Fidel - Our Man in Havana” by Charles A. Morse American complicity in the Cuban Revolution 1958-1960, our role in toppling the Batista government, and our installation of Castro and his gang of Communist murderers, is a story not widely reported. My primary source is American Policy Failures in Cuba by Mario Lazo. Incredibly, our government, particularly the Eisenhower State Department along with the New York Times and other major media outlets, assisted Castro and ousted Batista. This meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign state resulted in the murder, by the communists, of tens of thousands of innocent people and the enslavement of an entire population which, to this day, chafes under the steel tipped jackboot of a left wing Communist dictatorship. Fulgencio Batista y Zaldivar, while no saint, was a far cry from the monstrous apparition portrayed in the liberal American media. The truth is that Batista, while tolerating a level of corruption, abolished the death penalty, granted amnesty to his political opponents including Castro, and presided over the most prosperous economy in Latin America in the 1950s. Cuba had developed these enormous centros or clubs with memberships ranging from ten to ninety thousand people. For around three dollars a month, members enjoyed health, educational, and recreational benefits. In fact, according to the U.S. Dept. Of Commerce, Cuba had developed excellent healthcare and high educational standards including literacy. Castro would take credit for these advancements after the fact and his American robots would repeat his statistics, Hitler style, and continue to do so. What good is literacy, for that matter, if the State decides what youre allowed to read and not read? January 1957 found Castro and his 18-man group hiding out in the Sierra Maestra Mountains of Cubas eastern Oriente province. At a time when Castro had no support and was near starvation, he was able to make contact with New York Times Latin American specialist Herbert L. Matthews. Matthews had a proven trac record of support for Communist causes and was the type of leftist who thought it a virtue to bend the truth to help the cause. He had been reprimanded by the Times for this in his reportage of the Spanish Civil War of 1938-1939. Matthewss mendacious series, appearing on the Times front page, falsely described Castros force as powerful and well armed and also not Communist. Matthews was more than just a Castro lapdog, he actively conspired with State Dept. officials to depose Batista and helped Castro at every opportunity during his tenure in Havana 1957-1958. American media, following Matthews lead, jumped on the pro Castro bandwagon, including Edward R. Murrow. This alone, legitimized and, in a sense, created Castro. William A. Wieland, director of the office of Middle American Affairs and Roy R. Rubottom, Asst. Sec. of State for Inter-American Affairs, according to Senate testimony conspired to install Castro. Both men had been present at the Bogotazo 1948, in which the Conference of American States was interrupted by Communist guerillas including the Castro brothers and Che Guevara. The ensuing riots resulted in over a thousand murders and the burning of most of Bogota, Colombia. A letter from Castro to other leftist groups in Cuba, in which he explicitly states his intention to proclaim himself as the source of law, and his intention to abolish the legislature and judiciary, and to ban political parties other than his own, left no doubt as to whether or not Castro was a Communist. This letter was in the possession of Wieland and Rubottom. The Bogotazo, the Castro letter, and a steady stream of information concerning Castros political orientation leave no doubt that Wieland, Rubottom, and Matthews knew Castro was a Communist, and yet they actively supported him every step of the way. Their motivation is an unanswered question. Wieland and Rubottom were greatly assisted in their pro Castro activities by Dr. Milton Eisenhower, President Eisenhowers brother and chief advisor. Dr. Eisenhower could be described as entirely sympathetic to the pro Castro cause. Needless to say, there was little opposition to the plan concerning Castro. January of 1958, Wieland, after visiting Havana in his new capacity of Acting Special Ambassador to Latin America, issued a false report concerning Cubas crumbling economy with the recommended solution being the removal of Batista. This was one of the best periods economically in Cubas history. March 14, 1958, the State Dept., on Wielands recommendation, placed an arms embargo on Cuba. This sent a clear signal to Castro that the US Government was abandoning Batista and undermined Batistas generally strong support from the Cuban people. Meanwhile, arms, finances, and adoring press reports continued to flow to Castro from American sources and with the tacit approval of the Justice Dept. and the INS. The State Dept. also made assurances that no other Latin American government would help Batista. This was obviously direct intervention, on behalf of Castro, by our Government. During the period immediately preceding Batistas departure from the country, Wieland and Rubottom maintained almost daily contact with Castros representative, Ernesto Betancourt, and with Herbert Matthews of the Times. Many plans, including one from the Vatican, were presented to solve the Cuban crisis. These suggestions would involve supervised elections and would remove both Batista and Castro from the scene. Wieland and company undermined all of these plans, including one from Eisenhowers personal envoy, William D. Pawley. General elections were held on November 3, 1958. Castro, from his mountainous retreat, called for the assassination of