“As a purely hypothetical question,” said Castro, “how do you believe that diplomatic ties might be resumed?”
“Oh,” said Donovan, “in exactly the way porcupines make love.”
“I have heard the joke, but I no longer recall the answer. How do porcupines make love?”
“Well, Fidel,” said Donovan, “porcupines make love very carefully.”
Castro was much amused by this, and before the session was over, remarked, “If I could have an ideal government in Cuba, it would not be Soviet-oriented.”
“You need to offer a little more than that,” said Donovan. “There has to be some understanding that Cuba will keep a hands-off policy in Central and South America.”
They proceeded no further, but later in the visit, a doctor named René Vallejo, who is Castro’s friend and physician, made a point of taking Donovan aside. “Fidel,” he told him, “wants to further the relations of which you both spoke. He thinks a way can be found. We must tell you, however, that certain high Communist officials in the Cuban government are unalterably opposed to this idea.”
On their return, during their debriefing, Donovan summed up Castro as “most intelligent, shrewd, and relatively stable.” His assistant, Nolan, later reported to Bobby Kennedy that Fidel “was not difficult to deal with. Our impressions do not square with the commonly accepted image. Castro was never irrational, never drunk, never dirty.”
“What do you think?” Bobby Kennedy asked Nolan. “Can we do business with that fellow?”
The question was ironic—no more than Bobby’s way of indicating that he has just absorbed a piece of information for future reference. Castro, however, seems serious enough about new overtures. On Donovan’s suggestion, Lisa Howard of ABC obtained ten hours of interview with Fidel and returned from Cuba wildly in love with the man, I fear. In fact, although she would not admit it, and there was naturally a limit beyond which we could not probe since it was a voluntary debriefing, I suspect she had an affair with him.
If you would ask how I obtain such close knowledge of this kind of matter, take the obvious deduction. I was, yes, at the debriefing. I can tell you parenthetically that Hugh has finally found a way to increase my Agency stipend, which has been fixed for years. I have been put on temporary leave from the Agency, and promptly reinstated as a contract agent. The daily rates are excellent and I can work anywhere from one hundred to two hundred days a year, and make more than before, and obtain interesting assignments, plus, key to our present understanding, be more of a help to Hugh. It does work well. Arnie Rosen was Hugh’s liaison for the first debriefing with Donovan, and I, looking over the results, became sufficiently interested to come aboard during the session with Lisa Howard.
She is petite, blond, and would be very attractive to men, I think, if she did not suffer from what I call “media hollow.” These TV interviewers all seem scraped out within—all too superficially pleasant, but livid within. They are not quite like other people. Is it because they must live with all those electronic machines? Or, is it because they engage every day in the violation of human reserve? They are so lacking in animal integrity. I think we can agree that most of us are rooted in particular animals. It does seem fair to speak of different men and women as leonine, or ursine, bovine, feline, doelike, elephantine, simian, birdlike, beasty, so forth. I put it this obviously to underline what I would next say: If animals could speak, can you imagine how hideous it would be for the animal kingdom if they had television shows where sparrows interviewed gorillas, or snakes conversed with poodles? What a violation of their separate immanence to assume there was an animal bond between them that permitted instant communication on a variety of subjects with no regard for their private essence. It would certainly leach the spirit out of them. You wouldn’t be able to distinguish the crocodiles from the gazelles. Awful! Well, that is what happens, in my opinion, to TV interviewers. Lisa Howard was bright, peppy, eager to please us at the debriefing, and more than eager to get her pro-Castro points across. However, she was hollow. Do you know, the more I decided that she had had an affair with him, the more I lost respect for this fabulous Fidel. It occurred to me that he might have low taste of the awful basic variety—you know, “I’m dark, and you’re an American blonde, so wowsy-boom!” That kind of man never looks for essence, but then, it is the hallmark of vulgarity to live by image alone. That much less for you, Mr. Castro, I thought.
All the same, Lisa Howard had some more or less solid political stuff to pass on, and did try to be objective. The simple, small, useful stuff of what he said and she said was, however, scanted. Too much of it kept coming to us predigested, no matter how we pushed for details.
