Sunday, January 12, 2020

Arnoldo Fernandez on the CSI Report on Castro Killing Kennedy

Castro Killed JFK - an Active Measure Psych War Media Campaign 

BK NOTES: This is an important article that addresses an issue that I have dealt with and will update soon - the part of the plot to kill JFK that failed - the psych war black prop operation to blame the conspiracy on Castro - the Phase One cover story, - what they call an "active measure" today as this campaign continues
Destitute Cuban Studies Institute on the JFK Assassination as promoted by former CIA agents Brian Latell and Bob Baer, and their media assets Gus Russo and Phil Shenon. Because this action failed, like all failed covert ops, it gives us some insight into how these things work, and don't work. 




For More on this see: JFKcountercoup: The Psych War Operation that Failed to Blame Castro

And thanks to Jim DiEugenio for posting this article at KennedysandKing.com 

Saturday, Dec. 28, 2019


Written by Arnaldo M. Fernandez

Arnaldo Fernandez answers Pedro Roig's recent article from the Cuban Studies Institute, in order to set the record straight regarding Castro's involvement in the JFK assassination.


The Executive Director of the so-called Cuban Studies Institute (CSI), Pedro Roig, presents himself as an attorney and historian in posting “Castro’s Complicity in Kennedy’s Assassination.”

The piece leaves much to be desired of Roig’s expertise in both legal and historic studies. It exposes the CSI as a sanctuary of shameless and mindless anti-Castro propaganda. Let’s review Roig’s endeavor to persuade without regard for truth.

Oswald Contact with Cuban Security Agents

“It is now evident that Oswald made contact with Cuban intelligence officers while stationed at El Toro Marine Air Base in Santa Ana, California.”

No, it’s not. The FBI interviewed 26 U.S. Marines acquainted with Oswald at El Toro. None of them connected Oswald to the budding Castro’s foreign intelligence. Roig cherry-picked Nelson Delgado and disguises his presumptions as quantum of proof.

“Under oath, Delgado stated that ‘Oswald told him he was receiving mail from Cubans and had developed contact with Cuban government officials in Los Angeles. Delgado recalled that Oswald met with an unknown visitor … and they spent about one and a half, two hours talking.’”

Let’s summarize what Wesley J. Liebeler, assistant counsel of the Warren Commission, got from Delgado under oath, upon which Roig dares to even suggest that a Cuban handler came to a U.S. military base at night to talk with his agent Oswald.

Liebeler: You never asked Oswald who this fellow was that he talked to?

Delgado: No, no.

Q: Did you connect this visit that Oswald had at that time with the Cuban Consulate?

A: Personally, I did, because I thought it funny for him to be receiving a caller at such a late date time … After he started to get in contact with these Cuban people, he started getting little pamphlets and newspapers.

Q: Did you have any reason to believe that these things came to Oswald from the Cuban Consulate?

A: Well, I took it for granted that they did after I seen the envelope…

Q: What was on this envelope that made you think that?

A: Something like a Mexican eagle, with a big, impressive seal, you know. They had different colors on it, red and white … But I can't recall the seal. I just knew it was in Latin, United, something like that.

Q: You don't know for sure whether it was from the Cuban Consulate?

A: No. But he had told me prior, just before I found that envelope in his wall locker, that he was receiving mail from them.

Q: Did he tell you what his correspondence with the Cuban Consulate was about?

A: No, he didn’t.

As earwitness, Delgado didn’t know who visited Oswald one night at El Toro; as eyewitness, he described an impressive seal that could be anything but Cuban stuff. Roig has simply recycled the failed 1975 CIA trick of giving Delgado evidential weight to dispel the growing cloud of suspicion over the CIA itself and to point the finger at Castro. Thus, Roig has only proven that the CSI comes to the JFK research community with the spurious arguments of a previous generation.

In Oswald and the CIA (Carroll & Graf, 1995, 627 pages / Skyhorse, 2008, 696 pages), retired Major John M. Newman, who spent 20 years in U.S. Army Intelligence and became executive assistant of the National Security Agency (NSA), killed the two Delgado birds flown by the CIA with one stone. The ex-Marine Gerry Patrick Hemming told his 1960 CIA debriefers that he had met Oswald at the Cuban Consulate in Los Angeles and then confronted him about it outside the gate at El Toro the night before flying to Washington. In an interview by Dick Russell, Hemming destroyed the wild presumption of a 1959 link between Oswald and the budding Castro’s intelligence services:

I ran into Oswald in Los Angeles in 1959, when he showed up at the Cuban Consulate. The coordinator of the 26th of July Movement [Castro’s political group] called me aside and said a Marine officer had showed up, intimating that he was prepared to desert and go to Cuba to become a revolutionary. I met with the Marine … I thought he was a “penetrator” [and] I told the 26th of July leadership to get rid of him. (Argosy, Vol. 383, No. 3, April 1976)

In contrast to Oswald, Hemming did manage to join Castro’s army; in line with Oswald, he also exemplifies the adventurous spirit among many Americans in the early days of the triumphant Cuban revolution. Oswald was released by the U.S. Marine Corps at El Toro on September 11, 1959. On September 3-4, 1959, U.S. Ambassador Phillip Bonsal still expressed “the general sympathy with objectives of Cuban revolution and similarity with many of our own aims and aspirations.” (Foreign Relations of The U.S., 1958–1960, Volume VI, Cuba, Document 359)

