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In reply to the discussion: Since November 22, 1963... [View all]Octafish
(55,745 posts)98. That is a misconception repeated over the years.
Eisenhower was president when Dulles hired the Mafia to kill Castro -- 1960. If things had gone according to plan, Nixon would've been president during the Bay of Pigs and would've sent in the Marines, along with the Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard, making Allen Dulles and Meyer Lansky and all their rich and corrupt friends very, very happy.
AUG 1960: Richard Bissell meets with Colonel Sheffield Edwards, director of the CIA's Office of Security, and discusses with him ways to eliminate or assassinate Fidel Castro. Edwards proposes that the job be done by assassins hand-picked by the American underworld, specifically syndicate interests who have been driven out of their Havana gambling casinos by the Castro regime. Bissell gives Edwards the go-ahead to proceed. Between August 1960, and April 1961, the CIA with the help of the Mafia pursues a series of plots to poison or shot Castro. The CIAs own internal report on these efforts states that these plots "were viewed by at least some of the participants as being merely one aspect of the over-all active effort to overthrow the regime that culminated in the Bay of Pigs." (CIA, Inspector General's Report on Efforts to Assassinate Fidel Castro, p. 3, 14)
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/bayofpigs/chron.html
Details on the actual sit-down:
Ever wonder about the sanity of America's leaders? Take a close look at perhaps the most bizarre plot in U.S. intelligence history
By Bryan Smith
Chicago Magazine
November 2007
(page 4 of 6)
EXCERPT...
By September 1960, the project was proceeding apace. Roselli would report directly to Maheu. The first step was a meeting in New York. There, at the Plaza Hotel, Maheu introduced Roselli to O'Connell. The agent wanted to cover up the participation of the CIA, so he pretended to be a man named Jim Olds who represented a group of wealthy industrialists eager to get rid of Castro so they could get back in business.
"We may know some people," Roselli said. Several weeks later, they all met at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami. For years, the luxurious facility had served as the unofficial headquarters for Mafioso leaders seeking a base close to their gambling interests in Cuba. Now, it would be the staging area for the assassination plots.
At a meeting in one of the suites, Roselli introduced Maheu to two men: Sam Gold and a man Roselli referred to as Joe, who could serve as a courier to Cuba. By this time, Roselli was on to O'Connell. "I'm not kidding," Roselli told the agent one day. "I know who you work for. But I'm not going to ask you to confirm it."
Roselli may have figured out that he was dealing with the CIA, but neither Maheu nor O'Connell realized the rank of mobsters with whom they were dealing. That changed when Maheu picked up a copy of the Sunday newspaper supplement Parade, which carried an article laying out the FBI's ten most wanted criminals. Leading the list was Sam Giancana, a.k.a. "Mooney," a.k.a. "Momo," a.k.a. "Sam the Cigar," a Chicago godfather who was one of the most feared dons in the countryand the man who called himself Sam Gold. "Joe" was also on the list. His real name, however, was Santos Trafficantethe outfit's Florida and Cuba chieftain.
Maheu alerted O'Connell. "My God, look what we're involved with," Maheu said. O'Connell told his superiors. Questioned later before the 1975 U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (later nicknamed the Church Committee after its chairman, Frank Church, the Democratic senator from Idaho), O'Connell was asked whether there had ever been any discussion about asking two men on the FBI's most wanted list to carry out a hit on a foreign leader.
"Not with me there wasn't," O'Connell answered.
"And obviously no one said stopand you went ahead."
"Yes."
"Did it bother you at all?"
"No," O'Connell answered, "it didn't."
CONTINUED...
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/November-2007/How-the-CIA-Enlisted-the-Chicago-Mob-to-Put-a-Hit-on-Castro/index.php?cparticle=4&siarticle=3
Yet, the Mighty Wurlitzer plays the false tune that Kennedy was the guy who wanted Castro dead.
Spies: Ex-CIA Agent In Raleigh Says Castro Knew About JFK Assassination Ahead Of Time
Former CIA agent and author Brian Latell in Raleigh
By The Raleigh Telegram
RALEIGH A noted former Central Intelligence Agency officer, author, and scholar who is intimately knowledgeable about Cuba and Fidel Castro, says he believes there is evidence that Castros government knew about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 ahead of time.
SNIP...
Robert Kennedy, as the Attorney General of the United States, was in charge of the operation, said Latell. Despite the United States best efforts, the operation was nonetheless penetrated by Cuban intelligence agents, said Latell.
Latell said there were two serious assassination attempts by the United States against Castro that even used members of the mafia to help, but both of them were obviously unsuccessful.
He also said that there was a plot by the United States to have Castro jabbed with a pen containing a syringe filled with a very effective poison. Latell said that he believes the experienced assassin who worked for Castro who originally agreed to the plan may have been a double agent. After meeting with a personal representative of Robert Kennedy in Paris, the man knew that the plan to assassinate Castro came from the highest levels of the government, including John F. and Robert Kennedy.
The plan was never carried out, as the man later defected to the United States, but with so many double agents working for Castro also pledging allegiance to the CIA, Latell said it was likely that the information got back to Havana that the Kennedy brothers endorsed that plot with the pen.
CONTINUED...
http://raleightelegram.com/201209123311
Which to an amateur detective interested in justice would seem like a lead worth pursuing.
Kennedy ordered a rapproachment with Castro. Others in government worked against him.
