PATHFINDER – PART III - JOHN ROSSELI AND THE
CIA-MAFIA PLOTS – THE JOKER
By William Kelly
This is Part III of a a Four Part series on Pathfinder - the Plot to Kill Castro that was to JFK.
PART I - JFKcountercoup: PATHFINDER AT JMWAVE
Part II - JFKcountercoup: PART II - PATHFINDER at JMWAVE and Dealey Plaza
This is Part III of a a Four Part series on Pathfinder - the Plot to Kill Castro that was to JFK.
PART I - JFKcountercoup: PATHFINDER AT JMWAVE
Part II - JFKcountercoup: PART II - PATHFINDER at JMWAVE and Dealey Plaza
[Note: This is a first draft copy. After it is proofed and edited I will repost it at JFKCountercoup.blogspot.com There are various spellings of John
Rosselli’s name, as it is not his original birth name, and for the most part I
will use that spelling - the one he gave to the Church Committee in 1975]
The CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro were never revealed to the Warren Commissioner, which sparked Commission attorney Sam Stern to tell the HSCA that had the Commission learned of the CIA-Mafia conspiracies to assassinate Fidel Castro, “we would have gone much more into Cuba, the CIA, and the Mafia. We would have had a whole host of new avenues calling for investigation. And we would have obviously had to develop some new sources of information – other than the agency.”
The public and press didn’t learn about those plots until Jack Anderson revealed them years later, using John Rosselli as a source.
So far in this story is populated with characters
named “Bishop,” and “Knight,” and some are said to be “pawns,” and in
that spirit, to mix metaphors, Johnny Rosselli is the joker of the pack in this
game.
Much has been written about Mafia boss John Rosselli,
about his immigrant origins, rise in the mob, the Chicago outfit’s man in Las
Vegas and Hollywood, movie producer, his love life and bizarre murder after
testifying before the Church Committee. But I want to focus on one aspect of
his life – his work for the CIA, his association with the anti-Castro Cubans in
1962-63, his covert operational activities at JMWAVE and his allegations
regarding the assassination of President Kennedy.
Now they call them the CIA-Mafia plots to kill
Castro, and it was Rosselli who first exposed those plots and added the Mafia
part to the equation.
Rosselli has said that he first became involved in
the CIA plots to kill Castro during the
Eisenhower administration, when he was approached by former FBI agent Robert
Mahu in Las Vegas and introduced to James “Big Jim” O’Connell, his first CIA
case officer, at the Brown Derby restaurant in Beverly Hills in September 1960.
They discussed killing Castro, and Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana and Santo
Traficante of Tampa were advised and brought into the picture, but they faded
away after the early poison plots failed.
With the ascendency of John Kennedy to the
Presidency and following the Bay of Pigs in April of 1961, Jim O’Connell was
replaced by William Harvey as Rosseli’s CIA case officer and the mechanism of
death went from poison to high powered rifle.
William Harvey was brought in to run the CIA’s Cuban
Task Force W from his previous posting as chief of the CIA West Berlin station,
where he gained fame for the Berlin Tunnell escapade. And he brought some of
his German people with him, including his secretary Maggie Crane, Ted Shackley
and among others Karl, an “outside” man who dealt directly with the Cubans.
Harvey named the Cuban desk “Task Force W” –
reputedly after William Walker, an early 19th Century American
soldier-of-fortune, who among other things, took over Nicaragua and was
executed by a firing squad of American soldiers. Task Force W, aka “The Tank,”
was set up in a corner of the basement of CIA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Those who worked there were ostensibly the puppet masters pulling the strings
of the anti-Castro Cubans who were run out of the Miami, Florida JMWAVE station,
then the largest CIA forward operating base (FOB) in the world. Harvey
installed Maggie as secretary to Ted Shackley, who was named the JMWAVE chief
of station (COS), and Harvey himself put in an appearance in Miami every few
weeks though he usually worked out of the Task Force W offices at the CIA HQ in
Langley.
William Harvey was part of the “Three Martini Lunch”
crowd, along with James Jesus Angleton and Kim Philby, who Harvey unmasked as
the Third Man in on the Cambridge spy scandal. They were occasionally joined by
Maggie, whose husband was also in the CIA and was often stationed overseas.
