44: Life and Death
On October 4, 1977, Bob Woodward, the Watergate reporter from The Washington Post spoke in New Jersey at Montclair State College (now a University) and bet the audience that no one could name all of the infamous Watergate burglars just five years after the crime. I won his $20 bet because my interest in JMWAVE and the anti-Castro Cubans associated with E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis and William Pawley had been rising not waning during the investigations by the Rockefeller Commission, the Church Committee, the Pike Committee and the House Select Committee on Assassinations, between 1975 and 1978.
On the morning of January 7, 1977, hours before Pawley took his own life, Juan Jose Peruyero “was shot twice in the back” as he left his home in Miami’s Little Havana “shortly after at 8 a.m.” Before he died at “Jackson Memorial Hospital,” Peruyero said he knew who fired the shots, but the assailant in the passing “1967 Cadillac” was never prosecuted, and it has remained a cold case for decades. He “was the seventh exile leader to die in the last three years.”2
As President of the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association (AVBC) in 1965 Peruyero had requested President Lyndon Bains Johnson for funding to combat Castro and promised the Brigade 2506 members he would lead them back to their homeland. The following March he denied engaging in military planning and had nothing to do with the Haiti plan of Rolando Masferrer who he considered “a ‘Batistiano of the worst type.’”
Peruyero’s murder deeply shook Little Havana as well as his family.3 His daughter and grandson both became members of the Miami-Dade police to try to solve the case and the other unsolved deaths and bombings that plagued Cuban exiles who had advocated a softer approach to Castro than that pushed by the likes of Orlando Bosch.4
Some three months earlier, on September 24, 1976, a car bomb exploded a thousand miles away from Miami in Washington, D.C. killing Orlando Letelier and his American aide, Ronni Moffitt. Letelier had been Foreign Minister under democratically elected Marxist President Salvador Allende who took his own life after being overthrown in a CIA-backed September 1973 coup headed by General Augusto Pinochet. General Manuel Contreras of Chile’s secret police, DINA, working on behalf of dictator General Augusto Pinochet, headed the plot to silence Letelier which Secretary of State Kissinger was aware of and ordered that no attempt be made to block it. The bomb was planted by DINA agents who had been collaboration with anti-Castro CORU members.5
At the time of his death, Letelier was in discussions to testify before Senator Frank Church's Committee, making him the third potential witness to be murdered (Johnny Roselli and Sam Giancana, the other two) according to authors James and Thomas Risen in The Last Last Honest Man, The CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, and The Kennedys--and One Senator's Fight to Save Democracy released in the Spring 2023.
CIA Director Richard Helms had tried to deny CIA involvement in funneling money to Allende’s opponents on behalf of global communications company ITT, which counted among its Board of Directors former CIA Director McCone. Helms had also denied CIA involvement with the Watergate burglars, which Jefferson Morley demonstrated was ludicrous in his book Scorpion’s Dance. “A Month before his arrest, McCord bought electronic gear with Agency help. In retirement Hunt continued to meet with his longtime case officer, Thomas Karamessines, the deputy director of operations and one of Helms’s closest confidantes.”6
Helms continued his track record of denial. On October 2, 1979, he spoke at Montclair State College (now a University) about the importance of the Straits of Hormuz. After Aaron Kay, the Yippie, threw a pie at him that hit the podium, he continued on and I asked if the CIA was involved in Pawley’s attempt to discredit JFK eight years after Rockefeller approved the Doolittle Report. Helms asserted I was using my “own facts” and that “Rockefeller was never a national security advisor.” I cited NSC memo 54/12 which I had with me, and he changed his statement but still claimed no knowledge of the Bayo-Pawley operation even though one of his responses made mention of Pawley living in Florida and he was in charge of covert operations at the time JMWAVE was assisting the TILT effort.7
Helms, Dulles and Wisner had briefed the Doolittle Committee on July 14, 19548 and Helms became known as The Man Who Kept the Secrets when Thomas Powers published the ex-former Director’s biography based on their conversations.9
The FBI looked at the connection of anti-Castro Cuban brothers, Guillermo Novo and Ignacio Novo, to the Letelier car bombing on Washington’s embassy row. Guillermo Novo was an associate of Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada who were suspected of being behind the midair bombing of the Cubana Airliner. Posada, at the time of his arrest, had a map of Letelier’s route to work. Guillermo Novo was acquitted in the Letelier case in 1981. Nineteen years later, he and Posada were arrested after trying to kill Fidel Castro in 2000 in Panama.
In 1964, Guillermo Novo had been arrested for trying to kill Che Guevara with a bazooka while Che was speaking at the United Nations in New York City. FBI agents also suspected Novo of being involved in the murder of Rolando Masferrer in Miami.
Rolando “Kiki” Masferrer—whom Pawley was aware of in 1960, according to an FBI report, and perhaps earlier when Masferrer worked for Batista and Pawley ran Havana transportation to casinos.10 Kiki’s fanatical anti-Castro career was capped off in a car bombing in Miami on October 31, 1975. Suspects included Novo and others involved in Miami turf wars as anti-Castro exiles turned to drug trafficking and other crimes.11
John Martino, the former head of security at Santo Trafficante’s Hotel Deauville casino in Havana who instigated Pawley’s Operation TILT in 1963, and then bore false witness against Oswald, died of a heart attack on August 3, 1975.12
Martino’s death came a month after Johnny Roselli told U.S. Senators about the CIA’s plan to assassinate Cuban Premier Fidel Castro using fellow Mafia members, Trafficante and Sam “Momo” Giancana. Momo was murdered in his Chicago home in June 1975, the same week of Roselli’s testimony.13
A few weeks later, CIA Director of the Office of Security Sheffield Edwards died on July 15, 1975. He had interacted with Robert Maheu when he met with Trafficante and Giancana in 1960 to develop the Castro assassination plot.14
The following summer, the CIA’s William King Harvey, died in June 1975 of a heart attack. He had worked on Operation Mongoose and ZRRIFLE “executive action” assassination strategies using the Mafia triumvirate.15 The hard-drinking Harvey nurtured the careers of Theodore Shackley and John Sherwood in anti-Castro operations. Shackley, nicknamed the Blonde Ghost, became head of JMWAVE and at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis told Attorney General Robert Kennedy that “‘Harvey was running unauthorized agents in Cuba.’” President Kennedy transferred his ardent CIA opponent Harvey faraway from JMWAVE to be CIA Station Chief in Rome. Yet, according to reporter/author David Talbot who filed a FOIA lawsuit against the CIA and State Department for William Harvey's passport and travel records was denied access to the assassination chief's records. Talbot sought them after learning that Harvey "was spotted on a plane to Dallas by his deputy, F. Mark Wyatt," shortly before the President was shot.16
Before the summer of 1976 was over after Harvey died, Roselli was found dismembered in a 55-gallon drum floating in a Miami bay. The medical examiner believed he was killed July 28th.17
The next summer, Giancana’s right-hand man, Charles Nicoletti, was murdered in July 1977 in a Chicago parking lot.18
Others visited by the grim reaper before Pawley’s suicide included Laymoyne “Lem” Jones, the one-time Wendell Willkie press aide who later became spokesperson for the CRC and assisted in the distribution of Cuban exile propaganda through Radio Swan and other media outlets—while working hand in glove with E. Howard Hunt, David Phillips, Winston Scott and William Pawley. Lem died August 24, 1975.19
Raymond Leddy who shared PBSUCCESS and Cuban exile projects with Hunt, Phillips, Scott and Pawley, died March 5, 1976.20
Livingston Merchant who worked with Pawley in the early stages of planning action against Castro and then on the ransom and release of Bay of Pigs prisoners, died on May 15, 1976.21
On November 1, 1976 former U.S. envoy, Robert Mills McClintock, was struck by car near Beaune, France while on vacation with his wife and died in the hospital. During the Eisenhower Administration, after his stint at the National War College,22 Robert McClintock served as Deputy Chief of Mission in Saigon, Vietnam in 1953 as France gave up trying to control the region and the United States slowly got entangled there. McClintock then became “the first U.S. ambassador to live in Cambodia, from 1954 to 1956” where he “was reputedly the model of The Ugly American.”23 During that period, Pawley’s CAT airlines provided cover for the CIA’s Air America operations in Southeast Asia. As war spread from Vietnam into Laos and Cambodia in 1970s, Pawley would advocate using Chiang Kai-shek's forces instead of American soldiers.24
Robert’s brother, John C. McClintock, worked on Latin America affairs and was a Special Assistant to the American delegation during Pawley’s Conference of American States in Bogotá in 1948. John then served as a special representative for United Fruit and in 1950 became an executive of the company working in public relations in the tropics through the period of the Arbenz overthrow until United Fruit abandoned its PR effort in 1960.25
It was unclear from news accounts whether the driver of the car that took the life of Robert McClintock ever stopped; he was not unidentified. The car struck the former U.S. Ambassador to Argentina (1962-1964) and Venezuela (1970-1975) hours before arrest warrants were issued on November 2nd in Venezuela for a group alleged to have been involved in terrorism. They included Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch, Freddy Lugo and Ricardo Lozano.26
After a Cubana passenger plane was blown out of the sky near Barbados killing 73 people on board, Lugo and Lozano were convicted in Venezuela of the airplane bombing.
