Category: History Why the Communists are Winning as of 1976... by William D. Pawley & Richard R. Tryon
The events of the missile crisis will remain in history as part of the saga of how we once again failed to get the communists out of Cuba.

Chapter Twenty-three
SECOND CHANCE TO LIBERATE CUBA
1
We who had played an active part in planning the overthrow of Fidel Castro felt obligated to assist the prisoners taken in the disaster at the Bay of Pigs, in any possible way. As nearly as our Miami group could estimate, about 1,200 had been captured. While in combat they had killed about 1,600 of the Castro forces and wounded some 2,000 more. Of their number, about 112 had been lost. Four American pilots had been lost in action.
Every report confirmed that the men of Cuban Brigade 2506 had fought magnificently. As prisoners, they displayed the same rare courage. Public interrogation of the prisoners was carried on the Cuban radio and TV stations, easily picked up in Miami by thousands of Cuban exiles and other interested persons, including myself. Baited in cross-examination by a dozen or so Communist newspapermen from all over the world in the Havana Palacio de los Deportes, most prisoners stood their ground even in the lonely shadows of imminent execution. The few who cringed or apologized to their captors were the exception.
When Fabio Freyre was asked why he had returned to Cuba, he replied: “Because I want the 1940 Constitution re-established in my country, a democratic government with free press and elections, so the people can choose their government.”
If the United States is a democracy, he was asked, how does it happen that three huge corporations are allowed to practically monopolize the production of cars?
“The U.S. is a democracy,” Fabio shot back, “because hundreds of thousands of people own stock in these corporations and freely elect their directors”.
His interrogators quickly backed off. George Govin behaved with equal valor, as did another Brigade member of the same caliber, Tomas Cruz, a black man. At Playa Giron, Cruz had fought like a panther. Lying in a house severely wounded immediately after the battle, Cruz looked up and realized that the man who had just entered the building was Fidel Castro. He groped in the bad light for his .45 pistol.
“What are you trying to do, kill me?” Castro asked ironically.
“That’s what I came here fore,” Cruz replied. “We’ve been trying to do that for three days.”
Cruz was needled about the discrimination against blacks at the beaches in Miami.
“I didn’t come here,” he answered, “to swim in the integrated pool at the Country Club, but to free my country.”
I became convinced that these defiant patriots would be “sent to the wall” and shot. I spent the next 36 hours after the broadcast, without taking my clothes off, telephoning those Latin American Presidents and Latin American ambassadors in Washington whom I knew, begging them to intervene. When I reached Cardinal Spellman, he replied that he was persona non grata with Castro, and that his intervention might do more harm than good.
I left no stone unturned. I didn’t ask for freedom for the prisoners, which was out of the question, but only for their lives.
Appeals from countless officials and people in many countries apparently convinced Fidel and his advisers that it would be a political blunder to send the prisoners before firing squads. Besides, the cunning dictator must have realized that they were worth more to him alive. So they were sent to prison.
The leaders and those who came from wealthy and distinguished families were usually deemed “incorrigible” and sent to the prison stockade on the Isle of Pines. Men of humbler origin, particularly blacks such as the courageous young Cuban, Nestor Williams, were sent to prisons where conditions were better, since they were considered potential recruits to Communism.
The prison on the Isle of Pines confined 213 of the Bay of Pigs survivors. Fabio Freyre was among them, as was Mike Cervera, who later became manager of our sugar plantation in Belle Glade. The prisoners were fed practically nothing but fish heads and small bowls of rice. They were starved deliberately, and in come cases they were so deprived of vitamins that they went blind. But most of the former Freedom Fighters survived and were ransomed, as I shall relate.
2
My sense of outrage because of the failure to accomplish the overthrow of Fidel Castro, as could easily have been done by the Cuban exiles with our support, plus a burning desire to try again for a plan of liberation of the Cuban people, prompted me to seek an appointment to see President Kennedy.
