JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters

by James W. Douglass

On March 19, the CIA-sponsored Cuban exile group Alpha 66 announced at a Washington press conference that it had raided a Soviet “fortress” and ship in Cuba, causing a dozen casualties and serious damage.[7] Alpha 66 was one of the commando teams maintained by the giant CIA station in Miami, “JM/WAVE,” for its attacks on Cuba. Alpha 66 exile leader Antonio Veciana would admit years later to Gaeton Fonzi, a federal investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), that the purpose of the CIA-initiated attack on the Soviet vessel in Cuban waters was “to publicly embarrass Kennedy and force him to move against Castro.”[8] Veciana’s CIA adviser was a man who used the cover name “Maurice Bishop.” Veciana revealed that “[Bishop] kept saying Kennedy would have to be forced to make a decision, and the only way was to put him up against the wall.”[9] So Bishop targeted Soviet ships to create another Soviet–American crisis. As Fonzi showed by his HSCA investigation, “Maurice Bishop” was in fact David Atlee Phillips, who would become a key player in John Kennedy’s assassination and would subsequently be promoted to chief of the CIA’s Western Hemisphere Division.[10]