Final_Judgment

200 Cuban Love Song [139]
As we saw in Chapter 7 (and which has been repeatedly documented by
perhaps hundreds of writers over and over again), organized crime—Meyer
Lansky in particular—had much to lose when communist revolutionary
Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba.
Prior to the advent of Castro, Cuba had been a primary gambling
money-making base of operations for the Meyer Lansky Organized Crime
Syndicate and its Mafia lieutenants. Anthony Summers summarizes the
situation well:
"Castro's predecessor, the dictator Batista, had long been a puppet on
strings pulled by American intelligence and the mob. In 1944, when the
United States feared trouble from the Cuban left, Lansky reportedly
persuaded Batista to step down for a while. When he came back in 1952, it
was after the current President, Carlos Prio Socarras, was persuaded to
resign, a departure reportedly eased by a bribe of a quarter of a million
dollars and a major stake in the casino business.
"It was now that the gambling operation already established in Cuba
became a Mafia bonanza . . .When the Batista regime began to crumble
before a revolution of popular outrage, the mob hedged its political bets by
courting Fidel Castro.
"Many of the guns which helped him to power in 1959 had been
provided courtesy of Mafia gunrunners, a policy which did not pay off.
Lansky saw the writing on the wall and flew out of Havana the day Castro
marched in." 366
Investigative reporter Jim Hougan described the relationship between
the Meyer Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate and the Cubans—both Castro
and his enemies. "The Mob's relationship to the arrivista Castro regime was a
stormy one. On the one hand, some of its members had been active in the
revolution, ferrying guns to Castro's guerrillas. On the other hand, the new
Cuban premier seemed determined to eradicate those social evils that the
Mob found most profitable: drugs, prostitution, and gambling. Castro had,
moreover, jailed both Trafficante and Meyer Lansky's brother Jake in the
wake of his triumphal march upon Havana." 367
However, the initial mob support for Castro went sour when Castro
proved to be a danger to the Lansky syndicate's lucrative operations in
Cuba. It was at this point, then, that the mob did a turn-around and began
working against Castro.
Although many syndicate figures still hoped that they could resume
operations in Cuba after Castro was removed from office, Lansky was more
realistic and practical. He began looking to the Bahamas as his next
Caribbean gambling base of operations.
Still, Lansky maintained his ties with the anti-Castro Cubans. It was
during this period the CIA was preparing to move against Castro. Lansky
would play a major role in that effort.
For an even more obscure reason—one which has often gone unnoticed—
perhaps unmentioned—Lansky had another reason to be disenchanted with
Fidel Castro and supportive of anti-Castro Cuban