ON FEBRUARY 1, I was taken to the office by my good friend, Cipriano Mauri, for a conference with my lawyer. The minute I stepped inside, I could read on Dr. Camargo's face that something was terribly wrong.

"Well, John, I have bad news for you." Everybody in the office was being very courteous and attentive toward me. I realized that the news must be very bad indeed.

"I know it," I told Camargo. "You are no poker player."

"Your appeal was turned down. This is one of the most tragic things in the judicial history of Cuba. The members of the Court are unanimously in agreement that my seven reasons for stating you are in prison illegally are valid. You have a just case. You were tried in violation of your constitutional rights. You were deprived of due process. You were brought to trial for one thing and then convicted for another alleged crime, which was never charged against you in the indictment and which you never committed. You are being kept in prison in violation of law.

"The Supreme Court validates all these points. But their decision is that they have no jurisdiction over the military tribunal and therefore must uphold your sentence.

"Only one judge dared to vote for you. The rest have become puppets of Fidel Castro.

"Someday, these men will pay. if it is the last thing I do, I will see that they pay a terrible price for what they have done to the law."

"Doctor," I said, "there is no use. Just forget about it.

"Did you know that there was a cordillera the other night and that they took the three American boys to the Island?"

"My God. And I had their case up for an appeal. It looks as if an American can no longer get any sort of justice in Cuba."

He was shaken and agitated. I warned him not to say anything that could get him in trouble and he left me with tears in his eyes.

Cipriano Mauri helped me back to the galera and, as we walked, I told him what had happened. In the cell, they were all waiting for the news. When I gave the verdict to Dario Valdés, he picked me up in his arms and carried me over to my bed. The others grouped around me, expressing their sympathy, their anger and their grief. They took the blow as if it were their lives, not mine. Soon the whole prison knew and men crowded into the galera, pressing toward my bed, shaking my hands.

"You don't have to be careful now," Dario said. "You can talk to anybody and say whatever you think. That is one small consolation. Now there are only two alternatives. Either the Cubans will overthrow Fidel Castro or the United States will have to come down here and clean out these scorpions. You are going to be here as long as the rest of us and I have the feeling that very few of us will get out of here alive."

About a quarter of an hour later, William Morgan came in, sat on my bed and expressed his sympathy.

"It can't continue this way," he said. "This man is finished I know the Cubans and I also know what is going on outside

I believe there is going to be help, but it had better come fast, because I have the feeling that they are going to take me out and shoot me pretty soon."

Hunger Strike

The next two weeks were uneventful. In the batch of new prisoners that the G-2 had brought in were a group of students and their leader, a young man of great bravery named Luis Alfaro. These students would have been Rebels, boil they were too young to have fought with the 26th of July Now they saw the country turning toward Communism and they were disillusioned and bitter.

After they had been incarcerated for about a fortnight, they staged a hunger strike. As a reprisal, we were all locked up in our galeras.

On the third or fourth day of the hunger strike, Manolito Fernández announced on the loud-speaker that he did not want to punish everybody, because not all were guilty. He asked the men who were discontented to come into the patio and state their grievances, adding that their hunger strike would only make conditions worse for everybody in the prison. He ordered the galeras opened up and the student leaders came out to confer with him. They told him they were striking in protest against the executions, which was obviously something beyond Manolito's control. After talking to them for a while, he convinced them to call off the their fast and prison conditions soon returned to normal.

During this time, I had been paying Dr. Dubuté his ten dollars a week and I was being treated fairly decently as a result. Then William Morgan suddenly came down with an attack of kidney colic. He was in terrible pain. Dr. Dubuté came to see him in his galera to give him an injection, supposedly to relieve his suffering. However, Morgan knocked the syringe from his hand, called him an informer and added that he suspected that the injection was poison and that Dubuté wanted to curry favor by murdering him.

The news raced through the prison. About ten minutes later, Dubuté came into my galera with a group of men carrying William Morgan. They laid Morgan on the bunk next to mine. Morgan turned to me:

"Martino, you have medicine to kill pain, don't you?"

I nodded assent.

