Events leading up to the Havana Conference of 1966 bear the mark of years of planning and experimentation. In reviewing- these events, it is important to understand that the Tricontinental Conference was not called to start subversive operations. The meeting, was held, rather, to coordinate subversion and guerrilla activity on a worldwide basis, to exchange experiences, and to build further on what has already been constructed-meaning- especially Cuba and Vietnam.

The Dominican delegate, Guido Gil, made this crystal clear in his address to the conference. He said: "The Dominican delegation believes it is very important-one might say almost vital-to the development of the revolutionary process of liberation of the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, to be able always to count on a consultative body such as the Tricontinental Conference through which experiences and ideas acquired in the process of the struggle of the various peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America could be shared."

Similar statements were made by other delegates, like the delegate from the United Arab Republic, whose Havana Embassy, incidentally,gave a reception to members of the delegations. The Arab delegate said that '" solidarity means to step across continents. * * * We support the struggle of the peoples of Vietnam." He linked that support to the success of the "struggle in the Dominican Republic,Venezuela, Colombia, and other countries."

From time to time, Communists disclose their interpretation of Marxism and relate their objectives in remarkably frank language. Such was the case in a speech made by Premier Nikita Khrushchev on January 6, 1961. Conventional war, he said, is not a precondition for !he Communist takeover of the Free World. He pointed out that there are four categories of wars-world wars, local wars, liberation wars, and popular uprisings. He said that world war is ruled out, since it would mean destruction of all of society-Communist and non-Communist. "National Liberation Fronts" were endorsed as the safest and most efficacious means of extending Communist domination. This decision was ratified at the twenty-second Communist Party Congress in -.Moscow in October of that year.

The Havana conference of 1966 represents an extension of this Kremlin philosophy enunciated 5 years earlier. "Liberation wars," said Khrushchev, "will continue to exist as long as imperialism exists * * * such wars not only are permissible, but inevitable. Therefore, the peoples can attain their freedom and independence only by struggle, including armed struggle." He said, however, that the Soviets would not hesitate to use the threat of world war, particularly thermonuclear war, to immobilize Western military power and the will to use it.

Krushchev proceeded to employ nuclear blackmail by installing missiles in Cuba in 1962, and pouring troops and technicians into the island in virtual occupation of the country. There they constructed the most extensive underground fortifications in the history of the hemisphere.

Many political writers viewed the Cuban missile crisis, in retrospect, as a sort of continental divide in relations between the Soviet Union and the United States. That this is not so needs no elaboration, for the basic elements of Communist strategies articulated by Khrushchev in 1961 have, except for temporary reverses, remained very much the same. The popular name for it is "peaceful coexistence." But, as the Havana document makes clear, "peaceful coexistence" is not designed to hold back the onward march of "wars of liberation." Quite the contrary.

Prof. Robert Strausz-Hupé understood the situation when, back in 1963, he predicted "ubiquitous disturbances throughout the Free World such as uprisings throughout Latin America, Africa, and Asia."

Writing on the subject of local wars, Prof. Gerhard Niemeyer arrived at much the same conclusion as Dr. Strausz-Hupé. He said: "The cold war will take on the form of a number of concrete conflicts, each of which seems capable of settlement, so that the potential settlement of such conflicts will tend to be confused with an over-all settlement of the Cold War." Considered within the context of the statements made at the Havana conference, Dr. Niemeyer's comments assume a new significance.

Dr. Niemeyer also correctly estimated back in 1963 that political operations of the Communists would, aim at control of strategic areas in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. As the Russians well knew, there could be no better key than Cuba, and they resorted to the pickpocket method of stealing it. They intend not only to maintain control, but, as the Havana conferences clearly demonstrate, to expand Cuba as the base from which to pilfer the countries of Asia, 'Africa, and Latin America.

The strategy was articulated in Castro-official newspaper, Revolucion, in December of 1964 in the following statement: "Colombia and Venezuela form the nucleus of a vast Vietnam of Latin America."

