Valkyrie and Pathfinder at Dealey Plaza - garrison magazine

VALKYRIE AND PATHFINDER AT DEALEY PLAZA 

As published in garrison magazine (Vol. 3, Nov. 2019) 

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By William E. Kelly, Jr.

Billkelly3@gmail.com

(609-346-0229

"We now know to a fairly good degree of certainty what happened at Dealey Plaza. The motives were piling up - the Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, the back channel to Cuba,…to the point they had to assassinate him. I think…with the compilation of the information we have today, that the mechanism of the crime came out of the allegiance between the CIA and the Mafia. They already had an assassination apparatus set up for killing Castro and they just switched targets and killed Kennedy instead." 1)  - Former FBI Agent Bill Turner

After over a half-century of investigating the assassination of President Kennedy I still don’t know who killed JFK, but I am figuring out the M.O. – the Modus Operandi – how it was done, and it’s pretty obvious that it was a Covert Intelligence Operation and the key words to deciphering the details are VALKYRIE and PATHFINDER.

VALKYRIE was the code name for the German military plot that failed to kill Hitler on July 20, 1944, that the CIA said it “studied in detail” for a strategy to use against Fidel Castro. 2)

PATHFINDER was the CIA code name for a detailed tactical plan to kill Castro with a high powered rifle as he rode by in an open jeep. 3)

It appears that these were the specific plans – not plots – detailed contingency plans that were designed to kill Castro but redirected to President Kennedy in Dallas. And if they weren’t such detailed plans, we never would have figured it out.

INTRO – A Basic Research Primer

Before getting into the details of how this was done, I’d like to describe some of the research techniques that were and are being used to take this work further.

A NOTE ON RESEARCH TECHNIQUES

The Archivist of the United States David Ferriero is a blogger - and wrote about the remarkable discovery of thousands of previously unknown letters written by Walt Whitman when he was a federal secretary in the Justice Department during the Civil War. The uncovering of these records was accomplished by a lone professor who was familiar with Whitman's unique signature and went looking through the federal files where Whitman’s official correspondence would likely to be located. And he found some, thousands of them, so many it will take decades for Whitman scholars to properly review them. 4)

But the AOTUS – David Ferriero, who promotes himself as a champion of open government and records, wrote a recommendation to the President shortly before President Trump reneged on his promise to release all of the remaining JFK assassination records in full by 2017, as the JFK Act of 1992 law required. That letter of recommendation itself is still withheld in full from the public. 5)

But calling attention to how the Whitman letters were discovered in the government’s attic where they were all a long, just goes to show that new research techniques can be employed with success, as it is being done in many places on many levels.

HYPOTHESIS

Just as scientists break down complicated problems into smaller parts in order to understand it – we too must take such an approach – and develop some basic hypothesis, as John Newman has done in the course of his work, including – “The plot was designed to make it APPEAR that the Kennedy brothers’ plan to overthrow Castro had been successfully turned around by Fidel, resulting in the assassination.” Other hypothesis grow from this. 6)

ASSUMPTIONS

For starters we have to make some basic assumptions that are necessary to procede using logic and reason as our guides.

The first basic assumption is that the assassination of President Kennedy at Dealey Plaza, whatever you believe occurred there, and regardless of the role of the accused assassin and self-proclaimed Patsy Lee Harvey Oswald, the event was a covert intelligence operation and must be studied as such in order to understand it. As California attorney Bill Simpich, author of State Secret, has said, you must view the assassination as an operation in order to proceed. 7)

Another basic assumption, as the Microsoft analysis of the most recently released assassination records at the National Archives (NARA) concluded, the assassination had something to do with Cuba, as President Kennedy, his accused assassin and the killer of the accused all had ties to Cuba in common, and a large selection of official records on the assassination relate to Cuba. 8)

 RESEARCH TECHNIQUES

In the course of my half-century study of the assassination, Professor Peter Dale Scott has been a guiding light, and I utilize three of his basic research techniques and have developed some of my own.

Peter Dale Scott’s “Negative Template” thesis, Phase One and Phase Two Cover-Stories and recognizing the Psych War – Black Prop Operation to blame the conspiracy on Castro Cuban Communists are key elements in focusing on what’s important and narrowing the suspects. 

The “Negative Template” thesis is the idea that the records that are referenced and referred to elsewhere, but are missing, are the most significant records – as this report on the CIA’s “detailed study” of the Valkyrie plot and the missing Pathfinder records confirms that thesis. 9)

Scott, like Newman, also calls attention to the facts that indicate a very detailed psychological warfare – black propaganda campaign was part of the plan to kill the President, a false attempt to blame the conspiracy to kill JFK on Cuban Castro Communists, which formed the basis of what Scott calls the “Phase One” cover story that was officially and popularly rejected. Yet it continues today as an “active measure” with former CIA agents Brian Latell and Bob Baer – along with their media assets Gus Russo and Phil Shenon – actively promoting this failed thesis that Castro was behind the Dealey Plaza operation. Because this aspect of the plan failed, like all failed covert intelligence operations, it gives us an insight into those responsible. 10)