"Do you know how to give an injection?"

"Yes."

"Will you give me some of your medicine? Shoot it into my arm yourself, because I don't trust this dirty son of a bitch. He is one of the worst men in the prison and I think he is trying to kill me."

"What are you talking about, William?"

"Will you do as I say?"

'Of course," I replied.

Dubuté left the cell and returned with a syringe. I inserted an ampule of my own medicine and gave William Morgan the injection. They carried William out, but Dubuté stayed behind.

"You Americans are all alike, aren't you?" he said to me in Spanish. When he had left the cell, Dario shook his bead:

"Now you are going to have a problem with him, Martino."

"it might as well be now as later," I replied.

But things were not going to come to a head quite that fast. When the showdown was finally reached, Dubuté almost got me killed, but I am happy to say that I think he killed himself in the attempt.

Six Americans on a Pleasure Trip

That night, there was a sensational story on the Cuban radio. Six Americans had come to Havana on a yacht, the official propaganda said, to wage counterrevolution under the direction of Senator Rolando Masferrer. The radio was full of this and, sure enough, the next morning the six Americans arrived in La Cabaña Fortress as prisoners. These boys were brought into my galera by Comandante William Morgan.

They were Donald Green of Clover, South Carolina, James D. Beane of Franklinville, North Carolina, and four others named Thomas L. Baker, George R. Beck, Alfred C. Gibson and Leonard L. Schmidt. They told me that they had come to Cuba in a yacht, that they had entered Havana harbor openly, tied up at a wharf and asked for mooring instructions. As soon as they were docked, Castro's Marines had swarmed aboard and placed them under arrest.

"We bad a bit over $6,000, which these Cubans seized," Donald Green told me. "When they arrested us, they took us down to their G-2 and made movies of us. Then we were accused of being counterrevolutionaries before a group of newspapermen and now here we are."

I turned to Smitty, a kid with blond hair probably in his middle twenties.

"Are you kidding me with this story, Smitty? Are you yachtsmen? Do you spend your time sailing around the Caribbean? Where did you fellows meet?"

"We met in Miami," Smitty said.

I never knew whether their arrest was a frame-up or not. There wasn't enough time to talk. This was one of the cases which the Castro government evidently wanted to expedite. The very next morning, the six American boys were summoned out of Galera 12 to the office and given indictments for trial that afternoon on the charge of counterrevolution, which carries the death penalty.

Just before the trial, Smitty and Beane, the young man from South Carolina, came in to see me and to get my opinion as to their chances.

"Well, if they are trying you this fast," I replied, "it looks very bad, because this prison is where they shoot people. The only thing you can do now is pray. Is there any one thing they know that they can use against you?"

"We are all Army veterans," Smitty replied.

I thought that might explain the whole thing. I asked them if they had a lawyer and, to my relief, they said that Dr. Camargo was defending them.

Later that day, Dr. Camargo told me that he had been asked to defend the six Americans by the Swiss Embassy, which had been representing American interests in Cuba since President Eisenhower broke diplomatic relations. He was fully aware of the risk to himself:

"I don't have any choice, do I, Martino? I can't let these boys go to trial with a defense attorney appointed by the military court. If I do that, they won't have a chance. The trial has been postponed. It is scheduled for tonight. I will do my best to see that they are not shot, but I don't think I will have much luck."

"Is there any way of saving them?" I asked.

"Our only chance is international pressure," Camargo replied. "This case is getting widespread publicity. I know that Mexico, Brazil and a few other left-wing countries friendly to Castro have begun to complain about the executions."

Betrayal in the American Embassy

That same afternoon, a man named Dr. José Reposa came to see me in my galera. He was sixty-eight, white-haired, but strong and in good physical condition. He sat on my bed and began to talk to me in fluent English. He explained that he had not come to see me earlier because, as long as my appeal was up, be didn't want to do anything to prejudice my chances.

Dr. Reposa was a retired dentist. He had also been a deputy in the Cuban Congress in the time of President Grau San Martín. He had been in La Cabaña for quite some time awaiting shipment to the Isle of Pines.

