Page 10 - Gobierno ivisible

Date: 4/5/2011 Page: 10 of 237

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In New York, Dr. Jose Miro Cardona, the professorial, soft-spoken president of the Cuban Revolutionary Council,
could not resist issuing a flowery Latin statement. From his headquarters at the Hotel Lexington, Cardona hailed
the "heroic blow for Cuban freedom ... struck this morning by certain members of the Cuban Air Force." He said
it came as no surprise because "the Council has been in contact with and has encouraged these brave pilots."
Cardona's announcement was a bad move, as events later proved.

Not until 9:00 A.M., three hours after the attack, did the Cuban radio in Havana announce the bombings. But at
7:00 A.M. the Soviet Ambassador to Cuba, Sergei M. Kudryavtsev, an old hand in the KGB, the Soviet
intelligence network, was seen hurriedly leaving his official residence in a Cuban military car with two Cuban
Army officers. Newsmen were unable to find out where he was going. But at noon, with militiamen armed with
Czechoslovak automatic weapons stalking the streets of Havana, and others posted on roofs, the foreign
diplomatic corps was summoned to the Foreign Ministry and told that Cuba had proof that the United States had
"directed" the attack. Fidel Castro issued a communique saying he had ordered his United Nations delegation "to
accuse the United States government directly of aggression ... If this air attack is a prelude to an invasion, the
country, on a war basis, will resist ... the fatherland or death!" He called on U.S. news agencies to "report the
truth."

That was no easy task. At Key West, Rear Admiral Rhodam Y. McElroy, the commander of the Boca Chica
Naval Air Station, announced: "One of the stolen B-26 bombers that was involved in the blasts against Havana
this morning landed here."

At the White House, presidential press secretary Pierre Salinger denied any knowledge of the bombing. He said
the United States was seeking information.

***

Alongside the East River in New York, in the United Nations Building, the drama that had begun at the jungle
airstrip in Nicaragua before daylight now moved into the full glare of the world stage.

Raul Roa, the excitable Cuban representative, marched to the speaker's rostrum at the start of the General
Assembly session that was meeting on the Congo crisis.

Roa began: "At 6:30 A.M. in the morning, North American aircraft --"

The sharp rap of a gavel, wielded by the Assembly's president, Frederick H. Boland of Ireland, cut off the
bespectacled Cuban. Boland reminded Roa that the item was not on the Assembly's agenda. Valerian Zorin, the
Soviet representative, then proposed an emergency session of the Assembly's political committee to hear the
Cuban complaint. The meeting was scheduled for that afternoon.

At 3:00 P.M. Roa rose to charge the United States with launching a "cowardly, surprise attack" on Cuba with
"mercenaries" trained on United States territory, and in Guatemala, by "experts of the Pentagon and the Central
Intelligence Agency." Seven persons had been killed and many wounded, he said. The United States, he added,
was "cynically attempting" to assert the attack was carried out by Cuban Air Force defectors. Dr. Cardona's
statement that he had been in touch with those who did the bombing was in itself a violation of United States
neutrality laws, Roa said.

It was an awkward moment for Adlai E. Stevenson, the United States representative to the U.N. (The man who
had run twice as the Democratic candidate for President, only to see John F. Kennedy win in 1960, now rose to