Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth About the Unknown Relationship Between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK (19 page)

CIA documents indicate interest in Cobb by both CUOPS and CU SIG, the operations and molehunting elements of counterintelligence." These are the same two elements that appear on many of Oswald's CIA documents. And there is another document that reveals high-level interest in Cobb. Dated June 6, 1960-less than a week after she left Cuba-it is from the office of the vice president. It was placed in Cobb's 201 file, with the name "R. E. Cushman" handwritten on it. Lieutenant Colonel Cushman, U.S. Marine Corps, was Richard Nixon's national security assistant. As we will see in Chapter Eight, Cushman was "hands on" when it came to the Agency's Cuban operations.

Cobb did not know there was a CIA technician on the other side of the wall in her various hotel rooms. These eavesdroppers kept logs of the activities taking place in her room, such as this one from October 23, 1960:

8:03 P.M. Radio turned up. Announcement of Nixon's acceptance of 5th debate with Kennedy.

8:13 P.M. Other woman on phone. "Wanna say hello to June." June on phone, in Spanish."

"One would have thought that the CIA could have found someone who could speak Spanish in New York," Cobb remarks wryly today. She has a point: In this and other logs, it is apparent that the snoopers did not speak Spanish. With White House-backed plots to assassinate Castro afoot, and a subject who had access to his inner sanctum, it seems odd to go to the expense of this elaborate surveillance without the benefit of an on-site linguist.

A surveillance log turned in on October 25 said that among the phone calls of the previous six days, one had been to "AC 2-7190; Alexander I. Rorke, Jr., 7 West 96 Street, Apt. 2-A.53 Rorke was another Hemming, a soldier of fortune caught up in the Cuban vortex. Unlike Hemming, however, Rorke did not survive to tell his war stories. On September 24, 1963, he and a colleague, Geoffrey Sullivan, disappeared on a flight somewhere in the Caribbean. Rorke's right wing politics did not mix with Cobb's liberalism, and his call was not as a friend but in connection with one Marita Lorenz. "Manta and he had called me," Cobb recalls, "and I called him back, it it would have been to politely end the conversation." The name Marita Lorenz is well known to students of the Kennedy assassination case. For example, in his book Plausible Denial, investigator-lawyer Mark Lane narrates her remarkable claim to have been recruited by the CIA to assassinate Castro, and to have met with Howard Hunt and Jack Ruby in Dallas just before the assassination.'

After the disappearance of Rorke and Sullivan, Rorke's in-laws became involved. Sherman Billingsley's daughter Jackie was married to Rorke. Hoover was a regular at Billingsley's famous restaurant, the Stork Club. Billingsley's hopes were fueled by persistent but unproven rumors of Rorke's capture and imprisonment. Billingsley became angry with the administration and the CIA for ransoming Cubans and not doing the same for Rorke. He collected documents he thought embarrassing to JFK and the CIA and stored them in bank vaults. There was a second Billingsley daughter who had handled some of the material. She disclosed their content to her boyfriend, Douglas K. Gentzkow, a West Point cadet.

Gentzkow skipped his chain of command and Army security, went straight to the New York office of the CIA's Domestic Contacts Division (DCD), and turned over the documents in his possession. Mayo Stuntz, chief of support for DCD, wrote this on Gentzkow's file: "We wondered why a [West Point cadet] would risk his career on such a deal." The person from Cuban operations who handled the file, someone named "Ladner," recommended turning over the information to Army security. Decades later, Gentzkow was surprised to learn this."

In one of the New York DCD reports on Gentzkow, the story of June Cobb and Marita Lorenz surfaced:

The name of June Cobb as a double agent appears in the Rorke papers.... According to the Rorke notes, June Cobb forced, in the fall of 1960, a cousin of Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge to have an abortion when "Lodge's" cousin was six months pregnant with Fidel Castro's child. [About three years ago, we saw a copy of Confidential magazine giving details about this alleged abortion.]'

Gentzkow's papers also surfaced in William Pawley's files, a part of the JFK records long withheld by the CIA. Pawley had helped organize the Flying Tigers with Claire Chennault in 1940,57 had served as U.S. ambassador to Brazil and Peru under Eisenhower, was appointed to the Doolittle Commission to investigate covert operations, engaged in petroleum and mining activites in the Dominican Republic, and owned transportation and sugar assets in Cuba which he lost as a result of Castro's revolution. He was wealthy, and raised money for the Eisenhower and Nixon campaigns of 1956 and 1960.55 Pawley had been used by the CIA in 1952-1954,59 and was used again, beginning in 1959, in Miami for gathering intelligence on Cuba.60 Why Gentzkow's papers were mixed in with Pawley's is unclear, unless some of the Cubans whose names were in the documents were associated with Pawley.

