The PEPE Letters
By: Paul Bleau
“… we will analyze similar situations that demonstrate stratagems around other subjects and incidents that occurred during the months preceding and succeeding the assassination of JFK that are revealing of a pattern that is indicative of central coordination.”
From The JFK Assassination Chokeholds
Executive Summary
There is a strongly supported theory in the JFK research community that the assassination bears the fingerprints of a CIA assassination program code-named ZRRIFLE, and that it was led by rogue, high-level agents linked with the failed Bay of Pigs operation. Many facts support this theory, including the association of regime change specialists with many elements of the plot, the impersonation of Oswald in Mexico City in the fall of 1963 to make him look unhinged and Castro-connected, and, most interestingly for this article, the use of incriminating correspondence.
Shortly after the Mexico City incident, a letter with a forged signature incriminating Oswald and foreign confederates, and corroborative of the Mexico City charade was sent to the Russian embassy in Washington. The FBI eventually dismissed it as a clumsy attempt by Oswald to ingratiate himself with the Soviets. The content and the timing of the letter suggest rather that it was part of the same stratagem designed by those behind the Mexico City set-up.
Five other letters sent from Cuba, all postmarked shortly after the assassination, incriminated Oswald, unidentified Cuban agents, and Fidel Castro himself. They contained details of the Mexico City fabrication known only to a very few. Despite this, the FBI dismissed these letters as a hoax. (See the book ZR Rifle by Claudia Furiati)
Recently this author discovered three more incriminatory letters in released CIA files that received little attention from the research community. These very similar letters are postmarked in the late fall of 1962, the year before the assassination. This article analyzes these letters and concludes that:
- They reveal that plans to assassinate JFK were likely triggered by the Cuban Missile Crisis.
- They are consistent with and add detail to the theory that the assassination followed the ZRRIFLE playbook.
- The fact that the sender of these letters was directly linked to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, just like Oswald and other subjects of interest involved in suspicious events throughout 1963, provides compelling added evidence that plans to kill JFK during the last year of his life were centrally coordinated.
- They add credence to the theories that point to the involvement of specialists in regime change operations. They add to the suspicions that high-level officers David Phillips and William Harvey were involved.
- They do not incriminate the CIA as an organization, nor the FBI and Secret Service.
Introduction
Case linkage is a standard offender profiling technique that was never performed for the JFK assassination by the leading intelligence organizations of the country. By the time the ARRB was running, the Secret Service ensured that this could not be done by illegally destroying JFK files just before they would have been made available through declassification beginning in the mid-nineties.
In Chokeholds, by comparing some 20 incidents and/or subjects that were worthy of exploration, we were able to present a picture that revealed: “…that the peculiarities that one can find in many of the subjects’ personas, associations and actions are hardly a haphazard collection of traits and behaviors.” One of the traits that was underscored was links with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee that existed in a vast majority of the cases explored.
(For more see the articles on Prior Plots and on Exposing the FPCC at Kennedysandking.com)
In late December 2024, while reading some of the latest declassified files available at Mary Ferrell, I found a series pertaining to letters sent from Havana, written in a way to incriminate Cuba in a plot to kill JFK right after the peak of the Missile Crisis. I had a déjà vu moment.
The 1962 Pepe letters are not only corroborative of what many researchers have come to think, but they add a clearer picture to the offender profile that is getting more precise from added pieces to the puzzle– like these. In 1962, just following the height of the Missile Crisis where JFK was strongly opposed by his war hawks, three letters signed by a “Pepe,” were sent from Havana in a way that ensured that they would be discovered by U.S. intelligence. These letters created deep concern that there was a plot to kill JFK in the works, one that involved enemy agents in both Cuba and the U.S. They are remarkably similar to the 1963 letters and link potential patsies and perpetrators to Fidel Castro in what can only be seen as another false flag operation.
The FBI eventually dismissed these letters as a Cuban harassment tactic despite referring to the sender as a suspect.
- Was this a prequel to what would happen in the fall of 1963?
- Are the perpetrators of this similar case the same as those who are behind the conspiracy?
This author believes that the answer is yes to both questions, which can only lead to more crystallization of the opinions that most researchers have, according to recent surveys on the matter, about the who, when, how, and why of the conspiracy.
After the assassination, investigators did nothing to see how these letters linked up with the eerily similar subsequent events described earlier in this section.
Background
“According to a historical study of the Arbenz removal project: discussing themes and tactics that would become constants during the following decades… deniable assassination squads… while placing the blame on designated parties (patsies).
In 1953, sabotage and propaganda efforts were discussed but beyond that a CIA officer proposed a plan for first, spreading rumors that the communists were dissatisfied with Arbenz, then killing him in a fashion that would be laid on the communists.” (Nexus, by Larry Hancock)
According to a recent study, most researchers are of the opinion that the maneuvers described above are part of the assassination program code-named ZRRIFLE, and that CIA regime change specialists David Phillips and William Harvey should be considered people of interest and that the Missile Crisis was a determining factor in the decision to remove JFK.
1) ZRRIFLE
“ZRRIFLE” was a program to recruit foreign criminal assets for various illegal activities including burglary, wiretaps, strong-arm work, and thefts in support of ZR code-breaking work. Later it was used by William Harvey as a project for an Executive Action assassination program.
