Francesco/who-killed-jfk huggingface dataset:
[157-10011-10083.pdf — page 13]
SECRETpart of that Special Group. He called the meetings, he presided,he did a number of things.Q Were there any other occasions that you can recallin which the possibility or the subject of assassination ofFidel Castro was discussed?A `No, not really.Q You referred to this as the first occasion.A This is the first --Q Was there a second?A -- the first time I knew about it or even heard itdiscussed.Q Well, prior to the investigation that is currentlyunderway -- I am referring now to our Commission's investigation-- were there any other occasions in which this subject cameto your attention after this discussion in the garden inParis?A The only other thing that came to my attention wasthat the decision was made not to provide him with this sightthat he wanted. Whether that is right or wrong, I don't know,but that is what I was told.Q When did you learn that?A Oh, I would assume in -- must have been early 1964,around February, something like that.Q Off the record.(Discussion off the record.)
[157-10011-10083.pdf — page 14]
SECRETMR. MANFREDI: On the record.BY MR. MANFREDI:Q Mr. Sturbitts, are you familiar with a gentleman by the name of Frank Sturgis?A Indeed.Q Is your familiarity based on what you have read in the press?A No. It is what is contained in the files.Q Have you caused a search to be made of CIA files, particularly the files of the Western Hemisphere Division, in an attempt to determine whether Mr. Sturgis ever had any connection with the Agency?A I have.Q What were the results of that search?A Absolutely no connection, never has been.Q When we talk about connection, are we talking about an employment relationship?A That is what I am speaking of.Q Was Mr.Sturgis ever an independent contractor of the Agency?A No.Q Was he ever a contract employee?A No.Q Was he ever a regular employee of the Agency?A No.
[157-10011-10083.pdf — page 15]
SECRETQ Was he ever hired to do any piecework for theAgency?A Not to my knowledge.Q Do you know whether or not Mr. Sturgis ever partici-pated in any type of paramilitary or other operation againstCuba?A On his own behalf he did, not on behalf of thisAgency.Q How did you learn of those operations?A Through the newspaper. And through FBI reports.Q Now, are these recent FBI reports?A Oh, no. These go back -- I know at one time, thething that comes to mind, I think he made a leaflet dropover Cuba and this was subsequently reported in the press andby the Bureau office in Miami.Q Do you know who financed his activities?A I have no idea.Q Is it possible that Mr. Sturgis' activities wereindirectly financed by the Agency through --A I don't see how. Frank Sturgis is a soldier offortune; has been. He has constantly tried to associate himselfwith the Agency. When I went through his file they wanted meto classify the file and the way I classified it was "don'tdestroy it, he is an intelligence nuisance."Q Off the record.
[157-10011-10083.pdf — page 16]
# SECRET(Discussion off the record.)MR. MANFREDI: On the record.BY MR. MANFREDI:Q Have you caused the Agency records with respect to Mr. Sturgis to be assembled in any one location?A Yes. Ihave custody of them.Q And what is the volume of that material?A As I recall, there are five volumes. Your Committee called for them the other day after the article in the paper, I guess it was last Saturday. They called for them Monday and they returned them Monday afternoon.Q Do you know who examined those files?A No, I don't.Q You indicated a moment ago that Mr. Sturgis contacts the DCD office in Miami with some frequency, is that correct?A Well, not great frequency but he does with tidbits of so-called information.Q Is this information limited to narcotics, alleged narcotics traffic?A Recently it has been.Q Has Mr. Sturgis been encouraged by the DCD office in Miami?A Mr. Sturgis has been told by the DCD office in Miami to take his information to the Drug Enforcement Agency or the FBI.