Luis Posada Carriles had attended officer training school in 1963 at Fort Benning, Georgia with future Cuban American National Foundation leader Jorge Mas Canosa and Felix Rodriguez whose CIA career led him to hunting Che Guevara in Bolivia and notoriety in the Iran-Contra affair. High-profile politicians and a future NBC News anchorman came to the defense of Posada according to Ann Louise Bardach’s intriguing, international bombing tale “Twilight of the Assassins” in The Atlantic.27
Posada had served the CIA from 1961 to 1967. He “was scheduled to land at the Bay of Pigs” but his role was cancelled when calamity befell the Brigade 2506 invaders. Later he joined DISIP, the Venezuelan intelligence service, and served as a senior officer for five years until 1974.28 Two years later the Cubana airline was blown out of the sky. Posada was held for eight years in the U.S. but then fled the country. He was detained by the Venezuelan government for nearly a decade but never formally convicted or acquitted of the airline bombing. He denied any role in the bombings after reentering the U.S. and was released in 2007. But he did admit “to plotting attacks that damaged tourist spots in Havana and killed an Italian visitor there in 1997. He was convicted in Panama in a 2000 bomb plot against Mr. Castro.”
Declassified documents made public in 2009 by the non-government National Security Archive, indicate that Posada, like Bernard Barker and many other exiles, was an informant on his fellow Cuban exiles. Ironically one document from July 26, 1966 asserted that AMCLEVE15 (A15) “is not a typical kind of ‘boom and bang’ individual. He is acutely aware of the international implications of ill-planned or overly enthusiastic activities against Cuba.” Posada “informally exercised his influence to discourage exile activities that would embarrass” the United States. He was a man of “good character, very reliable and security conscious.”29 Posada died at age 90 on May 18, 2018.30
One of the other alleged co-conspirators in the October 6, 1976 bombing of the Cubana plane was Dr. Orlando Bosch Avila (AMDITTO-23), who had been a coordinator within MIRR which was financed by Paulino A. Sierra and “gambling interests” in Chicago. Bosch’s “association with Frank Sturgis alone culminated in 11 airstrikes over Cuba.” Their targets were often sugar cane production as a means of disrupting the Cuban economy.31
In the late 1960s, Bosch admitted to firing a bazooka from the McArthur Causeway in Miami at a Polish freighter.32 Bosch later aligned himself with the Coordinated Revolutionary Organization (CORU), a Puerto Rican based anti-Castro group and was considered a real zealot who later was described by a Justice Department official as “‘a terrorist, unfettered by laws or human decency, threatening and inflicting violence without regard to the identity of his victims.’”33
An internal 1976 CIA memo quoted a member (name redacted) of David Atlee Phillips’s association of retired CIA employees who “said the street-word among the Cuban community in South Florida is that the bomb should have gone off in the plane on the ground. The bombers did not mean to kill all those people. On Bosch, the community does not particularly like him, but admires him because he had been going at Castro tooth and nail for years. They do not like terrorism and fault Bosch and Morales for this.”34
A CIA contract worker, sniper instructor and frequent FBI informer, Ricardo “El Mono” (aka “Monkey”) Morales made a videotape confession declaring Bosch and Posada were not involved in the bombing. On December 20, 1983, Morales was shot to death in a “justifiable homicide” in a barroom brawl at Cherries disco in Rogers on the Green on Key Biscayne down the road from the former Nixon Winter White House and Bebe Rebozo’s home. Morales's attorney had been killed months earlier. Nearly 40 years later, Monkey's 58-year-old son, Ricardo Jr., claimed his dad trained Oswald to shoot and thought he was a lousy rifleman. Morales who "worked for or collaborated with the CIA, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Israel’s Mossad and Venezuela’s DISIP intelligence agency during the 1960s and ‘70s ... confessed to having a hand in more than 15 bombings. After his death, he was even linked to a plot to kill Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1976," according to the Miami Herald. The son also asserted that Rogelio Novo, owner of Rogers, was slain in retaliation for Monkey's murder.35
Bosch was acquitted in the plane bombing. But before that, the Miami office of Immigration and Naturalization Service received a bomb threat in protest to Bosch’s jailing. The Miami-Cuba corridor saw so many acts of terrorism in the final decades of the twentieth century that Jim Mullins would eventually compile a timeline in Miami New Times listing dozens and dozens of threats and murders. It was not until the Al Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that exiles realized that terrorism was unpatriotic and disrespectful to the nation that had given them asylum.36
On the day of the Cubana plane bombing, I was visiting the Miami Police Department to obtain a police report on the death of Grant Stockdale—the 1963 case strangely was still considered active in 1976 even though it had been ruled a suicide. The report indicated that Stockdale, shortly before leaping to his death, had spoken to William Frates, an attorney whose clients later would eventually include Watergate era figures John Ehrlichman and Bebe Rebozo.37
The next day, October 7, 1976, I attempted to reach William Pawley at his Miami office to discuss the Doolittle Report, which I had received under the new Freedom of Information Act, and Operation TILT which had been reported on as the “Bayo-Pawley Affair” (aka Operation Red Cross) in Soldier of Fortune.38 Pawley was unavailable, bedridden at home.
On October 13, 1976, Representative Henry B. Gonzalez (D-Texas) wrote thanking me for a letter I had sent. Gonzalez—who had been in the motorcade when JFK was shot and helped lift JFK’s coffin onto Air Force One—stated in his letter to me that his committee in the House would begin hearings on the assassination of President Kennedy in January 1977.
David Kirkpatrick Este Bruce passed away also died in the fall of 1977. When Dorothy Wetzel Day Goutiere met her future husband, E. Howard Hunt, David K.E. Bruce was their boss.39 The marriage lasted two decades, until Dorothy Hunt died in a 1972 airplane crash while carrying Watergate hush money.40
David K.E. Bruce’s own wedding in 1926 to Ailsa Mellon, daughter of banker and Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew W. Mellon, had been considered one of the most remarkable Washington events of its kind ever seen, with 2,000 guests and rumors of a $10 million wedding gift.41 David was the eldest son of Senator William Cabell Bruce of Maryland and went on to become an Ambassador as well as work for Frank Wisner’s Office of Policy Coordination.
Two years after the Doolittle Committee recommendations, David Bruce and Robert Lovett, associates of Pawley from the Truman administration,42 reexamined covert operations for President Eisenhower and were frightened by the lack of control over the agency that was taking on the task of being more ruthless than the enemy.43 Later, President Nixon called on David K.E. Bruce out of retirement to head the United States liaison office in Peking, China in 1973,44 a mission that thoroughly displeased Pawley.
