STATEMENT BY THE HONORABLE JOHN A. MCCONE DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS, TUESDAY, 19 FEBRUARY 1963

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP65B00383R000400060004-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 13
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 19, 2004
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: February 19, 1963
• Content Type: STATEMENT

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STATEMENT BY THE HONORABLE JOHN A. MCCONE
DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES COMMITTEE ON
FOREIGN AFFAIRS, TUESDAY, 19 FEBRUARY 1963
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The public pronouncements of Cuban leaders, the
anily record of events in Latin America and reports
1
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rItnrougnout
nemis-
phere all agree on one sa
Fidel Castro is spurring
i,en
and
conclusion:
supporting the
That
efforts
of Communists and other revolutionary elements to
overthrow and seize control of the governments in
Latin America.
Even before the October missile crisis--and with
increasing rancor since then--Cuban leaders have been
exhorting revolutionary movements to violence and ter-
rorism, and supporting their activities.
Cuban support takes many different forms, but its
main thrust is in the supply of the inspiration, the
guidance, the training, and the communications and tech-
nical assistance that revolutionary groups in Latin
America require.
In essence, Castro tells revolutionaries from
other Latin American countries: "Come to Cuba; we
will pay your way, we will train you in underground
organization techniques, in guerrilla warfare, in sabo-
tage and in terrorism. We will see to it that you get
back to your homeland.
"Once you are there, we will keep in touch with
you, give you propaganda support, send you propaganda
materials for your movement, training aids to expand
your guerrilla forces, secret communications methods,
and perhaps funds and specialized demolition equip-
ment."
Castro probably also tells them: "If you succeed
in establishing something effective by way of a revo-
lutionary movement in your homeland, if your guerrillas
come down out of the hills and confront regular armed
forces, then we may consider more concrete forms of
assistance." So far, it should be noted, none of the
movements in South America has reached this final
stage. In. many ways, Cuba under Castro is the Latin
version of the old Comintern, inciting, abetting, and
sustaining revolution wherever it will flourish.
We have evidence of more concrete Cuban sup-
port. Cuban nationals, for example, took part in the
La Oroya disorders in Peru in December. We know that
some funds move, generally in cash by courier, from
Cuba to the revolutionaries in other countries. We
know that Cuba furnishes money to buy weapons, and
that some guerrilla forces in Peru, for instance, are
equipped with Czech weapons which most probably came
from Cuba.
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Before going into more detailed evidence of
Cuban subversion in Latin America, I should note
that Venezuela is apparently number one on Cuba's
priority list for revolution.
Fidel Castro said so to the recent meeting
of Communist front organizations for Latin American
women.
Che Guevara and Blas Roca both emphasized the
outlook for revolution in Venezuela in speeches
in January.
We have learned reliably that the CP leader-
ship in Venezuela feels a peaceful solution to the
present sicudtion there is out of the question.
We also know that in late 1962 Communist guer-
rilla and terrorist operations in Venezuela were
placed under a unified command which coordinates
activities with the other militant extremist group
in Venezuela, the MIR. The result has been the
creation of the FALN, or Armed Forces of National
Liberation.
The FALN is currently trying to publicize its
existence by such acts as the hijacking of the
freighter Anzoategui, and by acts of sabotage and
indiscriminate s.oofings. These have also been
designed to dissuade President Betancourt from his
trip to Washington. In this, of course, they have
failed.
I do not wish to minimize the violence in
Venezuela. The sabotage is the work of experts,
and is being done with advanced types of explosives.
The shooting has reached the point in Caracas where
it is not safe to go out at night in some sections
of the capital. But unless the terrorists should
undertake and accomplish the assassination of Pres-
ident Betancourt and other high officials, the
present wave of sabotage and indiscriminate shooting
is not the sort of activity which would pose a direct
threat to the government. The Communists have not
demonstrated the ability to stand up to he armed
forces, or seize and hold government buildings.
Cuba has given guerrilla training to more
nationals from Venezuela than from any other coun-
try. Our best estimate now is that more than 200
Venezuelans recieved such training in 1962.
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Many of these are engaged in terrorism in the
cities, and others were rounded up and given long
prison sentences when they committed themselves
prematurely last spring in a countryside where the
rural population strongly supports the Betancourt
administration.
For the past year Cuban spokesmen have been
pushing the line that Cuba provides the example for
Latin American revolution, with the implication that
nothing more than guidance needs to be exported.
Castro actually sounded the keynotes for Cuban
subversion on July 26, 1960, when he said, "We prom-
ise to continue making Cuba the example that can
convert the Cordillera of the Andes into the Sierra
Maestra of the American continent."
