Zach Robertson

Here is some more background on Feeney: COMMANDER HAROLD FEENEY: Great friend of the Cuban Commander Harold Feeney, U.S. Navy (ret.) served in the Intelligence Service of the Navy, sometimes serving the CIA and DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), where he was Head of Cuba during the "missile crisis" in Cuba (1962). He was Chief of Intelligence of the Guantanamo Naval Base. He served as a U.S. Navy Intelligence Officer in several countries in Europe and Latin America. He was Naval Attaché at the American Embassy in Paris and ten years later Chief of Intelligence Plans SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (NATO) in Paris. He served in the Intelligence Department of the Army during World War II. He was then professor of languages at the University of Pennsylvania and University of Southern California. In 1949-50 he worked for the State Department in Ecuador as Director of the Ecuadorian-American Cultural Relations. Feeney Commander speaks eight languages (including Mandarin Chinese). A member of the Veterans Association of Special Missions and Honorary Member of the Assault Brigade 2506. Pigs Journal Official Publication of the Association of Combatants of the Bay of Pigs Brigade 2506 1999 Feeney and Dr. Miro CRC document Operation Cobra, Plan to overthrow Castro Operation Cobra II Operation Cobra III --Zach

Herman Koch Gene below MÁRTIRES DE LA BRIGADA 2506 Zach

Best Wishes Jack -- Get well soon! Zach

Here are a couple links regarding Jerry Buchanan: Apr 2, '63 - The New York Times reports: "Seventeen heavily armed Cuban exiles planning to attack a Soviet tanker off Cuba were seized yesterday by a British force on a solitary islet in the Bahamas chain. The capture was apparently the first result of an agreement worked out late last week by Washington and London to cooperate in preventing raids by opponents of Premier Fidel Castro [in Miami], Cuban exiles reacted with a mixture of anger, defiance and gloom." The anti-Castro raiding party was led by Jerry Buchanan, a member of Frank Sturgis' International Anti-Communist Brigade." Video and Original NY Times article attached. April 2 1963.pdf ANTI-CASTRO RAIDERS ARRESTED - KENNEDY SPEAKS video 04/04/1963 Current Section: CE 2951 - FBI report dated March 30, 1964, of interview of Jerry Buchanan at Fairhope, Ala Warren Commission Hearings, Volume XXVI -- Zach

Here is some more information about Tony at Cuban Special Operations Veterans Association Honor Roll The Commandos: ‘Tony’ Nestor Izquierdo Infiltration & Commando Services Nestor Antonio Izquierdo was born on 20th March 1936, in the humble neighborhood of "Pogolotti," in Marianao City, Cuba. His parents were Camilo Izquierdo and Josefina Diaz. “Tony” was raised in the manner and with the values of decent, honest people. His father was a contractor and since Tony was very young he went to work with him. Tony studied for some time in the Belen Electro-mechanic School, where He was a member of the Catholic Youth. He was a close friend to Manuel Artime in the underground with the M.R.P., and with him went to the rural-commandoes at the beginning of the Cuban Revolution. Later on Izquierdo entered the clandestine movement fighting the growing communist dictatorship, and was soon persecuted by the Government. He escaped to Mexico and in 1960 he went to the camps in Guatemala where the Brigade 2506 was training for the Bay of Pigs invasion. His first mission was before the invasion, and he made a parachute's night jump in the Oriente province in order to organize the guerillas in the area. He was successful but with the failure of the invasion he dissolved the groups and crossed to the Naval Base in Guantanamo from where he returned to Miami. Once in Miami he went with the "Company" as one of Miguel Orozco Commandoes, where he took part in many operations. When the "Mongoose" plan was closed, Izquierdo got the certificate of Jump Master and along with some others organized a parachutist's club. He took part in several exhibitions and sport festivals and act. In Mexico city, two Cubans had been arrested and charged with attempting to kill one of Castro's agents. There was no hope for a fair trial and Tony volunteered to help them escape. He moved into a house close to the jail and began excavating a tunnel. Unfortunately the tunnel was discovered and the Cubans were placed in different jails. Izquierdo, however, was not discouraged, He donned a policeman's uniform and a fake ID and went to one of the jail and got away with one of the prisoners. Some time later, he volunteered to train a group of paratroopers from the Nicaragua's National Guard, then fighting against the Sandinista Revolution. He took parts in several fire-fights with the Sandinistas, and then on September 10th 1979, a C-47 taking him and twenty-three others paratroopers crashed; all were killed. His body was brought to Miami where it was buried, His widow Edith Izquierdo and his two twin son live in Miami. The loss of Tony Izquierdo left an empty place in our hearts, but the example he gave us will always be with us. A statue in his honor was placed in the "Martyr's Boulevard" in the SW section of Miami.(13th Avenue SW between 8 an 9th street). *Synopsys of the writing by Mario Enriquez, published in "Giron" (December 1985) Tony Izquierdo with The Free Jump Team -- Zach

