Lisa Howard (reporter)

Lisa Howard was born on April 24, 1930. An off-Broadway theater and TV soap opera actress, including a stint on The Edge of Night for CBS in the 1950's, Howard turned to journalism when her acting career began to fade. Working for the Mutual Radio Network, she was the first American reporter to interview Soviet Premiere Nikita Krushchev. In 1961 she was hired by ABC and became the host of The News Hour with Lisa Howard.

In April 1963 she went to Cuba to make a documentary. Cuban dictator, Fidel Castro, agreed to both private and on-camera interviews with Howard. Castro had made it clear to her that he was amenable to opening relations with Washington. She returned to the US and reported this to President John F. Kennedy as well as the fact that she had had a sexual encounter with Castro, who had kept his boots on, according to what she told her friend, Gore Vidal. President Kennedy agreed that it would be helpful to start talks with Cuba and allowed Lisa Howard to act as a go-between to set up negotiations between Washington and Havana.

The CIA was none too thrilled when officials were debriefed by Howard as to Castro's willingness to open diplomatic ties. High-ranking officials (anti-Castro extremists) within the CIA made every effort to derail these peace talks. CIA assassinatin plots against Castro were being planned at the time -- in gross insubordination to the wishes of President Kennedy, who in certain aspects of his Cuban policies tended to vaciliate between hawk and dove stances. Efforts were made by hardliners to discourage the broadcast of the Howard-Castro interview on ABC but they proved unsuccessful.

According to her daughter, Fritzi Lareau, Howard had fallen in love with Castro and viewed herself as a grand player on the stage of History. In order to continue the reconciliation agenda, she set up a meeting between UN diplomat William Attwood and Carlos Lechuga, Cuba's UN representative on September 23, 1963 at her apartment.

As a goodwill gesture, Kennedy sent a coded message to Castro in a speech delivered on November 19, 1963. The speech included the following passage: "Cuba had become a weapon in an effort dictated by external powers to subvert the other American republics. This and this alone divides us. As long as this is true, nothing is possible. Without it, everything is possible." He also sent another journalist to Cuba to tell Castro that he would lift the embargo if Cuba would stop supporting left-wing movements in other countries.

Three days later, President Kennedy was assassinated. The new president, Lyndon B. Johnson, objected to normalizing relations with Cuba as he feared this would make him appear to be soft on Communism. But Lisa Howard refused to give up. During the next year she met with Che Guevara and on December 16, 1964, she arranged a meeting between Guevara and U.S. senator Eugene McCarthy.

The CIA monitered her phone calls with surveillance equipment, including conversations with Attwood about JFK's enthusiasm towards her endeavors. Embittered due to being thwarted over Cuba, she erroneously blamed Robert Kennedy and endorsed his Republican opponent in the 1964 New York Senate race. Because of her adamant determination to set up negotiations between America and Cuba and her public political partisanship, she was fired from ABC. In April 1965 she angrily confronted Robert Kennedy during an ABC conference with reporters. Suffering from an addiction to sleeping pills and devastated by the loss of her career and a miscarriage, she overdosed on July 4, 1965. The official report was that she had committed suicide by overdosing on phenobarbitols.

References

[http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKhowardL2.htm Lisa Howard page at Schoolnet.co.uk]

[David Talbot, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years (New York: Free Press, 2007), pp. 224-232.]