One of the oddest clusters of death that occurred during the assassination investigations were among FBI agents. On November 7, 1977, a hunting accident claimed the life of William C. Sullivan, one of the FBI officials who had read documents referring to Pawley. He was suddenly dismissed from the Bureau in 1971, after taking issue with Director Hoover over the FBI’s COINTELPRO. The program, which Sullivan ran, seemed to violate the Constitutional protection of free speech. The violation was justified by Hoover and others as necessary to protect the U.S. from communism, which had grown omnipotent in their minds.
Sullivan had also been put in charge of the FBI’s investigation into the Kennedy assassination and wrote reports along with the CIA Counterintelligence Chief James Jesus Angleton that formed the basis for the Warren Commission findings. Sullivan was scheduled to appear before the House Select Committee on Assassinations at the time of his death. Robert Daniels, the 21-year-old man who accidentally shot the former number three FBI official with a scope-mounted 30-caliber rifle lost his hunting license for ten years and was fined $500 for mistaking a human as a deer.45 Sullivan’s The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoover's FBI was published posthumously in 1979.
Six other top FBI officials died in 1977. Alan H. Belmont, special assistant to Hoover who also read Pawley documents; James Cadigan, a document expert; Donald Kaylor, FBI fingerprint chemist; Louis Nicholas, J. Edgar Hoover’s liaison with the Warren Commission; and J.M. English, former head of FBI Forensic Sciences Laboratory where Oswald's rifle and pistol were tested and linked to him. Once considered irrefutable, ballistics matching was found to be invalid four decades later by the National Academy of Sciences.46
On November 17, 1977, Manuel Artime Buesa, the Cuban physician who led the Brigade 2506 into the Bay of Pigs and “was later ransomed from a Cuban jail for $500,000” died of cancer at 35 years of age. Artime died as the House Select Committee on Assassinations was determining the possible role of anti-Castro exiles with Lee Harvey Oswald.47
Artime in 1963 had moved to Nicaragua as leader of operation AMWORLD—the U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy initiative that launched commando raids on Cuba despite President Kennedy’s American University commencement speech. Artime and Pawley both were eager to see the Somoza Plan succeed but it fizzled out. Pawley and Artime not only shared in common dying in 1977 but having theaters in Miami named in their honor.48
The William Pawley Theater is located at the North Campus of Miami Dade Community College—America’s largest college with some 160,000 students. When the theater was dedicated in 1989, the Miami Herald noted that Pawley “began his financial career at age 10 by selling candy and fruit from a rowboat to sailors in a Havana harbor.”49
The Manuel Artime Theater on SW 1st Street in Miami’s Little Havana is a performing arts venue where President Donald Trump in 2017 announced his “crack down on travel and trade with Cuba” while “hundreds of protesters and supporters clashed in the streets.”50
Artime was exceptionally close to E. Howard Hunt who became notorious during the Watergate scandal. Hunt died in January 2007.51 Frank Sturgis in 1993.52 Virgilio Gonzalez July 2014.53
In June 2009, Watergate burglar and former CIA JMWAVE informant, Bernard Barker (AMCLATTER-1), died. During the Bay of Pigs invasion, Barker had taken off in a plane with José Miró Cardona, the provisional president in-waiting. When it became obvious that Castro had not been overthrown, they returned to Miami. Eventually, Barker went into real estate and married four times.54
James Walter McCord, Jr. died in June 2017.55 Rolando Martinez January 2021.56 G. Gordano Liddy March 2021.57 Two years after the final death, HBO released its campy version of the event “White House Plumbers” which portrayed them as bungling fools.
One person with a different view was Felix I. Rodriguez y Mendigutia who considered Rolando Martinez as a hero for having infiltrated Cuba more times than any other exile. Felix Rodriguez was a President of the Brigade 2506 Veteran’s Association and head of the Assault Brigade 2506 Museum in Hialeah Gardens, Florida.58
As a member of Operation 40, Rodriguez had failed in assassination attempts on Castro, but had captured and interrogated Che Guevara shortly before he was executed in 1965.59 In later interview, he asserted that “the order to execute the prisoner came from the Bolivian military's high command, while his orders as CIA officer were to keep him alive.” Guevara’s hands were “chopped off so that his fingerprints could be used as proof of death.” Che’s “remains were found in 1997 [in an unmarked grave] and later brought to Cuba.”60
Rodriguez later became a Phoenix assassination program trainer in Viet Nam, and then under the pseudonym “Max Gomez,” worked with Col. Oliver North during the Iran Contra affair.61
Three decades after the Bay of Pigs veterans asked to have the Brigade flag back, members of Brigade 2506 returned to the Orange Bowl on Saturday, December 29, 2007, for a final visit before the stadium was torn down. “Near the scoreboard, the American flag waved next to the brigade's banner under an azure sky.” The Castro brothers were still governing Cuba and a new generation of Cubans born in America and partying in South Beach needed to be reminded of the struggles of their parents by visiting the Bay of Pigs Museum in Miami.62 Chairing the new museum in 2010 was Felix I. Rodriguez, President of the Brigade 2506 Veteran’s Association.63
Near the end of his autobiography, William Douglas Pawley opined in his chapter on “Détente and the Future” that things are getting worse. “When I started this book, I was haunted by the memory that after America’s victory in World War II, she enjoyed unprecedented world power and world leadership. Nearly thirty years have rushed by during which we have lost the power and most of the leadership.”64
Pawley's death also meant his outrage would not be leveled at President Carter for allowing Fidel Castro to visit the United Nations in New York City in October of 1977. The visit attracted a large protest by Alpha 66 and other Cuban exile groups that faced off with the police outside my office window on Lexington Avenue and 40th Street where I was Associate Creative Director and Copywriter of Edwin Bird Wilson, a long-established advertising agency two blocks north of the Cuban Mission to the United Nations. At 9:50 pm on October 27th, a bomb exploded by the Mission. "It shattered a heavy metal door, twisted an iron grille, and blew out doors and windows ... in some 30 buildings, some nearly two blocks away" from 315 Lexington. Police "believed the bomb was planted by members of Omega 7, a terrorist group opposed to Castro." Two men were seen "running away," according to The New York Times.
a plan which was pending final approval by a high-level Department of Defense authority to use Antonio Veciana, Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo and Nazario Sargen, all SNFE- Alpha 66 leaders, as sources for the collection of intelligence ... The Army intelligence representative advised that Gutierrez Menoyo was then a ‘registered Army Source’ in the Intelligence Source Registry maintained by CIA.” Gutierrez Menoyo was captured in Cuba in December 1964 and imprisoned for two decades, making him a cause célèbre.
Veciano twice conspired to assassinate Castro. He was arrested in 1973 on cocaine distribution charges, and later told the House Select Committee on Assassinations that he and the CIA's David Atlee Phillips (aka Maurice Bishop) met with Lee Harvey Oswald two months before the death of JFK. HSCA was unable to corroborate Veciano's claim. He died June 18, 2020.65
When I photographed the parade near the UN, one of the marchers threatenly stated, "You've taken enough pictures."
Pawley predeceased Clare Boothe Luce by a decade; she passed at 84 on October 9, 1987. Another
A century after Edward Porcher Pawley moved his family from Cuba to Haiti to build the first hotel to serve the tropical paradise, Port-au-Prince was considered “the most dangerous city” on the planet, overrun by gang warfare fed by the profound poverty that had been spawned by the ravages of famine, hurricanes, earthquakes, cholera, political assassinations and the extreme deforestation of the nation’s trees which were used by the poor population as a cheaper fuel than gas or electricity.67
And post-Castro Cuba was building an alliance with William Pawley's longtime nemesis—Red China—that could provide the world’s largest communist nation a nearby base for spying on America.68
FOOTNOTES:
1 The Rockefeller Commission convened in January 1975. The House Select Committee on Assassinations was given Congressional approval to investigate the murder of President Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King on September 21, 1976.
2 “Cuban Exile Leader Slain in Miami; 7th in 3 Years.” The New York Times, January 8, 1977.
MIAMI, Jan. 7—Juan Jose Peruyero, former president of the Cuban Bay of Pigs Invasion Brigade Veteran Association, was shot to death here today by unidentified assailants.
