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By Jefferson Morley

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By Jefferson Morley , .1^AA1' 46',24r1 , rkit 4P01,1461 MIAMI For 38 years the CIA has lied about its man in Miami, his work with militant Cuban exiles, and what he knew about John F. Kennedy's killer (A SPecial Report> REVELATION By Jefferson Morley Best of Miami readers' poll: Stand no and he counted! ',Vim says there's no good live music in Miami? Come to the New Nies Vibe festival this Saturday and check out some great bands. Concert guide inside. Volume 16. Number I, FREE Apr11 12-10, 2001 mianalnemtimse.eam After nearly four decades the CIA has been forced to disclose the identity of a Miami agent who may have known too much too early about Lee Harvey Oswald By Jefferson Morley REVELATION When Fidel Castro's Revolutionary-Armed Forces routed the LIS—backed Cuban exiles in the Bay- of Pip Basco 40 years ago this week, Prmidentjohn F. Kennedy tteik full responsibility For the defeat. Rut the contrition of the young commander in chief. while popular with the American people, played poorly among the tens of thousands of Cubans living here in Miami. Marry believed the liberal chief executives refusal to send planes to support- the men scrambling far cover at PlayaGil-naives a Failure of nerve, if note betrayal. And to this day a certain embittered distrust of Washington, born four decades ago, runs deep in Cuban Miami. erupting whenever the federal government (in the person oflinet Rena or farm-belt Republicans in Congress) pur- sues policies canonry to the agenda of the first generation of el exilic,. asst the truth is that whatever the disappointment of the Bay of Pip,. Miami's Cuban exiles have never lacked for support at the highest levels of the U.S. govern- ment From the beginning their ariti;Castro cause was taken up by senior leaders of the Cencral Intelligence Agency, who encouraged their ambitions to debt, uy the Cuban regime. For 38 years one of the most powerful of [base leaders has guarded a secret about the events leading up to Kennedy's violent death, .3 secret potentially damaging to the exile cause as well as to the agency ussuaa rt on gaga 26 24 MIAM1 MEINTIMRS APRIL 1.1-113. znal miandriaothn, _ • four million pages of long-secret march protesting the visit to Revelation eontirmeeereniewiesee documents - including a thin file Havana of Soviet envoy Anas- an ereienides. Yet even then the Sea MBroyen in February 1960. The man is Richard Helms, former CIA was claiming that no one in When pro-Castro forces director of the CIA. Now retired and liv- the agency had had any contact greeted the young Cuban ingin the swank Foxhallsecdon ofWash- with the DRE throughout 1961. democrats with lead pipes and (neon, D.C., the 89-year-old Helms The Joannides story, Tunheim aka Shellin Flying fists, Muller and Ca. declined interview requests for this story, says today -shows that the CIA decided to take up arms against the basic facts of which have emerged wasn't interested in the truth Castro's proletarian dictator- from recently declassified .17K film about the assassination." ship. They went ro Miami, Through four intensive investigations Journalist and author Gerald where it was safer to plan their of the Kennedy asstasinition. Helms Posner, whose 1991 best seller Laid to Exiles; activities and stockpile the withheld information about a 1_021 CIA Case Closed argued that the equipment necessary for mili- officer in Miami - a dapper, multilingual OEM's harassment of Oswald tary action. In the fall of 1950 the Lawyer and father of three - who guided was a "humiliation" that pro- group returned to the island and and monitored the DIrectorio 'tomtit. pelled him on his way to shoot organized boycotts at colleges cionario Estudiantil (the Revolutionary the president, says he finds the e Warn and high schools in the capital. Joannides piece of the JFK When Castro spoke at the Uni- By puzzle to be "obviously imPor• bacakEL O'NEILL. - versity of Havana. DRE members tent" and suggests that the WaghingtOn, Aug.'25 (NEWS Bureau).—The set off more than 100 bombs at CIA is ;ectoevneerel ph Its o wn U.S. spiked Cuban charges of the fringes of the crowd. IN THE EARLY SIXTIES. view AMetienn aggresSioi While the CIA trained an exile the agency's 'intransig tonight bypinning the blame for Last nights shellini army in Guatemala for on island THE DRE WAS AT THE ence, Of Havana on,,a group lying, and dissembling Miami and ,iiiirning thay.of Cuban"„ student exiles it invasion in the spring of CUTTING EDGE OF THE once again contributinga tote 1961. agency officials mr.ffee suspicions of conspiracy," would be punished: ; informed the ORE and CUBAN RESISTANCE G. Robert Blakey, who J.._ 111°. 