BLACK POWER AND RED CUBA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01314R000100410007-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 14, 2004
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: May 21, 1968
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

Approved For II ,_0%qQi8 : CIA-RDP88-013 8000100410007-3
21 May 1968
COVER STORY
Mr. Bethel, who monitors Cuban affairs from his
desk in Miami, shows how Communist puppetmasters in Havana
and Peking manipulate American black'power leaders
and teach them their trade-which is death in our streets
BLACK POWER AND RED CUBA
PAUL D. BETHEL
I T HAS OFTEN BEEN SAID that a
country's foreign policy is the
reflection-the sum-of its domestic
policies. This most certainly is true of
America over the past seven years,
during which the Democrats in Wash-
ington have tried to meet guerrilla vio-
lence in Latin America, as they now try
to meet urban terrorism in our cities,
with what amounts to the mentality of
the social worker. Our Communist
enemies have learned something from
all of this, and reason that if the soci-
ologist's approach being used in Latin
America has failed, as it most smash-
ingly has, it certainly cannot be counted
on to succeed here. This is the final
truth behind what has now emerged as
a link between Negro militants in the
United States and subversive guerrilla
movements in Latin America.
Evidence has been accumulating over
the past several years that some leaders
of the U.S. civil rights movement are
responding to directives coming out of
Havana, rather than to any real desire
to raise the economic and social status
of the American Negroes. A most re-
cent example: Last January 11, SNCC
leader H. Rap Brown took sanctuary in
the Cuban Mission to the United Na-
tions for six hours after a policeman
spotted him lugging a package out of
the Cuban Mission and asked him what
it contained. Brown refused to answer,
and when officer Richard Gleason
moved to pull him in, Brown ran back
into the Mission. Police were refused
entry on the grounds that the Mission
enjoys diplomatic immunity.
also is vice chairman of the City Coun-
cil of Washington, D.C.). Complete de-
tails are lacking, but enough leaked out
to indicate that Carmichael's group
plans to station black power militants
in every Negro neighborhood in this
country. Carmichael's control of the or-
ganization and his ability to attract to
the meeting leading Negro figures led
UN diplomats to speculate that he
may now he receiving financial support
from Havana, and to speculate further
that money for that purpose was in the
package which H. Rap Brown refused
to surrender for inspection to the New
York patrolman.
(Human Events, citing U.S. intelli-
gence sources, reports that Carmichael
was hesitant about what to do follow-
ing Dr. King's murder, and that it was
only after receiving a phone call from
Prensa Latina, the Cuban news agency
in New York, that he rushed out into
the streets of Washington, waving a
pistol and urging Negroes to "go get
guns.)
Inspired by Havana
Following some bitter exchanges
among members of Wash;ngton's City
Council, Fauntroy was permitted to
continue to serve as a vice chairman
while accepting membership in Car-
michael's Black United Front. One
may well contemplate the hue and cry
which would attend the investiture of a
member of the Ku Klux Klan in the
City Council of our nation's capital.
That Council passes on permits to
membership in Stokely Carmichael's or-
ganization.
The inspiration to form a Black
United Front most definitely came
from Havana. On August 14, 1967 Ra-
dio Havana quoted Carmichael, who
was in Havana at the time, as follows:
"The new name [Black United Front)
will have a decisive influence on the at-
titude of the Afro-Americans to fight
with arms . . . and in teaching them
that they also arc involved in the fight
for liberty of the exploited people of
Asia, Africa, and Latin America." In
other words, Carmichael allied his goals
with that of the Tricontinental organiza-
tion of subversion which was formed
in Havana by the Soviet Union in Jan-
uary 1966, and serves as the central
strategy body through which guerrilla
wars are planned and financed. Car-
michael has now joined in those guer-
rilla wars. Although Havana announced
that Carmichael's new organization
would be called "The Negro Movement
of Liberation," his group is the "Black
United Front." But this has only cir-
cumstantial meaning. The point is that
the inspiration and militant purpose be-
hind it came from Havana.
Carmichael also is allied with the
Puerto Rican Independence Movement
(MPI) and went to San Juan a year
ago, on January 24, 1967, under MPI
auspices. The MPI staffs what it calls
a "Free Puerto Rico" embassy in Ha-
vana, while its student arm is allied
with Castro's Continental Organization
of Latin American Students. The whole
Just one day earlier, Stokely Car-
michael was in Washington organizing
groups asking to hold parades and pub-
lic meetings, determines to a large ex-
of the Puerto Rican Independence
Movement has become little more than
a puppet whose handler is in Havana.
r ?-- ?~ ?- ?+.+uug ..u,uucuneI saiu ne supportea ruerlo
ther King's WashingWtfff8 tfr6yeRel~isii4ig0d4/M25410I-RfihJ8e~3I4RO'?QdGOAAQQ@7f& independence."
