DE LA COVA, ANTONIO
To: Jeremy Kryt [jeremyakryt@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 3, 2015 8:55 AM

Good morning Jeremy,

Thank you for sending me the link to your article in the Daily Beast.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/26/the-cuban-assassination-that-could-kill-obama-s-detente-deal.html
I was dismayed at finding a number of factual errors and distortions even though I had addressed all those issues with you by phone during a two-hour conversation and with four emails providing citations that can be read here
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/academic/Jeremy_Kryt.htm

It is now apparent that you had and agenda while writing the piece to meet a deadline for the anniversary of Vera’s assassination. It was obvious from our conversation that you lacked basic knowledge of the history of United States-Cuba relations, the Cuban exile community, or its involvement with the CIA. Your article was based mostly on Internet sources, many of them of questionable character.

Here are some of the major errors and distortions in your article:

1. Aldo Vera’s autopsy photos were not “soon leaked to the press” after his murder. Those photos, along with the autopsy report were public documents purchased by me more than a decade later from the coroner’s office and appeared in the Crónica Gráfica article that I wrote in 1988. The photos had previously never been published.

2. Aldo Vera never had any “involvement in the bombing of a Cuban airliner” as confirmed during the decade-long investigation of that incident by the intelligence agencies of five countries and the Venezuelan military and civilian courts that acquitted Dr. Orlando Bosch. You erroneously tie Vera into that act due to his acquaintance with Dr. Bosch, who had been the leader of Fidel Castro’s Action and Sabotage section of the 26th of July Movement in his native Las Villas province. You likewise make no mention that Bosch was twice acquitted by military and civilian courts of the plane bombing.

3. While identifying Vera as “The former war brother of Fidel Castro,” you distort the fact that Vera was “chief of the Action and Sabotage Section of Castro's 26th of July Movement in Havana” in charge of carrying out a terrorist campaign ordered by Castro that included “The Night of the Hundred Bombs,” as I pointed out to you in my email of 10/17/2015 7:37 PM. I cited Carlos Franqui’s, Diary of the Cuban Revolution, for this source. The bombings, assassinations, kidnaping of U.S. military personnel, multiple airline hijackings and arson carried out during Castro’s “war” is well documented but you avoided mentioning this.
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cuba-terrorism.htm
It is apparent that by not stating any of these facts you, like other Castro apologists, are trying to sanitize the Cuban revolution from the vast two-year terrorist campaign that brought them to power.

4. John Dinges is a renown Fidel Castro dictatorship stalwart who is untruthful when stating that“there’s no record of assassinations by Cubans abroad.” Cuban Gen. Rafael del Pino and DGI Major Florentino Azpillaga both publicly declared after defecting that the Castro dictatorship was responsible for the murders of exile leaders José Elías de la Torriente and Rolando Masferrer, which were orchestrated through a double agent.

5. John Dinges is also deceitful when stating that “Vera worked as an informant for the FBI,” that he “rubbed shoulders” with Pinochet, or that he “had an inside seat at the famous militant summit at Bonao in the Dominican Republic in the summer of 1976.” Dinges provides no evidence of any of these incidents, which he described in his book Assassination on Embassy Row co-authored with Castro sycophant Saul Landau. Vera is not even mentioned in their book.

6. I indicated to you in my email of 10/17/2015 7:37 PM that “I have interviewed Orlando Bosch and three others who were at the Bonao meeting and can guarantee you that neither Aldo Vera, Michael Townley nor Luis Posada were at Bonao. Posada has also admitted this to me.” I gave you the names of three informants who participated in the Bonao meeting but you chose to ignore this because it did not fit into your scheme and erroneously put Townley and Posada a Bonao. Assassination on Embassy Row does not have Townley at Bonao and Townley’s confession to the FBI and trial testimony do not place him at Bonao.

7. When you write that Vera “appears in CIA case logs, although the context is unclear,” you are unable to perceive that the single mention in that document relates to the CIA smuggling him out of Cuba in early 1961 with Humberto Sori Marin, who was soon after caught and executed under Castro’s orders on April 17, 1961. There is no other documented evidence of Vera’s contact with the CIA after that. I specifically made this clear in my email of October 17, 2015 7:23 PM citing the book The Fish Is Red which describes this affair.

8. Linking Vera to the Kennedy assassination by referring to “apocryphal sources” discredits the objectivity of your article and makes it more fit for a spurious blog than a serious news organization. During our phone conversation I warned you that Kennedy assassination theorists who linked Aldo Vera to the plot had likewise implicated Virgilio Paz in it, although Paz was only twelve years old at the time and residing in Cuba.

9. You also got it wrong when citing my article to say that as a result of the bomb blamed on Vera, “One officer lost both arms, and the the [sic] other was left partially blind by the blast.” The article and the photos clearly indicate that the two policemen lost both their arms.

10. You mention in your piece that I have a web page dedicated to Aldo Vera but omitted that I investigated this case for months, interviewed Vera’s wounded companion, police officers who investigated the case, and described it in a four-page magazine article.

