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Did Castro OK The Kennedy Assassination? 27

Did Castro OK The

Kennedy Assassination?

Continued from Page 25

But the plot hurtled forward in hopes of
success before the 1964 elections in the United
States. Bobby had pushed for a secret base in
Costa Rica, which was carrying out raids in
Cuba with materials provided by the Defense
Department. They bombed Cuban infrastructure,
such as railroads, bridges, and power plants, and
smuggled in radio equipment, arms, and
supplies to resistance forces. On September 6,
Fidel publicly charged the United States with
responsibility for an air attack on Santa Clara,
Cuba.
unstable mother, Lee Harvey Oswald's future piece of cake and cup of coffee he consumed in
For all of that boom and bang, however,
appeared to child psychologists who examined public, his stinginess on dates with women he
and all of Bobby's surety that Cubela was the
him as a disaster waiting to happen. There is wasn't enthused about, his preference for
right man for the job, the CIA skeptics would
some evidence that Lee may have suffered brain blondes, his ignorance of Marxist-Leninist
prove to be correct: the Cubans were on to him.
damage at the age of five when a chest of theory, the records and appliances he bought, the
It was during that summer that a G2 officer
drawers toppled over on his head during a move. hardware stores he visited, and, of course, the
known as "Oscar Marino" and others became
He was unconscious for eight days. Lee's doctor friends with whom he consorted. The “official”
aware that Cubela was a counterrevolutionary.
told his mother, “if the boy comes to at all, he's record of his life in Minsk omitted only what
And yet Cubela was not arrested.
going to have a problem.” From then on, he reflected badly on the Soviet intelligence
The same day that Cubela was having his
would suffer occasional blackouts, doing things apparatus.
meeting with the CIA in Brazil, Fidel was due at
he couldn't remember, walking out in the middle Oswald spent so much time on Ulyanov
a reception at the Brazilian embassy in Havana.
of classes and wandering his school's hallways. Street that he soon became acquainted with a
There, el lider niciximo pulled aside Associated
A year after his outreach to the YPSL, number of the junior Cuban spies. Marina would
Press correspondent Daniel Harker, within
Oswald, desperate to leave his mother, enlisted later tell the FBI about one of Lee's friends,
earshot of other journalists. Harker, a native of
in the Marines, where his pro-Communist rants Alfred, a "young man from Cuba [who] spoke
Colombia, spoke fluent Spanish and was
rendered him something between a joke and a Spanish" and who would later attend the
preferred by Castro for American press
pariah. After an early discharge in September University of Moscow. Lee would brag to
interviews because of his accuracy in
1959, he almost immediately boarded a ship as Marina that he had gotten tight with some of the
translating. “He often pulled me aside when he
the first leg of a pilgrimage to Moscow, where young future Cuban "ministers" and expected
wanted to be certain his words were reported
he intended to defect. When he was rejected by that he might be such a minister there himself
exactly as he said them,” Harker later
the Soviets, the youngster forced their hand by one day.
remembered.
attempting suicide. Faced with the cold war On July 18, 1962, just over a month after
“Hey, Colombian,” said Fidel, “come
equivalent of a public relations nightmare, the Lee, Marina, and their baby arrived in New
over here, I want to talk to you.” He started in
Soviets decided to smile upon him, sending him Jersey, Vladimir Kryuchkov, a future KGB
about the recent attacks, the other reporters
off to Minsk, where the KGB would babysit him chief, sent an encrypted Oswald file to the
bending in to hear more. “We are taking into
around the clock for the next two and a half attention of Valdes Menendez at G2
account . . . the Caribbean situation,” he
years. It was in Minsk that he married the headquarters in Havana. According to a source
growled, “which has been deteriorating in the
tempestuous young Marina Prusakova, the niece who examined the KGB's files in 2005, it read:
last few days due to piratical attacks by the
of an elite Soviet intelligence officer. “Lee Harvey Oswald left the Soviet Union in
United States against the Cuban people. . . .
As the Castros continued to co-opt the order to establish himself with his Soviet wife
Kennedy is a cretin . . . the Batista of our times.”
Cuban revolution and Rani flirted ever more Marina in the U.S.A. He is ideologically
He never used the word “assassination,” but his
heavily with the Soviet state, he was sending his unsound and psychically unstable.”
meaning was clear. “If U.S. leaders are aiding
youngest spies to Minsk for special training at Nevertheless, Kryuchkov asked Valdes “to
terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders, they
the academy of the Russians' MVD (Ministry of observe Oswald in the U.S.”
themselves will not be safe. Let Kennedy and his
Internal Affairs), a subsidiary of the KGB that Recently, actors from the Cuban side—
brother Robert take care of themselves, since
was responsible for civil law enforcement as aging cold warriors still alive in the Americas—
they too can be the victims of an attempt which
well as more shadowy pursuits. Within the have corroborated the Cuban link to Oswald.
will cause their death.”
school's hierarchy was Col. Ilya Vasilyevich One of them, who went by the name “Oscar
With that, Fidel strode on into the
Prusakov, Marina's uncle. Among the students Marino” in our talks, had been a senior Cuban
reception and began shaking hands, resplendent
were Jose Abrantes, the personal assistant to the spy, a founder of G2, and a revolutionary
in his olive fatigues. Two days later, the story hit
Cuban intelligence chief, Ramiro Valdes companero of Fidel's. It was his esteemed place
the Associated Press and the U.S. newspapers,
Menendez, and one Fabian Escalante Font, a in the national leadership that made him privy to
including the New Orleans Times-Picayune, a
paper read by a young Castro supporter named young agent of increasingly dangerous the Oswald overtures. It took over a year of
reputation who would soon rise to the top of the negotiations for him to agree to sit for interviews
Lee Harvey Oswald.
G2. with us. He lived, and perhaps still lives, in a
On October 3, 1956, in the same month
There were approximately 200 students Latin American metropolis, and when asked
that the Socialist Youth Party of Cuba appealed
at the academy when Oswald arrived in Minsk. about his politics in 2005, he sighed that he had
to Fidel to drop his revolutionary quest and join
As it happened, he was interested in studying “had enough” of ideology and bloody intrigue.
theirs, a pale, lonely teenager sat down in his
German, and his KGB file describes how He felt “no love for Kennedy,” and still
mother's small apartment in Fort Worth,
“friends” steered him to the Foreign Language considered himself a revolutionary, but was
Texasand wrote a letter to the Young People's
Institute (FLI) located directly adjacent to the demoralized by the “corruption” of Castro's
Socialist League, or (YPSL) in Chicago. The
apartment at 4936 Collingwood was the MVD academy on Ulyanov Street. The KGB original promise.
agents were astonishingly thorough. They
nineteenth home this boy had known. Raised
chronicled Oswald's moviegoing habits, every (Continued on Page 28)
without a father, in the clutches of a mentally