How did Fidel Castro come to power?

Earl E.T. Smith, a financier, corporate director and member of the New York Stock Exchange, was born in Newport, Rhode Island and attended the Taft School and Yale University. During World War II, he served as Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army and the United States 8th Air Force Intelligence. Earl E.T. Smith was appointed United States Ambassador to Cuba by President Dwight D. Eisenhower and served from 1957 to 1959. He was later appointed as a member of the Commission of Broadcasting to Cuba by President Ronald Reagan. Earl E.T. Smith died in his home in Palm Beach, Florida, on February 15, 1991. He was 87 years old.

Ambassador Earl E.T. Smith explained why he wrote this book. He stated the following: “I am convinced that my experience as the United States Ambassador to Cuba was unusual in the sense that I lived through the Castro Communist Revolution, and I feel that I owe it to the American people to try to establish the fact that the Castro Communist Revolution need never have occurred. From this experience, I learned not only that our techniques of relations with Cuba were faulty but that the modus operandi for the determination of policy is not only inadequate but dangerous to the defense of our country.”

Cuba has intervened militarily and engaged in subversion and terrorism throughout the world for decades

While Fidel Castro was fighting against the government of Fulgencio Batista during the 1950s, he used political assassinations, urban terrorism, extortion of businesses, kidnappings, and air piracy. All of these activities and crimes are, of course, different aspects of terrorism.

Once in power Fidel Castro began to intervene in many nations in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East for many decades. The Cuban regime trained thousands terrorists from many groups providing them with weapons and logistical and financial support.

Cuba’s intelligence service, called the Directorio General de Inteligencia (DGI), became one of the largest and more efficient in the world with more than 10,000 spies who have worked around the planet. Cuban trained spies penetrated the Department of Defense and the Department of State.

The consequences of the failure at the Bay of Pigs

The failure to overthrow the tyrannical and oppressive regime of Fidel Castro in April 1961 had terrible consequences for the members of the Assault Brigade 2506, the people of Cuba, the United States, Latin America, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. It consolidated the communist regime in Cuba, which has been responsible for more than 57 years for initiating communist revolutions in many nations of the Western Hemisphere; collaborating with terrorist organizations from the Middle East, Spain, and Ireland; and intervening militarily in various nations of Africa, including Angola, Ethiopia, Yemen, Namibia, Madagascar, Congo, and Somalia.

The weakness showed by President Kennedy at the Bay of Pigs emboldened Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, who built the Berlin wall in August 1961 and introduced Intercontinental ballistic missiles in Cuba in October 1962. During the October Missile Crisis, Fidel Castro asked Nikita Khrushchev to conduct a surprise nuclear attack on the United States. The Soviet Premier refused to do it knowing that the United States had many more intercontinental ballistic missile than his country. To end the crisis that could have started World War III, President Kennedy made a pact with Khrushchev to never invade Cuba and dismantled the U.S. missile bases in Turkey and Italy as the price for the Soviets to withdraw the missiles from Cuba.

Unfortunately, subsequent presidents of the United States have abided by the diabolical Kennedy-Khrushchev Pact in which the United States promised never to invade Cuba or tolerate Cubans in the United States to attack the communist regime. However, this was completely unnecessary since it only applied to President Kennedy. Moreover, Cuba’s continuing attacks against the United States and its allies was enough reason to have justified an invasion of Cuba to overthrow the regime.

For many years, several U.S. presidents tried to restore diplomatic relations with the tyrannical regime of Fidel Castro. However, the bloody Cuban dictator was not interested and he continued to support communist revolutions and to help terrorists world-wide.

During the Vietnam War, the communist regime in Cuba sent three intelligence officials to torture the American pilots who had been shot down and kept in prison in Hanoi. Almost all American pilots were subjected to torture by these three Cubans in an effort to obtain information on the U.S. aircraft carriers and their aircrafts and provide that information to the Soviet Union.

One American pilot was killed while he was being tortured. One of these three Cuban criminals later became a general and minister in Cuba. American POWs in North Vietnam named him “Fidel.” He was later identified as General Fernando Vecino Alegret and this criminal became Cuba’s Minister of Higher Education for over 10 years.

Senator John S. McCain, who was a victim of torture, wrote about his horrible experience in his autobiography. Like many other crimes committed by the totalitarian regime of the Castro brothers, the death of the American pilot has not been punished.

