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  • Walter Machann Interview Synopsis

    Walter Machann Interview Synopsis

    Gayle Nix Jackson’s Interview Excerpts with Walter Machann.

    http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2018/09/walter-machann-interview-excerpts.html

    For the complete interview – see Gayle Nix Jackson, Pieces of the Puzzle (2017)

    We know Gayle Nix Jackson as the granddaughter of Orville Nix, who, like Abraham Zapruder, filmed the assassination of President Kennedy, the subject of her first book—Orville Nix: The Missing Assassination Film (2014).

    Then, after interviewing a number of important witnesses, including Walter Machann, Gayle put together a second book, Pieces of the Puzzle, an anthology that includes contributions from a number of other JFK researchers and touches on other important subjects. The interview with Machann stands out however, as a key piece to the Dealey Plaza puzzle.

    Not only did Gayle Nix Jackson find Walter Machann; it can’t be overemphasized how important it was that she gained his trust and he talked to her on the record, answering key questions.

    One of the more significant and elusive characters in the JFK assassination story, Walter Machann was a Catholic priest who catered to the needs of the Cuban exile community of Dallas, including Silvia Odio and her family.

    Before the assassination, Silvia Odio told Father Machann about three visitors to her Dallas apartment, including “Leon” Oswald, a former Marine who said President Kennedy should have been assassinated after the Bay of Pigs. Machann not only confirms Odio’s story but provides and exact date, a fact that had eluded official investigators.

    To put things in chronological order, Machann explained to Gayle Nix Jackson: “I’m Polish on my father’s side. Irish on my Mother’s side … My dad worked as a shipping clerk for over 50 years at an oil company. My mother had only a high school education. My dad finished high school at night school … I never had money. I wasn’t tied to luxuries in life … My mother sent me to school at age 5 … Sister Winifred took me like her little boy. I graduated high school before my 16th birthday … and I was shipped off to the Seminary. I had been an altar boy and one of my friends was a secular priest. I got interested in philosophy because the Jesuits are famous for that, for their arguments, like Socrates and St. Thomas Aquinas. I was really just being carried along in the wave … I was ordained before I was 23. The cut-off age was 24. I have a little frame of the Pope in Rome that gave me dispensation to be ordained before age 24. I wasn’t really prepared emotionally, but I was very pious, very religious.”

    “I spent a summer in Mexico while still in Seminary,” Machann continued; “I saw a lot of Mexico and can speak Spanish well. It’s almost a second language.” Which is why he became head of the Catholic Cuban Relief Program in Dallas.

    “Bishop Tschoeper appointed me (to the Catholic Cuban Relief Program),” Machann said. “He knew I spoke Spanish and had done well at the University of Mexico. I was young and energetic. I think he felt I would be the right person for that job. The Cuban Catholic Committee of Dallas was not very representative of all the Cubans. There were different segments … a pretty small group … It’s always difficult when you have such people who have been thrust into a new country knowing no one and longing for their families. So many of these Cubans were young or newly married. Many of them were from quite wealthy families in Cuba and they got here and could barely scrape up enough money to buy food. It was very sad for them.”

    “As for the Odios,” Machann said, “I knew her sisters. Sarita. I knew Annie. She was a teenager. They were accustomed to living in a higher part of society. Castro made their country estate into a prison. That’s what revolutions are about I guess. Castro was at their house a lot. They had a wedding there for (Castro’s) sister.”

    Gayle gave Machann Silvia Odio’s book of poetry, written in Spanish, from which Machann translated to English and from which we learn that Silvia was born in Cuba in 1937, but was sent to the United States to go to school. She graduated from Sacred Heart High School in Philadelphia, studied law at Villanova University, returned home and then left Cuba in December, 1960.

    According to Machann, “She was artistic, semi-intellectual. The Spanish philosopher Ortega de Garcet [sic; probably refers to José Ortega y Gasset] was her favorite … She was romantic about the fate of Cubans coming to Dallas. Some of her ideas I even put in my sermons. Because of the trauma of the revolution, going from wealth to poverty, you have to remake yourself. Forge a new self.”

    Catholic Cuban Relief

    As for the Catholic Cuban Relief Program, Machann said, “ … I would talk to businesses asking them to help and then there were many socialites who helped bring clothing and food and such for us to distribute to the refugees.”

    Among the Dallas socialites who assisted Machann in taking care of the Cuban refugees was Lucille Connell. “Lucille Connell! Yes! She was one to remember … ,” said Machann. “There were a group of women who … helped with the Cubans. Most of them weren’t even Catholic, but a few were. They were more social than they were anything. I suppose because of the times it was their way of being in a kind of club to help others. They were always in the paper, Lucille Connell especially.”

    And it was Connell, not Silvia Odio, who first alerted authorities to Odio’s three visitors, including Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin.

    In Lucille Connell’s testimony, she mentions Silvia and Annie going to the movies. Gayle says that “Faith Leicht … said that while they were at the movies, Silvia said she would be right back. They figured she was going to the restroom. She didn’t show up after the movie was over. Faith said that they later found Silvia wandering around Turtle Creek near General Walker’s home. This was April 10th of 1963. Faith said that Annie called you to see if you knew where Silvia was and then called Lucille Connell. They then called the police. The police picked her up on Turtle Creek and took her to Lucille Connell’s home.”

    April 10th was the date someone took a shot at General Walker while he was in his home office on Turtle Creek. To that story, Machann said, “I don’t think that happened. I think that must be made up. I don’t remember anyone calling me about Silvia … It seems like another distraction. I don’t know what proof there is that he ever shot at General Walker and just missed him.”

