JFK & the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters (29 page)

“1. The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that the evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial.

“2. Speculation about Oswald’s motivation ought to be cut off, and we should have some basis for rebutting thought that this was a Communist conspiracy or (as the Iron Curtain press is saying) a right-wing conspiracy to blame it on the Communists. Unfortunately the facts on Oswald seem about too pat—too obvious (Marxist, Cuba, Russian wife, etc.).”
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To rebut any thought of either kind of conspiracy, Katzenbach’s memorandum recommended “the appointment of a Presidential Commission of unimpeachable personnel to review and examine the evidence and announce its conclusions.”
[153]

Before Lyndon Johnson jettisoned the CIA’s Mexico City case against Cuba and the Soviet Union, he used it (without Hoover’s reference to an impostor) as a lever to help put together just such a presidential commission of respected Cold War leaders. He ensured the commission’s public acceptance by convincing Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren to chair it. Warren at first refused to become Johnson’s pawn. However, in a taped phone conversation on Friday, November 29, LBJ described to Senator Richard Russell how he had co-opted Warren’s conscience, by an argument that accepted at face value the CIA’s Mexico City evidence. Johnson then manipulated Russell onto the commission, using the same Mexico City argument with which he had coerced Warren:

LBJ: “Warren told me he wouldn’t do it under any circumstances. Didn’t think a Supreme Court Justice ought to go on . . .

“He came down here and told me
no
—twice. And I just pulled out what Hoover told me about a little incident in Mexico City and I said, ‘Now I don’t want Mr. Khrushchev to be told tomorrow—and be testifying before a camera that he killed this fellow and that Castro killed him and all I want you to do is look at the facts and bring in any other facts you want in here and determine who killed the President.’”
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Russell told LBJ that he couldn’t work with Warren, but to no avail:

Russell: “Now, Mr. President, I don’t have to tell you of my devotion to you, but I just can’t serve on that commission. I’m highly honored you’d think about me in connection with it. But I couldn’t serve on it with Chief Justice Warren. I don’t like that man . . .”

LBJ: “Dick, it has already been announced. And you can serve with anybody for the good of America. And this is a question that has a good many more ramifications than on the surface. And we’ve got to take this out of the arena where they’re testifying that Khrushchev and Castro did this and did that and kicking us into a war that can kill forty million Americans in an hour . . .

“. . . The Secretary of State came over here this afternoon. He’s deeply concerned, Dick, about the idea that they’re spreading throughout the Communist world that Khrushchev killed Kennedy. Now he didn’t. He didn’t have a damned thing to do with it.”

Russell: “I don’t think he did directly. I know Khrushchev didn’t because he thought he’d get along better with Kennedy.”
[155]

Russell’s final remark shows his own sense of the differences between Kennedy and Johnson and of the foreign policy changes that began at Dallas. As tapes editor Michael Beschloss notes, “Russell means [Khrushchev thought he’d get along] better with Kennedy than Johnson.”

In November 1963, it could also be said of Fidel Castro that he, too, thought he’d get along better with Kennedy. Castro’s openness toward Kennedy was confirmed in November by JFK’s unofficial envoy to Castro, French correspondent Jean Daniel.

After his meeting with President Kennedy, Jean Daniel spent the first three weeks of November touring Cuba and interviewing people from every sector of the society, but without ever gaining access to Fidel Castro. He was told Castro was snowed under with work and had no desire to receive any more Western journalists. Daniel almost gave up hope of seeing him. Then on November 19, the eve of Daniel’s scheduled departure from Havana, Castro suddenly showed up at his hotel. Fidel had heard of Daniel’s interview with Kennedy. He was eager to learn the details of their conversation. Castro knew from the secret Attwood-Lechuga meetings that Kennedy was reaching out to him. In fact even as Daniel was trying to see Castro, Castro had been trying to firm up negotiations with Kennedy through Lisa Howard and William Attwood. We will fill in that part of the story before taking up the extraordinary conversation between Castro and Daniel that went right up to and through the hour of JFK’s assassination.

