Former CIA analyst Brian Latell thinks Fidel Castro was behind JFK’s assassination, a self-serving theory for a former employee of an agency that conspired to assassinate Fidle Castro 634 times. His is one of many JFK conspiracy theories which I doubt. Latell also thinks Fide Castro is a hypocritical dictator, which I can believe.
In his book review, An appalling indictment of Fidel, in the MIami Herald, Latell writes:
“With the collaboration of Axel Gylden, a prominent French journalist, [Juan Reinaldo] Sánchez has penned a scathing account of his years in Castro’s entourage. It is filled with surprising details of the Cuban dictator’s hypocritically regal life style. An island retreat, so exorbitantly lavish that only a select few have been invited to experience it, has been kept secret from the Cuban masses.”
Source: An appalling indictment of Fidel | Miami Herald Miami Herald.
The Cuban government can clarify these important historical issues by releasing its files on the Castro assassination plots and JFK’s assassination, as recommended by Bill Simpich.
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From a 5-Star Amazon review of Jefferson Morley’s
CIA and JFK: The Secret Assassination Files
“Can’t imagine a more meticulous take down of the CIA’s decades-long subterfuge surrounding the assassination.”
CIA and JFK: The Secret Assassination Files, provides the fullest account of the role of CIA operations officers in the events leading to the death of JFK.
Another five-star Amazon review:
“Highly recommended to all readers wanting to learn the truth on matters that the Government still fights to keep secret, some 53 years after the tragic event.”
CIA and JFK: The Secret Assassination Files
Castro served about 50 years. If there were 638 assassination attempts, that equals about 1 every month of his rein. Color me skeptical.
“… employee of an agency that conspired to assassinate Fidle Castro 634 times.”
The source for that number – I believe it was 638 – is (if we’re using the same source) Fabian Escalante, the former head of Cuban Intelligence or DGI.
From what I’ve read nowhere does he claim that ALL 638 attempts were undertaken by the CIA. Some were taken by Cubans acting on their own. And there is no evidence that anything approaching that number was undertaken by the CIA.
As to Mr. Latell: it seems to me that his claims will stand or fall or their own and shouldn’t be judged based on who his former employee was. As the late Sidney Hook once observed: “Before challenging a person’s motive, answer their arguments.”
Finally, I find it troubling, Mr. Morley, that you would uncritically accept the word of Escalante – the head of the secret apparatus of a bloody dictatorship – but think Mr. Latell’s claims are “self-serving.”
Troubling and perhaps revealing.
What many may not know is, in the days following JFK’s assassination, Win Scott, the respected CIA chief of station in Mexico City was instructed to stop pursuing investigative leads that would indicate Cuban involvement. Given the mindset of military and intelligence leadership at that time (where any reason to mount an invasion of Cuba would have been quite acceptable) one can only speculate as to the reasons for such instructions. My personal suspicions are that the CIA had reason to “know” Castro did not have a hand in the assassination and further investigation would only expose and compromise what had been on ongoing intelligence/CI operation. Thorough investigation may have well lead back to the CIA’s own doorstep.
Curiously, Dr. Latell published his book review on June 5, after the death of Lt. Colonel Juan Reynaldo Sanchez in Miami on May 26, without any mention about it.
It seems also worthy of mention that the CIA was not involved in all the 634 plots to assassinate Castro. Most of them were the work of Cuban exiles or anti-Castro militants inside Cuba, but the Castro State Security reported even the most minor detail, so that a crazy chat in a park about killing Castro, if overheard by one of his agents, was recorded as an attempt.
The Cuban propaganda statistically arranged the plots by U.S. administrations, as if the WH or the CIA were always behind: Eisenhower 38, Kennedy 42, Johnson 72, Nixon 184, Carter 64, Reagan 197, Bush 16, Clinton 21. Such an arrangement provides a prima facie evidence of the madness whirling around the issue.