Larry Hancock on the Wheaton Names
Wheaton Names / Who Knew?
Larry Hancock and David Boylan, 2018
From Larry's Lancer Presentation
One of the most fundamental challenges in JFK assassination
research is dealing with third party sources who appear to provide insights
into the origins and motive(s) of a conspiracy related to President Kennedy’s
murder. The starting point in evaluating the sources is obvious. First there
must be independent documentation verifying that they were personally associating
with the individuals they themselves name, at a point in time when they claim
to have obtained the information. Second, their sources must be determined to
have been in a position to have heard or otherwise obtained the information
being described.
Beyond that, information which has been officially offered
to law enforcement or official investigative bodies gains an additional level
of credibility given that the source is not only exposing themselves to legal
action but also demonstrating a personal risk by being on record with
information which may become public.
Beyond that there are consistency checks on the information
itself. One of the most important is whether any connections can be determined
among the names related by the sources. If multiple independent sources
independently provide names which can then be verified to actually have been
connected in a historical context, the information rises to a higher level of
credibility.
With those guidelines in mind, the following paper examines
third party information presented to the Assassinations Records Review Board by
Gene Wheaton. The ARRB itself interacted with Wheaton on several
occasions, but that interaction was very much pro forma and there is no
indication that, even though he presented a series of corroborative documents
relating to his own sources, that they seriously considered his information. It
was only after his communications were released as part of the routine
disclosure process that his story – and documents relating to his sources –
became visible to researchers. Wheaton himself had assumed that his information
would remain confidential and he was shocked when researchers approached him to
show him the paperwork he had submitted and ask for his comments. Only a single
interview, conducted by William Law and filmed by Mark Sobel, is available to
offer his personal confirmation of his information.
Wheaton Interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DPT9Oc0lsU
Wheaton’s attempt to offer the information to the ARRB,
which he had previously been willing to take to Senator Hugh Scott of
Pennsylvania, was intended to stimulate an official investigation, provided
confidentially and clearly not in any attempt at personal visibility or
gain.
This paper summarizes our efforts to investigate Wheaton’s
story and apply rigorous vetting criteria. As it developed, the effort expanded
into a study that went well beyond Wheaton himself - on to a series of other
sources which appear to be corroborative. Those individuals and the information
they independently provided are discussed individually as sources. In
addition, the backgrounds of certain of the individuals who seem to be common
to all the information which has emerged are reviewed in Appendix A. Appendix B
contains new information regarding the involvement in Castro assassination
efforts of key figures in the Wheaton story such as Jenkins and
Rodriquez.
Source 1: Gene Wheaton related to the ARRB that in the
mid-1980s he had heard conversations among individuals who described the
motives and participants in the murder of President Kennedy. The conversations
involved former CIA operations (paramilitary) officers as well as Cuban exiles
who had been involved in CIA activities for decades. At the time Wheaton was
managing a transport airline company and seeking business shipping materials to
Central America in support of the Reagan era covert North/Secord Contra warfare
against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua.
http://www.publicrecordmedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/whea/WHEA_pd_GW26004.pdf
Based on documents Wheaton supplied to the ARRB, we know
that two of the men involved in the conversations were Carl Jenkins, hired by
Wheaton to lead his sales effort, and Rafael Quintero, a personal friend of
Jenkins and one of the two Cuban exile field managers running Contra support
operations in Central America for Oliver North and Richard Secord.
While Jenkins did not specifically name the other
individuals involved in the conversations it seems likely that they included
Felix Rodriquez, the other Cuban exile logistics manager working for
North/Secord, and possibly Luis Posada - brought into the Contra project and
working for Rodriquez. Rodriquez himself was literally a legend within the CIA
and Cuban exile communities, one of a very few paramilitary officers to be
publicly acknowledged as a CIA employee. We now know that he was also a key
figure in a highly secret CIA effort to kill Fidel Castro in a sniper attack,
prior to the Cuban exile landings at the Bay of Pigs beaches in Cuba.
Released CIA operational and personnel documents now provide a good deal of
context on the anti-Castro operations of 1960-1964, including the personal
backgrounds of both Jenkins and Quintero, as well as Felix Rodriquez.
Wheaton described the JFK assassination remarks he heard as
simply conversation among the men he was associating with during his Contra
support sales effort, the recalling of old projects and individuals they had
worked with operationally in anti-Castro efforts for the CIA. The individuals
being discussed had either been trained by Jenkins or were known to him through
anti-Castro CIA projects. Apparently Jenkins and Quintero had both worked
with the individuals being discussed during the early 1960’s. It is
unclear whether individuals discussed in respect to the Dallas attack were
actually named, however Wheaton stated that it was clear that those who
attacked JFK were seeking revenge for friends who had died and the free Cuba, a
cause they felt Kennedy had betrayed. However those “above them” had a higher level
goal than simple revenge.
It seems most likely that the anti-Castro era names who
would come up during these conversations in the 1970s would include men who had
not only been involved in efforts against Castro’s Cuba but who would have also
had some history in Nicaragua, the contemporary focus of all the individuals
meeting with Wheaton and talking among themselves. Given that assumption, we
can posit certain individual’s individuals who might well have been the subject
of the exchanges Wheaton heard.
One such individual, one of the earliest Cuban exile
volunteers to enter the Contra struggle in Nicaragua, was Nestor “Tony”
Izquierdo. Izquierdo had also been one of the earliest volunteers for the CIA
anti-Castro project circa 1960. He had escaped from Cuba via Mexico and shortly
after his arrival in Miami had been recruited into a group being trained to go
into Cuba as part of a covert effort to organize a successful resistance
movement against the Castro regime. His skills earned him entry into parachute
jump training and he became one of a select number of exiles (including Felix
Rodriquez and Rafael Quintero) who were infiltrated into Cuba prior to the 1961
Cuban Expeditionary Force landings, in a variety of missions.
While Rodriquez and Quintero went into Cuba multiple times
by boat, Izquierdo reportedly dropped onto the island in a very risky night
parachute jump. Izquiredo was inside Cuba at the time of the Bay of Pigs
landings but managed to work his way out of Cuba following that disaster. After
making his way back to Florida he became a CIA asset, part of the exile group
used in ongoing CIA JMWAVE maritime infiltrations. He continued in that effort
into 1963, participating in covert maritime missions into Cuba – missions
personally organized and led by Rip Robertson.
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=12695&relPageId=10
In the fall of 1963 Izquierdo joined a new, highly secret
and highly autonomous, Kennedy Administration project designed to move
anti-Castro operations out of the U.S. and make them totally deniable – the
project was designated as AMWORLD and Rafael Quintero was its military leader,
working with CIA officer Carl Jenkins.
By early 1964 Izquierdo, along with Felix Rodriquez (who had
been personally recruited by Artime) had been covertly sent to Nicaragua.
Later in 1964 Izquierdo was recruited by Rip Robertson for a very select
paramilitary team sent into secret operations in the Congo. Following his time
in the Congo, Iquierdo became involved with some of the most radical exile
groups including CORU. Ultimately he became one of the earliest Cuban
volunteers to go to Nicaragua to train Contra rebels to fight against the
Sandinista regime. He as killed in 1979, during an air mission into
Nicaragua.
Luiz Posada, brought into work Contra logistics support
operations by Quintero and Felix Rodriquez had, along with Izquierdo, been
involved in some of the most violent and activist Cuban exile groups – CORU.
Posada was one of the founders of CORU and had been personally associated with
both assassination attempts against Fidel Castro (working as a covert asset of
CIA officer David Phillips) and the mid-air bombing of a Cuban air liner.
War stories:
We can only speculate as to the exact names which were at
the root of the conversations Wheaton heard, which he describes as war stories
told by those involved in the contemporary Nicaraguan Contra activities. Given
that Quintero had recruited Izquierdo into the Artime project and worked with
him operationally - and that Izquierdo had been the first of the Cuban exiles
to die in the Contra effort - it certainly seems that his name would have come
up. Another individual with an operational history with all Wheaton’s current
associates, as well as an extended history in Nicaragua, would have been Rip
Robertson.
Robertson (crypts Irving Cadick and William
Rutherford) was one of the first post-WW II CIA paramilitaries (as was
Carl Jenkins) and had served in PBSUCCESS, the Guatemala project, along with
CIA officers such as David Phillips and Henry Hecksher. Hecksher would become
the CIA senior officer in the AMWORLD project, working with both Carl Jenkins
and Rafael Quintero.
During PBSUCCESS, Robertson, known as a “cowboy” within CIA
field operations, had become so close to Nicaraguan president Somoza that at
Somoza’s urging he had sent an airstrike against a neutral freighter off
Guatemala, causing an international incident. That had so annoyed CIA
headquarters that Robertson was essentially banned from CIA missions for
several years, taking up residence in Nicaragua and starting his own business
there.
However with the start of the CIA Cuba project
(JMARC/JMMATE) Robertson was brought back into CIA activities – primarily
because of his long and close personal relationship with President Somoza. In
fact Robertson was designated as the key American liaison to Somoza for the
first Cuba project. Robertson coordinated all JMATE activities in Nicaragua and
was effectively in control of establishing and operating the CIA strike base established
at Porta Cabezas in Nicaragua (JMTIDE).
(Official History of the Bay of Pigs Operation, Volume II:
Participation in the Conduct of Foreign Policy Author: CIA, Mary Ferrell
Foundation; MFF146717.PDF, 268 pages)
Robertson was in Nicaragua from December, 1960 through
mid-February 1961. He returned to Guatemala in April to sail with the Cuban
Expeditionary Force and participate in the Bay of Pigs landings. He earned the
respect from the Cuban volunteers by going ashore and fighting alongside them –
against specific orders not to do so. His reputation as a “cowboy” and his trust
by the Cuban volunteers was enhanced by his personally leading maritime
missions into Cuba for the CIA following the disaster at the Bay of Pigs.
