40: The Rocky Report
Senator Schweiker was the only Senator permitted to see all of the classified Warren Commission’s documents in 1975, according to Robert Sam Anson in an interview with Arlene Francis on WOR-AM, December 3, 1975. However, he was guided by the CIA’s Counterintelligence head James Jesus Angleton and his assistant, Raymond Rocca, who after resigning a year earlier had returned to the CIA to help the assassination investigators and suggest Cuban and Soviet agents to question.4
Rocca, in 1944, was “Angleton’s executive aide” in Rome in the OSS X2 group involved in counterintelligence. In 1955, Rocca joined Angleton’s CIA Counterintelligence (CI) operation which previously “had been submerged in foreign intelligence.” He “was assigned to be the Chief of the Research and Analysis” where he remained “until 1969 when he became Angleton’s” Deputy Chief of the Counterintelligence which penetrated other agencies through identification of their agents or placing CIA agents within them. CI also developed double agents, handled defectors, intercepted and deciphered communications, and conducted research. Rocca left “the CIA on December 31, 1974.”5
Rocca denied any knowledge of Lee Harvey Oswald’s CIA 201 File prior to the JFK assassination pointing out that the file was opened erroneously in the name Lee Henry Oswald and further that Oswald would have been considered a military defector thus falling under the scrutiny of “the FBI and the responsible military arm” which “was the Navy.” The Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) communications show that FBI Director Hoover, State Department Security Officer Otepka and others were aware of Oswald’s Russian and FPCC activities before the assassination.6 [Bold emphasis added by D.P. Cannon.]
The ONI and CIA worked closely on anti-Castro matters. Harold Feeney who was associated with the Operation Cobra plan to overthrow Castro7 “served as Chief of Intelligence at the U.S. Guantanamo Base in Cuba (1960-1961)” during Pawley’s planning for the Bay of Pigs invasion. According to his obituary, “Feeney helped to infiltrate and operate CIA-trained exile Secret Agents into Communist Cuba, at times accompanying them on missions. Hal was awarded the Medal of Valor by Brigade 2506 for his actions in the effort to free Cuba. During the Missile Crisis in 1962, Hal was appointed Chief of the Cuba Branch of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Hal served as an advisor at meetings of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council chaired by President Kennedy at the White House.” During WWII, Feeney who spoke seven languages, taught Chinese to U.S. Army Officers.8
Rocca indicated that Oswald’s trip to Mexico might have come to the attention of several CIA people. “J.C. King, C/WH and Jack Witten (sic; Whitten), C/WH/Mexico City Desk were the two Washington level officers in charge. Mr. Win Scott, who was COS Mexico City, was responsible in Mexico. Mr. Dave Phillips, who was Stationed in Mexico was also knowledgeable. In Washington, Witten (sic) who had oversight of GPFLOOR dealt directly with Mr. Helms, who presumably kept Mr. McCone advised.”
Rocca felt that Warren Commission did not thoroughly investigate Oswald’s connections to the Soviet Union and Cuba. He also pointed out that Castro had warned of retaliation for threats against himself, then Rocca brought up “Des Fitzgerald’s trip to Paris to recruit AMLASH for the purposes of overthrowing Castro, Fitzgerald’s close contacts with the Kennedy famil and fact he had replaced Bill Harvey in the Special Project to assassinate Castro ... Mr. Rocca then commented on Operation MONGOOSE which he said Bobby Kennedy was running with McNamara and which involved Mr. Fitzgerald.”9
When the CIA’s Ann Egerter testified to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, she explained that a 201 file—like the one she requested to be opened on Oswald on December 9, 1960—was created because multiple documents had accumulated about a specific individual. This does not mean the person has a CIA connection other than being observed. However, even if a defector like Oswald worked for, or on behalf of, the CIA, she as a Counterintelligence (CI) or Counterespionage (CE) staff member would not necessarily have access to that information. It could have gone to the CIA’s Soviet Division (SD) staff or the Office of Security (OS).
The 201 file “would be controlled by the case officer” who may choose to withhold it. Moreover, if the 201 file had an index card with a red mark, it would indicate that the Office of Security was involved and “would probably not have told me.” Two documents about Oswald were not in his 201 file; Egerter indicated that there were other filing systems. If Oswald was involved in an operation, it would not be in the 201 file, but instead in the case officer’s “projects file.” Documents about Oswald were generated by the Navy, State, FBI, and CIA mail intercepts acquired through the Agency’s HTLINGUAL operation, a primary function of CI.
Ann Egerter’s spider sense was raised by Soviet defector Anatoli Golitsyn’s comment “that no Soviet women who was married to an American would be allowed to leave the country unless the KGB extracted a promise from her to cooperate with the KGB when and if called upon.” Egerter wondered why Marina Nikolayevna Prusakova Oswald was allowed to travel with Oswald when he returned to the U.S. She also realized that Oswald working for the CIA was “quite possible. I did not know.” Oswald’s trip to Mexico City triggered his 201 file being moved to the CIA’s Mexico Desk.10
The CIA operatives in Mexico City were Win Scott (who had long-known James Jesus Angleton) and Ann Goodpasture who had served the OSS in China and Guatemala two countries Pawley focused on.11
Among the most eye-opening revelations in the Family Jewels was that the Agency had been involved in plotting assassinations of foreign leaders, had developed poisons to facilitate those plots, and had tested LSD and other drugs on unwitting human guinea pigs in America.
The Family Jewels also indicated that at least one person wanted the documents sanitized so the information would never come to light. In a May 8, 1973 memo to William Colby, Ben Evans notes that CIA Science and Technology Directorate Chief Carl Duckett thinks Sidney Gottlieb's drug experiments should be sanitized and that the “Director would be ill-advised to say he is acquainted with this program.”12
The drug experiments in the program known as MKULTRA, according to author John Marks, were designed as early as 1955 to enhance the intoxicating effects of alcohol, promote illogical thinking and impulsiveness so as to discredit an individual in public, produce amnesia, make individuals feel dependent on others, lower ambition and productivity, cause paralysis, promote acute anemia, impair vision and hearing, and subdue enemies in other ways. There were also experiments to counteract brainwashing and torture, and to produce euphoria.13
The acts of global lawlessness revealed in 1975 and 1976 were in stark contradiction to the public image of a democracy that offered hope to all mankind, and the disclosures may have masked other horrors far worse. For it was the CIA that initiated the investigations, controlled their scope, blocked various findings from being disclosed—including the entire Pike Report—and even wrote some of the conclusions as noted by italics in the Senate’s Final Reports. In the end, the CIA was more capable of controlling the Federal Government than vice versa. This blow to democracy was due in large part to the DSSG role in creating the atmosphere in which Congress would cave in to CIA pressure rather than represent the interests of the voters by keeping the citizenry informed.14
Some Congressmen complained that there wasn't sufficient public support to go after the Agency more vigorously. In fact, however, many people in water-cooler and cocktail-party conversations at that time voiced their fears by sawing half jokingly, “If I expressed my real opinion, my name would wind up in some CIA or FBI file.”
