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Posts posted by William Plumlee
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Tosh, thanks for your answer...
But:
For me it's hard to believe that if you are there as an "abortteam" overlooking the area of DP and looking for a diversion and seeing an incident in front of the TSBD and hear the sound of an ambulance, that you DON'T see something/movement/hitmen on the east- and/or westside of the 6th floor of the TSBD. You were in the best position on the South Knoll to watch the TSBD, isn't it? DP isn't that big and it was easy to see something if there was anything to see. So wasn't there something at the 6th floor (IMO there were indeed shooters at the 6th floor, although NOT LHO, who you could have seen), or did you just ignore it?
Question to Tosh: what kind of proof do you have that you were part of an abortteam?
Gr. Paul.
P.S. My philosophie is this: flashed back in time with a timemachine and be at DP just in times to watch to whole plaza and look for myself what happened that day, with all we know nowadays it should be easy to see all the shooters, isn't it? I feel like when you knew they were planning a hit at JFK that day at DP it would also be easy to see some hitmen don't you think? It's something different for all the other spectators who didn't know and even then saw men on the 6th floor!!!
Q ".. Question to Tosh: what kind of proof do you have that you were part of an abortteam?..".
A "None. There is no proof. If there was I would be dead a long time now. I have never said there was proof, or I had proof. Nobody signed my dance book that day.
Q "...You were in the best position on the South Knoll to watch the TSBD, isn't it? DP isn't that big and it was easy to see something if there was anything to see. So wasn't there something at the 6th floor. ...".
A "... Hind sight is always 100% We were mostly interested in the SOUTH side of the Plaza and the parking lot. (our section) We did not focus much on the NORTH side except to point out best places for snipers. Sergio nor I saw anything that would cause alarm in or near the TSBD in spite of what some might think. If a shooter or people were there in windows, and we noticed them, we perhaps thought they were suppose to be there to watch that area. This hind sight is like a dog wagging its tail.
A "if the "Pittsburgh Steelers" punt return man had not dropped the ball and set up the winning touchdown for the other team.., then the Steelers would have won last weeks game".
A "if someone had answered their damn radio that day then perhaps JFK would be alive today".
A " if we had taken that mission more serious then perhaps we could have stopped it... And if the dog had not stop to crap, then he would have caught the rabbit. We live in a world of IF's.
A " I do not try to prove anything I have to say on the JFK matter. IF I can help, then I try. If I can point a few things out to research which might help, then I do. If that is not accepted by them then I accept the matter and move on. I have nothing to prove nor do I try to speculate on events I know nothing about. However, like you, I find its difficult at times. You are responsible for what you think and do. I am responsible for what I did, or in the JFK matter, did not do. JFK was a tragic event; one of many of the time. Tragic as it was, it has never been the focal point of my life. I have no motive except to try and help to understand the event if I can.
Perhaps its time to move on... as some have told me; "there is nothing to see here".
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I hope this does not distratct from my main question to Bill, which was:
While some of Holt's info checks out, others don't, and disinfo is planted among the truth.
Which particular info did not check out in your experience?
Wim
Well, he mentioned that he saw about a dozen guys he worked with on previous operaitons at Dealey Plaza, when some of them have been acounted for elsewhere.
In addition, he said he drove John Rosselli to Dallas in the Olds station wagon from Grace Ranch.
Others claim he was flown in to Dallas in a private plane.
I believe FBI wiretaps of Rosselli place him in a Vegas hotel at the time.
BK
The wire tapes that put Roselli in Las Vegas where from April of 1963 when he was at the "Thunderbird Inn". The FBI knew this at the time (63) when they stated he was not in Dallas and used the old survailence tapes to prove same to committee investigators. After the assassination it was said by the FBI that he was in Las Vegas at the time of the shooting and produced said document and tape to committee. (classified) The same reports and the same SAC also put me in West Palm Beach in county jail, in November of 63 but no records were produced or fingerprint booking card was ever produced (classified). Sometime later the FBI said in an "inter-agency memo", (classified) that I was in a Denver Colorado jail in November (reference FBI SAC Scott Warner 62 file and 301/2 file... the 301/2 was destoryed". classified) Fuel receips from aircraft N-63XX Echo were signed by me at the Thunderbird Inn airport in April of 63 (as per FBI 26 file de-classified) In 1978 a flight plann dated from April of 1963 from N63XX Thompson flight service Utah was found in aircraft that had names written on same by pilot (Plumlee) "Col. Rawlston", and also "call Rosellie". ( release date: FOIA 1981 FBI Lab. declassified)
Whats the point? Why do some quote the FBI as fact and can do no wrong and then on the other hand say they lie? Can anyone believe anything they had said back then as to the events leading to the assassination? Yet today they say and others that Rosellie was in Las Vegas at the time of the shooting because the FBI said he was there.... and now that becomes a FACT?..... DAH.
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duplicate post: sorry about that.
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As we all know Tosh Plumlee claims he flew a team in who had to stop the assassination on JFK.
They had to look for teams (hitmen,radiomen,spotters etc.)
He did this with Sergio and they were on the South Knoll. They were just in time, just a few minutes before the limousine was at DP.
They were overlooking the tripple overpass and the North Knoll but didn't see anything...
Right?
BUT: what about the TSBD?
Wasn't it easy for Tosh Plumlee to see men in the East- and probably Westside of the TSBD 1 minute before the limousine turned at Elmstreet?
When you are on the South Knoll IMO this is possible without any binocculars.
Tosh Plumlee: did you look at the TSBD or were you only concentrated on lower spots and didn't watch the buildings?
Or was there another "stop-team" who had to check the buildings?
What were your and Sergio's exact instructions and who gave them to you? Who else got instructions to stop the assassination that you know of?
Gr. Paul.
Thank you for the questions. However, they have been answered before on this forum and in other places. I have taken the time to select areas where you can find them. Most of the time people do not read anything except what they want to hear, or read. If it does not Fit their theories, then they move on and that is how mis quoted information becomes false facts (if such a thing exist.) I hope you will read the following selections and perhaps your questions will be put to rest..., although more questions will be raised I'm sure.
I have no motive. I have only tried to help and each time I get a "bloody nose". My statements have been on the record many many years..., long before special interest and profit agents and publishers came on the scene.
21st day of November, 2004 (Plumlee)
We changed aircraft at Tampa to a waiting DC-3 that was registered to 'Atlantic Richfield',
The CIA's specific information about the assassination, which their field personnel had obtained from Texas informants and international sources, was past to Military Intel units attached to the Pentagon. Some of this information, I had been told, came from the interrogations of Two Cubans who had plotted to fire on Air Force One with a bazooka on November 17 in West Palm Beach, Florida.
The pre-mission briefing was held at Loxahatchee, Florida on the evening of November 20th, but since I was not "field operational" at that time, except as a ?contract pilot', I was not directly addressed at the briefing, other than routing and weather reports pertaining to flying the team into position.
I only began to learn the full scope of the operation from my pilot Rojas and a field operative friend of mine named Sergio. Most of the details of this operation were told to me only after we had become airborne. I would learn more operational details upon reaching Redbird Airport.
I learned that it had been discussed by the abort team where to go
Although my specific assigned function was only a pilot. Upon arriving at Redbird Airport, Sergio asked me if I wanted to come along and see the President. I could also act as a spotter for him and his team, which, he said, were assigned to the south side of the plaza. I was told other members of the team would be patrolling the north side and the overpass. I understood we would be looking for a type of triangulation ambush. I gladly accepted Sergio's offer.
While on the south knoll, Sergio and I were attempting to evaluate the most logical places where shooters might be located, but everything was confused, the timing was off, team members were late getting into position. They were not where they were supposed to be and the limited radio contacts that we had with them were not working, or spotty at best. It was soon after our arrival that the motorcade arrived.
I never saw Roselli in Dealey Plaza that day.
The people on the flight out of Dallas were very quiet. I interpreted their silence as dejection at the mission's failure to abort the assassination of the President. I believed that if these men had been the shooters or assassins themselves, they would have been very excited because they had carried it off.
When I later learned that Oswald had been arrested as the lone assassin, I remembered having met him on a number of previous occasions which were connected with intelligence training matters, first at Illusionary Warfare Training in Nagshead, North Carolina, then in Honolulu at a radar installation and at Oahu's Wheeler Air Force Base, then in Dallas at an Oak Cliff safe house on North Beckley Street run by Alpha 66's Hernandez group, who had worked out of Miami prior to the assassination.
(Plumlee/Roselli; 62-2116 file) was not declassified until 1997)
NOTE: THE FOLLOWING REFERENCED FBI FILES HAVE BEEN REMOVED. (DECEMBER 1, 2004) AFTER I WAS ADVISED THAT WITHIN THOSE RELEASED FOIA FBI PAGES CONTAINED MATTERS WHICH ARE STILL CLASSIFIED "TOP SECRET COMMITTEE SENSITIVE", AS RECLASSIFIED ON AUGUST 12, 1991. I WAS NOT AWARE OF THIS AT THE TIME SOME OF THESE PAGES WERE POSTED BY ME ON THIS FORUM. I WILL REVIEW THESE PAGES AND REPOST THE REFERENCES THAT ARE CONSIDERED NOT TO "COMPROMISE" PROCEDURES AND METHODS.
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1992 Interview Note Plumlee did not transcribe this interview and never saw it until after it was published and He is not responsible for errors contain therein
Note toward the end of interview:
QB: “….who gave you your instructions for November 22, 1963?
A: Yes, my handler at that point was a person by the name of Bob Bennett. The people that would be CIA direct liaison aliases names, Bill Rogers, Rex Beardsley, Bob Bennett, and Larry Allen. And a guy by the name of Johnny Smith, which was actually John Roselli, those are found in the 105 files.
BQ: You said Roselli was one of the people you got your instructions from, correct?
A: Not on that particular day, not Roselli. That particular day my instructions came through Locksahatchie through Robert Bennett and also Rex Beardsley, I believe it was.
BQ: But Roselli was a key figure and someone you did get instructions from?
A: Well, Roselli's name was mentioned that day that he would be picked up at Tampa airport and he was staying at the Congress Inn so I guess as far as that particular mission the first time I heard Roselli's name was through Bob Bennett who instructed me and Sergio and Rojas. Rojas came from Miami to Lantana and we came from Locksahatchie to Lantana but I was already instructed through Bennett that we were to pick up John Roselli, and he was referred to as the Colonel, and I knew who that was because I had already had previous contact on many, many occasions with Johnny Roselli.
Back to front part of interview:
(cont) ...".
“The impression I was under at that time is we were flying a team into Dallas to abort the assassination…”.
A: No, well, the CIA acted as support. Our flight was a military intelligence flight.
Q: On the morning of November 22, 1963, did the flight that arrived in Garland, Texas, just outside of Dallas, have anything to do with the CIA?
A: The CIA was....yes it did, the CIA was our support people. We were military intelligence. The CIA was running support and coordinating certain flights, making different arrangements, or necessary arrangements, for us.
Q: After Nicoletti got off the aircraft do you know where he went?
A: I have no....he was not on the aircraft. After John Roselli got off the aircraft, I have no idea where John Roselli went.
A: I was over on the South side, directly in line with the light posts. Sergio and I were attempting to evaluate where the most logical place to be to make the "hit". We had just got there to the Plaza and everything was all messed up, timing was off, people were not in....where they were supposed to be, the limited radio contacts that we had were not working. Whether the team that I flew in was a combination of the abort team or the shooter team, I have no way of knowing. It could have been a combination of both or it could have been a complete 100% abort team, I don't know.
A: Let me interject something here. The reason that we left...if we were spotted in the Plaza that particular day, or our whole team was....it would have been a real problem for us because we had prior knowledge that an attempt was going to be made. It was imperative that we get out of the area.
Q: Did you ever have an occasion after that to provide any information to the FBI about John Roselli?
