Posada Carriles and the National Security
Archive "Documents"
By Servando Gonzalez (2005)
"Papers connect exile to bomb plot. Documents say that
Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban militant seeking U.S. asylum, attended
two meetings at which the1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner was
planned," is the title of an article by Oscar Corral, published
by the Miami Herald on May 10, 2005. According to Corral,
Luis Posada Carriles attended at least two planning meetings
for the bombing of a Cuban jetliner in 1976 that killed 73 people,
according to once-secret document Washington.
The records, made up of FBI and CIA files that were part of
an investigation into the airliner bombing and other anti-Castro
terrorism in the 1970s, may further complicate Posada's bid for
U.S. asylum.
The National Security Archive, a private research institute
and library at George Washington University, plans to post the
rest of the Posada documents online today at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsar
chiv/. The archive catalogs and releases declassified U.S. documents
often obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
''There is no way the Bush administration can ignore the historical
record as it evaluates his petition for safe harbor,'' said Peter
Kornbluh, a senior analyst and Cuba specialist at the archive.
I have not studied in detail de case of the bombing of the
Cubana plane, but I know a lot about the so called National Security
"Archive", therefore, I suggest to take these documents
with a grain of salt.
Planes have been the vehicle of choice for Castro's self-provocation
exercises. I heard in Havana some years ago an interesting rumor
about the Cubana de Aviación airliner allegedly sabotaged
by anti-Castro terrorist Luis Posada Carriles in 1973, killing
all people on board, including the Cuban Olympic fencing team.
According to the rumor, Beatriz Márquez, a Cuban singer
in vogue at the time, was on a tour in Venezuela and was scheduled
to fly back to Cuba in that plane. But, at the very last moment,
she allegedly changed her mind and decided to cancel her flight.
The plane took off with the rest of the passengers and was blown
out of the sky. Everybody aboard the plane died. Beatriz Márquez
was very lucky, and her last moment decision saved her from a
sure death.
But Beatriz Márquez was probably not only lucky. Her
husband was a senior officer of Fidel Castro's personal security
team, and she had very good contacts at the highest levels of
the Castro government. Some people in Cuba believe that, though
the Castro government perhaps was not directly involved in the
terrorist action, they knew the plane was doomed, and they saved
Ms. Márquez' life. The rest of the people in the plane,
including the team of young Olympic fencers, were expendable.
Revolutions need martyrs, and Castro has never been shy in committing
terrorist actions in order to provide martyrs for his revolution.
I am copying below part of a chapter of my book The Nuclear
Deception: Nikita Khrushchev and the Cuban Missile Crisis, in
which I devoted some space to show that the National Security
"Archive" is not what it purports to be, and its disinformation
job has nothing to do with documents.
I have come to believe that the guys at the NSA are not only
a bunch of liars, but that the NSA is most likely a CIA front.
Having in mind that, for some strange reason, the CIA always
ends up by playing Castro's hand and vice versa, I would not
be surprised if some day we discover that the spy agency has
strong interests in having Castro get a hold on Posada Carriles.
Perhaps Mr. Posada knows too much about both Castro and the CIA.
If any friend of Mr. Posada Carriles reads this article, I
would appreciate if he passes it to him.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The National Security "Archive"
According to information posted on its Web site, "the
National Security Archive began a concerted campaign in 1987
to advance the historical record on the missile crisis."
"The availability of previously classified material has
enabled scholars both to challenge the conventional wisdom and
to revise long-standing historical interpretation of the events
that took place before, during, and after October 1962."
But, as I have proved above, far from advancing, the historical
record on the Cuban missile crisis, since 1987 it has moved backwards
-among other things, thanks to the concerted campaign headed
by the National Security Archive. Therefore, an analysis of the
work of the National Security Archive is in order.
The first thing that calls the attention of an inquisitive
reader is the name of this organization. I asked several educated
persons, including several college professors and librarians,
what was, according to their belief, the National Security Archive.
All of them, with the single exception of an archivist who was
familiar with it, thought that the National Security Archive
was a government organization -which I myself believed for some
time.
But, a close look at the Archive's Web site reveals that they
are a non-governmental institution that receives no government
funding. According to its own definition,
The National Security Archive was founded in 1985 by a group
of journalists and scholars who have obtained documentation from
the US government under the Freedom of Information Act and sought
a centralized repository for these materials. Over the past decade,
the Archive has become the world's largest non governmental library
of declassified documents.