The June 25, 1975 murder in his home of one Senate witness, Chicago mobster Sam “Momo” Giancana,15 who had been involved in CIA plots to assassinate Castro compounded public fears and silenced other potential witnesses who could have revealed details of CIA-Mafia alliances in what President Lyndon Johnson once referred to as a “goddam Murder Inc. in the Caribbean” and led him to ponder whether the CIA's covert operations had backfired and led to the assassination of President Kennedy.
On June 10, 1975 the 299-page Report to the President by the Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States chaired by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller was issued after five months of investigation “to determine whether any domestic CIA activities had exceeded the agency’s authority.”16
The Rockefeller Commission had been appointed by President Ford at the encouragement of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dick Cheney17 who later excised eighty-six pages on CIA attempts against foreign leaders from the report and passed on the details to the Senate Intelligence Committee to determine what should be investigated.18
President Ford had served on the Warren Commission along with David Belin, and the Rockefeller Report stood by their findings that Oswald acted alone. In a strange twist of fate, a few months after the Report’s release, Ford became the target of an assassination attempt by Charles Manson Family member Squeaky Fromme in September 1975.19
The Rockefeller panel included:
-
DAVID BELIN - Executive Director Former counsel to the Warren Commission, and strong defender of the single-bullet theory that helped put the blame solely on Oswald.
-
GENERAL LYMAN LEMNITZER - Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis. General Lemnitzer and Admiral Arleigh Burke called for battleship bombing of Cuba to protect Brigade 2506 but were rebuked by JFK. He also was an advocate of the Operation Northwoods plan to manufacture an incident that could be blamed on Castro. After rejecting the proposal, President Kennedy removed Lemnitzer from the Joint Chiefs. Lemnitzer joined Edward Teller and other hawks on the American Security Council.
-
C. DOUGLAS DILLON - Organizer of the OSS and Secretary of the Treasury during the time when the CIA was funding the Cuban Revolutionary Council.
-
RONALD REAGAN - A presidential candidate at the time, who upon his election had his cabinet celebrated by Anna Chennault and appointed Clare Boothe Luce to his Presidential Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Reagan had been Pawley's top pick for Nixon's VP in 1968.
-
JOHN T. CONNOR - President of Merck & Company which helped collect millions of dollars of drugs to ransom the Bay of Pigs prisoners back from Cuba.
-
LANE KIRKLAND - Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO, an organization which was well represented on the Citizens Committee for a Free Cuba.
-
EDGAR F. SHANNON, Jr. - President of the University of Virginia who opposed Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia and supported civil rights.
ERWIN N. GRISWOLD - Solicitor General who argued before the Supreme Court that it was legal for the Army to conduct surveillance of civilians.20
- VICE PRESIDENT NELSON ROCKEFELLER - Two years earlier had served alongside Claire Boothe Luce, Leo Cherne and Edward Teller on President Nixon’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB).21 A decade earlier those three PFIAB members had united together on the Citizens Committee for a Free Cuba and pressured President Kennedy to launch a definitive second attack on Castro. In 1940 Nelson Rockefeller had moved to Washington, D.C. to become coordinator of the Office of Inter-American Affairs, a position that would give him say over policy toward Venezuela where his family’s company, Standard Oil, had large interests. In the same decade, U.S. Ambassador to Brazil Pawley encouraged Standard Oil to exploit the oil reserves in Brazil.
Prior to that, Acting Secretary of State Nelson A. Rockefeller wrote in 1945 to U.S. Ambassador to Peru William Pawley, enclosing “a draft of a suggested note for transmission to the Minister of Foreign Affairs discussing the future plans of the United States Government concerning the purchases of ores and concentrates of lead, zinc, and copper in Peru.”22
In 1954, Pawley’s business office was located at 30 Rockefeller Center, and Nelson Rockefeller was Ike's top man on the Operations Coordinating Board when it approved all covert CIA projects initiated under National Security Council directive 5412/1 which incorporated the Doolittle Committee's recommendations calling on the agency to act with ruthlessness. The recommendations had been crafted in part by the Rockefeller’s family attorney, Morris Hadley.
Hadley's partner, John J. McCloy, had served with Gerald Ford on the Warren Commission which claimed Oswald acted alone and was capable of accurately shooting a target in a moving vehicle nearly 250 feet away even though he was only rated as a “Marksman”—not a “Sharpshooter” or an “Expert”— according to a fellow U.S. Marine Air Control Squadron No. 9 member Kerry Thornley.23
Despite the bonds between Pawley and Rockefeller, Pawley was opposed to Nixon naming Rockefeller as his vice presidential running mate fearing his liberal leanings would cost him votes among conservatives considering third-party candidate, George Wallace. Pawley wanted Ronald Reagan who wound up on the Rockefeller Commission. Nixon instead chose Spirio Agnew and both left office in disgrace, replaced by President Ford and Rockefeller.
The Report to the President by the Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States found no connection between Watergate and the CIA, but some who read the report closer were disturbed by news that evidence was permanently withheld. CIA Director Richard Helms had destroyed three file drawers of transcripts; Lee Pennington destroyed information at the home of CIA security official and Watergate participant James McCord; and John Dean had ordered files from CIA agent E. Howard Hunt’s White House safe to be “deep-sixed.”
Among the rocky findings included a nine-point analysis of the tree in Zapruder Frame 413 that concluded “the tree on the Grassy Knoll” was too narrow “to postulate an assassin in or behind the tree” as stated on page 266 of the report. “An assassin would be unlikely to hide himself behind the barren trunk of a tree only a few inches in diameter, with only his head and shoulders behind the foliage, and with his whole person almost within an arm’s length in front of a spectator taking movies of the motorcade. Neither would such an assassin go unseen and undiscovered, able to make his escape over open ground with a rifle in hand, again unseen by anyone among the numerous motorcade police, spectators and Secret Service personnel present.”24
Members of the Rockefeller Commission never bothered to stand on the short white wall where Zapruder stood—as I did with camera—to see if the wide foliage on top of the narrow tree would obscure Zapruder’s view of a gunman kneeling behind the other end of the white wall. That spot, in fact, is many arm’s lengths from Zapruder and has a profoundly clear straight shot into the oncoming limousine. In 1976, while my wife stood behind the bushy tree, I was able to replicate what Zapruder captured in Frame 413.
The Commission members also never “postulated” that the crowds of people were focused up Elm Street not behind the wall and never “postulated” that after squeezing off the shot, a kneeling assassin simply had to rise, turn, and take one step to hand the rifle back over the wooden fence to an accomplice who could drop the weapon into the trunk of a car parked behind the fence. An individual is seen behind the fence in Zapruder Frame 454 as Abraham Zapruder continued to pan his camera to film the fleeing Presidential limousine.
There was no need for a gunman to “make his escape over open ground with a rifle in hand” because the car with the weapon inside the trunk of the car could simply drive out of the expansive lot behind the Grassy Knoll before police swarmed the area. And eventually rounded up a few tramps (“derelicts” in Rockefeller terms) and explored the Texas School Book Depository.25
Rockefeller’s team also found no “credible” evidence that E. Howard Hunt and Frank (Fiorini) Sturgis were involved in the Kennedy assassination. The allegation had been due in part to the photo of the three tramps who bore a slight resemblance to the anti-Castroite future Watergate burglars.
