11: Going Bananas in Guatemala 1954

As George C. Marshall was being honored for the Marshall Plan designed to spur a peaceful economic recovery in Europe, his friend William Pawley was becoming involved in more hostile activities. In response to Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman calling for agrarian reform that would impact profits of United Fruit and coffee growers, the CIA drew up a contingency plan to overthrow him. CIA Director Allen Dulles wanted “a coordinated effort in the political field.” Dulles felt that “the exact steps which might be politically feasible are matters beyond our competence here” nonetheless “we have a legitimate interest, it seems to me, in seeing that the climate is right for the types of action in which we may be engaged.”

Secretary of State John Foster Dulles suggested  to President Eisenhower “sending a two-fisted guy to the general area on a trip of inspection and to report to the President.” Who did he have in mind? “Bill Pawley or someone of his type might be considered. I recognize that Pawley is hard to control, but he is fearless and gets things done even though he may break a little crockery in doing it. I would suggest that he might also spend a little time in the countries bordering on one of our chief concern.”1

Prior to Dulles envisioning Pawley’s new role, covert “Security Clearance” had been requested by the CIA’s Branch 4 of the Western Hemisphere (WH-IV aka WH/4)—the Caribbean region—for Pawley to “be used in Project DTROBALO as a means of offering employment and resettlement to rehabilitated disposees [sic].” Pawley it was noted “has many contacts and business interests in Latin America which will be valuable in the resettlement phase of the Project. He is not to be used as a consultant. He will be used on a witting basis” and his cover story would be “Governmental” rather than “Commercial” or “Other.” 

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22: QDDALE'S Deep Pockets for Special Proposals

Two days after learning that Fidel Castro was aware of William Douglas Pawley’s activities, a cable appears in Pawley’s 201 file with a tantalizing, but redacted, glimpse at the strategy to exfiltrate Dr. Juan Antonio Rubio Padilla in the spring of 1960. The exfiltration operation involved using Pawley’s boat with a “proposed rendezvous off Sand Key light 16 April between Cuban yacht and KUBARK (cryptonym for CIA) for transfer passengers.”1

The day before the rendezvous, Pawley successfully requested a meeting with FBI Miami Special Agents Leman L. Stafford and George E. Davis, Jr. at his own business office where he had his secret recording equipment. According to a memo that the Special Agent in Charge of the Miami office later sent to Director Hoover, Pawley reiterated his praise of the FBI while revealing negotiations with Trujillo. Pawley also dropped some big names. “During the course of the interview, he disclosed that he is a personal friend of the Director of the FBI, as well as President Eisenhower, former President Truman and many other influential people in the United States and Latin America.”

Pawley told the agents he’s “deeply concerned about the communist trend in Cuba and its effect on other Latin American countries, and that he has been in close contact with the U.S. State Department and the CIA relative to this situation.” Understanding the friction between the FBI and CIA, Pawley “expressed admiration for the SIS program formerly operated by the FBI in Latin America during World War II and expressed the opinion that it had been a great mistake to supplant the FBI’s operation with that of another agency.”

Pawley revealed “that he had attempted unsuccessfully to make tape recordings of the two interviews, involving Merola and Bartone which took place in Pawley’s office; however due to a technical error on the part of one of Mr. Pawley’s employees, this recording failed. Mr. Pawley exhibited to agents his recording equipment, which he keeps in a locked closet in his suite of offices, and he offered his facilities in the event this Office [the FBI] ever desired to make a recording of any conversation held there.”

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25: The Name Game

In the past, Pawley would go straight to the top to argue his position to Presidents Roosevelt, Truman or Eisenhower when he felt that his dealings with underlings were not going well. But in the new Kennedy administration, he did not have that access, so he had to take his case to Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Mann (photo), whom weeks earlier Pawley had praised as “brilliant” and no “nicer fellow” while chastising him for his friendship with Betancourt.1

Pawley in early March 1961 began sending Mann materials to make the case against Manuel “Manolo” Ray and for the use of others.2 Ray was a former professor of engineering at the University of Habana, who had been selected by the CIA to rally support. Pawley disliked him because he had served as Castro’s Minister of Public Works, although he quit the Castro cabinet position after his friend Huber Matos was arrested by Castro. Ray then defected to the U.S. and became the leader of the anti-Castro counterforce People’s Revolutionary Movement (MRP).3