During those missions he repeatedly violated standing orders; on one mission he
directed his mission crew to conduct machine gun attack on Che Guevara’s
residence. There was no CIA officer more respected and well regarded by Cuban
anti-Castro fighters than Robertson, who always fought right along with them,
irrespective of orders.
Robertson died in Dallas in 1970 after overseas service in
the Congo and Vietnam. Anecdotal reports, circa 1964 in the Congo, describe him
as a separate source of information about the JFK attack in Dallas, He appears
to have rather openly discussed the nature and motives for the attack with his
Cuban exile team in the Congo, a team which included several of his long time
maritime mission personnel including Nestor Izquierdo.
Robertson is especially interesting to this story in regard
to the missions he was involved with during the summer of 1963, including the
TILT operation – a mission which violated a host of standard CIA security
guidelines and involved a number of non-CIA authorized Cuban exiles, as well as
civilians such as John Martino and former American ambassador William Pawley.
JFK story origins:
If we assume the war stories Wheaton heard involved the
common experiences and associates of Quintero and Rodriquez, two points quickly
emerge. The first is that they had both been involved in the earliest CIA
paramilitary operations against Cuba, operations carried out by specially
selected Cuban exile cadre who had received initial training at American
military facilities in the Panama Canal Zone. Several of those individuals had
been selected for advanced training even before the Cuban Expeditionary Force
Guatemala training camp was established. Carl Jenkins had overseen the Panama
camp training (JMRYE) and had gone on to become Chief of Base at the Guatemala
ground training base (JMTRAV). Jenkins had been in charge of the Guatemala base
from Sept, 1960 until December 10, when Frank Egan took command. Jenkins
himself appears to have been moved into special maritime operations against
Cuba, missions which involved both Quintero and Felix Rodriquez – missions very
possibly associated with extremely secret special projects aimed at
assassinating Fidel Castro.
If the men involved in the JFK war stories Wheaton heard
were indeed Quintero and Rodriquez, the two may have been relating information
heard from their associates in the early, covert Cuba missions into Cuba as
well as the later AMWORLD and Congo projects. Information from other sources
appears to support that possibility.
Source 2: Rolondo Otero was a source for HSCA
investigator Gaeton Fonzi, expressing to Fonzi his personal knowledge that a
CIA officer had been circulating among certain Cuban exiles in the early fall
of 1963 - talking of treasonous activities of JFK in regard to a secret
diplomatic outreach to Cuba and Castro. Otero himself was a personal
friend of Nestor Izquierdo, associated with him in a parachute group and also
with Luis Posada in CORU activities during the early 1970s. Otero also
claimed to have heard a similar story to that related in the Wheaton
conversations – that Cuban exiles had been involved in the attack on JFK, in
revenge for his failure to support the Cuban landings with air cover and for
his ongoing treachery. Otero provided Fonzi with the name of a local Cuban
exile who purportedly had a broader knowledge of those involved – Bernardo de
Torres.
Otero’s remarks in regard to a secret JFK/Castro outreach
have been confirmed in a variety of sources. As early as June 1963. Special
Group Augmented discussions included the possibility of establishing new and
highly secret channels of communication to Castro. Notes from that meeting
relate that there was a “discussion of “various possibilities of establishing
channels of communication with Castro”.
http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/jfk/NARA-Oct2017/NARA-Nov9-2017/104-10306-10024.pdf
However it appears that the CIA officer Otero described was
talking about something far more specific, something more imminent and far more
threatening to the Cuban exiles. Something which involved the possibility of
actual negotiations between Fidel Castro and President Kennedy. The activity in
question would have been secret negotiations which might have changed Cuba’s
relationship with Russia, ended the American embargos and sanctions and
formally acknowledged the continuity of Castro’s regime.
That new Kennedy/Castro secret was indeed very real,
extremely secret. It was being conducted with deniable State Department assets
– entirely outside the purview of the CIA, the Special Group Augmented and even
the National Security Council. It was underway by early fall and as it
proceeded the first actual meeting between American and Cuban representatives
was being scheduled for November, 1963.
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB103/index.htm
There are indications that the CIA officers at JMWAVE in
Miami were aware of the developing Kennedy/Castro contacts, contacts involving
highly personal backchannel communications supposedly known only to the
President and two State Department officers. Documents indicate that by early
fall the designated Castro representative (Rene Vallejo) – previously the
subject of no CIA interest at all – was being targeted for CIA intelligence
collection and possible surveillance. That interest was relayed to JMWAVE in
Miami, to the Cuban intelligence group units (AMOTS). Assets to be used in
targeting Vallejo were being evaluated, including AMOT assets in Mexico City.
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=45080&relPageId=1&search=rene_vallejo
What becomes especially interesting - and supports Otero’s
remarks about a CIA officer spreading the word against JFK in Miami – is that
highly secret JFK/Castro outreach was known beyond CIA headquarters and the
Miami CIA station. In addition to Otero, it appears to have been communicated
to a civilian in Miami, a civilian with whom Rip Robertson was operationally
and personally involved beginning in the summer of 1963. That civilian was John
Martino and Martino was quite public in his remarks about a secret Kennedy
Administration accommodation with Castro.
http://cuban-exile.com/doc_226-250/doc0237.html
Source 3: John Martino admitted to close friends,
shortly before his death, that he had been involved in a minor role in a
conspiracy (including acting as a courier in trips to Dallas) against JFK. He
related his limited knowledge of both the plan for Dallas and the motives for
those who were involved in the attack. His friends, first anonymously, and then
officially relayed that information to the HSCA. In later years both his wife
and his son confirmed that he had prior knowledge of the attack in Dallas and
provided a limited amount of information as to whom he had been associating
with in the period in which he had apparently become involved.
Martino independently supports other sources who described
that the word had been spread among certain Cuban exiles in Miami that there
was a secret JFK/Castro dialog emerging. That fact can be confirmed by
references which Martino made in speeches and writing, both prior to and
following the assassination. He also admitted to the knowledge that that Lee
Oswald was being used in a relatively minor role in the conspiracy, pointing
the attack on JFK towards Fidel Castro. Martino had actually observed
Oswald leafletting during a trip to New Orleans.
Speculation on Martino’s sources, and who might have
involved him in the conspiracy, seems to rest with individuals known to be
Martino’s most trusted associates in the September/October, 1963 time frame.
Certainly his most relevant anti-Castro activity, one quite surprising for a
man his age, had been his personal participation in a highly secretive maritime
mission into Cuba, CIA Operation TILT.
That mission (intended to obtain evidence that Russian
ballistic missiles were still deployed inside Cuba) was approved by Western
Hemisphere chief J.C. King, at the highest levels of the CIA - approved
apparently without knowledge of the Special Group Augmented, the NSC or
RFK/JFK. If it had succeeded the revelations would have been a tremendous
political blow to the Kennedy administration. TILT included the participation
of William Pawley, previously an American ambassador, earlier a secret
Presidential liaison to the Batista regime and one of a very select group who had
made am early, highly classified evaluation of American intelligence for
President Eisenhower.
Pawley himself personally participated in the TILT mission
along with Martino, a number of non-CIA vetted and non-operationally approved
Cuban exiles and a photo journalist from LIFE magazine. The participation of
Pawley, Martino, the LIFE photographer and the unvetted Cubans were all major
violations of standard CIA security protocols. Given Robertson’s operational
role at JMWAVE, Martino would have been one of the few “outsiders” that
Robertson would have been in contact with in the summer of 1963.
The TILT mission itself was under the operational command of
Rip Robertson. However beyond contact during the mission into Cuba, Martino’s
son related that Rip Robertson was a frequent visitor to the Martino home
during much of 1963; another definite violation of CIA security
protocols. Other visitors included Felipe Vidal and Frank Sturgis
(Fiorini). Both men circulated at will through the Cuban exile community.
Although Vidal was not a major exile “political” figure, he
was well respected for his bravery, commitment and naval experience. During
1963 Vidal was operationally involved in ongoing efforts to stage independent
paramilitary missions into Cuba with Roy Hargraves and Bernardo de Torres.
Hargraves was photographed preparing for maritime missions against Cuba, in the
company of Bernardo de Torres and Felipe Vidal. Vidal and Hargraves were
independent actors with extremely limited resources and certainly with no
connections to or support from the CIA
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=89719&relPageId=4
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=74050&relPageId=7
It should also be noted that Vidal himself related the
information that he was aware of the fact that JFK was about to betray the
Cuban exiles once again, negotiating some sort of accommodation with Fidel
Castro – an accommodation that would leave Castro in power and abandon the
Cuban exiles. Vidal described himself as having devoted an effort to spreading
the word within the exile community that JFK was actually a threat to them. It
is also a matter of FBI record that, like Martino, Vidal himself did travel to Dallas
during the fall of 1963.
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=74929&relPageId=5
In addition Roy Hargraves was independently reported to the
FBI as having known of and possibly as being involved in some fashion in a plot
against JFK.
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=62394&search=william_acker#relPageId=15&tab=page
Source 4: Ray January January operated an
aircraft servicing and sales company at Red Bird airport in Dallas and during
1963 was involved with a small number of multi-engine transport aircraft which
were being sold to a third party company associated with the Houston Air
Center. January was responsible for servicing, checking and making any
fixes required by the buyers who were accepting the aircraft. The last
aircraft being sold was actually a WWII troop carrier which had been heavily
modified, having all the seats removed and reconfigured as a cargo carrier.
