30:Bayo, Pawley & CIA TILT Against JFK

Shortly after Groundhog Day of 1963, E. Howard Hunt wrote a memorandum about his conversation over lunch with his close friend, Manuel Artime, the Bay of Pigs invasion Brigade 2506 leader. Artime arrived “with a heavy cold and an appearance of dejection." Artime "and others (presumably San Roman and Oliva) had been guests at a luncheon tendered them the day before by the Robert Kennedys at Hickory Hill." While appreciating the Attorney General’s attention, "Artime was upset by the suggestion that Brigade members should consider "joining the U.S. Army" and "continuing their academic careers" which Artime felt "had little to do with overthrowing Fidel Castro. Artime opined that Mr. Hurwitch of State was profoundly hostile to him, for reasons he could not fathom.”1

Two months later, Hunt and Artime would meet again along with “Manolin Hernandez, his one-time deputy in the MRR,” to celebrate Dorothy Hunt’s birthday at Hunt’s home. Artime, who “was wearing the shoes that he had put into the barracks bag when he last packed it in my operational quarters in Coconut Grove” was going to deliver “a message from Luis Somoza for Attorney General Robert Kennedy” and was scheduled to appear on NBC’s Today Show. He then planned to visit Generalissimo Franco in Spain to request support in getting his parents out of Cuba and into Spain which Hunt thought would be a fruitless because Franco was too busy negotiating the renewal of U.S. air bases in Spain which Pawley had originally negotiated with the country’s fascist leader, Franco.

The discussion then turned to the “capture of 17 raiders at Norman Cay ... the exiles restricted to the Dade County area” and “Pedro Diaz Lanz whom we agreed had for some time been so uncontrollable as to raise serious doubts as to his mental stability.” Diaz Lanz, in a speech on November 3, 1963 accused President Kennedy “of being a commie.”2

Hunt then “asked about Jose Perez San Roman and learned from Artime that Pepe had suffered a mental breakdown, that the Robert Kennedys had rented a home for Pepe, his wife and two children in the McLean area and that Artime had been with them during the day when Mrs. Kennedy had come to the San Roman home and seen Artime. Artime learned that the San Roman children were driven to and from school by the Kennedys. (It turns out that the Kennedy children, my three children, and Pepe's two all attend the same parochial school on MacArthur Blvd., so it is not unlikely that Pepe's children will seek mine out as the only other Spanish-speaking children in the school.)”

Pepe’s breakdown was the result of conflicts in his marriage, the U.S. government’s pressure on him “to persuade the Brigade to enlist in the U.S. Army” and his guilt over allowing the Brigade to be captured. San Roman also resented “that his psychiatric bill was being paid by Miro Cardona, regarding it a way of making him indebted to Miro ... I judged Pepe viewed Miro as a symbol of the CRC.”

Manolin Hernandez let Howard Hunt know that Jose Miro Cardona and Jose Ignacio Rasco (MDC) had queried “as to whether I (“Eduardo”) was still in the U.S.” and that Hernandez had not revealed anything to them. By “2 o’clock in the morning,” Hunt, Artime and Hernandez “had downed a fifth of Scotch and we regrouped in the kitchen where I prepared breakfast for all. Before leaving Artime said he would call me after he had seen the Attorney General.”

During the night, Hernandez had asked Hunt about “‘Colonel Earl Brennan’ ... who was moving through the Cuban exile community looking for dark-skinned Cubans to be used in Haiti against Duvalier” which he claimed was supported by Ambassador David Bruce and the White House. A successful coup would make Haiti a great base for activity against Castro, Brennan claimed. Hunt denied knowledge of Brennan’s role in the OSS but acknowledged “that Dave Bruce had been Chief of our operations in the ETO” (European Theater of Operations in World War II).3

Col. Brennan, in fact, was recruited into the OSS by David Bruce and Allen Dulles and served as Chief/SI (Secret Intelligence) in Italy and Albania4 long before becoming “the registered representative of a Haitian political party, the Parti Nationals” which had met multiple times with the CIA to discuss a coup against “Papa Doc” Duvalier—arriving at a target date in May 1963. Individuals in multiple countries supported the move, and Trujillo’s assassination “resulted in the development of an effectively placed action center in Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic)” supported by Juan Bosch.5 Brennan’s coup fizzled out and “Papa Doc” remained in power for eight more years when heart disease and diabetes took his life.

On June 28,1963 the CIA Chief of the Western Hemisphere Division revealed to the “Chiefs, Certain Stations and Bases” that Manuel Artime had moved to Nicaragua as leader of operation AMWORLD—the U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy initiative that launched commando raids on Cuba despite President Kennedy’s American University commencement speech.6

Between William Douglas Pawley’s pro-Goldwater speech about the troubling times and John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s speech of hope for the world, Pawley embarked on his second effort to discredit JFK as the President prepared to run for a second term. 

