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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CIA-RDP65B00383R000400060004-0
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February 19, 2004
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February 19, 1963
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STATEMENT
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Approved For Release 2004/03/15 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000400060004-0 STATEMENT BY THE HONORABLE JOHN A. MCCONE DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS, TUESDAY, 19 FEBRUARY 1963 Approved For Release 2004/03/15 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000400060004-0 Approved For Release 2004/03/15 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000400060004-0 The public pronouncements of Cuban leaders, the anily record of events in Latin America and reports 1 ::1 25X1 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. Approved For Release 2004/03/15 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000400060004-0 Approved For Release 2004/03/15 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000400060004-0 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. Approved For Release 2004/03/15 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000400060004-0 Approved For Release 2004/03/15 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000400060004-0 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. Approved For Release 2004/03/15 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000400060004-0 Approved For Release 2004/03/15 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000400060004-0 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. Approved For Release 2004/03/15 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000400060004-0 Approved For Release 2004/03/15 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000400060004-0 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. Approved For Release 2004/03/15 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000400060004-0 STAT Approved For Release 2004/03/15 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000400060004-0 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. Approved For Release 2004/03/15 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000400060004-0 Approved For Release 2004/03/15 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000400060004-0 (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. Approved For Release 2004/03/15 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000400060004-0 Approved For Release 2004/03/15 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000400060004-0 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 Approved For Release 2004/03/15 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000400060004-0 Approved For Release 2004/03/15 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000400060004-0 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. Approved For Release 2004/03/15 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000400060004-0 Approved For Release 2004/03/15 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000400060004-0 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, Approved For Release 2004/03/15 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000400060004-0 Approved For Release 2004/03/15 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000400060004-0 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. Approved For Release 2004/03/15 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000400060004-0 25X1 Approved For Release 2004/03/15 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000400060004-0 Next 57 Page(s) In Document Exempt Approved For Release 2004/03/15 : CIA-RDP65B00383R000400060004-0