A: Yes, through the Farentello Brothers and through a person by the name of Nick Nicholas. I was told that a hit was going, this was in 1976 a few months, that a friend of mine was gonna be...that a hit was made out on him because of his testimony. I immediately, because the FBI had asked me to do this, I immediately informed the FBI of the information that I had about a pending "hit" being made on John Roselli. Two weeks later John Roselli was found in Biscayne Bay and I immediately contacted the Fbi and said "hey this is the individual that we were talking about" and "why wasn't something done"?
Q: Are you aware of any FBI records that give this account of you informing them of the death of John Roselli?
A: Yes, I am. There are numerous...there's over 342 files...ah, pages, pertaining to John Roselli. The FBI 105 file from Phoenix Organized Crime Detail, which I think you have copies of, is one of the files...one of the pages, that I am making reference to.
A: Well, as we say in CIA. "There's many, many rouges out there". You have just as many rouges in Mafia. In fact, Roselli himself was very, very keen on Kennedy, he loved that man. That's why I find it difficult to say Roselli was an actual hitter or a shooter. Roselli's liaison...contacts was with CIA, but mostly with military people, some here in the Dallas area...4th Army Reserve out of Love Field, 49th Armored Division, Capt. Edward G. Siwells outfit at 4th Army Reserve. He had known these people. As far as Roselli being connected with the CIA, he had a lot of friends in CIA, military intelligence, and also within the government. Mainly, when they had the party at the Fountainbleu Hotel, the opening of the Fountainbleu Hotel, Sam Giancana, John Roselli, and many, many military intelligence personnel was at that opening so that's the reason that I say these things. Roselli was connected with military intelligence.
A: There has been a report of a flight plan that was uncovered in 1976 by Thomas Downing and Rick Feeney, I believe, where they allege that they had found the actual flight plan of the Dallas flight. I take exception to this because there was no flight plan filled out or filed on the Dallas flight, from Houston to Dallas. There was no flight plan filed from Tampa to New Orleans. We went open water across ADIZ zone. Then from New Orleans to Houston there was no flight plan. The flight plan that they're making reference to was the flight plan for 6393 Echo out of Thompson Flying Service, Salt Lake City, which was a 172 Cessena which had Roselli's name on it, and also had some other player's names on it, some of them military intelligence, some coded operations that were written. But, this was random writing on the back of a flight plan at that particular time. It was just making notes. I saw that. One investigator tried to tell me that that was the actual flight plan and I said absolutely not.
A: The time that we left Dallas, I felt something was drastically wrong. My pilot, I felt, and still feel all these years, had known more about that operation than what I had known. The flight out of Dallas was one of the strangest flights I've ever been on in my life. It was not a.....it was a team that was in total dejection. I mean we were...we'd...we'd actually, by our own disorganization, we had fouled...we had fouled up. Whether the information and intelligence that we'd got had been tampered with prior to that flight, or on that day, I have no way of knowing. The people that were on flight was very quiet. It was, for everybody that was on board, it seemed to be an extremely sad day. That's why I take issue, if these had been shooters or assassins themselves, I think they would have been very excited because they had carried it off. That's why I take issue with the fact that I....CIA had anything to do with flying an attack team in.
BQ: Did you see anything from the 6th floor window?
A: Nothing that would look suspicious to me, however, the most significant thing that I remember, we were looking for a diversion. It would be logical for a team to set up a diversion to focus in that direction while something was going on in this direction. I remember an incident where people congregated right out in front of the Texas School Book Depository and I'd heard the sound of ambulances and this so we thought that that could be the first sign of a diversion so instead of going toward the sound and going toward the people, Sergio and I went back up to the knoll there to check the parking lot. We thought at that point if a shooter was getting in place, he would be getting in place now because we were probably, at that point, 5-10 minutes before the motorcade would be coming down.
BQ: Just gonna ask you two or three more questions. Could you explain to the layman, like myself, how the CIA would go about hiring a team like yours in this kind of situation?
A: Well, they would never do it direct for one thing. It would be done through intermediaries.
A: Well, number one, the CIA would have absolutely nothing to do with the actual planning because their position at that point was to gather intelligence and assimilate that to the proper people. In our particular case, that intelligence would be passed back to military intelligence operatives so CIA would be acting as a support level for our particular operations. As far as the CIA being involved in the planning stages as a upper level agency, I find that very difficult to believe because the method of operation on recruiting agents and operatives or recruiting operatives doesn't work that way., The CIA would gather this information, assimilate it, decipher it, and then pass it back to appropriate authorities, in this case, I would say it would be military intelligence even though some of the information had came from operatives in military ranks which were involved in Mafia.
But, if we go back to "they", when we say "they", CIA implemented that "hit" team, I say CIA as an agency did not implement that "hit" team" but perhaps as we call them now, rouges, or special interest groups within the agency because of the "good ol' boy" network could have certainly been involved in an operation to assassinate the President.
If a guy's got a particular tremendous asset, then he'll be utilized.
As soon as he breaches that asset he'll be eliminated.
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Bill,
Are you saying then that the transcript Wim posted here is what you were told by Holt? I'm particularly intrigued by Holt's reference to Robertson. There is of course photographic evidence that Robertson was at Main and Houston. So I'm wondering if Holt and the photographic record corroborate each other, or if Holt was aware of the lookalike photograph.
It's my understanding that the Robertson lookalike did not come to the research community's attention until a couple of years ago. How might Holt have known what Robertson looked like? Where could they have ever crossed paths?
Ron
FWIW Its Documented.
Holt first mentioned this name in Phoenix Arizona at the Caravan Inn on Van Brun Street in 1974. This was recorded by Congressman Tom Downing's investigators before the HSCA was formed. Swaicker and Rick Feeney knew about this conversation and I think one of them had it taped by Phoenix Organize Crime Div. Later these same investigators went to the "Thurnbird Inn" in Las Vegas where the story told by Holt was confirmed by others associated with John Roselli. Also people who owned the Grace Ranch near Tucson also confirmed Holts story. It can be found at the "Phoenix Organized Crime Detail". ref; Sgt Ed Salem, Phoenix PD and Sgt Ray Lambertson Arizona Department of Public Safty. Also Senator Berry Goldwater' security advisor also knew or was there about this taped interview. The Phoenix FBI also knew about the tape as well as Karen Holt. Again FWIW... its old news and was not accepted by the research community when it was first made public when Holt was alive. Thats ashame... he is dead now. Ask his daughter about this she is still alive and I think she can add info on this. Tosh
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Bill,
Are you saying then that the transcript Wim posted here is what you were told by Holt? I'm particularly intrigued by Holt's reference to Robertson. There is of course photographic evidence that Robertson was at Main and Houston. So I'm wondering if Holt and the photographic record corroborate each other, or if Holt was aware of the lookalike photograph.
It's my understanding that the Robertson lookalike did not come to the research community's attention until a couple of years ago. How might Holt have known what Robertson looked like? Where could they have ever crossed paths?
Ron
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So Sturgis was wrong?
Sturgis was also a member of Operation 40. He later explained: "this assassination group (Operation 40) would upon orders, naturally, assassinate either members of the military or the political parties of the foreign country that you were going to infiltrate, and if necessary some of your own members who were suspected of being foreign agents... We were concentrating strictly in Cuba at that particular time. Actually, they were operating out of Mexico, too."
Mark
Mark: FWIW
Frank Struges was not CIA he was a "contact cut out" sometimes under "limited" contract to "special operations", which were not directly associated with the CIA's Covert Action Group (CAG) or the 40 Committee. This 'independent' group which were basically not under control of anyone. Hence Watergate and a few other none sanctioned operations, launched secretly by the White House's powers that be. It is wrong to even say these operations were "off the books", because they were never on the books. Some of these questionable ops were set in motion by John Martino at the request of the current administration; and too with others which were more connected with organized crime located in Miami after their leaving Cuban in a huff in 1959.
Is is wise to note that any sanction CIA or Military operative associated with any "on the books" approved operation never used his real name. Sometimes the operative was assigned two or sometimes three names and these names were found in file locator codes as "Tabs" or within "Sections" sometimes associated with a particular "Task Force" W/H Div. such as W or OMC. (Now hopefully this will bring out some military CIA retirees and we will go from there) now to continue:
Frank Struges was my friend as well as John Martino and John Roselli. None of these people were government employees. However, they were on call as "friends of the administration", so to speak for special operations that the CIA and others knew nothing about until the S--- it the fan. Then it was cried "Foul" by those on the carpet. At that point it became a CIA operation in name. "The bag of sour grapes" changed hands and the current administration pointed to the Ops 40 Committee. "Your damned if you do and your damned if you don't' ".
I worked under six different names for the CIA from 1958 until late in 1988. I infiltrated more than one "off the books" operation as a pilot for some of these ??? sanction operatives. There was a time in Miami when each fourth person walking the street was said to be CIA. All they had to do was act like James Bond. Others like Struges would sell the part by indicating they were real Spooks while they were not. There claim to fame was the fight for Cuba with promises of good jobs in the casinos when Cuba was returned to more happy times.
JFK and RFJ both knew this and they worked it. They sat up a secret operation and found their own people and inserted them into these phony operations and opened back door channels. Thus JFK's Secret Committee. In April the Pentagon was advised of a pending hit planned on government officials by Mafia, a few Texans, and a few associates of the CIA. The Military Intel and its secret task force (OMC-235) was launched into action from the Pentagon. These operatives worked as civilians and used fake names more than once to gather information from the Mafia, Cuban infiltrators, and double agents. The independents working as "Mercs" were rounded up and put on ice until the OMC sanctioned military operation could get organised.
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"...U.S. Department of State ref; Hinchey Report
Subject CIA Covert Action Group (CAG)
"....At the direction of the White House and interagency policy coordination committees, CIA undertook the covert activities described below. There were sustained propaganda efforts, including financial support for major news media, against Allende and other Marxists. Political action projects supported selected parties before and after the 1964 elections and after Allende's 1970 election.
In April 1962, the "5412 Panel Special Group"-a sub-cabinet body charged with reviewing proposed covert actions-approved a proposal to carry out a program of covert financial assistance to the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) to support the 1964 Presidential candidacy of Eduardo Frei.
Also in 1962, the CIA began supporting a civic action group that undertook various propaganda activities, including distributing posters and leaflets.
In December 1963, the 5412 Group agreed to provide a one-time payment to the Democratic Front, a coalition of three moderate to conservative parties, in support of the Front's Presidential campaign.
In April 1964, the 5412 Group approved a propaganda and political action program for the upcoming September 1964 Presidential election.
In May 1964, following the dissolution of the Democratic Front, the "303 Committee," successor to the 5412 Group, agreed to give the Radical Party additional covert assistance.
In February 1965, the 303 Committee approved a proposal to give covert assistance to selected candidates in upcoming Congressional elections.
In 1967, the CIA set up a propaganda mechanism for making placements in radio and news media.
In July 1968, the 303 Committee approved a political action program to support individual moderate candidates running in the 1969 Congressional elections.
As a result of 1968 propaganda activities, in 1969 the "40 Committee" (successor to the 303 Committee) approved the establishment of a propaganda workshop.
In the runup to the 1970 Presidential elections, the 40 Committee directed CIA to carry out "spoiling operations" to prevent an Allende victory.
As part of a "Track I" strategy to block Allende from taking office after the 4 September election, CIA sought to influence a Congressional run-off vote required by the Constitution because Allende did not win an absolute majority.
As part of a "Track II" strategy, CIA was directed to seek to instigate a coup to prevent Allende from taking office (see discussion below).
While Allende was in office, the 40 Committee approved the redirection of "Track I" operations that-combined with a renewed effort to support the PDC in 1971 and a project to provide support to the National Party and Democratic Radical Party in 1972-funneled millions of dollars to strengthen opposition political parties. CIA also provided assistance to militant right-wing groups to undermine the President and create a tense environment. ...".
