Why Castro and Che Guevara Split

 

 

 

Revolutionary Friends

Al Jazeera (2017)

Film Review

This is a documentary about Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and the 1959 Cuban Revolution. In addition to exploring the revolution’s early history, the filmmakers trace how Cuba came to rely on the Soviet Union for its economic survival – and how the Soviets forced Castro to exile Che from Cuba for political reasons.

After traveling extensively through South America, Che Guevara, deeply affected by the extreme poverty and exploitation he saw, was totally committed to “permanent revolution.”* In contrast Soviet leaders were committed to socialism in one country and “peaceful coexistence with the US.” They opposed Che’s guerilla activities in Africa and Latin America owing to the potential threat they posed to US-Soviet relations.

The most interesting part of the film reveals that the CIA initially supported Castro’s guerillas  with arms, funding and US volunteers because they viewed him as “easy to control.” It contains priceless footage of Castro denouncing communism (in English) to an American audience and calling for Cuban “representative democracy.”

In February 1959, the US initially recognizes Castro as Cuba’s new prime minister. A few months later, he appoints Che (an avowed Marxist) to head the Cuban national bank. The US responds by blocking all credit to Cuban banks. Castro retaliates by nationalizing Cuba’s American businesses. The US government, in turn, blocks all Cuban sugar imports.

Given that 90% of the Cuban economy is based on trade with the US, the country is on the verge of collapse. Castro is left with no choice but to ally himself with the USSR to trade Cuban sugar for oil and financial aid.

Under Soviet direction, Castro ends Che’s governmental role in 1963 and sends him on a series of foreign missions.After several speeches critical of Soviet leaders (for failing to support third world guerilla movements), Che angers them further by cultivating relations with China, just as the USSR and China are becoming estranged.

After an unsuccessful campaign with guerilla fighters in the Congo, Castro sends Che to Bolivia, where he and ten fighters who accompany him are stranded without weapons, food, medicine or support from the Bolivian Communist Party. On October 9, 1976, Che is wounded in a firefight with Bolivian security services. He is subsequently captured and executed.

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*As envisioned by Leon Trotsky, this refers to a country’s continuing revolutionary progress being dependent on a continuing process of revolution in other countries.

This film can’t be embedded for copyright reasons. It can be viewed free until April 7 at the Al Jazeera website: Che Guevara Fidel Castro Revolutionary Friends

Oral History: CIA Contractor Reveals Role in JFK Assassination

Inside the JFK Assassination

Secret History Productions (2003)

Film Review

This fascinating documentary is the oral history of Chauncy Holt, one of the infamous three tramps arrested in Dealey Plaza plaza following the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Although it was recorded in 1997, it would be six years before Holt’s interview was released. He died eight days after its filming. Assassination researcher Jim Fetzer has uncovered evidence that Holt, while hospitalized, was deliberately overdosed on Coumadin by someone posing as a doctor.

The first hour of the video focuses on Holt’s early life as a bootlegger and petty criminal in Kentucky. He was a mathematical genius and firearms expert, with a pilot’s license and expertise in oil painting and forgery. It was his math skills that brought him to the attention of Florida mobster Meyer Lansky. After a brief spell as Lansky’s accountant, the latter referred him to the CIA’s Clandestine Operations Division. Holt’s primary function was to oversee the Los Angeles  Stamp and Stationary Company, a CIA front that produced fake IDs and reconditioned firearms for Operation Mongoose, the CIA/Mob operation formed to invade Cuba and overthrow Castro. His immediate CIA supervisor was William King Harvey.

In April 1963, he was ordered to produce fake IDs for Lee Harvey Oswald under various aliases and deliver them to Guy Bannister, who Holt identifies as Oswald’s New Orleans control.

On November 22, 1963, Holt was ordered to deliver forged Secret Service IDs and lapel pins and refurbished rifles and ammunition to Dealey Plaza. He was also ordered to deliver fake Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco (ATF) IDs and handguns to CIA operatives Charles Harrelson (father of actor Willy Harrelson) and Richard Montoya.

