I was recently asked about the transcript of a Church Committee hearing in which I questioned the CIA's Ted Shackley. He testified twice before Committee. I took a look at the transcripts of the two hearings and was surprised at what I discovered. The two transcripts are curious both with respect to fact that the first was released in 1998 and the second withheld until 2017 and with regard to what Shackley said.
The witness. Ted Shackley was chief of the CIA's Miami station from February 1962 to July 1965. In its heyday, the station was purportedly the largest CIA station in the world and the largest employer in Florida. The transcript of the first hearing on August 19, 1975 dealt with assassination plots with Shackley testifying under the alias of "Halley." He testified under his real name in second on May 6, 1976 about the Kennedy assassination, but his name is redacted.
The two transcripts. Shackley's 1975 testimony (taken by Fred Baron, the "Baron transcript") was released with redactions in 1998. The Miami station was known by the cryptonym JMWAVE, often shortened to WAVE. Although he testified under the alias of "Mr. Halley," his true identity is easily determined from the transcript because he was asked about passages in the CIA Inspector General's report in which he was named as helping the CIA's Bill Harvey move material in a U-Haul truck. Since a portion of the report was attached to the transcript, you turn to the attachment and read that Shackley was the man who helped Bill Harvey in move. Someone at the CIA was careless when he or she approved the document and didn't redact Shackley's name from the attachment.
For inexplicable reasons, Shackley's 1976 testimony was withheld in 1998 and not released until 2017. While his name is redacted in this transcript, he is identified as the chief of JMWAVE for the same period stated in the first transcript. One might dream up sinister reasons for this. Had Shackley said something in his second appearance that he did not say in the first? Is that why it was withheld? I would be flattered by this interpretation since I was the lead questioner in the second, but this doesn't seem likely from a reading of the two transcripts. A more likely and prosaic explanation would be that Shackley testified under his true name the second time. This forced CIA reviewers to redact his name and, in so doing, they may have decided to withhold the entire transcript from release in 1998. But if this is the reason, they must not have read the transcript carefully enough to know that the witness in both transcripts is said to be chief of JMWAVE and he is identified as Shackley in the attachment to the Baron transcript. But, who knows what the reviewer's thinking was.
The May 6, 1976 transcript. (The Johnston transcript). If you read the whole transcript, you will see that there are several others at the hearing, Senator Richard Schweiker and Committee lawyer Paul Wallach, as well as Seymour Bolten and a man named "John _____" from the CIA. The result is an unstructured and somewhat confusing interview as each questioner pursued his own line of inquiry.
Generally, as Shackley says, the FBI was responsible for both criminal and counterintelligence investigations within the United States. But WAVE was an exception. The CIA station was conducting counterintelligence (but not criminal) investigations throughout the Cuban exile community. Because WAVE could do domestic investigations, I wanted to find out how involved it was in the investigation of Kennedy's assassination.
In addition, I had cables from CIA headquarters to WAVE about the delivery into Cuba of sniper rifles that the CIA's Nestor Sanchez had promised Rolando Cubela at the key November 22, 1963, meeting in Paris. Cubela, a "comandante" of the July 26 Movement and a "Hero of the Revolution," was a friend of Fidel Castro. But he thought Castro had betrayed the Revolution by embracing communists in the government and was prepared to overthrow him with or without the CIA's help. At least, this is what he told the CIA.
After the Paris meeting, CIA told WAVE to plan on delivering a cache of weapons to Cubela. But in a cable of December 6, 1963, the CIA backtracked and said the delivery had to be delayed pending review in Washington. The implication was that Kennedy's assassination might change things with respect to the operation. (Page 202 Murder, Inc.)
My questions cover three main areas. First, was the AMLASH (Cubela) operation an assassination? The CIA had always argued it was not. Rather, it characterized the operation as a coup. I thought this was splitting hairs. Cubela had been asking for rifles with telescopic sights, but the CIA dragged its feet until November 19, 1963. It did not seem mere coincidence that Richard Helms met with the President at the White House that day and, on the same day, approved giving Cubela the sniper rifles he wanted. Second, what role did WAVE play in the investigation of the assassination? And third, did the assassination result in a change in CIA policy towards Cuba?
