The Mamaroneck Plot

From mouth to mouth in Havana last week the word was passed: Christmas Eve was H-hour for the newest plot to unseat Strong Man Fulgencio Batista. Sailors patrolling the waterfront armed themselves with machine guns, the National Police stepped up its incessant searching of passing cars. But it took a small-town cop in Westchester County, N.Y. to blow the whistle on the plot.

As chief of police in the Westchester village of Mamaroneck (pop. 8,850), Louis Giancola had grown curious about the new board shutters over the windows of an unused gas station on the heavily traveled Boston Post Road. Leading a raid one afternoon last week, Giancola found that the building had been turned into a bristling arms dump: 1,000 rifle grenades, 1,000 bazooka shells, cases of rifle ammunition, napalm powder for making jellied gasoline, 900 parachute grenades with the chutes removed and napalm inserted. The chief was still staring in surprise when a 1953 Packard drove up, bearing Manhattan Arms Merchant Alfred Manheim, 29.

Manheim quickly spilled his story. Last summer, he said, he had met a Cuban named Jose Duarte. The Cuban, Manheim went on, placed orders to buy arms for the account of Carlos Prio Socarras, whom Bastista booted out of the Cuban presidency last March. Duarte turned over $15,500 for expenses and a $24,000 letter of credit. Manheim told police that he reported the deal to the U.S. State Department, and was instructed to "play along" until the plot was ripe. Over the months, he bought the surplus U.S. Army materiel and rented the gas station, only a grenade's throw from Mamaroneck Harbor.

The cops arrested Duarte, 35, who identified himself as one of three Cubans robbed last October at Fort Worth of $240,000 which they said Prio had given them to buy arms. Duarte, Manheim and two alleged accomplices were booked for illegal possession of bombs. In Miami, Prio denied any connection with the arms dump or the plot. In Havana, Batista arrested ten retired naval officers for questioning.

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