Roig hides this Zeitgeist to portray Oswald as a fully dedicated soldier for Castro: “[Delgado] testified that Oswald kept on asking him ‘how he could help Castro’”. Roig stops here, but the beat goes on with Delgado explaining: “We were on friendly terms with Cuba, you know, so this wasn't no subversive or malintent”. Delgado clearly revealed the adventurous spirit:

[W]e had a head start, you see. We were getting honorable discharges, while Morgan [Delgado meant Major William Morgan, who also had been infatuated with the Cuban revolution and ended up executed by firing squad under charge of rebellion against Castro] got a dishonorable discharge from the Army and he went to Castro and fought with Castro. So, we could go over there and become officers and lead an expedition to some of these other islands and free them too … [W]e would do away with Trujillo [The dictator of Dominican Republic, the Caribbean nation that shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti].

However, Roig keeps on building a body of evidence about a Castroite Oswald, in a way that resembles the fate of the Cuban character “Chacumbele,” who killed himself. After acknowledging that “defectors like Oswald [were] under close surveillance” by the KGB, Roig broaches a “suspicious coincidence.” In Minsk (Belarus), Oswald was directed to enroll in a Foreign Language School “adjacent to the KGB Academy, attended by Cuban security personnel.”

The coincidence is not suspicious, but absolutely irrelevant. There is not a shred of evidence in reference to Cuban security personnel and Oswald in his KGB file, which includes daily reports of intensive surveillance, even through a peephole into his bedroom. In addressing this lack of evidence, Roig has concocted an undrinkable cocktail: Marina Oswald “testified that Oswald bragged that he had gotten close to some of the Cubans [and] remembered the Cubans with pleasant memories.”

Marina clearly stated that Oswald knew “a Cuban family” and she had heard about 300 Cubans in Minsk, “but I never knew even a single one.” In fact, Oswald knew a man named Alfred (last name unknown) from Cuba and a picture of them together is provided by [Warren] Commission Exhibit 2612. Newman demonstrated Alfred does not provide scope for suspicions. He was a student at the University of Minsk and his parents visited him. Oswald knew him through Anita Zieger, who was courted by Alfred. She and her family—of Argentinian origin—were friends of the Oswalds in Minsk.

Oswald’s Alleged Visits to the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City

Roig continues his deceptive handling of the facts by masking Oswald as “a militant advocate of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.” He also labels the FPCC “as a Communist front that supported the Castro’s Marxist-Leninist revolution.” Ironically, this remark closes his new avenue of deception for good.

In the Spring 1963, Oswald formed a one-man New Orleans chapter of FPCC. Although its leadership warned him about “unnecessary incidents,” Oswald walked into a lair of the anti-Castro Student Revolutionary Directorate (DRE) to offer help. On August 9, he was handing out pro-Castro leaflets in downtown New Orleans. A brawl with DRE militants eventually ensued, but it was staged. Oswald had described the incident in a letter to FPCC postmarked five days before. Less than two weeks thereafter, Oswald and the local DRE head, Carlos Bringuier, met again on a debate at WDSU radio.

Bringuier exposed Oswald as a re-defector from the Soviet Union. Oswald turned the tables by boasting about his stay there as “excellent qualification to repudiate charges that the FPCC is Communist controlled.” He stressed: “It is inconsistent with my ideals to support Communism … We do not feel that we are supporting international Communism in supporting Fidel.”

Within a week, Oswald wrote to the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), in order to leave a paper trail of the very linkages he had denied on the air: “I am the secretary of the local bra(n)ch (sic) of the FPCC, a position which, frankly, I have used to foster communist ideals.” A prime soldier for Fidel Castro does not stab him in the back.

Roig circumvents the most burning question about Oswald in Mexico City by quoting from the unpublished autobiography of Winston Scott [CIA Chief of Station]: “Every piece of information concerning Oswald was reported immediately … These reports were made on all his contacts, with both the Cuban Consulate and the Soviets … Persons watching these embassies photographed Oswald as he entered and left; and clocked the time he spent on each visit.”

The core factual issue is that the CIA has never produced either a photo of Oswald nor a tape with his voice on it from Mexico City. Win Scott himself overlooked Oswald in his September 1963 report on the CIA telephone tapping program LIENVOY, although an American in phone contact with both Cuban and Soviet embassies was ipso facto of operational interest. In his attempt to escape from the facts, Roig falls into a preposterous dual story:

In March 1968, President Lyndon Johnson … requested from his close associate (sic) Marty Underwood to meet with Scott in Mexico City. The timing was excellent … In the meeting with Underwood, Scott stated that early in the morning of November 22, 1963, a small Cuban airplane landed at the Mexico City Airport. 

The passenger transferred to another plane, that immediately took off for Dallas, Texas. Later that evening, the same plane returned from Dallas and the individual transferred to the Cuban aircraft the flew back to Havana. After many months of investigation, the CIA was confident that the individual was Fabian Escalante.
Just the timing reveals Roig’s ignorance. Underwood’s only trip to Mexico City occurred in 1966. During his brief meeting with Scott, according to Underwood’s own notes, there was not the slightest reference to November 22, 1963. As a White House advance man, Underwood sought help from Scott for Johnson’s upcoming visit to Mexico. (ARRB Final Report, p. 136) And Escalante—as counterintelligence officer in the Section Q of Castro’s G-2—was so busy in 1963 watching anti-Castro fighters inside Cuba or in exile that he couldn’t have timed a wet operation, id est, involving spilling blood.

