may have been taken for a Russian preemptive attack on the United States and may have triggered a spasm-like retaliatory strike on the Soviet Union, with unpredictable consequences. Fortunately, the plan failed, but Fidel Castro is a very resourceful man. After his failed attempt to create a provocation which may have brought a nuclear confrontation between the superpowers, Castro produced another ace from up his sleeve.

It is a well known fact that, at the apex of the crisis, an American U-2 spy plane was shot down on the eastern part of Cuba by a Soviet surface-to-air missile. Several explanations, some of them conflicting among themselves, have been given to explain that bizarre event, but most people agrees that the missile was fired against orders from Khrushchev and the Soviet high command.

Following Castro's orders, and disregarding Soviet advice, on the morning of October 27, Saturday, Cuban antiaircraft artillery began firing at American low-flying reconnaissance planes, damaging at least one. As Castro himself told Tad Szulc, "I am absolutely certain that if the low-level flights had been resumed we would have shot down one, two, or three of these planes. ... With so many batteries firing, we would have shot down some planes. I don't know whether this would have started nuclear war." But the powerful surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) were under the Soviet's tight control, and the Cubans had no access to the bases and didn't know how to operate them. Nevertheless, at about 10:00 a.m. of that same Saturday morning, an American U-2 was shot down by a SAM fired from a battery at Los Angeles, near Banes, in the Oriente province.

Some years later, in 1989, Alexei Alekseyev, former Soviet ambassador to Cuba and a senior KGB officer, said that the U-2 was shot down by a "trigger-happy Soviet air defense commander." Alekseyev's claim, however, is hard to believe. The Soviet military, and especially the Soviet air defense, has rigid standards and operating procedures. Its military doctrine and practice reflects a do-it-by-the-book attitude. No Soviet officer would give such order unless he is out of his mind or forced to do it. Other explanations, therefore, seem to better fit the picture.

Carlos Franqui, former editor of Revoluci¢n now living in exile in Italy, and a close associate of Castro at the time, wrote some time ago that Castro himself told him he had personally pushed the button which sent the missile that shot down the U-2.

According to Franqui, Fidel was eager for a nuclear confrontation between the USSR and the United States and had been growing restless as the crisis evolved. At one time, wrote Franqui, Fidel "went on to say that if he were in Moscow, he would send the government to the subway, which was supposed to be safe during a nuclear attack." Franqui tells a bizarre version of the shoot down of the U-2 over Cuba. According to Franqui,

One day, with a look of astuteness on his face I remembered from the guerrilla days, he said, "Now I'm going to find out if they'll invade or not, if this is for real or not." He said nothing more and drove his jeep to Pinar del R¡o. ... Fidel went to one of the Russian rocket bases, where the Soviet generals took him on a tour of the installation. Just at that moment an American U-2 appeared on the radar screen, flying low over the island. Fidel asked how the Soviets would protect themselves in war if that had been an attack plane instead of a reconnaissance plane. The Russians showed him the ground-to-air missiles and said that all they would have to do would be to push a button and the plane would be blown out of the sky. "Which button?" "This one." Fidel pushed it and the rocket brought down the U-2. ... The Russians were flabbergasted, but Fidel simply said, "Well, now we'll see if there's a war or not."

Franqui's story, most likely based on hearsay, is hard to believe. First, the U-2 was not shot down in Pinar del R¡o, west of Havana, but in the Oriente province, more than 500 miles east of Havana. Second, the type of surface-to-air missile fired by the Russians is an early-type model which requires more than simply pushing a button. It has to be carefully guided by radar until it reaches its target. Therefore, the whole story has to be more complicated. But Franqui's account may contain at least a grain of truth.

According to Seymour Hersh, there is strong evidence that, on October 26, 1962, a Cuban army unit attacked and overran a Soviet-manned SAM base at Los Angeles, near Banes, in the Oriente province, killing many Soviets and seizing control of the site. Hersh based his article on information partly drawn from an interview with former Department of Defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg, who was himself citing classified material from a post- crisis study of the event. The speculation is based on an intercepted transmission from the Soviet base at Los Angeles indicating heavy fighting and casualties. Adrian Montoro, former director of Radio Havana Cuba, seems to confirm Ellsberg's thesis.

Though both Castro and the Russians categorically deny that the attack took place, Raymond L. Garthoff, Special Assistant for Soviet bloc Political/Military Affairs in the State Department during the Kennedy administration, claims that, in fact, from October 28, the Cuban army did surround the Soviet missile bases for three days. It is clear that Castro's ultimate goal was to precipitate a nuclear confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States.

Castro's Search for the Great Equalizer

Starting in the early 1960s, the Soviet Union under Khrushchev's guidance sought to moderate its relations with the United States. In the Soviet view, the threat of mutual annihilation in a nuclear war overshadowed the immediate conflict between the socialist and capitalist camps. At the XX Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956, the Soviets proclaimed their commitment to a new program of peaceful coexistence with the capitalist powers. Thereafter, they claimed, the struggle between Washington and Moscow would be peaceful and conducted solely in the political, economic, and social fields. It seems that at the time the Soviets were convinced that in the long run their superior economic and social system would triumph, if in the short run a nuclear conflagration could be averted.

