Authors Warren Hinckle and Bill Turner describe how during the Bay of Pigs, Higinio (Nino) Diaz and almost two hundred Cuban exiles headed out to sea from the naval base near New Orleans, put on Cuban military uniforms and prepared to stage a fake attack on Guantanamo. This provocation was "aborted primarily because of bad leadership" and suicidal conditions. Hinckle and Turner suggest that "the CIA had lost its planned excuse to send in the Marines, who were aboard ship nearby."[vi]
It is also important to note that in the months after Patty and Liborio, the Joint Chiefs of Staff would advocate a "Guantanamo pretext" in the infamous Operations Northwoods memo of February 1962, drafted by the military covert action chief General William H. Craig. Craig lobbied for a variety of pretexts that would provide the basis for a large-scale invasion of Cuba. In May 1962, Craig went on to become head of the Army Security Agency, the military wing of the NSA, and served in that capacity until 1965.
Bill Harvey was Craig's opposite number in the CIA, and they met together throughout
the first months of 1962 to plan the MONGOOSE program to destabilize Cuba.
Although President Kennedy and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara refused to consider Operation Northwoods, military chiefs and even Robert Kennedy lobbied for a "Remember the Maine"-type incident, where the US allegedly sank its own ship in Cuba as a pretext to start the Spanish-American War. [vii] Robert Kennedy suggested at an early point of the Cuban missile crisis:
"We should also think of whether there is some other way we can get involved in this, through Guantanamo Bay or something. Or whether there's some ship that...you know, sink the Maine or something."[viii]
PATTY'S LEADERSHIP, AND HOW THE OPERATION FELL APART
Cuban intelligence chief Fabian Escalante
describes Alfredo Izaguirre de la Riva as the leader of Operation Patty. [ix] Izaguirre was AMPUG-1. [x] The CIA referred to the "AMPUG net". [xi]
Jim Pekich was the man who organized nets inside Cuba to facilitate underground activity. There were at least three kinds of nets - the "singleton net", the "collection net", and the "black net operation". The AMPUG net in 1961 was a black net.
The
CIA referred to AMPUG-1 as "of JKLANCE interest" -- a reference to the CIA
itself. (After the CIA was implicated in possible involvement in the Kennedy murder, they adopted the cryptonym of JKLANCE as a
codeword for "CIA". "Lancer" was the
Secret Service's codeword for JFK.)[xii]
It is apparent that Alfredo Izaguirre was taking direction not from the CIA, but rather a Navy lieutenant commander. [xiii] This lieutenant commander was undoubtedly Hal Feeney. Base commander Feeney was working with Lieutenant Jack Modesett. Both men were working closely with the Castro rebels during this time period. [xiv] CIA documents show that Izaguirre was arrested on July 22, four days before the planned attack. [xv]
The plan was for the shooters to be Luis
Balbuena and Alonzo Gonzelez. Balbuena
told the Miami police that he "was involved in
an attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro", and that he had to take sanctuary in Guantanamo when Operation
Patty was busted by Cuban intelligence. [xvi]
A CIA memo shows that Balbuena's CIA liaison was Higinio Diaz, also known as "Nino". [xvii] Diaz had been chosen by Tony Veciana's lieutenant Juan Pujols to go to the US after the Bay of Pigs. [xviii] At that time, Veciana was the chief of sabotage for the anti-Castro MRP inside Cuba. Pujols was described by Reynol Gonzalez at his CIA debriefing as "an agent trained by the Agency in the U.S., who worked with the MRP and the small UR group". [xix]
There is another intriguing anecdote about Operation Patty. During the
late spring of 1961, field commander Jack Gordon was working at Guantanamo with
Alonzo Gonzalez (no known relation to Reynol Gonzalez), who was talking about
killing Castro. Gordon had come to the conclusion that Gonzalez was a double
agent. He then heard there was dynamite
on the base. Gordon called base
commander Hal Feeney and told him that he thought Gonzelez should be
arrested.
Within an hour, Gordon was in the psych unit, and held for several months until October 1961. Gordon says he was set up. His professional credentials later enabled him to become a history professor in Massachusetts and work with famed historian Samuel Eliot Morrison. Gordon ultimately provided his story to the Rockefeller Commission. [xx]
Andy
Postal of the Church Committee got a good look at Guantanamo's ONI files. An ONI report written by Clyde Roach states
that Lt. Modesett admitted knowledge of the assassination plan, passing on a
sniper rifle to Gonzalez, and test firing it with him.
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