Gerry Hemming and Interpen

[Hiram Huesca]

Working on it ...

Edited October 10, 2015 by Hiram Huesca

[Hiram Huesca]

http://s977.photobucket.com/user/gooddog9/media/Hermandad%20Cubana/169%20LIVING%20ROOM%20ANNOTATED_zps6awpr1s3.jpg.html

[Chris Newton]

Hiram,

Great job. When was this picture taken? I hadn't seen Loran Hall much without his goatee so thank you much. Do you have any idea who the man to Seymour's left might be?

I think your annotations are fantastic.

Chris

[Hiram Huesca]

Thank you Chris.

If you go to YouTube and look for LoranHall_01 and 02 , you will see Hall without the goatee but with mustache. It is a vinyl scratcher of a talk he gave to the John Birch Society.

It is difficult to date these memories perfectly and the originals seldom have a date stamp.

But I am pretty certain that these meetings, numbering three or four, began in mid-September and ended in late October 1962.

Gerry and Davy were at the first one when Gerry gave his speech and Hall, Seymour, Davy, and my uncle Pancho unloaded the C4, rifles, etc. to hide under our house ( houses near the Bay sat on pilons ).

This was the height of the Missile Crisis and I just cannot forget the Klingon B-52 belching black kerosene smoke onto our neighborhood as it went overhead so low that it covered most of the sky. There were also test firings of Nike-Hercules interceptors and many, many diamond formations of needle-nosed, F-104 Starfighters, from Homestead Air Force Base. This was resolved just before Halloween.

Fonseca and his crew were captured and announced shot within a couple of weeks. Then all, except Fariñas, disappeared from our lives as Pancho came down with that 28-day lung cancer.

I noticed that Hall, on the easy chair, has removed all the hair from his hands to just under his watch band. Any idea why?

I am thinking something to do with latex gloves?

The man leaning forward, whispering to Yarey, I have not been able to identify.

Anyone not captioned is yet to be identified, if dead.

I have a shot of Yarey and some unidentified men, in the kitchen of the house visible through the door, across the street. They are in the process of manufacturing and assembling improvised, lead-balloon grenades that look like WWII pineapples. They have burners and pots with lead, molds, and composition B on the counter top. But until I find out if any of them ( Yarey was executed in a round-up of the Escambray, by Fidel's guys. ) still live and who they are, I won't post their photos, albeit their faces are turned partially away from the lense, except for Yarey.

Edited May 9, 2016 by Hiram Huesca

[James Richards]

That is not Manuel Aguilar, not Seymour, not Hall and not Harber. Sorry.

[Hiram Huesca]

Sure .... And I mistook Gerry for a palm tree and Davy for a fire plug?

Edited October 10, 2015 by Hiram Huesca

[Hiram Huesca]

Re. Files and mystery companion,

I'd like to read more about him, if you give a link or reference.

I have read about the Remington pistol and fireball ammo.

I am intrigued, as well, by theories of escape via storm drains.

But, for the life of me, I don't understand why everyone keeps harping on the narrowness of the pipes:

A person does not have to fit; only the *weapon* !

It can be set in a pocket-end tarp with a pull line that a confederate, in the Main Street drain tunnel, then uses to pull the weapon to himself. From there, he/she can crouch over to a man hole a few blocks away where ersatz city workers have parked a van.

The stay-behind shooter, who has made himself conspicuous at various target ranges and hunting venues on the previous day, can walk away with aplomb.

Any arrest and paraffin test would be moot in view of his recent, legitimate use of a weapon.

Sancta simplicitas !

Edited October 15, 2015 by Hiram Huesca

[Greg Burnham]

That is not Manuel Aguilar, not Seymour, not Hall and not Harber. Sorry.

Agreed.

[Hiram Huesca]

That is not Manuel Aguilar, not Seymour, not Hall and not Harber. Sorry.

Agreed.

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

Hello Mr. Burnham, Mr. Richards,

I have watched your YouTube videos re. Gerry. These were great. Thank you!

The reasons I identify, say Loran Hall, are:

1. He took the photograph of the men seated at the table, a few minutes after the photographer captioned Argüelles took the photograph of the audience in my living room. The camera was handed to Hall by Gerry who addressed him by the name "Hall".

