Legacy of Secrecy (88 page)

the JFK-Almeida coup plan.

Helms chose to protect himself and some of his associates by with-

holding important information from the CIA Inspector General’s inves-

tigation, and thus from LBJ and any later president who might ask to

see the Report. From Helms’s perspective, he had no other choice if he

wanted to keep his job—and he had several ways to control, restrict, and

direct the Inspector General’s investigation. First, it was up to Helms

to verbally convey LBJ’s request to the Inspector General. By choosing

his words carefully, Helms could shade his request so that it generated

a lengthy report that addressed some of LBJ’s concerns, while avoiding

sensitive subjects that could cost Helms his career.

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Like a savvy politician talking to a journalist, Helms relied on the

strategy of not answering the question that was asked, but instead

answering the question he wished had been asked. Peter Dale Scott has

pointed out that the final Inspector General’s report (henceforth called

the IG Report) devoted scant attention to what LBJ had wanted inves-

tigated, which was primarily the story in Jack Anderson’s columns on

March 3 and March 7. Scott points out that the IG Report itself admits

that Anderson’s March 7 column “refers to a reported CIA plan in 1963

to assassinate . . . Castro,” but Scott notes that less than 10 percent of

the IG Report refers “to a 1963 plot at all, and that one is not the one

Anderson was writing about.”4

According to Scott, “less than a dozen lines” in the 133-page report

“are devoted to” the main point of Anderson’s columns, the “political H-

bomb” about the alleged “counterplot by Castro to assassinate President

Kennedy.” He notes that the IG Report “wholly fails to investigate . . .

the central theses [of the Anderson articles:] that Robert Kennedy autho-

rized a CIA plot which then ‘possibly backfired’ against Kennedy.”5

Instead of focusing on the main point of the Anderson articles as LBJ

had wanted, Helms apparently directed the IG to focus on finding out

who had leaked the information to journalists Anderson and Pearson,

and what could be done about it.6 Helms also worded the request—or

controlled access to information—so that the investigation focused only

on the summer 1960–1962 plots, which were made to look as if they

had essentially ended by early 1963—well before JFK’s assassination.

That approach was safer for Helms than focusing on operations Bobby

Kennedy had authorized, or the unauthorized CIA-Mafia plots Helms

was running into the late fall of 1963.

LBJ no doubt hoped Helms would turn up information he could use

against Bobby Kennedy to stop him from entering the race for presi-

dent, but the IG Report is devoid of information that reflects badly on

Bobby. In fact, there isn’t much about Bobby in the IG Report at all, since

Helms knew that the young Senator could become president at some

point in the future. Evan Thomas talked to one of the two CIA staffers

assigned to actually write the IG Report, a man who was definitely not

a Kennedy partisan. The CIA man said he “simply never heard [Bobby]

Kennedy cited as a mastermind [of operations to eliminate Castro] by

any of the CIA officials he interviewed.” Then again, Helms himself,

who had much contact with Bobby about Cuban matters in 1963, was

never interviewed for the IG Report.7

In protecting Bobby, Richard Helms was also protecting himself.

Helms couldn’t allow the IG Report to include information about the

Mafia’s penetration of the Almeida coup plan if he wanted to keep his

job. Thus, the entire coup plan with Almeida is missing from the IG

Report, as are the 1963 portions of AMWORLD (the code name appears

nowhere in the Report) and the CIA’s extensive support for Manuel

Artime and Manolo Ray in the last six months of JFK’s presidency. Omit-

ting all of that information made it easy for Helms to hide the fact that

Artime had been working on the CIA-Mafia plots at the same time that

he was working on AMWORLD and the Almeida coup plan.

Richard Nixon had made a remarkable political comeback by 1967,

and Helms knew he had an excellent chance of running for president

in 1968. Hence, the IG Report does not mention Nixon’s push, in 1959,

for the CIA to find ways to eliminate Fidel. Also missing is any indi-

cation of Nixon’s leading role regarding Cuba policy under President

Eisenhower, or why the CIA-Mafia plots were ramped up so extensively

three months before the 1960 election, when Rosselli, Trafficante, and

Giancana were brought in. Ironically, throughout Nixon’s presidency, he

would press Helms and the CIA for information they had about those

and related events, not realizing he had nothing to worry about from

Helms’s whitewashed IG Report.

Even after Helms assigned the report to the CIA’s Inspector General

on March 23, 1967, Helms had many ways to control and limit its con-

tent. In consultation with Desmond FitzGerald, Helms could withhold

certain information and witnesses while making others more easily

available. This tactic would ensure that the two IG investigators covered

easily documentable high points, especially those the FBI already knew

about, while steering the IG investigators away from information that

could expose the extent of Helms’s unauthorized plans or the Mafia’s

infiltration of Almeida’s coup plan.

For example, even though CIA officer E. Howard Hunt was very

active in the coup plan with Almeida, one of the two IG investigators

would later testify to Congress that “at the time of our investigation in

1967, Howard Hunt’s name did not come up.”8 Also, many CIA per-

sonnel who should have been interviewed were conveniently out of

the country during the IG investigation, including David Morales, Ted

Shackley, AMWORLD case officers like Henry Heckscher, and CIA

employees who had worked closely with Artime like Rafael “Chi Chi”

Quintero. Even though the IG Report mentions Artime’s contacts with

Rolando Cubela in late 1964 and 1965, Artime was not interviewed for

the IG Report, even though he was still living in Miami. As a result, the

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investigators didn’t learn about Artime’s massive, $7 million AMWORLD

effort or his Mafia ties. Manolo Ray wasn’t interviewed, and his con-

tacts with Cubela—first documented in
Ultimate Sacrifice
—are missing

from the IG Report, even though recently declassified CIA files and Ray

himself have now confirmed such contact. Especially glaring is that fact

that investigators didn’t talk to Tony Varona, though he and his contact

with the Mafia were mentioned many times in the report. The Report

contains no mention of the $200,000 Varona received from the Mafia in

the summer of 1963.9

Helms may have felt entitled to withhold the material relating to the

Almeida coup plan (such as AMWORLD, Hunt, and Harry Williams)

because part of it was still technically an ongoing, highly sensitive opera-

tion. Almeida was still unexposed and in power (and soon to get a major

promotion), and his family was still outside Cuba, receiving secret CIA

support. Excluding current operations from the investigation on the

basis that they could be disrupted enabled Helms to steer investiga-

tors toward older CIA operations that had originated before he became

responsible for them.

