000 104-10301-10001 2025 RELEASE UNDER THE PRESIDENT JOHN F KENNEDY ASSASSINATION RECORDS ACT OF 1992 CIA Internal Uae Only Acceaa Controlled by DDO HISTORICAL STAFF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY WESTERN HEMISPHERE DIVISION 1946 - 1965 • DDO HP 324 by I - j David R Davi 11 1ps Chief Western Hemisphere Division Directorate of Operations December 1973 VOLUME Copy No Copy No 1 2 I WH 0 DDO SECRET SECRET 40 •• f -Latin American i I f 1111 -1111 - material for the US Army Intelligence School to use in training foreign students on Communism Nine CIA officers lectured at a Fort Holabird course for senior Latin American officers in 1961 capping their presentation by producing a Soviet defector who spoke on the 267 Soviet intelligence $ervice -- --·· f • - n 1---•-' - officers in Panama and also supplied _ - l _ ___ _ -·- - '' · - · _ ___ v•··--- _ CIA maintained a station in Havana throughout 1960 but faced increasing operational difficulties-some of CIA's own making Probably the outstanding • flap was the capture of three TSD technicians caught in the act of planting a microphone in the New China News Agency office An analysis of this operation made when the technicians were released 18 months later showed that they had ignored many of _the basic rules of tradecraft On the other hand the Cubans had given 268 them only perfunctory interrogations -- --7 _' - In 1960 the Havana Station consisted of _ames A Noe-iJ chief of station Arthur Avignon deputy about six case officers and as many secretaries Life was unpleasant Castro agents shadowed American Embassy personnel monitored their telephone conversations and tried to pump their children about what - 233 - SECRET 114- SECRET ' -1111 I L-1111111 I I I daddy was doing As relations between the United States and Cuba deteriorated the station concentrated on support for the Cuban invasion then being planned and on developing stay-behind assets Frank Belsito and later Ralph Seehafer were designated as staybehind officers and regularly reported on a dozen or so agents and nets a few of which s rvived the station's closing The break in diplomatic relations with Cuba was predictable and during the fall of 1960 Embassy dependents were moving themselves and their household effects back to the United States Avignon made a special trip on the Havana-Key West ferry to take out his personal car silverware and a $1 500 violin Station files not absolutely essen- tial were crated and shipped back to Headquarters Case officers were working 15-hour days seven-day weeks When the break came the Embassy had three days' notice that it would close on 4 January 1961 The CIA station had just installed a new incinerator One stay-behind agent AMFOX-1 was still reporting in 1973 but WH Division believed he had been doubled - 234 - SECRET - 14-00000 SECRET and managed to burn what files it could not ship to Key West on the attache aircraft When they were not burning papers or smashing technical equipment case officers were caching radios or making advance payments to agents left behind On 4 January station personnel met at the Embassy rode in convoy to the ferry and sailed to the States A few like William J Murray had main- tained houses until the end and lost everything in 269 them -This was the period when Fidel Castro as yet unrestrained by his more cautious and practical Soviet advisors was busily stirring up trouble in the Western Hemisphere and popularizing the phrase exporrting the revolution A typical target was Honduras the poorest and most primitive country in Central America CIA's reaction was also typical of the nation-building and institution-building approach to countering subversion When Castro began his propaganda campaign in Two years later Congress authorized the Department of State to reimburse its employees the depreciated value of furnishings left in Cuba Payments fell far short of replacement costs - 235 - SECRET • • • • • • • •' t I i of assets commencing with a close personal relationship between the station chief and the President of Mexico highlevel telephone taps photographic surveillance unilateral intelligence assets and a broad scale of covert action capabilities Within a week of the inspector's visit Frederick W Cole was relieved as chief of station in La Paz partly because of comments made by Ambassador Ben Stephansky a former labor attache ho had not worked closely with CIA Lyle T Shannon COS I i ' Panama City left WH Division perhaps coincidentally a few months after the Inspector General had described him thus The chief of station is a GS-18 who has served in many different posts in the Agency He has been in Panama for about five years A wide gap in human relations