2. My uncle, captioned "Frank Alba", gushed a little too much, in his introduction of our guests, about the bravery of the veterans present. This caused Gerry to jokingly remark, (closely paraphrased) " Now come on, they're not THAT brave!". A ripple of good-natured laughter resulted in my uncle laughing with his head lowered in embarrassment. When Hall laughed, the laugh lines in his eyes and face were just like the ones depicted in the slide show incorporated in YouTube "LoranHall_01" and "LoranHall_02". My uncle had a face that wrinkled that way too, when he laughed. Hall looked around toward Manolo and back to Seymour. I had been sitting in the space between Harber and the gent wearing a striped shirt and rimless glasses. Gerry asked my uncle to get me out of there, because it was not a place for children. I ducked just inside the doorway of the second bedroom (not visible in the table photo) to the left of Argüelles.

Gerry and Davy left out the front with the furled flags and were followed, after the camera was returned to Argüelles, by Seymour, my uncle Alba, and Hall. They probably went out to stow the flags in my uncle's Café Pilon delivery van. I went to the kitchen after a little time with Fonseca and a secret reprimand session with my aunt Eloina Alba regarding my request for an HC i.d. card like my cousin was having printed. There, in the kitchen, was Gerry and Davy seated at our dining table.

When he had headed out our front door with Davy and flags, Gerry also asked where "Manolo" went as he nodded to that now empty seat. The name "Manolo" is a Spanish nick name for "Manuel" just as "Jack" is one for "John" in English. Manolo had gone into the bedroom visible in my photo ( a giraffe-necked man standing in the doorway; my maternal uncle "Macho") . The only business Manolo had there was to use the bathroom that connected both bedrooms. I did not see Manolo come out after Gerry et al, as I was in the kitchen.

Gerry did not address Seymour nor Harber. I identify them only by comparison to the Interpen thumbnail matrix here.

I will try to attach a side-by-side montage of YouTube Hall and living room Hall to which I have made minor, non-morphological modifications as captioned.

http://s977.photobucket.com/user/gooddog9/media/image.png.html

Below is a smaller version,

The only distinctions I can discern result from Hall raising his eye-brows sharply, while forming a word, and consequently rippling his forehead, rounding his eyes, and exposing more of their sclera. The mark on his cheek must have been temporary as it does not appear in his other YouTube portraits.

I note, in particular, that although the ears are not from the same side (I flipped my photo for better comparison) the conch and especially the lower lobe are essentially identical. The conch of a person's ear are said to be almost like finger prints.

Contextually, I would be forced to disregard my own lying eyes ? and believe that Gerry towed around a retinue of doppelgängers: one for Hall, one for Harber, one for Seymour, one for Aguilar, and these all happened to turn up at a venue that was itself a kind of doppelgänger, being just the kind of assemblage the real characters would frequent.

Can you gentlemen expand a little on why you feel this is the case?

I hope the attachment here goes through. Else, I will edit a link to my horrid photobucket.

Thank you,

HH

Edited November 11, 2015 by Hiram Huesca

[Chris Newton]

Hey Hiram,

I found the location of the ship that's in your photo bucket. The Marina's name is displayed on a sign on the building's north side. I looked up the company and found the dock. It's at the end of NW 6th St. where it intersects NE South River Drive. The Marina building no longer exists but you can see it's outline plainly on the dockside if you use google earth.

Just an FYI

[Hiram Huesca]

Thanks Chris.

I will look it up.

You are referring to the old ship I boarded and not to its museum display in white, right?

It should say " INTERCOASTAL BOAT YARD ".

There must have been some trick to ramming it into a Soviet ship without killing themselves.

I imagine a speedboat pickup.

Swimming away would have been suicidal, because the explosion shock wave in the water would have killed them instantly.

Then again, they wanted a nuclear war with Cuba !!!

Everyone in Miami knew what that meant and felt the powerful laxative effect of it when the USSR exploded the 50 megaton thermonuke at that time.

Thanks again,

h

Edited November 11, 2015 by Hiram Huesca

[Paul Trejo]

That is not Manuel Aguilar, not Seymour, not Hall and not Harber. Sorry.

Agreed.

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

Hello Mr. Burnham, Mr. Richards,

I have watched your YouTube videos re. Gerry. These were great. Thank you!

The reasons I identify, say Loran Hall, are:

1. He took the photograph of the men seated at the table, a few minutes after the photographer captioned Argüelles took the photograph of the audience in my living room. The camera was handed to Hall by Gerry who addressed him by the name "Hall".

