Tag: DAVID ATLEE PHILLIPS

Veciana, Phillips, and Oswald: A Plot Triangle?

Shortly before the JFK assassination, Hilda Veciana was walking as usual from her nearby home to her workplace, namely the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City. At some 200 feet from the entrance, she bumped into a big wad of bills on the sidewalk. Two men immediately approached and one of them told her in Spanish with a Mexican accent something like, “Hey, lady, this money is yours. Pick it up!”

She got scared, stepped up toward the embassy, and even cried for help. After she entered the diplomatic compound and talked about the incident, some of her co-workers got out and headed to the scene, but neither the money nor any people were there anymore.

Making Sense

General Fabian Escalante revealed this incident to JFK historians gathered with Cuban officials in Nassau, Bahamas, from December 7–9, 1995. He judged it as an obvious provocation. Hilda Veciana was working at the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City because her husband, Guillermo Ruiz, had been appointed as Commercial Attaché in August 1963. If she would have grabbed the money, the CIA would have her photographed to compromise her husband by showing him the photos and threatening with publishing them if he did not collaborate.

The Cuban diplomatic compound was under heavy photo surveillance by the CIA program LIONION. From a window in a third-floor apartment across the street, CIA employee Hugo Cesar Rodriguez was taking pictures of the visitors to the Embassy, while a pulse camera covered the Consulate from another window.

Connecting the Dots

Hilda Veciana was cousin of the fierce anti-Castro militant Antonio Veciana, leader of the paramilitary group Alpha 66 and fellow traveler of the CIA handled by David Atlee Phillips. Both shared an unrelenting animus against JFK.

In the spring of 1963, JFK ordered a crackdown on anti-Castro belligerent groups and Alpha 66 was targeted. It was attacking Russian ships to torpedo the Kennedy-Khrushchev understanding on their peaceful solution to the Cuban Missile Crisis. At the AARC Conference on “The Warren Report and the JFK Assassination” (Bethesda, MD, 2014), Veciana openly admitted: “In the early 1960’s, I believed John F. Kennedy was a traitor to the Cuban exiles and to this country.”

The Bay of Pigs fiasco was a thorn in Phillips’ flesh. Instead of admitting it was the CIA’s fault, Phillips put the blame on the pinko at the White House. In Nassau, Escalante also revealed that Phillips had told Cuban dangle Nicolas Sirgado a curious anecdote among a few drinks in Mexico by 1972: after Kennedy’s death, he visited his grave and urinated on it. Phillips also said JFK was a communist.

Before the HSCA, Veciana triangulated his relationship with Phillips by adding Oswald. At the so-called Southland Building meeting (Dallas, TX) in late August or early September 1963, Veciana arrived a bit early and saw Phillips chatting with a man who quickly left. On November 22, 1963, Veciana recognized this man on TV as the breaking news person.

Veciana affirmed Phillips contacted him after the assassination with the proposal to pay his cousin-in-law a large sum of money, if Guillermo Ruiz would say he and his wife had met with Oswald in Mexico City, meaning the Cuban Intelligence Services (CuIS) had precise instructions for Oswald to kill JFK. Veciana agreed to make contact, but was unable to do it.

Just after a HSCA panel visited Havana in 1978, Castro smelled a rat in the AMLASH plot: it might have been linked to the JFK assassination.[1] A task force overseen by Escalante—already head of the Cuban State Security apparatus—went over a bunch of files ranging from known terrorists to exiles, all under a cloud of suspicion. When the CuIS analysts read Veciana’s passage in the HSCA Report (1979), they instantly formulated a hypothesis strongly favored by the Hilda Veciana incident: her cousin was tampering with the timing of the facts.

The propaganda campaign trying to tie Oswald to Castro has lowered down after the failed wave of scams, hoaxes, and jokes during the first two weeks after the assassination by the deed and disgrace of Nicaraguan secret agent Gilberto Alvarado, Cuban exile Salvador Diaz-Verson, Mexican credit inspector Oscar Gutierrez, and other fakers.

Phillips knew, through Veciana himself, that his cousin and her husband were working at the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City, but bribing Guillermo Ruiz to take a path, unsuccessfully trodden by many others, did not seem to be proper tradecraft. Veciana admitted that Phillips was very jumpy about having asked him to bribe his cousin-in-law and shortly thereafter told him to forget about it. By contrast, Phillips’ proposal to Veciana fits in perfectly before the assassination with plotting a testimony after the fact or just a quick and convenient visa service.

Muddying the Waters

At the AARC Conference, Veciana made a truly astonishing revelation:

[Phillips] confirmed to me in a conversation that Oswald had traveled to Mexico on [his] orders. [Phillips] tricked Oswald into taking that trip to secure a visa from the Cuban Consulate though [he] knew the authorities there would never grant Oswald such a visa. The reason for this trip was to create a trail that would link Oswald to Fidel Castro and help focus the blame of the planned assassination of President Kennedy on Castro.

Veciana did not provide a straight answer to the key question posed by Jim DiEugenio on the spot: When did Phillips tell him that? Furthermore, Veciana omitted this conversation in his memoirs (Trained to Kill, Skyhorse Publishing, 2017) and left us all in the lurch. We don’t know whether Phillips actually told him such a crucial detail about Oswald or it was an inference drawn by Veciana from conversations with Phillips.

In his garbled answer to DiEugenio, Veciana stated Phillips had asked him about the possibility of getting a visa on the same day at the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City. Veciana responded zero chance. This conversation occurred shortly after Castro made his well-known and often distorted statement to Associated Press reporter Daniel Harker at the Brazilian Embassy on September 7, 1963.[2] The exhortation to bribe Guillermo Ruiz would have taken place immediately after the assassination.

In his memoirs, Veciana did not report the conversation around September 7 and placed the second one in Miami a few weeks after the assassination, but neither in the book nor at the conference does he clarify when Phillips made the assertion that Oswald was traveling to Mexico under his orders. Last, but not least, Veciana has never told why Phillips summoned him to Dallas in September of 1963 and what the Southland Building meeting was about.

Occam’s Razor

For CuIS, this meeting revolved around Phillips planning with Veciana and Oswald the trip to Mexico City and the fix of a same-day Cuban visa. But Veciana couldn’t approach Guillermo Ruiz, so Phillips tried to blackmail him through his wife. This push also failed, but Phillips sent Oswald to Mexico City with a false promise. It may explain why Oswald became so upset when he was denied an instant visa.

Phillips would have never planned a meeting in the same place with two assets from unrelated operations. On the contrary, the meeting in Dallas wouldn’t be a significant tradecraft mistake if Phillips was handling Oswald and Veciana in the same or related operations. Veciana tampering with the timing of conversations with Phillips about Guillermo Ruiz and suffering from Alzheimer’s disease in regard to the Dallas meeting agenda fit in well with this scenario.

As Dan Hardway has pointed out, Phillips could have used Oswald as a dangle without him being witting about an upcoming JFK assassination. His impersonation by phone in Mexico City reinforces such hypothesis. However, Veciana seemed to be aware of the ultimate goal.

[1] The CIA recruited Cuban Army Major Rolando Cubela and precisely on November 22, 1963, his handler gave him in Paris an ingenious poison pen to kill Castro, but Cubela didn’t take it. By February 29, 1965, Cubela was in Madrid with Cuban exile leader Manuel Artime [AMBIDDY-1] to plan the assassination of Castro with Cubela’s own rifle. It would be followed by the landing of Artime’s commandos from Central America to establish a beachhead and to create a government supported by the Organization of American States. Castro agent Juan Felaifel was infiltrated into Artime’s inner circle and spoiled the plot. Cubela and his co-conspirators ended up in jail by February 1966.

[2] “United States leaders should think that if they are aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe.” (The Miami Herald, September 9, 1963, page 1A).

November 16, 2021
Exposing the FPCC, Part 2
see Part 1

“Follow the money” is one of the things that the FBI and Warren Commission did not do in trying to understand how such a destitute person like Oswald could run an FPCC chapter, raise a family, and save money for Marina (at least $1600 in today’s money).[1] He was so poor that the White Russians paid for his YMCA fees.

The FPCC added the following to this drifter’s cost of living: FPCC membership fees, renting of a space, hiring leafleteers, paying a fine for disturbing the peace, the purchase of rubber-stamping equipment, personal displacements, printing of up to five different pieces of literature, correspondence with the FPCC, and use of a Post Office Box…with not one single member to help absorb the costs.

The following exchange between Oswald’s lawyer and Wesley Liebeler of the Warren Commission suggests something more plausible than Oswald giving away time and money for a passé organization rather than focusing on his growing family—he was paid $25 a day (Note that Oswald’s job at the Texas Schoolbook Depository paid $1.50 per hour):

Oswald’s slip was showing

Admitting his remuneration to Dean Andrews and stamping 544 Camp Street on his handouts were not Oswald’s only mistakes that would ultimately blow his cover.

Shortly after launching the FPCC Chapter in New Orleans, Lee sent out two honorary membership cards to Gus Hall and Benjamin Davis, two senior members of the American Communist Party, even though after his return from Russia he wrote the following in his diary:

The Communist Party of the United States has betrayed itself! It has turned itself into the traditional lever of a foreign power to overthrow the government of the United States; not in the name of freedom or high ideals, but in servile conformity to the wishes of the Soviet Union and in anticipation of Soviet Russia’s complete domination of the American continent.

In a letter dated August 1, 1963, postmarked August 4, Oswald wrote to Vincent T. Lee, head of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New York,

In regards to my efforts to start a branch of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New Orleans…I rented an office as planned and was promptly closed 3 days later for some obsure [sic] reasons by the renters, they said something about remodeling, ect. [sic] I’m sure you understand after that I worked out of a post office box and by useing [sic] street demonstrations and some circular work have substained [sic] a great deal of interest but no new members. Through the efforts of some cuban-exial [sic] ‘gusanos’ a street demonstration was attacked and we were oficialy [sic] cautioned by the police.

The problem with this letter was that the incident Oswald seems to be referring to occurred on August 9^th, more than a week after he first wrote about it. Was Oswald describing a scenario for the upcoming theatrics on Canal Street over which he would be arrested and arraigned in court?

When Oswald debated anti-Castro Cuban exile Carlos Bringuer, he was asked how he lived in Russia: “Did you have a government subsidy?” Oswald answered; “Well, I worked in Russia and, I was under the protection of the United States, Uh I was under the Uh that is to say, I was not under the protection of the United States Government. But, I was always considered a United States citizen.”

It was not just Oswald who blew his own cover. Antonio Veciana, who was David Phillips’s go-to guy in the Cuban exile community for some thirteen years, told Gaeton Fonzi—and later the whole JFK research community—that he had seen Phillips talk to Oswald in Dallas in September 1963.

Oswald’s participation in the training of anti-Cubans was caught on film according to Robert Tanenbaum, Chief Counsel of the HSCA, during his interview with Jim DiEugenio:

JD: Was it really as you described in the book, with all the people in that film? Bishop was in the film?

BT: Oh, yeah. Absolutely! They’re all in the film. They’re all there. But, the fact of the matter is the Committee began to balk at a series of events. The most significant one was when [David Atlee] Phillips came up before the Committee and then had to be recalled because it was clear that he hadn’t told the truth. That had to do with the phony commentary he made about Oswald going to Mexico City on or about October 1st, 1963. (Probe Magazine, Vol. 3 No. 5)

John Newman shows how Dallas FBI claims that they lost track of Oswald, while he was setting up the FPCC in New Orleans all the way up to August 5, lack credibility, especially given his multiple FBI scrutinized correspondences—all occurring before June 6—with the Post Office, the Communist Party, the Soviet Embassy in Washington, and the FPCC, where his New Orleans address was easy to find.[2]

Another astute observation by Newman is that before August 5^th, Oswald’s FPCC recruitment activities were done quietly, almost undercover. They were likely done that way in order to help Banister and the CRC with their background investigations. As of August 5, when he meets Bringuier up until September 25 when he meets Silvia Odio, Oswald repeatedly acts overtly with anti-Castro Cubans while, at the same time, seeking media attention for his FPCC activities.[3]

On September 16, 1963, the CIA informed the FBI that it was considering action to counter the activities of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in foreign countries. In New Orleans, on September 17, 1963, Oswald applied for, and received, a Mexican travel visa.[4]

Another indicator of Oswald’s informant role is what the FBI did not do: Infiltrate the New Orleans FPCC. The FBI did this with FPCC chapters throughout the country, often with multiple informants. And as we saw with Bill Stuckey, New Orleans was well prepared for an FPCC presence in their city. It would have been very easy to have informants answer Oswald’s leafleting by signing up to spy on him—as they did in Tampa, NY, Detroit, Chicago, L.A., Indiana, and elsewhere. But, for whatever reason, they chose not to.

There seems to be a logical deduction from all this. Oswald was informing on both pro- and anti-Castro operations in New Orleans. But he was also creating a portfolio similar to other FPCC participants in the past to be able to eventually travel to Cuba by way of the Mexico City-Cubana Airlines route.

Are we to believe that Oswald just stumbled into these right-wing fanatics, Cuban exiles, and old acquaintances who shared a hatred for Castro?

The FPCC template of informants and/or potential patsies

In this author’s article, The Three Failed Plots to Kill JFK eight subjects were profiled who shared similar traits to Oswald as represented in the ensuing chart:

As we can see:
- Eight of the nine subjects profiled are connected to cities visited by Kennedy during the six months that preceded his assassination.
- Each of these cities was a territory exploited criminally by Mafiosi of interest in the assassination.
- At least three moved to the cities and got employment in strategically located buildings along the motorcade route shortly before the planned presidential visit.
- Seven were ex-military.
- Eight of them exhibited behavior that can very plausibly be linked to intelligence gathering or Cuban exile interaction.
- Seven were directly linked to the FPCC. Seven of them had visited Mexico City
- Six attempted to visit Cuba, three of them successfully.
- Seven had links to Cuban/Latino exiles.
- Six were described as having psychological problems.
- Seven exhibited anti-Kennedy behavior.
- None were probed seriously by the Warren Commission.
Intelligence services, notably the Secret Service, kept crucial information about these subjects, as well as the prior plots, totally secret from the Warren Commission.

By reading the Failed Plots article, the reader will discover how many of the above characters were being potentially framed through linkage to prior plots attempts and their links to the FPCC and how some used their FPCC allegiance to spy on the organization or as a ruse to enter Cuba.

Another ruse that became clearer with time was that the associations of many of the potential patsies/informants would have had the impact of tearing down the FPCC once and for all, while placing the blame on Castro and providing Psy-Ops propagandists with a storyline tainting the FPCC operations outside the U.S. borders, as well as organizations like the SWP, the U.S. Communist Party, CORE, and others seen as threats to U.S. security.

Framing the FPCC – a coordinated effort by the usual suspects[5]

In the Failed Plots article, we show how the FPCC-tainted Oswald, not only put the final nail in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, he was used to frame Castro as well. A tactic straight out of the CIA’s ZR/Rifle executive action playbook written up by assassination guru William Harvey. Here were some of the P.R. tactics that were described:
- Cuban exiles: Immediately after the assassination, Carlos Bringuier and John Martino, as well as Frank Sturgis—also a Watergate burglar—pushed the Castro was behind it story.
- Castro frame-up stories were very quickly leaked to Hal Hendrix, a JM/WAVE friend, and other CIA media assets.
- Antonio Veciana, leader of the Cuban exile group Alpha 66, confirmed that David Phillips—whom he had seen talking to Oswald shortly before the assassination—had asked him to bribe a cousin of his in Mexico City to say that Oswald was being paid by Castro agents to assassinate JFK.
- HSCA investigator Dan Hardway confirmed that almost all of the Mexico City stories that incriminated Oswald and framed Castro were created by assets of Phillips.
On the night of JFK’s assassination and Oswald’s arrest, Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade erroneously stated during a press conference that Oswald was a member of the Free Cuba Committee. Out of all the many onlookers present, it was nightclub owner and future patsy killer Jack Ruby who corrected the D.A.

Let us now add a few more frame-up artists and their propaganda contributions:

Ed Butler (INCA) and Bill Stuckey

Butler’s role in the post-assassination tale got quite interesting. For as Time magazine noted in its 11/29/63 issue, “Even before Lee Oswald was formally charged with the murder, CBS put on the air an Oswald interview taped by a New Orleans station last August.” That night, according to New Orleans Magazine, Butler and the INCA staff churned out news releases about Oswald in order to offset the “rightist” and “John Bircher” charges flying about. Then, Senator Thomas Dodd, who ran the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, was called up by Butler.

The Kennedy-hating Dodd invited his acquaintance Ed Butler to testify before his Senate Subcommittee. Apparently completing Butler’s public relations tour, the tape of the WDSU interview was forwarded by the CIA to Ted Shackley at the Miami station and used in the CIA’s broadcasts into Latin America, furthering the legend about Oswald the communist killing President Kennedy. Declassified files reveal that the label on the box with the tape says, “From DRE to Howard.” Howard signifies either Howard Hunt or George Joannides, whose codename was “Howard.” This means that Bringuier’s group (DRE) probably gave a copy to Howard Hunt who forwarded it to the CIA’s Shackley. The Agency in spite of later denials was still funding the DRE at the time of the assassination.[6]

Ruth Paine (2 deliveries)

Ruth was not only the Warren Commission’s busiest witness in making the case for the lone nut scenario, she was a prolific provider of timely evidence against Oswald coming straight out of her garage. One of her go-to guys was Irving Police Captain Frank Barger (FBI informant T-4). Barger also had informants who revealed to him a phone conversation between Michael and Ruth Paine on November 23, 1963, confirming their perceptions of a conspiracy when one said[7]:

From Ruth Paine’s home came important evidence linking Oswald to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee:

And then you have these strange FBI notes that are at NARA:

Page 1

Page 2

These have, to my knowledge, never been fully analyzed, so I can only give a personal impression: Ruth seems to have asked Barger to send a Russian cookbook and toys to Marina. In the same breath, there are notes identifying two, if not three, FPCC members in Dallas including two Dalmans who, on Harlandale Street, are a stone’s throw away from an anti-Castro Cuban exile meeting place on that street where Oswald was said to have entered.

We have long suspected that the Paines kept files on Communist sympathizers. Was this some of the fruit of their labor? Did Oswald help supply the names through his short-term Dallas activities?

Al Lewis Los Angeles FPCC

Oswald was not the only FPCC member who was slandered. According to Dick Russell,

Al Lewis, executive director of the Los Angeles FPCC in 1963 and now a retired psychiatrist, remembered: ‘The FBI called me after Kennedy was assassinated, and apparently wanted to involve me in it some way. They tried to pin a relationship with Oswald on me, because apparently, I’d been in Mexico at the same time he was, on my way to Cuba. Well, that was the first I heard about it. And I never heard of Oswald and the New Orleans Fair Play for Cuba Committee in the movement. That whole thing to me was a setup of some kind by the intelligence services.[8]

Johnny Rossen Chicago and National FPCC

Johnny Rossen, who had been the head of the Chicago chapter and later became a National Chairman, was also the victim of wild rumors. An FBI report dated November 28, 1963, summarizes a slander campaign by an informant stating that he was a sex degenerate who slept with a Puerto Rican mistress named Carmen Osiokowski, who knew Oswald, who had sent money to him periodically and who hated Kennedy. His source was the mistress. When she was questioned, she denied everything. Upon re-questioning this informant’s story completely fell apart.

Tony Perez, an informant in Chicago, qualified as a reliable source by the Chicago FBI. He was an anti-Castro Cuban and had provided dirt on Rossen.[9] In a November 30, 1963, TELETYPE from SAC Chicago to Director and SAC Dallas, the FBI is given the following information: That Johnny Rossen had held a number of late-night meetings in his Chicago Theater with FPCC subjects during the days leading up to the assassination. Some two years earlier, Perez a representative of the Chicago Council for a Democratic Cuba, had debated Rossen at Northwestern University in opposition of his FPCC activities.

Like Oswald, Rossen was able to taint major organizations as he had always been an active pro-communist agitator having been the secretary of the U.S. Communist Party in St. Louis, where he ran for mayor for the party. Later, he would show Russian films in his Chicago Theater. He was active in the American Peace Crusade and Civil Rights Congress. He also used a number of aliases.

Robert Beaty Fennell San Francisco FPCC

On December 21, 1963, another Oswald-like character was arrested by the Secret Service in San Francisco for having on him notes containing threats to assassinate LBJ. Not much is known about Robert Beaty Fennell, but this article [10] reveals that he was said to be a member of the San Francisco FPCC, that he had mental problems, was involved in agitations and that he had received an honorable discharge from the Air Force five years earlier.

Richard Taber National FPCC

The framing of Oswald and even the FPCC as a group, were not the only lofty objectives of the anti-Castro forces. They planted the ridiculous story[11] that the inaugural head of the FPCC, while in refuge in Cuba, had actually met a Lieutenant Lee Harvey Oswald in 1961 when he himself had “accompanied Castro during the Bay of Pigs Invasion.”

Given that Oswald was in Minsk at this time, along with Taber’s vehement denials,[12] we can chalk this one up as another red herring designed to stimulate the invasion of Cuba.

Bringuier’s last gasp

Even when it became clear that the U.S. was steering clear of any scenario implying a conspiracy and stratagems to attack Cuba, there was an ultimate Hail Mary thrown by a Cuban Freedom Fighter (most likely Carlos Bringuier) in the form of an open letter to the President in October 1964 which stated:

Vincent T. Lee and Harrold Wilson National and Tampa FPCC

Vincent Theodore Lee, actually Army veteran Vincent Tappin, was elected Head of the Tampa Chapter in June 1961. On the Board was treasurer Harrold Wilson, who eventually replaced Lee when Lee took over from Richard Gibson as the national Chapter Chairman in 1962.

Oswald’s actions in New Orleans parroted Lee’s. Lee was heavily involved in leafleting, media coverage, and direct confrontations with anti-Castro Cubans featuring a near riot in November of 1961 in Marti Park, where Sergio Arcacha Smith led CRC forces against the FPCC. Lee appeared on WBAI radio.

On December 26, 1962, Vincent T. Lee flew from New York City to Mexico City. From there, on December 28, he flew to Havana via Cubana Airlines where he stayed for nearly one month. Oswald corresponded multiple times with Lee, reporting his FPCC agent provocateur coups. V. T. Lee, while providing him with advice, is the one who connected Oswald with Wilson so as to be better coached for his N.O. mission.

Other than this, not that much is known about Lee, because as a witness during the Eastland Senate hearings, other than defending the FPCC and confirming his military record, he mostly took the Fifth Amendment. The Warren Commission did very little to go into his background during their typical probe light questioning.[13] Lee also lied his head off by claiming he did not know Oswald. The HSCA never got him in as a witness despite obvious interest.

The following articles are fascinating because they also associate the FPCC with high-profile murderous activity in the U.S., taint Black Liberation Front activists and suggest that Lee and Wilson are informants.

Here is the lead-in to the article on the Statue of Liberty bombing plot:

On 16 February 1965 three Americans and one Canadian were arrested in connection with a plot to destroy three of the United States’ most treasured monuments: the statue of Liberty, Liberty Bell, and Washington Monument. The Americans—Robert Steele Collier, Walter Augustus Bowe, and Khaleel Sultran Sayyed—were part of a small extremist organization known as the Black Liberation Front (BLF). The Canadian, a white woman named Michelle Duclos, was a member of a Quebec separatist party.

In the article, the reader will discover how some of the perpetrators visited Cuba, met Che Guevara who provided “technical information,” and became involved in yet another major incident that would have favored the blaming of Cuba while tarnishing a “subversive” group.[14] (Click here to read)

Gilberto Policarpo Lopez

Another extremely important detail in the first article is that the Tribune claims to have a source that places V. T. Lee in Tampa on November 17, 1963, with Gilberto Policarpo Lopez. The FBI would easily know this based on the important number of informants at every FPCC meeting.

The HSCA described parts of what it called the Lopez allegation:[15]

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 has 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.

One can add this from DeBenedictis’ well-sourced thesis:[16]

A Cuban national by the name of Gilberto Policarpo Lopez, attended the viewing of “Ted Lee in Cuba,” at Mary Quist’s home on November 17. Lopez was staying at the Quist residence, while waiting for a phone call with the “go ahead order” for him to leave the United States and go to Cuba. The day after the film showing, President Kennedy visited Tampa.

One file showed that there were several teletypes and airtels regarding Lopez and Oswald and the possibility that they may have had contact. The airtel message told of Lopez’s travel to Mexico and later to Cuba. The airtel also told of post-assassination correspondence between FBI offices in Dallas, San Antonio, and Tampa. All intended to identify Lopez. Another part of this file, which was released later than other Tampa FPCC FBI files, told that the San Antonio FBI office was the source of the information in the post-assassination period regarding Lopez crossing the border at Laredo. From the 1964 Warren Commission to the 1976 House Select Committee on Assassinations, the change in time was more of a change in broadening of information rather than in a lessening of secrecy. Neither investigation showed a desire for opening assassination files until well into the Twenty-First Century. Since the FPCC was the subject of dossier compilation since its inception, there was much in the way of information. But in its post-assassination classification period, the secrecy surrounding the FPCC had more to do with the Kennedy assassination, and lack of cooperation from intelligence agencies, than from consideration of sensitive material due to the ongoing Cold War.

Combining the article information and FBI intelligence, what we have is the FPCC National Chapter’s V.T. Lee possibly meeting, at Tampa FPCC’s Mary Quist’s home on November 17, with FPCC tainted assassination suspect Lopez, who, considering his Texas and Mexico travels, likely would also have been linked to Oswald had the pro-Castro conspiracy scenario not been deep-sixed. This also would have torn down the FPCC worldwide, if not the U.S. Communist Party, and could easily have stimulated the invasion of Cuba, given the direct link between Lee and Castro.

There is a difference between a series of ads and an ad campaign. Ad campaigns have a coordinated rhythm, where there is a huge bang at the launch, followed by reminder advertising in a timely manner. They also have a central theme (called a USP) such as Castro was behind all of this. This P.R. push certainly has all the earmarks of being coordinated by propaganda specialists. Which brings us to the next two sections.

George Joannides

Towards the beginning of the HSCA investigation, much headway was being made in investigating CIA files. Things took a turn for the worse when George Bush senior, CIA Director since 1976, decided to clamp down on the scrutiny. A year later, George Joannides was brought in as a liaison between the CIA and HSCA investigators. The HSCA was lied to when they were told that Joannides was not involved in the areas of interest the HSCA was exploring. Quite the contrary.

George had been the person in charge of overseeing anti-Castro operations in New Orleans. He was now obstructing the HSCA. Joannides had joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1951 and later became chief of the Psychological Warfare branch of the CIA’s JM/WAVE station in Miami. In this role he worked closely with the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE), a militant right-wing, anti-Communist, anti-Castro, anti-Kennedy group. This was the group that Oswald was in direct contact and conflict with in New Orleans in August 1963.[17]

Jefferson Morley is credited for much of what we know about Joannides and the fight for the release of files about him. He adroitly underscored the following about him: “Among his primary responsibilities were guiding, monitoring and financing the Revolutionary Cuban Student Directorate or DRE, one of the largest and most effective anti-Castro groups in the United States. CIA records show, and the group’s former leaders confirm, that Joannides provided them with up $18-25,000 per month, while insisting they submit to CIA discipline. Joannides, in his job evaluation of July 31, 1963, was credited with having established control over the group.” Morley also revealed Joannides travels from JM/WAVE to New Orleans in 1963.

David Phillips

In a previous article,[18] I have penned for Kennedys And King, I wrote a section on how this legendary disinformation artist for the CIA was a person of interest in the scenario plans around Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963. By reading it, you will discover how his background, role with Amsanta, motives, track record, omnipresence around Oswald, lies to the HSCA, his being outed by colleague E. Howard Hunt and asset Antonio Veciana all point to something sinister. Readers are encouraged to follow the above hyperlink to review the case against Phillips.

The remarkable thing about Phillips and this story is that he was associated with both of these groups we have examined. In other words, he was at least partly involved with both sides of this pseudo-conflict and street theater. As we have seen, in Oswald and the CIA, John Newman showed that Phillips had a role in the CIA’s campaign to infiltrate and destabilize the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.[19]

During his questioning by the HSCA, Howard Hunt was asked about his knowledge of the DRE. He replied that, “Dave Phillips ran that for us.” (Deposition of 11/3/78, p. 77) Phillips was in on the beginnings of the DRE. William Kent, a psy war officer out of JM/WAVE, signed-off on Joannides’ reports in 1963. Kent was very familiar with what the DRE was doing at this time. Later on, to private family members, he was asked about Oswald. He said that Lee Oswald was a useful idiot. When asked about the Kennedy assassination itself, he said, “Its better you don’t know.”[20] Any objective person would have to say that, based on this information, New Orleans was quite important to the Kennedy assassination. HSCA investigator Hardway also revealed in 2013 at Cyril Wecht’s Duquesne Conference that he and Ed Lopez had prepared a bill of indictment for perjury against Phillips specifically keyed around what he had said about Oswald’s alleged activities in Mexico City.

James Phillips was the brother of David. He was a writer, a CIA pilot, and a member of the Flying Tigers. A former Marine, he later wrote for Leatherneck magazine. He was the father of Shawn Phillips.

Shawn Phillips

His recounting (email to Gary Buell) of his uncle David’s last conversation with his father represents one of a number of quasi confessions made by the high-level intelligence officer:

The “Confession,” you refer to was not in so many words as such. I cannot remember the time frames involved, but this was what was told to me by my father, James Atlee Phillips, who is deceased. He said that David had called him with reference to his (David’s), invitation to a dinner, by a man who was purportedly writing a book on the CIA. At this dinner, was also present a man who was identified only as the “Driver.” David told Jim that he knew the man was there to identify him as Raul Salcedo, whose name you should be familiar with, if your research is accurate in this matter. David then told Jim that he had written a letter to the various media, as a “Preemptive Strike,” against any and all allegations about his involvement in the JFK assassination. Jim knew that David was the head of the “Retired Intelligence Officers of the CIA,” or some such organization, and that he was extremely critical of JFK, and his policies. Jim knew at that point that David was in some way, seriously involved in this matter and he and David argued rather vehemently, resulting in a silent hiatus between them that lasted almost six years according to Jim. Finally, as David was dying of irreversible lung cancer, he called Jim and there was apparently no reconciliation between them, as Jim asked David pointedly, “Were you in Dallas on that day?” David said, “Yes,” and Jim hung the phone up.

If you add just how intertwined Phillips was with Oswald during the months in and around the assassination, there is simply too much to dismiss all of this as mere happenstance. Where there is still some debate is to what level, if any, Phillips was involved in the planning of the assassination. Where there is very little debate is in his involvement in the messaging and frame-up efforts.

Summary

Given Oswald’s adventure in Russia and the state the FPCC was in when Oswald opened a chapter in New Orleans—perhaps the most hostile city for such an endeavor—and at a time when the FPCC was in a downward spiral, the most plausible premise would be that it was also an intelligence operation. When he joined, the FPCC was infested with informants, the FBI and CIA were countering it through their respective COINTELPRO and Amsanta programs, and New Orleans intelligence was fully prepared for the arrival of the FPCC. In fact, Stuckey was on the prowl for the FPCC two years in advance.

Oswald’s choices in terms of timing, location, networking, recruitment activities, as well as the budget constraints he overcame, along with the lack of infiltration of his chapter, these all point to his being an informant on pro-Castro and anti-Castro goings-on in New Orleans.

The campaign to position Oswald as Castro-linked was clearly coordinated and performed by intelligence assets. Two persons of extreme interest linked to the operatives and the strategies used were Joannides and Phillips. By 1963, the FPCC appears to have been no more than a tool for intelligence gathering, creating a portfolio to enter Cuba and lying in wait to be a perfect platform on which to hoist a patsy, and through him, implicate Castro.

If it is confirmed that both V.T. Lee and Harrold Wilson were Intel related, we have yet two more cut-out operatives who add themselves to the above cast of characters (e.g. Dave Ferrie, Ruth Paine, Frank Bartes, and Clay Shaw) who helped build the Oswald myth.

The plot succeeded in removing JFK, but failed to stimulate an invasion of Cuba. It helped launch a new era of suspicion of government and media that has been exacerbated by other political murders, Vietnam, Watergate, Iran Contra, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the list goes on! No wonder the U.S. cannot get its people vaccinated! No one can put their trust in faith, it has deserted the country.

Conclusion

Oswald’s adventure in Russia has been analyzed by many. Most serious researchers concur that it was an Intel mission and was part of a false defector program. Oswald’s dance with the FPCC is lesser understood, but perhaps even more important, as it brought him right into the realm of the plot.

There has never been an all-defining write-up of the FPCC within the context of the assassination. This is somewhat normal, because as DeBenedictis noted, FPCC files have been kept under wraps. There should be hidden files on most of the potential patsies, informants, chapter leaders and a lot more… detailed ones. I have tried to make a start with this essay.

If we understand who gave Oswald his orders, as well as those for the other ex-marine informants and potential patsies, we will understand the propaganda side of the assassination.

Gaeton Fonzi opened incredible windows into the world of JM/WAVE, which led to an area of research taken up by authorities in this field including Larry Hancock, Bill Simpich, John Newman, and others who have figured out hierarchies, operational activities, and timelines through which these specialists focused on a number of assassination professionals who are leading suspects in the November 22^nd ambush. Having recently read Tipping Point by Larry Hancock, we can see that much progress has been made in nailing down the players, the ambush preparations, and logistics around the hit.

Jim Garrison paved the way for understanding the very important roles those who gravitated around Oswald in 1963 played in setting up the whole Castro did it scenario. The work done by contemporary researchers Joan Mellen, Jim DiEugenio, William Davy, and conclusions by the HSCA have all vindicated the New Orleans DA and shed light on many of the operatives working outside of Miami.

Understanding organizations like the FPCC, the DRE, ALPHA-66, Operation 40, and persons like Joannides, Phillips, the Rodriguez family, and Sergio Arcacha Smith will help us merge the bodies of research Fonzi and Garrison began and gain a better comprehension of organizational structure and interrelations between the murder and propaganda divisions.

While conducting the research for this document, I have seen some compelling arguments that many subversive organizations, including the FPCC, were intelligence vehicles from the outset. While I have not yet reached that conclusion, I am all ears.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Malcolm Blunt, Alan Dale, Bart Kamp, and Jim DiEugenio for their support in providing me with many of the files they have uncovered and archived. I also want to underscore the incredible efforts of the researchers, investigators and authors mentioned in this article plus other sources, who have paved the way to where we are now at…A case that, if I may say so, has been largely solved.

see Part 3

[1] Paul Bleau, “Marina’s Sponsor and Oswald’s Fifth Wallet,” Kennedys And King.

[2] John Newman, Oswald and the CIA, Chapter 16.

[3] John Newman, Oswald and the CIA, Chapter 17.

[4] Dan Hardway, “Declaration,” Case 1:03-cv-02545-RJL Document 156-1, Civil Action No. 03-02545 (RJL).

[5] Paul Bleau, “The Three Failed Plots to Kill JFK,” Kennedys And King.

[6] James DiEugenio, “Ed Butler: Expert in Propaganda and Psychological Warfare,” Kennedys And King.

[7] William A. Branigan, “Memorandum for Mr. Sullivan Re: Lee Harvey Oswald,” 105-82555, January 17, 1964.

[8] Dick Russell, The Man who Knew Too Much, pp. 685–686.

[9] Herbert Stallings, FBI report, 29/11/1963, File 62-6115.

[10] Associated Press, “Threat to Kill LBJ is Charged,” December 21, 1963.

[11] INFORMATION FBI HQ RECORD NUMBER 124-10008-10043 FILE NUMBER AGENCY 105-82555-194.

[12] FBI report 2/12/64, File NY 105 38431.

[13] Warren Commission, testimony of Vincent T. Lee.

[14] The Journal of Counterterrorism, “The Monumental Plot,” Volume 16 -No. 04 2010.

[15] House Select Committee on Assassinations Final Report.

[16] Frank S. DeBenedictis, “Cold War comes to Ybor City: Tampa Bay’s chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee,” Florida Atlantic University, December 2002.

[17] James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, 2^nd edition, pp. 159–61.

[18] Paul Bleau, “Oswald’s Intelligence Connections: How Richard Schweiker clashes with Fake History,” Kennedys And King.

[19] John Newman, Oswald and the CIA, pp. 240–242.

[20] Dan Hardway, “An Operation Sketch,” 2014.
August 11, 2021
Exposing the FPCC, Part 1

Introduction

In January 2019, a petition began circulating where, among other startling affirmations, the 2500 signatories, including prominent JFK assassination experts, agreed that, “As the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in 1979, President John F. Kennedy was probably killed as the result of a conspiracy. In the four decades since this congressional finding, a massive amount of evidence compiled by journalists, historians and independent researchers confirms this conclusion. This growing body of evidence strongly indicates that the conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy was organized at high levels of the U.S. power structure, and was implemented by top elements of the U.S. national security apparatus using, among others, figures in the criminal underworld to help carry out the crime and cover-up.”

The destruction of classified documents pertaining to the JFK assassination and the refusal to release others 58 years after the assassination only strengthens the perceptions of the conspiracy researchers.

One of the premises that is key to this scenario is that when ex-marine Oswald entered the Soviet Union in 1959 and spent two and a half years there, he did so as a false defector within a program called REDSKIN.1

Given the above, shouldn’t the most plausible premise for Oswald launching the Fair Play for Cuba Committee chapter in New Orleans, perhaps the most hostile city for such an endeavor at a time when the FPCC was in a downward spiral, be that it was also an intelligence operation?

Oswald’s strange dance with the FPCC in the months leading up to the assassination is not scrutinized enough––as this quest put Oswald right in the realm of those who would later accuse him of being Kennedy’s killer.

What do we really know about the Fair Play for Cuba Committee? It lacks scrutiny even though, like his adventure in Russia, the evidence of intelligence is everywhere. However, context and insight about the FPCC is lacking, even though it should have been turned inside out by the WC and the HSCA. But it was not, thanks largely to Allen Dulles, George Joannides and other spies who knew what to hide and were perfectly placed to obstruct real investigations.

Research into the FPCC will help lay the groundwork for what should have been a leading hypothesis that should have guided the investigations: that is, that Lee Harvey Oswald was again following orders when he penetrated the FPCC, thereby turning him into an ideal patsy for the assassination of the President.

The FPCC: A Brief History

In 1993, author Van Gosse wrote Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War America and the Making of the New Left. It gives one of the more complete accounts of this odd association.

The FPCC was founded in the spring of 1960 by Robert Taber and Richard Gibson––CBS newsmen who covered Castro’s ascent to power––as well as Alan Sagner, a New Jersey contractor. Its original mission was to correct distortions about the Cuba revolution. It was first supported by writers, philosophers, artists and intellectuals such as Norman Mailer, Truman Capote and Jean-Paul Sartre. It also touched a chord with university students. Some estimates place its African American membership at one third of its roster. In April 1960, Taber and Gibson ran a full-page ad in the New York Times.

Around Christmas time 1960, it organized a huge tour to Cuba, which led to a travel ban to the country by early 1961. According to Gosse, its high point was after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. There was no official membership headcount, but organizers claimed the FPCC had between 5 and 7 thousand members and 27 adult chapters, almost all in the Northeast, a few on the West Coast and only one in the Southeast in Tampa.

When it became clear that the U.S. would not tolerate the revolution, it began dissipating. After a short-lived peace demonstration binge during the missile crisis in 1962, its spiral downwards was accelerated and the FPCC died not long after one of its members allegedly killed JFK.

The FPCC was characterized as “Castro’s Network in the U.S.A.” by the HUAC. Membership within this anti-U.S. organization was described during hearings as an effective door opener to enter Cuba via the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City and Cubana Airlines. Though the HUAC had been seriously rattled by the McCarthy-era witch hunts, Castro was breathing some new life into this outfit for political showcasing of American patriotism. The FBI may even have bribed an FPCC insider to testify that a launch ad placed by the FPCC was financed by Cuba.

The Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (also known as the Eastland Committee) questioned Dr. Charles Santos-Buch, a young Cuban physician, who was a self-described FPCC organizer. On January 6, 1961, Santos-Buch told chief prosecutor Julian Sourwine that he and Taber had received the needed money from “eight different people.” The documents reveal that Santos-Buch changed his story on January 9 at a subsequent executive session, and that he was also given a promise that the CIA would help get a number of family members out of Cuba. He changed his story, at least in part because of his desire to extricate his family from Cuba. On January 10, Santos-Buch publicly testified that he and Robert Taber obtained $3,500 from the Cuban government through the son of Cuba’s Foreign Minister Raul Roa. This money, along with $1,100 in funds from FPCC supporters, paid for the full-page FPCC ad in the April 6, 1960, edition of the New York Times. A week later, Jane Roman from James Angleton’s counterintelligence office in the CIA reported that security concerns made it too dangerous for the CIA to keep its promise to Santos-Buch.

According to one of its national leaders, Barry Sheppard, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) was very involved with the FPCC: “We came to be part of the leadership of the FPCC partly as the result of a crisis in the organization. The original FPCC leadership was somewhat timid, and shied away from forthright defense of the revolution as it radicalized. In response, Cuban members of the 26^th of July Movement living in the U.S. aligned with the SWP and some other militants, and took over the leadership of the Committee.”

Sheppard’s memoir shows that the SWP was much larger than the FPCC. He describes protest mobilization during the Missile Crisis in 19622 this way:

We stood up to it. The PC discussed and approved the thrust of a statement to appear in the next issue of The Militant. It ran under the headline, “Stop the Crime Against Cuba!” We alerted SWP branches and YSA (Young Socialists of America) chapters that night to mobilize to support the broadest possible actions against the threat. In New York, there were two major demonstrations. One was called by Women Strike for Peace and other peace groups. We joined some 20,000 protesters at the United Nations on this demonstration. Then the Fair Play for Cuba Committee held its own action, more specifically pro-Cuba in tone, of over 1,000 people, also near the UN.

The following points concerning the July 1963 SWP convention cast even more suspicion around the timing and motives of the already suspiciously late openings of FPCC chapters in the deep south by Santiago Garriga in Miami and Oswald in New Orleans and the continued involvement with the FPCC by other odd subjects:

At the convention, a meeting of pro-Cuba activists discussed the situation in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Cubans living in the United States who supported the 26^th of July Movement had helped us build the FPCC. Now most of them had returned to Cuba. In most areas, the FPCC had dwindled down to supporters of the SWP and YSA. Since we did not want the FPCC to become a sectarian front group, the meeting decided to stop trying to build it. The FPCC then existed for a while as a paper organization, until the assassination of President John Kennedy dealt it a mortal blow.3

FBI reports confirm that FPCC National Chapter meetings plummeted from 25 meetings a year to 3 in its last year of existence.

Red Scares, the HUAC and McCarthyism

The first Red Scare in the U.S. took place in 1919-20 because of the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the fear of this movement spreading to the United States as well as the influx of immigrants that did include a small number of anarchists. In one case, a bomber blew himself up by accident in an attempt to assassinate John Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan. Because of this, the General Intelligence Division (the forerunner of the FBI) was formed and J. Edgar Hoover was chosen to lead it.

In 1938, The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA) was formed to investigate individuals, groups and organizations considered subversive or disloyal with a special focus on communist-leaning credos.

