My email to USA Today reporter re: Helms and DRE

[Michaleen Kilroy]

Helms hiding his role in managing the DRE - and the agency's role in helping him hide it - is still outrageous and incriminating to me... Hence, my letter below to USA Today reporter Ed Brackett:

Ed –

Thank you for covering the Joannides court case regarding the JFK files recently.  It’s really appreciated by someone like me who’s had an interest in the JFK case for years when someone from a mainstream media outlet covers this ongoing story.

Maybe you’re already aware of this, but Richard Helms, the CIA’s Deputy Director of Plans at the time, was personally overseeing Joannides’ running of the DRE.  This internal CIA memo are notes from a secret meeting Helms had with the leadership of the DRE in November 1962, a year before the assassination: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=18923#relPageId=1&tab=page  In the memo, Helms mentions he will be hiring a new case officer for the group that would report directly to him.  That new case officer would be Joannides.

One year later the assassination occurs and Oswald is taken into custody.  The DRE immediately contacts Joannides who say they interacted with the suspect in New Orleans over the summer and have newspaper, radio and TV coverage showing Oswald as pro-Castro.  Joannides tells the group to wait for word from Washington on what to do. Apparently the group’s leaders waited one hour and then went ahead and contacted media.

One would have to assume Joannides was trying to contact his direct report regarding the DRE, Richard Helms.  But whether he was able to get a hold of Helms or not, Helms, like the rest of the country, would’ve seen video of Oswald interacting with the DRE chapter in New Orleans on national TV that evening.  He would’ve seen the newspaper coverage the next day that described Oswald’s antics with the DRE that summer.

So let’s pretend for a minute you’re Richard Helms in this situation.  Your second-in-command of the CIA (and some would say ostensibly running the agency with the departure of Allen Dulles in 1961), and have learned that the accused assassin somehow crossed paths with the anti-Castro group you manage and you know is funded and guided by the agency.  In fact, if the CIA didn’t form and fund the DRE, there would not have been coverage of Oswald’s pro-Castro ways for the media to report on following the assassination simply because, as the DRE leaders say in the meeting memo above, the group would not exist without CIA funding.

Does Helms tell any federal authority about the CIA’s sponsorship of the DRE in the aftermath of the assassination?  He doesn’t.  He doesn’t tell the Warren Commission as the CIA’s liaison.  He doesn’t tell the HSCA in the 70s.  Instead, Congressional investigators are told the CIA cut-off all contact with the group by 1963.  Helms also doesn’t alert anyone to Joannides’ role in managing the group and reporting to him when Joannides serves as the agency’s liaison to the HSCA.

That is obstruction on its face.  Helms never spoke about his oversight of the DRE to anyone the rest of his life as far as I know (although Jefferson Morley tried before Helms died in 2002).  The CIA has never explained why he withheld that knowledge from successive investigations.  And Helms perjured himself during his HSCA testimony in 1979 with this exchange: 

• MR DODD: Are there other things that you can recall that might have had relevancy–things of importance, to the Warren Commission’s investigation of the assassination of an American President.
• Mr. HELMS – Well, I don’t know of any others. I can’t think of what they might have been, but then we might have been guilty of some other errors of omission, I don’t know. None come readily to mind. This didn’t come readily to mind at the time.

If Richard Helms were alive today, the questions would be many, including:

• Why did you keep your oversight of the DRE and the agency’s sponsorship role a secret from investigative bodies?

• Did you know about Oswald’s antics in New Orleans through Joannides’ reports on the DRE prior to the assassination?
• In your meeting with DRE leadership in 1962, you asked that they alert you to any further TV coverage of the group.  Were you alerted about their TV coverage in New Orleans with Oswald? 
• How did you miss a press release by the New Orleans chapter of the CIA-funded group calling for a Congressional investigation into Oswald three months before the assassination?
• Did you know Joannides maintained a residence in New Orleans during the time Oswald was there?
• Everyone knows there was a lot of animosity by the DRE and other anti-Castro groups against JFK regarding Cuba in 1963.  Wouldn’t it be logical to assume the CIA would have reams of info on what these groups discussed, who hated JFK the most, what role they might’ve played in the assassination, etc.?  Why didn’t you help investigators with this information?

But for me, the implications can be summed up simply by paraphrasing the old line from “Casablanca”:

• Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, how did the alleged assassin of the president walk into the CIA's?

Thanks again for the story and thanks for listening.

