Larry Hancock: Someone Would Have Talked

[Larry Hancock]

Dave, the only thing to be cautions about with that report is that about mid-way through his meetings with Martin, Nagell became suspicious of him (and I think it turned out later that Martin did have a former CIA affiliation - should look into that but I think he was on their list of approved firms if not more). Nagell pulled the plug at that point.

Which means that the names on the tape might be Arcacha and Q (Quiroga) for real, it could be a Nagell smokescreen or it could be Martin disinformation (love this stuff). In any event it's very likely that it was really Arcacha as he was out of New Orleans for months first in Florida and then in Texas before this was going down.

Arcacha and Quirogo would be nice since they both were stongly suspected of being Castro double agents and CIA still suspected Quiroga as of the Garrison investigation. However I'm just not sure we can trust this report - for several reasons.

.....life is just unfair, grin, Larry

[Jack White]

Most researchers have assumed Santos Trafficante had John Roselli murdered. There are several reasons for this:

JACK SEZ:

For the sake of accuracy, it is SANTO Trafficante...not SantoS.

Ask an Italian like Rich DellaRosa.

Jack

[John Simkin]

In chapter 8 you spend a lot of time on David Morales. On pages 96/97 you write:

It's also clear that like many of the men directly involved with the Bay of Pigs, Morales felt that John Kennedy was a coward and very likely a traitor to his country. Morales expressed his tremendous anger about seeing his friends butchered in remarks to both Carbajal and his lawyer and business partner, Robert Walton.

David Morales felt especially strongly about John Kennedy. At one point while in Walton's office. Morales noticed a small Kennedy ceramic decal and immediately offered to break it into pieces for Walton.

However, on one special evening after approximately eight hours of extremely heavy drinking, Morales went a good deal farther than that. It was in the spring of 1973, five years before his death. Morales entered into a heated exchange with Robert Walton while Reuben Carbajal and Walton's wife listened. The subject was John Kennedy.

At some point, Walton began to talk about himself, his background, his interest in politics and doing volunteer work for Kennedy's campaign. At that point. Morales literally flew off the bed of the hotel room in which they were drinking and started screaming curses against Kennedy and talking about how Kennedy had been responsible for him having to watch all the men he had recruited and trained get wiped out.

Several minutes later after he had worn himself out. Morales sat back on his bed and after a minute of silence simply said to himself, "Well, we took care of that SOB, didn't we?" Not bragging, no bluster, just talking to himself.

When a man of David Morales' rank, position, experience and reputation makes a first person remark about "taking care of the President of the United States, it deserves to be taken seriously - when the man in question can be shown to have been in the same location at the same time and with an established association with John Martino, a man who confessed to his personal participation in a conspiracy to murder the President, Morales' remarks become extremely significant.

You point out that David Morales retired from the Central Intelligence Agency in 1975. Three years later he was added to the list of people to be interviewed by the House Select Committee on Assassinations but died of a heart-attack before he could be questioned. Did you find out anything about the circumstances of his death?

Morales was not the only CIA officer involved in the plots to kill Fidel Castro to die an early death.

In 1963 Desmond FitzGerald was in charge of the CIA's Cuban Task Force. In this post he personally organized three different plots to assassinate Fidel Castro. According to Dick Russell, FitzGerald had a meeting in France with a Cuban code-named AM/LASH, finalising a plan to eliminate Castro, at the same time John F. Kennedy was assassinated. FitzGerald died of a heart attack while playing tennis in Virginia on 23rd July, 1967.

Winston Scott was the CIA's station chief in Mexico. Scott retired in 1969 and wrote a memoir about his time in the FBI, OSS and the CIA. He completed the manuscript, It Came To Late, and made plans to discuss the contents of the book with CIA director, Richard Helms, in Washington on 30th April, 1971. Four days before the agreed meeting Scott died of a heart attack.

Michael Scott told Dick Russell that James Angleton took away his father's manuscript. Angleton also confiscated three large cartons of files including a tape-recording of the voice of Lee Harvey Oswald. Michael Scott was also told by a CIA source that his father had not died from natural causes. Scott eventually got his father's manuscript back from the CIA. However, 150 pages were missing. Chapters 13 to 16 were deleted in their entirety. In fact, everything about his life after 1947 had been removed on grounds of national security.

Several important figures in the Central Intelligence Agency who were involved in the anti-Castro operations died before they could give evidence to the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigations. William Harvey, head of the ZR/RIFLE project, died as a result of complications from heart surgery in June, 1976. William Pawley, who took part in Operation Tilt, died of gunshot wounds in January, 1977.

