HW 55355 AGENCY RECORD NUMBER RECORD SERIES AGENCY FILE NUMBER ORIGINATOR FROM TO TITLE DATE PAGES SUBJECTS DOCUMENT TYPE CLASSIFICATION RESTRICTIONS CURRENT STATUS DATE OF LAST REVIEW OPENING CRITERIA COMMENTS DocId: 32401330 JFK ASSASSINATION SYSTEM ‘ IDENTIFICATION FORM AGENCY INFORMATION CIA 104-10302-10022 JFK CIA-DI-FILES DOCUMENT INFORMATION CIA OCI/CIA DAILY SUMMARY 11/29/63 47 /t CUBA PAPER, TEXTUAL DOCUMENT TOP SECRET 1B RELEASED WITH DELETIONS 09/22/98 JFK-M-02:F2 1998.09.22.15:56:00:106120: CIA-9. Page 1 Date: Page: 1 Released under the John Kennedy Was5assination Records ollection Act of 1992 (44 USC 2107 Nate). ases#: NW 55355 Date: Wi-26-2017 ‘CLASSIFIED ATTACHME* T 11/29/99 ARRB REQUEST.
_ FFOP-SECREF-DINAR DAILY SUMMARY 29 November 1963 This summary of significant information has not been coordinated outside the Office of Current Intelligence. It does not representa complete coverage of all current reports received, nor does time permit the complete evaluation of all reports which are included. CONTENTS CASTRO'S SPEECH: In his 27 November address, Castro first sought to exon- erate his regime of complicity in the death of President Kennedy and then provided a decidedly optimistic assess- ment of Cuba's economic situation. (Page 1) MILITARY DEVELOPMENTS: An unsuccessful combing operation was affected on the Isle ‘of Pines for two persons who apparently escaped from the military prison there. (Page 3) CUBAN INTERNAL SITUATION: The Cuban Government may have instituted new controls on fishermen by eliminating night fishing along the north coast and by restricting fishermen to three and one half miles from the coast, according to two clandestine sources. (Page 3) INSURGENCY AND CIVIL UNREST: Three incidents of sabotage have been noted in recent in- tercepted messages--two in Matanzas Province and the third in Oriente. (Page 4) + A LCB operation against an insurgent band in Las Villas Province ended on 29 November without results. (Page 4) Department of State Security (DSE) officials in Camaguey Province have been alerted to a possible clandestine escape attempt during the night of 28-29 November; militia- men have been instructed to mobilize at Playa Santa © Lucia. (Page 4) HW 55355 DBocld:32401330 Page 2?
HW 55355 —TOP SECRET DINAR CUBAN EXILE AND REFUGEE ACTIVITIES: Comandos L is considering an attack against a Soviet vessel in Cuban waters in the near future or when the seas become more quiet. (Page 4) Cubanos Libres may be planning to hijack a ship in a raid that would be staged from Miami. (Page 5) A small group of Cuban refugees may have attempted to infiltrate Cuba about 27 November, according to a promi- nentexile activist. (Page 5) BLOC RELATIONS: The Albanian ambassador spoke to a near-empty hall in Havana on 26 November at a celebration marking his country's national holiday; the audience was composed chiefly of Chinese embassy personnel, students, and journalists. The Cuban Government was represented by an official of the foreign cultural council. ‘ (Page 5) NON-BLOC RELATIONS: A three-man "good-will" mission is en route to Morocco to smooth Rabat's ruffled feelings over presence of Cuban troops in Algeria. (Page 6) The director of the Cuban petroleum enterprise is scheduled to travel to Georgetown aboard the BAHIA DE TANAMO; an untested source in Georgetown reports that Cuba will supply fuel oil for the British Guiana Electricity Cor- poration. (Page 6) "Cuba may establish diplomatic relations with Somalia and is attempting to improve its relations with Tanganyika and Ghana, according to intercepted communications. (Page 7) Two representatives of the Cuban National Association of Small Farmers are planning to attend a seminar in Chile. (Page 7) NON-BLOC COMMERCIAL RELATIONS: Cuba is continuing negotiations for the purchase of large amounts of construction equipment, probably from the Varmi company of Brussels. (Page 7) Li DoclIda:32740133530 Page 3
“TOP SECRET-DINAR- CUBAN SUPPORT OF EXTERNAL SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITIES: The Venezuelan Government has announced the discovery of a large cache of weapons of Cuban origin; this provides the best evidence in recent years of major Cuban support for Latin American subversives. Havana radio immediately denied the charge. (Page 8) iii HW 55355 DBocld:32401330 Page 4
