The Kennedy Brothers: The Rise and Fall of Jack and Bobby by Richard D. Mahoney

Author:Richard D. Mahoney [Mahoney, Richard D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biographies & Memoirs, Historical, United States, Leaders & Notable People, Political, History, Americas, 20th Century
Amazon: B0056GXHRG
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Published: 2011-05-01T23:00:00+00:00

December 29, 1962

Miami, Florida

During the height of the Cuban missile crisis, Bobby Kennedy had instructed CIA director John McCone to halt all covert operations aimed at Cuba. When Kennedy discovered a few days later that ZR/RIFLE chief Bill Harvey, with the approval of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had already dispatched three commando teams into Cuba to prepare for the invasion, he angrily summoned Harvey to the Pentagon and told him to countermand these sorties: “You’re dealing with people’s lives in a half-assed operation.” When Harvey replied that some of his teams were beyond recall, Kennedy stormed out of the room. “Harvey has destroyed himself today,” McCone observed.221 Harvey was relieved of his command of ZR/RIFLE several weeks after the conclusion of the crisis. On October 30, Ex Comm terminated “all sabotage operations” against Cuba. Consistent with the president’s secret commitment not to invade Cuba, Operation Mongoose and the executive body that ran it, Special Group (Augmented), were disbanded.

News of Harvey’s dismissal and the non-invasion pledge spread like a deadly epidemic among anti-Castro forces in south Florida. One prominent exile wrote: “For hundreds of thousands of Cubans eager to stake their lives to liberate their native land, it was a soul-shattering blow.”222 Suddenly, under Bobby Kennedy’s own order, there was a crackdown on the training camps, guerrilla bases, and commando sorties that had been the ramrod of the war against Castro. General Lansdale himself was sent down to Miami to make sure the anti-Castro Cubans and their CIA handlers obeyed the order. On December 4, United States Customs officers detained twelve anti-Castro guerrillas at No Name Key as they were about to embark on a raid to Cuba. Some, like JM/WAVE station chief Shackley, made the best of the bitter business of standing down. But others, like David Phillips, David Morales, and Frank Sturgis, now stripped of all legitimacy, surrounded by enraged Cubans, were moved to seditious resolve against the Kennedys.223 It was a package programmed to explode — and Johnny Rosselli, once again, was in the middle of it.

David Phillips, under the cover name Maurice Bishop, was already operating independently of the CIA station in Miami. A handsome man in his mid-forties, six feet two inches tall, two hundred pounds, with dark hair and blue eyes, Bishop had served as a CIA agent in Havana before Castro’s revolution. There he had become acquainted with Antonio Veciana, an accountant working at the Banco Financiero. Veciana later turned violently against Castro and attempted, with Bishop’s guidance, to assassinate the Cuban leader in Havana in October 1961. The attempt failed and Veciana escaped to Miami, where he resumed his partnership with Bishop and, along with an anti-Castro Spaniard named Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, formed a strike force called Alpha 66. In September 1962, the strike force began launching raids. On October 10, Alpha 66 commandos landed on the Cuban island of Isabela de Sagua and attacked and killed twenty people, including several Russians. On October 15, Alpha 66 struck again, sinking a Cuban patrol boat.

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