Rifles with telescopic sights are assassination weapons. Shackley discusses weapons in the Baron transcript. He paid attention to weaponry. Teams sent into Cuba commonly were given either short-range, self-defense weapons like pistols and light rifles or heavier machine guns for the backup teams that protected their comrades in the case of trouble. (P. 32). The Cubans frequently talked about assassinating this or that leader, and when they did, they always thought of a long-range weapon, a rifle with a telescopic sight. (P. 34). Shackley recalled putting a cache into Cuba for Cubela, but he wasn't asked what was in the cache. (P. 81). (A cache was a sealed container, sometimes water proof, that would be infiltrated into Cuba by CIA teams. This was classic spy-stuff. Larger boats would sail from Florida to Cuba carrying CIA-paid exiles, who would then get into smaller boats or inflatables and motor or paddle ashore to hide the cache in Cuba before returning to Florida). However, later in his testimony, when Mr. Baron mentioned giving the Cubans high-powered rifles with telescopic sights and conceivably with silencers, Shackley pulled him up short. "We had high-powered rifles. I cannot think now of a case where there was a sniper scope attached to the rifle.... I do not recall a sniper scope or a silenced rifle." (P. 101).
So I wanted to ask him specifically about the cache for Cubela. Here is the exchange. "Johnston: Well, was it common to drop, to your knowledge, to drop rifles with telescopic sights? Shackley: Well, I think the thing that would be uncommon would be the telescopic sights." (p. 47). Shackley knew what I was driving at. He knew Sanchez promised Cubela rifles with sights at the November 22, 1963 meeting. He knew President Kennedy had been killed by a rifle with a telescopic sight. To Shackley and to other CIA officers, giving Cubela rifles with telescopic sights converted the AMLASH operation from a coup to an assassination. He also knew that when the cache was finally left for Cubela in February1964, after Kennedy's assassination and after the review in Washington, it did not contain sniper rifles.
WAVE was not tasked to investigate Kennedy's assassination. Shackley says in the Johnston transcript that he was not given orders to investigate Kennedy's murder. (P. 9) WAVE's capability to conduct such an investigation in the Cuban community was, however, "quite good." (P. 11). WAVE did not have sources in Cuban intelligence in Cuba, but it did have sources who had access to people in Cuban intelligence. It never tasked its sources to make inquiries though. (P. 13) Why? Shackley gave the excuse that, after all, WAVE had no "hard information" that Cuba was involved in Kennedy's assassination.(P. 14) This excuse was obviously disingenuous. Intelligence agencies don't wait for hard information before they investigate. They investigate in order to get hard information.
When pressed on why WAVE didn't task its sources in Cuba, Shackley responded obliquely: "In my view, you would have had to have had a penetration of one or more of the Cuban intelligence services. The penetration would have had to have been in the 26th of July Movement [the cadre who had been in the Revolution with Castro] and had enough support with the top leadership that it could have moved freely in and out of a specific circle. Would probably had to have been at the level of a Comandante. We did not have that kind of resource in depth to conduct that kind of investigation." (P. 24)
By "comandante," Shackley was surely thinking of Cubela, but WAVE didn't control Cubela. He was being run out of CIA headquarters. When asked if he knew of Sanchez's November 22 meeting with Cubela, Shackley answered: "No, I think the basic answer to that question is no, but if you looked at my previous testimony, I previously said that in the case of this Cuban comandante over the years, I had acquired some knowledge of the fact that he existed and he was being run by my colleagues in Washington, but that was not a clearcut assassination operation." (P. 34). In other words, if the CIA wanted to determine whether the Cubans were involved in the President's assassination, the best person to ask was Cubela. There is no record that it ever asked him.
Although WAVE's capabilities to ask domestic sources about a Cuban connection to the Kennedy assassination were quite good, Shackley was never contacted by the Warren Commission. (P. 42).
