Thread by @1foreverseeking

12/11/59: Colonel JC King, CIA Western Hemisphere Division chief, sent a memo to CIA Director Allen Dulles arguing that there existed in Cuba a "far-left dictatorship which if allowed to remain will encourage similar actions against US holdings in other Latin American countries."

Dulles established Operation 40 because of the memo. There was originally 40 agents involved in the operation. Later this was expanded to 70 agents. The group was presided over by Richard Nixon. Tracy Barnes became operating officer of what was also called the Cuban Task Force.

First meeting chaired by Tracy Barnes took place in his office January 18th, 1960, & was attended by David Atlee Phillips, E. Howard Hunt, Jack Esterline, and Frank Bender.

Also in 1960, according to Fabian Escalante, Sr officer of Cuban Dept of State Security (G-2), Richard Nixon recruited an "important group of businessmen headed by Texas oilmen George Bush Sr & Jack Crichton, to gather necessary funds for the operation".

That suggests agents were involved in freelance work. It is known that at this time that George Bush & Jack Crichton were involved in covert right-wing activities.

In 1990 The Common Cause magazine argued that: "The CIA put millionaire & agent George Bush in charge of recruiting exiled Cubans for the CIA’s invading army; Bush was working with another Texan oil magnate, Jack Crichton, who helped him in terms of the invasion."

This story was linked to the release of "a memorandum in that context addressed to FBI chief J. Edward Hoover and signed November 1963, which reads: Mr. George Bush of the CIA" .

Reinaldo Taladrid and Lazaro Baredo claim that in 1959 George Bush was asked “to cooperate in funding the nascent anti-Castro groups that the CIA decided to create”. The man “assigned to him for his new mission” was Féliz Rodríguez.

Virtually all of the field agents of Operation 40 were Cubans. This included Antonio Veciana, Luis Posada, Orlando Bosch, Rafael Quintero, Roland Masferrer, Eladio del Valle, Guillermo Novo, Rafael Villaverde, Virgilio Gonzalez, Carlos Bringuier, Eugenio Martinez, Antonio Cuesta,

Hermino Diaz Garcia, Barry Seal, Felix Rodriguez, Ricardo Morales Navarrete, Juan Manuel Salvat, Isidro Borjas, Virgilio Paz, Jose Dionisio Suarez, Felipe Rivero, Gaspar Jimenez Escobedo, Nazario Sargent, Pedro Luis Diaz Lanz, Jose Basulto & Paulino Sierra
spartacus-educational.com/JFKoperation40…