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Buy the Book
The Stalinist Assassin
Few knew Fidel Castro quite like the CIA’s Brian Latell.
Castro’s Secrets: The CIA and Cuba’s Intelligence
Machine
By Brian
Latell
(Palgrave Macmillan, 272 pages,
$27)
Fidel Castro has been a menace for over 50 years—a veritable damned nuisance to Cuba, to America, to the Western Hemisphere, and to the wider world. None of that, of course, is news to readers of this publication. Yet even TAS readers will be surprised by the news in Brian Latell’s eye-opening work, Castro’s Secrets: The CIA and Cuba’s Intelligence Machine.
Few know Fidel Castro quite like Brian Latell. Or, to be more precise, few know those who know Fidel Castro quite like Brian Latell. This book is as close to an insider’s account as one can get without being inside. Latell began tracking Castro for the CIA in the 1960s. The documents he has seen and contacts he has made—especially defectors who trust him—are woven together in this book. They provide some disturbing information on Castro, unknown even to those of us who have long suspected the worst.
Latell opens the door to this communist police state, which, tragically, for 54 years has operated less than 100 miles from our shores, the shores of the freest nation on the planet, the one that took down Communism elsewhere but has been helpless and hopeless in aiding the helpless and hopeless Cuban people. Latell lays bare Castro’s crimes and pathological hatred of the United States.
For that matter, Latell lays bare Castro’s hatred of anyone who stands in his way. When Fidel finds leaders he doesn’t like, who oppose his communist ambitions, he becomes hell-bent on eliminating them. Latell describes four remarkable cases of Latin-American anti-communist authoritarians: Nicaragua’s Somoza, Chile’s Pinochet, the Dominican Republic’s Trujillo, and Fidel’s Cuban predecessor, Batista. Castro launched a personal jihad against all four caudillos. It appears that Castro had Somoza killed, tried to kill Pinochet, and wanted but failed to capture Trujillo and Batista alive. All were subjects of what Latell calls Castro’s “wrath” and “demonology.”
As for Somoza, Latell writes that his executioner “knelt in the middle of the street” and steadied his aim: “His shot hit the mark dead center, but the projectile was a dud. And then, amid the ensuing crossfire…he calmly reloaded and made the second shot that killed Somoza.”
Mission accomplished.
As for Castro’s own men who naturally came to despise him, there, too, Fidel has been ruthless—actually, Stalinist. Latell recounts the late 1980s, when Cuba’s leading sponsor, the Soviet Union, was so broke that it ended the annual $6 billion subsidy that was Castro’s lifeline. With glasnost shedding a ray of hope on the Evil Empire, and with the Berlin Wall collapsing, Fidel’s boys were frustrated with the prospects of yet another decade of dark, dank, broken, oppressive Marxist orthodoxy. Castro cracked down hard. Latell remarked on Castro’s actions of 1989, which he called “an even more devastating, top-to-bottom purging of the Ministry of Interior….The Stalinist-style crackdown was preemptive, meant to snuff out every trace of support within the secret services for the liberalizing reforms that led in 1989 to the toppling of the Berlin Wall.”
Among those executed was Arnaldo Ochoa, Cuba’s most decorated and beloved general, on trumped-up charges of drug trafficking.
Defectors fled when they could. One eventual defector, Juan Rodriguez Menier, was among roughly 200 intelligence professionals thrown into prison. He says that everyone he knew in the Interior Ministry, “without exception,” was “executed, locked up, or retired from power.” Thousands of officers were purged.
The most interesting of the defectors is Florentino “Tiny” Aspillaga, who provides the heart and soul—and thread—of Latell’s story: a report that suggests Castro had prior knowledge of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Aspillaga defected in June 1987, handing himself over to the U.S. embassy in Vienna. He would become what Latell called “the most informed and highly decorated officer ever to defect from Cuban intelligence.” Highly respected and barely 40 when he switched sides, there were many factors that influenced Aspillaga’s decision, but a powerful one was the lasting effect of his first face-to-face encounter with Fidel’s narcissism. It occurred 10 years earlier, in 1977, when Aspillaga stood present for a Castro appearance at a Cuban military base in Angola. Fidel arrived as usual, “strutting and preening like a conquering Roman legionnaire” (Latell’s words).
