According to (William) Harvey

                                                       William Harvey and RFK 

William Harvey had served in Berlin and was credited with developing the Berlin Tunnel project before returning to America to CIA HQ and taking over the Cuban desk that he renamed Task Force W, that was responsible for JMWAVE, the largest CIA base in the world at the University of Miami, Florida. While living in DC Harvey was one of the first to suspect Kim Philby as a Soviet-MI6 double-agent, especially after he got into a fist fight with Philby's pal Guy Burgess at a private party when Burgess drew an unflattering drawing of Harvey's wife. (To fully understand the vivid hatred Harvey had for the Kennedys see the Youtube interview with Mrs. Harvey.)

Harvey was also assigned to head ZR/RIFLE, an assassination program, and when President Kennedy asked to meet "America's James Bond," ie licensed to kill, he was presented with Harvey, who checked his pistols with the Secret Service at the door to the Oval Office. The portly pear shaped Harvey looked nothing like the tall, thin and handsome 007 James Bond. 

According to Harvey’s official biography “Flawed Patriot – The Rise and Fall of CIA Legend Bill Harvey” by Bayard Stockton (Potomac Books, Washington D.C., 2006, p. 125):

[NOTE: It should be pointed out that “Flawed Patriot” was vetted and approved by CIA, and the author, former CIA officer Bayard Stockton died before the book was published. ]

“By early Spring 1962 Task Force W’s headquarters staff was in place. Bill’s throne room during the fraught Cuban days was, of course, in the Langley basement, but his empire was in Miami, masquerading as Zenith Technical Enterprises on two thousand acres of CIA-leased property (on the University of Miami south campus).”

Stockton wrote: “…The stories about JMWAVE are legion. Among them is the tale of a visit by Robert Kennedy to JMWAVE – an incursion that in it self must have put Harvey into something south of a slow burn because CIA operating premises were off-limits to non-Agency personnel, regardless of rank or stature. As Kennedy roamed the building, he heard a telex machine chattering away. He ambled over to it, ripped the message out, and began to read it. Incensed beyond courtesy, Harvey, in turn, ripped the copy from the attorney general’s hands and thundered words to the effect that Kennedy was not cleared to read classified Agency correspondence. Both smoldered. The incident naturally became legendary and was symptomatic of relations between the two men.”

Ted Shackley told Stockton that, “(Harvey) came down to Miami ever four to six weeks, mostly to see Johnny Rosselli….”

As Stockton writes it, “Another popular JMWAVE story is the U-Haul truck deal. Writers like this one because, to them, it proves that the CIA and Harvey provided arsenals to the Mafia. The only known witness/participant to the event is Shackley.”

Shackley: “Bill came down with a list…four or five pages….of equipment he wanted. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary in that. We turned the list over to the JMWAVE warehouse manager, who loaded the stuff into watertight containers. All very standard procedure. I rented a truck through three or four cutouts and drove it into the JMWAVE compound. The stuff was manifested in and out. I drove the truck out of the compound and turned it over. Bill and I followed it to a parking lot in South Miami. The driver of the truck took a hike and caught a cab. Bill and I waited; maybe up to an hour….It was no different from any other odd request for equipment.”

According to Rosselli however, while Harvey approved of and made arrangements for the U-Haul truck load of arms, he recalls O’Connell as being with him on the hour long stakeout of a vacant lot behind a Cuban restaurant in Miami, and watched as Cuban #3 picked up the truck they watched as it was driven away. In his 1975 Church Committee testimony, Rosselli said Cuban #3, who he refused to name, often made runs to Cuba in his powerboat, sometimes depositing teams of commandos and assassins. The U-Haul arms cache, inventoried in a detailed manifest, included high powered rifles with scopes and ammo that Shackley says were packed by the JMWAVE warehouse man in waterproof containers so they could be easily and safely shipped to Cuba.

“During…. the climax of the Cuban Missile Crisis, it looked as if the United States was going to war,” writes Stockton, who quotes Shackley as saying: “American military teams were ready to be infiltrated ….pathfinders and people like that. I was to be in a plane with the airborne commander. The presumption was that the American military would pacify Cuba, and then J-2 – military government would take over. I guess I would probably have been Havana station chief…Then Bobby heard there was a commando team on the water, which he had not authorized, and he called them back.”

