First Class Sniper(s) at Dealey Plaza

First Class Sniper(s) at Dealey Plaza

One of the basic working hypothesis we have adapted for this analysis is that there was more than one gunman shooting at the President in Dealey Plaza that day, and the shot that hit JFK in the head killing him was not a "lucky shot" taken by the Third Class sniper in the Sixth Floor window of the TSBD but rather, a precision shot taken by a First Class sniper from a different location with a first class weapon. 

This is the case for a number of good reasons – including the fact that almost every ear witness at the scene heard a very distinct difference in the time between the first and second shot and the second and third shots – the last two of which came practically on top of each other – too close to have been fired by the same weapon.

In addition, first class snipers say that the fatal head shot was not fired at a moving target by the third class sniper in the sixth floor window with a third class weapon but was taken by a first class sniper either in front of or behind the target, as it approached or went away from the shooter.

And finally, as former Federal Attorney John Orr demonstrated in his report to the Attorney General, the fatal head shot was taken from a location other than the Sixth Floor of the Texas Book Depository with a different type of weapon, and a different type of bullet - a shot taken by a first class sniper.

Today there are many thousands of well trained and equipped first class snipers, most in the major armies of the world. But in 1963 there were only a few hundred. Someone once suggested that a list of the first class snipers in 1963 be compiled and you could solve the JFK assassination by finding which one was in Dallas that day.

You can't learn to be a first class sniper by reading books. It is a craft - a "craft of intelligence" as Allen Dulles put it, that must be learned from a craftsman who knows how to do it. And shooting accurately is not the most important part of the curriculum - getting into position without being identified, concealment, timing and extracting oneself after the shot is taken. "One shot one kill," is the motto of the first class sniper, and that's all they need. 

In the movie “American Sniper” Chris Kyle chases and eventually kills a terrorist and former Olympic champion shooter.

At Fort Dix, N.J., where they have been training soldiers for over a hundred years, the weapons Range manager for many years was the father of U.S. Olympic champion shooter Matt Emmonds, who missed a second gold medal because of a hick up – and was consoled by a Czech women's gold medal champion who he later married, and whose father is an Olympic team shooting coach.

You can’t be a first class sniper by reading books – it’s a master – apprentice job and you must be trained by a first class sniper, so those who train the first class snipers are a key to finding the Dealey Plaza sniper(s). This analysis focuses on those who were capable of training first class snipers 1960-1963.

The Canadian Sniper School, which served as the basis for US sniper schools, a part of the Canadian Weapons School, is in Frederickton, Canada, and is where many U.S. military sniper trainers are themselves trained by professionals.

In the U.S. military, the Army, Rangers, Navy SEALS and USMC all have first class sniper schools, but in 1963 it was more limited. The primary Army sniper schools are at Forts Benning, Bragg and Knox, while the USMC sniper schools are at Camps Lejeune and Pendleton, with the best sent to the Special Weapons Training Battalion Training Command at Quantico, Virginia, aka “The Farm.”

Another pertinent character in the JFK assassination story - Charles Ford, originally from Atlantic City, attended Princeton, joined the OSS and went on a mission to China with J. Walton Moore - who became the head of the Dallas Domestic Contacts division, while Ford became the head of the CIA Training Division at Quantico. Ford only left the Training Division for a one year tour with the Operations Division to serve at JMWAVE and work closely with the Attorney General RFK. He was also given custody of an early Secret Service copy of the Zapruder film, as the record attests "for training purposes only." John Newman writes about Ford in his books, and he discovered that one of the two transcripts of Ford's Church Committee testimony is missing. 

While there were many improvements in science and technology - the basic foundations of the CIA's training programs were based on the British model, as outlined by OSS Colonel William Donovan in the OSS manuals produced under his direction. 

This same manual was used by the CIA trainers at JMWAVE. 

OSS Manual – Link to – https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP89-01258R000100010010-5.pdf–

/  http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2018/12/oss-operations-group-manual.html?m=1

The best and most renown sniper to come out of Vietnam was Carlos Hathcock, who was sent to Quantico to train snipers and later trained police SWAT team snipers.

Craig Roberts, a USMC trained sniper and 26-year police veteran, is a specialist in sniper and counter-sniper tactics, and the author of the book Kill Zone,  a professional sniper’s perspective of the JFK assassination, which confirms the beliefs of the Army snipers I knew that the head shot that killed JFK was not taken from the Sixth Floor of the Texas School Book Depository but by a First Class Sniper from another location.

According to Craig Roberts (Kill Zone – p. 89-90), “Hathcock is likewise skeptical of Oswald's alleged shooting feat. Hathcock is a former senior instructor at the U. S. Marine Corps Sniper Instruction School at Quantico, Virginia. He has been described as the most famous American military sniper in history. In Vietnam he was credited with 93 confirmed kills,…and history’s single kill-shot of 2,500 meters, recipient of the Silver Star and nominated for the Congressional Medal of Honor.”

Carlos Hathcock 

Roberts asked Hathcock about the marksmanship feat attributed to Oswald by the Warren Commission and Hathcock answered that he did not believe Oswald could have done what the Commission said he did.

According to Roberts, Hathcock said:  "Let me tell you what we did at Quantico. We reconstructed the whole thing: the angle, the range, the moving target, the time limit, the obstacles, everything. I don't know how many times we tried it, but we couldn't duplicate what the Warren Commission said Oswald did".

