John F. Kennedy was killed 61 years ago today. Did Fidel Castro get him first?

 “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 Kennedy with the First Lady in the backseat moments in Dallas.

Sixty-one 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.

On the 61st anniversary of this political assassination the spin doctors and agents of influence continue to cloud the circumstances leading up to the murder of America's 35th president. However, the question that needs to be asked looking back to that fateful day: who benefited most from his death? Cui bono?

Following the Bay of Pigs debacle in April 1961 the White House initiated Operation Mongoose. President Kennedy's brother and Attorney General of the United States, Robert Kennedy, headed up the sustained effort to topple the Castro regime and this included the assassination of Fidel Castro.

 On December 29, 1962, President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy met with the Bay of Pigs veterans, and over 40,000 Cuban exiles at the Orange Bowl. On that day the returning soldiers gave President Kennedy the flag of Brigade 2506. " I want to express my great appreciation to the brigade for making the United States the custodian of this flag. I can assure you that this flag will be returned to this brigade in a free Havana," stated President Kennedy to all assembled there.

Daniel Harker of the Associated Press interviewed Fidel Castro on September 7, 1963 at the Brazilian Embassy in Havana at a reception, and in it the communist dictator made an explicit threat. “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.”

It is evident in a White House memorandum from ten days before President Kennedy was killed on November 12, 1963, that the Kennedy Administration was still committed to pursuing an aggressive strategy to topple the Castro regime:

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.

Less than eleven months after making his pledge at the Orange Bowl, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas by Lee Harvey Oswald.

On November 29, 1963 in a phone call with President Lyndon Baines Johnson, J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI revealed Oswald’s links with the Castro regime. "This angle in Mexico is giving us a great deal of trouble because the story is they have this man Oswald getting $6500 from the Cuban Embassy and then coming back to this country with it."

Politico in 2014 reported, "White House aide Joseph Califano, who was part of the anti-Castro plotting, said he was convinced that 'Robert Kennedy experienced this unbelievable grief after his brother’s death because he believed it was linked to his—Bobby’s—efforts to kill Castro.'” 

Lee Harvey Oswald raises his fist after being captured in Dallas, TX

In 1968, Johnson told ABC reporter Howard K. Smith that “Kennedy was trying to get to Castro, but Castro got him first.”

Leo Janos, one of President Lyndon B. Johnson's former speech writers, interviewed him for the July 1973 issue of The Atlantic in which LBJ "expressed his belief that the assassination in Dallas had been part of a conspiracy. 'I never believed that Oswald acted alone, although I can accept that he pulled the trigger." Johnson said that when he had taken office he found that "we had been operating a damned Murder Inc. in the Caribbean.' A year or so before Kennedy's death a CIA-backed assassination team had been picked up in Havana. Johnson speculated that Dallas had been a retaliation for this thwarted attempt, although he couldn't prove it."

Following the President's assassination within a year Operation Mongoose was scrapped and Fidel Castro would remain in power until 2006, then replaced by his brother Raul in a dynastic succession following a health crisis. General Raul Castro remains the maximum authority in Cuba. Fidel Castro died of old age after causing much suffering in Cuba and around the world in places such as Ethiopia, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

Respected German documentary filmmaker Wilfried Huismann in 2006 made the case that Fidel Castro was behind the killing of the 35th president, and explained why.

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.

 

Fidel Castro and John F. Kennedy.

President Trump returns to office next year, and during the campaign he promised to declassify all the remaining government records surrounding the assassination if he got a second term. Will Havana's role finally be fully exposed in this historic crime?

 

"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

Reject mob violence and lies across the board: An appeal to the center

Reflection on the present crisis

Pro-Trump protesters storm into the US Capitol during clashes with police

The United States is in the midst of a dangerous period. We are in the midst of a global pandemic, economic dislocation, and political crisis. American cities have been burning since May 26, 2020 caused by rioters following the death of George Floyd leading to the deaths of at least twenty five, and on January 6, 2021 the Capitol of the United States was attacked by rioters, who believed that the November 2020 presidential election had been stolen causing the deaths of five.

There are profound divisions and great numbers don't know their history and are being indoctrinated with one that is politicized. News and social media platforms have developed models that exacerbate divisions. 

Watching all this reminds one of another difficult time 1968, a year of riots, assassinations, and war.  Robert Kennedy speaking one day after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered by an assassins bullet, and two months before his own assassination gave an analysis of the time relevant for today at the Cleveland City Club.

No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of the people. Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

Some of the individuals involved in the insurrection on January 6, 2020 at the Capitol identify as Christians. Jesus commands us to love our enemies, and pray for those who persecute us. When one says the Lord's prayer there is a call to reconciliation to obtain pardon from the creator:  "If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions."