Additional information of interest for students interested in CIA research and background:
".... reference; Subject: Playing God With the Forty Committee
Keywords: CIA's mandate was only for correlation and evaluation of intelligence
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1992 13:41:06 GMT
Lines: 489 ...".
"... Henry Kissinger . . . did not relinquish [the] CIA-oriented job [of National Security Advisor] when he became Secretary of State. This is no doubt an unauthorized and perhaps illegal use of this position because the law requires that the President have a National Security Advisor. By his very duties this advisor performs functions that are in direct conflict with those of the Secretary of State. . . .
Since [the mid-50s] the Special Group or Forty Committee has become a power unto itself. The State Department has thousands of career people who are responsible for the Foreign Policy of the United States to the Forty Committee's five men. They approve items that have much greater impact on world events than the State Department. They do this secretly, without proper review, without comprehensive experience and often without anyone but a very few "spooks" knowing about it.
Technically the CIA does not have this authority, and legally this is not the way things should be done. The CIA was never given this power by law and should not be permitted to continue this practice. No new laws are needed; the present law should be followed precisely and enforced. The CIA is in existence to perform an intelligence function and no more.
the following appeared in the February, 1975 issue of Genesis:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Forty Committee
By L. Fletcher Prouty
reprinted with permission of the author
"By God, Prouty, those bastards are going to let them murder Trujillo. They go around telling everyone this xxxx about anticommunism; invading Cuba with a half-assed task force and then when they have one tough son-of-a-bitch right there in the heart of the Caribbean, what do they do? They take away his support. He'll be dead in less than forty-eight hours."
General Darcy was spitting mad. He was one of the toughest guys who ever strapped himself into a P-51 fighter. He was a real professional. He believed in fighting the Cold War as hard as he had fought the total war against Hitler. Now, in May 1961, less than one month after the Bay of Pigs, he had just come back from a meeting of the Forty Committee (then called the Special Group 5412/2). They were playing God again and Rafael Trujillo, the dictatorial president of the Dominican Republic, was the next target for termination.
"Prouty, before you go back to your shop, go down to personnel. Find out what it takes to retire. This is not my game. I'm getting out." Before Darcy's papers could be processed, Trujillo was dead, murdered in the city that carried his name, by men of his own army.
Tom Darcy had made it clear many times that he had no love for Trujillo nor for what he stood; but despite that he knew Trujillo would never condone communism, and anyway, "it is not our business to mess around in their internal affairs."
Assassinations are not made by the Forty Committee; they are permitted. When the South Vietnamese military found out that the U.S. was withdrawing its support from the Diem brothers in Saigon, there was but one thing for the Diems to do. Take that preferred plane ride and leave quickly. Trujillo was too proud to heed the warning, and he was shot down in the streets. The Diems were too stubborn. They returned to their palace to find that their CIA-trained elite guard -- their only real personal protection -- had vanished. They were defenseless, dead.
Many of the telegrams that tell this story are contained in the Pentagon Papers. Anyone can see how this country removed its support from the Diems' government and all but engineered their murders. An interesting sidelight to this came up in the Watergate testimony: Charles Colson ordered E. Howard Hunt to doctor up the State Department cables pertaining to the Diem murders in order to make it appear that President John Kennedy had ordered that act. Look at this from another perspective. Colson, Hunt, and others knew that Kennedy had not ordered those murders. They wanted it to look as though he did. If Kennedy did not order that action, someone of lesser authority did. Was it the Forty Committee? If not the committee, was it the CIA acting alone? Without belaboring this crucial point here, this is what it is all about. Who has this tremendous power? Who uses this great power -- with or without presidential consent, let alone without the consent of congress? The record is full of these actions. Eisenhower, Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Nixon were all caught in this web.
When President Salvador Allende's opposition in Chile learned that the United States had withdrawn all support of his government, they knew it was time to move. The Forty Committee did not have to say, "We have decided to kill Allende." All it had to do was to let the right people know that they would not support him, and that they would not censure these people. Allende should have recognized the pattern; not long before he had witnessed the same thing in Bolivia.
President Victor Paz Estensoro lost favor with Washington. The CIA tipped off General Rene Barrientos Ortuno that the gates of the city were open. In an almost effortless coup d'etat, Barrientos and his CIA friends flew into La Paz and the country was theirs. Estensoro accepted transport out of Bolivia and flew to exile in Lima, Peru. The committee does not kill anyone, they just welcome in the new regime and fling out the old -- dead or alive.
What is this Forty Committee, which has this power over the noncommunist world? Who are its members? Do they operate within any law? Whom do they represent and whose interests do they promote?
The Forty Committee is the latest of a long line of such committees, all of which live in deepest secrecy. Before it was called the Forty Committee it was the 303 Committee. Before that the Special Group. In the early Fifties it was the Special Group 10/2 and later the Special Group 5412 or 5412/2.[1] Ostensibly this organization has always been made up of a representative of the President (the President's Advisor for National Security Affairs -- a euphemism for the CIA's man in the White House); a representative of the Secretary of State and one for the Secretary of Defense. It also includes the Director of the CIA and since Kennedy's time it has included the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. These five men, representing as they do the principals of the National Security Council, have had thrust upon them the responsibility for international clandestine operations. At one time Nelson Rockefeller was the President's National Security Advisor. So were Robert Cutler, McGeorge Bundy, and Maxwell Taylor. The present incumbent is Henry Kissinger, because he did not relinquish that CIA-oriented job when he became Secretary of State. This is no doubt an unauthorized and perhaps illegal use of this position because the law requires that the President have a National Security Advisor. By his very duties this advisor performs functions that are in direct conflict with those of the Secretary of State.
The power of this committee is awesome. Like the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, there is almost nothing in the world that cannot be done secretly by the might and money of the government of the United States. Consider some of the actions of this committee, or at least things that the CIA has done under the guise of having the committee's support.
Years ago the CIA had an old-time oil expert named George Prussing who knew the Middle East and its power centers like the back of his sunburned hands. In those days many of the Arab countries were weak and the Russian bear loomed large over the Caucasus. Prussing was directed by the CIA via the Special Group to plant mines in the oil wells of such countries as Saudi Arabia against the day when the Russians might overrun those defenseless oil fields. Did he do it? Are they still there? Are they effective? Who knows? But most of all, who reviews these matters? Who knows about such horrendous things? And if these five men know or knew, then from whom do they, or did they, draw their supreme power? Did Eisenhower know about Prussing's assignment? Did he authorize it? He didn't know about Francis Gary Powers's U-2 flight. In 1958, when the Special Group authorized the CIA to invade Indonesia and to support more than forty thousand scattered rebels against the legitimate government of Sukarno, who really gave them that power? Was it really in the best interest of the U.S. for the CIA to mount such a large operation against a "friendly" country? Either the CIA acted on its own or with the approval of the Special Group mechanism. Richard Nixon, as Vice President, knew all about this. He knew that Allen Dulles's protege, Frank Wisner of the CIA, was in Singapore directing this operation. After its failure Nixon ordered Dulles to fire Wisner. But did Eisenhower know of this?
When the CIA was created, soon after World War II, the law (the National Security Act of 1947) stated clearly what its duties were to be. There are five. The first four are clearly above-board intelligence functions. It is the fifth duty that opens the door to clandestine operations:
to perform such other functions and duties related to intelligence affecting the national security as the National Security Council may from time to time direct.
This is the exact language of the law. This is the law today, and despite countless efforts by the CIA to have us believe otherwise, this is the only law that properly lists the duties of the CIA.[2] It has not been changed and it has not been augmented.
The CIA would like to have us believe that it has the right to perform clandestine activities. It does not have this authority in law -- unless it is directed by the National Security Council to perform such an activity. Even then the law is most explicit: it adds, "from time to time. . . ." As when the CIA is authorized to perform a clandestine operation, that authority does not carry over to another.
The law further limits the CIA by saying "As the National Security Council may . . . direct." In such important matters there is a vast difference between "direct" and "authorize." When the NSC directs, that means that the highest authority in the country has originated the idea, approved it and resolved to carry it out. When the NSC believes that the plan must be carried out, and only then, the NSC directs that it be done. And the NSC has the authority to direct any agency, not just the CIA. After Allen Dulles had been appointed Director of the CIA by President Eisenhower, he began a deft campaign to water down this prescribed process. Working in conjunction with his brother John Foster Dulles, who was then Secretary of State, Allen Dulles put his proposal in the following terms: because the members of the NSC are the busiest people in Washington, because they have the cares of the world on their shoulders, because the President or the Vice President cannot be at every meeting, it is proposed that representatives be appointed to a sub-committee of the NSC which can meet regularly in place of each member to act upon CIA clandestine matters.
This sounded logical from an administrative point of view. But was it legal? Congress and federal law already said how this should be done. Congress knew that the NSC would be busy. They also knew that those top men would be most responsible and ultimately discreet. So Congress did not provide for a subcommittee. But it was done.
The CIA had prevailed upon the NSC to publish a series of National Security Council Intelligence Directives (NSCIDs). One of these, NSCID 10/2, came close to giving the CIA what it wanted. In that document the NSC had spelled out that the CIA could get into clandestine work. However (and I used to have one of the original drafts of this directive in my files in the Office of the Secretary of Defense), President Eisenhower had written in his own handwriting on the side margin of NSCID/10/2 a stipulation to the effect that neither the military nor any other branch of the government was to provide the CIA with men, money, materials, or overseas base facilities in such quantity that the agency would have the ability to carry out a series of operations, a large operation, or a long-term operation. Eisenhower knew that if he cut off its men, money, and supplies, the CIA could not get deeply involved. The full meaning of this interpretation cannot be overemphasized. Yet the CIA eventually got around this device. Even the written directives of Presidents are ignored.
For years Eisenhower's stipulation slowed Dulles down. But through a procedure found in the complexities of the national war planning process, of which the CIA's a part, he was able to find another loophole and to build up supplies as though they were part of his "Fourth Force" augmentation during wartime. The military fell for this and gave him more war materiel then he could ever use, even in peacetime. Then the CIA penetrated the military with cover units. At one time more than one thousand military units of varying strengths belonged to the CIA. Even though they were not large, they permitted men and materiel to flow anywhere -- and at no cost to the CIA.
Then Allen Dulles got the Special Group established and it became the platform for the development of a capability for clandestine operations. With meticulous care Dulles saw to it that the men designated as representatives of the White House and of the State and Defense Departments were men with strong connections with the CIA. At one time General Edward G. Lansdale attended meetings for the Secretary of Defense. Lansdale had served with the CIA for most of his active "military" career.
By 1955, when I began my daily work within this secret framework, the Special Group was regularly approving items brought to it by the CIA. Very rarely, if ever, did the NSC "direct" the CIA to get itself involved in some activity. Rather the CIA, as Dulles has visualized, found itself creating and originating exercises one after the other, with the Special Group rubber-stamping them. In those days, when the CIA made a request of the Department of Defense, we would screen top-secret Special Group logs. If we found that the Defense Department representative had "voted" to approve the "fun and games," we would provide the men, materiel, and overseas resources through an elaborate "cover" process that was global in its capability.
On the other hand, when we found that the operation had not been presented to the Special Group, we would notify the Secretary of Defense immediately and await his instructions. Between 1955 and 1959 we had the power to stop CIA requests that had not been approved by the Defense Department. Sometimes the CIA would attempt to get around us and tie one operation to another or otherwise attempt to beat the system. We learned to put knowledgeable experts in the field -- pilots, doctors, and so on -- who would detect their plans and report them immediately. Once, when I was asked to move a squadron of Marine helicopters from the Laos CIA operational zone to South Vietnam, I found no precedent and no approval. I informed the Secretary of Defense of this item and he did not approve the project. At that time it would have been the first such move of major "hardware" into South Vietnam. The CIA battled this decision for weeks and finally prevailed, as they usually did, by using the weight of the Special Group and the White House.
