Air Force Picks Boeing 747-8 To Replace Air Force One: Sources

Business Insider

 

Thomson ReutersMedia and White House staff board Air Force One for an early morning departure with U.S. President Barack Obama to India, at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Air Force plans to announce on Wednesday that it has decided to use Boeing Co's commercial 747-8 airliner to replace its current fleet of Air Force One presidential aircraft, two sources familiar with the decision said on Wednesday.

The decision comes a month after Boeing said it would slow production of the 747-8 aircraft from 1.5 a month to 1.3 a month.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/r-air-force-picks-boeing-747-8-to-replace-air-force-one-sources-2015-1#ixzz3QDiZTeXl

"Habla el General" Rafael del Pino [13 y final]: Cuando Ronald Reagan recibió al General Rafael del Pino

Maria Elvira Salazar

Ivan Eland on Ranking US Presidents

The Independent Institute

Supreme Court limits president's recess appointment power

foxnews

The Supreme Court delivered a blow Thursday to President Obama, ruling that he went too far in making recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board. 

In a unanimous decision, the high court sided with Senate Republicans and limited the president's power to fill high-level vacancies with temporary appointments. It was the first-ever Supreme Court test involving the long-standing practice of presidents naming appointees when the Senate is on break. 

In this case, Obama had argued that the Senate was on an extended holiday break when he filled slots at the NLRB in 2012. He argued the brief sessions it held every three days were a sham that was intended to prevent him from filling the seats. 

The justices rejected that argument, though, declaring the Senate was not actually in a formal recess when Obama acted during that three-day window. 

Justice Stephen Breyer said in his majority opinion that a congressional break has to last at least 10 days to be considered a recess under the Constitution. 

"Three days is too short a time to bring a recess within the scope of the Clause. Thus we conclude that the President lacked the power to make the recess appointments here at issue," Breyer wrote. 

At the same time, the court upheld the general authority of the president to make recess appointments. 

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, among those who criticized the president for unilaterally filling the NLRB slots, applauded the high court decision on Thursday. 

"The president made an unprecedented power grab by placing political allies at a powerful federal agency while the Senate was meeting regularly and without even bothering to wait for its advice and consent," he said in a statement. "A unanimous Supreme Court has rejected this brazen power-grab." 

On a separate track, House Speaker John Boehner said a day earlier he plans to proceed with a lawsuit against the president over his alleged abuse of executive power. 

Reacting to the Supreme Court decision on Thursday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the administration is "deeply disappointed" in the ruling. He said that while the administration disagrees with the decision, it will honor it. 

The issue of recess appointments receded in importance after the Senate's Democratic majority changed the rules to make it harder for Republicans to block confirmation of most Obama appointees. 

But the ruling's impact may be keenly felt by the White House next year if Republicans capture control of the Senate in the November election. The potential importance of the ruling lies in the Senate's ability to block the confirmation of judges and the leaders of independent agencies like the NLRB. A federal law gives the president the power to appoint acting heads of Cabinet-level departments to keep the government running. 

Still, the outcome could have been worse for the administration. The justices, by a 5-4 vote, rejected a sweeping lower court ruling against the administration that would have made it virtually impossible for any future president to make recess appointments. 

The lower court held that the only recess recognized by the Constitution is the once-a-year break between sessions of Congress. It also said that only vacancies that arise in that recess could be filled. So the high court has left open the possibility that a president, with a compliant Congress, could make recess appointments in the future.  

The case decided Thursday arose out of a dispute between the NLRB and a Pepsi-Cola distributor, Noel Canning. The NLRB had ruled against him in a labor dispute, but Canning argued that three of the five board members were improperly appointed. 

A recess appointment can last no more than two years. Recess appointees who subsequently won Senate confirmation include Chief Justice Earl Warren and Justice William Brennan, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, two current NLRB members and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director Richard Cordray. Former UN Ambassador John Bolton is among recess appointees who left office because they could not win a Senate vote. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Marco Rubio: 'The Obama Presidency Is Over'

breitbart 

In an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity” on Wednesday, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) hit President Barack Obama on the grounds of his low poll numbers, particularly as a newly released NBC-Wall Street Journal poll shows 54 percent of those polled saying they no longer feel the president “is able to lead the country and get the job done.”

Rubio agreed with NBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd, who earlier in the day said the Obama presidency is effective over.

