Herminio Diaz Garcia was
born in Cuba in 1923. He was a member of
the Cuban Restaurant Workers Union and worked as a cashier at the
Hotel Habana-Rivera. Later he became involved in illegal activities
and eventually became a bodyguard for Santos
Trafficante.
Diaz Garcia killed Pipi Hernandez in 1948 at the Cuban Consulate in
Mexico. In 1957 he was involved with an assassination attempt against
President Jose Figures of Costa Rica.
Diaz Garcia moved to the
United States in July, 1963, where he worked
for Tony
Varona.
Some researchers believe that Dia Garcia was one of the gunman who
killed John
F. Kennedy on
22nd November, 1963.
In December, 1963, Dia
Garcia was involved in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Fidel
Castro. He was
also involved in providing weapons to anti-Castro groups.
Diaz Garcia was killed
on a mission at Monte Barreto in the Miramar district of Cuba
on 29th May, 1966. Herminio Diaz Garcia is buried in Columbus, Havana.
In 1978
President Jimmy Carter arranged for a
group of imprisoned exiles in Cuba to be released. This included Tony
Cuesta
who was involved in an attack on Cuba in 1966.
Just
before leaving Cuba
Cuesta asked
to see Fabian Escalante. Cuesta told
Escalante that he had been involved in the assassination of President
John
F. Kennedy.
He also named Diaz Garcia and Eladio
del Valle as
being involved in the conspiracy. Cuesta asked Escalante not to make
this information "made public because I am returning to my family
in Miami - and this could be very dangerous."
Tony
Cuesta
returned to Miami and died in 1994. The following year, Wayne Smith,
chief of the Centre for International Policy in Washington, arranged
a meeting on the assassination of John
F. Kennedy,
in Nassau, Bahamas. Others in attendance were: Gaeton
Fonzi,
Dick
Russell, Noel
Twyman,
Anthony
Summers,
Peter
Dale Scott,
Jeremy Gunn, John Judge, Andy Kolis, Peter Kornbluh, Mary and Ray
LaFontaine, Jim Lesar, John Newman, Alan Rogers, Russ Swickard, Ed
Sherry, and Gordon Winslow.
Some high-level
Cuban officials attended the conference. This included Fabian
Escalante, Carlos
Lechuga, former Cuban diplomat, and Arturo Rodriguez, a State Security
official. Escalante revealed
details of Cuesta's confession. He also informed the group they had
a spy in the anti-Castro community in Miami and knew about the plot
to kill Kennedy.
Open
Debate on the Kennedy Assassination
(1)
Mary Louise Wilkinson, Miami News (31st May, 1966)
Two Miami exiles who were killed after landing near a heavily populated
Havana suburb were on a mission to assassinate Fidel Castro, the Cuban
government claimed today.
The incident occurred late
Sunday near the Comodoro Yacht Club in suburban Miramar, when Commandos
L, a Miami-based action group, put Sandalio Herminio Diaz and Armando
Romero ashore from a 23-foot boat, the Cuban communiqué said.
Tony Cuesta, 39 - year
- old group leader, and Eugenio Zaldivar Xiques were captured after
being seriously wounded in a gunfight 10 miles off the coast. Two
other crewmen, listed only as "Guillermo" and "Roberto"
(alias Cara Vieja), were missing - and presumed drowned.
In Miami, where Cuesta
has lived since 1960, his wife said she had no further information
about the fate of her husband.
"I hope and pray he
is all right," said Mrs. Cuesta. "But regardless of what
happens, we must continue the fight against Castro. I knew before
he set out that the operation was risky."
According to the Cuban
Interior Ministry communiqué Commandos L launched the infiltration
attempt from Marathon. The Castro officials made their usual claim
that the group was sponsored by the American government.
"The objective, according
to the prisoners' confession, was to assassinate the prime minister
in order to create conditions favorable for an imperialist aggression,"
the communiqué claimed.