According to Bayard Stockton, Maggie “sat on the floor when she drank martinis,
‘so she wouldn’t fall off the carpet.’ Rita Chappiwicki succeeded Maggie. And
then, in the Langley basement, it was Skip. The three knew all the secrets, but
they never, ever betrayed Bill’s trust.”
According to Harvey’s official biography “Flawed Patriot – The Rise and Fall of CIA
Legend Bill Harvey” by Bayard Stockton (Potomac Books, Washington D.C.,
2006, p. 125), “By early Spring 1962 Task Force W’s headquarters staff was in
place. Bill’s throne room during the fraught Cuban days was, of course, in the
Langley basement, but his empire was in Miami, masquerading as Zenith Technical
Enterprises on two thousand acres of CIA-leased property (on the University of
Miami south campus).”
[NOTE: It should be pointed out that “Flawed Patriot” was vetted and approved
by CIA, and the author, former CIA officer Bayard Stockson died before the book
was published. ]
Stockton wrote: “…The stories about JMWAVE are
legion. Among them is the tale of a visit by Robert Kennedy to JMWAVE – an
incursion that in itself must have put Harvey into something south of a slow
burn because CIA operating premises were off-limits to non-Agency personnel,
regardless of rank or stature. As Kennedy roamed the building, he heard a telex
machine chattering away. He ambled over to it, ripped the message out, and
began to read it. Incensed beyond courtesy, Harvey, in turn, ripped the copy from
the attorney general’s hands and thundered words to the effect that Kennedy was
not cleared to read classified Agency correspondence. Both smoldered. The
incident naturally became legendary and was symptomatic of relations between
the two men.”
Ted Shackley told Stockton that, “(Harvey) came down
to Miami ever four to six weeks, mostly to see Johnny Rosselli….”
As Stockton writes it, “Another popular JMWAVE story
is the U-Haul truck deal. Writers like this one because, to them, it proves
that the CIA and Harvey provided arsenals to the Mafia. The only known
witness/participant to the event is Shackley.”
Shackley: “Bill came down with a list…four or five
pages….of equipment he wanted. Northing particularly out of the ordinary in
that. We turned the list over to the JMWAVE warehouse manager, who loaded the
stuff into watertight containers. All very standard procedure. I rented a truck
through three or four cutouts and drove it into the JMWAVE compound. The stuff
was manifested in and out. I drove the truck out of the compound and turned it
over. Bill and I followed it to a parking lot in South Miami. The driver of the
truck took a hike and caught a cab. Bill and I waited, maybe up to an hour….It
was no different from any other odd request for equipment.”
According to Rosselli however, while Harvey approved
of and made arrangements for the U-Haul truck load of arms, he recalls
O’Connell as being with him on the hour long stakeout of a vacant lot behind a
Cuban restaurant in Miami, and watched as Cuban #3 picked up the truck they
watched as it was driven away. In his 1975 Church Committee testimony, Rosselli
said Cuban #3, who he refused to name, often made runs to Cuba in his
powerboat, sometimes depositing teams of commandos and assassins. The U-Haul arms
cache, inventoried in a detailed manifest, included high powered rifles with
scopes and ammo that Shackley says were packed by the JMWAVE warehouse man in
waterproof containers so they could be easily and safely shipped to Cuba.
“During…. the climax of the Cuban Missile Crisis, it
looked as if the United States was going to war,” writes Stockton, who quotes
Shackley as saying: “American military teams were ready to be
infiltrated ….pathfinders and people like that. I was to be in a plane with the
airborne commander. The presumption was that the American military would pacify
Cuba, and then J-2 – military government would take over. I guess I would
probably have been Havana station chief…Then Bobby heard there was a commando
team on the water, which he had not authorized, and he called them back.”
“American military teams were ready to be
infiltrated….pathfinders and people like that…”
Yes, but these pathfinders weren’t US Army Rangers –
who are also known as the “pathfinders,” who are the first to go into a battle,
these pathfinders were Cubans, anti-Castro Cuban commandos trained by U.S. Army
Rangers – specifically U.S. Ranger Captain Bradley Ayers and U.S. Ranger
Captain Edward Roderick.