There are profound injustices and problems that require remedy, but violence is not the answer. But unfortunately, in the American political context born out of a revolutionary war of independence and a Civil War there is a cult of violence that is shared by many, but is not at the core of American strength. The vast improvements in American life did not arise out of war but out of commerce, politics, and civic nonviolent struggle. Long time peace scholar Michael Nagler  presents the theorem as follows: Nonviolence sometimes “works” and always works, while by contrast, Violence sometimes “works” and never works.  Nagler offers a more detailed explanation.

The exercise of violence always has a destructive effect on human relationships even when, as sometimes happens, it accomplishes some short-term goal. The exercise of nonviolence, or Satyagraha, always brings people closer. This explains why Gandhi, after fifty years of experimentation in every walk of life, could declare that he “knew of no single case in which it had failed.” Where it seemed to fail he concluded that he or the other satyagrahis had in some way failed to live up to its steep challenge.  Taking the long view, he was able to declare that “There is no such thing as defeat in non-violence. The end of violence is surest defeat.”

The monsters are more exciting than the saints. Popular culture focuses on the destroyers: Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot and their defenders and critics debate their merits, despite the societies they led being destroyed on every level: moral, material, spiritual and the rest. This is a mistake of the first order, and dangerous at a time of great economic dislocation and political polarization. But violence is visual, and "exciting" to the eye. Whereas an economic boycott, or a sit-in are often much more effective but not as visually captivating.

It would be better to focus on those who preserved the peace and made things better such as Konrad Adeneur, Alcide De Gasperi, Winston Churchill and others who founded a European order that prevented the outbreak of a major war for over seventy years as Metterneich and another generation did from 1815 to 1914. In Latin America Luis Alberto Monge, Romulo Betancourt, Patricio Aylwin, and others oversaw democratic consolidation in their respective countries along with rising living standards for their respective peoples for generations.

It is important to understand the power of nonviolent action and the pursuit of truth. Dr. Gene Sharp, a theoretician of nonviolent action, who passed away in 2018 understood that there was nothing passive about nonviolent resistance and that it also required strategy to increase the odds of success in a struggle. In 1990 at the National Conference on Nonviolent Sanctions and Defense in Boston, Gene Sharp succinctly outlined his argument.

"I say nonviolent struggle is armed struggle. And we have to take back that term from those advocates of violence who seek to justify with pretty words that kind of combat. Only with this type of struggle one fights with psychological weapons, social weapons, economic weapons and political weapons. And that this is ultimately more powerful against oppression, injustice and tyranny then violence."

The alternative to Gandhian and Kingian nonviolence, currently popular in some quarters is the Frankfurt school and Critical Theory which is a dead end in identity politics and repressive tolerance that will lead to more polarization and violence. Practitioners have justified the destruction of property and looting which in practice leads to anarchy and mass killings.  

 

Michael Nagler, already mentioned above, explained why property destruction is not nonviolent in 2008 in the above video. Nonviolence is the way, but the critical theory people, who despised Gandhi, now seek to compromise satyagraha by continuing to promote violence as an alternative. 

Satyagraha is the way of truth and nonviolence and that is the path back to the center and democratic consensus.

Positive change is possible but it requires study, reflection and moral action. Below is the first part of an online course on nonviolence that I highly recommend that people seeking to make the world a better place take.

The JFK Files: Oswald, Castro and Cuba connection to John F. Kennedy assassination

“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 Kennedy with the First Lady in the backseat moments in Dallas.

 Fifty four years ago today on November 22, 1963 around 12:30pm 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 Mrs. 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.

President John Kennedy and AG Robert Kennedy

 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." Three years later President Donald Trump announced the release of all the remaining files related to the John F. Kennedy assassination in what amounted to a dump of an additional 2,800 files.

#JFKFiles pic.twitter.com/AnPBSJFh3J

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 28, 2017

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." 

Oswald visited Cuban, Soviet embassies in Mexico on 9/28/63

Further linkage between Lee Harvey Oswald and the Castro regime is also found among the newly declassified files in a "transcript of a 1967 cablegram [that] recounted how a man named Angel Ronaldo Luis Salazar was interrogated at the Cuban embassy in Mexico City the year before by Ramiro Jesus Abreu Quintana, “an identified Cuban intelligence officer,” about Kennedy’s assassination. During the interrogation, Salazar claimed he remarked that Oswald must have been a good shot. According to him, Abreu replied 'Oh, he was quite good….I knew him.'"

Lee Harvey Oswald's membership card in a pro-Castro group

Furthermore who benefited the most from President Kennedy's death? Ten days prior to his 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 assassination of President Kennedy within a year these operations were mothballed and Fidel Castro would remain in power for the next five decades. Is there anyone else who benefited more from the events of November 22, 1963?

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.

