Rolando Masferrer was a member of CIA Operation 40.
Rolando Masferrer was born in Cuba. He became a successful newspaper publisher. Masferrer was a strong supporter of Fulgencio Batista and helped organize a private army, Los Tigres, to deal with the dictator's critics. When Fidel Castro gained power it is claimed that Masferrer fled to the United States with $10 million.
Masferrer settled in Miami where he established an anti-Castro organization called the 30th of November. He also had links with Alpha 66. Masferrer attempted to organize the assassination of Castro. He also remained in contact with Santo Trafficante and Jimmy Hoffa who provided funds for his activities. According to William C. Bishop: "Hoffa gave Masferrer $50,000... expense money... to partially set up the assassination team."
Rolando Masferrer was killed in Miami, Florida, on 31st October, 1975, as a result of a dynamite bomb being placed in his car. FBI Agents Robert Scherrer and Carter Cornick believed that Guillermo Novo (CIA agent, Operation 40) played a key role in the murder of Masferrer. According to Saul Landau: "Masferrer, a master of anti-Castro slogans, supported violence against the Cuban revolution. But his efforts had brought no results and the more ambitious exiled Cubans began to think of his rhetoric and his purported militant actions as a front for his “business” activities. Masferrer stood as an obstacle to Mas Canosa’s (CIA agent) plans to forge an effective and unified counter revolution".
Operation 40 was the code name for a Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored counterintelligence group composed mostly by Cuban exiles. It was approved by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in March 1960, after the January 1959 Cuban Revolution. The group was presided over by Richard Nixon and included Admiral Arleigh Burke, Livingston Merchant of the State Department, National Security Adviser Gordon Gray, and Allen Dulles of the CIA. CIA assembled virtually the same team that was involved in the removal of Arbenz: Tracey Barnes, Richard Bissell, David Morales, David Atlee Phillips, E. Howard Hunt, Rip Robertson and Henry Hecksher. Added to this list were several agents who had been involved in undercover operations in Germany: Ted Shackley, Tom Clines and William Harvey. Tracy Barnes functioned as head of the Cuban Task Force. He called a meeting on January 18, 1960, in his office in Quarters Eyes, near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, which the navy had lent while new buildings were being constructed in Langley. Those who gathered there included Howard Hunt, future head of the Watergate team and a writer of crime novels; Frank Bender, a friend of Trujillo; Jack Esterline, who had come straight from Venezuela where he directed a CIA group; psychological warfare expert David A. Phillips, and others. Vice-President Richard Nixon was the Cuban "case officer," and had assembled an important group of businessmen headed by George Bush Sr and Jack Crichton, both Texas oilmen, as fundraisers. Operation 40, Mexico-City-1963. Special operation allegedly charged with assasinating Fidel Castro (killed a bunch of other people instead),
Operation 40 Members:
Alvin Ross;
Antonio Cuesta;
Antonio Veciana;
Barry Seal
Bernard Barker
Carl Elmer Jenkins;
Carlos Bringuier;
David A. Phillips
David Sanchez Morales
E. Howard Hunt,
Eladio del Valle
Eugenio Martinez (‘Musculito’);
Felipe Rivero;
Felix Rodriguez Mendigutia;
Frank Bender
Frank Sturgis;
Gaspar ‘Gasparito’ Jimenez Escobedo;
George Bush
Gerry Patrick Hemming;
Guillermo Novo;
Henry Hecksher.
Hermino Diaz Garcia;
Isidro Borjas;
Jack Crichton
Jack Esterline,
Jose Basulto;
Jose Dionisio Suarez;
Jose Sanjenis Perdomo, Chief of Police Cuban Pres Carlos Prio
Juan Manuel Salvat;
Luis Posada Carriles;
Nazario Sargent;
Orlando Bosch;
Paulino Sierra;
Pedro Luis Diaz Lanz;
Porter Goss;
Rafael ‘Chi Chi’ Quinterol
Ricardo Morales Navarrete
Richard Bissell
Rolando Masferrer;
Ted Shackley, CIA station-chief in Miami
Thomas G. Clines;
Tracy Barnes
Virgilio Paz Romero;
William C. Bishop;
William Harvey.
William Robert “Tosh” Plumlee;
William “Rip” Robertson;
(1) Richard Case Nagell, interviewed by Dick Russell (1977)
I conducted inquiries relative to 'dissident' members of several Cuban refugee groups based in the United States; I checked out an alleged connection between a Miami resident named Eladio Del Valle and New Orleans CIA informant Sergio Arcacha-Smith; I investigated an associate of the now deceased right-wing extremist David W. Ferrie of New Orleans... I conducted a surveillance on a man, said to have been an ex-CIA employee, observed talking to (exile) leader Manuel Artime and former Cuban senator/racketeer Rolando Masferrer.