The appearance of the story about Cobb forcing Lorenz to abort Castro's child may seem to confirm at least part of the Confidential article. Cobb insists, however, that the father was Captain Jesus Yanez Pelletier, military aide to Castro. Yanez's enemies later succeeded in jailing him when his friendship with Castro-and therefore Castro's protection-was destroyed in the wake of the scandal surrounding the Marita Lorenz case. The CIA became interested in the Lorenz story and June Cobb as the result of earlier FBI reporting. This reporting concerned an alleged rape of Marita by Castro. That story ended up in a CIA memorandum that quoted Cobb as saying "she would hardly call it rape." This report, apparently based on FBI intelligence, also said, "The girl involved was amorous with several of the entourage and willingly submitted to their attentions."61 Cobb is adamant that this accusation a lie.62 The CIA did question Cobb during one of her 1960 trips to New York "in connection with one Marita Lorenz case."63

Here is the story of Manta's abortion in June Cobb's own words today:

Raul Castro had been trying to distance Yanez from Fidel-for example, by sending him on a mission to Italy. Marita became pregnant and that was a big problem. She was looking forward to having the baby. Yanez was separated but not divorced from his wife. Yanez wanted Marita to have an abortion. I suggested that she didn't have to have an abortion-we could just hide her. Unfortunately, before I could discuss this with Yanez, the abortion was performed. I learned of it when she called me from a room in the Hilton where Yanez had brought her after the operation.

When she was living in New York, Castro arranged for her to travel to Cuba. To save money she cashed the Cubana Airlines ticket and went by bus to Florida and cheap flight on over to Havana. When she got there she could not get a call through to Fidel. So she went to an inexpensive hotel in old Havana and, after a few days, was about to give up and go home. She was in her hotel room with the top half of the door open for ventilation when, suddenly, the head of this tall handsome Captain appeared. He took her to the Havana Riviera, where Fidel did visit her several times. She said that Fidel lay on the bed with her and talked a blue streak, but he never made love to her.

Fidel asked Yanez to take her out and show her around so that she could see Cuba; on a trip to one of the two beautiful beaches in Havana, she said he became her first love. She went home to New York. At the time of Fidel's April [19591 visit, she said, she was able to spend some time alone with Yanez in her mother's apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Unbeknownst to Fidel, she and Yanez arranged for her return to Havana. Yanez had limited funds, so he put her up at a little hotel, the Hotel de la Colina near the university; that's where she was staying when I met her in August; Fidel didn't even know she was back in Cuba.

We considered the possibility that she would need to go to a doctor after she got home to New York. She did not want to go to her mother's doctor because her mother would find out about the abortion; so I recommended an excellent physician who, I was sure, would treat her. After she returned to the States, at some time in the winter, Castro's Executive Secretary, Conchita Fernandez, and I both began receiving calls from Manta's mother threatening scandal.'

Thus Cobb opposed the abortion and had planned to intercede with Yanez to prevent it. The effect of the Confidential story undermined the bond between Castro and his aide and friend, Yanez. Yanez was arrested by the FBI in New York when he went there to ask Manta to marry him. Released, he returned to Cuba, where he was arrested a few days later under suspicion of being involved in mob-CIA plots against Castro. Yanez served eleven years in prison, and is a human rights activist in Cuba today.

Meanwhile, back in 1960, a call from Cobb to Rorke was not all that the eavesdroppers recorded in their logs. This passage is from November 3:

5:10 P.M. Outgoing Call-talking to Joan? Subject telling someone to look someone up in Cuba. Subject asking person if they read something. Subject thought it was very good. Believe Subject was referring to Drew Pearson's column. Subject is reading excerpts from the column. Subject mentions Senator [John] Kennedy and his "get tough" with the Cubans policy. Subject mentions a woman named Taylor (phonetic). Subject also mentions going back to Cuba.