On October 29, after a week of leaving phone messages for Lisa Howard, Castro’s aide Rene Vallejo finally reached Howard at her home. He assured her that Castro was as eager as he had been during her visit in April to improve relations with the United States. However, it was impossible for Castro to leave Cuba at that time to go to the UN or elsewhere for talks with a Kennedy representative. Howard told Vallejo there was now a U.S. official authorized to listen to Castro. Vallejo said he would relay that message to Castro and call her back soon.
[156]

On October 31, Vallejo phoned Howard again, saying “Castro would very much like to talk to the U.S. official anytime and appreciated the importance of discretion to all concerned.”
[157]
The phrase “to all concerned” was significant. At this point Castro, like Kennedy and Khrushchev, was circumventing his own more bellicose government in order to talk with the enemy. Castro, too, was struggling to transcend his Cold War ideology for the sake of peace. Like Kennedy and Khrushchev, he had to walk softly. He was now prepared to negotiate with a peacemaking U.S. president just as secretly as he had plotted guerrilla warfare against Batista. Thus, Vallejo said Castro was “willing to send a plane to Mexico to pick up the official and fly him to a private airport near Varadero, where Castro would talk to him alone. The plane would fly him back immediately after the talk. In this way there would be no risk of identification at the Havana airport.”
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Howard told Vallejo she doubted if a U.S. official could come to Cuba. Could Vallejo, as Castro’s personal spokesman, come to meet the U.S. official at the UN or in Mexico? Vallejo replied that “Castro wanted to do the talking himself,” but wouldn’t rule out that possibility if there were no other way to engage in a dialogue with Kennedy.
[159]

Howard reported the Vallejo calls to Attwood, who in turn relayed the information to the White House. On November 5, Attwood met with Kennedy’s National Security Adviser, McGeorge Bundy, and Gordon Chase of the National Security Council staff. He filled them in on Castro’s eagerness to facilitate a dialogue with Kennedy. On November 8, at Chase’s request, Attwood put all this in a memorandum.
[160]
There were now two weeks left before Kennedy would be in Dallas.

On November 11, Rene Vallejo phoned Lisa Howard again on behalf of Castro to reiterate their “appreciation of the need for security.”
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He said Castro would go along with any arrangements Kennedy’s representatives might want to make. He was again willing to provide a plane, if that would be helpful. As Attwood reported to the White House, Castro through Vallejo “specifically suggested that a Cuban plane could come to Key West and pick up the emissary; alternatively they would agree to have him come in a U.S. plane which could land at one of several ‘secret airfields’ near Havana. [Vallejo] emphasized that only Castro and himself would be present at the talks and that no one else—he specifically mentioned Guevara—would be involved.”
[162]
As both sides of the prospective negotiations knew, Che Guevara, like many of Castro’s associates, was opposed to a rapprochement with Kennedy. Castro was reassuring Kennedy of his independence from the opposition in his own government.

On November 12, after hearing Attwood’s report, McGeorge Bundy said that before a meeting with Castro himself there should be a preliminary talk with Vallejo at the United Nations to find out specifically what Castro wanted to talk about.
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On November 14, Lisa Howard relayed this information to Rene Vallejo, who said he would discuss it with Castro.
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On November 18, Howard called Vallejo again. This time she passed the phone to Attwood. At the other end of the line Fidel Castro was listening in on the Vallejo-Attwood conversation, as he would tell Attwood many years later.
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Attwood asked Vallejo if he could come to New York for a preliminary meeting. Vallejo said he could not come at that time but that “we” would send instructions to Lechuga to propose and discuss with Attwood “an agenda” for a later meeting with Castro. Attwood said he would await Lechuga’s call.

Thus the stage was being set, four days before Dallas, for the beginning of a Kennedy–Castro dialogue on U.S.–Cuban relations. Both Kennedy and Castro, with the encouragement and support of Nikita Khrushchev, were listening to the high notes of a song of peace their governments were still unable to hear. As carefully as porcupines making love, they were preparing to engage in a dialogue on the strange proposition that the United States and Cuba might actually be able to live together in peace.