The second Red Scare is considered to have begun shortly after World War II in 1947, when President Truman signed an order to screen government employees, and lasted 10 years. Through the propaganda and grandstanding of politicians, working in symbiosis with the press and the FBI, panic and hysteria was omnipresent. The HUAC went into overdrive, with Senator Joe McCarthy as its poster boy and with the Communist-hating Hoover eager to oblige.

By 1956, after overstepping and ruining hundreds of lives, McCarthy was taken down by lawyer Joseph Nye Welchin his heroic “Have you no decency” retort during the Army-McCarthy hearings.

This, however, did not stop the anti-communist fervor of the FBI and CIA. They just became even sneakier with no regard for the rule of law.

COINTELPRO and AMSANTA

The Church report,4 in its section “USING COVERT ACTION TO DISRUPT AND DISCREDIT DOMESTIC GROUPS,” describes the illegal activities of the FBI that were put in motion between 1956 and 1971 under the acronym COINTELPRO [Counter Intelligence Program], which claimed to have as a motive the protection of National Security.

The FBI acted as a vigilante by not just breaking the laws but by taking the law into its own hands against both violent and nonviolent targets. Some of the targets were law-abiding citizens who were advocating change, but were labelled as domestic threats unilaterally by the FBI, e.g., Martin Luther King. Others were violent groups such as the Black Panthers and the Klan, where due process was ignored. Once the FBI started down this dangerous path, they not only targeted the kid with the bomb but also the kid with the bumper sticker!

Organizational targets fell under five umbrella groups: The Communist Party; The SWP; White Hate groups; Black Hate groups; and the New Left. This opened the floodgates to investigate any group that had a potential for violence, including nonviolent groups such as The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which was labelled as a Black Hate Group, as well as sponsors, civil-right leaders, students, protesters; and the list goes on …

The FBI used five main methods during COINTELPRO: infiltration; psychological warfare; harassment via the legal system; illegal force; undermining of public opinion.5

These actions stepped up in the wake of the Communist takeover in Cuba. Church Committee members exposed the dimensions of the mail opening program, and discovered that the CIA and FBI had placed the names of 1.5 million Americans in the category of “potentially subversive.” Together, both agencies opened about 380,000 letters.6

Larry Hancock, in Someone Would Have Talked, describes the FBI program called AMSANTA:

The program was initiated by the FBI as part of its effort targeting the FPCC as a subversive group and involved the CIA in briefing, debriefing and possibly monitoring travel of assets through Mexico City to and from Cuba. The program began in late 1962, had one major success in 1963 and appears to have been abruptly terminated in fall 63.

According to John Newman (Oswald and the CIA)7, the CIA, led by David Phillips and James McCord (of Watergate fame), began monitoring the FPCC in 1961. In December 1962, the CIA joined with the FBI in the AMSANTA project. A September 1963 memo divulged an FBI/CIA plan to use FPCC fake materials to embarrass Cuba.

There are strong indicators that the CIA efforts to penetrate and use the FPCC were local and illegal––such as spying on U.S. citizen/members of the FPCC. As a David Phillips asset stated, it was “At the request of Mr. David Phillips” that, “I spent the evening of January 6 with Court Wood, a student who has recently returned from a three-week stay in Cuba under the sponsorship of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.”8

The opening of a Miami FPCC chapter in 1963 by Santiago Garriga is more evidence of illegal domestic espionage on or through the FPCC by the CIA. According to Bill Simpich, author of State Secret, Garriga’s resumé was perfect for patsy recruiter/runners––interaction with Cuban associates in Mexico City; seemingly pro-Castro behavior; and his crowning achievement: like Oswald in 1963, he opened an FPCC chapter in a market deemed very hostile for such an enterprise.

Garriga is the potential fall guy who is the most clearly linked with intelligence. Like Oswald, he could be portrayed as a double agent by those who packaged him. What makes Garriga so unique are, as Simpich writes, his pseudonym and close links with William Harvey’s (CIA Cuban Affairs) team. To cover this intriguing lead, it is best to cite a few excerpts from State Secret:

During October 1963 Garriga worked with other pro-Castro Cubans to set up a new chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in Miami … Although it appears that Garriga’s ultimate loyalty was with the Castro government, it’s likely that Garriga’s FPCC activity was designed by Anita Potocki (Harvey’s chief aide at the wiretap division known as Staff D) to set up a flytrap for people like Oswald. Maybe even Garriga himself was considered as a possible fall guy.

However, in the days before 11/22/63, the FBI ran an operation that investigated the Cuban espionage net that included Garriga and shared the take with the CIA. The CIA referred to this investigation as ZRKNICK. Bill Harvey had worked with ZRKNICK in the past … The memos that identify Garriga were written by Anita Potocki.

Was there something sinister in this effort to set up FPCC Miami? It certainly looks ominous, given that AMKNOB-1 is the main organizer and that Anita Potocki is one of his handlers. The FPCC leadership recognized that it was dangerous to set up such a chapter in Miami due to the possibility of reprisals by Cuban exiles. For just these reasons, the FPCC leadership had discouraged Oswald from publicly opening an FPCC chapter in the Southern port town of New Orleans.

The fingerprints of AMSANTA and COINTELPRO were also all over Oswald.

Targeting the FPCC

By the time Oswald opened his Crescent City chapter of the FPCC, it was under the intense scrutiny which had started in 1960, the year of the national launch. An FBI report9 in response to NSAM 43 and 45 to the attorney general, dated April 24, 1961, outlines steps taken by then to counter pro-Castro organizations. It was already a full-court blitz.

In this document, the FBI makes it clear that the Castro movement is a serious threat to the U.S. The FPCC is underlined as a key target pursuant to Executive Order 10450. The overall coverage of pro-Castro activities in the U.S. is described as having begun in November 1955 when Castro came to the U.S. looking for financial support for the rebel cause, and the 26^th of July Movement started up in the U.S. When Castro took power in January 1959, the FBI had files on this organization as well as lists of members it shared with other intelligence agencies and sharply expanded its surveillance operations. Spying on Cuban diplomatic institutions, questioning defectors and the infiltration of pro- and anti-Castro groups with informants, are listed as key Intel tactics.

By the time the report was written10, the FBI numbers the pending matters at 1000 and information sources at over 300. The FBI had by then identified 140 Castro supporters in the U.S. who constituted a threat to security. “We are maintaining close coverage of the various Cuban establishments as well as pro-Castro groups and their leaders,” which was shared generously with other intelligence groups. The FPCC is described as the most important such group, and received support from Cuba as well as the SWP and CP, according to the report.

The FBI claimed that Cuban agents were receiving assistance from their surveillance targets and that Cubana Airlines was an important tool for their activities. The FBI was keeping close tabs on pro-Cuba propaganda. Covert informants were given a T symbol,11 preceded by a location identifier such as NY for New York, followed by a number. Also identified were the locations they could report on and the subject matter. Some informants were government employees, post-office workers, intelligence assets on assignment (June Cobb was assigned to spy on Richard Gibson and slander Oswald in Mexico City)12 and freelancers (as we will see later Ruth Paine quite possibly was a provider of FPCC intelligence), etc., who could oversee documentary movement around targets. Others infiltrated FPCC chapters and were present during meetings. These would report on who was present, who said what, and the materials shown and exchanged. License plates of parked cars of meeting attendees were recorded. In some cases, chapter officers were key sources: Thomas Vicente (National), Harry Dean (Detroit), Harrold Wilson (Tampa), John Glenn (Indiana) were all definite or likely snitches for the FBI.

In April 1963, aided by Thomas Vicente, the FBI broke into FPCC NY offices for a black bag operation. FBI files indicate that NY alone had over 25 covert informers who were being used along with other sources. Tampa had at least 11 informants carrying the TP-T code.

The CIA also was all over the FPCC. Two days after the FPCC ad in the NY Times, William K. Harvey, head of the CIA’s Cuban affairs, told FBI counterintelligence chief Sam Papich: “For your information, this Agency has derogatory information on all individuals listed in the attached advertisement.” Other files confirm that Jane Roman and James Angleton were also monitoring the FPCC.

Recipients of intel included the Secret Service, the CIA, Customs Bureau, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Post Office Department, the Aviation Agency, the Federal Communications Commission, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the U.S. Information Agency, the Treasury Department, the U.S. Information Agency, the Bureau of Foreign Commerce. The report also stresses the importance of coordinated efforts with other intel agencies as well as local FBI offices.

After the failed Bay of Pigs and the Missile Crisis, we can assume that when Oswald, already notorious for his Russian adventure, opened an FPCC chapter in, of all places, New Orleans by the middle of 1963, he was a known quantity.

Frank S. DeBenedictis on the Tampa FPCC

In 2002, Frank S. DeBenedictis submitted a thesis13 about the Cold War coming to Ybor City, and the Tampa FPCC, for his Master of Arts at Florida Atlantic University. DeBenedictis adroitly points out that the reason FPCC files have been very difficult to access is that after the assassination of JFK, these files were categorized as classified JFK assassination files instead of Cold War files.

The following represents some of the key information/passages from his thesis. It is based largely on government and intelligence investigations of the FPCC, declassified JFK assassination documents, Van Gosse’s research, newspaper articles as well as FPCC propaganda and correspondence. Almost all of the FPCC chapters were situated in the North of the U.S. or along the West Coast. The reason Tampa was unique in hosting an important FPCC chapter was because it had a large Cuban exile population who were anti-fascist and had fled the brutal Marchado and Batista regimes. In 1955, Castro raised money there for his rebellion and had satellite followers to his 26^th of July Movement. Ybor City (part of Tampa) was known for its Latino culture and its cigar industry.

By 1961, Eisenhower cut all ties with Castro, and the 26^th of July Movement ceased activity in the U.S. It was being replaced by the FPCC. As Frank writes, “It was somewhat different from the older pro-Castro groups, since it came about after Castro was already in power. When Cuba formed ties with the Soviet bloc, the FPCC and its defense of Castro increasingly became part of the Cold War. By late 1961 the very active Tampa chapter had established its own newsletter, and drew attention from both Castro supporters outside Florida, and anti-Castro Cuban exiles and a variety of government operatives.”

The influx of anti-Castro Cuban exiles (including Batista followers as well as other Cubans who were disappointed by Castro’s political and economic systems as well as his strong-arm tactics) took refuge in large numbers in Florida and were ready to counter the FPCC on all fronts––with the support of intelligence forces. Violence among Cubans ensued: riots, intimidation, vandalism directed at FPCC sympathizers were the order of the day. Hosting chapters in the deep south became perilous, with strong anti-Castro sentiment coming from Latinos, business, government, intelligence and Americans from all walks of life.

“An organization formed in rebellion at this time, against the Castro regime. It called itself the Cuban Front. The group was made up of Cuban exiles and residents, which at this early date of disaffection with Castro, was composed primarily of Batista supporters. Since Cuba and the United States had by early 1961 experienced two years of deteriorating diplomatic relations, the Cuban Front’s strategy was to raise the specter of communism coming to Cuba.” One violent confrontation called the Marti Park Incident featured CRC leader Sergio Arcacha Smith, who entered Oswald’s universe in 1963.

The Bay of Pigs invasion commenced on April 17, 1961, and FPCC chapters organized protests against the U.S. action. Five days before the invasion, Tampa chapter leader V.T. Lee wrote a letter to the Tampa Tribune deriding both the Tampa daily and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, which was investigating the organization. His letter lambasted Senators Thomas Dodd and James 0. Eastland, whose strident anti-communism began accusations that the FPCC was run by a foreign government.

On April 22, 1961, when FPCC-led public protests against the Bay of Pigs operation became prevalent on a daily basis, the Kennedy administration’s National Security Council passed National Security Action Memo [NSAM] 45. This memo ordered the Attorney General and the Director of Central Intelligence to “examine the possibility of stepping up coverage of Castro activities in the United States.” On April 27, 1961, J. Edgar Hoover issued a general order for FBI agents to report on pro-Castro agitation. Hoover noted that the Fair Play for Cuba Committee’s actions showed the capacity of a national group organization to mobilize its efforts.

Florida Congressman William C. Cramer testified on April 3, 1963. A primary subject was, in the words of the Senate Committee, “the flow of subversives through the open door of subversion, the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City, by way of Cubana Airlines.’’

For the Tampa FPCC, in large part this meant that the Florida Legislative Investigative Committee [aka––Florida Johns Committee] became involved in investigating the activities of the pro-Castro group. Its investigation of the pro-Castro 26^th of July Movement and Fair Play for Cuba Committee began in 1959 and continued into 1964.

Local police intelligence unit “red squads” and state investigative committees filled the anti-Communist void in the post-McCarthy era. Florida’s Johns Committee had a counterpart in Louisiana, which was the Louisiana Un-American Activities Committee [LUAC].

The following passage by DeBenedictis explains the degree of FBI infiltration of an FPCC chapter, and the stunningly high number of informants per FPCC meeting attendee ratio.

A January 30, 1964, FBI report told of meetings the pro-Castro group had at the Tampa residence of Christine and Manuel Amor. Information about this meeting came from October 13, 1963, reports by FBI Special Agents Charles C. Capehart and Fredrick A. Slight. This data was gathered by taking down automobile license plate numbers registered to individuals in attendance. Eight cars were at the Amor residence. An FBI informant inside reported that a meeting cancellation notice had been sent to members, but several still showed up. Slide presentations and a tape recording of V.T. Lee’s Cuba trip were planned on this October date. Background reports provided data on FPCC members past affiliations with the Communist and Proletarian Parties. Jose Alvarez, who in June 1962 was elected the organization’s financial secretary, was identified by TP T-7 as a Communist Party member in Tampa in 1943. Other members, at late 1963 FPCC meetings, were listed as protestors and supporters of radical causes. Among these causes were opposition to the McCarran Act, and support of Cuba’s right to have Soviet missile stations. In addition, these members had links to the Communist Party in northern cities. FPCC informants were given the cryptonyms TP T-1 through TP T-11. Among them was TP T-2, who was identified as M. Miller, Superintendent of Mails at Ybor City’s post office. The FBI’s mail surveillance program complemented the CIA’s HT/LINGUAL mail opening program. FBI agents relied extensively on informants in the Tampa FPCC.

The key with Tampa is that it served as a model for Oswald’s agitation activities as well as FPCC countering strategies for many of the people Oswald would network with in New Orleans.

The FPCC in New Orleans

At least three city police intelligence units kept files and conducted surveillance on the Tampa FPCC. These included Miami, Tampa, and New Orleans. In addition, the police units also cooperated with each other and with the U.S. Senate Committee investigating the organization.14

Perhaps the most interesting of the police intelligence correspondence is the one between the Tampa Police Intelligence Unit and its New Orleans counterpart. The NOPD Intelligence Unit collected data about the FPCC from March to September 1961 from newspaper articles. In 1962 this changed when the NOPIU initiated a chain of correspondence with the TPIU. Sgt. J.S. de Ia Llana, supervisor of the TPIU, replying to a December 1962 information request on the Tampa Fair Play for Cuba Committee chapter, informed P. J. Trosclair (NOPIU): “The Tampa Chapter (of the FPCC) is very active in Tampa, these members hold secret meetings and distribute various types of literature. Also, movies are shown. Enclosed are some of the circulars which are distributed. This unit maintains a current file on the local chapter and its members.” The Tampa PD Intelligence Unit enclosed several circulars for its NOPD counterpart, and promised them its full cooperation.15

Early in 1963, the Tampa PD would write to New Orleans, giving them information about a Dr. James Dombrowski, a left-wing activist in New Orleans, claiming that he was an active FPCC member. The NOPD investigation of the FPCC collected a copy of Tampa Fair Play; a list of 202 travelers to Cuba, which can also be found in FBI files, and Florida Johns Committee files. Also included are the pre-Kennedy assassination arrest records and post-assassination warnings on Lee Harvey Oswald. For the NOPD, their late-1962-initiated correspondence to Tampa was odd since New Orleans had no known FPCC chapter in late 1962 and early 1963. Also unusual was the NOPD inquiry to Tampa about FPCC activity in New Orleans!

Oswald and the FPCC in Dallas

According to an FBI report, there is evidence that Oswald agitated for the FPCC in Dallas before moving to New Orleans. Dallas confidential informant T-2 advised that Lee H. Oswald of Dallas, Texas, was in contact with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. According to T-2, Oswald had a placard around his neck reading, “Hands off Cuba Viva Fidel.”

The following day (April 19), Oswald wrote to the FPCC in New York and said:

I do not like to ask for something for nothing but I am unemployed. Since I am unemployed, I stood yesterday for the first time in my life. with a placard around my neck. passing out Fair Play for Cuba pamphlets, etc. I only had 15 or so. In 40 minutes they were all gone. I was cursed as well as praised by some. My homemake [sic] placard said: ‘Hands OFF CUBA! V IVA Fidel’ I now ask for 40 or (50) more of the fine, basic pamplets-14. Sincerely, Lee H. Oswald16

The following lead merits investigation. One of the Cuban exiles who was cursing during the so-called skirmish involving Oswald and Carlos Bringuier was Celso Hernandez, who may have met Oswald before. According to Bill Simpich’s research, the CIA examined Celso Hernandez as a Castro penetration agent. There is an intriguing report of FPCC member Oswald being arrested with Celso Hernandez in New Orleans in late 1962. The ID of Hernandez was made years later and is admittedly shaky. The ID of Oswald is more substantive, as he identified himself to the police as an FPCC member––but he was living in the Dallas area. The story is that the two men were picked up at the lakefront in Celso’s work truck, owned by an electronics firm that was Celso’s employer.17

FBI agency file number 97-2229-7 even states that Oswald was the FPCC organizer and chairman in TEXAS!

(Note: also explosive in this document is the statement that Oswald was being polygraphed on November 22––sounds like another offshoot, sigh!)

Oswald’s first attempt at interacting with the FPCC may have been as early as late summer 1962, when the head of the FPCC at the time, Richard Gibson, responded to a request for information from a Lee Bowmont from Fort Worth, Texas. Gibson felt he may have been in a group of three Trotskyites he had met shortly after.18

And then we have the following mind-boggling correspondence(s) courtesy of Malcolm Blunt:

This envelope, with the FPCC return address, as it stands is difficult to analyze because of the unclear postmark and its content has not been revealed as far as I know (which would once again represent obstruction of justice if this were the case). However, we do know Oswald lived at the above address from about July to October of 1962. This confirms that Oswald/FPCC relations began clearly before 1963. The following May 5, 1961 letter is food for thought:

It was not only Oswald who was interested in the FPCC before he went to New Orleans; others from the Big Easy were gathering information. Guy Banister was also a member of the Scotch Rite19 which figures on the letterhead. What on earth is this organization doing corresponding with the FPCC in 1961?

Oswald and FPCC Worst Practices

Location, Location, Location!

As we have seen by chronicling the demise of the FPCC, Oswald’s sense of timing was horrendous when he launched the New Orleans chapter in the summer of 1963. His choice for a location was even worse.

The two most dangerous places to open chapters in the U.S. at the time were probably Miami and New Orleans. Dallas would not have been far behind. New Orleans perhaps stood out as the worst because of its dependence on North-South trade. Its proximity to Cuba caused many sleepless nights during the October 1962 missile crisis. V.T. Lee had urged Oswald to avoid New Orleans.

When the HSCA published its completed Final Report in 1979, it showed two areas related to the FPCC that the Warren Commission failed to investigate adequately. One overlooked area was the identity of occupants at the address Oswald used for his FPCC literature distribution. The address 544 Camp Street appeared on materials that Oswald was handing out. This address was the New Orleans Newman Building. The Warren Report stated that, at an earlier date, the building was occupied by an anti-Castro group, but the name was not revealed in the final report. Later it was found to be the Cuban Revolutionary Council. Another resident of the Newman Building was the private detective agency of Guy Banister. He also was not mentioned in the Warren Report. Banister was the retired FBI Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago FBI field office. After his FBI retirement in the mid-1950s, he moved to New Orleans and helped set up that city’s police intelligence unit. Guy Banister, a staunch anti-communist, continued his anti-subversion work well after his official ties with the FBI were severed. The HSCA determined in their investigation that in 1961 Banister and Sergio Arcacha Smith of the CRC were working together in the anti-Castro cause.20

The 544 Camp Street address, which Oswald foolishly stamped on some of his handouts, was also surrounded by intelligence organizations, including the ONI, CIA, Secret Service and the FBI.

The HSCA did take a closer look at the Camp Street enigma. Here were some of the findings:

(467) During the course of that investigation, however, the Secret Service received information that an office in the Newman Building had been rented to the Cuban Revolutionary Council from October 1961 through February 1962.

(466) The investigation of a possible connection between Oswald and the 544 Camp Street address was closed. The Warren Commission findings concurred with the Secret Service report that no additional evidence had been found to indicate Oswald ever maintained an office at the 544 Camp Street address.

(469) The committee investigated the possibility of a connection between Oswald and 544 Camp Street and developed evidence pointing to a different result.

(482) The overall investigation of the 544 Camp Street issue at the time of the assassination was not thorough. It is not surprising, then, that significant links were never discovered during the original investigation. Banister was involved in anti-Communist activities after his separation from the FBI and testified before various investigating bodies about the dangers of communism. Early in 1961, Banister helped draw up a charter for the Friends of Democratic Cuba, an organization set up as the fundraising arm of Sergio Arcacha Smith’s branch of the Cuban Revolutionary Council.

(489) The long-standing relationship of Ferrie and Banister is significant since Ferrie became a suspect soon after it occurred.

(491) Witnesses interviewed by the committee indicate Banister was aware of Oswald and his Fair Play for Cuba Committee before the assassination. Banister’s brother, Ross Banister, who is employed by the Louisiana State Police, told the committee that his brother had mentioned seeing Oswald hand out Fair Play for Cuba literature on one occasion.

(492) Ivan F. “Bill” Nitschke, a friend and business associate and former FBI agent, corroborates that Banister was cognizant of Oswald’s leaflet distributing.

(494) Delphine Roberts, Banister’s long-time friend and secretary, stated to the committee that Banister had become extremely angry with James Arthus and Sam Newman over Oswald’s use of the 544 Camp Street address on his handbills.

(495) The committee questioned Sam Newman regarding Roberts’ allegation. Newman could not recall ever seeing Oswald or renting space, to him … Newman theorized that if Oswald was using the 544 Camp Street address and had any link to the building, it would have been through a connection to the Cubans.

Roberts claimed Banister had an extensive file on Communists and fellow travelers, including one on Lee Harvey Oswald, which was kept out of the original files because Banister “never got around to assigning a number to it.”

(514) Significant to the argument that Oswald and Ferrie were associated in 1963 is evidence of prior association in 1955 when Ferrie was captain of a Civil Air Patrol squadron and Oswald a young cadet. This pupil-teacher relationship could have greatly facilitated their reacquaintance and Ferrie’s noted ability to influence others could have been used with Oswald.

(515) D. Ferrie’s experience with the underground activities of the Cuban exile movement and as a private investigator for Carlos Marcello and Guy Banister might have made him a good candidate to participate in a conspiracy plot. He may not have known what was to be the outcome of his actions, but once the assassination had been successfully completed and his own name cleared, Ferrie would have had no reason to reveal his knowledge of the plot.

On page 145 of its final report, the HSCA states that “it was inclined to believe that Oswald was in Clinton, August – early September 1963, and that he was in the company of David Ferrie, if not Clay Shaw. The Committee was puzzled by Oswald’s apparent association with David Ferrie, a person whose anti-Castro sentiments were so distant from those of Oswald, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee campaigner.”

Research since this very accusatory report has only re-enforced this conclusion. We now know for certain that Clay Shaw was a well-paid CIA asset, something that he vehemently denied during the Garrison inquiry. He was also using the alias Clay Bertrand and that he was seen in the company of Oswald in Clinton.

Birds of a Feather

If Oswald’s sense of timing and choice of location for opening an FPCC chapter were awful, his networking strategies were catastrophic … if you believe he was serious about promoting Fair Play for Cuba.

Jim Garrison had already pointed out how Oswald’s hobnobbing with White Russians in Dallas was diametrically opposed to his supposed pro-Marxist credo. His universe of contacts in New Orleans was even worse––unless he was involved in something else, like infiltrating pro- and anti-Castro groups to help the FBI in their oversight objectives. Let us highlight a few (for a more in-depth coverage of Oswald’s contacts read this author’s article Oswald’s Intelligence Connections: How Richard Schweiker clashes with Fake History):

David Ferrie

David Ferrie

Oswald’s first intel connection is one of the most important for confirming Schweiker’s assertion. David Ferrie plays an important role in Oswald’s fate during two phases of Oswald’s short life. In 1955, both Ferrie and Oswald were members of the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol where Ferrie taught, among other things, aviation. Ferrie later became a contract CIA agent flying bombing missions over Cuba. During the summer of 1963, Ferrie and Oswald linked up once again at 544 Camp Street. During this period, Ferrie was frequently seen in the building and elsewhere, in the company of Banister, CIA agent Clay Shaw, the CIA-connected Sergio Arcacha Smith, Oswald and others of this ilk who became key suspects in the Garrison investigation.

Kerry Thornley

Kerry Thornley

When Oswald was stationed back to California in 1959, Thornley wrote a book about him before the assassination called The Idle Warriors, and then another in 1965. In the summer of 1963, Thornley popped backed into the picture in New Orleans where several witnesses saw him with Oswald either in public or at Oswald’s apartment. There is evidence that Thornley picked up Fair Play for Cuba flyers for Oswald. An FBI memo states that Thornley and Oswald went to Mexico together. And despite preliminary denials, he eventually admitted links to David Ferrie, Guy Banister, Carlos Bringuier and Ed Butler.

Victor Thomas Vicente

When Lee Oswald wrote his first letter to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee HQ in New York in April 1963, he asked for “forty to fifty” free copies of a 40-page pamphlet. The author of the pamphlets, Corliss Lamont, turned out to be holding a receipt for 45 of these pamphlets from the CIA Acquisitions Division. These pamphlets were mailed to Oswald by FPCC National Chapter worker Victor Thomas Vicente. Vicente was a key informant for both the CIA and the FBI’s New York office.

John Martino

John Martino

Martino showed pre-knowledge of the assassination and also admitted observing Oswald during the summer of 1963. Martino certainly did have CIA connections in 1963, primarily to David Morales and Rip Robertson.

William Monaghan and Dante Marichini

During the summer of 1963 in New Orleans, Oswald gained employment at the Reilly Coffee Company, an organization of interest because of its links to Caribbean anti-communist politics. The Reilly brothers backed Ed Butler’s INCA (the CIA-linked Information Council of the Americas, which factors heavily in Oswald’s later Marxist PR activities) and the CRC (Cuban Revolutionary Council).

Reilly Coffee Co

William Monaghan was the V.P. of Finance there who ended up firing Oswald. He was also an ex-FBI agent. He was listed as a charter member of INCA in a 1962 bulletin. Other employees there of interest to researchers included four of Oswald’s co-workers who joined NASA during the summer of 1963. Dante Marichini, who was a friend of David Ferrie’s and the neighbor of Clay Shaw, was one of these.

Guy Banister

Guy Banister

What emerges from all we know about 544 Camp Street is that Oswald was assisting Banister, a known communist hunter, in identifying Castro-sympathizers and that Banister was deeply involved in activities supplying weapons to anti-Castro groups like Alpha 66––a key organization of interest in the assassination.

Clay Shaw

Clay Shaw

Thanks to Jim Garrison, we were introduced to a key person of interest in Clay Shaw. The HSCA investigation concluded that New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison and his office ”had established an association of an undetermined nature between Ferrie, a suspect in the assassination of President Kennedy, and Clay Shaw and Lee Harvey Oswald.”

In Destiny Betrayed, Jim DiEugenio underscores other Shaw links with the CRC and with Banister, CIA-cleared doctor Alton Ochsner, and Ed Butler, who are all connected to the Information Council of the Americas, which appears to have played a role in the sheep-dipping of Oswald (see Ed Butler). He also shows that Shaw was cleared for a project called QK/ENCHANT during the Garrison investigation. Howard Hunt also belonged to this project, which was part of the CIA’s Domestic Operations Division, according to CIA insider Victor Marchetti.

William Gaudet

William Gaudet

Gaudet had worked for the CIA before he crossed paths with Oswald. He most likely continued freelancing for it. He worked virtually rent-free out of Clay Shaw’s International Trade Mart. It seems plausible that Gaudet played a part in monitoring Oswald, perhaps for the benefit of Shaw.

Dean Andrews

Dean Andrews

Lawyer Dean Andrews was called by Shaw, under the pseudonym Clay Bertrand, and given instructions to represent Oswald, as told by Garrison in his famous interview with Playboy.

Sergio Arcacha Smith

Sergio Arcacha Smith

The CIA selected him to be a key leader of Cuban exiles as a representative of the Cuban Revolutionary Council. That group was created by Howard Hunt as an umbrella organization of many Cuban exile groups such as Alpha 66 and the DRE. The FDC was allegedly organized for his benefit, and it borrowed Oswald’s name when he was in Russia. It is in this role that he associated closely with Clay Shaw, Guy Banister, David Ferrie and Doctor Alton Ochsner. Gordon Novel claims that David Phillips participated in at least one meeting where Smith and Banister were in attendance.

At the time of the working relationship between Banister and CRC leader Sergio Arcacha Smith, the CRC became involved in Tampa’s Marti Park demonstrations against the FPCC. (Frank S. DeBenedictis thesis).

Carlos Bringuier, Carlos Quiroga, Celso Hernandez and Frank Bartes

Carlos Bringuier

Bringuier was part of the DRE, a militant right-wing, anti-Communist, anti-Castro, anti-Kennedy group. Bringuier, based in New Orleans, was placed in charge of DRE publicity and propaganda. According to Bringuier, the following summarizes his strange encounters with Oswald:

On August 9, 1963, Oswald, while leafleting FPCC flyers on Canal Street, drew the ire of Bringuier and his Cuban associates Celso Hernandez and Miguel Cruz. Bringuier did the swinging while Oswald tried to block his blows. Oswald was then interviewed on a Bill Stuckey show along with Bringuier where his Marxist and FPCC credentials were discussed for all to hear.

According to E. Howard Hunt, the DRE was started by David Phillips, who is the CIA career employee with the most links with Oswald. The DRE was eventually overseen in 1963 by George Joannides, who helped sabotage the HSCA investigation.

Arcacha Smith, Manuel Gil,
& Carlos Quiroga

A Jim Garrison polygraphed interrogation of Quiroga, plus other research, proved that Quiroga knew Banister and Sergio Arcacha Smith, had met Oswald more than once, and had supplied Oswald with Fair Play for Cuba literature on the orders of Carlos Bringuier. One of the Cuban exiles arrested during the so-called skirmish was Celso Hernandez, who may have met Oswald before. According to Bill Simpich’s research, the CIA examined Celso Hernandez as a Castro penetration agent.

While Oswald and Bringuier were in court after their altercation, a sympathizer and friend of Bringuier’s, Frank Bartes, showed up to offer moral support. This Cuban exile went on to conduct anti-Castro press relations. Bartes followed Smith as the CRC leader in New Orleans based in the Newman building with Banister. In 1993, the ARRB released files confirming that Bartes was an informant for the FBI agent who just happened to be monitoring Oswald: Warren DeBrueys.

Jesse Core

Core was Clay Shaw’s right-hand man who was present during the incident on Canal Street and Oswald’s leafleting in front of the Trade Mart. He contacted Shaw’s friends at WDSU TV. He also is the one who warned his team about Oswald’s blunder of placing Banister’s address on some of the literature he was handing out. Jesse Core’s reports about Oswald made their way to intelligence outfits.

John Quigley and Warren DeBrueys

Warren DeBrueys

After the altercation with Bringuier, while under arrest, Oswald made a bizarre request. He asked to see an FBI agent. The FBI sent agent John Quigley, who spent somewhere between 90 minutes and three hours with Oswald. It’s safe to say that they were not discussing Bringuier simply being mean to the alleged communist. Quigley stated that Martello told him that Oswald wanted to pass on information about the FPCC to him. Joan Mellen’s research finds that Oswald actually asked specifically for Warren DeBrueys. DeBrueys, who ran Bartes as an informant, would further nail down the real reason Oswald started an FPCC chapter in a hostile place like New Orleans. William Walter, an employee at the New Orleans FBI office, claimed to have seen an FBI informant file on Oswald with DeBrueys’ name on it.

Arnesto Rodriguez and family

Before his approach to Bringuier, Oswald had contacted the head of a local language school, Arnesto Rodriguez Jr., expressing an interest in learning Spanish. One of Arnesto’s closest associates in New Orleans was Carlos Bringuier, and both men acted as sources for the FBI (Arnesto aka Ernesto was assigned FBI source number 1213 S).

The father of the Rodriguez family, Arnesto Napoleon Rodriguez Gonzales, had his own intelligence connections, having worked for the Office of Naval Intelligence during World War II; he had also served as an on-island source for the CIA before leaving Cuba. In terms of Lee Oswald’s being known to JFK conspirators, the most important point is that Arnesto’s father and Arnesto Jr. were both in routine touch with a relative in Miami, a CIA officer deep within JM/WAVE intelligence operations. That individual (son to Arnesto Sr; brother to Arnesto Jr.) was Emilio Americo Rodriguez Casanova (crypt AMIRE-1). Emilio was a close friend to both David Morales and Tony Sforza as well as a number of other SAS and JM/WAVE officers. He had also worked with, and appears to have been in contact with, David Phillips in 1963.21

Orestes Peña, Joseph Oster, David Smith, and Wendell Roache

Orestes Peña

Curiously, the evidence that Oswald collaborated with Customs is stronger than with almost any other agency. Cuban exile Orestes Peña testified that he saw Oswald chatting on a regular basis with FBI Cuban specialist Warren DeBrueys, David Smith at Customs, and Wendell Roache at INS. Peña told the Church Committee that Oswald was employed by Customs. Informant Joseph Oster went farther, saying that Oswald’s handler was David Smith at Customs. Church Committee staff members knew that David Smith “was involved in CIA operations.” Orestes Peña’s handler Warren DeBrueys admitted he knew David Smith.

Ed Butler and Bill Stuckey

Butler & Bringuier

The Canal Street incident led to Oswald being part of a debate on WDSU reporter Bill Stuckey’s weekly radio program called Latin Listening Post. Later, Butler and Carlos Bringuier were also invited to debate Oswald about his Marxist views on a show called Conversation Carte Blanche.

To fully comprehend the significance of Oswald’s media exposure during his debate with Carlos Bringuier on WSDU, it is critical to have some insights on Ed Butler and INCA as well as Bill Stuckey and WSDU. These were dissected by Jim DiEugenio22:

INCA was, in essence, a propaganda mill that had as its targets Central and South America, and the Caribbean. It would create broadcasts, called Truth Tapes, which would be recycled through those areas and, domestically, stage rallies and fund raisers to both energize its base and collect funds to redouble its efforts. By this time, as Carpenter and others point out, Butler was now in communication with people like Charles Cabell, Deputy Director of the CIA, and Ed Lansdale, the legendary psy-ops master within the Agency who was shifting his focus from Vietnam to Cuba. These contacts helped him get access to Cuban refugees whom he featured on these tapes. Declassified documents reveal the Agency helped distribute the tapes to about 50 stations in South America by 1963. There is some evidence that the CIA furnished Butler with films of Cuban exile training camps and that he was in contact with E. Howard Hunt––under one of his aliases––who supervised these exiles in New Orleans. Some of the local elite who joined or helped INCA would later figure in the Oswald story e.g. Eustis Reilly of Reilly Coffee Company, where Oswald worked; Edgar Stern who owned the local NBC station WDSU where Oswald was to appear; and Alberto Fowler, a friend of Shaw’s; plus future Warren Commissioner Hale Boggs who helped INCA get tax-exempt status. Butler also began to befriend ground-level operators in the CIA’s anti-Castro effort like David Ferrie, Oswald’s friend in New Orleans; Sergio Arcacha Smith, one of Hunt’s prime agents in New Orleans; and Gordon Novel, who worked with Banister, Smith and apparently, David Phillips, on an aborted telethon for the exiles.

Two other acquaintances of Butler were Bill Stuckey, a broadcast and print reporter, and Carlos Bringuier, a CIA operative in the Cuban exile community and leader of the DRE, one of its most important groups in New Orleans.

Stuckey claimed that his show helped destroy the FPCC in New Orleans. It is during this show that Oswald let slip that he was under the protection of the government while in Russia.

So, as we can see, the arrival of Oswald in New Orleans, his behavior and his network were very closely linked to the demise of the FPCC and his own tragic fall, as well as a ploy to blame Castro.

His short stint in the Big Easy was not only a godsend for right-wing fanatics; it was planned and welcomed. FBI files discovered by Malcolm Blunt, as well as Stuckey’s testimony to the Warren Commission, confirm that the radio host was making inquiries about whether or not the FPCC was present in New Orleans as early as 1961. In other words, Stuckey was not just a free-lance journalist.

INCA WDSU
“Conversation Carte Blanche”

Both Butler and Stuckey were briefed in advance about Oswald’s defection to Russia: Stuckey by the FBI, Butler by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Therefore, they were able to ambush Oswald and expose him as a Soviet defector, which compromised his debate position as one who desired “fair play” for Cuba. The records of this show were used immediately after the assassination (through Butler and Bringuier) to paint Oswald as the lone-nut Marxist. In fact, Butler was flown up to Washington within 24 hours to talk to the leaders of the HUAC.

According to author Ed Haslam, Butler also became the secret custodian of Banister’s files years after his death.23

see Part 2

Notes

1 AEBALCONY_0005.pdf (cia.gov).

2 Barry Sheppard, The Party, p. 83.

3 Sheppard, The Party, p. 103.

4 Church Report, p. 211, Section: “Using Covert Action to Disrupt and Discredit Domestic Groups.”

5 Brian Glick, War at Home.

6 See n. 13 below.

7 Newman, Oswald and the CIA, location 1329, Kindle.

8 Newman, location 3122.

9 FBI report (CR-109-12 210-2990).

10 FBI report (CR-109-12 210-2990).

11 FBI document James Kennedy Report 11/29/1963.

12 FBI file 124-10324-10098.

13 Frank S. DeBenedictis, Cold War comes to Ybor City: Tampa Bay’s chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (Ph.D. diss., Florida Atlantic University, 2002).

14 DeBenedictis, Cold War comes to Ybor City.

15 DeBenedictis, Cold War comes to Ybor City.

16 John Armstrong, Harvey & Lee, p. 542.

17 https://www.opednews.com/populum/page.php?f=THE-JFK-CASE–THE-TWELVE-by-Bill-Simpich-120825-173.html.

18 CIA file, NBR 89970 Dec 18, 1963.

19 William Guy Banister (1901-1964) – Find A Grave Memorial.

20 DeBenedictis, Cold War comes to Ybor City.

21 Hancock, Tipping Point, part 4, “Oswald in Play.”

22 James DiEugenio, “Ed Butler: Expert in Propaganda and Psychological Warfare“ (2004).

23 Haslam, Dr. Mary’s Monkey, pp. 161-165.

August 7, 2021
Gaeton Fonzi’s original 1980 article, “Who Killed JFK?”, now available online

March 7, 2019
The Three Failed Plots to Kill JFK, Part 2
Case linkage and patsy casting for regime change operations

Case linkage, also called linkage analysis or comparative case analysis, is an offender profiling process that helps crime investigators determine whether a series of crimes were committed by the same offender.

The Warren Commission and the investigative agencies at their service never performed this type of standard research for the JFK assassination.

In The Three Failed Plots to Kill JFK: The Historians’ Guide on how to Research his Assassination published in 2016, I did some data mining from the works of reputable authors and original source documents (mostly from the Mary Ferrell Foundation) which centered on three previous plots (L.A., Chicago and Tampa) to assassinate JFK within the six months that preceded the murder and six potential patsies (Vaughn Marlowe, Richard Case Nagell, Thomas Arthur Vallee, Harry Power, Santiago Garriga and Policarpo Lopez). (Before reading this follow-up, it is strongly recommended that you read the original article by following the above hyperlink.)

What we can conclude from this analysis is that the peculiarities that one can find in their personas, associations and actions is hardly a haphazard collection of traits and behaviors. I have argued that there is a ZR/Rifle (CIA Executive Action) signature at play that points the finger straight at its signatories and the reliable executors of this regime-change M.O., namely: David Atlee Phillips, William Harvey, David Morales and their long established network of assassins and frame-up artists which includes Mafiosi and Cuban exiles.

Crucial to this line of inquiry will be the use of data visualization which will play a determining role in a summation phase of our quest to correct history book and mainstream media falsities in their accounts of November 22, 1963.

In this article, we will push the analysis even further by covering a fourth failed plot, add some information about one of the potential patsies already profiled, and add two more to our already impressive list. We will begin, however by discussing how the use of data visualization should be considered more often by authors in order to help synthesize this complex case.

Numerical data may be encoded using dots, lines, or bars, to visually communicate a quantitative message. Effective visualization helps users analyze and reason about data and evidence. It makes complex data more accessible, understandable and usable. (Wikipedia)

In Oswald’s Intelligence Connections: How Richard Schweiker clashes with Fake History, I chronicle some 64 characters (soon to be updated to over 75) that Oswald had touch points with that either certainly (over 30) or plausibly had intelligence connections. They were fluffed off by the Warren Commission instead of being mapped out in a diagram and analyzed for who they really were and who they linked up with—exactly what the Mueller Probe is doing for anyone with a direct or indirect relation with the Trump camp.

In my CIA and Mafia’s “Cuban-American mechanism” article, the chart below is used to showcase Santo Trafficante’s links with CIA, Mafia and Cuban exile persons of interest. Of particular interest are the persons with their names in red: No fewer than six for certain and two plausibly are directly involved in the Oswald set-up, murder or cover story and also are connected to Trafficante. The Trafficante, Roselli, Harvey, Morales, and Robertson links should also stimulate a lot of research:

Also in this article, readers can inspect a table that singles out David Atlee Phillips as a person of extreme interest.

In all, Oswald and Phillips shared 23 touch points—20 of which took place within the year in and around the assassination. It is simply impossible to ignore this number of connections between a CIA officer and a lone drifter!

The Phantom Plot in Nashville, May 1963

After reading the Previous Plots article, researcher Frank Cassano sent me information about another plot that failed in Nashville which had been covered by Bill Adams in 1993 for The Fourth Decade:

Synopsis of Assassination Attempt Against JFK, May 18, 1963, in Nashville TN

A few years ago I began looking into other assassination sites as well as other potential assassins and potential patsies. I was able to track a potential JFK assassin to the general area (Knoxville, TN) of a planned JFK motorcade in May of 1963. The trip was altered prior to the actual day of the trip and JFK instead made a visit to Nashville, TN. His visit, on May 18, 1963, included several motorcades.

In early 1992 I was shocked to see a tabloid print a story about an assassination attempt against JFK during the Nashville trip! Congressman Bob Clement of Tennessee had made a startling revelation. He said his father, the late Gov. Frank Clement (governor of Tennessee in 1963) told him of a strange incident while JFK awaited a helicopter after visiting the Governor. The tabloid quoted Congressman Bob Clement of Tennessee as stating, “While the President waited for the helicopter, a man approached with a gun hidden underneath a sack. Secret Service agents spotted him and grabbed him”.