Some info on Cuban Memorial Boulevard: This two-block stretch in the heart of Little Havana is lined with monuments commemorating the heroes that fought for Cuban independence. Here an eternal flame burns in memory of the 94 Cuban exiles who gave their lives in the foiled 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba. A bronze map of Cuba is dedicated to the "ideals of people who will never forget the pledge of making their fatherland free." A statue of Jose Marti, leader of Cuba's independence struggle against Spain, holds a prominent space on this tree-lined boulevard. Other statues are dedicated to the Virgin Mary; Nestor "Tony" Izquierdo, a soldier at the Bay of Pigs, and General Antonio Maceo, an Afro-Cuban general who died fighting for Cuban independence. In the center of the block stands a massive ceiba tree, a tree considered sacred by most African religions. Practitioners of Santeria, an Afro-Cuban religion, leave ritual sacrifices of chicken bones and bundles of cloth among the tree's roots in hopes of gaining the blessing of a saint. Other believers claim a miracle happens every afternoon at the Virgin Mary statue when a beam of light shoots through the leaves overhead onto the Christ child in Mary's arms. Cuban Memorial Boulevard holds great cultural and historical significance to the exile residents of Little Havana. It's also a focal point for political demonstrations, community gatherings, celebrations, and daily socializing. Miami's Little Havana, centered around SW 8th Street, is the historical and geographical center of the Cuban exile community in the U.S. Known affectionately as Calle Oche, the 25-block enclave of Little Havana is the first place of settlement for newly arrived immigrants. This neighborhood was created in the 1960s when large numbers of Cubans fled to Miami from the newly-formed government of Fidel Castro. At the time, Miami was not the multicultural metropolis it is today. The non-English speaking Cubans were not welcomed, so they created their own community west of downtown Miami. Still today little English is spoken in Little Havana, where Spanish is the official language. Nestor Izquierdo Memorial, (sculpture) Summary: A portrait of Nestor "Tony" Izquierdo holding a machine gun with his proper right hand on the trigger and his proper left hand on the barrel. He is dressed in military fatigues, a beret, and combat boots. He carries a canteen on his proper left hip. His facial expression is a near-smile. The sculpture is mounted on a three-tiered base composed of tile with a wood frame. The base is painted a high gloss black. The sculpture is installed in a brick courtyard surrounded by a three-foot-high wrought iron fence and locked gate. There are lamp posts on each side at the front and flag poles on each side at the rear. The American flag is flown from one pole and the Cuban flag is flown from the other pole. Sculptor: Tony Lopez -- Zach

Zach, when I went to that other thread, it had 10 people reading it. I came here, and was the only one reading. It's doing it's job. It's a distraction. Please keep up the good work, regardless... Greg, The amount of worthless madness in regards to this subject never ceases to amaze me. Thank you very much for the kind words! I am hoping you will keep up your good work as well, as I always enjoy reading your posts. Zach

Hi David, Thanks for replying. Great question - I spent more time looking at the documents and in my haste I did not source that. Mainly because Michael Hogan, who is a great researcher and valuable member of the forum, quoted John Armstrong and wrote about it here:Oswald a member of the Minutemen? I was not surprised when I looked at my copy of Harvey and Lee I found that passage on pages 553-554. So Michael, if you see this, Thank You! A connection to Fiorini/Sturgis is definitely another avenue of research worth looking at. I think what we will see is that the conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy was very small and not all that complicated but the people involved had a vast array of connections, which makes it seem like the conspiracy would be larger. These people traveled in the same circles, were from different backgrounds, but their main thing in common was an intense feeling of anti-communism. Zach

It also should be noted that most deniable projects which were never "ordered" or "directed" could still be documented and given a Crypt. Vest Pocket Ops were never registered in the CIA Crypt system so they were never sanctioned. Those Ops would be covered by soft files only; they are soft because they never make it into the system. Although we have no idea what they really were, both Hargraves and Lee Harvey Oswald had "soft" files - possibly a few documents sitting in an officers' desk and definitely not circulating throughout the system. Zach

Fellas, thank you for your support. I am hoping the research gurus do not deem this topic to be a public relations disaster. Here are a couple more useful files on AMHINT 26: PRQ FILE(Personal Record Questionnaire) HSCA note Infiltration Operation Training Station Asset Report Koch's brother Herman was killed during the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Herman Koch – Killed in combat Age: 22. U.S. citizen. Date: 17-04-61. Location: Bay of Pigs, Las Villas province. Occupation: Engineering student at University of Villanueva, Havana. Place of residence: Havana. Description: Paratrooper, member of the 2506 Brigade, killed in combat during the Bay of Pigs invasion. Zach

Steve, James no longer participates on the forum or makes any posts, but I have communicated with him and he wanted to pass along the following information: "It is correct that Robertson did mention to African mercenaries in the employ of Mad Mike Hoare that he was indeed in Dallas [during the JFK assassination]. I heard this in the early 1980's while in the Seychelles." -- James Richards ****** Also of note, I found a quote from Mad Mike Hoare about Rip: Later many of these Cuban-American BOP vets itched to get back into the fight. The CIA obliged and sent them with ex-marine Rip Robertson to the Congo in 65 . There they linked up with the legendary mercenary "Mad Mike" Hoare, and his "Wild Geese." Here's Mike Hoare's opinion, after watching them in battle: "These Cuban-CIA men were as tough, dedicated and impetuous a group of soldiers as I've ever had the honor of commanding. Their leader (Rip Robertson) was the most extraordinary and dedicated soldier I've ever met. Those Cuban airmen put on an aerial show to compete with any. They'd swoop down, strafing and bombing, with an aggressive spirit that was contagious to the ground troops who then advanced in full spirit of close-quarter combat." Zach

