William King Harvey

[Greg Kooyman]

I have been reading the biography of Bill Harvey, Flawed Patriot, written by a former CIA agent who knew him. At first glance, I thought that this author would focus on Bill as someone who history has painted with a bad brush. What I mean by that is , I didnt think the author would touch very much on the implications that Harvey and the JFK assassination might somehow be linked. If you haven't read this book, I highly recommend it. Not only does the author review the assassination and its possible links to organized crime (insert Johnny Rosselli) but more than 2/3rds of the book is dedicated to his fall from grace which was his assignment to ZRifle/ Task force W, his run-ins with Bobby Kennedy, the fallout after the Cuban Missile Crisis, etc. I was surprised to read that Harvey maintained a close relationship to Johnny Rosselli, for years after both had been relieved of their operations, much to the chagrin of the CIA and the FBI.

Strangely, the author notes that Dave M. was involved with Bill Harvey and ZRRifle and Taskforce W. I found it strange that since David Morales was a name outed years ago, this author chose to call him David M.

Obviously, the author does his best to debunk that Bill Harvey was directly involved with the Assassination, but concedes there are a lot of loose ends in this story. Some things I found compelling are that his wife (also a former CIA agent) was unable to retrieve any documents the CIA may be holding under FOIA until the year 2063. IF Bill Harvey was not part of the conspiracy or had any knowledge or dealings, why would his documents be witheld for exactly 100 years from the date of the death of JFK?? Another compelling note: After Harvey retired, his house was broken into on at least 2 occasions, and after his death his wife interrupted a burglary of Bill Harvey's study. She is also reported to have burned several pages of Classified Material from Bill's safe after his death, this was asserted by Bill's daughter to the author.

Very compelling. Any thoughts or opinions?

[Shanet Clark]

sounds good

looking for it on amazon

shanet

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

"Harvey is on my short-list."

Mine too. These aspects of Harvey put him there:

1) Detailied knowledge of three or four different layers of anti-Castro plots dating back to the middle of 1959.

This would be insidpensible in coordinating a multi-faceted coverup that might threaten several different groups

with different perceived dangers if there was a real investigation.

2) Close realtionship with Angleton.

3) Former FBI; could be very usefull in coordinating relations between the Angleton and Hoover, even though these two

had a smooth functioning relationship.

4) Involvement with the right wing Cubans in unscheduled speedboats during the Cuban Missile Crisis; said involvement

said to have got him fired by Bobby Kennedy.

5) Stationing in Rome perfect for Angleton's back channel to Rome independent of CIA station chief there.

6) Continued meetings with Rosseli, after being fired by Kennedy, and the fact that Angleton knew of these

continued meetings.

[John Simkin]

"Harvey is on my short-list."

Mine too. These aspects of Harvey put him there:

1) Detailied knowledge of three or four different layers of anti-Castro plots dating back to the middle of 1959.

This would be insidpensible in coordinating a multi-faceted coverup that might threaten several different groups

with different perceived dangers if there was a real investigation.

2) Close realtionship with Angleton.

3) Former FBI; could be very usefull in coordinating relations between the Angleton and Hoover, even though these two

had a smooth functioning relationship.

4) Involvement with the right wing Cubans in unscheduled speedboats during the Cuban Missile Crisis; said involvement

said to have got him fired by Bobby Kennedy.

5) Stationing in Rome perfect for Angleton's back channel to Rome independent of CIA station chief there.

6) Continued meetings with Rosseli, after being fired by Kennedy, and the fact that Angleton knew of these

continued meetings.

7) His meeting with Peter Wright of MI6 shows that he was looking for individuals willing to carry out assassinations.

[Wim Dankbaar]

http://video.google.nl/videoplay?docid=-5335004762430388088

Prologue

Photo of the three tramps on screen

Voice over: The men in these photos are known only as “The three tramps”.

(Footage of Chauncey Holt, interviewed on Dealey Plaza)

VO: This is Chauncey Holt, a career criminal, now living in California. Holt claims that he is this man. The tramp in the hat.

(Photo of the tramp with the hat on screen)

His story is fantastic!

(Footage of JFK in limousine - Zapruderfilm)

Prof. James Fetzer: If Chauncey Holt was not working as a contract agent for the Central Intelligence Agency, if it is not he who forged Secret Service Credentials, then it was somebody who looked like Chauncey Holt, who walked like Chauncey Holt, who talked like Chauncey Holt, so if it wasn’t Chauncey Holt, then it had to be his double.

VO: This is the story of Chauncey Marvin Holt, a long time contract agent for the Central Intelligence Agency and a Mafia associate. You are about the see an interview conducted with Mr. Holt, just eight days before he died. This is his story…….

Only the truth will put the past to rest

(Picture of John and Jackie Kennedy in Dallas)

Chauncey Holt: Various people know the interacting relationships that existed and probably exist at the moment between these various powerful elements, organized crime, intelligence community, polical and powerful business interests …

(Pictures of motorcade in Dallas)

I thought that the American people had a right to know a few of the details that I have available ……

Early Years

I grew up in southern Kentucky where bootlegging was a way of life. ? was an important crop, just like marihuana in certain counties now. And there was nothing unusual about bootlegging because Scottish and Irish immigrants came to Kentucky in the early part of the seventeenth century and they brought the stills with them, and whiskey making was a form of their skills and they always did it.

VO: For the young Chauncey there was no stigma attached to being a bootlegger.

Not only were there stills for whiskey that we delivered, usually to Knoxville, Tennessee, which is close, about forty miles, and as far away as Cincinatti

VO: Chauncey Holt got around, and getting around got him in trouble. He ends up in Reform School in Chillicoppi , Ohio.

Now they have prisons for youthful offenders. That is what it would have been in other states, but they called it Reform School. And I had been in there for I got railroaded by the FBI for stealing and riding a car . That was Hoover’s big thing in those days, catching car thieves, and although we were right in the middle of the war, Hoover took the time to send wire after wire down to Louisville, wanting to know why we hadn’t been prosecuted.

VO: This teletype, april 23 rd, 1942, from Hoover to FBI Louisville office, says in part: “Chauncey Marvin Holt, et al, advise by return teletype status prosecution of this case. In the event final prosecution completes, submit report immediately, reflecting results of prosecuition.”

It is signed “Hoover”

While I was there I met several people that were connected with organized crime. So he said ” I ‘ll put you in touch with these guys in Baltimore, who were hands in glove with Meyer Lansky.” One was Sy Bloom and his brother Morris. Sy Bloom handled all the bookmaking operations for Lansky in the Baltimore area. And so it was through that connection that he, that Lansky came down to Baltimore with Sy Bloom and to see his son Buddy Lansky, who at time was at Dutch Clint? And I knew him, got aqcuainted to him, with Buddy, we schooled and played chess with him, that sort of thing. And I was doing some painting work, restoring a painting.

VO: Chauncey Holt’s skills as a painter would serve him well. A renaissance man, he developed other skills. He became an arms expert in the military, as well as learning how to fly an airplane.

Pictures of Chauncey painting and in his pilot uniform and footage of Chauncey in his circus act on the trapeze.

VO: Holt also did another kind of flying, but not inside a cockpit.

My uncle owned a small one man circus. And from the time that I was six years old, I mean I was going up and down the tight wire, swinging on the trapeze, I worked in the family circus, and I did a single trapeze act, worked in the flying act, I did a low wire act, a high wire act, shots from the cannon, all that sort of things.

VO: The circus performance of Chauncey Holt, getting shot out of a cannon, was a hell of a lot safer and easier than getting shot at.