I called and interviewed the congressman in the early summer of 1963. I also obtained actual Nashville news stories about the congressman’s revelation in January of 1992. As a result of reading the news stories and talking to Congressman Clement, I have been able to piece together the following story:

President Kennedy arrived in Nashville on May 18, 1963. He rode in a motorcade to Vanderbilt University where he gave a speech outside in the football stadium. JFK left the stadium in another motorcade and drove to the governor’s mansion. Somewhere between the Governor’s mansion and the helicopter landing site at Overton High School, a man approached JFK with a handgun under a sack. It is unclear whether JFK was in his limousine or not at the time. The governor witnessed this event and the subsequent capture of the suspect by the Secret Service. The man was held at the High School for some time. Nothing more is known about the man. The Secret Service asked the governor to keep the event out of the press for fear it would lead to more assassination attempts.

I have also found some writings about a gun found in a paper bag in the vicinity of Dealey Plaza, however the foundation for this aspect of the story is not solid.

While this failed plot is by far the thinnest of the four looked into, it is worth noting for the following reasons:
1. As with the Chicago plot, a suspect was picked up and released without any trace: no names, fingerprints, photos, reports, etc.
2. The Nashville attempt, as was the case for all of the other failed plots, was revisited by neither the Secret Service nor the FBI after the JFK assassination.
3. The Secret Service once again took steps to keep media from publicizing it.
4. None of the four failed plots were known to the Warren Commission.
Over and above underscoring this pattern of secrecy, it may be worth pursuing whether or not there are still files or witnesses that could shed light on the incident and the suspect. Who were the arresting agents? Are they alive? What can we learn about this suspect? Was he also communist leaning? Was he linked to the FPCC? Did he have Cuban contacts? Why was he let go? Was he at least placed on an FBI watch list? Perhaps an FOIA request would be in order.

More on Harry Power

In the “Three Previous Plots” article, the alternate patsy that had the skimpiest profile was Harry Power. Other snippets of information about him have since surfaced.

Here is how Harry Power was originally covered:

San Antonio, November 21, 1963

Because of the code of omertà surrounding the JFK assassination, Harry Power’s story is perhaps the sketchiest of the potential scapegoat cases we will have discussed. But since no stone should be left unturned when investigating a murder, especially a president’s, it is worth identifying and earmarking for more analysis.

Harry Power was yet another ex-marine who checked in to a Terre Haute House Hotel room in Indiana on November 25, 1963 with a long package. When he checked out, he left behind a rifle … a Mannlicher-Carcanno, according to a retired Chief of Police Frank Riddle … a Mauser, according another unidentified source.

A United States Government Memo in 1967 describes the allegation. Riddle claimed San Antonio authorities informed him that Power was a member of the Young Communist League and an expert rifle marksman. An ex-co-worker described him as anti-Kennedy. He had held a job in San Antonio Texas in 1962.

Riddle stated that all information had been turned over to the Warren Commission and that the rifle was taken by Secret Service agents. The Secret Service claimed to have only found out about this incident in 1965. Their key source is none other than the head of the Washington Secret Service, Chief Rowley himself, who you will recall played a key role in keeping the Chicago plot as secret as possible. The FBI did confirm, however, that the Terre Haute Police department had in fact followed up on this lead around when Riddle claimed it happened … which would indicate further Secret Service and Warren Commission complacency.

According to Dick Russell, Richard Nagell told Jim Garrison that Power was a Trotskyite who had met Oswald.

Given that JFK motorcaded in San Antonio on November 21 and that Power could easily be linked to that city, it is not a major leap to see similarities between Power, Oswald and the other scapegoat candidates that seem to have been lined up before the assassination. [slightly edited]

The Indiana Rifle story had received little interest until journalist Sheldon Inkol researched it in 1993 (The Third Decade, Volume 9, Issue 5: “The Indiana Rifle,” by Sheldon Inkol) and updated his findings in 1995 for The Fourth Decade. From his research and FBI file 62-109060 JFK HQ, we can now add the following points:
1. The rifle found in Indiana was most likely a Mauser and not a Mannlicher-Carcanno.
2. Because of an NSF check written by Power, we know that at one time he was in New Orleans.
3. An ex-co-worker of Power’s who was the witness Riddle referred to was Roger Dresch, who also stated that Power was a hunter who sighted a rifle with a scope at a shooting range, that he had been a paratrooper who complained about his father being an alcoholic, and who occasionally talked about becoming a hermit in the wilderness.
According to Inkol, it is Dick Russell who first revealed the name of Harry Power in The Man Who Knew Too Much in 1992. There had been only small articles about the incident before this. Inkol credits veteran researcher Larry Haapanen, who interviewed Riddle, for having confirmed the name of Power after following up on an article in 1970.

Dick Russell provided the following to the Harry Power profile:

A National Archives document about the affair was declassified in 1970 … a file reports that Power had been investigated in connection with the shooting attempt on General Walker in Dallas, a shooting that the WC falsely claimed to have been by Oswald and his Mannlicher-Carcano. Other files associated with the Power rifle claim that it was a 7.65 Mauser. CIA agent Richard Nagell told Garrison investigators in 1967 that Power was a Maoist or Trotskyite and “had known Lee Harvey Oswald and had been seen with him …”

Inkol adds the following points, based on police investigations:
1. There were no fingerprints on the Mauser.
2. Indiana Police indicated that the hotel where the rifle was found was right across from the Democratic and Republican headquarters.
3. According to Riddle, the FBI tried to link Power’s presence to a political rally going on the night before in proximity to the Terre Haute hotel.
4. The editor of the Indianapolis News and the NRA, who had found out about the incident, were asked to keep it silent by authorities.
5. Power seemed to have a troubled marriage.
6. He had financial difficulties.
7. He was described as a “Smart Aleck”, “Trouble Maker” and person with a warped outlook on life.
8. He had failed at one point to get a driver’s license.
9. He may have been from Chicago.
According to Inkol, Frank Riddle insisted that Power was a suspect in the attempt on General Walker’s life the previous April—something the Warren Commission tagged on Oswald. In 1964, Secret Service Chief James Rowley confirmed to Riddle that the FBI and the Secret Service had files on Power.

Inkol tempers Riddle as a source as he points out that some have qualified him as a “blow-hard”.

Inkol is not convinced that Power was even in the hotel. He argues that the description given (age, height and weight) of the person with the rifle in the hotel is very different from the San Antonio description of Power.

He believes that one possibility that merits further investigation is that he was being set up as an alternate patsy or part of a subversive pro-communist group intent on attacking the U.S. Government—who could have been pinned as the shooter from the knoll if a front shot had to be admitted to.

He also points out that had the assassination taken place in San Antonio where Kennedy motorcaded a day earlier, the patsy might have been Power instead of Oswald.

Inkol ends the first article with a fleeting comment about the Indiana rifle being perhaps linked to a seventh potential patsy according to David Lifton who twice interviewed the next subject we will discuss, but revealed very little to Inkol about him. I decided to contact Lifton to follow up on this tantalizing clue about yet another alternate scapegoat (not to be confused with the famous astronaut), who even without a link to the rifle is, in terms of his profile, an Oswald dead ringer!

John Glenn

Unlike most of the other potential fall guys that figure in this analysis, the case of John Glenn and his wife Marcia is quite well documented. This, however, has nothing to do with the FBI, CIA, or Warren Commission’s efforts to scrutinize this Oswald semi-replica.

According to the WC, Oswald opening an FPCC chapter in New Orleans was a demonstration of his ego trip … period! Fortunately for researchers, the FPCC was under intensive scrutiny by the Internal Security Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

Through their reports and the writings in 1993 of Jerry Rose (The Third Decade, “Red Summer of ‘63”), we can paint a better picture of Glenn and the role the FPCC came to play in making our cast of puppets easy to frame for the crime of the century.

The FPCC was characterised as “Castro’s Network in the USA” by the HUAC. Membership within this anti-U.S. organization was described during hearings as an effective door-opener to enter Cuba via the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City and Cubana Airlines.

Though the HUAC had been seriously rattled by the McCarthy era witch-hunts, Castro was breathing some new life into this outfit for political showcasing of American patriotism.

One area that got their attention was the travel to Cuba by American students despite a travel ban. On June 25, 1963, 58 students left New York and transited through Russia satellite Czechoslovakia on the way to Cuba where they were apparently well received by the Castro regime. This group had been infiltrated by an informant named Barry Hoffman who had gotten approval from agencies that were tied to the FBI, CIA, and State Department. During hearings in September of 1963, he painted the students as pro-Cuba and anti-U.S.A. and talked about rumors that Cuba had not dismantled the nuclear installations on the island.

Evidently, he was a poor spy who was not trusted by the other students. He was “number 3 on their fink list”. Numbers 1 and 2 were John Glenn and his wife Marcia.

On November 18, 1963—four days before JFK’s assassination, the Glenns’ testimony before the HUAC had the effect of smearing the FPCC. Transcripts of the hearings point out striking similarities with Oswald:

John Glenn joined the U.S. Air force in 1950.

While in the service, Glenn received training in the Russian language at Syracuse University and became a Russian linguist for Air Force Intelligence, with security clearance for secret, top secret, and cryptographic information. Meanwhile, he continued his regular college studies through night school and correspondence courses. Glenn, while still receiving regular military service pay, including food and housing allowances, returned to full-time studies at the Indiana University where he obtained a degree in business administration in January 1954.

He then resumed active duty with Air Force Intelligence for 2 more years, including 16 months overseas, before being discharged in January 1956, after reaching the rank of staff sergeant.

During the summer of 1958, he visited the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Poland for about 40 days as a guide for the Tom Maupintour Associates, an American travel agency. The next summer he toured the same countries, plus Yugoslavia and Rumania, in a similar capacity for another travel organization.

The witness confirmed information obtained through an investigation by the Committee on Un-American Activities that he had traveled to Mexico in the spring of 1962 in an attempt to get a Cuban visa. He was unsuccessful.

It was at about this time, the fall of 1962, Glenn told the subcommittee, that he joined the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. He had been a sympathizer of the group much earlier, he said. He admitted having written a letter printed in an Indiana University publication, dated February 10, 1962, in which he said that “the people in Fair Play are willing to argue to anyone who will listen that our government and our press are lying through their teeth [about Cuba].”

The witness admitted that, without having applied for U.S. validation, he traveled to Cuba with the group of alleged students who departed from New York on a BOAC plane on June 25, 1963. Glenn acknowledged the accuracy of the subcommittee’s information that on the return trip, after arriving in Spain with the main body of U.S. “students” on August 26, 1963, he left the group and traveled to Morocco. He said that after he and his wife had learned they could stay abroad for a while, they had decided to travel to Algeria to observe the political developments there, which were supposed to be similar to what they had witnessed in Cuba.

When the Glenns arrived in Morocco from Spain, the witness testified, they received an entry permit to Algeria from the Algerian Government. While hitchhiking their way to Algeria, however, they were arrested by the Moroccan police and ordered deported to Spain as undesirables. He said he learned from both the American consul in Rabat, Morocco, and the Moroccan police that the deportation was ordered by the United States Government.

On October 15, 1963, according to investigation by the Committee on Un-American Activities, Glenn reported to the American Embassy in Madrid, Spain, that he and his wife did not have a ticket for return transportation to the United States. The embassy purchased a ticket for them, and they were flown to the United States on an Iberian Air Lines plane.

Their landlord testified that the Glenns possessed communist literature, including The Militant, which Oswald also subscribed to, that connected them to the Socialist Worker Party and its affiliate YSA.

In his article, Jerry Rose speculates that “given the possibility that Glenn was connected somehow with a rifle in Indiana which was believed to be related to the assassination, it is possible as well that Glenn, like Oswald, was being groomed as pro-communist patsy if Oswald for any reason did not work out in the role.” Rose advances that Glenn’s forced return and appearance before the HUAC suggest (but do not prove) control from high places … an interpretation he felt at the time that was worth pursuing.

David Lifton

When I first reached out to David Lifton through some of my contacts who know him, I was a bit apprehensive. But after some email exchanges, David Lifton generously shared some of his observations.

Here are the preliminary questions I sent David:
1. Can you summarize when the interviews took place, where, how long they lasted, who was present?
2. What led you to want to interview Glenn in the first place and how did you set them up?
3. What were the topics covered and what were the main things he had to say and that you observed?
4. Glenn’s learning of the Russian language, links to the FPCC, the way he entered Morocco and came back. Some point out the similarities to Oswald and the fingerprints of intelligence—what did your interviews (and other research) bring out in this area?
5. Inkol mentions that you said that Glenn had a link to the Indiana Rifle (which is the one that links to William Power I believe). Can you discuss this?
6. Do you think Glenn was being set up as a potential patsy?—please explain.
7. You mentioned you knew about William Power. How? and if you do read my article, you will see that what I have on him is quite thin (I have found a few more bits of information that I will add). If there is anything you can add I would be most grateful.
Without going into details, David’s preamble to answering my questions deals with how the passage of time and moving his office unfortunately cloud his recollection of his meetings with Glenn. What follows here are his responses:

So… that having been said, and based on current recollection.

RESPONSE TO Q1-3: Glenn’s name came up in connection with my embarking on a comprehensive search of all print (i.e., newspaper) coverage of the JFK assassination, using a set of microfilms I purchased from University Microfilms in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

I believe that it was the San Antonio papers—either the San Antonio Light, or the News—Express (there were only two San Antonio papers) —that carried stories about what happened on 11/21/63. About a “mystery car” parked at a curb, and some remarks made by one of the occupants of that car, to the effect that “He’ll never get through this city.” Something like that. That led to the San Antonio Police dispatcher putting out a call for that vehicle to “call in to your headquarters” or some such thing. Then, 24-36 hours later, after JFK was assassinated in Dallas, this incident (call it the “San Antonio incident”) then resulted in significant “follow-up” coverage, and that led to the name John Glenn and the story of the San Antonio rifle, linked to the Indiana (Bloomington, IN, I think) rifle.

Anyway, I clipped those stories, then obtained the House (or Senate? not sure) hearings that took place on or about Nov 18, 1963, at which Glenn testified, as I recall.

With that as background, I then sought contact with Glenn, who—I somehow learned—lived in Venice, California.

My first meeting with Glenn was at the UCLA Student Union. What I remember is that it was dark outside, and the SU cafeteria was crowded, and that was how I met him.

I questioned him closely and established—to my satisfaction (again, “as I presently recall”) —that he did not fit the profile of an “alternate” patsy because there was no evidence whatsoever that there was any third party in his life influencing where he was living, or what he was doing, or asking him to do anything.

Of course, I was disappointed in the result, but that’s what I found.

Subsequently, when Robert Sam Anson (who I came to know) was writing about the JFK assassination (for Esquire, I think), he wanted to follow-up on this. Again, as I recall. And, again, as I recall, the two of us actually went to John Glenn’s Venice apartment and spoke with him.

I do not remember the details at all. What I do remember is being in John Glenn’s apartment, and having the sense that he was “just like Oswald,” something like that. I believe I had that sense because he had either a poster of, or paraphernalia connected with, The Militant. Again, I don’t remember. What I do remember is the UCLA Student Union “first meeting” and my sense of disappointment that my

hypothesis wasn’t panning out.

RESPONSE to Q4: See answer to Question 1. FYI: I kept a very imperfect “journal” of my daily work; and I would often write letters home, but I don’t believe they would have contained any relevant information.

Anyway, that material is stored “elsewhere.”

RESPONSE to Q5: I believe that the “primary source” for these “links” comes from the San Antonio newspaper coverage—again, I was using microfilmed records of the S A Light and/or News Express for the period 11/20 —11/25/1963.

RESPONSE to Q6: That was my hypothesis, but what I remember is being (very) disappointed that my questioning of him failed to unearth any supporting data. (Could he have been deceiving me? I suppose he “could have,” but I’m pretty confident that I was not being fooled, and that he was who he “appeared to be.”)

RESPONSE to Q7:
1. Please send me the link to your article (or anything else you wish me to read) again. I’m not sufficiently “organized” to lay my hands on it at this moment.
2. As I recall, it all stemmed from my work with the microfilmed records of the two San Antonio newspapers.
Also, and this may be of interest to you—or maybe not—I think that some of this “San Antonio” stuff may have been covered in the Dallas Morning News in the day or two after JFK was assassinated.

David followed up shortly after with this following point:

P.S. What I forgot to mention in my memo …

That the San Antonio newspaper (one of them) reported after the assassination of JFK on Friday 11/22/63, that the “mystery car” was a Secret Service vehicle.

And that’s what made the whole incident so very important.

Harry Dean

Harry Dean is one of those characters I put into the category of unreliable witnesses who may have important knowledge, but that have made many statements that are easily contestable and that have had researchers chasing their tails. Unfortunately, in the JFK assassination soap opera—we are faced with a whole slew of personalities who mislead yet can sometimes be decoded to a certain degree. Frank Sturgis and Gerry Patrick Hemming come to mind, as they along with others tried to send HSCA investigator Gaeton Fonzi and other researchers on wild goose chases. They nevertheless give us a better picture of the decadent setting Oswald immersed himself in.

When dealing with such characters, without fully dismissing them, it is prudent not to waste much time on them and only go with what can be corroborated.

Before reading some of Dean’s forum posts, I looked at what other researchers had to say about him.

For over 50 years, Dean made claims in letters and forums that he had been recruited, selected, and led by American Intelligence forces to take on special missions such as spying on Castro while in Cuba, the John Birch Society, and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Only in 2017 would he finally admit that he was not an official FBI informant.

In a 2005 post on The Education Forum, he came up with the following claim:

But among the widespread ‘rightist’ movement were assassin-minded persons that would take action to aid in seizing control of the U.S. government if only given the word.

Even being tight-knit with the individuals involved, except for bits and pieces of confusing information I failed to timely detect a clearer picture of the real and more subtle plot to kill the president … the plan move relentlessly … but a ‘need-to-know’ method of secrecy was being applied among my radical associates.

When the name of a Fair Play For Cuba Committee communist was broadcast throughout the rightist circuit after the airing of an August, 1963 radio program from Station WDSU, New Orleans, Louisiana, Lee Oswald was ‘selected’ by another of our {JBS} associates, retired U.S. Army General E.A. Walker of Dallas, Texas.

The subject was chosen by ‘Guy” Gabaldon as ‘the fall guy’ in the secretive plot against Kennedy. None of us objected, and found it humorous to frame a communist. I quietly considered it as goofy as the weird, but hazy, arrangements to kill the president.

When Kennedy visited Mexico City in late June of 1962, Gabaldon, in league with some rightist Mexican Federal Police Officials, was set to shoot president Kennedy. Only a last minute escape problem aborted that assassination scheme … Two other of our associates … Lawrence John Howard—aka Alonzo Escruido, and Loran Eugene ‘Skip’ Hall—aka Lorenzo Pacillo, were dispatched by Gabaldon to enlist Oswald in {a phony CIA, Central Intelligence Agency set-up} at Gabaldon’s Mexico City area office.

General Walker did not orchestrate the assassination, nor the framing of Oswald! Nor did the Mafia, the Cuban exiles, Birchers, etc. Walker could not have organized the weakening of security, the botched autopsy, the Mexico City Oswald imposter episode, the Warren Commission failures, the propaganda offensives. The framing of Oswald began before he left Dallas for New Orleans.

This goes a long way in explaining why some have suggested that I not include Dean in a comparative analysis of potential patsies.

However, when researching the documentary trail about Harry Dean on the Mary Ferrell site, as well as on forums and websites (see: https://sites.google.com/site/xrt013/harrydean) that provide an in-depth analysis of Dean’s statements and pertinent documents—we can nevertheless find information about the FPCC, Dean himself and other characters that seem to be part of a model:

A 1962 Los Angeles FBI File reveals the following about Dean:

LAX advised Chicago FBI office about phone conversation which Harry had with SA William J. McCauley. During that phone conversation, Harry “confided that he had been an informant for the Chicago Office, having been a Secretary of the Chicago chapter of the FPCC, but that largely because his wife had become very upset over his activities on behalf of the FBI, he had discontinued his informant activities and had come to the LAX area about one year ago, and is now employed as a plasterer operating out of the Union Office on Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles. He added that he has, since his arrival in Los Angeles, had casual contact with Edgar and Marjorie Swabeck, whom he had previously known in the Chicago area, and from them has learned that Marjorie Swabeck is secretary of the LAX chapter of the FPCC at the present time. He said that he otherwise has taken no particular interest in the FPCC, and that while he himself is personally not averse to resuming informant activities in behalf of the FBI, he hesitates to do so because of his wife’s feeling in the matter. The Chicago Office is requested to verify and furnish a brief summary of the subject’s background, particularly his activities as an informant and his reliability while known to the Chicago office.”

Another L.A. 1962 FBI file goes on further:

SAC Chicago to SAC LAX

Dean first called the Chicago Office in August, 1960, to report that he had been elected Recording Secretary, Chicago Chapter, FPCC. He did not divulge his name and address at this time. Later in the same month he called this office, stating his name and advising he was residing at 1540 Central Avenue, Whiting, Indiana, and that he owned his own business, the Whiting Plastering Company. He told of his connections with the FPCC, furnished information concerning the leadership of this organization, and said he would be amenable to an interview with an agent of the FBI.

The Indianapolis Office conducted an inquiry in Whiting, Indiana, in September 1960. Detective Captain Edward Grabovac, Whiting, Indiana Police Department, advised that Dean, whose real name he believed to be Gordon Hunt and who had used the name George R. Baker, had skipped town and the Whiting PD had a warrant for his arrest on bad check charges. Grabovac said Dean was a self-employed plasterer.

The Whiting, Indiana PD procured an identification record from the Detroit, Michigan PD under FBI #4657880. This record revealed that Dean had been committed as a mental patient in Canada in 1948 and was sentenced at Chatham, Ontario, for breaking and entering to ‘one year indefinite’. At this time, Dean had one arrest by the Detroit PD for disturbing a religious meeting and two arrests for using indecent and obscene language.

He was also AWOL from Fort Knox, Kentucky in 1949. In December 1960, Dean again called this Office to report that he had been residing in Detroit for the past two months. At that time he said he was living in Chicago but he refused to divulge his local address. He continued to telephonically contact this office on several occasions until June 1961.

He furnished information concerning Cuban nationals connected with the 26th of July Movement and on local persons connected with the FPCC. He was last contacted by two agents of the Chicago Office on June 7, 1961, at which time he was told that this office did not desire his assistance. Former CG___-S advised in August 1960, that Dean was a white male, age about 25 (in 1960), stocky build and black hair. While Dean voluntarily furnished info to the Chicago Office over a period of nearly a year, he was never considered a PSI or informant by this Office.

Even though Dean does not seem like a highly prized asset for the FBI, the paper trail on Dean also confirms the following: Dean had been committed as a mental patient in Canada in 1948 and was sentenced at Chatham, Ontario.

An OSI file (NARA Record Number: 104-10404-10041) confirms that Harry Dean was in the U.S. Army in 1945 and then again in 1948 using the name George Robert Baker and that the Office of Naval Intelligence has three files on him. It also states that he had been arrested by the RCMP and the Detroit Police under the Registration Act.

In 1958 he became a member of the 26th of July Movement, a group led by Fidel Castro.

In late 1959 and early 1960 he received three letters from Juan A. Orta, the Director of the Prime Minister’s Office of Cuba.

He visited Cuba in June 1960.

In August, 1960, he had been elected Recording Secretary, Chicago Chapter, FPCC.

He soon after became a voluntary informant to the FBI (who nevertheless considered him a Fruitcake).

In 1961, he moved to Los Angeles, where he had casual contact with Edgar and Marjorie Swabeck, whom he had previously known in the Chicago area, and from them learned that Marjorie Swabeck is secretary of the LAX chapter of the FPCC at the present time. (Which perhaps brought him into the realm of Vaughn Marlowe and Richard Case Nagell).

In 1962 he joined the John Birch Society.

He also claims to have known Larry Howard and Loran Hall whose names come up with respect to the assassination, and he warned the Los Angeles FBI about a plot to murder JFK that emanated from General Walker which was discussed during a John Birch Society meeting where Oswald was identified as the patsy.

In one of his posts Dean states that the Swabecks may have been setting him up. The NARA documents do confirm a relationship that would have begun in 1960 when Harry met Edgar Swabeck during his travels to Cuba. According to Dean they played a role in getting him to set up the Chicago FPCC branch.

By 1961, the Swabecks were now part of an L.A. FPCC chapter when Dean reconnected with them. They tried once again to involve him in the FPCC. It would not be a great leap to conclude that the Swabecks probably knew Vaughn Marlowe.

Edgar Swabeck’s father seems to have been Arne Swabeck, one of the founding members of the Communist Party in the U.S. In the late 1920s, he was expelled from the party as a Trotskyist and worked together with James P. Cannon and other American Trotskyists to create the Socialist Workers Party. Swabeck visited Leon Trotsky in his exile in Turkey in 1933. He made a cameo appearance in the movie Reds. He was also reference person for The Militant, published by the SWP.

It is also worth asking: If the murder had taken place in L.A., would a link to the cast of FPCC characters have also caused the downfall of the SWP which was very close to the FPCC management in L.A.?

Potential patsy analysis: a new perspective

When I completed the first article, I felt we could deduce that the subjects discussed where being actively groomed to become patsies; in other words, that operatives maneuvered easily discarded freelance assets or other malleable figures into assuming weaponized, pro-Castro and/or communist, anti-Kennedy misfit personas, and placed them in the proximity of the kill zone with abundant incriminating evidence. The string-pullers were also fully prepared to pounce with propaganda initiatives to put the blame of the assassination on Castro! While this seems to fit well—admittedly to varying degrees—in the cases of the first seven subjects profiled, the analysis of our two latest characters suggests something similar but with certain caveats.

In the cases of Dean (pending more research) and Glenn, we can state that the credentials are also very suspicious, but that certain elements fit less well the claim that they were being groomed to take the fall: Their FPCC links predate when the winning stratagem was being mapped out, which arguably had its origins no earlier than when the ZR/Rifle (executive action) architect and disgraced CIA officer William Harvey met with mobster John Roselli in late Winter 1963. It was after these meetings that definite attempts on JFK’s life began multiplying and that the subsequent incriminating behavior and travels of Oswald, Nagell, Lopez, Vallee, Power and Garriga were too well timed to be considered mere coincidences.

So how we interpret the profiles of Dean, Glenn, Nagell, and Marlowe with respect to their FPCC links needs to be more nuanced. While we cannot state at this point that they were maneuvered into joining the FPCC in order to be groomed as patsies, their connections to this organization, which was being heavily infiltrated by intelligence, when combined with their other traits, are nevertheless very telling and more in line with the role of informants who had patsy credentials. Some of the other subjects required fine-tuning of their personas and logistical maneuvering in the months leading up to the hit. The analysis of all the candidates on the short list bolsters the case that a cash-strapped Oswald did not leave his young daughter and pregnant wife in the lurch so he could pursue his ideological dream of opening an FPCC chapter in one of the most hostile places imaginable towards this dwindling organization.

Senator Richard Schweiker of the Church Committee famously stated that the fingerprints of intelligence were all over Oswald. As we can see in the updated chart, Oswald has company!
- Eight of the nine subjects profiled are connected to cities visited by Kennedy during the six months that preceded his assassination.
- Each of these cities were territories exploited criminally by Mafiosi of interest in the assassination.
- At least three moved to the cities and got employment in strategically located buildings along the motorcade route shortly before the planned presidential visit.
- Seven were ex-military.
- Eight of them exhibited behavior that can very plausibly be linked to intelligence gathering or Cuban exile interaction.
- Seven were directly linked to the FPCC. Seven of them had visited Mexico City.
- Six attempted to visit Cuba, three of them successfully.
- Seven had links to Cuban/Latino exiles.
- Six were described as having psychological problems.
- Seven exhibited anti-Kennedy behavior.
- None were probed seriously by the Warren Commission.
- Intelligence services, notably the Secret Service, kept crucial information about these subjects as well as the prior plots totally secret from the Warren Commission.
Potential alternative patsy comparison chart

More on the FPCC

In the original article, much was written to underscore just how unlikely it would be for the subjects analyzed to be involved in 1963 with a dying FPCC. The timing was not right, their profiles contrast with the students and intellectuals who were most ideologically attracted to this outfit before the missile crisis, and the opening of chapters in hostile locations like New Orleans and Miami in 1963 can simply be described as mindless … unless, of course, other stratagems were at play: perhaps its infiltration by informants, which was rampant by then, and patsy grooming ploys.

It stands to reason that the persons in a position to lead the infiltrators and monitor their movements deserve our utmost attention and that the FPCC should be turned upside down by the research community, because when Oswald joined the failing FPCC, he was most likely on a mission.

In this respect, John Newman’s research into the FPCC infiltration and David Atlee Phillips’ role is worth noting. From his 2013 countercoup article here are some key points:
- In early 1961, eleven weeks before the Bay of Pigs invasion, the CIA seized an opportunity to become more actively involved in running operations against the FPCC. CIA Security Office and Western Hemisphere elements identified an Agency employee who knew Court Wood, an American student just returned from Cuba under the sponsorship of the FPCC. This opportunity to surveil Court Wood, which developed at the end of January, was irresistible in the judgment of the person in the CIA’s Security Research Service (SRS) of the Security Office who conceived and authorized the operation. That person was James McCord, the same James McCord who would later become embroiled in the (Watergate) scandal during the Nixon Presidency.
- It is fitting that one of the Agency’s legendary disinformation artists, David Atlee Phillips, should have been in charge of the CIA’s CI and propaganda effort against the FPCC. Phillips would reappear in Mexico City at the time Oswald visited there, taking over the anti-Castro operations of the CIA station in Mexico City during the very days that CIA headquarters and the CIA Mexico City station exchanged cables on Oswald’s visit to the Mexican capital.
- “At the request of Mr. David Phillips” wrote the fortunate CIA employee picked to spy on his neighbor, “I spent the evening of January 6 with Court Wood, a student who has recently returned from a three-week stay in Cuba under the sponsorship of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.” The employee said that Court and his father both were pro-Castro and “extremely critical” of American foreign policy. “I’ve been advised by Mr. Phillips to continue my relationship with Mr. Wood and I will keep your office informed of each subsequent visit.”
- What the operation tells us is that, by 1960, CIA was sufficiently interested in countering the FPCC to engage in an illegal domestic operation. The fact that controversy would follow the two men in charge, McCord in connection with Watergate and Phillips in connection with the Kennedy assassination, cause this page in CIA’s anti-Castro operations to stand out in hindsight.
- We have in the past utilized techniques with respect to countering activities of mentioned [FPCC] organization in the U.S. During December 1961, New York prepared an anonymous leaflet which was mailed to select FPCC members throughout the country for the purpose of disrupting FPCC and causing a split between FPCC and Socialist Workers Party (SWP) supporters, which technically was very effective.
- These tactics dramatize the lengths to which the FBI was willing to go to discredit the FPCC, whose chapters in Chicago, Newark, and Miami were infiltrated early on by the Bureau. As we will see in Chapter Sixteen, during Oswald’s tenure with the FPCC, FBI break-ins to their offices were a regular occurrence.
- According to FBI records, on April 21, 1963, Dallas confidential informant “T-2” reported this letter to the FPCC, in which Oswald said he had passed out FPCC pamphlets in Dallas with a placard around his neck reading HANDS OFF CUBA, VIVA FIDEL.
- Whether Oswald had stood on a street corner or not, important undercover FBI assets in New York were in motion against the FPCC during the time or shortly after Oswald wrote the letter. As we already know, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee was the subject for intense FBI and CIA interest and counterintelligence operations. A major FBI Chicago office investigation of the FPCC appeared on March 8, four days before Oswald ordered the rifle from Chicago. This study was transmitted to the CIA.
- By picking such an organization to correspond with and carrying out actions on its behalf, Oswald—by default or by design—had insinuated himself into the gray world of the watchers and the watched.
The SWP

Because of the Socialist Workers Party’s strong links to the FPCC and with at least four of the subjects we have profiled, and because it published The Militant, the newspaper being clutched by Oswald in his infamous backyard photo, it is worth researching this political outfit which was considered subversive by intelligence agencies.

In 2005, its national leader between the early 1960s to the mid 1980s, Barry Sheppard, wrote a political memoir about this organization.

The SWP had its roots in the 1930s and was officially founded in 1938. It quickly became an active supporter of leftist causes and the maligned Labor Movement—a target of Hoover’s FBI. Its existence was marked with volatility and controversy. It was a target of the McCarthy era witch-hunts in the fifties—these flared up again under the actions of the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1960s, when a certain Lee Harvey Oswald and at least three of the alternate patsies decided to join. The SWP also supported The Nation of Islam and later Malcolm X, The Freedom Riders, Algerian Independence, Peace movements—many of the issues Kennedy haters were boiling mad about!

It was an enthusiastic supporter of the Castro revolution:

Reflecting our own growing confidence in the revolutionary leadership, The Militant began to carry speeches by Castro and other Cuban leaders, which were among the best popular explanations of what the revolution was doing. In one of the first speeches we published, Fidel explained that the US-inspired counter-revolutionary fronts would fail because, unlike the guerrillas of the July 26 Movement, they could never build a base in the peasantry with their program of returning the land to the exploiters. Over the next years, others on the US left also came to support the Cuban revolution, but The Militant was always the best and most consistent US source providing truthful news about Cuba and publishing the ideas of the Cuban revolutionaries in their own words.

The SWP was very involved with the FPCC:

We came to be part of the leadership of the FPCC partly as the result of a crisis in the organization. The original FPCC leadership was somewhat timid, and shied away from forthright defense of the revolution as it radicalized. In response, Cuban members of the July 26 Movement living in the US blocked with the SWP and some other militants, and took over the leadership of the Committee. It was while he was staying at the Theresa that Castro met Malcolm X. A few years later, I would interview Malcolm for the Young Socialist in his office at the Theresa. The revolutionary Black nationalist was attracted to the Cuban Revolution from the start and supported it until he was murdered in 1965.

When Castro was refused lodging during his New York U.N. visit in 1960, he received support from the SWP:

Castro declared that the delegation would camp out in Central Park. Berta Green, a member of the SWP who was also the Executive Secretary of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC), got in touch with the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, which agreed the Cubans could stay there.

Sheppard’s memoir shows that the SWP was much larger than the FPCC when he describes protest mobilization during the missile crisis in 1962:

We stood up to it. The PC discussed and approved the thrust of a statement to appear in the next issue of The Militant. It ran under the headline, “Stop the Crime Against Cuba!” We alerted SWP branches and YSA chapters that night to mobilize to support the broadest possible actions against the threat. In New York, there were two major demonstrations. One was called by Women Strike for Peace and other peace groups. We joined some 20,000 protesters at the United Nations on this demonstration. Then the Fair Play for Cuba Committee held its own action, more specifically pro-Cuba in tone, of over 1,000 people, also near the UN.

The following points concerning the July 1963 convention cast even more suspicion around the timing and motives of openings of FPCC chapters in the deep south by Santiago Garriga and Oswald and the continued involvement with the FPCC by the other subjects:

At the convention, a meeting of pro-Cuba activists discussed the situation in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Cubans living in the United States who supported the July 26 Movement had helped us build the FPCC. Now most of them had returned to Cuba. In most areas, the FPCC had dwindled down to supporters of the SWP and YSA. Since we did not want the FPCC to become a sectarian front group, the meeting decided to stop trying to build it. The FPCC then existed for a while as a paper organization, until the assassination of President John Kennedy dealt it a mortal blow.

Sheppard’s account of the SWP reaction when the Kennedy assassination was announced is noteworthy:

We were listening to the news when the announcement came. I said, “I hope it’s not that nut who tried to join the party, that guy who is a one-man Fair Play for Cuba Committee chapter in New Orleans.” Imagine how I felt when it turned out he was the one charged with the act. The SWP and YSA had received letters from a Lee Harvey Oswald, asking to join. His letters, as I remember them, were politically confused, and the photo that was sent with them was strange. In it, the person who was supposedly Oswald held copies of The Militant and the Communist Party’s Worker. He also sported two or more rifles and hand guns sticking out of his belt. A similar picture appeared on the cover of Life magazine after the assassination. Oswald, it turned out, had posed for similar photographs holding the Communist Party’s paper and the Workers’ World Party’s Workers’ World. One look at the picture and everyone in the leadership of the party and YSA thought we were dealing with a nut or a provocateur. Oswald purchased subscriptions to The Militant and Young Socialist. But no one in our leadership thought we should accept him as a member. In any case, our policy was not to accept at-large members in places where there was no party branch or YSA chapter, for the reason that there was no real way of evaluating the applicant. The press featured Oswald’s connection with the FPCC and speculated that Castro or some unspecified “reds” were behind the assassination. We were a potential target because we were well known as supporters of the Cuban revolution …

… The New York Daily News, attempting to fire up the atmosphere against the left, stated in an editorial: “The fact remains that Oswald was a Marxist and proud of it. The fact remains that the Communist Party continually preaches death to imperialism, capitalism, etc. It is only natural for lamebrains such as Oswald to conclude that this means killing your enemies wherever and whenever you can reach them defenseless. Ideas have consequences.” This was all a pack of lies. As The Militant pointed out a few days later, the editorial was also an attempt to cover up the fanatical hatred that the right wing had for Kennedy, particularly because of the concessions the government was being forced to make to the fight for Black rights. In Dallas during the days before the Kennedy visit, for example, the rightists had posted leaflets displaying a photo of Kennedy and the words: “Wanted for Treason.”

Dan Hardway’s 2016 declaration

HSCA investigative attorneys Dan Hardway and Ed Lopez co-authored a section for the HSCA’s Final Report on the CIA and LHO in Mexico City which remained classified in full until 1996. The draft, after further declassification in 2003, was published by the Mary Ferrell Foundation Press as Oswald, The CIA, And Mexico City: The Lopez-Hardway Report, and shed light on missing/ destroyed tapes and photos, Oswald impersonations, lying CIA officials and peculiar behavior by Oswald or a frame-up artist—all completely fluffed over by the Warren Commission.

In 2016, Dan Hardway prepared a written declaration in a support of a Jefferson Morley Freedom of Information civil action which should really trouble historians who describe JFK conspiracy proponents as flakey opportunists. In his own words, here is who media and historians have chosen to snub:

From July of 1977 until December of 1978, I was employed as a researcher on the staff of the United States House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). In that capacity I had a top secret security clearance and, during a major portion of my employment, had access to un-redacted Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) records. My primary area of responsibility in research for the HSCA was the possibility of any relationship of any nature between the CIA and Lee Harvey Oswald (LHO), with special focus on the CIA’s awareness of, and reporting on, LHO’s activities in Mexico City. Implicit in that focus was the issue of whether the evidence from Mexico indicated any operational connection between LHO and the CIA.

My research for the HSCA also covered areas related to people of interest, including David Atlee Phillips and William Harvey, among others, and CIA assassination programs. I was also tasked with research and analysis of the response of the CIA’s Mexico City Station LHO’s trip to Mexico City and to the assassination.

The following are some of the most damning statements made in this very important affidavit:
- Beginning in May of 1978, the CIA assigned George Joannides to handle liaison with Edwin Lopez and me. In the summer of 1978, Mr. Joannides began to change the way file access was handled. We no longer received prompt responses to our requests for files and what we did receive no longer seemed to provide the same complete files that we had been seeing. The obstruction of our efforts by Mr. Joannides escalated over the summer, finally resulting in a refusal to provide unexpurgated access to files in violation of the Memorandum of Understanding previously agreed to by the HSCA and the CIA.
- I did not do any research aimed at George Joannides, or his activities in 1963, because, while working for the HSCA in 1977-1978, I was not informed that he had had any involvement with any aspect of the Kennedy case and I had no basis to even suspect that he had. In researching possible connections between post-assassination stories about LHO and David Atlee Phillips, I did little, if any, research that I recall into the Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil (DRE) because, among other reasons, the CIA had firmly represented to the HSCA that all ties between the DRE and the CIA had been terminated prior to 1963.
- … to review CIA 201 files on many of the individuals who had been sources for stories that appeared in the immediate aftermath of the assassination tying LHO to Castro or the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. I was able to establish that most of the sources of the stories were, or had been, agents or assets used at one time or another by David Atlee Phillips.
- Before our unexpurgated access was cut off by Joannides, I had been able to document links between David Phillips and most of the sources of the disinformation that came out immediately after the assassination about Oswald and his pro-Castro proclivities. I confronted Phillips with those in an interview at our offices on August 24,1978. Phillips was extremely agitated by that line of questioning, but was forced to admit that many of the sources were not only former assets that he had managed, in the late 50’s and early 1960’s, but were also assets whom he was personally managing in the fall of 1963. Mr. Phillips was asked, but could not explain, why the information that came from anti-Castro Cuban groups and individuals pointing to Cuban connections all seemed to come from assets he handled personally, but acknowledged that was the case. Mr. Phillips also acknowledged that back-channel communication methods existed, but denied that any were used in Mexico City.
- We have, since 1978, learned that George Joaimides was running the propaganda shop at the CIA’s Miami JMWAVE Station in 1963. It is extremely unlikely that Mr. Joannides could have occupied that position and not have known, and worked with, David Atlee Phillips. In addition, in 1963, as we now know, George Joannides was the case officer handling the DRE. In 1977 the CIA specifically denied that DRE had a case officer assigned when asked that question by the HSCA.
- One possible inference from the known data, at this point, is that the CIA brought someone out of retirement who knew where to not let us look and he impeded and, eventually, shut down our research. His specific work in regard to my research was commended by his superior in his annual performance review from 1978.
- In addition to being a primary source of stories about LHO in the days after the assassination, the DRE also had a highly visible encounter with LHO in New Orleans in September 1963. George Joannides’ s performance evaluation dated July 31,1963, reports that Joannides has “done an excellent job in the handling of a significant student exile group which hitherto had successfully resisted any important degree of control.”
- David Phillips recruited a group of students in Havana to work against Castro while Phillips was serving under deep cover in Havana in the late 1950s. At the time, the group was known as the Directorio Revolucionario, or DR. Phillips was the DR’s first case officer. When the DR’s leadership fled Cuba in 1960, William Kent, who was very close to Phillips and worked with him, organized them into an effective organization in Florida, known as the Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil, or DRE.
- In August, 1963, LEO had an encounter with DRE representatives in New Orleans. That encounter resulted not only in widespread publicity in New Orleans at the time, including newspaper articles, television coverage and radio interviews, it also resulted in the first reports trying to tie LEO to Castro after the assassination of John Kennedy. DRE released their information the day of the assassination and it was covered in both the Miami Herald and the Washington Post the next day.
- The CIA never told the Warren Commission about their support of, and work with, the DRE in 1963. The CIA never told the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (the “Church Committee”) about it. The Assassinations Record Review Board (ARRB) asked the Agency about DRE. The CIA initially told the ARRB the same thing they told the HSCA: the Agency had no employee in contact with DRE in 1963. The ARRB, however, in examination of Joannides’s CIA personnel file, discovered its clear indication that Joannides was the DRE case officer in 1963.
- In the early 1960’s, David Phillips was working at Headquarters where he, along with Cord Meyer, developed the first disinformation operations aimed at the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.
- To summarize what we now know: the DRE originated as the DR under the tutelage of David Phillips in Havana in the late 1950’s. William Kent took over running the group, now known as the DRE, once they had fled from Havana to Miami. In his position, he was responsible to Phillips. Crozier came in to assist Kent with his workload. Kent and Crozier were not too successful with the hard-to-control group and Richard Helms gave the DRE an officer responsible directly to him, which officer was Joannides. But Joannides’s performance evaluations indicate that his immediate supervisor, prior to October 1963, was Kent. We do not know what working relationship Joannides had with Phillips either directly, or indirectly through Kent. It is unlikely that Phillips did not continue to be involved in, or at least kept apprised of, operations of a group that he had started and nurtured, both directly and indirectly, which continued to be directly active in his primary area of responsibility: anti-Castro propaganda. Indeed, it would be in keeping with what is known if he used that group in operations against the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, or that he continued to be involved in disinformation operations aimed at the group, having designed the first one.
- After David Atlee Phillips testified a second time before the HSCA in Executive Session on April 25,1978, several staff members, myself included, sought to have the Chief Counsel recommend to the Committee that it refer Mr. Phillips to the Justice Department for prosecution for lying to Congress.
- On September 16, 1963, the CIA informed the FBI that it was considering action to counter the activities of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FFCC) in foreign countries. In New Orleans, on September 17,1963, Oswald applied for, and received, a Mexican travel visa; on September 27, Oswald arrived in Mexico City. On that day, and the following day, Oswald, or someone impersonating him, may have visited the Cuban Consulate. On those same days, the Mexico City CIA Station was testing an impulse camera in their photo surveillance operation aimed at the door of the Cuban Consulate. Sometime in late September Phillips left Mexico City on a temporary duty assignment at CIA Headquarters. It is at this time that Phillips was promoted to chief of anti-Castro operations in Mexico City—the Cuba desk. On October 1, the Mexico City Station sent bulk materials to Headquarters.
Dan Hardway’s state of mind can be inferred by the open-ended questions he poses near the end of his declaration:
- Were the promotions rewards for a successful disinformation operation aimed at the FPCC in New Orleans, an operation that the Agency thought it could export to Mexico? While TDY, did Phillips meet with Kent at HQ? Did he meet with Joannides in Miami? Did they review the results of a disinformation and “dangle” operation they had just run in Mexico City?—their first attempt to export the successful domestic anti-FPCC disinformation operation? Did they review the production from the impulse camera? Was that camera’s production the “bulk material” in the pouch? We don’t know the answers because the questions were never asked; George Joannides shut down the HSCA investigation into this area before this level of detail could be discovered and connected. Given all this, a reasonable researcher has to ask whether the Oswald visit in Mexico City was part of an intelligence operation that had both counterintelligence and propaganda purposes? It also, in this context, becomes appropriate to ask whether there has been an active cover-up and whether George Joannides’ undercover assignment to work with the HSCA was part of that cover-up.
Hardway’s concluding remarks do not give the impression that he believes that Oswald was simply a drifting malcontent or a pro-Castro ideologue, and that Joannides and Phillips could be counted on for knowing what really happened:
- In regard to the issues of 1963 there would be great public benefit to knowing whether LHO had been involved, wittingly or unwittingly, in an intelligence operation. Even without settlement of that ultimate question, additional information about what George Joannides was doing in 1963, in particular with the DRE in New Orleans, would go a long way to providing insight into that ultimate question. Similarly, being able to explore the relationship between David Atlee Phillips and George Joannides would benefit the public by either confirming or disproving vital aspects of the events of 1963.
Conclusion

Dan Hardway’s declaration is recent, blistering, and completely demolishes the history books’ stenographic claims that Oswald the Lone Nut killed JFK. Hardway underscores many disturbing observations that cannot be explained by mere happenstance. His position is nevertheless soft-pedalled compared to what Schweiker and Gaeton Fonzi have stated. It is now possible to go a lot farther in our deductions.

