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Politics
Attending
a recent conference hosted by former CIA agent Valerie Plame, Nina Burleigh writes:
……On the
conference’s closing day, the white-haired Mowatt-Larssen walked us through his
theory on who killed JFK. He started out with a key idea — that if the
CIA killed Kennedy, the plot would have necessarily involved three people: a
mastermind and two others — one to handle Lee Harvey Oswald and one to deal
with Jack Ruby, the Dallas nightclub owner who shot and killed Oswald before he
could be interrogated.
Then
Mowatt-Larssen, using his access to classified CIA files, went looking for
officers who would have had a motive, and access.
“It
takes an agent to find a mole,” he said. “Who would betray his country? We were
looking for a team of rogues.”
After
going through the names of ranking officers during the years before the
assassination, and then cross-referencing them, he settled on Jacob Esterline,
the CIA’s project director on the failed Bay of Pigs assault on Cuba, as the
likely mastermind, the man with the best motive, and the probable ringleader.
In his role as the CIA’s director of Western Hemisphere, he would have had
access to Oswald, as well.
“The
rogues must be expert, and they need a motive,” Mowatt-Larssen explained. “To
me, JFK is the motive. He pulled the plug on the Bay of Pigs. And he was
reckless. He almost got us into a thermonuclear war with the Soviets.”
Esterline
went on to serve as chief of the CIA’s Miami office, and as deputy director of
the CIA’s Western Hemisphere Division. He died in 1999.
Of course, there is no
shortage of conspiracy theories about the death of JFK, but Mowatt-Larssen
currently serves as director of the Belfer Center’s Intelligence Project — at
Harvard’s Kennedy School, no less — so his speculation carries some weight.
Belfer
Center’s Intelligence Project – Harvard Kennedy School
Biography
Rolf
Mowatt-Larssen is a Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center, having served
until July 2019 as Director of the Center's Intelligence Project. Prior to that
he was also a Senior Fellow.
Before
coming to the Belfer Center, Mowatt-Larssen served over three years as the
Director of Intelligence and Counterintelligence at the U.S.
Department of Energy. Prior to this, he served for 23 years as a CIA
intelligence officer in various domestic and international posts, to include
Chief of the Europe Division in the Directorate of Operations, Chief of the
Weapons of Mass Destruction Department, Counterterrorist Center, and Deputy
Associate Director of Central Intelligence for Military Support. Prior to his
career in intelligence, Mr. Mowatt-Larssen served as an officer in the
U.S. Army. He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy, West
Point, NY. He is married to Roswitha and has three children.
He is a recipient
of the CIA Director's Award, the George W. Bush Award for Excellence in Counterterrorism,
the Secretary of Energy's Exceptional Service Medal, the Distinguished Career
Intelligence Medal, Secretary of Defense Civilian Distinguished Service Medal,
and the National Intelligence Superior Performance Medal, among
others.
Marked for
Assassination
PAST EVENT Wed., Dec. 12, 2018 | 12:00pm - 1:00pm
PAST EVENT Wed., Dec. 12, 2018 | 12:00pm - 1:00pm
The
United States House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations
(HSCA) was established in 1976 to investigate the assassinations of John F.
Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. The HSCA completed its investigation in
1978 and issued its final report the following year, concluding that Kennedy
was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.
Taking
this key judgment as a starting point of a fresh inquiry into the plot, what
are the most likely explanations as to who killed JFK?
How can
intelligence operational and analytical modus operandi help unlock a conspiracy
that has remained unsolved for 55 years?
Drawing
on his 23 years as a CIA clandestine services officer recruiting spies and
hunting moles, Rolf uses the same trade craft, training, and thought
process to bring unique new answers to the old question: Who killed JFK?
Jacob “Jake” Esterline – Spartacus
BK NOTES: Jake Esterline is a character in David Atlee Phillips' fictional "The Carlos Contract," in which the Esterline character is called out of retirement in order to get "Carlos" - the Jackel terrorist.
