Book received from NetGalley

This book was an interesting read. The author was recruited to be a spy in Cuba during the early reign of Fidel Castro. I think I enjoyed it because I was just off of a Latin American History course and was still really into books on the area. Some of it does read like a conspiracy theory, but it's still entertaining.

With the release of the latest cache of until-now-confidential documents on the JFK assassination, I thought it time I get some reading in. Along came on NetGalley, one of the review services I use, this title. Trained to Kill is sub-headed “The Inside Story of CIA plots against Castro, Kennedy and Che” and is the autobiography of Antonio Veciana, a Cuban exile who spent the past fifty years or so plotting the overthrow of Fidel Castro.

Veciana details how he was recruited by a CIA officer known to him as Maurice Bishop (this officer’s cover name was to prove important) to usurp Castro, the CIA having correctly identified Vecianna’s growing disillusionment with the then nascent revolutionary regime. At first Veciana was tasked with psychological warfare – the spreading of rumours to sow discord and undermine the economy – something he embraced with gusto and not a little success. But by his own description, he was keen for more and it wasn’t long before he was leading his first assassination attempt. After the Bay of Pigs debacle (something he wasn’t involved in) Veciana fled with his family to Florida. Here he met up with Bishop and he says the CIA man was incandescent with what he saw as Kennedy’s betrayal of the Cuban exile invaders.

Veciana now founded Alpha 66, a militant group. While he says that the organisation’s exploits were exaggerated – again this was psychological warfare, this time more towards the Kennedy Administration, the hope being they would be forced to act against Castro – he does not deny that the group did launch attacks and raids against Cuba and against foreign shipping supplying the island. Veciana is keen to downplay civilian casualties here and perhaps Alpha 66 did take pains to avoid innocent casualties, but it’s hard not to conclude that the organisation was engaged in terrorism.

Throughout this time, Veciana was still in contact with the CIA via Bishop and it was at one such meeting that he met Lee. A little while later, JFK was assassinated and Veciana claims he recognised the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, as the Lee his CIA contact had been meeting with. Does this mean that the CIA, via Bishop, had something to do with the assassination of JFK? Perhaps, perhaps not. Years later, Vecianna was asked about this by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (a House of Representatives Committee formed to look again at the JFK assassination due to concerns over the original Warren Commission’s findings). In particular, he was asked whether Bishop was in fact the known CIA officer (who rose to be the CIA Chief of Operations in the Western Hemisphere) David Atlee Phillips. Veciana said no and claimed not to recognise Phillips. Fast forward to 2014 and he changed his mind, claiming Philips was indeed the man he knew as Bishop, something he repeats in Trained to Kill. Does this volte-face undermine Veciana’s credibility? Certainly, there could be compelling reasons for him not to have told the truth originally, not least fear of the consequences. If he is right and Bishop was Philips, and he witnessed him meeting with Oswald just weeks before Kennedy’s assassination, he might have reasonably feared for his safety. In the end, it is for the reader to decide.

For my own part, I tend towards the view that Oswald was a lone assassin. If so, Veciana might still have witnessed his CIA contact meeting with Oswald (and consequently concluded the CIA to have been involved). One explanation for the CIA’s latter behaviour, which certainly gave the impression of cover up, is that Oswald was indeed in contact with the CIA and then when he assassinated Kennedy, the agency panicked. Realising people might assume they had set the assassination up, the CIA by this theory have spent the past fifty years desperately trying to suppress the evidence of their negligence, the fact that had they been on the ball they might have spotted Oswald’s plans and put a stop to them.

Whatever the case, this book’s revelations concerning the Kennedy assassination threaten to overshadow its real explosive power. For that we need to look again at Castro. Trained to Kill demonstrates that Castro’s regime was never really given a chance. Veciana and others like him were recruited almost as soon as Castro came to power. I don’t doubt that Castro is not a particularly likeable chap, but the obsessive and pernicious attempts to overthrow him hardened the regime. Hardliners came to the fore and more moderate members of the revolutionary administration were side-lined. In the end, Castro was pushed into the welcoming arms of the Soviets. All this has long been known of course, but what was new to this reader certainly was the level of terroristic violence Alpha 66 and other likeminded groups were willing to resort to. In other circumstances, these people would have been arrested by the FBI, tried and convicted. It’s difficult to see how the tactics employed by these groups were any different to, say, those of the IRA or ETA.

Trained to Kill is one man’s honest account – sometimes shockingly so – of his work for the CIA in the attempt to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro. It is a fascinating historical document and well worth a read.

An interesting and heartfelt journey of one mans crusade to free Cuba from Castro. From his humble beginnings in the banking trade to rubbing shoulders with high flying CIA agents to running guns and money. His obsession with Killing Castro takes its toll not only on him but on his family as he sends them away for their safety while he begins organising daring raids and propaganda against Castro's regime. A detailed account of the final hours of Che Guevara's life as well as the insider knowledge of a meeting between the CIA and Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas just months before the assassination of JFK add to this well written part of not only Cuba's but Americas history too.

This was a tough book to review. The issue was deciding how much or how little of the story I cared to believe. I would not accuse Antonio Veciana of fabricating events, but instead question whether he actually knew the whole story of his own life.

In the end, I decided that the absolute amount of truth was not something that I could determine, and not something that really mattered all the much anyway. My reaction to the book was that Veciana’s tale was credible enough that it certainly could have happened the way he described it, and that required some contemplation of what the US Government was truly capable of.


=== The Good Stuff ===

* The book certainly doesn’t lack for action. We begin with an assassination attempt of Fidel Castro, and work through the Kennedy assassination, various coups in Latin America, and any number of plots and intrigue involving intelligence organizations, covert operations and violence.

* The best part of the book for me was the “daydreaming” opportunities it created. For example, does the US Government have the right to assassinate a political leader of another country. Does it matter if that leader had taken actions which might compromise the security of the US? What about being detrimental to the welfare of his own people? These are certainly issues that seem to keep coming to the forefront.

* Taking the author at his word, he was involved in some very nasty events-the consequences of which were loss of life of civilians. Veciana doesn’t sugar coat anything, and is honest about his motivations and actions, but he avoids rationalizations and excuses. He comes across about as you would expect from a professional intelligence or covert operative.

* Veciana, and his co-author Carlos Harrison, write in an easy-to-read, lively manner, and it is not hard to get sucked into the book. Some of the material is a bit unpleasant, but I was motivated to finish the book.

=== The Not-So-Good Stuff ===

* The authors have a tendency to wander about from topic to topic, and their writing can come off as a bit disorganized ad scattered.

* The major issue with the book is that there is not a single version of events that is generally accepted. Veciana makes much of David Atlee Philips as being his CIA handler, and initiating many plots and actions. But Philips has always denied this, and a little googling brings up libel cases won by Philips on this subject. Similarly, there are a number of accusations regarding involvement with the CIA and Lee Harvey Oswald prior to the JFK assassination. That issue is certainly generates discussion.


=== Summary ===

At the end of the book, I was still not sure how much of it I believed. But it was a good starting point for looking back at US History, especially with regard to Cuba and Latin America. As always, the question has to be “did things turn out better or worse than they might have”. I am not sure I know the answer to that, and equally unsure that any one book will ever answer the question.

So if you are a fan of US history, and would like some food for thought, this is an excellent book. It was only one man’s viewpoint, so I certainly didn’t feel comfortable taking it as an authority on the events described.