While the aircraft was being accepted, the pilot/aircraft
mechanic conducting the acceptance identified himself as a Cuban (he spoke
English with no particular accent) who had previously flown similar aircraft in
Cuba but who had also been a pilot at the Bay of Pigs (both B-26 fighter
bombers and parachute troop transports were involved in support of the
landings). He was outspoken in relating that his friends had died during that
effort - because JFK had not delivered the promised air cover for them. The
pilot told January that JFK would be killed in revenge for those deaths. January
felt the man to be quite sincere but simply did not believe him until the
afternoon of Nov. 22. He spoke briefly to the man before the transport departed
in early afternoon and was told that things were simply happening as the Cuban
had stated earlier.
Nothing about the pilot’s remarks indicates he was directly
involved in the Dallas attack; he had been there working on the aircraft’s
checking and acceptance since Nov. 18. It does suggest that he was
associating with individuals who were talking about JFK in terms of betrayal
and revenge. His remarks reveal the same motives overheard by Wheaton and
independently related by Martino, Otero and Vidal – that revenge was the motive
and that to those involved, JFK’s death was a matter of executing a traitor.
As with the Wheaton incident, the question becomes whether
the pilot’s remarks can be associated with any particular group of individuals.
Only now, while still speculative, it is actually possible to detail a
potential common origin – among people working in and associated with the new
Artime/Quinero/AMWORLD project which had begun in the summer of 1963.
Artime/AMWORLD project:
That project was headed by CIA officer Henry Hecksher.
Hecksher had previously served with the CIA in Berlin, Guatemala, Laos, and
Tokyo as well as on the Cuba projects – including special missions to Mexico
City in 1962. Hecksher’s second in command was Carl Jenkins. Jenkins
had prior service across SE Asia including Laos and Indonesia, as well as
in training the initial Cuba project Cubans in Panama and in running
pre-invasion maritime missions into Cuba out of CIA bases in the Florida
keys. As Artime began to prepare for new offshore, deniable missions
against Cuba in 1964, he brought in former personal associates such as Rafael
Quintero, Nestor Izquierdo and Carlos Hernandez. Although it is not
possible to be specific on their assignments, at least one of those individuals
appears likely to have been associated with a new element of the AMWORLD
project, a renewed effort to assassinate Fidel Castro (AMTHUG).
https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2018/104-10308-10086.pdf
Given that the Artime project was to be exceptionally
deniable and intended to be highly autonomous, associates of Artime and the
Cuban exile project personnel became directly in field activities without
direct CIA officer supervision or involvement - to an extent never seen in
previous CIA projects. Working under the umbrella of Desmond Fitzgerald’s new
Special Affairs Staff, Hecksher and Jenkins and a very small CIA staff provided
AMWORLD support including the provision of false identities and travel
paperwork (required to covertly exfilitrate them outside the United States) as
well as business and employment covers.
The AMWORLD staff also facilitated coded communications,
enabled logistics and coordinated funds transfers – Artime’s own people moved
money and managed the monies from the CIA, using a variety of shell accounts
and banking covers. The majority of AMWORLD purchasing, leases, shipping
and money management was performed entirely by Artime’s associates. For example
it is a matter of record that Artime’s close friend Frank Sturgis was dispatched
to Dallas in June, 1963 to begin arrangements for obtaining transport aircraft
for Artime’s use.
While AMWORLD was to be focused on deniable attack missions
against Cuba from offshore locations – making it almost entirely a maritime
effort – it did require limited air transport and a small number of pilots were
brought into the project. One of the AMWORLD pilots was Antonio Soto.
Soto had previously been in the Cuban Air Force, he was recruited into the
Brigade and had flown a B-26 in support of the Bay of Pigs landings. He had
further pilot training in the U.S. and CIA documents cite him as speaking good
English.
Another AMWORLD pilot was Jorge Navarro. Although Navarro
was a pilot and had been in training in the Cuban Air Force before going into exile,
he did not fly for the Cuban Expeditionary Force but rather was assigned to
paramilitary operations. His experience in unarmed combat and in sharpshooting
appears to have qualified him for assignment to the special group of
individuals inserted into Cuba prior to the Brigade 2506 landings. The record
indicates that his insertion was operationally conducted by Rip Robertson.
Navarro was recruited into the Artime project in August,
1963 and served in it as a pilot until 1966, at which time he and many other
members were recruited by the CIA for special operations in the Congo. Navarro
stated that he was one of the pilots that flew C-47s in Nicaragua for the
Artime project. Antonio Soto was also recruited for CIA air operations in the
Congo. His stay in Nicaragua was very brief and he never actually flew for
AMWORLD before transferring to the Congo. His first Congo tour was from the end
of 1963 until May 1964.
We have no way of positively determine if either Soto or
Navarro was the individual who talked to Ray January in Dallas the week of
JFK’s assassination. However research on the aircraft in question does
support that it was intended for the Artime project, which is also on record
using leased military transport planes. Documents confirm that as of February,
1964 Artime had one transport aircraft available to his operations
https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2018/104-10308-10082.pdf
Talk against JFK:
In addition to the remarks from the sources previously
noted, there are other instances of threatening talk against JFK, that talk was
reported to the FBI in both Chicago and Miami. We know now that a motorcade in
Chicago was canceled following an FBI advisory that individuals it was
monitoring had traveled to Chicago and might pose a risk to the president. In
addition, threats in Miami were well enough known that a number of special
security measures were taken in regard to the president’s trip there during the
fall. We also know that Secret Service records relating to the Chicago trip and
to the president’s fall travel were destroyed, some as late as the ARRB record
collections activities in the 1990s. While we have no idea what was in those
records it is apparent that some still unknown factor resulted in one of the
first acts by President Kennedy’s brother Robert immediately following word of
the attack in Dallas.
On the afternoon of the assassination, Robert Kennedy made
two significant personal contacts. Neither has ever been explained nor was RFK
ever questioned about them. One was an outreach to the new director of
the CIA, specifically asking whether or not the CIA had been involved in the
murder of his brother. The other was an attempt to reach his personal
friend, Harry Ruiz Williams - Ruiz Williams had been one of the Cuban exile
officers at the Bay of Pigs, seriously injured in the fighting. Williams’s
injuries were such that in he was released in April 1962, with some sixty other
badly injured prisoners. After that he worked closely with RFK in negotiating
the release of the rest of the Brigade.
RFK was unable to connect directly to Williams but he did
reach author Haynes Johnson, who was working on a book with Williams at the time.
RFK indicated to Johnson that he wanted to talk to Williams because he felt
“his people” had been involved in the attack on his brother.
http://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1635958_1635999_1634964,00.html
At the time Ruiz Williams was involved with forming a Cuban
political coalition in support of the new and deniable Kennedy administration
AMWORLD (external military attacks) and AMTRUNK initiatives (Cuban domestic
coup effort) initiatives. Williams appears to have been the administration’s
candidate to be the leader of a new Cuban republic - in the event that the
AMWORLD / AMTRUNK initiatives were successful in ousting Castro.
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10155
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10150
There is no doubt that there was talk against JFK in the
Cuban exile community, about the idea that he had become a major obstacle to
any effort in ousting Castro. Such talk can be documented within certain exile
circles, including within the student revolutionary group, the DRE. A DRE
member engaged in an effort to buy weapons in Chicago was reported by an
informant; he had stated that his group had new backers and they were going to
be moving against Castro – as soon as JFK was out of the way. Another Cuban exile,
recently arrived in Miami and apparently trying to impress a girl he was
chatting up at the Parrot Jungle restaurant was reported to the FBI as saying
that he hated Castro as did his friend Lee – his friend was in either Texas or
Mexico at the time and was capable of shooting Kennedy between the eyes.
At the time the new Cuban exile was living on the estate of former Havana
casino operator Mike McClaney, who had helped him gain entry to the U.S.
The obvious challenge is not in documenting such talk against
JFK, but rather in dealing with sources that at first glance seem to be totally
unrelated. In addition to remarks from Chicago and Miami, we have reviewed
similar comments from within the CIA paramilitary community in Miami, or from
individuals operationally associated with individuals like Quintero, Jenkins,
and Robertson.
At first glance there seems no obvious connections between
comments from within a Cuban exile student group (DRE) or from a new Cuban
exile whose only obvious connection was to Mike McClaney. How could those two
connect to CIA paramilitary personnel or to a Cuban exile pilot in Dallas?
Only now, after literally decades of research, and the
ongoing availability of new documents, is there an indication that there may be
common threads linking a number of seemingly disparate sources. Threads which
all lead back to the CIA paramilitary network that had developed during the
covert missions against Cuba in 1961 through 1963, and to names found to be
associated with the Artime project which began during 1963 – a network of
individuals who by the fall of 1963 would be working with each other once
again.
Manual Artime:
Manuel Artime Busa (crypt AMBIDDY-1): Manuel Artime
had been one of the Cuban exiles meeting with Senator Kennedy as early as the
Democratic Convention in July 1960; he became well acquainted with RFK. Artime
became one of the more well-known Cuban exile political figures. Known widely
inside Cuba for his anti-Batista activities, he became a highly symbolic figure
in the American anti-Castro efforts. While the CIA would ultimately back away
from the idea that a wide scale uprising against Castro was part of the plan
for sending the Cuban Expeditionary Force on to the island, we now know that to
be false. In fact we know that their plans involved sending Artime into Cuba in
advance, with special groups of pathfinders and scouts, to link up with active
resistance groups on the island. A number of the personnel used in those
infiltration teams, were taken from the CIA’s Guatemala camp, as of January
still under the command of Carl Jenkins. Others were taken from maritime
operations teams (AMHAZE) which had been established at bases in the Florida
Keys.