all candidates and threatened to machine gun anyone showing up at the polling places. The election was generally viewed as rigged in favor of the governments candidate, Dr. Andres Rivero Aguero. On December 14, 1958 Wieland, speaking for the State Dept. instructed the American Ambassador to Cuba, Earl E.T.Smith, to inform Batista that he no longer had the support of the US government and that he should leave Cuba at once. This interview brought about the fall of the Batista government. Castro could not have accomplished this without the help of the State Dept. William D. Pawley, after Batistas departure, stated the following: I believe that the deliberate overthrow of Batista by Wieland and Matthews, assisted by Rubottom, is almost as great a tragedy as the surrendering of China to the Communists by a similar group of Dept. of State officials fifteen or sixteen years ago and we will not see the end in cost of American lives and American recourses for these tragic errors. US Helps Fidel Consolidate Power - 1959 American government officials and key media figures, along with pro Castro partisans in this country, assisted Castro in seizing power and then consolidating that power in the critical year 1959. The machinations of State Department officials William Wieland and Roy Rubottom, working with New York Times correspondent Herbert L. Matthews and others, resulted in a direct order to Batista to leave Cuba clearing the way for Castro and his murderous gang. Few Americans realize the level of complicity with regard to how American official power, combined with friendly media, installed Castro. This constitutes a disgraceful and indelible stain on American history. Those involved in this treachery have never been held to account. Castros puppet President Urrutia was installed Jan. 1, 1959, the same day Batista fled to the Dominican Republic. Immediately, the island was engulfed in violence. It is commonly accepted that Raul Castro, Fidels brother, was involved, among other massacres, in personally machine-gunning 250 people into a ditch outside Santiago de Cuba. The Castro governments act was returning the death penalty. The pretence of a trial was more often relinquished and the reign of terror raged. The lefts response to this blood soaked regime, then and to this day, is dialectical rather than fundamental. Their opposition to political violence, usually expressed in insufferably high-minded tones, only applies if the accusations are directed at the so called enemies of the people. If Communists, like Castro are conducting the violence, according to their immoral Revolutionary logic, it serves progress. Castros activities were widely reported to a shocked world, and yet, Castros American friends continued to help Castro consolidate power. Castros triumphal visit to the US, April 1959, was met by an astonishing degree of mass media pimping. Questions concerning mass murders and increasing Anti American rhetoric were left unanswered as Castro was greeted to standing ovations at Harvard and a luncheon attended by Secretary of State Christian A. Herter. Herbert Matthews and other left wing media totems continued a hypnotic drumbeat of praise for the Communist dictator. Also in April 1959, American ambassadors to Latin American countries met in El Salvador to discuss the growing Cuban crisis and its implications in the hemisphere. Even at this early stage, terrorists from Cuba had already landed in Panama and the Dominican Republic with the goal of butchering as many people as possible in the name of peace. This meeting was neutralized by Wieland and Rubottom. The American ambassador to Cuba, Philip W. Bonsal, is on record as having stated that Cuba had needed a revolution. In May 1959, under the Agrarian Reform Law, Castro began expropriating land from Cubans and foreigners. Typically, Castro, the workers hero also abolished trade unions placing workers under the heavy handed state. Thus began the near starvation conditions and virtual slavery that sadly continues to this day. The New York Times declared that an agrarian reform was overdue in Cuba. American Ambassador Bonsal continued a policy of appeasement and capitulation in Havana as did the State Department and President Eisenhower in his public utterances during this critical year. On October 21, 1959, the conviction of the nationally respected Major Hubert Matos for treason was condemned both in Cuba and worldwide. Matos had resigned his post in protest of Communist indoctrination policy and was subsequently arrested. The coverage of the show trial by Herbert Matthews is quite revealing in terms of a leftist point of view. Matthews wrote, By the logic of the Revolution, Hubert Matos was a traitor. Those who condemn the way he was treated had to condemn the Revolution. In other words, truth and justice are defined by what is good for the revolution The year ended with Cuba in desperate condition. Revolutionary courts and busy firing squads had supplanted the court system, private property had been abolished, opponents had been driven underground or liquidated, and schools and the press had been converted into tools of indoctrination. Forward thinking Americans continued to support this transformation with heart skipping excitement. The evidence that key figures in our government and influential media figures knew that Castro was a Communist is overwhelming. Understanding why Americans, who enjoy all the fruits of our free market Capitalist system, would support Communism in Cuba would, perhaps, lead us to a better understanding of our own times. Mr. Kennedy Plays Footsie with Fidel, 1961-1962 The Bay of Pigs invasion and the subsequent discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba presented