The Mob Beckons

“We only kill each other “

Benjamin “Bugsy”Siegel

VO: Chauncey’s Baltimore connection with Meyer Lansky would lead to a long relationship with the mobster and other important mob figures, including the head of the Detroit family, Peter Licavoli.

I did a little work for him in paintings. He sent some paintings over to me to be restored, and that started the relationship with Licavoli, that lasted .. oh well .. lasted fifty years. It lasted from 44 to the date of his death in 1984.

Portraits Paintings of Lansky and Licavoli on screen

I had a lot of other qualities that they liked. First of all I was a pilot, secondly I was a very good shooter, I was a weapons expert, and of course the art, it didn’t hurt, because it extended to forgery if necessary. And of course I was a very good accountant, a money manager. And probably I did more money managing, fiscal type of work through the years than other types of work.

VO: Chauncey’s math skills ….., he was brilliant with figures, caught Meyer Lansky’s attention.

So Lansky was coming down to Baltimore, to see Buddy and he was going to check up on the operation, the bookmaking operation, and Sy Bloom called me, I was working in the shipyard, and he called me and asked me if I would like to come over and meet Meyer Lansky. So he told Mayer Lansky that I was a mathematical genius. Well, I may have seemed like a mathematical genius to him, but … you know Lansky came in and we talked and it turned out that he was like me in the sense that he used to work with mathematical problems just like you work a crossword puzzle, he had a whole book, with mathematical problems in it, mostly algebratic problems. So he said “I want to work out this little problem for you”, and he showed me the fallacy in it, because you start out with a premise, and it may end up and it looks like 2 = 1. So we go down to these equations (Holt describes a mathematical problem) …. So I pointed out there is a fallacy in it, and he said “Oh yeah that’s right!“ , and he said anything divided by zero, the answer is zero. So I told him that technically he was wrong for the simple reason that the answer is not zero, but infinity. So he was very very impressed. And he said: “Now if you ever come down to Florida”, because I had said I thought about coming to Florida, “if you come down to Florida, be sure to look me up. You can tutor me and help me calculate”. So he was interested. So I knew that I made a very valuable connection.

VO: Chauncey got a close-up and a personal look at one of the most powerful members of Organized Crime.

(Picture of Lansky on screen)

Lansky, although he had a very violent past, you know, he had been a member of the Bugs and Meyer gang, and he could be as ruthless as the next person, and he could get what he wanted. However, he was extremely intelligent, he was polite, he was very low key, he was compassionate …, many thing you don’t find in the average gangster.

He never actually thought of himself as a gangster, although to do that you had to have a exclude his early life. So he perceived himself simply as gambler who was providing the public for something they paid for. I knew him from the first start in 1944. I knew him until he went to Israel in 1974. A matter of fact I had a short letter from him just before he went to Israel saying he was.. he decided to.. go to Israel and live.”

(Zooming in on Meyer Lansky’s letter to Holt)

VO: Lansky writes to Marvin Holt. In a letter dated may 25th 1970

(A few sentences from Meyer Lansky letter is being shown)

“Dear Marvin, I’ve decided to go and live in Israel. I’ll be here at Ray’s for a few days.”

VO: Ray´s is Ray Ryan’s El Mirador hotel in Palm Springs. The letter goes on to say:

I would like to see you before I go. Fly down here if you can I don’t dare come to LA.

If I don’t get to see you before we leave I want to thank you for the past favours.

Keep your nose clean. I will write you from Israel if don’t get to see you.

Your friend Meyer.

VO: Lansky wanted to migrate to Israel. But was having difficulties entering the country. Like the letter he wrote to Chauncey, Lansky´s personal appeal to the prime minister of Israel is also handwritten. Lansky tells Menachem Begin he wants very much to live in Israel and blames his image problems on the media.

Chauncey became acquainted with another notorious crime figure. The man many say created a gambling oasis in the Nevada Desert, Bugsy Siegel.

(A photo of Bugsy Siegel is being shown)

“As soon as I after the war went south and hooked up with the a…Lansky.. start working for his organisation. I worked for his main accounting firm and also as office manager one of his funnel organisations which was used a lot for stock manipulations that and sort of things and I also worked at the Colonial Inn, which was the (inaudible) in Southern Florida at that time.”

VO: The Collonial Inn Harlendale, Florida was a hot spot. Show business types, mobsters and politicians flocked to the glamorous gambling nightclub resort. It was Lanskys prototype for Las Vegas gambling and casinos. All the while Holt was privy to Lansky’s Las Vegas Bugsy Siegel connection.

Actually I met him before he started the Flamingo. The first trip I made west with him to meet Siegel, he was going out because Siegel wanted to put him into, into buying the El Cortez hotel.

VO: On their first trip to Las Vegas Lansky told Holt he wasn’t worried about J. Edgar Hoover. The mob had compromising photos of the FBI director and his aide Clyde Tolson, taken at the Del Charro Lodge in La Hoya, California.

(Picture of Hoover and Tolson)

VO: The mob WAS worried about Siegel’s mishandling their money in Las Vegas.

The brotherhood, who had put up 6 million dollars. They became a bit concerned about their money. Sowe went out to talked too Siegel again and to look into the rumours that he and Virginia Hill had been swirling away money for their retirement.

So we went out and talked to all the vendors. The principal one, ageneral contractor was Dale Webb. We talked to him Webb and we discovered at once that Siegel hadn’t paid Dale Webb nearly as much money as he had said.

Soo it was obvious that he was stealing. So we came back and shortly after that they had a big meeting in Havana, where every mob figure in the country came in.. Lucky Luciano came from Italy. They came to Havana to have this conference. They had a conference about what they were going to do about Siegel. Lansky pleaded for him. He said he served us long an well, why don’t we use this as a little piece of the action and let him get out. Lansky and I made another trip to California and he told Lansky and I right to our face that we could shove it. That he Flamingo was his, and that he was keeping it, and of course he had a violent, violent uncontrollable temper. And so as far as that went, that was his death warrant.

VO: The last conversation was on 19th of june 1947. A day later Siegel was dead.

On the 20th we followed Siegel around all day. Barbershop to his lawyer he went over to a place Fauntain avenue meet a girlfriend. He didn´t seem to have a worry in the world.

(a picture footage of Siegel’s slain body is being shown)

VO: Siegel was murdered, three 3 shots to the head. Chauncey denied any involvement in the actual murder of Siegel. He didn´t pull the trigger he swears. But he answered his role as lookout performing surveillance for the mob hitmen. He never denied his relationship with another important crime figure.

“Peter Licavoli was one of the most important organize crime figures in the country. His was probably the last one of a dying breed.”

Covert Operations “CIA Style”

VO :It was during the Kefauver Commitees Hearings into organized Crime, that Chauncey’s career took a turn. Meyer Lansky had been ordered to testify.

Chauncey: He was one of the few guys that didn’t end up in jail because most of them ended up in jail because of Contempt of Congress, but he got up there and answered all their questions and he had his lawyer but he was quick on his feet.

VO: Chauncey was quick too, immediately accepting an offer for unique job offered to him by Lansky. The year is 1953.

I can put you in a job, I can put in here at the International Rescue Committee as Controller at a real good salary. I thought it was a non profit organization like the Red Cross, as the name implied. It was an innocuous name like the CIA. So I was sitting there when a guy walked in from Washington, his name was Richard Schroeder and he explained to me the facts of life, that this was a proprietary interest of the CIA

VO: Chauncey’s aliases were many. He would use over 25 while working for the mob and the CIA.

