With the release of the latest cache of until-now-confidential
documents on the JFK assassination, I thought it time I get some reading in.
Along came on NetGalley, one of the review services I use, this title. Trained
to Kill is sub-headed “The Inside Story of CIA plots against Castro, Kennedy
and Che” and is the autobiography of Antonio Veciana, a Cuban exile who spent
the past fifty years or so plotting the overthrow of Fidel Castro.
Veciana details how he was recruited by a CIA
officer known to him as Maurice Bishop (this officer’s cover name was to prove
important) to usurp Castro, the CIA having correctly identified Vecianna’s
growing disillusionment with the then nascent revolutionary regime. At first
Veciana was tasked with psychological warfare – the spreading of rumours to sow
discord and undermine the economy – something he embraced with gusto and not a
little success. But by his own description, he was keen for more and it wasn’t
long before he was leading his first assassination attempt. After the Bay of
Pigs debacle (something he wasn’t involved in) Veciana fled with his family to
Florida. Here he met up with Bishop and he says the CIA man was incandescent
with what he saw as Kennedy’s betrayal of the Cuban exile invaders.
Veciana now founded Alpha 66, a militant group.
While he says that the organisation’s exploits were exaggerated – again this
was psychological warfare, this time more towards the Kennedy Administration,
the hope being they would be forced to act against Castro – he does not deny
that the group did launch attacks and raids against Cuba and against foreign
shipping supplying the island. Veciana is keen to downplay civilian casualties
here and perhaps Alpha 66 did take pains to avoid innocent casualties, but it’s
hard not to conclude that the organisation was engaged in terrorism.
Throughout this time, Veciana was still in contact
with the CIA via Bishop and it was at one such meeting that he met Lee. A little
while later, JFK was assassinated and Veciana claims he recognised the accused
assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, as the Lee his CIA contact had been meeting with.
Does this mean that the CIA, via Bishop, had something to do with the
assassination of JFK? Perhaps, perhaps not. Years later, Vecianna was asked
about this by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (a House of
Representatives Committee formed to look again at the JFK assassination due to
concerns over the original Warren Commission’s findings). In particular, he was
asked whether Bishop was in fact the known CIA officer (who rose to be the CIA Chief
of Operations in the Western Hemisphere) David Atlee Phillips. Veciana said no
and claimed not to recognise Phillips. Fast forward to 2014 and he changed his
mind, claiming Philips was indeed the man he knew as Bishop, something he
repeats in Trained to Kill. Does this volte-face undermine Veciana’s
credibility? Certainly, there could be compelling reasons for him not to have
told the truth originally, not least fear of the consequences. If he is right
and Bishop was Philips, and he witnessed him meeting with Oswald just weeks
before Kennedy’s assassination, he might have reasonably feared for his safety.
In the end, it is for the reader to decide.
For my own part, I tend towards the view that
Oswald was a lone assassin. If so, Veciana might still have witnessed his CIA
contact meeting with Oswald (and consequently concluded the CIA to have been
involved). One explanation for the CIA’s latter behaviour, which certainly gave
the impression of cover up, is that Oswald was indeed in contact with the CIA
and then when he assassinated Kennedy, the agency panicked. Realising people
might assume they had set the assassination up, the CIA by this theory have
spent the past fifty years desperately trying to suppress the evidence of their
negligence, the fact that had they been on the ball they might have spotted
Oswald’s plans and put a stop to them.
Whatever the case, this book’s revelations
concerning the Kennedy assassination threaten to overshadow its real explosive
power. For that we need to look again at Castro. Trained to Kill demonstrates
that Castro’s regime was never really given a chance. Veciana and others like
him were recruited almost as soon as Castro came to power. I don’t doubt that
Castro is not a particularly likeable chap, but the obsessive and pernicious
attempts to overthrow him hardened the regime. Hardliners came to the fore and
more moderate members of the revolutionary administration were side-lined. In
the end, Castro was pushed into the welcoming arms of the Soviets. All this has
long been known of course, but what was new to this reader certainly was the
level of terroristic violence Alpha 66 and other likeminded groups were willing
to resort to. In other circumstances, these people would have been arrested by
the FBI, tried and convicted. It’s difficult to see how the tactics employed by
these groups were any different to, say, those of the IRA or ETA.
Trained to Kill is one man’s honest account – sometimes
shockingly so – of his work for the CIA in the attempt to overthrow the
government of Fidel Castro. It is a fascinating historical document and well
worth a read.
4 out of 5 stars
