Top Ten Record Released Under the JFK Act

TOP TEN JFK ASSASSINATION RECORDS - SMOKING DOCS

https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2018/11/top-ten-jfk-assassination-records.html

TOP TEN JFK ASSASSINATION RECORDS RELEASED UNDER THE JFK ACT

It has been repeatedly said that there have been no significant records released under the JFK Act, at least said by those who haven't bothered to read what has been released. These are just my personal favorites. If you ask Peter Dale Scott, John Newman, Rex Bradford, Malcolm Blunt, Larry Hancock, Russ Baker, Jim Lesar or anyone who is actually reading these records, they will come up with their own Top Ten documents, and I hope someone will take the time to do that. 

1)      Higgins Memo.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10246 - relPageId=1&tab=page

http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/jfk/NARA-July2017/jfk-july_2017_release-formerly_withheld_in_full-3of9/DOCID-32358065.PDF

1) The Higgins Memo - is the Number One Smoking Document released under the JFK Act for the following reasons:

THE KEY paragraph is (13) "He commented that there was nothing new in the propaganda field. However, he felt that there had been great success in getting closer to the military personnel who might break with Castro, and stated that there were at least ten high-level military personnel who are talking with CIA but as yet are not talking to each other, since that degree of confidence has not yet developed. He considers it as a parallel in history, i.e., the plot to kill Hitler, and this plot is being studied in detail to develop an approach.' 

D.C. attorney Jim Lesar, head of the Assassinations Archives and Research Center (AARC) and Dan Alcorn filed an FOIA request for that "detailed study" and the CIA apparently have lost it  

Other items of relevance include: 

a) It concerns a Joint Chiefs of Staff meeting at the Pentagon on a significant date - Sept. 25, 1963 a key time in the JFK Assassination Chronology as it occurs around the same time as some other key events, including:

1- the day Oswald left New Orleans for Mexico City,
2-  the estimated timing of the Odio incident, and
3- Michael Paine's wife Ruth Hyde Paine picks up Marina, the daughter and their belongings - including the rifle, and took them to Texas
4- after visiting Michael's mom - Ruth Forbes Paine Young - Mary Bancroft's close friend.
5-  It is also the day President Kennedy signs NSAM - National Security Action Memorandum on the advice of National Security advisor McGeorge Bundy approving "Four Leaves," - a secret military communications project.
6-  JFK then left on his "Conservation Tour," the first stop being the Northeast Pennsylvania home of the mother of Mary Pinchot Meyer, JFK's paramour who accompanied him.
7-  Oswald's name turns up on the list of those who visited the Tenn. nuclear museum and news cliips of the tour are found in a box at Oswald's rooming house.

8- Richard Case Nagel shot a gun in a bank in El Paso, Texas and waited to get arrested, ostensibly to be in federal custody at the time of the assassination.

So a lot of significant chronological events occurred in that 24 hour span.

b) Because Chef of Staff Gen. Maxwell Taylor was on a special mission to Vietnam, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Curtis LeMay chaired the meeting.

c) The author of the memo - Colonel Walter Higgins was the adjunct of Gen. Victor Krulak (USMC), the director of the military detachment responsible for providing any assistance requested by the CIA in the course of their covert intelligence operations.

d) Desmond FitzGerald, the CIA officer who briefed the Chiefs on CIA covert operations against Cuba, had replaced William Harvey as chief of Task Force W - the Cuban project based in the basement of CIA HQ, and was the case officer for Dr. Rolando Cubella (AMLASH), a founder of the DRE who the CIA considered their  best bet to fit the disgruntled Cuban military officer who would lead the assassination attempt and coup.

e) Fitzgerald said this adaption of the plot to kill Hitler was considered a part of the Psychological Warfare area, which included David Atlee Phillips, George Joannides and the DRE agents who were arrested with Oswald in New Orleans.

f) LeMay also introduces an Air Force communications officer who had devised a way to influence radio communications that were to be adapted for use against Cuba.

g) The PENDELUM project is mentioned - and described as the code name of the Security net that surrounded the covert Cuban projects they were operating.

h) The NSAM that JFK signed approving "Project Four Leaves" - a military communications system, is only mentioned once - in JFK's daily desk dirary at the JFK Presidential Library.

i) There is also mention of a textual letter that it so secret it could only be read and immediately returned to the messenger. This could possibly be a message from McGeorge Bundy regarding security for the Cuban operations then underway or being considered. 

2)  HSCA Interview w/ WC attorney Sam Stern (From Howard Weisberg’s Collection )

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/A Disk/Agent Oswald Office Files/Agent Oswald Office Official Records Subject File/Item 07.pdf

http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2017/02/hsca-sam-stern-interview-smoking-doc2.html

"I am less certain now that at the time we wrote the Report. Less certain that Oswald acted alone. Actually, I wasn't all that certain at the time. I thought the best evidence supported the final findings, and I agreed with them, but I wasn't tremendously firm or immovable in that, in my own mind. I just thought there were a lot of straws left.....I have become more skeptical about the Warren Commission findings and everything else that is a part of official life, I suppose. Everything has become discredited over the years since 1963. You don’t really believe in things the way you did back then."……

Mr. Stern stated that “at the outset we realized that there was no possible way to penetrate any official involvement in a cover-up or conspiracy if there was such complicity.” Stern stated that he and several of his Commission colleagues discussed what they regarded as “the fact that the agencies – the FBI and CIA – could formulate and maintain a cover-up which no one would ever penetrate. We of course did not believe that was so. And I still don’t. But we realized what we were dealing with, in the power of these agencies…

Stern stated that he had been told of FBI Agent Hosty’s allegedly threatening note received from Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the assassination, he “would have regarded it as greater identification of the possibility of potential danger in Oswald – of violence.” Stern stated that if the staff of the Commission had discovered that the Hosty note had existed and had been destroyed by the FBI in Dallas, that “if we had found out that happened, we would have gone to a full Commission meeting immediately, and would have made the big decision regarding any future relationship between the Commission and the FBI. It just would have gone to the heart of the whole relationship and the Bureau’s motivation. The destruction of that note would have resulted in the ultimate brouhaha.”

…Stern stated that had the Commission learned of the CIA-Mafia conspiracies to assassinate Fidel Castro, “we would have gone much more into Cuba, the CIA, and the Mafia. We would have had a whole host of new avenues calling for investigation. And we would have obviously had to develop some new sources of information – other than the agency.”

….When shown the CIA memorandum of November 1963 in which a CIA officer wrote that the Agency had once considered using Oswald for intelligence purposes, Stern stated that “I have never seen this. I was never given this, and we had asked for and were supposed to be given anything of relevance like this.” In reading the memo, Stern stated that “that would have definitely been relevant. If they (the CIA) were taking him that seriously, then you might think that others could or did also. If we found that had been withheld, that would have been a major explosion also.”

When shown a copy of the 1960-61 memos regarding “the possibility of an Oswald impostor,” Stern stated that he had never seen those three memos either, despite the fact that “they would have certainly been relevant. I was supposed to have been given all relevant Bureau information and files on Oswald in the pre-assassination period. They said I had everything.”

This leads us to the CIA document that was kept from the Warren Commission that indicated Oswald was considered for “operational use.”  

3) CIA Soviet Division memo – 104-10067-10212 – That says Oswald was once considered for operational use. Also known as the Cassin Memo.

http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/jfk/NARA-July2017/JFK-July_2017_Release-Formerly_released_in_part/DOCID-32347922.PDF

Also see: The CIA Man who considered using Oswald:”

https://www.tpaak.com/tpaak-blog/2017/9/14/the-cia-man-who-considered-using-oswald

“25 November 1963. “…REDWOOD (CIA Soviet Division) had at one time an OI (Operational Interest) in Oswald….”  

4)  Secret Service Preventive Research Section File

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/docid-32241845.pdf

http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2017/10/secret-service-protective-research.html

Former Secret Service Agent Gerald Blaine, in his book “The Kennedy Detail” (Gallery Books, 2010, p.59) writes: “The first stop before any advance was always the PRS. Located in the Executive Office Building, next door to the White House, the PRS office were the nerve center for tracking threat cases. Any time there was a threat made against the president’s life – whether it was a written letter, a phone call, details gathered from an informant, field investigation, or an unstable person trying to get inside the Northwest Gate of the White House – an investigative report was initiated and a case file number is issued. A PRS agent would type the report on carbon paper so there would be multiple copies, noting the threat maker’s name, last known address, a synopsis of the threats made, a description of the person, and their medical history, if known. Cases are analyzed and categorized according to the seriousness of the threat.”