Chauncey: We had 2 types of aliases. You had floating aliases that more than one agent used and a number of aliases witth a picture. Now I used Charles Hormley , Robert Ralston, Marvin Hoyt, which is not too far from my own name. However, as far as a deepcover agents I had three deepcover aliases with vigorous scrutiny. One was the the one that I used the longest time was John R. Moon, I used Kearney L. Siegler, and I used Dean Rutz.

VO: The CIA had not been in business too long but already had a clear target:Guatemala. Chauncey assumed a new identity and began training for his mission at a secret CIA base in Arizona.

So I became Robert Ralston and I had all these credentials in that name. So I went out to Aranja which is a big base , weel it wasn’t as big in those years, which was right near Tucson, and which the CIA used. I went out to get more training in preparation for going down to Guatemala.

VO: Chauncey’s personal records include copies of CIA Contract agents paperwork. This type of supporting documentation involving a CIA Contract Agent has never been made public before.

I first went to Guatemala as part of a five man assassination team, I guess you call it, that went down to figure out what we were going to do. It looked like that Arbenz was going to win the next year’s election and we were trying to get a CIA approved candidate to run against him.

VO: But the plan was a failure and Arbenz remained in power.

So here we were with this guy who was an out and out communist sitting there and that time Eisenhower, Dulles and those guys were all up and down the line saying “this guy has got to go!” So we found another guy who was in prison down there. His name was Castillo Armas and he was educated in the United States he had gone to the Command and General Staff in Leavenworth and soforth . He was in jail, so we went down and got the guy out of jail. Which was very easy. All we did, was just grease some palms and he walked right out into a limousine. You know it wasn’t a 007 type of deal.

VO: Armas , backed with a 300 man army and the CIA invaded Guatemala from Nicaragua.

C I was flying a C-47 and we had C-47 and we could actually push ordinance out the door or drop leaflets. We were flying over Guatemala City distributing those leaflets out the door for Arbenz to hear us, which he did. He threw in the sponge in August and

And fled the country and Eisenhower was able to say that Guatemala was now back in the hands of the people.

VO: Even while working for the CIA, Chauncey continued to work for Organized Crime.

I always kept in touch. If Meyer Lansky or any of his group wanted something of me, they certaindly did not hesitate to ask.

The CIA meets the mob

Operation Mongoose was a ill conceived operation, an operation between

organized crime and the CIA to actually simply kill Castro, and they had

some various memo's, as a matter of fact I have a few memo's how I ended

up, how they were talking about what they were going to do and so forth...

VO: Here are some of the memo's Chauncey refers to (picture of memo's).

These men participated in a meeting held at a small airport between Palm

Springs and Indio California, the name: Bermuda Dunes.

That meeting......Peter Licavoli and I flew in from Arizona. Sam

Giancana and Johnny Roselli came in from Chicago (pictures of Giancana and

Roselli). William King Harvey came in from Langley. William King Harvey was a

legend in the CIA. He was the only member, he was the only CIA-member

there, but of course he was the one that was laying out the plans.

VO: Who was William King Harvey? (picture of William King Harvey)

Chauncey was well aware of his involvement in other CIA operations.

William King Harvey was the head of Taskforce W. That has been

renamed, originally, that was a part of ZR/Rifle, an Operation called ZR/Rifle, ZR/Rifle was nothing more than an assasination group, that went around the world assasinating people, and

Harvey happened to be the head of ZR-Rifle.

VO: On December 14th 1961 top echelon leaders of the CIA and the mafia

met at Bermuda Dunes airport in Palm Springs to discuss groundrules for

operation Mongoose (picture memo's). Chaunceys memo's of that meeting

show an executive action was planned, executive action means

assasination. The target: The Beard, Castro. The ground rules: CIA only,

maximum security, non attributability, plausible denial, need to know

basis. Harvey set the tone of the meeting at the Bermuda Dunes airport.

They were going to eliminate the Beard and how was going to be done and

just starting as to what personel they were going to hire.

First of all they were trying to decide what cryptonym they were

going to use, because they had decided that they would assign a cryptonym

to end up in the official CIA-files. AM, normally, operations involving Cuba had an AM-start to their cryptonym. So well, we don't wanna use AM, all we anted to do is to start looking down the vest, and MO was some cryptonym for some secure place way out in the Pacific somewhere. So everyone says: Hey, why don't we use the MO and so I said “Well, what (word) is going to go with, what goes with MO, so that it flows, you know? And somebody said: Hey, how about Mongoose? You know, the Mongoose never looses, you know, so that's a good one, you know? So everybody said, everybody agreed: Hey, we call it Operation Mongoose.

VO: (picture of William King Harvey) It is also decided any further

discussions about operation Mongoose would be face to face, nothing in

writing. The CIA's William King Harvey was clearly in charge.

It was a very short meeting because of the fact that, 20 minutes to an hour, it didn't take very long, I mean, he layed it out in precise terms, but these these guys wanted to get out, you know, and take off and uh.....guys like Giancana and Roselli, they were reluctant to get together, and Licavoli too, these high-ranking mobsters

don't like to meet with each other and they rarely do that, so we kept it

short and sweet and that was it.

VO: (picture of CIA-memo) an August 14th 1962 inter office CIA-memo from

William King Harvey to the Director of Clandestine Operations says in part:

Our contract agents in Miami and in Los Angeles have been assured by me

that no reference to this operation appears in our central files.

The Patsy

What bothered me from day one, was the identification for Lee Harvey Oswald. Because I KNOW that Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy. I KNOW that he was executed just the same as everyone else.

VO : Chauncey is absolutely convinced that Oswald was framed.

Although my revelations probably won’t add too much to what has already been said. But all I wanted to do is …. I felt that the American people is entitled to know.

VO : The editing for the next portion of the Holt interview will be minimal. You will hear Chauncey Holt’s words as he spoke them. He is talking about his New Orleans assignment. It is late spring 1963.

It turned out that this work was for Lee Harvey Oswald. We did documentation … identity documents, in the name of Lee Harvey Oswald, Lee Henry Oswald, Leon Osborne and Alek Hidell. We weren’t sure at the time who we were actually doing it for, or who this person was, for the simple reason that the same picture that appeared on Lee Harvey Oswald (ID card), also appeared on Leon Osborne. So we didn’t know if this guy was actually Leon Osborne or that, or he might have been neither. We didn’t know exactly who this was. So we delivered that. Some of that suff, documentation, was redoing some other documentation that someone else had done. And it was very amateurish, and it would never pass, if you looked at it very closely, you would know it’s a forgery. So it was merely a matter of cleaning it up. Some of it was new. One of the new things that we did for him, was a card to show that Lee Harvey Oswald was a member of the Communist Party.

Well that presented a little problem for us, because we did not even know what that card looked like. And we hunted and hunted and hunted, trying to find what it looked like, and then we were finally told by an expert: “Hey, Communists don’t carry cards, a communist is not carrying a card.” But they wanted it, so we just had to wing it and made them a nice looking card that he was a member of the Communist Party. So we completed that in May or June.

In August we made a trip to New Orleans, to deliver some guns and so forth. I had a note, another note from George Reynolds.

( Letter of Reynolds shown on screen)

George Reynolds operated four proprietary interests in Morgan City, Louisiana. And he relayed … he was a high level, aparrantly he operated at a high level because a lot of instructions came from him and a lot of money came from him. A lot of money came from his organisations direct. Direct to whomever I said to send it to. So he worked at a high level. Besides, he was extremely well connected to the intelligence community. His sister was married to Frank Belcher, who was one of the most powerful figures, legal figures, in California.

