James Richards

There's another El Indio. James, can you help? I made this error in a mail to you and Larry. This other El Indio was on a Masferrer sponsored raid in October 1960. Americans and Cubans were executed. Perhaps two Indios not two Morales. (Christy Cox)

You are spot on, Christy.

Armentino Feria Perez (aka El Indio) was a Masferrer man. I should have recognized that earlier. This guy was also associated with Anselmo Alliegro and was around when the Masferrer guys went into Cuba. One would have to think that your dad would have known him.

Nice pick-up with the El Indio thing. Well done.

James

Shanet and Ron,

The Whitlam demise was CIA pure and simple.

This article below offers some explanations for those who are interested. Nugan/Hand may not be directly related to JFK but certain individuals were connected to both. Google searching Nugan/Hand, especially Michael Hand is revealing indeed. This guy tracks back to Shackley and our friends at JM/WAVE.

And yes Shanet, 20 years refers to mid 60's to mid 80's.

Christy: I have never been described as psychic, psychotic maybe. Can you elaborate on the Clare Luce connection?

http://www.wakeupmag.co.uk/articles/cia9.htm

James

Some Agents at ASIS believe Colby's troubles and his ultimate demise began with the dramas of the Nugan/Hand bank collapse here in Australia. When Frank Nugan was whacked, it began a series of murders where Agency assets running guns into the Middle East and some Sandline guys playing both sides were terminated. It's not a huge stretch that Colby was the last name on a very big hit list.

For a bit of background -

US military and CIA oversaw Far East drug smuggling for 20 years

From "American Society of Criminology" report by William J. Chambliss

In 1969 Michael Hand, a former Green Beret and one of the CIA agents stationed at Long Cheng when Air America was shipping opium, moved to Australia, ostensibly as a private citizen. On arriving in Australia, Hand entered into a business partnership with an Australian national, Frank Nugan. In 1976 they established the Nugan Hand Bank in Sydney (Commonwealth of New South Wales, 1982a, 1982b). The Nugan Hand Bank began as a storefront operation with minimal capital investment, but almost immediately it boasted deposits of over $25 million. The rapid growth of the bank resulted from large deposits of secret funds made by narcotics and arms smugglers and large deposits from the CIA (Nihill, 1982).

In addition to the records from the bank that suggest the CIA was using the bank as a conduit for its funds, the bank’s connection to the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies is evidenced by the people who formed the directors and principal officers of the bank, including the following:

Admiral Earl F. Yates, president of the Nugan Hand Bank was, during the Vietnam War, chief of staff for strategic planning of U.S. forces in Asia and the Pacific.

General Edwin F. Black, president of Nugan Hand’s Hawaii branch, was commander of U.S. troops in Thailand during the Vietnam War and, after the war, assistant army chief of staff for the Pacific.

General Erle Cocke, Jr., head of the Nugan Hand Washington, D.C. office.

George Farris worked in the Nugan Hand Hong Kong and Washington, D.C. offices. Farris was a military intelligence specialist who worked in a special forces training base in the Pacific.

Bernie Houghton, Nugan Hand’s representative in Saudi Arabia. Houghton was also a U.S. naval intelligence undercover agent.

Thomas Clines, director of training in the CIA’s clandestine service, was a London operative for Nugan Hand who helped in the takeover of a London-based bank and was stationed at Long Cheng with Michael Hand and Theodore S. Shackley during the Vietnam War.

Dale Holmgreen, former flight service manager in Vietnam for Civil Air Transport, which became Air America. He was on the board of directors of Nugan Hand and ran the bank’s Taiwan office.

Walter McDonald, an economist and former deputy director of CIA for economic research, was a specialist in petroleum. He became a consultant to Nugan Hand and served as head of its Anapolis, Maryland branch.

General Leroy Manor, who ran the Nugan Hand Philippine office, was a Vietnam veteran who helped coordinate the aborted attempt to rescue the Iranian hostages, chief of staff for the U.S. Pacific command, and the U.S. government’s liaison officer to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos.