It is incredible that Roig would fall for the deceased Underwood. Because, as noted above, Underwood was exposed for telling fairy tales back in 1998 when the Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board was published. Not only was his canard about Scott then revealed, but he had also been telling tall tales to Gus Russo and Sy Hersh for the deceitful Judith Exner. And those two willingly gobbled them up. (Ibid)

State Department: “Do Not Implicate Cuba”

From the bamboozler Underwood, Roig jumps to Thomas Mann, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, who “has the answer” about what happened to the CIA files on Oswald in Mexico City. Mann “was personally ordered by the State Department, a few days after Oswald murdered President Kennedy, to shut down any investigation that would implicate Cuba’s involvement.” Roig added that a top CIA official, Tom Karamessinger (sic), memoed Scott: “Arrest of Sylvia Duran is extremely serious matter which could prejudice (us) … Request you ensure that her arrest is kept absolutely secret, that no information from her is published or leaked.”

Roig is muddying the waters as if the report Oswald, the CIA, and Mexico City (1978), written by HSCA staffers Dan Hardway and Edwin Lopez, hasn’t gone through rounds of declassification since 1993. It became clear that the CIA knew Oswald had been impersonated by phone on September 28 and October 1. Duran was also impersonated on September 28.

That Saturday, a caller to the Soviet Consulate identified herself as Duran and announced that “an American that was just at the Soviet Embassy … is going to talk with you.” The CIA transcriber, Boris Tarasoff, commented that the American “speaks terrible, hardly recognizable Russian.” On October 1, a caller to the Soviet Consulate identified himself as Lee Oswald. Tarasoff noted he was “the same person who had called a day or so ago and spoken in broken Russian.” Duran was arrested and harshly interrogated by the Mexican Police on November 23 and November 28. The info taken from her included that she neither met Oswald nor made any call to the Soviet Consulate on September 28.

Duran emphasized “she had no fear [of] extradition to the United States to face Oswald.” On the contrary, the CIA was afraid [that] “any Americans [might] confront Silvia DURAN or […] be in contact with her” [DIR 85318, 11-27-63, in [Duran’s] Information - NARA Record Number: 104-10102-10145, p. 14]. That’s why neither the eyewitness Duran nor the earwitness Tarasoff were ever questioned about the call by the Warren Commission. The CIA itself, not the State Department, shut down any further investigation on a Cuban connection after its Mexico City station not only produced both a tape and a photo that weren’t Oswald’s, but also spread stories—all of them debunked—of Communist conspiracies:

Mexican writer Elena Garro de Paz transformed Duran from the Mexican employee, who handled Oswald’s visa request at the Cuban Consulate, into the intelligence officer of Castro, who met Oswald again at a twist party in order to put him up to killing Kennedy.

Nicaraguan secret agent Gilberto Alvarado watched Oswald taking $6500 in the Cuban Embassy to kill Kennedy, while Mexican credit examiner Pedro Gutierrez saw Oswald taking money outside the Cuban Embassy.

Cuban Embassy employee Luisa Calderon expressed foreknowledge of JFK’s assassination…
Fidel Castro vs. John F. Kennedy

Roig comes to his overarching issue with an “unavoidable” clash between Castro and JFK. As veteran of the Brigade 2506, he is as misguided in his analysis now as he was as a member of the force that failed twice in making a diversionary landing near Guantanamo in mid-April 1961. Roig rarefies JFK’s oath—in the December 29, 1962, ceremony at the Orange Bowl stadium (Miami) with the participants in the Bay of Pigs invasion just released from Castro’s prison—that the flag of the Assault Brigade 2506 was to “fly again in a free Havana.”

For Roig, it was the spark that ignited Castro to engage in “a personal fight to the end” against Kennedy but that’s an utter cognitive distortion of history. On Christmas Eve 1962, the American lawyer Jim Donovan boarded the last flight with the Bay of Pigs prisoners airlifted to Miami as result of his negotiation with Castro. Just before departure, Castro’s aide Dr. Rene Vallejo broached the subject of re-establishing diplomatic relations between the two countries.

Let’s suppose Castro was, indeed, trying to lure Kennedy. Even so, killing the sitting U.S. President offered nothing else to gain than having Johnson in the White House with no hope of more favorable U.S. policies toward Cuba. The Soviet bloc’s diplomats in Havana were aware of it. On March 31, 1963, Hungarian Ambassador János Beck set out in a secret report to Budapest that Castro was convinced “Kennedy is the best” option among the possible candidates for the U.S. presidency in 1964 (“Talks between Cuba and the USA, March 31, 1963,” in Selected Hungarian Documents on Cuba, 1960-1963,” Cold War History Research Center [Budapest]).

The anti-Castro fighter Roig is not aware yet of who his greatest enemy was. Castro knew that killing JFK wouldn´t solve anything and entailed risking everything. His personal fight was system-centered. Accordingly, he proceeded to infiltrate both the CIA and the Cuban exile community. Thus, Castro managed to win in the dirty USA-Cuba war.