[157-10011-10083.pdf — page 17]
## SECRETQ Do you know whether or not they consider him an established contact?A No manner.Q Do they have any -- do they periodically seek to collect information from Mr. Sturgis?A I can't speak to that but the records that we have don't reflect anything like that. Before they would contact somebody in that context, knowing that there is a 201 file on Sturgis, they would have to coordinate with the Latin American Division before they did anything since we do hold the file.Q Would you briefly explain what a 201 file is?A A 201 file is a personnel file. It consists of any information relating to an individual appearing in the press as a result of other agency reporting and that type of thing.Q Personnel or personality file?A Personality file, I should say. Excuse me.Q Do you know whether or not there is any connection or relationship between Eugenio Martinez and Mr. Sturgis?A Well, I will say this. Obviously, they do know each other. They have to know each other from their days in Cuba.Q Do you know whether or not Mr. Sturgis ever participated with Martinez in raids against Cuba?A No. As I recall, we employed Martinez around 1961,
[157-10011-10083.pdf — page 18]
SECRETI guess, and he was in our maritime activities. He was a boat captain eventually. And he did participate in infiltrations and exfiltrations and perhaps one or two raids, hit and run, sabotage-type actions against Cuba. Sturgis never engaged in any of these things. He never did it for us nor did he ever do it on any of our boats, planes, or -- anything that belongs to the Agency.Q When Martinez would run such an operation or captain a boat on such an operation, would he be charged with putting together his own crew?A No. ile had an assigned crew and every boat had a Case Officer operating either out of the -- probably out of the Miami Station. Sometimes I would assume that we did have some people in the Key West base. But he, Martinez, would recei his instructions and briefings from his Case Officer.Q So it is likely that he could have brought Sturgis along on any of these operations?A Absolutely unlikely. Oh, the guy whose name I was trying to think of, Chief of Station, John Dimmer.Q And that would be for a period of time between Shackley and Henze?A Yes.Q 1964 to 1966?A Something like that.Q Would you describe briefly for me the nature of the
[157-10011-10083.pdf — page 19]
# SECRETactivities conducted by the Special Activities Staff during your -- and subsequently the Cuban Operations Group during your 9-year tenure with those groups.A Well, there was -- it was an across-the-board intelligence operation consisting of collection of foreign positive intelligence, counterintelligence, paramilitary activities, covert action, economic activities. That is about the breadth of the thing.Q Now, these were all conducted through the DDO?A Right.Q Now, let's speak for a moment about the paramilitary operations. Were these operations run out of southern Florida?A Right.Q And in particular out of the Miami Station?A Yes.Q Were there any other CIA facilities in that area of the country that participated in these activities?A Not to my knowledge.Q Were there any southern harbors other than Miami that were used in these activities?A Well, we had activities down in the Keys also. As I said, we did have a Key West base.Q Were there any other bases in that area of the country that were utilized in these operations?
[157-10011-10083.pdf — page 20]
SECRETA Well, not that I would call a base. We did have training facilities for the UDT teamsQ What is a UDT team?A Underwater demolition.Q Where were those bases located?A I frankly don't know. They were down along the Keys along that long peninsula going down there. There were a number of sites. I really can't recall them.Q Were there any other sites within the United States in which paramilitary training was conducted, for people participating in these activities?A Not to my knowledge.Q Where were these people trained?A What do you mean?Q Well, Cubans who participated in these activities.A We trained them at these places we had in the Keys.Now, there also - some of them were brought up here and trained at the Domestic Training StationQ Where is that located?A That is down in Virginia,Q Were any CIA personnel actually involved in these raids?A Occasionally, I would think that you have got to understand at this time that we had a great many contract employees, independent contractors and this type of thing.
[157-10011-10083.pdf — page 21]
SECRETMost of the paramilitary operations and the training was conducted by the Special Operations Group which is another entity of the --Q DDO?A DDO.Q Now, the facilities that we have been talking about, training facilities, were manned, then, by the Special Operations Group, or at least supervised by the Special Operations Group, is that correct?A Well, supervised, yes, and I would think that probably some of the training was given by their people. The Domestic Training Station is under the Office of training and -- but I would think that in the paramilitary field that the SOG would probably staff the training facility with their people who have the expertise in paramilitary operations.Q Now, were the people that were being trained at these facilities basically Cuban refugees?A Yes.Q And at the outset I take it not many of those people were American citizens?A No.Q Or had become American citizens.A I would assume a great many have.Q By this time.A By this time, yes.