The 46‐year‐old owner of an automobile body shop was the seventh exile leader to die in the last three years in what the police believe were politically motived assassinations.
According to the police, Mr. Peruyero left his home soon after 8 A.M. and walked about 20 yards to his small van parked in the street to go to work. As he was opening the door, he was shot twice in the back by one or two men. He was taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital, where he died some 90 minutes later.
The police said that the assailants, who according to witnesses fled in a 1967 Cadillac, were waiting for Mr. Peruyero and must have known his daily routine.
A number of exiles saw in the Peruyero slaying the continuation of a wave of crime and terrorism that many had believed to be abating because there had been no acts of violence since last May.
In the last three years, about 100 bombs also have exploded in the Miami area, several attempts have been made to kill prominent Cubans and a number of newsmen, both Cubans and Americans, have received death threats.
Last May, Emilio Milian, a Cuban American radio commentator who has combatted terrorism, lost two legs when a bomb exploded in his car. He is a friend of Mr. Peruyero.
A local law enforcement official investigating the Peruyero killing described it as a “political assassination.”
Mr. Peruyero, who is survived by his wife and two daughters, has been described as a political activist. He was a known anti‐Communist and had reportedly organized and taken part in several commando raids against Cuban shipping and coastal targets.
He was also instrumental in having the Bay of Pigs flag returned to Miami from Washington. The flag was given to President Kennedy in January 1962 by the brigade at a rally held in Miami after the 1,500‐member group returned to the United States after the payment to the Cuban Government of a $62 million ransom arranged by the President.
3 “More Explosions in Miami,” Syracuse Post Standard, December 5, 1975.
4 “Cold Case Death Of Detective's Father Re-Examined: Cuban Exile Leader Gunned Down 29 Years Ago.” Local10.com, January 6, 2006.
FBI File 2-1622 on Rolando Masferrer, Vol. 88, Section 313-328 Page 106 of 112. Mary Ferrell Foundation website.
>> Peruyero told the FBI on March 10, 1966 that he had “not been engaged in any military planning during the past year.”
5 “The Assassination of Orlando Letelier and the Politics of Silence.” By Jon Schwarz. The Intercept. September 21, 2016.
How Henry Kissinger Paved the Way for Orlando Letelier’s Assassination. During a visit to Chile in 1976, Kissinger met the dictator Augusto Pinochet and offered no objection to his violent rule." By James Risen. The Intercept. June 16, 2023.
6 Jefferson Morley, Scorpions’ Dance, The President, the Spymaster, and Watergate (New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 2022)
.
7 Richard Helms Q&A discussion with David Price Cannon, Montclair State College (now University),
October 2, 1979.
>> Helms also acknowledge that Iran’s leadership wouldn’t have turned anti-American if free elections had been allowed by the Shah (who had been Helms’s roommate while in school in Europe in the 1930s).
8 7/25/1954 Memorandum For: (See Distribution). “Subject: Briefings for Special Study Group.” Approved for release February 2008.
>> The tentative briefing schedule covered numerous topics:
Preliminary Orientation Briefings (Completed 14 July)
1. General Organization and Responsibilities (Dulles, Wisner, Helms) 2. Communication Facilities (Names redacted)
3. Defector Program (Names redacted)
4. International Organizations Division (Names redacted)
5. Soviet Russia (Names redacted)
6. Far East Division (Names redacted)
General Briefing (Policy and Plans)
7. Planning System—Cold War (Names redacted) 1 hour
8. War Planning (Names redacted) 1 hour
9. Coordination with OCB (Names redacted) 1 hour
Staff Briefings (Coordination)
10. Foreign Intelligence (Names redacted) 2 hours
Introduction
Requirements
Plans and Operations
Support and Guidance
Control and Evaluation
Production
Agreed Activities
11. Communication Intelligence (Names redacted) 1 hour
12. Collection and Dissemination (Names redacted) 6 hours
13. Psychological and Paramilitary (Names redacted) 1 1/2 hours
Area Division Briefings (Operations)
14. Eastern Europe (Names redacted) 1 1/2 hours
15. Western Europe (Names redacted) 1 1/2 hours
16. Southeast Europe (Names redacted) 1 1/2 hours
17. North East and Africa (Names redacted) 1 1/2 hours
18. Western Hemisphere (Names redacted) 1 1/2 hours
19. Soviet Russia (Names redacted) 3 hours
Support Briefings
20. Administration (Names redacted) 3 hours
21. Inspection and Review (Names redacted) 1 1/2 hours
22. Clandestine Services Records (Names redacted) 1 1/2 hours
23. Technical Services (Names redacted) 3 hours
24. Security System (Names redacted) 3 hours
25. Clandestine Training (Names redacted) 3 hours
26. Training Field Trip (Names redacted) 8 hours
27. Communication Field Trip (Names redacted) 8 hours
Miscellaneous Briefings
28. British Intelligence Service; Organization (Names redacted) 1 hour
29. Liaison with Foreign Intelligence Services (Names redacted) 1 hour
30. Research and Development—Technical Services (Names redacted) 1 hour
31. Operation—Iran (Kermit Roosevelt Jr.) 1 1⁄2 hours
32. Special Operations (Angleton) 1 1⁄2 hours
33. Operation—Guatemala Techniques and Exploitation (To be selected) 1 1⁄2 hours
34. Personnel Management and the Career System (Names redacted) 1 1⁄2 hours
35. Activities of the Inspector General (Kirkpatrick) 1 1⁄2 hours
[The next page is fully redacted.]
>> Among the questions asked was “how do you refute damaging statements by such people as Winchell, the Alsops and Pearson?”
Reply: We don’t refute—but remain silent.
9 Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA (Knopf, January 1, 1979).
10 FBI 105-84265-34, 36. January 1960. Police Report. A.J. Weberman website.
11 “Ex-Batista Aide Killed by Bomb As He Starts His Auto in Miami.” The New York Times, November 1, 1975. Page 30.
“Crime is Luring Terrorist from Anti-Fidel Ranks.” By Jim McGee. Miami Herald, December 30, 1983.
Growing evidence has linked many reputed anti-Castro terrorists to Mafia-like criminal groups that deal in drugs, extortion and murder, a Herald investigation has found. Instead of fighting Castro, some terrorists have turned to crime. Recent court statements and a wiretap transcript indicate members of the Omega 7 terrorist group served as strong-arm debt collectors for Miami-based drug smugglers.
12 “The Bayo-Pawley Affair.” By Miguel Acoca and Robert K. Brown. Soldier of Fortune, Spring 1976.
13 “Mobster Giancana Murdered in Home; Gangland Boss Shot 5 Times.” By Weldon Whisler. Chicago Tribune, June 20, 1975. Page 1.
14 “Assassination Plot Reported to RFK.” Sarasota Herald Tribune, July 23, 1975. Page 4-A.
15 “W.K. Harvey, C.I.A. Aide, 60; Linked to Anti-Castro Plotting,” The New York Times, June 14, 1976,
Page 34.
>> Harvey died June 9th in Indianapolis.
“The CIA’s Loaded Gun.” By David C. Martin. The Washington Post, October 10, 1976.
16 Joseph J. Trento, Prelude to Terror, (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2005). Page 362.
>> William King Harvey, a hard-drinking CIA agent, nurtured Theodore Shackley and John Sherwood’s careers. After serving as a covert agent in western Europe, Sherwood became a deputy to Harvey “running anti-Castro operations.” During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Shackley told Attorney General Robert Kennedy that “Harvey was running unauthorized agents in Cuba.” Kennedy sent Harvey packing to be Rome station chief. A year later, an Italian rifle was identified as the weapon used in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald, the presumed pro-Castro sympathizer whose bona fides as a communist had been built on a defection to Russia with knowledge of U-2 flights.
“John Sherwood” death. Rocky Mountain News, July 18, 2001.
>> Sherwood leapt to his death in July 2001 in Boulder, Colorado, depressed by increasing frailties and charges of stalking a woman.
