46: Assassination Scenarios

In 1992, the National Archives began declassifying documents relating to Pawley’s CIA activities from 40 years earlier, and in 1999 it began releasing his QDDALE documents, which were still trickling out in December 2022 containing previously redacted names. Due to the Freedom of Information Act requesting process and the backlog at the National Archive, and the CIA’s reluctance to share the truth, it has taken from 1976 to 2023 to get close to finalizing this manuscript. 

Some of the still unreleased documents may have information pertinent to the complete picture of Pawley. Some may reveal other truths about Pawley, his associates and their dark diplomacy that transformed America from a beacon of hope for the world's oppressed into a nation where decades of ruthless tactics have helped rally enemies against us.

Some documents will never be found because of the paranoia of James Jesus Angleton and the politics of some officials. One example of this occurred during President Ronald Reagan’s term, when Everett Ellis Briggs, the United States Ambassador to Panama, in the summer of 1985, tried to keep visiting dignitaries away from General Noriega. “‘When Vernon Walters, a high-ranking CIA official, sent the general a very cordial Christmas greeting via the diplomatic pouch, I managed to intercept and destroy the message (without Mr. Walter’s knowledge).’”1

Cuban-born Briggs made the revelation five years after Walters died. For some reason, Briggs considered his judgment superior to the multilingual Walters who was a translator for Secretary of State Marshall at Pawley’s Latin America conference in Bogota when Briggs was just in his teens. Conservative writer and original television host of Firing Line, William F. Buckley, who attended Yale University, then entered the CIA under Case Officer E. Howard Hunt, did not share Briggs’ low opinion of Walters’ judgment and noted in the obituary he wrote for Walters, “Although his business in later years was diplomacy, his craft was intelligence, and the two blended in his hands.” The respect for Vernon Walters was demonstrated in 1980 when he was the guest speaker at the sixth annual national convention of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers whose members included former CIA Director Richard Helms, JMWAVES's George Joannides and former Western Hemisphere head David Atlee Phillips who founded the AFIO as he was coming under congressional scrutiny for his activities surrounding Lee Harvey Oswald.2

Diplomacy and intelligence in Pawley’s hands brought triumph and torment rooted in obsessions with China, Cuba, communism and Kennedy. In Russia Is Winning, Pawley wrote a scathing passage about the president who had refused to provide air cover for Brigade 2506, snubbed his pleas to bomb Cuba during the missile crisis and threw him out of the White House where he had been welcome for decades. “While continuing to speak with characteristic eloquence about the defense of freedom, Kennedy was engaged in the demolition of the Monroe Doctrine and of the collective security arrangements so carefully pieced together at the Rio, Bogota and other Western Hemispheric conferences. He had transformed the Statue of Liberty from a traditional beacon of Freedom, and our country from ‘the world’s best hope,’ as Jefferson phrased it, into a buffer for Fidel Castro against his freedom loving enemies.”3

Fidel Castro outlived Pawley, but did not survive the suspicions cast by Pawley, Luce, the DRE and others. In a 2009 discussion of President Barack Obama’s plans to relax tensions between the U.S. and Cuba, longtime television journalist Sam Donaldson said in complete seriousness that he would like to be at Fidel Castro’s bedside when he dies to see if Castro confesses to assassinating President Kennedy.4

Who really was behind the assassination?

SCENARIO #1: The Warren Commission was correct.

• Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone-nut assassin.

• Jack Ruby was upset and shot Oswald impulsively.

• The CIA and FBI conducted a coverup and withheld documents for decades because the U.S. was involved in anti-Castro plots and other projects of a dubious nature and were aware of Russian defector Oswald but failed to stop him. 

• But now that the CIA's ruthlessness is known, why does the CIA balk at the final release if those documents would prove that Oswald's actions in 1963 did not have any CIA or ONI involvement?

SCENARIO #2: Castro was behind it.

• Castro convinced Oswald and/or black-mailed captured anti-Castro Cubans or sent his own loyal followers to shoot Castro.