Rolando Cubela Secade (sic): The Double Agent Chosen to Kill Fidel Castro

Nonetheless, Roig obsessively resorted to the neither logically nor circumstantially justified hypothesis brought by Senator Robert Morgan (D / N.C.) of the Church Committee: “JFK was assassinated by Fidel Castro or someone under his influence in retaliation for our efforts to assassinate him [and] this fellow [Cubela] was nothing but a double agent.”

This fellow [AMLASH-1 for the CIA] was involved in two assassination plots against Castro. His key co-conspirators were the CIA officer Desmond FitzGerald [Chief of the anti-Castro Task Force known as Special Affair Staff (SAS)] and the CIA golden boy Manuel Artime [Chief of the anti-Castro paramilitary group Revolutionary Recovery Movement (MRR)]. Cubela does not fit at all into the facts as double agent loyal to Castro.

For unveiling the Artime-Cubela plot, Castro burned his intelligence officer Juan Felaifel, who had infiltrated the CIA in 1963. Another officer, Erasmo Terrero, was gathering evidence against Cubela in Paris. On March 11, 1966 Cubela was sentenced to 25 years.

For unveiling the FitzGerald-Cubela plot, Castro had to wait for a July 16, 1976, report by his State Security Department (DSE) stating that the “counterrevolutionary inmate” Cubela was the CIA agent AMLASH-1 who surfaced at the Church Committee. Before that, Castro lacked intel on this 1963 CIA plot.

At the XI World Festival of Youth and Students in Havana, Castro set up an agitprop court to prosecute the crimes committed by Yankee imperialism. On August 2, 1978, Cubela confessed to both CIA assassination plots against Castro and spelled an inconvenient truth for Roig: “It is absurd to think that a double agent would have spent 12 years in jail.” Cubela also testified before an HSCA panel in Havana. Castro rewarded him by granting the parole legally prescribed after serving half the sentence.

The Cuban Exile Clandestine Operations

As a fugitive from history, Roig runs so fast that he misses the two-track policy of the Kennedy administration towards Cuba after the debacle of Operation Mongoose. Roig just follows the track of (sometimes) autonomous operations by select Cuban exile groups, backed, in any event, by the CIA, and forgets the parallel track of accommodation with Castro. In fact, due to the ARRB, we now know just how feeble this activity was. 

For the incoming president Lyndon Johnson, CIA officer Desmond Fitzgerald wrote a report on what these operations consisted of at the time. He wrote that in the entire second half of 1963, there had been a total of five raids against Cuba. There were only fifty men involved in three cadres. In this letter, Fitzgerald admitted it was completely unrealistic to think that such a meager force would result in any real change in Cuba. He stated that they had now become counter productive, since they could not be taken seriously. And he advised they be discontinued. (Letter from Fitzgerald to McGeorge Bundy, 3/6/64)

Ignoring this factual aspect, Roig can please himself with a pharisaic righteousness: Kennedy remained “true to his commitment to get rid of Fidel Castro,” thus ignoring Kennedy’s crackdown on other anti-Castro belligerent exiles groups. How the administration was going to overthrow Castro with fifty men is the author’s secret. Perhaps Roig was modeling his essay on the Peter Sellers comedy The Mouse that Roared?

“Listen to Communications from Texas”

After such an intermezzo, Roig next stages an act against intellectual integrity. The protagonist is the late Cuban defector Florentino Aspillaga, who back in 1963 was working for Castro at a listening post in Jaimanitas [a small beach town near Castro’s main residence, dubbed as Point Zero, seven miles west of Havana]. The script reads thus:

On Friday morning, November 22, 1963, Aspillaga received precise orders: “The leadership wants you to stop all your CIA work, (repeat), All your CIA work” and listen to communications from Texas. Around 1:30 (Havana Time), “I began hearing broadcast on amateur radio bands about the shooting of President Kennedy in Dallas.”

Roig drops the question: “Did Fidel Castro know Kennedy would be killed?” instead of asking: “Who would believe such a tale?” Castro would have never resorted to electronic intelligence to learn something that would have been instantly available through mass media. In 1963, info about anything occurring in Dallas during the JFK visit meant broadcast reports interrupting soap operas on the three national TV networks, and radio stations giving breaking news.

Aspillaga was in fact a self-defeating storyteller. Radio amateurs must have just been chatting about what the commercial media had already reported. In late 1963, a unique witness gave conclusive evidence contradicting Aspillaga’s claim. French journalist Jean Daniel wrote a first-hand account (“When Castro Heard the News,” The New Republic, December 7, 1963). As Kennedy’s emissary, he was talking with Castro in Varadero Beach the very day of the assassination. After a phone call by Cuban President Osvaldo Dorticós, Castro got all the news “from the NBC network in Miami.” Daniel also recounted Castro was utterly shocked and turned to him saying—about the plans for rapprochement—that everything was going to change.

Aspillaga told Dr. Brian Latell in 2007 that the CIA had learned the Jaimanitas’ story during his debriefing in 1987. However, it is not to be found among the documents—either declassified or withheld—from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) on the JFK assassination. The CIA would not have objected to furnishing a carefully redacted Aspillaga debriefing to the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB).