John Newman also recognized this – and wrote about it, as I have done. Newman wrote that “The plot to assassinate President Kennedy was designed to deceive both people in the government and the public at large. A convincing trail of evidence was established to make it appear that the Kennedy brothers’ plan to overthrow Castro had been turned around against them by Fidel himself, resulting in the assassination of President Kennedy.” 11)

Most successful covert intelligence operations never make the news, only those that fail, like the Bay of Pigs and Watergate, get public exposure, and the part of the plot to kill JFK that failed was the psych war aspect to blame Fidel Castro for the conspiracy, which therefore gives us some clear insight in to those responsible for the plan. (See: The Part of the Plot that Failed.  12)

MO –MODUS OPERANDI

British Major General Llewellyn W. Atcheriey developed the Modus Operandi – MO system of classification of criminals by their common traits – which leads us to the MO of what happened at Dealey Plaza. The assassination must be recognized as a Covert Intelligence Operation. (See - Modus Operandi 13)

Three Time - 3X HITS 

In the course of my research, while reading the House Select Committee on Assassination (HSCA) reports, I came up with my own research technique I call Three Time Hits.

Besides the standard research technique utilized by all journalists and investigators covering complicated stories in starting a name and subject file and chronology, I began to start files on certain subjects when they came up in three separate areas – which first led me to focus on Collins Radio, then the Pan Am Bank of Miami, and more recently Looking Glass and Silver Dollar. 14)

COP PROFILE

Covert Operational Personality Profile (COP)

When the Secret Service commissioned the Exceptional Case study of those individuals who have assassinated presidents or attacked them, they came up with psychological profiles – but neglected to include one significant category – the covert intelligence operator.

Being from New Jersey, where such criminal profiling originated, I defined the Covert Operational Personality Profile (COP) that more clearly fits known or alleged political assassins. 15)

PART 1 – THE CIA/MAFIA PLOTS TO KILL CASTRO

As Bill Turner said decades ago, we knew then that the mechanism of death was already established and in place to kill Castro – and was redirected to JFK at Dealey Plaza, and we find a number of investigators and suspects who call attention to the significance of the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro and their association with the murder of the President.

SAM STERN

Warren Commission attorney Samuel Stern (who is still alive and practicing in Washington D.C.), told the HSCA that if they had known about the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro they would have looked into that area thoroughly. Stern stated 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.”  16)

Well just because they didn’t know about it and didn’t look into it, that doesn’t mean we can’t.

DAVID ATLEE PHILLIPS – Oswald used the same plan they had devised to kill Castro.

Over drinks in Washington, Phillips told the veteran Congressional investigator Kevin Walsh that, “My private opinion is that JFK was done in by a conspiracy, likely including American intelligence officers.”

When he died on 7th July, 1988, Phillips left behind an unpublished manuscript. The novel is about a CIA officer who lived in Mexico City. In the novel the character states: "I was one of those officers who handled Lee Harvey Oswald... We gave him the mission of killing Fidel Castro in Cuba... I don't know why he killed Kennedy. But I do know he used precisely the plan we had devised against Castro. Thus the CIA did not anticipate the president's assassination, but it was responsible for it. I share that guilt." 17)

 JOHN ROSELLI and JACK ANDERSON

Mafia syndicate mobster John Roselli told Washington columnist Jack Anderson that he was recruited by the CIA to kill Fidel Castro during the Eisenhower administration, and after a number of attempts to poison Castro failed, Roselli assisted a team of anti-Castro Cuban commandos run out of the CIA’s JMWAVE station in Miami assigned to infiltrate Cuba and kill Castro.  

While both William Pawley and Clare Booth Luce also supported some of the JMWAVE maritime commandos – Roselli’s team was the one trained by U.S. Army Ranger Captain Edward Roderick at a sniper’s training base in a remote area called Point Mary, off Key Largo, Florida.

After James O’Connell, Roselli’s CIA case officer was William Harvey, head of Task Force W., that set the policies for the covert missions run out of the JMWAVE station. At Roselli’s request, Harvey and JMWAVE chief of station Ted Shackley oversaw the delivery of a U-Haul trailer full of CIA supplied arms, ammunition and explosives to Roselli’s team.

Roselli said that the last mission his team conducted was in March, 1963, the results of which were unknown to him, but he never saw them again. After Harvey was fired by RFK as head of Task Force W. and appointed CIA chief of station in Rome, he returned to meet with Roselli for one last time in June, 1963. They met in Florida, had dinner at a swanky restaurant and stayed at a first class hotel, the bill paid by Harvey with funds dedicated to the HT/RIFLE Castro assassination account.

As Anderson reported, “There were four more assassination attempts, the plotters were smuggled into Cuba with high-powered rifles. The last assassination squad, Roselli heard, made it to a Havana rooftop before they were caught….This was around March 1, 1963. Then the project was abandoned. Roselli saw (his CIA case officer William) Harvey for the last time in June, 1963. Five months later, Lee Harvey Oswald gunned down President Kennedy in Dallas. Oswald had been active in the pro-Castro movement. Shortly before that dreadful day in Dallas, Oswald had made a mysterious trip to Mexico where he visited the Cuban embassy. The Warren Commission found no evidence, however, that Oswald was in the hire of Havana…..Roselli made no apology for his CIA role. U.S. authorities call him a mobster. He regards himself as a patriot.” 18)

So in retrospect, we can say with some authority that the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro were intimately entwined with the assassination of President Kennedy – as former FBI agent Bill Turner, former Warren Commission attorney Sam Stern, former CIA officer David Atlee Phillips and mobster John Roselli all attest. 

