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THE CUBAN
COVER-UP
Fulgencio Batista, in 1934, had overthrown the government of Cuba, which
hampered the social reform that had been begun by four separate
Presidents. In 1952, he established a dictatorship. Fidel Castro, who
had become a communist in 1947, during his second year in law school;
and Argentinian revolutionary Ernesto Guevara, rebuilt the guerrilla
forces that Castro had used in an unsuccessful revolt in 1953 (in which
Castro had been captured and arrested, but later paroled).
With financial backing from Russia, Castro bribed many military leaders.
He got a substantial amount of support from the intellectual and working
class, who knew nothing of his communist intentions.
In April, 1957, Herbert L. Matthews, a correspondent for the New York
Times and CFR member, interviewed Castro at his mountain retreat, for
three successive front page articles. He compared Castro to Lincoln, and
presented him as a "peasant patriot," "a strong anti-communist," a
"Robin Hood," and a "defender of the people." Earlier, in a February 25,
1957 article, Matthews reported: "There is no communism to speak of in
Fidel Castro's movement."
On CBS-TV, Edward R. Murrow portrayed him as a national hero. President
Kennedy in a speech compared him to South American patriot Simon
Bolivar. Ed Sullivan interviewed Castro for a film clip, which was seen
by about 30 million people, in which he said: "The people of the United
States have great admiration for you and your men because you are in the
real American spirit of George Washington." He retracted the statement
18 months later, but it was too late.
In 1958, in an interview with Jules DuBois, Castro said: "I have never
been nor am I a Communist..." The American Ambassador to Cuba declared
that Batista was no longer supported by the American government, and
that he should leave. Roy Rubottom, the Assistant Secretary for Latin
American Affairs, said in December, 1958: "There was no evidence of any
organized Communist elements within the Castro movement or that Senor
Castro himself was under Communist influence." In April, 1959, Castro
visited the U.S., and the State Department welcomed him as a
"distinguished leader."
A member of the Intelligence section of the Cuban army hand-carried
Castro's dossier to Washington in 1957, delivering it to Allen Dulles,
head of the CIA, which revealed that Castro was a Communist. Dulles
'buried' the file. In July, 1959, Major Pedro Diaz Lanz, of the Cuban
Air Force, toured the United States, and revealed that he had first-hand
knowledge that Castro was a Communist. This fact, for the most part, was
kept out of the media. The truth of the matter, was that the State
Department was purposely covering up Castro's communist connections, the
fact that his supporters were trained by Russia, and that he was
carrying out a communist revolution.
Arthur Gardner, the American Ambassador to Cuba, referred to Castro as a
communist terrorist, and he was replaced by Earl E. T. Smith, who,
instead of being briefed by Gardner, was briefed by Herbert Matthews. A
Senate Committee investigation of William A. Wieland, who in 1957 became
the State Department's Caribbean representative, said that he "regularly
disregarded, sidetracked or denounced FBI, State Department and military
intelligence sources which branded Castro as a Communist." Robert Hill,
Ambassador to Mexico, said under oath in a Senate hearing: "Individuals
in the State Department, and individuals in the New York Times, put
Castro in power." These individuals included Robert McNamara, Theodore
C. Sorenson, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Roy Rubottom, McGeorge Bundy,
J. William Fulbright, and Roger Hilsman.
After being asked to abdicate, by Eisenhower, Batista left office on
December 31, 1958; and Castro took control of the country in January,
1959. Later that year, he addressed a meeting of the CFR at their New
York headquarters.
Soon, Castro revealed his alliance with Russia, nationalized all
business and industry. On October 20, 1960, Kennedy said: "We must
attempt to strengthen the non-Batista democratic anti-Castro forces in
exile, and in Cuba itself who offer eventual hope of overthrowing
Castro." After the U.S. broke diplomatic ties with Cuba on January 3,
1961, an invasion force was organized, financed, and trained in Florida
and Guatemala, by the State Department and the Central Intelligence
Agency, who recruited from the thousands of Cubans who had fled to the
U.S. to get away from Castro.
On April 17, 1961, an anti-Castro force of 1,400 landed at the Bay of
Pigs in Cuba to begin the invasion. Within striking distance, were two
U.S. carriers, five World War II Liberty ships, and other support
vessels, whose decks were loaded with planes. About 500 miles away, a
group of B-26's waited. Kennedy had promised air support, but it never
came.
Years later, after it was revealed that both John and Bobby Kennedy had
sexual relationships with Marilyn Monroe, it was reported that she had
threatened to expose them, and referred to her "diary of secrets."
According to an August 3, 1962 C.I.A. memo that was released under the
Freedom of Information Act, information procured from phone taps of
conversations with reporter Dorothy Kilgallen and her close friend,
Howard Rothberg; as well as with Marilyn Monroe and Attorney General
Robert Kennedy, revealed the following:
1) Rothberg discussed the apparent comeback of subject with Kilgallen
and the break up with the Kennedys. Rothberg told Kilgallen that she was
attending Hollywood parties hosted by the "inner circle" among
Hollywood's elite and was becoming the talk of the town again. Rothberg
indicated in so many words, that she had secrets to tell, no doubt
arising from her trists with the President and the Attorney General. One
such "???" mentions the visit by the President at a secret air base for
the purpose of inspecting things from outer space. Kilgallen replied
that she knew what might be the source of the visit. In the mid-fifties
Kilgallen learned of secret effort by US and UK governments to identify
the origins of crashed spacecraft and dead bodies, from a British
government official. Kilgallen believed the story may have come from the
??? in the late forties. Kilgallen said that if the story is true, it
could cause terrible embarrassment to Jack and his plans to have NASA
put men on the moon.
