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The Agency backed the Frente Revolucionario Democratico (FRD), the most active and vocal of the many Cuban exile organizations, as the 'group with the best prospects for unifying the anti-Castro elements in the US. Under Agency guidance the FRD was to promote financial support from the business community in the New York City area; and, in the Florida area, the FRD was developed as the focal point for the recruitment of the Cubans who would form the 2506 Brigade. The Cuban community in Miami and Dade County, Florida, was a hotbed of anti-Castro politics of all degrees from improbable intellectualizing to strident calls for direct and immediate US intervention--particularly if US forces would oust Castro and then turn the country over to "them". As polemicists and pUblicists, the Cubans were developing a talent for directing political pressures at points where they believed there was the most to gain. Both. local politicians and congressional representa- tiyes were quite aware of these lobbying efforts against the Castro, government. For good or ill, Castro himself was widely known in the US; and the media sought by whatever means to uncover the - "secret" war plans which were being developed for his overthrow. By the late fall of 1960 when the concept changed from developing a guerrilla potential to the creation of an amphibious invasion force, the US Government's plan to maintain "plausible deniabi1ity" of its anti-Castro involvement had the impenetrability l " ..~,~. t 4 • I'·,' " f1