CASTRO ALSO COMMENTED ON THE STRANGENESS OF THE WIRE SERVICE REPORTS THE DAY BEFORE THAT HAD INSTANTLY IDENTIFIED LEE HARVEY OSWALD AS THE ASSASSIN On November 23, 1963, he asked brilliantly obvious questions about Oswald that have been suppressed in the U.S. media from then until now. “Can anyone who has said that he will disclose military secrets [as Oswald said to the Soviet Union] return to the United States without being sent to jail? . . . “How strange that this former marine should go to the Soviet Union and try to become a Soviet citizen, and that the Soviets should not accept him, that he should say at the American Embassy that he intended to disclose to the Soviet Union the secrets of everything he learned while he was in the U.S. service and that in spite of this statement, his passage is paid by the U.S. Government . . . He goes back to Texas and finds a job. This is all so strange!”[189] Fidel Castro recognized “CIA” written all over Lee Harvey Oswald and the disinformation on him that was being sent around the world soon after the assassination. The Dallas setup was obvious to someone as familiar with CIA plots as Fidel Castro was. On the night before Oswald was killed and silenced forever, Castro’s questions pointed beyond Oswald to an unspeakable source of the crime: “Who could be the only ones interested in this murder? Could it be a real leftist, a leftist fanatic, at a moment when tensions had lessened, at a moment when McCarthyism was being left behind, or was at least more moderate, at a moment when a nuclear test ban treaty is signed, at a moment when [presidential] speeches [that] are described as weak with respect to Cuba were being made?”[190] In the years to come, Fidel Castro would conclude that Nikita Khrushchev and John Kennedy had negotiated a correct way out of the missile crisis, in spite of his own opposition. He would then admit honestly that he had been too blind to see a liberating way out at the time. In a 1975 interview, he acknowledged that he had been “enormously irritated” by the way in which the crisis was resolved, with no guarantee of Cuba’s security against a U.S. invasion. “But if we are realistic,” he added, “and we go back in history, we realize that ours was not the correct posture.”[191] Upon further reflection he had come to feel “history has proven that the Soviet position [of withdrawing its missiles in return for a no-invasion pledge] was the correct one” and that Kennedy’s “promise not to invade Cuba [turned out to be] a real promise and everyone knows that. That is the truth.”[192] JFK’s successors in the White House adhered to that promise, even though they failed to follow up on his beginning negotiations with Castro. Castro had seen Kennedy change as president: “I have an impression of Kennedy and of Kennedy’s character, but I formed it over the years that he was President from different gestures, different attitudes. We mustn’t forget the speech he made at American University several months prior to his death, in which he admitted certain truths and spoke in favor of peace and relaxation of tensions. It was a very courageous speech and it took note of a series of international realities . . . This was Kennedy after two years in the presidency, who felt sure of his reelection, a Kennedy who dared make decisions—daring decisions . . . “One of the characteristics of Kennedy was courage. He was a courageous man. A man capable of taking a decision one way or another, a man capable of revising a policy, because he had the courage to do so.”[193] Speaking to members of Congress who visited Cuba in 1978, Castro said of his former enemy, “I can tell you that in the period in which Kennedy’s assassination took place Kennedy was changing his policy toward Cuba . . . To a certain extent we were honored in having such a rival . . . He was an outstanding man.”[194]--FROM JFK AND THE UNSPEAKABLE: WHY HE DIED AND WHY IT MATTERS BY JAMES W. DOUGLASS This book should be required reading for every American citizen.--Richard Falk, Milbank Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University ARGUABLY THE MOST IMPORTANT BOOK YET WRITTEN ABOU TA US PRESIDENT.... Should be reuquired reading for all high school and college students, and anyone who is a registered voter!-- JOHN PERKINS, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man In JFK and the Unspeakable Jim Douglass has distilled all the best available research into a very well-documented and convincing portrait of President Kennedys transforming turn to peace, at the cost of his life. Personally, it has made a very big impact on me. After reading it in Dallas, I was moved for the first time to visit Dealey Plaza. I urge all Americans to read this book and come to their own conclusions about why he died and why -- after fifty years -- it still matters.” -- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “Right now, I ask all of you—please please, read JFK and the Unspeakable! I cried all night reading it, and didn’t sleep a wink. It is a book that could make us stand up and change the world, right now. Maybe we can save the world before it blows up. Really” —Yoko Ono A remarkable story that changed the way I view the world. ---James Bradley, author of Flags of Our Fathers An unfamiliar yet thoroughly convincing account of a series of crediotable decisions of John F. Kennedy--at odds with his initial Cold War stance--that earned him the secret distrust and hatred of hard-liners among the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA.--Daniel Ellsberg, author, Secrets: A Memoir of the Vietnam War and the Pentagon Papers
Posted on: Wed, 29 Jan 2014 01:12:30 +0000
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