Pages 137-140.
The American adventurer, Comandante William Morgan, provided our Embassy with details regarding the early Communist takeover of the Cuban government. He resolved to do something about it and, in company with Comandante Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo came straight to the Embassy, causing a minor sensation by walking fully armed to the desk of the Marine guard in the foyer of the building and asking to see me. Two rebel soldiers, armed right up to their luxuriant beards, accompanied Morgan and Menoyo. The Marine politely told them that they must check their pistols and rifles at the desk. The four reacted as though they had been asked to surrender. Fortunately, Jack Wyant happened along. A young Foreign Service trainee, Jack had been assigned to my office to gain experience before being assigned to a post on his own. As a child, he had been brought up in the interior of Brazil and spoke perfect Brazilian Portuguese. He also spoke Spanish with a Brazilian accent.

Friendly, lanky, and freckle-faced, Jack was the picture of the all-American boy--until he began to speak Spanish with his heavy Portuguese accent, a feat which he performed for the startled foursome arguing with the Marine. With easy humor he told them that it was not the practice of an American Embassy to have heavily armed types resembling Buffalo Bill walking around the premises. He assured them that checking their arms with the Marine did not mean that the pistols and rifles were being surrendered, and offered to take them to see me. Hesitantly, Menoyo and Morgan checked their shooting irons and accompanied him. The other two soldiers said they preferred to keep their arms and would air outside the building. Jack brought Menoyo and Morgan to my office.

With the introduction, they were offered chairs. I seated myself and surveyed the two with what I am sure must have been ill-disguised curiosity. They were interesting characters, differing sharply in appearance and bearing. Menoyo was dark, and slender, Morgan was squat, blond, blue-eyed and tough. Lolling back on a tilted chair, with hands clasped behind his head, Morgan watched with tolerant arrogance the polite behaviour of his more cultured colleague Morgan then said that Menoyo was planning a good will tour to Miami, "or something like that," and needed some tips on how to handle the American press.

Wyant left the office and came back with a fistful of literature which American Embassies the world over use to orient visitors to the United States. I told Morgan ...  that as an American, himself, he could be Menoyo's guide in the United States. "Naw, not for the kind of stuff he needs," Morgan replied. He added with a quick grin that he would like to go along, but said he was "kinda restricted." He was referring to the possibility that once he set foot on U.S. soil he ran the risk of being picked up by Federal agents and trotted off to face a court martial for desertion from the Army of the United States. "Besides, he'll be meeting with the Mayor of Miami and all kinds of high class people," Morgan added of Menoyo's trip.

When Jack Wyant gave some additional materials to Menoyo, Morgan broke in and suggested that Menoyo and Jack read it over while he and I went to another room "to kick a few things around a little." It was apparent that Morgan had more on his mind than Menoyo's interest in the mores of the United States. This conversation was to lead to a labyrinth series of intrigues, plots and couterplots, and finally to an "invasion" of Cuba.

After Jack and Menoyo had disappeared, Morgan said that the Second Front was still intact, an entity apart from the Castro government. I was surprised to hear this, having understood that the Second Front of the Escambray had been disbanded, along with the forces of the Student Directorate. Morgan said the Second Front was building roads into previously inaccessible areas of the Sierra Escambray, but that he and Menoyo had ideas other than just public works.

It was important, said Morgan, to try to cut Castro's popularity, and that the Second Front, where Menoyo had many followers and friends, was being quietly organized into a political party "as that son-of-a-bitch Fidel promised." Morgan added that Castro "hasn't the slightest intention of holding elections." He then asked if the Embassy could provide him with heavily illustrated and easy to read pamphlets for the uneducated people in the mountains. "We want the material," he said, "to be anti-Communist." I focused on that comment in a hurry, since it was the first real indication that the Communists might be working with the guajiros. Using a few descriptive and unprintable adjectives to describe Félix Torres, the Communist leader who Menoyo had prevented from coming into the Escambray mountains in 1958, Morgan said of Torres that "he now has the full confidence of Fidel and Raúl and has moved Communists into the area to indoctrinate the guajiros."  Said Morgan: "You can imagine what the commies are saying about Menoyo and me after our run-ins with Torres and with Guevara." I could imagine.