“Frank G. Wisner Dies; Former CIA Official.” Washington Star, October 30, 1965.
>> Wisner, 56, “who had been ill for some time shot himself with a 20-gauge shotgun” and died from a
head wound on October 29, 1965. He was “upstairs at his country home and farm” in Galena, Maryland
and his wife, Mary, was downstairs.
>> Frank Wisner “had served as a Naval intelligence officer in World War II” then “joined the Strategic Services in Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans, France and Germany from 1943 until 1946, rising to the rank of commander.” Wisner “served for, a year as deputy assistant secretary of state for occupied areas” then “joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1948,” shortly after it was formed by President Truman. A year before Wisner’s death, Truman decried how far the Agency had gone beyond intelligence gathering and into policymaking.
>> A “member of the Metropolitan Club, the F Street Club and the D.C. Bar Association ... the River Club in New York, the Brooks Club in London and on the board of directors of the Conservation Foundation.”
>> Wisner in retirement invested in oil firms.
>> Wisner was survived by his wife, sons, Frank Jr. who was “serving in the State Department in Viet Nam; Ellis, studying at Oxford, and Graham, a student at St. Paul's School, Concord, N.H. and daughter, Wendy at Sarah Lawrence College.”
>> Wisner, a pioneer of covert operations under CIA Director Alan Dulles, worked on the Arbenz overthrow and the U-2 flights program under Frank Bissell, Jr.
“W.K. Harvey, C.I.A. Aide, 60; Linked to Anti‐Castro Plotting.” The New York Times, June 14, 1976.
William K. Harvey, reportedly the head of a special Central Intelligence Agency group set up in the 1960's to plan the removal of foreign leaders by means including assassination, died of a heart attack last Wednesday in an Indianapolis hospital.
Mr. Harvey, who was 60 years old, was said to have been in charge of the agency's efforts against Prime Minister Fidel Castro of Cuba. He was among 10 agents whose identities were disclosed by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence after an investigation in 1975 of alleged assassination plots by the United States.
William E. Colby, then Director of Central Intelligence, had argued that disclosure of the names of agents would put them in jeopardy of retaliation by “irrational groups.”
Mr. Harvey testified before the Senate committee that he had been told by superiors that the Castro assassination plot had been approved at the highest levels of the government, and that he had discussed the efforts with his immediate superior, Richard Helms, who later became director of the agency.
Mr. Harvey moved to Indianapolis in 1969 after retiring from the agency, where he had worked for 22 years. He worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 1940 to 1947.
At the time of his death, Mr. Harvey was law editor for Bobbs‐Merrill Publishing Company.
He was buried Saturday at South Cemetery in Danville, just west of Indianapolis. He is survived by his wife, Clara Grace, a daughter, Sally, and a son. James D. Harvey.
>> William K. Harvey died on the 13th of a heart attack as the Senate investigated the CIA’s assassination attempts on Castro.
“John Sherwood” death. Rocky Mountain News, July 18, 2001.
>> Sherwood leapt to his death in July 2001 in Boulder, Colorado, depressed by increasing frailties and charges of stalking a woman.
“Theodore Shackley, Enigmatic C.I.A. Official, Dies at 75.” The New York Times, December 14, 2002.
>> Shackley died December 9, 2002.
“Theodore Shackley, 75; CIA Leader Was Legendary Operative.” Los Angeles Times, December 14, 2002.
Theodore G. Shackley, a retired associate deputy director for clandestine operations of the CIA whose career took him from the streets of Berlin to the jungles of Laos and Vietnam, died of cancer Monday at his home in Bethesda, Md. He was 75.
In the context of an agency and a profession whose watchwords are secrecy and deception, Shackley was a legendary figure. He was known as “the godfather of secret warriors.” He was a three-time recipient of the Distinguished Intelligence Medal, the agency’s highest honor. Shackley spent his career on the front lines of the Cold War, and he was involved in some of the agency’s most important—and controversial—operations. His rise in the shadowy world of espionage was swift and sure. Colleagues described him as “coldly efficient and dependable,” “businesslike,” and “cold, calm, deliberate.”
In 1951, Shackley was recruited into the CIA from the Army. His first foreign assignment was West Berlin, then the espionage capital of the world.
In 1962, he was named CIA station chief in Miami, with responsibility for assisting Cuban exiles bent on overthrowing Fidel Castro. Shackley held that post during the Cuban missile crisis, when President Kennedy’s administration forced the Soviet Union to withdraw missiles from the island nation.
He also ran Operation Mongoose, an anti-Castro intelligence campaign that had been ordered by Atty. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy, the president’s brother.
Shackley’s next assignment was Vientiane, Laos. There he supervised a “secret” CIA war in which 20,000 Hmong tribesmen were pitted against the North Vietnamese-backed Pathet Lao. Among other things, he ran agents into Communist China. In 1968, he moved to Saigon as station chief.
In 1976, Shackley was named associate deputy director for clandestine operations at headquarters. The job involved worldwide counterintelligence operations and covert action.
By then, the CIA was no longer the freewheeling organization that he had joined 25 years earlier. In the early 1970s, a committee headed by Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) published voluminous reports on some of the seamier aspects of CIA operations, including plans to assassinate foreign leaders. The agency came under close and unaccustomed scrutiny by Congress.
Navy Adm. Stansfield Turner, a director of central intelligence during the Carter administration, drastically reduced the clandestine service. New technology, including spy satellites, came into use. The role of agents on the ground was cut back.
Shackley retired in 1979. His career appeared to have hit a dead end, in part because of dealings he had with Edwin P. Wilson, a former CIA agent who illegally sold explosives to Libya.
In private life, he founded Research Associates International, a consulting firm that specialized in risk analysis, threat assessment and executive protection.
Shackley also wrote three books on intelligence and security: “The Third Option”; “You’re the Target,” with co-author Robert Oatland; and “Still the Target: Coping with Terror and Crime.” He was the subject of a fourth book, “Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA’s Crusades,” by David Corn.
Shackley was born in Springfield, Mass., and grew up in West Palm Beach, Fla. During World War II, he served in the Army and took part in the occupation of Germany. After the war, he attended the University of Maryland, graduating in 1951.
Called to active Army duty during the Korean War, Shackley was on his way to Korea when he was ordered to Washington and assigned to the CIA.
Survivors include his wife, Hazel Tindol Shackley of Bethesda; a daughter; and two grandsons.
“Keeping Secrets.” By Julie Jargon. Westword.com, August 2, 2002
“Guilt or innocence? Stakes are high as doubt is cast on forensic lab techniques.” By Yamil Berard. McClatchy-Tribune News Service, December 6, 2009. http://www.cleveland.com/nation/index.ssf/2009/12/stakes_are_high_as_doubt_is_ca.html
“R.M. Bissell Jr. dies; CIA's Bay of Pigs, U-2 planner Richard Bissell Jr. Dies.” By Robert S. Capers, Hartford Courant, February 8, 1994
Richard M. Bissell Jr., heavily involved in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and the nation's highly successful spy satellite program, died Monday ... He was 84.
Robert Amory Jr., whose tenure as a CIA deputy director before his death [in 1989] overlapped with that of Mr. Bissell, has been quoted as describing Mr. Bissell as a “human computer.”
"The JFK Assassination at 60: The Public Knows the Truth - Why Won’t the Media Report It?" By David Talbot columnist The Kennedy Beacon, November 20 2023. (This opinion piece was requested by The New York Times, which then turned it down as too controversial to be printed by the newpsaper that had long defended the Warren Report.)
17 “Find Body of John Roselli in Drum on Biscayne Bay.” Gettysburg Times, August 9, 1976. Page 9. >> Roselli had been slain around July 28th according to the chief medical examiner.
18 “‘New’ Chicago Experiences a Surge in Gang Slayings; Former Policeman Slain.” By Douglas Kneeland. The New York Times, July 31, 1977.
19 “Lamoyne A. Jones Is Dead at 64; Press Aide to Willkie and Dewey.” The New York Times, August 24, 1975. Page 45.