Former President Eisenhower paved the way for our meeting on May 6, 1961, in the aftermath of the disaster at the Bay of Pigs. I had requested the appointment in a letter to Kennedy two weeks earlier.
“Pawley,” Kennedy began, “mutual friends have suggested that I ask you to come in and discuss what we ought to do about Cuba. Now before we start, Pawley, I’d like you to know that I take full responsibility for the mistake at the Bay of Pigs.”
I resisted the temptation to state my opinion that the chief culprit was Adlai Stevenson, having no desire to start things off with an argument. Instead, I responded:
“Mr. President, I believe that we are facing a major crisis in Cuba and that my knowledge of the country, after residing there off and on during many years of my life, may be useful to you.”
“Well, what do you think?”
“I’ve had the privilege of working with several of your predecessors on some very critical problems. In each case, as I recall it, there were options, several alternative courses of action that might be taken. But coming up here from Miami, I have been giving this problem a great deal of thought and I am sincerely of the opinion that there are no alternatives. I believe that we have one course, and only one, to follow.”
“And that is?”
“I think we have to drop ten thousand Marines in the environs of Havana. There is a sugar plantation on the outskirts of the city that would be an excellent assembly area. The Marines should go into the city, take the Palace, release the Bay of Pigs prisoners and the other political prisoners. Then, we should establish a provisional government. I have brought with me a list of outstanding Cubans who would, in my opinion, command confidence in such a government.”
He listened warily, without comment.
“When you have done that,” I continued, “I think you should have the provisional government remain in office for eighteen months. No reprisals of any sort should be allowed. It should be an absolutely clean operation. The main task of the provisional government would be to hold fair and free elections after a year and a half in office. Naturally, no member of the provisional government should be a candidate for office in such elections.
“If you do this, Cuba will be stabilized; the rest of the Hemisphere will be stabilized; the danger will be over. I believe you must do this right now. You might have a couple of million leaflets printed in Spanish, saying ‘Stay home, nobody is going to get hurt’. These could be dropped an hour or so before the Marines land. I’d have the Navy place a large number of warships seaward off Havana harbor, perhaps two or three miles offshore, as a display of force. If you do this, I believe you will have no casualties.”
3
“Pawley,” Kennedy answered firmly, “I don’t intend to spill one drop of American blood in connection with this matter. I don’t intend to put any Marines in Cuba.”
“Mr. President, if there is any other course, would you mind telling me what it is?”
“Yes, I am going to offer a ten billion dollar ‘Alliance for Progress’ program immediately to get to the heart of Communism. That is the problem.”
“If you offer money,” I replied, “right on top of a humiliating defeat, they will take it, but they will take it with contempt. That’s what the world believes we always do when we are in a jam. I beg you not to do this. Do anything, but don’t offer money. As President Frondizi told me, when he warned of a national catastrophe for America if our plan failed, what counts with Latins is results. That, not our money, is what they respect.”
“I don’t agree with you at all,” the President retorted emphatically. “We’ve got to get into Latin America with resources and lift these people out of the misery and poverty they’ve been living in for such a long time. Do you know what caused the revolution in Cuba in the first place?”
“Certainly. A desire on the part of the Russians to establish a puppet government in Cuba.”
“You’re mistaken. There is no country in the Western Hemisphere that has been exploited as badly by the American businessman. There is no country in the Western Hemisphere with as much poverty, destitution, misery and hunger as there is in Cuba.”
This really shocked me. It was substantially the myth that Professor Schlesinger propounded in the White Paper on Cuba.1
“Mr. President,” I replied, “I have no idea who is informing you on this subject, but you are completely mistaken. Cuba before Castro was one of the most prosperous countries in the Western Hemisphere! It stood fourth in per capita income, and ranked close to the top in education, literacy, social services and medical care. They have more maternity hospitals free than we will ever have. If you will just call up the Commerce Department and get their statistics, you will find that I’m telling you the unvarnished facts.” He shook his head impatiently.