4fnte I:tenet-men!: h other groups inside Cuba that something big would MOVEMENT. general far House Select soon take piece. but. citing onherF s s a a ri a Cse" securiry concerns. the agency's mn:cTertbrFtbria n rb:L3 Anfilr silence ecenpro 1.,trzeeol otmglaliaL:71urYSP:Tai.v71.-'‘t'::::4' *-11- - officials refused to inisedrhat +hared gat k. aunt. announce when and Student Directorate, or DRE). His name where the attack would dr.hvo eienn dg.631vi f id°1:.16.3";ff, n iZer t b 4i was George Jeennities, and his charges in nidesnwas O7Frei'aetk el:;hf 1 din: occur. Salvat organized a the DRE were among the moot notori- Would have demanded that network of active support- ously oumpoken and militant anti-Castro the agency take him off the Tee- arratesetior ers among Catholic and ems-wite nell.eer• Cuban exiles in the early Sixties. Far sev- job jof responding to corn- ay tee« reparweb. middle-class students eral .reeks lo the summer of 1963, those mitten inquiries)," he asserts ` throughout Cuba. Muller same exiles tailed. came to blows with, would have sat him dawn and built a nucleus of ,guteffro and harassed Lee Harvey Oswald, who Interviewed him. Under oath." Mlles in the Eacanthtuy just a few months later changed the ouflaged Mountains. Then without course of U.S. history. The story begins on November 6, 1.962. sites around the warning tame the April 17 Helms never told the Warren Commis, The Cuban Missile Crisis had just conic to island, was based With help horn CIA p3tran David Atlee trt333iOnettne Bay Pigs.. Sean - the presidential panel set up after an end the-week before, when Kennedy on information Phillips, the DBE task I shut at Castro Before the DRE could Kennedy's death to investigate the AMU- accepted the Soviet Union's decision to provided by the late one summer's alert In 1462 mobilize, the invaders election - about his officer's relationship withdraw all its missiles from the Island. Revolutionary . were trounced and Castro with the exile group. He never disclosed The fear of nuclear war that had lasted for Student Directorate. cracked down on his foes. Salver eluded that the CIA was funding the EIRE when thirteen anxious clays was easing. At the time the ARE was the single cert.-nee, but scores of DRE sympathizers it bad contact with Oswald, who was That afteenoen the Evening Star in most popular exile group in Miami. wound up in prison_ is a blow to the DRE, agitating un Castro's behalf in New Washington hit the newsstands with a dia. according to a CIA-survey, with a hard- cofounder Muller was among than Orleans In August 1962. A skillful eubing from, page headline: "Exiles Tell of care fallowing of 2200 supporters. Since caught and imprisoned. Others took bureaucrat. Helms withheld flies on Missiles Hidden in Cuba Caves." The the group's founding on the University of refuge in the pecked embassies of sympa- Oswelire pm-Castro-zeds-hies from sn in- Stays scoop which alleged the existence Havana campus in early 1960, it had been thetic Latin-American nations. house investigation of the accused asses- of seven previously unidentified and cam- receiving funding, training and logietical As the Directorate's leaders straggled aim (and when the veteran support for its leaders, back to Miami. they embodied the bitter officer in charge of that thanks to a CIA officer mood that enveloped the city in 1961. But probe protested, Helots named David Atiee Phillips, with assistance from David Atlee Phillips relieved him of his duties). known for his role in the and the CIA, Salvor, Fernandez-Rocha, Helms stonewalled 195-4 overthrow of a leftist and engineer Isidro "Chiba" Rorie again in 1978. when Con- government in Guatemala, revived the DEL gress created the House Bpi:hotline of the itaissilecri- In the summer of 1961. Fernandez- Select Committee. on els, the agency was giving the Rocha sneaked back into Cube and spent Assassinations to re-exam- group's young leaders in several dangerous months trying to shore ine Kennedy's murder. Miami 520900 each month up the group's clandestine network. With Once more the CIA kept The CIA wanted the DRE continuous funding from the U.S. govern. every detail of loannides's "for one simple reason,' meat, the DRE headquarters In Miami mission In Miami under recoils Luis Fernandez- wee able to send delegates to internetional wraps. Worse still, in Rocha, the Directorate's sec- conferences in Vienna and Helsinki. The veiled contempt of that rotary-general et the time group published a newspaper. Trinchera inquiry, the CIA assigned and a 23-year-old who had (Trenches), and an English-language to bandies himself the been expelled from medical newsletter, the Cuban Report, which often jab of deflecting sensitive school at the University of was cited by New York Sen.
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