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30 Did Castro OK The Kennedy Assassination?

Did Castro OK The

Kennedy Assassination?

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An attractive Mexican receptionist would take
him briefly as her lover, and the wife and
daughter of a future Nobel laureate would party
with him at an apartment full of Cuban
diplomats and staffers, all within the span of his
“lost week” in the Mexican capital.
Seven weeks later, while Oswald lay in
wait for the president, the first Cuban who had
recruited him would be meeting with CIA agents
in Paris to receive the weapon with which he
was meant to kill Fidel.
It was overcast in the City of Light, but,
Cubela slipped the tube into an inside briefly, and then returned the phone to its cradle,
despite the chill, the sidewalk cafes were already
pocket, weighing his reply. Before he could give pausing for a long moment before he spoke. The
aglow in the gathering dusk of a Friday night. it, a telephone rang across the room. An agent president of the United States had just been shot,
Two men arrived at the same luxury apartment
answered and then passed the phone to Sanson. he said, in Texas. “Oswald volunteered to kill
building in which, just a few weeks earlier, one
The call was urgent, he said. Kennedy,” Marino explained in 2005. “He was
of them, Cubela, had met with a man who called
For all the weird, ongoing hope for proof so full of hatred that it gave him the idea. He
himself James Clark. In fact, "Clark" was the
that the Mafia or the CIA or the oil companies or wanted it himself [because] he hated his country.
alias used by the CIA's Cuba desk chief,
even the Florida exiles killed Kennedy, the He was already prepared to do it. He was a
Desmond FitzGerald, when he was on covert
evidence is now overwhelming that a Cuban- soldier of the revolution and offered his services
operations. Even without knowing the man's real
style Communist who had learned of the to us in order to kill Kennedy. . . . Let's just say
identity, Cubela had been convinced that he was
planned U.S. reinvasion was the sole we used him. He adopted our plans as his own—
a senior American official; he wore his blue- triggerman, and that he did it with the aid and his idea was a natural projection of our wish.”
blood authority well. The man known as Clark
comfort of Fidel and Raid Castro. Marino, wanting to be clear, added, “That
had given Cubela the assurances he had
The effect of Lee Oswald's crime is doesn't mean he was brainwashed—that wasn't
demanded— that the operation under discussion
tremendously paradoxical. On one hand, necessary. Is it so important, whether or not he
had been approved at the highest levels of the
because of Lyndon Johnson's subsequent acted on his own initiative? He was an
U.S. government. And within days of that first
choices, Oswald single-handedly achieved his instrument of the G2. It makes no difference
meeting, Bobby Kennedy, the president's
political goal: he ended the secret war against whether he volunteered or was used. It ends up
brother, had contacted Cubela directly. Had it
the Castro brothers. Because that small, proxy the same.” []
not been for those extraordinary guarantees,
war had provoked a nuclear confrontation 13
Cubela would not have returned. months earlier, it could even be said that he Best Books on the JFK
On this evening, another CIA agent,
reduced the chances of a big, hot war, simply by
known to Cubela as “Sanson,” placed a small, Assassination
ending the little one. On the other hand, the fears
black leather case on a table before him. Inside,
his crime raised in the minds of international
Cubela found a metal tube, encased in foam
leaders, who worried over Oswald's Cuban The Devil's Chessboard
rubber. Sanson plucked it from its nest,
contacts, were so great that it nearly provoked a Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of
unscrewed the cap, and produced a single,
new nuclear showdown. Johnson was essentially America's Secret Government
brushed-chrome Paper Mate pen. Holding it up
forced to do in November 1963 what by Talbot, David
for closer observation, he pushed the depressor.
Khrushchev had done in October 1962: he
In his other hand he held a tiny flashlight, and backed away from the endgame. Oswald's dual JFK and the Unspeakable
when he switched it on, a fluorescent beam
effect on international tension was analogous to Why He Died and Why It Matters
revealed a micro-thin needle where the ballpoint
his own inner duality: the odd gulf between the
would ordinarily be. The instrument was a finely by Douglass, James W.
peacenik idealist and the gunslinger. That
tooled syringe, created at Langley for one
duality was hiding in plain sight in the screed he
purpose: it could be filled with a highly effective Two Days in June
wrote on the SS Maasdam during his return
poison. Sanson suggested Black Leaf 40, a slow- John F. Kennedy and the 48 Hours
voyage to America. His manifesto debated the
acting commercially available pesticide. That Made History
relative merits and injustices of the world's two
The Paper Mate weapon took Cubela off
dominant systems and then ended with a by Cohen, Andrew
guard. This deadly little prop implied close prediction of an imminent nuclear war. In
quarters, one on one. “I requested rifles and
hindsight, it was both a prediction and a vow: Destiny Betrayed
explosives,” he said, querulous. Cubela had a
the recognition that the superpowers might JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Case
house at Veradero Beach, right next door to one
destroy each other and a promise, however by DiEugenio, James
of Fidel's many domiciles; this seemed like the
unconscious, that he might one day help them
place for an easy strike.
along. Rockefellerocracy
Sanson placed the fake ballpoint back in
Internationally speaking, by averting
its tube. He explained that if Cubela needed to Kennedy Assassinations, Watergate
nuclear war on one hand and increasing its
get in close, he would be frisked, and a dart gun and Monopoly of the
likelihood on the other, Oswald's effect on the
would give him away. The case officer promised cold war was perhaps a wash. Domestically, "philanthropic" Foundations
once again that rifles and explosives would be
however, his effect has been, up until now, more by James, Richard
forthcoming—all the weapons Cubela and his
definitive. In the short run, his crime further
fellow insurrectionists would need for both a
polarized the United States in an already Brothers
palace coup and the widespread revolt that
extreme moment. In the longer term, it split the The Hidden History of the Kennedy
would ensue. These munitions were in fact
country open and made it susceptible to a form Years
already stockpiled at a secret location in rural
of political decay that was nearly as insidious as
Cuba that would be revealed at the last moment. by Talbot, David
the recoil of the crime itself.Sanson listened,