During the 1960s, Ernesto Che Guevara led a Cuban and African army in the Congo. Veteran pilots of Bay of Pigs and other volunteers called the Makasi fought successfully against this army in the Congo. The largest Cuban military intervention in Africa occurred in Angola. The Cuban Army was sent by Fidel Castro to support the communist government of Angola

Division General Arnaldo Ochoa was the military chief of the Cuban, Soviet, and Angolan forces.

Andres Oppenheimer wrote a book entitled Castro’s Final Hour (1992) where he covered very well the Cuban military intervention in Angola. In November 1975, a few weeks before the declaration of Angola’s independence, Cuba started a large-scale military intervention in support of the communist People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). The United States supported two other liberation movements competing for power in the country, the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). By the end of 1975, the Cuban army in Angola numbered more than 25,000. As the Cuban intervention continued for many years, the Cuban army increased to 50,000 soldiers.

Oppenheimer explained in his book that communist Angolan President José Eduardo Dos Santos asked Fidel Castro for an additional help when the 35,000 soldiers of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), led by its chief Jonas Savimbi and accompanied by 9,000 South African troops, defeated the Soviet Union, Cuban and Angolan soldiers who had to retreat to Cuito Cuanavale. By that time Cuba’s best Division General Arnaldo Ochoa was the military chief of the Cuban, Soviet and Angolan forces.

For the next 12 months the defense of Cuito Cuanavale became “Fidel Castro’s biggest obsession.” The Cuban dictator was spending 80% of his time planning each move of General Arnaldo Ochoa’s forces. General Ochoa disagreed with Fidel Castro’s absurd orders coming from his bunker 6,000 miles away in Havana. These disagreements and criticisms of the Cuban regime would lead to General Ochoa’s arrest for treason. After his trial, he was executed on July 13, 1989.

General Ochoa was a brilliant commander and was successful in Angola. General Ochoa attacked the UNITA forces with Cuban Mig-23 aircraft and eventually they retreated. General Ochoa moved his soldiers against the wishes of Fidel Castro and opened of a second front. As a result, negotiations between the United States, the Soviet Union, Cuba and South Africa ended with the New York Accords of December 22, 1988. Namibia achieved its independence from South Africa and most of the Cuban troops withdrew from Angola.

The Cuban military intervention in Angola ended in 1991. Approximately 500,000 Cuban soldiers served in Angola during the 16 years of this useless war and many of them died or were injured as well as tens of thousands of Africans. An unintended consequence of this illegal Cuban Army intervention in Angola was that many young Cubans were infected with the HIV virus in Angola and upon their returned infected thousands of Cubans in the island.

Cuba launched another military intervention in Somalia and then in Ethiopia. The Cuban army helped train communist guerrillas in the Congo, Namibia, Madagascar, and South Africa.

Another great damage inflicted upon the United States by the Cuban communist regime was the smuggling of all types of drugs to poison Americans. Andres Oppenheimer wrote a book entitled Castro’s Final Hour (1992) in which he documented the shipment of drugs through Cuba and then to the United States. He wrote that the Cuban communist regime collaborated with drug cartels in Colombia to introduce cocaine into the United States.

Oppenheimer pointed out the following: “Fidel Castro and Colombia’s drug barons had a long association, largely based on political convenience… In the early 1980s, Castro had used his Medellin cartel contacts to fly weapons to Colombia’s M-19 guerrillas. The planes would fly over Cuban airspace with no questions asked, and pick up the weapons on improvised runways in various Caribbean islands, and occasionally in Cuba itself. Carlos Lehder, one of the Medellin cartel’s top leaders, would testify years later in a United States Court that he had met twice with Raúl Castro, currently president of Cuba, in the island to clear these flights.”

Oppenheimer explained that Jaime Guillot-Lara, a Colombian drug lord, shipped at least 2.5 million pounds of marijuana, 25 million methaqualone tablets, and 80 pounds of cocaine, much of it through Cuba. In November 1982, a United States district attorney in Miami, Florida indicted four top Cuban officials on charges of smuggling cocaine and other drugs through Cuba to the United States. Witnesses testified at the trial that the Cuban ambassador to Colombia, Fernando Ravelo Renedo, received approval from Cuba for every drug shipment to the island. The Colombian ships were cleared by the Cuban navy. In addition to the indictment of Ambassador Ravelo, the United States district attorney indicted Vice Admiral Aldo Santamaría Cuadrado and René Rodríguez Cruz, a Cuban Directorate General of Intelligence official.