“Young Newsman Wise Politically.” By Richard L. Wilson. Spokane Daily Chronicle, August 16, 1940. Page 2.
20 “Raymond Leddy Diplomatic Aide; Specialist on Latin American Affairs is Dead at 63.” The New York Times, March 9, 1976, page 34.
Jefferson Morley, Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA, (Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press). Pages 131 and 289.
21 “Diplomat Livingston Merchant Dies.” The Washington Post, May 17, 1976.
22 “Robert Mills McClintock.” Current Biography 1955. Page 381.
23 “Amb. McClintock dies, State Dept. adviser here,” Newport Mercury (Rhode Island), December 17, 1976. Page 2.
“Former U.S. envoy killed by auto.” The Times Herald Record, November 3, 1976. Page 30.
>> Robert McClintock’s extensive Latin American experience included being secretary at the American embassy in Santiago, Chile (1934-1937); secretary of the legation to Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican Republic (1937-1939); and Ambassador to Venezuela (1970-75) at a time when Luis Posada Carriles was working in the Venezuelan intelligence agency, DISIP. Posada had worked for military intelligence there until 1974 when there was a regime change. McClintock was also a former U.S. Ambassador in Lebanon from 1957 to 1961 when U.S. Marines entered Beirut.
24 “CIA documents shine light on secretive Air America.” By Jeff Carlton. Associated Press, April 20, 2009.
“Air America.” University of Texas Dallas website.
>>The CIA released “about 10,000 previously classified Air America records, declassified the documents following a Freedom of Information Act request by University of Texas at Dallas, where they will be part of its aviation collection. Included are accounts of the chaotic evacuation after the fall of Saigon in 1975 ... Air America's public face was that of a passenger and cargo airline that operated in sometimes dangerous places. It formed after World War II under the name Civil Air Transport, and did contract work for the Chinese Nationalists.”
Control of Air America eventually shifted to the CIA, which set up shell companies to disguise its true ownership. Planes kept flying scheduled passenger flights out of Taiwan, but they also began flying covert missions in Laos and South Vietnam to supply anti-communist forces. Air America also had numerous government contracts, and was involved in humanitarian work though a deal with the State Department.
... UT-Dallas was chosen by the Air America alumni group as the site of a Vietnam Wall-style plaque listing the names of the roughly 240 fallen employees.
"Most people don't even know it occurred. It was a secret society," said Boecker. "They flew in all sorts of danger ... flying every day in terrible wartime conditions. They did a beautiful job."
CIA-RDP80-01601R000400220001-6 ~ "The Downfall of Sihanouk: Don't Blame the CIA." April 12, 1970. Released August 7, 2000.
>> Quoting "These Days" by John Chamberlain.
25 Current Biography 1955. Page 381.
Thomas P. McCann, An American Company, The Tragedy of United Fruit (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., New York, 1976).
>> United Fruit almost seems to cause depression. Governor Robert LaFollette committed suicide during the Guatemala overthrow. Edward Dale Toland, the United Fruit treasurer, committed suicide in 1966. And Eli Black, the head of United Brands (successor to United Fruit) leapt to his death from the Pan Am building in New York in 1975.
“Luis Posada Carriles, The Declassified Record, CIA and FBI Documents Detail Career in International Terrorism; Connection to U.S. National Security.” National Security Archive, George Washington University. Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 153, May 10, 2005.
27 “Twilight of the Assassins.” By Ann Louise Bardach. The Atlantic, November 2006.
28 “Cuban Exile Could Test the U.S. Definition of Terrorist.” By Tim Weiner, The New York Times, May 9, 2005.
>> At age 77, Posada returned to Florida “in an effort to seek political asylum for having served as a cold war soldier on the payroll of the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1960's, his lawyer, Eduardo Soto, said at a news conference last month.”
>> Guillermo Novo, who won an appeal overturning his conviction in the Letelier bombing had accompanied Posada to Panama where they were joined by “Gaspar Jiménez, convicted of trying to kidnap a Cuban diplomat in Mexico in 1977; and Pedro Remón, convicted of the attempted murder of Cuba’s ambassador to the United Nations in 1980.” The group had “33 pounds of the plastic explosive C-4.”
29 “CIA records: Cuban exile informed on colleagues.” By Laura Wides-Munoz. AP, October 6, 2009.
>> The CIA document with the favorable opinion of Posada was written by Grover T. Lythcott.
30 Luis Posada Carriles, age 90, of Pembroke Pines, Florida passed on Wednesday May 23, 2018. Luis was born February 15, 1928. A visitation for Luis will be held Sunday, May 27, 2018 from 5:00 PM to mid night at Caballero Rivero Little Havana, 3344 SW 8TH St, Miami, FL 33135.
31 HSCA Report, Volume X, Section: X. Movimiento Insurreccional de Recuperacion Revolucionaria (MIRR) and Orlando Bosch Avila.
32 “The Burden of a Violent History.” By Jim Mullen. Miami New Times, April 20, 2000.
33 “Cuban Exile Could Test the U.S. Definition of Terrorist.” By Tim Weiner. The New York Times, May 9, 2005.
34 NARA 104-10138-10171 ~ 1/17/1977 CIA Contact Report “Debriefing on Training and Demolition Given to Anti-Castro Cuban Exiles.” By: [Redacted] LA/Ops. Who: [Redacted] former staffer. Place: Holiday Inn (Tampa Airport). Page 3 of 7.
35 “Black-Edged Legend Is Ended In a Vulgar Miami Bar Brawl.” By Edward Cody. The Washington Post, February 6, 1983.
Ricardo Morales departed life as he had lived it, violently and under a cloak of so much intrigue that no one can be sure what happened.
As his friends and enemies tell it, however, one thing is certain: the .32-caliber bullet that penetrated the Cuban exile's head from behind eliminated a man who had made himself into a black-edged legend to be told and cherished throughout Miami, Latin America and, perhaps, Langley, Va.
After a month of investigation, the Dade County Public Safety Department has concluded that the spy, counterspy, mercenary, confessed murderer, bomber, informer, dope dealer and operator extraordinary was shot in a vulgar bar brawl, enraged because he thought someone had called him a maricon, or homosexual.
Morales allegedly was killed just before midnight Dec. 20 while reaching for the .38 strapped to his ankle in what Detective Steve Roadruck concluded was justifiable homicide for which no one should be charged.
"If you believe that, I've got a piece of expressway I'll sell you cheap," said one of Morales' attorneys, John Komorowski. "I'm convinced that sombody needed Morales dead and just executed him. There's no question about it; it was a set up. Who? God only knows. It could have been the Cubans, the anti-Castro Cubans, the druggers, the CIA, anybody."
In his 43 years, Morales had been involved with all of them, and more, in and out of the nether world of Miami. Miami is a place where simple explanations seldom suffice. It is where cocaine deals make people suddenly rich, occult and dead. It is where dissidents from a dozen Latin and Caribbean countries plot revolutions. It is a city so used to intrigue that a magazine for Latin visitors lists the CIA local phone number along with those of hotels and all-night pharmacies.
So from Morales' family and friends, some of whom were also his enemies at one time or another, have come several theories about why he might have been shot and by whom. None is provable, but they give an idea of how Morales lived and maybe how he died.
"Monkey" Morales, as the Miami press called him, had claimed that he helped plan and carry out the 1976 bombing of a Cubana airliner in which 73 persons died near Barbados. Morales claimed to friends that the C4 plastique explosive used to blow up the plane came from a storeroom of DISIP, the Venezuelan intelligence service in which Morales was then a high officer, and a then- DISIP director, Orlando Garcia, knew about the plot.
Morales explained that most of those aboard, some listed as the Cuban fencing team, were actually important regional operatives of the DGI, the Cuban version of the CIA.
Morales also was the chief informer for Miami police last year in an elaborate drug investigation called "Operation Tick-Talks" because of a bug hidden behind a clock in a suspect's home. The case was eventually thrown out of court because a judge ruled that Morales lacked credibility, but not before Rafael Villaverde and his brother Raul were charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine.