HW 355355 CASTRO'S SPEECH: Fidel's 27 November speech to the students at Havana University evidently had been scheduled some weeks ago, be- fore the assassination of President Kennedy, and was in-- tended as a fairly sweeping review of the country’s economic situation, post-Hurricane Flora salvage operations and, lastly, the regime's plans for changes in the educational sys- tem. In fact, it was the third time in a week that Castro has addressed himself publicly and at length to the death of the late President and to imputations that the Castro regime was involved in any way. On 24 November Castro had displayed considerable apprehension that already strained US-Cuban re- lations would worsen markedly as a consequence of the assassi- nation. We do not have an adequate text of Castro's seemingly impromptu remarks of 26 November to a group of high school students; but that speech apparently went little beyond his ‘statement on the Sunday following Mr. Kennedy's death. The address of 27 November obviously was a carefully prepared ref- utation of charges of complicity between Castro's regime and Oswald. Whatever the Cuban leader’s intent, textual analysis of the speech neither proves nor disproves that he had advance knowledge of the plot. He is determined to indict unnamed "reactionaries" in the United States with conspiring to murder the President, using Oswald as their innocent dupe, and to frame Cuba in. order to provoke punitive action by the US Gov- ernment against the revolution. To this end, he presented a considerable body of “evidence"--much of it admittedly specu- lative--based on what is generally known about Oswald, the "normal" behavior pattern of paranoiacs, the weapon the killer. used, the technical difficulties presented by the use of a telescopic sight, the 36-hour Dallas police interrogation of the alleged killer and, finally, Oswald's death at the hands of Jack Ruby in the basement of the Dallas police headquarters. Castro rehearsed the details of Oswald's 27 September application at the Cuban consulate in Mexico City for a Cuban visa and protested the 23 November arrest of two employees of the consulate by Mexican authorities. (Castro's remarks were followed up on-28 November by the delivery of a formal pro- test by the Cuban Foreign Ministry to the Mexican Government-- which rejected it.) Oswald’s Dallas television interview in July, his attempts to infiltrate the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee,and his street brawl with anti-Castro refugees in New Orleans--all were intended by those behind Oswald to mislead public opinion, according to Castro. And, finally, the decision of the Dallas police to "close" the Oswald case with the shooting of Sunday, 24 November, "demonstrates that the persons guilty of the death of Kennedy needed and urgently had to eliminate the accused at any cost...so that he would not talk...." -l- FOR-SECRET-PENAR- DoclId:32401330 Page 5
HW 355355 ‘TOP SECRET DINAR CASTRO'S SPEECH - cont'd But, says the Cuban premier, the "shot has backfired." Alluding to statements made earlier in the week by physicians at Parkland Hospital, Castro claims that no one in a posi-~ tion to do so has said whether one or two bullets were used to kill the late President. He declared "they cannot estab- lish which are the entry and exit wounds ,"implying that more than one assassin was involved and that the President was struck both from in front and behind. In sum, while Castro obviously was well briefed and went to some length to select "evidence" proving the guilt of do- mestic reactionaries in the United States (conversely clear- ing himself of any involvement), nothing he ‘said indicates advance knowledge of the crime or encompasses more factual data than can be presumed to have been gleaned from the press. The balance of the 27 November speech, the part which Castro told his listeners comprised the address he originally intended to deliver, was devoted to a somewhat rambling as- sessment of Cuba's economic health. It can be summed up for the most part with the quote: "Things are progressing in our country and they are going well, despite the obstacles, de- spite the hurricane...." As he has done before, Castro blamed the sloth and ineptitude of the Cuban bourgeousie for the “mismanagement, lack of concern for expenditures, by lack of concern not only for the quantity but also the quality of what we produced" immediately after the fall of Batista. He re- viewed the "tremendous ideological battle...it was a battle between ideas and theories..." within the regime during