Holt identifies Harrelson and Rogers as the two other tramps. The FBI ordered them released as they were carrying forged ATF IDs.

Holt claims he had no foreknowledge of the assassination prior to arriving in Dealey Plaza. His CIA handlers told him that Operation Mongoose had organized a violent pro-Castro protest to drum up popular support for a US invasion of Cuba.

Untold History of the US – JFK to the Brink

In Part 6 of Untold History of the United States, filmmaker Oliver Stone reveals that Kennedy vacillated between supporting and opposing the anti-communist Pentagon hawks who tried to control his foreign policy.

• In 1960, JFK made the “missile gap” (ie the so-called Soviet advantage in strategic weapons) a major plank of his campaign – only to discover (on taking office) that the US was far ahead in every category.
• Under pressure from the CIA and Joint Chiefs, he initially approved the Bay of Pigs invasion, only to refuse to authorize air support when he discovered they had lied to him about domestic Cuban support for the invasion.
• After the bungled Bay of Pigs operation, he fired Allen Dulles and other top CIA officials and placed all overseas CIA operations under State Department control. At the same time, he also put his brother Bobby in charge of Operation Mongoose, a secret program in Louisiana to train Cuban exiles to overthrow and/or poison Castro (Joan Mellen discusses Bobby’s role at length in her 2013 book on the JFK assassination – see New Evidence in the JFK Assassination).
• He resisted pressure from the Joint Chiefs to invade Laos.
• Despite resisting pressure from the Pentagon to increase arms expenditures, in 1961 he warned the American people against dangerous Soviet aggression and encouraged them to build fallout shelters.
• He approved the deployment of 16,000 advisors (in addition to CIA personnel) to engage in guerilla warfare in Vietnam. He also approved Operation Phoenix, which involved massive defoliation of the Vietnamese with cancer and birth defect-causing Agent Orange, the assassination of labor leaders and human rights advocates and the mass displacement of Vietnamese civilians into concentration camps.
• He resisted pressure from the Joint Chiefs to launch a nuclear strike on Cuba when a U2 spy plane discovered the Soviets had supplied Castro with nuclear-tipped ICBMs.

Most of the episode focuses on the naval blockade JFK imposed on Cuba during the Cuban Missile crisis and the delicate negotiations between him and Khrushchev to prevent this event from escalating into full blown nuclear war.

It’s Stone’s view that both Kennedy and Khrushchev lost control of their militaries during this period. According to Stone, it was down to a single brave Soviet submarine commander that global nuclear annihilation was averted in 1962. He believes the near-miss in Cuba caused Kennedy to rethink US involvement in Vietnam – and issue National Security Memorandum 263 in summer 1963. The latter ordered the gradual withdrawal of all US forces from Vietnam to commence in December 1963.

Johnson would reverse this directive within weeks of the JFK assassination.

Part 6 – JFK to the Brink

A Cuban Novel About Trotsky’s Assassination

The Man Who Loved Dogs

By Leonardo Padura

Translated by Anna Kushner (2013)

Book Review

The Man Who Loved Dogs is a fictional account of the Stalinist Conspiracy to assassinate Leon Trotsky in Mexico in 1940. Havana author Leonardo Padura uses three distinct perspectives to relate his story: that of Trotsky and his family, that of his assassin Roman Mercader and that of a failed Cuban writer who accidentally encounters Mercader on a Cuban beach in the 1970s as he’s on the verge of death.

The conspiracy is vaguely reminiscent of the JFK assassination conspiracy, in that it was meticulously planned and took three years to set in motion. Mercader was a Spanish Communist recruited by Stalin’s agents and brought to the USSR for specialized intelligence training. Posing as a Belgian journalist, he cultivated an American Trotskyite girlfriend to facilitate his entry into the high security compound where Trotsky’s family lived in Coyoacan Mexico.