But, to their surprise, Castro disagreed. Although the Cubans too were committed to avoiding nuclear war, they would not allow its threat to weaken their determination to struggle against world imperialism. The Third World, in Castro's view, could not afford to wait for the eventual triumph of socialism. Their life and death battles were being fought now.

As early as 1962, Castro began raising some highly critical questions about the Soviet commitment to peaceful coexistence. In a communiqu‚ issued from Havana during the January 1962 meeting of the International Organization of Journalists, Castro outlined his dissenting view of peaceful coexistence:

"The policy of peaceful coexistence is coexistence between states. This does not mean coexistence of classes. This policy does not mean coexistence between exploitation and the exploited. It is impossible for peaceful coexistence to exist between the exploited masses of Latin America and the Yankee monopolies. . . . As long as imperialism exists, international class war will exist between the exploited masses and the monopolies. (((Castro's speech at the 1962 meeting of the International Organization of Journalists in Andr‚s Su rez, Cuba: Castroism and Communism, 1959-66. Boston: MIT Press, 1967, 144.)))"

As history has shown once and again, Fidel Castro is a very stubborn person. After his failed attempts to spoil our day in 1962, he persisted in his goal, which became a sort of id‚e fixe . The first indication that he had his own plans came when he surprised the Soviets by rejecting the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 and refusing to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968.

By 1967, Castro's criticism of peaceful coexistence had become strident and was no longer limited to philosophical considerations. In Castro's view, peaceful coexistence had become a primary issue of the socialist's camp policy. The military struggle against imperialism should not be limited by concerns about peaceful coexistence.

It is interesting to notice that, as it always happens for some strange reason, Castro's views were very similar to the views of both the Russian and American miliary-industrial-academic-complexes, which view Khrushchev's doctrine of pacific coexistence as a direct threat to their economic interests and opposed it nail and tooth.

Following Castro's line, in May of that year the Castroite Cuban Communist Party issued the following statement:

If the concept of peaceful coexistence between states with different social systems does not guarantee the integrity, sovereignty, and independence of all countries alike, large and small, it is essentially opposed to the premises of Proletarian Internationalism. What kind of peace are the Vietnamese enjoying? What kind of coexistence is the U. S. practicing in that country? (((Cuban Communist Party statement on peaceful coexistence in Granma Weekly Review, May 21, 1967.)))

In early 1968 the UN General Assembly opened discussions on a multilateral agreement to curb the spread of nuclear weapons. The discussions resulted in the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Since it was opened for signature in 1968, 113 countries, including all the nuclear-weapons states, have signed the treaty. But, during the Non-Proliferation Treaty discussions, Cuban UN delegate Ra£l Roa Kour¡ clearly expressed Castro's position when he asserted that "Cuba would never give up its inalienable right to defend itself using weapons of any kind, despite any international agreement."

In the same fashion, Castro had earlier refused to sign the Tlatelolco agreement of 1967. Shortly after the missile crisis of October 1962, the heads of state of seven Latin American countries called for hemispheric consultations to create a nuclear-free zone in Latin America. The agreement was finally signed in Tlatelolco, Mexico, in February of 1967. Cuba was among the countries invited to participate, but the Castro government refused, stating that it would not participate in the negotiation of an agreement to denuclearize Latin America because the U.S. deploys nuclear weapons and maintains nuclear bases in Latin America. Castro's posture in relation with the Tlatelolco agreement was in sharp contrast with the policy of the Soviet Union.

Juan Viv‚s, a former Cuban intelligence officer who defected to the West, claims that, for several years after the missile crisis, Castro tried unsuccessfully to build his own missile capable of carrying nuclear weapons. For the ultra secret project he recruited military engineers and professors from Cuban universities. The missile, a sort of primitive V-1 bomb, would use a MiG-21 jet motor. The testing of the prototypes of the Cuban missile, called libertadoras, (liberators) was a series of failures, but in 1977 the project was still active. According to Viv‚s, Castro said that the missiles were not intended as an offensive weapon, but they would be used against the U.S. in case of an American attack against Cuba. Cuban nuclear capability at the time seemed remote, so Castro used to talk about using the missiles for bacteriological warfare.

After his missile failure, Castro's nuclear dream was postponed, but not forgotten. In 1989 General Rafael del Pino, the highest ranking Cuban defector, said that at the time of the Grenada operation in 1983, Castro ordered Cuban MiG 23 pilots to program their computers to attack targets in Florida. Among the selected targets was the Turkey Point nuclear plant, which Castro said had the potential of producing a nuclear disaster larger than Chernobyl. According to del Pino, Castro's words were: "I don't have nuclear bombs, but I can produce a nuclear explosion." In another interview, del Pino said that, in 1968, when a group of Cubans were authorized to recover a MiG-17 taken to the U. S. by a defector, Cuban agents secretly made detailed photographs of Homestead Air Force Base in Florida. The base, del Pino said, had been targeted for an air attack by Cuban planes. The intention of the attack, Castro told the Cuban Air Force officers, was to provoke the United States into an even stronger action "so the Soviet Union would become involved."