I brought in an artist, got authorization to produce small, simply worded and simply illustrated six-page pamphlets They were printed in comic book style. Few if any outsiders knew about it, but it was Morgan who gave me the ideas for some of the booklets and it was the Second Front that distributed hundreds of thousands of them throughout the Sierra Escambray.

Each of the little booklets had a theme--the life of José Martí in the United States, and similar topics. Skillfully laid out, simply captioned, and written by Gerardo Rodríguez Morejón, a wonderful, wizened old historian who specialized in children's educational books, the booklets could be understood even if the reader was illiterate. John Nepple of the Embassy's Point Four economic program, was fishing one week-end off the coast of the town of Trinidad near the Escambray. He came in for water and to buy some food, and a young boy who was tending boats came up to him saying that he knew a great deal about the United States, proudly producing three well-worn copies of the comic book series. He also told John that he had to be careful whom he showed them to "because there are some people who don't like us to read them." Those people, it may be supposed, were Félix Torres and his band of Communists, who, within two years' time were to bring terror and oppression to the poor farmers as resistance to Communism increased among them.

Returning to Menoyo's proposed good-will trip to the United States, Morgan said that it represented a venture into "foreign affairs" for the Second Front. It was hoped, said Menoyo, when he joined us later, that "a good reception by Miami officials will interest the press" and stimulate press feeds back into Cuba. Specifically, as it turned out later, Morgan and Menoyo hoped that the press pick-up through Cuba's newspapers and radio-TV stations would help build a public image of Menoyo within Cuba itself and gain some political backers among the rapidly growing number of influential Cubans who were thoroughly disillusioned with Fidel Castro.

What was important to the Embassy about all this was the appearance of what seemed to be the first organized opposition to Fidel Castro and his Communist adherents. I carefully reported to the political section what had been told to me by Morgan, was asked by John Topping to keep in contact with the Second Front and follow the progress of the daring young men, and report what happered.

One of the first things that was done by the Second Front was to hire an American press agent--Pat Valentine. This developed a few weeks later into a press conference at the Capri Hotel where Menoyo annuanced his intention to go to Miami, as I believe he put it, at the invitation of the Mayor of Miami, Robert King High. Menoyo's announcement was duly reported in the Cuban press, eliciting no explosion from Castro or from anyone else in the government. Yet, I was approached by a confused and perturbed Pat Valentine. On the one hand, he said, he was hired for a public relations buildup of Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo. But on the other hand, said Valentine, he was surrounded by so many restrictions that it was hard to do any kind of a job. Obviously, Mr. Valentine did not have much of a grounding in Cuban politics. One thing he had learned which perturbed him considerably was that he was functioning more and more as a political campaign manager and less and less as a public relations consultant. It had become increasingly clear to Mr. Valentine that in building up Menoyo, he ran the risk of angering none other than the man on the white horse, Fidel Castro himself. In a masterpiece of understatement, he characterized his position as "delicate."

The delicacy of his position was driven home to Mr. Valentine the day of the departure of Menoyo for Miami. Several hours after the Menoyo entourage was to have departed, a very agitated Valentine called me from the military airport at Camp Columbia. Was there any reason I could think of, he asked, why Raúl Castro had pulled Menoyo off the plane and escorted to his chambers at military headquarters? I could think of at least a few but chose to say nothing over the phone. After a lengthy delay, Menoyo finally got away and arrived in Miami [March 19, 1959]. The trip was successful, from the standpoint of press play given to Menoyo's visit to Miami in the Cuban press. But even then the newspapers were careful not to connect the Miami visit with any political ambitions of Menoyo.

Menoyo and Morgan dropped out of the limelight following the junket, and Mr. Valentine resigned. complaining bitterly that Morgan was absorbed in comic books most of the time. Also, said Valentine, Morgan kept company with a very unwholesome American who lived at the Capri Hotel, whom he described as a gangster."

