President John F. Kennedy's assassination, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and Cuba

“We are prepared to fight them and answer in kind. U.S. leaders should think that if they are aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe.” - Fidel Castro, September 6, 1963*

President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jackie Kennedy on November 22, 1963

Fifty six years ago on November 22, 1963 John F. Kennedy was assassinated. At 12:30pm Central Standard Time the Kennedys in their convertible limousine turned off Main Street at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. As they were passing the Texas School Book Depository, President John F. Kennedy was shot twice and slumped over toward First Lady Jackie Kennedy. The governor of Texas was also hit. At 1:00pm President Kennedy was pronounced dead.

Seven days later on November 29, 1963 President Lyndon Johnson and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover discussed the FBI investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on the White House telephone. The conversation was recorded and is now part of the public record. Hoover described to Johnson the capture of Lee Harvey Oswald after the shooting. Hoover also discussed Oswald's pro-Castro and anti-American associations.

On September 15, 2015 the international media reported on a newly declassified memo from the CIA concerning presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald that reported the following:

Three days after the shooting in Dallas, Texas, on 22 November 1963, Lyndon B Johnson was informed that Oswald had visited the Cuban and former Soviet Union embassies in Mexico City on 28 September 1963 to arrange visas.

The Daily Mail reported that the memo had "remained a secret until [September 15, 2015], when the CIA released 19,000 confidential documents from the 1960s."

German documentary filmmaker Wilfried Huismann described the circumstances surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the subsequent cover up by the Johnson White House with the tacit approval of Robert Kennedy in his 2006 documentary Rendezvous with Death. At the time of the film's release he gave an interview in Deutsche Welle on January 5, 2006 titled "Castro ordered Kennedy's Assassination." Below is an excerpt from the article:

DW-WORLD: We know that Lee Harvey Oswald killed John F. Kennedy. But who ordered his assassination and why? 

Wilfried Huismann: We settled the question of why in three years of research on this documentary in Mexico, USA and Cuba. Oswald had been an agent for the Cuban intelligence services since November 1962. He was a political fanatic and allowed himself to be used by the Cuban intelligence services to kill John F. Kennedy. It was a Cuban reaction to the repeated attempts of the Kennedy brothers, above all the younger Kennedy, Robert, to get rid of Fidel Castro through political assassination -- a duel between the Kennedys and the Castros, which, like in a Greek tragedy, left one of the duelists dead.

Declassified records in recent years corroborate Huismann's argument.

CIA documents, released in October of 2017, speculate that Oswald's motive for killing Kennedy was that he was "enraged after reading a detailed article in his hometown newspaper in New Orleans in September suggesting that his hero Castro had been targeted for assassination by the Kennedy administration." Oswald sought vengeance on Castro's behalf.  This was an embarrassment for the CIA and the White House that had repeatedly tried to assassinate Castro, and that President Kennedy's murder was blowback.

Another declassified CIA document, released in October 17, 2017 cites Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs and later U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, Thomas C. Mann who said "he had a 'feeling in his guts' that Castro paid Lee Harvey Oswald to assassinate the 35th president on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas." 

A pro-Castro Cuban expat, Gilberto Policarpo Lopez, was shadowing President Kennedy in the week prior to his assassination. Lopez was trying to get on the good side of the Castro regime and had applied for a visa to return to Cuba. Unlike Oswald, who was killed, Lopez made it back to Cuba and disappeared.

JFK’s Widow Blasted Times Over Cuba: Jackie singles out The New York Times for criticism for helping bring Castr... http://t.co/SBSZp8KH

— DonIrvine (@DonIrvine) September 19, 2011

John Kennedy had not been a fan of Fidel Castro and his revolution.  Four months after the assassination of her husband the First Lady recorded a series of interviews in 1964 about what life was like in The White House. The tapes were kept under seal by the Kennedy Library until September 2011.  On September 11, 2011 First Lady Jackie Kennedy's tapes were featured in the book Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy.

Cliff Kincaid from Accuracy in Media reported on what the former First Lady had to say about Cuba, the Castro revolution and how President Kennedy had viewed it.

"Jackie indicates that the Kennedys accepted the view of one of their family friends, Ambassador Earl E.T. Smith, that The New York Times and the State Department were largely responsible for Castro’s rise to power and the fall of Fulgencio Batista. 