It provided a cover for recruiting individuals who could be used to provide the CIA with a highly targeted ‘executive action’ capability. Along with other CIA assassination activities, it was investigated by the Church Committee in the 1970s. That investigation was the first to document and publicize American efforts to eliminate Fidel Castro, Patrice Lumumba, and other foreign leaders.
In 1961, William Harvey was tasked by Richard Helms with perfecting an executive action program. Key aspects of ZRRIFLE included setting up phony paper trails, the use of surrogates and patsies, as well as provisions to blame a foe. He left behind hand-written notes. The following are excerpts fromWilliam Harvey’s notes:
“Should have phony 201 in RI [Records Integration] to backstop this, all documents therein forged & backdated. Should look like a CE file …. Cover: planning should include provision for blaming Sovs or Czechs in case of blow.”
2) The Mexico City Charade
Between September 27 and October 3, 1963, conspirators in the JFK assassination, developed a false flag incident in Mexico City designed to make future patsy, Lee Harvey Oswald, look like he was in league with Cuban and Soviet agents. Oswald was alleged to have received bribes from Cuban agents and met KGB agent Valery Kostikov, who was their head of assassinations in the Western Hemisphere. J. Edgar Hoover affirmed that Oswald had been impersonated in Cuba. (Also see the Lopez Report.)
3) A forged letter sent to the Russian Embassy in Washington incriminates Cubans, Soviets, and Oswald.
Shortly after the Mexico City fabrication, a forged letter (see Appendix 1) incriminating Oswald and foreign confederates and corroborative of the Mexico City charade was sent to the Russian embassy in Washington. It denigrates the “notorious FBI” and refers to Kostikov as comrade Kostin. The Warren Commission eventually dismissed it as an awkward appeal by Oswald to the Soviets. In fact, the content and the timing of the letter suggest that it was part of the same stratagem designed by those behind the Mexico City set-up. The Russians, upon receiving the letter, saw it for what it was: As reported by Jerry Rose in the Fourth Decade, “in 1999, Boris Yeltsin handed Bill Clinton some 80 files pertaining to Oswald and the JFK assassination. One of the memos reveals that, at the time of the assassination, Russian ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin had right away seen the letter as a ‘provocation’ to frame Russia by the fabrication of complicity between Russia and Oswald, when none existed. ‘One gets the definite impression that the letter was concocted by those who, judging from everything, are involved in the president’s assassination,’ Dobrynin wrote. ‘It is possible that Oswald himself wrote the letter as it was dictated to him, in return for some promises, and then, as we know, he was simply bumped off after his usefulness had ended.’ In late November, the Russians sent the letter to U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk explaining why the letter was a fraud. By then, the White House was peddling the lone nut fable. Kept hidden was the fact that the FBI already had a copy of the letter.”
In his article, Jerry Rose points out that the typed letter had many more spelling errors in it than the rough draft found at Ruth Paine’s home. (Oswald’s Last Letter: The Scorching Hot Potato)
4) The Phony Letters from Cuba
Five letters from Cuba (See Appendix 2), all postmarked shortly after the assassination, one of which was destined for Oswald, were part of the false flag operation and were used to incriminate Oswald, unidentified Cuban agents, and Fidel Castro himself. They also corroborate the Mexico City fabrication that very few people would have known about. The FBI dismissed these letters as a hoax, but their content and timing revealed the same tactics being used by the assassination planners. (Read the letter from Cuba section in Kennedysandking article The CIA and Mafia’s “Cuban American Mechanism” and the JFK Assassination.)
The first letter addressed to Oswald includes: “close the business,” “money I gave you,” “recommend much to the chief,” “I told him (Castro) you could put out a candle at fifty meters,” “when you come to Habana.” Letter four specifies $7000 in bribes given to Oswald which is close to what a Phillips-connected false witness claimed he saw being given to Oswald in Mexico City in the Cuban embassy. It also states that a Cuban agent named Pedro Charles “became a close friend of former Marine and expert shooter Lee H. Oswald in Mexico.”
The following is how researcher John Simkin (Spartacus) summarizes the evidence:
The G-2 had a letter, signed by Jorge that had been sent from Havana to Lee Harvey Oswald on 14 November 1963. It had been found when a fire broke out on 23rd November in a sorting office. “After the fire, an employee who was checking the mail in order to offer, where possible, apologies to the addressees of destroyed mail, and to forward the rest, found an envelope addressed to Lee Harvey Oswald.” It is franked on the day Oswald was arrested, and the writer refers to Oswald’s travels to Mexico, Houston, and Florida…, which would have been impossible to know about at that time!
It incriminates Oswald in the following passage: “I am informing you that the matter you talked to me about the last time that I was in Mexico would be a perfect plan and would weaken the politics of that braggart Kennedy, although much discretion is needed because you know that there are counterrevolutionaries over there who are working for the CIA.”
