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Michael Vernon Townley


John Simkin

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I have never heard Michael Vernon Townley's name mentioned in relation to the JFK assassination. He was born in Waterloo, Iowa, in 1942. His father, Vernon Townley, was appointed head of the Ford Motor Company in Chile. As a result, the family moved to Santiago. Vernon Townley, who had developed links with the CIA while working in the Philippines, became involved in politics and helped fund the 1958 presidential campaign of conservative candidate, Jorge Alessandri who narrowly managed to defeat Salvador Allende in the election.

Michael Townley went to work for Investors Overseas Services, the company owned by Bernard Cornfeld and Robert Vesco. In 1961 Townley married Mariana Callejas. Although active in the Socialist Party, she was actually working as an informer for Chilean military intelligence. Soon afterwards Townley began working for the CIA.

Townley became associated with a Cuban group called the Chicago Junta. This group included Frank Sturgis, Orlando Bosch, Antonio Veciana and Aldo Vera Serafin. According to Peter Dale Scott, this operational hit team was disbanded on 21st November, 1963, the day before JFK was assassinated.

Does anyone know anything about the Chicago Junta?

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At the moment I don't have anything concrete to add. However there is here a pattern which repeats in other contexts. If anyone sees reason to mention J Venable and also Central American aid groupings (CIA guises) please do so.

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In 1967 Townley moved from Chile to Miami. According to Donald Freed (Death in Washington: The Murder of Orlando Letelier) Towney was now being sponsored by Frank Sturgis and the Secret Army Organization (SAO). "Townley began an intensive study of electronics and explosives under the tutelage of several former CIA men who were in the process of taking over an electronics operation in the Fort Lauderdale area." One of Townley's tasks was to plant bombs under the cars of people living in Miami.

In 1969 the CIA arranged for Townley to be sent to Chile under the alias of Kenneth W. Enyart. He was accompanied by Aldo Vera Serafin of the SAO. Townley now came under the control of David Atlee Phillips who had been asked to lead a special task force assigned to prevent the election of Salvador Allende as President of Chile. This campaign was unsuccessful and Allende gained power in 1970. He therefore became the first Marxist to gain power in a free democratic election.

The CIA attempted to persuade Chile's Chief of Staff General Rene Schneider, to overthrow Allende. He refused and on 22nd October, 1970, his car was ambushed. Schneider drew a gun to defend himself, and was shot point-blank several times. He was rushed to hospital, but he died three days later. Military courts in Chile found that Schneider's death was caused by two military groups, one led by Roberto Viaux and the other by Camilo Valenzuela. It was claimed that the CIA was providing support for both groups.

David Atlee Phillips set Townley the task of organizing two paramilitary action groups Orden y Libertad (Order and Freedom) and Protecion Comunal y Soberania (Common Protection and Sovereignty). Townley also established an arson squad that started several fires in Santiago. Townley also mounted a smear campaign against General Carlos Prats, the head of the Chilean Army. Prats resigned on 21st August, 1973. His replacement as Commander in Chief was General Augusto Pinochet.

On 11th September, 1973, a military coup removed Allende's government from power. Salvador Allende died in the fighting in the presidential palace in Santiago. General Augusto Pinochet replaced Allende as president. Soon afterwards Townley was recruited by General Juan Manuel Contreras, the head of DINA, the new secret police.

Townley's main task was to deal with those dissents who had fled Chile after General Augusto Pinochet had gained power. This included General Carlos Prats who was writing his memoirs in Argentina. Donald Freed argues in "Death in Washington: The Murder of Orlando Letelier" that: "On September 30, 1974, shortly after the first anniversary of the violent overthrow of the Allende government, Townley and a team of assassins murdered Carlos Prats and his wife in Buenos Aires. Their auto was exploded by a bomb."

Promoted to the rank of major by General Juan Manuel Contreras Townley made regular visits to the United States in 1975 to meet with Rolando Otero and other members of the White Hand group. In September 1975, Townley's death squad struck again. Former Chilean vice-president Bernardo Leighton and his wife were gunned down in Rome by local fascists working with DINA.