• Jack Ruby was upset and shot Oswald in an impulse.

• The CIA and FBI conducted a coverup because assassination plots against Castro had aggravated him into retaliating. 

• The final release may prove embarrassing.

SCENARIO #3: The Mafia got revenge.

• Organized crime hitmen shot JFK from multiple locations and then pressured Jack Ruby to eliminate Lee Harvey Oswald.

• Carlos Marcello who ran the Southern mafia from New Orleans and had been deported by the Kennedy administration after the “underworld figure, was ruled an undesirable alien” was behind it.5

• Sam Giancana from the Chicago Outfit was behind it because he had helped JFK get the winning votes in Chicago and never was rewarded.

• Santo Trafficante, head of the Tampa/South Florida mafia was not convinced that JFK would take the necessary action to free Cuba which would enable to regain the casino revenue he had lost.

• Jimmy Hoffa whose teamster pension fund had ties to mob figures and wanted JFK dead because he had been the target Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

• The CIA and FBI covered it up because the Mafia and CIA plotted to kill Castro.

• Disclosure would reveal Oswald was involved or a patsy.

SCENARIO #4: The House Select Committee on Assassinations was correct.

• Oswald and an unnamed Mafia hitman shot JFK.

• The Mafia convinced Jack Ruby to silence Oswald.

• The CIA conducted a coverup and withheld documents for decades because it had worked with Mafia figures on assassination plots against Castro.

• The CIA also was aware of Russian defector Oswald but failed to stop him.

• The CIA would be deemed complicit if all documents were released.

SCENARIO #5: New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison was correct.

• The CIA and anti-Castro Cubans were involved with Oswald in shooting JFK.

• The CIA convinced Jack Ruby to silence Oswald.

• The CIA conducted a coverup and withheld documents for decades because Garrison was close to the truth.

SCENARIO #6: CIA-JMWAVE-Mafia-military-industrial conspiracy.

• Scores of people plotted JFK’s assassination.

• Oswald shot JFK or was a “patsy” as he claimed.

• The Mafia convinced Jack Ruby to silence Oswald.

• The CIA conducted a coverup and withheld documents for decades because Agency officials and others were involved.

SCENARIO #7: William Douglas Pawley’s hitmen were involved.

• Pawley hated JFK for failing to provide air cover during the Bay of Pigs invasion which Pawley had helped plan; then failing to rid Castro from Cuba where Pawley had grown up, started the Cubana airlines and the Havana bus company, and operated businesses nearby in the Caribbean.

• Pawley bragged twice of having hitmen at his disposal; they either acted at his request or knew eliminating Kennedy would please him. (He did not specify if the hitmen were Mafia or DRE members.)

• Oswald was a covert CIA asset with pro-Communist credentials in order to infiltrate Russia and Cuba which made him the perfect “patsy” as he claimed.

• Pawley learned of Oswald’s presence in the Texas School Book Depository through one of his DRE/JMWAVE/Eastland/Doolittle contacts.

• Jack Ruby acted on impulse or was convinced to silence Oswald before he revealed his CIA activities.

• Pawley, Clare Boothe Luce, the DRE, and TILT’s John Martino promoted a Castro-Oswald link so the U.S. would bomb Cuba.

• The CIA conducted a coverup and withheld documents for decades because of its involvement with Oswald and anti-Castro activities—and Pawley was too closely connected to numerous officials in the CIA, FBI, Congress and the White House.

• The Warren Commission included Pawley’s friends, CIA Director Allen Dulles and attorney John J. McCloy, partner of Doolittle Committee member Morris Hadley.

• The Garrison investigation’s volunteer Spanish translator, Alberto Fowler, was indebted to Pawley as signature of the recommendation for Fowler’s inclusion in the Bay of Pigs Brigade 2506. Fowler had revealed details of Garrison’s prosecution case against Clay Shaw to the DRE’s Carlos Bringuier.

