vault backup: 2026-09-21 20:24:41
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@ -62,7 +62,7 @@ Under Eisenhower, Dulles reported all CIA covert operations, including MKULTRA,
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### Bay of Pigs and Forced Resignation
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The Bay of Pigs invasion of April 17-19, 1961 was the catastrophic failure that ended Dulles's career. The operation had been developed under Eisenhower and inherited by Kennedy; Dulles and Bissell had assured Kennedy that the plan was viable. After Kennedy's cancellation of the D-Day follow-up air strikes, the collapse of the cover story at the [[United Nations]], and the capture of 1,179 Brigade 2506 members, the disaster's scope was evident.
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The Bay of Pigs invasion of April 17-19, 1961 was the catastrophic failure that ended Dulles's career. The operation had been developed under Eisenhower and inherited by Kennedy; Dulles and Bissell had assured Kennedy that the plan was viable. After Kennedy's cancellation of the D-Day follow-up air strikes, the collapse of the cover story at the [[United Nations]], and the capture of 1,179 [[Brigade 2506]] members, the disaster's scope was evident.
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Kennedy publicly accepted responsibility but was privately furious. He reportedly told aide [[Ted Sorensen]] that he wanted to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds" - a remark almost certainly apocryphal in its precise wording but consistent with his documented anger. The Taylor Commission's findings and the classified Kirkpatrick IG report both pointed to fundamental CIA failures in planning, execution, and judgment.
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@ -166,7 +166,7 @@ After arriving in Miami, Blandón invested his L.A. drug profits in a string o
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Blandón bought into La Parrilla, a Nicaraguan restaurant co-founded by former National Guard major general [[Gustavo Medina]] and FDN supporter [[Donald Barrios]]. Henry Corrales, Blandón's former cocaine distributor, also owned a piece. The elegant restaurant became a hangout for Contra leaders and was the site of pro-Contra demonstrations and seminars. The Miami Herald named it "the best Nicaraguan restaurant in Dade [County]" in 1987 and awarded it four stars.[^11]
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Blandón's main investment was Alpha II Rent-a-Car, which began with an office outside Miami International Airport and spread to twenty-four other locations in southern Florida. The business was so successful he became an authorized outlet for Chrysler Corporation and [[General Motors]] vehicles.[^11]
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Blandón's main investment was Alpha II Rent-a-Car, which began with an office outside [[Miami International Airport]] and spread to twenty-four other locations in southern Florida. The business was so successful he became an authorized outlet for Chrysler Corporation and [[General Motors]] vehicles.[^11]
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### Continued Drug Oversight
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10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Elizabeth Dunlevy.md
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10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Elizabeth Dunlevy.md
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@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
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---
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category: "Intelligence & Government"
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tags:
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- Person
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- ElizabethDunlevy
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- CIA
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- RichardHelms
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- Watergate
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- HelmsTapes
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summary: "Richard Helms's secretary, who on his instruction in January 1973 ordered the destruction of the recordings of his office conversations, and who told the Senate she had read every transcript and none touched Watergate."
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location: "Langley, Virginia"
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created: 2026-09-21
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updated: 2026-09-21
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---
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Elizabeth Dunlevy kept the transcripts of the conversations recorded in the office of [[Richard Helms]], director of central intelligence, "under her tight control in the vault."[^1]
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### January 1973
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The technicians of the agency's recording facility, Allen Kobliska and Nicholas Popivchak, had been destroying tapes for want of space since 1972 on lists submitted to her. On the week of January 22, 1973, as Helms left the agency, all the remaining originals, "about six safe drawers" holding some 125 tapes, were destroyed. Senator [[Howard Baker]] learned of the taping and the destruction from [[William Colby]] in 1974; a letter from Senator [[Mike Mansfield]] to Helms of January 16, 1973, had asked that Watergate material be preserved.[^1][^2]
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### Testimony
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On February 6, 1974, before the Senate committee in a room where "a radio was played throughout to enhance security," she testified, in the summary of the agency's own observer, that "she did not order the destruction of the tapes at her own initiative, but had done so at the request of Mr. Helms, in the context of cleaning out the office in preparation for a new director"; that "she had no idea that any tapes other than Mr. Helms' tapes would be destroyed"; that "she had read them all and on her oath none contained any information relating to Watergate"; and that she had no knowledge bearing on Watergate, "but then corrected herself and referred to the 28 June 1972 memorandum to General Walters." She said that [[Howard Hunt]] "had always been grateful to her for arranging a loan in connection with the terrible financial strain involving his daughter," a loan of about 12,000 dollars that Helms had arranged by telephone. Afterward she "expressed her concern that material that had been sent to Archives labeled 'To be opened only by Mr. Helms or Mrs. Dunlevy or at their death' was being used to reconstruct records on conversations taped in Mr. Helms' office." The committee's counsel [[Fred Thompson]] "saw some real conflict" between her account and the technicians'; the agency's observer did not.[^1]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Legislative Counsel, memorandum for the record, "Select Committee Testimony of 6 February 1974," OLC 74-0197, February 6, 1974. CIA Reading Room, document 01474420.
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[^2]: U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities. "Minority Report on CIA Involvement, Submitted at the Request of Senator Howard H. Baker, Jr.," in *The Senate Watergate Report,* Dell, 1974, vol. 2, pp. 732 ff. (S. Rept. 93-981, 1974), "Tapes."
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10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Enrique Arancibia Clavel.md
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10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Enrique Arancibia Clavel.md
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---
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category: "Intelligence & Government"
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tags:
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- Person
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- EnriqueArancibiaClavel
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- DINA
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- OperationCondor
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- CarlosPrats
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- BuenosAires
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- Argentina
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alias:
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- Enrique Lautaro Arancibia Clavel
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summary: "DINA's Buenos Aires station chief from 1974 to 1978, who prepared the ground for Townley's bomb under Carlos Prats's car, received a life sentence in Argentina in 2000, and was stabbed to death on parole."
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died: 2011
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location: "Buenos Aires, Argentina"
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created: 2026-09-21
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updated: 2026-09-21
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---
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Enrique Lautaro Arancibia Clavel ran the [[DINA]] station in [[Buenos Aires]] from 1974. The Argentine courts found it "debidamente acreditado" that he belonged, from March 1974 until November 24, 1978, to "DINA exterior," an association of at least ten members "whose activity consisted of persecuting the political opponents of the Pinochet regime exiled in Argentina," by kidnapping, torture under interrogation, and the theft of victims' identity papers for reuse. His own function "was to form a parallel network of informants in Buenos Aires to supply data on those being pursued."[^1]
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### Prats
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In the summer of 1974 Major [[Raúl Iturriaga Neumann|Raúl Iturriaga]] came to Buenos Aires "with a bag of cash to hire assassins and to coordinate the operation with the Argentine service, [[Secretaría de Inteligencia del Estado|SIDE]]." Arancibia distributed 20,000 dollars to would-be killers who kept the money. [[Michael Townley]] then built the bomb himself. After it destroyed the car of General [[Carlos Prats]] and [[Sofía Cuthbert]] on September 30, 1974, Townley heard Arancibia shout "Asi mueren los traidores." The court found that he "prepared the ground" for Townley and "viabilizó el desvío de la custodia," the diversion of the general's police guard.[^2][^3]
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### Judgment
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In November 2000 Tribunal Oral Federal No. 6 of Buenos Aires, Judges María del Carmen Roqueta and José Valentín Martínez Sobrino among its members, sentenced him to reclusión perpetua as "partícipe necesario" in the killings and for membership in an illicit association. It called DINA "an instrument for eliminating opponents" and the "embrión" of [[Operation Condor|Operación Cóndor]]. An appeals court held the association charge time-barred. On August 24, 2004, on the complaint of the government of [[Chile]] as civil party, the [[Supreme Court of Argentina|Corte Suprema]] reinstated it, ruling that crimes against humanity were imprescriptible under customary international law when committed. In 2003 he received twelve more years for the kidnapping of two Chilean women. He was paroled in July 2007 and was stabbed fifteen times and killed in 2011 by a young man he had met after his release.[^1][^3]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: *Arancibia Clavel, Enrique Lautaro s/homicidio calificado y asociación ilícita y otros,* Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Nación, Argentina, August 24, 2004.
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[^2]: Dinges, John. *The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents*. New Press, 2004, pp. 74-77.
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[^3]: "Caso Prats: La DINA fue un instrumento para eliminar opositores," *Diario Judicial,* November 28, 2000. Infobae and La Voz de América retrospectives supply the 2003 sentence, the parole, and the killing.
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10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Frank Castro.md
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10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Frank Castro.md
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---
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category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
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tags:
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- Person
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- FrankCastro
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- CORU
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- CubanExiles
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- Terrorism
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- CubanaFlight455
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alias:
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- Eulogio Francisco Castro Paz
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- Francisco Castro
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summary: "Cuban exile named by a DISIP officer among the planners of the Cubana bombing at the Anauco Hilton in 1976, who led CORU from Miami after Orlando Bosch's arrest until Bosch removed him in 1978."
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location: "Miami, Florida"
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created: 2026-09-21
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updated: 2026-09-21
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---
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Frank Castro, whose name the FBI gave as Eulogio Francisco Castro Paz, was with [[Orlando Bosch]] the alleged organizer of the meeting in the [[Dominican Republic]] in June 1976 that formed [[CORU]]. He was "a leader of CORU, the anti-Castro terrorist organization which has taken credit for several bombings," and of the [[Frente de Liberación Nacional Cubano|Cuban National Liberation Front]].[^1][^2]
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### Caracas
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[[Ricardo Morales Navarrete]] of [[DISIP]] said the [[Cubana Flight 455 bombing|bombing of the Cubana airliner]] had been discussed at the bar of the Anauco Hilton by Castro, Gustavo Castillo, [[Luis Posada Carriles]], and himself, and again in his apartment, where "there was disagreement as to who would take part in the various phases of the operation, and who would claim credit." Castro said his front would claim it; after 73 people died he "did not want the FLNC to claim credit, fearing Cuban government reprisal." By an informant's account, [[Rolando Otero]], fleeing Miami after the bombings of 1975, was met in the Dominican Republic by Castro, who arranged his passage to Venezuela and [[Chile]].[^2][^3]
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### CORU
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After Bosch's arrest Castro was "CORU Chief from Miami." He was reported planning to sabotage a Mexican airliner, "very emphatic in stating that all operations must be outside of the boundaries of the United States"; in January 1977 a CORU envoy from [[Orlando García Vásquez]] was to find Castro for a bombing meant to relieve pressure on Bosch; and an informant put "a young action oriented cell under the control of Francisco 'Frank' Castro," [[Alvin Ross]] and Raciel Rodríguez, behind the bombing of the Viasa office in Miami Beach on December 23, 1977. In May 1977 he said the [[Cuban Nationalist Movement]] was rejoining CORU "but without [[Felipe Rivero]]." In July 1978 Bosch removed him in favor of Dr. Carlos Dominicis, and Castro received word through a relative, a former Dominican naval officer, "that the Cuban Government is trying to have Frank Castro assassinated in the Miami, Florida area."[^1][^4]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: Dinges, John, and Saul Landau. *Assassination on Embassy Row*. McGraw-Hill, 1980, p. 250; Federal Bureau of Investigation, Miami, file 2-471, "CORU," August 16, 1978. National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book 153, document 13.
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[^2]: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Miami, teletype to Director, "Bombing of Cubana Airlines DC-8 Near Barbados, West Indies, October 6, 1976," November 2, 1976, JFK Assassination Records Collection. National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book 153, document 10.
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[^3]: *Miami New Times* retrospective on the 1975 Miami bombings, not read in full; *United States v. Otero-Hernandez,* 418 F. Supp. 572 (M.D. Fla. 1976).
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[^4]: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Miami, file 2-471, "Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU)," January 24, 1977. National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book 153, document 12.
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@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ summary: "Cuban exile and father of Luis Elizondo whose revolutionary past and u
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### Revolutionary Past and Imprisonment
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In his youth, Luis D. Elizondo III fought alongside Fidel Castro against the Batista regime in Cuba. However, when Castro aligned with the Soviet Union and declared himself president for life, Elizondo III joined the resistance. He participated in the [[Bay of Pigs]] invasion as a member of Brigade 2506 and was subsequently captured and imprisoned in Cuba for two years. His experiences in prison, which included enduring oral surgery without anesthesia, left him a volatile and deeply anti-authoritarian man.[^1]
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In his youth, Luis D. Elizondo III fought alongside Fidel Castro against the Batista regime in Cuba. However, when Castro aligned with the Soviet Union and declared himself president for life, Elizondo III joined the resistance. He participated in the [[Bay of Pigs]] invasion as a member of [[Brigade 2506]] and was subsequently captured and imprisoned in Cuba for two years. His experiences in prison, which included enduring oral surgery without anesthesia, left him a volatile and deeply anti-authoritarian man.[^1]
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### Influence on Luis Elizondo
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@ -25,10 +25,26 @@ In the summer of 1967 federal officers caught Bosch and his men firing a bazooka
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In December 1974 Bosch entered [[Chile]] with [[Guillermo Novo]] and [[Jose Dionisio Suarez]] of the [[Cuban Nationalist Movement]], who had come "to pay homage to Pinochet." He lived there for more than a year, and was reported to have met General [[Augusto Pinochet]]. In February 1976 he was arrested in [[Costa Rica]] on "a false Chilean official passport in the name of Hector Davanzo Cintolesi," with a mission to kill [[Andres Pascal Allende|Andrés Pascal Allende]] of the Chilean [[Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria|MIR]]. That June he and [[Frank Castro]] brought some twenty men to Bonao in the [[Dominican Republic]] and formed the Commando of United Revolutionary Organizations, [[CORU]]. "We were conspiring there. Planning bombings and killings," he told an interviewer from prison. "Everything was planned there."[^1]
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### Caracas
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In August 1976 Bosch passed through Maiquetía airport from Curaçao on his way to Chile. There [[José Figueres Ferrer]], the former president of Costa Rica, got him a false passport as "Hector Emilio Balango"; arrested in Costa Rica, he was freed with another as "Luis Paniagua." Called to Caracas by telephone, he landed on September 8 and was met by Luis Posada Carriles, [[Orlando García Vásquez]], and [[Ricardo Morales Navarrete]], "all members of the Presidential Police Security Organization in Venezuela." From the Caracas Hilton he was offered protection, a weapon, leave to raise funds, and an interview with "a top level person in the Venezuelan government," and "promised to stop terrorism by his group in Venezuela, Costa Rica and Colombia, but not Panama." A CIA source at a fund-raising dinner in his honor at the house of a Cuban exile doctor, attended by Venezuelan officials, heard him ask in effect for payment to refrain from violence during the United Nations meeting of November, and say that his group had done "a great job" in killing [[Orlando Letelier]] and would "try something else." "After that," the FBI's narrative continued, "the Cuban plane was sabotaged, and seventy-some people were killed. Dr. Bosch was arrested and charged with the crime."[^2][^3]
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### Caracas
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In August 1976 Bosch passed through Maiquetía airport from Curaçao on his way to Chile. There José Figueres Ferrer, the former president of Costa Rica, got him a false passport as "Hector Emilio Balango"; arrested in Costa Rica, he was freed with another as "Luis Paniagua." Called to Caracas by telephone, he landed on September 8 and was met by Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando García Vásquez, and Ricardo Morales Navarrete, "all members of the Presidential Police Security Organization in Venezuela." From the Caracas Hilton he was offered protection, a weapon, leave to raise funds, and an interview with "a top level person in the Venezuelan government," and "promised to stop terrorism by his group in Venezuela, Costa Rica and Colombia, but not Panama." A CIA source at a fund-raising dinner in his honor at the house of a Cuban exile doctor, attended by Venezuelan officials, heard him ask in effect for payment to refrain from violence during the United Nations meeting of November, and say that his group had done "a great job" in killing Orlando Letelier and would "try something else." "After that," the FBI's narrative continued, "the Cuban plane was sabotaged, and seventy-some people were killed. Dr. Bosch was arrested and charged with the crime."[^2][^3]
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### October 1976
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Two Venezuelans arrested after the bombing of a [[Cubana Flight 455|Cubana airliner]] off [[Barbados]] on October 6, 1976, "named Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carrilles as part of the conspiracy," and DISIP arrested both. On October 11 the [[Department of Justice|Justice Department]] asked Venezuela to make Bosch available for questioning in the murder of [[Orlando Letelier]], committed three weeks earlier by [[DINA]] with members of the Cuban Nationalist Movement. Cuban exiles had complained that Chile gave haven to Bosch and [[Rolando Otero]], "both fugitives from the FBI, only to betray them."[^1]
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Two Venezuelans arrested after the bombing of a [[Cubana Flight 455|Cubana airliner]] off [[Barbados]] on October 6, 1976, "named Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carrilles as part of the conspiracy," and DISIP arrested both. On October 11 the [[Department of Justice|Justice Department]] asked Venezuela to make Bosch available for questioning in the murder of Orlando Letelier, committed three weeks earlier by [[DINA]] with members of the Cuban Nationalist Movement. Cuban exiles had complained that Chile gave haven to Bosch and [[Rolando Otero]], "both fugitives from the FBI, only to betray them."[^1]
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### Exclusion and Release
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Acquitted in Venezuela after eleven years, Bosch entered the United States without papers on February 18, 1988, and was held on his 1974 parole violation. On January 23, 1989, the acting associate attorney general, [[Joe D. Whitley]], ordered him excluded. "For 30 years Bosch has been resolute and unwavering in his advocacy of terrorist violence. He has threatened and undertaken violent terrorist acts against numerous targets, including nations friendly toward the United States and their highest officials." The decision recited his leadership of the [[Movimiento Insurreccional de Recuperación Revolucionaria|MIRR]] from 1960 to 1968, the recoilless rifle fired at the freighter *Polanica* on September 16, 1968, telegraphed threats to the presidents of [[Mexico]], [[Spain]], and Britain, his founding of CORU, and evidence at his Venezuelan trial "that the two men convicted of homicide in connection with the bombing were in contact with Bosch both before and after the bombing." "Appeasement of those who would use force will only breed more terrorists." In 1990, over the department's objection, the [[White House]] of [[George H.W. Bush]] released him.[^4][^5]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: Dinges, John, and Saul Landau. *Assassination on Embassy Row*. McGraw-Hill, 1980, pp. 9, 148, 246-250, quoting Bosch's interview with Blake Fleetwood, *New Times,* May 13, 1977.