“The records room of the PRS office contained row and rows of gray metal four-drawer file cabinets that held thousands of threat suspect files, organized by case number. There were smaller file cabinets where index cards of each suspect were organized both geographically and alphabetically. The cards were cross-referenced to the case files. Thus if you knew either the name of the suspect or their last known location you go to the small index drawers, locate the card, which would have a case number on it, then go to the large filing cabinets to get the master file.”

(p.76) “…Win Lawson had checked PRS for threat suspect in Texas, specifically in the Dallas area, and had been pleasantly surprised to find that there weren’t any.”  More likely than "pleasantly surprised, he was incredulous, considering US Ambassador Stevenson had been physically assaulted a few weeks previous and known threats were coming in on a daily basis. 

5)  Collins Radio – 104-10107-10191 - ARRB considered “NBR” – Not Believed relevant

http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/jfk/NARA-July2017/jfk-july_2017_release-formerly_withheld_in_full-3of9/DOCID-32358065.PDF

[ Also see:the Collins Radio Connections:  JFKcountercoup: Collins Radio Connections ]

While this document seems unconnected to the assassination in any way, Collins Radio comes up again and again throughout the JFK assassination narrative, especially in regards to the Air Force One Radio Transmissions and the Tippit murder, as J.D. Tippit’s good friend worked at Collins Radio and his car was seen near the scene of Tippit’s murder, with a man resembling Oswald behind the wheel. This document, lawyer’s briefs for the taxing of American defense contractors working at a top secret ELINT base in Australia (Alice Springs), provides the proof that Collins Radio, LTV, General Dynamics et al, had a very close working relationship 

6)  Drew Pearson dinner with Khrushchev - 104-10003-10064 

http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/jfk/NARA-July2017/JFK-July_2017_Release-Formerly_released_in_part/DOCID-32105956.PDF

Soviet Primer Khrushchev told Pierson and his wife over dinner that he disbelieved the Warren Report and criticized and suspected American intelligence agencies of involvement in the assassination. Rather than write a “Washington Merry-Go-Round” Column on this incredible scoop Pearson reported it to the FBI, who noted:  "Pearson repeated that the reaction of Chairman Khrushchev and his wife was one of flat disbelief and archtypical of the universal European belief that there was some kind of American conspiracy behind the assassination of President Kennedy and the murder of Oswald....(He) could not believe that the affair had happened as it apparently did and Mr. Pearson made no headway whatsoever in trying to change their belief that something was not on the level. Chairman Khruschev greeted Mr. and Mrs. Pearson's efforts with a tolerant smile..."   

7)  Jack Anderson on Jim Garrison – Tolson – DeLoach Memo of 4/4/67

http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2016/04/jack-anderson-on-jim-garrison.html

Tolson (FBI): Pierson’s protégé also reported to the FBI rather than write a column after dinner with Jim Garrison According to the FBI report: “Jack Anderson came to see me at 11:55 a.m. today. He has just returned from New Orleans where, at the invitation of District Attorney Jim Garrison, he interviewed Garrison for approximately six hours at his home. Anderson and Garrison later had dinner at the Latin Quarter restaurant in New Orleans. Anderson stated that he went to New Orleans fully prepared to present a hostile viewpoint to Garrison. After listening to Garrison for approximately 90 minutes, he began to believe Garrison’s story. Anderson described Garrison as a very convincing talker who has considerable facts at his disposal. Anderson now believes there is some authenticity to Garrison’s claims and future plans. Garrison told Anderson that he will undoubtedly hold a full-scale trial within six months….Shaw at this point already had been approved by the CIA, through an appropriate cut-out, to engineer a plot that would result in the assassination of Fidel Castro…..I also told Anderson that, while we of course would accept any information that was voluntarily given to us, we at the same time would not take over Garrison’s ‘dirty laundry.’

Anderson told me that if the Bureau had any change of policy in the above regard he would appreciate knowing about it. I told him we would keep his offer in mind; however there would be no change of policy.

Anderson told me that he had discussed this entire matter with George Christian, the President’s Press Secretary, at the White House. He stated that Christian was also convinced that there must be some truth to Garrison’s allegations. Christian told Anderson to get in touch with the FBI. Anderson stated that he had already been planning to do this, but that he now especially wanted to advise us of the full facts because of Christian’s request.

8) The Rosselli Chronology File – RIF 157-10014-10236

http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/jfk/NARA-July2017/JFK-July_2017_Release-Formerly_released_in_part/DOCID-32423624.PDF

http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2018/06/roselli-chronology-file-rif-157-10014.html

Drew Pearson's protege Jack Anderson also interviewed John Rosselli immediately after he testified in secret Congressional hearing about his CIA Cuban activities, four plots to kill Castro and his case officer William Harvey. "The CIA has maintained throughout that the Oswald 201 file was a complete compilation of the material related to the assassination of President Kennedy. However, information relating to who Lee Harvey Oswald was, and what he was doing are not included in their files. The Oswald 201 file does not attempt to question Oswald's connection with both pro-Castro and anti-Castro groups or any of the AMLASH information. The most notable subject missing was information relating to CIA/U.S. Government attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro." 

Note: Anderson's story beings on page 27 and the Rosselli Chronology begins on page 38. Anderson: "So here is Rosselli's own account of a real-life 'Mission Impossible' - the attempt to kill Castro. It is a story of cash payments, poison pellets, high-powered rifles and powerboat dashes to Cuba."   

9) NSA Defectors Martin and Mitchel  - 104-10219-10088. 

http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/jfk/NARA-July2017/JFK-July_2017_Release-Formerly_released_in_part/104-10219-10088.pdf

Report from inside Russia on NSA defectors William H. Martin and Beron F. Mitchell, confirmed they went to Moscow via Mexico and Cuba, the same route Oswald wanted to take. It also shows how the CIA and NSA dealt with real defectors.  

10) NPIC PATHFINDER DOCUMENT – SECU122 SECURITY FILE ON FRANK STUGIS - Record Number 199308.05.14:42:12:750028 – JFK Record Series Agency Number 80T01357A (BK Notes: I don’t know why this records doesn’t have a RIF # number. And Many thanks to Malcolm Blunt for providing me with document in 2013 - and I'm sorry it took me so long to recognize its significance. 

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=104139&relPageId=14

In this document, improperly inserted in the middle of Frank Sturgis’ Security File, it is noted that:

1)      On 19 March, Dino A. Brugioni, Chief, Western Geographic Division (NPIC), informed me (CIA Operational Division Chief) that three personnel assigned to his division had told him that while serving at JMWAVE, Miami, Florida or in the Imagery Analysis Service in Washington during the 1960’s, they had heard references to assassination plans on Fidel Castro.

2)      On 20 March, I met with the following NPIC personnel who had either served in the Imagery Analysis Service or at JMWAVE on Cuban related problems: Gordon Duvall, Earl Shoemaker, Tom Helmke, Bruce Barrett, Reyes Ponce, George Arthur, Eugene Lydon, and William Hanlon. The purpose of this meeting was to ascertain whether their participation was related to case officer generated materials or bona fide operations.  [ Note: that's eight witnesses, not three]. 

3)      There appeared to be two plans involving Fidel Castro and an incident that may have been related to Raul Castro…….

4)      The incident involving Raul Castro was not a formalized plan. It consisted of a paramilitary raid on Santiago de Cuba harbor. There was a rumor at JMWAVE that, while exiting the harbor, Raul Castro’s home had been fired upon by a paramilitary case officer named “Rip” Robertson. 

5)      To the best of my knowledge these facts represent the totality of any participation by our personnel in these matters. We have no further knowledge that the Fidel Castro operation ever advanced beyond the planning stage. 

SIGNED Edward S. Cates, Chief, Imagery Exploitation Group,  NPIC

While it may not have officially  “advanced beyond the planning stage” and was not implemented against the original target - Fidel Castro, Pathfinder was an off-the-shelf tactical plan that could have, and I believe was redirected to JFK at Dealey Plaza, and further analysis can prove me right or wrong,

It appears that “Rip” Robertson’s ride-by shoot up of Raul Castro’s home had already taken place, and the two Fidel Castro operations were formalized into distinct plans that, according to the Imagery Exploitation Group at NPIC, didn’t advance beyond the planning stage.

