Did the FBI know… of a plot to kill President Kennedy?
Al’s Loupe
Did the FBI know… of a plot to kill President Kennedy?
By Alvaro F. Fernandez
alvaro@progresoweekly.com
My young daughter and I recently took a walk on Bay Road, a little known street in South Beach. While there I pointed out a pink, condo building immediately south of Lincoln Road. I felt a weird sensation, a wave of emotions, and I searched for the place as it was in my childhood. But that was long ago.
Back then that tall building was a simple, but large piece of property with a two-story house, a cottage in the back and large fields on both the north and south sides of the structure. We’d use the north field for our football games. It may have included another of the condo structures now in the adjacent area.
My memory took me back to 1962 and 1963. That house was used as office space by the Central Intelligence Agency. From there, who knows what went on? But I know for a fact that many of the programs that were transmitted to Cuba via Radio Swan, based on Swan Island, the tiny island in the Caribbean used by the CIA for many of its covert operations to overthrow the Castro government in Cuba, were either broadcast or taped from there.
In that old house, now engraved in my mind, I’d walk in as a nine-, 10-year-old, through the front door, stairs immediately in front of me, and turn right to the room where the group’s leader worked. He happened to be my old man. And back then he was, if I remember correctly, a couple of years older than John F. Kennedy, the president of the U.S. To the right of the stairs at the entrance sat a man whose name I don’t remember, but he always had a cigar hanging from his mouth and he could type with two fingers faster than most people on earth can type with two hands. My friends and I would often stand and stare at him working. He worked with an old, Corona typewriter. Nothing electric about it. His fingers whirred. Like a hummingbird when it flies in one place. Then to the left of those stairs was the studio. Where radio shows were transmitted and taped – we’d often participate as students in a program on catechism taught by a fake priest whose real name was Paquito.
There was also the guy who’d tell me he was my uncle. He introduced me to American football as an eight-year-old. Took me to my first football game. I fell in love with the sport and revered the University of Miami quarterback, George Mira. He wore number 10. This guy, my so-called uncle (who I loved and often saw for years after), and who is now many years deceased and whose name I’ll forego, also let me peek at the first machine gun I ever saw. It was in the trunk of his car. And by the look of him, you’d never know he had a reputation for using it.
This may sound strange, but I remember those days fondly. And I loved to visit that house. Everything seemed so exciting. There, the other kids (mostly the children of the men who worked for my father) and I learned about the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis and other current events of the time – most of them, as they happened. And sometimes, before they occurred.
It is also where I remember the week before President Kennedy was to visit Miami. Visiting the office one day, I remember, were two FBI agents. Can you imagine, the FBI visiting my dad. In his office. G-men you only saw on TV or in the movies – chasing the bad guys. And always coming out on top.
I later found out they were there because they feared an assassination attempt on the president. And everything pointed to Miami as the place it would happen. They came with pictures of suspects – anti-Castro Cubans supposedly living in Miami. My father happened to have better pictures of the men and handed them over, gladly.
The fact is that Kennedy was assassinated a couple of weeks later, but in Dallas. Nobody seems to be sure of who did it – to this day.
It’s why when I read about the new book by former CIA analyst Brian Latell in print in a couple of weeks and getting The Miami Herald treatment: “Did Castro Know?” who was going to kill President Kennedy, I turn back and remember my days living – as in a movie. More excitement than any child should be exposed to.
But the fact is that there were many persons aware that there was a plot to assassinate the president. As most presidents, Kennedy had many people who hated him. Now Latell, and The Miami Herald and its headlines, are trying to point the finger at Castro. It’s nothing new. The guy’s been the bogeyman for more than a half century. Give him credit for staying power…
And I wouldn’t doubt that Castro may have known of someone wanting to kill President Kennedy, but what Latell conveniently leaves out of his book – at least from what The Miami Herald has reported – is that there were also people on the other side of this argument who knew of the plot. And at least in the specific moment I experienced, the culprits suspected were persons also out to get Fidel.
