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Porter Goss and Operation 40


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The journalist, Daniel Hopsicker, has received a photograph in the post. It came from Debbie Seal, the widow of CIA operative, Barry Seal. The person claimed that the photograph was taken in a Mexico City nightclub of members of the CIA’s secret assassination squad known as “Operation 40".

On 11th December, 1959, Colonel J. C. King, chief of CIA's Western Hemisphere Division, sent a confidential memorandum to Allen W. Dulles, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. King argued that in Cuba there existed a "far-left dictatorship, which if allowed to remain will encourage similar actions against U.S. holdings in other Latin American countries."

As a result of this memorandum Dulles established Operation 40. The group was presided over by Richard Nixon. Tracy Barnes became operating officer of what was also called the Cuban Task Force. The first meeting chaired by Barnes took place in his office on 18th January, 1960, and was attended by David Atlee Phillips, E. Howard Hunt, Jack Esterline, and Frank Bender.

On 4th March, 1960, La Coubre, a ship flying a Belgian flag, exploded in Havana Bay. It was loaded with arms and ammunition that had been sent to help defend Cuba's revolution from its enemies. The explosion killed 75 people and over 200 were injured. Fabian Escalante, an officer of the Department of State Security (G-2), later claimed that this was the first successful act carried out by Operation 40.

Over the next few years Operation 40 worked closely with several anti-Castro Cuban organizations including Alpha 66. Bernard L. Barker, Frank Sturgis, William C. Bishop and David Morales also joined the project. Cuban figures used by the Operation 40 included Antonio Veciana, Roland Masferrer and Eladio del Valle.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKoperation40.htm

Daniel Hopsicker claims that President George W Bush's nominee to head the CIA, Porter Goss, appears to be in the photograph. Hopsicker writes:

The Mexico City nightclub photo reveals a mixed group of apparent Cuban exiles, Italian wise guys, and square-jawed military intelligence types. It was discovered among keepsakes kept in the safe of the widow of CIA pilot and drug smuggler Barry Seal (third from left). It appears on the cover of “Barry & ‘the boys:’ The CIA, the Mob & America’s Secret History” (MadCow Press, Eugene OR. 2001).

Goss appears second on the left. He is seated between notorious CIA pilot and drug smuggler Barry Seal (third left) and the equally-notorious CIA assassin Felix Rodriguez (front left), a Cuban vice cop under the corrupt Mob-run Batista regime who later became an Iran Contra operative and a confidant of the first George Bush.

The only one of the spook celebrants displaying any hint of tradecraft (seated on the other side of the table covering his face with his sport coat) is Frank Sturgis, most famous as one of the Watergate burglars.

Beside him sits (front right) William Seymour, New Orleans representative of the Double-Chek Corporation, a CIA front used to recruit pilots (like Seal), and a man who many Kennedy assassination researchers believe impersonated Lee Harvey Oswald on several occasions when the lone nut gunman was out of the country and so unable to impersonate himself.

As we saw it, the photo was in a yellowed frame, the kind used by nightclub photographers to create instant keepsakes. Seal’s widow Debbie Seal kept it in her safe, where it was overlooked by a 7-man team from the State Department which arrived at her house in 1995 to comb through her records.

It bears the name of a nightclub in Mexico City, and is stamped January 22, 1963, which, if you’re counting, was exactly ten months to the day before the Kennedy assassination.

Barry Seal was then a young-looking 24-year old. Porter Goss was the same age.

It is now known that Porter Goss was based at the JM/WAVE, the CIA station in Miami where he worked with people such as Ted Shackley, David Sanchez Morales, Edward Lansdale, William Harvey and Tracy Barnes.

Members of Operation 40 have been associated with the assassination of JFK. Does this mean that Goss is now a suspect? Can anyone help with identifying the men in the photograph.

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I slapped this comparison together with the best appropriate shot of Porter I could find at short notice. Given the 40 odd years difference, one has to say that the ears seem to match and the profile in general appears correct.

Do you recognize anyone else? Is it for example, William Seymour? Did you know he worked for the Double-Chek Corporation

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I slapped this comparison together with the best appropriate shot of Porter I could find at short notice. Given the 40 odd years difference, one has to say that the ears seem to match and the profile in general appears correct.

