Because of his position, Lansdale was pulled into the anti-Castro enterprise he had advised against. As early as May, Dick Bissell told Lansdale of the CIA’s newest plan to keep the heat on Castro. In retirement the general later conjectured that his involvement with Cuba had damaged his career most. If there was one thing he could take back, that would have been it. But in 1961 Ed Lansdale answered the summons of the White House.

  Complaints about the handling of the Bay of Pigs brought no end to the secret war against Castro. If anything, the administration redoubled its efforts. Brigadistas still roamed the Zapata swamps when Bobby Kennedy sent Jack a memorandum calling for new action. Even during the interval of stocktaking the NSC affirmed the intent to get rid of Castro, and the CIA strove to rebuild its covert capability against Cuba. The agency had a new proposal within a month of the failure. That summer the president put aide Richard Goodwin in charge of a group to review proposals for new measures. In the fall the Special Group reviewed the situation.

  The CIA, overwhelmed by the travail of its move to a new headquarters complex at Langley, nevertheless furnished Maxwell Taylor’s committee a full readout on Cuba. According to the CIA, the anti-Castro political groups were becoming more realistic, though Miro Cardona, being subsidized to the tune of $90,000 a month, still represented a problem. Exile groups were providing recruits for paramilitary training, and the CIA had a thirty-five man commando unit, the rump of the Niño Diaz element of the Cuban brigade, ready for action. Propaganda efforts were in the best shape. Radio Swan continued its broadcasts. CIA had gotten its programming onto dozens of stations in Latin America and several in Florida as well. A ship for pirate radio broadcasts to Cuba had also become available. The agency had about a dozen agents or communicators ready to infiltrate, and retained contact with twenty-six more in Cuba, mostly in the Havana area. The CIA carefully added that some anti-Castro Cubans were carrying out sabotage missions in Cuba without its support. Its own plans were for minor actions; any major missions would be cleared with the Special Group.

  At that stage Jack Kennedy took a hand. With his brother Bobby the president discussed a “command operation” inside Cuba. According to journalist Don Bohning’s careful account, the impetus may have come from the outside, from reporter Tad Szulc, no less. Szulc was running around Washington lobbying for renewed covert operations, even telling a friend, diplomat Robert Hurwitch, that he hoped to see the president. Szulc in fact did see JFK. How much of this was Szulc, how much Kennedy, and how much Richard Goodwin, for that matter, is not clear. Goodwin sent the president a memo at the beginning of November that analyzed the idea as “the only effective way to handle an all-out attack on the Cuban problem.”

  Goodwin believed. Assistant counsel to the president, he had talked with Bissell about a renewed covert program since a month after the Bay of Pigs disaster, taking Tracy Barnes’s suggestions for deliberations of his task force. Goodwin then had an uncanny encounter with Che Guevara at a Latin American conference in Uruguay that summer, at which Che had thanked the Kennedy man for the Bay of Pigs, now a boon to Castro’s efforts to consolidate control. “The beauty of such an operation over the next few months,” Goodwin had written, “is that we cannot lose.” Either the CIA would unseat Castro or it would end up with a stronger underground, better propaganda, and a clearer idea of Castro’s power. But Goodwin recommended against CIA leadership, reckoning that it should be headed by Robert Kennedy. Goodwin helped Tad Szulc in his quest to see administration higher-ups. Over a period of a few days in early November, Szulc met with both Bobby and Jack Kennedy. Szulc’s meeting with the president is reported to have been at the suggestion of his brother.

  President Kennedy handled this situation carefully. Szulc, one of those journalists who had ferreted out the Bay of Pigs plans, had excellent contacts in Cuba and had proven himself an acute observer. That summer he had reported through Arthur Schlesinger a private conversation with Castro after the Bay of Pigs. The only other person present at his Oval Office chat with the president late on the morning of November 9 was Goodwin. Kennedy sat in his rocking chair, Goodwin on the sofa. JFK mostly asked questions. According to his own notes of this conversation, Szulc told the president that “Castro thought [that] despite the Bay of Pigs, JFK was the only American politician with whom he could deal in terms of improved relations.” Kennedy expressed no interest in that. Instead he asked how strong Castro seemed, whether new covert operations made sense, things like that. The president felt the need to control the CIA, to make it impossible for the agency to “construct another operation like the Bay of Pigs.” He said something about setting up a “special group on Cuba.”