2. My uncle, captioned "Frank Alba", gushed a little too much, in his introduction of our guests, about the bravery of the veterans present. This caused Gerry to jokingly remark, (closely paraphrased) " Now come on, they're not THAT brave!". A ripple of good-natured laughter resulted in my uncle laughing with his head lowered in embarrassment. When Hall laughed, the laugh lines in his eyes and face were just like the ones depicted in the slide show incorporated in YouTube "LoranHall_01" and "LoranHall_02". My uncle had a face that wrinkled that way too, when he laughed. Hall looked around toward Manolo and back to Seymour. I had been sitting in the space between Harber and the gent wearing a striped shirt and rimless glasses. Gerry asked my uncle to get me out of there, because it was not a place for children. I ducked just inside the doorway of the second bedroom (not visible in the table photo) to the left of Argüelles.

Gerry and Davy left out the front with the furled flags and were followed, after the camera was returned to Argüelles, by Seymour, my uncle Alba, and Hall. They probably went out to stow the flags in my uncle's Café Pilon delivery van. I went to the kitchen after a little time with Fonseca and a secret reprimand session with my aunt Eloina Alba regarding my request for an HC i.d. card like my cousin was having printed. There, in the kitchen, was Gerry and Davy seated at our dining table.

When he had headed out our front door with Davy and flags, Gerry also asked where "Manolo" went as he nodded to that now empty seat. The name "Manolo" is a Spanish nick name for "Manuel" just as "Jack" is one for "John" in English. Manolo had gone into the bedroom visible in my photo ( a giraffe-necked man standing in the doorway; my maternal uncle "Macho") . The only business Manolo had there was to use the bathroom that connected both bedrooms. I did not see Manolo come out after Gerry et al, as I was in the kitchen.

Gerry did not address Seymour nor Harber. I identify them only by comparison to the Interpen thumbnail matrix here.

I will try to attach a side-by-side montage of YouTube Hall and living room Hall to which I have made minor, non-morphological modifications as captioned.

http://s977.photobucket.com/user/gooddog9/media/image.png.html

Below is a smaller version,

The only distinctions I can discern result from Hall raising his eye-brows sharply, while forming a word, and consequently rippling his forehead, rounding his eyes, and exposing more of their sclera. The mark on his cheek must have been temporary as it does not appear in his other YouTube portraits.

I note, in particular, that although the ears are not from the same side (I flipped my photo for better comparison) the conch and especially the lower lobe are essentially identical. The conch of a person's ear are said to be almost like finger prints.

Contextually, I would be forced to disregard my own lying eyes and believe that Gerry towed around a retinue of doppelgängers: one for Hall, one for Harber, one for Seymour, one for Aguilar, and these all happened to turn up at a venue that was itself a kind of doppelgänger, being just the kind of assemblage the real characters would frequent.

Can you gentlemen expand a little on why you feel this is the case?

I hope the attachment here goes through. Else, I will edit a link to my horrid photobucket.

Thank you,

HH

Well, Hiram, although the photographs of Loran Hall look quite different in the two photos you provided at the bottom of your interesting post, the fact is that they are years apart.

The photo on the left is from the late 70's perhaps, while the photo on the right is from the late 50's perhaps.

Quite a lot can happen to a man's face in 20 years.

The photos of Lee Harvey Oswald when he is 19 look very different from his photos when he is 23. A man's face matures over time.

So -- photographic identification is not as easy as many believe it is. Personal knowledge of the subject matters far more than one might expect.

I saw two photographs of Judy Garland that were only five years apart -- and they looked like two completely different people. A lot depends on the angle -- down nose or up -- and on the camera -- and on the lighting -- but especially on the AGE of the person.

Since I also have Hispanic people in my family that I saw age before my eyes, I can easily agree that these two photographs are of the same man, about 20 years apart.

Regards,

--Paul Trejo

[Hiram Huesca]

Thank you Paul.

My version of Hall ( picture on the right ) was taken in October of 1962.

I have read of Hall being Cuban.

Maybe this is a misunderstanding due to his first sentence in his Bircher speech:

"I am a Cuban freedom fighter.".

I think he meant:

"I am a fighter for Cuban freedom.".

I say this because his Spanish is heavily accented for Anglo; especially when he says, "¡Paredon!".

I read that his parents were Cuban. Hmmmmmm..... maybe.

I want to read as much as I can find about Hall, because I am fascinated by allegations of his involvement in the JFK assassination.

He is said to have recorded a tape to be revealed in case of his untimely demise. I wish we had that. Also, I would be interested in any interviews and anecdotes of him.

When I found Gerry's posts here, some years back, I had a pic-nic for days of non-stop amazement.

Sadly, Gerry had died eleven months earlier and I had lost any chance to ask him questions.