Both men were reassigned from the Rangers to the CIA
by General Krulak to train the Cubans in basic covert operational fundamentals,
small craft maneuvering, small arms, explosives and sniper shooting.
“Legendary” explosives and small arms trainer John
“I.F.” Harper and US Marine Captain Carl Jenkins assisted Captain Roderick in
training the Cuban teams at Point Mary in sniper tactics and “infiltration and
exfiltration,” Jenkins’ specialtiy.
Jenkins trained small bands of Cubans to infiltrate
Cuba before the Bay of Pigs, during Moongose and sent out but recalled during
the Cuban Missile Crisis, and at JMWAVE in 1963.
In a chapter of “Flawed
Patriot” called “Rosselli’s Subbase in the Florida Keys,” Stockton writes;
“The only description I have found of Rosselli’s paramilitary activities
against Cuba comes from Richard Mahoney. Once Dick Helms personally cleared
Rosselli for the assassination operation, the Mafioso was covered as a colonel
in the Army and ‘Dave M.’ moved from the Langley basement to Florida. Toward
the end of May 1962 the CIA built a small base for Rosselli’s unit on Point
Mary, Key Largo, clearing out an acre or so of the thick mangrove forest for
rough-hewn sheds and two crude structures. A floating dock was anchored on a
coral reef. The purpose of the base was to train snipers.”
According to Stockton’s source Mahoney in his book “Sons and Brothers” (Arcade Pub.,
NY, 1999, pp.166-170), “Rosselli…was the
only person who could make the incendiary (Dave) M. laugh. They would drink
until the sun came up, usually joined by Rip Robertson, the hard-bitten Texan
and decorated veteran of World War ii who was the favorite ‘boom and bang’ guy
among the exiled Cubans [because he had actually participated in the Bay of
Pigs landing operation]. A favorite bar was Les Deux Violins where, according
to one of the Cuban operatives, ‘Johnny knew all the help by their first name,
tipped hugely, and would tell farcical stories about his days with Al
Capone…..According to [a Cuban commander under Rosselli], Colonel Rosselli
used the team from time to time for raids and other operations. Rosselli was
one of only two Americans authorized to go into Cuba on clandestine missions.”
While the CIA files are suspiciously quiet about
Rosselli’s activities at the JMWAVE station, former US Army Ranger Captain
Bradley Ayers wrote extensively about it. While those who work for the CIA
routinely sign non-disclosure forms that require them to run any manuscripts
past them before publication, Ayers never signed such an agreement since he was
US Army assigned to CIA for temporary duty.
Stockton’s footnote to these quotes also mentions
that, “Mahoney quotes in part Bradley Earl Ayers, “The War That Never Was: An
Insider’s Account of the CIA Covert Operations Against Cuba,” (Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill, 1976.) Ayers’ book is impossible to find there days. An
interesting coincidence is that it was published by Bobbs-Merrill, for whom
Harvey worked in Indianapolis until shortly before his death. I have heard one
claim that Harvey actually edited the book, but I cannot confirm the story.”
An official CIA Public Affairs officer, in response
to a media request as to whether or not Bradley Ayers “was ever a CIA agent,”
wrote: “According to our records, he was never an Agency employee. As an Army
officer, Mr. Ayers was detailed to work with the CIA from May of 1963 to
December 1964. Because he never was an Agency employee – and, as such, never
signed a pre-publication agreement with us – any suggestion that the CIA tried
to censor or suppress his writings is incorrect.”
While the CIA didn’t vet “The War That Never Was,” it was edited by William Harvey himself,
the attorney for Bobbs-Merrell, of Indianapolis, Indiana, primarily a school
book publisher who reportedly maintained an office at the Texas School Book
Depository in Dallas.