Jacob "Jake'' Esterline was born in Lewistown, Pennsylvania, on April 26, 1920. When he was eighteen he enrolled as an accounting student at Temple University in Philadelphia. In 1941 he joined the Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning.
During
the Second World War Esterline was recruited into the Office of
Strategic Services (OSS). Esterline was sent to India in early 1943. Later
that year he was infiltrated into Burma. By the end of the war
he had became a commander of a guerrilla battalion fighting the Japanese
Army in China.
Other
important figures working in China during this period include John K. Singlaub, Ray S. Cline, Richard Helms, E. Howard Hunt, Mitchell WerBell, Jake Esterline, Paul Helliwell, Robert Emmett Johnson, Jack Anderson and Lucien Conein.
Others working in China at that time included Tommy Corcoran,
Whiting Willauer and William Pawley.
After
the war Esterline finished his accounting degree. He then worked for a
family law firm in Pennsylvania.
On the outbreak of the Korean War Esterline
joined the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He was sent to work at
what became known as "The Farm" - a clandestine training
school for CIA recruits at Williamsburg, Virginia. Esterline was put in charge
of guerrilla warfare training.
PHOTO : Jake
Esterline in China during the Second World War.
Esterline
went to work for Frank Wisner, head of the Directorate of Plans (DPP) an
organization that concentrated on "propaganda, economic warfare;
preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and
evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to
underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist
elements in threatened countries of the free world."
In 1954
Esterline was placed in charge of the CIA's Washington task force in the
successful overthrow of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz. Esterline also
served as CIA station chief in Guatemala, Venezuela and Panama.
Richard
Bissell, the new head of the Directorate of Plans, appointed Esterline as Task
Force Chief for the Bay of Pigs invasion. He was also involved in the
plot to assassinate Fidel Castro. In an interview he gave to Don
Bohning of the The Miami Herald just before his death, Esterline
admitted that Juan Orta, who functioned as Castro's private secretary, had been
recruited to slip a poisoned pill into a drink. However, a few days before the
invasion Orta changed his mind and fled to the Venezuelan Embassy.
When
Esterline discovered that the assassination plot against Castro had failed he
had serious doubts about whether the Bay of Pigs operation would be a
success. Esterline and Jack Hawkins, Chief of Paramilitary Staff, were
also unhappy about the decision to change the landing site from Trinidad to the
Bay of Pigs. On 8th April, Esterline and Hawkins went to see Richard
Bissell and told him they wanted to resign. Bissell persuaded them to stay
and be "good soldiers".
In
February, 2005, Gerry P. Hemming claimed that it was Esterline and
not David Atlee Phillips who was Maurice Bishop, the man who met
with Antonio Veciana and Lee Harvey Oswald in August, 1963,
in the building that housed the office of Haroldson L. Hunt in
Dallas.
Esterline
also served as chief of the CIA's Miami office (1968-1972) and as deputy chief
of the agency's Western Hemisphere division. Esterline retired from the CIA in
1978.
Jacob
"Jake'' Esterline died at Hendersonville, North Carolina, in October,
1999.
By John Simkin (john@spartacus-educational.com) ©
September 1997 (updated August 2014).
Primary
Sources
(1) J.S.
Earman, CIA Plots to Kill Castro (27th May 1967)
We find
evidence of at least three, and perhaps four, schemes that were under
consideration well before the Bay of Pigs, but we can fix the time frame only
speculatively. Those who have some knowledge of the episodes guessed at dates
ranging from 1959 through 1961. The March-to-August span we have fixed may be
too narrow, but it best fits the limited evidence we have.
a. None
of those we interviewed who was first assigned to the Cuba task force after the
Bay of Pigs knows of any of these schemes.
b. J.D.