(Picture Frank Belcher showing on screen)

Now, Frank Belcher was also partners with Joe Ball. Not actually partners in a law firm, they had a separate lawfirm, but they operated together because when you would have multiple defendants, one was represented by Joe Ball, the other by Frank Belcher. That way they wouldn’t have any conflict of interest.

(Picture of Joe Ball showing on screen)

So that was her connection, that was George Reynolds’ sister. George Reynolds had a brother, whose name was Bob Reynolds. He was chief of station at JM/Wave

(Picture of JM/Wave headquarters showing on screen)

He was a very high level CIA individual, employee. Besides, Frank Belcher was related to J.A. Belcher of J.A. Belcher Oil Company, had old time oil money from Texas. He also was known to be a CIA asset. This was well known. ……So all these things were working together.

So I get a letter from George Reynolds, telling me that he and Leroy Young, who happened to be his second in command, a weapons expert, helicopter pilot, you know, soldier of fortune type, and that they were going to be in New Orleans for about twenty days, a twenty day period.

(Picture of Leroy Young showing on screen)

And I was going to New Orleans, to deliver some guns to Lewis McWillie, who was a high level organized crime figure, all these people of course were connected to the CIA, the CIA knew what was going on. So I would deliver these guns over there, and while I was there, I had this stuff for Guy Banister. So he sent me this note and said he was going to stay at the La Salle Hotel with a guy by the name of Thomas Eli Davis. Thomas Davis, he was another one of those soldier of fortune types that worked for the CIA.

(Picture of Thomas Eli Davis showing on screen)

[Robert Howard]

namebase.org hasn't been updated, in awhile, but William King Harvey's name certainly wasn't forgotten when it was current.....

HARVEY WILLIAM KING

Germany 1953-1959 Cuba 1961-1962 Italy 1963-1965

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* Scott,P.D... The Assassinations: Dallas and Beyond. 1976 (377-8)

* Smith,R.H. OSS. 1981 (366)

* State Dept. Foreign Service List 1964-04 (27)

* Summers,A. Conspiracy. 1981 (167, 256, 494, 507, 518-9)

* Summers,A. Conspiracy. 1989 (528-9)

* Syrokomsky,V. International Terrorism and the CIA. 1983 (233, 235)

* Tarasov,K. Zubenko,V. The CIA in Latin America. 1984 (226-7)

* Thomas,E. The Very Best Men. 1996 (69-70, 130-3, 223, 245, 271, 289-91, 294-5)

* Trento,J. Prelude to Terror. 2005 (29-30)

* Trento,J. The Secret History of the CIA. 2001

* Turner,W. Rearview Mirror. 2001 (204-5, 213)

* Vankin,J. Whalen,J. The 60 Greatest Conspiracies. 1998 (17)

* Volkman,E. Warriors of the Night. 1985 (80)

* Warner,R. Back Fire. 1995 (185)

* Washington Post 1987-05-03 (A24)

* Washington Times 1993-11-18 (A4)

* West,N. The Circus. 1984 (90-2)

* Willan,P. Puppetmasters. 1991 (38)

* Wise,D. Molehunt. 1992 (49, 213)

* Wise,D. The American Police State. 1978 (215-6, 222)

* Wright,P. Spycatcher. 1987 (147-52, 154, 159-62)

* Wyden,P. Bay of Pigs. 1979 (110)

* Wyden,P. Wall: The Inside Story of Divided Berlin. 1989 (28, 93-101)

* Yakovlev,N. Washington Silhouettes. 1985 (106, 227)

It may be unfair to cite a particular book, but one could do worse, than citing Wilderness of Mirrors.....It is also essential if you are like many who are trying to integrate your knowledge of the various Cold War intrigues and American Counter-Intelligence operations vis-a-vis the Soviets to the JFK Assassination......

Edited February 12, 2008 by Robert Howard

[Thomas Graves]

http://video.google.nl/videoplay?docid=-5335004762430388088

[...]

... On their first trip to Las Vegas Lansky told Holt he wasn't worried about J. Edgar Hoover. The mob had compromising photos of the FBI director and his aide Clyde Tolson, taken at the Del Charro Lodge in La Hoya, California.

[...]

So we went out and talked to all the vendors. The principal one, a general contractor was Dale Webb.

[...]

__________________________________________________________

Great video, Wim. Thanks!

--Thomas

P.S. It's spelled La Jolla and the "lodge" was called the Hotel Del Charro.

P.P.S. His name was Del Webb.

__________________________________________________________

Edited February 13, 2008 by Thomas Graves

[Tim Gratz]

Re John's Post #5, I submit it is a rather large leap to assume because a CIA officer, at the direction of a superior, was looking for ways to assassinate a foreign head of state, arguably even with the implicit approval of the Commander in Chief, he would then turn that capacity against his Commander.

Arguably the CIA officers involved in foreign assassination plots somehow justified those plots in part because they thought they had the implicit if bot express authority of the POTUS.

One cannot draw an inference because a police officer is prepared to kill a person in the line of duty that he is prepared to commit a murder.

Of course I have regularly condemned political assassination plots by our goverrnment and believe that the plots against Fidel may have "blown back" in our face, regardless of whether JFK had approved of or was aware of said plots.

But as John's post demonstrates one reason why the CIA is suspect in the assassination (wrongly as I argue above) is because it had shown willingness to murder foreign heads of state.

[Thomas Graves]

http://video.google.nl/videoplay?docid=-5335004762430388088

(Chauncey Holt interview and documentary)

[...]

The CIA Meets the Mob

Operation Mongoose was a ill conceived operation, an operation between

organized crime and the CIA to actually simply kill Castro, and they had

some various memo's, as a matter of fact I have a few memo's how I ended

up, how they were talking about what they were going to do and so forth...

VO: Here are some of the memo's Chauncey refers to (picture of memo's).

These men participated in a meeting held at a small airport between Palm

Springs and Indio California, the name: Bermuda Dunes.

That meeting......Peter Licavoli and I flew in from Arizona. Sam

Giancana and Johnny Roselli came in from Chicago (pictures of Giancana and

Roselli). William King Harvey came in from Langley. William King Harvey was a

legend in the CIA. He was the only member, he was the only CIA-member

there, but of course he was the one that was laying out the plans.

VO: Who was William King Harvey? (picture of William King Harvey)

Chauncey was well aware of his involvement in other CIA operations.

William King Harvey was the head of Taskforce W. That has been

renamed, originally, that was a part of ZR/Rifle, an Operation called ZR/Rifle, ZR/Rifle was nothing more than an assasination group, that went around the world assasinating people, and

Harvey happened to be the head of ZR-Rifle.

VO: On December 14th 1961 top echelon leaders of the CIA and the mafia

met at Bermuda Dunes airport in Palm Springs to discuss groundrules for

operation Mongoose (picture memo's). Chaunceys memo's of that meeting

show an executive action was planned, executive action means

assasination. The target: The Beard, Castro. The ground rules: CIA only,

maximum security, non attributability, plausible denial, need to know

basis. Harvey set the tone of the meeting at the Bermuda Dunes airport.

They were going to eliminate the Beard and how was going to be done and

just starting as to what personel they were going to hire.