  Suddenly Kennedy leaned forward in his chair.

  “What would you think if I ordered Castro to be assassinated?” the president asked.

  Taken aback, Tad Szulc replied that it would be a terrible idea: such a scheme could only make Castro stronger. Kennedy said he had only been testing. He felt the same way, but he’d been under “terrific pressure” to go ahead with a murder plot. The United States, the president declared, “morally must not be part[y] to assassinations.”

  Tad Szulc made no use of this information. But Kennedy went ahead and did what he had told the reporter, all of it. Lansdale received his own call to the White House around this time—he called it “the late fall of 1961.” The timing narrows considerably because a Lansdale memo to McNamara on November 25 shows him already at work on Cuba. Lansdale made out that his assignment had been vague, but it was to be done directly for the president, and Kennedy personally asked him to do it. Lansdale would “look over the situation vis a vis the U.S. in Cuba and . . . see if I had any ideas.”

  Lansdale reported back within days. He estimated Castro’s overthrow to be possible, but the Cuban sugar crop should be attacked at once and Fidel should be kept so busy with internal problems that he would have no time to stir up trouble in Latin America. Robert McNamara and Bobby Kennedy sat in. A Goodwin note on November 22 indicates the secret warrior had already put these thoughts to paper.

  When Maxwell Taylor convened the Special Group that same day, he groused that Edward Lansdale ought to be in another part of the world, a reference to the proposal that the general go to Saigon as ambassador. That Taylor, who had struggled to exclude Lansdale from his own recent Vietnam inspection trip, and then to minimize Lansdale’s role on it, should want him for ambassador is striking. Several days later in a memo to McNamara, Lansdale actually thanked him for nixing that proposition: “I am most grateful for your decision last week protesting the idea of my going out to Vietnam ‘to hold Diem’s hand,’ ” Lansdale wrote. The task that really needed doing, he noted, was “working to get a certain special project, of interest to the President, off dead center.” This byplay puts a far different light on the received history of Lansdale’s candidacy for ambassador.

  Sam Halpern, whom Lansdale had known since the early 1950s, had recently been reassigned to the Cuba branch. Lansdale asked him for a cryptonym for the new Cuba project. In an effort to obscure the project, Halpern looked at a list of code names set aside for Thailand. He selected Mongoose.

  Edward Lansdale became the man of Project Mongoose, planning and supervising this covert action. A presidential directive on November 30 declared Kennedy’s determination to “use our available assets to go ahead with the discussed project in order to help Cuba overthrow the communist regime.” The Pentagon, State Department, and CIA were to designate representatives to help Lansdale, and each should have “effective operational control over all aspects of their Department’s [sic] operations dealing with Cuba.” On a single sheet of paper President Kennedy cast the die for his vendetta.

  Robert Kennedy quickly emerged as field marshal of this renewed secret war, though corridor gossip gave Lansdale that role, even nicknaming him “FM.” Almost daily Lansdale informed Bobby—in quick handwritten notes, memoranda, hallway conversations, on the phone—of progress in the operation. Before a Special Group session in early December, for example, Lansdale frankly told RFK, “I decided to lay it right on the line on what it will take to win against the communist team.” He anticipated problems: “I’m not sanguine that even a heavy whip will put the right spirit into bureaucrats, but doggone it we have to work with what we have.” A month later Lansdale asked the attorney general to personally make clear to Edward R. Murrow, head of the U.S. Information Agency, Lansdale’s authority to give him orders. A week after that Lansdale warned Bobby of his presentation to the Special Group. When Lansdale actually presented the Mongoose plan on January 18, 1962, he again supplied the first copies to Robert and John F. Kennedy.

