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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45: Culture of Conspiracy

James Pierson in 2007 wrote on the subject of “The Culture of Conspiracy” in the Wall Street Journal and questioned the sensibilities of those who have the audacity to believe that plots are hatched by groups of people. He totally ignored Osama Bin Laden’s cells, the CIA’s PBSUCCESS, and the variety of conspiracies concocted at JMWAVE.

Instead, Pierson continued to make the case that the evidence against Oswald being a lone-nut assassin was overwhelming. He even shot and killed a Dallas policeman, Officer Tippit (pictured here), who had tried to stop Oswald as he was walking through the city. He was then arrested inside a movie theater (Pierson failed to note that theaters are often used for covert meetings and information exchanges). Oswald's purported motive was communism even though President Kennedy was publicly defusing tensions between the Soviets and the U.S. To Pierson, “Oswald was a dedicated communist who had defected to the Soviet Union in 1959 out of disgust with American capitalism.” 

Ironically, Pierson sees Oswald’s disillusionment “with Soviet life” and return “to the U.S. in 1962” as part of that dedication to communism. Pierson’s communist legend continued when in 1963, Oswald “bought a scoped rifle through the mail and soon used it to fire a shot (which missed) at retired general Edwin Walker, the head of the John Birch Society in Dallas. In the summer of 1963, Oswald was active in street demonstrations in support of Castro. In September 1963, he visited the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City seeking a travel visa that would allow him to travel to Cuba.”

The problem with Pierson using the General Walker shooting on April 10, 1963 is that it not only shows Oswald (if he pulled the trigger) had trouble hitting a target under circumstances that were far easier than firing from six floors up at a person in a vehicle moving away on a downward curving street. Pierson ignores the fact that a neighbor saw two cars leave the scene, and Oswald did not drive. Also that General Walker--an extreme racist who had been dismissed by President Kennedy--was planning to run against JFK, and one of Walker's friends distributed “Wanted for Treason” flyers displaying Kennedy’s picture on the day of the assassination. The shooting garnered Walker the press coverage he needed to jumpstart his campaign.1

Oswald never had his day in court because he was killed by Jack Ruby, owner of the Carousel Club strip joint, who was carrying a pair of brass knuckles on his morning trip to the post office when he had the sudden impulse to shoot Oswald while surrounded by police officers.2

When one looks at the supposed loner, Oswald, you don’t find a Unabomber-type recluse who hides in the woods from civilization, only emerging when he wants to strike out at perceived enemies. Instead, you see a young man who joined organizations such as the Civil Air Patrol in 1955 and the U.S. Marines in 1957. While stationed as a radar operator in Japan where the CIA launched U-2 planes to spy on Russia, he learned a second language, Russian, not so he could talk to himself in two languages in loneliness.3

Oswald then infiltrated Russia, and upon his return to the U.S. did not undergo the polygraph examination and 30-day debriefing that Pawley’s Soviet defectors were going to face in Operation TILT. In fact, there was no arrest for treason despite Oswald having supposedly shared top-secret information with the Russians.

Instead, Lee Harvey Oswald befriended a worldly geologist, George DeMohrenschildt, went to New Orleans and engaged people on the street by passing out pamphlets which coincidentally are stamped with an address that is located in the same building as anti-Castroites. After his arrest he asked to speak to an FBI agent, then Oswald enabled the DRE to promote its anti-Castro propaganda by debating its leader, Carlos Bringuier, on the CIA’s favorite propaganda medium, radio. Is this the behavior of a loner? Bringuier himself initially thought Oswald may have been an FBI agent attempting to infiltrate his group. Bringuier also described Oswald as “confident in himself” and “a really smart guy and not a nut.”4

In the wilderness of mirrors that was James Jesus Angleton's counterintelligence world, June Cobb appeared. Cobb was a drug trafficker in the early 1950s with her Colombian boyfriend. By the end of the decade, the adventurous, attractive blonde was in Cuba supporting Fidel Castro's movement against Batista and she translated Castro's famous "History Will Absolve Me" speech into English. After Castro cooled to her, June Cobb helped former leftwing Guatemalan President Juan Jose Arevale translate his book, The Shark and the Sardines, into English. In the metaphor, it is hard for sardine nations such as Guatemala to negotiate with a much larger sharks like the U.S. which support the interest of big corporations. The sardines just get eaten as happened to Arbenz when the CIA and Pawley took the side of United Fruit. The Shark and the Sardines was the last book Oswald checked out of the library. Was it a coincidence or something else? 

