The report also states that the assassination planning between May-July 1961 was not authorized by ONI, that Gordon was not involved but "apparently he did learn of some of the plans", and that the plan failed for lack of a silencer and telescopic sight. [xxi] Modesett told an interviewer in 1994 that "there was something regarding Raul that I don't think I can talk about."[xxii]
Besides Izaguirre (Tito), other main planners were Veciana's aide Jose Pujols Mederos (Ernesto), Emilio Adolfo Rivero Caro (Brand), Adolfo Mendoza (Raul), and Jorge Garcia Rubio (Tony). These men were named in Castro's Black Book, and again more recently in the Cuban press. [xxiii] The CIA has released a redacted document that hides the names of these men and their role in these operations, while admitting that several of them had some involvement in "sabotage" and similar activities. [xxiv]
Castro
believed that the main political exile forces involved were Tony Varona of the
FRD, Manuel Ray of the MRP, Aureliano Sanchez Arango of AAA, and "Admiral
(Arleigh) Burke and CIA agents at Guantanamo Naval Base". [xxv] The MRP must have been getting its funds from
military intelligence at this point, because their relations with the CIA were
not good.
MRP chief Ignacio Mendoza told his compatriot Manuel Ray in mid-July that he had been approached by CIA officers. The word was that MRP would get CIA funding if Ray was "eliminated or dismissed". Ray quit his post and then publicly denounced the CIA for "meddling" in the July 17, 1961 Miami News. The story made the New York Times days later. [xxvi] Ray's willingness to use guns and explosives may explain how he became AMBANG-1. [xxvii]
OPERATION LIBORIO
New plans were brought into play after the collapse of Operation Patty. One network that tried to move assassination plans forward was AMBLOOD, run by former Cuban government official Luis Toroella. Ecuador military intelligence chief Lt. Col. Roger Paredes helped network this operation, which was run from JMWAVE in Miami. The exiles were trained by the CIA inside Guatanamo naval base itself. The network was rounded up on or before September 24, 1961. [xxviii]
AMBLOOD's work seems to be tied to Operation Liborio, also run from Miami. CIA records show that the day after Izaguirre's capture, Veciana had a meeting with Harry Real at the CIA's New York field office and asked to speak to a senior CIA officer to discuss plans to assassinate Castro and his request for CIA assistance. According to Veciana, he received a call from "Maurice Bishop" months after the Bay of Pigs - during the past two years, Veciana has revealed that this man was actually CIA covert action officer David Atlee Phillips. Phillips told Veciana that he had "decided that the only thing left to be done was to have an attempt on Castro's life". The plan was to kill Fidel with a bazooka from an apartment overlooking a public plaza on the 4th of October 1961. [xxix] Veciana recruited the men and put the operation together. [xxx]
Veciana's aide Pujols/AMCOAX-1 became the new field general, taking over from Izaguirre. Pujols' aides Octavio Barreros and Rafael Quintero went to meet with CIA paramilitary chief "Dominick Pantleone", a pseudonym for Rocky Farnsworth, David Morales' predecessor as Chief of Base of JMWAVE. JMWAVE's mission was to focus on Cuba from its Miami outpost. It was the largest CIA base in the world. Farnsworth urged them to leave Pujols' MRR and work directly with the Agency, suggesting that "Reinol Gonzalez' MRP group in Cuba is the best organized group on the island, and the only one that is national in scope. [xxxi]
Things started going south for Operation Liborio on September 29, 1961, when MRP member Dalia Jorge Diaz was arrested while leaving a suitcase of explosives inside a Sears department store in Havana. [xxxii] Those known to her were immediately arrested; those not known to her were not. She was almost immediately released. [xxxiii] She was probably a pro-Castro spy.
On October 1, 1961, Reynol
Gonzalez/AMCALL-1 wrote a letter to US MRP members saying that Operation
Liborio had to be abandoned because of the arrest of Dalia.
After Dalia's arrest, planted bombs and explosives were discovered in fifteen stores. [xxxiv]
On October 3, 1961, Antonio Veciana and his
mother-in-law were forced to flee from Cuba, after weapons were found in an
apartment rented by his mother near the Presidential palace. [xxxv] Upon his arrival to the US, Veciana said
that he had lined up Luis Balbuena to be the primary sniper and he didn't know
what had gone wrong. [xxxvi]
In a debriefing with a CIA officer in the late 70s, Reynol Gonzalez told him that the attack on Castro failed because Veciana got "cold feet" and left, Raul Venta del Mozo was there but did not fire the weapon, and for some reason another unnamed man didn't either. [xxxvii] A CIA memo said that the "attempt aborted when the bazooka failed to fire". [xxxviii] Yet another story was that the bazooka was so dangerous that the participants concluded that there was no way to ensure that the shooter wouldn't be killed by its backfire. Whatever the truth is, Operation Liborio was a failure.
On October 12, 1961, Reynol Gonzalez was arrested while on the "Cesar Odio Farm", the property of millionaire Amador Odio. JMWAVE learned of his arrest by October 15th and did what it could to aid Gonzalez's group. [xxxix] Gonzalez was paid for his services as a CIA agent after his release from prison in 1977. [xl] Gonzalez claimed that Pujols and Barroso (Barreros) were arrested on or about the same time. [xli] Gonzalez identified Pujols as a "CIA agent" also known as "Ernesto". [xlii]
On October 26, 1961, Amador Odio and his wife were
arrested and held for eight years. Their
political allies were Manuel Ray, Aureliano Sanchez and their allies. [xliii] The Odios were the parents of a woman who was later to play a prominent role in the JFK assassination story...Sylvia Odio. Ms. Odio was to meet a man who looked like Lee Harvey Oswald and who talked about killing Kennedy a few weeks before the November 22, 1963 assassination. [xliv]
On November 6, 1963, Reynol Gonzalez was
interviewed on television. Gonzalez was a asked about Operation Patty, Liobrio and the firebombing of
the El Encanto department store in Havana during the days before the Bay of Pigs invasion - the subject of a narrative we will save for another day. His colleagues told the
media he was brainwashed. After his
release, Gonzalez did not say that he was tortured, although he was stripped
naked and repeatedly interrogated under bright lights. Gonzalez said that he and his team had made
an agreement that if captured no one would talk for seventy-two hours, in order to give
others a fighting chance to get away.
When he was told by his interrogators to talk or they would kill other
members of his team, he was willing to make the deal. [xlv] "They are using us in order to maintain the
state of internal agitation and anguish, through their sabotages, so that they
can make their plans-- He admitted
participation in all of the above-described operations. [xlvi]
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