The Nixon Administration and Cuba: Continuity and Rupture 0367754738, 9780367754730

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of Figures
Preface
Acknowledgments
PART I: The Context
1 From Saigon to Havana
PART II: The Nixon Administration’s Policy toward Cuba
2 “A Very, Very Cautious Probe Only”
3 CIA’s Covert Operations and the Use of Cuban Exiles
4 The Anti-Cuban Policy of the U.S
5 Debate in the U.S. National Security Council
PART III: The CIA and the Secret Economic War against Cuba, and a New “Missile Crisis” (1969–1970)
6 The Cuban Exiles in the CIA Plans
7 The “Crisis” of the Soviet Nuclear Submarines
PART IV: Other Secret Actions toward Cuba
8 Psychological Warfare: Radio Broadcasts
9 Pirate Warfare: Harassment of Fishermen
10 Biological Warfare: The African Swine Fever
PART V: The Decline of the Counterrevolutionary Groups
11 The Failure of the Torriente Plan
12 The Crisis of the “Mother Ships”
13 Assassination Plots toward Fidel Castro
PART VI: The U.S.–Cuba Agreement on the Hijacking of Aircrafts, Sea Vessels and Other Offenses
14 Air and Sea Hijackings: A Double-Edged Sword for the U.S
15 The Failed Negotiations between Cuba and the U.S
16 The Agreement of 1973
PART VII: The Debacle of a President
17 Debates in the Congress (1973–1974)
18 Continued Terrorism
19 Watergate: Nixon’s Fall and the Cuban Connection
Index

Citation preview

The Nixon Administration and Cuba

This book presents a detailed analysis of the U.S. policy that was adopted toward Cuba by the Richard M. Nixon administration between January 20, 1969, and August 8, 1974. Based on governmental, as well as other, sources from both the U.S. and Cuba, this book examines the rupture where the policy of “passive containment” was complemented with a policy of “dirty war.” President Nixon attempted to reestablish a confrontational and violent path of action, and once again, Cuba was exposed to a “dirty war” consisting of different forms of aggressive terrorist activities. Since the conditions for this violent route had changed dramatically both in the U.S. and in Cuba, a policy characterized by a continuity of the economic and psychological warfare came to be the central one for the Nixon administration. This book is unique since it is written from a Cuban perspective, and it therefore complements and enriches the knowledge of the U.S.–Cuban relationship during the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, and the policy adopted by the Nixon administration. It is of relevance to everyone interested in the issue, and especially for students and researchers within the disciplines of history and political science. Håkan Karlsson (born 1962) is Full Professor of archeology at the Department of Historical Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He has worked with archeological, anthropological and historical investigations approaching different aspects of Cuban cultural heritage for more than 15 years. Tomás Diez Acosta (born 1946) obtained licentiate in political science and doctor of philosophy in history from the University of Havana, Havana, Cuba. He is Professor and researcher at the Instituto de Historia de Cuba, and he has published over 20 books about the relations between Cuba and the U.S.

Routledge Studies in the History of the Americas

14 Hearing Enslaved Voices African and Indian Slave Testimony in British and French America, 1700–1848 Edited by Sophie White and Trevor Burnard 15 Kinship and Incestuous Crime in Colonial Guatemala Sarah N. Saffa 16 Education in Revolutionary Struggles Iván Illich, Paulo Freire, Ernesto Guevara and Latin American Thought Andrés Donoso Romo 17 Cartographic Expeditions and Visual Culture in the NineteenthCentury Americas Edited by Ernesto Capello and Julia B. Rosenbaum 18 The Johnson Administration’s Cuba Policy From “Dirty War” to Passive Containment Håkan Karlsson and Tomás Diez Acosta 19 The Unheard Voice of Law in Bartolomé De La Casas’ ‘Brevísima Relación De La Destruición De Las Indias’ David T. Orique 20 The Nixon Administration and Cuba Continuity and Rupture Håkan Karlsson and Tomás Diez Acosta

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge. com/Routledge-Studies-in-the-History-of-the-Americas/book-series/RSHAM

The Nixon Administration and Cuba Continuity and Rupture

Håkan Karlsson and Tomás Diez Acosta

First published 2021 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Håkan Karlsson and Tomás Diez Acosta The right of Håkan Karlsson and Tomás Diez Acosta to be identifed as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Karlsson, Håkan, 1962– author. | Diez Acosta, Tomás, author. Title: The Nixon administration and Cuba : continuity and rupture / Håkan Karlsson and Tomás Diez Acosta. Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Series: Routledge studies in the history of the Americas | Includes bibliographical references and index. Counterrevolutions—Cuba—History—20th century. | Cuba—Economic conditions—1959–1990. Classifcation: LCC E183.8.C9 K374 2021 | DDC 327.7307291—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020052389 ISBN: 978-0-367-75473-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-75474-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-16261-2 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

“The man that was the manager of the mercenary invasion of Girón against our homeland, the current President of the United States, is not even sure that he can fnish his current mandate. Mercenaries trained by the CIA in espionage, sabotage, subversion and aggression against Cuba, were later used to spy on and steal documents at the headquarters of the United States Democratic Party. This action, the scandal that it gave rise to, and the complications that it caused, showed that the CIA and its mercenaries were much more apt to ruin the United States presidency than to overthrow the Cuban Revolution. They raised crows, and crows are devouring their guts!” Fidel Castro: “Discurso por el XXI Aniversario de los asaltos a los cuarteles Moncada y Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, el 26 de julio de 1974”

Contents

List of Figures Preface Acknowledgments

ix xi xv

PART I

The Context 1 From Saigon to Havana

1 3

PART II

The Nixon Administration’s Policy toward Cuba

35

2 “A Very, Very Cautious Probe Only”

39

3 CIA’s Covert Operations and the Use of Cuban Exiles

44

4 The Anti-Cuban Policy of the U.S.

53

5 Debate in the U.S. National Security Council

71

PART III

The CIA and the Secret Economic War against Cuba, and a New “Missile Crisis” (1969–1970)

79

6 The Cuban Exiles in the CIA Plans

80

7 The “Crisis” of the Soviet Nuclear Submarines

98

viii Contents PART IV

Other Secret Actions toward Cuba

115

8 Psychological Warfare: Radio Broadcasts

118

9 Pirate Warfare: Harassment of Fishermen

123

10 Biological Warfare: The African Swine Fever

133

PART V

The Decline of the Counterrevolutionary Groups

145

11 The Failure of the Torriente Plan

146

12 The Crisis of the “Mother Ships”

154

13 Assassination Plots toward Fidel Castro

174

PART VI

The U.S.–Cuba Agreement on the Hijacking of Aircrafts, Sea Vessels and Other Offenses

181

14 Air and Sea Hijackings: A Double-Edged Sword for the U.S.

183

15 The Failed Negotiations between Cuba and the U.S.

199

16 The Agreement of 1973

211

PART VII

The Debacle of a President

221

17 Debates in the Congress (1973–1974)

225

18 Continued Terrorism

236

19 Watergate: Nixon’s Fall and the Cuban Connection

245

Index

265

Figures

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 2.1 2.2

4.1

6.1 7.1 7.2

President Richard Nixon with U.S. Army 1st Infantry Division troops during visit to Dian, South Vietnam, July 30, 1969. WHPO 1631-03. White House Photo Offce 4 Richard M. Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev aboard the Sequoia, June 19, 1973. NLRNWHPO-E1028-04. White House Photo Offce 10 Fidel Castro at the IV summit of the non-aligned countries in Algiers, September 7, 1973 16 Fidel Castro addresses a huge crowd at the Revolution Square in Havana on the X anniversary of the triumph of the Revolution, January 2, 1969 17 Fidel Castro at an event organized in commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Vladimir I. Lenin in Havana, April 22, 1970 22 First meeting of the President’s National Security Council, January 21, 1969. NLRNWHPO-C0127-01. White House Photo Offce 36 Memorandum to the president from Henry A. Kissinger. Subject: Cuban Exiles, Washington, January 31, 1969. NCS Country Files—Latin America, Box #780, Cuba Vol #1. Note President Nixon’s handwritten comments 37 Memorandum of conversation. Subject: CUBA: Signals from Castro Indicating a Desire for Dialogue with U.S. RG 59, Central Files 1967–1969, Stack 150, Row 65, Box 2021 55 Demonstration in Havana against the U.S. hijacking of Cuban fshermen, May 1970 89 The visit of a Soviet fotilla in Cienfuegos, September 1970 101 U.S. air reconnaissance photo of Cayo Alcatraz, Cienfuegos Bay, Cuba, September 18, 1970. CIA; Document Type: CREST; Collection: NGA Records (Formerly NIMA); Document Number (FOI)/ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP83–01074R000200420007-6 102

x

Figures 9.1

10.1 11.1 11.2 14.1

17.1 18.1

19.1

19.2

Attack on the Cuban fshing vessel Plataforma IV, October 10, 1972 The burning of slaughtered pigs infected with the African swine fever in July 1971 Nancy Pavón, a victim of the counterrevolutionary attack at Boca de Samá, October 12, 1971 Attack on the Cuban fshing vessel Aguja, October 10, 1972 Memorandum to the president from Henry A. Kissinger. Subject: Aircraft Hijacking, Washington, February 7, 1969. NCS Country Files - Latin America, Box #780, Cuba Vol #1 President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger stand at an Oval Offce window, February 10, 1971. WHPO 5628-20A. White House Photo Offce Terrorism abroad. An information board at the permanent exhibition “Memorial de la Denuncia” in Havana stresses the 581 terrorist attacks that have been directed at Cuban missions and personnel stationed outside Cuba. Photo: Håkan Karlsson Meeting in the Oval Offce concerning Congressman Ford’s nomination as vice president, October 13, 1973. Participants: Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, President Richard M. Nixon, Vice Presidential Designate Gerald Ford, Deputy Assistant Alexander Haig Jr. NLRN-WHPO-E1637-24. White House Photo Offce Richard M. Nixon’s resignation letter, August 9, 1974. Letters of Resignation and Declination of Federal Offce, 1789–1974, General Records of the Department of State, 1756–1979

124 140 147 151

186 229

238

255

259

Preface

The present book—The Nixon Administration and Cuba: Continuity and Rupture—has the purpose of analyzing the confrontational relations between the U.S. and Cuba during the Richard Nixon administration (January 20, 1969, to August 8, 1974). Once again, the Cuban people had to face a hostile U.S. government, in particular its president, who sought to take revenge and to demolish the peace in Cuba. A peace achieved after the defeat of the “dirty war” and the armed route led by the internal counterrevolution, encouraged and funded by the U.S., between 1959 and 1965. Based on U.S. and Cuban documents, the book studies how Nixon— in contradiction to the precepts of Realpolitik that was the foundation of the foreign policy and the main doctrine of his administration—tried to continue the failed policy of a violent confrontation with Cuba, that he had supported, as vice president of the U.S. under Dwight D. Eisenhower during the years of 1953–1961. However, the internal and external situations in the U.S. and Cuba did not allow it. The economic, commercial and fnancial blockade, diplomatic isolation and psychological warfare remained the main methods used by President Nixon in his anti-Cuban policy. The overthrow of the Cuban Revolutionary government prevailed as the main objective of the political strategy of the Nixon administration, ignoring those offcials within the U.S. government that proposed a renewal of the U.S. policy toward Cuba. However, one of the main problems in achieving this subversive objective was the disenchantment and frustration of the internal counterrevolution in Cuba that, in general, had rejected the path of armed opposition and preferred to emigrate to the U.S. The unity of the Cuban people around the Revolution was, essentially, the main obstacle in which the anti-Cuban plans of the U.S. administrations crashed. Destroying that obstacle was a central purpose of the subversive policy of the Nixon administration, for which advanced plans were drawn up. In line with this, the U.S. strategists considered taking advantage of the problems that the Cuban economy was going through, in particular, hindering the goal of reaching a production of 10 million

xii

Preface

tons of sugar in the sugar harvest of 1970. They believed that such a setback would cause a general popular discontent that could result in divisions within the direction of the Revolution and create the conditions for an armed insurrection. It was therefore no accident that during the frst two years of Nixon’s mandate-period there were new covert sabotage actions aiming to hamper the Cuban economy, particularly the 1970 sugar harvest, through the infltration of mercenary groups and threats of paramilitary invasions. The goal of 10 million tons was not achieved, but it was not due to these U.S. actions. This setback, as on other occasions, served to initiate a whole process of strengthening in all spheres of the political, economic and social life of the Cuban nation, which the enemies of the Revolution unsuccessfully tried to hinder. Another of the aggressions that caused great economic damage to Cuba, and the Cuban economy, was the attempt to hinder the possibility to provide foodstuff to the Cuban people through the introduction of the African swine fever virus. At the same time the harassment and seizure of Cuban fshing vessels and their crews by the U.S. Coastguard continued, and it was more intense. A number of terrorist groups, that acted with absolute impunity from the U.S., executed pirate attacks against economic targets and defenseless villages on the Cuban coasts, and they attacked fshing boats and kidnapped their crews. The illegal exits of persons from Cuba continued, especially through the U.S. Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Likewise, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the counterrevolution prepared plans for the assassination of Fidel Castro and other central revolutionary leaders; however, all these actions did not reach the proportion that they had in the 1960s. In this aggressive context, there were also moments of crisis and tension. One of them was the “crisis” of the Soviet submarines in Cienfuegos, which was resolved bilaterally, and diplomatically, between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Another moment of confict was motivated by the impunity enjoyed by terrorist groups of Cuban origin in the U.S., whose misdeeds were encouraged in that country, such as the criminal attack on the village of Boca de Samá, which provoked the reaction of the Cuban government, giving rise to what in this book has been termed the crisis of the “Mother ships.” By 1972, the decline of counterrevolutionary groups and organizations was an undeniable fact. In that context, the terrorist groups called for “the route of terrorism throughout the world,” which was a term describing a campaign of terror against Cuban offcials, installations abroad and anyone allegedly supporting the Cuban government. During the Nixon administration, in contrast to all of the above, there was a search for an agreement with the Cuban government against the hijackings of aircrafts, since these had become a problem for the U.S. national security. Despite the turbulent and prolonged negotiation

Preface xiii process, a memorandum of understanding against the hijacking of aircrafts, ships and other crimes, that was mutually satisfactory, could be reached in February 1973. The agreement led to the end of hijacked U.S. aircrafts arriving in Cuba, and it also led to a cessation of the piracy actions that were prepared from the territory of the U.S. However, the agreement could not be the preamble of a process of normalization of U.S.–Cuban diplomatic relations, due to the uncompromising position upheld by Nixon. As a result of the Nixon administration’s setback in defeating the Cuban people, there were a number of voices that—for the frst time since the triumph of the Cuban revolution in 1959—were raised in the U.S. Congress in demand for a reevaluation of the U.S. anti-Cuban policy of political and economic isolation, since its failure was evident. For many persons, the U.S. doctrine of detente practiced toward the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China was inconsistent with the policy that was carried out toward Cuba. However, the common ground between President Nixon and the counterrevolution was solid during his administration, and one example of this was the Watergate scandal. Of the fve individuals arrested for the assault on the Watergate building, and the headquarters of the National Committee of the Democratic Party, four were Cuban and all had been directly involved in activities against Cuba. Watergate was one of the biggest scandals in the history of the U.S., and it caused Richard Nixon’s resignation as U.S. president on August 8, 1974. The present work is structured in seven parts. The frst part, “The Context,” has the objective of addressing, on a fundamental level, the international, regional and domestic situations of the U.S. and Cuba that conditioned and, in many cases, were determinant factors, in the course of the events studied in the book. The second part, “The Nixon Administration’s Policy toward Cuba,” is dedicated to the evaluations that were made by the Department of State and the CIA of the U.S. policy toward Cuba that had been carried out until the frst year of the Nixon administration and the U.S. need to introduce changes in its Cuban policy according to the existing situation. However, Nixon’s uncompromising stance toward the Cuban Revolution did not make any essential changes possible, but rather reaffrmed the aggressive line of diplomatic and economic isolation policy that had been practiced for a decade. The third part, “The CIA and the Secret Economic War against Cuba, and a New ‘Missile Crisis’ (1969–1970),” explains and exemplifes how the counterrevolutionary exile was used for the execution of the plans designed to hamper the social and economic development of Cuba. It also shows that the so-called crisis of the Soviet submarines in Cienfuegos demonstrates an example of the intense aerial espionage to which the Cuban national territory was subjected to by the U.S. The fourth part, “Other Secret Actions toward Cuba,” shows the continuation of the different economic,

xiv Preface psychological and bacteriological methods of warfare that the Nixon administration applied toward Cuba; among these the harassment of Cuban fshermen and the introduction of the African swine fever virus, that caused much damage to Cuba, are highlighted. The ffth part, “The Decline of the Counterrevolutionary Groups,” demonstrates the failure of the counterrevolutionary Cuban exile organizations and groups, and especially the failure of the Torriente Plan, which strived to change the course of the Cuban Revolution. These attempts failed, despite the U.S. support and the impunity that these groups enjoyed for their criminal misdeeds in the U.S. One event highlighted in this context is the crisis of the “Mother ships,” which was a result of the Cuban response to the criminal attack on the village of Boca de Samá. The sixth part, “The U.S.–Cuba Agreement on the Hijacking of Aircrafts, Sea Vessels and Other Offenses,” demonstrates how, in an environment of hostility between the U.S. and Cuba, a mutually satisfactory agreement could be negotiated that was favorable for both countries. Finally, the seventh part, “The Debacle of a President,” covers the second term of Nixon’s presidency and summarizes the terrorist activity of the counterrevolutionary groups in the U.S., debates in the U.S. Congress concerning the relations with Cuba and the Watergate scandal—where a number of Cuban exiles participated—that caused the resignation of President Nixon. The study of the relations between the Nixon administration and Cuba is of importance for an understanding of the aggressive measures implemented by the U.S. toward Cuba since 1959. When working with this book during 2020, a new misdeed directed against Cuba occurred in the U.S. On April 30, a person with Cuban background fred a number of rounds with an automatic weapon toward the Cuban Embassy in Washington, DC, putting at risk the lives of the diplomatic personal. The U.S. has still not commented the event, nor has it presented any form of excuse, something that is an obvious act within the framework of the diplomatic agenda that regulates the civilized coexistence between the nations of the world. However, given the general U.S. policy toward Cuba, which has been practiced since 1959; perhaps the lack of this U.S. excuse is not surprising. We hope that this book will be useful and contribute to the knowledge about the historical relationship between the U.S. and Cuba, as well as the history of the U.S. aggressions toward its closest neighbor in the Caribbean—aggressions that the Cuban people, in defense of their national sovereignty, have had to face over more than half a century.

Acknowledgments

In this context, we would like to thank the following foundations and departments for supporting the project: the Adlerbert Research Foundation, the Centre for Critical Heritage Studies (CCHS) and especially its chairman Ola Wetterberg and its former chairman Kristian Kristiansen, the Faculty of Humanities and the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Gothenburg and the Royal Society of Art and Sciences in Gothenburg (KVVS). Thanks also to the Cuban Revolution that offered HK all medical attention for free during the Covid-19 pandemic during the spring and summer of 2020 and to Mari Antonia García Díaz, the landlord of HK in Havana for a number of years, for the company during the isolation. This is how solidarity is put to practice. Havana and Gothenburg, October 27, 2020 Håkan Karlsson Tomás Diez Acosta

Part I

The Context

The victory of Richard Milhous Nixon—in the elections of November 5, 19681—raised expectations within the Cuban counterrevolution based in the U.S. for a more aggressive change in the U.S. policy toward Cuba. This is in comparison with the policy of a “passive containment” of the Cuban Revolution that had been executed by President Lyndon B. Johnson and his administration during the past two years of his term. 2 These expectations were based in the promises made by Nixon during the electoral campaign, in his economic ties with the most aggressive sectors of power in the Cuban exile groups and, even more so, in his background. Nixon had been one of the initiators—since his position as vice president ten years earlier—of the strategy of hostility and of the “dirty war” by violent means toward Cuba. In April 1959, after a three-hour conversation with the Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, he wrote a confdential memorandum for the president, the Department of State, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) where he declared his conviction that “Castro was either incredibly naive about Communism or under Communist discipline […]”3; therefore, he recommended acting accordingly. Nixon acted accordingly—from the Capitol or from the White House—by promoting anti-Cuban laws in the U.S. Congress and driving the government’s undercover action program of March 17, 1960,4 that a year later would lead to the mercenary invasion at the Bay of Pigs. He blamed Cuba for his electoral failures, when he in 1960 aspired to the U.S. presidency and, in 1962, to the governor of the state of California, since the Cuban issue was an important subject of debate in those elections. This was a sign predicting the end of his political career. It seemed that in 1969 the hour of revenge had arrived, but the reality was very different from that existing a decade before, since it occurred in one of the most tragic moments in the history of the U.S. In 1969 the moral collapse of the U.S. political system was evident, and the Vietnam War was a decisive factor in that moral crisis. The continued U.S. military intervention in South Vietnam, and the sustained bombardment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, could not stop or crush the will of resistance and struggle of the Vietnamese people.5

2

The Context

The prolongation of the confict and the rise of the U.S. war casualties— despite the monumental fnancial and military efforts employed—were creating an increasing domestic reaction of doubts about the need to participate in that confict, the capacity of its leaders and the fairness of that policy. The horrendous acts of genocide committed by U.S. troops against Vietnamese villages and defenseless populations (for instance at Song My), disclosed by their own written, radio and television media, put to question within the U.S. population the traditional image of the U.S. armed forces as “the defenders of justice” and custodians of the “honor and respect of the nation.” To this was added, as one of its consequences, the deterioration of the domestic U.S. economy and the standard of living of the population. A colossal movement against the war in Vietnam and for the immediate exit from that confict shook the foundations of the U.S. society. It also led to the breakdown of the internal consensus achieved in foreign policy during the 1950s and the policy of confrontation with international communism. An image of that existing malaise in the U.S. upon the arrival of the Republican administration in 1969 is described in the memoirs of Henry Kissinger, who functioned as adviser on National Security Affairs and, later, as Secretary of State, when he stated that: I cannot yet write about Vietnam except with pain and sadness. When we came into offce over a half-million Americans were fghting a war ten thousand miles away. Their number were still increasing on a schedule established by our predecessors. We found no plans for withdrawals. Thirty-one thousand had already died. Whatever our original war aims, by 1969 our credibility abroad, the reliability of our commitments, and our domestic cohesion were alike jeopardized by a struggle in a country as far away from the North American continent as our globe permits. Our involvement had begun openly, and with neraly Congressional, public and media approval. But by 1969 our country had been riven by protest and anguish, sometimes taking on a violent and ugly character. The comity by which a democratic society must live had broken down. No government can function without a minimum of trust.6 But the war in Vietnam did not end with the arrival of the presidency of Richard Nixon, despite this being the main promise that gave him the electoral victory in the fall of 1968. On the contrary, it lasted for several more years and spread to other Southeast Asian countries such as Laos and Cambodia. However, the Nixon administration was forced to develop a new doctrine that could neutralize the powerful peace movement that was developing in the U.S. and, at the same time, maintain its imperial geopolitical control, not at least in Latin America and the Caribbean. This policy also needed to contain a way to handle the U.S. relationship with the USSR and China.

1

From Saigon to Havana

On July 25, 1969, President Nixon—during a stopover on his trip to Southeast Asia—on the Island of Guam, announced at a pressconference what was later known as the Guam or the Vietnamese doctrine. This doctrine was referring to the U.S. participation in the war in Vietnam, since Nixon hoped, from that moment on, that the U.S. allies “would take over their own military defense,” without abandoning the U.S. commitments made with them.7 This meant that the puppet government of Saigon had to continue the war with its own troops, but with economic support from the U.S. and with U.S. air forces. Using this formula, the Nixon administration began to withdraw U.S. ground troops from Vietnam, and in February 1972, 150.000 U.S. troops remained, although the bombings continued. This meant that Nixon did not end the war; he was ending the most unpopular aspect of it—the participation of U.S. soldiers in a war in a distant country.8 In the spring of 1970, the military high command, with the approval of the president and his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, ordered the invasion of Cambodia, after a major bombardment that was not disclosed to the public. That aggression did not only lead to a wave of protests in the U.S. and the world, but it turned out to be yet another military failure, and the U.S. Congress decided that Nixon could not use troops to extend the war without approval of the Congress. Contrary to this legislative ban, the following year the Nixon administration supported the military invasion of South Vietnam into Laos, without U.S. troops, which also failed. The resistance and the will to fght of the peoples of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia could not be undermined, despite the 100.000 tons of bombs dropped against those countries.9 While all this was happening in Southeast Asia, in the U.S. a new scandal broke out linked to the war in Vietnam. In June 1971, the New York Times newspaper began publishing a selection of secret Defense Department documents—known as the “Pentagon Papers”—that explained the causes, origin and military involvement of the U.S. in the war in Vietnam that shocked the nation.10 In that year the opinion polls refected the low confdence the U.S. population had in the foreign policy

4

The Context

Figure 1.1 President Richard Nixon with U.S. Army 1st Infantry Division troops during visit to Dian, South Vietnam, July 30, 1969. WHPO 1631-03. White House Photo Offce.

of its government, and the insignifcant disposition that existed to render aid to other countries, even if they were attacked by forces backed by the communists.11 At the same time that the peace movement was gaining strength in the U.S. society, the Nixon administration tried to justify the criminal bombings, resumed in late October 1972, after the failure of the frst round of peace talks. With these bombings the U.S. tried to force North Vietnam to the negotiating table under the terms imposed by the U.S., and the aim was also to demonstrate that South Vietnam continued to be supported by the U.S. despite the withdrawal of the U.S. troops. Nixon also wanted a “honorable” exit from what would be the frst military defeat for the U.S., a circumstance that infuenced the increase in these bombings.

From Saigon to Havana 5 To achieve that “honorable” exit, the U.S. threw 338.000 tons of napalm and close to 100.000 herbicides—blue, orange and white chemical agents—in the rural areas of South Vietnam in an attempt to destroy the food resources and the shelters of the Viet Cong (National Liberation Front of Southern Vietnam). The horrifc death and injury numbers caused by that U.S. chemical war left a legacy of almost 500.000 children who, years after the confict ended, have suffered serious physical deformations. However, the determination of the people of Vietnam could not be broken. On December 30, 1972, Nixon suspended the bombings and, nine days later, talks resumed in Paris. Despite all the pressures, the Vietnamese negotiator, Le Duc Tho, did not depart from the points that his country had maintained before the bombings and did not accept the changes proposed by the U.S. Given this position of principles, on January 27, 1973, the U.S. delegation was forced to sign the “Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam”; in large part these accords contained the same terms set forth in October the previous year.12 The peace accords involved a cease-fre, the withdrawal of the U.S. within 60 days, the realization of elections in South Vietnam and the exchange of prisoners. However, the Saigon government refused to accept the agreement, and the U.S. decided to make a last attempt to compel North Vietnam to submit. It sent a wave of B-52 bombers over Hanoi and Haiphong that destroyed houses and hospitals and killed a large number of civilians. The attack did not work and many U.S. aircrafts were shot down and the North Vietnamese government did not surrender. This event sparked ferce waves of global protest, and also U.S. allies criticized these bombings, and Kissinger had to return to Paris and sign a peace agreement very similar to the previous one. In late 1973, the U.S. withdrew its forces from Vietnam, although the U.S. continued to send aid to the Saigon government.13 The fght continued for a complete national emancipation, and the North Vietnamese were not intimidated and their units advanced across the country, increasingly rescuing territories and launching attacks against the most important cities in southern Vietnam. The continuous offensives of the patriotic forces, that began in early 1975, could not be stopped by the Saigon army, causing its complete demoralization. In late April 1975, North Vietnamese and national liberation troops entered Saigon,14 and thus ended that long war, which was the frst military defeat of the U.S. since the 1940s. The internal situation of the U.S. when the Republican administration assumed the presidency was not fattering. The loss of confdence by the U.S. population in its government and its management of the country was evident, as a result of the war in Vietnam. Also contributing to this situation was the intensifcation of the power struggle between the government and the Congress, which began in the election year of 1968, and that continued throughout the entire Nixon presidency. The main

6

The Context

theme was that these circles of power accused each other for the responsibility of the defeat in the Vietnam War, and of the domestic conficts and the political instability in the U.S. These internal struggles caused a certain degree of weakening of the presidential power at the expense of the accentuation of the role of the Congress, the lobby groups and the media.15 The situation worsened when new scandals16 were added, which reinforced the signs of distrust of the population in the activities of the political authorities, the heads of the armed forces and the directions of large corporations. Data collected in July 1975 by pollster Lou Harris on the conformity of the U.S. citizens to their institutions revealed that: […] between 1966 and 1975 […] the percentage of those who trusted the army had dropped from 62% to 29%, that of those who trusted large business companies from 55% to 18%; and that of those who trusted the President and the Congress from 42% to 13%.17 The discontent of the majority of the population was not only a product of the aforementioned political factors but probably also due to the decrease in their living conditions, which affected both the working class and the middle class with greater incidence. The U.S. economy began to go through one of its most diffcult crises, whose frst visible symptoms of industrial, mercantile and fnancial contraction began to manifest themselves in 1969. This crisis affected not only the U.S. but the entire capitalist system on a global level. However, it was felt most strongly in the U.S. economy, by abruptly infuencing the fnancial indexes and leading to a continuous increase in prices.18 A number of factors contributed to this situation, and among the most important were the excessive military expenses caused by the U.S. war in Southeast Asia, which caused a constant defcit in the U.S. balance of payments. The fall in industrial production not linked to the war industry, the infationary process, the increase in unemployment, which in 1970 was 5.4% compared to 4% in 1969, refected the economic stagnation of those years. In this way, the living conditions of large sectors of citizens worsened, mainly among blacks and minorities. “In addition, as a consequence of the negative economic and social factors, there was a considerable increase in manifestations of moral decline such as prostitution, drugs, etc.).”19 However, the deepest cause of this crisis in the U.S. was the process of depleting its reserves of economic dynamism, which, fundamentally, World War II had brought to the country, at the same time as this had allowed the U.S. to achieve the leadership in the capitalist world, by becoming the reviver of that whole system. But after 25 years, the countries of Western Europe and Japan had completed the restoration of their economies and were increasingly pushing for their spaces in the world

From Saigon to Havana 7 economy. Meanwhile, the growth rates of the leading U.S. economy stagnated rapidly.20 Amid that juncture, Washington’s relations with its capitalist allies began to deteriorate. Those same countries that had benefted from the Marshall Plan 21 had become increasingly strong and—to the detriment of the U.S. economic leadership—were vying more vigorously for markets and spheres of infuence. These struggles would be further aggravated in 1970 due to the constant devaluation of the dollar and the unilateral action of the Nixon administration, the year after declaring its inconvertibility in relation to gold, 22 which was the trigger point of the crisis in the international monetary system. Added to these disputes between the capitalist countries were the disagreements with the underdeveloped nations that increasingly demanded their justifed claim for the creation of a “new international order” in different global organizations—a new order that took into account their development, interests and needs, in order to overcome the gaps between the poor and the rich countries of the planet. These contradictions were refected in the increasingly frequent claim of these demands by the United Nations, through the Non-Aligned Movement— that during those years was more clearly defning an anti-imperialist political position, maintaining its neutral and nonalignment position with respect to the two great superpowers of that time, the U.S. and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) 23 —and the Group of 77. 24 If all this made the conditions of the U.S. capitalist world leadership diffcult, the greatest challenge of the Nixon administration was to face the end of the strategic military superiority of the U.S. in relation to its main adversary, the USSR,which determined the U.S. needs to reduce the tensions on the international level. Along with the challenges posed to its global hegemonic interests by the Vietnam War, the U.S. had to face a strategic nuclear parity with the USSR. The conditions had changed since the so-called Missile Crisis in October 1962, when the U.S. superiority was an infuential element in imposing its conditions on its main adversary. This led to an arms-race when the USSR tried to overcome the humiliation that was inficted on them back then. After the Missile Crisis—according to Henry Kissinger—the U.S. had decided to maintain a strategic nuclear weapon force consisting of 1.054 land-based ICBMs, 25 656 SLBMs26 and around 400 B-52 bombers, while the USSR launched a massive effort to increase its military capacity in all categories of weapons. In 1965 the Soviet strategic nuclear arsenal comprised around 220 ICBMs and more than 100 SLBMs. By 1968 the amount had grown to around 860 ICBMs and over 120 SLBMs. In 1971 the Soviets managed to reach the U.S. numbers, and they continued to build nuclear missiles. 27 The frst reaction of the U.S., and the Johnson administration, to this growth in the production of Soviet nuclear weapons was the decision to build a ballistic missile defense system (ABM)28 and, on the offensive side, to develop MIRV warheads29 in order to multiply the

8

The Context

offensive power of each of the existing missiles.30 Both these programs were inherited by Nixon who had to realize them. These changes in the strategic balance—added to the increasingly complicated situation described above—led to the weakening of the global role of the U.S., and this led to a reevaluation of the U.S. foreign policy. The purpose of the change would be to maintain U.S. hegemony and world domination, but from now on, from a more pragmatic ideological orientation, contained in the conception of the so-called Realpolitik [politics of reality, in German].31 This policy supports the idea that the national interest—its immediate and concrete need—shall be the guide of the foreign political projection of the State, without taking into account ideological or moral considerations, when evaluating the capacity to be able to act. The promoter of this theory, within the new Republican administration, was the German-American, Harvard University professor of Jewish origin, Henry Alfred Kissinger, who with the support of President Nixon— and after that President Gerald Ford—worked for a more agile and fexible system of balance of force in the international order that would preserve the imperial geopolitical interests of the U.S. from the risks that threatened these interests in those years, without having to reach a military confict on the global level.32 Under the guidance of these concepts, Nixon formulated the U.S. foreign policy strategy, known as the Guam or the Vietnamese doctrine, which had its military theoretical elaboration in the doctrine of “realistic deterrence,” offcially adopted in 1971, replacing the “fexible retaliation” policy from the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. In essence, it did not differ from the previous ones, because in practice it only pursued the purpose of reducing the level of participation of its troops in armed conficts, since it opposed the principle of “direct and automatic interference” in any warlike confrontation. The U.S. military-political command concluded that armed intervention should be carried out with minimal risk and that the bitter experience of the Vietnamese adventure should not be repeated. Therefore, the specifc objectives of the U.S. government in proclaiming this doctrine were as follows: 1

2

At the expense of “military aid” granted to friendly regimes—such as those of Israel, Thailand, South Korea or Saigon—create strongholds to defend U.S. interests in Asia, the Near East, Africa and Latin America, which would become bases of operations to deploy the fght against countries that followed an independent policy and against the patriotic forces of national emancipation. Endorse the main burden of bloody ground operations on the “friendly” troops—that is, Asians against Asians and Africans against Africans—by giving them military and technical assistance and assuring them of active support from the U.S. air and naval forces and, in case of necessity, from U.S. ground forces.

From Saigon to Havana 9 In accordance with the doctrine of “realistic deterrence,” the U.S. eliminated compulsory military recruitment and the armed forces became a service of strictly professional and voluntary nature, highly trained and equipped with means of transportation—naval or air—for long distances, allowing them to make swift attacks and interventions to aid their allies in all parts of the world.33 Driven by these concepts and especially by existing global realities, the U.S. government promoted the search for a system of balance of forces as a paradigm for a new world order, where diplomatic negotiations were imposed as a strategy within the use of military forces. President Nixon—under the advice and direct participation of Kissinger— embarked on a path: “[…] in the direction of overcoming the tense confrontation of the Cold War, although limited to the relations between the greatest adversary powers: the U.S., USSR, China and, more or less comprehensively, in a single region: Europe.”34 This strategy was Washington’s attempt to remake its world leadership, contain communism and achieve a balance of strategic forces with the USSR and the People’s Republic of China.35 In that endeavor, the U.S. tried to deepen the political and ideological divisions, and fueling the tensions between these two powerful socialist countries.36 Therefore, the U.S. diplomatic activity began a double game aimed at seeking good relations and agreements with these socialist countries separately, which among other benefts would serve to counterbalance them in the interest of exerting infuence in North Vietnam until the confict in that region ended. Whereas in November 1969 the SovietAmerican talks began for the limitation of strategic nuclear weapons; in 1971, the U.S. took advantage of the results of the so-called ping-pong diplomacy37 to begin the thaw of relations with China, frozen since 1949, and create conditions for President Nixon’s visit to China. During his stay in China—between February 21 and 28, 1972— Nixon toured Beijing, the Great Wall, Hangzhou and Shanghai. Upon his arrival in the capital, the U.S. president had a protocol meeting with the Chinese top leader Mao Zedong, who had been ill during nine days, but who felt strong enough to meet with Nixon. During the trip offcial talks took place between the U.S. president and the Chinese Premier Minister Zhou Enlai. The most controversial aspect in the talks—and that obstructed the relations between the U.S. and China—was referring to Washington’s support to the government of the island of Taiwan. The U.S. maintained a strong military presence in Taiwan, and they did not recognize the People’s Republic of China as the legitimate representative of the Chinese people in international organizations. For instance, the Chinese seat in the Security Council in United Nations was held by the Taiwanese government. At the end of the trip, the governments of the U.S. and the People’s Republic of China issued the “Shanghai Communiqué,” in which they expressed their views on foreign policy and where both nations promised to work for a complete normalization of their diplomatic relations.

10

The Context

Nixon’s trip to China speeded up the talks between the White House and the Kremlin concerning the limitation of strategic nuclear weapons that had taken place in Helsinki, Finland, and Vienna, Austria, since late 1969. Five months later, on May 22, for the frst time, a sitting president of the U.S. visited the USSR. On May 26—after intense debates between the Soviet and U.S. delegations concerning the formulations in the common agreement—“the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT)”38 was signed by Leonid Brezhnev, on behalf of the USSR, and Richard Nixon, by the U.S. This agreement limited the construction of strategic nuclear weapons and regulated the numbers for ICBMs, and SLBMs in the arsenals of the U.S. and the USSR. However, the development of MIRVs for these missiles questioned the effectiveness of the limits agreed upon.39 An important step in the process of detention was the signing, among other documents, of the declaration of “Basic Principles of Relations between the United States and the Soviet Union” which, in fact, implemented a code of conduct between the two superpowers, where they agreed to cooperate to avoid situations of tension in their relationships, not trying to obtain unilateral advantages, recognize the security interests of both nations and contribute to the peaceful development of all nations. The declaration included the purpose of expanding the cultural, scientifc, economic and commercial ties between the U.S. and the USSR.

Figure 1.2 Richard M. Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev aboard the Sequoia, June 19, 1973. NLRN-WHPO-E1028-04. White House Photo Offce. Source: The Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, used with permission.

From Saigon to Havana 11 This process of a detente, formally initiated at the 1972 summit in Moscow, cleared the way for the advancement of that process in Europe. A process that already had started in October 1969 with the rise to power in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), or West Germany, of the Social Democratic Party, led by Prime Minister Willy Brandt, who proclaimed a new policy, known as “Ostpolitik.” This policy was an effort by Willy Brandt to normalize the relations between West Germany and the nations of Eastern Europe, including East Germany, and therefore, it recognized the territorial changes made at the end of World War II, including the existence of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) or Germany Oriental. This policy was materialized in 1972, under the heading of a “Basic Treaty,” in which the West and East Germany mutually recognized each other as states.40 Undoubtedly, this process had very positive effects on world politics and constituted an important step in reducing the tensions of the Cold War between the great powers, predominant in world relations since the mid-1940s. However, this process was not the same for all regions of the world, since in the detente project promoted by the White House it did not cover the subordinate regions or those of U.S. geopolitical interest, since in these regions the U.S. continued with the same policy as before. Both Nixon and Kissinger prevailed: “[…] the idea of an expansive communism that took advantage of the turbulence in the third world areas,” when they ignored the very dynamics of the conficts in those regions, which responded to internal causes and had nothing to do with Soviet expansionist intentions.41 Numerous conficts detonated in these areas, since people were subjected to colonial or neocolonial regimes of political oppression and appalling living conditions. The effects of the world economic crisis that struck the developed capitalist countries during the frst years of the 1970s were more severe when it hit the areas of their domination in the Third World. Consequently, nationalist demands as well as claims for a fairer international economic order increased. The fght for national emancipation of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America grew rapidly and revolutionary movements—violent or peaceful, and some more radical than others— endangered the predominance of the Western capitalist powers and, especially, the so-called vital interests of the U.S. in those areas of the world. In those circumstances, the U.S. government blamed USSR for these revolutionary movements and for having violated the “code of conduct.”42 In Latin America and the Caribbean, there were also changes during the Nixon administration that threatened the U.S. policy of an economic, political and diplomatic isolation of Cuba. Although, since the end of 1967, the U.S. was able to contain the Latin American revolutionary tide of the 1960s, it was not possible to break the spirit and the will to fght among the oppressed peoples in the region. “New cries of war and victory”—as Che Guevara stated—shook the region. In 1968, the

12

The Context

guerrilla movements had practically been eradicated in Central America, and, in other cases, they had suffered cruel setbacks such as in Colombia and Venezuela. In a 1977 a U.S. Department of State report on Cuba’s presence in Africa stated: “By 1970, Cuban assistance to guerrilla groups and other attempts to export the revolution had decreased to very low levels.”43 Although it is true that the U.S. managed to neutralize to a certain extent the guerrilla movements in the region, it could not eliminate the political and socioeconomic causes that generated them. At the end of Johnson’s term as president, he was surprised by the progressive and nationalist coups in Peru on October 3, 1968, and in Panama on October 11, where the Generals Juan Velasco Alvarado (Peru) and Omar Torrijos Herrera (Panama) came to power. Both of them applied a sovereign policy of social demands and a rescue of the natural resources of their countries. In Peru, the progressive offcials established a patriotic program of social renewal and rescue of natural resources, under the infuence of the development oriented so-called Plan Inca, aimed at “[…] the redistributing of property, reforming the agriculture, implementing an industrial community and nationalize basic industries [oil, fshing, mining].”44 In Panama, General Omar Torrijos emerged to political power, and at the head of the National Guard his main objective was the national aspiration to achieve sovereignty over the Panama Canal. The new patriotic military government suspended the old oligarchic and pro-imperialist political parties, promoted the creation of new institutions and a strong productive stately sector and promoted the rescue of the country’s natural resources and the adoption of social measures in favor of the people, which integrated the precepts of the new constitution promulgated in 1972. Of all these demands, the most important was, without a doubt, the diplomatic campaign concerning the sovereignty of the Panama Canal carried out in all international forums.45 These types of patriotic and nationalist military coups, in the early 1970s, were not exclusive to Peru and Panama. In this way, governments of the same sort were established in Bolivia, in 1970 and 1971, through General Juan José Torres46; in Ecuador, between 1972 and 1976, directed by General Guillermo Rodríguez Lara; and in Honduras, with General Osvaldo López Arellano. All of them carried out progressive changes in their respective countries in those years. Concerning the effects, the historian Sergio Guerra Vilaboy points out: […] The new and unexpected attitude assumed by the nationalist military created an extremely delicate situation for the United States, by questioning the already traditional fdelity of the Latin American armed forces to the dictates of Washington.47 However, the most outstanding thing in these years of national and revolutionary developments—along with the patriotic military governments

From Saigon to Havana 13 of Peru and Panama—was the arrival to the presidency of Chile of Salvador Allende Gossens, after the triumph in the October 1970 elections of the Unidad Popular [Popular Unity]. The Popular Unity was a left-wing coalition organized in 1969 that brought together the Communist and Socialist parties, including political forces of the radicals detached from the Christian Democrats, such as the Movimiento de Acción Popular Unitario (MAPU) [Popular Unitary Action Movement] and the Christian Left (IC), which in these elections had constituted the Popular Unity coalition, made up of the main political fgures of the coalition. The U.S. and Chilean oligarchic sectors made unsuccessful efforts to prevent the victory of this coalition. First, through the unifcation of the Chilean right in the National Party—emerging from the fusion of the old Liberal and Conservative parties—and the Christian Democracy.48 Second, after the victory of Unidad Popular, trying to provoke a coup so that the outgoing President Eduardo Frei artifcially created an institutional crisis. This included also the failed military uprising of the right-wing General Roberto Viaux Marambio, and the assassination of the Chief of the army, General René Schneider Chereau, who opposed supporting the coup. None of these maneuvers could prevent the Chilean Congress from ratifying the electoral victory of the leader of Popular Unity.49 Henry Kissinger noted that: Nixon was beside himself. For over a decade he had lambasted Democratic administrations for permitting the establishment of Communist power in Cuba. And now what he perceived […] another Cuba had come into being during his own Administration […] This explains the virulence of his reaction and his insistence on doing something, anything, that would reverse the previous neglect.50 On November 3 Allende, backed by all the progressive, left-wing and revolutionary parties integrated into the Popular Unity coalition, assumed the presidency. In correspondence with his government program, whose strategic goal was the peaceful construction of socialism in Chile, the frst action he took was the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with Cuba.51 This measure continued with others aimed at the rescue of the country’s natural resources—in the hands of foreign corporations, mainly from the U.S.—such as copper, iron and coal, which constituted an essential basis for the socioeconomic development of Chile. To these were added the nationalizations of banks and the stately purchase of around 50 private companies, which contributed to reviving the industrial sector. Resolutions and decrees were approved aimed at deepening the Agrarian Reform Law, promulgated during the government of Eduardo Frei. The government also improved the workers’ wages, decreased the unemployment and made a more equitable redistribution of national income, to obtain resources for social education, health and other programs aimed at the less favored parts of the population.

14

The Context

All this increased the anger felt by the Nixon administration and the defeated Chilean bourgeois right, which redoubled its media campaigns against the Popular Unity government. They had “70% of the written press and 105 of the 115 radio stations,”52 and with these resources they tried to disorient and displease the middle classes—merchants, professionals, medium-sized and small manufacturers—and confront them with the process of change taking place in the country. With Washington’s advice, the opposition implemented the most varied subversive tactics, 53 in most cases designed by the CIA, to weaken and destabilize the Salvador Allende government and, if possible, to overthrow it. However, the majority of the people continued to demonstrate their support in favor of Popular Unity, as revealed by the results of the legislative elections of March 4, 1973, where it obtained 44% of the votes, 8% more than the opposition candidates. Imperialism and the bourgeoisie understood that it was not possible to defeat the government through democratic means, and therefore, the plans for a military coup were constructed. This opened the way to the military coup of September 11, 1973, where President Salvador Allende lost his life. The heroic death of Allende was followed by a wave of pursuits, crimes and torture against any direct or indirect supporter of Popular Unity, and this marked the beginning of the fascist Pinochet regime that would last until 1990. In South America, not only in Chile, there was a process of popular ascent where workers played a central role, such as in Argentina and Uruguay. Between May and June 1969, the Argentine proletariat realized a struggle known as the “cordobazo,” which weakened the military regime and imposed a democratic opening that years later, in May 1973, led to the return of a Peronist government in Argentina. 54 In Uruguay, where a strong repressive government reigned, chaired by Jorge Pacheco Areco, 55 the Frente Amplio [Broad Front]—a powerful alliance of democratic and popular forces, made up of communists, socialists, Christian Democrats and other social sectors56 —was organized to participate in the general elections of February 1971, under the infuence of the victory of the Popular Unity in Chile. Although the Broad Front’s candidate, General Líber Seregni Mosquera, did not succeed in the elections, he envisioned himself as a potential alternative. The Uruguayan people had to endure a regime of terror, established after the coup of June 27, 1973, led by the constitutional President Juan María Bordaberry.57 The Caribbean area witnessed similar events of a nationalist and revolutionary nature. In connection with the emancipatory process in which a number of colonies achieved their independence, 58 important popular struggles developed in different colonies and ex-colonies belonging to the United Kingdom, France and the Netherlands. In May 1969, in the important Dutch colonial oil enclave of Curaçao, the workers went on strike for economic and social demands. The strike was cruelly repressed by the colonial authorities, which caused the outbreak

From Saigon to Havana 15 of a popular uprising led by the newly founded Frente Obrero y de Liberación [Workers and Liberation Front]. To contain the uprising, the Dutch constitutional monarchy deployed a paratrooper brigade with 1.000 troops in that small territory, while its coasts were blocked by U.S. naval forces. The popular uprising was crushed, with several dead and over 150 wounded. This event prompted the fght for the independence of that enclave, as was the case in other Dutch colonies such as Suriname and Aruba.59 In Trinidad and Tobago, between February and April 1970, there was a violent popular uprising, led by the National Joint Action Committee, in which thousands of people took to the streets to protest against the regime of Prime Minister Eric Williams, which was imposed on the small country by the United Kingdom, after its formal independence in 1962. British military forces, with U.S. backing, allowed Williams to establish a state of emergency and resort to repression to crush the popular movement. Despite its failure, this event constituted a notable stimulus for the development in the Anglophone Caribbean of a strong nationalist current aimed at alleviating the weight of the economic domination of the former colonial metropolis and further expanding its tributes of sovereignty. Under this sign, in March 1970, the Cooperative Republic of Guyana was established by Forbes Burnham, and, in 1971, the Social Democrat Michael Manley came to power in Jamaica. Both leaders attempted to rescue key sectors of their respective economies, sources of external fnancing and new markets and promoted greater economic integration in the Anglophone area, through the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), whose four member countries, at the time, gave a sample of sovereignty when establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba in December 8, 1972.60 This rise of popular and revolutionary movements posed a challenge to the U.S. hegemonic control in a region that they had considered as “their backyard.” Faced with this situation, one of the frst foreign policy actions of the Republican administration, when assuming the White House, was to entrust the then Governor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller,61 to carry out a study tour to various Latin American and Caribbean countries to evaluate the scenario and make relevant recommendations. In the midst of great popular protests and the rejection of some governments in the hemisphere, Rockefeller made the trip between May and June 1969. It resulted in a report entitled “Quality of Life in the Americas.” Among the proposals was the creation of a collective security system in the Western Hemisphere and the strengthening of the Organization of American States (OAS) as a regional multilateral body in solving the problems confronting inter-American relations. It recommended—in accordance with the recently formulated “Nixon doctrine”—to strengthen the links of the U.S. security agencies with

16

The Context

the police-military apparatuses of the countries of the region, through direct advice and logistical and technological support. This should make them more effective in its repressive tasks against popular movements and to ward off the outbreak of social revolutions, which meant “Latin Americanizing” the policy of “containing communism” and abandoning direct military interventions in the internal and external affairs of the hemisphere, as occurred in the Dominican Republic in 1965. The U.S. context was characterized by the eminent defeat in Vietnam, the powerful peace movement, the changes in the strategic balance of forces in favor of the socialist camp, the capitalist world economic crisis that was beginning to manifest its frst symptoms and the rise of national and social liberation struggles on a global scale. This implied that the U.S. was not in political, economic, or moral condition to continue expanding their strategic commitments throughout the world,62 and even less in Latin America and the Caribbean, even if the desire of President Nixon was to crush any outbreak of socialism in the region and achieve his old aspiration to destroy the Cuban Revolution. The reality in Cuba was also different. The internal counterrevolution had lost its foundations for social support. Ten years of revolutionary socioeconomic construction had changed the class correlation of forces in the country. The active participation of the people in the structural transformations of the nation and in its defense had developed its culture and political consciousness, which allowed it to confront and resist all kinds of aggressions by the U.S. At the same time the counterrevolutionary armed groups that in the 1960s attempted to spread chaos in the country had been defeated. In that sense, the Cuban nation had been strengthened both in the political and

Figure 1.3 Fidel Castro at the IV summit of the non-aligned countries in Algiers, September 7, 1973. Source: Archive of the Institute of Cuban History, Havana, used with permission.

From Saigon to Havana 17 ideological felds and in the military sphere. At the same time when it built the state structures, it created new organizations of the masses and the professionals that brought together residents of the neighborhoods, women, children and youth, peasants, artists and intellectuals. In parallel as the workers’ union movement was strengthened, and the revolutionary political organizations were integrated and united into a single party, the Cuban Communist Party, overcoming the anti-communist prejudices sown—all of which allowed the country to be stronger and in better conditions to face the U.S. mercantile siege, and the errors and mistakes of the challenge that a human social work of such magnitude posed. Cuba in the external order, facing the isolationist policy of the U.S. on a regional scale, increased its ties of friendship and cooperation with the states that formed the socialist camp at that time. At the same time Cuba maintained an indeclinable position in defense of the principles of self-determination and sovereignty of peoples in international organizations, such as the United Nations. Cuba was also an active member of the Non-Aligned Movement and the Group of 77, and it also embraced in solidarity the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles of the national liberation movements in Latin America, Asia and Africa. The Cuban internal context between 1969 and 1974 was characterized by the search for an own socialist model of socioeconomic development—by means of the leap of stages that quickly led to the construction of communism—toward the beginning of a process of applying a model based on the experiences of socialist construction in the USSR and the countries of Eastern Europe.63 The year of 1969 was named “Año del Esfuerzo Decisivo” [Year of the Decisive Effort], since the idea was that all the energies put into the Cuban agriculture should be consolidated in order to reach the precious goal of 10 million tons of sugar in the harvest of the following year.

Figure 1.4 Fidel Castro addresses a huge crowd at the Revolution Square in Havana on the X anniversary of the triumph of the Revolution, January 2, 1969. Source: Archive of the Institute of Cuban History, Havana, used with permission.

18

The Context

This harvest would make possible a better development of the economy for satisfying the growing needs of the people. The revolution lived through moments of utopias, but the reality prevailed over the dreams. Despite the will and the heroic effort deployed by the vast majority of the people, the goal of 10 million tons of sugar could not be achieved, despite the fact that a record harvest of 8.5 million tons was achieved. The sugar industry did not have suffcient milling capacity, and the enormous battle waged on all fronts to accomplish this task produced signifcant decompensations in the country’s economy.64 On May 20, 1970, Fidel Castro spoke to the people and stressed that “The Battle of the Ten Million was not lost by the people. We lost it. We, the administrative bureaucracy of the Revolution; we, the leaders of the revolution.”65 A stage of refection, rectifcation and eradication of errors in the socialist construction began throughout the country. In 1975, when Fidel Castro evaluated this complex historical period in his report to the First Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), he stressed that: Revolutions usually have their periods of utopia in which their protagonists, dedicated to the noble task of turning their dreams into reality and putting their ideals into practice, believe that the historical goals are much closer and that the will, the wishes and the men’s intentions over objective facts can do everything. […] In the conduct of our economy we have undoubtedly suffered from errors of idealism and on occasions we have ignored the reality that there are objective economic laws to which we must abide.66 The rectifcation of these approaches and the formulation of a policy more in line with reality marked the initial years of the 1970s. The country’s economic and social policy underwent a profound process of national refection through open debates in workplaces, in student centers and at the neighborhood level that led to substantial changes. A series of measures were taken to rectify the errors of the fve-year period of 1966–1970, which began with a reordering of the economy, combined simultaneously with a strengthening of the political, mass and social organizations. State and governmental power structures, as a fundamental part of the socialist construction, were subjected to a profound criticism and evaluation with the aim to improve them and make them more effcient. Decisions made in that direction previously had to pass through the judgment of practical experimentation. In the province of Matanzas, a test was carried out on the operation of the Poder Popular [People’s Power] bodies between 1974 and 1975, which yielded important experiences that the First Party Congress analyzed and approved to generalize in the rest of the nation, which meant a remarkable advance of the Cuban political system and socialist democracy. Simultaneously with the bodies of the People’s Power as a complement, studies were carried out

From Saigon to Havana 19 on the political and administrative division of the country and on the system of directing the economy, which were agreed upon at the First Congress of the PCC in December 1975. These changes required a constitutional and legal order contained in a draft of a new Cuban Socialist Constitution that also was sanctioned at the Party conclave, and then submitted to a popular referendum on February 15, 1976. At the same time, the leading political organization of the Revolution, the PCC, was subjected to a profound evaluation, since it was indispensable and urgent to strengthen its role as the governing body of the socialist society. Special attention was given to the analysis of the methods and working styles of its structures from the base to the nation. One of the problems with the function of the party was its forms of leadership and relationship to state institutions and political organizations, mass and social, for the political leadership of the society. In this regard, on September 28, 1970, Fidel Castro stressed: […] The role of our Party—understood correctly—cannot and will never be that of replacing the administration, nor that of replacing the mass organizations, but that of leading that process, that of leading this formidable revolution of masses.67 Beginning in 1970, the PCC focused its efforts on the organization of the socialist system of the economy and the restructuring of the country’s political system. This posed essential tasks to the party organization, such as the reorganization and strengthening of its governing bodies at all levels and the delimitation of its functions with respect to those of the state and mass organizations. To the objective of strengthening the leading role of the Party, the expansion of its Secretariat and the passage of the Work Commissions contributed to the creation of the departments as auxiliaries of the executive and Party leadership bodies. This process reached its climax with the realization of the First Congress of the PCC, which, together with the important documents referring to the political, economic and social system of the nation, approved the “Statutes of the PCC” that regulated the internal Party activity and the “Programmatic Platform,” which constituted the guiding document for the work of the Party and the Revolution, whose principles and postulates would govern: […] All the policy to be followed in the different activities of our people, both internally and internationally, and whose objectives and tasks must be subordinated and adjusted to the specifc plans of the country’s various institutions.68 The mistakes made between 1966 and 1970, in the economic and social felds of the building of socialism in Cuba, did not generally lead to a weakening of its defensive systems. All the subversive attempts that tried

20  The Context to reverse the defeat of the internal counterrevolution were effectively prevented by the actions of the armed institutions and the people. This prevented the continuance of the violent path of the “dirty war” imposed on the nation from the first years of the Revolution from returning, and the country lived in a climate of peace. Given the complex political-military situation, the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) had the need to raise the volume of their regular troops well above the country’s economic and demographic potential. Faced with this reality and with the aim of alleviating the effects that the economy represented, between 1966 and 1970—given the strategic operational context that the war in Indochina meant for the U.S.—FAR dedicated a considerable part of their troops to productive tasks, to the detriment of military readiness and combative disposition. As part of the whole process that was taking place in the nation, in 1970 the political-­ military high command made the decision to gradually decrease the regular FAR troops. This implied that during the five-year period of 1971–1975, around 150.000 men, and approximately 5.000 vehicles,69 were liberated from the defense services in favor of the economy.” This was done without affecting the country’s combat capacity. The Ministry of the Interior (MININT) and its state security ­institutions—both intelligence and counterintelligence—of internal order and border troops continued to improve their general techniques and operational work, which enabled them to improve their surveillance work and the capture of infiltrated elements and, from 1965, achieve the decrease in infiltrations. The subversive actions of the U.S. and the counterrevolution abroad—under the direct and indirect advice of the CIA—had to adopt new methods for a longer struggle, where economic warfare and the subversion of ideas constituted central parts: “[…] Various forms of penetrations, through clandestine agents, economic sabotage, attempted penetrations and ideological confusion, and all the forms they may have at their disposal to combat the Revolution.”70 In this way, a phase of gradual abandonment of the socioeconomic lines opened in the second half of the previous decade began in 1971, leading the country to the adoption of the Soviet socialist model. Initially the economic recovery was favored, in addition, by a noticeable rise in sugar prices in international markets, since its price rose from 3.68 cents in 1970 to 29.60 cents in 1974. This recovery was also helped by the signing of an important commercial financial agreement with the USSR, in December 1972, which postponed until 1986 the payment of Soviet credits and their interests delivered before 1973, although their repayments were prolonged from the fixed year.71 On the other hand, the incorporation of Cuba, in July 1972, into the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CAME) integration scheme, contributed to the necessary reformulation of the economic and social project, taking into account, of course, the Cuban asymmetry. In those years the number of

From Saigon to Havana 21 Soviet specialists and specialists from other European socialist nations increased, offering their cooperation in all branches of society, and thousands of Cuban scholarship recipients studied technological and social science careers in the USSR and in other socialist countries in Europe. The favorable economic recovery in Cuba brought about by the reproduction of the Soviet model of socialism in almost all spheres of life was accompanied in many cases by sequels of bureaucratism and dogmatism from which few sectors of the nation could escape. In reference to the consequences caused by this phenomenon in the intellectual work, the Cuban writer Ambrosio Fornet described those years of the frst half of the 1970s as the “gray fve-year period”72 of Cuban culture. However, in 1976 this period began to be eradicated with the appointment of Armando Hart Dávalos at the head of the newly constituted Ministry of Culture and the establishment of a cultural policy directed—as far as possible in those years—to eliminate dogmatism and intolerance within the different sectors of art and culture. In accordance with the changes initiated in the domestic policy, between 1969 and 1972 the Cuban foreign policy was characterized by: a gradual improvement in relations with the USSR and the socialist countries of Eastern Europe: a continuing militant support for the revolutionary, anti-colonial and anti-imperialist causes of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America; a manifestation of an unrestricted support for the government of North Vietnam and its people in the war of resistance against the military aggression of the U.S. and the struggle of the units of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam. At the regional level, the Cuban foreign policy was characterized by the beginning of a break in Cuba’s diplomatic isolation, imposed in 1964 by the OAS countries, and for the reestablishment of relations with various Latin American and Caribbean governments. The obstacles in Cuban–Soviet relations73 that manifested themselves in the preceding years began to be defeated, after the events that occurred in Czechoslovakia in August 1968.74 However, the beginning of better relations between the governments and communist parties of Cuba and the USSR did not mean that Cuba abandoned the nation’s independent foreign policy. Cuba had its own approach to the international situation, which coincided with the USSR in many aspects, but not in all. For their part, the Soviet leaders expressed a greater understanding for the Cuban position in the global arena, particularly regarding the popular struggles and revolutionary movements in Third World countries. This implied that between 1969 and 1972 the relations between Cuba and the USSR gradually improved. For the Cuban economy, the link to the USSR was vital, because since 1961, the USSR was the main supplier of fuel, raw materials, equipment and machinery. In June 1969, a Cuban delegation was invited to participate—as observer—at the International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties held in Moscow. To the improvement

22 The Context of the Cuban–Soviet relations, could also be added an increase in the exchange of governmental and economic matters. As part of these, in November 1969, for the frst time the Minister of Defense of the USSR, Marshal Andrei A. Grechko, visited Cuba. Weeks later, this visit was reciprocated, when in April 1970, the Cuban minister, Commander Raúl Castro, at the head of a delegation of senior FAR offcers, visited the USSR and negotiated the plans for the development and supply of arms to Cuba for the fve-year period of 1971–1975. These visits were observed with concern by the U.S. special services. At an event organized in commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Vladimir Ilich Lenin, on April 22, 1970, Fidel Castro stressed: […] We will never break our political ties with the Soviet Union, nor what they call military ties. On the contrary, on the contrary! We, for our part, will always be ready for more military ties with the Soviet Union. Who are we going to have them with? With Yankee imperialism? […] Our political and military ties with the Soviet Union will never be broken.75

Figure 1.5 Fidel Castro at an event organized in commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Vladimir I. Lenin in Havana, April 22, 1970. Source: Archive of the Institute of Cuban History, Havana, used with permission.

From Saigon to Havana 23 To strengthen the trade relations between Cuba and the USSR, the interstate commission was created in 1970, which played an important role in coordinating the economic development plans of both countries. In this sense, the visit to Cuba by Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin, in October 1971, was important, since Kosygin made a notable contribution to shaping these programs and collaboration plans. In 1972, Fidel Castro visited the USSR on two occasions, frst in June76 and then in December, and during the visit in December important economic, fnancial and scientifc-technical aid agreements were signed for the development of the main branches of the Cuban economy.77 As a consequence of these agreements, Cuban companies in the sugar industry, ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, power plants, oil refneries, chemical factories, metalworking, food, repair, communication centers, dams and social buildings were established and rebuilt. The Soviet presence in Cuba, with respect to these activities, increased tremendously. In the 1960–1962 period, the USSR collaborated with Cuba in the construction of 17 projects, and in 1972 this number had reached 159. The ties of friendship and collaboration also increased with the socialist nations of Eastern Europe, with each one creating intergovernmental commissions for economic and scientifc-technical collaboration. These ties were strengthened by Fidel Castro’s visit to these countries between May and June 1972 and, in particular, on July 11, with the admission of Cuba as a full member of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), the governing body of the economic community of the socialist states. Cuban foreign policy maintained its independence in those years, in which it paid special attention to the revolutionary, democratic and national liberation movements of the peoples of the—colonial and neocolonial—countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The war in Indochina, where the peoples of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia victoriously resisted U.S. military aggression, occupied an important area of solidarity. The voice of Cuba in all international bodies was not left unheard in its constant denunciation of the U.S.’s military aggression against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, which heroically faced the waves of bombardment of its cities and towns, with which the U.S. intended to stop the support the fghters in the south of the country in their struggle against the Saigon regime and the U.S. military intervention. The Cuban political support was not only limited to their complaints but also materialized itself in concrete solidarity events such as the sending to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam of medical and technical personnel, shipments of food and medicine and other collaborations. When the National Liberation Front, on June 11, 1969, proclaimed the constitution of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam, the Cuban government authorities announced their offcial recognition78 that they would immediately proceed to accredit their

24

The Context

ambassador to that government—a position held by Raúl Valdés Vivó, who arranged his diplomatic headquarters in the jungles of the liberated territory in southern Vietnam. The ties of friendship and brotherhood between Cuba and Vietnam were consolidated with Fidel Castro’s visit to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in September 1973. The journey of the leader of the Cuban Revolution also included the liberated territory of South Vietnam even if this area was in the midst of the ongoing war. The progressive governments and movements of the African continent also had Cuban support. An example of the Cuban solidarity was manifested in the independence struggles taking place in the Portuguese colonies of Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde and Angola, which received the support of Cuba in the form of military and medical instructors; as well as with shipments of arms, ammunition, food, medicine and other supplies for the anti-colonial fght led by Amílcar Cabral’s African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC). Cuba also decisively contributed to the formation and training of the guerrilla forces of the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). The national liberation struggles of these peoples eroded the military forces and the economy of the Lusitanian dictatorial regime and infuenced the so-called Carnation Revolution of 1974, which overthrew the dictatorship in Portugal, leading to the independence of Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde, Angola and Mozambique. Meanwhile, in Latin America the armed path of revolutionary struggle had decreased. The region as a whole was not “[…] on the eve of global changes leading, as in Cuba, to sudden socialist transformations,”79 although they were not impossible in some countries. However, these popular struggles and, above all, the socioeconomic realities had led various social sectors—not only the oppressed ones but also in some decisive political and economic circles—to a general awareness of the need for a change in the relations of subordination and dependency of the U.S. in Latin America. The Revolutionary Government of Cuba knew how to understand these new circumstances and in its foreign policy, together with support for the struggles of the working class and peasant masses, it showed its solidarity with the nationalist and anti-imperialist aspirations of some governments that emerged in the region through different means—whether through coups80 or through traditional bourgeois electoral routes—as happened for instance in Peru, Panama, Bolivia or Chile. The government of General Juan Velasco Alvarado in Peru had a supportive ally in Cuba in the fght for the recovery of the nation’s natural wealth and in the fght against the punitive measures imposed by the U.S. as a result of the nationalization of the Peruvian oil felds, that a subsidiary company of the U.S.-based standard oil81 was operating to the detriment of the country. The ruling military junta proclaimed, in

From Saigon to Havana 25 the face of the U.S. pressures, that “ffty years of great profts were more than a just compensation,” to that consortium—a statement that won the sympathy of the Cuban people and its government. It was not only the political but also the human solidarity that Peru received from Cuba. In connection to the great earthquake that devastated Peru on May 31, 1970, a Cuban medical brigade provided relief to the victims; while the Cuban population attended massively to donate blood82 to save Peruvian lives affected by the catastrophe. As part of this aid, between 1971 and 1972, an internationalist brigade of builders constructed six hospitals in the places that were most devastated by the earthquake. This type of humanitarian solidarity aid in the face of natural disasters included Nicaragua, where the dictatorial regime of the Somoza family, a declared enemy of the Cuban Revolution, ruled. In December 1972, Cuba gave aid to the Nicaraguan people who were killed by the serious human and material damage caused by an earthquake that destroyed the city of Managua. In the face of this catastrophe, a medical brigade and a feld hospital were sent, as well as medicines and food to help the victims. In those years, the Cuban Revolution maintained its political and material support for the popular revolutionary movements that faced military dictatorships in the hemisphere such as those of Brazil and Nicaragua, and their combatants found refuge in Cuba. The welcome given on September 30, 1969, to the Brazilian revolutionaries that were exchanged for the U.S. ambassador to Brazil, kidnapped by a guerrilla command, was public, and on August 26, 1970, four guerrillas of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) [the Sandinista National Liberation Front] that were in prison in Nicaragua arrived in Cuba exchanged for four offcials of the United Fruit Company.83 Cuban foreign policy included the just political, economic and social demands made by the democratic and nationalist governments in the region against foreign companies that plundered their natural wealth. One of the causes that reached the interest of the Cuban population was the support to the aspiration of the Panamanian people and the government of Omar Torrijos, in pursuit of achieving sovereignty in the area of the Panama Canal. In parallel the Cuban complaint was present at the United Nations and in other international forums concerning the colonial status of Puerto Rico.84 Cuba’s independent and principled position won the respect of other nations in the region and in the world, and this made Cuba creditable to be integrated in different organs of the United Nations. For example, on May 17, 1972, Cuba was elected, along with Chile and Jamaica, as a member of the Administrative Council of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) for Latin America, for a period of three years. In Cuban internationalist politics, in the early 1970s, the revolutionary solidarity with the process of socioeconomic and political changes

26

The Context

in Chile was especially important. Cuba helped Chile in every way possible to confront the conspiracy of the oligarchic sectors of the Chilean right and the intelligence agencies of the U.S. aimed at destabilizing and overthrowing the socialist government of Allende. In the face of the shortages of basic goods, Cuba donated sugar and other forms of food. In December 1972—in an imposing act at the Plaza de la Revolución [Revolution Square] in Havana, in the presence of President Salvador Allende—the Cuban population supported the proposal of Fidel Castro that each Cuban citizen should renounce a pound of rice of their monthly ration to the people of Chile. Meanwhile, within the framework of the OAS, the U.S. tried to maintain its anti-Cuban policy of economic and diplomatic isolation against Cuba approved during the VIII and IX Conference of Foreign Ministers of the OAS, held, respectively, in 1962 and 1964. Since 1969 rumors circulated in the U.S. and other Latin American media concerning the desire of the Cuban government to return to the OAS, which the leadership of the Revolution itself denied. On April 22, 1970, Fidel Castro, after commenting on these rumors, clarifed the Cuban position on the matter by declaring that “Cuba had never applied for that entry,” and he further stated that “Cuba will never accept entering that indecent garbage that is the OAS.”85 But the truth was that the internal changes that were manifesting itself in various governments in the region toward a more independent position in relation to the U.S., reinforced a tendency favorable to the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with Cuba in contradiction to the OAS agreements of 1964.86 The New York Times, on July 13, 1970, reported that the frst initiative of the Nixon administration with respect to Cuba, carried out in the mid-1970s, was aimed at putting pressure on Latin American countries, especially Peru and Velasco Alvarado, and Bolivia and Juan José Torres, to maintain the economic and political blockade, due to the strong intentions of both leaders to reestablish their countries ties with Cuba. U.S. documents, especially from the Department of State and the CIA, show the efforts made in those years to reverse that trend—for example, in a memorandum from the Assistant Secretary of State Charles A. Meyer, on April 5, 1971, to the Secretary of State William Rogers proposed the political options and the tactics regarding the possible reconsideration in the OAS of the sanctions against Cuba.87 Another document was the “Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE) 85–712,” under the title “Continuation and Changes in Castro’s Cuba,” of April 29, 1971, that predicted—in subsection E—that for the next two to three years: Latin America is an international area where Castro has recently acquired a signifcantly wide space to maneuver. He will probably take a fexible attitude towards those Latin Americans who declare

From Saigon to Havana 27 that they seek to resume relations. It is likely that the OAS is under increasing pressure to relax its diplomatic and economic sanctions against Cuba […] of the 1964 resolution.88 This estimate was met since in May 1972, Peru proposed a draft resolution at the OAS aimed at obtaining that the member states should be able to reestablish their relations with Cuba in the manner that they found appropriate. Although it was not possible to suspend the sanction, the vote of 13 against, 7 in favor and 3 abstentions meant that from a juridical point of view the two-thirds necessary to maintain the sanction no longer existed. This result constituted a political defeat for the U.S., whose relations with Latin America were increasingly aggravated, among other factors, by its anti-Cuban policy. Furthermore, it was considered inconsistent by the governments of the region, in relation to the U.S. detente policy toward the USSR and China. The opening of the relations with Cuba was begun by Chile on November 12, 1970, and it was followed by Peru on July 8, 1972. By December 1972, seven Latin American countries already had diplomatic relations with Cuba and others clearly stated their intention to restore them. This was done in 1973 by the newly elected Argentine Peronist government; in 1974 by Panama, Venezuela and the Bahamas; and in 1975 by Colombia. This caused the U.S. to be forced to recognize the independent actions of these countries. The V General Assembly of the OAS, held in San José, Costa Rica, left the member countries of the regional body free to reestablish its diplomatic, commercial and consular relations with Cuba after the approval of a Protocol of Amendment to the Rio de Janeiro Treaty of 1947 and a complementary resolution. Such was the global, regional and internal context—both in the U.S. and in Cuba—that prevented Richard M. Nixon and his administration from taking revenge against the Cuban Revolution as was their intention in 1969 when they arrived at the White House.