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[^2]: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Miami, file 2-471, "CORU," August 16, 1978. National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book 153, document 13.
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[^3]: Central Intelligence Agency, intelligence report, "Activities of Cuban Exile Leader Orlando Bosch During his Stay in Venezuela," October 14, 1976. National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book 334, document 7.
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[^4]: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Associate Attorney General, *In the Matter of Orlando Bosch-Avila,* decision of Acting Associate Attorney General Joe D. Whitley in exclusion proceedings, January 23, 1989.
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[^5]: National Security Archive, "Bombing of Cuban Jetliner 30 Years Later," Electronic Briefing Book 202, October 5, 2006, with the affidavits of Trinidad and Tobago police officers and the FBI report of November 5, 1976, to the Secretary of State.
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10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Orlando García Vásquez.md
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10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Orlando García Vásquez.md
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---
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category: "Intelligence & Government"
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tags:
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- Person
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- OrlandoGarciaVasquez
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- DISIP
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- Venezuela
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- CubanExiles
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- CIA
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- CubanaFlight455
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alias:
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- Orlando Garcia Vasquez
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- Orlando García
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summary: "Cuban exile with CIA training who headed Venezuela's DISIP, received Orlando Bosch at Caracas airport in September 1976, and was said to have ordered CORU attacks to relieve pressure on him after the Cubana bombing."
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location: "Caracas, Venezuela"
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created: 2026-09-21
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updated: 2026-09-21
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---
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Orlando García Vásquez, a Cuban exile and friend of [[Orlando Bosch]], was head of [[DISIP]], the Venezuelan security police, with [[Rafael Rivas Vásquez]] as his deputy and [[Luis Posada Carriles]] as chief of operations. "All had received CIA training." The FBI described him in 1976 as "Minister Counsellor on Security Matters to Venezuelan President [[Carlos Andrés Pérez]]."[^1][^2]
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### September 1976
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When Bosch landed at Maiquetía on September 8, 1976, García, Posada, and [[Ricardo Morales Navarrete]] met him, "all members of the Presidential Police Security Organization in Venezuela," and dined with him at La Hacienda. Through two government men lodged at the Caracas Hilton Bosch was offered police protection, a pistol, permission to raise funds "for the cause of Cuba," and an interview with "a top level person," which Bosch took to mean the president; he in turn "promised to stop terrorism by his group in Venezuela, Costa Rica and Colombia, but not Panama." Four weeks later a [[Cubana Flight 455 bombing|Cubana airliner]] was blown up. García told a Miami detective that DISIP's bomb expert, Carlos Fabri, "became very nervous" at the prospect of testifying, and the detective's police source said DISIP took the investigation from the judicial police "to cover it up."[^2][^3]
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### 1977
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On January 21, 1977, an FBI informant reported that a [[CORU]] member had come to Miami "carrying out instructions for the 'people in Venezuela,'" understood to be García, who wanted "two immediate missions": "a naval operation against Cuban shipping enterprises, which should result in a maximum number of Cuban nationals killed," and "a bombing of a consulate, embassy, or the like of any country having relations with Cuba," to "take away the 'pressure' from Orlando Bosch and specifically from the Republic of Venezuela." The Venezuelans "were interested in prosecuting Luis Posada Carriles to the fullest," while Bosch "may be able to extricate himself." García later lived in Miami.[^4]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: Dinges, John, and Saul Landau. *Assassination on Embassy Row*. McGraw-Hill, 1980, p. 249.
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[^2]: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Miami, teletype to Director, "Bombing of Cubana Airlines DC-8 Near Barbados, West Indies, October 6, 1976," November 2, 1976, JFK Assassination Records Collection. National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book 153, document 10.
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[^3]: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Miami, file 2-471, "CORU," August 16, 1978. National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book 153, document 13.
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[^4]: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Miami, file 2-471, "Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU)," January 24, 1977. National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book 153, document 12.
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10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Paul Gaynor.md
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10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Paul Gaynor.md
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---
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category: "Intelligence & Government"
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tags:
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- Person
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- PaulGaynor
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- CIA
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- CIAOfficeOfSecurity
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- SecurityResearchStaff
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- Watergate
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- LeePennington
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alias:
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- Paul F. Gaynor
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summary: "Chief of the CIA Security Research Staff, who paid Lee Pennington 250 dollars a month and received James McCord's unsigned letters in the winter of 1972, until the staff's abolition in August 1973."
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location: "Langley, Virginia"
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created: 2026-09-21
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updated: 2026-09-21
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---
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Paul F. Gaynor was chief of the Security Research Staff of the [[CIA Office of Security|Office of Security]] of the [[Central Intelligence Agency]], the unit in which [[James McCord]] had served as deputy chief from 1957. He appeared before the House subcommittee of [[Lucien Nedzi]] in 1973 under that title.[^1]
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### Pennington
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|
||||
Gaynor retained [[Lee Pennington]], a retired FBI inspector, "at $250 per month until December of 1973." The Senate minority staff found that "the Pennington information was known within the CIA at least at a level as high as the Director of Security, according to the" chief of the Security Research Staff, and that Pennington "may have been a 'domestic agent,' possibly in violation of the CIA's charter." Gaynor testified in executive session on February 24, 1974. "The Agency has advised that the Security Research Staff was abolished in August of 1973."[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### The McCord Letters
|
||||
|
||||
After his arrest McCord "address[ed] a series of letters to Mr. Paul Gaynor, of CIA, with whom McCord was formerly associated in his active duty CIA days. That correspondence commenced on December 22, 1972, and in it McCord referred to the 'tremendous pressure' to put the operation on the CIA. The follow-on correspondence consisted of an undated note and others dated December 29, 1972, January 3 and 5, 1973 regarding alleged wiretaps on his home, McCord's decision to release his lawyer, and more litany on attempts to involve the CIA in the Watergate. None of this mail was signed. The record indicates that CIA retained this correspondence on file, recognizing that it came from McCord, but nothing was done to bring it to light until after the subcommittee commenced its hearings on May 11, 1973. Why this material was not given to the FBI or the Department of Justice earlier was not responded to satisfactorily by CIA witnesses."[^1][^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Armed Services, Special Subcommittee on Intelligence. *Inquiry into the Alleged Involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency in the Watergate and Ellsberg Matters.* 93rd Cong., 1st sess., October 23, 1973, witness list and pp. on McCord correspondence.
|
||||
[^2]: U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities. "Minority Report on CIA Involvement, Submitted at the Request of Senator Howard H. Baker, Jr.," in *The Senate Watergate Report,* Dell, 1974, vol. 2, pp. 732 ff. (S. Rept. 93-981, 1974), "Pennington Matter."
|
||||
|
|
@ -24,13 +24,16 @@ Percy Foreman (June 21, 1902 to August 25, 1988) was born in a log cabin near [[
|
|||
|
||||
At the hearing in [[Memphis, Tennessee|Memphis]] on March 10, 1969, Ray interrupted: "The only thing I have to say is that I can't agree with Mr. Clark." Foreman supplied: "[[Ramsey Clark]]." Ray went on: "Mr. [[J. Edgar Hoover]]. I agree with all these stipulations, and I am not trying to change anything." The court asked whose theories he rejected. "Mr. Canale's, Mr. Clark's and Mr. J. Edgar Hoover's about the conspiracy." Foreman told the judge: "I think that what he said is that he doesn't agree with Ramsey Clark that Ramsey Clark is right or that J. Edgar Hoover is right. I didn't argue that as evidence in this case." Ray received 99 years and within days repudiated the plea. His suit against Foreman, Huie, and Hanes was dismissed, and the [[United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit|Sixth Circuit]] affirmed in 1971, leaving open the question whether such contracts "are void as a matter of public policy." In 1976 the same court found "a potential conflict of interest" in the arrangement, and a district court finding that the fee "would be unreasonable if there were money to pay it," and upheld the plea.[^2][^3]
|
||||
|
||||
The new agreements of January 29 and February 3, 1969, gave Foreman 60 percent of the income from Huie's works. Ray alleged that on February 13 Foreman brought him a waiver of any claim against Huie or *[[Look (magazine)|Look]]* "for damaging Ray's chances for a fair trial," and that Foreman told him "the prosecution was prepared to bribe a key witness" and that "if he refused to plead guilty, Foreman would exercise less than his best efforts at trial." In one of the letters of March 9 Foreman wrote of the Huie royalties: "These are my own property unconditionally," and that he had by then "spent in excess of $9,500.00 on your case." The Sixth Circuit in 1974 called the allegations, if true, "an outrageous abrogation of the standards which the legal profession sets for itself" and ordered a hearing.[^4]
|
||||
|
||||
### The Hunts
|
||||
|
||||
On July 21, 1975, a federal grand jury charged [[Nelson Bunker Hunt]], [[William Herbert Hunt|Herbert Hunt]], Foreman, three other lawyers, and "a retired Texas industrialist," [[Edward J. Hudson]] of Houston, with obstruction of justice. "The indictment charged that the seven men had conspired to pay witnesses to go to prison to hush testimony about the wiretapping" of [[H.L. Hunt]]'s aides [[Paul Rothermel]] and [[John Curington]], who were Foreman's clients. The Hunts answered the same day that the charges were "a further result of an attempt by the C.I.A. to discredit the Hunt oil empire." In April 1976 Bunker Hunt pleaded nolo contendere and paid a fine of 1,000 dollars, and the charges against Foreman and Hudson were dropped. Neither of the wire service obituaries of 1988 mentioned the indictment.[^1][^4]
|
||||
On July 21, 1975, a federal grand jury charged [[Nelson Bunker Hunt]], [[William Herbert Hunt|Herbert Hunt]], Foreman, three other lawyers, and "a retired Texas industrialist," [[Edward J. Hudson]] of Houston, with obstruction of justice. "The indictment charged that the seven men had conspired to pay witnesses to go to prison to hush testimony about the wiretapping" of [[H.L. Hunt]]'s aides [[Paul Rothermel]] and [[John Curington]], who were Foreman's clients. The Hunts answered the same day that the charges were "a further result of an attempt by the C.I.A. to discredit the Hunt oil empire." In April 1976 Bunker Hunt pleaded nolo contendere and paid a fine of 1,000 dollars, and the charges against Foreman and Hudson were dropped. Neither of the wire service obituaries of 1988 mentioned the indictment.[^1][^5]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: "Famed trial lawyer Percy Foreman, who defended James Earl Ray," United Press International, August 25, 1988; "Outspoken lawyer Percy Foreman called legal 'warrior,'" United Press International, August 26, 1988.
|
||||
[^2]: *Ray v. Foreman,* 441 F.2d 1266 (6th Cir. 1971).
|
||||
[^3]: *Ray v. Rose,* 535 F.2d 966 (6th Cir. 1976).
|
||||
[^4]: "Hunt Sons Charge C.I.A. Used Agents To Embezzle Funds," *New York Times,* July 22, 1975; Hurt, Harry, III. *Texas Rich: The Hunt Dynasty from the Early Oil Days through the Silver Crash*. W.W. Norton, 1981, pp. 356-359.
|
||||
[^4]: *Ray v. Rose,* 491 F.2d 285 (6th Cir. 1974).
|
||||
[^5]: "Hunt Sons Charge C.I.A. Used Agents To Embezzle Funds," *New York Times,* July 22, 1975; Hurt, Harry, III. *Texas Rich: The Hunt Dynasty from the Early Oil Days through the Silver Crash*. W.W. Norton, 1981, pp. 356-359.
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
31
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Sheffield Edwards.md
Normal file
31
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Sheffield Edwards.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,31 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Intelligence & Government"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- SheffieldEdwards
|
||||
- CIA
|
||||
- CIAOfficeOfSecurity
|
||||
- AssassinationPlots
|
||||
- RobertMaheu
|
||||
- JohnnyRoselli
|
||||
summary: "Colonel who directed the CIA's Office of Security when Richard Bissell asked in 1960 for 'gangster-type action' against Castro, and who through Robert Maheu enlisted Johnny Roselli and briefed Robert Kennedy in 1962."
|
||||
location: "Langley, Virginia"
|
||||
created: 2026-09-21
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-21
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Colonel Sheffield Edwards was director of the [[CIA Office of Security|Office of Security]] of the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] in the years of the plots against [[Fidel Castro]].[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### 1960
|
||||
|
||||
In August 1960 [[Richard Bissell]], the deputy director for plans, asked Edwards "if he had assets that may assist in a sensitive mission requiring gangster-type action." Edwards took the question to the director, who approved. He chose [[Robert Maheu]], "a cleared source of the Office of Security," as the intermediary, and Maheu produced [[Johnny Roselli]]. Edwards assigned [[James O'Connell]] as case officer. "Sam Gold" and "Joe," whom Roselli brought in, were [[Sam Giancana]] and [[Santos Trafficante, Jr.|Santos Trafficante]]. He informed the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]]'s liaison, [[Sam Papich]], of the agency's contacts with the two.[^1][^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### 1962
|
||||
|
||||
When Maheu's wiretappers were arrested in [[Las Vegas]] in a job done for Giancana, Edwards asked that prosecution be dropped, and it was. On May 7, 1962, he and the general counsel, [[Lawrence Houston]], briefed Attorney General [[Robert F. Kennedy|Robert Kennedy]]. On May 14 Edwards wrote the memorandum for the record, "prepared at the request of the Attorney General of the United States following a complete oral briefing of him relative to a sensitive CIA operation conducted during the period approximately August 1960 to May 1961," which Houston sent to Kennedy the next day. In 1963 [[Richard Helms]] told Director [[John McCone]] that it was the only written record of the relationship with Giancana. The inspector general found in 1967 that Kennedy "was not told that the gambling syndicate operation had already been reactivated." Edwards testified to the Senate committee on May 30, 1975.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Central Intelligence Agency, "Family Jewels," memorandum of Howard J. Osborn, Director of Security, May 16, 1973, with attachments, pp. 00012-00014.
|
||||
[^2]: U.S. Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. *Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders: An Interim Report*. S. Rept. 94-465, 1975, pp. 74-83, 133-134.
|
||||
[^3]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963,* vol. X, Cuba, document 337, memorandum for the record by Sheffield Edwards, May 14, 1962, with source note.
|
||||
34
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Stefano Delle Chiaie.md
Normal file
34
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Stefano Delle Chiaie.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- StefanoDelleChiaie
|
||||
- AvanguardiaNazionale
|
||||
- Italy
|
||||
- OperationCondor
|
||||
- DINA
|
||||
- Bolivia
|
||||
- StrategyOfTension
|
||||
summary: "Founder of Avanguardia Nazionale, fugitive from Italy from 1970 through Spain, Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia, who arranged the 1975 shooting of Bernardo Leighton for DINA and was received by Pinochet in Madrid."
|
||||
location: "Rome, Italy"
|
||||
created: 2026-09-21
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-21
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Stefano Delle Chiaie led [[Avanguardia Nazionale]], which he told an Italian parliamentary commission had "surely more than a thousand" members. A warrant in the [[Piazza Fontana bombing]] investigation was issued for him in 1970, and he was a fugitive from Italy for seventeen years, active, as the commission's president put it to him, in "Spain, Chile, Bolivia and Argentina." He entered Italy four times in that period.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Rome, 1975
|
||||
|
||||
In 1975 Major [[Raúl Iturriaga Neumann|Raúl Iturriaga]] of [[DINA]] ordered [[Michael Townley]] "to enlist Delle Chiaie's organization in an operation to kill" [[Bernardo Leighton]]. Delle Chiaie advised against better-protected exiles such as [[Carlos Altamirano]]: "Leighton was a better, and easier target." On October 6, 1975, [[Pierluigi Concutelli]] shot Leighton and his wife in the street. "Townley and the Italians celebrated with dinner at Delle Chiaie's apartment, thinking that the Leightons were dead." Weeks later [[Augusto Pinochet]] flew to [[Madrid]] for the funeral of [[Francisco Franco]]. "[[Manuel Contreras|Contreras]] arranged for Delle Chiaie to come to Madrid. Delle Chiaie was given a private audience with Pinochet in his hotel room. Contreras also presented Delle Chiaie with the $5,000 payment."[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Testimony
|
||||
|
||||
Before the commission Delle Chiaie declined to describe his years abroad: "Non le sto a raccontare come ho vissuto da latitante perché è un fatto mio personale." He said a NATO-linked structure built against communism had been turned by "central political power" to "stabilization," and that fringes of the "movimento nazional-rivoluzionario" had been infiltrated and used in the strategy of tension. He read from an internal circular of April 1973 warning members of a "vasto piano provocatorio" to blame the movement for "una serie di ignobili fatti delittuosi," and a letter of June 8, 1974, after the [[Piazza della Loggia bombing]], distancing it from the group of the former partisan Fumagalli. He named the intelligence officers [[Antonio Labruna|Labruna]] and [[Gianadelio Maletti|Maletti]] and [[Giorgio Almirante]] as sources of what he called slander linking his movement to the Interior Ministry's Ufficio Affari Riservati. Asked about American intelligence: "Certo, la Bolivia non era stata riconosciuta dagli Stati Uniti quando c'ero io. Il Cile non aveva una ambasciata americana." "Mi porti un documento che dice questo. Io sono pronto a fare il mea culpa se si portano delle prove concrete." The president called much of it "autodifesa" and set against it the commission's findings on [[Propaganda Due|P2]] and the [[Argo 16]] inquiry.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
He was arrested in [[Caracas]] on March 27, 1987, and sent to Italy two days later. He was acquitted in Rome on February 20, 1989, in the [[Bologna railway station bombing]] case and in 1991 in the Piazza Fontana case.[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Commissione parlamentare d'inchiesta sul terrorismo in Italia e sulle cause della mancata individuazione dei responsabili delle stragi, audizione del signor Stefano Delle Chiaie, stenographic record no. 25, Rome.