Therefore, one thing is certain: The name National Security
Archive is misleading. It is also misleading that the above paragraph
does not mention that the "group of journalists and scholars"
who founded the Archive were mostly leftists and left-wing liberals.
It is not a coincidence that the main goal of the Archive
has been to obtain documents that prove the evil doings of the
CIA, the Department of Defense and other government organizations,
particularly about events occurred during Republican administrations,
or documents that show the evil intent of the right wingers in
the Army and other branches of the government during Democrat
administrations.
The second notable thing that calls one's attention about
this non-governmental organization's name is the use of the word
"archive." Reading on the Archive's Web site I found
that it is called an archive, "Despite the Archive's non-traditional
role (since the originals remain inside the government -hopefully)."[sic]
A cursory view at some of the "documents" the National
Security Archive allegedly keeps, shows that they are actually
photocopies, not the original documents. Actually, they are not
just photocopies, but photocopies of photocopies.
Due to the fact that no mention is found in the site about
any authentication procedure of the copies of copies of the documents
they keep, one may safely surmise that the archivists at the
National Security Archive have never seen, touched or scrutinized
the original documents of which they keep alleged faithful copies.
This is simply amazing, because in the archival profession the
process of authentication, that is, the evaluation of the physical
veracity of a document, is a long, difficult and painstaking
job. In the case of documents whose source is dubious or have
a reputation for dissembling, extra care is taken. But, apparently,
the persons in charge of the National Security Archive have trusted
the certification of the copies of alleged documents whose originals
-they hope- remain inside the government, the very same organizations
most of them despise because of their lying and cunning.
According to the Random House Webster's College Dictionary,
1977 edition, an archive is "a place where documents and
other materials of historical importance are preserved; the documents
and other materials preserved in such a place." This is
more or less the definition of the word "archive" found
in most dictionaries. No mention is made in any of the dictionaries
I consulted about an archive being a place for the preservation
of copies of documents. Therefore, if an archive is a depository
of documents, and the National Security Archive is actually the
depository of photocopies of alleged documents provided by non-reliable
sources which hopefully remain in the government's possession,
one has to reach the conclusion that the name National Security
Archive is also misleading, because its role is so "non-traditional"
that it is not an archive in the proper sense of the word.
Then, if it is not an archive, What is actually the National
Security Archive? The National Security "Archive" is,
at best, a hoax or a clever joke; at worst, an extraordinarily
successful exercise in deception.
The Value of Documents
Intelligence professionals believe that all documents are
suspect, particularly the ones purposely left as "historical
evidence". As Daniel Ellsberg puts it, "The idea that
official documents contain the real history of what transpires
within the circles of power is a questionable assumption made
by too many historians," adding that "So much of the
official record is deception written as cover or justification
for existing policy."
Sir William Stephenson, the famous spymaster, once said that
nothing deceives like a document. To intelligence analysts, all
official recorded information is potential disinformation. This
includes official records, memos, letters, photographs, etc.,
including audio recordings and, particularly after the advent
of computer generated imaging, film, video recordings and all
types of computer data.
It is useful to keep in mind that declassified documents are
as untrustworthy as any other source. The fact that a document
was labelled classified, and it has been declassified after some
period of time, does not guarantee that what it says is the truth,
nor that its original intent has not been disinformation.
It seems that, at least in the case of studies about the Cuban
missile crisis, Stephenson was close to the truth. In the Introduction
to a recent study of the missile crisis, Blight and Welch assert
that "While an irreducible element of mystery enshrouds
the event, and while imbalances in sources remain, the Cuban
missile crisis remains the most thoroughly documented historical
encounter of all time." Paradoxically, the Cuban missile
crisis remains full of unanswered key questions. Proof of it
is that, after so many scholarly studies about the crisis, Blight
and Welch's words closely resemble Castro's words when, less
than six months after the crisis, he said, "This is a mystery.
Maybe historians will be able to clarify this twenty years hence.
I don't know." But it is evident that, far from clarifying
the event, historians have been adding confusion to it. This
doesn't says good of their love for documents.