During his testimony to the Rockefeller panel, Hunt detailed his career which included working on a Cuban government in exile, training of the Bay of Pigs invasion brigade, a brief related stint in Mexico in 1960, returning to the U.S. to continue on the project that Vice President Nixon “was working [on] closely with the CIA.” After Nixon’s project—the Bay of Pigs invasion—failed, Hunt worked with CIA Director Allen Dulles until JFK replaced the Director with McCone. Then Hunt was involved in handling proprietaries for the Domestic Operations Division of the Deputy Directorate of Plans under Stanley Gaines and Tracy Barnes, “a cousin by marriage to Vice President Rockefeller.”
E. Howard Hunt said he and his wife, Dorothy, were returning from “shopping in a Chinese grocery store” and were “on H Street at about 9th in Washington, D.C.,” when he heard that Kennedy had been shot. But his maid claimed Hunt was home. Dorothy neither confirmed nor denied Howard’s account because she died in the United Flight #513 plane crash on December 8, 1972 carrying $10,000 from Washington, D.C. for an investment in Holiday Inns as her husband claimed and quite possibly “hush money” paid shortly before the Watergate trial was to begin. The crash near Midway Airport26 occurred two years before Rockefeller began his probe.27
CIA “Daily attendance records for the period are no longer available because they are destroyed in the ordinary course of the Agency’s records disposal system” the Rockefeller Commission noted. “There is some indication, however, that some of the eleven hours of sick leave was taken by Hunt on November 22, 1963. He testified that, on the afternoon of that day, he was in the company of his wife and family in the Washington, DC, area, rather than his employment duties. That was a Friday, and therefore a working day for employees at the CIA. Hunt could not recall whether he was on duty with the CIA on the morning of that day.”
Later Hunt would recollect before the House Select Committee on Assassination’s staff that he was at a store “Tuck Cheong” but in his earlier testimony Hunt said he “was purchasing Chinese groceries at a store named, as well as I can recall it, ‘Wah Ling.’”28
Although he admitted to suggesting that Castro be assassinated, E. Howard Hunt fully denied any involvement in the deaths of JFK, RFK, MLK, Congressman Hale Boggs, and the attempts on the lives of George Wallace and Senator Stennis. And the Rockefeller Commission found no evidence to the contrary.29 It was not until Hunt was dying that he was said by his son, Saint John Hunt, to have claimed that he and Sturgis were involved in the assassination.30 It may have been his final ego trip rather than being known failures at the Bay of Pigs and Watergate and novels under pseudonyms.
In addressing the allegation that Hunt and Fiorini/Sturgis knew each other in 1963, the Rockefeller Commission found that it was purely coincidental that Hunt had named a character in one of his novels Hank Sturgis in 1949. Frank Fiorini had changed his name to Frank Angelo Sturgis in 1952, after his mother married her second husband, Ralph Sturgis.31
The Rockefeller Commission failed to probe why a decade later Frank Sturgis was still using Fiorini and many other aliases in his dealings with the JMWAVE team that included Hunt, Pawley, and others. In fact, two months before the Kennedy assassination, Frank Fiorini was identified in The New York Times on September 16, 1963 as one of “Six In U.S. Warned On Raiding Cuba.” The Kennedy administration warned Fiorini that if he continued with plans to fly over Cuba he would face “a penalty of $25,000 and/or three years imprisonment.”32 Two days later Frank Fiorini’s lost briefcase was found containing air navigational charts of the Caribbean and weapons lists perhaps for the Pawley-involved Somoza plan.33
The Commission failed to verify the whereabouts of Sturgis on November 22, 1963, making a preposterous statement which demonstrates what a feeble effort it made. “Because Sturgis was never an agent or employee of the CIA, the Agency has no personnel, payroll, leave or travel records, relating to him.”
The blue-ribbon panel failed to ask if the CIA had other documents relating to his activities. One document in September 1963 noted that Frank Anthony Sturgis used multiple aliases—Frank Fiorini, Frank Attila, Fred Atila, Fred Frank Campbell, Frank Campbell and Frank Bonelli. But “ID cards for International Penetration Force (INTERPEN) were signed by Frank Fiorini” and INTERPEN was a “group run by Gerald Patrick Hemming” that used CIA funding to train exiles for the invasion.34
The Rockefeller Committee also failed to unearth the July 1967 Correlation Summary of Bureau files which added other spellings to the list of Fiorini aliases, including Fierini, Fiorine, Francisco Fiorini, One Fiorini, Paco Fiorini, Fiorino, Fiormi, Flori, Frank Fiori Florini, Frank Garcia, Sturges with an “e” and possibly Frank Anthony Fachetti. His locations included Florida, Cuba, Virginia, Mexico, California, Arizona, Texas, Costa Rico, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, New York, Washington, D.C., British West Indies, and Bahamas.35
A “Secret Eyes Only” Memo for the Record about Sturgis and Hunt prepared on June 10, 1975, that was finally declassified on April 26, 2018, revealed that there was “mutual involvement of Frank Fiorini with the Diaz Lanz brothers in anti-Castro activities until at least the summer of 1963.” And “the file of Frank Anthony Sturgis, aka: Frank Fiorini (#353 459), reflects that from circa May 1960 to at least January 1961, Sturgis was living in the Miami area training a group of Cuban and American volunteers for military invasion of Cuba. By October 1960, the FBI had determined that Sturgis’s only activities in anti-Castro matters were in conjunction with the activities of Pedro Diaz Lanz, who was one of the leaders of the anti-Castro group, ‘Liberation Alliance.” Reportedly, Sturgis’s invasion group in January 1961 was calling itself, ‘Brigada Internacionale,’ with variations of ‘International Anti-Communist Brigade’ and ‘Anti- Communist International Brigade.’
One of the sub-units of the ‘Brigade’ was identified in the press in July 1961 as being a paratroop unit called ‘Intercontinental Penetration Force’ or INTERPEN. The Commander of INTERPEN was identified as Gerald Patrick Hemming, Jr. (#429 229). The Office of Security file of Sturgis contains nothing further until October 1968 when his arrest was announced in October 1968—while still heading the ‘International Anti- Communist Brigade’—for his involvement in a group attempting to enter Guatemala to ‘clean out anti-Guatemalan guerillas.’ At that time Fiorini claimed that two men who were sponsoring his operation were Bob Howell, allegedly a friend of the Kennedy family, and a General Biddle, member of the (John) Birch Society.”36
The Office of Security was unsure which Bob Howell was being referred to but noted a General William Shepard Biddle had served in Panama before World War II and was chief of Military Assistance Advisory Group in Japan in 1958.37 “After retiring from active duty in 1960, he returned to Washington and joined Washington Consultants,” according to his 1981 obituary.38
Following the issuance of the Rockefeller Report, Frank Sturgis himself filed a Freedom of Information Act request to the Central Intelligence Agency on May 19, 1976, asking for all files related to his many aliases (excluding Attila and Atila) and added to the list a few code names: Federini, Barbarosa, and Samson.39 The Rockefeller investigative team never addressed the activities of those identities.
