Newspaper Clippings on Jfk Assassination

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Death
CASTRO, From A1
with what iwas practical and
what wasn’t," he said in -a
telephone‘ interview. f‘Who
knows? I -might -have listed
all sorts of possibilities and
that [Castro’s assassination]
might have been one of
them.”
-Castro has said that re-
peated attempts-were made
on his life and the lives of
other high-ranking -Cuban
officials—some of them en-
gineered by the Central In-
telligence _Agency—,after he
be-‘came premier in 1959.
ihvestigations of the CIA
now under _way -have also
compiled mounting evidence
that both President John F.
Kennedy and his brother,
Robert, who were later cut
do_wn by assassins, were well
aware of proposals to kill
the Cuban leader.
High-ranking officials of
the Eisenhower administra-
tion are also believed to
have been involved in ear-
lier assassination schemes.
A source close to the
Rockefeller commission,
which is investigating CIA
violations of domestic law,
said yesterday that" there
were not only repeated high-
level discussions of Castro's
assassination d u ri n g the
Eisenhower and Kennedy
administrations, “but there’s
also evidence -of overt acts
—0vert, covert acts, Iguess
you'd call them”—to kill the
Cuban premier.
One of the schemes, ac-
1
cording to other informed
sources, involved the CIA's
recruiting of Mafia figures
Sam Giancana, who had pre-
Castro interests in Cuba,
and J0h1lILV’ROSEl1i, Gian-
cana’s West Coast lieuten-
ant, during the waning
days of the Eisenhower ad-
ministration.
Although he was apparent-
ly not aware of any plot
against Castro, the late J.
Edgar Hoover, then direc-
tor of the FBI, alerted
Robert Kennedy in May,
1961, ’that- the CIA was in-
volved in backstage dealings
with the _,
Mafia.
A warning memo from
Hoover, sources said, was
apparently prompted, by the
FBI's discovery in the fall of
1960 of the ‘CIA-sponsored
surveillance of comedian
Dan Rowan, a rival with
Giancana at the time for the
affections of singer Phyllis
McGuire. '
Robert Kennedy reported-
ly responded to the secret
Hoover -memo by ordering
that it be"‘followed up vig-
orously."_ The Attorney Gen-
eral was eventually briefed
by .top _
CIA officials, ap-
parently in 1962," on what
Giancana and Roselli had
done for the agency. .
The Attorney General’s
only response, one source
said, was .to tell the CIA
representatives, “next time
you deal with the Mafia
come to me first."
Lansdale was said to have
drafted his plans later, after
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1 Z 7
Plot Tied to Crisis
an Aug. 10, 1962, meeting
of a special group at which
Castro’s assassination was
discussed but dismissed.
According to the Associ-
ated Press, the meeting was
attended -by then-Secretary
of Defense Robert F. Mc-
Namara; Dean Rusk, then
Secretary of State; John A.
McCone, then CIA director,
and McGeorge Bundy, Presi-
dent Kennedy's adviser on
national security affairs.
Robert Kenngdy, the fifth
member of the special
group, was reportedly ab-
sent.
Listed as a _top assistant
to McNamara at the time,
Lansdale was told after the
meeting to come up with
proposals, as he put it, about
“what to do with a leader
who .had threatened the
lives of millions of Ameri-
cans by placing‘ gmissiles
aimed at-this country."
Responding to questions,
Lansdale said _the orders
came not from McNamara
but" from “someone much
more intimate” with the
President. 5 f
Asked whether it was Rob-
ert Kennedy, he said, “A1l
the signs point to that, don’t
they?” He declined, how-
ever, to be more precise.
“I don't want to get into
a sort of smearing thing
right now for any individu-
als or _any political parti-
sans," Lansdale said.
He" said he might have
listed Castro’s assassination
as a possibility, especially
“if I saw a lot of American
lives at stake and casualties
that could run into the mil-
lions." But -he said he was
positive that “I never had
any part in planning any
details.”
Similarly, Lansdale said
he did'not recall -to whom
he sent his memo, nor did
he know whether President
Kennedy ever saw it. Lans-
dale agreed, however, that
"he doubtless ‘dispatched a
copy to the official who‘ told
him to draw up the plans.
The Cuban missile crisis
ended on Oct. 28, 1962, when
Soviet P r e m i e r Nikita
Khrushchev announced that
he had ordered a stop to
work on the Cuban bases
and was having the missiles
crated and returned to the
Soviet Union. _
Lansdale said that none
of his suggestions “came to
any fruition.” At the same
time, other accounts suggest
that the idea of Castro’s as-
sassination was not at all
new to the White House.
Watergate burglar E. How-'
ard Hunt Jr., a former CIA
officer, has said he proposed
it in the spring of 1960,
during the early planning
for the Bay of Pigs invasion.
.A former Defense Depart-
ment intelligence officer, L.
Fletcher Prouty, has said the
CIA dispatched a two-man
assassination team to Cuba
even earlier than that, also
while Eisenhower was Presi-
dent. ‘
According to journalist
Tad Szulc, then with The
New York Times, President
Kennedy raised the thought
with him during a private
conversation ‘in November,
1961. Szulc said he told him
it was a bad idea and quo-
ted Kennedy as responding:
“I’m glad you feel that way
because suggestions to that
effect keep coming to me,
and I believe very strongly
that the United States should
not be a party ‘to political
assassination.”
The Rockefeller Commis-
sion is expected to deal with
the controversy in its forth-
coming report to President
Ford.