Smith said that the U.S. government facilitated Batista’s downfall by withdrawing support for his government. But Smith also said that “Until certain portions of the American press began to write derogatory articles against the Batista government, the Castro revolution never got off first base.” 

Smith said that Matthews’ columns “eulogized Fidel Castro, portrayed him as a political Robin Hood, and compared him to Abraham Lincoln.” 

While JFK had no sympathy for Batista, he thought it was “awful” that President Eisenhower, a Republican, had permitted Castro to visit the U.S. after his seizure of power in Havana, said Jackie, going on to cite Smith’s book, The Fourth Floor, on how the U.S. State Department had paved the way for Castro’s takeover. The title is a reference to the officials responsible for Cuba policy who were on the fourth floor of the State Department."

This blog has been critical of The New York Times and its historic bias favoring Fidel Castro and the communist regime in Cuba. It was surprising to find that Jackie Kennedy was also critical of how The New York Times covered Cuba, and the role it played in Fidel Castro's rise to power. Kincaid from Accuracy in Media cites additional excerpts related to Cuba.

“We knew Earl Smith then, who’d been Eisenhower’s ambassador at the time,” said Jackie in the tapes featured in the book Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy. “When we were in Florida—that’s all Earl could talk about. Yeah, then Jack was really sort of sick that the Eisenhower administration had let him [Castro] come in and then The New York Times—what was his name, Herbert Matthews?” Jackie adds, “I can remember a lot of talk about it and wasn’t—didn’t even Norman Mailer write something?” 

Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who was interviewing Jackie, interjects, “Norman Mailer was very pro-Castro, yeah.” 

When Schlesinger noted that Smith had written a book about Castro being a communist and working with the communists, Jackie replied, “Yeah—The Fourth Floor? Well, he was always saying his troubles with the State Department—I remember there was a man named Mr. Rubottom he kept talking about. And how hard it was—warning against Castro and how just it was like, I don’t know, dropping pennies down an endless well. He just never could get through to the State Department. So, I suppose he thought he was a Communist, yeah.” 

Roy Rubottom was the Assistant Secretary of State at the time of Castro’s seizure of power. 

President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy addressed Brigade 2506 at the Orange Bowl in Miami on December 29, 1962 where he was given a flag of the Brigade and President Kennedy pledged that their flag would be returned to them in a free Havana.

Ten days prior to President Kennedy's assassination on November 12, 1963, in a White House memorandum, the continued commitment of the Kennedy Administration to pursue an aggressive policy to overthrow the Castro regime is clear:

(f) Support of Autonomous Anti-Castro Groups. The question was asked from where would the autonomous groups operate. Mr. FitzGerald replied that they would operate from outside U.S. territory. He mentioned two bases of the Artime group, one in Costa Rica and the other in Nicaragua. Also it was hoped that the autonomous group under Manolo Ray would soon get itself established in a working base, possibly Costa Rica. Mr. FitzGerald said that much could be accomplished by these autonomous groups once they become operational. A question was asked as to what decisions remain to be made. Mr. FitzGerald replied that we were looking for a reaffirmation of the program as presented, including sabotage and harassment. When asked what was planned in sabotage for the immediate future, he said that destruction operations should be carried out against a large oil refinery and storage facilities, a large electric plant, sugar refineries, railroad bridges, harbor facilities, and underwater demolition of docks and ships. The question was also raised as to whether an air strike would be effective on some of these principal targets. The consensus was that CIA should proceed with its planning for this type of activity looking toward January.

Following the President's assassination within a year these operations were mothballed and Fidel Castro would remain in power for the next half century, then replaced by his brother in a dynastic succession.

 

In the recordings, Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid also reported that "although JFK authorized an invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961, Jackie alludes to the failure to follow through with adequate military force. 'I mean,' she said, 'the invasion in the beginning and then no air strike—half doing it and not doing it all the way…' The result was a slaughter of anti-communist Cubans in the invasion force and a victory for the Castro regime."

*"Los líderes norteamericanos deben pensar que si están cooperando con los planes terroristas para eliminar a líderes cubanos, ellos mismos no estarán seguros" -Fidel Castro

Open Letter to Anne Ewbank regarding Atlas Obscura's article on Bacardi and Bay of Pigs Veterans

Dear Ms. Ewbank of Atlas Obscura,

Writing to express my disappointment in your October 31, 2019 article "Bacardi’s Head Honcho Once Tried to Bomb Castro’s Cuba" that sought to paint the history of the Bacardi family in a negative slant, and uses the slanders of the Castro dictatorship against the courageous volunteers who risked life and limb in April of 1961 when they tried to free their homeland from communist rule.



