I Was With Fidel Castro When JFK Was Assassinated

New Republic

By Jean Daniel

President Kennedy presided over both the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis, but when he was shot and killed on that November morning in 1963, Fidel Castro’s reaction was one of shock and sadness. “This is bad news,” he repeated three times. “For us Latin Americans, death is a sacred matter; not only does it mark the close of hostilities, but it also imposes decency, dignity, respect.”
This glimpse into the reclusive Cuban leader’s thoughts is made all the more remarkable by the fact that it only exists due to Kennedy himself. Eager to open another secret channel to Castro, JFK had sent journalist Jean Daniel to talk with Castro privately. Daniel arrived in Havana in mid-October, but was kept waiting and did not manage to deliver Kennedy’s message to Castro until November 19—just days before the president’s death. The president died without ever knowing that the Cuban leader had received his message.
To mark its 100th anniversary, The New Republic is republishing a collection of its most memorable articles. This week's theme: Moments that changed America.
This piece originally appeared at The New Republic on December 7, 1963.

It was around 1:30 in the afternoon, Cuban time. We were having lunch in the living room of the modest summer residence which Fidel Castro owns on magnificent Varadero Beach, 120 kilometers from Havana. For at least the tenth time, I was questioning the Cuban leader on details of the negotiations with Russia before the missile installations last year. The telephone rang, a secretary in guerrilla garb announced that Mr. Dorticós, President of the Cuban Republic, had an urgent communication for the Prime Minister. Fidel picked up the phone and I heard him say: “Como? Un atentado?” (“What’s that? An attempted assassination?”) He then turned to us to say that Kennedy had just been struck down in Dallas. Then he went back to the telephone and exclaimed in a loud voice “Herido? Muy gravemente?” (“Wounded? Very seriously?”)

He came back, sat down, and repeated three times the words: “Es una mala noticia.” (“This is bad news.”) He remained silent for a moment, awaiting another call with further news. He remarked while we waited that there was an alarmingly sizable lunatic fringe in American society and that this deed could equally well have been the work of a madman or of a terrorist. Perhaps a Vietnamese? Or a member of the Ku Klux Klan? The second call came through: it was hoped they would be able to announce that the United States President was still alive, that there was hope of saving him. Fidel Castro’s immediate reaction was: “If they can, he is already re-elected.” He pronounced these words with satisfaction.

This sentence was a sequel to a conversation we had held on a previous evening and which had turned into an all-night session. To be precise, it lasted from 10 in the evening until 4 in the morning. A good part of the talk revolved about the impressions I recounted to him of an interview which President Kennedy granted me this last October 24, and about Fidel Castro’s reactions to these impressions. During this nocturnal discussion, Castro had delivered himself of a relentless indictment of U.S. policy, adding that in the recent past Washington had had ample opportunity to normalize its relations with Cuba, but that instead it had tolerated a CIA program of training, equipping and organizing a counter-revolution. He had told me that he wasn’t in the least fearful of his life, since danger was his natural milieu, and if he were to become a victim of the United States this would simply enhance his radius of influence in Latin America as well as throughout the socialist world. He was speaking, he said, from the viewpoint of the interests of peace in both the American continents. To achieve this goal, a leader would have to arise in the United States capable of understanding the explosive realities of Latin America and of meeting them halfway. Then, suddenly, he had taken a less hostile tack: “Kennedy could still be this man. He still has the possibility of becoming, in the eyes of history, the greatest President of the United States, the leader who may at last understand that there can be coexistence between capitalists and socialists, even in the Americas. He would then be an even greater President than Lincoln. I know, for example, that for Khrushchev, Kennedy is a man you can talk with. I have gotten this impression from all my conversations with Khrushchev. Other leaders have assured me that to attain this goal, we must first await his re-election. Personally, I consider him responsible for everything, but I will say this: he has come to understand many things over the past few months; and then too, in the last analysis, I’m convinced that anyone else would be worse.” Then Fidel had added with a broad and boyish grin: “If you see him again, you can tell him that I’m willing to declare Goldwater my friend if that will guarantee Kennedy’s re-election!”

This conversation was held on November 19.

Now it was nearly 2 o’clock and we got up from the table and settled ourselves in front of a radio. Commandant Vallero, his physician, aide-de-camp, and intimate friend, was easily able to get the broadcasts from the NBC network in Miami. As the news came in, Vallero would translate it for Fidel: Kennedy wounded in the head; pursuit of the assassin; murder of a policeman; finally the fatal announcement: President Kennedy is dead. Then Fidel stood up and said to me: “Everything is changed. Everything is going to change. The United States occupies such a position in world affairs that the death of a President of that country affects millions of people in every corner of the globe. The cold war, relations with Russia, Latin America, Cuba, the Negro question… all will have to be rethought. I’ll tell you one thing: at least Kennedy was an enemy to whom we had become accustomed. This is a serious matter, an extremely serious matter.”

After the quarter-hour of silence observed by all the American radio stations, we once more tuned in on Miami; the silence had only been broken by a re-broadcasting of the American national anthem. Strange indeed was the impression made, on hearing this hymn ring out in the house of Fidel Castro, in the midst of a circle of worried faces. “Now,” Fidel said, “they will have to find the assassin quickly, but very quickly, otherwise, you watch and see, I know them, they will try to put the blame on us for this thing. But tell me, how many Presidents have been assassinated? Four? This is most disturbing! In Cuba, only one has been assassinated. You know, when we were hiding out in the Sierra there were some (not in my group, in another) who wanted to kill Batista. They thought they could do away with a regime by decapitating it. I have always been violently opposed to such methods. First of all from the viewpoint of political self-interest, because so far as Cuba is concerned, if Batista had been killed he would have been replaced by some military figure who would have tried to make the revolutionists pay for the martyrdom of the dictator. But I was also opposed to it on personal grounds; assassination is repellent to me.”

The broadcasts were now resumed. One reporter felt he should mention the difficulty Mrs. Kennedy was having in getting rid of her bloodstained stockings. Fidel exploded: “What sort of a mind is this!” He repeated the remark several times: “What sort of a mind is this? There is a difference in our civilizations after all. Are you like this in Europe? For us Latin Americans, death is a sacred matter; not only does it mark the close of hostilities, but it also imposes decency, dignity, respect. There are even street urchins who behave like kings in the face of death. Incidentally, this reminds me of something else: if you write all those things I told you yesterday against Kennedy’s policy, don’t use his name now; speak instead of the policy of the United States government.”

Toward 5 o’clock, Fidel Castro declared that since there was nothing we could do to alter the tragedy, we must try to put our time to good use in spite of it. He wanted to accompany me in person on a visit to a granja de pueblo (state farm), where he had been engaging in some experiments. His present obsession is agriculture. He reads nothing but agronomical studies and reports. He dwells lyrically on the soil, fertilizers, and the possibilities which will give Cuba enough sugar cane by 1970 to achieve economic independence.

“Didn’t I Tell You”

We went by car, with the radio on. The Dallas police were now hot on the trail of the assassin. He is a Russian spy, says the news commentator. Five minutes later, correction: he is a spy married to a Russian. Fidel said, “There, didn’t I tell you; it’ll be my turn next.” But not yet. The next word was: the assassin is a Marxist deserter. Then the word came through, in effect, that the assassin was a young man who was a member of the “Fair Play for Cuba Committee,” that he was an admirer of Fidel Castro. Fidel declared: “If they had had proof, they would have said he was an agent, an accomplice, a hired killer. In saying simply that he is an admirer, this is just to try and make an association in people’s minds between the name of Castro and the emotion awakened by the assassination. This is a publicity method, a propaganda device. It’s terrible. But you know, I’m sure this will all soon blow over. There are too many competing policies in the United States for any single one to be able to impose itself universally for very long.”