She did provide one cutting edge. René Vallejo and the new Foreign Minister, Raul Roa, favor accommodation with the U.S.; Che Guevara and Raul Castro are wholly opposed. I hear Hugh and Cal licking their chops. Castro is obviously in a bind. He ended by saying to Lisa Howard, “President John F. Kennedy will have to make the first move.”
Yes, right into the teeth of Nixon and Keating!
I sat back and observed. I am best at that. However, I did press one question. It was most unprofessional since I had not prepared the ground, but then, Rosen and a couple of prominently expert Agency folk were consuming the time, and it just wasn’t in my credentials to take over. I only had room, therefore, to ask: “How much, Miss Howard, of Mr. Castro’s desire for rapprochement with us is due, you might say, to his personal pique at Khrushchev?”
“Oh,” she said, “I don’t think any of it. He’s much deeper than that.”
Her idea of depth and mine do not necessarily coincide, of course. I am dubious that any man who would see poor over-extended Lisa Howard as a blond film star type can be above personal and intimate spite.
Khrushchev, that wily old peasant, must have a good sense of Castro, for he has invited C to the U.S.S.R. for an extended visit, perhaps as much as a month. My guess is that Castro will be wined, dined, fed with economic subsidies (to make up for his disastrous sugar harvest), and will come back with refreshed Communist blood in his veins. Indeed, the thigh-touching with Donovan and Howard may have been undertaken to make Khrushchev nervous.
All the same, we are entering a time that will have a new signature, I think.
Devotedly,
Kittredge
28
IF I WAS FASCINATED BY FIDEL CASTRO, BY WHICH I SUPPOSE I MEAN attracted and repelled at once, I did not doubt my political feelings. I agreed with Cal. Fidel was dangerous and not to be trusted. Was it for this reason that my father and I, by early May, began to pass through what I can only call a highly controlled maniacality? If the description seems excessive, perhaps it is, but Cal was in full command of Special Affairs Staff (precisely the name to replace Task Force W), his office on the seventh floor at Langley was large, his chair impressive, light was begging to dance in his eye, and there was nothing innovative to do. Since he was also convinced that improved relations with Cuba were on the Kennedy agenda, the romance of the seashell and the manta ray, once wild as pig squeal, began to enter the manly zone of the necessary. If we did not quite believe it would work, we were nonetheless drawn to the possibility. When a piece of intelligence arrived that AM/LASH in late April had gone scuba diving with Castro, my father was convinced. We would give it a go. Since other tasks I was taking care of for him would bring me to Washington for a few weeks, I was there to shepherd the project through the labs at Technical Services.
I never had to wonder about the Hubbard family balance after a few hours at TSS. I knew I was sane. The personnel at TSS had such detectable differences from the rest of the Agency. I would not say that the slide-rule gang were more childlike than the rest of us, but mottoes were strung together out of paper cut-out letters to dangle in festoons from the ceiling: “When It Falls Apart, Don’t Scream,” is the one I remember. No, there was another: “Blastogenesis Is But One Form of Ingenuity”—whatever that meant. I did find the labs curious. While there
was many another quarter in the Agency, particularly the Directorate of Intelligence, where half the men were bald and all wore glasses, here at TSS, people looked happy. Some walked the halls emitting larynx-bursts of opera; others kept their heads ensconced in a report.
I had been assigned a technician called “Doc” who was young, slim, potbellied, half bald, and wore glasses. It was not automatic to separate him from others when he was in a group, but then, he did not expect you to recognize him. His eyes were on the project. We were looking to develop a seashell with a manta ray for escort. I saw true happiness in Doc. “This one will stretch us in a couple of places we haven’t even flexed. Off the top, I would say we need input on whether to ship a couple of live specimens up to our tank here, or send some equipment down to Miami.” He put out his palm in apology. “I’m just thinking out loud. Forgive me, but the problems are nifty. We’ll have to think-tank it before we make a move because this one could put real distortions into the budget. I know we won’t have to run an obstacle course getting an okay from upstairs—after all, you come to us from upstairs!—but we ought to cook up some feasibility profiles. And, of course, check out the seashell. Can we pack it with enough soup to give appropriate payoff? Or should we install a mine underneath? But you better get ready for that. Mines can be touchy creatures.”