6:25 P.M. Subject turns on television. Governor Dewey talking for Nixon-Lodge, Channel #4.85

During this stay in Boston, Cobb recalls being interviewed by a CIA man who asked her this direct question: "Would you consider going to bed with a man for the good of your country?" June Cobb's response is worth noting. "Not if Nixon gets elected," she said.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Nixon, Dulles, and
American Policy in Cuba
in 1960

The Eisenhower administration had not paid close enough attention to Cuba.' Preoccupied with Khrushchev's secret speech,' the missile gap, and crises in Hungary, Suez, Syria, Lebanon, Indonesia, China, and Berlin in the years 1956 to 1958, the United States was caught off guard when the insurgency in Cuba, having quietly grown beyond the capability of President Batista to control it, exploded with Castro's sudden seizure of power in January 1959.

While U.S.-Cuban relations deteriorated and the CIA began to consider "eliminating" Castro, Soviet-Cuban relations improved dramatically, culminating in a visit to Cuba, from February 2 to 13, 1960, by Soviet Foreign Minister Anastas Mikoyan. Mikoyan signed trade agreements covering sugar, oil, loans, and Soviet technical experts.' The Soviet loan extended to the Cubans was $100 million in trade credits. The visit sparked grave concerns in Washington over Soviet intentions. Secretary of State Christian Herter said this about the Mikoyan visit:

Within Cuba he [Herter] found a change in attitude at the time of the Mikoyan visit. Prior to that time the Cubans had made offers of settlement [with respect to foreign assets in Cuba]. We have information that he [Mikoyan] advised them to confiscate the holdings of U.S. business people, adding that Russia would stand behind them."

This trend continued on May 7, 1960, when Cuba resumed diplomatic relations with Russia. On May 18, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Roy R. Rubottom was brooding over a memo stating that "there is considerable anxiety in the Pentagon lest the U.S.S.R. openly or secretly install an electronic tracking station in Cuba."' During early summer of 1960, the Soviet-Cuban connection began to take on an ominous character: the first Soviet arms arrived in Cuba.6

The summer of 1960 was the point of no return in Soviet-Cuban and U.S.-Cuban relations. In a month Castro seized U.S. oil assets. By September 1960, Castro and Khrushchev were able to laugh about this together in New York City, where both men were attending a U.N. meeting.' This passage by E. Howard Hunt, a veteran of the CIA's anti-Cuban operations, illustrates the developing Soviet military intelligence threat in Cuba:

On July 6 [1960] no less a personage than Sergei M. Kudryavtsev arrived in Havana as the Soviet Union's first ambassador to Castro's Cuba. As Embassy First Secretary in Ottawa in 1946, Kudryavtsev had left hurriedly following the disclosures of Igor Gouzenko that resulted in rounding up Canada's atom spy ring. Gouzenko had been military intelligence code clerk and identified Kudryavtsev as chief of the GRU rezidentura. Though personally unprepossessing, Kudryavtsev had a keen mind and was an accomplished linguist. Following departure from Canada, the Soviet appeared in Vienna as Deputy High Commissioner, then in Paris as Minister-Counselor. Cuba was Kudryavtsev's first ambassadorial post, and he filled it as representative of the international section of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. This high-echelon sponsorship indicated profound political interest in Cuba, the nature of which did not become apparent until two years later, when the installation of Soviet missiles in Cuba became chillingly known to the world.'

By the end of 1959 the Cuban problem had reached the crisis stage in Washington. As the Republican Party prepared to nominate Richard Nixon for president at the end of July 1960, Eisenhower wrote to British Prime Minister Macmillan, "As it appears to us, the Castro government is now fully committed to the bloc."9 The same day, July 11, Secretary of State Herter sent this word to se lected U.S. diplomatic posts: "Developments of last several days, especially Khrushchev's threat missiles can reach U.S. in event `aggression' against Cuba, have placed early solution Cuban problem among imperatives of U.S. foreign policy and offers most fundamental challenge to date to Inter-American System." 10 The solution, however, was out of Herter's hands. The man who grasped the reins of Cuban policy was Vice President Nixon. The centerpiece of the policy he implemented was a covert operation to overthrow Castro. That plan was put together by Allen Dulles and his team at the CIA.

"We regard the situation in Cuba as a crisis ... "

As Oswald waited in his Moscow hotel room in December 1959 for his Russian saga in Minsk to begin, Cuba had become a critical issue in the White House. The Cuban story was sensitive because the measures adopted to handle the problem were covert ways to overthrow Castro, including plans to "eliminate" him. This dark aspect to the Cuban problem led Vice President Nixon to suggest to his colleagues at a National Security Council in that same December that they should keep quiet about the fact that the situation with Cuba had reached the crisis stage."