First of all they were trying to decide what cryptonym they were

going to use, because they had decided that they would assign a cryptonym

to end up in the official CIA-files. AM, normally, operations involving Cuba had an AM-start to their cryptonym. So well, we don't wanna use AM, all we anted to do is to start looking down the vest, and MO was some cryptonym for some secure place way out in the Pacific somewhere. So everyone says: Hey, why don't we use the MO and so I said “Well, what (word) is going to go with, what goes with MO, so that it flows, you know? And somebody said: Hey, how about Mongoose? You know, the Mongoose never looses, you know, so that's a good one, you know? So everybody said, everybody agreed: Hey, we call it Operation Mongoose.

VO: (picture of William King Harvey) It is also decided any further

discussions about operation Mongoose would be face to face, nothing in

writing. The CIA's William King Harvey was clearly in charge.

It was a very short meeting because of the fact that, 20 minutes to an hour, it didn't take very long, I mean, he layed it out in precise terms, but these these guys wanted to get out, you know, and take off and uh.....guys like Giancana and Roselli, they were reluctant to get together, and Licavoli too, these high-ranking mobsters

don't like to meet with each other and they rarely do that, so we kept it

short and sweet and that was it.

VO: (picture of CIA-memo) an August 14th 1962 inter office CIA-memo from

William King Harvey to the Director of Clandestine Operations says in part:

Our contract agents in Miami and in Los Angeles have been assured by me

that no reference to this operation appears in our central files.

The Patsy

What bothered me from day one, was the identification for Lee Harvey Oswald. Because I KNOW that Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy. I KNOW that he was executed just the same as everyone else.

VO : Chauncey is absolutely convinced that Oswald was framed.

Although my revelations probably won’t add too much to what has already been said. But all I wanted to do is …. I felt that the American people is entitled to know.

VO : The editing for the next portion of the Holt interview will be minimal. You will hear Chauncey Holt’s words as he spoke them. He is talking about his New Orleans assignment. It is late spring 1963.

It turned out that this work was for Lee Harvey Oswald. We did documentation … identity documents, in the name of Lee Harvey Oswald, Lee Henry Oswald, Leon Osborne and Alek Hidell. We weren’t sure at the time who we were actually doing it for, or who this person was, for the simple reason that the same picture that appeared on Lee Harvey Oswald (ID card), also appeared on Leon Osborne. So we didn’t know if this guy was actually Leon Osborne or that, or he might have been neither. We didn’t know exactly who this was. So we delivered that. Some of that suff, documentation, was redoing some other documentation that someone else had done. And it was very amateurish, and it would never pass, if you looked at it very closely, you would know it’s a forgery. So it was merely a matter of cleaning it up. Some of it was new. One of the new things that we did for him, was a card to show that Lee Harvey Oswald was a member of the Communist Party.

Well that presented a little problem for us, because we did not even know what that card looked like. And we hunted and hunted and hunted, trying to find what it looked like, and then we were finally told by an expert: “Hey, Communists don’t carry cards, a communist is not carrying a card.” But they wanted it, so we just had to wing it and made them a nice looking card that he was a member of the Communist Party. So we completed that in May or June.

In August we made a trip to New Orleans, to deliver some guns and so forth. I had a note, another note from George Reynolds.

( Letter of Reynolds shown on screen)

George Reynolds operated four proprietary interests in Morgan City, Louisiana. And he relayed he was a high level, apparently he operated at a high level because a lot of instructions came from him and a lot of money came from him. A lot of money came from his organisations direct. Direct to whomever I said to send it to. So he worked at a high level. Besides, he was extremely well connected to the intelligence community. His sister was married to Frank Belcher, who was one of the most powerful figures, legal figures, in California.

(Picture Frank Belcher showing on screen)

Now, Frank Belcher was also partners with Joe Ball. Not actually partners in a law firm, they had a separate lawfirm, but they operated together because when you would have multiple defendants, one was represented by Joe Ball, the other by Frank Belcher. That way they wouldn’t have any conflict of interest.

(Picture of Joe Ball showing on screen)

So that was her connection, that was George Reynolds’ sister. George Reynolds had a brother, whose name was Bob Reynolds. He was chief of station at JM/Wave

(Picture of JM/Wave headquarters showing on screen)

He was a very high level CIA individual, employee. Besides, Frank Belcher was related to J.A. Belcher of J.A. Belcher Oil Company, had old time oil money from Texas. He also was known to be a CIA asset. This was well known. So all these things were working together.

So I get a letter from George Reynolds, telling me that he and Leroy Young, who happened to be his second in command, a weapons expert, helicopter pilot, you know, soldier of fortune type, and that they were going to be in New Orleans for about twenty days, a twenty day period.

(Picture of Leroy Young showing on screen)

And I was going to New Orleans, to deliver some guns to Lewis McWillie, who was a high level organized crime figure, all these people of course were connected to the CIA, the CIA knew what was going on. So I would deliver these guns over there, and while I was there, I had this stuff for Guy Banister. So he sent me this note and said he was going to stay at the La Salle Hotel with a guy by the name of Thomas Eli Davis. Thomas Davis, he was another one of those soldier of fortune types that worked for the CIA.

(Picture of Thomas Eli Davis showing on screen) (emphasis added by T. Graves)

bump

It's interesting that pilot "Bud" Belcher's father, Los Angeles attorney Frank B. Belcher, Sr was married to George Reynold's sister, Ruth B. Reynolds. And that George Reynolds' brother, Bob Reynolds, was satation chief of JM/WAVE.

--Tommy

Edited April 11, 2012 by Thomas Graves

[Robert Howard]

http://video.google.nl/videoplay?docid=-5335004762430388088

(Chauncey Holt interview and documentary)

[...]

The CIA Meets the Mob

Operation Mongoose was a ill conceived operation, an operation between

organized crime and the CIA to actually simply kill Castro, and they had

some various memo's, as a matter of fact I have a few memo's how I ended

up, how they were talking about what they were going to do and so forth...

VO: Here are some of the memo's Chauncey refers to (picture of memo's).

These men participated in a meeting held at a small airport between Palm

Springs and Indio California, the name: Bermuda Dunes.

That meeting......Peter Licavoli and I flew in from Arizona. Sam

Giancana and Johnny Roselli came in from Chicago (pictures of Giancana and

Roselli). William King Harvey came in from Langley. William King Harvey was a

legend in the CIA. He was the only member, he was the only CIA-member

there, but of course he was the one that was laying out the plans.

VO: Who was William King Harvey? (picture of William King Harvey)

Chauncey was well aware of his involvement in other CIA operations.

William King Harvey was the head of Taskforce W. That has been

renamed, originally, that was a part of ZR/Rifle, an Operation called ZR/Rifle, ZR/Rifle was nothing more than an assasination group, that went around the world assasinating people, and

Harvey happened to be the head of ZR-Rifle.

VO: On December 14th 1961 top echelon leaders of the CIA and the mafia

met at Bermuda Dunes airport in Palm Springs to discuss groundrules for

operation Mongoose (picture memo's). Chaunceys memo's of that meeting

show an executive action was planned, executive action means

assasination. The target: The Beard, Castro. The ground rules: CIA only,

maximum security, non attributability, plausible denial, need to know

basis. Harvey set the tone of the meeting at the Bermuda Dunes airport.

They were going to eliminate the Beard and how was going to be done and

just starting as to what personel they were going to hire.

