Final_Judgment

[140] Final Judgment 201
elements. The fact is that many of the anti-Castro Cubans who had settled in
Miami and elsewhere following Castro's rise to power were Cuban Jews.
THE CUBAN 'JEWISH CONNECTION'
American CIA-financed anti-Castro propagandist Paul D. Bethel, writing
in the December 15, 1965 issue of the Latin America Report (subtitled the
"Free Cuba News") gives us some interesting facts about the status of Jews in
Cuba before and after the advent of Castro. Bethel noted that of a total of
11,000 Jews in Cuba at the time of Castro's takeover, only 1,900 remained at
that time. The rest had already joined the anti-Castro Cuban colonies which had
largely migrated to the Miami and New Orleans areas. Of those remaining, an
additional 1,300 were leaving at the time of Bethel's report . 368
The affluent Cuban Jewish community was, in fact, an important
faction within the overall anti-Castro Cuban community. This, coupled with
Lansky's financial loss in Cuba, made him all the more inclined to strike
against Castro in cooperation with the CIA.
LANSKY AND THE ASSASSINATION PLOTS
Although Anthony Summers' previously-cited book on the JFK conspiracy,
aptly titled Conspiracy, devotes very little attention to Meyer Lansky's pivotal
role in Organized Crime, he does make reference to a CIA anti-Castro operation
funded by Lansky.
CIA operative E. Howard Hunt put together the Revolutionary Democratic
Front, a coalition of anti-Castro Cubans, headed by Manuel Antonio de Varona,
a former president of the Cuban Senate. In fact, as Summers tells us, de Varona
met with Lansky for financial support and also received funds through the
Washington, D.C. firm of Edward K. Moss and Associates, which represented
the interests of Lansky operatives Dino and Eddie Cellini. 369 (In Chapter 9 we
first met the aforementioned CIA operative, E. Howard Hunt, and learned how
he was implicated, in a little-publicized libel trial, in the JFK conspiracy. In
Chapter 16 we shall learn much more about the circumstances which led up to
that trial.)
Now although the famous CIA-Mafia assassination plots against Castro have
been reported time and again, the key organized crime players in the tale are
always the aforementioned Santo Trafficante, Jr., Johnny Rosselli and Sam
Giancana of Chicago.
Rosselli's biographers note that it was CIA contract agent Robert Maheu,
a longtime acquaintance of Rosselli, who initiated the CIA's dealings with
organized crime in the anti-Castro plots. 370
(It was this same Maheu, a former FBI agent as well, who had worked
directly under the former special-agent-in-charge of the Chicago FBI office, Guy
Banister. 371 It was Banister, as we saw in Chapter 10, who was the direct link
between the Lansky-Marcello-CIA gun-running on behalf of the anti-Castro
Cuban network.)