Notes 1 Nixon obtained 31.783.783 votes equivalent to 43.42% of the votes, his closest rival, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey of the Democratic Party reached 31.271.839 votes equivalent to 42.72%, while the Independent Party candidate, George Wallace, reached 9.901.118 votes equivalent to 13.53%. Nixon won in 32 states, Humphrey in 13, and Wallace in fve. In the end Nixon had 301 electors against 191 for Humphrey and 46 for Wallace. 2 Håkan Karlsson and Tomás Diez Acosta: The Johnson Administration’s Cuba Policy from “Dirty War” to Passive Containment (New York/London: Routledge, 2021), 202. 3 Richard M. Nixon, Six Crises (New York: Doubleday, 1962), 351–352. Between April 15 and 27, 1959, Prime Minister Fidel Castro visited the U.S. invited by the Society of Newspaper Directors. On the April 19 he met with Nixon, where he explained the democratic and social justice program of his government.

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The Context

4 See: Tomás Diez Acosta: La Guerra Encubierta contra Cuba (La Habana: Editora Política, 2006), 5–12. 5 When President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, there were 20.000 U.S. special forces military advisers in South Vietnam. That number was increasing, and at the end of 1965 the number of U.S. troops was 184.314 and in 1966, 385.000. By the end of Johnson’s term, the number of U.S. troops had reached 542.000. 6 Henry Kissinger: The White House Years (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979), 226. 7 This doctrine had application not only for the war in Vietnam, since it also had a fundamental political-strategic value. It implied that the U.S. promised to fulfll its commitments to protect any ally whose freedom was threatened by a state with nuclear weapon potential, as well as protecting all nations whose survival was considered a vital interest for the U.S. security. The U.S. protection meant the provision with the military potential for their defense. See: Roberto González Gómez: Estados Unidos: doctrinas de la guerra fría, 1947–1991 (La Habana: Centro de Estudios Martianos, 2003), 105–106. 8 Howard Zinn: A People’s History of the United States (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 483–484. 9 These bombings pursued the tactical objective, to cut the “Ho Chi Minh” trail, and another more strategic objective was to demonstrate to North Vietnam that the new U.S. administration was ready to do anything to end the war, including the nuclear option. But the North Vietnamese were not intimidated by that threat and continued their transportation of personal and weapons to the south. 10 These documents were provided by Daniel Ellsberg, who, tired by the U.S. action that he could verify during a visit to Saigon, decided to unveil a secret documentation from the Pentagon on the war; that was in his possession due to his participation in the writing of a story about the war requested by the Department of Defense to the RAND corporation, where he worked as a specialist. 11 Howard Zinn: A People’s History of the United States (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 541. 12 The South Vietnamese delegation did not accept the agreement and was excluded. The U.S. wanted to close that chapter in the nation’s history as soon as possible. 13 In that context, the U.S. Congress passed a law limiting the President’s power to go to war without the approval of the Congress. But even then, with the new “War Powers Resolution” the President could involve the nation in a war for 60 days without a statement from the Congress. 14 Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City, and the country was unifed to form the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. 15 “Among the President’s prerogatives that were weakened were: the authority to postpone expenses, authorize the sale of arms, control his personal documents, direct the security agencies, among others.” See: Elier Ramírez Cañedo y Esteban Morales Domínguez: De la confrontación a los intentos de normalización. La política de los Estados Unidos hacia Cuba (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2011), 42. 16 Among the most notorious scandals were the publication of the “Pentagon Papers,” the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew and that of “Watergate,” which led to the resignation of President Nixon himself. 17 Howard Zinn: A People’s History of the United States (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 557.

From Saigon to Havana 29 18 Elier Ramírez Cañedo and Esteban Morales Domínguez: De la confrontación a los intentos de normalización. La política de los Estados Unidos hacia Cuba (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2011), 41. 19 Ibid., 42. 20 Esteban Morales: “USA: la crisis de un liderazgo y el liderazgo de una crisis”, en: Seminario Nacional, El imperialismo norteamericano contemporáneo (La Habana: CEA, La Habana), 14–28. 21 Program of U.S. aid to the economic reconstruction of Western Europe and Japan, at the end of World War II, as part of its strategy of world hegemony and the containment of communism. See: Tomás Diez Acosta: Peligros y Principio (La Habana: Casa Editorial Verde Olivo, 2012), 18–19. 22 The position of the U.S. dollar as a leading world currency began to weaken due to the combined effects of its losses in relation to the gold price and the increase in currency over the growth of production. In 1970, it caused a drop in its coverage in relation to the gold price with 2.5%. In 1971 Nixon decided to eliminate its gold convertibility. 23 When referring to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, its acronym USSR will be used in the text. 24 The Group of 77 (G-77) was created on June 15, 1964, by 77 underdeveloped countries with the aim of helping, sustaining and mutually supporting each other in the deliberations of the United Nations Organization. The G-77 coordinates cooperation programs in trade, industry, food, agriculture, energy, raw materials, fnance and monetary affairs. Its current membership is 130. 25 ICBMs: intercontinental ballistic missiles. 26 SLBMs: submarine launched ballistic missiles. 27 Henry Kissinger: The White House Years (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979), 196–197. 28 ABM, antiballistic missile. 29 MIRV, multiple independently targeted reentry vehicle. 30 Henry Kissinger: The White House Years (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979), 197. 31 The term Realpolitik was coined in the 19th century by Otto von Bismarck in fulflling Prince Klemens von Metternich’s request to fnd a method of balancing the power between the European empires. One of the most famous forerunners was Niccolo Machiavelli, who in his work The Prince argued that the only concern of a ruler should be to seek and retain power, and that ethical or religious considerations were useless for this purpose. 32 On Kissinger’s ideas, see: Roberto González Gómez: Estados Unidos: doctrinas de la guerra fría, 1947–1991 (La Habana: Centro de Estudios Martianos, 2003), 93–102. 33 Roberto González Gómez: Estados Unidos: doctrinas de la guerra fría, 1947–1991 (La Habana: Centro de Estudios Martianos, 2003), 110. 34 Ibid. 35 The U.S. was concerned about the People’s Republic of China’s nuclear strategic development. The “National Intelligence Estimate [NIE] 13-8-69” presented on February 27, 1969, to the U.S. National Security Council predicted the possibility of limited nuclear capacity and the development of its carriers. In: U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. XVII, China, 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2011), Doc. 7. 36 Those tensions had increased in 1969 with the armed incidents that occurred at the common borders. These territorial disputes would reach their moment of maximum tension in the incident on the island of Zhenbao, on

30

37 38 39

40

41 42 43 44 45 46

47 48 49 50 51

52 53

The Context the Ussuri River, where a battle between Chinese and Soviet troops took place for control of the islet. This armed confrontation would be the lowest point in relations between the two countries, and the possibility of a great war was feared. “Ping-pong diplomacy” refers to an exchange of table tennis matches between Chinese and American players in 1971, which had notable political implications later on. SALT: Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty. After the signing of SALT-I in 1972, negotiations began for a more advanced agreement, SALT-II. Therefore, under the presidency of Nixon, two more summits were held with the USSR, in 1973 and 1974. In 1973, an agreement to prevent a nuclear war was signed, and in 1974, the agreement limited the antiballistic missiles in both countries, and it restricted the force of underground nuclear explosions to 150 kilotons. This progress would take the form of the “Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe,” held in Helsinki with the participation of all European countries, including Turkey, the U.S. and Canada. The conclave ended on August 1, 1975, with the signing of the Final Act by 35 countries, which fostered a climate of peace and cooperation very different from that which existed three decades earlier. Roberto González Gómez: Estados Unidos: doctrinas de la guerra fría, 1947–1991 (La Habana: Centro de Estudios Martianos, 2003), 119. Ibid., 117–118. Department of State, “Cuban Presence in Africa”, December 28, 1977. 4. FOIA. 1977/1334. On the measures taken by the government of the armed forces in Peru, see: Sergio Guerra Vilaboy: Breve Historia de América Latina (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2010), 288–290. Ibid., 290–292. On August 21, 1971, the most reactionary sectors of the Bolivian armed forces and ruling classes unleashed a bloody coup against the government of General Juan José Torres. The putschists, after crushing the popular resistance, formed a military triumvirate chaired by General Hugo Banzer, who was recognized by Washington. In: Luís Suárez Salazar: Madre América. Un siglo de violencia y dolor (1898–1998) (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2003), 281. Sergio Guerra Vilaboy: Breve Historia de América Latina (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2010), 288. The fnal count of the votes resulted in Salvador Allende, from the Unity Popular, 36.3%; Jorge Alessandri Rodríguez, from the National Party, 35%; and Radomiro Tomic Romero, from the Christian Democracy, 27%. Luís Suárez Salazar: Madre América. Un siglo de violencia y dolor (1898– 1998) (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2003), 271. Henry Kissinger: The White House Years (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979), 671. This measure taken by Allende constituted the beginning of the liquidation of the 1964 anti-Cuban resolution of the IX Conference of Foreign Ministers of the OAS, which imposed the U.S. policy of an economic and diplomatic isolation of Cuba in the region. Sergio Guerra Vilaboy: Breve Historia de América Latina (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2010), 293. Among these actions were the hoarding of basic necessities to artifcially provoke shortages that should lead to price rises, a growth of the “black” market and of the infation, all justifying the aristocratic antigovernment

From Saigon to Havana 31

54

55

56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67

68 69

protests against the shortage. Simultaneously, vandalism began to take place carried out by the gangs called “Homeland and Freedom” that acted in the service of the counterrevolution and imperialism. These activities and others were intended to present to the world press an image of Chile as ungovernable, divide the popular forces, sow anxiety in the population and prepare the way for the overthrow of the government. In the presidential elections of 1973, the Peronist candidate Héctor José Cámpora, who promoted the return of General Perón, triumphed. The Peronist right wing forced Cámpora to resign. Raúl Alberto Lastriri, his successor, called presidential elections in which Juan Domingo Perón, at the age of 77, was elected for the third time, with more than 60% of the votes. Perón died on July 1, 1974. Jorge Pacheco Areco ruled between 1967 and 1971. In 1968 he signed an agreement with the International Monetary Fund to renegotiate the country’s debt, through which wages and prices were frozen. The workers unions’ response was a strike movement that paralyzed the nation. The government responded with emergency measures to censor the press, ban strikes and crush leftist organizations. A popular armed struggle increased under the leadership of the socialist leader Raúl Sendic Antonaccio, who founded the Tupamaros urban guerrilla movement. Among these, the Tupamaros movement that publicly declared their support for the Broad Front. The Uruguayan regime had the support of the U.S. and the advice of the CIA, but the armed struggle of the Tupamaros continued. See: Phillip Agee: Inside the Company, CIA Diary (New York: Bantam Books, 1975). Colonies that obtained their independence were, for instance, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago in 1962, Guyana and Barbados in 1966, Bahamas in 1973 and Granada in 1974. Luís Suárez Salazar: Madre América. Un siglo de violencia y dolor (1898– 1998) (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2003), 289. CARICOM, Caribbean Community, founded in 1973. The frst four members were Barbados, Jamaica, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago. The billionaire Nelson Rockefeller was experienced in regional affairs. During World War II he had been coordinator of the former Offce of InterAmerican Affairs. Luís Suárez Salazar: Madre América. Un siglo de violencia y dolor (1898– 1998) (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2003), 268. The process of applying the Soviet model culminated—after the First Party Congress—with the application of a system of direction and planning of the economy. For the 1970 harvest, the participation of more than 1 million people was necessary. See: José Luis Rodríguez: Estrategia del desarrollo económico de Cuba (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1990), 123. Fidel Castro: “Comparecencia por radio y televisión, 20 de mayo de 1970”, Granma (May 21, 1970), 5. Fidel Castro: Primer Congreso del Partido Comunista de Cuba. Informe Central (La Habana: DOR, 1975), 102–104. Fidel Castro: Discurso pronunciado en el X Aniversario de los CDR, el 28 de septiembre de 1970 (La Habana: Ediciones COR No. 14, Editado por la Comisión de Orientación Revolucionaria (COR) del Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC), septiembre 1970), 7. Primer Congreso del Partido Comunista de Cuba. Informe Central (La Habana: DOR, 1975), 214. Ibid., 182.

32

The Context

70 Ibid., 191. 71 This agreement was signed within the framework of Fidel Castro’s offcial visit to the USSR in December 1972 at the invitation of Leonid Brezhnev, who reciprocated the invitation in January 1974. 72 See: Ambrosio Fornet: “El quinquenio gris; revisando el término”. In: Casa de las Américas, no. 246, enero-marzo (La Habana, Casa de las Américas, 2007), 3–16. 73 Political relations between Havana and Moscow reached their lowest level in 1967 after Che Guevara’s death in Bolivia. The Cuban leadership criticized the passivity with which the USSR contemplated the escalation of the U.S. bombings in North Vietnam; the null support to the anticolonial movements of the peoples of Africa, especially in the Portuguese colonies; the political position assumed before the Latin American popular armed struggle and the Soviet firting with repressive regimes in the region such as that of Colombia and others; the weak Soviet response to Israel’s attack on Egypt, Syria and Jordan in June 1967, among other differences. 74 Many in Cuba and abroad expected Fidel Castro to condemn the USSR’s invasion in Czechoslovakia; however, he expressed that, although he understood that the action was a violation of the sovereignty of Czechoslovakia, it had been necessary, due to that the country—as a result of the Czech Prime Minister Alexander Dubcek’s policy—“He was marching towards capitalism and he was marching inexorably toward imperialism.” See: Fidel Castro: “Comparecencia ante la radio y televisión cubana el 23 de agosto de 1968”. In: Álvares Tabío, P. (ed) Documentos de Política Internacional de la Revolución Cubana Nº 5 (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1972), 221–262. 75 Fidel Castro: Discurso pronunciado en la velada solemne en conmemoración del centenario del natalicio de Vladimir Ilich Lenin, efectuado en el teatro “Chaplin”, el 22 de abril de 1970 (La Habana: Ediciones COR, No. 8, Editado por la Comisión de Orientación Revolucionaria (COR) del Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC), abril 1970), 24. 76 On May 2, 1972, the Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro participated in an offcial visit to Guinea, beginning a tour that also included Algeria, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Poland, the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia and the USSR. 77 These agreements were expanded in 1974 with the visit to Cuba of the Secretary General of the Communist Party of the USSR, Leonid I. Brezhnev. 78 The signifcance of this historic Cuban decision had its resonance in Washington with the idea of constituting and recognizing a Provisional Government of Cuba in exile, as is shown in a memorandum by the Under Secretary of State Eliot Richardson to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs Henry Kissinger, June 16, 1969. In: U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 204. 79 Primer Congreso del Partido Comunista de Cuba. Informe Central (La Habana: DOR, 1975), 228. 80 Like those of the Generals Juan Velasco Alvarado in Peru and Omar Torrijos Herrera in Panama, who started “a new era in the position of certain military forces in Latin America.” Ibid., 229. 81 The U.S. applied against Peru the “Hickenlooper Amendment” that demanded the termination of economic and commercial aid to the country that expropriated one of its companies without fair compensation. 82 Between June 9 and 15, 105.000 blood donations were realized.

From Saigon to Havana 33 83 These guerrillas were Carlos Fonseca Amador, Plutarco Hernández (Costa Rican), Roque Marín and Humberto Ortega Saavedra, who presented two bullet wounds to the chest. 84 On December 6, 1971, the Cuban ambassador to the United Nations, Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada, spoke before the UN General Assembly, where he presented Cuba’s criteria regarding the colonial case of Puerto Rico and that country’s right to self-determination. 85 Fidel Castro: Discurso pronunciado en la velada solemne en conmemoración del centenario del natalicio de Vladimir Ilich Lenin, efectuado en el teatro “Chaplin”, el 22 de abril de 1970 (La Habana: Ediciones COR, No. 8, Editado por la Comisión de Orientación Revolucionaria (COR) del Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC), abril 1970), 24. 86 Final Act of the Ninth Meeting of Consultation of OAS Foreign Affairs Ministers, Washington, July 26, 1964, File of MINREX. 87 “Action Memorandum from the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter American Affairs (Meyer) to Secretary of State Rogers, Washington, April 5, 1971.” U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 236. 88 “Special National Intelligence Estimate 85–71, Washington, April 29, 1971.” U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 237.

References Agee, P. Inside the Company, CIA Diary (New York: Bantam Books, 1975). Castro, F. Discurso pronunciado en la velada solemne en conmemoración del centenario del natalicio de Vladimir Ilich Lenin, efectuado en el teatro “Chaplin”, el 22 de abril de 1970 (La Habana: Ediciones COR, No. 8, Editado por la Comisión de Orientación Revolucionaria (COR) del Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC), abril 1970). Castro, F. “Comparecencia por radio y televisión, 20 de mayo de 1970”, Granma (May 21, 1970). Castro, F. Discurso pronunciado en el X Aniversario de los CDR, el 28 de septiembre de 1970 (La Habana: Ediciones COR No. 14, Editado por la Comisión de Orientación Revolucionaria (COR) del Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC), septiembre 1970). Castro, F. “Comparecencia ante la radio y televisión cubana el 23 de agosto de 1968”. In: Àlvares Tabío, P. (ed) Documentos de Política Internacional de la Revolución Cubana Nº 5 (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1972). 221–262 Castro, F. Primer Congreso del Partido Comunista de Cuba. Informe Central (La Habana: DOR, 1975). Diez Acosta, T. La Guerra Encubierta contra Cuba (La Habana: Editora Política, 2006). Diez Acosta, T. Peligros y Principio (La Habana: Casa Editorial Verde Olivo, 2012). Final Act of the Ninth Meeting of Consultation of Foreign Ministers of American States (OAS), Washington, July 26, 1964, File of MINREX.

34 The Context Fornet, A. “El quinquenio gris; revisando el término”. In: Casa de las Américas, no. 246, enero-marzo (La Habana: Casa de las Américas, 2007). 3–16. González Gómez, R. Estados Unidos: doctrinas de la guerra fría, 1947–1991 (La Habana: Centro de Estudios Martianos, 2003). Guerra Vilaboy, S. Breve Historia de América Latina (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2010). Karlsson, H. and Diez Acosta, T. The Johnson Administration’s Cuba Policy from “Dirty War” to Passive Containment (New York/London: Routledge, 2021). Kissinger, H. The White House Years (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979). Morales, E. “USA: la crisis de un liderazgo y el liderazgo de una crisis”, en: Seminario Nacional, El imperialismo norteamericano contemporáneo. 1 (La Habana: CEA, 2015). Nixon, R.M. Six Crises (New York: Doubleday, 1962). Primer Congreso del Partido Comunista de Cuba. Informe Central (La Habana: DOR, 1975). Ramírez Cañedo, E. and Morales Domínguez, E. De la confrontación a los intentos de normalización. La política de los Estados Unidos hacia Cuba (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2011). Rodríguez, J.L. Estrategia del desarrollo económico de Cuba (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1990). Suárez Salazar, L. Madre América. Un siglo de violencia y dolor (1898–1998) (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2003). U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. XVII, China, 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2011). U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018). Zinn, H. A People’s History of the United States (New York: HarperCollins, 2001).

Part II

The Nixon Administration’s Policy toward Cuba Despite all the predictions that foreshadowed a short existence of the Cuban Revolution due to the colossal challenges faced—especially the “dirty war” encouraged, organized, directed and fnanced by the U.S.—January 1, 1969, marked its 10th anniversary. Twenty days later, Richard Milhous Nixon took possession of the White House. The hostile posture toward Cuba held by the new U.S. president was not a surprise for the Cuban leadership, since Nixon’s actions were predictable. Fidel Castro pointed out, “[…] Mr. Nixon, together with Mr. Eisenhower, initiated the economic aggression toward Cuba, organized the mercenaries for the Girón invasion, and initiated the blockade.”1 An aggressive anti-Cuban rhetoric had characterized Nixon’s election campaign, which was a refection of his ties with counterrevolutionary groups within the Cuban exile community in Miami and in other major U.S. cities. In one of his electoral speeches, he had stated that it was necessary “[…] to make the Castro regime understand that it cannot remain forever as a sanctuary for the export of terror to other countries.”2 Nixon’s speech during his presidential inauguration on January 20, 1969, was totally contrary to this anti-Cuban approach when he declared the arrival of the end of a “period of confrontations” and the beginning of “an era of negotiations,” and he affrmed that during his administration, the line of communication would be open with all nations. He further proclaimed his aspiration to “a world in which no people, small or large, live in bitter isolation.”3 However, the relations with Cuba did not change, since the policy of confrontation and isolation remained. The new Republican administration did not end its hostile rhetoric, nor the support and impunity to the actions carried out by the counterrevolutionary groups that acted from U.S. territory. Nixon maintained the so-called passive containment4 policy that had characterized the past few years of the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. Measures of economic and psychological warfare, as well as the isolation of Cuba in the hemisphere, continued as the main routes of the U.S. anti-Cuban actions. This, at that time, there existed no conditions for an intensifcation of the aggressive U.S. policy toward its closest neighbor in the Caribbean,

36

The Nixon Administration’s Policy

Figure 2.1 First meeting of the President’s National Security Council, January 21, 1969. NLRN-WHPO-C0127-01. White House Photo Offce. Source: The Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, used with permission.

despite the interest of the new president. This prevented the Nixon administration from implementing a strategy, similar to that of the late 1950s and the early 1960s. On January 31, 1969, in a memorandum from the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, Henry A. Kissinger, addressed to Nixon, Kissinger reported the considerable correspondence that had been collected from the Cuban exiles and the requests to meet him. Kissinger stressed that “We have already received one such request from a prominent but highly opportunistic exile fgure […] and we have referred his letter to the Department of State for reply […].”5 Kissinger realized the inconvenience with a situation that could involve these counterrevolutionary groups and their leading fgures directly, due to their great fragmentation and their different interests. Therefore, he stressed that getting involved or being identifed with any representative of those exiles could be embarrassing for Nixon and for the White House. As a rule of procedure, he therefore recommended to Nixon that letters or requests from fgures in the Cuban exile should be sent to the Department of State for handling, unless Nixon did not have any established personal relationship that would indicate a different procedure.6

The Nixon Administration’s Policy 37

Figure 2.2 Memorandum to the president from Henry A. Kissinger. Subject: Cuban Exiles, Washington, January 31, 1969. NCS Country Files—Latin America, Box #780, Cuba Vol #1. Note President Nixon’s handwritten comments. Source: National Archives and Records Administration, used with permission.

38 The Nixon Administration’s Policy It seems as if this recommendation was not well received by Nixon, because below the text there is a handwritten note from the president stressing that: I disagree. State has handled this with disgusting incompetence. The careerists are Pro Castro for the most part. Possibly Allen7 could handle these on a controlled discreet basis-showing at least some sympathy for their plight.8 Perhaps, Nixon longed for past times, when he, in the position as vice president, was one of the main promoters of the policy of confrontation against the Cuban Revolution.

2

“A Very, Very Cautious Probe Only”

Another example of Nixon’s obstinacy regarding Cuba was his decision to stop a response to a request for dialogue made by the Cuban leadership, through the Swiss ambassador, on issues of interest to both governments. On March 11, 1969, a meeting was held between the Secretary of State William P. Rogers and the Swiss ambassador in Havana, Alfred Fischli, 9 who reported on the main problems involving Switzerland as a representative of the U.S. interests in Cuba. At that meeting, Secretary Rogers asked the ambassador for an account of his recent conversation with Fidel Castro. Fischli commented that the Fidel Castro rarely received ambassadors, and that on previous occasions when he went to visit the U.S., he had asked the Cubans if they had any message to transmit and the responses were always negative. At the beginning of the year, he said, “[…] senior offcials suggested that the time could be ripe for a change in US-Cuban relations.”10 On February 1, he said, the Cuban Minister of Foreign Relations, Raúl Roa García, summoned him to receive a note of response from him concerning the air hijackings, and that after this contact, he had a meeting with Fidel Castro with whom he discussed the points contained in the mentioned note. In the conversation, the Cuban leader also discussed other topics. According to the Swiss ambassador’s account, the frst aspect commented by Fidel Castro gravitated toward “foreign interference” in Latin America, when he commented that “The U.S. should cease such interventions.” Fischli alluded to guerrilla activities involving Cuba, to which Fidel Castro replied, “[…] we should all stop interfering,” and added that “[…] the situation was such that only the people of the countries themselves could determine the question of revolution.”11 According to Fischli, the Cuban leader then explained to him that he had information about the conspiracy of Cuban counterrevolutionaries in the U.S. to spread the hoof-and-mouth virus in Cuba, with the purpose of ruining the cattle industry. Castro then inquired about Fischli’s willingness to transfer the information to the U.S. authorities of such a plot and offered to provide him with the evidence obtained for the preparation from a captured infltrator.

40

The Nixon Administration’s Policy

Another problem that Castro emphasized was that of the illegal escapes from Cuba of people, through the clandestine crossing of the border perimeter with the Guantánamo Naval base, and that these people were received as refugees there. The manner used by the Cuban leader to address this issue led the Swiss ambassador to believe that “[…] Castro was convinced that the U.S. did not connive in such escapes or encourage them […],”12 but the fact that the U.S. granted these people the status of refugees prompted further escapes. He also expressed that he did not want to build a “Berlin wall” around the base, nor deploying one or two army divisions to seal the border. He did not expect the U.S. to build their own wall, but that they could fnd a way to discourage those escapes. “Castro had asked him,” he further stated, “[…] convey a message that he was interested in establishing a discussion of such issues, presumably with a view to edging toward a detente.”13 Perhaps to promote his own role, Fischli commented that Castro told him, to the best of his knowledge, that the Russians did not know about this initiative, since the Cubans preferred to use the Swiss diplomatic representation, as an intermediary, instead of the Czechs, that acted as representatives of Cuba in Washington. In answers to questions from the Secretary of State about the internal conditions in Cuba, Fischli explained that the economic situation had worsened and with it the shortage of food products, consumer goods and medicines. Regarding the political scenario, he indicated that Castro was frmly in the saddle, without rivals, and, in his opinion, for the majority, the revolution was irreversible. Concerning the economic blockade, Fischli stressed that the most forceful effect was to disable Cuba from important industrial parts and equipment, and, consequently, it would be his recommendation that these should be the last restrictions to be lifted. He also considered the inclusion in the blockade of certain products, especially pharmaceuticals, allowed Castro to blame the U.S. for the shortage, while in reality Cuba would not buy these products even if the restrictions were lifted.14 Fischli clarifed that he had not been asked by the Cubans to transmit any specifc proposal, but only to transfer the general consideration indicated. The Secretary of State, Rogers, stressed that the information was very interesting, and that the Swiss ambassador should be provided with an answer to present upon his return to Cuba if requested by the Cubans. Rogers further stressed that Fischli could tell them that the U.S. found the information interesting, that it would be thoroughly examined and that a message should be transmitted through the Swiss ambassador at the right moment. Fischli suggested that if a decision were made to work toward a detente, a series of practical steps could be taken in silence, without reaching any formal agreement at this stage. Rogers commented that “[…] certainly the climate of U.S. public opinion might be more receptive to the possibility of a change in our posture if the Cubans did something which ended the hijacking problem.”15

“A Very, Very Cautious Probe Only” 41 It appears that the information transmitted by the Swiss ambassador was studied in the Department of State as Rogers said. On April 4, in a memorandum from Kissinger to Nixon, the presidential aide appreciated the request made a day earlier by the Secretary of State to the president to authorize Ambassador Fischli “[…] to probe what Castro had in mind, in sending us a recent message which seemed to indicate a desire for a détente.”16 Kissinger reminded the president that, the previous month, the Swiss ambassador in Havana informed the Secretary of State that: Castro had asked him to let us know that he was interested in establishing a discussion of current issues with us. Castro implied that he might be willing to reduce his support for revolutionary activities elsewhere in Latin America.17 Regarding this matter, the Presidential Assistant considered that the Cuban leader’s motivation may be determined by the deterioration of the economic situation in Cuba and the apparent antipathy of the Soviets to provide increased aid. He further stated that the Cubans hinted that the Russians were unaware of this approach toward the U.S. Kissinger knew how reluctant Nixon was to any contact with the Cuban government, for which he pointed out and clarifed that Secretary Rogers considered that a survey of what Castro had in mind would not compromise the U.S. to any change of policy.18 Kissinger recalled that a study was underway in the National Security Council on the current policy toward Cuba and expressed his opinion that a cautious probe would not exclude any option. He further stressed that putting out a feeler to Castro now would keep the option of a dialogue open, if Nixon wanted to use that approach at a later time. Kissinger therefore recommended that such a probe should not indicate any U.S. attitude. Nixon’s response was immediate. In an unsigned handwritten message from the president, at the bottom of the memorandum below Kissinger’s recommendation, he stressed that “A very, very cautious probe only.”19 A week later, on April 11, a meeting between the Assistant Secretary of State, U. Alexis Johnson, and the Swiss Ambassador to the U.S., Felix Schnyder, took place at the Department of State as a follow-up to the report made by Ambassador Fischli. Johnson asked if Schnyder could transfer the following message to Fischli: Referring to Prime Minister Castro’s remarks to Ambassador Fischli on February 1, which the Ambassador transmitted to the Secretary of State during his visit to Washington in March, it would be appreciated if the Ambassador could ask Castro to explain more precisely 1) what he may have in mind as regards the parameters or nature of any contact or dialogue; and 2) whether he has in mind specifc or limited subjects. 20

42

The Nixon Administration’s Policy

Thus, it seems obvious that Kissinger, and other persons in the Nixon administration, realized the value in creating a dialogue with the leaders of the Cuban Revolution, but that President Nixon, due to his personal anti-Cuban agenda, was quite uninterested in this matter.

Notes 1 Fidel Castro: Discurso en el acto por la conmemoración del X Aniversario del Triunfo de la Revolución Cubana, 2 de enero de 1969 (La Habana: Ediciones COR, No. 1, enero 1969). 2 The New York Times (June 12, 1968), 4. 3 Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Washington, February, 1969, 13. In: Instituto Superior de Relaciones Internacionales (ISRI): “Raúl Roa García”: De Eisenhower a Reagan (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1987), 193. 4 Håkan Karlsson and Tomás Diez Acosta: The Johnson Administration’s Cuba Policy from “Dirty War” to Passive Containment (New York/London: Routledge, 2021), 220. 5 “Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Nixon, Washington, January 31, 1969”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 195. 6 Ibid. 7 Nixon surely refers to Allen W. Dulles, who was director of the CIA until November 1961. Under Dulle’s leadership the frst secret offcial program of covert action against Cuba was implemented—a program that would end with the failure at the Bay of Pigs. 8 “Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Nixon, Washington, January 31, 1969”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 195, Note 1. 9 “Memorandum of Conversation, Washington, March 11, 1969, 2:45 p.m.” U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 197. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 “Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Nixon, Washington, April 4, 1969”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 198. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., Note 1.

“A Very, Very Cautious Probe Only” 43 20 “Memorandum of Conversation, Washington, April 11, 1969, 5 p.m.” U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969– 1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 199.

References Castro, F. Discurso en el acto por la conmemoración del X Aniversario del Triunfo de la Revolución Cubana, 2 de enero de 1969 (La Habana: Ediciones COR, No. 1, enero 1969). Instituto Superior de Relaciones Internacionales (ISRI). “Raúl Roa García”: De Eisenhower a Reagan (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1987). Karlsson, H. and Diez Acosta, T. The Johnson Administration’s Cuba Policy from “Dirty War” to Passive Containment (New York/London: Routledge, 2021). The New York Times (June 12, 1968). U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018).

3

CIA’s Covert Operations and the Use of Cuban Exiles

The personal interest shown by President Nixon—and his electoral commitments—to increase the U.S. subversive action toward Cuba raised the need to examine the results and the feasibility of the covert action plans used to overthrow the Cuban Revolution. Therefore, in early April 1969, the administration requested a reevaluation of the operation of these actions. Henry Kissinger, on behalf of the president, asked Richard M. Helms, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), for a feasibility study of the action programs and the eventual renewed employment of Cuban exiles. In compliance with this request from the National Security Assistant, Helms presented a memorandum to the 303 Committee,1 on April 26, 1969. entitled “Feasibility of Covert Operations Against Cuba,”2 which included a study of the history of different CIA-organized covert operation and actions after the Bay of Pigs. It also describes the actions that were taking place at the time, as well as comments on the viability of additional operations and the eventual utility of the employment of Cuban exiles. Regarding the background, the CIA document shows that after the Bay of Pigs, the CIA began its infltration missions with the purpose of “contact and sustain resistance groups identifed by exiles,”3 but that the tougher Cuban internal security “required sophisticated equipment and support programs.”4 The document further explains that in 1963 this support was used to carry out intelligence and sabotage missions, and later in support of the infltration and exfltration of intelligence agents, and that these activities were successful for a time. Between June 1963 and June 1965, the CIA supported the autonomous operations of Manuel Artime, who had a force of “four hundred exiles trained in Central America,” and that the economic cost for this was high. The document also reports the CIA’s help to another operation of this type “designed to infltrate a charismatic anti-Castro resistance leader” which also failed.5 It further describes that, from 1964 to 1966, these missions were directed at “Economic warfare operations, principally the introduction of subtly sabotaged goods into Cuban trade channels.”6 The infltrations from the sea continued until 1967, but were

CIA’s Covert Operations and Cuban Exiles 45 exclusively used for “intelligence gathering operations.”7 The CIA report also refers to actions of psychological and propaganda nature; in this context it highlights the radio broadcasts, from the island of Swan, directed at the Cuban population, which continued until May 1968. It also reveals the existence of a program of action designed at provide false information about the Government of Cuba that began in 1963 and that still was up and running.8 The assessment made in the report of the effects of these actions is interesting. It states that during the period from 1961 to 1967, more than 400 maritime infltration operations were carried out, of which a few were “sabotage missions,” and that the successes of these were outweighed by the negative reaction, because the damage done physically to Cuban factories did lead to a consolidation of the internal, as well as the international, support for Fidel Castro. At the same time the infuence of these actions in the strengthening of the internal resistance groups claimed by the exiles were, in fact, chimerical.9 The report explains: The occasional destruction of a sugar mill or damaging of a patrol craft was counterbalanced by an increase in international sympathy for the Cuban regime.10 For this reason, the report states, these operations were interrupted in December 1963 and the support for the “autonomous” Artime operation ended in June 1965.11 Regarding the maritime infltrations, for intelligence gathering (espionage) tasks, the report notes that they were very successful during 1965, but in 1966 they began to decline due to greater internal surveillance. They were interrupted in December 1967, through a decision of the 303 Committee, although an emergency maritime exfltration capacity was maintained. Regarding the economic sabotage program, it is stressed that it had a limited success and that it was suspended in late 1966.12 Regarding the internal situation in Cuba, the memorandum states: After a decade of existence there are no visible cracks in the Cuban power structure, and Cuban internal security is almost hermetic. Fidel Castro has destroyed the upper class; the middle class is apathetic, its will to resist vitiated by the emotional escape valve of the daily exodus of refugees; a large percentage of the lower classes, many of whom have benefted substantially from the Cuban revolution, support Castro and the lesser percentage who oppose him are not capable of an organized opposition. Some of the latter, in fact, might rally to his defense in the face of an external threat.13

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The CIA document recognizes the development achieved by the Cuban security, and it mediates its effectiveness to the cooperation and aid that the USSR had provided to the country, when it ensures: Soviet advisors have assisted the external security service to achieve an unexpected degree of sophistication. The internal security service is a monolith of effcient repression, literally operating on a blockby-block system of informants. Cuban and Soviet communications networks are good. Military hardware, supplied by the Soviets, includes radar, aircraft and swift patrol vessels. This equipment and its trained personnel in conjunction with solid support from the regime in key power groups—military, youth and peasants—makes Cuba an extremely formidable target for externally-directed paramilitary operations.14 The CIA memorandum also refers to the considerable intelligence data provided by the fow of refugees and agents, who have provided reliable information on Cuban international affairs for several years.15 Despite the deletions in the document, the existence of other intelligence actors is inferred, such as diplomats from embassies of allied countries based in Cuba, who “[…] has updated information on Cuban-Soviet relations, Cuban policy for the export of the revolution, and the support apparatus in Europe which handles the travel of Latin American subversives.”16 Added to this are the reports on Cuban activities in Latin America and Africa obtained through the penetration of national communist parties, communications intelligence, electronic intelligence and photographic reconnaissance fights. The report explains that the psychological operations carried out “[…] presently include a developmental radio project, a Latin American news feature service, singleton propaganda agents, and the continuing false information program referred to previously.”17 The report also commented on the feasibility of additional operations, when it indicates “[…] of reasonably covert and inexpensive harassment operations against coastal targets designed to cause wasteful military and militia alerts, possibly some confusion as to United States intentions and, especially, diversion of labor from sugar harvesting.”18 These types of actions include coastal raids, economic harassment, deceptive radar wave broadcasts, radio messages and spurring false rumors. It indicates that its viability is based on the fact of causing additional expenses to Cuba in moments of a constant deterioration of the economic situation, and that this would affect Castro’s doubtful promise of a harvest of a 1970 sugar crop of 10 million tons.19 The study also includes an assessment of the Cuban exiles and their usefulness. In this regard, the report points out the existence in the territory of the U.S. of about 400.000 exiles, and that a large number of their organizations are eager to fnd a pattern for anti-Castro operations

CIA’s Covert Operations and Cuban Exiles 47 ranging from propaganda broadcasting to armed invasion. However, it is stressed that they suffer from the same decline in operational effectiveness that typically affects exile movements over time. 20 It is further stressed that their utility is given in the coverage they provide for the “dirty” tasks of the CIA. The reactivation of the role of Cuban exile could be achieved, according to the memorandum, through: […] the clandestine funding of a single leader who obtains his own support and action apparent. Poor security is characteristic of Cuban exiles. The risk in their use, from the security standpoint, lies somewhere between extremely high and unacceptable. In addition, a serious political disadvantage is the dogmatic and adamant belief of large numbers of the Cuban populace that any exile success against the Cuban regime would automatically lead to a turning back of the revolutionary clock to a Batista-style dictatorship. 21 According to the report, the most responsible group was perhaps the Representación Cubana en el Exilio (RECE) [Cuban Representation in Exile], based in Miami. 22 Finally, the document deals with the international reaction to a paramilitary action program. By noting that: […] present evidence indicates that most Latin American nations would be reluctant to condone paramilitary actions, against Cuba. Many Latin American countries, since the failure of Che Guevara in Bolivia, consider the Cuban threat lessened. European nations refuse to be associated even with economic pressures against Cuba. It is quite possible that other nations would react unfavorably to an action program designed to inhibit the internal economic development of Cuba, particularly since the United States has publicly stated that its cardinal concerns are the Soviet military presence in Cuba and Cuba’s export of the revolution.23 This study was frst analyzed by the Department of State at the Bureau for Inter-American Affairs (ARA) and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), considering the memorandum acceptable. 24 Between April 29 and May 1, 1969, as scheduled, Committee 303 analyzed and discussed the CIA document. The President of the Committee, Henry Kissinger, declared when introducing this matter, the interest expressed by President Nixon “[…] in having a review made of past and present covert operations and the feasibility of future operations directed at the Cuban problem.”25 William V. Broe, chief of the CIA Western Hemisphere Division, and David Phillips, chief of the Cuba Section, were responsible for introducing the topic, both giving a detailed summary of its content and answering questions about the covert operations executed since the Bay

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The Nixon Administration’s Policy

of Pigs. From an evident triumphalist position, they denied the defeats suffered by the CIA in its “dirty war” against Cuba, stating, “All of these activities were generally successful in execution but in some cases negative reactions outweighed the successful operations.”26 They asserted the availability of a considerable amount of Cuban intelligence and counterintelligence data from a wide variety of human and technical sources. Regarding the psychological actions, they commented on the “successful” continuation of the “false information program,” although its intensity fuctuated somewhat due to the oscillations in Soviet–Cuban relations. 27 Further, they confrmed the existence of a propaganda capacity for new broadcasting options. The report sparked a broad debate about the types of covert actions that could be taken to increase Castro’s problems. The members of the committee were not unaware to the notable changes in the Cuban context compared to the frst few years of the 1960s. They commented on the Cuban defense and security services, which were described as being “formidable and maintaining strict controls”28 under the Soviet advice, and they estimated the number of Soviet advisors to 3.000 persons. The USSR, they estimated, had provided the Cubans with extensive means of land, sea and air military hardware, and with an excellent communication system. Similarly, they pointed out that “There is a lack of human motivation in Cuba to overthrow Castro.”29 All these elements led them to dismiss the large-scale secret paramilitary operations and express doubts about sabotage raids, since these raids could not cause suffcient damage to motivate their cost, effort and the resulting publicity. However, some of the CIA’s proposals on the execution of covert actions to cause problems for Cuba, especially its economy, were approved. For instance, it was decided that with a modest expansion of the CIA’s maritime capacity, a variety of coastal harassment operations could be undertaken to cause a waste of Cuban energy and manpower. Covert operations, they claimed, could also be devised in support of the U.S. covert economic warfare program.30 Henry Kissinger asked Richard Helms and the CIA to prepare a document on the feasible actions to be carried out in the “[…] in the area of covert economic warfare, small scale, tricky sabotage activities, etc. to be weighed against political considerations.” He would then present this document, the CIA report, as well as the outcome of the meeting and the discussions to President Nixon for consideration.31 That request by Kissinger and the 303 Committee was quickly met. Shortly thereafter, the CIA presented another document presenting a group of covert operations of viable economic sabotage toward Cuba that could be executed in third countries. The document begins with the explanation that the greatest disadvantage for the execution of these actions was the locales/countries where these operations would have to be conducted. This when Cuban trade in the so-called free world

CIA’s Covert Operations and Cuban Exiles 49 principally was carried out with the U.S. allies of Western Europe and Canada, whose governments and entrepreneurs—despite the pressures at the highest level by the U.S. government—continued to be Cuba’s largest trading partners. This was the case, for instance, concerning the United Kingdom, Canada, Italy, France and Spain, which had granted credit limits of signifcant sums in the medium term (of three to fve years). The document stresses that: Cuba has been prompt in servicing her European debts, and the United Kingdom and France continue to fnance and raise credit limits on desperately needed Cuban purchases of transportation, industrial and other capital equipment. The high imbalance of trade with Cuba assists the economy of these Western countries, and the credits extended to Cuba have given the Castro regime the fexibility to cope with a grave, domestic economic crisis while pursuing other external revolutionary activities. Soviet assistance to Cuba has been, and probably will continue to be, adequate to keep the Cuban economy afoat, but will not be suffcient to make the regime prosper or to bring about any appreciable easing of current hardships endured by the populace.32 The report points out, however, that the aforementioned European nations are U.S. allies in NATO33 and are bound to the U.S. by treaties or friendship ties, and for that reason “[…] the overall risk in conducting such a program in these countries is very high, if not unacceptable.”34 The undercover techniques of economic warfare examined by the CIA to determine their feasibility, projected effectiveness, and risk factors were as follows: A B C D E

Denial/sabotage of Cuban exports to the Free World Sabotage of Cuban imports from the Free World (fertilizer, transportation/industrial/capital equipment at point of manufacture) Utilization of incendiary devices against Cuban ships Blacklisting frms trading with Cuba Denial to Cuba of Free World sugar markets35

It was stressed in the document that technique A, by applying technique C, was not feasible due to its unacceptable risk and its questionable result due to “[…] past experience with the security of operations of this type; the very long lead time necessary to locate, recruit, train and deploy agents […].” Such consideration was also applicable to technique B. Regarding technique D, the document states that the possibility of its success depended on the “[…] full (overt) United States Government participation. Without it, the blacklisting would have only limited effectiveness.” While technique E, “[…] the denial to Cuba of Free World

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The Nixon Administration’s Policy

sugar markets,” was seen as the most practicable, albeit costly, operation, because “It would involve the formation of a Free World consortium of sugar brokers who would aggressively enter the Japanese market and substitute Free World sugar for Cuban sugar.”36 Despite the negative results of the evaluation of the CIA’s covert operations, these subversive activities continued, in support of the economic war, which explains the impunity of different Cuban terrorist organizations acting from the U.S. The new Republican administration, and its highest authority, President Richard Nixon, had also pledged to the main fgures of the Cuban counterrevolutionary in exile to increase the economic war toward Cuba. Therefore, the U.S. government promoted and encouraged a policy aimed at making the application of the economic, commercial and fnancial war more rigorous. The CIA—under the cover of terrorist groups in exile—undertook coastal harassment operations and led covert operations in support of the open economic war, increased the internal espionage activities and recruited new agents and collaborators in the form of diplomats from third countries accredited in Cuba. Simultaneously, actions of ideological diversion continued through the spread of rumors and covert radio broadcasts with false information and the stimulation of legal and illegal departure from Cuba of professionals and skilled labor. In the Latin American context, the U.S. opposed any attempt to break the Cuban diplomatic isolation achieved in 1964. The intensifcation of the U.S. covert war against Cuba was also determined by various factors, both internal and external to the U.S., that advised the Nixon administration not to go further with the subversive actions. The strengthening of the entire Cuban national security system and the defeat of the internal counterrevolution since 1965 constituted an important obstacle to the use of a more aggressive strategy. Another limiting factor of the most aggressive subversive U.S. plans toward Cuba was the immigration policy of the U.S. government toward Cuba. This since the U.S. attempts to economically weaken the country and strengthen the anti-Cuban propaganda campaigns, through a generous immigration policy for Cubans, weakened the internal Cuban potential of disaffected persons for these purposes.

Notes 1 On June 2, 1964, Task Force 5412 began to be called the 303 Committee of the U.S. National Security Council (NSC), and it was responsible for coordinating, planning and approving covert actions and intelligence operations. This group included senior offcials from the Defense, State and CIA departments, and other federal departments and agencies were also included. 2 “Memorandum Prepared for the 303 Committee, Washington, April 26, 1969”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States

CIA’s Covert Operations and Cuban Exiles 51

3 4 5 6

7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23

24 25

(FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 200. Ibid. Ibid. Although the document does not identify that anti-Castro leader, we believe that the document refers to the infltration of Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo on December 28, 1964 in Baracoa. He was captured on January 26, 1965. Ibid. “Memorandum Prepared for the 303 Committee, Washington, April 26, 1969”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 200. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Håkan Karlsson and Tomás Diez Acosta: The Johnson Administration’s Cuba Policy from “Dirty War” to Passive Containment (New York/London: Routledge, 2021), 177–178. Ibid. “Memorandum Prepared for the 303 Committee, Washington, April 26, 1969”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 200. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Cuban Representation in Exile (RECE) was founded in 1964, sponsored by Pepín Bosch, manager of the Bacardí company. Individuals such as Vicente Rubiera, former leader of the telephone sector in Cuba, were appointed to head the organization; Erneido Oliva, second military chief of the 2506 Brigade; Ernesto Freyre, a lawyer who was part of the team that negotiated the release of the Bay of Pigs invaders; and Jorge Mas Canosa, from the Christian Democratic Movement. See: Jesús Arboleya: La contrarrevolución cubana (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1997), 150. “Memorandum Prepared for the 303 Committee, Washington, April 26, 1969”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 200. This acceptance was communicated by the Assistant Secretary for InterAmerican Affairs, Charles A. Meyer, to the Under Secretary of State U. Alexis Johnson in a memo dated April 28. “Memorandum from the Deputy Director for Coordination, Bureau of Intelligence and Research (Trueheart) to the Assistant Secretary of State for InterAmerican Affairs (Meyer), Washington, May 5, 1969”. U.S. Department of

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26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34

35 36

State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 2018), Doc. 201. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. “Paper Prepared at the Central Intelligence Agency, Washington, undated”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 2018), Doc. 203. NATO, North Atlantic Treaty Organization. “Paper Prepared at the Central Intelligence Agency, Washington, undated”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 2018), Doc. 203. Ibid. Ibid.

References Arboleya, J. La contrarrevolución cubana (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1997). Karlsson, H. and Diez Acosta, T. The Johnson Administration’s Cuba Policy from “Dirty War” to Passive Containment (New York/London: Routledge, 2021). U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 2018).

4

The Anti-Cuban Policy of the U.S.

Not only were the CIA’s covert actions toward Cuba evaluated, since all the foreign policy on which it depended was subjected to analysis, after a decade of execution without achieving its main goal: to overthrow the Cuban Revolution. Since the end of the Johnson administration, the Department of State had considered the need for a detailed review of the Cuba policy. In a brief letter from the Chairman of the Political Planning Committee of the Department of State, Henry D. Owen, addressed to the then Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, on May 2, 1967, he commented: A review of our Cuba policy seems very much needed. Our present policy of economic denial and political isolation through OAS action has contributed to Castroʼs diffculties, but has not shaken his grip on power. It may indeed be running into considerable diffculty. In any event, after six years it is only prudent to ask whether this policy will be the best means of advancing our national interests under the conditions which may prevail in the future. A policy review might well conclude that, all things considered, no fundamental change is required. Various alternative strategies could, however, usefully be explored. For example, the manner and consequences of applying considerably increased pressure on the Castro regime, and the opportunities and risks involved in seeking some accommodation could both be studied. Without a thorough evaluation, however, we do not have the basis for recommending any of these courses of action on Cuba.1 He asked for support for the preparation of a national policy document on Cuba. The elaboration of this material lasted ten months, until July 1968, when its fnal version was completed. The document characterized this policy as “passive containment” and advocated transforming it into a positive one, by: […] a series of initiatives, parallel steps, concrete actions and understandings concerning limited things, all acted on their own merits at the time, the cumulative effect of which over time would be de facto changes. 2

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The Nixon Administration’s Policy

Although these changes were not made, it was an example of how within some institutions of the Department of State, generators of foreign policy strategies, there existed people who understood the need to change the political course followed toward Cuba in the face of its constant failures, but always with the marked purpose of overthrowing the Cuban Revolution. At the end, the national policy document on Cuba was never formally discussed or approved because it was decided that the new administration should consider it, although it was registered. Perhaps that material was studied by the recently appointed offcials in charge of the U.S. foreign policy and suggested to Henry Kissinger, who on March 21, 1969, requested the National Security Council to conduct a detailed study of that policy. As a result of this analysis, an extensive document was prepared entitled “Memorandum of National Security Studies 32—Cuba (NSSM 32),”3 approved on July 2, 1969, by the Interdepartmental Group for Inter-American Affairs of the Department of State. It is important to pause in the analysis of this extensive material, because in its content is expressed the meaning of the Cuban “problem” for the U.S., its situation and perspectives, as well as its alternatives. The ideas presented in that study were present when the Nixon administration shaped its Cuba policy. The document begins with an assessment of the signifcance of the threat that Cuba represents to U.S. national security, stating that it has been twofold: (1) as a base for Soviet military power and (2) as an exporter of revolutionary doctrine and violence in Latin America. It is stated that the U.S. effort in the face of “such threats” has been preventive and concentrated on limiting the damage, and that it constitutes essentially one of the functions of the U.S.–Soviet, and U.S.–Latin American relations. The basic problem—the memorandum indicates—is whether or not there exist feasible policies toward Cuba that could offer a greater promise of promoting a “constructive” change in Cuban attitudes and behavior, so as to eventually remove the basis for subversive threats to the interests of the U.S. and its security, as well as promoting the realization of subordinate and minor U.S. interests in improved relations with Cuba.4 The memorandum exposes 14 interests or objectives outlined by the priority they offer to get rid of threats, refecting the almost null existing relationships, and the continuous confrontation. They classify these interests as vital, major, important and limited. 1

The prevention of “the introduction of strategic weapons” is presented as a primary “vital interest.” Although the Soviet–U.S. understanding in connection with the Missile Crisis in October 1962 and the increases in Soviet nuclear weapon capacity concerning intercontinental ballistic missiles reduce that threat and make those strategic plans more unlikely. However, the document reaffrms, “[…] US surveillance guards Cuba’s strategic sanitation.”

The Anti-Cuban Policy of the U.S. 55

Figure 4.1 Memorandum of conversation. Subject: CUBA: Signals from Castro Indicating a Desire for Dialogue with U.S. RG 59, Central Files 1967–1969, Stack 150, Row 65, Box 2021. Source: National Archives and Records Administration, used with permission.

56 The Nixon Administration’s Policy The “major” interests include the objectives of (2) “Inhibiting the use of Cuba as a Soviet military base” and (3) “Limiting the impact of Cuban insurgent activity in Latin America.” The document estimates the possibility of the use by the Soviets of the existing naval facilities on the island and sarcastically points out that if the Guantánamo base were in the hands of the Cubans, the Soviet situation would be better. Regarding the “Cuban insurgency” in the region, it stresses Cuba’s geographical, air and maritime limitations, in its ability to sustain operations of this type on a “large scale.” However, the smaller operations are considered as worrying due to socioeconomic tensions and institutional weaknesses in Latin America, and it is stated that: […] Cuban-supported insurgencies have failed in half a dozen countries, and continuing Cuban efforts to foment insurgency in several others have not taken hold. 5 The following fve objectives—numbers 4–9—were rated as of “important” interest. The fourth, “Encouraging Cuba to abandon external subversion and militancy,” begins with an assessment of the level of priority that Cuba considers to “the export of the revolution” and lists it as a low Cuban interest since the death of Che Guevara in Bolivia. These actions are “more limited” and their propaganda is “substantially moderate.” However, it is stated that even if Castro is “more careful and pragmatic,” Cuba still “[…] provides guerrilla training and assists selected insurgent groups with funds, occasionally arms, and even cadres.” According to the authors of the material, this low-key Cuban approach is an adaption to the USSR and their domestic concerns.6 Despite the above statements, the document considers Cuba a long-term subversive threat due to Castro’s revolutionary commitment; his notion that insurgencies elsewhere help “divert and weaken U.S. ability to oppose Cuba”; and for his position in the communist world as “an international revolutionary spokesman.”7 “To loosening Cuban international Communist ties” constitutes the ffth objective. On the importance of these links for Cuba, it is stressed that the USSR and other communist countries provide almost 75% of the Cuban import, and the Soviets also fnance with subsidies and credits, almost 40% of this import. Regarding Cuban–Soviet relations, it is indicated that there exist fundamental differences, but that the relations have improved considerably due to Castro’s public support for the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.8 The document describes Cuba’s relations with the People’s Republic of China as “extremely limited.”9 The sixth objective, “Demonstrating that Cuban radicalism and extra-hemisphere alliance do not pay,” seeks to present Cuba as “a symbol of economic failure” in Latin America and, thereby, reduce its attractiveness as a model and achieve to a certain degree a situation where the hemisphere is turned against Cuba. The seventh objective is presented as “Establish a viable psychological relationship with the Cuban

The Anti-Cuban Policy of the U.S. 57 people,” with the aim to achieve a positive attitude toward the U.S. after a decade of confrontation, which facilitates the plans for psychological subversion.10 Another important objective was the eighth, “Retaining U.S. naval base rights at Guantánamo,” since the base: […] provides feet training, sea/air facilities for naval control and protection of shipping, support for and surveillance for ASW operations, and for defense of approaches to the Panama Canal. U.S. occupation precludes Soviet naval use, maintains a physical U.S. presence on the island, and confrms legally acquired rights.11 The last objective, the ninth, described as important, states “In maintain multilateral involvement of the Organization of American States (OAS)” in the policy toward Cuba, since it has been “ftted and expressed” according to U.S. interests in the OAS framework and must be considered in terms of regional commitments.12 The study presents as political objectives of “limited” interest the remaining four which are presented as follows: (10) “In maximizing […] the international Communist cost of supporting Cuba” to make them irrepressible. The document estimates that, in 1968, the USSR granted Cuba with credits of $1.8 billion, and the countries of Eastern Europe $200 million and Communist China $100 million. The aid to Cuba is said to amount to a total of $1.2 billion just for the sugar subsidy payments, while the Soviet military supply reached more than $700 million.13 Objective 11 is focused on “Inhabiting aerial hijacking to Cuba,” which was an increasing problem for the U.S.14 Objective 12 refers to “Repatriating U.S. citizens from Cuba,” since the statistics had registered, “[…] 838 American citizens in Cuba registered for repatriation plus 1.713 ‘freside alien’ family members.” It is indicated that “[…] Approximately twenty U.S. citizens are imprisoned—mostly charged with political crimes and many with long terms.”15 The last two objectives—13 and 14—are focused on “Settling expropriation claims of U.S. citizens against Cuba”16 and “Reducing the need and cost of special U.S. programs for Cuban refugees.”17 The second section of the memorandum deals with the “situation and prospects” of the anti-Cuban policy. The frst issue analyzed is the reality in Cuba, after ten years of unsuccessful attempts to overthrow the revolutionary government. It is stated that: Castro is in full control. During a decade in power, he has organized the Cuban revolution into a reasonably stable domestic institution and developed relatively constant strategic goals in foreign affairs. […] The military and security forces […] are well-trained,

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The Nixon Administration’s Policy well-equipped, and effective […] There is little chance of discontent being translated into organized political opposition. […] morale is eroded by decreased consumer consumption, reduced civilian bureaucracy, and predominantly military administration […].18

It is supposed that some of the Cuban reforms and the social discipline proclaimed by Fidel Castro have reduced his popularity and have produced some restiveness in some groups. It is believed in the report that these tendencies will probably be intensifed when “[…] it becomes increasingly apparent that highly publicized and extravagant national goals for 1970 cannot be realized.”19 This was a reference to the sugar harvest of 10 million tons proclaimed as a goal for the year of 1970. The document predicts a different Cuba after Castro, although it is asserted that “[…] much of what he has wrought has vitality, and much of his domestic organization and social values will likely persist.”20 Further, it points to Raúl Castro as a successor to Fidel Castro and describes him as a capable administrator with supporters in the army, even if he lacks the charisma of his elderly brother. It is stressed that “Under Raul and a military junta, prospects might improve more for the USSR than for the US.”21 Concerning the Cuban economic situation, it is described as depressed, since it is appreciated that the “[…] total output declined in 1968 and GNP lags behind population growth.” It highlights that these problems can be found in: […] Balance of payments diffculties, coupled with recurrent problems of drought, poor planning and management, shortages of agricultural labor and low labor productivity have permitted little economic growth in the 1960’s. Sugar production, a key determinant, was below average in 1968. 22 It is estimated that the sugarcane harvest of 1969 will be “an agony for the country,” since it will probably fall from 5 million tons to 4 million tons that is far less than expected, and since the profts from the sale of sugar, 85% of Cuba’s exports, have remained below the 1957–1958 average. Cuba’s strong dependence on imports, it is pointed out, intensifes the search for “communist and non-communist” credits. It characterizes Cuba’s economic performance as “ragged,” which encourages the Revolutionary government to impose “[…] compensatory demands upon the Cuban people for work regimentation and personal sacrifce.” The reaction of the Cuban population to this situation is “deviated” by the belief that “[…] Cuba is a beleaguered nation fghting against malevolent external forces - mostly American.”23 This belief of the Cuban people was based in hard facts, and it seems as if the authors of the document forgot about the bloody economic, commercial and fnancial blockade maintained by the U.S. against the Cuban people.

The Anti-Cuban Policy of the U.S. 59 Cuba’s economic prospects are described as “gray,” although the possibility of a growth in income from sugar exports to non-communist countries is pointed out, due to the increase in sugar prices after the restoration of export quotas, under the International Sugar Agreement of October 1968. It is also stressed that the USSR will prevent the Cuban economy from approaching a critical condition. It is predicted that: If Castro can get through the next harvest without too great economic damage, the Cuban economy, with luck during 1970–75, should reach a per capita annual growth rate approaching 3%, some increase in labor productivity, substantially greater sugar crops, and an improved balance of payments. This should translate into slightly improved Cuban living standards. 24 “Can Cuba under Castro be infuenced by the U.S.?” The authors of the document ask themselves, and their response was laconic: “To a really satisfactory settlement, probably not. Toward a more constructive relationship, perhaps.”25 The argument was broader, stating that “Elimination of American infuence in Cuba is one of Castro’s proclaimed prize achievements […] Castro still seeks to resolve the dilemma of dependence upon the USSR or the US and to establish a more independent international position.”26 It is said that Cuba could adopt more moderate tactics and behaviors to ease the U.S. pressure in Western Europe and receive respectability and economic ties. Infuential factors for this moderation, it is stated, could be “[…] domestic economic imperatives, U.S.-Soviet diplomatic trends and Vietnam peace talks.”27 The authors consider the Cuban leader unpredictable but capable of rational and pragmatic adjustment in the face of hard facts. The memorandum indicates the existence of some elements of this restraint, such as the position adopted by the Cuban government regarding the situation of dangerous illegal escapes of Cubans, across the border at the Guantánamo base: […] Castro has physically isolated the base but carefully avoided major provocations and not formally denounced the 1903 treaty; where he has not requested the return of “fence jumpers”, although the treaty provides that fugitives be returned to Cuban authorities upon request; and where he has privately solicited US cooperation in discouraging escapees. 28 According to the document, other signs are that Cuba has not interrupted the U-2 fights [espionage] since the Missile Crisis in 1962, even if the possibility has existed due to the fact that the Cubans have 24 operational Surface-to-Air-Missile (SAM) sites; the situation of the air hijackings to Cuba that the Cubans have not promoted, which entailed

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The Nixon Administration’s Policy

the U.S. to seek Castro’s cooperation; and a marked decrease in the exploitation of potential propaganda opportunities against the U.S. It was also stressed that “[…] Castro seemed to have hinted at lowering the temperature of the US-Cuban confrontation.”29 It also analyzes the perception of Europeans, Canadians and Japanese, who see Cuba as a U.S. problem “infated out of proportion.” A view reinforced by their temptations “to engage in proftable trade with Cuba.” The U.S. attempts to deter the Europeans from this trade are viewed with “growing irritation” from Europe. Concerning the Latin American countries that “have felt the effect of Castro’s subversive activities,” they seems more inclined to maintain the general agreement of “diplomatic and commercial isolation.” However, the opinion of many in the region prevails that “[…] Cuba remains an attractive symbol of social development and of defant independence from the US.” Mexico has diplomatic relations with Cuba, but it does not encourage other OAS members to establish this kind of relations. Meanwhile, Chile, Trinidad and Tobago and possibly Ecuador tend to favor a normalization with Cuba within the framework of the OAS. Within Latin American countries, the document points out, there are factions that support a normalization and others that advocate a strict isolation of Cuba. The document further states that there exists a great concern and fear that the U.S. will make a political change over Cuba in the OAS that leaves out Latin America and the general agreement.30 The authors of the document speculate about the relation between Cuba and the USSR, when they stress that “Castro is reluctant to submit to Soviet discipline,” but his ambitious goals, his limited capabilities and great needs “make some kind of external dependency unavoidable.” The resistance to the Russians “refects Castro’s unhappiness with the relatively conservative Soviet view.” Cuba tries to “maneuver for greater political and economic independence within its basic relationship with the USSR.”31 They further speculate—from the Soviet perspective—that “Cuba is […] a useful example of radical rejection of US domination of the Western Hemisphere,” for which they “are willing to expend substantial resources to ensure its survival.” They presume as doubtful that the USSR considers Cuba as a vital interest worth protecting at the risk of a nuclear confrontation with the U.S. On the Soviet discrepancies with Cuba, they state: The Soviets are opposed to premature Castro-type violent revolution in Latin America, disappointed with Cuban economic performance and irritated with Cuban criticism of Soviet policies and world posture, and with Castro’s stubborn adherence to anti-Soviet positions on Latin America and the Third World. Nonetheless, they apparently have not felt constrained to resort to sustained economic pressure.32

The Anti-Cuban Policy of the U.S. 61 The formulated interpretation is more interesting, from the bipolar perspective of the two great superpowers. In this regard, it indicates that the U.S. and the USSR agreed to “keep strategic weapons out of Cuba.” Both countries, “for different reasons,” are interested in “moderating Castro’s revolutionary activity in Latin America.” The USSR “would like to limit its outsize support costs,” and the U.S. “would like to see Cuba less dependent upon the USSR.” The USSR is also interested in that the U.S. and Latin America accept the socialist system in Cuba. These interests, “while tenuous,” suggest that the USSR would be in favor of “a partial US-Cuban accommodation.” On that particular, they affrm: Historically at least, periods of possible Castro receptivity to improved relations with the US have surfaced when his relations with Moscow were good (and his economy strained). The current warming of Soviet-Cuban relations, e.g., recent Castro praise of the USSR and Cuban participation as an observer in the world communist conference this June, could presage another such period (in the presence of economic strains).33 The document calls attention to the Soviet motivation for and capacity of “restraining” Castro should not be overestimated, since his “extremism” has not impeded the rapid growth of Soviet relations in Latin America. Based on this assessment, the authors of the document question the usefulness of considering Cuba as a “hostage” in the competition between the U.S. and the USSR “to offset US vulnerabilities is such exposed positions as Berlin.” It is stated that the “hostage” tactics and the possible prospects of using Cuba in this way are risky, and it does not “justify not loosening the Cuban-Soviet ties where possible.”34 The last issue analyzed in this section of the document was the usefulness of the counterrevolutionary Cubans in exile in the U.S., when asking “What about the Cuban exiles?” It calculates the arrival in the U.S., from the beginning of the Cuban Revolution until that year (i.e., the 1959–1969 period), of almost 500.000 Cubans—in addition to the thousands established in other nations, mainly in Spain, but also in Mexico and Venezuela. With the exception of the last country, it is stressed that there is no signifcant political activity among the Cubans compared to the situation existing in the U.S. Among the hundreds of Cuban exile groups scattered across the U.S., Latin America and Europe, “there is little or no coordination” and they are increasingly “inactive.” It is further claimed that the potential for an invasion by exile forces is “nearly nil,” that there are some organizations that “still aspire to armed forays or infltrations into Cuba,” but that these activities are greatly reduced in scale compared to a few years ago. In general, it is predicted that over time these exiles will become increasingly oriented toward the U.S. life and less toward a return to Cuba. It is estimated that there are few

62

The Nixon Administration’s Policy

prospects of the Cubans in exile to play “a signifcant leadership role on promoting and exploiting political change in Cuba.”35 The following section of the document evaluates the existing policy of the U.S. toward Cuba, and its effects and its perspectives. It presents a summary of that policy over a decade of confrontation, a period when—according to the document—its goals and fundamental premises have been redefned. Specifcally, in the frst three years, the U.S. actively sought the overthrow of Castro, and after the Bay of Pigs, it strived for the disappearance of the Castro regime and the reintegration of Cuba into the hemispheric community. However, in practice the policy has strived to hinder the success of the Cuban regime, rather than to overthrow it. It is stressed that there have been two conditions required for the normalization of the U.S. relations with Cuba: the cessation of Cuban interventions in the hemisphere and the termination of the military ties with the USSR.36 The document continues describing the elements that have shaped this policy and its results. After interrupting its diplomatic, commercial and economic ties with Cuba, the U.S. does not allow any import of Cuban merchandise or components; the export of U.S. products to Cuba are prohibited; U.S. ships or aircrafts cannot touch port or land on Cuba; “black” lists of third-country ships participating in Cuban trade have been constructed, preventing them from transporting their own cargoes or those fnanced by the U.S. government; these ships are denied fuel and U.S. stevedores do not handle their cargoes; U.S. oil companies do not transport fuels in the tankers that have participated in trade with Cuba.37 Other measures of the economic war highlighted in the document are related to the Cuban Assets Control Regulations (CACR) of the Department of Treasury, through which Cuban assets are “blocked”38; which prevents the use of the fnancial facilities of the U.S. to Cubans or nationals subject to Cuban jurisdiction; while U.S. citizens are prohibited from making any fnancial transaction with Cuba except under a closely controlled licensing. Under the Foreign Assistance Act, countries whose ships or aircrafts transport merchandise or provide strategic elements or economic assistance to Cuba are not eligible for economic and military aid. The U.S. restricts passport approval to travel between Cuba and the U.S. with the exception of humanitarian and professional institutions. Also, extraterritorially, the efforts have been directed to prevent any type of commercial transaction from U.S. subsidiaries in third countries from trading with Cuba and pressure other countries to “reduce trade, credit extensions and transportation ties with Cuba.”39 It is ensured that export and asset control regulations are administered fairly stringently, transshipment through third countries is not large, and the exceptions allowed in the CACR are limited and the number of evasions are few. It is stated that no European or “free world” country extends concessional

The Anti-Cuban Policy of the U.S. 63 aid or exports strategic goods to Cuba, although Great Britain and Cyprus are the greatest transgressors in transportation.40 Referring to the isolation policy in the hemisphere, the document mentions the achievements obtained by excluding the Cuban Government from the OAS in 1962 and the decision to ban diplomatic or consular, commercial or transportation relations in 1964. This policy has implied an elimination of practically all regional trade with Cuba, including Mexico that did not abide by the resolutions, since its commercial exchange is reasonably small; diplomatic and consular ties have been broken by all OAS countries, with the exception of Mexico, and Jamaica is not expected to break its consular ties with Cuba; only Mexico maintains commercial or transportation air and ship services with Cuba; Latin America—except for Chile, Mexico and Uruguay—imposes legal or administrative restrictions on trips to Cuba, but it has been diffcult to control clandestine or evasive traffc by third countries, and only irregularly the countries in Latin America have made restrictions on merchant ships that participate in Cuban trade. The document also refers to the 1967 OAS agreement, in which a call was made to nonmember states to restrict trade, credits, shipping and support to Cuba.41 The study did not overlook the effects of these economic measures, which in the frst years of their application caused severe damage to Cuba, such as eliminating the sugar quota and prohibiting the purchase of spare parts for machinery of U.S. origin. Simultaneously as the Cuban foreign trade was distorted into communist channels with severe economic costs in availability, reliability, price, etc. Cuba was forced to adopt a variety of expedients, at considerable costs, inconvenience and loss of effciency, to keep the U.S. machinery operational. While, at the same time, U.S. agricultural and transportation equipment began to be largely replaced by that of socialist countries or Western European ones, although about 40% of the machinery and the transportation continued to be of U.S. origin. The USSR replaced the U.S. as its most important trading partner, and Cuba has been able to sustain imports over exports, due to the signifcant help of the socialist countries. Likewise, the document indicates that foreign exchange earnings have been restricted by the low prices of sugar on the world market and by the limited success in increasing the production of other exportable products. In 1968, it is claimed, Cuba received non-communist short and medium-term loans for a total amount of more than $200 million, and mostly by banks and providers in the United Kingdom, France and Spain.42 In evaluating this policy of economic blockade, political isolation and strategic sanitization, since 1962, the authors of the document consider that this policy has kept Cuba free of strategic weapons and of Soviet military bases; obstructed the export of Castro’s subversion, without removing the threat; contributed to increasing the economic and moral diffculties of the Cubans, without weakening the power of Castro;

64 The Nixon Administration’s Policy burdened the USSR by increasing the Cuban dependence on support from the USSR; reduced Castro’s ideological appeal in the hemisphere, even if stimulating a certain sympathy for his David-Goliath image; and it has led to the OAS response to Castroism, with some reluctance and without Mexico.43 Despite this anti-Cuban policy, the document says, it has been able for the U.S. to retain the Guantánamo base, since U.S. repatriation has not been promoted. This while the strategy of pressure and force in international relations provides Cuba with an incentive toward a more constructive relationship, while the image of the hostility of the U.S. prevents such a Cuban movement.44 According to the document, the absence of Soviet strategic weapons and combat units in Cuba is more a refection of U.S.–Soviet relations, than that of U.S.–Cuba relations, at the same time as the failures of Cuban subversion in Latin America may be more attributable to the affected countries than to the anti-Cuban policy of the U.S. The document warns about the relative value and effects of the current policy, which varies “with perspective and over time,” and it asserts in this regard that the policy “[…] was more effective in its early stages, with subsequent declining benefts and rising costs that suggests probably diminishing returns within the next few years […].”45 In the last aspect of the study, four “packages” or options of political alternatives are proposed toward Cuba called force, isolation, carrot and stick and normalization. The frst option, force, was an approach that seeks regime’s elimination through “[…] a military intervention alone or in collaboration with ‘unleashed’ Cuban exile forces.”46 This package was viewed as unrealistic due to prevailing domestic conditions in the U.S., as well as internationally due to the eventual response from the USSR.47 The second option, isolation, consisted of “continue the present policy,” despite recognizing the “little room for further tightening.” In favor of this alternative, the document points out that maintaining it “would work to maintain conditions in Cuba which erode confdence in the regime and which may lead to a change in the regime, should economic conditions further deteriorate,” although it is considered to be a viable and effective course only for “two or three years.” For this reason, it is stated that this option should be kept open until the U.S. could see “the internal effects of failure to reach the 1970 sugar goal,” in the same way as it “would avoid the diffcult task of modifying […] the current policy” and avoid raising “opposition from parts of Congress and the public opposed to alternative courses.”48 The elements against a continuation of this course were much greater, as recognized in the document since it “[…] would confne the U.S. to a wasting course […] by conscious choice and incapable by itself of forcing or promoting constructive Cuban change.”49 In addition, it would bring with it the increase in “political costs” of continuing extraterritorial controls against the trade with Cuba in countries such as Canada

The Anti-Cuban Policy of the U.S. 65 and Western Europe, as well as when trying to control the travel of U.S. citizens in light of relevant decisions in the Supreme Court. It would also entail the “declining” of the measures of economic denial, at the same time as incurring an increase in “psychological costs” as a consequence of trends in the hemisphere against: […] hostility and toward tacit acceptance of, and coexistence with, the Castro regime; would maintain Castro regime fxation of U.S. hostility […] thereby giving substance to genuine fears and continuing to provide Castro a convenient scapegoat for failure and a useful foreign devil to spur popular support […] would continue Cuban dependence upon the U.S.S.R. in contradiction to the most important U.S. interest in loosening such ties.50 The third option, carrot and stick as designated in the study, was “moving toward constructive change.” This alternative was conceived as a combination of the current actions of denial and isolation with measures of “fexibility” in the application of “selected” restrictions and a disposition toward some relaxation in exchange for tangible advantages. It would seek to “manipulate in combination the Cuban perception” by showing the prospect of benefts in contrast to the realities of denial, understood as the economic blockade.51 Thus, the effort of the use of the carrot and stick option would have the purpose of: […] infuence Castro, the Cuban hierarchy, and the Cuban people to move, or generate pressure for movement, toward moderation concerning U.S. interests; we would publicly project U.S. attitudes eschewing hostility and would privately formulate U.S. requirements in terms facilitating compliance and avoiding unnecessary damage to Cuban prestige and dignity.52 Likewise, the study proposes two versions—one active and the other one passive—for the implementation of this policy. The frst, “Version A: Work for Breaks,” would be carried out directly or through other Latin American governments aimed at improving atmospherics with Cuba, indicating openings in a series of “modest movements” and “develop understandings” aimed, over time, at a de facto cumulative change that includes a series of parallel steps and reciprocal actions designed to gradually manipulate Castro or induce his associates to manipulate him.53 For illustrative purposes, the document give some examples of those actions (quid) from the U.S. and the expected responses from Castro/Cuba (quo): U.S. Quid Discourage escape through Guantanamo short of surrendering escapees.

