Wednesday, January 19, 2022

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

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