It would take more than a decade before the American public learned about the Bayo-Pawley Affair (aka Operation Red Cross). Documents declassified decades later showed that the project--as it was happening--was known within the CIA as Operation TILT.

In 1976 the Kingsport Times reported that Francis Ford Coppola's City of San Francisco magazine had published an article in which Pawley in Miami “confirmed that in 1963 he navigated his personal yacht to the Cuban coast with a raiding party bent on spiriting two Soviet missile technicians off the Communist island.” Article authors,Warren Hinckle and William Turner, had begun interviewing people about the operation in 1973, including Pawley, Gerry Patrick Hemming and Robert K. Brown whose Soldier of Fortune magazine provided more details complete with many photos of some of those involved in 1976.  

On board Pawley’s Flying Tiger II was a motley crew of CIA agents, armed Cuban exiles, an organized crime associate, John Martino (left in photo), Eddie Bayo (far right) and a Life magazine Miami reporter, Richard Billings who claimed such raids were commonplace and denied Life was financing the project as Pawley asserted. Loren Hall, after reading Hinckle's article called the author and claimed Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana put up money as well as Tampa Mafia head Santos Trafficante who had spent time in Cuban prison with John Martino. Their release was expedited by Rauol (aka Raul) Villamia, a Cuban-born minor league baseball player whose brother Mario had founded Accion Civica Cuban to support Castro by obtaining weapons along with Howard Davis as Castro was mounting his revolution against Batista. Mario convinced Rauol in 1955 to start fundraising in Tampa for Castro's 26th of July Movement which he did until Castro declared himself a communist.7

Although Pawley denied involvement of CIA agents in the actual TILT raid, members of the CIA hierarchy were not only aware of Pawley’s Flying Tiger II mission, but internal documents showed the CIA financed it along with other “angels” and tracked it from the launch through its mysterious failure—and there is no hint that they attempted to prevent him from causing an international incident or from attempting to discredit the sitting president prior to his upcoming re-election campaign. 

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33: Shockwaves

The Kennedy assassination shook the nation, but one of JFK’s friends took it harder than others. When Edward Grant Stockdale’s Irish eyes stopped smiling there may have been more to his depression than was ever revealed.

Stockdale was the former U.S. Ambassador to Ireland. On November 26th, he flew to Washington and talked with Robert Kennedy and Edward Kennedy. Upon his return to Miami, Stockdale told several of his friends that “the world was closing in.” On December 1st, he spoke to his attorney, William Frates, who later recalled their conversation. “He started talking. It didn't make much sense. He said something about ‘those guys’ trying to get him. Then about the assassination.” William Snow Frates and his partners, Peter Thorp Fay and Robert Lester Floyd, coincidentally were the subjects of a December 6th memo seeking CIA covert security approval for the three attorneys “who will be used as officers in KUVEST” which appeared to be a funding mechanism “through notional companies for JMWAVE payroll companies.”1

On December 2, 1963, Grant Stockdale fell to his death from his office window on the thirteenth floor of the exquisite art deco Alfred I. duPont Building, Miami’s first commercial skyscraper at 169 East Flagler Street.2 The building lobby housed a major branch of Florida National Bank & Trust Co. headquartered in Jacksonville which Alfred duPont had purchased in 1929 and named his wife Jessie Ball duPont to the Board of Directors. Upon Alfred’s death in 1935, Jessie’s brother, Ed Ball, took charge of bank through his leadership of the Alfred I. duPont Testamentary Trust.

The Alfred I. duPont Building from which Stockdale plunged should not be confused with the DuPont Plaza Center building at 300 Biscayne Boulevard Way (U.S. 1), Miami, where Life magazine was located on the eighth floor. That building sat at a sharp turn in the road— similar to the Dealey Plaza presidential motorcade route—just before it turns past Bay Front Park where 15,000 family members and friends had gathered waiting for the return of the Cuban exiles involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion.3 Three decades earlier, five shots rang out in Bay Front Park shortly after President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered a short speech. The disgruntled, lone-nut, would-be assassin Giuseppe Zangara missed Roosevelt, but five people were struck by bullets and Chicago Mayor Cermak would die later from complications. Zangara died in the electric chair just 14 days after Cermak died.4 