Aspillaga and hundreds of other Cuban military and intelligence officials stood before Castro in uniform and at attention. Fidel’s speech was totally self-congratulatory, all about himself, his braveness, valor, exceptional leadership abilities, his triumphs, all expressed with the “most heinous extreme” hubris—and without a word for the efforts of his men. He actually compared himself to chief Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. “Castro said he could lead the multitudes better than Goebbels,” recalled Aspillaga. “That’s how he said it…how to guide people to do what you need them to do.” Aspillaga concluded then and there: “I knew he was evil. I told myself, ‘This man is crazy.’”
(Latell shares another account from another defector, one of Fidel’s bodyguards, who described standing next to Castro as the insane dictator spoke, incredibly, for 14 straight hours. “My feet were swollen and sore,” the defector told Latell. “I was standing near Castro the whole time, guarding him.”)
ASPILLAGA’S FATHER had been close to Fidel and the revolution from the outset, and was considered a faithful aide. This brought a very young Aspillaga into the bosom of Fidel’s intelligence circles. He began serving the cause as a boy in the 1950s. Nothing, however, compares to what he heard the morning of November 22, 1963.
About the Author
Paul Kengor is professor of political science and executive director of The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. He is author of the new book The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor. His other books include The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism and Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (32) | Leave a comment
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Commander Kelly | 2.7.13 @ 6:33AM
Interesting points in this article. See my post "Conspiracies through History" only here...http://americanconservativeinlondon.blogspot.co.uk/
Doctor Right| 2.7.13 @ 7:39AM
EDITOR:
Looks like you've run an older article about Stanton Evan's new book onto the end of this one.
Doctor Right| 2.7.13 @ 7:46AM
I have long believed that Castro had arranged for Kennedy's death to avenge his wounded pride from the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
If Oswald was involved at all, it was as a patsy of Castro, not of some right-wing conspiracy promoted by Oliver Stone.
In my mind, this explains the need for the obvious and ongoing cover-up that started with the Warren Commission. The Commissioners knew all along that it had been Castro, but they and President Johnson obviously feared the reaction if that information went public.
The world had narrowly averted nuclear war in October of 1962. If the American people knew that Castro had killed their President, an invasion of Cuba would have been inevitable. This would naturally have drawn the US into conflict with the Soviets, who would have come to the aid if Castro.
The cover-up was the only way to avoid World War III.
When Castro assumes room temperature - hopefully soon - then maybe the truth will emerge.
Alan| 2.7.13 @ 8:38AM
A lot of people still don't realize just how close we came to nuclear disaster in that Cuba crisis. The Soviets had far more than nuclear Intermediate range missiles on that island. The US invasion force and fleet would have been evaporated before they ever landed on that island. I also believe that Castro had a hand in the asassination.
JmsA| 2.7.13 @ 11:49AM
Don't be so certain the Russians would have come to the aid of Castro should Cuba have been invaded by the U.S. It was the Russians, upon realizing they could not trust Castro with the nuclear weaponry, that made them remove the missiles from Cuba. In fact, more than fifty Russians ships managed to bypass the so-called blockade.
Alan| 2.7.13 @ 12:33PM
What made them remove the Missiles from Cuba was the US overwhelming strategic strength compared to the Soviet's arsenal of few if any workable ICBM's from the Soviet Mainland. The US later threw them a bone by removing the Jupiters from Turkey. The whole idea behind operation "Anadyr" was to take a short cut to create some kind of deterence against a US attack on the Soviet Union and to gain the Soviets time to build up an ICBM long range deterrance which was at the time almost useless as a counter deterrence.
The Nuclear Weaponry brought to Cuba was NEVER going to be left to the Cubans to use, maintain or them to have anything to do with in any way. It was all strickly in Soviet Control and Castro agreed to that. The warheads and delivery systems were strickly under Soviet Military control and would stay totally under their control. What the US did not know until many years later was that the Soviets also had Battlefield Tactical Nuclear weapons(Frog missiles and possibly some Scud short range missiles) positioned to oppose a US invasion.
Interviews with Soviet commanders who took part in the situation conducted many years later said that they had the authority to use them to oppose any attempts by the US to invade including launching Nukes at the US fleet and landing Forces. Castro later admitted that if the US did invade he was totally convinced that Cuba would have dissappeared and so would the US invasion force.
JmsA| 2.7.13 @ 1:43PM
Serge Nikoyan, the son of Soviet Foreign Minister, Anastas Nikoyan, has written that up to face to face meeting by the latter and Fidel Castro in November 1962, the Soviets had secretly planned to leave behind in Cuba over 100 tactical nuclear weapons. It was not until they came to understand Castro's "obstreperous" behavior relative to his feelings about being left out of the negotiations with the U.S., that they, the Soviets, changed their mind. In fact, those truly in the know, and as history has subsequently shown, understand that the placement of the missiles in Cuba had nothing to do but with projection of power, and ultimately, the guaranteed survival of Castro and communism in Cuba, from where not the remainder of the southern American continent has been turned if not socialist, then at least neo-socialist, but subversive activities have been carried out, not to mention proxy wars for the benefit of Soviet expansionism throughout the World.
