Tim Carroll

With regard to staying on point, I consider the status of SOP for the SS at that time to be relevant. As Al has pointed out, many changes have been made as a result of Dallas, but that's the result of hindsight. I question how our own military could have been developing assassination capablities for which our own protective services weren't correspondingly preparing. That doesn't mean that there aren't some remarkable and important deviations from standard procedures particular to that day. I find the film of Rybka being left at the airport very disturbing, and the last-minute rearrangement of the motorcade line-up, as seen by the misnumbered labels on the vehicles, is also more than worthy of note. But this is a discussional forum, not a graduate seminar, and sometimes communications meander around a topic more loosely than might be preferred by a proctor. I consider the issue of SS preparedness for the kind of hit being developed by the military to be germaine to whether or not security was adequate. T.C.

The authors note that Enrique (Harry) Ruiz-Williams died on March 10, 1996. The book also notes, on page 31: "After briefly running across the 1959 CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro, Harry left Cuba once more and came to the US, returning only when he landed on the beach at the Bay of Pigs." T.C.

The story of Veciana seeing his CIA handler, code-named "Bishop," meeting with Oswald in Dallas in the later summer of 1963 is well-documented. The HSCA's attempts at positively identifying Bishop as David Atlee Phillips is also well-documented. What I have not been aware of is that Veciana ever broke his silence and positively made the identification that Bishop was indeed David Phillips. So my question is: am I correct in understanding from Ultimate Sacrifice that Veciana identified Bishop as Phillips to the authors? This question is based on the assertion on page 242: "Veciana told us that Oswald and Phillips were discussing what 'we can do to kill Castro.'" T.C.

I thought that a military-type sniper hit was on most people's minds in November 1963.... Kennedy himself had described precisely this type of assassination that very morning in Forth Worth.Again you are looking at it in hindsight and puting history into perspective with real time of November of '63.... Kennedy referred to a nut with a rifle, not a professional military hit team. Wasn't JFK himself aware of the increased emphasis on military sniper training as part of the expansion of the use of special forces for counterinsurgency and so-called brushfire conflicts? When I referred to "military-type" sniper hit I was deliberately distinguishing that from straight "military" snipers, such as that which Al considers to have been at work in Dealey Plaza. For me to understand that distinction better, a historic example of a "military sniper hit" would be helpful. I know that MLK was hit by a sniper, but not much more than that. What would be an example of a military hit, in Central America or anywhere else, that exhibited classic "military" procedure? It's certainly understandable if names can't be used. But a description of the circumstances that demonstrate it to be military in nature would be helpful. It's absolutely true that this is a hindsight observation, but thinking about the advances being made during those years with military special forces training, and the innovated means to kill individuals with a minimum of international political accountability, it would be a classic, and ironic, interagency blunder if Presidential Protection wasn't advanced to correspondingly counter the very types of innovations being made in the arts of killing by the military. T.C.

I thought that a military-type sniper hit was on most people's minds in November 1963. There were the OAS plots against deGaulle (Day of the Jackal scenario), and Kennedy himself had described precisely this type of assassination that very morning in Forth Worth. T.C.

When I was visiting Dealey Plaza, some of the guys that give tours and sell brochures were talking about how stuff is constantly being planted and then found there. T.C.

During this past week's observations of the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's murder, a Barbara Walters interview revealed Mark David Chapman citing the very same reasoning and logic applied to Michael Moore by Gerry Hemming and Tim Gratz. Chapman described how it was when he learned that Lennon resided in the prestigious Dakota building that he was struck by the notion that Lennon was a hypocrite to pretend to be a man of the people when he actually lived in luxury. The ire raised by Moore for making a good documentary is nothing short of remarkable. I sincerely hope the climate of hate engendered by the right-wing doesn't result in violence toward him. T.C.