It was no Soviet expeditionary force that put Cuba into Mr. Khrushchev's pocket in 1959 and 1960. It was done by unconventional warfare --blackmail, subversion of the Cuban Confederation of Labor, deliberate destruction of the police and armed forces, and cancellation of Cuba's democratic constitution. No overt expeditionary force created I-e upheaval in the Dominican Republic in April of 1965. The guerrilla wars being waged in Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, and other countries, which the Russian delegate to the Havana conference specifically named as targets for Communist conquest, are wars of the same nature, directed from Cuba with material support from the Soviet Union. Nothing could be plainer on this score than the words of Soviet Delegate Sharaf Rashidov.1

The value of Cuba to world communism is not primarily as a launching pad for atomic missiles, aircraft, and submarines against the United States and its neighbors. The very existance of a Communist Cuba just off our shores under Soviet occupation carries with it the shattering implications of U.S. weakness and vulnerability. The psychological value alone of a Communist Cuba is enormous, an it is being exploited every day in every way. For example, Vilma Espin de Castro, wife of Cuban Armed Forces Minister Raul Castro, journeyed to Moscow last November. Thumping the drums for the upcoming conference, she broadcast from Moscow to the world: "If little Cuba located only 90 miles from North American imperialism, is able to carry out its revolution, then all peoples every-where can do so. Her comments were echoed by virtually every delegation to the Havana conference

The tangible value of Cuba, however, is something else. Avowedly pro-Communist, it has served as a hemispheric operations center which has conducted unconventional warfare against its neighbors for the last 6 years.

The governments of Panama, Colombia, Guatemala, Venezuela, Peru, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Argentina have protested against proved Cuban complicity in student riots, guerrilla operations, and political assassinations. A plot to assassinate, simultaneously, the presidents of Colombia and Venezuela was uncovered, and the trail led to Havana.

Cuba's role in subversion extends back to July of 1960 when Raul Castro and his wife hosted a "Preparatory Conference of Latin American Youth." Groups of teenagers from 17 Latin American countries, Canada, the United States and Europe descended on Havana. This was perhaps the first mass effort to recruit youngsters for guerrilla training.

Raul Castro addressed the assembly thus: "We must remove ourselves from the influence of the American eagle whose claws have been worn down from plundering its sister republics." Alongside the younger Castro were official delegates from Russia, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Red China, North Korea, and East Germany.

Fidel Castro himself rose from a sickbed to address the meeting. He told the youths to look upon Cuba's expropriation of United States properties as "an example for Latin America."

Just prior to the youth conference, the former Spanish Communist General Enrique Lister, appeared in Cuba. A graduate of the Frunze Military Academy in Russia, Lister set a out organizing guerrilla training camps, along with another Spanish Communist, Colonel Alberto Bayo. Bayo, it should be noted, trained Fidel Castro and his band of revolutionaries in Mexico and prepared them for their invasion of Oriente Province of Cuba on December 2, 1956.

These two Spanish Communists were the prime movers in establishing, guerrilla training camps in Cuba. Among the first was Boca Ciega school east of Havana in the resort town of Tarara.. It was placed under the control of Colonel Bayo. General Lister helped establish and later commanded the largest complex of guerrilla training schools in Minas del Frio, Oriente Province.

The training of guerrilla fighters and subversives in Cuba got underway in the middle of 1960 when Colonel Bayo received an initial batch of 19 young Latin American "becados"--so-called scholarship students. They were put through a rigorous program of drilling, marching, swimming, and mountain climbing; demolition work, infiltration tactics, and propaganda techniques. From these modest beginnings, Cuba's guerilla camps swelled in number to 10 in early 1963, following the missile crisis of the previous October. Painstaking interviews over the past several years with Castro officers, camp technicians, and other refugees who escaped following defection from the Government, indicate that by early 1966 Cuba had developed 43 such camps in which Latin Americans are trained in Viet Cong,-type terroristic wars.

Colombian officials estimated that 1,500 of its youth, including young women, were in training in Cuba the end of 1965. Virtually all of the countries of this hemisphere have presented evidence that their citizens are being trained in guerrilla operations in Cuba.

Nor are mainland United States and Puerto Rico immune from the guerrilla virus, and subversion. Previous studies of Cuba have concentrated mainly on the Cuban threat to our Latin American neighbors. However, U.S. territory is being, progressively threatened, as well, and that threat is summarized below.

Actual assaults on the United States and its institutions began as early as November 17, 1962. On that date several Cubans were arrested and charged with attempted sabotage of oil refineries in New-Jersey and retail stores in New York City. Roberto Santiesteban Casanova, the head conspirator, was found to be head of the Castro Communist spy and terrorist ring, operating in the United States. However, he and his accomplice, Jose Gomez Abad and his wife, were cloaked with diplomatic immunity by virtue of their assignment to the Cuban mission to the United Nations. Under this cloak, they recruited three others, including a pro-Castro American woman, and attempted the sabotage described by the Attorney General as "aimed at the heart of the internal security of the United States of America."

