American Conspiracies - Jesse Ventura [22]
For the next twenty minutes, I couldn’t stop him from talking. First of all, he said it was an “inside job,” meaning that the assassination was orchestrated from within the United States. He very intently stared at me and said—which also told me that he was aware of my military background—“You know as well as I do, Oswald couldn’t make the shots.” Then he went on to explain the reason he knew that. During the Cuban Revolution, he was the main guy who taught and carried out sniper work. Knowing all he did about this, he knew Oswald couldn’t have accomplished the job with the antiquated Mannlicher-Carcano rifle that he used.
Then Fidel described why it was an inside job. First of all, he said, he was very close to the Soviet Union at that time. “The Soviets didn’t do it,” he stated emphatically. In fact, the Kremlin leaders had told him about Kennedy: “You can talk to this man.” Apparently the Russians were pleased that Kennedy had enough of an open mind to at least consider their side’s position, on Cuba and other matters. Besides, neither country wanted another nuclear confrontation like the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Secondly, Castro said, “I didn’t do it.” Again his gaze was penetrating. He went on, “I’m not suicidal crazy. Why would I destroy my Cuba, the country I love so much. If I would have ordered Kennedy killed, and the United States found out, we wouldn’t exist anymore. They would have unleashed everything they had on us, and basically blown us off the face of the earth. Why would I take that risk?”
It made sense to me. Not only that, but look who was waiting in the wings—Lyndon Baines Johnson. I didn’t see his becoming president as a positive for Fidel Castro.
He also recalled for me how, at the moment Kennedy was killed, he was meeting in Havana with a French journalist named Jean Daniel, whom Kennedy had personally sent to see him. Castro felt very strongly that Kennedy was considering a change in policy towards Cuba. I could tell that he felt Cuba was worse off without Kennedy alive.
He said again, “It was completely an inside job. It was done by people within the United States of America.”
I wanted to ask for specifics—it felt like he knew some—but our time was up.
That last night, I turned to my Cuban bodyguards and asked them to take me out for a night on the town. They took me to the infamous Club Havana. It’s a beautiful nightclub, maybe the biggest one in Cuba, with a Vegas-type entertainment show where they bring out Latino comedians, a variety of different musical acts, and have beautiful Cuban girls who dance in their feathered native costumes.
The night wore on. Castro apparently has informants everywhere. One of them came up and whispered something to my bodyguard, who then told me. It seems that some CIA operatives were tailing me. I thought to myself—is that for my benefit, or for theirs? Am I in some type of danger that they need to be following me around? I don’t think so. I doubt that Fidel Castro would want an American governor coming to harm on his island, when I’m there on a mission of good will. So I ruled out that somehow the CIA were hanging around to protect me, especially considering I had my own armed bodyguards plus the three assigned by Fidel.
The Cubans had only one question: Did I want to lose them? If this made me uncomfortable, they would help me get rid of these guys and we could go on about our business. I said, “No, we’re not going to even acknowledge that they’re here. Who cares, we’re not doing anything wrong. There’s nothing they’ll be able to blackmail me with, or take back to the U.S. about any misbehavior on my part. Let’s ignore them, they’re not going to ruin our night.”
So we ended up going to another club, and I don’t know if we were followed there or not. The subject was never brought up again. It could be the Cuban security team decided on a means to lose them on the way; I never inquired. What I did do was put this incident on