ABOUT THIS EPISODE
In this second installment of our 15-part miniseries, Ground Zero: JM WAVE and the Cuban Question, we explore the chaotic aftermath of the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and the secret agreements that fundamentally altered President John F. Kennedy's relationship with the anti-Castro exile movement. We trace the Christmas Eve 1962 return of Brigade 2506 prisoners landing at Homestead Air Force Base, culminating in President Kennedy’s famous Orange Bowl address where he received the brigade's battle flag and promised it would be returned in a "free Havana." Yet behind this public spectacle lay a covert reality: Kennedy’s secret letters to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev offering assurances against an invasion of Cuba alongside the confidential removal of U.S. Jupiter missiles from Turkey. We examine the internal fallout inside the CIA, where task force chief William Harvey's unauthorized dispatch of ten Cuban agent teams during the crisis sparked a furious clash with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, resulting in Harvey’s exile to Rome, his replacement by Desmond Fitzgerald, and a seismic shift in which JM WAVE's 300-plus American officers and thousands of exile operatives were transformed almost overnight from an army of liberation into a volatile political liability.
We detail the Kennedy administration's aggressive 1963 federal crackdown on independent anti-Castro paramilitary factions operating out of South Florida. We examine the U.S. Customs raid on Gerald Patrick Hemming’s Interpen group on No-Name Key, which prompted the exiles to send a white feather of cowardice to the White House, as well as the CIA’s appointment of psychological warfare specialist George Joannides ("Howard") to rein in the student group DRE (Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil) and redirect their efforts toward controlled propaganda rather than unsanctioned raids. We follow the Justice Department's prosecution of militant exile groups Alpha 66 and Commandos L following their high-profile attacks on Soviet freighters in Cuban ports, an escalating confrontation that drove Cuban Revolutionary Council leader José Miró Cardona to resign in protest while accusing the White House of a second catastrophic betrayal.
Finally, we expose the secret, high-stakes White House backchannel to Fidel Castro that operated in direct opposition to the CIA's ongoing covert operations. We trace how ABC journalist Lisa Howard ("TV's first lady of sin"), building on Bay of Pigs ransom negotiator James Donovan's private talks with Castro, secured a groundbreaking 10-hour interview in Havana with the Cuban leader, returning with Castro's message that U.S. crackdowns on exile raiders were viewed as a "proper step toward accommodation." We examine a top-secret March 1963 White House memorandum recording President Kennedy’s personal decision to overrule CIA Director John McCone and State Department hardliners by refusing to demand a break with Moscow as a non-negotiable condition, instructing aides to dangle "flies" and explore a "Titoist" model for Cuba. We highlight the dangerous paradox of late 1963, where White House diplomats quietly pursued peace while the CIA continued plotting sabotage raids and poison-laced scuba wetsuits—leaving the radicalized exile community in South Florida convinced of a double-cross while Castro interpreted federal enforcement as a signal of rapprochement.