Not being trained in the black arts of intelligence and espionage,
most scholars involved in the study of the Cuban missile crisis
have been accepting raw data, that is, information, -i.e., documents,
interviews, etc.- as if it were what in the field of intelligence
and espionage is called intelligence. They seem to ignore that
intelligence is not the product of the collection, but of the
analysis of all types of data. It is not until the collected
information has been thoroughly evaluated according to certain
specific rules and criteria, that it becomes true intelligence.
An important element in the evaluation process is the verification
that the information has not been intentionally created for disinformation
purposes, that is, that the person or persons who created it
has intentionally lied. A close reading of the books produced
by these scholars, however, show that the possibility that some
of their sources may have intentionally lied for disinformation
purposes seems to have been totally absent from their minds.
Documents or Images of Documents?
As in Magritte's famous picture of a pipe with the caption
"This is not a pipe," a copy of a document is not the
document. Some naïve reader may think that my contention
that some of the copies of the documents archived in the National
Security Archive may not be a faithful rendering of the original,
or that some of them may be total fabrications, is far-fetched.
On the contrary, it is totally justified.
My main objection to accepting copies of documents at face
value is simply that, for obvious reasons, it has never been
an accepted practice among archivists. Moreover, how can one
accept without verification alleged copies of documents provided,
among others, by the CIA, an organization that has a whole department
devoted to the falsification of documents? How can we accept
at face value the word of people from an organization whose main
job is lying and deceiving?
My concerns about the possibility that some of these "declassified'
documents may be faked is not the product of a paranoid mind,
but a legitimate one based on objective facts. It is widely known
that the CIA and other U.S. government agencies have falsified
documents. The CIA makes considerable use of forged documents.
Just last year, an internal inquiry found that the very Pentagon
agency charged with discovering and exposing fraud destroyed
incriminating documents and replaced them with falsified ones
to avoid embarrassment when its own operations were audited.
The Soviet (and now Russian) intelligence services has a department
exclusively working full-time in the falsification of documents.
Some of the KGB cobblers boasted that their falsifications were
better than the originals. The Cuban DGI is proud of the quality
of the works of its Technical Support Division, the department
responsible for the production of false documents.
Government officials would not accept a copy of a birth certificate
or a certificate of naturalization in lieu of the original document.
Why is one supposed to accept from this same government copies
of documents instead of the originals? Apparently Americans have
become so fascinated with images that they have lost the dividing
line between things and their images. But, despite general agreement
of the contrary, a thing and its image are not the same thing.
In the same fashion, a copy of a document is not the same as
the document itself.
Have the signatures and other handwritten notations undergone
calligraphic analysis to verify that they are not forgeries?
Have the watermarks on the paper been checked to make sure that
the documents were typed on similar paper as the one used in
similar documents typed at the same place and at approximately
the same time? For example, in the particular case of Castro's
speech mentioned in the previous chapter, did Brenner and Blight
actually listen to the original recording? Assuming that they
did, did they electronically analyzed the tape looking for alterations
or forgeries? If what Castro gave them was a transcript of his
speech there is a strong possibility that they have been shortchanged.
It is known that Castro heavily edits his own speeches before,
and sometimes after, publication. Therefore, if this was the
case, what they actually got was not what Castro said, but what
Castro would like to have said.
A historian may consider the physical analyses of documents
I have mentioned above pure and simple paranoia, but they are
standard operating procedure for intelligence professionals,
who have been using them successfully for centuries. The main
reason for these precautions is that all intelligence services
have whole sections devoted to the forging of documents. As a
matter of fact, document forgery is an important specialization
in the intelligence field. Consequently, intelligence officers
are very careful not to fall in the same traps they normally
set against their opponents.
Most scholars believe that true history only comes out of
the study of original documents. Scholars are apparently satisfied
when they verify the authenticity of a document. Intelligence
officers, go a step further and try to verify its reliability,
which is mostly given by the reliability of the person or persons
who created it in the first place. Therefore, the last thing
they would do would be to trust documents produced by opposing
intelligence services-unless those documents, disregarding their
truthfulness, help them to prove their point. For example, CIA
officers would happily accept any declassified KGB document proving
that Penkovsky was a traitor, while they will never accept a
similar one proving that Penkovsky was a Soviet plant.
