Earlier this same day, the CIA had received a cable from the Paris station indicating that Cubela planned to return to Cuba. If the CIA was to meet his request for assassination weapons, it was now or never. Thus, it's hard to escape the conclusion that Helms's real purpose in going to Robert Kennedy was to see if the CIA should provide the weapons and that he bucked the decision up to his brother.
Helms writes in his book that Hershel Peake was with him and brought along an FAL rifle with Cuban markings from an arms cache found in Venezuela. A week earlier, the president asked Helms to get "hard evidence" of Castro exporting the revolution to other Latin American countries, and it is plausible that this was a reason for Helms's actions. Moreover, Peake was a CIA officer stationed in Venezuela. However, this doesn't adequately explain why Helms felt he had to go to Robert Kennedy first. Since John Kennedy had been the one to ask for such hard evidence, why didn't Helms go directly to him? Besides, the White House meeting lasted forty minutes, but Helms only devotes a paragraph to it in his memoir. The likelihood is that the two men discussed more than the arms cache. Given the length of the meeting, Helms probably needed a decision from the president, and, therefore, a time-consuming, back-and-forth conversation ensued, a conversation about whether to give in to Cubela's request for assassination weapons.
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This is incorrect supposition. First, the CIA's IG report on the Castro plots (which is a damage control report - the CIA was looking to protect itself) makes clear that the CIA had never received ANY approvals to kill Castro and in fact hid later plots, telling RFK only of plots that had ended and not about those continuing.
The cache episode was Helms' last chance at getting Kennedy to invade Cuba. Kennedy had promised not to invade Cuba during the Missile Crisis unless it could be proven that Castro was exporting his revolution. CIA operative Joseph Burkholder Smith wrote in his own book he suspected the CIA had planted the Cuban weapons cache and he made a persuasive case. RFK didn't buy it but it wasn't his call so he sent Helms to JFK, who didn't buy it either. On the way out, Helms asked for an autographed picture of JFK. He didn't even like or respect the man. But he was a collector. Helms knew he was about to be killed and then it would be too late to get such an item.
See also Breckinridge's Church Committee testimony. He makes it very clear the CIA never had approval from either Kennedy to kill Castro.
Scott Breckenridge was one of several CIA men who worked on the Inspector General’s Report on assassination plots in 1967. His testimony to the Church Committee was that the CIA briefed Robert Kennedy in the spring of 1962 about Phase 1 of the CIA’s work with the underworld to assassinate Castro. The reason for this briefing was that FBI Director Hoover was feeling caught between the attorney general’s demand that he prosecute Sam Giancana and the CIA’s request that he not be prosecuted for fear it would disclose Giancana’s role in the CIA’s use of the underworld to assassinate Fidel Castro. Breckenridge testified that when senior CIA officers learned Kennedy had not been told the plots were continuing, they made the decision not to correct the record with Kennedy. Breckenridge did not say Kennedy didn’t learn about the plots in some other way. This has nothing to do with the plot with Cubela in 1963. Breckenridge’s testimony doesn’t speak to the Kennedys’ knowledge about that, which is the subject of this post.
One can’t make up facts in order to support a theory. Smith may have “suspected” the CIA planted the Cuban arms cache, but there is absolutely no evidence to support this. Nor is there evidence to support the argument that the IG Report was “damage control.” The clear facts are that when Lyndon Johnson learned underworld figures were saying Castro had Kennedy killed in retaliation for plots against him, Johnson ordered the CIA to report on it.
The IG Report is not the last word. As Breckenridge admitted to the Church Committee, they did not interview anyone outside the CIA. They didn’t know Desmond FitzGerald called Robert Kennedy within an hour of getting a cable that said Cubella wanted to meet with Kennedy. They didn’t talk to Cubela. They didn’t interview Richard Helms, who said in his book that he met with both Kennedys on November 19, 1963, the same day Sanchez’s MFR says he got approval to promise Cubela assassination weapons. They apparently didn’t have the CIA memo that said Robert Kennedy had approved flying Cubela back to the United States in a military aircraft for a meeting with Kennedy. The IG Report doesn’t mention that the CIA wrote Kennedy’s “barrier speech” of Nov. 18. It doesn’t even note that Kennedy said that removing the barrier of the Castro regime would lead to a normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba. Kennedy’s words were precisely what Cubela and his cohorts needed to hear.
The “cache episode” wasn’t Helms’s idea. As early as spring 1962, Secretary of State Dean Rusk talked about Castro exporting the revolution. In February 1963, John Kennedy ordered the CIA to report to him on Cuban recruitment of students in Latin America. In the 1960 presidential debates, Kennedy had hammered Nixon by accusing him of being a part of an administration that had lost Cuba. Kennedy wasn’t going to lose another Latin American country. McGeorge Bundy was the one who raised the Venezuelan arms cache at a meeting the president attended on November 12, 1963. Kennedy ordered the military to look into interdicting the flow of arms from Cuba to Latin America. A massive military effort was planned. After the assassination, Rusk talked to the Russians about the arms cache. He minimized its significance. It was the military, not the CIA, that actually sorted through the arms that were found and reported on it.
Helms’s is the only record of the meeting with Robert Kennedy on November 19 and with what was said at the meeting with John Kennedy later that day. Helms included it in his memoir, “A Look over My Shoulder,” published after his death. Helms didn’t say Robert Kennedy didn’t buy it, whatever “it” was. He said the opposite. He said he had brought a Belgian-made FAL to show Kennedy and had trouble getting it away from him. Robert Kennedy set up the White House meeting. Helms writes about Kennedy fondly. Again where is the evidence that Helms didn’t like or respect John Kennedy? Helms said he got into the Oval Office with the FAL without the Secret Service detecting it. Kennedy joked, “Yes, it gives me a feeling of confidence.” When he was leaving, Helms saw Kennedy signing things, probably autographing photographs, and so later he asked the White House for an autographed photo. He doesn’t say if this was done before Kennedy was assassinated. The claim that Helms had advance knowledge of the assassination is absurd.
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