Though classified a third class sniper with a third class weapon, the sniper in the end window of the Sixth Floor of the Texas School Book Depository was certainly a military man, as Arnold Rowlands saw him. Rowlands was one of those witnesses on the street who saw the man with a rifle standing back from the window next to another man (in a brown sports coat). The man with a rifle, Rowlands said, stood in a "Port Arms" position, with the rifle held diagonally across the chest. Port Arms is a military drill position one does not assume unless ordered to do so. And I believe the Sixth Floor Sniper, whoever he was, was a military man operating under orders who knew he was part of the deception plan that would allow him and the other men in on this operation - including the first class sniper and his spotter - to escape without being identified.   
       
Along with Carlos Hathcock, Robert Rohrer started the first USMC sniper school designed to train sniper instructors - as Rohrer relates: “We essentially ran two classes end-on that summer of 1977,…the first six weeks was designed to make snipers out of our fledgling shooters….while the second six weeks was designed to make them sniper instructors. The snipers were certified to go back to their various Divisions to start Division Scout Sniper Schools, and thus could feed their finest graduates back to our school in Quantico to make Scout Sniper Instructors out of ‘em….”

As Bob Rohrer writes at his blog: “The word had been out that the individuals giving the indoctrination (us) were simply ‘team shooters’ who were ‘pushing’ competitive marksmanship. What they hadn’t figured on was that we were combat veterans with appropriate decorations and awarded for combat skills. The youngsters were more impressed than the Basic School Company Officers had envisioned. Carlos’ skills were well documented, and I had done my time as a combat Rifle Company Commander with lots of time in the dirt. We gave ‘em what  I would have considered to be an impressive lecture from combat experienced veterans.”

“The possibilities of, and the ability to impose our will on the enemy with a minimum amount of exposure seemed to have  made its mark.”

The snipers are trained not only how to shoot - and how to escape - but "the ability to impose our will on the enemy with minimum amount of exposure..." 

“Modern Sniper Classes are now the rule of the day, and even the Basic School instructional staff seemed to be properly impressed, subsequent combat experiences have made our point…”

At the Canadian Sniper School at Frederickton – “We learned a new lexicon of terminology that was added a bit at a time to our slowly expanded Marine Corps sniping influence. We had such terms as ‘Sniper-Hide’ (we had just called ‘em positions), ‘Gillie Suits’ – (we were using plain old camouflage with appropriate twigs – don’t laugh since Carlos ‘offed’ at least 93 of the offending blighters using such archaic methods, good shooting positions, and ‘sans’ the more modern terminology). Gillie Suits had been used by Scottish Game Keepers to fend off poachers, but the name stuck and has since become one of the well recognized terms utilized in modern sniping training….”

Some U.S. Army Reserve soldiers were trained as snipers and in their civilian jobs as policeman were assigned to the special teams that later became known as SWAT teams, some of whom were trained by Hathcock.

Most of the Dallas Special Services unit policeman also served in the U.S Army Reserves, some with the 488^th Army Intelligence unit created and led by Colonel Jack Crichton, of who was originally from Shriveport, Louisiana.

Also from Shriveport, U. S. Marine Captain Carl Jenkins (USMC-R) helped establish the first US Marine Corp Reserve unit in Louisiana, and like U.S. Army Ranger Captains Bradley Ayers and Edward Roderick, was cross posted to the CIA to help train the anti-Castro Cubans. Jenkins helped train the brigade that went ashore at the Bay of Pigs and later fought in what Taylor Branch and George Crile III called “the secret war” against Cuba (1960-1964).

Unlike the USMC and US Army sniper schools, the Cubans were trained by a Joint Task Force that included Marines, Army Rangers and the CIA and was coordinated out of the Task Force W at CIA HQ at Langley, and the Pentagon.

Of all the Cubans assembled in Guatemala to go ashore at the Bay of Pigs, the best were selected and given special training, including Watergate burglar Rolando Martinez and paramilitary commando Felix Rodriguez – who went on to capture and execute Che Guevara.

At some point in the proceedings, Lansdale's plan to train commandos and send them in to engage in guerrilla war was replaced with the full fledged invasion, and Lansdale's man - Napoleon Valeriano was replaced as head of training at the Guatemala training camp. 

In p. IV of the Official CIA History of the Bay of Pigs – it is explained how two basic changes in the plans doomed the invasion - changing the tactics from infiltration of small commando units to engage in guerrilla warfare from the mountains to a full fledged invasion. And the site changed from Trinidad to the Bay of Pigs. 

The CIA's Official History reads: “From April plans for the infiltration into Cuba of small teams of agency trained specialists in communications, sabotage, and paramilitary operations to provide training and guidance to anti-Castro dissidents,….November’s plan called for an amphibious landing.”

Another key change in strategic plans – not relayed to the President – changed the planned landing site from Trinidad to the Bahia de Cochinos – which would become more famous as the Bay of Pigs.

At Trinidad – the infiltrated commandos could easily work their way into the nearby mountains to establish bases of operation – much like Castro himself did – and an airstrip for supplies –

American ornithologist James Bond just happened to be at the Bahia de Conchinos a few months before the Bay of Pigs invasion – and noted the recent construction of roads to the swamp, which made Castro’s counter-attack much easier. 

When these changes – from commando – guerrilla infiltration to full fledged amphibious invasion – both Jake Easterline and Col. Hawkins – attempted to resign and warned the invasion would fail given those changes – but Bissell persuaded them to stay and go down with the Dulles ship. 