The Paris Meting (sic): Assurance of American support

In this intermezzo, Roig again addresses Operation AMLASH to reinforce the discredited notion of Cubela as fake conspirator. The Castroite General Directorate of Intelligence (DGI) did not control but rather watched Cubela with a certain inefficiency. Before the Church Committee, the CIA moved to transfigure him into a double agent, even a provocateur, to hide its own shortcoming in recruiting a heavy-drinking, loquacious, third-rate Castro official who couldn’t provide any valuable service.

The DGI manipulated Oswald’s Violent Outburst at the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City?
Roig stages this act with an outright lie:

Oswald requested at the Cuban Consulate in the City of Mexico a transit visa to Russia via Cuba and was denied. Oswald turned violent and began screaming “I am going to kill Kennedy.”

As FBI super-spy Jakob “Jack Childs” informed J. Edgar Hoover, Castro himself recounted:

I was told this by my people in the Embassy exactly how he (Oswald) stalked in and walked in and ran out. That in itself was a suspicious movement, because nobody comes to an Embassy for a visa (they go to a Consulate) [W]hen Oswald was refused his visa at the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City, he acted like a madman and started yelling and shouting on his way out, “I’m going to kill this bastard. I'm going to kill Kennedy” [Castro]was speaking on the basis of facts given to him by his embassy personnel, who dealt with Oswald, and apparently had made a full, detailed report to Castro after President Kennedy was assassinated.

The Consulate was in a separate building from the Embassy. The Cuban diplomatic compound in Mexico City was located at Francisco Marquez Street (Colonia Condesa) with two main entrances: one to the Embassy, on the corner of Tacubaya Alley, and the other to the Consulate, on the corner of Zamora Street. Both the outgoing (Eusebio Azcue) and incoming (Alfredo Mirabal) consuls testified before HSCA that they did not hear Oswald threatening Kennedy’s life. Neither did the Mexican employee Sylvia Duran, who was consistent about it in both her interrogation by Mexican Police and her interview by the HSCA, nor did two other witnesses who had come downstairs from the Commercial Office.

Roig’s opera seria continues as a vaudeville with a substandard duet: DGI defector Vladimir Rodriguez [dispatched by his own CIA debriefer, Harold Swenson, as lacking “any significant information” on Oswald] and Oscar Marino [an alleged former Cuban intelligence officer imported from the bestiary described by Gus Russo and Stephen Molton in Brothers in Arms (Bloomsbury USA, 2008)]. Roig closes the act by foisting two “outrageous lies [on Castro as] part of a premeditated deniability perfidy[:] that he knew nothing of Oswald’s existence before the Dallas assassination and that he was never informed of Oswald’s threatening remarks against Kennedy in the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City”. The latter is refuted by Childs’ report; the former is still wanting for any evidence.

Fidel Castro Got Kennedy First

Before the curtain falls, Roig concocts a Castroite Oswald with a Castro prone to react to the CIA plots against him in the spaghetti western manner summed up by Lyndon Johnson: “Kennedy was trying to get Castro, but Castro got to him first.” Such a fact-free approach thrives only on claques of people who cannot think logically or will not think logically, because they have a fanatical and counterproductive anti-Castro agenda.

Arnaldo M. Fernandez 


Arnaldo M. Fernandez is a former lecturer (1997-2003) of Philosophy and History of Law at the University of Havana. He earned a Masters Degree in Journalism and taught Interpretative Journalism (2005-2010) at the Koubek Center, U. Miami. He has published a book (in Spanish) about the death of Cuban patriot José Marti (Miami, Cuban New Press, 2005). Regarding JFK research, he focuses on the Cuban connection in order to debunk the "Castro did it" and "Castro knew it" theses.

Charles "Babe" Baron


Charles "The Babe" Baron 


Charles Baron 

BK NOTES: To me this guy is one at the cross roads of a number of various elements in the Dealey Plaza story - a Ford auto dealership, the Chicago mob, General Dynamics and the whole TFX scandal, mob casinos in Havana and Vegas, a Brig. Gen. in the National Guard and a close personal friend of General LeMay, the Air Force Chief of Staff. 

According to LeMay's daughter, Baron was the godfather to her son, Gen. LeMay's grandson. 

Baron was also pals with Patrick Hoy and General Dynamics, whose security chief was I.B. Hale, former FBI agent whose twin sons went to school with Oswald and broke into Judyth Cambell Exner's Vegas apartment while it was under surveillance by an FBI stakeout squad. Hale's wife Virginia got Oswald jobs when he returned from Russia. 

Baron is a key person on three or four different fronts, and may be the link that ties them together. 