Donald Freed claims that on 29th June, 1976, Townley had a meeting with Bernardo De Torres, Armando Lopez Estrada, Hector Duran and General Juan Manuel Contreras Sepulveda. The following month Frank Castro, Luis Posada, Orlando Bosch and Guillermo Novo established Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU). CORU was partly financed by Guillermo Hernández Cartaya, another Bay of Pigs veteran closely linked to the CIA. He was later charged with money laundering, drugs & arms trafficking and embezzlement. The federal prosecutor told Pete Brewton that he had been approached by a CIA officer who explained that "Cartaya had done a bunch of things that the government was indebted to him for, and he asked me to drop the charges against him."

One Miami police veteran told the authors of Assassination on Embassy Row (1980): "The Cubans held the CORU meeting at the request of the CIA. The Cuban groups... were running amok in the mid-1970s, and the United States had lost control of them. So the United States backed the meeting to get them all going in the same direction again, under United States control." It has been pointed out that George H. W. Bush was director of the CIA when this meeting took place.

Frank Castro told the Miami Herald why he had helped establish CORU: "I believe that the United States has betrayed freedom fighters around the world. They trained us to fight, brainwashed us how to fight and now they put Cuban exiles in jail for what they had been taught to do in the early years."

On 18th September, 1976, Orlando Letelier, who served as foreign minister under Salvador Allende, was traveling to work at the Institute of Policy Studies in Washington when a bomb was ignited under his car. Letelier and Ronni Moffitt both died of their injuries.

The director of the CIA, George H. W. Bush, was quickly told that DINA and several of his contract agents were involved in the assassination. However, he asked members of Operation Mockingbird to cover-up the role that the CIA and DINA had played in the killings. Jeremiah O'Leary in the Washington Star (8th October, 1976) wrote: "The right-wing Chilean junta had nothing to gain and everything to lose by the assassination of a peaceful and popular socialist leader." Newsweek added: "The CIA has concluded that the Chilean secret police was not involved." (11th October).

William F. Buckley also took part in this disinformation campaign and on 25th October wrote: "U.S. investigators think it unlikely that Chile would risk with an action of this kind the respect it has won with great difficulty during the past year in many Western countries, which before were hostile to its policies." According to Donald Freed, Buckley had been providing disinformation for the General Augusto Pinochet government since October 1974. He also unearthed information that William Buckley's brother, James Buckley, had met with Michael Townley and Guillermo Novo Sampol in New York City just a week before Orlando Letelier was assassinated.

The FBI eventually became convinced that Michael Townley was organized the assassination of Letelier. In 1978 Chile agreed to extradite him to the United States. Townley confessed he had hired five anti-Castro Cubans exiles to booby-trap Letelier's car. Guillermo Novo Sampol, Ignacio Novo Sampol, Virgilio Paz Romero, Dionisio Suárez, and Alvin Ross Díaz are indicted for the crime.

Townley agreed to provide evidence against these men in exchange for a deal that involved him pleading guilty to a single charge of conspiracy to commit murder and being given a ten-year sentence. His wife, Mariana Townley also agrees to testify, in exchange for not being prosecuted.

On the 9th January, 1979, the trial of Guillermo Novo Sampol, Ignacio Novo Sampol and Alvin Ross Díaz began in Washington. General Augusto Pinochet refused to allow Virgilio Paz Romero and Dionisio Suárez, two DINA officers, to be extradited. All three were found guilty of murder. Guillermo Novo and Alvin Ross were sentenced to life imprisonment. Ignacio Novo received eighty years. Soon after the trial Michael Townley was freed under the Witness Protection Program.

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This is extrememely interesting, John Simkin.

I have been googling for a long time to find a connection between Frank Sturgis and the Secret Army Organisation (SAO). I couldn't find it. I don't even know what it is. First time I heard it was in the 2003 interview with James Files. He says he knew Sturgis from the SAO. I have heard of the french OAS (which means the same in french. But is that the same thing? All Google matches refer to the french organisation. Was there an American branch, or was the SAO something else than the OAS? And what was Sturgis position in it?

By the way, Michael Townley and James Files worked together.