And there were plans to kill Castro known to the NPIC techs  – two of them specifically. According to this NPIC chief the plans involving Fidel, to the knowledge of our people were: 

(a)    A folder stored in the Photo interpretation area at JMWAVE contained materials relating 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 PATHFINDER, apparently had been disapproved and was 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 Varadero 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. To our knowledge, this plan also was never implemented.

Bonus Doc. #11) In Response the CIA wrote (1993.08.05.14:4212;750028)

[ https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=104139 - relPageId=13&tab=page ] 

SUBJECT: Assassination Plans Against Castro
REFERENCE: Memorandum for the Record dated 21 March 1975 from Mr. Cates, NPIC 

1.      On receipt of reference memorandum, we reviewed the official folder on Mr. Carl Jenkins, a retired Agency employee, and asked the Directorate of Operations for any available information on PATHFINDER. Both efforts were fruitless – no one in the Directorate of Operations recognized the cryptonym PATHFINDER. 

2.      In our search of other files in connection with other staff activities, we came, just by chance, a reference to Pathfinder in an FBI memorandum dated 20 January 1961 concerning Frank Anthony Sturgis. We are unable to offer any speculation, reasonable or otherwise, on its significance in this memorandum or in the NPIC memorandum…..[End CIA Response]

Because these were "in house" agency communications between one division of the CIA and another, and was not shared with the Church Intelligence Committee, the "official folder on Mr. Carl Jenkins" that was reviewed was not subject to the JFK Act and is not in the JFK Collection at the National Archives and available to the public. And because Jenkins is still alive, it is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). But because Jenkins is still alive, we can and will try to interview him.

Bonus Doc #12 - [ Carl Jenkins:  http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2018/10/carl-e-jenkins-vita.html /

http://www.publicrecordmedia.org/wp content/uploads/2015/09/whea/WHEA_pd_GW26005.pdf]

When the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB) interviewed former NPIC secretary Velma Reumann, she said that RFK had ordered her to box the NPIC records on the assassination (apparently including the Pathfinder documents) and convey to them to the Smithsonian Institute rather than the NARA where they belonged. 

Bonus Doc. #13 Interview with NPIC Secretary: http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2017/02/smoking-doc-5-npic-records.html

So the missing Pathfinder operational records were intentionally misfiled at least three times – 1) At JMWAVE the NPIC employees said the Pathfinder files were kept in their section of the station instead of the Operational Files, where they belonged; 2) the NPIC memo to CIA officials calling attention to the Pathfinder files (#1) were misfiled in the middle of Frank Sturgis’ Security File instead of being passed on to the Church Intelligence Committee; 3) the NPIC assassination records were ordered by RFK to be sent to the Smithsonian instead of the NARA.

As we have seen here, the best records lead to new names, new events and new records 

 

 

Executive Summary - Wheaton - Jenkins - Pathfinder

 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY – 2021 CAPA ON PATHFINDER - WHEATON – JENKINS

Since there are some who don’t want to sit through an hour long talking-heads video presentation or read the entire transcript, I thought I’d put out an Executive Summary to set the basics story so a larger audience can appreciate the leads we are following. Former FBI Agent William Turner best expressed the idea behind these leads.

As former FBI agent Bill Turner said at a COPA Conference years ago: “We now know what happened at Dealey Plaza to a fairly good degree of certainty.  The motives were piling up – the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, the two-track back channel to Cuba – the motives were piling up to the point they had to assassinate him. I think it’s now pretty obvious, with the information we have today, that the mechanism of it came out of the alliance between the CIA and the Mafia. They already had an assassination apparatus set up for killing Castro, and they just switched targets and they killed JFK in

 Instead of following all of the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro, we can eliminate those involving poison, exploding cigars and sea shells, tainted diving suits and the like, and concentrate only on those plans, not plots, those detailed plans to kill Castro with high powered rifles as he rode by in an open jeep, and the Pathfinder plan fits that bill.

Both movies Executive Action and JFK portray the conspirators sitting around smoking, drinking and talking about how to wack JFK, but that’s not how it was done. It was done by very detailed planning, complete with U2 and ground photo recognizance of the area, maps and surveys and blueprints of buildings, all of which are supplied by the CIA’s National Photo Recognizance Center (NPIC).

In 1975, when the Church Committee was investigating the CIA-Mafia plot to kill Castro, eight NPIC technicians, who had been assigned to Task Force W – the Cuban desk at CIA HQ in Washington, and the JMWAVE station in Florida, came forward to make their superiors aware of two CIA plans to kill Castro that they were aware of.

The NPIC technicians said that they not only assisted in the contingency plans for “PATHFINDER,” supplying photos and maps of the target areas, - the Bay of Pigs resort docks and the DuPont Xanadu resort at Veradaro, but the PATHINDER files were kept in the NPIC section of the JMWAVE station, rather than in the station’s Operational Files, where they would normally be kept. 

According to the NPIC technicians, one of the two PATHFINDER plans was to kill Castro with high powered rifles near the Bay of Pigs, which apparently became somewhat of a tourist attraction and resort area after the failed invasion in April 1961. It was reported that Castro kept a boat docked there. 

This PATHFINDER plan was, according to the NPIC techs, “disapproved” by “higher authority” (aka JFK and RFK), but another, similar plan also called PATHFINDER was devised to kill Castro in a sniper attack when he drove by Veradero in an open jeep on his way to Xanadu, the North Shore estate once owned by the DuPont family of Delaware, and frequented by Castro.

As the NPIC director Dino Brugioni wrote in a memo, “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 Varadero 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. To our knowledge, this plan also was never implemented.”

 [ Full doc: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=104139&relPageId=14 ]

In a follow up report from Joseph Seltzer at the CIA dated 8 May 1975, in response to the NPIC inquiries regarding Carl Jenkins and PATHFINDER, Seltzer wrote:

“SUBJECT: Assassination Plans Against Castro
REFERENCE: Memorandum for the Record dated 21 March 1975 from Mr. Cates, NPIC” 

      “On receipt of reference memorandum, we reviewed the official folder on Mr. Carl Jenkins, a retired Agency employee, and asked the Directorate of Operations for any available information on PATHFINDER. Both efforts were fruitless – no one in the Directorate of Operations recognized the cryptonym PATHFINDER.”

When G. Robert Blakey, Chief Counsel to the HSCA wrote to the CIA and requested, “Any and all documents concerning or referring to OPERATION PATHFINDER, including all indices,” the CIA responded, regarding “Operation Pathfinder – No information.”

On hearing the NPIC technicians mention Carl Jenkins' name and description as a DD/Plans officer, the CIA Operations chief Mr. Cates reviewed a folder on Jenkins. But since that communications with the NPIC’s Brugoni did not involve the Church Committee, that was active and investigating just those issues at that time – the Jenkins folder was not subject to the JFK Act and is not at the JFK Collection at the NARA. And because Jenkins is still alive, that folder is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). But because he is still alive, we have talked to him, and will try to do that again.

[ More on Jenkins: https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKjenkinsC.htm ]

We know that Carl E. Jenkins was a former USMC from Louisiana who enlisted in the CIA and was responsible for the recruitment and training of the dozen or so anti-Castro Cubans infiltrated into Cuba a few weeks prior to the Bay of Pigs, who became known as the Pathfinders. They were given special training and after the failure of the invasion, some were killed and captured while others escaped.

Back operating out of the JMWAVE station, we know the Pathfinder plan to kill Castro at Veradero was not "disaproved by higher authority," but implemented and put into action, as one of the original Pathfinders, Felix I. Rodriguez wrote in his book Shadow Warrior, that: “I was given a weapon… a beautiful German bolt-action rifle with a powerful telescopic sight, all neatly packed in a custom-made padded carrying case… a box of ammo, twenty rounds. I was told that I wouldn't have to sight the rifle, as it had already been zeroed in. Apparently the resistance had obtained a building facing a location that Castro frequented at the time....We were supposed to debark onto a Cuban boat near Varadero Beach, an area I knew from my childhood. From there we would be taken to rendezvous with members of the anti-Castro resistance…..We would be provided a safe house, then move to the room where we'd be able to shoot Fidel….” Rodriguez made three attempts to infiltrate Cuba, but was recalled each time, increasing his frustrations.