Edited April 8, 2018 by Mike Kilroy

[Steve Thomas]

3 hours ago, Mike Kilroy said:

Helms hiding his role in managing the DRE - and the agency's role in helping him hide it - is still outrageous and incriminating to me... Hence, my letter below to USA Today reporter Ed Brackett:

Ed –

Thank you for covering the Joannides court case regarding the JFK files recently.  It’s really appreciated by someone like me who’s had an interest in the JFK case for years when someone from a mainstream media outlet covers this ongoing story.

Maybe you’re already aware of this, but Richard Helms, the CIA’s Deputy Director of Plans at the time, was personally overseeing Joannides’ running of the DRE.  This internal CIA memo are notes from a secret meeting Helms had with the leadership of the DRE in November 1962, a year before the assassination: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=18923#relPageId=1&tab=page  In the memo, Helms mentions he will be hiring a new case officer for the group that would report directly to him.  That new case officer would be Joannides.

 

Mike,

 

What do you make of the "man in charge in Miami" suggesting on October 23rd or 24th that the DRE send its five top leaders into Cuba to "direct artillery fire"?

(see pp. 9-10 of that memo)

1) Who was this "man in charge in Miami?

2) Was he that naive?

3) Was he deliberately trying to get them killed?

4) Was the coordination between the CIA and the U.S. military that bad that he would be suggesting sending in civilians rather than U.S. Special Forces?

 

Steve Thomas

 

[Paz Marverde]

4 hours ago, Mike Kilroy said:

Hence, my letter below to USA Today reporter Ed Brackett:

Did he answer?

[Jason Ward]

9 hours ago, Mike Kilroy said:

with the anti-Castro group you manage and you know is funded and guided by the agency.

Is this certain from the evidence provided?

The Helms memo you cite speaks of a DRE that may go a separate way from the CIA, if the DRE's goals are incompatible with US policy.  Certainly the memo indicates that by the CIA providing money to the DRE, the CIA has become essential to DRE activities.   But this memo reads to me more like an investor speaking to an independently run company - there are no orders given by Helms to the DRE.   

Based on the evidence you provide, it is not at all shown that the CIA is in a position to "manage" the DRE.   There is an implied potential of continued or discontinued financial support depending on two independent factors: 1. the potentially changing goals of US policy, and, 2. the potentially conflicting goals of the DRE.   

This is no CIA puppet group according to the memo, instead the DRE is one of many addicted and ineffective Cuban exile groups looking to freeload off of CIA largesse, IMO.

 

Jason

Edited April 8, 2018 by Jason Ward

[Michaleen Kilroy]

4 hours ago, Jason Ward said:

Is this certain from the evidence provided?

The Helms memo you cite speaks of a DRE that may go a separate way from the CIA, if the DRE's goals are incompatible with US policy.  Certainly the memo indicates that by the CIA providing money to the DRE, the CIA has become essential to DRE activities.   But this memo reads to me more like an investor speaking to an independently run company - there are no orders given by Helms to the DRE.   

Based on the evidence you provide, it is not at all shown that the CIA is in a position to "manage" the DRE.   There is an implied potential of continued or discontinued financial support depending on two independent factors: 1. the potentially changing goals of US policy, and, 2. the potentially conflicting goals of the DRE.   

This is no CIA puppet group according to the memo, instead the DRE is one of many addicted and ineffective Cuban exile groups looking to freeload off of CIA largesse, IMO.

 

Jason

Well, they obviously didn't go their separate ways.  Jefferson Morley summarizes the relationship after the Helms meeting better than I could here: http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/revelation-1963-6353139

The DRE leaders said they met with Joannides up to 3 times a week.  The leaders also said Carlos Bringuier told them about the altercation with LHO immediately and that the resulting news coverage is exactly the kind of thing they would've alerted Joannides to.  

Any lawful reason Helms, Joannides and the CIA in general should withhold this information from successive investigations?  

If there's a smoking gun in this case, this is it for me.  The CIA wanted to keep the DRE relationship in 1963 a secret forever.  Unless they provide a better explanation, I'll assume the worst.

Edited April 8, 2018 by Mike Kilroy

[Michaleen Kilroy]

6 hours ago, Paz Marverde said:

Did he answer?

Not yet and it's been a week.  

[Michaleen Kilroy]

3 hours ago, Jason Ward said:

Is this certain from the evidence provided?

The Helms memo you cite speaks of a DRE that may go a separate way from the CIA, if the DRE's goals are incompatible with US policy.  Certainly the memo indicates that by the CIA providing money to the DRE, the CIA has become essential to DRE activities.   But this memo reads to me more like an investor speaking to an independently run company - there are no orders given by Helms to the DRE.   