Three years before Sturgis filed the FOIA request, James Schlesinger replaced Richard Helms as CIA Director and a week later wrote a memo stating that President Nixon’s Chief of Staff James Dean had called him saying “there is a hot story being passed around in the press, primarily instigated by Seymour Hersh of the New York Times. The story suggests that Sturgis, who sometimes goes by the code name Federini, was the individual responsible for the burglarizing of the Chilean Embassy in Washington.”
Schlesinger “discussed these matters with Bill Colby, who indicated that Sturgis has not been on the payroll for a number of years and that whatever the allegations about the Chilean Embassy, the Agency has no connection at all.”40 This indicated at some point Sturgis was on the CIA payroll which was immediately denied by Jerry G. Brown, Deputy Chief, Security Analysis Group in the CIA. “The writer found no information in the material reviewed which would contradict the Agency’s public statement; however, it is apparent that an unknown group has backed some of Sturgis’s activities.”41
Schlesinger cc-ed Deputy Director General Vernon Walters who would shortly replace Schlesinger when he was named Secretary of Defense. Walters was then replaced as CIA Director by William Colby who was discouraged from revealing too much about CIA misdeeds.
The Rockefeller panel also did not address that Hunt used an “Eduardo” alias but did not mention “Twicker” which appears in CIA documents from his Bay of Pigs planning days.42
Hunt changed some of the details of his testimony between his Rockefeller Commission testimony and what he said to the House Select Committee on Assassinations. During Hunt’s November 3, 1978 testimony to House Select Commission on Assassinations, he stated that:
- He had served as a translator for Richard Nixon in Montevideo (where Hunt was CIA Chief of Station) in 1950 “before his official translator, General [Vernon] Walters, arrived.”43
-
During “the Guatemala project” (Arbenz overthrow) David Phillips “was the Chief of Propaganda and I was the Chief of Political Action. Later on I saw Dave in Havana, where he was an undercover agent” in 1958. “I saw Dave again in Mexico City ... in any event Dave was a familiar figure in Western Hemisphere operations.”44
-
“Colonel Robert Cushman, who had served with me in the CIA some ten years previously and who told me at a luncheon that Mr. Nixon was the action officer on the National Security Council for the Cuba project and wanted me to go along and if any help was necessary I should get in touch with Cushman ... that was the last I ever heard of it.”45
-
Hunt arranged that Pedro Diaz Lanz “be given a stipend by the Revolutionary Democratic Front.”46
-
During the fall of 1960 and the spring of 1961, Hunt dealt with Antonio (Tony) Varona “right up until the Bay of Pigs on almost a daily basis” but had no knowledge of “Varona’s dealings in any plots to assassinate Castro involving underworld figures.”47
-
Hunt’s “successors developed the Cuban Revolutionary Committee out of the ashes of the FRD” in March 1961.48
-
General Charles “Cabell came into our war room at an unfortunate moment and delayed the take-off of our strike plans.”49
-
Hunt was on CIA Director Allen Dulles’s staff “from late summer of ’61 until Mr. Dulles’ retirement.”50
-
Hunt “joined Tracy Barnes’ new Domestic Operations Division, which should have been called commercial operations division, and I worked for them in Washington until sometime in 1965, when we left for Spain under cover” after Richard Helms (aka Fletcher L. Knight) became concerned that Hunt’s identity as an author had been accidentally revealed.51
-
Hunt was not in contact with his close friend, Manuel Artime, when he “was involved in Castro assassination plans in Spain during the period 1964 to 1967.”52
-
Bernard Barker introduced Hunt to Sturgis in 1972.53 [When Sturgis was deposed by the Rockefeller Commission he stated to Robert B. Olsen that Bernard Barker had approached him in 1961 to participate in an assassination attempt against Castro in 1961. Sturgis agreed to participate if the orders came from Barker’s “Case Officer, or his Station Chief ... I assumed at the time that it was possible that it was Eduardo ... about 1972, I asked him if he gave any orders to Bernie, or Barker, or Maucho [sic: Macho], whatever – these names – I called him by these names ... I did ask Howard: Did you ever ask Maucho Barker to do an assassination, to approach me on an assassination. He says ‘Hell, no.’” Later in his deposition, Sturgis listed as one of personal friends “Paul Bethel in Havana and also Miami.” Bethel was one of the Citizens Committee for A Free Cuba member who propogated the message to the media that Oswald was working for Castro.]54
-
Hunt stated to the HSCA “I met Bill Pawley—he is now dead, by the way— during the early days of the Bay of Pigs’ operation. I was taken out there by the project chief—his home on Star Island (sic: Sunset Island), to discuss the situation. Apparently, Mr. Pawley had an ‘in’ with the division chief and wanted to have people talk with him from time to time about what was going on. I may have covered that in my book, Give Us This Day.55
In Spain, Hunt was cultivating “working relationships with Spaniards of position who might some day form or be in the government that would be successor to that of General Franco” with the knowledge of Richard Helms and the Deputy Director of Plans Thomas Karamessines.56
When “an American male who spoke broken Russian said his name Lee Oswald (phonetic)” appeared at the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City on September 28, 1963 a document alerting agency divisions of actions to be taken was drafted. The document had T. Karamessines as the “Releasing Officer” and CIA Chief of Western Hemisphere Division J.C. King as the “Authenticating Officer.” W. Hood signed for King.57
In April of 1975, when Hunt reported to prison at Eglin Air Force base in Florida, Manuel Artime drove him there. Coincidentally, Vietnamese refugees were being processed there as Hunt, who had worked with Cuban exiles and had experience in Asia from World War II, settled in to serve his Watergate sentence.
FOOTNOTES:
1 Rockefeller Commission, Report to the President by the Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States, July 10, 1975.
2 U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. United States Senate website.
>> Known as The Church Committee Resolution passed: Jan 27, 1975. Final report issued: Apr 29, 1976.
>> Chairman: Senator Frank Church (D-ID). Vice Chairman: Senator John Tower (R-TX).
>> Committee members: Senator Howard Baker (R-TN). Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ). Senator Gary Hart (D-CO). Senator Philip Hart (D-MI). Senator Walter Huddleston (D-KY). Senator Charles Mathias (R-MD). Senator Walter Mondale (D-MN). Senator Robert Morgan (D-NC). Senator Richard Schweiker (R-PA).
In 1973 the Senate Watergate Committee investigation revealed that the executive branch had directed national intelligence agencies to carry out constitutionally questionable domestic security operations. In 1974 Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Seymour Hersh published a front-page New York Times article claiming that the CIA had been spying on anti-war activists for more than a decade, violating the agency’s charter. Former CIA officials and some lawmakers, including Senators William Proxmire and Stuart Symington, called for a congressional inquiry.
3 U.S. House Select Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
>> The Nedzi Committee formed on February 19, 1975, became the Pike Committee 5 months later.
>> Chairman: Representative Otis G. Pike.
4 “Robert Sam Anson interview.” By Arlene Francis. WOR-AM, December 3, 1975.
5 NARA 104-10106-10435 ~ 3/25/1970 CIA Memorandum for the Record “Itkin Case.” Prepared by: Raymond G. Rocca, Deputy Chief Counter Intelligence Staff. Reference: Memorandum dated 20 March 1970 by Mr. Houston. Released 12/15/2022.