[157-10011-10083.pdf — page 22]
SECRETQ At the present time, how large is that Cuban community in Miami? Do you have any idea?A Well, it is extremely large. I would think it is probably -- I was trying to think. I would say up towards a military people.Q You spoke about paramilitary operations and covert action. How do you distinguish between those two categories of activities?A Well, actually one can fall into the other. The paramilitary could fall into covert action but in those days we did distinguish somewhat. A lot of the covert action was media placement. We had a number of operations at -- legal-type operations, harassment operations. For instance, Fidel seized a great many art treasures and in particular he had a Napoleonic collection which was supposed to be the finest in the world that he sold to dealers in Europe. Ile had paintings that were immensely valuable that he tried to have auctioned in London and the London auctioneer would not accept them because he obviously didn't have clear title to them. He was -- they were stolen, in the eyes of the auctioneer. lie was forced to auction them in Toronto, Canada.We ran legal operations, got the owners and had them hire attorneys and bring them to court and this type of thing.He seized these race horses. He tried to peddle them in Europe and up in Canada. We ran opposition against that
[157-10011-10083.pdf — page 23]
SECRET1 type of thing.2 Q These were what you considered to be covert operation:A Yes, covert action.Q Now, this is what you were referring to, legal- type operations?5 A Yes.7 Q You used legal process to harass Castro.8 A Yes.9 Q What other types of harassment activities did you run that would fall under this covert action category?11 A Well --12 Q Would economic warfare be --13 A That was sort of something separate unto itself.14 This was -- the economic warfare aspect of this thing was a decision of the Special Group to enforce an economic blockade.16 Q What special group is that?A It is now called the Forty Committee.18 Q Is that 302 Committee?19 A Well, it was a 302 at one time, too. First of all, it was called the Special Group, CI, Counterinsurgency. Then it went to the 302 and then it had another name in between there and now it is the Forty Committee.23 Q All right. We will return to that a little bit later, but what other types of harassment were you running against Castro --
[157-10011-10083.pdf — page 24]
SECRET1 A This is what I was trying to think of.2 Q -- that would be considered covert action?3 A Well, as I say, a lot of propaganda, press placement, media placement. It has been so long ago I really don't remember. I know we had a number of things going against him.6 We used suasion, moral suasion, otherwise. We did some extra-legal things. We tried to get to his sources of supply, particularly when they were countries that we had treaties with, NATO countries, Canada, this type of thing.10 Q Let's talk about each of those in turn. You said you used moral suasion. What kind of activities are you referring to?13 A Well, in the moral suasion field we -- actually, we were the catalyst in this whole thing and we had the legal activities, the legal -- well, I don't know how you would phrase it, but we operated under the Cuban access control regulations of the Treasury, Department, the Trading with the Enemy Act, and we also used the facilities of the Department of Commerce, the Export Control people.20 I guess as you are aware, Cuban industry was totally U.S.-oriented. As parts began wearing out and this type of thing, Castro had his little people there running around trying to place orders with subsidiaries of U.S. companies. Where we would find this out through all-source intelligence, we or the Treasury people or the Commerce people would go to the
[157-10011-10083.pdf — page 25]
SECRETexecutives of these American companies and ask them to tell their foreign subsidiaries not to provide the spare parts and the other things that Castro might need. We had the Department of Commerce -- we identified 600 of the major U.S. companies that could provide spare parts for Cuban industry. We had the Department of Commerce send letters to those 600 manufacturers and ask them to cooperate with them in denying any spare parts to the Cubans. This was a fairly concentrated effort to really isolate them.Q All right. And that is what you were referring to as moral suasion?A Yes.Q Anything else in that category?A Not really. None that I can think of.Q Did you make the same kind of efforts with foreign companies?A At one point we did but it was absolutely useless, the point in case being the Leyland buses. We pulled all stops to stop that sale. The British Government turned us down flat.Q Now, did you attempt to reach any other sources of supply?A Well, we also had what we call a preemptive purchasing program. If there was a single source of supply for a particular item we would go in and buy it to deny the Cubans
[157-10011-10083.pdf — page 26]
# SECRETthe market.Q Would that then be re-sold somewhere on the domesticA Yes.Q -- domestic market?A No. It would be re-sold abroad.Q In all cases?A The cases that I was associated with, it was all sold abroad.Q What kind of purchases were made?A Well, we purchased at one point -- we purchased some Bright Stock in Antwerp.Q What?A Bright Stock.Q What is that?A Heavy, heavy oil, and since Cuba -- 85 percent of her energy comes from oil, this was considered a critical commodity. Bright Stock can be -- oh, it is almost like tar, melted tar, and it can be cut into additives, lubricants, this type of thing, and this was critical to the Cuban economy. So we had an oil firm purchase this Bright Stock from a dealer for which we reimbursed the guy and the Bright Stock was eventually sold in Africa.Q Do you know of any sales of such materials that were made within the United States? Resales, I should say.A No.
