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Posted
On 5/30/2018 at 1:25 PM, Larry Hancock said:

Thanks DAvid,  that would have been my speculation on Silver - strictly connected to the early days of Harvey's prospecting for candidates in Europe and having noting to do with the executive action that got hidden under ZR/RIFLE or with its application to the new phases of the Castro assassination effort.  I very much doubt that Silver was told that at some point the Staff D project had morphed into executive action but then again he must have known about the Lumumba effort so I don't suppose it would have shocked him.  That certainly did shock the station chief in the Congo who thought it was political action only until the poison showed up... 

 

 

 

Larry - any idea who James Rabney is? Pseudonym?

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Posted

Paul, I'm sort of lost in this thread and the name is not familiar to me.  The CIA station chief in the Congo was Larry Devlin.  Point me in the direction of where James Rabney is mentioned in the thread and I might be able to at least make a guess.

Posted

I would agree with David that its likely a pseudo. About the only thing we know for sure is that KUCLUB  was the CIA office of communications and it appears they were sending in a communications team under cover, most likely to do with the Congo given the Brussels connections.

We also know that the US Ambassador to the Congo had effectively gone rogue in March, 1961 requesting support missions from various US agencies and sources with no approval from the President.  He even directed the Navy to send a force into Congolese waters and JFK was irate when he learned about it after the fact. For anyone who has Shadow Warfare, check pages Chapter 13 Holding the line in the Congo for some context and what was happening in 1961.

Sorry Paul, it does not help with  your question but is useful in the background for some of the documents David is linking in....

 

 

Posted (edited)

I just found it. James Rabney, and also Kurt Herzfanz, both pseudonyms for Arnold Silver, also QJBANNER was his cryptonym.

Edited by Paul Brancato
Posted
1 hour ago, David Boylan said:

Good catch Paul. 

Thanks David. I’ve caught something else, possibly significant. In searching Arnold M. Silver I read the Wikipedia article, which uses as a source a CIA generated study called ‘Studies in Intelligence’, specifically an entry by Silver called ‘Questions, Questions, Questions, about his time at a CIC interrogation center called Oberursel. It looks like he was the agent in charge. One of the Nazis he interrogated, mentioned early in this article and touted as a success, was Otto Skorzeny. He claims that he believed Skorzeny was not a Nazi, just a patriotic German. It was Silver that recommended he be released and sent to Madrid, which is exactly what happened. 

Posted

Paul, just as a side note I think you will find that post-war, the CIA was very much interested in and in contact with a number of Germans of his ilk (often designated as German patriots simply to clear them as sources - of course the Catholic Church in Italy did something similar in aiding German expatriation), including former military officers and especially SS in terms of what was going on with German expats in Latin America and particular with the networks that were being set up through Italy and Spain to get them down there. Skorzeny was a major player in raising some of the funds to the SS officers.  If you would like some related reading just message me - but most of it is quite "dense" and covers not just him but the much broader picture of what was going on.  There are references here and there as to how the CIA was clearing people as sources on certain Latin American governments and also a speculation on how they were in turn played as part of the process.

Posted
5 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

Paul, just as a side note I think you will find that post-war, the CIA was very much interested in and in contact with a number of Germans of his ilk (often designated as German patriots simply to clear them as sources - of course the Catholic Church in Italy did something similar in aiding German expatriation), including former military officers and especially SS in terms of what was going on with German expats in Latin America and particular with the networks that were being set up through Italy and Spain to get them down there. Skorzeny was a major player in raising some of the funds to the SS officers.  If you would like some related reading just message me - but most of it is quite "dense" and covers not just him but the much broader picture of what was going on.  There are references here and there as to how the CIA was clearing people as sources on certain Latin American governments and also a speculation on how they were in turn played as part of the process.

All true. It’s clear that Mr. Silver was very keen on recruiting anti-Soviet types. He said he was impressed with Skorzeny for his directness. But still, this is  ‘Hitler’s Commando’ we are talking about, reputed to be a VIP in the post war Reich, aligned with far right European fascists. QJWIN has by CIA accounts been identified as Mankel, but the only biographical info I can dig up on him comes from CIA documents. One of them, as Steve Thomas and I noted, seems to imply that although CIA released all info on QJWIN they still kept secret his actual identity, even though he is referred to as Mankel several times in that doc. Maybe if Steve knows where that document is and he can repost it. 

Main point is that Silver, CIA Chief of Station in Luxembourg, the man who recruited QJWIN for Harvey, was Skorzeny’s interrogator, and the man responsible for placing Skorzeny in Madrid. I should mention here that Madrid is where Mossad located him and hired him to destroy Egypt’s nuclear program in 1961. 

Posted

One of the many things we do know about Skorzeny is that he was very active in raising money, funding and helping support the SS ratlines out of Germany (especially for SS officers)  - and those ratlines went through Madrid and Rome...no doubt he could have been a valuable source for contacts and sources in Latin America. The question would be his ability to play all sides in the interest of his fellow countrymen. Putting him in Madrid was no doubt thought of as a good idea at the time. 

 

Posted (edited)

QJWIN related to Spain, speculatively... in bold.

17 minutes ago, Michael Clark said:

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/157-10002-10084.pdf

JMWAVE

QJWIN

ZRRIFLE

AMLASH-1

Artime

Fitzgerald

AMOT.    Details P.12

-------------------

P. 9

Mr.. Baron: how do you heard at any point that Artime was supplied weapons for the specific purpose of assassinating Castro?

Mr. Halley: No,, not for the specific purpose of assassinating Castro.

Mr. Barron: Was it your general impression that AMLASH-1  was a reliable agent?