(Jake) Esterline, who was head of the Cuba task force in pre-Bay of Pigs days,
is probably the most reliable witness on general timing. He may not have been
privy to the precise details of any of the plans, but he seems at least to have
known of all of them. He is no longer able to keep the details of one plan
separate from those of another, but each of the facts he recalls fits somewhere
into one of the schemes. Hence, we conclude that all of these schemes were
under consideration while Esterline had direct responsibility for Cuba operations.
c.
Esterline himself furnishes the best clue as to the possible time span.
He thinks it unlikely that any planning of this sort would have progressed to
the point of consideration of means until after U.S. policy concerning Cuba was
decided upon about March 1960. By about the end of the third quarter of 1960,
the total energies of the task force were concentrated on the main-thrust
effort, and there would have been no interest in nor time for pursuing such
wills-o'-the-wisp as these.
We are
unable to establish even a tentative sequence among the schemes; they may, in
fact, have been under consideration simultaneously. We find no evidence that
any of these schemes was approved at any level higher than division, if that.
We think it most likely that no higher-level approvals were sought, because
none of the schemes progressed to the point where approval to launch would have
been needed.
It never
occurred to Bissell that if push came to shove, Kennedy wouldn't put in his
stack," said Mac Bundy. "He never said, "Do you really
mean it? If we get the beachhead, will you back us up?"
These
worries were covered up. Once engaged, Bissell believed, Kennedy wouldn't allow
it to fail." Bundy or Kennedy himself should have pressed Bissell to own
up to his real expectations and intentions. It is the job, particularly, of the
national security adviser to prevent misunderstandings between the
president and his foreign policy advisers. But Bundy was a little too trusting
and admiring of Bissell, as was the president. And Bissell was too sure of himself
and his plan to fully seek their advice as well as consent. The cheerful,
damn-the-bureaucrats bond between the CIA and the New Frontiersmen was a curse.
Back at
Quarters Eye, Colonel Hawkins and Jake Esterline, the project director, worked
through the night to produce a plan for the White House that was less
"noisy." A few days later Dave Phillips, the propaganda chief, walked
into the war room and noticed that someone had scrawled a large red
"X" over the town of Trinidad. "There's been a change in the
plan," said Colonel Hawkins. "Trinidad is out. Now we are going to
land here." He pointed to an area on the coast a hundred miles to the
west. Phillips laughed when he saw the name. "Bahia de Cochinos? How can
we have a victorious landing force wading ashore at a place with that name? How
can propagandists persuade Cubans to join the Brigade at the Bay of Pigs?"
Phillips
squinted at the map. "It's too far from the mountains," he said. The
invaders were supposed to be able to "melt into the mountains." Now
the Escambray Mountains were eighty miles, away-across an impenetrable swamp.
"How will the Brigade take' the beach and hold it?" he asked Hawkins.
"The
first ships to land will carry tanks."
"Tanks!"
Phillips was "stunned," he writes in his memoirs, The Night Watch.
"We're going to mount a secret operation in the Caribbean with
tanks?"
"That's
right," said the colonel. "A company. Three platoons of five each,
with two command tanks.
It is
hard to see how the addition of tanks made the operation "less
noisy." But the loss of the "guerrilla option" was a serious
change in the plans. Without the ability to "melt into the
mountains," the invaders had to secure and hold the beachhead-or, pushed
back into the sea. There was no fallback plan. Bissell never told Kennedy.
"I did not deliberately mislead the president," he said. "I
didn't take the trouble to say to him that if we shift from Trinidad to the Bay
of Pigs, the fallback plan becomes totally different. The guerrilla option was
not an option.
(3) Jake
Esterline was interviewed by Jack Pfeiffer on 10th November, 1975.
Jack
Pfeiffer: I have a question, and it is what was Pawley's relation to this whole
operation... and your relation with Pawley seems to have been quite close, too.