“Pawley, you’re just completely misinformed.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. President, but it is you who have been misinformed. And I suspect where the misinformation has been coming from. Goodwin must be giving you all this false data.”
Richard Nathan Goodwin, a Harvard graduate in his twenties with whom I had had several talks, was one of the most powerful White House advisers on Latin American during the Kennedy administration. In my opinion, he knew practically nothing about the subject. At this reference of mine to Goodwin the atmosphere in the Oval Room suddenly chilled. The President rose, speaking curtly.
“Thank you for coming in,” he said. I was shown the door. As I reached it, I turned back to him.
“Mr. President, for God’s sake look into the real facts before you take action based on glaring misinformation. And I repeat, as emphatically as I can, please don’t offer them money. Every dollar you sink in your Alliance for Progress, unless the Castro regime is removed first, will result in three dollars of foreign and Latin capital being scared away.”
“Thanks for coming in,” he repeated, even more coldly.
Later, I was dumbfounded when I learned that Lauchlin Currie had been placed by the Kennedy administration in charge of supervising U.S. Economic and Military Assistance in Colombia under Kennedy’s “Alliance for Progress”. It was an experiment in trying to combat the spread of Communism in Latin America by large infusions of American dollars. Currie’s past record did not deter our State Department from channeling to Colombia a total between 1946 and 1964 of 677.7 million dollars. Not that I was opposed to aid to Colombia, but I did believe the aid should have been handled by others than those accused of aiding the spread of Communism!
Shortly after my curt dismissal from Kennedy’s office, I wrote to him, thanking him for the opportunity he had given me “to discuss our serious Cuban problem.” And I added:
“The record shows that for sixteen years when confronted with situations such as Yalta and Potsdam, we gave the Russians great advantage; therefore, all Americans, irrespective of party, welcomed your words of strength in which you lamented the loss of American prestige and assured us that under your administration corrective measures would be taken.
“Most Americans are greatly disturbed by indecision, timidity, ‘too little and too late’. Most Americans are disturbed over the great humiliation that our great country is having to take. They are praying for a strong, vigorous Uncle Sam, unafraid to assume the responsibilities that have fallen our lot as the leader of the free world.
“I am confident, Mr. President, that in a week’s time a special envoy could enlist the support of four or five Latin American countries which would participate in a military operation...
“And lastly, Mr. President, should it be your considered judgment that the U.S. Government cannot in the foreseeable future undertake this vital matter, you might consider the approach adopted by President Roosevelt when he permitted us to organize the American Volunteer Group (Flying Tigers), who, as civilians, worked directly for the Chinese Government in doing a job that the U.S. Government did not feel it could undertake.
“I had the privilege of initiating and carrying out that effort. A group of Americans capable in this field are prepared to offer our services to the Cubans in exile should such a venture not be looked upon with disfavor by the U.S. Government...”2
My letter spurred no discernible reaction, nor did it even elicit a reply from the Oval Office. It was simply ignored.
4
The crushing let-down in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs did not discourage our organization from continuing to function. I turned over the ground floor of my office building to Cuban matters. Here we held frequent meetings of several hundred Cubans, our objective having been to preserve the unity of free Cubans and to form a government-in-exile which the majority would accept and which the United States might be persuaded to recognize.
Our continuing task also was to free the Cuban Brigade prisoners. We helped to organize the Cuban Families Committee for the Liberation of Prisoners of War, whose members began their tireless efforts.
Canada continued to recognize the Cuban Communist government. So we sounded out the Castro regime through our ambassador to Canada, Livingston Merchant, on the possibility of ransoming some of the prisoners. The reply was that the 213 men on the Isle of Pines could be released for $100,000 each; those in Principe for $50,000 or $25,000 per man. The sums of $100,000 for Fabio Freyre, and $50,000 for the young Cuban George Govin, were offered by their families, who had the means. However, I feared that Castro would exploit the release of two men whose families could afford ransom, while their comrades were left behind. I therefore added Nestor Williams to the list, at $25,000 ransom.
