Word: ransoming
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Houston carried the first of the 1,113 survivors of Brigade 2506, the forlorn-hope band of Cuban exiles who suffered catastrophe at the Bay of Pigs. For their release, the U.S. had agreed to pay Fidel Castro a ransom of $53 million in drugs, medical equipment and other goodies (see following story). As the planes bringing back the prisoners prepared to take off from Havana's San Antonio airport, Castro delayed their departure by demanding to inspect the first shipment of drugs. Then he watched a demonstration of Soviet MIGs in the air space required for the prisoners...
...York Lawyer James Donovan, counsel for the Cuban Families Committee, was annoyed by the notion that Bobby Kennedy and the Justice Department were really responsible for arranging the ransom payments to Castro. "I have enormous respect for the Attorney General." said Donovan, "but it is absolutely and unqualifiedly so that the policy and negotiations were entrusted...
...President Kennedy, he feels a moral obligation to the prisoners: he made the decision that sent them to the Bay of Pigs; he also denied them the air cover that might have given them a chance. But there remained even more basic problems of principle. Should the U.S. pay ransom to sustain Castro's Communist regime? And if so. should it be done with such look-folks-no-hands clan-destineness...
President Kennedy has publicly insisted that the U.S. Government was playing no official part in arranging for the ransom to Castro. "This," he said, "is being done by a private committee." What really happened was that representatives of the Justice Department all but ordered drug and chemical companies to kick in with "donations" of their products. Transport companies-railroads, truckers, airlines and shipping firms-were similarly told to "donate" their services. Naturally enough...
Although the specific tax adjustments had not been worked out. it appeared that the drug, chemical and food companies who contributed to Castro would be able to write off $25 million (at retail, not wholesale, prices) of the $53 million ransom as "charitable" deductions. Charitable it certainly was-but of the sort that might becloud the brow of the ordinary U.S. taxpayer, worried as he is by Administration threats to make him show receipts for every dime he hands out for charity...