Case comparison analysis of the potential patsies and prior plots to assassinate JFK would bring investigators to study common traits, behavior patterns, entity links, chronological sequences in order to develop a profile of the offenders. The perpetrators in this case were able to:
1. recruit dreamy, malleable ex-marines or Cuban exiles who were drawn to the world of espionage;
2. have access to a network of Mafiosi and Cuban exiles who shared regime change objectives and could work in proximity with the potential patsies while providing layers of separation for the decision-makers;
3. use propaganda to create pro-Castro, anti-Kennedy, misfit, violent, and dangerous personas;
4. lead the subjects into joining left-wing, subversive organizations, visiting Mexico City, and trying to enter Cuba;
5. move some of them near the kill zones and cause them to behave suspiciously in visible, controversial, and timely manners;
6. ensure a weak investigation and keep incriminating evidence secret;
7. place the blame on communists or Castro himself with the help from friends in the media.
Only a select few had the means to carry all this out.

They wrote up the technique in a playbook called “ZR/Rifle” and applied it, or versions of it, a number of times in foreign countries. Some of them hated Kennedy so much that it is quite plausible that they went rogue. A few of them even admitted the existence of a conspiracy, their involvement, or their knowledge of it.

William Harvey’s links with other CIA persons of interest, Johnny Roselli and Santo Trafficante and their network of Mafiosi, Jack Ruby and Cuban exiles who hovered around Oswald during the last months of his life, his links to the FPCC infiltration programs, travel to Dallas shortly before the assassination and role in ZR/Rifle tactics qualify him as a person of extreme interest in the coup.

Visual data shows how David Atlee Phillips’ universe overlaps with Oswald’s through over 20 common touch points involving Cuban exiles, propaganda tools, the FPCC, Mexico City, Oswald babysitters, etc. Case linkage shows that no fewer than six of the eight alternate patsies were also marked as pro-Castro with their bizarre FPCC links, the very organization Phillips was turning inside out in his plots to counter Castro sympathizers. Throw in his lies, quasi-confessions, and his being thrown under the bus by colleague E.H. Hunt, and we have a strong case to make about who some of the leading plotters were.

If we accept that these are some the fingerprints of intelligence that Richard Schweiker referred to, the offender profile suggests quite strongly that at least a few of the fingers the prints came from belonged to David Atlee Phillips and William Harvey! In the late 1970s, after the HSCA asked the Justice Department to re-open the case, these two suspects, and their networks of assassins, operatives and propaganda assets who have been discussed in previous articles, should have been rounded up, and would have been in a normal murder investigation. The fact that this one was presidential seems to have lowered the bar of diligence and motivation. It should still be done posthumously, for the sake of correcting what is related to unsuspecting high-school history students, and of preventing future attacks on a democracy.

The next question we can ask ourselves, is who provided the brains and handled upper management tasks for the Big Event? The entity link diagram and a chronology analysis point so far to a group of like-minded, discarded and/or disgruntled CIA officers who were all loyal to a disgraced Alan Dulles who, after being removed from his functions by the victim, remained committed to his worldviews, well connected and a man on a mission. Stay tuned!

Go to Part 1
September 24, 2018

The CIA and Mafia’s “Cuban American Mechanism” and the JFK Assassination

KUsomething:

“Jesus, you don’t look so good!”

WOsomething:

“Look who’s talking, I’ve never seen you so baggy-eyed.”

KUsomething:

“I don’t handle the heat very well. I wonder how the Old Man is doing. Apparently, it’s a lot hotter a few floors down.”

WOsomething:

“Tell me, have you seen AMHINT-24 around?”

KUsomething:

“You mean the one who bumped into GPFLOOR in the courthouse after his rumble on…”

WOsomething:

“No that was AMSERF-1.”

KUsomething:

“Then was it the guy who got all those articles written about him with the help of AMHINT-5? … I thought he was AMDENIM-1.”

WOsomething:

“AMHINT-24 was in on the brouhaha on … uh, Canoe Street; he also helped Don Santo Junior recruit AMLASH with the help of their friend AMWHIP-1. It gets a little confusing because many were part of AMSPELL… Then when you throw in the 30 or so AMOTs living here… Maybe AMSHALE-1 will help clear things up when he joins us.”

KUsomething:

“I don’t think we will be seeing him here, he seems to have gotten most of his shit together… I doubt he would even speak to me anyway, after getting shot at and all…”

WOsomething:

“Well, I can think of only a few others who might be soon joining us. Hopefully, they won’t blame us like the others do.”

KUsomething:

“Man it’s hot!”

Introduction

In 2013, just before the fiftieth anniversary of JFK’s assassination, this author completed a study on how North American history books describe the JFK assassination and how their authors justify their writings. The most distributed books overwhelmingly portrayed the crime as one perpetrated by a lone nut, and their key sources are the Warren Commission along with a few authors who re-enforce this notion.

After corresponding with the historians, it became clear that almost all were unfamiliar, if not completely unaware, of critical information that came out in the half-century that followed. Many of the post-Warren Commission sources cannot simply be fluffed off as conspiracy theorist machinations. These include five subsequent government investigations; one civil trial; a number of mock trials; three foreign governments’ analysis of the assassination; and some groundbreaking work by a number of dedicated, independent researchers.

In a subsequent article, it was demonstrated that most government investigations that followed (and therefore should have trumped) the Warren Commission, as well as the only civil trial about the case, proved that a conspiracy took place and that the Warren Commission hardly even investigated this possibility.

When one considers the written conclusions from many of the reports, jury decisions and comments from investigation insiders, which contradict the Warren Commission report, it is clear that many of these historians were in breach of their own code of conduct by woefully disrespecting the official record. Furthermore, they showed no effort in following the proper historical research methodology that can be summarized as follows:

Identification of the research problem (including formulation of the hypothesis/questions);
Systematic collection and evaluation of data;
Synthesis of information;
Interpreting and drawing conclusions.

By stopping all research beyond the obsolete Warren Commission report and limiting themselves to a few discredited authors, historians never made it to step two in their work. In fact, the impeaching of the Warren Commission by both the Church Committee and the HSCA should have stimulated investigators, journalists and historians to start anew with one of the hypotheses being that there was a probable conspiracy.

Over and above underscoring historians’ ignorance of the work of their own institutions, this author sought to contribute to the data collection step in the research by analyzing previous plots to assassinate JFK and bringing out patterns that should have been impossible to ignore and that clearly pointed the finger at persons of interest in the case. In a fourth article, Oswald’s touch-points with some sixty-four plausible or definite intelligence-connected characters (since updated to seventy-five) underscored the Warren Commission’s hopelessly inaccurate and simplistic description of him as a lone malcontent.

Another source of valuable information that historians are oblivious to comes from what foreign governments knew about the conspiracy. Cuba in particular was very motivated to monitor many of the persons of interest in the Kennedy assassination; for them their survival was at stake!

Gaeton Fonzi, as an investigator for both the Church Committee and the HSCA, was perhaps the first to sink his teeth into the confusing world of Cuban exiles who were involved in plots to remove Castro. This allowed him to better connect the dots with CIA and Mafia forces that were influencing them. In doing so, researchers who were effective in disproving Warren Commission conclusions would now be better prepared to identify the plotters. Malcolm Blunt, John Newman, Bill Simpich and others began deciphering CIA cryptonym codes related to a hornet’s nest of secrets and covert operations that Allen Dulles kept hidden from his Warren Commission colleagues. In doing so, he deprived them of crucial information that could well have brought the spotlights right back on him.

On the Mary Ferrell Foundation website, we can now find a database of CIA cryptonyms and pseudonyms carefully designed to designate people, organizations, operations and countries. For example, cryptonyms that begin with the letters AE relate to Soviet Union sources, in particular defectors and agents, and those that start with LI refer to operations, organizations, and individuals related to Mexico City. The category, which has by far the most cryptonyms, is the one that starts with the letters AM, which were used for protecting the identity of operations, organizations, and individuals relating to Cuba. As we will see, an impressive number of crypto-coded jargon revolves around the world of Oswald and the Big Event.

In this article, we will: first, assess what some foreign intelligence services concluded about the assassination; second, explore how seemingly different factions came together to form one of America’s most ruthless team of covert operators, assassins, saboteurs and terrorists that wreaked havoc abroad and on American soil for decades; third, describe the make-up and some of the covert actions of what the Cubans called The CIA and Mafia’s “Cuban American Mechanism”; and finally, see how this obscure, misunderstood entity came to play a role on November 22, 1963.

France, Russia and Cuba nix the Warren Commission report

It is important to preface this section by recognizing that the quality of foreign government data is sometimes difficult to evaluate. Some would argue, perhaps rightly, that it does not always come with primary source information, that the data is old and that there could be hidden biases. On the other hand, we will see that foreign intelligence also had different sources that would logically have been well connected and positioned to observe the goings-on in and around the persons of interest, including Oswald himself; that they may in fact have had fewer biases than those controlling U.S. investigations; and that their research is much more recent than the sources lone-nut backers rely upon. As a matter of fact, Cuban analysis takes into account key ARRB declassified documentary trails that Warren Commission backers’ hero Gerald Posner could not do when he wrote Case Closed just before the ARRB vaults of classified documents were opening. In an open-ended investigation, not looking into what these sources can reveal is simply derelict.

It was not only foreigners who suspected foul play the minute Ruby terminated Oswald; dark thoughts were omnipresent in the U.S. The very first media reactions clearly indicated that Oswald was bumped off in order to seal his lips.

In an article written for the Washington Post, and published one month after the assassination, former president Harry Truman, who had established the CIA in 1947, opined that the CIA was basically out of control:

For some time I have been disturbed by the way the CIA has been diverted from its original assignment… This quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue– and subject for cold war enemy propaganda.

He said the CIA’s “operational duties … should be terminated.” Allen Dulles, then sitting on the Warren Commission, tried unsuccessfully to get Truman to retract the story. Some have speculated that the timing of the writing of this article was linked to the assassination.

Shortly after the media congratulations greeted the Warren Commission Report release, valiant independent researchers such as Vincent Salandria, Penn Jones, Sylvia Meagher and Mark Lane played key roles in debunking it. Some foreign governments were also forming their own opinions about what really took place.

Neither Jackie Kennedy nor Bobby Kennedy believed the Warren Commission, nor did they trust U.S. intelligence to find the underlying cause of what really happened. According to the late William Turner and Jim Garrison investigator Steve Jaffe, they received information from French intelligence, which had monitored Cuban exiles and right-wing targets in the U.S. (perhaps because they felt some of the attempts on De Gaulle’s life stemmed from the U.S.). They reported that the president had been killed by a large rightwing domestic conspiracy.

As for the Russian reaction to the JFK assassination, the most recent ARRB releases leave no doubt about where they stood on the matter. In 2017, a CIA note describing Nikita Khrushchev’s feelings about the assassination was declassified. It revealed a May 1964 conversation between the Soviet leader and reporter Drew Pearson, where the head of state said he did not believe American security was so “inept” that Kennedy was killed without a conspiracy. Khrushchev believed the Dallas Police Department to be an “accessory” to the assassination. The CIA source “got the impression that Chairman Khrushchev had some dark thoughts about the American Right Wing being behind this conspiracy.” When Pearson said that Oswald and Ruby both were, “mad” and “acted on his own … Khrushchev said flatly that he did not believe this.”

The research community also gained access to a J. Edgar Hoover memo sent to Marvin Watson, Special Assistant to the President on December 2, 1966, which described what Russian intelligence believed about the murder:

The Memo also adds this explosive point made after two years of Russian intelligence efforts that had been intended for internal use only:

We can safely guess that this only hardened Khrushchev’s opinions.

When interviewed by NBC’s Megyn Kelly in 2017, Vladimir Putin stated, “There is a theory that Kennedy’s assassination was arranged by the United States intelligence services,” Putin told Kelly. “So if this theory is correct, and that can’t be ruled out, then what could be easier in this day and age than using all the technical means at the disposal of the intelligence services and using those means to organize some attacks, and then pointing the finger at Russia?”

Though one can question his motives, there is no doubt that the ex-lieutenant colonel in the KGB had easy access to the intelligence on which he could base such a tantalizing statement.

The most vocal foreign leader about the assassination was Fidel Castro.

The Cuban leader was perhaps the first person to remark publicly that something was awry in the JFK case. He learned of the assassination on the day it happened while engaging in diplomatic discussions with one of JFK’s secret envoys, a French journalist named Jean Daniel. Immediately upon getting the news, Castro remarked to his visitor: “This is an end to your mission of peace. Everything is changed.” Later Castro commented: “Now they will have to find the assassin quickly, but very quickly, otherwise, you watch and see, I know them, they will try to put the blame on us for this thing.” A day later, after frantically following all the cables about the subject, the early ones linking Oswald to pro-Communist and Cuban interests, he felt it confirmed a plot to blame him so as to give the U.S. the excuse it needed to invade his country.

Cuba was plunged into crisis-mode, the overthrow of the Island was already a clear and present danger and it would be under assault for decades. Its security and intelligence forces went into even higher gear. Among them, some Cuban exiles in the U.S. who had access to privileged information on plots to remove Castro, which intersected with the one to remove Kennedy— perceived to be the biggest roadblock into regaining an empire to be plundered once again by ruthless opportunists.

The hit team: Was it a mosaic of diverse groups and organizations, or a well-tuned, synchronized network?

One of the biggest problems researchers have in convincing skeptical audiences that there was, in fact, a large-scale conspiracy behind the coup d’état is that the involvement of so many different factions would have been too complex to pull off. In fact, here is what two historians remarked in their correspondence with me when I challenged their writings:

Was it Cubans, the CIA, the Mafia, Lyndon Johnson, the Federal Reserve . . . many of the villains contradict each other?

I’m always reminded of the headline in the comedy newspaper, The Onion, which read something like: JFK ASSASSINATED BY CIA, FBI, KGB, MAFIA, LBJ, OSWALD, RUBY, IRS, DEA, DEPT OF ED, DEPT. OF COMMERCE AND MORE! That about sums up the feeling from professional historians about those proposing we rethink the JFK assassination.

Of course, it would have helped to ask who the persons and groups of interest were. Something the Cubans did. Out of all the foreign governments that looked into the assassination, Cuban intelligence efforts were the most persistent and the best connected. Their findings were eventually revealed. Thanks to some of their writings and exchanges with serious assassination researchers, we can better understand how interrelated some of the suspects were before, during and after the assassination. Their stories begin in the early part of the twentieth century.

**Cuba pre-revolution: Enrique Cirules, The Mafia in Havana, a Caribbean Mob story, 2010**

	Enrique Cirules (1938 – 18 December 2016) was a Cuban writer. His books include Conversation with the last American (1973), The Other War (1980), The Saga of La Gloria City (1983) Bluefields (1986), Ernest Hemingway in the Romano Archipelago (1999) The Secret life of Meyer Lansky in Havana (2006) and Santa Clara Santa (2006).
Enrique Cirules

His The Mafia in Havana won the Literary Critic’s Award in 1994, and its 2010 edition is the basis for most of this section.

This book goes significantly farther than what its title suggests, as it chronicles how a network of imperialist-exploiters from 1930 to the revolution in 1959 plundered the Island. It sheds light on how the foursome of the Mafia, U.S. intelligence, Captains of U.S. industry and the Cuban elite ran a rigged system with an invisible government pulling the strings using Cuban figureheads for the benefit of so few.

The Mafia actually began running alcohol in Cuba in the early 1920s; however, the creation of a large criminal empire began in 1933 when Lucky Luciano tasked Meyer Lansky, the top Mafia financier, to begin a relationship with Fulgencio Batista who by then controlled Cuba’s Armed Forces. Batista used this position to influence Cuban presidents until he was elected president in 1940 and would go on to become a long-lasting American puppet dictator who made off with some 300 million dollars by the time he was forced to leave as Castro and his band of rebels were closing in on Havana.

Cuba was an ideal location for the Mafia: only ninety miles off U.S. shores, virgin territory, with neither laws nor taxes to worry about, and Cuban leaders in their pockets. For a long time the Mafia operations were organized under Lansky who was the number one chieftain in Cuba, drug tsar Santo Trafficante Sr., Amadeo Barletta, and Amletto Batisti who actually established a bank to finance his Mafia interests. By the 1940s, the Mafia was careful to select Cuban nationals to participate in their operations. One wealthy Cuban who did well under this regime was Julio Lobo (AMEMBER-1) who was an important player in the sugar and banking industries. He also connects well with some of the Cubans of interest in the JFK assassination.

By the end of World War II, the Mafia controlled casinos, prostitution, and the drug trade. Cuba was a stopping point for heroin destined to the U.S. and a key market for cocaine. They also began taking over banks they used to finance shady deals, get their hands on Cuban subsidies and launder Cuban and U.S. based rackets. At around the same time they took over important parts of the media. Trafficante even began training undercover agents within Cuban political groups. Barletta at one point was the sole representative of General Motors in Cuba. He also owned media outlets and many businesses.

By far the most powerful of the foursome was Lansky, who is said to have been aware of everything that went on in Cuba. He intimidated all the leaders, including Batista. Lansky always kept a low profile, but he was well known by all the power brokers and key operators who governed the country. He was suspected of having maneuvered to block his ex-boss Luciano from gaining entry on the Island after his expulsion from the U.S. His high rank in the pecking order could be seen by his refusal to allow credit to the Vice-President of the republic in one of the casinos, his snubbing of the Minister of the Interior who sought to exchange greetings with him and by even pressuring Batista himself into protecting Mafia-friendly policies. An invisible government was now in charge of Cuba where profits of the Mafia empire were greater than the rest of the Cuban economy.

By 1956, other U.S. mobsters, including Sam Giancana and Carlos Marcello, wanted in, which led to a bloody mob battle in the U.S. coined the Havana Wars.

U.S. industry leaders took their share of the spoils as the Rockefellers used their banks to quickly take over large segments of the economy in the early 1930s. By the 1950s, Rockefeller interests owned much of the sugar, livestock and mining industries.

Where one could find American imperialism thriving, not far away was Sullivan & Cromwell, the leading international lawyer/lobbyists of the era who joined their clients on Cuban soil and opened doors for others like the Schroeder Bank. Through the Dulles brothers, who were partners in the firm, the symbiosis with U.S. intelligence and government was ensured as John Foster Dulles later became Secretary of State and Allen Dulles would go on to head the CIA.

The free reign in Cuba could not have worked without the efforts of U.S. intelligence, who became the gatekeepers of the Island as early as 1902 when they infiltrated the Cuban military. By the 1930s, they were using Mafiosi, journalists, lawyers, businessmen, politicians all over the Island. During the war years, Franklin Roosevelt became alarmed by the trend towards Marxism and was particularly worried about Cuba. The key diplomat he designated to ensure that Batista would squash any rebellion was no other than Meyer Lansky, because of his excellent relations with the dictator.

Fearing a revolt, the U.S. took steps to fake a demonstration of democracy to give the Cuban people the impression that they had a voice. They convinced Batista to call an election in 1944 that the U.S. rigged to place another puppet, Doctor Ramon Martin (AMCOG-3), in power. The new leader could not take two steps without a Batista henchman breathing down his neck. During this era, Carlos Prío would have a stint as prime minister while Tony Varona was second in command—both of whom would go on to become key leaders of Cuban exiles in Miami. The invisible government later created a crisis around these political leaders so that Batista could come back in 1952 and save the day—so many smoke screens all marketed to the populace as a showcase of democracy by the Mafia and CIA-run media.

By 1955, when a rebellion threat was growing again, Lyman Kirkpatrick, inspector general of the CIA, was making repeated trips to Cuba to help Batista, who had been scouted by the U.S. in the early 1940s. Cirules produced a letter from Allen Dulles to Batista where he reminds him of their recent meeting and the decision to have the new head of the Bureau of Repression of Communist Activities, General Tamayo, come to Washington to receive special training.

In 1958, Castro took over and the Imperialist-Finance-Intelligence-Mafia network was forced out with many of their Cuban protégées. But not without a futile last stand from Tony Varona, who haplessly tried to lead the police forces.

As we will see, many of the persons of interest in the JFK assassination did not just join forces sometime around 1962 to develop a plot to remove JFK. They were part of a well-connected network of very cunning people in existence for many years, if not decades, who desperately shared the same goal to regain their former power and wealth, who were very secretive, who planned the removal of Castro and who came to see JFK as an obstacle and a traitor. For some of them, their obsessions and their violence persisted for decades.

Journalists and historians never asked themselves who these people whose names kept popping up from deep event to deep event were. If they had looked into their backgrounds, they would have discovered a ruthless cast of characters, who were linked to the Mafia and/or intelligence and/or U.S. imperialist forces and/or the Cuban elite. This network, which scattered away from Cuba in 1958, would quickly coalesce again in Miami and spread to New Orleans, Dallas and other American cities. What followed was an onslaught of assassination attempts against Castro, acts of terrorism that would span 40 years and a regime change in the U.S. on November 22, 1963, during lunchtime in full public view on a sunny day.

American style state-sponsored terrorism

The network of many of the persons of interest in the JFK assassination had its origins some thirty years before the revolution, and while many faces changed over time, the gangs lived on for decades with a moral compass that was pointed towards hell.

Before discussing this partnership and Dealey Plaza, it is worth underscoring the forty years of fury unleashed on Cuba, and its friends, in the form of covert action according to the perpetrators, terrorist acts according to the victims. We will let the reader decide. The following is a partial list:

In March 1960, the Belgian steamship La Courbe loaded with grenades was blown up in Havana, killing 101 and injuring over 200;
In 1961, a volunteer teacher and a peasant were captured and tortured to death;
Also in 1961, explosives in cigarette packages were used to blow up a store;
In 1962, the Romero farming family were murdered by counter-revolutionaries;
In 1964, a Spanish supply ship was attacked;
In 1965, led by Orlando Bosch, terrorists bombed sugar cane crops;
In 1970, two fishing vessels were hijacked and their crews of 12 kidnapped;
In 1981, dengue fever broke out in Cuba killing 151 people, including 101 children; terrorist Eduardo Arocena admitted to the crime in a federal court in New York;
In 1994, terrorists from Miami entered Cuba and murdered a Cuban citizen;
In 1997, explosives were detonated in the Copacabana, killing an Italian tourist;
In 2003, the Cuban vessel Cabo Corriente was hijacked.

The targets were not only confined to Cuban territory:

During the years that followed the revolution, British, Soviet and Spanish ships carrying merchandise to and from Cuba were attacked;
In 1972, Cuban exiles blew up a floor where there was a Cuban trade mission in Montreal killing one person;
In 1974, Orlando Bosch admitted sending letter bombs to Cuban embassies in Lima, Madrid and Ottawa;
The terrorists were particularly active in 1976: explosions were set off in the Cuban embassy in Madrid and the offices of a Cuban aviation company; two Cuban diplomats were kidnapped, tortured and assassinated; two other Cuban diplomats were murdered in Lisbon; a bomb exploded in a suitcase just before being put on a Cuban airline in Jamaica; terrorists downed a Cuban airliner that had departed from Barbados, killing all 73 aboard.

Even U.S. soil was fair game for the terrorist cells:

In 1975, a Cuban moderate living in Miami was shot and killed;
Cuban diplomats were killed in New Jersey and New York City in 1979 and 1980;
In 1979, a TWA plane was targeted, but the bomb went off in a suitcase before departure.

Overall, Cuba counted 3500 who died and 2000 who were injured because of these acts of aggression to go along with billions of dollars in damage.

The terrorists, who had become full-fledged Americans, were well known to authorities but acted with impunity:

Orlando Bosch (AMDITTO-23) told the Miami press that “if we had the resources, Cuba would burn from one end to the other.”
There was not much remorse if we base ourselves on what Guillermo Novo Sampol had to say after a Cuban airline exploded in midflight, killing 73 passengers: “When Cuba pilots, diplomats or members of their family die—this always makes me happy.”
Convicted terrorist Luis Posada Carilles (AMCLEVE-15) confirmed in a New York Times interview that they had received training in the use of explosives by the CIA.

Fabian Escalante’s investigation

Fabian Escalante joined the Department of State Security in 1959. Escalante was head of a counter-intelligence unit and also part of a team investigating a CIA operation called Sentinels of Liberty, an attempt to recruit Cubans willing to work against Castro. At the request of the U.S., he presented the HSCA with a report on Cuban findings about the JFK assassination that was never published by the committee because of some of the information it contained. He is recognized as a leading authority on the CIA in Cuba and Latin America.

Fabian Escalante

Some of his critics state that he seems to base most of his analysis on the work of American researchers and that he is biased. In his defense, it is important to note that very few American investigators have gone through as much committee-based research as Escalante. While it is true that some of his sources like Tosh Plumlee and Chuck Giancana are not convincing for many, he himself tempers his observations by often emphasizing that more research should be done to follow-up on leads ignored by U.S. media and intelligence. His exchanges with people like Dick Russell and Gaeton Fonzi helped push the analysis forward. As we will see, some of his insights certainly go an awful lot farther than what we can see on CNN. In the following sections, we will look at Escalante’s work, which will be at times bolstered by findings from other sources that dovetail with his analysis.

Cuban intelligence, though lacking in structure during the days that followed the revolution, had privileged access to informants in the U.S. and Cuba who at times penetrated exile groups in the U.S. and their antennas on the Island. They also captured combatants who revealed secrets they kept about the assassination. Furthermore, they were able to obtain information from their Russian counterparts. Finally, they kept abreast of all U.S. research in the subject to a degree far superior to what historians or mainstream media ever did. By 1965, a Cuban spy, Juan Felaifel Canahan, had infiltrated CIA special missions groups in Miami and won Cuban exile leader Manuel Artime’s confidence. Artime was involved in the plot to assassinate Castro code-named AMLASH, which brought together the CIA, Mafia, and Cuban exiles in the master plan. It was only after 1975, after the publication of a Church Committee report, that they suspected that this partnership was behind the assassination of JFK.

In 1993, during his retirement, after launching a security studies center, he again put together all the pieces of the puzzle he could put his hands on. His research would be enriched by ARRB releases. Even Escalante admits that he does not have full access to all the Cuban files, but what he does know is worth listening to.

In 1995 Wayne Smith, chief of the Centre for International Policy in Washington, arranged a meeting on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, in Nassau, Bahamas. Others in attendance were: Gaeton Fonzi, Dick Russell, Noel Twyman, Anthony Summers, Peter Dale Scott, John M. Newman, Jeremy Gunn, John Judge, Andy Kolis, Peter Kornbluh, Mary and Ray LaFontaine, Jim Lesar, Russ Swickard, Ed Sherry, and Gordon Winslow. In 2006, his book analyzing the assassination, JFK: The Cuba Files, was published. While some of Cuba’s sources are deemed contestable by some reputable researchers, it is clear that they had access to sources that not even the FBI could have tapped. Their findings may not be perfect but they certainly are more fact-based and up to date than anything a historian will find in the Warren Commission report.

The network factions

In JFK: The Cuba Files, Escalante describes how the departure of Cuban exiles, CIA operators and Mafiosi from the Island, where they had originally joined forces, gave birth to what he called the CIA and Mafia’s “Cuban American Mechanism”. Its members were based mostly in Miami and were trained to do a lot of the dirty work to get their empire back in a manner that was plausibly deniable by their supervisors.

Most researchers are aware of the influence the business elite had on U.S. foreign policy. It is now fully accepted that regime change in the 1950s in the Middle East was for the benefit of U.S. and British oil magnates, and the removal of Arbenz in Guatemala was asked for by United Fruit and made good on by Dulles and a cadre of CIA officers who mastered the art of delivering a coup. Many of these specialists were involved in covert actions against Cuba and some became persons of interest in the JFK assassination.

Escalante demonstrates the importance of the corporate elite in dictating U.S. policy by quoting a statement made by Roy Robottom, Assistant Undersecretary of State for Hemispheric Affairs: “… In June 1959 we had taken the decision that it was not possible to achieve our objectives with Castro in power … In July and August, we had been drawing up a program to replace Castro. However, certain companies in the United States informed us during that period that they were achieving some progress in negotiations, a factor that led to a delay …” By the end of 1959, J.C. King, head of the CIA’s Western Hemisphere Division, recommended the assassination of Castro. In March 1960, Eisenhower approved the overthrow under a project codenamed Pluto.

The Mechanism assumed a life of its own after the failed Bay of Pigs in 1962, and held JFK responsible for the debacle.

Structuring the Cuban exiles

The author describes how “venal officials, torturers, and killers from the Batista Regime fled Cuba and sought refuge in the United States” to escape justice in Cuba, and began forming groups with an eye to re-taking the Island. In this chaos, the Mafia, the CIA, and the U.S. State Department would quickly aid them. This is what also gave birth to the Miami Cuban Mafia. Some of the prominent leaders were of course Batista puppets, including Carlos Prío Socarrás, who was President of Cuba from 1948-52, and Tony Varona, who was Vice President under Prío, also a Mafia associate. They led the Revolutionary Democratic Front (FRD) (AMCIGAR), an umbrella group for hundreds of smaller groups. The FRD was eventually replaced by the Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRC) (AMBUD) which was conceived by the CIA as a government in waiting.

The command structure of the Cuban exiles was focused at first on the Bay of Pigs invasion. After this fiasco, in 1961, the management of the Cuban exiles centered on acts of sabotage and terrorism under the Operation Mongoose program led by Edward Lansdale and William Harvey. Harvey was later exiled to Rome after almost messing up the delicate Missile Crisis negotiations when he intensified covert actions against Cuba.

In the early 1960s, JMWAVE in Miami became the largest CIA station with over 400 agents overseeing some 4000 Cuban exile assets, Mafia partnerships and soldiers of fortune. The Cuban exile counter-revolutionary organizations were so numerous (over 400) and weirdly connected that Richard Helms of the CIA had to send Bobby Kennedy a handbook to explain the situation. Some groups were more political in nature, others military. Many had antennas in Cuba.

The handbook describes the unstable structure as follows:

Counter-revolutionary organizations are in fact sponsored by Cuban intelligence services for the purpose of infiltrating “unities” creating provocations, collecting bona fide resistance members into their racks and taking executive action against them. It is possible that the alleged “uprising” on August 1962, which resulted in the well-nigh final declination of the resistance ranks, was the result of just such G-2 activities.Guerrilla and sabotage activities have been further reduced by lack of external support and scarcity of qualified leadership. Exile leaders continue to hold meetings, to organize to expound plans of liberation, and to criticize the United States “do nothing policy.”But it is the exceptional refugee leader who has the selflessness to relinquish status of leadership of his organization or himself by integrating into a single strong unified and effective body. “Unidades” and “Juntas” are continually being created to compete with one another for membership and U. S. financial support. They print impressive lists of member movements, which in many instances are only “pocket” or paper groups. Individuals appear to leadership roles in several or more movements simultaneously, indicating either a system of interlocking directorates or pure opportunism.

In order to place in perspective the hundreds of counter-revolutionary groups treated herein, it is necessary to understand the highly publicized CRCConsejo Revolucionario Cubano—Cuban Revolutionary Council). The CRC is not included in the body of this handbook because it is not actually a counter-revolutionary group, but rather a superstructure, which sits atop all the groups willing to follow its direction and guidance in exchange for their portions of U. S. support for which the CRC is the principal channel.

The CRC was originally known as the FRD (Frente Revolucionary Democratica) and was not officially called CRC or Consejo until the fall of 1961.The Consejo has always been beset with factionalism and internal dissension. It and its leader Dr. Jose Miro Cardona have been continually criticized by Cuban exile leaders for a “do nothing” policy. The CRC does not participate in activities within Cuba but acts as a coordinating body for member organizations. It has delegations in each Latin American country as well as in France and Spain. Besides the main office located in Miami, it has offices in Washington, New York, and New Orleans. CRC gives financial support to member groups for salaries, administrative expenses and possible underground activities in Cuba.

The following is a list of the groups (the handbook gives additional information on each group-membership numbers in U.S. and Cuba, key members, year of foundation etc.):

Part I: Leading Organizations [7 groups]

Movimiento Revolucionario 30 de Noviembre – 30 Nov, MRTN, M-30-11 — 30 November Revolutionary Movement
Movimiento de Recuperacion Revolucionario – MRR — Movement for Revolutionary Recovery
Unidad Revolucionaria – U. R., Unidad — Revolutionary Unity
Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil D.R.E. — Students Revolutionary Directorate (DRE) (
Rescate Democratico Revolucionario RDR — Revolutionary Democratic Rescue
Movimiento Revolucionario del Pueblo — Revolutionary Movement of the People
Movimiento Democrata Cristiano MDC — Christian Democrat Movement

Part II describes those organizations currently judged to be above average in importance. [52 groups]. See appendix 1 (note: in this author’s opinion Alpha 66 in this group became very important).

Part III describes those judged to be of little apparent value, paper organizations, or small disgruntled factions.

The CIA ensured funding to the tune of $3 million a year according to CIA operative E. Howard Hunt. U.S. militia forces recruited some of the other Cuban exiles. Two CIA stations were key in the destabilization efforts: one in Mexico City, where David Phillips played a key role; the other in Madrid, headed by James Noel. Both spies were very active in Cuba before the revolution.

Captain Bradley Ayers trained commandos. Training grounds could be found in Florida and near New Orleans, where Guy Banister, David Phillips, and David Ferrie were seen in the company of Cuban exiles and soldiers of fortune. According to Escalante, the Mafia, represented by John Roselli, exercised control as an executive and got involved as a supplier of weaponry. The Mafia could even count on CIA watercraft to bring in narcotics and arms. Finally, as Escalante continues, organizations created by private citizens interested in freeing “Cuba” popped up in various cities seeking additional and illegal funds for the huge cost of the operation and lobbying effort. Escalante cites as examples: in his native Texas, George H. W. Bush as one of those “outstanding Americans”, along with Admiral Arleigh Burke and his Committee for a Free Cuba; and in New Orleans, there was the Friends of Democratic Cuba.

A repressive police and intelligence apparatus, called Operation 40, was formed to cleanse captured territories of communists and other adversaries. Mercenaries like Gerry Patrick Hemming, through his group called Interpen, and Frank Sturgis and his International Anticommunist Brigade, offered their services for waging the secret war. Private citizens and corporations joined the Mafia by getting involved in financing operations and launching NGOs such as the Friends of Democratic Cuba in New Orleans, located at 544 Camp Street. Here, Lee Harvey Oswald would eventually set up his Fair Play for Cuba Committee office and hob-nob with Cuban exiles he was supposedly at odds with.

Operation Tilt, undertaken in 1963, and sponsored by Clare Boothe Luce (Life Magazine) and William Pawley (QDDALE), who were two close friends of Allen Dulles, is a clear example of how big business, Mafia, Cuban exiles and intelligence teamed up on an anti-Castro mission that went against JFK policy. Described by Gaeton Fonzi, among others, the scheme can only be seen as reckless and quasi-treasonous. In the winter of 1962, Eddie Bayo (Eduardo Perez) claimed that two officers in the Red Army based in Cuba wanted to defect to the United States. Bayo added that these men wanted to pass on details about atomic warheads and missiles that were still in Cuba despite the agreement that followed the Cuban Missile Crisis. Bayo’s story was eventually taken up by several members of the anti-Castro community, including Nathaniel Weyl, William Pawley, Gerry P. Hemming, John Martino, Felipe Vidal Santiago and Frank Sturgis. Pawley became convinced that it was vitally important to help get these Soviet officers out of Cuba. William Pawley contacted Ted Shackley at JMWAVE. Shackley decided to help Pawley organize what became known as Operation Tilt or the Bayo-Pawley Mission. He also assigned Rip Robertson, a fellow member of the CIA in Miami, to help with the operation. David Sanchez Morales, another CIA agent, also became involved in this attempt to bring out these two Soviet officers.

On June 8, 1963, a small group, including William Pawley, Eddie Bayo, Rip Robertson, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez, John Martino. Richard Billings and Terry Spencer, a journalist and photographer working for Life Magazine, boarded a CIA flying boat. After landing off Baracoa, Bayo and his men got into a 22-foot craft and headed for the Cuban shore. The plan was to pick them up with the Soviet officers two days later. However, Bayo and his men were never seen again. It was rumored that he had been captured and executed. However, his death was never reported in the Cuban press.

William Pawley’s background is particularly revealing. Gaeton Fonzi points out in his book, The Last Investigation: “Pawley had also owned major sugar interests in Cuba, as well as Havana’s bus, trolley and gas systems and he was close to both pre-Castro Cuban rulers, President Carlos Prío and General Fulgencio Batista.” (Pawley was one of the dispossessed American investors in Cuba who early on tried to convince Eisenhower that Castro was a Communist and urged him to arm the exiles in Miami.)

Lee Harvey Oswald and the subterfuge according to Escalante

Like most Americans, the Cubans found Oswald’s murder by a nightclub owner in the basement of the Dallas Police headquarters simply too convenient. His immediate portrayal as communist and pro-Castro made them strongly suspect that this was all a ruse to attack Cuba.

Within days of the assassination, Castro stated the following: “ … It just so happened that in such an unthinkable thing as the assassination a guilty party should immediately appear; what a coincidence, he (Oswald) had gone to Russia, and what a coincidence, he was associated with FPCC! That is what they began to say … It just so happens that these incidents are taking place precisely at a time when Kennedy was under heavy attack by those who felt his Cuba policy was weak …”

When Escalante analyzed all they could find on Oswald (post-assassination cryptonym: GPFLOOR), he was led to the following hypothesis:

Oswald was an agent of the U.S. intelligence service, infiltrated into the Soviet Union to fulfill a mission.
On his return, he continued to work for U.S. security services.
Oswald moved to New Orleans in April 1963 and formed links with Cuban organizations and exiles.
In New Orleans, Oswald received instructions to convert himself into a sympathizer with the Cuban Revolution.
Between July and September 1963, Oswald created evidence that he was part of a Cuba-related conspiracy.
In the fall of 1963, Oswald met with a CIA officer and an agent of Cuban origin in Dallas, Texas, to plan a covert operation related to Cuba.
In September 1963, Oswald met with the Dallas Alpha 66 group and tried to compromise Cuban exile Silvia Odio.
Oswald attempted to travel to Cuba from Mexico.
Oswald was to receive compromising correspondence from Havana linking him to the Cuban intelligence service.
The mass media, directed by the CIA and Mafia’s “Cuban American Mechanism,” was primed to unleash a far-reaching campaign to demonstrate to the U.S. public that Cuba and Fidel Castro were responsible for the assassination.

Through his investigation, he found evidence of the parallel nature of plans of aggression against Cuba and the assassination of Kennedy. The Cubans simply found that there were too many anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Oswald’s realm, suggesting a role in a sheep dipping operation. They show that his history as a provocateur in his pre-Russia infiltration days was similar to his actions in New Orleans, and that James Wilcott, a former CIA officer in Japan, testified to the HSCA that “ … Oswald was recruited from the military division with the evident objective of turning him into a double agent against the Soviet Union …” Escalante also received material on Oswald in 1977 from their KGB representative in Cuba, Major General Piotr Voronin. Then, in 1989, while in the Soviet Union, he met up with Pavel Iatskov, colonel of the first Directorate of the KGB, who had been in Mexico City during Oswald’s visit.

Iatskov stated the following: “At the end of the 1970s, when the investigation into the Kennedy assassination was reopened, I was in Moscow, and at one point … one of the high-ranking officers from my directorate … commented that Oswald had been a U.S. intelligence agent and that his defection to the Soviet Union was intended as an active step to disrupt the growing climate of détente …” They speculated that Oswald was there to lend a blow to Eisenhower’s peace endeavors by giving away U-2 military secrets, which dovetailed into the downing of Gary Powers a few short weeks before a crucial Eisenhower/ Khrushchev summit.

It was through some of their intelligence sources in the U.S. that the Cubans found out about the formation of the Friends of Democratic Cuba and its location in the famous Camp Street address. They identified Sergio Arcacha Smith, Carlos Bringuier and Frank Bartes as exiles who were often there and who were visited by Orlando Bosch, Tony Cuesta, Antonio Veciana, Luis Posada Carilles, Eladio del Valle, Manual Salvat, and others. This same source recognized Oswald as someone who was in a safe house in Miami in mid-1963. Escalante believes that Oswald did in fact visit Mexico City with the intention to try to get into Cuba, to push the incrimination of Castro even further.