Files has stated that Michael Townley could confirm him. He also said that Townley’s wife is named Mary Ann and they have two kids (I checked that with Saul Landau).

The two documents below are of interest. The originals are here:

http://jfkmurdersolved.com/blackops.htm

1 – 179 – 4328

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

Associate Director

Sept. 16, 1983

Office of Enforcement Operations

Director, FBI

JAMES E. FILES.

Attached is a copy of a communication which furnishes information concerning a current investigation.

Subject: Sutton, James E. aka Files, James E. aka Castillo, Sergio A.

25 SEPT. 1976. During an interview with Aldo Vera he stated he had been expelled from accion Cuba in June of 1976 because of his informant activity. But in early July he had been at a meeting in Bonao in the Dominican Republic at the executive lodge of the Falcondo Mining Company to help plan an assassination and a bombing. The assassination was Orlando Letelier, and the bombing was a Cuban airliner.

Aldo Vera did not know everyone at the meeting but gave the names of: Michael Townley, Sergio Castillo, Sacha Volman, Frank Castro, and Jose Suarez. Three unknown subjects were also present. Aldo Vera stated he had never seen those three subjects before.

OCT. 6, 1976. A Cuban airliner was blown up killing ( 73 ) seventy-three people aboard.

AUG. 1978. Jose Suarez was released after serving ( 11 ) eleven months on contempt of court charges for refusing to answer questions ask by the Grand Jury.

Upon his release he disappeared. Presumed; deceased.

NOTE: x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x

x x x x x x x x x x x x x Washington D.C. Supervisor x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x was

advised by FBIHQ Supervisor x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x.

Agent : A J Stokely

1 – 646 – 1072

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

Associate Director

FEB. 23, 1984

Office of Enforcement Operation

Director, FBI

JAMES E. FILES:

Attached is a copy of a communication which furnishes information concerning a current investigation.

Jan. 16, 19, 23, 27, 1984: During this time ( 4 ) four subjects have been interviewed in Bonao, Paraguay. The ( 4 ) four subjects have all identified the picture of Sergio Castillo as that of Sutton, James E. aka Files, James E. And state that they remember him being in Bonao, Paraguay in July of 1976 with Sacha Volman. Sacha Volman was a forman employed by Falcondo Mining Company which is a part of Gulf and Western. The subjects all stated they remembered him because they were in the store room where the explosives were kept when Sacha Volman and a stranger (Sutton aka Files aka Castillo) walked in and Sacha Volman requisitioned two ( 2 ) cases of explosives and six

( 6 ) detonators. They thought this was strange but they were afraid to question Sacha Volman as they were afraid they would loose their jobs.

All four ( 4 ) subjects have volunteered to appear before a Grand Jury Hearing, and to answer questions and to identify subject Files aka Sutton aka Castillo.

x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x.

x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x

x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x

Agent: AJ Stokely

There are some other references to Townley in my book:

THE UMBRELLA SYSTEM: PRELUDE TO AN ASSASSINATION

by Richard E. Sprague and Robert Cutler

Page two I’ve highlighted. If someone, (like whoever wrote that article) would have checked the weather, they would have found out it had been drizzling rain that morning in Dallas, Texas. The sun came out just prior to the arrival of the motorcade. What were the people with umbrellas supposed to do, just toss them in the trash? But, back to the umbrella and the world of intrigue. Yes, we do have weapons like that and more in similar style. There is a walking cane that shoots the same round. Some are solid-state fuel and others operate off compressed air, like the old Daisy B.B. gun. These things have been built into cameras, like when we were going to do “Castro” in Santiago that time. We had a gun mounted inside a camera. They even discussed using a lethal dart at that time, but Townley (Michael) and me preferred to use live ammo. Nothing like the real stuff to get the job done right. But there were plenty of people that could get the use of weapons like that, even back in sixty-three. The “Umbrella Weapon” was not something brand new. It had been around even during the OSS years, the prelude to the CIA.

