Castro and the Assassination

Veteran journalist Anthony Summers, author of one of the best books on the Kennedy assassination Conspiracy, later updated in an edition titled Not in Your Lifetime, has responded to the German documentary alleging that Castro was behind the JFK assassination. A few excerpts:

On July 18, 1962, soon after Oswald’s return to America from the Soviet Union, Vladimir Kryuchkov, a future KGB chief, sent a telegram about Oswald to the head of Cuban intelligence, Comandante Ramiro Valdes. Though Oswald was “unstable”, he said, the Cubans should take a look at him.

Señor Valdes’ staff did as their Soviet counterparts suggested, and had their first contact with Oswald in November, a few weeks after the Cuban missile crisis. More contacts followed — directed, according to the documentary, by Rolando Cubela, then a trusted Castro associate. Oswald was supplied with modest sums of money, and acquired a file at Havana headquarters in a section assigned to “Foreign Collaborators”.

There have been reports that Cubela--the CIA assassin whose code-name was AMLASH--was a double-agent. The best evidence against that would be that he spent a number of years in a Cuban prison. Whoever he was really working for it would certainly be interesting if he met Oswald.

The pivotal encounter, the episode most incriminating to the Cubans, took place less than two months before the assassination. Fabián Escalante, a future chief of intelligence, and his nephew Aníbal, the son of a former president of the Cuban Communist Party, are named in the programme as having met Oswald. To support the claim that the future State Security chief Señor Escalante was involved, Huismann presented a document provided by the late Marty Underwood, an aide who served both the murdered President and Johnson.

“Early on the morning of November 22, 1963,” a key extract reads, “a small Cuban airplane landed at the Mexico City airport. The single occupant transferred to another plane that was waiting at the far end of the airport. It immediately took off for Dallas, Texas. “Later that evening the plane returned from Dallas and the occupant transferred back to the Cuban airplane. After many months of checking we are confident that the occupant was Fabian
Escalante.”

Escalante denies these charges but then he would, wouldn't he? Escalante himself has a book out on the assassination, JFK: The Cuba Files : The Untold Story of the Plot to Kill Kennedy. Escalante, of course, blames the CIA.

William Coleman, a former assistant counsel, had told me before Christmas of a mission that he carried out on the orders of the US Chief Justice, Earl Warren. He had flown to a secret location for a meeting with Señor Castro — a rare event indeed for an American official, even more so given the nature of the discussion. What Mr Coleman learnt, he said, satisfied him — and the Chief Justice when he reported back — that “Castro’s regime had nothing to do with the President’s murder”.

Mr Coleman had spoken clearly, and in the presence of a third party. This week, however, I received a letter from him denying that the meeting with the Cuban leader had ever taken place. This is hard to explain, unless perhaps one notes that Mr Coleman — himself a former Cabinet member — is close to senior officials in the Bush Administration. Perhaps the Bush people, who take a hard line on Cuba, prefer that dark rumours about Señor Castro remain unrefuted. www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-1974173,00.html

A Cuban journalist has also responded to this documentary:

www.granma.cu/ingles/2006/enero/vier6/03kennedy-i.html