Letters from Cuba to Oswald—proof of pre-knowledge of the assassination

In JFK: the Cuba Files, a thorough analysis of five bizarre letters that were written before the assassination in order to position Oswald as a Castro asset is presented. It is difficult to sidestep them the way the FBI did. The FBI argued that they were all typed from the same typewriter, yet supposedly sent by different people. Which indicated to them that it was a hoax, perhaps perpetrated by Cubans wanting to encourage a U.S. invasion.

However, the content of the letters and timeline prove something far more sinister according to Cuban intelligence. The following is how John Simkin summarizes the evidence:

The G-2 had a letter, signed by Jorge that had been sent from Havana to Lee Harvey Oswald on 14th 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 counter-revolutionaries over there who are working for the CIA.”

Escalante informed the HSCA about this letter. When he did this, he discovered that they had four similar letters that had been sent to Oswald. Four of the letters were post-marked “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 27th 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 been written in English and then translated.

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, including that sent to his postal address in Dallas, Texas …. 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 argues: “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.”

Jack Ruby’s links to Trafficante

Escalante is of the opinion that Jack Ruby and Trafficante were acquainted and that Ruby did in fact visit Trafficante when the latter was detained in Cuba in 1959. Here is his rationale:

Ruby’s close friend Louis McWillie ran Trafficante’s Tropicana Casino;
Ruby’s visits to Cuba after accepting invitations from McWillie, coincide with the detention of Trafficante and other Mafiosi;
McWillie told the HSCA that he made various visits to the Tiscornia detention center during Ruby’s visits;
After Ruby’s stays in Miami, he met with Meter Panitz (partner in the Miami gambling syndicate) in Miami. McWillie spoke with Panitz shortly before the visits. Trafficante was a leading gangster in Florida. Ruby kept this hidden from the Warren Commission;
Ruby’s entries and exits logistics dispel any idea that he went to Cuba for vacation purposes;
Ex-gun-runner and Castro friend Robert McKeown told the HSCA that Ruby approached him to try and get Castro to meet him in the hope of getting the release of three prisoners. McKeown also had contacts with Prío before and after the revolution and had met Frank Sturgis;
John Wilson Hudson, a British journalist, was also detained in Tiscornia at the same time as Trafficante (confirmed by Trafficante). Wilson gave information to the U.S. embassy in London recalling an American gangster-type called Ruby had visited Cuba in 1959 and had frequently met an American gangster called Santo. Prison guard Jose Verdecia confirmed the visits of Trafficante by McWillie and Ruby when shown a photo. He also confirmed the presence of a British journalist.

Operation 40

“We had been operating a damned Murder Inc. in the Caribbean.”

~ President Johnson

In 1973, after the death of Lyndon Johnson, The Atlantic published an article by a former Johnson speechwriter named Leo Janos. In “The Last Days of the President,” LBJ not only made this stunning statement but also expressed a highly qualified opinion that a conspiracy was behind the murder of JFK: “I never believed that [Lee Harvey] Oswald acted alone, although I can accept that he pulled the trigger.” Johnson thought such a conspiracy had formed in retaliation for U.S. plots to assassinate Fidel Castro; he had found after taking office that the government “had been operating a damned Murder Inc. in the Caribbean.” It is very likely that Johnson garnered this information from reading the CIA Inspector General Report on the plots to kill Castro.

There is compelling evidence that it is through Operation 40 that some of the assassins that Johnson may have been referring to received their training and guidance. The existence of this brutal organization of hit men was confirmed to the Cuban G-2 by one of the exiles they had captured: “The first news that we have of Operation 40 is a statement made by a mercenary of the Bay of Pigs who was the chief of military intelligence of the invading brigade and whose name was Jose Raul de Varona Gonzalez,” says Escalante in an interview with Jean-Guy Allard:

In his statement this man said the following: in the month of March, 1961, around the seventh, Mr. Vicente Leon arrived at the base in Guatemala at the head of some 53 men saying that he had been sent by the office of Mr. Joaquin Sanjenis (AMOT-2), Chief of Civilian Intelligence, with a mission he said was called Operation 40. It was a special group that didn’t have anything to do with the brigade and which would go in the rearguard occupying towns and cities. His prime mission was to take over the files of intelligence agencies, public buildings, banks, industries, and capture the heads and leaders in all of the cities and interrogate them. Interrogate them in his own way.

The individuals who comprised Operation 40 had been selected by Sanjenis in Miami and taken to a nearby farm “where they took some courses and were subjected to a lie detector.” Joaquin Sanjenis was Chief of Police in the time of President Carlos Prío. Recalls Escalante: “I don’t know if he was Chief of the Palace Secret Service but he was very close to Carlos Prío. And, in 1973 he dies under very strange circumstances. He disappears. In Miami, people learn to their surprise—without any prior illness and without any homicidal act—that Sanjenis, who wasn’t that old in ‘73, had died unexpectedly. There was no wake. He was buried in a hurry.”

Another Escalante source concerning Operation 40 was one of its members and a Watergate burglar: “And after he got out of prison, Eugenio Martinez came to Cuba. Martinez, alias ‘Musculito,’ was penalized for the Watergate scandal and is in prison for a time. And after he gets out of prison—it’s the Carter period, the period of dialogue, in ‘78, there is a different international climate—Eugenio Martinez asks for a contract and one fine day he appears on a boat here … and of course he didn’t make any big statements, he didn’t say much that we didn’t know but he talked about those things, about this Operation 40 group, about what they had done at the Democratic Party headquarters …”

In the Cuba Files, Escalante underscores a reference to Operation 40 by Lyman Fitzpatrick, CIA Inspector General, in his report on the Bay of Pigs: “…the counter-intelligence and security service which, under close project control, developed into an efficient and valuable unit in support of the FRD, Miami base, and the project program. By mid-March 1961, this security organization comprised 86 employees of whom 37 were trainee case officers, the service having graduated four classes from its own training classes, whose instructor was (censored) police officer. (Probably Joaquin Sanjenis)”

A memo by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. refers to this organization and its dark mission:

Schlesinger’s Memo June 9, 1961
MEMORANDUM FOR MR. RICHARD GOODWIN

Sam Halper, who has been the Times correspondent in Habana and more recently in Miami, came to see me last week. He has excellent contacts among the Cuban exiles. One of Miro’s comments this morning reminded me that I have been meaning to pass on the following story as told me by Halper. Halper says that CIA set up something called Operation 40 under the direction of a man named (as he recalled) Captain Luis Sanjenis, who was also chief of intelligence. (Could this be the man to whom Miro referred this morning?) It was called Operation 40 because originally only 40 men were involved: later the group was enlarged to 70. The ostensible purpose of Operation 40 was to administer liberated territories in Cuba. But the CIA agent in charge, a man known as Felix, trained the members of the group in methods of third degree interrogation, torture and general terrorism. The liberal Cuban exiles believe that the real purpose of Operation 40 was to “kill Communists” and, after eliminating hard-core Fidelistas, to go on to eliminate first the followers of Ray, then the followers of Varona and finally to set up a right-wing dictatorship, presumably under Artime. Varona fired Sanjenis as chief of intelligence after the landings and appointed a man named Despaign in his place. Sanjenis removed 40 files and set up his own office; the exiles believe that he continues to have CIA support. As for the intelligence operation, the CIA is alleged to have said that, if Varona fired Sanjenis, let Varona pay the bills. Subsequently Sanjenis’s hoods beat up Despaign’s chief aide; and Despaign himself was arrested on a charge of trespassing brought by Sanjenis. The exiles believe that all these things had CIA approval. Halper says that Lt Col Vireia Castro (1820 SW 6th Street, Miami; FR 4 3684) can supply further details. Halper also quotes Bender as having said at one point when someone talked about the Cuban revolution against Castro: “The Cuban Revolution? The Cuban Revolution is something I carry around in my check book. Nice fellows.

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

Frank Sturgis, one of its members and a Watergate burglar, allegedly told author Mike Canfield: “this assassination group (Operation 40) would upon orders, naturally, assassinate either members of the military or the political parties of the foreign country that you were going to infiltrate, and if necessary some of your own members who were suspected of being foreign agents … We were concentrating strictly in Cuba at that particular time.”

In November 1977, CIA asset and ex-Sturgis girlfriend, Marita Lorenz gave an interview to the New York Daily News in which she claimed that a group called Operation 40, that included Orlando Bosch and Frank Sturgis, were involved in a conspiracy to kill both John F. Kennedy and Fidel Castro. “She said that they were members of Operation 40, a secret guerrilla group originally formed by the CIA in 1960 in preparation for the Bay of Pigs invasion … Ms. Lorenz described Operation 40 as an ‘assassination squad’ consisting of about 30 anti-Castro Cubans and their American advisors. She claimed the group conspired to kill Cuban Premier Fidel Castro and President Kennedy, whom it blamed for the Bay of Pigs fiasco … She said Oswald … visited an Operation 40 training camp in the Florida Everglades. The idea of Oswald, or a double, being in Florida is not far-fetched. The 1993 PBS Frontline documentary “Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?” had a photo of Oswald in Florida, which they conspicuously did not reveal on the program.

In Nexus, Larry Hancock not only provides another confirmation of this outfit’s existence but describes part of its structure and its role: Time correspondent Mark Halperin stated that Operation 40 members “had been trained in interrogation, torture, and general terrorism. It was believed they would execute designated Castro regime members and Communists. The more liberal and leftist exile leaders feared that they might be targeted following a successful coup.”

Hancock also asserts that “documents reveal that David Morales, acting as Counter-intelligence officer for JMARC, had selected and arranged for extensive and special training of 39 Cuban exiles, designated as AMOTs …. Sanjenis was the individual who recruited Frank Sturgis … They would identify and contain rabid Castroites, Cuban Communists …” A final confirmation of Operation 40 comes from Grayston Lynch (a CIA officer involved in the Bay of Pigs): “The ship Lake Charles had transported the men of Operation 40 to the Cuban landing area. The men had been trained in Florida, apart from the regular Brigade members, and were to act as a military government after the overthrow of Castro.”

Other than Morales, Sanjenis, Sturgis, and Felix (probably Felix Rodriguez), it is difficult to pin down names of actual members with certainty. This author has not found any documentary traces. But there is no doubt that it existed and that it was a Top Secret project that was rolled over into the Bay of Pigs so that President Kennedy would not know about it. It was so secret that, according to Dan Hardway’s report for the HSCA, Richard Helms commissioned the study on Operation 40 to be done by his trusted aide Sam Halpern. Hardway wrote that only one person outside the Agency, reporter Andrew St. George, ever saw that report. Exactly who was in Operation 40 is a moot point; what is important to retain is that the most militant and violent Cuban exiles were recruited and trained by the CIA to perform covert operations against Cuba, Castro, and anyone who would get in their way no matter what country they were in and no matter who they were.

**The Mechanism’s Team Roster: The Big Leagues**

Out of the thousands of Cuban exiles living in the U.S., only a select few could be counted on to be part of the covert activities that would be used to remove Castro, and that became useful for the removal of Kennedy. These received special training in techniques used for combat, sabotage, assassinations and psychological warfare. The training would be provided by people such as Morales, Phillips and perhaps some soldiers of fortune.

When analyzing these figures, it is easy to see how many were, or could easily have been, linked to one another before and after the revolution and during the November 22, 1963, period. It is only by understanding the universes of the factions that worked together on that dark day that we can explain how Oswald and Kennedy’s lives came to their tragic ends.

The first 18 persons profiled were considered the most suspicious by the Cuban researchers. Because the Cuban data precedes 2006, we will enrich some of the pedigrees with more current information.

Table 1

Other persons of interest come from JFK: The Cuba Files and various other sources:

Table 2

Aftermath of the assassination

“Operation 40 is the grandmother and great-grandmother of all of the operations that are formed later.”

~ Fabian Escalante

The assassination of JFK was a landmark moment in American history. The country would go on to be rocked by a series of scandals that would see public confidence in politicians and media go into a tailspin. LBJ gave us Vietnam and Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Bobby Kennedy and John Lennon saw their freedom of speech rights contested, with extreme prejudice. Watergate, Iran/Contra, George Bush Junior’s weapons of mass destruction, and the Wall Street meltdown would follow. Now even U.S. grounds are the target of foreign rebels who have mastered the art of using terrorism tactics similar to those that were used against Cuba.

The role some of the members of the Mechanism played in future deep events adds credence to what is alleged about them regarding the removal of JFK. Their murderous accomplishments have their roots in the Dulles brothers’ worldviews. Allen Dulles’ protégé E. Howard Hunt became one of Nixon’s plumbers. In 1972, after Arthur Bremer attempted to assassinate presidential candidate George Wallace, Nixon aide Charles Colson asked Hunt to plant evidence in Bremer’s apartment that would frame George McGovern, the Democratic opponent. Hunt claims to have refused. Hunt, with his ex-CIA crony James McCord, and Cuban exiles Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez, together with Frank Sturgis, would all be arrested, and then let off rather easily for their roles in Watergate. Hunt would even demand and collect a ransom from the White House for his silence. In 1985, Hunt would lose the Liberty Lobby trial that, in large part, verified the infamous CIA memorandum from Jim Angleton to Richard Helms stating that they needed to create an alibi for Hunt being in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

Recruited by David Morales in 1967, Felix Rodriguez succeeded in his mission to hunt down and terminate Che Guevara in Bolivia. Rodriguez kept Guevara’s Rolex watch as a trophy. He also played a starring role in the Iran/Contra scandal. In the 1980s, Rodriguez was the bagman in the CIA’s deal with the Medellin cartel and often met with Oliver North. He was also a guest of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush at the White House.

In 1989, Loran Hall and his whole family were arrested for drug dealing.

As discussed earlier, Novo Sampol, Carilles (who also had links to Iran Contra), and Orlando Bosch continued in their roles in American-based terrorist activities for decades. Arrested in Panama, Luis Posada Carriles and Guillermo Novo were pardoned and released by Panama, in August, 2004. The Bush administration denied putting pressure on for the release. The Bush administration cannot deny providing safe haven to Bosch after an arrest in Costa Rica, which saw the U.S. decline an offer by the authorities to extradite Bosch to the United States.

Veciana continued for a while to participate in attempts to assassinate Castro. He eventually outed David Atlee Phillips. For his candor, he was possibly framed and thrown in jail on narcotics trafficking charges. He was also shot at. The Mafia may not have regained their Cuban empire, but they no longer had the Kennedys breathing down their necks. American imperialists and captains of industry set their sights on the exploitation Vietnam, Indonesia, the Middle East, Africa and cashed in on conflicts.

Risky Business

Being a member of the Mechanism also came with its share of professional risks—namely, short life expectancies. When the Warren Commission whitewash was taking place, there were few worries. When the more serious Garrison, Church and HSCA investigations were in full swing, the word cutoff took on a whole new meaning. Intelligence did not seem to bother too much about being linked to rowdy exiles and Mafiosi when it came to removing a communist; the removal of JFK … well, that must have been a different matter. There were many deaths that occurred before 1978 which were timely and varied from suspicious to murderous:

William Pawley died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, in January 1977.

Del Valle was murdered in 1967 when Garrison was tracking him down, shortly after David Ferrie’s suspicious death.

Sanjenis simply vanished in 1973.

Artime, Prío, Masferrer, Giancana, Hoffa, Roselli and Charles Nicoletti were all murdered between 1975 and 1977.

Martino, Harvey and Morales all died of heart attacks.

Out of some 45 network members discussed in this article, 18 did not survive the end of the HSCA investigation, 8 were clearly murdered and 7 of other deaths were both timely and suspicious.

Trafficante’s links

The unholy marriage of the CIA and the Mafia with the objective of removing Castro was initiated by Allen Dulles and Richard Bissell. They had Sheffield Edwards go through Robert Maheu (a CIA cut-out asset), to organize a partnership with mobsters Giancana and Trafficante using Johnny Roselli as the liaison. The CIA gave itself plausible deniability and the Mafia could hope to regain its Cuban empire and a have the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card in their back pockets.

William Harvey, author of executive action M.O. ZR/RIFLE, eventually oversaw the relationship between himself and Roselli, which involved assassination expert David Morales as Harvey’s special assistant.

Trafficante, who spoke Spanish, was the ideal mobster to organize a Castro hit because of his long established links on the Island. He was also seen as the CIA’s translator for the Cuban exiles. Through Tony Varona and Carlos Tepedino (AMWHIP-1), they tried to get Rolando Cubela (AMLASH) to murder Castro. Trafficante and his friends have very close ties to the Kennedy assassination, to the point where Robert Blakey (head of the HSCA) became convinced the mob was behind it. Blakey now seems to be open to the idea that the network was a lot larger.

Trafficante’s links to persons of interest

Victor Hernandez connects to Trafficante through his participation in the attempts to recruit Cubela, a potential hitman who had access to Castro. He wound up joining Carlos Bringuier in a Canal Street scuffle with Oswald that the arresting officer felt was for show. This was a key sheep-dipping moment of the eventual patsy. Loran Hall met Trafficante when the two were in jail in Cuba. He ran into him a couple of times in 1963. When the Warren Commission wanted the Sylvia Odio story to go away, Hall helped in the pointless tale that he in fact was one of the people who had met her.

Rolando Masferrer had links with Alpha 66, Trafficante and Hoffa. According to William Bishop, Hoffa gave Masferrer $50,000 to kill JFK. Frank Sturgis connects with so many of the people of interest in the JFK assassination that it would require a book to cover it all. He likely received Mafia financing for his anti-Castro operations. He is alleged to have links with Trafficante. So does Bernard Barker, who some think may have been impersonating a Secret Service agent behind the grassy knoll.

Fabian Escalante received intelligence (in part from prisoner Tony Cuesta) that Herminio Diaz and Eladio del Valle were part of the hit team and were in Dallas shortly before the assassination. Robert Blakey had the Diaz story corroborated by another Cuban exile. Diaz was Trafficante’s bodyguard and a hitman. Del Valle worked for Trafficante in the U.S. and was an associate of his in Cuba. It is important to note that Diaz’ background fits well with what is alleged, however some doubt the hearsay used to accuse him.

John Martino showed pre-knowledge of the assassination and admitted a support role as a courier. He also helped in propaganda efforts to link Castro with Oswald. He worked in one of Trafficante’s Cuban casinos.

As we have seen in an earlier section, Jack Ruby’s links to Trafficante are many. He is known to have spoken often with underworld personalities very closely linked to Trafficante, Marcello and the Chicago mob during the days leading up to the assassination. These include McWillie, James Henry Dolan and Dallas’ number two mobster Joe Campisi. We all know what he did two days after the coup. His seeming nonchalance in implicating others may have led to his demise while in jail.

The following excerpts from the HSCA report should leave no doubt in the historians’ minds about the significance of just who Ruby’s friends were, what he was up to, and just how badly the Warren Commission misled the American people by describing him as another unstable loner:

… He [Ruby] had a significant number of associations and direct and indirect contacts with underworld figures, a number of whom were connected to the most powerful La Cosa Nostra leaders.

… Ruby had been personally acquainted with two professional killers for the organized crime syndicate in Chicago, David Yaras and Lenny Patrick. The committee established that Ruby, Yaras and Patrick were in fact acquainted during Ruby’s years in Chicago.

… The committee also deemed it likely that Ruby at least met various organized crime figures in Cuba, possibly including some who had been detained by the Cuban government.

… The committee developed circumstantial evidence that makes a meeting between Ruby and Trafficante a distinct possibility …

… The committee concluded that Ruby was also probably in telephonic contact with Mafia executioner Lenny Patrick sometime during the summer of 1963.

… The Assassinations Committee established that Jack Ruby was a friend and business associate of Joseph Civello, Carlos Marcello’s deputy in Dallas.

… Joe Campisi was Ruby’s first visitor after his imprisonment for murdering the President’s alleged assassin. (Incredibly, the Dallas Police did not record the ten-minute conversation between Oswald’s murderer and a man known to be a close associate of Carlos Marcello’s deputy inDallas.)

… The committee had little choice but to regard the Ruby-Campisi relationship and the Campisi-Marcello relationship as yet another set of associations strengthening the committee’s growing suspicion of the Marcello crime family’s involvement in a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy or execute the President’s alleged assassin or both.

…As for Jack Ruby’s connections with the Marcello organization in New Orleans, the committee was to confirm certain connections the FBI had been aware of at the time of the assassination but had never forcefully brought to the attention of the Warren Commission.

Jack Ruby’s connections to the mob and his actions before, during and after the assassination were obviously a chokepoint for HSCA investigators. If we analyze Trafficante’s points of contact with very suspicious figures, one can easily argue that we have another.

All these relationships should be enough to suggest that Trafficante played a role in the hit, at the very least in the recruitment of Ruby to eliminate Oswald. Over and above being tightly connected with key leaders of the Cuban exile community, he has at least nine (seven definite) links with people who became actors in the Kennedy assassination and/or Oswald’s universe (five definite and four plausible). Any serious investigator cannot file this away as coincidental or innocuous.

David Phillips’ links to Oswald

For a historian, pushing data collection further in this area and synthesizing the data would lead them to a new hypothesis: They would concur with Blakey that the mob was involved in the assassination.

This would lead to a completely new area of investigation (that Blakey sadly dismissed) regarding who was complicit with the mob, which would invariably lead to data collection around CIA mob contacts such as William Harvey and David Morales who link up with our next subject. David Phillips’ overlap with the world of Oswald left some investigators from the Church and HSCA Committees with the feeling that they were within striking distance of identifying him as one of the plotters. That is when George Joannides and George Bush came in and saved the day.

For exhibit 2, we can lazily accept that the entwinement of Phillips’ world with Oswald’s was mere happenstance, or conclude logically that it was by design:

Phillips’ links to Oswald

If Oswald was in fact a lone malcontent who somehow drifted by chance into the Texas School Book Depository, how can one even begin to explain so many ties with a CIA officer who just happened to be in charge of the Cuba desk in Mexico City, running the CIA’s anti-Fair Play for Cuba Committee campaign, and one of the agency’s premier propaganda experts? The perfect person to sheep-dip Oswald and to apply ZR/RIFLE strategies of blaming a coup on an opponent, ties into over 20 different events that were used to frame Oswald, blame Castro or hide the truth. He also connects well with up to six other patsy candidates who, like Oswald, all had links with the FPCC and made strange travels to Mexico City. It is no wonder the HSCA and Church Committee investigators found him to be suspicious and lying constantly, even while under oath.

He made no fewer than four quasi-confessions, and his close colleague E. Howard Hunt confirmed his involvement in the crime.

David Phillips’ name does not appear anywhere in the Warren Commission report. Nor in the 26 accompanying volumes. Which is especially startling in light of the fact that he was running the Agency’s anti-FPCC crusade.

Conclusion

JFK’s assassination has been partially solved. The arguments that can satisfy the skeptics are not yet fully streamlined and the willingness of the fourth estate and historians to finally shed light on this historical hot potato is still weak.

Blue-collar and violent crimes perpetuated by individuals get the lion’s share of the publicity and serve to divert attention away from what is really holding America back. Behind the Wall Street meltdown, there were scores of white-collar criminals who almost caused a full-fledged depression. How many went to jail? Who were they? It is pure naiveté to believe that such crimes will get the attention of politicians, yet the limited studies on the matter indicate that they cost society over ten times more than blue-collar crime.

State-crimes are almost never solved, let alone investigated. Politicians, media and the power elite fear being dragged into the chaos that would be caused by a collapse of public trust and avoid these issues like the plague. However, every now and then, a Church Committee does come along and exposes dirty secrets that, instead of hurting the country, will help straighten the course. The catalyst often comes from the youth who were behind the downfall of Big Tobacco and are now taking on the NRA.

This article helps dispel the notion that the Cuban exiles, Mafia and CIA partnership was too complicated to have taken place. There is still explaining to do on how the Secret Service and Dallas Police Department were brought in to play their roles, but researchers like Vince Palamara have already revealed a lot in these areas. At least four of the people Oswald crossed paths with in the last months of his life had cryptonyms (Rodriguez, Hernandez, Bartes and Veciana). If the alleged sightings of him with other Cuban exiles are to be believed and other cryptonyms were to be decoded, that number would more than triple. Still other crypto-coded figures, who may not have met him, played a role in framing him. Still others are persons of interest in the assassination itself. By really exploring Oswald’s universe, we can get a glimpse of who some of the first line players and their bosses were. It is world of spooks, Mafiosi, Cuban exiles and shady businessmen who were part of, or hovered around, the “Cuban-American Mechanism”.

If we were to push this exercise even further and explore the universes of Phillips, Morales and Harvey, we would fall into the world of Allen Dulles, a world brilliantly looked into by David Talbot in The Devil’s Chessboard and also by Fletcher Prouty. Understanding Dulles’ CIA and Sullivan & Cromwell’s links to the power brokers of his era would probably go a long way in explaining how the plot was called.

It is this author’s opinion that today’s power elite are not far away from having the conditions needed to let this skeleton out of the closet. Their cutoff is time: most of the criminals have already passed away. Another cutoff may be Allen Dulles himself: he is long dead and he was not a formal part of the CIA when the crime took place. But as Talbot showed, the trails to him are still quite palpable.

He may end up being the one who takes the most heat. And deservedly so.

Appendix: Cuban exile groups judged to be of average importance in CIA handbook

Asociacion de Amigos Aureliano AAA — Association of Friends of Aureliano

Asociacion de Amigos de Aureliano – Independiente AAA-I — Association of Friends of Aureliano – Independent

Accion Cubana AC — Cuban Action

Asociacion Catolica Universitaria ACU – Catholic University Group

Agrupacion de Infanteria de Combat AIC — Combat Infantry Group

Alianza para la Libertad de Cuba ALC — Alliance for the Liberty of Cuba

Agrupacion Montecristi (AM) — Montecristi Group

Buro Internacional de la Legion Anticomunista BILA — International Bureau Anti-Communist Legion

Batallon de Brigada BB — Brigade Battalion

Bloque de Organizaciones Anti-Comunista BOAC — Bloc of Anti-Communist Organizations

Comite Anti-Comunista de Ayuda a la Liberacion Cubana CACALC — Anti-Communist Committee to Aid Cuban Liberation

Comite Coordinador de Organizaciones Democraticas Cubanas en Puerto Rico CCODC — Coordinating Committee of Democratic Organizations for Cuban in Puerto Rico

Cruzada Femenina Cubana CFC — Cuban Women’s Crusade

Confederacion Profesionales Universitarios Cubanos en el Exilio — Confederation of Cuban University Professional in Exile

Confederacion de Trabajadores de Cuba en Exilio CTCE — Confederation of Cuban Workers in Exile

Directorio Magisterial Revolucionario DMR — Revolutionary Teachers Directorate

Ejercito Invasor Cubano EIC — Cuban Invading Army

Ejercito Libertador de Cuba ELC — Liberating Army of Cuba

Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional (ELN) — National Liberation Army

Frente Anticomunista Cristiano FAC — Christian Anti-communist Front

Fuerzas Armadas de Cuba En El Exilio (FACE) — Armed Forces of Cuba in Exile

Fuerza Anticomunista de Liberacion (in US) FAL — Anti-Communist Liberation Force

Fuerzas Armadas y Civiles Anticomunistas FAYCA — Armed Forces and Civilian Anti-Communists

Federacion Estudiantil Universitaria FEU — University Students’ Federation

Frente de Liberacion Nacional FLN — National Liberation Front

Frente Nacional Democratica Triple A (FNDTA) — National Democratic Front (Triple A)

Frente Organizado Anticomunista Cubano FOAC — Organized Anti-Communist Cuban Front

Frente Obrero Revolucionario Democratico Cubano FORDC – Labor Revolutionary Democratic Front of Cuba

Frente Revolucionaria Anti-Comunista FRAC — Anti-Communist Revolutionary Front

Frente Unido de Liberacion Nacional FULN — United Front of National Liberation

Gobierno Interno de Liberacion Anticomunista GILA — Internal Government of Anti-Communist Liberation

Ingenieros de Combate Commando 100 — (Commando 100 Combat Engineers)

Juventud Anticomunista Revolucionaria JAR — Revolutionary Anti-Communist Youth

Junta Nacional Revolucionaria JNR — National Revolutionary Unity

Junta Revolucionaria Cubana JURE — Cuban Revolutionary Unity

Movimiento de Accion Revolucionaria MAR — Revolutionary Action Movement

Movimiento Democratica Liberacion MDL — Democratic Movement for Liberation

Movimiento Democratico Martiano MDM — Marti Democratic Movement (also Frente Democratico Martiano)

Movimiento Masonico Clandestino MMC — Masonic Clandestine Movement

Movimiento Revolucionario Accion Cubana MRAC — Cuban Action Revolutionary Movement

Movimiento Recuperacion Revolucionaria Cubano — Cuban Revolutionary Recovery Movement

Organizacion Autentico OA – Authentic Organization

Operacion ALFA 66 — Operation ALPHA 66

Organizacion del Ejercito Secreto Anticomunista OESA — Organization of the Anti-Communist Secret Army

Pro-Gobierno Constitucional de Cuba en Exilio PGCC — Pro-Constitutional Government of Cuba

Partido Revolucionario Cubana (Autentico) PRC — Cuban Revolutionary Party (Autentico)

Resistencia Agramonte RA — Agramonte Resistance

Segundo Frente Nacional de Escambray SFNE — Second National Front of the Escambray

Unidad Cubana de Accion Libertadora UCAL — Cuban Union of Liberating Action

Unidad de Liberacion Nacional (de Cuba) ULN — National Liberation Unity

Union Nacional Democratica “Movimiento 20 de Mayo” UND — Democratic National Union “May 20”

Union Nacional de Instituciones Revolucionarias UNI — National Union of Revolutionary Institutions

The author wishes to express his thanks to Kennedys And King and to Chris La May for their proofreading and assistance with graphics.

Addendum

The following FBI teletype shows how the cooperation between the Mafia and the anti-Castro Cubans continued right up to the month of the assassination, despite JFK’s orders to cease and desist. The FBI informant states that Trafficante offered to pay for the arms and ammo purchased from the mob by the Cubans through him, provided they could demonstrate it would be used in efforts against Castro. [The editors]

April 12, 2018

With more to come, new JFK documents offer fresh leads 54 years later

By Kevin G. Hall, At: MSN News

January 13, 2018
JFK Declassified: Tracking Oswald, Part 7
Part 6

Part 5

Part 4

Part 3

Part 2

Part 1

The 2017 release of JFK assassination files has shown that the national security agencies are not subject to the JFK Records Act (1992) and we, the people, have no right to know their secrets, but must settle for mostly or entirely redacted and even illegible materials. An accessory to the fact is the mainstream media, whose willful deception would have us believe that “there’s nothing here” or, if there is something, it should be a Red conspiracy.

The History Channel did its bit by extending the infamous series JFK Declassified: Tracking Oswald 1 with a seventh part that is an in-your-face flipped bird to the public. The ineffable Bob Baer reentered the game of deception as “one of the most intelligence minds in the world.” He boasted about having his own network of former CIA and FBI agents who “can tell me what I should be looking at and what to dismiss” within the complex milieu of the newly declassified JFK files. Poor Bob. He needs to set up his own front group to mislead the global media audience about a crucial American tragedy. The Warren Commission critics going through each and every document can’t be trusted.

Foreknowledge?

Among the stories indicating awareness of the coming JFK assassination2, Baer purposely picked the blatant lie of Cuban defector Florentino Aspillaga3 and a dubious phone call trickily turned into an explosive discovery in the light of a memo from Jim Angleton, CIA Counterintelligence Chief, to FBI Director Hoover. It was dated on November 26, 1963 (NARA 104-10079-10262) and the gist reads thus: “At 18:05 GMT [12:05 Dallas] on 22 November [1963] an anonymous telephone call was made in Cambridge, England, to the senior reporter of the Cambridge News. The caller said only that the Cambridge News reporter should call the American Embassy for some big news and then rang off.”

Baer’s discovery is a trick since both Angleton’s memo and the original CIA cable of 23 November 1963 from London (NARA 1993.07.22.14:03:15:250530) were already available to the HSCA forty years ago. Moreover, the British Security Service (MI-5) has never revealed the identity of the reporter, if any, who picked up the phone. The story itself has been neither published by the Cambridge newspaper nor even addressed as a topic of conversation by its staffers.4

Since there is no quantum of proof for discerning within the range of possibilities5—from a prank with coincidental timing to a conspiratorial move—Baer’s mix of the Cambridge uncertainty with Aspillaga’s falsehood is likely the worst approach to understand who would have been behind Kennedy’s death.

A Missing Link?

In the fourth part, “The Cuban Connection,” Baer and his partner, former police officer Adam Bercovici, dealt with Antonio Veciana’s6 account of having seen Maurice Bishop with Oswald in Dallas in the late summer of 1963. Bercovici blurted out: “There’s your co-conspirator. He [Oswald] had on-the-ground assistance in Dallas.” Nonetheless, they withheld the critical info that Bishop was David Atlee Phillips, a covert action officer running anti-Castro operations at the CIA Station in Mexico City by that time.7

In the seventh part, they avoid keeping track of Phillips and resort to a “document [that] alone could destroy any conversation about Oswald being a lone wolf.” Not all that much, Bob. Your document (NARA 180-10141-10191) reduces to a handwritten note from October 2, 1967, by Bernardo de Torres, the first CIA agent to infiltrate D.A. Jim Garrison’s office.8 The note merely states that some Rene Carballo, a Cuban refugee living in New Orleans, “thinks head of training camp at [Lake] Ponchartrain was ‘El Mexicano’ [who] accompanied LHO to Mex[ico] City.”

This note was also available to the HSCA, so Baer should have used it earlier, but he even missed the primary source: the main FBI Headquarters file [62-109060] on the JFK assassination. It contains a teletype from May 11, 1967 (Section 131, pp. 19-20) about Carlos Bringuier9 advising the FBI in New Orleans that Carballo “was conducting his own investigation into the death of President Kennedy and had determined that Richard Davis was not actually in charge of the anti-Castro training camp near Lake Ponchartrain, but it was actually run by a man known as ‘El Mexicano.’ Carballo opined it was this man, ‘El Mexicano,’ who accompanied Lee Harvey Oswald to the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City.”

The Cuban refugee Francisco Rodriguez-Tamayo, a.k.a. “El Mexicano” [The Mexican],10 is a delusional choice for both an Oswald companion11 in Mexico City and a head of a training camp elsewhere. No “fellow traveler” has been identified in the alleged Oswald’s route from New Orleans to Mexico City or during his stay there. Likewise, Richard Davis comes across the story because of the training camp at Lacombe, set up in 1962 for the Intercontinental Penetration Force (INTERPEN) and operated in the summer of 1963 by an amorphous anti-Castro group.12

Baer had already plunged into confusion during the third part, “Oswald Goes Dark,”13 trying to shed light on him as an ex-Marine engaged in paramilitary exercises with Cuban exiles. Baer and his team went to the training camp at Belle Chasse, headquarter of the CIA operation JM/MOVE, run by Higinio “Nino” Diaz (AM/NORM-1) in 1961. In those days, Oswald was living in Minsk (Belarus).

As leaders of the training camp at Lacombe, the Garrison probe identified Davis, Laureano Batista (AM/PALM-2) and Victor Paneque (AM/RUG-5), but in no way “El Mexicano.”14 Although any sensible citizen would prefer Garrison over Carballo, Baer recklessly keeps on forging his missing link to Oswald by attributing to “El Mexicano” a dual nature of professional assassin and Castro agent.

For the former, Baer musters an FBI report from June 28, 1968 (NARA 124-90158-10027) about an informant saying that “El Mexicano” had been arrested in Caracas, Venezuela, “on a charge of an alleged assassination attempt against an unknown individual.” Baer doesn’t give a damn about the additional info. There was “no sufficient evidence to prosecute the case (…) except that [“El Mexicano”] had apparently entered the country illegally.”

For the latter, Baer applies the same clumsy rule of evidence. He deems as “smoking gun” a CIA internal memo from March 19, 1963 (NARA 104-10180-10247) about the following intel furnished by “an untested source.” In El Principe prison (Havana), the source spoke briefly with death row inmate Roberto Perez-Cruzata, who asked him to tell the U.S. authorities that “El Mexicano” was “a paid agent of the Cuban government in Miami.” Perez-Cruzata added he had learned it from Major Efigenio Ameijeiras during an interrogation. Ameijeiras also told him that his anti-Cuban government activities had been reported by “El Mexicano.”

Baer does not seem at all to be intrigued by the curious case of Major Ameijeiras, chief of Castro’s National Revolutionary Police (PNR), burning a Castro agent before a Brigade 2506 prisoner under interrogation.15 Nor did he pay attention to the follow-up by CIA, FBI, and Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Instead of remaining under a cloud of suspicion as Castro agent, “El Mexicano” was reported talking about bombing a ship bound for Cuba, delivering silencers along with Luis Posada-Carriles (AM/CLAVE-15) and even trafficking drugs with Ricardo “The Monkey” Morales (AM/DESK-1).

A Russian-Cuban Probe?

With the preconceived idea that the KGB and the Cuban Intelligence Services (CuIS) worked in tandem to kill Kennedy, and that the FBI Director Hoover covered it up to avoid a nuclear WW III, Baer continues his far-fetched story about KGB officer Valery Vladimirovich Kostikov—who served at the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City under the official cover of vice-consul—in order to pass off an ill-founded allegation as the greatest worry: “The fact that Oswald is essentially being handled by Kostikov.”

Since the first two parts, “The Iron Meeting” and “The Russian Network,” Baer had been trying to present the Kostikov-Oswald connection as emerging from hitherto little known evidence. Yet in 1964, the Warren Report identified Kostikov as KGB officer (page 309) and established that Oswald “had dealt with [him]” (page 734). Moreover, the CIA informed the Warren Commission that “Kostikov is believed to work for Department Thirteen (…) responsible for executive action, including sabotage and assassination (Commission Document 347, p. 10).

As a somehow sparklingly brand-new item, Baer shows a CIA memo of 23 Nov 1963 (NARA 104-10015-10056) that was partially, but well enough declassified in 1995. It was prepared by the acting chief of the CIA Soviet Russia Division, Tennent “Pete” Bagley, who linked Kostikov as officer of “the KGB’s 13^th Department” with Oswald as “a KGB agent on a sensitive mission [who] can (sic) be met in official installations [as the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City] using as cover (…) some sort of open business [like requesting an entry visa in the Soviet Union].” Baer again has simply left the audience in the dark. Both of these assumptions led straight to a Red conspiracy theory which has long been discredited and may be deemed defunct.

For the sake of argument, let’s accept Kostikov was “head of Department Thirteen”, as Baer affirms and stresses with a flashback scene from Oleg Nechiporenko’s interview in part two. Baer conveniently forgets that his interviewee—who met Oswald as well in his capacity of KGB counterintelligence officer under official cover of vice consul—rebutted Bagley’s assumption about Oswald, which presupposes he would have been recruited before meeting Kostikov. Nechiporenko not only emphatically denied this,16 but also demonstrated that the two very brief Oswald contacts with Kostikov did not add up to agent handling. They were nothing more than the coincidental meeting of an American visa applicant with a competent Soviet consular official.17

Both the FBI and CIA were tracking Kostikov before Oswald showed up in Mexico City, but by June 25, 1963, Angleton assured Hoover that the CIA “could locate no information” indicating he was an officer of Department Thirteen.18

If there had been any serious concern about Oswald meeting Kostikov, Langley would have advised strengthening surveillance on both after receiving this piece of intel from the CIA station in Mexico City: “American male who spoke broken Russian said his name LEE OSWALD (phonetic), stated he at SOVEMB on 28 Sept when spoke with consul whom he believed be Valery Vladimirovich Kostikov” (MEXI 6453, 8 Oct 1963). Quite the contrary, Langley abstained from giving such an instruction and even omitted any reference to Kostikov while providing ODACID (State Department), ODENVY (FBI) and ODOATH (Navy) with the intel (DIR 74673, 10 Oct 1963).

The following month, Oswald broke the news as prime suspect of the JFK assassination without having been grilled by the FBI, the CIA or the Secret Service about his travel to Mexico. In tune with Bagley’s allegation, Angleton changed his mind about Kostikov to deflect the attention from a CIA failure to a KGB plot. On February 6, 1976, however, Angleton recanted before the Church Committee: “There’s never been any confirmation [that Kostikov] was 13^th Department.”19

The connection between Kostikov and Oswald surfaced in a phone call to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City on October 1, 1963. The call was taped by the CIA operation LIENVOY and made—according to its transcriber Boris Tarasoff—by “the same person who had called a day or so ago [namely Saturday 28^th of September] and spoken in broken Russian:”20
- Caller: Hello, this LEE OSWALD speaking. I was at your place last Saturday and spoke to a Consul, and they say that they’d send a telegram to Washington, so I wanted to find out if you have anything new? But I don’t remember the name of that Consul.
- Soviet guard: KOSTIKOV. He is dark?
- Caller: Yes. My name is OSWALD.
Baer ignores the proven facts that since Oswald spoke fluent Russian and the FBI deduced it was not his voice on the tapes, Oswald was impersonated during both phone calls, and that CIA officer Anne Goodpasture, dubbed “the station’s troubleshooter” by Phillips, made up a fake story—which has passed into history as “The Mystery Man”—about Oswald at the Soviet Embassy, as well as hid from Langley Oswald’s visit to the Cuban Embassy. This series of facts lead immediately to the debunking of Baer’s and all other Red conspiracies. Based on the newly declassified November 24, 1963 FBI report about Oswald’s murder by Ruby (NARA 180-10110-10104), Baer emphasizes that Hoover covered up after the assassination; but the whole series deliberately overlooks that—before the assassination—the CIA had already engaged in a cover-up that had nothing to do with fear of nuclear war.

Ironically, Baer’s suspect Fidel Castro posed the most immediate and critical challenge to Hoover’s decision to close the case after Ruby killed Oswald:

As if it were a matter not of the President of the United States, but of a dog killed in the street, they declared the case closed with 48 hours. The case was closed when the case was becoming less closeable, when the case was becoming more mysterious, when the case was becoming more suspicious, when the case was becoming worthier of investigation from the judicial and criminal point of view.21

Baer tries to muddle through somehow by doing a pathetic pirouette. The Soviets “hand off Oswald to the Cubans” after he showed up in Mexico City as “an opportunity” that the KGB couldn’t seize, “because there was no plausible deniability.” Sure Bob, sure. The KBG offloaded Oswald on Cuban G-2 knowing the latter had no plausible deniability either, since Oswald had visited the Cuban Embassy, which was under CIA surveillance as heavy as at the Soviet Embassy.

So, far removed from common sense, Baer repeats the same old and silly song from Part Three22 about Mexican consular clerk Silvia Duran being a CuIS agent who met American visa applicant Lee Harvey Oswald outside the Cuban Consulate at a twist party … to put him up to killing Kennedy! Baer simply replaced the original mouthpiece for this story, the late Mexican writer Elena Garro, with her nephew Francisco Garro, as if a false allegation might come true by repetition.

A Self-Destructive Production?

Unwilling to delve into the body of evidence, Baer misses the chance to prevent extremely botched scenes like the discussion around Kostikov. After the voice-over narrator notes that his CIA Personality File [201-305052] “had never been released,” the telephone rings. A 167-page portion (1965-1975) of the Kostikov 201 file (NARA 104-10218-10032) has been finally declassified, although the camera focuses on a different file number [201-820393]. Baer brought former FBI analyst Farris Rookstool III to dig deeper into the lack of coordination between the FBI and the CIA, but Kostikov was in fact under well-coordinated surveillance by both agencies. Kostikov was handling a German national living in Oklahoma, Guenter Schulz, who was a double agent codenamed TUMBLEWEED by the FBI and AEBURBLE by the CIA. Bagley’s allegation that Kostikov worked for Department Thirteen was indeed based on the intel that—together with Oleg Brykin, “a known officer” of said department—he had been “pinpointing objectives for sabotage” to Schulz. Instead of the travels to Oklahoma City listed in the index of the referred volume, Rookstool points out the travels to San Diego and Baer makes up from who knows what information that Kostikov had been there planning “some sort of assassination or sabotage.”