However. contact was again renewed by Morgan a few months later, when an attempt made to implicate the American Embassy, through me, in a phony "invasion" of Cuba from the Dominican Republic an attempt which we shall come to later.

Worries about Communist infiltration in Castro's regime were reflected in yet another, and considerably more militant, quarter.

In late June, William Morgan surfaced again. I came home one evening to find a note from the maid, Zaida, saying that the well-known American Comandante "Weelyam Morgan" had called and asked me to telephone him at once. I did so, but with great reservations. By this time the dictatorship had progressed to the point where so-called key members of the Embassy were warned by the security officer that their phones had been tapped and that they be guided accordingly. Since, as Press Attaché, it was necessary for me to make some twelve telephone calls each night to the Ambassador, to the Minister-Counselor, and to others, I was inclined not to call Morgan. But the message from Zaida also said that the Morgan call was one "of life and death," so I phoned, to hear him whisper intensely: "Come to my house early tomorrow morning."

Morgan's residence differed but little from the houses of the other revolutionaries. Located at the corner of 66th street and 7th avenue in the swanky Miramar section of Havana, his house was sumptuous--confiscated from a Batistiano--and Morgan lived there in the comfort of the "new class." My car, of course, had diplomatic plates, so I parked it several blocks away and walked. I rang the doorbell and waited. The door opened just a slit, and through the slit emerged the muzzle of a rifle. A voice behind it asked me to identify myself. I did. It closed again for a few seconds, then was swiftly jerked open and, protesting, I was almost literally pulled over the threshhold by two fierce-looking bearded gents. Then Morgan appeared.

Dressed in his Rebel Army uniform, bearing the one-star rank of Comandante, (the highest rank in Castro's army) Morgan waved the sentries aside, greeting me like a long-lost brother. We walked over and around fifteen snoring barbudos stretched out in the living room and the hall of the house to a small, dark study.

Seating himself behind a desk, Morgan lighted a cigarette, offered me one, and reached into one of the drawers. He drew out several cans of what appeared to be tape for a tape recorder. "Do you know what that is?" he asked. I replied that I couldn't be certain, but that it  looked like tape.

"This," said Morgan slowly and importantly, "is anti-Castro propaganda. We are broadcasting to the Cuban people every night. Now, what do you think about that?"

What I thought of the conversation was to turn my back on Morgan and without a word walk out into the hallway. I turned around to see him sitting at the desk with his mouth open, staring at me. He spread his arms, and said. "What's the matter, chico?" I beckoned him to come out in the hall. He grinned and followed me into the hall.

"Listen, Willie," I said angrily, "whatever you have to say to me, or me to you, will be said in the wide open spaces, not in an office equipped with a tape recorder."

"You thought I was going to record you, eh?" Morgan chuckled. "Naw, I'm not interested in that. But it's your decision. C'mon, I want to show you something."

We walked out toward the back of the house, passing through a huge walk-in meat refrigerator. In the anteroom to the refrigerator. a sort of utility room, he had banks of portable AMPEX tape recorders. The rest of the walls were covered with sophisticated radio panels.

"Here," said Morgan, "is where we send out our propaganda." I said not one word.

We walked outside and I turned to look for roof-top antenna, and spotted a large directional television antenna. Nothing else. The garden in which we found ourselves was impressive, about half the size of a football field, with a large pool, cabañas and a bar at the end of it. It was quite a lay-out. I was thinking as rapidly as I could. Obviously, Morgan was still on the payroll of the Cuban government, though he claimed to be making anti-Castro broadcasts. The first point was a fact; the second, that he was making anti-Castro broadcasts, lacked proof.

Suddenly Morgan turned to me and said: "I have five thousand men, willing and able to fight against Communism." He went on: "Sure, Menoyo is the leader, but the boys follow men. Menoyo is also with us, though."

I stood there, for a moment, transfixed, then said, "What did you say?"

Morgan repeated what he had said before, grinning a little at my disbelief. He also claimed that he had "several hundred men in La Cabaña fortress, ready to go." "Che" Guevara, of course, was the commander of La Cabaña, and I questioned Morgan on this point.

