15: Suspicious Minds

In the summer of 1958, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and President Eisenhower became suspicious of Fidel Castro’s true intentions after U.S. sailors from Pawley’s childhood stomping grounds of Guantanamo were seized by Castro forces. This was followed by Raul Castro’s demand for $10,000 from United Fruit. United Fruit representatives were “considerably concerned over the general lawlessness of some of the Castro elements in the area, communist infiltration into the movement and lack of control by Fidel over his errant brother, Raul.” United Fruit’s Vice President of Cuban Operations Raines described President Fulgencio Batista’s “Cuban Army in the area as being completely ineffectual.” As it had successfully done when Guatemala’s Arbenz threatened corporate profits, United Fruit once again looked for President Eisenhower to eliminate this new thorn in Cuba.1

The job of preventing communism’s spread in the Western Hemisphere lay on the shoulders of the Colonel J.C. King who oversaw the CIA’s Western Hemisphere Division. Colonel King, years later, responded to a question from Attorney General Robert Kennedy stating that the Agency concluded Castro was unacceptable to the U.S. politically, as early as June or July 1958. Admiral Arleigh Burke commented that some in the State Department, with the exception of Under Secretary Robert Murphy, still had hopes for Castro being politically compatible in December of that year.

A declassified foreign policy document states that “in late 1958 CIA made two attempts (each approved by the Department of State) to block Castro's ascension to power. The first attempt was made in November 1958 when contact was established with Justo Carrillo and the Montecristi Group. The second attempt was made on or about the 9th of December 1958 when former Ambassador William D. Pawley, backed by the CIA Chief of Station in Havana, and Colonel King, approached Batista and proposed the establishment of a Junta to whom Batista would turn over the reins of government.”2

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18: Controlling Cuban-Exile Chaos

Publicly Vice President Richard Nixon was asserting that the U.S. should take a hands-off approach to Cuba and hope for the best.1 But in fact, Nixon had been dealing with the issue of Castro since at least April 19, 1959, when he met with Castro and then “prepared a 4-page secret memorandum and sent out copies to President Eisenhower, Secretary Herter and to Allen Dulles.” Herter was serving as Secretary of State in place of an ailing John Foster Dulles who coincidentally was hospitalized at the same time as former Secretary of State George C. Marshall. Dulles died May 24, 1959, while Marshall passed October 16, 19592 leaving a hole in William and Edna Pawley’s personal lives and William’s sphere of influence.

In the 12 months since Castro ascended to power, the Cuban government had expropriated 70,000 acres of property owned by U.S. sugar companies and United Fruit. Once again, the company would call for U.S. action to overthrow a government.3 

The tsunami of Cuban exiles arriving in the U.S. made that mission seem easy if someone could vet them to determine the best future political leaders and organize an effective fighting force.

On January 3, 1960, President Eisenhower announced that the U.S. was severing diplomatic relations with Cuba. On January 13th a Special Group meeting attended by CIA Director Allen Dulles and Livingston Merchant from the State Department discussed “Anti- Castro Activities.” With these actions and Eisenhower's March 17th approval of a plan to invade Cuba, he was in essence establishing an undeclared war that would hang like an albatross around Uncle Sam’s neck.

The CIA began dealing with Fidel on a formal basis on January 8, 1960, when Director Allen Dulles asked Deputy Director of Plans Richard “Dick” Bissell to organize a special task force. Ten days later the Western Hemisphere Division “organized Branch 4 (WH/4) as an expandable task force to run the proposed Cuban Operations” manned “with 18 at Headquarters, 20 at Havana Station, and 2 at Santiago Base.”

Heading WH/4 was Jacob “Jake” D. Esterline (aka Jacob Engler) who had gained “extensive guerilla warfare experience in World War II with the OSS” and was “one of the principals in Project PBSUCCESS” in Guatemala in 1954. “Esterline was the choice of J.C. King, Chief, WH Division.” As head of the WH/4 Cuban unit during the fifteen-month run up to the Bay of Pigs invasion, Esterline took his orders from the Deputy Director Plans Richard Bissell but frequently had direct contact with J.C. King and the Miami-based Cuban expert, William Pawley. Both were to be reckoned with because they “had known Republican Party affiliations.”4