In order to suggest that the KGB and the CuIS may have engaged in “massive coordination”23 to kill Kennedy, Baer brought in another media puppet, The Guardian (U.K.) foreign correspondent Luke Harding, who broached a false analogy with a joint operation by the KGB and Bulgarian State Security. On September 7, 1978, the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was mortally wounded in London by a ricin-filled pellet shot from a silenced gun concealed inside an umbrella. The problem is that this so-called “Umbrella Murder” was a far cry from the highly unlikely assassination of a Western official by the KBG and its allied services,24 and even less similar to Castro’s strategy against the U.S. dirty war. Thanks to his system-centered thinking style, Castro prevailed by carving out an ironclad personal security against the CIA assassination plots and infiltrating to the core both the CIA and the Cuban exile community.

In this seventh part, Baer utters: “I’m not doing this for the camera.” He’s damn right. Not so much due to poor TV production, but essentially because it is self-evident that he is just muddying the waters, even at the humiliating cost of lingering over the soft-headed folly that Castro wasn’t aware of an obvious fact: that killing a sitting U.S. President wouldn´t solve anything25—for by 1963, Operation Mongoose had been terminated—while it would surely risk everything.

Since 1963, the CIA has been trying to blame the Kennedy assassination on Cuba. Each time the claim has been exposed to scrutiny, it has collapsed. It is disheartening to see that, on the occasion of the final declassification of the JFK files, 54 years on, Baer is still beating that dead horse.

NOTES

1 See the six-part review on this website.

2 Some of these stories are plausible, as the tape-recorded prediction by right-wing extremist Joseph Milteer in Miami, or the incidents related to Silvia Odio in Dallas and Rose Cherami in Louisiana.

3 See “An Apocryphal Story as Baer’s Cornerstone” in JFK Declassified: Tracking Oswald, Part 6.

4 Cf. “Did Cambridge News reporter really take a call before the JFK assassination?,” Cambridge News, 27 Oct 2017.

5 See Mark Bridger’s analysis, “Foreknowledge in England,” Dealey Plaza Echo, Vol. 9, Issue 2, pp. 1-16.

6 For a biographical sketch, see Antonio Veciana: Trained to Kill Kennedy Too?

7 On November 3, 2017, four of Phillips’ files were released. His 358-page Office of Personnel file has neither the fitness reports from 1956 to 1965 nor a single record from 1961 to 1965. The other three may be operational files, but they are so heavily redacted that no relevant data is to be found.

8 De Torres was a private detective who worked under David “El Indio” Sanchez Morales for the CIA Station in Miami (JM/WAVE). He served as Chief of Intelligence for the Brigade 2506 and was captured during the Bay of Pigs invasion. After being released, he resumed work in the private sector. Early in the Garrison probe, he offered help dropping the name of Garrison’s friend and Miami D.A. Richard Gerstein. Shortly after Garrison asked him to find Eladio del Valle, the latter was found murdered inside his car in Miami. Garrison eventually realized De Torres was undermining the JFK investigation and working for JM/WAVE.

^⁹ Bringuier was a Cuban exile affiliated with the CIA-backed Student Revolutionary Directorate (DRE – AM/SPELL for the CIA). On August 9, 1963, he confronted Oswald handing out pro-Castro leaflets in New Orleans. Shortly after, he debated with Oswald on radio WDSU about the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC). He was instrumental in the first printed JFK conspiracy theory. On November 23, 1963, a special edition of DRE’s monthly magazine Trinchera [Trenches] linked Oswald to Castro under the headline “The Presumed Assassins.”

10 On December 14, 1959, Castro lashed out against “El Mexicano” during the trial of Major Hubert Matos (AM/LIGHT-1): “Who was the first to accuse us of Communists? That captain of the Rebel Army who was arrested for abusing and getting drunk, known as ‘El Mexicano’ (…) He came to Havana, entered a military barrack, conferred on himself the rank of captain again, and as soon as he realized that his situation was untenable, he left for the United States and made the first statement of resignation from the army because the revolution was communist.” On June 25, 1959, “El Mexicano” told Stanley Ross, editor of the Spanish-language newspaper El Diario de Nueva York, that Castro had embezzled 4.5 million Cuban pesos raised for the revolution.

11 Baer is not the first to entertain this canard. In autumn 1964, a certain Gladys Davis advised the FBI that a “El Mexicano” had brought Oswald to her former marital residence in Coral Gables, Florida, “about August or September of 1959 or possibly 1960.” “El Mexicano” replied he never had contact with Oswald. The case was put to rest because Mrs. Davis was lying in an attempt to get FBI help in a custody dispute against her former husband. Cf. FBI 105-82555 Oswald HQ File, Section 220, pp. 95 ff.

12 “Playboy Interview: Jim Garrison,” Playboy Magazine, October 1967, p. 159 (NARA 104-10522-10109).

13 See “Rocking the Refugee Boat” in JFK Declassified: Tracking Oswald, Part 3.

14 Cf. Garrison Investigation – Volume I, pp. 43 ff. (NARA 1994.05.06.08:43:35:150005).

15 Perez-Cruzata was a former PNR sergeant sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment for killing Dr. Rafael Escalona Almeida on January 10, 1959, while the latter was under arrest. Perez-Cruzata escaped from La Cabana prison on July 1, 1959, and took refuge in the U.S. His extradition was denied (Ramos v. Diaz, 179 F. Supp. 459 / S.D. Fla. 1959). He ventured to return to Cuba with the Brigade 2506 and after a summary trial in Santa Clara (central Cuba), he ended up being one of the only five prisoners executed by a firing squad on September 9, 1961.

16 The CIA should have known it since the defection of KGB officer Yuri Nosenko on April 1964. He claimed having seen the KGB files compiled on Oswald during his stay in the Soviet Union and found Oswald was neither recruited nor used as agent. However, Nosenko’s chief handler, Pete Bagley, suspected he was a plant to convey false intel. The newly released file (NARA 104-10534-10205) about the case study on Nosenko shows he was “a bona fide defector [who was not] properly handled, [since] the variety of techniques used (…) did not conform to any generally accepted sense of the term methodology.”

17 Cf. Nechiporenko’s book Passport to Assassination (Birch Lane/Carol Publishing, 1993, pp. 28-29, 66-81). On September 27, Kostikov promptly handed off Oswald to counterintelligence officer Nechiporenko, right after checking his documents and learning he was a re-defector from the Soviet Union. On September 28, Oswald was attended by consul Pavel Yatskov. Kostikov just walked in and briefed Yatskov about Oswald’s previous visit. Then Nechiporenko arrived, but did not take part in the meeting. The scene dramatized with Oswald at a table before three Soviet officials is simply a botch job.

18 Admin Folder-X6: HSCA Administrative Folder, CIA reports LHO, p. 51 (NARA 124-10369-10063).

19 Testimony of James Angleton, pp. 62 f. (NARA 157-10014-10003).

20 Since the Mexican security police known as DFS was the CIA’s partner in the wiretapping operation, the transcripts of this and four more CIA taped calls related to Oswald are available in Spanish and some in English (NARA 104-10413-1007).

21 Cf. live speech by Castro at the University of Havana on November 27, 1963 (Commission Exhibit 2954).

22 See “The Twist Party” in JFK Declassified: Tracking Oswald, Part 3.

23 Both agencies did engage in massive coordination precisely in Harding’s homeland, after around 100 KGB officers under diplomatic cover were expelled from London in September 1971. The CuIS took over some KGB operations in the UK, but none related to assassination of foreign leaders. Cf. Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, “KGB: The Inside Story of its Foreign Operation from Lenin to Gorbachev”, Sceptre, 1991, p. 514.

24 Cf. “Soviet Use of Assassination and Kidnapping” (NARA 104-10423-10278). Rather than killing statemen, the KGB did its best to encourage the idea that the CIA had been involved in the JFK assassination and even that its methods to kill Castro had been taken into consideration against other foreign leaders. Indira Gandhi, for instance, became obsessed with it. Cf. Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The World Was Going Our Way, Basic Books, 2005, p. 18.

25 In 1984, Castro ordered that President Reagan be advised about an extreme right-wing conspiracy to kill him. CuIS furnished all the intel to U.S. Security Chief at United Nations. The FBI quietly proceeded to dismantle the plot in North Carolina. Cf. Nestor Garcia-Iturbe’s account in “Cuba-US: Cuban Government Save Reagan’s Life.”
January 11, 2018
Oswald’s Intelligence Connections: How Richard Schweiker clashes with Fake History
“We do know Oswald had intelligence connections. Everywhere

you look with him, there are fingerprints of intelligence.”

~Senator Richard Schweiker, The Village Voice, 1975

Introduction

There are many statements from official sources that contradict Warren Commission findings and most history books’ description of the JFK assassination. They are on the record in the numerous reports following other governmental investigations of the JFK assassination or they were captured in interviews and writings of many of those directly involved in them, but Schweiker’s was perhaps the most damning. Not only because of what he said, but also because of who he was.

Schweiker was a well-respected Republican politician who served under President Reagan from 1981 to 1983 as Secretary of Health and Human Services. He served over 20 years as a Pennsylvania U.S. Representative (1961–1969) and U.S. Senator (1969–1981). In 1976, he had an unsuccessful run to become Vice President in Reagan’s losing presidential campaign.

Most crucial for the purposes of this essay, from 1975 to 1976, Schweiker was a member of the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. Which, in deference to its chair Senator Frank Church, was commonly known as the Church Committee. This famous investigative body issued fourteen reports after interviewing hundreds of witnesses and studying thousands of files from the FBI, CIA and other agencies.

Thanks to its work, this is when most Americans were first told about the infamous U.S. assassination plots against foreign leaders, which were a key component of CIA regime control or “change operations”. Targets included the Congo’s Patrice Lumumba, Fidel Castro of Cuba, the Diem brothers in Vietnam, General Schneider of Chile and President Trujillo of the Dominican Republic. Ex CIA director Allen Dulles’ pact with the mob to assassinate Castro was also part of their findings. This information, which could have had an impact on the Warren Commission investigation, was kept secret by Dulles while he served on the Commission –– something CIA historians now refer to as a benign cover-up.

Under senators Gary Hart and Richard Schweiker, the Church Committee also conducted a focused investigation (Book 5) of the Kennedy assassination, concentrating on how the FBI and CIA supported the Warren Commission. Its report was very critical of these agencies:

“… developed evidence which impeaches the process by which the intelligence agencies arrived at their own conclusions about the assassination, and by which they provided information to the Warren Commission. This evidence indicates that the investigation of the assassination was deficient.”

To say the least, Schweiker was quite vocal in his views. Consider the following instances:

In 1976 he told CBS News that the CIA and FBI lied to the Warren Commission and that the case could be solved if they followed hot new leads. He also claimed that the White House was part of the cover up.

In a BBC documentary, The Killing of President Kennedy, he made the following blistering statement about the Warren Commission investigation:

“The Warren Commission has in fact collapsed like a house of cards and I believe it was set up at the time to feed pabulum to the American people for reasons not yet known, and one of the biggest cover-ups in the history of our country occurred at that time.”

In this revealing documentary, he goes on to say that the highest levels of government were behind him and his committee being mislead. They were continuing the cover-up, and also that Oswald was clearly involved with pro-Castro and anti-Castro groups, which smacked of an intelligence role as a double agent, and that these relationships were not investigated.

In his Kennedys and King article, JFK and the Unforgivable, this author chronicled some thirty examples of other investigation insiders who contradict the Warren Commission’s conclusions about Oswald being a Lone Nut assassin, which is still the basis of what we can find in most of today’s history textbooks.

Donald Trump and the Mainstream Media’s double standard

Since Donald Trump’s election, CNN has featured non-stop coverage of the President and the ongoing probe into Russia’s alleged meddling in the U.S. elections and possible connections to Team Trump. The Washington Post and New York Times are also piling on with a vengeance. Concerning whether Trump and his network of advisors were complicit, the recent quote from Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, kind of summarized the position mainstream media is going with: “We do not have enough evidence to bring to a jury yet but there is enough smoke that warrants an investigation.” And this was before anyone knew of the actual meetings between Russian point-people and Donald Trump, Jr. The smoke that has often been talked about seemed to revolve around six or seven people close to Trump who had contact with Russian persons of interest before the election.

CNN pundits, specialists and reporters are going through each word of each tweet made by the president; each statement made by him and others in his surroundings; and every single touch point between them and the Russians going back for years. At least three separate government bodies are spending millions in investigating the case.

And then, during a rare non-Trump related show on CNN, there it was: on their series The Sixties, re-broadcast in the middle of the Trump cavalcade, we were given their take on the JFK assassination: Krazy Kid Oswald did it alone. It was all explained to us up by their panel of experts: Max Holland, the late Vincent Bugliosi, and Priscilla Johnson McMillan were earnestly telling the audience this discredited tale, in spite of what had been revealed by the Church, HSCA and ARRB investigations. And in spite of what actual participants like Schweiker, Gary Hart, Senator Richard Russell, House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) Chief Counsel Robert Blakey, Schweiker-Hart investigator Gaeton Fonzi, HSCA Deputy Counsel Robert Tanenbaum and many, many other investigation insiders had to say. CNN was doing exactly what Trump has been Tweeting to his cast of fiercely loyal followers: Peddling fake news! Which certainly bolstered historians’ egos around their shameful role in perpetuating fake history about this landmark, trust-breaking event.

In his article The Three Failed Plots to Kill JFK: The Historians’ Guide on how to Research his Assassination, this author showed how historians, journalists and investigators could learn a lot by investigating the failed plots that preceded the assassination and no less than six other potential patsies who had many similarities with Oswald. In this article we will try to decode the famous lines that make up the epigraph to this essay, and point out a whole area of investigation that the Warren Commission was almost completely shielded from and that journalists and historians have turned a blind eye to. Namely, the cast of characters Oswald crossed paths with who were plausibly, and in many cases definitely, connected to intelligence. These names originate with the work of some of the very best researchers in the field. We are at a point where we can now take stock of what has already been done, crosscheck work and ask ourselves: What does this mean? This author would like to underline the incredible travails of determined independent researchers who did a lot of the grunt work and represent many of the key sources for this article. Hopefully this will serve as a small testament to what they have accomplished.

If you think that seventy-one-year-old billionaire Trump connects well with Russian meddlers according to CNN and others, wait until you see just who twenty-four-year-old Lee Oswald, the truant/loner/murderer, connects with. It should make serious historians pause and ask themselves if they may have missed something.

Oswald and Intelligence: Odds and Ends

Before getting to who Oswald links up with let us look at general points where we can find fingerprints of intelligence. From Jim Marrs’ Crossfire we can read about how Oswald:
1. Possessed a Minox spy camera.
2. Had a notebook that included microdots.
3. Loved James Bond and the spy program I Led Three Lives.
4. Worked at Atsugi air base in Japan as a radar operator with possible security clearance. This was the base where the CIA’s U2 top-secret high altitude surveillance program was housed.
5. Was discharged from the Marines, entered Russia through a favorite spy-friendly crossing point in the middle of a false defector program, threatened theatrically to give away U2 secrets to the Russians in the U.S. embassy, and returned easily to the U.S. with his Russian wife, who herself had ties to Russian intelligence. All this with financial support in ways that could have only been state-sponsored.
6. Learned Russian in a way which New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, himself an ex-marine, concluded could only have been through special training for an intelligence assignment. He also discovered that Oswald’s base for his Fair Play for Cuba activities was right in the heart of New Orleans’ intelligence establishment, and that he was most probably playing an agent-provocateur role. He grew convinced that intelligence assets were obstructing his investigation into Oswald’s links, something that was confirmed by the HSCA and ARRB releases.
7. Applied, while in the Marines, to a very obscure Swiss college called Albert Schweitzer that appears to be CIA-linked.
Researcher Mae Brussell argued that Oswald’s mission in Russia was to help the Russians bring down Gary Powers’ U2 flight over Russia and therefore sabotage Eisenhower’s attempt at rapprochement with the Russians at an upcoming summit meeting. Others have pointed to those who were convinced Oswald was a spy, including Marines Oswald served with, Gerry Patrick Hemming, Oswald’s mother and others.

According to Gaeton Fonzi, former CIA Director Richard Helms told reporters during recess of the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978 that “no one would ever know who or what Lee Harvey Oswald … represented.” Asked whether the CIA knew of any ties Oswald had with either the KGB or the CIA, Helms paused and with a laugh said, “I don’t remember.”

According to author and intelligence specialist John Newman, a CIA propaganda associate of David Phillips, William Kent, intimated to his daughter at a family Thanksgiving gathering: “Oswald was a useful idiot.”

It was common knowledge in the Tokyo CIA station that Oswald worked for the agency … . Right after the President was killed, people in the Tokyo station were talking openly about Oswald having gone to Russia for the CIA. Everyone was wondering how the Agency was going to be able to keep the lid on Oswald. But I guess they did.

~ interview of Jim and Elsie Wilcott, former husband and wife employees of the Tokyo CIA Station, San Francisco Chronicle, “Couple Talks about Oswald and the CIA,” September 12, 1978

Jane Roman, who in 1963 was the senior liaison officer on the Counterintelligence Staff of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia, gave Jefferson Morley and John Newman this revealing answer to the following question during a seventy five-minute taped interview in 1994: “is this indicative of some sort of operational interest in Oswald’s file?” This was the key question of the interview, and Roman took it head on. “Yes,” she replied. “To me it’s indicative of a keen interest in Oswald held very closely on the need to know basis.”

John Newman is one of the researchers who did the most work in analyzing intelligence files on Oswald, and has uncovered, along with Malcolm Blunt, content and patterns that can only be explained by Oswald being used for intel purposes. This includes the very late opening of a standard CIA 201 file that would have been normally immediately opened upon a defection.

Lisa Pease wrote for Probe magazine in 1997 about Otto Otepka, who was the very competent head of the State Department’s Office of Security (SY) during much of the Oswald saga. He would have been the one who was behind initiating a study of defectors to Russia in 1960. The CIA –– probably James Angleton, who is suspected of running Oswald at this time –– gave instructions not to delve into Lee Harvey Oswald. That may be the reason Otepka was fired a few weeks before the assassination.

By the time Oswald returned from Russia, his days were numbered. However, during the year remaining in his life, the additional traces he would leave linking him to intelligence would be omnipresent: Only later dug into by serious researchers but ignored by mainstream media and historians.

During the summer of 1963, Oswald would ostensibly abandon his expecting wife and young baby to open an FPCC Chapter for which he was the lone member in the very hostile environment of New Orleans. In his previous article (The Three Failed Plots to Kill JFK), this author presents the case that Oswald was more likely involved in an intelligence operation to counter this has-been, informant-infested outfit, publicize his Marxist legend and weed out communists. The similarities with six other potential patsies profiled in the article reinforce this notion.

A clue to Oswald’s real loyalties came during a televised interview he gave in August 1963 with a revealing Freudian slip he made when he said he was (while in Russia) “under the protection of the government,” which he quickly corrected –– but it was too late.   The “Hands Off Cuba” flyers that he distributed with the now infamous Camp Street address represented a major gaffe, as it placed him directly in the presence of his anti-Castro friends and blew his cover to people willing to investigate this like Jim Garrison and Senator Schweiker.

Thanks to the HSCA and the ARRB record releases, we know for sure that intelligence networks played very important roles in hiding key facts from the Warren Commission and obstructing the HSCA, Garrison, and ARRB activities which were getting close to linking Oswald to the world of intelligence.

Perhaps the most explicit links came in the form of the Lopez Report written up for the HSCA and kept secret for many years. Because of the diligent work of HSCA investigators Dan Hardway and Ed Lopez, we now know that Oswald was, at the very least, partly impersonated in Mexico City under the watchful eye of CIA operatives there –– who later played starring roles in covering this incident up. Perhaps the most explicit links came in the form of their report, “Oswald, the CIA, and Mexico City” (aka the Lopez Report), written up for the HSCA and kept secret for many years.

Oswald’s Intelligence Touch Points

The Warren Commission portrayed Lee Oswald as a lone-nut, Marxist, and drifter who was not on anyone’s radar. The New York Times coverage of the Warren Commission’s Report release includes the following statement:

The Warren Commission also rejected, after complete access to the files of the FBI and the Central Intelligence Agency, the claim that Oswald may have been some kind of American undercover agent.

This conclusion of course has today proven to be founded on quicksand. Far from their having “complete access”, it has been confirmed that intelligence agencies played a key role in keeping information about Oswald hidden away from the Commission, for example regarding Oswald in Mexico City. Schweiker’s bombshell assertion clearly advances that Oswald had intelligence connections. The Church Committee and the HSCA both impeached the Warren Commission by unequivocally concluding that, among other inadequacies, it had not properly investigated the possibility of a conspiracy. (For more, see this author’s article on the historical record of Government investigations).

Based on the standards we are currently witnessing with the barrage about Trump and friends in Moscow, let us look at who should have been turned inside out in a serious investigation about a far more serious crime. In the following section we will briefly go over a long list of persons with definite or plausible intelligence credentials/links who crossed paths with Oswald in one way or another. Some of the links are loose, others are solid; of course not all are involved in the assassination. All, however, would merit an in-depth analysis by true investigators. For the purpose of this article we will provide short snapshots. To know more about an individual, the author encourages the reader to follow the links/sources.

If we were to add persons with indirect intelligence connections, Cuban exiles of interest, Mob-related personalities, the number of persons of interest that would give insight into who Oswald really was and what he and others were up to would more than likely double.   Seen in their entirety, we can conclude that if there is smoke around the current Russia meddling intrigue, what we have here is a forest fire and a cover-up that was more than just “benign.”

New Orleans, Atsugi, California, Russia, Dallas

Let us look at who Schweiker could be plausibly referring to when he confirmed that Oswald had intelligence connections. (Next to the name, we will list the source material in the literature.)

David Ferrie (Jim Garrison)

The young David Ferrie

Oswald’s first Intel connection is one of the most important for confirming Schweiker’s assertion. David Ferrie plays an important role in Oswald’s fate during two phases of Oswald’s short life. In 1955, both Ferrie and Oswald were members of the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol where Ferrie taught aviation. Author Greg Parker, in Lee Harvey Oswald’s Cold War, makes the case for the CAP being linked to the CIA’s recruitment activities and Texas School Book Depository’s owner Harold Byrd –– an oil-man known for his deep hatred of JFK and who is connected with many persons of interest, as well as the world of espionage. Ferrie later became a contract CIA agent flying bombing missions over Cuba at the request of Cuban-exile Eladio Del Valle, who was himself intelligence connected and a person Jim Garrison was pursuing concerning the assassination until Del Valle was killed, within 24 hours of Ferrie’s own mysterious death.

During the summer of 1963, Ferrie and Oswald link up once again at 544 Camp Street. This location was an address on some of Lee Harvey Oswald’s Fair Play for Cuba literature. The building was a hub for right-wing, anti-Castro activities centered around the office of FBI- and CIA-connected Guy Banister, as well as intelligence-backed Cuban exiles. During this period, Ferrie was frequently seen in the building and elsewhere, in the company of Banister, CIA agent Clay Shaw, CIA-connected Sergio Arcacha Smith, Oswald and others of this ilk who became key suspects in the Garrison investigation, which was sabotaged by special interest groups. The HSCA and ARRB findings clearly confirm as much. Ferrie confessed a lot about the assassination to Garrison’s investigator Louis Ivon, but died mysteriously before he could be taken to trial.

Gerard Tujague (Destiny Betrayed – JFK: The Cuba Files)

In early 1956, Oswald joined Gerard Tujague’s shipping company. Tujague was also vice-president of the Friends of Democratic Cuba (FDC), which is believed to be a CIA and FBI front that was largely created by Guy Banister and Sergio Arcacha Smith, and was also linked to Clay Shaw. Cuban intelligence identified this organization as a perpetrator of hostile acts against Cuba.

In a strange incident in 1961 while Oswald was in Russia, the FDC used Oswald’s name in an attempt to buy 10 Ford pick-up trucks at the Bolton Ford lot in New Orleans.

Richard Case Nagell (The Man who Knew too Much – Destiny Betrayed – Jim Garrison)

Richard Case Nagell

While in Atsugi, Japan, Oswald met up with Army Intel agent Richard Case Nagell for the first time. Nagell began a CIA career in 1955-56, which eventually brought him into the world of Black ops where CIA people like E. Howard Hunt and Tracy Barnes excelled.

In 1962, he served as a double agent in Mexico City. He hinted to a friend that he knew the CIA’s David Phillips who, as we will see, became a key suspect for many researchers with respect to the Oswald sheep-dipping operations. By October 1962, the Soviets advised him that the violent Cuban exile group Alpha 66 was plotting to assassinate Kennedy. They thought this would be blamed on them. So they hired him to investigate, and possibly abort the plot. His investigations allowed him to identify Arcacha Smith, Ferrie, Carlos Quiroga, Tony Cuesta and a Leopoldo as possible conspirators. In 1963, he tried to convince Oswald he was being set up to be the fall guy. He failed. Nagell eventually faked a bank robbery so as to be in jail when the assassination took place.   His interviews with researcher Dick Russell, his material links to Oswald when he was arrested, and his pre-assassination warnings go a long way in proving his credibility.

Colonel Nikolai Eroshkin

According to what Nagell told Russell, while Oswald was in Atsugi, he met with GRU agent Colonel Eroshkin: a CIA defection target.

Kerry Thornley (Destiny Betrayed)

Kerry Thornley

When Oswald was moved back to California in 1959, few Marines bought into his communist-leaning persona. Also, many described him as quite a poor marksman.   It is here that fellow-Marine Kerry Thornley met him for the first time. He wrote a book about him before the assassination called the Idle Warriors, and then another in 1965. He became the go-to Marine for the Warren Commission in their attempt to paint Oswald as unpatriotic.

In the summer of 1963, Thornley popped backed into the picture in New Orleans where several witnesses saw him with Oswald either in public or at Oswald’s apartment. There is evidence that Thornley picked up Fair Play for Cuba flyers for Oswald. An FBI memo states that Thornley and Oswald went to Mexico together. And despite preliminary denials, he eventually admitted links to David Ferrie, Guy Banister, Carlos Bringuier and Ed Butler –– all intelligence-connected persons of interest who will be covered in this article. He also eventually confirmed his utter hatred of Kennedy. Thornley was actually indicted by Jim Garrison for perjury because of his lies about this association with Oswald in New Orleans in the summer of 1963. Further, two witnesses told Garrison that Thornley had said that Oswald was not a communist. Which makes his performance before the Warren Commission quite suspicious.

Rosaleen Quinn (Lee Harvey Oswald’s Cold War)

In 1959, fellow Marine Henry Roussel set up a date between Oswald and his aunt Rosaleen Quinn, an airline stewardess who studied Russian with a Berlitz tutor for the State Department exam, as she was interested in working in the American embassy in Russia. She is suspected by some as having monitored Oswald’s skills with the Russian language, which she qualified as very good. This coincided with Oswald’s imminent departure from the infantry and the beginning of his Russian adventure. In Lee Harvey Oswald’s Cold War, Greg Parker underscores an intelligence angle to her that he thinks should be explored.

Gerry Patrick Hemming (Oswald and the CIA)

Gerry Hemming

Hemming has been a difficult nut to crack for many of the researchers who interviewed him. He was someone who seems to have known something about the assassination, but is difficult to read.

Hemming was in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1954 to 1957. He was honorably discharged and became a soldier of fortune who eventually fought for Castro’s revolutionary army with another person of interest, Frank Sturgis. They both came back quickly after feeling disillusioned by Castro. Hemming also spent some time in Atsugi. Though the CIA has denied any relationship with Hemming and Sturgis, this has been contradicted by files that show that Hemming frequently interacted with the CIA. Frank Sturgis’ later association with CIA’s E. Howard Hunt and James McCord, along with Cuban exiles, during the Watergate scandal, further contradicts this claim.

Hemming eventually founded Interpen in 1961. This was a paramilitary exile group that specialized in the penetration of revolutionary forces. Interpen is linked to many people involved in the training of Cuban exiles and persons of interest in the assassination. Interpen set up shop right in the midst of the Miami CIA JM/WAVE station and Cuban exile communities. HSCA investigator Gaeton Fonzi came to believe that much of the brainwork behind the plot came from disillusioned rogue CIA officers associated with this Miami nexus and involved in the Bay of Pigs fiasco.

It is quite possible that some of Hemming’s contacts with the CIA took place in Los Angeles in early 1959 when he would have met Lee Harvey Oswald who, along with his El Toro base friend Nelson Delgado, showed interest in joining the Castro forces before he had become persona non grata in the United States. Hemming claims that Oswald bumped into him at the Cuban consulate in Los Angeles and inquired about joining up with him. Hemming thought of him as a snitch and later met him at the base gate where he confronted him. He says he relayed this information to James Angleton. There is some corroboration of these meetings to be found in CIA files, and from Nelson Delgado, who confirmed that Oswald was at the Cuban consulate for discussions about their project and met a civilian for almost two hours at the base gate at the times Hemming states these took place.

Hemming, in later interviews, went on to express his opinion that Oswald was a patsy.

Gregory Golub (Destiny Betrayed)

The logistics involved in getting Oswald into Russia in October 1959 has been found by many to be perplexing. The nature and speed of his discharge, his financing, his route through Helsinki, his stay in expensive five-star hotels, and finally, the expedient issuing of a visa into Russia within 24 hours of his application –– these all seem too complex for an uneducated former truant. Golub, who issued Oswald’s visa, may have had direct ties to the American State Department.

Here is how the HSCA describes the visa situation:

HSCA Report Findings on the Issue of Oswald’s Visa:

In an effort to resolve this issue, the committee reviewed classified information pertaining to Gregory Golub, who was the Soviet consul in Helsinki when Oswald was issued his tourist visa. This review revealed that, in addition to his consular activities, Golub was suspected of having been an officer of the Soviet KGB. Two American Embassy dispatches concerning Golub were of particular significance with regard to the time necessary for issuance of visas to Americans for travel into the Soviet Union. The first dispatch recorded that Golub disclosed during a luncheon conversation that:

MOSCOW had given him the authority to give Americans visas without prior approval from Moscow. He [Golub] stated that this would make his job much easier, and as long as he was convinced the American was “all right” he could give him a visa in a matter of minutes …

The second dispatch, dated October 9, 1959, 1 day prior to Oswald’s arrival in Helsinki, illustrated that Golub did have the authority to issue visas without delay. The dispatch discussed a telephone contact between Golub and his consular counterpart at the American Embassy in Helsinki:

… Since that evening [September 4, 1959] Golub has only phoned [the U.S. consul] once and this was on a business matter. Two Americans were in the Soviet consulate at the time and were applying for Soviet visas through Golub. They had previously been in the American consulate inquiring about the possibility of obtaining a Soviet visa in 1 or 2 days. [The U.S. consul] advised them to go directly to Golub and make their request, which they did. Golub phoned [the U.S. consul] to state that he would give them their visas as soon as they made advance Intourist reservations. When they did this, Golub immediately gave them their visas …

Thus, based upon these two factors, (1) Golub’s authority to issue visas to Americans without prior approval from Moscow, and (2) a demonstration of this authority, as reported in an embassy dispatch approximately 1 month prior to Oswald’s appearance at the Soviet Embassy, the committee found that the available evidence tends to support the conclusion that the issuance of Oswald’s tourist visa within 2 days after his appearance at the Soviet consulate was not indicative of an American intelligence agency connection. Note: If anything, Oswald’s ability to receive a Soviet entry visa so quickly was more indicative of a Soviet interest in him.

Author’s comment: If this is what it did in fact indicate, why wasn’t a CIA 201 file immediately opened after Oswald’s defection? It was not opened until one year later.

Richard Snyder (Destiny Betrayed)

John McVickar & Richard Snyder

In early November of 1959, Oswald decided to pay a visit to the American Embassy in Moscow to renounce his citizenship. He met with former CIA recruiter Richard Snyder, who was probably working under diplomatic cover as a consular official. He had previously spotted student talent for the CIA who could travel to Russia under operation REDSKIN. Some of his notes while in Russia refer to false defectors. Snyder used well-studied delay tactics to avoid having Oswald fill out the necessary forms to renounce his citizenship. This made Oswald’s re-entry to the U.S. a lot easier and demonstrated Snyder’s knowledge of the fake defector programs in place.

In his exchange with Snyder –– which researcher Malcolm Blunt refers to as theatrical and designed to be picked up by Russian eavesdropping –– Oswald threatened to give away military secrets. This most likely was a reference to the U2 surveillance operations. This makes the opening of a 201 file only a full-year later incredible, as Oswald now should have also been considered a traitor. Unless, of course, something else was going on.

John McVickar (Oswald and the CIA)

While Oswald was going through his charade with Snyder, they were being observed by embassy official John McVickar. He is the one who alerted and then set up intelligence-linked journalist Priscilla Johnson to interview Oswald in his Moscow hotel room. He was then was later debriefed by her. She would go on to make a career out of endorsing the Warren Commission line.

Priscilla Johnson (Oswald and the CIA)

In 1959, Johnson was a correspondent for the North American News Association (NANA). Her November 13th interview with Oswald was the basis for news reports that would publicize Oswald the defector to a U.S. audience. In 1977 she published her book Marina and Lee after building a relationship with Marina Oswald, who by then was still very cooperative with authorities. She went on to become a staple in pro-Warren Commission propaganda and one of the first in a long line of intelligence friendly so-called JFK assassination experts.

Marina Oswald & Priscilla Johnson

Her job and relationship with the U.S. embassy at the time of Oswald’s defection already made her a natural ally for intelligence organizations. She identified propaganda specialist Cord Meyer as one of the CIA recruiters who took an interest in her. Documented cases of her passing on information to the CIA, her access to CIA space and resources, her own writings and her role in hosting star-defector Svetlana Stalin, daughter of Joseph Stalin, in 1967, represent strong evidence of her ties to intelligence. She was even given permission to live with heavily guarded Marina Oswald for months in 1964 while they worked on the book.

The release of intelligence files in 1993 by the ARRB seal the deal, as the following information from a contact report reveals. CIA recruiter Donald Jameson reported this about her in 1962, after a ninety minute interview: “I think that Miss Johnson can be encouraged to write pretty much the articles we want … .”   We also know that the CIA had a 201 file opened on her in the mid-1950s and that she was considered to be knowledgeable about Soviet affairs.

Leo Setyaev (Oswald and the CIA)

Lev Setyaev

According to John Newman, Oswald had a name he could contact while he was in Russia if he needed anything. Leo Setyaev is a name that appears in Oswald’s address book, and, according to Marina, is who Oswald intended to call in 1961 when visiting the American embassy. She also stated that he had met Oswald in the Hotel Metropole in Moscow shortly after his arrival and had helped Oswald get on a Radio Moscow show, where he criticized the U.S. for a Russian audience. The FBI and CIA had files on Setyaev, who was quite possibly an informant for the CIA.

Robert Webster (Destiny Betrayed)

Robert Webster

Webster is another person some researchers suspect was a false defector who entered Russia and returned to the U.S. at around the same times Oswald did. He worked with the CIA-linked Rand Corporation, which was known for its high-tech products, which were of interest to Russia. Oswald, when planning to leave Russia in 1961, inquired about Webster’s status to a U.S. embassy official.

Strangely, Webster had met Marina Prusakova in 1959 before she married Oswald, and Webster’s Leningrad address was found in Marina’s address book after the assassination. It appears Webster spoke English with her, a language she claimed to not understand. All this suggests that Russia was aware of the false defector program and that Marina may have been assigned Russian intelligence tasks to identify some of them. Webster also brought back a Russian spouse some feel was linked to Russian intelligence.

Marina Oswald (Destiny Betrayed – Richard Schweiker)

Marina’s uncle worked for the Russian version of the FBI. Her interactions with both Oswald and Webster and the ease by which she was allowed to leave Russia are among the reasons that some researchers believe Marina was intelligence-linked, and that Oswald’s and Webster’s suspected false defector roles are why she was made to cross paths with them in the first place.

Schweiker was onto this:

The key is why did they let him (Oswald) bring a Russian-born wife out contrary to present Russian policy, he had to get special dispensation from the highest levels to bring his Russian-born wife out, that in itself says somebody was giving Oswald highest priority either because we had trained and sent him there and they went along and pretended they did not know to fake us out, or they had in fact inculcated him and sent him back and were trying to fake us out, but he had gotten a green light no other American had gotten.

Francis Gary Powers (Oswald and the CIA)

Francis Gary Powers

Powers is the U2 pilot whose plane was shot down over Russia while Oswald was there after threatening to give away U2-related secrets. This scuttled Eisenhower’s upcoming summit meeting with Khrushchev and is what probably contributed to Eisenhower’s warnings about the power of the military industrial complex in his farewell address to the nation. There has been some speculation that Oswald was at his trial in Russia. Powers and others have blamed Oswald for his being shot down. Oswald, while in Russia, wrote a letter to his brother, Robert, in which he says that he saw Powers in Moscow.

Spas Theodore Raikin (JFK and the Unspeakable)

Spas Raikin

Since the ARRB cleared the release of a large number of classified documents, a number of CIA files have shed light on the person assigned by the U.S. State Department to greet the Oswald family on June 12, 1962 when they stepped off the ocean liner Maasdam in Hoboken, New Jersey. Raikin was a representative of the Traveler’s Aid Society who helped them pass smoothly through immigration and customs.

Here is how James Douglass describes what the Warren Report did not reveal about him: “Raikin was at the same time secretary-general of the American Friends of the Anti-Bolshevik Nations, an anti-communist organization with extensive intelligence connections –– like the American government, an unlikely source of support for a traitor.”

Andy Anderson/Eleanor Reed (Joan Mellen)

The Agency claims that they did not debrief Oswald upon his return to the USA from Russia. On the surface, this seems ridiculous. But he may have been when he went through Copenhagen on his way back to the United States. In 1978, Donald Denesyla told the HSCA that he had in fact received a report about a defector who returned from Russia in 1962 who had worked in a radio factory. This report, written by Andy Anderson, went to Robert Crowley, a close friend and colleague of James Angleton. Crowley also handled the Webster case.

Joan Mellen argues that the actual de-briefer may have been Eleanor Reed.

Further corroboration that the CIA Soviet Russia Division, Soviet Realities, SR6, in the person of Eleanor Reed, debriefed false defectors is contained in a document that I have just discovered that the CIA released “as sanitized” in 1998. The document resides in Robert Webster’s file, is dated 17 August 1962, and is telling for several reasons; the cases of Oswald and Webster are so similar that we can await, with reasonable expectation, that a parallel document of Oswald’s debriefing by Reed (with, perhaps, her frequent debriefing partner, Rudy (“Valentino”) Balaban, may well surface. This document demonstrates beyond doubt that Reed (“Anderson”) was an SR6 debriefer.

In other words, Reed used the Anderson name at times.

John Fain (The Twelve Who Built the Oswald Legend)

In Dallas, Fain was the first FBI agent who interrogated Oswald in June and then in August 1962. He was interested in finding out if the Russians were using him or his wife. He described Oswald as impatient, insolent and secretive during the first meeting. Though more cooperative during the second, he was still not fully transparent. Fain showed his suspicions around the subject of Oswald wanting to be part of a country that represented the biggest threat to the U.S.

There is more to Fain’s involvement in the Oswald saga than this however, as he is probably the agent that Oswald’s mother Marguerite interacted with while her son was in Russia and he also made certain the FBI was in in sync with the CIA in the administration of Oswald’s files.

George Bouhe, Max Clark and the White Russians of Dallas (Destiny Betrayed)

In the summer of 1962, Oswald settled in Fort Worth, where he was greeted by White Russians. This group was very cooperative with intelligence forces, especially in welcoming anti-communist immigrants to their fold. These are the people our supposed pro-Marxist traitor cozied up with in what Jim Garrison referred to in his memoir as “The Social Triumphs of Lee Oswald”. Of course, the Warren Commission’s curiosity was not even piqued by these relationships of direct adversaries: a communist dealing with White Russians who wanted to overthrow the Red regime and bring back the czar. Probably many in this group had direct contacts with intelligence. Let us single out two: The leader George Bouhe kept files on the White Russians and just happened to be a neighbour of Jack Ruby. It is he who introduced Oswald to Max Clark, a retired Air Force Colonel who Bouhe suspected was involved with the FBI and security work. It was Clark and Dallas CIA Station Chief J. Walton Moore who would connect Oswald with one of his most prominent intelligence contacts …

George DeMohrenschildt (Destiny Betrayed – Family of Secrets – Spartacus – I’m a Patsy)

George DeMohrenschildt

DeMohrenschildt came from a family of Russian nobility; his father was governor of Minsk and director of the Baku oil fields before the Russian Revolution. Some family members became involved in intelligence activities against the communist regime that took over the country and relocated in foreign countries. There is even correspondence between George’s brother Dimitri, a CIA asset in Europe, and Allen Dulles that goes as far back as 1953. It goes without saying that Dulles kept these relations hidden from his Warren Commission colleagues.

George moved to the U.S. in 1938. The British suspected he worked for German intelligence at the time. Through his studies, work in the oil industry and involvement with the Texas Crusade for Freedom and other associations, he came into contact with George H. W. Bush, Clint Murchison, Harold Byrd, H.L. Hunt (all oilmen) and Dallas mayor Earle Cabell. His international travels dovetail with CIA relations for which he received favors.

He is perhaps the person who interacted the most with the Oswalds before Lee’s move to New Orleans. In the fall of 1962, he persuaded Oswald to move to Dallas. DeMohrenschildt helped Oswald gain employment by January 1963 at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall. This is surprising, as JCS was a graphics art house that seems to have done some work related to U2 flights over Cuba, and Oswald’s notebook lists it with the words micro dot beside it. While there he showed co-worker Dennis Ofstein photos of Soviet military headquarters he had taken and gave him detailed descriptions of military related observations he was able to make while in Russia. DeMohrenschildt is also the one who introduced the Oswalds to Ruth Paine in February. It has become apparent to many that DeMohrenschildt was a CIA-designated baby-sitter who had numerous meetings with Moore, which Moore tried to cover up. In March of 1963, George got a contract from the Haitian government, which he attributed to his relationship with the CIA. While he probably had nothing to do with the JFK assassination itself, according to Jim Garrison, he did help paint Oswald as a sociopathic communist before the Commission.

In Family of Secrets, Russ Baker chronicles DeMohrenschildt’s relations with George H. W. Bush, who most probably was a CIA operative orally briefed by Hoover shortly after the assassination. In 1976, as the JFK case was heating up again, DeMohrenschildt corresponded with his friend Bush, who was CIA director at the time, asking for help to get the FBI off his back, as he felt he had perhaps spoken too much about Oswald.

In his book I’m a Patsy, he expresses his opinion that Oswald was innocent and incapable of such a violent act. This is pretty much a reversal of what his testimony was before the Warren Commission. On March 29, 1977, just when he was about to be interviewed by the HSCA, he became another person of interest among many to die mysteriously during intense investigative activity.

