Fidel, the fall guy

There is no doubt that RFK was involved in the JFK-era operations against Castro. But the details matter. What role exactly did he play, and what were his underlying motives? The testimony of others on this point -- whether they were loyalists or those seeking to shift the blame -- is inevitably suspect. In 1967 Connally surely understood the political usefulness of damaging Sen. Kennedy, who was then emerging as a critic of LBJ on Vietnam. And Helms had been deputy director for operations at the CIA in 1963. What could be more convenient, in 1975, than to let it be known that he had been taking orders back then from a man long since deceased?

So the truth frankly eludes us. But for the purposes of his story, Holland needs RFK to have been the aggressive, hands-on architect of the Castro assassination plots. (And he needs Castro to have known it too, though how this could have happened is not explained.) So he gives us RFK in that light -- even though we know that the plots had their origins much earlier, in a circle close to Vice President Nixon and CIA Director Allen Dulles during the Eisenhower years.

Next, is there is any actual evidence linking Castro to the murder of President Kennedy? The question is important, not least because Castro remains president of Cuba today. There is no statute of limitations on murder. If evidence exists, a grand jury could be impaneled and Castro could be indicted for murder even now.

That brings us to the figure of Lee Harvey Oswald. For Holland, Oswald was the unquestioned sole triggerman in Dallas. But as to Oswald's connections and motives, Holland provides yet another claim backed by no evidence at all:

"Knowing the President's conspiratorial turn of mind, Helms probably hastened to reassure Johnson that the CIA, the FBI and the Warren Commission had all looked long and hard for a connection between Oswald and Cuba but come up empty-handed."

Of this statement, we know four things. First, it is purely speculative; we don't know that Helms said anything of the kind to Johnson, much less that he "hastened" to do so. We don't know that Helms tried to speak for the FBI -- whose work Johnson had direct access to through his close relationship with Director J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover did not exactly confide in the CIA. So it would have been very strange, under those conditions, for Helms to try to speak for Hoover.

Second, we know that there were many bits of evidence that seemed to connect Oswald to Castro's Cuba. For instance, Oswald portrayed himself as a Marxist. In addition, he passed out pamphlets for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New Orleans in 1963 and was filmed in a scuffle with anti-Castro activists. We know that he traveled to Mexico City in September 1963 and apparently sought a visa to go to the Soviet Union and to Cuba -- without success.

Third, we know that Oswald's pro-Cuba posturing was staged. The Fair Play for Cuba Committee existed, but it had no chapter in the South. In New Orleans, Oswald worked from the offices of Guy Bannister, an ex-FBI man with strong anti-Castro connections. And as for the trip to Mexico City, Johnson knew by midmorning on Nov. 23, 1963, that a photo and tape purporting falsely to capture Oswald's activities in Mexico had already been passed to the FBI -- from the CIA. As Michael Beschloss reported in "Taking Charge," Hoover told LBJ: "No, that's one angle that's very confusing, for this reason -- we have up here the tape and the photograph of the man who was at the Soviet embassy, using Oswald's name. That picture and the tape do not correspond to this man's voice, nor to his appearance. In other words, it appears that there is a second person who was at the Soviet embassy down there."

Next Page: Richard Helms had his reasons for pointing a finger at Castro

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