The early part of the book contains long sections about the Spanish Civil War. These focus on Stalin’s brutal efforts to undermine the Spanish Revolution by assassinating anarchist and Trotskyite rivals, including members of the International Brigades. He then proceeded to abandon Spain’s Republican government to Franco’s fascists to improve his negotiating position with Hitler.

The History of Trotsky’s Exile

The narrative from Trotsky’s perspective begins with his forced exile to Turkey in 1929. He’s eventually offered asylum in France and Norway, both of which expel him (under pressure from local communists) after a few months. These sections also focus on Trotsky’s dismay regarding Stalin’s decade of show trials and executions, which systematically eliminated the primary Bolshevik luminaries responsible for the 1917 revolution, as well as one-third of the leadership of the Soviet Army.

Prior to 1990 Books About Trotsky Banned in Cuba

The narrative based on the fictional Cuban writer focuses on the intellectual and artistic repression that characterized the early Castro regime and the severe hardship (literal starvation in many cases) that began when the USSR collapsed in 1989 and Cuba ceased to have access to cheap soviet oil essential to their system of industrial agriculture.

Prior to the 1990s, books by or about Trotsky were banned in Cuba, as they were in the USSR. As Padura reminds us in his acknowledgements, Cubans of his generation grew up totally unaware that Trotsky or Trotskyism even existed. From this perspective, one can’t help but marvel at his extensive research into Trotsky’s personal and political history, as well as the Spanish Civil War and Stalin’s show trials.

Lee Harvey Oswald: Career CIA Operative

 

JFK: The Second Plot

Matthew Smith (1992)

Book Review

Lee Harvey Oswald worked for the CIA (and FBI and Army and most likely Naval Intelligence) from the late fifties when the CIA recruited him from the Marine Corps until his murder on November 24, 1963 by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby. A clear appreciation of Lee Harvey Oswald’s role as an intelligence operative is key to understanding the JFK assassination conspiracy and cover-up. Although more than 20 years old, in my opinion Matthew Smith’s JFK: The Second Plot offers the most comprehensive account of Oswald’s CIA career. The first account of Lee Harvey Oswald’s CIA connections appeared in a 1968 book originally published by French intelligence entitled Farewell America. French president Charles DeGaulle had a keen interest in identifying the conspirators behind Kennedy’s assassination, as the same group had also made three assassination attempts against DeGaulle. Farewell America reveals how the CIA recruited Oswald when he was stationed at Atsugi Marine Air Base in Japan and sent him to the Soviet Union. These historical details were corroborated by testimony a former CIA officer provided the House Committee on Assassinations in 1978.

The Soviets, recognizing Oswald as a likely double agent, never fully trusted him, and in 1961 the CIA returned him to the US. According to government archives, his handlers went on to give him assignments intended to create a kooky leftist alter ego, which would later be used to frame him for Kennedy’s murder. Given that Oswald had foreknowledge of Kennedy’s assassination, the obvious question is why he allowed himself to be set up. The answer Smith offers seems totally plausible: Oswald believed the CIA was returning him to the Soviet Union (via Cuba) to become a double agent. His handlers, in turn, intended to use his flight to Cuba to blame the President’s assassination on Fidel Castro.

Oswald’s Visit to Red Bird Airport

Smith first got the idea for his book after obtaining FBI documents under the Freedom of Information Act revealing that Oswald, together with two other federal agents, paid a visit to the American Aviation Company (AAC) at Red Bird Airport trying to charter an aircraft for November 22, 1963. Smith subsequently interviewed Wayne January, the AAC employee they dealt with, and discovered the FBI had falsified the date. The FBI gives the date of their encounter as July, 1963, while it was actually November 20, only two days before the assassination.