Unaware of these behind-the-scenes developments, Jean Daniel was shocked by the sudden appearance of Fidel Castro at his Havana hotel the night of November 19. Castro wanted to hear about Kennedy. He met with Daniel in his room for six straight hours, 10:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. The interviewer became the interviewee. Castro turned the interview around, so that he could absorb every meaning and nuance from Daniel’s recitation of his conversation with Kennedy. Daniel described later Castro’s reaction to the explicit and subliminal messages he was receiving from the president, through the medium of his “unofficial envoy,” two and a half days before Kennedy’s death:

“Fidel listened with devouring and passionate interest: He pulled at his beard, yanked his parachutist’s beret down over his eyes, adjusted his maqui tunic, all the while making me the target of a thousand malicious sparks cast by his deep-sunk, lively eyes. At one point I felt as though I were playing the role of that partner with whom he had as strong a desire to confer as to do battle; as though I myself were in a small way that intimate enemy in the White House whom Khrushchev described to Fidel as someone with whom ‘it is possible to talk.’ Three times he had me repeat certain remarks, particularly those in which Kennedy expressed his criticism of the Batista regime, those in which Kennedy showed his impatience with the comments attributed to General de Gaulle, and lastly those in which Kennedy accused Fidel of having almost caused a war fatal to all humanity.”
[166]

When Daniel finished speaking, he waited, expecting an explosion. Instead Castro was silent for a long while. He knew Daniel was returning to Washington, so the U.S. president could hear of the Cuban premier’s response to his overture. In essence their dialogue had already begun, even before Castro’s meeting with Kennedy’s representative Attwood—a meeting that would soon be struck down, with a world of other possibilities, in Dallas. Finally Castro spoke, weighing his words.

“I believe Kennedy is sincere,” he began. “I also believe that today the expression of this sincerity could have political significance. I’ll explain what I mean,” he said, then gave a sharp critique of Kennedy that at the same time revealed his unique understanding of the president’s situation:

“I haven’t forgotten that Kennedy centered his electoral campaign against Nixon on the theme of firmness toward Cuba. I have not forgotten the Machiavellian tactics and the equivocation, the attempts at invasion, the pressures, the blackmail, the organization of a counter-revolution, the blockade and, above everything, all the retaliatory measures which were imposed before, long before there was the pretext and alibi of Communism. But I feel that he inherited a difficult situation; I don’t think a President of the United States is ever really free, and I believe Kennedy is at present feeling the impact of this lack of freedom. I also believe he now understands the extent to which he has been misled, especially, for example, on Cuban reaction at the time of the attempted Bay of Pigs invasion.”
[167]

Castro was stung by Kennedy’s charge that he bore the primary responsibility for having brought humanity to the brink of nuclear war in the missile crisis. He responded with his own reading of that history, in a way that would have deeply challenged Kennedy in turn, had he lived to hear it from Daniel:

“Six months before these missiles were installed in Cuba, we had received an accumulation of information warning us that a new invasion of the island was being prepared under sponsorship of the Central Intelligence Agency, whose administrators were humiliated by the Bay of Pigs disaster and by the spectacle of being ridiculed in the eyes of the world and berated in US government circles. [Castro had put his finger on a critical period in U.S. history, when the CIA’s leaders from the Bay of Pigs hated Kennedy with a passion that only Castro, the other target of their hatred, could intuit.] We also knew that the Pentagon was vesting the CIA preparations with the mantle of its authority, but we had doubts as to the attitude of the President. There were those among our informants who even thought it would suffice to alert the President and give him cause for concern in order to arrest these preparations. [If Castro had then, like Khrushchev, taken the risk of initiating a secret correspondence with Kennedy, what might he and JFK have seen together?] Then one day Khrushchev’s son-in-law, Adzhubei, came to pay us a visit before going on to Washington at the invitation of Kennedy’s associates. Immediately upon arriving in Washington, Adzhubei had been received by the American Chief Executive, and their talk centered particularly on Cuba. A week after this interview, we received in Havana a copy of Adzhubei’s report to Khrushchev. It was this report which triggered the whole situation.