27

ONE EVENING IN A MIAMI BAR, I THOUGHT OF HOW MODENE USED TO putty the underside of her long fingernails and bind them in adhesive tape before she would play tennis. Maybe it was the drink, but tears came to my eyes. I might have called her if the telephone number had been in my wallet rather than in its sealed envelope in my locked office desk.

I have said nothing of my private life during this period, but then, nothing is much worth recording. I had dates with a few of the more attractive secretaries who worked at JM/WAVE, and the ladies seemed to be looking for a husband while I was certainly not searching for a wife; soon enough, I would go back to drinking with Zenith confreres. When boozing grew too heavy, I would stop for a day or more and write a long letter to Kittredge.

It was a curious period. The wheels had begun to turn once my father came back from Tokyo, but he was under instructions to reorganize JM/WAVE into a leaner operation. By March we were scaled down—which proved almost as time-consuming as building us up. Transfers wore heavily on my father’s conscience; having been sent out on occasion to regions of the globe that he deemed inappropriate for his skills, he would study the 201 of each officer he was now shifting to an undesirable Station, and would review the file a second time if the man was taking his family along. I thought that was more than gracious until I realized that Cal was protecting himself as well, for he did not wish an undue number of appeals to be recorded against his judgment.

The Cuban sorties that we sent out through the first months of 1963 were usually chosen with reference to the budget. Any project that had been on the books long enough to run up a sizable expenditure would receive Cal’s sanction more easily than a new op whose curtailment would be inexpensive. Since this practice usually involved saving Bill Harvey’s projects at the expense of new ones that Cal had conceived, I also perceived this as more than fair until I realized that, once again, my father had his low motive nicely in gear with the good one. “I can’t keep explaining to the Company auditors,” said Cal, “that a money-guzzling op I shut down because it showed no results was commenced on Bill Harvey’s watch and is not my fault. Those auditors never listen. They’re just as lazy as the law allows.” My education was advancing.

Our largest problem in this period, however, derived from ongoing negotiations between the White House and the Kremlin. Those powers were overseeing the gradual removal of the missiles, and there were hitches. Bobby Kennedy would prod us to throw in a raid from time to time—nothing severe enough to jar the larger transaction, but if Castro wouldn’t honor certain pledges that Khrushchev had made, we, in turn, were not about to forgo attacks on the Cuban coast. It was fine-tuning. The trouble, however, was that the exiles kept tweaking the strings with their own very much unauthorized raids. Alpha 66, Commando 77, Second Front, MIRR, or any one from a number of sleazier outfits (whose names shifted more quickly than we could replace labels on their file jackets) often succeeded in firing a rocket at a Soviet ship or blowing a bridge on some dirt road back of the Cuban shore. That was fine-tuning with a Chinese pitch pipe. The Russians would complain that we were backing such moves, which was exactly what these Miami Cubans wanted the Soviets to believe.

From the Kennedy point of view, it was not the time for this variety of misunderstanding. Senator Keating of New York, now soaring politically on a Republican thermal, was claiming that the Soviets had filled a number of Cuban caves with unregistered missiles. Helms kept sending memos to Cal to furnish more intelligence. Yet it was not possible to verify the claims. We kept getting reports from our agents in Cuba that Castro was storing tanks, munitions, even airplanes in caves. If the cave’s mouth had a gate and a guardhouse, as indeed it would, any Cuban peasant relaying such observations to an underground group might be all too quick to mistake a large gas tank for a missile. And if they didn’t, the exiles in Miami only passed such news on to Keating after heating up the interpretation.

It was, yes, a delicate balance, and on March 31 the White House announced that it would take “every step necessary to halt the exile raids.” Such steps soon engaged the Coast Guard, Immigration, FBI, Customs, and JM/WAVE. Government, I now discovered, was an organism with one outstanding property—it did not look back. The FBI went into many an exile camp in southern Florida and came out with bomb casings and truckloads of dynamite. Local Cubans were indicted. Our financial support to Miro Cardona and the Cuban Revolutionary Committee was terminated, and Cal’s raids were closed down completely by the National Security Council. “Politics is weather,” was Cal’s reaction. “We’ll just wait it out.” He passed an advisory across his desk to me. “Next time you’re down in Florida, worry about this first. Came to me from a gentleman named Sapp. Charlie Sapp. Chief of Police Intelligence in Miami. Considering the nature of his work, Sapp is a singular family name, wouldn’t you say?”

We laughed, but the advisory was still on the desk. It read: Violence hitherto directed at Castro’s Cuba may now be turned toward governmental agencies in the United States.

“I called Mr. Sapp,” said Cal. “He kept talking about anti-Castro extremists. Inflamed tempers. Wild coyotes. Says a new lunatic fringe has been forming ever since we missed going to war in October. Right now this handbill is being stuffed into letter boxes in Little Havana, Coral Gables, and Coconut Grove. I took the wording down right over the phone.” Cal read aloud: “Cuban patriots—face into the truth. Only one development will make it possible for Cuban patriots to return to their homeland in triumph. That is an inspired act of God. Such an act would place a Texan into the White House who is a friend to all Latin Americans.”