John Paisley was deputy director of the Office of Strategic Research. On 24th September, 1978, John Paisley, took a trip on his motorized sailboat on Chesapeake Bay. Two days later his boat was found moored in Solomons, Maryland. Paisley's body was found in Maryland's Patuxent River. The body was fixed to diving weights. He had been shot in the head. Police investigators described it as "an execution-type murder". However, officially Paisley's death was recorded as a suicide.

According to the journalist, Victor Marchetti, Paisley was a close friend of Yuri Nosenko. Marchetti also claimed that Paisley knew a great deal about the assassination of John F. Kennedy and was murdered during the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigation because he was "about to blow the whistle".

Do you have any information on any of these deaths?

[Larry Hancock]

John, I don't have any information on any of the individuals on your list other than what has been widely written and other than Pawley I've never viewed any of them as associated any any way with the conspiracy (the cover-up is of course a separate story and that certainly could involve Scott who I think knew or suspected what was really going on with Oswald in Mexico City). I had heard that Pawley was very ill at the time of his death (shingles possibly related to a nervous condition) and that it was suicide - but I have no direct information on that.

The CIA officers that continue to be of much more interest to me beyond Morales are David Phillips and Tracy Barnes. I've been doing some study on Barnes lately and find it interesting that the two not only worked on the Cuba Project (BOP) together but that Barnes career was directly affected by it, he became physically ill over it for a period of time (as Phillips had) and became one of the primary sources for the view that JFK had betrayed everyone, later being quoted in some very strong negative remarks about JFK. Given the fact that he was in charge of the new Domestic Ops division in 1963, that he recruited Phillips into doing joint duty in that group while working in Mexico City and also that this group would have been the one most likely to have been using Lee Oswald in any anti Cuban projects he is of far more interest to me at the moment than the other names on the list and I'd welcome any correspondance from individuals who have studied him in more depth.

-- Larry

[James Richards]

Great post, Larry.

Tracy Barnes is one who has not received the attention that he possibly should have.

Below is a command list for the Brigade and Bay Of Pigs operation. Barnes and Robertson both being mentioned.

James

[Pat Speer]

Hi, I'm new to this forum. I've spent the last year fully absorbing myself in the JFK Assassination mystery. Consequently, I must thank Mr. Hancock on his book, one of the few to try and draw a complete and believable picture from the available information.

To answer the question about Tracy Barnes. There is a fairly mainstream but nevertheless informative accounting of his life in Evan Thomas' The Very Best Men. Barnes is also a central character in Robert Morrow's Firsthand Knowledge. Between these two books, there is plenty to make one wonder if he was involved in the assassination.

For example, Thomas' book relates Barnes' love of black ops, his ties to Howard Hunt, his frustration with his career around the time of the assassination, and his loyalty to Richard Bissell (who was fired by JFK).

The Morrow book puts Barnes right in the center of it all.

[James Richards]

The Morrow book puts Barnes right in the center of it all.

I have not read Morrow's book but I put Barnes right amongst the action as well. I also put him in Dealey Plaza. I know I have posted this before but I believe it to be most convincing.

James

[Pat Speer]

Wow, that is a good likeness. Robert Morrow claimed to be a CIA contract agent. He wrote a few novels based on his experiences with the CIA and then wrote Firsthand Knowledge, which supposedly told the true story. He claimed Barnes was his case officer and was also heavily involved with David Ferrie. Where Morrow gains credibility is that he was convicted in the 1960's for counterfeiting--he was part of a plot led by a right-wing Cuban named Mario Kohly to de-stabilize the Cuban economy by making false money and then using the false money to fund a Cuban counter-revolution. Where it gets interesting is that Richard Nixon wrote letters begging the Justice Dept. for leniency for Kohly, and Morrow re-prints them in his book.

Morrow also claims he purchased three Mannlicher-Carcanos and delivered them to David Ferrie, as I remember. That part I'm not so sure about.

[Larry Hancock]

This discussion of Barnes and Kohly is very interesting and I would welcome any dialog from researchers who can tell me what Barnes was actually doing in 1963. Evan Thomas book has him as a major charactor but seems to drop him after the Bay of Pigs, we hear that his career was in trouble, he developed some medical problems related to that and possibly as a result of the stress of the BOP operation - and that he seems to have been very angry at JFK. But then Thomas seems to leave it. We need to know what Barnes job was in 63, who he reported to and who he was associating with. I've seen some reference to his role in a new Domestic Opeations group but with no detail - obviously that could be very interesting.