After I read Ayers’ book in the early 1970s, I
immediately recognized its significance in regards to the assassination of
President Kennedy, and later got know Brad Ayers through numerous long distance
telephone conversations. I also got a copy of his second book on the subject, “The Zenith Secret – A CIA Insider Exposes
The Secret War Against Castro And the Plot That Killed The Kennedy Brothers,”
(Vox Pop, NY, May 2006), a very obscure publisher that was run out of Bronx
storefront.
When I talked to Ayers on the phone he said that one
of the items edited out of his first book was the name and role of Gordon
Campbell, the head of Maritme activities at JMWAVE, who Bill Turner was the
first to write about in his book “The
Fish Is Red.” Ayers also said he was suing Vox Pop for breach of contract.
In his second book Ayers says that he first heard
about “Colonel Rosselli” from his fellow Ranger Captain Ed Roderick, who worked
out of the Point Mary base at Key Largo while Ayers trained his cadre of Cuban
commandos at the Pirates Lair and Elliot Key, deeper in the Everglades.
In a motel room drinking Scotch, Ayers recalled that,
“Rod described an interesting new guy, Colonel Rosselli from Washington with
whom he was working in operations.”
Ayers says that Roderick “had been drinking
before he got to the house that night…confided, he and the recently arrived
Colonel Rosselli were working on plans to ambush Fidel Castro, and
they had been on a weekend binge together. They’d become close friends as they
spent time together; their drinking friendship was a natural extension of their
on-duty relationship.”
“While we ate I discussed my training activities,”
Ayers continued, “Rod began to tell me about the new things that were ‘in the
air’ at the station….It seemed the administration was ready to begin making an
even more concerted effort to unseat Castro…The Special Group had already
removed a number of targets from the restricted list, and there were more to
go. It was up to the CIA, specifically the Miami station, to plan the new
missions, recruit and train exiles, and mount operations to strike the
Communist dictator where it really hurt. Other espionage activities were being
carried out to coincide with this paramilitary effort, and still more attempts
to eliminate Castro were being developed.”
“Then he dropped it,” Ayers says. “He told me
Rosselli had high level Mafia and Havana connections. I was speechless. The
American government collaborated with organized crime? I couldn’t believe it. I
was anxious to meet this guy.”
Just as the Big Con confidence men are either
“Inside” or “Outside” guys, the JMWAVE operators were either “Inside” men who
worked out of the “Zenith Technical Enterprises” official offices, while the
“Outside” guys like Ayers, Roderick, Morales, Jenkins, Harper, et. al. worked
“in the field” and dealt directly with the Cubans.
Ayers worked in Training under the Maritime
activities branch head Gordon Campbell, and occasionally had to report to HQ
where he sometimes attended briefings of branch chiefs, including one in which he notes:
“All the branch chiefs were there as well as Mr. (Desmond) Fitzgerald and Mr.
(William) Harvey from Washington accompanied by Ted Shackley and Campbell. Dave
Morales introduced Mr. (David Atlee) Phillips who was identified as a coordinator
for the new initiatives with the exile political organizations. The briefings
were far more interesting and revealing than I anticipated….”
“It was during the period of these briefings (summer
of 1963), when I had reason to frequent the operations-branch offices in the
building adjacent to mine, that I finally met Colonel Rosselli. While waiting
for the briefing to begin, I would usually visit with Bob Wall or Rod (Rodick). One day
I walked into Wall’s corner office to see him talking with a dark-haired, sharply
dressed man. As I apologized for my intrusion, Wall introduced him as Colonel
Rosselli, ostensibly a former Army field grade officer now in service with CIA
as a paramilitary specialist. Rosselli greeted me warmly while at the same time
eyeing me carefully. He had a charming manner, self-confident, polished,
soft-spoken. Just for the hell of it, I threw out a hook and asked him if he’d
ever serve with the 11th Airborne Division. He looked at me
quizzically, then at Wall, and somewhat embarrassedly said he had not. Rosselli
was a presence in and about the operations building for most of the week of
briefings and I saw him frequently coming and going from Morales’ office. I
also observed him consulting with Rod in the plans room and occasionally walking
or driving around the JMWAVE complex with Gordon Campbell and Mr. Phillips, who
obviously held a very important position somewhere in the CIA covert operation
hierarchy.”