In the letter to Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Mann, Pawley demonstrated his mastery of the Cuban situation while raising the possibility of a post-Castro civil war if the wrong leaders are selected. “It [is] also thought by important Cubans whom I know here that Ray and three or four of the other prominently mentioned Cubans have already made arrangements through Russian agents and that when Castro falls, Russia will still have their men in power even though they pretend to demonstrate a more friendly attitude toward the United States.” Pawley stated “that the best solution would be a ‘junta’ or ‘frente’ made up of leaders of the various political groups. At no time has this seemed more necessary than now.” He offered four names for this role: de Varona, Carillo, Artime, and Maceo.

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26: Days of Swine and Rose's Boys: Bay of Pigs Invasion

Fear of retaliation was a concern as the CIA planned the demise of two Western Hemisphere leaders, Castro and Trujillo. According to the CIA’s Deputy Director for Support, Col. L.K. White, on March 22, 1961, the CIA’s Sheffield Edwards and Jack Earman met with CIA Deputy Director General Charles Cabell “to point out to them that we were not furnishing the Director the personal protection which we should be furnishing in these critical times.”1

On April 4, 1961, President John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic president whose mother, Rose, prayed the rosary throughout his life, heard about the “immorality” of an invasion of Cuba voiced by Senator William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. While Fulbright “denounced the proposition out of hand,” Adolphe Berle declared his belief that “a ‘power confrontation’ with Communism in the Western Hemisphere was inevitable.” Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Thomas C. Mann, “who previously had been on the fence, now spoke up for the operation.”2 Rose’s son’s march toward disaster proceeded headlong with the momentum created by Pawley-intelligence-exile axis.

Pawley on April 15th sat down with FBI agents Leman L. Stafford, Jr. and George E. Davis, Jr. for an interview that Pawley had requested. He let them know he was “a personal friend of the Director of the FBI, as well as of President Eisenhower, former President Truman and many other influential people in the United States and Latin America.” Pawley then voiced “that he is deeply concerned about the communist trend in Cuba and its effects on other Latin American countries, and that he has been in close contact with the U.S. State Department and the CIA relative to the situation.”3

Manuel Ray Rivero “took the view that the internal resistance was so strong that Castro could be overthrown without an ‘invasion’ from the outside.” (In truth, there was only insignificant damage from the 110 insurgent bombings between October 1960 and April 17, 1961,4 when Jose A. Perez “Pepe” San Roman led the Bay of Pigs invasion.)5

Ray’s wishy-washy stance on the need for an invasion did not sit well with Pawley, and in the weeks before the invasion Ray complained that assertions that he favored Cuba maintaining relations with the U.S.S.R. “were not true and part of a ‘campaign against him by Mr. Pawley of the Miami City Transit Company.’”6

Despite the desire to make it look like a Cuban led invasion, among the first men ashore were two non-Cubans, Grayston L. Lynch (aka Gray) and William “Rip” Robertson, who had been among those suggested as possible assassins of Castro. Lynch, a fearless veteran of the D-Day invasion at Normandy Beach, the Battle of the Bulge, and Heartbreak Ridge in Korea, would survive the debacle at the Bay of Pigs and go on to direct and participate in hundreds of more clandestine operations against Cuba. A decade before dying in 2008, Lynch published his account of the invasion imbued with anger at the failure of the Kennedy Administration to provide the essential air cover titled Decision for Disaster: Betrayal at the Bay of Pigs. Rip Robertson’s passion for adventure ended a decade later when he “died in 1973 of malaria in Laos.”7

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39: The Détente Betrayal

William Douglas Pawley’s support of Richard Nixon in 1968 was based upon a longstanding relationship that began while Nixon was Vice President to Eisenhower, and it was reinforced by a mutual disdain for communists shared by all conservatives including E. Howard Hunt. But the times they were a changing as much as Bob Dylan switching from folk to country rock with his release in April 1969 of Nashville Skyline.

Once sworn in, President Nixon began to head down a different path from ruthlessly battling communism toward embracing détente. In February 1970, Henry Kissinger began secret talks with North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho outside Paris, while the more public, formal peace process ground slowly away in the city. Pawley, like most Americans, was out of the loop on Nixon’s new strategy. 