66

The Nixon Administration’s Policy Castro’s Quo Publicly reveal that Cuba jails hijackers or puts them to hard work.” U.S. Quid Issue temporary visas more leniently to Cuban visitors or participants in non-governmental or cultural events in U.S. Castro’s Quo Ease departure of U.S. citizens and alien families desiring return to U.S. U.S. Quid Adopt a more constructive tone toward Cuba. Castro’s Quo Adopt a more constructive tone toward U.S. U.S. Quid Grant licenses for Commercial shipments of medicines, drugs and foodstuffs to Cuba upon request, ease “moral suasion” and “extraterritorial” efforts vis-à-vis third country trade with Cuba. Castro’s Quo Release substantial number of political prisoners, particularly women, aged and ill. U.S. Quid Encourage visits to Cuba of journalists, scholars or others with a serious purpose and encourage U.S. foundations or institutions to investigate Cuban feld. Castro’s Quo Permit nonoffcial U.S. scientifc and educational research projects and allow entry of U.S. experts. U.S. Quid Relax travel or ship bunker controls, or “general licensing” of food and medicine shipments. Castro’s Quo Evidence substantial reduction in Cuban subversive efforts abroad or training of guerrillas from abroad in Cuba. U.S. Quid Move toward elimination of export controls including punitive measures toward third countries in Cuba trade. Castro’s Quo Evidence cessation of support to insurgents in Latin America.54

The document states that this variant: […] would add a degree of fexibility to a current policy faced with erosion; would moderately widen U.S. contact with and information about Cuba; would enhance U.S. capability to test Castro’s susceptibility to constructive change, to promote specifc cooperation

The Anti-Cuban Policy of the U.S. 67 on such matters as hijacking, and to identify and exploit pressures within the Cuban power structure; would facilitate the recasting the U.S. conditions (i.e., cessation of subversion and of Soviet military ties) as de facto goals toward which the U.S. might “educate” Cuba, and given the attainment of which the U.S. could tolerate Cuban socialism and communist ties other than bases and strategic weapons; would help counteract the contention that U.S. infexibility is the root cause of Cuba’s actions and attitudes.55 However, there are also a number of considerations presented against this variant, since it: […] would be too subtle and complex to coordinate well, particularly in the OAS where there is mixed sentiment concerning change and some contusion and suspicion about U.S. policy; would constitute a change of course at a time when evidences of economic diffculty and signs of growing discontent in Cuba suggest that the bite of ISOLATION may be having effect;” would entail serious problems in verifcation, in many respects be irreversible in event of Cuban nonperformance, and in some respects take on a momentum of its own; would be construed as a green light by Latin American and other countries for relaxing their restraints, thereby taking pressure off Castro without Cuban concessions; would stir up politically articulate groups in the U.S. and in Latin America who oppose any modifcation of ISOLATION.56 The second option “Version B: Wait for the Breaks” is the passive version, in which the “standby proposals” would be prepared; it would review and respond to “[…] Cuban initiatives on their merits, letting Cuba set the pace”; and the U.S. would follow rather than lead Latin American sentiment on the rate and conditions of policy modifcation. Its pros and cons would be given in that it would dilute advantages and disadvantages attributed to “Version A”; it would be “conservative and low risk,” marginally “more sensitive than ISOLATION,” and it would allow a relatively easier retreat to ISOLATION or advance to Version A when experience indicated that it was necessary.57 The fourth package, normalization, aimed at the search for U.S.– Cuba negotiations to normalize relations. It is stated that this package would show the U.S.’s “[…] receptivity to negotiations without preconditions on a wide-ranging improvement in US-Cuban relations.” The OAS would be consulted on the eventual dismantling of the denial and isolation measures, as well as of the reestablishment of bilateral diplomatic and commercial relations between the U.S. and Cuba, and there would be no objection from the side of the U.S. to the movement in this direction by the OAS countries and others.58 To this alternative, according

68 The Nixon Administration’s Policy to the document, all the pros and cons of the third package apply, in addition to the following pros: […] would as a public and dramatic affrmation to U.S. reasonableness pressure Castro to respond in kind or carry the onus within and outside Cuba tor anti-American intransigence; would offer the prospect of relieving the U.S. of the political and economic costs of ISOLATION without incurring new costs beyond those associated with minimal normal relations; would reduce U.S. utility as scapegoat for Castro’s economic mismanagement and raise questions within Cuba concerning need for heavy dependence upon the U.S.S.R. and for outsize military establishment.59 And the following cons: […] would subject our bilateral and multilateral relations in Latin America to substantial strains of substance and coordination in an already diffcult period; would possibly strengthen Castro’s aggressive stance by relieving pressure and giving him a boost at no cost to his policy aims; would dishearten opponents and encourage proponents of Castro’s radicalism in Cuba and abroad, thereby raising his domestic political stock and international stature; would entail a formidable domestic political and international U.S. effort to explain and win support for so substantial a reversal in U.S. policy in the absence of compelling and self-evident circumstances. Although the study is not in favor of any of the alternatives, the need for changes to the worn-out course of the policy of isolation is obvious in its content. This material was not discussed in the National Security Council until September 23, 1969, which demonstrates the diminution of the priority of Cuba within the national security agenda of the U.S.

Notes 1 “Action Memorandum from the Chairman of the Policy Planning Council (Owen) to Secretary of State (Rusk), Washington, May 2, 1967”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1964–1968, Vol. XXXII, Dominican Republic; Cuba; Haiti; Guyana (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 314. 2 “National Policy Paper (NNP) on Cuba. Washington, July 15, 1968”. Ibid., Doc. 322. 3 “Study Prepared in Response to National Security Study Memorandum 32, Washington, July 2, 1969”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 205. 4 Ibid.

The Anti-Cuban Policy of the U.S. 69 5 6 7 8 9

10 11

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. See: Fidel Castro: Comparecencia ante la radio y televisión cubana el 23 de agosto de 1968, Documentos de Política Internacional de la Revolución Cubana Nº 5 (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1972), 221–262. “Study Prepared in Response to National Security Study Memorandum 32, Washington, July 2, 1969”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 205. Ibid. A note below this interest indicates that “OSD/ISA and the Joint Staff consider Guantanamo a ‘major interest’ within the context of denying its use by hostile forces, and its strategic importance to support U.S. operations and facilitate control of Mid-Atlantic and Caribbean approaches to the Panama Canal.” Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. The document indicates that a total sum of “$300 billions” had been submitted to the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission, although of these they are estimated at “$1.3 billions as valid.” Ibid. The memorandum points out that “The Cuban refugee program has spent more than $300 millions since 1961 to help 317.000 refugees.” Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. It refers to the Resolution concerning the isolation of Cuba from 1964, approved during the IX Conference of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of American States (OAS). Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. These assets, according to the document, amounted to about $140 million. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

70 The Nixon Administration’s Policy 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

References Castro, F. Comparecencia ante la radio y televisión cubana el 23 de agosto de 1968, Documentos de Política Internacional de la Revolución Cubana Nº 5 (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1972). U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1964– 1968, Vol. XXXII, Dominican Republic; Cuba; Haiti; Guyana (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018). U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018).

5

Debate in the U.S. National Security Council

Days before the discussion of the policy toward Cuba in the U.S. National Security Council (NSC), two important events took place that to a certain extent could have infuenced the discussions in the Council. The frst was the presentation by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director of a new intelligence estimate concerning Cuba, which updated the estimate of the previous year, and the second was the approval by the Cuban government of a law against the hijacking of aircrafts and sea vessels. On September 2, 1969, the CIA Director Richard Helms signed the “National Intelligence Estimate (NIE 85-69).”1 This document was prepared by the CIA, with the direct participation of the intelligence agencies of the U.S. Departments of State, Defense and the National Security Agency (NSA). Before being approved, it was submitted to the members of the U.S. Intelligence Board (USIB), with the exception of the representatives of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) who abstained because it was outside their feld of jurisdiction. It is an extensive estimate, and it is interesting to study its general conclusions which express its appreciations, some of them erroneous, on the immediate future of Cuba. Not at least, since its importance is given due to the fact that it served as a guide for the U.S. policy makers. In this regard, the intelligence estimate stresses that: A. The Castro regime is clearly in control of Cuba. Fidel Castro retains much of his charismatic appeal, and the military and security forces remain loyal to him. Even though there is evidence that popular dissatisfaction is on the rise, we know of no serious organized resistance to the regime. B. Cuba’s major economic goal over the past few years has been to increase sugar production to 10 million tons annually, beginning with the 1970 harvest. Radical preparations have been undertaken to accomplish this purpose, but we doubt that more than 7–8 million tons can be produced. C. Castro would probably regard a production of less than seven million tons as a failure, but we are uncertain of what his response would be. Faced with a discouraged populace and bureaucracy, he

72

The Nixon Administration’s Policy might decide the time had come to shift toward more moderate goals and methods and to increase the use of material incentives. Or he might respond by dealing out punishment and resorting to greater authoritarianism. This latter course would further depress living conditions, which are already quite drab and cheerless. D. A comparative success—eight million tons or better—would improve morale but might not help the consumer very much. A large crop would tend to depress world sugar prices, and Castro might not wish to use scarce foreign exchange for consumer goods; in any case the fnancial benefts of increased production are already heavily mortgaged to Cuba’s creditors. The largest of these is the USSR, and much depends on how helpful the Soviets choose to be. E. Cuban-Soviet relations have improved since Castro supported Soviet action against the Czechs a year ago. There will probably be continuing tensions in their relationship, however. Castro would like continued Soviet economic help but not Soviet tutelage; the Soviets would like ideological and political conformity, but would also like to reduce Cuban economic dependence on them. F. Castro appears to be reassessing his role in the hemisphere and his relations with the US. He has at least temporarily de-emphasized the export of revolution, and he may be seeking to re-establish formal ties with some other Latin American states. While there have been some indications of an interest in reduced US-Cuban tensions, Castro will be very cautious about making gestures of substance. If there is improvement in US-Cuban relations, it will probably come on peripheral issues and at a very slow pace. 2

A week before the meeting of the U.S. NSC in Washington—on September 16, 1969—the Cuban Revolutionary government approved Law 1226, concerning the diversion and hijacking of airplanes and ships.3 It cannot be said that this Cuban legal initiative infuenced the members of the U.S. NSC, but it was taken into account when analyzing the U.S. Cuban policy regarding the serious problem of hijackings that threatened the U.S. national security. On September 23, in the afternoon—in the situation room of the White House—the U.S. NSC met to discuss NSSM 32 about the U.S. policy toward Cuba. The meeting was chaired by Henry A. Kissinger, with the participation of senior offcials from the Departments of State and Defense, the Joint of Chiefs of Staff (JCS), the Offce of Emergency Preparedness (OEP), the CIA and the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) agencies, as well as NSC staff.4 At the opening of the meeting, Kissinger explained that the document to be discussed had been prepared in response to a request by President Nixon to evaluate the options available concerning Cuba. Kissinger considered the study presented as an interesting and preliminary analysis,

Debate in the U.S. NSC 73 since it “[…] correctly identifed the problem that Cuba represents for the U.S. as a military base for Soviet military power and as an exporter of revolutionary doctrine in Latin America.”5 Kissinger noted the existence of some differences of opinion of the JCS with the classifcation, vital, major and important, that the document made concerning the objectives of interests, and he further commented that the study leaved the impression that the benefts of the current policy was declining due to “rising costs” and asked if the point had been reached where a change in the U.S. policy was required or if this was just a general observation. Cargo replied that it was the second and commented that “[…] the net calculus is still in the favor of the U.S. and is likely to remain so for three to fve years, depending on Cuba’s export posture,” and he referred to a comment in the memorandum in which it was predicted, in the fve-year period of 1970–1975, an increase in Cuba’s income as a result of sugar exports to the capitalist countries and an annual growth of the Cuban economy of 3%—something that would lead to a slight increase in labor productivity, since good sugar harvests and a better balance of payments could transform itself into a slight improvement in the living standards of the Cubans. Kissinger asked if everyone agreed with that observation and that there was no immediate pressure to change the policy “[…] unless we can come up with a better one.” All agreed with Mr. Cargo’s comment.6 Next, the National Security Adviser addressed the four basic options, namely, force, isolation, carrot and stick—in their active and passive versions—and normalization, and asked if this was a correct statement of the U.S. alternatives and if anyone had anything to add. The USIA Director Frank Shakespeare commented that they seemed reasonable to him. Cargo considered that the description of isolation as “continuing the current policy” was not completely accurate, rather it seemed to him to “be a combination of ‘isolation’ and ‘carrot and stick,’ in its passive version.”7 An interesting debate occurred when Kissinger inquired about the rejection and challenge of some of the alternatives8 such as Cuba “as a hostage.” He asked, “Why the hostage approach had been rejected?” “If the Soviets blocked Berlin, would it be beyond the realm of possibility that we blockade Cuba?” Shakespeare considered that the situations were not comparable and pointed out, “If you have a hostage, you presumably have something valuable to the other side. Do we have any indication as to whether or not the USSR would like this give up this hostage?”9 Kissinger asked, “[…] if the hostage theory meant that we have a positive stake in keeping the Soviets in Cuba so that we might use Cuba as a hostage.” Cargo said that he understood that these four courses had been considered, but it had been concluded that they should be rejected, and he added that if the hostage alternative gave the U.S. leverage over the USSR and if it were appropriate, he thought that the U.S. should use it, but it should not be sought after.10 To which Kissinger inquired if the hostage theory meant that we have a positive stake, keeping the Soviets in Cuba so that we might use

74 The Nixon Administration’s Policy Cuba as a hostage. Hurwitch replied that the document did not focus on that point.11 The National Security Assistant, unconvinced with these responses, asked again if “[…] we have an interest in maintaining a Communist regime in Cuba so that we can use Cuba in a squeeze play vis-a-vis the USSR.” The responses were hesitant. Viron P. Vaky thought that this aspect “had not been considered.” Shakespeare argued whether the existing situation should be maintained in order to achieve something else and asked, “[…] when you want to play your hostage, what do you play?”12 General Unger cited the military blockade as a possibility. Kissinger noted the need to examine these possibilities, as there may be other actions. Shakespeare asked if it was known what was the value of the economic support that the USSR gave to Cuba. “Some,” said G. Warren Nutter. This was missing in the document, commented Kissinger. “Some supplemental analysis will be necessary,” said General Unger.13 The study lacked some general valuations such as considering Cuba as an element in the U.S.–Soviet relations, noted Cargo. The presidential adviser noted in connection to this the rejection of negotiations with the USSR. This could be analyzed by the Kremlinologists,14 suggested Shakespeare, and he thought that they should address the question “[…] of what use is Cuba as a symbol?” Kissinger agreed and also suggested presenting this question to interdepartmental groups for Latin America and Europe. He also referred to the usefulness of an analysis of Cuba’s hostage value in the context of the ongoing updating of the contingency planning for Berlin. Hurwitch recalled that fve years earlier he had participated in the Berlin contingency that some thoughts had been given to Cuba at that time of planning and had issued a judgment on Cuba, and he added that he would review that planning. To which Kissinger commented, “[…] if Cuba is an important base the Soviets may have considerable interest in maintaining it.” Vaky suggested the convenience of valuing the role of Cuba “in Soviet eyes in regard to the Communist world.”15 Then Kissinger asked, “[…] why the possibility of negotiating with the USSR concerning the limitation on Cuban conduct had been rejected? If there were negotiations looking toward a global settlement […]?”16 Hurwitch added that this should be considered in a framework of bilateral discussion. Kissinger asked to add a page concerning that point and drew the attention of those present to the issue of paramilitary pressure. An issue that, in his opinion, was not examined with the required depth in the actual document. He emphasized that “[…] the President has specifcally asked that this be looked at and that we owe him a paper on it.”17 He meant that such a paper could be considered in the Review Group and that it did not need to go to the NSC for a while. He recommended the inclusion in the material to be prepared of the pros and cons of paramilitary operations, including a discussion of their technical diffculties. In relation to this matter, Nutter suggested renaming the alternative “Force” with the term “Coercion,” which would give the possibility of including paramilitary pressure under that approach.

Debate in the U.S. NSC 75 However, Kissinger wanted a more profound study of that issue and repeated that “[…] we owe the President inclusion of this approach with our best judgment as to its feasibility.” He noted that it might require an effort of a magnitude approaching overt military action.18 Such was Nixon’s commitment to the Cuban exile groups. Paramilitary activity could be seen “[…] as an effort either to exert pressure or to bring down the Castro regime,” Vaky said. Kissinger criticized the 303 Committee’s limited response to the question of covert action. “He thought it would be useful to go through the exercise and that omission of para-military activity from a survey of our options with regard to Cuba would be noticed.”19 Cargo recalled Nutter’s comment to include covert paramilitary activity under the “Force” or “Coercion” approach. That study could be done separately or as a subtopic under “Force,” Kissinger replied. That assessment should be less strategic and more tactical, Smith suggested. 20 The presidential adviser moved the discussion toward the four options considered in the document and asked what was meant by “constructive change” in option 3 (carrot and stick). In this regard, Nutter commented that they had suggested “accommodation” as a substitute. Kissinger expressed that he had no preference concerning words, but he needed a clear judgment about what was meant. Vaky explained that they meant to express a change in Cuban behavior, for example, to stop the export of guerrillas. Kissinger asked if “[…] a Communist Cuba can not be a force in Latin America?”21 Vaky and Smith replied that it was not a force now. “An unsuccessful Communist Cuba was not a force,” Shakespeare explained. Kissinger insisted on the importance of an analysis of all the different types of possible outcomes in Cuba and the impact of each of them for U.S. interests. Vaky added the need to better defne the concept of “constructive change,”22 and then commented that “Cuba can’t be successful until it sells its sugar.” If Cuba were to succeed economically as a communist state, Latin America would be lost to us, added Shakespeare. Smith added that “[…] this would have had an impact but that it would not have been cataclysmic.”23 An analysis of the value that Cuba would represent as a “successful” economic example would be interesting, added Shakespeare. Cuba independent of the Soviets, said Cargo, could not be successful without our help and considered that it is better to have a poor Communist example with Soviet support and approval than not. 24 This was followed by a discussion about the possibility for the president to choose one of the four options outlined in the document. Kissinger wanted to hear the opinion of the meeting participants on this and asked: […] For example, if he should choose package 3, [Carrot and Stick] the A version [Active], would we then move to the list of illustrative quids

76 The Nixon Administration’s Policy and quos […]? If he chose package 4, [Normalization] would we then choose elements of package 3A if we got into a negotiating phase?25 Once you start down the line of quid and quo, a momentum can be generated, said Hurwitch, which is diffcult to reverse and that can create diffculties with other countries in the hemisphere. 26 Concerning the option of “Normalization,” Hurwitch remarked, more will be lost in the hemisphere than it would gain the U.S. with respect to Cuba, and that the option “Force” would involve greater risks to U.S. national security than those that Castro represents, for those reasons. Therefore, he opted to remove options 1 and 4. 27 Kissinger pointed out the existence of a good scenario for option 3 and asked how to move from 2 to 3 and what Castro should be expected to pay. He quoted a paragraph from the document referring to the search for manipulation of the perception of Cuba in combination with the perspective of the benefts and realities of the denial [political and economic isolation], 28 and asked how the U.S. would change that perception. 29 In this regard, Hurwitch pointed out that the current policy of the U.S. toward Cuba was more in line with the “passive version” of option 3B than with the “Isolation” of option 2, since he considered that the U.S. was “[…] engaged in a policy of isolation but passively alert to any breaks in the situation that may arise.”30 Kissinger’s reply to this comment was immediate. The president, he said, was committed to option 2 and, in fact, leaned toward option 1, and was not ready to move to option 3B. “[…] he situation should be made clearer to him.”31 The search for a solution to the problem of the hijacking was, as Cargo emphasized, “[…] the type of break envisaged,” The National Security adviser stressed that the ruptures had to be defned more clearly if the president should be convinced of the value of option 3B. He explained the possibility of achieving this, “[…] while maintaining the present optional structure of the paper and give the President a chance to study the options and their operational consequences.” He added that personally he did not see anything wrong with option 3B.32 Any move toward package 3 should be moderate, Cargo added. The problem of the hijackings could be used, stressed Vaky. Hurwitch explained that the Department of State was preparing a response to Castro on that problem in accordance with the U.S. policy. Kissinger recalled that the Cuban proposal through the ambassador of Switzerland was stopped by the president, and he reaffrmed Nixon’s intransigent position regarding the Cuba policy, when he asserted “[…] package 2 would be the mildest the President would choose at present.” He added that the purpose of the exercise was to give the president a spectrum of choices, and that he (Mr. Kissinger) was eager to use the paper to get the matter cleared up in terms of its operational signifcance. He also thought the paper should expand on how to make the transition from 2 to 3.33

Debate in the U.S. NSC 77 Despite the results of the study presented and the discussion carried out in the NSC, President Nixon maintained his commitment to the sectors of the right and the Cuban counterrevolution in the U.S. to increase the aggressions and the hostilities toward Cuba, a position contrary to his proclaimed international negotiating position. This attitude manifested itself a few days later, on September 25, in a memorandum to Kissinger from Special Assistant Kenneth Cole. Cole informed Kissinger that President Nixon, when reading a summary of news from September 24, learned of a note on Cuba, which quoted a statement by an offcial of the Cuban government on the new situation in Latin America that could create conditions for an improvement in relations between Cuba and the U.S. Outraged at such a possibility, the president ordered Kissinger to tell the Department of State, “absolutely not.”34 However, the existing conditions, both internationally and in the U.S. and Cuba, prevented the increase in the anti-Cuban subversive action to the level that it had a decade before. Nixon, aware of these limitations, reluctantly maintained, in a general sense, the policy of isolation, economic and psychological warfare of the Johnson administration. This equally aggressive position led to moments of tension and crisis in relations between the two countries.

Notes 1 “National Intelligence Estimate, NIE 85–69, Washington, September 2, 1969”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 207. 2 Ibid. 3 Política Internacional, No. 26/1969, 265–267. 4 The meeting was attended by: William I. Cargo, Robert Hurwitch and Donald McHenry for the State Department, Assistant Secretary for National Security Affairs G. Warren Nutter for Defense, Lt. Gen. F.T. Unger for the JCS, Assistant Director Haakon Lindjord for the OEP, R. Jack Smith for the CIA, Director Frank Shakespeare for the USIA and Viron P. Vaky and Jeanne W. Davis for NSC. 5 “Minutes of an NSC Review Group Meeting, Washington, September 23, 1969, 2:10–3:15 p.m.” U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 209. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. This policy was described at the end of the Lyndon Johnson administration as “passive containment.” See: Håkan Karlsson and Tomás Diez Acosta: The Johnson Administration’s Cuba Policy from “Dirty War” to Passive Containment (New York/London: Routledge, 2021), 220. 8 Among the rejected alternatives were negotiations with the USSR, paramilitary activities, unilateral normalization and holding Cuba as a hostage. 9 “Minutes of an NSC Review Group Meeting, Washington, September 23, 1969, 2:10–3:15 p.m.” U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American

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10 11 12 13 14 15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

The Nixon Administration’s Policy Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 209. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. U.S. specialists dedicated to the analysis of the highest spheres of Soviet policy generated in the Kremlin were called Kremlinologists. “Minutes of an NSC Review Group Meeting, Washington, September 23, 1969, 2:10–3:15 p.m.” U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 209. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. “Memorandum from the President’s Special Assistant (Cole) to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger), Washington, September 25, 1969”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969– 1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 210.

References Karlsson, H. and Diez Acosta, T. The Johnson Administration’s Cuba Policy from “Dirty War” to Passive Containment (New York/London: Routledge, 2021). Política Internacional, No. 26/1969. U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018).

Part III

The CIA and the Secret Economic War against Cuba, and a New “Missile Crisis” (1969–1970) Richard M. Nixon’s electoral victory was celebrated by the Cuban counterrevolution based in the U.S. He was an old friend, since from his position as vice president of the U.S.; under Dwight D. Eisenhower during the years of 1953–1961, he established strong links with the Cuban oligarchy displaced from political power in 1959. Nixon was one of the frst promoters of aggressive politics and subversive actions to overthrow the Revolution, but the conditions in 1969 were not the same as in the previous decade. In Cuba, the armed subversion promoted by Washington, which characterized the frst fve years of the Revolution, had been defeated. All attempts to create a united internal opposition front had failed. The internal counterrevolution was dismantled, and the foci of liquidated rebels, and most of the elements of the opposition that served as its social base, opted for emigration. In 1969 Cuba existed in an almost absolute climate of peace,1 since the counterrevolutionary movement was concentrated outside of Cuba, mainly in the U.S. By the end of the 1960s, the discredit of this movement was ostensible and its infuence had declined markedly. The so-called Cuban exile could never overcome its political division in a great number of fractions and the attempts to unify it were unsuccessful.2 However, the establishment of the new republican administration flled these exile groups and their leaders with the prospects to reverse the prevailing reality in Cuba. However, the internal and external context of the U.S. made it impossible to achieve a direct armed intervention of Cuba, as the enemies of the Revolution dreamed about. The covert actions of the U.S. government were mainly aimed at hindering Cuban economic development, for instance, preventing the Cuban goal of the production of 10 million tons of sugar in the 1970 sugar harvest. This promoted new covert plans and actions with the direct participation of Cuban exiles during 1969–1971, whose purpose was to force the Cuban authorities to divert resources toward defense activities and in this manner hamper the plans of an economic development of the Cuban society.3

6

The Cuban Exiles in the CIA Plans

In compliance with the suggestions made by the 303 Committee, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) undertook the execution of actions of coastal harassment, infltration of dissident elements, support for exile incursions and economic sabotage. Thus, these covert operations were conceived and carried out in support of the open economic war. The activities of the counterrevolutionary organizations served as a cover for CIA’s subversive plans. The infltration of terrorist groups, harassment and pirate attack on the Cuban coasts and the assault and hijacking of Cuban fshing vessels were the main modalities of the actions of these organizations, although not with the same intensity as during the initial years of the 1960s. The frst infltration that was carried out took place on May 3, 1969, when a group of eight CIA agents led by Amancio Mosquera Fernández―alias Yarey4―landed on Mocambo Beach, in San Antonio del Sur, Baracoa, in the former province of Oriente. Its purpose was to establish contacts with elements critical to the Revolution for carrying out actions of economic sabotage and damage the preparatory activities for the 1970 sugar harvest. This group was captured 48 hours after they arrived on Cuban soil, and three of the infltrators died in combat. Troops from the Brigada de la Frontera [Border Brigade], the Tropas Guardafronteras [Border Guard Troops] and State Security personnel participated in the operation. In the course of the actions, the revolutionary fghters Luis Campos, José Pérez Cutido and Maximiliano Domínguez fell and fve others were wounded. A month earlier, on April 13, the counterrevolutionary Alejandro Bay Martínez was detained when a fragmentation grenade accidentally exploded in his home, killing three children and injuring another. The terrorist was following instructions from the CIA.5 With the purpose of creating a network of spies and saboteurs in the eastern region of the country, the infltration of two CIA agents took place on October 12, 1969, in Bahía de Taco, Baracoa. These agents were to be exfltrated, through the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo, after they had carried out their mission. One of them, José Quesada Fernández, was captured by the revolutionary forces and declared to the Cuban

The Cuban Exiles in the CIA Plans 81 authorities that he left from a base in Miami, and that the CIA had instructed the group to present themselves to be members of the Alpha 666 organization, with the aim of covering up their direct involvement with the CIA. In 1969 and 1970, it was a prioritized CIA mission to hinder Cuba’s economic efforts to produce 10 million tons of sugar. In their book The Fish Is Red Warren Hinckle and William Turner state that: […] During 1969 and 1970 the CIA deployed futuristic weather modifcation technology to ravage Cuba’s sugar crop and undermine the economy. Planes from the China Lake Naval Weapons Centre in the California desert, where hi tech was developed, overfew the island, seeding rain clouds with crystals that precipitated torrential rains over nonagricultural areas and left the cane felds arid.7 The CIA also carried out a whole series of other subversive actions in order to draw human resources from sugar harvest. However, one of the sectors with the greatest experience and organization to participate in the extraordinary task of producing 10 million tons of sugar was the Revolutionary Armed Forces. On November 5, Fidel Castro reported that, since that month, 54.612 Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) troops had joined the frst harvest period, and in January it would increase to 67.632 troops, and in the decisive stage to 75.240.8 According to CIA’s calculations the creation of a situation of threat to Cuban national security was a factor that would hinder the sugar harvest. In pursuit of this objective, the CIA prepared and organized a psychological warfare and a siege operation against Cuba. One of the instruments used to carry out this policy was the counterrevolutionary exile in the U.S. However, for this it was necessary to achieve a unifcation of the dozens of groups that existed within the U.S. and create a new entity that could win the sympathy of the majority of the exile Cubans residing in the U.S. Generally, these were tired of the false promises of the corrupt groups and their leaders, since they forced people to contribute to the “national cause,” while they thrived on the money collected. It was then that the fgure of José Elías de la Torriente appeared in the Miami public arena in mid-1969. José Elías de la Torriente, nephew of Cosme de la Torriente, settled in the U.S. In 1931 he studied at the University of Tennessee and graduated as a public accountant, and in 1938 he acquired U.S. citizenship. In 1940 he returned to Cuba, where he worked as an advisor to the director of the Offce of Regulation of Prices and Supply (ORPA); later he worked as an accountant for North American companies such as the Canadian Dry soft drinks, and in addition to this he owned homes and farms and acted as a horse breeder. In the mid-1960s, he left Cuba and settled in the city of Chicago, where he worked as an accountant for Coca-Cola.

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His relations with the CIA date back to the beginning of the Revolution when he provided information on the internal situation in Cuba. He was not directly linked to the activities of the counterrevolution and was characterized by his apolitical position. In 1969, when he turned 65, he retired from his professional activity as an accountant.9 In any other circumstance, this individual, who became the most important fgure among the counterrevolutionary exiles in the U.S., would not have gone from being another charlatan, even more so with his mediocre personal political history, if he had not had the covert support of the CIA and from the highest political spheres in Washington. In the fnal months of 1969, the Torriente Plan was revealed, with a huge propaganda in the media. According to the statements of the main promoter of the Torriente Plan, José Elías de la Torriente, it consisted in an effort to unify the Cuban exile organizations to prepare a military action aimed at overthrowing the Cuban regime. On December 5, in a public act at the headquarters of the 2506 Brigade, most of the leaders of the counterrevolutionary groups based in the U.S.―with the exception of Alpha 66 and some other groups―signed a Unity Pact in support of the Torriente Plan.10 All counterrevolutionary exile organizations were represented in that assembly, with the exceptions noted above. The leaders of the association of the mercenaries of the Bay of Pigs, groups that served in the army and other U.S. agencies, were also present, as well as politicians from the past Cuba and the governments of Ramón Grau San Martín, Carlos Prío Socarrás and Fulgencio Batista. Thus, the meeting of these factions brought together the traitors of the Revolution, the so-called repentants, as they were called by the majority of the editors of the press and the radio stations. How was it possible that a fgure like Torriente, “without personality or political history, unknown both in Cuba and in the Cuban exile community,”11 could lead an integration movement that managed to join the majority of exile groups? Undoubtedly, this was achieved due to the strong support given to him by the U.S. state and the federal authorities, particularly the CIA, who had enrolled him on his agent payroll already before 1959.12 Regarding the purposes of the CIA for employing Torriente in 1969, Carlos Rivero Collado states that: The CIA’s objectives in using Torriente […] as a unifying element for the Cuban exiles were well defned. It was based on the assumption that the economy of Cuba in those years, 1967–1969,―and especially in 1970, when the goal of 10 million tons of sugar could not be reached―was going through a period of crisis. The U.S. were convinced that the aggravation of the economic situation in Cuba would be the epilogue to the Revolution. They calculated that the Cuban people could not go on […] after those diffcult years. The CIA thought that […] towards the end of the 1970s, “there would be an uprising of the military forces disaffected by communism […].13

The Cuban Exiles in the CIA Plans 83 What was at stake now was a whole psychological warfare operation, through which the CIA sought to reactivate internal counterrevolutionary groups. Their calculations were based on the number of people interested in leaving Cuba through the migratory agreements reached between Cuba and the U.S. in 1965.14 To this campaign must be added that the U.S. press echoed the public statements of terrorist groups such as Cuban Representation in Exile (RECE) and Alpha 66 that promised to “land fghters in Cuba before the end of 1969.” The psychological warfare operation continued, for example, in an AP (Associated Press) cable, dated January 16, 1970, Washington DC, reporting the activities of Alpha 66 and stating that: The State Department revealed today that 14 Cuban exiles made a failed attempt to infltrate Cuba last week, and were rescued a few miles off the coast of the communist island by a US naval patrol boat. Robert Mc Closkey, a spokesman for the Department, said that the Cubans were rescued from their boat, which was sinking, and taken back to Miami, after stopping at the Guantanamo Naval Base.15 Regarding the publicized attempt to infltrate Vicente Méndez Hernández, the Alpha 66 leader Andrés Nazario Sargén, who was accompanying the group with the mission of returning to Miami with photos of the action, declared that the action failed “due to inclement weather that raged the sea,” which made it diffcult for them to reach the agreed landing point. This caused the loss of the life of one of the members of the group when he fell into the sea. In fact, there was no bad weather or rough seas, but there was a suspicion that one of the members of the group, Julio César Ramírez, might be an agent of the Cuban security services and that they were waiting at the place chosen for the landing. What a coincidence that the individual on whom the suspicion fell was precisely the one who fell into the sea and lost his life!16 Meanwhile, the propaganda deployment in favor of the Torriente Plan continued. On February 10, The Miami News reported about a meeting held in Miami, where Rolando Masferrer Rojas17 praised and highlighted the activities of the Torriente movement, when he stated: The Fontaines are wondering what means Torriente will use to perform the next miracle, now when he has made the frst creating a unity for the war. It is no secret to me: with a patriot army, with tanks, planes and cannons, with money, with powerful allies. That’s also what Torriente has. They will not appear on the indiscreet pages of the Miami Herald, in the style of those absurd reports from Guatemala. But soon the heavy caterpillars will be on the television screens of the four corners of the world, crushing the communist

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The CIA and the Secret Economic War mistake […] Many of our countrymen have seen these soldiers and these tanks, and the planes that will sweep the bandits off the face of the island have fown swiftly over their heads. They still do not show the insignia of the liberating army on their turrets or wings, but no one despairs, because they will soon see them.18

For his part, Torriente said, “I cannot explain what I am realizing, nor can I reveal for now what the plan is, nor who is helping me and are willing to liberate Cuba, who are people that occupy higher positions than me.”19 The U.S. press agency UPI (United Press International) reported, on March 25, from New Orleans, the statements of Eulogio Cantillo, who said: Soon recruitment offces will open in Miami and other cities to form an army of anti-Castro exiles […] The project is part of the Torriente plan, a new anti-Castro movement launched during a gigantic exile demonstration two months ago by José de la Torriente […] We will have an army before the end of the year. We can have one almost of the size we need. […] There will be recruiting facilities in all the cities that have numerous Cuban colonies. In the United States there are large colonies in the cities of Miami, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, New Jersey and many others, that receive Cubans who constantly arrive as refugees by aircraft from Cuba. 20 The former general also reported that the registered volunteers were chosen among the ones best prepared for the military task, and he assured: […] among those recruited will be veterans of the Bay of Pigs invasion, former members of the Cuban constitutional army, of the Rebel Army of Fidel Castro, and of Cubans who have fought in Vietnam […]. 21 This means that when Cuba was completely devoted to the task of carrying out the sugar harvest of the 10 million tons, a propaganda campaign was launched from the U.S. to stimulate sabotage of the sugar factory facilities. On March 4 at the “10 de Octubre” plant in Las Villas, four saboteurs were arrested for actions aimed at obstructing the sugar production through creating constant breaks. The same thing happened at the “Ciro Redondo” plant in Morón, province of Camagüey, on April 6, when the production stopped due to the melting of the machinery, due to the intentional closure of a lubrication valve, and those responsible were arrested.22 On the April 22 there was a fre that totally destroyed the sugar warehouse “García,” in the port of Isabela de Sagua, in Las Villas, where 35.000 bags of raw and refned sugar, consisting of approximately 2 million tons of the product, and around 3.900 bales of jute were destroyed.23

The Cuban Exiles in the CIA Plans 85 Meanwhile, on April 17, there was a new infltration of a group of 13 heavily armed mercenaries, from the U.S., under the command of Vicente Méndez Hernández, all belonging to the organization Alpha 66. In the communiqué of the Prime Minister of the Revolutionary government, Fidel Castro, he argues that the landing occurred in the vicinity of the Yumurí river, 22 kilometers east of the city of Baracoa. The communiqué stresses that: Almost immediately, forces from the army, the mountain militias and border guard units made the frst contact with the mercenaries, capturing two prisoners and 2.000 bullets and numerous packages of plastic explosives, and continued the persecution of the rest of the group. Today, 18 at 16.23, our forces once again engaged in combat during the pursuit of the enemy. Four courageous revolutionary fghters lost their lives and two were wounded. In the action, two mercenaries died and a third was taken as prisoner. 24 Faced with the Cuban accusations for the complicity of the U.S. government in this act, the Department of State’s response was the total denial of its responsibility. On April 22, Fidel Castro in his speech to commemorate the centenary of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s birthday demonstrated the involvement of the U.S. authorities in the mercenary landing at Baracoa. He asked: How can the United States government even insinuate that it has no responsibility for these events? When that group was […] supplied with AR-15, AR-16 and AR-18, the most modern U.S. automatic rifes […] and in Miami a flm about the event was announced on the April 26 by a press mercenary named Guayo, at the same time as new landings were announced. […] If the State Department wants more information, it can be requested from that man. He can even show you the movies. Of course, from April 26 there will be no mercenary to advertise. 25 Certainly, on April 26, in a “MINFAR Communiqué” the liquidation of the infltrators at Baracoa was reported, and it was explained that: Revolutionary forces, persecuting the enemy, made contact on April 24, at 8.00 […] with the rest of the mercenary group […] capturing two of them and their AR-16 and AR-18 rifes, and abundant munition. Today, April 26, at 9:45 […] the remaining two were located and captured, occupying two AR-18 rifes, with the corresponding munition. In the last three encounters our forces had no casualties. The entire group of 13 mercenaries has been put

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The CIA and the Secret Economic War out of action in a few days, despite the abrupt and remote terrain. Not a single one managed to escape. They were also occupied with all the weapons, all the bullets and all the equipment they carried with them. 26

As Fidel Castro pointed out in his speech on April 22, it seems that the White House was not so uninformed about the activities of Alpha 66 and other counterrevolutionary groups as they claimed. A demonstration of this can be verifed by a memorandum from Viron P. Vaky―a member of the National Security Council and substitute to the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs― addressed to Henry Kissinger on April 28. 27 In the aforementioned document, Vaky reports his concern about the combination of events that were occurring in Cuba—not precisely because he was concerned that U.S. laws were violated through the actions of Alpha 66, but because of the consequences associated with other factors. What were the combinations of events that caused his concern? In the frst place, the event in the form of the infltration carried out on April 17, by Alpha 66―that according to a CIA report―“was relatively successful,” due to the fact that some of the infltrators survived during a week before being captured. Vaky stressed that the propaganda coverage given to that action had stimulated the Cuban exile community in the U.S. to support the activities of that organization and to realize possible raids in the future. “All of this is against a backdrop of efforts to unify various exile organizations and adopt a more belligerent posture,”28 said Vaky, in direct reference to the psychological operation of the Torriente Plan. The euphoria of the Cuban exile community was also a product of the lies spread by Alpha 66 in which they claimed that Vicente Méndez was alive and continued fghting in the eastern mountains. 29 The second event―related to the frst one―refers to the information received from the Guantánamo Naval base30 on the day of the raid, which reports of an increase in the military activity of Cuban forces around the base. Probably since the Cubans considered the probability of that the infltrators would try to seek refuge at the base. According to Vaky, the most striking and dangerous part of that information was the appreciation that if the situation got out of hand, “[…] the Cubans might attack the Guantanamo base in retaliation.” However, Vaky questions the information from Guantánamo, when he points out that the accuracy of this report was not clear. He concludes, “[…] There is some feeling it may have been deliberately intended to get to us simply as a tactical warning that if the exile efforts succeed the US can expect a confrontation with Cuba.”31 The third event, indicated in the memorandum, deals with the Cuban political reaction to that counterrevolutionary action contained in the

The Cuban Exiles in the CIA Plans 87 speeches of Fidel Castro on April 19 and 22. The frst contained a “[…] public blast from Castro against the United States,” and in the second, on the occasion of Lenin’s centennial ceremonies in Havana, Castro returned to lash out at the U.S. and “[…] said warm things about the Soviets and their leadership in the communist world.”32 The fourth issue that Vaky relates in his memorandum was the journey that the Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, Commander Raúl Castro, was making to the Soviet Union at the time—a visit that followed after a visit to Cuba, by the Soviet Minister of Defense a few weeks earlier.33 “Obviously,” he writes, “[…] some talks about something related to military matters have been going on, and relations seem warm.”34 The last and ffth event discussed in the memorandum was the fact that two Soviet naval reconnaissance aircrafts, Bear D-type aircraft (version of the TU-95, a strategic heavy bomber), few to Cuba on April 18 and again on April 25. He assured that these fights could be related to the Soviet naval maneuver Ocean, taking place in the North Atlantic. Vaky stressed that these fights ought to be surveilled, since “This is the frst time since the missile crisis that Soviet strategic aircraft have been in Cuba.”35 Based on the appreciation of all these events, Vaky considered the accusations of the Cuban revolutionary government as “[…] an effort to renew the siege mentality in order to revitalize Cuban enthusiasm for sacrifce and excuse domestic problems, an effort that was helped and possibly even occasioned by the exile raid.” The increase in exile activity—he estimated—could also be perceived by Castro “[…] as a hardening of the US position, and a possible renewal of US supported exile paramilitary activity.” He further believed that this situation could be used by the Cubans to justify or discourage a stronger rhetoric against the U.S. administration. There is no clarity concerning what: […] the Cubans and the Soviets are doing in the military feld, but the Raúl Castro visit and the fights of Soviet reconnaissance bombers raise questions as to what the future thrust of Castro’s external policy may be, and what he may have been planning when the Alpha-66 activity cut across his vision.36 According to Vaky the conjunction of these troubling events raises the need for “[…] a further assessment of Castro’s intentions and the SovietCuban relationship,” and he should ask the intelligence agencies for their estimates. He further stressed that there was a need to decide what “[…] we are to do about heightened exile activity. Present activity is a technical violation of US law and of international law.” If we disregard it—he said—“[…] it may be seen by Castro as a deliberate USG tactic

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to increase pressure.” He emphasized that “[…] uncontrolled exile activity is an unguided missile; we can fnd ourselves unwittingly sucked into a confrontation we do not want and are not prepared for.”37 Finally, the document indicates the need to review the contingency plans with regard to Cuba, particularly those related to an attack on the Guantánamo base. Two days later, Viron P. Vaky presented a memorandum where he informed Henry Kissinger38 that Alpha 66 “[…] is organizing a new expedition to Cuba.” He commented on the past incursion of this organization, which led to a strong public reaction from Fidel Castro. Although these actions are “spontaneous,”39 that is, they are not “sponsored or instigated” by the U.S., at least as everyone had assured him. Vaky speculated on the possibility that “[…] Cuba might deliberately create a diversion to offset anything we might be thinking of in Southeast Asia cannot be discounted.”40 He considered it especially “unfortunate” if the actions of Cuban exiles unconsciously pushed the U.S. into a confrontation with Cuba. He thought that it would be convenient if “[…] the Department of Justice should ‘sit on’ the ALPHA–66 organization to prevent this kind of activity at this time.”41 This last recommendation was ignored. Signifcant in this context is a handwritten note in the upper right part of the document that bears Kissinger’s initials, which reads “No formal action. Have discussed with Pres.”42 Ten days later, on May 10, there was a new action credited to Alpha 66, which was very different from the previous one. The counterrevolutionary organization reported that, since they did not want to face the dangers of infltrating Cuban territory, they cooperated with a group led by Ramón Orozco Crespo43 —experienced in the execution of criminal pirate activities against peaceful fshing boats—to carry out a new pirate action. The attack targeted the Plataforma I and Plataforma IV vessels of the Caibarién fshing cooperative in Las Villas. These vessels were sunk and their 11 crew members kidnapped and taken to an island in the Bahamas, where they were held for more than a week. According to Carlos Rivero Collado, this action was carried out by Alpha 66, associated with Orozco, to neutralize the devastating blow of the death of Vicente Méndez.44 When learning of the event, the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a note of complaint, and the demand for the immediate release of the kidnapped fshermen, to the Swiss ambassador, representative of the interests of the U.S. The response of the U.S. authorities to this dreadful act of maritime piracy was very pale and ineffective, and the Department of State’s spokesman in Washington on May 12 stated: The Government of the United States wishes to remind all persons who reside in its territory that the United States laws forbid the

The Cuban Exiles in the CIA Plans 89

Figure 6.1 Demonstration in Havana against the U.S. hijacking of Cuban fshermen, May 1970. Source: Archive of the Institute of Cuban History, Havana, used with permission.

use of United States territory as a base for any military expedition against a foreign country. The United States Government will take all appropriate measures to ensure that the spirit, as well as the letter, of these laws is observed.45 The nonsolution of the problem provoked the reaction of the Cuban people, who showed their natural rejection and outrage with large and combative popular demonstrations in front of the headquarters of the building of the former U.S. Embassy in Havana. Between May 15 and 18—permanently, and throughout the day and night—the population of Havana remained there, demanding the release of the kidnapped fshermen, until their captors fnally abandoned them in the Bahamas and fed to the U.S. In those days, when the popular protest was taking place, two Swiss diplomatic offcials remained at the former headquarters of the U.S. embassy. The U.S. wanted to exploit the situation to mount an international protest toward Cuba. The Swiss Ambassador Alfred Fischli began to spread diplomatic notes and statements to news agencies about his fear for the safety and the lives of these Swiss diplomats. According

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to him they were being held against their will in the besieged building, and as a propaganda show he announced that he would personally enter to rescue them. Given these statements, on May 17, the Cuban Foreign Minister, Raúl Roa García, issued the following note to the Swiss ambassador: […] I must express to you, frst of all, that the Revolutionary Government of Cuba does not recognize what Your Excellency says regarding the situation of the two Swiss offcials […] According to the information from the agencies with which that Embassy maintains its communication, these offcials have enough food and water to survive their needs. It is absolutely false that this building is under siege. The irritated demonstrations of the people surrounding it are a natural expression of their growing rejection and protest toward the pirate sinking of the two Cuban fshing vessels, and the kidnapping of their crew […] If you fnd the departure of the two Swiss offcials from the building suitable, you must formally request it in writing so that the Cuban Government can study it, and within the complex situation that exists, fnd some way of evacuating them. If there are any diffculties in entering or leaving that building, it is only a consequence of the huge crowd that remains there. As for the announcement that you make in the note, that you will enter the building at any risk, ignoring the deep irritation and outrage of the people, in an attitude of protest, the Cuban Government considers it as an act of ridiculous drama for propaganda purposes. As regards the Cuban authorities, you have complete freedom to enter or leave the building, but do not intend to hold the Government of Cuba responsible for any act of defance and provocation from your part, in which case the responsibility will fall on you and the interests that you represent, that are entirely responsible for the vandalism and the just indignation of our people. […] The Revolutionary Government will not use force to repress the people who are protesting with all reason.46 On May 18, after being abandoned by their captors, an International Red Cross plane located the fshermen and began their rescue. On May 19, they returned to Cuba and in a massive act the Cuban people gave them a warm welcome.47 Several declassifed documents of the U.S. government, dated during those days, show the participation, complicity and impunity of the U.S. authorities with the actions against Cuba carried out by organizations and groups of exiles operating from U.S. territory. In another memorandum from Viron P. Vaky addressed to Kissinger on May 18,48 Vaky reiterated that the activities of Cuban exile were “becoming a real problem” and that “[…] there is increasing evidence that the exile

The Cuban Exiles in the CIA Plans 91 community believes high levels of the U.S. Government would be or are receptive to their forays.”49 According to a Federal Bureau of Investigation report: “Senator Thurmond would call for U.S. support of the exiles is a case in point. I have also heard that otherwise unidentifed Pentagon offcials have encouraged exiles to engage in such forays.”50 He stressed that: If in fact we are to control events and if we want to avoid the risks and “surprises” that this kind of uncontrolled exile activity can present, then I think we have to get the word to the government community. The Coordinator for Cuban Affairs has met with representatives of U.S. agencies to coordinate plans to handle the present situation. Present policy and guidance is as indicated in the attached memo to the President. Moreover, the word has been passed quietly to the exile groups that they should knock it off. […] I have also suggested that word be quietly passed to Senator Thurmond not to encourage the exiles in the present juncture.51 In a subsequent memo to Kissinger, May 25, Vaky noted that the Department of Treasury had been investigating Alpha 66’s activities since July 1969. At the end of that document, a handwritten note from Alexander Haig52 appears on June 3, which reads “Pete53 -let’s take it easythis will evoke strong Pres. reaction. Pete, please call me. Al.”54 A conversation memorandum dated May 15 reveals that a Department of State offcial met with Cuban exiles to dissuade them from taking action against Cuba, but it seems that they did not listen at that request from the U.S. authorities.55 Under those circumstances, John N. Mitchell, the U.S. attorney general, approached Richard Helms, director of the CIA, to criticize him for the CIA’s ties with Alpha 66. Helms’s response was immediate: “I had the distinct impression from the President one day a couple of months ago that he rather favors some anti-Castro activity by this ALPHA 66 group.”56 Meanwhile, in a memorandum from the Department of State’s Offce of Legal Counsel, addressed to the Assistant Secretary for InterAmerican Affairs, Robert A. Hurwitch, dated August 14, 57 it was reported on the initiatives in the U.S. and Latin America of José Elías de la Torriente and his associates with the objective to “[…] organize Cuban exiles for military action against Cuba.” The document clarifes the most recent statements to the press by Torriente and Guillermo Martínez Márquez, stating that “[…] following a call upon the President of Costa Rica promising that their movement would undertake an invasion of Cuba without the assistance of the United States before the end of this year.”58 In this regard, the document indicates that “President Figueres made some general remarks endorsing a crusade against terrorism he attributed to Cuba, including action within Cuba itself.”59

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The document from the Department of State’s Offce of Legal Counsel also notes that Torriente: […] has begun to take a census of the Cuban exile population in the United States and abroad. The census form requests the recipient to provide information regarding military experience and skills, but it does not go so far as to expressly solicit recruits for a military expedition. However, there are intelligence reports that training classes in demolition and infantry tactics are being held at offces of Brigade 2506 and the Guantanamo Civic Association in Miami. Torriente has received funds from various sources including $45,000 from the Cuban Medical Association, and the census form requests recipients to contribute 25 cents to cover the administrative costs of the census.60 In addition, the document acknowledges that, on July 4, José Elías de la Torriente called the Department of State offce in Miami and presented himself to Matthew Smith with a copy of the census that he planned to make on the Cuban exile population in the U.S. and abroad. The questions on the form was aimed at obtaining information on the military experience and skills of people. Smith reported that “[…] Torriente tacitly admitted that this census is a preliminary census for military recruiting,” and he expressed his concern that Torriente “[…] may well take our silence in the matter as some kind of acceptance or tacit clearance for his scheme.”61 At the end of 1970, the two most important actions of that year of the external and internal counterrevolution were reported. On September 14, a group of nine mercenaries belonging to Alpha 66, and led by José Rodríguez Pérez, landed at a point located seven kilometers east of Boca de Samá, north of Banes, in the province of Oriente. According to the “Communiqué of the Revolutionary Armed Forces,” all the infltrators were captured between September 16 and 20.62 Regarding this new infltration of Alpha 66, Carlos Rivero Collado comments that the purpose was that it would help the leader Nazario Sargén to continue the campaign of collect economic resources.63 This infltration had a new human cost for Cuba, since in the capture operations “[…] three militiamen died and two fghters from the Ministry of the Interior were wounded.”64 On October 25, terrorist elements set fre to the “René Bedia Morales” match factory, in the neighborhood of El Cerro, in Havana. There were no human victims, but the factory was totally destroyed. The explosive and fammable substances could be removed in time from the building, so the fre did not spread to the neighboring houses.65 As has been seen in this chapter, all the actions carried out during the frst two years of the Nixon administration were conceived and directed

The Cuban Exiles in the CIA Plans 93 to hinder the social and economic development of Cuba. This at the same time as the Cuban counterrevolution covered up the complicity of the CIA in their terrorist activities, and for that reason, they were executed under the greatest impunity of the U.S. judicial authorities. The secret war continued and it was a complement to the open economic warfare that the U.S. developed toward Cuba.

Notes 1 See: Håkan Karlsson and Tomás Diez Acosta: The Johnson Administration’s Cuba Policy from “Dirty War” to Passive Containment (New York/ London: Routledge, 2021), 4. 2 According to offcial U.S. statistics, in Miami alone there were in 1966 around 105 groups of Cuban exiles. In: Committee on the Judiciary United States Senate, Ninety Fourth Congress: Terrorist Activity. Terrorism in the Miami Area (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 1966). 3 Instituto Superior de Relaciones Internacionales (ISRI): “Raúl Roa García”: De Eisenhower a Reagan (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1987), 195. 4 Amancio Mosquera Fernández, “Yarey,” an agent recruited by the Guantánamo Base Naval Intelligence Service. Prior to this occasion he had infltrated the country, from Florida or from the base itself, fve times along with other individuals. In all these cases, their intention had been to foment rebel groups, create espionage networks, obtain military information and carry out sabotage. He was famous for having managed to evade the persecution of the revolutionary forces and manage to exfltrate himself; but in this last operation he was arrested. 5 José Cantón Navarro and Martín Duarte Hurtado: Cuba: 42 años de Revolución. Cronología histórica 1959–1982. Tomo I (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2006), 195. 6 Alpha 66 was an organization that emerged during the Operation Mongoose, in mid-1962. Since its foundation, it received support from the CIA for the execution of its terrorist actions. In 1963 it was included in the autonomous operations project of the U.S. Intelligence Agency, and it was specialized in executing pirate attacks against targets on the Cuban coasts and on merchant ships. Among its leaders was Antonio Veciana Blanch, recruited by the CIA in 1960. Its members enjoyed impunity under U.S. law; in accordance with this, they were arrested and ridiculously fned or simply released. 7 Warren Hinckle and William Turner: The Fish Is Red: The Story of the Secret War against Castro (London: Harper & Row, 1981), 293. 8 Centro de Documentación del DOR del CC del PCC: Cronología 25 años de Revolución (La Habana: Editora Política, 1987), 87. 9 Carlos Rivero Collado: Los sobrinos del Tío Sam (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976), 249–251. 10 Among the signatories were “Carlos Prío Socarrás, Andrés Rivero Agüero, Nicolás Castellanos Rivero, Francisco Batista Zaldívar, Raúl Menocal Sera, Juana Castro Ruz, Gral. Eulogio Cantillo, Gral. Abelardo Gómez, Arturo Hernández Tefaeche, Eduardo Suárez Rivas, José Villalobos, Radio Cremata Valdés, Ángel Cofño, Vicente Rubiera, Francisco Oruega González and José Pardo Jiménez.” See: Leonel-Antonio de la Cuesta: “Tablas Cronológicas de la Historia de Cuba (1922–1992)”. In: Calixto C. Masó: Historia de Cuba (Miami: Ediciones Universal, 1993). 712–722.

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11 Jesús Arboleya: La contrarrevolución cubana (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1997), 152. 12 Joan Didion: Miami (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1987), 62. 13 Carlos Rivero Collado: Los sobrinos del Tío Sam (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976), 252. 14 See: Jesús Arboleya Cervera: Havana-Miami: The U.S.-Cuba Migration Confict (Melbourne: Ocean Press, 1995). 15 See: Carlos Rivero Collado: Los sobrinos del Tío Sam (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976), 219–222. 16 Ibid. 17 Rolando Masferrer Rojas was leader of a paramilitary squad known by the name of the “Tigres de Masferrer” who was responsible for barbaric torture and assassinations of numerous revolutionaries and peasants during the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship. He fed from Cuba to the U.S. on January 1, 1959. From there he organized sabotages and plans against the life of Fidel Castro, and he was linked to acts of terrorism, smuggling of weapons, drugs and people. He was assassinated in 1976 in the U.S. when a bomb exploded in his car, as a consequence gangster conficts. 18 The Miami News (February 10, 1970). 19 Ibid. 20 U.S. press agency UPI [United Press International] (March 25, 1970). 21 Ibid. 22 Sociedad Cubana de Derecho Internacional: Agresiones de Estados Unidos a Cuba Revolucionarias (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1989), 293. 23 José Cantón Navarro and Martín Duarte Hurtado: Cuba: 42 años de Revolución. Cronología histórica 1959–1982. Tomo I (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2006), 202. 24 “Comunicado del Primer Ministro de Gobierno Revolucionario, Fidel Castro, 18 de abril de 1970”, publicado en el periódico Granma (April 20, 1970), 1. 25 Fidel Castro: Discurso pronunciado en la velada solemne en conmemoración del centenario del natalicio de Vladimir Ilich Lenin, efectuado en el teatro “Chaplin”, el 22 de abril de 1970 (La Habana: Ediciones COR, No. 8, Editado por la Comisión de Orientación Revolucionaria (COR) del Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC), abril 1970), 21–22. 26 “Comunicado del Ministerio de las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias, abril 26 de 1970”, Granma (April 27, 1970), 1. 27 “Memorandum from Viron P. Vaky of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger), Washington, April 28, 1970”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 216. 28 Ibid. 29 Carlos Rivero Collado: Los sobrinos del Tío Sam (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976), 225–227. 30 Vaky refers to a telegram dated April 22 from the Chief of the Guantánamo Naval Base to the Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet (CINLANTFLT), a document attached to the memorandum. Ibid., Doc. 216. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 33 It refers to the visit of Marshal Andrei A. Grechko, Minister of Defense of the USSR, to Cuba between November 12 and 19, 1969.

The Cuban Exiles in the CIA Plans 95 34 “Memorandum from Viron P. Vaky of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger), Washington, April 28, 1970”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 216. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid. 38 “Memorandum from Viron P. Vaky of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger), Washington, April 30, 1970”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 217. 39 The quotes are Vaky’s, as it seems as he did not give that information much credit. 40 Ibid., Doc. 217. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid., Note 1. 43 Ramón Orozco Crespo, a CIA agent, was part of the 2506 mercenary brigade at the Bay of Pigs. Between 1963 and 1966 he was part of the Manuel Artime group, as offcer in the Punta Mona camps in Nicaragua. He participated in numerous pirate attacks against fshing vessels, merchant ships and economic targets on the coasts of Cuba. He had the support of the CIA for the execution of his misdeeds, as well as the support of important political fgures in the U.S. Among them is the Mayor of Miami, Maurice Ferrer, for whom he worked as “master builder” at his real estate companies. 44 Carlos Rivero Collado: Los sobrinos del Tío Sam (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976), 227. 45 “Paper prepared in the Department of State, Washington, July 13, 1971”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 240. 46 “Nota dirigida por el Ministro de Relaciones Exteriores de la República de Cuba, Dr. Raúl Roa García, el 17 de mayo de 1970, al Embajador de Suiza, representante de los interese norteamericanos en Cuba”. Política Internacional, primer semestre de 1970 (La Habana: Instituto de Política Internacional, MINREX, 1970), 225–226. 47 Granma (May 20, 1970). 48 “Memorandum from Viron P. Vaky of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger), Washington, May 18, 1970”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 220. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. 52 Military Advisor to the President’s Advisor on National Security Affairs, and later he substituted Kissinger. 53 Haig refers to Peter M. Flanigan, assistant to the President for Economic, Commercial and Financial Affairs. 54 Doc. 220. Note 1.

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55 “Memorandum of conversation, May 15, 1970”. Department of State, RG 59, Central Files 1970–73, POL 30–2 CUBA. 56 “Memorandum from Richard Helms to the Attorney General of the United States (Mitchell), Washington, July 10, 1970”. Central Intelligence Agency, Executive Registry, Job 80 – B01285A. 57 “Memorandum from the Offce of the Legal Adviser of the Department of State, to the Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs (Hurwitch), Washington, August 14, 1970”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 223. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid. 62 “Comunicado de las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias”, Granma (September 23, 1970), 1. 63 Carlos Rivero Collado: Los sobrinos del Tío Sam (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976), 227. 64 “Comunicado de las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias”, Granma (September 23, 1970), 1. 65 José Cantón Navarro and Martín Duarte Hurtado: Cuba: 42 años de Revolución. Cronología histórica 1959–1982. Tomo I (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2006), 204–205.

References Arboleya Cervera, J. Havana-Miami: The U.S.-Cuba Migration Confict (Melbourne: Ocean Press, 1995). Arboleya, J. La contrarrevolución cubana (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1997). Cantón Navarro, J. and Duarte Hurtado, M. Cuba: 42 años de Revolución. Cronología histórica 1959–1982. Tomo I (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2006). Castro, F. “Comunicado del Primer Ministro de Gobierno Revolucionario, Fidel Castro, 18 de abril de 1970”, Granma (April 20, 1970). Castro, F. Discurso pronunciado en la velada solemne en conmemoración del centenario del natalicio de Vladimir Ilich Lenin”, efectuado en el teatro “Chaplin”, el 22 de abril de 1970 (La Habana: Ediciones COR, No. 8, Editado por la Comisión de Orientación Revolucionaria (COR) del Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC), abril 1970). Centro de Documentación del DOR del CC del PCC. Cronología 25 años de Revolución (La Habana: Editora Política, 1987). Committee on the Judiciary United States Senate, Ninety Fourth Congress. Terrorist Activity. Terrorism in the Miami Area (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 1966). de la Cuesta, L.A. “Tablas Cronológicas de la Historia de Cuba (1922–1992)”. In: Calixto C. Masó: Historia de Cuba (Miami: Ediciones Universal, 1993). 712–722. Didion, J. Miami (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1987). Granma (April 20, 1970).

The Cuban Exiles in the CIA Plans 97 Granma (April 27, 1970). Granma (May 20, 1970). Granma (September 23, 1970). Hinckle, W. and Turner, W. The Fish Is Red: The Story of the Secret War against Castro (London: Harper & Row, 1981). Instituto Superior de Relaciones Internacionales (ISRI). “Raúl Roa García”: De Eisenhower a Reagan (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1987). Karlsson, H. and Diez Acosta, T. The Johnson Administration’s Cuba Policy from “Dirty War” to Passive Containment (New York/London: Routledge, 2021). Política Internacional, primer semestre de 1970 (La Habana: Instituto de Política Internacional, MINREX, 1970), 225–226. Rivero Collado, C. Los sobrinos del Tío Sam (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976). Roa García, R. “Nota dirigida por el Ministro de Relaciones Exteriores de la República de Cuba, el 17 de mayo de 1970, al Embajador de Suiza, representante de los interese norteamericanos en Cuba”. Política Internacional, primer semestre de 1970 (La Habana: Instituto de Política Internacional, MINREX, 1970). Sociedad Cubana de Derecho Internacional. Agresiones de Estados Unidos a Cuba Revolucionarias (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1989). The Miami News (February 10, 1970). U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018). U.S. Press Agency UPI [United Press International] (March 25, 1970).

7

The “Crisis” of the Soviet Nuclear Submarines

One of the events that occurred during the second half of 1970 was the so-called crisis of the Soviet nuclear submarines in Cienfuegos. However, this event did not have a signifcant impact in the U.S. press1 at the time compared to other events related to Cuban–Soviet military ties. Even more so when the “crisis” took place during the electoral campaign for the so-called mid-time elections to be held in November of that year. For many political analysts, this dispute was an artifcial crisis, in order to force the U.S. Congress to approve bulky budget allocations for military spending. The Republican Senator William J. Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, blamed the president for misleading the U.S. public with stories about Soviet nuclear submarines in Cuba—stories that only were intended to get Congressional compliance for grants to the Pentagon. 2 This crisis, artifcial or not, showed how the U.S. continued to act as judge over the type of weaponry, and measures, that Cuba needed for its legitimate defense against the threats of the Nixon administration since its arrival to the executive power in 1969. However, the international situation had changed signifcantly during the eight years that has passed since the Missile Crisis of October 1962. The strategic nuclear weapon disparity existing between the U.S. and the USSR in 1962 had disappeared due to a reinforcement in the nuclear weapon capacity of the USSR during the 1960s. This determined the need for the U.S. administration to achieve a high increase in defense budgets in order to develop new weapons, particularly antimissile systems, at the same time as realizing negotiations and a treaty with the USSR concerning the limitation of strategic nuclear weapons (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks/Treaty, SALT). Furthermore, this parity between the two superpowers required a more discreet action on the part of the U.S. administration, unlike what happened in 1962, but the action ought to be clear enough to imply that the U.S. would not tolerate the construction of a Soviet nuclear submarine base in Cienfuegos Bay. Of course, this was usurping the sovereign right that only Cuba and its people had concerning the decisions regarding the defense of the country.

“Crisis” of the Soviet Nuclear Submarines 99 This confict, although it developed during the months of September and October 1970, had its most immediate antecedents in the policy of the Nixon administration endorsed in the Memorandum of National Security Studies 32—Cuba, 3 analyzed Chapter 5, in which the “prevention of the introduction of strategic weapons” in the Cuban archipelago was established as a vital interest. This matter was not new, and for that reason one of the goals of the U.S. intelligence community and the U.S. surveillance activities was directed at the assessment of the military relations between Cuba and the USSR. The visit to Cuba, for two weeks in July 1969, by a Soviet naval detachment that included a nuclear submarine, attracted the attention of the surveillance of the U.S. intelligence. On July 20, the National Military Command Center reported that seven Soviet Navy ships had entered the port of Havana. On August 1, a memorandum distributed among the members of the U.S. National Security Council presented information concerning the activity of that submarine in the Caribbean area.4 Meanwhile, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) announced that day, in another memorandum, that there was “[…] no evidence to support the rumors that have circulated in recent years to the effect that there are Soviet Polaris-type submarine bases in Cuba.”5 The other relevant event in 1969 that caught the attention of the U.S. special services was the visit to Cuba, for eight days between November 12 and 19, of the Defense Minister of the USSR, Marshal Andrei A. Grechko. This was the frst trip of a Soviet offcial holding that title to the Western Hemisphere. This event was refected on February 17, 1970, in a telegram from the U.S. Department of State to all U.S. embassies, and one of the paragraphs in this telegram stated: […] (h) With reference to Cuba’s military ties to the Soviet Union, our concern is the dependent relationship of Cuba upon the USSR which makes it prudent to be alert to the possibility that Cuba could once again lend itself to Soviet military activities in this Hemisphere. There is no evidence that this relationship has altered. We currently estimate as low the chances of the Soviets embarking on any adventurist military course with respect to Cuba. We have taken careful note, however, of the Soviet naval visit in July 1969 (frst of kind in the Hemisphere) and of Marshal Grechko’s visit in November (frst visit of a Soviet Defense Minister to Cuba.) The full implications of these two developments are not yet known.6 In summary, during the end of 1969 and the frst half of 1970, a series of events were monitored by the U.S., such as the visit of Commander Raúl Castro, Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) minister, to the USSR, between April 4 and May 13. The fights of two Soviet reconnaissance aircraft-type TU-95 Bear on April 18 and 25. The comments made by the

100 The CIA and the Secret Economic War Prime Minister of the Cuban Revolutionary government, Fidel Castro, in his speech at the evening at the centenary of Lenin’s birthday where he stated that “We, for our part, will always be ready for more military ties with the Soviet Union. Who are we going to have them with? With Yankee imperialism?”7 On May 11, Viron P. Vaky informed Henry Kissinger that: Relations between the Soviets and Castro are warmer than they have ever been. Use of Cuba by Soviet naval units and an exchange of visits by Defense Ministers indicate military relations are also warm. This raises the possibility that some arrangement or plan relating to military or strategic matters between the two has been or is being made. We ought to study this.8 Vaky speculated about the meaning of these events, which could be a coincidence, but he thought that it was necessary to “[…] consider the possibility that they form a pattern that may mean something else.” For instance, this could mean: […] Simple fexing of Soviet military muscles; showing itself to be mobile throughout the world. […] Use of Cuba as a de facto bunkering for naval units and/or the large planes, with the Soviets probing to see whether we will react. […] Building up to maintenance of Soviet naval units in the Caribbean/Southern Atlantic on a more or less permanent basis, refueling and resupplying out of Cuba, in effect a de facto rather than formal base in Cuba.9 Vaky also stressed that he had asked the CIA to cooperate, so that in approximately 14 days they would have more information concerning the meaning of these events. On June 17, in another Vaky memorandum to Kissinger, the content of a part of a CIA report, dated June 3, that speculated about the significance of the recent developments in Cuban military relations with the USSR was presented. It was stated that: The Soviets may intend to establish a new Soviet facility in Cuba, such as an installation for servicing naval ships or reconnaissance aircraft, or both. […] Any such move is likely to be modest and accomplished in a gradual and cautious manner to avoid faunting military power on our doorstep or a direct confrontation while at the same time gaining additional mobility for Soviet forces. […] Such a move would be in line with its general policy of “showing the fag”; it may also be Moscow’s answer to the US naval activity in the Black Sea.10 On September 9, the U.S. intelligence services reported the arrival in Cienfuegos Bay of a Soviet fotilla, which included special ships to

“Crisis” of the Soviet Nuclear Submarines 101 support nuclear submarine operations, which on August 28 was sighted moving in the area. On September 12, several submarines and a ferry were located in a deep-water basin moored at buoys. The existence in the bay of a Soviet fuel transport anchored on the quay and another tanker anchored in the north of the bay, as well as two special-purpose ships, was verifed. On September 18, in a memorandum addressed to President Nixon,11 Kissinger reported the analysis of the air-reconnaissance fight photography of that day, which confrmed the probable construction of submarine deployment base at Alcatraz Cay, in Cienfuegos Bay. Due to the seriousness of the situation, Kissinger also informed about that he had requested the CIA to provide him with a briefng, since it was necessary to carefully evaluate the full range of the photographic evidence to determine more precisely the full scope of the Soviet activity in Cuba. He also announced the urgent initiation of a detailed analysis of the strategic implications of this development. The constructions referred to by Kissinger in his memorandum included: […] an administrative area, two single-story barracks, a soccer feld, basketball court and probably handball, volleyball or tennis courts. An offshore wharf and swimming area are on the east side of the island and a platform tower has been constructed just south of the administrative area.12

Figure 7.1 The visit of a Soviet fotilla in Cienfuegos, September 1970. Source: Archive of the Institute of Cuban History, Havana, used with permission.

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Figure 7.2 U.S. air reconnaissance photo of Cayo Alcatraz, Cienfuegos Bay, Cuba, September 18, 1970. CIA; Document Type: CREST; Collection: NGA Records (Formerly NIMA); Document Number (FOI)/ ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP83–01074R000200420007-6. Source: CIA.

