The Yankee Comandante Read online

  The Yankee Comandante

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  The Yankee Comandante

  The Untold Story of Courage, Passion, and One American’s Fight to Liberate Cuba

  Michael Sallah and Mitch Weiss

  Lyons Press is an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield

  Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

  Copyright © 2015 by Michael Sallah and Mitch Weiss

  Map: Alena Joy Pearce © Rowman & Littlefield

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in writing from the publisher.

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication information available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data available

  ISBN 978-0-7627-9287-0 (hardcover)

  eISBN 978-1-4930-1646-4 (eBook)

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

  To our wives and children

  God may save all, but human rescue is only for a few.

  —Saul Bellow

  Cast of Characters

  Second National Front of the Escambray (SNFE)

  Edmundo Amado Consuegra: rebel fighter who served on Morgan’s security detail after the revolution.

  Lázaro Artola Ordaz: comandante who trained Morgan after his arrival in the mountains.

  Regino Camacho Santos: captain and training officer who designed a homemade gun with Morgan during the fighting that became known as the “Cuban Winchester.”

  Anastasio Cárdenas Ávila: comandante, killed in the battle of Trinidad in 1958.

  Jesús Carreras Zayas: comandante who stood up to “Che” Guevara when the latter tried to take over the Second Front. Carreras was executed with Morgan in 1961.

  Antonio Chao Flores: young rebel known as “The Americanito,” who met Morgan in Miami and helped him travel to Cuba to join the Second Front in the mountains.

  Armando Fleites Diaz: comandante and medical doctor who defended Morgan after the revolution when Fidel Castro tried to oust the American from the post-revolutionary forces.

  Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo: comandante and principal founder of the Second Front. He became a trusted friend and mentor to Morgan.

  Rafael Huguet Del Valle: pilot tapped by Morgan to haul weapons to the new rebel forces rising up against Fidel Castro.

  Ramiro Lorenzo Vega: rebel who broke his leg and was carried across rugged terrain by Morgan while fleeing Batista’s soldiers. Morgan later wrote about Lorenzo’s bravery in a letter published by the New York Times.

  William Morgan: leading figure of the Cuban revolution and the only American to achieve the rank of comandante, the highest command level in the rebel forces. Known as the Yanqui comandante, he later organized a movement against the new revolutionary government after Fidel Castro began forging ties with the Soviet Union.

  Domingo Ortega Gomez: captain whose rebel team intercepted enemy soldiers during the final days of the fighting and stopped them from escaping.

  Pedro Ossorio Franco: former member of Castro’s intelligence unit sent to spy on Morgan, but who eventually sided with Morgan and threw his allegiance to the Second Front. He was also later charged with trying to overthrow the government and sentenced to thirty years in prison.

  Roger Redondo Gonzalez: captain and intelligence officer who warned Morgan in 1960 that Soviet military advisers were arriving in Cuba.

  Olga Rodriguez Farinas: popular student leader and protester forced to flee to the central mountains during the revolution. Morgan’s second wife, she spent eleven years in prison, leading hunger strikes and spending much of her time in solitary confinement. After her release, she moved to Morgan’s hometown of Toledo, Ohio, in 1981, where she waged a campaign to restore Morgan’s citizenship and return his remains to America for reburial.

  Roger Rodriguez: rebel fighter and medical doctor who escorted Morgan to the mountains to fight for the Second Front.

  26th of July Movement

  Fidel Castro Ruz: charismatic founder of the Cuban revolution who led the fighting from his base in the Sierra Maestra mountains in 1958. Known as the “Maximum Leader,” Castro served as prime minister and president until illness forced him from office in 2008. A virulent anti-American, he was leery of Morgan’s growing popularity with the Cuban people and tried to bounce Morgan from the post-revolutionary forces.

  Raúl Castro Ruz: younger brother of Fidel, who became one of the most important figures in Cuba’s leadership. An avowed Communist since the early days of the revolution, he bitterly opposed any recognition of the Second Front, calling for the entire unit to disband. As of 2008, he is president of Cuba.

  Ernesto “Che” Guevara de la Serna: Argentinian physician and avowed Marxist who joined the Castro brothers to help lead the revolution. During the fighting, he tried unsuccessfully to take over the Second Front before the final campaign that drove Batista from power. He later clashed with the Second Front leaders over their pro-Democratic stance and tried to strip them of their ranks.

  Other Rebels

  Faure Chomón Mediavilla: leading student rebel and Second Front supporter who broke with the unit over its decision to wage war in the mountains rather than taking the fight to Havana. After the revolution, Castro appointed him ambassador to the Soviet Union.

  Targets of the Revolution

  Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar: Cuban leader who seized control of the government in two separate military coups, the first in 1933 and the second in 1952. A populist leader in his early years, he later forged ties with US businessmen and mobsters, reaping millions in kickbacks while cracking down on his opposition through torture and imprisonment. He fled the country on January 1, 1959, after the rebels took control of Santa Clara and the Escambray mountains. He died in exile in Spain in 1973.