 Alexander Haig in the documentary placed it in an electoral context explaining what it would've meant for the Democratic Party if the truth about the Kennedy assassination became known:

General Alexander Haig, for example, thinks Kennedy's successor, President Lyndon B. Johnson, "was convinced Castro killed Kennedy, and he took it to his grave." Haig served as a military adviser to Johnson and later as President Reagan's Secretary of State. He tells Huismann in the film about memos from 1963 that suggested Johnson's fear of letting the Castro-assassination story get out to the American public. Johnson's attitude, said Haig, was that "we cannot allow the American people to believe that Castro ... had killed Kennedy," because "there would be a right-wing uprising in America which would keep the Democratic Party out of power for two generations."

 The Kennedy brothers plotted Fidel Castro's assassination, but the Communist dictator got them first. This is what has been covered up by the U.S. government for 54 years.

"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

Cuban regime denies involvement in Kennedy Assassination on 50th anniversary

“I have …wondered at times if we did not pay a very great price for being more energetic than wise about a lot of things, especially Cuba.” – Robert Kennedy  (1968)

Fifty years ago today on November 22, 1963 around 12:30pm 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 Mrs. Kennedy. The governor of Texas was also hit. At 1:00pm President Kennedy was pronounced dead.

On the eve of the 50th anniversary the Cuban Interests Section in Washington D.C. tweeted three times on November 21, 2013 at 9:47am, at 5:09pm and finally at 7:19pm the same message: "No Cuban official was involved in JFK's assassination, Fidel Castro told The Atlantic"

Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic had published a new article a day earlier from a three year old interview with Fidel Castro in which the Cuban dictator not only denies involvement in the assassination but argues that "Oswald could not have been the one" while backing Oliver Stone's version of events. Goldberg is the same journalist who discounts the Castro regime's history of terrorism.

Furthermore, the Atlantic Journalist fails to address new information involving the Castro regime and the assassination of President Kennedy.  According to Brian Latell, who was the chief CIA officer in Latin America and a Cuba specialist, in his 2012  book, Castro's Secrets: The CIA and Cuba's Intelligence Machine,: 

"On the morning of the day the president was killed, Fidel Castro ordered a senior intelligence officer in Havana to stop listening for non-specific CIA radio communications and concentrate instead on 'any little detail, any small detail from Texas, ...Four hours later, the airwaves came alive with news that Kennedy was dead."  Latell concludes that "Fidel knew of Oswald’s intentions and did nothing to deter the act."

However in the midst of Goldberg's puff piece for Castro an important piece of information was revealed. 

"Fidel reserved his animus mainly for Robert Kennedy, who was attorney general in his brother’s administration and loathed Fidel and his revolution. It was Robert Kennedy, Fidel believes, who was behind U.S. plots to have him assassinated."

Arthur Schlesinger revealed in his book on Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General's commitment to overthrowing the Castro dictatorship quoting him from a November 1961 meeting:

"My idea is to stir things up on island with espionage, sabotage, gender disorder, run & operated by Cubans themselves with every group but Batistaites & Communists. Do not know if we will be successful in overthrowing Castro but we have nothing to lose in my estimate."

Yesterday in an interview with former CIA operative Eugenio Rolando Martinez the elderly Cuban exile placed into context Fidel Castro's frame of mind in November of 1963. Castro felt isolated and betrayed by his Soviet allies during the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 and had operational knowledge of efforts of the Kennedy Administration to overthrow his dictatorship and plots to have him assassinated.

Eugenio Rolando Martinez believes that both Kennedy's were victims of Castro

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 assassination of President Kennedy within a year these operations were mothballed and Fidel Castro would remain in power for the next five decades. Is there anyone else who benefited more from the events of November 22, 1963 and of June 6, 1968?

The Kennedy assassinations: Cui Bono?

“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.”  - See more at: http://westwingreports.com/jfk-elm-street/sept-8-1963-is-oswald-aware-of-castros-threat#sthash.i2cey3xj.dpuf

“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*

What Oliver Stone refuses to tell you about the Kennedy assassination.

As the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy approaches the spin doctors and agents of influence have already begun to cloud the circumstances leading up to the murder of America's 35th president. However, a question that needs to be asked looking back a half century later: who benefited most from his death?

Motive and Opportunity

Recent revelations indicate that Cuban intelligence officials had indeed met with Lee Harvey Oswaldo and that Fidel Castro had prior knowledge that John F. Kennedy would be assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963 but the author, former national intelligence officer for Latin America, Brian Latell does not go as far as to say that the Cuban dictator orchestrated the assassination. However, a respected German documentary filmmaker Wilfried Huismann says that Castro was behind the killing of the 35th president:

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.