By my next visit, this question was resolved. “They can store enough soup in a whelk spiral,” said Doc, “to pop a black hole into space. Total obliteration through ten-foot radius.” The manta ray, however, was not free of kinky-kinks. Should they try using a live one? “Feasibility there is bound to be below the line,” said Doc. “We’d have to drug Mr. Manta, and then he’s likely not to react. Our understanding is that good old Ray has to be macho enough to attack and get himself spear-gunned.”
“Exactly.”
“With your concurrence, we’re all for constructing our own synthetic-fiber manta ray prototype. Provisionally, let’s refer to that as a mantoid. I won’t say yet whether such a facsimile can be built to function in off-setting modes.”
“That is, first alive, then mortally wounded?”
“Precisely. We will bury a watertight computer on-site with a lead into the facsimile. That way we can certainly program Señor Mantoid to activate his flippers so long as he is in idling mode. We might be able to work up a manta ray body language that will give every appearance of saying, ‘Hey there, Mr. Swimmer, please don’t come any nearer with your spear-gun. Not if you know what’s healthy.’ We can program the mantoid for that. But I have to consider your bold swimmer. Once he shoots at our facsimile—are we also to assume he will not miss?”
“Not this guy. He won’t miss.”
“Super. Just to be sure, we can put in an option. If there is no register of spear-entry, we can inhibit the death dance. Easily achieved within these parameters. But how are we to program Señor Mantoid’s behavior after the spear has missed? Should he still be programmed to attack, or does he merely say, ‘I’ve had enough, thank you very much,’ and decamp? We can’t option up for that without capacitating the computer up two orders of magnitude. Too much! It’s vastly better to assume bold swimmer doesn’t miss.”
“Project such assumption,” I said.
“All right, then,” said Doc, “we’ll try to locate some film on manta ray behavior during the first ten to twenty seconds after spear-gun entry wound. If Film Tracer Desk can’t come up with such footage, we just spear-gun a manta ray or two in our Florida tank with collateral cinematography. That should provide us with a carload of film data.” He held up one finger for caution. “All the same, should the work-up bring back a negative likelihood factor, we’ll have to hand you a no-no. None of us want that, but I have to tell you: Responsibility, around here, is king.”
“When will you know?”
“We should be out of parameters in two weeks.”
Through the interim, Cal was getting together our material. The link to AM/LASH, a gentleman christened AM/BLOOD, turned out to be a Cuban lawyer, a Communist, nicely in place in Havana; he had known Rolando Cubela since their days at the University. Now, per Cal’s instructions, another Cuban (who dropped into Cuba by parachute on a night flight) reached AM/BLOOD for preliminary talks; in turn, AM/BLOOD talked to AM/LASH, who, we now learned, was most unhappy in the Foreign Ministry, and ready to consider the seashell option.
Now Cal had to come to a decision. Did we alert Cubela to the full scope of his mission? It was Agency policy not to sacrifice agents knowingly, but at Cal’s level, you could take a shot at ignoring policy. AM/LASH, Cal decided, ought to be told no more than that he was to lure Castro to a specific place on the reef.
On the other hand, it would set a wretched precedent to sacrifice an agent in this manner. It would be doubly wretched if the tale got out. Cal said, “I’m drawn to the odds. That son of a bitch Castro was ready to use missiles on us. Hell, if I knew it would work, I believe I would trade my own life for his.”
“Does that answer the question?” I asked.
“Well, what do you say? Do we wit AM/LASH or label the guy expendable?”
“There’s no choice,” I said. “He can’t be such a fool as to lead Castro to a predesignated spot on a reef and think it’s all going to happen thereafter in slow motion.”
“Fellow, you are too inexperienced to know,” said Cal. “Give an agent too many specifics, and he will panic. The waiter that Roselli’s people hand-picked to deliver Castro his poison drink was told too much. A grave error. The waiter’s hand was shaking so badly that Castro invited the guy to taste the drink. In fact, that makes me wonder whether AM/LASH is the man for the scuba stunt. He is already asking for guarantees. He told AM/BLOOD that he does not love Castro so much that he wishes to jump into the hereafter with him. That sounds, dammit, like he’s going to ask for a sniper’s rifle with scope.”
