Where Were You?: America Remembers the JFK Assassination (20 page)

Then I called the
Times Picayune
to tell them who Oswald was. The
Times Picayune
wanted me to go immediately over there, and I went over. They already had Ed Butler and Bill Stuckey over there. Butler told me to wait and don’t be interviewed for a few minutes because Stuckey was trying to arrange a deal, a monetary deal, to provide information about Oswald. To me that was revolting. I never thought that, with the president killed, somebody would be asking for money to give information. I said, “No, Butler, I’m sorry. I’ll give everything that I know free. I don’t need any money.”

To me, President Kennedy was the last hope that the Cuban people had to get rid of Castro. The day I heard that Kennedy was killed, those hopes went out the window—because Kennedy had the moral obligation. He had sworn in Miami in December 1962 that he was going to return the flag of the Bay of Pigs invasion, of Brigade 2506, to a free Havana. When Kennedy was killed, there was no one who was going to take over that statement from Kennedy.

Sunday morning, when Oswald was led down the hall, I was at the Secret Service office talking to an agent. He received a phone call, and he turned to me and said, “Oswald has been shot.” It was like when you see the end of a movie. You’re watching a movie and you see “The End.”

I said, “Castro got rid of Oswald.” I was thinking that when Oswald went to trial, the one who would be sitting there would be Fidel Castro. They got rid of Oswald, and everything was confused. Everything became “Who killed Oswald?”

On November 22 I was interviewed on local, national, and international television. I said, “I don’t know if Lee Harvey Oswald is the assassin or not, but if it’s proven that Lee Harvey Oswald is the assassin, the hand of Fidel Castro is behind the assassination.”

My statement arrived in Cuba, and the next day Castro held a gathering of the masses in Cuba because he wanted to address the “lies” against him. He mentioned me and tried to distort what I had said. I am sure that day and the next day Castro was sweating very badly because of what I said.

I was interviewed by the Warren Commission, and I was told by several people, among them Ed Butler, not to be too outspoken against Castro; just tell, matter of fact, what happened with Oswald. That is what I did in the Warren Commission.

Secret memos from the CIA that never reached the Warren Commission but would come out in 1998 referred to two assassins Castro had sent to the United States in 1960 and 1961 to kill Kennedy. The Warren Commission never knew a lot of things about the assassination. The commission was just a seal of approval of an idea that was planted by President Johnson, who was convinced that Castro was the one who killed President Kennedy. Johnson said that several times to different people, but I believe that President Johnson wanted to close the case, say it was one person, not a conspiracy, and that’s it.

I know Fidel Castro. Presidents of different countries and presidents of the United States, they’re presidents. They are politicians. But Castro is not a politician—Castro is a gangster.

The first person he ever killed, on February 22, 1948, was a cousin of mine: Manolo Castro, who was leader of the students in the University of Havana and was the person in charge of Cuban sports in 1948. Fidel Castro killed him.

On November 1, 1958, he killed another cousin of mine, Rosco Menyano—or at least he ordered the situation that ended with the assassination of my cousin. He was a pilot with the Cuban airline, and his plane was leaving Florida to Cuba. Castro sent some people from the 26th of July Movement to Florida. Those people hijacked the airplane before it reached Cuba. When they told my cousin they wanted the plane to go to the Sierra Maestra, my cousin said to them, “We don’t have gasoline to reach the Sierra Maestra. We will crash.” They said, “You have to go.” He said, “I won’t go.”

They stabbed him to death. The plane eventually crashed in the Bay of Nipe. Several of the passengers were killed. Some of the mercenaries, terrorists, from the July 26th Movement were killed too, but some of them survived. One of them just recently died in Coral Gables, Florida. When I returned to Cuba in 1959, I saw a
Bohemia
magazine in which they were interviewing the survivors of that hijacking, and they were bragging about how they had to kill the pilot because he didn’t want to reach the Sierra Maestra.

I am a Christian. I don’t believe in falsely accusing a person. If Castro was innocent, I would have never blamed him. But I know him—he’s an assassin. He had been doing that for years, and he had every motive to kill Kennedy. Kennedy was going to get rid of him.

I believe that is one of the problems Bobby Kennedy confronted after the assassination, that he felt guilty because, I believe, Kennedy was playing a game he could not really be involved in. Kennedy was not an assassin. Kennedy could have had various bad traits as a politician or as a person, but he was not an assassin. That was something in which he should not have been involved.

I was a lawyer in Cuba. I used to work in a criminal court, and I have never put blame on an innocent person. I believe that Castro is an assassin. Only an idiot could think that Castro is a saint, that Castro is not a gangster, that Castro is not an assassin. We are dealing with an assassin: a serial killer assassin. That is the man who has been in power for fifty-three years in Cuba.

I told that to Garrison, the district attorney of New Orleans, at the time of his investigation, and I told him that if he wanted me to work for him, I would work for him for free. I didn’t want to frame a Communist, and I didn’t want to frame an anti-Communist. What I wanted was the truth, because I knew the truth would blame Fidel Castro.

I learned about Jim Garrison’s investigation because an American by the name of David Ferrie came to my store asking to meet with Dr. Carlos Bringuier.

I said, “I am Carlos Bringuier.”