The word came through the Canadian intermediaries that we would have to put $175,000 to the account of the Cuban Government in the Royal Bank of Canada and then wait for Cuba’s next move. There would be no promises.
We decided the risk was worth taking and deposited the money in the bank in the name of the Cuban Families Committee for the Liberation of Prisoners of War, which had been doing a splendid job. A few days later, a plane brought the three Cubans to Miami - almost fifteen months to the day after they had been captured.
Fabio Freyre had lost seventy pounds. But he had lost no stature in the tear-filled eyes of his wife and eight children when they threw their arms around his emaciated frame.
George Govin and Nestor Williams were welcomed home with equal joy.
Meantime, the President’s brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, was carrying on negotiations through the Swiss Embassy in Havana to determine the cost of ransoming the Bay of Pigs prisoners. We learned that Castro, backed by his Soviet Union sponsors, was setting a price of $85 million. But that amount, said Khrushchev and his puppet, would be paid not in money but by its worth in big industrial machinery. Castro stipulated that he wanted earth-moving and construction machinery, such as bulldozers and draglines, steel and cement for buildings.
A group of us used every possible contact we had in Washington to block that scheme. We pointed out that such a ransom would not help the Cuban people one whit but would be used in some manner to strengthen the Russian stranglehold on the Castro regime.
Just how the Soviet overlords planned to use that heavy industrial equipment soon became known, as we shall see.
Through Goodwin of the White House staff we proposed that only food and medicines be offered for the ransom. The idea gained immediate support among members of Congress. “Bobby” Kennedy also accepted the idea.
The bearded puppet raised the price to approximately $300 million worth of foodstuffs and pharmaceuticals. For months American citizens were inundated with news and pictures of ships loading at Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and sailing away with cargoes of grain and processed food for Castro.
Manufacturers of drugs and medicines were coerced into contributing to the ransom with the inducement that such “contributions” would be tax-deductible. Ultimately, the ransom was raised and paid, and the surviving prisoners released.
In spite of all the tragic mistakes made by President Kennedy in the Bay of Pigs affair, many Cuban exiles still retained faith in him. When the prisoners taken during the disaster were finally ransomed, their leaders gave Kennedy their Brigade flag at a ceremony in the Miami Orange Bowl. Urging the Cubans to “keep alive the spirit of the Brigade so some day the people of Cuba will have a free chance to make a free choice,” Kennedy promised to return the banner to them in Cuba. Hopeful Cuban exiles interpreted this rhetoric, literally, as a pledge of liberation by the United States.
But the hope that liberation could be realized was to be dashed when another chance to free Cuba from Soviet-Castro enslavement was thrown away through weakness “at the top”, as we shall see. On December 23, 1975, members of the Veterans of the Bay of Pigs adopted a resolution asking that the Brigade flag given to Kennedy be returned to the keeping of their organization in Miami, “because,” their resolution declared, “he never fulfilled the promise to liberate Cuba from Fidel Castro and his Communist regime.”
I am certain that the Russian dictator, Nikita Khrushchev, would not have been at all surprised if the United States had taken action, at any time after Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba, to throw out the Communist puppet. In fact, Khrushchev expected the United States to move with firmness to uphold the Monroe Doctrine. He took it for granted that the U.S. would not permit an enemy of all our freedoms to get a foothold 90 miles from our Florida shores. This is proved by his own words, written in his memoirs entitled Khrushchev Remembers and published in 1970. Khrushchev said:
“Cuba’s geographical position has always made it very vulnerable to its enemies. The Cuban coast is only a few miles from the American shore, and it is stretched out like a sausage, a shape that makes it easy for attackers and incredibly difficult for the island’s defenders. There are infinite possibilities for invasion, especially if the invader has naval artillery and air support.