  Lansdale presented an elaborate proposal. He divided the new Cuba operation into six phases, to end with Castro’s overthrow. Like an escalation ladder, the phases began with intelligence gathering and proceeded through more strenuous actions. Lansdale included almost three dozen separate elements, from establishing pathfinder agents, then bases, then clandestine headquarters, to actions like sabotage or work slowdowns, to open revolt. One item anticipated defections of Castro’s henchmen; another, attacks on revolutionary cadre, including key leaders. The Special Group consensus viewed this as a good start but wanted it broken into a more explicit schedule. The next day Bobby Kennedy convened Lansdale’s assistants, with CIA deputy director Marshall Carter attending for the agency. RFK delivered an exhortation: action on Cuba required not merely Lansdale’s effort but theirs, and they were to use every resource at their command, spare no expense. This had become the chief priority of the United States. Bobby quoted his brother, the president: “The final chapter on Cuba has yet to be written.”

  By February Lansdale had completed a fresh version that timed his phases to culminate in October 1962. McGeorge Bundy’s doodles and notes reveal that the Special Group (Augmented) talked over the number of Cuban exiles ready to fight, teams necessary for various operations, transportation needs and hardware for a voice of the Cuban movement, and that old bugaboo, the point when the United States might intervene. Arrangements now fell into place quickly. Guidelines for Mongoose, dated March 5 and prepared by Maxwell Taylor, instructed the secret warriors to proceed in such fashion as to permit disengagement. General Lansdale would continue as project chief. The CIA next day promised to ensure a steady flow of intelligence on Cuba—this flaw of the Bay of Pigs would be avoided. Secret warriors actually hired the Zogby firm to conduct an opinion poll in Latin America identifying countries where propaganda gains against Castro were possible and issues the CIA could use to that end.

  All the work built to a meeting with Kennedy in the Oval Office on the afternoon of March 14, 1962. Everyone was there, including the Joint Chiefs chairman and representatives of Robert McNamara and Dean Rusk. Just before the president entered, Lansdale told the group that Taylor’s guidelines would preclude success. Taylor emphasized the need to gather intelligence. President Kennedy, as he had done before the Bay of Pigs, shut off discussion of U.S. intervention. The group nevertheless considered certain military support for the CIA and contemplated sabotage plans for Mongoose. A lot rode on knocking out Castro’s patrol boats. JFK congratulated his warriors on what they had accomplished, complained about the danger the press might guess what impended, and wondered if the United States should refuse further Cuban immigration. The president reassured his warriors: he wanted them to carry on.

  Waiting in the anteroom during the key Mongoose meeting were CIA officers Richard Helms and William K. Harvey. Lansdale had asked John McCone to let them in, but the CIA director nixed the idea. McCone had made Dick Helms his lieutenant for Cuba, and the new deputy director for operations spent part of every day on the issue. Excluding the DDO and the task force chief was highly unusual. McCone may have wanted to keep the play in his own hands, or he may have anticipated the fight over guidelines and wanted no witnesses. Or perhaps, like Jack and Bobby, McCone felt CIA had made a poor showing and wished to keep as low a profile as possible.

  The fact was that the CIA had begun reconstituting quite quickly after the Bay of Pigs, something not evident to the Cuban agents left to flap in the wind as Castro’s security services hunted them down, but true nonetheless. Records of DCI morning staff meetings indicate the agency began planning new activities for Cuba within weeks of the disaster. By May 19 it had a proposal. The agency offered a revised plan in July with a price tag of $13 million.

  Arthur Schlesinger complained to Dick Goodwin, the White House commissar of the secret war on Castro, that the CIA’s notion of island-wide resistance under its own banner represented a focus on convenience rather than pathways to success. The same discrimination against the non-Castro left and favoritism for the batistianos that had characterized the Bay of Pigs remained pervasive. “It is a fallacy,” Schlesinger warned, “to suppose that clandestine activity can be carried out in a political vacuum.” That August, Kennedy approved the scheme anyway. By September the idea was that the CIA would act through Cuban groups with potential for effective political opposition, and that covert activity would destroy important economic targets.