JmsA| 2.7.13 @ 1:53PM
It follows then, that as to Cuba, as well as anywhere else they endeavored to expand, the Soviets followed their method and slogan, and I paraphrase: Thrust forward with the bayonet, and if resistance is encountered, pull back and try somewhere else. I call it the chopping wood effect: Keep on chopping and eventually the tree will fall. What you claim, is not what happened in Cuba. It's not the grand strategy you've posited; it was just a very thought out long-term strategy in the backyard of a World Power, against a young and inexperienced counterpart, Kennedy, operating under domestic political restraints, namely appearing heroic to the voting public, in exchange for a treaty guaranteeing no further attempts to invade or subvert Castro's dictatorship from the U.S. It appears you can't see the forest for the trees. Don't believe everything you hear or read from communist Russians, particularly those from that era. They were truly committed communists, who are now just engaging in hyperbole. They never had any intention to go to war over Cuba.
Alan| 2.7.13 @ 4:11PM
First of all, get your facts about missiles straight, the tactical Nukes described in that discussion had nothing to do with the reasons for removal of the Strategic SS4 and SS5 missiles which are considered "Offensive" weapons because they can reach the US homeland from Cuba. The Tactical weapons(your describing nuclear tipped FROG-7 and scud) proposed to be left behind are NOT and were not considered Offensive(because they are considered short range battlefield weapons) since they could only be used due to limited range as defensive in nature.
Alan| 2.7.13 @ 4:11PM
The purpose of the placement of Intermediate range SS4's and SS5's and the crux of the crisis was to buy time to close the gap Khruschev was terrified about due to the nature of the imbalance with the US. The defense of Cuba was important but secondary in purpose. The Soviet SS6 and SS7 ICBM programs, Missiles which could reach the US, was in shambles and at the time the Soviets had a credible force of a dozen of so ICBM's that could launch from Soviet soil, and none of them were in hardened launchers to survive a first US strike. The reason Khruschev backed down and removed them was simply because he knew his bluff was called, if a nuclear war occurred the Soviet Union would have been devastated in comparison with what the US would have suffered and he knew it. His bluff was called and he had no choice but to back down. The strategic Missiles, aka IRBM's were always UNDER Soviet control, soviet personal, and the decision to use them was in Soviet control. As I said, any Nuclear weapons that were in Cuba were always under Soviet control, proposals to allow Cuban control of anything were just that proposals. The crisis was about the SS4's and SS5's, not the tactical weapons which at the time the US didn't even know existed and were not the subject of the Cuban Missile crisis.
Alan| 2.7.13 @ 4:13PM
Lastly, if your going to advise not believing Communist sources of the time as now engaging in hyperbole, then don't quote one yourself. I can quote plenty of Soviets sources and references.
JmsA| 2.7.13 @ 5:27PM
Your comments are full of surmise and conjecture. I deal with facts, especially the final facts or end results. Such, irrespective of your deep in the weeds comments about missiles, it's what ultimately matters, as is the subject of the author's thesis: Castro, tyrannical communism, and what came and continues to come from it, including the possible assassination of President Kennedy. The purposes of the missiles, whether tactical or strategic, were to ensure the survival of Castro's communist tyranny, absent a treaty non-intervention or invasion, whether aided or carried out by the U.S. I guess you can't help but miss the obvious. Go back to your reading; maybe you'll learn it, though I doubt it. The end result is what matters: Cuba remained a communist dictatorship, spreading its socialist poison about the world. I don't care about the missiles; that's ultimately a side issue and a seemingly simple (particularly to you), yet very complex and drawn out geopolitical phenomenon. Read the post again, it's not about missiles, which are but a tool in the overall geopolitical context.
If you have a fetish about missiles, so be it. I don't care. If the Russians really wanted a fight, they would have acted in Berlin, or elsewhere.
JmsA| 2.7.13 @ 6:16PM
You can quote all the Russians you want, but you weren't there, in Cuba. I was. As were my parents, including my father, not only a doctor, whose patient's included many high-ranking Russian military and diplomatic personnel, but also Vice-Minister of Public Health, including head of military medicine in the second largest Cuban province of Camagüey, as well as director of a paratrooper training school, etc. (And no, my father is not and has never been a communist, in case you or anyone else wonders).