GENE WHEATON 

In the 1980s Eugene “Gene” Wheaton was one of the first to blow the whistle on what became known as the Iran-Contra affair. Wheaton was not a silly conspiracy theorist, but rather a former Marine, Oklahoma police officer, military investigator (Army and Air Force), private security consultant and Mid-eastern agent for Rockwell International, the overseas division of Rockwell-Collins, Inc. a major defense contractor. Wheaton had received a prestigious presidential medal and award from President Nixon for his service in the Middle-East as a border security and drug smuggling expert.

Wheaton worked closely with Carl Jenkins at National Airlines, a cargo shipment company that may have been a front for the CIA (as described JFKcountercoup: CIAir ). As Vice President of the airline, Wheaton hired Jenkins to be his Washington representative. When Wheaton was in Washington he stayed in a bedroom reserved for him at Jenkin’s home, and they were close personal friends and business partners for a number of years.

Wheaton, through his association with Jenkins, was recruited into the Ollie North network that was running the Iran-Contra arms network. When he realized they were raising millions of dollars to support covert intelligence operations without the approval of Congress, Wheaton went first to William Casey, the director of the CIA, but he realized that Casey was involved and supported the Iran-Contra affair.

He then told the Iran-Contra story to Christic Institute attorney Dan Sheehan, who was preparing to sue the Iran-Contra principles in court, which resulted in Wheaton receiving a footnote in court papers and in the book Sheehan later wrote.

After CIA contract agent and baggage kicker Eugene Hasenfus’ plane was shot down and he was captured by the Sandinistas, he confessed that the CIA supported the Contras and Hasenfus was found to have in his possession, the phone number of Felix Rodriguez, a Bay of Pigs veteran and JMWAVE Pathfinder. 

When Wheaton learned about the Congressional passage of the JFK Act of 1992, unanimously passed by Congress and reluctantly signed by President Bush, that established the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB) and JFK Collection at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Wheaton wrote to ARRB chairman Judge John Tunhiam. As the law required all government agencies to release to the public any and all records regarding the assassination of President Kennedy, Wheaton thought the records regarding Jenkins, Quintero, Rodriguez and the other Pathfinders should be included in the JFK Collection.

In his letter to ARRB chairman Judge John Tunheim, Wheaton gave him some basic background, establishing the fact that he was not just another silly conspiracy theorists, and said he had information that might be of interest to the Review Board that they might want to pursue. And the Review Board took him seriously, at first.

Wheaton talked on the phone with ARRB investigator Anne E. Buttimer, an attorney, and he gave her the basic story as he knew it, and they arranged to meet in person in Washington D.C., when Wheaton gave Buttimer some supporting documents, including Carl Jenkins’ vita-resume and his passport, among other things. Those items are open to the public in the JFK Collection at the NARA. 

[BK Notes: For Jenkins’ Resume/Vita see: http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2018/10/carl-e-jenkins-vita.html - and A JFK Counter-Coup Research Feather for your cap to anyone who comes up with Jenkins' Passport.]

According to Buttimer's ARRB outside contact report, Wheaton told her "Cuban exiles who were originally trained by the CIA to kill Castro, killed Kennedy instead, considering him a traitor for his failure to support them at the Bay of Pigs." Wheaton said that "people above the Cubans wanted JFK killed for other reasons," and that "the matter is not complex, but convoluted."

Buttimer then suddenly quit her job at the ARRB and disappeared, and the Review Board never followed up on Wheaton’s information and failed to get files on the relevant individuals named by Wheaton. He belatedly received a ARRB form letter thanking him for contacting them. 

TWO DOCUMENTARY FILMED INTERVIEWS 

Then Matt Ehling, a documentary film maker from Public Records Media in Minnesotta corresponded with and filmed a number of extensive interviews with Wheaton, and William M. Law, based on records released under the JFK Act, filmed an interview with Wheaton about his inside information on the JFK assassination. Both are excertpted in the 2021 CAPA presentation.

THE STRAIGHT STORY 

When Law asked him what was the “straight story,” Wheaton responded: “The straight story is that there was a CIA fronted program to assassinate Castro and Carl (Jenkins) was in charge of training the Cubans in Miami to assassinate Castro and it was paid for by the CIA. They would go from Texas down to Mexico and take some convertibles and things into the hills and rocky areas and set watermelons up in the back seat and they had what they called a triangulation shooting team. And they were according to THEM, THEY were the ones that diverted the Castro funds and training for their own agenda to snuff Kennedy. It was a paid element and they were CIA people. They were training to assassinate Castro, but if you are trained to assassinate one person, you can use that training to assassinate anybody with that same training. That’s what they were using – the paid training program to get Castro. The Cubans, because of the imprisonment of those guys and JFK backing off at the last moment in support of the Bay of Pigs invasion, they were still angry, still are to this day. There was another clique above them that was worried about Kennedy not increasing the program for escalating the hostilities in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. So at an extremely high level, I’m talking about the political elite level, the shakers and movers of the country – the top guys in the Pentagon and White House, did not want Kennedy to shut down that war because they were just getting it warmed up and wanted to escalate.”

“Chi Chi and Carl Jenkins were in charge of the main team.  Carl Jenkins was training Chi Chi (Quintero) and several other shooters, about five of them – and I.F. Harper helped train these guys to assassinate Castro. According to THEM, they just went off and decided to get their revenge on Kennedy for his failure to support the invasion of Cuba.”

[ John Henry “I.F.” Harper - https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2020/11/john-henry-iw-harper-rip.html ]

British schoolmaster John Simkin attempted to contact Rafael Quintero via his close friend CIA media asset Don Bohning, but Quintero refused to be interviewed though he did say that Gene Wheaton was telling the truth as "he knew it". Quintero was also quoted as saying: “If I were ever granted immunity, and compelled to testify about past actions, about Dallas and the Bay of Pigs, it would be the biggest scandal ever to rock the United States.”

[https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKwheaton.htm]

When asked why he blew the whisle on the Iran-Contra affair, and gave up the names of his friends and associates to the AARB, Gene Wheaton simply replied, “Because I’m a cop.”

When Carl Jenkins was asked about Gene Wheaton by Lee Shephard, he said, “Wheaton was a nobody. We knew he was a cop so we didn’t talk about anything important around him.”

If the assassination of President Kennedy isn’t anything important, what else were they involved in that was more important than that?

For more on this see: Original 2021 CAPA Conference Presentation by Bill Kelly, Matt Ehling and W.M. Law interviews with Gene Wheaton and Lee Shephard’s report on meeting with Jenkins and complete transcript:

https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2021/12/bill-kellys-2021-capa-conference.html

Ed Lansdale Memo on Cuban Operations that refers to "pathfinders" and their purpose and considerations - Under PHASE I - (March 1962) 

documents.theblackvault.com/documents/jfk/NARA-Oct2017/2018/docid-32206917.pdf

Carl Jenkins at the Bay of Pigs: https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2022/01/carl-jenkins-at-bay-of-pigs.html

Felix Rodrigues on Rafael Chi Chi Quintero:  https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2022/01/felix-rodrigues-on-rafael-chi-chi.html

Confirming Wheaton and Jenkins: https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2022/01/confirming-wheaton-and-jenkins-i.html

Bill Kelly billkelly3@gmail.com

CONFIRMING WHEATON AND JENKINS

CONFIRMING WHEATON AND JENKINS

I don’t consider Gene Wheaton a national hero, or Carl Jenkins a villain; I think they were both patriots in their own ways and each adds important aspects to the JFK assassination story that deserves close attention.  

As this 2021-2022 New Year eve came and went I couldn’t help but think of Gene Wheaton after spending the past two weeks transcribing excerpts of his interviews with Matt Ehling and William Matson Law from our 2021 CAPA Conference presentation.

[https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2021/12/bill-kellys-2021-capa-conference.html ]

It was on December 31, 2015 when Gene Wheaton suffered an injury to his head that caused his death, reportedly from a fall at his home in a trailer on the side of a mountain in a remote area of California. He either got drunk and fell and hit a corner of some furniture, ala William Holden -

( https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/ - search/William+Holden/FFNDWMQWGHVzZZTLFNzcpFfqlgpbSpTm?projector=1&messagePartId=0.1 )                                                                    Or he was murdered by those trained killers who thought he talked too much. I will try to obtain Wheaton’s autopsy report for Dr. Wecht to review to see if there was any foul play involved. I think the fall is most probable, but he certainly could have been the victim of some professional killers who he accused of being involved in political assassinations, so being killed himself is certainly possibility.