• The Rockefeller Committee included Pawley’s friend Nelson Rockefeller when looking into the possibility of involvement of E. Howard Hunt, a long-time associate of Pawley.

• The House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) dealt with George Joannides as the CIA’s liaison when reviewing documents. HSCA did not know he was the Case Officer at JMWAVE for the DRE with whom Pawley was involved in Operation TILT.

• Richard Billings (son of John, the first managing editor of Life) was a writer for Luce’s Life from December 1956 to April 1968.6 In 1963, Billings signed a contract with Pawley to report on Operation TILT. Billings then became part of the team that purchased the Zapruder film of the JFK assassination. He joined New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s investigation of a link between the CIA and the JFK assassination; months later, Life began questioning Garrison’s integrity. In the 1970s, Billings joined the staff of the HSCA and co-wrote with HSCA Chief Counsel G. Robert Blakey The Plot To Kill The President (New York: Times Books, 1981) which made the case that organized crime was behind the Kennedy assassination.

• Gaeton Fonzi, investigator for the HSCA, would have immediately called Pawley to testify under oath, but Pawley in excruciating pain from shingles took his own life in January 1977 and never testified.7

Judge Burt Griffin, an investigator for the Warren Commission, stated to Jefferson Morley in a 2023 interview that he did not feel that Jack Ruby's dinner with a Dallas mobster the night before he killed Oswald was relevant to answering who shot President Kennedy. He believed Oswald did it and the Warren Commission should not be questioned because it would be criticizing the U.S. government of which he was a member of the third branch. And he brushed off the fact that Jack Ruby was at the police station the day before he shot Oswald in what was painted as an impulsive act.8 

  

FOOTNOTES:

1 “Our Man in Panama.” By Everett Ellis Briggs. The New York Times, September 9, 2007. Page WK15.

>> Everett Ellis Briggs, United States Ambassador to Panama 1982-1986 and to Honduras 1986-1989 and member National Security Staff 1989.

2 “William F. Buckley Is Dead at 82.” The New York Times, February 27, 2008. “Obituary—Vernon Walters, R.I.P.” By William F. Buckley, Jr. National Review, March 11, 2002.

Walters was at once the invisible man, and the man, asked to speak out, utterly plainspoken, wittily dogmatic, searchingly thoughtful. He was a consummate craftsman: You had to be out of sight when you were interpreting for Eisenhower and de Gaulle, Kissinger and Pompidou, note-taking for Truman when he fired Douglas MacArthur, sneaking Kissinger into Paris to meet secretly with the Vietnamese, serving as deputy chief, then acting director, of the CIA. But when his views were asked, on questions he thought himself entitled to speak out about, the words, thoughts, reflections, history, and witticisms poured forth, ingenuous questions corrected, sarcasm and cynicism handled, the questioner left barely alive to tell the tale.

CIA-RDP90-00806R000100140088-9 ~ "AFIO Association of Former Intelligence Officers. Sixth Annual National Convention Holiday Inn at Tyson's Corner 1960 Chain Bridge Road 'McLean Virginia 22101. Roster of Registered Attendees" Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/08: 

ALLISON Elisabeth T. 

ANDRONOVITCH Nicholas 

ARNOLD Daniel C. 

ARNOLD James K. 

ARNOLD Joan T. 

BATES Richard W. 

BEASEY Anita Herndon 

BELLIN Robinson O. 

BELT Charles V. 

BEYER Thomas Lynn 

BEYRLE Joseph R. Sr. 

BLAKE John F. 

BLAUFARB Douglas S. 

BOTSFORD Norman L. Jr. 

BOUBLIK Irene U. 

BUHL Janet D. 

BUHL William W. 

BURKE Joseph L. 

BUSCH Lynn Robertson 

BUSCH Richard L. 

CLAPP Jane B. 

CLAPP John B. 

CLARK James F. Jr. 

CLINE Ray S. 

COLBY William E. 

CULMER William R. 

CUMBY Bert 

DANIELS M. Gordon 

DAVIS John J. 

DAVIS Wilma Z. 