  Manuel Benítez: corrupt chief of Cuba’s national police under Batista, who fled to Miami and later became a key informant for the FBI.

  Antonio Regueira: Batista army lieutenant whose prolonged shootout with Morgan in the battle of Charco Azul underscored the tenacity of both sides in the early months of the revolution.

  Ángel Sánchez Mosquera: tenacious Cuban army colonel who fought numerous battles with the rebels in the Sierra Maestra mountains before being sent to the Escambray mountains to stem the rebel incursion.

  Francisco Tabernilla Dolz: Cuban general and army chief under Batista whose demoralized forces struggled against the rebels, prompting him to declare that the war was lost well before the final surrender.

  The Trujillo Conspiracy

  Augusto Ferrando: Dominican consul in Miami and bagman for Trujillo who helped the dictator devise the plan to overthrow the Castro government with Morgan’s help.

  Rafael Trujillo Molina: longtime dictator of the Dominican Republic who hatched a plot to overthrow the Castro government in 1959 with the help of Morgan. Trujillo put a $100,000 bounty on Morgan’s head after discovering that the American had served as a double agent for Ca
stro.

  Ricardo Velazco Ordóñez: Spanish priest and Trujillo operative who helped the dictator plan the conspiracy against Castro and convinced Trujillo the plot would succeed.

  Americans

  Dominick Bartone: Cleveland organized-crime figure who supplied guns and a plane to Trujillo in the plot to overthrow Castro.

  Ellen Mae “Terri” Bethel: Morgan’s first wife, whom he met while working in a Florida circus in the 1950s. She filed for divorce in 1958, three months after he left for Cuba. They had two children: Anna and William Jr.

  Philip Bonsal: career US diplomat and last American ambassador to Cuba, who fed information to the FBI about Morgan’s activities in Cuba.

  Frank Emmick: CIA operative from Ohio who helped finance Morgan’s venture to breed fish and frogs in Cuba for sale to American restaurants.

  J. Edgar Hoover: director of the FBI, who became obsessed with Fidel Castro’s rise and Morgan’s role in helping Castro stay in power.

  Alexander Morgan: father of William Morgan, who agonized over his son’s decision to fight in the Cuban revolution.

  Loretta Morgan: mother of William Morgan, who tried to stop his execution and later pushed to restore his US citizenship and to return his remains to America for reburial.

  Frank Nelson: CIA and mob operative who first approached Morgan about carrying out an assassination of Castro for one million dollars.

  Leman Stafford Jr.: veteran FBI agent ordered to track Morgan’s movements between Miami and Havana in 1959 and 1960.

  Introduction

  Darkness had enveloped La Cabaña, the ancient prison ­fortress near Havana Bay. Most of the inmates had been ordered to their bunks, and most of the death sentences had been carried out without a hitch. But the commanding officers instructed the guards to remain alert. The firing squad stood gathered at the craggy, bloodstained wall outside, waiting. No one from the chapel area—God’s waiting room—would see morning.

  William Alexander Morgan, his thick arms bound by handcuffs, walked down the long, dark hall, past the cells of inmates huddled in their own filth. At his side, the priest hurried to keep up. They passed the chapel where Morgan had knelt in darkness the night before and whispered his prayers. At the guard station, uniformed men gathered to watch the prisoner and the priest. The guards would make sure that Morgan didn’t see dawn. They had swung open the exit door. There, his escorts were waiting to whisk him away.

  The stone-walled hallway narrowed between the chapel and the center of the prison and then opened to the inner courtyard and the dark sky. As they passed the next station, Morgan and the priest were met by more guards eyeballing them. Rarely had a prisoner captured so much attention in Fidel Castro’s prison, where more than 597 men had been hauled to their deaths since the revolution ended two years before. But rarely had the prison housed anyone like Morgan. Even the guards stepped back as the muscular, six-foot-tall prisoner walked by, oblivious to those around him.

  He was the Yanqui comandante.

  Two years earlier, he had been a hero of the revolution. He had won the hearts of millions of Cubans by helping to liberate them from a brutal dictator. Not since Theodore Roosevelt charged up San Juan Hill had an American captured the imagination of the country like this. He had come to Cuba for adventure, but he wound up leading a ragtag band of rebels to a series of stunning victories that forced military dictator Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar from power.

  Morgan’s image—wild beard, blond hair, powerful build—splashed across magazines and newspapers, joining Castro and Che Guevara as icons of a revolution celebrated around the world.

  Young boys kept trading cards of him, women begged for his autograph, movie producers tried to track him down, and writers wanted to tell his life story. In America, he verged on celebrity. But William Morgan was more than a celebrity.