Like the U.S. Army Rangers – who take the lead and are known as “Pathfinders,” these Cuban Pathfinders went ashore into Cuba in the days and weeks before the invasion and were to pave the way for the main invasion forces. Some Cuban Pathfinders were captured, some were killed, a few like Rodriguez - the self-described “Shadow Warrior”– escaped and found their way back home.

In the USA they were assigned to the CIA’s Operation Mongoose, run out of the JMWAVE station. 

JMWAVE was what the military calls a FOB - Forward Operating Base. 

From there they ran maritime infiltration and hit and run missions against economic targets in Cuba, as described by Branch and Crile in their landmark August 1975 Harpers article “The Kennedy Vendetta.”

Watergate burglar Martinez was a JMWAVE boat captain who was interviewed by George Crile  and Taylor Branch for their Harpers article. Martinez told them that he made many missions to Cuba, delivering high powered rifles with scopes that weren’t to be used to “kill rabbits.”

Were these “officially sanctioned” Castro assassination teams?

As Martinez put it, it‘s largely a question of semantics: “There was an attempt by this country to overthrow Castro, and it was not to be by elections,” Martinez said. “It was to be by war. The (news) papers now want to say there were plots. Well, I can tell you there were plots. I took a lot of weapons to Cuba. Some of them were very special weapons for special purposes – Springfields with bolt actions, rifles only used by snipers. They were not sent to shoot pigeons or kill rabbits. Everyone in the underground was plotting to kill Castro, and the CIA was helping the underground. I was with the underground, as well as with the CIA, so you could say I was involved in the plots, too, but that is all so obvious.”

“Very special weapons for special purposes – Springfields with bolt actions, rifles only used by snipers. They were not sent to shoot pigeons or kill rabbits.”

These were first class snipers, taught by first class sniper trainers with specially refined weapons only used by snipers.

Of all the plots to kill Castro, one was a plan that stands out – Operation Pathfinder, a contingency plan to kill Castro with a high powered rifle as he rode in an open jeep.

As Felix Rodriguez explains 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….”

The whole operation was well planned. He was selected because they knew he was from that area and knew it well. The plan was complete with a safe-house, secure operational base room from where to shoot Fidel where he frequented at the time, - given a beautiful German bolt action rifle, pre-sighted, custom made padded carrying case. First class plan, first class weapon, first class sniper who was trained by another first class sniper.

They were trained at JMWAVE – or sub-bases under the control of JMWAVE.

At JMWAVE, a series of buildings on the South Campus of the University of Miami, the CIA’s largest Forward Operating Base was commanded by Ted Shackley, with the maritime operations run by Gordon Campbell and the covert operations by David Morales.

JMWAVE came under the nominal control of Task Force W – the CIA’s Cuban desk that was set up in the basement of the CIA’s new headquarters at Langley, Virginia, and run by William Harvey, until after the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, when he was replaced by Desmond FitzGerald. FitzGerald later said that while he assumed control of most of Harvey's operations, he didn't know about them all, and he didn't assume the role of case officer for John Rosselli, a job that Harvey kept. 

The Cuban commandos being trained were handled by case officers and their trainers, and were kept “compartmentalized” and out of the main JMWAVE headquarters, were the “inside men” – Ted Shackley and Gordon Campbell ran things from desks. Even Felix Rodriguez later said that he didn’t know the location of the JMWAVE HQ until years later when he worked as a part time security guard for the university of Miami and saw his case officer and other CIA officials at the HQ.

Besides Carl Jenkins, the anti-Castro Cubans were trained by two U.S. Army Rangers assigned to the CIA by  US Marine General “Brut” Krulak, who had an office just down the hall from the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon. Krulak was responsible for military support of CIA covert operations, especially those being run against Cuba.

U.S. Army Ranger Captains Edward Roderick and Bradley Ayers took their orders from Krulak and were each assigned teams to train in covert operational procedures, small boat maneuvering, infiltration and exfiltration, explosives and sniper tactics.

Ayers taught small craft maneuvering and infiltration and exfiltration at a remote Everglades swamp sub-bases, one called Pirates’ Lair.

Roderick taught another team sniper tactics at a remote base near Point Mary, off Key Largo. With Roderick at Point Mary were USMC Capt. Carl Jenkins, and legendary CIA explosives expert John “I.F.” Harper, along with strategic and financial support from John Rosselli, aka “Colonel Rawlins.”  

We know a lot of what went on there because of Ranger Capt. Bradley Ayers, who wrote two books about his experiences, “The War That Never Was,” and “The Zenith Secret.”

After JFK was killed, the JMWAVE base was deactivated – by Jake Esterline, the guy who engineered the Bay of Pigs, and Ayers was given other assignments. Because Ayers didn’t sign a CIA secrecy agreement he didn’t have to have his manuscripts reviewed and censored by the CIA before being published, as did Victor Marchetti and David Atlee Phillips.

But the only publisher really interested in “The War That Never Was” – Bobbs-Merrell – out of Indiana, included their attorney William Harvey, who edited the manuscript and left out some key characters like maritime operations chief Gordon Campbell.

Harvey, who started Task Force W after being herald as the brains behind the Berlin Tunnel, ordered the Cuban Pathfinder commandos into Cuba during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and was fired for doing so by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. Harvey was the second CIA case officer for mafia boss John Rosselli, who supported one of the Pathfinder commando teams by giving them money and supplies.

Rosselli had William Harvey fill a U-Haul Trailer full of weapons, guns, ammo and explosives and delivered to his Cuban commando team – a cache of weapons that was assembled on the orders of Ted Shackley and invitoried before being given to the Cubans.