Castro Goes Nuclear... Powered

In December, 1971, Castro announced his intention to turn to nuclear power for electricity generation in Cuba. Since that date, two Soviet-designed VVER-440 nuclear power reactors have been under construction at Juragu , not far from the city of Cienfuegos, in Cuba's southern coast, about 150 miles south of Key West. The Soviet VVER-440 reactors are known to be fatally flawed -- poorly designed, made with defective materials and assembled incompetently, allowing for many unsafe welds in their critical cooling systems.

But, having in mind Castro's previous attempts to have the bomb, this nuclear program raises new questions about the real nature of his nuclear ambitions. As professor Michael Mandelbaum has pointed out, it doesn't take a superpower to pose a nuclear threat. Any small, poor country with a few nuclear explosives and the means to deliver them could wreak terrible damage to the United States. Well, Castro's Cuba is a small, poor country just ninety miles off Florida, who has been desperately trying to get nuclear capability and has the means to deliver its deadly radiation to the U. S. simply by allowing the wind to do the job.

In 1977 Castro was interviewed by Brazilian journalist Fernando Morais. In the course of the interview Morais brought the subject of the nuclear plants being built in Cuba. Castro answered that, because Cuba lacks big rivers or lakes, in the future he planned to depend mostly on nuclear-generated power. But he ended the interview with this rather enigmatic remark: "And, in the future, all new power-generating units will have nuclear energy as its power source. That's the news I can give you. For the present, we don't plan to built any atomic bomb." (emphasis mine) Perhaps Castro intended his last remark as a joke. If this was the case, it was a very bad one. Later developments in Cuba, however, indicate that, Castro's words to Morais were not a joke, but rather a slip of the tongue.

Juan Antonio Rodr¡guez Menier, a senior Cuban intelligence officer who defected in 1987 and is now living in the U.S., claims that he positively knows that Castro has been actively seeking the possibility of having nuclear weapons. The fact, Rodr¡guez claims, was common knowledge among Cuban senior intelligence officers. It has been corroborated by other sources.

As early as mid-1980s Castro begun a very secret nuclear-bomb research project. Most of the hard currency he needed for the project was coming from his involvement in the narcotics trade and perhaps explains one of the reasons why he decided to collaborate with the Latin American drug barons. The research, under the direction of Castro's son, nuclear engineer Fidel Castro D¡az- Balart, was been conducted at two installations, one located between Jibacoa and Arroyo Bermejo beaches, on the north coast of Cuba, not far from Havana, and at another one in Las Villas province. Furthermore, there is no indication as how the Cubans will dispose of the waste from the weapons-grade uranium they will use to power their 10-megawatt Soviet-designed research reactor. The reactor is similar to Iraq's Soviet-made IRT 10-megawatt research reactor, which was a key element of that nation's military nuclear program until it was bombed by U.S. planes during the Gulf War. In 1982 Castro D¡az told an associate that they were very close to acquiring the necessary knowledge to produce a nuclear weapon. The facilities also were involved in research on nerve gases and bacteriological weapons that could be delivered to the U.S. by different ways. In the early 1990s Castro ordered to built another large nuclear research complex at Pedro Pi, southeast of Havana. The facility occupies a seven-square-mile area and contains 27 buildings. Moreover, as late as 1991, a U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency report indicated that Castro was still showing a strong interest in acquiring material capable of producing nuclear weapons. Strong concerns have been raised in the U.S. about safety standards at the Juragu  nuclear plant. Nuclear power plants are prone to accidents and their normal operation is risky. Among the main risks -- aside from operation accidents -- is the fact that some of the materials required for its operation, like plutonium and weapons-grade enriched uranium, could be used in building nuclear artifacts. But, given Castro's megalomaniac dreams, the main concerns about the nuclear plant in under construction in Cuba should not only be limited to the possibility of an accidental meltdown, but to an intentional explosion and subsequent radiation leaks from the Juragu  plant. It would be easier for Castro, and the results will be just the same, to resort to sabotaging his nuclear plant in Cuba's southern coast than bombing the American ones in Florida. Just by cutting off a few minutes the flow of coolant may result in a meltdown and release of deadly radioactivity.

As soon as the Soviet authorities knew about the accident at Chernobyl they acted swiftly to mitigate its consequences, but not even their desperate efforts stopped radiation from spreading across most parts of Europe from the very start of the accident. Just a few days after, prevailing upper-level winds brought radiation to the Arabian Peninsula, Siberia and parts of Canada.