“American military teams were ready to be infiltrated….pathfinders and people like that…”

An official CIA Public Affairs officer, in response to a media request as to whether or not Bradley Ayers “was ever a CIA agent,” wrote: “According to our records, he was never an Agency employee. As an Army officer, Mr. Ayers was detailed to work with the CIA from May of 1963 to December 1964. Because he never was an Agency employee – and, as such, never signed a pre-publication agreement with us – any suggestion that the CIA tried to censor or suppress his writings is incorrect.”

The War That Never Was: An Insider’s Account of the CIA Covert Operations Against Cuba,” (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1976.) 

While the CIA didn’t vet “The War That Never Was,” it was edited by William Harvey himself, the attorney for Bobbs-Merrell, of Indianapolis, Indiana, primarily a school book publisher who reportedly maintained an office at the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas.

After I read Ayers’ book in the early 1970s, I immediately recognized its significance in regards to the assassination of President Kennedy, and later got know Brad Ayers through numerous long distance telephone conversations. I also got a copy of his second book on the subject, “The Zenith Secret – A CIA Insider Exposes The Secret War Against Castro And the Plot That Killed The Kennedy Brothers,” (Vox Pop, NY, May 2006), a very obscure publisher that was run out of Bronx storefront.

In a motel room drinking Scotch, Ayers recalled that, “Rod described an interesting new guy, Colonel Rosselli from Washington with whom he was working in operations.”

Ayers says that Roderick “had been drinking before he got to the house that night…confided, he and the recently arrived Colonel Rosselli were working on plans to ambush Fidel Castro, and they had been on a weekend binge together. They’d become close friends as they spent time together; their drinking friendship was a natural extension of their on-duty relationship.”

“While we ate I discussed my training activities,” Ayers continued, “Rod began to tell me about the new things that were ‘in the air’ at the station….It seemed the administration was ready to begin making an even more concerted effort to unseat Castro…The Special Group had already removed a number of targets from the restricted list, and there were more to go. It was up to the CIA, specifically the Miami station, to plan the new missions, recruit and train exiles, and mount operations to strike the Communist dictator where it really hurt. Other espionage activities were being carried out to coincide with this paramilitary effort, and still more attempts to eliminate Castro were being developed.”

“Then he dropped it,” Ayers says. “He told me Rosselli had high level Mafia and Havana connections. I was speechless. The American government collaborated with organized crime? I couldn’t believe it. I was anxious to meet this guy.”

Harvey was the CIA case officer for John Rosselli, the mob boss under Chicago's Sam Giancana, and Rosselli was known around the JMWAVE base as "Colonel Rawlston," and wore a US Army Colonel's uniform. 

During the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 62, Harvey sent a team of JMWAVE Pathfinder commandos into Cuba, but when RFK found out he had them recalled, and Harvey was fired from his leadership of the Cuban projects and replaced by Desmond FitzGerald. Harvey was sent to be the Chief of Station in Rome, where James J. Angleton had served in the OSS during the War and Clare Booth Luce had been ambassador under Eisenhower. Both Luce and Harvey supported teams of JMWAVE commandos, Luce's team leader being Julio Fernandez and Rosselli's team were snipers trained at Point Mary, off Key West. 

The last official meeting between Harvey and Rosselli was in June 1963 in Miami, when they wined and dined together with Harvey paying their hotel and expenses on the ZR/RIFLE account. 

David Talbot filed an FOIA request and civil suit seeking Harvey's travel records, but I don't know what became of that, but will try to find out. 

Update Note: Well, I didn't have to wait long to get an answer to that question, as Jeff Morley, who must be on the same wavelength as I am, just posted a JFKFacts blog post about William Harvey, linking to Mrs. Harvey's interview video on their opinions of JFK and RFK, as well as the fact that the CIA response to David Talbot's request for Harvey's travel records was to not respond favorably. 

BK 

Billkelly3@gmail.com 

 

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