John, I think you must mean the conversation of November 29. Hoover tells LBJ, "This angle in Mexico is giving us a great deal of trouble because the story there is of this man Oswald getting $6,500 from the Cuban embassy and then coming back to this country with it." (Hoover is no doubt referring to the story told by Gilberto Alvarado, which Alvarado later admitted was false.) Then later, when LBJ is summing up the conversation, LBJ says, "whether (Oswald) was connected with the Cuban operation with money, you're trying to - " And Hoover says, "That's what we're trying to nail down now." I believe the book Ultimate Sacrifice got this one wrong, as cited by John, and that Ron is correct about the date. The text of the book does cite November 28, 1963 as the date of this particular conversation between Hoover and LBJ. However, the book's own source notes for this conversation say: "11/29/63 tape from the Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library, cited in Michael Beschloss, Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963-64 (New York: Simon & Schuster Audio, 1997)." T.C.

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2005/12...onse/print.html The mafia, the coup and the murder The authors respond to David Talbot's review of "Ultimate Sacrifice." By Lamar Waldron with Thom Hartmann Dec. 07, 2005 | We appreciate the serious coverage of "Ultimate Sacrifice" in Salon.com, but there are several assertions and omissions in the review written by David Talbot that we'd like to address. "Ultimate Sacrifice" presents evidence from thousands of pages of declassified documents that John and Robert Kennedy planned to stage a coup against Castro on Dec. 1, 1963, and that the plan was infiltrated by three Mafia bosses (from the mob families that controlled Chicago, Tampa and Dallas). The Mafia chiefs then used parts of the coup plan, including some U.S. intelligence assets, in their plot to kill JFK -- first trying in Chicago, then Tampa, and finally Dallas -- in a way that forced a coverup to protect national security, and the coup plan. The documentary evidence is backed up by accounts from almost two dozen Kennedy associates involved in aspects of those events, and their aftermath. The most glaring omission in Talbot's review was not addressing or even mentioning AMWORLD, the CIA's code name for their supporting role in the Kennedy coup plan in 1963. AMWORLD is a major focus of the book. "Ultimate Sacrifice" not only reveals this recently declassified operation for the first time, but documents that it was withheld from the Warren Commission and later congressional investigating committees. AMWORLD, which began on June 28, 1963, was an integral part of the Kennedys' plan for a coup in Cuba and it's impossible to consider one without the other. Coup planning began in January 1963 as a slow-moving, bureaucratic exercise, and the plan was only in its fourth draft by June 1963. But that month, planning began in earnest after the real opportunity for a high-level coup arose. After the CIA created AMWORLD, millions of dollars began to be devoted to the coup plan. From that point forward, coup planning proceeded rapidly, demonstrating that it had become a live operation. By September 1963 the "Plan for a Coup in Cuba" was in its 13th draft, and the rapid pace accelerated further, continuing through November of 1963. (After JFK's death, the CIA kept the AMWORLD code name, but without the involvement of Robert Kennedy and other key figures, the plan changed radically.) The most important of our five sources who actively worked on the coup plan was the Kennedys' top Cuban exile aide, Enrique "Harry" Ruiz-Williams (who asked us to always call him "Harry"). Talbot acknowledged in his review that Harry was close to RFK, but says that Harry's "belief that a Kennedy-backed assault on the Castro regime was imminent might be a case of wishful thinking." That's not what the evidence demonstrates. Harry's account -- and that of the others -- is backed up by many declassified coup plan and AMWORLD documents that talk about them and the operation. High-level AMWORLD documents from November 1963 say that "all US plans (were) being coordinated through" Harry and he had been "so named by Robert Kennedy." By Nov. 22, 1963, millions of dollars had been spent on the coup plan, hundreds of Cuban-American troops had been trained, U.S. assets were going into Cuba, and everything was ready. As noted in the book, a long-overlooked Washington Post article confirms that Harry's work "had reached an important point" by November 22, when Harry "participated in the most crucial of a series of secret meetings with top-level CIA and government people about Cuba." Harry and other Kennedy associates told us he was going into Cuba the following day, to await the Dec. 1, 1963, coup -- a date consistent with what we were told by others who worked with RFK on the coup plan and which is contained in an AMWORLD memo from JFK's CIA director. Talbot seems skeptical of the coup plan because