In his speech on 15 January 1963 Castro said
that if "Socialism" in Cuba had waited to overturn
Batista by peaceful means, Castro would still be
in the Sierra Maestra.
Since the October missile crisis, Che Guevara
and Education Minister Armando Hart, both in public
speeches and in temarks to visiting Communists,
have been insisting that what they call "Socialism"
can achieve power in Latin America only by force.
The Cuban effort at present is far more serious
than the hastily organized and ill-conceived raids
that the bearded veterans of the Sierra Maestra led
into such Central American countries as Panama, Haiti,
Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic during the first
eight or nine months Castro was in power.
Today the Cuban effort is far more sophisticated,
more covert, and more deadly. In its professional
tradecraft, it shows guidance and training by exper-
ienced Communist advisers from the Soviet bloc, in-
cluding veteran Spanish Communists.
The ideas move fairly openly in a massive propa-
ganda effort. The inflammatory broadcasts from Havana
and the work of Prensa Latina are matters of public
record I do not need to go into. It might be worth
noting that the postal and customs authorities in
Panama are destroying on the average of 12 tons a
month of Cuban propaganda coming into their lands.
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Another 10 tons a month comes into Costa Rica, and
most of it is spotted either at the airport or in
the post office and destroyed.
The know-how is not only imparted to the guer-
rilla trainees who come to Cuba, but is exported in
the form of booklets. There are thousands of copies
of the texts on guerrilla warfare by Mao Tse-tung
and by Che Guevara scattered over all of Latin Amer-
ica. There is also a little pocket booklet, about
two and a half by four inches, called "150 Questions
on Guerrilla Warfare," written by a Spanish Civil
War veteran, Alberto Bayo. This was apparently
printed in Cuba, and turned up first in Peru.
Another version, with 100 questions and answers,
based on Guevara's and Bayo's books, has been written
especially for Peruvian use, and mimeographed in Peru.
This is about 5 x 8, and includes drawings on how to
place demolition charges, and charts for calculating
the force of various explosives. There is a Portu-
guese text of Guevara's book in Brazil, and a mimeo-
graphed abridgement of Bayo's 150 questions prepared
by a terrorist-guerrilla organization in Colombia.
All of these textbooks stress that the guerrilla
must be self-sustaining. They not only tell him how
to make Molotov cocktails, explosives, and incendiary
preparations from materials that he can obtain easily
and sometimes even openly at home; they stress that
his weapons, his equipment, and supplies should come
from "the enemy"--that is, from the security forces
in his homeland.
At least 1,000 to 1,500 persons came to Cuba
during 1962, from all the other Latin American coun-
tries with the possible exception of Uruguay, to re-
ceive ideological indoctrination or guerrilla warfare
training or both. More have gone in 1963 despite the
limited facilities for reaching Cuba at present.
The largest contingents have come from Venezuela,
Peru, Ecuador, Argentina, and Bolivia.
Some of the courses are as short as four weeks,
designed to let it appear that the trainees had merely
attended some conference or celebration and done a lit-
tle sightseeing.
Other courses last as long as a year, and may in-
clude intensive training in such things as sabotage,
espionage, or psychological warfare.
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The Cubans go to great lengths to conceal the
movements of trainees. The Cuban Embassy in Mexico
City gives the trainee a visa on a separate piece
of paper, so that his passport, when he goes home,
will only show that he has been in Mexico.
In other cases, particularly in the case of
travel through Montevideo before the quarantine,
the Cubans have furnished passports under other
names for travel by way of Curacao.
However in the case of I I we
come up with a list of 235 names of individuals
known to have made extended stays in Cuba in 1961
and 1962.
Some of the trainees arrive, and many go home,
by way of the Iron Curtain and Western Europe, using
Soviet, Czech, or Cuban aircraft and probably on ships
as well for the trip between Cuba and the Bloc. This
is another attempt to conceal their movements, and
in some cases permits further indoctrination and
training in Bloc countries.
We believe that the scope and volume of this
training is being stepped up, just as we know that
it increased in 1962 over 1961.
The basic training covers cross-country movement
of guerrillas, firing, care of weapons, and general
guerrilla tactics.
Some of the trainees remain indefinitely. The
Cubans sometimes refer to these men as their Interna-
tional Brigade. Sometimes they are formed into na-
tional units from a particular country, in effect
forming a packaged cadre which can be returned to
the homeland at the appropriate time to lead a
"Liberation Army."