Ayers adds some light flavor to the story in
describing the places he saw the Inside men socializing. In a footnote Ayers
writes, “I observed Rosselli frequently when I had occasion to visit the
operations or intelligence branches…I also saw him with Roderick, Morales, and
a case officer by the name of Tom Klines lunching or having cocktails at the
State Bar, (a favorite JMWAVE staff watering hole) on U.S.1, not far from the
station, and at the Perrine New England Oyster House. I got the distinct impression
Rosselli and Morales were quite close and Roderick confirmed this in
conversations I had with him. By the middle of summer 1963, it was commonly
known that Rosselli was a mobster hit man type hired by the agency to conduct
covert operations designed to kill Castro. There was virtually no secret about
this at JMWAVE. Following my introduction to Rosselli in Walls’ office, my
contact with him was brief, casual, and cordial and did not involve operational
matters.”
Besides the State Bar, Ayers also mentions some social
occasions with JMWAVE personnel at the Black Caesar’s Forge, and the Green
Turtle Inn. From April 13 to 21, 1963 Harvey and “John A. Wallston” – aka
Rosselli resided at or ate and drank at the Plantataion Yacht Harbor Motel, the
Eden Roc and Fountainebleau Hotels in Miami. We know this because Harvey
submitted the pay stubs for the CIA to pick up the tabs.
Among Harvey’s “Ops Expenses QJWIN/ZRRIFLE” are $26
for “drinks and dinner for 2” at the Eden Roc, $75 charter fishing boat fee,
Islamorada, $200 for Eden Roc hotel rooms, and $1,000 for “ZRRIFLE/MI – No
receipt.
RFK
AT JMWAVE’S WALOOS GLADES HUNTING CAMP
Ayers says that the administration’s new covert
initiatives against Castro and Cuba not only had the approval of the NSC
Special Group, but Robert Kennedy the attorney general was brought into the mix
personally, meeting with the JMWAVE Inside men at a cocktail mixer in a safe
house adjacent to a golf course, and was flown by helicopter to one of the
Everglade base camps where he was personally introduced to some of the Cuban
commandos who were being trained there.
According to Ayers, he was sent to the “Waloos
Glades Hunting Camp” where he observed two helicopters – a military Bell-13
with the tail numbers taped over, and a civilian chopper from the West Palm
Beach air service parked next to two Quonset huts. While drinking coffee around
a camp fire, “the door to one of the Quonsets sung open and four men emerged.
As they moved into the circle of firelight I recognized Gordon Campbell. I had
seen him only a few times since my briefing with him but had been impressed
with his polished, slightly flamboyant executive manner. I caught my breath at
the appearance of the second man. It was attorney general Robert Kennedy.”
“The four men talked in low voices for a few
minutes, and then the attorney general came over and shook hands with each of
us, wishing us good luck and God’s speed on our mission. Hell, I didn’t even
know what my mission was. His white teeth sparkled, and I felt a strange sense
of strength and resolve when he grasped my hand. Then he and one of the Cubans
went to the civilian helicopter, and in minutes it took off. Now I understood
the need for extra secrecy. If the president felt strongly enough to send his
brother, something very big was being planned.”
“When the helicopter was gone, the deputy chief of
station came over,…In a Quonset hut…illuminatd by several Colman lanterns,
…charts, maps, and other papers on a table in the center of the room, he said,
‘The reason we’ve got you here and the reason for all the secrecy is that we
just got the green light from upstairs to go ahead on some missions we’ve been
planning for some time….You’ll be happy to know that the Special Group has
finally given us permission to use two-man submarines to strike Castro’s ships
in the harbors. Some of your UDT people will be involved in that. And next week
Rip’s (Robertson) boys are going to Eglin for parachute training, so an
airborne commando raid may not be far off. But right now we’ve got the go-ahead
to hit one of the major oil refineries from on the island. All we have to do is
get a commando force in shape to do the job.”
THE
TRAINING CAMPS
The men for these missions were trained at Point
Mary, Elliott Key, Plantion Key and the remote Pirate’s Lair, that could only
be reached by boat.