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=21090#relPageId=2&tab=page
Beyond that there is strong reason to speculate that putting
Artime and a total of four special teams into Cuba, in an operation approved
directly by the CIA Director, was part of an initiative to assassinate Fidel
Castro and trigger a general uprising which would have been climaxed by the
arrival of the Cuban Expeditionary Force.
Under orders from CIA Director Helms, Artime and two special
Cuban exile teams were sent under extremely high and compartmentalized security
from Guatemala to Florida in early February, 1961. Seven team members were to
personally accompany Artime. In addition a separate three man team traveled on
the same transport aircraft, carefully isolated from Artime and his team.
Related documents suggest that prior to the actual mission teams proceeding
into Cuba, Artime was to receive a special CIA headquarters briefing.
https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/104-10162-10099.pdf
https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/104-10162-10101.pdf
Those missions and the overall assassination initiative are
not directly related to our exploration of the Wheaton names, however what is
currently know is detailed in Appendix B of this work. In contrast, Manual
Artime and certain individuals closely associated with him, and with
anti-Castro paramilitary operations are directly related to the Wheaton names
studies, much more so than previously understood.
Artime and AMWORLD
What we do know is that the plans to put Artime into Cuba in
February/March did not come to pass. Instead he rejoined the expeditionary
force and Brigade 2506 in Guatemala and became the senior exile political
leader to actually go into the fight with the Cuban brigade. Along with many of
them, he was captured and spend 20 months in a Cuban prison during 1961/62.
In late 1962 Artime was released from Cuban captivity along
with the remaining prisoners from Brigade 2506 and he initiated a new contact
with the CIA through JMWAVE operations chief David Morales – as well as direct
personal contacts with RFK. In January, 1963 William Harvey, acting head
of Task Force W (which was still supporting the second generation anti-Castro
Mongoose project) recommended Artime for use by the CIA, initially for
propaganda purposes. Artime also continued to meet directly with RFK from
February –April, 1963. There were May meetings between Theodore Shackley,
head of JMWAVE (crypt Andrew K. Reuteman), David Morales (crypt Stanley R.
Zamka), Henry Hecksher (crypt Nelson L……)
While we know a good deal about the logistics, funding and
even the purchasing activities of Artime’s new project we have very limited
details on the activities of his personnel, especially during 1963. Given that
the role of the CIA officers assigned to AMWORLD was vastly different than
previous CIA covert operations, this is understandable. Hecksher, Jenkins and
the small logistics staff functioned as advisors and coordinators rather than
directly in either personal activities or actual military operations. Their
role was to support financing, shipping and the purchasing activities that
required to support what was to appear as a totally independent and autonomous
military initiative against Castro. A variety of commercial and civilian covers
were required, not just for personnel but for major buys of deniable weapons
from commercial arms dealers. Ships and barges of various types had to be
bought or leased, transit papers arranged, and most importantly off-shore bank
accounts established. And in addition to offshore accounts, deniable shell
accounts were established inside the United States.
Those accounts were run by Sixto Mesa, a close personal
friend of Artime’s from the days of anti-Castro activities in Cuba. It appears
that multiple “working accounts” (including accounts at the First National Bank
of Miami) were established inside the U.S. each constantly funded at the level
of $25,000. Those accounts were used for domestic travel and lodging,
recruiting, maintaining communications channels such as letter drops and
generally funding activities including the purchase of materials available in
the United States. Over the period of its life, the overall AMWORLD project as
a whole was provided with some $7,000,000.
It also seems important to note that Artime’s official cover
story for the AMWORLD operation – vital to distance it from the CIA, the United
States and the Kennedy administration – was that it was a totally independent
movement, funded by President Samoza of Nicaragua and with European donors.
Artime is quoted in telling potential recruits at Fort Benning that the U.S.
government was not going to do anything more against Cuba, they had become an
obstacle and he intended to obtain bases and support totally outside the U.S.
Initial organizational moves in the new project began in
June and by July/August the first funding and recruiting for AMWORLD was in
progress. By the end of June matters had proceeded to the point where Artime’s
close friend Frank Fiorini (Sturgis) was dispatched to Dallas by Artime to
investigate a source for transport aircraft to be used in project operations.
While most of Artime’s military operations were intended to be sea borne raids,
transport aircraft would be required and records show that at least one C-47
transport was obtained for AMWORLD use. Major covert financial funding for
AMWORLD began in July, 1963.
http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/jfk/NARA-Oct2017/2018/180-10142-10307.pdf
Available documents do give us some level of information on
the recruiting and staffing of Artime’s project. We now have documents which
identify certain of his “commandoes” although there is no overall personnel
list. Among the individuals personally recruited by Artime was Felix Rodriquez,
in addition Artime brought a number of individuals into the project who he had
worked with inside Cuba and who had been specifically named in his pre-Bay of
Pigs mission. One of the names - Felix Rodriquez – is already familiar to the
Wheaton story. However what the documents reveal is that the personnel
selection for AMWORLD was totally unlike any previous CIA operation. There
appears to have been no extended security vetting and even when JMWAVE received
recommendations for AMWORLD, it simply forwarded them on through the Special
Affairs Staff, earmarked for AMWORLD reference.
https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/104-10172-10114.pdf
It is especially significant that prior participation in
independent and unsanctioned maritime missions against Cuba or in illegal
activities involving violations of U.S. federal statutes did not prevent
individuals from being taken into Artime’s operation. In fact several
individuals being investigated by the FBI for federal crimes may have escaped
charges by being quickly taken into the Artime project. That represented a
dramatic break with prior exile activities sponsored by the CIA, where all
personnel were security screened prior to any assignments.
One of the early 1963 AMWORLD recruits was Carlos Hernandez
(Brigade trainee 2523). Carlos was well known to Artime, having been a
member of Artime’s “Commandos Rurales” in Cuba, along with Nestor Izquierdo and
Rafael Quintero. Hernandez was a black belt in Karate and a sharpshooter.
It was his expertise in Karate and his friendship with Artime that had led to
Artime to request Hernandez as his personal bodyguard while Artime was
traveling in Latin America early in 1960.
Carlos had also been one of the first volunteers for the
CIA’s Cuba project. That project began strictly as an operation to train a
relatively small number of exiles into Cuba. Their mission would be to join
on-island resistance groups, stimulating a guerrilla activities and triggering
a counter revolution.
Carlos Hernandez began his CIA paramilitary training under
Carl Jenkins at the CIA’s Panama camp (JMRYE). Training included infantry
combat, guerilla operations, and sabotage as well as radio communications.
Following training in Panama, Hernandez was moved into advanced training in the
use of explosives and infiltration skills, at a CIA camp operated outside Belle
Chasse, Louisiana (JMMOVE). A number of the earliest Cuban exile volunteers
went through Panama training and moved on to Belle Chase – that list includes
Carlos Hernandez, Victor Hernandez, Frank Bernardino and Jorge Navarro. Those
individuals were then “sheep dipped” as malcontents and officially taken out of
the program, while actually being moved into safe houses and then into Cuba
infiltration missions managed out of the CIA’s base in the Florida keys
(JMFIG).[1]
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=38005#relPageId=2&tab=page
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=21116#relPageId=3&tab=page
https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2018/104-10162-10101.pdf
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=38009#relPageId=2&tab=page
While many of these missions remain to be explored, we do
know details of one involving an AMHAZE team, a team involving Carlos Hernandez
and designated as Operation Yeast. That mission was to launch from Ramrod Key
and was intended to stimulated an uprising in Cuaba’s Oriente Province (one of
the team members, Luis Sierra, would later head Artime’s 1963 AMWORLD project).
As with several of the missions associated with stimulating on-island
resistance to Castro, Operation Yeast apparently aborted due to Castro military
forces in the intended landing area.
https://maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=34298#relPageId=2&tab=page
https://maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=36146&relPageId=2
Several of these individuals involved in those maritime
missions were personally known and especially trusted by Manual Artime. In
January 1961, in preparation for his still mysterious mission inside Cuba,
Artime he had requested Carlos Hernandez, Nestor Izquierdo and Frank
Bernardino, as part of his own special commando group. While they were not
available at that time, already dispatched for maritime infiltration missions
(AMHAZE). But again, in April, Artime specifically requested that that the CIA
locate and transport several of the individuals - including Hernandez,
Izquierdo and Bernardino – to Guatemala, to accompany him as a special commando
group during the upcoming landings in Cuba.
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=21117&relPageId=2
Those same individuals, are also found among the CIA vetted
Cuban paramilitary personnel participating in in various post Bay of Pigs
missions (AMHAZE)[2] into Cuba - with certain of the
missions under the operational control of Rip Robertson.
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=21117#relPageId=2&tab=page
Some of these individuals – including Tony Izquierdo and
Felix Rodriquez were inserted into Cuba prior to the landings; they managed to
evade capture and make their way back from Cuba. They continued with CIA
activities into 1963. Others, such as Carlos and Victor Hernandez continued in
maritime infiltrations, eventually being taken out of operations as the CIA began
to limit such missions even before the Cuban missile crisis.
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=34504#relPageId=2&tab=page
These individuals remained fervent anti-Castro activists but
upon being separated from the CIA began to affiliate themselves with
independent exile groups such as the student revolutionary movement (DRE).