Intelligence officers are aware that, particularly in recent
history, some of the documents have been left for the sole purpose
of disinformation. Moreover, most scholars apparently ignore
that a great part of dirty politics is based on orders never
put to paper or never spoken, but merely "understood"
by subordinates. Therefore, an important part of modern history
is systematically left out of the reach of scholarly work.
The comments above do not mean that I think that all the copies
of the documents in possession of the National Security Archive
are false. Most likely the majority of them are true copies of
the original documents they claim to be -though probably some
of them are not, and at least a few may be total fabrications.
The point I want to emphasize is that, because these copies have
not been validated against the original documents, and there
is no way they can be validated for the time being -hoping that
they still exist somewhere in the government's archives- and
that the originally documents have not been authenticated, the
copies of documents in the possession of the National Security
Archive are suspect and do not constitute a reliable source of
information until they have been scientifically authenticated
by qualified professionals. Moreover, all scholarly work based
on information whose source is these documents should be considered
suspect and unreliable. I think that, given the provenance of
these documents, and the irregularities in their authentication
(or lack of it), such skepticism is merely prudent.
This concern is even more justified when we see that, based
on these "documents," some scholars have arrived at
new explanations, sometimes diverging considerably from previous
ones, about what really happened in some seminal historic events
-like the Cuban missile crisis for example. The main danger I
see in this trend of accepting spurious documents at face value
is that studies based on them, which may be the product of erroneous
data and, therefore, erroneous themselves, may one day be used
by American leaders as a guide for future actions -the "lessons
of the Cuban missile crisis" mentality. This is a mistake
that may bring momentous consequences to America.
The Ouroboros of American Politics
According to the National Security Archive's web site, its
close to $1.8 million yearly budget comes in part from private
philanthropists. Among the organizations providing funds for
the Archives are the Arca Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation,
the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation,
the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Rockefeller Family Fund,
just to mention a few.
What is difficult to understand is why the same people who
made billions as the direct results of the evil doings of the
CIA and other U.S. government agencies, are now out with the
apparent intention of crucifying them. Like the medieval depiction
of the ouroboros -a serpent biting its tail- they are shooting
themselves in the foot. This, at least to me, is highly suspicious.
May it be that this is precisely what they are trying to avoid?
A significant detail is that, though apparently damaging,
most of the areas of interest of the National Security Archive
do not deal with subjects which may be a cause of embarrassment
for the people who are economically supporting the Archive. No
documents in the National Security Archives mention the collaboration
of some members of the US government and their friends in the
industry and banks with Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. I
particularly have not heard of any "document" in the
National Security Archive mentioning the CIA's role in overthrowing
Batista and helping Castro grab power in Cuba. And this brings
us to another obscure area of the "documents" in the
National Security Archive.
Even though the role of the National Security Archive in the
procuring of documents is a proactive one -usually they ask based
on the Freedom of Information Act for a document they presume
exists- the documents the different branches of the U.S. government
eventually declassify are those that, for some reason, they believe
are not smoking guns. Therefore, this is a case of deception
by omission. We can safely assume that the truly damaging documents
will never be made public.
One of the most pernicious side-effects of the activity of
the National Security Archive is that it has contributed to create
the illusion that one can write truthful history based on the
information provided by "declassified" documents provided
by any government organization of any country -particularly intelligence
organizations. But the idea is fallacious. In the first place,
there is no guarantee that some of the key documents have not
been doctored or fabricated from scratch. Secondly, the fact
that some of the declassified documents have deletions shows
that perhaps the most important bits of information are not provided.
Finally the declassification process itself, by which a government
organization controls which documents are declassified and which
are not, is a form of censorship which guarantees that the overall
image that will come out is a distorted, slanted one tailored
to benefit the interests of the declassifiers-cum-censors.
As I mentioned above, there is the possibility that the National
Security Archive may be an exercise in deception. As Senator
Daniel Patrick Moyniham has shown, the main goal of government
secrecy is not keeping them out of the eyes of the enemy, but
of their own people.
It is highly suspicious that some of the people who created
the CIA, like Allen Dulles, for example, were close associates
of some of the people who control several of the organizations
that are now bankrolling the National Security Archive. As professor
Teresa Odendahl has pointed out, "contemporary American
philanthropy is a system of 'generosity' by which the wealthy
exercise social control and help themselves more than they do
others." One has to be a gullible fool to believe that the
same people who created the CIA, and used it for the benefit
of their businesses in Guatemala and Iran, just to mention two
well-known examples, are going to fund an organization devoted
to find and expose their dirty linen.