On the board of directors of the parent company formed by Michael Hand that preceded the Nugan Hand Bank were Grant Walters, Robert Peterson, David M. Houton, and Spencer Smith, all of whom listed their address as c/o Air America, Army Post Office, San Francisco, California.

Also working through the Nugan Hand Bank was Edwin F. Wilson, a CIA agent involved in smuggling arms to the Middle East and later sentenced to prison by a U.S. court for smuggling illegal arms to Libya. Edwin Wilson’s associate in Mideast arms shipments was Theodore Shackley, head of the Miami, Florida, CIA station. In 1973, when William Colby was made director of Central Intelligence, Shackley replaced him as head of covert operations for the Far East; on his retirement from the CIA William Colby became Nugan Hand’s lawyer.

In the late 1970s the bank experienced financial difficulties, which led to the death of Frank Nugan. He was found dead of a shotgun blast in his Mercedes Benz on a remote road outside Sydney. The official explanation was suicide, but some investigators speculated that he might have been murdered. In any event, Nugan’s death created a major banking scandal and culminated in a government investigation. The investigation revealed that millions of dollars were unaccounted for in the bank’s records and that the bank was serving as a money-laundering operation for narcotics smugglers and as a conduit through which the CIA was financing gun smuggling and other illegal operations throughout the world. These operations included illegally smuggling arms to South Africa and the Middle East. There was also evidence that the CIA used the Nugan Hand Bank to pay for political campaigns that slandered politicians, including Australia’s Prime Minister Gough Whitlam (Kwitny, 1987).

Michael Hand tried desperately to cover up the operations of the bank. Hundreds of documents were destroyed before investigators could get into the bank. Despite Hand’s efforts, the scandal mushroomed and eventually Hand was forced to flee Australia. He managed this, while under indictment for a rash of felonies, with the aid of a CIA official who flew to Australia with a false passport and accompanied him out of the country. Hand’s father, who lives in New York, denies knowing anything about his son’s whereabouts.

Thus, the evidence uncovered by the government investigation in Australia linked high-level CIA officials to a bank in Sydney that was responsible for financing and laundering money for a significant part of the narcotics trafficking originating in Southeast Asia (Commonwealth of New South Wales, 1982b; 1983). It also linked the CIA to arms smuggling and illegal involvement in the democratic processes of a friendly nation. Other investigations reveal that the events in Australia were but part of a worldwide involvement in narcotics and arms smuggling by the CIA and French intelligence (Hougan, 1978; Kruger, 1980; Owen, 1983).

Other songs where the assassination gets a mention are -

The Brain Of JFK - Pearl Jam

We Didn't Start The Fire - Billy Joel

Mommy And Daddy - The Monkees

The most hard hitting though is Hadda Be Playing On The Jukebox by Rage Against The Machine.

The lyrics were composed by Allen Ginsberg (see below)