Scientists at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told NBC reporters that a Chernobyl-like accident in Cuba would have catastrophic consequences for the United States: "The day after [a nuclear disaster in Cuba] could witness radioactive fallout stretch[ing] from Key West to Managua, Nicaragua. [By] day three, the cloud could cover Miami and Tampa, Florida. Within the first week, most of the Western Seaboard, portions of Texas and Louisiana, plus all of Mexico might be at risk."

If Chernobyl serves as an example, given the right weather conditions, a nuclear "accident" at the Juragu  plant will spoil the day for most people living in Florida, the East Coast and Southern states. A similar type of event in Cuba, a country without the resources and perhaps not even the willingness to fight the accident, may result in even higher levels of radiation.

Gary Milhoun, a nuclear non-proliferation expert and former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, pointed out that even a low-level contamination from a nuclear plant in Cuba will trigger an exodus in Florida that would disrupt most of the southern states. Also, Juan Oro, a nuclear scientist who worked at the Center for Nuclear Investigation in Cuba, said that if a reactor explodes in Cuba, "Heavy isotopes can be released into the atmosphere... I can assure you that in highly dynamic atmospheric conditions, probably by the second day, it will be over Atlanta; by the sixth day it could be over places more farther to the North -- not with lethal effects or even much less than that -- but the ecological impact could be felt at a point near the Great Lakes."

Castro's Armageddon Dreams

On a speech he delivered on October, 1991, to the Fourth Congress of his "Communist" party, Castro, in an address that sounded like an ardent call to collective suicide, called on the Cuban people to prepare themselves for catastrophe, war and martyrdom. Author Andr‚s Oppenheimer observed that the words 'death' and 'blood' permeated his rhetoric, as if he had already resigned himself to the inevitability of a tragic ending. Like a cornered animal, his eyes spilling rancor, he vowed to die -- taking the Cuban people with him -- rather than allow La Revoluci¢n to be sullied by Yankee imperialists. Cubans, Castro seems to believe, would redeem themselves only by dying in battle against their enemies.

And then Castro proceeded to recite what Cubans on the street soon will refer to as "Fidel's Ode to Death":

"We are invincible. Because if all members of the Politburo have to die, we will die, and we will not be weaker for it! If all members of the Central Committee have to die, we will die, and we will not be weaker for it! If all the delegates to the Congress have to die, all the delegates to the Congress will die, and we will not be weaker for it! . . . If all the members of the Party have to die, all the members of the Party will die, and we will not weaken! If all members of the Young Communist Union have to die, all the members of the Young Communist Union will die!

During this seemingly never-ending socio-economic crisis, which Castro euphemistically calls the "special period," he is reciting a new mantra for the weary Cuban populace: "Socialism or Death!" Apparently some Cubans don't want either socialism or death, because they have been taking to the ocean in inner tubes by the hundreds, trying to escape from Castro's mad house and looking for other options.

Evidence of strange activities in Cuba indicate that Fidel Castro has been toying with the idea of a nuclear holocaust and is preparing himself for the event. Newsweek reported in early 1992 that, since 1991, Castro is building a massive network of underground tunnels and concrete shelters, allegedly to protect the Cuban people from U.S. bombs. Later inquiries brought out that, at least since 1981, more than 10,000 Cuban troops were working 24 hours a day digging an intricate network of concrete-reinforced tunnels and bunkers beneath Havana and other parts of the island. It is believed that some of these tunnels could house an entire division of troops, plus tanks and equipment.

But Fidel is not preparing himself to survive, "some kind of final cataclysm," as Newsweek reported. He is preparing himself to survive, or perhaps to die, after a Castro-made cataclysm that will make Chernobyl look pale in comparison. That is, seemingly, his idea for a final solution to his "American problem."

In October, 1992, it was unexpectedly announced that Castro's son, Fidel Castro D¡az, had been fired from his post as Executive Secretary of the Cuban Atomic Energy Commission and as Director of the Cuban atomic energy program. The concise note, appeared in Granma, gave no reasons for the causes of the demotion. Some have speculated that it had to do with the problems plaguing the construction of the Juragu  nuclear plant. But others believe that Castro fired his son because of his failure to produce the promised nuclear bomb.

Signs that Castro has been preparing himself for a G”tterd„mmerung are clear for anyone to see. Since the early nineties he has been consistently talking in his speeches about the ancient Numantians, who chose to die instead of being conquered, and ending his speeches exhorting the Cubans to "Socialism or Death!" He has adopted an increasingly apocalyptic tone in public speeches. Cuba, he has told on several occasions to his audience, would better sink in the sea rather than return to the corrupt capitalist world.

In its March 6 issue, the authoritative Jane's Defence Weekly published a short note under the headline: "Cuban special forces prepare for US attack." The note tells about how, since 1990, Cuban Special Forces troops have been training for the possibility of an attack directed at some parts of the continental United States, most likely Florida. Intensive training courses have been ongoing, at least since 1990, under a training program provided by Vietnam, at the Vietnam People's Army base at Hoa Binh, an inland town south-west of Hanoi.