They are not silly conspiracy theorists, but serious investigators and a number of key players involved in the operations.

JMWAVE

Former CIA officer Rolf Mowatt-Larrsen - once the CIA chief of station in Moscow concluded that if the CIA was involved in the assassination of Presdient Kennedy, that involvement probably stemmed from the JMWAVE station, and he names Jacob Easterline as a CIA officer capable of being the mastermind of the plot. Easterline was one of the top planners of the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, and was later assigned to disolve the JMWAVE station after the assassination. 19)

General Brute Krulak assigned U.S. Army Ranger Captain Bradley Ayers to train anti-Castro Cubans at JMWAVE, along with another Ranger, Captain Edward Roderick. While Ayers trained the Cubans in small boat maneuvering and infiltration and exfiltration techniques at a remote base in the Everglades called Pirates Lair, Roderick worked with a sniper team at Point Mary, off Key Largo, that was affiliated with Colonel “Rawlins” – John Roselli – the Pathfinders.

After leaving the Army, because he didn’t officially work for the CIA and didn’t sign a secrecy agreement, Ayers wrote a book that wasn’t pre-approved by the CIA – “The War that Never Was,” which was published in Indiana by Bobs-Merrell, a school book firm that reportedly had an office in the Dallas Texas School Book Depository. The attorney for Boobs-Merrell, who edited Ayers’ manuscript, was William Harvey, the former CIA officer who ran Task Force W and was fired by Robert Kennedy for sending the Pathfinders into Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. Harvey edited out the names of a number of JMWAVE officials mentioned by Ayers, including Gordon Campbell, the director of the Maritime operations. 20)

Years later Ayers wrote another book, “The Zenith Secret,” that does mention Gordon Campbell, as well as Roderick and Roselli, and takes its name from the Zenith Technological Services – the cover companay for JMWAVE at the University of Miami, South Campus. 21)

THE TRAINERS

Taking a cue from Ayers, I thought it wise to take a closer look at the CIA trainers – and have identified a number of them who come into play.

At the top of the list is Paul Linebarger, who Joseph Smith, in his book “Portrain of a Cold Warrior,” describes as the primary CIA educator in covert intelligence operations. The former Army officer who wrote the official text book on propaganda and psychological warfare, Linebarger was a college professor who gave private classes in covert intelligence procedures and techniques at his Washington D.C.  home. Among his students Linebarger was especially proud of E. Howard Hunt and Edwin Lansdale, who he said “had black minds.” 22)

As Smith explains, Linebarger divided propaganda into different categories, with black propaganda being a very specific intelligence operation, one that perports to originate from the enemy – and is known as Black Propaganda. Besides his own book “Propaganda” – Linebarger used David Maurer’s “The Big Con,” as an example of good covert intelligence operations. Maurer, a Kentucky professor of linguistics, wrote about his unique study of the lingo and slang of confidence men, con artists and swindlers, and was the basis for the movie “The Sting.”

At a retirement party for CIA officer Haveland Smith, journalists Thomas Powers (“Intelligence Wars”) met General Odom, the former head of the National Security Agencey (NSA) and U.S. Army Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence (ACSI), whose officers are all over Dealey Plaza. When Powers asked Odom, what makes a good case officer? Odom replied – “the movie ‘The Sting’,” clearly indicating he had taken Linebarger’s course that included “The Big Con” as part of its curriculum. 23)

Linebarger worked closely with General Edwin Lansdale in the Phillipines, where he recruited Napoleon Valeriano, who was trained in the covert black arts by Linebarger.

According to the official CIA History of the Bay of Pigs, Lansdale brought Napoleon Valeriano to Guatemala to train the anti-Castro Cuban commando crusaders in guerilla warfare. But rather late in the game, Lansdale and Valeriano were removed from the program, and the plan changed from the infiltration of small teams on the east coast of Cuba near the mountains where they would conduct a guerilla war against Castro, and instead went with a full fledged amphibious landing, at the Bay of Pigs. Those two changes in plans doomed the invasion before it could even land and the original planner – Jacob Esterline and the U.S. Marine officer responsible, tried to resign, but were persuaded to stay by Richard Bissell.  24)

Lansdale then became head of the Kennedy administration’s covert Cuban action program called Mongoose, while William Harvey was brought in to run the Cuban Task Force W out of the basement of the new CIA headquarters in Langley and took over the case officer responsibilities for John Roselli. 25)

Charles Ford was Princeton student from Atlantic City, N.J. when he joined the Army at the start of World War II and was assigned to the Office of Strategic Services. The OSS, under Gen. William Donovan, were originally trained by the British MI6 – with James Jesus Angleton being personally coached in the covert arts by British-Soviet double agent Kim Philby. 26)

Donovan adpoted the British model of training and issued training manuals to all OSS officers, and the same training manuals were adapted by the CIA for the training of the Cubans. 27)

