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DOCUMENT 0026
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NEW LEADS FOCUS ON MIAMI
PROBE EXPLORES OSWALD-CUBAN TIES
The Miami News
May 20, 1976
(Final Home Edition)
Page 5A
NEW LEADS FOCUS ON MIAMI
PROBE EXPLORES OSWALD-CUBAN TIESBy Hilda Inclan
Miami News Latin Community WriterNew leads into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy involve Lee Harvey Oswald's connections with both pro-Communist and anti-Communist Cuban groups, The Miami News has learned.
A spokesman for Sen. Richard Schweiker (R-Pa.), heading a Senate subcommittee probing the assassination, said new leads developed by investigators who had been in Miami were the dominant factor in the formation of a permanent panel to restudy the murder. The spokesman said Miami has now become one of several focal points in the investigation.
He said the investigators had been looking into Oswald's connections "with both anti-Castro Cubans who blamed Kennedy for the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and pro-Castro Cubans."
A report on the new developments will be completed in two weeks, the spokesman for Schweiker said.
The Senate Intelligence Committee has criticized the CIA for not disclosing to the Warren Commission several assassination plots against Cuban Premier Fidel Castro attempted by the agency during the Kennedy era, attempts which could have provided pro-Castro Communists with a motive to get rid of Kennedy.
"There is no question that both the FBI and the CIA lied to the Warren Commission." the spokesman said.
He added that the CIA also hid from the Warren Commission a Secret Service report on a Cuban refugee opposed to Castro and known to be violently anti-Kennedy as well, who had been trying to buy bazookas and machine guns in Dallas shortly before the President's death.
According to the Senate committee, Oswald infiltrated an anti- Castro Cuban group in New Orleans before he started his own phony pro-Castro organization the "Fair Play for Cuba Committee, " under which he distributed propaganda favorable to Castro. Oswald lived in New Orleans from April to September 1963.
He clashed with anti-Castro Cuban exiles there during the summer preceding the assassination.
Yesterday, anti-Castro Cubans in Miami vehemently denied any links to Oswald.
"When Kennedy was killed, Cuban exiles here who were active against Castro had not yet lost faith in the President," said Carlos Prio, the only surviving former president of Cuba, who now lives in Miami. "Cubans were still waiting for Kennedy to fulfill his promise to help free Cuba.
According to Prio and other exile leaders, the most numerous and significant CIA operations and other U.S. supported activities against Castro ever launched from U.S. soil occurred during the Kennedy period after the Bay of Pigs invasion attempt.
The operations grew both in intensity and number even after the October 1962 missile crisis and the peace pact Kennedy allegedly signed with Soviet leaders at that time, promising that no anti- Castro attacks would be launched from U.S. soil.
These operations began to be phased out under the late President Lyndon Johnson. The phase-out of all covert CIA military actions against Cuba from Miami was completed during President Richard Nixon's first term.
Anti-Castro Cubans believe that Oswald was part of a pro-Castro conspiracy.
"The belief is that Castro found out the U.S. --under Kennedy-- was trying to assassinate him and he tried the same tactic, except he was more efficient," said a former CIA agent involved in commando raids against Cuba before and after the Bay of Pigs.
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