Since those days the Special Group or Forty Committee has become a power unto itself. The State Department has thousands of career people who are responsible for the Foreign Policy of the United States to the Forty Committee's five men. They approve items that have much greater impact on world events than the State Department. They do this secretly, without proper review, without comprehensive experience and often without anyone but a very few "spooks" knowing about it.
Technically the CIA does not have this authority, and legally this is not the way things should be done. The CIA was never given this power by law and should not be permitted to continue this practice. No new laws are needed; the present law should be followed precisely and enforced. The CIA is in existence to perform an intelligence function and no more. It would not take much to conclude that the Forty Committee possesses sufficient leverage over international affairs to overthrow Allende. To give money to the opposition party in Italy? To train King Hussein's elite bodyguard? To create and build up the Shah of Iran? To grant soft drink bottling concessions to Marshall Sarit of Thailand in order to make him the most powerful and wealthy man of that CIA-pawn country? To create Willy Brandt in West Germany and then to knock him down when it wished? To overfly Chinese nuclear plants at will? To arm and equip Indian Border Police? To infringe on the air rights of Norway? To bolster the Katangese rebel government of the Congo while the State Department was working with the legal government? To overthrow Paz Estensoro? To spy in Antarctica despite an international treaty prohibiting it? To play dirty "dirty tricks" at several Olympic Games until the Games now have become political battlegrounds? To spy with U-2's on the French and British at the Suez in 1956? To place so many CIA personnel in other branches and agencies of the American government that the CIA is internally powerful in almost every agency? If the Forty Committee did not authorize these things, then is the answer that the CIA did them on its own, illegally?
When Gary Powers's U-2 spy plane went down in the Soviet Union in 1960, President Eisenhower did not know about it until after he heard the news from Khrushchev. Rather than admit that a tiny irresponsible cabal had sent the U-2 out, Eisenhower had to say that he knew about it. After the Bay of Pigs, when John Kennedy learned about the CIA's role, he wrote three strong orders intended to control the CIA. But he did not live to complete that task. Lyndon Johnson admitted that the CIA ran a "damned Murder Inc." but confessed that he had been unable to do anything about it.
The combination of the Forty Committee and the CIA has outlived any usefulness that it may once have had. It must be abolished and the CIA must be so controlled by Congress and the Executive that it will be removed from the business of clandestine operations altogether. After all, there are other ways to do these things. We'll discuss them at a later date.
* * * * * * *
A segment of NSC 5412 follows below. Known as the Special Group 5412/2, this subcommittee of the National Security Council was the descendant of the Special Group 10/2 which, as described above, produced a document NSCID 10/2 that "came close to giving the CIA what it wanted" in terms of being able to conduct clandestine operations. NSC 5412, "National Security Council Directive on Covert Operations," effectively neutralized such oversight functions as were intended to be carried out under the authority of the Operations Coordinating Board (OCB) which was a part of NSC by law. OCB was intended to be a group of senior individuals, who would follow the decisions made by the National Security Council and make sure that the bureaucracy carried them out.
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The following comes from The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War, Part I, 1945-1961, prepared for the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate, by the Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, printed by the U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1984. Declassified in 1977, NSC 5412 is located at the National Archives, RG 273. Also important to note here is the wording that defined "covert operations."
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NSC 5412, "National Security Council Directive on Covert Operations," which continued to be the U.S. Government's basic directive on covert activities until the Nixon administration's NSC 40 in 1970, began with this statement of purpose:
The National Security Council, taking cognizance of the vicious covert activities of the USSR and Communist China and the governments, parties and groups dominated by them . . . to discredit and defeat the aims and activities of the United States and other powers of the free world, determined, as set forth in NSC directives 10/2 and 10/5 [of the Truman administration], that, in the interests of world peace and U.S. national security, the overt foreign activities of the U.S. Government should be supplemented by covert operations. . . .
The NSC has determined that such covert operations shall to the greatest extent practicable, in the light of U.S. and Soviet capabilities and taking into account the risk of war, be designed to
a. Create and exploit troublesome problems for International Communism, impair relations between the USSR and Communist China and between them and their satellites, complicate control within the USSR, Communist China and their satellites, and retard the growth of the milltary and economic potential of the Soviet bloc.
b. Discredit the prestige and ideology of International Communism, and reduce the streneth of its parties and other elements.
c. Counter any threat of a party or individuals directly or indirectly responsive to Communist control to achieve dominant Power in a free worid country.
d. Reduce International Communist control over any areas of the world.
e. Strengthen the orientation toward the United States of the peoples and nations of the free world, accentuate, wherever possible, the identity of interest between such peoples and nations and the United States as well as favoring, where appropriate, those groups genuinely advocating or believing in the advancement of such mutual interests, and increase the capacity and will of such peoples and nations to resist International Communism.
f. In accordance with established policies and to the extent practicable in areas dominated or threatened by International Communism, develop underground resistance and facilitate covert and guerrilla operations and ensure availability of those forces in the event of war, including wherever practicable provisions of a base upon which the military may expand these forces in time of war within active theaters of operations as well as provision for stay-behind assets and escape and evasion facilities.
NSC 5412 defined "covert operations" as ". . . all activities conducted pursuant to this directive which are so planned and executed that any U.S. Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the U.S. Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them. Specifically, such operations shall include any covert activities related to: propaganda, political action; economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition; escape and evasion and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states or groups including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillias and refugee liberation groups; support of indigenous and anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world; deceptive plans and operations; and all activities compatible with this directive necessary to accomplish the foregoing. Such operations shall not include: armed conflict by recognized military forces, espionage and counterespionage, nor cover and deception for military operations."
To approve and coordinate most covert operations, (some were required to be approved by the President) NSC 5412 established what became known as the 5412 Committee, also given the nonspecific title, the Special Group, to reduce chances of exposure. (In 1964, after the term "Special Group" became known, the Group was called the 303 Committee. In 1970, it was renamed the 40 Committee.) The 5412 Committee and its successors consisted of the Deputy Under Secretary of State, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, the President's Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, and the Director of the CIA, with the latter serving as the Group's "action officer." In 1957, the Chairman of the JCS also became a member.
Section 403, paragraph d of the National Security Act of 1947, which defined the powers and duties of the CIA:
Section 403. Central Intelligence Agency
(d) Powers and Duties
For the purpose of coordinating the intelligence activities of the several Government departments and agencies in the interest of national security, it shall be the duty of the Agency, under the direction of the National Security Council --
1. to advise the National Security Council in matters concerning such intelligence activities of the Government departments and agencies as relate to national security;
2. to make recommendations to the National Security Council for the coordination of such intelligence activities of the departments and agencies of the Government as relate to the national security;
3. to correlate and evaluate intelligence relating to the national security, and provide for the appropriate dissemination of such intelligence within the Government using where appropriate existing agencies and facilities: provided, that the Agency shall have no police, subpoena, law-enforcement powers, or internal-security functions: provided further, that the departments and other agencies of the Government shall continue to collect, evaluate, correlate, and disseminate departmental intelligence: and provided further, that the Director of Central Intelligence shall be responsible for protecting intelligence sources and methods from unauthorized disclosure;
4. to perform, for the benefit of the existing intelligence agencies, such additional services of common concern as the National Security Council determines can be more efficiently accomplished centrally;
5. to perform such other functions and duties related to intelligence affecting the national security as the National Security Council may from time to time direct. ...".
Note; Operation 40 (OPS-40) was a committee of five people then later increased to 40 members and known as "The 40 Committee". They were not an assassination group (operation 40) as some researchers claim.
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I have just recieved an Email from Gary Mack, Gary states.
"Stephen, you have left out the obvious-and stated at the time-explanation. Day said ( and still does) that the wood, and metal were far too rough to take, and hold a print. So far, no qualified experts have disagreed with his observation."
Except for the palm print found on the underside of the metal barrel?
Anyone care to comment on this.
Stephen, FWIW. In 2003 Jay Harrison a Texas researcher with excellent qualifications and many contacts with the Dallas Police Departmen and also a previous DPD reserve officer in 1963, who knew some of the officers who had loged the evidence at the time of the shooting, stated to many people before his death that the DPD had evidence that the FBI as well as the DPD had taken fingerprints from the weapon and the prints taken did not match Oswald. A print was found under the berrel. Officer and detectives were told by the FBI that the gun's wood stock was to rough to get prints. The DPD said they had taken prints but any record of this is lost.
Point Two: FWIW
In 2004 the DPD historical committee was going through the basement of one of their buildings which had a water leak some years ago. In the process of a limited clean up, they located, behind one of the many file cases when moved, a folder with notes and pictures and an old fingerprint card. It was said at the time within the folder was notes and evidence taken from the snipers nest. It was said that this card had two sets of fingerprints which, as Jay Harrison and others claimed, belong to Malcom Wallace. This was after work had been done on another set of prints claimed to be Wallace's (palm and little finger print taken from boxes in the snipers nest) which was said to belong to Wallace. Oswald's prints were not on this card as the notations stated.
The notes in the folder made reference to prints being taken from the gun and given to the Dallas FBI. These prints were said not to belong to Oswald, except the one under the stock on the metal portion of the gun. This information along with other evidence was sent to the FBI crime lab sometime in 1964. As yet no word or follow up on this lab report has been completed or made public. The two officers involved who received and signed for this evidence, which was received from the hired clean up people, are no longer available and their names were blocked out on the notes. The two officers with the DPD are also no longer with the DPD ( one retired, the other took a job with the FBI) Jay Harrison did locate one of these officers and obtain a sworn statement.
The Dallas Police Department (2004) had no comment on this information which Jay Harrison and others had received. Two metal boxes were also removed from this flooded basement and turned over to the FBI to be sent to the crime lab for study. No word as to what they found, if anything, has been reported. The information above is in "sworn statements" from two of the DPD officers who claimed the above to be true and correct. One copy of this document was sent to the Dallas PD and the orginal remained in Jay Harrison's files and hopefuly remains there today. Jay Harrison's files were much bigger and more complete that Mary Ferrels (?) files and much of her information came from Harrison.
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The horse out of the barn analogy doesn't really apply here. I have worked with Dr. Wecht and know he has done newer things related to JFK case than most are aware of. I'm convinced these are trumped-up charges to both silence and punish him. He is now currently without even sufficient funds to mount his legal defense and stands to be personally and professionally destroyed. Anyone now who is perceived by the neo-fascists in power as 'anti-American' [read pro-democracy, law, constitution and what the US used to stand for] are now subject to attack and destruction. Cryil could use any and all support now - moral, financial, other.....and I hope that someone at the November conventions will 'pass the hat' for his legal defense fund, information on which can be found on the internet...contact me if you can't find it. In addition to JFK - related forensic pathology he has been involved in the following as well as other high-profile cases: Being an expert in Forensic Medicine, Dr. Wecht has frequently appeared on several nationally syndicated programs discussing various medicolegal and forensic scientific issues, including medical malpractice, drug abuse, the assassinations of both President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, the death of Elvis Presley, the O.J. Simpson case, and the JonBenet Ramsey cases. His expertise has also been utilized in high profile cases involving Mary Jo Kopechne, Sunny von Bulow, Jean Harris, Dr. Jeffrey McDonald, the Waco Branch Davidian fire, and Vincent Foster. A comprehensive study of these cases are discussed from the perspective of Dr. Wecht's own professional involvement in his books, Cause of Death, Grave Secrets, and Who Killed JonBenet Ramsey? His political and social ethics and beliefs IMO also make him a desirable 'target' for the Huns at the wheel of the ship of State now.
Agreed. The unsual aspect of this case is not the allegations of wrongdoing -- which may or may not be true -- but the fact that it is being prosecuted federally and not locally. You can be fairly sure, though, that if this were really JFK related, Wecht would be screaming that from the mountaintop -- and telling us what they seized. He is no shrinking violet.