James

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

It had to be flashin’ like the daily double

It had to be playin’ on tv

It had to be loud mouthed on the comedy hour

It had to be announced over loud speakers

The cia and mafia are in cahoots

It had to be said in old ladies’ language

It had to be said in american headlines

Kennedy stretched and smiled and got double crossed by lowlife goons and

agents

Rich bankers with criminal connections

Dope pushers in cia working with dope pushers from cuba working with a big

time

Syndicate from tampa, florida

And it had to be said with a big mouth

It had to be moaned over factory foghorns

It had to be chattered on car radio news broadcasts

It had to be screamed in the kitchen

It had to be yelled in the basement where uncles were fighting

It had to be howled on the streets by newsboys to bus conductors

It had to be foghorned into new york harbor

It had to echo onto hard hats

It had to turn up the volume in university ballrooms

It had to be written in library books, footnoted

It had to be in the headlines of the times and the mind

It had to be barked on tv

It had to be heard in alleys through ballroom doors

It had to be played on wire services

It had to be bells ringing

Comedians stopped dead in the middle of a joke in las vegas

It had to be fbi chief j. edgar hoover and frank costello syndicate

Mouthpiece meeting in central park, new york weekends,

Reported time magazine

It had to be the mafia and the cia together starting war on cuba,

Bay of pigs and poison assassination headlines

It had to be dope cops in the mafia

Who sold all their heroin in america

It had to be the fbi and organized crime working together

In cahoots against the commies

It had to be ringing on multinational cash registers

World-wide laundry for organized criminal money

It had to be the cia and the mafia and the fbi together

They were bigger than nixon

And they were bigger that war

It had to be a large room full of murder

It had to be a mounted ass- a solid mass of rage

A red hot pen

A scream in the back of the throat

It had to be a kid that can breathe

It had to be in rockefellers’ mouth

It had to be central intelligence, the family, allofthis, the agency mafia

It had to be organized crime

One big set of gangs working together in cahoots

Hitmen

Murderers everywhere

The secret

The drunk

The brutal

The dirty rich

On top of a slag heap of prisons

Industrial cancer

Plutonium smog

Garbage cities

Grandmas’ bed soft from fathers’ resentment

It had to be the rulers

They wanted law and order

And they got rich on wanting protection for the status quo

They wanted junkies

They wanted attica

They wanted kent state

They wanted war in indochina

It had to be the cia and the mafia and the fbi

Multinational capitalists

Strong armed squads

Private detective agencies for the rich

And their armies and navies and their air force bombing planes

It had to be capitalism

The vortex of this rage

This competition

Man to man

The horses head in a capitalists’ bed

The cuban turf

It rumbles in hitmen

And gang wars across oceans

Bombing cambodia settled the score when soviet pilots

Manned egyptian fighter planes

Chiles’ red democracy

Bumped off with white house pots and pans

A warning to mediterranean governments

The secret police have been embraced for decades

The nkpd and cia keep each other’s secrets

The ogbu and dia never hit their own

The kgb and the fbi are one mind

Brute force and full of money

Brute force, world-wide, and full of money

Brute force, world-wide, and full of money

Brute force, world-wide, and full of money

Brute force, world-wide, and full of money

It had to be rich and it had to be powerful

They had to murder in indonesia 500000

They had to murder in indochina 2000000

They had to murder in czechoslovakia

They had to murder in chile

They had to murder in russia

And they had to murder in america

Have you ever heard of dropjes? (Wim Dankbaar)

Isn't that some kind of liquorice?

James

Castro tumbles base over apex, breaks his knee and fractures his arm. It appears a simple fall has caused him more injuries that what the CIA could muster in all those years trying to whack him.

I love the line -

"When asked whether he wished the Cuban leader a speedy recovery, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher replied simply, "No.""

James

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/stor..._243/?hub=World

The main problem I see with that South Knoll trajectory is that JFK was in the back seat. Shooting over the windshield but under the crossbar is a very narrow range. Otherwise, tracking the shot would be optimal from the South Knoll. (Tim Carroll)

Tim,

I take your points.

Until this thread, I had not even pondered that a shot would have come from this direction. I have never been to Dealey Plaza so I guess I'm talking through my hat, but if I were looking for positions to set up sniper teams, the indicated spots below (rough proximity) would be the best. Then again ...

Also one could add the TSBD sniper's perch even though that's probably not an ideal location but a necessary one.

James

Your photo corresponds to my understanding of what Tosh has said. Another view would be the following: (Tim Carroll)

Right. Good stuff.

I had a hunt around trying to find an image that would be close to the line of site for our proposed South Knoll shooter. I think this one below is roughly in the ballpark.

Interesting.

James

I post the following which will hopefully put us all on the same page (if not it will confuse us even more).

If I have understood things correctly, this is where the possible South Knoll shooter was positioned and where Tosh and Sergio were standing (roughly of course).

Am I close, Tosh?

James

Just thought I would throw this document into the mix. FWIW.

Klihr not being cooperative at all.

Also Larry, I may be wrong here but I was under the impression that the photo was damaged while in the hands of the DPD.