Although Harvey was reassigned as CIA COS – Chief of Station in Rome, Italy, where he was at the time of the assassination, he traveled extensively, and in June 1963, met with Rosselli in Florida where they went to dinner and got hotel rooms on Harvey’s CIA credit card – a tab that he chalked off to “ZRRIFLE,” the CIA code for the Castro assassination plots.

After leaving the CIA Harvey returned to his home state of Indiana and worked for Bobbs-Merrell, primarily a school book publishing company that had an office and secretaries at the Texas School Book Depository. Harvey edited Bradley Ayers book “The War That Never Was,” that I recognized when reading it, included important information on the assassination of President Kennedy.

In his book “The Zenith Secret,” not edited by Harvey, Ayers describes how his US Army Ranger counterpart – Capt. Edward Roderick, was assigned to train the commando team supported by Rosselli – aka “Colonel Rawlins.” 

While Ayers trained his team at remote Everglades bases like Pirate’s Lair, Roderick trained Rosselli’s team in sniper techniques and tactics at Point Mary, a remote area near Key Largo. And it is that team that we are interested in learning more about as they are the ones who were trained and practiced to kill Castro as part of the Pathfinder operation – the one that was “disapproved by higher authority” – that is JFK and RFK. 

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

JFKcountercoup: PATHFINDER AT JMWAVE

And it was the Pathfinder operation, I believe, that was redirected to JFK in Dallas, as I hope to conclusively demonstrate.  

If you can, please support JFKCountercoup research: https://www.gofundme.com/supportjfkcountercoup

Rolf Mowatt-Larssen and Jake Esterline

Medium Politics

https://medium.com/s/reasonable-doubt/heres-what-happened-at-valerie-plame-s-spy-convention-cc58aab9435d

Attending a recent conference hosted by former CIA agent Valerie Plame, Nina Burleigh writes:

……On the conference’s closing day, the white-haired Mowatt-Larssen walked us through his theory on who killed JFK. He started out with a key idea — that if the CIA killed Kennedy, the plot would have necessarily involved three people: a mastermind and two others — one to handle Lee Harvey Oswald and one to deal with Jack Ruby, the Dallas nightclub owner who shot and killed Oswald before he could be interrogated.

Then Mowatt-Larssen, using his access to classified CIA files, went looking for officers who would have had a motive, and access.

“It takes an agent to find a mole,” he said. “Who would betray his country? We were looking for a team of rogues.”

After going through the names of ranking officers during the years before the assassination, and then cross-referencing them, he settled on Jacob Esterline, the CIA’s project director on the failed Bay of Pigs assault on Cuba, as the likely mastermind, the man with the best motive, and the probable ringleader. In his role as the CIA’s director of Western Hemisphere, he would have had access to Oswald, as well.

“The rogues must be expert, and they need a motive,” Mowatt-Larssen explained. “To me, JFK is the motive. He pulled the plug on the Bay of Pigs. And he was reckless. He almost got us into a thermonuclear war with the Soviets.”

Esterline went on to serve as chief of the CIA’s Miami office, and as deputy director of the CIA’s Western Hemisphere Division. He died in 1999. 

Of course, there is no shortage of conspiracy theories about the death of JFK, but Mowatt-Larssen currently serves as director of the Belfer Center’s Intelligence Project — at Harvard’s Kennedy School, no less — so his speculation carries some weight.

Belfer Center’s Intelligence Project – Harvard Kennedy School

https://www.belfercenter.org/person/rolf-mowatt-larssen

Biography

Rolf Mowatt-Larssen is a Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center, having served until July 2019 as Director of the Center's Intelligence Project. Prior to that he was also a Senior Fellow.

Before coming to the Belfer Center, Mowatt-Larssen served over three years as the Director of Intelligence and Counterintelligence at the U.S. Department of Energy. Prior to this, he served for 23 years as a CIA intelligence officer in various domestic and international posts, to include Chief of the Europe Division in the Directorate of Operations, Chief of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Department, Counterterrorist Center, and Deputy Associate Director of Central Intelligence for Military Support. Prior to his career in intelligence, Mr. Mowatt-Larssen served as an officer in the U.S. Army. He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy, West Point, NY. He is married to Roswitha and has three children. 

He is a recipient of the CIA Director's Award, the George W. Bush Award for Excellence in Counterterrorism, the Secretary of Energy's Exceptional Service Medal, the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal, Secretary of Defense Civilian Distinguished Service Medal, and the National Intelligence Superior Performance Medal, among others.

Marked for Assassination
PAST EVENT Wed., Dec. 12, 2018 | 12:00pm - 1:00pm

https://www.belfercenter.org/event/marked-assassination-who-killed-jfk-rolf-mowatt-larssen

The United States House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) was established in 1976 to investigate the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. The HSCA completed its investigation in 1978 and issued its final report the following year, concluding that Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.

Taking this key judgment as a starting point of a fresh inquiry into the plot, what are the most likely explanations as to who killed JFK?

How can intelligence operational and analytical modus operandi help unlock a conspiracy that has remained unsolved for 55 years?

Drawing on his 23 years as a CIA clandestine services officer recruiting spies and hunting moles, Rolf uses the same trade craft, training, and thought process to bring unique new answers to the old question: Who killed JFK?

