Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (29 page)

Testifying to the Warren Commission on June 10, 1964, Secretary of
State Dean Rusk said:

I have seen no evidence that would indicate to me that the Soviet Union
considered that it had any interest in the removal of President Kennedy
I can't see how it would be to the interest of the Soviet Union to
make any such effort.

In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, even after
hearing the Nosenko story, concluded: "The committee believes, on the
basis of the evidence available to it, that the Soviet Government was not
involved in the assassination of President Kennedy."

But perhaps the best argument against Soviet involvement comes from
the memoirs of the highest-ranking Soviet official ever to defect to the
West. In his book, Breaking With Moscow, Arkady N. Shevchenko writes:

In November 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.
Everyone in the [Soviet] mission was stunned and confused, particularly
when there were rumors that the murder had been Soviet-inspired... .
Our leaders would not have been so upset by the assassination if they
had planned it and the KGB would not have taken upon itself to venture
such a move without Politburo approval. More important, Khrushchev's
view of Kennedy had changed. After Cuba, Moscow perceived Kennedy as the one who had accelerated improvement of relations between
the two countries. Kennedy was seen as a man of strength and determination, the one thing that Kremlin truly understands and respects. In
addition, Moscow firmly believed that Kennedy's assassination was a
scheme by "reactionary forces" within the United States seeking to
damage the new trend in relations. The Kremlin ridiculed the Warren
Commission's conclusion that Oswald had acted on his own as the sole
assassin. There was in fact widespread speculation among Soviet diplomats that Lyndon Johnson, along with the CIA and the Mafia, had
masterminded the plot. Perhaps one of the most potent reasons why the
U.S.S.R. wished Kennedy well was that Johnson was anathema to
Khrushchev. Because he was a southerner, Moscow considered him a
racist (the stereotype of any American politician from below the MasonDixon line), an anti-Soviet and anti-Communist to the core. Further,
since Johnson was from Texas, a center of the most reactionary forces
in the United States, according to the Soviets, he was associated
with the big-time capitalism of the oil industry, also known to be
anti-Soviet.

A final argument against Soviet involvement goes like this. While it is
conceivable that the Russians somehow contrived Kennedy's death and
that high-level U.S. government officials were forced to cover up this fact
to prevent a devastating world war, it makes no sense that these facts
would not have been leaked slowly to the American public in the late
1960s and early 1970s in an effort to gain support for the anticommunist
war in Vietnam and blunt the growing antiwar movement.

The fact that this didn't happen goes far to prove that hard evidence of
Soviet involvement in Kennedy's death is nonexistent.

But if the Russians had nothing to do with the assassination, the same could not be said for their proteges on the island of Cuba. Cubans-both
communist and anticommunist-would not have shed tears over the death
of the American president.

It appears obvious to most assassination researchers that Oswald's visit
to Russia was a planned intelligence operation-perhaps he was one of the
members of the Office of Naval Intelligence defection program. After all,
the Marines are technically part of the Navy.

Oswald's suspicious manner of entering and leaving Russia reinforce the
belief that he was an intelligence operative-as does the lavish lifestyle he
enjoyed while living in Minsk.

His hurried romance and marriage to Marina is yet another aspect of his
time in Russia that hints at intelligence undertones.

Then there are the tantalizing-though unproven-connections between
Oswald, the ex-Marine radar operator, and the ill-fated U-2 spy plane
incident.

And consider the men with whom Oswald came in contact and their
U.S. intelligence connections-U.S. embassy second secretary Snyder,
Traveler's Aid Society representative Raikin and embassy doctor Captain
Davison. Recall that both embassy personnel and news reporters voiced
the belief that Oswald was acting under orders from someone.

All this is capped by the strange defection and interrogation of Yuri
Nosenko, who apparently went to great lengths to assure U.S. government
officials that the Soviets were not responsible for Kennedy's death.

There is much to argue against Soviet intelligence involvement in the
assassination.

However, the same cannot be said for Oswald's involvement with
non-Soviet intelligence work-and the trail always leads back to the
United States.

[Assassinating Kennedy] would have been to run the risk that our country
would have been destroyed by the United States.

-Fidel Castro

On October 28, 1492, Christopher Columbus stepped ashore from the
long boat of his flagship Santa Maria in the Caribbean to become the first
Western European to land in the New World, which would come to be
known as America. This landing was the first step in the building of a
Spanish empire that included the island of Cuba, located on the northern
edge of the Caribbean, and ninety miles south of what is now Key West,
Florida.

During the centuries of Spanish rule, Cuba-the most westerly of the
West Indies-suffered the same fate as most islands in that chain. During
the unrelenting search for gold and other precious minerals, exploitation of
the land and resources, and ongoing raids by pirates, the natives were
decimated. Of the approximately one million Ciboney Indians living on
Cuba when Columbus arrived, all but a handful were dead by 1600.

On July 15, 1895, a group of Cubans in exile, encouraged by business
interests in the United States, proclaimed Cuba a republic and a longstanding revolt against Spain was intensified.

What followed was the Spanish-American War and in the summer of
1898-while Commodore George Dewey was conquering Manila Bay in
the Philippines-Colonel Theodore Roosevelt led his Rough Riders up San
Juan Hill as his part in subduing the island. A treaty was signed on
December 10, 1898, and Spain was expelled from the Western Hemisphere.

The United States established a military occupation government that
finally relinquished power to an elected Cuban government headed by
Tomas Estrada Palma on May 20, 1902. However, Cuba remained a
trusteeship of the United States, which directly or indirectly remained
dominant in the decision-making process of that country.