  No one—not the guards, not the priest, not the prisoners who bunked with him in the hot, cramped dorm known as Gallery 13—knew how much lay at stake beyond these eighteenth-century prison walls. Castro was forging alliances with the Soviet Union, and America was about to lead a secret invasion to oust him from power. The plan was in place, the strike just five weeks away. While US-backed forces landed on the southern coast, Morgan and others would lead an insurrection in the central mountains.

  Morgan already had stashed hundreds of rifles, hand grenades, and machine guns in safe houses. Soon he would hand them out to a small army of rebels who had been hiding in the mountains for months. During those months, he had been drilling them: push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, target practice. The plan was risky—treacherous to some of the planners—but with Morgan and other rebel leaders in the Escambray mountains to fight Castro’s forces, it stood a chance. If the plan succeeded, it would remove the threat of a Communist nation just ninety miles from America’s shores.

  The Kennedy White House had been monitoring Morgan’s trial. So had J. Edgar Hoover, whose FBI agents had been tracking the Americano’s movements inside La Cabaña. The CIA had sent its own agents to Havana to keep watch.

  At the end of the hall, the door slammed behind him and the priest. If the rebel forces could spring him, if Tony Chao and the others could reach La Cabaña in time . . .

  In the distance glittered the lights of Havana, a city on the brink.

  Olga Morgan leaned down, pulled her two little girls close, and held them tightly. This was going to be difficult. It could be days—weeks, even—before she would see them again. But she had to get out.

  She gazed for a moment at Loretta and Olguita and then walked past the fountain and sweeping arches of the embassy to the car. The driver had popped the trunk. Without hesitating, she raised one leg over the side, then the other, rolling onto the floor of the trunk. As planned, she turned on her side, curled into a ball, and nodded. The door slammed shut.

  Darkness.

  She could hear the driver’s door close. The engine started. Prisa, por favor.

  Hurry.

  The messenger had just left the embassy and told her that she needed to leave. Morgan was going to escape. She needed to reach the safe house in Camagüey, where he would meet her. There wasn’t much time. If everything went as planned, her husband would be free and on his way to the mountains. The Brazilian ambassador had warned her not to leave the embassy. She could be arrested, beaten, or worse by the G2, Castro’s secret police.

  But Morgan had always come through for her. He would come through again. No one could separate them.

  She had wanted him to leave after the revolution so they could raise their two daughters in peace, even if that meant moving to America. But he wouldn’t do it.

  “I can’t leave my boys,” he said of the men who served with him in the revolution. Thousands of rebels were waiting in the Escambray, poised for another upheaval, this one more brutal than the last.

  Her heart pounded as the car sped through the streets, turning corners, bouncing her back and forth.

  The last time she saw him, she held his hand in the prison waiting room.

  “I love you,” he had said.

  If she could survive for fifty more miles, she’d see him again. She had mustered the strength before, and she would do it again.

  1

  Jose Paula was wiping down the counter of his downtown Miami diner when he spotted the grizzled stranger slip inside. Paula knew just about all of his regular customers, but he had never seen this guy before.

  Rumpled and unshaven, William Morgan ordered a coffee, ambled over to a square table with a white tablecloth, and plopped down. It was not a good time.

  In just minutes, people would be gathering inside the hot, stuffy eatery, pulling up chairs, inching up close to one another, echoing a word that few Americans had ever heard: revolución. The restaurant, a recruiting station for the rebel cause, would soon be filled with bearded men in stained, sweaty fatigues ready to c
onvince young Cubans to return to their country to fight.

  Some of the men were running guns; others were on the streets collecting wads of cash. Paula needed someone to get the Americano out. FBI agents were crawling all over Miami, looking for any signs of subversive activities.

  With the island nation just ninety miles from the shores of the United States, no country had more of a stake in the outcome. America’s national security was at risk. So was the entire hemisphere’s.

  Just days earlier, customs agents in Miami had nabbed two men and seized a cache of weapons—five hundred rifles and fifty thousand rounds of ammo—bound for Cuba. Trucks were pulling up to marinas at night, unloading crates stuffed with vintage guns on the backs of the vessels.

  Miami had become two places: the shiny postcard image with swanky hotels, palm-shrouded beaches, and cruise ships, and an ethnic staging ground for a revolution that was about to explode. Two worlds on a collision course.

  Motioning to two young men sitting at the counter, Paula told them to see what they could do to get rid of the Yanqui. As far as Paula knew, the guy cupping his coffee and dragging on a cigarette could be a US spy.

  Edmundo Amado Consuegra, a thin sixteen-year-old with deep-set eyes, walked over to Morgan, nodded, and then sat down. After an awkward moment, he began to ask Morgan questions in broken English, but Morgan just shrugged.

  A buddy of Amado’s came over to the table and sat down. Tony Chao Flores, a tough sixteen-year-old with a temper, was more direct. He looked Morgan up and down, and then asked: “What are you doing in here?”

  Morgan glanced up at Chao, and then looked across the room, where all the customers were staring at him. Any other time, he would have told the kid it was none of his business. If it meant a fight, then so be it.