 Jacob “Jake” Esterline – Spartacus

https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKesterline.htm

BK NOTES: Jake Esterline is a character in David Atlee Phillips' fictional "The Carlos Contract," in which the Esterline character is called out of retirement in order to get "Carlos" - the Jackel terrorist. 

Jacob "Jake'' Esterline was born in Lewistown, Pennsylvania, on April 26, 1920. When he was eighteen he enrolled as an accounting student at Temple University in Philadelphia. In 1941 he joined the Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning.

During the Second World War Esterline was recruited into the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Esterline was sent to India in early 1943. Later that year he was infiltrated into Burma. By the end of the war he had became a commander of a guerrilla battalion fighting the Japanese Army in China.

Other important figures working in China during this period include John K. Singlaub, Ray S. Cline, Richard Helms, E. Howard Hunt, Mitchell WerBell, Jake Esterline, Paul Helliwell, Robert Emmett Johnson, Jack Anderson and Lucien Conein. Others working in China at that time included Tommy Corcoran, Whiting Willauer and William Pawley.

After the war Esterline finished his accounting degree. He then worked for a family law firm in Pennsylvania. 

On the outbreak of the Korean War Esterline joined the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He was sent to work at what became known as "The Farm" - a clandestine training school for CIA recruits at Williamsburg, Virginia. Esterline was put in charge of guerrilla warfare training.

PHOTO : Jake Esterline in China during the Second World War.

Esterline went to work for Frank Wisner, head of the Directorate of Plans (DPP) an organization that concentrated on "propaganda, economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world."

In 1954 Esterline was placed in charge of the CIA's Washington task force in the successful overthrow of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz. Esterline also served as CIA station chief in Guatemala, Venezuela and Panama.

Richard Bissell, the new head of the Directorate of Plans, appointed Esterline as Task Force Chief for the Bay of Pigs invasion. He was also involved in the plot to assassinate Fidel Castro. In an interview he gave to Don Bohning of the The Miami Herald just before his death, Esterline admitted that Juan Orta, who functioned as Castro's private secretary, had been recruited to slip a poisoned pill into a drink. However, a few days before the invasion Orta changed his mind and fled to the Venezuelan Embassy.

When Esterline discovered that the assassination plot against Castro had failed he had serious doubts about whether the Bay of Pigs operation would be a success. Esterline and Jack Hawkins, Chief of Paramilitary Staff, were also unhappy about the decision to change the landing site from Trinidad to the Bay of Pigs. On 8th April, Esterline and Hawkins went to see Richard Bissell and told him they wanted to resign. Bissell persuaded them to stay and be "good soldiers".

Assassination of John F. Kennedy Encyclopedia

In February, 2005, Gerry P. Hemming claimed that it was Esterline and not David Atlee Phillips who was Maurice Bishop, the man who met with Antonio Veciana and Lee Harvey Oswald in August, 1963, in the building that housed the office of Haroldson L. Hunt in Dallas.

Esterline also served as chief of the CIA's Miami office (1968-1972) and as deputy chief of the agency's Western Hemisphere division. Esterline retired from the CIA in 1978.

Jacob "Jake'' Esterline died at Hendersonville, North Carolina, in October, 1999.

By John Simkin (john@spartacus-educational.com) © September 1997 (updated August 2014).

Primary Sources

(1) J.S. Earman, CIA Plots to Kill Castro (27th May 1967)

We find evidence of at least three, and perhaps four, schemes that were under consideration well before the Bay of Pigs, but we can fix the time frame only speculatively. Those who have some knowledge of the episodes guessed at dates ranging from 1959 through 1961. The March-to-August span we have fixed may be too narrow, but it best fits the limited evidence we have.

a. None of those we interviewed who was first assigned to the Cuba task force after the Bay of Pigs knows of any of these schemes.

b. J.D. (Jake) Esterline, who was head of the Cuba task force in pre-Bay of Pigs days, is probably the most reliable witness on general timing. He may not have been privy to the precise details of any of the plans, but he seems at least to have known of all of them. He is no longer able to keep the details of one plan separate from those of another, but each of the facts he recalls fits somewhere into one of the schemes. Hence, we conclude that all of these schemes were under consideration while Esterline had direct responsibility for Cuba operations.

c. Esterline himself furnishes the best clue as to the possible time span. He thinks it unlikely that any planning of this sort would have progressed to the point of consideration of means until after U.S. policy concerning Cuba was decided upon about March 1960. By about the end of the third quarter of 1960, the total energies of the task force were concentrated on the main-thrust effort, and there would have been no interest in nor time for pursuing such wills-o'-the-wisp as these.

We are unable to establish even a tentative sequence among the schemes; they may, in fact, have been under consideration simultaneously. We find no evidence that any of these schemes was approved at any level higher than division, if that. We think it most likely that no higher-level approvals were sought, because none of the schemes progressed to the point where approval to launch would have been needed.

(2) Evan Thomas, The Very Best Men: The Early Days of the CIA (1995)

It never occurred to Bissell that if push came to shove, Kennedy wouldn't put in his stack," said Mac Bundy. "He never said, "Do you really mean it? If we get the beachhead, will you back us up?"

These worries were covered up. Once engaged, Bissell believed, Kennedy wouldn't allow it to fail." Bundy or Kennedy himself should have pressed Bissell to own up to his real expectations and intentions. It is the job, particularly, of the national security adviser to prevent misunderstandings between the president and his foreign policy advisers. But Bundy was a little too trusting and admiring of Bissell, as was the president. And Bissell was too sure of himself and his plan to fully seek their advice as well as consent. The cheerful, damn-the-bureaucrats bond between the CIA and the New Frontiersmen was a curse.