Kissinger, a Harvard professor, had entered government service after John J. McCloy chose him in 1956 to "chair a study on Soviet American relations" then get a job as a speechwriter for Nelson Rockefeller. McCloy was a hawk who believed peace talks showed U.S. weakness.   

Early in the Nixon’s first term, Pawley, unaware of his friend's evolving policy, had called the White House and told Rosemary Woods to pass along to the President a few comments: “How tremendously proud I am of the great job our friend is doing. All of the disbelievers around here—at clubs, restaurants, etc. are coming around saying—‘Bill, the man’s got it.’ It is excellent—we are getting it from all sources.” Pawley went on to say he spent “several days in Santo Domingo and talked to the President [Balaguer] there for an hour. He is probably one of the finest Presidents ever to have served in the Western Hemisphere. He is not interested in making any money—he is interested in country ... it is fantastic the progress that has been made since Trujillo’s death.”

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41: Was Dallas A Target, Too?

Following his arrest at Watergate, Hunt released Give Us This Day, an autobiography detailing his role in the Bay of Pigs invasion. Hunt candidly states that his first recommendation to the agency after measuring Cuba’s social climate was to kill Castro. His superiors tried their best, but success eluded the CIA hit men run by William Harvey. Hunt characterizes General Charles Cabell as the man most responsible for the failure of the invasion, because Cabell waited for JFK’s order for a second air strike instead of initiating the order himself. Among those waiting for the order was Frank Sturgis.

The Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein in All The President’s Men described Watergate burglar Hunt as a “psychological warfare expert.” In a second autobiography, Undercover: Memoirs of an American Secret Agent, E. Howard Hunt quotes Tacitus, a Roman emperor killed by his own soldiers whose brother is also slain by the soldiers. In a classic vendetta, revenge must combine both death and disgrace.

If a classicist, sought a vendetta against Charles Cabell and President Kennedy, the perfect place for the assassination would be Miami where the President had promised to the invasion brigade members that their flag would fly one day in Cuba.

If a Miami shooting was not possible, revenge would be sweet in Dallas, where General Charles Cabell’s brother, Earle, was Mayor as part of a long family tradition. For 90 years the Cabell family had been intertwined with running the city and criminal justice in and around Dallas:1

• 1874-1876 Mayor William L. Cabell

• 1877-1879 Mayor William L. Cabell

• 1883-1885 Mayor William L. Cabell (became a U.S. Marshall)

• 1900-1904 Mayor Ben E. Cabell (previously Sheriff)

• 1961-1964 Mayor Earle Cabell2 (previously President of Dallas Crime Commission)

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43: Sunset

On January 7, 1977, while many Americans were coping with one of the worst winters in U.S. history, an 80-year-old Miami Beach resident, whose fortune had been made off the public’s desire for refuge from the cold, composed a note in his Sunset Island home. Then he lifted a pistol to his chest and fired a bullet into his heart.1 

He was still alive when the ambulance arrived, “but died a short time later” according to the Miami police who told reporters William Pawley “had been in failing health.”2 His death came as Frank Sinatra fans mourned the death of his mother, Dolly Sinatra, in a plane crash that also claimed the life of her close friend from New Jersey, Ann Carboni, coincidentally the wife of the former China National Aviation Corporation dentist in Calcutta.3

That night, the national broadcast of CBS Evening News devoted less than half-a- minute to reporting that William Douglas Pawley, a former Ambassador to Brazil, had committed suicide. 4

The Washington Post two days later referred to him as an aviation expert and devoted 309 words to his life.5

The New York Post announced “‘Flying Tigers’ Founder Dies” and noted that Pawley had raised over $250,000 for the election campaign of President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956 and another $100,000 for Vice President Nixon's unsuccessful race against John F. Kennedy in 1960.6

Time magazine noted William Pawley’s passing in its customary inch of coverage which stated that in 1958 President Eisenhower had dispatched Pawley to Cuba on a secret mission to persuade President Fulgencio Batista that a caretaker government should be installed to prevent revolutionaries from taking control of the island.7 Batista refused to step down, and three weeks later Fidel Castro took power. The underpinnings and aftermath of the incident would lead to animosity between Pawley, State Department members and the next President, John F. Kennedy.8

Pawley’s life as a world financier, envoy and philanthropist merited 15 inches in The New York Times.9

Down in South Carolina, where an island is named for the Pawley family, The Florence Morning News obituary pointed out that General James Doolittle had “once served as a test pilot for Pawley” when he sold planes to China.

