Antonio Veciana - Trained to Kill: The Inside Story of CIA Plots against Castro, Kennedy, and Che

Copyright 2017 by Antonio Veciana and Carlos Harrison

Foreword copyright 2017 by David Talbot

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Brian Peterson

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-1356-7

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-1357-4

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

SOMEONE WOULD HAVE talked. Thats the argument the lone gunman crowd has always fallen back on whenever confronted by the growing evidence of a conspiracy in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The truth is, numerous people with knowledge about the dark operation in Dallas more than half a century ago have talked. But few in Washington or in the mainstream media were listening.

The list of those who talked and were either ignored or silenced begins with JFK intimates who rode with him in the fateful Dallas motorcade, including First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and White House aides Kenneth ODonnell and Dave Powersall of whom immediately reported that the presidents limousine was caught in a lethal cross fire that day in Dealey Plaza. Jack Ruby, the Mafia hit man who conveniently muzzled the self-proclaimed patsy Lee Harvey Oswald, also began to talk to government investigatorsuntil he was shut up.

The line of eyewitnesses and co-conspirators who had much to say about the Kennedy assassination stretches into the current century, with CIA officer E. Howard Hunt, leader of the Watergate burglary team, confessing late in his life to playing at least a peripheral role in the Kennedy assassination conspiracy, along with such other notorious agency operatives as William Harvey and David Morales.

Now we have the remarkable, revelatory memoir of Antonio Veciana, a legendary leader of the anti-Castro underground whose shadowy exploits were sponsored by the CIA. Robert F. Kennedy, who served as his brothers attorney general, became convinced immediately after the gunfire in Dallas that the plot against JFK had grown out of the CIAs secretive Cuba operation. In Trained to Kill , Veciana finally and definitively confirms that RFKs suspicions were true. Veciana recounts that shortly before President Kennedys assassination, he witnessed his CIA handler, David Atlee Phillipsa rising star in the agencys Latin America divisionmeeting with Oswald in Dallas.

This is a mind-blowing revelation because its the only credible eyewitness account to connect Oswaldthe accused assassin and likely scapegoatdirectly to an important CIA official. Phillips emerged as a key suspect in Kennedys murder during the House Select Committee on Assassinations hearings in the 1970s. He squirmed and stonewalled and chain-smoked under interrogation by committee members and staff.

Phillips was no rogue agenthe was a prized member of the core team built by CIA spymaster Allen Dulles to fight the spread of Communism and left-wing movements in South America and the Caribbean. He consistently received promotions and commendations throughout his twenty-five-year career at the CIA, which in addition to his involvement in the agencys Castro assassination plots also included his leadership of the covert operation against Chilean President Salvador Allende, who died during a CIA-instigated coup in 1973. After retiring in 1975, when the agency was under sharp attack from Congress and the press for its subversive excesses, Phillips founded the CIAs first overt lobbying group, the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.

Veciana too led a colorful and violent life, and his memoir is filled not just with gripping insights into the Kennedy assassination, but with inside stories about the relentless crusade to kill Fidel Castro and to track down the other hero of the Cuban Revolution, Ernesto Che Guevara. Vecianas intimate portraits of these charismatic men and their murderous antagonists in the CIA and the Cuban underground put the reader squarely inside some of the most dramatic episodes of twentieth-century history.

Starting off his career in Havana as a mild-mannered banker and devoted family man, Veciana found himself sucked into the whirlwind of events that placed Castros Cuba in the bulls-eye of U.S. imperialism. Though he remained a dedicated anti-Communist partisan through most of his life, Veciana had the integrity and courage to finally question the ruthless methods and mentality of his CIA sponsors. His growing disenchantment with the agency put not only his own life but that of his family at risk, and for years he wrestled with the decision to go public about the Lee Harvey Oswald-David Atlee Phillips connection.

Now, in old age, Antonio Veciana has finally unburdened himself of the secrets of his life. His story sheds light on some of the darkest corners of American history. Trained to Kill should be read by all of those who wonder and worry about our countrys incessant imperial adventures and how they have tragically undermined our democracy.

David Talbot,

February 2017

PREFACE

I DONT KNOW who killed John Kennedy. I know who wanted to. He was with the CIA. He introduced me to Lee Harvey Oswald. In Dallas. Two months before JFK died.

By then, he had already taught me to be an agent, in Cuba. By then, I had already tried to kill Fidel Castro, the first time.

The man I knew as Maurice Bishop supplied the training. He supplied the money. He supplied the weapons.

I found the men. I found the place. I failed.

But I didnt give up. Neither did Bishop.

The CIA has repeatedly denied that one of its highest-ranking officials used the cover name of Maurice Bishop. Confessing that David Atlee Phillips used that pseudonym would connect the agencyor at least one of its most important functionarieswith Oswald. And that, by extension, would link it to Kennedys death.

The very fact that they do deny it proves to me they know something. Theres no need for a cover-up when youre innocent.

David Atlee Phillips rose to be the CIAs chief of Western Hemisphere operations. He hadnt reached that level yet when I met him, but he was clearly powerful. He could order Castros death and supply the means to do it.

When it came time to spirit me out of Cuba, he provided me with a job, working for the United States government in Bolivia. But still, even there, my target was Castro.

Again, the man I knew as Bishopand years later by his real namesupplied the money. He supplied the intelligence. But I have no idea how he wouldve reacted if I had been caught when I smuggled the weapons he provided into Chile. I didnt tell him that I had piled my three children and my wife into the car for the trip. For them it was a vacation. For me it was coverwhat border guard would ever suspect a family on a road trip? With three small children squealing excitedly, and a young wife in the passenger seat.