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Che Guevara and the FBI: The U.S. Political Police Dossier on the Latin American Revolutionary. - book reviews
Monthly Review, April, 1998 by James D. Cockcroft
Michael Ratner and Michael Steven Smith, Che Guevara and the FBI: The U.S. Political Police dossier on the Latin American revolutionary (Melbourne and New York: Ocean Press, 1997) $18.95 [paper], pp. 213.
Che Guevara and the FBI is a bombshell. It reproduces and annotates a selection of documents on Che Guevara from FBI files obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Huge chunks of the materials have been blackened out, but what remains is still devastating.
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Civil liberties lawyers Michael Ratner and Michael Smith decided to publish these laundered items because they illustrate the obsessive concern of U.S. police agencies with not only the Cuban revolution and its possible spread but also, and more emphatically, with Che. Also, they illustrate how the U.S. government manipulates the press, including the New York Times. Finally, they provide readers with a quick easy-to-understand snapshot of how thorough and incompetent U.S. snooping and police agencies are in their monitoring of anyone suspected of dissent, a practice that has grown more sophisticated and ominous since Che's 1967 murder in Bolivia on orders from the CIA (declassified documents on the last months prior to Che's death are still amazingly scarce).
The documents reproduced here are only the tip of the iceberg. Although they consist largely of CIA reports sent to the FBI, they come only from the FBI. Ratner and Smith are now conducting a quest for the rest of the CIA's voluminous reports on Che, some of which are still classified.
In their introduction to Che Guevara and the FBI, Ratner and Smith point out that the FBI legally "was not supposed to be involved in international political intelligence work anymore than its younger and bigger brother, the CIA, was supposed to involve itself in American domestic affairs" (p. 4). Their book blows the lid on that not so well kept secret!
The FBI started its dossier on Che in 1952, when apparently Che was in Miami. The FBI photocopied his passport and took his fingerprints. A 1958 CIA document asserts that Che "had a police record in Miami," where he "was arrested and interrogated during the Korean War" (p. 31). Yet a 1964 CIA report says that upon his arrival in Miami Che "was turned back by U.S. immigration authorities" (p. 117).
Reliability of reports submitted to U.S. security agencies is always problematic, because the informants are often contradictory, prejudiced, self-serving, and stupid. One report alleges that Cubans will not cotton to communism because they like "to idle in the sun or dance to their native rhythms" (p. 6). Others include these CIA gems on Che relayed to the FBI in the 1956-66 period (pp. 20-25, 89, 115, 127, 137, 171):
* Che "never studied medicine."
* Che "has no negro strain in him.
* Che "hates to wash and will never do so."
* Che "is fairly intellectual for a 'Latino'."
* Che's "attitude towards the U.S. is dictated...by somewhat childish emotionalism and jealousy and resentment."
* Che is a "Cuban citizen by birth."
* Che "seems" to follow the "Chinese Communist Party line."
* Che had disappeared or was dead because he and Fidel had a falling out, yet Che's mysterious absence was not "motivated by problems with Fidel."
* Che's farewell letter to the Cuban people was "fictitious."
* Che was killed while landing on the coast of the Dominican Republic in a "yellow-painted pocket submarine."
The CIA began its spying on Che in 1954 when Che was one of millions of voices protesting the CIA-directed military coup that overthrew Guatemala's democratically elected president Jacobo Arbenz in order to protect United Fruit Company's idle lands being distributed to peasants. By the time of Che's 1956 arrest in Mexico City, U.S. spy agencies had bundles of reports on him. This suggests that they probably had files on thousands of other Latin Americans who at the time were not well known.
Reports on Che and others in Fidel Castro's guerrilla camps of the Sierra Maestra in 1956 were clearly obtained by informants who spoke with or overheard Che. The CIA, fresh from its experiences in Europe, Iran, and Guatemala, was once more infiltrating possible "communist" insurgencies. Yet it showed no comprehension of why Latin Americans were unhappy with U.S. policies in Latin America. Instead, it attributed anti-U.S. feelings to "an attitude which is fairly common among young 'Latin Americans'." Attitude indeed!
Che Guevara and the FBI sheds new light on the events immediately following the defeated U.S.-led Bay of Pigs (Playa Giron) invasion of Cuba in 1961. Memoranda sent by presidential adviser Richard Goodwin to President Kennedy about his meeting with Che at the Punta del Este conference of the Organization of American States (OAS) reveal that Che, speaking as head of the Cuban delegation, sought a modus vivendi between Cuba and the United States. Goodwin viewed Che as the one Cuban official most "dedicated [to] communist views" (p. 73). One Goodwin memo states that Che told him there would never be enough internal support in Cuba for an overthrow of the revolution and that in other Latin American countries "the commies would get in through popular election" or, under dictatorships, armed revolt [p. 78 - note the use of the fanatical term "commies" by Goodwin, a prominent U.S. liberal intellectual]. Che assured Goodwin that in time Cuba would have "free elections ... [after] the establishment of a one-party system." Che also said the Cubans were willing to make concessions to the United States, such as agreeing to no "political alliance with the East - although this would not affect their natural sympathies." Finally, Che thanked Goodwin and Kennedy "for the invasion ... that it ... transformed them from an aggrieved little country to an equal" (p. 79). Yet Goodwin's recommendations to Kennedy were to tighten the economic blockade of Cuba, form "the Caribbean security pact" to deal "with the spread of revolution," and eliminate the "peaceful coexistence which Castro is now trying to create" (p. 74).