Do you recognize anyone else? Is it for example, William Seymour? Did you know he worked for the Double-Chek Corporation

http://xooberant.com/Barry+who/index.html

The only one you can be 100% sure of is Barry Seal 3rd left. The man that Hopsicker claims is Frank Sturgis is actually Tosh Plumlee (according to Plumlee himself). Anyone can see it is NOT Sturgis by comparing with these:

http://www.jfkmurdersolved.com/sturgis.htm

Also, look at where Sturgis is wearing his watch.

However it is an exact match for Tosh, who is left handed, wearing his watch right, up to the dark eyebrows and the greasy rolled back hairlock:

http://www.jfkmurdersolved.com/TOSHTRANS1.htm

Edited by Wim Dankbaar
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Do you recognize anyone else? Is it for example, William Seymour? Did you know he worked for the Double-Chek Corporation

John,

It is not William Seymour. I don't know about the Double Chek corporation but through 1963, Seymour had a pretty full dance card with the anti-Castro business associating with the likes of Dennis Harber, Bernardo De Torres and Loran Hall. Also, Seymour was 26 in 1963 and the guy in the Barry and the Boys photo looks much older.

As for the guy 3rd from the right, I think that is Alberto 'Loco' Blanco and the guy 4th from the right is Jorgo Robreno. The guy 5th from the right might be a character who was included on a CIA watch list. I don't know his name but his comparison is below.

BTW Wim, I agree that the guy second from the right is most likely Plumlee but Tosh in later years wore his watch on his left hand. See the photo with Nazario Sargen below.

Cheers,

James

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Has Tosh told you who the other men in the photograph are?

Wim has also stated that according to Tosh the photo goes "way beyond 1963," i.e. it was taken much later. Perhaps Wim can also expand on that.

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  • 4 weeks later...
John,

I slapped this comparison together with the best appropriate shot of Porter I could find at short notice. Given the 40 odd years difference, one has to say that the ears seem to match and the profile in general appears correct.

FWIW.

James

James, this website showing comparison photos may have already been pointed to here? (If so, I missed seeing it in this thread)

Anyhow, here it is:

http://www.madcowprod.com/

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  • 5 months later...

Good Day.... With respect to the 23JAN63 group photo that appears on the book cover of "Barry and the Boyz," it reads like, FWIW, that the recent "Granma" article here (about 3/4th's into the article)....

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2005/marzo/mar8/11mexico.html

takes a stab at identifying the men seen in that same photo....

A photo of the Cuban American mafia from Miami, taken at a cabaret in Mexico in 1963. All are connected to terrorist attacks on Cuba. On the left, at the bottom towards the back and leaning on the table, Juan Restoy, a former political leader from Batista’s regime, turned drug trafficker and caught by the FBI in the 70’s. Félix Rodríguez Mendigutía, a CIA agent of Cuban origin implicated in the Coca-Contra scandal, who ordered the death of Ernesto Che Guevara in Bolivia, in October, 1967; drug trafficker Barry Seal; Guillermo and Ignacio Novo Sampol, leaders of the CORU terrorist group, responsible for CANF’s paramilitary activities. On the right, at the bottom towards the back, William Seymour, linked to Kennedy’s assassination; Frank Sturgis, CIA agent and Watergate "burglar"; drug trafficker Felipe de Diego; Mafioso Richard Cain and according to several experts, Porter Goss…the current head of the CIA! Sturgis also participated in the failed invasion of Playa Girón, in Cuba and afterwards was recruited by a CIA agent named George H.W. Bush. Right before his death, he confessed to having participated in J.F. Kennedy’s assassination. The Novo brothers participated in the assassination of former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and his colleague Ronni Moffit in Washington.

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Don Roberdeau

U.S.S. John F. Kennedy, CV-67, "Big John" Plank Walker

Sooner, or later, the Truth emerges Clearly

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T ogether

E veryone

A chieves

M ore

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"There's other things involved that are detrimental to other things."

- REGIS BLAHUT, ex-C.I.A. Office of Security officer and liaison to the H.S.C.A., after he was fired from the C.I.A. in 1978, after he was caught having removed the autopsy photos of President KENNEDY from an HSCA safe even though he was never given authorization to access the autopsy photos.

Edited by Don Roberdeau
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