Castro Hid Testimony About the Assassination of Gaitan


by Gerardo Reyes and Pablo Alfonso

Published October 22, 2000 in El Nuevo Herald

The mystery of the assassination of the Colombian political leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitan now has a new chapter in Miami an ex Cuban intelligence official claims that the island's government concealed the testimony of an ex CIA agent who confessed to having participated in the assassination of the Liberal leader in 1948.

A former political prisoner said that the ex CIA agent is in the United States.

In extensive interviews with El Nuevo Herald, the former intelligence chief Carlos Cajaraville told of his participation in 1980 in interrogations, videos and recordings to gather evidence with the apparent purpose of making a great international scandal. But after 15 days of interrogations, the Cuban government decided to archive the case for reasons never known for certain.

Cajaraville was a veteran official of the counter- intelligence services of the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) who deserted in 1995 and now lives in Miami.

In the second half of 1980, he explained, he and other agents interrogated John Mepples Spiritto, a former anti- Castro combatant who was identified as a CIA agent.

"He was a man with curly grey hair," recalled Cajaraville. "He spoke perfect Spanish with much fluidity, to a degree such that when they made the recordings, we had him say some things in English so they would believe he was an American."

Spiritto would have very specific knowledge of many operations of the intelligence services of the United States in Latin America and utilized "a language only recognized by those who work in intelligence," added Cajaraville.

"He never said he was directly involved in the assassination [of Gaitan], that his mission was to arrange the assassination," indicated Cajaraville.  "The details that he gave [about the death of Gaitan] were astonishing.  Some we confirmed with our Colombian friends."

The assassination of Gaitan unleashed a spiral of violence in Colombia, the consequences of which remain in the current crisis of the country.

One of the witnesses was Fidel Castro, whom he met in Bogota the day of the assassination, in his role as a student leader. It was the most important event in the formation of his political career.

"His real baptism as a revolutionary," wrote the biographer Tad Szulc.

Various sources coincide in that Spiritto fell prisoner to the beginnings of the 1960s in a conspiratorial mission against Castro in the mountains of Escambray, the same scenario in which years before he fought as a guerrilla against Fulgencio Batista.

But the opinions about his credibility are not unanimous.

Former anti-Castro combatant of Escambray Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo said "He is a charlattan.  As a prisoner he said that he was in the CIA and told some incredible stories searching for his freedom, I would not give one cent for his version that he was in the CIA and that he participated in the murder of Gaitan."

The ex chief of counterintelligence of MININT, General Fabian Escalante Font, has another opinion.

In his book, The Secret War, Escalante identified Spiritto as a CIA agent who was sent to the mountains of Escambray on a specific mission to "measure the waist" of the volatile and undisciplined William Alexander Morgan, another CIA agent put in the region against Batista.

Morgan reached the grade of commander on the Second Front of Escambray, under the command of Gutierrez Menoyo.  After the revolutionary triumph, he opposed Castro's government and was shot.

According to Escalante, Gutierrez Menoyo named Spiritto captain the same day of his arrival in 1957.

The whereabouts of Spiritto are unknown.  The former Cuban political prisoner Felix Vazquez Robles, who knew him in Escambray, said that he had heard recently that he could be in the United States.

"They are things that are said in the street and I did not pay much attention because we were never friends," said Vasquez. "He is an extremely strange person."

In the opinion of Gloria Gaitan, the daughter of the assassinated politician, Spiritto is a key piece to decipher the role played by the United States intelligence services in the death of her father.

In the early 1960s, Gloria saw in Havana a movie of the Cuban government in which Spiritto confessed to the participation of the CIA in the elimination of her father.

In the middle of the projection, Gloria burst into tears and the security agents had to suspend the session to console her.

Her emotional reaction, explained Gloria to El Herald, came after hearing Spiritto mention an episode in the life of Gaitan that she had only heard from the mouth of her father and mother.

Spiritto gave details of the first part of the operation that consisted of trying to bribe Gaitan to renounce his presidential candidacy, but he would not accept it.

"In 1947 my father came home for lunch one day and told my mother, in my presence, had offered him a law professorship in the Sorbone in Paris or in the University of Rome, and a guarantee of a spendid apartment in one of the luxurious parts of these cities," related Gloria.

The faded memories of Cajaraville, the official who battled almost 20 years after with Spiritto, were the following

In the second half of 1980, one of the lieutenant colonels in the confidence of then Minister of the Interior, Jose Abrantes, communicated that he had a "tough guy" in the Las Villas prison that he wanted "to save" telling his story.

The prisoner had been enamored with the sister of another prisoner and was desperate to leave the prison.

Spiritto was taken to a suite of the Hotel Capri that belonged to George Raft, an actor in gangster movies, where he was interrogated by Cajaraville and by Eduardo Rodriguez, known as One Armed Martin.

There he told of his Sicilian origin, and that he had fought as a young man in the Second World War.  He learned to speak Spanish in Mexico in the recently created CIA, and was sent to Colombia to neutralize a candidate who could become a destabilizing political factor in the region.  Gaitan was assassinated in the afternoon of the 9th of April in a central street of Bogota by Juan Roa Sierra, quien was lynched hours afterwards by frenzied crowds.

"Then Spiritto began to give all kinds of information about Colombia, about the assault of the Presidential Palace in Cuba in 1957, of the invation of Giron," recalled Cajaraville.  "It was like we had opened a lock, we had to begin a process of systematic verification," said Cajaraville.

Spiritto recalled that he made contact in Colombia with another CIA agent, Thomas Elliot, and with pro- Nazi activists to coordinate the "neutralization" of Gaitan.

"When we asked him if the crowds had really lynched the assassin or if it had been his contacts who had provoked the crowds, he became withdrawn," said Cajaraville.

Taking note of the mine of information that the witness offered, the Cuban government decided to make a documentary film.  After three meetings, the film was finally edited and limited to the statements about the participation of the CIA in the death of Gaitan. Still today, the tape has not been made public.

Cajaraville was left with the impression that the officials that participated in the film were fearful that the final product was not to Castro's liking.

"The boss's name [Fidel] appeared many times," he explained.  He spoke a lot of his presence the 9th of April in Bogota and he had unpublished graphics of his visit, participating in a riot."

After several weeks, Cajaraville learned of the destiny of the film the hidden vaults of the Ministry of the Interior."



Translation by Paul Wolf