In fact, he had been sued by former FBI agent Oliver “Buck” Revell, for saying Revell, as part of an anti-terrorist Task Force, had organized a murder squad to assassinate those who were considered terrorists. Wheaton was later dropped from the suit.

 [https://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2021/12/oliver-buck-revell-sues-wheaton-for.html ]                                      

While others are interested in what Gene Wheaton has to say about Iran-Contra, OBIX, the Revell suit, the CIA Island in the Bahamas he mentioned, his Presidential award for his security work in the Middle East, and Jenkins operations in the Congo, Vietnam, the Middle East and Central America, I am focused strictly on what Wheaton and Jenkins have to say about the Kennedy assassination. But I use what they have to say about other aspects of their careers in order to independently confirm their veracity.

Larry Hancock and Russ Baker have said that we should treat Wheaton with skepticism, and I do.

As Ronald Reagan said, "Trust but confirm."

Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall both talked with Wheaton around the time of the Iran-Contra affair (1985), and Marshall said that Wheaton didn’t tell him anything he could independently verify so he didn’t use anything Wheaton supplied him. Scott said he was suspicious of Wheaton because of his close association with Carl Jenkins, and he warned Dan Sheehan not to use Wheaton as a source in his Iran-Contra suit.

Paul Hovan, a Vietnam vet who led a group trying to expose Pentagon waste, met Wheaton at a party and described him derisively as “someone who thought he was a player but who was truly not,” and whose “claims were based on a mishmash of speculative hearsay, fanciful information, and some actual facts.” But Wheaton’s bottom line remained clear - “a rogue element in the U.S. government had engaged in a host of nefarious activities, including assassinations,” and that part has been sustained. And Wheaton never said he was a covert player, but that they accepted him as one.

I have been able to independently verify some of what Wheaton has said about various things, such as the IBEX murders in Iran.

[Ie: IBEX : https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1977/01/02/ibex-deadly-symbol-of-us-arms-sales-problems/be83dfc8-5998-441a-84c0-f376b240c83d/ ]

In addition, Wheaton mentioned to Matt Ehling that he once worked with Dr. Cyril Wecht as an investigator, hired by the families of the victims of the Gander, Newfoundland plane crash on December 12, 1985 that killed 248 passengers and crew, mainly U.S. Army soldiers from the 101^st Airborne Division, an event that Wecht remembered.

[ https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2015/12/09/101st-airborne-marks-30-years-since-gander-plane-crash-killed-248-soldiers/  ]

When Wheaton was asked why he tried to blow the whistle on the Iran-Contra affair, and why he informed John Tunheim and the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) of the association of his friends with the assassination, he replied simply, “Because I’m a cop.”

When Carl Jenkins was asked about Wheaton, he said “He was a nobody. We knew he was a cop so we didn’t talk about anything important around him.”

Well, admitting involvement in plots to kill Fidel Castro and redirecting one of those plot to engage in the assassination of a President,- if that is not the most important information you have, what could be greater than that?

One of Carl Jenkins closest protégés, Rafael “Chi Chi” Quintero, shortly before he died, said that Wheaton was telling the truth “as he knew it,” – didn’t say he was lying or even mistaken. And Quintero went on to say, “If I was to tell wat I know about Dallas and the Bay of Pigs, it would be the greatest scandal that has ever rocked the nation.”

[ Thank you John Simkin:  https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKquintero.htm ]

Quintero was one of about twenty especially selected anti-Castro Cubans who were trained in explosives, as snipers and in radio communications. They were commandos and assassins, like the WWII Jedburghs before D-Day, sent into Cuba a few weeks before the Bay of Pigs, with instructions to organize resistance cells, blow up bridges, create general havoc and if possible, assassinate high priority targets, like Fidel Castro. They were called Pathfinders. 

Felix Rodriguez, one of the original Pathfinders, is quoted as saying (in Peter Wyden, Bay of Pigs – The Untold Story, Simon & Schuster, 1979 p. 75) that one of his trainers, “Carl,” – undoubtedly Carl Jenknis, said “If this goddamn operation succeeds, it will be a goddamned miracle.” 

Some of the original Pathfinders were captured (like Nestor Peno) and imprisoned until they were bargained for with tractors and medical supplies and released, while others made it out of Cuba. Eventually those that survived reunited at JMWAVE, the CIA station in Miami, Florida, where they resumed their commando raids and assassination attempts against Castro under the Mongoose operation and then continued even after Mongoose with commando raids and the Pathfinder plan to kill Castro.

During the Church Committee investigation of CIA activities, eight National Photo Interpretation Center (NPIC) technicians came forward to make it known that there was a plan to kill Castro by snipers with high powered rifles as he rode by in an open jeep on his way to the DuPont estate in Veradero, on the north shore, where he was known to frequent. They said that the plan, called “Pathfinder,” and was led by Carl Jenkins, but was “disapproved by higher authority.” That CIA NPIC memo was intentionally misfiled in Frank Sturgis’ CIA Security File and relessed under the JFK Act. 

[ https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=104139&relPageId=14 ]

The NPIC technicians said that the Pathfinder plan folder was kept in their section of the JMWAVE station instead of the Operational File where it belonged. That folder has since disappeared, but a NPIC secretary told the ARRB she received a call from then attorney general Robert Kennedy and instructed to box all of the NPCI records that had to do with assassination and send them to the Smithsonian Institute, rather than the National Archives, where they belonged. When I asked the NARA if the ARRB followed up on that with a request to the Smithsonian for any JFK, RFK or NPIC assassination records, they responded in the negative, the ARRB did not follow up on it. But we are and preparing a FOIA request to find out.

Gene Wheaton said that from conversations among themselves, Carl Jenkins and the former Pathfinders, including Rafael Chi Chi Quintero, admitted to being trained by the CIA to kill Castro, but redirected their plan to kill Kennedy.

Wheaton became especially close to Quintero, and asked him if he obtained immunity from prosecution for them, would he and the others talk about what they knew about the assassination? And they would, so Wheaton approached U.S. Senator Hugh Scott (D. Pa.) and they went to the White House and Senate committees attempting to obtain the immunity necessary for them to talk about the assassination but they failed. The government didn’t want to know the truth.

David Atlee Phillips also admitted that Oswald used the same plan they had devised to kill Castro. Just before his death Phillips told Kevin Walsh, an investigator with the House Select Committee on Assassinations: "My final take on the assassination is there was a conspiracy, likely including American intelligence officers."

David Atlee Phillips died of cancer on 7th July, 1988, leaving behind an unpublished manuscript, a novel about a CIA officer who lived in Mexico City, in which the character states: "I was one of those officers who handled Lee Harvey Oswald... We gave him the mission of killing Fidel Castro in Cuba... I don't know why he killed Kennedy. But I do know he used precisely the plan we had devised against Castro. Thus the CIA did not anticipate the president's assassination, but it was responsible for it. I share that guilt."

When asked about the assassination of President Kennedy, Carl Jenkins showed no remorse, but said he didn’t know who killed Kennedy, and was out of the country at the time.

That reminded me of what Gene Wheaton told Matt Ehling in one of their interviews. Wheaton explained that while an Air Force investigator he was approached and an attempt was made to recruit into a military outfit that was specially trained for “wet operations” – assassination. The procedure they used to protect the assassins was called “Diogenes.”

Larry Hancock, in his detailed analysis of the backgrounds of the names Wheaton provided, asks the question of whether we can place any of them in Dallas at the time of the assassination, and the answer is “no,” and I believe the answer is Diogenes.

Taking its name from Diogenes, a fourth century B.C. Greek philosopher and Cynic who made poverty a virtue, and when asked what he was doing replied: “I am just looking for an honest man,” but found nothing but rascals and scoundrels. In one of Matt Ehling’s interviews with Wheaton he does touch on some interesting things – including the Zeta-Diogenes Program.

Wheaton:  “In Italy, in 1962, I was recruited into … I was approached to become part of an assassination network in the intelligence community. I was there (Italy) from ’61-’63 - as an (Air Force) Office of Special Investigations (OSI) agent working out of Aviano Air Base… In ’62, shortly after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and the embarrassment of the intelligence community, they … CIA covert operators in conjunction with some people in the Pentagon wanted to set up a secret cell – a worldwide cell of intelligence agents that would be called on for torture, interrogations, and assassinations, if necessary….A man came out from Washington, talked to me, and described it as - in the Air Force it was called the Zeta-Diogenes Program, the ‘ZD Program’ for short.  And each agent that was indoctrinated, recruited into it would be given this secret identifier on his master military record in Washington DC, and only another ZD controlling officer would recognize it.  Nobody in personnel or anybody else would know that it was there.” 

