◆ SpookStack

businessmen who had been kidnapped by Raul Castro. In both instances, the Agency representatives returned unharmed; and both reported on the "radical" and anti- American nature of the Castro movement. According to one source, Wiecha found Ifdefinite communist over- tones If among the Raul Castro forces. * 12/ Additional documentation of the pro-communist nature of the Castro organization was reported with great frequency during 1958 from contacts the Santiago de Cuba Base had in Oriente Province. Whether Castro's contingent was communist oriented or not, others such as Adolf Berle and his friends (both in and out of State Department)~ continued to reflect their concern about the possible ways to combat the growing strength of the Castro movement in Cuba. 13/ Berle was most hopeful that the Castro situation could be remedied by cooperation among Latin American liberals working in conjunction with some of the more enlightened Cubans who had broken with Castro (for example, Felipe Pazos and Pepin Bosch) with additional support from the OAS * The historian for WH Division provided the figures ~ us captives shown here, but Hugh Tho~as indicates 19 us businessmen and 27 servicemen were captured. - 7 -