While Jenkins, Harper and Roderick worked with the
Cubans at Point Mary, a remote area near Key Largo, Captain Bradley Ayers and
Case Officer Porter Goss trained another team of Cubans at different locations
deep in the Everglades. That team was led by Julio Fernandez, and partially
financed - just as Rosselli supported his team at Point Mary, the
Ayers/Fernandez team was backed by Clare Booth Luce, wife of the Life Magazine publisher.
Luce wrote a photo feature on her “Cuban Boys” in Life, and on the night of the
assassination, she was awaken by a phone call from Julio Fernandez, who told
her he had a recording of Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin, as well as
photos and other items of evidence. Luce told Fernandez to call the FBI, but he
wasn’t heard from again.
Bradley Ayers says that he trained his team of
Cubans to attack an oil facility and docking terminal on the North Shore, while
the Point Mary team were trained as snipers. That was the team that was being trained
to carry out Pathfinder, the plan to kill Castro by shooting him with a high
powered rifle as he rode in an open jeep. And it is the Cubans at Point Mary we
are primarily concerned with as they are the most likely ones to have turned
their guns on JFK in Dallas.
And it is the Point Mary team who became involved
with John Rosseli.
On April 14, 1962 in Washington, D.C., Rosselli’s
former case officer Jim O’Connell sat in on a Rosselli-Harvey meeting, after
which O’Connell was reassigned to Okinawa and Harvey became Rosselli’s case
officer and O’Connell went out of the picture.
According to Stockton, Rosselli’s official
biographer, “On April 21, 1962, a year after the Bay of Pigs, Harvey and
Roselli met at the Miami airport, and the Get Castro enterprise took on a new
life. ‘The second phase [i.e., after Harvey took over] appears to lack the
high-level gangster flavor that characterized the first phase,” - meaning
Giancana and Trafficante were no longer consulted.
“Rosselli remained a prominent figure in the
operation, but working directly with the Cuban exile community, directly on
behalf of the CIA and directly under Harvey. In fact, immediately after he took
over the ZRRIFLE portfolio, Harvey cut Giancana, and most especially,
Trafficante out of the operation. It would be rational to assume, however, that
Rosselli kept them informed, as a matter of Mob tact and diplomacy.”
“In an internal memorandum dated May 14, 1962,”
writes Stockton, “Sheffield Edwards noted a phone call from Harvey, who said
‘that he was dropping any plans for the use of [Rosselli] for the future.’ The
comment may have been an accurate indication of intent at the time, but it was
not factually correct. Rather it was a conclusive, deliberately misleading
signal, obscuring the fact that Bill was tucking the Rosselli/Get Castro
operation into his vest-pocket.”
At that point Rosselli got a “crash course in
intelligence trade craft, particularly the need for security and perhaps most
especially the use of the telephone, counter-surveillance, the use of cutouts,
recruitment requirements, and name checking – the usually boring but vital
aspects of intelligence work. Most probably, as the circumstances permitted,
the two men from worlds apart felt each other out, probed each others’
vulnerabilities and weaknesses – often over a bottle or two – and gradually
formed the basis for an enduring partnership.”
Rosselli’s alias was “John Ralston” or “Colonel
Ralston.” (also spelled John A. Wallston).
Two JMWAVE officers recalled that Rosselli,
“…frequented JMWAVE…sometimes attending staff briefings, but more often
engaging in demolition exercises with Ed Roderick, in rounds of cribbage, or
heading off…for drinking bouts.”
“Dave M. was assigned to Johnny’s raiders to exert
day-to-day control over a group of buccaneers who could have turned a messy
situation into a disastrous one. It’s more than possible that the U-Haul
resupply caper recalled by Shackley…was actually a resupply mission for
Johnny’s ops base in the Keys.”
Sen. Mondale. When you were asked to help arrange
for the assassination of Mr. Castro, what was your understanding of who In the
United States government wanted you to do this.
Mr. Rosselli. Well, anybody in the U.S. government.
My point was if I am recruited in the Army, and I was in the Second World War,
it is like being recruited in the Army, and if it comes through from higher
authority I don’t ask any questions how high it was as long as there were
government people I was satisfied that I was doing a duty for my country.
