In this dim, musty, empty storefront in Wicker Park, about 30 people have gathered to hear Vern Lyon, 46, of Des Moines. His talk is being sponsored by Venceremos (a group that supports improved relations with Cuba), and in it Lyon tells how he went from an apolitical engineering major at Iowa State University to a CIA agent overseeing sabotage and destabilization efforts in Cuba to a prisoner at Leavenworth. This 20-year odyssey also forms the basis for his book, “Plausible Denial.” Though two publishers have expressed an interest in it, because of censorship problems with the CIA, it’s impossible it will be published in anything less than a year.
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“I faced the same decision all my colleagues did at the time: ‘What are you going to do about the draft?’ I spent all my life working for a career I didn’t want to cut short. I was looking for a way out. I saw a lot of my friends who were into engineering get drafted before graduation or just after. I waited for the shoe to drop.”
Recruiters from aerospace companies came to campus with promises of draft deferments. In his senior year, Lyon was wooed by an Alabama company whose offer included not only a deferment but a package so fantastic that he couldn’t be told about it until he’d signed a paper stating he wouldn’t share this conversation with any of his fellow students. They might become insanely jealous. “I started thinking, ‘My God, they’re going to make me president of the company.’” So he signed, and the recruiter stamped it with a notary seal and whipped it into his pocket. Then he said he was really with the CIA.
He soon became chief of base, overseeing all the CIA’s covert operations in Cuba. “I recruited agents, oversaw and directed some direct sabotage. We sabotaged the sugar industry, X-ray machines, airlines, communication systems. The agency informed us that the only way to bring down the Castro government was from within. The general directive was to raise the frustration level of the Cuban citizen by whatever means.”
Shortly after his release, he was offered a job with Des Moines Hispanic Ministry, an immigrant resettlement agency he heads today. He never did get to be an aerospace engineer.