Two generations of the Bacardi family fought for Cuban independence with one family member fighting alongside General Antonio Maceo. During the Republic the family not only had enlightened business practices, but also engaged in civic activities that promoted a democratic culture. It is not an understatement to say that to understand Cuban history one must know the role played by Bacardi.

Emilio Bacardi: Rebel who fought for independence

In your article you making passing reference to Tom Gjelten's book, Bacardi and The Long Fight for Cuba :The Biography of a Cause.  It deserves more attention. Gjelten is a journalist for National Public Radio. A 2008 review of the book in The New York Times by Randy Kennedy touched on an important figure in the Bacardi family.

Emilio Bacardi Moreau, especially, comes to life as the book’s most powerful character, though one so strange that Gabriel García Márquez might have invented him. Emilio was imprisoned twice by Spain off the coast of Morocco for his revolutionary activities. But he still managed to hold the company together, to serve as Santiago’s mayor during the unsettled years of the American occupation, to help found a salon called the Victor Hugo Freethinker Group, to practice theosophy in a predominantly Catholic country and to track down a genuine mummy on a trip to Egypt, which he bought as the centerpiece for a museum he had founded in San­tiago. (Modest he was not; he signed his revolutionary correspondence with the name Phocion, after the Athenian statesman known as “the good.”)

His son Emilio Bacardi Lay actively took part in Cuba's war of independence. In 1895, he was a field officer for Gen. Antonio Maceo during the invasion of Cuba by independence forces. He reached the rank of colonel by the age of 22. He fled Cuba in 1961 due to the Castro regime. Bacardi Imports, Inc., re-established its headquarters in Miami in 1963 after having been based for a century in Santiago de Cuba. Emilio Bacardi Lay died in exile in Miami on October 14, 1972 at the age of 95 and was the last surviving ranking officer of Cuba's war of independence with Spain. This founding father of Cuba is buried in Miami.

Emilio Bacardi Lay

The Bacardi family tradition, which you make light of in your essay, is one of public service and steadfast defense of democracy against tyranny that stretches back 151 years. Each time that dictatorship arose in Cuba under Machado (1927-1933), Batista (1952-1959) and the Castros (1959-present) the Bacardis played an important role in the democratic resistance. 

They have continued this tradition and recognized the life and work of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, and in 2017 that of his daughter, Rosa María Payá. They are now supporting the Cuba Decide initiative to push for a democratic transition in Cuba.

There are two traditions competing for control in Cuba. One tradition, embodied by the Castro regime and prior dictatorships, is based on violence and the destruction or subjugation of the other has dominated Cuba's political discourse for six decades. It views dissent as treason and demands unanimity. 

The second tradition that built the institutions of Cuban democracy in the 19th Century using civic means, that founded companies with a social conscience was represented by Bacardi, in Cuba. This Cuban company, now in the diaspora, continues to contribute to the common good fighting for freedom using all means at their disposal. This tradition on the international scene, embodied by Cuban democrats played an important role in the drafting and adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.



Making light of this democratic tradition only serves to empower the dictatorship, and is a disservice to Cuban democrats and the many who have been killed resisting or fleeing the dictatorship over the past six decades.

This letter is not meant to attack you, the author, or your publication, but express the disappointment and anguish that such a well written article would regurgitate talking points of a six decade old dictatorship. It also serves to provide links and videos that present a factual history that too many have overlooked.

Pray that you revisit this history and take a closer look at Cuba's democratic tradition and give it a fairer shake.


Sincerely,

John Suarez

This Film Used To Be About Rum from MEL Films on Vimeo.

The reason why Brigade 2506 endorsed Donald Trump

Why in a tight race in Florida the Cuban vote could be decisive

Mr. Donald Trump accepting endorsement by Brigade 2506 on October 25, 2016

The Brigade 2506 Veterans Association formally endorsed Donald Trump for President yesterday afternoon and received him at The Bay of Pigs Museum in Little Havana. This is the first endorsement for President ever made by the Brigade in its six decade long history. 

As the insults rain down from those partisans upset with the Trump endorsement a natural question arises: Why after more than a half century of formal neutrality in Presidential elections did the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association decide to endorse a candidate?