Ruth Paine and Michael Paine (Destiny Betrayed – Someone Would Have Talked – Spartacus)

By the time they met the Oswalds, the Paines, who were Quakers, had separated but remained on friendly terms. From the beginning, Ruth Paine would be omnipresent in Marina’s life and seemed purposeful in separating her from her husband. After dropping Marina off to join Lee in New Orleans, she corresponded with her throughout the summer of 1963.

Ruth & Michael Paine

Towards the end of the summer, Ruth Paine picked up Marina to be with her when she delivered her second child in Dallas. This is when the Oswalds separated and Marina moved in with Ruth in Irving, Texas. It is in her garage that Lee Oswald stored many of his belongings. Ruth Paine’s roles in Lee Oswald’s demise were varied and numerous. She helped Oswald get his job in the Texas School Book Depository. Her garage became the go-to place to find convenient, and often suspicious, clues linking Oswald to the murder. She would go on to become one of the Warren Commission’s most important witnesses. In fact, she was asked more questions than any other single person.

Michael Paine might have played perhaps as important a role. A suspicious event involving the Paines occurred on the day of the assassination. At 1:00 pm on November 22, 1963, Michael Paine placed a collect call to his wife to discuss Oswald’s involvement in the assassination. While the telephone operator remained on the line, Michael Paine told his wife that he “Felt sure Lee Harvey Oswald had killed the President but was not responsible.” Rather ominously he added, “We both know who is responsible.” (FBI report of Robert C. Lish, November 26, 1963, JFK Document No. 105-82555-1437) The most extraordinary thing about this call is that it took place one hour before Oswald’s arrest. For obvious reasons, the Warren Commission wanted to sweep this little problem under the rug. So when junior counsel Wesley Liebeler questioned Michael about the call, he stated the date of the call as November 23^rd, giving Michael an easy way to deny its implications.

According to a report written by Dallas Deputy Sheriff Buddy Walthers on the day of the assassination, upon searching Paine’s garage, officers found “a set of metal file cabinets that appeared to be names and activities of Cuban Sympathizers.” (19H520). These metal file cabinets did not make it onto the Dallas Police inventory sheets and were never entered into evidence alongside Lee Harvey Oswald’s belongings. By the time the Warren Commission got them, they had been reduced in number and attributed to Ruth Paine. And if Ruth and Michael Paine had a “set of metal file cabinets” containing “the names and activities of Cuban sympathizers”, then they were most certainly involved in the same intelligence activities that most researchers believe Oswald was involved in during the summer of 1963: rooting out “Un-Americans”.

Here is how long-time researcher Jim DiEugenio interprets these findings:

This cinches the case that the Paines were domestic surveillance agents in the Cold War against communism. (Hancock notes how the Warren Commission and Wesley Liebeler forced Walthers to backtrack on this point and then made it disappear in the “Speculation and Rumors” part of the report.)

The Paines were painted as Good Samaritans by the Warren Commission. Kept hidden were their eyebrow-raising associations with intelligence, beginning with their links to Russian expatriates. To begin with, the father of a witness who vouched for their character, Frederick Osborne Jr., was a close associate of Allen Dulles. Allen Dulles’ mistress was Mary Bancroft. Her best friend, Ruth Forbes Young, was the mother of Michael Paine. Forbes’ husband Arthur Young was one of the creators of Bell Helicopter where Michael worked and had a security clearance. Arthur Young also had worked for the CIA-linked Franklin Institute. Michael’s grand-uncle Cameron Forbes sat on the board of United Fruit with the members of the Cabot family. United Fruit was an important client of the Sullivan and Cromwell law firm where the Dulles brothers were partners. Michael’s cousin Thomas Cabot was United Fruit’s former president. Thomas’ brother John exchanged information with attorney Maurice Gatlin (who links up closely with Guy Banister) to help the overthrow of Jacob Arbenz of Guatemala.

In April 1963, some students at Southern Methodist University identified Michael Paine as a person who regularly would visit Luby’s Restaurant, a popular college hangout. While there he tried to root out those with Castro sympathies. In his pitch, he brought up his links to a communist-Marine who came back from Russia with a Russian bride.

Ruth Paine’s father William Hyde had worked for the OSS in World War II and stayed connected with the CIA later on through his work for the Agency for International Development (AID), which was infested with CIA operatives. Before picking up Marina in New Orleans, she had paid a visit to her sister who worked for the CIA. This is something that Ruth seemed intent on keeping from Jim Garrison in her appearance before the Clay Shaw grand jury. Her brother-in-law also worked for AID. Ruth seemed to have a penchant for weeding out communists as, later in her life, she is alleged to have played a role in identifying Americans who opposed U.S. policy when she was in Nicaragua during the Contra war.

James Hosty (Destiny Betrayed – Oswald and the CIA)

James Hosty

March 1963 is when FBI agent James Hosty was asked to monitor the Oswalds in Dallas. He lost track of Lee Oswald when he moved to New Orleans. By November 1^st, he had interviewed Ruth Paine and Marina in order to locate him. When Oswald found out about this, he left Hosty a note in an envelope at the FBI office in Dallas. What was on the note is still unclear. When Oswald was assassinated, Hosty’s boss Gordon Shanklin ordered him to destroy the note and Hosty’s memorandum about the event. Hosty’s name was in Oswald’s address book, something the FBI kept hidden from the Warren Commission.

This created great consternation when it was publicly disclosed in the seventies. Hoover had been very worried that Oswald’s possible role as an informant who infiltrated the Fair Play for Cuba Committee would blow up in the FBI’s face. Based on Oswald’s links to New Orleans FBI agents, which will be reviewed later, this role seems more than plausible.

Hosty was also present during Oswald’s interrogations after Kennedy’s murder. Hosty took heat for the security lapse that allowed someone like Oswald to be present on the infamous motorcade route in Dallas.

Return to New Orleans, Mexico, Return to Dallas

Victor Thomas Vicente

In the article The Three Failed plots to Kill JFK, the author shows how Oswald’s starting a Fair Play for Cuba Committee Chapter in New Orleans was more likely part of a covert operation than his demonstration of bonding with Marxism. By then the FPCC was infested with informants and linked closely to infiltration and sabotage programs overseen by prominent CIA operatives David Atlee Phillips, James McCord and William Harvey.

When Lee Harvey Oswald wrote his first letter to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee HQ in New York in April 1963, he asked for “forty to fifty” free copies of a 40-page pamphlet.

The author of the pamphlets, Corliss Lamont, turned out to be holding a receipt for 45 of these pamphlets from the CIA Acquisitions Division. These pamphlets were mailed to Oswald by FPCC worker Victor Thomas Vicente. Vicente was a key informant for both the CIA and the FBI’s New York office.

Novo Sampol brothers, Tony Cuesta, Orlando Bosch, Luis Posada (JFK: The Cuba Files)

Orlando Bosch

The CIA and FBI were not the only intelligence agencies tapping into Cuban exiles living in the U.S. Cuban Intelligence also had their share of informants. Fabian Escalante was put in charge of Castro’s security and later became Head of State Security. He directed the investigations that the Cuban government carried out at the request of the U.S. Select Committee of the House of Representatives. He also wrote a book called JFK: The Cuban Files. Having read the book, I was struck by how cautious he was in talking about potential leads.

Here are some of the people of interest who met Oswald according their files and analysis. By mid-1963 there was a meeting between Oswald and group of terrorists in a CIA safe house on the outskirts of Miami. Also present were:

Tony Cuesta

Orlando Bosch who among other things participated in the downing of a Cuban airliner, for which he was eventually incarcerated, and the murder of Chilean ambassador Orlando Letellier. He was considered such a threat to JFK that the Secret Service had him under special surveillance during JFK’s visit to Miami in November, 1963. According to Gaeton Fonzi, Antonio Veciana considered him a good friend.

Tony Cuesta was a higher-up in Alpha 66 and a close colleague of Veciana. He was indicated by Richard Case Nagell as a suspect in the assassination. He also confessed to Escalante his role in the assassination after being captured during a failed raid in 1966. He identified Herminio Diaz and Eladio Del Valle (a key suspect of Garrison) as conspirators.

The Novo brothers, Posada and Bosch were all allegedly part of team of assassins called Operation 40.

John Martino (Someone Would Have Talked)

From Larry Hancock we learned about another person who may have crossed paths with Oswald:

John Martino

Martino certainly did have CIA connections in 1963, primarily (David) Morales and Rip Robertson …

John Martino had pre-knowledge of the plan to kill John Kennedy in Texas. John Martino “talked” in a very believable and credible fashion. At first, he talked only to his immediate family, nervously, hesitantly, and excitedly. Shortly before his death, he talked with two long time friends –– part confession and part simply recollection. He made no grand claims, downplayed his own role and limited his statements to things he would have personally come in contact with in playing the role he described with the Cuban exiles whose cause he was demonstrably devoted to at the time. His story is certainly consistent and totally in context with his documented activities and personal associations in 1963.

Martino also admitted observing Oswald during the summer of 1963.

William Monaghan and Dante Marichini (Deep Politics)

Reilly Coffee Co.

During the summer of 1963 in New Orleans, Oswald gained employment at the Reilly Coffee Company, an organization of interest because of its links to Caribbean anti-communist politics. The Reilly brothers backed Ed Butler’s INCA (the CIA-linked Information Council of the Americas which factors heavily in Oswald’s later Marxist PR activities) and the CRC (Cuban Revolutionary Council).

William Monaghan was the V.P. of Finance there who ended up firing Oswald. He was also an ex-FBI agent. He was listed as a charter member of INCA in a 1962 bulletin. He is believed by some to have played a role in the friendly hosting of Oswald at Reilly’s during his covert Intel-linked mission.

Other employees there of interest to researchers included four of Oswald’s co-workers who joined NASA during the summer of 1963. Dante Marichini who was a friend of David Ferrie’s and the neighbour of Clay Shaw was one of these.

Guy Banister (Destiny Betrayed – Jim Garrison – Ed Haslam – Spartacus – How JFK was killed)

FBI investigators did not take Jim Garrison’s suspicions about David Ferrie seriously. Garrison had turned over Ferrie because of his incriminating behaviour on the day of the assassination. The FBI then let Ferrie get away with numerous lies during their questioning of him. If they had not done so, they would have been able to link Oswald to a network of informants, CIA-backed anti-Castro Cuban exiles and other intelligence assets who had in common their hatred of Castro and, by then, Kennedy. This violent, right-wing hub of anti-Castro activity just happened to be where Oswald set up shop for his Fair Play for Cuba Committee office, which became central in his renewed relationship with Ferrie and Thornley and the development of new contacts like Sergio Arcache Smith, Carlos Quiroga, Frank Bartes, Clay Shaw, Carlos Bringuier, Guy Banister and who knows who else. It is no wonder the Warren Commission investigators and pro-lone-nut mouthpieces have felt extremely uncomfortable about Oswald’s flyers with the 544 Camp Street address on them.

Guy Banister

Garrison’s investigation led him to this nest of anti-Castro intelligence activity that was at the antipode of Oswald’s new found pro-Castro hobby. Over and above working in very close proximity to one another and Banister’s close ties to Ferrie, proof that Banister and Oswald were working together is overwhelming:
1. An important number of Banister’s colleagues confirmed seeing Oswald with Banister and other persons of extreme interest.
2. Recall that the Banister-linked organization Friends of Democratic Cuba used Oswald’s name while he was in Russia.
3. There was evidence in Banister’s files that he kept tabs on Oswald.
4. Writer Ed Haslam discovered that Ed Butler, who played an important role in a radio interview of Oswald, kept the deceased Banister’s files hidden. We will get back to Butler later.
Banister’s ties to intelligence are well summed up even in the very early work of Joachim Joesten, How Kennedy Was Killed (1968):

Guy Banister, a former FBI official and onetime assistant superintendent of the New Orleans police department, had had a ‘stormy’ career, according to the New Orleans States-Item of May 5, 1967. After he had left police work officially, if not earlier, Banister was active for years as a top U.S. intelligence agent in the South and in Latin America. His spacious office, at 531 Lafayette Street, in New Orleans, served both as a rallying point for Minutemen, Cuban exiles and assorted right-wing and intelligence operatives and as an arms distribution centre for these elements. This has been brought out with dazzling clarity both by the Garrison investigation and through independent research by the local press.

A close friend and adviser of Banister’s told the States-Item the veteran FBI agent was a key liaison man for U.S. government-sponsored anti-Communist activities in Latin America, the New Orleans paper reported and added: “Guy participated in every important anti-Communist South and Central American revolution which came along while he had the office on Lafayette Street,” the source reported. The paper also stated that Banister is believed to have worked in cooperation with a U.S. military intelligence office here.

What emerges from all of this is that Oswald was assisting Banister, a known communist hunter, in identifying Castro-sympathizers and that Banister was deeply involved in activities supplying weapons to anti-Castro groups like Alpha 66 –– a key organization of interest in the assassination.

Clay Shaw (Jim Garrison – Joan Mellen – Destiny Betrayed)

Thanks to New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, we were introduced to a key person of interest in Clay Shaw. For his profile let me quote from a one of my previous articles:

Perhaps no other person who believed there was a conspiracy was vilified more than Jim Garrison. He has been called a charlatan, a publicity-seeker and crazy, among other things. With time however, many of his claims have been vindicated. While some described his case as a farce, it is often overlooked that Garrison had presented his evidence beforehand to a three-judge panel who concluded that he was justified to bring it to court, and that the subsequent HSCA investigation concluded that Garrison and his office “had established an association of an undetermined nature between Ferrie, a suspect in the assassination of President Kennedy, and Clay Shaw and Lee Harvey Oswald” –– a devastating blow to Garrison detractors. Many witnesses have confirmed this.

Clay Shaw

Other information from later investigations reveals that his efforts were sabotaged by adversaries who infiltrated his volunteer team and weakened his efforts; well-orchestrated propaganda attacking both his case and reputation; refusals to his subpoenas for out-of-state witnesses and the harassment, turning and untimely deaths of some of his key witnesses, including the suspicious deaths of star-witness David Ferrie and the murder of Eladio Del Valle. Other irrefutable documentary evidence that began to emerge showed that Clay Shaw, despite his denials, was in fact a CIA asset and part of a CIA organization of interest called Permindex.

In Destiny Betrayed, Jim DiEugenio underscores other Shaw links with the CRC and with Banister, CIA-cleared doctor Ed Ochsner, and Ed Butler, who are all connected to The Information Council of the Americas which appears to have played a role in the sheep-dipping of Oswald (see Ed Butler). He also shows that Shaw was cleared for a project called QK/ENCHANT during the Garrison investigation. Howard Hunt also belonged to this project , which was part of the CIA’s Domestic Operations Division, according to CIA insider Victor Marchetti.

William Gaudet (Destiny Betrayed)

William Gaudet

Gaudet had worked for the CIA before he crossed paths with Oswald. He most likely continued freelancing for it. He worked virtually rent-free out of Clay Shaw’s International Trade Mart. He told the HSCA that he observed Oswald and Banister talking on a street corner on a number of occasions. Gaudet links up with many in the Banister network.

And then there is this little plum, according to author Anthony Summers: Gaudet … happened to be next in line to Oswald when Oswald applied for his Mexican tourist visa.

It seems plausible that Gaudet played a part in monitoring Oswald, perhaps for the benefit of Clay Shaw.

Dean Andrews (Jim Garrison)

Lawyer Dean Andrews was called by Shaw under the pseudonym Clay Bertrand, and given instructions to represent Oswald, as told by Garrison in his famous interview with Playboy:

A New Orleans lawyer, Dean Andrews, told the Warren Commission that a few months before the assassination of President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald and a group of “gay Mexicanos” came to his office and requested Andrews’ aid in having Oswald’s Marine Corps undesirable discharge changed to an honorable discharge; Oswald subsequently returned alone with other legal problems.

Dean Andrews

Andrews further testified that the day after President Kennedy was assassinated, he received a call from Clay Bertrand, who asked him to rush to Dallas to represent Oswald. Andrews claims he subsequently saw Bertrand in a New Orleans bar, but Bertrand fled when Andrews approached him. This was intriguing testimony, although the Warren Commission dismissed it out of hand; and in 1964, Mark Lane traveled to New Orleans to speak to Andrews. He found him visibly frightened. “I’ll take you to dinner,” Andrews told Lane, “but I can’t talk about the case. I called Washington and they told me that if I said anything, I might get a bullet in the head.” For the same reason, he has refused to cooperate with my office in this investigation. The New York Times reported on February 26th that “Mr. Andrews said he had not talked to Mr. Garrison because such talk might be dangerous, but added that he believed he was being ‘tailed.’” Andrews told our grand jury that he could not say Clay Shaw was Clay Bertrand and he could not say he wasn’t. But the day after NBC’s special, Andrews broke his silence and said, yes, Clay Shaw is not Clem Bertrand and identified the real Clay Bertrand as Eugene Davis. The only trouble is, Andrews and Davis have known each other for years and have been seen frequently in each other’s company. Andrews has lied so often and about so many aspects of this case that the New Orleans Parish grand jury has indicted him for perjury. I feel sorry for him, since he’s afraid of getting a bullet in his head, but he’s going to have to go to trial for perjury. [Andrews has since been convicted.]

Sergio Arcacha Smith (Destiny Betrayed – Jim Garrison – JFK: The Cuba Files)

Arcacha Smith is considered by many to be one of the leading organizers of the Cuban exiles who probably played a role in the assassination. He is perhaps also the Cuban exile with the most links with suspected participants from the mob, intelligence and business communities. He was sprung from Cuba by New Orleans lawyer Guy Johnson, an Office of Naval Intelligence reserve Officer and friend of both Guy Banister and Clay Shaw. The CIA selected him to be a key leader of Cuban exiles as a representative of the Cuban Revolutionary Council that was created by Howard Hunt as an umbrella organization of many Cuban exile groups such as Alpha 66 and the DRE. It is in this role that he befriended David Ferrie who he worked with in CIA Bay of Pigs training of Cuban exiles. According to Richard Case Nagell, Arcacha Smith, along with his right-hand man Carlos Quiroga, were among those setting Oswald up to take the fall.

Sergio Arcacha Smith

When in New Orleans he associated closely with Clay Shaw, Guy Banister, David Ferrie and Doctor Alton Ochsner. Gordon Novel, who later played a role in sabotaging the Shaw trial, claims that David Phillips participated in at least one meeting where Smith and Banister were in attendance. Arcacha Smith helped found the Friends of Democratic Cuba, the organization that borrowed Oswald’s name when he was in Russia and connects Arcacha Smith to Banister, Shaw and Ferrie. Jim Garrison discovered that this group worked closely in sync with New Orleans FBI agents Regis Kennedy and Warren DeBrueys, who were also monitoring Oswald. Jack Martin, who worked for Banister, claimed that he had been introduced to Oswald in the presence of Arcacha Smith.

Arcacha Smith also interacted with mobster Carlos Marcello and oilman H.L. Hunt, who saw him as a good contact for when Cuba would be won back. Cuban intelligence placed him in the top twelve suspects in the conspiracy.

After David Ferrie’s mysterious death, Garrison tried to extradite Arcacha Smith out of Texas for questioning under oath. This was blocked by Texas Governor John Connally, and the world never heard from one of the assassination’s most important witnesses.

Carlos Bringuier, Carlos Quiroga, Celso Hernandez and Frank Bartes (Destiny Betrayed – The Twelve Who Built the Oswald Legend – Spartacus)

Bringuier was part of the DRE, a militant right-wing, anti-Communist, anti-Castro, anti-Kennedy group. Bringuier, based in New Orleans, was placed in charge of DRE publicity and propaganda. According to Bringuier, the following summarizes his strange encounters with Oswald:

Carlos Bringuier

On August 5, 1963, Oswald walks into Carlos Bringuier’s shop and starts up a conversation with him about wanting to help in the fight against Castro. Bringuier does not trust him and refuses his help. The next day Oswald drops off a copy of a Marine manual; on August 9. 1963, Oswald, while leafleting FPCC flyers on Canal Street, drew the ire of Bringuier and his Cuban associates Celso Hernandez and Miguel Cruz. Bringuier did the swinging while Oswald tried to block his blows. Within a few minutes all four were arrested for disturbing the peace; Oswald spent the night in jail while the other three were quickly let go; Oswald is then interviewed on a Bill Stuckey show along with Bringuier where his Marxist and FPCC credentials were discussed for all to hear.

Through this episode Oswald’s persona was archived on tape for strategic distribution on the day of the assassination. Bringuier himself wrote up an article that was published the day after the assassination that described this experience which he used as a call to arms against Castro. Oswald had actually described this event on August fourth, before it happened, to the head office of the FPCC, proving that it was staged. Bringuier’s links to intelligence were numerous. According to E. Howard Hunt, the DRE was started by David Phillips, who we will see is the CIA career employee who has the most links with Oswald. The DRE was eventually overseen in 1963 by George Joannides, a fact which was kept hidden from the HSCA when he became the CIA liaison to that committee and directly sabotaged investigation efforts.

Arcacha Smith, Manuel Gil,
& Carlos Quiroga

According to Richard Case Nagell, a Bringuier colleague who played a role in setting Oswald up as a patsy was Carlos Quiroga. A Jim Garrison polygraphed interrogation of Quiroga and other research proved that Quiroga knew Banister and Sergio Arcacha Smith, had met Oswald more than once, and had supplied Oswald with Fair Play for Cuba literature on the orders of Carlos Bringuier. Quiroga was shown to be lying when he claimed to have met Oswald only once in an attempt to infiltrate the FPCC New Orleans Chapter.

One of the Cuban exiles arrested during the so-called skirmish was Celso Hernandez, who may have met Oswald before. According to Bill Simpich’s research, the CIA examined Celso Hernandez as a Castro penetration agent:

There is an intriguing report of FPCC member Oswald being arrested with Celso Hernandez in New Orleans in late 1962. The ID of Hernandez was made years later and is admittedly shaky. The ID of Oswald is more substantive, as he id’d himself to the police as an FPCC member –– but he was living in the Dallas area. The story is that the two men were picked up at the lakefront in Celso’s work truck, owned by an electronics firm that was Celso’s employer.

The most important thing is that right about this time, Bill Harvey –– who worked both the wiretapping side and the Cuban beat for the CIA during 1962 –– was tipped off on 10/1/62 that Celso Hernandez might be a communist. This kicked off an investigation that revealed in the autumn of 1963 that there was a left-wing Celso and a right-wing Celso, and a brother and sister who couldn’t agree on who was who. Oswald and Celso Hernandez were arrested together again in August 1963. What we do know is that throughout this era, Hernandez was under close scrutiny as a possible pro-Castro infiltrator.

While Oswald and Bringuier were in court after their altercation, a sympathizer and friend of Bringuier’s, Frank Bartes showed up to offer moral support. This Cuban exile went on to conduct anti-Castro press relations.

Bartes just happened to be the CRC leader of New Orleans based in a building near Banister. He was suspected of holding meetings later on Camp Street, with perhaps Oswald present and other persons of interest like Sergio Arcacha Smith. While this is mind-boggling enough, in 1993 the ARRB released files confirming that Bartes was an informant to the FBI agent who just happened to be monitoring Oswald, Warren DeBrueys.

(Author’s comment: This takes the cake!)

Jesse Core (Destiny Betrayed)

Core was Clay Shaw’s right-hand man who was present during the incident on Canal Street and Oswald’s leafleting near the Trade Mart. He contacted Shaw’s friends at WDSU TV. He also is the one who warned his team about the blunder by Oswald of placing Banister’s address on some of the literature he was handing out.

John Quigley and Warren DeBrueys (Destiny Betrayed – Joan Mellen – Sylvia Meagher)

After the altercation with Bringuier, it was New Orleans police Lieutenant Frank Martello who questioned Oswald first. The Warren Commission seemed to dismiss his testimony that Oswald: “… seemed to have set them up, so to speak, to create an incident …”.

While under arrest, Oswald made a bizarre request. He asked to see an FBI agent. One would think a true Marxist/FPCC recruiter would want to avoid such an encounter at all costs. It’s more likely that Oswald knew he would be joined by a friendly party he could pass on information to and who might spring him from jail without him having to pay bail. Just as interesting, the FBI sent agent John Quigley, who spent between ninety minutes and three hours with Oswald. It’s safe to say that they were not discussing Bringuier simply being mean to the alleged communist.

Quigley stated that Martello told him that Oswald wanted to pass on information about the FPCC to him. Joan Mellen’s research finds that Oswald actually asked specifically for Warren DeBrueys. DeBrueys, who ran Bartes as an informant, would further nail down the real reason Oswald started an FPCC chapter in a hostile place like New Orleans. William Walter, an employee at the New Orleans FBI office, claimed to have seen an FBI informant file of Oswald with DeBrueys’ name on it.

Warren DeBrueys

Coupled with the communist witch-hunts taking place out of Banister’s office, the FBI and CIA FPCC penetration operations that were in full-swing, and the fact that Quigley’s colleague, Warren DeBrueys, was in charge of monitoring the New Orleans FPCC chapter –– whose one and only member was Oswald –– it is only normal that this event has been interpreted by many as an intelligence officer interacting with an informant. The same informant who was helping Banister and would later give a note to Dallas FBI agent James Hosty that was so provocative that Hosty was asked to destroy it, and which became an explosive topic for the Church Committee.

In his questioning of DeBrueys, Schweiker clearly showed disbelief in Oswald the communist having a Camp Street address for his FPCC activities, something the FBI agent fluffed off by saying that perhaps Oswald had a sense of humor.

Arnesto Rodriguez (Joan Mellen)

The number of links between DeBrueys and Oswald are to say the least impressive. For our next Oswald intel contact let us return to a Joan Mellen essay:

124 Camp Street

Supporting the conclusion that the CIA was behind the Kennedy assassination is the fact that in New Orleans Oswald associated only with people with intelligence connections, beginning with Arnesto Rodriguez, an FBI informant with family members rooted in the CIA’s clandestine services. Rodriguez was one of FBI Special Agent Warren DeBrueys’ informants. One day Oswald appeared at Rodriguez’s office at the International Trade Mart building at 124 Camp Street. He wanted to help the Cubans, Oswald said. He wanted to be part of the training camps. Rodriguez was suspicious. Who had sent Oswald to him? he wondered. How did Oswald know that there was “a training camp across the lake from us, north of Lake Pontchartrain?” It was top secret at the time, yet Oswald knew about it.

Author’s Note: This writer does not agree at this point that this gives evidence that the CIA, as an organization, was behind the assassination. The relationships indicated here show so far that Oswald was linked to intelligence-related covert activities (such as infiltrating the FPCC to discredit it or to identify Castro sympathizers or to gain eventual entry into Cuba.)

Orestes Pena, Joseph Oster, David Smith, Juan Valdes and Wendell Roache (Bill Simpich)

Orestes Pena

DeBrueys’ relationship with Oswald reaches a whole other dimension of intensity according to another one of his informants, Orestes Pena. He also connects Oswald with Customs and the INS. Relying on Church Committee testimonies, Bill Simpich wrote the following in the Twelve Who Built the Oswald Legend part 9:

Curiously, the evidence that Oswald collaborated with Customs is stronger than with any other agency. Cuban exile Orestes Pena testified that he saw Oswald chatting on a regular basis with FBI Cuban specialist Warren DeBrueys, David Smith at Customs, and Wendell Roache at INS. Pena told the Church Committee that Oswald was employed by Customs. Informant Joseph Oster went farther, saying that Oswald’s handler was David Smith at Customs. Church Committee staff members knew that David Smith “was involved in CIA operations.” Orestes Pena’s handler Warren DeBrueys admitted he knew David Smith. Oswald was also frequently seen with Juan Valdes, who described himself as a “customs house broker”.

Orestes Pena also claimed that DeBrueys, who admitted arguing with Pena, tried to intimidate him with respect to what he had witnessed.

Ed Butler and Bill Stuckey (Destiny Betrayed – Ed Haslam)

Carlos Bringuier with Ed Butler

Ed Butler was the director of INCA, the Information Council of the Americas, a right-wing, CIA-associated propaganda outfit. Doctor Alton Ochsner and the Reilly Coffee Company were among its chief sponsors.

The Canal Street incident led to Oswald being part of a debate on WDSU reporter Bill Stuckey’s weekly radio program called Latin Listening Post. Later, Butler and Carlos Bringuier were also invited to debate Oswald about his Marxist views on a show called Conversation Carte Blanche. Stuckey claimed that his show helped destroy the FPCC in New Orleans. It is during this show that Oswald let slip that he was under the protection of the government while in Russia.

INCA – WDSU
“Conversation Carte Blanche”

Both Butler and Stuckey were briefed in advance about Oswald’s defection to Russia: Stuckey by the FBI, Butler by the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC). Therefore they were able to ambush Oswald and expose him as a Soviet defector, which compromised his debate position as one who desired “fair play” for Cuba. The records of this show were used immediately after the assassination (through Butler and Bringuier) to paint Oswald as the lone-nut Marxist. In fact, Butler was flown up to Washington within 24 hours to talk to the leaders of the HUAC.

Ed Butler is also the one who helped link Gordon Novel to Arcacha Smith and David Phillips. According to author Ed Haslam, he also became the secret custodian of Banister’s files years after his death.

Leopoldo and Angel (HSCA – Dick Russell – Joan Mellen – Larry Hancock)

Before commenting on our next two intelligence-linked Oswald contacts, let us review how they may have been involved in the Sylvia Odio incident as described by the HSCA:

Silvia Odio

The Commission investigated (Mrs. Odio’s) statements in connection with its consideration of the testimony of several witnesses suggesting that Oswald may have been seen in the company of unidentified persons of Cuban or Mexican background. Mrs. Odio was born in Havana in 1937 and remained in Cuba until 1960; it appears that both of her parents are political prisoners of the Castro regime. Mrs. Odio is a member of the Cuban Revolutionary Junta (JURE), an anti-Castro organization. She testified that late in September 1963, three men came to her apartment in Dallas and asked her to help them prepare a letter soliciting funds for JURE activities. She claimed that the men, who exhibited personal familiarity with her imprisoned father, asked her if she were “working in the underground,” and she replied that she was not. She testified that two of the men appeared to be Cubans, although they also had some characteristics that she associated with Mexicans. Those two men did not state their full names, but identified themselves only by their fictitious underground “war names.” Mrs. Odio remembered the name of one of the Cubans as “Leopoldo.” The third man, an American, allegedly was introduced to Mrs. Odio as “Leon Oswald,” and she was told that he was very much interested in the Cuban cause. Mrs. Odio said that the men told her that they had just come from New Orleans and that they were then about to leave on a trip. Mrs. Odio testified that the next day Leopoldo called her on the telephone and told her that it was his idea to introduce the American into the underground “because he is great, he is kind of nuts.” Leopoldo also said that the American had been in the Marine Corps and was an excellent shot, and that the American said the Cubans “don’t have any guts … because President Kennedy should have been assassinated after the Bay of Pigs, and some Cubans should have done that, because he was the one that was holding the freedom of Cuba actually.”

Because this story was corroborated by her sister, and Odio had talked to others about it before the assassination and remained consistent throughout the years, the HSCA concluded that she was credible:

It appears that Silvia Odio’s testimony is essentially credible. From the evidence provided in the sworn testimony of corroborating witnesses, there is no doubt that three men came to her apartment in Dallas prior to the Kennedy assassination and identified themselves as members of an anti-Castro Cuban organization. From a judgment of the credibility of both Silvia and Annie Odio, it must be concluded that there is a strong probability that one of the men was or appeared to be Lee Harvey Oswald. No conclusion about the significance of that visit could be reached. The possibilities were considered that Oswald actually had some association with JURE, the anti-Castro group headed by Manolo Ray, and that Oswald wanted it to appear that he had that association in order to implicate the group, politically a left-of-center Cuban organization, in the Kennedy assassination.

Some researchers interpret the goals of this highly incriminating, Warren-Commission-debunking incident as 1) a further attempt to sheep-dip Oswald as anti-Kennedy and 2) a ploy to link the Cuban exile group JURE that Odio was connected to with Oswald. For the Kennedys seemed to favor this left-leaning organization over others that were much closer to the intelligence networks. Richard Case Nagell revealed that Leopoldo and Angel were war names for two Cuban exiles who had also, in the spring of 1963, looked into the possibility of setting up an executive of the Los Angeles chapter of the FPCC called Vaughn Marlowe.

Joan Mellen’s research has led her to believe that they were Cuban exiles Angelo Murgado and Bernardo De Torres.

Angelo Murgado and a fellow veteran of the Bay of Pigs, in September, were the men who traveled with Oswald from New Orleans to Dallas where they visited Sylvia Odio. (Mrs. Odio testified that the three traveled together although Angelo says that when he and Leopoldo, who drove from New Orleans together, arrived at Sylvia Odio’s, Oswald was already there, sitting in the apartment. That “Leopoldo” and Angelo both knew Oswald, there is no doubt) …

“Leopoldo” was Bernardo de Torres, who testified before the HSCA with immunity granted to him by the CIA, so that he was not questioned about the period of time leading up to the Kennedy assassination, as the CIA instructed the Committee on what it could and could not ask this witness. Both the Warren Commission and the HSCA buried the anti-Castro theme, and never explored what Bobby Kennedy might have known.

Bernardo De Torres

Although her conclusion, to put it mildly, is not shared by all pro-conspiracy researchers, many do consider them –– especially De Torres –– to be persons of interest in the JFK assassination. De Torres’ ties to the CIA were later confirmed by his daughter. Larry Hancock in Someone Would Have Talked identifies other key links: De Torres is known to have associated with several of Hemming’s Interpen members and he was well acquainted with Frank Fiorini/Sturgis. De Torres also had strong operational contacts in Mexico City all the way up to Miguel Nazar Haro in Mexican police intelligence. Haro was later revealed as a key individual in drug trafficking into the U.S. and has been associated with both Sam Giancana and Richard Cain. An FBI report on De Torres from the 1970’s refers to his “high level contacts” with the CIA, but this is otherwise unsubstantiated (unexplained is perhaps a better description).

After the assassination, De Torres infiltrated the Garrison investigation and played a key role in messing up his efforts. In 1977, the HSCA came to believe that he may have played a role in the assassination: “De Torres has pictures of Dealey Plaza in a safe-deposit box,” a HSCA report states. “These pictures were taken during the assassination of JFK.”

Sylvia Duran and Eusebio Azcue (State Secret – The Lopez Report)

Duran worked at the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City and received “Oswald” on September 27^th 1963 when he talked about his plans to visit Cuba and then move to the Soviet Union and asked for a visa. She was suspicious of him and instructed him to go through the Russian embassy instead. It is during this episode that the CIA Mexico City station used imposters to create phoney telephone calls between a fake Oswald and workers at the Russian embassy exchanging compromising information that could be used to position Oswald as a communist assassin who had received help from either the Cubans, Russians or both.

Silvia Duran

Suspiciously, the CIA could not produce any photos of Oswald’s five entrances and exits as surveyed by their cameras. They claim that these were all out of order during the two days of Oswald’s visits. David Phillips lied under oath to HSCA Chief Counsel Richard Sprague by claiming that the tapes of these calls had been recycled. It was proven that several investigators had heard at least one recording on the weekend of the assassination. They confirmed that the voice on the tape had survived and was not Oswald’s. This impersonation, followed by the obfuscation, is one of the most important choke points in the whole case.

After the assassination, Sylvia Duran was picked up by Mexican police, on order of Win Scott –– chief of the Mexico City station, and forcefully interrogated. The CIA had been monitoring her and knew she had an affair with Cuban ambassador to the United Nations Carlos Lechuga. Furthermore, through a made-up story by CIA operative June Cobb, Duran was accused of have had a fling with Oswald.

Eusebio Azcue

It is believed that the CIA had perhaps even recruited Duran according to the Lopez Report: “… the circumstantial evidence tends to indicate that Duran had a relationship with Mexican or American intelligence [and] cannot be dismissed.”

Eusebio Azcue, a co-worker of Duran, also met “Oswald” when he was in the office. Curiously, he described him as short and blond, which corresponds to Cuban photograph of the visitor. In State Secret, Bill Simpich makes the argument that Azcue may have been a CIA-linked case officer of another FPCC-related potential patsy called Santiago Garriga who would have penetrated the FPCC for Bill Harvey while David Phillips was running the FPCC monitoring and discrediting project called AM/SANTA.

Antonio Veciana (Dick Russell – JFK: The Cuban Files – Gaeton Fonzi)

For our next person of interest let us refer to renowned researcher Dick Russell, who was one of the first to interview Veciana (From “Interview with an assassin”):

Alpha 66’s Cuban leader Antonio Veciana claimed that at one of his hundred or so meetings with Bishop, Oswald was there. “I always thought Bishop was working with Oswald during the assassination,” Veciana told Russell. Veciana’s cousin worked for Castro’s intelligence service and after the assassination Bishop wanted Veciana to bribe his cousin into saying that he met with Oswald, in order to fabricate an Oswald-Castro connection.

Antonio Veciana

Investigators never established for sure that Bishop and Phillips were one and the same, but descriptions of Bishop’s appearance and mannerisms mirrored Phillips’. Veciana drew a sketch of his old controller and Senator Richard Schweiker, a member of the assassination committee, recognized it as Phillips.

When the select committee’s star investigator Gaeton Fonzi finally brought Veciana and Phillips together, the two started acting weird around each other. After a short conversation in Spanish, Phillips bolted. Witnesses to the encounter swear that a look of recognition swept Veciana’s visage, but Veciana denied that Phillips was his case officer of more than a decade earlier.

Veciana’s reluctance to make the ID, Fonzi theorized, was related to two unfortunate events that had befallen him of late: one, he was convicted of running drugs and suspected that Bishop set him up to silence him; two, he was shot in the head. Veciana’s desire to clear his drug rap and avoid absorbing another bullet may have had something to do with the fact that he would not rat on his old benefactor.

Fonzi was proven right posthumously by a letter Veciana sent to his widow Marie, interviews Veciana gave and a book he has since written confirming that Bishop and Phillips were one and the same. Schweiker did not find Phillips’ denials of knowing Veciana credible; he was unconvinced by this evidence. He found it difficult to believe Phillips would not have known the leader of Alpha 66. Especially as Phillips had been in charge of covert action in Cuba when Alpha 66 was established. Another CIA agent who worked in Cuba during this period claimed that Phillips used the code name Maurice Bishop.

According to Veciana, after the assassination, Phillips tried to convince him to get a relative of his in Mexico City to claim he had seen Oswald receiving money from Castro agents.

(Author’s comment: Because Alpha 66 was the most active and reliable Cuban exile group involved with Castro assassination attempts; because Richard Case Nagell and Cuban intelligence leader Fabian Escalante both fingered Tony Cuesta, another Alpha 66 higher-up, as having been involved in the assassination; and because it is difficult to believe that Phillips would let himself be seen with Oswald by non-participants in a plot; and because of reports of Oswald being present in a Dallas Alpha 66 safe-house, and because of Oswald’s probable links to other prominent people in the Cuban exile community such as Orlando Bosch, this author wonders what other details could be brought forward by Veciana.)

David Phillips

Out of all the CIA-linked people that crossed paths with Oswald, Phillips is perhaps the most important. Because of his rank and the multi-faceted way he links with Oswald beyond the Veciana reports, as well as the government investigators belief of Veciana, this author has reserved a special section to cover this highly revealing relationship that most historians do not even have a clue about. They are not aware of what people like Richard Schweiker came to believe, because they are frozen in the Warren Commission era which set in motion what has been perhaps the U.S.’s worst case ever of perpetuated “Fake News” and Fake History.

Manuel Orcarberrio

Manuel Rodriguez Orcarberrio (JFK: The Cuban Files)

According to Escalante, Alpha 66 opened a chapter managed by Orcarberrio in Dallas in September 1963 on Harlendale Street, where Oswald was seen a few days before the crime by an informant of Dallas Deputy Sherriff Buddy Walthers.

Pedro Charles and friends (JFK: The Cuban Files)

One rarely discussed subject about the assassination are the letters from Cuba sent to Oswald, media outlets and Robert Kennedy which were received or intercepted shortly after the murder. A “Pedro Charles” (probably a fictitious name) signed one of these letters and is referred to in another as a Castro agent. These letters suggested that Oswald was being assisted by Cuban agents. The FBI found that, though different people signed off on some, they were written from the same typewriter and concluded they were a hoax perhaps perpetrated by anti-Castro rebels in Cuba hoping to encourage a show-down with the U.S.

Cuban Intelligence had a different take on this mystery. They found it resembled the Mexico City disinformation tactics used by David Phillips and concluded that it was an intelligence operation. Indeed, the letters refer to Oswald’s travels to Dallas, Mexico City, Houston and Miami which would have been known to very few people at the time the letters were sent (“franked” from November 23^rd to November 30^th). Also analyzed was the Cuban postal system, which presented severe logistical problems around the dates the letters were written, franked and received and were never explained in U.S. investigations.

John Hurt (Dr. Grover B. Proctor, Jr.)

On Saturday night November 23^rd Oswald placed a call that even the head of the HSCA described as very troublesome. Doctor Grover B. Proctor, Jr. wrote a comprehensive article about that phone call. It shows that Lee Oswald tried to make a phone call on Saturday night that the Secret Service did not allow to go through. Proctor then investigated why:

Surell Brady, a Senior Staff Counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), summarized Mrs. Treon’s version of events this way:

Mrs. Treon stayed on the line. She said she was therefore able to hear everything Oswald said and she is sure he asked for the name John Hurt and gave the two numbers. She said that as she listened she wrote the information down on a regular telephone call slip. However, since Mrs. Swinney actually handled the call, Mrs. Treon signed her [Mrs. Swinney’s] name to the slip she intended to keep as a souvenir. She said the notations on the slip of “DA” and “CA” stand for did not answer and cancelled, because the call was never actually put through. Mrs. Treon said she never retrieved any paper from the wastebasket on which Mrs. Swinney supposedly entered the information.

Billie & J. D. Hurt

Had Mrs. Treon not kept the LD call slip that she filled out as a souvenir, this story would be no more than the most minor of footnotes in the tragedy of the Kennedy Assassination. However, years later, when the identity became known of the man to whom Oswald was trying to place a call, its significance would rise to the “very troublesome” and “deeply disturbing” levels ascribed to it by HSCA Chief Counsel Blakey.

Grover goes on to write:

What Mrs. Treon recorded for history on her LD slip is that Lee Oswald requested to call a “John Hurt” in Raleigh, North Carolina. But what would become important is the fact that the John Hurt who had the first phone number on the slip was a former Special Agent in U.S. Army Counterintelligence. In short, Oswald attempted to place a call from the Dallas jail to a member of the American Intelligence community on Saturday evening, November 23, 1963, but was mysteriously prevented from completing the call.

Jack Ruby and Robert McKeown (John Armstrong website)

As we can see, the claim that Oswald was a loner with no ties with intelligence agencies is one of the largest deceptions put forth by the Warren Commission. The description of his murderer by the Warren Commission as another deranged person with no mob ties comes very close. For example, the phone calls that he was part of in the weeks leading up to the murder and that were analyzed by the HSCA revealed a frenzy of communications with known mobsters.
1. His first visitor when he was jailed was Dallas head-mobster Joe Campisi.
2. His idol and acquaintance Lewis McWillie was a mobster who became an associate of Mafia Don Santos Trafficante and Meyer Lansky, leaders in the CIA-mob alliance to take out Castro.
3. There is strong evidence that Ruby visited Trafficante when the latter was in a Cuban jail and that he tried to free him.
The use of known-mobsters by the Warren Commission to vouch for Ruby not being linked to the mob is not re-assuring to say the least.