Friends say Morales had long wanted to nail Rafael Villaverde, a fellow Cuban. Villaverde, a Bay of Pigs veteran, had been a CIA operative in Miami during the agency's Cuban destabilization campaign in the early 1960s. Morales' friends say they did not know why Morales had it in for him. But Morales also was a CIA operative in the anti-Cuban campaign and a friend of former CIA agent Edwin P. Wilson.
As a young CIA officer, Wilson had participated in the anti-Cuba campaign for which Miami was the chief launching pad. Anti-Cuban campaign veterans Rafael and Raul Villaverde have said they met Wilson in Geneva in September, 1976, because they thought Wilson was recruiting them for a CIA plan to kill an international terrorist called Carlos the Jackal. But by then Wilson was working for Col. Muammar Qaddafi of Libya. According to U.S. investigators, he was proposing instead a plot to kill a Libyan dissident.
The Villaverdes went to U.S. authorities with the proposal. Their denunciation became part of an I nvestigation that has landed Wilson in jail.
Morales was killed in a bar called Cherries in Key Biscayne, the plush island off Miami where Richard M. Nixon once had a home. After an early evening of drinks in the section called Little Havana, he had gone there in his red Cadillac with Nancy Cid Lamazares and Juan Fernandez.
Lamazares was an old friend, the widow of German Lamazares, a Cuban exile murdered in 1973. Morales was the chief informer who led to the indictment of Armando Elidio Ruiz on charges that he killed Lamazares. Morales was also the man, by his account in a later court deposition, who killed Ruiz with an automatic pistol after Ruiz was acquitted and showed up on Morales' front porch one night.
A police investigation showed it was a customer in Cherries who shot Morales, Detective Roadruck said.
Lt. Raul Diaz of the Dade County Public Safety Department, who received information and terrorist lore from Morales for a decade, said any number of people in Miami--terrorists, drug dealers and spies from various nations--had reasons to kill him. In addition to admitting blowing up the Cuban plane, Morales said he had built and planted bombs for anti-Castro activists in Miami, while simultaneously working as an informer for the FBI.
Diaz tells of accepting an invitation from Morales to a Christmas party in 1975. As guests were milling about with drinks, Morales reminded Diaz of a song that went, "The Condor Is Passing." Condor was the name of an anti-Castro terrorist Diaz was then seeking, and he wondered vainly what Morales was talking about.
Sometime later, Morales, at the time with Venezuelan intelligence, called and suggested Diaz compare certain sets of fingerprints. The prints matched and Diaz had his case against the Condor.
But not such a good one, it turned out. At the same time he was informing to Diaz and the FBI, Morales had warned the Condor to flee. Only when Diaz saw the Condor's photograph, he recalled, did he realize that the suspect had also been a guest at the Christmas party where Morales made his jokes.
"Cuban exile told sons he trained Oswald, JFK’s accused assassin, at a secret CIA camp." By Nora Gámez Torres, Miami Herald, October 29, 2021.
36 “The Burden of a Violent History.” By Jim Mullin. Miami New Times, April 20, 2000.
>> A few of the incidents listed by Mullin are:
- 1976 Car bomb blows off legs of WQBA-AM news director Emilio Milian after he publicly condemns exile violence.
- 1977 Juan José Peruyero murdered in internecine exile power struggles.
- 1982 Miami Mayor Maurice Ferre defends $10,000 grant to exile commando group Alpha 66 by noting that the organization “has never been accused of terrorist activities inside the United States.”
- 1992 Cuban American National Foundation mounts campaign against the Miami Herald, whose executives then receive death threats and whose newsracks are defaced and smeared with feces.
37 District Court for District of Columbia, Criminal No. 74-116, United States v. John D. Ehrlichman, Charles W. Colson, G. Gordon Liddy, Bernard L. Barker, Felipe DeDiego, Eugenio R. Martinez.
Appearances on behalf of Defendant Ehrlichman: John J. Wilson, Esq.; Frank H. Strickler, Esq.; William S. Frates, Esq.Charles G. Rebozo, Plaintiff-Appellant-Cross Appellee. v. The Washington Post Company, Defendant-Appellee-Cross Appellant. United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit. - 637 F.2d 375. Feb. 19, 1981 Sherryll Martens Dunaj, William S. Frates, Alan G. Greer, Miami, Fla., for plaintiff-appellant-cross appellee.
"William S. Frates, 66; A Watergate Attorney." Obituary. The New York Times, March 23, 1984. Page D 15.
>> Frates represented John Ehrlichman and Charles G. Rebozo.
38 “The Bayo-Pawley Affair.” By Robert K. Brown and Miguel Acoca, Soldier of Fortune, 1975, Pages 18- 19
39 “David K. E. Bruce, Diplomat, Dies; David K.E. Bruce, Diplomat, Is Dead in Capital at 79.” By Albin Krebs. The New York Times, December 6, 1977.
“Watergate Figure E. Howard Hunt Dies.” By Tim Reynolds. The Associated Press, January 24, 2007.
40 “Ex-Spy Crafted Watergate, Other Schemes.” By Patricia Sullivan. The Washington Post, January 24, 2007. Page A01.
41 “Ailsa Mellon Wed to David K. E. Bruce Before Notables; Washington Sees Brilliant Ceremony at Marriage of Secretary's Daughter and Senator's Son. The Coolidges are Guests. Crown Prince and Princess of Sweden Are Among 2,000 at the Reception. $10,000,000 Gift Rumored But No List of Numerous Bridal Presents and Donors Is Made Public.” The New York Times, May 30, 1926.
42 “Daily Appointments of Harry S. Truman, February 18, 1948.” Harry S. Truman Library & Museum. Truman Library website.
Honorable John W. Snyder, Secretary of the Treasury Honorable A. Lee M. Wiggins, Under Secretary of the Treasury Honorable Robert A. Lovett, Under Secretary of State Honorable William McC. Martin, Jr., Chairman and President, Export-Import Bank of Washington Honorable Willard J. Thorp, Assistant Secretary of State Honorable William Pawley, U. S. Ambassador to Brazil Honorable John McCloy. [Emphasis added by D.P. Cannon]
43 Jefferson Morley, Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA, (Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press). Pages 76 and 77.
44 John Herbers, “David Bruce, 75, Selected to Head Office in Peking; Bruce Named to Post in Peking,” The New York Times, March 16, 1973.
45 "Man Is Fined in Death of Former FBI Official." The New York Times, January 15, 1978.
46 Yamil Berard, “Guilt or innocence? Stakes are high as doubt is cast on forensic lab techniques,” McClatchy-Tribune News Service, December 6, 2009. http://www.cleveland.com/nation/index.ssf/2009/12/stakes_are_high_as_doubt_is_ca.html
47 George Volsky, “Manuel Artime Dies; Led Invasion of Cuba; Castro Foe, 45, Had Close Ties to CIA – Recruited Exiles for Bay of Pigs Operation.” The New York Times, November 19, 1977.
48 Beth Dunlop, Herald Architecture Critic, “Theater Boosts Emerging Arts District,” The Miami Herald, October 8, 1989.
49 [No Headline], The Miami Herald, June 11, 1989, page 12.
50 “Donald Trump Announces His Cuba Policy at Manuel Artime Theater in Little Havana.” By Michelle Eve Sandberg. Miami New Times, June 16, 2017.
51 Tim Reynolds, “Watergate Figure E. Howard Hunt Dies,” Washington Post, January 24, 2007.
52 “Frank A. Sturgis, Is Dead at 68; A Burglar in the Watergate Affair.” The New York Times, December 5, 1993.
53 “Eugenio Martínez, Last of the Watergate Burglars Dies at 98.” The New York Times, February 11, 2021.
>> “Barker, a former Miami real estate agent and C.I.A. operative, who died in 2009; Virgilio González, a Miami locksmith, who died in 2014.”
54 “Bernard Barker 1917-2009: Bernard Barker Watergate 'plumber' was a hero to exiles,” Miami Herald June 6, 2009.
