22: QDDALE'S Deep Pockets for Special Proposals

Two days after learning that Fidel Castro was aware of William Douglas Pawley’s activities, a cable appears in Pawley’s 201 file with a tantalizing, but redacted, glimpse at the strategy to exfiltrate Dr. Juan Antonio Rubio Padilla in the spring of 1960. The exfiltration operation involved using Pawley’s boat with a “proposed rendezvous off Sand Key light 16 April between Cuban yacht and KUBARK (cryptonym for CIA) for transfer passengers.”1

The day before the rendezvous, Pawley successfully requested a meeting with FBI Miami Special Agents Leman L. Stafford and George E. Davis, Jr. at his own business office where he had his secret recording equipment. According to a memo that the Special Agent in Charge of the Miami office later sent to Director Hoover, Pawley reiterated his praise of the FBI while revealing negotiations with Trujillo. Pawley also dropped some big names. “During the course of the interview, he disclosed that he is a personal friend of the Director of the FBI, as well as President Eisenhower, former President Truman and many other influential people in the United States and Latin America.”

Pawley told the agents he’s “deeply concerned about the communist trend in Cuba and its effect on other Latin American countries, and that he has been in close contact with the U.S. State Department and the CIA relative to this situation.” Understanding the friction between the FBI and CIA, Pawley “expressed admiration for the SIS program formerly operated by the FBI in Latin America during World War II and expressed the opinion that it had been a great mistake to supplant the FBI’s operation with that of another agency.”

Pawley revealed “that he had attempted unsuccessfully to make tape recordings of the two interviews, involving Merola and Bartone which took place in Pawley’s office; however due to a technical error on the part of one of Mr. Pawley’s employees, this recording failed. Mr. Pawley exhibited to agents his recording equipment, which he keeps in a locked closet in his suite of offices, and he offered his facilities in the event this Office [the FBI] ever desired to make a recording of any conversation held there.”

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