JFK's Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara told him he didn't know about a "major Cuban intervention" in late 1963. Talbot also questions the credibility of Secretary of State Dean Rusk, who first told us about the coup plan in 1990. However, Talbot didn't mention that Rusk gave an on-the-record confirmation of the coup plan to Anthony Summers for Vanity Fair in 1994, three years before the first "Plan for a Coup in Cuba" documents were declassified. Rusk even explained to Summers why the Kennedys pursued the coup plan and secret peace negotiations with Castro at the same time, saying, "It was just an either/or situation. That went on frequently," though Rusk told Summers that in doing so, "the Kennedys 'were playing with fire.'" As the book explains, we have only identified a dozen people so far who were fully informed about the coup plan prior to JFK's death, and McNamara wasn't one of them. Evidence indicates the only military figures who were fully informed include Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Maxwell Taylor, Defense Intelligence Agency chief Gen. Joseph Carroll, and Secretary of the Army Cyrus Vance. Rusk told us he only learned about the coup plan after JFK's death. Still, Rusk and his subordinates -- and other officials -- had helped to shape the coup plan while JFK was alive, having been told it was being developed in case the CIA found a powerful Cuban official willing to stage a coup against Castro. That's why Talbot was in error when he wrote we must "have confused what were contingency plans for a coup in Cuba for the real deal." The coup plan was so serious that in the days and weeks before Dallas, Robert Kennedy had a secret committee making plans for dealing with the possible "assassination of American officials" if Castro found out and tried to retaliate. The same people working on those plans were also working on the coup plan and AMWORLD. While Talbot didn't mention those plans in his review, we did include a Nov. 12, 1963, document from that committee in our excerpt, which Salon was kind enough to run. Our book cites documents totaling thousands of pages from the National Archives, which we encourage people to view for themselves. A reader of Talbot's review might get the impression that we pieced together our story of AMWORLD and the "Plan for a Coup in Cuba" from the documents released in the mid- to late 1990s, but that is not correct. Starting in 1990, we were told about the coup plan and the CIA by Dean Rusk and other Kennedy associates, long before any of the documents were released. We made public presentations about the coup plan and the CIA's role in it beginning in 1993, at historical conferences, on the History Channel, and in Vanity Fair, to draw attention to the documents that remained unreleased. When the coup plan documents finally started being declassified in 1997, they included the same people and phrases ("Plan for a Coup in Cuba") we'd been using for years. Talbot says we "take pains to (repeatedly) exonerate the CIA in the killing of Kennedy," but we present evidence against several CIA personnel that implicates them to some degree in JFK's assassination. "Ultimate Sacrifice" details how AMWORLD was one way three Mafia bosses -- Carlos Marcello of Louisiana (who controlled the rackets in Dallas), Tampa's Santo Trafficante, and Johnny Rosselli of the Chicago mob -- infiltrated the Kennedy coup plan. For example, we quote CIA documents showing that Rosselli's mob paid $200,000 in August 1963 to one of the Cuban exile leaders for the coup plan and AMWORLD, Tony Varona. Using the CIA's own declassified documents, our book exposes Mafia-compromised CIA assets, extensive CIA intelligence failures, unauthorized operations, and the stonewalling of Robert Kennedy and government committees by certain CIA officials -- all under the veil of secrecy covering AMWORLD. The CIA personnel and CIA exile assets whom Talbot himself fingers at the end of his review -- Morales, Phillips, Harvey, Varona, Artime -- were all the subjects of incriminating new evidence presented in "Ultimate Sacrifice," and most had major roles in AMWORLD in 1963. Though we also present exculpatory facts where they exist, we present serious evidence against people like David Morales -- operations chief of Miami's huge CIA station in 1963 and close to Rosselli -- as well as exile leaders such as Varona and Manuel Artime. Our focus on Marcello and his allies being behind JFK's death didn't originate with us -- it came from Robert Kennedy and his associates. It's well documented that after Robert F. Kennedy learned all he could from several private investigations, RFK told close associates such as Richard Goodwin and Hoffa prosecutor Walter Sheridan that New Orleans godfather Marcello was behind his brother's death. In 1979, the House Select Committee on assassinations -- whose director was a former Mafia prosecutor for RFK -- concluded that both Marcello and Trafficante had the motive, means and opportunity to kill JFK. However, since so much