Based on the evidence you provide, it is not at all shown that the CIA is in a position to "manage" the DRE.   There is an implied potential of continued or discontinued financial support depending on two independent factors: 1. the potentially changing goals of US policy, and, 2. the potentially conflicting goals of the DRE.   

This is no CIA puppet group according to the memo, instead the DRE is one of many addicted and ineffective Cuban exile groups looking to freeload off of CIA largesse, IMO.

 

Jason

Jason - This is the money quote from the memo for me.  Helms, the second-in-command of the CIA, has expressed a "personal interest" in maintaining a relationship with the group.  Nine months later, the group interfaces with Oswald.  Three months after that, the NO fracas with LHO is immediately integrated into the assassination news. And Mr. Helms stays mute. This is a master spy and propagandist with unaccountable power and control of the world's largest network of spooks.  I don't believe any of it is a surprise to Helms.  He knows exactly what he's doing and why, IMHO. Mike

 

Edited April 8, 2018 by Mike Kilroy

[Paz Marverde]

19 minutes ago, Mike Kilroy said:

Not yet and it's been a week.  

Thank you

[Michaleen Kilroy]

6 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

Mike,

 

What do you make of the "man in charge in Miami" suggesting on October 23rd or 24th that the DRE send its five top leaders into Cuba to "direct artillery fire"?

(see pp. 9-10 of that memo)

1) Who was this "man in charge in Miami?

2) Was he that naive?

3) Was he deliberately trying to get them killed?

4) Was the coordination between the CIA and the U.S. military that bad that he would be suggesting sending in civilians rather than U.S. Special Forces?

 

Steve Thomas

 

That is compelling because those dates are the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis.  So it appears someone from the CIA was trying to get the DRE to infiltrate Cuba to help them during the coming invasion of the island.

I'm just curious who "the man in charge" is.  Shackley?  Joannides predecessor?  Harvey?

The DRE did have a military section and actual pulled this off in August '62 (from Morley's article):

Quote

To announce the revival of the Directorate, the group's military section launched its most spectacular deed on the evening of August 24, 1962. Under the leadership of Salvat and Borja, two boats of DRE militants carried out a midnight fusillade attack on the Rosita Hornedo hotel in suburban Miramar, where Castro's Soviet-bloc advisors were gathering. 

So it's not out of the realm of possibility for the CIA to use the DRE for strikes against Cuba, but usually it was the other way around - the DRE was pushing for military action and the CIA wanted to use the group for propaganda throughout Latin America.

 

[James DiEugenio]

Very good letter Mike.

Not really a surprise that you did not get a reply.

Kind of par for the course.  As Cyril Wecht has said, "I have a whole drawer full of letters that I never got a reply to in any way."

[Jason Ward]

4 hours ago, Mike Kilroy said:

Jason - This is the money quote from the memo for me.  Helms, the second-in-command of the CIA, has expressed a "personal interest" in maintaining a relationship with the group.  Nine months later, the group interfaces with Oswald.  Three months after that, the NO fracas with LHO is immediately integrated into the assassination news. And Mr. Helms stays mute. This is a master spy and propagandist with unaccountable power and control of the world's largest network of spooks.  I don't believe any of it is a surprise to Helms.  He knows exactly what he's doing and why, IMHO. Mike

 

Many thanks for your response and for posting evidence, Mike.

I wonder if your point in this post is in keeping with the broader context of CIA efforts in this era?  Are you drawing too much out of this microcosm snapshot of a single communication between Helms and the DRE?   I've reviewed several thousand CIA cables in 2017 and if you read the communications over a period of time a big picture emerges of the CIA and the Cuban exile groups like the DRE.   

The report you cite is a more formal version of many 100s of CIA internal communications documenting meetings with Cuban exile groups where the CIA holds out a carrot that the exiles promise to chase, as long as they get more money.  There was a big panic about Castro which in turn caused the CIA to both solicit and help create new anti-Castro groups - AND gladly finance most any Cuban anti-Castro group that came around asking for money.  It was a golden windfall for the Miami exile community, that charming set of Batista's cronies anxious to get their corrupt regime back.

In all cases, this failed.   Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent because guys like Carlos Bringuier, Felix Rodriguez, and 100 others kept saying they could topple Castro if only they had a little more support from the CIA.   In all cases, these nominally passionate anti-Castro crusaders simply took the money and put on a minimal show of effort.   They played pretend war games in the Everglades and around Lake Pontchartrain.  They dreamed up the Bay of Pigs debacle.  Always, they had their hand out asking for more.  Always, they talked big and delivered nothing.  For awhile, the CIA played along.