exists between the chief of station and his staff He is· coldly aloof and is reputed to brook no difference of opinion even on questions of operational procedures He is a hard-driving administrator His talents along this line are granted even by the Ambassador who bluntly discredits his ability as an intelligence officer 275 Although the separate Task Force W TFW was not officially established until 8 March 1 62j the planning and execution of the Bay of Pigs operation - 242 - SECRET l _ 14-00000 SECRET were for all practical purposes conducted independently of WH Division and therefore are not covered in this history There was an informal but under- stood shortcut in the chain of command basic decisions were made at the DDP DCI or Presidential level Although some of the key personnel were de- tailed from WH Division the Cuban Headquarters unit was in another building and no one pretended that J C King was running the show Jacob D Esterline a veteran WH Division officer who later became deputy chief of the division was chief of the Cuban unit during the buildup and invasion attempt and took his orders from the DDP When the Cuban unit was made officially autono- mous as TFW and later as the Special Affairs Staff SAS it was headed first by William K Harvey and then by Desmond FitzGerald Bruce B Cheever and John L Hart none of whom had previous service in WH Division It was not until 1965 that the Cuban unit really lost its autonomy and again came firmly under WH Division Actual expenditures in FY 1961 illustrate the disparity between Cuban operations and the - 243 - SECRET II 14-00000 SECRET parent WH Division In that year total obligations - 11 for Cuban operations were 41 498 74 or almost 19 four times the l Il _3 99i spent in the rest of Latin America Except for Cuba 1961 was a repre- sentative year· and these were the obligations for regular sta ions through ut t e hemisphere t ' i1 I '1 '1 Brazil Mexico Venezuela Argentina Chile Panama Uruguay Guatemala Peru Ecuador Bolivia $1 498 101 1 384 505 922 424 802 302 646 768 579 310 521 082 418 778 380 422 336 367 303 210 Colombia Dominican Rep Costa Rica El Salvador Honduras Nicaragua Haiti Paraguay West Indies Puerto Rico $301 389 261 148 231 351 222 037 103 820 92 088 7 7 6 75 54 606 - Until the nearly 1 200 prisoners taken at the I Bay of Pigs could be ransomed with shipments of pharmaceuticals CIA regularly supported their dependents in the United States In the opinion of the General Counsel if a dependent had sued courts would probably have found that Cuban Brigade member wer e ti tled to the benefits of the Federal Employees' Compensation Act Thus by mid-1962 CIA was disbursing $311 500 per month to the dependents plus bonuses and medical care for invaders who managed to return These ex- penses however were paid from special funds outside - 244 - SECRET I 41 864 1 24 3'17 276 f - · - -_· - - _· - c· - J'i- -- - 14-00000 I_ • 277 the WH Division budget - - r 7 i - - - -·· - -t- t '· s -- l I ' f 11 r inspired guerrilla action in Latin America occurred 'I J ' 1 · i · I tJ ' • 1 I 'i t1· f ' in March of that year when Indians in the interior of Peru attacked the towns of Huampani and Satipo A Lima Station penetration agent identified their leader as Cuban-trained and reported that radios and 1 l l l ' ' J 1' 1 ' id t J I j j 1 weapons had been smuggled in from Cuba to start the 278 attack At year's end the US Government planned to assemble for the Organization of American States a I 11' 11 1 j 11 1 1 11 -h I till white paper on Cuban subversion in Latin America and in February 1963 WH Division chiefs of station '' 1 h ' if met in Panama to discuss their contributions with• I j ' I 1 1 1 H r t 11ii' I ' Jiil the DCI From this meeting came a pfcture of Castro's g11 J ry 1 Tt I 11 1 1 1 I ' - l l 1- I 'r I I· 1 '1l 1 Hi· Ff 1· ' I11 f r'' _ i • Argentina reported that left-wing Peronists ' · were an attractive target for Cuba police had cap- 11 turec f a group of· terrorists organized and directed f I 1 I il' ' Bolivia knew of 217 activists trained in Cuba within r·· nine months and was looking forward to debriefing t ij M t ---J f I l al · f1 1 - by John William Cooke • an ex-Peronist then in Cuba I 1 lh· 'i i · i · · 11 campaign of subversion flt 1 ·1 1' ''I'•' tv ' I I iiil 1• • t 1 - 245 - SECRET __ ---· 14-00000 •• SECRET - Everyone breathed easier and the Chief WH Division described· the operation as one of the most tightly held of our Cuban activities · Two years later the hold was not so tight for on 26 March ' 1 1 · · ij i '_ 1 · I -- ' f J --- I ' I I 'i I J j I ' • I • l I r j ' p1ete and -accurate ·account of the gre at sugar-sabotage - I f ·J l 1 PRESIDENT KENNEDY BALKED CIA PLOT