its first two years in power, said that the government officials had become too "argumentative," and admitted that for a time the regime had been incapable of compensating for the loss of trade with the non-Communist world. Today, he boasted, Cuba "can trade with any country in the world; we can offer an ad- vantageous exchange because we no longer have to sell sugar to Japan, England, Spain, France and most of the countries with which we traded, take their dollars and use them to pay the Yankee imperialists." Instead, Cuba can plow back into its in- ternal development revenue derived from foreign trade, and de- velop to the maximum the use of those natural resources which are in demand. Attempts to bar Cuba from the world sugar trade, he said, have resulted only in increasing the price of sugar so that the Cubans ~-though exporting less--are able to realize proportionately greater profits from what they do sell and more than break even, "We. have been able to get wonderful prices, and we have sold sugar for 1965 for approximately 10 cents. We have made sales for 1966 at. approxi- mately 10 cents." Though the Cuban sugar growers will be affectéd in some measure for several years by the attempts of nonbloc states to juggle sugar prices, "we shall be in a position /1970 or-71/ to resist any price decrease in the sugar produced in the cpaital- ist world." By then, "we shall be in a position to surpass the 10-million-ton figure in sugar. production,,.." -2~ FOP-SECRET DINAR- DoclId:3240133530 Page 6
CASTRO'S SPEECH - cont'd Returning to the post-hurricane economic dislocation, Castro promised that by 15 December of this year full food rations would be restored and in many cases allotments in- creased. He called for greatly increased mechanization of agriculture and the use of the latest methods of cultivation, appealed for more food production and the recovery of arable land lost through neglect and erosion. He demanded an end to public "vice," such as official bribe-taking, theft, pilferage, etc. In the field of social welfare, Castro praised medical students for "volunteering" to serve in out-of-the-way country posts for minimum terms of two years and prophesied that "as the number of graduate doctors in= creases, the need for the establishment of socialized medicine once felt as a social need will not be quite as great." Castro concluded by appealing to Cuban youth to partici- pate “in the great task of opening new frontiers in every field...you are in a revolution that will never end." (CIA FBIS 07 and adds, 28 November, OFFICIAL USE ONLY) MILITARY DEVELOPMENTS: spay ee aeE eE AEY RES Military headquarters on the Isle of Pines informed PS Armed Forces headquarters in Havana that two persons who ; had escaped, probably from the military prison, had not yet been recaptured. The 27 November intercepted message re- ported that an unsuccessful combing operation had been effected in an area indicated by two peasants who reportedly saw the escapees. (See Daily Summary of 26 November for information personnel heine sought on the Isle of a 27 November, SECRET tp see . . .. ry ay CUBAN INTERNAL SITUATION: The Cuban Government may have instituted new controls on fishermen, by eliminating night fishing along the north coast and by restricting fishermen to three and one half miles from the coast. A Florida law enforcement officer was informed by the former administrator of a fishing coopera- tive at Isabela de Sagua that on 12 November it was rumored } that no night fishing would be allowed on the north coast ‘ of Cuba after 17 November. Reportedly, those who were fish- ing at sunset were to anchor their boats or risk being fired upon. Another source received information thirdhand | from an unidentified fisherman that in late November, Cuban fishermen were ordered by the Cuban general staff to do their fishing between three and three and one half miles from the coast. No confirmation has yet been received of these reported changes in fishing regulations. (CIA TDCSDB- 3/658 ,077, 27 November, SECRET/CONTROLLED DISSEM) -3- ~FOP-SECREF-DINAR HW 55355 DBocld:32401330 Page 7