|
||||
[^2]: Dinges, John. *The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents*. New Press, 2004, pp. 130-133.
|
||||
[^3]: Press obituaries and secondary accounts of the 1987 arrest and the 1989 and 1991 acquittals, not read in the original reporting; the manner of his transfer from Venezuela, by extradition or by handover, is given differently in the accounts.
|
||||
|
|
@ -20,21 +20,21 @@ born: 1913-03-13
|
|||
died: 1987-05-06
|
||||
location: "Elmhurst, Queens, New York"
|
||||
---
|
||||
William Joseph Casey was born March 13, 1913, in Elmhurst, Queens, New York. He attended St. John's University and Fordham Law School, becoming a corporate and tax attorney. During World War II he served in the [[Office of Strategic Services]] (OSS) under William "Wild Bill" Donovan, rising to head the OSS's Secret Intelligence operations in Europe and coordinating the infiltration of agents into Nazi-controlled territory. After the war he became a wealthy lawyer and author of tax shelter guides. President Nixon appointed him Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1971, a post he held through 1973. He managed [[Ronald Reagan]]'s 1980 presidential campaign. Reagan appointed him Director of Central Intelligence in January 1981, and he served as DCI until resigning due to illness in January 1987. He died May 6, 1987, at a hospital in Glen Cove, New York, having suffered a seizure in December 1986 and subsequently undergone brain surgery. He was subpoenaed to testify before the Senate Iran-Contra investigating committee but died before he could appear.[^5]
|
||||
William Joseph Casey was born March 13, 1913, in Elmhurst, Queens, New York. He attended [[St. John's University]] and Fordham Law School, becoming a corporate and tax attorney. During World War II he served in the [[Office of Strategic Services]] (OSS) under [[William J. Donovan|William "Wild Bill" Donovan]], rising to head the OSS's Secret Intelligence operations in Europe and coordinating the infiltration of agents into Nazi-controlled territory. After the war he became a wealthy lawyer and author of tax shelter guides. President [[Richard Nixon|Nixon]] appointed him Chairman of the [[Securities and Exchange Commission]] in 1971, a post he held through 1973. He managed [[Ronald Reagan]]'s 1980 presidential campaign. Reagan appointed him [[Director of Central Intelligence]] in January 1981, and he served as DCI until resigning due to illness in January 1987. He died May 6, 1987, at a hospital in Glen Cove, New York, having suffered a seizure in December 1986 and subsequently undergone brain surgery. He was subpoenaed to testify before the Senate [[Iran-Contra Affair|Iran-Contra]] investigating committee but died before he could appear.[^5]
|
||||
|
||||
### October Surprise
|
||||
|
||||
The central allegation against Casey is that he served as the principal American negotiator in secret meetings with Iranian representatives in Spain and France in 1980, during which the Reagan campaign agreed to delay the release of 52 American hostages held in [[Iran]] until after the November 4 election in exchange for promises of arms and the release of frozen Iranian assets. The allegation is the subject of the [[October Surprise]] affair.[^1]
|
||||
The central allegation against Casey is that he served as the principal American negotiator in secret meetings with Iranian representatives in [[Spain]] and [[France]] in 1980, during which the Reagan campaign agreed to delay the release of 52 American hostages held in [[Iran]] until after the November 4 election in exchange for promises of arms and the release of frozen Iranian assets. The allegation is the subject of the [[October Surprise]] affair.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
Multiple sources identified two probable meeting locations: Madrid in July 1980 and Paris in October 1980. A U.S. Embassy cable indicating Casey was in Madrid "for purposes unknown" in summer 1980 was withheld from the House October Surprise Task Force by Bush administration officials and only surfaced through journalist [[Robert Parry]]'s reporting in 2011. Casey's personal calendar for October 20, 1980, showed an 8 a.m. Metropolitan Club appointment in Washington, which the House Task Force cited in its January 1993 report finding "no credible evidence" of a deal. Former French intelligence chief Alexandre de Marenches, through his biographer's sworn testimony, indicated he had arranged meetings between Casey and Iranians in Paris in October 1980.[^1][^2]
|
||||
Multiple sources identified two probable meeting locations: Madrid in July 1980 and Paris in October 1980. A U.S. Embassy cable indicating Casey was in Madrid "for purposes unknown" in summer 1980 was withheld from the House October Surprise Task Force by [[George H.W. Bush|Bush]] administration officials and only surfaced through journalist [[Robert Parry]]'s reporting in 2011. Casey's personal calendar for October 20, 1980, showed an 8 a.m. Metropolitan Club appointment in Washington, which the House Task Force cited in its January 1993 report finding "no credible evidence" of a deal. Former French intelligence chief [[Alexandre de Marenches]], through his biographer's sworn testimony, indicated he had arranged meetings between Casey and Iranians in Paris in October 1980.[^1][^2]
|
||||
|
||||
A separate [[Senate Foreign Relations Committee]] investigation found that Casey had engaged in "potentially dangerous" unauthorized efforts to collect intelligence on the Carter administration's hostage-release negotiations -- confirming Reagan-campaign intelligence operations against Carter's Iran policy without concluding a deal had been struck.[^2]
|
||||
A separate [[Senate Foreign Relations Committee]] investigation found that Casey had engaged in "potentially dangerous" unauthorized efforts to collect intelligence on the Carter administration's hostage-release negotiations, confirming Reagan-campaign intelligence operations against Carter's Iran policy without concluding a deal had been struck.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
Casey died before he could be formally questioned under oath. He was subpoenaed to testify at the Iran-Contra hearings, which were examining a separate but related set of covert arms deals with Iran from 1985-1986.[^5]
|
||||
|
||||
### KH-11 and Israeli Intelligence
|
||||
|
||||
Casey was an enthusiastic supporter of the [[KH-11]] imagery-sharing program with [[Israel]] from the moment he took office, ordering that Israeli liaison officers be provided with a private office near [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] headquarters to ensure all essential intelligence was turned over. After the Israeli bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor at [[Osirak bombing]], Casey authorized a review that found Israel had significantly expanded the agreement, requesting and receiving extensive KH-11 coverage of western [[Russia]].[^4]
|
||||
Casey was an enthusiastic supporter of the [[KH-11]] imagery-sharing program with [[Israel]] from the moment he took office, ordering that Israeli liaison officers be provided with a private office near [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] headquarters to ensure all essential intelligence was turned over. After the Israeli bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor at [[Osirak bombing]], Casey authorized a review that found [[Israel]] had significantly expanded the agreement, requesting and receiving extensive KH-11 coverage of western [[Russia]].[^4]
|
||||
|
||||
### Launching the Contra War
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
36
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Arthur Hanes.md
Normal file
36
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Arthur Hanes.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Law Enforcement & Legal"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- ArthurHanes
|
||||
- FBI
|
||||
- CIA
|
||||
- Birmingham
|
||||
- JamesEarlRay
|
||||
- BayOfPigs
|
||||
alias:
|
||||
- Arthur J. Hanes
|
||||
- Arthur Hanes Sr.
|
||||
summary: "Former FBI agent, CIA confidential correspondent from 1952 to 1959 and recruiter of Alabama Guard pilots for the Bay of Pigs, mayor of Birmingham with Bull Connor, and James Earl Ray's first lawyer."
|
||||
location: "Birmingham, Alabama"
|
||||
created: 2026-09-21
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-21
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Arthur J. Hanes was a special agent of the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] and from August 1951 to November 1961 a contract administrator at the [[Hayes Aircraft Corporation]] of [[Birmingham, Alabama|Birmingham]]. He was elected mayor of Birmingham and served during the 1963 demonstrations with the police commissioner, [[Bull Connor]].[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### The Agency
|
||||
|
||||
A memorandum of the [[CIA Office of Security|Office of Security]] signed by [[James O'Connell]] on October 15, 1968, records: "From May 1952 through February 1959, Hanes served as a Confidential Correspondent with this Office. He resigned due to the pressure of his regular employment." On August 14, 1961, the general counsel's office "received a covert security clearance" to use him on its Cleared Attorneys Panel. "It is believed that Hanes was instrumental in recruiting several [[Alabama Air National Guard|Alabama National Guard]] pilots during the [[Bay of Pigs Invasion|Bay of Pigs]] incident. Several lost their lives during this period." The memorandum was prompted by word that a *[[New York Times]]* reporter was writing on "the use of Hanes by the Agency in connection with the recruitment of pilots." It closed: "There is no current Agency interest in Mr. Hanes."[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Ray
|
||||
|
||||
In July 1968, while [[James Earl Ray]] awaited extradition in [[London]], Hanes and his son met him there. On July 5 Ray signed a power of attorney and an agreement, supplied by the writer [[William Bradford Huie]], giving Hanes 40 percent of what Ray would receive from Huie's book. Three days later Hanes, Ray, and Huie contracted for Huie to pay Ray and Hanes each 30 percent of his receipts. Ray dismissed Hanes in November 1968 for [[Percy Foreman]]. Huie paid Hanes 30,000 dollars in fees and expenses and 1,000 dollars for an article, "For Conspiracy."[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
The Sixth Circuit recited in 1974 that Hanes "was apparently concerned about whether Ray would be able to pay his fee. Consequently, he was receptive to the suggestion of author William Bradford Huie." The London agreements gave Hanes "complete power of attorney for Ray" and made him "exclusive agent and attorney" for the sale "of any and all rights to information or privacy which he may have in and to his life." Ray alleged that when he asked for a professional investigator Hanes refused, that Hanes said "Why give testimony away when we can sell it?" and that Hanes would not seek a continuance "because the contract with Huie provided that they must go to trial within a certain number of days." The court: "The entire record reeks with ethical, moral and professional irregularities."[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Security, memorandum for the record, "HANES, Arthur J.," October 15, 1968, signed James P. O'Connell, Deputy Director of Security. Record 104-10117-10312, National Archives, released July 21, 2025.
|
||||
[^2]: *Ray v. Rose,* 535 F.2d 966 (6th Cir. 1976); *Ray v. Foreman,* 441 F.2d 1266 (6th Cir. 1971).
|
||||
[^3]: *Ray v. Rose,* 491 F.2d 285 (6th Cir. 1974).
|
||||
|
|
@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ George Sergius de Mohrenschildt (April 17, 1911 - March 29, 1977) was a Russian-
|
|||
|
||||
### Background
|
||||
|
||||
De Mohrenschildt was born in Mozyr, Czarist Russia, to a noble family with oil industry connections; his father managed Nobel family oil interests in Baku. He emigrated to the [[United States]] in 1938 via [[Belgium]] and [[France]]. A [[Department of State|State Department]] "lookout" notation dated October 8, 1942, flagged him as a possible Nazi agent; he was expelled from [[Mexico]] as persona non grata in 1942. He subsequently earned a doctorate in petroleum geology from the University of Texas and taught at Texas colleges while working as an independent petroleum consultant, accumulating a broad social network in Dallas spanning the White Russian emigre community, the Texas oil industry, and, through his travels, U.S. government contacts.[^1]
|
||||
De Mohrenschildt was born in Mozyr, Czarist Russia, to a noble family with oil industry connections; his father managed Nobel family oil interests in Baku. He emigrated to the [[United States]] in 1938 via [[Belgium]] and [[France]]. A [[Department of State|State Department]] "lookout" notation dated October 8, 1942, flagged him as a possible Nazi agent; he was expelled from [[Mexico]] as persona non grata in 1942. He subsequently earned a doctorate in petroleum geology from the [[University of Texas]] and taught at Texas colleges while working as an independent petroleum consultant, accumulating a broad social network in Dallas spanning the White Russian emigre community, the Texas oil industry, and, through his travels, U.S. government contacts.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### CIA Contact: J. Walton Moore
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -44,7 +44,7 @@ Hunt also managed the political exile leadership, working to maintain cohesion a
|
|||
|
||||
### Bay of Pigs
|
||||
|
||||
Hunt was assigned as the CIA's political officer for the Bay of Pigs invasion, responsible for the Cuban Revolutionary Council - the exile political organization that would form a provisional government after the expected overthrow of [[Fidel Castro]]. He worked with the exile leadership in [[Miami]] and later in [[New York]], managing their political expectations and organizational disputes.
|
||||
Hunt was assigned as the CIA's political officer for the Bay of Pigs invasion, responsible for the [[Cuban Revolutionary Council]] - the exile political organization that would form a provisional government after the expected overthrow of [[Fidel Castro]]. He worked with the exile leadership in [[Miami]] and later in [[New York]], managing their political expectations and organizational disputes.
|
||||
|
||||
The Bay of Pigs was a catastrophic failure, and Hunt's political operation collapsed along with the military operation. The exile political leadership was not told the operation was under way until it had already failed, and Hunt's management of their expectations was blamed by exile leaders for contributing to the political disorder. His role in the operation was not publicly acknowledged.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -66,6 +66,10 @@ On the night of June 17, 1972, Hunt organized and directed the team that broke i
|
|||
|
||||
Hunt was convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and wiretapping and sentenced to 35 years, subsequently reduced. He served approximately 33 months in federal prison. His wife Dorothy died in a plane crash in December 1972, with some researchers suggesting the crash was not accidental; the official ruling was that it was an accident.[^7]
|
||||
|
||||
The [[CIA Office of Security|Office of Security]] reported to the inspector general on May 22, 1975, for the [[Church Committee]], that in November 1963 Hunt "was assigned to DDP/CA Staff, Office of the Chief, Headquarters; however, apparently Mr. Hunt had collateral duties with DDP/Domestic Operations Division/Facilities Branch," from November 1961 to February 1965, and that "neither Mr. Hunt nor Mr. McCord were in charge of Mexican operations at the time of the Kennedy assassination."[^8]
|
||||
|
||||
Helms's secretary [[Elizabeth Dunlevy]] testified in 1974 that Hunt "had always been grateful to her for arranging a loan in connection with the terrible financial strain involving his daughter"; the agency's observer noted that Helms had placed the call that produced a loan of about 12,000 dollars.[^9]
|
||||
|
||||
### Kennedy Assassination Statements
|
||||
|
||||
In his final years, Hunt made a series of statements about the Kennedy assassination that attracted significant attention. In a 2007 article in *Rolling Stone* based on a recorded conversation with his son Saint John Hunt, Hunt implicated several CIA figures - including [[Cord Meyer]] and [[David Phillips]] - as having known about or participated in a conspiracy. Hunt's account was inconsistent across tellings and was disputed by the individuals named; his health had declined severely before the statements were made.
|
||||
|
|
@ -83,3 +87,5 @@ Hunt died of pneumonia on January 23, 2007, in [[Miami, Florida|Miami]].[^1]
|
|||
[^5]: "E. Howard Hunt: Utilization by Central Cover Staff," 1970, CIA Reading Room document C00660613; Gahagen, Robert D., "Request for CSA concerning E. Howard Hunt," June 3, 1970, C00297384; "Letter of Recommendation Written by Mr. Helms," July 20, 1973, C00609297.
|
||||
[^6]: House Committee on Armed Services, Special Subcommittee on Intelligence, *Inquiry into the Alleged Involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency in the Watergate and Ellsberg Matters,* 93rd Cong., 1973; Ruth, Henry S., Jr., letter to John S. Warner, July 26, 1973, C01482382; "Inquiry Regarding Possible ITT Association with CIA and Robert R. Mullen and Company," August 7, 1973, C01367838.
|
||||
[^7]: Summers, Anthony. *The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon.* Viking, 2000. Hougan, Jim. *Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat, and the CIA.* Random House, 1984.
|
||||
[^8]: Kane, Charles W., Director of Security. Memorandum for the Inspector General, "Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Operations, Request," May 22, 1975, JFK record 104-10106-10619.
|
||||
[^9]: Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Legislative Counsel, memorandum for the record, "Select Committee Testimony of 6 February 1974," OLC 74-0197, February 6, 1974. CIA Reading Room, document 01474420.