“I saw a commentator today say that these polls they reflected with the Obama presidency is over,” Rubio said. “And I agree with that. I think it is in general. Obviously he still has responsibilities that I hope he'll live up to. But whether it's foreign policy or the issue on the border, or the VA, or the IRS losing its e-mails or Benghazi before that, it seems like every day now, every other day, there's a new crisis -- almost like we're overwhelmed by the number of crisis and conflicts that are arising as a result of the incompetence and in some instances the design of this administration.”

Rubio also criticized the Obama’s handling of the unfolding crisis in Iraq. The Florida senator emphasized the need to cut off the ISIS supply lines from Syria into Iraq in his criticism and he took issue with Obama taking certain actions off of the table.

“First of all, I don't think the president should be ruling things out even if he never intends to send a single American back. And by the way I don't take that lightly, nor am I calling for that. But you don't start by telling terrorists, here's what we're not going to do. But second, I think we need to use American power, primarily air power and targeted missile strikes to wipe out the ISIS advance, particularly these supply routes that they now have in place. Again, this is not about saving Maliki. This is about preventing these guys from setting up a caliphate that they're going to use to attack us here in the United States.”

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 >> 

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.

Mary O'Grady: What Castro Knew About Lee Harvey Oswald - WSJ

Mary O'Grady

In November 1963, Cuban intelligence officer Florentino Aspillaga was posted in a little hut near a Cuban beach where he operated listening equipment trained on Miami and CIA headquarters in Virginia. On the morning of Nov. 22, Mr. Aspillaga—who would defect to the U.S. in 1987—said that he was ordered "to stop all your CIA work, all your CIA work." He was instructed to "put all of my equipment to listen to any small detail from Texas. They told me Texas."

Did Castro know that Lee Harvey Oswald was about to assassinate President Kennedy? Brian Latell, a veteran CIA Cuba analyst who spent 15 hours interviewing Mr. Aspillaga for his newly revised "Castro's Secrets," (Palgrave MacMillan), makes a strong case that he did.

Nov. 23, 1963 file photo, Lee Harvey Oswald is led down a corridor of the Dallas police station for another round of questioning in connection with the assassination of U.S, President John F. Kennedy. Associated Press

Mr. Latell takes readers through a half-century of Cuban espionage by interviewing a dozen high-ranking Cuban defectors and numerous former CIA officers. He calls Mr. Aspillaga "the most knowledgeable Cuban defector ever to change sides." He also pored over thousands of pages of declassified CIA documents and gained access to the unpublished memoir of Thomas Mann, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico in 1963, who had reason to suspect an Oswald-Cuba connection.

Mr. Latell set out to tell the story of Cuba's "intelligence machine," which outmaneuvered the U.S. for many years. In the process he uncovers startling details that suggest that Cuba fueled Oswald's maniacal desire to prove himself worthy of Castro's revolution during the American's visit to Mexico City in the fall of 1963. Mr. Latell also presents strong evidence that the Johnson administration and higher-ups in the FBI and the CIA ensured those details were kept from the Warren Commission.

The Kennedy administration was desperate to eliminate Castro. The 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion had failed and by August 1963, according to Edward Jay Epstein —a renowned expert on the killing of the president and author of the recently released book "The JFK Assassination Diary"— Richard Helms, though not yet CIA director, was "receiving almost daily phone calls from [Attorney General Robert Kennedy ] demanding to know what actions he was [taking] to remove Castro from power." The agency recruited Rolando Cubela, a revolutionary insider, to do the job. 

But Cubela was a double agent. And on Sept. 7, just after Cubela agreed to help the Americans, Castro gave an interview to an AP reporter in which he put the U.S. on notice that "aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders" would mean that "they themselves will not be safe."

Castro didn't need to look far for a willing partner to back up those words. It is "known with near certainty," writes Mr. Latell, that Cuba had "opened a dossier" on Oswald in 1959, while he was stationed at the Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, in Southern California. Oswald was enamored of the Cuban Revolution, and he had made contact with the Cuban consulate in Los Angeles.

On Sept. 27, 1963, Oswald checked into the Hotel Comercio in Mexico City for a five-night stay. He tried to get a visa from the Cuban embassy to travel to Havana. He had a fling with an embassy employee and probably spent time with others who were intelligence agents. When his visa was not forthcoming, witnesses said he went on a rant at the embassy, slammed the door and stormed off.

Keep reading on WSJ.com >>

Was a Cuban hitman the second JFK assassin? New book reveals another plausible killer

He was chief counsel of the US Congress's Assassinations Committee, the body set up in the late Seventies to re-examine the shootings of JFK and the civil rights leader Martin Luther King - and he had special access to classified information.