"What," I asked, "a man of your age?"

"Really, I am very lucky. The law says I am too old to be shot. Since nobody over the age of seventy can be kept in prison, my sentence expires in two years.

"When I tell you my story, you will find it hard to believe."

"Try me, Doctor."

"I was educated in the University of Pennsylvania. I have my family and many friends in Philadelphia. For many years, I was the head of the Cuban delegation to the American Dental Association when we had our conventions. So you can see I am very pro-American."

"I am glad to hear that," I said.

"When all this trouble started, I was very friendly with a certain person in the American Embassy." He gave me the official's name. "Naturally, having many friends in the Embassy, I did my best to inform them of certain matters concerning which they had asked me for reports."

"What has that got to do with your being arrested?"

He looked at me and smiled:

"Mr. Martino, I love the American Government and the American people, but something very strange happened in my case. When I went to trial, they presented enough evidence to execute me. They put into the record every visit I made to the American Embassy, the floor I went to and the time I spent there. And, to make matters worse, I was arrested just after I had left the Embassy for the last time. I blame my arrest on somebody in the American Embassy."

"I find that hard to believe," I said.

"You know the last American Ambassador, Mr. Bonsal, was very naive. In addition, he was a left-winger, who tried to curry favor with Fidel Castro. The people working in your Havana Embassy were, with some exceptions, almost as bad as Mr. Bonsal.

"Don't you know that the employees of the American Embassy--that is 60 to 70 per cent of them--were Fidelistas and spies?"

"Are you sure?"

"Positive. Later on today, I will let you talk to three other gentlemen, who are in prison here and who were arrested for exactly the same reason. They were fingered and informed on by someone in the American Embassy."

Later the same day, he introduced me to three other men who told me substantially the same story. And later on, in my confinement in La Cabaña, I would hear the same sordid story of treachery and betrayal within the American Embassy.

If the reader is skeptical about this charge, let him remember the testimony of the former U. S. Naval Attaché in Havana, which I have already summarized. This man stated under oath that patriotic officials in the Embassy were unable to get two known Cuban Communists off the payroll.

As for Dr. Reposa, I am sorry to say that he did not survive his two years on the Isle of Pines. He was bayonetted to death in the same requisa that cost Salvador his life.

"The Six of Us Were Born This Moming"

That night, the six Americans went on trial. They came back and were placed in capilla. We knew now that they had been sentenced to death.

This created a sensation in the prison. Everyone crowded into my galera. They kept asking me again and again how it was possible for the American Government to permit Castro to shoot these men. There was nothing I could say to them. The last thing I wanted to do was to disillusion them about the United States or about the new Administration of President Kennedy, from which they expected so much. They would shake their heads and straggle out of my galera.

There was so much commotion in the patio that night that they closed the galeras at six, stationed extra guards in the patio and ordered lights out and absolute silence at seven. We kept anxious vigil. At ten-fifteen, the death jeep came in as usual, but the man who was watching for us told us that the firing squad had not left the vehicle. The jeep turned around and went out. We waited all night, our observer glued to his post, but nothing happened. We were afraid that the boys had been taken out during the night to the old paredón at the entrance of La Cabaña Fortress.

That morning, the word came to us that the six Americans were still in capilla. The men who brought food into the capillas informed us later that the boys were still alive.

Around nine in the morning, they were released and came into the patio. I cannot describe the reaction of the Cuban prisoners. There was cheering; men jumped in the air; the Americans were surrounded by a swarming mass of hysterical prisoners, who pounded their backs, embraced them or even broke into tears of joy. I asked Smitty what had happened in capilla.

"Well, you know we were accused of coming to Cuba to start a second front in the Escambray Mountains. Of course, if we had wanted to do that, we wouldn't have come into Havana. The fact that the charge didn't make sense was irrelevant. I guess the order had come down to give us the works and we were all convicted in very short order and sentenced to die that night.

"Well, Johnny, when we were put into the death cell, we were scared to death and the only thing we could think of was to play cards. These colored guards were staring at us and making dirty remarks about what was going to happen to us, but, sure enough, one of the Rebels brought a deck of cards. We sat there and played all night, arguing and swearing at each other, while the guards and Rebel prisoners came and stared at us and scratched their heads and said that ill Americans were loco."