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
62
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/James McCord.md
Normal file
62
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/James McCord.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,62 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Intelligence & Government"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- JamesMcCord
|
||||
- Watergate
|
||||
- CIA
|
||||
- CIAOfficeOfSecurity
|
||||
- LeePennington
|
||||
alias:
|
||||
- James W. McCord Jr.
|
||||
- James W. McCord
|
||||
summary: "CIA Office of Security officer from 1951 to 1970, arrested inside the Watergate in June 1972, whose letter to Judge Sirica broke the cover-up and whose papers a paid CIA informant watched being burned."
|
||||
born: 1924-01-26
|
||||
died: 2017-06-15
|
||||
location: "Rockville, Maryland"
|
||||
created: 2026-09-21
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-21
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
James Walter McCord Jr. was born at [[Waurika, Oklahoma]], on January 26, 1924, and finished high school at [[Electra, Texas]], in 1940. He kept books at the Electra State Bank, joined the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] in March 1942 as a radio technician, served as a bombardier in the Army Air Corps from November 1943 to November 1945, took a business degree at the [[University of Texas]] in 1948, and was an FBI special agent in [[Washington, D.C.|Washington]], [[San Diego]], and [[San Francisco]] from October 1948 to February 1951. He joined the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] on August 22, 1951, and served in the [[CIA Office of Security|Office of Security]] until August 31, 1970. The agency's summary of his service records two years as an investigator, seven years "engaged in research and report writing," appointment in May 1957 as deputy chief "of a research staff of some six professional and clerical personnel," two years abroad as "Chief of a regional staff of some ten professional and clerical personnel providing a full spectrum of security support," a year at the [[Air War College]] from August 1964, command of the technical security division from 1965 to 1968, "some 40 professional and clerical personnel," and from October 1968 command of the physical security division of about 70, which "produced for the Agency a physical security posture of pre-eminent quality within the US Government." A personnel form of July 2, 1970, records his separation as "Retirement (Involuntary) Under CIA Retirement and Disability System," at grade GS-15, step 8, salary 24,228 dollars, "pursuant to a request from the Head of the Security Career Service." [[Richard Helms]] wrote to him at Rockville on August 19: "Your faithful and loyal support has measured up to the high ideals and traditions of the Federal service."[^1] On an [[Atomic Energy Commission]] security questionnaire of May 1962 he reported official trips to Britain and the Continent every year from 1955 to 1961.[^2] An agency cable after his arrest shows it had been "concerned with McCord's emotional stability prior to his retirement."[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
From June 1962 to June 1964 he was chief of the agency's Regional Security Support Staff in [[Frankfurt]]. The director of security told the inspector general in 1975, answering a question from the [[Church Committee]], that "neither Mr. Hunt nor Mr. McCord were in charge of Mexican operations at the time of the Kennedy assassination."[^4]
|
||||
|
||||
### The Arrest
|
||||
|
||||
McCord was among the five men arrested inside the [[Democratic National Committee]] offices at the [[Watergate scandal|Watergate]] on June 17, 1972. "On June 17, 1972, I recorded on the Metropolitan Police records the fact of my CIA retirement," he wrote in 1974. "There was no effort made to hide that fact." The agency's cables of the same day record that [[Michael Mastrovito]] of the [[United States Secret Service|Secret Service]] "agreed to downplay McCord's Agency employment." In the days after, [[Lee Pennington]], a retired FBI inspector paid by the Office of Security, visited Mrs. McCord and "found her burning papers and documents." Pennington's report reached the agency, was written up, and "for more than a year and a half, it lay in the CIA files like a paper bomb." In November and December 1972 Pennington gave his case officer "a memorandum allegedly written by McCord about [[Jack Anderson]] and others."[^3][^5]
|
||||
|
||||
### Havana
|
||||
|
||||
In July 1974 the agency's operations directorate examined whether McCord had had a part in the effort to free three officers of its [[Technical Services Division]] "who were jailed as a result of the [[Xinhua News Agency|NCNA]] Havana audio operation compromise." [[Ted Shackley]], chief of the East Asia Division, reported on July 5 that the operation against the New China News Agency in [[Havana]] was STESCALADE, that a similar one against the [[Bank of China]] there, STVOLUME, "was planned but never executed," that the files "contain no reference to McCord," that a further file of "sensitive non-CS record material" on the operation existed but was not accessible to his division, and that a contingency plan "for the provision of black air transport for the three TDS detainees in the event of their release" named no one. A Western Hemisphere officer on the file thought it "plausible" that "the Office of Security and TSD might have tried to work something out in terms of a rescue operation." A note on the routing sheet reads: "O/Sec has turned up material on McCord's involvement and we will be getting a memo on this. Something should go forward from O/Sec to FBI correcting our earlier reports to the Bureau, per DCI instructions." The officer who traced the file asked "that he not be credited as the source of this."[^6]
|
||||
|
||||
### The Letter
|
||||
|
||||
In March 1973, awaiting sentence, McCord wrote to Judge [[John Sirica]] that "there was political pressure applied to the defendants to plead guilty and remain silent," that "perjury occurred during the trial," and that "others involved in the Watergate operation were not identified during the trial." He wrote that members of his family "have expressed fear for my life if I disclose knowledge of the facts in this matter."[^7]
|
||||
|
||||
### The Letters to Langley
|
||||
|
||||
On July 29, 1972, McCord "sent an unsigned letter to Mr. Richard Helms, then Director of Central Intelligence, enclosing correspondence purportedly addressed to his attorney expressing concern over a 'ploy' to lay Watergate at the doorstep of CIA." From December 22, 1972, he wrote a series of unsigned letters to [[Paul Gaynor]] of the Security Research Staff, "with whom McCord was formerly associated," referring to the "tremendous pressure" to put the operation on the CIA, "alleged wiretaps on his home, McCord's decision to release his lawyer, and more litany on attempts to involve the CIA in the Watergate." The agency "retained this correspondence on file, recognizing that it came from McCord, but nothing was done to bring it to light until after the subcommittee commenced its hearings on May 11, 1973." McCord told the subcommittee that at the Monocle restaurant on December 21, 1972, his lawyer Gerald Alch had proposed a CIA defense, "that they would doctor McCord's CIA records to show a recall to duty; that the new Director, Dr. Schlesinger, 'would go along with it.'" Alch denied it "in the strongest of terms" and said Hunt's lawyer [[William Bittman]] had first raised such a defense. "This subcommittee cannot unravel the direct conflict of evidence in the testimony of Mr. McCord and Mr. Alch."[^8]
|
||||
|
||||
### Pennington
|
||||
|
||||
The Senate committee's minority staff, under Senator [[Howard Baker]], found that the agency "had in its possession, as early as June of 1972, information that one of their paid" informants had witnessed the destruction "of documents which might show a link between McCord and the CIA," and that when the FBI asked in August 1972 about a "Pennington" the agency answered with the name of a different employee. The information reached the committee only on February 22, 1974, after an employee of the Personnel Security Division copied the memoranda into his own safe for fear they would be destroyed. A five-inch reel of tape labeled "McCord Incident/18-19 June 1972" was found in the Office of Security on March 1, 1974, and had not been played for the committee when it reported. [[Howard Osborn]], the director of security, retired on February 26.[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
McCord answered the *[[Washington Star]]* on July 3, 1974: "There was no breaking and entering, no burglary, and no destruction of evidence. This 60-year old gentleman, Lee Pennington, was a personal friend; he came over to bring food to my family; they invited him in; he destroyed no evidence; and in fact the documents in question, the papers in my CIA retirement folder, were still there when I returned home three days later." He copied the letter to Pennington, who "is planning legal action against your publication."[^5]
|
||||
|
||||
In June 1976 McCord asked the agency under the Freedom of Information Act for documents and "a copy of a deposition which according to the request the DCI is to present to a District Court on 8 July 1976" in the suit of [[R. Spencer Oliver]], the Democratic official whose telephone had been tapped at the Watergate, against the [[Committee to Re-elect the President]]. The privacy staff found that "no one is aware of what McCord is referring to." [[Bruce Solie]] of the Office of Security identified Oliver for them from a 1972 newspaper article, and noted that "action by the Office of Security may be later requested if it is determined that the DCI or the Agency has any involvement in the 'Spencer Oliver vs. CREEP' lawsuit."[^9]
|
||||
|
||||
McCord died at his home in [[Douglassville, Pennsylvania]] on June 15, 2017, at 93. His death was not reported for nearly two years.[^10]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Central Intelligence Agency, "Summary of Agency Employment, James W. McCord, Jr.," August 31, 1970, JFK record 104-10123-10387; request for personnel action, July 2, 1970, JFK record 104-10123-10394; Helms, Richard, letter to James W. McCord Jr., August 19, 1970, JFK record 104-10123-10372.
|
||||
[^2]: U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, personnel security questionnaire of James Walter McCord Jr., May 20, 1962, JFK record 104-10123-10337; CIA clearance sheet, July 10, 1958, JFK record 104-10123-10334.
|
||||
[^3]: U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, minority staff, "CIA Investigation," memorandum of Senator Howard H. Baker Jr., 1974, later printed in *Final Report,* S. Rept. 93-981, pp. 1115-1165. CIA Reading Room copy, document 01481990.
|
||||
[^4]: Kane, Charles W., Director of Security. Memorandum for the Inspector General, "Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Operations, Request," May 22, 1975, JFK record 104-10106-10619.
|
||||
[^5]: McCord, James W., Jr. Letter to the editor, *Washington Star-News,* July 3, 1974. CIA Reading Room, document 01482011.
|
||||
[^6]: Shackley, Theodore G., Chief, East Asia Division. Memorandum for the Deputy Director for Operations, "James McCord Involvement in Cuban Operations," July 5, 1974, with routing sheet and note of July 2, 1974, JFK record 104-10095-10272.
|
||||
[^7]: McCord, James W., Jr. Letter to Judge John J. Sirica, March 1973, as quoted in contemporaneous press reports.
|
||||
[^8]: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Armed Services, Special Subcommittee on Intelligence. *Inquiry into the Alleged Involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency in the Watergate and Ellsberg Matters.* 93rd Cong., 1st sess., October 23, 1973
|
||||
[^9]: Solie, Bruce L., Chief, Security Analysis Group. Memorandum for the file, "McCord, James Walter, Jr.," June 23, 1976, JFK record 104-10123-10362.
|
||||
[^10]: "Watergate burglar James McCord died in 2017, and no one noticed," *San Francisco Chronicle,* 2019.
|
||||
|
|
@ -33,7 +33,9 @@ On May 7, 1962, Houston and the director of security, [[Sheffield Edwards]], bri
|
|||
|
||||
The agency's own account of the confinement of [[Yuri Nosenko]] states that the [[CIA Office of Security|Office of Security]] "together with the Office of General Counsel became increasingly concerned with the illegality of the Agency's position," and that their representations to Helms ended it in October 1967.[^5]
|
||||
|
||||
On March 3, 1967, two days after [[Jim Garrison]] arrested [[Clay Shaw]], the chief of the [[Domestic Contact Service]] in [[New Orleans]], [[Lloyd Ray]], recommended that Houston be briefed on Shaw's past reporting "to be on the safe side." On May 1 [[Herbert J. Miller Jr.|Jack Miller]], a former assistant attorney general, telephoned Houston with information "from within Garrison's office" supplied by [[Walter Sheridan]] of [[NBC]]. His memorandum of October 2, written as the agency's [[Garrison Group]] considered its response, recommended doing nothing beyond resisting subpoenas.[^6]
|
||||
On March 3, 1967, two days after [[Jim Garrison]] arrested [[Clay Shaw]], the chief of the [[Domestic Contact Service]] in [[New Orleans]], [[Lloyd Ray]], recommended that Houston be briefed on Shaw's past reporting "to be on the safe side." On May 1 [[Herbert J. Miller Jr.|Jack Miller]], a former assistant attorney general, telephoned Houston with information "from within Garrison's office" supplied by [[Walter Sheridan]] of [[NBC]]. His memorandum of October 2, written as the agency's Garrison Group considered its response, recommended doing nothing beyond resisting subpoenas.[^6]
|
||||
|
||||
At the first meeting of the [[Garrison Group]] on September 20, 1967, Houston "discussed his dealings with Justice and the desire of Shaw's lawyers to make contact with the Agency." His paper for the director of September 29 found that Garrison, needing an overt act with Oswald and Ferrie dead, "may well be able to involve CIA in the Shaw trial," set out what the agency knew of each Cuban Garrison had questioned, and concluded: "At the present time, therefore, there is no action we can recommend for the Director or the Agency to take. If during the trial it appears that Shaw may be convicted on information that could be refuted by CIA, we may be in for some difficult decisions."[^7]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -43,3 +45,4 @@ On March 3, 1967, two days after [[Jim Garrison]] arrested [[Clay Shaw]], the ch
|
|||
[^4]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963,* vol. X, Cuba, document 337, memorandum for the record by Sheffield Edwards, May 14, 1962, with source note.
|
||||
[^5]: Central Intelligence Agency, "Family Jewels," memorandum of Howard J. Osborn, Director of Security, to the Executive Secretary, CIA Management Committee, May 16, 1973, with attachments, p. 00023.
|
||||
[^6]: Holland, Max. "The Lie That Linked CIA to the Kennedy Assassination," *Studies in Intelligence,* vol. 45, no. 5, 2001.
|
||||
[^7]: Janney, F.W.M. Memorandum for the record, "Garrison Group Meeting No. 1 - 20 September 1967," JFK record 104-10428-10023. Houston, Lawrence R. Memorandum for the Director of Central Intelligence, "Clay L. Shaw's Trial and the Central Intelligence Agency," OGC 67-1877, September 29, 1967, forwarded to the Director October 2, 1967, JFK record 104-10104-10280.
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
40
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Raúl Iturriaga Neumann.md
Normal file
40
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Raúl Iturriaga Neumann.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Intelligence & Government"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- RaulIturriagaNeumann
|
||||
- DINA
|
||||
- OperationCondor
|
||||
- CarlosPrats
|
||||
- BernardoLeighton
|
||||
- RonniMoffitt
|
||||
alias:
|
||||
- Raul Iturriaga Neumann
|
||||
- Raúl Iturriaga
|
||||
- Eduardo Iturriaga
|
||||
summary: "DINA officer who carried cash to Buenos Aires for the Prats killing in 1974, set Townley on Bernardo Leighton in 1975, and by 2026 held sentences of 500 years, the last for Ronni Moffitt."
|
||||
location: "Santiago, Chile"
|
||||
created: 2026-09-21
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-21
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Raúl Iturriaga Neumann was an officer of [[DINA]], the secret police of [[Augusto Pinochet]]'s [[Chile]], and by 1975 head of its foreign operations. The prosecutors of the Letelier case knew him as Eduardo Iturriaga.[^1][^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Buenos Aires
|
||||
|
||||
In late July 1974 he "traveled to [[Buenos Aires]] with a bag of cash to hire assassins and to coordinate the operation with the Argentine service, [[Secretaría de Inteligencia del Estado|SIDE]]." The station chief, [[Enrique Arancibia Clavel]], paid 20,000 dollars to men who did nothing; "the Argentines didn't have the guts to kill them," [[Michael Townley]] said. Townley's own bomb killed General [[Carlos Prats]] and his wife on September 30. In 2010 the Chilean courts convicted Iturriaga, [[Manuel Contreras]], [[Pedro Espinoza]], and [[José Zara]] of the murders.[^1][^3]
|
||||
|
||||
### Rome
|
||||
|
||||
In 1975 he "added a new name to Townley's hit list: [[Bernardo Leighton]], the grandfatherly Christian Democrat who was working in [[Rome]] to forge an alliance between his party and the remnants of Allende's forces," and ordered Townley to enlist the organization of [[Stefano Delle Chiaie]]. Leighton and his wife were shot on October 6, 1975, and lived. An Italian court later convicted Iturriaga in his absence on Townley's testimony; he has said that Townley is the only accuser and that he never met the Italians.[^1][^3]
|
||||
|
||||
### Washington
|
||||
|
||||
Iturriaga briefed Townley on the mission against [[Orlando Letelier]] in 1976 and approved his taking [[Virgilio Paz]] of the [[Cuban Nationalist Movement]]. When the Chilean police came for Townley in 1978, Iturriaga led the search party into his house. On June 15, 2026, Judge [[Paola Plaza]] sentenced him, Espinoza, and Zara to fifteen years each for the death of [[Ronni Moffitt]]. He was then 88 and serving cumulative sentences of 500 years.[^2][^4]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Dinges, John. *The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents*. New Press, 2004, pp. 74, 130.
|
||||
[^2]: Branch, Taylor, and Eugene M. Propper. *Labyrinth*. Viking, 1982, pp. 303, 464.
|
||||
[^3]: Chilean press reports of the 2010 judgments of Judge Alejandro Solís and the Supreme Court and of the 2022 court resolution on DINA's exterior department (La Tercera, CNN Chile, El Mostrador), not read in full.
|
||||
[^4]: Kornbluh, Peter. "A Modicum of Justice for Ronni Karpen Moffitt," *The Nation,* September 2026.
|
||||
38
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Ricardo Morales Navarrete.md
Normal file
38
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Ricardo Morales Navarrete.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Intelligence & Government"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- RicardoMoralesNavarrete
|
||||
- DISIP
|
||||
- CIA
|
||||
- FBI
|
||||
- CubanExiles
|
||||
- CubanaFlight455
|
||||
alias:
|
||||
- Ricardo Morales
|
||||
- El Mono
|
||||
- Comisario Moises
|
||||
summary: "Cuban exile, CIA contract agent, FBI informant, and DISIP counterintelligence chief who sat in the Caracas meetings that planned the 1976 Cubana bombing, told a Miami detective about them, and was shot dead in 1982."