99% of what the DRE, Alpha 66 and the Cuban exiles did was bilk the CIA and the US taxpayer for money while they enjoyed an easy life in Miami and New Orleans, ego stroking themselves with modest CIA connections.  It all amounts to very little.  A waste of time.  Very similar to America's support of Afghani and Iraqi groups that came around promising an easy new democracy that somehow never came to fruition a trillion US dollars later.

I respect your own judgments based on the evidence, but I interpret the words of Helms to the DRE in the memo you cite (where he says the DRE is of "continued personal interest"(!!!)) as nothing more than a politician's typical BS they give to every constituent - the same you would hear if you went to your congressman complaining of a problem.  The same any Iraqi or Afghani would hear from the CIA director when they showed up in 2001 or 2002 saying they wanted to establish democracy in their homeland.

By the mid 1960s, the CIA realized that its strategy of literally placing a bet on every number on the roulette wheel of Cuban exiles failed badly.   The roulette wheel landed on double zeros and not one of the Cuban exile groups like DRE gave any kind of return on investment.   It turns out living in Miami on CIA money is more desirable than fighting a war against Castro.

 

1. The DRE was independently minded, not a CIA puppet

 

2. The DRE was mainly an expert at getting money from the CIA while delivering nothing

 

3. $20k a month or so was a reasonably cheap bet to make on the DRE, because who knows, they might pan out?   Of course, they didn't pan out.  But they had a good time on Miami Beach with the money!

4.  The DRE was never a CIA favorite:

 

---

SOURCES:

1- HSCA segregated CIA collection staff notes, NARA 180-10142-10246

2- HSCA Report Volume  10, p. 82

3 - Russ Holmes work file, NARA 104-10422-10355

4 - The Road To Dallas, by David Kaiser, p.149. See Google Books snippet here: https://books.google.com/books?id=CYwluOC30KAC&q=whose+relations+with+its+cia+sponsor#v=snippet&q=whose relations with its cia sponsor&f=false

 

 

Edited April 8, 2018 by Jason Ward

[Steve Thomas]

2 hours ago, Mike Kilroy said:

 

I'm just curious who "the man in charge" is.  Shackley?  Joannides predecessor?  Harvey?

 

Mike,

 

I think Jason might have answered this in his post: Ross Crozier.

 

Steve Thomas

[Jason Ward]

3 hours ago, Mike Kilroy said:

.. Jefferson Morley summarizes the relationship after the Helms meeting better than I could here: http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/revelation-1963-6353139

...

Hi Mike,

I will not dwell on the fact the article cites no sources, however, I will dwell on the fact that it is in the "Miami New Times," and all that this implies.

Morley's article is basically the everlasting PR efforts of the Cuban exile community.  More properly, it is what the prominent CIA-paid exiles who bilked money from the CIA in the early 60s want to publish as the history of their work.  The Cuban exile community were in their leadership mostly corrupt ex-Batista regime fixtures who had a taste for the good life but masqueraded as patriotic democrats yearning to liberate Cuba from Castro.   Had Castro kept the casinos open and the crony-capitalism in place, continued the bribes and payoffs, and kept all the graft of the Batista regime, all these DRE freedom fighters would be fine with Castro, even if he cozies up to the Soviets and even if he called himself a communist.

In later years of retrospect, they yearned to position themselves as powerful CIA agents, with top notch friendships in place all over the US intelligence community.  They were so close to getting Cuba back to glorious freedom and democracy - except of course they never cared about that and were only friends with the CIA because the CIA paid well.   Miami was more fun than Cuba anyway.

My reading of internal CIA communications is that all these Cuban exiles were seen as a bunch of half baked charlatans who nevertheless might accidentally be of some assistance in effecting Cuban regime change.   They were never as important, respected, or trusted by the CIA or Helms as the Miami exile community and their descendants* portray.