"Why did you do it, Smitty?"

"We figured it would occupy us and make the time pass and prevent us from sweating with fear. We never expected to come out alive. By this time, we thought we would be dead. The six of us were born again this morning."

But it was not too much of a rebirth. At four o'clock the next morning, there was a cordillera, which took about 120 men, among them the six Americans. They were sentenced to thirty years on the Isle of Pines. When they arrived there, Castro showed his hatred of Americans by having them kept in solitary confinement for six months. In the winter of 1962, when I was a free man again, I learned from Mrs. Beane that her son, James, was being held incommunicado, that she could neither write to him nor receive letters from him and that he was too lame to walk.

The following week, there was visitor's day and a prisoner escaped. This man was slight and had a baby face. When his visitor came-- forget whether it was his mother or his wife-the other prisoners crowded around him, while he changed into boy's clothes. We all held our breath as the visitors left, taking with them the "little boy," who had shaved carefully before making the attempt. The danger to the plan was that informers among the prisoners would find out what was happening, but we had managed to seal them off while the change into boy's clothes occurred.

After the conteo the next morning, while the prisoners were drinking their coffee, the loud-speaker ordered us back into our cells. Then there was another conteo. This time there was a roll call. They verified that a man was missing and that his name was [Francisco González] Aruca.

Normally, when a prisoner escapes, the chief of the prison is removed. We held our breath to see whether this would happen, but fortunately Manolito survived. After keeping the galeras closed for a week, they were re-opened. Visitors were now subjected to strict search. None were allowed inside the galeras. A detail of some 200 Rebel soldiers erected a barricade with heavy wire that cut the patio in two sections. Under the new regulations, one section was our exercise yard; the other was for visitors. Whenever a man escapes from a prison, the rest suffer. Nevertheless, a successful escape is always a matter of triumph.

About ten days later, three of the leaders of the electrical workers union were brought into La Cabaña This was a militant labor organization, which had won excellent conditions for the workers under the regimes of Grau San Martín, Prío Socarrás and Fulgencio Batista. The Castro regime had wiped out these gains, imposed an unwanted Communist leadership on the Cuban Federation of Labor (CTC) and was now destroying the independence of the electrical workers union. Consequently, a large number of skilled workers in the power industry went into opposition and resorted to extremely effective sabotage.

Fidel Castro, the great advocate of a "dictatorship of the proletariat," now had a chance to show his true colors. The electricians were brought into prison at five that afternoon; by seven o'clock they were put on trial, and by half past ten that night the firing squad assembled for them.

A boy named Ignacio, who was waiting to be shipped to the Isle of Pines to serve a ten-year sentence for counterrevolutionary activities, went into the capilla to talk to the trade union leaders who were to die that night.

The officer of the day was a gigantic mulatto, about six feet three, known to us as Emilio. He was one of the most vicious and depraved human beings I have ever known. He was from Marianao and had a record of marihuana peddling.

Emilio went into the capilla to prepare the men for execution.

"Are there three men here or four?" he asked.

The boy, who was almost frightened to death, explained that he was in the capilla, but that he was not to be executed. Unfortunately for him, he got into an argument with Emilio and with the head of the firing squad. They said to him:

"We have decided to take you along. There will be one less gusano" (that is to say, worm) "to fight the Revolution."

Ignacio was put to death merely because he happened to be in the capilla when the other three were taken out and because, when he protested, he angered these two militiamen. He was the last of the four to be shot.

We had beard the firing squad execute four men and we discovered next morning that Ignacio was not in the capilla. By the end of breakfast, the whole prison knew what bad happened. We shook our fists at the guards on the roof and called them assassins.

There were protests by the defense lawyers. There was an investigation of sorts and blame was assigned to the captain of the firing squad, but not to Emilio, who remained one of the two officers of the day at La Cabaña.