In 1952, former army sergeant Fulgencio Batista seized control in Cuba
by means of a military coup. A dictator and a despot, Batista nevertheless
worked closely with many American groups, especially organized criminals.

By the late 1950s, Cuba was a mecca for American gamblers, tourists,
investors, and off-shore banking speculators.

Only one man seemed determined to overthrow Batista-Fidel Castro.

Born the son of a Spanish-born plantation owner on August 13, 1926,
Fidel Castro had an active boyhood in rural eastern Cuba. He once
threatened to burn the house down if his parents didn't send him to school.

In 1952, he ran for Parliament but was blocked when the dictator Batista
canceled the elections. From that time on, Castro devoted himself to
ousting Batista.

Gathering some followers, Castro's first assault on Batista took place on
July 26, 1953, when they attacked Batista's Moncada Barracks. The attack
was a military disaster. About half of the rebels were caught, tortured, and
killed. Castro was put on trial. Conducting his own defense, the youthful
Cuban lawyer stated: "Condemn me. It does not matter. History will
absolve me."

Sentenced to fifteen years in prison, Castro was released after twentytwo months. He then fled to Mexico where he began reorganizing his
guerrilla fighters. He used the brutality displayed by Batista at the Moncada
Barracks as a rallying point and named his revolution the "26th of July
Movement" after the disastrous attack. Since 1959, this date has been
celebrated as Cuban independence day.

In 1956, Castro swam the Rio Grande and entered the United States to
arrange the purchase of a dilapidated yacht named the Granma. Returning
to Mexico, he began planning the next stage of his revolution-the invasion of his homeland. Confident that he would rapidly gain followers,
Castro even made his invasion plans public.

On December 2, 1956, when he and eighty-two guerrillas waded ashore
on the swampy coast of his native Oriente Province, Batista's soldiers
were waiting in ambush. Only twelve guerrillas, including Castro, survived and escaped into the Sierra Maestra mountains.

After Batista proclaimed his death, Castro invited a reporter for The New
York Times to his camp to show he was very much alive and he predicted
that final victory would be his.

After several years of basic survival in the mountains-during this
time, Castro grew his now-famous beard-Castro and his followers began
to take the initiative. By the summer of 1958, his guerrilla band had grown
to more than eight hundred, and later that year a detachment led by
Ernesto "Che" Guevara captured the provincial capital of Santa Clara in
Central Cuba.

Although backed by an army of some thirty thousand, Batista panicked
and decided to quit the island. Taking bags of cash, Batista fled to the
Dominican Republic in the first few hours of 1959.

Castro's fantasy revolution had suddenly become a dream come true.
For two weeks, Castro slowly moved toward Havana. The excitement and
passions of the moment were almost overpowering. Veteran news corre spondents could not recall a more jubilant scene since the liberation of
Paris in World War II. For a period of weeks, the jublilation continued,
but then became subdued in the wake of trials and executions of prerevolution
''war criminals."

Castro began the formidable task of restructuring Cuban society.

With the defeat of the dictator Batista, Castro became the undisputed
leader of Cuba, even proclaiming himself "Jefe Maximo" (maximum
leader). And he began making drastic changes in the island.

Castro closed down the gambling casinos and houses of prostitution that
had been the source of an estimated $100 million a year for organized
crime in the United States. He nationalized the sugar industry, the backbone of Cuba's economy, and by the summer of 1960, he had seized more
than $700 million in U.S. property, including banks that had been accused
of laundering money for American interests. (Even his parents' plantation
was nationalized, angering his own mother and prompting his younger
sister, Juanita, to leave Cuba and become an anti-Castroite.)

Some social gains were made on the island. Within a few years,
illiteracy had been reduced from 24 percent to 4 percent.

But Castro also proclaimed that he was the leader of socialist revolution
in South America, although he strongly maintained that he was not a
communist. American interests were quick to respond. The U.S. government abruptly restricted sugar imports and began encouraging its allies not
to trade with Castro.

With his trade restricted and hearing rumors that the U.S. might invade
the island at any time, Castro turned to the Soviet Union for support. He
began selling sugar to Russia in 1960 and soon Soviet technicians and
advisers began to arrive on the island. This confirmed the suspicions of
American interests, who began to brand Castro a communist and a subverter of the status quo in Central and South America.

As Castro's social, economic, and agricultural reforms continued, often
with brutal effectiveness, Cubans began to split into two factions-the
Fidelistas (supporters of Castro) and the anti-Castroites, many of whom
fled Cuba. By the end of the first year of Castro's takeover, more than one
hundred thousand Cubans were living in the United States.

As the United States stepped up its program of isolating Cuba-first
with cutting off the island's sugar markets and oil supplies, then through
diplomatic maneuvers with other South American countries, and finally by
introducing arms and saboteurs into Cuba-Castro grew more and more
fearful of an armed invasion by the United States.

In November, 1963, Castro was quoted as telling the United States: "Of
course we engage in subversion, the training of guerrillas, propaganda!
Why not'? This is exactly what you are doing to us."

On January 3, 1961, the United States ended diplomatic relations with
Cuba after Castro demanded the U.S. embassy staff be cut to only eleven persons. Castro charged that 80 percent of the staff were "FBI and
Pentagon spies." Two weeks later, the United States forbade its citizens to
travel to Cuba. In the same month, the month that John F. Kennedy took
office as president, Castro placed his militia on twenty-four-hour alert,
proclaiming that the "Yankee invasion" was imminent.