[Intelligence Report - Dallas Morning News Clipping, May 10, 1979] Part: 3 of 4
This clipping is part of the collection entitled: John F. Kennedy, Dallas Police Department Collection and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the Dallas Municipal Archives.
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"I told him he could testify in secret
if he wanted," she said. "But he said he
would just as soon broadcast from the
top of the Empire State Building as to
testify in secret before a senate investi-
gating committee. He begged me not to
reveal his name because he would then
be on the Cuban (Castro) hit list."
MRS. LUCE respected his wishes and
didn't reveal his identity to Schweick-
er. Nor did she when she was inter-
viewed last year by investigators with
the House Assassinations Committee.
The other two Cubans were not
available for testimony. One was de-
ported "right after they had reported to
the FBI" in 1963, she said, and the other
was knifed to death in Miami.
The Miami lawyer said he and the
other refugees in 1963 took the photo-
graphs and tape recordings to the FBI
as Mrs. Luce advised. He told her the
FBI took the photos and tapes,
"roughed them up and told them to
scram and keep their mouths shut and
disappear or they would all be deport-
ed."
"Now what became of their evi-
dence is something I do not know,"
Mrs. Luce said. "The incident was
never reflected in the Warren report. I
myself have always entertained the
theory that unable to prove that the as-
sassination was backed by the Cas-
troites — but perhaps suspicious of it —
the Kennedys and the Johnsons and
the whole government decided to say
nothing about it since even to raise the
suspicion might have plunged us into a
war with Cuba."
When the three Cubans called Mrs.
Luce in the early morning on the day
after the assassination, they were not
strangers. They had known her as crew
members of a Miami-based boat she had
secretly "sponsored" for raids and
other missions against Fidel Castro's
government.
The boat excursions ended and the
trio was dispersed to New Orleans
when Kennedy ordered a halt to such
activities in early 1963.
"I myself got a personal call from Al-
len Dulles (then a former CIA director
and later a member of the Warren
Commission)," Mrs. Luce said. "He said
get out of that boat business — he was
well aware of it, by the way — because
the neutrality act has now been reas-
serted and it was against the law to aid
or abet the Cubans in any attempts to
free their country."
MRS. LUCE said the former crew
members called her "because they
wanted to inform me of anything they
could that would, so to speak, put the
finger on or clarify the motive of
Oswald."
However, some of the Cubans' infor-
mation was inaccurate, and maybe in-
tentionally so.
The Warren Commission deter-
mined that Oswald was the only active
member of the Fair Play for Cuba Com-
mittee in New Orleans; no one has ever
claimed his "committee" conducted
meetings at which he spoke.
Mrs. Luce still believes her Cuban
friends took their photos of Oswald to
the FBI "because soon after photo-
graphs appeared in the Dallas papers
... showing Oswald handing out hand-
bills" in New Orleans.
Those photos, however, were taken
by newsmen.
The refugees' early knowledge of
any trip by Oswald to Mexico, however,
indicated they had intelligence sourc-
es. Not even the CIA briefing on
Oswald's mysterious visit to Mexico
City was given to President Lyndon
Johnson until hours after the Luce
call.
Then, on Nov. 23,1963, CIA Director
John McCone told Johnson about
Oswald's "visits" to the Cuban and Rus-
sian embassies in Mexico City in late
September and October of 1963. The
CIA claimed it had photographed and
taped Oswald's visits. But later, after
the agency realized their man was not
Oswald, the Warren Commission was
not so informed.
The Luce incident was similar to a
series of attempts to spread misinfor-
mation by people with obvious intelli-
gence connections to link Oswald to
Castro immediately after the assassina-
tion.
THE IMPRESSION of Oswald the Cu-
ban refugees left with Mrs. Luce "was a
Communist gun-for-hire" who at first
didn't have much money but who "had
suddenly come into enough money to
take trips (to Mexico) and to bring his
wife to New Orleans."
Her husband, Henry, would have
been an ideal conduit to disseminate
the refugees' story nationally through
his Time or Life magazines, but Mrs.
Luce didn't take the bait.
Two days after Mrs. Luce's call from
the Cubans in New Orleans, a Nicara-
guan named Gilberto Alvarado Ugarte
told personnel at the American em-
bassy in Mexico City that he was in the
Cuban consulate on Sept. 17,1963, and
saw Cubans who were discussing assas-
sination pay Oswald $6,500.
The CIA and Warren Commission
later concluded the story was a fabrica-
tion, but President Johnson and Ameri-
can intelligence agencies at the time
were concerned it might lead to a con-
frontation with Castro's Cuba.
About a week later the Secret Serv-
ice intercepted a letter to Oswald in
Dallas, postmarked Havana, stating
"Oswald had been paid by (Pedro)
Charles to carry out an unidentified
mission which involved accurate
shooting." The FBI also got a copy of
letter written to Robert Kennedy]
which claimed Oswald assassinated his
brother "at the direction of Pedro
Charles, a Cuban (Castro) agent" and
was paid $7,000 by Charles in Miami in
early 1963. The Warren Commission
concluded the letters were a hoax bu
didn't consider whether they were par
of a misinformation plant by intelli
gence sources.
Another early attempt to plant mi-
sinformation was not known to the
Warren Commission in 1963-1964, but
was told to the House Assassinations
Committee by a witness deemed credi-
ble by committee investigators.
THE WITNESS was Antonio Veciana
of Miami, one of the founders of the
militant group of anti-Castro exiles
called Alpha 66. Veciana said that soon
after the assassination an American in-
telligence agent, known only by his
alias of Maurice Bishop, "solicited me
to intercede with a cousin of mine who
worked in the Cuban embassy in Mex-
ico to see if he, for money," would
agree to say he saw Oswald in the
embassy.
Veciana told the committee Bishop
was "the man behind the scenes" in Al-
pha 66's attempts to assassinate Castro.
Veciana said he saw Bishop with
Oswald — several weeks before Oswald
left for Mexico City — in the lobby of
what probably was the Southland Cen-
ter in Dallas. The committee was una-
ble to identify or locate Bishop.
The assassination of Kennedy by
Castro forces would have achieved "ba-
sically nothing" for Castro because
Kennedy "was their (Castro Cubans)
best ally," said the militantly anti-Cas-
tro Mario Kohley Jr., son of the late of-
ficial de facto president-in-exile of the
Cuban government.
"He (Kennedy) was their best ally,"
Kohley said. "He was preventing us
from leaving our (United States)
shores. He had made a secret deal with
(Nikita) Khrushchev not to allow any
more Cubans to leave American waters
and go to Cuba to harass Castro. So ac-
tually I thought it was to Castro's ad-
vantage to keep him alive."
Kohley said he thinks it "very possi-
ble that the assassination was done by
anti-Castro Cubans in the hopes of mak-
ing it look like Castro had done it.
Which would have given us a green
light for our invasion of Cuba."
Clare Boothe
Luce ... "What
became of their
evidence is some-
thing I do not
know."
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Dallas (Tex.). Police Department. [Intelligence Report - Dallas Morning News Clipping, May 10, 1979], clipping, May 22, 1979; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth190856/m1/3/?q=%22Places+-+United+States+-+Texas+-+Dallas+County+-+Dallas%22: accessed July 10, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dallas Municipal Archives.