Spycraft - Melton [156]
A little more than a month later, on April 21, 1963, Wally, Dave, and Andy, along with eighteen other prisoners, were told to gather up their belongings. They were transported back to La Cabana and released in exchange for four Cuban nationals held in New York on charges of sabotage conspiracy.38
Taking off from Havana for Florida’s Homestead Air Force Base, they were well into the air when a CIA medical officer told Wally that his mother had died. The news touched the deepest emotions of the techs who endured two and a half years of depravation and uncertainty. They cried together.
When the plane’s hatch opened to a media pack on Homestead’s tarmac, the American soldier of fortune, Pecoraro, was the first to step off the plane to freedom. The three techs, to avoid the cameras, lingered behind the others, and were then hustled away to a nearby safe house to see their families, receive medical attention, and undergo the obligatory debriefings.
The techs had been in captivity for 949 days, and for the entire time their cover and aliases held. In prison, they had refrained from discussing the operation or personal reminiscences about home and family lest other inmates overhear the conversation and their cover stories erode. Yet, within days of their return, someone whispered to the press that the three American tourists held in Castro’s prison were, in fact, CIA officers.
The CIA debriefings lasted for about a week. They were interviewed by psychologists, counterintelligence officers, debriefers, and subjected to polygraph examinations. Personal security became a concern after their identities were leaked to the press. During the summer of 1963, the techs waited for the phone call that would return them to duty. Wally went north to be near his father, while Andy was sent to a fishing camp in Florida owned by Agency retirees. Dave remained in the Washington area.
Eventually certified fit for duty, the three returned to new assignments in the fall of 1963. Dave Christ, against his preference, was transferred to the Office of Research and Development in the newly formed Directorate of Science and Technology. Andy and Wally continued working in TSD. Andy became head of an equipment testing and certification unit at the OTS laboratory while Wally remained in audio operations.
TSD Chief Seymour Russell told Andy that he should not expect to be treated any differently from other techs—he would be judged on the quality of his future work, not the past. Initially, even within TSD, the returnees were avoided by some of their colleagues and business was conducted around them. The only senior Agency official who formally acknowledged what the techs had endured was Executive Director Lyman Kirkpatrick, during a brief meeting with them in his office. Quietly, each received a one-grade promotion but, otherwise, for the official bureaucracy, their nearly three years spent in a Cuban prison never happened.
Christ, seeking no personal recognition, submitted a lengthy and comprehensive recommendation to CIA management in late 1964 that Andy and Wally be given “the highest possible” Agency award for the courage, imagination, and fortitude they exhibited during the ordeal.39 The recommendation was ignored and Christ retired in 1970.
When Andy announced his intention to retire from the Agency in 1979, David S. Brandwein, then director of OTS, conducted a routine review of his personnel file to determine what retirement award might be appropriate. Included in Andy’s file was a copy of Christ’s 1964 memo. The graphic description of the conditions in the prison and professionalism