Understandably, that note may strike most Americans as insane. Castro attacking the United States? Are you kidding? But one most never forget that we are dealing here with a very special individual, with a different mindset. Castro's plans, therefore, should be taken into serious consideration.

Contrary to what common logic may indicate, an attack by Castro's forces on the United States, will not be a suicidal one. Castro has shown, over and over, that the element of surprise is ever present in his plans. Florida is teeming with Castro's secret agents, a fifth column who will create, in coordination with a military attack, chaos and panic, disrupting communications and taking control of vital centers in Florida. Also, it is safe to surmise that Castro's plans include recruiting allies among malcontent minorities in Florida, most likely blacks. Liberty City, for example, may become a strong source of military support for Castro. If Castro is not stupid, and he has proved that he is not, a military attack by Cuban forces on Florida will be coordinated with riots and uprisings in some American cities where there is a strong anti-American sentiment among minorities. Most likely places for this to happen are Washington, D.C., New York, and Los Angeles.

As crazy as it may sound, Castro's dreams of carrying out a putsch to overthrow the President of the United States and become the head of the American government are not new. Teresa Casuso, one of Castro's close associates until she defected in the early sixties, tells how Castro believed at heart that his long speech at the UN denouncing American imperialism, will galvanize Americans into action, provoking a Bogotazo-style spontaneous uprising, who will propel him to the White House.

I remember that in the early sixties, after the Bay of Pigs invasion, the following joke was heard among Rebel Army soldiers: Fidel tells Ra£l: "If the gringos try to invade us again, we will bring war to their own territory. We will invade the U.S." To what Ra£l answered: "And what are you going to do if we win?"

As I explain in detail in my coming book, The Secret Fidel Castro, contrary to common belief, Castro is a closet Gringophile. He not only loves baseball and basketball, but American films -- particularly cowboys films, in which the tall, lonely hero defies superior forces and wins, against all odds, in a last gunfight. It seems that Castro is preparing himself for a High Noon. As Larry Rohter put it in an article he wrote for the New York Times, what Castro still needs is a good fight.

In a speech he delivered last October at the United Nations, Castro made a remark that perhaps passed unnoticed to many of the delegates. In an obvious reference to the U. S. embargo on Cuba, he said: "We lay claim to a world without ruthless blockades that cause the death of men, women, and children, youth and elders, like noiseless atom bombs." (emphasis mine).

During the visit he paid later to Harlem, he delivered a very similar message, using almost the same words: "As we were saying today at the United Nations, it's [the blockade] like a noiseless atom bomb." The inference, therefore, is very clear. If the U. S. has used atom bombs (the blockade) against Cuba, then Castro believes he has the right to defend himself in kind, using atom bombs against the United States.

Lately, after his recent visit to New York, Castro seemed to be in great spirits. But there is no evidence to show that he has reformed. Sooner than later things will turn sour again in his proletarian paradise (he's a sort of King Midas with short-circuited cables) and his dark dreams will return, with unpredictable consequences. A glimpse of things to come was his decision to shoot-down two small American civilian planes flying beyond Cuba's territorial waters, just because he "felt humiliated."

Castro's behavior, though shocking, came as no surprise for people who really know him. In his book The Fourth Floor, Earl E. T. Smith, former U.S. ambassador to Cuba from 1957 until Castro took power in 1959, tells how he made an intensive research into Castro's background and spent days talking to people who had known him closely from childhood. "It was the unanimous opinion of these people," writes Smith, "that Fidel was an unstable terrorist."

On the other hand, let me make clear that I am not making any value judgement on Castro's actions. Since he was very young he has been craving for America's love and respect. A letter Castro wrote when he was a twelve-year-old to President Roosevelt is a strong proof of it. But, save for a short honeymoon in early 1959, the United States has given him neither love nor respect, which, if not justified, at least explains why he has been acting all these years like a scorned lover.

Over the years Castro has seen, time and again, how Americans only respect force, particularly pulverizing force. As a matter of fact, the architects of American foreign policy match Castro in most counts -- it was the United States the first and only nation to use the atom bomb to pulverize human beings. It makes sense, then, that Castro, a copycat of American foreign policy who desperately craves for American love and respect, wants to become a pulverizer himself. And, if his pulverizing plans become reality, I don't know if the folks at the People's Republic of Berkeley are going to continue loving Fidel Castro, but I am sure that everybody in the U.S. is going to show a lot of respect for him.

Political scientists have been talking lately about what they call "crazy states." Though several definitions have been given, the most accurate is that crazy states are the ones under the absolute control of crazy leaders. But it is a big mistake to think that because the person controlling a state is a lunatic, he must be clumsy, erratic, or incompetent in carrying out his irrational goals. As Hitler's early history has proved, it is a big mistake to underestimate the rationality of leaders who profess the craziest of ends. A crazy leader can be both wise and wily. Moreover, not being bounded by traditional moral or ethical restraints, he has a distinct advantage over his rational counterparts when he decides to choose his means.