One group of trainees was asked to mark bridges
and other similar demolition targets on detailed maps
of their country. These trainees were also required
to fill out a lengthy questionnaire on sabotage tar-
gets, possibilities for subversion of police, methods
for illegal entry and travel, suitable drop zones for
air supply, possible points of attack against police
and military posts, and similar information necessary
for direction subversion and insurrection.
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STAT
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Three Cuban nationals were involved in the
strike violence at La Oroya, Peru, last December,
which culminated in some four million dollars worth
of damage to the smelter of the American-owned Cerro
de Pasco mining company.
One of these Cubans has also been directing the
armed invasions of big ranches in the Andean high-
lands by land-hungry Indians. Information of this
nature contributed to the decision of the Peruvian
junta to crack down on Communists in January.
In Brazil, in fact, the complaint of guerrillas
in training camps there was that they had been re-
cruited by a promise of Cuban instructors, but found
there were none. This came to light in the Brazilian
press when the report of a Cuban intelligence agent,
relaying their complaints to Havana, turned up in the
wreckage of the Varig airliner which crashed in Peru
in November.
With respect to weapons, in general the Cubans
are following the textbook for guerrillas in regard
to provision of arms. They are telling the guerrilla
warfare students and their leaders to obtain their
own weapons at home.
One trainee was trained exclusively in the use
and maintenance of the Garand M-l rifle and M-3 sub-
machinegun, and the Browning and Hotchkiss machine-
guns. His group was told that these were the weapons
guerrillas would be able to buy, steal, or capture
from the security forces at home.
Other trainees were told that Cuba would not be
sending weapons because there was a plentiful source
of supply for any determined guerrilla movement in
its own homeland.
Leaders of militant groups in Venezuela, Brazil,
and Peru who have gone to Cuba seeking assistance
have been told by the Cuban leaders that Cuba is will-
ing to furnish funds, training, and technical assist-
ance. Reference to weapons is pointedly omitted.
We have within the past month again reviewed
what evidence we have of military shipments from Cuba.
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(1) In Peru, radio transmitters were admittedly
brought in from Cuba. (In Venezuela so much radio
equipment was stolen last fall this was unnecessary.)
(2) In Peru, the guerrilla trainees who were
rounded up in the Huampani-Satipo incident last March
had been issued kits containing a Czech rifle with a
pistol grip, apparently of bloc origin.
Otherwise, however, in case after case guerrilla
hardware turned out to have been bought or stolen lo-
cally, or smuggled in from the adjoining country.
Latin America has a long tradition of smuggling, a
long coastline, innumerable isolated landing fields
and drop zones, and inadequate security forces to con-
trol all such channels.
In summary, then, we have evidence that in princi-
ple Cuba is not sending identifiable quantities of weap-
ons to Latin American insurgents at present. But we
have no reason to believe that they will not or cannot
do so, when so doing serves their stated purpose of
creating uprisings in Latin American countries.
Needless to say, this is a matter that we consider
of most serious concern and we intensively trace every
rumor that comes to us of the importation of arms from
Cuba to Latin American countries.
Cuban financing of subversive operations in Latin
America is generally effected by couriers carrying cash.
A few examples of these operations are:
A Venezuelan politician, Fabricio Ojeda, returning
from Cuba in March of 1962, was seen by several witnesses
to have large quantities of US currency stuffed in a
false-bottomed compartment of his suitcase. There is no
law against bringing currency into Venezuela, so that au-
thorities could not even determine how much he brought in.
Ojeda later was captured, tried, and sentenced to prison
for guerrilla activity.
A Nicaraguan exile, Julio Cesar Mayorga Portocarrera,
was flying from Mexico to Honduras in September, 1961,
when weather forced the plane to overfly Honduras and land
in Nicaragua. He was found to be carrying $3,600 in cash,
which he admitted he was bringing from Cuba for Nicaraguan
rebels in Honduras.
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Last April Ecuadorean troops raided a guerrilla
training camp in the mountains west of Quito and ar-
rested some 48 members of the URJE (Union of Revolu-
tionary Ecuadorean Youth). The leaders of the group
admitted having received guerrilla training in Cuba.
They also received Cuban funds to support their ac-
tivities; one item involving $44,000 reached the
public press.
There are also involved bank transfers by which
Cuban money eventually reached Latin American front
groups to pay for political and propaganda activity.
The principle that guerrillas must be self-sus-
taining has obviously been applied to finances as
well. Communist guerrillas have staged numerous
bank robberies in Venezuela, Peru and Argentina.
The most spectacular hold-up, for instance, was
that of a bank in a Lima suburb last year which net-
ted almost $100,000. F_ I
we know that the hold-up was carried out
by a combination of guerrillas and ordinary criminals,
who divided the loot fifty-fifty.