When we spoke on the phone I asked if you had interviewed anyone else for this article and you only mentioned lawyer Antonio Martínez. Then in a follow up email that day you indicated that you were “coordinating with other interviews.” You withheld from me that you had already interviewed Ann Louise Bardach and John Dinges. Both of these writers have a long history of being Castro dictatorship cheerleaders and vilifiers of the Cuban exile community. A federal jury dismissed Bardach’s credibility as a reporter during the trial against Luis Posada in 2005 when he was acquitted of perjury, a charge largely based on her allegations.
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/posada/AP-1-20-2011.htm

On my email of Oct. 17, at 7:37 PM, I wrote: “Please make sure that you quote me referring to the ‘Castro dictatorial dynasty.’” I likewise said the same on the phone. Instead, you decided to omit my direct quote and only cited me as referring to “Castro,” once again indicating your biased and preconceived agenda of not antagonizing the dictatorship and its supporters.
 
At the end of our phone conversation you completely took me by surprise when stating that you would review the recording of our talk and the emails I sent you. At no time prior to that did you ask for permission to record me nor did you indicate that you were surreptitiously doing so. That unethical behavior is what got journalist Jim DeFede fired from the Miami Herald in 2005.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/29/us/miami-paper-fires-columnist-adding-own-twist-to-tale-of-sex-politics-and-suicide.html

Unless you drastically improve your investigative and reporting capabilities and ethics, I seriously doubt that you will ever work for a prestigious news organization.

I have put our exchange of emails on my web site to set the record straight and in the hope that others you try to interview will first learn about your disreputable tactics.

Antonio

Antonio R. de la Cova, Ph.D.
Adjunct Professor of Anthropology, History, and AFAM
University of South Carolina
Department of Anthropology
Gambrell Hall, Room 439
Columbia, South Carolina 29208

Dear Professor De La Cova,

I'm working on a story for The Daily Beast, concerning U.S-Cuba relations, and I was hoping to include your expertise in the article.

The focus of the piece is the Aldo Vera murder case, and what it and other cases like it mean for U.S.-Cuban relations -- and I'd like to include some of Vera's back story as well.

I apologize for writing on the weekend, but I'm on deadline for the story and working on this now. Would you be available to speak on the phone for a few minutes -- perhaps early tomorrow afternoon? I'd be glad to send the questions ahead of time, if that's convenient.

Thank you in advance for your help with this. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the Vera case etc.

Best regards,

Jeremy Kryt

DE LA COVA, ANTONIO
To: Jeremy Kryt [jeremyakryt@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, October 17, 2015 9:42 AM

Good morning Jeremy,
  Have you read my 1988 article on the Aldo Vera murder?
  http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cuban-rebels/aldo-vera.pdf
  Here are accompanying photos on my web site.
  http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/vera.htm
  I don't understand what that has to do with U.S.-Cuba relations.
  On the other hand, radical terrorist fugitives Assata Shakur, William Morales and Victor Gerena are directly related to U.S.-Cuba relations.
  I will be available today after 2:30 P.M. at 812 202-8422.
  Antonio

Antonio R. de la Cova, Ph.D.
Adjunct Professor of Anthropology, History, and AFAM
University of South Carolina
Department of Anthropology
Gambrell Hall, Room 439
Columbia, South Carolina 29208

Jeremy Kryt [jeremyakryt@gmail.com]
To: DE LA COVA, ANTONIO
 Saturday, October 17, 2015 5:10 PM
You replied on 10/17/2015 7:37 PM.

Antonio,

Thank you again for the very helpful and informative interview. Here are a couple of articles I thought you might find of interest:

https://adriaen22.wordpress.com/tag/aldo-vera-serafin/

http://www.aporrea.org/actualidad/n174429.html

Relevant text from above link:

Otros dos individuos llevando la "mancha" CIA que participan a la reunión de Bonao son Gaspar "Gasparito" Jiménez Escobedo y Aldo Vera Serafín. El 3 de agosto de 1975, Jiménez había sido involucrado con Vera en el intento de secuestro del entonces embajador cubano en Argentina, Emilio Aragonés. Ese mismo año, Jiménez se sumaba a una conspiración fracasada para asesinar al presidente Fidel Castro en ocasión de su primera visita a Jamaica.

Tan "CIA" era, por su parte, Vera Serafín que acompañaba a Michael Townley cuando este agente viajo a Chile para sumarse a los servicios especiales de la dictadura de Augusto Pinochet.

En confidencias que hizo antes de su asesinato, ocurrido este mismo año en Puerto Rico, el propio Vera afirmó que tres misteriosos "desconocidos" se encontraban también presentes en la reunión de Bonao. No cabe duda que se trataba de oficiales de la agencia de Langley asignados al caso.

Más claro, el agua. En Bonao, la CIA firmó lo que se convertirá en una devastadora cadena de atentados terroristas, cuyos actores principales siguen beneficiándose, más de 30 años más tarde, de su total protección.