After his releas from post-Bay of Pigs JMWAVE maritime missions, Carlos Henandez
became a very active DRE member, part of its military leadership. He was a
participant in a dramatic and internationally publicized boat raid on Havana in
August, 1962.
http://cuban-exile.com/doc_101-125/doc0117.html
By the summer of 1963, Carlos Hernandez and John Koch Gene
(whose brother had died at the Bay of Pigs landings) had been recruited by
Victor Hernandez (another DRE member) into projects which involved launching
independent aerial bombing missions against Cuba from both the Miami and New
Orleans (LaCombe La.) areas.
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=136967#relPageId=2&tab=page
The Cuban exiles participating in those 1963 projects were
Student Directorate (DRE) members and the financing had come from former Havana
casino figures, primarily from Mike McClaney, via Sam Benton. The FBI conducted
an extensive investigation of the bombing efforts (the FBI summary report runs
to 112 pages) but in the end no charges or other legal actions were taken
against any of those involved - even though the incident had involved the
illegal purchase of explosives and their transport across multiple state lines.
Explosives and other materials for the abortive bombing project had been
obtained in Illinois, where DRE members had been traveling in the summer and
fall of 1963, seeking weapons for new military activities. By that point
in time the Kennedy Admiration was opposing any of their military missions and
supporting them only in public relations and propaganda activities.
Apart from Carlos Hernandez and John Koch
Gene (AMHINT-26), other exiles involved in the McClaney funded aerial bombing
projects included Victor Hernandez, Frank Bernardino, Antonio Soto and Gonzolo
Herrara. Both Soto and Herrera had flown Brigade 2056 aircraft in support
of the Bay of Pigs landings. John Koch Gene, Carlos Hernandez and Victor
Hernandez had met with Mike McClaney as part of the bombing project and
McClaney was identified by the FBI as the source of funding for what was
essentially a DRE rogue mission.
Victor Hernandez’s (CIA crypt AMHINT -25) activities
following the abortive bombing projects are unknown. Although he was
interviewed by the HSCA they failed to question him about virtually anything
beyond that incident. His CIA operational approval had lapsed in May,
1963, only two months before he became involved with the first attempted McClaney
bombing mission, to be flown out of Florida.
While we don’t actually know what Victor was involved in
during the rest of 1963 and into 1964, we do know several Cuban exiles
investigated in the LaCombe air attack plan were recruited by Artime and were
taken into his project by early fall, 1963. Those individuals included Antonio
Soto and Gonzolo Herrara, who would both go on to join covert CIA air
operations in the Congo. Carlos Hernandez and John Koch were also
requited for AMWORLD, as part of “Quintero’s Commandos”.
Coming together:
A deep dive into the documents released during the last few
years reveals that a considerable number of Artime’s AMWORLD recruits had prior
experience in the special maritime infiltrations run against Cuba both before
and after the Bay of Pigs disaster. Those missions launched from the Florida
Keys and many of the individuals directly involved in the post-BOP missions
worked directly with Rip Robertson.
The group that came together in the AMWORLD project was
first organized inside the U.S. beginning in the summer of 1963. The location
and movements of all those involved are still hazy but we do know there were
funds made available for domestic activities such as lodging, travel and even
the purchase of supplies and weapons. Only in December and January were
personnel given cover identities and covertly exfiltrated out of the United
States to Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic. In addition to now familiar
names such as Rafael Quintero, Felix Rodriquez and Nestor Izquierd, the recruit
list also included names from the independent DRE and McClaney funded projects
of summer, 1963 - including Carlos Hernandez, John Koch Gene, Antonio
Soto and Jorge Navarro.
Some of these individuals were likely together inside the
United States in the fall of 1963. The majority of them were together in
Nicaragua in 1964 – and some of them including Rafael Quintero, Felix Rodriquez
and Nestor Izquierdo would return to Nicaragua in the 1970’s, key figures
during the North/Contra era.
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=40542#relPageId=2&tab=page
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=40542&relPageId=3
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=40536&relPageId=2
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=40536&relPageId=2
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=136967#relPageId=34&tab=page
“The Names” - Connections and corroboration:
What begins with conversations heard by Gene Wheaton turns
out to be something much more “connected” than isolated war stories from a
couple of people. When his 1970s Nicaraguan Contra logistics sales effort reunited
Carl Jenkins with Rafael Quintero it brought together not only current Contra
project people like Felix Rodriquez and likely Luis Posada, but individuals who
had a decades long history with covert paramilitary action against Fidel
Castro, including high risk one and two men missions run directly into denied
and highly dangerous territory.
These men were the alpha cadre of the CIA’s Cuba projects,
repeatedly selected for covert projects and missions before and after the Bay
of Pigs fiasco, ultimately picked for the new and highly autonomous AMWORLD
project – some would continue to be picked for clandestine missions such as the
Congo operations and the mission that finally killed Che Guevera.
As to the war stories themselves, particularly those that involved
the talk of an attack on JFK, in terms of motive and incentive it appears they
are fully consistent with the other sources we noted – Vidal, Otero and Martino
– all associating the attack on JFK as involving Cuban exiles, individuals
dealing with a sense of betrayal and with a fundamental motive of revenge.
Beyond motive, it appears that a number of pre-assassination
remarks about a threat to JFK are also repetitive and consistent. Those remarks
– to Ray January in Dallas, at the Parrot Jungle in Miami and from a DRE member
in a weapons sting in Chicago – all appear to connect back to unsanctioned DRE
activities in the summer of 1963 (with financing from gambling figures in Miami
and Los Angeles) and to people who became involved with new Artime/AMWORLD
autonomous anti-Castro effort the end of that summer.
Those individuals had been frustrated enough to join in
efforts to procure weapons and launch missions against Cuba even as the CIA and
JFK was denying the DRE any further military role in efforts to oust Castro –
and as Artime himself was telling recruits they had been abandoned by the US,
the CIA and the Kennedy administration.
The names, the motives, the threads do all seem to be
interwoven. At a minimum what they suggest some type of rogue CIA/Cuban exile
action against JFK. An action incited and abetted by certain CIA officers and
involving the most activist Cuban exiles. At this point, based only on these
sources and stories it is impossible to be more specific – however the one name
common to all the threads, and the one directly associated with John Martino,
who himself admitted to being a minor participant in the conspiracy, would seem
to be that of Rip Robertson.
Appendix A / Backgrounds:
Gene Wheaton
In October, 1995 Gene Wheaton advised John Tunheim, the
Chairman of the Assassinations Records Review Board that he had “relevant
information” for the Board’s inquiry. He included a four page personal
biography as well as a personal commendation from President Nixon for his work
in Iran, targeting the global heroin network.
In response to a blanket communication sent to everyone who
had contacted the ARRB, he responded with a one page CV of a former CIA officer
– a close personal friend and employee of his at the time Wheaton was serving
as Vice President of National Air Cargo, operating a fleet of 23 turboprop
primarily involved in overnight UPS transport services. The former CIA officer
had been employed in Washington D.C., as a sales liaison seeking air
transportation contracts for support of the Reagan Administration humanitarian
and military efforts against the government of Nicaragua.
The ARRB did follow up with a contact, at which time Wheaton
advised them that he could produce documents relating to two former CIA
officers who had related details pertaining to the assassination of President
Kennedy, specifically information related to the Cuban exiles who had carried
out the attack (motivated by their hatred of JFK as a “traitor” to the
anti-Castro cause) and to those individuals above them who had acted for their
own reasons.
Although the ARRB totally failed to respond to Wheaton’s
outreach, the eventual release of the ARRB files, their discovery by researcher
Malcolm Blunt and subsequent investigations (including confronting Wheaton with
documents he had never realized would be made public) revealed that the
individuals Wheaton had desired to name as sources for the ARRB were former CIA
Directorate of Plans/Operations officer Carl Jenkins and a well-known Cuban
exile who had worked extensively with the CIA in military activities against
Cuba. Wheaton stated that both men were in possession of names and details
related to the attack on JFK in Dallas and had discussed the attack and those
who participated in it in his presence. The CIA paramilitary officer
employed by and a close friend of Wheaton was Carl Jenkins.
Carl Jenkins
Jenkins began his military service during WWII, following
the war he was commissioned as a Second Lt. in a Reserve Rifle Company (1940)
and became an instructor for the CIA in 1952, teaching courses in paramilitary
operations, survival and Evasion and Escape during 1952 and 1953. During the
1950s he conducted training across SE Asia, including training Thai and
Nationalist Chinese personnel and served in Singapore, Malaysia, the
Philippines and Indonesia. His specialties included maritime infiltration and
guerilla/resistance tactics.
In 1960 Jenkins (CIA crypt James D Zaboth) was assigned
to the CIA’s Cuba project (JMATE) in 1960/61, placed in charge of training of
Cuban exiles and expatriates. The initial training work was carried out at a
CIA camp in Panama. From Panama Jenkins was assigned to develop a much larger
training facility in Guatemala. He served Chief of Base for the ground forces
training in Guatemala (JMTRAV). In February Jenkins was reassigned, apparently
to run a variety of highly covert infiltration missions into Cuba, missions
related to preparing the way inside Cuba for the landing forces. He was
associated with the abortive effort to move Artime and special teams into Cuba
in March and appears to have been involved with the covert efforts to send in
personnel to carry out attacks against Fidel Castro in early April.
http://www.publicrecordmedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/whea/WHEA_pd_GW26005.pdf
http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/jfk/NARA-Oct2017/NARA-Nov9-2017/104-10194-10035.pdf
Following the failed landings at the Bay of Pigs in April
1961, Jenkins was sent to Vietnam, where he served as a special warfare advisor
to I Corps in the northernmost region of South Vietnam, operating out of
DaNang. In 1963 Jenkins was assigned to a new project, designated AMWORLD. That
assignment most likely had to do with his earlier experience in covert Cuban
operations as well as his prior service as a case officer for Rafael Quintero
(AMJAVA-4), a participant in the very early covert maritime missions into Cuba.
|
http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/jfk/NARA-Oct2017/2018/104-10169-10265.pd
AMWORLD continued as an active CIA project following the
death of JFK, however Cuba did not remain a priority for President Johnson
and as all attention turned towards Vietnam. The Artime project struggled on,
only to be quietly closed down by 1965. Following his AMWORLD assignment
Jenkins was assigned as a senior advisor to the Dominican National Police and
following that as Senior Advisor on Security and Training to the national
police of Nicaragua. In 1969 he moved to Laos, becoming Chief of Base for CIA
military operations in southern Laos during 1971-73 (a position earlier held
by David Morales, former Operations officer for the JMWAVE station in Miami).