“Who does it purport to be from?” I asked.

“No name. It is signed: ‘A Texan who resents the Oriental influence that has come to control, to degrade, to pollute, and enslave his own people.’ The rhetoric does suggest John Birch Society.”

“Yes,” I said, “all we poor enslaved American people.”

“Well, you don’t need to get college-boy about it,” said Cal. “It doesn’t solve anything to feel superior to the John Birch Society.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

I had never presumed to speak like this to him. I had forgotten the heat of his temper. An oven door might just as well have opened across the desk.

“All right,” I said, “I apologize.”

“Accepted.” He caught it in midflight like a hound wolfing a chunk of meat.

But I was not without my own anger. “Do you really believe we are enslaved?”

He cleared his throat. “We are polluted.”

“By whom?”

“That is a complex question, isn’t it? But ask yourself whether the Kennedys have a sense of a priori value.”

“What if they don’t?”

He was still breathing heavily. “At St. Matt’s, my father used to tell us that a man without a priori values soon gets into a pact with the Devil.”

“I take it that you believe this.”

“Of course I do. Don’t you?”

“I would say by half.”

“That is a damned unsatisfactory remark,” said Cal. “Half devout. Why are you in the Agency?”

He was going too far. “I like the work,” I told him.

“Your reply is insufficient. Don’t you recognize that in Castro we are dealing with Communism in its most macho form? He appeals right across the board to the three-quarters of the world that is dirt poor. A wholly dangerous man.”

I did not answer. I was thinking that only half of Fidel might meet my father’s prescription. The other half could yet prove congenial to the half of Kennedy that was, I suspected, inclined to have a dialogue with Fidel Castro. But then, I was another half-man, ready to live with the bearded one and equally ready to abet his instant elimination. No, I could not answer my father.

“Would it surprise you to know,” said Cal, “that our dear friend Hugh Montague could have written that John Birch letter?”

“No,” I said, “not ever. The style would repel him.”

“All the same,” said Cal, “he does feel that some form of Satanic embodiment is degrading, polluting, and, yes—I’ll say it—enslaving the yeoman virtues and values that this country used to possess.”

“Does Hugh hate Kennedy that much?”

“He might.”

“It is not the impression I get from Kittredge.”

“Kittredge may have a good deal to learn about Hugh.”

“Yessir.”

He was done with the conversation. The light went out of his eyes and his strong features looked as implacable as they must have appeared in those ruthless college days when he was on the way to making Second All-American. “Watch yourself in Florida,” he said.

Miami proved quiet over the next couple of weeks, but there was an undeniable sullenness of spirit on Calle Ocho; when we drank at our watering holes, there were jokes about satchel-charges coming through the window. Our situation reminded me of hot summer afternoons in adolescence when the air did not move for hours, and I was certain something would happen that night, even if it never did.

April 10, 1963

Dear Harry,

I am beginning to suspect that Jack Kennedy has such an active Alpha (and equally lively Omega) that he is not only inclined to explore in two opposed directions at once, but prefers to. And, do you know, I suspect the same is true for Castro. I have picked up some special stuff on the man by way of an Agency debriefing of James Donovan, who just returned from Havana after a new set of negotiations.

Donovan’s mission was to obtain the release of a considerable number of Americans who are at present in Cuban prisons. When Bobby asked Donovan to take this on, he said, “Jesus Christ, I’ve done the loaves and the fishes. Now you want me to walk on water.”

I think it is precisely this Irish humor that enables Donovan to get along with Castro. Of course, it was a return trip and they were old hands by now at dealing with each other; Castro even took Donovan and his assistant, Nolan, to the Bay of Pigs where lunch was served on a launch, and they devoted a good part of the day to skin-diving and fishing. All the while, they were guarded—I do enjoy this—by a Russian PT boat.

Here is the part of their conversation which I think you will find interesting. Hugh certainly did.

“Last November,” said Donovan, “when I ran for Governor of New York State, I got licked. I’m beginning to think I’m more popular down here.”

“Truth, you are very popular here,” said Castro.

“Why don’t you,” asked Donovan, “have some free elections? Then, I could run against you. I might get elected.”

“That,” said Castro, “is exactly why we do not have free elections.”

From there, they moved toward the edges of some serious political talk. It seems Bobby is trying to get the State Department to lift travel restrictions on trips to Cuba—trying, I say, because Jack has left that matter to be contended over by State and the Attorney General’s office—which does annoy Bobby. “It’s preposterous,” he said, “to prosecute American students because they want to take a look at the Castro revolution. What’s wrong with that? If I were twenty-two years old, that is the place I would want to visit.” Or that, at least, is what Donovan passed on to Castro.

On hearing those sentiments, Fidel seemed interested. “Can that have any bearing on the future of American policy?” he asked.

“Well,” said Donovan, “things might be getting a little more open. We did clamp down on the exile groups. From your point of view, you might call that a positive step. Now, it might be your turn. If you release your American prisoners you will remove one hell of a stumbling block.”

“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