Government-controlled newspapers
in Havana carried pictures of material allegedly seized from the boat,
including hand grenades, plastic explosives, submachine guns and anti-Castro
leaflets.
The infiltration try came
immediately after Castro announced an island-wide combat alert against
"imperialist aggressors" following a series of incidents
at the U. S. Naval Base at Guantanamo in which an armed Cuban soldier
was shot and killed.
Last year, Commandos L
teamed up with the Cuban Referendum in Exile (RECE), sponsored by
rum millionaire Jose M. Bosch, to carry out a series of attacks against
Cuba.
However, Ernesto Freyre,
of RECE, denied knowledge of the Sunday raid, stating, "I am
sorry but there is nothing I can say."
In November, the two groups
joined with the 30th of November Movement here to strafe a police
station on the Havana waterfront. Three years ago, Cuesta led a Commandos
L raid against the Russian freighter Baku in a Cuban port which prompted
a Soviet protest note to Washington.
Sunday's infiltration attempt
came on the heels of a claim by the Second Front of the Escambray-Alpha
66 that they raided a naval past at Tarara Beach, same 20 miles east
of Havana, on May 19 and slipped back to a "secret Caribbean
base" without losing men or equipment.
Despite the latest failure,
exile activists here appeared to intensify plans for future anti-Castro
action.
Manuel Antonio de Varona,
former Cuban prime minister and head of the Rescate movement, flew
here from his exile home in New York to coordinate plans for an action
group merger that reportedly included the Second Front.
Varona, who served briefly
as head of the now-defunct Cuban Revolutionary Council, said, "We
must not give Castro a breather. There should be well-coordinated
actions from outside to encourage the people inside to work toward
overthrow of the dictator."
(2)
James
Richards, JFK
Assassination Forum (25th June, 2004)
I'm sure
there was Mafia involvement which came via John Roselli. One of the
shooters (Herminio Diaz Garcia) may have come via this connection.
Diaz Garcia was Trafficante's bodyguard during the Havana casino days
and was most likely the man Roselli reached out to in those early
days of the Castro assassination plots.
(3)
Fabian
Escalante,
Cuban
Officials and JFK Historians Conference
(7th December,
1995)
During 1960, Santos Trafficante
also had a Cuban bodyguard. His name was Herminio Diaz Garcia... Hernandez
met and talked with Richard Cain in December of 1960 regarding a plot
against the life of Fidel Castro.
Herminio Diaz is one of
the people we feel was most definitely involved in the plot against
Kennedy. Herminio Diaz died in Cuba in May 1966. He had a confrontation
against Cuban forces when he tried to enter Havana illegally.
(4)
Dick
Russell,
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1992)
The most intriguing
news to come out of the Nassau conference, however, was Escalante's
revelation about what another leader of the Alpha 66 group allegedly
told him. As we have seen, Nagell would never reveal the true identities
of "Angel" and "Leopoldo" - the two Cuban exiles
who he said had deceived Oswald into believing they were Castro operatives.
Instead, on several occasions when I prodded him, Nagell had cleverly
steered the conversation toward a man named Tony Cuesta - indicating
that this individual possessed the knowledge that he himself chose
not to express. Cuesta, as noted earlier, had been taken prisoner
in Cuba during a raid in 1966.
"Cuesta was blinded
(in an explosion) and spent most of his time in the hospital,"
Escalante recalled. In 1978, he was among a group of imprisoned exiles
released through an initiative of the Carter Administration. "A
few days before he was to leave," according to Escalante, "I
had several conversations
with Cuesta. He volunteered, 'I want to tell you something very important,
but I do not want this made public because I am returning to my family
in Miami - and this could be very dangerous.' I think this was a little
bit of thanks on his part for the medical care he received."
Escalante said he was
only revealing Cuesta's story because the man had died in Miami in
1994. In a declaration he is said to have written for the Cubans,
Cuesta named two other exiles as having been involved in plotting
the Kennedy assassination. Their names were Eladio del Valle and Herminio
Diaz Garcia.
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