Few people today realize that there were actually two separate factions of
Cuban exiles-one with close ties to Robert Kennedy (moderates), and
another with close ties to the CIA (right wind radicals). In the summer
of 1963 President Kennedy, reacting to criticism that his administration
was not doing enough to stop para- military activities against Cuba,
ordered the FBI to get tough with the Cuban exiles. The communist-hating
Director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, undoubtedly knew the administration
was seeking rapprochment with Cuba and was reluctant to follow the
President's instructions and close down the camps.
Hoover knew all about the 6 exile training camps on Lake Poncharrtain
through New Orleans FBI agents Warren DeBruey and Regis Kennedy. He knew
that one of the camps was loated on land owned by William Julius McLaney,
who had close ties to Robert Kennedy. Hoover responded to President
Kennedy's order by sending FBI agents to close down ONLY the "McLaney
Camp." This was Hoover's way of thumbing his nose at President Kennedy's
orders to close down the camps, and it placed the Kennedys in a potential
embarassing position if Robert Kennedy's ties to William McLaney became
public.
On July 31, 1963 the Associated Press re****ted, "FBI agents swooped down
on a house in a resort section near here today and seized more than a ton
of dynamite and 20 bomb casings. An informed source said he explosivies
were part of a cache to be used in an attack on Cuba. But the FBI would
only say that the materials were seized in connection with an
investigation of an effort to carry out a military operation from the
United States against a country with which the Unites States is a
peace....."
The materials seized by the FBI included 48 cases of dynamite, 20 firing
caps, M-1 rifles, grenades, and 55 gallons of napalm. The FBI arrested
two men: Sam Benton, a conduit between William McLaney and the
anti-Castro Cubans, and Richard Lauchli, co-founder of the Minutemen and a
close friend of Jack Ruby's.
From newspaper articles it appeared to the public the FBI was doing it's
job by confiscating illegal explosives. But, no indictments were handed
down against either of the men who were arrested, and the 11 men who had
been detained were quietly released. Neither the President nor the
Attorney General were able to complain publicly about the FBI raid because
they feared that Hoover might make their relatition****p with McLaney known
to the press.
The FBI's raid on the McLaney Camp did not affect David Ferrie and Guy
Bannister's close relation****p with the CIA nor with the camps. Thomas
Compton, a friend of Ferrie's, drove him to Guy Bannister's office during
the early fall of 1963. Bannister and Ferrie then went to Mancuso's
Restaurant and talked while Compton sat at another table.
Efforts to eliminate Castro were not limited to the camps at Lake
Pontcharrtain. In late summer the DRE (Cuban Student Directorate) took
out an advertisement in "See," a national tabloid, and offered a
ten-million-dollar reward to anyone helping to assassinate Fidel Castro.
DRE delegate Carlos Bringuier was interviewed by the Warren Commission but
never menioned, nor was he asked, about the advertisement or the source of
the ten-million-dollar reward (undoubtedly from the CIA).
Desmond Fitzgerald, the former head of the Special Affairs Staff in Miami
(formerly Task Force W), had been transferred to Mexico City and was in
charge of assassination plots against Castro-in direct violation of
Attorney General Robert Kennedy's orders. One such plot involved placing
an unusually spectacular seashell on the ocean floor n an area where
Castro went skin diving. When the shell was lifted, hopefully by Castro,
an explosive device would be triggered. Another plot involved poison
cigars and yet another involved contaminating a skin-diving suit and
breathing apparatus with tuberculosis bacilli and s****es from a virulent
skin disease called "Madura foot."
These and other outrageous schemes to eliminate the Cuban leader may have
been intentionally leaked to the people connected with Cuban intelligence
in Miami. By leaking such information the public would be tricked into
believing that when Castro learned of he plots against him, he
*RETALIATED* by ordering the assassination of President Kennedy.
Harvey and Lee pg. 553-4
CJ
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