Wheaton: “They went looking for young, super-patriotic, guys … flag-wavers … with military and police background …, above-average intelligence …who could work on their own.  Who would do anything for their country. I was approached because I fit that mold - conservative, Oklahoma, big family, flag wavers, patriotic. I had been in the Marine Corps before the Air Force, and I’d been a police officer before that. And I fit the mold.  Because of the compartmentalization, and so forth, I never knew anybody else in that program, except I knew that General Joe Cappucci had been…for the Air Force portion of this thing."

[General Joseph J. Cappucci, head of Air Force Counter-Intelligence, and close friend of J. E. Hoover, at a party at the Rome Hilton in 1969, told his assistant Col. William Henry Amos that LBJ had JFK killed. BRIGADIER GENERAL JOSEPH J. CAPPUCCI > U.S. Air Force > Biography Display]

Wheaton: "In ’65, I transferred from the Air Force to the Army … I don’t know if I was recruited in or rejected … They just came out and interviewed me, and told me what it was about, and if they needed me, the idea was that you’d be sent on temporary duty someplace, and then you’d disappear and you’d go where you were really supposed to go. And then come back and your temporary duty would continue.”

While that doesn’t sound too far fetched, it is confirmed by at least one other military man - Sgt. Daniel Brad MacBolan III, who informs us that he too was recruited into Diogenes:

“So basically they built this platform which was built on Zeta Diogenes Clear-Eyes. There are five levels with that. I’m a level five. Able to handle other elements within the five membered cells. Its unacknowledged special access programs deep coordinates cell. We are pretty much I guess you would say the darker part of the CIA’s non official cover-type, where you got CIA agents which have a different name. Nonofficial cover are employed somewhere and that’s their day job. And then you turn a key and they become someone else. And go about doing their spooking so to speak. They’re a spook and some may know it and some may not. Most know it because they have to have special training to make sure they’re, they’re extremely careful not to compromise themselves…Non-official cover are employed somewhere and that’s their day job. And then you turn a key and they become someone else. And go about doing their spooking…..”

In the movie The Shooter, a former expert military sniper played by Levon Helm, says that the guys from the grassy knoll were themselves killed before the day was out, and buried in the desert.

In fact, as we know from Felix Rodriguez book Shadow Warrior and the records of the Pathfinders released under the JFK Act, after the assassination of JFK and the closing down of JMWAVE in 1964, these men went on to work on other on other covert and “wet” operations, including AMWORLD in Central America, and fighting Communists in the Congo, Dominican Republic, Vietnam and Nicaragua.

So far I have posted this Confirming Wheaton and Jenkins blog, excerpts of mainstream books that mention Carl Jenkins, along with Felix Rodriguez’s key references to Rafael Chi Chi Quintero in his book Shadow Warrior, and a transcript of the 2021 CAPA presentation on Wheaton, with excerpts of Matt Ehling and William Matson Law’s interviews with Wheaton and Lee Shephard’s report on his meeting with Carl Jenkins.

But we are not done with this yet, as we are still pursuing a number of important leads. Wheaton had a grandson in California we are tying to locate, as well as the autopsy report of Wheaton’s death for Dr. Wecht to evaluate. We have also located Sen. Hugh Scott’s papers and will go through them to see if there are any documentary records of the attempts by Wheaton and Scott to obtain immunity from prosecution for Quintero, Jenkins and others who would talk of what they knew of the JFK assassination.

Felix Rodriguez is still alive and we are trying to obtain the two Oral History interviews he did with the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas to review before we question him about these things, as we have made contact with him.

We are also filing a FOIA request for the Smithsonian to see if they have the NPIC documents and the Pathfinder folder that the NPIC secretary said she sent to the Smithsonian under orders from RFK.

I am waiting on William Matson Law to type up his notes on his telephone conversations with Wheaton as well as any out takes of his filmed interview that we don’t have.

After I supplied Jefferson Morley with Carl Jenkins address in Southeast Pennsylvania, Morley, like Shephard, went to visit him and got in the door. Morley reported back to me that Jenkins “didn’t say anything new,” but that Jenkins did say some things that Morley will be including in his next book on Watergate, due out later this year. So we will just have to wait for that.

Lee Shephard also tracked down Jenkins’ second wife, a former high level CIA officer, and had a pleasant conversation with her and the son she had with Jenkins, and we await his report on that.

In the meantime, Jenkins somewhat suddenly left his home in Southeast Pa., which he shared with his third wife, but we have located him at an assisted living facility in Texas, and hope to question him one more time, though he is in his 90s.

Matt Ehling is also preparing a compilation of the six interviews he did with Wheaton, full transcripts of each, as well as all of the documents Wheaton faxed him over the years, that will be published in a book without commentary, for use by researchers who want to pursue the many leads he has provided on a number of subjects. I am fixated on the JFK Assassination however, and will pursue that angle.

I will be leaving this subject alone for awhile as we quietly pursue these leads and will be writing and posting on other related topics, including a review of Dr. Wecht’s new book - “The JFK Assassination Dissected,” as well as a summary of significant records released under the JFK Act, and a review of where we’ve been, what we know, and where we have to go from here.

Thanks for paying attention, as I think this is an important lead. Possibly the most important I have tried to run down.

Send comments, corrections and critiques to Billkelly3@gmail.com

Felix Rodrigues on Rafael Chi Chi Quintero

 RAFAEL “Chi Chi” QUINTERO

Felix Rodriguez – Shadow Warrior (Simon & Schuster, 1989)

(p. 100)

…The problems Shackley, Clines, and the other CIA officers based in Miami would face were considerable. The MRR leader Francisco was dead, executed by Castro on April 17. His replacements, handpicked by the Americans, were Manuel Guillot Castellanos and Rafael Quintero. Their task was to infiltrate and rebuild the shattered MRR organization inside Cuba.

But it would not be easy….there was resentment towards Guillot and Quintero from many MRR resistance fighters still active. Those resistance fighters operating inside Cuba felt that those who stayed there, not a pair who fled after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, should set the priorities. Still, Guillot and Quintero had Agency money and resources behind them – and the CIA operation based in Miami, code named JMWAVE, was huge. ….

Indeed, within two weeks of my return from Venezuela I was on my way back to Cuba. My job ws to reactivate an infiltration route, which would later serve to move Guillot and Quintero into Cuba…..

Like me, Jose Basulto became an infiltration-team member. And because he was a radio operator, he got to spend a few weeks at the CIA’s “farm” at Fort Peary, Virginia. The Cubans nicknamed it “The Icebox,” because they went there in the winter (many saw snow for the first time courtesy of the CIA.}

Basulto was one of five men sent to the city of Santiago de Cuba in Oriente province before the invasion. He was an architecture student, and, unlike me, he didn’t go in surreptitiously by boat. Instead, he posed as a student from Boston College coming home on vacation, and he flew straight into Havana airport. Later, when things fell apart, Basulto managed to jump the fence at the Guantanamo U.S. Naval Base, and was flown back to Miami immediately. The other members of his team weren’t so lucky – all were killed or captured…..

I was happy to be working with the Agency in 1962. Basulto was not. He felt – and still feels – that the CIA was more interested in promoting the U.S. national interests than it was in seeing a free and democratic Cuba. Basulto has always felt that the Agency’s dealings with Cubans reflected a dangerous mixture of cynicism and naivete…..

So Basulto quit working with the CIA and decided to strike out on his own. Like many Cubans in Miami, he was outraged by what he perceived as the Kennedy administration’s public softness on Fidel. During the first halfl of 1962, Kennedy’s tone on Cuba was indeed much less strident than it had been prior to the Bay of Pigs. The Agency was pushing fewer paramilitary operations and more straight intelligence gathering.

In March, for example, they tasked Rafael Quintero, to find out the number of checkpoints between Moron and Havana; to evaluate the efficiency of neighborhood defense committees; to report on any changes in documents and identity cards; and to look closely at military operations in the Keys. He was asked to “give us the general psychological situation of the people in respect to the communist government,” and was also queried about Castro’s success in indoctrinating the Cuban people…..

Another, less publicized vow was made by President Kennedy….It gave 2506 Brigade officers the opportunity to become commissioned as regular U.S. Army officers, even though we were not citizens…..So I accepted the President Kennedy’s offer, was commissioned as a second lieutenant, and in March, 1963 I reported for my basic training at the infantry school in Fort Benning, Georgia.