Who do think I'm going to believe? You, who weren't there and only know what might have happened from books and other second hand sources, particularly from those whose misinformation prowess is renown, or from those directly affected. My father was directly involved, in the front lines, as they say, and he told me that had the Cubans wished to take over the missiles, they would have easily done it. Remember, there were only a few thousand Russians there, but millions of Cubans, OK? Thus the haste in light of previously alluded to comments about bluster, by the Russians to reach an agreement with the U.S. Not the mention their attaining their final strategic goals, without firing a shot, other than shooting down an American observation plane, of maintaining a base of operations in the Western Hemisphere, including nuclear-armed submarines, such as those housed in Cienfuegos Bay, and the listening post of Lourdes in Western Cuba.
JmsA| 2.7.13 @ 6:20PM
I quoted Mikoyan's son, because his father's version, as proven by all that has transpired following the removal of the missiles from Cuba, directly and accurately comports with accomplished Soviet long-term strategic goals: survival and spread of communism in the Americas, as well as Africa, in addition to access to military installations, including the signal intelligence post at Lourdes in Western Cuba, the nuclear submarine base in Cienfuegos Bay, etc.
Although you appear to know certain details about certain things, you lack an essential or over-arching perspective, and as such fail to see the big picture. The missiles were but a tool in the grand scheme. Your very thesis of American strategic predominance gives ample credence to my views insofar as the fulfillment of the Russians' original intent, which was far from War with the U.S.
JmsA| 2.7.13 @ 6:25PM
Apologies for the repeated mention of Lourdes and Cienfuegos Bay.
Alan| 2.7.13 @ 7:06PM
Khruschev didn't want war, but he didn't want to be inihilated either, The Sputnik program scared the US and created a panic in the US missile program. The purpose of a Strategic deterrence needed by the Soviets was to at least firstly guarentee their own survival and not be forced to back down when moves where made to expand Soviet Communism accross the globe. Lacking that is why he was forced to back down and remove the IRBM's which later caused his own removal.
Alan| 2.7.13 @ 6:55PM
We all know about the Soviet world dominence and dogma, its taken for granted. I get the big picture. Unfortunately, it WAS the Russians and the US, NOT the Cubans who went head to head, the Cubans had no say in the discussions that went on between Kennedy and Khruschev, so those are the key sources on the crisis and they are numerous. Modern historians are not required to have BEEN THERE to have any credibility on a subject from the past especially the near past. Soviets Archives were extensively explored for research on this subject, the whole thing was pretty well documented by both sides.
"particularly from those whose misinformation prowess is renown"
I tend to take both Khruschev and Kennedy's recollections as a pretty good source as well as those who were these two persons staff and inferiors in the field. Khruschev was in an inferior position militarily on a strategic scale and he misread Kennedy in their meeting and took an opportunity to take a shortcut to address the Soviet strategic disadvantage and deter a cuban invasion by the US. Kennedy called his bluff because Kennedy was in a superior military situation, Khruschev new it and had to back down.
The recollections of military people on both sides at the time pretty well admitted that if the US invaded Cuba the Soviets would resist and also launch a probable invasion of western Europe to retalitate.
Alan| 2.7.13 @ 6:32PM
Your totally ignorant of the subject aren't you? It was called the Cuban Missile Crisis, read this again numbnuts, it was called the Cuban MISSILE crisis, it was not the Cuban Communist Dogma Crisis.
"The purposes of the missiles, whether tactical or strategic, were to ensure the survival of Castro's communist tyranny"
Wrong, the installation of the Intermediate range SS4 and SS5 first strike missiles were a deterent for the protection of the Soviet Union first and foremost not Cuba. Thats why Khruschev put them there in the first place, he admitted so in his memoirs. The defense of Cuba was also an excuse to put first strike weapons within range of the US mainland. The rest of the forces involved were to defend Cuba from US invasion. This was a two pronged operation, firstly a deterence against a first strike by the US agains the Soviet Union and the defense of Cuba as a base of operations in the region. Khruschev feared the warhawks in the Kennedy administration like LeMay and others who openly stated that the US should take advantage of its overwhelmingly superior strategic forces and take out the Soviets while they had a chance. If Kennedy followed LaMay's advice during the crisis there would have been a nuclear war.
"I don't care about the missiles; that's ultimately a side issue"
That WAS the issue in this crisis.
Pecos Pete| 2.7.13 @ 7:06PM
Alan and JmsA: Good discussion, I learned stuff I didn't know. Thank you both.