In 2007, out of the blue, he was contacted by a Cuban exile named Reinaldo Mart­nez. He was in his 80s, Mart­nez explained, and there was something he wanted to get off his chest before he died. Over two days with Blakey I listened to what Mart­nez had to say. He passed on what he said he had been told by anti-Castro leader Tony Cuesta, a celebrated hero to Cuban exiles in the US, when Cuesta was being treated in the infirmary at Cuba's La Cabana prison for terrible wounds received in an anti-Castro raid.

Cuesta said a comrade, Herminio D­az - a man he and Mart­nez both knew intimately - had admitted before his death in combat that he had "participated" in the assassination of President Kennedy. D­az was a known political assassin, a marksman and - before joining the struggle against Castro that so many exiles felt Kennedy had betrayed - had worked in one of Mafia boss Santo Trafficante's casinos in Cuba.

We found Mart­nez credible, what he told us plausible. Former chief counsel Blakey deems the new information "a breakthrough of historic importance". Its significance lies in the fact it undermines the Oswald did-it-alone theory of the official account of Kennedy's assassination 50 years ago, on November 22, 1963.

Keep reading on Daily Express >>

Was Cuban Herminio Diaz a second Kennedy assassin?

dailymail

Author Anthony Summers has claimed that Cuban exile shot President John F. Kennedy in 1963 with Lee Harvey Oswald

Diaz was part of an anti-Castro movement that felt betrayed by Kennedy for the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis

He 'told a friend that he was responsible for the killing before his death'

------------------------------

A Cuban exile and professional hit man assassinated President John F. Kennedy with Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963, an author has claimed.

Anthony Summers said evidence shows Herminio Diaz, who was part of the anti-Castro movement that felt betrayed by Kennedy for the Bay of Pigs invasion, was in the U.S. at the time of the killing.

Afterwards, Diaz reportedly revealed to friends that he had been part of the murder and after his death in 1966, one moved to Miami and eventually contacted officials to share the story.

The chief counsel of the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations, G. Robert Blakey, said he believed the account and called the new details 'a breakthrough of historical importance'.

Accused: An author has claimed that Heminio Diaz (left), a Cuban exile, was also responsible for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy n 1963. Lee Harvey Oswald (right) was arrested for the killing

The startling claims have been made by Summers in an update to his 1998 book on the killing, 'Not In Your Lifetime' and shared with the National Enquirer.

While Diaz's name has been linked to the assassinations before, Summers claims he now has the real evidence - and support from experts - to prove the claims are true.

It further fuels beliefs that Kennedy's assassination as he drove in a motorcade through Dallas, Texas was a conspiracy and not carried out solely by Oswald, who was arrested for the murder.

Diaz, who had worked for Mafia boss Santo Tafficante Jr. in Cuba and killed a Cuban police officer in the 1940s, arrived in the U.S. a few months before the assassination on November 22, 1963, CIA documents show, the Enquirer reported.

Before tragedy: President John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie Kennedy Onassis smile at the crowds lining their motorcade route in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963 minutes before he was shot

Horror: An image shows Jackie Kennedy leaning over to help her husband just after he was shot

'Diaz was a professional hit man with a record of political assassinations,' Summers said. 'He was in the country at the right time and was involved in the anti-Castro movement.

'Many people in that movement thought President Kennedy had betrayed them during the CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, and had a motive to kill him. Frankly, it all adds up.'

Summers did not say how Oswald and Diaz would have been acquainted with each other.

After the assassination, Diaz was traveling to Cuba for an anti-Castro raid with a friend, Tony Cuesta, who he told about his role in the killing, the Enquirer reported.

Diaz died in the raid and Cuesta was hurt after trying to commit suicide to avoid capture - but he was caught and jailed at La Cabana Prison.

Claims: Author Anthony Summers said he spoke to another Cuban immigrant who heard that Diaz confessed to the assassination. The new details are an addition to his 1998 book, Not In Your Lifetime

While being treated in the infirmary, he told another anti-Castro inmate, Reinaldo Martinez, about Diaz's confession.

After Martinez was released from prison, he went to Miami and eventually contacted G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel of the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations, in 2007.

Blakey told the National Enquirer that Martinez thought he was going to die so wanted to come clean.

'After speaking with him, I believe he was telling the truth,' he said. 'This is a breakthrough of historical importance.'

