7

THROUGH THE FALL OF 1961 AND THE WINTER OF 1962, CORRESPONDENCE with Kittredge continued. I would write at least twice a week, and although she did not reply as often, she frequently had more to say. For that matter, her information was probably more reliable: Mongoose was a much compartmented operation. While I was prepared to describe its properties, I could never be wholly certain of distinguishing fact from hearsay. Whispers circulated ceaselessly in JM/WAVE, and that was inevitable. Before we were done, more Agency personnel had come down to Miami than were ever assigned to Pigs. Indeed, our CIA portion of Mongoose, JM/WAVE, became the largest CIA station in the world.

Given our size, therefore, and the speed with which we had been put together, rumors abounded, security was weak. That was hardly surprising. The highest standards of secrecy in CIA were usually exercised by Agency scholars exploring land grants in Manchuria in the seventeenth century. They could be depended upon not to breathe a word of their discoveries. We, however, in Harvey’s basement at Langley, or spread out once more over half of southern Florida with JM/WAVE projects, gossiped unconscionably. How was Lansdale hatching his eggs for Mongoose? What was coming down from General Maxwell Taylor, or Bobby Kennedy? What was the real stance of the White House? Florida brought one close to those questions, whereas at Langley the recognition could not be avoided that one was merely a part of government instead of an agent of History.

I was quartered in Washington; I was stationed in Miami: It is hard to say where I lived. I soon suspected that my job had been manufactured by Lansdale out of no greater need than to keep on pleasant terms with my father. The duties (or lack of them) revealed the superficial aspects of the new position. Lansdale did not need me very often. He had his own cadre, and trusted them.

Before long, I was down in the basement with Harvey. We took the first steps toward crossing an abyss of distrust. All the same, we did our best to get along. Maybe I reminded him of heroic days in Berlin. Indeed, our relations were not all that dissimilar even now. He ruminated aloud, he clammed up, he confided in me, he withdrew. After a while, I began to feel like the young and unfaithful spouse of an older man with settled habits. He could never forgive me for my transgressions, but he did enjoy my company. I even rode with him again in the backseat of his bulletproof Cadillac while he slugged his martinis and I took notes en route to the airport. Before long, he had me jumping down to Miami with him. Since his corpulence could no longer be wedged into an Economy seat, he flew First Class, one of the few Agency officers allowed such a perk, and thereby allowed me the rare luxury of my own First Class seat whenever he needed me along.

Often, I stayed over in southern Florida to oversee a subproject that he had initiated. Each week I was further away from liaison with Lansdale, and the General didn’t seem to care. When I would report in, he would usually meet me in the anteroom to his office on his way to a meeting with officials from State, Defense, or Special Group, Augmented, and say in passing, “Are you keeping Harvey happy?”

“Doing my best.”

“Keep it up. That’s useful work,” and he would be gone.

Harvey was not particularly suspicious of my relation to Lansdale. It was Montague’s shadow that prevailed. Harvey’s assumption was that I had been assigned to him in order to report back to Harlot. In substance, that was true. If Harlot had asked me for information, I would have supplied it, I suppose. I did not really know. I wanted to be my own man. I even confess to feeling injured, at least to some small degree, that Harvey did not trust me more; I was putting in twelve-hour days for him, and work provides its own sense of integrity. The irony is that in my letters to Kittredge I was, objectively speaking, reporting every last matter of interest on Harvey, but then, I did not believe she would pass it on to Harlot. Indeed, how could she account to her husband for such pieces of information?

All the while, I wondered at the force of Montague’s grip on Wild Bill and thought often of my last couple of days in Berlin, and the four-page transcript of which Harlot had shown me but the first two pages. Harvey was not certain how much I knew, but he would make his references, and they were not oblique. “I don’t care what kind of grip you think that prick has on me, he can go fuck himself.” About once a week, Harvey would drop such tantrums in the manner of a black Florida cloud delivering itself of a squall, after which, back to work we would go.