    Besides Lucille Connell and Faith Leicht, another Dallas socialite who assisted Machann in helping the Cuban refugees was Trudi Castorr, wife of Colonel Castorr, who was involved in running guns to Cuba with the husband of one of the bartenders at the Carousel Club, and Jack Ruby was the bagman in the operation. But Machann doesn’t recall Trudi Castorr.

    “Trudi Castorr? That doesn’t ring a bell, but I didn’t know all of them,” Machann said. But he did know Sylvia Odio, intimately. “Silvia was one of the Cubans from a wealthy family; in fact, I heard that her dad was one of the wealthiest men in Cuba. Silvia immediately took up with Lucille … She also liked attention and nice things. Her state of mind, I don’t know how you would describe it, but she was prone to nervous breakdowns. She was highly excitable, but also very strong. She told me she was her father’s favorite child and I think she must have been very much like him. Though she would faint and feign nervousness, she was strong and outgoing, unlike her sister Sarita … Sarita went to the University of Dallas and was here with their younger sister (Anne) who was in high school. She was engaged to a Swedish man. I think they may have gotten married. Sarita was very quiet. She never rocked the boat. She was the opposite of Silvia.”

    The Visitors

    Before the assassination Silvia wrote to her father in a Cuban prison to tell him about the three visitors, told a Navy psychiatrist—a friend of Connell—and told Father Machann. She told those three close confidants, and Connell, about three strangers who visited her apartment seeking assistance for their Cuban cause, including “Leon” Oswald, the accused assassin of the president, who said that JFK should have been killed after the Bay of Pigs.

    When the strangers came, Silvia’s younger sister Annie answered the door and the visitors at first asked for her other sister Sarita. Silvia’s father was affiliated with JURE, a liberal anti-Castro group led by Manolo Ray, while Silvia’s sister Sarita was a Dallas college student involved in the DRE, the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil.

    The visitors said they were “working in the underground,” and they introduced themselves as “Leopoldo,” “Angelo,” and “Leon” Oswald, an American. The next day, Leopoldo called Silvia and told her Oswald was a former Marine and expert marksman who said the Cubans should have assassinated President Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs.

    Machann said, “The one thing I did tell them was that I remember that date because Silvia and Lucille were going to a celebrity party with that actress (Janet Leigh) … and I felt slighted. I wondered why they didn’t ask me to go. I would have liked to have gone. I just remembered when she called and told me … I connected it to that party I didn’t go to … I do know she told me the day she said they came was the day they were going to the party.”

    Gayle found a Tuesday, September 24, 1963, newspaper report on the Galaxy Gala Ball that was scheduled for the following Friday, September 27, setting the date of the visitors exactly.

    Besides having knowledge about Odio’s visitors before the assassination, and providing the date, Father Machann, the Dallas newspapers also reported, introduced John Martino to a John Birch Society audience in Dallas when he was promoting his book, I Was Castro’s Prisoner. In that talk, with Sylvia Odio’s sister Sarita in the audience, Martino said he knew her father Amador Odio in the Isle of Pines prison in Cuba. Odio was incarcerated for participating in a plot to kill Fidel Castro that also included Antonio Veciana, who also becomes entwined in the JFK assassination story. Martino’s mention of her father caused Sarita to cry.

    John Martino is well known to JFK researchers from his role in the Bayo-Pawley raid to Cuba with William Pawley and other suspects in the assassination. In the 1990s, while I interviewed Martino’s sister and brother in Atlantic City, Anthony Summers was in Florida interviewing Martino’s son and wife. Martino’s widow told Summers that her husband had expressed foreknowledge of the assassination of the president on the morning of the murder.

    Machann however, says today that he didn’t know John Martino and doesn’t recall introducing him to the Birch Society audience.

    Machann said that with the Cubans, “Politics and religion were separate. Whereas in Texas, politics is religion … I just remember I think it was at a Mass we had for him, I gave a sermon, that was later published in the Catholic Weekly, and it was, kind of my interpretation of some of the things that Silvia had said about this philosopher Ortega y Garcet [Gasset], talking about consciousness, the change of consciousness, I kinda played a little on that now they needed to think of something positive for the future.”

    Machann said that “I would go to different businesses asking for help with the organization. I met the oil baron H. L. Hunt that way … When I went to Mr. Hunt’s office he just talked about the Communism problem and his Lifeline show. He never donated any money to us.”

    The CIA Connection

    While Machann assisted the Cubans and helped raise donations for them, he worked closely with a Cuban, Mr. Joaquin “Papa” Insua. “We worked together. Mr. Insua kept our books so he knew about all the money we took in and gave out … I didn’t [hire him], I don’t know who did, but I would think it was someone from the Diocese.”

    Strange enough, after the assassination, the Dallas Cuban Refugee Office, where Machann worked, caught fire. Of that Machann says, “I know all the records that Mr. Insua kept were burned. He died not long afterwards, or maybe it was before. The memory of an old man isn’t reliable is it?”

    It was Joaquin Insua who kept the records and accounted for the money, the origins of which we now know was the CIA.

    The Catholic Church’s support for the Cuban refugee relief was sponsored, as least in part, by the Philadelphia-based CIA conduit Catherwood Foundation.

    [See: Catherwood Fund—http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2008/01/catherwood-fund.html and Cuban Aid Relief—http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2008/01/cuban-aid-relief.html].

