Reviewed by Ronald Goldfarb

The assassination of John F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald in November 1963, a grim anniversary we will commemorate next year, was certainly the crime of the last century. An extensive body of literature chronicled, critiqued and analyzed that event, following the official Warren Commission Report that President Lyndon Baines Johnson ordered to document what happened. That report was flawed for reasons the Commission itself could not know. It acted quickly, as it had to, in order to assuage concerns about possible conspiracies and continuing dangers to the U.S. However flawed by the deceptions of officials in the FBI and CIA who knew facts they did not relate, and even secrets Robert F. Kennedy could not share, the Warren Commission’s basic conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was an erratic assassin who acted alone has withstood continuous barrages of criticism. Some of that criticism is foolish and insubstantial, some impressively persuasive. Today, the Warren Commission findings remain the accepted view of the assassination.

But the case is not closed, and may never be. Two credible theories draw conclusions inconsistent with the Warren Commission’s. One is that the Mafia plotted and ordered Kennedy’s murder in retribution for Robert F. Kennedy’s aggressive prosecutions and investigations of its members. That theory is developed in my book, Perfect Villains, Imperfect Heroes: RFK’s War Against Organized Crime, a memoir of that “war” in which I was one soldier. There is convincing proof that the Mafia conspired to kill John F. Kennedy, but none to tie its conspiracy to the act of Lee Harvey Oswald, which may have fortuitously intervened. The dots of accumulating proof are not connected, though a U.S. House of Representatives Special Committee concluded that was the case, and later detailed studies added further proof of the Committee’s conclusion, based on post-Warren Commission archival disclosures.

The second theory, also backed by credible evidence, but also inconclusive, is that Fidel Castro was behind Oswald’s act of treachery in retaliation for the U.S. government’s plans to assassinate him. Again, there is evidence to support this theory, but not enough to settle the matter. Castro’s Secrets, a new book by former CIA official Brian Latell, a knowledgeable expert on Latin American intelligence, pursues this latter theory, adding credible new, if not decisive, evidence.

Latell worked for almost four decades for the CIA and National Intelligence Agency, including time as a CIA Cuba desk analyst and an intelligence officer for Latin America. He knows the literature and is a punctilious researcher, a knowledgeable historian, and a savvy insider. Latell concludes that Fidel Castro, among other notable skills, was Cuba’s “supreme spymaster,” conspiratorial in his instincts, audacious in his actions, devious in his Machiavellian brilliance, and avid in his hatred of the U.S.

I met with Latell in Key Biscayne, Florida, and over cups of Cuban coffee we discussed the revelations in his new book, a follow-up to his earlier After Fidel. Latell’s research adds uniquely credible evidence that Castro knew that the U.S. was planning to kill him, warned there might be retribution, and was aware that Kennedy was being pursued by Oswald. There is no proof Castro solicited Oswald’s criminal act or contributed to his crime. But that he knew of Oswald’s intentions, and waited knowingly for it to happen, is now demonstrated by Latell’s book.

Latell combed through vast collections of stored archival records and interviewed Cuban defectors who had fled Cuba and were protected by our intelligence service. One in particular, Florentino Aspillaga Lombard, who fled Cuba’s intelligence agency, and has been protected and hidden since then in the U.S., told Latell that his radio surveillance directed at the CIA was suddenly and inexplicably ordered to be stopped shortly before the Kennedy assassination, and was to be refocused on Texas. The implication is clear:  Castro knew of Oswald’s plan, watched and waited for it to happen. That doesn’t make Castro the active conspirator, but it proves a level of passive complicity, at the least “a conspiracy of silence,” Latell suggests.

Castro had proof that his double agent, Rolando Cubela, was meeting in Paris with Desmond Fitzgerald, Robert F. Kennedy’s CIA contact on Cuban intelligence and CIA machinations, to conjure a plan to kill Castro at the very time Oswald shot John F. Kennedy. One Cuban intelligence official told a colleague that she knew of the assassination in Dallas “almost before Kennedy did,” as a result of Cuban intelligence’s knowledge of Oswald’s plan.

Latell’s chief revelation in Castro’s Secrets is Aspillaga’s disclosure that, early in the morning of November 22, 1963, he was ordered to direct radio attention to Texas.  Aspillaga related that story to Latell in a CIA safe house decades ago. Latell confirmed it through declassified reports of two “reliable American intelligence community sources.” The revelation demonstrates Castro’s knowledge of the deadly cross-currents of intrigue between our countries that concluded in the assassination of JFK. Alone, it does not prove that Castro or Cuban intelligence agents initiated or assisted Oswald’s acts; but it does show that they knew of his plan, and at a minimum silently let it happen. Latell concedes there is “a critical distinction between Fidel Castro simply knowing in advance and somehow being involved in what transpired.”

Aspillaga is “the most valuable Cuban intelligence officer ever to have changed sides,” Latell reports. His disclosure that he was instructed “to redirect the antennas from Langley and Miami to Texas“ and to advise his superiors if anything important happened,  is chilling evidence that adds meaning to other circumstantial evidence we now know. “They knew Kennedy would be killed,” Aspillaga told Latell. Oswald had told Cuban officials in Mexico earlier that he planned to assassinate JFK. Even Lyndon Baines Johnson later stated that “Kennedy was trying to get Castro, but Castro got to him first,” adding that “I never believed Oswald acted alone, although I can accept the fact that he pulled the trigger.”

Both alternative explanations of the assassination, undercutting the Warren Commission’s single bullet, one lone assassin conclusion, remain haunting, challenging, but inconclusive. Perhaps after Fidel Castro’s death and the likely easing of relations between Cuba and the U.S., further evidence will emerge to resolve the perplexing riddle of November 23, 1963. “Until Cuban intelligence in Havana is prepared to turn over their files … it is going to be extraordinarily difficult to tidy up this case, finally and conclusively,” former CIA Director Richard Helms concluded to assassination investigators.

The Warren Commission, the House Assassination Committee, the Church Committee, and five million pages of U.S. government documents disclosed no evidence of Cuban complicity in JFK’s assassination. Latell concludes that “Castro and a small number of Cuban intelligence officers were complicit in Kennedy’s death but that their involvement fell short of an organized assassination plot.” The case rests there. For now.

Ronald Goldfarb is a Washington DC attorney and author. He has reviewed much of the John F. Kennedy assassination literature, discussed it on TV documentaries, and written about it in his Perfect Villains, Imperfect Heroes: Robert F. Kennedy’s War Against Organized Crime, published by Random House in 1995, and recently optioned for a movie.