In that document, Kissinger also reviewed his conversations with the Soviet diplomatic representative Yuli Vorontsov on August 4 and 7, which for him were of “special signifcance” in relation to the actual situation. In this regard, Kissinger referred to the meeting on August 4, as “extremely cordial.” During the meeting the Soviet diplomat gave him, as well as read, a document that: […] Expressed Soviet anxiety over alleged attempts by Cuban revolutionary groups in the United States to resume sabotage and subversive activity against Cuba from the U.S. soil. […] Complained about provocative articles in the American press and ambivalent statements on the part of the U.S. offcials concerning Cuba. […] Stressed that the Soviets were proceeding on the Cuban question from the understanding with regard to Cuba that existed in the past and confrmed that the Soviets expected us to adhere to this understanding.13

“Crisis” of the Soviet Nuclear Submarines 103 The understanding to which Vorontsov was referring was arrived at during the Missile crisis in October 1962. In essence, during the exchanges between the U.S. and the USSR in 1962 at the time of the Missile crisis the USSR assured that they would not locate nuclear weapons on Cuban territory in return for assurances from the U.S. government that it would not undertake military action to change the government of Cuba. At a new meeting on August 7, Kissinger presented Vorontsov with the answer that President Nixon had instructed him to give: […] The U.S. notes with satisfaction the assurance of the Soviet government that the understandings of 1962 are still in force, adding, we take this to mean that the Soviet Union will not emplace any offensive weapons of any kind or any nuclear weapons on Cuban soil.14 During the meeting Kissinger also expressed the U.S. concern about the repeated information concerning the increase in Soviet activity in Cuba. However, Vorontsov did not recognize the validity of this increasing activity. Concerning the 1962 understanding, Kissinger told Vorontsov that he was authorized to specifcally reaffrm that the U.S. would not use military force to bring about a change in the governmental structure of Cuba. Kissinger then mentioned the U.S. concern caused by the increasing fights over Cuba of long-range Soviet planes on reconnaissance missions, but with nuclear bombing capacity, which could approach the limit of the understanding. Kissinger added that a decrease to a minimum of such operations and of Soviet naval activity in the Caribbean, he said, would certainly be noted as assurances of that ratifcation. Likewise, Kissinger also drew Vorontsov’s attention to the protective measures taken a few days ago to protect a Soviet ship that was reportedly in danger of an attack by Cuban exile groups. For his part, Vorontsov indicated the good spirit in which the U.S. observations were made and he was certain that the Kremlin would be very pleased to receive them. Kissinger concluded the conversation, telling Vorontsov that the major problem now was to see what concrete progress could be made in the area of negotiations.15 Despite this conversation with Vorontsov, U.S. aerial reconnaissance photographs showed the rapid movements made by the Soviets to establish an installation in Cienfuegos Bay that was likely to serve as a base for Soviet submarines in the Caribbean.16 This information caused an immediate reaction from Nixon when he wrote on the third page of the aforementioned memorandum: I want a report on a crash basis on (1) what CIA can do to support any kind of action which will irritate Castro (2) what actions we can take which we have not yet taken to boycott nations dealing with

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The CIA and the Secret Economic War Castro (3) most important what actions we can take covert or overt to put missiles in Turkey—or a sub base in the Black Sea—anything which will give us some trading stock.17

On September 22, in a long memorandum,18 Kissinger informed the president of the results of the analyses of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the military signifcance and intentions of the Soviet submarine base in Cienfuegos and his personal considerations on the issue. The document begins with a description of the existing Soviet facilities and installations, as well as the naval ships anchored in Cienfuegos Bay. Ships consisting of: […] a Soviet submarine tender moored to four heavy buoys in the bay. Two Soviet submarine support barges, a landing ship, a heavy salvage vessel, and a rescue vessel are in the harbor. Other ships that had been there—a tanker and two missile anti-submarine warfare (ASW) ships—have departed.19 As for the constructions in Cayo Alcatraz, an island in Cienfuegos Bay, the memorandum states that it consists of: […] two single story barracks, sports area (soccer feld, basketball and tennis courts), an offshore wharf and a swimming area. Three AAA sites and a communications antenna array are also in the harbor area. […] None of this construction or naval activity was in the area on August 15, the last prior date on which U–2 photography of the bay was available. All of this was thus accomplished in the intervening four-week period, suggesting that it was done on a crash basis.20 Kissinger compares those buildings, in Cienfuegos, to a similar semipermanent U.S. facility located on Holy Lake. He points out that the Soviet base could have the ability to repair submarines, including nuclear ones, and to provide facilities of rest and recreation for naval crews, as well as permanent support staff. He stresses that “No other naval support capabilities are evident at this point.”21 He further stressed that “There is a wide spectrum of views regarding the military signifcance of this development.” The Joint Chiefs of Staff believes “[…] that the military impact would be signifcant equating, in the case of submarines, because of increased on-station time, to approximately one-third of the size of the Soviet Ballistic Missile Submarine (SLBM) force.”22 In addition, the Joint Chiefs of Staff pointed to additional Soviet advantages of the installation such as the installation of SLBM patrol stations in the Gulf of Mexico, the option of keeping all missile submarines (nuclear. powered, ballistic missile-carrying submarine, SSBN) in port at Cienfuegos and either launch the missiles from that port or deploy rapidly as the situation

“Crisis” of the Soviet Nuclear Submarines 105 dictates, and the lessening of personnel hardship and the concomitant increase of SSBN crew effectiveness by signifcantly decreasing at-sea time. Similarly, the Joint Chiefs of Staff believed that this action “[…] fts into an overall Soviet pattern which indicates increasing Soviet hostility toward the U.S. and a willingness to take greater risks in pursuing their objectives.”23 Although Kissinger shared the same concerns as the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the document shows that he believed that such a Soviet base in the port of Cienfuegos would only add marginally to the total Soviet capability for attacking the U.S. with nuclear weapons, and he specifed: […] there are always some Soviet subs off our East Coast with the capability to launch missiles against most targets in the U.S. If they want, the Soviets can increase this number at any time by simply increasing their force levels. Having a base at Cienfuegos makes it easier to achieve such an objective but at considerably higher risks considering past U.S. reactions to Soviet military activities in Cuba. Unlike 1962, the Soviets have a massive land base missile capability which continues to grow. If my view that the increase in military capabilities of the Cienfuegos base would be only marginal is correct, then the Soviet action becomes even more puzzling. Why run such high risks for such low returns in increased military capability? This strongly suggests that this Soviet move is perhaps more politicallymotivated than militarily. 24 In the morning of September 23, a meeting of the U.S. National Security Council25 took place, ―with the presence of President Nixon―26 where the latest intelligence on the situation in Cienfuegos Bay was analyzed. Before beginning the discussion, Nixon stated to all the participants that: […] the discussion on Cuba was limited to a strictly need-to-know group, pointing out that we were faced with a major election issue which opponents could seize upon for their own domestic political advantage. He cautioned each of the principals to hold the information strictly to themselves and to take equivalent action on any paperwork associated with the Cuban issue. 27 The Director of the CIA Richard Helms presented an update on the situation in Cuba, using photographic evidence describing the environment of Cienfuegos Bay.28 Helms stated that the frst evidence of Soviet activity in Cienfuegos Bay was obtained in the spring of 1970, and that: […] in August we noted the athletic facilities and all believed that it was signifcant that there were no baseball felds—only soccer felds, suggesting Soviet occupation rather than Cuban. 29

106 The CIA and the Secret Economic War The president commented that the dates were very important, and Secretary Laird and Admiral Moore emphasized that the construction of the facilities had been very fast since all the work was completed in 30 days, between August 15 and September 15.30 Then a discussion began on the meaning of this fact. Kissinger commented on the international political implications of the Soviet action and raised the following questions: […] Why, for example, had they chosen this point to install a base? Why also would the Soviets try to reaffrm the 1962 understandings and then 11 days later31 move precipitously to install strategic weapons in Cuba? What is the relationship with this action and the situation in Chile and what are its implications should Chile go Marxist?32,33 Kissinger further stated that the political consequences of this Soviet action present a very serious dilemma that completely transcend the strategic military implications of the Soviet action. According to him, the real question was, “[…] why have the Soviets undertaken this move directly against the spirit, if not the letter, of the 1962 understandings?”34 Nixon commented, in this regard, that if the new base just constituted a marginal strategic advantage, the causes of the Soviet action could perhaps be sought in other political reasons. He reiterated his desire to keep this discussion secret within the group gathered in the room, and that they should avoid public statements on the matter. He argued, “[…] in private we must be very tough but that this line was to be taken privately. If we are to take a tough public stance, we will set up a great domestic clamor.”35 He therefore proposed to design two lines of action: the frst was a public one aimed at avoiding an atmosphere of crisis, and the second an offcial one to take privately with the Soviets. Therefore, in public, “[…] we should merely take the stance that we are aware of the situation and are watching it carefully.”36 Kissinger added that he regretted the necessity of playing the role of a villain on this issue, but “[…] the important aspect of our public line is not to permit the Soviets to think that what they have done is acceptable.” The president agreed and stressed the need to let the Soviets know that their actions were unacceptable.37 The next day, Kissinger met at the White House with a group of senior offcials from the Departments of State and Defense, from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA Director, to review the information guide that would supply the U.S. press with information concerning what was going on in Cienfuegos Bay if the information of a Soviet base in Cuba became known to the U.S. public.38 Kissinger suggested that the public response from the U.S. government should be: We are aware of the reports. The President has reviewed these reports with his senior advisors. The Soviets are well aware of the fact

“Crisis” of the Soviet Nuclear Submarines 107 that establishment of a base would be of great concern to us. We are keeping the situation under constant review.39 He further commented on the existence of two dangers: “[…] (1) it might be built into a Cuban missile crisis, and (2) on the other hand, if we keep it too low-key, then the Congress might build it up.”40 On September 25―in a memo to Rogers, Laird, Helms and Moore―Kissinger provided the guide for the press and reported that the president stipulated “rigid adherence” to such guidance, with “no backgrounding, comment, or speculation of any kind on this subject by U.S. spokesmen and offcials.”41 On the afternoon of September 25, Kissinger had a meeting with the Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin under the pretext of discussing the preparation of the summit conference between the leaders of the U.S. and the USSR.42 Following the guidelines set by Nixon, Kissinger addressed the problem of the Soviet base in Cienfuegos, the Presidential Adviser explained to Dobrynin that the U.S. “[…] had deliberately inferred in our public statements that we did not know whether there was an actual submarine base in Cuba in order to give the Soviets a chance to withdraw without a public confrontation,” but that the existence of the base was known, and that the U.S. “[…] would view it with the utmost gravity if the construction continued and the base remained.”43 Kissinger added that the U.S. did not want a public clash and that they were giving the USSR the possibility to remove the base, but that the U.S., at the same time, would not hesitate to take necessary measures if forced to realize them. He also recalled the conversation on August 4, with Vorontsov, in which he let him know that the U.S. saw the construction of a Soviet base in Cienfuegos, “[…] as an act of bad faith, but if the ships, especially the tender, left we would treat the whole matter a training exercise.”44 Dobrynin asked if the U.S. side believed that the 1962 understanding had been violated, and Kissinger replied yes. The Soviet ambassador said he would inform his government and give a response soon. For his part, Kissinger ended by stating that there would be no big press campaign on the matter, but that the U.S. administration was determined to remove the base. A new meeting between Kissinger and Dobrynin took place in the White House on October 6, where the Soviet ambassador presented Kissinger with an offcial statement from the Soviet government concerning the situation in Cienfuegos. This statement reaffrmed that the USSR had not done, and would not do, anything that could contradict the understanding on Cuba reached between the U.S. and the USSR in 1962.45 On October 9, Kissinger and Dobrynin, at the initiative of the former, met again in the White House. The purpose of the meeting was to reaffrm

108 The CIA and the Secret Economic War the Soviet position contained in the statement of October 6. However, Dobrynin stressed that the Soviet government could not promise that Soviet submarines would never visit Cuban ports, even if the USSR would never locate an operational capacity there.46 While Kissinger pointed out that the U.S. considered “[…] the presence of ships at Cienfuegos, especially the tender and barges, clearly inconsistent with the 1962 understanding.”47 Dobrynin replied that he awaited instructions from Moscow, and that Telegraph Agency of the USSR (TASS) soon would issue an offcial statement that would repeat the offcial Soviet statement of October 6, denying any Soviet attempt to establish a base in Cuba.48 Indeed, a week later, on October 13, the Soviet news agency TASS issued an offcial Soviet government statement denying that the USSR was building a submarine base in Cuba and confrming that the USSR would continue to adhere to the 1962 understanding. On October 16, a memorandum from Defense Secretary Laird to Kissinger informed about Soviet naval activity in Cienfuegos and Mariel. It was stressed that: […] We are keeping a close watch on the movements of the submarine tender and the rescue tug now in the Port of Mariel […] All that can be said as of this moment is that the Soviet Navy still has all the essential means in Cuba to operate an advanced submarine base.49 Meanwhile, on November 4, a CIA intelligence cable confrmed that the Soviet construction of naval facilities in Cienfuegos had ceased.50 The so-called submarine crisis in Cienfuegos had ended. Years later, President Richard M. Nixon, boasting of his performance in that event, explained: Frequently results can be achieved through quiet diplomacy that could never be acheived through public diplomacy. A classic illustration of this occurred during my frst term, in 1970. In the fall of that year U-2 fights over Cuba revealed that a base was being constructed at Cienfuegos which could be used for submarines armed with nuclear missiles. This violated the 1962 U.S.-Soviet agreement on Cuba. But instead of confronting the Russians publicly with our knowledge of this violation, we decided to use quiet diplomacy so that they could withdraw without losing face publicly. Henry Kissinger informed Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin that we were aware of the base under construction, told him unequivocally that we considered it to be a violation of our agreement, and let Dobrynin know that we were keeping things cool deliberately so that the Soviets could withdraw without a public confrontation. Two weeks later Dobrynin handed Kissinger a note reaffrming the 1962

“Crisis” of the Soviet Nuclear Submarines 109 understanding about Cuba and stating that the Soviets were doing nothing to violate that understanding. U-2 fights showed that construction had slowed down at the sub site. After some face-saving delays it stopped altogether and the base at Cienfuegos was abandoned. Our strategy had worked. The Russians had decided to take advantage of the maneuverability our low-profle strategy afforded them. By denying that the violation had ever existed, they backed away from the crisis and still saved face. Quiet diplomacy supported by steady nerves and a still-superior arsenal had prevailed. We had mot forced the issue into the open where the Russians could retreat only at the cost of a great deal of prestige. We made it easier for them to retreat, thereby averting another confrontation at the brink over Cuba. 51 Other political analysts consider that this “crisis” must be assessed in the global context of negotiations between the U.S. and the USSR, as well as the consecutive detente between the two superpowers. The Cuban Professor of International Political Relations, Roberto González Gómez, stresses: […] In September 1970, Washington organized a confict around Cuba and the possible construction in Cienfuegos of a Soviet submarine base, which served to establish that the detente did not signify the abandonment of the prohibition of USSR to install strategic weapon in that country, since that constituted a threat to the security of the United States.52 The participation of Cuba in this confict between the two superpowers was practically null. In reality, there was no military event, beyond an increase in surveillance and radio-electronic exploration activities, which endangered Cuba’s security. Unlike what happened in October 1962, a press campaign or threatening statements by U.S. politicians or authorities did not originate, and there existed no reason for a public statement by the Cuban government. However, this does not imply that the Cuban leadership did not closely follow the development of the event or that they were uninformed. In this regard, the news published by the Soviet agency TASS, on October 27, is interesting since it reported that that the same day the Secretary General of the CPSU Central Committee, Leonid Brezhnev, met with the FAR minister, Commander Raúl Castro. This for discuss “questions concerning the collaboration between the USSR and the Republic of Cuba” and the exchange of “criteria on current problems in the international situation, in relation to our agreements.”53 During the frst two years of the Nixon administration—1969 and 1970—the actions taken toward Cuba were directed primarily at

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hampering the country’s economic development, especially by preventing the goal of a production of 10 million tons of sugar. The U.S. promoted new subversive plans in order to force Cuba to divert resources to the defense of the country, and in this context counterrevolutionary Cuban exile groups based in the U.S. played an important role. This at the same time as a new international confict—with Cuba as its epicenter—took place between the U.S. and the USSR, in the autumn of 1970. The so-called Cienfuegos crisis of Soviet nuclear submarines. However, the international context was not favorable for this new confrontation between the two superpowers to develop in the same manner as in October 1962, and discrete diplomatic negotiation was imposed instead of a politics of force.

Notes 1 Nor did the event lead to any resonance in the Cuban or in the Soviet press. 2 Instituto Superior de Relaciones Internacionales (ISRI): “Raúl Roa García”: De Eisenhower a Reagan (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1987), 195. 3 “Study Prepared in Response to National Security Study Memorandum 32, Washington, July 2, 1969”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 205. 4 “Memorandum from Dave McManis of the National Security Council Staff to John Howe of the National Security Council Staff, Washington, August 1, 1969”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 206. 5 Ibid. 6 “Telegram 23858 from the Department of State to All ARA Diplomatic Posts, February 17, 1970, 1640Z”. Ibid., Doc. 213. 7 Fidel Castro: Discurso pronunciado en la velada solemne en conmemoración del centenario del natalicio de Vladimir Ilich Lenin, efectuado en el teatro “Chaplin”, el 22 de abril de 1970 (La Habana: Ediciones COR, No. 8, Editado por la Comisión de Orientación Revolucionaria (COR) del Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC), abril 1970), 24. 8 “Memorandum from Viron P. Vaky of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger), Washington, May 11, 1970”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 218. 9 Ibid. 10 “Memorandum from Viron P. Vaky of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger), Washington, June 17, 1970”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 222.

“Crisis” of the Soviet Nuclear Submarines 111 11 “Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Nixon, Washington, September 18, 1970”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 224. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Kissinger referred to the SALT negotiations. 16 “Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Nixon, Washington, September 18, 1970”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969– 1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 224. 17 Ibid., Note 1. 18 “Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Nixon, Washington, September 22, 1970”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 225. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 “Minutes of a Meeting of the National Security Council, Washington, September 23, 1970, 9:30 a.m.” U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 226. 26 The following persons participated: the Secretaries of State and Defense, William P. Rogers and Melvin R. Laird; the CIA Director, Richard Helms; the Deputy Secretary of Defense, David Packard; the Assistant Secretary of State, Joseph Sisco; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Thomas Moore; Presidential Assistant, Henry A. Kissinger and the President’s Personal Military Advisor, General Alexander M. Haig. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. Concerning this, Defense Secretary Laird proposed adding to the aerial surveillance, the new means of espionage from the Corona satellite. 29 “Minutes of a Meeting of the National Security Council, Washington, September 23, 1970, 9:30 a.m.” U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 226. 30 Ibid. 31 Kissinger refers to the meeting he had with Vorontsov on August 4 and 7, and the affrmation of the Soviet Union to respect the understanding of 1962. 32 “Minutes of a Meeting of the National Security Council, Washington, September 23, 1970, 9:30 a.m.” U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 226.

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33 Kissinger refers to the victory of Salvador Allende Gossens in the Chilean presidential elections on September 4, 1970. 34 “Minutes of a Meeting of the National Security Council, Washington, September 23, 1970, 9:30 a.m.” U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 226. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid. 38 “Memorandum for the Record, Washington, September 24, 1970”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969– 1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 227. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid., Note 1. 42 “Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Nixon, Washington, October 14, 1970”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 230. In this memorandum Kissinger reviewed his four meetings with Ambassador Dobrynin: twice on September 25 and on October 6 and 9. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid. 45 “Memorandum from William Hyland of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger), Washington, October 7, 1970”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. XII, 1969–1976, Soviet Union, January 1969-October 1970 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 225. 46 “Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Nixon, Washington, October 14, 1970”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969– 1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 230. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 “Memorandum from the Secretary of Defense (Laird) to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger), Washington, October 16, 1970”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 231. 50 CIA, TDCS 314 / 11498–70. Ibid., Note 1. 51 Richard M. Nixon: The Real War (New York: Warner Books, 1980), 252. 52 Roberto González Gómez: Estados Unidos: doctrinas de la guerra fría 1947–1991 (La Habana: Centro de Estudios Martianos, 2003), 119. 53 Granma (October 28, 1970), 1.

“Crisis” of the Soviet Nuclear Submarines 113

References Castro, F. Discurso pronunciado en la velada solemne en conmemoración del centenario del natalicio de Vladimir Ilich Lenin, efectuado en el teatro “Chaplin”, el 22 de abril de 1970 (La Habana: Ediciones COR, No. 8, Editado por la Comisión de Orientación Revolucionaria (COR) del Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC), abril 1970). González Gómez, R. Estados Unidos: doctrinas de la guerra fría 1947–1991 (La Habana: Centro de Estudios Martianos, 2003). Granma (October 28, 1970). Instituto Superior de Relaciones Internacionales (ISRI). “Raúl Roa García”: De Eisenhower a Reagan (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1987). Nixon, R.M. The Real War (New York: Warner Books, 1980). U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018). U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. XII, 1969–1976, Soviet Union, January 1969-October 1970 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018).

Part IV

Other Secret Actions toward Cuba The actions of economic and psychological warfare continued as the main line of the offcial policy of the Richard Nixon administration toward Cuba. Within it, the pursuit of foreign trade with Cuba was a priority activity of the U.S. diplomatic headquarters throughout the world. Offcials of the U.S. intelligence services accredited at these embassies and consulates, as well as their secret agents, were monitoring any commercial transaction that Cuba carried out. The governments and companies of third countries suffered strong U.S. pressure for the realization of their businesses with Cuba. One of the main targets of this economic war was also the Cuban commercial representatives abroad, both diplomats and offcials, who were surveyed, harassed and recruited to betray their country, in order to make them deserters or agents in service of the U.S. Likewise, the CIA recruited accredited diplomats in Cuba, who served to present information on the progress in Cuba concerning economy, the political-ideological situation and other information of importance for the subversive plans of the U.S. One of those agents discovered and denounced—on September 4, 1969—was Humberto Carrillo Colón, press attaché of the Embassy of Mexico, who obtained information on the activities of the leaders of the Cuban government, especially Prime Minister Fidel Castro. Information that could be used not only trying to penetrate confdential matters but also for an eventual assassination attempt toward the Cuban leaders. He used diplomatic bags to send information, and from his private residence he transmitted messages with the use of sophisticated means of communication. He cooperated with “[…] the CIA in its plans to sabotage and block the Cuban economy and in achieving its objectives of subversion with the objective to the overthrow of the Revolutionary government […] or an eventual military aggression […].”1 In order to cause damage to Cuban foreign trade, commercial transactions were pursued not only in capitalist countries but also in socialist ones. On October 2, 1969, the U.S. Offce of Foreign Assets Control of the Department of Treasury issued a note, stating the reasons it had for believing that the nickel sulfate produced in the USSR could be made,

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or its derivative in whole or in part, with nickel of Cuban origin. It was stated that, as of October 3, 1969, imports of nickel sulfate directly or indirectly from the USSR would be detained by customs until their release from customs custody or other provision was authorized by the Offce of Foreign Asset Control, under the provisions of the Cuban Assets Control Regulation. 2 Under the same argument, this offce announced that, as of November 7, 1969, imports from Czechoslovakia of nickelcontaining materials and articles, direct or indirect, would also be retained by customs.3 That anti-Cuban policy is illustrated by Richard Nixon’s conversation with Henry Kissinger and the Director of the CIA, Richard Helms, on March 25, 1970, after a meeting of the U.S. National Security Council. According to a text written by Helms, Nixon asked for his opinion on the pressures from Canada and other countries to ease the attitude toward Castro and possibly “[…] enter into diplomatic relations somewhere down the road.”4 Helms stressed that: It was clear that the State Department was advocating some change of policy such as this. […] I thought we should continue the present policy of keeping Castro isolated and of applying economic sanctions against his country. […] Cuba was costing the Soviet Union a million dollars a day and that if indeed the President wanted to cause the Soviet Union headaches, as he indicated earlier in the meeting he did want to do, this was one that he had within his power by doing nothing. The President’s reply was, “You have convinced me.”5 The U.S. Department of Treasury, specifcally its Offce of Foreign Assets Control, has been one of the most active federal institutions in the economic war toward Cuba. This offce obtained the information from agents who monitored and controlled all U.S. imports from different parts of the world and verifed that the imported goods did not contain any raw materials of Cuban origin, such as nickel. An example of this is the note that was issued on January 4, 1971, in which the offce expressed its satisfaction concerning that the nickel materials and nickel content imported from France did not come from Cuba. Therefore, the controls on imports of merchandise of French origin that may contain Cuban nickel were canceled.6 Another example of the U.S. pressures toward governments and companies that traded with Cuba occurred, in May 1971, regarding Australia, when the offcial agency of the U.S. Army released the following notice: The United States expressed its displeasure with Australia’s sale to Cuba of twenty cane cutting machines, despite the existence of an economic embargo against the Castro government, which is maintained by the United States and other nations of the hemisphere.

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The Secretary of State said that she had pointed out to the Australian government, before the sale, the economic sanctions that still exist. The United States Senator William Fulbright, chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, criticized the sale, noting that Australia has sided with the United States in opposing communism in Southeast Asia. He said that it is ironic that Australia is breaking the economic blockade on Cuba […].7 The Australian newspaper The Sun described the U.S. statements and the pressure on the Canberra government as “[…] the most furious attack launched against Australia.”8 The achievement of this anti-Cuban policy by the U.S. administration was completely contradictory to the political and economic openings that it had been carrying out at that time with the main socialist powers, as was the case with the USSR and the People’s Republic of China. Perhaps this inconsistency in its global strategy can be found, and explained, by some of the conclusions of the Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE) 85–71 that the CIA made on Cuba on April 29, 1971, which emphasizes that: Despite the outlook for continuing discontent in the next few years, there seems little chance that this sentiment will become manifest as a popular revolt. […] The overall performance of the Cuban economy has been poor and is not likely to change during the next few years. The regime’s ability to manage the economy shows few signs of improvement. Sugar production, still the bulwark of the economy, is at a somewhat higher level than before the revolution, but agriculture as a whole remains depressed. Cuba depends upon the USSR for a wide range of vital imports, which it cannot fully pay for.9 This makes it obvious that even if the Nixon administration was open to more close and relaxed relations with the USSR and the People’s Republic of China, the administration’s objective concerning Cuba was the same as before—namely, to overthrow the Cuban Revolution with all means at their disposal.

8

Psychological Warfare Radio Broadcasts

Along with economic actions, the psychological and propaganda war occupied an important place in the anti-Cuban strategy of the Nixon administration toward Cuba. In the year of 1971 the psychological operations continued, and the most used method was the use of agents, located in Cuba, that spread misleading information, through rumors, among the citizens. This occurs mainly through combining false information concerning the real problems that the nation was going through at that time, in order to create doubts and insecurities among the Cuban population. For this purpose of psychological warfare, radio programs— broadcasted from Florida on short- and medium-wave frequencies that were specially designed for Cuba—played an important role. These broadcasts called for civil disobedience, economic sabotage, attacks toward the main leaders and armed resistance against the Revolutionary government, by offering all kinds of necessary support from abroad. In the late 1971, and infuenced by the insurrectional calls of the counterrevolutionary radio stations in Florida, a group of 14 ex-collaborators of bandits and common criminals attempted to organize an act of armed uprising on the hill of Grillo, in the municipality of Madruga close to Havana. In February the following year, the entire group was captured. Connected to this event it is interesting to know what the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, Charles A. Meyer, reported in writing to the Undersecretary for Political Affairs, U. Alexis Johnson, on August 13, 1971. In the document, Meyer expressed his opinion on a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) memorandum, dated May 24, 1971, addressed to Committee 40,10 of the National Security Council, entitled “Radio Programming Targeted at Cuban Youth and Its Potential for Attracting Selected Youth Audiences Elsewhere in Latin America,” in which the CIA proposed the continuation of radio broadcasts, from stations in the Caribbean area, aimed at Cuban youth. Charles Mayer stressed that these broadcasts “[…] are prepared by a CIA proprietary, but have the appearance of a purely commercial venture.”11 Mayer also stated that: The program content is intended to suggest that political and social progress is taking place in Latin America in ways foreclosed to

Psychological Warfare: Radio Broadcasts  119 authoritarian societies such as Cuba. The aim is to develop skepticism and dissent toward their society among Cuban youth, but in a manner that is low key and that will not provoke active opposition and consequent repression. The appeal of the program is broad and not confined to Cuba; mail reaction shows that the youth of other countries (including Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama and El Salvador) are listening to and are being attracted by the series.12 Although Meyer could not assure the effectiveness of the programs, he recommended to Undersecretary Johnson the support, in Committee 40, that this project should be continued as proposed in the CIA memorandum.13 The continuation of the programs was approved in April 1972, at a total estimated cost of $560.000 for the following two years.14 The great expenses of the radio broadcasts required having a supervision of the reception of the radio signal and the effectiveness of its programs in the Cuban population to fulfill its subversive objectives. In the 1960s, the CIA and the USIA15 interviewed thousands of Cuban emigrants who arrived in Florida to know about the receptivity of these broadcasts. They also conducted detailed surveys of program preferences with the aim of determining the specific audience for each radio station. However, some USIA officials were suspicious of the results of those studies, because the responses obtained in the surveys came from people who had chosen to leave Cuba, and almost all of them were positive toward anti-Cuban broadcasts. On May 15, 1968, the CIA closed the longest-running anti-Castro station, Radio América, located on Cisne Island (Swan). It was founded in May 1960 with the name of Cuba Libre, but the name was changed to Radio Swan shortly after the failure of the mercenary invasion at the Bay of Pigs. This subversive CIA station broadcasted on the short- and long-wave bands—under the coverage of the so-called Cuban Freedom Committee (CFC)—and during its years of existence, it dedicated itself to launching strong counterrevolutionary campaigns of false rumors and provide its listeners with instructions how to execute sabotages. The CFC also operated four other radio stations broadcasting toward Cuba—in Florida: WGBS and WKWF; in New Orleans: WWL; and in the Dominican Republic: Radio Santo Domingo—and these five stations broadcasted a total of 15 hours a day of anti-Cuban propaganda. In December 1968, the official government radio station Voice of America (VOA) began broadcasting programs tailored especially for Cuban listeners, one of which was “Cita con Cuba” [Meeting with Cuba]. To achieve greater efficiency of the broadcastings of VOA, an amplitude modulation (AM) transmitter was located in Cape Marathon, Florida. The reception and audience of this station was verified by the interrogation of the thousands of Cuban “refugees” upon their arrival

120 Other Secret Actions toward Cuba in Florida. These surveys, however, were not entirely reliable. Another check used by the CIA and the USIA was obtaining information provided by diplomatic representatives of nations allied to the U.S. accredited in Cuba. Frequently, the USIA also used to determine the reception of these broadcasts with information gained from the U.S. vessels that surrounded the Cuban archipelago, in particular those of the U.S. Federal Coast Guard. This is demonstrated in a declassifed report from the Offce of the Director of Engineering, of the USIA, on the “Reception of VOA Transmissions in the Cuban Area,” dated March 1971.16 But the interesting thing about the aforementioned document was that it also presented the actions that were taken in Cuba against this type of aggression. The study was conducted between February 23 and 27, 1971, aboard a U.S. Coast Guard cutter from a point in the Florida Strait 25 miles north of Havana, and it extended along 210 miles east of the coastline. In the investigation, a Nordmende transistorized radio receiver of the type used in many Cuban household was used. The research resulted in “[…] a satisfactory morning and afternoon reception of the VOA Spanish-language program along the route covered by the study.”17 The survey also showed the existence of a blocking transmitter located in the Havana area directed against the medium-wave frequency 1,180 kc/s located at Cape Marathon in Florida. When comparing the study with the measurements made of the signal the previous year, the increase in the power of the blockade was verifed, and it was estimated that it could have a radial power of 500 watts. Therefore, it was obvious that the reception in the city of Havana was not satisfactory. While in other Cuban regions, it was stated that “[…] The Marathon station produced a signal as strong and clear as any other station in the band, including local Cuban stations. No blocker is targeting VOA shortwave frequencies in Spanish.”18 In the aforementioned material, it also emphasized that the blocking transmitter is directed against the medium-wave frequencies of two commercial radio stations located in Miami, Florida. These were the frequency bands: 1.140 kc/s from the WQBA station and 710 kc/s from the WGBS. The document concludes by stating that there was no evidence that Cuba was directing “[…] the blocker against any other shortwave station.”19 At the end of 1972, the psychological war against Cuba began to diminish, since for Washington the events in Cuba were less worrying, even more so, when a treaty with Cuba was being managed to end the air hijackings. However, it was not only that fact that infuenced the behavior of the U.S. administration, rather other international events were infuencing and conditioning the U.S. foreign policy, not at least, the confict in Vietnam and the situation in Latin America and the Caribbean, in particular the covert war against the government of the Popular Unity of Salvador Allende in Chile. Another factor was the signing in May 1972 of the First “Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty” (SALT

Psychological Warfare: Radio Broadcasts 121 I) between the U.S. and the USSR, as well as domestic factors in U.S. politics and society. At the same time President Nixon opposed any type of arrangement that could lead to the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with Cuba and to an end to the economic, commercial and fnancial blockade. In April 1973, the U.S. budget cuts for psychological warfare and propaganda activities toward Cuba lead to that the Voice of America was nearly the only program specifcally designed for the Cuban people continuing its broadcasts. However, at the same time the “Cita con Cuba” program was reduced from one hour to half an hour and was broadcasted twice a day, and in July 1974 the morning broadcast was canceled. This policy was temporary, since, seven years later, with the arrival of the Ronald Reagan administration, the psychological warfare with radio broadcasts toward Cuba was redesigned and increased in volume once again.

Notes 1 “Nota del Ministro de Relaciones Exteriores de Cuba, doctor Raúl Roa García, entregada por el embajador de Cuba en México al Secretario de Relaciones Exteriores de ese país”. Granma (September 15, 1969). 2 Federal Registry, October 2, 1969. See. José Cazañas Reyes and Felipa Suárez Ramos: EE UU vs. CUBA. Más de dos siglos de agresiones (La Habana: Editorial Verde Olivo, 1992), 66. 3 Ibid. 4 “Memorandum for the Record, Washington, March 25, 1970”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 215. 5 Ibid. 6 Federal Registry, Vol. 36, No. 2 (January 5, 1971). 7 Quoted in the editorial of the Granma newspaper entitled “¡A lo que llega el odio y la hostilidad imperialista contra Cuba!” Granma (May 18, 1971), 1 8 Ibid. 9 “Special National Intelligence Estimate 85–71, Washington, April 29, 1971”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 237. 10 Committee 40 was the name adopted by Panel 5412/2 or Committee 303. On February 17, 1970, Nixon decided to change the name of that covert operations approval group to Committee 40, in part because Committee 303 had been revealed by the press. 11 “Memorandum from the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Meyer) to Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (Johnson), Washington, August 13, 1971”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 241. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid.

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14 “Editorial Note”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 194a. 15 USIA: United States Information Agency. 16 Offce of the Engineering Manager, USIA Frequency Division: “Reception of VOA Broadcasts in the Cuban Area”, March 1971. In: Jon Elliston: Psywar on Cuba: The Declassifed History of U.S. Anti-Castro Propaganda (Melbourne/New York: Ocean Press, 1999), 182–187. 17 Ibid., 186. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., 187.

References Cazañas Reyes, J. and Suárez Ramos, F. EE UU vs. CUBA. Más de dos siglos de agresiones (La Habana: Editorial Verde Olivo, 1992). Elliston, J. Psywar on Cuba: The Declassifed History of U.S. Anti-Castro Propaganda (Melbourne: Ocean Press, 1999). Federal Registry, Vol. 36, No. 2 (January 5, 1971). Granma (September 15, 1969). Granma (May 18, 1971). U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018).

9

Pirate Warfare Harassment of Fishermen

During the Nixon administration, the harassment of Cuban fshing vessels and their crews was a form of economic aggression carried out by the U.S. Navy and by the U.S. Coast Guard. In their daily business, Cuban fshermen had to endure and confront illegal detentions, heavy fnes and prison terms imposed in Florida-rigged trials under the false accusation of fshing in U.S. territorial waters. To this also was added the danger to their lives caused by the kidnappings and the destruction of their boats by the criminal activities of the counterrevolutionary groups acting from the U.S. All these actions as a whole—as part of the economic war—were aimed at pressuring the Cuban authorities to abandon the right of fshing in the international waters of the Gulf of Mexico, thus hindering basic food products to reach the Cuban population and making the country’s fshing activity more expensive. The pirate action carried out on May 10, 1970, by the counterrevolutionary group Alpha 66 against the Plataforma I and Plataforma IV fshing vessels, has already been presented in Chapter 6. Within the context of the confictive relations between the U.S. and Cuba, the frst semester of 1971 was characterized by the siege and seizure of Cuban fshing vessels by the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard in the international waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The frst episode of this kind took place on the night of February 24, 1971, when four Cuban fshing vessels were seized by the Coast Guard of Cape York, south of the Dry Tortuga islets, and forced to navigate to Key West (Cape Hueso), accused arbitrarily for fshing in the territorial waters of the U.S. The group of Cuban vessels detained was made up of the four fshing vessels—Lambda 102, Lambda 91, Lambda 54 and Sondero 25—in which 50 fshermen, all belonging to the Flota del Golfo [Gulf Fleet], carried out their work. Later it was learned from international news agencies that, on the morning of the February 25, three of the vessels had been released due to lack of evidence and were being escorted into international waters by the Coast Guard. The spokesman for the Federal Coast Guard Service told the reporters that they had decided to retain the Lambda 102 fshing vessel and its crew, according to orders received from Washington.1 Hours later, international news agencies reported

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Figure 9.1 Attack on the Cuban fshing vessel Plataforma IV, October 10, 1972. Source: Archive of the Institute of Cuban History, Havana, used with permission.

that when the released vessels were escorted to international waters by the Coast Guard, they were once again seized by local Florida Marine Patrols, detained on charges that they were fshing in the jurisdictional waters of Florida. The information from these news agencies also refers to the discrepancy between the U.S. federal and state authorities regarding the maritime fshing limits. Meanwhile, the U.S. claims as territorial limits up to 3 miles and fshing limits up to 12 miles; the State of Florida demands a greater distance for fshing rights. Recently—according to United Press International (UPI)—the State of Florida claimed vast stretches of up to 100 miles from the mainland in the Gulf of Mexico. “The dispute over maritime boundaries […] is pending before the United States Supreme Court.”2 During that detention, the U.S. press agencies reported that there existed a disagreement between the Coast Guard and the Florida Marine Patrol. Lieutenant E. G. Little, of the Coast Guard, declared that when escorting the three Cuban vessels, the Florida Marine Patrol showed an aggressive attitude toward the Coast Guard boats, when they insisted on making an arrest. The offcer responsible tried to justify this arbitrary action by stating, “We had waited a long time for this. The fshing of Cuban boats at the coast of Florida does a lot of damage to the commercial fshing in

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the state.”3 The 49 Cuban fshermen, making up the crew of the vessels, were detained in Key West. The captains of the fshing boats Lambda 91, Lambda 54 and Sondero 25 were arrested by Florida authorities on the charge of fshing commercially within the waters of Florida. While Captain Bartolomé Llambia Leiro, from the Lambda 102 vessel, also was accused by the federal agency for fshing in U.S. territorial waters. Referring to this incident, a spokesman from the U.S. Department of State stressed that they were examining the legality of the Florida Maritime Patrol’s decision to seize the Cuban vessels. However, it seems as if the litigation was resolved quickly, since it was a problem that involved Cuba, so beyond a matter of legality it was primarily a political matter. On Friday, February 26, UPI announced the withdrawal of the Florida charges against the three Cuban captains, following the promise of the federal government to “[…] prosecute them under the accusation of a violation of U.S. territorial waters.”4 This is in contradiction with the previous statement on the eventual illegality of the capture of the Cuban vessels and the judging of the captain of the fourth vessel. The Florida Governor Rubin Askew told the Associated Press (AP) that he had ordered the charge against the fshermen of the Cuban vessels to be dropped since the federal authorities had promised to prosecute them. He added that “The orders, which I have given, have followed the instructions of the White House.”5 However, the most disgusting part of the judicial handling of the case against the 49 Cuban fshermen, mostly under 21 years of age, was the attitude of blackmailing of the Monroe County prosecutor, Nathan Eaton, who promised to drop all the charges against them if they applied for political asylum in the U.S. This blackmail did not work due to the frm position of principle that the fshermen showed.6 To this was added mistreatment and acts of provocation. According to the accounts of the fshermen, groups of women provocatively dressed summoned them to desert: “Women with bare breasts or with transparent cloths approached the Key West pier day by day and cried: Stay, stay! You will have a house, money, food, a refrigerator! If you marry me, I have a fridge and an apartment! […]”.7 This general situation was not alien or unknown by the highest authorities of the U.S., as it was a part of their anti-Cuban policy, as evidenced in a memorandum from Henry Kissinger to President Richard Nixon, on March 2, in which Kissinger summarized the solution of the confict, when he expressed, “It now appears that the problem created by the seizure of four Cuban fshing boats for fshing within the 12 mile limit will be resolved within the next several days.”8 Kissinger recalled how the confict arose: […] the Coast Guard seized one vessel and the Florida Marine Patrol seized an additional three boats which were being escorted outside

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Other Secret Actions toward Cuba territorial waters by the Coast Guard at the time. […] potentially serious problem between ourselves and the Cubans and also a problem of confict between state and federal authority. The affair was partially untangled late last week when the State of Florida ceded jurisdiction to the federal government over the three vessels it had captured providing the federal government agreed to prosecute.9

Precisely in this aspect one can fnd the key to the confict, namely, a clash of interest between two U.S. authorities. According to the federal maritime authorities of the Coast Guard, there was only a “charge” of a single vessel and not of all four; however, it resigned as a consequence of the pressure from the Florida state authorities and from the Cuban counterrevolutionary groups that were sheltering in that state. Kissinger informed Nixon that the Cuban government, through its representatives, was willing to pay the $25.500 in fees and fnes to free the crews and the vessels. Despite this the Cuban government denied that the vessels were fshing inside the 12 miles limit and they also referred to the U.S. action as blackmail.10 Kissinger also stressed that: It is possible that the Cubans will retaliate at the frst opportunity, perhaps when the next US-airliner is hijacked to Cuba. Charges equaling the amount of fnes paid in this case may be levied against the aircraft. In addition charges equaling the $5,000 a day which the Cuban Government claims the arrest of the four vessels has cost the Cuban economy may be levied. It is also possible that the aircraft and its crew may be held for a time equaling that which the Cuban vessels were held in Florida.11 Consequently, on March 2, the four Cuban captains—Bartolomé Llambia Leiro, Eliseo Soto Fuente, Roberto García Reyes and Humberto Martínez—appeared before the Court of the Southern District of Florida, after having spent six days in prison. The Court ordered the release of the four detainees, by paying fnes of $3.000 for each captain, $7.500 for Lambda 102 and $2.000 for each of the remaining vessels. In total the payment amounted to $25.500.12 Throughout the judicial process the captains did not admit to have any responsibility for the accusations made against them. The initial litigation that occurred between the U.S. authorities themselves was a sign of the illegality of the process. The Granma newspaper, the offcial organ of the Communist Party of Cuba, on March 3, 1971, presented the position of the highest Cuban political authorities concerning this affair: The Government of Cuba understands that no violation of the jurisdictional waters and the fshing zone of the United States has been

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committed, and since it is known that our interest is to avoid this type of incidents, and since we are basing our policy in a rigorous respect of the jurisdiction and limits indicated by the coastal countries, this event could easily have been avoided if the Government of the United States had been encouraged by the same purposes. The capture of the four fshing vessels, in addition, caused serious damage to the Cuban economy, amounting to around fve thousand dollars a day, apart from the sum already paid. In holding the Government of the United States responsible for it, the Revolutionary Government of Cuba will demand the corresponding compensation. The decision to pay the aforementioned amount was taken by our Government, in the circumstances of fnding the captains imprisoned and the boats being held. Neither the captains of the ships nor the Cuban Government have accepted the veracity of the accusations, nor the moral and legal legitimacy of the payments that have been made. Therefore, the release and freedom of the captains and the ships have been possible without any acknowledgment of guilt by the Cuban side. This action of the imperialist Government of the United States constitutes an arbitrary act, in clear detriment of the legitimate rights and interests of the Cuban people. Given this, the Revolutionary Government of Cuba reaffrms its invariable purpose, in the exercise of its sovereignty, to continue carrying out fshing tasks in all seas, respecting the provisions established by the coastal countries in relation to their jurisdictional waters and natural resources.13 After being released, the Cuban fshermen moved to the fshing area to complete their fshing plans. During that work, which lasted until March 24, they were surrounded by U.S. Coast Guard units. On March 25, they arrived at their port of origin in the municipality of Regla, in Havana, that functioned as the base for the Gulf Fleet. However, the harassment of Cuban fshing vessels had not stopped. At the same time as the judicial process against the Cuban fshermen in Florida was developing, vessels from the U.S. Navy surrounded and inspected the fshing areas of other Cuban vessels. For example, the fshing vessel Lambda 19 reported—at 9 a.m. on March 2—the approach of a U.S. Navy ship. It was the U.S. Coast Guard ship number 322, which was sailing approximately one mile away, but the Cuban vessel was located in international waters, 30 miles from Dry Tortuga.14 In this context, it did not take long before a new incident occurred. In the afternoon hours of May 26, 1971, four Cuban fshing vessels, belonging to Lambdas 110 and 107 of the Gulf Fleet, and its eight crew members, were intercepted and seized by Coast Guard 6–23 Steadfast, when executing their usual fshing tasks in international waters, 35 miles west of Dry Tortuga.15 The fshermen and the four vessels were frst

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taken to Key West and later to Miami. It was learned shortly afterward by a radio broadcast that four fshermen had been brought before a federal court and the remaining four would be returned to Cuba. It was also learned that the court had set the fne of each of the accused crew members to $10.000.16 This new provocation was grotesque and arbitrary. The U.S. authorities did not have the slightest shyness to present simple fshermen who carried out their tasks in small auxiliary vessels of the lambdas as captains. The accused fshermen—Gustavo Céspedes, Gilberto del Sol, Pedro Sánchez Pietro and Jorge Peña Atucha, aged 19, 21, 23 and 18, respectively—declared themselves not guilty to the charges, and their trial was set to June 7. Faced with the new aggressions, the Cuban government remained frm in its right of fshing in international waters, and in its decision not to be blackmailed. An example of this determination was the formidable attitude assumed by the fshermen of Lambda 110 and 107 who continued their work in the area where the aggression occurred, despite the siege of U.S. ships and aircrafts.17 The crews of Sondero 26 and Lambda 102 faced the same situation in the vicinity of that place. That attitude and determination were manifested not only by the fshermen of those vessels but by the entire Fleet, for instance, by Lamda 14, 19 and 63 and Sondero 27 that on May 29 started fshing in the same area. In the afternoon of June 7, when the jury decided upon the four Cuban fshermen, their defense attorneys complained about the rights violated at the time of their arrest. At no time, and in accordance with U.S. laws, were their rights explained to them, nor was the cause of their detention communicated to them. For instance, they were never informed about their rights to appoint an advocate. Even if Judge William O. Mehrtens rejected the ridiculous accusation of the prosecution of accusing them of possession of weapons, in this case harpoons and other instruments used in their work,18 all the irregularities of the case were not taken into account. Irregularities were enough to immediately release them, since the falsity of the accusation that was imputed to them was easily verifable. The jury needed two and a half days to reach a guilty verdict, despite the evident contradictions that existed in the statements of the main prosecution witnesses. The entire judicial process was characterized by its irregularities, its partiality and its haste. On the afternoon of June 9, Judge Mehrtens issued the conviction of six months’ imprisonment and the exaggerated fnes of $10.000 each. After the sentence, the judge hypocritically stated, “I realize that you are innocent victims of the circumstances and policies of your country, but the matter cannot be lightly addressed. The court cannot condone your activities.”19 Following a shameless blackmail attitude, the judge declared that within the next ten days he could appear to reconsider the penalties imposed. And he added, if “[…]

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the Government of Cuba pays the fnes, he would take the circumstances into account.”20 The four convicted young fshermen disagreed with the court’s ruling and sentence, and their defense attorney stated on their behalf, “[…] Their decision to be imprisoned with the objective of not allowing the Cuban Government to spend this money, since they consider it important to cover other needs in the country.”21 The Revolutionary government instructed the defense attorney not to appeal the sentence: “[…] the American courts are not worthy of consideration or trust, since they are at the service of the interests of imperialism, as has been clearly demonstrated in this criminal and shameful aggression.”22 When explaining to the Cuban people the position adopted by the government in this case, unlike what happened in March, Fidel Castro stressed: […] Previously there had already been arbitrary arrests on the high seas, and outside the exclusive fshing zones of the United States, a few months ago, of a group of fshermen. Well, on that occasion they were imprisoned and the question of the fne was raised, that is, the payment of a fne, and on that occasion, to avoid prolonging the stay of those fshermen in prison, and while we were fguring out if there was an error, a dispute between the state of Florida and the Federal Government, or what it was, it was decided to pay certain amounts established before the trial to free the fshermen. However, just a few weeks had passed and once again: 35 miles from Dry Tortuga, the illegal and arbitrary arrest of a group of Cuban fshermen by United States naval units occurred again. On this occasion it was already clear to us that if the procedure of paying the fnes was followed— as one of the fshermen said here—the moment would come when they would be arrested at the exit at the Morro. [the entrance to the port of Havana] And in these conditions, we did not want to accept any formula similar to the previous one. We said that it was their responsibility. Therefore, we refuse to pay that arbitrary and unilateral imposition. 23 The results of the unfair trial of the four fshermen determined the Cuban government’s decision to transfer fve crew members of two U.S. vessels that violated the jurisdictional waters of Cuba, and landed on the coasts of the country, to the revolutionary courts. The frst of these vessels arrived in Cayo Mégano, in the north of the old province of Las Villas, in the late hours of the night of May 22, 1971. It was operated by Fritz Tyson Sprandel, who, when arrested, carried several cameras. He claimed that he was engaged in sports practices and that he had landed in Cuba driven by the streams of the Gulf of Mexico. The Cuban authorities seized the cameras, suspecting that they could be used in espionage activities.

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The second vessel landed at Cayo Cruz, in the old province of Oriente, in the afternoon of June 6. It was a 58-foot yacht, fully equipped with communication media, manned by the four U.S. citizens: Lawrence Alambender, Michael Leigh Pender, Thomas Joseph Maguire and Bernard Bender, who alleged that they were on a tourist trip through the Caribbean. In both cases, the vessels and the crews entered without authorization into the jurisdictional waters of Cuba and landed in Cuban territory where they were arrested. 24 In the early hours of June 8—in front of the port of Vita in the Holguín region—a third U.S. vessel also entered into Cuban jurisdictional waters. It was a tugboat that was towing a barge with a load capacity of 6.500 tons. The captain declared that he had mechanical problems with the vessel, and therefore, it was taken to the port of Vita to receive assistance. The crew consisted of eight members. The U.S. Coast Guard requested authorization to enter Cuban jurisdictional waters in order to assist the aforementioned ship, but was not authorized, since the vessel was already receiving assistance. At the end of the repair, after paying the expenses for the Cuban services, the tugboat and the barge continued its travel. The position of the Cuban government, facing the new aggressions of the frst two vessels, was clearly explained in the Editorial of the Granma newspaper on June 12, when it stated: Once again, Cuba has been the victim of a planned and coldly executed aggression by agents in the service of imperialism, including the federal court. It is not the frst time that the imperialists, blinded by the traditional hatred they possesses against the Cuban Revolution, have embarked on the path of misdeeds, violations and attacks of all kinds against our country, which have always ended up turning against them as a boomerang that has hit them in the face. This time it will happen once again. 25 The penetration of vessels of different types from the U.S. or from other neighboring nations into the Cuban coasts and jurisdictional waters— with or without authorization— happened frequently for different reasons. “We are here like an alligator lying in the middle of the Caribbean, and it is easy for them to get here for multiple reasons,”26 as Fidel Castro explained. When the previous incident occurred, Henry Kissinger himself, on March 2, predicted the results of that aggressive action, stating that “It is possible that the Cubans will retaliate at the frst opportunity […].”27 He was right, since each of the fve crew members, of the two U.S. vessels entering Cuban waters on May 22 and June 6, who were sent to the revolutionary courts was sanctioned to pay $20.000 of fne.28 Subsequently, two new U.S. vessels—Battler and Saturn—with 13 crew members entered into Cuban waters. Maintaining this unsustainable

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situation could have negative consequences for the U.S. since the problem did not originate in essence from a dispute over jurisdictional limits between the two countries, but it was a consequence of the anti-Cuban policy of the U.S. Consequently, on July 6, the U.S. Attorney General asked the federal district court of Miami to suspend the prison sentences that the four Cuban fshermen had been serving and to reduce the fnes from $10.000 to $2.000 for each of them. For its part, the Revolutionary government ordered the reduction of the fnes imposed on the fve U.S. citizens—who had entered into Cuban national waters—to $2.000 each and issued instructions to the corresponding authorities so that the 13 U.S. crew members of the Battler and the Saturn vessels received all the support to leave the country, once the expenses and services to the crew and the ships had been covered. This proceeding made possible the liberation of the four young Cuban fshermen imprisoned in the U.S., and therefore, it put an end to that annoying problem. However, the threats and risks did not cease, since new incidents occurred, carried out not only by the U.S. Coast Guard but also by counterrevolutionary pirate groups. Simultaneously as the aforementioned events were taking place, other serious incidents were occurring in Cuba, where another battle was being fought—particularly in the province of Havana—in the face of a new aggression. This assault consisted of the deliberate introduction of the African swine fever in Cuba, aimed at causing economic damage toward the country and making it diffcult for Cubans to fnd foodstuff.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Granma (February 26, 1971), 1. Ibid. Ibid. Granma (February 27, 1971), 1. Ibid. Ibid. Granma (March 26, 1971), 15. “Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Nixon, Washington, March 2, 1971”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 235. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Granma (March 3, 1971), 1. Ibid. Ibid. The detained crew members were Gilberto del Sol Rodríguez, Jesús Font Pedroso, Pedro Sánchez Pietro, Eduardo Martínez Robert, Jorge Peña Atucha, Gustavo Céspedes Cabriales, Santiago García Giraudy and Lino Matos Ramírez.

132 Other Secret Actions toward Cuba 16 Granma (May 29, 1971), 1. On May 31, the remaining four fshermen were released, while the four vessels were held in detention after the trial. Granma (June 1, 1971), 1. 17 See messages from Lambda 110 to the headquarters of the Gulf Fleet published in Granma (May 31, 1971), 1. 18 Granma (June 8, 1971), 1. 19 Granma (June 10, 1971), 1. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid., Editorial. 23 Speech delivered by Fidel Castro at the act of reception of the four Cuban fshermen unjustly castigated by the U.S. courts, held in the port of Havana on July 7, 1971. Granma (July 8, 1971). 24 Granma (June 10, 1971), 1. 25 Granma (June 12, 1971), 1. 26 Speech delivered by Fidel Castro at the act of reception of the four Cuban fshermen unjustly castigated by the U.S. courts, held in the port of Havana on July 7, 1971. Granma (July 8, 1971). 27 “Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Nixon, Washington, March 2, 1971”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 235. 28 José Cantón Navarro and Martín Duarte Hurtado: Cuba: 42 años de Revolución. Cronología histórica 1959–1982. Tomo I (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2006), 211.

References Cantón Navarro, J. and Duarte Hurtado, M. Cuba: 42 años de Revolución. Cronología histórica 1959–1982. Tomo I (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2006). Granma (February 26, 1971). Granma (February 27, 1971). Granma (March 3, 1971). Granma (March 26, 1971). Granma (March 29, 1971). Granma (May 31, 1971). Granma (June 1, 1971). Granma (June 8, 1971). Granma (June 10, 1971). Granma (June 12, 1971). Granma (July 8, 1971). U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018).

10 Biological Warfare The African Swine Fever

On June 23, 1971, the Granma newspaper reported the appearance in the province of Havana of a serious disease known as African swine fever, whose virus is highly contagious and usually lethal. It infects only pigs and it is not transmitted to humans. This was the frst outbreak of swine fever in the Western Hemisphere, listed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) as “[…] the most alarming event of 1971.”1 The Granma announced the measures to be taken to prevent the outbreak from spreading to other provinces, including the establishment of a health security strip along the border between Havana and Pinar del Río. That strip would be four kilometers wide and all the pigs within it would be slaughtered. This fact constituted an extraordinary event due to the type of disease. Swine fever was discovered in Kenya in 1910 and was limited to regions of the African continent—south of the Sahara— until the end of the 1950s. In 1957 it spread to Europe, frst to Portugal, from where it went to Spain in 1960 and later to Italy, France, the Netherlands and Belgium. In all these cases, it was quickly eradicated. There was no link that could induce the disease to enter Cuba through a normal route. This was verifed in the scientifc investigations carried out—in parallel to the campaign for its liquidation—of the possible routes or channels of penetration into the country. The investigations included not only epidemiological but also forensic studies. Bones of animals that had died months before the plague were exhumed, and it was verifed in laboratories that the disease had not been present in the national territory before the actual date. In the same way, the impossibility of its introduction through commercial channels, travelers or other causes was precisely determined. The research included the scientifc collaboration of Soviet virologists and the help of specialists from Spain and Canada. The scientifc results corroborated the initial suspicion. Cuba had been the object of a new aggression by the U.S., in this case through a top-secret biological warfare operation, aimed at seriously affecting the Cuban economy. When the Cuban foreign ministry blamed Washington for launching that biological attack, of course, the U.S. Department of State denied that accusation.

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The secret Cuban governmental documentation of this type of operations, considered by the international community as an “attack against humanity,” is very diffcult to declassify, since they remain within the framework of the strictest stately secrets. However, during the passage of time, there appears testimonial evidence within conjunctural political scenarios, and the U.S. media, as well as the U.S. scientifc community, has presented interesting and revealing results and evidences. Therefore, and toward the background of these sources, it can be considered that the intention to use chemical and biological means against the Cuban people, animals and plants in the beginning of the 1970s to cause serious damage to the Cuban economy was not new. Declassifed documents from Operation Mongoose in 1962 show how—among the actions prepared toward Cuba—a plan was drawn up to incapacitate the sugar workers during the harvest, through “the use of chemical warfare substances.”2 Likewise, in a document of the so-called Cuba Project, dated January 18, 1962, 32 tasks appear and one of these—the 21st— states that “[…] CIA to submit plan by February 15 for inducing failures in food crops in Cuba.”3 Although it is not known how this task would be carried out, since part of its formulation is censored in the U.S. documentation. In 1979 the American newspaper The Washington Post revealed that there existed a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) program toward the Cuban agriculture and that, since 1962, specialists manufactured biological agents for these purposes in the laboratories of Pentagon. Therefore, it is not by chance that at the end of that year the viral disease “Newcastle” appeared simultaneously in the hen and chicken population of the provinces of Pinar del Río, Havana and Matanzas and in the eastern region of Cuba, where Cuba had started the accelerated development of a plan for increasing the production of hens and chickens. All the outbreaks of this virus had a common cause, since they arose after the use of a vaccine against fowlpox given to day-old chickens. In the investigations carried out, it was found that this vaccine had been manipulated by contamination with a virulent strain of the Newcastle virus in the then Veterinary Products Laboratories of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA) where it was produced, and this caused the death of more than 1 million birds in Cuba. The economic impact, of meat losses and sanitation expenses, rose to 3.3 million pesos at the current price level. This sabotage action was corroborated in a trial where the personal responsibility was determined.4 Another of the macabre plans of this type that were prepared and were ready to be executed in 1962 was exposed by Judith Miller, William Broad and Stephen Engelberg in their book Germs: Biological Weapons

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and America’s Secret War, published in 2001, 5 revealing the existence of a Pentagon operation, whose code name was “Marshall Plan,” which was to be launched if the U.S. forces had invaded Cuba during the socalled Missile Crisis. The operation consisted of a biological attack to affect millions of Cubans. The authors of the book quote the account of the scientifc director, at Fort Detrick, who assured them that one of the alternatives considered was to spray Cuban troops with the lethal botulinum toxin. This “would be a good cause,” since “it would save the lives of U.S. soldiers” during the invasion. It was a “cocktail” of two germs and biological toxins, explains the authors, which caused extreme nausea, fevers of up to 40 degrees, near those that cause coma and death. He clarifed that it acted like the Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus and the Q fever. Miller further stressed that: Teams at the Pine Bluff—U.S.’s leading chemical weapons plant— brewed hundreds of gallons of this cocktail, enough to fll a pond. The Pine Bluff chief stated: We could mobilize our forces, take the country and that would be it.6 When trying to justify this horrendous plan, the director of Fort Detrick cynically explained the “human aspect,” since it decreased the number of U.S. casualties during the combat. How would that macabre plan be executed? The winds would be used to cover Cuba, since the toxic product would be sprayed from east to west, days before the commencement of the combat actions. This “humanitarian” biological warfare of the U.S. would “only” kill 1%–2% of the population. Since the population at that time was 7 million, it implied the death of between 70.000 and 140.000 Cubans. Miller and her coauthors comment that the Harvard University biologist Matthew Meselson learned of the plan and approached his former colleague McGeorge Bundy, President Kennedy’s presidential adviser on National Security Affairs, to oppose it. Bundy promised him that the “Marshall Plan” would not be considered. Nonetheless, Miller and her coauthors claim that the use of those “[…] germs were maintained in the Pentagon’s war plans,” according to the testimonies from former U.S. offcials.7 These revelations are consistent with information8 sent to Robert Kennedy on March 21, 1962, about the preparations being made in the Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff for a military intervention in Cuba, in the framework of the Operation Mongoose, when it is stressed that such an intervention must occur as quickly as possible and with suffcient force to minimize the reaction period of the Warsaw Pact. It is also stressed that the Cuban forces should be confronted with enough force to reach a quick capitulation for avoiding unnecessary losses of human lives. However, there is also information about a secondary plan that involves a degree of risk.9

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Thus, the idea was to reduce the time for reaction to contingency plans and strengthen the U.S. capacity to penetrate and take power quickly in Cuba. Despite being censored, in the text of the document, it is obvious that at the moment of the activation of the fundamental plan, its effect would make it possible to confront the Cuban forces with “suffcient power to induce an initial capitulation.”10 The document then indicates the existence of a secondary plan, whose name also is censored, that “involves a degree of risk,” and thereafter another line indicating the “risk” is also censored. Perhaps the document refers to the “Marshall Plan” discussed above! The truth is that the U.S. had used biological warfare as one of the main weapons toward Cuba, with the result of noticeable damages to the Cuban economy and with serious implications for the health and lives of many Cubans. In the economic context, this biological warfare has mainly been directed toward the agricultural production, with the aim of sabotaging the population’s food resources and preventing incomes from the export of agricultural products. This has caused considerable economical losses due to the destruction of products and increased expenses for combating the pests and diseases introduced. To these ends, CIA agents repeatedly attempted to contaminate Cuban sugar designed for export. The CIA, in addition to using chemical and biological means to damage the Cuban agricultural production, also used the most advanced technology of those years for modifying the climate. William Blue revealed that the CIA, in the 1960s, undertook a secret investigation project—code named MK-ULTRA—directed toward crops in various countries. Likewise, he asserted, “[…] When Castro tried to mobilize the population to obtain a harvest of ten million tons of sugar […] the CIA sabotaged the harvest by manipulating clouds to produce torrential rains in neighboring provinces and leaving the cane felds dry.”11 A possible biological attack had been denounced—at the beginning of February 1969—by Fidel Castro during an interview with the representative of the interests of the U.S. in Cuba, the Swiss Ambassador Alfred Fischli. Castro told the Ambassador that counterrevolutionary groups established in Florida conspired to introduce and spread the footand-mouth disease in Cuba, with the objective of affecting beef cattle, particularly milk production, and he offered the ambassador to provide a test, based on the preparation taken from a captured infltrate. This information was forwarded to the U.S. authorities on March 11, during a conversation between Ambassador Fischli and the Secretary of State William P. Rogers. The response was that the U.S. did not know of such a plot and that they would oppose something of this type.12 However, the U.S. authorities did nothing to prevent a biological attack from taking place. Quite the contrary, the CIA conspired with Cuban terrorist groups to realize such attack, as was reported—six years

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later—in a journalistic investigation that was published on January 10, 1977, in The San Francisco Chronicle, under the title “CIA Link to Cuban Pig Virus Reported.”13 The article revealed that a U.S. intelligence offcer stressed that, in March 1971, “[…] he was given the virus in a sealed, unmarked container […] with instructions to turn it over to the anti-Castro group.”14 This had happened at Fort Gulick, a military base of the U.S. Army, located in the Panama Canal area, that was also used for CIA training. The article further explained how the virus was transferred from Fort Gulick to Cuba. The U.S. intelligence offcer stressed that the container was given to a person in the Canal Zone, who took it by boat and turned it over to persons aboard a fshing vessel at the Panamanian coast. The source—quoted by the newspaper—clarifes that the substance was not identifed to him until months after the outbreak of the disease in Cuba. Another individual involved in the operation, a Cuban exile, who asked not to be identifed, said he was on the vessel when the virus was put on board, at a point outside Bocas del Toro, Panama. The vessel took the virus to the island of Navassa, a small islet located between Jamaica and Haiti, and from there the container was taken to Cuba and given to other operatives that took it to the U.S. Guantánamo Naval base. This person who was trained by the CIA for special operations and had previously performed missions for the agency said that he had not seen any CIA offcers aboard the vessel when the virus was delivered outside of Panama. However, he added, “We were well paid for this and Cuban exile groups don’t have that kind of money […].”15 He further commented that although he had no proof, such an operation had to be approved by CIA offcials in Washington, and he stressed that “In a case like this, however, though, they would always give them (the CIA offcials in Washington) plausible deniability.”16 A CIA spokesman, Dennis Berend, on a direct question—without denying the agency’s involvement— replied that “We don’t comment on information from unnamed and, at best, obscure sources.”17 According to Cuban research, one of the frst centers of the disease was located near Rancho Boyeros, from where it spread to the entire province of Havana and to some areas of Pinar del Río. As a result of the epidemic, and given the need to prevent its spread to the rest of the country, the Cuban authorities were forced to slaughter more than 500.000 animals, including high-value genetic ones.18 This measure affected the supply of pork meat and its derivatives in the diet of the citizens of Havana. The selection of this moment to provoke the swine epidemic by the CIA was not a coincidence, nor the type of virus used, or the place where it took place in Cuba. The failure of the 1970 harvest to reach the revolutionary goal of 10 million tons in the sugar harvest “[…] appears to have been an important watershed, bringing home to Castro the need for

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more pragmatic economic policies,”19 emphasizes the study of the Department of State and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Further this study stresses that from then on: […] he [Castro] has repeatedly cautioned against overly “idealistic” development goals. […] But Castro has good reasons for feeling defensive and even discouraged over the state of his revolution. He had long promised a marked improvement in living conditions by 1970. In addition, he probably hoped that an economic take-off by 1970 would help to free him from the Soviets. He now realizes, however, that neither is likely for some time to come. At the same time, the Cuban labor force appears tired after more than a decade of economic struggle, and the sugar harvest for 1971 was only 5.9 million tons. 20 The CIA took advantage of those conditions, in the late 1960s, to organize a covert operation, which would cause great economic damage to Cuba and also affect the diet of the people, leading, according to the planners of the operation, to the creation of discontent among the population toward the Revolutionary government for the sanitary management of the meat production. The selection of the African swine fever for the biological attack was not accidental. Other viruses, such as the foot-and-mouth disease directed toward cattle, were discarded since the Cuban health authorities were vigilant for detecting this virus. African swine fever is a viral disease that—when introduced into a territory that has never been previously affected—produces a mortality of virtually 100%. Its discovery is diffcult, and it may confuse the specialists, since it produces symptoms and injuries, similar to other diseases that existed in the country at the time, especially one that was popularly called pintadilla. 21 Being a highly contagious and rapidly spreading disease, it is vital to discover it early. Therefore, the choice of the then province of Havana for the transmission of the virus was not accidental. Since 1969 this province had been chosen to be the center of the development of the country’s livestock branch. With the creation of the Combinado Porcino Nacional (Combined National Pig) industry, a special plan was launched, aimed not only at increasing the breeding but also at achieving—at medium term—the genetic improvement of the native animal mass, through the importation of valuable animals. For this last reason, a pig quarantine center operated in Havana, through which animals from abroad were controlled to prevent the entry of pathogens that would put the country’s health status at risk. No less important for the selection of the capital as the place for the aggression was the existence of the largest urban and population conglomerate in the nation. It was also a usual practice, given the shortage

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of food products and in order to ensure these means for the end of the year festivities and other commemorations or simply for sale, that an appreciable number of the inhabitants in the city had the bad habit of raising pigs privately in yards, on roofs and in unimaginable places of their homes. Of course, this violated all laws and sanitary regulations, sometimes with impunity, under the complicit gaze of neighbors and those who had to enforce those rules. Actually, there existed a lack of a more general awareness of these problems among the population, as well as of the rigor of care concerning the sanitary measures. The infexible and necessary application of the law, in an epidemic like this one, would therefore affect a lot of people—by the confscation of their pigs— causing discomfort and anti-governmental attitudes in the population. The disease became an epidemic on June 17, 1971, when it reached the pig breeding center, Quebrada del Yuro, in the municipality of Bauta. This facility “had more than 11.000 pigs,”22 coming from state agricultural units, cooperatives and private farms, which facilitated the introduction of the virus. The frst investigations began immediately, and when the disease already had reached a certain extent, it was established that it was African swine fever. The Revolutionary government presented all the material, fnancial and human resources for the prompt eradication of the disease. The epidemic was also reported to the UN organizations in charge of these matters, and vigorous sanitary provisions were approved to prevent the virus from spreading to other provinces and neighboring countries. […] it was necessary to slaughter nearly 500.000 pigs, 23 which meant millions in losses for the country’s economy due to the incineration of animals, slaughter cost, campaign expenses, compensation to private producers and damages to the quality of the pig livestock and its future development. 24 Without possible quantifcation, the impact on the diet of the people was profound since this led to a drastic reduction in the pig livestock. 25 The eradication of the epidemic was announced on August 6; up to that date, 36 outbreaks had been located in the province of Havana. 26 The campaign implied the liquidation of all of the pigs held by private breeders and of the majority of the state property farms in the province of Havana, and it took nearly a decade for the breeding of pigs to recover in the affected territories. Despite the losses caused by this biological attack, the country obtained considerable scientifc experience to confront these enemy actions. Laboratories were created and specialists educated for being capable of detecting this virus quickly, as well as for combating the existence of other viruses, bacteria or any other germ that could affect the livestock of pigs and cattle, as well as the agricultural crops.

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Figure 10.1 The burning of slaughtered pigs infected with the African swine fever in July 1971. Source: Archive of the Institute of Cuban History, Havana, used with permission.