First of all they were trying to decide what cryptonym they were

going to use, because they had decided that they would assign a cryptonym

to end up in the official CIA-files. AM, normally, operations involving Cuba had an AM-start to their cryptonym. So well, we don't wanna use AM, all we anted to do is to start looking down the vest, and MO was some cryptonym for some secure place way out in the Pacific somewhere. So everyone says: Hey, why don't we use the MO and so I said “Well, what (word) is going to go with, what goes with MO, so that it flows, you know? And somebody said: Hey, how about Mongoose? You know, the Mongoose never looses, you know, so that's a good one, you know? So everybody said, everybody agreed: Hey, we call it Operation Mongoose.

VO: (picture of William King Harvey) It is also decided any further

discussions about operation Mongoose would be face to face, nothing in

writing. The CIA's William King Harvey was clearly in charge.

It was a very short meeting because of the fact that, 20 minutes to an hour, it didn't take very long, I mean, he layed it out in precise terms, but these these guys wanted to get out, you know, and take off and uh.....guys like Giancana and Roselli, they were reluctant to get together, and Licavoli too, these high-ranking mobsters

don't like to meet with each other and they rarely do that, so we kept it

short and sweet and that was it.

VO: (picture of CIA-memo) an August 14th 1962 inter office CIA-memo from

William King Harvey to the Director of Clandestine Operations says in part:

Our contract agents in Miami and in Los Angeles have been assured by me

that no reference to this operation appears in our central files.

The Patsy

What bothered me from day one, was the identification for Lee Harvey Oswald. Because I KNOW that Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy. I KNOW that he was executed just the same as everyone else.

VO : Chauncey is absolutely convinced that Oswald was framed.

Although my revelations probably won’t add too much to what has already been said. But all I wanted to do is …. I felt that the American people is entitled to know.

VO : The editing for the next portion of the Holt interview will be minimal. You will hear Chauncey Holt’s words as he spoke them. He is talking about his New Orleans assignment. It is late spring 1963.

It turned out that this work was for Lee Harvey Oswald. We did documentation … identity documents, in the name of Lee Harvey Oswald, Lee Henry Oswald, Leon Osborne and Alek Hidell. We weren’t sure at the time who we were actually doing it for, or who this person was, for the simple reason that the same picture that appeared on Lee Harvey Oswald (ID card), also appeared on Leon Osborne. So we didn’t know if this guy was actually Leon Osborne or that, or he might have been neither. We didn’t know exactly who this was. So we delivered that. Some of that suff, documentation, was redoing some other documentation that someone else had done. And it was very amateurish, and it would never pass, if you looked at it very closely, you would know it’s a forgery. So it was merely a matter of cleaning it up. Some of it was new. One of the new things that we did for him, was a card to show that Lee Harvey Oswald was a member of the Communist Party.

Well that presented a little problem for us, because we did not even know what that card looked like. And we hunted and hunted and hunted, trying to find what it looked like, and then we were finally told by an expert: “Hey, Communists don’t carry cards, a communist is not carrying a card.” But they wanted it, so we just had to wing it and made them a nice looking card that he was a member of the Communist Party. So we completed that in May or June.

In August we made a trip to New Orleans, to deliver some guns and so forth. I had a note, another note from George Reynolds.

( Letter of Reynolds shown on screen)

George Reynolds operated four proprietary interests in Morgan City, Louisiana. And he relayed he was a high level, apparently he operated at a high level because a lot of instructions came from him and a lot of money came from him. A lot of money came from his organisations direct. Direct to whomever I said to send it to. So he worked at a high level. Besides, he was extremely well connected to the intelligence community. His sister was married to Frank Belcher, who was one of the most powerful figures, legal figures, in California.

(Picture Frank Belcher showing on screen)

Now, Frank Belcher was also partners with Joe Ball. Not actually partners in a law firm, they had a separate lawfirm, but they operated together because when you would have multiple defendants, one was represented by Joe Ball, the other by Frank Belcher. That way they wouldn’t have any conflict of interest.

(Picture of Joe Ball showing on screen)

So that was her connection, that was George Reynolds’ sister. George Reynolds had a brother, whose name was Bob Reynolds. He was chief of station at JM/Wave

(Picture of JM/Wave headquarters showing on screen)

He was a very high level CIA individual, employee. Besides, Frank Belcher was related to J.A. Belcher of J.A. Belcher Oil Company, had old time oil money from Texas. He also was known to be a CIA asset. This was well known. So all these things were working together.

So I get a letter from George Reynolds, telling me that he and Leroy Young, who happened to be his second in command, a weapons expert, helicopter pilot, you know, soldier of fortune type, and that they were going to be in New Orleans for about twenty days, a twenty day period.

(Picture of Leroy Young showing on screen)

And I was going to New Orleans, to deliver some guns to Lewis McWillie, who was a high level organized crime figure, all these people of course were connected to the CIA, the CIA knew what was going on. So I would deliver these guns over there, and while I was there, I had this stuff for Guy Banister. So he sent me this note and said he was going to stay at the La Salle Hotel with a guy by the name of Thomas Eli Davis. Thomas Davis, he was another one of those soldier of fortune types that worked for the CIA.

(Picture of Thomas Eli Davis showing on screen) (emphasis added by T. Graves)

bump

It's interesting that pilot "Bud" Belcher's father, Los Angeles attorney Frank B. Belcher, Sr was married to George Reynold's sister, Ruth B. Reynolds. And that George Reynolds' brother, Bob Reynolds, was satation chief of JM/WAVE.

--Tommy

I am one of those persons who believes Holt was connected to some degree, to the assassination, however there are some very important allegations he made that, to my knowledge have never been confirmed. Such as he claimed to be in the photo of Oswald passing out Fair Play for Cuba leaflets with several individuals in New Orleans, [in that photo he is the individual at far right,in sunglasses, I believe.]

His linking the Belcher genealogy is very critical, and I would suggest someone really look into that, if it is true, it would be something of a revelation, as it is not exactly common knowledge.

Example of details worth corroborating.

In the interview he cited Bob Reynolds as the CIA station chief at JMWAVE.

That is true but, Reynolds was not the CIA Station Chief at JMWAVE sometime after early 1962. Not long after the failed BOP operation, he was replaced by Ted Shackley. In Blond Ghost page 74 Corn wrote...."Bumping the JMWAVE Chief out of his post and replacing him with a young, brash officer would have triggered a bureaucratic uproar. Harvey did the next best thing. In early 1962 he installed Shackley as a deputy to the station chief and straighten out the mess in Miami. (Shackley came to town with his new wife, the former Hazel Burton.) Within a short time, the chief of station went on too public a drinking binge, and he was removed. Harvey slid his man from the deputy position to the top spot. For the thirty-four year old, ever confident Shackley, it was a career-making move."

Don't take my post as a p _ _ _ ing match, type of thing, I am just saying that there is a difference between someone saying something is the case and it being the case. I know Holt was ostensibly related to a Warren Commission official. But at this late stage, it is incumbent to get the I's dotted and the T's crossed.

Below is an article that references Reynolds name being redacted from some CIA documents.

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43b/108.html

There is definitely some compelling who-knows-who associations that are not exactly well known.

William Harvey and Ted Shackley were both from the Danville, Illinois area. Shackley had served at Berlin, so had Harvey. Lansdale of course is a big player, not exactly unknown to the former two and with regards to Lansdale and General LeMay it would seem impossible for the two not to have rubbed elbows before 1963.

Below is a bio of Lansdale that has a few details that some probably aren't aware of.

EDWARD G. LANSDALE. Major General USAF (Ret.) Born Detroit, 6 Feb 1908. Student, UCLA.