[157-10011-10083.pdf — page 27]
## SECRETQ In addition to preemptive buying were there any other actions taken by this group with respect to sources of supply to Cuba?A Well, we did provide through third country agents who got orders for Cuban goods, in collusion with the Commerce Department, and I would assume the Special Group, we had replacement parts manufactured that were substandard.Q And you had them sold through foreign companies?A Well, we had our agents get the Cuban orders all over Europe. Then they would come back and, as a matter of fact, the former Secretary of Commerce, who is on your Committee, Des. and I met him and he gave us the go-ahead to do this.Q Mr. Dilion?A No. He was Secretary of the Treasury.Q But.--A But you must remember that these American --Q Mr. Connors?A Yes. But you must remember these American manufacturer well, their places were nationalized and they were only too happy to work with us. And actually, it was a cash deal, bona fide business. These things were transshipped through two or three countries, finally wound up in Havana.Q You referred to some extra-legal activities.A Yes. That is what I was trying to think of, what we did. I just can't think -- I remember this was on one of
[157-10011-10083.pdf — page 28]
# SECRET26our activities but I just can't think -- I remember this was on one of our activities but I just can't remember what the extra-legal was. I just can't remember what it was. I know it was one of the parts of the program.Q This was illegal activities? Is that what you are referring to?A Well, I wouldn't say they were illegal, but they weren't exactly legal, I don't think. Perhaps they were in a gray area some place.Q Well, whose laws are we talking about, international law, the laws of the United States?A I would have to go back and review the thing. I really can't remember this. I would have to go to the files.Q Where could we find that kind of thing in the files?A I would think probably down in the Records Center some place.Q Would it be possible to obtain that material some time during the lunch hour?A No. It is forty miles away.Q Well, is there some place in the building where you could refresh your memory?A Not to my knowledge. All that stuff has been shipped!This is talking 11 years ago, 12 years ago. All that material has been retired.Q What category of activity would we be talking about
[157-10011-10083.pdf — page 29]
SECRET27when we refer to extra-legal activities?A This is what I was trying to think of and I can't think of what it was. I know extra-legal activities was one parts of the program that we were involved in.I might have a chart in my safe downstairs that might tell me what that is.Q Well, let's make a note of that and we will have to come back to that.A All right.Q Who else would be knowledgeable about extra-legal activities that were run against Castro?A Well, the people that would be knowledgeable are probably retired and I was running the program. So I ran the economic program.Q Well, these are activities that were run in connectio with the economic program?A Yes.Q We talked about media placement during this nine-year period. To what are you referring when you refer to media placement?A Well, stories or news items that perhaps our propaganda people wrote. We had them placed in newspapers and magazines throughout the world.Q Would this also include broadcasts over radio stations?
