664. Memorandum from FitzGerald to McCone, April 221
SUBJECT
- Effects of the Curtailment of Exile Hit and Run Raids
1. This paper is for your information only.
2. The decision of the U.S. Government to stop “hit-and-run” raids by the Cuban exile groups will have a variety of effects depending upon from where one is viewing the decision.
3. From Fidel Castro’s view it is our belief that he will have mixed feelings. His first will be elation at our having stopped the majority of these raids, but he will soon recognize that we know they have been [Typeset Page 1696] more spectacular than damaging. Fidel will, we think, recognize that this order will not stop a few determined Cubans just as such an injunction did not deter him in his fight to oust Batista. To a degree Castro will view this order with apprehension. He will probably wonder what we plan instead. Castro may well miscalculate the effect of this order for he may believe that the basic motivation and drive of the exiled Cuban is actually that of the U.S. and not the Cuban himself. He may expect to see the entire exile effort against him collapse.
4. We believe the anti-Castro element inside Cuba will be seriously disheartened. This U.S. policy will be interpreted and loudly proclaimed as a victory for Fidel, and a further accommodation to the existence of Fidel in Cuba. Our effort to recruit or defect officials of the Castro Government should be expected to become even more difficult. A [Facsimile Page 2] few disillusioned individuals on the inside who have long awaited U.S. action may now be convinced that it is not coming and finally leave a regime they cannot tolerate.
5. The effect on the exiles and their activities will be varied. Basically, their motives are, first, hopefully to embroil the U.S.A. on their side, secondly, to establish their own personal reputation and thus assure a significant position in the future government, and thirdly, an honest desire to remove Castro and his government. The order will cause the non-activist type Cuban exile wherever he is to conclude that the U.S. is unwilling to permit “free-lancing” Cuban exiles to force or create U.S. policy in the Caribbean by their actions. Coupled with this thought will go the conviction that the U.S. is convinced that these raids cannot bring Castro down and short of a full scale military invasion, Castro is presently invulnerable. This leads him unhappily to the conclusion that the U.S. has no immediate, dramatic plan for the restoration of democracy to Cuba. They will use the hard term “co-existence” to describe our policy and some will call it “appeasement.” Many Cubans will conclude that the U.S. is right and that they cannot do that which the U.S. judges cannot be done. Some will at long last pack their bags and may leave Miami for various destinations in the U.S. and Latin America, or in just a few cases they may ask to go home.
6. The “activist” Cuban exiles will probably not be deterred by the order. They may even profit by the decree. It will now be a greater honor to engage in operations against Fidel. The double jeopardy arising from the threat of detention by U.S. agents and the chance for martyrdom at the hands of Fidel will be an even greater challenge. Actually the supply of recruits for such hit and run raids may run shallow but not dry. Another advantage arising from the scrutiny of U.S. agents will be the improvement in control and better clandestine security practices on the part of the exiles. But as the U.S. restricts and apprehends these men, confiscating goods and funds, the loci of power will have [Typeset Page 1697] a tendency to move back to its traditional center: the exiled-monied interests such as the Posches, Prios, Batistas. It must be recognized that the clamp down will deter [Facsimile Page 3] raids and eliminate the “shoe-string” operator and many others, but it must be expected that occasional uncoordinated raids will slip through any cordon.
7. Politically the exile most apt to profit from this pronouncement will be Manolo RAY of the Revolutionary Junta (Junta Revolucionaria—JURE). It has long been RAY’s contention that the Cubans themselves must, in the end, free Cuba and the decision to stop exile raids may have the immediate effect of firmly convincing many anti-Castro Cubans that the freedom of Cuba is after all their problem.
8. From the standpoint of our agents inside Cuba, we believe some will initially be seriously disheartened. They had dreamed that these raids would increase, keep Fidel off balance, encourage resistance internally, and eventually blow the spark into a conflagration destroying Fidelismo. Sobering as the thought of no immediate help from the outside will be, we believe our continued contact and support of these men will prove to them that they have not been forgotten and that our determination to free Cuba has not changed.
9. It is too soon actually to state definitively what the effect of this policy will have on our recruitment program. The Agency’s problem is not the number of recruits, but their quality. The unemployed, poorly educated, hungry are always with us. Some of the more discerning type Cubans will avoid recruitment as they are convinced that a principal reason for the U.S. action is to control who fights Castro in order to assure who will succeed him; however, others will desire to work for us regardless of this factor. The preliminary reaction of our WAVE station was to doubt that the order would have any effect on our recruitment efforts.
- Effects of the curtailment of exile hit and run raids. Secret. 3 pp. CIA Files: Job 91–00741R, Mongoose Papers, Box 1.↩