The National Security Archive at George Washington University has the story:
Kennedy Sought Dialogue with Cuba
INITIATIVE WITH CASTRO ABORTED BY ASSASSINATION,
DECLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS SHOW
Oval Office Tape Reveals Strategy to hold clandestine Meeting in Havana; Documents record role of ABC News correspondent Lisa Howard as secret intermediary in Rapprochement effort
Washington D.C. - On the 40th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the eve of the broadcast of a new documentary film on Kennedy and Castro, the National Security Archive today posted an audio tape of the President and his national security advisor, McGeorge Bundy, discussing the possibility of a secret meeting in Havana with Castro. The tape, dated only seventeen days before Kennedy was shot in Dallas, records a briefing from Bundy on Castro's invitation to a U.S. official at the United Nations, William Attwood, to come to Havana for secret talks on improving relations with Washington. The tape captures President Kennedy's approval if official U.S. involvement could be plausibly denied.
The possibility of a meeting in Havana evolved from a shift in the President's thinking on the possibility of what declassified White House records called "an accommodation with Castro" in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Proposals from Bundy's office in the spring of 1963 called for pursuing "the sweet approach enticing Castro over to us," as a potentially more successful policy than CIA covert efforts to overthrow his regime. Top Secret White House memos record Kennedy's position that "we should start thinking along more flexible lines" and that "the president, himself, is very interested in (the prospect for negotiations)." Castro, too, appeared interested. In a May 1963 ABC News special on Cuba, Castro told correspondent Lisa Howard that he considered a rapprochement with Washington "possible if the United States government wishes it. In that case," he said, "we would be agreed to seek and find a basis" for improved relations.
The untold story of the Kennedy-Castro effort to seek an accommodation is the subject of a new documentary film, KENNEDY AND CASTRO: THE SECRET HISTORY, broadcast on the Discovery/Times cable channel on November 25 at 8pm. The documentary film, which focuses on Ms. Howard's role as a secret intermediary in the effort toward dialogue, was based on an article -- "JFK and Castro: The Secret Quest for Accommodation" -- written by Archive Senior Analyst Peter Kornbluh in the magazine, Cigar Aficionado. Kornbluh served as consulting producer and provided key declassified documents that are highlighted in the film. "The documents show that JFK clearly wanted to change the framework of hostile U.S. relations with Cuba," according to Kornbluh. "His assassination, at the very moment this initiative was coming to fruition, leaves a major 'what if' in the ensuing history of the U.S. conflict with Cuba."
CONTINUED with links, resources...
This is a story I don't see mentioned very often online, rarely in print, and never on television. I believe it's a good thing for Democrats to know, as well as all people who are interested in making peace and building a better world.
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'We have more will than wallet.' -- George Herbert Walker Bush, inaugural address
Octafish
Nov 2014
#116
I live in Sam Rayburn country and I am perplexed...to say the least...that it is very conservative
Horse with no Name
Nov 2014
#12
Well now, that's one way of interpreting McLean's magnum opus. But one could say that
KingCharlemagne
Nov 2014
#42
America was touched by the lowest demons in our nature, setting us on a different course.
Octafish
Nov 2014
#62
...this country has seen the corruption of our liberties by the MIC become the norm.
robertpaulsen
Nov 2014
#6
...and Cuba. Ike was president when Dulles hired the Mafia to kill Castro -- 1960.
Octafish
Nov 2014
#93
It is remarkable, the moments when it strikes. For me, HBO's ''Nixon by Nixon''...
Octafish
Nov 2014
#67
Since we are discussing people who need clues, perhaps you should spend a few moments
jtuck004
Nov 2014
#25
WHy don't you look up "hungry", which is what the children of the people who have been put and left
jtuck004
Nov 2014
#31
Hey, my friend, please do not confuse 'nostalgia' with 'reactionary.' I can assure you that
KingCharlemagne
Nov 2014
#46
Maybe just maybe we learn from the past that life does not have to suck like it does today. That
jwirr
Nov 2014
#80
WTF? Historians round the world are shaking their fists at you! :) - nt
KingCharlemagne
Nov 2014
#43
It's even more distressing to see 'progressives' forget what their party is supposed to be about.
sabrina 1
Nov 2014
#77
I was three. I still remember how upset I was. My mother had the old B & W tv on, I was watching
Dont call me Shirley
Nov 2014
#18
I don't want to piss in people's nostalgia Cheerios unduly, but JFK and RFK continued to
KingCharlemagne
Nov 2014
#45
JFK's assassination heralded the start of a string of murders of our best and brightest....
Hekate
Nov 2014
#50
Those weren't really great times for minorities and I really don't see it as
craigmatic
Nov 2014
#34
No I've read Dallek's book and seen all the documentaries but I'm not impressed by JFK.
craigmatic
Nov 2014
#63
Probably it would help understanding if you had actually been there. The Cold War was not one-sided
Hekate
Nov 2014
#72
Maybe you're right but it all comes back to ideology with JFK for me or rather his lack of one.
craigmatic
Nov 2014
#79
Once JFK allowed the Vietnamese military to kill Ngo and his brother we owned Vietnam.
craigmatic
Nov 2014
#107
Except JFK did not order assassination, despite what E Howard Hunt and CIA want us to believe.
Octafish
Nov 2014
#108
Jon Stewart said O'Reilly seemed ALMOST a Kennedy Democrat in comparison to RW extremists
pinboy3niner
Nov 2014
#56
In other words, a humorous exaggeration by a satirist for comic effect. Makes more sense that way.
Hekate
Nov 2014
#57
Sure was. Hear Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. describe what JFK did during the 1960 campaign...
Octafish
Nov 2014
#104
For a time capsule of the transition from the idealism of the late 1950s to
GreatGazoo
Nov 2014
#106