(UNTITLED)

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000600040139-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 15, 1998
• Sequence Number: 139
• Publication Date: August 17, 1965
• Content Type: OPEN

CPYRGHT FOIAb3
AUGUST 17, 1965
,raaniitized 4 ApprovedsRbrrrrRelea
"restored to otiicial duty" all ouicial n:uned William
\Vicland offers a disturbing insight into the
security standards of the Johnson Administration.
Wieland had been charged by a number of people, in-
cluding three former ambassadors, with suppressing in-
formation about the Communist ties of Fidel Castro Bur-
in; the time Castro was battling for power in Cuba and
Wieland occupied a pivotal position in the Caribbean
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section of the State Department. As a result of these
Charges, and of questions raised by the Department's top
security specialist, Otto Otepka, Wieland's credentials
were put under review. The Department has now ex-
onerated him.
According to the advisory board which examined his
case, Wieland's conduct was not reproachably partial to
Castro. Instead, said the three board members, "Wieland
has honestly exercised his judgment over the years in-
cluding the period of the difficult and highly complex
Cuban situation." So opining, the State Department says
Wieland is considered "completely cleared and his case
closed."
The Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, however,
came to some different conclusions about Wieland, after
extensive hearings on the State Department's role in the
fall of Cuba to Communism. In contrast to the Foggy
Bottom verdict' of Wieland's innocence, the senators
charged (a) that Wieland had considerable information
showing Castro was a Communist well before the Cuban
dictator came to power, (b) that Wieland at no point
passed this information along to his superiors in the
State Department, and (c) that he actively campaigned
to sway American policy in favor of a man who by
WVieland's own declaration was tied in with the Com-
munists.
onlmunrst conncc ,
pointed Ambassador Earl E. T. Smith to be "briefed"
on Cuba by Castro's most blatant press apologist, Herbert
Matthews; and that he kept the lid on intelligence re-
ports showing that Castro was either a Communist or
a tool of, the Communists.
The Subcommittee seemed less ready than the State
Department to believe these actions the result of honest
error. It pointed out that Wieland had repeatedly proved
his knowledge of the fact that Castro was interlaced with
Ar;Gnu ciecScsu~as :.:;oat Wieland during the Subcommit-
tee's hearings were the facts that Wieland was instru-
mental in having U.S. aid to anti-Communist Cuban
boss Fulgencio Batista cut off at the height of the battle
with Castro ; that he interfered with intelligence of-
ficials trying to inform D:. Milton Eisenhower of Castro',
r, ti-"s that he instructed newly ap-
t,i u ; .v
present in Bogota, Colombia, during the 1943 riots, an,I
knew Castro had been involved in this Conunt;nist-in-
spired disturbance. He also knew Raul Castro, hid el's
brother, had attended a Red Congress in Prague,
Czechoslovakia, and that Che Guevara, Castro's other
top lieutenant, was a Communist.
In addition, Wieland told close friends, including
Samuel Shaffer of Newsweek and Mrs. Frank Bccerra-
according to their uncontradicted testimony-that Castro
was a Communist. Becerra testified Wieland told him
in 1957: "Fidel Castro is a Communist. Fidel Castro
will be the ruination of Cuba if he gets into power.
Fidel Castro was one of the leaders of the famous Bogota
uprising in Bogota in 1948. . ."
Despite this demonstrated knowledge o ,`tro's Bol-
shevik affinities, Wieland did nothing to aicit the U.S.
Government to the dangers he privately confided to
friends, and worked actively to bring about Castro's
rise to power. Ambassador Smith writes in his book,
The Fourth Floor, that in January 1958 "Wieland
visited the American embassy in Havana and showed
us a paper he had written, which depicted the economy
of Cuba as crumbling and recommended that the United
States apply pressure on the government of Cuba to
hasten its downfall."
VJ::on qucsiionod about these matters, Wieland suffered
memory failure, alleging he could not recall confronta-
tionis to which two and three witnesses had given mutually
sustaining testimony.. In some instances, according to se-
curity expert Otepka, Wieland gave the senators false
information.
Examining the total record, the Subcommittee came to
these conclusions about Wieland:
"He was appointed without any security check. . . .
"He falsified his job application by omission.
"When he later filled out an expanded personal history
form, he falsified that by direct misstatement.
"Mr. Wieland had a hand in shaping our policy with
respect to Cuba both before and after Castro's takeover.
One of the things the Department paid him for
was his expertise-his own judgment based on his own
experience.
"Yet he never told his superiors officially or wrote in
any Department paper, down to the very day when
Fidel Castro stood before the world as a self-proclaimed
;Marxist, what he told his friends privately . . . that
Castro `is a Communist,' and . . . `subject to Com-
munist influences.'"
.~' ciaad, with that record, is "completely cleared,
it becomes apparent that' thcre'_is' very little, in- the,
State Department view, for which an employee can be
"uncleared"--with one exception: Otto Otepka, the se-
curity officer who gave Wieland an adverse security
rarinn. was of course fired.
NA,Tio,xASIat%W IApproved, For Release : CIA-RDP75- & g00600040fi 3b
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