ON RUSSIAN SUGAR Press services picked up the story 1 ·· 1 1 United i J 'i jl Press International doffed its cap to enterprising r'i fr A _U S agents but added that White House interven- 111·' r f 1 1 1 f'Y operation under the headline l T I ' r1 1 -1965 the· New Yo·rk Times front-paged a- reasonably corn- ' i I 1 · · tion· foiled the Central Intelligence Agency's Caribii t i1 2 8 3 it bean melodrama CIA as usual had no CQJ U J en t -----______ L -S - -e- r 7' a r --- 1oE ' t _ - c' - _ -s s °' - - __ ' -_ ' ' · - - - -- - - '- - ' ' -' _fu For across-the-board coverag_e of Cuba in _ 1 J j the early 1960's the Mexico City Station was tops Reporting on the Cuban Embassy the COS said in February 1963 We intercept their ail photograph all the people who go in an·a out of the Embassy cover their telephones comp1etely and within a few hours of the conversations have resumes of all the phone calls We cover their trash · and this has been found to be useful And included in the usefulness was the discovery of a man who · was doublecrossing us who we thought· was a good penetration of the ·Embassy - 252 - SECRET 14-00000 - - - CIA had seven different microphones in the Like most audio operations this one produced a lot of chaff but it also yielded bi ts of operational information showing connections between the Embass'y and local Communists and students At the airport the station was getting photographs of all travellers to Cuba plus about 300 photos per day of their passports and documents z'I lncluded in· the take from the Cuban Embassy were the s erial numbers of weapons bought by Communists for smuggling into Guatemala plus th names and positions of the sellers Complicating the ex- ploitation of this information was the fact that the _ _ - weapons had been sold by Mexican officials and while -- the station wanted to stop the smuggling and apprehend the Communist smugglers it had no desire to upset sensitive relations with the 4exican Governmen 9 1 iwo high-level off fee rs of the_ Cu Jan Embassy one of them the cultural attac were recruited CIA penetrations The station had s nt three agents into Cuba and was ·getting reports from them by secret - 253 - SECRET I 1 I Cuban Embassy one hidden in a leg of the coffee table in the Ambassador·' s office - 14-00000 ' - writing Meanwhile it was servicing 17 accommoda- tion addresses £or Headquarters and Miami In spite of all this there was little exploitable evidence ·that Cuba was using Mexico as a base for subversion in the rest of Latin America Mexico was the only Latin American nation to maintain diplomatic relations with Cuba in the face of an OAS reso lution intended to isolate the island Anxious to retain this bridge to the Western Hemisphere Castro had ordered his Embassy to do nothing which might be 284 cons i r d offensive by the Mexican Government - -- - -_-- · - --- --- - - - - -' • v -• ' - -- -- -'7' '- -- i '- - -- - i ' - - -· - _ 2 No such restraint was applied to Venezuela where Castro-supported terrorism was rampant - On l1 f 2 November 1963 on a tip from a campesino the Jli Servicio de Inteligencia de las Fuerzas Armadas t' · I i q 1' j 1 '' ' JI j'i 1 i I 'I' - SIFA found a cache of more than three tons of Cuban arms on a beach on the Paraguana Peninsula in northwest Venezuela CIA learned about it promp tly through liaison Jonathan G Hanke a Caracas ca §E _officer 'i brought sample weapons to Washington where CIA was able to raise the serial numbers and Cuban Army insignia which had been ground off4 - 254 - Richard Helms j j I ii I i Jj I ' pj SECRET 14-00000 - - SECRET J i j l ' 1 blocs in the· country ·l ' Barrientos supported by the • ' •'·v ' 'I ·I canipes'inos General Alfredo Ovando Candia supported '·1' ' I · -r ii· l by the army and the ·communists and leftists sup- I 1·· 1 t ported by tough mine and factory workers To have 'I I i h Barrientos elected CIA first had to promote a · 'I i credible election by underwriting the campaigns of j ' ji both the selected winner and his token opposition 11 · i •J at the polls J I ' The real question was whether ele·ctions would 1 - I 9 I I l l · ' q i · ' · -iit be held at all spent $585 000 first to persuade the armed forces to c 1 amp d own on t h e 1 e f t1sts t h en to persua d e Ii 1 1 I i · I 1 i' f I In 18 months the La Paz Station ·1 ' I kl f 1 Jj ·1' 'tl Barrientos to run then to convince Ovando he should 1 V 1 I f not interfere and finally to promote enough poli ti- • 1 ' 11' • f cal opposition to make the election plausible i I 1 'A1· In i·I i ii lll • d f orce CO s Lawrence -M a· genuine tour I produced what OAS o·bs·ervers called a democratic and Id1 ril s tern f 1el d 1·1 ljf fi ri 1 1 honest election- -and got the results