Fabian Escalante, chief of Castro’s G-2, informed the HSCA about this letter. When he did this, he discovered that they had four similar letters that had been sent to Oswald, RFK, The Voice of America, and The Director of the Diario de New York. Four of the letters were postmarked “Havana.” It could not be determined where the fifth letter was posted. Four of the letters were signed: Jorge, Pedro Charles, Miguel Galvan Lopez, and Mario del Rosario Molina. Two of the letters (Charles & Jorge) are dated before the assassination (10th and 14th November). A third, by Lopez, is dated 27 November 1963. The other two are undated.
Cuba is linked to the assassination in all the letters. In two of them, an alleged Cuban agent is clearly implicated in having planned the crime. However, the content of the letters, written before the assassination, suggested that the authors were either “a person linked to Oswald or involved in the conspiracy to execute the crime.”
This included knowledge about Oswald’s links to Dallas, Houston, Miami, and Mexico City. The text of the Jorge letter “shows a weak grasp of the Spanish language on the part of its author. It would thus seem to have
Escalante adds: “It is proven that Oswald was not maintaining correspondence, or any other kind of relations, with anyone in Cuba. Furthermore, those letters arrived at their destination at a precise moment and with a conveniently incriminating message….The existence of the letters in 1963 was not publicized or duly investigated, and the FBI argued before the Warren Commission to reject them.”
Escalante continues: “The letters were fabricated before the assassination occurred and by somebody who was aware of the development of the plot, who could ensure that they arrived at the opportune moment, and who had a clandestine base in Cuba from which to undertake the action. Considering the history of the last 40 years, we suppose that only the CIA had such capabilities in Cuba.” (JFK: The Cuba Files)
The linkage with Mexico City is interesting in that very few people were even aware of Oswald’s alleged behavior there shortly before the assassination. David Phillips worked undercover in Cuba in 1959-60 and under Win Scott in Mexico City when the assassination took place. He was a lead propagandist for regime change operations for the CIA. He collaborated closely with other clandestine specialists such as Harvey over the years. Some of the letters suggest a $7000 payoff to Oswald given by Pedro Charles, “a Mexico City-based Castro agent.” Interestingly, Phillips was queried by the HSCA about misinformation from his agents painting a picture of a Cuba-backed conspiracy in league with Oswald. One of his underlings, Gilberto Alvarado, was found to be lying when he claimed that he saw Latinos giving Oswald $6500 in the Cuban embassy.
The Pepe Letters
a) Overview
In the process of reviewing the recent Latin American intel files at the Mary Ferrell Foundation, a series of them that culminated with CIA file 104-10506-10007 (See appendix 3), set off alarm bells. In it, we find the first Pepe letter translated from Spanish and other observations.
This file, on its own, is very revealing:
The letter suggests several troubling points if authentic (which it is not):
- It was sent from Cuba to “Bernardo Morales” at a post office box in Miami owned by an anti-Castro propaganda unit called Radio Libertad, La Vos Anti-Communista de America. It was sent by Jose Menendez and signed by Pepe. Morales was unknown to those who handled the letter and was eventually forwarded to a CIA contact linked to the JMWAVE station in Miami.
- It reveals a network of conspirators based in Miami, Washington, and Cuba.
- The letter is postmarked November 29, 1962, just after the height of the Missile Crisis.
- It lamely suggests that by sending the letter to the right-wing Radio Libertad, it would not be intercepted.
- It crudely links “Fidel” to a plot to kill JFK.
- It does not mince words and is self-incriminating: “if we are able to kill President Kennedy,” “It would be a great success, super extraordinary, for Fidel,” “Marxist-Leninists 90 miles from the U.S.,” “paralyze imperialism completely,” “terrorize capitalism”, “get in contact with your Friends”, “You are an artist”: all very similar to the 1963 letters.
- Letter three of 1963 letters from Havana (appendix 2) was sent to the Directors of the Voice of America, which, like Radio Libertad, was a Cold War vehicle for anti-communist propaganda.
- The information was sent to the Secret Service, the FBI, and the Department of State on Dec. 8, and later to the INS by Rufus Horn of Task Force W and is signed by him as Liaison and in lieu of William Harvey.
- The links with the 1963 letters and William Harvey (a person of extreme interest in the assassination) caught my attention.
As I went through other related files, the parallels would get even more evident: In short order, I was able to find out that the 1962 letter was one of three Castro incriminating letters, originally written in Spanish, sent within days of one another, all signed by Pepe. (See Appendix 4)
The second letter was postmarked November 14 and was sent to Antonio Rodriguez who was a chauffeur for Colonel Hugo Trejo (a suspected intelligence contact from Venezuela). Improperly addressed, Trejo said that the letter arrived at a Venezuelan Delegation office. The Secret Service, tipped off by an informant suspecting an assassination plot involving Trejo, questioned members of the delegation including Trejo, Rodriguez, and others.
The letter refers to the assassination plot in a similar fashion as the first Pepe letter discussed above and was deemed to have been written by the same sender following FBI analysis. The letter opens with Comrad Rodriguez (was Comrad commonly used by Cubans in 1962?) In Oswald’s last letter to the Russian embassy (Appendix 1), he refers to comrade Kostin. Like the letter intended for Morales, this one finds a clumsy way of clearing the Soviets in this plot.