Despite her left-leaning credentials, June Cobb entered the anti-Castro CIA in 1961with the cryptonym AMUPAS-1. She explored the Fair Play for Cuba Committee prior to Oswald's faux membership. In September 1962, her cryptonym was changed to LICOOKY-1 (aka LICOOKIE) and she was sent toMexico City to work with the likes of CIA Station Chief Winston Scott and his Cuban Desk head David Atlee Philips. She was there when Lee Harvey Oswald arrived in the city purportedly attempting to get into Cuba in an effort to return to Russia. Cobb even learned of Oswald's interactions with Sylvia Duran, the Mexican native at the Cuban consulate who interacted with Oswald concerning his travel plans. After the JFK assassination, Duran's friend Elena Garro de Paz, wife of writer Octavio de Paz, tried to make sure investigators knew Oswald had been seen with Duran at a twist party giving rise to the possibility of conspiracy (rather than the possibility that Duran was trying to determine Oswald's real intention). Cobb tried to quash Garro's assertion. 

Years later when the State Department's Charles Thomas--transferred from Haiti to Mexico City--tried to elevate awareness of the sighting as proof Oswald was part of a Castro conspiracy. He was told to speak to Cobb's superior James Jesus Angleton who did not want Americans questioning the lone-nut assassin conclusion. Thomas died by suicide April 12, 1971. That same month Winston Scott dropped dead after Angleton read his autobiography manuscript.     

In January 2024, JFK Facts reporter Jefferson Morley interviewed Mary Haverstick, author of A Woman I Know: Female Spies, Double Identities and a New Story of the Kennedy Assassination. She detailed to him how her film documentary about astronaut-in-training Jerrie Cobb evolved into a biography about her other possible identity, the cold-as-ice-CIA-asset June Cobb. Cobb admitted to having sat on the runway at Redbird Airport--9 miles from Dealey Plaza--on November 22, 1963 after delivering a Life magazine crew from Miami to cover the day's events. But was this true? Life took no photos that day; it bought the Zapruder film. Jerrie Cobb did have a relationship with Luce's Life having been featured in its pages on August 19, 1960 under the headline "A Lady Proves She's Fit for Space Flight." 

Coincidentally when Haverstick mentioned that her mom's first husband had been shot down twice as a Flying Tiger and that "Catherine Taafe was a real fangirl of the Flying Tigers" aviatrix Jerrie Cobb demonstrated that she "was extremely well-versed in the geopolitical nuances of the entire China-Burma region" as well as the activities of the Flying Tiger pilots. According to Anthony Carrozza's book on Pawley (page 234), "Catherine Taaffe, who worked for Castro but passed information to the CIA, told her contact there was widespread belief in Cuba that the United States was sponsoring anti-Castro plots. Further, 'one of those responsible for this belief appeared to be Edward P. Pawley [a hand-written note in the margin reads “probably Wm. D. Pawley”] who . . . encourages the belief that CIA is backing anti-Castro plotting and that he, Pawley, is working for CIA in this effort.'” Oddly, June Cobb also had worked for Castro before getting cozing up to the CIA.

Haverstick pondered if June Cobb was the inspiration for the Oswalds naming their daughter June because no relatives had that name. But at the time of June Oswald's birth, June Cleaver was the beloved mom on the popular Leave It To Beaver TV comedy series, June Allyson had her own TV series, and June Carter performed with her family at Nashville's Grand Ole Opry where she caught the eye of Johnny Cash and eventually helped him walk the line to greater fame -- his fireplace mantle held gold records (commemorating a million albums sold) which I saw while waterskiing past Cash's home on Tennessee's Jackson Lake in the summer of 1969 with my University of Miami classmate, Del Bryant, whose dad, Boudleaux, wrote hit songs for the Everly Brothers recorded at Monument Records run by Fred Foster who was steering the boat. 