We arrived at the granja de pueblo, where the farmers welcomed Fidel. At that very moment, a speaker announced over the radio that it was now known that the assassin is a “pro-Castro Marxist.” One commentator followed another; the remarks became increasingly emotional, increasingly aggressive. Fidel then excused himself: “We shall have to give up the visit to the farm.” We went on towards Matanzas from where he could telephone President Dorticós. On the way he had questions: “Who is Lyndon Johnson? What is his reputation? What were his relations with Kennedy? With Khrushchev? What was his position at the time of the attempted invasion of Cuba?” Finally and most important of all” What authority does he exercise over the CIA?” Then abruptly he looked at his watch, saw that it would be half an hour before we reached Matanzas and, practically on the spot, he dropped off to sleep.

After Matanzas, where he must have decreed a state of alert, we returned to Varadero for dinner. Quoting the words spoken to him by a woman shortly before, he said to me that it was an irony of history for the Cubans, in the situation to which they had been reduced by the blockade, to have to mourn the death of a President of the United States. “After all,” he added, “there are perhaps some people in the world to whom this news is cause for rejoicing. The South Vietnamese guerrillas, for example, and also, I would imagine, Madame Nhu!”

I thought of the people of Cuba, accustomed to the sight of posters like the one depicting the Red Army with maquis superimposed in front, and the screaming captions “HALT MR. KENNEDY! CUBA IS NOT ALONE….” I thought of all those who had been led to associate their deprivations with the policies of President John F. Kennedy.

At dinner I was able to take up all my questions. What had motivated Castro to endanger the peace of the world with the missiles in Cuba? How dependent was Cuba on the Soviet Union? Is it not possible to envisage relations between Cuba and the United States along the same lines as those between Finland and the Russians? How was the transition made from the humanism of Sierra Maestra to the Marxism-Leninism of 1961? Fidel Castro, once more in top form, had an explanation for everything. Then he questioned me once more on Kennedy, and each time I eulogized the intellectual qualities of the assassinated President, I awakened the keenest interest in him.

The Cubans have lived with the United States in that cruel intimacy so familiar to me of the colonized with their colonizers. Nevertheless, it was an intimacy. In that very seductive city of Havana to which we returned in the evening, where the luminous signboards with Marxist slogans have replaced the Coca Cola and toothpaste billboards, in the midst of Soviet exhibits and Czechoslovakian trucks, a certain American emotion vibrated in the atmosphere, compounded of resentment, of concern, of anxiety, yet also, in spite of everything, of a mysterious almost imperceptible rapprochement. After all, this American President was able to reach accord with our Russian friends during his lifetime, said a young Cuban intellectual to me as I was taking my leave. It was almost as though he were apologizing for not rejoicing at the assassination.

Lo que Castro sabía de Lee Harvey Oswald

El Independent

Por Mary Anastasia O'Grady

The Wall Street Journal Americas

En noviembre de 1963, el agente de inteligencia cubano Florentino Aspillaga trabajaba en una pequeña cabaña cerca de una playa de la isla en la que operaba un equipo de intercepción de conversaciones orientado hacia Miami y la sede de la CIA, en Virginia. En la mañana del 22 de noviembre, Aspillaga, que desertaría a Estados Unidos en 1987, recibió órdenes de "detener todo tu trabajo en la CIA, todo tu trabajo en la CIA". Recibió instrucciones de "colocar todo mi equipo para escuchar cualquier detallito de Texas. Me dijeron Texas".

¿Acaso Castro sabía que Lee Harvey Oswald se disponía a asesinar al presidente John F. Kennedy? Brian Latell, un experimentado analista de Cuba de la CIA, pasó 15 horas entrevistando a Aspillaga para la edición revisada de su libro "Castro's Secrets" (algo así como Los secretos de Castro, publicado este año por la editorial Palgrave MacMillan). El libro aporta razones poderosas para pensar que lo sabía.

Latell hace un repaso para los lectores de medio siglo de espionaje cubano a través de entrevistas con decenas de desertores cubanos de alto rango y numerosos agentes de la CIA. Considera a Aspillaga "el desertor cubano mejor informado que jamás haya cambiado de bando". También revisó miles de páginas de documentos desclasificados de la CIA y tuvo acceso a las memorias no publicadas de Thomas Mann, el embajador de EE.UU. en México en 1963, que tenía razones para sospechar de una conexión entre Oswald y Cuba.

El veterano analista aborda la tarea de contar la historia de la "máquina de inteligencia" de Cuba, la cual estuvo un paso por delante de la de EE.UU. durante muchos años. Por el camino, el autor descubre detalles sorprendentes que sugieren que Cuba alimentó el deseo maniaco de Oswald de demostrar su valor para la revolución castrista durante la visita del estadounidense a Ciudad de México en 1963. Latell también presenta sólida evidencia de que el gobierno de Lyndon Johnson y las máximas autoridades tanto del FBI como de la CIA se aseguraron de que esos detalles no llegaran a los oídos de la Comisión Warren, que investigaba la muerte de Kennedy.

El gobierno de Kennedy estaba desesperado por eliminar a Castro. La invasión de Bahía de Cochinos en 1961 había fracasado. Edward Jay Epstein, un connotado experto sobre el asesinato del presidente y autor del libro recientemente publicado en EE.UU. "The JFK Assasination Diary" (algo así como El diario del asesinato de JFK), señala que para agosto de 1963 Richard Helms, que aún no era director de la CIA, recibía "llamadas casi a diario del [fiscal general Robert Kennedy] que exigía saber qué acciones se estaban tomando para sacar a Castro del poder". La CIA contrató los servicios de Rolando Cubela, que era parte de la revolución castrista, para hacer el trabajo.

Sin embargo, Cubela era un doble agente. El 7 de septiembre, justo después de que Cubela acordara ayudar a EE.UU., Castro concedió una entrevista a la AP en la que advirtió a EE.UU. que "colaborar con los planes terroristas para eliminar a los líderes cubanos" significa que "ellos mismos no estarán seguros".

Castro no tenía que buscar muy lejos para encontrar un socio que respaldara tales palabras. Latell escribe que "se conoce casi con certeza" que Cuba "abrió un dossier" sobre Oswald en 1959, cuando estaba en la estación de la marina estadounidense en El Toro, California. Oswald se enamoró de la revolución cubana, y se había contactado con el consulado de la isla en Los Ángeles.

El 27 de septiembre de 1963, Oswald se registró en el Hotel Comercio de Ciudad de México para una estadía de cinco noches. Trató de obtener una visa de la embajada cubana para viajar a La Habana. Tuvo un romance con una empleada de la embajada y probablemente pasó tiempo con otros empleados que eran agentes de inteligencia. Testigos aseguran que cuando el trámite se demoró, Oswald empezó a despotricar contra la embajada, tiró un portazo y se marchó furioso.

Según Latell, Oswald visitó en dos ocasiones el consulado soviético durante su paso por Ciudad de México, donde conoció a "un agente del notorio Departamento 13, responsable de las operaciones de asesinato y sabotaje", señala. La KGB estaba entrenando a la inteligencia cubana en ese entonces y "parece una certeza que el archivo de inteligencia [de Oswald] en La Habana" estaba creciendo.

