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As rumors began to circulate about mysterious goings-on at Retalhuleu, Alejos last winter allowed nosy journalists to visit the Helvetia plantation. Before they arrived, the Cubans were transferred to nearby La Suiza; they were brought back as soon as the visitors left. The recruits got rugged training in jungle, commando and night fighting techniques from a dozen U.S. experts and one Filipino instructor. They learned to use the most modern U.S. weapons—bazookas, recoilless cannon, machine guns. So strict was security that only a few officer B-26 pilots were allowed to visit nearby towns; infantry recruits were confined to camp. Incoming mail was addressed to an A.P.O. number; outgoing mail, heavily censored, was carried by pouch on a weekly C46 flight to Miami to friends and family. Yet Castro's spies penetrated the camp, and one even managed to smuggle movies of the training activity to Havana.
In the midst of the Frente buildup, the underground sabotage operations of the M.R.P. inside Cuba came almost to a halt for lack of matériel. In November, Manolo Ray sneaked out of Cuba to the U.S., hoping to win some support. Anxious to collect all anti-Castro organizations under one umbrella, the CIA offered to help M.R.P. on condition that it join Varona's Frente. The M.R.P. refused. The M.R.P. asked that arms be dropped to guerrillas in Escambray. The CIA, say the exiles, finally agreed, but on condition that the weapons be stamped with the Frente's initials. The M.R.P. asked for 15 minutes' broadcasting time on the CIA-controlled radio station on Swan Island. Again, they say, Bender agreed, but insisted that a CIA man direct the program.
Who & What For? Varona's Frente had its own complaints about the CIA, despite all the help the Frente was getting. "They want to know everything," complained one Frente leader. "Suppose you ask for 100 rifles. They want to know to whom, what for, where they will be used—in triplicate." Exiles also say that they were subjected to lie-detector tests before going to camps (sample question: Have you had homosexual relations?) and were threatened with deportation or detention camps at McAllen, Texas, if they got out of line. They say that in the final stages, the Pentagon moved in to take direct control of the operation. The Frente representative was removed when he tried to exert some authority, and the Batista followers in the camps moved toward the leadership, working with a militant young opportunist named Manuel Artime, 28, onetime Catholic student leader at Havana University and a Frente subchief who schemed to leapfrog into supreme power. When one Frente man mentioned the Batista recruits to a U.S. colonel, the colonel dismissed the matter with "they're antiCommunists, aren't they?"
Increasingly, the Frente and the M.R.P. leaders complained to intimates that the liberation of Cuba was no longer in their hands. "The U.S. has taken over, and they are owners, not allies," one confided. "The attack is coming soon. I don't know exactly when; it's no longer our decision. They plan to establish a beachhead, establish there a government-in-arms, hold air control, and move for the interior." On a map he pointed to a spot in Las Villas province, close to the Bay of Pigs.
All Together. By the middle of