The third Pepe letter (appendix 4) was sent to Guatemala. It does not refer to the assassination plot. It does link Cuba to clandestine revolutionary activities in the country.
b) The FBI and HSCA Investigations of the Pepe letters (See Mary Ferrell file 124-10279-10068 for 21-page FBI document) and click to see the HSCA report
FBI summary of findings:
The sender’s full name is Jose Menendez Ramos. The Ramos part of the name may bear significance.
Radio Libertad was CIA-sponsored (which was also the case for Voice of America) and operated out of Venezuela. It had an antenna office in Miami. CIA representative William Finch said he was unable to confirm this link. The report affirms that the Pepe letter was acquired through a contact coded MM-T1.
Special agent John A. Marshall of the Secret Service and the FBI took this threat very seriously. He advised the FBI about the second letter (Rodriguez).
Olga Duque de Heredia de Lopez and Aida Mayo Coetara, Miami Representatives for Radio Libertad, handled the mail. Lopez handed the letter to Cesar Gajate whom she described as an anti-Communist fighter. Mayo is the wife of Humberto Lopez Perez, the director of Radio Libertad in Venezuela.
The INS identified a Morales who entered the U.S. using a fake visa. Some witness evidence indicated that he was anti-communist.
Hand-writing analysis confirmed that the two letters were written by the same person. The FBI compared these letters to a letter signed by Jose Menendez sent to V. T. Lee but could not determine definitely whether it was from the sender because of insufficient comparable handwriting. The report concludes that Menendez moved from Tampa, Florida, to Cuba in 1961 and that he was being investigated as a suspect.
What the report does not state is that V. T. Lee was head of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. He would later correspond frequently with Lee Harvey Oswald.
The FBI suspected subterfuge around the flagrant errors in addressing all three letters:
The HSCA 1978 report sheds more light on the cast of characters and the Pepe affair:
Concerning the third letter sent to Guatemala, it states that the intended recipient Carlos Meneses was not associated with a P.O. Box 347 in Guatemala City and consequently the letter was intercepted. It describes how Radio Libertad operatives in Caracas contacted the U.S. embassy to let them know about their broadcasting initiatives in Latin American countries, including Cuba.
The sender Jose Menendez and his wife Carrie Hernandez had been described by the informant as members of the Tampa FPCC. Menendez got a “top Job” in the Cuban Government after his return. He and his wife are said to be extremely pro-Castro. Concerning Olga Duque, the HSCA repeats how the Morales letter went from her to Gajate, to eventually make its way to the Secret Service, without divulging the CIA Miami station role in the logistics. Aida Mayo is described as a founder of an anti-Castro organization. Olga and Aida shared an apartment.
Concerning the intended recipient of letter 2, Antonio Rodriguez, the reports are a mixed bag. One lead with thin traces connected his father with the assassination of an anti-Castroite in Haiti. Another points to links with a Castro henchman named Pino Machado. (Note: a base story for a pro-Castro conspiracy could have emerged had a plot developed further.)
The HSCA Weighs in
The Warren Commission paid no attention to the Pepe incident and only made fleeting mention of the Pedro Charles letters, lazily fluffed off as a hoax by the FBI.
The HSCA published a 165-page report (180-10108-10017 titled ANTONIO GUILLERMO ROGRIGUEZ JONES.) Towards the beginning of the report exchanges among intelligence agents all the way up to Chief Rowley, head of the Secret Service, and FBI director Hoover emphasize the seriousness of these letters. S.A. Marshall is extremely insistent about the importance of looking into Menendez.
The HSCA Final Report
While the above is a summary of the raw data concerning the Havanna 1962 letters, the HSCA presented in a report, Volume 3 of its final report in which there is precious little value when it comes to interpretation. As we have seen, the FBI fluffs all of this off as simply Cubans muddying the wells. The HSCA toed the line, which seems contradictory to its criticism around the absence of case linkage regarding potential patsy Policarpo Lopez, whom they linked to suspicious behavior in and around the assassination in 1963 (compare the double standard):
Lopez would have obtained a tourist card in Tampa on November 20, 1963, entered Mexico at Nuevo Laredo on November 23, and flew from Mexico City to Havana on November 27. Further, Lopez was alleged to have attended a meeting of the Tampa Chapter of the FPCC on November 17… CIA files on Lopez reflect that in early December 1963, they received a classified message requesting urgent traces on Lopez… Later the CIA headquarters received another classified message stating that a source stated that “Lopes” had been involved in the Kennedy assassination… had entered Mexico by foot from Laredo on November 13…proceeded by bus to Mexico City where he entered the Cuban embassy…and left for Cuba as the only passenger on flight 465 for Cuba. A CIA file on Lopez was classified as a counterintelligence case…
An FBI investigation on Lopez through an interview with his cousin and wife as well as document research revealed that… He was pro-Castro and he had once gotten involved in a fistfight over his Castro sympathies.