*****************************

Back to the other point that I want to clear up. Bob Vernon had all of my papers, including the original manuscript and my notes for “To Kill A Country,” and he gave them to at that time, “warden Godinez” who is now the D.D. for the D.O.C. And in writing, I had it plainly stated the Orlando Letelier was killed by a bomb, that had the explosives transported by me, to Buckley, and Michael Townley put the bomb in his car, a Chevy Nova, if my memory is correct and the car exploded in front of the Chilean Embassy on Sheridan Circle, better known as Embassy Row. The explosives came from the Falcondo Mining Co. and they were 60 per-cent strength dynamite, that is referred to as “engineering explosives.” The man that I shot was sitting in the back seat of the limo when I pulled my .45 and shot the S.O.B. and yes, I ticked off a lot of people. But he was Russian, he was not a Chilean. Bob had all of the paperwork on all of this. Bob knows what I had down in writing and I even had the route that he, Orlando Letelier, took to work that morning. Ronnie Moffit and Michael Moffit were in the car with him. She was killed, but Michael survived it. Please tell them to get their facts straight. I know what I said.

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I have been googling for a long time to find a connection between Frank Sturgis and the Secret Army Organisation (SAO). I couldn't find it. I don't even know what it is. First time I heard it was in the 2003 interview with James Files. He says he knew Sturgis from the SAO. I have heard of the french OAS (which means the same in french. But is that the same thing? All Google matches refer to the french organisation. Was there an American branch, or was the SAO something else than the OAS? And what was Sturgis position in it?

By the way, Michael Townley and James Files worked together.

Files has stated that Michael Townley could confirm him. He also said that Townley’s wife is named Mary Ann and they have two kids (I checked that with Saul Landau). (Wim Dankbaar)

Wim,

There is another Secret Army Organization (a paramilitary group) which was set up in California by ex Minutemen. The guy running the show was ex FBI man Howard Godfrey. Basically Godfrey was an informer for the Feds and his contact agent was Steve Christiansen.

One of the SAO's goals was to assassinate Richard Nixon.

If you looking to connect Sturgis, it might come through a guy by the name of Jerry Lynn Davis who was a member of the SAO and is a most interesting individual.

Townley and his wife below.

FWIW.

James

Edited by James Richards
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Wim Dankbaar Posted Today, 07:30 AM

This is extrememely interesting, John Simkin.

I have been googling for a long time to find a connection between Frank Sturgis and the Secret Army Organisation (SAO). I couldn't find it. I don't even know what it is. First time I heard it was in the 2003 interview with James Files. He says he knew Sturgis from the SAO. I have heard of the french OAS (which means the same in french. But is that the same thing? All Google matches refer to the french organisation. Was there an American branch, or was the SAO something else than the OAS? And what was Sturgis position in it?

By the way, Michael Townley and James Files worked together.

Files has stated that Michael Townley could confirm him. He also said that Townley’s wife is named Mary Ann and they have two kids (I checked that with Saul Landau).

The two documents below are of interest. The originals are here:

http://jfkmurdersolved.com/blackops.htm

1 – 179 – 4328

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

Associate Director

Sept. 16, 1983

Office of Enforcement Operations

Director, FBI

JAMES E. FILES.

Attached is a copy of a communication which furnishes information concerning a current investigation.

Subject: Sutton, James E. aka Files, James E. aka Castillo, Sergio A.

25 SEPT. 1976. During an interview with Aldo Vera he stated he had been expelled from accion Cuba in June of 1976 because of his informant activity. But in early July he had been at a meeting in Bonao in the Dominican Republic at the executive lodge of the Falcondo Mining Company to help plan an assassination and a bombing. The assassination was Orlando Letelier, and the bombing was a Cuban airliner.

Aldo Vera did not know everyone at the meeting but gave the names of: Michael Townley, Sergio Castillo, Sacha Volman, Frank Castro, and Jose Suarez. Three unknown subjects were also present. Aldo Vera stated he had never seen those three subjects before.

OCT. 6, 1976. A Cuban airliner was blown up killing ( 73 ) seventy-three people aboard.

AUG. 1978. Jose Suarez was released after serving ( 11 ) eleven months on contempt of court charges for refusing to answer questions ask by the Grand Jury.

Upon his release he disappeared. Presumed; deceased.