I have been in contact with Cyril within the last few days and they have seized ALL of his JFK related files and materials as well as much else. He is not screaming as they have him in a 'very difficult and delicate' situation and to the extent I understand it would also like to not detail it. He needs all of our help and concern...if it can happen to him, it can happen to any of us who are researchers or in 'opposition' to what is happening to our country. In fact, it happend to me...if in a different way and that is why I now live outside the USA...after having lost everything on 'seemingly unrelated' [to my research] legal attacks. That is how it is so often done. I sense from Cyril very deep concern about his future in all regards. I think the statement above is incorrect, that he would be 'screaming' if JFK [or other high-profile case or political view] related. The most he could say on this is that they 'are not directly related, but also not totally unrelated' [i am paraphrasing].....these are very difficult times for him and for all of us...who is next?
Pete: For your information and background research: Dr. Cyril has just had all his past research notes and papers on many cases confiscated... IRS is knocking at his door as we read... Sound familiar? One very important case, among many, which he worked on a few years back was the Col James Sabow case, which is now being re investigated as a murder case. The findings of that case, as well as others, has now left in a little white van with government plates going east toward the sunrise from Pittsburgh.
While we think Dr Cyril's problems are perhaps related to JFK, I think different. I think there is more to this than JFK. We do not know which records they really wanted... they took them all. Now as of yesterday I became aware that I too am in process of being investigating concerning a possible FBI- FAG charge filed on me because of the OC article, as well as others, of last week. (False Accusations on Government) , a charge that has not been used in over thirty years (not sience Civil Rights Movement) Basicly I am to shut the F up. Well you and others now have this information before the fact and now we will see what the rest of the story has to say about these matters. I assure you of one thing I will not do a G. Webb or a Vicent Forster checkout. They will have to blow my ass away in public. Later T
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I believe Gene was a conduit and, at times, was given false information by the powers that be. His JFK information was based on "Hear Say" some of it from me after the Sabow trial in California in the nineties and from others as we casually talked and speculated about old operations of the past with Gene Wheaton. Even at that time nothing was said by Gene that he knew anything about the players in JFK's assassination. Jenkins and others were set into the JFK matter sometime in the mid to late 1990's by Wheaton and others. It was presented as 'First Hand Knowledge' to various Senate investigators before and after Kerry.
Gene Wheaton's information came from Carl E. Jenkins and Chi Chi Quintero. They have both confirmed that they told Wheaton this story. However, they claim they were lying.
What do you know about the information that Jenkins gave to Sheehan? Is it possible that he was being paid by the CIA to mess up Sheehan's case? Is that why Wheaton is so angry with Jenkins?
John: Anything I would know along those lines would only be speculation on my part. I do know that neither of these gentleman, Jenkins or Quintero, would know anything about the intermost workings of those operations, JFK as well as Contra, even if they were CIA operatives at the time. They would only know a small part of the total picture. As for the CIA, as an agency, useing them direct to derail an independent investigation would not happen unless a cut out was used as a "go between". To use them direct could and most likely would compromise that operation and other operations of the time.
If the CIA as an Agency set it up and paid money to discredit, then I would have to ask; Who in the CIA would be to source for that information to leak out? And Who would make the pay-out?. Sometimes operatives fabricate and speculate openly to see where the info goes and how it is interputed and how it gets into the media or to other foreign agents. From there the info is fine tuned and perhaps twisted to protect various aspects, or personal of the (or their) operations.
I think, or speculate that both of these gentleman sold Wheaton a "bag of sour graps" knowing that Wheaton would pass the information to various sources outside of the agency and government for whatever reasons. That would fit in with the profile of Wheaton. Which ever came first, the chicken or the egg, Wheaton past the info to Sheenan or Sheenan past the information to Wheaton, or Sheenan got the information from Jenkins, or Wheaton got the information from Quintero is a mute point. It was all 'hear-say", with no documentation. The information in itself was flawed from the very beginning. I do not think this was done by CIA to protect any operation of the time, military or CIA. I think it was started by independents with a little bit of inside agency information as to proceedure and proto-call. I believe it was a project to establish publicity credit for a pending media project to make money. In the process the story started to fall apart and they bailed on Wheaton and Sheenan. Sheenan and Wheaton also saw a chance to run with the story, thinking they had the support of Jenkins and Quentero, or other previous CIA personal, to stand firm on their past statements of boasting about JFK and the Contra only to find out that was not the case. I do not think CIA had anything to do with the mechanics of any of that. It does not (IMO) fit their operations profile. Just because someone had or has contact with CIA operations does not mean they know everything the CIA does or thinks. The CIA as an agency has thrown many of their own to the wolves and thought nothing about it. The ones who play the game know this..., it is an accepted risk which we all agree to from the very start.
I know many will dis agree with this. And they will say I am CIA disinformation. It seems when people do not like what they hear or expect they cry "foul" and throw out the banner of "CIA Disinformation". Well Thanks for letting me speculate. I'll crawl back into my hole. Tosh
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Al: Glad to hear your doing well. I understand your concern. I assure you that my intentions are not to put others "on point", as they (like so many we know) have paid their dues in full. In view of world events and other matters creeping and leaking forth from the Washington DC circle at present; and perhaps new efforts I see in a cover-up concerning old ops from the late eighties and early nineties (concerning matters we both know about) I feel it is my duty to bring these matters forward before the fact and not after the fact. In doing this I fell I am also protecting those "operatives", military and civilian who were associated with those events and are our friends and associates. To remain in secret and play the shadows, while politicians and others of special interest twist the facts and create illusions, only opens to door for harm to some to step in and muddy the picture, and too, to seal the truth within that dark world.
We Americans are heading for very difficult times and our past activities must be covered by those who still play the secret game. It is a world others from the eight to five crowd cannot even began to comprehend. To remain secret any longer only plays into the hands of those who have political motives. As you know our friends are not in DC. This is an election year. And for some they had better see that their past deeds do not see the light of day. That and this war is not over yet. To crouch and hide knowing the truth of matters no longer play in my book. In my opinion, It's time to clean house even if we have to throw the baby out with the dirty bath water. I for one do not have the option of 'playing safe' any longer. The door is about to close on the truth that you and I both know to be... Hang in there my friend. Its been a long road. Tosh
Al, who I don't know...and Tosh, who I know well obviously know each other. Again, I can only reiterate, that to my frustration, but understanding, I have asked direct questions to Tosh where he would not 'go' to answer....either to protect others who he felt did not deserve being 'outed' without it being their own decision to do so; or to protect what he felt to be legitiment operations; or becuase to 'go' there was a bit too dangerous; and I'm sure there were other reasons, alliances and allegences I can't know or imagine. That having been said, if every intelligence / black operative would only tell about one illegal/immoral/unconstitution mission they had participated in we wouldn't be in this f****ing mess we are now....and Tosh by my count has told about more then two hands full....and maybe add my toes too. [ie more than his share]. He knows I know some of the personal grief he has gone through for this..[and let me assure you it is major] and I'm sure there are other pressures he has not been able to mention to me also. Despite this he has persisted....and should be congratulated, encouraged and supported IMO. You don't even have to believe all he has ever said, much of it has been corroborated by others and all of it needs more action and investigation - and accountability at higher levels - such as from where/with whom the operations and the 'ethics' [or lack thereof] behind them originated. Not one of the operations he or others have detailed were their own 'projects'....far from it....
To Tosh,
Forgive my friend if I overreacted. It was not meant as a slam to you or a show or of being disloyal as to what you are trying to do. It was simply a safeguard and a reminder that there are those out there who have a tremendous amount to lose if certain things and names go public. As always, I applaud your courage and feel for what you have went through in your life. I also am ashamed that we all cannot have this courage and take these chances that you have and are doing.
To Peter,
Please understand that there are those out there that have risked a great deal and have held cards that allowed them to walk away from such wet ops. Most mechanics are no longer around to talk. There will be a day when their children are grown and careers have lived out their life, when they will be willing and eager to shove the truth down the throats of those who have masterminded these attrocities. Regardless the cost!
Al
Al; No problem. You and I are very "thick skined" I understand your concern. Your right. Perhaps when some of the ones we know get a little longer in the tooth, and the distance is far and their love ones safe, perhaps then they will come forth and tell their deeds of dareing. Until then, I assure you I in noway would ever bring then to the surface or cause harm to them or give them up. You take care and thanks for all your good work and the research you have done. I assure you, It is not wasted.
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I see Gene Wheaton is a source on the murder of Colonel Sabow. I also believe he gave evidence on the death of three mangers who discovered details of CIA illegal activities. Do you know anything about this? It has to be remembered that it was Wheaton who first broke the Iran-Contra scandal. Do you think Wheaton is a reliable witness?
John: I take exception to statements that Gene Wheaton was the first to expose the Iran-Contra affair. Gene is a very good investigator and has many contacts in the Intel community and he means well. However in reference to Iran-Contra he was not the first one who broke the story. That person was Scott Wheeler who was murdered at Poco Solo Costa Rica on an undercover operation for military Intel and the DEA. Scott had talked to his case officer about the activities he had encountered shortly after the Contra southern front had been formed. This information eventuality exposed the John Hull Ranch and activities of Carr and Gilberie (?phoe spel) I had taken the maps (meaning more than one) to Senator Gary Hart at Scotts request. (1983-86) Senator Hart gave copies of the maps and background information to the Senate Arm Service Committee and The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on two different occasions through the years 1983-86. Both of these committees elected to do nothing with the "Field" reports or the information at that time because it would compromise on going operations. Sometime later, Senator John Kerry was given a briefing and the copies of the maps were turned over to his investigators, John Winer and Dick Mc Call.
Gene Wheaton became aware of this about a year or two later (after the Le Penca bombing) It was then that he started going public and became associated with Dan Sheenan and the Christic Institute. Gene found me in Grant Colorado and we meet and talked about Contra and other matters. Nothing was said about JFK or Cuban operations of the fifties or sixties. Gene did not bring it up, nor did I. He had a wealth of information on CIA activities and operations of the past, but not current "ongoing ops". Later, he told me he was, as he said, investigating the Gander airline crash for some of the families. I liked Gene and I trusted Gene. Some years later he ask me about Col. Sabow and El Toro. He also was investigating the C-130 Forest Service matter and was responsible for my being part of the CBS 60 Min. program about that and the Connie Jung CBS Eye to Eye program concerning Col Sabow. During all these associations and contact nothing was ever said about JFK or anyone associated with Cuban affairs. Most all of this about Gene Wheaton's information came to my attention after the 1990 and into 2000. Some of Gene's information is right on, and too, some of it is faulty.
I believe Gene was a conduit and, at times, was given false information by the powers that be. His JFK information was based on "Hear Say" some of it from me after the Sabow trial in California in the nineties and from others as we casually talked and speculated about old operations of the past with Gene Wheaton. Even at that time nothing was said by Gene that he knew anything about the players in JFK's assassination. Jenkins and others were set into the JFK matter sometime in the mid to late 1990's by Wheaton and others. It was presented as 'First Hand Knowledge' to various Senate investigators before and after Kerry.
I did see a CIA document that was later shown to a California reporter by an undercover operative which Gene had shown me and ask if I thought it was real. The document had not been declassified and I ask him how and where he had obtained the document. It was real and had the coded sequence numbers and file locator codes still intack and SECRET was not crossed out nor were there blacked out names and information within the document. Two air carriers, which I was familiar with were named in the document. Gene also had copies of aircraft ID numbers and fuel receipts of which I had signed for at El Torro in my military operative name at the base. This concerned me at the time as to how he had obtained the documentation. He never told me. Only said it best I did not know.