was withheld from the committee (including AMWORLD, the "Plan for a Coup in Cuba," the Tampa assassination attempt four days before Dallas, etc.), they weren't able to find conclusive proof. After spending several years reviewing all the theories about the assassination, we were pointed toward a conspiracy led by Marcello, Trafficante, and Rosselli by a knowledgeable Kennedy associate in 1992, and quickly found a huge amount of supporting evidence. In addition to all the documentary evidence, we talked with five attorneys who worked under RFK at the Justice Department, as well as Pierre Salinger, who worked for the Kennedys in the 1950s as a Senate Mafia investigator targeting Marcello. Typical is Ronald Goldfarb, who concluded in his own book about those years "the likelihood [was] that our organized crime program" caused "Marcello and Trafficante to plot an audacious assassination." Our book documents the godfathers' infiltration of the coup plan, and how they linked it to JFK's assassination in over a dozen ways, from the bullet found in Oswald's rifle to exile leaders like Varona. Talbot says RFK could have simply explained "the national security concerns in the judge's chambers" and proceeded with his prosecutions, but it would have been impossible to prosecute -- or even extensively investigate -- the godfathers' role without completely exposing the coup and invasion plan. In those tense Cold War times, just a year after the nuclear standoff during the Cuban Missile Crisis, that could have triggered a nuclear confrontation with the Soviets. RFK tried to prosecute Marcello for other offenses even after JFK's death, to no avail. The attorney general kept the pressure on Jimmy Hoffa, a close ally of Marcello and Trafficante, and on Rosselli's Chicago Mafia. But if it had been publicly reported that the attorney general of the United States even suspected the Mafia of his brother's death, defense attorneys in those cases and many more would have had a field day. Talbot also failed to mention that Marcello, Trafficante and Rosselli all eventually confessed their involvement in JFK's assassination to associates. Two men who worked with Trafficante and Rosselli -- and who documents confirm knew about AMWORLD -- also confessed to friends, later in life. Talbot says we "assert that Bobby blamed only the Mafia (and New Orleans godfather Carlos Marcello in particular) for the death of his brother," but we also detail RFK's initial suspicions directed at the CIA. This includes not only RFK asking CIA director John McCone if the CIA killed his brother, but RFK's statement to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Haynes Johnson that "one of your guys did it," just hours after JFK's murder. As the book explains, Johnson was working at the time on a book with Manuel Artime, and CIA files now show Artime was not only involved in AMWORLD but working on the CIA-Mafia plots against Castro (which involved Rosselli, Trafficante and Marcello) and that the CIA had considered using the Mafia as a cover to provide weapons to Artime as part of AMWORLD. Talbot says he can't understand "why in the world would organized crime bosses knock off Kennedy just days before he was about to knock off Castro?" As the book explains, the Kennedys tried to exclude the Mafia from any involvement in the coup plan, and any involvement in Cuba after the coup. As our sources told us and documents confirm, the Kennedys' goal for Cuba was a democracy with "free elections." Helping to ensure that would be the presence of U.S. troops, so even if the Kennedy coup plan were successful, it would do the Mafia no good. The Mafia bosses had to kill JFK before the Dec. 1, 1963, coup, because only the top-secret coup plan/AMWORLD could provide the secrecy the Mafia needed to prevent a thorough, public investigation of JFK's assassination. Plus, Marcello was already on trial by RFK's men and Rosselli's Chicago mafia was under attack from RFK and the attorney general had just announced a massive crackdown on Las Vegas, where Rosselli represented the Chicago mob. Rosselli and Marcello weren't even U.S. citizens, and feared deportation even if they were only convicted of a relatively minor offense. Trafficante's criminal empire, and his close ally Hoffa, were under constant assault by RFK, so eliminating JFK to end RFK's war against them had to be the first order of business for the mob bosses. If the Mafia chiefs later wanted to eliminate Castro (which some experts feel Trafficante didn't want to do), they always had the CIA-Mafia plots to use against Castro, plots they played a major role in, unlike the Kennedys' coup plan. By the end of Talbot's review we don't seem that far apart in our conclusions, of a conspiracy involving mob godfathers, some CIA personnel, and a few Cuban exiles. Our hope is that all authors, historians and researchers can work to get the remaining million-plus files that we talk about in our book released, and follow the evidence wherever it leads. -- By Lamar Waldron with Thom Hartmann