Smith also answers puzzling questions about Officer J.D. Tippitt’s role in the assassination conspiracy. Smith believes that an ex-CIA friend named Roscoe White asked Tippitt to transport Oswald to the Red Bird Airport to catch a charter flight to Cuba. When they rendezvoused, Tippitt became suspicious after hearing Oswald’s description broadcast over the police radio. When he got out to question him, a man matching White’s description rushed out of the bushes and shot Tippitt. Following Tippitt’s murder, the plan to spirit Oswald off to Cuba had to be abandoned.

The Main-Tier Plot

Smith organizes his book into two halves. Book One is called “The Main-Tier Plot,” involving the assemblage of a group of snipers to ambush President Kennedy as his motorcade traveled through Dallas. Book Two is devoted to “The Second Plot,” a scheme to enable the true shooters and co-conspirators to escape prosecution by shifting the blame to a kooky leftist Castro-sympathizer.

Smith’s expose of the main-tier plot begins with official Warren Commission (WC) version of the assassination. He devotes an chapter to irregularities in gathering and recording WC testimony that would never be allowed in a court of law. Many of the witnesses reported seeing more than one gunmen and complained bitterly about their evidence being omitted or misreported. Smith is particularly critical of the WC for failing to investigate Officer Tippit’s background or obtain ballistic evidence linking Oswald’s handgun to his murder.

Smith also summarizes the detailed physical evidence pointing to the presence of three or four shooters in Dealey Plaza. He goes on to discuss the intelligence connections of a handful of suspects arrested in the Dal Tex building and elsewhere in Dealey Plaza. All were released after President Lyndon Johnson ordered the Dallas police to discontinue their investigation. Smith devotes an entire chapter to the photographic evidence, including the amateur film made by businessman Abraham Zapruder, which was altered to make the fatal shot appear to come came from the Book Depository behind the motorcade. Finally he discusses the acoustic recordings which led the House Assassinations Committee to make the determination that more than one shooter was involved in Kennedy’s murder.

The Second Plot

The second half of the book offers an in-depth portrait of Oswald’s early history and personality. It details his posting to the Atsugi Marine Air Base in Japan, where he held a “secret” level security clearance, and assisted in monitoring overflights of the Top Secret U2 Spy plane. Smith goes on to describe Oswald’s activities in the Soviet Union in exhaustive detail, as well as the assignments he was given on his return to the US. In one of his first jobs, he processed photos of a Soviet military facility, which again required a security clearance. Other assignments involved infiltrating leftist and pro-Castro groups as an informant. The fabrication of Oswald’s unstable loner persona was facilitated by an Oswald double, a second agent who created major public disturbances while posing as Oswald.

Smith believes that at the time of his arrest, Oswald had been given a new assignment – to attempt to return to the Soviet Union via Cuba. Strong evidence suggests there were plans to airlift him to Cuba the afternoon of November 22, 1963. The plans were suddenly disrupted when Officer J.D. Tippitt was shot and killed. Tippitt’s murder forced the plan to spirit Oswald away to Cuba to be abandoned. His subsequent arrest necessitated his murder by Jack Ruby, another minor co-conspirator. Allowing Oswald’s intelligence connections to come out at trial would have seriously endangered high level officials in the Kennedy administration who participated in the conspiracy.

The Conspirators Had Names

The book’s final chapter “The Conspirators Had Names” is disappointing because it offers no firm conclusions about the real culprits in the JFK assassination. Although Smith refers to New Orleans District Attorney’s Jim Garrison’s unsuccessful prosecution of one of the co-conspirators, he makes no mention whatsoever of the Swiss corporation Pemindex that financed the assassination. It was Clay Shaw’s membership in Permindex that formed the basis of Garrison’s case against him. Nor does it mention the shadowy Defense Industrial Security Command and the 50 or so intelligence and defense contractors with clearly established links to both the DISC and the assassination. The evidence linking Permindex and DISC to the JFK assassination is outlined most clearly in a 1970 book by William Torbitt called Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal or Torbitt Document

Posted in honor of the 50^th anniversary of the assassination of John F Kennedy.

photo credit: Lone Primate via photopin cc

Originally published in Veterans Today