Fonzi's Two Faults

Fonzi's Two Faults

JFK and Clare Booth Luce 

Gaeton Fonzi was a really good reporter and ethical journalists who exposed the bad journalists and publishers, but he wasn't perfect.

In regards to the JFK case I believe Fonzi was wrong on two counts.

For one, he should have walked down the hall and talked to David Phillips when they were both working at Washingtonian at the same time, before he published the article implicating Phillips in the assassination. 

When I met Fonzi on the Grassy Knoll one anniversary, we talked for a while and I asked him why he didn’t. Fonzi said that Sprague’s approach was to question everyone around a suspect before you question the suspect, and he did question Phillips in Congress, when Phillips lied under oath. They had prepared a request for his indictment for perjury. Still, when the man you were looking for is in an office right down the hall, and you are writing about him, you should say hello and give him the opportunity to give his side of the story. Fonzi didn’t.

And Gaeton Fonzi got it wrong when he decided Clare Booth Luce made up the name "Julio Fernandez," who called her on the night of the assassination from New Orleans saying he had audio tapes of Oswald and other evidence.

Luce said she - along with William Pawley and others - financially supported an anti-Castro commando team that ran motor boat raids against Cuba from Florida, and wrote an article about them for Life Magazine. 

Clare Booth Luce was the featured Keynote speaker at the conference of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) when Fonzi introduced Veciana to Phillips, and Veciana knew for certain Phillips was "Bishop," but denied it wanting to reestablish report with his former spymaster to resume their anti-Castro activities.

Veciana knew Phillips was "Bishop" because of his voice, as "Bishop" had taught him the tradecraft - "the voice seldom changes." Fonzi too knew that Phillips was Bishop despite Veciana's denials and the cryptic, "But he knows."

Veciana was only one of many Cubans Fonzi chased - "Clare Booth Luce's Julio Fernandez was another. 

She said he was one of her Cuban "boys" she financially supported who ran a commando boat out of Florida that attacked Cuba. 

When the HSCA requested the CIA files on Cubans named "Julio Fernandez" they sent a list of over a dozen Cubans they had files on but not a mention of the anti-Castro Cuban commando team leader who Clare Booth Luce financially supported. 

Fonzi decided that Luce made up the name and there was no such person, but there were - three such persons named Julio Fernandez.

Two of them - Julio Fernandez Sr. and Junior, were known to the Warren Commission, who published the FBI and Pennsylvania State Police reports from Martinsburg, Pa.., where nosey neighbor Mrs. Margaret Hover had told her brother about the Cuban next door.

JFKcountercoup: Julio Fernandez

She said she found some trash that the neighbor was burning in his back yard - a train ticket and a trailer advertisement with the names “Ruby” and “Lee Oswald” and the “Silver Slipper” written on the back of it.

She showed it to her daughter saying that “Ruby” and “Lee” were probably women her recently divorced husband was seeing, and told her brother about it.

After the assassination Mrs. Hover's brother notified the State Police and the FBI from the Pittsburg office investigated.

After interviewing Mrs. Hoover and her daughter, who confirmed her mother's story, the FBI investigators went next door and met Julio Fernandez, Sr., a former Cuban newspaper publisher in exile, whose son Julio Jr. was an art student at Penn State University. 

Fernandez taught Spanish at the local high school and had probably been relocated there by the Cuban Aide Relief (CAR), an organization out of Philadelphia that assisted anti-Castro Cuban professionals in exile, an organization that in turn was supported by the CIA conduit Catherwood Find. Fernandez said he was an avid anti-Communist and didn't know Ruby or Oswald. The FBI didn’t ask him why he was burning his trash in his backyard.

While he couldn't explain the trailer advertisment with the “Ruby” and “Lee” names on back, Fernandez said the train ticket was an AMTRACK to Florida. He said his son Julio, Jr. used it in August to attend a conference of Cuban journalists in exile at the University of Miami (JMWAVE), that was sponsored by the Pan Am Society and the Catherwood Foundation. 

David Phillips' media asset Virginia Prewett, who Veciana’s secretary connected with “Maurice Bishop,” covered this conference and wrote about it in an article entered into the Congressional Record. 

Then there's a third Julio Fernandez who US Army Ranger Bradley Ayers writes about in his book "The Zenith Secret."

JFKCountercoup2: Excerpts from The Zenith Secret

Ayers, a U.S. Army Ranger captain, says that he was assigned, with another Ranger named Roderick, to the CIA's JMWAVE station by General Krulack, to train anti-Castro commando teams - one of which was led by Julio Fernandez, the most likely candidate for Clare Booth Luce's "boy."

So there were three Cubans named Julio Fernandez who come into play and one of them was the one who called Luce on the night of the assassination with evidence on Oswald.

And Fonzi and the HSCA should have located him and interviewed him. Julio, Jr. may still be alive.

Of key interest in this is the financial assistance Clare Booth Luce and William Pawley gave to the CIA backed Cuban commandos operating out of JMWAVE. If they were backed by the CIA, and operating under orders from the National Security Council, why would they need additional financial assistance? And who were they really working for?

Besides Clare Booth Luce and William Pawley, Bradley Ayers says that while he taught his team, led by Julio Fernandez, small boat handling and firearms training, his Ranger Counterpart, Major Roderick, led another, different team that practiced sniper training at Point Mary, off Key Largo. That team was occasionally assisted by a “Colonel” Rosselli, - John Rosselli, the mobster whose case CIA case officer was William Harvey, who was replaced by Desmond FitzGerald and sent to Italy as CIA station chief there.

It appears, that a number of officially approved JMWAVE commando teams were financially and otherwise supported by a number of prominent individuals, - Clare Booth Luce, William Pawley and John Rosselli. And one of them, led by Julio Fernandez, had an audio of Oswald and other evidence on the night of the assassination.

And Gaeton Fonzi should have gotten to the bottom of it. 

Now we have to. 

Gaet - at the bar - where the sign read: "A jury consists of twelve people chosen to decide who has the better lawyer."