Ruby’s ties to the mob are what got Robert Blakey, head of the HSCA, to write a book about organized crime being behind the assassination.

Ruby at press conference

Did Jack Ruby cross paths with Oswald before he stalked him during his weekend in jail? According to reporter Dorothy Kilgallen, who interviewed Ruby after he was arrested, at least ten people signed affidavits saying they saw Ruby with Oswald. She claimed that she was going to blow the lid off the case before dying mysteriously.

During a press conference by Dallas attorney Henry Wade, where he claimed that Oswald was part of the Free Cuba Committee, it was Ruby masquerading as a journalist who corrected him by saying it was the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

John Armstrong is the researcher who has done the most investigation on the case of two Oswalds, one he calls Harvey (the patsy) and the other Lee. It is known that Oswald was often times impersonated. He presents the case that while Harvey was in New Orleans, Lee was a frequent client in Ruby’s Carousel Club.

Another link between Oswald and Ruby comes through their interactions with a gun smuggler and friend of Castro. Robert McKeown, who had been jailed for these activities, at one time got a call from Ruby who tried to use these ties in his efforts to convince the Castro regime to free Trafficante. McKeown did not want to get involved.

Robert McKeown

In his website-article, Armstrong describes this stunning event: Robert McKeown watched as a car arrived, parked, and two men got out and walked toward his home. One of the men introduced himself to McKeown as Lee Oswald, and said that he wanted to purchase rifles. McKeown, who was still on a 5-year probation for selling arms, refused to sell guns to Lee Oswald. The two men left but returned a few minutes later and again asked McKeown to sell rifles, but he refused. Lee Oswald’s attempt to purchase rifles from Robert McKeown, who was a very close personal friend of Fidel Castro, was very significant and an obvious attempt by the conspirators to link Lee Oswald to Cuba.

Other than his links with Trafficante, what were Ruby’s links to intelligence? Here are some of the arguments John Armstrong brings forth:

There are indications that Jack Rubenstein, of Chicago and Dallas, may have been hired as an informant for the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) to report on Communist Party activities. A memorandum written by a HUAC staff assistant on November 24, 1947 reads, “It is my sworn statement that one Jack Rubenstein of Chicago noted as a potential witness for hearings of the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities is performing information functions for the staff of Cong. Richard M. Nixon, Rep. of California. It is requested Rubenstein not be called for open testimony in those aforementioned hearings.”

As a gun-runner for Cuban revolutionaries, Ruby’s links were monitored by the CIA. Some of his gun-running was done with a CIA operative called Donald Browder at a time when Customs and the CIA were not opposed to Castro’s revolution.

Thomas Eli Davis III

His ties with another gun-runner named Thomas Eli Davis brought forth this interesting connection Armstrong wrote about:

When JFK was assassinated, Davis was in jail in Algiers, charged with running guns to a secret army terrorist movement then attempting to assassinate French President Charles de Gaulle. Davis was released from jail through the intervention of the CIA’s foreign agent code-named “QJ/WIN,” who was identified by the top-secret CIA Inspector General’s Report as the “principle asset” in the Agency’s assassination program known as ZR/RIFLE.

After Ruby’s arrest for killing Oswald, his defense attorney (Tom Howard) asked Ruby if he could think of anything that might damage his defense. Ruby responded and said there would be a problem if a man by the name of “Davis” should come up. Davis was later identified as Thomas Eli Davis III, a CIA-connected gun-runner and “soldier of fortune.” In December, 1963 the Moroccan National Security Police informed the US State Department that Davis was arrested for an attempted sale of firearms to a minor. When Davis was searched, the police found “a letter in his handwriting which referred in passing to Oswald and to the Kennedy assassination.” Ruby told Howard that “he had been involved with Davis, who was a CIA-connected gun runner entangled in anti-Castro efforts and that he (Ruby) had intended to begin a regular gun-running business with Davis.” … Tom Howard died of a heart attack within a year at age 48. The doctor, without an autopsy, said that he may have suffered a heart attack. But some reporters and friends thought Howard had been murdered.

The HSCA, under Robert Blakey, was intent on covering up any CIA connection or gun-running activities connected with Ruby and failed to investigate the Ruby/Davis connection. They explained, in typical government prose, “Due to limitations of time and resources … it was not possible to confirm these (Seth Kantor’s) allegations.”

Gerald Ford, in his otherwise uninformative book, Portrait of an Assassin, did reveal that Ruby had been an FBI informant. Before dying, Ruby made the claim that there was a high level conspiracy. The Warren Commission did not even want to question Ruby, when they finally did meet him they were not very probing to say the least!

Synopsis

There you have it folks … sixty-four people with whom Oswald had touch points, and, who also had either plausible, probable, or definite intelligence links. The list could be much longer because this author decided not to include certain witnesses who have not yet convinced enough researchers of their credibility. Furthermore, we do not know about all those who Oswald spent time with learning Russian, acquiring a Minolta camera, were connected to his U2 duties, were in Copenhagen on his return, and possibly in Montreal, and so forth.

In part 2 of his excellent essay “Tokyo Legend? Oswald and Japan,” Kevin Coogan compared the investigation into two genuine defectors who embraced the Soviet Union almost one year after Oswald defected. On September 6, 1960, two former National Security Agency (NSA) employees named Bernon Mitchell and William Martin held a press conference in Moscow. The two mathematician/cryptographers formally announced their defection. As it so happened, the two men had earlier worked at the U.S. military base at Atsugi, Japan.

Contrary to what happened with Oswald, in this case the level of alarm and degree of scrutiny were off the charts: The Mitchell-Martin defection was a tremendous shock to the NSA, which launched an internal investigation that involved speaking to some 450 witnesses. The FBI, the CIA, and military intelligence all worked the case. The inquiry included a microscopic look at both men’s earlier experiences in Japan.

As we can see, not one stone was left unturned in getting to the bottom of what happened, something we are now seeing in the Trump-Russia meddling affair. The underlying assumption here is that all leads must be followed to the end no matter how much time it takes or how much it costs. In the case of the JFK assassination, the opposite happened: A lead’s merit needed to be justified in full in order to be followed up, while respecting budget and time constraints.

Mark Lane found that intelligence’s investigation into Oswald’s defection was very shallow and pro forma. Schweiker added this telling insight: “The most important thing was that the intelligence agencies did all the wrong things if they were really looking for a conspiracy or to find out who killed John Kennedy.”

Two comments from important witnesses further confirm this:

Oswald, it was said, was the only Marine ever to defect from his country to another country, a Communist country, during peacetime. … When the Marine Corps and American intelligence decided not to probe the reasons for the ‘defection,’ I knew then what I know now: Oswald was on an assignment in Russia for American intelligence.

~James Botelho, former roommate of Oswald who would later become a California judge, in an interview with assassination researcher Mark Lane

When Oswald’s commanding officer John Donovan was questioned by the Warren Commission, he noted that they did everything they could to avoid exchanges about Oswald and the U2 program.

In the next section we will explore where investigators should have gone had they followed up on these leads by focussing on one of the most important ones.

Where There’s Smoke There’s Fire

David Phillips (Larry Hancock – Destiny Betrayed)

Concerning the CIA career officer who left the most intel fingerprints on Oswald, let us refer to Larry Hancock, who has written extensively about him, and from whose work we can conclude the following about his potential involvement in the conspiracy:

A) He had the perfect credentials.

David Atlee Phillips

Phillips joined the CIA in 1950. He played a significant role in the CIA coup that removed Jacobo Arbenz, the president of Guatemala in 1954. An ex ad-man and actor, Phillips was a master at propaganda. According to Hancock, Phillips was part of a cadre of like-minded CIA officers that specialized in regime change. Some of the techniques involved featured use of surrogates, putting the blame on a foe, creating a scenario, including paper trails, files and fabrications that could be plausible, and compartmentalized logistics on a need to know basis. This cadre included persons of interest in the JFK assassination: E. Howard Hunt, David Morales, and William Harvey are some of the key names that also figure prominently in many of the assassination writings.

There are reports Phillips worked with David Morales out of the JM/Wave Miami CIA station in attempts to remove Castro. Phillips helped launch Alpha 66, one of the most violent and active anti-Castro Cuban exile groups. He worked undercover in Cuba in 1959-60 when he recruited its leader Antonio Veciana. According to Howard Hunt, he was also involved with the DRE.

B) He had the motive.

He became one of many disillusioned officers who blamed and resented JFK after the failed Bay of Pigs and the firing of their popular chief Allen Dulles.

He demonstrated his insubordination to Kennedy: Phillips’ direction of Alpha 66 to attack Russian targets in Cuba was intended to provoke a direct U.S. –– Russian conflict which would result in the liberation of Cuba. Through Veciana, Phillips independently supported multiple unsanctioned assassination plots against Fidel Castro. Alpha 66, Veciana, Eddie Bayo and Tony Cuesta were not directed by the CIA but personally by Phillips. Phillips specifically told Veciana his goal was to provoke US intervention in Cuba by “putting Kennedy’s back to the wall.”

C) His quasi-confessions.

According to Larry Hancock, the author of Someone Would Have Talked, just before his death Phillips told Kevin Walsh, an investigator with the House Select Committee on Assassinations: “My final take on the assassination is there was a conspiracy, likely including American intelligence officers.” (Some books wrongly quote Phillips as saying: “My private opinion is that JFK was done in by a conspiracy, likely including rogue American intelligence people.”)

David Atlee Phillips died of cancer on 7th July, 1988. He left behind an unpublished manuscript. The novel is about a CIA officer who lived in Mexico City. In the novel the character states: “I was one of those officers who handled Lee Harvey Oswald … We gave him the mission of killing Fidel Castro in Cuba … I don’t know why he killed Kennedy. But I do know he used precisely the plan we had devised against Castro. Thus the CIA did not anticipate the president’s assassination, but it was responsible for it. I share that guilt.”

In his last conversation with his brother, who suspected him of being a conspirator and was pressing him on it, he refused to confirm his innocence and admitted being in Dallas on November 22^nd 1963.

D) E. Howard Hunt names him.

In January 2004, E. Howard Hunt gave a taped interview with his son, Saint John Hunt, claiming that Lyndon Baines Johnson was the instigator of the assassination (coded The Big Event) of John F. Kennedy, and that it was organized by Phillips, Cord Meyer, Frank Sturgis and David Sanchez Morales.

E) His lies.

He claimed to Fonzi that he had never met Veciana. How could the person who coordinated anti-Castro activities not know the Alpha 66 leader?

He claimed to Richard Sprague (HSCA) under oath that tapes of Oswald had been routinely recycled:

Phillips’ testimony was that there was no photograph of “Oswald” because the camera equipment had broken down that day and there was no audio tape of “Oswald’s” voice because they recycled their tapes every six or seven days. The problem with his story was, we had obtained a document, it was from the desk of J. Edgar Hoover, it was dated November 23rd, 1963, the very next day after the assassination. This document was a memo to all FBI supervisorial staff stating, in substance, that FBI agents who have questioned Oswald for the past 17 hours approximately, have listened to the tape made on October 1st, by an individual identifying himself as Lee Henry Oswald inside the Russian Embassy, calling on the phone to someone inside the Cuban Embassy and the agents can state unequivocally that the voice on the tape is not the voice of Lee Harvey Oswald, who is in custody.

He professed ignorance to Dan Hardway (HSCA) about all the disinformation stories trying to link Oswald to Castro agents that were initiated by his assets.

F) His omnipresence before, during and after Oswald’s demise.

Oswald’s opening of an FPCC chapter in New Orleans when this organization was spiralling out of control and infested with informants and Oswald’s extremely provocative way of promoting his supposed views smacked of an operational ruse overseen by Phillips who was running a program called AM/SANTA that was designed to infiltrate and undermine the FPCC. In the article The Three Failed Plots to Kill JFK, this author identified four other potential patsies who were FPCC-linked and who had travelled to Mexico City.

Phillips admitted knowing New Orleans-based FBI agent Warren DeBrueys, who was monitoring the FPCC and most likely using Oswald as an informant. Richard Case Nagell’s FPCC-related activities with Oswald, with another potential patsy Vaughn Marlowe, and a few FPCC chapters, combined with his visits to Mexico City and hints he gave to a friend that he worked with Phillips, add further weight to the Phillips-FPCC-Oswald conduit.

According to CIA-linked electronics wizard Gordon Novel, a person resembling Phillips, masquerading as an employee of the Double-Check Corporation, even attended a meeting along with Guy Banister and Sergio Arcacha Smith in Banister’s offices. Researcher Lisa Pease’s analysis led her to conclude that this person was in fact Phillips and Double-Check was a CIA front.

Banister, Smith and Ferrie at one time helped train Cuban exiles for the Bay of Pigs near Lake Pontchartrain north of New Orleans on a CIA controlled site. In 1967, while the CIA was trying to keep this information hidden from Garrison, Phillips wrote a memo describing the status of that operation.

Related to these training activities is, according to this author, one of the most mysterious pieces of evidence: a training film that was seen by a few HSCA investigators before it eventually disappeared. According to HSCA Deputy Counsel Robert Tanenbaum, he viewed a film of a CIA training camp in New Orleans. He brought in witnesses to identify certain people in the film. From the work done of it, he said that Oswald, Banister and Phillips were depicted in the film.

E. Howard Hunt claimed that Phillips was a key person behind the DRE. Phillips admitted helping it in its PR efforts. Carlos Bringuier of the DRE got into a fight with Oswald on Canal Street in August of 1963. He wrote a press release that was published the day after the assassination to position Castro as being behind Oswald; the fingerprints of Phillips became even more evident. The fact that George Joannides –– who took over DRE coordination activities from Phillips –– was inserted into the HSCA investigation by the CIA as a key liaison and thereafter started an obvious obfuscation operation underscores this suspicious event. Here is how HSCA investigator Dan Hardway described this situation:

We have, since 1978, learned that George Joannides was running the propaganda shop at the CIA’s Miami JMWAVE Station in 1963. It is extremely unlikely that Mr. Joannides could have occupied that position and not have known, and worked with, David Phillips. In addition, in 1963, we now know, George Joannides was the case officer handling the DRE. In 1977 the CIA specifically denied that DRE had a case officer assigned when asked that question by the HSCA.

Through Ed Butler and the CIA-associated INCA, Oswald’s apparent charade and his televised interview went a long way in painting his leftist persona to the public at large. INCA had been used by Phillips for propaganda purposes during the period leading up to the Bay of Pigs. Butler was quick to send recordings to key people the day of the assassination.

Antonio Veciana, who was Phillips’ go-to guy in the Cuban exile community for some thirteen years also, over time named Phillips. He told Gaeton Fonzi he had seen him talk to Oswald in Dallas in September 1963. Phillips also tried to get Veciana to convince a relative of his in Mexico City to fabricate a story about seeing Oswald taking money from Castro agents.

In October 1963, the CIA monitored the impersonation of Oswald in Mexico City at the Cuban consulate in what appears to be a clear attempt to link him to Castro and the Soviets –– all this right under Phillips’ nose as he was based there. Phillips then was clearly involved with the manipulation of evidence (tapes, photos and transcripts) in the subsequent cover-up.

On November 24 1963, Jack Ruby terminated Oswald, thus sealing his lips. Phillips’ close friend, Gordon McLendon, was a close friend of Jack Ruby.

Right after the assassination, persons of interest like John Martino, Frank Sturgis and Phillips-linked contacts (Bringuier, Butler and journalist Hal Hendrix) began a “Castro was behind it” spin to the assassination.

Following the assassination, it became obvious that Phillips was connected to a number of disinformation stories trying to link Oswald to Castro agents. HSCA investigator Dan Hardway called him out on it:

Before our unexpurgated access was cut off by Joannides, I had been able to document links between David Phillips and most of the sources of the disinformation that came out immediately after the assassination about Oswald and his pro-Castro proclivities. I confronted Phillips with those in an interview at our offices on August 24, 1978. Phillips was extremely agitated by that line of questioning, but was forced to admit that many of the sources were not only former assets that he had managed, in the late 50’s and early 1960’s, but were also assets whom he was personally managing in the fall of 1963. Mr. Phillips was asked, but could not explain, why the information that came from anti-Castro Cuban groups and individuals pointing to Cuban connections, all seemed to come from assets that he handled personally, but acknowledged that that was the case.

Conclusion

So as we can see, the noose was getting very tight around the Phillips’ neck during the Church and HSCA investigations. By following leads as far as they could, investigators like Schweiker, Hart, Fonzi, Tanenbaum, Sprague, Hardway and Lopez were zeroing in on who was behind the plot. These real sleuths brought the ball forward: The Warren Commission was finally fully impeached and the outline of a conspiracy began taking shape.

And just when they had suspects like Hunt and Phillips in their sights, a combination of factors took place that stalled and then stopped all progress. George H. W. Bush became head of the CIA and called the shots so as to protect the integrity of this all-American institution; HSCA leaders Sprague and Tanenbaum were forced out and a collegial working relationship with the CIA was then put in place by its new head Robert Blakey, and George Joannides was installed strategically to sabotage investigative efforts.

Phillips was now off the hook.

Moving forward, we do need to be cautious about how we interpret all of this. One may be tempted to conclude from this article that the CIA as an organization was complicit in killing the President. This in my opinion is highly doubtful and quite different from suspecting persons who can be linked to intelligence. When one goes over the names of the usual suspects, one is struck by their outlier status. It is also easy to imagine implication by someone in a ruse which ended up going in a completely unforeseen direction: For example DeBrueys using Oswald to weed out Castro sympathizers while having no clue that he was being set up to be a patsy could be quite plausible in this author’s opinion. It would be however quite natural for intelligence agencies to want to distance themselves from the assassination and its embarrassing implications.

In 1993, the ARRB began ordering releases of declassified information. That information made all of this obvious to those who looked into the goldmine of new information. It added even more evidence that vindicated the authors who were discredited mercilessly by the pro-Warren Commission propaganda network. Absent from all this data-mining are the historians and journalists who are still frozen in the Warren Commission time-warp –– the same people who are fighting for their lives countering Donald Trump who has accused them of being peddlers of fake news.

On a positive note, Randy Benson spoke with an historian who saw his recent documentary, The Searchers, and who admitted not knowing about all the post-Warren-Commission discoveries, and pledged to change his way of relating the assassination. My bet is that students who read his account will respect him, the way we should all show our respect to Richard Schweiker.
July 29, 2017
JFK Declassified: Tracking Oswald, Part 6
Part 7

Part 5

Part 4

Part 3

Part 2

Part 1

How The History Channel Did Not Track Oswald

The series “JFK Declassified: Tracking Oswald”1 has revealed itself to be a deception, one almost as blatant as the magic bullet, conducted not in six seconds, but over six episodes:
- “The Iron Meeting” that never happened in Mexico City, since …
- “The Russian Network” immediately wrote Oswald off as a nut job;
- “Oswald Goes Dark” in New Orleans—after displaying his pro Castro activism in broad daylight on the streets and even on the radio—to establish …
- “The Cuban Connection” with Alpha 66—a virulent paramilitary group of Cuban exiles organized and backed by the CIA—for the common purpose of killing Kennedy;
- “The Scene of the Crime” is mounted upon junk-science tests aimed at fixing Oswald as the lone gunman, and a far-fetched escape route for cooking up evidence about alleged Castroite Oswald being helped by anti-Castroite Alpha 66; and finally …
- “The Truth” reached by former CIA case officer Bob Baer is just an old CIA deceit about Castro’s foreknowledge of Oswald’s criminal intent.
An Overview of Baer’s First Four Installments

Before commenting on the last episode, let us revisit some of the earlier segments, in order to accent both what was in them and what was missing.

The first episode, about Oswald in Mexico City, was largely based upon a dubious book arranged by American journalist Brian Litman while he was living in Moscow in the late eighties. Colonel Oleg Nechiporenko’s Passport to Assassination seemed designed to counter two sources. First, what CIA officer David Phillips said in a debate with Mark Lane, namely, that when all the records were in, there would be no evidence Oswald was at the Russian consulate. (See Plausible Denial, p. 82) Second, what the Lopez Report describes: namely, that the CIA could provide no tapes or pictures of Oswald at either the Russian or Cuban consulates. The Litman/Nechiporenko book said Oswald was at the Russian consulate anyway. And even more made to order, the portrait it drew of Oswald was one of an unstable, almost suicidal character who fears the FBI is hunting him down. Which, as we know, is contradictory to the actual Oswald who, even under arrest for murder in Dallas, was a pretty cool customer. The Litman/Nechiporenko creation is much more in line with the Warren Commission’s sociopathic portrait. Baer never notes this discrepancy.

What is even worse, in part 2, Baer tells the audience that before he met with the colonel, he had no idea what Nechiporenko knew about Oswald. Are we to buy the concept that Baer never heard of his book? Are we supposed to believe the note of surprise in Baer’s voice when the colonel tells him he met with Oswald in Mexico City? That book was published in 1993, well over twenty years ago. So when, after speaking with the colonel, Baer says, “This puts the case in a whole new light”, what on earth is he talking about? And who does he think he is kidding? Certainly not anyone who knows something about the JFK case.

But further, in his usual portentous tones, Baer constantly compares Oswald meeting with Russian KGB agents in 1963 to someone meeting with ISIS today. As if ISIS had embassies that people can walk into and request information about visa applications. Again, this is so exaggerated as to be ludicrous. When did the KGB ever perform executions on camera? The spy wars back then were more sophisticated, more assiduous and cerebral in their planning and objectives than the war with terror today. That is one reason why it was called the Cold War.

Let us describe another crevice in Baer’s early presentation. One of the very few documents Baer shows the audience which actually was declassified by the Assassination Records Review Board was a transcript of a call between President Johnson and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. In it, LBJ asks for information about Oswald in Mexico City. The call was made on the morning of November 23^rd. Baer does not tell the audience that, as Rex Bradford discovered, there is no tape recording of this call, we only have a transcript. But he also does not tell his viewers that right after LBJ asked for more information, Hoover told the president that the audio tape and the picture they have of Oswald did not correspond to the man the FBI was interrogating in Dallas. In other words, the guy the CIA says was in Mexico City is not the man electronically captured by the CIA surveillance devices. (Jim Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, p. 80) Are we to believe that Baer read that transcript but missed that crucial piece of information? Or if he did not, he thought that it somehow was not important?

Let us mention another less-than-candid practice of “Tracking Oswald”. Time after time, Baer intones that he has studied the JFK case for ten years and read the entire 2 million page declassified record of the Assassination Records Review Board. In fact, he (unconvincingly) tries to insinuate that he has scanned the two million pages into his own personal database. Yet, if that were so, why does he show us pages printed from the Warren Commission Report as being redacted? Which they are not. He does this more than once, at least three times. Is he trying to present old, mildewed information as somehow spankingly brand new?

After speaking with Oleg Nechiporenko, Baer decides that his idea from Part 1, that somehow Oswald met with KGB agents in Mexico City in 1963 and they plotted to kill President Kennedy is faulty. Yet the original evidence he based this on was flawed to begin with. Baer said that the FBI got hold of some postcards that Oswald allegedly purchased in Mexico City. One of them depicted a bullfight. Therefore, Baer deduced that Oswald met some KGB agents at a bullfight and planned the killing of JFK. No joke.

The idea that if you buy a postcard with a bullfight on it, then you went to a bullfight is not logically sound. Tourists buy all kinds of postcards in foreign countries concerning places they do not actually go to. It is true that Marina Oswald said that her husband told her that he went to a bullfight in Mexico City. (WR, p. 735) But this is in direct contradiction to the fact that she had previously denied he was in Mexico City to the Secret Service during their first interview. And she denied it twice. (Secret Service report of Charles Kunkel from 11/24-11/30)

Contrary to what the program asserts, the evidence of Oswald in Mexico City—a Spanish-English dictionary, blank postcards, etc.—was not immediately seized and turned over to the FBI. And contrary to what Baer says, the Russians did not give him the postcard in evidence. These pieces of evidence—including the postcards—were adduced into the record a week after the assassination by Marina Oswald’s companion Ruth Paine. (Reclaiming Parkland, by James DiEugenio, p. 344) That Baer relies so much on these postcards without telling the viewer about their provenance tells us a lot about both his honesty and his knowledge base. Or perhaps both. Because the truth is that the Warren Commission had a hard time placing Oswald in Mexico City. Months later, in August, Priscilla Johnson, who replaced Ruth Paine as Marina’s companion, was still surfacing evidence about Oswald’s bus rides in Mexico City. This drove Warren Commission lawyer Wesley Liebeler up the wall. (ibid)

Baer also makes much play about Soviet diplomat Valery Kostikov meeting with Oswald at the Russian consulate in Mexico City. At the end of Part One, he tries to proffer it as evidence that hardly anyone ever knew about. If Baer really believes that, then he did not read the Warren Report, because Kostikov’s name appears there on page 734. And he is named as a KGB agent on that same page. In other words, it was open to the public back in 1964.

Once the KGB colonel tells him the Russians had no espionage interest in Oswald, Baer drops that line of inquiry. He now goes back to Mexico City and “discovers” the name of Sylvia Duran in his two million page declassified database. Again, he somehow sounds surprised when he finds the name of Sylvia Duran in there, even though, as anyone could have told him—except perhaps his staff—her name is also in the Warren Report. (See p. 734) And again, he continues in his shocked syndrome with, “This file completely changes the course of this investigation.” Who does Bob think Oswald talked to in the Cuban consulate, Che Guevara? Again, Baer is seemingly stunned when he finds out the Warren Commission did not talk to Duran. Which again shows his lack of knowledge of the real declassified record. The ARRB declassified the Commission’s Slawson/Coleman report in the Nineties. It was very clear from this Mexico City trip report of the Warren Commission that the CIA and FBI kept those two men on a short leash. By never referring to it, Baer escapes this question: Why did the Bureau and the Agency firmly regulate what Commission lawyers David Slawson and Bill Coleman saw and read? And why did the Commission not demand more freedom and access?

Ultimately, what can one say about a program called “Tracking Oswald” that never mentions or details the following names: Ruth and Michael Paine, George Bouhe, George DeMohrenschildt, David Ferrie, Guy Banister, Clay Shaw, or Kerry Thornley? These people largely controlled the last 17 months of Oswald’s life after his return from Russia. The first four did so in the Dallas/Fort Worth area; the second quartet in New Orleans. If you never examine any of those persons then how are you tracking Oswald? And contrary to what Baer says about his (ersatz) access to the ARRB declassified files, there have been many pages released about those people. And there are still pages that will be released on them in October of this year.

Baer’s presentation is so restricted, so empty, and at the same time his approach is so hammily bombastic, that it leads an informed viewer to suspect an agenda. That agenda is to make believe he has consumed 2 million pages of documents for the viewer. Then to present virtually nothing from those pages. After performing this shell game, he tells his audience: Hey, I saw them, and guess what? Oswald still did it.

Sure Bob, sure.

The Final Chapter

The title for the final episode conceals the fact that Baer’s conclusion—Castro knew it—has been drawn from two false premises: (1) Oswald was the lone gunman who killed Kennedy firing both a magic bullet and a fatal shot to the head; (2) Oswald was openly telling his criminal intention to members of Alpha 66, which was riddled with agents of the Cuban Intelligence Service (CuIS) who reported back to Castro.

Since Baer refuses to explain how CuIS moles would have known much more about Oswald than the CIA officers and agents working closely with Alpha 66 since its inception in 1962, let’s make a clean break with his conspiracy theory. There is no shred of evidence refuting Castro’s statement about Oswald during his Radio/TV appearance in Havana the day after the assassination:2 “We never in our life heard of the existence of this person.”

An Apocryphal Story as Baer’s Cornerstone

Shortly before airing the series, Baer revealed to Time magazine staffer Olivia B. Waxman:3 “What really got me into it was meeting a defector from Cuba and one of the best agents the CIA has ever had. He said that on the 22nd of November 1963, four hours before the assassination, he was at an intelligence site in Havana when he got a call from Castro’s office, saying, ‘Turn all of your listening ability to high frequency communications out of Dallas because something’s going to happen there.’”

In front of the camera Baer provides a second-hand version of this story by CuIS defector Enrique García, who affirmed that another CuIS defector, Florentino Aspillaga, had told him such a story. The latter had also given it as an anecdote à la carte for the book Castro’s Secrets (Macmillan, 2012, 2013),4 written by former CIA desk analyst Dr. Brian Latell.

Together with Aspillaga and Latell, García and Baer end up forming a crew who carry the banner “Castro knew Kennedy would be killed.” It’s silly that Castro would have resorted to a radio counterintelligence prodigy or any other means of electronic intelligence (ELINT) in order to learn something that would have been instantly available through the mass media. In 1963, instant info about anything occurring in Dallas during the JFK visit simply meant broadcast reports interrupting soap operas on the three national TV networks and radio stations breaking news furnished by reporters covering the live event.

Pathetically, Baer mounts a charade with Adam Bercovici broadcasting local info from Dallas, Baer himself boosting it through short-wave radio as some Alpha 66 operator would have done, and two guys in a boat picking up the signal in international waters near a Cuban ELINT radio tower. They are unaware that Aspillaga, codenamed TOUCHDOWN by the CIA,5 became a self-defeating storyteller6: “It wasn’t until two or three hours later that I began hearing broadcasts on amateur radio bands about the shooting of President Kennedy.” Radio amateurs must have just been chatting about what the commercial media had already reported. Indeed, a unique witness—French journalist Jean Daniel—had given conclusive evidence against Aspillaga since the very day of the assassination. After a phone call by Cuban President Osvaldo Dorticós, Castro got all the news “from the NBC network in Miami.”^⁷ Plus, we know from Daniel—who was serving as Kennedy’s emissary to Castro on the day of the assassination—that Fidel was utterly shocked when he heard the news that Kennedy had been shot. Later, when Castro got the news that JFK was dead, he turned to Daniel and said—referring to their plans for rapprochement—that everything was going to change. (Jim Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, pp. 89-90)

Aspillaga’s story is spurious not only because it’s silly but because, as shown above, its rebuttal can be traced back to Daniel’s on-site account. The crux of the matter is that Aspillaga confided to Latell in 2007 he had previously told the story only to the CIA during his debriefing after defection in 1987.8 Thus, it must have been declassified or withheld under the terms of the JFK Records Act (1992). However, Aspillaga’s story appears neither among the millions of pages declassified by the ARRB nor among the around 1,100 records still withheld by the CIA at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).9

Tracking Oswald Seriously

In Dallas, Baer and his team attempt to reconstruct a planned Oswald escape after the last shot. He imagines having made an unbelievable discovery: there were, get this, six houses of Cuban exiles along the road to a present-day bus stop on a route matching the dubious 1963 transfer ticket found in Oswald’s shirt pocket when he was arrested. Even as simply linking Oswald to a safe house, this evidence is fishy.

Baer absolutely trusts an informant who told the Dallas Police Department (DPD) about seeing Oswald with Cuban exiles in a house at 1326 Harlandale Avenue. It was rented by Jorge Salazar, lieutenant to Manuel Rodríguez Orcabarrio [sic], head of the Dallas Alpha 66 chapter, and served as a meeting place. However, Peter Scott pointed out that Orcabarrio “looked so much like Oswald that he was mistaken for him.”10 A point that somehow, in all his alleged document review, Baer missed. Yet, this was backed up by another reputable JFK researcher. In his book, The Secret Service (Fine Communications, 2002), the late Philip H. Melanson further provided that it was “independently confirmed by the FBI [that Orcabarrio] bore a resemblance to Lee Harvey Oswald” (page 83). And Larry Hancock argues that there is some evidence that the information was later negated. A source later “told the FBI Oswald had never been there.”11

Baer ignores all of this and goes on by cherry-picking info out of context. To make it crystal clear that Alpha 66 was deeply infiltrated by CuIS, defector García stated that its Chief of Operations was a Castro dangle. In fact, CuIS officer José Fernández-Santos, a.k.a. “El Chino” [The Chinese], became Alpha 66 Chief of Naval Operations, but just after illegally leaving Cuba in late 1968. To reinforce the image of Oswald obsessed with killing Kennedy, Baer makes use of the Sylvia Odio incident as if it were a prelude in Dallas on the road to Mexico City, instead of a quantum of proof about Oswald’s impersonation here or there.12

Under an illusion about another “explosive discovery”, Baer raves on about Oswald returning from Mexico to fulfil “his promise” and running into people as furious with Kennedy as himself: Alpha 66. Thus, Baer and his team lost the real trail marked by the CIA’s “keen interest in Oswald, held very closely on the need-to-know basis.”13

Three CIA teams never stopped tracking Oswald all the way from Moscow (1960) to Dallas (1963). Info about him—more than 40 different documents: FBI reports, State Department cables, intercepted personal letters and others—usually passed from the CIA Counterintelligence (CI) Special Investigation Group (SIG) to the CI Operation Group (OPS) to the Counter-Espionage Unit of the Soviet Russia Division (CE-SR/6).
- The CIA opened a personality file (201-289248) on “Lee Henry Oswald” on 9 December 1960. His documentary record began with the Halloween 1959 UPI story “An ex-Marine asks for Soviet citizenship.”
- Since May 25, 1960, “Lee Harvey Oswald” appeared in another file at the Covert Operations Desk, based on the report by FBI Special Agent John Fain in Dallas after talking with Oswald’s parents about “Funds Transmitted to Residents of Russia.”
- A third CIA index card for “Lee H. Oswald” was attached to file (100-300-011) about the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) on October 25, 1963. FBI Special Agent Warren De Brueys had reported from New Orleans that Oswald confessed being “a member of the alleged New Orleans chapter of FPCC,” a pro-Castro group listed as subversive.
These cards were used in a threesome for making different legends of the same re-defector, who arrived in the U.S. with his wife and their 4-month-old daughter on June 13, 1962, thanks to a $435.71 loan from the State Department. S.A. Fain debriefed him in Fort Worth twice. His final report, dated on August 30, 1962, stated Oswald “agreed to contact the FBI if at any time any individual made any contact of any nature under suspicious circumstances with him.”

Surprisingly, the CIA cable traffic in early October 1963 demonstrates that the Station in Mexico City and the Headquarters in Langley hid from each other their intel about Oswald’s connections with Cuba: His visit to the Cuban Consulate on September 27, 1963, and his pro-Castro activism in Dallas and New Orleans, respectively.

The CIA got shockingly involved in a conspiracy of silence about a former Marine, re-defector from the Soviet Union and self-pronounced Marxist, who was identified by the FBI as a pro-Castro activist in Dallas and New Orleans, spotted by the CIA in Mexico City visiting both the Cuban and Soviet embassies, and finally missed by both the FBI and the CIA as a security risk in Dallas at the moment of truth. A former CIA case officer must be aware of all this, but Baer overlooks the hard facts in lieu of resorting to camouflage with “Castro knew it.”

Castro versus Kennedy

In the interview with Waxman, Baer dragged and dropped that Castro “had every reason in the world” to want JFK dead. In the series, Baer assumes that Castro “was very happy” when his moles in Alpha 66 briefed him about Oswald being set up to kill Kennedy. Since Castro did nothing to prevent JFK’s death, Baer foists a conspiracy of silence on him.

This is an utter distortion of history done for the History Channel. Because Castro had every reason to want Kennedy alive and well. On Christmas Eve 1962, the American lawyer Jim Donovan boarded the last flight with the Bay of Pigs prisoners airlifted to Miami as result of his negotiation with Castro. Just before departure, Castro’s aide Dr. Rene Vallejo broached the subject of re-establishing diplomatic relations. Upon learning of this communication, Kennedy commented “it looked interesting.”14

With JFK’s death Castro was going to gain nothing else than LBJ in the White House, who offered no promise of more favorable U.S. policies toward Cuba. The Soviet bloc’s diplomats in Havana were aware of Castro’s preference. On March 31, 1963, Hungarian Ambassador János Beck set out in a secret report to Budapest that Castro was convinced “Kennedy is the best” option among the possible candidates for the U.S. presidency in 1964.15 Furthermore, ABC newswoman Lisa Howard interviewed Castro in April 1963 and reported he considered a rapprochement with Washington desirable.16 The same message was conveyed in August 1963 by one María Boissevain, wife of a former Dutch Ambassador to Cuba.17

Even so, the CIA was dismayed that Kennedy continued to favor a compromise with Castro. On November 5, 1963, CIA Deputy Director for Plans Dick Helms suggested to “war game” the Castro détente in a meeting of the Special Group.18 Kennedy opted for sending French reporter Jean Daniel as secret envoy to Castro. On November 19, Daniel was already talking with him, while Kennedy was waiting for an agenda proposal by Castro to “decide what to say [and to] do next.”^¹⁹

On September 7, 1963, Castro had attended a reception at the Brazilian Embassy in Havana. He talked with Associated Press correspondent Dan Harker, who quoted him saying: “U.S. leaders should think that if they are aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe.”^²⁰ According to the crew of “Castro sorta did it,” he wanted Kennedy’s death and gratuitously broadcasted his intention to the whole world. In fact, Kennedy had expressed the same idea on November 1961. After meeting with reporter Tad Szulc, who noted him “under terrific pressure from advisors (…) to okay a Castro murder,” Kennedy discussed the issue with his aide Richard Goodwin and remarked: “If we get into that kind of thing, we’ll all be targets”.^²¹

Castro summed up his ethical pragmatism thusly: “Ethics is not a simple moral issue (…) It produces results.”22 If he would have had foreknowledge—from Alpha 66 or any other source—of Oswald or whoever else was threatening to kill Kennedy, he would have reacted just as in 1984 with a U.S. President he deemed much worse than Kennedy. After being advised about an extreme right-wing conspiracy to kill Ronald Reagan in North Carolina, Castro ordered his spymaster at the Cuban Mission to the UN to furnish all the intel to the U.S. Security Chief at the UN, Robert Muller. The FBI quietly dismantled the plot.23

Abuse of History

Baer’s intent appears to be to keep on muddying the waters. He even said to Waxman: “We don’t know exactly what the Cubans told him in Mexico City,” although the CIA did know that they only talked about an in-transit visa. The acting consul, Alfredo Mirabal, was also a CuIS officer, identified by the CIA as “Chief of Intel”24. Before the HSCA, Mirabal adamantly stated having judged Oswald’s visit to the Cuban consulate on September 27, 1963, as “a provocation.”25

That day the CIA listening post LIENVOY recorded two calls between Cuban and Soviet consular staffers about an American citizen seeking—illegally—an in-transit visa to Cuba on his way to Soviet Russia. On the second call’s transcript, Station Chief Win Scott noted: “Is it possible to identify?”26

This normal reaction was followed by an anomaly. In the LIENVOY operational report for September 1963, Scott referred to “two leads of operational interest:” a female professor from New Orleans calling the Soviet Embassy, and a Czech woman calling the Czech embassy.27 In gross violation of the CIA protocol, the U.S. citizen in Mexico City who was allegedly Oswald was not reported to Langley.

Ironically, the conspiracy of silence foisted in a fact-free manner by Baer on Castro proved to be factually correct in reference to the CIA. With Castro as vantage point instead of the CIA, Baer was not tracking Oswald to articulate a true picture of the past, but to drive the historical truth away.

NOTES

1 After two episodes, the series was cancelled in the U.S., but continued in Canada. The History Channel has informally stated it will come back to the States in a timely fashion.

2 JFK Exhibit F-684.

3 “Former CIA Operative Argues Lee Harvey Oswald’s Cuba Connections Went Deep,” Time, April 25, 2017.

4 See the book review “The End of An Obsession.”

5 After 25 years and 13 medals in the CuIS, Aspillaga defected from his third-rate post in Bratislava [Slovakia] to Vienna in early June 1987. The CIA Station Chief there, James Olson, thought his companion was Aspillaga’s daughter, but she was actually Aspillaga’s girlfriend. The British historian Rupert Allason, a.k.a. Nigel West, made an entry for the case in his Historical Dictionary of Sexspionage (Scarecrow Press, 2009). Anyway, Aspillaga got a deluxe package of resettlement in the U.S. in return for handing over valuable documents stolen from the first-rank CuIS Station in Prague and for being squeezed by CIA debriefers. He furnished the key intel that almost all the Cubans recruits by the CIA from 1960 onward were double agents loyal to Castro.

6 Brian Latell, Castro’s Secrets, Macmillan, 2013, 103.

7 Jean Daniel, “When Castro Heard the News,” The New Republic, December 7, 1963.

8 Instead of taking the road to clarification, the CIA engaged in a conspiracy of silence. The Agency Release Panel responded to a FOIA request on June 28, 2013: “The CIA can neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence” of JFK-related records in Aspillaga’s debriefing.

9 Neither Aspillaga nor TOUCHDOWN brings any result by searching one after the other, or both, at the National Archives web site. By entering “JFK Assassination” in the search box, the first relevant result would be “About JFK Assassination Records Collection.” By clicking on it, then on “JFK Assassination Records Collection Database”, and finally on “Standard Search”, a “Kennedy Assassination Collection Simple Search Form” appears. After entering the terms “Aspillaga” (first line) OR “Touchdown” (second line), no hit will be retrieved.

10 “The CIA’s Mystery Man,” The New York Review of Books, Volume 22, Number 12, July 17, 1975.

11 The last name is often misspelled as Orcabarrio or Orcaberrio. In the CuIS files, he is registered as Manuel Rodríguez Oscarberro. On the evening of November 22, 1963, DPD detective Buddy Walthers knew about someone looking very much like Oswald going into this house since October because his mother-in-law was living next door. Walthers reported it and the FBI did no more than confirm that Oscarberro and other Cuban exiles had been there and departed. Nonetheless it was noted that a source inside Alpha 66, who later moved to Puerto Rico, had furnished the information that Oswald was not associated with the group in any way and had never been to the house. Since Oscarberro did move to Puerto Rico, it is possible he was the FBI source clearing Oswald.

12 Both occurrences overlapped in time, but left the same trail. Along with two Cuban exiles, a Leon Oswald visited Mrs. Odio in Dallas. The day after, one of the Cubans phoned her and discussed Oswald as an excellent shooter, who believed President Kennedy should have been assassinated after Bay of Pigs. Meanwhile, a Lee Harvey Oswald visited the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City and yelled on his way out: “I’m going to kill Kennedy!”

13 As CIA Counterintelligence (CI) officer Jane Roman told John Newman on November 2, 1994.

14 FRUS, XI, Doc. 275, 687 f.

15 Declassified top secret document from the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. At Cold War History Research Center Budapest, click on “Archives”, then on “Selected Hungarian Documents on Cuba, 1960-1963,” and finally on “Talks between Cuba and the USA (March 31, 1963).

16 “Castro’s Overture,” War/Peace Report, September 1963, 3-5.

17 NARA Record Number: 104-10310-10244.

18 NARA Record Number: 104-10306-10024.

19 Peter Kornbluh, “JFK and Castro,” Cigar Aficionado, September – October 1999, pp. 3 ff.

20 “Castro Blasts Raids on Cuba,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, September 9, 1963.

21 Richard Mahoney, JFK: Ordeal in Africa, Oxford University Press, 1983, p.135.

22 My Life: A Spoken Autobiography, Simon and Schuster, 2008, 211.

23 Nestor Garcia-Iturbe, Cuba-US: Cuban Government Saved Reagan’s Life, June 6, 2015.

24 NARA Record Number: 1994.05.03.10:31:46:570005.

25 HSCA Report, pp. 173-78.

26 NARA Record Number 104-10413-10074

27 NARA Record Number: 104-10052-10083.
July 12, 2017