Helms also worked to manipulate the IG investigation to his own

advantage. He would be able to find out which sensitive files the investi-

gators could find on their own, how those files meshed with what the FBI

had, and how people who weren’t involved in the original operations

might interpret them. Helms would also use the IG Report’s preparation

as an excuse to destroy some of the sensitive material the investigators

uncovered.

Essentially, Helms attempted what would later be termed a “limited

hangout,” allowing some negative material about the CIA to be dis-

closed to LBJ, but nothing that could get Helms fired. It’s important to

keep in mind that the Rosselli matter and Jack Anderson’s investiga-

tion were still ongoing at the time of Helms’s IG investigation. It was a

fluid situation that limited what Helms could safely allow the Inspector

General to see or investigate.

The first two weeks of April 1967 saw new developments involving

Bobby Kennedy, Jack Anderson, and former CIA Director John McCone

that further affected Helms and the IG investigation. On April 4, Jack

Anderson told the FBI about his trip to New Orleans and his talk with

District Attorney Jim Garrison. According to an FBI memo, Anderson

had gone to New Orleans skeptical of Garrison, but Anderson “now

believes there is some authenticity to Garrison’s claims.” Anderson said

he had also spoken with LBJ’s press secretary, who “was also convinced

that there must be some truth to Garrison’s allegations.”10

The scenario Garrison outlined to Anderson involved Oswald’s going

to Mexico City in an attempt to get into Cuba for a CIA-approved plot to

assassinate Fidel Castro. Oswald supposedly became “disillusioned and

refused to go through with the plot to assassinate Castro,” and was then

set up to take the fall for JFK’s murder. Garrison correctly linked David

Ferrie to Oswald, but tried to make Clay Shaw the mastermind of the

operation. Although Anderson was in New Orleans for two weeks, he

didn’t find—or at least didn’t write about—the extensive links between

Ferrie and Carlos Marcello in 1963.11

Jack Anderson told the FBI that Garrison was “willing to give the FBI

everything . . . and let them finish the investigation.” However, the FBI

official who spoke to Anderson told the reporter that “the FBI would

not under any circumstances take over the case.” In contrast to Helms

and the CIA, who were very concerned about Anderson, the FBI official

wrote in his memo that there was “no need to make further contact with

Anderson.” Though the FBI appeared to have little interest in Ander-

son, Hoover was following the Garrison inquiry closely and giving LBJ

regular updates.12

Drew Pearson, Anderson’s boss, spoke to President Johnson the fol-

lowing day. LBJ had seen the results of Morgan’s FBI interview and had

talked with Helms, so he admitted to Pearson that “we think there’s

something to . . . Morgan’s information. There were some attempts to

assassinate Castro through the Cosa Nostra [the Mafia], and they point to

your friends in the Justice Department.” Pearson replied, “You mean one

friend”—a reference to former Attorney General Bobby Kennedy.13

It must have been agony for Bobby Kennedy, waiting to see what Jack

Anderson was going to write next and wondering when other news

outlets would start investigating Anderson’s revelations. Unlike LBJ,

Bobby had no special pipeline to Pearson or Anderson to find out what

was going on. Bobby must have been concerned when former CIA direc-

tor John McCone told Bobby that Jack Anderson had just called him.

According to Senate investigators, Anderson told McCone he was “pre-

paring [yet another] column on Castro assassination attempts, implicat-

ing President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy.”14

John McCone and Bobby apparently came up with a response that

would protect both of them, as well as the CIA. McCone then talked

“with Anderson at Robert Kennedy’s request,” after which “McCone

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dictated [an] April 14, 1967, memorandum” to Helms that likely mir-

rored what McCone had told Anderson. In it, McCone admitted only

that in early August 1962, he recalled having heard in Project Mongoose

meetings “a suggestion being made to liquidate top people in the Castro

regime, including Castro.” McCone said he “took immediate exception

to this suggestion.”15

In a small way, McCone and Bobby paralleled Helms’s strategy with

LBJ and the Inspector General, by shifting the focus away from 1963 and

admitting a little in order to hide a great deal. It’s ironic that at that very

moment, Helms was allowing the IG Report to include admissions about

some of the information he had withheld from Bobby and McCone, since

he apparently hoped that neither man would ever see the report.

For reasons that are still unclear, Jack Anderson suddenly dropped

his plans for another article. By then Anderson certainly knew he had

a good story, based on LBJ’s confirmation to Pearson and McCone’s

admission that the subject of assassinating Castro had surfaced during

an official meeting in 1962. The CIA was somehow able to learn that

Anderson and Pearson had additional “information, as yet unpublished,

to the effect that there was a meeting at the State Department at which

assassination of Castro was discussed and that a team actually landed

in Cuba with pills to be used in an assassination attempt.” The CIA’s

IG Report would confirm that “there is basis in fact for each of those . . .