Walter E. Fauntroy, s reported to other decisions in which Mr. Fauntroy He signed a "protocol" with the MPI
have attended the meeting. (Fauntroy now has a vested interest because of his and addressed his news allies in the fol?
 Approved For Release 2004/10/28 : CIA-RDP88-01314R000100410007-3
lowing terms: "There is a great connec-
tion between our fight for Negro power
in the United States and your fight for
independence," and revealed that he
was following the Havana line. Castro's
newspaper Granma quoted him:
"Brothers, we see our fight connected
with the patriotic struggle of the peo-
ples of Africa, Asia and Latin America
against foreign oppression, especially
United States oppression."
It should have come as no surprise
to Washington when Carmichael went
to Cuba in late July of last year and
took part in the Latin American Solidar-
ity Organization conference (LASO),
the branch of the Tricontinental or-
ganization specifically charged with sub-
verting the Western Hemisphere. Car-
michael was made an "honorary dele-
gate" among the 164 Communists from
27 countries and dependencies, and ap-
parently worked on the "resolution" to
free American Negroes from alleged
white oppression. Apart from the blunt
language in which the resolution itself
is couched (it is too long to consider
here), Carmichael's own statements re-
garding the resolution and his own view
of things show how important Cuba is
as a Communist base. Granma pub-
lished an interview with Carmichael in
which he said that "Fidel Castro is a
source of inspiration" and that Cuban
Communism has a special importance
"because it is the nearest system."
Asked whether his activities were 'a part
of the total picture of LASO subver-
sion, he replied: "Our very presence
here indicates that." "We are moving
toward urban guerrilla warfare within
the United States," Carmichael said,
and linked the purposes of his guer-
rilla warfare to Communist objectives:
"When the United States has fifty Viet-
nams inside and fifty outside, this will
mean the death of imperialism."
It is within the context of this vow
that a telephone conversation between
H. Rap Brown in New York City and a
Castro functionary in Havana takes on
considerable significance. The long-dis-
tance call was broadcast throughout
Latin America by Radio Havana last
August 13. Brown told Havana, "Our re-
bellion is against the power and struc-
ture of white America." He bragged
that black power now is proficient in
the terrorist urban tactics of the Viet-
cong, and said of this summer: "Each
city in America which has a large Negro
population can predict with confidence
that it will have a rebellion." The inter-
viewer prompted Brown to get on with
a discussion of discrimination against
the Negro in the armed forces, and
Brown alleged (falsely): "It is no ac-
cident that 30 per cent of the casualties
.in Vietnam are black men and that 22
per cent of the forces there are black."
He added: "They are not only killing
us in Vietnam, but in the streets of
America!" and concluded, "We live in
the stomach of the monster and we can
destroy him from within!"
In Paris at the time, Carmichael told
a cheering, stamping crowd of antiwar
demonstrators: "We don't want peace in
Vietnam. We want the Vietnamese to
defeat the United States of America.
. . . Our aim is to disrupt the United
States of America. We are going to es-
calate our resistance movement against
the war in Vietnam." He called the Viet-
cong "our brothers as well as our com-
rades in arms."
ference had to say about the war i-
Vietnam and civil rights in this coun-
try. One passage is highly interesting:
"Although geographically Afro-Ameri-
cans do not form a part of Latin
America, Asia, or Africa, special con-
siderations demand that the Tricon-
tinental Organization create the neces-
sary mechanisms so that these brothers
in the struggle will, in the future, be
able to participate in the great battle
being fought . . ." And here is how
Havana told them to do it back in
January of 1966: "Rallies of protest
against the war in Vietnam, demon-
strations, boycotts ... celebrations of
days and weeks of solidarity . . ." And
the resolution on Vietnam said that
each spring in the U.S. Negroes should
rally and protest.
On April 4, 1967 Martin Luther King
rose to the speakers' stand in New
York's Riverside Church in one of the
greatest and most irresponsible condem-
nations of American policy in Vietnam
ever to come from a well-known U.S.
citizen. King called the United States
"the greatest purveyor of violence in
the world today" and almost overnight
became one of the leaders of Vietnik
peacenik agitation in the country. He
was prominent in the Spring Mobiliza-
tion for Peace and staged a series of
mass rallies all over the country against
the war in Vietnam.