"Don't worry," he said. plucking leaves off of one of the trees, chewing on them and them spitting them out, "I know what I'm doing."

"Well, since you've gone this far, Willie, you might as well tell me--exactly what are you doing?"

"Castro is a Communist, see" he said, "and we don't like Communists. I told you about this before. Well, we've been working to get our people into strategic spots." He chuckled. "One of them is secretary to 'Che'."

He also said he was trying to convince the government to organize a rural guard in the Sierra Escambray and put him in command. I asked who he was dealing with in these discussions and he answered: "Fidel." What did Castro think of the idea? Morgan didn't know.

Morgan then spoke with quiet intenseness. Resistance to Communism was growing by leaps and bounds, he said, and ticked off several commandantes and captains who "are with us." I hadn't heard most of the names, but took notes on a small pad which I carried around with me. Then I asked him what he wanted the Americans to do about it. "Plenty" he answered, "if you don't want Communism here." He then made the astonishing but apparently sincere statement that his forces, with adequate arms and ammunition, could overthrow Fidel Castro "within three days." This was indeed an eyebrow-lifter, I said, but what about public opinion? I asked. Would public opinion support him?

Morgan had a twig in his hand, broke it in half, then said: "That much for public opinion. What in hell did public opinion do in the fight against Batista, anyway?" I told him I thought it added quite a bit to his final downfall. But Morgan was not impressed.

Then I asked him just what he wanted of the Americans, and why he should assume that the U.S. government was willing to get behind a move to oust Castro. He said he "had been told." I told him frankly that I found no evidence to support what he had been told. He waved my comments aside with a conspiratorial wink and a nudge in the ribs, implying that both of us were adults and shouldn't play games with each other.

Morgan then came even more to the point. He said that hostilities might break out at any time, that he would be in the middle of those hostilities, and that he wanted a visa "right away" for his pregnant wife, a Cuban citizen. It really was difficult for me to tell whether he was using all that he told me as a buildup to get a visa or if he was driving at something else. I did tell Morgan that if his wife should receive preferential treatment in obtaining a visa, this would hardly go unnoticed among the Cuban personnel working in the consular section for the Embassy.  I did not tell him that several of our employees were at that very moment undergoing a quiet investigation by the Embassy, on the suspicion that they were spying for the Castro regime--in some instances, trying to pave the way for visas for Cubans with suspicious records of adherence to Communism. This again brings up a point worth noting. We were investigating Embassy personnel on the suspicion that they were working for a Castro-Communist regime which we had yet to acknowledge was actually Communist.

In any case, regarding the visa for his wife, I said I would take it up with the proper authorities, but suggested that the safest path for his wife to follow was to apply for a tourist visa like any other Cuban, and then talk the situation over with immigration authorities once she was safe in Miami. He became a little nervous, wondering whether he had been wise to divulge "all this information" to me. I assured him that Embassy officers had no obligation to become a source of intelligence for the Cuban government. I also reminded hum that, in view of what he had told me, I had taken considerable risk in even seeing him. So the score was even. When I left, I said that this would be the last occasion that he would talk to me. What he had volunteered in the way of information. I said, far exceeded my authority to be a party to. I did tell Morgan that he most probably would be contacted by another person who would use my name in making that contact, and left the house through Morgan's garden

I went immediately to the Embassy, wrote a long memorandum of the conversation and gave it to the deputy chief of the CIA. We had a long conversation, during which he said he was not disposed to make contact with Morgan "just yet."

We all had reason to recall these discussions when, a few weeks later, mysterious rumors began to circulate that something was afoot which involved the Dominican Republic. Then, La Calle, a newspaper owned by a Castro government stooge, Luis Orlando Rodríguez, headlined a story that a conspiracy headed by dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo had been uncovered. On the day that the story broke, Fidel Castro was at the National Planning Office speaking with José Luis Díaz de Villegas on the development of plans being made for the American Society of Travel Agents to hold their annual convention in Havana in October--an explosive week, as it turned out.