The FBI had previously documented that Lopez had actually been in contact with the FPCC and had attended a meeting in Tampa on November 20, 1963. In a March 1964 report, it recounted that at a November 17 meeting… Lopez said he had not been granted permission to return to Cuba but was awaiting a phone call about his return to his homeland… A Tampa FPCC member was quoted as saying she called a friend in Cuba on December 8, 1963, and was told that he arrived safely. She also said that they (the FPCC) had given Lopez 190$ for his return. The FBI confirmed the Mexico trip (Lopez’ wife confirmed that in a letter he sent her from Cuba in November 1963, he had received financial assistance for his trip to Cuba from an organization in Tampa)… information sent to the Warren Commission by the FBI on the Tampa chapter of the FPCC did not contain information on Lopez’ activities… nor apparently on Lopez himself. The Committee concurred with the Senate Select Committee that this omission was egregious since the circumstances surrounding Lopez’ travel seemed “suspicious.” Moreover, in March 1964 when the WC’s investigation was in its most active stage, there were reports circulating that Lopez had been involved in the assassination… Lopez’ association with the FPCC, however, coupled with the fact that the dates of his travel to Mexico via Texas coincide with the assassination, plus the reports that Lopez’ activities were “suspicious” all amount to troublesome circumstances that the committee was unable to resolve with confidence.
So, what fingerprints did they pick up on the Menendez links to the FPCC, the similarities with the Pedro Charles letters and Oswald’s last letter, and the fact that Menendez was deemed an FBI suspect in an assassination plot…? None! None they wished to discuss that is. The HSCA also deflected somewhat by speculating that Menendez may have been someone else (Juan Jose Mulkay Gutierrez- 1977 File 104-10506-10036). The HSCA ended by concluding that there was a probable conspiracy but leaned towards a Mafia-centric one. The Pepe letters did not support this concept.
SGA, JMWAVE, Task Force W, and SAS
Dave Boylan is a co-author of the book The Oswald Puzzle and the essays The Wheaton Lead and The Red Bird Airport Leads. He is regarded as one of the leading researchers of JFK assassination-related files and he is currently working with this author on a far-reaching JFK research project. In it, we have produced the beginnings of the CIA org chart for 1963 as well as one specifically for the CIA station in JMWAVE and another for the SAS CIA cell. No one understands this structure more than Dave. Interested in the Pepe letters, he helped me decode some of the files and added a few to the mix. Thanks to this we can better understand the extended team that was involved with this covert operation, whether wittingly or not.
From Spartacus: “After the Bay of Pigs disaster, President John F. Kennedy created a committee (SGA) charged with overthrowing Castro’s government. The SGA, chaired by Robert F. Kennedy (Attorney General), included John McCone (CIA Director), McGeorge Bundy (National Security Adviser), Alexis Johnson (State Department), Roswell Gilpatric (Defence Department), General Lyman Lemnitzer (Joint Chiefs of Staff) and General Maxwell Taylor. Although not officially members, Dean Rusk (Secretary of State) and Robert S. McNamara (Secretary of Defense) also attended meetings.
At a meeting of this committee at the White House on 4 November 1961, it was decided to call this covert action program for sabotage and subversion against Cuba, Operation Mongoose. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy also decided that General Edward Lansdale (Staff Member of the President’s Committee on Military Assistance) should be placed in charge of the operation.
The CIA JMWAVE station in Miami served as operational headquarters for Operation Mongoose. The head of the station was Ted Shackley and over the next few months, he became involved in the attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro. One of Lansdale’s first decisions was to appoint William Harvey as head of Task Force W. Harvey’s brief was to organize a broad range of activities that would help to bring down Castro’s government.”
After Harvey left America for Rome, Desmond FitzGerald stepped in to provide new leadership to the Cuban division at Headquarters, renamed as the Special Affairs Staff (SAS). Harvey stepped down as chief of Staff D.”
By painstakingly assembling names from files, searching through directories, and working with colleagues, David and I have been putting together org charts representative of the CIA in 1963. It is a colossal work in progress that does sometimes involve guesswork and evolving conclusions. Of interest for this article is the 63-64, org chart of SAS developed by David. (Note: William Harvey does not figure in this because he had by then been demoted and exiled. In 1962, he would have had a prominent position near the top of a structure SAS replaced called Task Force W). By visiting Appendix 5, the reader will better appreciate how many of the persons profiled below worked within the Counterintelligence section of SAS under Fitzgerald in 63 and Harvey in 62.
David’s first take on the files we looked over proved very insightful:
“These are very close to the Pedro Charles letters! I suspect that the person that sent these was a cutout/asset for the Psychological Warfare, Propaganda guys. Notice that the memo went to Paul Maggio and Rufus ‘Austin’ Horn. Horn was SAS/Counterintelligence who met with FBI liaison Sam Papich every day. Horn worked for Hal Swenson, who worked for Harvey and later, Dez Fitzgerald. The initial source was a PW/Prop anti-communist radio station (Olga Duque). From there to an AMOT (Gajate). The AMOT sent it to JMWAVE, most likely the head of the AMOTs, Tony Sforza. Then JMWAVE sent it along to SAS (Maggio and Horn) who brought in the FBI (Papich). Of course, Harvey would have seen this.”