There are a number of reasons for this decision and why Cuban Americans may vote for Trump in huge percentages:

Freeing a murderer of four Cuban Americans and downplaying state terrorism

On December 17, 2014 President Barack Obama announced that he was normalizing relations with the Castro regime, and he commuted the prison sentences of three Cuban spies. One of them Gerardo Hernandez was serving a life sentence for the murder of four members of Brothers to the Rescue on February 24 1996.  To add insult to injury two days later on December 19, 2014 at a year end press conference President Obama downplayed the Brothers to the Rescue shoot down as a "tragic circumstance" and not the premeditated act of state terrorism that had been plotted weeks in advance of February 24, 1996.

Armando, Mario, Carlos and Pablo murdered on February 24, 1996

The Clintons' terrible record on Cuba policy: then and now

The Clinton Administration engaged in unilateral concessions to the Castro regime and ended up with a mass exodus in 1994, a worsening human rights situation in Cuba, four young humanitarians murdered in an act of state terrorism over international airspace ordered by Fidel and Raul Castro on February 24, 1996. Despite all of this Bill Clinton refused to enforce the law tightening sanctions in 1996 in response to the shoot down, shook hands with Fidel Castro in 2000 and opened up trade with the Castro regime. In 2015 former President Clinton warmly greeted and met with Raul Castro despite his role in the murder of American citizens.

Clinton shook hands with Fidel Castro in 2000 and opened trade to Cuba

Meanwhile the Obama policy that Hillary Clinton championed in 2014 and 2015 has not had the desired results.  Human rights violations are at record levels in Cuba, there is a mass exodus of Cubans fleeing the island not seeing a future there  with the U.S. legitimizing the regime and assisting in a generational succession, and the U.S. is more isolated than ever in Latin America with its embrace of the Castro regime alienating it from democrats. The Colombian peace initiative,backed by the Obama administration, mediated by Raul Castro in Havana was rejected by the Colombian people in a national vote. The situation in Venezuela has descended into crisis as Nicaragua slides into dictatorship.

Three high profile instances of U.S. Cuba policy discriminating against Cubans

Protesting anti-Cuban discrimination by Carnival (2016)

It is not only civil liberties in Cuba that have taken a beating over the past two years but also in America to satisfy Castro regime demands. Below are three examples.

First, Carnival Cruise Line signed an agreement with the Castro regime on March 21, 2016 to sail to Cuba from the United States. In order to conduct their core mission Carnival had to agree to enforce General Castro's policy that bans all Cubans from traveling into the island by water. It did not matter if Cubans born on the island were now citizens of another country. Obama's Treasury Department on July 7, 2015 signed off on the Carnival Cruise Line - Castro alliance ignoring that an entire class of Americans would be discriminated against based on their national origin. Mass protests, boycotts and lawsuits led the Castro regime to blink when it became apparent that popular outrage would lead the cruise ship company to cancel its cruises.  

Second, the U.S. embassy in Cuba floated a trial balloon that announced that the United States government accepted that U.S. citizens of Cuban descent born in the United States are not recognized by the Castro regime as Americans but as Cuban nationals subject to the dictatorship's laws and regulations. Even though one was born in the United States and has never applied for dual nationality in Cuba they are treated as a Cuban born by the Castro regime in terms of responsibilities but not rights and the Obama State Department went along with it in order to have "normal relations." This also means that these U.S. citizens would be denied consular access in Cuba. The State Department had to back track in May of 2016 when this trial balloon sunk amidst negative press coverage and popular outrage.  

Third, American Airlines is pulling Cuban-American pilots and flight attendants off flights to Cuba in order to placate demands by the Castro regime. Fabiola Santiago, of The Miami Herald, obtained an American Airlines memo announcing the policy as follows: “Please remember that those who are Cuban born should be removed with pay from Cuba flights until we can verify what requirements the Cuban government has for these crew members.

Clinton, Trump called on to denounce violence against Cuba's Ladies in White

President Obama went to Cuba earlier this year to hobnob with Raul Castro and the rest of the elite communist leadership in Cuba. However the President remained relatively silent about the Ladies in White beaten up the same Sunday he and his family. 

On the eve of the debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, “The Rebel Yell”, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas student newspaper published a full page ad from the Center for a Free Cuba urging them to “prod the Obama Administration to condition any future negotiations and affirmative responses to General Raul Castro’s requests to … the immediate end to beatings and abuses of peaceful dissidents by the regime’s police.” The ad “calls on all Americans to petition General Raul Castro to stop beating and abusing these women.”