The importance of this scientifc potential was revealed when facing, years later, new biological attacks. One of these occurred in January 1980, when the presence of the African swine fever virus was once again discovered and confrmed in the province of Guantánamo and in all the municipalities close to the U.S. Naval base located in that province. What happened this time? If in 1971 Soviet specialists cooperated with Cubans and some Spanish and Canadian scientists participated, in 1980 the confrontation was carried out only by Cubans, since the country had a superior scientifc-technical capacity. In 1971 it took 45 days to eradicate the disease, but in 1980 this was achieved within 21 days. To these data we must add that in this second attack with swine fever, the virus was manipulated in laboratories to confuse the Cuban experts. The idea of the enemy was to avoid the rapid detection of the virus and buy time for it to spread through the eastern mountain ranges, in order to turn it into an endemic disease of the region and hamper the plans for the pig industry that were promoted there. It was no longer a classic virus that could be detected quickly under a microscope […] it was already a transformed virus. Those who had manipulated it—thought that since we were able to detect the frst one, they had to transform it to confuse us in diagnosing the disease. We even saw that, evidently, it had been a virus that had been passed on by birds. 27

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Although the disease was quickly eradicated, the economic effects caused were great: 297.037 pigs had to be slaughtered—the entire pig mass of the provinces of Guantánamo, Santiago de Cuba and Holguín—and considerable expenses had to be incurred in the eradication campaign. The costs were also linked to the compensation of private breeders and losses in foreign trade transactions. However, the most serious effect was that it damaged the prospective development of the pig livestock production, which was an important branch in assuring foodstuff to the Cuban population. 28 These were not the only attacks of this type against Cuba in the 1970s. From 1978, it had been detected that the country was the object of new biological attacks. The frst, in September 1978, occurred in the province of Holguín, where the disease of sugarcane rust appeared— one of the most aggressive diseases of that plant—that spread throughout the country. This disease severely damaged the sugarcane variety Barbados-4362, which was then predominant in the plantations. It was necessary to demolish 34% of the area planted with sugarcane, and that variety needed to be replaced by others with greater resistance to the disease, but at the same time these had a lower value for the agricultural industry. Another biological attack that caused great economic damage occurred in November 1979, when the plague of blue fungus was detected in the tobacco felds in the province of Villa Clara, and that fungus soon spread rapidly throughout the plantations. Its rapid dispersion over wide areas allowed determining that the fungi could have been deliberately spread via the air. In the last few decades of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21th century, Cuba had to face repeated biological attacks against plants and animals. However, the most criminal action was the one taking place in 1981, the year in which the Dengue hemorrhagic fever epidemic broke out, which in a few weeks costed 158 citizens their lives, 101 of them girls and boys, at the same time as 344.203 people were affected. The epidemic of hemorrhagic conjunctivitis was another of the diseases introduced in those years toward the Cuban population, which, if not attended, can lead to blindness. However, the scientifc potential developed by the Cuban Revolution allowed it to combat all these pests and diseases. In 1984, the U.S. citizen of Cuban origin, Eduardo Víctor Arocena Pérez, confessed before a federal court in New York City—that tried him for a murder he had committed—to being the head of a terrorist action group, belonging to the counterrevolutionary organization Omega 7, who was dedicated to “[…] obtain certain germs and introduce them into Cuba […].” Perhaps Arocena was trying with that revelation to receive certain impunity for the homicide that he was charged with. Both the federal judge and the prosecutor in the case ignored this criminal confession and did not order the opening of an investigation, of this

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violation of the U.S. laws.29 This has been the general way of acting of the authorities of the U.S. toward the criminal activities of those groups that they have protected. In summary—between 1971 and 1972—the actions of economic and psychological warfare continued as the main lines of the offcial policy of the U.S. toward Cuba. Among them, the radio broadcasts with counterrevolutionary content aimed at spreading rumors and discontent with the Revolutionary government among the Cuban population. The constant harassment of the U.S. Federal Coast Guards and the Coast Guards of Florida toward the fshing vessels of the Cuban Gulf Fleet also caused serious incidents in the relations between the two countries in 1971. However, the most terrible action toward the Cuban economy was the introduction of the African swine fever, and this act was followed by others including means of biological warfare with viruses that affected animals, plants and humans in that decade and in those that followed.

Notes 1 Granma (July 7, 1971), 1. 2 U.S. Senate: “Interim Report of the Select Committee of the United States Senate to Study Government Operations Related to Intelligence Activities”, 94 Congress, 1st Session, Report No. 94-465 (Washington: United States Government Press, 1975, Volume II), K10–K11. 3 “Program Review by the Chief of Operations, Operation Mongoose (Lansdale), Washington, January 18, 1962”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1961–1963, Vol. X, Cuba, January 1961–September 1962 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 291. 4 Enrique A. Silveira Prado and Alfredo Pérez Amores: Historia del Agroterrorismo de Estados Unidos de América contra Cuba (La Habana: REDVET, Revista electrónica de Veterinaria, Vol. 11 Nº 03B, Marzo/2010), 3. 5 Judith Miller, William J. Broad and Stephen Engelberg: Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War (London: Simon & Schuster, 2001). 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 8 Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Meetings and Memoranda Series, Special Group (Augmented), Operation Mongoose, 2/62-4/62. See also: Tomás Diez Acosta: La Guerra Sucia Contra Cuba (Tomo 1) (La Habana: Editora Política, 2018), 189–193. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11 William Blue: Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (Monroe: Common Courage Press, 1995). 12 “Memorandum of Conversation, Washington, March 11, 1969, 2:45 p.m.” U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 197. 13 “CIA Link to Cuban Pig Virus Reported”. In: The San Francisco Chronicle (January 10, 1977).

The African Swine Fever 14 15 16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23

24 25 26

27

28 29

143

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Enrique A. Silveira Prado and Alfredo Pérez Amores: Historia del Agroterrorismo de Estados Unidos de América contra Cuba (La Habana: REDVET, Revista electrónica de Veterinaria, Vol. 11 Nº 03B, Marzo/2010), 3. “Abstract of Research Study Produced in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Washington, October 1, 1971”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 244. Ibid. Enrique A. Silveira Prado and Alfredo Pérez Amores: Historia del Agroterrorismo de Estados Unidos de América contra Cuba (La Habana: REDVET, Revista electrónica de Veterinaria, Vol. 11 Nº 03B, Marzo/2010), 4. Ibid. According to the experts Emerio Serrano Ramírez, Manuel Toledo Pórtela and Carlos Emilio Delgado Pórtela in the Informe Pericial sobre daños causados a la población animal productiva de nuestro país por enfermedades introducidas por acción enemiga entre noviembre de 1962 a abril de 1996. (2000) [“Expert Report on damages caused to the productive animal population of our country by diseases introduced by enemy action between November 1962 to April 1996. March 2000] in the case before the Provincial Court of the City of Havana, they indicate that a total of 470.554 pigs were slaughtered—of them a total of 45.706 were incinerated and 424.848 pigs were used by the industry. The expenses were added to a total of $10.027.536.15, in the value of dollars at that time. Ibid. Enrique A. Silveira Prado and Alfredo Pérez Amores: Historia del Agroterrorismo de Estados Unidos de América contra Cuba (La Habana: REDVET, Revista electrónica de Veterinaria, Vol. 11 Nº 03B, Marzo/2010), 4. Emerio Serrano Ramírez, Manuel Toledo Pórtela and Carlos Emilio Delgado Pórtela: “Informe Pericial sobre daños causados a la población animal productiva de nuestro país por enfermedades introducidas por acción enemiga entre noviembre de 1962 a abril de 1996”. In: Aguirrechu, I. (ed.) Demanda del Pueblo Cubano contra el Gobierno de Estados Unidos por Daños Económicos ocasionados a Cuba (La Habana: Editora Política, 2000). 73–87. Enrique A. Silveira Prado and Alfredo Pérez Amores pointed out that “In Spain it took 5 years to free the country from the African swine fever, while France achieved it in 4 years”. Enrique A. Silveira Prado and Alfredo Pérez Amores: Historia del Agroterrorismo de Estados Unidos de América contra Cuba (La Habana: REDVET, Revista electrónica de Veterinaria, Vol. 11 Nº 03B, Marzo/2010), 5. Ibid. File 2 FBINY 185-1009, 1984. 2189.

References Blue, W. Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (Monroe: Common Courage Press, 1995). Diez Acosta, T. La Guerra Sucia Contra Cuba (Tomo 1) (La Habana: Editora Política, 2018).

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Granma (July 7, 1971). Miller, J., Broad, W.J. and Engelberg, S. Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War (London: Simon & Schuster, 2001). Serrano Ramírez, E., Toledo Pórtela, M. and Emilio Delgado Pórtela, C. “Informe Pericial sobre daños causados a la población animal productiva de nuestro país por enfermedades introducidas por acción enemiga entre noviembre de 1962 a abril de 1996”. In: Aguirrechu, I. (ed.) Demanda del Pueblo Cubano contra el Gobierno de Estados Unidos por Daños Económicos ocasionados a Cuba (La Habana: Editora Política, 2000). Silveira Prado, E.A. and Pérez Amores, A. Historia del Agroterrorismo de Estados Unidos de América contra Cuba (La Habana: REDVET, Revista electrónica de Veterinaria, Vol. 11 Nº 03B, Marzo/2010). The San Francisco Chronicle (January 10, 1977). U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1961–1963, Vol. X, Cuba, January 1961–September 1962 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018). U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018). U.S. Senate. “Interim Report of the Select Committee of the United States Senate to Study Government Operations Related to Intelligence Activities”, 94 Congress, 1st Session, Report No. 94-465 (Washington: United States Government Press, 1975, Volume II), K10–K11.

Part V

The Decline of the Counterrevolutionary Groups Despite the continuation of the activities of the counterrevolutionary groups abroad, especially in the U.S. where they received the covert support of the Nixon administration, a decrease in their terrorist and subversive actions directed against objectives in Cuba could be noted from the end of 1971. One of the factors behind this decrease was the fact that their setbacks were increasingly evident for everyone involved, but the decline in activities such as the harassment and attacks on Cuban fshing vessels, and coastal terrorism and infltration was also a consequence of the increased effectiveness of the Cuban authorities, not at least the Frontier Guard Troops [Las Tropas Guardafronteras] of the Ministry of the Interior, in detecting and impeding these criminal acts. Another factor that also had a reducing effect, at least from February 1973, was the signing of the U.S.-Cuban “Memorandum of Understanding on Hijacking of Aircraft and Vessels and Other Offenses.” During the Nixon administration, the plans concerning the assassination of Fidel Castro and other Cuban offcials, with the active use of counterrevolutionary groups, also continued to be created. However, all these attempts failed, due to the active surveillance of the Cuban population and the work of the Cuban intelligence and counterintelligence. Thus, during the frst years of the 1970s, it was obvious that the illusions that the counterrevolutionary groups and organizations based in the U.S. had presented to the Nixon administration, and not at least to the president himself, of reversing the situation in Cuba and returning to the conditions that existed in the beginning of the 1960s were frustrated. The time of the “dirty war” that intended to overthrow the Cuban Revolution with violent means had ended.

11 The Failure of the Torriente Plan

One of the failed projects was the Torriente Plan. Throughout 1970, its main leader, José Elías de la Torriente, and his closest acolytes with impunity violated the U.S. neutrality law, by continuing with their propaganda campaigns and announcements of the preparations for an invasion of Cuba. They made tours of cities in the U.S., in particular where there existed huge populations of Cuban emigrants, in order to collect money. In 1971 fnance committees were established in these cities to make the collection work more effective. Proselytizing and promotional activities were the main characteristic of the actions of this new counterrevolutionary creation. José Elías de la Torriente also made a tour of Latin America in June 1970 with the purpose of gathering support from the governments of Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Paraguay, Uruguay, Venezuela and Costa Rica. On his return to Miami, he announced to the press the success of his efforts with the Latin American leaders. These exaggerated statements were later discovered to be totally false, since in Buenos Aires, La Paz and Asunción, he only met with low-ranking offcials, while in Brazil, Uruguay and Peru he did not meet with any offcial contact at all. As for the presidents José Figueres, of Costa Rica, and Rafael Calderas, of Venezuela, they only spoke courteously for a few minutes with Torriente.1 The high-sounding declarations of Torrente reached their extreme, when in December 1970, he affrmed that his fghters—members of the so-called Frente de Liberación Nacional Cubano (FLNC) [National Front for the Liberation of Cuba]—had short- and medium-range remote-controlled rockets that they would use to defeat the Revolution in Cuba. These senile confessions provoked mockery among the Cuban exiles, since it was unreasonable to think that any country in the region, or in the world, that possessed that type of weapon was going to deliver it to Torriente. 2 By the late 1970s, the “Unity Pact” or the Torriente Plan began to be less interesting for the U.S. special services and their initial support began to wane, in favor for its “psychological warfare” operations. The “Unity Pact” was slowly disintegrating with the gradual departure of the organizations and groups that it initially consisted of. Perhaps this

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decline in the support from the U.S. government explains the strange silence in which Torriente fell, between January and September 1971, compared to the propagandistic noise he generated the previous year. In those months, he dedicated himself to support the groups that still remained by his side and asking for fnancial help from some sectors of the U.S. society and from the Cuban exiles.3 The decline of infuence of the Torriente Plan in the counterrevolutionary feld led him to organize the pirate attack of October 12, 1971 against the small hamlet of Boca de Samá, on the eastern coast of Cuba. This criminal action led to that two persons, Lidio Rivafecha Galano and Ramón A. Siam Portelles, lost their lives, and that four people, Carlos Escalante Gómez, Jesús Igarza Osorio and the sisters Ángela and Nancy Pavón, 13 and 15 years old, respectively, were injured. The last injured in one foot by a 50 Caliber bullet, which caused the amputation of her foot. This attack was carried out at the request of José Elías de la Torriente to an FLNC command under the leadership of Antonio “Tony” Iglesia, who was a former offcer of the armored battalion of the defeated Bay of Pigs mercenary brigade.4 Upon learning of the event, at dawn on the October 13, the Cuban military command instructed the air force to immediately explore the area, and it was discovered, more than 100 miles from Cuba, that a highly suspicious merchant ship was heading in the direction of the Bahamas channel, on its way to Florida, and photographs were taken.

Figure 11.1 Nancy Pavón, a victim of the counterrevolutionary attack at Boca de Samá, October 12, 1971. Source: Archive of the Institute of Cuban History, Havana, used with permission.

148 Decline of Counterrevolutionary Groups Although there was a suspicion that the ship had participated in the event, the air force was ordered not to act against the ship to avoid any possibility of error. If the results of that action caused the full outrage of Cuba, this would be even greater when the statement of José Elías de la Torriente was known. On October 18, his organization was responsible for an event at the National Club of Republican Women, in the city of New York, and an Associated Press (AP) cable, dated that day, pointed out that Torriente made a strong statement during a press conference held at the event. In this statement he offered a detailed report of the commando action of members of his organization at Samá, and he stressed that his organization had the men and equipment necessary to make each future operation a victory, and that the so-called Castro fortress was very vulnerable. In another part of his statement, he stressed that this was the beginning of a war in which his organization had the sympathy of the majority of the Latin American nations.5 It seems that Torriente was not satisfed with the two dead and the three wounded, including two girls. He also lay when he stressed that they had destroyed “a power plant and a radio station.” He stated unequivocally that “this is the beginning of a war” against Cuba. Although—as Carlos Rivero Collado writes—the objective of this propaganda show was clearly stated, when Torriente expressed at the end of his speech, that acts “like those of Samá will be repeated and will be more important as the months go by and we can have more economic resources,”6 that is, receive more money for his lucrative business. What was the reaction of the U.S. authorities to this event, organized and prepared within its territory, in fagrant violation of its laws? None. Only a memorandum from Ashley Hewitt—written a day after the attack and addressed to General Alexander Haig, who was then the Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs—shows knowledge of the act. This demonstrates the impunity for these terrorist groups, since the main concern of these U.S. authorities was not the criminal action but the relationship that could exist between it and the movement toward Cuba of a squadron of Soviet naval vessels. In the material it was stated that the two events were not related. Although two recommendations of the Department of State are noted, “[…] that a thorough investigation be made of this raid. […] that State be authorized to once again remind Cuban exiles that the U.S. will enforce its laws pertaining to this kind of thing.”7 What happened in the U.S. in the face of such a monstrous declaration by Torriente at October 18, in New York? Nothing. “Nixon did not say a single word. He did not speak of piracy, […] he did not speak of violation of international law. Not a word!”8 While in Cuba this criminal pirate action and the shameless declarations of Torriente would determine that the Cuban government took a series of actions to confront or deter those attacks—a fact that will be dealt with later on.

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However, Boca de Samá was the only action Torriente and his group took, not because the U.S. authorities prevented him but because the desire of the leaders of that group was personal economic proft. In a document prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), presumably dated December 11, 1972, which evaluated the capabilities in the paramilitary or military spheres of Cuban exiles, referring to the personality of the Torriente, it was stated that: […] Torriente, as an individual, is discredited among Cuban exiles. The individuals that made up his military organization have gone their separate ways. The Torriente group, to the best of our knowledge, has no military capability whatsoever at this time.9 Counterrevolutionary circles in Miami have calculated that de la Torriente and those closest to him raised more than $4 million. The dispute over the funds of the group is considered to have been the main cause of the murder of Torriente in April 1974. The other organization that had achieved a certain amount of propaganda notoriety within the counterrevolutionary Cuban exiles was Alpha 66, whose main leader, Andrés Nazario Sargén, hoisted the illusory idea of reviving the irregular war in Cuba, in the style of the early years of the 1960s.This organization also failed totally. The year 1971 marked the decline in the infuence of Alpha 66 as a result of the failed infltrations of the previous year: Vicente Méndez in April and José Rodríguez Pérez in September. The group was also discredited by the discovery of the lies presented by Nazario Sargene and his acolytes when they claimed—for propaganda and especially lucrative purposes—that Méndez and Rodríguez Pérez were still alive and fghting in the mountains of the eastern part of Cuba. The publicity noise following the execution of real or fctitious attacks by the counterrevolutionary groups in the U.S. affected more than it benefted the foreign policy of the U.S. One of these frauds was the announcement made on September 13, 1971, by José Francisco Alabau Trelles, who declared that his commandos had invaded Cuba and occupied the coastal town of Guayabal, south of Camagüey, causing the death of more than 40 communist enemies. Days later it became known that all of this was a hoax. The photos shown as evidence of his success were photomontages of toy vehicles and weapons, purchased for a few dollars from Miami commercial establishments.10 In the face of this accumulation of anti-Cuban warmongering propaganda, the U.S. Department of State, in early 1972, delivered an article to the international press agency Reuters, which revealed warnings to Cuban exiles by the U.S. government for actions against Cuba from U.S. territory. With this action it is obvious that they tried to hide their complicity.

150 Decline of Counterrevolutionary Groups This type of proceeding by the Department of State was not appreciated by the CIA executives. On January 28, 1972, the CIA Director Richard Helms forwarded a copy of the Reuters article in a memo to General Alexander Haig, asking: Is this kind of State Department action really necessary? It seems to me we go out of our way to make things tough for that tiny number of individuals who are prepared to do something active, if not always useful.11 This journalistic information also caused misunderstandings in some countries of the hemisphere about a certain rapprochement between the U.S. and Cuba. On February 16, the Department of State sent a circular to all Central American and Caribbean embassies, which reiterated the U.S. policy regarding the activities of militant Cuban exile groups, as well as indicating that the warning published in the Reuters article did not represent a change in the U.S. policy toward Cuba.12 On October 8, 1972, there was a new attempt to infltrate the Cuban coast, but the persons were captured that same day; this time it was the CIA agents, Jacinto Roque, Hugo Llampallas and Armando Delgado, all residing in Miami, who tried to enter the country through the north coast of the old Oriente province. They came in a fberglass boat, model FV-28, with two high-speed engines, and brought explosives, weapons and abundant ammunition. At the same time, the pirate Ramón Orozco Crespo continued his misdeeds. On October 10, 1972, in a cooperation with a small group called Halcones Dorados [Golden Hawks], a terrorist cell of the National Front for the Liberation of Cuba (FLNC), Orozco attacked and approached the Cuban fshing vessels Aguja and Plataforma IV, south of Andros Island in the Bahamas. The vessels were blown up and destroyed, and their 11 crew members were kidnapped. In the action, the fsherman Amado Jiménez was injured and was abandoned along with his ten companions in a small boat that was rescued on October 10, by a Bahamian helicopter. Three days later they returned to Cuba. On January 28, 1973, Orozco returned to his “work.” That day he attacked the ship Plataforma I also close to the Bahamas. In the attack, the Cuban fsherman Ibrahim Ruiz was wounded by a gunshot. This act, widely publicized in Miami, was attributed to the FLNC, and it was the second time—after the attack in May 1970—that an action by the Orozco group was attributed to a specifc organization. Perhaps the propaganda of this terrorist attack was aimed at hindering an agreement on air and sea hijackings between the U.S. and Cuba that at that moment was at the peak stage of the negotiations. Within the counterrevolutionary Cuban exile groups, as well as in other powerful U.S. sectors, there

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Figure 11.2 Attack on the Cuban fshing vessel Aguja, October 10, 1972. Source: Archive of the Institute of Cuban History, Havana, used with permission.

existed an opposition to an agreement between the two countries, and they tried by all means to sabotage it. The agreement between the governments of the U.S. and Cuba on this issue, the “Treaty on Air and Maritime Hijackings,” on February 15, 1973, led to the cessation, or at least to a decrease of the consent—open or secret—of the U.S. authorities to pirate actions that groups like Orozco’s and others performed. Rivero Collado stresses that in early March 1973, some offcials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) traveled to Miami to warn the Cuban exile leaders that they were obliged to comply with the agreements signed in February. In parallel the federal agents ratifed President Nixon’s moral support for the anti-communist cause.13 However, Orozco ignored this offcial warning. The cloak of impunity with which he had always acted, as well as the fnancial and political support of different U.S. economic and political sectors, led him to prepare a new criminal action of piracy. On October 3, 1973, he managed to recruit 15 mercenaries and order them to attack peaceful Cuban fshing vessels. The incident occurred on October 4, when these mercenaries attacked the fshing boats Cayo Largo 17 and 34 near the Bahamas with two heavily gunned boats. The Cuban vessels were machine-gunned and

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sunken, the crewmember Roberto Torna Mirabal was assassinated and the rest of the 13 crewmembers were abandoned at sea in a rubber raft.14 This was the last time that the pirate Orozco was able to raise “his black fag with the skull in its center,”15 since the U.S. federal authorities could not ignore such an event. Through international channels, the Cuban Revolutionary government pressured the U.S. to comply with the terms established in the U.S.–Cuban “Memorandum of Understanding on Hijacking of Aircraft and Vessels and Other Offenses” from February 1973. The FBI was forced to press the judge who was responsible for case of Ramón Orozco, to judge him for a violation of probation,16 since his absence from Dade County was proven. Due to this he was sentenced to one year in prison, of which he served only nine months. This means that Orozco was not tried for the criminal act of piracy that he had committed, and his 15 accomplices were not even after-sought. The U.S. impunity concerning these acts of piracy continued to exist despite the memorandum of agreement signed between the U.S. and Cuba, concerning air and sea hijackings. Although the memorandum of understanding on air and sea hijackings directly contained the issue of assaults on peaceful Cuban fshing vessels by terrorist groups, the U.S. did not eliminate this manner of counterrevolutionary action and new aggressive actions of this type had to be suffered by the Cuban people.17

Notes 1 Carlos Rivero Collado: Los sobrinos del Tío Sam (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976), 260–261. 2 Ibid., 261. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid., 189–190. In his book, Carlos Rivero Collado included the version of the event narrated by the counterrevolutionary Juan José Peruyero, who in his story altered the real data of the criminal attack, although he offered the names of the persons participating. 5 AP October 18, 1971. 6 Carlos Rivero Collado: Los sobrinos del Tío Sam (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976), 187. 7 “Memorandum from Ashley Hewitt of the National Security Staff to the President’s Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs (Haig), Washington, October 14, 1971, 2132 EST”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 245. 8 Fidel Castro: Comparecencia por radio y televisión, 22 de diciembre de 1971 (La Habana: Ediciones COR Nº 15, Instituto Cubano del Libro, 1971), 14. 9 “Paper prepared in the Central Intelligence Agency, Washington, undated”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 266.

The Failure of the Torriente Plan 153 10 Carlos Rivero Collado: Los sobrinos del Tío Sam (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976), 268–274. 11 “Memorandum from Helms to Haig, Washington, January 28, 1972”. National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, Box 781, Country Files, Latin America, Cuba, Vol. IV, 1972. 12 “Telegram 027141, February 16, 1972”. RG 59, Central Files 1970–73, POL 30–2 CUBA. 13 Carlos Rivero Collado: Los sobrinos del Tío Sam (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976), 199. 14 Granma (October 5, 1973), 1. 15 Carlos Rivero Collado: Los sobrinos del Tío Sam (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976), 201. 16 Orozco was on provisional release, so he was obliged not to leave the limits of Dade County, Miami. This legal situation was the result of the fact that in 1972, after one of his trips through the Bahamas, some weapons were discovered in his boat. On that occasion the court imposed a sentence of “probation for three years.” 17 Granma (April 10, 1976).

References Castro, F. Comparecencia por radio y televisión, 22 de diciembre de 1971 (La Habana: Ediciones COR Nº 15, Instituto Cubano del Libro, 1971). Granma (October 5, 1973). Granma (April, 10, 1976). Rivero Collado, C. Los sobrinos del Tío Sam (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976). U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018).

12 The Crisis of the “Mother Ships”

Faced with the piracy activity of the counterrevolution, Cuba strengthened its organization of confrontation, especially the Frontier Guard Troops [Las Tropas Guardafronteras] of the Ministry of the Interior, which were equipped with naval combat technique and other means, such as radars and sonars, located in different areas of the coast that were of economic interest to the country. The actions and operations of the Frontier Guard Troops also had the support from, and could count on the cooperation with, the air and naval branches of the Revolutionary Armed Forces. However, the total control and surveillance of the extensive coastal areas of Cuba has been extremely diffcult, due to the geographical characteristics of the Cuban archipelago—a circumstance that the terrorist groups took advantage of when committing their misdeeds. In many cases these groups could also rely on intelligence information from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and its radio-electronic and photographic scanning systems. One of the modalities of the actions of these terrorist groups was the use of “Mother ships.” These ships were vessels equipped with sophisticated electronic and communication means, whose mission was to safely transport the rapid armored motorboats and the persons participating in the attacks.1 The use of this type of modality took on more systematic forms after the Missile Crisis of 1962. This was especially in 1963 for the use by the CIA’s “autonomous” operation groups, whose main exponent was “the golden boy of the CIA”—as the counterrevolutionary Manuel Artime Buesa was described—who organized bases in Nicaragua and Costa Rica, equipped with “Mother ships” and well-trained crews. 2 The CIA operated those ships directly or indirectly, in the latter case under the cover of a private shipping company that the CIA probably fnanced. Between 1963 and 1966 these ships carried out dozens of operations toward Cuba. Those ships—Fidel Castro explained—remained at 60 or 70 miles from the Cuban coast from where: […] They sent their rapid motorboats, approached the coast, landed some personnel; sometimes they landed bazookas, mortars,

The Crisis of the “Mother Ships”  155 attacked port facilities, attacked warehouses, attacked oil refineries; they used bazookas, mortars, and shooting; sometimes they fired from the boat itself […] The task of hunting these ships was carried out for a long time. They realized the operations at night, using the rapid motorboats, at distance, they were confused with the merchant ships. Sometimes our planes went out, and our ships went out to look for them […]3 But, in reality, we had assumed a defensive position: fighting these ships only when they came in direct action, when they were carrying out their missions. And in reality, the rest of the time, they could march with impunity. That situation existed during a period of several years. When later on, the situation became more complicated in Vietnam, the imperialists lowered the tone of this type of activity a little, they began to remove these ships from circulation, at least as instruments of pirate attacks; they were reserved for infiltration activities, landing agents, spies. But the pirate attacks decreased.4 In Cuba, the first information on the decrease in this type of activity with CIA naval means was available in 1966: “[…] including that certain routes of navigation between Florida and Santo Domingo, Haiti and Puerto Rico were to be used for infiltration acts […].”5 One of the shipping companies, whose ships were used in these criminal activities, belonged to the Cuban exile Miguel Babun. In May of that year, a counterrevolutionary who worked directly with the CIA, Antonio Cuesta Valle, was arrested in an attempt to infiltrate, with the aim of carrying out an attack on the Cuban President Osvaldo Dorticós. He reported that through the CIA agent, Alberto Fernández, he knew about the planification to eliminate the “Mother ships” in the infiltrations against Cuba, and that in the future “[…] they would use merchant ships that sailed under the Panamanian flag, owned by the Babun brothers.”6 He further said that these ships: […] had a route that passed close to the Cuban coasts, as well as they had their bases in Miami and Puerto Rico, and that these ships would be used to leave weapons in cays close to Cuba, as well as sealed tanks in places that would be designated in advance. For this they would use special radios enabled for this purpose.7 Two years later, in June 1968, two counterrevolutionaries, Alfredo Isesalaya Valera and Justo Fernando del Toro, were arrested for infiltrating with the mission of locating a place where men and weapons could be disembarked with the aim of realizing a provocative act against the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base. This with the aim of provoke an incident that could initiate an armed confrontation between the Cuban and the

156  Decline of Counterrevolutionary Groups U.S. military forces. A confrontation that could justify a direct military intervention of Cuba by the U.S. The accused stated that: […] They left the Babun pier, on the freighter Johnny Express, and to make this possible, the Rece’s counterrevolutionary leader, Nacín Elías, put them in contact with Teófilo Babun. […] the day they left for Cuba, Babun said goodbye to them at the pier, and he wished them good luck in the enterprise they were to carry out. The motorboat Fiberglass that they later used for the transport to the coast of the Oriente province, was transported by the ship on a truck owned by the Babuns. The ship’s captain, that during this period was Brook,8 told them that he had participated in sabotage of the Babun nationalized sawmill located in the Oriente province.9 In September 1968, another infiltration took place, this time by the CIA agent, Ángel L. Castillo Cabrera, through the Cayo Lobo area, at Cuba’s northern coast. Once again, the freighter Johnny Express was used to carry out the subversive action. One month later, in October 1968, Amancio Mosquera Fernández Yarey was infiltrated in the Imías area in order to deliver two backpacks with explosives and an M-1 rifle to an individual from that area. However, that task could not be carried out due to the Cuban forces that acted directly after his arrival on the Cuban coast. Amancio Mosquera confessed that he had been transported on the Layla Express vessel, owned by the Babuns.10 Other information on the use of the Babun’s vessels was provided by Juan Pastor Díaz Vega, in November 1968, when he—after his arrest— declared to the Cuban authorities, that he had been recruited by Nacín Elías to be infiltrated and start an uprising in the hills of Caujerí, in Oriente. The Layla Express had been used during the infiltration process, and the same vessel was used for the failed infiltration operation of May 1969, led by Amancio Mosquera and seven other mercenaries. Those two merchant vessels—Layla Express and Johnny Express—were not the only ones used for pirate attacks and infiltrations toward Cuba. Although the shipping company of the Babun brothers, and in particular these two vessels, was always ready to undertake any action against Cuba. However, this was not the only mean used for the infiltration and disembarkation of spies, agents and terrorists. The criminal pirate attack on Boca de Samá on October 12, 1971, and the impunity with which its performers acted in the U.S., when they even dared to take public responsibility for their terrorist activities—as happened with the bold declarations of José Elías de la Torriente on October 18, at the New York Republican Women’s Club—naturally provoked reactions in Cuba. In this regard, Fidel Castro stressed: We wondered if the phase of pirate attacks toward our country would resume once again. We were concerned with the ease with

The Crisis of the “Mother Ships”  157 which that suspicious ship had returned to Florida […] When that shameless statement was made in the middle of New York City, on the 18th, then we looked upon these events with concern, not only the style of the attack but also the style of the statement so calm and so shameless, made by a man who was unquestionably linked to the United States government. […] We were faced with the dilemma: well, possibly a phase of pirate attacks will begin again, a phase that will recall the entire history of some years ago […] that we will quietly have to dedicate ourselves to wait for the news of these attacks. Today Boca de Samá, tomorrow whichever port, and after that another port, and after these events, the United States will start making warlike declarations demanding little less than homage, titles and all the honors for perpetrating such a crime. […] We were faced with a dilemma: if we were to assume a simply passive position. And we understood that no […] And that if […] we had precise and exact information on the ships that were carrying out activities toward Cuba […] we had to go out and chase those ships wherever they were. […] the decision was made and instructions were given […] to proceed against those ships that had been carrying out operations and that we knew from the information, were Layla Express and Johnny Express.11 As a consequence of that decision, these vessels were captured. On December 5, 1971, units of the Revolutionary Navy that patrolled the northern coasts of the Oriente province discovered and captured the ship Layla Express within the limits of Cuba’s jurisdictional waters.12 Ten days later, on December 15, the ship Johnny Express resisted the order to stop and tried to escape to the north. The Cuban naval unit tried to force it to stop with warning shots but, when the ship did not respond, shoot directly at the ship. The captain José Villa Díaz was slightly injured, but no other crew members were wounded. In the declaration of the Revolutionary government of Cuba, issued at 7:00 p.m. on December 15, 1971, it was reported: Today, at 1:15 p.m., between the islands of Pequeñas Iguana and West Caicos, 120 miles from Punta Maisí, one of the units of the Revolutionary Navy that stands guard against pirate ships serving the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States that have been harassing our territory, sighted the ship Johnny Express that, along with the Layla Express and others from a shipping company owned by the Babuns, renowned agents of imperialism, that have participated in acts of piracy, introduction of weapons and counterrevolutionary elements in our country. When commanded to stop for being boarded and captured, the ship disobeyed the order and tried to escape. Minutes later, the ship was forced to obey, being approached by a Cuban naval unit that, at night, transported it to the

158  Decline of Counterrevolutionary Groups north coast of the Oriente province. This ship, like the recently captured Layla Express, used the Panamanian flag to execute its misdeeds. Several weeks ago, on October 12 at 9:30 p.m., the humble village of Samá was attacked by a pirate vessel, costing the lives of several people, while others received serious injuries, among them a girl whose leg had to be amputated. […] Days later, from New York City, counterrevolutionary leaders, with a well-known connection to the CIA, cynically proclaimed their responsibility for this cowardly crime. The Revolutionary Government of Cuba will have no contemplation, independently of the distance from the coast where they are intercepted, with pirate ships that under any flag or camouflage carry out such crimes against our country. The responsibility of this situation rests entirely with the Government of the United States as the main author and inspirer of such acts of banditry.13 The reaction of the U.S. government to these events, and to the Cuban actions, was very different in comparison with how they had acted in the face of the criminal incident of Boca de Samá and Torriente’s statements in New York. First, the U.S. authorities rejected the causes that motivated Cuba to act legitimately in defense of its security interests toward aggressive actions directed at its territory. Second, they did not take into account the legal and moral Cuban right to act against the pirate ships that travelled with impunity around the Cuban coasts to carry out—at the time and place that suited them best—their misdeeds and their attacks. In parallel they did not accept that piracy constitutes a condemned act within the framework of international law. What were the public statements of the representatives of the U.S. government regarding this fact? On December 16, the U.S. authorities responded, and a United Press International (UPI) telegram stated that: The United States will demand the immediate return of Captain Villa, captain of the Miami-based freighter seized yesterday by a Cuban navy vessel, the White House announced today. The Press Secretary Ronald L. Ziegler revealed the official determination to secure Villa’s release after President Richard M. Nixon received Villa’s wife, Isabel, and their three children. “This act from the Cuban side is deplorable,” said Ziegler. The fact that a Panamanian registered ship was seized in this way is an act without conscience from the Cuban government, and it is something that cannot be tolerated in the international community. The telegram added that Nixon had expressed his “deep personal concern” for the fate of Captain Villa, born in Cuba, but a naturalized U.S. citizen. The official told the reporters that the government had received information that Villa is alive in Cuba. Several crew members of the freighter were wounded in the attack and at a certain moment Villa reported that he was

The Crisis of the “Mother Ships”  159 dying. Ziegler added that the United States would demand Villa’s prompt return through the Swiss embassy in Havana […] He noted that the seizure of the ship “is clearly a violation of international practice and the right to free navigation.”14 The same day a Miami radio station reported that: The United States has placed naval units and fighter jets on alert to assist any merchant ship that Red Cuba may attack in the Caribbean Sea. The precautionary measures were adopted by the Department of Defense, after the Department of State warned Havana that it would no longer tolerate attacks on US citizens on the high seas. The Castro-­ communist regime has seized two Panamanian cargo carriers since the 5th of this month. The second was seized last Wednesday, after being attacked with machine guns, and its captain, the Cuban José Villa, who is a US citizen, was captured. The White House has disclosed that President Nixon has demanded the prompt release of Villa and his crew, 12 men. The Pentagon said it was taking defensive measures, and it emerged that the Air Force and the naval pilots were put on alert, and that licensed U.S. sailors have been called to serve. The Navy is believed to have destroyers and other warships in the Caribbean area by tomorrow night, brought in from the Atlantic to respond quickly to any attack. These forces may be dispatched […] from the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo and the bases in the Gulf of Mexico.15 Another press cable from Associated Press (AP) on December 17 stressed that: The State Department declared today that the United States will take whatever measures are necessary to protect US citizens from attacks similar to those perpetrated by Cuba this month on two Panamanian freighters. Speaking for the State Department, Robert J. McCoskey said: “The United States Government considers these armed attacks on commercial ships […] a frank and real threat to freedom of commerce in the Caribbean and a threat to American citizens. Such threats are intolerable. The United States government is prepared to take all measures under international law to protect the citizens of the United States and the freedom of the seas against such attacks in this area.”16 On the same day, December 17, the Department of Defense’s spokesman Daniel Z. Henki also made threatening statements, stressing that: We have initiated certain precautionary measures so that the Defense Department is prepared, if necessary, to comply with the

160  Decline of Counterrevolutionary Groups policy expressed in the declaration issued by the State Department […] regarding the protection of North American citizens in the Caribbean area.17 From different sources, it was learned that the U.S. air and naval forces located in nearby areas were being placed on alert. At that time, they had forces located in Cherry Point, North Carolina; Jacksonville, Florida; and the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, in the east of Cuba. The president—very interested in his reelection—was the main actor in a propaganda show for political ends. On December 16, Nixon invited Captain Villa’s wife and their three young children to his residence in Key Biscayne, Florida, and was photographed together with them in an acted comforting pose, putting his arm on the woman’s shoulders. At the same time, he described the Cuban capture of the ship as an “unjust act” and demanded Villa’s immediate release. It cannot be forgotten that Nixon in his reelection campaign counted on the support of the economic power groups of the counterrevolutionary Cuban exiles in Florida. The axis of the problem passed from the ships to the captain of one of these, when Nixon declared him a U.S. citizen and demanded his release. This while a press campaign tried to present Cuba as a violator of international and maritime laws, which endangered commercial navigation in the Caribbean area. In this manner, Nixon and the U.S. press tried to turn Cuba, a victim of pirate attacks, into a victimizer. Faced with these threats, the Cuban Revolution was not intimidated. The air and naval units of the Revolutionary Armed Forces were placed on alert. What justification did the U.S. government put forward for this climate of tension in the Caribbean area? The ships were captured in international waters, they were registered in Panama and their crews, with the exception of Villa, were citizens of other nationalities. There was only one individual of Cuban origin, nationalized as U.S. citizen. Was being a U.S. citizen a “Letter of marque”18 to commit acts of piracy? There was no compelling justification for a direct conflict between the two countries, beyond the political purposes already mentioned; however, a new crisis broke out that put the Caribbean area in tension. Actually, this conflict was not convenient for, and contradicted the global objectives of, the United States, since it could obstruct the Soviet–U.S. summit and the signing of the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT) Agreement planned for the early spring of 1972. This contradiction has been a characteristic—throughout more than half a century—of the U.S. confrontational relations with Cuba. In addition to the public statements, there are a number of secret U.S. documents that have been declassified, which account for the event and the political, diplomatic and military actions taken. The first of these documents is an informative memorandum—dated on December 15,

The Crisis of the “Mother Ships”  161 1971—authored by Arnold Nachmanoff, belonging to the personnel of the National Security Council, addressed to Henry Kissinger,19 in which Kissinger was notified of the Cuban persecution of a Panamanian-­ flagged ship [Johnny Express] of the Bahamas Lines, Miami, owned by “[…] Mike Baboun, a Cuban exile, who has been active for some time in exile activities. The Cubans suspect that his ships have been offering support to Cuban exile raids against Cuba.”20 Nachmanoff reported that the Department of State maintains contact with the British government to determine if they will take any action, since the ship is in Bahamian waters. “[…] the Captain of the ship, a US citizen, and two crewmembers have been wounded thus far. 21 […] The Coast Guard has sent two planes and a helicopter to the area to observe the situation.”22 Likewise, he commented on the impossibility of legally undertaking something else, and that the Panamanian ambassador in Washington, for humanitarian purposes, had requested a helicopter to transport the wounded captain from the ship.23 Kissinger did not ignore that information and took the matter as a priority, as expressed in a second document, by instructing his deputy, General Alexander Haig, to personally deal with the problem. The next day, on December 16, Haig received a memorandum from Ashley Hewitt, 24 informing him that he had already spoken with the Department of State and the agencies in charge to “[…] convey the sense of urgency that you conveyed to me,” and the need for “[…] air and sea units will be available in the general area in the event of repetition.”25 He estimated that the Cubans would not immediately attempt a third seizure, although they could “[…] be tempted to try a repeat performance on the basis of two successes.”26 He further stressed that the Babun Enterprises that “[…] owns both the Johnny Express and the Lilah Express, previously seized by the Cubans, owns three or four other vessels plying the same waters.”27 Hewitt also considered it important to establish rules of engagement against Cuban aircrafts and maritime vessels, which regulate “[…] contact occurs in or over international waters, Cuban territorial waters, or in the territory of a third state.”28 He assumed that the Council of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) would develop such rules, but that “[…] it would be very helpful if we could look at them once they are drafted.”29 Haig agreed with this. Meanwhile, on December 17, at the Pentagon, the JCS Council addressed the Commander-in-Chief Atlantic (CINCLANT) to prepare, as soon as possible, plans to implement the policy of actions of the government of the U.S. against the hostile Cuban acts against ships from third countries. This was in accordance with what was reported in the “Memorandum from the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, G. Warren Nutter, to the Secretary of Defense, Melvin R. Laird.”30 In this undated memorandum, several documents are cited and it summarize the military actions planned by the Pentagon.

162  Decline of Counterrevolutionary Groups Warren Nutter stressed that the purpose of the JCS policy was, “[…] if necessary, to take unilateral military action in response to any future Cuban hostile actions which may constitute a threat to freedom of navigation or international commerce, in the Caribbean, or to the safety of American citizens.”31 It was also stressed that this “[…] would not apply to third country vessels unless their governments had requested such protection.”32 It is mentioned in the memorandum that on December 17, Laird informed Kissinger of the three broad options which had been developed by the Council of the JCS: “Option A—US Renders Assistance and Provides Protection. Option B—US Renders Limited Assistance. Option C—US Provides Support, Remains Neutral and Uninvolved.”33 The Council of the JCS had analyzed these options, and concerning option A, they summarized the military assets available and what was required to implement them. Concerning option B, they stated that it would only partially fulfill the objectives of the policy statement, while option C was probably no longer realistic in view of the already public stated U.S. posture.34 They stated that military actions under option A could include: […] Surveillance, escort (surface), harassment, quarantine of Cuban ports, capture or sinking of a Cuban vessel, attack against Cuban naval and/or airbases, attack against other Cuban objectives and an invasion of Cuba.35 The document clarifies that the actions suggested in option A were based on the assumption of a Cuban escalation, and it stresses that the three most realistic levels of action were as follows: • Surveillance of the sea areas beyond Cuban territorial waters. • Surveillance, with an immediate response to a call for help. This requires propositioning of air units and ships. It could include harassment of Cuban vessels that have taken a captured vessel under tow and/or have taken its crew members on board, in order to impede its passage into a safe haven, of armed counter-attack against Cuban vessels to ward off attempts to size or destroy the victim vessel(s). • Surveillance, coupled with air and/or ship escort of potentially vulnerable vessels or ship patrols in the shipping lanes around Cuba. This could also include counter-attack of Cuban vessels attempting to seize commercial vessels.36 The actions planned to be carried out in the face of Cuban hostile acts against third-country ships were sent by Laird to Kissinger on December 18. In the document, the military actions contemplated in the options

The Crisis of the “Mother Ships”  163 and the measures to be taken were explained, as well as that they started from that day. These actions included the following: • Surveillance flights conducted on a case by case basis to track innocent shipping and provide information concerning potentially hostile craft. • Surface combatants deployed on a case by case basis to conduct surveillance operations, establish US visibility in the area, and provide protection if directed. • Fighter aircraft rapidly available from Guantanamo when required for surveillance and protective operations.37 In addition, it communicated the message that the Unified Combatant Command had submitted to the JCS concerning a permanent operations plan to provide protection to third-country ships in the Caribbean, based on their request and considered and planned in each case. The document recommends the continuation of the first course of action—vigilance only—and an immediate public announcement informing about the ongoing and planned steps as well as their purposes.38 Washington’s excessive reaction showed to what extent the administration was committed to the interests of the Cuban exiles, who were only pawns at the service of the U.S. Meanwhile, on December 18, the Cuban ambassador to the United Nations, Ricardo Alarcón, declared that the Revolutionary government had put its air and naval forces on alert in support of the policy of acting against any vessel that realized acts of piracy toward Cuba. On December 19, the Department of State prepared an extensive document entitled “Safeguarding of Freedom of Navigation in the Caribbean for Third Country Flag Vessels Engaged in Commercial Pursuits.”39 What a title! It really should say “Engaged in pirate attacks.” This material included four points: (1) policy assumptions, (2) nature of the threat, (3) international law considerations and (4) courses of action. Due to its length, we will only refer to some of the aspects contained in these points. The second point—“nature of the threat”—reveals how well informed the U.S. high authorities were of the pirate attacks on Cuba, when the document exposes: The specific immediate motives for the Cuban actions appear to be to prevent the recurrence of and to retaliate against a mid-October Cuban exile raid by the de la Torriente group on a small Cuban town on the northeast coast in which several Cubans were killed or wounded. In that raid […] used as a mother ship, the Panamanian-­ flag vessel Aquarius, which is generally the same class ship as those operated […] by the Babun brothers, although it is not owned by them. Because of past Babun family support of Cuban exile armed

164  Decline of Counterrevolutionary Groups raids against Cuba, Castro appears intent to seize as many of the Babun Brothers vessels as feasible as well as any other foreign-flag vessels which he believes have been involved in operations against Cuba. There does not appear to be a Cuban threat at this time to other vessels which are not owned by the Babun brothers or are not suspected of having been used in anti-Castro operations.40 The document recognizes the dissuasive motive of the Cuban action, the use of “Mother ships” in pirate attacks. Furthermore, it indicates that Cuba has identified the participating vessels and indicates that the threat is only directed towards the ships used in “anti-Castro operations.” However, in the third point—“international law considerations”—it validates the action of the U.S. in manipulating international law at its convenience, pointing out that under the “Geneva Convention on the High Seas of 1958” is only justified interference with a merchant ship in cases of piracy, slave trade or violation of state coastal laws. The Department of State document states: These circumstances are absent here. Therefore, assuming that the Panamanian flag vessels seized by Cuban authorities were not engaged in armed attacks or a continuing pattern of aggression against Cuba substantial enough to warrant the exercise of the right of self-defense […].41 Therefore, it is asserted that “[…] the Cuban action of firing upon, boarding and seizing these vessels is a clear and flagrant violation of international law.”42 The document then argues the need for hemispheric and international support for any retaliatory action by the U.S. that strengthens its measures. Regarding the fourth point—“courses of action”—it includes two types of measures: (A) intelligence collection and (B) U.S. responses. Under A it is proposed: 1  Maintain close and continuous contact with the Babun brothers regarding the whereabouts, ETD’s, ETA’s and routing of these vessels. Similar contact should be established with the owners or agents of other vessels known to have configuration similar to that of the Aquarius. 2  Obtain and keep current crew lists, including nationalities, of the vessels described …]” 3  Monitor closely and continuously the whereabouts of Cuban patrol vessels and aircraft. 4  Maintain close and continuous surveillance of militant exile groups who may be planning infiltration raids against Cuba.43

The Crisis of the “Mother Ships”  165 In other words, the U.S. air and the naval forces became custodians and protectors of the Babun pirate “Mother ships” and other vessels used in this type of criminal activity in the Caribbean area. It is obvious that to the authors of the material, criminal acts such as piracy should only be kept under surveillance so that these acts did not complicate the situation and the U.S. military actions. Regarding course B, the U.S. responses would be military and political. Regarding the military responses, it was stressed that: a  Continue U.S. surveillance actions now underway. Announce and explain them. b  Pre-position air and sea units to provide a capability for an immediate U.S. response to a call for help from a vessel under Cuban threat, harassment or attack. Such air and sea units will be authorized to take measures short of the use of force to deter or frustrate Cuban actions. Actual engagement by such U.S. units in hostilities with Cuban units, except in self-defense, will be at the direction of the President. c  Consider the feasibility of providing air/or ship escort for potentially threatened vessels.44 The idea, and realization, of these military responses created a huge tension in the area and increased the possibilities, conscious or accidental, of a violent confrontation between the U.S. and Cuba, not at least, since both countries maintained their forces in a mode of combat alert. Regarding the proposed political responses, they pursued the objective of obtaining the “Letter of marque” so that the U.S. naval and air forces could act as a Caribbean gendarme, and: a  where we have good reason to believe that a third country flag vessel (other than Panama) faces imminent attempts at seizure by Cuba and has U.S. citizens aboard, elicit from that nation a request for U.S. assistance. [It refers indirectly to Panama, since they know very well which vessels that had participated in the aggressions toward Cuba.] b  Reiterate warning to Cuban exile groups that U.S. law enforcement agencies will continue to enforce rigorously U.S. laws prohibiting the use of U.S. territory as a base for any military actions against a foreign country. Actively prosecute offenders (to do otherwise serves only to encourage these counter-­productive raids). c  Prior to public announcement of the pre-positioning of U.S. forces, inform OAS countries of our estimate of the current Cuban threat to freedom of navigation and the steps we are taking to meet this threat.

166  Decline of Counterrevolutionary Groups d  Prior to public announcement of pre-positioning of U.S. forces, inform the USSR of our intention and the reasons therefore. e  If there should be further seizures of third country vessels, making a clear case that there is a general threat to freedom of navigation of innocent vessels in the Caribbean, encourage the flag country (if an OAS member) to bring the question to the OAS under the Rio Treaty; if a non-member flag is involved, bring the case ourselves, preferably in a joint initiative. f Enlist British cooperation when pertinent.45 This document was summarized by Kissinger for approval by the president. In a Kissinger memorandum dated December 23,46 the Secretaries of State, Defense and Transportation, and the CIA Director was told that the president has reviewed the Contingency Plan “Safeguarding of Freedom of Navigation in the Caribbean for Third Country Flag Vessels Engaged in Commercial Pursuits” and that he approved it with the following modifications: •  US military aircraft and vessels are authorized to enter the air space and territorial waters of friendly countries without prior permission if in the act of preventing or forestalling a Cuban attack on a third country vessel. The country whose air space or territorial waters we have entered is to be simultaneously informed of the incident and the reasons for our entering their territory. •  At the first indication of Soviet movements or intentions which might lead to the involvement of Soviet units in the area in an incident of this kind, the President is to be immediately informed. •  No steps should be taken to inform the other members of the Organization of American States (OAS) or the Soviet Union of our intentions or actions to date.47 Furthermore, it is stressed that the president had approached the Secretaries of State and Defense to prepare a study of the advisability and feasibility of escorting specific vessels potentially threatened by Cuban attacks. The Secretary of State was also instructed to prepare a scenario and the necessary supporting documents to raise the problem in the Organization of American States (OAS) if another attack on a third-country ship should occur. These documents should be prepared no later than January 7, 1972.48 While in Cuba, Fidel Castro appeared on Cuban radio and television, on the night of December 22, to explain the causes and reasons that had motivated the country to capture the vessels. Faced with the discredit campaign toward the Revolution, he stated that: The Cuban Revolution does not threat any international trade. The Cuban Revolution does not threat any right of free navigation. The

The Crisis of the “Mother Ships”  167 Cuban Revolution offers guarantees to any vessel from any country that sails peacefully in the vicinity of its coasts. And it can not only offer them guarantees, but to do what it has always has done to help them if in any circumstance they need it. […] However, concerning what the Revolution does not and cannot guarantee, it cannot offer any kind of guarantees to pirate ships dedicated to carrying out attacks against our country or carrying out any type of hostile missions against Cuba; it neither guarantees nor can guarantee it, and no one has the right to demand it, no one has the moral right to demand it from our country. […].49 Regarding the captain of Johnny Express, José Villa Díaz, the Cuban prime minister, summoned President Nixon to say “[…] whether or not it is true that […] he is a CIA agent,” who since 1964 has participated in a series of missions against Cuba, as crew member of several CIA “Mother ships.” “[…] We summon Nixon and the Department of State and the spokesmen to tell whether this is true or false.”50 Castro further commented that these vessels, for maintaining their camouflage, carried and brought merchandise to the U.S. and that they hired crew members from different countries to carry out normal commercial tasks. In the case of the two seized ships, there were three Spaniards51 and only one of them was involved in counterrevolutionary activities, two Guatemalans, two Colombians, one Honduran, nine Dominicans and eight Haitians. There were no charges for crew members not involved in acts against Cuba. Fidel Castro stressed that “The policy that we follow in relation to citizens of other countries, is a policy of principle, even if they are North Americans. Here we give full guarantee to any North American, that is innocent.”52 On the same day of the appearance of the Cuban leader, December 22, the tensions began to diminish. The political position adopted by the U.S. in the foreign policy sphere was unsustainable, and therefore, the Department of State pressed the federal legal authorities to take a stance that protected the government from internal and external criticism. In relation to this, Fidel Castro referred to a telegram that arrived in Cuba minutes before he left for the press appearance, which stated: Miami, Florida, December 22.—The United States government today launched a legal action against the owner of the ship allegedly used for an anti-Castro landing in Cuba. In what was described by US sources as a gesture aimed at preventing further incursions by Cuban exiles, federal prosecutors are preparing a license suppression lawsuit against the owners of the Panamanian-flagged ship Aquarius. Cuban exile sources in Miami said that this boat, confiscated by the Coast Guard and the Police last Friday in Fort Pierce, Florida, was the mothership of an attack against the Cuban town

168  Decline of Counterrevolutionary Groups of Boca de Samá on October 12 last October. A spokesman for the Miami federal attorney indicated that the owners of the Aquarius had not yet been officially determined, although he added that “they had quite strong suspicions about it.” Other official sources pointed out that there is no longer any doubt that it belongs to the group of exiles led by the anti-Castro leader José Elías de la Torriente, an American citizen. This group claimed responsibility for the attack on Boca de Samá, but when questioned about the ownership of the boat, de la Torriente stated: “I don’t know. Neither in one way or another. I neither affirm, nor deny it.” The aforementioned spokesman admitted that there was a lot of speculation that the legal action taken was intended to prevent similar new attacks against the Fidel Castro regime.53 Fidel Castro stressed that even if this measure was taken late, it pleased Cuba, “[…] since a mobilization of war is no longer intended to give immunity and guarantees to Aquarius.” Likewise, the Cuban leader questioned the U.S. authorities about what would happen to those responsible for the horrible crime in Boca de Samá: “Do they intend to allow this crime with impunity? Do they not plan to hold accountable those who publicly took responsibility […]? Is it that they do not intend to hold these elements accountable, and are simply trying to save the forms?”54 As is known, the real culprits of the crime were released, and they were not bothered. However, the actions taken by Cuba in defense of the country put this method of counterrevolutionary action in crisis and constituted a strong deterrent for the use of “Mother ships” within the framework of piracy actions. At the appearance, Fidel Castro also announced that the crew members not involved in aggressive acts against Cuba would be returned to the Panamanian government. The Cuban proposal was accepted by the Panamanian authorities, and on December 24, they sent an official delegation to carry out the negotiations with the Cuban government. The U.S. documentation demonstrates how the tensions in the Caribbean area decreased day by day. A study material prepared jointly by the Departments of State and Defense on “State-Defense Study of the Advisability and Feasibility of Escorting Specific Vessels Potentially Threatened by Cuban Attack”55 shows the knowledge and the complicity of the U.S. authorities in the pirate attacks executed by the Cuban exiles, since it stresses that: […] the principal targets of possible Cuban seizure and/or attack are the four remaining “Express” vessels of the Babun family interests, presently being operated by their Miami-based company, the Bahama Lines. A second category of potential targets are the six vessels identified by Castro on December 22 as having engaged in

The Crisis of the “Mother Ships”  169 past raids against Cuba and four other vessels not mentioned by him but which we believe have been used in maritime operations against Cuba. […] more than 100 small craft used in actual landings during the past 10 years against Cuba which are almost impossible to identify at the present time and which may not be known to the Cubans now. However, some of them could, through prisoner interrogation or similar means, come to their attention.56 The material also reported on some of the actions taken to reduce the risk of Cuban seizures, such as the recommendation they made for the vessels of the Babun line to move at a distance farther from Cuba. It also stressed that the U.S. naval and air units monitored the Babun vessels on a daily basis, and that they also controlled the Cuban naval activity as a measure of protection for these vessels. The material also pointed out that “Castro feels he has achieved his objectives of retaliating for the October 12 exile raid and of reducing the likelihood of future exile raids for the time being.”57 Therefore, Castro will not attempt to seize vessels, unless “[…] the ‘Express’ vessel sail near Cuba within range of their patrol vessels or unless Cuban exile groups attempt subsequent infiltration raids against Cuba.”58 To ensure these two conditions, the material states that the Express vessels will continue to be urged to follow the present routes far from Cuba at the same time as: […] reiterate our warning to Cuban exile groups that U.S. law enforcement agencies will enforce vigorously U.S. laws prohibiting the use of U.S. territory as a base for any military actions against a foreign country.59 Although the document concludes that the military security measures— the escort of commercial ships—to be taken in the Caribbean are operationally feasible, it “[…] would involve such other-mission degradation and financial costs as to make it an impractical alternative […].”60 On the one hand, the success of the negotiations between the governments of Panama and Cuba regarding the release of the crew not involved in piracy actions and the measures taken by the U.S. authorities to prevent new incidents were relaxing the situation and the conflict ended.61 Thus, it demonstrated the fairness of the Cuban action against “Mother ships,” such as Layla Express and Johnny Express, which operated with impunity against Cuba. In 1972 the decline in the actions of the counterrevolutionary groups was evident. All infiltration attempts were promptly and vigorously liquidated. The so-called Torriente Plan which had been the CIA’s greatest effort in the period—when trying to unify the Cuban exile groups and organizations—had failed.

170  Decline of Counterrevolutionary Groups In summary, in the period from 1969 to 1972, the illusions that the organizations and groups of the counterrevolution based in the U.S. had presented to the Republican administration of Richard Nixon, of reversing the situation in Cuba and returning to the context of the beginning of the 1960s, were frustrated. The time of the “dirty war” that intended to overthrow the Revolution with violent means had ended. A moment of tension in the relations between Cuba and the U.S. was caused by the terrorist activity of the counterrevolutionary groups, and the Cuban defensive action of seizing the Panamanian-registered vessels Layla Express and Johnny Express, from the Babun family shipping company. Both these vessels had participated as “Mother ships” in a number of attacks toward Cuba. In that conflict, once again, the leadership of the Cuban Revolution was not intimidated by the threats and the violent policy of the Nixon administration, which sought to justify its imperial actions through a deceptive media campaign that presented the U.S. as a defender of the freedom of navigation. However, the truth prevailed. The Panamanian government—headed by General Omar ­Torrijos—could not be pressured or influenced by the U.S., or by that media campaign, and through diplomatic channels negotiated the dispute for which it had no direct responsibility.

Notes 1 The “Mother ships” were located in international waters, close to the Cuban coasts, the target of the attack, where they unloaded the motorboats and waited for them at their return from their attacks. 2 Håkan Karlsson and Tomás Diez Acosta: The Last Year of President Kennedy and the “Multiple Path” Policy toward Cuba (New York/London: Routledge, 2020), 129. 3 One of those actions was carried out against the mother ship Rex. Ibid., 129. 4 Fidel Castro: Comparecencia por radio y televisión, 22 de diciembre de 1971 (La Habana: Ediciones COR No. 15, Instituto Cubano del Libro, 1971), 8. 5 Ibid., 8. 6 Ibid., 8–9. 7 Ibid., 9. 8 Gaspar Brook belonged to the Cuban Navy during the Batista regime. In 1959 he emigrated to the U.S., and he served as captain of CIA ships. Due to his knowledge of the Cuban coast, he was entrusted with the missions of infiltration of spies and agents into Cuba, and he also participated in attacks on economic objectives and Cuban coastal populations. 9 Fidel Castro: Comparecencia por radio y televisión, 22 de diciembre de 1971 (La Habana: Ediciones COR No. 15, Instituto Cubano del Libro, 1971), 9. 10 Ibid., 9. 11 Ibid., 12–13. 12 Two days before, a pirate vessel attack had taken place in the Río del Medio area, in Las Villas.

The Crisis of the “Mother Ships”  171 13 “Declaración del Gobierno Revolucionarios de Cuba, 15 de diciembre de 1971, 19:00 horas”. Granma (December 16, 1971), 1. 14 Granma (December 17, 1971), 1. 15 Fidel Castro: Comparecencia por radio y televisión, 22 de diciembre de 1971 (La Habana: Ediciones COR No. 15, Instituto Cubano del Libro, 1971), 21–22. 16 Granma (December 18, 1971), 1. 17 Ibid. 18 “Letter of marque” was an authorization, a sort of government license, given to an individual (known as a privateer or buccaneer) or to a ship to attack and loot enemy vessels and territories. Such letters were issued by the kings of England and France to assault Spanish ships during the 16th and 17th centuries. 19 “Memorandum from Arnold Nachmanoff of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger), Washington, December 15, 1971”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 2018), Doc. 248. 20 Ibid. It seems that if the author of this document forgot, or was unaware, that in 1968, the brothers Santiago and Teófilo Babun were arrested by the Miami police after a huge cache of weapons was found in the shipyards of their shipping company. 21 Ibid. José Villa in his calls for help staged a whole drama; in his final radio broadcast, he said, “The deck is full of blood. I’m dying, boy. Tell the Coast Guard to come quickly. Tell them there are dead and wounded here.” Who knows if this was a propaganda montage! 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 “Memorandum from Ashley Hewitt of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs (Haig), Washington, December 16, 1971”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 2018), Doc. 249. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid. 30 “Memorandum from the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (Nutter) to Secretary of Defense Laird, Washington, undated”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 2018), Doc. 250. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid.

172  Decline of Counterrevolutionary Groups 39 “Contingency Plan Prepared in the Department of State, Washington, December 19, 1971”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 2018), Doc. 251. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 4 4 Ibid. 45 Ibid. 46 “Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to Secretary of State Rogers, Secretary of Defense Laird, Secretary of Transportation Volpe, and the Director of Central Intelligence Helms, Washington, December 23, 1971”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 2018), Doc. 252. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 Fidel Castro: Comparecencia por radio y televisión, 22 de diciembre de 1971 (La Habana: Ediciones COR No. 15, Instituto Cubano del Libro, 1971), 22. 50 Ibid., 16–18. Castro read the statements of José Villa, in which he confessed that “he was recruited quite early by the CIA, considering that […] he was almost an expert in matters related to the Cuban coast.” In mid-1964, he received instructions to join the vessel Royna, a vessel directly operated by the CIA, in which he carried out different infiltration missions for groups along the northern coast of the western region of Cuba, under the command of Captain Gaspar Brook. In May 1965, he was ordered to transfer himself to the CIA vessel Explorer, captained by José Antonio Rodríguez Sosa, and from this vessel, he participated in three other operations on the coasts of Pinar del Río. In October 1971, “he was asked to work on the ships available to José Elías de la Torriente for his plan against Cuba […] as a captain earning $50 a day.” In November, he accepted the offer to work as captain on the vessel Johnny Express. “During the brief time he performed these functions, he did not participate in any mission.” 51 The Spanish involved was named Pablo Garí Carmañy, who claimed to have participated in two trips where persons were infiltrated into Cuba from the U.S. Ibid., 26–27. 52 Ibid., 22. 53 Ibid., 26–27. 54 Ibid., 27. 55 “Study prepared in the Departments of State and Defense, Washington, undated”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 2018), Doc. 253. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid.

The Crisis of the “Mother Ships”  173 61 On March 31, 1972, Alexander Haig informed President Nixon that the captain of the captured Panamanian ship was being held in Havana. “Panama awaits the release of the ship in the immediate future. Once that happens, and after a short interval of perhaps a few weeks, the Panamanian government expects the captain to be released”. “Memorandum from the President’s Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs (Haig) to President Nixon, Washington, March 31, 1972”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 2018), Doc. 258.

References Castro, F. Comparecencia por radio y televisión, 22 de diciembre de 1971 (La Habana: Ediciones COR, No. 15, Instituto Cubano del Libro, 1971). Granma (December 16, 1971). Granma (December 17, 1971). Granma (December 18, 1971). Karlsson, H. and Diez Acosta, T. The Last Year of President Kennedy and the “Multiple Path” Policy toward Cuba (New York/London: Routledge, 2020). U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 2018).

13 Assassination Plots toward Fidel Castro

During the Nixon administration, plans continued to be created directed at the assassination of the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro. According to a table that appears in a book written by Fabián Escalante Font La guerra secreta. Acción Ejecutiva [The Secret War. Executive Action] between 1969 and 1972, 22 plots and 83 conspiracies involving attacks were executed,1 which in all cases failed. This was due to the active surveillance of the Cuban population and the Cuban intelligence and counterintelligence work carried out by Cuban security, which managed to penetrate the conspiratorial groups as well as the CIA. 2 The best-known assassination plot that took place during these years—with the direct participation of the CIA—was the one that was attempted to be carried out, in November 1971, when Fidel Castro visited the Republic of Chile in compliance with an invitation from President Salvador Allende. Regarding this homicidal project, there exists no declassifed document from the U.S. government that acknowledges the U.S. participation in the events. However, a number of newspaper articles and books have been published in the U.S. that include testimonies from persons directly or indirectly involved in these plans. Similarly, in Cuba investigative works have been published that confrm the existence of these plans. In all of them, there are coincidences and differences regarding the execution of these failed assassination operations. According to the journalists Warren Hinckle and William W. Turner, the Nixon administration prepared a series of assassination attempts against Fidel Castro, supported by the CIA. They stress that “A group of exiles […] was involved in a triple assassination attempt when Castro was the guest of Salvador Allende in Chile.”3 One of those attempts was to shoot him “[…] with a weapon hidden inside a camera when he arrived in Santiago.” The camera plot was confrmed by Antonio Veciana, who emphasized that “Maurice Bishop, his CIA case offcer, ordered him to organize the attack.”4 Veciana stated—the journalists quote in their book—that the plan was very similar to the Kennedy assassination, because the person that Bishop had assigned to kill Castro was going to carry papers that would make him appear like a Castro-Moscow agent that had become a traitor, and then he himself would be killed. 5 Those

Assassination Plots toward Fidel Castro 175 false documents would be delivered by a former Batista security agent named Luis Posada Carriles, who had enlisted for the Bay of Pigs and then received intelligence training at Fort Jackson and who had become, by 1971, a senior service offcial of the Venezuelan security service (National Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services, DISIP).6 According to Veciana, the assassination attempt failed purely by chance. The assassins had a television camera with a machine gun mounted inside to kill Castro during his speech, but one of the agents had an appendicitis attack, and they had to rush him to the hospital, while the other agent did not dare to carry out the attack alone.7 Hinckle and Turner also describe that the plotters had an additional plan to kill Fidel Castro when he visited a copper mine in the mountains, near Antofagasta, in the northern part of Chile, but this attempt was also unsuccessful. They describe that Castro was in a car, climbing the narrow, winding road to the mine. Halfway there a disabled car blocked the road. This car was loaded with 400 pounds of dynamite, connected to an electric detonator. The plunger was pushed, but the dynamite did not explode.8 A third assassination attempt took place when Fidel Castro stopped in Peru on his return from Chile. It was planned that he should be assassinated at the moment when he appeared at the door of the aircraft, after it had landed at the Lima airport. A Beechcraft Baron aircraft, with a 20 mm gun behind the door, was positioned in an area from where it could fre on Castro and then quickly escape. However, Castro’s aircraft was parked in a special security area, out of sight of the Beechcraft, and the pilot refused to taxi to another position, because their chance to escape would disappear.9 Another more detailed version of the assassination plans toward Fidel Castro during his visit to Chile appears in a book by Fabián Escalante Font, who quotes a report prepared by the Cuban Departamento de Seguridad de Estado (DSE) [Department of State Security], in November 1979.10 In the report, it is stated that it was known from the later part of 1970 that the CIA planned to assassinate Fidel Castro when he visited Chile. The report clarifes that the CIA, “[…] according to confdential information, assigned a budget of $50.000 for the operation.”11 It also presents the individuals involved when it points out that: […] the leaders were the counterrevolutionaries of Cuban origin, Antonio Veciana Blanch, Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch,12 Lucilo Peña, Joaquín Sanjenis, Marcos Rodríguez, Diego Medina, Secundino Álvarez, Félix Rodríguez, Frank Sturgis, Gerry Patrick Hemming, a certain Naples, based in Bolivia, and the American offcer David Phillips.13 The DSE report indicates that the plan originally contained two execution alternatives in Chile and to which two more attempts were

176 Decline of Counterrevolutionary Groups added in Lima, Peru, and Quito, Ecuador, on the stopovers of the aircraft that would transport Fidel Castro on his return to Cuba. It also points out that in the initial meetings of the project, “[…] the attack should take place from a room in the Hilton hotel, next to the Government Palace […] but that attempt was hindered due to the cowardice of the participants.”14 Therefore, the second version of the plan, which had been prepared in advance from Caracas, Venezuela, was put to action. […] the Cuban counterrevolutionaries were accredited as journalists on the Venevisión channel: Marcos Rodríguez, from the group of Orlando Bosch […] and Diego Medina, from the group of the Second National Front of Escambray […] Both were trained in precision shooting and in the handling of the television camera that contained the 38 caliber revolver and with which they had to shoot Fidel, on the occasion of his last press conference in Chile. […] it failed because the executors refused, perhaps realizing that they would not leave the place alive.15 To carry out this frustrated plan, there had to be some authority from the body of carabineers involved, and that person—according to the Cuban Security informant—was “General José María Sepúlveda,” who took on the mission “[…] to facilitate the entry of the executors to the room where the Cuban leader’s press conference should take place. He was also responsible for executing the two assassins after the fatal shots were fred.”16 The DSE document, cited by Fabián Escalante, also reveals that Luis Posada Carriles and Lucio Peña: […] had devised a project through which they would fabricate false evidence linking Marcos Rodríguez and Diego Medina with Soviet intelligence offcers accredited in Caracas. The objective was to show, once the murder was committed, that it had been the work of the Russians who, displeased with Fidel Castro for his support to the revolutionary movement in Latin America, had decided to eliminate him from the Latin American political scene.17 After the fasco in Chile, the alternatives planned in connection to the stopovers of the aircraft that would return Fidel Castro to Cuba were passed. The report explains that Phillips and his group had hired the former captain of the Second National Front of Escambray, Eusebio Ojeda, along with two experts on explosives named Horacio and Marcelo to: […] station themselves on the terrace of the airport in Lima, Peru, and await the arrival of Fidel Castro […] with the aim of launching

Assassination Plots toward Fidel Castro 177 two previously prepared bombs at him. Both subjects, after giving their consent, disappeared and it was impossible to locate them. Faced with this new failure, Luis Posada Carriles offered to carry out the attack at the Quito airport, Ecuador, the last stop on Fidel Castro’s trip back to Cuba. The plan consisted of: […] recruiting the brothers Guillermo and Roberto Verdaguer, owners of an airline in Ecuador, to arrange that one of their aircrafts, was located at the air terminal, to enable for Posada Carriles and another accomplice, named Osiel González, to shoot Fidel Castro as soon as he appeared at the door of his aircraft.18 However, the project failed since the brothers Verdaguer refused to participate in the action, under the excuse that the conspiracy “[…] would be discovered and their businesses would be ruined.” Another version of the plot was provided directly by Antonio Veciana—in October 1994— to the Cuban journalists Hedelberto López and Ignacio Hernández, from the then weekly Juventud Rebelde, who, on a working visit to Miami, Florida, were able to interview Veciana about the assassination plans organized by him toward Fidel Castro.19 Naturally, in the account that Veciana presented, nothing appeared concerning his relations with the CIA and his links with David A. Phillips. Fabian Escalante meant that “It was a kind of aseptic and sweetened story, but that […] contained small portions of the truth […].”20 Regarding the plans of assassinate Castro in Chile, Veciana narrated: A person from the Chilean government, who’s name I still cannot mention, announced to me six months in advance that Fidel was going to Chile. I prepared two persons, both already dead, Diego Medina […] and the other, Marcos Rodríguez, we trained them in Venezuela as cameramen. […] This preparation lasted three months. They went to Chile a month before and obtained the credentials to enter La Moneda. The equipment was bought from the Venevisión channel […] The plan was to kill him during a large press conference, with around three hundred journalists, with the idea that whoever did it would become a hero before the international press. This scenario was chosen since Castro’s agents could not function and one should wait for the moment of least tension. They were two, but only one had to shoot. […] When Fidel just arrived in Chile, Diego Medina ran off to Peru, but the other could and should do it. Marcos Rodríguez attended the frst press conference with Fidel, but as planned, and to give Fidel’s security more confdence, he did not bring the weapon. After this Marcos went into a hospital claiming that he had appendicitis. When I went to see the doctor, he told

178

Decline of Counterrevolutionary Groups me that although the patient suffered from chronic appendicitis, the case was not an urgent operation, and it could wait months or years, but Marcos insisted on having the surgery done and after speaking with him again, I told the doctor to operate him […] Therefore, neither of the two men hired to carry out the attack attended the second press conference. […] On that occasion, Fidel was not killed due to the lack of balls. 21

The expert report of Colonel José Pérez Fernández before the Popular Provincial Court of Havana City, on July 19, 1999, in the trial of the Demanda del Pueblo Cubano contra el Gobierno de Estados Unidos por Daños Humanos Ocasionados a Cuba [Demand of the Cuban People towards the Government of the United States for Humanitarian Damage] coincides with all the previous versions, when declaring that during the visit to Chile, “[…] he planned to assassinate Fidel during a press conference he was to attend” and in order to commit the assassination: “[…] a weapon was installed in a video camera.”22 This converges with the version given in the book The Fish Is Red by the journalists Warren Hinckle and William W. Turner concerning the existence of an alternative plan in Chile, when Pérez Fernández states that “[…] they planned to assassinate him during the journey to the Chuquimata mine, by placing of a bomb with a high-power plastic explosive at a point on the road,” but that the attempt failed since “[…] the detonation mechanism did not work.”23 At the same time, there is some coincidence with the explanation in The Fish Is Red, concerning the planned attacks at the stopovers of the aircraft that would bring Fidel Castro back to Cuba. Especially, with the plan concerning the Lima airport, regarding the fact that the plan was to “[…] shoot him from a point nearby to the place where the aircraft would be parked,” but that the plan was frustrated when “[…] the aircraft was parked elsewhere.”24 In relation to the action to be carried out in Quito, Ecuador, it is similar to that of the DSE report, published in the book by Fabián Escalante Font, when stressed that in Quito, Luis Posada Carriles would be the executor of the assassination, and that he would shoot Castro “[…] with a rife with a telescopic sight, from an airplane owned by the brothers Guillermo and Roberto Verdaquer,” and that this attack failed due to “[…] the last minute refusal of the Verdaguer brothers to collaborate.”25

Notes 1 Fabián Escalante Font: La guerra secreta. Acción Ejecutiva (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2003), 266–267. 2 “Informe del perito coronel José Pérez Fernández acerca de los planes del gobierno de Estados Unidos, a través de la CIA y las organizaciones terroristas,

Assassination Plots toward Fidel Castro 179

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

11 12

13 14 15

16 17 18 19

20 21

22

para asesinar a dirigentes de la Revolución y en particular al Comandante en Jefe Fidel Castro” (1999). In: Centro de Documentación del Centro de Investigación Histórica de la Seguridad del Estado (CIHSE): Cuba Acusa. Política subversiva del gobierno de los Estados Unidos contra la Revolución Cubana (1959–2002) (La Habana: CITMATEL, 2003). Warren Hinckle and Wiliam W. Turner: The Fish Is Red: The Story of the Secret War against Castro (New York: Harper & Row, New York, 1981), 352–353. Maurice Bishop was one of the pseudonyms used by Davis Atlee Phillips, who was head of the Cuba section at the CIA. Ibid., 352. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 353. Interview with Gerry Patrick Hemming. Fabián Escalante Font: La guerra secreta. Acción Ejecutiva (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2003), 244–248. The author of the book, without mentioning the source of the document, provides information on the events that is not to be neglected, due to the high positions Escalante Font held as the Head of Cuban Security. Ibid., 244–245. Orlando Bosch could not have taken a direct part in this plot, because at that time he was in prison. Perhaps he had recommended some of the members of his group to participate in the attack, as was the case with Marcos Rodríguez. Fabián Escalante Font: La guerra secreta. Acción Ejecutiva (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2003), 245. Ibid. Ibid., 245–246. The report explains that from the frst moments Rodríguez and Medina began to put obstacles in the way of the project. Medina mentioned that “a distant cousin, who lived in Cuba, was part of Fidel Castro’s escort and could discover him at any time […] Rodríguez simulated an intense pain that the doctors diagnosed as possible appendicitis, being hospitalized, thus providing the excuse for the failure of the operation.” Ibid., 246. Ibid., 246. Ibid., 247. Ibid., 247–248. Hedelberto López and Ignacio Hernández: “Entrevista a Antonio Veciana Blanch, Miami, Florida, octubre de 1994”. In: Fabián Escalante Font: La guerra secreta. Acción Ejecutiva (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2003), 261–264. Fabián Escalante Font: La guerra secreta. Acción Ejecutiva (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2003), 261. Hedelberto López and Ignacio Hernández: “Entrevista a Antonio Veciana Blanch, Miami, Florida, octubre de 1994”. In: Fabián Escalante Font: La guerra secreta. Acción Ejecutiva (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2003), 262–263. Informe del perito coronel José Pérez Fernández acerca de los planes del gobierno de Estados Unidos, a través de la CIA y las organizaciones terroristas, para asesinar a dirigentes de la Revolución y en particular al Comandante en Jefe Fidel Castro’ (1999). In: Centro de Documentación del Centro de Investigación Histórica de la Seguridad del Estado (CIHSE): Cuba Acusa.