“Why don’t we wait,” I said, “until we find out if TSS can build the manta ray?”
Cal nodded gloomily. “I have an old Hollywood friend who used to be an intimate of Irving Thalberg’s—you know, the great producer of the 1930s? Well, Thalberg once said to him, ‘Do you have any idea of how wasteful we are? Not one in twenty of our projects ever gets made into a film. Not one in twenty!’ Rick, I ask myself, do we do any better here?”
29
IN FACT, THE PARAMETERS DID BRING BACK A NO-NO, BUT BY THEN IT WAS the third week in May, and other possibilities were stirring. Our officers at the American Embassy in Moscow reported that Castro was reacting favorably to his Soviet hosts, which upset Director McCone. He soon proposed to Bobby Kennedy and the Standing Group of the National Security Council that we “subvert military leaders in Cuba to the point of their being willing to overthrow Castro.”
My father, receiving this news from Helms, gave me a wink. He had developed in the last month an odd, ribald wink, as if a girl we were talking about had just walked into the room. If the manta ray was now behind us, the prospect of employing AM/LASH remained alive. Indeed, the wink referred to AM/LASH. Cal and Helms had labored for a month to bring McCone around to his last proposal. “Always look to the language,” said Cal. “We’ve built a foundation for ourselves almost as good as a directive. ‘Subvert military leaders to the point where they will be ready to overthrow Castro.’ Well, son, tell me: How do you do that by half? You can subvert a foreign military officer, but you cannot control his every move. If Cubela manages to put a large hole into Fidel Castro’s head, we will be able to point to McCone’s remark. No one at Standing Group countermanded him. We are functioning, therefore, under the sanction of a general authorization. Always look to the language.”
Two weeks later, on June 19, Jack Kennedy sent a memo concerning Cuba over to Special Group: “Nourish a spirit of resistance which could lead to significant defections and other by-products of unrest.”
“By-products of unrest,” said Cal, “enhances the authorization.”
Of Helms, Cal’s opinion had never been higher. “Dick h
as been perfectly choke-proof on this,” he told me. “It takes moxie to give the go-ahead for AM/LASH. Helms knows as well as you or I how unstable Mr. Cubela has been in the past, but he also knows that we have to finalize Castro or a lot of Third World leaders are going to get the wrong impression. Why, Helms sees the importance of this sufficiently to put his own future up for grabs. He is bound to be the next DCI after McCone, but he is not playing it safe, not with Cubela. I respect that.”
“Yessir.”
I do not know whether my own sense of oncoming events affected my perceptions all summer, but I had to wonder whether everyone might be losing some part of their control. I know I squandered the good part of a week obtaining the answer to a simple question. “Where,” Cal wanted to know, “is Artime now? I want to locate him in my mind.”
Hunt wouldn’t tell me. “I can’t sacrifice someone else’s security,” he informed me. I followed up reports that Artime was in New Orleans with Carlos Marcello and Sergio Arcacha Smith; in the U.S. Army at Fort Belvoir; in Guatemala; in Costa Rica, Mexico, Miami, Madrid, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. It proved to be the last. Chevi Fuertes supplied the information. Under Somoza’s benevolent sanction, Artime was training an army of several hundred Cubans, and his bills were—or were they not?—being paid by the Agency. That last detail I would have to discover for myself. Cal sent a query to Harlot who returned the following reply: “Look no further than Bill Pawley, Howard Hughes, José Alemán, Luis Somoza, Prio Socarras, Henry Luce, Carlos Marcello, Santos Trafficante, or friends of Richard Nixon. Take your pick. God leads Artime to the money, and Howard Hunt may be the guiding light. Unlike Manuel Artime, I do not have God inside my heart. Nor Howard’s angelic certainties. God inhabits my conscience instead. He asks: Is this worth pursuing? Artime has three hundred men. He will march them up the hill, and then he will march them down again. Whereas thee and me and your boy-wonder ought to have a chin-chin. You see, I have come to share your conviction that something must be done about the Great Unmentionable.”