After intense OSS training Charles Ford was sent on a special mission to China with another OSS officer – J. Walton Moore, who should become the head of the Dallas CIA Domestic Contacts Division office for many years, while Ford was assigned to the CIA office of training, where he rose up the ranks over the years. Ford’s career remained in the Training Division except for one year when he was assigned to the Operations branch Cuban desk – Task Force W and JMWAVE. There he assumed a false Italian identity and was tasked with assisting Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, doing whatever he requested. 28)

In the course of his research for his series of books on the assassination, John Newman discovered that one of the two transcripts of HSCA interviews with Ford is missing, and that what was frequently said of Ford wasn’t true – he did not represent RFK in secret meetings with the Mafia to discuss the assassination of Castro. But he did meet with dissident Cubans on RFK’s behalf. 29)

As an Army intelligence officer Newman worked closely with General Odom at NSA, and has unmasked the CIA training officer described by Antonio Veciana as the man who took his CIA security oath and trained him in “psychological warfare,” Linebarger’s specialty. Veciana said that some of this training took place in an office in the Pan Am Bank building in Miami, Florida, which was one of the places that is mentioned more than three times in divergent areas of the JFK assassination story. 30)

After the assassination Charles Ford went back to the CIA’s Training Division, and was given custody of the CIA’s copy of the Zapruder Filim – that the Secret Service notes was to be used “for training purposes.”

NARROWING THE PLOTS TO KILL CASTRO

Cuban intelligence officer Fabian Escalante, who knew a lot about these matters, wrote a book that detailed over 600 attempts to kill Castro, but he didn’t include the ones that matter – the ones connected to the assassination of President Kennedy.

For starters there’s the plot to kill Castro that involved Antonio Veciana, that forced him to flee Cuba and led to the arrest of Sylvia Odio’s parents, who were in Cuban jails before the assassination when Sylvia wrote to her father on the Isle of Pines to tell him about the visit she received from Oswald and two Cubans. In jail Mr. Odio met John Martino, who visited Dallas to promote his book, “I Was Castro’s Prisoner,” and met Syliva and her sister and Father Walter McChann, the Catholic priest patron of the Dallas Cuban community. 31)

Besides the attempt to kill Castro that involved both Antonio Veciana and Sylvia Odio’s parents, there’s the matter of Dr. Rolando Cubella (AMLASH), who was one of the founders of the DRE and one of the Cuban military officers the CIA was trying to get to kill Castro and take over the government in a coup. 32)

THE CIA’S “DETAILED STUDY” OF VALKYRIE - Targeting disgruntled military officers to stage a coup.

As part of this project, we learn from the September 25, 1963 briefing of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by the CIA’s Desmond FitzGerald that the CIA was “studying in detail” the failed July 20, 1944 German military officer’s plot to kill Castro that was to be adapted for use against Castro. This is all detailed in the memo prepared by Col. Walter Higgins, the adjunct to Gen. Brute Krulak – who was responsible for U.S. military support of CIA covert operations against Cuba. 33)

When Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC) director Jim Lesar recognized the significance of this memo, they cited it in an FOIA request for the CIA’s “detailed study” of the July 20^th Valkyrie plot, but the CIA couldn’t find it or any CIA records at all. The CIA then belatedly claimed to have discovered just one document with a reference to it from 1954, blaming the failure of the plot on Communists. 34)

While the judge discounted the significance of these records and their connection to the CIA assassination plots to kill Castro and association with the assassination of President Kennedy, the AARC was granted an appeal of one aspect of the FOIA request for the records of the CIA’s search for the Valkyrie documents.

Oral arguments on this case were presented in Washington D.C. court with the AARC being represented by attorney Dan Alcorn. The three judges can take weeks or even months to come up with a decision.  35)

VALKYRIE at Dealey Plaza

Even without the CIA’s records that they have apparently lost or destroyed, we can study the July 20, 1944 Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler and see how it was to be adapted for use against Castro and possibly was redirected to JFK at Dealey Plaza.

For starters, the CIA could have asked three key players in the Valkyrie drama who they were already working closely with – former CIA director Allen Dulles, his OSS assistant Mary Bancroft and a key player in the plot – Gestapo officer Hans Bernd Gisivious, one of the few of the primary participants to survive. Gisivious survived with the assistance of Dulles and Bancroft Bancroft went on to translate Gisivious’ history of the Third Reich. A newspaper reported that Dulles and Gisivious met for an anniversary dinner in Washington D.C. on July 20, 1954, the tenth anniversary of the failed plot to kill Hitler. 36)

As we review the story of the failed July 20, 1944 Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler, we can see how the CIA would attempt to use the same strategy against Castro, and it appears it was use against JFK at Dealey Plaza.

There are five basic aspects of the Valkyrie plot that fall into place in Dallas beginning with the use of standard covert intelligence operational techniques – i.e. - nothing is written down so there are no written records, etc., and the operation is given a code name that only direct participants know – Valkyire. 37)

Valkyrie are legendary Norse fairies that float above a battlefield and chose who will live and die, and is the operational code name for what became the July 20, 1944 coup attempt and failed assassination of Hitler. The plan was devised by high level German military officers who recognized that Germany would be totally destroyed if they didn’t kill Hitler, take over the government and surrender to the Western Allies.  