More to come on this guy. - BK 



From Chicago Mafia History

Charles “Babe” Baron was a notorious Chicago mobster during the days of Meyer Lansky and Al Capone. He had widespread interests in the underworld but he is best known for his role in the gambling industry.
Baron may not have been at the top of the food chain in the American Mafia but he was certainly a powerful representative of the big guns. For instance, he kept the company of the likes of Sid Korshak, a mobster who owned the Tropicana in the 50s.
It would seem that the two were such good buddies that Korshak threw a lavish birthday party for Baron at his hotel. It latter emerged that Baron was a shareholder at the establishment.
Aside from that, it has been reported that Charles had ties to Al Capone’s gang which is quite believable considering that he hailed from Chicago. Furthermore, after Capone exited the scene he stayed loyal to both Llewelyn Morris Humphreys aka “Curly” Humphreys and Salvatore “Mooney Sam” Giancana. Baron represented their interests in the mob’s Las Vegas casinos.
When Meyer Lansky opened his Havana Riviera casino hotel in Cuba, he chose Baron as its general manager. Yes, he was a man who knew his way around the casino business but that was not the main reason he was hired. He was there to ensure that the interests of the Chicago mob were well represented.
Baron remained in Cuba until Fidel Castro and his revolutionists invaded its capital. The mob had invested millions of dollars in hotels and casinos in that country but Castro was not entertaining its presence. Like many of his partners in crime, Baron was forced to flee the country and he found a job at the Sands Hotel and Casino, in Las Vegas where he served as the official greeter.
The life and times of Charles “Babe” Baron are a good example of how mobsters got away with things that would see ordinary citizens rotting behind bars. For instance, it is a well known fact that he was a suspect in at least two murders in Chicago during his early days.
One of them was that of fellow mobster Gus Winkler which is said to have been a gangster’s duel after a disagreement over a prize fight bet. Baron was never tried for the murder that took place in 1933 and was only charged with having a concealed weapon. This is in spite of the fact that he may have admitted to the killing.
What is even more curious is the fact that his police records seem to have disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Furthermore, in the previous murder of an unnamed person in 1929, the grand jury returned a no-bill ruling making Baron a free man.
The plot thickened in 1960 when he appeared before the Gaming Control Board seeking a 1% stake in the Sands. He was a man with a criminal record albeit altered by unknown persons and he kept the kind of company that should have raised eyebrows.
The Board was informed of his alleged murders and it was also furnished with a list of Baron’s unsavory associates. Names like Louis J. Lederer, Frank Costello and John Rosselli featured prominently in the subsequent report.

Moreover, upon questioning Baron revealed that he was a former bookmaker but claimed that he had changed his ways and was running legitimate businesses. With such a rap sheet, his application should never have seen the light of day but surprise, surprise he got his share of the Sands and a spot in the Black Book.

Charles Baron


Charles "Babe" Baron (b?-d?) was an organized crime figure in Chicago, Illinois. He owned a successful Chicago new car dealership (Charles Baron Ford) as well as holding the rank of Brigadier-General in the Illinois National Guard. He was involved in illegal gambling as a handbook operator for the Chicago Outfit.

Along with Dave Yaras and Lenny Patrick, Baron served as a protégé to Democratic Party ward boss Jacob Arvey.  

Baron was an associate of Meyer Lansky. (see: Peter Dale Scott, 1993:199)

He was also a close associate of Patrick Hoy, a Henry Crown employee of General Dynamics who was later able to arrange a job for Sidney Korshak at the Hilton Hotels. [1]

Twice arrested for murder, including that of bootlegger James Walsh, whom he shot and killed following a prize fight in 1929, and of North Side Gang financier 'Smiling' Gus Winkler, on October 9, 1933.[1]

Baron was identified as an associate of John Roselli during the Kefauver Hearings, in the 1950s.[1]

According to Jack Ruby and Baron associate Tony Zoppi, Baron knew U.S. Air Force General Curtis LeMay. (see: Peter Dale Scott, 1993:199, 355)

A former general manager of the Havana Riviera in pre-revolutionary Cuba, Baron was one of the first to be granted a gaming license by the Gaming Control Act, in 1960, and served as the official greeter of the Sands Hotel and Casino, in Las Vegas, under Joseph "Doc" Stacher.[2]

References

Demaris, Ovid

Rothman, Hal. Neon Metropolis: how Las Vegas started the twenty-first century. London: Routledge, 2002. ISBN 0-415-92612-2

Scott, Peter Dale. Deep Politics and the Death of JFK. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. ISBN 0-520-08410-1

From Peter Dale Scott’s “Deep Politics and the Death of JFK”    (Thank you Peter) 

“…..mob’s casinos in both Havana and Las Vegas. Zoppi’s chief contacts in Las Vegas were at the Sands, where the official greeter was Charles “Babe” Baron, the associate of Meyer Lansky and Jake Arvey who was also a general in the Illinois National Guard. (5 AH 171; 9 AH 167-68).

By 1978, when the (House Select) Committee (on Assassinations HSCA) interviewed him, Zoppi himself worked in Las Vegas at the Chicago mob’s Riviera casino, as did Charles Baron and Ruby’s early friend Dave “Dingy” Halper. It was in this interview that Zoppi revealed that Baron was a close friend of General Curtis LeMay, another well-known enemy of President Kennedy; and the Committee investigators confirmed that “Baron was visiting LeMay the following week” (5 AH 170)

Inasmuch as Ruby spent two or three hours at the Dallas Morning News on November 22, much of it in Zoppi’s office, the Committee surely faied in its own search for organized-crime links when it failed to explore the possibilty that Ruby used Zoppi’s office that day for liaison with Las Vegas, the city that Blakey and the Committee believed……… 

Tuesday, January 7, 2020

General LeMay RIP Obit

Retired Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay Dies at 83

October 1, 1990

MARCH AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) _ Air Force Gen. Curtis E. LeMay, who relayed the order to drop the A-bomb on Japan and said the United States should threaten to bomb North Vietnam ″back into the Stone Age,″ died Monday. He was 83.

