[News] Fidel Castro - Reflections on the "Family Jewels"

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/

July 9, 2007


Reflections on the "Family Jewels" From a Target of the CIA


The Killing Machine

By FIDEL CASTRO

It was announced that the CIA would be 
declassifying hundreds of pages on illegal 
actions that included plans to eliminate the 
leaders of foreign governments. Suddenly the 
publication is halted and it is delayed one day. 
No coherent explanation was given. Perhaps 
someone in the White House looked over the material.

The first package of declassified documents goes 
by the name of "The Family Jewels"; it consists 
of 702 pages on illegal CIA actions between 1959 
and 1973. About 100 pages of this part have been 
deleted. It deals with actions that were not 
authorized by any law, plots to assassinate other 
leaders, experiments with drugs on human beings 
to control their minds, spying on civil activists 
and journalists, among other similar activities that were expressly prohibited.

The documents began to be gathered together 14 
years after the first of the events took place, 
when then CIA director, James Schlessinger became 
alarmed about what the press was writing, 
especially all the articles by Robert Woodward 
and Carl Bernstein published in The Washington 
Post, already mentioned in the "Manifesto to the 
People of Cuba". The agency was being accused of 
promoting spying in the Watergate Hotel with the 
participation of its former agents Howard Hunt and James McCord.

In May 1973, the Director of the CIA was 
demanding that "all the main operative officials 
of this agency must immediately inform me on any 
ongoing or past activity that might be outside of 
the constituting charter of this agency". 
Schlessinger, later appointed Head of the 
Pentagon, had been replaced by William Colby. 
Colby was referring to the documents as 
"skeletons hiding in a closet". New press 
revelations forced Colby to admit the existence 
of the reports to interim President Gerald Ford 
in 1975. The New York Times was denouncing agency 
penetration of antiwar groups. The law that 
created the CIA prevented it from spying inside the United States.

That "was just the tip of the iceberg", said then 
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Kissinger himself warned that "blood would flow" 
if other actions were known, and he immediately 
added: "For example, that Robert Kennedy 
personally controlled the operation for the 
assassination of Fidel Castro". The President's 
brother was then Attorney General of the United 
States. He was later murdered as he was running 
for President in the 1968 elections, which 
facilitated Nixon's election for lack of a strong 
candidate. The most dramatic thing about the case 
is that apparently he had reached the conviction 
that John Kennedy had been victim of a 
conspiracy. Thorough investigators, after 
analyzing the wounds, the caliber of the shots 
and other circumstances surrounding the death of 
the President, reached the conclusion that there 
had been at least three shooters. Solitary 
Oswald, used as an instrument, could not have 
been the only shooter. I found that rather 
striking. Excuse me for saying this but fate 
turned me into a shooting instructor with a 
telescopic sight for all the Granma 
expeditionaries. I spent months practicing and 
teaching, every day; even though the target is a 
stationary one it disappears from view with each 
shot and so you need to look for it all over again in fractions of a second.

Oswald wanted to come through Cuba on his trip to 
the USSR. He had already been there before. 
Someone sent him to ask for a visa in our 
country's embassy in Mexico but nobody knew him 
there so he wasn't authorized. They wanted to get 
us implicated in the conspiracy. Later, Jack 
Ruby, --a man openly linked to the Mafia-- unable 
to deal with so much pain and sadness, as he 
said, assassinated him, of all places, in a precinct full police agents.

Subsequently, in international functions or on 
visits to Cuba, on more than one occasion I met 
with the aggrieved Kennedy relatives, who would 
greet me respectfully. The former president's 
son, who was a very small child when his father 
was killed, visited Cuba 34 years later. We met and I invited him to dinner.

The young man, in the prime of his life, and well 
brought up, tragically died in an airplane 
accident on a stormy night as he was flying to 
Martha's Vineyard with his wife. I never touched 
on the thorny issue with any of those relatives. 
In contrast, I pointed out that if the 
president-elect had then been Nixon instead of 
Kennedy, after the Bay of Pigs disaster we would 
have been attacked by the land and sea forces 
escorting the mercenary expedition, and both 
countries would have paid a high toll in human 
lives. Nixon would not have limited himself to 
saying that victory has many fathers and defeat 
is an orphan. For the record, Kennedy was never 
too enthusiastic about the Bay of Pigs adventure; 
he was led there by Eisenhower's military 
reputation and the recklessness of his ambitious vice-president.