Just last week a bank in an outlying Venezuelan
town was robbed of $25,000 by men wearing FALN arm-
bands.
Since the October crisis, Fidel Castro has ob-
viously been trying to straddle the rift between Mos-
cow and Peiping over global Communist strategy. As
Mr. Martin aptly put it yesterday, Castro's heart is
in Peiping but his stomach is in Moscow.
This same split between all-out militancy and a
more cautious policy--call it coexistence or "two
steps forward, one step back"--is reflected on the
extreme left in many Latin American countries.
Thus Cuba at present not only seeks to serve two
masters, but to choose among rival servants in its
Latin American subversions.
Castro's views on what is good for socialism and
revolution in Latin America are more in line with those
of the Chinese Communists than the Soviets.
STAT
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Only the Cuban and Venezuelan Communist parties
are totally committed to terror and revolution.
In spite of differences over tactics and timing
between various Communist groups, all intent eventu-
ally to deliver the Latin American countries into the
Communist-socialist bloc. The so-called Soviet "con-
servative" view, as it is now espoused, is more in-
tent on trying to achieve power by legal means if pos-
sible and by subversion rather than by force.
Direct Soviet interest in Latin America is clearly
increasing.
An excellent example of this was the setting up
early in 1962 of a Latin American Institute in the
Academy of Sciences of the USSR.
The avowed purpose of this institute is to raise
the study of the problems of Latin America, which in
their own statements the Soviets claim they have neg-
lected, to the highest possible level.
Teaching of Spanish and Portuguese languages is
to be stressed in the institute and throughout the
school system.
A list of subjects on which this institute in-
tends to publish shows that it is to be used to at-
tack the Alliance for Progress; it has already at-
tacked the Alliance program in Colombia--a showpiece
of the Alliance.
Posters have been placed in some Colombian uni-
versities referring to the problems of the "national
liberation and workers I movements in Latin American
countries" as topics which will be studied by the
institute. Results of these studies will be published
in the near future in a magazine called America Latina,
intended especially for distribution in Latin America.
A pamphlet, apparently to be distributed by the
institute, and entitled Alianza para el Progreso, will
in the words of its heralds, "unmask the economic ex-
pansion of the USA" in Latin America.
The institute expects to enter into close contact
with the principal Latin American scientists and acade-
micians during 1963.
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One of the most important Communist assets in
Latin America is a large number of Bloc diplomatic
and Cuban missions. These missions are used to
further Communist subversive activities even in
countries where there are no Bloc diplomatic mis-
sions.
The Soviets and in some cases some satellites
as well, have diplomatic missions in Mexico, Brazil,
Argentina, and Uruguay. The USSR maintains relations
with Bolivia but has no resident mission there. Cuba
maintains embassies in Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, Uru-
guay, and Chile.
The Chinese Communists, of course, have no diplo-
matic ties in Latin America except with Cuba. That
fact alone would make Cuban missions important to the
Chinese. Only seven Latin American countries--Chile,
the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guate-
mala, Paraguay, and Peru--have no official ties what-
ever with any bloc country.
Uruguay offers a good example of how the Commu-
nists misuse diplomatic missions and the importance
the Communists attach to them.
Communist subversive activities in Uruguay are
not now aimed at promoting revolutionary activity
against the government. In this case even the Cubans
appear to be much more interested in retaining the
good will of the government to that they can continue
to use the country as a base of operations against
Argentina, Paraguay, etc.
Communist diplomatic missions, however, are active
in supporting local Communists and other pro-Castro
groups to retain enough leverage within the country so
as to prevent the anti-Castro groups from forcing a
break in relations.
The USSR, most of the Satellites, and Cuba all
have diplomatic missions in Montevideo--some 70 or so
bloc personnel. In addition, couriers and travelers
can go back and forth between this city and the bloc
countries and Cuba at any time.
In conclusion, on the whole, while Cuban-backed
subversive pressure is great in all of Latin America,
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the Cubans have thus far been having only limited suc-
cess. For example, Cuban attempts to organize a Com-
munist-controlled Latin American labor movement have
not yet gotten off the ground, despite the fact that
the Cubans have been working at it for more than a
year.
In Venezuela, despite the great subversive pres-
sure, President Betancourt seems to be proving that
his government can control these subversive forces.
Short of some disaster, there is every likelihood-that
he will be the first freely elected Venezuelan presi-
dent in history to complete his term. In Brazil, some
moderates were elected to congressional and guberna-
torial posts last fall.
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