Testimony of John Roselli, 24, JUN 1975 157-10014-10001 – p. 62-63 of 97)
“Various accounts place Rosselli physically –
sometimes in the uniform of a U.S. Army colonel – at the JMWAVE
headquaraters….(but),” according to Stockton, “it is highly unlikely that
Rosselli did, indeed come onto the base. Such a visit would have been a severe
violation of basic security and would have been anathema to Harvey.”
“Once Dick Helms personally cleared Rosselli for the
assassination operation, the mafioso was covered as a colonel in the U.S. Arm
and Dave M. moved from the Langley basement (Task Force W) to Florida. Towards
the end of May 1962 the CIA built a small base for Rosselli’s unit on Point
Mary, Key Largo, clearing out an acre or so of the thick mangrove forest for
rough-hewn sheds and two crude structures. A floating dock was anchored on
coral reef. The purpose of the base was to train snipers.”
From the Rosselli Chronology File: “In Key Largo,
Roselli was known as “Colonel,” training Cubans as fighters and earning
Harvey’s admiration. On midnight missions, these exile soldiers reportedly
traveled in twin powerboats to secret landing spots along the Cuban coastline
to provide armaments to other anti-Castro conspirators. One JFK file includes
a heroic account of Roselli going along on some of these trips, once saving
himself from a sinking boat riddled with bullets after being attacked by a
Cuban patrol waiting in the shadows. According to another JFK file,
Roselli was gone for so long on one mission that Giancana worried that he had
been killed.”
“Sometime in 1962, the CIA created a file
called “Project Johnny” about Roselli’s heroics and kept it locked in a safe.
Documents show this file was given a number — 667 270 — though years later it
could not be found by congressional investigators, who mentioned looking for it
to trace the actions of this mobster spy.”
As the Cuban Missile Crisis was getting underway, in
October 1962 Rosselli said that he talked to Harvey over the phone and Harvey
instructed him to go to Florida where he stayed in contact with his Cuban
friends for the duration of the Cuban missile crisis, and it was three JMWAVE maritime teams who were on their way to Cuba when they were sent on their way to Cuba by Harvey and Rosselli and then called
back on orders of RFK.
Rosselli’s Chronology File reads: “During the Cuban
missile crisis, Rosselli was in Chicago. He contacted (William) Harvey at
Harvey’s mother’s home in Indianapolis and left his number in Chicago. Harvey
then called him, told him to go to Washington, D.C. From Washington D.C.,
Rosselli traveled to Florida where he stayed for the duration of the Cuban
missile crisis. He, at times, would, through his Cuban contacts, attempt to
verify the location of the Russian missiles in Cuba. Rosselli claimed that this
had been successful. After the Cuban missile crisis, Harvey called Rosselli and
told him to stop all contacts with any and all persons involved in past Cuban
missions. Harvey never stated why the missions were being called off.”
According to Rosselli, he met with Harvey in June,
1963, the last time they met officially in regards to the Cuban projects,
though they remained close friends and social acquaintances.
What became of the JMWAVE commandos after their plans were "disapproved by higher authority" and the missions they trained for were called off, both the Cuban Missile Crisis Pathfinders, and when
the Pathfinder mission was officially “disapproved by higher authority”?
The National Security Council’s Special Group
(Augumented w/ RFK) was responsible for evaluating proposed covert intelligence
operations against Cuba, and approving or disapproving them. Sometimes JFK would over rule a covert operation approved by the NSC SGA – such as the
leaflet dropping mission.
A leaflet was prepared for release by airplanes over
Cuba, and after it was approved by the NSC SGA, President Kennedy ran it past
Robert Morrow, whose objections to it led to JFK withdrawing approval. Other
covert ops, - such as one to destroy an oil refinery, was rescinded after the
oil company objected, hoping to retrieve its Cuban assets in full operating
order.
The three “Pathfinder” crews sent to Cuba during the
Cuban Missile Crisis by William Harvey, were recalled in route by RFK, - the
straw that broke Harvey’s back, as he was relieved as head of the Cuban Task
Force W by RFK shortly thereafter, and posted to Rome, as Chief of Station by
the CIA.