But even before the basic course was completed, I had a visit from Manuel Artime and Rafael “Chi Chi” Quintero, which changed the direction of my life once again.

“We’re going to overthrow Castro – this time we’re really going to do it,” they said, explaining that the President of the United States himself was sponsoring a liberation movement. Even better, this force would be entirely Cuban-run and Cuban-led. ….

[BK Notes - This would be Operation AMWORLD, that Carl Jenkins was affiliated with as well.]

The operation would be run out of Central America, utilizing hit-and-run tactics against Castro, stinging him like a boxer with repeated jabs until he becomes weak and could mount a major military attack.

They guaranteed the U.S. Government was behind the plan; that it was sponsored by Robert Kennedy and the President himself. They asked me to become a high-ranking officers in the endeavor, heading up the communications division. The only hitch was that I’d have to resign my army commission. The operation was to be covert…..

Still, I’d know them both for awhile. I’d met Chi Chi Quintero in 1956. There were three good-looking sisters from Camaguey who were spending the summer in Veradero Beach that year.  I dated the eldest, Chi Chi the youngest, and his brother dated the middle sister….

After Francisco’s death, Chi  was one of the resistance leaders I infiltrated back inside Cuba – there is a picture taken of us together on one of those missions.

Now he was Artime’s deputy. Manuel Artime was one of those charismatic people you get to meet only once or twice in a lifetime. I’d known him since 1960, when he was political leader of MRR….

Artime was in his early thirties, with dark wavy hair and a husky voice that served him well as a public speaker. He was one of those people who, if he showed up at your home, would give your mother a kiss and within five minutes she’d be cooking his favorite dish for him.

“What assurance do you have it’s a U.S. operation?” I asked Artime.

“What assurance do you need?” he answered.

I thought for a minute. “All right,” I said. “You say you want to give me special communications training. Give it to me here, in U.S. Army uniform.”

“If that’s what you want, OK.”

A short time afterward, two civilians who said their names were Mr. Moose and Mr. Flannigan showed up at Fort Benning to give me and two others communications training, on the base and in uniform. That convinced me that Artime was planning a bona fide U.S. Government-sponsored operation, and I took steps to resign my commission. …

The fact of the matter was that the fight for Cuba was and remains the central focus of my life. Such is the case for many of my generation.

The summer of 1963, for example, marked the end of an era for many Americans – although they didn’t realize it at the time….The summer of 1963 was the last of America’s innocent summers, the summer before JFK was assassinated in Dallas; the last summer before the name Vietnam insinuated itself into our national consciousness. 

For us, veterans of Castro’s prisons, fighters since our teens (I was only still twenty-two that summer), virtually none of these things mattered or existed. We lived outside the mainstream of American culture – societal orphans, whose one goal was Castro’s overthrow and the reestablishment of a democratic republic on our homeland.

For me, the summer of 1963 was infantry training at Fort Benning, followed by Mr. Moose and Mr. Flannigan’s tutorials in the fine arts of clandestine communications. ….

…. I made my plans, and just around the time President Kennedy was assassinated, I left for Central America.

I spent almost two years in Nicaragua, running the communications network for Artime. The scope of the operation was considerable – more than three hundred people in all, based in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Miami. Our three main bases were in Nicaragua, the operations headquarters, my communications base, and the commando’s base. Artime was in Miami, and our arms cache was in Costa Rica. The funding for the project came from the CIA, but the money’s origin was hidden through the use of a cover corporation, a company called Maritima BAM, which Artime’s initials are spelled backwards. Periodically, deposits would be made in Maritime BAM’s accounts, and disbursed by Cuban corporation officers. The U.S. Government had the deniability it wanted; we got the money we needed.

The funds were spent well. We had two mother ships, each 250 feet long; two 50-foot aluminum-frame Swift boats for our commando forces, plus assorted smaller craft for silent landings and special operations. There was one C-47 aircraft plus a couple of Cessnas and smaller Beaver aircraft that were capable of water landings. Our weapons came from Germany on a huge barge that we hid up a Costa Rican river. There were more than 200 tons of arms – all American-made – including a pair of 20mm anti-aircraft cannons in case Castro decided to stage an air raid on the communications headquarters, which was under my command. In all the operation ended up costing the Americans somewhere in the area of $6 million over two and a half years.

We staged fourteen missions in that time, of which four achieved their objectives. While the success rate was low, it was not. The first year and a half was spent getting the project organized. We were running an entirely self-sufficient operation, put together from scratch. In fact, what we did in Nicaragua twenty-five years ago has some pretty close parallels to the Contra operation today……

For example, patience is an essential requirement. Resistance operations take time and do not become successful overnight. Each element must be built slowly to insure success. My area of responsibility was communications. I held the rank of major and commanded ninety men. The problems we faced were not insurmountable, but they required time to solve. I had to come up with methods that allowed us to communicate securely with infiltration teams and commando units many miles from their home base. I had to rig communications systems between each of our bases and our political headquarters in Miami. and mobile systems for our boats. These are tremendously complicated procedures because radio frequencies vary greatly according to the time of day, atmospheric conditions, and weather, as anybody who is a ham radio operator knows.

I had to train operators to work with high-frequency radios, telegraphy devices, encoders, decoders, one-time cipher pads and the like – the whole tradecraft of communications – and have them ready to go operational within a few months. I had to design and oversee the construction of our communication sheds….

The most vital thing I had to do was create a signal plan for the operation, something that took me weeks to complete. The signal plan is the centerpiece of all secure communications operations. It tells you what frequencies to use and when to use them; what call signs to use and when to use them. WE, for example, transmitted and received on two frequencies to make enemy interception more difficult. The signal plan also tells you in what sequence the frequencies are used, when they change – and how often. In addition, it determines what ciphers will be employed. We use an Agency five-letter cipher code that is even today almost impossible to break because it is based on random groupings of letters, each of which is used only once.

This was just my own area of responsibility; there was much more involved in the total operational scheme. Boat captains and crews had to be hired and trained. Commando units had to learn to work together as teams. Intelligence networks had to be set up and intelligence gathered, evaluated and passed on. Up-to-date documents, everything from identity cards and drivers licenses to the sorts of detritus normally found in an old coat and trouser pockets, had to be designed and fabricated. Forward operational bases had to be scoped out and our long supply lines designed. 

Each of these elements takes time. Each takes planning. And once they are complete,.... it takes sustained effort to equip and train a sharp fighting force, no matter how good its motivation may be (and ours was very, very high)…..

[BK Notes- See Carl Jenkins reports on this operation: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=18131#relPageId=6&search=carl_jenkins ]

 (After shooting up a ship they thought was the Cuban Granma)….We subsequently discovered that the ship was carrying a boiler for a Cuban sugarcane facility as well as some Christmas foodstuffs. We felt terrible. Soon after the incident, our operations were rolled up. Our fast boats were taken by the Agency and sent to Africa, where they saw service in the Congo. Some of the people who served with me in Nicaragua volunteered to fight in Africa too….

[BK- End of AMWORLD]

(Years later)….I watched, for example, as my friend Tom Clines and my fellow infiltrator Rafael Chi Chi Quintero became more and more allied with Edwin Wilson, who had become a renegade CIA agent.

By late 1979, while I didn’t know the whole picture – like the fact that Wilson had sol Quaddafi tons of C-4 plastic explosives, which would be used against Americans and other Western nations by radical and communist guerilla movements…..

I decided not to have anything more to do with Wilson or any of his associates, and cooled my friendships with Cline and Chi Chi Quintero. …..

Late in July. Rafael Quintero told me that Secord and North were going to close everything down – no further money was available for salaries, fuel, housing, or other expenses, he said. I now what was happening. Secord and Company didn’t want to spend another dime until they sold the whole operation to the CIA, or whoever was going to take over the resupply duties for the U.S. Government. Meanwhile the Nicaraguan Freedom Fighters were getting screwed. I talked with the pilots and crews, who all volunteered to keep going without getting paid…For the moment we didn’t need Secord’s people. ….

[BK Notes: Not long after that Eugene Hasenfas’ supply plane was shot down by Sandinistas and he was captured with business cards for both Felix Rodriguez and Rafael Chi Chi Quintero, and the whole Iran-Contra

 affair became public and a major media story.  

