The Fidel Fixation

The Agency's legacy wasn't entirely negative, though. Mongoose pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the local economy at a critical period in Dade's development. The CIA's influence over the transformation of Greater Miami into a center of international business and finance can probably never be determined, but it's clear that the Company and its numerous subsidiaries had a stake in almost every type of commercial endeavor: real estate, banking, shipping, air transport -- you name it. And JM/WAVE's reach was worldwide, coordinating everything from sabotage of Cuban-bought buses in West Germany to disruptions of student meetings in Finland, collecting and collating intelligence on Cuban activities from Japan to the Congo. It was, in a sense, a true forerunner of the freebooting information age corporations that have found Miami so conducive to their prosperity.

Any organization that had so significant and interesting an influence on South Florida deserves some sort of lasting memorial, and any war so bitter (even a secret one) needs its monuments. But after the early Seventies shutdown of JM/WAVE, the Agency sold off its navy, locked up its safe houses, and vanished into the night, without offering a word about what it did in Dade County unless forced by congressional subpoena.

With the exception of Memorial Boulevard (SW Thirteenth Avenue) and the Brigade 2506 museum, there are no overt monuments to the covert anti-Castro war in South Florida. Veterans of the special missions keep their sea logs and charts stashed away in footlockers, or remember their gunboats with black-and-white photos on office walls. And so we decided to put together our own CIA anti-Castro tour of Dade County, taking in the high and low points of the secret war's home front. Our list is far from complete. For one thing, the total number of locations involved is staggering, and for another, memories have faded. But as a kind of historical smorgasbord, this is one outing we hope will whet your appetite for more.

A Guided Tour

1. Why not begin at the CIA's epicenter, easily accessible from Florida's Turnpike. For most of the Sixties, South Dade had its very own version of the Twilight Zone: the 1571 acres between Coral Reef and Eureka drives, just west of the entrance to Metrozoo. Formerly occupied by the Richmond Naval Air Station, and nominally under the control of the University of Miami (some contemporary maps show it as UM's "South Campus"), the property was leased in late 1961 to a mysterious outfit called Zenith Technical Enterprises, which sealed off the tract from its then-rural surroundings with high fences, gray-uniformed guards, and attack dogs. Zenith placed such a high value on its privacy for good reason -- it was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Central Intelligence Agency, a dummy corporation set up as a cover for the biggest Agency spy base anywhere in the world outside of its headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Code-named JM/WAVE (the acronym, as far as anyone knows, was meaningless), the sprawling complex quickly grew to include everything a secret warrior could desire. Buildings that had survived the navy blimp base's 1945 destruction by hurricane and fire were refurbished and turned into offices for hundreds of CIA employees. A gas station was installed to service the Agency's large motor pool. (Vehicles were doled out according to rank: Low-level case officers got Chevies, higher-ups got Pontiacs, and station chief Ted Shackley drove a Cadillac.) Powerful radio systems were installed, enabling secure communications all over the Caribbean. And World War II-era bunkers and warehouses were stocked with all the paramilitary necessities: automatic weapons and ammunition, high explosives, Cuban army uniforms, even coffins. Nothing was overlooked -- with the possible exception of the CIA charter's injunction against covert operations on American soil.