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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32: "What it is ain't exactly clear"*

On October 4, 1963, The New York Times reported that Republican conservative candidate for President Barry Goldwater believed President Kennedy was helping the Soviets. The President was considering a wheat sale to the Russians, which former Vice President Nixon also spoke adamantly against asserting it would be “harming the cause of freedom.”1

Six days later, asserting it was good for the US economy, JFK announced his approval of the $250 million wheat sale to the Soviet Union while ruling out sales to Cuba and China. A schism between Red China and Russia had appeared at about the same time, and the intelligence and defense communities would debate whether it was real and or a treacherous ploy to deceive the United States.2

The President issued a denial that the CIA was pursuing an independent course in South Vietnam where a “serious disagreement over United States policies” had developed “between Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge and the head of the Central Intelligence Agency there.” The New York Times had reported “that Mr. Lodge would be happier with a new C.I.A. chief.”3  The 6' 3" tall Lodge, also felt that South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem should be overthrown by the country’s military because of his harsh treatment of the nation's Buddhists.4

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35: Our only hope, Goldwater

On March 6, 1964, a splintering of Pawley’s clout in the Florida Republican Party was revealed. Pawley’s favored candidate, conservative Barry Goldwater--whom Pawley believed was "our only hope" for the nation-- “expressed himself as not being ‘overly concerned’ with the Florida intra-party struggle. Nevertheless, there is bad blood in Florida Republican ranks, and it could hurt Barry,” reported the Muscatine Journal.

Clifton White and Richard Kleindienst were sent by Goldwater to Tampa to smooth things over. “When Barry Goldwater landed in Palm Beach, he was handed a memo from, a close adherent of Basil LaVergne, head of the Draft Goldwater movement in Florida. The memo was a petition for Barry Goldwater to step in and appoint somebody with the authority to force both Brown and Cramer into line. William D. Pawley, “one of the most respected Florida Republicans” was mentioned as one possibility: Victor Hruska, vice president of the Prudential Insurance Company of Jacksonville, was another.

It was a sticky situation for Goldwater because Pawley and Hruska had already been approved by Brown, “and Goldwater could hardly undercut Grenier, his southern regional director, without causing bad blood in Alabama and Mississippi.”

The Florida conservatives believed that LBJ would lose because “Lyndon Johnson hurt himself on his appearance in Florida last week when he skipped over the dubious constitutionality of some features of the civil rights bill.”1

On March 25, 1964, the FBI reported on its interrogation of Dr. Fernando Penabaz Coburn, a Duke graduate who became a Cuban lawyer before fleeing to Miami in 1960 and becoming a newspaper writer and anti-Castro propagandist at JMWAVE. Like others in Miami’s anti-Castro milieu, Penabaz claimed Oswald had connections to Castro. 

While attending “the Third Annual National Anti-Communist Leadership School, sponsored by the Christian Crusade,” Penabaz met with its founder, evangelical Reverend Billie James Hargis who spread his message on hundreds of radio and TV stations across America. “Dr. Penabaz stated that during the period of his visit at Shreveport, [February 1964] he recalled having a visit in the room of the Reverend Hargis, at which General Edwin Walker was present.” Regarding the topic of the JFK assassination, “Dr. Penabaz stated he probably did say that one could argue in favor of the thesis that Castro may have had reasons to eliminate President Kennedy,” because “President Kennedy wanted him deposed as the leader in Cuba.” In fact, in September 1963, “Castro virtually threatened President Kennedy by a statement to the effect that leaders threatening him (Castro) better be careful, because they, too, could suffer accidents.” Penabaz even claimed there was a cartoon in a Cuban newspaper showing Castro laughing over a dead Kennedy shortly before the assassination—but the FBI found no copy of it.

Penabaz told his FBI interrogator he was unaware of the article in William F. Buckley’s National Review that asserted a reporter at The New York Times “had obtained from a very good source the story of Oswald’s trip to Mexico and subsequent return to the United States with the sum of $10,000, but that the Times “mysteriously withheld the story.” Months earlier, Clare Boothe Luce had used her good friend Buckley’s National Review to denounce Kennedy.2

“With respect to information that Oswald, on return from his alleged trip to Cuba, was accompanied by Quintin Pino [Machado], who was to take Oswald to Cuba after the assassination, Dr. Penabaz stated he had not made such a statement to anyone as being fact. He stated that he had heard [from Miguel de Leon] of an alleged plot wherein Quintin Pino had crossed into Texas from Mexico for the purpose of rescuing Oswald.” Miguel “de Leon stated he had learned this while visiting the home of Cuban engineer Sixto Mesa about a week after the assassination” but could not recall who said it. Mesa “stated it was Dr. [Adolfo] Vilasuso who had related the story.” Yet, Dr. Vilasuso stated he possessed no authentic information.

Dr. Penabaz denied to the FBI that he claimed “Oswald had been shot by Jack Ruby for failing to follow the escape plan after the assassination” but “may have said that such a possibility existed.”3 During a television interview on December 5, 1963, Penabaz had also claimed Jack Ruby was a communist.4 Coincidentally, Penabaz knew the DRE’s Carlos Bringuier whose interactions with Oswald on the streets of New Orleans helped paint him as a communist.5

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41: Was Dallas A Target, Too?

Following his arrest at Watergate, Hunt released Give Us This Day, an autobiography detailing his role in the Bay of Pigs invasion. Hunt candidly states that his first recommendation to the agency after measuring Cuba’s social climate was to kill Castro. His superiors tried their best, but success eluded the CIA hit men run by William Harvey. Hunt characterizes General Charles Cabell as the man most responsible for the failure of the invasion, because Cabell waited for JFK’s order for a second air strike instead of initiating the order himself. Among those waiting for the order was Frank Sturgis.

The Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein in All The President’s Men described Watergate burglar Hunt as a “psychological warfare expert.” In a second autobiography, Undercover: Memoirs of an American Secret Agent, E. Howard Hunt quotes Tacitus, a Roman emperor killed by his own soldiers whose brother is also slain by the soldiers. In a classic vendetta, revenge must combine both death and disgrace.

If a classicist, sought a vendetta against Charles Cabell and President Kennedy, the perfect place for the assassination would be Miami where the President had promised to the invasion brigade members that their flag would fly one day in Cuba.

If a Miami shooting was not possible, revenge would be sweet in Dallas, where General Charles Cabell’s brother, Earle, was Mayor as part of a long family tradition. For 90 years the Cabell family had been intertwined with running the city and criminal justice in and around Dallas:1

• 1874-1876 Mayor William L. Cabell

• 1877-1879 Mayor William L. Cabell

• 1883-1885 Mayor William L. Cabell (became a U.S. Marshall)

• 1900-1904 Mayor Ben E. Cabell (previously Sheriff)

• 1961-1964 Mayor Earle Cabell2 (previously President of Dallas Crime Commission)

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