It's laughable for Gerry Hemming to hide behind a statute that's never been applied (e.g. Scooter) to evade identifying a government agent whose presence in Dealey Plaza signifies foreknowledge of some event related to the Kennedy assassination. To charge Gerry Hemming with that crime would constitute an admission the government will never make. But's it a convenient way to claim the kind of knowledge for which he wants credit, but not accountability. T.C.

Of the look-alikes in photos of Dealey Plaza that day, which could be eliminated on Gerry Hemming's say-so? Thus far we know that he doesn't find a personally recognizable photo of anyone there.... T.C.

I find threads that contain a conclusion in the title to be skewed from the start. In this case, the title containing an assertion about someone who's "defending alleged terrorists" (as if they don't deserve a defense) is by someone who's "curious what the members here think of Ramsey Clark." We find that after some guy who wrote about MLK and JFK "in Light of the Fourth Gospel" (whatever the hell that means) is unable to get anything out of Ramsey Clark about the Kennedy assassination, another author's article is presented, again with a skewed subtitle: "Stalinist Dupe or Ruling-Class Spook?" Well howdy! That's quite a range of choice; Posner couldn't have framed it better. In the absence of knowing anything about Ramsey Clark's psychological make-up, I tend to agree with Lynne. To even frame this thread in relation to "defending alleged terrorists" in the context of the current trial of Saddam Hussein slips into the Bush administration's rationale that there is a connection between 9-11 and the Iraq War. Some people, even those born into powerful families, have the capacity to sustain growth through the course of their lives. Bobby Kennedy was, in the end, most notable for such a capacity for growth. Many of us find plenty that "Ruthless Bobby" did in his younger years to be ... unpleasant. As even the obvious hit-piece article posted by Dawn asserts, "AG Ramsey got into a famous showdown with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover when he attempted to block the Director's wiretaps of Martin Luther King Jr.--apparently the first stirrings of Ramsey's conscience." I don't know what the journalist who wrote that would know about the stirrings of conscience if his professionalism lies in producing such imbalanced psuedojournalism. T.C.

The Lorenz story had significance to the Liberty Lobby trial, and I believe my language was precise in that regard. As for what claims I accept or deny, you wouldn't believe how long the list is of assertions that I have not yet relegated to either category. While Gaeton Fonzi is one of the best, most reliable researchers in the history of the Kennedy assassination matter, I can't think of anyone whose qualifications are the be-all, end-all of discussion. T.C.

Which Sergio was Sergio Sanchez, brother of Celia Sanchez, the mother of Felipe Castro? T.C.

I believe the man wearing the silver cross was identified as Sergio Sanchez, brother of Celia Sanchez. While he's at it, maybe Tosh could identify the men in the above photo? T.C.

Does it qualify as a connection that the man at whose feet John Lennon fell, dying, was Jose Perdomo, a Bay of Pigs veteran? T.C.

The new book, Ultimate Sacrifice, has the following description of Nicoletti's automobile modifications, pp. 400-401: "After being caught by police 'on March 2, 1962' in a car specially modified for hits and assassinations, Nicoletti was released - which later allowed him to be involved in the fall 1963 assassination plots. U.S. Senate hearings about what came to be known as Nicoletti's 'hit car' show the lengths the Mafia would go to for even routine hits. According to the Senate hearings, Nicoletti and another mobster - both linked to narcotics by earlier cases - were caught hiding in 'a 1962 Ford sedan'; 'under the dashboard of this automobile were concealed three switches. Two of these switches enabled the operators of the car to disconnect the taillights. Without taillights, the police would have difficulty in following the car at night. The third switch ... opened a hidden compartment in the back rest of the front seat ... fitted with brackets to hold shotguns and rifles.' It was also large enough 'that a machine gun could be secreted in the compartment.' If Nicoletti and Rosselli's Chicago mob would go to that much trouble for routine hits, one can only imagine the lengths they would go to in preparing for JFK's assassination." T.C.

