9: Forrestal Plunges into the Cold War

On the Sunday night of May 22, 1949, former Secretary of the Navy and recent first Secretary of Defense James Forrestal was found dead on the ground outside Bethesda Naval Hospital. A few months earlier he had been asked to resign as Secretary of Defense by President Truman and then spent time with Robert Lovett in Hobe, Florida before entering Bethesda Naval Hospital for depression.

While some questioned if he had intentionally died by suicide, fallen accidentally or been induced to jump by experimental drugs or nefarious forces, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin was convinced that “communists hounded Forrestal to his death. They killed him just as definitely as if they had thrown him from that sixteenth-story window in Bethesda Naval Hospital.” McCarthy also stated that “while I am not a sentimental man, I was touched deeply and left numb by the news of Forrestal’s murder. But I was affected much more deeply when I heard of the communist celebration when they heard of Forrestal’s murder. On that night, I dedicated part of this fight to Jim Forrestal.” McCarthyism was born.1

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14: Pawley's Caribbean Oyster

With his Doolittle Special Study Group’s work done, Pawley continued pursuing his lucrative Latin American activities. He was issued a regular passport on December 14, 1954 “to visit Venezuela for an undetermined stay on personal business.”1 As a teenager, he had ridden a donkey into the Venezuelan jungles “to sell stearic acid and paraffin” and in his early twenties returned “to sell diving suits” to pearl hunters. Two decades later, he and Edna “spent Easter in Caracas, Venezuela with Walter Donnelly and his wife.”2

Like his father, the Caribbean region became the focus of Pawley’s expanding financial wealth. In his autobiography, Pawley detailed how he became entwined in business with Trujillo while the guest of honor at the head table of a large dinner attended by “400 Dominicans and Americans, evenly divided.” He “sat between Trujillo and our Ambassador [William Townsend] Pheiffer.” The discussion turned to “mining and oil ventures which led into the subject of the need for the Dominican Republic to develop its abundant natural resources.” Pawley soon became an adviser to Trujillo on how to profitably exploit the island nation’s natural resources and the “results were spectacular, especially in the development of one of the most valuable nickel mines anywhere.3

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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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19: CIA Informant R-1

In late September 1959, the CIA’s Bernie Reichardt asked whether the Agency “had any information on Fabio Freyre, a nephew of Julio Sanchez, who is Bill Pawley’s next door neighbor.” Freyre gave Pawley “some important material” which Pawley “will forward as soon as possible.” Pawley also “told Bernie he will try to get a job for General Martin Diaz Tomayo”1 (one of those who had been selected for the post-Batista junta) giving Reichardt the impression that the Spanish-speaking Miamian was continuing the job-finding role he played in Panama.

When Pawley and Reichardt discussed Freyre, “Pawley suggested to Bernie that a recorder and mike for his office would be a good idea since it would permit him to make recordings of the conversations with Cubans and Dominicans who come in to discuss political matters.”2

As a result, plans were made to survey Pawley’s office to install a recording device and the “mike and wire installation was made on 15 October 1959 by employees of an Office of Security field office” according to a 1975 memo summarizing the agency’s relationship with Pawley that was finally declassified December 15, 2021.3

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