Dave later added the following:
Another possible source of the letters was members of the DRE—the Student Revolutionary Directorate. The DRE was a “specialized” student group of the larger Revolutionary Directorate. The student group was founded in the summer of 1960 by Ross Crozier (Harold Noemayr) and William Kent (Oliver Corbus/Doug Gupton) under the direction of Philip Toomey (Robert Trouchard) and David Phillips (Michael Choden) and designated AMSPELL. Kent was first introduced to Juan Salvat (AMHINT-2) by Alberto Muller (AMHINT-1). Salvat knew Kent as Gupton. Other early members of AMSPELL were Isidro Borja (AMHINT-5), and Luis Fernandez Rocha (AMHINT-53). AMSPELL was split into three sections: AMSPELL itself, AMHINT and AMBARB. AMSPELL proper was managed by Ross Crozier, AMHINT, the paramilitary section, was managed by David Morales, and the AMBARB (propaganda) section was managed by Calvin Thomas. (Note: Oswald’s interaction with the New Orleans chapter of the DRE in the summer of 1963 was key in creating his pro-Castro credentials and adding to his Mexico links to Phillips.)
David Morales, who was part of the 1954 Guatemala coup (operation PBSUCCESS) with Phillips, was also chief of operations for the Bay of Pigs invasion under Ted Shackley at JMWAVE and was reportedly involved in various assassination projects including the capture and killing of Che Guevara and later aided repressive governments in South America.
1) Lt. Ramos
This link File 104-10308-10271 and File 104-10308-10272 establish that Castro’s close friend Lt. Ramos could be Menendez, the alleged FPCC-linked sender of Pepe’s letters. The latter file identifies William Harvey as its author. These files pertain to a project to assassinate Castro in 1962 called AMRANGE, likely led by Harvey.
2) Augusto Cesar Gajate Puig
The Morales letter was received at JMWAVE on December 7, via Augusto Cesar Gajate Puig, a Cuban exile involved in the fight for a free Cuba, who had received it from Olga Duque who worked for the CIA-sponsored Radio Libertad. The reason she got to handle it was because the letter was suspiciously mistakenly addressed to this right-wing conduit by supposedly communist assassins working for Castro. File 104-10308-10249 refers to Gajate as a CIA contact and expresses a need to protect his identity. 104-10506-10015: ROUTING SHEET AND GREEN LIST NAME CHECK REQUESTS/RESULTS describes him more specifically as an AMOT contact. AMOT is a cryptonym for a network of Cubans trained by David Morales during 1960-61 to be a new Cuban intelligence service once Castro had been ousted. It became a proprietary which produced economic and sociological reports in support of Cuban operations.
3) Rufus Horn
A report about the letter (appendix 3) was then written up by Rufus Horn who signed it (by direction of Victor Wallen) as the liaison as well as in lieu of William Harvey above his name at the bottom of the report. The report is sent on December 8 to the FBI, Secret Service, and Department of State.
Rufus Horn, also known as Austin Horn, was a key liaison within the SAS group and TFW as well as with the FBI (File 104-10269-10134) where he interacted with Sam Papich. He was also well connected with Desmond Fitzgerald of the CIA who led the all-powerful SAS group that enacted major covert activity policies.
Horn was put in the loop when Oswald was arrested for a street fight with a DRE operative (Carlos Bringuier) around his provocative FPCC leafleting activities in New Orleans in 1963: (from State Secret, Simpich, Chapter 5) “Anderson received a Sept. 24 report of Oswald’s arrest, which revealed Oswald’s request to speak with an FBI agent and share quite a bit of information while in jail: Austin Horn, the Special Affairs Staff (SAS) liaison with the FBI, also got his copy of the September 24 report on October 8. The routing sheet indicates that Horn’s copy was signed for by ‘LD,’ SAS/CI L. Demos. This document was passed on to SAS/CI/CONTROL, then Egerter, and then CI/IC Cal Tenney. Horn was active on the Cubela case at its end in 1965.” (Note: The Cubela case was another plot to assassinate Castro involving Harvey.)
4) Richard Tansing
Another person whose name appears in many of the Pepe letter files is Richard Tansing. Tansing describes himself as C/TFW/CI. His boss, Harold Swenson, used the pseudonym of Joseph Langosch while serving as C/SAS/CI and C/WH/SA/CI between 1963 and 1965. In a cable on October 17, 1963, that was originated by Anita Potocki (Harvey Assistant), SAS/CI, and Tansing C/SAS/CI, was a Coordinating Officer.
Tansing is also linked to William Harvey, Desmond Fitzgerald, Sam Halpern (all TFW or SAS), Win Scott (Chief of Station in Mexico City), Papich of the FBI, as well as soldiers of fortune: Frank Sturgis (of Watergate fame) and Gerry Patrick Hemming (104-10048-10217: FRANK ANTHONY STURGIS, ALSO KNOWN AS FRANK FIORINI and 104-10218-10274: ROUTING AND RECORD SHEET).
Tansing was involved in an effort to recruit the Cuban Head of the Mexico City embassy, Eusebio Azcue (who had contact with Oswald) shortly before the Mexico City charade, the Cubela assassination of Castro plot, and direct involvement with CIA FPCC assets and covert activities.
5) Anita Potocki
Anita Potocki was Bill Harvey’s long-time loyal aide. She helped potential patsy Santiago Garriga set up an FPCC chapter in Miami. She aided CIA FPCC informant Thomas Vicente (who helped Oswald with his New Orleans Chapter) travel to Cuba as an asset for the CIA. She is also closely linked to David Phillips. Her relations with Tansing are noted above.