“We were sure that the Americans would never reconcile themselves to the existence of Castro’s Cuba. They feared, as much as we hoped, that a Socialist Cuba might become a magnet that would attract other Latin American countries to Socialism. Given the continual threat of American interference in the Caribbean, what should our own policy be? This question was constantly on my mind, and I frequently discussed it with the other members of the Presidium. Everyone agreed that America would not leave Cuba alone unless we did something. We had an obligation to do everything in our power to protect Cuba’s existence as a Socialist country and as a working example to the other countries of Latin America. It was clear to me that we might very well lose Cuba if we didn’t take some decisive steps in her defense.
“The fate of Cuba and the maintenance of Soviet prestige in that part of the world preoccupied me even when I was busy conducting the affairs of state in Moscow and traveling to the other fraternal countries. While I was on an official visit to Bulgaria, for instance, one thought kept hammering away at my brain: what will happen if we lost Cuba? I knew it would have been a terrible blow to Marxism- Leninism. It would gravely diminish our stature throughout the world, but especially in Latin America. If Cuba fell, other Latin American countries would reject us, claiming that for all our might the Soviet Union hadn’t been able to do anything for Cuba except to make empty protests to the U.N.”
5
Stripped of its propaganda cliches, this is a penetrating analysis. When Khrushchev discovered that the young American President had no intention of taking any effective steps to protect the vital Caribbean area from the spread of Communism, Nikita was fulsome in his praise of Kennedy, and went about the job of setting up bases for nuclear missiles “to protect Cuba’s existence as a socialist state.”
As early as March 24, 1961, as astute an observer of Cuban affairs as “Pepin” Bosch had warned in an open letter, published and paid for by him, in The New York Times, of heavy concrete emplacements in Pinar del Rio which appeared to be missile sites. He wrote in part:
“Just recently I have received confidential information that in the western part of the island of Cuba, specifically in the vicinity of the town of Soroa, Province of Pinar del Rio, an installation is being finished that has required hundreds of tons of Portland cement, and has led observers to conclude that a rocket-launching pad is being prepared for use by the Soviet Union. Many reports of other secret military installations are being received continuously in my office. Do the American people not realize that these installations may be used to pinpoint atomic destruction to any part of the United States, and that a military base in Cuba would be invaluable to the Soviet Union, not only because of its military value as a base at the very back door of the U.S., but also because of the prestige that this would give the Russians?”
An efficient underground among the exiled Cubans was developed. Small groups were sent in and out of Cuba. As the months passed, they began to receive circumstantial and disturbing reports which convinced them that missile bases were indeed being built in Cuba by the Soviets. They duly passed on their findings to Washington, where the information, some of it garnered at the risk of men’s lives, was given the brush off.
I could never believe that our government, which its U-2 high-flying reconnaissance, its other sophisticated intelligence devices and its highly professional intelligence evaluation organization, could remain in ignorance of a situation of which our Cuban volunteers were fully aware.
Furthermore, important improvements had been made in photography, and they were being used by our intelligence agencies. Outstanding among these was an infra-red lens, invented by Major General William L. Hubbard, that could photograph objects as small as a nail from a mile high - either in daylight or at night! This Hubbard device had been in use for months before the “missile crisis”, photographing the Russian missile installations in Cuba from the time of their first preparation.
I was forced to the conclusion that Kennedy did in fact know about the Soviet missiles and was waiting for a politically opportune moment to announce his discovery.
Sure enough, on Monday, October 22, 1961, the President informed the American people that the Russians had surreptitiously placed intermediate range ballistic missiles in Cuba, and that he would insist on their removal and upon on-site inspection by us. The timing was just two weeks before the Congressional elections on November 6th. The Democrats, and the Kennedy administration, won.
Those who voted for Kennedy and his regime may have believed that he stood up manfully to the Russian threat, that he had protected the security of all of the Americas, and that he had averted a nuclear holocaust.
We now know that his prior inaction had actually permitted the Soviets to come within a few days of having their missiles operational.