King’s full role during the period and many interactions with Pawley will never be known. His papers that once filled eight safes—then only two—disappeared, according to an official history of the period.5

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26: Days of Swine and Rose's Boys: Bay of Pigs Invasion

Fear of retaliation was a concern as the CIA planned the demise of two Western Hemisphere leaders, Castro and Trujillo. According to the CIA’s Deputy Director for Support, Col. L.K. White, on March 22, 1961, the CIA’s Sheffield Edwards and Jack Earman met with CIA Deputy Director General Charles Cabell “to point out to them that we were not furnishing the Director the personal protection which we should be furnishing in these critical times.”1

On April 4, 1961, President John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic president whose mother, Rose, prayed the rosary throughout his life, heard about the “immorality” of an invasion of Cuba voiced by Senator William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. While Fulbright “denounced the proposition out of hand,” Adolphe Berle declared his belief that “a ‘power confrontation’ with Communism in the Western Hemisphere was inevitable.” Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Thomas C. Mann, “who previously had been on the fence, now spoke up for the operation.”2 Rose’s son’s march toward disaster proceeded headlong with the momentum created by Pawley-intelligence-exile axis.

Pawley on April 15th sat down with FBI agents Leman L. Stafford, Jr. and George E. Davis, Jr. for an interview that Pawley had requested. He let them know he was “a personal friend of the Director of the FBI, as well as of President Eisenhower, former President Truman and many other influential people in the United States and Latin America.” Pawley then voiced “that he is deeply concerned about the communist trend in Cuba and its effects on other Latin American countries, and that he has been in close contact with the U.S. State Department and the CIA relative to the situation.”3

Manuel Ray Rivero “took the view that the internal resistance was so strong that Castro could be overthrown without an ‘invasion’ from the outside.” (In truth, there was only insignificant damage from the 110 insurgent bombings between October 1960 and April 17, 1961,4 when Jose A. Perez “Pepe” San Roman led the Bay of Pigs invasion.)5

Ray’s wishy-washy stance on the need for an invasion did not sit well with Pawley, and in the weeks before the invasion Ray complained that assertions that he favored Cuba maintaining relations with the U.S.S.R. “were not true and part of a ‘campaign against him by Mr. Pawley of the Miami City Transit Company.’”6

Despite the desire to make it look like a Cuban led invasion, among the first men ashore were two non-Cubans, Grayston L. Lynch (aka Gray) and William “Rip” Robertson, who had been among those suggested as possible assassins of Castro. Lynch, a fearless veteran of the D-Day invasion at Normandy Beach, the Battle of the Bulge, and Heartbreak Ridge in Korea, would survive the debacle at the Bay of Pigs and go on to direct and participate in hundreds of more clandestine operations against Cuba. A decade before dying in 2008, Lynch published his account of the invasion imbued with anger at the failure of the Kennedy Administration to provide the essential air cover titled Decision for Disaster: Betrayal at the Bay of Pigs. Rip Robertson’s passion for adventure ended a decade later when he “died in 1973 of malaria in Laos.”7

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29: Strange Dreadfellows: Citizens Committee for a Free Cuba

On December 29, 1962 at the Orange Bowl in Miami, President Kennedy told Manuel Artime (center) and other Brigade 2506 members that their "flag will be returned to them in a free Havana." The attendees clapped and cheered believing JFK was prepared to go to war. 

But as 1963 unfolded, a more diplomatic approach was taking place, involving negotiations with Cuba and the Soviet Union. Soon a group of prominent U.S. citizens decided it was time to turn up the heat on Kennedy. Freedom House, headed by Leo Cherne called upon Americans on March 25, 1963, to unite in a movement for a Free Cuba, without communist influence.1 In May, his rallying cry would lead to the formation of the Citizens Committee for a Free Cuba. Cherne himself had been trying, like Pawley, to organize exiles for several years.2

Politically, Cherne had begun as a Wendell “Willkie Republican.” Willkie had switched from Democrat to Republican in 1939 as Hitler moved across Europe. With conservative Republicans viewing him as an “internationalist,” he lost the 1940 Presidential election to the re-elected Democrat Franklin W. Roosevelt. Willkie then helped Roosevelt push through the Lend-Lease policy to aid Great Britain and the Allied nations. Before dying in 1944, Willkie also served as FDR's liaison to Chiang Kai-shek which reportedly evolved into an affair with Madame Chiang. At the same time, Mrs. Willkie became a member of The Committee to Defend America by Aiding Anti-Communist China along with Clare Boothe Luce.

