36: Back to Business: Talisman Sugar

Pawley’s re-approval for covert activity in 1964 had a focus on the Miami business community. However, CIA documents about Pawley all but disappear for years. Even a review of his activities in the next decade assumed that his involvement with the agency ceased the same year his status was renewed: “Subject appears to have remained of interest to the WH Division and the DCI until as late as 1964.”1

In that year, Pawley became president and chairman of Talisman Sugar Corp. in Belle Glade, Florida, which ranked among the largest private properties in Central Florida. As his manager of Talisman, he appointed Mike Cervera, a participant in the Bay of Pigs invasion.2 Talisman already employed a number of other opponents of Castro. The FBI looked into employees Angelito Goitia on October 16, 1961, and Octavio Ledon Baradania on December 11, 1962.3

Prior to Pawley taking control of the company, the Chief of Station of JMWAVE received a dispatch in September 1962 regarding Dr. Fernando De La Riva’s plan to organize “50 Cubans to come to Brazil [where Pawley had been Ambassador] to engage in anti-Castro activities ... De La Riva is owner or manager of the Talisman Company in Miami and also owns a part of Usina Baixa Grande sugar refining company located in Campos, Rio de Janeiro state ... De La Riva’s empire is associated with the Ford family’s financial interests.”4

The following year, FBI Special Agent Leman L. Stafford, Jr. reported on December 30, 1963, an interview with Jesus Sanchez-Martinez, an electrician at Talisman Sugar Mill, who claimed to have been invited along on a fishing trip from Miami Marine Stadium by Orlando Ramirez and Evelio Alpizar. When they got out to sea headed toward Cuba, U.S. Customs intercepted the boat and found bombs onboard.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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