Back at Quarters Eye, Colonel Hawkins and Jake Esterline, the project director, worked through the night to produce a plan for the White House that was less "noisy." A few days later Dave Phillips, the propaganda chief, walked into the war room and noticed that someone had scrawled a large red "X" over the town of Trinidad. "There's been a change in the plan," said Colonel Hawkins. "Trinidad is out. Now we are going to land here." He pointed to an area on the coast a hundred miles to the west. Phillips laughed when he saw the name. "Bahia de Cochinos? How can we have a victorious landing force wading ashore at a place with that name? How can propagandists persuade Cubans to join the Brigade at the Bay of Pigs?"

Phillips squinted at the map. "It's too far from the mountains," he said. The invaders were supposed to be able to "melt into the mountains." Now the Escambray Mountains were eighty miles, away-across an impenetrable swamp. "How will the Brigade take' the beach and hold it?" he asked Hawkins.

"The first ships to land will carry tanks."

"Tanks!" Phillips was "stunned," he writes in his memoirs, The Night Watch. "We're going to mount a secret operation in the Caribbean with tanks?"

"That's right," said the colonel. "A company. Three platoons of five each, with two command tanks.

It is hard to see how the addition of tanks made the operation "less noisy." But the loss of the "guerrilla option" was a serious change in the plans. Without the ability to "melt into the mountains," the invaders had to secure and hold the beachhead-or, pushed back into the sea. There was no fallback plan. Bissell never told Kennedy. "I did not deliberately mislead the president," he said. "I didn't take the trouble to say to him that if we shift from Trinidad to the Bay of Pigs, the fallback plan becomes totally different. The guerrilla option was not an option.

(3) Jake Esterline was interviewed by Jack Pfeiffer on 10th November, 1975.

Jack Pfeiffer: I have a question, and it is what was Pawley's relation to this whole operation... and your relation with Pawley seems to have been quite close, too.

Jake Esterline: I think it was a hangover relationship from the things that Bill Pawley had done as quite a wheel with a number of very senior people during the Guatemalan operation ... that they felt that Bill, who had been very closely tied into Cuba ... that he was a very prominent man in Florida... that there were a lot of things that he might be able to do, in the sense of getting things lined up in Florida for us... and also his ties with Nixon and with other republican politicos. I used to deal with him quite a bit before.... From my point of view, we never let Bill Pawley know any of the intimacies about our operations, or what we were doing. He never knew where our bases were, or things of that sort. He never knew anything specific about our operations, but he was doing an awful lot of things on his own with the exiles. Some of the people that he had known in Cuba, in the sugar business, etc. I guess he actually was instrumental in running boats and things in and out of Cuba, getting people out and what not, and a variety of things that were not connected with us in any way. He was a political factor from the standpoint from J.C.'s standpoint. I don't know whether Tommy Corcoran entered in at this point... I think Tommy Corcoran was strictly in Guatemala. I guess Corcoran didn't come into this thing, at least not very much.

Jack Pfeiffer: His name turns up once or twice.

Jake Esterline: Yes, I met him once, in connection with Cuba, but I don't remember who... for J.C King, but I don't remember why, at this point. It wasn't anything of any significance. My feeling with Pawley... he was such a hawk, and he was every second week... he wanted to kill somebody inside... . It was from my standpoint - we were trying to keep him from doing things to cause problems for us. This was almost a standing operation.

Jack Pfeiffer: This is what I was wondering, because Tracy Barnes, I know on a number of occasions, seemed to make it quite clear that what the Agency had to be careful of was getting hung with a reactionary label, and then at the same time that was going on, here is all of this conversation back and forth with Pawley and his visits...

Jake Esterline: Really to keep him from doing something to upset the applecart from our standpoint. In that sense, I did fill that role in part for a long time; and the net result of the thing is that Bill thinks I am a dangerous leftist today. If I hadn't been a foot dragger, or hadn't taken all these dissenting opinions of this, things in Cuba would have been a lot better.

Jack Pfeiffer: Was Pawley actually involved in the covert operation in Guatemala?

Jake Esterline: Yes, he, well I am sure he was, in a...

Jack Pfeiffer: I mean, with you as far as you...

Jake Esterline: Not I personally, but he was involved with State Department. I said Rubottom a couple of times, I didn't mean Rubottom, I meant Rusk. He was involved - especially in Guatemala with Rubottom or whoever Secretary of State was, and Seville Sacassaa and Somoza and whoever Secretary of Defense was in getting the planes from the Defense Dept., having them painted over, the decals painted over and flown to Nicaragua where they became the Defense force for that operation.

Jack Pfeiffer: I ran across some comment that he had made to Livingston Merchant.

Jake Esterline: They were good friends, and knew each other. But to my knowledge, he never had any involvement like that during the Bay of Pigs days, although you'd have to ask Ted Shackley about what they did later, because I think he ran some things into Cuba for Ted Shackley.

Jack Pfeiffer: That is beyond my period of interest. He was involved in a great amount of fund raising activity, in the New York area apparently - pushing or raising funds in the New York area - wasn't Droller involved in this too? What was your relation with Droller... were you directing Droller's activities, or was Dave Phillips running Droller...