Jake
Esterline: I think it was a hangover relationship from the things that Bill
Pawley had done as quite a wheel with a number of very senior people during the
Guatemalan operation ... that they felt that Bill, who had been very closely
tied into Cuba ... that he was a very prominent man in Florida... that there
were a lot of things that he might be able to do, in the sense of getting
things lined up in Florida for us... and also his ties with Nixon and with
other republican politicos. I used to deal with him quite a bit before.... From
my point of view, we never let Bill Pawley know any of the intimacies about our
operations, or what we were doing. He never knew where our bases were, or
things of that sort. He never knew anything specific about our operations, but
he was doing an awful lot of things on his own with the exiles. Some of the
people that he had known in Cuba, in the sugar business, etc. I guess
he actually was instrumental in running boats and things in and out of Cuba,
getting people out and what not, and a variety of things that were not
connected with us in any way. He was a political factor from the standpoint
from J.C.'s standpoint. I don't know whether Tommy Corcoran entered in at this
point... I think Tommy Corcoran was strictly in Guatemala. I guess Corcoran
didn't come into this thing, at least not very much.
Jack
Pfeiffer: His name turns up once or twice.
Jake
Esterline: Yes, I met him once, in connection with Cuba, but I don't remember
who... for J.C King, but I don't remember why, at this point. It wasn't
anything of any significance. My feeling with Pawley... he was such a hawk, and
he was every second week... he wanted to kill somebody inside... . It was from
my standpoint - we were trying to keep him from doing things to cause problems
for us. This was almost a standing operation.
Jack
Pfeiffer: This is what I was wondering, because Tracy Barnes, I know on a
number of occasions, seemed to make it quite clear that what the Agency had to
be careful of was getting hung with a reactionary label, and then at the same
time that was going on, here is all of this conversation back and forth with
Pawley and his visits...
Jake
Esterline: Really to keep him from doing something to upset the applecart from
our standpoint. In that sense, I did fill that role in part for a long
time; and the net result of the thing is that Bill thinks I am a dangerous
leftist today. If I hadn't been a foot dragger, or hadn't taken all these
dissenting opinions of this, things in Cuba would have been a lot better.
Jack
Pfeiffer: Was Pawley actually involved in the covert operation in Guatemala?
Jake
Esterline: Yes, he, well I am sure he was, in a...
Jack
Pfeiffer: I mean, with you as far as you...
Jake
Esterline: Not I personally, but he was involved with State Department. I said
Rubottom a couple of times, I didn't mean Rubottom, I meant Rusk. He was
involved - especially in Guatemala with Rubottom or whoever Secretary of State
was, and Seville Sacassaa and Somoza and whoever Secretary of Defense was in
getting the planes from the Defense Dept., having them painted over, the decals
painted over and flown to Nicaragua where they became the Defense force for
that operation.
Jack
Pfeiffer: I ran across some comment that he had made to Livingston Merchant.
Jake
Esterline: They were good friends, and knew each other. But to my knowledge, he
never had any involvement like that during the Bay of Pigs days, although you'd
have to ask Ted Shackley about what they did later, because I think he ran some
things into Cuba for Ted Shackley.
Jack
Pfeiffer: That is beyond my period of interest. He was involved in a great
amount of fund raising activity, in the New York area apparently - pushing or
raising funds in the New York area - wasn't Droller involved in this too? What
was your relation
with Droller... were you directing Droller's activities, or was Dave Phillips
running Droller...
Jake
Esterline: Oh, I sort of ran Droller, except I never knew what Tracy Barnes was
going to do next, when I turned my back. Droller was such.an ambitious fellow
trying to run in... trying to run circles around everybody for his own
aggrandizement that you never knew... but Droller would never have had any
continuing contact with Pawley, because they had met only once, and I recall
Pawley saying that he never wanted to talk to that "you know what"
again. He was very unhappy that somebody like Gerry... he just didn't like
Gerry's looks, he didn't like his accent. He was very unfair about Gerry, and I
don't mean to be unfair about Gerry - the only thing is that Gerry was insanely
ambitious. He was his own worst enemy, that was all.... We just didn't think
that Tracy really understood it that well, or if Tracy did, he coudn't
articulate... he wouldn't articulate it that well. Tracy was one of the
sweetest guys that ever lived, but he coudn't ever draw a straight line between
two points....