LeMay, who also directed the 1948 Berlin Airlift and ran for vice president in 1968 as George Wallace’s running mate, died of a heart attack at the 22nd Strategic Hospital, said Sgt. Steve Mahnke.

An ambulance had picked him up minutes earlier at his retirement home outside this base east of Los Angeles.

″He was one of the real American heroes of World War II,″ Wallace said. ″I am proud to have served under him in World War II and proud to have had him on the ticket as a vice presidential candidate in my third-party campaign. ... I will always count it a high honor to have been his personal friend.″

The former four-star general who built the Strategic Air Command into a global strike force.

Considered the father of strategic bombing, LeMay and his tactics were instrumental in pressing the daylight bombing offensive against the Nazis in Europe in World War II.

LeMay was the architect of B-17 bombing formation tactics in Europe, and later transferred to the Pacific where he organized the B-29 bombing campaign against the Japanese islands.

Years later, he said the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unnecessary to force Japan’s surrender.

″We felt that our incendiary bombings had been so successful that Japan would collapse before we invaded,″ LeMay said in a 1985 interview with the Omaha (Neb.) World-Herald.

″We went ahead and dropped the bombs because President (Harry) Truman told me to do it. He told me in a personal letter.″

But LeMay told the newspaper he felt the United States could have defeated Japan in ″a few more days″ if it had continued the firebombing of Japanese cities.

After the war, LeMay was given command of the U.S. Air Force in Europe. He was there in 1948 when the Soviet Union cut off ground access to West Berlin. His management of the airlift that kept West Berlin supplied brought LeMay much notice at home.

He was named commanding general of the Strategic Air Command in October 1948 and held the command until June 1957 - longer than any other general.

The 1955 Jimmy Stewart movie, ″Strategic Air Command,″ provided a glimpse of the strike force LeMay built. A cigar-chomping Frank Lovejoy portrayed a character that displayed LeMay’s tough, demanding persona.

He was SAC’s second commander but was widely credited with having built its bomber force to a formidable level.

Within a few short years he transformed the largely demobilized air arm into a global striking force that could deliver nuclear weapons anywhere at any time.

In a 1965 biography, ″Mission with LeMay,″ published in 1965 after his retirement as Air Force chief of staff during the early years of the Vietnam War, he wrote that a solution to the war might be to warn the North Vietnamese that they ″have got to draw in their horns and stop their aggression, or we are going to bomb them back into the Stone Age.″

His reputation was that of a man who was equally unsparing of his men and himself. He said he was unable to distinguish between the unfortunate and the incompetent, and he tolerated little if any error from his subordinates.

But he would willingly do any job that he demanded of his followers. He was as comfortable in a machine gun cupola as he was in the cockpit. He personally led dozens of missions in Europe.

One of many famous stories about LeMay was that he once found a SAC sentry who had put down his weapon to eat a sandwich.

″This afternoon I found a man guarding a hangar with a ham sandwich. There will be no more of that,″ LeMay’s subsequent memo said.

He was promoted to full general while at SAC.

After leaving SAC, LeMay became vice chief, then President Kennedy named him chief of staff of the Air Force.

LeMay retired in 1965, frustrated by the politics of the Pentagon and by Robert S. McNamara, defense secretary under presidents Kennedy and Johnson.

McNamara had denied LeMay the B-70, which the general had wanted as the successor to the B-52, and forced him to accept the F-111 fighter-bomber. In so doing, McNamara had subordinated LeMay’s coveted bombers to the new ballistic missiles.

LeMay also grew angry over McNamara’s restraints on U.S. air power in Vietnam, a sore point for LeMay who believed in an all-out war.

At a news conference at which he was introduced as Wallace’s running mate, LeMay said he saw nothing wrong with using nuclear weapons to shorten any war and, thus, save lives.

LeMay had been living in Air Force Village West, a military retirement community outside March.

A memorial service is scheduled for Wednesday at the air base chapel. Burial will be at the U.S. Air Force Academy on Thursday.

He is survived by his wife, Helen, and a daughter.

General LeMay Foundation

General LeMay Foundation


QUICK FACTS

Place - March Air Reserve Base, CA

March Air Reserve Base (IATA: RIV, ICAO: KRIV, FAA LID: RIV) (March ARB), previously known as March Air Force Base (March AFB) is located in Riverside CountyCalifornia between the cities of RiversideMoreno Valley, and Perris. It is the home to the Air Force Reserve Command's Fourth Air Force (4 AF) Headquarters and the host 452d Air Mobility Wing (452 AMW), the largest air mobility wing of the Fourth Air Force.[3] In addition to multiple units of the Air Force Reserve Command supporting Air Mobility CommandAir Combat Command and Pacific Air Forces, March ARB is also home to units from the Army ReserveNavy ReserveMarine Corps ReserveCalifornia Air National Guard and the California Army National Guard. For almost 50 years, March AFB was a Strategic Air Command base during the Cold War. The facility covers 2,075 acres (840 ha) of land.


Mission - TO PROVIDE FINANCIAL SUPPORT FOR INDIGENT WIDOWS AND/OR WIDOWERS OF ACTIVE DUTY AND RETIRED AIR FORCE OFFICERS AS WELL AS ENLISTED PERSONNEL.