NARA 104-10150-10011 ~ Memorandum for the File “Interview with Raymond G. Rocca February 14, 1975, 2 p.m. Commission on CIA Activities within the United States. Chairman Nelson Rockefeller.” From James B. Weidner. Released 12/15/2022.
6 “Pre-11/22/63 ONI Files On Lee Harvey Oswald Received by Paul Hoch from NARA 1967.” Mary Ferrell Foundation website: MaryFerrell.org.
7 NARA 1993.08.03.16:50:25:310039 ~ “Memo On Harold Feeney's Plan To Overthrow Castro, Operation Cobra.”
8 “Harold Feeney Obituary.” Corpus Christie, Texas, Caller-Times, June 13, 2012.
FEENEY Harold 'Hal' Feeney, Commander, US Navy, retired, went to be with the Lord on June 9, 2012. Hal was born on September 22, 1922, in Bristol, TN, the son of Charles Wakefield Feeney and Florence A. Kaufman Feeney, and grew up in VA, PA, and Long Beach, CA. Hal attended Valley Forge Military College in PA (1941-1942). Later, while attending the University of Southern California, World War II broke out and word came that his brother Wakefield had been killed at sea. Hal immediately quit the University and volunteered to serve in the Army. Hal attended the War Department Military Intelligence Training Center and later the Infantry Officer's Candidate School. He was sent to the Command and General Staff School to help teach the course in Chinese to Army Officers from China. After World War II, Hal finished his studies, taught Spanish and French at the University of Southern CA, Un. of PA and the Valley Forge Military College in PA. In 1949 Hal accepted from the US Department of State the position of Director of the US-Ecuadorean Cultural Center in Quito, Ecuador (1949-1950). Meanwhile, he had switched his commission to be a US Navy Intelligence Reserve Officer to honor his brother. After the Korean War broke out, Hal was called to duty in 1950 in Naval Intelligence. He served as Special Agent in Panama (1952-1954). He was appointed from Reserve to Regular Navy (1943) and made it his career. He also served as Naval Attaché at the US Embassy in Paris, France (1957-1959) and later as Chief of Intelligence Plans Unit at NATO Headquarters in France and in Belgium when NATO relocated there (1966-1968). Hal served as Chief of Intelligence at the US Guantanamo Base in Cuba (1960-1961) and helped to infiltrate and operate CIA-trained exile Secret Agents into Communist Cuba, at times accompanying them on missions. Hal was awarded the Medal of Valor by Brigade 2506 for his actions in the effort to free Cuba. During the Missile Crisis in 1962, Hal was appointed Chief of the Cuba Branch of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Hal served as an advisor at meetings of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council chaired by President Kennedy at the White House. Hal was twice awarded the Joint Service Commendation Medals and numerous classified commendations for specific actions in the Intelligence Service. Foreign awards include the Spanish Navy Meritorious Cross and the International Eloy Alfaro Cross. In 1970 Hal gave up a promotion to Captain in order to start a new career as a Vice-President of Great Western Corporation, with Headquarters in Corpus Christi, TX. After a few years Hal quit the business world and became a Special Investigator under contract with several entities of the Federal Government. With his many years of experience in counter- intelligence, Hal enjoyed using his training and experience in counter-intelligence to serve his country during disturbing times. His knowledge of seven languages was called upon frequently in his career. Also a Blessed opportunity was introduced in 1974, when Shaklee's products saved Hal's life by restoring his health. Forever after, Hal gratefully shared that gift of a way to better health with people worldwide. An avid sportsman, Hal still played tennis into his eighties. He won many tennis trophies during his life. Hal enjoyed writing and was a regular Feedback Columnist for the Corpus Christi Caller-Times for many years. He also had may magazine articles published in Spanish and English.
Commander Feeney is survived by his wife, Lydia (Lyke) Jansse Feeney; his sons: Harold Feeney, Jr., and wife, Barbara, Charles Wakefield Feeney and wife, Jennifer; six grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. His youngest son, David Whitney Feeney preceded him in death. Visitation will be on Thursday, June 14, 2012 from 4:00 P.M. to 9:00 P.M., at Seaside Funeral Home with family to receive friends at 6:00 P.M. to 7:00 P.M. Hal was a dedicated Christian and attended St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church. Jack Modesett, Jr., Hal's longtime friend, will officiate the service of Praise and Thanksgiving in celebration of Hal's life at Seaside Funeral Home Chapel, Friday, June 15, 2012 at 2:00 P.M. Internment will take place at Arlington National Cemetery at a later date. In lieu of flowers Hal asked that any donation be given to "Tennis Success", P.O. Box 71647 Corpus Christi, Texas 78467
9 NARA 104-10419-10001 ~ 11/13/1975 Memorandum for the Record “Subject: Meeting of Raymond Rocca with the Senate Select Committee Staff.” Released 12/15/2022.
3. Mr. Wallach expressed interest in reviewing the chronology of Oswald's activities prior to the assassination and at what point in time did Mr. Rocca become involved. Mr. Rocca explained that during the period of 23 November 1963 through mid-January 1964 action responsibility for the investigation rested with WH Division. After that he became involved. He referred to it as the GPFLOOR Phase. During this period Messrs. J.C. King, C/WH and Jack Witten [sic], C/WH/Mexico City Desk were the two Washington level officers in charge. Mr. Win Scott, who was COS Mexico City, was responsible in Mexico. Mr. Dave Phillips, who was Stationed in Mexico was also knowledgeable. In Washington, Witten who had oversight of GPFLOOR dealt directly with Mr. Helms, who presumably kept Mr. McCone advised. Mr. Rocca then recounted Oswald's military career and Oswald apparent contacts with the Cubans while he was in the Marines. At this point Mr. Rocca made a point that there are gaps in the information provided by both Soviet and Cuban Governments to the Warren Commission and these gaps were, in his words, "relevant and open."
Mr. Rocca stated Oswald's contacts with both the Cubans and Soviets should be investigated. He related how Oswald went to Finland then to the USSR, how he was handled by Rima Shirakova a Inturist Guide who he said was in fact a KGB agent. Mr. Rocca suggested that Oswald's attempted suicide was part of a scenario to "allow Oswald to remain in Moscow by a reluctant government to permit further assessing."
His handling in the Soviet Union, his resettlement in Minsk, the fact he was allowed to marry Marina, whose uncle was in the MVD, etc. were areas which Mr. Rocca's comments were that there are areas. which the Warren Commission did not fully investigate and which, in retrospect, suggested to him that the question that Oswald may have been under KGB control was never re- solved.
4. At this point in the interview the questioning turned to assassination plots against Castro. Mr. Wallach asked Mr. Rocca if he participated in any such plots or if he was aware of any. Mr. Rocca gave a negative response then regaled the group about the international political atmosphere at the time, recounting President Kennedy's meeting with Khruschev in Vienna, the Soviet build up in Cuba, the Missile crises, Castro's long visit to Cuba in 1963 which led. to greater assistance by the KGB to the Cuban DGI, and finally the fact that Castro held a press conference at the Brazilian Embassy in Havana which was clearly according to Mr. Rocca a warning to the U.S.. that any attempts on Cuban leaders, i.e. Castro, would be met in kind. Mr. Rocca referred to Des Fitzgerald's trip to Paris to recruit AMLASH for the purposes of overthrowing Castro, Fitzgerald's close contacts with the Kennedy family and fact he replaced Bill Harvey in the Special Project to assassinate Castro.