    The CIA’s interest in refugees from communist countries began with Nazi German general Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler’s intelligence chief for the Eastern front, who recognized the value of the information provided by the refugees fleeing the Soviets with Operation Wringer. The CIA continued this operation with the International Rescue Committee, headed by Leo Cherne, who Lee Harvey Oswald wrote to three times from the Soviet Union seeking assistance in returning home.

    As most Cubans are Catholic, it wasn’t surprising for the Catholic Church to support the Cuban refugees, and the Church’s effort was in turn supported by the CIA Catherwood Foundation, that provided money and set up medical clinics in Miami, New Orleans, and Dallas, where large numbers of Cubans settled.

    New Orleans

    Sometime shortly after the assassination, Machann suddenly left the priesthood, disappeared from Dallas, and resurfaced in New Orleans.

    “I didn’t see them after the assassination. I moved to New Orleans and never saw any of those people again,” Machann said.

    As for leaving the priesthood, Machann says: “There’s a saying, ‘El camino que no coriste.’ It means, ‘The road you didn’t take.’ People do tend to think what would have happened had I stayed? I mean, I see many of my classmates … what happened to them in their careers. You know. I had a very good friend who was a counselor at the University of Dallas, another was a chancellor to the Arch Diocese, at that time every place I had been assigned, they couldn’t find anything to keep me challenged. I couldn’t find anything to keep me adequately engaged. They kept me busy. I would do all the things and turn the money over to them, but basically it was not something I had really chosen. It didn’t seem to be what my potential was. You know? It wasn’t my real vocation, whatever that is, my calling. It was my mother’s dream … My mother didn’t like me leaving the priesthood. I didn’t really tell her I was going. I just left. She didn’t even know where I was … I ended up negotiating with the Diocese, very privately, that I could be admitted to Loyola in New Orleans. They didn’t know what to do with me, and they … It’s not that they didn’t want me, I just found the priesthood unfulfilling. Of course, I was a bit scandalized by some of the things I saw, which of course you would be when you get too close to people who are very sanctimonious, or at least have all the trappings of religion … I held myself to a certain standard but I didn’t see anyone else doing it. I think shock is what allowed me to make the break. Otherwise, I may have not ever broken away. It was a critical time. My personal crisis just happened to occur simultaneously as the Kennedy Crisis.”

    When he left the priesthood, Machann had talked the church leadership into allowing him to attend Tulane University, where he got a degree in Sociology and Philosophy.

    In New Orleans, unknown to Silvia, he visited her uncle, Dr. Augustin Guitart, a college professor who attended Oswald’s court hearing after the altercation with Carlos Bringuier and the DRE Cubans who accosted him. Guitart was a friend of Bringuier.

    Of his time there Machann said, “I knew the Odio family well enough that when I went to New Orleans I would visit her uncle (Augustin Guitart). He was a professor … He taught physics … It was nice knowing him though because I was in a city where I knew no one and I would go to his home and it felt like family.I spent a lot of time at the Guitart home … He was a quiet man. He didn’t seem like an activist. He was a physics professor, short in stature. He was a mature, serious pleasant man.”

    After the Warren Commission learned about what became known as “The Odio Incident,” an investigator visited Machann in New Orleans. Besides Gayle Nix Jackson, Machann says there have only been two other interviews with him. “One was an FBI agent that found me in New Orleans, the other was a Frontline team that put me on camera and asked me questions. There were only two official interviews. The FBI guy in New Orleans and Frontline.”

    Machann’s associate in the Dallas Catholic Cuban Relief program, Mr. Insua, had a daughter who served as their secretary and taught school at the church, including the son of FBI agent Hosty, a parishioner. And it was Hosty, Machann says, who tracked him down in New Orleans and interviewed him there.

    “That FBI guy’s name was James Hosty,” Machann now says. “He was a former parishioner at Blessed Sacrament Church where my family had attended church for a long time and he was the one who found me in New Orleans and came to my boarding house where I was renting a room. He called me downstairs and had a talk and I followed his direction, he asked me to make a phone call which I did. But the only thing I could tell him is what I said. He couldn’t get any more information, I wasn’t really involved. If they did send him, or why they did send him, he didn’t ask me a lot of questions, like did they ever confess to you. Even if I had heard confessions, it’s nobody’s business, it’s sealed and locked away. Maybe they were just trying to find out anything they could find. They like trying to catch someone. Like fishing. They’ll try anything. I didn’t know anything. How soon the investigation got to be a cover-up rather than an investigation, I don’t know. It became more a distraction than an in-depth investigation … They talked to me … just because it was a way to throw sand up in everybody’s face … they had to pretend they were doing a completely thorough investigation.”

    The problem here is that the official Warren Commission records indicate that it was not Hosty, but Secret Service Inspector Thomas Kelley, who questioned Machann in New Orleans about the Odio incident. According to these documents, the investigator had Machann call Sylvia Odio on the phone and ask her once again about her visitors. And according to the official report, Odio then said one of the visitors was Rogelio Cisneros, but she later denied saying that.

    And then we don’t hear from Machann for many years. When I tracked Machann’s family to Texas and talked to his sister on the phone, she said her brother was in Thailand, where he moved to after leaving the priesthood. I imagined he had continued his theological musings and became a monk, but boy was I wrong.

    Machann says that, “My first real job other than being a priest or throwing a newspaper route was working at the Mental Health Halfway house (in New Orleans).”