Executions at our prison were not announced until days or weeks later, at which time a small item would appear in the papers. However, we almost always had full details the next morning of who had been put to death and where the previous night. We were given this information at great risk by our friends within the garrison, who were secretly opposed to the Communist regime.

We had another way of getting information. Men would be designated to pick fights in the patio. The punishment would be to be put in capilla on bread, and water. We would see that this was done whenever we knew that there were men from the underground among the military prisoners. These underground elements in the military barracks could easily mix with our men in the capillas and brief them on what was happening elsewhere in Cuba.

That is how we learned that there were bloody riots among the prisoners on the Isle of Pines immediately after the invasion at Playa Girón and that a savage requisa took place there in which five men were killed and the infirmary was filled with wounded. Considering the fact that La Cabafia was considered virtually incommunicado with the outside world, our system of receiving detailed, prompt and accurate information was remarkable.

The William Morgan Story

With Morgan when he was arrested was another Comandante, a man named [Jesús] Carreras. He stayed in the rear of Galera 7, morose and brooding. I never saw him and don't know what he looked like.

One day, Morgan was called to the office on the loudspeaker. When he returned about an hour later, he sat on my bunk and said:

"Well, John, it looks like this is it. My trial is for tomorrow night."

"Willie, what do you think?"

"I don't have a chance. I know they are going to shoot me."

"Don't talk that way, Willie. You were a Comandante. You were a friend of Fidel."

"I was a friend of Fidel," he said with a strained laugh. I will be back later. I want to have a long talk with you."

The whole prison was agog with the news that Morgan and Carreras were actually going to stand trial. Not even the most zealous of the young Rebels believed that Fidel Castro would shoot these two men, who had played such a big role in the Cuban Revolution and who were so popular with the people and the armed forces. Morgan had a knack for making friends. He was always laughing a lover of practical jokes, a man of enormous physical strength and bursting energy. In the prison, he exercised like an athlete and marched like a soldier.

"Well, this is the evening of the day before I die," Morgan said when he came into my galera after supper that evening and sat on my bed. "Let us have the long talk I promised you."

"What shall we talk about, William?"

"You don't think much of me, do you?" he asked, giving me a penetrating stare.

"Well, William, many things have been said about you. After all, you were one of the main factors in betraying the people in the Trujillo conspiracy."

"That is a long story. I am going to try to explain it to you.

"William, you don't have to explain anything to me," I said.

The fact is that I liked William Morgan personally, but there was not much in his brief life--he was thirty-three at the time--that an American could cheer about. When the civil war was raging in Cuba, Herbert L. Matthews of the New York Times apparently wanted to build Morgan up and characterized him as a freedom fighter, "a veteran of the U. S. Army in World War II . . . adept at judo . . ." Jules Dubois, who was equally color blind concerning Castro and his movement, called Morgan a "former paratrooper."

The facts were less romantic. Morgan never saw service in World War II; he was never a paratrooper, and his military service with the U. S. Army was neither a credit to himself nor to his country. After a grammar school education, he had worked for the Army as a truck driver. Right after World War II, he enlisted, at which time, although he was only eighteen, he already had a police record in his native Toledo, Ohio. As a private in the infantry of the Army of Occupation in Japan, Morgan was court-martialed on November 7, 1947 for having been A.W.O.L. on two occasions. Convicted and sentenced to three months at hard labor, he overpowered his guard, stole the latter's clothing and weapon and made his escape.

Naturally, he was captured and rearrested. A general court-martial tried him on January 15, 1948, found him guilty of escape and robbery and sentenced him to five year at hard labor, which was reduced to three years by a board of military review. Thus, he spent most of his military service--which so impressed Dubois and Matthews--as a prisoner  in the Federal Reformatory at Chillicothe, Ohio. He was put in solitary confinement there on several occasions for attempted escape, fighting, refusal to work and threatening arson. He apparently rounded out his confinement at the Federal Reformatory in Milan, Michigan, where he was eventually released on April 11, 1950.