(One of the Staffers referred to it as Task Force W.) Mr. Rocca then commented on Operation MONGOOSE which he said Bobby Kennedy was running with McNamara and which involved Mr. Fitzgerald, The meeting broke at this point.
5. Incidental items which arose. At one point Mr. Rocca made reference to a debriefing of a Soviet defector Golitzin. Mr. Wallach asked if this was refuted by Nosenko. Mr. Rocca advised he was not cleared for Nosenko at that time hence could not comment. Mr. Wallach asked for the report on the debriefing of Golitzin related to KGB assassinations. At various times Mr. Rocca deferred questions to people most knowledgeable on given aspects. These are: Messrs. Murphy, C/SB, Bagley, DC/SB, Wigren, SB Research and Miss Virginia Valpey re analysis on Oswald's stay in USSR, Soviet methods etc.; Miss Betty Egerter for file procedures; Messrs. Jack Witten and Dave Philips re Mexico City investigation; Mr. Len McCoy re dissemination of SB reports; Mr. Kim Chalmer re HTLINGUAL; and a Mr. Bruce Solie re Office of Security files and investigations.
6. A final point. Mr. Rocca in furtherance of his theories suggesting possible Soviet and/or Cuban complicity in the Kennedy Assassination, provided two documents from the files to Mr. Wallach. The latter graciously gave the documents to Mr. (Niesciur) with a request they be reproduced prior to the next meeting as he may submit a document request for them at a later date. Copies of the documents in question are attached.
Robert Wall AC/CI/OG
10 NARA 180-10131-10333 ~ 5/17/1978 HSCA Transcript of Deposition “Ann Elizabeth Goldsborough
Egerter.”
>> Ann Egerter (sometimes misspelled Eggeter) also known as Susan Purcell signed some documents as
Betty Egerter. She was with the CIA’s Counterintelligence, Special Intelligence Group (CI/SIG) headed by
Birch O’Neal.
11 NARA 104-10193-10079 ~ CIA Op Files “Ann Goodpasture.” Released in 2018.
12 Scott C. Monje, The Central Intelligence Agency: A Documentary History (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2008). Page 135.
MEMORANDUM FOR: Mr. Colby
Carl Duckett [the Deputy Director for Science and Technology] brought this up and said he is very uncomfortable with what Sid Gottlieb is reporting and thinks the Director would be ill-advised to say he is acquainted with this program. Duckett plans to scrub it down with Gottlieb but obviously cannot do it this afternoon.
Ben Evans
8 May 1973
13 John Marks, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate. (New York: Times Books, 1979).
“Tests Contradict U.S. Story of Man's Suicide; Family Suspects CIA Killed Researcher.” By Brian Mooar. The Washington Post, July 12, 1994. Page B1.
“New Study Yields Little on Death of Biochemist Drugged by CIA.” By Brian Mooar. The Washington Post, November 29, 1994. Page B3.
“Mk Ultra.” By Mark Jenkins. The Washington Post, September 25, 1998. Page N15.
“CIA Official Sidney Gottlieb, 80, Dies.” By Bart Barnes. The Washington Post, March 11, 1999, page B5.
“The Coldest.” By Ted Gup. The Washington Post, December 16, 2001, page W9.
“Lawrence R. Devlin, 86, C.I.A. Officer Who Balked on a Congo Plot, Is Dead.” By Scott Shane. The New York Times, December 12, 2008.
>> Devlin, the CIA’s Congo station chief in 1960, avoided executing the order to assassinate Patrice Lumumba, the ousted prime minister. “Sidney Gottlieb, the agency’s top poison expert, who passed on orders ... approved by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to kill Lumumba, who the United States feared might ally the mineral-rich Congo with the Soviet Union.” Devlin tossed “the poison toothpaste” into the Congo River. He later held the same position in Laos during the Vietnam War.
14 The premise that it was the CIA that initiated the investigation is based upon the fact that CIA Director Schlesinger requested his department heads to send him details of the Agency’s darkest secrets. This compilation became known as “The Family Jewels” and wound up in the lap of Schlesinger’s successor William Colby. He fed the information about the CIA’s illegal domestic activities to The New York Times through reporter Seymour Hersh in late 1974.
Hersh’s articles resulted in a public outcry and stimulated President Ford to set up the Rockefeller Commission and Congress to appoint the Church Committee and the Pike Committee. While Colby protested various committee leaks to the press during the investigations, he justified his own by saying that “leaks represent cracks in the pitcher, but there is nothing wrong with a spill from the top.”
In response to my question to Lawrence Sulc, a retired CIA agent, who lectured in defense of the Agency at the public library in New Providence, NJ in 1976, Sulc confirmed that the Agency was in control of aspects of the investigations. I noted that the Doolittle Report in 1954 actually stated that the public may at some point have to be made aware of the methods the Agency was employing to fight communism. The Doolittle Group, like the Rockefeller Commission, was established by the executive branch in hopes of blocking Congressional probing of covert activities.
As for the assertion that the CIA blocked and controlled the investigations. Senate Select Committee Book IV contains an editorial note stating: “Although the Committee received access to some files on covert operations, the access was by no means complete ...”
The murder of Richard Welch, the CIA Station Chief in Athens, by Italian communists was leveraged to the advantage of the Agency and President Gerald Ford to convince the Senate to delete certain names from the SIC report as well as get the House to block issuance of the Pike Report.
Rockefeller Commission, Report to the President by the Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States, July 10, 1975.
The CIA’s Special Council, Mitchell Rogovin, succeeded in getting the House to block the release of the 300-plus page Pike Report, although it was leaked to CBS reporter Daniel Schorr who passed it to the Village Voice which published it on February 16, 1976.
President Gerald Ford stated off the record to a group of editors from The New York Times that he was opposed to CIA investigations because it might expose the Agency’s involvement in “Assassinations.” After the editors agreed not to report about them, one of them, Tom Wicker, passed the comment onto Seymour Hersh. He verified that the CIA had plotted to kill foreign leaders, passed it along to his neighbor, CBS News reporter Daniel Schorr, who broke the story. (Source: Frank Church biographer James Risen interviewed by Andy Levy, The New Abnormal Podcast, May 28, 2023 produced by my son, Jesse Cannon).
15 “Giancana, Gangster, Slain; Tied to C.I.A. Castro Plot; Gangster Linked to Castro Plot Is Slain.” By Seth S. King. The New York Times, June 21, 1975. Page 1.
16Rockefeller Commission, Report to the President by the Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States, (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, June 1975).
17 John Prados, The Family Jewels: The CIA, Secrecy, and Presidential Power (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013).
18 “White House Aide Dick Cheney Spearheaded Editing of Report to Dampen Impact New Documents Cast Further Doubt on Commission’s Investigation, Independence.” By John Prados and Arturo Jimenez- Bicardit. February 29, 2016. National Security Archive, George Washington University.