In regard to Kohly and Morrow, Kohly's organization seems to have been very much out of the mainstream in 1963 and very "old line", not at all happy with many of the other exile leaders, no real military component and certainly not in special favor with the administration or part of the new Cuban project. I've seen some interesting letters in regard to Kohly and have always been curious as to exactly who picked him to be part of the counterfeit project - which certainly did occur but seems not to be found on the official map of Cuban projects being run under Fitzgerald or the Special Group/RFK? It would be really interesting if there was some sort of compartmentalized effort under Barnes.

I've talked to some folks who were close to Morrow but although they are convinced that he was sincere in his belief about a conspiracy, beyond that it is very hard to separate truth from fiction (or perhaps speculation is a better word) where Morrow is concerned. The concensus seems to be that he did hear a very fundamental piece of rumor or gossip from somebody before the assassination but who - and why they would talk to him - is unclear. What is clear is that he felt it was more important to keep stirring the pot on the subject than to be accurate or factual in all he was writing; however it's also clear he did have an impact in the genesis of the HSCA.

I have a hunch if we knew more about Barnes real job/activities things might become a good deal more clear.

-- Larry

[Ron Ecker]

James,

Egad, yet another Main and Houston lookalike! How many does that make? The Barnes resemblance is indeed striking, except the man on the corner looks to have a normal left ear. In Barnes’ photo his ear looks to be all but missing. There is another photo of Barnes in Morrow’s book, and his ears look almost non-existence there too. (Of course that master of disguise E. Howard Hunt could have given Barnes some ears to wear for the Dallas trip.)

Larry,

On Barnes, there is this from Hunt’s HSCA deposition (p. 31 of second session):

Mr. Genzman: During the time period 1962 to 1965, where were you stationed specifically?

Mr. Hunt: After Allen left, I joined Tracy Barnes’ new Domestic Operations Division, which should have been called the commercial operations division, and I worked for them in Washington until sometime in 1965, when we left for Spain under cover.

In his book Undercover (p. 132), Hunt goes into more detail on Barnes' division:

“At the end of 1961 Dulles was forced to ‘retire,’ and Richard Bissell followed. He was succeeded, not by Tracy Barnes, but by Richard Helms, untainted by the Bay of Pigs.

“After a considerable bureaucratic struggle Barnes established the Domestic Operations Division and appointed me its chief of covert action. The new division accepted both personnel and projects unwanted elsewhere within CIA, and those covert-action projects that came to me were almost entirely concerned with publishing and publications. We subsidized ‘significant’ books, for example, The New Class, by Milovan Djilas, one of a number of Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., titles so supported; ran a couple of news services—one based in Washington’s National Press Building—even subsidizing the printing and distribution of a well-known series of travel books. The work was not particularly demanding, and at the end of the day I still had sufficient energy to write fiction at home.”

Hunt skips to the summer of 1964 (p. 133), when “I received orders from the division's executive officer, Stanley Gaines, to have some of my ‘outside’ personnel obtain information from the nearby headquarters of Republican candidate Barry Goldwater. This was a White House matter, I was told, President Johnson being keenly interested in the plans and utterances of Barry Goldwater.” Hunt had his subordinates frequently pick up press material, position papers, and advance speaking schedules from Goldwater’s headquarters under various pretexts. “This was my first exposure to White House use of Agency personnel against a ‘domestic enemy,’ and I found it disturbing.”

Hunt also says this of Barnes in his book Give Us This Day (pp. 22-23), when Barnes hired him as Chief of Political Action for the Bay of Pigs: “Suave and popular, Barnes was a product of Groton, Yale, and Harvard Law. Through marriage he was connected to the Rockefeller clan, and during World War II he had worked for Allen Dulles and been decorated with the Silver Star. We had a common OSS background, and five years before I had worked for Tracy as a member of the CIA team that ousted Jacobo Arbenz from Guatemala.”

Edited July 31, 2004 by Ron Ecker

[James Richards]

James,

Egad, yet another Main and Houston lookalike! How many does that make? The Barnes resemblance is indeed striking, except the man on the corner looks to have a normal left ear. In Barnes’ photo his ear looks to be all but missing. There is another photo of Barnes in Morrow’s book, and his ears look almost non-existence there too. (Of course that master of disguise E. Howard Hunt could have given Barnes some ears to wear for the Dallas trip.)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hi Ron,

It's getting to the point of almost being ridiculous. I put this speculation together below. Can anyone say JM/WAVE? Of course this is not counting the Lucien Conein and Gerry Hemming look-a-likes positioned about 15 feet away just on the Main Street side of the corner.

James

[John Simkin]

Larry, did you come across any information on Earl Smith and his wife, Florence Smith, when researching your book?

Earl Smith was Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Cuba between June, 1957 and January, 1959. His wife, Florence Smith (Pritchett) had a long-term relationship with JFK that dated back to 1944. Apparently, FBI files show that JFK visited Florence over a dozen times while she was in Cuba. They also met several times in Palm Beach where their homes were conveniently adjoined.

