Spycraft - Melton [150]
“Talk about stink,” said Anderson. “Once in a while they would get some ‘volunteers’ for clean-up duty. The ‘president’ of the circular’s prisoners was an ex-motorcycle cop that worked for Batista. He was a tall mulatto guy whose job was to control the prison and he would get a couple guys to bring some water up and they’d get a stick, pour water in, stir, and keep repeating until they finally emptied the thing.”
Castro’s prison held an odd mix of inmates, including many of Cuba’s prerevolutionary elite of doctors, lawyers, and businessmen along with Batista loyalists and an American soldier of fortune. These political prisoners were held in circulars different from those that housed common criminals. “Of course there was politics. All the counterrevolutionaries hated the Batista people and vice versa,” said Andy. “But they were all in there together.”
The inmates received meager rations of food and the bare necessities of life. The lucky ones received care packages supplied by relatives and friends or bought food in the prison commissary. A few who had the financial means bought food from outside restaurants that prison officials would dutifully deliver. However, for those who could not afford to supplement their prison lifestyle with outside resources, existence was often unbearable. The inadequate diet of rice and beans prompted some starving prisoners to sell their beds for additional food. Prisoners who had no paper ripped off pieces of their shirt to clean themselves after using the toilet. Those who lacked the discipline for personal hygiene lived in filth.
The three techs sent collect telegrams to Mario’s maid—who had acted as their outside contact when they were in La Cabana—asking for supplies to be sent in. “As a result, we got packages once in a while,” remembered Wally. “That’s the only way you lived in a Cuban jail. They give you almost nothing. They gave us those Batista military khakis with big P’s stenciled on the back, but if you couldn’t come up with razor blades, soap, toilet paper, spoons, dishes, and the like, you did without and they couldn’t care less.”
Eventually the CIA arranged for a private attorney to hire a woman to bring the techs packages from the States. The techs were surprised and encouraged as much by the packaging as the contents, since the type of tape and wrapping used were unmistakably the type used at the TSD warehouse near Washington, D.C. It was a clear signal they had not been forgotten.
“During the time we were in prison, the outside attorney’s assistant continued to arrange to get us occasional packages—and sometimes we’d get a big plastic bag of Mixture No. 79 [pipe tobacco],” explained Wally. “When we saw how the packages were wrapped and sealed, it didn’t take a rocket scientist adding up two and two to make four to guess who was packaging this stuff and sending it in. After I was released, a friend told me he was nosing around the warehouse and watched the guys packing supplies like underwear and Tang orange drink for shipment to tech bases around the world. But there was one older man over in the corner working all by himself. He would go over to the line, take some stuff out and put it in a box. My friend asked the guy, ‘How come you’re not over working with the rest them?’ He replied very quietly, ‘Don’t say anything, what I’m doing is for our boys in Cuba. The others don’t know that.’”
Less frequently, the techs received letters, including some from family or TSD colleagues. One letter to Dave included a picture of Mia, a TSD secretary oddly identified as Sally Wilson. In the photo, a male Agency colleague was embracing the woman. The two, who had no known personal association, were pictured walking across a stream. Although Dave thought it a strange photo, he was still happy to see familiar faces. Only after their release did the techs learn Sally Wilson was a clue signaling that the photograph contained secret writing and should be soaked in water. “If we had put the picture in water the back would have come