    World Travel—Thailand

    After leaving New Orleans, Machann says, “I worked in Florida for a few years in the mental health field. I didn’t like the commercialization of Florida. I lived in West Palm Beach where the rich people were … I traveled throughout Russia with a travel group. It was a break in the Cold War. They wouldn’t let you read just any book, so you had to be careful which books you carried. I bought a Volkswagen in Hamburg in 1968 and drove all the way through the Baltic States, the Czech Republic and the Coast of Spain. I was sleeping in the car and eating just to stay alive. I ran out of money and had to come back home.”

    “When I was in New York, I was having a hard time finding a job. I had put in applications to many overseas jobs and WHO just happened to hire me. I moved to Thailand and lived there many years. In fact, I had my son there. Yes, I have a son … Unfortunately, his mother died when he was seven of dengue fever. He basically grew up as an orphan. He had no mother. But he always was interested in philosophy as well. I don’t know how much of who we are is genetic, environment or education, but he was mesmerized by Greek books at a very young age … He did a few tours in Iraq and came back a different man. He tried to find peace here, but eventually moved back to Thailand. I’m going to see him soon.”

    “I haven’t talked much about my low points in life, because you don’t go through traumatic changes in your life without discussing your philosophy, emotions, mental state and the like. My wife dying forced me to come back to Texas. That’s when I also found that in life after 40, you become unemployable in the states. My friends tried to get me jobs. Incidentally, one was a medical director at UT Southwestern. He hated the Kennedys. What came out was, he had a tremendous hatred for the Kennedys even though he was from the north. I was kind of shocked. He was one of these New England Harvard graduates, I don’t know. But I knew I didn’t want to work there.”

    “Truth is a difficult thing. I don’t know how to explain it. Have you read a book called Killing Time? [Paul Feyerabend’s autobiography; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_Time_(book)] The man who wrote it is one of my favorite modern philosophers … The world is changing politically and environmentally. It’s harder to travel these days. When I came back to the states, I noticed how different everything was. I knew I needed to be here to help my sister, but the Thai government was making me jump through hoops, so it was necessary to come back. They were making my life inconvenient. My son and his Thai wife were living here with me for a while … While I’m thinking about it and it amazed me that it happened. I used to come on home leave every 2 years from Thailand and other places. I was back at the house on Oak Cliff Blvd. and the phone rang, no one was there but me, I don’t know where everyone else was and it was Silvia Odio. She called me from Miami. She was telling me about her new husband making all these trips to Cuba and had other girlfriends and she was kinda complaining … She said she was very, very crushed and upset. She said people were twisting the truth, they don’t believe me. Of course, she was a very unusual person and personality so she inspired a lot of interest … It was a short conversation. We kind of cooled off then. We never spoke again.”

    The Assassination

    As for the assassination itself, Machann says: “I thought there was a conspiracy. Though Oswald was very left-wing and pro-Castro, none of it seemed to make sense. I still think there is something more to the assassination but I have no idea what … After the Bay of Pigs, there were many upset Cubans, they were patriots. They missed their homes. But I don’t believe they were upset enough to kill the President.”

    “I think it was something far out of my realm and my hands. I think it was power at the very highest levels. That’s one thing I learned about Greek history and civilization—trouble always began when the power and wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few. That’s what’s happened in the US now. Very few have wealth and power, elected or not. So, I’m just afraid this was a power elite type of conspiracy. They have the confidence of power. They can do all kinds of things.”

    “At that time (Oswald) was doing crazy things … I heard a radio interview he had once in New Orleans … The guy talked very honestly like he was involved in these causes for a reason. He was convincing. He didn’t sound stupid, he just sounded confused or misguided or mixed up.”

    “The thing that really blows my mind is they really put the story across that using that weapon, he fired those shots you have to really twist everything around upside down and inside out to make that stand up. Only power can do that … We still don’t know some of the secrets of the Roman Emperors. You know, this is almost like a thorough kind of reduxia ad absortum [sic; = reductio ad absurdum] as if there are other possible explanations, other than a top down kind of conspiracy, deliberate type plan. These things don’t just happen like this.”

    “Let’s face it, there is room somewhere in the real world that somethings are not what they seem to be and the story we get told and we are led to believe aren’t always true. The American Dream is not all real … But you can see how I was pulled into maybe as a distraction or confusion to muddle the picture. Something like that, I really feel like I was a spectator like everyone else … But you see, that’s like all the bloodhounds following the false scent somewhere. And I think that was deliberate on someone’s part, to put up all these distractions. Whereas the real culprits escaped.”

    “I didn’t see that (JFK) movie for a long time. When I did see it, I thought it was pretty well made … but then … it finally made up my mind, you know, I could never believe their story. I was convinced there was a conspiracy.”

    In Conclusion

    “Well, that’s all. I hope that you can tie it up and be satisfied that you’ve done what your conscience compelled you to do and call it a new day and become a writer in your own right.”

    Gayle noticed that when Machann talked about his past he did so in the third person, as if he was another person, as he says in his parting shot letter to Gayle:

    “The way or path to come through a better and stronger person while showing compassion for those you have spent so much of your life trying to support is one you must find for yourself. There are different paths. I have found my own, and my son has tried his own, but now we share the same. The work it entails determines the degree it rewards … I expect you may try and will find the path for yourself. In response to your questions re my past … Fr. Machann is an earlier person, self-evolved into a changed identity beginning 50 or more years ago. As I recall, he was an innocent bystander with respect to that tragic event of the murder of an American president. My own present memory, i.e., of Walter J. Machann Jr., can add little to your specific requests for evidence in your work to expose facts and a more truthful history of that crime. I can feel how personal this quest has become. I don’t believe that a chapter on “Father Machann” would be meaningful, or really pertinent to the core of your work. Whatever you decide I will remain a friend and confidant in need as you wish.” Sincerely, Walter J. Machann Jr.

