They came out of Havana with nothing but rage and American promises. Doctors, lawyers, cane cutters, casino managers. Sons of families who'd owned half of Oriente Province. Soldiers from Batista's army with nowhere else to go. The Agency called them "assets." They called themselves la brigada.
By 1963, there were perhaps fifteen thousand trained Cuban exiles in South Florida. The CIA had created an army and then abandoned it on a beach. What do you do with an army that has no war?
You point it somewhere else.
Classification: TOP SECRET / RYBAT
Date: 15 August 1962
From: Theodore Shackley, Chief of Station, JMWAVE
1. JMWAVE currently maintains operational relationships with approximately 3,000 trained Cuban exile personnel in the greater Miami area. An additional 400-600 assets are deployed in forward positions (Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica).
2. Core cadre consists of Brigade 2506 survivors supplemented by subsequent AMWORLD recruiting. Training standards remain at paramilitary level, with select personnel qualifying for special operations including infiltration, sabotage, and executive action.
3. SECURITY CONCERN: Asset loyalty is increasingly difficult to assess. Many personnel openly express hostility toward current administration policy. Multiple assets have stated they consider President Kennedy personally responsible for Bay of Pigs failure.
4. RECOMMENDATION: Maintain operational tempo to preserve asset morale and discipline. Idle assets present unacceptable security risk.
JMWAVE was the largest CIA station in the world outside of Langley. Three hundred case officers running four hundred corporations. Boat repair shops that never repaired boats. Real estate firms that only sold safe houses. All of it hidden in plain sight along the Miami waterfront, humming with the energy of men who had nothing left to lose.
The pattern was always the same. Agency man recruits exile. Exile receives training, weapons, mission. Mission fails or is cancelled. Exile is abandoned but retains training, weapons, contacts. Exile is approached by other interested parties—organized crime, rival exile factions, foreign intelligence services.
The Agency created a resource that anyone could tap.
Location: 3 Points Bar, Miami, FL
Date: 14 September 1963
Subjects: Unidentified Cuban Males (UCM-1, UCM-2)
UCM-1: ...promises, always promises. Three years of promises. UCM-2: The Company uses us when it's convenient. Then Kennedy tells them to stop, and they stop. UCM-1: Not all of them stop. UCM-2: [Inaudible] UCM-1: I'm saying there are people in the Agency who feel the same way we do. People who remember the beach. People who know who's really responsible. UCM-2: Be careful what you say. UCM-1: I'm just saying—when the time comes, we won't be alone. We have friends. In the right places. [LONG PAUSE] UCM-2: What places? UCM-1: Places he's going to be. The Italians have people. So do we. So does [INAUDIBLE].
[TRANSCRIPT FLAGGED FOR REVIEW. NO ACTION TAKEN. FILED 9/16/63.]
The FBI had them under surveillance. So did the Miami Police intelligence unit. So did the Secret Service, sporadically. Everyone was watching. No one was coordinating. The exile community leaked like a sieve in all directions, and every agency caught fragments of a picture no one assembled.
The camps existed in a jurisdictional void. The Neutrality Act forbade private military operations against foreign governments. The FBI would occasionally raid a facility, seize some weapons, file a report. Then the camps would reopen somewhere else. Everyone understood the game. The exiles were too useful to prosecute, too dangerous to ignore, too angry to control.
David Ferrie moved between worlds like a ghost. Civil Air Patrol instructor in New Orleans. Pilot for Marcello's organization. CIA contract employee (unacknowledged). He knew Oswald from the CAP. He knew the exiles from the camps. He knew the mobsters from the flights he ran to Guatemala and Cuba.
On the night of the assassination, Ferrie drove through a thunderstorm to Houston. Then to Galveston. Then back to New Orleans. When asked why, he said he'd gone ice skating.
"We were all connected. The Agency, the outfit, the exiles—we were all working the same side of the street. The only people who didn't know that were the American public and the President of the United States."
1. STATION CONFIRMS REPORTS OF KENNEDY ASSASSINATION IN DALLAS.
2. MULTIPLE EXILE ASSETS UNACCOUNTED FOR AS OF 1200 HRS LOCAL.
3. REQUEST GUIDANCE ON OPERATIONAL POSTURE. RECOMMEND IMMEDIATE STAND-DOWN OF ALL AMWORLD ACTIVITIES PENDING ASSESSMENT.
4. ASSET HERNANDEZ REPORTS ADVANCE KNOWLEDGE OF "DALLAS OPERATION" CIRCULATING IN EXILE COMMUNITY PRIOR TO 22 NOV. RELIABILITY: UNCONFIRMED.
5. AWAITING INSTRUCTIONS.
The cable was never answered. JMWAVE went dark for seventy-two hours. When operations resumed, the anti-Castro programs were quietly wound down. The exiles were cut loose again—this time for good.
Some went into the drug trade. Some became contract operators for the Agency in other theaters. Some disappeared into the Florida real estate market, their secrets buried under strip malls and retirement communities.
And some, perhaps, carried different secrets. Secrets about a week in November. About friends in the right places. About the day the Brigade finally got its revenge.
[ hover or tap redactions to reveal ]