from the elec- 1' ' 1 r r J I _ to d t un _ ou l Y - 2 c1f ' -ecJ i_ 3t '' • l · On 7 April 1964 President Lyndon B Johnson o--- j s _ _ _ _ _ _ __ - - - - -- -- - - - presided· at a White House meeting which laid down general guidelines ·for CIA action against Cuba Others at the meeting included Secretary of State - 279 - SECRET 14-00000 SECRET Dean Rusk Secretary of Defense Robert S McNamara • • I General Maxwell Taylor of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Presidential Advisor McGeorge Bundy DCI John A McCone DDP Richard Helms and FitzGerald I There was no question about charging CIA with the following types of activity 1 Collection of intelligence 2 Covert propaganda to encourage low-risk forms of active and passive resistance 3 Cooperation with other agencies in economic denial 4 Attempts to identify and estab lish contact with potential dissident elements inside Cuba S Indirect economic sabotage Ther as sharp disagreement however over whether CIA should continue infiltrating sabotage agents into Cuba McNamara Taylor and McCone favored more sabotage raids but Rusk and Bundy feared that CIA raids might undermine the US clean han ds posture in the OAS or give the Soviets an excuse for delaying turnover of their sµrface-to-air missile - 280 - SECRET 14-00000 SECRET SAM sites to the Cubans Finally Rusk recommended that CIA's raiding assets be kept in being but not actually used--at least until the OAS and SAM sites problems could be clarified tion The President accepted this recommenda- Although CIA did try to keep its sabotage agents ready the White House decision spelled the end of the Agency's sabotage though not support and 306 intelligence-collecting infiltrations of Cuba --_ Agency-sponsored radio propaganda aimed at Cuba reached its peak in early 1965 with an actual expenditure of about $1 500 000 and expansion still planned The semi-notional Cuban Freedom Committee served as cover for Radio Free Cuba which broadcast a total of 77 hours weekly from transmitters· in Miami Key West and New Orleans Started in i96_1 the Cuban Freedom Committee retained a public relations firm· and spent $7 000 annually to establish its cover by soliciting bona fide public contributions In its first _year these totalled· $5 000 but by 1965 public support had dwindled to $200 One of the difficulties was that any widespread US appeal-for funds for Radio Free Cuba - 281 - SECRET 14-00000 SECRET would perforce have to attack Castro and might therefore be considered domestic propaganda exceeding CIA's charter Outside the committee CIA operated a transmitter calling •itself Radio Americas and broadcasting from Swan Island and bought time for antiCuban broadcasts from three commercial stations Programming on these four stations totalled 119 hours weekly in addition to the 77 on Radio Free 30 7 Cuba -- Swan Island roughly a mile and a half long and three-quarters of a mile wide lies in the Caribbean 125 miles north of the Honduran coast Both the United States and Honduras claimed sovereignty over the island in the 1960's The US Weather Bureau had manned a weather station there since 1949 and CIA first set up a covert transmitter in 1954 to support its propaganda against the Arbenz regime in Guatemala Apart from the question of its real impact-in Cuba and the psychological problems of a staff living Under a 1971 agreement the US relinquished its claim to sovereignty but retained the right to operate a weather station - 282 - SECRET ' ' - 14-00000 _ _ - - -- - ' - SECRET in almost total isolation the Swan Island transmitter raised a nightmare of cover complications Operating as Radio Americas it was supposedly under cover of the Vanguard Service Corporation an Agency proprietary which offered no services and the Gibraltar Steamship Corporation another proprietary which operated no steamships A Boston millionaire who claimed to own the island collected rent from the Vanguard Corporation which could not afford to argue but not from·the Weather Bureau which disputed his claim Vanguard contracted with Coastal Air of Miami for one light-aircraft supply flight a week and with the Logistics Service Corporation of Philadelphia a Philco subsidiary to maintain the island facilities and transmitting equipment All of this enabled CIA to play tapes and broadcast the commentaries of the -three Cuban announcers stationed on the island but it did not prevent Radio Habana from pinpointing the transmitter and calling it a r 308 CIA propaganda mechanism t • - · _ _ j C _ - - - ' • - - • - - - - - 7 - ·--- -- -- Nevertheless in early 1965 Congressman Roman_ ·- 4·7· C Pucinski D- I 11 a member of the Cuban Freedom I Committee executive board was pressing CIA