Some of the very foundations that provide the funds for the
operation of the National Security Archive, "namely, Rockefeller,
Ford and Carnegie, have been conscious instruments of covert
U.S. foreign policy, with directors who can only be described
as agents of U.S. intelligence." The fact that Fidel Castro,
who is everything but a fool, has been so eagerly cooperating
with the National Security Archives' folks, is perhaps an important
clue to discover where his true allegiances really lie.
It would be a sad, but not surprising paradox, if some day
it is found that the CIA has been all the time behind the supposed
efforts to unmask the CIA. That would be the ultimate blowback
operation, the consummation of the ouroboric goal.
In his well known novel 1984, George Orwell wrote that he
who controls the past controls the present, and he who controls
the present controls the future. The intelligence services discovered
a long time ago that he who controls the enemy controls the outcome
of the battle. Thus, successful penetration of the opponent's
ranks has always been the golden dream of all intelligence services.
Servando González' novel La madre de todas las conspiraciones:
una novela de ideas subversivas, just appeared. You can buy it
at http://www.intelibooks.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes:
36 www.gwu.edu/~nsarchive/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/declass.html.
37 This, of course, is no surprise. Paradoxically, the American
Left has always been indirectly bankrolled by the most reactionary
elements of the Right. See, i.e., Evan Gahr, "Looking at
Philanthropy The Gift of Giving: Paymasters of the PC Brigades,"
The Wall Street Journal, Jan 27, 1995; Joyce Price, "Media
Give Liberal Causes Millions More, Study Says," The Washington
Times, Nov. 14. 1993; Marshall Robinson, "The Ford Foundation:
Sowing the Seeds of a Revolution." Environment, v. 35 n.
3 (April 1993) 10-20; Goldie Blumenstyk, "New Head of Ford
Fund's Education Program is Champion of Women and Minority Students,"
The Chronicle of Higher Education, v. 39 n. 16 (Dec 9, 1992),
A27; Daniel Brandt, "Philanthropists at War," NameBase
NewsLine, No. 15 (October-December, 1996). The fact perhaps explains
why the American Left is perhaps one of the most reactionary
Lefts in the world. Of course, they see themselves as "progressives."
38 I refuse to use the word "democratic" when I
mention the Democratic Party because, as it fits to this era
of semantic deception, the Democratic Party is not democratic.
Moreover, I think that it is time to begin talking about the
Repucrat (or Demoblican, if you wish) party, the one that truly
controls American politics.
39 Unfortunately, even serious scholars apparently believe
that the National Security Archive is in possession of the actual
documents. After mentioning some documents, Richard Ned Lebow
affirms that, "All documents, unless otherwise noted, are
found in the National Security Archive." See, Richard Ned
Lebow and Janice Gross Stein, We All Lost the Cold War (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 377, note 9.
40 Some of the documents show deleted areas, so one can safely
assume that the deletions have been made on copies, not on the
originals.
41 Ellsberg quoted in Michael Parenti, History as Mystery
(San Francisco: City Lights, 1999), p. 153.
42 "What can Intelligence tell us about the Cuban missile
crisis, and what the Cuban missile crisis tell us about Intelligence?,"
in James G. Blight and David A Welch, eds., Intelligence and
the Cuban missile crisis (London: Frank Cass, 1998), p. 3.
43 Fidel Castro in interview with Claude Julien, Le Monde,
22 March 1963.
44 In 1973, during the investigations of the Watergate scandal,
E. Howard Hunt, one of the burglars, was questioned about his
forgery of a State Department cable linking the Kennedy administration
to the assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam.
Hunt told the federal prosecutor that he had been given some
training in his past CIAcareer to do just this sort of thing
"... floating forget newspapers accounts, telegrams, that
sort of thing." Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks, The
CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (New York: Dell, 1974), p. 170.
In his book The Master of Disguise: My Secret Life in the CIA
(New York: William Morrow, 1999), ex-CIA officer Antonio Mendez
offers a candid behind-the-scenes view of his career as CIA's
foremost specialist in disguises. He also explains in some detail
the artistic abilities and state-of-art techniques to forge official
documents.