Jay Harrison who had the most complete data base (more complete that Mary Ferrel) was at odds with most of Gene Wheaton's conclusions and his later detailed work in reference to JFK and Contra. As I have said Wheaton's early work was good work, but after he became involved with the Christic Institute and the Le Penca bombing his credibility went down in my book. I too, made the same mistakes in judgment as to who and what to confide in as to my activities. Its easy to do, as Gene and I both know, to get roped into someone's "special projects for profit". So in sumation. I feel most of Genes work on the JFK was launched long after most of the information (he presented) had already been put into the main stream of research. I believe Gene accepted that information as fact and past it along. The contra information was mostly feed to him by the Christic Institude which I refused to become a part of. The Sabo case in California was derailed and not all because of Gene, however he was a part of it, IMO. (willing or by accident I do not know)
http://www.phoenixarchives.com/express/199...sh%20Plumlee%22
http://www.meixatech.com/COLSABOWHOMICIDE.pdf
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Cocaine Airways
A former CIA pilot says secret flights to El Toro could explain a Marine officer’s ‘suicide’
William Robert "Tosh" Plumlee
By NICK SCHOU
Thursday, September 14, 2006 - 3:00 pm
When we first spoke, a decade ago, the fear in his voice—the staccato pace, the tremor—was unmistakable.
“I can’t talk to you,” he said. “This is all classified.”
He answered just one question: if he told me what he knew, he’d go straight to federal prison for violating U.S. national security laws.
Then he hung up the telephone.
Two weeks ago, I tracked the man to his home in rural Pennsylvania. This time, he didn’t hang up on me. The terror in his voice was gone, replaced by the cheerful nonchalance that maybe just comes with being 69 years old and knowing that your kids have finished college, you’re well into retirement, and it’s too late for anyone to ruin your life for talking to a reporter about matters that powerful people would rather keep secret.
He laughed when he recalled our conversation a decade ago. He apologized for not answering my questions. He asked me what I wanted to know.
Over the course of the next several days, the man told me his life story.
Tosh,
While I admire your courage and openess and need to set things straight, I question what appears to be your willingness to dangle out those who need to remain in the shadows. After all, you of all should be aware that all is not safe!
Al
XXXX
Al: Glad to hear your doing well. I understand your concern. I assure you that my intentions are not to put others "on point", as they (like so many we know) have paid their dues in full. In view of world events and other matters creeping and leaking forth from the Washington DC circle at present; and perhaps new efforts I see in a cover-up concerning old ops from the late eighties and early nineties (concerning matters we both know about) I feel it is my duty to bring these matters forward before the fact and not after the fact. In doing this I fell I am also protecting those "operatives", military and civilian who were associated with those events and are our friends and associates. To remain in secret and play the shadows, while politicians and others of special interest twist the facts and create illusions, only opens to door for harm to some to step in and muddy the picture, and too, to seal the truth within that dark world.
We Americans are heading for very difficult times and our past activities must be covered by those who still play the secret game. It is a world others from the eight to five crowd cannot even began to comprehend. To remain secret any longer only plays into the hands of those who have political motives. As you know our friends are not in DC. This is an election year. And for some they had better see that their past deeds do not see the light of day. That and this war is not over yet. To crouch and hide knowing the truth of matters no longer play in my book. In my opinion, It's time to clean house even if we have to throw the baby out with the dirty bath water. I for one do not have the option of 'playing safe' any longer. The door is about to close on the truth that you and I both know to be... Hang in there my friend. Its been a long road. Tosh
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You might like to note that in 1983 Wheaton and another operative were talking to then Senator Gary Hart about the Contra northern front and the formation of the new southern front. Both of these gentleman provided Senator Gary Hart with military maps and detailed flyways as well as aircraft ID numbers, and names of pilots, long before the Iran-Contra affair and the names of locations, operatives, and pilots, became public knowledge. (1983-86) The information provided by both of these operatives was given to The Senate Arms Service Committee which decided to take "No Action" as per Senator Hart's memo of 1984 and again in 1991. This was before the C-123 crash, which opened the door into the contra re-supply operations and the "Savings and Loan scandal of the mid eighites. In 1990 an article with Senator Hart's information and the map notations was published in a southern California publication which created a "firestorm" in Washington DC. Leslie Cockburn also had inside information which she published concerning the secret airbase located in CR (Santa Elena) which was later referenced as "Point West" in O North's notebook, as noted in her 1987 book "Out of Control", and CBS producer Ty West's 60 min program, confirmed Cockburns account of the affair.. All of this information was and still is still being withheld. Senator John Kerry has had the major parts of this information "Classified Top Secret, Committee Senitive" as of 1990. FWIW
Very interesting information Tosh. Is it a coincidence that the two senators who attempted to explore the relationship between the CIA, drugs and the arms trade, both attempted to become the Democratic presidential candidate? In both cases they had to endure smear campaigns (probably part of Operation Mockingbird). The same happened to other American politicians who attempted to expose the illegal activities of the CIA: Frank Church and Otis Pike.
The same thing happens to the journalists. It has never helped the careers of journalists who attempt to expose the role that the CIA has played in these illegal activities. Look what happened to Gary Webb, Angus Mackenzie, Jonathan Kwitny and Steve Kangas? It was hardly a good career move for Pete Brewton, Barbara Honegger, Robert Parry, Leslie Cockburn, Joel Bainerman and Daniel Hopsicker. Compare their careers with those who were willing to write about “limited hangouts” like David Corn, Evan Thomas and Bob Woodward.
Let us not forget; DEA SA agent KiKi Camarena, Col. James Sabow, USMC, CIA UC agent Scott Wheeler; CIA James A Paisly, Congressman Tom Downing; ONI Com. Lt. Col D Sullivan; DEA SA Shaggy Wallace, Vincent Foster, Berry A Seal and a host of others dead and alive that in some ways reads like the 9-11 list of fatalites: And above all we cannot forget, JFK and RFK.
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In his book, Blond Ghost: The Shackley and the CIA's Crusades (1994), David Corn defends Ted Shackley against Gene Wheaton's unified theory of CIA illegal operations.
Sheehan and Wheaton sat down in the kitchen of Hoven's house in early February of 1986. It was magic. To a wide-eyed Sheehan, Wheaton, posing as an experienced operator, tossed out wild stories of clandestine operations and dozens of names: Wilson, Secord, Clines, Hakim, Singlaub, Bush. A whole crew was running amok, supporting Contras, conducting covert activity elsewhere. Drugs were involved. Some of this gang had engaged in corrupt government business in Iran and Southeast Asia. Now the same old boys were running weapons to Latin America. Central to the whole shebang was a former CIA officer named Ted Shackley. Sheehan was captivated. He had struck the mother lode.
Sheehan spoke a few times with Carl Jenkins. At one session, Sheehan listened as Jenkins and Wheaton discussed what Wheaton was calling the "off-the-reservation gang"- Secord, Clines, Hakim, and Shackley - and the operations they ran in and out of government. According to Hoven, Wheaton and Jenkins wanted to see information about this crowd made public and saw Sheehan as the mechanism of disclosure.
Wheaton and Jenkins did not tell Sheehan that they hoped to settle a score with a band they believed had an unfair lock on the air-supply contracts they desired. But to Hoven it was clear that one faction of spooks was whacking another. Hoven was not sure who was on what side. He guessed that somebody somewhere -
maybe even in the Agency itself - was upset with the freelancers and wanted to see them reined in. But if Jenkins or anyone else thought they could use Sheehan as a quiet transmitter of damaging information, they were as wrong as they could be.
Throughout the winter and spring, as Sheehan talked to Wheaton and Jenkins, he had something else on his mind: a two-year-old bombing in Nicaragua. On May 30, 1984, a bomb had exploded at a press conference in La Penca, Nicaragua, held by Eden Pastora, a maverick Contra leader who resisted cooperating with the CIA and the main Contra force. Several people were killed, but not Pastora. Afterward, Tony Avirgan, an American journalist who suffered shrapnel wounds at La Penca, and his wife, Martha Honey, set out to uncover who had plotted the attack. A year later, they produced a book that charged a small group of Americans and Cuban exiles-some with ties to the CIA and the Contras-with planning the murderous assault. One of the persons they fingered was John Hull, a Contra supporter with a spread in northern Costa Rica and a relationship with North and the CIA. Their report noted that some Contra supporters were moonlighting in the drug trade.
Hull sued the couple for libel in Costa Rica. He demanded $1 million. Avirgan and Honey, who lived in San Jose, received death threats. They considered retaliating by filing a lawsuit in the States against individuals in the secret Contra-support network. But they could find no lawyer to take such a difficult case. Eventually Sheehan was recommended to them. They checked him out. The reports were mixed. But he had one undeniable positive attribute: he would accept the case. The couple retained him.
Come late spring of 1986, Sheehan was mixing with spooks in the Washington area, and he was pondering how to craft a lawsuit for Avirgan and Honey. He collected information on the Contra operation. He drew closer to Wheaton, who had a new tale every time they met. Then Sheehan made a pilgrimage to meet the dark angel of the covert crowd: Ed Wilson.
The imprisoned rogue officer made Sheehan's head swim. The essence of Wilson's story, Sheehan claimed, was that the Agency in 1976 had created a highly secretive counter terrorist unit modeled on the PRUs of Vietnam and had run this entity apart from the main bureaucracy. The mission: conduct "wet operations" (spy talk for assassinations). After the election of Jimmy Carter, this group was erased from the books and hidden in private companies, and Shackley was the man in charge of the unit both in and out of government. The program was divided into different components. CIA man William Buckley supposedly had directed one out of Mexico with Quintero and Ricardo Chavez. Another unit was headed by a former Mossad officer. Felix Rodriguez was involved in yet one more in the Mideast. Sheehan took Wilson at his word. "Wilson went into such detail," Sheehan later maintained. "It's not something that's being made up."
At one point after Sheehan met with Wilson, it dawned on him: everything was connected. The La Penca bombing, the North-Contra network, the Wilson gang, all those CIA-trained Cuban exiles, the whole history of Agency dirty tricks, the operations against Castro, the war in Laos, the nasty spook side of the Vietnam War, clandestine Agency action in Iran. It was an ongoing conspiracy. It did not matter if these guys were in or out of government. It was a villainous government within a government, a plot that had existed for decades, a permanent criminal enterprise. Sheehan had a unified held theory of covert U.S. history. And Shackley was the evil Professor Moriarty, the man who pulled all the strings. The avenging Sheehan now was determined to take Shackley down.
Sheehan melded the La Penca bombing case to his Wheaton - influenced investigation of the old-boy network. Avirgan and Honey shared with him all the information they carefully had developed on the Contra support operation. Names and stories he threw at them - including Shackley's - were unfamiliar. They took it on faith that Sheehan knew what he was doing when he blended the results of their professional investigation with the grab-bag of information he had collected from Wheaton, Wilson, and others. "We saw John Hull as the center, and Sheehan saw it as Shackley," Honey recalled. "Shackley was the main ingredient. I don't know why Danny fixated on him. He told us he had lots of information on Shackley's involvement in La Penca. That was b.s. But what do we know, sitting in Costa Rica?" Sheehan was looking for a case he could play before a large audience. He repeatedly told Avirgan and Honey the public did not care about La Penca. But people would pay notice if the enemy was one grand conspiracy headed by a dastardly figure.
Sheehan applied the resources of his small Christic Institute to the case. Wheaton continued investigating the Wilson crowd and other covert sorts. He started telling Jenkins that he believed he was chasing a decades-old, top-secret assassination unit. Wheaton claimed it had begun with an assassination training program for Cuban exiles that Shackley had set up in the early 1960s. The target was Castro. The secret war against Cuba faded, but the "Shooter Team" continued. It expanded and was now called the Fish Farm, and Shackley remained its chief.