DECK Helen Priest 

DELANO Frank E. 

DOLAN J. E. 

DOWD Robert A. 

DUNBAR William H. 

EAST John W. 

EATON Richard J. 

ECHOLS Lee E. 

ELLIOTT Carter E. 

ENGRAV Charlotta P. 

FARNHAM David E. 

FAULKNER Scot M. 

FEER Fredric S. 

FERGUSON Andrew J. 

FORBES Donald P. 

FRAMPTON Polly 

FRANK William J. 

FRIERSON David E. 

FUSCO Jeremiah N. 

GALES Richard C. 

GAUMOND Marian E. 

GODSON Roy 

GOODMAN B. L. 

GOODMAN Helen 

GORDON Charles L. 

GRADY J. William 

GRAYBEAL Sidney N. 

GREANEY John K. 

GREEN Roy H. 

GREENE Harris 

GRODHAUS Ray F. 

HAMMOND Walter S. 

HARRINGTON Tracy B. 

HELMS Richard 

HEZLEP William H. 

HIBBS Russell S. 

HOOD William J. 

HOPLER Samuel B. H. 

HOUKAL Henry C. 

HUDSON Herbert A. 

HUEFNER Donald G. 

JACOBS Arthur L. 

JACOBS John D. 

JENKINS Carl E. 

JOANNIDES George E.  (Bold emphasis added by D.P. Cannon)

JOHNSON Dwight C. 

KATSIRUBAS William P. 

KEARNS Dennis M. 

KEARNS Robert W. 

KING Doris E. 

KLEIN Philip A. 

KLEYLA Helen H. 

KLEYLA Robert L. Sr. 

KONSKI Margaret L. 

KOPLOVITZ Wilfred D. 

KOSTOLICH Marcus W. 

KUMRO Arthur C. 

KUNKEL Robert G. 

KURITZKY Jack 

LAPINER Arnold J. 

LAPINER Golda E. 

LARSON Florence C. 

LASER Lawrence C. 

LAYTON Gilbert B. 

LEE Derek A. 

LEWTON Lewis F. 

LITTLE Wendell E. 

LOGRASSO Peter P. 

LYLE Edward W. 

MACKIE Thomas B. 

MANCHESTER Benjamin B. III 

MARCERON Connie 

MATLACK Dorothe K. 

MATTISON Alma H. 

MATUSZEWSKI Edward F. 

MAURY John M. 

McCRARY Thomas A. 

McNALLY Mayme O. 

McNAMARA Francis J. 

McRAE Robert B. 

McTIGUE William J. 

MERZ Mary Frances 

MOELLER Charles E. 

MORTON Walter M. 

MOSES Hans 

MULDOON John P. 

NAGLE Frederick F. 

NOLAN W. Robert 

NOVAK Robert J. 

O'CONNELL Sara E. 

PAFENBERG Dale 

PEARSON Ethel 

PERRY Donald W. 

PFORZHEIMER Walter L. 

PHILLIPS David Atlee 

PHILLIPS Stanton V. 

PITTAWAY James W. 

POPOVICH Eva M. 

POTOCKI Anita A. 

PRUJAN George E. 

QUIGG Stuart 

QUITMEYER H. Carl 

RALL Lloyd L. 

REGAN Edward F. 

RIGSBEE F. Catherine 

RIZZOTTO Mary 

ROSITZKE Harry 

ROTH Robert C. 

ROWAN Donald J. 

SANDO Vernon R. 

SCHMITZ Clarence W. 

SCHRAMKO Betty Garrity 

SCHRAMKO Framk M. 

SCHWASINGER Eugene L. 

SHONKWILER John P. 

SNYDER Dorothy S. 

SNYDER Warren A. 

SMITH John Anson 

SOUTHERLAND Dorothy 

SPERA Alfonso 

STRAZZINI Armido J. 

STRAZZINI Maria T. 

STEITZ George W. 

STEVENS Russell E. Jr. 

STEWART Richard R. 

STILWELL Richard G. 