[157-10011-10083.pdf — page 30]
SECRETA Oh, yes. Radio is a very big part of it.Q Now, were any of these newspapers or magazines published within the United States?A Not to my knowledge, no.Q These were essentially foreign publications?A Yes.Q Were any of them published in the Cuban community in Miami?A No. The intent was to get world opinion against Castro. You don't do that by publishing in the United States.Q What about the radio broadcasts? How were those handled?A Are you speaking of Radio Swan now?Q Well, I am unfamiliar with how many radio stations were involved. Was there more than one radio station?A No. We only had the one radio station but we did contract time with Florida stations, a station in New York.Q For broadcasts to what areas?A For broadcasts to Havana.Q And the station in New York, was that received also -- was that also broadcasting to various areas of the United States?A I have no idea. I don't know whether they used a particular frequency to get this out or whether they did it on short-wave or what they did.
[157-10011-10083.pdf — page 31]
SECRETQ But the intention was to reach Cuba.A Reach Cuba.Q You referred to a station in New York, referred to as Swan. Were there others?A There were a couple in Miami that I recall. Not in Miami. I think there was one -- yes, there was one in Miami, I think, and one down in Key West that they used.Q Where was Radio Swan located?A On Swan Island.Q Where is Swan Island?A Swan Island is a little glob around Honduras.Q As far as you can recall, were there any other radio stations in the United States that were utilized to broadcast propaganda materials toward Cuba?A Well, there conceivably could have been, not that I recall right now.Q Do you recall any attempts by the Agency or groups affiliated with the Agency to raise money from the American public to support those propaganda activities?A No. As far as I know, Radio Swan and this type of thing was fully subsidized by the Agency.Q Do you recall the advertising campaigns that were run in connection with Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty?A Oh, yes.Q Was anything of that nature done in connection with
[157-10011-10083.pdf — page 32]
                                                                             SECRET                                                                301      Cuban propaganda?2  A      Not to my knowledge.3  Q      And that would include both the publications and the4  radio?5  A      Right.6  Q      Let's talk about economic warfare for a couple of7  moments. Could you describe for me briefly the type of8  economic activities that were conducted against Castro?9  A      Well, first of all, we wanted to denigrate the10 regime, his credit worthiness, and this type of thing. We11 worked very closely with the Coordinator of Cuban Affairs in12 the State Department and, well, for instance, in those days, I13 guess it was back in 1964, the price of sugar had jumped from14 about a penny a pound to 13 cents a pound, something like15 that, and we couldn't understand why. So we kept -- Fidel kept16 saying that he had such a poor crop and this type of thing and17 we just couldn't figure out why he had such a poor crop because18 some of our own island assets told us they were out there cuttin19 this cane like mad and the mills were working 24 hours a day,20 this type of thing. So subsequently, we found out that he was21 lying and he was storing the raw cane in the schools, any22 place. He had no storage facilities and put it any place he23 could.24 So in cooperation with a couple of sugar brokers in25 New York, we surfaced this fact and the price of sugar took a
[157-10011-10083.pdf — page 33]
# SECRETreal tumble and all of a sudden then Cuba started exporting.It was this type of thing that obviously he was trying to build up the world price because he didn't have any money, he was so short on his exchange, and obviously we didn't want him to get the exchange. So it was those types of activities.Q Was the assistance of any U.S. businessmen or U.S. companies enlisted in that effort?A Oh, yes.Q In what manner did you use U.S. companies and businessmen?A Well, we simply used them as the experts. A great many -- the sugar industry in Cuba was controlled by the American community, by American bankers, and obviously they lost everything when they had to pull out. Sugar is the lifeline of Cuba as far as any exchange, foreign exchange, this type of thing, and it was naturally our Number 1 target.was only natural that we would go to the American businessmen.Q What kind of assistance did you seek or obtain from these businessmen?A Well, we simply talked with them about why -- you know, the market conditions were, why the price was rising. If we could find out that Fidel has plenty of sugar, what would happen to the market price. This type of thing.Q They were used as consultants, basically.