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47: Timeline

1864 ~ Edward Porcher Pawley born.

1890 ~ Edward marries Mary Irene Wallace.

1893 ~ George Plummer Pawley born. 

1896/9/7 ~ William Douglas Pawley born in Florence, South Carolina.

1899 ~ After the Spanish American War when Teddy Roosevelts “Rough Riders” help liberate Cuba from Spain, Pawley spends his early childhood at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station where his father had a store, earning him the nickname “Cuba” from classmates at Gordon Military Academy in Georgia.

1925/5/20 ~ Gerardo Machado becomes the 5th President of Cuba. He is overthrown in 1933.

1928 ~ William Douglas Pawley creates Cubana National Airlines which is sold to Pan American Airlines in 1932.

1929 ~ China Airways financed by Curtiss-Wright and controlled by Clement M. Keys begins flying mail from Shanghai to Hankow, Peiping and Canton. With pressure from the government, it evolves into China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC).

1932 ~ William Pawley establishes Intercontinent Corporation run by him and his brothers Edward and Eugene.

1933 ~ Pawley becomes President of China National Aviation Corporation.

1936 ~ William's oldest brother, George Plummer Pawley, dies.

1940/12/23 ~ Pawley partners with India in establishing Hindustan Aircraft Limited near Calcutta (Bangalore).

1941 ~ Pawley begins China Aircraft Manufacturing Company CAMCO to manufacture planes for the American Volunteer Group (The Flying Tigers headed by General Clair Chennault) to defend Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists against Japanese planes. CAMCO airplane assembly plants moved from Hangzhou to Wuhan to Lowing (on the China-Burma border) to India. 

1941/9 ~ David Harold Byrd, wealthy oil man and owner of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas, co-founds the Civil Air Patrol to watch for enemy submarines and border crossings as well as enemy aircraft over the U.S. and provide other civilian support for the U.S. Army Air Force. Byrd is a cousin of Antarctic explorer Richard Byrd and West Virginia politician Harry F. Byrd. 

1942 ~ CNAC operates out of Calcutta until 1945.

1943 - E. Howard Hunt, Jr. serves as a wartime intelligence officer in China.

1945/7/20 ~ Pawley becomes U.S. Ambassador to Peru.

1945/10/13 ~ Carlos Prio Socrarrás becomes 5th Prime Minister of Cuba. 

1946/6/13 ~ Pawley becomes U.S. Ambassador to Brazil.

1947 ~ Antonio de Varona appointed leader of the parliamentary committee of his party under Prio. Previously, de Varona was involved in the overthrow of Gerardo Machado and was elected to the Cuban congress and the senate.

1948 ~ E. Howard Hunt, Jr. becomes spokesperson in Paris for the Marshall Plan's Economic Cooperation Administration. George C. Marshall and his wife are close friends of the Pawleys.

1948/10/10 ~ Carlos Prio becomes President of Cuba, succeeding Ramon Grau.

1949/9 ~ Pawley negotiates taking over the Havana trolley system.

1950/1 ~ Pawley runs Havana Autobuses Modernos, removing trolley car tracks. He also becomes a partner with John J. McCloy and others in Commerce International China.  

1950 ~ E. Howard Hunt becomes Chief of Station of the Office of Policy Coordination in Mexico City. 

1951/2/4 ~ Pawley's daughter, Annie Hahr, weds.

1951/2/19 ~ Pawley enters State Department as special assistant to Dean Acheson.

1951/6 ~ Pawley visits India re wheat and monazite.

1951/9 ~ Son, Clifton Pawley, dies in Mexico; William flies from Washington to Mexico City and Miami. 

1951/11/20 ~ Pawley resigns from State Department effective the 30th. 

1951/12/3 ~ Pawley enters Defense Department as special assistant to Lovett.

1952/1/17 ~ Pawley sails with Edna and Anita Pawley and his assistant Ed Harris to Europe; stays until May, but returns to Washington to settle a strike in Miami then flies to Lisbon Conference with Lovett and takes a two week trip for consultation with Defense Department.

1952/5 ~ Pawley resigns as assistant to Lovett.

1952/6 ~ At Belvoir House farm in Virginia.