    What Walter Machann remembers of Father Machann is meaningful and pertinent to the core of our work, as he was innocently entwined in the murder like a fly in a web, the intelligence network that was responsible for the covert action that resulted in the murder of the President—the Dealey Plaza Operation.

    From what we now know, it is disturbing that Machann doesn’t recall introducing John Martino at his Birch Society book promotion, or Trudi Castorr, society wife of Colonel Castorr, involved in a Cuban gun-running operation with Jack Ruby.

    The discrepancies are disturbing. Was it FBI Agent Hosty or Secret Service Inspector Kelley who questioned Machann in New Orleans? And who were Leopoldo, Angelo and “Leon” Oswald, and was it the historic Oswald or an imposter? Either way the whole scene stinks of conspiracy.

    What Machann does tell us is significant. He was apparently unaware of the CIA-backing of the exiled Cuban Aid Relief; and the sudden, suspicious death of Joaquin Insua and the arson fire that destroyed their records leaves open areas of new investigation.

    Machann gives us dates, names and places that provide additional leads that will allow us to find other missing pieces to the Dealey Plaza puzzle.

    [Some of the quoted text has been slightly edited for grammar and punctuation]

  • Larry Hancock, NEXUS

    Larry Hancock’s new book Nexus has an interesting and rather unique idea behind it. As Larry explained at the 2011 Lancer Conference in Dallas, the idea here was to trace the Kennedy assassination from a macroscopic view. That is, from the top down rather than from a typical detective story, which works from the bottom up. When I heard Larry talk about this I thought it was a good idea. And something that, to my knowledge, had not been done before. So I looked forward to reading the book.

    For a bit over three–fourths of the book, Hancock keeps to that plan. And I found that part of the book interesting and rewarding. The author begins with some good work on the origins of the Cold War and the CIA. I had not known the Joint Chiefs of Staff had a plan for a nuclear attack on Russia in late 1945. Which is really remarkable, since Russia was our ally in World War II. (Hancock, p. 13) He then goes into the famous directive NSC 68, which essentially said that the USA was at war with communism. And that this new kind of war justified Machiavellian ends in order to win out. Therefore, once the CIA was born out of the National Security Act of 1947, many of its covert aspects were done outside the law. And into these covert acts, was built the culture of deniability: That is, a “cover story” was always created in order to be able to shift the blame for the act onto someone else.

    Some of these operations were dealt with through so called “soft files”, that is files that were not entered into the CIA’s central filing system. This allowed certain officers to start their own projects that were hard to detect or attribute. (ibid, p. 16)

    In 1954, Larry Houston, the CIA’s General Counsel, made out an agreement with Bill Rogers at Justice so that crimes of the CIA would not be prosecuted. (ibid, p. 17) With this agreement, Hancock rightly states that national security was now placed ahead of criminal violations by CIA personnel. This included all crimes up to and including murder.

    This agreement was very useful in that it was made the same year of the CIA coup against Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala. Here, Hancock brings in the most recent declassified study on that operation. He uses it to show that this was perhaps the first time that the CIA actually arranged a so-called “kill list” of certain citizens to be taken care of after the coup. (ibid, p. 19) He also brings in the fact that neighboring leaders Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua, and Rafael Trujillo of Dominican Republic both agreed to the coup. And, in fact, the bloodthirsty Trujillo requested four specific people be killed. Certain CIA officers wanted Arbenz killed, and his death, of course, to be blamed on the communists. (ibid, p. 20)

    What makes this latter fact important is that two famous CIA officers were involved in this overthrow who later figured in the JFK case. They were David Phillips and Howard Hunt. This idea, of killing a liberal head of state and then blaming it on the communists, projects a familiar theme ten years hence. The actual project officer on the coup was Tracy Barnes. From him, the chain of command went to J. C. King, Frank Wisner, Dick Bissell and Allen Dulles.

    Hancock has studied the documents of this coup—codenamed PBSUCCESS—carefully. Especially those dealing with the murder lists. In his measured opinion, “Clearly, regardless of any official position being taken in Washington, PBSUCCESS CIA field staff were very much involved with the subject of assassination and actively involved in preparing surrogate personnel to carry out political eliminations.” (ibid, p. 25) In other words, the actual killings were not to be done by CIA agents, but cut outs. Therefore, the hallowed concept of deniability would be followed. In fact, the CIA had an assassination manual prepared in advance for the coup. (ibid, p. 28) And there was actually a discussion at a PBSUCCESS staff meeting in March of 1954 that 15-20 Guatemalan leaders would be killed by gunmen sent over by Trujillo. (ibid, p. 26)

    Interestingly, Hancock lists some of the Congressional backers of the coup. They were Lyndon Johnson, Jack Brooks, Martin Dies, and George Smathers. (ibid, p. 31) The message that came down was literally, “Arbenz must go, how does not matter.” (ibid, p. 32) After Guatemala, Barnes and Bissell do further work in assassinations. But also, a lesson is learned: Don’ t put it down in writing. (ibid, pgs. 34-35)

    II

    Around the time of the Arbenz overthrow, the CIA also learned how to kill people through poisons. And, looking forward, this will be one of the ways that the CIA will brainstorm to kill Patrice Lumumba of the Congo. Hancock deduces from circumstantial evidence that Barnes was involved in the killing of Trujillo in 1961. And around this time, the operations to kill Castro also were in full swing. On these, Bissell had worked with Dulles, while Barnes had run his own attempts. (ibid, p. 40) Although, as Hancock correctly points out, the idea for the plots was also hinted at by Richard Nixon at a National Security Council meeting. (See Oswald and the CIA by John Newman, p. 120) And right after that 1959 NSC meeting, the first phase of the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro began.