Thanks Thomas -- Here is a little more info on Hargraves: Noel Twyman, the author of Bloody Treason, did an interview with Roy Hargraves. It can be found in Larry Hancock's great book Someone Would Have Talked. You can read it at Amazon by using the 'Look Inside' feature. A summary of the interview can be found in the Bloody Treason eBook. Here are a couple highlights: Bloody Treason eBook Appendix D SUBJECT: Noel Twyman Meeting with Roy Hargraves DATE: February 10, 2001 Roy now admits that he went from Miami to Dallas with Vidal on November 18, 1963 and returned to Miami on the afternoon/evening of November 22. They flew by private jet both ways. There were others, unnamed with them on the plane. Roy would not reveal who provided the plane. Roy would not say what he did in Dallas, or who he met there. Roy said that he did not shoot JFK, didn’t even know that JFK was to be in Dallas. At the end of the meeting when we were looking at photos of Dealey Plaza from Groden’s book of photos, Roy reiterated that Vidal was the man on Elm Street with the walkie-talkie. I asked Roy if he was speculating on this. He said no, he was not speculating. He said compare Roy’s photo to the Saturday Evening Post photos. He explained that Vidal did not know what was coming down and was following specific instructions to do exactly specific things, thus explaining Vidal’s arms being raised up. Roy said “Black Dog Man” was there to signal the bomber (to blow up the car on the other side of the underpass.) Roy said it was Colonel William Bishop who ordered Vidal to come to Dallas at that time and that it was under Vidal’s instructions that Roy come along. Roy said later that if he met the torturer General Escalante he would kill him on the spot for what he did to Vidal. CIA File - Hemming and Hargraves ROY TRIVIA: has Tattoo on right arm that reads "Death before Dishonor" So-Called mercenaries in 1962, part of a group allegedly sponsored by US Intelligence at No Name Key in Florida for the purpose of overthrowing Castro’s Cuba or assassinating Castro 1 – Steve Wilson 2 – Roy Hargraves 3 – Lawrence Howard 4 – Little Joe Cavendish Garman 5 – William Seymour 6 – Bill Dempsey 7 – The Leader, Gerry Hemming 8 – Ronald Ponce de Leon Zach

Following these important but older topics - Robert Emmett Johnson, Cubans in Scandinavia, and AMHINT and the Assassination of JFK - I think it would be beneficial to start a new topic on John Koch Gene. John Koch Gene, or Koch as he liked to be called, was AMHINT 26 - a CIA asset / DRE member. AMHINT was the name given to the leaders of the DRE; AMSPELL was the cryptonym for the CIA's relationship with the DRE. AMSPELL files refer to the group and its activities; AMHINT files refer to the individuals. A note in the report entitled “Separate Tracks: Agency Planning – Mafia Plotting” that had been written by Jack Pfeiffer, the CIA’s in-house historian, in September 1983 -claims that “AMHINT was related to the work of the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE).” Pfeiffer then goes on to say that he found a document that included AMHINT request of 14 January 1961 for “Silenciadores.” These were rifles with silencers and telescopic sights. Documents on Koch make it clear he received AMOT training under David Morales and was infiltrated into Cuba. Afterwords, many of these individuals, because of their age and as former students linked up with the DRE. Koch first appeared on a CIA list of DRE infiltrators in 1961 and attended the World Youth Festival in Helsinki Finland in July, 1962 (initially staying at the same Hotel - Klaus Kurkias - as Lee Harvey Oswald did three years prior). Koch was a close associate of Manuel Artime & Rafael Quintero. Koch, also an associate of David Ferrie, was arrested July 31, 1963 when the FBI raided an illegal DRE dynamite cache on Lake Pontchartrain at LaCombe. The Associated Press reported, "FBI agents swooped down on a house in a resort section near here today and seized more than a ton of dynamite and 20 bomb casings. An informed source said the explosives were part of a cache to be used in an attack on Cuba. But the FBI would only say that the materials were seized in connection with an investigation of an effort to carry out a military operation from the United States against a country with which the United States is at peace...." The materials seized by the FBI included 48 cases of dynamite, 20 firing caps, M-1 rifles, grenades, and 55 gallons of napalm. The FBI arrested two men: Sam Benton, a conduit between William McClaney and the anti-Castro Cubans, and Richard Lauchli, co-founder of the Minutemen and a close friend of Jack Ruby. ARRESTED AT LACOMBE: John Koch Gene, Sam Benton, Richard Lauchli, Earl J. Wassem Jr. Ralph Folkerts, Victor Espinosa, Carlos Eduardo Hernandez Sanchez, Acela Pedros Amores, Miguel Alvarez Jimenez, Antontio Soto Vasquez, Victor Panque. In response to FBI queries, Carlos Hernandez took the Fifth Amendment about the dynamite, and said he was associated with Manuel Artime. The FBI questioned Victor Paneque about the explosives. Carlos Quiroga told the New Orleans District Attorney's Office that Victor Paneque was in charge of training at this camp. The CIA reported: "His file contains no information to indicate connection in the LaCombe, Louisiana, area." HEMMING 1994: "The men at the LaCombe training camp were the top terrorists in the Cuban community." - Nodule 18, page 119 In August of 1963, Koch and Victor Hernandez (AM/HINT 25) were involved in a plot to bomb Cuban targets using explosives sourced out of New Orleans. Koch was born in Havanna (May 29, 1940), 'had a white look,' and allegedly made a trip to Texas in the week leading up to the assassination. Just speculation, but it is possible Koch moved on to Artime’s AMWORLD project in Nicaragua after the assassination. Some sources on John Koch Gene - AMHINT 26 Koch File - Finland Trip FBI file - Lake Ponchartrain The Road to Dallas - David Kaiser