Consistent with Michael Beschloss' observation that "the most likely explanation for the cause of Kennedy's death lies in his policies,"[1] the convergence of CIA-Mafia-Cuban exile operations with the events surrounding the President's assassination provides strong circumstantial evidence of the motive and means for that crime. But there is more direct evidence. In a 1985 libel trial, E. Howard Hunt ("Eduardo") filed suit contesting an assertion in an article written by former CIA officer Victor Marchetti implicating him in the assassination, including an alleged 1966 memo initialed by CIA Director Richard Helms and Deputy Director for Counterintelligence James Angleton, which discussed Hunt's presence in Dallas and the possibility that "a cover story, giving Hunt an alibi for being elsewhere the day of the assassination, 'ought to be considered.'" Speculating on why such an extraordinary cover-up would be put in writing, a high level CIA source said, "The memo is very odd. It was almost as if Angleton was informing Helms, who had just become director, that there was a skeleton in the family closet that had to be taken care of and this was his response."[2] Castro's former mistress-turned-CIA agent, Marita Lorenz, testified of her direct knowledge of Hunt's participation, as well as that of other anti-Castro Cubans, in the events in Dallas leading up to November 22, 1963. She claimed to have been in a two car caravan with Frank Sturgis, Orlando Bosch and others traveling from Miami carrying numerous weapons. Upon their arrival in Dallas they were met at their motel on November 21st by their old paymaster, "Eduardo." An hour after Hunt delivered the money and departed, another character out of history arrived: Jack Ruby. In that trial, an amazing exchange took place after Hunt testified that, "like thousands of other Americans, millions," he, his wife and children had huddled together at home that fateful weekend, "and watched the burial services."[3] Yet, despite providing his own children as alibis, he had also asserted his legal damages to be the doubts in their minds about their own father's activities. The question was asked: "Mr. Hunt, why did you have to convince your children that you were not in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963, if, in fact, as you say, a fourteen-year-old daughter, a thirteen-year-old daughter, and a ten-year-old son were with you in the Washington, D.C. area on November 22, 1963, and were with you at least for the next forty-eight hours, as you all stayed glued to the T.V. set?" After a long pause, Hunt lamely asserted that. "it was less a question of my convincing them that I was in Washington, D.C. with them-rather, reminding them that I was-than it was to assure them that none of the charges...had any substance to them at all." The magazine's attorney followed up with: "What I want to know is since they knew how outrageous the lies were, why did they have to be convinced by you that you weren't in Texas?" Hunt simply replied: "Reminded, reminded."[4] Hunt had failed to anticipate that the two elements of his story-that his children were with him the entire weekend and that his children were unsure of where he had been at the time-were mutually exclusive. Hunt lost his lawsuit. The jury did not even debate the malice issue because the truthfulness of the assertion had been sufficiently proven. On the tenth anniversary of the invasion fiasco, April 17, 1971, E. Howard Hunt had traveled to the Bay of Pigs Monument in the Little Havana area of Miami to recruit exile veterans for a new operation. Resurrecting the dream of overthrowing Castro, Eduardo had assured them that "the whole thing is not over."[5] Subsequent events would expose a high level role played by these terrorists when a team of Bay of Pigs veterans was caught burglarizing the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. Found among the burglars' effects was evidence that they were being coordinated by E. Howard Hunt, who had an office in the White House. In addition to political burglary, Hunt had been given the high-level assignment of manufacturing evidence of President Kennedy's complicity in the assassination of South Vietnam's leader in 1963, Ngo Dinh Diem. President Nixon subsequently managed to remain in power for more than two years, withstanding remarkable disclosures, until