Federal Bureau of Investigation Quotes

talks toward normalizing relations with Cuba One of the many alternative theories about the assassination of President Kennedy, was that it was done by fanatic Cubans who resented Kennedy for not sending more military assets to support the Bay of Pigs operation, for not supporting the Cuban militants to make another invasion attempt. If they had found out that Kennedy was secretly negotiating with Castro, they would have seen this as a betrayal. Attwood had secretly met with the Cuban Government Representatives and was to have briefed President Kennedy, but the president was assassinated first. His death ended the mission to normalize Cuban relations, so if that was the motivation for an assassination, the Cuban exiles might have been successful in derailing relations with Cuba. However, there has been no direct evidence found for this speculative theory.

Kennedy was a relatively new president and the Bay of Pigs Operation was prepared and planned by the CIA under the Eisenhower Administration. The president assumed that the intelligence was correct and there would be an uprising of the Cuban people when as soon as the landing took place. That was all wrong and the Cubans actually supported Castro and the operation was a disaster. Kennedy never trusted the CIA after that.

The meeting was about the Congo. Patrice Lumumba was an extremely popular Congo leader who had just led the independence fight against Belgium and been elected Prime Minister and one of the few African leaders at the time who was not corrupt but he was a socialist. The mineral rich Katanga Province then seceded just a few weeks after Independence. Lumumba asked the UN. for supplies and trucks to allow him to keep the country together but the UN was bogged down in debate where the US thought that he might become, Russia then unilaterally offered the aid. Thinking that the Congo might become part of the Soviet Bloc, President Eisenhower called the meeting. Lumumba had not only claimed that he was not a communist but stated that Communism was just as bad as colonialism. A few weeks later the CIA engineered a coup of the Congo Military which had previously been organized and led by Colonial Belgium. The coup deposed Lumumba in favor of a corrupt incompetent Army Officer, Joseph Mobuto. Lumumba was arrested, and the UN Secretary General demanded that he be treated properly while Russia demanded that he be released as he could not have committed any crimes as he had been in office such a short time. While under "arrest" Lumumba was mysteriously murdered. The United States denied that America had anything to do with the murder. Johnson gave similar testimony under oath before the Senate Church Committee Investigating the Intelligence Agencies.

The CIA had attempted to employ the Mafia to assassinate Fidel Castro, the strongman of Cuba, and Castro found out about it. He then warned that U. S. leaders could be assassinated in retaliation. Although LBJ appointed the Warren Commission to investigate the JFK assassination and the commission concluded that Castro and Cuba had nothing to do with it—Oswald was a gunman acting alone. Johnson privately never believed that but only confided his believes to his closest confidants lest there would be public pressure to retaliate against Cuba and Johnson had no hard proof—just a suspicion.

This quotation was used by the Goldwater campaign in 1964 to make the point that Fidel Castro was an evil and that the Democrats had not done anything about him. Four decades later Castro was still in place but neither party would chastise the other on this issue since both had their chance and neither succeeded.

This was the first American initiative for the assassination of Fidel Castro.

There was no national uprising. Not a single Cuban came to assist the Bay of Pigs invaders, nor was there even one sabotage action or other revolutionary action anywhere in Cuba. The conviction of the CIA that Castro was hated by the Cubans and the overwhelming majority of Cubans would welcome an invasion was so completely wrong that it was stunning. The assurances the CIA planners had received that there would be an uprising came from Cuban anti-Castro émigrés who were being paid by the CIA to organize the invasion force. They would only continue to get paid if the American authorities felt that there was a very good chance of success so they turned out to have a serious conflict of interest. But the CIA planners had been hearing this from Cuban exiles not involved with the invasion and they had a strong bias that no communist government could be a popular one. It was a great illustration of the fact that experienced professional intelligence analysts and operatives are susceptible to self-delusion and confusing wishful thinking with reality.

In April of 1962, President Kennedy convened a meeting of top advisors at the State Department to discuss the proposed CIA plan for the invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. The senator was the lone dissenter from the plan:

Oswald was the assassin of President John F. Kennedy.

It was later disclosed that some in the CIA had, working with some Cuban exiles, arranged with American organized crime for them to assassinate Fidel Castro. They failed, and the CIA then tried to cover up the truth. They even lied to the Warren Commission investigating John F. Kennedy’s murder. See {642341}.