La declaración de Castro acerca de Oswald, durante un discurso pronunciado 30 horas después del atentado, de que jamás había oído hablar de Oswald era una mentira. En realidad, en una conversación con Jack Childs, un comunista estadounidense que había estado trabajando secretamente para el FBI, a Castro se le escapó que estaba al tanto de la explosión de furia de Oswald en la embajada en Ciudad de México y de que había amenazado con asesinar al mandatario estadounidense.

Cuando el equipo de la Comisión Warren le preguntó al embajador Mann acerca de la reputación del Hotel Comercio como "un cuartel general de las actividades pro Castro", el diplomático respondió que tal fama "no era para nada conocida en general (…) [solamente] en los círculos de inteligencia".

A Mann le pareció demasiado conveniente que Oswald fuera a parar en ese hotel. Hizo presión para obtener más información sobre el viaje de Oswald a Ciudad de México. En sus memorias escribió que "la embajada recibió instrucciones de cesar nuestra investigación acerca de la visita de Oswald a México y pedirle al gobierno mexicano que hiciera lo mismo". Mann pidió que la idea fuera reconsiderada, pero su solicitud fue denegada. A la Comisión Warren nunca se le informó del plan de la CIA para eliminar a Castro.

Todo esto deja un agujero gigantesco en el relato oficial sobre el asesinato de Kennedy. Latell concluye que "Castro y un reducido grupo de agentes de la inteligencia cubana fueron cómplices en la muerte de Kennedy, pero que su participación no llegó a constituir un complot de asesinato organizado". En lugar de ello, los cubanos "exhortaron a Oswald" e "incentivaron su feroz militancia".

Lisa Howard, la mediadora de la historia secreta entre Kennedy y Castro

ABC.es

Lisa Howard/ Wikipedia

Si uno escucha el nombre de Lisa Howard puede que no le diga nada. Sin embargo, se trata de una pieza clave en un hecho histórico que jamás llegó a culminarse: el intento de acercamiento entre Estados Unidos y Cuba de la mano de los que por aquel entonces eran sus presidentes, John F. Kennedy y Fidel Castro.

Para comprender su historia es preciso conocer el contexto basándonos en dos momentos clave para ambas potencias: la invasión de Bahía Cochinos (Cuba, abril de 1961), plan ideado por la CIA para acabar con Fidel Castro -que terminó en una sonora derrota de los invasores y en el que es considerado como uno de los grandes errores del prestigioso Kennedy y un triunfo para Castro- y la crisis de los misiles soviéticos en Cuba (octubre de 1962), que puso de manifiesto que el líder cubano y la URSS habían tomado caminos distintos, para alivio de Estados Unidos.

Ambos capítulos fueron determinantes para Kennedy puesto que, si bien el primero fue su gran error, con la gestión del segundo aprendió de los errores y salió reforzado. Tal y como escribía en su artículo en ABC Javier Rupérez «El crimen fue en Dallas (Tejas), hace cincuenta años»: «el presidente estadounidense manejó con más soltura la crisis de los misiles soviéticos, seguramente enviados a la isla caribeña por Nikita Kruschev en la errónea convicción de que un vacilante Kennedy acabaría por acomodarse al desafío. Mostró firmeza y habilidad para conseguir la retirada de los artefactos y con ella evitar los peligros de un enfrentamiento nuclear».

Este era el contexto público, pero, según consta en los documentos desclasificados por la CIA en el año 2007, Fidel Castro y John Kennedy estaban tratando de promover en los años 60 un acercamiento. En el cómo se había resuelto crisis de los misiles, sin contar con Cuba, asesores del presidente de EE.UU. vieron la oportunidad de alejar a Castro de las relaciones e influencia de la URSS y, según consta en dichos textos desclasificados, días antes del asesinato del líder de EE.UU., las negociaciones de acercamiento iban a culminarse con una reunión entre los respectivos delegados estadounidenses y cubanos. Clave en dicho hito fue Lisa Howard.

El encuentro con Castro

Nacida en 1930 en Ohio con el nombre de Dorothy Jean Guggenheim, dejó con sólo 17 años su ciudad natal para ser actriz, momento en el que decidió cambiar su nombre. Aunque no le fue mal en el ámbito de las artes escénicas, tal y como se relata en el reportaje «Kennedy y Castro: la historia secreta», emitido en el programa de La 2, «Docufilia», Howard tenía otra faceta: escribía artículos para revistas políticas. Así, poco a poco el mundo del periodismo se convirtió en su motor y en 1959 se introdujo en la radio.

Tras la invasión de Bahía Cochinos, Howard se suma a la larga lista de periodistas que quiere entrevistar al líder cubano, muy fortalezido tras el fracaso de la misión para derrocarle. Así, en abril de 1963 Lisa, ya convertida en reportera de la cadena American Broadcasting Company (ABC), viaja a Cuba para cumplir su objetivo. «Doctor Castro, ¿siente que hay alguna posibilidad para la normalización de las relaciones con Estados Unidos?», pregunta la periodista al líder cubano: «Creo que es posible si el gobierno de Estados Unidos lo desea», respondió él. Aquel encuentro marcó a Lisa Howard y su entrevista fue un éxito en Estados Unidos.

Richard Helms , de la CIA, es el canal que Howard emplea para hacer saber al Gobierno estadounidense las intenciones de Castro, algo que este plasma en un informe que el presidente Kennedy lee. Más tarde, Howard da un paso más y expresa en persona, esta vez al adjunto al embajador norteamericano adscrito a la misión de Estados Unidos en las Naciones Unidas, William Attwood, la disposición del líder cubano a establecer algún tipo de contacto con Estados Unidos.

El asesinato de Kennedy

La actuación de Howard, quien también se entrevistó, entre otros, con Raúl Castro y su esposa o el cirujano René Vallejo, un cirujano muy próximo a Castro, no se queda ahí. En septiembre decide organizar un cóctel en su piso de Manhattan al que invita a Attwood y al embajador cubano ante la ONU, Carlos Lechuga. Fue el escenario en el que se acordó una reunión secreta y se realizaron preparativos provisionales para que Attwood viajara a La Habana e diciembre de 1963 y se encontrara con Castro. Lisa Howard fue el canal mediante el que ambos bandos se comunicaban, ella sentó las bases para que empezara a ser una realidad un acercamiento entre ambos países.

Kennedy eligió al periodista francés Jean Daniel para que le transmitiera, en persona, su intención de de hablar seriamente con Cuba. Así lo hizo el 22 de noviembre de 1963, día en el que todo lo que se había gestado para un acercamiento entre los dos países se vino abajo con el asesinato del presidente.

Lo que no terminó con la muerte de Kennedy fue el interés de Lisa Howard por una verdadera normalización de las relaciones entre Cuba y Estados Unidos. Por ello vuelve a viajar a territorio cubano y a entrevistar a Fidel. Sin embargo, su entusiasmo ya no es recibido igual en la nueva Casa Blanca, que decide retirarla de la cuestión cubana. A partir de ese momento decide involucrarse más aún en la política hasta el punto de terminar siendo despedida de la candena ABC, lo que le sumió en una profunda depresión. Se quitó la vida en julio de 1965.

Hemming: "Lee Harvey Oswald was going to Cuba."

Assassination of JFK

Jackie Kennedy Letters Shine Light on Her Marriage and Mourning

NBC News.com

Jacqueline Kennedy confided intimate thoughts to an Irish priest about her entire romance with John F. Kennedy, from the excitement of first love to an assassination that left her “bitter against God.”

“God will have some explaining to do to me if I ever see him,” the devastated first lady wrote to the priest in 1964 after her president husband was gunned down. “I have to think there is a God — or I have no hope of finding Jack again.”