The phone rang in Diaz de Villegas' office. It was for Prime Minister Castro, the speaker said. After listening for a few moments, Castro slammed down the receiver and, turning to a portion of the crowd (crowds followed him around wherever he went) he said "Luis Orlando Rodríguez is a jackass!" He then telephoned his brother Raúl and his secretary, Celia Sánchez, ordering each of them to "kill the story" in La  Calle. He immediately turned to Díaz de Villegas, saying with great relish (according to Díaz de Villegas,) that "a conspiracy is afoot." Castro left that night for the city of Trinidad on the south coast of Las Villas Province, leaving in the wake rumors of impending national disaster.

Despite his earlier protestations about not coming to the United States, William Morgan had indeed come to Miami. The official version, published in the magazine, Bohemia, is that in July Morgan met "an agent of dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo at the Dupont Plaza Hotel in Miami, receiving $ 100,000 in return for assisting Trujillo to invade Cuba." Acting as double agents, Morgan and Menoyo went so far as to lure well-known Cuban leaders into a plot to do away with Castro and to set up a "cabinet," which was to take over the country when Castro was overthrown. Apparently, my earlier caution in dealing with Morgan was wise, for the story published also added the spine-tingling information that his house had been elaborately equipped as "a counterrevolutionary headquarters."

Working with Castro in the bizarre plot, said the story, Morgan and Menoyo lured the "counterrevolutionary cabinet" to Morgan's house there to be confronted by Fidel Castro. At 9:30 that evening of August 6th, the story went on, Fidel Castro walked in and introduced himself to Arturo Hernández Tellaheche (who, the government had it, had been tabbed by the counterrevolutionaries to be "President"), along with Armando Caíñas Milanés, Ramón Mestre, and others. All were immediately clapped into jail. It was following this confrontation that Menoyo reportedly preceded Castro to Trinidad and established radio contact with the "invasion force" in the Dominican Republic that was to have overthrown the revolutionary regime.

It is here that the credibility of the government version breaks down. According to that version, a transport plane was lured from the Dominican Republic to land at the airport of Trinidad with a dozen "counterrevolutionaries" aboard. This was the "invasion" force which Castro claimed was charged with overthrowing his regime. Called the "banyan tree invasion," because Fidel Castro calmly awaited the "invaders" seated under a banyan tree, the force would never have had a chance.

Looking as much like Jehovah as possible, the by now obese Prime Minister sat before the television cameras in a Havana studio on August 14th and "judged" the invaders. Among them were the son of the former Mayor of Havana, Luis Pozo, also Pedro Rivera, a Roberto [Martin] Pérez, and a Spanish mercenary by the name of Alfredo Malibrán. Unimpressed by Castro, Malibrán gave as good as he took from the bearded Prime Minister, and was whisked away from the cameras.

Ambassador [Philip] Bonsal sat in the Embassy penthouse, his eyes glued to the television set. When the rumors had begun to fly a week earlier that something was afoot, the CIA had apparently suspected Morgan as being involved in the "plot," and had told Mr. Bonsal about it. My contacts with Morgan were also revealed, and the memorandum I had written about my encounter with him was also brought into the discussion. What made the Ambassador very edgy about the performance unfolding on the television screen was that the star witnesses for Castro as he "judged" the "invaders" in the name of the Cuban people were none other that Ploy Gutiérrez Menoyo and William Morgan. From time to time, the cameras were turned on them. They had shaved off their beards and sat on the floor of the studio with their legs folded under them, looking pleased as punch when the "Maximum Leader" singled them out for praise in frustrating an invasion of "nuestra patria." They beamed when Castro also said that the two of them had been given a reward of $100,000 and had donated it to the agrarian reform.

