CIA installed Fidel Castro

[Paul Rigby]

http://www.kennedyassassinationarchive.c...rentPage=0

El Paso Herald-Post (El Paso, Texas), Thursday, 4 May 1961, Page 26

It Is Hard To Moralize About Cuba

By Robert C. Ruark

PALOMAS, Spain. — Ordinarily the peons of punditry are a glib lot, given to laying it out fast and hard on everything from birth control to babysitting, but I have noticed a general lack of positiveness of position in this sad business of Castro and Cuba. The truth is that we have been crowded into the narrow corner of morality, and nearly everything that has been pronounced is lip service or shaded half-truths, if not outright lies in some instances. But the impairment to morality is still nakedly there, and we are just as open to the broadsides from Russia as Russia is open to attacks by us. Russia has no more right to be interfering in Cuba than we have to be meddling in Laos, with our equipment and money and tame technicians, otherwise known as soldiers without portfolio. Cuba is not so far from Russia as we are distant from Laos, in valid interest as well as miles. We say that this Cuban counter-revolution is not our cooking, which is of course ridiculous. Perhaps the hard work in the kitchen is necessary — and I believe it is—in the interests of security for North America and the hemisphere. To say that the United States was not instrumental in the backing of Castro and the overthrow of Batista is also ridiculous. That was meddling, too, even if It seemed to be meddling in the best democratic manner. We meddle all over, in point of fact, every time we send a shipment of arms or make a whacking loan or sew up a fresh treaty. Whether we have bis right is something I cannot say. But if we have it according to our -rights, then possibly the Russians have it according to theirs.

I must confess confusion. I do not understand all this Alice-in-Wonderland talk about the immortality of atomic wars against the implied morality of limited warfare with limited weapons. To me a man is just as dead if you kill him with a stick as if you drop a ton of H-bomb on his head. Much has been written of the moral aspects of our stand in the Cuban revolution, and all of it weasel-wordy that I've seen. Personally, I think we'd be a lot more honest if we did what we probably may have to do, which is walk in and clout Castro loose from his whiskers in the name of peace-making, if that's the best lame excuse we can think up. Certainly that would be as moral as some of the private uses the United Nations have served in the Congo. While we look at this thing with a semblance of honesty, let us also inspect the Cuban people. They have always spoken much of Cuba libre, and in my lifetime have forever been making revolutions and executing political coups, usually with bombs and bloodshed. They are and have been dictator-prone, and most remarkably amiable about accepting the Machados and Batistas if the price was right.

Some of the loudest anti-Castros today were pro-Castro at the beginning, including the leader, Dr. Jose Miro Cardona, who used to be Castro's prime minister before he renegaded out on the new deal. I cannot believe that Castro swindled the lot. Somebody must have known where his sympathies lay when they hooked up with him. It is not too impossible that a great many anti-Castros thought they could control him after they used him as a wedge to dump Batista and got hoist. I pity the Cuban people, because old Pepe Guajiro has always gotten it right smack in the neck, no matter which thug encumbers the loot factory. And loot factory is about all you can call Cuban government since I was a boy. The average Cuban deserves better than he's had, or, for that matter, is apt to have when any new bunch gets in, if any ever does get in. The revolucionistas are not all rose geraniums. It is a very tough conflict to moralize about, even for the deepest-dyed cosmic thinker. The reason for that is that nearly everybody mixed up in it, on both sides, is morally dead wrong.

[Anthony Marsh]

Before Castro came into power the CIA sent Frank Bender to interview him who reported back that Castro was not a Communist and that he deserved CIA backing. I doubt that the CIA will ever declassify Bender's report.

[Magda Hassan]

What year was that? It is true that both Castro and Che were not communist in their early days. That came later. Even after the revolution. Castro was a nationalist to start with.

[Charles Drago]

If a Communist Castro did not exist, the CIA -- a tool, or facilitator, as opposed to a sponsor -- would have had to create him.

Which it very well may have done.

[Magda Hassan]

Well the CIA do manufacture many odd things. Mainly murder and mayhem as a justification for its unnecessary existence. With the odd exploding cigar and toxic wet suit.

[Anthony Marsh]

I don't know if the book specified which year. Probably 1958.
I'll try to dig out that book and see if it hints at the year.
I think it was the Bay of Pigs book.