The future Mrs. Kennedy began writing to the priest, Rev. Joseph Leonard, after meeting him on a visit to Ireland in 1950, when she was 21.

First Lady Jackie Kennedy on daughter Caroline’s privacy in 1961

Over the next 14 years, in a neat, back-slanting hand, she wrote of dating and marriage and of her ultimate heartbreak. She wrote freely of how she felt, a departure from the controlled image of previously released letters and books.

The letters, previously unpublished, number 33 in all. They will be sold in June by Sheppard’s auction house of Ireland. Excerpts were published Tuesday by the Irish Times newspaper. They are expected to fetch as much as $1.6 million.

The auction house said Tuesday that the letters amount to “the unpublished autobiography of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy.”

“What comes though from the letters is Jacqueline’s obvious love for Ireland, which pre-dated her engagement and marriage to John F. Kennedy,” said the auctioneer, Philip Sheppard. “But there’s also wonderful insight into their courtship and into the character of the man who would become president.”

 

Sheppard's Irish Auction House

Some of the correspondence between Jackie Kennedy and Rev. Joseph Leonard that will be auctioned next month.

In July 1952, when Kennedy was a third-term congressman and a rising political star, Bouvier wrote of being in love with “the son of the ambassador to England.” She had written of a previous love, an engagement that was broken off.

Of John F. Kennedy, she wrote: “He’s like my father in a way — loves the chase and is bored with the conquest — and once married needs proof he’s still attractive, so flirts with other women and resents you. I saw how that nearly killed Mummy.”

The Kennedys married in 1953. After a year, Mrs. Kennedy wrote: “I love being married much more than I did even in the beginning.”

In 1956, after a daughter was stillborn, Jacqueline Kennedy wrote to the priest that she could see “so many good things that come out of this — how sadness shared brings married people closer together.”

Leonard died in 1964. Kennedy married the shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis after the president’s death. She died in 1994.

Newly Released Letters to Jackie Kennedy

Besides the 33 letters, the auction house will put on the block Christmas cards, photographs and newspaper clippings shared between Mrs. Kennedy and the priest.

In the letters, she spoke in detail of her feelings about Catholicism. She wrote in 1952 that she and her sister had been away from church for a year but desperately wanted to “get close to God again.”

The Irish father, she wrote, was “someone who loves everything I love — who you can have FUN with — who can take you to Jammet’s & the theatre as naturally as to Mass — whom you can talk to about anything in the world and know you won’t shock them — and whose whole life is built on love — love and not fear — which is what always put me off.”

The two also regularly exchanged books. She thanked him for a gift, for Christmas 1962, of “My Ireland,” by Kate O’Brien. She signed her letters with Xs and Os. She introduced the priest to her husband, by then a U.S. senator, in 1955, the Irish Times reported.

Mrs. Kennedy wrote in a January 1964 letter that she was “so bitter against God” but confided that “only He and you and I know that.” She wrote that she was trying to make peace with God, and did not want to raise her children in bitterness.

The letter arrived on black-lined mourning paper, embossed “Mrs. John F. Kennedy.”

A few weeks later, she wrote again to thank the priest for his prayers — he had celebrated Mass for the late president — and to agree with his previously expressed sentiment that “the American people are beginning to realize what they have lost.”

“I feel more cruelly every day what I have lost,” she wrote. “I always would have rather lost my life than lost Jack.”

               

               
           
            

Néstor García Iturbe: A Castroit Brian Latell

cubaconfidential

By Chris Simmons

mexico.cnn.com

By Miguel Fernandez

Retired Colonel Néstor García Iturbe has launched a theory on the Kennedy assassination in the leftwing blogosphere. The hard core argument is that the assasination was a plot by the CIA and the Pentagon with some carefully selected members of the anti-Castro groups. However, García Iturbe moves away from the Castroit official line by asserting that Lee Harvey Oswald was a case of “false flag” recruitment. Oswald would have been recruited “for Cuba” by an FBI agent, who had infiltrated the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC). Oswald was actually used as decoy in the assassination, but he aimed his rifle on the belief he was working for Castro. Thus, ex-DGI spymaster García Iturbe concurs with the view of ex-CIA desk analyst Brian Latell, who wrote in Castro´s Secrets (2013) that intelligence officers were winding Oswald up at the Cuban Consulate in México City and turned him into "a fully primed soldier of Fidel" (page 227).

False Flag

García Iturbe seems to be unaware of the classic article “Leftist Lee at Work” (The Third Decade, Vol. 2, No. 5, July 1986, pp. 1-6), where Philp H. Malenson demonstrated that Oswald was working against FPCC, id est, against the very flag under which he had been recruited. For instance, Oswald engaged in a radio debate (“Conversation Carte Blanche,” WDSU, New Orleans, August 21, 1963) versus Cuban exile Carlos Bringuier and American anticommunist militant Ed Butler on the U.S. policy toward Cuba. They revealed Oswald's defection to the Soviet Union in 1959, but Oswald replied that FPCC had absolutely nothing to do either with the URSS or the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA). This message was repeatedly delivered by Oswald, who also exaggerated his one-man FPCC chapter in New Orleans. On August 28, Oswald wrote to the CPUSA asking for advice “upon a problem of personal tactics:” whether or not to go underground. He established on paper the very linkage he had denied on the air: “Frankly, I have used my position [in the FPCC] to foster communist ideals.” He never informed the FPCC he had placed such a risky paper-trial linkage (Commission Exhibit 1145) tying the pro Castro group to the CPSUA and, through his background as re-defector, to Moscow.

Crass Ignorance

García Iturbe thinks the job Oswald got at the Texas Book School Book Depository (TSBD), facing Dealey Plaza in Dallas, “deserves an analysis.” From his very first question emerges he does not know what he is talking about: “¿Who provided this job to Oswald?” On August 25, 2013, C-SPAN3 broadcasted an interview with Buell Wesley Frazier, the co-worker who gave Oswald the last lift to the TBSD. Frazier reiterated some well-known data available in the Mary Ferrell Chronologies, apparently an alien bibliography for García Iturbe.

Since September 23, 1963, Oswald´s wife had moved with her friend Ruth Paine to Irving, around 21 kilometers of Dallas, for the birth of her second baby. On October 14, Marina and Ruth went to a neighbor´s house (Mrs. Roberts) for coffee. Another neighbor, Linnie Randle, was there. When Paine mentioned that Oswald was looking for work, Randle said there might be a job opening at TBSD, because her brother Frazier had been hired a month ago. Pain called the TBSD and talked with Superintendent Roy Truly, who told her to have Oswald make an application. Paine immediately called Oswald. The next day he went to the TBSD and got a job for $10 daily, from 8 AM a 4:45 PM, with 12 to 12:45 PM for lunch.

García Iturbe confirms his lack of knowledge with this tirade: "What a coincidence that the TBSD was located precisely at a street on the route of the presidential motorcade! Who knew it would go along this street by that time? Usually this is a ‘Top Secret’ in order to protect the President; however, Oswald had foreknowledge and could get his rifle inside the bulding." García Iturbe has not got even a clue about the fact that all the people in Dallas must know in advance the route of the motorcade for greeting the President on the streets. Both The Dallas Morning News and The Dallas Times Herald described it in detail on November 19, 1963. The latter even ran a large map of the motorcade route in the evening edition of November 21.

Coda

As Dr. Latell, García Iturbe tries to connect the dots for making theories, but the crux of the matter is finding facts instead of bringing more factoids, like Oswald being recruited under a “false flag” by the FBI or having not a single unforeseen incident during the days prior to the assassination.