A rightwing plot—lead by Joseph Milteer of the National States Rights Party—to assassinate President Kennedy with a rifle from an office building in Miami on November 18th was publicly revealed in 1967 as I drove along S.W. 8th Street in Miami after eating breakfast at The Skillet. In 1963, the threat was taken seriously enough by the Secret Service that President Kennedy's motorcade was canceled and instead he and  Senator George Smathers were driven to a helicopter that flew them to Miami Beach where he delivered a speech to the Inter-American Press Association signaling a desire for peace in the Caribbean which was not what Pawley and Cuban exiles wanted to hear.5

JFK and Senator George Smathers at Miami International Airport 11/18/1963 awaiting a helicopter ride after cancelling a motorcade out of security concerns four days before Kennedy was assassinated 1,300 miles away in Dallas. (Photo: Joe Rimkus/State Archives of Florida)

According to FBI reports printed in Don Adams's From an Office Building with A High-Powered Rifle: A Report to the Public from an FBI Agent Involved in the Official JFK Assassination Investigation, the 62-year-old Joseph Adams Milteer from Quitman, Georgia who sometimes lived with a prostitute in Valdosta, Georgia believed John Kennedy, Nikita Kruschev, Martin Luther King and Jewish people were undermining America. (His patriotic zealotry didn't extend to what he drove: a 1962 Volvo and her Volkswagen.)  Milteer had inherited $200,000 from his father and spent it printing pamphlets spreading his segregationist point of view as a member of the White Citizens Council of Atlanta. He supported Strom Thurman for President in 1962 and attended a rally in Fort Lauderdale for Barry Goldwater shortly after revealing his belief that President Kennedy would be shot in Miami from building with a high-powered rifle. Coincidently, the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Palm Beach Goldwater delegate and the honorary chairman of the Florida Republican Party campaign for Goldwater was William Douglas Pawley. FBI Special Agent Don Adams included in his book a reprint of a photo he had seen in the Harrison Edward Livingstone and Robert J. Groden book High Treason: The Assassination of JFK and the Case for Conspiracy which possibly shows Milteer at Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963. The picture is odd because Milteer is in a short sleeve shirt while others wear coats and he is taller than many others despite his FBI reported height of 5'4". 

A December 2, 1963 Miami News report stated that Ambassador Grant Stockdale had looked at a Life magazine covering the Kennedy assassination."After smoking a cigarette, he lept out a window, "hitting a ledge eight floors below.” He was to have hosted Senator Ted Kennedy’s visit to Miami on the occasion of the University of Miami’s homecoming ceremony on December 14th. Stockdale was the chairman of the homecoming event, which was cancelled when he died.7 (In 1969, I received my AB degree in American Civilization from the University of Miami.)

Stockdale did not leave a suicide note but Miami Homicide Detective Robert Utes said Pawley’s friend, Senator George Smathers, who had an office in the same building, claimed that Stockdale had become depressed as a result of the death of John F. Kennedy. Stockdale had been Smathers’ administrative assistant in 1946. As word was being spread by the DRE that Oswald was associated with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, no doubt Smathers recalled that his proposal to cut to U.S. sugar imports from Cuba by 10% was ridiculed in the FPCC's May 13, 1960 Fair Play newsletter under the headline "Sweetening the Bitter Tea of Senator Smathers."     

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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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47: Timeline

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

1899 ~ After the Spanish American War when Teddy Roosevelts “Rough Riders” helped 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 ~ Pawley establishes Intercontinent Corporation run by him and his brothers Edward and Eugene.

1933 ~ Pawley becomes President of China National Aviation Corporation.

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 based in Calcutta until 1945.

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

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

1946/6/13 ~ Pawley named 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.

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

1949/9 ~ Negotiated taking over the Havana trolly system.

1950/1 ~ Pawley runs Havana Autobuses Modernos, removing trolley car tracks.

1951/2/4 ~ Daughter Annie Hahr's wedding.

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

1951/6 ~ In India re wheat and monazite

1951/9 ~ Son Clifton Pawley died, left Washington for Mexico and Miami. 

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

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

1952/1/17 ~ Sailed with Edna and Anita Pawley and his assistant Ed Harris to Europe; stayed until May, but returned to Washington to settle a strike in Miami then flew to Lisbon Conference with Lovett. Took a two week trip for consultation with Defense Department

1952/5 ~ Resigned as assistant to Lovett.

1952/6 ~ At Belvoir House farm in Virginia.

1952/9 ~ In Europe and Middle East with Edna.   

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

1953 ~ In Miami. 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.

1953/4/4 ~ 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.

1954/6 ~ William Pawley, William Franke, Morris Hadley and General Jimmy Doolittle appointed by President Eisenhower to review the Central Intelligence Agency and recommend that it 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 in Atsugi, Japan where the U.S. dispatches U-2 planes to spy on Russia and 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 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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