I remember that, exactly on the day and minute he 
was assassinated, I was speaking in a peaceful 
spot outside of the capital with French 
journalist Jean Daniel. He told me that he was 
bringing a message from President Kennedy. He 
said to me that in essence he had told him: "You 
are going to see Castro. I would like to know 
what he thinks about the terrible danger we just 
experienced of a thermonuclear war. I want to see 
you again as soon as you get back." "Kennedy was 
very active; he seemed to be a political 
machine", he added, and we were not able to 
continue talking as someone rushed in with the 
news of what had just happened. We turned on the 
radio. What Kennedy thought was now pointless.

Certainly I lived with that danger. Cuba was both 
the weakest part and the one that would take the 
first strike, but we did not agree with the 
concessions that were made to the United States. 
I have already spoken of this before.

Kennedy had emerged from the crisis with greater 
authority. He came to recognize the enormous 
sacrifices of human lives and material wealth 
made by the Soviet people in the struggle against 
fascism. The worst of the relations between the 
United States and Cuba had not yet occurred by 
April 1961. When he hadn't resigned himself to 
the outcome of the Bay of Pigs, along came the 
Missile Crisis. The blockade, economic 
asphyxiation, pirate attacks and assassination 
plots multiplied. But the assassination plots and 
other bloody occurrences began under the 
administration of Eisenhower and Nixon.

After the Missile Crisis we would have not 
refused to talk with Kennedy, nor would we have 
ceased being revolutionaries and radical in our 
struggle for socialism. Cuba would have never 
severed relations with the USSR as it had been 
asked to do. Perhaps if the American leaders had 
been aware of what a war could be using weapons 
of mass destruction they would have ended the 
Cold War earlier and differently. At least that's 
how we felt then, when there was still no talk of 
global warming, broken imbalances, the enormous 
consumption of hydrocarbons and the sophisticated 
weaponry created by technology, as I have already 
said to the youth of Cuba. We would have had much 
more time to reach, through science and 
conscience, what we are today forced to realize in haste.

President Ford decided to appoint a Commission to 
investigate the Central Intelligence Agency. "We 
do not want to destroy the CIA but to preserve it", he said.

As a result of the Commission's investigations 
that were led by Senator Frank Church, President 
Ford signed an executive order which expressly 
prohibited the participation of American 
officials in the assassinations of foreign leaders.

The documents published now disclose information 
about the CIA-Mafia links for my assassination.

Details are also revealed about Operation Chaos, 
carrying on from 1969 for at least seven years, 
for which the CIA created a special squadron with 
the mission to infiltrate pacifist groups and to 
investigate "the international activities of 
radicals and black militants". The Agency 
compiled more than 300,000 names of American 
citizens and organizations and extensive files on 7,200 persons.

According to The New York Times, President 
Johnson was convinced that the American anti-War 
movement was controlled and funded by Communist 
governments and he ordered the CIA to produce evidence.

The documents recognize, furthermore, that the 
CIA spied on various journalists like Jack 
Anderson, performers such as Jane Fonda and John 
Lennon, and the student movements at Columbia 
University. It also searched homes and carried 
out tests on American citizens to determine the 
reactions of human beings to certain drugs.

In a memorandum sent to Colby in 1973, Walter 
Elder who had been executive assistant to John 
McCone, CIA Director in the early 1970s, gives 
information about discussions in the CIA 
headquarters that were taped and transcribed: "I 
know that whoever worked in the offices of the 
director were worried about the fact that these 
conversations in the office and on the phone were 
transcribed. During the McCone years there were 
microphones in his regular offices, the inner 
office, the dining room, the office in the East 
building, and in the study of his home on White 
Haven Street. I don't know if anyone is ready to 
talk about this, but the information tends to be 
leaked, and certainly the Agency is vulnerable in this case".