Jack
Pfeiffer: What about JFK?
Jake
Esterline: JFK was an uninitiated fellow who had been in the wars, but he
hadn't been exposed to any world politics or crises yet if he had something
else as a warm up, he might have made different decisions than he made at that
time. I think he was kind of a victim of the thing. I blame Nixon far more than
I do Kennedy for the equivocations and the loss of time and what not that led
to the ultimate disaster. Goodwin, I just thought was a sleazy; little
self-seeker, who I didn't feel safe with any secret. His consorting with Che
Guevara in Montevideo had rather upset me at the time...
Jack
Pfeiffer: How about McNamara did you get involved with him at all?
Jake
Esterline: No.
Jack
Pfeiffer: Bobby Kennedy?
Jake
Esterline: I wouldn't even tell you off tape. I didn't like him. He's dead, God
rest his soul.
(4) Don
Bohning, Troubling questions still haunt legacy of Bay of Pigs, The
Miami Herald (17th April, 1998)
Thirty-seven
years later, as the Bay of Pigs fades into history, many questions have been
answered by the release of long-secret documents and the increasing
willingness of the few remaining central participants to talk.
But many
of the answers raise other questions surrounding the ill-fated invasion of Cuba
on April 17, 1961, by a brigade of 1,500 Cuban exiles trained and supported by
the CIA.
Two of
the most troubling, according to participants and analysts:
Was a
failed Mafia assassination plot against Fidel Castro directly linked to the
invasion? And, if so, did that detract from the invasion planning and
execution?
Did a
combination of ego and ambition cause the late Richard Bissell -- the man most
directly responsible for the invasion as the CIA's chief of clandestine and
covert operations -- to mislead both President Kennedy and Bissell's own
planners?
Author
Seymour Hersh, in his recent book The Dark Side of Camelot, a critical
look at the Kennedy presidency, most persuasively raises the linkage between
the invasion and an assassination plot that began under the Eisenhower
administration.
Why was
mission canceled? " One of Kennedy's most controversial and least
understood decisions during the Bay of Pigs was the cancellation of the second
bombing mission'' Hersh writes. "The assumption that Castro would be dead
when the first Cuban exiles went ashore, and the fact that he was not, may
explain Kennedy's decision to cut his losses. The Mafia had failed and a very
much alive Castro was rallying his troops.''
Hersh
quotes Robert Maheu, a former FBI agent and the link between administration
officials and the Mafia for the assassination plot code-named ZR/Rifle, as
telling him that "Taking out Castro was part of the invasion plan.''
Castro's murder, said Maheu, was to take place "before - but preferably at
the time of - the invasion.''
The plot
fell apart when Juan Orta, who functioned as Castro's private secretary and was
to slip a poisoned pill into a drink, apparently got cold feet and took refuge
in the Venezuelan Embassy a few days before the invasion. Orta died several
years ago.
Kennedy,
Hersh said in an interview, must have known by April 15 - two days before the
invasion - and perhaps earlier, that the assassination plot had fallen apart
and "he was in real trouble with the operation.''
The
question then became, Hersh said, whether Kennedy should "take a bath by
going ahead with it or take a bigger bath politically if he stops it. If he
stops it he takes a tremendous hit from the right.''
Peter
Kornbluh, senior analyst at the National Security Archive, a nonprofit
documentation center in Washington responsible for the recent declassification
of hundreds of Bay of Pigs-related CIA documents, concurs that the question of
linkage between the assassination and invasion is an intriguing one.
"The
degree to which it (the assassination plot) was coordinated as part of the
planning and whether the President actually knew about it and factored it into
the decision-making process'' is a key question, Kornbluh says.