Excised section of TheUnited States President’s Commission on CIA Activities within the United States. (Rockefeller Commission) was "Summary of Facts: Investigation of CIA Involvement in Plans to Assassinate Foreign Leaders," June 5, 1975. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/intelligence/2016-02-29/gerald-ford-white-house-altered- rockefeller-commission-report
There had already been revelations of illegal domestic activities by the CIA. These led to the creation of a presidential panel under Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller, and committees of inquiry in both houses of the United States Congress. Ford’s January 1975 admission of CIA involvement posed a dilemma for the administration. Vice President Rockefeller attempted to head off inclusion of the subject, restricting consideration of assassinations to the question of what role Cuba might have had in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. That proved unacceptable to some members of his own commission, among them then- Governor of California Ronald Reagan. When the Rockefeller Commission took a vote on whether to include charges of CIA assassination plots in its inquiry, the group overrode its own chairman.
Rockefeller’s key opponent in the fight over investigating assassinations was the panel’s staff director, David W. Belin. A lawyer for the Warren Commission, empaneled to look into the Kennedy assassination in 1963-1964, Belin had been handpicked by Ford for the Rockefeller group. Ford, one of the Warren commissioners, was confident of Belin’s loyalty, but this time the lawyer fought hard to investigate deeply.
19 President Ford, on September 5, 1975, escaped the attempt on his life in Sacramento, California by Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a disciple of convicted murder mastermind Charles Manson.
20 Rockefeller Commission, Report to the President by the Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States. Page (v).
21 Leo Cherne, Rescuing the World: The Life and Times of Leo Cherne (SUNY Press, 2002). Page 162.
>> Foreword by Henry Kissinger.
President Ronald Reagan’s PFIAB.
Foreign Relations, 1961-1963, Volume XI.
>> Documentation on the missile crisis.
>> On February 4, 1963, James R. Killian, Jr., Chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), sent President Kennedy a report based on the Board’s survey of intelligence coverage, assessment, and reporting by U.S. intelligence agencies prior to the Cuban missile crisis in the fall of 1962. The report was based on PFIAB’s review of intelligence on the Soviet military buildup in Cuba during the months preceding the President's report to the nation on October 22, 1962, on the Soviet establishment of offensive missile sites in Cuba. The February 4 PFIAB report was signed for the Board by Killian as Chairman, and included the names of the other Board members, William O. Baker, Clark Clifford, James Doolittle, Gordon Gray, Edwin H. Land, William L. Langer, Robert D. Murphy, and Frank Pace, Jr. Killian transmitted the report under cover of a shorter separate memorandum to President Kennedy, also dated February 4, 1963.
Central Intelligence Agency, DCI (McCone) Files, Job 80-B01285A.
>> Text of the report and covering memorandum.
CIA Documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962. Pages 361-371.
>> Text of the report and covering memorandum.
6/28/1963 White House Memorandum for the File, “Subject: Meeting of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board—June 25-26, 1963.”
Kennedy’s PFIAB in June of 1963 was chaired by Clark Clifford, and included members Doolittle, Gray, Langer, Murphy, Land, and Pace and was attended by Coyne and Ash.
22 8/ 7/1945 No. 25 Letter “811.20 Defense (M) Peru/7–2445.” To: The Acting Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Peru (Pawley). From: Acting Secretary of State Nelson A. Rockefeller. Foreign Relations Of The United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1945, The American Republics, Volume IX.
23 “Testimony of Kerry Wendell Thornley.” Warren Commission Hearings, Volume XI. Page 104.
Anthony Carrozza, Pawley.
>Favored Reagan over Rockefeller.
24 Rockefeller Commission, Report to the President by the Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States. Page 266.
An assassin would be unlikely to hide himself behind the barren trunk of a tree only a few inches in diameter, with only his head and shoulders behind the foliage, and with his whole person almost within an arm’s length in front of a spectator taking movies of the motorcade. Neither would such an assassin go unseen and undiscovered, able to make his escape over open ground with a rifle in hand, again unseen by anyone among the numerous motorcade police, spectators and Secret Service personnel present.
25 David Price Cannon’s firsthand observations from viewing the Zapruder film and visiting the Grassy Knoll.
26 J. Anthony Lukas, Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years. (New York: Viking Press, 1976). Pages 260-262.
10/2/1972 Memorandum “Accounting of Monies Received.” To: Mr. William O. Bittman. From: Dorothy Hunt. Section: Statement of Information and Supporting Evidence. Judiciary Committee Hearings: Statement of Information, Book III, Part 1 - Events Following the Watergate Break-In. Page 290 (302 of 700).
>> A listing of various amounts of money Dorothy “received and paid out” July-November for bail and income replacement to Sturgis, McCord, Gonzalez, Barker, Martinez, Hunt and herself. She “received a total of $88,000 and have paid out $91,000 (using the final $3,000 from my own funds).”
27 John Prados, The Family Jewels: The CIA, Secrecy, and Presidential Power (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013).
28 HSCA Interview “E. Howard Hunt by Staff Counsels Robert W. Genzman and Mike Ewing.” November 3, 1978. Part I. Pages 6 & 8.
>> Representing Hunt was Ellis S. Rubin, Esq.
>> Wah Ling. “... I have determined that the name of the store was Tuck Cheong.”
29 NARA 157-10011-10090 ~ 3/6/1975 SSCIA “Material from Rockefeller Commission Re: E. Howard
Hunt.” Originator: Rockefeller Commission. From: Olsen Robert. Page 6 of 22.
>> Hunt’s CIA proprietary activities were released in December 2022. He managed: “Continental Press,
which prepared news and radio broadcast for foreign use; Allied Pacific Publishing Company of Bombay,
which was engaged in publishing textbooks for Indian schools; the Rome Daily American, a cover
operation; and Fodor’s Travel Guide ... which had been set up in 1946 as a cover operation but served no
apparent use during the years Hunt was with DOD.”
30 “The Last Confession of E. Howard Hunt. The ultimate keeper of secrets regarding who Killed JFK.” By Erick Hedegaard. Rolling Stone, April 5,2007.
Speaker Biography: “Saint John Hunt—Growing Up CIA.” JFK Conference DC, March 11, 2018. The JFK Historical Group Presents: The Big Event New Revelations In The JFK Assassination And The Forces Behind JFK's Death. JFK Historical Group.
>> St. John Hunt taped his father, E. Howard Hunt, confess to knowing key figures in the CIA were responsible for the plot to assassinate JFK in Dallas including the CIA’s David Atlee Phillips, Cord Meyer, Jr., and William Harvey, as well as future Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis.
31 Rockefeller Commission, Report to the President by the Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States. Page 254.
32 “Six In U.S. Warned On Raiding Cuba,” The New York Times, September 16, 1963.
>> The others were Alex Rorke, Bill Johnson, Jack Griffin, Geoffry Sullivan and an unnamed sixth man.
>> A week later Rorke and Sullivan “departed Florida on September 24, 1963, in a plane bound for Central America and presumably were victims of an air mishap ... In earlier 1964, Alexander Rorke, Sr. was in Miami seeking information concerning his son and on April 10, 1964, it was reported that Fiorini, Johnson and Gerald Patrick Hemming, all previous associates of Rorke, Jr. no longer interested in promoting a rescue mission to Central America inasmuch as they apparently were unable to obtain money from Rorke, Sr.”