    The idea of “kill lists” was then carried over into the Bay of Pigs planning with the infamous Operation Forty plot. This was designed to get rid of any left-leaning part of the invasion force if the landing was successful.

    What the author has so far tried to do is to introduce several gestalt concepts that he will rely upon later:

    1. The idea that covert operations had a deniability apparatus worked into them.
    2. That covert actions as sanctioned by the CIA were done in a holy war against communism.
    3. That since they were so sanctioned they were actually practiced as if they were above the law.
    4. That these actions even included murder, as was exhibited by the “kill lists” for the Guatemala overthrow.
    5. After Guatemala, the orders to murder were not placed in writing.
    6. Later assassination targets were Lumumba, Trujillo, and Castro. The wholesale nature of Operation Forty was a descendant of the “kill lists” for Guatemala.

    Now, as John Newman notes in his book Oswald and the CIA, most insiders expected Nixon to become president in 1961. And he was important to the anti-Castro operations already being planned. But Kennedy pulled off an upset. And therefore, this did much to upset the CIA plans against Cuba.

    Hancock now introduces the figure of CIA officer William Harvey, who he clearly suspects as being a significant figure in the JFK case. Harvey was involved in two Top Secret CIA operations: Staff D and ZR Rifle. The former was an attempt to use the NSA to figure out opposing nations secret transmittal codes. But it also served as a cover for the latter operation, which was aimed at assassinating foreign leaders. Hancock notes that CIA Director of Plans Richard Helms personally placed Harvey in that position. (Hancock, p. 47)

    All of these various elements—deniability, assassination targets, covert acts done outside the law, a holy war against communism—were now to be mixed into a swirling cauldron with many of these same players: Harvey, Bissell, Barnes, Phillips, Dulles and Hunt. The cauldron was called the Bay of Pigs operations, codenamed Operation Zapata. But, as noted, there was one notable alteration to the cast. It was not going to be run by Richard Nixon, who originated much of the official antipathy toward Castro’s revolutionary regime. The responsible officer was going to be John Kennedy.

    That was going to make a big difference.

    III

    From here, Hancock now describes what some previous writers have called, “The Perfect Failure”, and others have termed, “A Brilliant Disaster”. I am referring, of course, to the Bay of Pigs operation. His synopsis and analysis takes up his entire Chapter Seven. It is one of the better short summaries/critiques of this debacle that I have read.

    The author begins with an observation first originated by Fletcher Prouty. Namely that between the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, the operation seemed to morph from what was essentially intended as a guerilla/infiltration project, until by November of 1960, it became a full fledged amphibious assault. (Ibid, p. 51) Why this was done has never been fully explained. But the author states that the CIA’s Director of Plans, Dick Bissell, is the man who gave the order to alter the operation to the military planner Marine Corps Col. Jack Hawkins. (ibid, p. 53) Once this was done, Hawkins—who was an expert in amphibious assaults—told Bissell that if this was the route he wanted to go then it was necessary to have strong air support. If that was not approved in advance, then the project in that form should be abandoned. The author then notes that this memo, by the project’s main military planner, never got to Kennedy’s desk. It got as high up the chain as Bissell. (ibid, p. 54)

    Hawkins was also against the use of tanks and planes. He thought this would all but eliminate the CIA’s plausible deniability. Therefore their use would expose the project as sponsored by the USA.

    Hancock next reveals another interesting nugget. The project’s other main designer, CIA officer Jake Esterline, was banned from all the high level meetings. These included those with President Kennedy and other White House advisors and Cabinet members. (ibid) But meanwhile, Bissell was telling Kennedy that the operation would be rather low-key and use minimal air power. This was true for the first plan, under Eisenhower. Which was drafted by Esterline in January of 1960 and approved by Eisenhower in March of that year. But it was not true of this new plan that Bissell had evolved. The first plan used a pool of about 500 Cuban exiles to land at the beach at Trinidad. This group would then unite with the paramilitary groups that the CIA had already developed in opposition to Castro on the island. They would then try and build a larger resistance force with CIA furnished communications equipment. Hancock suggests that one reason this plan was altered was because of the effective crackdown that Castro and Che Guevara had made on resistance groups on the island by late 1960. (ibid, p. 53)

    It is important to note here that the two men closest to the operation on the ground, Hawkins and Esterline, are cut off from the White House. Sensing their isolation, as the actual invasion day approached, both Esterline and Hawkins told Bissell that they would resign if the air attacks were not guaranteed. They told him the beachhead could not be established or maintained without it. (ibid, p. 55) Therefore the Cuban T-33 jet fighters had to be eliminated in advance. Yet, as Hancock notes, Bissell acquiesced to Kennedy’s wishes to cut back the number of air attacks by the exiles. And further, during the actual invasion, the CIA turned down an offer to plead their case for more air cover to Kennedy directly. (ibid p. 55)

