(1) The Warren Commission investigation.-Investigative efforts into the background of Lee Harvey Oswald led to an early awareness of his Communist and pro-Castro sympathies, his activities in support of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and a trip he made in September 1963 to Mexico City where he visited the Soviet Embassy and the Cuban consulate. (35)

All of this information had been gathered prior to the beginning of the Warren Commission's investigation, and it was sufficient to alert the Commission to the need to investigate the possibility of a conspiracy initiated or influenced by Castro. The report of the Warren Commission reflects that it was indeed considered, especially with respect to the implications of Oswald's Mexico City trip. (36) In addition, the Warren Commission reviewed various specific allegations of activity that suggested Cuban involvement, concluding, however, that there had been no such conspiracy. (37) For the next few years, suspicions of Cuban involvement in the assassination were neither widespread nor vocal. Nevertheless, beginning with a 1967 column by Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson, press reports that suggested Castro's involvement in the assassination began to circulate once again. (38) Specifically, they posed the theory that President Kennedy might have been assassinated in retaliation for CIA plots agains: the life of the Cuban leader.

(2) The U.S. Senate investigation.-Thereafter, the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities was formed to investigate the performance of the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies. (39) The Senate committee detailed two general types of operations that the CIA had directed against Castro. One, referred to as the AMLASH operation, involved the CIA's relationship with an important Cuban figure (code-named AMLASH) who, (40) while he was trusted by Castro, professed to the CIA that he would be willing to organize a coup against the Cuban leader. The CIA was in contact with AMLASH from March 1961 until June 1965.(41) A second plot documented by the Senate committee was a joint effort by the CIA and organized crime in America. It was initiated in 1960 in a conversation between the agency's Deputy Director for Plans, Richard Bissell, and the Director of Security, Col. Sheffield Edwards. According to the Senate committee, this operation lasted until February 1963. (42)

The Senate committee concluded from its review of the joint operations of the CIA and organized crime that "*** Castro probably would not have been certain that the CIA was behind the underworld attempts." (43) Nor, in the view of the Senate committee, would Castro have distinguished between the CIA-underworld plots and the numerous other plots by Cuban exiles which were not affiliated in any way with the CIA. (44) By emphasizing these two conclusions, the Senate committee apparently intended to suggest that the efforts by the CIA and organized crime to eliminate Castro would not have resulted in any retaliation against officials of the United States. (45)

The Senate committee identified the AMLASH operation as being "clearly different" from the CIA-underworld plots.(46) It was still in progress at the time of the assassination, and it could clearly be traced to the CIA, since AMLASH's proposed coup had been endorsed

by the CIA, with the realization that the assassination of Castro might be a consequence. (47) Nevertheless, the Senate committee found 66* * * no evidence that Fidel Castro or others in the Cuban Government plotted President Kennedy's assassination in retaliation for U.S. operations against Cuba." (48) The Senate committee left the door open, however, stating, "***the investigation should continue in certain areas, and for that reason (the committee) does not reach any final conclusions." (49)

(3) The CIA's response to the Senate.-In response to publication of the report of the Senate committee, a special internal CIA task force was assigned in 1977 to investigate and evaluate the critical questions that had been raised. The task force first considered the retaliation thesis. It advanced the position that the Senate committee had essentially ignored the history of adversarial relations between the United States and Cuba which, if provocation were the issue, provided adequate grounds to support a theory of possible retaliation without the necessity of reaching for specific Agency programs such as the Mafia and AMLASH plots. (50) In essence, the task force report suggests, those plots were only one aspect of a large picture and in themselves were not sufficient to have provoked retaliation. (51).

The 1977 CIA task force then specifically responded to the Senate committee with respect to the AMLASH operation:

Whatever the relationship with AMLASH, following the death of President Kennedy, there is every indication that during President Kennedy's life AMLASH had no basis for believing that he had CIA support for much of anything. Were he a provocateur reporting to Castro, or if he was merely careless and leaked what he knew, he had no factual basis for leaking or reporting any actual CIA plot directed against Castro. (52)

With respect to the CIA-sponsored organized crime operations, the CIA task force noted:

It is possible that the CIA simply found itself involved in providing additional resources for independent operations that the syndicate already had underway *** [I]n a sense CIA may have been piggy-backing on the syndicate and in addition to its material contributions was also providing an aura of official sanction. (53)

The task force argued, therefore, that the plots should have been seen as Mafia, not CIA, endeavors.

