CUBA: Henry’s Plot

The tool of Fidel Castro’s battlefield victory last week was a crafty, U.S.-born double agent who worked so smoothly that he lured Castro’s enemies into the open at home and conned a Dominican invasion plane into a trap in central Cuba, nipping the first major rebellion against the seven-month-old regime.

Castro’s man was Major William Morgan, of Cleveland, Ohio, who did stockade time in the U.S. Army, earned his Cuban rank fighting Dictator Fulgencio Batista last year in the central Cuban mountains of Las Villas province (in a minor revolt parallel to Castro’s Sierra Maestra campaign). Approached by anti-Castro Cubans in March. Morgan went to Castro. On Castro’s orders. Morgan joined the plot, brought in some fellow officers and even set up his luxurious Havana home, a prize of war, as the meeting place.

Rich Rebels. When Castro’s wild economic reforms hit Cuba’s upper class, the plot grew quickly. Armando Caiñas Milanés, head of the National Cattlemen’s Association, joined, as did leading businessmen and cashiered Batista army officers. The plotters made Morgan delegate to anti-Castro groups in Miami and Ciudad Trujillo.

Using the code name “Henry,” Morgan played such a convincing game, according to Castro, that Trujillo gave him $78,750 in Miami to buy arms, sent three boatloads of weapons. When the conspirators set a target date for an uprising in Havana, Castro called a halt. The top 40 plotters were summoned to Morgan’s home for a “final briefing.” Police poured in the doors. Castro himself stepped out of a back room. “What were you going to be minister of?” he sneered at an ashen-faced Havana contractor. Castro’s cops jailed 10,000 Cubans, most of them apparently unconnected with the plot, and uncovered tons of hidden arms.

News of this showdown leaked to the papers, but the Dominicans stupidly dismissed it as war-of-nerves propaganda. “Forward, Henry!” chattered the Dominican radio. “Contrary to the allegations of Fidel, Morgan is in Las Villas at the head of the counter-revolution.”

Decoy. In Las Villas, Morgan urged the Dominicans on with a radio transmitter they had given him. “Our troops are advancing,” he said, “but we cannot do it all. Send the Dominican legion!” One night, while Castro sat in the dark under a nearby mango tree to watch, a Dominican C46 put down at a Las Villas strip. As his men yelled “Death to Castro!” Morgan conferred at length with a man in priest’s garb and five civilians. Morgan’s men unloaded 13 bazookas and 40 cases of ammunition from the plane.

Next night the C46 returned, flown by Colonel José Antonio Soto, Batista’s personal pilot, and carrying nine anti-Castro rebels. From near by, Castro himself happily joined the cries of “Down with Fidel!”—it was such a well-baited trap. As soon as the rifles, ammunition, hand grenades and submachine guns were unloaded, Morgan’s men clapped the dumfounded invaders under arrest. In a flurry of gunfire from the plane, two of the invaders and two of Morgan’s men were killed.

Triumphantly, Castro and Morgan paraded their prisoners on television in Havana. Castro bragged: “If we could have kept our plans secret for 15 days, we would have captured Trujillo and his whole army.” Ominously, placards saying “To the firing squad!” appeared on buses and walls. Waldo Medina, a prosecuting attorney for the Supreme Court, called for execution of the plotters (the death sentence is legal for “counterrevolutionary activity”) and accused the U.S. of egging them on. Bitterness—between Castro and Trujillo, between Castro and his victims at home—grew rapidly.