the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that he had to turn over tape recordings of certain Oval Office conversations. Nixon was out of office within two weeks, primarily because of the disclosure of a taped discussion about Hunt that occurred a few days after the break-in. This tape recording has become known in history as the smoking gun conversation. During that incredible exchange that would topple a presidency, Nixon ordered his Chief of Staff, H. R. Haldeman, to meet with Richard Helms, the Director of the CIA, and tell him to call off the FBI's investigation of the burglary for national security reasons. Nixon suggested that Hunt's involvement be used as a lever to make sure the CIA would cooperate. The transcripts of President Nixon's rantings about Hunt are perhaps the most factually revealing evidence of deep politics in history: "Hunt...will uncover a lot of things. You open that scab there's a hell of a lot of things.... Tell them we just feel that it would be very detrimental to have this thing go any further. This involves these Cubans, Hunt, and a lot of hanky-panky that we have nothing to do with ourselves. When you get the CIA people in say, "Look, the problem is that this will open up the whole Bay of Pigs thing again." So they should call the FBI in and for the good of the country don't go any further into this case. Period. Just say (unintelligible) very bad to have this fellow Hunt, ah, he knows too damned much.... If it gets out that this is all involved, the Cuba thing would be a fiasco. It would make the CIA look bad, it's going to make Hunt look bad, and it's likely to blow the whole Bay of Pigs which we think would be very unfortunate-both for the CIA, and for the country, at this time, and for American foreign policy. Just tell him to lay off....[6] Haldeman recorded Helms' dramatic reaction to the threat: "Turmoil in the room, Helms gripping the arms of his chair leaning forward and shouting, 'The Bay of Pigs had nothing to do with this'" Despite this, Helms acquiesced and Haldeman was able to report to the President that "his strategy had worked," that Helms would be "very happy to be helpful." But the remarks and Helms' behavior raised the question in Haldeman's mind: "What was such dynamite in the Bay of Pigs story?" The more innocuous explanation is that Nixon, as the chief White House official involved with the Eisenhower administration's Cuba invasion planning, knew of the government's use of Mafia assassination assets in the efforts against Castro. However, following years of study, analysis and reflection, along with his personal knowledge of the players involved, Haldeman asserted a more astonishing answer to that question: "It seems that in all of those Nixon references to the Bay of Pigs, he was actually referring to the Kennedy assassination." Given his reaction, it is apparent that Helms clearly understood Nixon's message.[7] Aside from such an interpretation of the dark secret to which Nixon was alluding, he and the CIA director had a more current mutuality of interests. Helms wanted to suppress the CIA-Hunt relationship because it violated the Agency's charter regarding domestic spying. Nixon wanted to suppress the White House-Hunt relationship because it would reveal precisely for whom the chief Watergate burglar was working. E. Howard Hunt clearly represented a problem for more than one major Washington power center. Nine months after the smoking gun conversation, when Hunt was about to be sentenced, Nixon was told that Hunt had issued a blackmail demand in lieu of revealing some of the "seamy things" he had done for the President. Nixon's response was unequivocal: "Well, for Christ's sakes...get it."[8] 1. Jefferson Morley, "November 22, 1963: Why We Need The Real History Of The Kennedy Assassination," Washington Post, (November 24, 1996). 2. Joe Trento and Jacquie Powers, "Was Howard Hunt in Dallas The Day JFK Died?" Wilmington Sunday News Journal, (August 20, 1978). 3. Mark Lane, Plausible Denial, (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1991), 282. 4. Ibid., 283-284. 5. Carl Oglesby, The Yankee and Cowboy War. (Kansas City: Sheed Andrews and McMeel, Inc., 1976), 277. 6. H. R. Haldeman, The Ends of Power, (New York: Times Books, 1978), 33. 7. Ibid., 38-39. 8. Theodore H. White, Breach of Faith, (New York: Reader's Digest Press, 1975), 199-200.