45 See, "Anti-Fraud Agency Fakes Documents," Associated
Press, Washington, June 5, 2001.
46 Ladislav Bittman, The KGB and Soviet Disinformation (Washington,
D.C.: PergamonBrassey's, 1985). See particularly Chapter 5, The
Art of Forgery, pp. 91-107. See also "Soviet Covert Action:
The Forgery Initiative," Hearings Before the Subcommittee
on Oversight of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence,
House of Representatives, 96th Congress, 6,19 February, 1980,
Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing.
47 In spy lingo, a passport is a "shoe." Hence the
name "cobbler" for the person who falsifies passports.
48 See, Manuel Cereijo, "Cuba's Adversary Foreign Intelligence
Operations," INGMCA@aol.com, July 2001; also Domingo Amuchástegui,
"Cuban Intelligence and the October Crisis," in Blight
and Welch, Intelligence and the Cuban Missile Crisis, p. 98.
In May 1967, after a dispute with American black leader Robert
Williams, the Cuban intelligence forged an issue of William's
publication The Crusader, and mailed thousands of copies to the
U.S. and Africa. In the forged issue Williams accused the Chinese
of different political crimes. See Daniel Tretiak, Cuban Relations
with the Communist System (Waltham, Mass.: Advanced Study Group,
June 1940 [monograph 4), cited in Carlos Moore, Castro, The Blacks,
and Africa (Los Angeles: Center for Afro-American Studis, University
of California, Los Angeles, 1988), pp. 265-266.
49 Usually, after giving a speech Castro goes directly to
Granma, the official newspaper, and personally edits his speech
before it gets printed. When he is too tired to do it, Granma's
presses wait patiently until he comes by or approves the printing
over the phone. In the case of his speech at the trial for the
Moncada attack (later published under the title "History
Will Absolve Me") and his famous "I am a Marxist"
speech, so many different versions have been officially published
that it is almost impossible to know what he actually said.
50 One must keep in mind that, long before we had historians,
there were spies. Sun Tzu is still considered obligatory reading
by many intelligence officers. Blight and Welch's criticism about
the Russian and American intelligence services reluctance to
declassify SIGINT and HUMINT information "that would compromise
certain by-now-surely-defunct sources and methods," only
shows their lack of understanding of the essential work of intelligence
services. The basic practices of tradecraft, particularly HUMINT,
don't change much over the years, and intelligence services keep
information about it under tight control. See "What can
Intelligence tell us about the Cuban missile crisis, and what
the Cuban missile crisis tell us about Intelligence?," in
James G. Blight and David A Welch, eds., Intelligence and the
Cuban missile crisis (London: Frank Cass, 1998), p. 2.
51 According to Amuchástegui, "Cuban intelligence
became very adept at falsifying identities, forging documents,
and other techniques of deception." See, Domingo Amuchástegui,
"Cuban Intelligence and the October Crisis," in Intelligence
and the Cuban Missile Crisis, James G. Blight and David A Welch,
eds. (London: Frank Cass, 1998), 98.
52 Proof of it is their preoccupation about forgery and document
integrity. Studies in Intelligence, a CIA scholarly publication
with a very restricted circulation among members of the American
intelligence community, has published several articles and book
reviews about graphology and scientific examination of documents.
53 Norberto Fuentes points out that, once the Castroist regime
has disappeared, no one will be able to find any compromising
documents in the DSE (Department of State Security) archives.
The reason for this is that "Castro has never dictated to
his secretaries any assassination order, or a guerrilla landing
or the kidnapping of an American diplomat in Central America.
Those papers, of course, do not exist. Fidel Castro has won his
main battles whispering to the ears of his Antonios de la Guardia.
Dulces guerreros cubanos, p. 153. Col. Antonio de la Guardia
was Castro's main hit man, who boasted of having killed more
than sixty people abroad following Castro's direct orders. Eventually
Fidel had his assassin assassinated.