There was enough to do. Lansdale had landed in his job running at full speed. Before a month was out, he had assigned thirty-two planning tasks to the Agency, the Pentagon, State, and whoever else was cooperating on Mongoose. Among the tasks was collection of intelligence; defection of Cuban officials; propaganda operations; sabotage operations; and an invasion scenario for U.S. forces whenever the new Cuban movement would be ready to overthrow the government. Lansdale sent out one memo calling for “a revolution that would break down the police controls of the state. Reliance is to be placed on: (a) professional anti-Castro emigrés, (b) labor leaders, (c) church groups, (d) gangster elements, if necessary, for certain tasks.”

The memo concluded with a peroration. “It is our job to put the American genius to work quickly and effectively. The conclusive overthrow of Fidel Castro is possible. No time, money, effort, or manpower is to be spared.”

“Who is he kidding?” asked Harvey. “Everybody knows that is Lansdale taking dictation from Bobby Kennedy. Nothing spared! Yes. They give us the language, and we can do the dirty work. Thirty-two tasks!” said Harvey, getting ready for his own peroration. “Somebody ought to tell Lansdale that the labor leaders in Cuba are gangsters, the gangsters buy out the churches, and the priests spend their money on fortune-tellers. You don’t look for a, b, c, and d categories. You look for people who can do the job. I don’t care if you bring me a one-eyed Martian with a longshoreman’s hook on his cock and the guy drinks cat piss at midnight, I’ll take him if he’s a stand-up Joe who likes to blow bridges and can obey my orders. This Lansdale, with Bobby Kennedy in back of him, is talking about revolution? He better get it straight. Any Cuban I do not control will have nothing to do with my operation. Leave it to Lansdale, and we’ll have a revolution which will bring in a new kind of Communist who wears his insignia on the right tit instead of the left. Screw that noise. I say, fuck Cuba up good. Stuff the worst shit you can find into the economic gears. Wound the cocksuckers. Demoralize them. The only thing I agree on with Lansdale is that we will destabilize Cuba. But, I tell you, that candy General is a goddamn hypocrite. Yesterday, there were Thirty-two Tasks. Today, he gives us a new one. Task Thirty-three: Incapacitate the sugar workers during the harvest. The son of a bitch knows just enough to cover his ass. ‘It will require,’ he says, ‘policy determination before final approval.’ Well, even I, who am no internationalist, thank you, can see what is wrong internationally. Listen to his take: ‘The chemicals employed are to be guaranteed by priority studies to do no more than sicken Cuban sugar workers temporarily’—italics are mine, Hubbard—‘and keep said sugar workers away from the fields without permanent ill effects. Nonlethal incapacitating chemicals.’ Brother, I have heard everything now—can you imagine what we could look like to the rest of the world? Depend on it—Special Group, Augmented, is going to table Task Thirty-three.”

Special Group, Augmented, did. A week later, Harvey read the refined Thirty-two Tasks with a bilious eye. One phrase stated, “Gangster elements might provide the best potential for attacks against Cuban Intelligence officials.” Harvey was on the boil. “You are not supposed to put things like this on paper,” he said. “Gangster elements! Hubbard, I am aware of the principle that in combat, men die, but this happens to be Murder, Incorporated. Who, presumably, will handle it? Why, our friend Bill Harvey with his Task Force W will do the wet jobs. Bill Harvey can catch it if something goes wrong. I’ll say this for Lansdale. He is a complex individual. He doesn’t want a poor innocent Cuban killed unless we can show a real purpose behind it. Then he takes a sip of water and asks me to target a couple of hundred Soviet-bloc technicians. Add them to the hit list. I am somewhat underwhelmed by his plans, the cocksucker.”

Harvey dictated a memo to SGA: The emphasis for Mongoose, in his opinion, ought to be placed on acquiring more intelligence. I had learned by now that such memos had nothing to do with Harvey’s real intentions, indeed, they could have served as model form letters in our unwritten Book of Agency Etiquette. By now, I could put the book together myself. If you had to perform a task that strayed beyond the limits of our charter, it was crucial to establish a trail of paper that would confuse anyone trying to follow what you had done. The rule of thumb was to commit to writing the opposite of what you were intending. If Harvey was sending out saboteurs to wreck factories, he called, on paper, for the intensification of our intelligence efforts.

Lansdale had been a solitary operator for too long, Harvey decided, so he now had a tendency to put everything in writing. Harvey said: “I knew a whore once up in Alaska. One big fat old Eskimo mama with a cunt as wide and comfortable as the rear seat of a Cadillac. That’s Lansdale’s mouth—just as big.”