NOTE: x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x

x x x x x x x x x x x x x Washington D.C. Supervisor x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x was

advised by FBIHQ Supervisor x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x.

Agent : A J Stokely

1 – 646 – 1072

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

Associate Director

FEB. 23, 1984

Office of Enforcement Operation

Director, FBI

JAMES E. FILES:

Attached is a copy of a communication which furnishes information concerning a current investigation.

Jan. 16, 19, 23, 27, 1984: During this time ( 4 ) four subjects have been interviewed in Bonao, Paraguay. The ( 4 ) four subjects have all identified the picture of Sergio Castillo as that of Sutton, James E. aka Files, James E. And state that they remember him being in Bonao, Paraguay in July of 1976 with Sacha Volman. Sacha Volman was a forman employed by Falcondo Mining Company which is a part of Gulf and Western. The subjects all stated they remembered him because they were in the store room where the explosives were kept when Sacha Volman and a stranger (Sutton aka Files aka Castillo) walked in and Sacha Volman requisitioned two ( 2 ) cases of explosives and six

( 6 ) detonators. They thought this was strange but they were afraid to question Sacha Volman as they were afraid they would loose their jobs.

All four ( 4 ) subjects have volunteered to appear before a Grand Jury Hearing, and to answer questions and to identify subject Files aka Sutton aka Castillo.

x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x.

x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x

x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x

Agent: AJ Stokely

There are some other references to Townley in my book:

THE UMBRELLA SYSTEM: PRELUDE TO AN ASSASSINATION

by Richard E. Sprague and Robert Cutler

Page two I’ve highlighted. If someone, (like whoever wrote that article) would have checked the weather, they would have found out it had been drizzling rain that morning in Dallas, Texas. The sun came out just prior to the arrival of the motorcade. What were the people with umbrellas supposed to do, just toss them in the trash? But, back to the umbrella and the world of intrigue. Yes, we do have weapons like that and more in similar style. There is a walking cane that shoots the same round. Some are solid-state fuel and others operate off compressed air, like the old Daisy B.B. gun. These things have been built into cameras, like when we were going to do “Castro” in Santiago that time. We had a gun mounted inside a camera. They even discussed using a lethal dart at that time, but Townley (Michael) and me preferred to use live ammo. Nothing like the real stuff to get the job done right. But there were plenty of people that could get the use of weapons like that, even back in sixty-three. The “Umbrella Weapon” was not something brand new. It had been around even during the OSS years, the prelude to the CIA.

*****************************

Back to the other point that I want to clear up. Bob Vernon had all of my papers, including the original manuscript and my notes for “To Kill A Country,” and he gave them to at that time, “warden Godinez” who is now the D.D. for the D.O.C. And in writing, I had it plainly stated the Orlando Letelier was killed by a bomb, that had the explosives transported by me, to Buckley, and Michael Townley put the bomb in his car, a Chevy Nova, if my memory is correct and the car exploded in front of the Chilean Embassy on Sheridan Circle, better known as Embassy Row. The explosives came from the Falcondo Mining Co. and they were 60 per-cent strength dynamite, that is referred to as “engineering explosives.” The man that I shot was sitting in the back seat of the limo when I pulled my .45 and shot the S.O.B. and yes, I ticked off a lot of people. But he was Russian, he was not a Chilean. Bob had all of the paperwork on all of this. Bob knows what I had down in writing and I even had the route that he, Orlando Letelier, took to work that morning. Ronnie Moffit and Michael Moffit were in the car with him. She was killed, but Michael survived it. Please tell them to get their facts straight. I know what I said.

Wim,

Tosh Plumlee names "Sergio" as someone who was with him on the flight to Dallas that day 11/22/63, and went with him to the South knoll of DP.

Just wondering if this reference of "Sergio", could in anyway, be a reference to Jimmy Files? Trying to connect some dots...

By the way, welcome back!

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Antti,

No Sergio of Tosh was Sergio Soccares. James sent me this picture of him.

http://jfkmurdersolved.com/images/sergio1.JPG

The other one comes from Tosh.

http://jfkmurdersolved.com/images/sergio.jpg

Sergio Castillo was an existing person from Chile, whose identity was used by Files in the seventies with approval from David Atlee Phillips.

