THE TRAGEDY OF MARIO KOHLY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000400410016-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 5, 1999
• Sequence Number: 16
• Publication Date: October 1, 1966
• Content Type: NSPR

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Cuban . anti-communist leade
presently serving time on a Fed
cral prison farm in Pennsy
vania, in early , in
CIA agents offered Kohly.$500,000 in American cur-
rency if he would induce his 45,000-member under-
round organization in Cuba to join in the abortive Bay
of Pigs invasion. Kohly declined because he rightly
feared that Castro agents had infiltrated the leadership
of this ill-fated CIA venture.
Then, late in 1963, Kohly was arrested by Secret
Service agents in New York and charged with "counter-
eiting the currency of a foreign government." He was
tried and sentenced to serve two years in prison and in
January of this year he was given an additional year for
contempt of court.
Kohly's plan was to sabotage the Cuban economy by
boding Cuba with $50 million of counterfeit pesos,
ut he was betrayed to the authorities by a planted
merican agent. It seems that Kohly had unwittingly
nfringed upon President Kennedy's secret agreement
with Khrushchev, made at the time of the Cuban mis-
file crisis, to protect Castro from Cuban exile pressures
nd a corollary secret agreement with Castro made at
he time of the ransom of those Cubans caught in the
Bay of Pigs trap.
Despite the fact that the United States has adhered to
astro's stipulation to keep Kohly out of circulation,
Castro now wants Kohly---dead! Recently the FBI re-
eived a tip from Kohly's organization that Castro was
sending one of his top assassins to America to kill
ohly. The FBI notified the Federal Bureau of Prisons,
which promptly transferred Kohly from Lewisburg Peni-
entiary, a maximum security prison, to the prison farm
at Allenwood, a minimum security institution.
Not only is it much easier for an assassin to knock
off Kohly at Allenwood, the frail, 66-year-old Kohly,
who is under a doctor's care, has been assigned to work
at hard labor where he will be even more vulnerable to
assassination. According to secret FBI information,
astro has gone all out to get Kohly by giving his agent
lavish expense account plus a $75,000 fee upon com-
pletion of the job!
Several Americans who, over the years, have helped
Kohly, have disappeared or died mysteriously, including
multi-millionaire building contractor, Louis Berlanti and
its son, whose private plane was last seen over Lake
Okeechobee, Florida, in 1963. Berlanti, who had ex-
tensive business interests in Cuba confiscated by the
Castro government, had given Kohly over $50,000 of
his own money and had been authorized by Generalis-
simo Raphael Trujillo, the late Dominican dictator, to
withdraw $53 million of Dominican funds from a New
York bank. Berlanti had $30 million with him when
his plane disappeared. The New York law firm of for-
mer Vice President Richard Nixon, representing the
1rujillo family, is trying to locate and recover the miss-
in millions. In 1960, while he was still Vice Presi-
dent, Nixon, at the request of the late Senator wen
Brewster (R., Maine) asked the CIA to help the Kohly
organization overthrow the Castro regime and for a
while the CIA actively cooperated with Kohly.
Undercover CIA agents leased a $460 per month
house on 32nd Street in Georgetown, next door to the
home of CIA Director Allen Dulles, for Kohly's head-
quarters. The house had plenty of bedrooms where vis-
iting Cuban exiles who wanted to confer with Kohly
could stay overnight; also, it was an impressive place
where Kohly could ask anyone of importance to Wash-
ington without embarrassment. - CIA operatives sold
Koitly on the idea that the best way to break the Castro
economy would be to flood Cuba with counterfeit
currency.
Richard Marrow, an engineer who was working elect
tronic inventions on a CIA contract, came to Kohly
with'a batch of ten-peso notes that were perfect repro-
ductions of Cuban currency. The counterfeit plates were
made with the aid of expert engravers of the U.S.
Bureau of Engraving and Printing. While it is against
U.S. laws to counterfeit any foreign government cur-
rency or bonds, the CIA representative assured Kohly
that they had obtained U.S. Government "clearance"
for him to use the spurious pesos to subvert the Castro
economy. However, soon thereafter Castro changed the
printed design on Cuban currency, so this clandestine
operation promoted by the CIA was suspended.
After John F. Kennedy took office as President, See.
retary, of State Dean Rusk, McGeorge Bundy, Assis-
tant to. the President for National Security Affairs and
Richard Bissell, Deputy Director of the CIA, prevailed
upon the new President to support another Cuban
exile group headed by Manuel Antonio de Varona, who
was later replaced by Dr. Jose Miro Cardona, a Cuban
judge who had joined Castro in the revolution and who
Castro put-in office as the first revolutionary Prime Min-
'is ' ter of Cuba. Later Castro kicked him out when he
decided to become Prime Minister himself. Cardona
came to the U.S. and was immediately embraced by the
State Department, and appointed coordinator of the so-
called Cuban Revolutionary Council that was supported
by CIA funds deposited in a Miami bank. This group
spent $40 million. on the abortive Bay of Pigs inva-
sion operations. -.
Cardona was thoroughly hated by the anti-Castro
Cubans because he drew up the harsh code of Castro
laws that led to the "blood baths" after Castro seized
power. Also, Cardona had seized $2 billions in U.S.
property in Cuba without making any compensation.
Under Cardona's direction the Bay of Pigs invasion was,
doomed to failure from the very beginning since Cubans
despised and feared Cardona next to Castro.
The CIA and State Department tried to induce Kohly
to join forces with Cardona. He flatly refused. As a
further inducement the CIA agents in the office of
IZohly's lawyer, offered Kohiy a brict'casc containing
$500,000 in American currency. With an outburst of
temper, 'Kohiy ordered the CIA rcpresentativo out of
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