Sheehan knitted together all this spook gossip and misinformation with a few hard facts, and on May 29, 1986, he dropped the load. In a Miami federal court, Sheehan filed a lawsuit against thirty individuals, invoking the RICO antiracketeering law and accusing all of being part of a criminal conspiracy that trained, financed, and armed Cuban-American mercenaries in Nicaragua, smuggled drugs, violated the Neutrality Act by supporting the Contras, traded various weapons, and bombed the press conference at La Penca. Sheehan's plaintiffs were journalists Tony Avirgan and Martha Honey. The conspirators were far-flung: John Hull in Costa Rica; Cuban exiles based in Miami (including Quintero); drug lords Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa in Colombia; arms dealers in Florida; Contra leader Adolfo Calero; an Alabama mercenary named Tom Posey; Robert Owen, a secret North aide; the unknown bomber at La Penca; and Singlaub, Hakim, Secord, Clines, and Shackley. Sheehan alleged that Shackley had peddled arms illegally, plotted to kill Pastora, and (with Secord, Clines, and Hakim) accepted money from drug sales for arms shipments. Sheehan demanded over $23 million in damages.
With this lawsuit, Sheehan believed, he could break up the Contra support operation and cast into the light shadowy characters who had been up to mischief for years. Sheehan and Wheaton had stumbled across some real players and some real operations. But they both possessed hyperactive imaginations, and whatever truth they did uncover they had twisted into a false, cosmic conspiracy.
The filing-drafted sloppily by Sheehan-surprised Shackley and his fellow defendants. Hoven and Jenkins were stunned. Neither expected Sheehan to produce such a storm. Sheehan clearly was in this for politics and ego. He was not about to be a quiet disseminator of information. "I had been left with the assumption," Hoven noted, "that I was set up to pass information to Sheehan. But they" - whoever they were - "mucked it up because Sheehan was not playing it close to the script."
Corn’s view has been generally accepted by most commentators on the CIA. Daniel Sheehan was also criticised by “conspiracy theorists” for including too much in his original legal action that he could not prove. This was mainly based on information provided by Carl E. Jenkins, who was still working for the CIA at the time. Jenkins later refused to testify for Sheehan. Peter Dale Scott has suggested that Jenkins’ role was to undermine Sheehan’s case. I am sure he is right about this. However, I believe Gene Wheaton was a genuine informer. As far as I can see, nothing that Wheaton told Sheehan has proved to be incorrect. It has to be remembered that Wheaton began telling his story before the Iran-Contra scandal was exposed by the shooting down of the C-123K cargo plane and the capture of Eugene Hasenfus on the 5th October, 1986.
Wheaton’s unified theory goes further than the one told to Sheehan and assessed by Corn.
In 1995 Gene Wheaton approached the Assassination Records Review Board with information on the death of John F. Kennedy. Anne Buttimer, Chief Investigator of the ARRB, recorded that: "Wheaton told me that from 1984 to 1987 he spent a lot of time in the Washington DC area and that starting in 1985 he was "recruited into Ollie North's network" by the CIA officer he has information about. He got to know this man and his wife, a "'super grade high level CIA officer" and kept a bedroom in their Virginia home. His friend was a Marine Corps liaison in New Orleans and was the CIA contact with Carlos Marcello. He had been responsible for "running people into Cuba before the Bay of Pigs." His friend is now 68 or 69 years of age... Over the course of a year or a year and one-half his friend told him about his activities with training Cuban insurgency groups. Wheaton said he also got to know many of the Cubans who had been his friend's soldiers/operatives when the Cubans visited in Virginia from their homes in Miami. His friend and the Cubans confirmed to Wheaton they assassinated JFK. Wheaton's friend said he trained the Cubans who pulled the triggers. Wheaton said the street level Cubans felt JFK was a traitor after the Bay of Pigs and wanted to kill him. People "above the Cubans" wanted JFK killed for other reasons." It was later revealed that Wheaton's friend was Carl E. Jenkins. Wheaton also named Irving Davidson as being involved in the assassination.
In an interview with William Law and Mark Sobel in the summer of 2005, Gene Wheaton claimed that Carl E. Jenkins and Rafael Quintero were both involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The operation was organized out of JM/WAVE, the CIA station in Miami. In 1963, Ted Shackley was chief of JM/WAVE station. Shackley was also a close associate of George Bush.
Bush was head of the CIA when in 1976 Frank Castro established Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU). Other members included Luis Posada, Orlando Bosch, Armando Lopez Estrada and Guillermo Novo. 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."
Bush also played an important role in covering up the assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt, by CIA contract agent Michael Townley.
Bush was grooming Shackley to take over from him as director of the CIA. Jimmy Carter’s election put an end to this plan. Bush then worked with Shackley to help Reagan defeat Carter in 1980. Bush had been a candidate for the job (some of his speeches had been written by Shackley) but decided to help Reagan after being promised the vice-presidency.
Bush was also the key figure in the Iran-Contra Scandal. However, as Lawrence E. Walsh, who wrote the official report on the scandal, Bush refused to be interviewed or to hand over documents during the enquiry. As soon as Bush became president he pardoned all those who could have provided evidence against him. He also gave top jobs in his administration who helped him cover-up the scandal (this includes Dick Cheney who is still being rewarded for his silence).
It is Shackley and Bush that is the unifying factor in understanding CIA illegal activities between 1960-1990.
XXX
John:
You might like to note that in 1983 Wheaton and another operative were talking to then Senator Gary Hart about the Contra northern front and the formation of the new southern front. Both of these gentleman provided Senator Gary Hart with military maps and detailed flyways as well as aircraft ID numbers, and names of pilots, long before the Iran-Contra affair and the names of locations, operatives, and pilots, became public knowledge. (1983-86) The information provided by both of these operatives was given to The Senate Arms Service Committee which decided to take "No Action" as per Senator Hart's memo of 1984 and again in 1991. This was before the C-123 crash, which opened the door into the contra re-supply operations and the "Savings and Loan scandal of the mid eighites. In 1990 an article with Senator Hart's information and the map notations was published in a southern California publication which created a "firestorm" in Washington DC. Leslie Cockburn also had inside information which she published concerning the secret airbase located in CR (Santa Elena) which was later referenced as "Point West" in O North's notebook, as noted in her 1987 book "Out of Control", and CBS producer Ty West's 60 min program, confirmed Cockburns account of the affair.. All of this information was and still is still being withheld. Senator John Kerry has had the major parts of this information "Classified Top Secret, Committee Senitive" as of 1990. FWIW
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deleted
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For Your Information and my protection: I post the following
COPY from Email received, August 29, 2006
from:xxxxxx and xxxxxxx:
to: XXXXX and XXXX atty @ Law
I received an email from a literary agent from London asking for my comments. I thought you might like to see this. I was unaware that this book was out. I have no idea who this is or how she obtain her information or from whom. I was not interviewed by her or anyone else as to this chapter or book. I think it is a set up to draw some of us old boys out into open debates.
I am sure nobody cares about this or will pay any attention to this book or whats in it, but none the less sure pisses me off. I can not find any reference to the London publisher cited above. Could you look into this and let me know what, if anything, you can find out?
I think I will publish this on the education forum and see if anyone knows anything about this. If nothing else it will be recorded as information before the fact and not after. But I do not expect anyone to take notice or respond. Just insurance for me, as I've said, "before the fact"..
Reference: "To Stand Alone", by Roseanne Blackstone, Trendale books 2006 soon to be released in Germany and England.
Notes on: Tosh Plumley, Plumlee, William Robert (Tosh) Plumlee, aka Buck Pearson (pg 93-97 104, 110 CH- 17, 23, 27
".... It appears Plumlee was active in Cuba in 1956, CIA Ops in 1960's, Iran Contra, 1980 and Mexico covert operations. from 1978-90. He has testified four times closed door to Senate Investigators, all documented which remains classified today. (reference FBI DEA and CIA unclassified and classified documentation)
I found the following articles on a recent investigation on Plumlee, (Plumley) I find this rather strange that this fellow plays into many historical activities and the research people do not know about him and his connections or associates. It seems he is a protected military intell, CIA/DEA asset. I think he is still active and is being used to gather information for the United States Government; a forum of 'damage control'. He claims he was in Dallas on the day JFK was assassinated. However, this has never been proven and could be nothing more than disinformation fed to him my the American government. If what he has said in the past is not true then why is he allowed by the American government to continue making the kinds of statements he has made? What secrets does he know that would allow the United States government to not step in and correct his conduct?
The San Diego Reader published an article or Mr. Plumlee, in April of 1990, with documentation and maps. "I Ran Guns for Uncle Sam" by Niel Matthews. In that article was a detailed map of drug smuggling and the Contra resupply operation, as well as Ollie North's "Point West" secret air base at Santa Elena. This was before Husenfus and Contra supply operation became public knowledge. One of the notations on the published map noted in 1984 was LUIS CARRILES POSADO. I find this interesting as this was noted and photographed by federal authorites in 1983 long before the names of the Contra players became known by the American people. At the time, 1983 through 1986, Senator Gary Hart took Plumlee's information to the Senate of the United States on three occausions, but they refused to address any of the information at that time because of "National Security matters. ...". However, I have found the Plumlee trail leads to other interesting information:
"... CIA and Subsidiaries Exposed in Court Documents As Active Drug Smugglers Using Military Aircraft Washed Through Forest Service
December, 1998 Investigations Latest in Legacy of CIA's Drug Operations and Corruption of Government
Two Reagan Era Operators, Convicted in 1997, May Be Only The First To Hit The Graybar Hotel
The Dark History - In 1976 Senator Frank Church submitted CIA General Counsel Lawrence Houston to intense grilling over the Agency's questionable and illegal operation of proprietary air transport services. At that time, Houston admitted that the CIA had routinely used the United States Postal Service and the U.S. Forrest Service as covers for covert activities. Houston admitted that The Forest Service had been infiltrated by CIA and that CIA shared an address with the Forrest Service's Air Research and Development unit on Kent Street in Alexandria, VA.
Houston also admitted that the primary company, responsible for all of CIA covert air operations, was a holding company named Pacific Corp. There is an Oregon based corporation known as Pacificorp which has a multitude of sub entities with varying versions of the name including Pacific Power & Light, Pacificorp and Pacific Harbor Capital. In 1993 a Seattle paper ran a story connecting Pacificorp to CIA's Pacific Corp. Under oath, before the Senate in 1976, Houston admitted that Pacific Corp, owned and controlled such CIA notables as Air America, Southern Air Transport and Intermountain Air. In 1976 the CIA was ordered to sell Air America and divest itself of all its holdings.
Since 1973 the CIA had been anticipating this and had moved quickly to give all of its clandestinely owned aircraft to its alleged proprietary, Evergreen International based out of Marana Air Park near Tucson Arizona and McMinville Oregon, near Portland. Coincidentally, Medford Oregon is the home base of aircraft broker Roy Reagan. Reagan was convicted in 1997, along with another man on criminal charges stemming from a scheme to fraudulently take $80 million worth of airplanes from the U.S. government and place them in private hands. Reagan was also the broker for Evergreen according to a lawsuit filed by former CIA pilot Gary Eitel.
In the late 1970s and early 80s former military and CIA pilot Eitel, also an attorney, became aware that the CIA was planning to move a number of Australian C-130s under CIA control into the private sector and transfer them to Bogota Colombia. "They were to be used for drug smuggling," said Eitel. The attorney for the transfer was a man named John Ford who in later years represented Pacificorp, Pacific Harbor Capitol and who is currently said to be senior in-house attorney for Pacific Gas and Electric in San Francisco (no connection). Several of the Australian C-130's turned up in the drug trade and were moved through facilities in Arizona and Mena, Arkansas, among others, on their way into the cocaine trade. (cont)
Death of a Hero - The Murder of Jim Sabow
Marine Col. Jim Sabow was murdered at his home on the El Toro Marine Air Station in January 1991. His death, ruled a suicide by the Navy and the Marine Corps, has left a brave family virtually destroyed. As opposed to the official military account that Sabow, despondent over pending disciplinary actions for minor offenses committed suicide, a lingering and persistent body of evidence persists which indicates that Jim Sabow was murdered because he caught the CIA flying drugs onto a base where he was Chief of Air Operations. Much of the
evidence indicates that the cocaine arrived on the same C-130s which had been given to the Forest Service.