As a crazy leader himself, Fidel Castro has always had an advantage. He is so utterly convinced of the rightness of his ends that he lacks ordinary inhibiting scruples in choosing his means. He has never had any moral or ethical conflicts when matching means and ends. He has always considered the instrumental value of his means, not their moral value.

If Castro is not yet the greatest pulverizer -- it was we who pulverized Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- it has not been for lack of trying. Contrary to the image most of the American media loves to portray, he has never been an innocent bystander in the pulverizing business. He is old, but he is not finished yet, and it is too early to tell his whole story. In 1961 Herbert Matthews called him "a prophet of doom." He was right. As long as he is alive and in power in Cuba he will persist in his nuclear Armageddon dreams. Seemingly his grandiose plan is to go to the trash can of history not with a whiff, but with a big bang.

One of Castro's biographers, Georgie Anne Geyer, says that she has always believed that, "given his absolutist and apocalyptic personality, if he felt he was cornered or doomed, he would go down in an Armageddon end like Hitler in the bunker. It now looks as though that stage has begun." Castro's own sister, Juana, said a long time ago that his brother's plans for Cuba are as sinister as Nero's for Rome.

Another of his biographers, Carlos Franqui, sees Castro's revolution as an instrument of revenge against his enemies. But the revolution as revenge, says Franqui, destroys not only the enemy, but the country, its natural resources and its freedom.

The Boy Without a Name

In an interview Castro gave in 1985 to Brazilian priest Frei Betto he gave some information about his childhood that may serve as a clue to understand the cause of Castro's destructive behavior. After asking Fidel a few questions about the place where he was born, Betto asks Castro if he was baptized at Bir n.

Betto - Were you baptized there?

Castro - No; I was baptized in Santiago de Cuba, several years after I was born.

Betto - How old were you then?

Castro - I think I was around five or six. I was one of the last children in my family to be baptized. . . . As a rule, everybody there had been baptized. I remember that those who hadn't been baptized were called Jews. I couldn't understand what the term Jew meant -- I'm referring to the time when I was four or five years old. I knew it was a very noisy, dark-colored bird, and every time somebody said, "He's a Jew," I thought they were talking about that bird. Those were my first impressions. Anyone who hadn't been baptized was a "Jew."

The fact that he was five or six years old and had not been yet baptized seems to have caused a profound impression in Castro, because a few moments later on the interview he brings the subject again:

I remained unbaptized, and I remember that people called me a Jew. They used to say, "He's a Jew." I was four or five and was already being criticized, for people were saying I was a Jew. I didn't know the meaning of the word Jew, but there was no doubt that it had a negative connotation, that it was something disgraceful. It was all because I hadn't been baptized, and I wasn't really to blame for that.

Betto doesn't follow up the subject, and the question of why Castro had not been baptized remains unanswered. But the fact is that it was a very strange thing, in the Cuba of the 1920s, to find a child born of Catholic parents who had not been baptized at such advanced age. That anomaly cannot be explained just because of the remoteness of the place, because, just a few moments before, Castro himself told Betto that, though there was no church close to the farm, a priest visited the area once a year to baptize the children. What Castro fails to tell Betto, however, is that the problem had nothing to do with the inaccessibility of the place, but with a fact that Castro is at pains to hide: his bastard origins.

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was the product of an extramarital affair of Angel Castro with his housemaid, Lina Ruz. Fidel was born at a small house Angel had built for Lina, just a few feet from the back of the main house, while Angel's legitimate wife was still living at the farm. Angel kept his two houses and his two wives, and other children from Lina were born after Fidel. The boy's legal situation was kept in limbo for many years, and it was not solved until after Angel's first wife died and he married Lina. That explains why several times Fidel was refused to be admitted to Santiago's religious schools when his family tried to enroll him.

But the fact that Fidel was a bastard was not the real impediment for not being baptized. Though it may not be the norm, bastard sons were abundant in the Cuban countryside, particularly at the beginning of the century. The real problem is that Fidel had been the product of a bigamous relationship, a fact strictly condemned by the Catholic Church and Cuban society at large.

But, then, perhaps lulled by the late night hour and by Frei Betto's calm stare, Castro tells the Brazilian priest one of the most strange revelations:

Castro - Yet, when I tell you why I'm called Fidel, you'll laugh. You'll see that the origin of the name isn't so idyllic. I had no name of my own. I was called Fidel because of somebody who was going to be my godfather.

Yes, you have not read wrong. Castro is telling Frei Betto that he was five or six years old and he had no name of his own. Which also means that not only he had not been baptized, but that his birth had not even been registered on the civil records. And a five- year-old boy without a name is an anomaly that, by force, had to make a profound negative impact in any child's life.