Dragon Operations Hostage Rescues in the Congo, 1964-1965 Cuban-exile pilots in the Congo excerpt: Back in September, when General Adams tasked Colonel Mayer to plan for a covert rescue in Stanleyville, Mayer had planned for a military show with some CIA backing. With the shelving of Operation Golden Hawk, the Low Beam option, under the auspices of the CIA, took on new life. According to Thomas Powers, in The Man Who Kept the Secrets, the CIA was very concerned over their people in Stanleyville, and a meeting consisting of Director John McCone; Richard Helms, deputy director for plans; Ray Cline, deputy director for intelligence; and two junior officers convened at the CIA headquarters in late October or early November. Cline reportedly supported direct action to extract the American officials, but Powers states that Helms' cautious counsel successfully persuaded McCone that such an operation was impracticable. In fact, Helms' effort was only partially successful. Low Beam was resurrected in official traffic soon afterward… …Stanleyville was now the focus of the Congo crisis. While Washington and Brussels had anguished over the necessity of Dragon Rouge, Colonel Frédéric J. L. A. Vandewalle (Former security chief in Belgian Congo) was pushing toward the city. On 21 November, The L'Ommengang force was joined by the Low Beam force, led by CIA agent William "Rip" Robertson, which consisted of eighteen Cuban exiles armed with sixty-eight different weapons. Robertson's team, along with Rattan and Weisel, made up the American contingent of L'Ommengang. Robertson introduced himself to Larson as "Carlos" and led the group along the route specified by the missionary. Larson was impressed by the swarthy band, who were careful to describe themselves as "not Castro Cubans." The tiny force sped through the town in a jeep and a pickup truck, passed by Camp Prince Leopold II, and punched through two roadblocks to reach the mission. For one of the missionaries, they were three hours too late. That morning, the Simbas had arrived to arrest the remaining missionaries at Kilometer 8. Panicked by the news of Dragon Rouge, the Simbas shot two missionaries and two boys. One missionary, Hector McMillan, died shortly afterward, but the others survived. Larson and Robertson found the survivors shaken. The CIA agent wasted no time: his troops emptied their vehicles of everything that did not shoot and crammed the refugees in them. Robertson left McMillan's body behind, along with the refugees' baggage, and the overloaded vehicles roared back into Stanleyville without incident. Again, Robertson's men were at pains to clarify their political affiliations. One of the men, after taking a snapshot of a pig along the road, smiled and said, "Castro . . . someday we do that!" Operation Low Beam Version a. U.S. military special warfare mission to conduct covert American rescue-rehearsed as Golden Hawk Version b. CIA covert mission attached to Vandewalle's column. Zach

From: Mary Ferrell FBI Files and NODULE X27 ROY EMORY HARGRAVES in Cuban affairs can be found in cases captioned 'ROY HARGRAVES HARGRAVES has been described as a 'bomber.' i.e. HARGRAVES engaged in such activities as knocking on doors and throwing a hand grenade inside when the door was opened. HARGRAVES is a mercenary, adventurer and soldier of fortune. In 1963 HARGRAVES was 23 years old, 5' 10", 165 pounds, brown hair, hazel eyes. From November 1963, through March 1964 HARGRAVES was closely associated with and worked for Felipe Vidal Santiago. HARGRAVES helped Felipe Vidal Santiago to obtain arms, ammunition and a boat. He transported the boat and military equipment between Miami and the Florida Keys. When HARGRAVES was stopped by US Customs agents, Felipe Vidal Santiago clandestinely left the United States and infiltrated Cuba. Felipe Vidal Santiago was captured and executed by a firing squad in Cuba in April 1964." [FBI 62-109060-4450] ROY, according to Art Silva, had several telescopic sight rifles, grenades, mortars, dynamite etc. in his room. Also ROY had made a trip to Dallas, Texas, in late 1963 and was reported by Art Silva to have Secret Service credentials. ROY was also associated with various Cuban resistance movements and was an ex-Marine. William Blanton Acker notes that instant article he read says a policeman stopped a man in Dallas who showed Secret Service credentials. Acker says at a Christmas party in 1963 he was arguing with ROY and almost came to blows as ROY blamed former President Kennedy personally for the death of one of his close friends who was in the invasion at the Bay of Pigs. Acker says that in late 1963 he met Art Silva in an open air sandwich shop in Miami to have a beer and Art Silva talked of his next door neighbor ROY and said ROY was working with the Cubans and would help William Blanton Acker get into the movement if he wanted to help out in winning back Cuba from Castro. Art Silva also said, 'Somebody is going to die. Somebody who hasn't hurt anybody. He doesn't know it but he is going to die.' Acker says he asked Art ,'Who?' and Art Silva said he couldn't say. Art Silva also said "ROY is in something big, the biggest thing this country has seen.' HEMMING 1994: It was not ROY HARGRAVES [behind the fence on the knoll]. The kid was pissed off with his dad at the time. He was a pudjoe, and looked nothing like his father. He used to hang around to hear war stories.

As an excuse to bring this great thread back, I think the Trident was the Movement for the Recovery of the Revolution's battle flag. It is mentioned on p. 221 of Oswald Talked. Here are some other Cuban patches of the era: From the original photo found on the Spartacus website: The Leaders of Artime's AM/WORLD army: Zach

Myra, There are different readers you can have for your computer. It makes the book into a large pdf file (sort of). There are a couple like Mobi and Kindle. I am not sure what Google uses but they are free to download. I have Bloody Treason on Kindle (as well as the hardcover). The ebook is 'updated' but I was disappointed the entire Roy Hargraves interview was not included only a synopsis. The only place where it can be found is in Larry Hancock's SWHT ed. 2 (all 39 pages of the interview can be accessed online at Amazon.com inside feature). I agree, I also like to have a hard copy of my books. The Gibson book was on ebay not too long ago and went for less than $30. Just have to keep looking... You are right, it would be great to have them all in searchable form. Quite a few are on google books. There are ways to save the material. Zach

