35: Our only hope, Goldwater

On March 6, 1964, a splintering of Pawley’s clout in the Florida Republican Party was revealed. Pawley’s favored candidate, conservative Barry Goldwater--whom Pawley believed was "our only hope" for the nation-- “expressed himself as not being ‘overly concerned’ with the Florida intra-party struggle. Nevertheless, there is bad blood in Florida Republican ranks, and it could hurt Barry,” reported the Muscatine Journal.

Clifton White and Richard Kleindienst were sent by Goldwater to Tampa to smooth things over. “When Barry Goldwater landed in Palm Beach, he was handed a memo from, a close adherent of Basil LaVergne, head of the Draft Goldwater movement in Florida. The memo was a petition for Barry Goldwater to step in and appoint somebody with the authority to force both Brown and Cramer into line. William D. Pawley, “one of the most respected Florida Republicans” was mentioned as one possibility: Victor Hruska, vice president of the Prudential Insurance Company of Jacksonville, was another.

It was a sticky situation for Goldwater because Pawley and Hruska had already been approved by Brown, “and Goldwater could hardly undercut Grenier, his southern regional director, without causing bad blood in Alabama and Mississippi.”

The Florida conservatives believed that LBJ would lose because “Lyndon Johnson hurt himself on his appearance in Florida last week when he skipped over the dubious constitutionality of some features of the civil rights bill.”1

On March 25, 1964, the FBI reported on its interrogation of Dr. Fernando Penabaz Coburn, a Duke graduate who became a Cuban lawyer before fleeing to Miami in 1960 and becoming a newspaper writer and anti-Castro propagandist at JMWAVE. Like others in Miami’s anti-Castro milieu, Penabaz claimed Oswald had connections to Castro. 

While attending “the Third Annual National Anti-Communist Leadership School, sponsored by the Christian Crusade,” Penabaz met with its founder, evangelical Reverend Billie James Hargis who spread his message on hundreds of radio and TV stations across America. “Dr. Penabaz stated that during the period of his visit at Shreveport, [February 1964] he recalled having a visit in the room of the Reverend Hargis, at which General Edwin Walker was present.” Regarding the topic of the JFK assassination, “Dr. Penabaz stated he probably did say that one could argue in favor of the thesis that Castro may have had reasons to eliminate President Kennedy,” because “President Kennedy wanted him deposed as the leader in Cuba.” In fact, in September 1963, “Castro virtually threatened President Kennedy by a statement to the effect that leaders threatening him (Castro) better be careful, because they, too, could suffer accidents.” Penabaz even claimed there was a cartoon in a Cuban newspaper showing Castro laughing over a dead Kennedy shortly before the assassination—but the FBI found no copy of it.

Penabaz told his FBI interrogator he was unaware of the article in William F. Buckley’s National Review that asserted a reporter at The New York Times “had obtained from a very good source the story of Oswald’s trip to Mexico and subsequent return to the United States with the sum of $10,000, but that the Times “mysteriously withheld the story.” Months earlier, Clare Boothe Luce had used her good friend Buckley’s National Review to denounce Kennedy.2

“With respect to information that Oswald, on return from his alleged trip to Cuba, was accompanied by Quintin Pino [Machado], who was to take Oswald to Cuba after the assassination, Dr. Penabaz stated he had not made such a statement to anyone as being fact. He stated that he had heard [from Miguel de Leon] of an alleged plot wherein Quintin Pino had crossed into Texas from Mexico for the purpose of rescuing Oswald.” Miguel “de Leon stated he had learned this while visiting the home of Cuban engineer Sixto Mesa about a week after the assassination” but could not recall who said it. Mesa “stated it was Dr. [Adolfo] Vilasuso who had related the story.” Yet, Dr. Vilasuso stated he possessed no authentic information.

Dr. Penabaz denied to the FBI that he claimed “Oswald had been shot by Jack Ruby for failing to follow the escape plan after the assassination” but “may have said that such a possibility existed.”3 During a television interview on December 5, 1963, Penabaz had also claimed Jack Ruby was a communist.4 Coincidentally, Penabaz knew the DRE’s Carlos Bringuier whose interactions with Oswald on the streets of New Orleans helped paint him as a communist.5

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38: Anna Chennault's Halloween Surprise

As male baby boomers, like myself, graduated high school in record numbers and faced the possibility of being drafted and sent to Southeast Asia, Americans focused more on the escalating war in Viet Nam than the threat in the Caribbean. And Pawley’s dire warnings about Cuba got less and less ink.

It was a turbulent time in America. On April 4, 1968, civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, was assassinated by another “lone gunman,” James Earl Ray. Riots broke out across America. White flight from the inner cities separated the human race even more. Two months after delivering an eloquent speech calling for calm and reconciliation in the wake of Dr. King’s murder, Presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated by yet another loner, Sirhan Sirhan.1

In July, Pawley was honored for his glory days in China. “Bill Pawley received the first CNAC Award for contribution to aviation in China” at a reunion of the CNAC and Flying Tiger “‘Old China Hands.’” He gave a rousing banquet speech to the attendees including Edna Pawley, his brothers, Gene and Ed, and their wives.” Eugene Pawley first went to China in 1939, returned in June 1942 to drive CNAC supplies, then switched over to intelligence, heading the OSS China Desk. Ed helped organize the Flying Tigers, while Bill built planes. The celebrity attraction at the CNAC event was 1950s heavyweight champion boxer Rocky Marciano, who ironically died the following year in an airplane crash. One of the other CNAC Award highlights was a party hosted by Edna and William Pawley at their Miami home during which they gave the attendees a cruise on Biscayne Bay aboard his Flying Tiger yacht.

Anna Chennault, widow of the Flying Tiger leader General Claire Chennault, sent a letter of regret that she could not attend the July 22, 1968 event “due to urgent business matter I have to leave for the Far East and Southeast Asia.”2 

Anna had served as an advisor to Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on the region. She had developed close relationships with the top tier of the South Vietnam leadership. When President Johnson halted U.S. bombing of the communist North Vietnam, Anna, two days after Halloween, conveyed to a representative of the South Vietnamese government that it should stall the Paris Peace Talks until after Nixon was elected President, promising a better outcome. Anna received Nixon’s instruction from a longtime friend of Pawley and Anna—Chiang Kai-Shek—according to author George J. Veith in 2022.3

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