Summers, who also spoke to Martinez at length, and Blakey said that Martinez had gone to the FBI with his story, but he was told the investigation was closed.

In the famous Zapruder film of the assassination, Kennedy can be seen being hit from behind - where Oswald was standing - and then apparently being hit from the front, some experts have said.

Blame: Oswald, pictured the day after the assassination, was the only person arrested for the killing. A man who heard Diaz was responsible for the shooting told the FBI - but they said the case was closed

Cyril H. Wecht, a medical examiner who has studied the assassination for decades, said he agrees there was someone else involved.

'Based on the initial backward trajectory of the president's head after being impacted by the gunshot blasts, I believe a shooter operated from the right front of the vehicle behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll,' he said. 'Eyewitness accounts corroborate this.'

The Warren Report into the death discounted this and instead only Oswald was arrested for the death.

He denied any role in the assassination. Two days after his arrest, he was shot dead by nightclub owner Jack Ruby as he was transferred from police headquarters to jail.

Read more:

• The National Enquirer

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2463291/Was-Cuban-Herminio-Diaz-second-Kennedy-assassin.html#ixzz2hwuHN0Lg
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Los Castro frente a la historia y a once presidentes de EEUU (2 y final )

Diego Trinidad, PhD

lapupilainsomne

El resto de la década de los 60 transcurrió sin muchas novedades en las relaciones bilaterales entre Cuba y EEUU. Al parecer, después de su viaje a Rusia en 1963, la muerte de Kennedy y los cambios obvios en la política del nuevo presidente Johnson hacia Cuba (corte de la ayuda por la CIA a los exiliados en Miami, suspensión de la Operación Mongoose, cierre de los últimos campamentos de entrenamiento en Costa Rica bajo el control de Manuel Artime), Castro llegó a la conclusión de que el acuerdo entre Kennedy y Khrushchev sería, en definitiva, respetado por EEUU. Eso le daba carta abierta a Castro para proseguir impunemente con sus planes subversivos, confiado en que EEUU no invadiría a Cuba como reacción a la “exportación” de la revolución cubana. Así, en enero de 1966 se celebró en La Habana la primera conferencia Tricontinental, que creó los organismos (OSPAAAL, OLAS) para la subversión masiva en África y Latinoamérica. Hasta la elección del republicano Richard Nixon en 1968, la administración de Johnson estuvo completamente ocupada con la guerra en Vietnam y Castro campeó por su respeto en sus planes subversivos sin casi ninguna interferencia del gobierno americano, excepto por las actividades clandestinas de la CIA.

Cuando Ernesto “Che” Guevara decidió, con complicidad de Cuba, implementar una de sus demenciales guerra de guerrillas en Bolivia -un país que había tenido su reforma agraria bajo el presidente Victor Paz Stensoro desde 1953- la CIA, en cooperación con el ejército boliviano, estaba lista para ponerle fin a sus sueños de conquistar el continente y fomentar “uno, dos, muchos Vietnams” en el mundo. Fue ejecutado por el sargento del ejército boliviano René Terán a la 1:20 pm en la Quebrada del Yuro, en las selvas de Bolivia. El cubano-americano de la CIA, Félix Ismael Rodríguez, quien trató por todos los medios de salvarlo por órdenes de la CIA, lo acompañó hasta que fue ajusticiado.  Antes de morir, le envió el siguiente mensaje a Castro: “Dile a Fidel que pronto verá una revolución triunfante en América”.29 Pero Castro, quien lo había abandonado y había saboteado la misión desde el principio, sólo estaba interesado en el “Che” como símbolo, el gran mártir de la revolución cubana (ayudado por la icónica foto del fotógrafo comunista cubano Alberto Korda). Esto lo consiguió a plenitud, pero la predicción de Guevara no se cumplió. No hubo ninguna revolución triunfante en América, pero no por falta de esfuerzo, ya que Castro nunca abandonó el proyecto hasta ahora mismo, cuando lo sigue intentando con ayuda venezolana, aunque ya no con subversión armada y con guerrillas. Ahora, en el proyecto “autoritario” del “socialismo del siglo 21” en sociedad con el presidente de Venezuela Hugo Chávez, y tras su muerte con su heredero Nicolás Maduro, la subversión es política y a través de dinero de PDVSA. Pero el “sueño” de Castro y Guevara vive.  En 1968, ese sueño, por lo menos la parte de ser el líder mundial del Tercer Mundo, sufrió un grave revés cuando Castro apoyó la intervención militar rusa en Checoeslovaquia. 

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