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Bradley Ayers


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This article appeared in the Burnett County Sentinel (22nd June, 2005). What do researchers make of Bradley Ayers? Is he a reliable witness:

http://www.burnettcountysentinel.com/Main....&ArticleID=8947

Who shot the president? It’s been the standard joke for many years. Do you know who killed President Kennedy?

I recall a movie with Nicholas Cage in which secret film is discovered and he gets his hands on it and points to the film and tells his girl friend, “Do you want to know who shot President Kennedy?”

Well, a local man says he knows and he’s written a book to tell all. Bradley Ayers of Frederic, who by the way is the same guy who has been fighting the Polk County Board tooth and nail and who ran for a county seat but lost and who has been getting a reputation as someone who is trying to rock the boat, is the writer of the new book.

Ayers, a former CIA and DEA undercover operative received a book deal from Vox Pop/Drench Kiss Media Corporation for a new book called Zenith Secret. He wrote the book once before but it was highly edited. Authors say this time Ayers book will “tell all.”

“Brad Ayers exposes secrets he’s waited a lifetime to tell: the CIA’s secret war on Cuba and the involvement of far-right Cubans and CIA in the murder of both John and Robert Kennedy."

Some are going to say this is a crackpot book by a crackpot. Others may say it’s about time the secrets were released. I guess only time will tell if the book will have an impact on Americans.

Ayers has been saying for years that the CIA has had involvement in many operations he says weren’t legal. He claims he worked with two key plotters of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

“Although Ayers attempted to publish this tale in 1976, CIA pressure stopped him from full disclosure. Now, with Vox Pop as publisher, Ayers can finally reveal the whole story,” said a release from the publishers.

Vox Pop Publisher Sander Hicks is quoted as saying, “Brad was a witness to a lot of conniving and cover-up while at the CIA.”

This is the same company that is publishing a book about the death of Senator Paul Wellstone, claiming there was also a plot to the death of the Minnesota Senator.

Brad Ayers is a man people love to hate around here. He’s also a man of deep convictions and very strong political feelings.

I know he was pleased to finally get a chance to tell this story.

What makes it so interesting is the fact he’s a local guy who is going out on a limb with a very unpopular message.

I guess only time will tell how well accepted this message will be.

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John,

Personally, I think Brad Ayers has a lot to offer. The fact that he mixed with the likes of Morales and Robertson puts him amongst the action where his first hand information has to be valuable indeed.

This paragraph below is from a preliminary draft review of the manuscript. Intriguing stuff to say the least.

James

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John,

You could probably reach him through the publisher. The Vox Pop website is http://www.voxpopnet.net/ and CEO Sander Hicks's email address is sander@drenchkiss.com

Ron

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  • 3 weeks later...

A few notes on Bradley Earl Ayers.

Ayers was a member of the United States Army. He served as a paratrooper before being assigned to the CIA in their efforts to remove Fidel Castro from power in Cuba. According to Ayers he was briefed at the CIA by General Victor Krulak, a personal friend of President Kennedy and a member of the Special Group (SGA).

In 1963 Ayers was based in Florida where he worked with members of anti-Castro groups like Alpha 66 and took part in Operation Mongoose. Gaeton Fonzi claims that Ayers worked closely with Johnny Roselli in attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro.

In his book, The War That Never Was (1976), Ayers claimed he trained small teams of commandoes "to infiltrate Cuba, reach human targets, and assassinate them. Anyone in a senior position in government was fair game, and it reached down to the provincial heads, police chiefs and so on. But the principal target, we knew, was Castro - there was no secret about that amongst our people."

Ayers also points out the Robert Kennedy visited CIA personnel at their base in the Everglades: "I'm confident in my gut, that Bobby Kennedy was aware of what we were doing down there. It wasn't a case of the Agency mounting these assassination operations without the knowledge of the Special Group... RFK had a hands-on kind of control of the operations."

After the assassination of JFK the CIA ordered Ayers to shut down the operation. Ayers returned to the Florida Keys in 1971 and according to one source recovered a suitcase of cash hidden in a mangrove thicket on upper Key Largo.