 

Jason

* the Batista exiles and their descendants still have an out sized voice today - see Trump's efforts to pander to their stale 50+ year old rhetoric and reverse Obama's friendliness towards Cuba

Edited April 8, 2018 by Jason Ward

[Jason Ward]

14 hours ago, Mike Kilroy said:

Helms hiding his role in managing the DRE

 

Hi Mike, thanks for the conversation, I hope you enjoy it as much as I.

if you have evidence Helms is hiding his role in the DRE because of a DRE connection to the assassination, please post it.   Carlos Bringuier's theater of confronting Oswald on Canal St and related New Orleans shenanigans in the summer of 63 meant to certify to all the world that Oswald is a Castro-loving communist is indisputable.   However, I've never seen any evidence Bringuier takes his orders from the CIA or even that the DRE in general is very good at taking orders from the CIA.  What's Bringuier doing and saying today?  A big clue there IMO.  What's DRE figure Bringuier saying about Oswald even now, and why?

Helms has a lot to be ashamed of because everything the CIA did around Cuba in this era was a total embarrassment. They reached out to organized crime for one thing.  They invested in the absurd comedy of scams for another thing - like exploding cigars. I ask if Helms isn't behaving in a way that's familiar?  Isn't it like the way so few in government today want to take credit for invading Iraq for some reason?

 It was easy for a Cuban to show up in Miami, talk a big game about overthrowing Castro, and promptly get on the CIA payroll for several years.  Nothing required in return except big talk.  Mainly, the CIA money went to amateur theatrics, pseudo-military training in the Everglades and elsewhere, and of course to the nightclubs and restaurants on Miami Beach.   I can't prove it and I despise the rampant speculation around here - but I have to ask if the continued prominence of these early Cuban exiles and their offspring in Miami isn't in part founded on the early CIA boondoggle of flushing taxpayer money down the toilet?   They bought real estate, businesses, and assumed prominence still palpable today.

I agree Helms was probably not eager to have a public link made between himself and the DRE - which in turn would link him to Bringuier and Oswald.  He probably tried to hide it.  However, I think the evidence released in recent days doesn't point to shame over the JFK assassination, but shame over the general incompetence of CIA efforts towards Cuba.  I am as always anxious to see evidence you might have.

 

Jason

Edited April 8, 2018 by Jason Ward

[James DiEugenio]

How could Castro have kept the casinos open, kept corny capitalism in place, and cozied up to the commies?

That would have been quite a magical feat.  Batista was not going to do that under any circumstances. The fact that Castro and Che Guevera did do it is what defined them.  Even in the eyes of the liberal group of Cuban exiles, e.g. Manuelo Ray.

The Cuban exiles were essentially an appendage of the CIA and they were such from the start.  Once Eisenhower decided to side with Allen Dulles on the embargo, with Nixon on his view of Castro as a commie, and then approved the preparations of the secret war against Cuba, short of an American invasion, the CIA and the Pentagon had to work through and with the Cuban exiles. This movement was sustained from Eisenhower, through the Bay of Pigs, and through Mongoose.  The CIA trained and worked with these guys day in and day out.  This idea that somehow these Cubans really did not want to overthrow Castro, I mean to me I don't know what you are talking about there.

Virtually every Cuban exile I ever talked to despised Fidel with an intensity that was kind of shocking once they got going.  And once Zapata was capsized, the CIA then transferred  that failure to JFK.  And therefore, Kennedy was now looked upon for them as the guy who blew the operation.  Then after the Missile Crisis, when JFK began his attempt at rapprochement with Cuba, and began shutting down the training camps and actually putting travel restrictions on the exile groups, this began a real backlash against Kennedy by these exiles.  Because it meant not only that Mongoose was over, but they were now going to have to live with Castro.  For as more than one writer has pointed out, the CIA knew about Kennedy's back channel.  And there is evidence, Larry Hancock for one, that this info got out to the exile groups.

To show and list all the evidence that the Cubans were involved in some way in the JFK assassination would take a small book.  But to somehow say that Morley's article is not footnoted and since it appears in an alternative weekly its somehow to be discounted, I mean please!  What newspaper or journal includes footnotes?  As far as periodicals, maybe you prefer the NY Times Magazine? Morley is quite careful in his work on Johannides and it has been accepted by the likes of  Blakey and even Posner.

Can you really be serious with: "if you have evidence Helms is hiding his role in the DRE because of a DRE connection to the assassination, please post it."  mean I really hope you do not mean that as I think you state it.  The idea that you were ever going to get Helms, of his own accord, to admit anything about any of the CIA lawbreaking is kind of preposterous is it not?  In regards to the JFK case, I mean it is pure science fiction.  

But, while you are at it, you may want to explain away the memo Angleton showed Trento that he wrote to Helms about creating an alibi for Howard Hunt being in Dallas on the day of the assassination.

Edited April 8, 2018 by James DiEugenio