James

Regarding the possibilty of a South Knoll shot, I am certainly open to the suggestion and I guess it could explain the actions of the man on the grass area in these Zapruder frames. I would certainly be ducking and running if a bullet whizzed over my head.

James

I guess the queston is, if the vehicle was innocent, or even if was registered to Charles Klihr like Posner said, why obliterate the licence tag?

Was the photo mutilation done by Roscoe White? What was being concealed here? I sure don't buy that it was an accident.

James

Felipe,

In another thread, mention was made of the car parked in the driveway of General Walker's house. The licence tag has been obliterated.

Do you know if the '57 Chevy in question (see attachment below) was owned or driven regularly by your uncle, Felipe Vidal Santiago?

Cheers,

James

I tried to post an image for Terry Mauro but for some reason found it difficult to attach. For further discussions, I have made up the following and placed circles around areas of possible interest.

James

I'm confused about Gator and El Gato. Was Gator really El Gato (which means The Cat in Spanish), or were Gator and El Gato two different people (both with a missing finger)? (Ron Ecker)

Hi Ron,

I'm not 100% sure they are the same man but I do know El Gato had some fingers chomped off by an alligator. Bizarre coincidence if they are not the same guy.

Anyway, I am trying to get a photo of El Gato for Tosh to have a look at.

James

.....and given the weapons in the photos

I'd say that may not have been a bad guess. Certainly the team was armed

for far more than simply slipping in covertly and extracting a couple of

Russian officers.... (Larry Hancock)

Larry,

There seemed to be a lot of Belgian FAL's being waved about in the Op Tilt photographs and according to Rappeleye and Becker in 'All American Mafioso', William Harvey secured FAL's for covert use so they would not be traced back to US agents. These were the weapons used by the Cuban army. Mmm.

James

There were rumors that Bayo and others came back later - certainly their

JMWAVE boat guide came back with the Tilt mission - but as far as

Morales and the CIA summary report went at the time, Bayo and

his team remained in Cuba, whereabouts unknown.

(Larry Hancock)

Indeed, Larry.

Boat operator Eugenio Martinez did return as did Virgilio Gonzalez (arrested in 1972). Rip Robertson returned as did James Arthur Lewis. Alfredo Mirr and Luis Cantin also returned hooking up with Tony Cuesta.

Do you think that Morales may have been stretching the truth?

James

I'd never heard of CD JACKSON. (Shanet Clark)

Hi Shanet,

Jackson died on September 18, 1964 and in some circles this was considered as a convenient or suspicious death. Interesting to note that Jackson was also closely associated with psychwar people like Edward Barrett and the man who was considered as the father of US Army Special Warfare, Major General Robert McClure.

Google search those names and you find connections directly into the heart of the CIA.

FWIW.

James

James, Morales was definitely in charge of the Tilt mission support.

He assigned the people and signed off on the supplies and even

the deployment of the radar support mother ship. He also wrote

the after action summary report representing JMWAVE.

However Shackley signed off with Pawley on JMWAVE support

for the project. For some time it appeared that Shackley

was the "approving officer".

Very recently however, we have obtained some rather amazing

correspondance revealing that Marshall Carter gave written permission for

Pawley to involve LIFE magazine, take their photo journalist and

do photo coverage of the mission - including apparently giving

LIFE first dibs on the coverage of the story if it succeeded or did not.

I'm sure you can appreciate the number of security regs such

an approval violated; not to mention it's potential impact on

the Kennedy administration. We are still working on that

aspect but as of now what we had once thought of as a somewhat

small scale rogue mission clearly was far more than that. On the

other hand it was definitely not cleared by the Cuban working group,

nor on the Presidential approved mission list nor apparently known

to RFK (if it had been Marshall Carter would have retired in pieces

rather than going on over to the NSA). Much more to be learned

here I think. (Larry Hancock)

Thanks, Larry. Muchly appreciated.

I didn't know Carter was the one who gave LIFE permission to tag along. That is certainly interesting. I do agree that there is much more to be learned.