The real problem, I soon concluded, was that Lansdale might have compromised some of his ideas, but he had not given them up. Lansdale wanted real underground organizations; he was searching for autonomous Cubans looking to obtain their own real intelligence. Which, presumably, they would share with us. He did not seem able to recognize that Harvey, when it came down to it, preferred to have no underground rather than one over which you could only exercise sporadic control. Therefore, Harvey was building up cadres with trustworthy exiles that he could use in paramilitary operations. How else could JM/WAVE maintain any kind of security in the open atmosphere of Miami? “The emphasis,” said Harvey, “is going to be on the case officer, not the agent. The case officer here is going to be equal in importance to a priest. Our exiles have got to be ready to tell him everything. Read me? Hubbard, you had that job for a couple of years. How feasible would that relationship be for you?”

“Fifty percent probability,” I replied.

“Good.” He grunted. “I like your answer. You must have been one soft case officer.”

“Not as soft as you think,” I said back, and he laughed. “Shit, you merely got your toes wet in Uruguay. You were tooling around with the tulips.”

Lansdale finally took me into his office one day and asked, “Do you have any input with Bill Harvey?”

“I can get a personal message to him. In fact, I think he would prefer to hear from you that way.”

“Not in writing?”

“Not in writing, sir.”

He sighed. “I’ve spent a good part of my life trying to learn to do things the military way. They won’t move in the military unless you back them up with clear orders on paper. Harvey, obviously, is accustomed to the opposite.”

“Yessir.”

“Tell Harvey I said that I would like him to remember I am not the enemy.”

“Fuck he isn’t,” said Harvey on receiving this message.

When next I visited the General, he said, “Harry, I like to know where I stand. I will underline my next remark. I believe in getting along with people. If I ask you to pass this on to Bill Harvey, what reply will he give?”

“I can’t answer that, General.”

“Well, you just have, in fact.”

“Yessir.”

“I’m going to lay something out for you. So you can still communicate my point of view.”

“I will try.”

“I certainly hope you will. Because what JM/WAVE is doing now in Cuba amounts to no more than random hit-and-run raids. No overall strategy. No reaching out. I don’t know what anyone expects these stunts to accomplish. The other day, a bridge was blown up. ‘Why’d you do it?’ I asked Harvey. ‘What communications were you trying to destroy?’ Do you know what he answered? ‘You never told us not to blow the bridge.’ Hubbard, that’s the wrong kind of independence. I want to put an end to all this aimless sabotage. I want to save Cubans from pointless death. I cannot repeat it often enough: Americans who go abroad must possess a real dedication to the highest principles.”

He had been speaking with such self-absorption that only at the end did he notice I was taking notes. “Oh, you don’t need points of reference,” he said. “Just tell him that I have been gentle beyond reason, but that next week will see some changes.”

“Yessir.”

“If you have an opportunity, pass those same sentiments along to Montague.”

I would not. I could predict Harlot’s reaction. Cuba was a morass. The actions chosen by Harvey would at least reduce the danger implicit in the Kennedys’ enlightened notions of war. Prevention of leaks was worth more than the dubious search for illumined results. Indeed, Kittredge had written as much. “Hugh, you see, is convinced that Castro’s intelligence will always be superior to ours. He has the power to kill his traitors; we can merely cut ours off from the weekly paycheck. Our agents are fighting for freedom, yes, but also for future profits in Cuba. Greed does make for corrupt intelligence. Whereas a lot of Castro’s people believe they are in a crusade. Besides, Castro knows Cubans better than we do. Castro has KGB methods to guide him. We have politicians to satisfy. So when it comes to Cuba, his DGI will always be superior to our CIA. Conclusion: Cut the losses. Of course, Hugh doesn’t talk that way around President Jack, just tries to nudge him a little in the proper direction. I, being a woman, and therefore not wholly responsible, can twit Jack about Cuba. I do. ‘Oh,’ I say, ‘don’t you think Castro is holding trumps?’ and then I pass on Hugh’s analysis as mine. But lightly. Ladies are there to relax the President, not to confound him. I will say for Jack that he does listen carefully. He is not gross in his political passions. I wish I could say the same for Bobby, who is much more emotional. Perhaps in another letter, I will try to describe Bobby for you.”

