Cryptonym: AMBLOOD
Mary Ferrell Database Entry for AMBLOOD
Describes Torroella as former employee in Cuba's Ministry of the Treasury.
http://database.cubaarchive.org/case-record-simple-search/3432/
Captured after infiltrating from overseas in a C.I.A. operation to support the 2506 Brigade for the Bay of Pigs invasion. He was first taken to La Cabaña Fortress prison in Havana, but was hastily sent to Boniato prison in Santiago for a speedy trial and immediate execution by firing squad. At Boniato prison, awaiting his execution, he smuggled a photo of his daughter Cynthia to his friend and fellow political prisoner Ramiro Gómez Barrueco, and asked him to tell his daughter that he had died as a man and that she had been in his heart until his last moments. Raul Castro had taken special interest in his imprisonment from the start, had been present in his early interrogation, and had told him that if he did not cooperate with information, he would be executed. Luis did not talk. Raul attended his execution in Santiago. His death certificate (Book 2, p.332, Section on Deaths, Juzgado Municipal del Sur, Santiago de Cuba), lists the cause of death as bullets from firearms, occurring at 5AM at the shooting range in Santiago, and indicates the body was to be buried at the Santiago cemetery. The family, however, was not told where it was placed. He left a twenty-seven-year-old wife and a six-year-old daughter. Luis had studied a Masters in Economics in the U.S. at Dartmouth College, married a fellow student (US citizen), and returned to Cuba with his new wife in 1954. He went to work at the Merril Lynch office in Havana, and the couple had a daughter. He joined the anti-Batista resistance and, after the ouster of Batista, went to work for the Minister in the Treasury Department of the new revolutionary government. But, he soon became concerned over the apparent Communist takeover, and left for the US with his wife and child. Once there, he began to help the Cuban resistance and returned to Cuba, where he was captured.
The Secret War: CIA Covert Operations Against Cuba, 1959-62, by Fabian Escalante, p. 93.
Escalante identifies AMBLOOD as Luis Torroella y Martin Rivero.
A 8/15/60 IRD note on Luis Torroella is in the file of Manuel Ray (AMBANG-1). Luis Torroella's Office of Security number is 203308.
CIA Diary by Philip Agee, pp. 122-123; pp. 195-196.
Agee identifies one network that tried to move assassination plans forward was AMBLOOD, run by former Cuban government official Luis Toroella. Ecuador military intelligence chief Lt. Col. Roger Paredes helped network this operation, which was run from JMWAVE in Miami.
Deadly Secrets, by Warren Hinckle and William Turner, pp. 116-117.
Hinckle and Turner agree that Torroella was the leader, and that the exiles were trained by the CIA inside Guantanamo naval base itself.
Fabian Escalante, The Cuba Project (Ocean Press, 2004), pp. 86-88, 92, 161
"After the defeat at the Bay of Pigs, the internal counterrevolution, encouraged by the US government, began almost immediately to regroup to carry out a new campaign of terrorism and psychological warfare. This campaign was to have culminated on July 26, 1961, with the assassination of Commanders Fidel Castro and Raul Castro and a simultaneous provocation at the US naval base at Guantanamo. This was to initiate a conflict between the two countries and provide the pretext for an open military intervention by US troops, which would be ready and waiting at military bases in the southern United States. It was an operation which the CIA had been developing since 1959, and which they considered an alternative to Sori Marin's conspiracy. The groups involved in these plans had salvaged their forces from the Bay of Pigs debacle, and had highly trusted agents, including Alfredo Izaguirre de la Riva (AMPUG-1), Jose Pujals (AMCOAX-1) and Octavio Barroso. These elements were divided into three groups, one which operated in the former Oriente province, and the other two in the nation's capital...AMBLOOD's mission consisted of coordinating the counterrevolutionary organizations in the eastern provinces that had survived the Bay of Pigs...On July 12, Jose Pujals Mederos slipped out of the country to Miami, for the purpose of reporting in detail on the progress of Operation Patty...AMBLOOD, who operated in Santiago de Cuba, was arrested (in that city during mid-May)."
Chicago Tribune, 11/8/62, p. 20
Luis Torroella's wife says her husband was executed on October 31, 1962 for allegedly trying to kill Castro. http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1962/11/08/page/20/article/u-s-woman-says-mate-executed-falsely-in-cuba