Thanks Zach. The printed version is very expensive so that's a good deal if a printed version isn't a requirement. You're welcome Myra. The printed versions are identical; the former a hardback and the latter a paperback. It is unclear if there will be a new printing for a 3rd edition. The publisher does science textbooks. Personally, I would rather have a real book but it is nice to have an e-book option with the prices the way they are now. This is an important book that seemingly gets overlooked much like Battling Wall Street. Zach

The Kennedy Assassination Cover Up by Donald Gibson is available in google E-book form found here for $15: JFK Cover-UP Zach

Bill, Here are both photos and the story: I don't know how Mr. Armstrong got the photos, Jack White may know that story, but these were pictures taken by the Cuban government in the fall of 1963. This man visited the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City and called himself Lee Harvey Oswald. On a Friday afternoon on 9/27/63, Oswald arrived at the consulate, he handed them an application to obtain a Cuban visa right there on the spot for a Monday departure on 9/30/63, even though he had no Soviet visa. When Oswald was refused the visa, he acted out and caused an unforgettably boisterous scene. Despite American claims, none of the consulate employees who were present could positively identify Oswald as the person at the Cuban consulate that day. Cuban consul Eusebio Azcue was emphatic in testifying that Oswald was not the "dark blond" man angrily demanding an instant visa. on page 646-47 of Harvey and Lee by John Armstrong: The Cuban's description of Oswald Oswald's visit to the Cuban Consulate, and his physical description, were described by Silvia Duran during her interrogation by the DFS on November 23, the day after the assassination. A 10 page statement was signed jointly by Duran and the DFS and was given to the Warren Commission in May 1964, but only after several revisions. The original version of this report, which was given to the CIA station in Mexico City, described Oswald as "blond, short, dressed unelegantly (sic), and whose face turned red when angry." These descriptions were removed before the report was given to the Warren Commission. Cuban consul Eusebio Azcue and Silvia Duran remembered the Oswald who visited their consulate had thin, blond hair, stood about 5-foot-6, and was over 30 years old. Azcue saw Lee Harvey Oswald on television after the assassination and said he "did not even resemble" the man who visited the consulate. On April 1, 1978 Azcue was interviewed by the HSCA and said that he would never have identified Lee Harvey Oswald as the man who visited the Cuban Consulate in Sept. 1963. On Thursday Aug. 3, 1978 Azcue was interviewed on television by CBS evening news reporter Ed Rable. Azcue produced photographs (above) taken in the Cuban consulate, of the man who identified himself as Lee Harvey Oswald. One photo showed a man in a light colored sweater walking toward the lower left of the picture (left). The second photo was of a man walking toward the right (right). Neither of these photos looked anything like the man accused of assassinating President Kennedy. Duran would go on describe the Mexico City Oswald as having blond hair and blue eyes. In 1978 HSCA investigator Edwin Lopez located and interviewed two CIA assets who worked inside the Cuban Consulate during Oswald's visit. Both people said the person who visited the consulate was not the man accused of assassinating President Kennedy and both told Lopez that they reported this to the CIA station in Mexico City. Thanks for all your great work Bill, Zach

President Carter's fate was sealed in March of 1977 when he appointed Stansfield Turner as DCI. After Turner fired 820 CIA employees, mostly in covert operations, Carter was destined to be a one term president. Zach

