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.
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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