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Política subversiva del gobierno de los Estados Unidos contra la Revolución Cubana (1959–2002) (La Habana: CITMATEL, 2003). 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid.

References Centro de Documentación del Centro de Investigación Histórica de la Seguridad del Estado (CIHSE). Cuba Acusa. Política subversiva del gobierno de los Estados Unidos contra la Revolución Cubana (1959–2002) (La Habana: CITMATEL, 2003). Escalante Font, F. La guerra secreta. Acción Ejecutiva (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2003). Hinckle, W. and Turner, W.W. The Fish Is Red: The Story of the Secret War against Castro (New York: Harper & Row, 1981). López, H. and Hernández, I. “Entrevista a Antonio Veciana Blanch, Miami, Florida, octubre de 1994”. In: Fabián Escalante Font: La guerra secreta. Acción Ejecutiva (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2003), 261–264.

Part VI

The U.S.–Cuba Agreement on the Hijacking of Aircrafts, Sea Vessels and Other Offenses One of the phenomena generated during a decade of confrontation and aggressions by the U.S. toward Cuba was constituted by the acts of hijacking of aircrafts and maritime vessels that, by the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, in the case of aircrafts, tended to grow ostensibly as a global pest. The political scientist Karen Feste, in a paper presented at the “XIX Annual Conference of the Association for Confict Management,” held in Montreal, Canada, in June 2006, stated, “Between 1969 and 1972, the global number of aircraft hijackings jumped to 280. Most of them were diverted to Cuba.”1 These hijackings that initially were stimulated and welcomed by the U.S., when it was a question of hijackings of Cuban aircrafts diverted to the U.S., turned against their architects and hit them like a boomerang, when the high number of hijackings of U.S. aircrafts diverted to Cuba, became a domestic U.S. security problem that threatened the civil aviation in the U.S. Therefore, it was necessary for the Nixon administration trying to reach some kind of bilateral agreement with Cuba on this issue. However, this was a not a simple process since the U.S. approach was limited to the hijacking of aircrafts, while the Cuban government wanted a broader agreement that also included hijackings and piracy directed toward Cuban fshing vessels, as well as the illegal exit of persons from Cuba. This implied that the intentions to reach a bilateral agreement between the two countries in 1969–1970 failed. Instead the U.S. government leaned against multilateral and international agreements for solving the hijacking problem. However, it became obvious that these agreements failed to stop the phenomenon in the U.S., as well as the circumstance that Cuba continued to be the destination of most of the aircrafts diverted from its route by violent means in the U.S. A number of grave incidents in connection to hijackings in the U.S. in the end of 1972 led to a renewed U.S. interest of a bilateral agreement with Cuba on the issue. After a rather quick negotiation process, Cuba and the U.S. signed a bilateral agreement concerning the hijacking of

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aircrafts and sea vessels in February 1973. This implied that the Cuban broader interests were met, for instance, since the agreement also included the hijacking of sea vessels. This agreement could have meant much for the normalization of the relations between the two countries, but this was not achieved due to Nixon’s obstinacy with the Cuban Revolution. Right from the beginning of the negotiations—as it appears in the U.S. documentation—Nixon clarifed that the agreement did not constitute a change in Washington’s policy toward Cuba. The 1973 anti-hijacking agreement between Cuba and the U.S. was in force until March 1977, when the Cuban government decided to terminate it. The reason for this was the horrendous Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-sponsored terrorist sabotage toward a Cuban aircraft on October 6, 1976, that led to the loss of the lives of the 73 persons on board.

14 Air and Sea Hijackings A Double-Edged Sword for the U.S.

The psychological and propaganda war of the U.S. toward the Cuban Revolution had among its lines of action the promotion of the forced diversion of aircrafts and sea vessels, by inciting these hijackings and protecting their perpetrators, whom they cataloged as heroes who fed to fght the communist regime on Cuba. Among these “heroes,” one could fnd vulgar criminals and murderers, at the same time as the Cuban people had to lament valuable loss of life, resulting from these terrorist acts. Incitement to carry out these actions in Cuba also infuenced individuals in the U.S. who for various reasons—fair or unfair—were trying to escape persecution by the U.S. authorities. The phenomenon of air and sea hijackings began to manifest itself from the frst few months of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959. First, by individuals who were fugitives from justice for their repressive activities during the tyrannical Batista regime, who were eagerly seeking any means to get out of the country and fnd a safe haven in the U.S. Later, by counterrevolutionaries who, due to their criminal acts, tried to fee abroad by illegal means; and later, in 1962—when the normal routes of travel to the U.S. were closed—2by people who longed to emigrate to that country and who were encouraged by the US. antiCuban propaganda. The frst air hijacking occurred on April 16, 1959, when a DC-3 passenger plane, which covered the Gerona–Havana route, was forcibly obliged to deviate from its itinerary and land in Miami, Florida.3 Days later, on April 25, a second air hijacking of another civil aircraft took place.4 In both cases, the U.S. immigration authorities welcomed the hijackers. Due to this, and from here on, Cuban civil aviation on domestic routes had to face all kinds of dangerous situations that meant risks for passengers and crew. It would be excessively extensive to review or simply refer to all the events that occurred. However, it will not hurt to point out some of the acts of air hijackings that occurred before 1969 and that led to the loss of human lives. On October 29, 1960, a DC-3 passenger plane was hijacked and forced to change its route to Key West. In this action, the soldier Cástulo Acosta Hernández—that functioned as an escort of the aircraft—was

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assassinated, and the pilot Candelario Delgado Ruiz and the 14-yearold passenger, Argelio Rodríguez Hernández, were injured. On December 8, counterrevolutionaries tried to hijack another DC-3 aircraft from the Cubana Aviación [Cubana Airline] during its route Santiago– Camagüey–Santa Clara–Cienfuegos. The pilot, Francisco Martínez Malo, and a passenger were killed, and the copilot and the fight attendant were injured. The following year, on August 9, 1961, during an attempt to hijack a C-46 aircraft from Aerovías Q, on the Havana–Gerona route, the pilot Luis Álvarez Regato and the escort Silvino Rómulo Sánchez Almaguer were assassinated. Years later, on March 27, 1966, the fight engineer Ángel María Betancourt Cueto tried to hijack an IL-18 from the Cubana Airline. During this attempt, the escort Edor Reyes Martínez and the pilot, Captain Fernando Álvarez Peña, who heroically prevented the realization of the kidnapping, were killed, and the copilot Evans Rosales was injured. That same year, on July 8, the custodian Elucido Torres was killed, and the pilot of a fumigation plane was wounded, when that aircraft was stolen in the Bayamo region, Oriente province, and fown to Jamaica.5 At the same time, elements disaffected with the revolution carried out hijackings of sea vessels, with the aim of leaving the country. To this must be added that, in the second half of the 1960s—as a result of the defeat of the counterrevolution in Cuba—terrorist attacks against the Cuban coasts and defenseless Cuban fshing vessels took place orchestrated by counterrevolutionary groups abroad. These were mainly based in the U.S. and—with or without the support of the CIA—they carried out 731 actions of this kind during these years.6 As presented in previous chapters, not a few of these pirate attacks were carried out against fshing vessels, and they put the crews at risk, while they also costed a number of fshermen their lives. To this can also be added the stimulation of illegal exits with the use of any means, with disregard for the life and safety of people, which also caused a number of violations in the border territory of Cuba with the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo. This military enclave served as an evacuation route and a refuge for counterrevolutionary elements infltrated or feeing from the Cuban forces that were pursuing them. If in the west and the center of the country, the illegal exits were carried out through hijacked air and sea means, in the east, the U.S. base constituted the procedure chosen to leave Cuba by elements hostile to the revolution or by people who were naively stimulated by the counterrevolutionary radio stations that glorifed this type of risky action. With the existence of two opposed armed forces—Cuban and the U.S.—in the border area of the base, these actions could lead to an uncontrolled situation of armed confrontation between the two, which compromised Cuba’s

Air and Sea Hijackings 185 national security. This dangerous situation was alerted to the U.S. by Fidel Castro, in his conversation with the Swiss ambassador to Cuba, Alfred Fischli, on February 1, 1969. However, the U.S. government did not take any measures in respect of this situation.7 In the early 1960s, the Revolutionary government tried to prevent the proliferation of air and sea hijackings as a way for illegal exits from the country. In connection to this, they had addressed the U.S. government, as the National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger reminded President Nixon: I think you should be aware of one historical aspect of this problem which may prove embarrassing to us. In 1961, when there were several cases of ships and planes seized by Cubans escaping to the United States, we did not respond to a Cuban note proposing a mutual agreement to return the persons responsible for those actions to the country of registry of the ship or plane. In effect, we refused to consider essentially the same proposal we have now made to the Cubans.8 This implies that in the beginning of the 1960s there existed no interest from the U.S. authority to end the hijackings of aircrafts and sea vessels since these were convenient for their policy, namely, to create problems for the revolution and stimulate the exit of persons from Cuba. However, at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, the boomerang had hit the U.S. because these hijackings had become a domestic U.S. problem, since the hijackings of U.S. aircrafts diverted to Cuba were increasing. Therefore, the U.S.—initially the propitiator of these acts of piracy against Cuba—was interested in trying to reach an anti-hijacking agreement with Cuba. A few days after that Richard Nixon assumed the presidency of the U.S., on February 6, 1969, the Secretary of State, William P. Rogers, sent him a memorandum alerting him about the serious problem that the hijackings of aircrafts redirected to Cuba constituted: Hijacking of aircraft to Cuba is an increasingly serious problem. Most of the hijacked aircraft have been U.S. planes, but aircraft from Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Peru have also been involved. So far this year, nine U.S. aircraft9 and three from other countries, all commercial airliners, have been taken to Cuba. This compares with seventeen U.S. and nine non-U.S. aircraft hijacked in 1968. A few of these were non-scheduled and private planes, but most were commercial airliners. There were seven successful hijackings of U.S. aircraft and three of other countries in the period 1961–67. Most of the recent hijackers have been U.S. citizens, rather than Cubans.10

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Figure 14.1 Memorandum to the president from Henry A. Kissinger. Subject: Aircraft Hijacking, Washington, February 7, 1969. NCS Country Files - Latin America, Box #780, Cuba Vol #1. Source: National Archives and Records Administration, used with permission.

Air and Sea Hijackings 187 Although the Secretary of State stressed that “None of these incidents as yet involved us [the U.S.] in a serious international problem. Aside from the inconvenience and cost involved in each incident […].” However, he warned of the possibility of two types of dangers that could occur: “a) an accident with loss of life; and b) an incident in which we are unable to obtain the return of the aircraft or the passengers and crew.” He recognized the meticulous performance of the Cubans in “[…] returning relatively promptly hijacked aircraft, passengers and crew […].” But at the same time, he stressed that there was a risk that Cuba could change its attitude or that the problem could spread to other parts of the world. For instance, a kidnapping of a U.S. aircraft could occur in “[…] some less cooperative place, such as North Korea.”11 In his memorandum, Rogers informed President Nixon of the bilateral and multilateral steps that the Department of State had taken under the previous administration. Rogers explained that bilaterally, two approaches had been made to the Cuban government through the Swiss Embassy. The frst approach had been carried out in July 1968, when the U.S. suggested the return of the stolen aircrafts and the return of the Cubans who wanted to go back to Havana. Accordingly, in November the Cuban government had been presented with a list of names of people who had indicated that wish. Rogers pointed out in this regard that “[…] a repatriation arrangement might be helpful, at least psychologically.” The other approach had taken place in December, when the U.S. presented the Cuban government with a diplomatic note with the proposal of an arrangement concerning “[…] the return of hijackers of commercial aircraft and expressing our willingness to make this reciprocally.” An effective way to stop the increase in hijackings—Rogers argued—was the “[…] prosecution of hijackers.” He further stated that “[…] a gap in our efforts to combat the problem has been the fact that Cuba, at present, does not return hijackers […].”12 It seems as if the Secretary of State forgot that nor did the U.S. return the aircraft hijackers of Cuban aircrafts. Rogers pointed out that the result of these efforts was that the U.S. had: […] just received through the Swiss a Cuban reply dated February 1 to both approaches. The Cuban note is measured and responsible in tone, indicates that the Cubans are concerned themselves about the problem, and provides some hope for some small practical steps that could ease the problem.13 Both notes, made by the Democratic administration of Lyndon B. Johnson, were not intended to solve the underlying problem but merely intended to ease the situation created for the security of the U.S. In the new context, what could Cuba expect from the new U.S. president who,

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in his frst public announcements, signaled the continuation and the increase in the anti-Cuban aggressiveness? Richard Nixon’s hate of the Cuban Revolution and his disgust of Fidel Castro was manifested in a bizarre way. Years later, his National Security adviser, Henry Kissinger, wrote that Nixon, disliked Castro intensely.14 However, as cited above, Rogers evaluated the Cuban government’s response as measured and responsible in tone, and that the Cuban response indicated that the Cubans was concerned about the problem, and that it provided some hope for practical steps that could ease the problem. In the response, Cuba also objected “[…] unrestricted entry for all Cubans who might wish to return […],” nor did Cuba agree to “[…] permit return of individuals who violated Cuban law, in departing the country illegally.” However, Cuba was prepared to “[…] receive limited numbers and to give consideration to any list of names given them.”15 The Secretary of State believed that the Cuban position of allowing passengers and crew to return to the U.S. in the hijacked plane, if the airlines and the U.S. government assumed the responsibility, and if they considered it safe was “feasible.” Likewise, he expressed that for the Cubans it was not possible, in the circumstances existing at that time, to make “[…] bilateral commitments to return hijackers,” but if the air hijackings continued at their present rate, Cuba had stated that they could also consider “[…] the adoption, on its own account,” which was interpreted as the possibility that, in Cuba, the hijackers could unilaterally be prosecuted, returned or expelled.16 In the memorandum, Secretary Rogers also referred to Cuba’s concern, about both the illegal exits of people through the air hijacking and the exits realized through the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base—concerns that had been expressed by Fidel Castro in his conversation with the Swiss ambassador on February 1. He also commented on some ideas given for a direct approach with the Cuban leader through some “[…] unoffcial intermediary such as James Donovan.”17 Although, Rogers estimated that: […] in view of the Cuban reply just received, indicating reluctance to proceed at the moment with negotiated bilateral understandings we have decided to defer further consideration of this tactic for the time being. We will weigh its desirability again in the future if the problem’s intensity is sustained or if more propitious signs for it are received.18 In the memorandum, the Secretary of State also referred to the request made to third parties to “[…] talk to Cubans about the general problem,” as was the case with the Director General of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and the president of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a specialized agency of the United

Air and Sea Hijackings 189 Nations, as well as to the governments of Canada and Mexico. This approach to the Cuban government should be realized “[…] not on our behalf but in terms of it being an international problem.”19 Rogers also reported on the ongoing efforts of the U.S. at the multilateral level. The frst involved the “Tokyo Convention,”20 which is fundamentally related to crimes onboard aircrafts and only secondarily with hijackings. Despite the limitations of that treaty, he pointed out the importance of establishing an international code of conduct that “[…] would be helpful if we ever have an incident in which either the airplane, the passengers, or the crew is detained.”21 That convention, he pointed out, was not yet in force, since it required the ratifcation of 12 countries and only 8 had done so. The U.S., he noted, had not done so. In September 1968, President Johnson sent a note to the U.S. Senate in which he expressed his hope of a prompt ratifcation for its quick implementation, although Rogers doubted that the Cubans would ratify it soon. 22 Rogers further stressed the Department of State’s proposal to include a protocol in the “Tokyo Convention,” where a requirement was established stating, “[…] return the hijacker to the country of where the hijacked aircraft is registered for trial.”23 On February 10, there would be a meeting, under the auspices of ICAO, where the proposal would be considered. Rogers indicated that there were two important aspects to this protocol: (1) It is limited to incidents involving the hijacking of a commercial aircraft […] We would not want to get involved with individuals who steal a raft or a small aircraft to escape political persecution or the like. (2) […] the traditional right of asylum would not apply to hijackers covered by the protocol. […] the risks to safety are so great that they outweigh this traditional consideration. 24 He was aware, he said, that a kidnapper who pleaded that he was feeing political persecution should be returned, since “[…] without this exception to the asylum rule, the protocol would not be effective.”25 As manifested in the document, the previous administration had tried on several occasions to reach an understanding with the Cuban government but had failed due to limitations. These limitations consisted in the fact that the U.S. only wanted to discuss air hijackings, and not other forms of piracy, and ignore their causes and encouraging factors were obstacles to an agreement with Cuba. This position was continued by the Nixon administration, but the reality had changed and it was different. The U.S. was beginning to receive blows from the boomerang launched toward Cuba when the increasing number of hijackings of aircrafts diverted to Cuba—both for political and for criminal reasons—threatened

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the U.S. national security and putting the civil aviation in the U.S. at risk. However, Nixon held on to his positions, and he was only authorizing Rogers to do, with the mediation of the Swiss Ambassador Fischli, a slight survey of what “Castro has in mind” on the matter. The U.S. position of only considering the air hijackings was rejected by Cuba. Foreign Minister Raúl Roa García clearly stated the Cuban position that any negotiation would be carried out on the basis of equality and strict reciprocity to the interests of both countries, when he expressed, “[…] If the United States government really wants to discuss seriously and defnitively, the agreement must include all forms of piracy and violations without any exception.”26 Faced with the increased number of air hijackings to Havana, Washington promoted secret talks, using the Swiss Embassy as an intermediary, to extradite the abductors to the U.S. But the intransigence of the U.S. position of not addressing the problem in all its complexity condemned the talks to total failure. Meanwhile, Cuba began to take positive steps by “[…] expelling some hijackers to third countries and encouraging others to leave.”27 In this context, and when its own security was threatened—faced with the growing problem of hijackings—the U.S. undertook a great diplomatic effort in using its powerful infuence in regional organizations, such as the Organization of American States (OAS), and global ones, through the specialized institutions of the United Nations. At the regional level, it managed—through Argentina and Uruguay that the Permanent Council of the OAS adopted, on May 15, 1970, a unanimous resolution condemning terrorist acts of aircraft hijackings and a recommendation that the organization’s General Assembly, set for the end of June, should adopt a resolution concerning general and political actions regarding such crimes. On June 30, 1970, a resolution was adopted regarding “acts of terrorism and, above all, hijackings and extortion,”28 linked to acts of air piracy. The United States also enthusiastically supported the realization, within the United Nations, and in the ICAO, of the same kind of resolution, and in November of that year, the UN also issued a condemnatory resolution concerning acts of air piracy and the proposal of a multilateral agreement to prevent them. 29 Washington’s objective in obtaining these regional and global instruments was not only to combat air piracy but also to force Cuba to accept the U.S. rules of the game through threats. Therefore, the U.S. diplomatic efforts were preceded and accompanied by an international press campaign, condemning the Revolutionary government as guilty of air hijackings and for not discouraging these crimes. This was nothing more than the old U.S. manner of turning the victim into the victimizer in the eyes of the public opinion, as had been manifested at other occasions. Faced with this U.S. policy and the propaganda that supported it, Cuba’s position of principles was clearly established, in a speech presented

Air and Sea Hijackings 191 at the United Nations General Assembly, at its session on October 8, 1969, by the Cuban Ambassador Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada, which stated that: Cuba’s attitude has always been clear and adjusted to the international principles that govern relations between the nations. Hijacked aircrafts and sea vessels and its passengers have been returned without hindrance, and these actions and their organizers have never been glorifed. Our behavior, as we can see, contrasts with that of the United States government, and that of the Latin American governments that follow their orders submissively. With the same concern as the world public opinion, we contemplate the insecurity of air and sea navigation, and we would say that with more intensity since our country has suffered the most from this criminal imperialist invention and our territory is the usual scenario of the expansion of this violent phenomenon.30 Alarcón de Quesada highlighted the ineffectiveness that solutions through multilateral agreements would have for Cuba—whether regional or global—as well as the threats to impose a boycott or a blockade, stressing: […] The Cuban government is not willing to abide by decisions of international organizations such as the OAS […] whose agreements lack the least dose of morale, in the specifc case of air and maritime piracy it has been complicit to the government of the United States on numerous occasions.31 In the case of the United Nations, he asked: […] Has this body not remained silent and with its arms crossed before the cases of piracy against Cuba? By what right would the United Nations address this problem in the current circumstances when it previously allowed illegal acts to pass without the slightest hint of concern?32 With regard to international blockade or boycott pressures and threats, Alarcón de Quesada rightly inquired: […] Which self-respecting government will be able to adopt measures under these conditions, when such measures exclusively concern its sovereign prerogatives? And on the other hand, was there ever discussions of an international blockade or boycott when the imperialists and their lackeys were the victimizers? Now they talk, at the same time as they encourage and promote illegal exits from Cuba and hijack Cuban vessels and cause the death of valuable

192 The U.S.-Cuba Agreement companions? The Government of Cuba wishes to make it clear that it will not accept any imposition based on a multilateral agreement and will frmly maintain its criterion that, as far as our country is concerned, it will only adopt measures based on bilateral agreements with countries that are willing to adopt exactly the same measures in relation to the hijacking of aircrafts, vessels and other similar violations of the laws that governs the international traffc.33 In this regard, the Cuban ambassador announced the recent law enacted by the Cuban government on the diversion of aircrafts or sea vessels, which stated that “[…] the return of the perpetrators of those acts to the affected nations that bilaterally with Cuba agrees upon the application of such a policy as a just response to the concern of the international community.”34 On September 16, 1969, Law 1226 was promulgated in Cuba to sanction—as related in its “Article 1”—the following acts: a b c d e f

Seize, steal or appropriate an aircraft or a sea vessel by any means. Diverting an aircraft or a sea vessel from its normal routes and activities through deception, bribery, violence, intimidation or in collusion with any member of the crew. Endanger the safety of an aircraft or sea vessel or of persons or property on board, or of third parties, or the good order and discipline within it. Enter or leave the country in violation of the regulations on migration, customs and epidemiological, veterinary and phytosanitary national and international control. Violate the criminal laws of Cuba on board any Cuban fag aircraft or sea vessel regardless of the territory where it is located. Violate any other regulations in force by the members of the crew or person on board the aircraft or sea vessel.35

While in “Article 2” it instructs the perpetrators of the acts described that if they arrive in the national territory, “[…] they may be returned to the affected state, provided that they are claimed by this state in accordance with the provisions of this law.” Likewise, “Article 3” establishes that the aforementioned measure will be applied only “[…] on the basis of equality and strict reciprocity with respect to the affected state, that bilaterally agree to apply the same policy to these cases.” The legislation also contemplates, without prejudice to the provisions, the evaluation of the motive for committing the crime and exercise sovereignty concerning the interpretation. The Cuban state, as “Article 5” stipulates: […] Reserves the prerogative to grant the right of asylum, when it is deemed justifed, to those people, who due to political reasons arrive in our country due to the need to use this extreme route to avoid a real danger of their lives or severe repression.36

Air and Sea Hijackings 193 The new law was publicly released to the national and international press on September 19, and its impact on the U.S. government was immediate. On September 23, in a memorandum from Viron P. Vaky addressed to Kissinger, the former informed the later of his considerations on Law 1226, and he stated that the law “[…] does not in fact make very many real concessions beyond the publicizing of an unfavorable view of hijacking, which in itself may discourage some potential hijackers.”37 Regarding the proposals in the law, Vaky explained that they probably had two purposes: “To respond to growing international criticism by taking an apparently forthcoming position, and to undercut the OAS policy of diplomatic isolation by inviting treaty negotiations on extradition of hijackers.” He stressed that this type of law “[…] places the onus on those countries which have been victimized by air piracy.” Another purpose, he said, may be targeting the U.S. directly in an effort to “[…] reach a negotiated agreement […] on something that bothers us a great deal to test our posture and see what can be developed.” Likewise, he considers that “[…] it could be some kind of gambit […]” to suggest another move, such as taking steps towards “[…] a new modus vivendi and in mutual Cuban-American steps toward improved relations. It quotes the hijacking law as an opportunity.”38 For that reason, Vaky stressed that whatever is up Cuban sleeve, “[…] they have made a defnite probe in our direction, and we must consider carefully how or whether to respond both in terms of hijacking and relations generally.” He further stresses that he has asked the Department of State to urgently send a memorandum to the president that analyzes the situation and that outlines what could be done, so that they could get the president’s view of the problem and an approval of a course of action.39 Another reaction at the highest levels of the U.S. government can be seen in the letter that the Secretary of Transportation, John Volpe, sent to the State Secretary, William Rogers, on October 21.40 In that letter Volpe informed Rogers that the essential aspects contained in the new Cuban legislation had been carefully studied by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Task Force on Deterrence of Air Piracy. He said that the issue of this decree should be viewed:“[…] as a signifcant move on the part of the Government of Cuba toward the return to the United States of certain persons who have hijacked United States aircraft to Cuba.” He urged the Department of State to explore its full extent, since: “[…] Cuba’s announcement may be translated into actions resulting in the return of hijackers.” Finally, he expressed his optimism for the announcement of the adoption of a Cuban decree that represented “[…] an opportunity to enter into discussions, through appropriate channels, regarding acceptable conditions for obtaining the return of aircraft hijackers.”41 Ten days later, on October 31, after evaluating the Cuban law at the Department of State, Secretary Rogers approached President Nixon to recommend the approval of a note to the Cuban government indicating that the U.S. “[…] is prepared on a basis of reciprocity to return hijackers

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of Cuban` ships and aircraft except in the case of U.S. nationals or when we determine to grant a hijacker political asylum.”42 The memorandum explained the aspects discussed in the Department of State, arguing in this regard that the “[…] announcement of an agreement with Cuba to return hijackers would have a strong deterrent effect.” The announcement of the return of the hijackers of Cuban aircrafts and sea vessels was also not overlooked: The return of refugee-hijackers to Cuba would cause problems in the United States, but we expect that most hijackers coming from Cuba would be entitled to political asylum. In the exceptional case of a common criminal who uses hijacking to escape justice, we should be prepared to reciprocate in order to achieve the return of hijackers to the United States.43 Regarding the legal aspects that the content of the note to Cuba would imply, Rogers indicated that he had discussed it with the Attorney General who accepted “[…] to the use of deportation, or exclusion procedures under the immigration laws for this purpose.”44 Knowing of Nixon’s position regarding Cuba, Rogers assured the president that the agreement “[…] would not alter the status of our relations with the Castro Government.” He also explained that there were many antecedents of discussions and agreements with governments in the absence of diplomatic relations, such as the one carried out in 1955 with China for the exchange of prisoners, and in the “Agreement on the Neutrality of Laos” in 1962. He also referred to Article 74 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties that states the accepted principle of international law that even “the conclusion of a treaty does not in itself affect the situation in regard to diplomatic or consular relations.”. He further indicated that in 1965 the U.S. and Cuba concluded a formal agreement for the establishment of the refugee airlift in a memorandum of understanding set forth in an exchange of notes between the Swiss Embassy in Havana and the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations. To calm President Nixon, he stated that “The proposed note, which is not drafted in the form of an agreement as such, would also be communicated to the Cuban Government by note of the Swiss Embassy in Havana.” In direct reference to the Cuban counterrevolutionary exile, Rogers stated that this agreement might cause: […] apprehension on in some quarters that we intend to regularize relations with Cuba, we believe an agreement on hijacking generally would be understood to be limited to that subject and would be favourably received in most sectors of U.S. and Latin opinion. A favorable response would be reinforced if we move promptly.45

Air and Sea Hijackings 195 Apparently, Nixon was reluctant to approve this proposal because of the repercussion it could have among Cuban exile communities. On November 12, Kissinger informed the president that the Secretary of State asked if he approved the issuance of the note to the Cuban Government, since “[…] the hijacking situation has reached serious proportions and that we should take every step we can to resolve it.” Kissinger stated that: I concur in the Secretary’s recommendation because I think the opportunity to fnd a solution to the very troublesome hijacking problem is suffciently promising that we should not miss it. I also agree that the adverse implications or consequences are likely to be minimal.46 The following day, Nixon frmed the approval of the expedition of the note to the Cuban government.

Notes 1 Karen Feste: “Reducing International Terrorism, Negotiation Dynamics in the US-Cuba Skyjack Crisis”, quoted in: Peter Kornbluh: “Terrorism and the Anti-Kidnapping Agreement in Cuba’s Relations with the United States” (Temas, No. 62–63, April-September 2010), 54. 2 Regarding this, Jesús Arboleya states, “At the end of that year, President Kennedy suspended direct fights to Cuba, and some tens of thousands of people waiting to emigrate were stranded in the country, which together with the indiscriminate acceptance of immigrants Cuban illegals created a tremendous incentive for illegal emigration […].” Jesús Arboleya: La contrarrevolución cubana (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1997), 192–193. 3 The perpetrators of this kidnapping were former members of the repressive bodies of the Batista tyranny, Alfredo Masón Sánchez, along with his brothers Rolando and Jesús, and Leonardo Serrate. The aforementioned brothers were fugitives from a prison where they should be tried. 4 The aircraft was hijacked from Varadero beach, Matanzas, and forced to land in Miami by Antonio Rodríguez Díaz and three other family members who were accompanying him. 5 “Cronología de las acciones terroristas de la contrarrevolución”. In: Centro de Documentación del Centro de Investigación Histórica de la Seguridad del Estado (CIHSE): Cuba Acusa. Política subversiva del gobierno de los Estados Unidos contra la Revolución Cubana (1959–2002) (La Habana: CITMATEL, 2003). 6 Jesús Arboleya: La contrarrevolución cubana (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1997), 167. 7 See: “Memorandum of Conversation, Washington, March 11, 1969, 2:45 p.m.” U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 197. 8 “Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs to President Nixon, February 7, 1969”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign

196

9

10

11 12 13 14 15

16 17

18

19

20

21

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Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 196. In the “National Security Study Memorandum 32 – Cuba.” it is affrmed that in: “January 1969, there were eleven kidnappings”. “Study Prepared in Response to National Security Memorandum 32, Washington, July 2, 1969”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 196. “Secretary Rogers memorandum to the President, February 6, 1969”. Document attached to: “Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs to President Nixon, February 7, 1969”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 196. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Henry Kissinger: Years of Renewal (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999), 771. “Secretary Rogers memorandum to the President, February 6, 1969”. Document attached to: “Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs to President Nixon, February 7, 1969”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 196. Ibid. The lawyer James Donovan was the negotiator who, between 1961 and 1963, mediated for the release of the Bay of Pigs mercenary invaders and other CIA agents imprisoned in Cuba. See: Håkan Karlsson and Tomás Diez Acosta: The Last Year of President Kennedy and the “Multiple Path” Policy toward Cuba (New York/London: Routledge, 2020), 137. “Secretary Rogers memorandum to the President, February 6, 1969”. Document attached to: “Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs to President Nixon, February 7, 1969”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 196. “Secretary Rogers memorandum to the President, February 6, 1969”. Document attached to: “Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs to President Nixon, February 7, 1969”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 196. The “Convention on Offenses and Certain Other Acts Committed on Board Aircraft”, also known as the “Tokyo Convention”, was agreed upon in the capital of Japan on September 14, 1963 and it entered into force on December 4, 1969. “Secretary Rogers memorandum to the President, February 6, 1969”. Document attached to: “Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs to President Nixon, February 7, 1969”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 196. Ibid.

Air and Sea Hijackings 197 23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40

41 42

43 44 45 46

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Instituto Superior de Relaciones Internacionales (ISRI): “Raúl Roa García”. De Eisenhower a Reagan (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1987), 197–198. Peter Kornbluh: “Terrorism and the Anti-Kidnapping Agreement in Cuba’s Relations with the United States” (Temas, No. 62–63, April-September 2010), 56. See: “General Action Policy of the Organization with Regard to Acts of Terrorism and, Especially, the Kidnapping of Persons and Extortion in Connection with that Crime”. National Archives, RG 59, Central Files 1970–73, POL 23-8. See also: Resolución de la Organización de Estados Americanos, 30 de junio de 1970, adoptado durante la sexta sesión plenaria de la Asamblea General. Archivo del MINREX. Carol Edler Baumann: The Diplomatic Kidnappings: A Revolutionary Tactic of Urban Terrorism (New York: Springer, 2012), 167. “Discurso pronunciado en la Asamblea General de las Naciones Unidas, en su sesión del miércoles 8 de octubre de 1969, por el embajador de Cuba, Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada”. Política Internacional No. 26, 1969. 287. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 288. “Ley número 1226, dictada por el Consejo de Ministros de la República de Cuba y promulgada por el Presidente de la República el 16 de septiembre de 1969, para sancionar el desvío de aviones o naves marítimas”. Ibid., 266. Ibid., 267. “Memorandum from Viron P. Vaky of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger), Washington, September 23, 1969”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 208. Ibid. Ibid. “Letter from Secretary of Transportation Volpe to Secretary of State Rogers, Washington, October 21, 1969”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 1, Documents on Global Issues 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 124. Ibid. “Memorandum from Secretary of State Rogers to President Nixon, Washington, October 31, 1969”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 1, Documents on Global Issues 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 125. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. “Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Nixon, Washington, November 12, 1969”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969– 1976, Vol. E – 1, Documents on Global Issues 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 126.

198 The U.S.-Cuba Agreement

References Arboleya, J. La contrarrevolución cubana (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1997). Centro de Documentación del Centro de Investigación Histórica de la Seguridad del Estado (CIHSE). Cuba Acusa. Política subversiva del gobierno de los Estados Unidos contra la Revolución Cubana (1959–2002) (La Habana: CITMATEL, 2003). Edler Baumann, C. The Diplomatic Kidnappings: A Revolutionary Tactic of Urban Terrorism (New York: Springer, 2012). Instituto Superior de Relaciones Internacionales (ISRI). “Raúl Roa García”. De Eisenhower a Reagan (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1987). Karlsson, H. and Diez Acosta, T. The Last Year of President Kennedy and the “Multiple Path” Policy toward Cuba (New York/London: Routledge 2020). Kissinger, H. Years of Renewal (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999). Kornbluh, P. “Terrorism and the Anti-Kidnapping Agreement in Cuba’s Relations with the United States” (Temas, No. 62–63, April-September 2010). Política Internacional No. 26, 1969. U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 1, Documents on Global Issues 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018). U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018).

15 The Failed Negotiations between Cuba and the U.S.

Once the presidential consent was obtained, the Department of State prepared to send, on November 28, 1969, the “Telegram 199293” to the U.S. embassy in Switzerland, so that it could deliver the U.S. proposal concerning hijackings, as a “priority” matter, to the Federal Political Department in Switzerland and to Ambassador Alfred Fischli at the Swiss Embassy in Havana.1 The idea underlying this maneuver was that Fischli  should be the one presenting the proposal to the Cuban government. The document, authored by the U.S. Secretary of State, William P. Rogers, contained the background and the instructions for its diplomatic management. In this regard, it cited parts of the Cuban Law 1226, when it pointed out the need to: […] adopt measures to put an end to the climate of insecurity created in air and ocean navigation by the diversion by force of ships and planes from their normal routes and activities, and to adapt the application of such measures to the attitude assumed by other States on bases of equality and reciprocity […].2 The document also referred to Alarcón’s speech at the United Nations, when he assured that Cuba would not enter into any multilateral negotiation for the elimination of the problem, and that the Cuban Law 1226 provided for the return of the hijackers to the affected state upon the offcial request of that state. Although the instructions of the Secretary of State, to the Swiss ambassador in Havana, clarifed that Cuban law was much broader than the U.S. proposal, since it “[…] applies to all persons entering or leaving Cuba in violation of regulations and to Cuban ships and planes that may be taken by theft or bribery […],” while the U.S. proposal deliberately was limited to hijackers. It was also stated that “Obviously, the USG will not agree to return other persons simply because they left Cuba illegally, whether through Guantanamo or some other route.”3 This clarifcation in the document shows that the U.S. position would be limited only to the hijacking of aircrafts and sea vessels and not to all the acts provided for in “Article 1” of Law 1226, and this difference was one of the factors that determined that the negotiation should be extended during more than three years.

200 The U.S.-Cuba Agreement The document also reminded Ambassador Fischli—aware of previous initiatives—that the goals of the U.S. government with Cuba on the hijacking problem are to “[…] achieve a well-publicized understanding with Cuba which hopefully would in itself act as a substantial deterrent against future hijackings” and obtain “[…] less formal arrangements which would refect that Cuba and the United States have adopted parallel positions on this grave problem.”4 In addition, Roger asked Fischli, when delivering the note to the Cuban government, to orally emphasize that the U.S. government: […] (a) views the problem of hijacking as being most serious; (b) welcomed the Cuban Government’s initiative to deter hijacking by its adoption of its Law 1226; (c) believes that a well-publicized understanding between the United States and Cuba that hijackers risked being returned for punishment would in itself act as a substantial deterrent to future acts of hijacking to the mutual advantage of both governments; (d) has taken this initiative to communicate […] that the USG believes that US policy with respect to return of hijackers parallels that of the GOC; (e) is prepared to act on a basis of equality and strict reciprocity.5 After referring to parts of the content of the Cuban law, the document states: The Government of the United States wishes to confrm that it shares the determination of the Government of Cuba to adopt measures to deter the diversion by force of ships and planes from their normal routes and activities. The United States is prepared, upon request, to return to Cuba persons committing such acts against Cuban ships and planes, on a basis of equality and reciprocity as specifed in Law 1226, in accordance with the procedures available under United States laws and regulations. Accordingly, the Government of the United States hopes that the Government of Cuba will act affrmatively on requests by the United States for the return of hijackers of United States ships and planes. It is our belief that the return of hijackers for prosecution will have a substantial deterrent effect that would help to achieve the objective of Law 1226 to put an end to the climate of insecurity that has been created in air and ocean navigation.6 The delivery of the note was made on December 5, 1969, and the Cuban Foreign Ministry responded to Ambassador Fischli on December 8: The Revolutionary Government of Cuba states that it is disposed to work out an agreement with the Government of the United States on

Negotiations between Cuba and the U.S. 201 hijackers of aircraft and other similar acts referred to in Cuban law 1226, published on September 16, 1969, which shall constitute for Cuba the legal basis of the said agreement.7 The answer was clear. The Revolutionary government was willing to work with the U.S. to reach an agreement on aircraft hijackers and other similar acts related to Law 1226. This means, not just with one type of events but with all those contemplated in the law, that established the legal basis for any agreement. Fidel Castro stated that “We made our law concerning the aircrafts. If they want a resolution for the aircrafts, they have to take our law letter by letter, and article by article, and without quit a single comma, from our law.”8 On January 9, 1970, the Department of State issued Telegram 3810 to the Embassy of Switzerland, responding to the answer from the Cuban government. Rogers asked Ambassador Fischli to orally inform the Cuban Foreign Minister Raúl Roa, about the assurance expressed by Prime Minister Castro that the Cuban government was ready to negotiate, and that he should emphasize to Roa that: […] The USG is prepared […] to reach a frm understanding with the GOC on this matter as soon as possible […] We are hopeful that a well-publicized understanding between the GOC and the USG for the return of hijackers of ships and aircraft would have a substantial deterrent effect on hijacking. […] We believe that the US proposal […] is clear, but perhaps the following restatements of it will be helpful. The United States is prepared, on the basis of equality and reciprocity, as specifed in Cuban Law 1226 […] to return to Cuba persons who by force or threat of force divert ships and planes of Cuban registry from their normal routes and activities and bring them to the United States; the U.S. would also apply reciprocally the same exceptions specifed in the Cuban law […] for cases of political asylum and for nationals of the US. The United States Government is prepared to provide any further clarifcation that the GOC may request, in order that a mutually satisfactory arrangement […] can be ac as achieved as quickly as possible.9 In this communication, it is obvious that the U.S. accepted the Cuban response, and that they were willing to let the negotiations be based in Law 1226. However, parallelly, it is also apparent that the U.S. limits itself to an agreement on air and sea hijackings and intentionally omits any reference to subsection d, of Article 1, in Law 1226, which specifes as a criminal act the illegal entrance in, or exit from, the country. However, the Revolutionary government did not object to the start of the

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talks, as evidenced by its note to the Swiss Embassy in Havana, dated April 6, 1970, which, concisely, replied that it was willing to work for an agreement with the U.S. government regarding the return of hijackers, based on Cuban Law 1226 of September 16, 1969. At that time, despite the diffcult situation that the U.S. had with the hijackings, there was no concrete U.S. proposal as a platform for the conversation between the two governments. This is a bit odd when it was the U.S. that wanted to reach a solution to this problem as soon as possible, not at least since the hijackings did not decrease in number, on the contrary, they were on the rise. This situation was also to become one of the political weapons during the midterm elections in the U.S., set for November 1970. In this context, on May 15, 1970, the Secretary of State asked President Nixon for authorization to issue a note to the Cuban government consisting of a “Memorandum of Understanding.”10 Although in arguing for this request, Rogers also expressed some doubts about being able to reach an agreement with Cuba, when he stated: If we fail to make a signifcant reply, Castro will have the propaganda advantage. If we reply with a concrete proposal, we could demonstrate effectively that we have gone to considerable and serious effort to deter hijacking. […] More important, however, we should take all reasonable steps to stop hijacking.11 He recognized that the main problem in the negotiation was related to the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base. If the Cubans should argue that for reaching an agreement on hijacking, the U.S. should cease using the base as “[…] a port of exit for Cubans.” Concerning this issue, he argued that: […] we should reject the suggestion for we would then be required either to hold refugees at the base or return them to the Cuban authorities. Neither option is feasible. If we sought overtly to discourage Cubans seeking freedom from entering the base, it could be tantamount to our building a “Berlin Wall.” In rejecting such terms, we could treat the suggestion as “evidence” that Cuba is not seriously interested in a hijacking agreement.12 He also indicated the consequences of not sending the “Memorandum of Understanding,” since it would leave the U.S. administration in a situation where “[…] Castro could say that he has repeated his offer to reach an agreement with the United States on this sensitive problem, and that we had not responded.”13 After analyzing the Secretary of State’s proposal, Henry Kissinger sent a memorandum to President Nixon on May 28, expressing his agreement

Negotiations between Cuba and the U.S. 203 with Rogers’ arguments and recommending the approval of the action of sending the “Memorandum of Understanding.” In this regard, Kissinger stressed: Failure to follow up would give Castro the opportunity to say that the US is unwilling to settle this problem. If we reply with a concrete proposal we would demonstrate that we have gone to considerable and serious effort to deter hijacking; if we conclude an agreement, it would be to our advantage; if Castro backs away, we could charge Castro is insincere.14 On June 11, the president signed the approval of the proposal. Rogers was informed about the decision, and on June 19, he sent a note to the U.S. embassy in Bern to request the Federal Political Department to instruct Ambassador Fischli, in Havana, to present the U.S.’s reply to the Cuban response, in the form of the U.S. proposal to reach an anti-hijacking agreement, through the use of the “Memorandum of Understanding.”15 The text of the note begins by citing Cuba’s willingness to work with the U.S. on an agreement on the return of hijackers, based on Cuban Law 1226, as expressed in its note of April 6. The U.S. note stressed that: It is the understanding of the United States Government that the Cuban Government is in accord that an agreement between the two governments for the return of hijackers should be given wide publicity to achieve the maximum deterrent effect. The Government of the United States welcomes the agreement in principle that has been achieved in this matter, and it hopes that the Government of Cuba will be prepared to conclude a frm understanding as soon as possible.16 It further proposed an exchange of notes through the Embassy of Switzerland setting forth a Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and Cuba, and it stressed that if the Cuban government agreed, “the Memorandum of Understanding can be brought into effect immediately.”17 The text of the proposed “Memorandum of Understanding” stated: 1

The Government of the United States of America and the Government of Cuba recognize that in order to avoid a tragic accident it is necessary to adopt measures to put an end to the climate of insecurity created in air and ocean navigation by the diversion by force of ships and aircraft from their normal routes and activities, and that such measures should be adopted on a basis of equality and reciprocity.

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3

Each Government therefore, upon request, will return to the other, in accordance with the procedures established under the laws of the requested state, persons who by force or threat of force hereafter divert ships or aircraft registered by the requesting state from their normal routes and activities […] Each Government reserves the right not to return (a) its own nationals and (b) persons to whom it grants political asylum. The Embassy has the honor to propose that, if the Memorandum of Understanding […] is acceptable to the Ministry of Foreign Relations […] constitute an agreement between the Government of the United States and the Government of Cuba which shall enter into force as of the date of the Ministry’s reply.18

This document was presented to Revolutionary government of Cuba by the Swiss Embassy, on July 11, 1970.19 However, the proposal did not satisfy the Cuban demands, as it did not include any practical action to discourage illegal departures from the country. The diversion of aircrafts or sea vessels “through deception, bribery, violence, intimidation or in collusion with any member of the crew” or “in violation of the regulations on migration,” such as, among others, the violation of the border with the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, as stipulated in Law 1226 was not mentioned in the U.S. “Memorandum of Understanding.” This was well known by the U.S. Secretary of State, who was not very confdent that an agreement was possible on the proposed basis. It was all a manipulative effort “to return the ball” to the Cuban government, blaming it for not solving the problem. However, in the note from the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Swiss Embassy of September 29, Cuba’s willingness to discuss with the U.S. government to reach a reciprocal agreement of mutual interest was ratifed, in accordance with the provisions contained in Law 1226. The note recalled that this law “not only covers the hijacking of aircrafts but also sea vessels of all types, and other crimes and forms of piracy that violate the law and international norms.” The note asserted that if the U.S. government intended to facing this matter “seriously and defnitively,” under the aforementioned conditions, Cuba was prepared to immediately sign an agreement. However, the Cuban government “would not accept or respect” any international agreement related to the hijacking of aircrafts that did not include all the crimes established in the law enacted for that purpose. Finally, it stated that the Cuban government did not concede any special importance to “publicity about the negotiations” concerning agreement. 20 The answer to the U.S. “Memorandum of Understanding” was clear. It is known from the U.S. documentation that the Department of State prepared a new dispatch, dated October 15, in which Ambassador Fischli was requested to deliver a diplomatic communication to Cuba

Negotiations between Cuba and the U.S. 205 urging the conclusion of a bilateral agreement, but not including anything new to what was previously proposed. However, the deliverance of this communication was withheld. 21 The interesting thing about this material was in the reminder to the Swiss ambassador in Havana, about the U.S. position regarding the Cuban law that was qualifed as “[…] much broader than what we proposed in that it applies to all persons entering or leaving Cuba in violation of Cuban regulations, and to Cuban ships and planes that may be taken by theft or bribery.” It was further stated that U.S. proposal was deliberately limited to hijackers, since the U.S. was in no position “[…] to agree to return other persons simply because they left Cuba without permission, whether through Guantánamo or some other route.”22 On December 22, it was requested that the aforementioned document should be sent quickly, because Ambassador Fischli was leaving “[…] his post for reassignment about January 1 and may not be replaced for several months.”23 It seems that the note was never sent. Thus, the year 1970 ended without reaching any progress in the negotiations, which were detained for two years, until Cuba would once again take the initiative to promote an agreement between the two countries. The Nixon administration’s commitment, and particularly that of President Nixon himself, to the counterrevolutionary Cuban exile groups prevented the U.S. government from being willing to comply with the reciprocal nature of a bilateral agreement with Cuba, since it could not commit itself to returning the exiles who had committed hijacking crimes. 24 Meanwhile, the Cuban government maintained its willingness to seek a solution to the problem between the two countries. In a document authored by Kissinger, on October 31, 1970, in which “Sanctions against countries which are uncooperative in on hijackings” were analyzed, the actions of Cuba were recognized when he stated that “Cuba has now become one the best-behaved of the hijacking states, since it immediately allows the planes and passengers to return and often jails the hijackers.” Kissinger also noted that Cuba “[…] recently returned its frst hijacker, and offered to return all hijackers provided we would do the same (a commitment we cannot make because of the political asylum aspect).”25 It was inconceivable that, due to a political prejudice, it was not possible to reach an agreement with Cuba, on a subject so problematic and increasing, despite the internal measures that the U.S. authorities had taken to confront it. Such was the situation that on July 20, 1971, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee called on the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, Charles Meyer, to testify about the negotiations on hijackings with Cuba, as appears in a report prepared on July 22 by the Assistant Legal Adviser for Inter-American Affairs. In that document, it was pointed out that the main concern of the Committee was to understand why the government could not enter into

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an agreement with Cuba that covered all the crimes listed in Cuban Law 1226. According to the report, Meyer explained to them that the Cuban law was not limited to the hijacking of aircrafts and sea vessels, since it also covered other crimes such as the illegal entry or exit of Cuba. He justifed the administration’s position arguing that the U.S. “[…] is not prepared to recognize as criminal conduct departure from Cuba without the consent of Cuban authorities.” Mayer further stressed that none of the U.S. extradition treaties recognize such a crime, since the U.S. does not recognize the right of states to confne its population against their will. Although he made the observation that the “Cuban Law, and our proposal, contemplates exceptions for political asylum, no Senator specifcally asked why that exception did not solve our problems.”26 At one point in the public session, the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator J. William Fulbright, noted “[…] ratifcation of the Hague Convention 27 would be meaningless without Cuba and would mislead the American public to believe something was being done about hijacking.”28 The reply to Fulbright’s insinuation was given by Mark B. Feldman, Assistant Legal Adviser for Inter-American Affairs of the Department of State, when emphasizing the increasing numbers of air hijackings in the U.S. to countries other than Cuba and the serious foreign policy that could arise from the hijacking of non-U.S. aircrafts in other parts of the world such as in the Middle East. He also stressed the value that an international agreement could have, even to infuence the Cuban conduct in relation to air hijackings. 29 The position of the Department of State and, even more, of the White House was to seek a solution to the situation by means of multilateral agreements that would force Cuba to comply with them and not to seek the Cuban solution of a bilateral agreement based on Law 1226. From that meeting, according to Feldman, a favorable recommendation was reached from Fulbright and other senators toward the Hague Convention, but the Committee’s report would draw also attention to the defciencies of the Convention. The Chairman of the Committee also indicated that he planned to present a resolution demanding a review of the U.S. Cuba policy. In this way, he wrote, “[…] the Committee tactic may be to argue that normalization of relations with Cuba is necessary, inter alia to achieve Cuban cooperation on hijacking.”30 On July 30, 1971, Senators William Fulbright and Edward Kennedy presented Resolution S.J. 160 in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which expressed the Senate’s sentiment that the U.S. government policy toward Cuba should be reviewed with the objective of beginning a process that would lead to the restoration of normal relations between the U.S. and Cuba.31 The same day, Fulbright, together with Senator Frank Church, presented the S.J.146 Initiative to repeal the so-called Cuban Resolution of October 1962.32 These legislative initiatives were

Negotiations between Cuba and the U.S. 207 discussed at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on September 16, in which many senators criticized the intransigent position of the Department of State in relation to Cuba. However, the issue was postponed, as the Congress focused on analyzing the U.S.’s exit from the war in Vietnam. However, the main problem was not the intransigence of the Department of State, but rather the instructions from President Nixon, who was reluctant to any arrangement with Cuba. In a conversation with his National Security Advisor, on December 9, 1971—when Kissinger expressed the concern of some Latin American governments about the possibility of a change in the U.S. Cuban policy—Nixon replied, “I’ve said that I’m not going to change the policy.” Thereafter, he reiterated with anger, “I’m not changing the policy towards Castro as long as I’m alive […] That’s absolute. Final. No appeal whatever. I never want you to raise it with me again.”33 This attitude prevented the U.S. and Cuba to reach a bilateral agreement, under the principle of reciprocity, that represented the interests of both countries regarding the problem of hijackings. This means that two years were lost, since the last Cuban note of September 29, 1970, remained unanswered. A number of violent and dangerous events of air hijackings in the U.S. that shocked the public opinion—in October and November 1972—had to occur before the U.S. administration was forced to resume negotiations with Cuba concerning an agreement that could stop these events.

Notes 1 “Telegram 199293 from the Department of State to the Embassy in Switzerland, November 28, 1969”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 1, Documents on Global Issues 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 128. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 The text of the Cuban response is quoted in the “Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Nixon, Washington, May 28, 1970”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 1, Documents on Global Issues 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 130. 8 Fidel Castro: Discurso pronunciado en la velada solemne en conmemoración del centenario del natalicio de Vladimir Ilich Lenin, efectuado en el teatro “Chaplin”, el 22 de abril de 1970 (La Habana: Ediciones COR, No. 8, Editado por la Comisión de Orientación Revolucionaria (COR) del Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC), abril 1970), 30.

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9 “Telegram 3810 from the Department of State to the Embassy in Switzerland, January 9, 1970, 2215Z”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 1, Documents on Global Issues 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 129. 10 The text of the proposed “Memorandum of Understanding” can be found in: “Telegram 96818 from the Department of State to the Embassy in Switzerland, Washington, June 19, 1970”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 1, Documents on Global Issues 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 131. 11 “Memorandum from Secretary of State Rogers to President Nixon, Washington, May 15, 1970”. Attached to: “Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Nixon, Washington, May 28, 1970”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 1, Documents on Global Issues 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 130. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 “Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Nixon, Washington, May 28, 1970”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 1, Documents on Global Issues 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 130. 15 The essence of the reply and the use of a “Memorandum of Understanding,” as the instrument of reply, had already been discussed with Ambassador Fischli during his visit to Washington, on May 13–15. 16 “Telegram 96818 from the Department of State to the Embassy in Switzerland, June 19, 1970, 1833Z”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 1, Documents on Global Issues 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 131. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 Nota No. 108-IE de la Embajada de Suiza, 11 de julio de 1970. 20 The report of the Swiss Federal Political Department to the U.S. embassy, in Bern, on the Cuban note of September 29, 1970, and the conversations of Ambassador Fischli with the Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs appears attached to the “Memorandum from Arnold Nachmanoff of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger), Washington, December 22, 1970.” U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 1, Documents on Global Issues 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 133. 21 The obstruction of the deliverance of the note, according to Arnold Nachmanoff, was due to the fact that it coincided in time with an incident with a Costa Rican transport plane, hijacked to Cuba in October. In that case, Nachmanoff commented that “[…] apparently due to Castro’s anger over statements of Costa Rica’s President Figueres, and held the plane longer than has been usual. The Cubans also levied excessive charges for alleged repairs to the aircraft. The incident has since been resolved.” Ibid. 22 “Telegram 209449 from the Department of State to the Embassy in Switzerland, October 15, 1970, 1744Z”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign

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23

24 25

26

27

28

29 30 31 32 33

Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 1, Documents on Global Issues 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 132. “Memorandum from Arnold Nachmanoff of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger), Washington, December 22, 1970. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 1, Documents on Global Issues 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 133. Peter Kornbluh: “Terrorism and the Anti-Kidnapping Agreement in Cuba’s Relations with the United States” (Temas, No. 62–63, April-September 2010), 56. “Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Council (Kissinger) to the President’s Assistant (Flanigan), Washington, October 31, 1970”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 1, Documents on Global Issues 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 79. “Memorandum from the Assistant Legal Adviser for Inter-American Affairs (Feldman) to the Assistant Legal Adviser of Administrative and Consular Affairs (Malmborg), Washington, July 22, 1971”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 1, Documents on Global Issues 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 134. Fulbright referred to the “Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft,” which was agreed in the Hague, the Netherlands, on December 16, 1970, and entered into force on October 14, 1971—an agreement that was not yet recognized by the U.S. since it needed the approval of the U.S. Congress. “Memorandum from the Assistant Legal Adviser for Inter-American Affairs (Feldman) to the Assistant Legal Adviser of Administrative and Consular Affairs (Malmborg), Washington, July 22, 1971”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 1, Documents on Global Issues 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 134. Ibid. Ibid. “Congressional audiences”. U.S. Policy toward Cuba (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 1971), 3. The “Cuban Resolution” refers to the Joint Resolution on Cuba S.J.230, of October 3, 1962, that aimed to “Prevent the export of the Cuban Revolution to Latin America and the establishment of military bases in Cuba.” “Conversation between President Nixon and the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger), Washington, December 9, 1971, 9:13–10:04 a.m.” U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 247.

References Castro, F. Discurso pronunciado en la velada solemne en conmemoración del centenario del natalicio de Vladimir Ilich Lenin, efectuado en el teatro “Chaplin”, el 22 de abril de 1970 (La Habana: Ediciones COR, No. 8,

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Editado por la Comisión de Orientación Revolucionaria (COR) del Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC), abril 1970). Kornbluh, P. “Terrorism and the Anti-Kidnapping Agreement in Cuba’s Relations with the United States” (Temas, No. 62–63, April-September 2010). U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 1, Documents on Global Issues 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018). U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018). U.S. Policy toward Cuba (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 1971).

16 The Agreement of 1973

In the last third of 1972, the U.S. government was leaning toward multilateral and international agreements, for solving the hijacking problem; however, it became obvious that these agreements failed to stop this phenomenon in the U.S., and Cuba continued to be the destination of most of the aircrafts diverted from its route by violent means in the U.S. This situation was described in the “Declaration of the Revolutionary Government of November 14, 1972,” which stressed: Cuba, which was the frst country to be the victim of such hijackings, transformed into a landing point for a large part of the aircrafts hijacked in the United States, whose perpetrators, driven by the most variable causes, ranging from political motivation to common crime and mental alienation, saw our country, as a place where the United States itself had destroyed all the international legal instruments to act against them.1 Meanwhile, a climate of impunity prevailed in the U.S. with respect to the illegal actions against Cuba of the counterrevolutionary groups, which—with or without the help of the CIA—continued to carry out terrorist acts of piracy against peaceful Cuban fshing vessels. For instance, the attacks on October 10, 1972, when the Aguja and Plataforma IV vessels were boarded and sunk, south of Andros Island. In this context, in the early morning of October 29, a Boeing 727 aircraft of the Eastern Airlines Company, with 34 passengers on board, was violently hijacked and forced to land at the “José Martí” airport in Havana. In the event, according to a note from the Swiss Embassy, “[…] four hijackers killed a ticket vendor of the Eastern Airlines Company in New Orleans, where the aircraft was supplied with gasoline, and they also wounded a cargo employee.”2 The note further stated that the U.S. authorities and that of the aforementioned airline “[…] assume all responsibility regarding the safety of the passengers so that they and the crew can return in the diverted plane […] to the United States as soon as possible.”3 In a second note, the Department of State reported suspicion that the hijackers of the plane “[…] are fugitives from justice, who robbed a bank

212 The U.S.-Cuba Agreement in the Washington area […] killing two persons.”4 In the third note, the physical description of two of the recognized perpetrators of the bank robbery executed on October 25 was transmitted, and the Cuban authorities were requested to provide the name and description of the hijackers in order to confrm “[…] the identifcation of the suspects in having committed other crimes.” The note also repeated the wish “[…] that the hijackers of this aircraft should be returned to the jurisdiction of the United States.”5 The next day, the Cuban government replied that it had proceeded to “[…] provide the arrangements for the immediate return of the aircraft […] its crew and passengers “[…].” Concerning the kidnappers, the Cuban reply informed the U.S. that they remain “[…] under arrest and an investigation is being carried out into the motives, circumstances and events that occurred around the hijacking.” Concerning the Department of State’s request that the perpetrators should be handed over to the jurisdiction of the U.S., it was informed that: The Cuban government […] nor does it want in any way that the territory of Cuba is used as a refuge for persons responsible for common criminal acts that occur somewhere […] in the United States. Neither has […] any interest in promoting the hijacking of aircrafts, sea vessels or illegal exits or entries in the country in violation of immigration, health and similar laws. But the Cuban government cannot resolve this issue unilaterally and in isolation without a reciprocal and comprehensive commitment by the United States. In […] the United States, elements that carry out brutal acts against the people and the territory of Cuba, such as the pirate attack on the port of Boca de Samá […] In the State of Florida, persons are recruited openly for the organization, training and attacks against Cuban vessels, such as the fshing vessels Aguja and Plataforma IV […] Boats that penetrate the territorial waters of Cuba and reach our shores to promote the transfer of people between Cuba and United States, violating the laws of both countries are constantly departing from that State. Certainly, illegal exits from Cuba have been promoted in various ways for many years […] as part of a policy aimed at harming our country by all possible means. We understand that these events and many others before […] have created a climate of violence and illegality whose consequences in one way or another both countries are suffering from today. It is diffcult for the Cuban government to suppose that the authorities of the United States cannot investigate, know and really take adequate measures on their part to punish, discourage and avoid such acts. […] It is in the mutual interest of both countries to take the necessary steps to resolve this issue, which, through more or less frequently, is systematically repeated. The Cuban government, for its part, is seriously

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and willingly without any delay to take those steps that should take the form of a broad agreement on the specifc question if the United States government shows equal willingness and interest […] this is a problem between the two countries that can be solved relatively briefy […] and that would also positively result in the solution of events that, because they have become widespread in the international arena, cause disorders in many countries. If the United States government wishes, the procedures for the mentioned agreement can be carried out on measures to be adopted in relation to the hijacking of aircrafts, sea vessels, illegal entries and exits into the territory of both countries, through the representation of your interests in Cuba held by the Swiss Embassy. […].6 In this offcial note—exponent of its position of principle—the foundation on which the Revolutionary government believed it possible to achieve a bilateral agreement for the treatment of cases of airplane hijackings, maritime piracy against Cuban ships and the attacks against Cuba was presented. The response of the U.S. was vague, since it was replied that the note “was being studied.” It seemed that the U.S. was not willing to negotiate on the foundation formulated by Cuba; however, the events forced the U.S. to act. Just a week and a half later, on November 10 and 11, 1972, one of the most dramatic events in the history of air hijackings in the U.S. occurred. A hijacked DC-9 aircraft from the Southern Airways Company few almost two hours around the Oak Ridge nuclear power plant, and the hijackers threatened to crash it into this facility if its $10 million demands were not met. The aircraft, with its crew and passengers, was forced to fy for 30 hours, landing at more than half a dozen different airfelds, including the McCoy Airforce Base in Orlando, Florida, where the U.S. police forces fred at the aircraft, causing the destruction of the landing gear tires, as well as oil leaks. This action caused the gunfre from one of the hijackers that seriously injured the co-pilot, as well as causing technical diffculties. In these conditions, the aircraft made an emergency landing, at 00:25 a.m. on November 12, at Rancho Boyeros, where the security and protection measures had been taken. The catastrophe was avoided due to the skill and serenity of the crew, together with the measures put in place at the airport. The perpetrators were immediately arrested and the wounded, passengers and crew, received the required attention. In that circumstance, Fidel Castro, in a direct conversation with the Swiss Ambassador, Silvio Masnata, raised the urgency of putting an end to events like that, through an agreement between Cuba and the U.S., as stated in the Cuban proposal. If this was not possible—Castro emphasized—the responsibility for future similar events would fall

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entirely on the U.S. administration. Parallelly, a declaration of the Revolutionary government of Cuba was prepared —which was released on November 14, 1972—in order to inform the national and international public of the Cuban position regarding these serious problems and the measures that Cuba meant had to be taken to effectively fght the problem, such as those set forth in the Cuban offcial note of October 30. In the declaration, it was stated that: Such measures can be taken immediately depending on the response of the United States government. Although the government of that country continues to maintain a policy of blockade and aggression towards Cuba, our consideration for the people of the United States and for the international community is what determines our constructive position on this problem.7 In Washington, the following day, the Secretary of State met with the Swiss Ambassador to the U.S. Félix Schnyder, to ask him to send a message to the Swiss Ambassador in Havana, Silvio Masnata, as soon as possible. In the conversation, Secretary Rogers explicitly clarifed that a bilateral agreement on hijackings would not change the U.S. policy toward Cuba, since it would remain “unalterable.”8 The Department of State’s request to Ambassador Masnata began by asking him to seek: […] the earliest possible appointment with Foreign Minister Roa to deliver the following message orally: The United States Government has welcomed the Government of Cuba’s desire to reach an agreement with United States on hijacking, as indicated in its Note of October 30, 1972. Rogers also informed that the U.S. was prepared to negotiate an agreement that included “[…] hijacking and other serious crimes which may be committed in the future.” Lastly, he indicated that the U.S. “[…] consider favorably any arrangements and location for such talks that would expedite agreement and awaits the Cuban government’s views.”9 The Cuban government reacted promptly to the U.S. message. In Cuba’s response—on December 18—it was stated that “The Government of Cuba looks with equal pleasure on the disposition of the Government of the United States to reach an agreement on hijackings of aircraft and other offenses […],” with the Swiss Embassy, as representative of the interests of the U.S.10 The Cuban answer also stated that Cuba would be ready to begin discussions by the middle of the same week and that they planned to present a draft agreement during the discussions.11 As promised, on November 25, the Revolutionary government presented a draft agreement during the frst meeting between the Cuban and Swiss offcials, which, according to the Secretary of State Rogers,

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seemed “somewhat more acceptable” than the Cuban position in 1969– 1970. The Cuban proposal foresees “stiff punishment” of persons who seize or divert aircrafts or sea vessels. It clearly defnes, in the case of political asylum, the non-obligation of prosecution. It also contemplates the obligation of both states to punish persons who in each country prepare or carry out “acts of violence against the territory of the other party or aircraft or sea vessel of the other party.”12 On December 2, Secretary Rogers asked President Nixon to approve the response to the Cuban draft agreement, for facilitating the discussions of the agreement. Rogers stressed that “To facilitate agreement we have followed the Cuban text as closely as possible, but certain changes were necessary to eliminate lesser offenses and to conform with United States laws.”13 Kissinger emphasized that the differences in the proposal that the U.S. would present with that of Cuba was: […] to agree to give serious consideration to extraditing hijackers instead of prosecuting them in the country in which they land; to rule out retroactive action against acts of piracy thereby protecting Cuban émigrés in the U.S.; to stiffen the sentence for aircraft piracy; to return any funds or property obtained illegally.14 The U.S. offcials passed this draft to Swiss intermediaries in Washington a few days later. On December 9, the second negotiation meeting was held between Ambassador Masnata and the Cuban authorities to deliver the text of the U.S. counterproposal to the Cuban draft agreement. Present at that meeting were the First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, René Anillo Cueto, and the Head of the Department of Justice of MINREX, Dr. Olga Miranda, who—according to the “Message from the Swiss Embassy in Havana,” from December 11—showed particular interest in the following questions: 1 2 3

The difference in the penalties depending on whether air or sea piracy is involved, and the fact that no minimum penalty has been provided for sea piracy. They asked for details about procedure in the case of return of the guilty parties. They were bothered for a moment by the wording “in the case of air piracy” and “and in other cases” used with reference to penalties in the frst sentence of Article One.

In this respect, the Ambassador Masnata stresses that he “[…] had the impression that Anillo was a little concerned by the fact that sea vessels were not explicitly referred to.” 4

In Article Three, they also were bothered by the addition of common crimes but they seemed able to swallow it after my explanations.