|
||||
died: 1982-12-20
|
||||
location: "Miami, Florida"
|
||||
created: 2026-09-21
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-21
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Ricardo Morales Navarrete, called El Mono, gave his birth as [[Havana]], June 14, 1939, in his 1981 deposition. In 1968 he helped [[Orlando Bosch]] with instruction in bombs "and then suddenly surfaced in court as an FBI informant and as the chief witness against the baby doctor, who went to jail." By 1976 he was a comisario of [[DISIP]], the Venezuelan security police, in charge of Section D-54, its counterintelligence section, under the code name Comisario Moises.[^1][^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Caracas
|
||||
|
||||
On September 8, 1976, he, [[Luis Posada Carriles]], and [[Orlando García Vásquez]] met Bosch at Maiquetía airport and dined with him that night. Morales lived at the Anauco Hilton. In late October he told Detective Raúl Díaz of the Dade County organized crime bureau, who had come to persuade him to testify at the trial of [[Rolando Otero]], that the [[Cubana Flight 455 bombing|bombing of the Cubana airliner]] had been discussed at the hotel bar by [[Frank Castro]], Gustavo Castillo, Posada, and himself, and again in his apartment, and that after the second meeting he "had nothing more to do with this matter." "Some people in the Venezuelan government are involved in this airplane bombing," he said, "and if Posada Carriles talks, then Morales Navarrete and others in the Venezuelan government will 'go down the tube.'" He passed on Bosch's claim that [[Orlando Letelier]]'s death "was the result of an agreement between [[Guillermo Novo]] and the [[Patria y Libertad]] organization," and named Castillo's group, "Youth of the Star," for four Miami bombings of 1975. After the strategy meeting of October 15 he signed the DISIP arrest warrant for Bosch and went with the party that escorted him to prison. On October 27 the government announced that there was no Morales in DISIP. He telephoned a friend in Miami and told her not to call, since "he does not exist." In January 1977 he was replaced by Mario Jiménez Rojo.[^2][^3][^4]
|
||||
|
||||
### Miami
|
||||
|
||||
An FBI source reported in December 1977 that Morales, back in Miami, was the go-between for Frank Castro and [[Rafael Villaverde]] in negotiations over the release of Bosch and Posada until the two fell out, and that he was seeking explosives to retaliate for attacks on Venezuelan interests. In January 1978 he was linked by an informant to the young [[CORU]] cell of [[Alvin Ross]] and Raciel Rodríguez. When the writer [[Taylor Branch]] tried to reach Bosch in Venezuela in 1976, "at five o'clock in the morning, Branch had been dragged out of bed and thrown out of the country by none other than Ricardo Morales." His deposition in Dade County criminal case 81-17247 ran to nine volumes. He was shot dead in a bar in [[Key Biscayne, Florida|Key Biscayne]] on December 20, 1982.[^1][^4][^5]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Branch, Taylor, and Eugene M. Propper. *Labyrinth*. Viking, 1982, pp. 101, 113.
|
||||
[^2]: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Miami, teletype to Director, "Bombing of Cubana Airlines DC-8 Near Barbados, West Indies, October 6, 1976," November 2, 1976, JFK Assassination Records Collection. National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book 153, document 10.
|
||||
[^3]: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Miami, file 2-471, "CORU," August 16, 1978. National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book 153, document 13.
|
||||
[^4]: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Miami, file 2-471, "Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU)," January 24, 1977. National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book 153, document 12.
|
||||
[^5]: Deposition of Ricardo Morales Navarrete, Dade County Circuit Court, criminal case 81-17247, index; death date from press accounts, not read in full.
|
||||
38
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Richard Kleindienst.md
Normal file
38
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Richard Kleindienst.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Law Enforcement & Legal"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- RichardKleindienst
|
||||
- DepartmentOfJustice
|
||||
- Watergate
|
||||
- ITT
|
||||
- Arizona
|
||||
- HuntFamily
|
||||
alias:
|
||||
- Richard G. Kleindienst
|
||||
summary: "Deputy attorney general and then attorney general under Nixon, sworn in five days before the Watergate break-in, who pleaded guilty in 1974 to not answering the Senate fully about the ITT antitrust settlement."
|
||||
born: 1923-08-05
|
||||
died: 2000-02-03
|
||||
location: "Prescott, Arizona"
|
||||
created: 2026-09-21
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-21
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Richard Kleindienst was born at [[Winslow, Arizona]], on August 5, 1923, attended the [[University of Arizona]], and was an early supporter of [[Barry Goldwater]]. He ran for governor of [[Arizona]] in 1964 against Sam Goddard. After [[Richard Nixon]]'s election he became deputy attorney general under [[John Mitchell]], and attorney general five days before the [[Watergate scandal|Watergate]] break-in of June 1972.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### ITT
|
||||
|
||||
At his confirmation hearings in 1972 the Senate asked him about the settlement of the [[Department of Justice|Justice Department]]'s antitrust cases against the [[ITT Corporation|International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation]]. "In 1974, Kleindienst pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge after he was accused by the Watergate special prosecutor of failing to fully testify at his Senate confirmation hearing." He said: "I was wrong in not having been more candid with the committee and I sincerely regret it."[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### The Hunts
|
||||
|
||||
"Nelson Bunker and his father met President Nixon at the celebrated barbecue at [[John Connally]]'s Floresville ranch in the autumn of 1972. Soon after, [[Nelson Bunker Hunt|Nelson Bunker]] huddled with Richard Kleindienst, then the new boss of the Justice Department, at the plantation of Mississippi Senator [[James Eastland]]." The [[Hunt brothers]] were indicted for wiretapping their father's employees "only after a curiously long time lag," and a Dallas grand jury later investigated the three-year delay. The account of the meeting came from Hunt sources.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Arizona
|
||||
|
||||
In Tucson "he was accused and acquitted of lying under oath during an investigation by the State Bar of Arizona for his role in a 1976 scam to siphon money from the Teamsters Union Health and Welfare Fund. The Arizona Supreme Court later suspended him from practicing law for one year." He died at [[Prescott, Arizona|Prescott]] on February 3, 2000.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Volante, Enric. "Kleindienst, Watergate figure, dies at 76," *Arizona Daily Star,* February 2000.
|
||||
[^2]: Porterfield, Bill. "H.L. Hunt's Long Goodbye," *Texas Monthly,* March 1975.
|
||||
36
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/William Bradford Huie.md
Normal file
36
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/William Bradford Huie.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Authors & Journalists"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- WilliamBradfordHuie
|
||||
- JamesEarlRay
|
||||
- MartinLutherKing
|
||||
- CIA
|
||||
- Journalism
|
||||
- Alabama
|
||||
summary: "Writer who in 1951 pressed the CIA on a 50,000 dollar bribe to French Communists and in 1968 bought James Earl Ray's story through his lawyers, paying Hanes and Foreman shares a court found irregular."
|
||||
born: 1910-11-13
|
||||
died: 1986-11-22
|
||||
location: "Guntersville, Alabama"
|
||||
created: 2026-09-21
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-21
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
William Bradford Huie was born at [[Hartselle, Alabama]], on November 13, 1910, graduated from the [[University of Alabama]] in 1930, reported for the *Birmingham Post* from 1932 to 1936, became an editor of *[[The American Mercury]]*, and served as a Navy lieutenant from 1943 to 1945. He wrote more than twenty books, six of them filmed, among them *The Americanization of Emily* and *The Execution of Private Slovik*.[^1][^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### 1951
|
||||
|
||||
On September 14, 1951, on the *Mercury*'s letterhead, Huie wrote to the director of central intelligence, [[Walter Bedell Smith]]: "In both The American Mercury and the current Cosmopolitan, I have reported how [[James Forrestal|Jim Forrestal]] employed a $50,000 bribe to help settle the French railway strike in 1947. The facts are known to a number of Americans. The money was raised very quickly at the Brook Club in New York, in fact, it became known as 'Operation Brook Club.' The money was then carried to France by a naval intelligence agent, and paid to certain members of the Communist Party. Admiral [[Roscoe Hillenkoetter|Hillenkoetter]] arranged to make these contributions deductible." *[[Le Figaro]]* had bought the Forrestal papers and wanted the omitted episode. "Is there any valid reason why I should not question the intelligence agent who handled the payment?" [[Allen Dulles]], as acting director, answered on September 22 that "it is the policy of CIA to decline comment on any statement that may relate to activities imputed to this Agency. This silence carries no implication as to the truth or falsity of the statement." A routing slip in the file reads: "Please speak to me about the attached at your convenience. A.W.D."[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Ray
|
||||
|
||||
In June 1968 [[James Earl Ray]], awaiting extradition in [[London]], wrote to [[Arthur Hanes]] of Birmingham. Hanes "was apparently concerned about whether Ray would be able to pay his fee. Consequently, he was receptive to the suggestion of author William Bradford Huie that Hanes persuade Ray to give Huie exclusive rights to information about Ray and, presumably, the assassination." Ray gave Hanes power of attorney and 40 percent of what would come from Huie, and Hanes and Huie contracted for Ray and Hanes to supply information on "the assassination of [[Martin Luther King Jr.|Martin Luther King, Jr.]], the alleged participation of Ray therein, and the life and activities of Ray," for 30 percent each of Huie's gross receipts. When [[Percy Foreman]] replaced Hanes, new agreements of January 29 and February 3, 1969, gave Foreman 60 percent. Two Huie articles ran in *[[Look (magazine)|Look]]* before Ray pleaded guilty on March 10, 1969, and a book followed. Ray alleged that Hanes had said, "Why give testimony away when we can sell it?" and that Huie offered "to pay $12,000 either to him or his family if he would refuse to take the witness stand." The Sixth Circuit wrote in 1974: "The entire record reeks with ethical, moral and professional irregularities, demanding a full scale judicial inquiry." Huie received 67,000 dollars in royalties and paid 40,000 to the two lawyers.[^3][^4]
|
||||
|
||||
He was found dead at his office in [[Guntersville, Alabama]], on November 22, 1986, after an apparent heart attack.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Huie, William Bradford. Letter to Walter Bedell Smith, September 14, 1951, and reply of Allen W. Dulles, Acting Director, September 22, 1951, with Who's Who clipping. CIA Reading Room, CIA-RDP80R01731R003100020068-6.
|
||||
[^2]: "William Bradford Huie, 76, Writer And Crusader for Civil Rights, Dies," *Washington Post,* November 24, 1986.
|
||||
[^3]: *Ray v. Rose,* 491 F.2d 285 (6th Cir. 1974).
|
||||
[^4]: *Ray v. Rose,* 535 F.2d 966 (6th Cir. 1976).
|
||||
34
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/William Luers.md
Normal file
34
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/William Luers.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Intelligence & Government"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- WilliamLuers
|
||||
- StateDepartment
|
||||
- OperationCondor
|
||||
- HenryKissinger
|
||||
- OrlandoLetelier
|
||||
alias:
|
||||
- William H. Luers
|
||||
summary: "Deputy assistant secretary of state who drafted the August 1976 cable warning the Condor governments against assassination abroad, pressed for its delivery, and was told on September 20 to take no further action."
|
||||
location: "Washington, D.C."
|
||||
created: 2026-09-21
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-21
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
William H. Luers was a deputy to [[Harry Shlaudeman]], assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, in 1976.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### The Cable
|
||||
|
||||
Shlaudeman's memorandum to [[Henry A. Kissinger|Henry Kissinger]] of August 5, 1976, warned that the [[Southern Cone]] governments "have established Operation Condor to find and kill terrorists" in their own countries and in Europe. Luers and Shlaudeman's other deputy, [[Hewson Ryan]], drafted the response over three weeks. Cable 209192 of August 23, drafted by R. Zimmerman and Luers, cleared by Shlaudeman, R. Kirk, and the under secretary [[Philip Habib]], and approved by Kissinger, went by the Roger Channel to the embassies in [[Buenos Aires]], [[Montevideo]], and [[Santiago]]. "Government planned and directed assassinations within and outside the territory of Condor members has most serious implications which we must face squarely and rapidly." There were "rumors that this cooperation may extend beyond information exchange to include plans for the assassination of subversives, politicians and prominent figures both within the national borders of certain Southern Cone countries and abroad." The ambassadors were to "seek appointment as soon as possible with highest appropriate official, preferably the chief of state." The embassy at [[La Paz]] was told: "We are not repeat not instructing you to make the specific demarche on Condor."[^1][^2]
|
||||
|
||||
Popper replied on August 24: "I seriously doubt that an approach to President Pinochet is the best way to achieve it. It is quite possible, even probable, that Pinochet has no knowledge whatever of Operation Condor." He proposed that the CIA station chief tell Contreras instead, "in the context of having heard a rumor which he cannot believe."[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
### No Further Action
|
||||
|
||||
Ambassador [[Ernest Siracusa]] in Montevideo declined to deliver it and asked for instructions; the ambassadors in Chile and Argentina raised concerns. Luers spent the following weeks pressing Ambassador [[David Popper]] to deliver the message to [[Augusto Pinochet]] or through the CIA to [[Manuel Contreras]]. On September 16 Kissinger cabled from [[Lusaka]] that he "declined to approve message to Montevideo" and "instructed that no further action be taken on this matter." On September 19 Luers cabled Shlaudeman in [[Costa Rica]] on how to proceed; the cable remains classified. On September 20 Shlaudeman directed Luers "to instruct the ambassadors to take no further action, noting that there have been no reports in some weeks indicating an intention to activate the Condor scheme." [[Orlando Letelier]] and [[Ronni Moffitt]] were killed in Washington the next morning.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: National Security Archive, "Operation Condor Verdict: GUILTY!," Electronic Briefing Book, May 27, 2016, with the memorandum of Harry Shlaudeman to the Secretary of State, August 5, 1976, the memorandum of conversation of Kissinger and César Guzzetti, June 10, 1976, and cables of September 16 and 20, 1976.
|
||||
[^2]: U.S. Department of State, cable 209192 to the embassies at Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Santiago, "Operation Condor," August 23, 1976, Secret, Roger Channel. National Security Archive, document 04 in "Operation Condor Verdict: GUILTY!," Electronic Briefing Book, May 27, 2016.
|
||||
[^3]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976,* vol. E-11, part 2, Documents on South America, 1973-1976, document 242, telegram 8210 from Santiago, August 24, 1976.
|
||||
32
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Alvin Ross.md
Normal file
32
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Alvin Ross.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- AlvinRoss
|
||||
- CubanNationalistMovement
|
||||
- CORU
|
||||
- OrlandoLetelier
|
||||
- CubanExiles
|
||||
alias:
|
||||
- Alvin Ross Díaz
|
||||
- Alvin Ross Diaz
|
||||
summary: "Former Tropicana blackjack dealer and Cuban Nationalist Movement member convicted of the Letelier murders in 1979 on a jailhouse informant's testimony, freed on appeal after United States v. Henry, and acquitted at retrial in 1981."
|
||||
location: "Union City, New Jersey"
|
||||
created: 2026-09-21
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-21
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Alvin Ross Díaz had been a blackjack dealer at the [[Tropicana Club|Tropicana]] in [[Havana]] before the revolution. [[Guillermo Novo]] introduced him to [[Michael Townley]] in September 1976 as "a comrade." He was at the meeting in a [[New Jersey]] hotel room on the night of September 10 with Novo, [[Virgilio Paz]], and [[Jose Dionisio Suarez|José Dionisio Suárez]] where Townley asked the [[Cuban Nationalist Movement]] to help kill [[Orlando Letelier]].[^1][^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Trial
|
||||
|
||||
An FBI informant reported in January 1978 that "a young action oriented cell under the control of Francisco 'Frank' Castro of the [[CORU]] organization," made up of Ross and Raciel Rodríguez, had bombed the Viasa Airlines office in Miami Beach on December 23, 1977. Indicted for the Letelier murders on August 1, 1978, Ross was tried with the Novo brothers from January 8, 1979. [[Sherman Kaminsky]], a racketeer awaiting sentence who had met him in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York, testified that Ross said "he was involved in the murder of Orlando Letelier together with generals in DINA," called Townley "a traitor, a rat, an informer," called Letelier "a rotten Communist Marxist," said he was "glad Letelier was dead," admitted "he had contributed two wires used in the bomb," and said "he would not pay for Letelier's murder because the CIA would be the scapegoat, people would believe anything of the CIA." The sentencing judge had told Kaminsky: "I am going to suspend the operation of that sentence depending on how you come through." Ross was convicted on February 14, 1979, and sentenced to two concurrent life terms.[^2][^3]
|
||||
|
||||
On September 15, 1980, the court of appeals reversed: after *[[United States v. Henry]]*, decided that June, testimony so obtained was inadmissible. At the retrial in May 1981 Townley, asked what Ross had done to carry out the assassination, answered: "There is nothing I can think of." The jury acquitted Ross and Novo of the murders.[^2][^4]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Dinges, John, and Saul Landau. *Assassination on Embassy Row*. McGraw-Hill, 1980, p. 14.
|
||||
[^2]: *United States v. Sampol,* 636 F.2d 621 (D.C. Cir. 1980).
|
||||
[^3]: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Miami, file 2-471, "CORU," August 16, 1978. National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book 153, document 13.; "USA v. Guillermo Novo Sampol et al., 78-CR-367," case synopsis, latinamericanstudies.org, not verified against the docket.
|
||||
[^4]: "Michael Moffitt, who survived a car bomb that killed his wife," United Press International, May 13, 1981; "New Tactics Led to Acquittal in Letelier Case," CIA Reading Room, CIA-RDP90-00552R000403680028-2, as summarized.
|
||||
|
|
@ -26,13 +26,16 @@ From August 13, 1965, to October 27, 1967, the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA
|
|||
|
||||
To the [[House Select Committee on Assassinations]] on June 1, 1978, Solie rejected the theory that Nosenko had been sent. "I concluded that he was under his own power when he contacted us in 1962. He did it without the knowledge of the KGB, and he went back to the Soviet Union. If he had been dispatched out, it would have been quite logical that there would have been contact with him in the Soviet Union." On Nosenko's statements about [[Lee Harvey Oswald]]: "The record reflects on 3 January 1968, I asked Nosenko to give me an account of everything he did in the Oswald investigation." Asked whether he had questioned Nosenko on what he wrote or compared it with other material, he said: "No, because I had no reason to disbelieve him." Asked whether he believed Nosenko had told the truth about Oswald: "Yes, I have no reason to disbelieve him."[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
As chief of the Security Analysis Group in June 1976 he identified for the agency's privacy staff the "Spencer Oliver" named in a Freedom of Information request from [[James McCord]], "who according to a newspaper article in 1972 was the Executive Director of the State Chairmens Association of the [[Democratic National Committee]]" and in whose office telephone "an alleged listening device was found."[^4]
|
||||
|
||||
### Wackenhut
|
||||
|
||||
On July 18, 1978, Solie certified that the committee's staff had reviewed the Office of Security's file on the [[Wackenhut Corporation]] "in conjunction with the HSCA's investigation into the deaths of President [[John F. Kennedy]] and Dr. [[Martin Luther King Jr.|Martin Luther King, Jr.]]"[^4]
|
||||
On July 18, 1978, Solie certified that the committee's staff had reviewed the Office of Security's file on the [[Wackenhut Corporation]] "in conjunction with the HSCA's investigation into the deaths of President [[John F. Kennedy]] and Dr. [[Martin Luther King Jr.|Martin Luther King, Jr.]]"[^5]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: House Select Committee on Assassinations, security classified testimony of Bruce L. Solie, June 1, 1978, record 180-10110-10010. National Archives, JFK Assassination Records Collection, pp. 5-6, 59, 65-66.
|
||||
[^2]: Central Intelligence Agency, "Family Jewels," memorandum of Howard J. Osborn, Director of Security, to the Executive Secretary, CIA Management Committee, May 16, 1973, with attachments, p. 00023.
|
||||
[^3]: House Select Committee on Assassinations, security classified testimony of Yuri Nosenko, June 20, 1978. National Archives, JFK Assassination Records Collection, pp. 44, 110-111.
|
||||
[^4]: Solie, Bruce L. Memorandum, July 18, 1978, JFK record 104-10130-10450. National Archives, JFK Assassination Records Collection.
|
||||
[^4]: Solie, Bruce L., Chief, Security Analysis Group. Memorandum for the file, "McCord, James Walter, Jr.," June 23, 1976, JFK record 104-10123-10362.
|
||||
[^5]: Solie, Bruce L. Memorandum, July 18, 1978, JFK record 104-10130-10450. National Archives, JFK Assassination Records Collection.