Joining the Cuban Rebel forces in 1957 or 1958, Morgan saw service in the Escambray and emerged as Fidel Castro's chief cloak-and-dagger man and one of the most spectacular confidence men and double-crossers of our day. In August 1959, he carried out two major agent-provocateur operations for Castro with conspicuous success. He convinced Dominican dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo that he was able to organize and lead a military insurrection that would overthrow the Castro regime. Reportedly, he got $200,000 from the Dominican political boss and, with Castro's connivance, lured Dominican mercenaries and anti-communist volunteers into a carefully prepared death trap. A few days earlier, he had betrayed the leaders of the White Rose society, the militant anti-Castro organization with which I was supposed to have been connected, to the Cuban secret police. As a result, 4,000 suspects were arrested and the backbone of what was at that time the most effective anti-Castro organization in Cuba was snapped.

"There is nothing to explain, Willie," I said to Morgan. "I saw you on television when Fidel Castro paid you your reward for betraying the people in the Trujillo conspiracy."

"Yes, he really made me look like a Judas, even to the Cuban people, didn't he?"

I shrugged:

"How could you go on television, knowing that you were to receive this money?"

"I want you to believe me. I had no idea of what was going to happen. What I was told was that Fidel Castro and I were to talk about the Trujillo plot and how it was smashed. There  I was. Before I could do anything about it, Fidel Castro was making his speech and he took out this money and gave it to me and said that that was my reward for exposing and betraying the Trujillo plotters.

"From that moment on, I hated him, because I realized he had made me into a Judas in front of my friends and in front of the whole world. He made it look as if' I had done it for money. My wife could never get over it. After that, my real friends  tried to understand."

"Well, what do you want to tell me about it?"

"I guess I trapped many people. I did it on my own. It is hard to explain, but Fidel Castro has a strange hold over people. I believed everything he told me. As far    as is I was concerned, he could do no wrong.

"The story of the conspiracy is this. I was approached early in 1959 by someone about a plot to overthrow  Castro. At that time, there was much turmoil and confusion; there were still lots of Batista people at large. When the approach was made to me, I made one of my biggest mistakes--I told Fidel Castro.

"Fidel was very much interested. We sat down and talked it out. I agreed to pretend to go along with  the plot to find out what was really behind it.

"As the negotiations developed, I found that the people behind the conspiracy were Batistianos. I reported this to Castro. He and his advisors decided that I should pretend to join the conspiracy so we could lure these former Batista henchmen to Cuba and destroy them. Castro felt this would increase his personal prestige and would also give him a pretext to kill more of his potential enemies. He felt personally insecure and afraid and he wanted to put the firing squads back to work.

"I became more deeply involved. I went to Miami personally to work out arrangements with the Dominican Consul there. On my return, there was a key meeting to perfect plans with Fidel, Raúl, Ché Guevara and others present. Fidel said:

"'Listen, William, while we are about this matter, there are a few other people we must get out of the way

"I asked him what be meant by that.

"He explained that in Cuba there were many influential and popular people who had held office in the governments of Grau San Martín and Prío Socarrás. There were also big businessmen and others who would make trouble. He said:

"'Willie, this is what you must do. You must approach certain people and try to lure them into the conspiracy."'

I interrupted Morgan:

"William, I heard a story to that effect from someone I met in prison."

"Who was that?"

"Arturo Hernández Tellaheche, the former Minister of Labor under Prío."

"That part is true."

"Do you mean to tell me that that man is in jail because you approached him and offered him the Presidency of Cuba, as he told me?"

"Yes. I did that sort of thing to quite a few people."

He went on to describe what had happened at Trinidad. One plane had come down and the Castro forces had wounded the pilot and co-pilot and quite a number of Batista people. There were two planes. Only one landed. The other got away.

He admitted that he had played a very important role in the betrayal, but be claimed that he had not done it for money.

"Fidel Castro doesn't trust anybody. Right after the Trinidad plot, when he cut the ground under me by offering me money, be also took away my command. He left me with my escort of ten men, but the job he gave me was running a frog farm out in Pinar del Rio.

"Look what had happened to me. From being a glory boy and a big military man of the Revolution, I was chopped down to just a Comandante without any command. He did the same sort of thing to all of the Comandantes that weren't Communists or considered reliable by the Communists. Now, I realized that I was just a Commander on paper and that I didn't really have any power at all."