Ruling Year - 1989
Principal Officer - LEANA FRANKLIN
Main Address - 21824 Cactus Ave Unit 4-2, March Air Reserve Base, CA 92518

EIN - 33-0277610 / Bridge Number  - 6273153843 / Cause Area (NTEE Code) 
Private Independent Foundations (T22) / IRS Filing Requirement
This organization is required to file an IRS Form 990 or 990-EZ.




The LeMay Foundation helps widows and widowers of all Air Force Retirees, both officers and enlisted, through financial grants of assistance. These spouses spend much of their lives coping with the difficulties of military life, and supporting their spouses through years of active duty. We provide assistance for as long as it is required. We have several spouses who have been receiving monthly checks for over fifteen years. We also help them with a specific need they may be facing, in a single disbursement. We do not offer loans. All funds given are considered grants.​​​

Monday, January 6, 2020

Papers of Gen. LeMay

LeMay Papers


COLLECTION  |  MANUSCRIPT/MIXED MATERIAL
Curtis E. LeMay papers,
About this Item
Title - Curtis E. LeMay papers,
Summary

Correspondence, diaries, speeches, teletype messages, flight orders, mission reports, strategic plans and operation reports, appointment calendars, commissions, certificates, scrapbooks, clippings, printed matter, photographs, and other papers primarily concerning LeMay's career as an aviator and officer in the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force. Documents his service in the U.S. Army Air Corps, commands in the European and China-Burma-India theaters during World War II, and supervision of strategic air operations against Japan involving saturation bombing of Japanese cities. Also documents his assignment as special deputy to the Air Matériel Command, U.S. Army Air Forces; deputy chief of air staff for research and development, Washington, D.C.; commander of the U.S. Air Force in Europe including his role in the Berlin Airlift of 1948; head of the Strategic Air Command, U.S. Air Force, 1948-1957; and chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, 1961-1965. Subjects include his advocacy of increased defense spending, promotion of aggressive nuclear strategy, and clash with the John F. Kennedy presidential administration over the Cuban missile crisis. Also includes material pertaining to his 1968 campaign as the vice presidential candidate on the American Independent Party ticket led by Alabama Governor George C. Wallace.

Contributor Names
LeMay, Curtis E.
Subject Headings
-  United States--Foreign relations--1961-1963
-  United States--Politics and government--1963-1969

Notes
-  Arranged in ten series. Series 1: Special Personal Correspondence, 1935-1964; Series 2: Command Assignment Papers, 1918-1965; Series 3: Miscellany, 1918-1965; Series 4: Campaign Papers, 1968-1969; Series 5: Classified, 1947-1964; Series 6: Top Secret, 1948-1964; Series 7: Restricted Data (Classified), 1948-1964; Series 8: Restricted Data (Top Secret), 1948-1964; Series 9: North Atlantic Treaty Organization, 1954; and Series 10: Oversize, 1951-1952.

-  Gift and deposit converted to gift, Curtis E. LeMay, 1965-1969.
-  Motion picture films, tape recording, soundscriber recordings, and phonograph recordings transferred to Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division.
-  Some maps transferred to Library of Congress Geography and Maps Division.
-  Some photographs and other pictorial material transferred to Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
-  Aviator and U.S. Army and Air Force officer. Full name: Curtis Emerson LeMay. Born, 1906. Died, 1990.
-  Collection material in English.
-  Finding aid available in the Library of Congress Manuscript Reading Room and at http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/eadmss.ms014063

Medium
131,550 items.
243 containers plus 14 classified and 4 oversize.
90 linear feet.
Repository
Library of Congress Manuscript Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA dcu http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mss.home

Library of Congress Control Number
mm82029918
Access Advisory
Open to research.
Classified, in part.
Language English
Description

Correspondence, diaries, speeches, teletype messages, flight orders, mission reports, strategic plans and operation reports, appointment calendars, commissions, certificates, scrapbooks, clippings, printed matter, photographs, and other papers primarily concerning LeMay's career as an aviator and officer in the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force. Documents his service in the U.S. Army Air Corps, commands in the European and China-Burma-India theaters during World War II, and supervision of strategic air operations against Japan involving saturation bombing of Japanese cities. Also documents his assignment as special deputy to the Air Matériel Command, U.S. Army Air Forces; deputy chief of air staff for research and development, Washington, D.C.; commander of the U.S. Air Force in Europe including his role in the Berlin Airlift of 1948; head of the Strategic Air Command, U.S. Air Force, 1948-1957; and chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, 1961-1965. Subjects include his advocacy of increased defense spending, promotion of aggressive nuclear strategy, and clash with the John F. Kennedy presidential administration over the Cuban missile crisis. Also includes material pertaining to his 1968 campaign as the vice presidential candidate on the American Independent Party ticket led by Alabama Governor George C. Wallace.

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Also See: The Untold Story of Lemay and MacNamara https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/1019446.pdf
Daughter Patricia Jane “Janie” LeMay Lodge Interview: https://d1vmz9r13e2j4x.cloudfront.net/nebstudies/0904_0302jane.pdf

Says: “My son’t godfather was a brigader general in the Army Reserves and he was a hotel executive in Las Vegas.” – Her father would pick him up at airport and carry his luggage during holidays. Barron?