Ambassador Bonsal was certain that Castro would attack the United States, saying that the United States, through its Press Attaché, had been implicated in the plot. The CIA chief differed. Such an accusation would be difficult, if not impossible, for Castro to prove. He also took the view that, in making such an accusation, Castro would invite a break in relations with the United States, and coolly observed that, in view of growing internal resistance, Castro must be aware that a break with the United States at that time might topple his regime. As it turned out, our CIA chief was right. Morgan and Menoyo apparently had said nothing about their contacts with the American Embassy for the simple reason that they had not stopped plotting against Castro. What happened is that Morgan learned that certain of his activities had come to the attention of Castro. In typical Castro fashion, the Prime Minister telephoned Morgan, asking him what was going on. On the basis of all the available evidence we at the Embassy concluded that Morgan flipped completely over, and told Castro that he was acting as a double agent. Appealing to Castro's flare for the dramatic, as well as to his injured pride following the humiliating Cuban failure to topple Trujillo, Morgan brought the Prime Minister in on the plot, saved his own hide and that of Gutiérrez Menoyo, and decided to fight another day. It is probable that nothing was said by Morgan about his Embassy contacts, for Castro never once mentioned anything about them in any of his subsequent tirades against the United States.

Several months after the "invasion," Bohemia magazine published a picture story of Morgan developing a frog farm. His plan, according to reports, was to develop various kinds of products from frog skins--wallets, cigarette cases, and the like. Morgan ran the farm with labor supplied by the National Institute of Agrarian Reform, and the Communist management of INRA infiltrated its spies into the labor force to keep an eye on the burly American. No lily-white character himself, Morgan nevertheless was appalled by the excesses of the Communists located in high places, including the torture and execution of some of the men who had fought with Menoyo and him in the Escambray mountains. He gathered about him a body guard of trusted followers and with them ran his frog farm with the discipline of a military camp. Some mornings he would line up the laborers in military formation and, according to his friend, Comandante Lázaro Asencio, would shout: "I hate all Communists! They work for Russia, not for Cuba. All of you who are Communists and work for Russia take one step forward!" None, of course, did. But Morgan kept the Communists from taking over his state-run frog farm, a feat that should have been emulated in other sectors of the Cuban government.

It was about this time that Army Chief of Staff, Comandante Juan Almeida, was married. Called to attend a meeting at INRA, Morgan had a woman's bag made of frog skins as a wedding present for Almeida's wife, and took the gift to Almeida at his office there. He left his body guard at the frog farm. As Morgan entered Almeida's office, he was immediately seized, disarmed, and jailed.  The following day, a very small notice appeared in Revolucion, announcing that "Comandante William Morgan had been using military trucks under his command illegally to transport food and ammunition into the Escambray mountains," and had been arrested and jailed for counterrevolutionary activities.

From all accounts, Morgan comported himself admirably in dreaded La Cabaña prison. A man of enormous physical strength, he refused to vegetate. Up at dawn, he would put himself through calisthenics, then march around the compound shouting commands at himself. One would never have guessed from Morgan's self-discipline in La Cabaña that he had spent most of his American military service as a prisoner in the Federal Reformatory at Chillicothe, Ohio, and rounded it out in the Federal Reformatory in Milan, Michigan, for escape, robbery and A. W. O. L. from the Army of the United States. The final months of Morgan's life in La Cabaña are vividly portrayed by fellow inmate John Martino in his book, I Was Castro 's Prisoner. The Martino-Morgan conversations throw considerable light on the personality and ambitions of William Morgan. In any event, William Morgan marched to his summary trial, singing: "As the Caissons go Rolling Along." At 2:30 a.m. one day in February, 1961, Fidel and Raul Castro attended his execution by firing squad. As his hands were being tied behind his back, an unidentified voice in the shadows of the lights beamed on Morgan shouted: "Kneel and beg for your life!" Morgan shouted back: "I kneel for no man " But. they used a sharp-shooter, not a firing squad, to kill him. First, a bullet was put through one knee, then one through the other. As Morgan crashed to the ground cursing the Communists, the same unidentified voice from the shadows exulted: "There! You see, we made you kneel!" The rifleman put another bullet through one of Morgan's shoulders. He took his time putting a bullet through the other, prolonging the agony of his victim. Then, a captain walked up to Morgan and emptied a clip from his Tommy gun into his chest. That is how William Morgan died.