SECRET
Report # DD-742. 20 Mar 64
TO: [Redacted]
FROM: [Redacted]
SUBJECT: Appearance of Manuel ARTIME BUESA at the A.M.E.R.C. Session on 18 Mar 64 in the Everglades Hotel, Miami.

At exactly 1550 hours, 18 Mar 64, Manuel ARTIME BUESA appeared before A.M.E.R.C. members. ARTIME spoke for one hour and twenty minutes, finishing his speech at 1710 hours. During that time he answered questions from the audience.

ARTIME dedicated the first hour of his speech to "presenting his credentials" (that is how he called what he was going to say). During that hour he gave a recount of his actions, beginning with the letter of resignation which he sent to Fidel CASTRO in Cuba, and then reading excerpts from things published in exile by the M.R.R. and from his "Political Testament" which he claimed to have written in the Guatemala training base in the 24 hours preceding the departure for the Bay of Pigs invasion, etc., etc., up to the present time. He finished that part of his speech by declaring that he respected the Constitution of 1940, that he was fighting against a system not against one man, and that he would continue to fight after the fall of Fidel CASTRO Ruiz if another dictatorship was established in Cuba—whether a rightist or a leftist dictatorship—or if it was simply an attempt to exchange Fidel for another person, no matter who it might be.

Then he said that many persons said he was an extreme rightist and others said he was an extreme leftist, that others said he was an ambitious individual, and others said he was an opportunist. That all he could answer to those who said he was an extremist was that he did not like extremes, either of the right or left, because these extremes always ended by touching each other. That to those who said he was an ambitious individual he replied that yes, he was ambitious, but that his ambition was for his name to be spoken with respect some day in his country and that the ambition that he had, after his death, it would be said he was a worthy man. That, in short, what he had was a great ambition for his country. That to those who said he was an opportunist he could say that opportunism is making use of every moment and every opportunity to do something for the country; it is an opportunism for opportunities to do something for the country; it is a great [illegible].

[Handwritten note at bottom:] Air File: [Redacted] [Redacted] [Redacted]