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Well it seems like Ayers gives us a pretty good idea of what he did and who he knew in his first book. He was one of two military trainers recruited to come in and give tactical military training to CIA recruited exiles who had been selected, screened and vetted by JMWAVE to go into its small sabotage groups. He gives some very detailed descriptions of that training. Of course as part of the overall picture that was part of the Mongoose project and as a military trainer he worked along side Robertson (whom he describes at some length), Lynch and other trainers and his overall operational supervisor was Morales (whom he also describes at some length and which was a real key for Fonzi in trying to figure out who the Big Indian was). As a JMWAVE military trainer he would not have been working with exile groups which were not under the control of or part of JMWAVE operations.

As I recall he never met Roselli although he visited one camp with personnel he was told had done missions for Roselli. Perhaps a good read of the book would yield his comments on assassination missions or some mention of Phillips which I don't recall.

I didn't recall that assassination was a key part of the training he did nor the missions he describes - the ones I recall sound very much like the sabotage missions that were officially approved all the way up to JFK as part of the Mongoose project in that period of time. He also describes SWIFT boat operations , a base and the mother ships which are all well documented now.

All in all his first seemed pretty accurate with a bit of "romance" added - the work he did on investigating Morales was good investigation but was done privately after his book was out.

The question will be what experiences he had or sources he may be willing to produce that will provide something beyond his first book.....he expressed a good deal of suspicion about the assassination in the first book, perhaps now we will get to see something more solid behind that suspicion. The good news is that we do know enough about him to have a baseline for evaluation and that's a real advantage.

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Namebase includes the following page references:

Anderson, J. Peace, War, and Politics. 1999 (234-5)

Corn, D. Blond Ghost. 1994 (104)

Fonzi, G. The Last Investigation. 1993 (369, 371-2, 376-7)

Hinckle, W. Turner, W. The Fish is Red. 1981 (114-5, 116, 174, 184-8, 193-4)

Marrs, J. Crossfire. 1990 (192)

Neuberger, G. Opperskalski, M. CIA in Mittelamerika. 1983 (123)

Peake, H. Reader's Guide to Intelligence Periodicals. 1992 (183)

Penthouse 1981-10 (182)

Scott, P.D. Deep Politics. 1993 (178)

Summers, A. Conspiracy. 1981 (262)

Tarasov, K. Zubenko, V. The CIA in Latin America. 1984 (217)

Turner, W. Rearview Mirror. 2001 (212-3)

http://www.namebase.org/main1/Bradley-Earl-Ayers.html

My page on Ayers can be found here:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKayers.htm

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As I recall, Ayers mentioned in his book that Johnny Rosselli was called "Colonel" by the men working with him and that he had his own swift boat and assault team with which to conduct raids. One piece of info that's never been developed that could be a real find is the name of the men who worked with Rosselli in his swift boat. As many here know, men under fire develop a loyalty to each other beyond their loyalty to a cause. It could very well be that Rosselli's men developed a loyalty to him beyond their loyalty to the President, and were quite willing to assist him when he was ordered to kill Kennedy.

Edited by Pat Speer
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Pat, a couple of thoughts on that. First, Ayers did not get to JMWAVE and to that particular camp until the summer of 1963, some six months after the Harvey/Roselli assassination plots were supposedly laid to rest and Harvey was gone. What Ayers heard about Col Roselli was apparently from Robertson. I'd love to find something concrete to show Roselli was present or involved with that particular group of Cubans as of late summer 1963 but Ayers didn't give us that in his first book. Second, Roselli didn't give anybody much about any plots aside from the early poison pill attempts; that was supposedly on the agenda for his next visit interview (which someone made sure he didn't make). So we have a lot of juicy rumors about Roselli and exciting boat raids into Cuba but nothing to back it up - and its very likely all that was very much compartimentalized from normal JMWAVE operations anyway. Certainly Ayers description of that independent little camp is a great deal different that the tight controls somebody like Shackley ran.

I think there is a lot of value in considering a small and highly aggressive team that would have been loyal to Roselli and maybe Robertson and Morales as well. Maybe Ayers knows something about that but it would seem, given Ayers time frame and associations at JMWAVE, that the best we could expect is perhaps some inside gossip - unless of couse he continued his investigations into Morales and otehrs beyond what he provided to Fonzi and other researchers?