Fidel Castro, el sospechoso habitual

EL PAÍS

Maye Primera 

Lo primero que dice haber hecho Fidel Castro cuando se enteró del asesinato de Jonh F. Kennedy - ocurrido el 22 de noviembre de 1963 en Dallas - fue contactar a las autoridades Estados Unidos para explicarles que él no tenía ninguna responsabilidad en el asunto. El atentado se producía tras dos años de conflicto sostenido entre Washington y La Habana: en abril de 1961 había tenido lugar la invasión de Bahía de Cochinos y en octubre de 1962 se desató la Crisis de los Misiles. Lee Harvey Oswald, el hombre detrás del gatillo, había hecho público su apoyo a la revolución que en 1959 se puso en marcha en Cuba. Castro, preocupado por una invasión de tropas estadounidenses a la isla, se apresuró a despejar las dudas que lo incriminaban y, en los años siguientes, comenzó a elaborar sus propias teorías conspirativas, hasta concluir que Oswald no actuó solo.
“Fue un día muy triste cuando todo esto ocurrió”, dijo hace tres años el expresidente al periodista estadounidense Jeffrey Goldberg durante un almuerzo en La Habana. “Nunca lo olvidaré. Tan pronto como escuchamos la noticia, todos corrimos al radio a escuchar”. No fijaron aquella cita para hablar del asesinato de Kennedy, explica Goldberg en un artículo publicado este 20 de noviembre en The Atlantic, pero fue la oportunidad elegida por Castro para compartir su tesis: “He llegado a la conclusión de que Oswald no pudo haber sido el que mató a Kennedy”.
Para Castro, el resultado de las investigaciones que lideró el jefe de justicia Earl Warren y que indica que Oswald no recibió ningún tipo de asistencia en la planificación o en la ejecución del asesinato, fue “una historia elaborada para gente tonta”. Esta sospecha es tal vez lo único que comparte Castro con un amplio sector de la opinión pública de Estados Unidos, pero con inmensas diferencias: mientras que Castro cree que el crimen fue responsabilidad del propio Gobierno de Washington, muchos estadounidenses creen aún que el asesinato fue planeado por Castro.

“Había gente en el Gobierno de EE UU que pensaba que Kennedy era un traidor porque no invadió Cuba. Él nunca fue perdonado por eso”

Fidel Castro era, en aquella época, el enemigo más enconado de Jonh F. Kennedy en el mapa regional de la Guerra Fría. Su revolución, enclavada en pleno mar Caribe, servía de plataforma física e ideológica a los intereses de la Unión Soviética. Esta rivalidad tuvo dos momentos cumbre en los años inmediatamente anteriores al asesinato del presidente. Pocos días después de su toma de posesión, en febrero de 1961, Kennedy autorizó la invasión de Bahía de Cochinos. Comenzó a planearse en marzo 1960, se ejecutó en abril 1961 y acabó en un rotundo fracaso. Luego, en octubre de 1962, estalló la Crisis de los Misiles: 13 días de amenaza de guerra nuclear que concluyeron con la firma de un pacto entre Kennedy y el líder soviético Nikita Jruschov para retirar de Cuba los proyectiles instalados allí por Moscú.
Lee Harvery Oswald, el autor material del magnicidio de Kennedy, no ocultó nunca sus simpatías por Castro. Solía repartir panfletos a favor de la revolución cubana en las calles de su natal Nueva Orleans. Y pocas semanas antes del asesinato del presidente, visitó la embajada de Cuba en Ciudad de México para pedir una visa de entrada a la isla que le fue negada. Quienes sostienen que la mano de Castro estuvo siempre detrás del plan, creen que fue entonces cuando Oswald pudo haber entrado en contacto con la inteligencia cubana.
Fidel Castro, sin embargo, ha negado siempre su supuesta participación en el complot y ha dicho que, por el contrario, la trama provino de Washington. “Había gente en el Gobierno de Estados Unidos que pensaba que Kennedy era un traidor porque no invadió Cuba cuando tuvo la oportunidad, cuando se lo estaban pidiendo. Él nunca fue perdonado por eso”, afirmó Castro en la misma entrevista con Goldberg, donde dijo incluso haber intentado recrear las circunstancias en las que fueron disparados los proyectiles que mataron al presidente de Estados Unidos y que a partir de entonces concluyó que “fue imposible para un solo hombre hacer esto”.
El periodista estadounidense Philip Shenon, autor del libro “A Cruel And Shocking Act: The Secret History of The Kennedy Assassination” (Un acto cruel e impactante: la historia secreta del asesinato de Kennedy) que salió a la venta el pasado octubre, descarta que el líder cubano haya tenido responsabilidad alguna en el crimen. “No hay ninguna evidencia creíble de que Castro estuviese involucrado personalmente en la orden de asesinato”, sostiene Shenon. De acuerdo a sus investigaciones, Fidel Castro arregló un encuentro con la Comisión Warren, a bordo de un yate estacionado en aguas cubanas, para contar su versión. Porque había elementos para sospechar que era culpable, y él bien lo sabía.

How Kennedy's assassination ended hopes for a reconciliation with Castro

Public Radio International

Producer Christopher Woolf

November 21, 2013 

Credit: The National Security Archive, George Washington University

A declassified memo documents plans for Cuban leader Fidel Castro to meet secretly with a US envoy. It's dated the very day of JFK's assassination.

Everyone knows that President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was against communism. He presided over the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban missile crisis. And he authorized attempts to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

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But at the time of his death, Kennedy was actually trying to negotiate a reconciliation with Castro.
"Kennedy emerged from the Cuban missile crisis, I think, understanding that our policy of aggression towards Cuba could be very dangerous in the Cold War," says Peter Kornbluh. Kornbluh directs the Cuba Documentation Project at the National Security Archive at George Washington University, and is working on a new book provisionally titled, "Talking with Cuba: The Hidden History of US-Cuban diplomacy."
"In the spring of 1963, the Kennedy administration began a series of ultra-secret contacts with Cuba through a series of emissaries," Kornbluh explains. Kornbluh has reviewed a "voluminous file," declassified at the Kennedy Library, and also obtained a host of other documents, including recordings of conversations on the topic at the White House.
Kennedy was interested in detaching Cuba from the Soviet orbit. And Castro was interested in exploring options, since he was angry at the Soviets for withdrawing their nuclear weapons from Cuba at the end of the missile crisis, without even consulting him.
The first emissary was a New York lawyer, James Donovan, who was secretly engaged by the US government to negotiate the release of the exiles captured during the Bay of Pigs invasion. Castro released the prisoners as a sign of goodwill in early 1963 and raised the idea with Donovan of more wide-reaching negotiations. Donovan passed the baton to a glamorous young ABC reporter, Lisa Howard, who was introduced to Castro by Donovan.
She used her New York apartment as the venue for some 'cocktail diplomacy.' She invited the head of the Cuban mission to the United Nations, Amassador Carlos Lechuga, to a party, along with senior US diplomat William Attwood, who happened to already know Castro and was coincidentally serving as deputy US ambassador to the UN. Attwood got clearance from the White House to go, and the talks snowballed from there.
The secret intermediaries got so far as to set up a secret meeting between Castro himself and Attwood. The logistics of the meeting were arranged and Castro's proposed agenda was en route from Havana to the UN Cuban mission in New York at the very hour Kennedy was shot. Attwood, at Kennedy's request, was to quit the foreign service, to provide plausible deniability in case news of the meeting leaked. But all these steps came to naught the moment Kennedy was killed.
His successor, Lyndon Johnson, did not want to appear soft on Cuba in the run-up to the 1964 election.
Castro was meeting with a French journalist, Jean Daniel, when an aide rushed in with news that Kennedy was shot. Daniel was yet another of Washington's secret emissaries. He was updating Castro on the proposed talks and the Cuban leader seemed very excited by the prospects. Then they got the news, and Castro turned to Daniel and said, "There goes your mission of peace."

