THE YANKEE COMANDANTE

Cherne wanted to send someone to see
him in the future, he should give that person
the coin for presentation to Morgan—a
sign of trustworthiness.
After Cherne left the hotel, with the
coin and the recording of their conversation
tucked away, he grew anxious that he
had been spied upon. Why had he taken
such a foolish risk? Cherne scribbled on
paper what he had learned, put it in an
envelope, and slipped it to a trusted friend
in Havana. “Just in case I didn’t get out,”
he recalled.
Cherne returned to his hotel and remained
in his room. The phone rang, but
he did not answer it. “I heard footsteps
outside my door, and I sweated freely,” he
recalled. Finally, he rushed to the airport,
waited an “interminable period,” and
“wasn’t relieved until the plane took off.”
On March 20th, Cherne went to
C.I.A. headquarters—then a complex of
shabby buildings on E Street, in Northwest
Washington, D.C. A sign saying
“U.S. Government Printing Office” had
once hung out front, but, after President
Eisenhower and his driver struggled to
find the entrance, it was replaced with the
C.I.A.’s emblem.
Cherne was ushered through security
and into the French Room, a conference
space used by senior C.I.A. officials,
where he met with the acting chief of the
Western Hemisphere Division. Cherne
debriefed him about his encounter with
Morgan, which he considered one of the
“most incredible and fascinating accidental
exposures to political reality in my entire
life.” The C.I.A. cultivates its own
private language, and Cherne, who was
identified in a classified document about
Morgan simply as “HQS contact,” was
serving as a spotter—someone who
identifies a potential asset for recruitment.
Cherne told the C.I.A. that Morgan
could be very valuable, as he was on
excellent terms with Castro. And Cherne
passed on Morgan’s coin—the kind of
object that the magician Mulholland
called a “recognition signal.”
A C.I.A. report concluded that Morgan
had “KUCAGE possibilities.” In his
1975 book, “Inside the Company,” Philip
Agee, a former C.I.A. officer who turned
against the agency and allegedly assisted
Castro’s regime, revealed that KUCAGE
stood for highly sensitive psychological
and paramilitary operations. “They are action
rather than collection activities,” Agee
wrote. “Collection operations should be
invisible so that the target will be unaware
of them. Action operations, on the other
hand, always produce a visible effect. This,
however, should never be attributable to
the C.I.A. or to the U.S. government.”
Not long after Castro took power, the
C.I.A. began to seek out action operators
who could press the “magic button”: assassination.
In addition to commissioning
Mulholland’s manuals, the C.I.A.
had created a document titled “A Study
of Assassination.” After noting that the
“morally squeamish should not attempt
it,” the study laid out various techniques:
The most efficient accident . . . is a fall of
75 feet or more onto a hard surface. Elevator
shafts, stair wells, unscreened windows and
bridges will serve....The act may be executed
by sudden, vigorous [lifting] of the ankles,
tipping the subject over the edge.
If the subject is deliberately run down,
very exact timing is necessary and investigation
is likely to be thorough....The subject
may be stunned or drugged and then placed
in the car, but this is only reliable when the
car can be run off a high cliff or into deep
water without observation.
At the end of March, the C.I.A. authorized
a background investigation of
Morgan—“a.k.a. ‘El Americano.’ ” Its
THE OVERHAUL
Look—it’s the Lively,
hauled out above the tide line
up on a trailer with two
flat tires. What—
fourteen-foot? Clinker-built
and chained by the stern
to a pile of granite blocks
but with the bow
still pointed westward
down the long voe,
down toward the ocean
where the business is.
Inland from the shore
a road runs, for the crofts
scattered on the hill
where washing flaps,
and the school bus calls
and once a week or so
the mobile library;
but see how this
agents needed more “biographical data”
before trying to recruit Morgan. On
March 30th, the agency’s Central Cover
Division requested that it be advised
immediately when Morgan had been
“activated.”
Two weeks later, Castro arrived in
Washington, D.C., on what he billed as
a “good will” tour. President Eisenhower
declined to meet with him, but, when
Castro appeared in public, wearing his
rumpled green fatigues and empty pistol
holster, he was cheered by Americans
who saw him as a folk hero. “Viva Castro!”
they shouted.
Around this time, as Aran Shetterly,
the biographer, recounts, another curious
guest appeared at the Hotel Capri. He
was a reputed bagman for the Mob
named Frank Nelson. The Mob feared,
correctly, that Castro planned to shutter
its casinos and night clubs. (“We are not
only disposed to deport the gangsters, but
to shoot them,” Castro later proclaimed.)
Nelson said that a friend in Miami
was interested in Morgan’s “services.”
“In my services?” Morgan asked,
confused.
It was Nelson’s turn to look around
60 THE NEW YORKER, MAY 28, 2012