Carl Jenkins at the Bay of Pigs

 CARL JENKINS AT THE BAY OF PIGS

"In September, 1963 Jenkins wrote a general memo describing Artime's operational philosophy and concepts. This summarized his views about commando teams, infiltration teams, and guerrilla actions. The memo addresses military operations as Artime conceives them to be organized and conducted under a single organization (AM/WORLD) in which the Cubans can have faith. In a section on Commandos, there is discussion of the use of abductions and assassinations targeted against Cuban G-2 intelligence informants, agents, officers, and foreign Communists to raise the morale of people inside Cuba.'"

[Jenkins AMWORLD Memo-  RIF104-10308-10080.pdf - billkelly3@gmail.com - Gmail]

"In December, 1964, Jenkins prepared a summary report of Quintero's visit to Europe for a dialogue with Rolando Cubela [AMLASH] in preparation for further meetings with Artime. The goal of this meeting was to develop contacts with a group inside Cuba which was capable of "eliminating Fidel Castro and of seizing and holding Havana, at least for an appreciable time that would be sufficient to justify recognition."'

"There seems to be no doubt that Jenkins was indeed involved in a very special project in 1963-64 just as the CV Wheaton provided to the ARRB indicates. It should be noted that these AM/ WORLD activities were completely segmented from JM/WAVE and communications from Jenkins and Hecksher were not run through JM/WAVE. In fact the AM/ WORLD group operated its own facility in Miami (cryptonym 'LORK')..."

"There seems some reason to at least speculate that both Quintero (who became second in command to Artime) and Rodriguez (who also joined Artime's offshore autonomous effort in 1963) may have been associated with CIA paramilitary officer Carl Jenkins before the Bay of Pigs. It also seems possible that Rodriguez may have been involved with the assassination project described in the NPIC memo and that the project was overseen by Carl Jenkins - this being the operation described by the NPIC personnel."

[ NPIC Memo on Jenkins - https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=104139&relPageId=14 ]

"It appears that Carl Jenkins' paramilitary activities in support of Cuban operations were exactly as described to Gene Wheaton and exactly as summarized in the Jenkins CV submitted to the ARRB. There is also no doubt that Jenkins was very closely associated with Quintero in this period, as described by Wheaton. There are two books in print that also confirm these descriptions of Jenkins."

"In The Death Merchant: The Rise and Fall of Edwin P. Wilson, author Joseph Goulden presents information from the CIA officer whom Quintero went to when he became suspicious of an assassination assignment being promoted to Quintero and other exiles by Ed Wilson. The officer (given the pseudonym "Brad Rockford") talks about entering the CIA on detached duty from the Marines, being career paramilitary, and running CIA paramilitaries out of JM/WAVE. It seems clear that Rockford was in fact Carl Jenkins."

[BK Notes: Now we know Joe Goulden from his work as Philadelphia Inquirer Washington correspondent covering the assassination of President Kennedy, egging on Asst. Dallas DA William Alexander to indict Oswald as being part of a communist conspiracy, as detailed in Vincent Bugliosi's Reclaiming History, and with Hugh Aynesworth and Lonne Hudkins, making up the false story that Oswald was an FBI informant. Goulden was also a media asset of David Atlee Phillips and is currently responsible for Phillips papers.]

"In his book Manhunt: The Incredible Pursuit of a CIA Agent Turned Terrorist, Peter Maas mentions Carl Jenkins by name as the case officer for Quintero prior to the Bay of Pigs. Quintero was part of an advance team sent in before the invasion by Jenkins. After the landing failed, he hid out in Cuba for six weeks before making his way back to Florida. Afterwards Clines would assume a case officer role for Quintero, who would go on make to a number of sabotage and assassination missions into Cuba."

"It seems worth pointing out that Jenkins' name has never been mentioned in any of the numerous works on the Bay of Pigs, the Miami station, or the secret war against Castro. Prior to this investigation of Wheaton's ARRB communications, Carl Jenkins had a far lower profile than even David Morales."

"Interestingly, Gene Wheaton recommended that William Law read these books in a 2005 interview. Wheaton suggested that they would describe the individuals he had been associating with or had source information on……" 

[BK Notes: I believe the above was written by Larry Hancock, but as far as I can tell it is 100% accurate, other than Jenkins name "has never been mentioned in any of the numerous works on the Bay of Pigs," as demonstrated below.]

From Peter Wyden: Bay of Pigs - The Untold Story (Simon & Schuster, 1979)

It has been reported above that Carl Jenkins is not mentioned in any of the published text on the Bay of Pigs, but in fact, he is mentioned in Peter Wyden’s Bay of Pigs- The Untold Story, if only by his first name, but there is no doubt that it is a reference to Carl Jenkins.

(p. 35) Assembling the Cuban Exile Fighters

Jose Basulto was assigned identification number 2522in the Cuban force. It made him proud and very happy. The CIA wanted Castro’s intelligence to think that the force was much larger than it was, so the numbers began with 2500. Even years afterward, the men with low numbers were the elite among patriots; the lower your number, the more honored was your badge of courage.

Basulto was impatient for important action. A devout Catholic, he had left Boston College to return to his native Havana so he could join the Federation Catholica, the Catholic underground organization. He found only great confusion in the underground and no action. Basulto wanted to be part of something big. He was twenty, wavy-haired, handsome, with a sense of humor that appreciated the ridiculous. He had style, even something of a swagger. He knew that his brains made him special, and he liked being special.

Now it was May 21, and a power boat with a crew of American civilians was taking him from Fort Myers, Florida, to tiny Useppa Island, a resort off the southwest coast. He was one of twenty men who were going to be trained as radio operators to be infiltrated into Cuba. He did not trust the other men, because some were known Batista supporters…..Besides they were going to be infiltrators, a dangerous and important mission. If caught, they would be shot as spies. And if infiltrators were special, the radio men were particularly special. They carried code books, and, unlike the ordinary infiltrators, they were not considered expendable. They were the lifeline between the resistance and the Americans. Basulto loved the role.

Nobody mentioned the CIA. The deserted island, where Jose and the other infiltrators were comfortably settled into a rustic golf club, was supposed to have been leased by a “wealthy” Cuban from Miami, Freddie Gordie….

“Carl,” who was in charge, had a military bearing and walked with a limp. He was a retired Marine and knew all about guerrilla warfare.

“Max,” the psychiatrist, gave Basulto a live detector test,….

The radio training was run by a businesslike American instructors. Baulto was initiated into the intricacies of cryptography and worked with two types of radios. They were more complicated and lower powered than modern units and supposedly more difficult to detect. The Cuban operators were told that when they went into action, each man’s call sings would be unique and would be changed every hour. Jose’s training would continue for more than nine months. It wasn’t something exciting, but it was clearly leading to something important….

….Shortly after midnight on July 21 a cable went to Havana: “Possible removal of top three leaders is receiving serious consideration at HQs.” …..

(p. 75) Infiltrators Move In

On February 5, the young ex-collegian Jose Basulito and fourteen other infiltrators who had completed special training in Panama were assembled for a “mission briefing.”

The instructions were disappointingly vague. The men were told they would be spirited into Cuba to gather intelligence and train saboteurs.

Their personal instructions were even less specific. One of Basulito’s friends was simply ordered to “raise hell in Havana.” Jose was to proceed to Oriente province. He gathered that “they wanted to have an agent in Oriente.” As his base he picked the main city, Santiago de Cuba, where he had friends and relatives.

The security precautions were formidable. Escorted by “Carl,” the men were flown by chartered DC-3 to Virginia. They landed in what appeared to be a Navy base and were issued civilian clothes with all the labels removed. A twin-engine Aero Commander took them to Baltimore, where Basulto met his case officer “Tom,” in a downtown hotel. Together the two men flew to Boston on a commercial flight. The idea was to build a cover story for Jose: he was to be able to document that he was kicked out of Boston College. Tom visited school officials, who said they would cooperate, and then instructed Jose to fly to New Orleans, where he had relatives. The Mardi Gras was on, and Jose had a marvelous time.

Eventually he flew to Miami and boarded a Cubana Airlines flight to Havana. His story was that he was going home to continue his studies because he was fed up with American priests in Boston. Nobody even questioned him.

Maybe “Carl” had been too pessimistic after all. Jose kept thinking about how the CIA operative had shanken his head gloomily in Baltimore and said, “If this goddamned operation comes off, it’ll be a goddamned miracle.” So far, though, the CIA had been meticulous and clever. If Jose had been picked up and tourtured, he could of revealed little of value to the enemy. ….