54 For example, I bet that Castro's letter to Khrushchev,
published by Granma, is a toned down fabrication. See, Prime
Minister Fidel Castro's letter to Premier Khrushchev, October
26, 1962 (reproduced from the international edition of Granma),
The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962, A National Security Archive Documents
Reader, Laurence Chang and Peter Kornbluh, eds. (New York: The
New Press, 1992) p. 189. The original letter was written in Spanish,
not in English as the one published by the NSA. In it, the Cuban
maniac, excited about the possibility of provoking a nuclear
holocaust which may have caused the death of half the world's
population, urged the Soviet Premier to launch a preemptive nuclear
attack on the United States. Faithful to their role as propagandists
of the Castro regime, the folks at the National Security Archive
published the false letter, disingenuously purporting it as the
real document. Of course, the NSA folks don't want the rest of
us to discover that their hero is actually an evil monster. For
a detailed analysis of Castro as an evil monster, see Servando
González, The Secret Fidel Castro, pp. 306-318.
55 The authentication of a document whose source is suspect
may involve verifying that the signature or any hand writing
on them really corresponds to the persons who producedthe document,
as well as the typewriters in use at the time. But, as the Hitler
Diaries hoax proved, none of them is conclusive. If an organization
with the technical means and know-how were intent in forging
a document, the most rudimentary precautions they would take
would be to find the proper typewriter and use a paper of the
same size. The only way to really be certain is to have chemical
tests made on the paper and its age, and the ink, looking for
inconsistencies like, for example, the use of synthetic fibers
in papers purporting to have been made at a time when this had
not been yet introduced in paper manufacturing.
56 It is interesting to see that some of the foundations contributing
to the National Security Archive are the same ones author Christopher
Simpson identified as those that, working close with the US military
and intelligence services, provided the largest single source
of funding for major scientific research in the 1950s a research
sponsored by the CIA. See, Simpson, Universities and Empire:
Money and Politics in the Social Sciences During the Cold War
(New Press, 1968), quoted in Mooney, "For Your Eyes Only,"
p. 36.
57 Out of unavoidable oversimplification, people always refer
to actions taken by intelligence services as "the CIA knew,"
"the KGB acted," "the Mossad believed," etc.,
forgetting that intelligence services are not homogeneous entities.
Due to the application of the need-to-know and compartmentation
principles, a common characteristic of intelligence services
is that the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing,
and vice versa. Therefore, when one says "the CIA knew,"
it actually means "some people at the CIA knew." In
the case of critical operations, as in the case of assassination
attempts on a foreign leader, it is likely that most people at
CIA, including very senior officers, were left out in the dark
about the operation. On the other hand, there is some evidence
that, since the sixties, the CIA has been not only teeming with
liberals but it has had some crypto-leftists among its ranks.
Contrary to what most people think, Castro has always haveh many
secret admirers among CIA officers. Some CIA defectors, like
Philip Agee, are notoriously pro-Castro. Given the strange coincidence
of interests between Castro and the CIA, there is the remote
possibility that both of them may just be different sides of
the same coin. The strange coincidence of interests between Castro
and the CIA will be the subject of my next book, Fidel Castro
Supermole: Walking Back the Cat in the Cuban Operation.
58 As an example I can bring the case of Paul Wolf, who has
been for many years engaged in a legal battle with the CIA trying
to obtain through the Freedom of Information Act the release
of documents related to the assassination of Colombia's leader
and presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán.
But the Gaitán case has many ramifications, and is a potential
can of worms the CIA does not want to unlid. Therefore, it is
not surprising that the CIA folks, so eager to comply with the
requests filed by the National Security Archive, have not been
cooperative at all with Wolf's requests. For a detailed account
of this legal battle as well as interesting details of the Gaitán
case, see www.derechos.net/paulwolf/gaitan/gaitan.html. By the
way, some people, Gaitán's daughter among them, suspect
that some of the Gaitán documents, so secretly kept in
the CIA files, may contain incriminating information about Fidel
Castro. On Castro's magnicidal inclinations see Servando González,
The Secret Fidel Castro, pp. 96-131.
59 Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Secrecy (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1998).
60 Teresa Odendahl, Charity Begins at Home: Generosity and
Self-Interest Among the Philanthropic Elite (New York: Basic
Books, 1990), p. 245. See also Francie Ostrower, Why the Wealthy
Give: The Culture of Elite Philanthropy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1995). The classic of all these studies still
is Rene Wormser, Foundations: Their Power and Influence (New
York: Devin-Adair, 1958).
60 Daniel Brandt, "Philanthropists at War," Name
base NewsLine, No. 15 (October-December, 1996)
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