Fair Play for Cuba Committee

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Lee Harvey Oswald distributing literature on behalf of the Fair Play For Cuba Committee, August 9, 1963. The headline on the leaflet reads "Hands off Cuba!"(photo taken by Michael O,Connor)

The Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) was an activist group set up in New York in April 1960.^[1] The FPCC's purpose was to provide grassroots support for the Cuban Revolution against attacks by the United States government once Fidel Castro began openly admitting his commitment to Marxism and began the expropriation and nationalization of Cuban assets belonging to U.S. corporations. The Committee opposed the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, the imposition of the United States embargo against Cuba and was sympathetic to the Cuban view during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Subsidiary Fair Play for Cuba groups were set up throughout the United States and Canada. Among its early notable supporters were William Appleman Williams, Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, as well as Latin Americans Waldo Frank and Carleton Beals.^[2] The committee later achieved notoriety through the activities of Lee Harvey Oswald in the New Orleans area, who was later the accused assassin of President of the United States John F. Kennedy.

On May 26, 1963, Oswald wrote a letter to the New York City headquarters of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and proposed "...renting a small office at my own expense for the purpose of forming a FPCC branch here in New Orleans."^[3] Three days later, the FPCC responded to Oswald's letter advising against opening a New Orleans office "at least not ... at the very beginning."^[4] In a follow-up letter, Oswald replied, "Against your advice, I have decided to take an office from the very beginning."^[5]

As the sole member of the New Orleans chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, Oswald ordered the following items from a local printer: 500 application forms, 300 membership cards, and 1,000 flyers with the heading, "Hands Off Cuba."^[6]

On August 9, Oswald turned up in downtown New Orleans handing out pro-Castro flyers. Carlos Bringuier, an anti-Castro militant, confronted Oswald, claiming he was tipped off about Oswald's leafleting by a friend. During an ensuing scuffle, Oswald, along with Bringuier and two of his friends, was arrested and charged with disturbing the peace.^[7] While in prison Oswald was visited by an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

On August 12, 1963, Oswald debated Bringuier on the issue of Castro and Cuba on the Bill Stuckey Radio Show explaining that "the principles of thought of the Fair Play for Cuba consist of restoration of diplomatic trade and tourist relations with Cuba.... We are primarily interested in the attitude of the US government toward Cuba. And in that way we are striving to get the United States to adopt measures which would be more friendly toward the Cuban people and the new Cuban regime in that country." During the course of the debate, Oswald was confronted with accusations about his past in the Soviet Union and his activities in New Orleans.

Like almost everything else associated with the Kennedy assassination, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee has been the subject of much speculation. It was often suspected of being a Soviet front with little real support outside of a few dedicated American Communists: such suspicions were not entirely unfounded, as it later came out that the Socialist Workers' Party had a huge hand in at least the Los Angeles branch. In more recent years it has also suspected of having largely or entirely been a puppet organization of the or some other U.S. governmental agency used to identify Communists and Communist sympathizers. (Some of Oswald's FPCC leaflets were printed with the address "544 Camp Street" on them. This address was in the same building as the office of Guy Banister, an ex-FBI agent who was involved in counterintelligence activities.) Jim Garrison, through his investigation of the John F. Kennedy Assassination, insinuated the involvement of intelligence agencies in its activities in New Orleans^[8].

In his 2002 book, The Kennedy Conspiracy (2002), Anthony Summers asserted that documents indicate both the Central Intelligence Agency and the FBI infiltrated the FPCC. He quoted a CIA officer saying "We did everything we could to make sure it was not successful - to smear it... to penetrate it. I think Oswald may have been part of a penetration attempt."

Vincent T. Lee shut down the national Fair Play for Cuba Committee in December 1963 when its landlord evicted the group from its national office; the notoriety accorded to it following the November 22, 1963, Kennedy assassination made it impossible for the committee to continue its work. Although as of 2006, several groups are currently working to end the U.S. embargo against Cuba, none seem to be lineally descended from the Fair Play for Cuba Committee or to be interested in being associated with that exact name.

[edit] External links

Cuba Portal

• Article on the Fair Play for Cuba Committee
• Testimony of Vincent T. Lee in regard to Oswald and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee
• Transcript of the radio debate between FPCC representative Lee Harvey Oswald, Ed Butler and Carlos Bringuier

[edit] References

1. ^ Richard Gott : Cuba a new History 177-178
2. ^ E.Van Gosse, Where the bous Are; Cuba and the Cold war, and the making of the new left,London 1993
3. ^ Lee (Vincent T.), Exhibit No. 2, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 20, p. 512.
4. ^ Lee (Vincent T.), Exhibit No. 3, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 20, p. 515.
5. ^ Lee (Vincent T.), Exhibit No. 4, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 20, p. 518.
6. ^ FBI Report of Investigation of Lee Harvey Oswald's Activities for Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New Orleans, Warren Commission Hearings, Volume 25, pp. 770, 773.
7. ^ Summers, Anthony. Not in Your Lifetime, (New York: Marlowe & Company, 1998), p. 211. ISBN 1-56924-739-0
8. ^ Fair Play for Cuba Committee