Muerte de JFK y cuentos cubanos

Cuba Encuentro

Arnaldo M. Fernández 

Fotograma del asesinato de John F. Kennedy captada por la cámara de cine de Abraham Zapruder, en la que se convirtió en una de las películas más vistas en la historia. Zapruder trató de que se cortara este fotograma, el frame 313, que muestra el momento del impacto de bala en la cabeza del presidente, pero sin éxito.

Las conspiraciones anudadas el viernes 22 de noviembre de 1963 en Dealey Plaza (Dallas, Tejas) andan ya por más de cien complotados, entre ellos treinta disparando desde cuatro edificios diferentes, un paso elevado, dos montículos, una alcantarilla, una esquina de la calle Elm y hasta el vehículo del Servicio Secreto. El saldo de este tiroteo es desalentador: un solo muerto y apenas un herido de bala: el gobernador tejano John Connally.

El Comité Selecto de la Cámara de Representantes sobre Asesinatos (HSCA) concluyó que probablemente JFK fue asesinado en virtud de una conspiración, sin poder precisar su extensión ni otros francotiradores aparte de Lee Harvey Oswald. Así se reanimó la cuentística sobre la muerte de Kennedy, que entre cubanos toma por senderos que se bifurcan.

Fidel Castro: autor intelectual

Aún sin enterrar el cadáver de JFK, la nota “John Kennedy y su hermano sí pueden ser víctimas de un atentado, amenazó Castro” (El Universal, 25 de noviembre de 1963) corrió por Ciudad México con aval del ex diplomático cubano Dr. Emilio Núñez Portuondo (1898-1978).

Interpol había interceptado la víspera en México una llamada por teléfono de otro cubano exiliado, José Antonio Cabarga, a Núñez Portuondo en Miami. La conversación giró en torno a que, con el asesinato de John, “se venía realizando el plan de Castro” y la próxima víctima sería Robert.

En la nota precitada, Núñez Portuondo argumentó que Castro había soltado su amenaza en La Habana el 7 de septiembre de 1963. Al toparse con el corresponsal Daniel Harker (AP) en recepción ofrecida por la embajada de Brasil, Castro habría sentenciado: “Kennedy y su hermano Robert tienen que cuidarse, porque ellos también pueden ser víctimas de un atentado mortal.”

Esta sentencia no aparece en el cable de Harker, que los medios publicaron con énfasis en la protesta de Castro por las incursiones comando desde EEUU contra Cuba (“Castro Blasts Raids on Cuba,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, 9 de septiembre de 1963).

Harker reportó que Castro dijo: “If US leaders are aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe.” Más o menos lo mismo había dicho el propio JFK en noviembre de 1961, al discutir con su asistente Richard Goodwin sobre los planes de atentado contra Castro: “If we get into that kind of thing, we 'll all be targets.” (Richard D. Mahoney: Sons & Brothers, Arcade Publishing, 1999, p. 135).

Por ironía historiográfica, el domingo 17 de noviembre de 1963 Núñez Portuondo largó un discurso ante unos ocho mil exiliados en Bayfront Park (Miami) con tachas de cobardía y otros ataques contra la Casa Blanca, por haberse manchado con la sangre de los fusilados en la Isla y desoír los gritos de dolor del pueblo cubano.

Así, la respuesta rápida para implicar a Castro se dio por el bando más asociado al rumor que, tras las redadas del FBI y otras agencias federales contra grupos anticastristas, corría en Miami por lo menos desde abril de 1963: The Cubans must eliminate the pinko in the White House.

El exilio anticastrista: autor material

El general Fabián Escalante, ex jefe y actual historiador de la Seguridad del Estado en Cuba, se apearía en 1993 con que Tony Cuesta, jefe de Comandos L, habría revelado que otros dos exiliados beligerantes: Herminio Díaz y Eladio del Valle, estaban apostados en Dealey Plaza aquel viernes fatídico.

Escalante habló varias veces con Cuesta, quien convalecía de heridas graves tras ser capturado, el 29 de mayo de 1966, en la fallida incursión por Monte Barreto (Habana), pero no pudo sacarle más. Por otras pistas detectó a los mafiosos americanos Dave Yaras, Lenny Patrick y Richard Gaines como francotiradores en la escena del crimen junto a Díaz y Del Valle.

En la edición revisada de su obra clásica sobre el asesinato de Kennedy: Not in Your Lifetime (Open Road Media, 2013), Anthony Summers incluye su entrevista de 2007 en Miami con el ex preso político Reinaldo Martínez-Gómez, ya fallecido, a quien Cuesta habría confiado en prisión que “Herminio le había confesado a él, a Tony Cuesta, que Herminio había tenido participación en la muerte del presidente de los Estados Unidos.”

Martínez-Gómez agregó que otro veterano de la guerra a tiros contra Castro, Remigio “Cucú” Arce, le había dicho entre tragos: “Oye, el que mató al presidente fue nuestro amiguito Herminio.”

Coda

Desde una u otra bandería, la conexión cubana se aborda también por cuenteros extranjeros. El belga Marcel Dehaeseleer y el holandés Wim Dankbaar plantaron respectivamente a Orlando Bosch y Luis Posada Carriles aquel viernes en Dealey Plaza, sin cuanto de prueba razonable. El Dr. Brian Latell manipuló el informe del súper espía del FBI Jack Childs en junio de 1964: “Castro had nothing to do with the assassination,” para enredar a Castro en “conspiración de silencio” contra Kennedy.

Quizás el cuento más sugestivo aparece en el borrador The AMLASH[1] Legacy, que redactó el alto oficial de la CIA David Atlee Phillips (1922 – 88) y termina así:

“Yo fui uno de los dos oficiales de la CIA que atendieron a Lee Harvey Oswald. Luego de trabajar duro para establecerlo como auténtico marxista, le dimos la misión de matar a Fidel Castro en Cuba. Lo ayudé cuando vino a México para solicitar la visa y tras su regreso a Dallas, volví a verlo en dos ocasiones. Ensayamos el plan muchas veces. Oswald iba a asesinar a Castro en La Habana con un fusil de francotirador, desde la ventana del piso superior de un edificio ubicado en la ruta que Castro solía recorrer en jeep descapotado. No estoy seguro de que fuera doble agente o psicópata ni sé por qué mató a Kennedy, pero sí sé que actuó precisamente conforme al plan que habíamos elaborado contra Castro. La CIA no previó el asesinato del presidente y es responsable por ello. Yo comparto esa culpa.”

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[1] AMLASH es el nombre en clave que la CIA dio al plan de asesinato de Castro por Rolando Cubela, quien a su vez fue codificado AMLASH-1. Ahí se interrumpió la secuencia. Como el primer contacto de Cubela con la CIA fue propiciado por su amigo Carlos Tepedino (AMWHIP-1) y whip significa látigo, nada mejor que asignarle a Cubela el latigazo [lash] contra Castro. En la CIA, el prefijo AM identificaba operaciones, organizaciones y personas relacionadas con Cuba.

Castro vs JFK: ¿rivalidad hasta sus últimas consecuencias?