“Harvey’s removal from Task Force W at Bobby
Kennedy’s behest was a watershed event for the CIA,” writes Stockton, “even
though it may not have been recognized as such at the time.”
“From October 1962 on – after Helms and McCone
replaced Harvey with Desmond FitzGerald, who was far more acceptable to the
Kennedys as a person – the CIA was vulnerable to political manipulation. This
became evident again in 1967, when (CIA Director Richard) Helms hastily called
for the inspector general’s report, in anticipation of the fallout from Drew
Pearson’s revelations...(about the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro).”
In Harvey’s place, Desmond FitzGerald was appointed
the new head of Task Force W, the Cuban desk at the CIA, and it was FitzGerald
who, on September 25, briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff on CIA covert Cuban
operations, especially the ones that were approved by the NSC SGA and required
military assistance, that would be provided by General Krulak, whose aide,
Colonel Higgins, wrote the memo minutes of that important meeting.
That the anti-Castro Cuban commandos, trained by
Ayers, Roderick, Jenkins and Harper continued their – NSC SGA approved covert
action missions against Cuba was readily apparent on November 1, 1963 when the
New York Times ran a front page article about the CIA raider ship “The Rex,”
and a photo of the ship docked at Palm Beach, Fla., not far from President
Kennedy’s Southern White House home.
Castro had complained publicly on television, and
the New York Times confirmed that the ship had deposited teams of commandos on
a North Shore beach, some of whom were captured, with high powered rifles and
scopes, and they were paraded on Cuban TV, and acknowledge that the CIA
officially approved and supported and trained them. The CIA raider ship “Rex,”
the New York Times reported, was leased to “Collins Radio” company of
Richardson, Texas.
Collins Radio also made and serviced the radios for
Air Force One, all of the executive aircraft as well as the Air Force Strategic
Air Command bombers. The company later
merged with Rockwell International, to become Rockwell-Collins, a major defense
contractor that hired Eugene Wheaton as a security consultant in the Middle
East.
[Note: For some reason, even after the Collins Radio
cover was blown by the New York Times in the Nov.1, 1963 cover story, the
National Security Agency (NSA) used Collins Radio as a cover story for the
construction of its new multi-million dollar headquarters in suburban Virginia,
a transparent cover that was easily exposed when a security guard at the
construction site was suspiciously murdered. It would be remiss for me not to
mention the fact that Bradley Ayers and a former Havana Embassy officer were
discredited in their photo identification of JMWAVE officers Gordon Campbell
and David Morales at the scene of RFK’s murder, and Ayers recalls meeting with
Campbell after an official death certificate was issued for him. Regardless of
that, I believe what Ayers says about Rosselli at JMWAVE, as it rings true to
what else we know.]
Both Bradley Ayers and Gene Wheaton are like flies
on the wall, insiders who saw and heard those covert operators who were engaged
in the secret operations that led to the murder of President Kennedy at Dealey
Plaza.
On November 22, 1963, as news of the assassination
spread around the world, it was early evening in Italy, where William Harvey
was awaken from a drunken sleep by his aide (probably Mark Wyatt) and told of
the murder, sparking him to mumble, “This was bound to happen, and it’s
probably good that it did.”
John Rosselli told the Church Committee Senators
that he was in bed at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, where he was awaken by a phone call from a Hollywood movie producer friend who told him about
the assassination.
It was 1:30 pm in Washington D.C. where Desmond
Fitzgerald and his associate Sam Halpern were sitting down to lunch at an exclusive and
historic Georgetown Club when they were told of the assassination and left
immediately. As they walked out, Halpern said, Fitzgerald thought out loud, wondering if his
Cubans were involved.
That is something we should all be wondering now,
over fifty years later.
PART IV - THE PATHFINDERS AFTER HARVEY AND ROSSELLI -
PART V - THE PATHFINDERS AFTER THE DEALEY PLAZA OPERATION
PART IV - THE PATHFINDERS AFTER HARVEY AND ROSSELLI -
PART V - THE PATHFINDERS AFTER THE DEALEY PLAZA OPERATION
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