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
39
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/David Popper.md
Normal file
39
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/David Popper.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Intelligence & Government"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- DavidPopper
|
||||
- StateDepartment
|
||||
- Chile
|
||||
- OperationCondor
|
||||
- HenryKissinger
|
||||
- AugustoPinochet
|
||||
alias:
|
||||
- David H. Popper
|
||||
summary: "US ambassador to Chile from 1974 to 1977 whose human rights approaches drew Kissinger's marginalia, and who in August 1976 advised against warning Pinochet about Condor, proposing that the CIA raise it with Contreras instead."
|
||||
location: "Santiago, Chile"
|
||||
created: 2026-09-21
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-21
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
David H. Popper was the [[United States]] ambassador to [[Chile]] from February 1974 to May 1977, arriving five months after the coup.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Human Rights
|
||||
|
||||
Between April 1974 and February 1975 Popper made ten approaches to Chilean officials on human rights. On December 13, 1974, he told the foreign minister, Admiral [[Patricio Carvajal]], that "Congressional critics might be impressed and progress be possible if the GOC were to move towards restoration of normality regarding the applicability of traditional Chilean legal requirements and the state of siege, restoration of habeas corpus, a role for civil court review of military sentences and convincing assurances regarding alleged practice of torture." On February 3, 1975, he told the interior minister, General [[César Benavides]], that "the release of a few well known prisoners" was "probably not sufficient to restore the GOC's image." Beside those two entries on the list sent him by [[William D. Rogers]], [[Henry A. Kissinger|Henry Kissinger]] wrote: "What was this about?" On an earlier cable Kissinger had written: "Tell Popper to cut out the political science lectures."[^2][^3]
|
||||
|
||||
### Condor
|
||||
|
||||
The department's cable of August 23, 1976, told him to see the head of state about "government planned and directed assassinations within and outside the territory of Condor members." Popper answered the next day: "While I appreciate importance of objective sought in reftel, I seriously doubt that an approach to President Pinochet is the best way to achieve it." Given [[Augusto Pinochet]]'s "sensitivity regarding pressures by USG, he might well take as an insult any inference that he was connected with such assassination plots. It is quite possible, even probable, that Pinochet has no knowledge whatever of Operation Condor. Particularly of its more questionable aspects." He proposed instead that the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] station chief convey the message to Colonel [[Manuel Contreras]] of [[DINA]] "in the context of having heard a rumor which he cannot believe, but which if substantiated would be disastrous for the perpetrators." On August 27 [[Harry Shlaudeman]] told CIA officers that an approach to Pinochet would be futile. [[William Luers]] pressed Popper through September to deliver the message. On September 20 the ambassadors were told to take no further action. [[Orlando Letelier]] was killed in Washington the next day.[^4][^5]
|
||||
|
||||
On September 13 Popper reported that Pinochet's anniversary speech "contains little of encouragement to us," and that the release of 205 prisoners that day "does not indicate that detentions and 'disappearances' have ceased to occur in Chile. They still do occur." In early October, "after consulting with Ambassador Popper," the station chief "confronted the Chilean head of DINA, Colonel Manuel Contreras, with U.S. knowledge of Condor's existence. Colonel Contreras denied that our information of Condor was accurate and refused to admit that one of its objectives was to operate against terrorists in Europe. Recent clandestinely acquired information indicates that plans for Condor are continuing."[^6][^7]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976,* vol. E-11, part 2, Documents on South America, 1973-1976, editorial notes; tenure dates from the Department of State's Office of the Historian.
|
||||
[^2]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976,* vol. E-11, part 2, Documents on South America, 1973-1976, document 182, memorandum of William D. Rogers to the Secretary of State, "Démarches in Chile on Human Rights," February 8, 1975, with editorial note.
|
||||
[^3]: Dinges, John. *The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents*. New Press, 2004, p. 157.
|
||||
[^4]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976,* vol. E-11, part 2, Documents on South America, 1973-1976, document 241, telegram 209192, August 23, 1976; document 242, telegram 8210 from Santiago, August 24, 1976, with editorial note.
|
||||
[^5]: National Security Archive, "Operation Condor Verdict: GUILTY!," Electronic Briefing Book, May 27, 2016; *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976,* vol. E-11, part 2, Documents on South America, 1973-1976, document 245, telegram 4526 from San José, September 20, 1976, with editorial note on Secto 27128 of September 16.
|
||||
[^6]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976,* vol. E-11, part 2, Documents on South America, 1973-1976, document 244, telegram 8956 from Santiago, September 13, 1976.
|
||||
[^7]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976,* vol. E-11, part 2, Documents on South America, 1973-1976, document 253, paper prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency, "Items Which May Be Discussed," undated.
|
||||
|
|
@ -33,7 +33,13 @@ On September 10, 1976, at Union City, Townley "outlined my DINA mission to assas
|
|||
|
||||
Asked by the prosecutor [[Eugene Propper]] and the agent [[Carter Cornick]] where he had been the night before the bombing, Novo said: "That is my trump card. That is the ace up my sleeve." The informant [[Ricardo Morales Navarrete|Ricardo Morales]], then an officer of the Venezuelan [[DISIP]], had planted a story that Bosch was telling associates the "Novo brothers" had killed Letelier. "Bosch is a liar and a traitor to freedom," Novo said.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Trials
|
||||
|
||||
Indicted on August 1, 1978, Novo was tried with Alvin Ross and his brother Ignacio Novo from January 8, 1979. Michael Townley, who had pleaded, testified that DINA "ordered him to secure assistance from the CNM" so as to isolate itself, and that Novo had insisted Townley take part personally. A jailhouse informant, Antonio Polytarides, testified to Novo's admissions. The defense argued that Townley "was in fact an agent of the United States Central Intelligence Agency which had planned the assassination of Letelier." On February 14, 1979, the jury convicted all three; Novo received two life terms and five years for lying to the grand jury. On September 15, 1980, the court of appeals reversed under *[[United States v. Henry]]*, decided that June, which barred testimony from informants cultivated by the government among pretrial detainees; Ignacio's conviction fell for want of a separate trial. At the retrial of May 1981 the jury acquitted Novo and Ross of the murders and convicted Novo of the false declarations. In October 1981 he was released from federal prison by mistake, officials having confused him with his brother. An FBI informant had reported in January 1978 that he was organizing [[CORU]] cells in Union City "for military action in the U.S. and against the country of Venezuela."[^3][^4]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Branch, Taylor, and Eugene M. Propper. *Labyrinth*. Viking, 1982, pp. 101-108.
|
||||
[^2]: Dinges, John, and Saul Landau. *Assassination on Embassy Row*. McGraw-Hill, 1980, pp. 9-21, 147-152, 240.
|
||||
[^3]: *United States v. Sampol,* 636 F.2d 621 (D.C. Cir. 1980).
|
||||
[^4]: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Miami, file 2-471, "CORU," August 16, 1978. National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book 153, document 13. "Wrong Man Freed in Letelier Case," *Washington Post,* October 21, 1981, as summarized.
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ On May 16, 1973, Osborn forwarded to the management committee "summaries of acti
|
|||
|
||||
### Pennington
|
||||
|
||||
After [[James McCord]], "an ex-CIA agent," was arrested at the [[Watergate scandal|Watergate]] in June 1972, [[Lee Pennington]], a former inspector of the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] then paid by the agency as a consultant and "an old family friend of the McCords," visited Mrs. McCord. "He found her burning papers and documents. Earlier, she had burned typewriter ribbons." He reported it, and the agency wrote it up. "For more than a year and a half, it lay in the CIA files like a paper bomb," while the bureau's agents "were getting persistent denials from the CIA." When Senator [[Howard Baker]] began to inquire into the agency's part in the cover-up, "a middle-level CIA employee who knew of the hidden memo threatened to blow the whistle." Director [[William Colby]] took it to Representative [[Lucien Nedzi]], who held hearings and concluded that the agency had not sent Pennington to burn the papers, "as the memo seemed to suggest." Osborn said he had not known of the memorandum. "It led to the early retirement of Osborn," Nedzi said. Osborn said: "I had planned for over a year to retire in June."[^2]
|
||||
After [[James McCord]], "an ex-CIA agent," was arrested at the [[Watergate scandal|Watergate]] in June 1972, [[Lee Pennington]], a former inspector of the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] then paid by the agency as a consultant and "an old family friend of the McCords," visited Mrs. McCord. "He found her burning papers and documents. Earlier, she had burned typewriter ribbons." He reported it, and the agency wrote it up. "For more than a year and a half, it lay in the CIA files like a paper bomb," while the bureau's agents "were getting persistent denials from the CIA." When Senator [[Howard Baker]] began to inquire into the agency's part in the cover-up, "a middle-level CIA employee who knew of the hidden memo threatened to blow the whistle." Director [[William Colby]] took it to Representative [[Lucien Nedzi]], who held hearings and concluded that the agency had not sent Pennington to burn the papers, "as the memo seemed to suggest." In January 1974, as the inspector general prepared to review the Watergate files, Osborn "ordered that the Pennington materials be removed." An employee of the Personnel Security Division copied them to his safe. Osborn wrote the memorandum of February 22, 1974, that disclosed the matter, testified to the Senate committee's staff on February 25, and retired on February 26.[^5] Osborn said he had not known of the memorandum. "It led to the early retirement of Osborn," Nedzi said. Osborn said: "I had planned for over a year to retire in June."[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -40,3 +40,4 @@ After [[James McCord]], "an ex-CIA agent," was arrested at the [[Watergate scand
|
|||
[^2]: Anderson, Jack. "Washington Merry-Go-Round," *Washington Post,* April 2, 1974, p. B15. CIA Reading Room, CIA-RDP84-00499R000200010002-2.
|
||||
[^3]: U.S. Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. *Final Report, Book III*. S. Rept. 94-755, 1976, pp. 579, 600-602, 723-724.
|
||||
[^4]: Osborn, Howard J. Memorandum for the record, November 8, 1967, JFK record 104-10133-10076. National Archives, JFK Assassination Records Collection.
|
||||
[^5]: U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, minority staff, "CIA Investigation," memorandum of Senator Howard H. Baker Jr., 1974, later printed in *Final Report,* S. Rept. 93-981, pp. 1115-1165. CIA Reading Room copy, document 01481990.
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
37
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/James O'Connell.md
Normal file
37
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/James O'Connell.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Intelligence & Government"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- JamesOConnell
|
||||
- CIA
|
||||
- CIAOfficeOfSecurity
|
||||
- JohnnyRoselli
|
||||
- AssassinationPlots
|
||||
- FBI
|
||||
alias:
|
||||
- James P. O'Connell
|
||||
- Jim Olds
|
||||
summary: "FBI agent turned CIA security officer who as Johnny Roselli's case officer from September 1960 carried the Castro poison plot, rose to deputy director of security, and in 1968 vetted James Earl Ray's lawyer."
|
||||
born: 1917-02-19
|
||||
died: 1992-02-15
|
||||
location: "McLean, Virginia"
|
||||
created: 2026-09-21
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-21
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
James Patrick O'Connell was born in [[New York City|New York]] in 1917 and graduated from [[St. John's University]] in 1939. He served with the Navy in the Atlantic, was a special agent of the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] from 1946 to 1951, and joined the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] as a security officer in 1951.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Roselli
|
||||
|
||||
In September 1960 [[Sheffield Edwards]], the director of security, put O'Connell to the operation against [[Fidel Castro]] arranged through [[Robert Maheu]]. Under the name Jim Olds he was introduced to [[Johnny Roselli]] and was his case officer from September 14, 1960, until May 1962, when [[William Harvey]] took him over. Roselli brought in [[Sam Giancana]] and [[Santos Trafficante, Jr.|Santos Trafficante]]. Poison pills from the agency's technical division went to [[Cuba]] by way of [[Juan Orta]] and later [[Tony Varona]]. Edwards recorded the operation for Attorney General [[Robert F. Kennedy|Robert Kennedy]] on May 14, 1962.[^2][^3]
|
||||
|
||||
### Deputy Director of Security
|
||||
|
||||
By 1968 O'Connell was deputy director of security. On October 15 of that year he signed the [[CIA Office of Security|Office of Security]]'s memorandum on [[Arthur Hanes]], the former mayor of [[Birmingham, Alabama|Birmingham]] then representing [[James Earl Ray]], recording Hanes's service as a confidential correspondent from 1952 to 1959 and his part in recruiting [[Alabama Air National Guard|Alabama Guard]] pilots for the [[Bay of Pigs Invasion|Bay of Pigs]]. He retired in 1973 with the Intelligence Medal of Merit, worked as a security consultant, and died at [[Arlington, Virginia|Arlington]] on February 15, 1992.[^1][^4]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: "Obituaries," *Washington Post,* February 17, 1992.
|
||||
[^2]: Central Intelligence Agency, "Family Jewels," memorandum of Howard J. Osborn, Director of Security, May 16, 1973, with attachments, pp. 00012-00014.
|
||||
[^3]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963,* vol. X, Cuba, document 337, memorandum for the record by Sheffield Edwards, May 14, 1962, with source note.
|
||||
[^4]: Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Security, memorandum for the record, "HANES, Arthur J.," October 15, 1968. Record 104-10117-10312, National Archives.
|
||||
36
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Jose Dionisio Suarez.md
Normal file
36
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Jose Dionisio Suarez.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- JoseDionisioSuarez
|
||||
- CubanNationalistMovement
|
||||
- OrlandoLetelier
|
||||
- DINA
|
||||
- CubanExiles
|
||||
alias:
|
||||
- José Dionisio Suárez Esquivel
|
||||
- José Dionisio Suárez
|
||||
- Charco de Sangre
|
||||
summary: "Cuban Nationalist Movement member who drove Michael Townley to Orlando Letelier's house in 1976 and, by Townley's account, pressed the buttons at Sheridan Circle, a fugitive until 1990 and released from immigration detention in 2001."