And finally this piece -- which includes a few paragraphs at the end that I think will interest you, especially regarding Banco Bilbao's theories about why Vera was killed.

http://www.courthousenews.com/2015/09/08/bank-stumbles-on-appeal-to-shield-cuban-assets.htm

Thoughts?

Thank you again.

Jeremy

Jeremy,
  I have interviewed Orlando Bosch and three others who were at the Bonao meeting and can guarantee you that neither Aldo Vera, Michael Townley nor Luis Posada where at Bonao. Posada has also admitted this to me. I even know one person who was there but who has never been mentioned because the informants didn't know his name.
I can also tell you who were the informants who participated in the Bonao meeting: Bay of Pigs veteran Roberto Carballo informing the Castro regime, with whom he has been doing business for years; Bay of Pigs veteran Armando Lopez Estrada, a convicted drug dealer and known FBI informant who had voluntarily four months earlier snitched on Bay of Pigs comrade Rolando Otero http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/belligerence/Armando_Lopez_Estrada.pdf
  and reporter Oscar Angulo, who was a Miami police informant.
  Two of the articles in the link you sent me was written by Jean Guy Allard, a French Canadian who writes for Cuba's official newspaper Granma. He is a propaganda mouth piece of the Castro dynasty.
  Allard is totally discredited in one of those articles when purporting that Aldo Vera and Virgilio Paz were linked to the JFK conspiracy.
  According to the FBI Wanted poster, Paz was born on November 20, 1951!
  http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/belligerence/virgilio-wanted.jpg
  He didn't leave Cuba with his family until 1964.
  The "Night of the Hundred Bombs" was November 8, 1957. The article saying many people were killed and hurt is exaggerating. They even got the year wrong.
  Vera was founder and chief of the Action and Sabotage Section of Castro's 26th of July Movement in Havana.
  Look him up in Carlos Franqui, "Diary of the Cuban Revolution," where Vera in mentioned in the index in ten pages of the book.
  Odon Alvarez de la Campa was the bomber injured with Vera. His photo appears on my web site here dedicated to Castro's terrorism that led to his seizing power
  http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cuba-terrorism.htm
  Vera and Alvarez were not summarily executed by the Batista regime, that provided medical attention and sent them to prison from November 1957 until Batista fled on January 1, 1959. Vera became the first National Chief of Police until Fidel Castro replaced him with Efigenio Ameijeiras.
  I'll send a follow-up email with more information.
  Please make sure that you quote me referring to the "Castro dictatorial dynasty."
  Antonio

Antonio R. de la Cova, Ph.D.
Adjunct Professor of Anthropology, History, and AFAM
University of South Carolina
Department of Anthropology
Gambrell Hall, Room 439
Columbia, South Carolina 29208

Antonio R. de la Cova, Ph.D.
Adjunct Professor of Anthropology, History, and AFAM
University of South Carolina
Department of Anthropology
Gambrell Hall, Room 439
Columbia, South Carolina 29208

DE LA COVA, ANTONIO
In response to the message from DE LA COVA, ANTONIO, 10/17/2015
To: DE LA COVA, ANTONIO
Sent ItemsSaturday, October 17, 2015 7:37 PM
Jeremy,
  The last paragraph of the Courthouse News article is referring to this case
  http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cuba/villoldo-lawsuit.htm
  Gustavo Villoldo is known for selling Che relics
  http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/che/che-relics.htm
  The family of Howard Anderson also sued Cuba and won a judgement
  http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cuba/howard-anderson.htm
  and judgement here
  http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/us-cuba/anderson-court.htm
  Spanish language report on the Anderson case that I put on Youtube.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yke0zfAyyKM
  Antonio

Antonio R. de la Cova, Ph.D.
Adjunct Professor of Anthropology, History, and AFAM
University of South Carolina
Department of Anthropology
Gambrell Hall, Room 439
Columbia, South Carolina 29208

Jeremy Kryt [jeremyakryt@gmail.com]
To:  DE LA COVA, ANTONIO
 Monday, October 19, 2015 12:22 AM
You replied on 10/28/2015 10:58 PM.
Antonio,

Thank you for the very helpful links and additional material. I'm truly impressed by the breadth of your knowledge about all of this.

I'm going through the information you sent, and coordinating with other interviews, etc. I'll let you know if I have any follow up preguntas -- or if you come across anything else please don't hesitate to send.

Thank you again.

Cuidate,

Jeremy

Antonio R. de la Cova, Ph.D.
Adjunct Professor of Anthropology, History, and AFAM
University of South Carolina
Department of Anthropology
Gambrell Hall, Room 439
Columbia, South Carolina 29208

Jeremy Kryt [jeremyakryt@gmail.com]
In response to the message from Jeremy Kryt, Mon 10/19
To:
 DE LA COVA, ANTONIO
 Thursday, October 29, 2015 1:14 AM
Antonio,

here is the link, apologies for not sending before

Thank you

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/26/the-cuban-assassination-that-could-kill-obama-s-detente-deal.html