STREIDL Edward G. 

STRICKLER Gilbert E. 

SULC Lawrence B. 

SULLIVAN Joseph P. 

SULLIVAN Rachael A. 

SWAN Thaxter 

TAYLOR Jane L. 

THUERMER Angus MacLean

TORDELLA Louis W. 

TOUSSAINT Paul A. 

TWENTYMAN Chester H. 

VAN STEYN Dominique 

VELLIOS Gus 

WARNER John S. 

WATSON Harold 

WENK Max 

WHITE Charles W. 

WHITT Samuel S. 

WIGGINS.- Lloyd George 

WINKLER Wallace R.

WOODWARD Henrv C. 

YOUNG James P. Jr. 

ZACHMAN Henrv E. 

1980 CONVENTION COMMITTEE 

LTG John J. Davis, USA Retired, Chairman

COL Robert C. Roth, USA Retired, Vice Chairman 

CAPT Richard W. Bates USN Ret 

Anita Herndon Beasey 

Charles V. Belt 

Joseph L. Burke 

COL Richard C. Gales USA Ret 

J. William Grady 

William P. Katsirubas 

Helen H. Kleyla 

Alma H. Mattison 

John G. Rushworth 

ALTERNATE AGENDA*

Thursday, 2 October 1980

1600 - 1900 Registration

1600 - Hospitality Suite Opens

Friday, 3 October 1980

0730 - 0845 - Registration

0900 - 0925 FORMAL CONVENTION OPENING (Presentation of Colors by Joint Service Color Guard, Pledge of Allegiance, National Anthem) 

INVOCATION Col. Norman G. Walker & Deputy Chief Chaplain MDW 

0925 - 0935 REMARKS BY CONVENTION CHAIRMAN LTG John J. Davis USA (Ret) 

0935 - 0950 REMARKS BY AFIO PRESIDENT John F. Blake 

0950 - 1000 REMARKS BY ADVISORY COUNCIL CHAIRMAN COL Robert Roth USA (Ret) 

1000 - 1030 REMARKS BY COMMITTEE CHAIRMEN 

1000 - 1010 Finance: Robert Novak 

1010 - 1020 Public Affairs: Angus Thuermer 

1020 - 1030 Publications: Douglas Blaufarb 

1045 -1145 The Honorable Frank Carlucci Deputy Director Central Intelligence (Bold emphasis added by D.P. Cannon)

1145- 1230 Cash Bar 

1230 - 1330 Luncheon 

1345 - 1515 PANEL DISCUSSION WITH BLOC DEFECTOR Moderated by Dr. Ray Cline 

1515 - 1530 Coffee Break 

1530 - 1600  REPORT BY COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN - LEGISLATIVE John S. Warner Legal Counsel AFIO 

1600 - 1700 

PRESENTION [sic] AND DISCUSSION OF CONVENTION RESOLUTIONS CAPT Richard W. Bates U.S. Navy (Ret) and John S. Warner 

1700 - 1830 Hospitality Suite Opens 

1830 - 2030 Cocktail Reception (with Cash Bar) Entertainment by Barbershop Quartet 

2030 - Hospitality Suite Opens 

Saturday, 4 October 1980 

0830 - 0930 CHAPTER AND AREA COORDINATOR REPORTS 

0930 -1000 REMARKS ON IMPACT OF SNEPP CASE Mr. Daniel Silver General Counsel CIA 

1000 - 1015 Coffee Break 

1015 - 1145 GUEST PANEL ON TERRORISM 

- Ambassador Anthony C.E. Quainton, Director Office for Combatting Terrorism Department of State. 

- Special Agent Conrad Hassel Director Anti-terrorism Instruction FBI Academy 

- Colonel Jonathan Hall-Tipping British Army (Ret) formerly Director British Defense Intelligence Liaison Staff Washington D.C. 