The secret transcripts of the CIA directors could 
contain a great number of "jewels". The National 
Security Archive is already requesting these transcripts.

A memo clarifies that the CIA had a project 
called OFTEN which would collect "information 
about dangerous drugs in American companies", 
until the program was terminated in the fall of 
1972. In another memo there are reports that 
manufacturers of commercial drugs "had passed" 
drugs to the CIA which had been "refused due to adverse secondary effects".

As part of the MKULTRA program, the CIA had given 
LSD and other psycho-active drugs to people 
without their knowledge. According to another 
document in the archive, Sydney Gottlieb, a 
psychiatrist and head of chemistry of the Agency 
Mind Control Program, is supposedly the person 
responsible for having made available the poison 
that was going to be used in the assassination attempt on Patrice Lumumba.

CIA employees assigned to MHCHAOS ­the operation 
that carried out surveillance on American 
opposition to the war in Vietnam and other 
political dissidents ­expressed "a high level of 
resentment" for having been ordered to carry out such missions.

Nonetheless, there is a series of interesting 
matters revealed in these documents, such as the 
high level at which the decisions for actions against our country were taken.

The technique used today by the CIA to avoid 
giving any details is not the unpleasant crossed 
out bits but the blank spaces, coming from the use of computers.

For The New York Times, large censored sections 
reveal that the CIA still cannot expose all the 
skeletons in its closets, and many activities 
developed in operations abroad, checked over 
years ago by journalists, congressional 
investigators and a presidential commission, are not in the documents.

Howard Osborn, then CIA Director of Security, 
makes a summary of the "jewels" compiled by his 
office. He lists eight cases ­including the 
recruiting of the gangster Johnny Roselli for the 
coup against Fidel Castro ­but they crossed out 
the document that is in the number 1 place on 
Osborn's initial list: two and a half pages.

"The No. 1 Jewel of the CIA Security Offices must 
be very good, especially since the second one is 
the list for the program concerning the 
assassination of Castro by Roselli," said Thomas 
Blanton, director of the National Security 
Archive who requested the declassification of 
"The Family Jewels" 15 years ago under the Freedom of Information Act.

It is notable that the administration which has 
declassified the least information in the history 
of the United States, and which has even started 
a process of reclassifying information that was 
previously declassified, now makes the decision to make these revelations.

I believe that such an action could be an attempt 
to present an image of transparency when the 
government is at an all time low rate of 
acceptance and popularity, and to show that those 
methods belong to another era and are no longer 
in use. When he announced the decision, General 
Hayden, current CIA Director, said: "The 
documents offer a look at very different times and at a very different Agency."

Needless to say that everything described here is 
still being done, only in a more brutal manner 
and all around the planet, including a growing 
number of illegal actions within the very United States.

The New York Times wrote that intelligence 
experts consulted expressed that the revelation 
of the documents is an attempt to distract 
attention from recent controversies and scandals 
plaguing the CIA and an Administration that is 
living through some of its worst moments of unpopularity.

The declassification could also be an attempt at 
showing, in the early stages of the electoral 
process that the Democratic administrations were 
as bad, or worse, than Mr. Bush's.

In pages 11 to 15 of the Memo for the Director of 
the Central Intelligence Agency, we can read:

"In August 1960, Mr. Richard M. Bissell 
approached Colonel Sheffield Edwards with the 
objective of determining whether the Security 
Office had agents who could help in a 
confidential mission that required gangster-style 
action. The target of the mission was Fidel Castro.

"Given the extreme confidentiality of the 
mission, the project was known only to a small 
group of people. The Director of the Central 
Intelligence Agency was informed and he gave it 
his approval. Colonel J. C. King, Head of the 
Western Hemisphere Division, was also informed, 
but all the details were deliberately concealed 
from officials of Operation JMWAVE. Even though 
some officials of Communications (Commo) and the 
Technical Services Division (TSD) took part in 
initial planning phases, they were not aware of the mission's purpose.