There are reasons, some of them listed above, that Cuban Americans who are single issue voters on the Cuba issue would be upset with the Obama Administration's Cuba policy. 

Furthermore Mrs. Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State advocated for this policy and gave a lecture at Florida International University focused on ending economic sanctions on Cuba.  The Obama administration and Clinton's running mate Senator Time Kaine have declared this policy irreversible.  

Mr. Donald Trump on the other hand has declared that he will undo it and try to reach an accommodation that improves the human rights situation of Cubans and protects U.S. interests. At the same time he praised Cuba's Ladies in White and blasted the Obama-Clinton Cuba policy.

These contrasting visions explain the decision of the Brigade to endorse Donald Trump today and reject the Obama-Clinton Cuba policy. 

In a tight race in Florida where three points separate the two candidates the Cuban American vote can play a decisive role in deciding who the next President of the United States will be. 

On November 8th we will see how Cuban Americans will vote and what impact they have in Florida. 

Meanwhile the testimony of Miriam de la Peña, whose son Mario was one of the four men murdered on February 24, 1996 who met with Donald Trump this morning, explains the behavior of the Obama administration that so outraged her.

Economic Sanctions: What remains left unsaid in the debate

Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth. The friends of totalitarianism in this country usually tend to argue that since absolute truth is not attainable, a big lie is no worse than a little lie.- George Orwell, The Prevention of Literature (1946)

Unlike totalitarian regime's that are constantly rewriting history by altering the facts of the historical record, the United States declassifies documents in order to provide a fuller picture of government policies for historians. This can also create opportunities for distortions and embarrassment for the entity doing the declassifying. However, there are times that it also offers insights into what might have been that can inform future policy discussions.

For example in the memo below from 1960 Lester D.Mallory, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, addressed to R. Roy, Jr Rubottom, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs that analyzed the situation in Cuba warning that "militant opposition" from outside of Cuba would only serve Castro's and the communist cause advocating a policy of economic sanctions in order to increase popular "disenchantment and disaffection" with the Castro regime.

Unfortunately, his memorandum although approved by Rubottom at the time was ignored and a year later the Bay of Pigs disaster took place that consolidated Castro and the communist regime as Mallory had foreseen. The earliest version of the embargo began at the end of the Eisenhower Administration on January 3, 1961 but full scale economic sanctions, involving restrictions on travel, did not take place until after the Bay of Pigs, well into the Kennedy Administration in 1962 and was due to the heavy Soviet presence there and the introduction of nuclear weapons onto Cuban soil.

If higher ups in the U.S. government had followed a policy of sanctions first then perhaps the Castro regime would have ended in the 1960s. What is interesting is that when a violent option fails such as the Bay of Pigs invasion, experts do not arise questioning the efficacy of violence in the way that they tend to do when a nonviolent effort fails to achieve policy objectives.

Economic sanctions are a nonviolent response that falls within the large arsenal of nonviolent tactics that can have a great impact without going to war. 

In the end, due to the Bay of Pigs debacle and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, economic sanctions were put in place not to eliminate the Castro regime but limit its ability to expand into the rest of the hemisphere and to force the Soviet Union to expend large sums in keeping the Castro regime afloat which ended up contributing to the USSR's demise in 1991 due to the economic dissatisfaction and hardship suffered by Russians.

Below is the memorandum:

499. Memorandum From the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Mallory) to the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Rubottom)1
Washington, April 6, 1960.

SUBJECT
The Decline and Fall of Castro

Salient considerations respecting the life of the present Government of Cuba are:

1. The majority of Cubans support Castro (the lowest estimate I have seen is 50 percent).

2. There is no effective political opposition.

3. Fidel Castro and other members of the Cuban Government espouse or condone communist influence.

4. Communist influence is pervading the Government and the body politic at an amazingly fast rate.

5. Militant opposition to Castro from without Cuba would only serve his and the communist cause.

6. The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship.

If the above are accepted or cannot be successfully countered, it follows that every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. If such a policy is adopted, it
should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.

The principal item in our economic quiver would be flexible authority in the sugar legislation. This needs to be sought urgently. All other avenues should likewise be explored. But first, a decision is
necessary as to the line of our conduct. Would you wish to have such a proposal prepared for the Secretary?2

LDM

1 Source: Department of State, Central Files, 737.00/4–660. Secret.
Drafted by Mallory.

2  Rubottom initialed the “yes” space provided on the source text.

http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v06/d499