It seemed time either to retreat or send in reinforcements, so I bludgeoned Larry Bensky, the current victim on the sacrificial altar of the Ramparts Managing Editor's chair, into catching a night plane to Paris. Bensky was not all that happy about going, since he had been a founder of a Franco-American antiwar group during his previous residence as an editor of the Paris Review and had reason to think the French police would be watching him. Bensky found Michel to be a very average-looking Frenchman, a chain smoker of Gitanes, a chain lover of women, with a strong taste for luxury, a seemingly inexhaustible supply of pocket money, and many flashily dressed friends with nice apartments and no visible means of support. He was an expert in "pillow-talk intelligence," having been assigned by French intelligence, with its concern for industrial counterespionage, to infiltrate the social circles of the oil industry in New York and Texas by seducing the daughters of the petroleum magnates. "I learned English to xxxx them," the Frenchman told Bensky. The French intelligence agent came on as an orgy freak, or, more precisely, he came on as a combination self-voyeur and fetishist about being an orgy freak. He sat in Paris sidewalk cafes ostentatiously picking his teeth, and otherwise acting the part of Terry Thomas playing the stud. His conversation was that of an after-dinner speaker in a bordello catering to civil servants. He would preface intimate accounts of the sexual proclivities of prominent politicians with the phrase, "It is known in French intelligence that . . .", then proceed to the nitty gritty about several American politicians and their boyfriends. Michel was in other ways the perfection of rottenness. He pulled off one of the meanest ploys in the book of dirty tricks: He deliberately got one of our men the clap. The victim was a Ramparts lad who had been standing by in Paris, another innocent New Leftie abroad. Michel apparently convinced his young victim that sexual intercourse was a prerequisite to commercial intercourse in Paris and that their discussions could best be held during nightly visitations to Paris whorehouses in which he was a stockholder. There our lad received a sexual mickey. Relying on the young American's pride not to cry uncle, the fiendish Michel stepped up the whoring pace, putting his negotiating partner at the disadvantage of extreme physical and psychological discomfort. Bensky arrived just in time to put a halt to this slow torture, which he learned about only by accident. The lad met him at the airport and on the way into Paris asked Bensky to wait for a minute in the cab while he ran up to a doctor's office to get a "vaccination." After the meter had ticked by twenty minutes, Bensky, figuring even Ramparts' expense accounts did not have that elasticity, paid off the driver and wandered upstairs. After several wrong numbers in doctors' offices, he found the innocent American, all blushing red, pale white, and de- pressed blue, sitting uncomfortably on a folding chair in a VD clinic. The embarrassed investigator confessed his plight, which was redundant in light of his surroundings. He perked up a bit when Bensky explained to him, Captain Ahab to Penrod, that his extended discomfort was not due to inexperience or bad luck but a trap of the devil, in all his cunning. Benksy ducked Michel's efforts to lure him to the whorehouses, where he was certain a trap lay germinating for him, pleading a Benedictine vow of celibacy from a previous incarnation, and instead maneuvered the Frenchman into successive cat-and-mouse encounter sessions of drinking cognac in bistros of Bensky's choice. On the third night, he beat the Frenchman at the endurance game. As the sensuous intelligence agent wandered drunkenly around the bistro, having left his jacket on the chair, Bensky went through his pockets, discovering business cards and press cards in several identities, only a few of them in Michel's own name, and a British passport in yet another name. Bensky dropped these identities on Michel in subsequent conversations, which caused the Frenchman to raise ever so slightly his egg-skin eyebrows and compliment the Managing Editor on Ramparts' "excellent sources" of information. Back home, we at last developed a good hunch about who was dealing in the bridge game in which Ramparts was playing a dummy hand. The droopy fleur-de-lis of French intelligence overshadowed the cardboard publishing house of Frontiers, but that in itself was of little specific help in tracing the river of data in Farewell America to its source, because the French SDECE was so notoriously, and almost hilariously, riddled with KGB double agents that as a matter of course Frenchmen were offered vodka before wine at international spy gatherings. There were also some noisy cross signals indicating that the book's brewmasters might be in the private sector of international espionage. A dandruff-collared crew of former French spies, tossed in the garbage when the rotten apple that had been French intelligence was drawn and quartered after World War II, had been hired en bloc by the French oil cartel. The pate of flab around their midsections was strengthened by the addition of Marseilles thugs and floating assassins to their number, creating a relatively sophisticated and mean chorus line of Harry Palmers in berets, ready to do whatever was necessary so that the Frenchies might gain a bigger share of the world oil lamp, Standard Oil be damned. This was something by the way of cherries on the matzos, as the SDECE itself assumed as a prime part of its raison d'etre the protection and furtherance of French petroleum interests. (It remains an object of bar bets in Paris whether it was the SDECE proper or the freelance French oil agents who erased Enrico Mattei, the Italian oil magnate whose North African holdings encroached on French vital interests, and who conveniently perished in a plane crash near Milan in 1962 which had the suspicious markings of that other political plane crash of General Sikorski off Gibraltar in 1943, in which Winston Churchill was alleged to have pulled the fatal cotter pin.) At any rate, such types as these, who possessed sufficient rough magic to make the Moroccan leftist Ben Barka disappear from the Left Bank and from the face of the earth in 1965, had the financing if not the suavity (that apparently was Michel's function) to palm off Farewell America on the public libraries of the world. This was something they might wish to do inasmuch as the book contained between its hard covers considerable dirt on the American oil industry, including the not very nice suggestion that the kingpins of American petroleum got together to knock off the President of the United States. It sounds mad, I know, but when you get into it, and down to it, all real madness takes place in some factual context. The French are not the only ones who have found other uses for old spies. Everywhere, former intelligence agents for hire constitute a black belt of overprivileged crud. What really goes on in the world is made all the more dreadfully complicated when one becomes aware of the existence of this private half-world on top, or rather beneath, that other half-world of officially sanitized clandestine intelligence work and subversion. We never learned for certain whether Michel worked for the French intelligence, with or without its KGB brandy float, or for the Watergate division of French private intelligence, or, for that matter, for some other squad of Flying Dutchmen. Someone substantial was paying his whoring and typesetting bills. He admitted to being a plant but would not say who potted him. All his identities were phony. He had never been the publisher of a French magazine. But in his earnest efforts to get Ramparts to publish his thing Michel did clear up several of the minor mysteries about the black books. He said the extraordinary detail about the CIA had come from the files of the SDECE, which of course kept tabs on the competition. The information in the book about the KGB had come from the same source; he denied it came directly from the KGB. The nasty details about the American petroleum industry were the product of the same files and from Michel's own years of spying and snookering his way into the inner social circles of the filthy oil rich. He also explained the derivation of some of his most scarlet name-dropping. Michel's imagination took him to the heights of drugstore fiction. The nonplusing references to Roy Cohn, for instance, were explained as a simple matter of "friendship" -- Michel claimed to have become great buddies with Cohn while working the stud circuit in Eastern seaboard millionaire playgrounds. To hear the Frenchman tell the tale, he and Roy were something of a frogman team of cunnilingus experts who made many successful forays together in the dangerous waters off East Hampton; therefore, one nice guy to another, the spy put his friend's name in his book. (I later asked Cohn about this; he said he recalled no such person and that the whole story smacked of a left-wing lie.) Michel also came clean that the name James Hepburn, the pseudoauthor of Farewell America, was of a metasexual derivation. James was the French J'aime, and Hepburn from the actress Audrey Hepburn, with whom Michel professed, without substantiation, to once having dated, and for whom he had kept a soft spot in his black heart, even though, he said, his affection was unreciprocated. On the basis of this less than complete information, Ramparts purchased an option to publish Farewell America in America, paying for it with a postdated check drawn on a bank with which we no longer had an account. I had never bounced a check on an intelligence agency before and it seemed somehow a fair idea. If the truth be told, the cables I was sending Bensky urging him to hurry up and make haste so we could go to press with James Hepburn's exclusive were in that gray area between little white lies and big black lies. It was in for a dime, in for a dollar, and I couldn't see the harm in hanging tough and trying to find out just who had gone to all this expense and effort to bloody up the good name of the CIA and eminent American oilmen such as H. L. Hunt, the billionaire brown-bagger whom James Hepburn, the pseudoauthor, had defamed in terms I would be loath to repeat even about someone poorer than Hunt. There being no Geneva Convention of publishing, I figured that if the culprits coughed up Volume Four, with the names and numbers of the players in the Dallas assassination bowl, and if we succeeded in pinning the goods on one intelligence agency as opposed to another, then we could screw James Hepburn and run the story with its proper by-line -- "Who Killed Kennedy, by the KGB." I thought that would make a terrific Ramparts cover. Under prodding, the proprietorship of Frontiers Publishing came clean as to their most extraordinary source: the material on the internal