Was there a change in Cuban policy after Kennedy's assassination? Murder, Inc. documents the "sea change" in U.S. Cuban policy in the wake of the assassination. I didn't have that documentation when I was interviewing Shackley, but I suspected this might be the case and wanted to ask him. On this line of questioning, Shackley's memory failed. He didn't recall the December 6, 1963, cable from Sanchez, telling WAVE not to deliver the cache of assassination weapons to Cubela until a policy review in Washington was complete. (P. 49). He didn't recall a "stand down" in operations after the assassination. Rather, he said, operations were always being called off. (P. 50). He didn't recall if CIA Director McCone met with him in Florida after the assassination. He deflected the question by referring to a time in December 1962, a year earlier, when McCone (and John Kennedy) welcomed the return of Brigade 2506 from its imprisonment in Cuba at the Orange Bowl. He couldn't recall if he had discussions with someone from CIA headquarters, such as McCone or Helms, about the direction of Cuban policy after the assassination. (P. 64) Shackley hedged: "I don't recall this kind of specific conversation with a particular individual, but I'm sure that these kinds of conversations must have taken place." (P. 65)
Shackley's selective memory. If you read through both transcripts, you will find that Shackley had a remarkable memory for things of relative minor importance, but on major matters such as those I was asking about his memory failed. For example, he remembered General Lansdale's visit to WAVE in 1962 and what they talked about. He only had one meeting with Lansdale in Florida. He clearly remembered he never discussed assassination with McCone. (Baron transcript 15, 27). When Senator Schweiker asked him about his dealings with a banker, whose name is still redacted. Shackley's memory was spot on. He remembered him. And, when I asked if he and the banker ever discussed the Kennedy assassination, Shackley answered: "No I wouldn't have talked about that. My recollection of the kind of things that I would have talked about with _____ would have been the formation of some cover company, the purchase of a boat, the rental or term lease of you know pieces of acreage for training sites and things like that. That is what I recall of _____ relationship with us at the time." (P. 75-76). Exasperated by Shackley's selective memory, I had to observe: "I guess I just have a little bit of trouble, [illegible] with your recollection of conversations with him. But you don't recall whether you talked to McCone or Helms about a connection between the Kennedy assassination and the Cuban operation." Shackley answered by saying that the banker was an important man who made an impression on him, to which I responded sarcastically, "I thought Mr. Helms and Mr. McCone would also make an impression." (P. 76-77).
Shackley distinguished coup from assassinations. Murder, Inc. documents that the CIA met with Cubela on September 7, 1963, for the purpose of enlisting him in a coup plot in Cuba. But, at that first meeting, he said he wanted to "eliminate" Castro. In later meetings that fall, he repeatedly argued that Castro's assassination had to be the first step in the coup. This is why he wanted certain "tools," such rifles with telescopic sights and a dart pen. So a line of questioning in the Johnston transcript by Mr. Wallach is interesting. It begins with Wallach asking if Castro was aware that the CIA was supporting Cubans in overthrowing his regime. Shackley answered quickly "Yes." (P. 35). But after some confusion over a follow up question, Wallach explained: "I don't see that much of a distinction between sending someone in who is going to try to foment a revolution, the result of which would probably be the death of Castro as opposed to sending someone in to [kill him]. (P. 36). Shackley went out of his way to correct Wallach. He answered a different question from Wallach before saying: "I do want to come back to your point. I do think there is a difference in the Latin American revolutionary sense of plotting revolution against somebody as opposed to plotting a specific assassination operation against a particular individual. You know, maybe we have an honest difference of opinion on that point, but my view differs from yours." (P. 37). In hindsight, Shackley is giving a much stronger answer than I appreciated at the time.
Shackley was drawing a clear line between a coup and an assassination and was not going to let the record show him agreeing to Wallach's blurring that line. This takes on added significance because Shackley was far more involved in and knowledgeable of the AMLASH operation than appears in these transcripts or than one might expect of a CIA station chief. Desmond FitzGerald told him that he was going to meet with Cubela personally. Shackley strongly advised against it, warning of the "flap" that might result if anything went wrong because FitzGerald was such a high-level CIA officer and well-known in Washington. This would have been in October 1963 since FitzGerald met with Cubela on October 29. Shackley was in attendance at a White House meeting with the President on November 12, 1963, ten days before Kennedy's death, at which FitzGerald and other top CIA officers briefed the President on the progress of the coup plot. (Murder, Inc. 121, 137). Shackley's strong reaction to Wallach's conflating coup and assassination seems intended to state for the record that he was not consulted when the CIA approved promising Cubela assassination weapons at the November 22 meeting.
Seymour Bolten's presence at the 1976 interview. Shackley's appearance at the May 6, 1976 interview was unusual in that he was accompanied by two other CIA officers. Bolten was one of several "liaison" officers from the CIA to the Church Committee. The last name of John, the other individual from the CIA, is still redacted. Witnesses could be accompanied by their lawyers, but not by officials from their agencies. I don't remember if Bolten made a special request to attend this interview or whether he and John showed up and weren't challenged. I remember Wallach afterward complained to senior committee staff because Bolten had been FitzGerald's deputy in 1963. This means he was involved in the AMLASH plot in 1963, but it was way too late to raise this. The Church Committee's time was running out. The committee's report on its investigation of the intelligence agencies performance in the investigation of Kennedy's assassination was released on June 23, 1976 a little over a month after Shackley's interview.
A final curious coincidence is that Shackley's memoir was published posthumously by Potomac Books, a commercial publisher, in 2005. Murder, Inc. was also published by Potomac Books in 2019, by which time, it had been acquired by the University of Nebraska Press.
No comments:
Post a Comment