The only thing worse than a question I can't answer is an itch I can't reach ?

Thanks again,

H

Edited November 13, 2015 by Hiram Huesca

[Paul Trejo]

One of the most interesting stories about Loran Hall and Gerry Patrick Hemming is that they eventually broke off their friendship when Loran Hall decided to start his own Cuba Raid group, which he named, La Sambra. Hemming was displeased that Loran Hall was poaching Interpen members to form La Sambra.

Here's how the break started. Raids against Cuba depended on money for supplies. One could easily lose a boat in a Raid, and so one immediately would need enough money to buy a replacement boat. Also, bullets and ammunition are not free. Also, feeding the soldiers is not free. Also, soldiers usually have families, and money for their families is always necessary.

The CIA would offer support -- but never full support -- only a small percentage. The Mafia was far more generous than the CIA in supporting the Cuba Raid groups, but even the Mafia wouldn't provide all the money that Interpen needed.

So, Interpen always needed money and supplies, and the folks who had the best skills of getting money and supplies would be "assigned" to do that full time if possible. The folks who would be best at getting money from well-heeled American donors would be those who spoke English the best. That would be Gerry Patrick Hemming and Loran Hall.

But Gerry Patrick Hemming didn't favor fund-raising and public speaking full-time. He was far more comfortable leading his troops in the field. So, Loran Hall drew the short straw, and he was "assigned" to go from meeting to meeting -- coast to coast -- to ask rightist groups for money and supplies. Loran insisted on taking Larry with him. Gerry agreed.

In the USA, the most generous group, coast to coast, was the John Birch Society (JBS).

It was at the JBS in Southern California (which was Larry Howard's home town) that Loran Hall and Larry Howard met Guy Gabaldon, a Mexican-American war hero from WW2, who single-handedly got hundreds of Japanese to surrender on the Island of Saipan. A movie was made about Gabaldon in 1960, entitled, From Hell to Eternity (starring Jeffrey Hunter and David Janssen).

Loran Hall and Larry Howard also met Guy Gabaldon's friend, Harry Dean in 1962. Guy Gabaldon was a well-known speaker for the JBS in those times, and Harry Dean also spoke occasionally for them.

Harry Dean liked Loran and Larry -- especially Larry, who was more easy-going. Harry said that these two young men practically worshipped Guy Gabaldon, and would have done anything for him. Guy was their hero.

Guy and Harry had another role -- they would collect money and supplies from doctors, dentists and lawyers within the JBS, and they needed somebody to haul the goods from Southern California to Louisiana and Miami, where the Cuban Raid groups had bases.

That's where Loran Hall and Larry Howard came in. Harry Dean would help to store the supplies in his garage, and in Guy Gabaldon's garage, and would help Loran and Larry load up their trailer. They also helped Loran Hall prepare his famous fund-raising speech to speak before the JBS meetings, to collect money. One version of this speech was given to me by Harry Dean, and I uploaded it to YouTube. Here are the URL's:

LORAN HALL SIDE 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6daWtQYlydQ

LORAN HALL SIDE 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kLVVHQ_Myg

Loran Hall and Larry Howard got so good at "running guns" that they were practically doing this full-time. The money was starting to look good, and this is when Loran Hall also decided to drop out of Interpen and form his own group, La Sambra.

Gerry Patrick Hemming was disappointed, because he thought Loran was only doing this to keep more money for himself. Loran actually went out on very few raids anymore. Also, Gerry Patrick Hemming was creating a Retirement Fund for his Interpen soldiers, and he needed all the money he could get.

So, that was the beginning of their break.

They came to further breaks as the time came closer to the JFK assassination and they began interacting with Ex-General Walker in Dallas. The FBI has records about some of these events. Harry Dean also has interesting information about Loran Hall, Larry Howard and the JFK assassination.

Regards,

--Paul Trejo

Edited November 15, 2015 by Paul Trejo

[Larry Hancock]

Paul, I have to laugh at the idea that Hemming did not like public speaking...he was one of the most outgoing guys with the media you could find. I have seen him in what amounted to fund raising TV pleas for his group and he put together one fascinating media day for the press involving his and Sturgis group and some parachute jumps, one of which did not work out well at all. He was all over the Miami newspapers and on TV whenever he had a chance. Actually Hemming came across very well with the media, very sincere, strong spoken and not at all hesitant. Whatever else he might have been, he was a really great spokesperson and did quite well in public appearances - and I can verify that from personally seeing him speak in public.