The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups

3. THE COMMITTEE BELIEVES, ON THE BASIS OF THE EVIDENCE AVAILABLE TO IT, THAT ANTI–CASTRO CUBAN GROUPS, AS GROUPS, WERE NOT INVOLVED IN THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY, BUT THAT THE AVAILABLE EVIDENCE DOES NOT PRECLUDE THE POSSIBILITY THAT INDIVIDUAL MEMBERS MAY HAVE BEEN INVOLVED.

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The committee investigated possible involvement in the assassination by a number of anti-Castro Cuban groups and individual activists for two primary reasons:

First, they had the motive, based on what they considered President Kennedy’s betrayal of their cause, the liberation of Cuba from the Castro regime; the means, since they were trained and practiced in violent acts, the result of the guerrilla warfare they were waging against Castro; and the opportunity, whenever the President, as he did from time to time, appeared at public gatherings, as in Dallas on 22 November 1963.

Second, the committee’s investigation revealed that certain associations of Lee Harvey Oswald were or may have been with anti-Castro activists.

The committee, therefore, paid close attention to the activities of anti-Castro Cubans—in Miami, where most of them were concentrated and their organizations were headquartered, and in New Orleans and Dallas, where Oswald, while living in these cities in the months preceding the assassination, reportedly was in contact with anti-Castro activists.

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(2) Attitude of anti-Castro Cubans toward Kennedy. — President Kennedy’s popularity among the Cuban exiles had plunged deeply by 1963. Their bitterness is illustrated in a tape recording of a meeting of anti-Castro Cubans and right-wing Americans in the Dallas suburb of Farmer’s Branch on 1 October 1963. In it, a Cuban identified as Nestor Castellanos vehemently criticized the United States and blamed President Kennedy for the US Government’s policy of “non-interference” with respect to the Cuban issue. Holding a copy of the September 26 edition of the Dallas Morning News, featuring a front-page account of the President’s planned trip to Texas in November, Castellanos vented his hostility without restraint:

Castellanos:… we’re waiting for Kennedy the 22nd, buddy. We’re going to see him in one way or the other. We’re going to give him the works when he gets in Dallas. Mr good ol’ Kennedy. I wouldn’t even call him President Kennedy. He stinks.

Questioner: Are you insinuating that since this downfall came through the leader there [Castro in Cuba], that this might come to us…?

Castellanos: Yes ma’am, your present leader. He’s the one who is doing everything right now to help the United States to become Communist.

(b) The committee investigation

The committee initiated its investigation by identifying the most violent and frustrated anti-Castro groups and their leaders from among the more than 10 °Cuban exile organizations in existence in November 1963. These groups included Alpha 66, the Cuban Revolutionary Junta (JURE), Commandos L, the Directorio Revolutionary Estudiantil (DRE), the Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRC) which included the Frente Revolucionario Democratico (FRD), the Junta del Gobierno de Cuba en el Exilio (JGCE), the 30th of November, the International Penetration Forces (InterPen), the Revolutionary Recovery Movement (MRR), and the Ejercito Invasor Cubano (EIC). Their election evolved both from the committee’s independent field investigation and the examination of the files and records maintained by the Federal and local agencies [that were] then monitoring Cuban exile activity. These agencies included local police departments, the FBI, the CIA, the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (now the Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA), the Customs Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Department of Defense.

The groups that received the committee’s attention were “action groups”—those most involved in military actions and propaganda campaigns. Unlike most others, they did not merely talk about anti-Castro operations, they actually carried out infiltrations into Cuba, planned, and sometimes attempted, Castro’s assassination, and shipped arms into Cuba. These were also the groups whose leaders felt most betrayed by US policy toward Cuba and by the President; they were also those whose operations were frustrated by American law enforcement efforts after the missile crisis.

(1) Homer S. Echevarria. — For the most part the committee found that the anti-Castro Cuban leaders were more vociferous than potentially violent in their tirades against the President. Nevertheless, it was unable to conclude with certainty that all of the threats were benign. For example, one that the committee found particularly disturbing—especially so, since it was not thoroughly looked into in the 1963–4 investigation—came to the attention of the Secret Service within days of the President’s death, prompting the Acting Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago field office to write an urgent memorandum indicating he had received reliable information of “a group in the Chicago area who [sic] may have a connection with the J.F.K. assassination.” The memorandum was based on a tip from an informant who reported a conversation on 21 November 1963 with a Cuban activist named Homer S. Echevarria. They were discussing an illegal arms sale, and Echevarria was quoted as saying his group now had “plenty of money” and that his backers would proceed “as soon as we take care of Kennedy.”

Following the initial memorandum, the Secret Service instructed its informant to continue his association with Echevarria and notified the Chicago FBI field office. It learned that Echevarria might have been a member of the 30th of November anti-Castro organization, that he was associated with Juan Francisco Bianco-Fernandez, military director of the DRE, and that the arms deal was being financed through one Paulino Sierra Martinez by hoodlum elements in Chicago and elsewhere.

Although the Secret Service recommended further investigation, the FBI initially took the position that the Echevarria case “was primarily a protection matter and that the continued investigation would be left to the US Secret Service,” and that the Cuban group in question was probably not involved in illegal activities. The Secret Service initially was reluctant to accept this position, since it had developed evidence that illegal acts were, in fact, involved. Then, on 29 November 1963, President Johnson created the Warren Commission and gave the FBI primary investigative responsibility in the assassination. Based on its initial understanding that the President’s order meant primary, not exclusive, investigative responsibility, the Secret Service continued its efforts; but when the FBI made clear that it wanted the Secret Service to terminate its investigation, it did so, turning over its files to the FBI. The FBI, in turn, did not pursue the Echevarria case.

While it was unable to substantiate the content of the informant’s alleged conversations with Echevarria or any connection to the events in Dallas, the committee did establish that the original judgment of the Secret Service was correct, that the Echevarria case did warrant a thorough investigation. It found, for example, that the 30th of November group was backed financially by the Junta del Gobierno de Cuba en el Exilio (JGCE), a Chicago-based organization run by Paulino Sierra Martinez. JGCE was a coalition of many of the more active anti-Castro groups that had been founded in April 1963; it was dissolved soon after the assassination. Its purpose was to back the activities of the more militant groups, including Alpha 66 and the Student Directorate, or DRE, both of which had reportedly been in contact with Lee Harvey Oswald. Much of JGCE’s financial support, moreover, allegedly came from individuals connected to organized crime.

As it surveyed the various anti-Castro organizations, the committee focused its interest on reported contacts with Oswald. Unless an association with the President’s assassin could be established, it is doubtful that it could be shown that the anti-Castro groups were involved in the assassination. The Warren Commission, discounting the recommendations of Slawson and Coleman, had either regarded these contacts as insignificant or as probably not having been made or else was not aware of them. The committee could not so easily dismiss them.

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(c) Oswald and anti-Castro Cubans

The committee recognized that an association by Oswald with anti-Castro Cubans would pose problems for its evaluation of the assassin and what might have motivated him. In reviewing Oswald’s life, the committee found his actions and values to have been those of a self-proclaimed Marxist who would be bound to favor the Castro regime in Cuba, or at least not advocate its overthrow. For this reason, it did not seem likely to the committee that Oswald would have allied himself with an anti-Castro group or individual activist for the sole purpose of furthering the anti-Castro cause. The committee recognized the possibility that Oswald might have established contacts with