Lansdale’s counterattack soon arrived. If he had expressed contempt for military methodology, he knew how to employ it. Daily questionnaires now came to the basement. Soon after we returned them, secondary questionnaires brought follow-up queries. Harvey sent memos to McCone full of complaint:

We are required to furnish Special Group, Augmented, in nauseating detail such irrelevancies to the purpose of an operation as the gradient of the landing beach and the composition of the sand. We are asked to specify times of landing and departure, which times are often impossible to predict or coordinate. Full listing of ordnance employed is supposed to be attached to each plan even though said battle plan may consist of no more than six Cubans armed to the teeth out in a rubber boat trying to slip by Castro’s coast guard. They are doing everything possible to make it impossible for us to accomplish anything. Then they complain that nothing is happening. Can matters be made less restrictive and stultifying?

The questionnaires kept coming. Through January and February of 1962. Once, taking the noonday flight of Eastern Airlines to Miami on what we called “the milk run” (since you could always pick out new Agency men moving down to JM/WAVE with the wife and kids), King Bill turned to me and said, “I’ve got the troops, and he’s sitting next to nothing but a desk. I’ll show the son of a bitch what dirty fighting is.”

I never knew if Harvey was the author of the next caper, but it was easy enough to suspect him since he seemed to take an artist’s pleasure in telling me the tale. At a joint meeting of Mongoose committees, a Colonel named Forsyte from the Defense Department brought forth the idea of Operation Bounty. “Defense doesn’t even want to take credit for this concept,” Forsyte had said. “We’re just stealing one of Ed Lansdale’s ideas.”

Operation Bounty was a proposition to cover Cuba with hand-out bills announcing that sums from $5,000 to $100,000 would be paid for the deaths of various high Cuban officials. Castro’s life, however, would be given a value of two cents.

Lansdale had come to his feet immediately. “This is awful,” he said. “It’s wholly counterproductive.”

“Why, Ed, are you against this?” McCone had asked. “Isn’t it in line with your principles?”

“Hell, no,” Lansdale had replied. “This idea will boomerang. You don’t deride Castro in ways that are excessively crude. On the contrary, we have to recognize that the Cuban peasant now has better living conditions than before. They are not going to accept such ridicule of Castro.”

Later, Harvey would comment: “With those few words, Lansdale lost McCone, half of State, and half of Defense. You don’t tell McCone what Castro has accomplished. ‘What,’ asks McCone now, tight as a tick, ‘would you say, General, is then the proper note to strike?’ ‘Oh,’ says Lansdale, ‘I would emphasize how the Devil gives you everything but freedom. All the material goods you need, but no, sir, no freedom. We want to get across that we can give them all that they get from Satan, plus freedom in addition.’”

“Jesus on a ham sandwich!” said Harvey. “McCone doesn’t want to hear about Satan, Maxwell Taylor looks embarrassed, Roger Hilsman from State is choking back his laughter. Maybe there were ten principals around the conference table and thirty flunkies back of them, and you could slice the fog with your hand. Lansdale has no sense of when he’s losing a war.”

One week later, a story circulated through Task Force W that Lansdale was looking to seed Cuba with the rumor that Castro was the Antichrist, and the Second Coming was near. It was rumored around the Basement that Lansdale had promulgated this scenario at a National Security Council meeting: On a moonless night, an American sub could surface in Havana Bay long enough to fire star shells into the sky. This would be done on a scale sufficient to suggest that Jesus had risen, Jesus was walking toward Havana by way of the water. Rumormongers in Havana could then disseminate the story that Castro had also been out there patrolling the bay with his Coast Guard cutters and had managed to keep Christ offshore. Done properly, this could ignite an enormous reaction. Conceivably, it could topple Castro.

A man from the State Department was supposed to have remarked, “It sounds like elimination by illumination to me.”

The story kept Lansdale miserable. In a letter from Kittredge, she mentioned in passing: “He called Hugh again last night to complain about the canard. Swore it was not true. Claims nothing of the sort was ever said at NSC and that the foul report came out of the woodwork at Task Force W. Lansdale obviously thinks it’s Harvey. I wonder if it’s Hugh.”