Journalist/advertiser. Entered U.S. Army and served with OSS in WW II; commissioned

(1943); served in Philippines (1945-48); Instructor, Strategic Intelligence School,

Lowry AFB (1948-1949); Liason Officer to Philippine Secretary of Defense Magsaysay

(1950-53);member General O'Daniel's mission to French forces in Indochina (1953-56);

Dep. Asst. Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Asst. to Secretary of Defense

(1957-63); retired 1963; Returned to Republic of Vietnam as Asst. to American Ambassador,

with rank of Minister (1965-68); Publications: In The Midst of War (1973); numerous articles.

The above bio is from Air Power and Warpower...Proceedings of the Eighth Military History

Symposium USAF Academy 1978 [published 1979]

Edited April 11, 2012 by Robert Howard

[Thomas Graves]

http://video.google.nl/videoplay?docid=-5335004762430388088

(Chauncey Holt interview and documentary)

[...]

The CIA Meets the Mob

Operation Mongoose was a ill conceived operation, an operation between

organized crime and the CIA to actually simply kill Castro, and they had

some various memo's, as a matter of fact I have a few memo's how I ended

up, how they were talking about what they were going to do and so forth...

VO: Here are some of the memo's Chauncey refers to (picture of memo's).

These men participated in a meeting held at a small airport between Palm

Springs and Indio California, the name: Bermuda Dunes.

That meeting......Peter Licavoli and I flew in from Arizona. Sam

Giancana and Johnny Roselli came in from Chicago (pictures of Giancana and

Roselli). William King Harvey came in from Langley. William King Harvey was a

legend in the CIA. He was the only member, he was the only CIA-member

there, but of course he was the one that was laying out the plans.

VO: Who was William King Harvey? (picture of William King Harvey)

Chauncey was well aware of his involvement in other CIA operations.

William King Harvey was the head of Taskforce W. That has been

renamed, originally, that was a part of ZR/Rifle, an Operation called ZR/Rifle, ZR/Rifle was nothing more than an assasination group, that went around the world assasinating people, and

Harvey happened to be the head of ZR-Rifle.

VO: On December 14th 1961 top echelon leaders of the CIA and the mafia

met at Bermuda Dunes airport in Palm Springs to discuss groundrules for

operation Mongoose (picture memo's). Chaunceys memo's of that meeting

show an executive action was planned, executive action means

assasination. The target: The Beard, Castro. The ground rules: CIA only,

maximum security, non attributability, plausible denial, need to know

basis. Harvey set the tone of the meeting at the Bermuda Dunes airport.

They were going to eliminate the Beard and how was going to be done and

just starting as to what personel they were going to hire.

First of all they were trying to decide what cryptonym they were

going to use, because they had decided that they would assign a cryptonym

to end up in the official CIA-files. AM, normally, operations involving Cuba had an AM-start to their cryptonym. So well, we don't wanna use AM, all we anted to do is to start looking down the vest, and MO was some cryptonym for some secure place way out in the Pacific somewhere. So everyone says: Hey, why don't we use the MO and so I said “Well, what (word) is going to go with, what goes with MO, so that it flows, you know? And somebody said: Hey, how about Mongoose? You know, the Mongoose never looses, you know, so that's a good one, you know? So everybody said, everybody agreed: Hey, we call it Operation Mongoose.

VO: (picture of William King Harvey) It is also decided any further

discussions about operation Mongoose would be face to face, nothing in

writing. The CIA's William King Harvey was clearly in charge.

It was a very short meeting because of the fact that, 20 minutes to an hour, it didn't take very long, I mean, he layed it out in precise terms, but these these guys wanted to get out, you know, and take off and uh.....guys like Giancana and Roselli, they were reluctant to get together, and Licavoli too, these high-ranking mobsters

don't like to meet with each other and they rarely do that, so we kept it

short and sweet and that was it.

VO: (picture of CIA-memo) an August 14th 1962 inter office CIA-memo from

William King Harvey to the Director of Clandestine Operations says in part:

Our contract agents in Miami and in Los Angeles have been assured by me

that no reference to this operation appears in our central files.

The Patsy

What bothered me from day one, was the identification for Lee Harvey Oswald. Because I KNOW that Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy. I KNOW that he was executed just the same as everyone else.

VO : Chauncey is absolutely convinced that Oswald was framed.

Although my revelations probably won’t add too much to what has already been said. But all I wanted to do is …. I felt that the American people is entitled to know.

VO : The editing for the next portion of the Holt interview will be minimal. You will hear Chauncey Holt’s words as he spoke them. He is talking about his New Orleans assignment. It is late spring 1963.

It turned out that this work was for Lee Harvey Oswald. We did documentation … identity documents, in the name of Lee Harvey Oswald, Lee Henry Oswald, Leon Osborne and Alek Hidell. We weren’t sure at the time who we were actually doing it for, or who this person was, for the simple reason that the same picture that appeared on Lee Harvey Oswald (ID card), also appeared on Leon Osborne. So we didn’t know if this guy was actually Leon Osborne or that, or he might have been neither. We didn’t know exactly who this was. So we delivered that. Some of that suff, documentation, was redoing some other documentation that someone else had done. And it was very amateurish, and it would never pass, if you looked at it very closely, you would know it’s a forgery. So it was merely a matter of cleaning it up. Some of it was new. One of the new things that we did for him, was a card to show that Lee Harvey Oswald was a member of the Communist Party.

Well that presented a little problem for us, because we did not even know what that card looked like. And we hunted and hunted and hunted, trying to find what it looked like, and then we were finally told by an expert: “Hey, Communists don’t carry cards, a communist is not carrying a card.” But they wanted it, so we just had to wing it and made them a nice looking card that he was a member of the Communist Party. So we completed that in May or June.

In August we made a trip to New Orleans, to deliver some guns and so forth. I had a note, another note from George Reynolds.

( Letter of Reynolds shown on screen)

George Reynolds operated four proprietary interests in Morgan City, Louisiana. And he relayed he was a high level, apparently he operated at a high level because a lot of instructions came from him and a lot of money came from him. A lot of money came from his organisations direct. Direct to whomever I said to send it to. So he worked at a high level. Besides, he was extremely well connected to the intelligence community. His sister was married to Frank Belcher, who was one of the most powerful figures, legal figures, in California.

(Picture Frank Belcher showing on screen)

Now, Frank Belcher was also partners with Joe Ball. Not actually partners in a law firm, they had a separate lawfirm, but they operated together because when you would have multiple defendants, one was represented by Joe Ball, the other by Frank Belcher. That way they wouldn’t have any conflict of interest.

(Picture of Joe Ball showing on screen)

So that was her connection, that was George Reynolds’ sister. George Reynolds had a brother, whose name was Bob Reynolds. He was chief of station at JM/Wave

(Picture of JM/Wave headquarters showing on screen)

He was a very high level CIA individual, employee. Besides, Frank Belcher was related to J.A. Belcher of J.A. Belcher Oil Company, had old time oil money from Texas. He also was known to be a CIA asset. This was well known. So all these things were working together.

So I get a letter from George Reynolds, telling me that he and Leroy Young, who happened to be his second in command, a weapons expert, helicopter pilot, you know, soldier of fortune type, and that they were going to be in New Orleans for about twenty days, a twenty day period.

(Picture of Leroy Young showing on screen)

And I was going to New Orleans, to deliver some guns to Lewis McWillie, who was a high level organized crime figure, all these people of course were connected to the CIA, the CIA knew what was going on. So I would deliver these guns over there, and while I was there, I had this stuff for Guy Banister. So he sent me this note and said he was going to stay at the La Salle Hotel with a guy by the name of Thomas Eli Davis. Thomas Davis, he was another one of those soldier of fortune types that worked for the CIA.