James

Thanks James: Toney Varona and Barnard Baker (Macho) a friend of Masferrer (?) I did know. Sometimes I have confused Varona with John Martino..., not sure why. These are some of the people I was associated with in the gun-running dasys into Cuba. Barnard Baker was also known as "Burnie". Most of these people used code names, or mob names like "CharlieThe Blade" "El Toro" Shorty the snake" and Snake Eyes" If any of these were connected to the company then ther were assigned alases or code names... like 'Redbird' Gator" Hawk, or Eagle" along with a fake name, like "William H Pearson" or "Buck" or "Col. Rawlson" or "Rawlston" and others I can't remember. These names would become "cut-outs" and were only used for a short time frame or for a paticular operation, then be droped... thanks. looking forward to the pictures.... Tosh (Tosh Plumlee)

Thanks, Tosh.

Edgardo Buttari Puig who I mentioned in my previous post is present in this photo below but I don't know which one he is. I can tell you that is Bernie de Torres 4th from the right and Ed Collins in the white shirt on the far left - Collins being closely connected with Bill Seymour, Roy Hargraves, Felipe Vidal Santiago and Hemming's Interpen group.

Are you able to identify any of the others? Even if you can't remember names, rough time lines and places would be of huge assistance.

Cheers,

James

Right on James: And he had a large Adams Apple. I could not recall all the details and would not be in a position to know all the details about him. It was outside my expertise, a pilot, "bus Jocky" as Hemming used to call me. None the less, I can tell you how he lost his finger or fingers. He used to capture alligators and put on displays at an alligator farm near West Palm Beach and one got him one day. That was before he became engaged with the mob and the Cuban cause. I think he was also known as "the Assination" and ran around with " Charlie the blade". I know who this is (the blade; its recorded by me years ago ask Marrs) his real name) He used to work in Havana at Mayer Lansky's Casino, before the fall of Batista. Later came to Florida and got engageded in Ops as a "contract employee" for Johney Rosellie. However, I can not confirm that this is the man in the picture.. It does look like the man on the Dallas flight and I am on record as saying that years ago... to the FBI and to Jim Marrs and others. It went no where and I was accused of making up the story. Thanks for the memory jog... tosh (Tosh plumlee)

Tosh,

I believe that you were correct in your original belief that El Gato was not Bosch. This El Gato character was supposedly a real bad ass. He also allegedly had an association with Tony Varona, Bernie de Torres and a dude by the name of Edgardo Buttari Puig. Buttari was the Director for Social Assistance for the First Officers of Brigade 2506 Association. De Torres was the Vice Director for a time.

Buttari and Bernard (Macho) Barker also handled Cubans for clandestine activities - guys like Reinaldo Pico Ramon, Felipe de Diego and several of the guys arrested in the Watergate burglary. It sounds like El Gato fell in with that lot.

Give me a week or so and I should be able to get his name and a photo.

James

Thanks, Larry. Terrific information as always.

To your knowledge, was it Morales who signed off on Operation Tilt?

James

I did say at one time to Peter Lemkin and Jim Marrs that he did look like Bosch also known as 'Gator" and had a finger missing on his right hand I think. (Tosh Plumlee)

Tosh,

You mention the name 'Gator'. Could it have been El Gato? This guy supposedly had a finger bitten off by an alligator.

James

This first image below taken moments after the shooting shows the collection of people gathered above where the limo passed under only seconds before.

The second image shows a collection of spectators (and one police officer) who ran up the knoll and gathered at the fence. It does make one wonder.

FWIW.

James

Larry,

I'm glad you mentioned Hargraves as that information is vital I believe. Hargraves also claimed connections to the CIA even though Hemming at the time was trying to put some distance in that possible relationship.

I find this 1964 newspaper clipping below interesting. Hargraves mentions the so-called CIA sponsored mission with Vidal but correct me if I'm wrong, didn't Vidal mistrust the CIA and not want to have anything to do with them?

I guess it could suggest something rogue and if one is allowed to speculate, JM/WAVE springs to mind.

James