INSURGENCY AND Cs IL UNREST : Ca a pA EE a Sec ee SU Sc RG a i “Two additional acts of sabotage have been reported by a Bureau of Public Order (BOP) officials in Matanzas Province. On 25 November nearly four tons of sugar cane were burned on the Araujo farm near Maguanito and on 27 November two empty houses were burned on the Angelina farm in the dis- trict of Maximo Gomez. Meanwhile, First Army headquarters in Santiago de Cuba was informed by its southern sector Sierra Maestra head- quarters that 87,000 arrobas of cane were burned on 17 November at Algeria del Pio near San Lorenzo in Oriente Province. [ 8 November, SECRET KIMBO; and[ | | 26 November, SECRET SABRE) On 27 and 28 November special anti- insurgent forces (LCB) in Las Villas carried out an operation against Menendez Esquijaro and his band near Sancti Spiritus. LCB field opera- tions headquarters in Santa Clara’ ‘was informed on 21 November = 39 Novemn- JEK Act 6 (1) (B) Department of State Security (DSE) officials in Nuevitas, Camaguey Province, were instructed on 28 November to mobilize militiamen into an! ‘easily seen land patrol" at Playa Santa Lucia in order to prevent a clandestine escape attempt dur- ing the night of 28-29 November. DSE headquarters in Camaguey directed Nuevitas to coordinate the operatio and "to be Fae Rovas watchful for boats. " | "CUBAN EXILE AND REFUGEE ACTIVITIES: Comandos L is considering an attack against a Soviet ship in Cuban waters, according to a member of a group of Cuban refugees who have provided useful reports. The raid, ‘which was being discussed on 22 November, would take place’ in the near future or when the seas become more quiet. Re- portedly, the plan would involve 15 men in three speed-boats who would rendezvous in international waters after leaving from three points along the Florida coast. In connection with the raid, Jesus Alvarez Amador picked up material on 22 Noven- + ber, including one box of fragmentation grenades, three maga-— Zines for a 20-mm. cannon and 87 rounds of ammunition for ‘ the same, and 15 ponchos. This equipment is being stored at the home of Jesus Vazquez, owner of Super Cake S.A., La Gran Via Bakers, Miami; Vazquez ' home telephone number is 379-5218. Other ‘weapons to be used in the operations are two 20-mn. cannons, one 57-mm. cannon, four machine guns, and two Garand rifles, Alvarez planned to’ go to West Palm Beach on 22 Noven- ber to borrow some additional weapons. (CIA TDCS-DB-3/658, 110, 28 November, CONFIDENTIAL NO FOREIGN DISSEM/CONTROLLED DISSEM) , -4. HW 55355 DBocld:32401330 Page 6
HW 355355 CUBAN EXILE AND REFUGEE ACTIVITIES - cont'd Cubanos Libres may be planning to hijack a ship ina ‘raid that would be staged from Miami, according to a mem- ber of a group of Cuban refugees who have provided useful reports. The source reported that funds for the raid were to be raised at a dinner scheduled for 24 November in Le Tre Venezie restaurant, 472 West 9th Avenue, New York City. At the dinner, Cubanos Libres was planning to show films of their raids against Cardenas Bay in October 1962 and the Arechabala Refinery in June 1963. (CIA TDCSDB-3/658,109, 28 November, CONFIDENTIAL NO FOREIGN DISSEM/CONTROLLED DISSEM) A small group of Cuban refugees may have attempted to infiltrate Cuba about 27 November, according to a prominent exile activist who received the information from a. close associate of a person involved in the attempt. Reportedly, a 20- to 22-foot speed-boat left Key Biscayne, Florida, the night of 26 November to rendezvous off Key Largo with a Cuban fishing boat and then proceed to an infiltration point on the north coast of Las Villas. The fishing boat is reportedly based in a shrimp fishery on the southeast coast of Key Largo. The persons involved in the operation were Manuel Pedro Gutierrez Cardenas, and presumably two infiltrees--Emilio Perez Fernandez and Luis Aguiar Perez. Two crew members, known only by nicknames, were "Comacho" and "Vascoy," possibly Jose Bascoy Barrios. (CIA TDCSDB-3/658,104,.27 November, SECRET/CONTROLLED DISSEM) BLOC RELATIONS: The Albanian ambassador to Cuba, Josif Pogace, delivered a speech to a nearly empty hall in Havana on 26 November. A Polish correspondent in Havana informed Warsaw that the speech, in celebration of Albania‘'s national holiday, was attended by only 80 people, mostly Chinese Communist embassy personnel, students,and journalists. Cuba was represented by an official of the Cuban foreign cultural council. The Polish correspond- ent reports that the audience applauded the ambassador's words on the subject of “contemporary revisionism" and "the revision- ist blockade of Albania" but reacted with silence to his at- tack on "false guarantees for Cuba." (CIA FBIS 105, 27 Novem- ber, OFFICIAL USE ONLY): -5- DoclId:32401330 Page 93