(2) Dick Russell,The Man Who Knew Too Much (1992)
Nicknamed "The Tiger" after his ruthless private army of the Batista era, Masferrer was an ex-Cuban senator and newspaper publisher who reportedly fled the island with as much as $10 million. "A guy who could slit your throat and smile while doing it," as U.S. Senate aide Al Tarabocchia put it.
In Miami, Masferrer was an FBI informant who maintained connections to the Trafficante underworld. His "30th of November" exile organization kept up efforts to eliminate Castro all through 1963 and beyond. Cuba seems to have responded in kind; Castro was known to have a substantial bounty out on Masferrer. As we saw in Chapter Ten, before leaving Mexico City Nagell obtained a weapon, with Masferrer as the original target.
And who was the unidentified man - "said to have been an ex-CIA employee" - whom Nagell observed talking with Artime and Masferrer that January 1963 day in Miami? Based on other material supplied me by Nagell, I believe it was a Cuban exile who used the "war name" of "Angel" (pronounced On-hel). He, along with a partner, would later come into direct contact with Lee Harvey Oswald.
(3) William C. Bishop, interviewed by Dick Russell (1990)
I was to obtain additional funding, I'll say this and no more, from the (crime) Syndicate out of New Orleans, for Alpha 66. At that point in time, Rolando Masferrer was the key bagman, for lack of a better term, for Alpha 66. Primarily the funding came through the Syndicate, because of Masferrer's connections with those people back in Cuba. He had ties with Santos Trafficante, Jr., and other criminal elements. Organized crime, pure and simple. He also had different ties with Jimmy Hoffa. As far back as 1962,1 think. But Rolando, from time to time when it came to large sums of money, had sticky fingers. I think that's why he was killed, eventually. Either that, or the Kennedy assassination. Because he knew about it.
(4) Saul Landau, Anti-Terrorism Update (20th September, 2003)
In the 1960s, Guillermo and his brother had linked their political fortunes with an overtly fascist anti-Castro group called the Cuban Nationalist Movement. According to FBI Agents Carter Cornick and Scherrer, whose police work helped crack the Letelier Moffitt assassination case and point the finger at the highest levels of the Pinochet government, Novo pursued his violent anti-Castro activities throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. Scherrer claimed that “he tried to finance through drug dealing. But we could never make a charge stick.” Guillermo’s reputation as a tough guy included an incident where, to show his courage and machismo, drove his car into a brick wall at high speed.
In 1975 Guillermo and Ignacio had already forged links with General Pinochet’s secret police. Indeed, FBI Agents Scherrer and Carter Cornick, who was the point man on the Letelier case, were convinced that the Novo brothers had played key roles in the assassination of anti-Castro exile Rolando Masferrer whose death directly benefited Jorge Mas Canosa, the man who went on to lead the Cuban American National Foundation, the most powerful anti-Castro pressure group in the nation.
Masferrer, a Senator in Batista’s Cuba, won his notoriety for leading a small army known as "Masferrer's Tigers." Prior to Castro’s assumption of power in January 1959, these thugs attacked violently factions that opposed the Batista regime. In exile in Miami, he bought and published a Spanish language newspaper named Libertad. But he also continued his better-paying occupation: the extortion of small and easily intimidated business people in south Florida.
Masferrer, a master of anti-Castro slogans, supported violence against the Cuban revolution. But his efforts had brought no results and the more ambitious exiled Cubans began to think of his rhetoric and his purported militant actions as a front for his “business” activities. Masferrer stood as an obstacle to Mas Canosa’s plans to forge an effective and unified counter revolution, which would include meaningful violence and political pressure.
May 2, 2018 - President John F. Kennedy greeted Fort Worth law enforcement crowd ... from Bohning in 1968 about the past activities of Rolando Masferrer, ...
Rolando Masferrer - Wikipedia
Rolando Arcadio Masferrer Rojas (1918–1975), born in Holguín, July 12, 1918, in former Oriente Province, better known simply as Rolando Masferrer,
was a Cuban henchman, lawyer, congressman, newspaper publisher and a
political activist. He was killed in Miami, United States, on October
31, 1975.
Rolando Masferrer
was born in Cuba. He became a successful newspaper publisher. Masferrer
was a strong supporter of Fulgencio Batista and helped ...
C-O-N-FEN -E-N-T-I-A-L . Bo. COUNTRY Cuba/Haiti. REPORT NO. (b)(0). SUBJECT. Activities of Rolando. Masferrer Rojas. DATE DISTR. 19 May 1966. (
(SUMMARY: ROLANDO MASFERRER ROJAS, FORMER CİBAN SENATOR. WHO HAS FOR MANY MONTHS BEEN DESCRIBING PLANS FOR ACTION ...
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