Wayne Poucher and HL Hunt

[Steve Thomas]

This is a December 9, 1976 letter from Al Lewis to Richard Sprague. Sprague forwards it on to Tannenbaum and says, "Read Promptly" and "Discuss this with me promptly"

Look at pages 5 and 6 of this document. Any guesses on who the three Cubans are?

Notice too the emphasis Poucher places on HL Hunt's influence over LBJ.

"He (Poucher) surmises nothing although he does believe that the Cubans recognized that they could not obtain any influence on Kennedy through Hunt, but if LBJ were President, this would be their entre. The Cubans discussed their hatred of Kennedy for his handling of the Bay of Pigs."

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...amp;relPageId=4

Comes about the closest I've seen I think.

Steve Thomas

[David Boylan]

1. Pedro Diaz Lanz

2. Carlos Prio

3. Paulino Sierra.

[David Boylan]

By the way Steve, this is an absolutely fascinating but under researched area.

[David Boylan]

[Harold Weisberg interviewing Hall. Feb 1968]

Hall: …We had a hell of a deal set up – we were going to take all the, uh, we were going to take [Carlos] Prio Socarras to Guatemala and we were going to invade Cuba from Guatemala into Oriente, set up a 24 hour holding period and ask the United Nations to come in and help us and we going to do this and Prio got…Yeah, and do you know what, the dirty lousy son of a bitch wouldn’t do it. Prio Socarras flat turned me down and I had the money to do it.

Weisberg: Did you have an army?

Hall: You bet.

[Steve Thomas]

David,

1. Pedro Diaz Lanz

2. Carlos Prio

3. Paulino Sierra.

I thought of Paulino Sierra too.

Steve Thomas

[Robert Howard]

David,

1. Pedro Diaz Lanz

2. Carlos Prio

3. Paulino Sierra.

I thought of Paulino Sierra too.

Steve Thomas

I have read the same memo, and it is interesting to note that after Poucher offering his opinion that Madame Nhu and the South Vietnamese could have been behind the assassination, he mentions the Cuban's almost as an afterthought.

I can sure see why Al Lewis was not too excited about Poucher "researching" the subject, he doesent exactly seem like a good example of an unbiased third party.

What makes Poucher's account compelling to me, is the large sum of money being solicited, and Hunt's recalcitrance over the idea. [He may have been anti-Kennedy, but he wasn't an idiot]

And there certainly were some prominent Cuban lawyers in the mix........Sierra is definitely the one who comes to mind. Did he have white hair circa 1963?

Blakey and Billings did a crappy job in covering Paulino Serra in their tome, the story about Serra's backers being "Chicago businessmen," did not ring true, to many researchers including P.D. Scott.

Both Somoza and Paulino Serra were stating that they had the backing of RFK, in a particular Anti-Castro operation, a contention which according to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. was definitely not true.....

My view on Blakey and Billings book, after all these years is that it can now be seen as a rather pathetic attempts to oversimplify the mob angle, when in reality it is the footprints of the intelligence agencies that still havent been cleared up; but I suppose that is common knowledge......

[David Boylan]

I'm not sure what started Sierra on his goal to unite the various Cuban groups. I know he was visited by Burt Mold and Dr. John Lechner late Feb/early March 1963. Lechner and Mold were from California and founded Americans for a Free Cuba which seems to have been a JBS offspring. Lechner is listed in Richard Case Nagell's notebook. I believe Harry Dean knew Lechner. Harry?

Sierra went to Washington DC in April 1963 where he met with Lucius Clay and Morris Liebman. In August, he and Reinaldo Pico (Watergate) went to Nicaragua to visit the exile troops. Pico was reporting to Bernard Barker (again Watergate) at the time.