Cryptonym: AMBLOOD
Mary Ferrell Database Entry for AMBLOOD
Describes Torroella as former employee in Cuba's Ministry of the Treasury.
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