Jenkins retired at the end of the SE Asian conflict, although he was called
back for special duties as late as 1979.
|
Rafael Quintero
Quintero, was the second individual named by Gene Wheaton as
having knowledge of the individuals involved on the attack on President
Kennedy.
Quintero had been involved with infiltration missions into
Cuba prior to the failed landing of the Cuban Expeditionary Force and had
operated covertly on the island, as had Felix Rodriquez. He had managed to
evade and escape during the landings and the following massive round up of
suspected insurgents, as had Rodriquez. Following his return to the United
States, he had had drafted plans for a new covert operations initiative and
presented them to Special Group leaders Robert Kennedy and Maxwell Taylor, who
in turn offered the plans to CIA Deputy Director Richard Helms.
Quintero was well respected, both within the CIA community
and by senior members of the Kennedy Administration who thought highly of him.
Helms was favorably impressed and forwarded Quintero’s plans on to the
president’s military representatives.[3] As the Artime project evolved into
AMWORLD, Quintero was appointed second in command of the new project and
accompanied Artime to the most secret meetings – with Carl Jenkins continuing
as his case officer as he had been during the early 60/61 JMATE project. .
Quintero was involved in AMWORLD military operations through
1965. It appears that given his experience with autonomous operations and
deniable military logistics, he was then retained as a contract employee
working with a variety of companies in Mexico and Central America that
functioned as CIA fronts. He officially separated from the CIA in 1971,
maintaining contact with his former associates. In 1976 he was approached by
former CIA officer Ed Wilson and personally loaned Wilson ten thousand dollars
to help set up a new freight forwarding company. Shortly afterwards Wilson
approached Quintero to take part in an assassination; Quintero assumed it was
CIA sanctioned and he and an experienced Cuban exile demolitions expert flew to
London to be briefed on the mission.
During the briefing it became clear that Wilson was involved
with a strictly private project and that Russians were involved. The project
was actually one of the Gadhafi/Libyan deals that Wilson and other Americans
had become involved with and Quintero immediately returned to the U.S. and
reported it to his longtime friend, Carl Jenkins. Jenkins advised him to have
nothing to do with Wilson.
By 1985 Quintero was in a new position, as field logistics
coordinator for the Reagan Administration Contra initiative against the
Sandinistas in Nicaragua. He traveled across Central America, arranging
shipping and weapons clearances with multiple governments – working directly
for Richard Secord (under Oliver North) and with no official US government
clearances or standing Quintero established senior level government
arrangements with foreign governments and military agencies. Quintero supported
Secord in establishing airfields and setting up a covert air operation in
support of the Contra effort – all after Congress had passed legislation
officially removing the CIA from Contra military activities.
At the same time, another long time CIA asset – Felix Rodriquez
– had also been brought into the North era Contra operation.
Felix Rodriquez
Rodriquez had been deeply involved in the pre-invasion
maritime missions into Cuba, as well as in plans for an abortive sniper attack
on Castro. He became one of the earliest recruits for the AMWORLD project,
personally approached by both Artime and Quintero while in U.S. Army training
at Fort Benning in the earl fall of 1963.
http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/jfk/NARA-Oct2017/NARA-Nov9-2017/104-10109-10170.pdf
Rodriquez was among the Artime recruits “black exfiltrated”
out of the U.S. at the end of 1963. He carried out a number of activities,
including radio communications coordination, in the AMWORLD project. Following
the end of AMWORLD, Felix Rodriquez was retained by the CIA as a totally
deniable field agent. In his own biography he describes being paid as a
principal agent but only under a verbal agreement with no contract and no
paperwork. Following a short assignment to Venezuela, Felix Rodriquez, along
with two other Cuban exiles, was moved into a project in Bolivia – a project
specifically targeting Che Guevara. Operating under commercial cover, Rodriquez
became a key figure in the operation which ultimately led to Guevara’s
death.
Afterwards Rodriquez continued activities across Latin
America, conducting counter insurgency training under the cover of being an
American military officer. Following that service he was moved to SE Asia,
where he supported Project Phoenix field operations out of Saigon; after
Vietnam he was redirected back to Latin America, to a post in Argentina in
1972.
While working as an “off the books” CIA employee, Rodriquez had
also pursued other work - serving as a security consultant in Lebanon and then
joining Ed Wilson (as Quintero did) for work supplying weapons to militias in
that country. He writes of “hoaxing” his CIA case officer to go overseas for
that work. His activities across Latin America introduced him to a host of
senior military officers in the region. He officially separated from the CIA in
1976 and received a virtually unique approval to publicly talk and write about
his CIA employment. By 1981/82 he became involved in a number of private
initiatives against the Sandinista leadership in Nicaragua, implementing what
he called his own “tactical task force” of experienced anti-Castro Cuban exile
fighters.
Ultimately Rodriquez, like Quintero, became deeply involved
with the North/Secord Contra operations, organizing and managing transportation
and supply logistics for the effort. It was during this involvement that
Quintero became reacquainted with Carl Jenkins and in which Jenkins went to
work for Gene Wheaton, seeking air transportation contracts to support the
North/Secord Contra effort.
Nestor “Tony” Izquierdo
Another of Artime’s early recruits for the AMWORLD project
was Nestor Izquierdo, another Cuban exile with a long history of anti-Castro
operations. He had been one of the earliest anti-Castro revolutionaries inside
Cuba, along with both Artime, Quintero and Tony Verona.
Izquierdo was among the earliest exile volunteers - along
with Quintero and Felix Rodriquez – to volunteer for the CIA’s Cuba project,
taking his initial training in Panama under Carl Jenkins, Reported he
parachuted into Cuba prior to the Bay of Pigs landings. Following the disaster
at the Bay of Pigs Izquierdo managed to make his way out of Cuba and joined CIA
JMWAVE maritime missions against Cuba, missions often personally led by Rip
Robertson. Like Artime, Robertson clearly had a good deal of respect for
Izquierdo’s operational skills, actually taking him out of the AMWORLD project
(under Quintero and Jenkins) for a special hostage rescue mission into the
Congo in the fall of 1964.
Izquierdo ended up being one of the last AMWORLD
recruits to leave Nicaragua as that project was being closed down. He and
Silvano Pozo Carriles helped secure the cache of AMWORLD armaments at Monkey
Point in Nicaragua. In June 1965 Carl Jenkins managed to obtain work for both
men in Panama, in jobs under George Cabot Lodge, son of Henry Cabot Lodge.
Upon his return to the United States, Izuierdo became
involved with some of the most activist Cuban exile groups, joining CORU along
with Rolondo Otero, Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles. Izquierdo was also
one of the earliest volunteers to train Contra rebels to fight against the
Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. He was killed in 1979 during an air mission
into Nicaragua.
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/belligerence/CIA-4-20-1977.pdf
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/belligerence/San_Antonio_Express_4_5_1977_1.pdf
Rip Robertson and TILT
The TILT mission remains somewhat mysterious for many
reasons, even though we do have documents on its origins and a detailed after
action report from the operation’s mission leader, Rip Robertson. TILT
was first floated by DRE members in the spring of 1963. It was also
endorsed and promoted by John Martino through his anti-Castro political
contacts in Miami. The purported objective of the mission was to connect with a
revolutionary group inside Cuba who was hiding defecting Russian missile
technicians. Those Russians supposedly (according to the DRE sources) had
remained in Cuba after the Russian agreement to remove all ballistic missiles
from the island. Supposedly they were willing to provide statements and
evidence that Russian ballistic missiles - and possibly nuclear warheads -
remained in Cuba. Arrangements were in place to immediately provide that
evidence to Congressional and media sources in a manner that would have been
highly damaging to the Kennedy Administration and JFK’s upcoming election
campaign.
What the available documents confirm is that the TILT
mission was authorized at the level of the CIA’s Western Hemisphere chief, JC
King, and supported by Ted Shackley, the head of the JMWAVE station in
Miami. It was approved and carried out at a point in time when all
missions into Cuba required approval by the Special Group Augmented (SGA)
covert action oversight committee (headed by RFK).and Presidential concurrence.
Yet there is no indication that TILT was communicated to the SGA or approved by
RFK or JFK.
The TILT mission itself involved a host of violations of
standard CIA security practices, including the participation of a LIFE magazine
photo journalist. In addition it involved the personal participation of
William Pawley, a former US Ambassador. Beyond his work as an ambassador,
Pawley had been a consultant on national security and the organization of the
CIA, submitted an eyes only secret report on the national intelligence t0
President Eisenhower. TILT also involved the participation of a number of
non-CIA vetted Cuban exiles involved with Alpha 66 (a proscribed exile military
group at that point in time) and of John Martino, recently released from prison
in Cuba and a highly visible critic of the Kennedy Administration policies on
Cuba.