RCV| 2.7.13 @ 12:23PM
I don't buy the "cover-up" angle, but I do share your belief that Castro might well have been behind JFK's assassination. Oliver Stone is an utter liar and disgrace.
CJW| 2.7.13 @ 5:08PM
I agree that Castro was involved using Oswald as a patsy. Oswald was involved in distributing literature and other activities in support of Cuba. In addition, to revenge for the missiles, JFK and RFK has tried to assasinate Castro in the CIA Operation Mongoose.
spike59| 2.8.13 @ 6:18AM
maybe the truth will emerge.
----------------------------------------
i wish i had a nickel for every time i've heard that old chestnut since '63
IF the Warren Commission got it wrong, we'll never know
the thing about conspiracy theories is they give comfort to people frightened at the idea of an out-of-control world; when bad things happen, they need to believe that some shadowy and sinister cabal is behind the scenes, pulling the strings...otherwise, life has just too much uncertainty
but, in reality, more often than not, it's just a case of 'shit happens'...the grubby little Leftist gets off the shots that change history
Pecos Pete| 2.7.13 @ 9:28AM
Cuba and Fidel, the leftist/progressive/moderate/communist plan for the USA.
BTW: Does the description of Fidel and Fidel's speeches sound eerily familiar?
Gary B| 2.7.13 @ 2:28PM
Pete,
Exactly... sounds like our own Dear Leader.
"Fidel’s speech was totally self-congratulatory, all about himself, his braveness, valor, exceptional leadership abilities, his triumphs, all expressed with the “most heinous extreme” hubris—and without a word for the efforts of his men."
Anthony| 2.7.13 @ 10:10AM
Yeah, only Oliver Stoned, and I do mean stoned, could turn the Russia & Cuba loving Communist, Lee Harvey Oswald, into a member of the vast right-wing conspiracy.
I read once that the American left started its unhinged decent after JFK was killed by a communist, and RFK was killed by a Palistinian.
Amazing, the American left haven't hit bottom, but that's coming soon.
Walter Duranty was the New York Times reporter who shilled for Stalin and informed America what a transformational leader he was.
I can't remember the hack New York Times reporter who was Castro's shill, but his writing was equally sickening.
Today, the American media are full of Obozo drones willing to overlook Obozo's criminal behavior.
And now we have killer Obozo drones, hopefully, to take out American Obozo drones.
I just might put an Obozo 2012 sticker on my car if the New York Times building is hit by a stray Obozo drone, or Rockerfeller Center.
JmsA| 2.7.13 @ 11:45AM
The name of Castro's shill at the New York Times was Herbert Matthews.
Anthony| 2.7.13 @ 1:49PM
Thanks JMSA.
Gary B| 2.7.13 @ 2:32PM
What could possibly motivate an American to spend all his waking hours being anti-American? The only thing I can compare it to is the mindset of a teen age vandal, who takes immense pleasure in simply wrecking stuff.
CJW| 2.7.13 @ 5:10PM
The NYT had a shill for Stalin also, Will Duranty.
gene| 2.7.13 @ 6:11PM
Nov. 63 was a renegade Black Ops Operation gone bad. I will like to point out a funny anomoly. During the McCarthy hearing, the media went hog wild over a "cropped Photograph" that removed an individual. There is a photograph that shows Kennedy being hit and raising his arms to his throat. The photograph (Altgens Photo) is from the front of the vehicle. In the trailing vehicles you see a smiling Lady Bird Johnson and Senator Yarborough. They have not reacted to anything yet. Just to Ladybird's right is EMPTY SPACE. The six foot plus LBJ was HIDING down by the floor a full 30 seconds before the first shot rang out. Even a motorcycle cop next to the vehicle made public comments about it. The FULL UNcropped photo is on the Net. For decades it was NEVER published.
spike59| 2.8.13 @ 6:19AM
the Mother Ship called; you missed the rendezvous. call Ron Paul for new coordinates
gene| 2.8.13 @ 6:31AM
I suggest you read Billy Sol Estes biography IF you can find a copy printed in the United States. He survived prison and out lasted everyone and called the book "The Last Standing Man". He published in France for a reason. Back in the 80's, a smart person dragged Billy in front of a Grand Jury. Not wanting to return to prison, Billy spilled the beans on everyone. It is all there is black and white. You have recorded history and you have real history. I prefer the real stuff undiluted. I suppose you believe all the current official versions on Benghazi and the Mexican Drug Cartel Assault Rifles? If you do, I truly feel sorry for you.