32: "What it is ain't exactly clear"*

On October 4, 1963, The New York Times reported that Republican conservative candidate for President Barry Goldwater believed President Kennedy was helping the Soviets. The President was considering a wheat sale to the Russians, which former Vice President Nixon also spoke adamantly against asserting it would be “harming the cause of freedom.”1

Six days later, asserting it was good for the US economy, JFK announced his approval of the $250 million wheat sale to the Soviet Union while ruling out sales to Cuba and China. A schism between Red China and Russia had appeared at about the same time, and the intelligence and defense communities would debate whether it was real and or a treacherous ploy to deceive the United States.2

The President issued a denial that the CIA was pursuing an independent course in South Vietnam where a “serious disagreement over United States policies” had developed “between Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge and the head of the Central Intelligence Agency there.” The New York Times had reported “that Mr. Lodge would be happier with a new C.I.A. chief.”3  The 6' 3" tall Lodge, also felt that South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem should be overthrown by the country’s military because of his harsh treatment of the nation's Buddhists.4

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42: Luce Lips

In 1956, Clare Boothe Luce was close enough to the Kennedy family that she received a postcard from JFK’s mother, Rose, written when Jackie and John lost a baby. “Pray—please—dear Clare.”1 

But in August of 1970, it was revealed that Henry Luce had voted a decade earlier for Richard Nixon—instead of John F. Kennedy—yet spent the night of the election with Joseph and Rose Kennedy and months later attended JFK’s inaugural.2

In August 1971, an article appeared in the Miami Herald detailing Pawley’s role in Operation TILT, the effort to extract Soviet missile technicians from Cuba and have them state missiles still existed on the island despite the Kennedy administration’s claim that the weapons had been removed. FBI Special Agent in Charge Francis M. Farrell attached the article to his memorandum noting that “Pawley has been of interest to our organization and its predecessor for many years.”3

In 1975, the Washington Star contacted Pawley for follow up to a story that had appeared in City, a short-lived San Francisco publication. City’s story had been co-authored by former FBI agent William Turner and Warren Hinckle, who had been with Ramparts magazine when the publication revealed CIA funding of foundations. The Washington Star story dealt with Operation TILT and reported that Pawley “said yesterday that Life joined the party and paid the commandoes in exchange for exclusive rights to the story.”4

Another account of the tale was published in the spring 1976 issue of Soldier of Fortune magazine. Written by Miguel Acoca, a former Life staff writer, and Robert K. Brown, the publisher of Soldier of Fortune, the exclusive article was titled “The Bayo-Pawley Affair: A Plot to Destroy JFK and Invade Cuba.” It was excerpted from Brown’s 1967 manuscript, Ripped Cloak, Rusty Dagger: JFK, LBJ and the CIA’s Secret War Against Castro. The article included photos taken by Terence Spencer, the Life photographer who accompanied the Bayo-Pawley operation part of the way.

The Soldier of Fortune article asserted that “Operation Red Cross” (a name created by Life) “was a plot to destroy President Kennedy politically, and the CIA played a major role— with “its agents, planes, ships and communications” involved.

Bayo, whose real name was Eduardo Perez, had earlier in the year been involved in a failed attempt “to topple Haiti’s President Francois Duvalier, the hated ‘Papa Doc’” believing that “Haiti was the ideal base for attacks against Cuba.” At one of the first planning meetings, Bayo met with Tony Questa and Ramon Font of Commando L, Mario Fontela of FORDC and “and the boys from DRE.”5 Other Bayo-Pawley planning meetings were attended by INTERPEN’s Frank Fiorini6 and Gerald Patrick Hemming.7

Pawley was interviewed briefly on October 15, 1975 for the Spring 1976 article and stated that he felt that the June 1963 Operation TILT was a “‘one-thousand-in one chance.’”8

As it turned out the odds were not even that good.

When CIA documents were finally declassified decades later they provided details including weapons and points of rendezvous for an operation that was plagued with problems. The radar was out of order and the “operation delayed twenty four hours due to engine trouble Mr. Pawley yacht.” His “Flying Tiger anchored at Point G” had to wait for a replacement part to make emergency repairs. “Bill, States intentions to continue operation independently unless unknown factors exist,” the “Op procedding [sic] as planned X due navigational difficulties involved.” Then there was loss of contact with the and the futile search for the missing TILT team members.9

A memo referring to QDDALE’s May 23 contact with JMWAVE Station Chief Reuteman detailed how John “Martino had tried to talk [Richard] Billings [of Life] out of participating in the Soviet defector operation but Billings had refused to be excused ... This resulted in QDDALE learning that Mr. George P. Hunt, Managing Editor of Life Magazine, planned to be in Miami 23 May” and “Life was willing to pay each of the Soviets $2500 for their story.”10

Richard Billings was not a mere employee. His father, John, had been the first managing editor of Life. Richard was part of the team that purchased the Zapruder film of the JFK assassination. A few years later, he endeared himself to New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison and Tom Bethal who were looking into Oswald’s associates in New Orleans. Months later, Life began questioning Garrison’s integrity.

In the next decade, Billings became the editorial director for G. Robert Blakey who was named chief counsel to the House Select Committee on Assassinations in September 1976. In the book, they co-wrote after the hearings ended, they concluded that Oswald and an unnamed shooter from the Grassy Knoll were part of a conspiracy organized by 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.”11

On October 25, 1975, after Pawley was interviewed about TILT, Life magazine’s Clare Boothe Luce called her friend CIA Director William Colby to try to explain how she was able to so very quickly identify Oswald as being pro-Castro. The call took place as Senator Schweiker was reopening the Kennedy
assassination in wake of the Watergate Rockefeller hearings. The entire conversation, transcribed by Barbara Pindar along with her parenthetical notes, offers many insights into the Luce and Pawley mission, their DRE allies and associates, and her spin:

Mrs. Luce: I have a big problem, a case in conscience. I got rather deeply involved during and after the Bay of Pigs, and up to the time of the missile crisis, with a group called the (Directorate Revolutionario Estudiante; Barbara Pindar Note: the spelling of that is just a guess), the DRE. Whether you know this or not, it was me who fed the missile stuff to Keating. I knew a number of these leaders well; they were going in and out of Cuba, and I paid for one of the motor boats. Bill Pawley did too. We thought we were doing another Flying Tiger. The missile crisis came, and I got a telephone call from Allen telling me that the Secrets Act had gone into effect and that henceforth there would be no voluntary American efforts. That ended that, and I don't know what I was doing— maybe I went back to Arizona, or whatever. Then came the assassination. The night of the assassination, right after Oswald was caught, one of my boys telephoned me from New Orleans. Didn't I ever tell you this?

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