"When did you start plotting against Castro?"

"Later," Morgan continued, ignoring my question, "I realized I should have gotten out of Cuba. But the Cuban press was still making a lot of me and I seemed to be a big man down here. Also I was having trouble with the American Government, which had taken my citizenship away from me, and I felt very bitter about that."

What had happened was that, two weeks after Morgan's act of betrayal in Trinidad was splashed over the world's press, Representative Francis E. Walter had demanded that the State Department revoke Morgan's American citizenship. The legal basis for this was a provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act which forbids Americans to serve in foreign armies. Walter was the chairman of both the House Committe on Immigration and Naturalization and the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was a power to be reckoned with and the State Department hastened to comply with his request.

To continue with Morgan's statement to me. In the early months of 1960, he started to conspire seriously with groups in Santa Clara and Las Villas provinces. At that time, he had a small band of followers who agreed with him that Castro was turning over Cuba to the Communists and that something must be done to stop him.

"I was one of the first men to start a Patriotic fighting front in the Escambray Mountains," Morgan said. "I made two or three clandestine trips into the United States to get arms and managed to get substantial amounts to the guerrilla fighting forces.

"How long did this go on, William?"

"For quite some time. Nobody was wise to what I was doing. Or at least so I thought.

"A man like you who knew all about underground methods of work, how did you get caught?"

'That is the worst part of the whole story," he said. "I had a boy with me in whom I had the utmost confidence. I had picked him myself and made him my chauffeur. He delivered plenty of arms for me to the groups in the Escambray and, as a matter of fact, he went there and fought as a guerrillero.

"All the time he was doing this, he was an agent of the G-2  When the time came, be prepared the trap and sprang it. This boy is the one who is going to send me to my execution."

"And you were never wise to him?"

"Absolutely not. Because he did everything I told him to. He seemed completely in earnest. He went into the mountains and stayed there to fight. So I trusted him with my life."

Tell me, William, do you think you have a chance?"

"Absolutely not. But I had counted on help earlier. You know there is really going to be an invasion, don't you?" I shook my bead. "Men have been infiltrating into Cuba for two or three months now. They are working closely with the CIA. When Pardo Llada said that the counterrevolution is already in Cuba, be was telling the truth.

"But Fidel Castro knows this also. That is why they are scheduling my trial. Castro wants to eliminate anyone who can take power from him and that is why they are going to shoot me."

I told him I was sorry it was ending this way.

"I had no choice. I had to make amends for my terrible mistake. It is hard because of my family. My wife is now in political asylum in the Brazilian Embassy. I have two beautiful daughters."

There was nothing to say. I told him I hoped it would be God's will that he escape from the trap.

"It is impossible . . . There is one more thing. Are you sue you don't knew Why you are in prison?"

When I shook my head, Morgan reminded me that I had spoken against Fidel Castro and the Revolution on the Alan Courtney Show in Miami in February 1959.

"My God, how did they find that out? My radio appearance was by telephone and I didn't reveal my name."

"Don't you remember, there was a lot of argument about your statement that a Federal Marshal had warned you about going to Cuba? That made them investigate. That gives you an idea of how many people Fidel Castro has working for him in Miami. They checked the people going to Cuba and, by a process of elimination, decided it was you.

"Then to make matters worse, you talked on the international. telephone without realizing that everything you said was monitored. Batista had this system operational and Castro simply took it over. Moreover, they found out you were a friend of Lieutenant [José] Castaño. There were stool pigeons in the Deauville Hotel who had worked for Batista--you probably knew who they were--and the same people informed on you. When you left the airport that night, you were suckered right in."

"But, William, why did they accuse me of being a pilot?"

"That part is very confusing. They were actually waiting for [Rafael] del Pino. There was much confusion that night; you will recall there were two arrests. When they accused you of being a pilot, they made a mistake. But that was the accusation and they had to leave it that way or let you go.

"Later on, when they had you on ice, they were ready to release you. Then your wife and son talked on the Miami radio, attacking Castro's Cuba. You realize that cooked your goose, don't you?"