What type of problems, one may guess; what extraordinary situation may have existed to cause that a five-year-old boy to have no name? What feeling of loneliness, carelessness and lack of love may have suffered a child so ignored, so despised, to the point of not having been given a name? And what feelings of resentment and hatred may have felt that child against such a family and such a society which has denied him even the right of having a name?

Most likely such a situation provoked feelings of hatred and resentment so strong as to accompany him for his whole life. Feelings of hatred and resentment that neither power nor riches have been able to erase. Feelings of hatred and resentment against society and mankind, the ones to blame for his misfortune. Feelings of hatred and resentment which unconsciously have pushed him for his whole life to seek the destruction of all who he considers responsible for his pains -- even including his own destruction.

Notes

Zuckerman's editorial, "Let's Start Talking to Castro," May 15, 1995, 106.

Ch‚ Guevara on nuclear attacks and Rusk's remark in US Senate, Committee of the Judiciary, Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of Internal Security Act, "Castro's Network in the United States," Hearing, 88th Congress, First Session, Part 6, February 8, 1963.

Guevara's editorial in Verde Olivo, December 22, 1968. It is interesting that, though Guevara wrote the editorial in 1962, it was not published until 1968, when the Cuban-Soviet differences over armed struggle had finally come out in the open.

Ch‚ Guevara's words about no bargaining in Granma Weekly Review, December 22, 1963.

Ra£l Castro's opposition to peaceful coexistence in Andr‚s Su rez, Cuba: Castroism and Communism , 1959-66. Boston: MIT Press, 1967, 94.

Matthews about Castro in Herbert L. Matthews, Cuba . New York: Macmillan, 1964, 105; the story of the Cuban missile crisis is everywhere, but is wrong. Contrary to the claims of a bunch of professional liars, including Macnamara, Castro, and some Russians, there were never nuclear warheads in Cuba in 1962, but that's another story (See Fidel Castro Supermole in SUMERIA).

Castro demanding a harder line during crisis in U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, "Cuban Realities: May 1975," a Report by Senator George S. McGovern to the Committee on Foreign Relations, August 1975, 14.

Castro asking for assurances in Dino A. Brugioni, Eyeball To Eyeball. New York: Random House, 1991, 461; plot to destroy Manhattan in Andrew Tully, White Tie and Dagger. New York: Pocket Books, 1968, 74-78 (Tully mistakenly believes the plot was a Soviet idea, but it was Castro's), also in Andres Oppenheimer, Castro's Final Hour. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992.

Cuban artillery firing on low-flying planes and Castro's words to Tad Szulc in Daniel Ellsberg, "The Day Castro Almost Started World War III," The New York Times, October 31, 1987, A7.

Alekseyev claims about trigger-happy officer, and Soviet operating procedures in Brugioni, 462, 463.

Carlos Franqui's story in Family Portrait With Fidel. New York: Vintage, 1984, 193; Hersh's article, "Was Castro Out of Control in 1962?" in The Washington Post, October 11, 1987, and Adrian G. Montoro, "Moscow Was Caught Between Cuba and U.S.," The New York Times, November 17, 1987.

Garthoff claims in James Blight and David Welch, On the Brink. New York: Hill and Wang, 1989, 56.

Cuban-built missile and bacteriological warfare in Juan Viv‚s, Los amos de Cuba. Buenos Aires: Emec‚ Editores, 1982, 181,182.

Castro's plans to attack nuclear plants in Florida in Jeanne Kirkpatrick, "Is a stubborn Castro testing U.S. defenses?," The Miami Herald, Marc 31, 1991, 3C.

Homestead AFB attack and Castro's words on Joseph B. Treaster, "Defecting General Says Cuba Has Plan to Raid Base in the U.S. if It Is Attacked," The New York Times, October 11, 1987;

Del Pino on Castro's comments on Turkey Point plant in Ernesto Betancourt, "Is Castro Planning a Preemptive Strike Against the U.S.? Washington, D.C., [1996], 4; flawed VVER reactors in Frank Gaffney, Jr., "With Help From Russia, Cuba Poses Nuclear Threat," Insight, December 14, 1995, 20.

Professor Mandelbaum statements in "Lessons of the Next Nuclear War," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 74, No. 2 (March/April 1995), 308.

Rodr¡guez Menier claims that Castro is seeking nuclear weapons in Cuba por dentro. Miami: Ediciones Universal, 1994, 84, 150.

Castro's words to Morais in La Isla: Cuba y los cubanos hoy, (segunda edici¢n) M‚xico, D.F.: Editorial Abril, 1978, 169.

Nuclear plants prone to accidents in Bennet Ramberg, "Learning From Chernobyl," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 65, No. 2 (Winter 1986- 87), 304.

Meltdown by cutting off coolant in Bennet Ramberg, "Learning From Chernobyl," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 65, No. 2 (Winter 1986- 87), 308.

Radiation expanding to Europe and America in Bennet Ramberg, "Learning From Chernobyl," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 65, No. 2 (Winter 1986-87), 311.