Upon the intervention of U.N. Secretary General U Thant, who argued diplomatic immunity, Robert Santiesteban Casanova was released on $250,000 bond and allowed to leave the country ,without being brought to justice. This incident contrasts unpleasantly with treatment accorded U.S. nationals in Iron-Curtain countries, particularly Cuba and Russia. The case of Newcomb Mott comes instantly to mind. This young American strayed across the Soviet border, was accused of spying, sentenced to 6 months in a Soviet labor camp, and then allegedly committed suicide by the improbable method of cutting his own throat with a knife. Adding to the improbability is the apparent contradiction that the Soviet guards who were accompanying him to the labor camp would permit the American to have a sharp knife in his possession at all.

Following the revolt in Santo Domingo in April of 1965, it became known that Santiesteban Casanova had turned up there on the rebel side. It also became known that he is a meniber of the Cuban DGI-General Directorate of Intelligence-Cuba's overseas spy and sabotage system.

Then there is the startling case of February 16, 1965, in which three American Negroes and a Canadian women were seized in a plot to blow up cherished symbols American heritage-the Statue of Liberty, the Washington Monument, and the Liberty Bell. All were Castroites. All had traveled to Cuba.

Interrogation turned up the fact that ringleader , Robert S. Collier, not only had traveled to Cuba illegally with 84 so-called "students" in August of 1964, but while there had received instructions in terroristic tactics from a major in the North Vietnamese army. Walter A. Bowe, another plotter, was revealed to have been a member of the Castro-financed "Fair Play for Cuba Committee." Both had been in contact with Robert Williams, an American renegade Negro.

According to a Havana broadcast of January 5, 1966, Robert F. Williams attended the Tricontinental Conference. He is presently a fugitive from North Carolina justice as the result of a riot which occurred in Monroe, N.C., on August 27, 1961. He faced prosecution there on a kidnaping charge. During the past few years he has been conducting a series of broadcasts in English beamed to the United States from Havana. These broadcasts openly call upon American Negroes to engage in force and violence against the American Government. He is the publisher of a monthly newsletter called the Crusader. In its May-June 1964, issue, Mr. Williams describes in detail how to manufacture Molotov cocktails, organize riots, terrorize the population, and ruin cities. The Crusader of October 1964, shows a photograph of Robert F. Williams with Mao Tse-tung, Chinese Communist leader. Mr. Williams is also the author of a pamphlet entitled "Negroes With Guns," published by a Communist publishing house, Marzani and Munsell.

Williams' berserk anti-Americanism should not be lightly dismissed as something uncharacteristic and irrelevant. For the fact is this: that Williams insane hatred of America and his categorical commitment to violence were reflected, with minor changes in wording and nuance, in the speeches of the most "responsible" Conference spokesmen and in the official resolutions of the Conference.

New York Police Commissioner Michael J. Murphy revealed that the terrorists had contacts in other cities with a view toward spreading terrorism throughout the country. Collier apparently received his instructions from Major Ernesto Guevara when the latter came to the United Nations to address the General Assembly in December of 1964.

Raymond Wood, the detective who penetrated Collier's "Black Liberation Front" and turned up the information which led to the arrest of Collier and his accomplices, testified that Collier told him he had met with Major Guevara and had received instructions from him. Said detective Wood: "Three-man demolition teams were to spearhead an uprising. The Capitol and the White House were scheduled to be destroyed by air."

Detective Wood also stated that the plot called for inducing military pilots to sabotage planes, the creation of chaos within the armed forces by means of false communications, and the use of mortar and machine-gun fire on police and street crowds, and, finally, the boobytrapping of the homes of Government officials.

The same February 16 that the plotters in New York were seized by police, another event took place in Miami which suggests, at the very least, some coordination. The Roney Plaza Hotel on Miami Beach canceled a meeting of a Cuban exile group. The management told the president of the group that it had received an anonymous telephone call threatening a bombing of the premises if the meeting were held. The previous October 7, a hall in the Everglades Hotel in Miami was bombed when the same exile group met there.

Two days following that, on February 18, it was discovered that Southern Florida might be the center for the printing and distribution of Communist pro-Castro propaganda. For, on that date, a Venezuelan stevedore in the port of Caracas came upon a mailpouch filled with pro-Castro literature as the U.S. ship, Santa Rosa was being unloaded. Investigation turned up another 1,000 mailpouches containing the literature. Upon tracing its origins (amounting to 100,000 pieces), they were found to have been consigned to Caracas from Miami. A Caracas cable from Agence France-Presse remarked that "* * * the material presumably was sent bv agents of the Castro regime who have be-en infiltrated into the United States."

These are a few of the many items in the history of mounting hemispheric violence which preceded the Conference.