As director of the Willkie Memorial, Leo Cherne undoubtedly knew Willkie’s aide-decamp, Lamoyne (Lem) Jones, who in the 1960's became spokesman for the CIA's Cuban Revolutionary Council.3

Cherne in 1951 received “Covert Security Clearance to provide cover under Project BLANKET”—a program permitting “the subject to receive information about National Security Council 5412/2 matters on a need-to-know basis.” The CIA viewed individuals with international contacts as assets that could be tapped for gaining foreign country insights and for making contacts with potential informants, opinion influencers and future leaders. In 1954, Cherne received “Covert Security Clearance for use by Central Cover Division in providing cover under Project QKENCHANT.”4 This provided “Provisional Covert Security Approvals (PCSA) and Covert Security Approvals (CSA), with the Office of Security in connection with acquisition of Corporate Cover for Action.”5

A 1952 memo about using the Research Institute of America to provide cover for agents revealed that “Leo Cherne and Carl Novgard have been given covert operational clearances.”

Within less than a week of President Kennedy cutting funds to the Cuban Revolutionary Council, newspapers announced the establishment of the Cherne’s Citizens Committee for a Free Cuba (CCFC), comprised of prominent Americans with backgrounds in the academia, the military, news, labor, science, religion, government, and other walks of life.

Lyle C. Wilson’s article in The Oakland Tribune referred to it as a blue-ribbon committee on Cuba and stated the “CCFC is nonpartisan.” Its sponsors intended “to develop considerable political muscle, however” and had already developed an eight-page mimeographed pamphlet. The organization’s Executive Secretary, Daniel James, was listed as Editor in 19636 and served until Paul Bethel became Editor the following year. Bethel was a friend of the CIA’s anti-Castro propagandist in Mexico, David Phillips, who oversaw the activities of the exile student movement, Directorio Revolutionario Estudiantil (DRE), which the agency referred to by the cryptonym AMSPELL, according to Jefferson Morley’s Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA.7

The Free Cuba News (FCN) Vol. 1, No. 1 pamphlet dated May 4, 1963, stated that the Citizens Committee for a Free Cuba saw an urgent need for an effective U.S. Cuban policy embracing a method of freeing the island from communism.” Adding to the dread of communism in Cuba was the assertion that “the enslavement of 6 million Cubans may now lead to the enslavement of 200 million persons in the remaining 19 Latin American republics” which is “wholly part of an offensive designed to enslave the United States.”

The pamphlet also promised a “punishing non-partisan attack” on President Kennedy whom “does not now have an effective U.S. Cuban policy.” The group believed it could rally Democrats against JFK, noting that it was “evident that the 1964 Republican presidential and congressional campaigns will make Cuba a major issue.”

The first issue of FCN further asserted that the overall situation in Latin America is much worse than the American people realize. “What CCFC is trying to tell Americans is not merely that it can happen here but that it probably will happen here unless Americans move to defend themselves now.”8

The American public however had faith in JFK’s handling of the Cuba situation. Nearly six out of ten polled believed that a war over Cuba in the next five years was unlikely.9

Among the fear-mongering Citizens Committee for a Free Cuba sponsors listed were former Bay of Pigs invasion co-planner, Admiral Arleigh Burke, and Pawley’s old friend Clare Boothe Luce.10

At the time that the CCFC was formed, the public would not know that Luce, Leo Cherne, Jay Lovestone, Irving Brown and Ernest Cuneo, had connections with the CIA. Nor would many be aware that Cherne, Luce, Lovestone, Christopher Emmet, Dr. Sidney Hook, Sal B. Hoffman, and Edgar Ansel Mowrer had previously supported the pro-Chiang Kai-shek China Lobby11 that had long benefited from Pawley’s activism. Two decades earlier, Mowrer had been the reporter who was hired to draft a final report for “Colonel William J. Donovan, U.S. Coordinator of Information concerning a mission to the Far East in autumn of 1941” prior to setting up a U.S. intelligence infrastructure there after getting input from Colonel Chennault of the Flying Tigers.12

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