|
||||
born: 1939
|
||||
location: "Union City, New Jersey"
|
||||
created: 2026-09-21
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-21
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
José Dionisio Suárez Esquivel, a former officer of the Cuban revolutionary army, was called "El Cepillo" and "Charco de Sangre," pool of blood, "for his work in carrying out executions since the revolutionaries' victory." In December 1974 he went with [[Guillermo Novo]] to [[Chile]] "to pay homage to Pinochet," entering with [[Orlando Bosch]]. At a [[Union City, New Jersey|Union City]] motel he and Armando Santana searched [[Michael Townley]]'s luggage at gunpoint and found the passport of Kenneth Enyart.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### September 1976
|
||||
|
||||
Suárez was at the meeting of September 10, 1976, where Townley asked the [[Cuban Nationalist Movement]] for help. He "drove to Washington in his late-model American car" on September 18, lent Townley more than a hundred dollars, and because he had a new job to start in [[New Jersey]] on Monday pressed the others to move quickly. He supplied a blasting cap. "During the ride to Letelier's house, I was informed by Paz and Suarez that they expected me to place the device on the car as they wished to have a DINA agent, namely myself, directly tied to the placing of the device," Townley stated. Suárez drove him to [[National Airport]] for the first flight to Newark. Townley told investigators he believed Suárez set off the bomb "by pressing two buttons on a telephone beeping device as he trailed Letelier at [[Sheridan Circle]]."[^1][^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Fugitive
|
||||
|
||||
Indicted on August 1, 1978, with Novo, [[Alvin Ross]], [[Manuel Contreras]], [[Pedro Espinoza]], [[Armando Fernandez Larios|Armando Fernández Larios]], and [[Virgilio Paz]], he had earlier "spent 11½ months in a D.C. jail rather than testify before a grand jury." FBI agents found him on April 11, 1990, in a modest house in [[St. Petersburg, Florida]], an unemployed painter known as Jose Suárez, with his wife and a fifteen-month-old son. "Jose is basically a scapegoat," his wife said. "In exchange for a promise not to prosecute his wife," he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to murder a foreign official and was sentenced to eight years. Released on probation in 1997, he was held by the immigration service at [[Bradenton, Florida|Bradenton]] because [[Cuba]] would not take him, until the Supreme Court's ruling of June 2001 against indefinite detention. Freed on August 14, 2001, he said: "I want to clarify a lot of things. There have been many lies."[^2][^3][^4]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Dinges, John, and Saul Landau. *Assassination on Embassy Row*. McGraw-Hill, 1980, pp. 16-21, 148-151, 240.
|
||||
[^2]: McAllister, Bill. "Suspect Arrested in Letelier Slaying," *Washington Post,* April 12, 1990.
|
||||
[^3]: *United States v. Sampol,* 636 F.2d 621 (D.C. Cir. 1980).; "USA v. Guillermo Novo Sampol et al., 78-CR-367," case synopsis, latinamericanstudies.org, not verified against the docket.
|
||||
[^4]: "Conspirator in '76 Letelier Assassination Released," Reuters, *Washington Post,* August 16, 2001, p. A13.
|
||||
|
|
@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
created: 2026-05-15
|
||||
updated: 2026-05-16
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-21
|
||||
title: Lee Harvey Oswald
|
||||
aliases:
|
||||
- Lee Oswald
|
||||
|
|
@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ Lee Harvey Oswald (October 18, 1939 - November 24, 1963) was the man arrested fo
|
|||
|
||||
### Background and Soviet Defection
|
||||
|
||||
Oswald was born in [[New Orleans, Louisiana|New Orleans]] and raised in Texas and [[New York]]. He enlisted in the [[United States Marine Corps|Marine Corps]] in 1956 and was assigned to Marine Air Control Squadron 1 (MACS-1) at Atsugi Air Base in [[Japan]] - a facility of particular intelligence significance. Atsugi's MACS-1 unit included height-finding radars (the MPS-16 radar among them), and Atsugi simultaneously hosted [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] Detachment C of the [[U-2]] reconnaissance program, which conducted overflights of the [[Soviet Union]] whose existence was concealed from Soviet authorities until Gary Powers was shot down in May 1960. A Japanese-American technical intelligence unit, JTAG, was also co-located at the base. As a radar operator, Oswald had access to data from high-altitude U-2 operations - information CIA counterintelligence chief [[James Angleton]] later assessed as potentially significant given Oswald's subsequent defection.
|
||||
Oswald was born in [[New Orleans, Louisiana|New Orleans]] and raised in Texas and [[New York]]. He enlisted in the [[United States Marine Corps|Marine Corps]] in 1956 and was assigned to Marine Air Control Squadron 1 (MACS-1) at Atsugi Air Base in [[Japan]] - a facility of particular intelligence significance. Atsugi's MACS-1 unit included height-finding radars (the MPS-16 radar among them), and Atsugi simultaneously hosted CIA Detachment C of the [[U-2]] reconnaissance program, which conducted overflights of the [[Soviet Union]] whose existence was concealed from Soviet authorities until Gary Powers was shot down in May 1960. A Japanese-American technical intelligence unit, JTAG, was also co-located at the base. As a radar operator, Oswald had access to data from high-altitude U-2 operations - information CIA counterintelligence chief [[James Angleton]] later assessed as potentially significant given Oswald's subsequent defection.
|
||||
|
||||
Oswald received a hardship discharge in September 1959. Within two weeks, he traveled to the Soviet Union and, in October 1959, walked into the U.S. Embassy in Moscow to renounce his American citizenship. Soviet authorities initially denied him permanent residency but eventually allowed him to remain, settling him in [[Minsk]], where he worked in a factory under [[KGB]] surveillance. He married Marina Prusakova, a Soviet citizen, in April 1961. Soviet defectors were routinely debriefed by the KGB; given Oswald's Atsugi assignment, the extent of any debriefing and what he disclosed has never been established.
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -30,15 +30,15 @@ Oswald subsequently sought to return to the [[United States]]. In 1962, the [[De
|
|||
|
||||
### CIA File: CI/SIG and Counterintelligence Handling
|
||||
|
||||
The CIA's counterintelligence Staff D, known as CI/SIG (Counterintelligence Special Investigations Group) and run by [[James Angleton]], opened a 201 personnel file on Oswald on December 9, 1960 - more than two and a half years before the assassination. The file, numbered 201-289248, was opened by Ann Egerter, a CI/SIG officer, under the name "Lee Henry Oswald" - with his middle name rendered as "Henry" rather than the correct "Harvey." Recording an incorrect identifying detail in a newly opened file was a CI/SIG technique called "marked cards": deliberately inserting a small error to detect whether file contents had been obtained by a foreign intelligence service, since any leak would carry the false detail. The file was connected to the HT/LINGUAL mail intercept program, in which the CIA monitored correspondence between American citizens and addresses in the Soviet Union.[^2]
|
||||
The CIA's counterintelligence Staff D, known as CI/SIG (Counterintelligence Special Investigations Group) and run by James Angleton, opened a 201 personnel file on Oswald on December 9, 1960 - more than two and a half years before the assassination. The file, numbered 201-289248, was opened by Ann Egerter, a CI/SIG officer, under the name "Lee Henry Oswald" - with his middle name rendered as "Henry" rather than the correct "Harvey." Recording an incorrect identifying detail in a newly opened file was a CI/SIG technique called "marked cards": deliberately inserting a small error to detect whether file contents had been obtained by a foreign intelligence service, since any leak would carry the false detail. The file was connected to the HT/LINGUAL mail intercept program, in which the CIA monitored correspondence between American citizens and addresses in the Soviet Union.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
On October 10, 1963 - six weeks before the Kennedy assassination - the CIA [[Mexico City]] station cabled headquarters reporting that "Lee Henry Oswald" had visited the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City the previous week. CIA headquarters' response cable described Oswald in terms suggesting limited familiarity with his history - omitting his Soviet defection, his two-and-a-half years in [[Minsk]], and his summer 1963 [[Fair Play for Cuba Committee]] activities in New Orleans. This information was all available at headquarters and would have made Oswald's Soviet Embassy contact appear far more operationally significant.
|
||||
On October 10, 1963 - six weeks before the Kennedy assassination - the CIA Mexico City station cabled headquarters reporting that "Lee Henry Oswald" had visited the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City the previous week. CIA headquarters' response cable described Oswald in terms suggesting limited familiarity with his history - omitting his Soviet defection, his two-and-a-half years in Minsk, and his summer 1963 [[Fair Play for Cuba Committee]] activities in New Orleans. This information was all available at headquarters and would have made Oswald's Soviet Embassy contact appear far more operationally significant.
|
||||
|
||||
The cable was routed through the office of Jane Roman, a senior CIA officer and wife of Howard Roman. Roman's initials appear on the cable as a sign-off. In 1994, journalist [[John Newman (historian)|John Newman]] showed Roman the cable and the withheld information during a recorded interview. Roman stated: "I'm signing off on something that I know isn't true." She was unable or unwilling to identify who at CIA headquarters had directed the response be drafted as it was, or why.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Pro-Castro Activities and New Orleans
|
||||
|
||||
In the summer of 1963, Oswald appeared in New Orleans distributing [[Fair Play for Cuba Committee]] (FPCC) leaflets stamped with a fictitious address - 544 Camp Street - that was the same building as 531 Lafayette Street, the office of [[Guy Banister]], a former [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] Special Agent in Charge who ran an anti-Castro intelligence network. Oswald gave a radio interview on WDSU defending Castro's Cuba and reportedly was the only FPCC member in New Orleans. His activities were monitored by the FBI.
|
||||
In the summer of 1963, Oswald appeared in New Orleans distributing Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) leaflets stamped with a fictitious address - 544 Camp Street - that was the same building as 531 Lafayette Street, the office of [[Guy Banister]], a former [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] Special Agent in Charge who ran an anti-Castro intelligence network. Oswald gave a radio interview on WDSU defending Castro's Cuba and reportedly was the only FPCC member in New Orleans. His activities were monitored by the FBI.
|
||||
|
||||
The coincidence of the FPCC leaflets' address with Banister's office has been examined extensively without definitive resolution: whether Oswald and Banister knew each other, whether the address overlap was deliberate or accidental, and whether Oswald's pro-Castro activities were genuine political expression, intelligence cover, or something else, remain unresolved questions in the HSCA record.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -48,13 +48,15 @@ In late September and early October 1963, Oswald (or someone representing himsel
|
|||
|
||||
The CIA's evidentiary record from this surveillance proved anomalous. Photographs of individuals entering the Soviet Embassy on the dates Oswald claimed to have visited showed a heavyset, dark-haired man who was clearly not Oswald. CIA headquarters acknowledged this in cable DIR 84888, sent to the Mexico City station on November 23, 1963 - the day after the assassination - stating that the photographs "are not of Lee Oswald." The Mexico City station's explanation was that its cameras had malfunctioned or that the visitor was photographed at a moment when cameras were not operational.
|
||||
|
||||
The agency's own internal account, drafted by [[Raymond Rocca]] of the counterintelligence staff for the general counsel on May 12, 1967, when [[Jim Garrison]] made the photograph an issue, states that Oswald's contact with the Soviet consulate on October 1, 1963, "was reported to CIA Headquarters on 9 October 1963" and distributed on October 10, "predicated entirely on the assumption that Oswald probably intended to redefect to the Soviets," and that the station "guessed" the man photographed that day "might be Oswald because of the coincidence in time." The station passed to the FBI on the afternoon of November 22 three photographs of the man taken at 12:17 on October 1, five taken at 11:32 on October 4, and two taken outside the Cuban embassy on October 15. One was cropped by agent Bardwell Odum in Dallas and shown to [[Marguerite Oswald]] on November 23. "No photograph was taken, acquired or received of Oswald, alone or with any individual, by CIA in front of the Cuban Embassy, the Soviet Embassy, or anywhere else in Mexico." A request to the Navy for a photograph of Oswald "had not been serviced before the assassination date." Rocca sent the draft to [[Thomas Karamessines]] "based on a file review as well as my recollections of the event," and a colleague noted: "This checks completely with my recollection." Its conclusion: "CIA's considered judgment is that this man and his photograph are totally irrelevant to the Oswald investigation."[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
The LIENVOY recordings posed a separate problem. FBI agents who listened to recordings of intercepted phone calls involving someone claiming to be "Lee Oswald" stated the voice spoke broken Russian-accented English - markedly inconsistent with Oswald's documented fluency in Russian and his recorded voice from the New Orleans WDSU radio interview. Whether the recordings and photographs involved a different person using Oswald's name, technical failures in CIA surveillance, or something else was examined by the HSCA Lopez Report and not resolved.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
The HSCA commissioned a 350-page classified staff study, "Oswald, the CIA, and Mexico City," by Edwin Lopez and Dan Hardway (the Lopez Report), completed in 1979, partially released in 1996, and more fully released in 2003. The Lopez Report concluded that CIA information about Oswald "was not reported to CIA Headquarters in an accurate and expeditious manner prior to the assassination" and that the Mexico City station had not reported "all information in the possession of the CIA Mexico City Station" to headquarters. The report is available at history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/lopezrpt/.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### The Assassination
|
||||
|
||||
On October 14, 1963, Oswald was hired at the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) in [[Dallas, Texas|Dallas]]. President Kennedy's motorcade route was announced in Dallas newspapers on November 19, passing directly in front of the TSBD.
|
||||
On October 14, 1963, Oswald was hired at the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) in Dallas. President Kennedy's motorcade route was announced in Dallas newspapers on November 19, passing directly in front of the TSBD.
|
||||
|
||||
On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was shot while riding in his motorcade through [[Dealey Plaza]]. The Warren Commission concluded that three shots were fired from the sixth floor of the TSBD, where Oswald's presence was established, and that all three shots were fired by Oswald using a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle traced to him via a mail-order purchase under the alias "A. Hidell." Oswald was arrested that afternoon at the Texas Theatre after the killing of Officer Tippit. He denied killing Kennedy and denied owning the rifle. He was charged with both the Kennedy assassination and the Tippit murder.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -66,7 +68,7 @@ The Warren Commission concluded Ruby acted alone from personal grief over Kenned
|
|||
|
||||
### Dallas: [[George de Mohrenschildt]] and the Russian Community
|
||||
|
||||
After Oswald's return from the Soviet Union in June 1962, he settled in the Dallas area, where a White Russian emigre community took social interest in Marina. The most prominent member to actively befriend Oswald was [[George de Mohrenschildt]], a petroleum geologist and Texas academic who maintained a documented relationship with CIA Domestic Contact Service officer [[J. Walton Moore]]. De Mohrenschildt told journalist [[Edward Jay Epstein]] shortly before his own death in 1977 that Moore had asked him to befriend Oswald and report on what Oswald had observed in the Soviet Union - with CIA assistance on a Haitian oil contract as the reciprocal arrangement. De Mohrenschildt obtained that contract in March 1963, immediately after his period of closest contact with Oswald.[^3]
|
||||
After Oswald's return from the Soviet Union in June 1962, he settled in the Dallas area, where a White Russian emigre community took social interest in Marina. The most prominent member to actively befriend Oswald was [[George de Mohrenschildt]], a petroleum geologist and Texas academic who maintained a documented relationship with CIA Domestic Contact Service officer [[J. Walton Moore]]. De Mohrenschildt told journalist [[Edward Jay Epstein]] shortly before his own death in 1977 that Moore had asked him to befriend Oswald and report on what Oswald had observed in the Soviet Union - with CIA assistance on a Haitian oil contract as the reciprocal arrangement. De Mohrenschildt obtained that contract in March 1963, immediately after his period of closest contact with Oswald.[^4]
|
||||
|
||||
### Intelligence Connections and Unresolved Questions
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -80,4 +82,5 @@ The [[Assassination Records Review Board]] (ARRB), operating under the JFK Recor
|
|||
|
||||
[^1]: Warren Commission. *Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy.* Government Printing Office, 1964. House Select Committee on Assassinations. *Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives.* Government Printing Office, 1979.
|
||||
[^2]: Newman, John. *Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth about the Unknown Relationship between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK.* Skyhorse Publishing, 2008 (updated ed.). Lopez, Edwin, and Dan Hardway. "Oswald, the CIA, and Mexico City" (Lopez Report). HSCA Staff Report, 1979. Available at history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/lopezrpt/. Assassination Records Review Board. *Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board.* Government Printing Office, 1998.
|
||||
[^3]: House Select Committee on Assassinations. *Report.* Vol. XII (de Mohrenschildt). Government Printing Office, 1979. Available at aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol12/. Epstein, Edward Jay. *Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald.* Reader's Digest Press, 1978.
|
||||
[^3]: Rocca, Raymond G. Draft memorandum to Lawrence Houston, "Garrison Allegations Re CIA Photograph in Warren Commission Report: The Facts," May 12, 1967, with routing slips of May 15, 1967, JFK record 104-10005-10374.
|
||||
[^4]: House Select Committee on Assassinations. *Report.* Vol. XII (de Mohrenschildt). Government Printing Office, 1979. Available at aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol12/. Epstein, Edward Jay. *Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald.* Reader's Digest Press, 1978.