Jake Esterline: Oh, I sort of ran Droller, except I never knew what Tracy Barnes was going to do next, when I turned my back. Droller was such.an ambitious fellow trying to run in... trying to run circles around everybody for his own aggrandizement that you never knew... but Droller would never have had any continuing contact with Pawley, because they had met only once, and I recall Pawley saying that he never wanted to talk to that "you know what" again. He was very unhappy that somebody like Gerry... he just didn't like Gerry's looks, he didn't like his accent. He was very unfair about Gerry, and I don't mean to be unfair about Gerry - the only thing is that Gerry was insanely ambitious. He was his own worst enemy, that was all.... We just didn't think that Tracy really understood it that well, or if Tracy did, he coudn't articulate... he wouldn't articulate it that well. Tracy was one of the sweetest guys that ever lived, but he coudn't ever draw a straight line between two points....

Jack Pfeiffer: What about JFK?

Jake Esterline: JFK was an uninitiated fellow who had been in the wars, but he hadn't been exposed to any world politics or crises yet if he had something else as a warm up, he might have made different decisions than he made at that time. I think he was kind of a victim of the thing. I blame Nixon far more than I do Kennedy for the equivocations and the loss of time and what not that led to the ultimate disaster. Goodwin, I just thought was a sleazy; little self-seeker, who I didn't feel safe with any secret. His consorting with Che Guevara in Montevideo had rather upset me at the time...

Jack Pfeiffer: How about McNamara did you get involved with him at all?

Jake Esterline: No.

Jack Pfeiffer: Bobby Kennedy?

Jake Esterline: I wouldn't even tell you off tape. I didn't like him. He's dead, God rest his soul.

(4) Don Bohning, Troubling questions still haunt legacy of Bay of Pigs, The Miami Herald (17th April, 1998)

Thirty-seven years later, as the Bay of Pigs fades into history, many questions have been answered by the release of long-secret documents and the increasing willingness of the few remaining central participants to talk.

But many of the answers raise other questions surrounding the ill-fated invasion of Cuba on April 17, 1961, by a brigade of 1,500 Cuban exiles trained and supported by the CIA.

Two of the most troubling, according to participants and analysts:

Was a failed Mafia assassination plot against Fidel Castro directly linked to the invasion? And, if so, did that detract from the invasion planning and execution?

Did a combination of ego and ambition cause the late Richard Bissell -- the man most directly responsible for the invasion as the CIA's chief of clandestine and covert operations -- to mislead both President Kennedy and Bissell's own planners?

Author Seymour Hersh, in his recent book The Dark Side of Camelot, a critical look at the Kennedy presidency, most persuasively raises the linkage between the invasion and an assassination plot that began under the Eisenhower administration.

Why was mission canceled? " One of Kennedy's most controversial and least understood decisions during the Bay of Pigs was the cancellation of the second bombing mission'' Hersh writes. "The assumption that Castro would be dead when the first Cuban exiles went ashore, and the fact that he was not, may explain Kennedy's decision to cut his losses. The Mafia had failed and a very much alive Castro was rallying his troops.''

Hersh quotes Robert Maheu, a former FBI agent and the link between administration officials and the Mafia for the assassination plot code-named ZR/Rifle, as telling him that "Taking out Castro was part of the invasion plan.'' Castro's murder, said Maheu, was to take place "before - but preferably at the time of - the invasion.''

The plot fell apart when Juan Orta, who functioned as Castro's private secretary and was to slip a poisoned pill into a drink, apparently got cold feet and took refuge in the Venezuelan Embassy a few days before the invasion. Orta died several years ago.

Kennedy, Hersh said in an interview, must have known by April 15 - two days before the invasion - and perhaps earlier, that the assassination plot had fallen apart and "he was in real trouble with the operation.''

The question then became, Hersh said, whether Kennedy should "take a bath by going ahead with it or take a bigger bath politically if he stops it. If he stops it he takes a tremendous hit from the right.''

Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at the National Security Archive, a nonprofit documentation center in Washington responsible for the recent declassification of hundreds of Bay of Pigs-related CIA documents, concurs that the question of linkage between the assassination and invasion is an intriguing one.

"The degree to which it (the assassination plot) was coordinated as part of the planning and whether the President actually knew about it and factored it into the decision-making process'' is a key question, Kornbluh says.

Historian Arthur Schlesinger insisted in at least two appearances at the Miami Book Fair last November that he did not believe Kennedy was even aware of an assassination plot against Castro.

If there was a link, key CIA planners for the Bay of Pigs invasion apparently were not aware of it. Jake Esterline, the Bay of Pigs project director, says he learned of the assassination plot by accident when he was asked to approve an unexplained expenditure by the late J.C. King, then head of the CIA's Western Hemisphere division.

"I really forced my way in by refusing to pay unless I knew what I was paying for,'' Esterline said in an interview. "That got me partially briefed.''

Esterline said he was sworn to secrecy and didn't even tell Jack Hawkins, a retired Marine colonel who headed the Bay of Pigs paramilitary planning staff. Hawkins did not learn about it until long after the failed invasion.

Esterline now believes there "is no question about it... if that whole specter of an assassination attempt using the Mafia hadn't been on the horizon, there would have been more preparation'' for the invasion.

He believes "Kennedy and his group were not prepared to support the operation and if Bissell and others hadn't felt they had that magic bullet (assassination), I don't think we would have had all the hairsplitting over air support.''

Esterline has no doubt that Kennedy knew of the assassination plot.

The questions surrounding Bissell arose in the spring of 1996 at a conference on the Bay of Pigs attended by former CIA officials, brigade members and academics, following release of documents to the National Security Archive.