"Robert A. Maheu was contacted, he was informed 
in general terms about the project, and he was 
asked to evaluate whether he could get access to 
gangster-type elements as a first step for achieving the desired goal.

"Mr. Maheu informed that he had met with a 
certain Johnny Roselli on several occasions while 
he was visiting Las Vegas. He had only met him 
informally through clients, but he had been told 
that he was a member of the upper echelons of the 
'syndicate' and that he was controlling all the 
ice machines on the Strip. In Maheu's opinion, if 
Roselli was in effect a member of the Clan, he 
undoubtedly had connections that would lead to the gambling racket in Cuba.

"Maheu was asked to get close to Roselli, who 
knew that Maheu was a public relations executive 
looking after national and foreign accounts, and 
tell him that recently he had been contracted by 
a client who represented several international 
business companies, which were suffering enormous 
financial losses in Cuba due to Castro. They were 
convinced that the elimination of Castro would be 
a solution to their problem and they were ready 
to pay $ 150,000 for a successful outcome. 
Roselli had to be made perfectly aware of the 
fact that the U.S. government knew nothing, nor 
could it know anything, about this operation.

"This was presented to Roselli on September 14, 
1960 in the Hilton Plaza Hotel of New York City. 
His initial reaction was to avoid getting 
involved but after Maheu's persuasive efforts he 
agreed to present the idea to a friend, Sam Gold, 
who knew "some Cubans". Roselli made it clear 
that he didn't want any money for his part in all 
this, and he believed that Sam would do likewise. 
Neither of these people was ever paid with Agency money.

"During the week of September 25, Maheu was 
introduced to Sam who was living at the 
Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach. It was not 
until several weeks after meeting Sam and Joe 
­who was introduced as courier operating between 
Havana and Miami ­that he saw photos of these two 
individuals in the Sunday section of Parade. They 
were identified as Momo Salvatore Giancana and 
Santos Trafficante, respectively. Both were on 
the Attorney General's list of the ten most 
wanted. The former was described as the boss of 
the Cosa Nostra in Chicago and Al Capone's heir, 
and the latter was the boss of Cuban operations 
of the Cosa Nostra. Maheu immediately called this 
office upon learning this information.

"After analyzing the possible methods to carry 
out this mission, Sam suggested that they not 
resort to firearms but that, if they could get 
hold of some kind of deadly pill, something to be 
put into Castro's food or drink, this would be a 
much more effective operation. Sam indicated that 
he had a possible candidate in the person of Juan 
Orta, a Cuban official who had been receiving 
bribery payments in the gambling racket, and who 
still had access to Castro and was in a financial bind.

"The TSD (Technical Services Division) was 
requested to produce 6 highly lethal pills.

"Joe delivered the pills to Orta. After several 
weeks of attempts, Orta appears to have chickened 
out and he asked to be taken off the mission. He 
suggested another candidate who made several unsuccessful."

Everything that was said in the numerous 
paragraphs above is in quotes. Observe well, dear 
readers, the methods that were already being used 
by the United States to rule the world.

I remember that during the early years of the 
Revolution, in the offices of the National 
Institute for Agrarian Reform, there was a man 
working there with me whose name was Orta, who 
had been linked to the anti-Batista political 
forces. He was a respectful and serious man. But, 
it could only be him. The decades have gone by 
and I see his name once more in the CIA report. I 
can't lay my hands on information to immediately 
prove what happened to him. Accept my apologies 
if I involuntarily have offended a relative or a 
descendent, whether the person I have mentioned is guilty or not.

The empire has created a veritable killing 
machine that is made up not only of the CIA and 
its methods. Bush has established powerful and 
expensive intelligence and security 
super-structures, and he has transformed all the 
air, sea and land forces into instruments of 
world power that take war, injustice, hunger and 
death to any part of the globe, in order to 
educate its inhabitants in the exercise of 
democracy and freedom. The American people are 
gradually waking up to this reality.

"You cannot fool all of the people all of the time", said Lincoln.




Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20070709/aea5d0a8/attachment.htm>