Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Pathfinder Plan to Kill Castro

PATHFINDER
or
PAJNFINDER

NPIC - JMWAVE Personnel Interviews

Handwritten notes transcribed by Bill Kelly (April 14 2015)

Your comments appreciated before I post this - Does it say they kept the PAJN-PATHFINDER File in the JMWAVE NPIC "Area" - where they accessed it?

Memo for the Record
Secret Sensitive

21 March 1975

1. On 19 March Dino A. Brugioni, chief, Western Geographic division had told him that while serving at JMWAVE, Miami, Florida or in the Image Analysis Service in Washington during the 1960's they had heard references to assassination plans on Fidel Castro.

2. On 20 March, I met the following NPIC personnel who had either served in the imagery analysis services or at JMWAVE on Cuban related problems:....The purpose of the meeting was to ascertain whether their participation was related to case officer generated materials or bonafide operations.

3. There appeared to be two plans involving Fidel Castro and/or incidents involving Fidel, to the knowledge of our people, were:

(a) A folder, stored in the Photo Interpretation ["Section" crossed out ] Area at JMWAVE contained materials related to a plan to assassinate Castro in the Bay of Pigs Resort area where he maintained a yacht and was known to vacation.

The plan, possibly with the code word PAJNFINDER [or PATHFINDER] apparently had been disapproved and not under active consideration at the time. Our people did not participate actively in the plan in any regard.

(b) While assigned to the Imagery Analysis Service, a number of our photo interpreters supported Carl Jenkins of the DD/P concerning a plan to assassinate Castro at the DuPont Veradero 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 interpreter support was restricted to providing annotated photographs and line drawings of the estate. To our knowledge this plan was never implemented


1 comment:

  1. Bill, great notes. Do you have the original audio for this? It sounds like Dino is saying he spent time at JM/WAVE??
    -Chris

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