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
37
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Lee Pennington.md
Normal file
37
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Lee Pennington.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Intelligence & Government"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- LeePennington
|
||||
- CIA
|
||||
- CIAOfficeOfSecurity
|
||||
- FBI
|
||||
- Watergate
|
||||
- AmericanSecurityCouncil
|
||||
alias:
|
||||
- Lee R. Pennington Jr.
|
||||
summary: "Retired FBI inspector kept on a monthly retainer by the CIA's Security Research Staff, who watched James McCord's wife burn papers days after the Watergate arrests, a fact the agency withheld from investigators until 1974."
|
||||
location: "Washington, D.C."
|
||||
created: 2026-09-21
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-21
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Lee R. Pennington Jr. was "a former FBI inspector" and "an old family friend of the McCords." The [[Central Intelligence Agency]]'s own account describes him as "for a number of years an informant of CIA's Office of Security. Being involved in work for the [[American Legion]] in the field of security he did research on the subject for CIA." [[Paul Gaynor]], head of the Security Research Staff of the [[CIA Office of Security|Office of Security]], retained him by the month until December 1972.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||
|
||||
### June 1972
|
||||
|
||||
Shortly after [[James McCord]] was arrested at the [[Watergate scandal|Watergate]], Pennington visited the McCord house, "where he found Mrs. McCord, with her daughter and son-in-law, destroying papers." He reported it. In August 1972 the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]]'s Alexandria office asked the Office of Security about a "Pennington" who might have been McCord's supervisor. The agency answered with "the name of another Pennington, an employee of the CIA Office of Security, but who had never been a supervisor of McCord." The Senate minority staff found the purpose was "to withhold the name of Lee R. Pennington." In November and December 1972 he passed his case officer a memorandum by McCord about [[Jack Anderson]].[^1][^3]
|
||||
|
||||
The published minority report of the Senate committee gives the retainer as "$250 per month until December of 1973" and states: "The Agency has advised that the Security Research Staff was abolished in August of 1973."[^4]
|
||||
|
||||
### 1974
|
||||
|
||||
In January 1974, when the agency's inspector general was to review the Watergate files, [[Howard Osborn]] "ordered that the Pennington materials be removed." An employee of the Personnel Security Division copied them to his safe and told the inspector general. Osborn's memorandum of February 22, 1974, went to the Senate committee, the oversight committees, and the special prosecutor. Pennington testified in executive session on February 23 "that he did not go to the McCord home for the purpose of searching for or destroying CIA-related documents, but does acknowledge witnessing the destruction of documents." The testimony of others, the staff wrote, indicated "more active participation." Osborn retired on February 26. "The Security Research Staff has now been abolished." The staff noted that Pennington "may have been a 'domestic agent,' possibly in violation of the CIA's charter," and that his agency file "apparently has portions missing from it." The file itself went only to the House subcommittee of [[Lucien Nedzi]], with "gaps" the agency acknowledged. Nedzi concluded that the agency had not sent him to burn the papers. McCord wrote that Pennington, then 60, "came over to bring food to my family" and destroyed nothing.[^1][^2][^5]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, minority staff, "CIA Investigation," memorandum of Senator Howard H. Baker Jr., 1974, later printed in *Final Report,* S. Rept. 93-981, pp. 1115-1165. CIA Reading Room copy, document 01481990.
|
||||
[^2]: Anderson, Jack. "Washington Merry-Go-Round," *Washington Post,* April 2, 1974, p. B15.
|
||||
[^3]: Central Intelligence Agency, "Questions Raised About Lee R. Pennington," 1974. CIA Reading Room, document 01435032.
|
||||
[^4]: U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities. "Minority Report on CIA Involvement, Submitted at the Request of Senator Howard H. Baker, Jr.," in *The Senate Watergate Report,* Dell, 1974, vol. 2, pp. 732 ff. (S. Rept. 93-981, 1974), "Pennington Matter."
|
||||
[^5]: McCord, James W., Jr. Letter to the editor, *Washington Star-News,* July 3, 1974. CIA Reading Room, document 01482011.
|
||||
38
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Raymond Rocca.md
Normal file
38
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Raymond Rocca.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Intelligence & Government"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- RaymondRocca
|
||||
- CIA
|
||||
- CIACounterintelligenceStaff
|
||||
- JamesAngleton
|
||||
- GarrisonGroup
|
||||
- WarrenCommission
|
||||
alias:
|
||||
- Raymond G. Rocca
|
||||
- Ray Rocca
|
||||
summary: "Research chief on Angleton's counterintelligence staff who handled the CIA's side of the Warren Commission and wrote its papers on Jim Garrison in 1967, proposing to brief Hoover and McCone and line up press channels."
|
||||
born: 1917
|
||||
died: 1993-11-11
|
||||
location: "Falls Church, Virginia"
|
||||
created: 2026-09-21
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-21
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Raymond G. Rocca "began his intelligence career during World War II. It included service in [[Rome]], where he went in 1944 with the [[Office of Strategic Services]] and later with the [[Central Intelligence Group]] and then the newly established [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]]." He was chief of research and analysis on the [[CIA Counterintelligence Staff|Counterintelligence Staff]] under [[James Jesus Angleton]] and retired in 1975 "as acting chief of counterintelligence."[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Garrison
|
||||
|
||||
[[Richard Helms]] assigned him the New Orleans matter in 1967. On April 26 he wrote that it would be "unwise to dismiss as trivial any attempts by Garrison to link the Agency to his plot." On May 12 he drafted for the general counsel the agency's account of the Mexico City photograph, "based on a file review as well as my recollections of the event." At the first meeting of the [[Garrison Group]] on September 20 "Rocca felt that Garrison would indeed obtain a conviction of Shaw for conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy." On September 26 he circulated "a survey of possible courses of action": charges of impersonation against [[Gordon Novel]] and [[Donald P. Norton]]; an effort "to block or head off any attempts to put the [[Playboy]] article into the [[Congressional Record]]"; briefings of [[Clark Clifford]] and [[John McCone]], who "is in a position to exert extensive influence in Catholic and Republican Party circles"; "Mr. [[J. Edgar Hoover]] is probably the single most important person to be considered in reacting to Garrison's false charges"; "carefully selected channels of communication lined up in advance" in the press; and "materials for covert exploitation" presenting the investigation as "wittingly or unwittingly designed to cover, exonerate or exculpate the Soviets in the Oswald case." He was to "work up a graphic of the organization as conceived by Garrison." In March 1968 he wrote that Garrison's charge of a plot by the agency and the military-industrial complex "is by and large a rehash."[^2][^3][^4]
|
||||
|
||||
### Later
|
||||
|
||||
The [[Church Committee]] took his deposition on November 25, 1975, on the doctrine of counterespionage. The [[House Select Committee on Assassinations]] took his testimony on July 17, 1978. He died at Arlington Hospital of a stroke on November 11, 1993, aged 76.[^1][^5]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: "Raymond G. Rocca, CIA Official, Dies," *Washington Post,* November 13, 1993.
|
||||
[^2]: Holland, Max. "The Lie That Linked CIA to the Kennedy Assassination," *Studies in Intelligence,* vol. 45, no. 5, 2001.
|
||||
[^3]: Janney, F.W.M. Memoranda for the record, Garrison Group meetings no. 1 and 2, September 20 and 26, 1967, JFK records 104-10428-10023 and 104-10428-10022.
|
||||
[^4]: Rocca, Raymond G. Memorandum, "This is a survey of possible courses of action," September 26, 1967, JFK record 104-10435-10022; draft memorandum to Lawrence Houston, "Garrison Allegations Re CIA Photograph in Warren Commission Report," May 12, 1967, JFK record 104-10005-10374.
|
||||
[^5]: U.S. Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. *Final Report, Book I*. S. Rept. 94-755, 1976, p. 167.; House Select Committee on Assassinations, security classified testimony of Raymond Rocca, July 17, 1978.
|
||||
30
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Rolando Otero.md
Normal file
30
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Rolando Otero.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- RolandoOtero
|
||||
- CubanExiles
|
||||
- Terrorism
|
||||
- Miami
|
||||
- DINA
|
||||
- Chile
|
||||
alias:
|
||||
- Rolando Otero Hernandez
|
||||
summary: "Cuban exile charged with nine Miami bombings of 1975, including the FBI office, who fled to Chile and was handed to the FBI by Pinochet's government in 1976, a surrender the Cuban Nationalist Movement resented."
|
||||
location: "Miami, Florida"
|
||||
created: 2026-09-21
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-21
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
At 5:58 on the morning of October 17, 1975, an Eastern Airlines reservation clerk took a call: "Listen to me. This is not a joke. We have planted some bombs in the complex. The first one will go off in a couple of minutes." Minutes later a bomb went off in a bank of lockers at [[Miami International Airport]]. A federal grand jury indicted Rolando Otero Hernández for that bombing and others of December 3 and 4, 1975, in a seventeen-count indictment, later moved to [[Jacksonville, Florida|Jacksonville]] for the press coverage in Miami. The clerk picked his voice from a spread of five by "accent, tone, rhythm and word formation." The state charged him with nine bombings, among them the FBI office in Miami, and tried him from November 15, 1976.[^1][^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Chile
|
||||
|
||||
Otero fled to [[Chile]]. In 1976 the FBI's legal attaché in [[Buenos Aires]], [[Robert Scherrer]], obtained his surrender. "The Chilean government first denied having Otero, then offered to turn him over in a coffin." Cuban exiles complained that Chile had given haven to Otero and [[Orlando Bosch]], "both fugitives from the FBI, only to betray them." When [[Michael Townley]] of [[DINA]] asked the [[Cuban Nationalist Movement]] for help against [[Orlando Letelier]] in September 1976, [[Guillermo Novo]] argued that "DINA should have killed Otero rather than turn him over to the FBI." A Dade County detective went to Venezuela in October 1976 to persuade [[Ricardo Morales Navarrete]] to testify at Otero's trial. An index to Morales's deposition of 1981, as transcribed on an exile website, lists Otero under the alias "Condor."[^3][^4]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: *United States v. Otero-Hernandez,* 418 F. Supp. 572 (M.D. Fla. 1976).
|
||||
[^2]: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Miami, teletype to Director, "Bombing of Cubana Airlines DC-8 Near Barbados, West Indies, October 6, 1976," November 2, 1976, JFK Assassination Records Collection. National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book 153, document 10.
|
||||
[^3]: Dinges, John, and Saul Landau. *Assassination on Embassy Row*. McGraw-Hill, 1980, pp. 9-10, 130.
|
||||
[^4]: Deposition of Ricardo Morales Navarrete, Dade County Circuit Court, criminal case 81-17247, index.
|
||||
|
|
@ -28,7 +28,10 @@ In [[Rome]], where Townley was arranging with the followers of [[Stefano Delle C
|
|||
|
||||
In September 1976 Paz gave Townley the remote-control detonator used against [[Orlando Letelier]], one Townley "himself had constructed months before in Santiago by modifying a radio paging device." Paz and [[Jose Dionisio Suarez]] drove with Townley to Letelier's house. "I was informed by Paz and Suarez that they expected me to place the device on the car," Townley stated, "as they wished to have a DINA agent, namely myself, directly tied to the placing of the device."[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
Paz was indicted with six others on August 1, 1978, and remained a fugitive when Suárez was caught in 1990. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to murder a foreign official and was sentenced to twelve years.[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Dinges, John, and Saul Landau. *Assassination on Embassy Row*. McGraw-Hill, 1980, pp. 16-19, 152-160.
|
||||
[^2]: Branch, Taylor, and Eugene M. Propper. *Labyrinth*. Viking, 1982, pp. 243-246, 303.
|
||||
[^3]: McAllister, Bill. "Suspect Arrested in Letelier Slaying," *Washington Post,* April 12, 1990. "USA v. Guillermo Novo Sampol et al., 78-CR-367," case synopsis, latinamericanstudies.org, not verified against the docket.
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -24,8 +24,11 @@ NBC broadcast a program critical of Garrison's conduct on June 19, 1967. On July
|
|||
|
||||
"On 1 May, Jack Miller, a former assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's Criminal Division, called the CIA's general counsel to offer some intelligence that had come to Miller 'from within Garrison's office,'" the agency's own journal recorded in 2001. "Miller's source was Walter Sheridan." The general counsel was [[Lawrence Houston]], and the call is recorded in a memorandum of May 1, 1967, headed "Report Concerning Garrison-Kennedy-CIA." Miller was the same lawyer who represented Sheridan against Garrison two years later.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
In September 1967, with Sheridan "subpoenaed by Garrison to appear before the Grand Jury in New Orleans," his lawyer Jack Miller, "who also is counsel for the Slocums in the Tofte case," told the agency's general counsel that Shaw's lawyers had approached him for someone in government "who could steer them as to the true facts and circumstances." Miller had been the channel from Garrison's office to the CIA in May; in September he was the channel from Shaw's defense.[^4]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Holland, Max. "The Lie That Linked CIA to the Kennedy Assassination," *Studies in Intelligence,* vol. 45, no. 5, 2001. https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/Lie-That-Linked-CIA.pdf
|
||||
[^2]: Sheridan v. Garrison, 415 F.2d 699 (5th Cir. 1969).
|
||||
[^3]: DiEugenio, James. "The Wegmann Files," *Probe,* vol. 4, no. 4, May-June 1997, pp. 8-9.
|
||||
[^4]: Houston, Lawrence R. Memorandum for the Executive Director-Comptroller, "Garrison Investigation," OGC 67-1787, September 18, 1967, JFK record 104-10428-10024.
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -28,6 +28,8 @@ The defense "hired not one, but two top-notch private detective services," the [
|
|||
|
||||
In September 1967 the defense, "confused by the smoke-screen Garrison was raising" about the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]], asked the [[Department of Justice|Justice Department]] for someone "who could steer them as to the true facts and circumstances." The agency and the department declined, since "if Garrison learned of federal assistance to Shaw's lawyers, he'd play it to the hilt." Through the contact the department learned that Shaw had not told his own lawyers that from 1948 to 1956 he had reported to the agency's [[Domestic Contact Service]] on 33 occasions. The agency's general counsel, [[Lawrence Houston]], wrote on October 2, 1967, that if Shaw were to "be convicted on information that could be refuted by CIA," then "we may be in for some difficult decisions." At the trial Dymond asked Shaw whether he had ever worked for the agency, and Shaw answered: "No, I have not."[^4]
|
||||
|
||||
The approach went through [[Herbert J. Miller Jr.|Jack Miller]], the former head of the criminal division, who was also the lawyer of the NBC man [[Walter Sheridan]], then under subpoena from Garrison. Houston reported on September 18 that Miller "has been approached by the lawyers for Clay Shaw, Mr. Irving Diamond and Mr. FNU Wakeman. They told Miller they felt Shaw was leveling with them but that they were so confused by the smoke screen Garrison was raising they would like to talk to someone in Government who could steer them as to the true facts and circumstances." Houston told Miller that Justice would claim executive privilege for any agency witness. [[Nathaniel Kossack]] of the criminal division "agrees it is tempting to try to do something, such as talk to Shaw's lawyers, but he feels it is rather dangerous unless we know that we can trust them absolutely."[^5]
|
||||
|
||||
Wegmann's daughter gave his files to the review board in 1995. They include the diary of [[Tom Bethell]], a member of Garrison's staff.[^2][^4]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
|
@ -36,3 +38,4 @@ Wegmann's daughter gave his files to the review board in 1995. They include the
|
|||
[^2]: DiEugenio, James. "The Wegmann Files," *Probe,* vol. 4, no. 4, May-June 1997, pp. 8-9; National Archives and Records Administration, finding aid to the Papers of Edward F. Wegmann.
|
||||
[^3]: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Domestic Intelligence Division, informative note, April 14, 1967, JFK record 124-10369-10048; Assassination Records Review Board, letters to Southern Research Company, electronic files of Philip G. Golrick.
|
||||
[^4]: Holland, Max. "The Lie That Linked CIA to the Kennedy Assassination," *Studies in Intelligence,* vol. 45, no. 5, 2001. https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/Lie-That-Linked-CIA.pdf
|
||||
[^5]: Houston, Lawrence R. Memorandum for the Executive Director-Comptroller, "Garrison Investigation," OGC 67-1787, September 18, 1967, JFK record 104-10428-10024.
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
35
10 - PEOPLE/(T-Z)/José Zara.md
Normal file
35
10 - PEOPLE/(T-Z)/José Zara.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Intelligence & Government"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Person
|
||||
- JoseZara
|
||||
- DINA
|
||||
- CarlosPrats
|
||||
- RonniMoffitt
|
||||
- OperationCondor
|
||||
- PuntaPeuco
|
||||
alias:
|
||||
- José Zara Holger
|
||||
- Jose Zara Holger
|
||||
- Jose Zara
|
||||
summary: "DINA exterior department officer sentenced to fifteen years for the Prats murders, released from Punta Peuco on August 25, 2025, rearrested within two days for the killing of Ronni Moffitt, and convicted in June 2026."
|
||||
location: "Santiago, Chile"
|
||||
created: 2026-09-21
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-21
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
José Zara Holger, a retired brigadier of the Chilean army, served in the exterior department of [[DINA]], which Judge [[Paola Plaza]] found to consist of one group for international policy and another for operations abroad.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Prats
|
||||
|
||||
In 2010 the Chilean courts convicted him, with [[Manuel Contreras]], [[Pedro Espinoza]], and [[Raúl Iturriaga Neumann|Raúl Iturriaga]], of the murders of General [[Carlos Prats]] and [[Sofía Cuthbert]] in [[Buenos Aires]] on September 30, 1974, and sentenced him to fifteen years. He served them at [[Punta Peuco]] and was released on Monday, August 25, 2025.[^1][^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Moffitt
|
||||
|
||||
He had been charged, with Iturriaga, as an author of the killing of [[Ronni Moffitt]], the 25-year-old colleague of [[Orlando Letelier]] who died in the same car on September 21, 1976, on complaints brought by the [[Agrupación de Familiares de Ejecutados Políticos]] and the former interior under-secretary Rodrigo Ubilla. Until then the only Chilean convictions in the case, those of Contreras and Espinoza by Judge Adolfo Bañados, concerned Letelier alone. Zara had been left at liberty in that case because he was serving the Prats sentence. On August 27, 2025, on the order of Judge Alejandro Aguilar, standing in for Plaza, the investigative police's human rights brigade arrested him and returned him to custody; his appeal was rejected. "No tengo que pedirle perdón a nadie," he told an interviewer that October. "Yo no tuve ninguna participación." On June 15, 2026, Plaza sentenced Zara, Iturriaga, and Espinoza to fifteen years each for Moffitt's death.[^1][^3]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Basso Prieto, Carlos. "José Zara Holger fue detenido de nuevo: esta vez por crimen de Ronni Moffitt," *El Mostrador,* August 27, 2025.
|
||||
[^2]: Chilean press reports of the 2010 judgments of Judge Alejandro Solís and the Supreme Court (La Tercera, El Mostrador), not read in full.
|
||||
[^3]: Kornbluh, Peter. "A Modicum of Justice for Ronni Karpen Moffitt," *The Nation,* September 2026.; The Clinic, interview of October 15, 2025, as quoted in press summaries.
|
||||
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