Wim

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I have been googling for a long time to find a connection between Frank Sturgis and the Secret Army Organisation (SAO). I couldn't find it. I don't even know what it is. First time I heard it was in the 2003 interview with James Files. He says he knew Sturgis from the SAO. I have heard of the french OAS (which means the same in french. But is that the same thing? All Google matches refer to the french organisation. Was there an American branch, or was the SAO something else than the OAS? And what was Sturgis position in it?

My information on the SAO came from Donald Freed's excellent book, The Murder of Orlando Letelier: Death in Washington (1980). You might be interested in this passage from Donald Freed's article, Gemstone - the Bottom Line (1974)

On May 15, 1972, Arthur Bremer was arrested for the attempted assassination of George Wallace. The question is the classic cui bono, who benefits? The answer, Operation Gemstone.

From the media the American people learned that Wallace's would-be assassin Arthur Bremer was a disturbed twenty-oneyear-old, an unemployed ex-busboy and janitor's helper. He had been laid off his janitorial job in Wisconsin in January 1972 and had no record of any income from that time until his arrest in Maryland in May. His tax return for 1971 shows earnings of $1,611. His automobile, purchased in September 1971, cost some eight hundred dollars, half of his total income for the year. Where, then, did Bremer get the money for his "mad scheme" to kill George Wallace, by far the most heavily guarded of all the presidential candidates, with a double set of body guards and a bullet-proof speakers' podium?

It is relatively, easy to compute the minimum amount that Bremer would have needed from January to May. Setting to one side the cash outlay for stopping at expensive hotels (the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, the Lord Elgin in Ottawa); automobile repairs for a machine driven constantly for weeks at speeds up to seventy-five miles per hour in order to keep pace with presidential candidates who flew to their destinations; any miscellaneous expenses such as his records, specially constructed ammunition found in his car, and the expensive clothes Bremer wore into court when he pled not guilty; setting aside all these and any other contingency costs, Bremer could not have spent less than five thousand dollars on his eighteen-week, ten-state odyssey. The figure is conservative. It includes the price of the guns he purchased, court fines for speeding and carrying a gun, and the $135-a-month rent for his occasionally used Milwaukee apartment.

On May 15, 1972, Arthur Bremer stepped from a crowd in a shopping center in Laurel, Maryland, and gunned down George Wallace. To this day no one has explained how Bremer could have known weeks in advance where in Laurel Wallace would speak. Nor has the FBI been able to identify the bullets used as coming from Bremer's gun, since they were special and had no rifling marks. Somehow the "lone fanatic" had gotten advance intelligence for what appeared to be a thoroughly professional job...

The full story remains to be told. But during 1972-73, our research group, the Citizens Research and Investigation Committee (CRIC), receive several bits of unconfirmed information which are worthy of note:

* On July 13, 1973 Roger Gordon, fifty-three, a member of the right-wing Secret Army Organization (SAO) fled from a hiding place in Australia to beg asylum in Suva, Fiji. According to the Associated Press, Gordon "had secret information concerning Watergate" and feared for his life. His information: that the heavy-set man with the "Joisey brogue" seen giving orders to Bremer on an Ohio ferry was Anthony Ulasewicz, a White House operation.

* Secret Army Organization (SAO) and FBI sources in the San Diego area reported that White House agent Donald Segretti gave moriey to Bremer.

* During 1970 Tom Huston, a Nixon aide, prepared a series of memoranda which attempted to tighten White House control of the FBI, CIA, etc., and intensify the use of electronic surveillance, "penetration agents," and illegal break-ins. According to a staff member of the Ervin Committee, White House files contain a still undivulged memo in which Huston justifies selective assassination.

* On May 18, 1972, three days after the Wallace shooting, Charles Colson staged a "Victory in Vietnam" march and rally in Washington, under the auspices of the right-wing preacher Carl McIntire. Mr. and Mrs. Calvin Fox of the Secret Army Organization drove from San Diego to attend, passing en route near the site of the Wallace shooting. Sources in San Diego reported that while the Foxes were away, FBI Special Agent Steve Christianson entered Mr. Fox's office files and planted documents which could implicate him in the assassination attempt. A group of Washington-based former intelligence agents have since confirmed this.

