Pawley ironically believed U.S. funding to exile operations would be putting money down a rat-hole because Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro was in control of Cuba and had the support of a large number of Cubans, especially the underprivileged.
[This is a part of CovertAction Magazine’s (CAM) coverage illuminating some of the more interesting revelations in the newly released documents in the JFK assassination file. While none of the documents offers any smoking-gun evidence, they do provide insight into CIA operations. The document below features a summary of a recording of CIA operative William Pawley talking to two right-wing Cuban exiles about sabotage and terrorist operations in Cuba.
Pawley was President of Nacional Cubana de Aviación Curtiss, which was sold to Pan American Airways in 1932. He joined the infamous Flying Tigers in World War II, which supplied Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces that were fighting against Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Civil Air Transport (CAT), which was used to supply Chiang, was subsequently bought by the CIA and became Air America. A close friend of Dwight Eisenhower and CIA Director Allen Dulles, Pawley was a key architect of the CIA’s 1954 coup in Guatemala that ousted reformist President Jacobo Árbenz. He was also suspected of being involved in CIA covert operations in Nicaragua, Peru, Panama and Brazil in the 1950s and 1960s, along with Cuba—Editors]
MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD
SUBJECT: Highlights of Tape-Recorded Conversation in Miami Between Mr. William D. Pawley and an Unidentified Cuban during Period 17-18 October
1. On 20 October the undersigned and Owen Faust of WH/3 listened to the play-back of a tape, brought to Washington from Miami and given to Colonel King [J.C. King] by Mr. Pawley on 19 October, which was a recording of Mr. Pawley’s conversations with two Cubans during the period 17-18 October. The first conversation was with an unidentified Cuban, believed to be a member of a group of wealthy anti-CASTRO Cubans, members of which have talked to Mr. Pawley recently about their plans for sabotage of the coming sugar harvest as reported in UMWA-32 dated 2 October. The second Cuban was AMPACA-l, a Cuban journalist of operational interest to Station Habana, and a separate memorandum is submitted on that conversation.
2. The unidentified Cuban, who had somewhat of an accent and spoke indistinctly, was difficult to understand. He mentioned a meeting “with some of our people who came up from Cuba” to discuss plans. He said his group had been contacted by a representative of General Jose Eleutorio [sic] PEDRAZA, leader of Cuban revolutionary groups in the Dominican Republic, who wanted to know what action their group had taken and was told that they had a plan “to start sabotage.” The Cuban said the PEDRAZA representative said their group (the PEDRAZA group) had four provinces organized in Cuba, mentioning Camaguey and Santa Clara, and that they had two provinces yet to be organized, Habana and Matanzas.
3. The Cuban said his group needed two things—moral backing and money; he pointed out that Cubans in Cuba are afraid to start an underground movement, and there was no way to raise funds, etc. Mr. Pawley gave him no encouragement on the money angle, saying that even if there were Americans willing to run the risk of becoming involved in Cuban revolutionary activities by furnishing money for such a movement, which he doubted, he felt that at the present time it would be like “putting money down a rat-hole” for the following reasons: (1) there is no unity among the anti-CASTRO groups, and there are at least 10 that he knows of who are working absolutely independently of one another; and (2) CASTRO is in control of the country and has the support of a large number of Cubans, especially the under-privileged. Mr. Pawley said he felt the Cuban economic situation was worsening fast and that if it gets bad enough, a large number of Cubans will turn on CASTRO; but until that time comes it would be dangerous to try to organize a revolutionary movement.
4. Mr. Pawley asked the Cuban if his group felt they had moral support of the U. S. and the Cuban replied that they wanted U. S. moral support but whether they had it or not, they felt they were obliged to carry through with their plans. Mr. Pawley said he didn’t know what to tell him—he would have to think about it and see if anythìng could be done. He said, “having been connected with the U. S. Government, I can’t get involved in revolutionary movements.” Also said he would hate to see the Dominican Government get involved, which might be difficult to avoid with so many Cuban exiles there, but commented that he understood “the Dominican Government hasn’t given them a dime.”
– Martha Tharpe, WH/III/CARIB
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About the Author
Chris Agee
Executive Editor
Jeremy Kuzmarov
Managing Editor
Pawley was your garden variety useful idiot. A plan to “sabotage Cuba’s sugar supply” is equivalent in brilliance to the ‘Trojan Rabbit’ plan in Monty Python’s “Search for the Holy Grail. A more interesting story is how the oligarchs (can you spell United Fruit, Coca Cola) addicted Americans to Cuban sugar, or why the four biggest oil companies built refineries in Cuba to refine Venezuelan crude, instead of building them in Venezuela, or the fact that Mao would not have been able to defeat Chiang had not the Japanese invaded China. That aside, it was interesting to read in this article that Allen Dulles name (indirectly albeit befittingly) appears in the JFK files. Now, that’s what I call a major oversight on someone’s part.