A conclusion of the Senate committee had been that further investigation was warranted, based in part on its finding that the CIA had responded inadequately to the Warren Commission's request for all possible relevant information. The CIA had not told the Commission of the plots. (54) In response, the 1977 CIA task force observed:

While one can understand today why the Warren Commission limited its inquiry to normal avenues of investigation, it would have served to reinforce the credibility of its effort had it taken a broader view of the matter. CIA, too, could have considered in specific terms what most saw in general termsthe possibility of Soviet or Cuban involvement in the JFK

assassination because of the tensions of the time ** The
Agency should have taken broader initiatives, then, as well.
That ČIA employees at the time felt-as they obviously did-
that the activities about which they knew had no relevance to
the Warren Commission inquiry does not take the place of a
record of conscious review. (55)

(c) The committee's analysis of the CIA task force report

The committee believed its mandate compelled it to take a new look at the question of Cuban complicity in the assassination. The Warren Commission had expressed its view, as follows:

*** the investigation of the Commission has thus produced no evidence that Oswald's trip to Mexico was in any way connected with the assassination of President Kennedy, nor has it uncovered evidence that the Cuban Government had any involvement in the assassination. (56)

There are two ways that this statement may be read:

The Warren Commission's investigation was such that had a conspiracy existed, it would have been discovered, and since it was not, there was no conspiracy.

The Warren Commission's investigation, limited as it was, simply did not find a conspiracy.

Although the Commission inferred that the first interpretation was the proper one, the committee investigated the possibility that the second was closer to the truth.

Similarly, the committee investigated to see if there was a factual basis for a finding made by the Senate Select Committee that the CIA plots to assassinate Castro could have given rise to crucial leads that could have been pursued in 1963 and 1964, or, at a minimum, would have provided critical additional impetus to the Commission's investigation. (57)

As previously noted, although the 1977 CIA Task Force Report at least nominally recognized that the Agency, in 1962-64, "*** could have considered in specific terms what most saw then in general termsthe possibility of Soviet or Cuban involvement in the assassination because of the tensions of the time," and that the Agency "should have taken broader initiatives then," the remainder of the Task Force Report failed to specify what those broader initiatives should have been or what they might have produced. It did, however, enumerate four areas for review of its 1963-64 performance:

Oswald's travel to and from the U.S.S.R.;

Oswald's Mexico visit in September-October 1963;

The CIA's general extraterritorial intelligence collection requirements; and

Miscellaneous leads that the Senate committee alleged the Agency had failed to pursue. (58)

The 1977 Task Force Report reviewed the question of Agency operations directed at Cuba, including, in particular, the Mafia and AMLASH plots. (59) In each area, the report concluded that the Agency's 1963-64 investigation was adequate and could not be faulted, even with the benefit of hindsight. (60) The task force uncritically accepted the Senate committee's conclusions where they were favor

able to the Agency, 10 and it critically rejected the Senate committee's conclusions (as in the case of AMLASH) wherever some possible investigative oversight was suggested. (62)

The 1977 Task Force Report, in sum, did little more than suggest that any theoretically "broader initiatives" the Agency could have taken in 1963-64 would have uncovered nothing. They would only have served to head off outside criticism. That conclusion is illustrated in the following passage of the report:

* [our] findings are essentially negative. However, it must be recognized that CIA cannot be as confident of a cold trail in 1977 as it could have been in 1964; this apparent fact will be noted by the critics of the Agency, and by those who have found a career in the questions already asked and yet to be asked about the assassination of President Kennedy. (63) The committee, of course, realized that the CIA's 1977 review might be correct, that broader initiatives might only have been window dressing and would have produced nothing of substance. But the 1977 report failed to document that fact, if it were a fact. For example, it provided no detailed résumé of the backgrounds of those CIA case officers, Cubans and Mafia figures who plotted together to kill Castro. There is nothing in the report on the activities of the anti-Castro plotters during the last half of 1963. If the Agency had been truly interested in determining the possible investigative significance to the Kennedy assassination of such CIA-Cuban-Mafia associations, the committee assumed it would have directed its immediate attention to such activities in that period.