Earl E. T. Smith gave evidence to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary on 27th August, 1960, about the CIA and Cuba. He had lot of interesting things to say. This included comments about the Soviet long-term tactics in Cuba.

http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/us-cub...rdner-smith.htm

This views also appeared in his book The Fourth Floor, published in 1962.

Some accounts suggest that the journalist Dorothy Kilgallen, passed notes of her investigation into the JFK assassination to Florence Smith. Kilgallen was found dead in her New York apartment on 8th November. Florence Smith, died two days later of a cerebral hemorrhage. The notes of her interview with Jack Ruby and the article she was writing on the case, were never found.

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

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

[Larry Hancock]

John, Smith is known to me only through his Committee remarks, which became part of the right wing drumbeat about "giving away Cuba to the Communists" and were used to paint certain CIA and State Department officials as sympathetic to Castro and of course ultimately as possible closet Communists. The same round of accusations from certain old Cuban hands as had followed the remarks of the old China hands about China going Communist. These sorts of remarks seem to assume a life of their own and you find them repeaed in many places.

Interestingly you find some of them very specifically placed in Martino's book where he talks about some of the same individuals being responsible for the rise of Castro that Smith mentions. It might be interesting to ask Mr. Weyl if those names, especially the CIA officer names came directly from John Martino or from other sources.

Other than that I can't say that Mr. Smith or his wife were on my radar screen any more than a host of anti-Communist folks who shared the same view. And of course a strong anti-Communist view would not have been socially out of place in any association with JFK since he shared the same feelings about Castro.

-- Larry

[Ron Ecker]

Some accounts suggest that the journalist Dorothy Kilgallen, passed notes of her investigation into the JFK assassination to Florence Smith. Kilgallen was found dead in her New York apartment on 8th November. Florence Smith, died two days later of a cerebral hemorrhage. The notes of her interview with Jack Ruby and the article she was writing on the case, were never found.

Apparently the main source on Kilgallen giving her notes to Mrs. Smith was Penn Jones. I have no copies of Jones's works, but it would be interesting to know where Jones got his information.

I recently bought a used copy of Lee Israel's biography "Kilgallen," which as far as I know is the most authoritative work on her. Florence Prichett (aka Florence Smith) gets one mention in the whole book, with no indication that she and Kilgallen even knew each other, though I'm sure they did.

From page 426, on Kilgallen's Jack Ruby material:

"Three days after (Dorothy's) death, Bob and Jean Bach invited (her husband) Richard Kollmar to their home for dinner. Bob asked the widower, 'Dick, what was all that stuff in the folder Dorothy carried around with her about the assassination?'

"Richard replied, 'Robert, I'm afraid that will have to go to the grave with me.'" (From author's interview of Bob Bach.)

Israel also relates that Mark Lane called Kollmar a month after Kilgallen's death and asked if he could see "the folder." Kollmar told him, "I'm going to destroy all that. It's done enough damage already." (From author's interview of Lane.)

Israel also notes that in 1975 the FBI asked Kilgallen's son about his mother's papers. (Kollmer committed suicide in 1971.) He knew nothing about their disposition and "suggested that his grandfather might have them" (p. 427).

Israel concludes "it is impossible to know whether (Kollmer) ever really possessed the material or what he decided to do with it. . . . Nothing of what Dorothy gathered, surmised, or wrote during her private interview with Jack Ruby or on her Texas or New Orleans sojourns has ever come to light" (p. 427).

[John Simkin]

Thank you for this Ron. I have ordered Lee Israel’s book but is yet to arrive. Researchers usually refer to the person who Kilgallen passed her notes to was a Mrs Earl Smith. It was only earlier this week that James Richards told me that the woman was also a journalist and used her maiden name, Florence Pritchett. After posting information about this on another forum, John Johnson pointed out that Florence Pritchett was a long-term girlfriend of JFK (there was talk that they would get married in the late 1940s). John Johnson provided information that JFK continued to have a relationship with Florence while she was married to Earl Smith.

Is it possible that it was Florence Smith who was providing information to Dorothy Kilgallen about the assassination. After all it was Kilgallen who first broke the story that the CIA and the Mafia were working together on the assassination of Fidel Castro (15th July, 1959). She also was the first to publish an article suggesting that JFK was having an affair with Marilyn Monroe? It does seem a very strange coincidence that both women died within three days of each other. Given Earl Smith’s political record, he was unlikely to hand over Kilgallen’s notes if they were in Florence’s possession.

Does anyone have W. Penn Jones’s article/book where he refers to the notes on the assassination being given to Florence Smith?