Oppenheimer explained that later on the Minister of the Interior, Division General José Abrantes, and his subordinates, among them Coronel Antonio de la Guardia, were also involved in shipping several thousand tons of drugs to the United States during the 1980s. Coronel Antonio de la Guardia and two of his subordinates were charged with trafficking drugs and corruption. They were shot along with General Arnaldo Ochoa on July 13, 1989. Abrantes was sent to prison and died of a heart attack soon after. Many speculate that he was assassinated because he knew how Fidel and Raúl Castro were shipping drugs to the United States.

The Cuban Missile Crisis

The weakness showed by President Kennedy at the Bay of Pigs emboldened Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) Premier Nikita Khrushchev, who built the Berlin wall in August 1961 and introduced intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in Cuba in October 1962. The office of the historian at the Department of States published an article regarding the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. It explained that it was a direct and dangerous confrontation between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) during the Cold War

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) or Soviet Union began construction of several missile sites of medium-range and intermediate-range ballistic nuclear missiles in 1962.

It was the moment when the two superpowers came closest to nuclear war. The October Missile Crisis involved calculations and miscalculations as well as direct and secret communications and miscommunications between the two sides. The crisis was handled at the White House and the Kremlin level with almost no input from the respective bureaucracies typically involved in the foreign policy process.

Aerial view of missile launch site at San Cristobal, Cuba (John F. Kennedy Library).

After the failure to overthrow the Castro regime in Cuba with the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, and while the Kennedy administration planned Operation Mongoose to overthrow the Castro regime, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev in July 1962 reached a secret agreement with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro to install Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba to prevent any United States or anti-communist Cubans future invasion attempt.

In the late summer of 1962, construction began of several missile sites. Cuban refugees arriving in the Unites States brought news of these missile launch construction in many places in the Island. Eventually, U.S. intelligence discovered a massive general Soviet arms build-up on Cuba, including Soviet IL–28 bombers, during routine U-2 surveillance flights.

On September 4, 1962, President Kennedy issued a public warning against the introduction of offensive weapons into Cuba. The Soviet leaders ignored the warning. On October 14, 1962, a U–2 aircraft took several pictures clearly showing sites for medium-range and intermediate-range ballistic nuclear missiles under construction in Cuba. These images were processed and presented to the White House the next day, thus precipitating the beginning of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

President Kennedy called his closest advisers to consider options and direct a course of action for the United States that would resolve the crisis. Some advisers—including all the Joint Chiefs of Staff—argued for air strikes to destroy the missile sites under construction and followed by a U.S. invasion of Cuba. It was very unfortunate that President Kennedy did not follow the advice of the military for the overthrow of the communist regime in Cuba. If Kennedy had order the invasion of Cuba, it would have prevented decades of misery for the United States and many nations around the world. Tens of thousands of individuals around the world would not have died and the president would have prevented his own assassination in 1963 by Fidel Castro and the Mafia. The Soviet Union would not have gone to war with the United States over Cuba since the United States had an overwhelming superiority of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) over the Soviets.

President Kennedy followed the advice of other officials who advocated strong warnings to Cuba and the Soviet Union and a negotiated solution. On October 22, 1962, the president ordered a naval “quarantine” of Cuba. The use of “quarantine” legally distinguished this action from a blockade, which assumed that a state of war existed. The use of the term “quarantine” instead of “blockade” also enabled the Unites States to receive the support of the Organization of American States.

On that same day, President Kennedy sent a letter to the Soviet dictator Khrushchev declaring that the United States would not permit offensive weapons to be delivered to Cuba. He also demanded that the Soviets dismantle the missile bases already under construction or completed and return all missiles and IL–28 bombers to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.). The letter was the first in a series of direct and indirect communications between the White House and the Kremlin throughout the remainder of the 13 days crisis.

President Kennedy went on national television that evening to inform the American public of the developments in Cuba and his decision to initiate and enforce a naval “quarantine.” He also warned the nation of a potential war if the crisis continued to escalate and the Soviets did not dismantle the missile bases in Cuba. President Kennedy stated: “It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.” The Joint Chiefs of Staff announced a military readiness status of DEFCON 3 as U.S. naval forces began implementation of the naval quarantine and plans accelerated for a military strike and an invasion to Cuba.