For Rele et2004tl1Q/28o: GlAe MrQ1314 }QP0Jj91 1PQQ 3i r. King's ad-
of what Havana's Tricontinental Con- herence to the Vietnik cause was the
 Approved For Release 2004/10 - - -
manner in which political resolutions
adopted by the Tricontinental Organiza-
tion in Havana in 1966 found their
way into the rhetoric of the Negro
anti-Vietnam war advocates in this
country. Compare these statements, for
instance, culled from a handful of Mar-
tin Luther King's talks after he became
a Vietnik activist in 1967:
Havana. 1966: "The Afro-Americans
are being shipped ofT to fight in
Vietnam. For each white Ameri-
can, the imperialists send two Afro-
Americans."
King. 1967: "Twice as many Negroes
as whites arc in comb-u."
Havana, 1966: "North American ag-
gressors deliberately use new scien-
tific discoveries that kill our for-
ests . .
King, 1967: "We kill a million acres of
their crops, poison their water ..."
Havana. 1966: "The invading forces in
Vietnam surpassed the barbaric ac-
tions of Hitler's hordes . . mu-
tilations, savage tortures, mass as-
sassinations . . .
King, 1967: "We try out new weapons
on them, just as the Germans
tested out new medicines and new
tortures in the concentration camps
of Europe . . .
Whether consciously or not, Martin
Luther King was placing himself in the
company, not only of Stokely Car-
michael and H. Rap Brown, but of
Robert Williams, the Negro fugitive
from justice from North Carolina,
who is wanted on a kidnaping
charge. Williams fled to Cuba six
years ago, urged American Negroes,
over Radio Havana, to form "fire
teams" and burn the cities; put out
an incendiary magazine called the
Crusader which gave details on how
to make homemade fire bombs,
booby traps,. napalm bombs and
flame-throwers. A couple of years
ago he disappeared from the public
view and turned up some months
later in Peking where his propa-
ganda efforts were turned toward
Negro GIs in Vietnam. (Sample:
"If you get trapped in this war, you
should eliminate as many of your
real enemies [white Americans] as
you can at the front so that these
racists will not be able to return
home.")
Several months ago, Williams an-
nounced he wanted to return to the
United States, presumably to he
where the action is going to be this
summer. And last month in De-
troit, the National Black4ArejXed
ment Conference founded the Re-
public of New Africa (comprising
the former states of Mississippi, Ala.
hama, Louisiana, South Carolina and
Georgia) and elected Robert Williams
President (11. Rap Brown is to be Min-
ister of Defense).
Militants Seize Opportunity
There is also the matter of the itt
volvement of Carmichael and Co. with
the Puerto Rican Independence move-
ment. Two Puerto Ricans in the Cuban
Mission to the UN are credited by their
diplomatic colleagues with having man-
aged the MPI-Carmichael alliance. One,
Mrs. Laura Menescs de Albizu, is the
widow of Pedro Albizu, who was the
original leader of the Independence
Movement and also in on the plot
to shoot President Harry S. Truman
two decades ago. The other is Juan
Juarhe y Juarhe, a writer for Castro's
original 26th of July organ. Revolu-
cidn, back in 1959 and a contributor to
Cuba's propaganda wire service, Prensa
Latina, today. Both are cloaked by dip-
lomatic immunity, but also are involved
in a Tricontinental Information Center
which has recently been opened at 1133
Broadway in New York City. Federal
authorities have yet to mention that this
Cuban-linked office has been established
in the United States, and have done
nothing about it. The suddenness with
which militants take advantage of hesi-
tation, confusion or weakness make it
entirely possible that the SNCC-backed
office will invite Latin American guer-
rillas to come to the United States and
speak here. By that time, the initial
shock of the event will have been dissi-
pated in the elephantine reflexes of our
State Department. Indeed, a step has
already been taken in that direction
with the presentation of Angel Silen, a
leader of the FUPI (the Puerto Rican
Independence Movements Youth Arm),
whose speech a few months ago might
have been writ,tcn in Havana,
However that may be, this much
seems certain. Our foreign policy fail-
ure in the confrontation with Com-
munism in Cuba and elsewhere has
come to roost on the rifle barrels of
Negro militants in our cities. And no
amount of political cover-up can ob-
scure the fact that this country now is
besieged at home and very close by
with a sophisticated array of psycho-
logical and physical weaponry. This is
the final reward of the social worker
in the field of foreign affairs and the
ultimate truth of what we face because
For Release 2004/10/28 : CIA-RDP88-01314R000100410007-3