2) Subject repeatedly called the Attorney General and complained about
the way she was being ignored by the President and his brother.
3) Subject threatened to hold a press conference and would tell all.
4) Subject made references to "bases" in Cuba and knew of the
President's plan to kill Castro.
5) Subject made reference to her "diary of secrets" and what the
newspapers would do with such disclosures.
After her suicide (or murder, as some researchers believe), Lionel
Grandison, the Los Angeles County Coroner sent a driver to Marilyn's
house to get an address book, so that Monroe's relatives could be
contacted. Her housekeeper, Eunice Murray, gave him the address book and
a little red diary. Grandison was the last person to examine the diary
and said that there were references to the Kennedys, as well as other
people, such as Fidel Castro. It was locked in the office safe. The next
day, when the safe was opened, the diary was gone, and never seen again.
One of the bits of information that was purported to be in the diary,
was that on the day of the Bay of Pigs invasion, President Kennedy was
incapacitated because of excruciating pain in his back, and Bobby
Kennedy was actually running the country. It was alleged that he made
the decision not to provide air support.
The invasion failed, because it was not able to launch the attack at the
alternate site which had an airfield nearby and was more suitable for
the unloading of troops and supplies, plus, there were nearby mountains
to hide in. Besides the fact that the U.S. didn't provide the needed air
support, it wasn't even a surprise attack, because the New York Times
carried an article on January 10, 1961 with this headline: "U.S. Helps
Train Anti-Castro Force At Secret Guatemalan Air-Ground Base," thus, the
complete communist domination of Cuba was insured.
Russia, in May of 1962, realizing the potential of Cuba's location,
tried to build missile sites on the island, but the U.S., considering
them to be a threat to our national security, threatened Russia with
possible military action if they weren't removed. After a blockade was
imposed, the missiles were removed; however, the Soviets were still able
to bolster the Cuban military by providing advisors, troops, aircraft,
submarines, and military bases.
There are some researchers who believe that there were never any
missiles on the island. The objects identified as "missiles" in
government photos were no larger than pencil dots, and it was impossible
to concretely label them as ballistic missiles. It is believed that the
incident was created by the Russians, and that empty crates were removed
from Cuba, in exchange for an agreement by the United States to remove
missiles from Russia's borders, and for a guarantee that the U.S. would
not support an anti-Castro invasion.
According to The Nuclear Deception: Nikita Khrushchev and the Cuban
Missile Crisis (Spook Books, 2002, an imprint of InteliBooks) by
Servando González (who was a political officer in the Cuban Army at the
time), the presence of missiles in Cuba was never proven. The CIA
maintained that there were never nuclear warheads in Cuba, and American
planes flying over "missile sites" and Soviet ships had never detected
any radiation.
In a 1996 article called "Fidel Castro: Supermole," González said that
Cuba had turned into an economic embarrassment. He wrote: "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 (and the)
propagation of Fidel's 'heretical' ideas." Because Castro was perceived
as being "unpredictable, volatile, undisciplined," he was being blamed
for the Soviet's failure in Cuba, and Khrushchev decided he had to cut
his losses and withdraw from the country. However, leaving voluntarily
would give the impression that they were admitting failure, so the
scheme was hatched to get rid of Castro "as a result of American
aggression."
Initially, an uprising was planned that would have unseated Castro and
replaced him with Anibal Escalante, a trusted Party ally. However,
Castro discovered the plan and neutralized it by expelling the
ringleader, Soviet ambassador Mikhailovich Kudryavtsev. A frustrated
Khrushchev then hit on the idea of provoking Kennedy to invade Cuba. The
idea was that Castro would be overthrown, and when no missiles would be
found, the American government would be embarrassed. According to
González: "Khrushchev's carefully conceived plans had not counted on the
unexpected and apparently irrational behavior of President Kennedy."
González writes:
"Finally, Soviet developments in Cuba were so blatant and political
pressures 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 . Fortunately for the world, Khrushchev was enough of a
political realist to recognize when a gambit had been lost.Khrushchev
never understood why Kennedy had acted in such an irrational and foolish
way, by not attacking Cuba and, thereby, allowing Castro to stay in
power."
On December 2, 1961, Castro proclaimed: "I have been a Communist since
my teens." On December 11, 1963, the New York Times printed one of
President Kennedy's last interviews, in which he said: "I think we have
spawned, constructed, entirely fabricated without knowing it, the Castro
movement." In 1979, the New York Times published a letter from the
former U.S. Ambassador to Cuba, Earl E. T. Smith, in which he said:
"Castro could not have seized power in Cuba without the aid of the
United States. American government agencies and the United States press
played a major role in bringing Castro to power ... The State Department
consistently intervened ... to bring about the downfall of Batista,
thereby making it possible for Fidel Castro to take over the government
of Cuba."
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