Clandestine

Chapter 7 - Life in the fast lane

It is difficult for me to convey how much $10,000 was in 1962. A house in New York City may have gone for $20,000 and the average annual income for an American was under $7,000. It was a ridiculous amount. My apartment was paid for and I had a job which paid me $100 / week at Western Union. Consequently I had enough money to enjoy my time in the city. Sensibly I invested most of the cash in U.S. bonds and kept enough handy in case I needed anything. My job at Western Union was just to keep me busy and under the radar. I was paid for my silence and for whatever would come next.

I went to the party that Simon had recommended and met a few blokes and many more women. I left with plenty of phone numbers, and in the two months that I spent in New York I was rarely without a date. I pretended that my success with the ladies was due to my charming Scottish accent but my intelligence training made me believe otherwise. In one of my first lessons in intelligence training I learned that agents are often manipulated by money (like $10,000 in cash, in envelopes) and sex. Agents are often set up with girls to keep them satisfied and addle-brained. I was sensible enough to realise that I was being manipulated from the time I arrived in New York, though I played along willingly and especially enjoyed the attention from the women.

At the end of April I received a call from Simon who informed me that it was time for me to head to Tampa to assist with operations in Florida at a CIA-directed camp. I would be leaving at the end of the week.  I was sad to be leaving New York but happy to be seeing more of the US and interested in what ‘operations” I might be involved in assisting. In my last conversation with Simon he reminded me that I could contact him if I needed any help. Though the manner in which he offered his support made me reluctant to call upon him or aide. Simon left me with another envelope, this time with a train ticket to Florida, the name and phone number for my contact in Tampa, and $1,000 in cash. I thanked Simon for his help and proceeded to pack up my belongings from my apartment.

Florida was hot. The only thing I could compare it to was my two-month stint in Iran, but the humidity in Tampa over the summer of 1962 had me wilting. I met my contact in Tampa, a man named Eduardo, who drove me south to a militia-training centre just north of Miami. The training centre housed a gang of Cuban exiles who were training under the auspices of the U.S. government and the supervision of the CIA. My job was purchasing and procurement, essentially running the operations at the camp. I had 300 hungry Cuban exiles to feed every day and I needed to find a cover story for the packages of military hardware which magically found their way on a regular basis to our camp in the middle of the Florida swampland. Every dime that was needed for the operation flowed through Eduardo who was the paymaster for the venture. I assumed that the Cuban exiles were preparing for another invasion of Cuba, but given the disorganised nature of the camp I hoped that it was only for show. There were intelligence leaks coming out of every corner of the operation, and the leadership of the camp was embarrassingly inept. During my time at the camp I was kept extremely busy, helping keep the wheels greased for the venture.

My career as a camp co-ordinator did not last long. In early October Eduardo brought me to downtown Tampa to meet with a few of his associates. We arrived at a classy bar in the city, named “The Columbia”. Eduardo didn’t have much to say to me about why I was along for the ride, but I soon realised he had put my name forward for an intelligence assignment to be undertaken with agents I would meet this evening.

Eduardo and I ordered a drink and within a few minutes I was introduced to a number of his associates. It was fairly clear to me that the gentlemen I met that evening were only superficially related to the CIA; however, I had pieced together that this was one source of the money that funded the operations of our little militia down the road. As the night wore on I was introduced to Santo Trafficante and Johnny Roselli, who I would later come to realize were two of the more infamous mob bosses in the United States. The meeting was brief and Eduardo introduced me as the guy that he had mentioned before from the camp. Later, from the bar, I overheard Mr. Roselli say to Eduardo that he should “set it up” and that “he even looks like him”.