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=28993&search=tilt#relPageId=1&tab=page
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=28894&search=tilt#relPageId=2&tab=page
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=28896&search=tilt#relPageId=2&tab=page
Appendix B / Castro Assassination Efforts:
We are far from having the full details of the extremely
secret CIA military initiative which targeted Fidel Castro for assassination in
early 1961. It is even unclear to what extent the heads of the Cuba project and
the CIA Director himself were informed as to the operational details of its
various efforts. As with many areas of the overall Cuba project, deniability
and compartmentalization appears to have overruled effective communications and
operational coordination. The best we can do is to detail some of the elements
now known to have been occurred.
During the first three months of 1961 at least two different
military missions were planned. Those missions targeted Cuban leaders and
specifically Fidel Castro. Theyt were intended to lay the groundwork for a
popular uprising which would have supported by the landing of the Cuban
Expeditionary Force. One mission (possibly planned under the “Pathfinder”
operations) was intended to carry out an attack on Fidel Castro at a location
near the Bay of Pigs resort where he routinely vacationed. It appears that plan
may have included details of Castro’s personal travel and activities, including
information from sources previously close to Castro inside Cuba such as Frank
Sturgis. Prior to his departure from Cuba Sturgis had offered to personally
carry out a lethal attack on Castro, however the CIA had declined his offer at
that point in time.
Sturgis’s name appears in one January 20, 1961 report which
includes a reference to “Pathfinder”.
A second plan – known to Carl Jenkins, if not operationally
managed by him - did go operational; it involved the insertion of personnel who
were to carry out a well-planned sniper attack on Fidel Castro at his retreat
on Varadero Beach, east of Havana. The mission was supported with maps and annotated
drawings of the Varadero (formerly DuPont owned) Estate. Those materials were
prepared from aerial and possibly satellite photo imagery processed by the
imagery staff assigned to JMWAVE. We only know about these two assassination
projects because certain of the WAVE personnel were later transferred to the
National Photo Imagery Center (NPIC) and they provided information the Church
committee on assassinations. The very limited records which describe the
two plans were submitted to the Church Committee by managers at NPIC, they
included statements from some eight personnel who had worked on projects
related to attacks on Castro.
According to Edward Cates, the chief of the Image
Exploitation Group at NPIC, “a number of our photo interpreters [8 individuals]
supported Carl Jenkins of the DD/P (Deputy Directorate of Plans) concerning a
plan to assassinate Castro at the DuPont Veradero 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.”
It appears that the CIA may have performed its own internal
investigation of those missions in the mid-1970s. Two memoranda from June and
August, 1975 record the statement of a Cuban CIA officer (in 1961 a contract
employee) that he participated in three abortive Cuban infiltration missions,
including an effort to land him near Varadero Beach. The objective of that
mission was a long range rifle attack on Fidel Castro. One of the memos
mentions the names of two Cubans involved in the mission, “Felix” and
“Segundo”. Based on this information, it appears that Carl Jenkins may
have been transferred out of Guatemala to manage a number of covert
infiltration missions, involving at least one which involved Felix Rodriquez
and a sniper attack on Fidel Castro.
The memo also discloses that the boat used, the “yacht” had
aborted one insertion due to engine problems. That observation, when combined
with information in related documents, allows us to identify both the yacht as
the Tejuana III and the individual named Felix as Felix Rodriquez. CIA
documents record the missions of the Tejana III, which began in late February,
1961 and ended in early April. The Tejana made four trips into Cuba during that
period, carrying infiltration personnel and supplies for on island groups
intended to support the planned uprising. Some 27 personnel and 60 tons of
supplies were covertly transported into Cuba. It appears that Felix Rodriquez
was sent in on a one man mission in early April, a mission which was forced to
abort due to an engine problem with the Tejana III.[4]
A separate CIA document, the debriefing of Felix Rodriquez
prior to his separation from the CIA in 1976 (and a very unusual authorization
for the public disclosure of his CIA service) records his own statement that in
December 1960 he had volunteered to kill Fidel Castro, stating that it was the
only solution to the Cuban problem. He also stated that he had been supplied
with a special sniper weapon for missions into Cuba and that he and another CIA
Cuban had made three missions into Cuba.[5] Rodriquez did not identify the CIA
officer who had given them the assignments or state any details on the
missions. In his own biography, Rodriquez provides more detail on the
assassination plan, describing a German bolt action sniper rifle with a
telescopic sight. The rifle itself was pre-sighted according to the specifics
of the mission, based on the exact location in which Castro was to be attacked.
While we have a good level of detail on the abortive sniper
attack involving Felix Rodriquez, the earlier mission – apparently scheduled
for March – remains far more mysterious. However we do know that Director Helms
himself approved the transportation and staging of four different teams that
apparently were scheduled for missions in the March time frame, but which
either aborted or failed. One of the teams would have involved Artime, another
a special three man mission which ultimately did attempt and failed in a major
sabotage effort on the Havana power system as well as the assassination of
Castro. While characterized to the Church committee as a rogue operation,
that effort clearly was sanctioned and involved a three man team sent out of
Guatemala by Carl Jenkins.
At the same time, another team consisting of 7 exile
personnel and two deniable team leaders was also sent out of Guatemala.
Interestingly, one of the team leaders may have been one of the Russian
defectors who had been used for Cuban exile military training in both Panama
and Guatemala. That possibility is indicated by the fact that a CIA
document indicates him as associated with AEDEPOT. The AE crypt can be shown to
be used for Soviet Union sources, in particular defectors and agents.
http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/jfk/NARA-Oct2017/2018/178-10002-10261.pdf
https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2018/104-10162-10101.pdf
https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2018/104-10162-10098.pdf
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=66025&relPageId=2
https://www.maryferrell.org/php/cryptdb.php
For reference it should also be noted that the CIA’s efforts
to use Havana casino connections to actually poison Fidel Castro did not get
underway before March. The first effort failed and a second effort was
hurriedly put together in early April, immediately prior to the dispatch of the
Cuban Expeditionary Force. That effort aborted because the conduit for the
poison, Tony Verona, was sequestered along with other exile political leaders
immediately before Brigade 2506 sailed from Guatemala. President Eisenhower’s
initial time frame for putting exile forces into Cuba would have inserted them
prior to the November, 1960 elections. When that failed he requested that
the CIA carry out an operation in December. However the CIA’s plan had
changed so dramatically over time that even the basic missions in support of an
internal uprising in Cuba – much less the actual elimination of Fidel Castro -
were not operational prior to January, 1960.
[1] Larry Hancock,
Someone Would Have Talked, JFK Lancer Publications, 2010, Appendix E, “Student
Warrior”, 360-363
[2] A CIA maritime
operationas group consisting of exiles initially recruited for the 2506
Brigade. This brigade was the anti-Castro Cuban exiles and allies that
participated in the Bay of Pigs.
https://www.maryferrell.org/php/cryptdb.php?id=AMHAZE&search=amhaze
[3] RIF
145-10001-10121 and 145-1001-1022, “Operational Plan Submitted to CIA by
Quintero”
[4] Larry Hancock,
Someone Would Have Talked, Appendix D, “The Way of JMWAVE”, 352-359
[5] Ibid, Appendix
I, “Echoes from Dallas”, 389-391
As mentioned in a previous blog post, my presentation at the
November in Dallas Lancer conference dealt with new research by myself and
David Boylan into the possible names that my have been in play during the “war
stories” talk heard by Gene Wheaton. Names associated with direct
knowledge of the attack on President Kennedy in Dallas.
In an hour of conference time I was barely able to provide
an introduction to the subject, including the vetting of Wheaton and his two
sources – CIA paramilitary officer Carl Jenkins and long time CIA anti-Castro
operative, Rafael Quintero. Exactly how and when the dialogs heard by
Wheaton occurred is covered in the 2010 edition of SWHT and is supported by the
papers and correspondence Wheaton provided to the ARRB. The failure of
the ARRB to respond in any proactive or positive fashion is also discussed in
that book.
It should be noted that Wheaton tried to take both men to a
US Senator, with negotiated grants of immunity. That offer was rejected
and Wheaton was told if he pursued the matter his credibility would be
undermined – a threat which indeed appears to have been carried out.
Much later, Quintero – a close personal friend of Wheaton,
Quintero – confirmed that the dialogs and discussions had occurred as Wheaton
described but that Wheaton had simply “misunderstood”.
What has become clear in the intervening years is that there
is independent, if circumstantial, corroboration for the scenario and motives
which Wheaton described hearing – discussed in front of him simply as a
trusted third party.
That corroboration, and the possibilities it opens are
discussed in the following monograph. For the sake of brevity sources are
included directly in the monograph rather than footnoted; there are a few
footnotes but virtually all the research is embedded in the text.
Debra Conway has been kind enough to archive the full paper
which was presented at the conference and you can find it here:Advertisements
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https://docs.google.com/document/d/14WMnEEy9otCemUh7OHiNCY5iomx5l4O02eSr4vzLrGM/edit
I’d be happy to take questions on it here or by email at
larryjoe@westok.net.
Certainly it is an ongoing project and while it can only
take us so far, its implications are significant. As are the possible
connection between certain of the individuals mentioned and New Orleans, Dallas
Texas and Lee Oswald. larryjoe2 says: While its still early days in some
of these areas, here’s what I think we know at this point:
Initially personnel from the earliest training (under
Jenkins in Panama) were taken to Belle Chase for advanced training, a select
number of them were separated and moved to the Keys for maritime missions.