In a 1993 segment of her news program Eye to Eye, Connie Chung covered the Sabow death in detail and showed evidence of the murder by introducing statements from Sabow's brother, a medical doctor, that Sabow had been unconscious and aspirating blood for minutes before a shotgun was rammed so far down his throat that it sheared off the uvula. In that same segment, veteran covert military operative and CIA pilot Tosh Plumlee stated that he flew loads of cocaine as large as 2,000 kilos onto El Toro in the years and months prior to Sabow's death. Plumlee claimed this was an undercover "AMSOG" interdiction program for the United States government. Plumlee stated clearly that he was flying C-130s operated by the Forest Service and their contractors. In later conversations with investigators of the Senate of the United States Plumlee admitted that he routinely flew loads as large as 2,500 kilos onto military installations in California and Arizona for the CIA. This information was immediately classified as, "Top Secret, Committee Sensitive".
Then Senator Gary Hart confirmed to this writer that Plumlee had first contacted his Denver office in 1983 and released a military map with markings and other information as to flight plan routing, the names of other pilots- who would figure in the later Iran-Contra affair- as well as refueling places inside Mexico controlled by the CIA. Plumlee recorded the coded fly-ways into the United States from Central America for his own protection, so he says. All his information meant nothing at the time but would figure heavily in the soon to be infamous Iran Contra of 1986. Plumlee was called before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in August of 1991 and confirmed under oath as to the truthfulness of the map and his previous statements to investigators concerning his activities in behalf of the CIA and Iran-Contra. He confirmed the "CIA Thing" in Mexico which DEA had received from another undercover government source.
At the time, both Eitel and veteran investigator Gene Wheaton, who still works for the Sabow family which has a pending and oft delayed lawsuit pending in San Diego for next year, believe that the C-130s are the same ones which led to Col. James Sabow's murder. Wheaton, a retired Warrant Officer from Army CID, has participated in and led investigations ranging from the Cristic Institute lawsuit of 1987 to the very suspicious crash in Gander, Newfoundland of an Arrow Air flight in 1985 which took the lives of more than 250 members of the 101st Airborne Division. Arrow Air was, according to Wheaton, "One of Ollie North's favorite airlines." He was also one of the first investigators to uncover CIA drug smuggling in Mena, AK. He has also conducted extensive investigations of the Forest Service C-130s and worked with Eitel on the case. ...".
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GOOD THREAD ROBERT I hope some take notice and not hijack your work or thread. Seems to be the way things go on these forums these days.
FWIW I Thought this might be of interest to some researchers:
NOTE: reference website toshplumlee.info.
This is NOT my website it was put up by others and I have no control over it. I have been warned to take it down or THEY will. (whoever THEY are)
Also there are over three hundred pages concerning Ferrie and Roselli and others. I was shown them in close door meeting when I was in Washington DC in August of 1991 to give testimony to Senator Kerry. That file is still classified. Some of these files (one example FBI 62-2116) were classified in 1976 and declassified in 1997 and reclassified in 2004. These and others are now under "OMC" file locator numbers.
http://toshplumlee.info/pdf/DEAfiles.pdf
http://toshplumlee.info/pdf/fbi1.PDF
http://toshplumlee.info/pdf/fbi9396.PDF
This DEA information as well as the Roselli/Plumle information has been reclassified secret as of 2004. Also the Plumlee/ John Martino information has been removed from the AARB as well as the Brad Ayers/Plumlee affidavate which Peter Lemkin whitnessed the signing in 1991 or so, and has copy.
DEA FILES INFORMATION: SA Hector Berrellles,/GS; DEA SA Wayne Schmidt and SA Susan Baldin. reference Mexico OMC- AMSOG Drug Interdiction. Phoenix Tri-State Drug Task Force. KiKI Camarenda field report Classified Top Secret released to public in 1992 by SA William Robert Plumlee aka Tosh; reclassified 2004 (This aught to 'frost their balls')
DEAfiles.pdf DEA Mexico OPS:
"... These documents make reference to "Guatemalan Guerrillas" training at a ranch owned by Drug Lord CARO- Quintero in Vera Crus, Mexico. It was reported at the time this was a CIA training site where weapons were exchanged for drugs in support of the Contra effort in Nicaragua and Costa Rico. DEA Agent Enrique Camarena (KIKI) and his pilot found out about this operation known as "The CIA Thing" and were killed because of this knowledge. Plumlee and other OMC American undercover pilots had flown into this ranch many times as reported in various sections within these documents and other news media leaks in Mexico and America. The operation was known as "AMSOG" and, as reported to Senator Gary Hart and his Senate investigators in early 1983, was an "illegal" smuggling operation through Mexico into the United States, supported by the US Military, Panama Southern Command. ...". Bring it on BUSH.
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As someone who spends a lot of time scanning and making as much as possible of the JFK Collection available online (and percentage-wise it's not yet much), I think Robert's questions are right on target. While if "the truth is in there" it is not in bold print, I would echo Peter Dale Scott's point that the documents may be an oblique path to the truth, but it's the best one we have. The integrity of that record is an important issue, and for me the integrity of our "online copies" is an important issue as well. I've chosen to by-and-large follow NARA's organizational method for the online materials, in order to make it easy to cross-check them.
I have heard, for instance, that Wesley Liebeler's somewhat famous memo about the upcoming Report has gone missing, and certainly when I scanned the box I thought it should have been in, it wasn't there. If somebody has a copy of this by the way, and we can find some informal way of authenticating it, I would be very interested in a copy.
Of some concern to me, though I wouldn't overblow this, is the current re-classification craze and the accompanying pronouncements from the administration that those possessing classified materials should be prosecuted. Coupling the two creates a neat catch-22: how does one know that one possesses classified documents, if they have been reclassified after acquisition?
One of the "new" problems for those researching the JFK records is not the fight to obtain them (though that is not entirely true, witness Jeff Morley and the fight for the Joannides files - http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/...ted_-_Episode_2. A new problem, beyond finding the useful needles in the haystacks, is to map out the holes in the record. To borrow another Peter Scott term, this "negative template" is itself useful in pursuing the truth. Why are the Joannides documents withheld? Why are there no photos of Oswald in Mexico City nor tapes of the recorded calls? Why are the photographic panel's files on their failed authenticity test of the autopsy camera missing? Etc. It would be interesting for somebody to try to work up a chart of these things.
Rex
Robert, Thanks for this thread which I consider one of the MOST imporatant I have seen of late here! I also agree with both Robert and Rex in all they say and are concerned about. I'd just add that Tosh Plumlee is one example of a person who was told that some of the documents released to him and others through FOIAs were now re-classified and he pulled them down from the internet...if you want an example. As I still may have some of them - as do others - are we now at risk of holding classified materials illegally? I'd be willing to bet my life that those that are 'missing' are not simply lost or misplaced...but are the best of the best to understand the truth and this is why they go into the information black hole! Just think how little we would know without documents and photos etc - as altered and as problematic [in many ways I won't go into here] as they often are as to veracity or even being the originals unchanged...! We must not loose eye on the prizes nor loose momentum in getting more and new documents - and all those we should get...which IMO is all of them!...so remember your calculus and make that [all] the limit as x ==>[approaches] truth
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To: John Simkin:
% The Education Forum
copy forwardered to:
Debora Conway
% JFK Lancer
John and Debora: This is to advise you that I will no longer be active in any JFK Forums. I hereby request that my membership and name be stricken from your membership records and the roll thereof; effective this date.
(dated this 21st day of June, 2006)
Thank you William Plumlee
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[quote name='Robert Howard' date='Jun 21 2006, 05:56 AM' post='66082'
Another strange death which happened a few years before Gary's murder, was that of Lt. Col Sabo a Marine from El Toro Navel Air Station which investigator Gene Wheaton, and the brother of the Marine, investigated and proved it was not what was claimed. The MO was the same as Webb's death, except a shotgun was used to the head, but the LT had his boots on. The cover up almost identical. Lt Col, was about to testify about drugs and drugs being flown in government aircraft from Central America. Gene Wheaton and the Federal court system in San Diego CA have all the facts about that strange suicide.
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John: I remember the reason we did not go streight across the tracks was because of the switching rails. (where the tracks come together they make V shapes and are hard to walk over and they are wider). We went between these and tried to cross at the least difficult places, the narrow single tracks. The rail road bed were raised about tthree feet with stone but not each track.., on each side of all tracks... the whole area if I remember right. I have always felt the south knoll shooter came from the parking lot to the winged area and then after the shot went back into the parking lot and escaped. As Sergio and I approached this position we would of not seen him because of the underpass and the hill, and to we were looking toward the kill zone as we walked toward the underpass.
Also following is acopy of an email I sent to another researcher/investigator:
"... Some years later, after we had parted company, I went to the plaza and set off a large firecracker at the south end of the underpass and watched people's reaction. Everyone first looked toward the north knoll, then started to look around..., some up.., some toward Houston St.., some toward the old Dal-Tex..., The firecracker made a strange echo that bounced off the buildings. I was told by an Oliver Stone "Sound Man" that because of the three underpass streets that this would be normal for sound to echo from the tube like tunneled streets. And the sound would be heard coming from different directions depending on where you were standing. I do not know if this is true. I am not a sound man, but I did hear the echo's. Also It sounded like more than one firecracker from my position. ...".
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??
John: note height of triple underpass 14'6'' plus addition 6 feet to rail road bed and tracts. The down grade into the underpass is approx 4 feet from fatal shot. the shooter would be approx ten feet plus above the limo... easy shot from that distance over the windshild into the back seat (which is approx 4 feet from front dashboard left of driver (between both men from shooters point of view)
Is that someone on the underpass rail road tracts? If so he would be east of the west banister (10 feet or so) on the rail road tracts. I speculate.... shooter or abort members? I do not think Sergio and I could have been at that location because of the limo's position. Where the limo is in your picture I would think is about the time Cancellara was taking the picture of the south knowl.
To be successful and to escape, you'd need a diversion of some kind.Something noisy and smoky perhaps, to get everyone looking the other way?The Presidents head had just been about blown off. That in itself was a diversion, riveting attention from all spectators, focused at that spot. Also everyone was focused on the motorcade before the shots. And after the shots and the echos everyone was just stunded, numb, and confused, including Sergio and I. If I remember right there was other diversions... towed cars, and other distractions east of the kill zone, before the motorcade arrived at Houston and Elm.
Chauncey Holt
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted · Edited by William Plumlee
Reference to previous post: Documentation and background.
http://toshplumlee.info/toshgallerySAFE.htm #7
(release date, 1963 flight plan; Cessna N 63XX Echo: also Plumlee/Rosellie FOIA 1981 FBI Lab. declassified) FBI file locator number for Flight Plan #24-8157 32 Q6 DQ referenced within FBI #26 file/Plumlee; also found at "toshplumlee.info" picture #7; also reference within the Roselli/Plumlee #62-2116 file and the Phoenix FBI #PHX-72, 73 file of 1978, declassified-- as well as the FBI-SS 302 Phoenix file that was destroyed in 1963)
" The Flight Plan states: two on board: destination Sky Harbor Phoenix; Alt Airport: Las Vegas; Home base of aircraft; Thompson Flight Service, Salt Lake City; Home address of pilot 'Apple Blosom Lane, Denver Colorado. Contact place while in Phoenix; CARAVAN INN. FBI 26 Files dated April 1963. Phoenix 302 files dated 1963, gun running to Florida. hand writen notes at bottom of flight plan: "J Ralston.... call J Rosellie Miami JMWAVE Col. Rawlston". On file at FBI office since April of 1963 as per FBI 26 file reference "Abd Aircraft, Mc Cord Ranch NM" James Mc Cord interview by FBI.