    The author adduces Bissell’s strange behavior to the CIA’s secret attempt to kill Castro during the operation. (ibid) This is an aspect of the project which was kept from Kennedy. I don’t fully agree with this. I believe that both CIA Director Allen Dulles and Bissell both thought that Kennedy would change his mind about direct American involvement in the operation once he was confronted with the stark alternative of defeat. There is no doubt that Nixon would have committed American power: he told Kennedy that is what he would have done. (Arthur Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, p. 288) And Dulles later admitted that this was something he had actually relied upon with Kennedy, that the president would not accept an American humiliation. (Jim Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, p. 14)

    Because the two internal reports on the Bay of Pigs—Lyman Kirkpatrick’s for the CIA, and Maxwell Taylor’s for the White House—were so closely held, the CIA managed to create a mythology about what really happened. Their cover story was that the plan would have succeeded had the D-Day air raids not been cancelled. When in fact, those raids were reliant on the establishment of a beachhead. (Peter Kornbluh, Bay of Pigs Declassified, pgs. 127-28) Which was not achieved. But as Kirkpatrick pointed out, relying on the D-Day air raid was not realistic. Since the bridges had not been blown, the speed at which Castro got his infantry and armor to the beach made it impossible for 1,500 men to establish a beachhead, let alone to break out from it. (ibid, p. 41) Especially since Castro’s total troop allotment at this time was over 200, 000 men.

    But with the CIA’s allies in the media, the failure for the operation was switched to President Kennedy. As far as Hancock’s narrative goes, the reason this reversal is important is that now the CIA had forged a permanent alliance with the Cuban exiles involved with the Bay of Pigs. That bonding was strongly based on their mutual antipathy for the president. In Hancock’s outline of the actual assassination maneuvering, some of these very same Cubans would be used in what they perceived as a retaliation against the man they thought had betrayed them at the Bay of Pigs. And this suspicion and distrust was also felt by Kennedy in reverse. He began to feel as if he could not work with the leaders of the CIA. He therefore fired the top level of the Agency—Dulles, Bissell and Deputy Director Charles Cabell-and placed his own man in charge, John McCone. McCone was not part of the so-called Old Boys network. But he also then supplemented McCone with Robert Kennedy, who served as a sort of ombudsman over Cuban operations. As the author notes, RFK’s presence, and his insistence at reviewing each aspect of each proposed raid on Cuba, greatly agitated William Harvey. (Hancock, p. 80)

    IV

    After the Bay of Pigs, CIA Counter-Intelligence Chief James Angleton got involved in assessing Castro’s intelligence apparatus. And as Bissell was forcibly retired, Harvey now began to assume more control over Cuban operations. His program was called Task Force W. (Hancock, pgs. 61-62,67) Helms had already placed Harvey in charge of ZR Rifle, but now Angleton comes on board there also. (ibid, p. 65) Harvey now reactivated the Castro assassination plots. He reached out to mobster John Roselli and Cuban exile leader Tony Varona.

    During the Missile Crisis, when Harvey made an authorized order to infiltrate CIA contract agents into Cuba, Bobby Kennedy found out about it. Perceiving Harvey as an unreliable cowboy, he had him removed from Cuban operations and eventually relocated to Rome. Des Fitzgerald now took command of the Cuba desk at Langley. (ibid, p. 71)

    During this post Bay of Pigs phase, Hancock notes the relationship between Cuban exile leader Antonio Veciana and CIA officer David Phillips. These two first got to know each other on the island and then continued their partnership in the USA. After the Bay of Pigs, which Phillips was a major part of, Phillips began to see that Operation MONGOOSE was not going to be effective at removing Castro. MONGOOSE was the CIA operation that sponsored raids and coordinated attacks by the exiles against Cuba in 1962. But with Robert Kennedy managing it from above, both Harvey and Phillips decided it had no real teeth. It therefore was not going to work. Consequently, Phillips decided he had to do something provocative. Kennedy would only do something strong if his back was to the wall. Phillips had to create headaches for him in order to get him to act. If he had to , he would publicly embarrass him. Therefore, the CIA now began to sanction raids against the island in defiance of directives by the Kennedys. (Hancock, pgs. 83-84)

    Hancock then furthers his argument for the motivation of the CIA/Cuban exile alliance against Kennedy. He now notes that the Pentagon had planned on invading Cuba during the Missile Crisis. There had been contingency plans for this operation. They were activated for the Missile Crisis. Fortunately, Kennedy defused the crisis. Fortunate since what no one on the American side knew is that the Russians had installed tactical atomic weapons on the beaches, and Soviet subs stationed there had been outfitted with atomic torpedoes.

    But word got out that Kennedy had made a “no invasion” pledge to the Russians over Cuba as part of the resolution to the crisis. That pledge seemed to seal any further hope of the exiles taking back the island. This further exacerbated the hatred felt by the Cubans against Kennedy. They now called him a “traitor”. (Hancock, p. 86)

    What made this even worse for the exiles was this: MONGOOSE was retired after the Missile Crisis. What took its place was a very weak program which, as many have written, was just meant to keep the noise level up about Cuba. Hancock notes that, under Des Fitzgerald, very little was done in the first half of 1963. We know from declassified documents that there were only five raids authorized in the second half of that year. Fitzgerald sanctioned an operation to try and create rebellion leading to a coup. Ted Shackley and Dave Morales of the CIA’s JM/Wave station in Miami disapproved. They thought this was completely unrealistic in the face of the controls Castro’s security forces had established on the island. And, in fact, almost everyone contacted to lead the resistance turned out to be a double agent. (Hancock, pgs. 85 and 98)

    Operation TILT exemplified the desperation felt by the Cuban exiles and their allies. This was a renegade project. The Special Group inside the White House, headed by RFK, did not authorize it. (ibid, p. 85) This was a June 1963 infiltration operation that was meant to bring back two Russian officers from Cuba. Once returned, they would testify how all the nuclear missiles on the island were not gone yet. In advance of the project, individuals like John Martino—a close ally of the exile community who had served time in Castro’s jails-and exile groups like Alpha 66 shopped the story in advance. In fact, a reporter from Life magazine was a part of the boat mission to Cuba. And even though the Special Group did not authorize the project, Shackley provided logistical support for it. The mission was a complete failure. And it is doubtful that the two Russian officers ever existed.