to saturate --- _1 l __ - 283 - SECRET 14-00000 - -- · SECRET '·• 'Iii i ff the Cuban airwaves and smuggle or airdrop transistor I radios into Cuba to expand the audience Inside the Agency FitzGerald politely rejected the· congressional advice buf pointed out that WH Division already was 1 1 planning the University of the Air which would i broadcast college-leveJ courses to divide the loyalty I 309 I of Cuban students -- Another congressional critic was Senator •I Eugene McCarthy D-Minn perennial sponsor of bills ''I 1 · ii I i'· 1I January 1964 Saturday Evening Post article entitled The CIA Is Get ting Out Of Hand I In April 1965 ' ii ' I 7 L FitzGerald and Seymour Bolten of WH Division met I with the Senator to discuss the Christian Democratic I social and political programs of the Catholic Church After this meeting McCarthy · a after the Cuban missile crisis 0£ 1962 when Agency 7 - 284 - SECRET - --- ' · I to create a CIA Watchdog Committee and author of a ii · I I i · 14-00000 SECRET facilities provided the Kennedy administration with positive information on the buildup of Soviet missile capability on the island This episode is docu- mented elsewhere and is outsidi the scope of this present paper One of FitzGerald's major successes against Cuba was in the field of economic warfare--called the MHVIPER program in CIA After a hurricane ripped through the island in 1964 Castro's economists and puolicists began a campaign to persuade free-world sugar brokers that the Cuban sugar crop had been badly damaged and exports would be low The object of course was to drive up sugar prices on the world market on which Castro depended for hard currency_ to finance imports At first the campaign worked and sugar prices did skyrocket But FitzGerald was not convinced 1 · and sent Natalie Scott-if to London to study economic -- reports from the British Embassy in Havana Partly o the' basis of h r research the US Government's sugar-crop forecasters concluded that despite the hurricane Cuba would harvest more sugar than ever FitzGerald arranged to have a Department of - 2 85 - SECRET 14-00000 SECRET State official leak this general conclusion to t e New York Times ---- - - - Sugar prices dipped but rallied when Castro indignantly denied the Times story The Department then officially announced the US Government estimate that there would be no shortage of Cuban sugar As it turned out the US estimate was right After the official announcement world sugar prices dropped several cents per pound and this time they stayed down At a time when fluctuations of one cent a pound meant millions of dollars to the Cuban economy publication of the essentially correct estimate upset Castro's attempts to manipu311 late the market -Late in the summer of 1964 the DDI told FitzGerald that the Department of State was inquiring informally bout the possibility of setting up a CIA channel for plausibly deniable clandestine contacts with Cuba FitzGerald replied It seems to me that the establishment of a continuous two-way conversation with Fidel Castro at a time when we•have nothing to convey to him would be a serious mistake It may be that Secretary Rusk feels that the present establishment of conversations with Fidel Castr9 should - 286 - SECRET 14-00000 SECRET ' be consider ed in order to make sure that we wiil have the ability to speak to him when or if the time comes On this score I do not feel there is any reason for •orry There are a number of ways in which·we can communicate to Fidel Castro virtually at a moment's notice 312 •---•' la rf tllllii · o f C I A ' s e c ri rf re g-ai · •· involved an elaborate scheme to supply tampered pet- I - roleum additives through an Agency mechanism in Antwerp This was planned as subtle sabotage after r i being mixed with Soviet petroleum the additives would surely but imperceptibly incapacitate Cuban machinery Unfortunately the doctored additives proved anything · but subtle and the Cubans promptly discovered they 313 were unusable -- Also a failure was an attempt by Francis S Sherry and William C ·Boner Jr of the Cuban Op_erations Group WH COG to persuade Detroit automobile executives to produce spare parts- deliberately designed to break down Sherry and Boner went to De- troit in early March 1965 and explained to manufac- ·-' turing vice presidents that the defective parts could be-sent to Cuba tnrough third-country suppliers But the autom_obile executives refused to cooperate they feared that their companies' reputations would - 287 - SECRET I -I 14-00000 • I I • SECRET A • • • • '• • • ij I ' I 314 L to the wrong _channels -In the wake of the ill-fate4 Bay of Pigs in vasion of 1961 and the active years of 1962-1964 anti-Castro operations