With Wallace out and the election assured, most of Nixon's politicos signed off the Gemstone plan. The hardliners under Colson did not. Moving into the temporary vacuum, they stepped up their drive for power. Their immediate object-to implicate the opposition in the violence planned for the GOP convention.

How? By planting forged documents, a second specialty of Howard Hunt.

Where? In the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Complex.

It wasn't difficult. Once inside the complex, the contract team moved into the office of Dorothy V. Bush, which was located next to that of Lawrence O'Brien, the Democratic National Chairman. It was their third raiding party and they moved with a familiarity of the surroundings. They carried with them the necessary tools: false documents prepared by the CIA, lockpicks and door jimmies, a shortwave receiver, gas guns, two cameras and forty rolls of film, a walkie-talkie, and an assortment of electronic surveillance equipment.

The team had several objectives. One was to install a bugging device to monitor O'Brien's telephone conversations. Another was to search for evidence of contribution's from foreign governments. A third grew out of an earlier break-in over the Memorial Day weekend. The team had discovered that the Democrats had nothing in their files which could later be used to link them to the "violent, left-wing militants," or to justify emergency measures against the party in the name of "national security." So, while McCord checked listening devices, and one of the Cubans handed the security plans for the Democratic Convention to a compatriot to photograph, Frank Sturgis prepared to put several forged documents deep in a filing drawer where no one would be likely to find them before the time was ripe. According to a source close to some of the men arrested that night, Sturgis was planning to plant something which purported to tie the upcoming convention violence to the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), the Black Panther Party, the antiwar movement, and the presidential campaign of Senator George McGovern. Sturgis was Hunt's man, and he was acting without the knowledge of McCord, Barker, and the others.

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Mmm, yes that's interesting. Not everything is on Google.

I guess you know that when Sturgis was caught in Watergate, he carried the ID of Edward J Hamilton.

- The gentleman we are interviewing is Chauncey Marvin Holt.

Holt: My true name is Chauncey Marvin Holt. Throughout the years I have used many, as many as 25, perhaps 30 aliases, I don't remember them all. Starting with the first ones that I do remember, that were prominent in operations, there was Robert Ralston, Jack Hall, Jack Moon, Kearney Sigler, William Dean Rutz...John Moon...

Those were the main alias that we used throughout the years. We did use other aliases, which are called, "floating identities", one time things, that you just sign your name on, which was used not only by me, but others as well. The best known one, I suppose, was Edward Joe Hamilton, which was used by a number of people. And I used that also, from time to time.

****************

Have you ever encountered the name "Willard Galbraith"?

I would like to know if that name can be connected with David Atlee Phillips , and if he was in Mexico City at the time of Oswald's visit there.

Wim

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By the way, Michael Townley and James Files worked together.

Files has stated that Michael Townley could confirm him. He also said that Townley’s wife is named Mary Ann and they have two kids (I checked that with Saul Landau).

Michael Townley married Mariana Callejas in 1961. Her father was a right-wing politician in Chile. Although active in the Socialist Party of Chile, she was actually working as an informer for Chilean military intelligence.

She was involved in Operation Condor:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor

See my web page on Townley:

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

See Namebase entry for her:

http://www.namebase.org/main3/Mariana-Ines-Callejas.html

Chile 1974-1978

Branch,T. Propper,E. Labyrinth. 1983 (302-3, 483-503)

Christie,S. Stefano Delle Chiaie. 1984 (85)

Dinges,J. Landau,S. Assassination on Embassy Row. 1981 (95-102, 104, 130)

Dinges,J. The Condor Years. 2004 (76-7, 129)

Freed,D. Death in Washington. 1980 (5, 29-30, 35, 55-6, 78)

Intelligence (Paris) 1999-01-25 (22)

Intelligence (Paris) 2003-04-07 (26)

Kruger,H. The Great Heroin Coup. 1980 (10)

Schmidt,O. The Intelligence Files. 2005 (105)

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