55 “James W. McCord Jr., Who Led the Watergate Break-In, Is Dead at 93.” By Robert D. McFadden. The New York Times, April 18, 2019.
56 “Eugenio Martínez, Last of the Watergate Burglars Dies at 98.” The New York Times, February 11, 2021.
57 “G. Gordon Liddy, Mastermind Behind Watergate Burglary, Dies at 90.” By Robert D. McFadden, TheNew York Times, March 30, 2021.
58 Bay of Pigs Museum Officers and Board Members in early 2000s.
Officers
Felix I. Rodriguez, Chairman (President of Brigade 2506 Veteran's Association)
Nicolas J. Gutierrez Jr., President (Partner, Borgognoni, Gutierrez & Arza)
Jorge Munilla, Vice-president (President, MCM Corp.)
Richard Martinez, Treasurer (President, Virginia Cole Investment Corp.)
Board of Directors
Felix I. Rodriguez, Chairman (President of Brigade 2506 Veteran's Association, retired CIA officer, author: "Shadow Warrior")
Nicolas J. Gutierrez Jr. President (Partner, Borgognoni, Gutierrez & Arza. Active in Cuba issues)
Jorge Munilla, Vice-president (President, MCM Corp.)
Richard Martinez, Treasurer (President, Virginia Cole Investment Corp.)
Board Members
Irela Bague (President, Bague Group)
Esteban Bovo, Sr.
Brigade Veteran Esteban Bovo, Jr.
President, Hialeah City Commission Grant Lally (Partner, Lally & Lally Nilo Messer)
Brigade Veteran Jose E. "Gene" Miranda
Brigade Veteran, Kelly Tractor Jorge Marquet
Brigade Veteran Tomas A. Pila (Attorney, Pila & Associates Humberto Alonso)
The Brigade Veterans Association AVBC was created in March 1963. http://cuban-exile.com/doc_026-050/doc0035.html
59 CIA Debriefing of Félix Rodríguez [aka Benton Mizones], June 3, 1975. www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB232/index.htm
60 “How Did Che Die? The CIA Helped Military-Ruled Bolivia Kill the Marxist Revolutionary.” By Sofia Lotto Persio. Newsweek, October 9, 2017.
61 Mary McGrory, “Badmouths, Bullies and Buccaneers,” The Washington Post. May 31, 1987.
62 “Bay of Pigs Vets Fight for Home Betrayed by the U.S. government and their own country, they want to
be remembered.” By Janine Zeitlin. Miami New Times News, January 17, 2008.
This article details the frogmen led by Grayston Lynch who were part of the Bay of Pigs invasion. A
picture from the period shows: Andrés Pruna, Jorge Silva, Amado Cantillo, Eduardo Zayas-Bazán, Octavio
Soto, and Carlos Fonts. “Amado Cantillo, who participated in dozens of CIA missions to Cuba after the
Bay of Pigs, flies a helicopter for the county's public works and is president of the Cuban Pilots
Association.” http://bestof.miaminewtimes.com/photoGallery/index.php?id=862220&p=4
63 Bay of Pigs Museum Officers and Board Members [former website]
64 Pawley, Russia Is Winning, page 448.
>> Draft notations indicate it was worked on June 8, 1974, August 13, 1974, October 29, 1974 and July 1, 1975.
65 Agency File: 105-82298-NR ~ "Subject: Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo." To: HQ. From DOJ, January 21, 1964.
"Neighbors Angry After Explosion At Cuban Office: Presence of U.N. Mission Disrupts Lives for Some." The New York Times, October 29, 1979.
Brent L. Smith, Terrorism in America: Pipe Bombs and Pipe Dreams (SUNY Press, January 25, 1994).
"Exile Is Convicted As Omega 7 Leader." By Arnold H. Lubasch. The New York Times, September 23, 1984.
"CHC5157 Alpha 66 Records" University of Miami Cuban Heritage Collection.
>> "The Cuban exile paramilitary organization known as Alpha 66 was first organized and founded in Puerto Rico in 1961 with 66 men. The group was created with the intention of maintaining the fighting spirit of the Cuban people after the Bay of Pigs Invasion. General Secretary Andrés Nazario Sargén was a founder of Alpha 66 along with other prominent anti-communist fighters such as his older brother Aurelio Nazario, Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo and Antonio Veciana.
"Other organizations joined this armed struggle against Cuban communism, and thus began the first
movements and incursions into the Cuban coast. In 1962, the Second Escambray Front (Segundo Frente
del Escambray – SFE) and Alpha 66 became one, with Veciana as a coordinator and Gutiérrez Menoyo
in charge of the military training. Later, Alpha 66 joined forces with the Revolutionary Movement of the People (Movimiento Revolucionario del Pueblo – MRP) in the Revolutionary Alliance (Alianza
Revolucionaria).
"In 1964, the Revolutionary Alliance executed “Plan Omega” that involved situating a well-equipped guerrilla force inside Cuba. Delegations from California, Florida, New York, Puerto Rico and Venezuela assembled a War Council carrying out propaganda and finance operations with the slogan, 'El Plan Omega está en marcha' ('The Omega Plan is in motion'). The central goal was to overthrow the Castro regime in Cuba.
“'El Plan Omega' failed, and Ernesto Díaz, Pedro Rodríguez, and Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo, were captured along with three other Alpha officers: Domingo Ortega, Ramón Quesada Gómez, and Noel Salas Santos. After their capture, broadcast and propaganda campaigns were launched to gain release for these political prisoners. Their failure and imprisonment affected many of the rebel groups in Cuba and the Cuban exile community as a whole. The previously fiery enthusiasm diminished, and the Revolutionary Alliance split up, reduced once again to merely The Second Escambray Front and Alpha 66.
"In 1965 El Correo, Alpha 66’s bulletin, announced that the new commander in chief would be Dr. Armando Fleites Díaz, who was dedicated to continuing the fight and rebuilding military strength. The renewed force initiated new paramilitary campaigns and fundraising for ships and military and radio equipment. Alpha 66 persisted in organizing and executing military operations, sabotages, and creating clandestine cells on the island. Many officers and members were killed during these infiltrations. In 1970 Coronel Vicente Méndez died in combat, and Aurelio Nazario was captured and executed.
"After the 1970s, Alpha 66 restructured its underground network. New members were recruited and political activities implemented. The organization established the 'Plan Máximo Gómez' in 1980 to promote internal destabilization in Cuba. As of 2010, Alpha 66 continued to operate from its headquarters in Miami, continuing to advocate for an armed civil uprising in Cuba."
“Clare Boothe Luce Dies at 84: Playwright, Politician, Envoy.” By Albin Krebs.The New York Times, October 10, 1987.
http://www.medaloffreedom.com/ClareBoothLuce.htm
“Luce Speaking Tour,” The Bridgeport Post, December 20, 1963.
Tim Weiner, “F. Mark Wyatt, 86, C.I.A. Officer, Is Dead,” The New York Times, July 6, 2006.
66 “New University Collaborations and Developer Resources Foster Local Technical and Business Skills
Development,” IBM news release, PR Newswire, May 22, 2009.
>> Outsourcing proved to have its downside, as Covid-19 created supply chain shortages and some
companies decided they needed plants in the U.S.
“City On Fire: World’s most dangerous city descending into all-out WAR as machete vigilantes butcher & burn gangsters in mob justice.” By Iona Cleave. The Sun (UK Edition), June 19, 2023.
68 “China's latest provocations is (sic) a spy base in Cuba. Here's why that concerns experts.” By Josh Meyer. USA Today, June 12, 2023.
67 “Haiti crisis: how did it get so bad, what is the role of gangs, and is there a way out?” The Guardian, January 12, 2023.
Labels: Alpha 66, Bosch, Chennault, Giancana, Harvey, Helms, Hunt, Lem Jones, Letelier, Luce, Martino, Masferrer, McClintock, Merchant, Morales, Novo, Pawley, Peruyero, Posado, Roselli
posted by David Price Cannon @ 1:43 PM
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