foul-ups of the Secret Service -- detailed down to the number of bourbons a Secret Serviceman had had the night before and how many aspirins he took the morning after -- was hand delivered from the inner councils of the Kennedy family. The chapter was based on a private, unpublished and undistributed memorandum prepared for Attorney General Robert Kennedy after his brother's murder. Bobby had convened a select committee the day after the assassination, which was to conduct a secret investigation of the Secret Service, independent of the work of other federal agencies such as the FBI or the CIA. For RFK's first thought had been that the person responsible for his brother's death was his old enemy, Jimmy Hoffa. Michel said the committee's report had been written by Daniel Moynihan. It excoriated the Secret Service for organizational and functional deficiencies, but it also cleared Hoffa of any involvement in any plot. Once he was assured that his nemesis hadn't done it, Bobby apparently lost all interest in the investigation. He didn't even turn the report over to the Warren Commission, although it was far more critical of the Secret Service than the eventual Warren Report. This memorandum had lain hidden somewhere in the file cabinets of Camelot ever since. Through "personal friendships" developed within the Kennedy inner circle -- Michel would not say with whom -- it had come to rest in the hands of French intelligence, which had made such expert use of it. Such was the root of the strangest one-liner in the inscrutable text of the espionage classic Farewell America: "Only Daniel Moynihan, a former longshoreman, had some idea of such things." We were of course sworn to secrecy because of the "extreme sensitivity" of this confidence, a trust I violated in a flash by bracing Moynihan. At first he refused to talk. This was not wholly unreasonable of him, as a tart invitation to a liberal intellectual of the stripe of Daniel Moynihan from the Katzenjammer Kids of Ramparts would naturally raise suspicions of New Left entrapment. However, a second telephone call to his Cambridge home, in which the subject matter of the desired discussion was mentioned, brought him flying down to New York, where a Ramparts Face the Nation panel had hastily assembled. Moynihan almost swallowed his bow tie when briefed on what we knew. He vehemently denied knowing the man known as Michel, or any French cockfighter, but he would not deny his secret mission for Bobby. He would not confirm it, either. He became fidgety and begged permission to use a telephone for some private calls. "I have to ask some people," he said. Twenty minutes later a slightly more composed Moynihan reappeared, announced that he had no intention of discussing this matter with us, and made a less than graceful exit. We presumed he was under homing instructions beamed from some transmitter still functioning in the ruins of Camelot. That is everything there is to know about the mystery of the black books except who did it. Bensky returned from the Paris talks with little more substantial than a fervent dislike for the other side. When pressed to the wall, Michel handed over the long-awaited "fourth volume," which consisted of one double-spaced page. Here is what it said: THE MAN OF NOVEMBER FIFTH The choice made by the people of the United States on November 5th, 1968, will have profound and far-reaching consequences for the life, liberty and happiness of the universe. The peoples of the earth are awaiting new decisions. The man of November 5th cannot escape the conflicts of the modern world. If he chooses to ignore them, he will only delay their consequences. If he is prepared to confront them, he can overcome them. John and Robert Kennedy had the courage to meet these problems and break down the doors to the future. They were stopped by the frightened confederates of the traditions on which they infringed. When John Fitzgerald Kennedy's head exploded, it was for some the signal for toasts. The funeral did not go unnoticed. One November morning the cannon boomed, the Panama Canal was closed, flags flew at half-mast, and even Andrei Gromyko wept. Adlai Stevenson declared that he would bear the sorrow of his death till the day of his own, and the Special Forces added a black band to their green berets. Almost five years passed, and another bullet shattered the brain and stopped the heart of another Kennedy who had taken up the fight. There was another funeral. Once again the Green Berets formed the Honor Guard; once again the Stars and Stripes flew at half-mast. On an evening in June, Robert Kennedy joined his brother beneath the hill at Arlington, and those who pass by can bring them flowers. The tombs are splendid, but the scores have not been settled. Who killed them? And why?" It is perhaps indicative of the nature of the real knowledge of the Kennedy assassinations on the part of the authors of Farewell America that their manuscript finally ended on a question mark. At that, the book remained chock-full of an odd lot of goodies. Stalemated in the attempt to determine to which I intelligence agency to award the by-line, I adopted a new tactic which, in retrospect, may have been counter-productive: I told the truth. Frontiers Publishing was informed via its Geneva, Paris and Vaduz, Liechtenstein, addresses that Ramparts would regretfully not publish its book as it would not tell us which brand name of espionage it represented. Michel replied, in something of a snit, that Frontiers would publish the book itself in America, as it had successfully done elsewhere. They proceeded to print a hard-cover, 418-page English-language edition of Farewell America in Belgium which was air-freighted to Canada, warehoused and prepared for distribution in America. For reasons best known to Frontiers -- a publishing firm which, needless to say, has ceased to answer its telephones -- the book was never brought into the United States. I fear now that its failure to surface may have had something to do with my promise to Michel to "write about" the book when it was published in the United States. I meant that as a promise, not a threat, but it may have been interpreted otherwise. The plot died lingering. A month after the events just described, Michel showed up in California. He telephoned Bill Turner, who had been Jaffe's contact man. Turner was getting ready to fly to New York, but offered to stop by Michel's hotel on the way to the airport. Hill -- our supersecret emissary -- was driving Turner to the airport, and he joined the meeting. The encounter was light on substantive conversation, but the next evening Michel called Hill, who had let it slip that he was staying in Sausalito, and said that he was leaving town but had "a present" for the gang at Ramparts. Typically, although the Frenchman was staying at the Fairmont Hotel, the present was in the hands of the bell captain of the St. Francis Hotel. From the bellboy Hill retrieved a can of 16-mm film. It was a print of the famous Zapruder film, at that time off-limits to the world at large and under lock and key in the vaults of the National Archives in Washington and at Life magazine, which had paid Zapruder a tidy sum for all the prints in existence. Bensky volunteered the most articulate explanation of these strange goings-on. The Bensky Theory is the product of his tiptoeing through the intelligence poppy fields of Paris without getting dizzy from the fragrance. He believes Michel was working with a politicized wing of the French intelligence service which had become the last bastion of gainful employment for various supporters of the right-wing militarists who lost out to reality in the French Indochina and Algerian colonial wars. These types were all young-to-middle-aged rightist playboys of the intelligence world, grinning fascists with souped-up cars and a hand in the till of private business deals, of whom Michel was a specimen. A thinking cult among their number, anxious to develop some ploy that would appeal to De Gaulle, hit upon the black books to worm their way into favor. The General was of course very anti-American, but was known to have achieved something of a personal rapprochement with Jack Kennedy, whom he liked and whom he was convinced was the murder victim of a conspiracy within the United States. General de Gaulle was also extremely concerned about France's future sources of energy, which he saw at the mercy of the American and British petroleum cartels. Industrial counterespionage, both oil and nuclear, was an important function of French intelligence. The object of the black books, therefore, was to show De Gaulle that he was right in his views about the conspiracy to kill Kennedy, and at the same time create a scandal both in Europe and the United States by linking the hated American oilmen to the assassination. Neat, no? There are differences of opinion about the Bensky Theory, but I will refrain. If that was the purpose of the black books, the perpetrators were at least partially successful. They managed to con the largest daily newspaper in Germany and newsmagazine in France into buying their poke, not to mention thousands of book buyers in both countries who were taken along for the ride. And although Farewell America has never been reviewed or written about in the United States, for reasons now familiar to the readers of this history, numerous copies of the book have somehow wormed their way into the public libraries and card catalogs of the nation, including the Library of Congress (Catalog Card Number 68-57391). I do not know what happened to the shipment of books in Canada, except that six hundred of them ended up in Bill Turner's basement. Michel had asked him at their breakfast tete-a-tete if Turner would like "some copies" of the book. Turner said sure. Two months later he received a notice from a freight forwarder in San Francisco that they were holding something for him. It was a considerable poundage of Farewell America, sent via Montreal to Turner's San Rafael home. Turner refused to accept the skid of books, since there was a $282 shipping tag to be paid, and he did not feel like subsidizing a foreign government to that amount. He so notified Michel. Michel wired back telling him where to pick up money to pay the shipping cost. Following Michel's instructions, Hill went to a Swiss bank in San Francisco and got the money. So the ex-FBI man keeps the only known extant stash of the black books next to his lawn mower. It is a slowly dwindling pile, as he is constantly bothered by requests to send copies through the mail. Most of these orders come from bookstores near college campuses, one shop apparently getting his address from another. He mails out a dozen or more copies each month, at $8.95 a pop. The Los Angeles Public Library bought five copies. From If You Have a Lemon, Make Lemonade (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1974), pp. 245-68 http://www.voxfux.com/kennedy/farewell/farewell00.html