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Finally, they dwelt on what they called in Spanish the valor (status, weight, force, importance) of the agreement, asking in particular if the hijacking agreement would have the same valor as the 1965 Memorandum on refugees.15

In this way, ten weeks of discussions passed between the Swiss Embassy, especially Ambassador Silvio Masnata and Cuban offcials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who were defning the different contents of the possible Memorandum of Agreement. On February 9, 1973, both parties informed each other of their agreement, with respect to the fnal text, and also of the procedure for signing it.16 Consequently, at 11:30 on February 15, 1973, the “Memorandum of Understanding” was signed simultaneously in Havana and Washington,17 which stated: MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING ON HIJACKING OF AIRCRAFT AND VESSELS AND OTHER OFFENSES The Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Republic of Cuba, on the bases of equality and strict reciprocity, agree: FIRST: Any person who hereafter seizes, removes, appropriates or diverts from its normal route or activities an aircraft or vessel registered under the laws of one of the parties and brings it to the territory of the other party shall be considered to have committed an offense and therefore shall either be returned to the party of registry of the aircraft or vessel to be tried by the courts of that party in conformity with its laws or be brought before the courts of the party whose territory he reached for trial in conformity with its laws far the offense punishable by the most severe penalty according to the circumstances and the seriousness of the acts to which this Article refers. In addition, the party whose territory is reached by the aircraft or vessel shall take all necessary steps to facilitate without delay the continuation of the journey of the passengers and crew innocent of the hijacking of the aircraft or vessel in question, with their belongings, as well as the journey of the aircraft or vessel itself with all goods carried with it, including any funds obtained by extortion or other illegal means, or the return of the foregoing to the territory of the frst party; likewise, it shall take all steps to protect the physical integrity of the aircraft or vessel and all goods, carried with it, including any funds obtained by extortion or other illegal means, and the physical integrity of the passengers and crew innocent of the hijacking, and their belongings, while they are in its territory as a consequence of or in connection with the acts to which this Article refers. In the event that the offenses referred to above are not punishable under the laws existing in the country to which the persons committing them arrived, the party in question shall be obligated, except in

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the case of minor offenses, to return the persons who have committed such acts, in accordance with the applicable legal procedures, to the territory of the other party to be tried by its courts in conformity with its laws. SECOND: Each party shall try with a view to severe punishment in accordance with its laws any person who, within its territory, hereafter conspires to promote, or promotes, or prepares, or directs, or forms part of an expedition which from its territory or any other place carries out acts of violence or depredation against aircraft or vessels of any kind or registration coming from or going to the territory of the other party or who, within its territory, hereafter conspires to promote, or promotes, or prepares, or directs, or forms part of an expedition which from its territory or any other place carries out such acts or other similar unlawful acts in the territory of the other party. THIRD: Each party shall apply strictly its own laws to any national of the other party who, coming from the territory of the other party, enters its territory, violating its laws as well as national and international requirements pertaining to immigration, health, customs and the like. FOURTH: The party in whose territory the perpetrators of the acts described in Article I arrive may take into consideration any extenuating or mitigating circumstances in those cases in which the persons responsible for the acts were being sought for strictly political reasons and were in real and imminent danger of death without a viable alternative for leaving the country, provided there was no fnancial extortion or physical injury to the members of the crew, passengers, or ether persons in connection with the hijacking. FINAL PROVISIONS: This Agreement may be amended or expanded by decision of the parties. This Agreement shall be in force for fve years and may be renewed for an equal term by express decision of the parties. Either party may inform the other of its decision to terminate this Agreement at any time while it is in force by written denunciation submitted six months in advance. This Agreement shall enter into force on the date agreed by the parties. Done in English and Spanish texts which are equally authentic.18 The agreement of February 15, 1973, was advantageous for both parties. The hijackers of aircrafts and sea vessels—both in the country of arrival or of origin—would be tried and sentenced to serious verdicts under the laws in the respective country. The governments of both the U.S. and Cuba had an obligation to facilitate the rapid return of passengers and crews, as well as the hijacked vessel. This was benefcial not only for the

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U.S. but also for Cuba, since the U.S. authorities should prosecute or return Cubans who hijacked a plane or a sea vessel as a means of discouraging hijackings or illegal exits. Another beneft, for both countries, was the deterrent effect that the agreement could have for those who tried to hijack an aircraft, since the continuous and increasingly violent acts of this type threatened the national security of the U.S., at the same time as they transmitted a negative image of Cuba as a refuge for terrorists. To fulfll the agreement, from that moment on, the U.S. would be forced to fght counterrevolutionary terrorist groups, since “[…] each party shall try with a view to severe punishment in accordance with its laws any person who, within its territory, hereafter conspires to promote, or promotes, or prepares, or directs, or forms part of an expedition which from its territory or any other place carries out acts of violence or depredation against aircraft or vessels of any kind or registration […].” In 1973 the time had come for the U.S., as well as the world, to act with strength toward the hijackings of aircrafts. As Peter Kornbluh states: For Washington, the agreement became part of a broader package of policy changes on airline safety. In the era before September 11, the year 1973 was a pivot for the offcial recognition of the terrorist threat in the skies; for the frst time, passengers would be searched for weapons, and efforts to combat the seizure of planes were coordinated internationally.19 The success of the negotiations and the signing of the agreement toward hijackings, between the Cuban government and the Nixon administration, represented “[…] an advance of multiple Cuban interests” and the possibility of being “[…] the frst step for broader conversations about a change in the U.S. policy toward Cuba, in the sense of achieving more normal relationships.”20 However, everything that this agreement could have meant for the normalization of the relations between the two countries was not achieved. Nixon’s obstinacy with the Cuban Revolution prevented him. Right from the beginning of the negotiations—as it appears in the U.S. documentation—he clarifed that this kind of agreement did not constitute a change in Washington’s policy of hostility toward Cuba. In this context, the secret recording of Nixon’s conversation with Rogers, in the Oval Offce of the White House, on February 13, 1973, is interesting. This was a moment when the fnal text of the agreement was presented to Nixon and Rogers anxiously inquired the position of the president. Nixon: Does it have anything to do with the normalizing of the relationships? Because that’s the only thing that would worry me. If you could assure that, because I don’t want the Cuban community to rise up in […].

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Rogers: I would say that it does not change any policy in respect to Cuba.21 The Secretary of State was very careful—in announcing the bilateral agreement on hijackings with Cuba—not to give any sign of a change in the administration’s approach to the Castro regime. Therefore, he told journalists that the agreement signed “[…] does not foreshadow a change in policies as far as the United States is concerned.”22 The 1973 anti-hijacking agreement between Cuba and the U.S. was in force until March 1977, when the Cuban government decided to terminate it. The reason for this was the horrendous CIA-sponsored terrorist sabotage toward a Cuban aircraft on October 6, 1976, which led to the loss of the lives of the 73 persons on board. Days after the signing of the understanding, on January 20, 1973, Nixon had begun a second term as president, a term that he could not conclude.

Notes 1 “Declaración de Gobierno Revolucionario de Cuba, el 14 de noviembre de 1972”, Granma (November 15, 1972), 3. 2 “Primera Nota del Gobierno de Estados Unidos a través de la Embajada de Suiza en Cuba al Ministro de Relaciones Exteriores de Cuba, 29 de octubre de 1972”. Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 “Segunda Nota del Gobierno de Estados Unidos a través de la Embajada de Suiza en Cuba al Ministro de Relaciones Exteriores de Cuba, 29 de octubre de 1972”. Ibid. 5 “Tercera Nota del Gobierno de Estados Unidos a través de la Embajada de Suiza en Cuba al Ministro de Relaciones Exteriores de Cuba, 29 de octubre de 1972”. Ibid. 6 “Nota del Gobierno Revolucionario de Cuba a la Embajada de Suiza, representante de los intereses de Estados Unidos en Cuba, 30 de octubre de 1972”. Ibid. 7 “Declaración de Gobierno Revolucionario de Cuba, el 14 de noviembre de 1972”. Ibid. 8 “Memorandum of Conversation between Secretary Rogers and Swiss Ambassador Schnyder, Washington, November 16, 1972”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 1, Documents on Global Issues 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 135. 9 Ibid. This message was transmitted to the Cuban authorities on November 17. 10 “Information memorandum from Assistant Secretary Meyer to Secretary Rogers, Washington, November 20, 1972”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 1, Documents on Global Issues 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 136. 11 Ibid.

220 The U.S.-Cuba Agreement 12 “Memorandum from Secretary Rogers to President Nixon, Washington, November 27, 1972”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 1, Documents on Global Issues 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 137. 13 “Memorandum from the Secretary of State (Rogers) to President Nixon, Washington, December 2, 1972”. Attached in “Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Nixon, Washington, December 3, 1972”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 1, Documents on Global Issues 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 138. 14 Ibid. 15 “Message from the Swiss Embassy in Havana”, attached to the “Memorandum from Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Hurwitch) to Secretary of State Rogers, Washington, December 12, 1972”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 1, Documents on Global Issues 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 139. 16 “Declaración del Gobierno Revolucionario de Cuba sobre el acuerdo frmado con el Gobierno de Estados Unidos”, Granma (February 16, 1973), 1. 17 At the event in Havana, the document was signed by the Cuban Foreign Minister, Dr. Raúl Roa, and Swiss Ambassador to Cuba, Mr. Silvio Masnata. And in Washington, the Secretary of State, Mr. William P. Rogers, and the Charge d’Affaires of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in the U.S., Ing. Jaroslav Zantovsky, as representative of the interests of Cuba. Ibid. 18 Granma (February 16, 1973), 1–2. See also: “Memorandum from Serban Vallimarescu of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs (Scowcroft), Washington, February 13, 1973”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 1, Documents on Global Issues 1969– 1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 142. 19 Peter Kornbluh: “Terrorism and the Anti-Kidnapping Agreement in Cuba’s Relations with the United States” (Temas, No. 62–63, April-September 2010), 57. 20 Ibid. 21 “Conversation no. 43–66”, recordings by Richard Nixon, February 13, 1973, (WH Telephones, January 31–February 27, 1973). Ibid. 22 Lars Schoultz: That Infernal Little Cuban Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 259.

References Granma (November 15, 1972). Granma (February 16, 1973). Kornbluh, P. “Terrorism and the Anti-Kidnapping Agreement in Cuba’s Relations with the United States” (Temas, No. 62–63, April-September 2010). Schoultz, L. That Infernal Little Cuban Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009). U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 1, Documents on Global Issues 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018).

Part VII

The Debacle of a President

On January 20, 1973, Richard M. Nixon’s second term as U.S. President began. His victory in the general elections—on November 7, 1972—was one of the most unquestionable and overwhelming in the history of the U.S., but this victory was also the result of one of the dirtiest electoral campaigns ever.1 The triumph was not a refection of the progress of the internal conditions in the U.S., nor of the strengthening of its foreign policy, since these continued to worsen. The U.S. economy—not yet recovered from the crisis of 1969– 1971—did fall again between 1974 and 1975. Industrial production fell by 11.8% compared to the 5.8% decline in 1971–1972; gross domestic product fell for the frst time since the end of World War II to 1.4% in 1974 and 1.3% in 1975; unemployment in that last year reached 9.1%, which exceeded 5.4% that had prevailed in the 1961– 1971 decade; and infation reached 12.9%. 2 This situation had a fundamental impact on the living conditions for broad sectors of the U.S. population. The situation was also worsened due to a number of political and corruption scandals among the spheres of power, at the same time as the peace movement, and the protests toward the U.S. war in Vietnam held its grip of the population. Parallelly, the struggles of infuence between the executive and legislative powers did not cease; on the contrary, they increased. These circumstances created a situation that further weakened the administration in its executive powers and produced an increase in the role of the Congress concerning the decision-making in the country. This was the case especially concerning matters of national security and foreign policy, as exemplifed for instance by the War Powers Act of 1973, which required the President to consult the Congress before initiating any military action. The weakening of the U.S. foreign policy, which was a result of its setbacks in Vietnam, was clearly demonstrated in October 1973, when the so-called Yom Kippur war3 broke out between Egypt and Syria against Israel. The U.S. call to Western Europe to provide military aid to Israel had no resonance, with the exception of the Portuguese fascist regime, as they were more concerned with the fuel supply from the Arab countries

222 The Debacle of a President than with the fght against “communist expansion.” Furthermore, the U.S. could not cope with the Arab oil embargo that was applied to Israel and the decision of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to triple the prices of oil. These circumstances were used by the ideologues of capitalism for justifying the economic crisis and the rise in the cost of goods globally. During this second period of republican mandate, the covert plans continued to be carried out against the Latin American nations, whose governments had implemented policies aimed at recovering their natural resources, defending their national sovereignty and improving the living conditions for their populations. Special attention was given by the U.S. intelligence services to the plot of the oligarchy—and the connection between the military and U.S. companies—to overthrow the Chilean popular government, led by Salvador Allende. This culminated in the military coup of September 11, 1973, and the installation of the terror regime of Augusto Pinochet that acted with brutality toward any opposition, whether from the left or the right. The isolationist policy toward Cuba in the Western Hemisphere remained intact, as well as the U.S. attitude of hostility and confrontation toward Cuba. The actions of economic isolation continued, and in some cases, they were increased, especially concerning third-country companies that had commercial relations with Cuba. For example, in February 1974, the Canadian government sent a memorandum to the U.S. Department of State that expressed the frustration concerning the prolonged delays of various requests for agreements for trade with Cuba. In the document, it was stated: The authorities of the United States will recall the guarantees given to the Government of Canada when this matter has been raised between the two governments on previous occasions […] of the desire of the United States government to be as attentive as possible regarding such cases to avoid a jurisdictional confict between the laws and policies of the two governments.4 In parallel the activities of ideological subversion and psychological warfare were maintained, and the U.S. administration continued with the covert transmissions of radio programs directed toward the Cuban public. The actions of political, economic and military espionage also continued to develop, for instance, the CIA maintained its devices for the infltration and exfltration of spies on Cuba. One of these devices was neutralized on August 1, 1974, when the combined forces of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the Ministry of the Interior captured a motorboat arriving from Key West, Florida, which entered Cuban jurisdictional waters. The vessel was manned by Luis Manuel de la Caridad Zúñiga Reyes and Feliciano Miguel Salas Figueroa.5

The Debacle of a President 223 In April 1973, President Nixon unilaterally decided to terminate the airlift between Cuba and the U.S. and suspend the “1965 Memorandum of Understanding” concerning this issue, thereby bringing the migration problem between the two countries back to the state it had in 1965. The reasons for this decision—according to the Cuban historian Jesús Arboleya—were the economic and political situation in the U.S., the spread of strong anti-immigrant sentiment and the rejection of the privileges that Cubans enjoyed. This measure, in addition, corresponded with the interest of the Revolutionary government to limit the drainage that the indiscriminate emigration constituted.6 It is stressed in a Department of State memorandum, from 1980, that during the eight years that this agreement was in force, 260.737 persons emigrated to the U.S.7 The signing of the agreement on the hijackings of aircrafts and sea vessels and other crimes on February 15, 1973, considerably reduced the pirate attacks toward Cuban vessels and coasts, although these actions did not completely end. In early March 1973, a number of Federal Bureau of Investigation agents traveled to Miami and realized interviews with the leaders of the counterrevolutionary groups that had been conducting maritime operations. “They brought a message […] from the President of the United States; that the leaders […] were obliged to comply with the agreements of the Pact signed in February.” However, at the same time, the federal agents affrmed that Nixon ratifed his moral support for the cause of the “anti-communist Cuban exiles.”8 Even if Nixon supported them, a number of politicians in the U.S., particularly within the legislature, did not agree with the infexibility of the President’s criteria regarding Cuba. After almost a decade and a half of aggressive and hostile relations, the U.S. policy had not reached the counterrevolutionary effects that their instigators had expected. The Cuban Revolution had managed to overcome the economic crisis at the end of the 1960s, and the country was consolidated on all levels of its economic, political and social life. During those years, the Cuban government also expanded its commercial relations with the developed capitalist nations of Western Europe and Asia. Some of them—ignoring the restrictions imposed on third countries by the economic, commercial and fnancial blockade of the U.S. on Cuba and the Organization of American States (OAS) prohibitions—also increased their commercial ties with Cuba. For many, the anti-Cuban actions of economic, political and diplomatic isolation were a failure since they had not led to a tangible result for the U.S.’s interests in the region. In light of the Nixon administration’s new detente policy with respect to the People’s Republic of China and the USSR, various U.S. sectors and prominent fgures in the Congress demanded a revision of the U.S. policy toward Cuba. For instance, the congressmen William Fulbright, Edward Kennedy and Frank Church, among others,

224 The Debacle of a President were promoters in favor of such a revision. In this context, the article by Professor John Plank, published in 1969, with the title “We should start talking with Castro,”9 was signifcant. Likewise, the immovable maintenance of the application of this isolation policy made the U.S. relations with third countries linked to trade with Cuba diffcult and was causing more harm than beneft. Furthermore, this policy was clearly inconsistent at a time when an international detente was taking place. It was also inconsistent with the hyped pragmatism of Nixon, who had pointed out—in October 1969—when referring to Latin America: “[…] we will deal realistically with governments […] as they are.”10 However, this was a pragmatic approach that only was carried out in a reactionary manner by supporting dictatorial Latin American regimes. However, the anti-Cuban attitude of the Nixon administration found obstacles within the framework of international organizations, as well as within the inter-American system itself, due to the increase in the favorable Latin American trend toward Cuba.

17 Debates in the Congress (1973–1974)

The frst initiatives of congressmen directed at modifying the U.S. policy toward Cuba took place within the framework of the detente policy of the Nixon administration toward China and the conversations with the USSR for a treaty concerning the limitation of strategic nuclear weapons. The Cuban question was also present in the context of the increasing numbers of hijackings of U.S. commercial aircraft, since 80% of these aircrafts were diverted to Cuba. The discussion of the topic was initially raised in the hearings of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, from June 7 to July 20, 1971, called to deal with the ratifcation or not of the “Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft” signed in The Hague in December 1970. Three resolutions emerged from these discussions: 1 2

3

The S.J. 146, which called for the repeal of the so-called Cuban Resolution of October 1962 The S.J. 160 that expressed the Senate’s sentiment that the U.S. government policy toward Cuba should be reviewed with the objective of beginning a process that would lead to the restoration of normal relations between the U.S. and Cuba The S.J. 148, which likewise requested the annulment of the “Cuban resolution,” since it authorized the President to use the U.S. armed forces toward Cuba.

These resolutions constituted—as Barry Sklar states—“[…] the frst formal challenge of the U.S. legislature of the administration’s policy towards Cuba.”11 On September 16, 1971, these resolutions were the subject of a hearing in the Foreign Relations Committee. During the course of the debate, the representatives of the Department of State were intransigent to any change in the present policy, which was to the displeasure of some senators.12 However, these discussions did not advance further, as other issues of priority for the Congress, such as the war in Vietnam, captured the attention of the legislators. In 1973 the subject of Cuba was taken up again by the U.S. Congress, since important domestic events in the U.S., as well as in the Western

226

The Debacle of a President

Hemisphere infuenced the setting of the legislative agenda in the Cuban case. The OAS agreement from 1964—concerning sanctions and a diplomatic and economic isolation of Cuba—was increasingly violated by nations in Latin America and the Caribbean. In December 1972, four Caribbean countries—Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago—recognized the Cuban Revolutionary government and established diplomatic relations with Cuba. Thus, they were joining Mexico, which never broke its diplomatic ties with Cuba, Chile that restored them in 1970 and Peru that restored them in July 1973. Simultaneously as Panama, Argentina and Venezuela publicly stated their intention to reestablish their diplomatic relations as well. Thus, the U.S. hemispheric policy of a political and diplomatic isolation of Cuba was in crisis. Another theme that had a positive impact on the political climate was the position of the Cuban government to reestablish contacts with the U.S. representation in Havana—in the face of the serious events of the air hijackings in the U.S. in October and November 1972—and its wish to reach an agreement with the U.S. concerning this grave issue. This culminated in February 1973, of the signing of the “Memorandum of Understanding on Hijacking of Aircraft and Vessels and Other Offenses.” According to Barry Sklar, the agreement: […] was more a product of mutual interest than a sign of benevolence towards the other, although it forced the two governments to recognize the realities of international politics.13 When the anti-Cuban plans designed by the Nixon administration failed, and in connection with the signing of the agreement on hijacking, a current began to develop within the U.S. Congress that would advocate— with increasing force during 1973 and 1974—a detente policy also in the Cuban case. Likewise, the main newspapers in the U.S. began to demand a revision of the U.S. policy toward Cuba.14 At the same time, the public opinion expressed—through surveys—an interest in a new vision of the Cuban policy. For example, a Gallup poll in 1973 showed that 71% of the U.S. population was in favor of Secretary Kissinger15 going to Havana to improve the relations between the governments. The inclusion of the issue of relations with Cuba in the U.S. legislature came in the context of a growing opposition of the Congress to the decisions and mismanagement of the Nixon administration—directed especially toward President Nixon—regarding the war in Vietnam. The opposition was also based in the corruption scandals of members of the administration, such as the case of Vice President Spiro T. Agnew,16 as well as the disputes between the judicial and legislative powers with President Nixon concerning the Watergate scandal. However, within the Congress the Cuban issue was a controversial issue. Both in the Senate and in the House of Representatives, there was

Debates in the Congress (1973–1974) 227 a strong opposition to establishing any type of relationship with Cuba. One of the frst resolutions against such relations was presented in January 1973 by the representative of Florida, Claude Pepper, in which the legislative opinion is expressed that the President of the U.S. should not recognize the Cuban government while it was governed by the Castro regime. Despite this, in February—in the context of the signing of the memorandum of understanding on hijackings—there was an action by the most liberal Republican members of the House of Representatives, led by the Ohio Representative Charles Whalen, which tried to turn the Cuban question into a biparty issue. This initiative was supported by the “Wednesday Group”—that was a coalition formed by liberal and moderate Republicans—and it culminated in the study, “Detente with Cuba,” that discussed the U.S. policy toward Cuba. This study was produced and supported by 12 Republicans, and it recommended a review of the administration’s policy, as well as changes in the legislation that affected Cuba. In the aforementioned material, according to Barry Sklar, the Nixon administration was required to realize a new consideration of its policy toward Cuba. The arguments used were the new U.S. relations with China and the USSR, the normalization of Cuba’s diplomatic relations with a number of Latin American nations and the consideration of a more realistic policy executed by Fidel Castro, as well as the benefts a normalization with Cuba could bring to the U.S. in its relationship with Latin America.17 This initiative infuenced the circumstance that two months later, the issue of the U.S. Cuba policy was addressed in hearings of the Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, held on March 26 and April 18, 1973.18 In these senatorial conclaves, the senators Gale McGee and J. William Fulbright, chairmen of the subcommittee and the committee, respectively, confronted the Nixon administration’s immovable position regarding Cuba in light of the changes on the international arena. In these hearings, the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, Robert A. Hurwitch, defended and justifed the administration’s policy under the hackneyed argument of the prohibition of relations imposed by the OAS, since the Cuban regime still exported the revolution to the region and maintained its strong military ties to the USSR.19 In reaffrmation of that position, in May 1973, the Department of State’s Bureau of Public Affairs issued a document in which, among other things, it was stated: In cooperation with our neighbors in the hemisphere and in accordance with OAS resolutions, we continue to seek Cuba’s economic and diplomatic isolation as long as it continues to be a threat to the peace and security of the hemisphere. As President Nixon has

228

The Debacle of a President repeated. We are not going to change our policy towards Cuba as long as it continues to support subversion in other Latin American countries and maintains close military ties with the Soviet Union. We regret the unilateral decisions of some OAS member nations to ignore the organization’s trade and diplomatic sanctions against Cuba. […]. 20

This document was based on the most recent statements of the Secretary of State, William P. Rogers, on April 6, 1973, during the OAS General Assembly, in which the representatives of the U.S. refused to support the changes aimed at modifying the obsolete concepts established in this regional organization since 1948 and the incorporation of the principles of “ideological pluralism.”21 These changes were evidences of the dissatisfaction existing among the nations of the hemisphere, which included, among other things—and due to the development of the inter-American relations—the need to promote the repeal of the agreements adopted by the organization toward Cuba in 1962 and 1964, respectively. 22 The other document that served as the basis was President Nixon’s report on Foreign Policy to the Congress on May 3. When referring to Cuba he indicated that “we will act in agreement with our fellow OAS members.”23 Cuba, for its part, would not have accepted any detente with the U.S. while this country continued its military aggression against Vietnam, bombed Cambodia and did everything to overthrow the Allende government in Chile, until achieving it. Much less, as long as Washington maintained its policy of economic blockade, and as long as Richard Nixon was the President of the U.S., a president whose anti-Cuban sentiments and his personal connection to the Cuban counterrevolutionary exiles were public. This made it impossible to reach a satisfactory general arrangement between the two governments. The pressure on the Nixon administration for a change in its policy toward Cuba did not cease. Since April 1973, important U.S. transnational companies, such as Ford, Chrysler and General Motors, had argued for the approval of the license applications they had made to the Department of Treasury. These licenses were necessary for the ongoing businesses of these companies, for instance, for fulflling the demands of the Argentine government that stipulated that the companies’ subsidiaries in Argentina needed these licenses to be able to make business within the framework of the Argentine–Cuban trade agreement. The same happened with the subsidiaries of Studebaker-Worthington Inc., in Canada, which negotiated concerning the sale of locomotives. In both cases, these companies had to abide the U.S. anti-Cuban legislation, in particular the Trading with the Enemy Act, as amended in the Cuban case. However, the energetic positions of the governments of Argentina and Canada forced the White House to grant these licenses so as not adventure the administration’s relation to these nations. 24

Debates in the Congress (1973–1974) 229

Figure 17.1 President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger stand at an Oval Offce window, February 10, 1971. WHPO 5628-20A. White House Photo Offce. Source: The Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, used with permission.

During a 1974 speech by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in Congress, following the celebration of the XV Meeting of Consultation of Foreign Ministers of the OAS, he stated, “The United States will not reestablish relations with Cuba.”25 However, it is known that since May 1974, Kissinger had started a secret and moderate movement to approach the Cuban government, when Frank Mankiewicz—executive producer of NEC Productions—approached Kissinger to discuss his upcoming trip to Cuba and offered himself to present a message to Fidel Castro. Without consulting Nixon 26 —and after evaluating the risks of this type of action—Kissinger took the opportunity to send a message with a conciliatory and realistic content in accordance with the

230 The Debacle of a President circumstances of that moment. 27 About that oral letter from Kissinger, the historian Néstor García Iturbe writes: […] Kissinger had expressed to Mankiewicz his opinion on the absurdity of the United States’ policy towards Cuba, his disagreement with it and his interest in making it fexible despite the contrary opinion that Nixon had always expressed. As a sign of goodwill, he asked to transmit to the Cuban government that what he could do to make the policy more fexible should be to allow U.S. tourists to enter the United States with $50 in Cuban products, and assure the abstention of the United States when the elimination of sanctions against Cuba was discussed at the OAS, all of which materialized later, as Kissinger had promised. 28 On July 10, 1974, the U.S. Department of Treasury issued regulations that allowed academics and journalists from the U.S. country to travel to Cuba. This made possible the visit of the television producer Mankiewicz that took place at the end of that month, in the company of the journalist Kirby Jones and the academic Saúl Landau, who were in charge of interviewing Fidel Castro. On that occasion, Mankiewicz took the opportunity to speak with the Cuban Prime Minister and deliver the message from the Secretary of State. 29 To explain the reasons for this individual position taken by Kissinger, when Nixon was still the head of the White House, it must be taken into account that Kissinger—as an intelligent politician—very well understood the political situation in the U.S., and that it would lead to the fall of the President. Likewise, the Secretary of State was no stranger to the total failure of the U.S. policy toward Cuba, that the Cuban economy was improving,30 and that the Cuban security situation was more solid, due to the strong support from the USSR. Another reason for Kissinger to search for some fexibility in U.S.–Cuban confrontational relations could be that this initiative was in line with the policy of a “New Dialogue” that he had proposed for Latin America and the Caribbean at the United Nations in late 1973.31 This policy consisted of the willingness of the U.S.—outside the framework of the OAS—to enter into talks with the governments of the region to discuss matters of common interest, based on “[…] equality and respect to the dignity of each state.”32 This policy was the main theme at the OAS meetings held in Mexico City in February 1974 and Washington in April 1974. However, and rather ironically, the issue of the elimination of the OAS sanctions against Cuba was not included in the agenda at these meetings, even if the theme was discussed.33 Perhaps, Kissinger’s message to Castro was a frst step of trying to open up a new dialogue with Cuba, behind the back of President Nixon. All these circumstances led to an increase in the interest among some of the members of the Congress for the Cuban issue. Barry Sklar stresses

Debates in the Congress (1973–1974) 231 that a number of proposals were presented and that “The resolutions introduced in 1974 were, in numerical terms, overwhelmingly favorable to a change in the US policy.”34 An example of these legislative initiatives, presented in the Congress, which address the normalization of relations can be seen in Resolution H. J. 9000, proposed on February 14, 1974, by the representative Michael Harrington who demanded the elimination of the Cuban Resolution of October 1962. In line with this, on March 28, Harrington presented a proposal to repeal the economic sanctions imposed on Cuba contained in various legislations such as the Foreign Assistance Act and the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act. Thus, Harrington’s proposal called for nonmilitary merchandise trade with Cuba. On April 22, the representative Charles Whalen presented another proposal that advocated the elimination of the same economic sanctions listed by Harrington and the annulment of the aforementioned 1962 anti-Cuban resolution.35 Meanwhile, on April 23, 1974, in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, an additional clause—proposed by Senator Jacob Javits—to the Fund Authorization Act, to the Department of State and the United States Information Agency (USIA) for the fscal year of 1975, was approved by 12 votes to 0. The addition stipulated a review by the administration and the legislative branches of the U.S.’s policy toward Cuba, in order to create a new policy based in the prevailing realities. This clause went unnoticed on May 20, in the Senate, which approved the draft of the Fund Authorization Act. However, the same thing did not occur in the bicameral committee, because the representants of the committee had been warned about the addition of the clause, which was omitted on October 8. A day later, on October 9, members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee rejected Harrington’s proposal to lift the sanctions against Cuba, included in an amendment to the Fund Authorization Act, since it was considered premature.36 In this context, the activity of the Congress was also increased due to the visit to Cuba of some of its members, who returned with recommendations to change the U.S. policy. Among these trips, the one made—between the end of June and the beginning of July 1974—by Pat Holt, then advisor to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, stood out. During his stay in Havana, he met with Fidel Castro, who opened up for the possibility of future visits by U.S. senators and representatives. Holt wrote in his travel report37 that the isolation to Cuba was a failure, and he called for an end of the economic sanctions. In his report, he also recommended the authorization of trips to Cuba for U.S. citizens, as well as the elimination of the restrictions of movement imposed on Cuban diplomats at the United Nations.38 This visit was followed—in September 1974—by Senators Jacob Javits and Claiborne Pell. Upon his return, Senator Javits commented— at a press conference—that the Cuban Prime Minister had expressed his

232 The Debacle of a President interest in reaching an understanding with the U.S. and “We believe that the time is ripe to begin this process.” In their travel report, the senators recommended reducing the movement limitations in New York of the Cuban diplomats accredited to the United Nations, and they called for reducing the restrictions for U.S. citizens to visit Cuba. They also recommended the administration to study the possibilities of liberalizing the embargo prohibitions on third countries in their trade with Cuba.39 Such were, in a general manner, the samples given by the U.S. legislature in search of ways for the normalization of the relations with Cuba during the second presidential term of Richard Nixon. A month before Javits’s and Pell’s visit to Cuba, Nixon resigned from the Presidency to prevent being judged and dismissed by the U.S. Congress for his complicity in the events of Watergate, where persons from the Cuban counterrevolutionary circles were directly involved.

Notes 1 Nixon obtained 47.168.710 votes, which was equal to 60.67% of the votes. His rival from the Democratic Party, George McGovern, obtained 29.173.222 votes, corresponding to 37.52%. These were followed by John Schmitz of the American Independent Party, which reached 1.100.868 votes equal to 1.42%; and other candidates received a total of 301.227 votes equal to 0.39%. Nixon won in 49 states and McGovern in just 2 (Massachusetts and the District of Columbia). The Republicans won 520 electing delegates against 17 of the Democrats, and 1 of the minority candidates. However, the dirty tactics used to achieve this triumph were exposed during the judicial process concerning the events of Watergate in June 1972. 2 Elier Ramírez Cañedo and Esteban Morales Domínguez: De la confrontación a los intentos de normalización. La política de los Estados Unidos hacia Cuba (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2011), 41–42. 3 The name of that war was due to the fact that it began on October 6, 1973, the day of Yom Kippur, the Jewish religious holiday. 4 José Cazañas Reyes and Felipa Suárez Ramos: EE UU vs. CUBA. Más de dos siglos de agresiones (La Habana: Editorial Verde Olivo, 1992), 69. 5 Both the detainees said that they belonged to Alpha 66, thus trying to cover up their connection to the CIA. 6 Jesús Arboleya Cervera: Cuba y los cubanoamericanos. El fenómeno migratorio cubano (La Habana: Editorial Casa de las América, 2013), 35. 7 Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs, Historical Offce, Research Memorandum No. 1230, May 20, 1980. 8 “[…] These warnings were made, among others, to Orozco, Peruyero and Nazario Sargene, of Alpha 66, and to the leaders of the nationalist and terrorist groups, based in New York, Héctor A. Fabián, Guillermo Novo Sampol, Arturo Rodríguez Vives and José Pérez Linares.” Carlos Rivero Collado: Los sobrinos del Tío Sam (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976), 199. 9 John Plank: “We Should Start Talking with Castro”, The New York Times (March 30, 1969), 28–31. 10 Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Washington, October 31, 1969, 42.

Debates in the Congress (1973–1974) 233 11 Barry Sklar: The Congress and the Normalization of Relations with Cuba (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 1980), 146. At the time, Sklar was specialist in Latin American affairs, and staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. 12 United States Congress, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations: United States Policy toward Cuba, Hearing, 92nd. Period of Sessions, First Session, September 16, 1971 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Offce, Washington, 1971), 29. 13 Barry Sklar: The Congress and the Normalization of Relations with Cuba (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 1980), 146. 14 Editorials in: New York Times (November 19, 1972), The Washington Post (November 17, 1972), The Christian Science Monitor (November 27, 1972). 15 On September 23, 1973, Kissinger was appointed Secretary of State, a position he synchronized with his position as National Security Advisor. 16 On October 10, 1973, Spiro Agnew resigned as the Vice President of the U.S. He was under investigation for receiving $29.500 in bribery when he was governor of Maryland. In 1973 he was prosecuted for tax evasion and money laundering. He was replaced by Gerald Ford. 17 Barry Sklar: The Congress and the Normalization of Relations with Cuba (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 1980), 146. 18 United States Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, U. S. Policy toward Cuba. Audience. 93rd. Session Period. First Session, March 26, and April 18, 1973 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 1974), 67. 19 Ibid. 20 State Department, Bureau of Public Affairs, May 1973, United States–Cuba Relations. In: Elier Ramírez Cañedo and Esteban Morales Domínguez: De la confrontación a los intentos de normalización. La política de los Estados Unidos hacia Cuba (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2011) (Annex 6), 302–304. 21 See: Luis Suárez Salazar: Madre América. Un siglo de violencia y dolor (1898–1999) (La Habana: Editorial Ciencias Sociales, 2003), 293–294. 22 In that OAS assembly, the U.S. was forced to remain on the defensive and did not even achieve an opposition that could prevent the concept of “ideological pluralism” from being approved as the principle of the organization, thereby destroying the doctrine of “ideological borders,” prevailing since 1948. However, the U.S. still controlled enough votes to maintain the sanctions against Cuba. 23 Richard Nixon: Report to Congress on Foreign Policy from President Richard Nixon (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 1973), 56. 24 On April 18, 1974, the State Department announced that export licenses would be granted that allowed Ford, Chrysler and General Motors, in Argentina, to sell parts to trucks and cars to Cuba for a value of $150 million. The Canadian subsidiary of Studebaker-Worthington Inc. also negotiated a multimillion dollar contract for locomotives. See also: “Memorandum from Acting Secretary of State Rush to the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Kubisch), Washington, January 21, 1974”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume E–11, Part 1. Documents on Mexico; Central America; and the Caribbean, 1973–1976 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 278. 25 Citado en: Instituto Superior de Relaciones Internacionales (ISRI): “Raúl Roa García”. De Eisenhower a Reagan (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1987), 201. This Kissinger statement was seen by the media and

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political circles as an act to strengthen Nixon’s position vis-à-vis the Republican congressmen who supported him against the efforts by the Congress to remove him as a consequence of the Watergate scandal. Kissinger was well aware of Nixon’s opinion on this matter and—as Néstor García Iturbe wrote—decided to consult this matter with Vice President Gerald Ford, who did not object. See: Néstor García Iturbe: From Ford to Bush (La Habana: Editora Política, 2008), 27. In this regard, in a 1994 interview with Peter Kornbluh, Kissinger stated that “There is a possibility that I have told Nixon […] Nixon certainly had other things in mind at the time.” Quoted in Elier Ramírez Cañedo and Esteban Morales Domínguez: De la confrontación a los intentos de normalización. La política de los Estados Unidos hacia Cuba (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2011), 48. See also: William M. LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh: Back Channel to Cuba. The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 119–123. William M. LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh: Back Channel to Cuba. The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 119–123. Néstor García Iturbe: From Ford to Bush (La Habana: Editora Política, 2008), 27–28. Ibid., 27. Between 1971 and 1975, the Cuban gross social product reached an average of 10% annual growth. In those years, the price of sugar increased gradually at the world market, and in 1975 it rose to 65 cents a pound on the New York Stock Exchange. Luis Suárez Salazar: Madre América. Un siglo de violencia y dolor (1898– 1999) (La Habana: Editorial Ciencias Sociales, 2003), 294. Address by Secretary of State Kissinger, Mexico City, February 21, 1974. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969– 1976, Volume XXXVIII. Part 1, Foundation of Foreign Policy 1973–1976 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 28. Luis Suárez Salazar: Madre América. Un siglo de violencia y dolor (1898– 1999) (La Habana: Editorial Ciencias Sociales, 2003), 294. Barry Sklar: The Congress and the Normalization of Relations with Cuba (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 1980), 151–153. Ibid. Ibid. United States Congress, Senate, Foreign Relations Committee: Cuba. A Staff Report, by Pat Holt, August 21, 1974, 93rd. Session, Second Session (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 1974), 11. Ibid. United States Congress, Senate, Foreign Relations Committee: The U.S. and Cuba: A Proper Moment, report by Jacob Javits and Claiborne Pell on their trip to Cuba, September 27–30, 1974 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 1974), 13.

References Arboleya Cervera, J. Cuba y los cubanoamericanos. El fenómeno migratorio cubano (La Habana: Editorial Casa de las América, 2013). Cazañas Reyes, J. and Suárez Ramos, F. EE UU vs. CUBA. Más de dos siglos de agresiones (La Habana: Editorial Verde Olivo, 1992).

Debates in the Congress (1973–1974) 235 Christian Science Monitor (November 27, 1972). García Iturbe, N. From Ford to Bush (La Habana: Editora Política, 2008). Instituto Superior de Relaciones Internacionales (ISRI). “Raúl Roa García”. De Eisenhower a Reagan (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1987). LeoGrande, W.M. and Kornbluh, P. Back Channel to Cuba. The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015). Nixon, R. Report to Congress on Foreign Policy from President Richard Nixon (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 1973). Plank, J. “We Should Start Talking with Castro”, New York Times (March 30, 1969), 28–31. Ramírez Cañedo, E. and Morales Domínguez, E. De la confrontación a los intentos de normalización. La política de los Estados Unidos hacia Cuba (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2011). Rivero Collado, C. Los sobrinos del Tío Sam (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976). Sklar, B. The Congress and the Normalization of Relations with Cuba (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, Washington, 1980). Suárez Salazar, L. Madre América. Un siglo de violencia y dolor (1898–1999) (La Habana: Editorial Ciencias Sociales, 2003). The Christian Science Monitor (November 27, 1972). The New York Times (November 19, 1972). The Washington Post (November 17, 1972). United States Congress, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. United States Policy toward Cuba, Hearing, 92nd. Period of Sessions, First Session, September 16, 1971 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Offce, Washington, 1971). United States Congress, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs. U. S. Policy toward Cuba. Audience. 93rd. Session Period. First Session, March 26, and April 18, 1973 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 1974). United States Congress, Senate, Foreign Relations Committee. Cuba. A Staff Report, by Pat Holt, August 21, 1974, 93rd. Session, Second Session (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 1974). United States Congress, Senate, Foreign Relations Committee. The U.S. and Cuba: A Proper Moment, report by Jacob Javits and Claiborne Pell on their trip to Cuba, September 27–30, 1974 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 1974). U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume E–11, Part 1. Documents on Mexico; Central America; and the Caribbean, 1973–1976 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018). U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XXXVIII. Part 1, Foundation of Foreign Policy 1973–1976 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018). Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Washington, October 31, 1969.

18 Continued Terrorism

In the years of 1973 and 1974, the terrorism toward Cuban interests and against countries that maintained commercial ties with Cuba, as well as toward persons who expressed their opposition to these methods, increased in the U.S. as well as in other parts of the world. Carlos Rivero Collado defnes this terrorist reaction as the product of “a morbid feeling of criminal revenge” and as a result of constant defeats—in short, a typical expression of “political impotence.”1 Between the years 1969 and 1972, the illusions that the counterrevolutionary organizations and groups—based in the U.S.—had placed in the Richard Nixon administration’s ability to reverse the situation in Cuba were frustrated. The world had changed and there existed no return to the beginning of the 1960s, and to a policy where the Cuban Revolution should be overthrown by violent means through a “dirty war.” It was not by chance that during the frst two years of Nixon’s presidency, infltration actions predominated, with the purpose of reactivating the armed counterrevolutionary struggle in Cuban mountainous areas, preferably in the eastern region, and hindering the 1970 harvest. Of the fve infltrations that took place in that period, four occurred in the frst two years. All these were supported and approved by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)—two in 1969, realized by Cuban Representation in Exile (RECE), and two in 1970, in the name of Alpha 66—and one in 1972. These followed the covert economic warfare plans of the CIA. Similarly, that agency supported the calls of the Torriente Plan, in 1970, to organize a mercenary army to invade Cuba. Those attempts failed, due to the rapid and energetic response to these infltrations by the Cuban Ministry of the Interior, the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces and the Cuban people. As a consequence, these infltrations were annihilated in a few days, since the persons participating were captured rapidly. Due to this, these counterrevolutionary groups switched to their older and safer tactics of maritime piracy operations against peaceful Cuban fshermen, merchant vessels or surprise attacks on economic targets and small coastal towns, which caused human and material losses. These actions did not break the revolution; on the contrary, they strengthened it, since an overwhelming majority of the people repudiated these acts of

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terrorism. All actions were carried out for propaganda and fundraising purposes for the counterrevolutionary organizations and their leaders, who enjoyed impunity from the U.S. authorities, although in some cases these actions affected the interests of the U.S. foreign policy negatively. When assessing the capabilities in the paramilitary and military spheres of the counterrevolutionary organizations of the Cuban exiles, the CIA estimated—in December 1972—that “[…] no Cuban exile group can successfully establish a beachhead in Cuba at this time via paramilitary or military techniques.” It was also stated that the current policy of the U.S. government was “[…] to interdict exile groups who attempt to mount paramilitary operations against Cuba from U.S. territory.”2 In 1969, with the imprisonment of Bosch and a group of his followers, the terrorist actions toward Cuba, organized in the U.S., decreased dramatically in comparison with the previous year, 3 but the number began to increase gradually in 1972. Among the terror acts reported in 1969 was the location of a bomb in the car of a Cuban United Nations offcial in New York, attributed to the Movimiento Nacionalista Cubana (MNC) [Cuban Nationalist Movement]. On May 29, the organization Comandos Libres Nacionalistas (CLN) [Free Nationalist Commandos] tried to sabotage the display of the flm “Che”—at a cinema in West Palm Beach, Florida—with explosives. On May 29, an explosive device was placed at the door of the Cuban Consulate in Montreal, Canada.4 Meanwhile, the organization El Poder Cubano [Cuban Power] of Orlando Bosch resumed its actions in June of that year but with a tendency to carry out its terrorist actions outside the U.S.5 However, the placement of four bombs in the U.S. on August 6—in a Mexican tourist agency, in the facilities of the English subsidiary of Shell Oil and in the offces of Air France and a Japanese airline—is attributed to this group.6 In 1970 the terrorist activity was reduced, since only eight events were recorded; of these, fve were attributed to Alpha 66. One of these misdeeds was the explosion of a bomb on November 11 at the Cubana de Aviación ticket offce in Madrid, Spain. The following year, 1971, there was a resurgence of terrorism in the U.S., and other parts of the world directed toward Cuban interests, as a manifestation of the failure and decline of the direct actions against Cuba. Orlando Bosch’s organization Cuban Power reappeared under the coverage of a new name, Gobierno Cubano Secreto (GCS) [The Secret Cuban Government], to which four of the seven terrorist actions carried out were attributed. Among these actions was the placement of a bomb, on July 14, at the offce of the U.S. Health Exchange.7 In 1972 the number of terrorist acts increased, with the realization of 18 attacks; of these, 9 were carried out with bombs. The Secret Cuban Government (GSC) was very active, and on March 29 this organization was attributed to have placed a bomb at the Institute of Cuban Studies

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Figure 18.1 Terrorism abroad. An information board at the permanent exhibition “Memorial de la Denuncia” in Havana stresses the 581 terrorist attacks that have been directed at Cuban missions and personnel stationed outside Cuba. Photo: Håkan Karlsson.

in New York, placed several bombs in shops in Miami that sent packages to Cuba and, on December 13, placed explosive charges at the offce of Va Cuba Farcaidinco, the travel agency Calipso and the company Michaels Forwarding Co. All these actions were carried out in the territory of the U.S.8 Terrorist acts were also carried out in other parts of the world; for example, explosive devices were placed on March 24 at the Cubana de Aviación offce in Mexico, on May 17 at the Cuban Embassy

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in Spain and on December 3 in the Cuban Consulate in Mexico. Of all these criminal actions, the explosion that destroyed the Cuban Commercial Offce in Montreal, Canada, on April 4, stands out for its homicidal results, since the Cuban diplomat Sergio Pérez Castillo died and seven people were injured.9 In the counterrevolutionary circles, particularly in Florida, a campaign was carried out to obtain the release of Orlando Bosch, which included terrorist actions by the GSC. It was a year of general elections in the U.S., and the Floridian Governor Claude Kirk, who wanted to obtain political, and especially economic, support from the Cuban exiles for his reelection, joined the campaign for the liberation of Bosch. At a political dinner held at the Cuban-dominated Latin Chamber of Commerce, he stressed that “When I think of free men seeking a free homeland, I necessarily have to think of Dr. Bosch […] I am working quietly and effectively for his release and I hope very soon see results.”10 A few days before the elections were held, on November 1, Orlando Bosch Ávila was released on parole under the management of the Governor of Florida. Bosch only served 4 years out of the 18 to which he was sentenced. He immediately rejoined the terrorist actions. Between 1973 and 1974, the terrorist actions of the counterrevolutionary groups toward Cuban diplomatic headquarters or commercial representations in different parts of the world and companies from third countries that maintained commercial ties with Cuba reached great virulence. Simultaneously as there existed “account adjustments” attacks within the Cuban exiles in the U.S., aimed at those individuals and organizations that expressed doubts about the effectiveness of these criminal methods or simply advocated another approach to the Cuban government after a decade and a half of fruitless struggle. This tactic was not new, since a decade earlier it had been proclaimed by the MNC—in particular by its founder Felipe Rivero Díaz11—who in 1963 announced that his organization’s fghting strategy would be based on the thesis of a “route of terrorism throughout the world,” which was a term describing a campaign of terror against Cuban offcials, installations abroad and anyone allegedly supporting the Cuban government. From then on, the Cuban diplomatic and commercial agencies and those of countries that were considered as “friends of Fidel Castro”—that is, of those governments that had not joined the economic blockade—were not safe from their criminal actions. These tactics were also assimilated by other counterrevolutionary groups such as Cuban Power and the Ejército Secreto Anticomunista (ESA) [Secret Anti-Communist Army]—whose fanatical cells carried out several attacks with bombs in the heart of New York City—as well as by other groups of similar nature. Since then, a series of terrorist attacks began to be carried out in the U.S., Canada and other countries, which provoked the rejection of the U.S. public opinion.

240 The Debacle of a President The offcial protests by various governments to the U.S. Department of State, whose commercial offces had suffered attacks—such as Mexico, Canada, Japan and the United Kingdom—forced the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to act and repress the actions of these counterrevolutionary groups. In November 1967, Felipe Rivero was forced, after six months in prison, to agree with the FBI on a “non-aggression pact” and to deactivate the terrorist cells in Miami. In parallel the organizations metropolitan group in New York, led by Guillermo Novo Sampol, continued to act with extreme caution, although his brother Ignacio was arrested and released twice.12 In 1973 the MNC decided to make certain adjustments in its terrorist tactics for carrying out its “route of terrorism throughout the world.” The bomb attacks on diplomatic headquarters had led to arrests and to a negative impact on the international and international public opinion, which in no way facilitated their goals. The groups terror actions—says Carlos Rivero Collado—shifted toward the migrants themselves, and the group joined forces with those who blamed Torriente as the main culprit for the decline of the counterrevolution, and they called him “the murder of the faith of the exiles.”13 That line was the same as that of the group Gobierno Cubano Secreto (GCS). During the so-called Congress against Coexistence, held in 1973, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Orlando Bosch14 announced the beginning of the purifcation within the Cuban exile. This meant the elimination of those who were advocating a coexistence with their home country. In this regard, Bosch stressed that “We have to clean the exiles of all evil; these are obstacles to obstruct the liberty of Cuba.”15 GCS cells located in the northern U.S., in March 1973, carried out several attacks with explosives, such as the one executed toward the Center for Cuban Studies in New York City—an institution made up of progressive intellectuals who promoted an approach to Cuba—whose premises were destroyed; the attack on the Waterloo clothing store, located in Union City, New Jersey, that were carried out due to the fact that its owner—a Cuban emigrant—had refused to cooperate fnancially with the counterrevolutionary groups. There was also an attack toward Ceferino Pérez Carril,16 in which he was shot four times, but his life was saved after several weeks of hospital confnement. Pérez Carril managed one of the Va Cuba offces, located in the Bronx district of New York. On July 24, the GCS placed a powerful bomb in the basement of the Martin Luther King building in Manhattan, where the exhibition ExpoCuba 1973 was carried out in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the assault on the Moncada barracks. The attack disabled the building’s elevators and injured a U.S. citizen working in the building. The attacks on Cuban diplomatic headquarters did not stop. On August 3, Juan Felipe de la Cruz, a member of the terrorist group Acción Cubana [Cuban Action] died in a town near Paris, when a high-powered

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plastic bomb exploded in his hands—a bomb that was to be placed at the Cuban Embassy in Paris. In that month, a few days after the death of Fulgencio Batista in Spain, Gastón Godoy and Loret de la Mola— the later former president of the House of Representatives in 1954— who had fred the tyrant declared “[…] the only strategy left to the exile was to plant bombs, attack Cuban diplomatic units abroad, kill ambassadors.”17 Since the end of 1973, this terrorist tactic was actively followed by the Frente de Liberación Nacional Cubano (FLNC) [National Front for the Liberation of Cuba],18 whose members carried out an attack against the headquarters of the Cuban consulate in Mexico on December 2, which caused considerable damage. In January 1974, this organization, once again, attacked the Cuban embassy in Mexico City with highpowered explosives, without causing personal injury. During the same month, the terrorist group Acción Cubana, in coordination with members of the FLNC, sent postal packages with plastic bombs to Cuban embassies in Canada, Peru, Argentina and Spain.19 As a result of that action, on February 4, the offcial of the Cuban embassy in Lima, Peru, Pilar Ramírez Vega, suffered considerable injuries and burns when an envelope exploded in her hands. On February 13, a postal package addressed to the Cuban diplomatic headquarters in Madrid exploded at the Post Offce, located in Plaza Cibeles, and injured a worker from that offcial Spanish agency. In the month of March, two terrorists—Humberto López (son) and Luis Crespo—were injured when a bomb exploded in their hands when they tried to insert it into a hollowed-out book that should be sent by mail. 20 On March 24, an artifact detonated in the offce of Cubana de Aviación in Mexico, which damaged the premises and those of three other airlines—the Venezuelan Viasa, the Costa Rican Taca and the Icelandic Icelandic Air—and the shock wave destroyed ten windows of the Hotel Francis. On March 26 they threw bombs on the Cuban embassy in Kingston, Jamaica, and on April 9, a powerful explosion devastated the Cuban consulate in Madrid, Spain, without leading to the loss of life. On May 4, another bomb detonated in the building next to the Cuban embassy in London, England, and on May 14, members of an FLNC cell placed two explosive devices at the Cuban consulate in Mérida, Yucatán, which caused considerable damage. On July 3, there was another terrorist attack, attributed to the FLNC, against the Cuban embassy in Paris, France, which destroyed the entrance door to the diplomatic headquarters, some interior walls and several windows. The criminal acts that occurred in 1974 among the groups of the socalled Cuban exile in the territory of the U.S. were notorious. On April 12, José Elías de la Torriente was assassinated at his residence, accused by terrorist groups of being a traitor who was “the murder of the faith of the exiles” and a “traitor of the Fatherland.”21 Four days later, on April

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16, the terrorist Arturo Rodríguez Vives was killed in his apartment in New York City. In 1968 this individual had been one of the main spokesmen of the Cuban Power group, and after the arrest of the leaders of that group, he worked to regroup those who were not arrested by the FBI to continue the execution of the terrorist plans. In 1973 he joined the GCS. At a counterrevolutionary act held in Union City, New Jersey, two days before his death Rodríguez Vives declared, “It is not time to mourn the death of anyone. We must remember that in ancient times the Greeks killed traitors!”22 In early May 1974, there was a failed assassination attempt in Miami on the counterrevolutionary Áurea Poggio, editor of the weekly newspaper Pueblo, who received injuries to one hand. The terrorist groups blamed her for publishing information favorable to a rapprochement with Cuba. In the second week of May, the president of the Christian Democratic Movement in Exile, Ernesto Rodríguez, 70, was assassinated. The Miami police authorities and the relatives of the deceased stated that the crime was politically motivated. Terrorist groups accused the so-called Christian Democrats of just playing the game against communism and of proposing peaceful coexistence with the Cuban Revolution. In late May, a bomb exploded at a door of the Réplica magazine, based in Miami, causing considerable damage, and a few days later, another bomb detonated in the CAMACOL offces, also located in Miami. These last two attacks were attributed to the group Unión Mundial Anticomunista (UMA) [Anti-Communist World Union], made up of various counterrevolutionary elements. 23 The “account adjustments” continued. In July 1974, Ricardo Morales Navarrete, an FBI agent in Miami, saved his life by a few seconds when a bomb planted in his car exploded, and Morales Navarrete blamed Orlando Bosch for ordering the attack. In 1968 Morales had witnessed the FBI’s “charge” to destroy the Cuban Power terrorist cell in Miami. On August 20, Héctor Díaz Limonta, secretary of the MNC in the northwestern U.S., was strangled in Union City, New Jersey. This individual had been sentenced to probation by a court of that State for “conspiring to carry out terrorist activities.” Together with Rodríguez Vives and other terrorists in Miami, he prepared a plan to carry out a “cleaning up of traitors,” and he also stood out for being one of the accusers of Torriente. 24 Twelve days after that assassination of Díaz Limonta, Richard M. Nixon had been forced to resign from the U.S. presidency as a consequence of the Watergate scandal, and Gerald Ford replaced him as U.S. president. However, the impunity for these terrorist groups continued and new criminal attacks against Cuban diplomatic and economic objectives in third countries took place. With the knowledge of the FBI, the terrorists repeatedly attempted to blow up an airplane until, on October 6, 1976, a Cubana de Aviación aircraft exploded in mid-fight from

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Barbados, killing 73 persons onboard. The fghting and the assassinations among the counterrevolutionary groups in the U.S. also continued throughout the 1970s.

Notes 1 Carlos Rivero Collado: Los sobrinos del Tío Sam (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976), 342–343. 2 “Paper prepared in the Central Intelligence Agency, Washington, undated”. U.S. Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018), Doc. 266. 3 Terrorist actions occurred every month in 1968, with the highest number of incidents taking place in July, with 21, and October, with 13. In the U.S. 69 bombs were detonated out of a total of 82, including 13 in Canada, Mexico and Puerto Rico. The wave of terror unleashed in the U.S. was directed not only at interests linked to Cuba but also toward U.S. businessmen and merchants. See: In: Centro de Documentación del Centro de Investigación Histórica de la Seguridad del Estado (CIHSE): Cuba Acusa. Política subversiva del gobierno de los Estados Unidos contra la Revolución Cubana (1959–2002) (La Habana: CITMATEL, 2003). 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 8 Centro de Documentación del Centro de Investigación Histórica de la Seguridad del Estado (CIHSE): Cuba Acusa. Política subversiva del gobierno de los Estados Unidos contra la Revolución Cubana (1959–2002) (La Habana: CITMATEL, 2003). 9 Ibid. 10 Dick Russell: “Little Havana’s Reign of Terror”, The New York Times (October 29, 1976). 11 The MNC was created in New York in the early 1960s by Felipe Rivero Díaz—ex-president of the Artes Gráfcas in the Batista dictatorship and mercenary of the 2506 brigade—and among its founders were also Miguel Sampedro, the brothers Guillermo and Ignacio Novo Sampol and Santiago González Naranjo. Felipe Rivero proclaimed the aspiration to establish a nationalist regime—of fascist nature—in Cuba, similar to that of Benito Mussolini. By 1963, the MNC expanded its membership and carried out a series of attacks in the U.S. and in other countries. See: Carlos Rivero Collado: Los sobrinos del Tío Sam (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976), 306–311. 12 Carlos Rivero Collado: Los sobrinos del Tío Sam (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976), 306–311. 13 Ibid., 312–313. 14 In that year, Orlando Bosch, violating his parole, traveled to several countries in Latin America. In the company of Guillermo Novo Sampol, he visited Chile, where he was welcomed by the Military Junta that usurped power after the military coup of September 11, 1973. 15 Dick Russell: “Little Havana’s Reign of Terror”, The New York Times (October 29, 1976). 16 Pérez Carril had a long criminal record. He joined the “Tigers of Masferrer,” in the province of Oriente. He was a mercenary of the Bay of Pigs; then in

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1963 he traffcked drugs, owned a targeting bank and ran a brothel in New York. In 1968, he was jailed by a federal court for counterfeiting coins. In 1972, he was released from prison and dedicated himself to the business of sending packages to Cuba. Carlos Rivero Collado: Los sobrinos del Tío Sam (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976), 334. FLNC was the merger of several terrorist cells, related to Ramón Orozco, dedicated to maritime pirate attacks, which were forced to give up their maritime activities for the time being, and their members participated in the attacks on Cuban diplomatic headquarters. Carlos Rivero Collado: Los sobrinos del Tío Sam (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976), 335. Luis Crespo had to have his right hand amputated, and Humberto López lost an eye and received serious injuries to the rest of his body. Carlos Rivero Collado: Los sobrinos del Tío Sam (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976), 336. Ibid., 337. Ibid., 339–340. Ibid., 340–341.

References Centro de Documentación del Centro de Investigación Histórica de la Seguridad del Estado (CIHSE). Cuba Acusa. Política subversiva del gobierno de los Estados Unidos contra la Revolución Cubana (1959–2002) (La Habana: CITMATEL, 2003). Rivero Collado, C. Los sobrinos del Tío Sam (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976). Russell, D. “Little Havana’s Reign of Terror”, The New York Times (October 29, 1976). U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969–1976, Vol. E – 10, Documents on American Republics 1969–1972 (Washington: United States Government Printing Offce, 2018).

19 Watergate Nixon’s Fall and the Cuban Connection

On the afternoon of August 8, 1974, in a live television broadcast to the U.S. nation, Richard M. Nixon resigned as president of the U.S. The reason for this unique and unusual event was the Watergate scandal— one of the largest scandals in the political history of the U.S.—which began when, in the early hours of June 17, 1972, fve individuals were arrested for a raid—in Washington, DC—of the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate offce complex. The detained were James W. McCord, Bernard León Macho Baker, Virgilio R. González, Eugenio Rolando Martínez and Frank Sturgis (Frank Ángelo Fiorini). The frst, a U.S. citizen, was the head of security for the Committee for the Re-election of the President (CREEP) and the remaining four were Cuban counterrevolutionaries. All of them were Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents and direct participants in the subversive plans toward Cuba since the beginning of the 1960s. Shortly after the arrest it was discovered that the fve assailants had been secretly hired and paid by Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy, two men linked to the CREEP, which was a Republican Party team of militants created by Richard Nixon to sustain his reelection campaign in the elections of November 1972. The description of the details of the Watergate scandal is not the purpose of this book, let us leave it to the historians, political scientists and sociologists of the U.S., since it is up to them to draw the experiences and conclusions of an event that removed the foundations of the U.S. society of that time. However, it is important to avoid erasing from the historical memory of the U.S. citizens the unfortunate events that constituted the foundation of the Watergate scandal, not for justifying it but for creating an understanding of the U.S. policy—both internal and external—that the U.S. administrations practiced both before and after this scandal, and the dangers that this policy still constitutes close to fve decades after those events. This scandal exposed to the public the close relations of Nixon and other high offcials of his administration with the Cuban counterrevolution. Those ties developed much earlier, when in 1960, Nixon was vice president, under President Eisenhower, and when he in this position

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directed “Operation 40.”1 This was a special secret unit created by the CIA aimed at overthrowing governments that were not acted in agreement with the U.S. policy, and this description was especially valid for Cuba. It is not by chance that when the Special Investigative Unit of the White House—known as “the plumbers”—was constituted in 1971, a number of persons in this unit had their background in “Operation 40.” Although the 1972 presidential election campaign had not yet begun, Nixon was preparing to achieve his reelection, and this was precisely the main task of the “plumbers.” Their mission was to remove all obstacles that could prevent the reelection of Nixon, through every means, such as scam, blackmailing, force, political espionage, sabotage, illegal trespassing into offces and large-scale eavesdropping. The chiefs of that special unit were the former CIA offcer and ex-agent, Howard Hunt, 2 and the former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent, G. Gordon Liddy. The lead promoter of the new “spy unit,” Nixon’s special adviser, Charles Colson, had compiled a “list of enemies” of the White House that—according to John Dean3 —included hundreds of people that “the plumbers” should investigate. These included the name of Daniel Ellsberg, who had “leaked” the “Pentagon Papers,” whose record was released to Hunt as the group’s frst assignment. To form this group of “plumbers,” it was necessary to choose individuals prepared for these illegal tasks and who was better prepared than those who for more than a decade had prepared and executed subversive, terrorist and espionage actions with impunity against the Cuban Revolution. Among the frst nominees was the counterrevolutionary Bernard L. Barker, nicknamed Macho,4 with an extensive curriculum vitae (CV) at the service of the CIA, who proposed enrolling two close friends, Felipe de Diago and Eugenio Rolando Martínez; the later had participated as mercenary at the Bay of Pigs. In Cuba, and during the Batista tyranny, all of them had belonged to the BRAC. Another of the recruits was Frank Sturgis, who also had an extensive counterrevolutionary record. On Sunday, September 5, 1971, while Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy watched, Bernard Barker, Eugenio Rolando Martínez and Felipe de Diago entered the Beverly Hills offce of Dr. Lewis Fielding, the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, to photograph all information about Ellsberg. The aim was to destroy the public image of Ellsberg as a punishment for leaking revealing documents to the New York Times about the U.S. war in Vietnam. However, they did not fnd anything that could stain Ellsberg’s reputation. Another similar operation—recalled Frank Sturgis—was carried out against Senator Edward M. “Ted” Kennedy, who was considered to be the Democratic presidential candidate in 1972. The “plumbers” were given a list with the names of four young women who had allegedly had some kind of romance with Kennedy, and the mission was to interview

Nixon’s Fall and the Cuban Connection 247 them under the pretext of a Democratic Party study of the senator. The questions presented to the young women were intentionally hostile to Ted Kennedy in order to know their reactions. As Sturgis explained, “The idea was to tap their phones and fnd out to whom they were reporting our visit, and what they were saying in their frst outburst of anxiety. Well, we did the interviews without problems, but we weren’t able to tap the phones.”5 With the start of the 1972 election year, Hunt’s “plumbers” moved to the CREEP and joined the security team led by Jim McCord, who had worked with the 2,506 Brigade invaders at the camp of Fort Jackson. One of the frst tasks posed to Hunt’s group by CREEP was the robbery in the offce of Hank Greenspun, editor of The Sun in Las Vegas trying to discover any type of material that could be used to blackmail Senator Edward Muskie, who they presumed could be the Democratic candidate at the time. The dirty tricks and the espionage on Nixon’s political opponents increased with the arrival of John Mitchell—after his resignation on February 15, 1972 as Attorney General—to the CREEP leadership. In March, the committee’s new chairman approved a comprehensive espionage plan and illegal action against Democrats, and the codename of this operation was “Gemstone.” Among the measures planned to be carried out was an operation to place hidden microphones in the rooms of the main Democratic leaders who would be staying at the Hotel Fontainebleau in Miami Beach during their convention in July. For this operation the Gemstone operatives reserved, through a third party, several rooms in the name of Edward Hamilton, a name used by both Hunt and Sturgis.6 However, before that operation, other actions took place with the assistance of the Cuban exiles. The unexpected death on May 1 of J. Edgar Hoover, founder and director of the FBI, led to the preparation of a number of “plumbers” for overseeing Hoover’s funeral and for controlling that no protest took place on this occasion. Two weeks later, the attack against the Governor of Alabama, George Wallace, took place, which seriously wounded him and removed him from the presidential race. The instigator of the attack was Arthur H. Bremer. Wallace posed a serious threat to Nixon’s reelection in the southern states of U.S. If Wallace should have participated, as a third candidate, he would take away the president’s votes in these states, as had happened in 1968, when he won by a narrow margin. Polls showed that if this had happened, there would be a virtual tie between Nixon and Hubert Humphrey or George McGovern, who were the probable Democratic candidates. Charles Colson directed Hunt to immediately fy to Milwaukee, Bremer’s hometown, to remove any suspicions of ties between Bremer and the Republican Party, and to plant evidence in his department that

248 The Debacle of a President he was associated with radical leftist groups. This action was never carried out because Hunt refused on the grounds that the FBI had already sealed the apartment. When this information came to light during the Watergate trial, Colson said that when Nixon got knowledge of the attack, it made him very agitated, and he “[…] showed an immediate concern that the attack might have ties to the Republican Party, worse still, to the Reelection Committee of the President.”7 What a coincidence! Lawyer Ellis Rubin, defender of William Bremer, was the same one who later defended the four Cubans in the Watergate trial.8 By the end of May, the nomination of Senator McGovern9 as the candidate for the Presidency of the U.S. by the Democratic Party was a fact, and this made him the main target of the “Gemstone” operation. A dirty media campaign of lies was directed toward McGovern; among them, the accusation of his ties to Cuba was not lacking, and it was rumored that Fidel Castro had secretly contributed a million dollars to his presidential campaign. Under the pretext of a business meeting, Hunt summoned his group, on Monday, May 22, at the Hotel Hamilton Manger in Washington, DC, to give them the instructions for a new mission. This time it was about the penetration of the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee located in the Watergate Building Complex. At the meeting Barker, Martínez, Sturgis and De Diego participated, as well as a new member, Virgilio González, the group’s professional locksmith. Hunt promised them that if they helped the White House, “[…] it would be a decisive factor in obtaining help later to liberate Cuba.”10 To convince and motivate them to carry out this action, he told them that their mission was to fnd evidence of Fidel Castro’s contribution to the Democratic campaign, and in particular to McGovern. Although Hunt’s real purpose was to search for documents that could link McGovern to the radical peace movement in the U.S. According to Sturgis, Hunt also directed them to enter the offces of Lawrence O’Brien, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and search for “anything about Howard Hughes.”11 For the past two years, O’Brien had done public relations work for Hughes, and the White House was desperate to learn what O’Brien would know about the important “gifts” that Hughes had given Nixon.12 Frank Sturgis confessed that “One of the things we were looking for in the fles of the Democratic National Committee, and also in other fles in Washington, […] was a secret memorandum from the Castro government, confdentially addressed to the Democratic National Committee.”13 The content of this presumed memorandum was a detailed denunciation of the long-running CIA covert operations against Cuba, in particular the assassination attempts against Fidel Castro and other revolutionary leaders. The “other fles” to which Sturgis referred was an indirect insinuation to “[…] the secret entrances to the Chilean embassy14

Nixon’s Fall and the Cuban Connection 249 and to the Cuban Mission to the United Nations in New York, in the month of May […].”15 After several days of preparation, in the evening hours of Friday, May 26, to Saturday, May 27, “the plumbers” broke into the offces of the Democrats in Watergate. In this frst attempt—although they managed to intervene the telephones, placing hidden transmitters and photographing documents, they did not achieve the desired goals of the mission. Among other reasons, the low volume of the equipment installed by McCord was such that they were barely understood16 and the photographed papers did not reveal the desired information. Therefore, a new raid was imposed on the Democrats’ headquarters. On June 16, Sturgis, Barker, Martinez and Gonzalez few to Washington to try another raid on the offces of the Democratic National Committee in Watergate. The group was joined for this mission by McCord, now also an employee of the Nixon electoral campaign, who had increased the volume of the listening transmitters. The perpetrators of these dirty activities probably felt that they could act with impunity before the U.S. laws, and perhaps this was the result of more than ten years of illegal counterrevolutionary action, from the territory of the U.S. toward Cuba. They were told that if they were caught by chance, they would not worry, as security measures had been taken to release them quietly and they trusted this promise. In the early hours of June 17, they entered the building again, through violating the entrance controls. While the group was immersed in the task of taking photos of documents, the security guard detected the intruders and immediately called the police, who minutes later arrested fve men inside the offce of the Democratic National Committee. The plan conceived to proceed—in a case like this and to quickly get out of the legal loopholes with a minimum of political problems—for the “Miami Four” was to declare to the authorities their ardent anti-Castro affliation and that they acted towards the background of the rumor of the millions of dollars that Castro had given McGovern for his election campaign. However, this lie failed when the name of James McCord appeared in the police record of detainees, since the journalists who reported about the intrusion quickly connected him to the CREEP. From the beginning of the investigations, the District of Columbia police asked about the participation of the FBI in the case, since the assailants were seized by telephone listening equipment. The frst police investigations reported the discovery in a pocket of Bernard Barker of an address book that contained the initials “H. H.” with the inscription “W. House,” along with a check signed by a certain E. Howard Hunt.17 “Then the police started tracking down the White House.”18 Although the news was not published on the front pages of the newspapers, Nixon was concerned, and from Cape Biscayne, Florida, he gave instructions to downplay the event. That day the President’s Press

250 The Debacle of a President Secretary, Ron Ziegler, declared that it was nothing more than “a third category robbery.”19 On his return to the White House, fve days later, the president denied the participation of anyone from the White House in the events related to Watergate. A day later he locked himself up in the Oval Offce together with the Head of the Presidential Cabinet, H. Robert Haldeman, to study the problem and decide on the measures to be taken to make a “damage control,” as revealed by the recorded tapes— from June 23, 1972—revealing the conversation between the two. 20 The frst aspect discussed was how to put pressure on the FBI to abandon the investigation. Haldeman commented that: […] we’re back to the-in the, the problem area because the FBI is not under control, because Gray21 doesn’t exactly know how to control them […] their investigation is now leading into some productive areas, because they’ve been able to trace the money […] not through the money itself, but through the bank […] and it goes in some directions we don’t want it to go. […] Ah, also there have been some things, like […] was a photographer or has a friend who is a photographer who developed some flms through this guy, Barker, and the flms had pictures of Democratic National Committee letter head documents and things. […] it’s things like that that are gonna, that are fltering in […].22 The Head of the Presidential Cabinet told Nixon that “[…] the only way to solve this […].”—as Mitchell and John Dean had suggested—was to make “[…] a massive story about the Cubans […].” That is, to continue with the legend that it was an anti-Castro problem, alien to CREEP and the White House, as had been broadcast by the NBC Broadcasting Company, 23 on which Nixon agreed. To block the FBI investigations, Haldeman argued, “[…] the way to handle this now is for us to have Walters24 call Pat Gray and just say, stay the hell out of this…this is ah, business where we don’t want you to go any further.”25 Nixon asked, “What about Pat Gray, ah, you mean he doesn’t want to?” Haldeman stressed that: Pat does want to. He doesn’t know how to, and […] he doesn’t have any basis for doing it. Given this, he will then have the basis. He’ll call Mark Felt26 in, and the two of them…and Mark Felt wants to cooperate because… […] he’s ambitious… […] he’ll call him in and say, “We’ve got the signal from across the river [i.e. from the White House] to, to put the hold on this.” And that will ft rather well because the FBI agents who are working the case, at this point, feel that’s what it is. The president then inquired about the development of the investigations and the level of information obtained by the police in the investigative

Nixon’s Fall and the Cuban Connection 251 process up to that moment and asked if “[…] they’ve traced the money?”27 Haldeman replied, “Well, they’ve have, they’ve traced to a name, but they haven’t gotten the guy yet.” With anxiety, the president asked, “Would it be somebody here?” “Ken Dahlberg,”28 replied Haldeman. “Who the hell is Ken Dahlberg?” Haldeman explained that “He’s ah, he gave $25.000 in Minnesota and ah, the check went directly in to this, to this guy Barker.” Nixon said, “He didn’t get this from the committee though, from Stans.”29 Haldeman answered30: Yeah. It is. It’s directly traceable and there’s some Texas people in— that went to the Mexican bank which they can also trace to the Mexican bank…they’ll get their names today it can be traced to the Mexican bank… they will get the names today […] Both Nixon and Haldeman considered it necessary to stop the trail of that track and divert the investigation into another direction. Nixon proposed that: I’m just thinking if they don’t cooperate, what do they say? They they, they were approached by the Cubans. That’s what Dahlberg has to say, the Texans too. Is that the idea?31 Haldeman was skeptical: “Well, if they will. But then we’re relying on more and more people all the time. That’s the problem. And ah, they’ll stop if we could, if we take this other step.” Haldeman stressed that “[…] the only way to do that is from White House instructions. And it got to be to Helms32 and, ah, what’s his name…? Walters. […] And the proposal would be that Ehrlichman33 and I call them in.” Nixon emphasized that: How do you call him in, I mean you just, well, we protected Helms from one hell of a lot of things. […] that will uncover a lot of things. You open that scab there’s a hell of a lot of things and that we just feel that it would be very detrimental to have this thing go any further. This involves the Cubans, Hunt and a lot of hanky-panky34 that we have nothing to do with ourselves.35,36 However, the thing that worried Nixon most was the degree of involvement of the leadership of CREEP in the events, since this could jeopardize his reelection. “Well, what the hell, did Mitchell know about this thing to any much of a degree?” Haldeman responded that “I think so. I don’t think he knew the details, but I think he knew.” Nixon rapidly commented, “[…] Well, who was the asshole that did? Is it Liddy?37 Is that the fellow? He must be a little nuts. […] I mean, he just isn’t well screwed on is he? Isn’t that the problem?” Haldeman stated that “[…]

252 The Debacle of a President he was under pressure, apparently, to get more information, and he got more pressure, he pushed the people harder to move harder on…” “Pressure from Mitchell?” “Apparently” A bit calmer, Nixon said, “All right, fne, I understand it all. We won’t second-guess Mitchell and the rest. Thank God it wasn’t Colson.”38,39 In relation to Colson, Haldeman told him that the FBI agents in charge of the case interviewed him the previous day, since they had determined that there were one or two possibilities: […] that this was a White House, they don’t think that there is anything at the Election Committee, they think it was either a White House operation and they had some obscure reasons for it, non political […] or it was a […] Cuban thing […] Cubans and the CIA […] And after their interrogation of Colson yesterday, they concluded it was not the White House, but are now convinced it is a CIA thing […].40 Nixon was not convinced that the FBI agents would draw this conclusion and stated that “[…] I’m not going to get that involved.” “No, sir, We don’t want you to,” commented Haldeman. Nixon then ordered that when Haldeman met with Helms and Walters: You call them in. […] Play it tough. That’s the way they play it and that’s the way we are going to play it. […] When you get in these people when you…get these people in, say: Look, the problem is that this will open the whole, the whole Bay of Pigs thing, and the President just feels that, ah, without going into the details… don’t, don’t lie to them to the extent to say there is no involvement, but just say this is sort of a comedy of errors, bizarre, without getting into it, the President believes that it is going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again. And, ah because these people are plugging for, for keeps and that they should call the FBI in and say that we wish for the country, don’t go any further into this case. […].41 Although they managed to stop the scandal so that it did not affect the general elections of November 1972, where Nixon was reelected as president, they could not prevent the discovery that the fve assailants had been hired and paid undercover by Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy, two men linked to CREEP. On September 15, 1972, the seven suspects—the assailants plus Hunt and Liddy—were accused with the charges of conspiracy, theft and violation of federal communications intervention laws, and a judicial process led by Judge John J. Sirica was started. Although the defendants received their convictions in January 1973, the investigation continued since there existed indications of more persons involved in the crime.