A second part of the Valkyrie plan that was adapted for use against Castro and redirected to JFK at Dealey Plaza was the encouragement of disgruntled high level military officers to commit to the plan and exercise a coup to take over the government.

At his September 25, 1963 briefing of the Joint Chiefs of Staff the CIA’s Desmond Fitzgerald said this was part of the “psychological” operations, and that while they had identified some disgruntled Cuban military officers they were not confident enough to communicate with each other. While that may have been the case among the Cuban military officers, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff were united in their dissatisfaction with President Kennedy. 38)

A third key aspect of the Valkyrie plan was to get the approval of the victim, and Col. Von Staufenberg drew up the Valkyrie plan in such a way that it did get the approval and signature of Hitler. As it was explained to Hitler, the Valkyrie plan was a “continuity of government” plan that would only be put into action in the case of an emergency – the example given was that of a slave labor revolt that required the securing of key government buildings and media outlets. Not mentioned to Hitler that his own death would also kick in the operation. 39)

The forth aspect of the Valkyrie plan that was adapted to the assassination of President Kennedy was the use of the “Home Guard” to carry out the “boots on the ground” tasks that had to be accomplished. In the United States what they called the “Home Guard” in Germany is the state National Guard or Army Reserves. 40)

Many of the Dallas Police officers and most of the Dallas Police Special Services intelligence unit were also members of the National Guard, including Capt. George Lumpkin, driver of the Pilot car that proceeded a mile ahead of the motorcade looking for possible trouble, and in the back seat included Col. Whitmeyer, head of all of the U.S. Army Reserve units in North Texas.

When they got to Dealey Plaza Lumpkin pulled off to the sidewalk at Houston and Main to tell the traffic patrolman there that the motorcade was only a mile and a few minutes behind, also telling the Sixth Floor sniper sixty feet above them.

After going to Parkland Hosptial, Lumpkin returned to Dealey Plaza where he met TSBD superintendent Roy Truly. Even though Truly had seen Oswald in the second floor lunchroom with DPD motorcycle officer Marion Campbell within two minutes of the last shot, and knew he wasn’t the shooter, Truly falsely told Lumpkin that Oswald was the only missing employee – and gave Lumpkin a piece of paper with Oswald’s name and Mrs. Paine’s Irving address. Lumpkin and Truly then went to the sixth floor where Homicide Captain Will Fritz was inspecting the recently discovered rifle. Lumpkin gave Fritz Oswald’s name and address. Fritz then went across the street where he met privately with Sheriff Bill Decker, a meeting of which there is no record as to what they discussed. Back at his office Fritz ordered some of his men to go out to Irving and get Osawld – but they said “There he sits” – having just been arrested at the Texas Theater.

In the hours after the assassination the U.S. Army Reserve officers serving with the Dallas Police made major moves –especially Capt. Gannaway and Jack Revell of the Special Services unit and Col. Jack Crichton, head of the 488^th Army Reserves Intelligence unit that oversaw the Dallas Emergency Communications bunker below the Science Museum at the Texas Fairgrounds, where the DPD Special Services Unit also had their headquarters. Because the DPS SSU ran undercover informants, they maintained their office outside City Hall so the informants wouldn’t be recognized.

So just as the German Home Guard were to carry out the Valkyrie plan, the US Army Reserve officers in Texas played major roles in the assassination story as it unfolded.

Then another key aspect of the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler, that was to be adapted by the CIA for use against Castro – but redirected to JFK at Dallas, was to blame the assassination and conspiracy on communists – Castro Cuban Communists – that they did through Oswald. 41)

As Sen. Richard Schweiker (R. Pa.) of the Church Committee said, “there are the fingerprints of intelligence” all over the assassination of President Kennedy and it’s cover-up, and these five “fingerprints of intelligence” clearly place the Valkyrie plot in Dealey Plaza as the strategic backbone of the operation. 42)

While Valkyrie may have been the basic strategy that was adopted and adapted – Pathfinder was the much more specific tactical plan to kill Fidel Castro that was redirected to JFK at Dealey Plaza.

And because the CIA can no longer find any records of their “detailed study” of the Valkyrie plot to be used against Castro, it fits Peter Dale Scott’s “Negative Template” thesis that there are no longer any official records of the most significant events.

PATHFINDER

Englishman Malcolm Blunt, who has spent more time roaming the JFK Records Collection at the National Archives than anyone I know, first provided me with the Pathfinder documents he uncovered. 43)

The “Pathfinder” operation would have gone the way of Jimmy Hoffa, as all documentary records of it disappeared within the purged CIA files, if it wasn’t for three – not one, or two, but three (actually eight) NPIC technicians who blew the whistle when they learned that Congress was interested in the CIA plots to kill Castro and came forward with their information.