Lee Oswald came to the attention of Joannides’s anti-Castro informants in New Orleans in the summer of 1963.

Silvia Ayuso-DPA 

Cuando el 22 de noviembre de 1963 el presidente de Estados Unidos, John F. Kennedy, murió asesinado por un francotirador en Dallas, Texas, muchas miradas acusadoras se dirigieron de inmediato hacia Cuba y a su líder Fidel Castro.

¿Por qué no? Al fin y al cabo, desde la frustrada invasión de Bahía Cochinos a la Crisis de los Misiles, Cuba había marcado, y no de forma positiva, la política exterior de la corta presidencia de Kennedy.

Acabar con el régimen castrista se llegó a convertir en una obsesión de muchos miembros de su gobierno, incluido su hermano y fiscal general Robert Kennedy. De hecho, hasta poco antes del magnicidio, Washington dio el visto bueno a numerosos planes de sabotaje en Cuba de la CIA y hasta para acabar con su joven líder.

A ello se unía la fascinación por el mundo comunista, en general, y con Cuba y Fidel, en particular, del asesino de Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald, quien como se supo después, había intentado obtener en México un visado para viajar a Cuba apenas dos meses antes del magnicidio.

El rápido asesinato del propio Oswald selló por siempre la única voz que podría haber aclarado qué le llevó a perpetrar el asesinato.

Pero abrió a la par un torrente de teorías conspirativas en las que la mano de Castro siempre tuvo, pese a las muchas fehacientes negaciones del señalado, un fuerte peso que perdura incluso cuando se cumplen ahora 50 años del magnicidio más analizado de la historia reciente.

En la mañana del 22 de noviembre de 1963, Florentino Aspillaga todavía no se había convertido en el formidable espía cubano que, 24 años más tarde, acabaría desertando y convirtiéndose en una de las mayores fuentes sobre la inteligencia cubana de la CIA.

"Castro lo sabía. Sabían que Kennedy iba a ser asesinado", dijo el entonces espía cubano, Florentino Aspillaga.

En aquellos momentos solo era un joven miembro recién reclutado por la Dirección General de Inteligencia (DGI) cubana, encargado de seguir todas las comunicaciones de la CIA. Pero esa mañana, según contaría años más tarde al ex analista de la CIA y estudioso de Cuba y los Castro Brian Latell, una llamada lo cambió todo.

La orden: dejar de inmediato el seguimiento a la CIA y ponerse a escuchar cualquier comunicación procedente de Texas.

"Me dijeron que escuchara todas las conversaciones y que llamara a la jefatura si sucedía algo importante. Puse todos mis equipos a escuchar cualquier pequeño detalle de Texas. Me dijeron Texas", relató Aspillaga a Latell, una conversación que éste transcribió en su último libro, "Los secretos de Castro", en el que afirma que el líder cubano cuanto menos sabía de antemano del plan para asesinar a Kennedy.

Faltaban aún tres horas para el asesinato del presidente estadunidense cuando Aspillaga dice que recibió la orden. "Castro lo sabía. Sabían que Kennedy iba a ser asesinado", sostuvo.

Según Latell, a ello se une entre otros el hecho de que Oswald, al ver denegada su visa a Cuba, provocó un escándalo en la embajada cubana en México e incluso llegó a amenazar con matar a Kennedy para demostrar su fidelidad a Cuba. Fidel Castro negó públicamente haber sabido de Oswald previo al asesinato de Kennedy, pero Latell acusa al histórico líder cubano de mentir, al menos, en ese punto.

Hasta hoy día, Castro también ha negado cualquier responsabilidad en la muerte de Kennedy.

"Su muerte me dolió. Era un adversario, claro, pero sentí su desaparición. Fue como si perdiera un oponente de mérito", dijo Castro al periodista Ignacio Ramonet en su libro "Cien Horas con Fidel".

"No digo que Fidel Castro ordenara el asesinato (...) pero, ¿quería Fidel ver a Kennedy muerto? Sí. Temía a Kennedy. Y sabía que Kennedy apuntaba contra él. En la mente de Fidel, probablemente estaba actuando en defensa propia", declaró Latell al "Miami Herald" al publicar su libro, el año pasado.

Muestra de que el vínculo cubano nunca ha desaparecido de la mente de muchos son las últimas declaraciones del actual secretario de Estado, John Kerry, a la cadena NBC sobre sus "serias dudas" acerca de que Oswald actuara solo y sobre sus vínculos con Moscú y La Habana.

"Tengo serias dudas de si (los investigadores) llegaron hasta el fondo del tiempo e influencia de Cuba yRusia" sobre Oswald, declaró crípticamente Kerry, si bien se negó a especular más allá.

Otros le dan al vínculo cubano incluso una vuelta de tuerca más. Y es que, según ha trascendido en la última década de la publicación de documentos clasificados, en sus últimos meses de vida, Kennedy estaba decidido a intentar un acercamiento a Castro, en vista de la dificultad de acabar con él. Algo que no gustó ni a los exiliados cubanos ni a todos los que seguían empeñados en derrocar a Castro, recuerda el escritor Jefferson Morley, estudioso del asesinato de Kennedy y colaborador de la web sobre este tema www.jfkfacts.org. "El asesinato de Kennedy demostró ser aleccionador. En los 50 años que siguieron tras 1963, la visión de Kennedy de normalizar las relaciones entre los dos países volverían a ser, literalmente, abatida cada vez que resurgía", recordó.

Brush with Oswald lingers for local man

By Paul Grondahl

Bern Rotman, a TV reporter in New Orleans in the early 1960s, at his home Wednesday Nov. 20, 2103, in Niskayuna, NY. (John Carl D'Annibale / Times Union)

The guy who called assignment editor Bern Rotman at WDSU-TV, Channel 6, in New Orleans on Aug. 14, 1963, said he represented Fair Play for Cuba and that he would be demonstrating in front of the city's World Trade Mart the next day because Fidel Castro "is getting a raw deal."

He identified himself as Lee Harvey Oswald.

The brief conversation and an encounter two days later at the TV station was a random brush with the infamy of the JFK assassination for Rotman, of Niskayuna. The accidental Oswald connection earned Rotman a visit from FBI agents and a footnote in the Warren Commission Report.

"He was an oddball," recalled Rotman, 80, who retired in 1996 as director of the radio and TV unit for the state Department of Commerce, where he worked for 21 years under three governors. "I would have completely forgotten about Oswald if it weren't for the assassination."

Rotman was reminded of the chance meeting following extensive stories in advance of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963 in Dallas.

Fifty years ago, Rotman wasn't convinced Oswald merited coverage, but he told reporter Michael Alla to swing past the World Trade Mart on his way to do a story at City Hall.

Alla called Rotman on a two-way radio to report that Oswald was the lone protester, holding a homemade sign that read Fair Play for Cuba, and walking back and forth on the sidewalk. "We may not even use it, but shoot a minute of film just in case," Rotman radioed back.

That afternoon, Oswald called Rotman to say someone grabbed his sign, there was a brief scuffle and he was arrested by New Orleans police after passers-by became agitated over Oswald's presence.

"I called the cops and they said the guy was a kook," Rotman recalled.

Nonetheless, for that evening's newscast, Rotman used the Oswald protest footage as a "kicker" to end the newscast. "I figured it was kind of a man bites dog story," he said.

The next morning, Aug. 16, Rotman called Oswald back and asked him to come in to the station to record an interview, this time with audio and video. He assigned reporter Bill Slatter, who did a brief interview with Oswald.