NARA 124-10226-10290 ~ 5/13/1968 Bureau Correlation Summary “Subject: Frank Angelo Fiorini, One Frank Date searched July 19, 1967.” Page 33.
33 RIF 1993.08.05.10:15:50:750052 ~ Memorandum “Subject: Frank FIORINI – Documents, Correspondence and Maps which were observed in a Briefcase. Various Materials On Frank Sturgis Aka Frank Fiorini—10 January 19.” To: Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation. From: Deputy Director (Plans). Page 115 of 214.
34 NARA 104-10221-10106 ~ Circa 9/16/1963 CIA Memo “Frank Anthony Sturgis aka Frank Fiorini.” Subject: INTERPEN, MIRR Ops. Pages 1& 4.
>> Sturgis aliases.
>> Pedro de la Camera was partnering with Fiorini in the effort.
RIF 1993.07.02.11:06:04:930800 ~ “Max Forman Gonzalez aka Max Gonzalez.”
>> Bonelli alias.
NARA 124-10281-10203 ~ 10/11/1963 FBI Document “Subject: Americans for Freedom (Americanos Por
Libertad) Internal Security – Cuba – Haiti; Neutrality Matters.”
>> “A confidential informant, familiar with certain aspects of Cuban exile activity, furnished the following information concerning captioned organization and its legal counsel, Charles R. Ashman ... an attorney with offices in the Dupont Plaza Building ... Ashman was an assistant to Senator George A. Smathers in 1956 and 1957 ... Ashman’s efforts on behalf of Harris and Company [an ad agency that had filed suit against the Castro government] resulted in effectively attaching 21 Cuban airplanes and other property.”
>> From June to September 1962, he represented a group “composed of approximately 15 to 25 ex United States servicemen headed by one Gerald Patrick Hemming, also known as the ‘Bearded Giant of No Name Key.’” Two of the members “were one Howard Davis, who handled liaison with other anti-Castro groups, and one Joe Garman, the son of a wealthy man from Kentucky.” Ashman also represented “members of Alpha 66, who were picked up by the United States Coast Guard while attempting to launch a raid on Cuba” and “Commando L., Cuban Anti-Communist Army, and Second National Front” plus others.
35 NARA 124-10226-10290 ~ 5/13/1968 Bureau Correlation Summary “Subject: Frank Angelo Fiorini, One Frank Date searched July 19, 1967.” Page 2.
36 NARA 104-10300-10208 ~ 6/10/1975 MFR (Memo for the Record) “Sturgis, Frank, and Hunt, Howard.” Declassified on April 26, 2018
37 RIF 1993.07.02.11:06:04:930800 ~ “Max Forman Gonzalez aka Max Gonzalez.”
38 “Gen. W.S. Biddle Dies, Decorated Combat Officer.” The Washington Post, January 27, 1981.
39 “Freedom of Information Act Request by Frank Sturgis to the CIA.” May 19, 1976.
40 “58.1 James Schlesinger Memorandum, February 9, 1973, SSC Exhibit No. 135, 9 SSC 3825-26.” Judiciary Committee Hearings: Statement of Information, Book II—Events Following the Watergate Break-In Current Section: Statement of Information and Supporting Evidence. Page 675.
41 RIF 1993.08.09.17:20:39:560007 ~ CIA File “On William Pawley, William Seymour, Frank Sturgis, And Operat,” Page 114.
6/10/1975 Memorandum “Subjects: Sturgis, Frank Anthony aka Fiorini, Frank #353 459; Hunt, Everett Howard, Jr. #23 500." For: Director of Security.
42 “Chapter 19—Allegations Concerning the Assassination of President Kennedy Rockefeller Commission.” Report to the President by the Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States. Page 253.
43 HSCA 11/3/1978 Interview “E. Howard Hunt by Staff Counsels Robert W. Genzman and Mike Ewing.” Part 2, Page 2.
44 HSCA 11/3/1978 Interview “E. Howard Hunt by Staff Counsels Robert W. Genzman and Mike Ewing.” Part 2, Page 13.
45 HSCA 11/3/1978 Interview “E. Howard Hunt by Staff Counsels Robert W. Genzman and Mike Ewing.” Part 2, Page 2.
46 HSCA 11/3/1978 Interview “E. Howard Hunt by Staff Counsels Robert W. Genzman and Mike Ewing.” Part 2, Page 17.
47 HSCA 11/3/1978 Interview “E. Howard Hunt by Staff Counsels Robert W. Genzman and Mike Ewing.” Part 2, Page 41.
48 HSCA 11/3/1978 Interview “E. Howard Hunt by Staff Counsels Robert W. Genzman and Mike Ewing.” Part 2, Page 25.
49 HSCA 11/3/1978 Interview “E. Howard Hunt by Staff Counsels Robert W. Genzman and Mike Ewing.” Part 2, Page 6.
50 HSCA 11/3/1978 Interview “E. Howard Hunt by Staff Counsels Robert W. Genzman and Mike Ewing.” Part 2, Page 6.
51 HSCA 11/3/1978 Interview “E. Howard Hunt by Staff Counsels Robert W. Genzman and Mike Ewing.” Part 2, Pages 14 & 31.
52 HSCA 11/3/1978 Interview “E. Howard Hunt by Staff Counsels Robert W. Genzman and Mike Ewing.” Part 2, Page 34.
53 HSCA 11/3/1978 Interview “E. Howard Hunt by Staff Counsels Robert W. Genzman and Mike Ewing.” Part 2, Part 1, Page 7.
54 NARA 178-10002-10372 ~ 4/4/1975 Rockefeller Commission Memorandum “Deposition for the Record
of Frank Sturgis and Wilfredo Navarro.” From: Commission Staff Robert B. Olsen and James N. Roethe.
Pages 2, 3 & 49.
>> On page 49, Sturgis listed his friends as: Jack Stewart, Ragelio Gonzalez Corso, Rafael Hanscom in Havana; Ray Sanstrom in Fort Lauderdale; Ricardo Lorie; Salvador Aller; Paul Bethel in Havana and also Miami; Captain Anonio Montis Yunkles who “is very close with General Wesson of the Dominican Republic and a very good close friend of mine; Colonel Gerard de Berly ... Coral Gables ... communications chief of CIA before the Bay of Pigs invasion.”
>> Corso (AMRUNG-1) was captured in Cuba and executed before the invasion.
>> Lorie (QDCOVE)had purchased a plane with Sturgis in 1958.
>> Bethel became the newsletter Editor of the Citizen Committee for a Free Cuba.
55 HSCA 11/3/1978 Interview “E. Howard Hunt by Staff Counsels Robert W. Genzman and Mike Ewing.” Part 2, Pages 39 & 40.
56 HSCA 11/3/1978 Interview “E. Howard Hunt by Staff Counsels Robert W. Genzman and Mike Ewing.” Part 2, Pages 33 & 35.
57 RIF 1993.08.14.08:20:30:900059 ~ 10/10/1963 Classified Message “Lee Harvey Oswald Renouncement of U.S. Citizenship.”
Labels: Belin, Grassy Knoll, Helms, Hunt, Lemnitzer, Nelson Rockefeller, Pawley, Pennington, Reagan, Sturgis, Thornley, Zapruder
posted by David Price Cannon @ 1:52 PM
<< Home