6) Desmond Fitzgerald
Fitzgerald was the head of a secret unit within the CIA called the Special Affairs Staff. His top priority, as directed by SAG, was to eliminate Castro.
Note: In a nutshell, we can conclude that those involved in handling the Pepe letters within the CIA coalesced under Harvey and then Fitzgerald mostly in the CI section of SAS. SAS had its tentacles in JMWAVE where covert activities involving AMOTs (like Gajate) were run as well as Mexico City activities (where David Atlee Phillips was based).
7) David Phillips
“I’m firmly convinced now that he [Phillips] ran the red herring, disinformation aspects of the plot. The thing that got him so nervous was when I started mentioning all the anti-Castro Cubans who were in reports filed with the FBI for the Warren Commission and every one of them had a tie I could trace back to him. That’s what got him very upset. He knew the whole thing could unravel.” Dan Hardway (HSCA investigator), from Gaeton Fonzi’s The Last Investigation
From Spartacus: “David Phillips also worked undercover in Cuba (1959-60). He returned to the United States in 1960 and was involved in the organization of the Bay of Pigs operation. During this period he worked with E.Howard Hunt in the attempts to have Fidel Castro murdered. Phillips later worked under Winston Scott, the head of the CIA station in Mexico.
Desmond FitzGerald arrived in Mexico City to tell Phillips that he had the freedom to roam the entire Western Hemisphere mounting secret operations to get rid of Fidel Castro. Phillips now worked closely with David Morales at JMWAVE in Miami. Phillips also provided support to Alpha 66. It was later claimed that Phillips told Antonio Veciana his goal was to provoke U.S. intervention in Cuba by ‘putting Kennedy’s back to the wall…’
David Atlee Phillips served as Station Chief in the Dominican Republic and in Rio de Janeiro. In 1970, he was called to Washington and asked to lead a special task force assigned to prevent the election of Salvador Allende as President of Chile. Allende was killed in a military takeover in 1973.”
From Someone Would Have Talked, Larry Hancock: “However, there are two further indications that he was either aware of the conspiracy or actively supported it.
One of these is from conversations David Phillips had with Kevin Walsh, a former HSCA staffer who went on to work as a private detective in Washington, DC. In a conversation not long before his death, Phillips remarked: ‘My private opinion is that JFK was done in by a conspiracy, likely including American intelligence officers.’ — David Atlee Phillips, July 1986.
The second conversation was related in an email exchange between researcher Gary Buell and David Phillips’ nephew, Shawn Phillips. As Shawn described in the email, Shawn’s father, James Phillips, became aware that his brother, David, had in some way been ‘seriously involved’ in the JFK assassination. James and David argued about this vigorously and it resulted in a silent hiatus between them that lasted for almost six years.
As David was dying of lung cancer, he called his brother. Even at this point, there was apparently no reconciliation between the two men. James asked David pointedly, ‘Were you in Dallas that day?’ David answered, ‘Yes,’ and James hung up the phone on him.
8) William Harvey
Harvey hated the Kennedys, wrote up the executive action program called ZRRIFLE, and led Task Force W, which headed Operation Mongoose (an anti-Castro sabotage program). At the height of the Missile Crisis, he foolishly defied the Kennedys by sending three commando units to Cuba. This got him exiled to Rome. ZRRIFLE describes the importance of ensuring corroborative paper trails when planning elimination programs. Harvey was singled out by HSCA investigator Dan Hardway as a person of extreme interest in the assassination… something our studies confirm as a point of agreement among most researchers.
From Spartacus on William Harvey: “At a meeting of this committee at the White House on 4 November 1961, it was decided to call this covert action program for sabotage and subversion against Cuba, Operation Mongoose. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy also decided that General Edward Lansdale (Staff Member of the President’s Committee on Military Assistance) should be placed in charge of the operation.
The CIA JMWAVE station in Miami served as operational headquarters for Operation Mongoose. The head of the station was Ted Shackley and over the next few months became very involved in the attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro. One of Lansdale’s first decisions was to appoint Harvey as head of Task Force W. Harvey’s brief was to organize a broad range of activities that would help to bring down Castro’s government…
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Robert Kennedy instructed CIA director John McCone, to halt all covert operations aimed at Cuba. A few days later he discovered that Harvey had ignored this order and had dispatched three commando teams into Cuba to prepare for what he believed would be an inevitable invasion. Kennedy was furious and as soon as the Cuban Missile Crisis was over, Harvey was removed as commander of ZRRIFLE. On 30 October 1962, RFK terminated ‘all sabotage operations’ against Cuba. As a result of President Kennedy’s promise to Nikita Khrushchev that he would not invade Cuba, Operation Mongoose was disbanded.
Harvey was now sent to Italy where he became Chief of Station in Rome. Harvey knew that Robert Kennedy had been responsible for his demotion. A friend of Harvey’s said that he ‘hated Bobby Kennedy’s guts with a purple passion.’”
The Usual Suspects
There are numerous reasons that many researchers have suspected David Phillips and William Harvey as being part of the conspiracy. It is Harvey’s links with Johnny Rosselli and the mob, his suspicious behavior during the months leading up to the assassination–including a possible visit to Dallas–his hatred of the Kennedys, and his experience in executive action; all these that make Harvey of extreme interest.