1952/9 ~ Pawley in Europe and Middle East with Edna.   

1952/3/10 ~ Fulgencio Batista overthrows Prio; de Varona begins fight against Batista.

1953 ~ Pawley in Miami serving as owner president and general manager of the Miami Beach Railway Co. since 1941 and of Miami Transit Co. since 1948. Also owner of South Miami Coach Line and Tropical Coach Line Inc. and Grayline Sightseeing Co. of Miami.

1953 ~ William, Edward and Eugene Pawley develop oil and mining companies in Mexico.

1953/4/4 ~ CIA coup against Mossadegh in Iran (Operation AJAX) is hatched by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, CIA Director Allen Dulles, Frank Wisner and Kermit Roosevelt, Jr.  Mossadegh is replaced by the Shah of Iran Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, coincidentally a former classmate of future CIA Director Richard Helms.

1954/6 ~ Pawley works with the CIA on PBSUCCESS, the overthrow of the Arbenz government in Guatemala. So does E. Howard Hunt, Jr.

1954/6 ~ William Pawley, William Franke, Morris Hadley and General Jimmy Doolittle appointed by President Eisenhower to review the Central Intelligence Agency. They recommend that the CIA become “more ruthless than the enemy.”

1955/7/27 ~ Lee Harvey Oswald joins the Civil Air Patrol in New Orleans which also includes Captain David Ferrie.

1956/10/24 ~ Oswald drops out of high school in Texas and joins the U.S. Marine Corps where he is trained as a sharpshooter.

1958/10/5 ~ Oswald is stationed at the Air Force base in Atsugi, Japan where the U.S. dispatches U-2 planes to spy on Russia. Oswald learns Russian.

1959/Spring ~ Oswald, back in the U.S., becomes friend of Kerry Thornley. 

1959/9/4 ~ Oswald applies for a passport a week before he is discharged from active duty in the Marine Corps.

1959/9/20 ~ Oswald departs the U.S. 

1959/10/2 ~ Pawley is given the CIA cryptonym QDDALE.

1959/10/15 ~ Pawley installs a tape recorder to tape discussions with Cuban exiles.

1959/10/31 ~ Oswald defects to the Soviet Union offers U-2 secrets.

1959/11/16 ~ Oswald interviewed by Priscilla Johnson.   

1959/12 ~ Pawley tries to convince Batista to step aside so an interim government could be put in place as a buffer against Castro.

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51: Resources

More Ruthless Than The Enemy content was gathered over four-and-a-half decades as classified documents about William Douglas Pawley’s activities were slowly released from the national archives as a result of. my Freedom of Information Act requests for documents including the Doolittle Committee Report in 1976; Congressional hearings; Presidential directives; and FOIAs by others. Even in June 2023—some six decades after the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis and President Kennedy’s assassination—thousands of documents are still withheld or are heavily redacted purportedly for national security reasons.

I originally posted key information at www.williampawley.blogspot.com which led a number of individuals to share knowledge about their parents’ activities during the 1950s and 60s.

A number of document repositories have been invaluable while preparing this manuscript:

• The National Archives ~ https://www.archives.gov
  The United States National Archives in Washington, DC and College Park, Maryland contain numerous government collections that are vital to researchers. President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection www.archives.gov/research/jfk

• The Mary Ferrell Foundation ~ https://www.maryferrell.org
  Over 1.5 million scanned JFK assassination related CIA, FBI and other government documents are available online. The website also has an invaluable Cryptonym guide and much more. Many Mary Ferrell references cite a page number/total pages which I format as, Page 12 of 97 for example.)

• The National Security Archive ~ https://nsarchive.gwu.edu
  Peter Kornbluh and his staff at George Washington University provide superb resources such as the CIA’s five-volume history of the Bay of Pigs.

• The Black Vault ~ https://www.theblackvault.com
  More than 3,000,000 pages of declassified U.S. Government documents.

• Assassination Archives and Research Center ~ www.aarclibrary.org Founded by Bernard “Bud” Fensterwald and James Lesar, AARC has the most extensive collection of records on the JFK assassination in private hands. The collection has been enhanced by the donation of personal files belonging to several researchers and officials including Richard Popkin, Anthony Summers, Earl Golz, Zachary Sklar, Jim Garrison, and others. AARC holdings include:

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