Ferrie didn’t remember that we had met in 1961, I believe, for ten minutes at his house with Sergio Arcacha and Carlos Quiroga. Ferrie at that time was helping Arcacha with the Cuban Revolutionary Council. I had heard from Cubans that they didn’t like Ferrie because of his tendencies. Then I wanted to meet Ferrie. We went over there and stayed for ten
minutes. When we left, I told Arcacha, “If I were you, I would not like to be seen with this guy.”

Ferrie forgot about that, and he came asking for Carlos Bringuier. He told me that Garrison was doing a witch hunt on him and that Garrison was going to frame him for the assassination of President Kennedy. He said something at that moment that I didn’t like. He said that all the judges should be hanged.

My father used to be a judge in Cuba. I didn’t want my father to be hanged. I got very short and said that I didn’t have anything else to talk about with him, and he left. At that moment I was feeling great. I was thinking,
Okay, the district attorney is going to discover that Castro is behind the assassination
. That was my first thought.

After a few days I started receiving news from Cubans who were being interviewed by the district attorney, and the line of questioning was not in that direction. Then I called the district attorney’s office and asked to have a meeting with Garrison. The next day they called me, and I went over there to meet Garrison.

Garrison was a very impressive guy. He was six feet something, and he looked like Perry Mason in a lot of ways. He was telling me his latest conspiracy theory. I don’t know if it was conspiracy theory number three or conspiracy theory number thirteen, because he had a lot of conspiracy theories. He mentioned a lot of different names of Americans that never came out in public. I don’t want to mention their names because they are very respectable Americans. When he finished explaining his theory to me, I said, “You are either stupid or you are a Communist.”

He said, “I won’t discuss anything else with you unless you take a lie detector test.”

I said, “You can give me three lie detector tests! But I don’t discuss with you until you give me a lie detector test.”

He sent me to take the lie detector test. We went to the office of William Gurvich, who administered the lie detector test. A couple of days later I received a call from the district attorney’s office that he wanted to meet with me again.

Garrison apologized to me and said I had passed the lie detector test perfectly. That was when I offered to work with him without pay. I didn’t want to blame a Communist or an anti-Communist—what I wanted was
the truth, and I knew where the truth was going to take me. Several times after that I was called to Garrison’s office. One time I was called because a Cuban was brought from Miami who was going to identify Arcacha with Oswald. For Garrison, that was tremendous, a perfect thing for his theory.

Then James Alcock, who was the assistant district attorney, brought me into a room with a Cuban. I knew this Cuban. He had been living in New Orleans, and I knew him as a thief. His name was Emilio Santana, and Santana was identifying Arcacha with Oswald in a meeting on Washington Avenue of some people from the Alpha 66 Movement.

They wanted me to be the translator. I translated everything Mr. Santana said. When he finished, Alcott was all excited because now they had Arcacha. I knew that was wrong. Arcacha and I were not on speaking terms when Arcacha left New Orleans in 1962, and I knew Arcacha was not in New Orleans when this guy was placing him in New Orleans.

I asked Alcott if I could ask Santana a question. Alcott said yes. I said, “Okay, it could not have been where you said, on Washington Avenue and Madison Street, the service station of the Suarez Family.” I knew the Suarez Family had the service station there and that they were with Alpha 66. Then I said, “The person that you said was there, the delegate of Alpha 66, his name is Miguel Bretos.”

And he’s like, “Yes, that’s it! Miguel Bretos was the man who was there.” I knew that Miguel Bretos had a lot of resemblance, physically, to Arcacha. You had to see Alcott’s face—everything disappeared in front of him. When I finished he said, “I want to check that the translation of Dr. Bringuier has been completely accurate.” He was testing me to see if I had changed something; he could charge me with obstruction of justice if I said something other than what Santana said to me.

After we left, I talked to Santana. I said, “Santana, what are you doing here? How did this happen?” He said, “These people from the district attorney showed up in Miami. They started questioning me, and they offered to pay for my trip here, to put me up in a hotel, and give me drugs if I testify.”

In Cuba in 1959 I was part of the 10 percent of the people who knew what Castro was. Ninety percent of the people were for Castro; 90 percent of the people said, “Oh, Castro is the man.” In New Orleans, when
Garrison was district attorney, 90 percent of the people were for Garrison. He duped everybody. Remember that New Orleans has always been a very corrupt city, and Louisiana has always been a very corrupt state. Garrison was the district attorney, and he had the dirt on all the politicians.

Garrison started his investigation because of David Chandler, who was a newsman with
Life
magazine. He talked to him about everything he had. The problem for Chandler was that Chandler was putting the blame on the Mafia, and Garrison was part of the Mafia. Garrison took all the information that Chandler was providing to him, and when he had all that information, he didn’t do anything against the Mafia. That is when he broke up with Chandler.

To me, one of the most incredible things is how people sometimes cast blame on innocent people. Oliver Stone and Kevin Costner were able to carry that movie,
JFK,
by putting the blame on an innocent man like Clay Shaw.

I had the opportunity to meet Clay Shaw after he had been indicted by Garrison. I was invited to the reception he had in his house after he was acquitted of all charges by the grand jury in less than three hours. The man was a gentleman. I don’t care if he was gay or not gay—that is his personal decision—but this man was a gentleman. This man was recognized by a lot of ambassadors and very influential people all over the world, and Garrison was able to blame an innocent man.