Historian
Arthur Schlesinger insisted in at least two appearances at the Miami Book Fair
last November that he did not believe Kennedy was even aware of an
assassination plot against Castro.
If there
was a link, key CIA planners for the Bay of Pigs invasion apparently were not
aware of it. Jake Esterline, the Bay of Pigs project director, says he learned
of the assassination plot by accident when he was asked to approve an
unexplained expenditure by the late J.C. King, then head of the CIA's Western
Hemisphere division.
"I
really forced my way in by refusing to pay unless I knew what I was paying for,''
Esterline said in an interview. "That got me partially briefed.''
Esterline
said he was sworn to secrecy and didn't even tell Jack Hawkins, a retired
Marine colonel who headed the Bay of Pigs paramilitary planning staff. Hawkins
did not learn about it until long after the failed invasion.
Esterline
now believes there "is no question about it... if that whole specter of an
assassination attempt using the Mafia hadn't been on the horizon, there would
have been more preparation'' for the invasion.
He believes
"Kennedy and his group were not prepared to support the operation and if
Bissell and others hadn't felt they had that magic bullet (assassination), I
don't think we would have had all the hairsplitting over air support.''
Esterline
has no doubt that Kennedy knew of the assassination plot.
The
questions surrounding Bissell arose in the spring of 1996 at a conference on
the Bay of Pigs attended by former CIA officials, brigade members and
academics, following release of documents to the National Security Archive.
Those
documents and later information have convinced both Hawkins and Esterline, who
worked for Bissell on the Bay of Pigs, that Bissell was not leveling with them
and probably was not passing on their concerns to Kennedy over such things as a
change in the landing site and air cover.
Hawkins
cites a recently declassified briefing paper by Bissell to the President dated
April 12, 1961, that he says "proves that Bissell had agreed with Kennedy
several days before the operation began to cut the air support in half.''
Bissell
didn't tell Esterline and Hawkins about the decision until the invasion.
"I
am sure Bissell never made it clear to the President why it was necessary to
eliminate Castro's air force before the landing,'' Hawkins said. `"I gave
great emphasis to this... Bissell knew what the military staff's opinion was
about this need but . . . Bissell never pressed it.''
(5) Don
Bohning, The Miami Herald (18th October, 1999)
Jacob
Donald "Jake'' Esterline, a veteran of US intelligence services and the
CIA'S project director for the ill-fated 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, has
died at age 79. Death came quickly at midday Saturday as he collapsed of an
apparent heart attack while riding in a car with his son-in-law near
his home in Hendersonville, N.C.
Esterline,
who spent 27 years with the Central Intelligence Agency and its World War II
forerunner, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), was a significant
participant in the making of contemporary history.
In
addition to his role in the Bay of Pigs, he commanded a battalion of Burmese
guerrillas in a jungle war against the Japanese; was chief guerrilla warfare
trainer at The Farm, a once-clandestine training school for CIA recruits at
Williamsburg, Va.; headed the CIA's Washington task force in the 1954 overthrow
of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz; served as CIA station chief in
Guatemala, Venezuela, Panama and Miami during the height of the Cold War and as
deputy chief of the agency's Western Hemisphere division.
Apart
from the Bay of Pigs, it was as chief of the CIA's Miami office from 1968 to
1972, that involved him most directly in Cuban affairs.
His task
in Miami was to quietly complete the phase-out of the unsuccessful post-Bay of
Pigs secret war against Fidel Castro - started by the Kennedy administration
and known in its initial stages as Operation Mongoose - without creating a
scandal that might embarrass Washington.
That
meant disposing of ships and boats, terminating leases on safe houses, marinas,
boat yards, relocating the CIA's Miami offices and - the most difficult task -
laying off the several hundred Cubans still directly on the payroll.
''I felt
a sense of obligation to the Cubans after the failure of the Bay of Pigs,'' he
said, explaining in a 1995 interview why he volunteered for the Miami
assignment. ``If it was going to be done, I wanted to see it done right.
