The Castro Conspiracy

So far, he has seized $700,000 of American businessmen's assets. Every Mafia casino has been closed, and over a billion dollars of mob money has been confiscated. Sam Giancana and other Mafia bigwigs are extremely unhappy with Fidel. They are looking for a way to get even. So are the Americans, many of whom have been forced to flee to safety. Castro has already executed seven hundred Cuban citizens who dared to object to his murderous regime. There are no rights in Cuba other than those granted by Fidel Castro and his henchmen. Murder and mayhem are the order of the day. The burning question is, what can be done to stop Castro? On March 17th, President Eisenhower gives his permission for the C.I.A.'s Allen Dulles and Richard Bissell to develop a small, covert, anti-Castro operation. A thousand Cuban refugees will be recruited and trained as guerrilla fighters and saboteurs. When they're ready, they'll be infiltrated back into Cuba, where they'll begin a series of raids designed to upset, and eventually overthrow, the Castro regime. In the pages of The Castro Conspiracy we'll meet the U.S. Marine and Special Forces personnel who train those men. We'll visit them in their Central American mountain and jungle training camps. Then we'll watch as the 1960 Presidential Election puts a reluctant commander-in-chief in the White House, and see the entire, carefully orchestrated, covert operation fall apart. We'll attend dozens of secret meetings conducted by the CIA, FBI, and the CFR. At those meetings we'll finally discover why Operation Trinidad, a small, easily controlled and plausible incursion, a plan that was almost certain to succeed, was turned into the over-zealous, overly ambitious, and impossible to control fiasco that the Bay of Pigs Invasion eventually became. We'll meet the Kennedy family and the Castros, along with the deadly Mafia hitmen who are recruited to kill Castro. Washington insiders and Hollywood stars will be on display. Along the way we'll watch men who willingly risk their lives to achieve success, and women who willingly use their wiles to keep them from gaining that success. We'll get to know Jack Kennedy, a man who desperately wants the Cuban Invasion to succeed, and John F. Kennedy, a president who desperately can't afford to allow it to. And we'll be present when he cancels American air support-the decision that spelled doom for the invasion and every Cuba Freedom Fighter. We'll spend three frightening days in the middle of the Bay of Pigs Invasion, and eighteen frustrating months in its aftermath-fighting and dying on the beaches-running and hiding in the swamps-sweating and suffering in the prisons. And wondering, always wondering, why the Americanos deserted us? We'll see the Cuban Missile Crisis through the eyes of the men who lived it. Part of our time will be spent in America's Oval Office-another part in Russia's Kremlin-and the rest of our days at the UN. And we'll discover how close America came to the brink of World War III during that historic October fortnight-and learn, perhaps for the first time, why the Cuban Missile Crisis was John F. Kennedy's finest hour. In the first half of 1963, we'll sit in on meetings with war profiteers and Old Guard G-men-with double-crossed Mafia chieftains and desperate Castro supporters-the four groups of men that cannot permit President Kennedy to live one day longer than necessary! We'll meet Phyllis McGuire and other "show biz folks," and we'll get to know the dupes who had starring roles in the Kennedy Assassination-Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald. We'll be present at the final and deadly negotiations with Carlos, the Jackal, when he agrees to assassinate the American President, and we'll eavesdrop when the Jackal hires three other "professional shooters," so that there will be no slip-ups in Texas. And finally, we'll be in Dallas with Jack and Jackie on that fatal Friday in November, and we'll relive the shock and sorrow of a grieving nation.