Dick Russell interviewed Col William Bishop in 1990. This is part of what Bishop said:
"I was to obtain additional funding, say this and no more, from the crime Syndicate out of New Orleans, for Alpha 66. At that point in time, Rolando Masferrer was the key bagman, for lack of a better term, for Alpha 66. Primarily the funding came through the Syndicate, because of Masferrer's connections with those people back in Cuba. He had ties with Santos Trafficante, Jr., and other criminal elements. Organized crime, pure and simple."
You see what he's telling us. CIA's anti-Castro activity was not approved by the president and had no official funding. So they got black money from the mob, and used it to train insurgents everywhere from New Orleans to Nicaragua. This was facilitated by the anti-Castro Cubans, many of whom had ties to organized crime going back long before Castro. The mob wanted its casinos back, so they were more than happy to pony up some funds.
This is Cuban intelligence chief Fabian Escalante talking about Felipe Vidal Santiago and his relationship with Bishop:
Felipe Vidal Santiago told Cuban intelligence that on the weekend before the assassination, he was invited to a meeting in Dallas by the CIA's Colonel William Bishop. "It was supposed to be a meeting with a few wealthy people to talk about financing anti-Castro operations," says Escalante. Bishop left on his own "for interviews" numerous times during their stay in Dallas. After approximately four days they returned to Miami.
Not long before his death in 1993, Colonel Bishop confirmed to this writer that he'd had knowledge of the JFK plot. The Cubans indicate that the Vidal-Bishop Dallas trip concerned plans for re-taking the island once Castro's people had been implicated in the assassination.
The key word from the CIA's standpoint is "compartments". They could not be caught violating the US agreement with the Soviets, but they wanted Castro gone. So they set up a cover story whereby Castro could be blamed for the assassination. Hence Oswald and "Fair Play for Cuba".
Only, it didn't work out the way they wanted, because the anti-Castro Cubans were publicly involved in every aspect of the operation. They were even all over Dallas that day, because of their relationship with the mob. The CIA couldn't tell the mob not to use them, because it would have tipped their hand. So after the assassination, the CIA went back to business as usual, infiltrating people like Santiago to stir up trouble.