- Moderator: CAPT Richard W. Bates U.S. Navy (Ret) Vice President AFIO 

1145 - 1230 Cash Bar

1230 - 1345 Luncheon Guest Speaker: The Honorable Robert J. Hermann Assistant Secretary Air Force for Research and Development 

1400 - 1430 SUMMARY OF A REPORT ON THE TEACHING OF INTELLIGENCE IN AMERICAN COLLEGES 

1430 - 1500 REMARKS BY CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD David Atlee Phillips (Bold emphasis added by D.P. Cannon)

1515 - 1700 BUSINESS SESSION Discussion with convention attendees on AFIO.Vote on By-Law amendments. Vote on Resolutions. Elections. 

1700 - 1900 Hospitality Suite Opens (Reopens after banquet) 

1900 - 2000 Cash Bar in banquet area 

2000 -2030 PATRIOTIC MUSIC by element of Air Force Band 

PRESENTATION OF COLORS by Joint Service Color Guard concluded by playing of the National Anthem (group singing). 

INVOCATION/BLESSING: Col. Norman G. Walker 2030 - 

2030 - Banquet. Guest Speaker: LTG Vernon L. Walters former Deputy Director of Central Intelligence 

Closing Remarks by AFIO President John F. Blake 

Benediction 

Sunday, 5 October 1980 

0800 - Hospitality Suite Opens 

*Due to the last minute cancellation of one of the defectors this schedule will be followed rather than the one printed in the program. 

3 Pawley, Russia Is Winning. Pages 446 & 447. 

>> Pawley continued:

Two years after the Kennedy assassination, Ike wrote me the following letter:

I understand and concur in your uneasiness about the situation in the Caribbean and should I get an opportunity to talk to the President (Johnson), I shall convey to him some of the apprehension you and I feel. Of course, when it comes down to things that might now be done in Cuba, it is difficult to propose any positive program because, by this time, world opinion—and, indeed, American opinion—has more or less accepted the situation as it exists. But I see no flaw in your argument that we should not be ‘protecting’ Castro from exiled Cubans who want to regain their country for freedom (Eisenhower to Pawley, Gettysburg, May 26, 1975).

I laid down the letter with a heavy heart. And for the first time I really began to feel that time was running out for America.

4 This Week with George Stephanopoulos, April 19, 2009.

You mentioned the assassination," Donaldson, appearing on ABC's This Week on Sunday said in reference to early conversation about the shooting of JFK. "In his dying breath I'd like to be at [Castro's] bedside and say, did you do it? Meaning November 22, 1963.

Peggy Noonan sighed, “Oh, my goodness” while Cokie Roberts chastised him, “Come on, Sam.”

“Wait a moment,” Donaldson responded. “I think it is still open.”

>> Cokie Roberts father was U.S. Representative Hale Boggs, a member of the Warren Commission who questioned the single bullet theory and died in a plane crash in Alaska in 1972.

5 Richard N. Billings and G. Robert Blakey, The Plot to Kill the President Organized Crime Assassinated J.F.K. (New York: Times Books, 1981).

“Marcello Loses Case; New Orleans Rackets Figure Is Ordered Deported Again,” The New York Times, July 12, 1961. Page 20.

>> Henry Luce died in Phoenix at age 68 on February 28, 1967. His death came during the week New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison revealed that his plan to indict several people for plotting the assassination of JFK, among them anti-Castro Cubans. Garrison's attempts to gain access to CIA and FBI files on the alleged conspirators was thwarted though, and Clay Shaw was acquitted. Shaw died at age 60 of cancer on August 15, 1974.

6 NARA 124-10371-10190 ~ “Richard Newcombe Billings FBI Investigation.” Admin Folder-P2: HSCA Administrative Folder, HSCA Personnel List A-G VOL I. Pages 88-96 of 370. Mary Ferrell Foundation website.

7 Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1993). Page 57.

8 " A Conversation with Judge Burt Griffin: Larry and I have a lively conversation about the JFK story with one of the last living Warren Commission staffers." Interview by Jefferson Morley and Lawrence P. Schnapf. The JFK Facts Podcast. November 22, 2023.