''I
thought, Really, my heart will always be with these people, these Cuban exiles
in all these years, starting with the Bay of Pigs, and I don't want to see them
cast in the cold.''
For
better or worse, however, his role in the Bay of Pigs remains the event for
which he will be most remembered and one that haunted him for the remainder of
his life.
He had
been recalled from Venezuela in early 1960 to undertake the project, which
initially was envisioned as a guerrilla incursion at Trinidad, on Cuba's south
coast. It eventually evolved into a full-scale invasion at the Bay of Pigs, an
isolated swamp area 80 miles to the west.
Both he
and Marine Col. Jack Hawkins, his paramilitary counterpart in planning the
invasion, became increasingly doubtful of its chance for success. On an April
Sunday, a week before the invasion, Esterline and Hawkins went to the home of
Richard Bissell, the agency's director of clandestine services who was in
overall charge of the operation, and told him they were quitting.
After a
heated discussion, Bissell talked them out of quitting by appealing to their
loyalty and warning that their resignations wouldn't stop the invasion.
''We
made a bad mistake by not sticking to our guns and staying resigned,'' he said
in the 1995 interview.
The
invasion failed, with both Esterline and Hawkins convinced the change in
landing sites had much to do with its failure, along with President Kennedy's
reduction in the air cover that had been promised for the invaders.
Hawkins,
in a telephone interview Sunday, recalled that Esterline, in his capacity as
the invasion task force chief ``had struggled continually to persuade political
authorities to provide all the support and protection necessary for a small
force of Cuban exiles to be landed on the Cuban coast.
''Failing
this,'' said Hawkins, "he warned his superior at the CIA that the landing
could not succeed with the restrictions imposed by the president. He
recommended cancellation, but his advice was not heeded. The result was a
military, political and diplomatic disaster at the Bay of Pigs.''
Hawkins
praised Esterline as a man ``whose dedication and abilities were recognized at
the CIA throughout his long career'' and who "devoted his life to the
defense of the United States.''
''Jake
was a great leader,'' said Sam Halpern, a retired CIA colleague and
contemporary of Esterline. "He believed in what he was doing and he saw
trouble ahead at the Bay of Pigs and tried to stop the operation to no avail.''
''I had
the privilege and honor of serving under him during the U.S. intelligence
community's secret war against Castro communism,'' said Carlos Obregon, a
Cuban-American businessman in Miami. ``He shared with hundreds of us exile
Cubans a love and passion for our cause.''
Born in
Lewistown, western rural Pennsylvania on April 26, 1920, Esterline attended
Temple University in Philadelphia for three years then enrolled in Officer
Candidate School where he was when World War II war broke out.
He was
recruited into the OSS, winding up as the commander of a Burmese guerrilla
battalion fighting the Japanese, and was awarded a Bronze Star for his service.
He returned
to Pennsylvania after the war, finishing an accounting degree at
Temple. Ordered back to active duty in 1951 when the Korean War broke out, he
took up a standing offer to join the CIA.
Survivors
include Mildred, his wife of 53 years; two sons, Jacob Alan Esterline of
Austin, Texas; and John Esterline of Peachtree City, Ga.; and a daughter Ann
Hutcheson of Flat Rock, N.C.
1 comment:
I don't get the sense from reading material re Esterline that he would be a rogue operator, in fact, I think he worked with others willingly and cared deeply. Unless his comments re "1 week before the invasion, I wanted to resign" are false.
Could be, but not too sure.
I do get the sense from reading material Re D.A. Phillips, and watching a taped interview with him on Youtube that he was a risk taker, a solitary patriot, who alone, saw how the Exiled Cubans were killed, crushed, and their pain affected him greatly.
Additionally, Robert Tanenbaum, who has integrity and resigned from the House Select Committee on assassinations, interviewed Phillips and describes his demeanor as "broken, ashen and seething with scorn that he would be asked questions and be expected to answer them". Thanks for the information
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