Fair Play for Cuba Committee

The Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) was an American political organization founded in 1960 to advocate for the Cuban Revolution and oppose U.S. government hostility toward Fidel Castro's government. The committee organized public meetings, published a newsletter, and coordinated protests against the Bay of Pigs invasion. It was effectively destroyed as a national organization by 1963 through sustained FBI and CIA infiltration and harassment.

The FPCC's primary historical significance is its connection to Lee Harvey Oswald, who used the organization's name and materials in New Orleans in the summer of 1963 - activities that have been extensively analyzed for what they reveal about Oswald's associations and the intelligence context of the Kennedy assassination.¹

Organization and Activities

The FPCC was founded in April 1960 by Robert Taber, a journalist, and initially attracted a range of signatories from the American left, including figures such as Norman Mailer, Truman Capote, and several prominent academics. At its peak the committee had chapters in approximately twenty-seven cities and several thousand members. Its public activities were largely legal: organizing debates, producing literature defending the Cuban revolution, and opposing U.S. economic pressure on Cuba.

The organization was under FBI surveillance from its founding. The FBI's COINTELPRO program - which targeted left-wing organizations across the political spectrum - ran specific operations to discredit and disrupt the FPCC. The CIA simultaneously ran its own disruption programs targeting the committee's international contacts and attempting to compromise its leadership. By 1963 the combination of infiltration, internal disputes, and government pressure had severely diminished the FPCC's national organization.¹

Oswald and New Orleans

In the summer of 1963, Oswald appeared in New Orleans distributing FPCC leaflets stamped with a fictitious address ("544 Camp Street," which was actually the address of anti-Castro activist Guy Banister's office building). He gave a radio interview defending Castro's Cuba, attempted to recruit members for a New Orleans FPCC chapter, and was photographed distributing leaflets. He may have been the only actual FPCC member in New Orleans.

The anomalies of Oswald's FPCC activities have been extensively analyzed:

The 544 Camp Street address: The address Oswald stamped on his FPCC leaflets - 544 Camp Street - was physically the same building as 531 Lafayette Street, the office of Guy Banister, a former FBI Special Agent in Charge who ran an anti-Castro intelligence network. This proximity has never been satisfactorily explained. Whether Oswald and Banister knew each other, or whether the address connection was deliberate or accidental, remains disputed.

Intelligence cover theory: Some researchers have argued that Oswald's public pro-Castro activities were designed to establish a left-wing cover identity that would later be used to create the appearance of a Castro-connected assassination motive - either by Oswald himself as part of a planned operation or by others who were using or manipulating Oswald. The CIA's own internal reviews acknowledged that the Mexico City evidence connecting Oswald to the Cuban and Soviet embassies was handled in ways that remained unexplained.

Genuine belief: Other analysts have argued that Oswald was a genuine if eccentric political actor whose FPCC activities represented real ideological commitment - consistent with his Soviet defection, his stated political views, and his documented interest in Cuba and Marxism.¹

CIA and FBI Disruption

Declassified documents have confirmed that the CIA ran targeted operations against the FPCC in 1961-1963, including attempting to use Cuban exile groups to create incidents at FPCC events and working with informants to penetrate the organization. The specific question of whether any CIA-connected operative was directing or monitoring Oswald's New Orleans activities has not been definitively resolved.

The Warren Commission investigated Oswald's FPCC activities and concluded they were genuine political expression with no intelligence connection. The HSCA found the CIA's handling of Oswald-related evidence "not in accordance with agency regulations" and noted unexplained gaps.²