began to diminish in 1965 Operations continued but at a slower pace John Li Hart had the title of Deputy Chief WH Division for Cuba DCWHD C and operated a large base in Miami j 1 ' I I I -4 i ofs be ruined if the doctored parts accidentally got in- with virtual autonomy A chain of safehouses training sites and boat-moorages stretched through the Florida keys to Key West From these CIA launched maritime operations which regularly placed and retrieved agents from the Cuban coast but whose intelligence product often did not justify the 315 effort -Meanwhile CIA ran a dwindling number of on-island intelligence agents including some handled in cooperation with the US Navy base at -Guantanamo where hundreds of Cubans ·sttll- worked--·---- by day and returned to Castroland at night As the Cuban General Directorate of Intelligence DGI improved arid expan4ed under Soviet tutelage CIA agent networks were rolled up· and even singleton - 288 - SECRET ____ __ 14-00000 SECRET agents dropped out of contact Typical was Radio Habana's 12 May 1965 announcement that 31 counterrevolutionaries members of a CIA espionage network had been arrested Of the 14 actually named in the broadcast WH Division identified six who had worked with Juan Bautista Perez Luis AMTAUP-10 chief gardener at the naval base and principal agent for CIA Although he had been debriefed in Miami in Jan- uary Perez' location and status were not known in ·n6 May -- • -- -1P r e most successful political operation in WH Division's history was the Chilean elec- 1 tion of 4 September 1964 in which Eduardo Frei of the Christian Democratic Party decisively defeated i' 'l I - l f · 1 'i Salvador Allende Marxist leader of a Communistdominated coalition Drawing on covert mechanisms established by Santiago Station years earlier plus new procedures and assets developed for the election ___ the campaign to assure Frei's victory cost CIA about - - - $2 600 000 Its success kept Allende at bay until 1970 when no such intervention by CIA was authorized For a full description see The Chilean Election Operation of 1964 a Case History 1961-1964 CSHP- 1 - 289 - SECRET · 1 14-00000 SECRET l ' that FitzGerald had won the President's confidence f in several meetings I Freeman who had been in Mexico only a few months apparently simmered down after his · J 318 ' I - _ t h_ _ - - t - n_t- - - -1 a ry_ ___-__-__ - - -- ---- -__ - - -- ---- - 2- - · · l I ' a- - tlL The Mexico City Station deyoted a major part 1 -of its time to running or supporting operations against Cuba 47 percent of its cable traffic concerned Cuban operations Mexico was the only atin Ameri an country maintaining diplomatic relations with Castro and had the only direct air link to Havana WH Division assigned top priority to recruit- ing agents in plac e in Cuba and Mexico City Station not only ran its own operations but supported the tentative plans of other stations The variety and volume of technical operations created a heavy work load managing safehouses listen- I I J 1ng posts and veh-icles - For photography_ alone tile station had six base houses commanding the en trances to target embassies two mobile photosurveillance trucks and three agents trained in photosurveillance on foot • It was such projects that provided informa- I --- tion on the visits of Lee Harvey Oswald President Kennedy's ass as sin to the Cuban and Sov iet Embassies - 293· - L I 1 Ii ' SECRET 14-00000 1 ' _ ____ _ _ _ J_ -- ' '·' - SECRET I 319 in Mexico -CIA's clandestine information on Oswald including a photograph showing him in front of the Soviet Embassy was turned over to the FBI which promised to safeguard Agency sources and methods ' Instead the Bureau showed the photograph to Oswald's mother in Dallas and told her it w•s a CIA photo The mother gave the press a garble_d story about the photo the FBI gave the press the correct story and eventually CIA's clandestine information became part of the voluminous Warren Commission report on the Kennedy assassination In the _process Mexico City Station had to abandon its photosurveillance 320 bas e houses which _had been thoroughly blown •-- _ · - -Ji -' - _ -_ -# _ _ i · -r-· ·-•--·--1 '_ _ ------ - - - - - -- __ - - - tensive political polling mechanism around the Insti- 1 1 J ' - - ' --In the early 1960's WH Division built an ex- tute for the C_ompa rative Study _of_ Political Systems '' t t I I it' I 11 a proprietary whose project cryptonym was JMTUBA From 1962 ·to 1966 the institute conducted 20 polls ' -- ' ' ' j I ' in nine Latin -American countries Their cost cannot be computed because many of the expenses were charged ' ' l· I LJ to other projects In FY 1965 for example political polls in - 294 - SECRET _r tc