Those would be the Pathfinder cadre (Pathfinder being standard terminology for
advanced reconnaissance and preparing for the main force). As a type of special
force (somewhat comparable to U.S. Army Recon/Scouts) these folks would be
highly trained, skilled and first in, infiltrated in advance. The vetting
process came though through their basic and advanced training combined with the
fact that they had been among the very first volunteers – heavily committed and
with many of them having prior experience in Cuba as part of the armed
revolution against Castro. As far as we can tell so far Carl Jenkins played a
key role in this.
What all those folks had in common was going into Cuba in
advance. It is also possible that some of the AMOTS were inserted in advance
for intelligence collection and Castro leadership targeting – although that is
less clear. If I knew exactly how Felix Rodriquez came through the pipeline we
would know but that remains unknown at this point.
Some of the work David Boylan is now doing with the AMHAZE
crypts also suggests that some of the maritime personnel were intended to work
directly with on island resistance groups, in support of an uprising that the
landings would reinforce. Its pretty clear the uprising was supposed to follow
the assassination of Castro – and all those efforts (paramilitary and poison)
failed. Artime was supposed to have been inserted in advance to help lead that
resistance; since it all aborted he ended up going in with the Brigade.
The other forces and names that you mention were all part of
the Brigade landings, San Jenis’s team as diversion and Lynch and Robertson
going in with the Brigade at the BOP. Later, after that disaster, Jenkins went
off to Vietnam and Robertson became a key operations figure in maritime
operations against Cuba, working with some of the same Pathfinder team members.
On your last question, it looks like several of the
Pathfinder personnel did manage to avoid the round ups after the landings
failed – Felix Rodriquez, Nestor Izquierdo, Carlos Hernandez. Some were not on
island at the time. We are still trying to track what may well have been one
assassination team out of Guatemala that appears to have literally disappeared.
What is clear from all of this is that the full story of the
Bay of Pigs is far more complex than what is in the history books. That story
suggests that key elements – a) Castro assassination, b) Island wide uprising
and c) broad military action by resistance groups – was definitely part of the
plan and apparently was not communicated to JFK. Worse yet there were so many
failures in the last two months that the whole operation should certainly have
aborted. Of course that full story makes Helms, Barnes and Bissell look even
more culpable..not surprising it was suppressed.
Hope that helps, that’s the best picture we have at the
moment.
December
18, 2018 at 2:46 pm
Confusion on the names is a problem we all face. The
crypt/code system is intended as a security measure – to defeat foreign
intelligence and preserve operational security. It’s taken us decades of
document release and study to understand enough crypts to effectively read the
documents we now have available. We are building a growing encyclopedia of
crypts at the Mary Ferrell Foundation:
https://www.maryferrell.org/php/cryptdb.php
Basically you have personal crypts for individuals….and if
those individuals are acting within a particular operation that operation has a
crypt as well. So you have AM/HAZE as an operation and AM-HAZE 1 – N as
individual crypts. You have AM/MOT as an operation and AMOT 1- N as individuals
. Some individuals are involved in ongoing projects over time (not just
individual operations) and significant enough to have their own independent
crypt (Manuel Artime as AMBIDDY).
In regard to AMOT, it refers to a set of individuals trained
to be the new Cuban intelligence service upon the removal of Castro – that was
the AMOT program. There were collateral programs for other roles, such as
AMCHEER.
Certain of the AMOT trainees were taken into special
projects and others became part of the group designated to support the landing
and move on with the anticipated overthrow, targeting and removing Castro and
Communist leaders as resistance removed the Castro regime. The AMOTS traveled
with the Cuban Expeditionary Force to the Bay of Pigs but due to the failure of
the landings they were never debarked and ultimately ended back in Florida.
It appears that the role of the AMOTS in essentially
eliminating the Communist leadership inside Cuba was designated as Operation 40
(over time that term got used in a variety of different ways). At this point it
is unclear that it was an official CIA designation at all or simply a term used
to describe that effort and the individuals being used in it …some of the
nastier activities in regime change don’t get fully on record.
The Brigade became the public terminology for the large group
of exiles officially designated as the Cuban Expeditionary Force. Its members
were initially trained in Panama, later in Guatemala and a limited number of
them at other bases in the U.S. So an individual could be trained for the
Brigade but used in various operations….most stayed in Guatemala with the main
force, however the individuals in the Wheaton Names studies were tasked with
special missions, moved to the sites supporting those missions and operated as
part of them.
Its definitely not simple and it is confusing…but then again
it was designed for that purpose.
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This update is for the folks who have been following our
Wheaton Names research over the past several months. I’ve blogged a few times
and we did put up a link to an early research paper on the work, but since
then we’ve gone much further in some respects…and hit a bit of a wall in the
process.
With the assumption that Wheaton did hear remarks about
the attack on JFK, among the “war stories” that Carl Jenkins and Rafael
Quintero were exchanging with their friends, the obvious question is who were
those friends and what would Jenkins and Quintero have in common with them.
That obvious answer – given that Wheaton and Jenkins were
trying to get into the air transport/supply business for the Contra military
effort against the Sandinista’s, is that they were meeting with the two field
agents in charge of handling those shipments. That would be Rafael Quintero
and Felix Rodriquez.
Further research shows that both Quintero and Rodriquez
had an extended history in anti-Castro paramilitary operations Carl Jenkins,
making Jenkins a perfect selection for Wheaton as his sales manager.
That history, combined with the documented personal relationship
between Wheaton and Quintero, explains why Wheaton might well have been in a
position to hear the sorts of war stories and remarks about JFK which he
ultimately attempted to report to the ARRB.
Research into Quintero and Rodriquez has also provided a
good deal of detail on their association with Jenkins. It began with the
earliest volunteers for the CIA’s Cuba project, and their training at a base
in Panama – training overseen by Carl Jenkins. During 1960 a group of those
earliest volunteers was pulled for additional training at the secret CIA
training installation in Belle Chase, outside of New Orleans.
Ultimately those individuals, along with personnel trained
in intelligence collection and practices by David Morales, were covertly
inserted into Cuba to make contact with resistance groups and report on
conditions inside Cuba. Several of them were also deployed on maritime
insertion missions in the months immediately before the landings at the Bay
of Pigs, on supply missions – and as we learned – on highly secret attempts
to kill Fidel Castro in a series of planned ambushes and sniper attacks.
They were part of a last ditch effort to decapitate
Cuban leadership before the landings, an effort which included the notorious
poisoning project but which was more extensive than the CIA ever admitted in
its reports on the Cuba Project, or later to the Church committee.
Due to the nature of those missions, the majority of those
individuals, including both Quintero and Rodriquez, did not end up in Cuba
prisons; they and several of the other individuals being used in the pre-landing
maritime missions (operated out of the Florida Keys, with some, including
assassination missions overseen by Carl Jenkins) continued working in covert
CIA operations including maritime missions into Cuba – overseen by CIA
paramilitary specialist Rip Robertson.
Those missions decreased over time, particularly after the
agreements with the Russians which helped resolve the Cuban missile crisis of
fall 1962. By mid-1963 several of those individuals has essentially
been taken off missions, some held on retainer but most simply looking for
ways to continue efforts against Castro. In the summer of 1963, several
of them (who were DRE members) participated in two abortive efforts to carry
out bombing missions against Cuba.
At the same time that was going on, the Kennedy
Administration had decided to support a new, highly autonomous off shore
effort against Castro (AMWORLD), headed by Manuel Artime and with Quintero as
second in command. Carl Jenkins was assigned to perform CIA oversight
over Quintero and the initial military operations against Cuba.
What we have learned is that a particular clique of the
most committed anti-Castro fighters, the earliest volunteers for the Cuba
Project, the individuals given advanced training and sent into Cuba in high risk
maritime missions – including assassination attempts were some of the
earliest recruits into the new AMWORLD project. The joined the project
in the August and September time frame – but the project itself did not begin
covertly exfilitrating personnel out of the U.S. until January/February 1964.
For all intents and purposes those key individuals, very
possibly including some of the names mentioned by Quintero, Rodriquez and
Jenkins in the conversations Wheaton overhead, simply go out of sight. They
continued to live in the US, they continued to travel and take some amount of
training, apparently most continued to reside in the Miami area.
However while they were in the process of being given
covers, they simply went dark. AMWORLD did have money for domestic
activities, including travel and purchases. And it was all done outside of
CIA control. It was autonomous and so were its members to a large
extent. There is some indication that certain of the individuals we begin
following in Carl Jenkins training camp in Panama in 1960 were traveling to
Texas in the fall of 1963.
Several of them were active DRE members and could have
used that affiliation as a dover in their travels to New Orleans and Dallas;
some were definitely in New Orleans in the summer when Lee Oswald was there.
But pinning down their movements in the fall is a real challenge and
largely speculative at the moment.
In one instance it appears that the links may extend to
Red Bird airport and the remarks made to Ray January by a Cuba pilot immediately
before the attack on JFK. But fully confirming that is a challenge in itself.
So…do we have names that fit the Wheaton story;
absolutely. Can we show them to be associated with each other and to be among
the most committed and aggressive Cuban exiles; yes. Some among them
were expert marksmen and had volunteered for use in sniper attacks on Castro.
They were among the most skillful of the trainees at both infiltration and
exfiltration, going in and out of Cuba multiple times even when Cuban security
was at its highest. Manuel Artime had requested several of them by name as
his own special security team. They were also among the first volunteers for
his AMWROLD project in 1963.
Can we put them in Dallas for the attack, no we
can’t. We have suspects, at the moment because of the autonomous nature
of the AMWORLD project and its limited reporting, moving the ball further
down the field is proving to be quite challenging.
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