PROPOSED PRESIDENTIAL STATEMENT ON CUBA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79T00429A000600040003-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 23, 2004
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: November 4, 1963
• Content Type: MEMO

( Approved For Release 2004/10/08: CIA-RDP79T00429A00
4 November 1963
MEMORANDUM FOR: Director of Central Intelligence
SUBJECT : Proposed Presidential Statement on
Cuba
1. We consider this to be an appropriate time for
a Presidential statement on the Cuban situation. The
growing economic pressures weighing on the Cuban people,
the regime's increasing restrictions on individual rights,
the continuing harassment of exile raids, and the mount-
ing indications of frictions between the Cuban and Soviet
regimes combine to create conditions that would probably
give such a Presidential statement a greater impact inside
Cuba than would have been the case even a few months ago.
2. We have reviewed the proposed Presidential state-
ments on Cuba which were circulated to the members of the
Standing Group of the NSC for the 16 July meeting (attached).
Our comments of .15 July on these proposed statements remain
valid.
3. Because of the changes that have occurred in the
Cuban situation, however, we feel that several new points
would be appropriate for a Presidential statement at this
time, along with many of the key points made in the De-
partment of State draft of July. Specifically, we feel
that the following points should be added:
a. We think there should be greater emphasis
on the worsening economic plight of the Cuban people:
the general economic decline that was manifest well
before Hurricane Flora; the continuing shortages of
consumer goods; the ineptness of the Castro bureauc-
racy; the tightened control by the regime over the
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lives of the Cuban workers; the weakening of worker
incentives and the substitution of work speed-up gim-
micks; the attempts to liquidate the medium farmer
inherent in the 4 October decree confiscating all
farms larger than 167 acres; the shift in agriculture
from cooperatives to the more tightly controlled
state farms; and the concern of the small private
farmers that they will be next.
b. We feel that it would perhaps be useful for
the President to make some statement on US policy
toward a post-Castro regime re-emphasizing that the
United States does not envisage the turning back of
the political clock in Cuba to pre-Castro days and
stating United States willingness to work with and
assist a popularly-based anti-Communist regime. It
might be appropriate to recall the following passages
from the President's address in the Orange Bowl on
29 December 1962:
"Under the Alianza para el Progreso,
we support for Cuba and for all the countries
of this hemisphere the right of free elections
and the free exercise of basic human freedoms.
We support land reform and the right of every
campesino to own the land he tills. We sup-
T;ort effort of every free nation toursue
programs of economic progress. ; e support right of every free people to freely transform
the economic and political institutions of
society so that they may serve the welfare of
all...and I believe these are the principles
of the great majority of Cuban people today,
and I am confident that all over the island
of Cuba, in the government itself, in the army,
and in the militia, there are many who have
viewed with dismay the destruction of freedom
on their island and who are determined to re-
store that freedom so that the Cuban people
may once more govern themselves."
c. Specifically, we believe it extremely im-
portant in this context that the President emphasize
our recognition that many Cubans now serving the
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Castro regime will play a part in its overthrow.
These people need to be assured that the United
States is sympathetic to their problems.
d. We feel that it would also be appropriate
again to stress the fact that Cuba has become a sat-
ellite of a foreign power and an instrument of a for-
eign ideology. Even though the number of Soviet
military personnel in Cuba has been reduced in recent
months, this has not lessened Cuba's dependence on
the Soviet Union.
e. The President might also wish to touch on
the problem of Cuban subversion in other Latin Amer-
ican countries, stressing the point that Castro is
inciting small minorities in every other Latin Amer-
ican country toward violence and terrorism in an at-
tempt to lessen the pressures weighing on him at
home. Ile seeks thereby to destroy developing demo-
cratic institutions in many of these countries before
they have become sufficiently well-rooted to demon-
strate their value.
STAT
R. J. SMITH
Acting Deputy Director (Intelligence)
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