NOAA scientists talking to NBC in Frank Gaffney, Jr., "With Help From Russia, Cuba Poses Nuclear Threat," Insight, December 14, 1995, 21.

Milhoun's words in Associated Press release, "Nuclear power in Cuba makes experts uneasy," The Times Picayune, May 29, 1991, B-8.

Juan Oro quoted in Associated Press release, "Nuclear power in Cuba makes experts uneasy," The Times Picayune, May 29, 1991, B-8.

Castro preparing to survive cataclysm in "Tunnel Vision," Newsweek, February 24, 1992, 4.

Castro preparing himself for a G”tterd„mmerung in Andr‚s Oppenheimer, Castro's Final Hour. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992, 20.

Cuban Special Forces ready to attack Florida also in Jim Hampton, "Is Castro ready to attack Florida?," The Miami Herald, March 24, 1996.

Castro's speech to the Fourth Congress in Andres Oppenheimer, Castro's Final Hour. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992, 399- 400.

Castro's closing speech to the Fourth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party, from Granma International, October 20, 1991.

Castro's nuclear dreams in Servando Gonz lez, "Bomba y Paranoia," Observando (Segunda Edici¢n), San Francisco: El Gato Tuerto, 1986, 53-54.

Ambassador Smith researching Fidel's childhood in The Fourth Floor, New York, Random House, 1962, 29.

Fidel as a prophet of doom in Herbert Matthews,The Cuban Story. New York: George Brazillier, 1961, 172.

Roa Kouri's words at NPT discussions in Granma, May 14, 1968, 4.

Castro government refusing to sign Tlatelolco agreement in "Cuba no firma desnuclearizaci¢n mientras E.U. sea una amenaza at¢mica," Revoluci¢n, August 27, 1965, 1-2.

Nuclear research facilities and drug money in Joseph Barron, "Castro, Cocaine and the A-Bomb Connection", Reader's Digest, March 1990, 69-70. Evidence seems to indicate that, notwithstanding Castro's reported outrage over the discovery that some of his senior officers were involved in drug trafficking, he was not alien to the whole operation. It has been known for years that the Castro government has been raking off huge payments from the Medell¡n drug cartel for providing a safe haven for trans- shipping their cargoes from Colombia to the United States. It has also been known that Castro's motivation was not limited to easy money. Flooding the U. S. with drugs has been a major objective of Castro for at least 30 years. An interesting compilation of articles appeared in the American press about this matter, see The Cuban- American National Foundation, Castro's Narcotic Trade. Washington, D.C.: The Cuban-American Foundation, Inc., 1983.

Nuclear research facilities at Pedro Pi in Eric Ehrmann, "Cuba's Nuclear Safety Struggle," The Journal of Commerce, July 5, 1991.

DIA study and reactor in Juragu  in Eric Ehrmann, "Cuba Joins Nuclear Renegades," The Journal of Commerce, November 26, 1991.

Concern about safety standards at Juragu  in Thomas F. Berg, "Cuban Nuclear Plant Assailed for Safety Flaws," Public Utilities Fortnightly, July 15, 1991, 32.

Tunnel digging and exhortations of "Socialism or death!" in "Running Against Fidel," Newsweek, March 9, 1992; also in "Tunnel Vision," Newsweek, February 24, 1992, 4.

Possibility that Castro fired his son because of his failure to produce a nuclear bomb, evidence of Juan Antonio Rodr¡guez Menier in private communication with the author.

Castro's U.N speech quoted in Jarvis Tyner, "Fidel Castro cheered at Harlem meeting," People's Week World, October 28, 1995 [on the Internet]).

Thoughts on crazy states in Charles Krauthammer, "How to deal with Countries Gone Mad," Time, September 21, 1987, 82.

Larry Rohter, "What Castro Still Needs Is a Good Fight," The New York Times, March 3, 1996, E-5.

Castro's letter to Roosevelt was discovered among the retained files of the Havana Embassy, and is now housed in the records of the foreign service posts of the Department of State, record group 84, at the American Archives in Washington D.C. In it Castro shows his admiration and love for the American president, asked him for a "ten dollars bill green american" [sic], and offered his help in showing Americans how to better exploit the iron mines in the Oriente province.

Castro going down in an Armageddon end like Hitler in Georgie Anne Geyer, "Anti-Reforms are evidence the Cuban revolution is over," Mobile Press Register, June 6, 1994, 13-A.

Juana Castro's words on Fidel's sinister plans in Jes£s Conte Agero, Fidel Castro: Psiquiatr¡a y Pol¡tica, Mexico, D,F,: Editorial Jus, 1968, 105.

Castro using revolution as revenge in Vida, aventuras y desastres de un hombre llamado Castro. Barcelona: Planeta, 1988, 82-83.

Castro on been called "Jew" and not having a name in Frei Betto, Fidel and Religion. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987, 99-101, 105.

Copyright © 1997 by Servando Gonzalez, All rights reserved.

Published with the author's permission & cooperation.