176 10036 10065

176-10036-10065 2025 RELEASE UNDER THE PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY ASSASSINATION RECORDS ACT OF 1992

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AGENCY: NARA RECORD NUMBER: 176-10036-10065 RECORD SERIES: National Security Files AGENCY FILE NUMBER :

ORIGINATOR: CIA FROM : TO : TITLE: Draft Briefing Notes: Funding DATE: 2/18/1963 PAGES: 5 SUBJECTS: DOCUMENT TYPE : CLASSIFICATION : RESTRICTIONS : CURRENT STATUS : DATE OF LAST REVIEW : 9/10/2000 OPENING CRITERIA : COMMENTS: National Security Files, Box 59: Cuba Subjects, Cuban Subversion, 2/18/1963. Box 1

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DRAFT BRIEFING NOTES 18 February 1963

FUNDING

I. Cuban financing of subversive operations in Latin America is easy to ascertain and hard_to_document. Our evidence shows that it is generally effected by couriers carrying cash.

A. A Venezuelan politician, Fabricio Ojeda, re- turned from Cuba in March of 1962, and was seen by several witnesses to have large quantities of US currency stuffed in a false-bottomed com- partment of his suitcase. There is no law against bringing currency into Venezuela, so that authorities could not even determine how much he had brought in. Ojeda later was cap- tured, tried, and sentenced for guerrilla ac- tivity.

B. A Nicaraguan exile, Julio Cesar Mayorga Porto- carrera, was flying from Mexico to Honduras in September, 1961, when weather forced the plane to overfly Honduras and land in Nicaragua. He was found to be carrying $3,600 in cash from Cuba for Nicaraguan rebels in Honduras.

C. Last March Ecuadorean troops raided a guerrilla training camp in the mountains west of Quito and

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arrested some 48 members of the URJE (Union of Revolutionary Ecuadorean Youth) The leaders of the group admitted having received guerrilla training in Cuba, but there was no other evidence at the time of any Cuban involvement. The URJE, however, was a Communist-front group whose leaders had thrown off the discipline of the regular Com- munist party, and this January the Communists man- aged to have a URJE convention, run by Young Com- munists, expel the leaders. They were accused, according to published accounts, of having wasted $44,000 supplied by Cuba for guerrilla activities. One of our reliable sources in the Communist Party ((a regional Communist leader in contact with the Cuban chargé in Chile, and a member of the PCE inquiry commission)) has informed us that the next-to-last Cuban chargé in Quito blamed the fiasco on the fact that his successor had passed the money to the URJE without coordinating with the regular Communist party.

D. A highly placed Guatemalan Communist who defected last November has given us a specific account of procedures by which Cuba sent cash to Mexico to buy weapons which were then smuggled into Guate- mala.

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E. We also have considerable evidence of involved bank transfers by which Cuban money eventually reaches Latin American front groups to pay for political and propaganda activity. In some countries where the Cubans still have diplomatic missions, we have obtained photostats showing that Cuban diplomats paid for printing of front- group propaganda.

F. Just last month, one of the first Brazilians to receive guerrilla warfare training in 1961 was picked up with a suitcase full of ammunition. he was carrying to some of those same guerrilla training camps exposed when the Varig plane crashed in Peru. Interestingly enough, the Brazilians believe that the money Cuba had been providing for the camps actually came from Com- munist China. Since the exposure of the Varig documents--and probably since the guerrillas first reached the Cuban embassy in Rio with their complaints about mismanagement, confusion, and corruption--the Cubans have apparently stopped financing this operation, but the evidence shows it is still limping along. The man with' the suitcase full of ammunition said that a woman attorney in Rio had given him the money to buy a large hacienda as a new guerrilla camp. We know

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that this woman is a cut-out in the communica- tions between the pro-Communist Peasant Leagues, which have run the camps, and the Cuban embassy.

II The principle that guerrillas must be self-sustain- ing has obviously been applied to finances as well. Communists have staged waves of bank robberies in Venezuela, Peru, and Argentina.

A. The most spectacular hold-up was that of a bank in a Lima suburb last year which netted almost $100,000. Some of the participants have been caught and are being tried in the mass trials of more than 200 Communists just starting in Peru. We know that the hold-up was carried out by a combination of guerrillas and ordinary criminals, who divided the loot fifty-fifty. г. Some of the share of the common criminals has been recovered, but the Communist half is be- lieved to have reached the sizeable guerrilla forces of Hugo Blanco in the Cuzco Valley.

B. Just last week a bank in an outlying Venezuelan :- town was robbed of $25,000 by men wearing FALN armbands.

C. Argentine police last July raided a Buenos Aires warehouse and found evidence that it had been the headquarters for a gang of terrorists--ap- parently working with both the Peronists and the

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Communists--responsible for a wave of hold-ups, burglaries, and attacks on police posts designed to obtain funds, weapons, and explosives.

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