Those documents and later information have convinced both Hawkins and Esterline, who worked for Bissell on the Bay of Pigs, that Bissell was not leveling with them and probably was not passing on their concerns to Kennedy over such things as a change in the landing site and air cover.

Hawkins cites a recently declassified briefing paper by Bissell to the President dated April 12, 1961, that he says "proves that Bissell had agreed with Kennedy several days before the operation began to cut the air support in half.''

Bissell didn't tell Esterline and Hawkins about the decision until the invasion.

"I am sure Bissell never made it clear to the President why it was necessary to eliminate Castro's air force before the landing,'' Hawkins said. `"I gave great emphasis to this... Bissell knew what the military staff's opinion was about this need but . . . Bissell never pressed it.''

(5) Don Bohning, The Miami Herald (18th October, 1999)

Jacob Donald "Jake'' Esterline, a veteran of US intelligence services and the CIA'S project director for the ill-fated 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, has died at age 79. Death came quickly at midday Saturday as he collapsed of an apparent heart attack while riding in a car with his son-in-law near his home in Hendersonville, N.C.

Esterline, who spent 27 years with the Central Intelligence Agency and its World War II forerunner, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), was a significant participant in the making of contemporary history.

In addition to his role in the Bay of Pigs, he commanded a battalion of Burmese guerrillas in a jungle war against the Japanese; was chief guerrilla warfare trainer at The Farm, a once-clandestine training school for CIA recruits at Williamsburg, Va.; headed the CIA's Washington task force in the 1954 overthrow of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz; served as CIA station chief in Guatemala, Venezuela, Panama and Miami during the height of the Cold War and as deputy chief of the agency's Western Hemisphere division.

Apart from the Bay of Pigs, it was as chief of the CIA's Miami office from 1968 to 1972, that involved him most directly in Cuban affairs.

His task in Miami was to quietly complete the phase-out of the unsuccessful post-Bay of Pigs secret war against Fidel Castro - started by the Kennedy administration and known in its initial stages as Operation Mongoose - without creating a scandal that might embarrass Washington.

That meant disposing of ships and boats, terminating leases on safe houses, marinas, boat yards, relocating the CIA's Miami offices and - the most difficult task - laying off the several hundred Cubans still directly on the payroll.

''I felt a sense of obligation to the Cubans after the failure of the Bay of Pigs,'' he said, explaining in a 1995 interview why he volunteered for the Miami assignment. ``If it was going to be done, I wanted to see it done right.

''I thought, Really, my heart will always be with these people, these Cuban exiles in all these years, starting with the Bay of Pigs, and I don't want to see them cast in the cold.''

For better or worse, however, his role in the Bay of Pigs remains the event for which he will be most remembered and one that haunted him for the remainder of his life.

He had been recalled from Venezuela in early 1960 to undertake the project, which initially was envisioned as a guerrilla incursion at Trinidad, on Cuba's south coast. It eventually evolved into a full-scale invasion at the Bay of Pigs, an isolated swamp area 80 miles to the west.

Both he and Marine Col. Jack Hawkins, his paramilitary counterpart in planning the invasion, became increasingly doubtful of its chance for success. On an April Sunday, a week before the invasion, Esterline and Hawkins went to the home of Richard Bissell, the agency's director of clandestine services who was in overall charge of the operation, and told him they were quitting.

After a heated discussion, Bissell talked them out of quitting by appealing to their loyalty and warning that their resignations wouldn't stop the invasion.

''We made a bad mistake by not sticking to our guns and staying resigned,'' he said in the 1995 interview.

The invasion failed, with both Esterline and Hawkins convinced the change in landing sites had much to do with its failure, along with President Kennedy's reduction in the air cover that had been promised for the invaders.

Hawkins, in a telephone interview Sunday, recalled that Esterline, in his capacity as the invasion task force chief ``had struggled continually to persuade political authorities to provide all the support and protection necessary for a small force of Cuban exiles to be landed on the Cuban coast.

''Failing this,'' said Hawkins, "he warned his superior at the CIA that the landing could not succeed with the restrictions imposed by the president. He recommended cancellation, but his advice was not heeded. The result was a military, political and diplomatic disaster at the Bay of Pigs.''

Hawkins praised Esterline as a man ``whose dedication and abilities were recognized at the CIA throughout his long career'' and who "devoted his life to the defense of the United States.''

''Jake was a great leader,'' said Sam Halpern, a retired CIA colleague and contemporary of Esterline. "He believed in what he was doing and he saw trouble ahead at the Bay of Pigs and tried to stop the operation to no avail.''

''I had the privilege and honor of serving under him during the U.S. intelligence community's secret war against Castro communism,'' said Carlos Obregon, a Cuban-American businessman in Miami. ``He shared with hundreds of us exile Cubans a love and passion for our cause.''

Born in Lewistown, western rural Pennsylvania on April 26, 1920, Esterline attended Temple University in Philadelphia for three years then enrolled in Officer Candidate School where he was when World War II war broke out.

He was recruited into the OSS, winding up as the commander of a Burmese guerrilla battalion fighting the Japanese, and was awarded a Bronze Star for his service.

He returned to Pennsylvania after the war, finishing an accounting degree at Temple. Ordered back to active duty in 1951 when the Korean War broke out, he took up a standing offer to join the CIA.

Survivors include Mildred, his wife of 53 years; two sons, Jacob Alan Esterline of Austin, Texas; and John Esterline of Peachtree City, Ga.; and a daughter Ann Hutcheson of Flat Rock, N.C.

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