According to the CIA no one there today heard of an operation called “Pathfinder,” and they have no records of anything called “Pathfinder,” except for one reference in a file devoted to Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis, who was heavily involved in Cuban activities, but wasn’t an agent or operative of the CIA, but rather US Air Force Intelligence. 44)

Though its significance was not recognized at the time, we first learned about the Pathfinder files from the Congressional records released under the JFK Act of 1992, when it was recorded on the official record that in 1975 Dino Brugioni of the NPIC informed the CIA top brass that three NPIC technicians who were assigned to the Miami, anti-Castro Cuban JMWAVE station recalled working on the PATHFINDER program that was an assassination plan to kill Castro. 

When the Congressional Church Committee was investigating the CIA-Mafia plot to kill Castro, these NPIC technicians, assigned to the JMWAVE station, came forward to make their superiors aware of two CIA contingency plans to kill Castro and one to kill his brother Raoul.

We first learned about Pathfinder from our old friend at NPIC - Dino Brugioni, who we know from his books on Photo Fakery and the Cuban Missile Crisis, and his work on the Zapruder film at NPIC, on the weekend of the assassination, making the first set of briefing board.

In this MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD, dated 21 March 1975,

It is noted that:

1)      On 19 March, Dino A. Brugioni, Chief, Western Geographic Division (NPIC), informed me (CIA Operational Division Chief) that three personnel assigned to his division had told him that while serving at JMWAVE, Miami, Florida or in the Imagery Analysis Service in Washington during the 1960’s, they had heard references to assassination plans on Fidel Castro.

2)      On 20 March, I met with the following NPIC personnel who had either served in the Imagery Analysis Service or at JMWAVE on Cuban related problems: Gordon Duvall, Earl Shoemaker, Tom Helmke, Bruce Barrett, Reyes Ponce, George Arthur, Eugene Lydon, and William Hanlon. The purpose of this meeting was to ascertain whether their participation was related to case officer generated materials or bona fide operations. 45)

 [Note: that's eight witnesses, not three]. 

3)      There appeared to be two plans involving Fidel Castro and an incident that may have been related to Raul Castro…….

4)      The incident involving Raul Castro was not a formalized plan. It consisted of a paramilitary raid on Santiago de Cuba harbor. There was a rumor at JMWAVE that, while exiting the harbor, Raul Castro’s home had been fired upon by a paramilitary case officer named “Rip” Robertson. 46)

5)      To the best of my knowledge these facts represent the totality of any participation by our personnel in these matters. We have no further knowledge that the Fidel Castro operation ever advanced beyond the planning stage. 

SIGNED Edward S. Cates, Chief, Imagery Exploitation Group, NPIC

While it may not have officially  “advanced beyond the planning stage” and was not implemented against the original target - Fidel Castro, Pathfinder was an off-the-shelf tactical plan that could have, and I believe was redirected to JFK at Dealey Plaza, and further analysis can prove me right or wrong,

It appears that “Rip” Robertson’s ride-by shoot up of Raul Castro’s home had already taken place, and the two Fidel Castro operations were formalized into distinct plans that, according to the Imagery Exploitation Group at NPIC, didn’t advance beyond the planning stage.

And there were plans to kill Castro known to the NPIC techs – two of them specifically.

According to this NPIC chief the plans involving Fidel, to the knowledge of our people were: 

(a)    A folder stored in the Photo interpretation area at JMWAVE contained materials relating to a plan to assassinate Castro in the Bay of Pigs resort area where he maintained a yacht and was known to vacation. The plan, possibly with the code word PATHFINDER, apparently had been disapproved and was not under active consideration at the time. Our people did not participate actively in the plan in any regard. 47)

(b)   While assigned to the Imagery Analysis Service, a number of our photo interpreters supported Carl Jenkins of the DD/P concerning a plan to assassinate Castro at the DuPont Varadero Beach Estate, east of Havana. Castro was known to frequent the estate and the plan was to use a high powered rifle in the attempt. The photo interpretation support was restricted to providing annotated photographs and line drawings of the estate. To our knowledge, this plan also was never implemented. 48)

In a follow up report from Joseph Seltzer at the CIA dated 8 May 1975, in response to the NPIC inquiries regarding Carl Jenkins and PATHFINDER, Seltzer wrote:  49)

SUBJECT: Assassination Plans Against Castro
REFERENCE: Memorandum for the Record dated 21 March 1975 from Mr. Cates, NPIC 

1.      On receipt of reference memorandum, we reviewed the official folder on Mr. Carl Jenkins, a retired Agency employee, and asked the Directorate of Operations for any available information on PATHFINDER. Both efforts were fruitless – no one in the Directorate of Operations recognized the cryptonom PATHFINDER. 

2.      In our search of other files in connection with other staff activities, we came, just by chance, a reference to Pathfinder in an FBI memorandum dated 20 January 1961 concerning Frank Anthony Sturgis. We are unable to offer any speculation, reasonable or otherwise, on its significance in this memorandum or in the NPIC memorandum.