On October 24, 1962, Khrushchev responded to Kennedy’s message with a statement that the U.S. “blockade” was an “act of aggression” and that Soviet ships bound for Cuba would be ordered to proceed. However, during October 24 and 25, some Soviet ships turned back from the quarantine line. Others were stopped by U.S. naval forces, but they contained no offensive weapons and so were allowed to proceed.

Meanwhile, U.S. reconnaissance flights over Cuba indicated the Soviet missile sites were nearing operational readiness. With no apparent end to the crisis in sight, U.S. forces were placed at DEFCON 2—meaning that war involving the Strategic Air Command air strike was imminent. On October 26, Kennedy told his advisors that it appeared that only a U.S. attack on Cuba would remove the missiles, but he insisted on giving the diplomatic channel a little more time. The crisis had reached a virtual stalemate.

The article of the Department of States explained that on October the crisis took a dramatic turn. ABC Newscorrespondent John Scali reported to the White House that “he had been approached by a Soviet agent suggesting that an agreement could be reached in which the Soviets would remove their missiles from Cuba if the United States promised not to invade the island.” While White House staff tried to assess the validity of this “back channel” offer, Khrushchev sent Kennedy a message the evening of October 26, which meant it was sent in the middle of the night Moscow time. It was a long message that raised the specter of nuclear holocaust and presented a proposed resolution that remarkably resembled what Scali reported earlier that day. “If there is no intention,” Khrushchev said, “to doom the world to the catastrophe of thermonuclear war, then let us not only relax the forces pulling on the ends of the rope, let us take measures to untie that knot. We are ready for this.”

The next day, October 27, 1962, Premier Khrushchev sent another message indicating that any proposed deal must include the removal of U.S. Jupiter missiles from Turkey. That same day, a U–2 reconnaissance jet was shot down over Cuba. Kennedy and his advisors prepared for an attack on Cuba within days as they searched for any remaining diplomatic resolution. Kennedy decided that he would ignore the second Khrushchev message and respond to the first one. That night, Kennedy set forth in his message to the Soviet leader proposed steps for the removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba under the supervision of the United Nations and with a guarantee that the United States would not attack Cuba.

The article of the Department of States pointed out that Attorney General Robert Kennedy then met secretly with Soviet Ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin, and indicated that the United States was planning to remove the Jupiter missiles from Turkey anyway. The article indicated that the United States would do so soon, but this could not be part of any public resolution of the missile crisis. On October 28, 1962, Khrushchev issued a public statement that Soviet missiles would be dismantled and removed from Cuba. The crisis was over but the naval quarantine continued until the Soviets agreed to remove their IL–28 bombers from Cuba. On November 20, 1962, the United States ended its quarantine. U.S. Jupiter missiles were removed from Turkey in April 1963.

During the October Missile Crisis, Kennedy and Khrushchev and their advisers struggled throughout the crisis to clearly understand each other’s’ true intentions, while possible nuclear war was contemplated. In an effort to prevent this from happening again, a direct telephone link between the White House and the Kremlin was established which became known as the “Hotline.” Additionally, both superpowers began to reconsider the nuclear arms race and took the first steps to agree to a nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

During the 1962 Missile Crisis, the Cuban regime, with its spies in New York City, planned to blow up the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, and other sites. Fortunately, the FBI arrested the perpetrators of this conspiracy.

In the middle of the October Missile Crisis, dictator Fidel Castro asked Nikita Khrushchev to conduct a surprise nuclear attack on the United States. The Soviet Premier refused knowing that the United States had many more intercontinental ballistic missile than his country. To end the crisis that could have started World War III, President Kennedy made a pact with Khrushchev to never invade Cuba. He dismantled the U.S. missile bases in Turkey and Italy as the price for the Soviets to withdraw the missiles from Cuba. Unfortunately, subsequent presidents of the United States have abided by the diabolical Kennedy-Khrushchev Pact in which the United States promised never to invade Cuba or tolerate Cubans in the United States to attack the communist regime.

The Castro brothers have been engaged in subversion, espionage, military interventions, and support for terror groups thought out the world for more than 57 years.  The United States should have overthrown the communist regime in Cuba long time ago. Cuba is continuing to help all the enemies of America and terrorist organizations. Obama’s New Cuban policy is an absolute failure since it provides financial assistance to the worst and longest dictatorship in the Western Hemisphere!