PLANS NOT PLOTS

PLANS NOT PLOTS

Most conspiracy theorist and counter-conspiracy debunkers attempt to describe conspiracy at Dealey Plaza as a plot, similar to what was portrayed in the movies “Executive Action” and “JFK” – where the conspirators sit around smoking and drinking and discussing how they are going to wack JFK.

Well it didn’t go down that way.

The CIA doesn't plot assassinations, it plans them. And like the military, they have contingency plans for everything. 

Rather it was a detailed and distinctive plan, practiced, expertly conducted and mostly successful.

Actually it was two plans, one strategic – the Valkyrie plan, the other tactical – the Pathfinder plan, that were originally aimed at killing Fidel Castro, and redirected to JFK in Dallas.

We know about the Valkyrie plan from Desmond FitzGerald’s September 1963 briefing of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the CIA’s covert operations against Cuba that required military support. FitzGerald told them that the CIA was making a “detailed study” of the July 20, 1944 German military plan to kill Hitler – co-named Valkyrie, in order to use it against Castro.

FitzGerald told the Joint Chiefs, then chaired by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Curtis LeMay because Maxwell Taylor was in Vietnam on a special mission for the president, that while they had identified a number of disenchanted Cuban military officers who didn’t like Castro’s communist leanings, they were not confident enough to talk among themselves.

That was not a problem with the US military, as the Joint Chiefs of Staff, other than Maxwell Taylor, were united in their distaste and downright hatred of the president for both the betrayal of the Cubans at the Bay of Pigs and the failure to use force to remove the Soviet missiles from Cuba, as well as the Nuclear Test Ban treaty.

In answer to a FOIA request by the Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC), the CIA said it has no record of the “detailed study” of the July 20, 1944 German military plan to kill Hitler, and among all of its files, could only find one reference to it in a Cold War era propaganda pamphlet that blamed the failure of the operation on Communists.

Well we now know that the Valkyrie plan led to the use of Dr. Rolando Cubela (AMLASH), who recently died, and it now appears that he was acting as a double-agent and reporting what the CIA was doing to Castro.

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

This opinion was shared by former military investigator Gene Wheaton, who operated a CIA propriety airline and lived in Washington DC with Carl Jenkins, a Bay of Pigs trainer and leader of the Pathfinders at both the Bay of Pigs and JMWAVE.

If that is the case, then we can eliminate most of the 600 or so documented cases of failed plots to kill Castro  by poison, exploding cigars and seashells, tainted diving suits, etc., and focus only on those that were to shoot him in the head with high powered rifles as he rode by in an open jeep, and Pathfinder fits that bill to a tee.

The Pathfinders were the most elite of the Bay of Pigs Cubans who were specially trained and sent in to Cuba weeks before the invasion to set the groundwork. Some were killed, others captured, and a few, like Felix Rodriguez and Chi Chi Quintero, managed to escape and make their way back to the JMWAVE base in Florida. There they were again led by Carl Jenkins, and infiltrated into Cuba on special missions, one of which was to execute the Pathfinder plan to kill Castro.

As far as I can tell there were three Pathfinder teams, each with its own boat, trainer, training area and private supporter in addition to the CIA payroll. The three millionaire private patrons and supporters were Clare Booth Luce, William Pawley and Mafia hoodlum John Rosselli, who actually worked at JMWAVE under the cover of a CIA Army Colonel Rawlston.

Rosselli’s crew were trained as snipers at Point Mary, near Key Largo, by US Army Ranger Edward Roderick and CIA trainer John “I.F.” Harper.

Since the Pathfinders were the most elite of the anti-Castro Cuban commandos trained at JMWAVE, they were given the Pathfinder plan, and practiced it over and over.

Only one CIA document that mentions the Pathfinder plan managed to make it through to the public via the JFK Act, and that was mistakenly or intentionally placed, or misplaced in the middle of the CIA Security File on Frank Sturgis, who had nothing to do with the Pathfinder Plan and didn’t work for the CIA but rather Air Force Intelligence.

This National Photo Interpretation Center (NPIC) document from 1975 was sparked by the Church Committee’s investigation that included CIA plots to kill Castro. Eight NPIC technicians came forward to tell their boss – Dino Brugioni, that they were aware of a plan to kill Castro – the Pathfinder plan, because they had worked on it and the folder was kept in the NPIC section of JMWAVE instead of the Operational File where it belonged.

The NPIC technicians said the Pathfinder plan was to shoot Castro with high powered rifles as he rode by in an open jeep on his way to Xandau, the DuPont’s exclusive and confiscated estate in the resort town of Veradero on the north shore east of Havana, where Castro was known to frequent.

The Pathfinder plan, the NPIC employees reported, was led by Carl Jenkins, but was never implemented because it was “disapproved by higher authority,” with the higher authority being JFK, RFK and the National Security Council, that had to approve all CIA covert operations. But that didn’t stop the Pathfinders, or their leaders, who sent them in to carry out the plan anyway, as Felix Rodriguez described in his book “Shadow Warrior.”

“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….”

It just so happens that Dr. Rolando Cubella (AMLASH) apparently had an apartment overlookig the only road that led to Veradero that was going to be used as a staging area for the attack on Castro that never came.

As John Rosselli told Congress in executive session, and then Jack Anderson afterwards, his team of Cuban commando were sent in three times, but recalled each time, though one time they were captured, and Rosselli believes they were sent back to kill JFK.

When the AARC asked the CIA for the Pathfinder records, they were told there was nothing on Pathfinder in the CIA files, but we pretty much know what became of them. As the NPIC employees said, the Pathfinder folder was kept in their section of the JMWAVE station and not in the Operational File where it belonged, Then we know that the Dino Brugioni’s report on the NPIC description of Pathfinder was mistakenly placed in the middle of Frank Sturgis’ CIA Security File. Then a NPIC secretary was tracked down by the Assassinations Records Review Board  (ARRB).

She told them that the Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy told her to pack the NPIC assassination records in boxes and have them delivered to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. The ARRB staff questioned her on that, - didn’t she mean the National Archives? No she said, she was positive it was the Smithsonian because she called them to make the arrangements for them to be delivered.

When I asked the National Archives JFK Collection official if the ARRB followed up on that information and checked with the Smithsonian to see if they had the NPIC records, they simply responded, no.

The bottom line is that we shouldn’t be considering silly plots to kill the president, but instead looking closely at the Standard Operating Procedures of the day – detailed contingency plans that were developed to kill Castro, frequently practiced and expertly and successfully  implimented at DealeyPlaza, specifically the Valkyrie strategic plan and the tactical Pathfinder plan.