In the case of Phillips, his universe is so intertwined with Oswald’s through his ties to Mexico City, the FPCC, the DRE, Alpha 66, New Orleans right-wing networks, George Joannides, etc. that renders him suspicious. He also made quasi-confessions—including being in Dallas on the day of the assassination– revelations that have led most researchers to suspect him.
What do the Pepe letters add to the mix?
If one agrees that—their similarities with the 1963 letters, the FPCC links of the sender, and the total post-assassination complacency displayed by investigators of this despite the obvious fingerprints and the labeling of Menendez as a suspect are not a matter of happenstance–then we can conclude that this incident, like so many others, was deep-sixed, because it went against the lone nut scenario.
This author believes it went further than just this:
– The fabrication of a false paper trail is alluded to in William Harvey’s executive action plan called ZRRIFLE. So are the tactics of shifting the blame on a foe and the use of proxies. All this is in full display with the Pepe letters.
– The 1963 letters have content that only a few people could have known about, including alleged bribes and Oswald’s fall 1963 displacements. One of these people is clearly suggestive of Phillips and another could well be William Harvey, who worked closely with Phillips in the past on covert activities and whose assistant, Anita Potocki, worked closely with the Mexico City station.
– The 1962 letters occurred one year earlier and share a similar template with the 1963 letters. These were certainly two false flag operations organized by the same perpetrators.
– William Harvey had already turned on the Kennedys by the time he tried to sabotage the Kennedy/Khrushchev diplomacy attempts at the height of the Missile Crisis. Phillips expressed his disgust with the failed Bay of Pigs mission which he blamed on JFK.
– Over and above his privileged knowledge, Phillips had the contacts in Havana, in Mexico City, and at JMWAVE in Miami as well as the false flag expertise to pull off these tactics.
– It is interesting to note that one of the recipients of the Pepe letter was a CIA conduit called Radio Libertad out of Miami. And one of the 1963 recipients was the Voice of the United States of America, another Cold War propaganda organization. Phillips would have been well acquainted with these organizations as he himself used such tools in his regime change propaganda efforts.
Conclusion
This author had opinions, based on intelligent speculation, about who was involved in the assassination. The prior plots to remove JFK confirmed a template. Ergo, solving a prior plot meant solving the JFK assassination. Because of negligence and obfuscation on the part of investigators, this proved difficult.
Two things changed all this in the past four months: one—a better understanding of the intelligence universe of 1963 that culminated in organizational charts and two—the Pepe letters.
With declassification, the current downfall of Warren Commission apologists was predictable. The files not only torpedoed the lone-nut scenario and disgraced the Warren Commission, but they revealed the biggest challenge facing conspiracy deniers caused by the shift to pushing a lone-nut scenario which had to be improvised because the blame Castro scenario was overruled after the assassination. The fairy tale spinners could not put all the toothpaste back in the tube. Fabrication, witness intimidation, coercing media, and file classification became the order of the day. Until 1991, when the movie JFK, gave us the declassification of thousands of files, and changed the assassination universe.
The Pepe letters operation proved more difficult to sweep under the rug because it occurred in 1962 and had been analyzed by the FBI and the Secret Service, both genuinely concerned by the threat. A suspect for a plan to remove Kennedy linked to the FPCC had been identified. The knee-jerk dismissal of the Pepe letters does not hold water. The HSCA simply tabled them, until against all odds, they were found decades later, and are only now being analyzed in detail.
What we can take away from the Pepe Letters is monumental and could be even more incriminating with more research.
- The Pepe letters bear too much of a resemblance to the 1963 incriminating correspondence for them not to be linked.
- Both correspondence initiatives were designed to incriminate Fidel Castro in plots to kill JFK.
- Both initiatives use FPCC links to taint the offenders.
- Both initiatives correspond closely with the ZRRIFLE executive action template mastered by both William Harvey and David Phillips who are regime change specialists.
- Phillips’s network is omnipresent in the false flag operations around Oswald in 1963.
- Harvey’s network is very closely connected to the characters involved in the post-reception phase of the Pepe letters.
- Harvey and Phillips connect closely through their regime change operations history, members of their networks, and relations between TFW/SAS and Mexico City.
- Both shared a hatred of the Kennedys.
- SAS was a critical conduit between regime change operators and those who set policy.
- The post-assassination analysis was cursory and evasive.
It remains difficult to determine who, within the networks, acted wittingly vs. unwittingly and who figured out after the fact the minutiae around the operations. However, if we conclude that what happened in the 1962 and 1963 false flag operations discussed in this article are not the result of mere happenstance, and that neither the Cubans, Mafia nor lone wolves could have pulled these plots off, we can conclude that they were coordinated by the same perpetrators who are regime change specialists.
Find out who designed tactics for either the false flag plots, their roll-out, the propaganda themes, and who got the instructions through to contacts in Havana to send the letters, who set up the FPCC tainting strategy… You have a strong case of who was behind the JFK assassination at the operations management level.
Appendices
A 9-page PDF with all appendices may be found here.
