Legacy of Secrecy by Lamar Waldron Read Free Book Online Page B

Inside the CIA, Cubela was referred to
    as AMLASH, but those in other agencies who knew about him simply
    referred to him by his real name.37 Though Cubela, a physician, had
    no real power within the Cuban government, as the former leader of
    a prominent revolutionary student group (the DR38), he was allowed a
    large travel budget and frequently went to Europe and communist-bloc
    countries. One of Bobby’s secret NSC subcommittees was told that the
    CIA was using Cubela to try to locate a high official willing to stage a
    coup.39 Cubela himself wasn’t powerful enough to lead a coup, since an
    October 18, 1963, CIA memo says “that Cubela has no official position in
    the government.”40 Because of his service during the Revolution, Cubela
    had been awarded a purely ceremonial military title, but according to
    an October 30, 1963, CIA memo, he lost that when he “resigned from
    the Army after difficulties with Raul Castro.”41
    Planning progressed on the coup, invasion, and post-coup Cuban
    government by Bobby’s subcommittees “just in case” a high-ranking
    Cuban official could be found. This allowed JFK and Bobby to get rep-
    resentatives from those agencies to do extensive planning, without
    revealing prematurely that Cuban Army Commander Juan Almeida
    had already agreed in May 1963 to lead the coup. In one memo, Army
    Secretary Cyrus Vance lists several possible scenarios by which Fidel
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    LEGACY OF SECRECY
    might be toppled, but states they will initially focus only on a “palace
    coup” by a powerful Cuban official; Vance says plans for the other sce-
    narios will be prepared later. Of course, these plans were never made,
    because Vance knew they wouldn’t be needed.
    With the coup planning largely complete by November 22, 1963, the
    Kennedys thought they had no need to inform officials like Secretary
    of State Dean Rusk about Almeida until shortly before the December 1
    coup. On November 22, Rusk and several other cabinet officials, as well
    as JFK’s press secretary, Pierre Salinger, were flying to the Far East. A
    still partially classified series of memos between Bobby Kennedy and
    National Security advisor McGeorge Bundy reveals that as of Novem-
    ber 20, “The Cuban problem is ready for discussion now . . . so we will
    call a meeting as soon as we can find a day when the right people are in
    town.” With JFK going to Texas, while Bundy, Rusk, and other cabinet
    officials were in the Far East, that meant Monday, November 25, would
    be the soonest day all the parties would be available. But by that day,
    assuming there was no last-minute breakthrough in the secret peace
    talks with Fidel, Harry would be in Cuba to meet Almeida and the coup
    plan would be past its “fail-safe” point. That would be when Rusk and
    others could simply be told that all their efforts to find someone to stage
    a coup had yielded results, and that the action had been set for December
    1, using the plans they had already developed and agreed to.
    Bobby’s method yielded an odd situation in which only some officials
    on the subcommittees knew about Almeida and realized all the plan-
    ning was for real; officials in this group included Cyrus Vance, General
    Maxwell Taylor, CIA Director John McCone, Richard Helms, and only
    a few more. Others on the subcommittees didn’t know about Almeida
    and thought the planning was just a “what if” exercise, contingent on
    finding a high-ranking Cuban official to lead the coup; those in this
    group included Robert McNamara and Dean Rusk.42 This meant that in
    any particular meeting, some of those attending knew about Almeida
    and that the coup was fast approaching, and some did not. The declas-
    sified notes from those meetings show the torturous wording that was
    sometimes used to convey necessary information without revealing too
    much to those not yet fully in the loop.43
    Bobby’s method proved extremely effective in keeping secret both
    Almeida’s identity and the imminence