Because these were "in house" agency communications between one division of the CIA and another, and was not shared with the Church Intelligence Committee, the "official folder on Mr. Carl Jenkins" that was reviewed was not subject to the JFK Act and is not in the JFK Collection at the National Archives and available to the public. And because Jenkins is still alive, it is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). But because Jenkins is still alive, we can and will try to interview him. 50)

Three years later, on June 20, 1978, the second chief counsel to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) G. Robert Blakey, wrote to Mr. Scott Brekenridge, Principal coordinator between the HSCA and the Office of Legislative Counsel, Central Intelligence Agency, asking a series of requests for documentary records. 51)

“In connection with its investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of President Kennedy, the House Select Committee on Assassinations requests access to the following information:…..6.      Any and all documents concerning or referring to OPERATION PATHFINDER, including all indices…..”

Signed: Sincerely, G. Robert Blakey, Chief Counsel and Director HSCA

On 14 July, 1978, Marvin L. Smith, Chief, Operations Group, responded to the HSCA Requests of 20 June 1978. 53)

“A.    (S) An intensive search of the files and indices of this Directorate revealed the following information on the individuals and organizations listed in the referenced request, which, unless otherwise indicated, is being forwarded to your Office. Since birthdates were not provided on the individuals, some of the information may not pertain to them…..

6.      Operation Pathfinder – No information

C.     (U) It has been determined that none of the individuals listed in the referenced request has been the subject of an FOIA or PA request.”

SIGNED Marvin L. Smith

To dispense with the Raoul plot first, it was, according to the NPIC technicians, a “drive by” maritime speed boat attack on a Cuban North Shore estate where Fidel Castro’s brother Raoul ostensibly lived, hoping he was in residence, and that mission may have even taken place. The NPIC JMWAVE techs said that “Rip Robertson,” one of only two American to go ashore at the Bay of Pigs, was connected to this operation. 53)

The other two contingency plans are much more relevant to the assassination of President Kennedy, and according to the JMWAVE NIPIC techs, was given the code name PATHFINDER.

The NPIC technicians said that they not only assisted in the contingency plan for “PATHFINDER,” supplying photos and maps of the target areas, but the PATHINDER files were kept in the NPIC section of the JMWAVE station, rather than in the station’s Operational Files, where they would normally be kept. (See: 48)

According to the NPIC technicians stationed at JMWAVE, PATHFINDER was a contingency plan to kill Castro with high powered rifles when he drove by in an open jeep near the Bay of Pigs, which apparently became somewhat of a tourist attraction and resort area after the failed invasion in April 1961. It was reported that Castro kept a boat docked there. 

While the PATHFINDER plan was, according to the NPIC techs, “disapproved by higher authority” (aka JFK and RFK), another, similar plan was devised to kill Castro in a sniper attack when he drove by in an open jeep to Xandau, the former North Shore Dupont estate, once owned by the Delaware Dupont family, but frequented by Castro near Varadero on the north Shore. 54)

“I was given a weapon… a beautiful German bolt-action rifle with a powerful telescopic sight, all neatly packed in a custom-made padded carrying case… a box of ammo, twenty rounds. I was told that I wouldn't have to sight the rifle, as it had already been zeroed in. Apparently the resistance had obtained a building facing a location that Castro frequented at the time....We were supposed to debark onto a Cuban boat near Varadero Beach, an area I knew from my childhood. From there we would be taken to rendezvous with members of the anti-Castro resistance…..We would be provided a safe house, then move to the room where we'd be able to shoot Fidel….”

- Bay of Pigs Pathfinder Felix Rodriguez  55)

GENE WHEATON

Then along came Gene Wheaton, a former policeman, Marine, Air Force and Army investigator who received a presidential citation for his security work in the Middle East.

When the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) was established Wheaton contacted the chairman Judge John Tunheim and said he might have some information that could lead the Review Board to relevant JFK assassination records. He was contacted by a ARRB attorney and met with her in Washington, D.C., gave them dozens of documents and explained to them how he came to know deep background on the assassination from Carl Jenkins, his partner in a national cargo airlines that was owned by the CIA. 56)

Although Weaton didn’t know that the NPIC employees had already dropped a dime on Jenkins, Wheaton explained that he learned details of the assassination from Jenkins and the Cubans he trained at JMWAVE over the course of their association over years, as he lived at Jenkins house when he worked in Washington D.C.

Although the ARRB did not follow up on the leads Wheaton provided, he did talk on camera to two documentary film makers, the first one from Minnesota who was more interested in Wheaton’s knowledge of the Iran-Contra deal sell military missiles to Iran to free American hostages and financially support CIA covert intelligence operations that Congress refused to approve. 57)

The second filmed interview with Wheaton done in 2005 by William Matson Law deals with his knowledge of the assassination of JFK and was shown at the JFK Lancer conference in Dallas that year, but few took serious notice until after Wheaton died, and excerpts were more recently posted on the internet. 58)

In that second interview Wheaton is quoted as saying: “The straight story is that there was a CIA fronted program to assassinate Castro and Carl (Jenkins) was in charge of training the Cubans in Miami to assassinate Castro and it was paid for by the CIA. They would go from Texas down to Mexico and take some convertibles and things into the hills and rocky areas and set watermelons up in the back seat and they had what they called a triangulation shooting team. And they were according to THEM, THEY were the ones that diverted the Castro funds and training for their own agenda to snuff Kennedy. It was a paid element and they were CIA people. They were training to assassinate Castro, but if you are trained to assassinate one person, you can use that training to assassinate anybody with that same training. That’s what they were using – the paid training program to get Castro. The Cubans, because of the imprisonment of those guys and JFK backing off at the last moment in support of the Bay of Pigs invasion, they were still angry, still are to this day. There was another clique above them that was worried about Kennedy not increasing the program for escalating the hostilities in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. So at an extremely high level, I’m talking about the political elite level, the shakers and movers of the country – the top guys in the Pentagon and White House, did not want Kennedy to shut down that war because they were just getting it warmed up and wanted to escalate.”