The purported group of plane passengers in Cobb's claim is revealing. Life reporters went on raids with DRE ani-Castro Cubans, and Life was involved with William Douglas Pawley as recently as June 1963 in Operation TILT. Moreover, DRE members were the springboard for elevating awareness of Oswald as a communist and the centerpiece of Life's Clare Boothe Luce's 1975 confessional phone call to CIA Director Colby (Chapter 42: Luce Lips). Haverstick notes that in the summer of 1963, Luce had penned "a blistering op-ed" supporting the Mercury 13 astronaut program in which Jerrie Cobb was a member and that the CIA approved contact between its ZR/RIFLE assassination planner, Rome Chief of Station William King "Bill" Harvey and Luce, the former Ambassador to Rome. 

Silvia Odio, a Dallas resident, claimed that Oswald visited her home on September 26 or 27 of 1963 and discussed plans to kill JFK with two other men. The Warren Commission said she was mistaken because Oswald was on his way to Mexico. It was a doppelganger William Seymour, along with Larry Howard and Loran Eugene Hall, soldiers of fortune involved in anti-Castro activities. Either Odio was wrong or the CIA Mexico City Station group of Scott-Philips-Cobb was seeing a double. Coincidentally during testimony to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, Hall who had befriended Jim Garrison following his March 1, 1967 (my 21st birthday) indictment of Clay Shaw admitted that he had not mentioned to Garrison the Bayo-Pawley Operation TILT which had Hall had initially been involved in but missed the boat.

In 1994, FBI Special Agent James Hosty, who wrote reports on Oswald's activities, told John Newman, the author of Oswald and The CIA, that Odio's visitors might have been Pawley's men. "H.L. Hunt was backing Pawley's people, and they were also getting support from Henry Luce. It could be that Pawley's guys spying on JURE [Junta Revolutionaria Cubana, led by Amador Odio]." 

Newman's book, also relates how West Point cadet Douglas K. Gentzkow turned over documents being gathered by Stork Club owner Sherman Billingsley to the CIA's Domestic Contact Division. "Gentzkow's papers also surfaced in William Pawley's files." The documents were intended to be used as leverage to get an investigation into the disappearance of Alexander Rorke who--along with Marita Lorenz--had spoken to June Cobb. "The name of June Cobb as a double agent appears in the Rorke papers." Cobb had forced Lorenz to abort Fidel Castro's love child.  

Marita Lorenz was as complex as Cobb. Lorenz claimed to have been recruited to poison her lover Castro but balked at the last minute. Then, in 1963, she supposedly met Oswald in Miami at an Operation 40 safe house and a second time with Frank Sturgis, E. Howard Hunt, Pedro Diaz Lanz and others at Orlando Bosch's house. Sturgis claimed he never met Oswald. The House Select Committee on Assassinations doubted her assertions. While she was dubbed "a patron saint of conspiracy theories," Lorenz actually was impregnated a second time by another President, Venezuela's Marcos Pérez Jiménez, and who daughter grew up to marry a son of Orlando Letelier, the Chilean academic assassinated in Washington, DC in a bombing conspiracy involving DINA, the Chilean secret police, and CORU, the militant anti-Castro group founded by none otherr than Orlando Bosch.5

Do loners debate anti-Castro DRE members in public and on radio then travel to Mexico to visit two embassies, while followed in line by William George Gaudet, a Central and South American propaganda expert who was hired by pubic relations guru Edward Bernays to write the weekly Latin America Report to enhance the image of Samuel Zemurray's United Fruit Company? The CIA underwrote it by paying for more than 20 annual subscriptions.

“During World War II, Gaudet worked as secret agent in Latin America for Nelson Rockefeller, Coordinator of Latin American affairs under FDR ... he traveled constantly in Latin America and combined his commercial work with his CIA assignments ... basically uncompensated (some expenses were picked up by CIA) and done for patriotic purposes. There were three others in the New Orleans area who did likewise.” 

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