-- Larry

As I recall, Ayers mentioned in his book that Johnny Rosselli was called "Colonel" by the men working with him and that he had his own swift boat and assault team with which to conduct raids.  One piece of info that's never been developed that could be a real find is the name of the men who worked with Rosselli in his swift boat.  As many here know, men under fire develop a loyalty to each other beyond their loyalty to a cause.  It could very well be that Rosselli's men developed a loyalty to him beyond their loyalty to the President, and were quite willing to assist him when he was ordered to kill Kennedy.

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Pat, a couple of thoughts on that.  First,  Ayers did not get to JMWAVE and to that particular camp until the summer of 1963,  some six months after the Harvey/Roselli assassination plots were supposedly laid to rest and Harvey was gone.  What Ayers heard about Col Roselli was apparently from Robertson.  I'd love to find something concrete to show Roselli was present or involved with that particular group of Cubans as of late summer 1963 but Ayers didn't give us that in his first book.  Second, Roselli didn't give anybody much about any plots aside from the early poison pill attempts;  that was supposedly on the agenda for his next visit interview (which someone made sure he didn't make).  So we have a lot of juicy rumors about Roselli and exciting boat raids into Cuba but nothing to back it up -

I went back and re-read Ayers' passage about Rosselli, and it is indeed "Bob" who tells Ayers about Rosselli. Bob says that Rosselli worked out of Washington and ran raids from time to time, using "Bob's" own team, led by a Julio. Ayers mentions that in his presence one of Julio's snipers came up and told Julio that he'd hit 3 cormorants at a range of nearly 500 yards.

If Ayers' book names the names of men like Julio it should be VERY interesting.

Edited by Pat Speer
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The Julio mentioned may indeed be Julio G. Garcia.

That is Garcia on the right in the image below. Apart from Roselli, he also had connections to Eloy Menoyo and during the late summer of 1963 during that Everglades training period, to Herminio Diaz Garcia.

During the hunt for Che Guevara, Garcia was still working as an Agency asset and was stationed in Bolivia. His cover was as an Urban Police Advisor associating with a Dr. Gonzalez who in fact was Gustavo Villoldo, ex Brigade 2506 member and graduate of Fort Benning.

FWIW.

James

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Great work, James. Do we know if he worked with Robertson? Ayers usually disguised guy's names, but I suppose Julio was generic enough so that he might not care.

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Great work, James.  Do we know if he worked with Robertson? Ayers usually disguised guy's names, but I suppose Julio was generic enough so that he might not care.

Hi Pat,

I believe Garcia was along for the Robertson led raid against a diesel plant in Casilda. Also present were Tony Izquierdo and Rafael Villaverde. Garcia may have also been one of the Low Beam Cubans who went to the Congo with Robertson.

I think Garcia did have a war name but I can't find it off hand.

BTW, this image below shows Garcia on the left and Gustavo Villoldo on the right.

James

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Great info, James as always with a picture. What more about "Garcia" where was he in relation with revolution--with Second Front or Alpha 66 later? Did Felix talk about him? What were later incarnations of Garcia? Was he in Congo? Sources for info? Thanks as always.

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great info, James as always with a picture.  What more about "Garcia" where was he in relation with revolution--with  Second Front or Alpha 66 later?  Did Felix talk about him? What were later incarnations of Garcia?  Was he in Congo? Sources for info?  Thanks as always.

Hi Christy,

Most of my information on Garcia comes from conversations with various Cubans who were associated with different militant groups.

Garcia was definitely connected to Eloy Menoyo who was one of the founders of Alpha 66. Menoyo was running this camp in the Everglades during the late summer of 1963. The guy running the training was Vicente Mendez (that his him in the first photo I posted of Garcia). There are more images of Mendez in the photo archives under the 'Alpha 66' section. This component has direct connections to Herminio Diaz Garcia and eventually Tony Cuesta.

I have no idea what that idiot Rodriguez said about him but Garcia seems to stay involved with the Robertson (Congo) and Morales (Bolivia) connection of Cuban assets.

The raid into Casilda may have been more than just blowing up a diesel plant. This is where the Soviets off-loaded a lot of their hardware. I am trying to get more on this but information is sketchy. When I have something, I will let you know.

Interesting photo below. I don't wish to divert this thread away from Ayers so maybe John can move this to its own thread.

James

Edited by James Richards
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