Oliver Stone, and other apologists and defenders of Fidel Castro, would point the finger at a military coup d'état led by Vice-President Lyndon Baines Johnson who became the 36th president of the United States. At the same time they claim that President Kennedy was seeking a rapprochement with Fidel Castro that angered anti-Castro and anti-communist elements that participated in the conspiracy to murder President Kennedy. They also claim that Lee Harvey Oswald was a "patsy" and innocent of the crime for which he was arrested. Fidel Castro is quoted at the time of speaking well of Kennedy and that Khrushchev had indicated to him that he was a man one could talk with. Years later Fidel Castro reasserted that it would have been insane for him to have been involved in Kennedy's assassination.

What they fail to mention was that Castro asked Khrushchev in a letter dated October 26, 1962 to launch a preemptive nuclear strike on the United States and the Cuban dictator became enraged when the Soviet leader backed down and struck a deal with the United States without including the Cubans in the negotiations.  George Anne Geyer in her book Guerilla Prince describes in greater detail Fidel Castro's reaction to the missiles being pulled out of Cuba:

 As the missiles were leaving his island, Castro's tongue exploded with every scatological and cursing word he could grasp for. He railed at Khrushchev to the editors of Revolucion, screaming, "Son of a bitch! Bastard! Asshole!"Later he would call Khrushchev a "maricon"or homosexual.

Relations between the Castro regime and the Soviet Union cooled for a time and the Cuban tyrant reached out to former Nazis and right wing German elements for training and weapons. Following the Bay of Pigs debacle in April of 1961 the Kennedy brothers initiated Operation Mongoose. President Kennedy's brother and Attorney General of the United States, Robert Kennedy, headed up the sustained effort to topple the Castro regime and this included the assassination of Fidel Castro. Coincidentally, Operation Mongoose operations were phased out after the assassination of President Kennedy and the departure of Robert Kennedy from his position as Attorney General in September of 1964.

Stone and others who point the finger at Cuban exiles also fail to mention President Kennedy's December 29, 1962 visit to the Orange Bowl where he addressed Cubans exiles, received the flag of Brigade 2506 pledging to return it to them in a free Cuba. They also fail to mention that Cuban exiles had other strong allies in the Kennedy Administration, chief among them Attorney General Robert Kennedy, the president's brother.  Following President Kennedy's assassination they would never again have as much support to overthrow Castro as provided by that Administration.

John Simkin, an unreconstructed leftist, provides a timeline for an assassination attempt against Fidel Castro initiated in September of 1963 with the instruments for the killing of the Cuban dictator handed to a double agent on November 22, 1963, the very day President Kennedy was killed:

In September, 1963, Cubela ( a double agent working for Castro to infiltrate U.S. intelligence) had a meeting with the CIA in Sao Paulo, Brazil. It was suggested that Cubela should assassinate Fidel Castro. According to a CIA report Cubela asked for a meeting with Robert Kennedy: "for assurances of U.S. moral support for any activity Cubela under took in Cuba." This was not possible but FitzGerald, now Chief of the Cuban Task Force, agreed to meet Cubela. Ted Shackley was opposed to the idea as he was now convinced that Cubela was a double-agent.

Desmond FitzGerald and Nestor Sanchez met Cubela met in Paris on 29th October, 1963. Cubela requested a "high-powered, silenced rifle with an effective range of hundreds of thousands of yards" in order to kill Fidel Castro. The CIA refused and instead insisted on Cubela used poison. On 22nd November, 1963, FitzGerald handed over a pen/syringe. He was told to use Black Leaf 40 (a deadly poison) to kill Castro. As Cubela was leaving the meeting, he was informed that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated.

 Taking into consideration all of the above and the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination which included the end of the U.S. government program to overthrow Fidel Castro and the sidelining of Robert Kennedy from government. ( This should also raise questions about the motives behind the younger Kennedy's assassination on June 5, 1968 at the hands of the Palestinian Sirhan Bishara Sirhan.) The Castro regime had (and still has) close relations with the Palestinian Liberation Organization and other Middle-Eastern terrorist organizations providing them training in Cuba.  Consider for a moment who could have more to lose in a Robert Kennedy presidency than Fidel Castro?

Cuban intelligence had the means

The coverup and aggressive misinformation campaign surrounding the assassinations of both John and Robert Kennedy is reminiscent of other campaigns carried out by Cuban intelligence and their mentors the East German intelligence service also known as the Stasi.

In 1967 in West Berlin an unarmed left wing demonstrator was killed by a police officer in what became known as “the shot that changed the republic.” The 1967 killing put conservative West Germany on the defensive and led the country to tilt towards social democrats in 1969 who took a softer line on East Germany. Thirty two years later the German police officer was unmasked as a Stasi spy.  This Stasi trained the Cuban intelligence service and provided them with trade craft to sucessfully be able pull off both active measures and shaping public opinion to neutralize negative blow back.   The United States also has a long history of underestimating the Cuban intelligence services over the past 50 years.

The Castro regime had the motive, the opportunity and the means to assassinate both Kennedy brothers and cover it up.



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