Rotman showed Oswald around the newsroom, and the slight man with a faint Texas accent acted oddly. "He spoke in a kind of robotic tone and spouted Marxist doctrine like he had just read it in a book. He was strange and stilted," Rotman said. He did not mention JFK. Oswald left and they never heard of him again in New Orleans.

Keep reading on Times Union >> 

Bill de Blasio and Lee Harvey Oswald

David Lawrence

On Saturday night, I watched "As It Happened: John F. Kennedy" on Channel 2.  Dan Rather said that Lee Harvey Oswald, an admirer of Russia and Fidel Castro's Cuba, killed Kennedy.

Well, look whom New Yorkers have voted in now.  Bill de Blasio, just like Oswald, is an admirer of Russia and Castro's Cuba.  He joyfully visited both, honeymooning in the latter.  Add in Nicaragua for good measure.

Now, I don't think that De Blasio is an assassin.  He will never kill anyone.  The deaths will be the accidental result of his softness on crime and his progressive clichés.  They will be consequential. 

His philosophical equivalent, Sarah Scheindlin, has criticized stop-and-frisk, and gun violence has already gone up.  It seems that people like De Blasio and Scheindlin, who seem to want to do good, trip over their own feet and injure others.  Their means are civilized, but their ends are disastrous.

De Blasio seems to like the communist system enough to have vacationed there more than once.  Communism is like De Blasio's hatred of stop-and-frisk.  It is empathetic toward the dangerous people yet crushes the peaceful citizens.  It promises fairness toward everyone while it hurts the general population.

It favors government over individuals.  And it has not worked out in any country.  It lowers the standard of living and reduces civil rights.

I'm sure Sarah Scheindlin and De Blasio have good intentions.  I'm sure Karl Marx did, too.  Did he know that his ideas would lead to Stalin? 

De Blasio does not want his son, Dante, stopped and frisked.  He does not have the foresight to see that a local killer who is not stopped and frisked might kill his son.

Which is more important?  A pat-down or a shooting?  Does De Blasio have any concern for his family or other people's sons?  Or is he only coldly political?

Will his election be scattered with the corpses of victims who could have been saved?  I see through De Blasio's happy speeches to death in the streets.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/11/bill_de_blasio_and_lee_harvey_oswald.html#ixzz2lIoOC660

Castro-Oswald-Kennedy: Conundrum or Nonsense?

cubaconfidential

By Chris Simmons

By Miguel Fernandez

Last Monday, ex-CIA analyst Dr. Brian Latell and Miami Herald journalist Glen Garvin addressed it at the University of Miami. The thesis statement, “Castro and the Kennedy Assassination,” became ironical.

After clumsily manipulating the reports of both FBI super spy Jack Childs and Cuban Consul Alfredo Mirabal, recycling the fairy tales of foreknowledge with Luisa Calderon and Vladimir Rodriguez-Lahera (AMMUG-1) in the leading roles, and re-telling “the Jaimanitas story” by Florentino Aspillada (TOUCHDOWN), Dr. Latell added a “new discovery” for proving a connection between Lee Harvey Oswald and the Castro’s intelligence machine: Oswald stayed for six days at the center of the pro-Castro activities in Mexico City.

That’s an old story from U.S. Ambassador Thomas Mann. Dr. Latell used it for the same original purpose of pushing “the Cuban conspiracy.” However, the more dots are connecting to work against the lack of conclusive evidence for accusing Castro, the lesser options are left for a rational explanation of Oswald’s actions. Actually Dr. Latell’s approach leads to the crossroad of a conspiracy between Castro and the CIA, or a despicable mishandling by the CIA. Since the former is preposterous, as Dr. Latell rightly said, the latter is the point d´honeur.

Uncommon Nonsense

To a certain extent, Dr. Latell exemplifies the analytical shortcomings of the CIA facing Castro. Any conspiracy theory on Castro not only presumes he took the greatest risk for winning nothing with Lyndon B. Johnson as President. It also assumes that an ex-Marine re-defector from the Soviet Union was not an intelligence bonanza in 1963.

Dr. Latell’s legend affirms that a true believer of Communism and Cuban Revolution, connected to several leftwing newspaper and organizations, after leafleting for Castro and clashing with anti-Castro exiles in New Orleans, got a brand new passport, traveled to Mexico City, stayed at the Castroit Hotel El Comercio, visited several times the Cuban and Soviet diplomatic compounds, asked to illegally travel to Cuba with the Soviet Union as final destination, was encouraged by Castro intelligence offices to kill Kennedy, and returned to Dallas for accomplishing the mission.

Oswald had pre-assassination files in both the FBI (105-82555) and the CIA (201-289248). The routing slips of the latter show that he was under close scrutiny by three teams inside the company: the Counterintelligence Special Investigation Group (CI-SIG), the Counterintelligence Operation Group (CI-OPS) and the Counter-Espionage Unit of the Soviet Russia Division (CE-SR/6).

However, the CIA Inspector General flatly stated: “It was not until 22 November 1963 [that the CIA] Station learned (…) Oswald had also visited the Cuban Embassy.” Thus, Oswald would have passed unnoticed by the CIA surveillance teams in Mexico City despite his three visits to the Cuban Consulate on September 27, 1963, and a call about his immigration proceedings from a Cuban employee to a phone taped by the CIA at the Soviet Consulate.

The Cables of October

Moreover, the CIA revealed a keen interest in Oswald on the “need to know” basis during his stay in Mexico City.
• October 8, 1963. The cable 6453 from Mexico City CIA Station to Langley reported wit delay that “an American male who spoke broken Russian” had said by phone his name was “Lee Oswald.” He had visited the Soviet Embassy on September 28 and spoke with Consul Vareliy V. Kostikov. It was also provided a description of a presumed American male entering the Soviet Embassy on October 1st.
• October 10. The cable 74830 from Langley replied that Lee Oswald “probably” was Lee Henry Oswald and specified that latest info was an ODACID [State Department] report from May 1962. Langley gave a description of Oswald and concealed two FBI reports recently added to his file: from Dallas (September 24, 1963) on his leftist political activities and form New Orleans (October 4) on his clashes with Cuban exiles.
• October 10. The cable 74673, drafted by the same CIA officers at Langley on the same day for ODACID, ODENVY (FBI), and ODOATH (Navy), gave as Oswald’s the description of the “presumed American male” from the cable 6453 and left out the most important hint from Mexico: that Oswald had spoken with the well-known KGB officer Kostikov.

To cap it all, the CIA Station never produced a photo or an audio tape from Oswald. One of each item was immediately sent to the FBI in Dallas, but Director J. Edgar Hoover had to call the already sitting President LBJ for advising that “the picture and the tape do not correspond to this man’s voice, nor to his appearance.” At least, Oswald was telephonically impersonated in Mexico City.

Coda

Even if nobody aided and abetted Oswald, the crucial problem is how the CIA failed to prevent him from killing the U.S. President in broad daylight at Dealey Plaza. The conspiracy debate turns a blind eye to it.

By pure chance, Oswald got a job at the Texas School Books Depository on October 16, 1963. A week before, FBI supervisor Marvin Gheesling had cancelled the FLASH card issued on Oswald when he defected to the USSR. The day after the cancellation, the CIA sent DIR 74673 to FBI with phony items about Oswald, but enough information for putting him again in the watch list. Since the FLASH was off, Oswald would come back under the spotlight too late.

Nobody from the CIA or the FBI took responsibility, and the CIA still retains about 1,100 secret documents related to the assassination. Thus, the debate should not be about conspiracies, but rather about transparency and justice.