    But what further exasperated the exiles and their allies in the CIA was that Kennedy now moved to honor his “no invasion” pledge. He did this by moving what was left of the anti-Castro operations out of the 48 states. Kennedy enlisted the FBI to enforce this ban. Therefore boats and weapons in the USA were seized. The INS began to issue warnings and to take legal action against the exiles. Pilots had authorizations taken away. (Hancock, p. 95) The war against Cuba now seemed to be over. Some of the remaining exile groups were actually at odds with each other. Manuel Artime hated Manuelo Ray. Shackley liked Artime. He did not like Ray. But Shackley understood why JFK did, since Ray was a liberal. (Hancock, p. 99) Dave Morales, Shackley’s Chief of Staff, felt that Ray had an infiltration program going against the JM/Wave station. So he authorized Artime to fire on Ray’s boats. Things were now going so poorly, they were turning inward.

    V

    Then came the icing on the cake: the back channel. This refers to Kennedy’s negotiations with Castro through reporter Lisa Howard, diplomat William Attwood, and French journalist Jean Daniel. The goal was to normalize relations with Cuba. This began in January 1963 and continued all the way up to Kennedy’s death. National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy and Helms were opposed to it. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara looked at it as a way of weaning Castro from the Soviets. In fact, McNamara said the end result could be an ending of the American trade embargo in return for Castro removing all Soviet personnel from the island. (Hancock, pgs. 99-100) Averill Harriman from the State Department was also for it. But he said, “Unfortunately, the CIA is still in charge of Cuba.” (ibid, p. 102) Hancock interestingly notes that Bundy was part of the movement to block any continuance of the back channel when LBJ became president.

    Since Helms knew about the back channel, and since the NSA likely was picking up some of Howard’s phone calls, Hancock here makes an interesting assumption. Since Angleton and Helms were good friends, and since Angleton’s domain was counter-intelligence, Angleton very likely knew about the back channel. Through both Helms and the NSA. Since he and Harvey were close in 1963, Angleton had to have told him.

    Hancock then advances some interesting evidence that at least three of the Cuban exiles knew about the back channel. They were Rolando Otero, Felipe Vidal Santiago, and Bernardo DeTorres. (Ibid, pgs. 114-15, 122)

    Hancock then begins to lay out the plotting around Oswald in the summer of 1963. He clearly implies that this was done to kill off the back channel, which it did. As the time comes to move the plot to Mexico City and Dallas, the occurrences of Oswald “doubles” begin to manifest itself. The author notes the famous Sylvia Odio incident and states that the Odio family was associated with Ray’s group called JURE. And, in fact, Sylvia had just visited with Ray and his assistant that summer. So this may have been an attempt to associate Oswald with the CIA’s least favorite exile group.

    From here on in, which is about the last thirty pages or so of the book, I thought Hancock lost sight of his goal. He now begins to lose the macro view of the assassination, that is, from the top down; and he begins a micro view. That is how the ground level worked in Dallas with Ruby as a featured player. Not to say that this information is not interesting. Much of it is. I was especially taken by the work of Anna Marie Kuhns-Walko on Roy Hargraves. The substance of this is that Hargraves had Secret Service credentials and was in Dallas in November of 1963. Hancock does not really recover the macro focus until the very end where he mentions that Harvey’s files were gone through after his death. (Hancock, p. 186) And he finalizes the work with a nice closing quote from Phillips saying that JFK was likely killed in a conspiracy, likely utilizing American intelligence officers. (ibid)

    I have some other disagreements. Hancock apparently buys the part of the CIA Inspector General report saying that Roselli met with Jim Garrison in Las Vegas in 1967. In a private letter I saw, Garrison says it never happened. And he would not know Roselli if he saw him.

    I disagree with part of Hancock’s analysis on Mexico City. He seems to think Oswald was actually there and did most all the things attributed to him. My view is that Oswald may have been in Mexico City, but the weight of the evidence says he did not do most of the things attributed to him. I also thought the author did not make enough of what was going on with Oswald in New Orleans. After all, the CIA program to counter the Fair Play for Cuba Committee was being run by Phillips. And that is what it appears Oswald was up to in New Orleans. At one point in the narrative Hancock says there is no evidence that Ruby knew JFK was going to be killed in the motorcade route. Well then, what about Julia Ann Mercer? And I would be remiss if I did not say that the book is studded with numerous typos and pagination errors. Apparently, there was a rush to get the volume out for the 48th anniversary.

    But overall, I think this is an interesting and worthwhile work. As I said, it has a unique approach to it, and Hancock’s analysis of the crime has sophistication, intelligence and nuance to it. Which, in these days of Lamar Waldron, Tom Hartmann and Mark North, is not all that common.