◆ SpookStack

assault), the plan was rejected by the Special Group in a meeting of 3 November 1960. The Department of Defense supported the Agency, but State objected and suggested that perhaps the point where covert intervention was possible had passed. Gordon Gray even went so far as to raise the possibility of a fake attack on Guantanamo as a means of justifying overt US intervention. It was at this same meeting that Mr. Livingston Merchant of the Department of State raised the question of whether plans were being made to assassinate Fidel Castro, Raul Castro, and Che Guevara at which point General Cabell, the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, pointed out that such activities as assassination were extremely difficult to manage and that the CIA had no capability for such an operation. 4/ Even as the size of the Cuban exile force was being debated, Headquarters cabled to Guatemala (4 November 1960) that the small team concept had gone by the board and that planning should begin for training a conventional amphibious assault force of at least 1,500 infantrymen. Outlines sent to the infantry training base in Guatemala (JMTRAV), emphasized - 147 - Tor SEERET