In November 1961 William
Harvey was ordered to activate an assassination plot against Fidel
Castro. This
became part of what became known as the ZR/RIFLE project. Harvey decided
to transfer David
Sanchez Morales from
Mexico City to the JM WAVE station. Johnny
Roselli was also recruited into the project.
Roselli
persuaded Santos Trafficante, the
senior Mafia figure in Cuba, to join the
conspiracy. Meyer
Lansky
also became involved in
this plot and was reportedly offering a million-dollar reward for
the Cuban leader's murder. Richard
Cain,
a specialist in electronics and wire taps, was also recruited by Roselli.
Cain took part in a failed attempt in March 1961 to poison Castro.
On 12th March, 1961, William
Harvey arranged for CIA operative, Jim O'Connell, to meet Sam
Giancana, Santo
Trafficante,
Johnny
Roselli
and Robert
Maheu
at the Fontainebleau Hotel.
During the meeting O'Connell gave poison pills and $10,000 to Rosselli
to be used against Fidel
Castro.
As Richard D. Mahoney points out in
his book: Sons and Brothers: "Late
one evening, probably March 13, Rosselli passed the poison pills and
the money to a small, reddish-haired Afro-Cuban by the name of Rafael
"Macho" Gener in the Boom Boom Room, a location Giancana
thought "stupid." Rosselli's purpose, however, was not just
to assassinate Castro but to set up the Mafia's partner in crime,
the United States government. Accordingly, he was laying a long, bright
trail of evidence that unmistakably implicated the CIA in the Castro
plot. This evidence, whose purpose was blackmail, would prove critical
in the CIA's cover-up of the Kennedy assassination."
During the Cuban
Missile Crisis, Robert
Kennedy instructed
CIA director John
McCone,
to halt all covert operations aimed at Cuba.
A few days later he discovered that William
Harvey had ignored this order and had dispatched three commando
teams into Cuba to prepare for what he believed would be an inevitable
invasion. Kennedy was furious and as soon as the Cuban Missile Crisis
was over, Harvey was removed as commander of ZR/RIFLE. On 30th October,
1962, RFK terminated "all sabotage operations" against Cuba.
As a result of President Kennedy's promise to Nikita
Khrushchev that
he would not invade Cuba, Operation Mongoose
was disbanded.
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