Dec. 5, 2005, 9:00PM Castro targets Jeb Bush with 'fat little brother' poke By MARC CAPUTO Miami Herald TALLAHASSEE, FLA. - In a harangue about how a suspected anti-Cuba terrorist entered the United States, Fidel Castro singled out Gov. Jeb Bush — and went straight for the gut. Castro called the governor "the fat little brother in Florida" and wondered if Bush had helped Luis Posada Carriles into the country, according to a transcript released Monday of the Nov. 17 address to University of Havana students, who erupted in laughter. The Cuban leader didn't stop there. "Forgive me for using the term 'fat little brother' " Castro said. "It is not a criticism, rather a suggestion that he do some exercises and go on a diet, don't you think? I'm doing this for the gentleman's health." The governor's office wouldn't "dignify this with a response," a spokesman said. In an e-mail, Bush declined Monday to discuss Castro's comments, saying questions about it were the product of a "slow news day." During a question-and-answer session Monday, a reporter asked if there were anything in this week's special lawmaking session that gives him "heartburn." Joked Bush: "I thought you were talking about my diet. I didn't have breakfast today." When he first took office in 1999, Bush was more svelte when he would climb 22 flights of stairs to the top of the Capitol. Since then, his pace his slackened. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/3504844.html

Lennon: "You know it ain't easy, you know how hard it can be, the way things are going, they're going to crucify me." Favorite with the Beatles: Tomorrow Never Knows Favorite Solo: #9 Dream Helter Skelter and Cold Turkey are hardcore! I saw McCartney a few weeks ago on my birthday, Nov. 16, and he included Helter Skelter in the playlist. It was friggin amazing. I went to the Dakota in the middle of the night back in 1982, on my way from Boston to D.C. Bizarre place at that late hour, with junkies straggling out of Needle Park across the street. Just after getting back in the car a song that was popular then came on the radio and I suddenly realized it was talking about that place: Elton John's Empty Garden, which starts with, "What happened here, as the New York sunset disappeared..." The refrain is great: "Hey Johnnie, can't you come out to play?" T.C.

Susan Baldwin and Hector Gomez(?) two DEA agents and investigators of the time reported in a classified Secret memo on a ranch in MX that belong to Quintero. As a side bar it is interesting because it referes to the "CIA Thing" of weapons for the Contra. Wheaton knows about this. Its interesting reading.. It was very effective for a short time and relied on Hull to provide a staging ground beyond his narcotics trafficing operation. This was the groundwork for FRANg33. This was how it became so bloody in '81. Jack and Jill Didn't Come Home. Very few are left to tell the story and even fewer are willing. I believe this picks up where the following left off almost a year ago, when Tosh went on the wagon of internet posting; but now that he's fallen off.... When I attended these "familiarization" programs or (Covert Action Training Programs, CATP) that the manual was written from, I found Cubans, Iran, Tibet, and ? V.C. in those training classes, as well as personal from Angola.... Some of these military specialized operatives with their secret MOS's of the 1979-81 era, were from Iran and Afghan and Central America, and Egypt. Two Latin Americans from Eden Pastroa's small group, before Pastroa took command as Captain Zero, were engaged in the SOA Benning sniper school as well as a few of the "Mosquito Indians" of northern Nicaragua. This was one of the first test units formed. The training book was being written at that time. This type of training was being conducted very hush-hush and did not follow any of the 'OLD' manuals that had previously been written. (1953-54) This 'testing' school threw away all the old manual material and started all over. In some ways this was the start of training a secret army to operate independent specialized CIA projects off the books. Should we bring it up another notch?Tosh, We probably shouldn't, but what the hell! Maybe it is time! You opened the door when you brought out Tofoya so it is too late to close it. A man who had a great deal of control of SOA in that period and a strong backer of the likes of Sandavol-Alarcon'.... The term "reliance on others is not an acceptable risk" is gospel in this type of operation. When the operation ran it's course, the Black Widow policy would show it's ugly head often and would be utilized to maintain security of the operation. "Jack and Jill never made it home".... The US operational sniper school of this period was ran out of Marathon for final testing with basic and advance instruction leading to this at Bragg and Benning. Have I went too far? Al T.C.

There are better ways for students of the assassination to spend their money and attention than on a book that completely discredits Gerry Hemming while at the same time using his stories as its primary hook. T.C.

This must be a different Nash Rambler than the one mentioned by Gerry Hemming; this one has no bullet holes in the grill or signs of any shootout. T.C.

I wonder if LHO had any inkling that he was being/had been set up as a patsy in either the planned (?) assassination of Castro or the "hit"/assassination of Kennedy. Perhaps he did and they were reflected in his(?) note to "Mr. Hunt" concerning (sic) his role(s)....... Although the "Mr. Hunt" letter has been largely discredited, we still are left with the issue of the "Mr. Hosty" note that was flushed. On p. 656: "We believe the note may have been an attempt by Oswald to keep Hosty from 'blowing' Oswald's carefully crafted image and his role in the upcoming Cuban operation. Oswald's willingness to go into the FBI office shows that he had been pefectly willing to talk to Hosty directly, if Hosty had been in the office - hardly the act of a lone assassin who had kept the FBI from finding out where he lived. But it is consistent with a frustrated Naval Intelligence and CIA asset who knows that his upcoming 'mission' to Cuba might be jeopardized by Hosty's actions. Because the FBI had no official role in C-Day, or any of the other CIA anti-Castro plots, Agent Hosty had no way of knowing that he might be interfering. Oswald was anxious because all his years of undercover work were about to pay off." T.C.