Nixon’s Fall and the Cuban Connection 253 Many people, including Judge Sirica himself, suspected that the crime included members of the highest levels of the government. In March 1973, the sentenced James McCord sent a letter to Judge John Sirica, in which he expressed that he had been pressured to plead guilty. In the letter, McCord implicated several government offcials in the case, including the former Attorney General John Mitchell. His letter turned the matter into an unprecedented political scandal.42 McCord’s letter gave Judge Sirica arguments to reopen the investigations into the Watergate events. It was not the same in the case of the Cuban counterrevolutionaries—the “Miami Four”—that until that moment remained silent. As Carlos Rivero Collado revealed,43 Manuel Artime Buesa had the mission of supporting the families of the four Cubans imprisoned due to their involvement in the crime, with money from the White House—canalized through the wealthy Charles G. Bebe Rebozo, who had a Cuban origin—on the condition that they did not speak.44 On this last character and his ties to Nixon, Rivero Collado commented: One of the most scandalous examples of this policy was that of the “Cuban” Charles G. Bebe Rebozo, who used his enormous infuence with the Yankee government to acquire, at a very low price, an island located near the south of the city of Miami.—Called Fisher’s Island, which was later purchased by the U.S. state, at Nixon’s own request, for a sum twenty-four times greater than that invested by Rebozo only three years earlier. In this operation, the intimate of the President obtained a net proft of several million dollars. In addition, Rebozo, in partnership with some stateless leaders such as Manolo Artime, Edgardo Buttari and others, acquired the land and built the so-called Cuban Shopping Center, located on the 22nd Avenue in North West Miami. Later, always using his all-embracing infuence with Richard Nixon, he obtained several loans, worth millions of dollars, through the Small Business Administration, which were used to establish more than 20 businesses of various kinds, that were sold —giving them some facilities—to the counterrevolutionaries who were in contact with Nixon’s group of personal friends. This business brought Rebozo a proft of a few million dollars. In addition, Bebe Rebozo was involved in a great scandal when it was discovered that he had lent himself as an intermediary—using his position as Vice President of Key Biscayne National Bank—for the sale of counterfeit United States bonds.45 Detailed reports of the case published in The Washington Post by two of its journalists, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, contributed to the ignition of the looming scandal, since they helped to untangle the complex knot whose threads pointed directly to the White House, and the president, through Richard Nixon’s CREEP. The journalists were assisted

254 The Debacle of a President by an anonymous informant—that they named Deep Throat—whose identity was not revealed until 33 years after the scandal.46 The source told Woodward that wiretapping against the Democratic Party was an activity planned by Nixon’s top advisers, H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, with the endorsement of the president. These revelations led to the formation of a Senate Committee of Inquiry, whose sessions were broadcasted on U.S. television in May 1973. The Senate Committee questioned a number of presidential advisers about the origin of the order for the telephone espionage of the Democratic Party, where some advisers tried to reject any involvement in espionage. Through John Dean’s statements, it was learned that in recent conversations the president had presented them with “biased” questions so that his advisers could give answers that would free Nixon of all responsibility.47 The scandal that followed the publication of these news, and the television broadcasts of the session of the Senate Committee of Inquiry, caused the resignation of the president’s advisers John Dean, H. Robert Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, at the end of May 1973. as well as the U.S. Attorney General, Richard Kleindienst. To mitigate the complicated situation created by these resignations, Nixon, on May 25, nominated Elliot Richardson48 as Attorney General. Richardson was a person who enjoyed an impeccable reputation within the leadership of the Republican Party for his honest precedence.49 The press interpreted Richardson’s appointment as an attempt by the president to control the investigations of the scandal. But Richardson was an impeccable Republican, and his frst decision as the Head of the Department of Justice was to appoint the Democrat Archibald Cox as Special Prosecutor in the Watergate case. Richardson asked Cox to examine all the documentary evidence and told him that he would have access to all material without any restrictions. The investigations determined that other offcials close to the president probably had knowledge of the illegal wiretappings, which is why three prominent persons of the Republican Party—dedicated directly to directing the reelection campaign of Richard Nixon—were included in the investigations. These were Charles Colson, Jeb Magruder and John Mitchell. More and more evidences were beginning to come to light. After an interview with another of Nixon’s aides, the retired General Alexander Butterfeld, a whole recording and eavesdropping system for conversations inside the White House became known to the Senate Committee member Donald Sanders, and he confrmed it on July 13, 1973.50 The pressure on Nixon increased, the ship began to sink and many of its crew tried not to drown in the sea of mud that surrounded them and still kept them afoat. On September 29, 1973, Nixon’s personal secretary, Rose Marie Woods, confessed to the commission that she had recorded Nixon’s conversations with H. R. Haldeman. The Senate Committee immediately demanded the delivery of the tapes recorded in the Oval Offce, but Nixon refused, claiming that the presidential immunity extended to his

Nixon’s Fall and the Cuban Connection 255 communications. The commission replied that this immunity could not be invoked to hide criminal acts committed by the president or his advisers.51 In the midst of all this, there was a lawsuit against Vice President Spiro Agnew for receiving bribes from Maryland contractors in exchange for political favors and for evading tax payments. This led him to present his resignation from the vice presidency on October 10, 1973. The president appointed Congressman Gerald Ford to fll the position. It is believed that Nixon decided to politically destroy Agnew, as he did not maintain the loyalty around the already irrepressible Watergate scandal. The special prosecutor in the case, just as the Senate Committee did, requested an audition of nine of those decisive tapes. Nixon rejected once again to present the tapes, arguing the president’s immunity, and only offered a summary of the material. However, the Special Prosecutor Cox was frm, and on Saturday, October 20, 1973, President Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to remove Cox and to close the Special Prosecutor’s offce and its work with the case. In a tense half-hour conversation with Nixon in the Oval Offce, Richardson fatly refused to fre Cox and resigned. Richardson’s second-in-command, William Ruckelhaus, was immediately summoned to the White House, and he was also ordered to act toward Cox, but he also preferred to

Figure 19.1 Meeting in the Oval Offce concerning Congressman Ford’s nomination as vice president, October 13, 1973. Participants: Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, President Richard M. Nixon, Vice Presidential Designate Gerald Ford, Deputy Assistant Alexander Haig Jr. NLRN-WHPO-E1637-24. White House Photo Offce. Source: The Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, used with permission.

256 The Debacle of a President resign. Minutes later, Nixon appointed the acting Attorney General Robert Bork and repeated his order a third time. It was frst then that the president achieved his purpose. 52 These events, which led to the resignation of Richardson and Ruckelhaus and the dismissal of Cox, were dubbed by the press as the “Saturday night massacre.”53 The news of these dismissals caused a great anger in the Senate when it was announced on Monday, October 22, since it showed a serious abuse of power by the president, since a Senate investigation was maliciously hindered, and when a judicial offcer was arbitrary dismissed by the president. The pressures increased on Nixon to release the recorded tape of his conversations with Haldeman, but it was not until early November that the new Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski received the tapes. When, on November 14, 1973, the Senate Committee and Judge John Sirica could revise them, a gap of 18 minutes and 30 seconds was detected. Judge Sirica immediately ordered a panel of experts to evaluate the incomplete tape, and on November 21, 1973, it could be concluded that the detected vacuum was due to erasure and not to a technical defect in the recording or in the tapes. The verifcation of the erasure caused a new controversy, and Secretary Woods alleged that she was guilty of it due to an “accident” on October 1, 1973. She had answered the phone in her offce and at the same time transcribed the content of the tape. The version presented by Nixon’s personal secretary made Judge Sirica doubt the “accidental” erasure, and the public suspicions was that it was an “intentional” deletion of sensitive material and comments by Nixon that had been recorded on the tape.54 However, the Senate Committee concluded that several advisers and advisers to Richard Nixon were directly guilty of the events in Watergate. Finally, it was revealed—and it was reported in the press—that the president had lain in order to hide his participation. The tapes overheard by the Committee and Judge Sirica were compromising, since they showed that Richard Nixon was at least aware of the telephone espionage and that he had insisted on paying bribes to those accused of assaulting the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, in order to avoid blackmail towards his advisers and himself. In the course of the investigations carried out, various testimonies of those involved in the process—especially the mercenaries of Cuban origin—revealed that this assault was only one of the many illegal activities authorized and carried out by “the plumbers” on direct orders from the White House. The huge scope of the crimes and abuses committed that came to light included campaign fraud, political espionage and sabotage, illegal intrusions into offces, false tax declarations and large-scale telephone wiretapping.55 Among the most notable revelations were the following: •

The realization of a large-scale espionage plan carried out against Nixon’s political opponents—which included party leaders and

Nixon’s Fall and the Cuban Connection 257

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

administration offcials—which allowed the leaders of the reelection campaign of the president to have knowledge, even of the most intimate secrets and the private life of these persons, through the use of electronic devices installed in their offces and even in their private homes. The illegal contributions, consisting of millions of dollars, to the president’s reelection campaign, from large U.S. corporations, such as the Gulf Oil Corporation, ITT Corporation and American Airlines. These economic resources were used, among other things, to form a secret fund in a bank in Mexico, and to pay those who carried out illegal operations on behalf of the president. Funds were also used to buy the silence of the fve men who were charged with the assault in the Watergate building on June 17, 1972. One of the Watergate assailants—Bernard Baker—testifed that shortly after The New York Times, in September 1971, published copies of classifed reports on the war in Vietnam, known as the Pen Papers provided by Daniel Ellsberg, a robbery of the offce of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, Dr. Lewis Fielding, was planned. The intention with the robbery was to search for Ellsberg’s medical history, and it was ordered by the White House and executed with the personal involvement of Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy. In addition, Baker told the Senate Committee of his involvement in a plan to physically attack Daniel Ellsberg when he was speaking at a meeting of pacifsts in Washington. The testimonies of the “Cubans” implicated in the Watergate events revealed that after their arrest, they were promised—through secret Nixon channels—that they would be granted executive clemency if they agreed to go to jail, and that they should receive up to $1 million if they were silent. It was found that $450.000 had been delivered to them on Ehrlichman’s order. The disappearance of FBI archival materials, associated with a series of illegal telephone wiretappings carried out toward four journalists and 13 senior government offcials, was revealed. This stolen material was kept in the safe of Nixon’s adviser, John Ehrlichman, in the White House. Investigations also revealed that for more than a year, between 1969 and 1970, the U.S. had carried out secret and massive bombings of Cambodia, a fact that had been hidden from the U.S. public and even from the Congress. The investigations also showed that Nixon had presented false tax declarations, by falsifying a tax deduction, in connection with the entries for the publication of documents and memoirs from the years of his vice presidency.56

258 The Debacle of a President Referring to the events that were originating in the U.S., on July 26, 1974, Fidel Castro ironically stated: The man that was the manager of the mercenary invasion of Girón against our homeland, the current President of the United States, is not even sure that he can fnish his current mandate. Mercenaries trained by the CIA in espionage, sabotage, subversion and aggression against Cuba, were later used to spy on and steal documents at the headquarters of the United States Democratic Party. This action, the scandal that it gave rise to, and the complications that it caused, showed that the CIA and its mercenaries were much more apt to ruin the United States presidency than to overthrow the Cuban Revolution. They raised crows, and crows are devouring their guts!57 At the conclusion of the investigative process, on March 1, 1974, a list of seven offcials and assistants to President Nixon, who should be sued for telephone espionage at the headquarters of the Democratic Party, was handed over to Judge John Sirica. These were H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, John Mitchell, Charles Colson, Gordon C. Strachan, Robert Mardian and Kenneth Parkinson. The judicial process against the “Seven of Watergate”—as the press called them—weakened the position of Richard Nixon, and a Committee of the House of Representatives was preparing the documentation to initiate an impeachment58 process against him. On July 27, 1974, the plenary session of the House of Representatives began its meeting to approve a vote of nonconfdence against the president for the obstruction of justice, and two days later it was approved to impute him for abuse of power, and on July 30 the accusation of contempt was forwarded to the Congress, and everything foreshadowed that a majority of the votes would be reached, with which the Senate would be free to start the trial against Nixon, where the necessary two-thirds majority would vote to remove him from offce. The atmosphere was also warmed up by the publication, on August 6, of the conversation between Nixon and Haldeman concerning the Watergate events. This caused that the following day a large commission of leaders of the Republican Party visited the president in the White House to ask for his resignation as soon as possible. Later it was learned that important leaders of the House of Representatives secretly assured Nixon that if he resigned, they would not initiate any criminal process against him.59 The situation was such that a prominent fnancier—commented Howard Zinn—said, “Right now, 90% of Wall Street would cheer if Nixon resigns.”60 In less than 72 hours after the transcript of that conversation was made public, Nixon presented his resignation in a live television broadcast on the afternoon of August 8, 1974, before fnishing the process, leaving his functions as president of the U.S. and left the White House with his

Nixon’s Fall and the Cuban Connection 259

Figure 19.2 Richard M. Nixon’s resignation letter, August 9, 1974. Letters of Resignation and Declination of Federal Offce, 1789–1974, General Records of the Department of State, 1756–1979. Source: National Archives and Records Administration, used with permission.

family the following morning. This dramatic decision had the characteristics of a national tragedy, because it was the frst time in the history of the U.S.—198 years after the Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia and 185 years after the installation of George Washington as the frst president—that a president was forced to abandon

260

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his offce, at the height of a scandal that shook the foundations of the U.S. political system, exposing its intrinsic amorality and the shameful performance of its leaders. Counterrevolutionaries of Cuban origin were directly associated in this U.S. tragic comedy. These counterrevolutionaries, as well as the Nixon administration, had prepared to overthrow the Cuban Revolutionary government and what they accomplished was to end the Nixon presidency. His vice president, Gerald Ford, succeeded him immediately and took offce at noon on August 9. When occupying the presidency, he said: My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works. […] As we bind up the internal wounds of Watergate, more painful and more poisonous than those of foreign wars, let us restore the Golden Rule to our political process and let brotherly love purge our hearts of suspicion and of hate.61 The newspapers, both pro-Nixon and opposing, celebrated the successful and calm culmination of the Watergate crisis. “The system is working,” said the New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis. No respectable U.S. newspaper published the comment presented, in September 1974, by the then Director of Le Monde Diplomatique, Claude Julien: “The elimination of Mr. Richard Nixon leaves intact all the mechanisms and all the false values which permitted the Watergate scandal.” In other words, the U.S. had to get rid of Nixon but save the system. On those hot days, Theodore Sorensen, a former adviser to President Kennedy, wrote, “The underlying causes of the gross misconduct in our law-enforcement system now being revealed are largely personal, not institutional. Some structural changes are needed. All the rotten apples should be thrown out. But save the barrel.”62 The basket was certainly preserved, since the new president maintained his predecessor’s ties to the interests of the large U.S. corporations. Among Ford’s frst acts was to grant Richard Nixon pardon to prevent any criminal prosecution against him and to allow him a safe retirement to California with a huge state pension. With his resignation, Nixon lost the possibility to realize the revenge toward the Cuban Revolution that he had planned, and it is ironical that the Cuban counterrevolutionaries that he hired for the criminal acts carried out in Watergate and at other places caused his fall.

Notes 1 “Operation 40” participated directly in the failed mercenary invasion of the Bay of Pigs. Its members were tasked with persecuting, murdering and torturing Cuban Revolutionary leaders and eliminating any popular resistance once the invasion had triumphed. This organization would play a similar role as the Gestapo in Nazi-Germany during World War II.

Nixon’s Fall and the Cuban Connection 261 2 Howard Hunt had more than 20 years of experience at the CIA, where he worked as an agent in Paris, Vienna, Mexico, Madrid and Montevideo. He played a very active role in the overthrow of the Jacobo Arbenz government in Guatemala, and later, under the pseudonym “Eduardo,” he was the CIA representative in the so-called Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRC), under whose name the mercenary invasion of the Bay of Pigs was organized in April 1961. 3 John Dean was legal adviser to the White House until 1973, when Nixon demanded his resignation over the Watergate case. He refused to be the President’s “scapegoat” and became one of Nixon’s main accusers when the President tried to realize a number of cover-up actions to avoid the scandal. 4 Bernard Macho Barker was born in Havana by American parents. In the Batista dictatorship, he was an assistant to the Mayor of Marianao and a secret agent of the Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities (BRAC), and he left Cuba in 1959. In 1960, under the orders of CIA agents Frank Bender and Howard Hunt, he served as the liaison for the formation of the Frente Revolocionario Democrático (FRD) [Democratic Revolutionary Front], an organization that served as a screen for the execution of activities against Cuba. He participated in the enrollment of the exiles to train them in Guatemala for the Bay of Pigs invasion. During that attack, he acted, along with Hunt, as a direct connection between the CIA and the Cuban Revolutionary Council, headed by José Miró Cardona. Later, between 1963 and 1966, he joined the “autonomous” group of Manuel Artime Buesa. 5 Andrew St. George: “Confessions of a Watergate Burglar”, True, August 1974. 6 Warren Hinckle and William Turner: The Fish Is Red: The Story of the Secret War against Castro (London: Harper & Row, 1981), 359. 7 The Washington Post (June 21, 1973). 8 Warren Hinckle and William Turner: The Fish Is Red: The Story of the Secret War against Castro (London: Harper & Row, 1981), 361. 9 George McGovern, a senator from South Dakota, was nominated for the Democratic Party after an intense internal fght between ten pre-candidates. Some historians consider him the most leftist presidential candidate in recent U.S. history. Among the lines of his electoral program were the end of the U.S. participation in the war in Vietnam and the reduction of the military budget. 10 Frank Mankiewicz: Perfectly Clear (New York: Times Books, 1973). 11 Andrew St. George: “Confessions of a Watergate Burglar”, True, August 1974. 12 James Phelan: Howard Hughes: The Hidden Years (New York: Random House, 1976), 75. Howard Hughes, a U.S. billionaire, considered in his day as the richest man in the U.S. Hughes owned one of the largest aviation companies in the U.S., the Trans World Airlines (TWA). He made contributions to the presidential campaign of both parties. 13 Andrew St. George: “Confessions of a Watergate Burglar”, True, August 1974. 14 The Nixon government’s covert plans to overthrow the Salvador Allende government were well advanced at that time. A key role in this secret action against the Popular Unity government in Chile was played by the International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) Company, which had close ties with both the CIA and the White House. The ITT had secretly offered to donate $400.000 for the Republican convention to be held in San Diego and at the company’s hotel—Sheraton Harbor Island—in that city. “Perhaps it was not coincidentally, that the Department of Justice ruled in favor of ITT in a trial

262

15 16 17

18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

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of a major antitrust case.” See: Warren Hinckle and William Turner: The Fish Is Red: The Story of the Secret War against Castro (London: Harper & Row, 1981), 363. Ibid. Ibid., 364. It refers to a check from a bank in Mexico worth $25.000 that Ken Dahlberg—a member of CREEP in 1972—handed to Macho Barker. This was a part of the money that the counterrevolutionaries received for the Watergate action. When the four “Cubans” were arrested on June 17, 1972, more than $40.000 on top of this was found. That money was one of the important pieces of evidence that linked them to CREEP. Warren Hinckle and William Turner: The Fish Is Red: The Story of the Secret War against Castro (London: Harper & Row, 1981), 365. Ibid. The transcript of the content of the tapes was released by Associated Press (AP) on August 6, 1974, and published by the Granma newspaper on August 8. The tapes cover three separate discussions conducted between 10:04 a.m. and 11:39 a.m. on June 23, 1972. The recording has a gap of 18 minutes and 30 seconds that was “accidentally” erased by the personal secretary of Nixon, Rose Marie Woods. L. Patrick Gray, Director of the FBI from May 1972 to April 1973. Associated Press (AP), August 6, 1974. See also: Alexander Cruden: Watergate (New York: Greenhaven Publishing, 2012). NBC: National Broadcasting Company. Vernon A. Walters, lieutenant general, deputy director of the CIA since May 1972. Associated Press (AP), August 6, 1974. See also: Alexander Cruden: Watergate (New York: Greenhaven Publishing, 2012). William Mark Felt, associate director of the FBI—second in rank of that agency—knew of all the information compiled from Watergate, from the day of the crime, on June 17, 1972, until the FBI investigation concluded in June 1973. To fnance the “Gemstone” operations, $89.000 in cash was channeled as a result of illegal contributions from corporations to the reelection campaign. This money was sent to a lawyer in Mexico City that should “launder it.” The CREEP member Ken Dahlberg worked in the Fundraising Committee. Maurice Stans, former Secretary of Commerce for the Nixon administration who resigned from that position to lead the collection of funds for the reelection campaign. Associated Press (AP), August 6, 1974. See also: Alexander Cruden: Watergate (New York: Greenhaven Publishing, 2012). Ibid. Richard Helms, Director of the CIA. John D. Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs. Perhaps this hanky-panky to which Nixon refers are the covert actions of the CIA and of the support for the illegal activities of Cuban counterrevolution groups in the U.S. The White House’s orientation towards the CIA was to try to get the FBI to drop the trail of the money in its investigation on the basis that it would reveal a CIA conduit and jeopardize the “national security.” Associated Press (AP), August 6, 1974. See also: Alexander Cruden: Watergate (New York: Greenhaven Publishing, 2012). Nixon refers to Gordon Liddy. Refers to Charles Colson.

Nixon’s Fall and the Cuban Connection  263 39 Associated Press (AP), August 6, 1974. See also: Alexander Cruden: Watergate (New York: Greenhaven Publishing, 2012). 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid. 42 Alexander Cruden: Watergate (New York: Greenhaven Publishing, 2012). 43 See: Carlos Rivero Collado: Los sobrinos del Tío Sam (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976), 366. 4 4 Ibid. 45 Ibid., 354–355. 46 The secret source, Deep Throat, that provided the journalists with information was William Mark Felt—Deputy director of the FBI under Nixon’s presidency—whose identity as Deep Throat was revealed in the June 14, 2005, issue of Vanity Fair magazine. 47 Carlos Rivero Collado: Los sobrinos del Tío Sam (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976) and Alexander Cruden: Watergate (New York: Greenhaven Publishing, 2012). 48 In 1969 Elliot Richardson held the post as Undersecretary of State, a year later he was appointed Secretary of Health, and after the reelection of Nixon, he was appointed as Secretary of defense. He was regarded as an excellent administrator and organizer by the press, perhaps the best in Nixon’s cabinet. 49 Carlos Rivero Collado: Los sobrinos del Tío Sam (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976) and Alexander Cruden: Watergate (New York: Greenhaven Publishing, 2012). 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. 52 More than 450.000 protest telegrams reached the White House, and the deans of the 17 major law schools signed a petition in favor of the removal of Nixon from the presidency. 53 Carlos Rivero Collado: Los sobrinos del Tío Sam (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976) and Alexander Cruden: Watergate (New York: Greenhaven Publishing, 2012). 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid. 56 See: Howard Zinn: A Peoples History of the United States (New York: Harper­Collins, 2001), 543–545. See also: Carlos Rivero Collado: Los sobrinos del Tío Sam (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976), 352–355. 57 Fidel Castro: “Discurso por el XXI Aniversario de los asaltos a los cuarteles Moncada y Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, el 26 de julio de 1974”, Granma (July 28, 1974), 2. 58 The impeachment is a tradition in the Anglo-Saxon right to judge a high government officer. The U.S. Constitution establishes that, by mandate of the House of Representatives, a process of impeachment can be started, and the Senate carries out the judgment. For a conviction, two-thirds of the senators’ votes are required. The penalty is dismissal and disqualification from holding a public office. 59 Carlos Rivero Collado: Los sobrinos del Tío Sam (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976) and Alexander Cruden: Watergate (New York: Greenhaven Publishing, 2012). 60 Howard Zinn: A Peoples History of the United States (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 545. 61 Granma (August 10, 1974), 1. 62 Howard Zinn: A Peoples History of the United States (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 545–546.

264 The Debacle of a President

References Associated Press [AP], August 6, 1974. Castro, F. “Discurso por el XXI Aniversario de los asaltos a los cuarteles Moncada y Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, el 26 de julio de 1953”, Granma (July 28, 1974). Cruden, A. Watergate (New York: Greenhaven Publishing, 2012). Granma (July 28, 1974). Granma (August, 1974). Hinckle, W. and Turner, W. The Fish Is Red: The Story of the Secret War against Castro (London: Harper & Row, 1981). Mankiewicz, F. Perfectly Clear (New York: Times Books, 1973). Rivero Collado, C. Los sobrinos del Tío Sam (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976). St. George, A. “Confessions of a Watergate Burglar”, True, August 1974. The Washington Post (June 21, 1973). Zinn, H. A Peoples History of the United States (New York: Harper Collins, 2001).

Index

Africa 8, 11–12, 17, 21, 23–4, 46, 133 African swine fever virus see Biologic warfare (U.S. toward Cuba); U.S. anti-Cuba actions Agreement between U.S. and Cuba on hijacking of aircrafts and sea vessels 1973 xii–xiii, 72, 145, 150–2, 181–4, 187–95, 199–207, 211–19, 223, 226–7; as eventual process of normalization xiii, 181–2, 207, 214, 218; Cuban law against the hijacking of aircrafts and sea vessels as forerunner 71–2, 192–3, 199–201, 203–4, 206; end of piracy actions xiii, 51–2, 223; prolonged negotiation process xii, 181–2, 188, 207; problem for U.S. national security xii, 57, 72, 181, 190, 195, 213, 226; U.S. unwillingness to include sea vessels in the agreement 181, 189 Air transport (suppression of) see Economic war (U.S. toward Cuba) Alarcón de Quesada, Ricardo 163, 191, 199 Allende Gossens, Salvador. G. 13–14, 120, 174, 222, 228; in Havana 26; U.S. overthrow of 14, 26, 120, 222, 228 Angola 24 Anti-imperialism 22, 100, 129, 130, 157 Argentina 14, 190, 226, 228, 241 Armed bands see Counterrevolutionary groups Arms-race see U.S. detente policy towards USSR and PRC Aruba 15 Asia 2–3, 6, 8, 11, 21, 23, 88, 117, 223

Assassination plots toward main revolutionary leaders see Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); U.S. antiCuban actions Asunción 146 Australia 116–17; trade with Cuba 166–17; U.S. pressure on government 116–17 “Autonomous groups” see Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); Counterrevolutionary groups; U.S. anti-Cuba actions Bahamas 27, 88–9, 147, 150–1, 161 Batista, Fulgencio 47, 82, 175, 183, 241, 246 Bay of Pigs see Playa Girón B-52 bombers 5, 7 Beijing 9 Berlin 40, 61, 73–4, 202 Biological warfare (U.S. toward Cuba) 133–6, 138–42; blue fungus 141; damaging the Cuban economy 133– 6, 138, 141; Dengue hemorrhagic fever 141; eventual plans for use within the framework of an U.S. invasion 134; introduction of the African Swine fever virus in 1971; xii, xiv, 131, 133, 135, 138–40, 142; see also U.S. anti-Cuba actions Blockade see Economic war Boca de Samá piracy attack against xii, xiv, 92, 147, 149, 156–8, 168, 212 Bolivia 12, 24, 26, 47, 56, 146, 175 Bordaberry, Juan María 14 Border Brigade (Cuban) see Confrontation with the internal counterrevolution

266 Index Border Guard Troops (Cuban) see Confrontation with the internal counterrevolution Brandt, Willy 11; “Ostpolitik” 11 Brazil 25, 146 Brezhnev, Leonid. I. 10, 109 Broe, William V. 47 Buenos Aires 146 Bundy, McGeorge 135 Burnham, Forbes 15 Cabral, Amílcar 24 Camagüey (province of) 84, 149, 184; sabotage 84 Cambodia 2, 23; protests against U.S. war in 3; U.S. bombing of 3, 228, 257; U.S. invasion of 3, 23 Canada 49, 116, 133, 181, 189, 222; counterrevolutionary sabotage in 237, 239–41; trade with Cuba 49, 64–5, 228 Capitalist system 6, 16; crisis of 6, 11, 16; U.S. leadership of 6–7, 16 Cape Verde 24 Caribbean xiv, 2, 11, 14–16, 21, 35, 99–100, 103, 118, 120, 130, 150, 159–60, 162–3, 165–6, 168, 226, 230 Caribbean Community (CARICOM) 15 Carribbean Sea 159 Castro, Fidel: on agreement between U.S. and Cuba on hijacking of aircrafts and sea vessels 185, 188–90, 201, 213; assassination plots against xi–xii, 115, 145, 174–8, 248; on U.S. biological warfare toward Cuba 39; on 10 million tons of sugar 18, 46, 58–9, 136–7; on counterrevolution 40, 51, 85, 129–30, 136, 154–7, 166–8; on dialogue with the U.S. 40–1, 60–1, 72, 231; on errors of idealism 18; on FAR and the sugar harvest 81; on Guantánamo (U.S. naval base) 40, 199, 202; on impunity of terrorism, 168; meeting with Richard Nixon (1959) 1; on Nixon and the Watergate scandal 258; on political and military ties with the USSR 22, 100; on piracy and “Motherships” 154–5, 166–8; on relations with OAS 26; on relations

between the USSR and Cuba 22–3, 61; speech 22–3, 85–6, 166–7; as symbol 16, 56, 60, 64, 74; visit to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam 24; visit to Eastern Europe 23; visits to the USSR 23; on U.S. hostility and aggression 40, 51, 85, 129–30, 136, 154–7, 166–8; U.S. plans of overthrowing 48, 54, 62, 82, 246; on victory against banditry 85 Castro, Raúl 58; negotiating on arms supply with the Soviet Union 22, 99; visit to the Soviet Union 22, 87, 99, 109 Cayo Alcatráz see Crisis of the Soviet submarines in Cienfuegos Bay 1970 Central America 12, 44, 150 Central Committee of the USSR Communist Party 109 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA): agents 20, 44, 46, 49–50, 80, 115–16, 118, 130, 136, 150, 155–7, 175, 245; assassination plots toward main revolutionary leaders xi, 115, 145, 174–5, 177–8, 248; biological warfare 133–6, 138–42; concern over Raúl Castro’s visit to USSR 87, 99; cooperation with foreign embassies in Cuba 46, 50; covert action plans 44, 48, 53, 75, 79; doubt on paramilitary operations and sabotage raids 46–8, 74, 237; espionage xiii, 45, 50, 222, 246; hampering of the Cuban sugar harvest xii, 45–6, 79–82, 84, 110, 134, 136, 141; ideological and psychological propaganda xi, xiv, 35, 45–6, 48, 56–7, 77, 81, 83, 115, 118–20, 120–1, 142, 183, 222; preparation, training, infltration, exfltration and support to counterrevolutionary “autonomous” groups 44–5, 80, 85–6, 92, 137, 154–6, 164, 169, 222; pirate attacks xii, 80, 88, 90, 123, 147–52, 155–8, 163–5, 168, 184, 212, 223; radio broadcasts 45–6, 50, 118–20, 128, 142, 184, 222; Radio Swan 45, 119; reactivating counterrevolutionary groups and subversive activities xii, 44, 50, 83, 236; sabotage xii, 20,

Index 267 44–5, 48–9, 80, 84, 115, 119, 134, 136, 156, 219; sabotage towards Cuban interests in third countries 44, 48, 236–243; sabotage of civil aircrafts 182, 219, 242–3; sabotage off industrial plants 45; support of counterrevolutionary sabotage and terrorism in third countries xii, 236–43; terrorism xii, 145, 236–40; use of Cuban exiles 44–7, 61, 80–4, 88, 90–1, 148–9, 160, 168, 205, 237, 247 Chicago 81, 84 Chile 13, 25–7, 60, 63, 106, 174–8, 226, 228; Allende triumph in the elections of 1970 13–14; construction of socialism 13–14; Pinochet dictature 14, 222; Popular Unity 13, 120; overthrow of Allende through military coup 14, 24, 26, 120, 222, 228; U.S. subversion through CIA 14, 222, 228 China xiii, 2, 9, 10, 27, 56–7, 81, 117, 194, 223, 225, 227 CIA see Central Intelligence Agency Cienfuegos Bay see Crisis of the Soviet submarines in Cienfuegos Bay 1970 Cold War 9, 11; strategic balance 16 Colombia 12, 27, 119, 185 Commander in Chief Atlantic (CINCLANT) 161 Communism 1, 82, 117, 242; adoption of USSR model in Cuba 17; U.S. confrontation with international 2, 11; U.S. containment of 9, 16 Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) 17–18, 126; congress of 18–19; reorganization and strengthening of governing bodies 19; self-evaluation of 18–19; working structures of 18–19 Confrontation with the internal counterrevolution and piracy: capture operations and capture of persons/group 20, 80, 85–6, 92, 118, 136, 150, 154, 157–9, 222, 236; counterintelligence and penetration of armed bands and networks 20, 46, 145, 154, 174–5; Cuban State Security Organization (DSE) 175–6, 178; fght against pirate attacks and infltration 20,

130, 147, 156–8, 160; Border Brigade 80; Border Guard Troops 80; organization and effectivity of 20, 45–6, 50, 145, 154, 174; support of the Cuban people 16, 20, 145, 174 Coordinator of Cuban Affairs see Offce of Cuban Affairs Costa Rica 27, 91, 119, 146, 154 Counterrevolution: armed groups xii, 16, 61, 79, 85, 118, 164, 236; assassination plots toward main revolutionary leaders xi, 115, 145, 174–5, 177–8, 248; cooperation with embassies in Cuba 46, 50; Cuban targets outside Cuba 44, 48, 236–243; demoralization and defeat of xi, 16, 20, 48, 50, 79, 145, 184; end of piracy actions xiii, 51–2, 223; espionage xiii, 45, 50, 222, 246; expectations on Nixon 1, 170; failure of xiv, 16, 79, 146, 237; hampering the social and economic development in Cuba xiii, 47, 79, 93, 110, 141; information networks inside Cuba 80; internal xi, 16, 50, 79, 83, 92; impunity of xii, xiv, 35, 50, 90, 93, 146, 148, 151–2, 158, 168, 211, 237, 242, 249; piracy against Cuban coastal villages xii, 46, 48, 50, 80, 130, 145, 147, 149–50, 154–8, 184, 223, 236; piracy in the form of harassment and seizure of Cuban fshing vessels and hijacking of crews xii, xiv, 48, 80, 123–131, 145, 162, 165; reactivation of subversive activities by the CIA xii, 44, 50, 83, 236; sabotage xii, 20, 44–5, 48–9, 80, 84, 115, 119, 134, 136, 156, 219; sabotage of civil aircrafts 219; sabotage off industrial plants 45; terrorism xii, 145, 236–40; Torriente plan xiv, 82–4, 86, 146–7, 169, 236 Counterrevolutionary groups, organizations and networks: Alpha 66 81–3, 85–8, 91–2, 123, 149, 236–7; Anti-Communist World Union (UMA) 242; “autonomous” groups 44–5, 154; CIA infltration and exfltration support of 44–5, 80, 85–6, 92, 137, 154–6, 164,

268

Index

169, 222; Cuban Action 240–1; Cuban Nationalist Movement (MNC) 237; Cuban Power 237, 239, 242; Cuban Representation in Exile (RECE) 47, 83, 236; defeat and failure of xi, 16, 20, 48, 50, 79, 145–6, 184, 237; expectations on Nixon 1, 170; fragmentation of 36; Free Nationalist Commandos (CLN) 237; National Front for the Liberation of Cuba (FLNC) 146, 150, 241; Omega 7 141; reactivation of subversive activities by the CIA xii, 44, 50, 83, 236; Secret Anti-Communist Army (ESA) 239; Secret Cuban Government (GCS) 237; Torriente plan xiv, 82–4, 86, 146–7, 169, 236; U.S. support of xiv, 44–5, 80, 85–6, 92, 137, 154–6, 164, 169, 222 Counterrevolutionary sabotage and terrorism toward Cuban interests in third countries xii, 44, 48, 236–243; aircrafts 182, 219, 242–3; car bombs 237; cinemas 237; embassies and consulates 237, 239–41; mail bombs 241; newspapers 242; shops and offces 237–40; tourism agencies 237–8 Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CAME) 20, 23; Cuban incorporation in 20, 23 Crisis of the Soviet submarines in Cienfuegos Bay 1970: Cayo Alcatráz 101, 104; Cienfuegos Bay 98, 100–101, 103–6; KissingerDobrynin meeting 107–8; low-key diplomatic solution of 106–8, 110; no publicity around 106–8; reconnaissance photos 100–3 Cuba: adoption of the USSR socialist model 17, 20–1; different standpoints between Cuba and USSR 21; increase of USSR presence in Cuba 22–3, 46, 48; on the support of revolutionary movements in Latin America, Africa and Asia 21, 23–6, 46; new Cuban Socialist Constitution 19; opening of the relations with Cuba from countries in Latin America 13, 21, 26–7, 227; search for an own socialist model 17–18; specialists

from the USSR and from other European socialist countries 22–3, 46, 48 Cubana Aviación [Cubana Airline]: terrorist attack against aircraft 182, 219, 242–3 Cuban defense capacity 48, 98; development and supply of Soviet armament and combat technology to Cuba 22, 87, 109; strengthening of 16, 87 Cuban Department of State Security (DSE) 175–6, 178; on assassination plots toward Fidel Castro 175–6, 178 Cuban fshing vessels: accusation of violating U.S. territorial waters 123–6, 212; attacks towards and seizure of and hijacking of crews xii, xiv, 48, 80, 123–131, 145, 162, 165 Cuban government positions: adoption of the USSR socialist model 17, 20–1; agreement between U.S. and Cuba on hijacking of aircrafts and sea vessels xii–xiii, 72, 145, 150–2, 181–4, 187–95, 199–207, 211–19, 223, 226–7; defense of sovereignty and seizure of “Mother Ships” 157–8, 160, 166–8; continuing militant support for the revolutionary, anti-colonial and anti-imperialist causes of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America 21, 23–6, 46; denouncement of U.S. accusations against Cuban fshing vessels 90, 126–7, 129, 154–5, 166–7; denouncement of CIA sponsored sabotage 40, 51, 85, 129–30, 136, 154–7, 166–8; denouncement of piracy and kidnapped fshermen 90, 126–7, 129; different standpoints between Cuba and USSR on the support of revolutionary movements in Latin America, Africa and Asia 21, 23–6, 46; improvement in CubaUSSR relations 21–3; law against the hijacking of aircrafts and sea vessels 71–2, 192–3, 199–201, 203–4, 206; position in defense of

Index 269 the principles of self-determination and sovereignty of peoples 17; search for an own socialist model 17–18; reestablishment of relations with various Latin American and Caribbean governments 13, 21, 26–7, 227; support for the government of North Vietnam and the National Liberation Front in South Vietnam 21, 23–4; on U.S. hostility and aggression 40, 51, 85, 129–30, 136, 154–7, 166–8 Cuban Gulf Fleet 142 Cuban medical brigades 25 Cuban Missile Crisis see October Crisis Cuban production of 10 million tons of sugar in 1970 xi–xii, 17–18, 58; Fidel Castro on 18, 46, 58–9, 136–7; non-achievement of 18, 137; U.S. prevention of xii, 46, 71, 79, 81–2, 84, 110 Cuban Refugee Program see Immigration policy (U.S. toward Cuba) Cuban Revolution: adoption of the USSR socialist model 17, 20–1; Communist Party 17–19, 126; cooperation with states in the socialist camp 17, 20–1, 23, 46, 48; defense of xiv, 16, 48, 50, 98, 110, 168; impact as symbol and infuence in the rest of America 16, 56, 60, 64, 74; new mass organizations 18–19; search for an own socialist model 17–18; strengthening of xii, 18–19, 50; position in defense of the principles of self-determination and sovereignty of peoples 17; self-refection 18; support to revolutionary movements outside Cuba 17, 21, 23–6, 46; unity of the Cuban people around xi, 17–19 Cuban State Security Organization (DSE) see Confrontation with the internal counterrevolution Cuban Sugar export see Sugar Cuba-USSR: commercial, fnancial and scientifc agreement of 1972 20–3; development and supply of Soviet armament and combat technology to Cuba 22, 87, 109;

different standpoints on the support of revolutionary movements in Latin America, Africa and Asia 21, 23–6, 46; improvement in CubaUSSR relations 21–23; interchange of specialists and scholarships 21–3, 46, 48; USSR as main supplier of fuel, raw materials, equipment and machinery 21, 63 Cuba-USSR commercial, fnancial and scientifc agreement of 1972 20–3; increase of USSR presence in Cuba 22–3, 46, 48 Curaçao 14 Cyprus 63; trade with Cuba 63 Czechoslovakia 21, 56, 72, 116 Demand for a reevaluation of the U.S. anti-Cuba policy: by U.S. companies 228; by U.S. Congress xiii, 223–8, 230–2 Democratic Republic of Vietnam 1, 23–4; see also Vietnam war Detente policy see U.S. detente policy towards USSR and PRC Diplomatic isolation (of Cuba) see Organization of American States (OAS); U.S. anti-Cuba actions Dirty war (U.S. toward Cuba) xi, 20, 48, 236; defeat of 170, 236; reestablished by Nixon 1, 35, 145 Dobrynin, Anatoly meeting with Kissinger 107–8; on the Soviet submarine base in Cienfuegos 177–8 Dominican Republic 16, 119 Dorticós Torrado, Osvaldo 155 Dry Tortuga 123, 127, 129 Eastern Europe 11, 17, 21, 23, 57 East Germany 11 Economic blockade see Economic war Ecuador 12, 60, 176–8 Economic war (U.S. toward Cuba): as fundamental weapon xi; attacks on the sugar industry and other key sectors in the Cuban economy 80–1; blacklisting of frms doing business with Cuba 49, 62, 115; blockade xi, 26, 35, 40, 58, 62–33, 65, 73–4, 117, 120–1, 191, 214, 223, 228, 239; Cuban Assets Control Regulations 62; denial to

270 Index France 14, 116, 133; counterrevolutionary attack in 241; trade with Cuba 49, 63, 116 Free World 48–50, 62 Frei Montalva, E. 13 Fulbright, William J. 98, 117, 206, 223, 227

Cuba of “free world” sugar markets 49–50, 63, 115–6; diffculties to stop “free world” trade with Cuba 63–5, 115–16; drain Cuba of human capital via legal and illegal emigration 223; embargo 116, 222, 232; hinder of Cuban fshing 131, 142, 151–2; hinder U.S. citizens and U.S. frms to do business with Cuba 62; pressure from the U.S. government on foreign governments 62, 115–17; pressure from U.S. frms on associated foreign frms 62, 115–16; restriction of the sale of vital items 40, 63; sabotage towards Cuban ships 49; stop “free world” trade with Cuba 48–9, 63, 115–6; sabotage of Cuban imports from third countries 44–5, 48–9; sabotage of Cuban exports to third countries 44–5, 48–9; suppress naval and air transportation of goods and people to Cuba 49, 62–3; suspension of Cuban sugar quota 63; travel ban for U.S. citizens to Cuba 62 Egypt 221 Eisenhower, Dwight D. xi, 35, 79, 245 Ellsberg, Daniel 246, 257 Embargo see Economic war; U.S. antiCuba actions Emigration from Cuba to the U.S. see Immigration policy (U.S. toward Cuba) Escalante Font, Fabían 147, 174–8 Europe 46–7, 49, 57, 59–63, 65, 74, 133, 221, 223

García Iturbe, Néstor 230 German Democratic Republic see East Germany Granma 126, 130, 133 Great Britain see United Kingdom 14–15; trade with Cuba 49, 63, 240 Grechko, Andrei A. visit to Cuba 22, 99 Group of 77 7, 17 Guam/Vietnam doctrine see Nixon administration; U.S. global policy Guantánamo (province of) 140–1 Guantánamo (U.S. naval base) 56–7, 64, 83, 88, 92, 137, 159–60, 163, 188, 202; exfltration of agents 80, 86; U.S. provocative acts at 155; as clandestine crossing xii, 40, 59, 65, 184, 199, 204–5 Guatemala 83, 119, 167 Guerra Vilaboy, Sergio 12 Guerrilla/emancipatory movements in Latin America 11–12, 15–17; Cuban support of 17, 21, 23–5, 39, 56, 176 Guevara, Ernesto Che 11, 47, 56 Guinea Bissau 24 Gulf of Mexico 104, 123–4, 129, 159 Guyana (Cooperative Republic of) 15, 226

FAR see Revolutionary Armed Forces FBI see Federal Bureau of Investigation Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 71, 91, 151, 223, 240, 246 Federal Republic of Germany see West Germany Fischli, Alfred 39–41, 89, 136, 185, 190, 199–201, 203–5 Flexible retaliation see U.S. global policy Florida 118–20, 123–7, 129, 136, 142, 147, 155, 157, 160, 167, 177, 183, 212–13, 222, 227, 237, 239, 249 Ford, Gerald 8, 242, 255, 260

Haig, Alexander 91, 148, 150, 161 Haiphong: U.S. bombing of 5 Haiti 137, 155, 167 Hangzhou 9 Hanoi: U.S. bombing of 5 Harrington, Michael 231 Havana 3, 26, 39, 41, 87, 89, 92, 99, 118, 120, 127, 129, 131, 133–4, 137–9, 159, 178, 183–4, 187, 190, 194, 199, 202–3, 205, 211, 214–16, 226, 231 Helms, Richard M. 44, 48, 71, 91, 105, 107, 116, 150, 251–2 Hijacking of aircrafts 39–40, 57, 59, 67, 72, 145, 181–4, 187–195, 199–207, 211–19, 223, 226–7;

Index 271 Cuban law against the hijacking of aircrafts and sea vessels 71–2, 192–3, 199–201, 203–4, 206; U.S. promotion of 183–85; see also Agreement between U.S. and Cuba on hijacking of aircrafts Hinckle, Warren 81, 174–5, 178 Honduras 12 House of Representatives 226–28, 230–1, 241, 258 Hurwitch, Robert A. 74, 76, 91, 227 ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) 7, 10 Illegal immigration (from Cuba to the U.S. see Immigration policy (U.S. toward Cuba) Immigration policy (U.S. toward Cuba) 50, 183, 194, 217; drain Cuba of human capital 50; illegal and legal emigration/immigration 40, 59, 65, 184, 199, 204–5, 212; promotion and assistance of emigration from Cuba 40, 50, 59, 65, 184, 199, 204–5 Imperialism 14, 22, 100, 129–30, 157 International Air Transport Association (IATA) 188 International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) 188–90 Israel 8, 221–2 Italy 133; trade with Cuba 49 Jamaica 15, 25, 137, 184; counterrevolutionary attack in 241; diplomatic ties with Cuba 63, 226 Japan 6, 50, 237, 240; trade with Cuba 60 Johnson administration 7–8, 35, 53, 187; policy toward Cuba 1, 8, 53, 77 Johnson, Lyndon B. 1, 12, 189 Johnson, U. Alexis 41, 118–19 Joint Chiefs of Staff 72–3, 104–6, 135, 161–3 Kennedy, Edward 206, 246–7; criticism of Nixon’s Cuba policy 206, 223 Kennedy, John, F. 135, 260; assassination of 174; “gentlemen agreement” with Khrushchev 107–8; policy toward Cuba 8 Kennedy, Robert 135

Key West 123, 125, 128, 183, 222 Khrushchev, Nikita “gentlemen agreement” with Kennedy 107–108 Kingston 241 Kissinger, Henry 2–3, 8, 36, 100, 226; agreement between U.S. and Cuba on hijacking of aircrafts and sea vessels 185, 193, 195, 203–5, 215; arms-race 7; Cuban exiles 36; development in Chile 13; on demand for a reevaluation of the U.S. Cuba policy 44, 47–8, 54, 72–5, 116; meeting with Dobrynin 107–9; on Nixon’s dislike of Castro 188, 207; peace agreement with Vietnam 5; on “probe” towards Castro and Nixon’s refusal 41, 76–7; past and present covert and harassment operations 86–8, 90–1, 125–6, 130, 161–2, 166; Soviet submarines in Cienfuegos Bay 101–9; Realpolitik 9; relations with the USSR and PCR 9; secret approaches towards the Cuban government 229–30; on Vietnam war 2, 5 Kosygin, Alexei. N. visit to Cuba 23 Kremlin 10, 103 Laos 23, 194; U.S. invasion of 2–3 La Paz 146 Las Villas (province of) 88, 129; counterrevolutionary sabotage 84 Latin America 39–41, 47, 64, 72; as “backyard” of the U.S. 12, 24, 222; Cuban support of emancipatory movements 17, 21, 23–5, 39, 46, 54, 56, 61, 176; fght for national emancipation in 11, 16–17, 21, 23–4; reestablishment of relations with Cuba 21, 25–7, 50, 60, 63, 226–7; U.S. interests and interpretation of the situation in 8, 15–16, 26–7, 47, 55–6, 60, 65–8, 73–5, 77, 91, 118, 120, 146, 148, 176, 191, 207, 222, 224, 227–8, 230 Le Duc Tho 5 Lenin, Vladimir I. 22, 85, 87, 100 Liberation movements in Latin America, Asia and Africa 11–12, 15–17, 21, 23–5, 39, 46, 56, 176 London 241 López Arellano, Osvaldo 12

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Madrid 237; counterrevolutionary sabotage in 241 Managua 25 Manley, Michael 15 Mao Zedong 9 Marshall Plan 7 Masnata, Silvio 213–6 Matanzas (province of) 18, 134 Mexico 61, 119, 185, 189, 230, 257; counterrevolutionary sabotage in 238–9, 241; defense of air communication with Cuba 63; diplomatic relations with Cuba 60, 63–4, 226; trade with Cuba 63 Mexico City 230, 241 Meyer, Charles A. 26, 118–19, 205–6 Miami 35, 47, 81, 83–5, 92, 120, 128, 131, 146, 149–51, 155, 158–9, 161, 167–8, 177, 183, 223, 238, 240, 242, 247, 253 MININT see Ministry of the Interior Ministry of the Interior (MININT) 92, 236; boarder troops 145, 154; capture of infltrators 20, 85, 222; effectiveness of 145, 154; improvement of 145; intelligence and counterintelligence of 20, 145 Missile Crisis see October Crisis Mitchell, John N. 91, 247, 250–4, 258 Montreal 181; counterrevolutionary sabotage in 237, 239 Moscow 11, 21, 61, 100, 108, 174 “Mother ships” xii, xiv, 154; Castro on piracy and “Motherships” 154–5, 166–8; Cuban government on 157–8, 160, 166–8; Frontier Guard Troops and Revolutionary Navy hunting, capture and seizure of 154, 157, 163, 168–9; safely transport motorboats and persons participating in pirate attacks on the Cuban coast 154–6, 164, 167–8; sophisticated electronic and communication means 54; U.S. denouncement of Cuban seizure 158–62, 165–6; see also Counterrevolution; Piracy Mozambique 24 National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA) 134 National Security Council (U.S.) 71; “Memorandum of National

Security Studies 32–Cuba (NSSM 32) 54; “Mother ships” 161; psychological warfare 118–19; study and discussion of Cuba policy 41–2, 54, 68, 71–7, 86, 116; submarine crisis (1970) 99, 105 NATO 49 Naval transport (suppression of) see Economic war (U.S. toward Cuba) Netherlands the 14, 133 New Orleans 84, 119, 211 New York 15, 84, 141, 148, 156–8, 232, 240, 242, 249; counterrevolutionary sabotage in 237–9 New York Times 3, 26, 246, 257, 260 New world order (demand for) see Third World Nicaragua 25, 154 Nixon administration: on agreement between U.S. and Cuba on hijacking of aircrafts agreement between U.S. and Cuba on hijacking of aircrafts 185, 187, 190, 194, 203, 211–218; anti-Cuban policy 26–7, 35, 50, 53–69, 116–8, 125, 131, 149, 223; on “autonomous” groups 44–5, 80, 85–6, 92, 137, 154–6, 164, 169, 222; changed conditions for Cuba policy 27, 35–6, 50, 77, 227; concern about the trade of capitalist countries with Cuba 48–9, 60–5, 115–6, 231; Cuba as a threat to U.S. national security 54; Cuba policy 11, 26–7, 35, 47, 53–4, 64–8, 72, 76, 206, 227; demand for a reevaluation of the U.S. Cuba policy 47–8, 53–4, 64–8, 72, 206, 223, 226–31; diplomatic and economic isolation of Cuba xi, xiii, 11, 17, 21, 26, 35, 50, 60, 63–8, 193, 222–4, 226, 231; embargo 116, 222, 232; on Cuban seizure of “Mother ships” 155–172; espionage xiii, 45, 50, 222, 246; ideological and psychological warfare xi, xiv, 35, 45–6, 48, 56–7, 77, 81, 83, 115, 118–20, 120–1, 142, 183, 222; Guam/Vietnam doctrine 3, 8; more rigorous application of the economic, commercial and fnancial war 50, 63; neutralization of peace movement 2, 4; overthrow

Index 273 of Cuban government 11, 44, 48, 53–4, 57, 62, 79, 82, 115, 117, 145, 170, 236, 258, 260; “passive” containment 35, 53; pros and cons of a more constructive relation towards Cuba 54, 59, 64, 65, 67–8, 75; Realpolitik as main foundation for foreign policy xi, 8; review and renewal of the U.S. covert policy toward Cuba xii, 44–50, 75, 79–80, 82, 138, 222, 236, 248; rethinking and evaluating the U.S. policy toward Cuba xi, 1, 35, 53–68, 71–6, 150, 190, 214, 218, 223, 225–31; support of counterrevolutionary groups 44–5, 80, 85–6, 92, 137, 154–6, 164, 169, 222; support of military coups in Latin America 14–16, 222; on Soviet submarines in Cienfuegos Bay 98–110; relationship of detente with the USSR and China xiii, 11, 27, 109, 223–5; use of the OAS for sanctions toward Cuba 15, 53, 57, 60, 63, 67, 227–8; U.S. public distrust in 6; Vietnam war 2–9, 16, 23, 59, 120, 207, 221, 225–6; Watergate xiii, 226, 232, 245–260 Nixon, Richard. M. anger over development in Chile 13; agreement between U.S. and Cuba on hijacking of aircrafts 185, 187, 190, 194, 203, 215; blaming Cuba for electoral failures 1; changed conditions for Cuba policy 27, 35–6, 50, 77, 227; common ground with counterrevolution 1, 35, 50, 75, 77, 79, 160, 245–6; concern about the trade of capitalist countries with Cuba 60, 115–6; on Cuban seizure of “Mother ships” 165–7; on Cuba policy 11, 26–7, 35, 47, 64–8, 72; Guam/Vietnam doctrine 3, 8; as initiator of the “dirty war” towards Cuba 1950s xi–xii, xiv, 35, 79; meeting with Fidel Castro (1959) 1; meeting with Mao Zedong 9; on demands for a reevaluation of the U.S. anti-Cuba policy 47–8, 54, 64–8, 72, 226–8; Nixon doctrine 15–16; prevention of new revolutions in Latin America 11, 16, 26, 56; resignation of xiii,

245, 255–6, 258–60; revenge on and uncompromising stance toward Cuba xiii, 1, 35, 182, 187–8, 207, 218; socialism in Latin America 12–14, 16, 26, 56; use of the OAS for sanctions toward Cuba 15, 53, 57, 60, 63, 67, 227–8; on Soviet submarines in Cienfuegos Bay 101, 103–9; signing of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) 10; subversive actions toward Cuba 26, 35, 37, 39, 41–2, 44, 48, 50, 75, 92–3, 110, 125–6, 170, 236; ties with Cuban exile groups 1, 35–6, 50, 75, 77, 79, 160, 195, 205, 223, 228, 245–6; Vietnam war 2–5, 226; on violent confrontation with Cuba 35; as Vice President xi–xii, xiv, 35, 245–6; visit to China 9–10; visit to USSR 10; Watergate xiii, 242, 245–60 Non-Aligned Movement 7, 17 Normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations: demand in the U.S. Congress for a reevaluation of the U.S. anti-Cuba policy xiii, 26–7, 35, 50, 53–69, 116–8, 125, 131, 149, 223–8, 230–2; pros and cons of a more constructive relation towards Cuba 54, 59, 64, 65, 67–8, 75; see also Agreement between U.S. and Cuba on hijacking of aircrafts North Vietnam 4–5, 9; Cuban support for the government of 21 OAS see Organization of American States October Crisis 7, 54, 59, 87, 98, 103–4, 107, 135, 154; agreement between the U.S. and the USSR 103–4 Operation Mongoose 134–5 Organization of American States (OAS) 165–6, 190–1, 193, 229; ban on diplomatic or consular, commercial or transportation relations with Cuba in 1964 21, 26; economic and diplomatic isolation of Cuba 21, 26, 50, 53, 60, 63, 67, 193, 222–3, 226; exclusion of Cuba in 1962 26, 63; U.S. strive for strengthening 15, 57, 190; freedom to reestablish diplomatic,

274 Index commercial and consular relations with Cuba 27, 228; more independence towards the U.S. 26, 228; reestablishing of the relations with Cuba 21, 26–7, 60, 226–8, 230; Rio Treaty 161; U.S. use for sanctions toward Cuba 15, 26, 53, 57, 60, 63, 67, 223, 227–8 Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) 222 Oriente (province of) 92; counterrevolutionary sabotage in 80, 156; counterrevolutionary infltration into 130, 150, 156–8, 184 Overthrow of the Revolutionary Cuban government (U.S. wish for) see U.S. policy (toward Cuba) Pacheco Areco, Jorge 14 Panama 12–13, 24–5, 27, 57, 119, 137, 160, 165, 169, 226 Panama Canal 12, 25, 57, 137 Paraguay 146 Paris 5; counterrevolutionary sabotage in 240–1 Pentagon 91, 98, 134–5, 159, 161 Pentagon Papers 3, 246 People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA): Cuban support of 24 Peru 12–3, 24–7, 146, 175–7, 185, 226, 241 Phillips, David 47, 175–7 Pinar del Río (province of) 133–4, 137 Ping-Pong diplomacy see U.S. global policy Pinochet, Augusto 14, 222 Piracy see Counterrevolution Plan Inca 12 Playa Girón 1, 44, 62, 82, 84, 119, 147, 175, 246, 252 Portugal 24, 133 Protest and peace movement in the U.S. see Vietnam Psychologic war see U.S. anti-Cuba actions Puerto Rico 25, 155, 240 Radio broadcasts see U.S. anti-Cuba actions Radio Swan see Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)

Realistic deterrence see U.S. global policy Realpolitik as foundation of foreign policy see Nixon administration; U.S. global policy Reconnaissance fights see Spy fights Reinforcement of the Cuban armed forces see Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR); Soviet troops and equipment in Cuba Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR): capture of infltrators 92, 160, 222, 236; decrease of regular troops 20; reinforcement of 20; Revolutionary Navy (MGR); development and supply of Soviet armament and combat technology to Cuba 22, 87; Revolutionary Navy (MGR) seizure of “Mother ships 154, 157, 160, 222; troops used in the production 20, 81; visit to the USSR (Raúl Castro) 22, 99, 109 Revolutionary Navy (MGR) seizure of “Mother ships” see Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) Rio Treaty see Organization of American States (OAS) Rivero Collado, Carlos 82, 88, 92, 148, 151, 236, 240, 253 Roa García, Raúl 39, 90, 190 Rockefeller, Nelson proposals concerning Latin America 15 Rodríguez Lara, Guillermo 12 Rogers, William 26, 39–41, 107, 136, 185, 187–90, 193–4, 199, 201–3, 214–15, 219, 228 Rusk, Dean 53 Sabotage see Counterrevolution; Counterrevolutionary sabotage and terrorism on Cuban targets in third countries; Economic war; U.S. antiCuba actions Saigon 3, 5, 8, 23 SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks/Treaty) 10, 98, 120–1, 160 Schnyder, Felix 41, 214 Seregni Mosquera, Líber 14, 80, 156 Shanghai 9 Sklar, Barry 225–7, 230 SLMB (Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile) 7, 10, 104 Song My see Vietnam war

Index 275 Sorensen, Theodore 260 South America 14 South Korea 8 South Vietnam 1, 3–5, 21; Cuban support for the National Liberation Front 23–4 Spain 61, 133; counterrevolutionary sabotage in 237–9, 241; trade with Cuba 49, 63 Spy fights 46, 101, 103; U-2 aircraft 59, 104, 108–9 Submarines see Crisis of the Soviet submarines in Cienfuegos Bay Sugar: Cuban income from 57–9, 73, 75, 117; Cuban export of 57–9, 73, 75, 136; Cuban production of 10 million tons 1970 xi–xii, 17–18, 46, 58–9, 71, 79, 81–2, 84, 110, 136–7; lowering prices and restrictions for destroying the Cuban economy 49–50, 63; suspension of Cuban sugar quota 59, 63; world market price of 20, 59, 63, 72 Suriname 15 Swiss Embassy 39–41, 88–90, 136, 159, 185, 187–8, 190, 194, 199, 202, 204–5, 211, 213–16 Switzerland 39, 76, 199, 201, 203 Syria 221 Taiwan 9 TASS 108–9 Terrorism see Counterrevolution; Counterrevolutionary sabotage and terrorism toward Cuban interests in third countries Thailand 8 Third World 11; demands for a fair international economic order 7, 9, 11; revolutionary movements 17, 21, 23–6, 46 Tokyo Convention on hijacking of aircrafts 189 Torres, Juan José 12, 26 Torriente, José Elias de la 81–4, 91–2, 146–9, 156, 158, 163, 168, 240–2 Torriente plan see Counterrevolution; Counterrevolutionary organizations and networks Torrijos Herrera, Omar 12, 25, 170 Travel restrictions for U.S. citizens to Cuba see U.S. anti-Cuba actions; U.S. policy (toward Cuba)

Trinidad and Tobago 15, 60, 226 Turner, William W. 81, 174–5, 178 U-2 aircraft see Spy fights United Fruit Company 25 United Kingdom 14–15; trade with Cuba 49, 63, 240 United Nations 7, 17, 25, 133, 163, 190–1, 199, 230–2, 237, 249; security council of 9 Uruguay 14, 63, 146 U.S. anti-Cuba actions: African swine fever virus introduction of; xii, xiv, 131, 133, 135, 138–40, 142; agents inside Cuba 20, 44, 46, 49–50, 80, 115–16, 118, 130, 136, 150, 155–7, 175, 245; assassination plots toward main revolutionary leaders xi, 115, 145, 174–5, 177–8, 248; biological warfare 133–6, 138–42; blockade (economic) xi, 26, 35, 40, 58, 63, 65, 73–4, 117, 120–1, 191, 214, 223, 228, 239; covert action plans xii, 44–50, 75, 79–80, 82, 138, 222, 236, 248; diplomatic and economic isolation xi, xiii, 11, 17, 21, 26, 35, 50, 60, 63–8, 193, 222–3, 226, 231; embargo 116, 222, 232; espionage xiii, 45, 50, 222, 246; harassment and seizure of Cuban fshing vessels and hijacking of their crews xii, xiv, 48, 80, 123–131, 145, 162, 165; ideological and psychological warfare xi, xiv, 35, 45–6, 48, 56–7, 77, 81, 83, 115, 118–20, 120–1, 142, 183, 222; impunity of counterrevolutionary groups acting from the U.S. of xii, xiv, 35, 50, 90, 93, 146, 148, 151–2, 158, 168, 211, 237, 242, 249; maximizing USSR costs for supporting Cuba 57, 61; military invasion plans 91, 135, 162; preparation, infltration, exfltration and support to counterrevolutionary “autonomous” groups 44–5, 80, 85–6, 92, 137, 154–6, 164, 169, 222; pressure on the governments and companies of the capitalist countries trading with Cuba 62, 115–17; pressure on the governments of Latin America to

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Index

break economic and diplomatic relations with Cuba 21, 26, 50, 53, 60, 62–3, 67, 193, 222–3, 226; promotion of emigration from Cuba 40, 50, 59, 65, 183–4, 194, 199, 204–5, 217; psychological warfare xi, xiv, 35, 45–6, 48, 56–7, 77, 81, 83, 115, 118–20, 120–1, 142, 183, 222; radio broadcasts 45–6, 50, 118–20, 128, 142, 184, 222; restriction of the sale of vital items 40, 63; sabotage towards Cuban ships 49; sabotage of Cuban imports from third countries 44–5, 48–9; sabotage of Cuban exports to third countries 44–5, 48–9; stop “free world” trade with Cuba 63–5, 115–16; support of counterrevolutionary sabotage and terrorism on Cuban interests in third countries xii, 44, 48, 236–243; support of sabotage in Cuba xii, 20, 44–5, 48–9, 80, 84, 115, 119, 134, 136, 156, 219; suppress naval and air transportation of goods and people to Cuba 49, 62–3; suspension of Cuban sugar quota 59, 62–3; travel restrictions for U.S. citizens to Cuba 62, 65, 183, 230; use of the OAS for sanctions toward Cuba 15, 53, 57, 60, 63, 67, 227–8 U.S. blockade of Cuba see Economic war U.S. Coast Guard 120, 123–7, 130–1, 142, 161, 167 U.S. Congress: demand for a reevaluation of the U.S. anti-Cuba policy xiii, 223–8, 230–2 U.S. detente policy towards USSR and PRC xiii, 11, 27, 223–8; arms-race 7; end of U.S. strategic military superiority 7–8, 98 U.S. Department of State: dissuade Cuban exiles from taking action against Cuba 148, 150–1; need for a detailed review of the Cuba policy xiii, 53–4; pros and cons of a more constructive relation towards Cuba 54, 59, 64, 65, 67–8, 75 U.S. global policy: fexible retaliation 8; Guam/Vietnam doctrine 3, 8; Ping-Pong diplomacy 9; realistic deterrence 8–9; Realpolitik xi, 8;

detente policy towards USSR and PRC xiii, 11, 27, 223–8 U.S. Information Agency (USIA) 72–3, 119–20, 231 U.S. Intelligence Board (USIB) 71 U.S. military intervention of Cuba 91, 135, 162 U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) 71 U.S. policy in Latin America: containing communism in Latin America 9, 11, 16, 54, 56, 60–1; containment of the Cuban revolution 12, 16, 46–7, 54, 56, 72–3; prevention of new revolutions in Latin America 11, 15–16, 54, 56, 60–1, 72–3; strengthening of cooperation between police-military apparatuses and U.S. security agencies 15–16; use of the OAS for sanctions 15, 53, 57, 60, 63, 67, 227–8 U.S. policy (toward Cuba): agreement between U.S. and Cuba on hijacking of aircrafts and sea vessels xii–xiii, 72, 145, 150–2, 181–4, 187–95, 199–207, 211–19, 223, 226–7; on “autonomous” groups 44–5, 80, 85–6, 92, 137, 154–6, 164, 169, 222; on Cuban exiles in the U.S. 44–7, 61, 80–4, 88, 90–1, 148–9, 160, 168, 205, 237, 247; changed conditions for 27, 35–6, 50, 77, 227; containing communism in Latin America 11, 16, 54, 56, 60–1; containment of the Cuban revolution 12, 16, 46–7, 54, 56, 72–3; demand for a reevaluation of the U.S. anti-Cuba policy 44, 47–8, 54, 64–8, 72–5, 116, 226–8; diplomatic and economic isolation of Cuba in Latin America and the rest of the world xi, xiii, 11, 17, 21, 26, 35, 50, 60, 63–8, 193, 222–3, 226, 231; failure of xiii, 54, 223, 230–1; ideological and psychological warfare 35, 45–6, 48, 56–7, 77, 81, 83, 115, 118–20, 120–1, 142, 183, 222; maximizing Soviet costs for supporting Cuba 57, 61; overthrow of Cuban government 11, 44, 48, 53–4, 57, 62, 79, 82, 115, 117, 145, 170, 236, 258, 260; present Cuba as an

Index 277 economic failure in Latin America and reduce its attractiveness as model 56; prevention of new revolutions in Latin America 11, 15–16, 54, 56, 60–1, 72–3; promotion of emigration from Cuba 40, 50, 59, 65, 183–4, 194, 199, 204–5, 217; pros and cons of a more constructive relation towards Cuba 54, 59, 64, 65, 67–8, 75; support of counterrevolutionary groups 44–5, 80, 85–6, 92, 137, 154–6, 164, 169, 222; travel restrictions for U.S. citizens to Cuba 62, 65, 183, 230; use of the OAS for sanctions toward Cuba 15, 53, 57, 60, 63, 67, 227–8 U.S. strategic military superiority end of see U.S. detente policy towards USSR and PRC U.S. support of military coups in Latin America 14–16, 222 USSR: as main supplier of fuel, raw materials, equipment and machinery to Cuba 21, 63; commercial, fnancial and scientifc agreement with Cuba 1972 20–3; construction of submarine base in Cienfuegos Bay 101–9; development and supply of Soviet armament and combat technology to Cuba 22, 87, 109; different standpoints on the support of revolutionary movements in Latin America, Africa and Asia 21, 23–6, 46; improvement in CubaUSSR relations 21–3 USSR-Cuba: as main supplier of fuel, raw materials, equipment and machinery to Cuba 21, 63; commercial, fnancial and scientifc agreement with Cuba 1972 20–3; construction of submarine base in Cienfuegos Bay 101–9; development and supply of Soviet armament and combat technology to Cuba 22, 87, 109; interchange of specialists and scholarships 21–3, 46, 48; different standpoints on the support of revolutionary movements in Latin America, Africa and Asia 21, 23–6, 46 USSR troops and equipment in Cuba: construction of submarine base in Cienfuegos Bay 101–9;

development and supply of Soviet armament and combat technology to Cuba 22, 87, 109 Vaky, Viron P. 74–6, 86–8, 90–1, 100, 193 Váldes Vivó, Raúl 24 Velasco Alvardo, Juan 12, 24, 26 Venezuela 12, 27, 61, 119, 135, 146, 175–7, 185, 226, 241 Vietnam war 1, 120, 155, 207, 221, 225–6, 246, 257; acts of genocide 2; chemical warfare 5; Cuban support for the government of North Vietnam and the National Liberation Front in South Vietnam 21, 23–4; protests and peace movement in the U.S. 2, 4, 16, 221, 248; Democratic Republic of Vietnam 1, 23–4; peace agreement 5; peace talks 4–5, 59; resistance and struggle of the Vietnam people 1, 23; Song My 2; U.S. bombings 1, 5, 228; U.S. casualties 2; U.S. defeat in 4–6, 16; U.S. forces in 2–5; Viet Cong 5; withdrawal of U.S. ground troops 3, 5 Voice of America 119, 121 Vorontsov, Yuli 102–3, 107 War Powers Act of 1973 221 Warzaw Pact 135 Watergate scandal: the connection to Cuban exiles 246, 248, 253, 258; as Nixon’s fall 245–63; Nixon’s resignation 245, 255–6, 258–60 Washington 7, 9, 12, 14, 40–1, 72, 79, 82–3, 88, 109, 123, 133–4, 137, 161, 182, 190, 212–6, 218, 230, 245, 248–9, 257, 259 Western Hemisphere 15, 47, 60, 99, 133, 222, 227 Western Europe 6, 49, 59, 63, 65, 221, 223 West Germany 11 White House 1, 10–11, 15, 27, 35–6, 72, 86, 106–7, 125, 158–9, 206, 218, 228, 230, 246, 248–58 Williams, Eric 15 World War II 6, 11, 221 Yom Kippur war 221 Zhou Enlai 9