President John F. Kennedy with two opportunities to lift the oppressive left wing millstone from the necks of the Cuban people and reestablish the US as defenders of freedom and liberty. At this point Castro had become a declared enemy of the US and had turned Cuba into a satellite of the Soviet Union. This would nullify the Monroe Doctrine, which was meant to prevent colonization of the Western Hemisphere. Cuba had become a haven for terrorists who had invaded the Dominican Republic and Panama and had become a military and subversive threat to Latin America. Beside legitimate political considerations, we had a moral obligation to rescue the Cuban people from the Communist hellhole that we were largely responsible for creating. The Bay of Pigs operation involved the US helping expatriate Cubans invade and liberate their homeland. Cuban pilots, under US direction, were to fly three bombing missions destroying Castros small air force, which would coincide with a ground invasion at the Bay of Pigs. The invaders were met with overwhelming civilian support on the island as well as major defections from Communist forces. The promised bombing missions were mostly cancelled at the last minute, in one case, as the invading force was already on their way. As a result, Castros air force had free reign in bombing the troops and sinking the landing ships thus leaving the invaders trapped. Kennedy turned his back on his commitments and did nothing to help. Kennedys actions were against the advice of the operations military planners. Instead, he followed the advice of political advisors. Three names emerge as the chief culprits in this catastrophe, Sec. Of State Dean Rusk, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., and UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson. They convinced Kennedy to scale back the operation to the point where it was doomed to fail. Rather than liberation and victory, their main concern was world opinion. However world opinion would have applauded a US that would again emerge as a defender of freedom as it did after WWII, and the peoples of the Communist world would have been encouraged to throw off their socialist yoke and rejoin civilization. Kennedys political advisors, referred to as The Best and the Brightest in a book by that title, must have hoped for the opposite effect. As a result of this humiliating disaster, Castro would tighten the screws on his own people and the firing squads would emerge as the only producing segment in his socialist economy. The US looked weak to the rest of the world, which encouraged Communist thugs and emboldened Khrushchev, the Soviet bloody-handed dictator, to move offensive missiles into his Latin American beachhead. To add insult to injury, the US Government had to ultimately raise $62 million in goods and cash to ransom the Bay of Pigs survivors from Castros torture chambers. Certainly not our finest hour. Kennedy was humiliated in his meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna the following June as the Soviet tyrant berated him on his bungling at the Bay of Pigs. James Reston, Associate Editor of the New York Times, reported that as a result of this meeting, Khrushchev felt ready to put offensive missiles into Cuba. Reston, in an article published in the N.Y.Times, Jan. 18, 1966, states that Kennedy told him after the Vienna conference, that in order to make American power credible after the Bay of Pigs, he would intensify the war in Vietnam not because the situation on the ground demanded it in Vietnam, but because Kennedy wanted to prove a diplomatic point, not a military point. This diplomatic point cost America almost 60,000 lives and another defeat. Surveillance photos proved the existence of offensive Soviet missiles in Cuba which were capable of targeting most cities in the US and Latin America. The US had vast military superiority over the Soviet Union at the time although, thanks to The Best and the Brightest, particularly Sec. Of Defense Robert McNamara, we would be at about military parity with the Soviets by 1967. At the beginning of the crisis, Kennedy met with congressional leaders who advised him to invade Cuba. Instead, Kennedy settled for a naval blockade, which only stopped and boarded one Soviet vessel out of the many streaming toward Cuba. Our superior position was strangely whittled away when Kennedy incorporated Adlai Stevensons position that the issue be settled with the US dismantling missile sites in Turkey and Italy. Stevenson wanted the further step of abandoning the naval base at Guantanamo Bay but that suggestion was disregarded. UN Secretary U Thant while negotiating with Castro, was suddenly gripped with the idea that national sovereignty was a virtuous concept and agreed that there would be no onsite inspection of missile bases in Cuba. Inspection would be conducted by plane only. It would be impossible to determine what was going on underground and has remained so. The Soviets would give us their word that the missiles would be removed! Aspects of the agreement to end the Cuban Missile Crisis also included a guarantee that the US would not interfere with the Soviet satellite. By doing so, we guaranteed Communism in Cuba and continue to honor this commitment to this day. Additionally, there was a crackdown of Cuban American partisan activities in this country with many arrests. Castro emerged, along with his Soviet managers, as the undisputed master of Cuba and were left to create havoc in Latin America and beyond. COMMUNISM WILL BE IN CUBA AS LONG AS THE U.S. CONTINUES TO HONOR ITS COMMITMENT TO KEEP FIDEL CASTRO IN POWER.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 06:42:07 +0000
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