The task force report also noted that even without its taking broader initiatives, the CIA still sent general directives to overseas stations and cited, as an example, a cable which read:

Tragic death of President Kennedy requires all of us to look sharp for any unusual intelligence development. Although we have no reason to expect anything of a particular military nature, all hands should be on the quick alert for the next few days while the new President takes over the reins. (64)

The report reasoned that the CIA's tasking of its stations was "necessarily general," since little was known at the time about which it could be specific. (65)

The CIA task force further noted that 4 days after this general cable was sent, a followup request for any available information was sent. to 10 specific stations. The task force argued, in any event, that such general requirements for intelligence-gathering would have been adequate, since "relevant information on the subject" would have been reported anyway. (66)

Conspicuously absent from such self-exculpatory analysis was any detailed discussion of what specific efforts the Agency's stations actually made to secure "relevant information" about the assassination.

10 For example, with respect to the Agency's investigation of Oswald's trip to Russia. the report summarily concluded, "Book V of the SSC Final Report, in not criticizing the Agency's performance in this aspect of the investigation, seems to have accepted it as adequate, and it will not be detailed here." (61)

For example, it became generally known that in 1963 the CIA had a station in Florida through which it monitored the activities of most of the anti-Castro Cuban groups operating in the United States. While the Florida station was mentioned, the task force report failed to make a comprehensive analysis of what requirements were placed on the station and the station's response. It might have been expected that the station would have been required to contact and debrief all of its Cuban sources. In addition, the station should have been asked to use all of its possible sources to determine if any operatives in the antiCastro Cuban community had information about possible Cuban Government involvement or about any association between Oswald and possible Cuban Government agents. Further, the station, or possibly other units of the CIA, should have been tasked to attempt to reconstruct the details of the travels and activities of known pro-Castro Cuban operatives in the United States for 60 or 90 days prior to the assassination. (Such undertakings might have been made without specific cables or memoranda requiring them. The Task Force Report implied such efforts were taken by the stations "on their own initiative." (67) But the Task Force Report failed to document or even discuss the details of such efforts or the responses of the stations to CIA headquarters.)

The committee found that the CIA's 1977 Task Force Report was little more than an attempted rebuttal of the Senate Select Committee's criticisms, and not a responsible effort to evaluate objectively its own 1963-64 investigation or its anti-Castro activities during the early 1960's or to assess their significance vis-a-vis the assassination. The committee made an effort to evaluate these questions through its own independent investigation. In investigating the implications of the CIA plots and the Warren Commission's ignorance of them, the committee conducted interviews, depositions and hearings for the purpose of taking testimony from pertinent individuals, conducted interviews in Mexico and Cuba, and reviewed extensive files at the CIA and FBI.(68)

(1) AMLASH.-Turning first to the AMLASH operation, the committee received conflicting testimony as to whether, prior to the Kennedy assassination, it was considered to be an assassination plot. Former CIA Director Richard M. Helms, in his testimony before the committee, stated that the AMLASH operation was not designed to be an assassination plot. (69) And, as already indicated, the 1977 Task Force Report concluded that AMLASH had "no factual basis for leaking or reporting any actual Central Intelligence Agency plot directed against Castro" during President Kennedy's life. (70)

The committee, however, noted that such characterizations were probably both self-serving and irrelevant. The committee found that the evidence confirmed the Senate committee's report that AMLASH himself envisioned assassination as an essential first step in any overthrow of Castro. (71) It also noted that it was Castro's point of view, not the Agency's, that would have counted.

The CIA's files reflect that as early as August 1962. AMLASH spoke to his CIA case officer about being interested in the "*** sabotage of an oil refinery and the execution of a top ranking Castro subordinate, of the Soviet Ambassador and of Castro himself." (72) The case officer,