  Kennedy’s National Security Council formally adopted the goal of ousting Castro and considered means ranging from a naval blockade to an international Caribbean Security Force to strong economic sanctions, with the CIA one more arrow in Kennedy’s quiver. The military dreamed up deception schemes that would establish a justification to invade Cuba, and updated its contingency plans.

  In mid-December 1961 John McCone had to explain to JFK when the press reported a new covert operations snafu: the eight-man team intended to carry out Operation Whale had suffered an engine failure and aborted their mission, and their boat had been rescued by the Coast Guard. A couple of the agents were picked up by a passing freighter, leading to press attention when panicked operatives tried to hush up the episode. Eyes must have widened when McCone said that he could not establish who had given orders for that raid.

  Plenty of CIA laundry would have to be washed at the Special Group (Augmented). But the Kennedys kept CIA under the lash. Where Max Taylor told them to proceed in a low key, Bobby Kennedy insisted no time, money, or effort be spared. He met the managers at his Justice Department office to drive the point home. By January 1962 he had begun regular sessions to prod the bureaucracy.

  The Central Intelligence Agency maintained its Miami base in a colonial-style building on the south campus of the University of Miami. Bob Reynolds left, temporarily replaced by Robert Davis. The former Guatemala chief stepped on toes at Jay Gleichauf’s refugee reception center, a major source of recruits and information on conditions inside Cuba. Next the CIA dispatched Albert L. Cox. Best known for his role in acquiring and managing Civil Air Transport, Cox had been an OSS commando in Italy and France, had run operations against the Red Chinese from Hong Kong, had managed CAT during its campaign at Dien Bien Phu, and had since worked in staff positions at headquarters. Cox had been chief of the paramilitary branch of CIA’s Covert Action Staff. But though Cox could put pieces back together, some doubted his dedication. He stood among those at the agency who had entertained hopes for Castro at the beginning, and very early on had even advocated cooperating with the Cuban leader.

  About the time CIA moved to Langley, William K. Harvey, task force boss, learned that a colleague from Berlin was back in town. Harvey summoned Theodore G. Shackley and sent him to Miami to report on what the base needed to be reconstituted as a full CIA station. Shackley spent a few weeks looking over the situation, then filed his report. Harvey then appointed him chief of operations under Cox.

  Ted Shackley insinuates that Al Cox somehow was not serious. He records the man as absent when he arrived, and suggests the chief turned up only intermittently afterward. When Harvey came to review an operational schedule and Cox did not show up, Shackley notes, his reign ended. But it is equally likely that Harvey did not believe Cox had his heart in Mongoose, or that Cox thought this venture fated. Howard Hunt claims to have turned down an offer to lead the station, but there is no evidence for that. Hunt had been tarred by the Bay of Pigs fiasco and had no relationship with Harvey. On the other hand, Harvey had no problem asking Shackley, former Berlin base chief, to do the job. In May 1962 Harvey’s man took up the position. He had local knowledge—Ted Shackley came from Palm Beach and became known as the “Blond Ghost” while playing football at his high school. This game would be much bigger.

  The star of Lansdale’s operation had made his mark in the shadows in Washington and Berlin. A storied legend, forty-six-year-old Bill Harvey held the distinction of having suspected Kim Philby as a Soviet mole even as the Britisher bamboozled CIA counterspy James Angleton. He had then run the agency’s Berlin base for seven years. Shackley had been his protégé, doing Polish operations out of Berlin. During his time Harvey had witnessed the East Berlin riots, supervised the Berlin Tunnel operation (in which the CIA and the NSA had tapped a major Russian telephone cable, recording secret conversations), and conducted a host of retail spy games. Among those who transferred from the FBI to CIA in its first years, Harvey stood out as someone who could go up against the best Russian spies. He was a lawyer, but unlike the Ivy Leaguers at the top of the DO, his degree came from Indiana University in his home state. Some thought Harvey inspired, others reviled him as a paranoid or a pedestrian drunk and womanizer, but many had strong opinions on this short, stocky Hoosier.