6
Khrushchev sent his spokesman, Andrei Gromyko, to the White House to tell the bald lie that the Soviet Union had not set up missiles in Cuba. Kennedy was able to brand Gromyko’s statement as completely false. The President ordered an embargo of all war material bound for Cuba. A plan of action was agreed upon by the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon, as follows:
The U.S. Air Force was alerted to be ready with a heavy concentration of planes to fly over Cuba in a demonstration of strength that could be used if necessary to destroy the missile bases. The U.S. Navy was alerted to have warships ready to surround Cuba completely, and cut off all sea contact with the island.
“We worked and slept in our uniforms for 48 hours,” one of the high-ranking officers implementing the plan related. “We were all set to go. We did not expect to use our weapons, but we did expect to scare hell out of the Russians and Fidel Castro.”
And scare the Russians and Fidel Castro they did. Well known among his intimates as a cowardly bully, the bearded tin-horn dictator had the jet engines of his plane warmed up, with its crew standing by, ready to fly him to Mexico.
“And what happened?” the U.S. officer I have quoted was asked.
“Oh, we got a call from the White House, with the message, ‘Forget it’.”
It is known that Khrushchev put the matter squarely up to his Presidium in Moscow as to whether he should use military action to counter the American threat. As usual when confronted by determined force, the Communist leaders in the Kremlin backed away. They were not ready to start a military war with the U.S., when they felt certain they could, also as usual, get most of what they wanted by simply continuing the diplomatic war they had been waging so successfully since 1945.
So the Soviets assured President Kennedy they would remove the missiles from Cuba - but at their price. Here is the price they demanded - and got:
First, there would be no “on site” inspection of the ground sites for the missiles in Cuba, nor of the missiles themselves. The Russians could alone load the missiles on their ships and cover them with heavy fabrics.
Second, all American intermediate-range missiles in England, Greece and Turkey would be dismantled and removed.
Third, the United States would guarantee that Fidel Castro and his regime would be protected permanently from any invasion by people from this country or from any Latin American nation.
Having posed as the hero to defend the territory and interests of the U.S. from destruction by missiles erected by the Soviet Union at our back door, President Kennedy knuckled under to these infamous demands. There was no on-site inspection. As a result, exiles from Cuba since that time have certified that whereas a few missiles were carried away, many were simply dismantled and removed to storage in caves, ready for future use when needed.
The lame excuse given for removing our missiles from England, Greece and Turkey was that they were “obsolescent” anyhow. General Curtis E. LeMay, who commanded our forces in those areas at that time, has declared that this was false. The missiles had only become operational shortly before.
The third pledge given Khrushchev and his Cuban stooge was the most infamous of all. Repeatedly in his windy speeches since that crisis Castro has referred to the fact with gloating pride that he and his Marxist regime are actually protected by the stupid “Yankee imperialists”.
While continuing to speak with characteristic eloquence about the defense of freedom, Kennedy was engaged in the demolition of the Monroe Doctrine and of the intricate collective security arrangements so carefully pieced together at the Rio, Bogota and other Western Hemispheric conferences. He had transformed the Statue of Liberty from a traditional beacon of freedom, and our country from “the world’s best hope”, as Jefferson phrased it, into a buffer for Fidel Castro against his freedom-loving enemies.
Two years after Kennedy’s assassination, former President Eisenhower wrote me the following letter:
“I understand and concur in your uneasiness about the situation in the Caribbean and should I get an opportunity to talk to the President (Johnson), I shall convey to him some of the apprehension you and I feel. Of course, when it comes down to things that might now be done in Cuba, it is difficult to propose any positive program because, by this time, world opinion - and, indeed, American opinion - has more or less accepted the situation as it exists. But I see no flaw in your argument that we should not be ‘protecting’ Castro from exiled Cubans who want to regain their country for freedom.”
I laid down the letter with a heavy heart. And for the first time I really began to feel that time was running out for our beloved country, America.