"William, we were told to do that by the American Embassy."

"Well, maybe the Embassy made an honest mistake. It was about that time that I tried to do something for you, but there was too much resentment because of that radio show. Your case had become dangerous for me."

I asked William if there was anything I could do for him.

"If you ever get out of here alive, which I doubt," Morgan said, "try to tell people my story. I am not asking you to say that I was innocent, since I have been guilty of many things. But I tried to make up for my mistake and I am paying the penalty. I am paying with my life. Even though they took away my citizenship, I risked my life working for the United States to destroy Castro."

I promised to do what I could. We shook hands and he walked away. William Morgan had many friends. Hence, even though he was in and out of the galera several times after that, I never talked to him alone again.

"I Kneel for No Man"

That night, after they locked us into the galeras, we had no idea that anything out of the ordinary would happen, but, at half past one that morning, they called Comandante William Morgan and his co-defendant, Comandante Jesús Carrera, to the office. The man who was watching the office for us reported that Morgan and Carrera had been put in capilla. We spent another bad night because we believed they were going to shoot both men without trial.

In the morning, however, we learned that they were still in capilla and would be held there until trial. Around four that afternoon, William Morgan went to his trial, marching jauntily and singing "As the Caissons Go Rolling Along" at the top of his lungs. The trial lasted for six hours and, when it was over, the two men were put into capilla again and the grapevine told us they would die that night.

Around eleven o'clock, the man who was watching for us informed us that a woman and two little children had come into the office. He said that Morgan had then been taken from the capilla and led into the office, where he spent about half an hour.

The prison electrician was called into Morgan's death cell to fix the light. When he got there, William told him to give all of us his greetings and that be would try to let the world know what had happened at his trial. Shortly before his execution, a priest was sent in to him. We know that Morgan did manage to smuggle two letters out.

Early next morning around half past two, the firing squad arrived. The first man they took out was Jesús Carrera. We knew from our observer in the back of the galera that Fidel Castro, Raúl and other big shots were attending the executions in person. Either they wanted to be absolutely sure that their most dangerous enemies were dead or they came to indulge their cruelty and thirst for vengeance.

Jesús Carrera was shot to death. Five minutes later, they took William Morgan out of capilla. As they brought him to the paredón and tied his hands behind his back, a voice, which our observer could not identify with any certainty, asked him to kneel and beg for his life.

"I kneel for no man," Morgan replied in Spanish.

Then another voice said something we could not understand and we heard William Morgan cursing them. One of the riflemen shot and hit Morgan in the right knee. He fired again and put a bullet into Morgan's left kneecap. Then Morgan fell, for naturally he could not stand with both knees shattered.

The next stage was to put a bullet in his right shoulder and then another in his left. With Morgan writhing on the ground, the captain of the firing squad--I do not know his name--walked up to the tortured man and emptied a clip from his Tommy gun into his chest. When lie was finally dead, they smashed his face with five .45 slugs.

This was confirmed to us by a member of the garrison who was an eyewitness of the execution. The priest, Father Dario Casado, who saw the body, agreed with this amount.

Morgan's body was given to his sister-in-law, the woman who had come to see him with his two little children just before his execution. Father Casado, who was imprisoned a month or so later and who then slept next to my bed, saw the corpse and told me that Morgan's face was completely gone and that there was hardly anything recognizable about him.

William Morgan was buried the night of his death in the Colon Cemetery. Many of his friends came and saw how his body bad been mutilated. This created such a scandal that the practice of giving the bodies of men executed by firing squads to their families was stopped.

The morning after the execution, when we bad finished our coffee and were in the patio, a tumult began in the courtyard. Prisoners began shouting, "Bandits, Killers, Assassins" at the guards on the roofs. For the first time, the prisoners openly damned the Revolution. Many of the men in the patio were crying because the story of the brutal way Morgan had been killed was being circulated. The rumbling, that almost rose to the pitch of a riot, was a tribute to William Morgan's popularity. Whatever the verdict on Morgan's life, his death was that of a man.