Wheaton: “Chi Chi (Quintero) was a shooter, he was trained by I.F. Harper…Jenkins was from Louisiana and was the CIA’s liaison with  Carlos Marcello, the mafia boss connected in with Sam Giancana and John Roselli who are on the public record as being part of that crowd – the Mafia guys they say were connected to the Kennedy assassination. …I had been working with Sen. (Hugh) Scott (Rep. Pa.) to see if we could get the record set straight on the Kennedy assassination – get total immunity for those involved. I talked to Senator Scott about it and I told them if you guys just tell the whole straight story you can get immunity.”

“Chi Chi and Carl Jenkins were in charge of the main team.  Carl Jenkins was training Chi Chi (Quintero) and several other shooters, about five of them – and I.F. Harper helped train these guys to assassinate Castro. According to THEM, they just went off and decided to get their revenge on Kennedy for his failure to support the invasion of Cuba.”

“Lee Harvey Oswald was just a stooge that Carl and his friends…... Carl you see, back in the early 1950s, when he came back from Korea, he formed the first US Marine Corps Reserve unit in New Orleans. Carl was a Captain in the Marine Corps, and a CIA officer. He formed the first US Marine Corps reserve unit in New Orleans, La., and he was the CIA liaison between CIA Headquarters and Carlos Marcello, the organized crime boss there.”

“Lee Harvey Oswald was a young guy, and because of Carl’s connection with the US Marine Corps reserve, and his involvement in the CIA, helped recruit Lee Harvey Oswald while he was a Marines. Keep in mind this is not somebody sitting down and telling me this, this is over months and years of talking with them and them talking to each other in my presence. It was obvious Lee was a stooge that they set up. You always have what they call an 'Operational Security Plan' for deniability, - something that they put in the plan when they put the covert operation in place.”

Wheaton also gave a number of relevant documents to the Minnesota film maker, who posted them on line – including a copy of Carl Jenkins’ passport and a vita – resume that Jenkins himself had written that itimizes his role in the CIA assassination plots to kill Castro. 60)

In the early 1960s Jenkins notes that he was “Chief of Base for Cuban project, first in Florida, then in Guatemala; responsible for selection and training of cadre, assignment of officers for invasion brigade, maritime infiltration and operational management of small teams and individual agents.” In the mid-1960s Jenkins wrote that he was a “Senior Operations Adviser for a still-sensitive Cuban project” with a handwritten notation on the side that reads: “Castro assassination program.”

In the 1980s Soldier of Fortune Magazine wrote an article about the CIA trainers involved with the Contras in Nicaragua, among them the “legendary” CIA trainer John “I.F.” Harper, who was training the Contras to fight the Sandinistas just as he had trained the anti-Castro Cubans in the 1960s. 60)

Just as the there are no records today of the CIA’s “detailed study” of the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler, to be used against Castro, the Pathfinder Files have also fallen into Peter Dale Scott’s “Negative Template,” but at least we know what was in it as we have the NPIC employees descriptions of it. We also know that the Pathfinder file was delibaratly kept in the NPIC section of the JMWAVE station instead of the Operational Files, where it belonged. Then we learn that the 1975 NPIC memo was burried in Frank Sturgis’ CIA Security File, where it was inadvertatedly discovered.

Then when the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB) went looking for these records in the early 1990s, a former NPIC secretary told them that sometime in 1964, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy ordered the NPIC records on the assassination to be boxed and sent to the Smithsonian Institute, rather than the National Archives, where they belong. 61)

So we have three distinct instances where the Pathfinder files were deliberately misfiled – and we are still trying to locate them.

CONCLUSION

As this is still a work in progress, there is no definitive conclusion, other than the leads presented are panning out, both in records at the National Archives and with interviews with the known participants.

One of the Pathfinders trained by Ayers, Roderick, Jenkins and Harper – Chi Chi Quintero, before he died, was asked about Wheaton’s allegations, and said he was only saying what he knew, and “If I were ever granted immunity, and compelled to testify about past actions, about Dallas and the Bay of Pigs, it would be the biggest scandal ever to rock the United States.” 62)

Both Carl Jenkins and John Harper are still alive, and have been located and attempts are being made to get them to tell what they know about these affairs.

In an email, Harper said Wheaton “was a two faced son of a bitch,” but he didn’t say he was lying. 63)

So as we proceed to research both the Valkyrie plan to kill Hitler that was being adapted by the CIA for use against Castro, and the Pathfinder plan to kill Castro with a high powered rifle as he rode in an open jeep, that I believe was redirected to JFK at Dealey Plaza, we can be confident that the assassination of the President will not forever remain a mystery, as we can and are figuring it out. 64)

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