In Noel Twyman's interview of Bob Walton (David Morales' former lawyer), Walton talks about how Morales had a little black plastic card (smaller than a credit card) in his wallet that had a few gold numbers/letters and no insignia on it. He would show it to people to get whatever he wanted - into a restaurant, on an overbooked airplane etc... Does anyone know what this card was? (My only guess is that it was from when he worked in the Pentagon for the Joint Chiefs of Staff) Zach

Andy at the Last Hurrah told me that there is not much difference between the first book and the "revisited" one. A couple small things that are not worth the expensive price. The main difference was the company that published it usually does only science books and did not produce very many JFK copies so that is why the price is so high. I ordered the original "The Kennedy Assassination Cover-Up" off Amazon but I have not received it yet. Yes, Battling Wall Street is definitely a great book; I agree it is very underrated. Zach

Jim, Thanks for coming back into this atrocious thread for those last 2 comments. It was worth your time. Sex has NOTHING to do the JFK case. It was a REVENGE murder for the people who carried it out plain and simple. The people higher up on the food chain wanted JFK killed for other reasons but not for Sex. As for RFK staying quiet about the Warren Comm. findings, he did that to maneuver for a shot at the Presidency and for his own safety. He would never publically question the lone gunman theory for political gain NOT sex. It is not a coincidence that the day before he was killed he visited Oxnard Ca. Sorry if I disappointed all the Maury Povich fans out there. Zach