The Cuban leader that our State Department said "had to go" was Fulgencio Batista, whom they called a "corrupt dictator." It is strange that when tens of thousands of Cubans were being murdered and imprisoned by Castro, the State Department never found it in their vocabulary to call him a "corrupt dictator." The fact was, that in 1957 under Batista, Cuba had the highest standard of living in Latin America, 1957 being Cuba's most prosperous year. Wages were high and the Cuban peso was at parity with the dollar. Even though he was not without some faults, Batista had built roads, schools, and hotels, and had attracted foreign investors. Castro put an end to this progress and made Cuba a giant prison camp. The methods used to establish a Communist dictatorship in Cuba were a replay of the methods used before. First a propaganda campaign was carried out against Bastista, then military arms were supplied to the revolutionaries. This was followed by an arms embargo against the Cuban government, and constant State Department pressure against Batista. The top men in the State Department at this time, who were members of the New York based Council on Foreign Relations were: Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Under Secretary of State Christian Herter, and Deputy Under Secretary of State Robert Murphy. The leader of the CIA was CFR member Allen Dulles, and the man who occupied the White House was CFR 129 Babylon's War Against God