Mr. Halley: I really do not know that much about him, you know. This was an operation that was run at the time out of Washington and, you know, my knowledge was as I described it to you, the conversations with Fitzgerald, Madrid, newspaper articles, so forth, in that particular time frame.

-----------------

Mr. Halley:  let me go back. You asked me about ZRRIFLE. This is one of thousands or hundreds of cryptoNYMS. Every day I read, you know, hundreds of pages of traffic, so when you ask me do I know what ZRRIFLE is, I must answer you off the top of my head no. I have tried to be helpful. I have asked you several times if you could give me a steering tip or show me what direction you are going, I might be able to try to comment on it, but ZRRIFLE as such means nothing to me. You really could not expect that it would, given the thousands of these things that come across my desk.

Mr. Barron:  That is  absolutely understandable. I want to try to see what happens in the way of getting in unrefreshed recollection from you, then I will go back over these two, especially the next one, QJWIN. Do you recall a CIA asset who went by the Cryptonym QJWIN.

Mr. Halley: No, I do not. Knowing the system, and so forth, normally it would have something to do with Spain. It does not ring any bells with me. That is all I can give you, a sort of Pavlovian response. You flash QJWIN on the screen, I'm telling you now I do not know, but it probably has something to do with Spain.

 

 

 

 

 

It's interesting that the respondent has a "Pavlovian" response of "Spain" with regard to QJWIN, yet the "QJ" portion of that Cryptonym has no other mates, "QJ" is unique. Either we are missing multiple, or numerous, "QJ" Cryptos, or QJWIN is very likely related to Spain, or the respondent is being deceptive. 

It could also be that I am not very good at this.......

Edited by Michael Clark
Posted
15 hours ago, Michael Clark said:

QJWIN related to Spain, speculatively... in bold.

It's interesting that the respondent has a "Pavlovian" response of "Spain" with regard to QJWIN, yet the "QJ" portion of that Cryptonym has no other mates, "QJ" is unique. Either we are missing multiple, or numerous, "QJ" Cryptos, or QJWIN is very likely related to Spain, or the respondent is being deceptive. 

It could also be that I am not very good at this.......

Amazing and surprising gem in an otherwise rather unrevealing interview. Madrid, where Hunt was posted officially in 1965 I think, the European center of the fascists. 

David - the page you posted is one I used to start a thread here because it really struck me how strange it was to see this Cuban mention Skorzeny without being asked about him, and he specifically mentions Madrid and Belgium. On that thread I posted a link to a short interview with Skorzeny who says, when asked if he’d ever been approached by Castro, says yes, and also by the enemies of Castro. 

There are books being released soon that suggest (I think) that Skorzeny was QJWIN. How strange it is to find an article in a CIA history written by Arnold Silver, the COS in Luxembourg who recruited QJWIN for William Harvey, in which he specifically recalls his interrogation of Skorzeny in 1946 and his recommendation at the time that Skorzeny be allowed to go to Madrid, the city that Skorzeny suggests to Arnold. 

Posted (edited)
56 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

Amazing and surprising gem in an otherwise rather unrevealing interview. Madrid, where Hunt was posted officially in 1965 I think, the European center of the fascists. 

David - the page you posted is one I used to start a thread here because it really struck me how strange it was to see this Cuban mention Skorzeny without being asked about him, and he specifically mentions Madrid and Belgium. On that thread I posted a link to a short interview with Skorzeny who says, when asked if he’d ever been approached by Castro, says yes, and also by the enemies of Castro. 

There are books being released soon that suggest (I think) that Skorzeny was QJWIN. How strange it is to find an article in a CIA history written by Arnold Silver, the COS in Luxembourg who recruited QJWIN for William Harvey, in which he specifically recalls his interrogation of Skorzeny in 1946 and his recommendation at the time that Skorzeny be allowed to go to Madrid, the city that Skorzeny suggests to Arnold. 

 

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2018/180-10143-10076.pdf

Review of Office of Security files on E. Howard Hunt

p.16 (PDF)

p. 8. Sec. 19

 Memo for the record from department director of security; PPS; dated 2/8/63. Reports hunt call asking whether wife should register under "Foreign Agents Rregistration Act". Since she was doing translation work for the Spanish Embassy. Hunt is reported as fuzzing (?) an answering a question about OS approval and saying his wife is so independent that she would take the job regardless of what he said.

Sec. 20.

Memo for the record, undated, by Hunt: "Subject: Procurement of Intelligence by Mrs. Dorothy L hunt." 

1. On 25 February 1963, I delivered to Mr. W. Lloyd George, Chief, FI, Thermo-fax copies of a memorandum and a letter of transmittal dated 18 and 20 February respectively. Both were prepared by ambassador Antonio Garrinques for Prrince Stanislas Radzivill and take to the latter in New York by Alfonso de Bourbon, 2d. Secretary of the Spanish Embassy in Washington.

2. The purport of the material was to enlist the aid of Rradzzivill in (a) persuading the President to visit Madrid during his next European trip, and (b) conveying to the Preesident the views of Ambassador Garrinques regarding US Latin American relations.

 

Edited by Michael Clark
Posted
18 hours ago, Michael Clark said:

QJWIN related to Spain, speculatively... in bold.

It's interesting that the respondent has a "Pavlovian" response of "Spain" with regard to QJWIN, yet the "QJ" portion of that Cryptonym has no other mates, "QJ" is unique. Either we are missing multiple, or numerous, "QJ" Cryptos, or QJWIN is very likely related to Spain, or the respondent is being deceptive. 

It could also be that I am not very good at this.......

I found another QJ Crypto. It is QJBANNER, and it seems to me that I have seen it before. And QJBANNER-1 is on the MFF list. It was either just added or I overlooked it yesterday.

P. 2

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/157-10004-10068.pdf

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