(Picture of Thomas Eli Davis showing on screen) (emphasis added by T. Graves)

bump

It's interesting that pilot "Bud" Belcher's father, Los Angeles attorney Frank B. Belcher, Sr was married to George Reynold's sister, Ruth B. Reynolds. And that George Reynolds' brother, Bob Reynolds, was satation chief of JM/WAVE.

--Tommy

I am one of those persons who believes Holt was connected to some degree, to the assassination, however there are some very important allegations he made that, to my knowledge have never been confirmed. Such as he claimed to be in the photo of Oswald passing out Fair Play for Cuba leaflets with several individuals in New Orleans, [in that photo he is the individual at far right,in sunglasses, I believe.]

His linking the Belcher genealogy is very critical, and I would suggest someone really look into that, if it is true, it would be something of a revelation, as it is not exactly common knowledge.

Example of details worth corroborating.

In the interview he cited Bob Reynolds as the CIA station chief at JMWAVE.

That is true but, Reynolds was not the CIA Station Chief at JMWAVE sometime after early 1962. Not long after the failed BOP operation, he was replaced by Ted Shackley. In Blond Ghost page 74 Corn wrote...."Bumping the JMWAVE Chief out of his post and replacing him with a young, brash officer would have triggered a bureaucratic uproar. Harvey did the next best thing. In early 1962 he installed Shackley as a deputy to the station chief and straighten out the mess in Miami. (Shackley came to town with his new wife, the former Hazel Burton.) Within a short time, the chief of station went on too public a drinking binge, and he was removed. Harvey slid his man from the deputy position to the top spot. For the thirty-four year old, ever confident Shackley, it was a career-making move."

Don't take my post as a p _ _ _ ing match, type of thing, I am just saying that there is a difference between someone saying something is the case and it being the case. I know Holt was ostensibly related to a Warren Commission official. But at this late stage, it is incumbent to get the I's dotted and the T's crossed.

Below is an article that references Reynolds name being redacted from some CIA documents.

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43b/108.html

There is definitely some compelling who-knows-who associations that are not exactly well known.

William Harvey and Ted Shackley were both from the Danville, Illinois area. Shackley had served at Berlin, so had Harvey. Lansdale of course is a big player, not exactly unknown to the former two and with regards to Lansdale and General LeMay it would seem impossible for the two not to have rubbed elbows before 1963.

Below is a bio of Lansdale that has a few details that some probably aren't aware of.

EDWARD G. LANSDALE. Major General USAF (Ret.) Born Detroit, 6 Feb 1908. Student, UCLA.

Journalist/advertiser. Entered U.S. Army and served with OSS in WW II; commissioned

(1943); served in Philippines (1945-48); Instructor, Strategic Intelligence School,

Lowry AFB (1948-1949); Liason Officer to Philippine Secretary of Defense Magsaysay

(1950-53);member General O'Daniel's mission to French forces in Indochina (1953-56);

Dep. Asst. Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Asst. to Secretary of Defense

(1957-63); retired 1963; Returned to Republic of Vietnam as Asst. to American Ambassador,

with rank of Minister (1965-68); Publications: In The Midst of War (1973); numerous articles.

The above bio is from Air Power and Warpower...Proceedings of the Eighth Military History

Symposium USAF Academy 1978 [published 1979]

Here's a 1978 U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit case involving J.A. "Red" Belcher Sr. and J.A. Belcher Jr..

--Tommy

[Thomas Graves]

http://video.google.nl/videoplay?docid=-5335004762430388088

(Chauncey Holt interview and documentary)

[...]

The CIA Meets the Mob

Operation Mongoose was a ill conceived operation, an operation between

organized crime and the CIA to actually simply kill Castro, and they had

some various memo's, as a matter of fact I have a few memo's how I ended

up, how they were talking about what they were going to do and so forth...

VO: Here are some of the memo's Chauncey refers to (picture of memo's).

These men participated in a meeting held at a small airport between Palm

Springs and Indio California, the name: Bermuda Dunes.

That meeting......Peter Licavoli and I flew in from Arizona. Sam

Giancana and Johnny Roselli came in from Chicago (pictures of Giancana and

Roselli). William King Harvey came in from Langley. William King Harvey was a

legend in the CIA. He was the only member, he was the only CIA-member

there, but of course he was the one that was laying out the plans.

VO: Who was William King Harvey? (picture of William King Harvey)

Chauncey was well aware of his involvement in other CIA operations.

William King Harvey was the head of Taskforce W. That has been

renamed, originally, that was a part of ZR/Rifle, an Operation called ZR/Rifle, ZR/Rifle was nothing more than an assasination group, that went around the world assasinating people, and

Harvey happened to be the head of ZR-Rifle.

VO: On December 14th 1961 top echelon leaders of the CIA and the mafia

met at Bermuda Dunes airport in Palm Springs to discuss groundrules for

operation Mongoose (picture memo's). Chaunceys memo's of that meeting

show an executive action was planned, executive action means

assasination. The target: The Beard, Castro. The ground rules: CIA only,

maximum security, non attributability, plausible denial, need to know

basis. Harvey set the tone of the meeting at the Bermuda Dunes airport.

They were going to eliminate the Beard and how was going to be done and

just starting as to what personel they were going to hire.

First of all they were trying to decide what cryptonym they were

going to use, because they had decided that they would assign a cryptonym

to end up in the official CIA-files. AM, normally, operations involving Cuba had an AM-start to their cryptonym. So well, we don't wanna use AM, all we anted to do is to start looking down the vest, and MO was some cryptonym for some secure place way out in the Pacific somewhere. So everyone says: Hey, why don't we use the MO and so I said “Well, what (word) is going to go with, what goes with MO, so that it flows, you know? And somebody said: Hey, how about Mongoose? You know, the Mongoose never looses, you know, so that's a good one, you know? So everybody said, everybody agreed: Hey, we call it Operation Mongoose.

VO: (picture of William King Harvey) It is also decided any further

discussions about operation Mongoose would be face to face, nothing in

writing. The CIA's William King Harvey was clearly in charge.

It was a very short meeting because of the fact that, 20 minutes to an hour, it didn't take very long, I mean, he layed it out in precise terms, but these these guys wanted to get out, you know, and take off and uh.....guys like Giancana and Roselli, they were reluctant to get together, and Licavoli too, these high-ranking mobsters

don't like to meet with each other and they rarely do that, so we kept it

short and sweet and that was it.

VO: (picture of CIA-memo) an August 14th 1962 inter office CIA-memo from

William King Harvey to the Director of Clandestine Operations says in part:

Our contract agents in Miami and in Los Angeles have been assured by me

that no reference to this operation appears in our central files.

The Patsy

What bothered me from day one, was the identification for Lee Harvey Oswald. Because I KNOW that Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy. I KNOW that he was executed just the same as everyone else.

VO : Chauncey is absolutely convinced that Oswald was framed.

Although my revelations probably won’t add too much to what has already been said. But all I wanted to do is …. I felt that the American people is entitled to know.

VO : The editing for the next portion of the Holt interview will be minimal. You will hear Chauncey Holt’s words as he spoke them. He is talking about his New Orleans assignment. It is late spring 1963.

It turned out that this work was for Lee Harvey Oswald. We did documentation … identity documents, in the name of Lee Harvey Oswald, Lee Henry Oswald, Leon Osborne and Alek Hidell. We weren’t sure at the time who we were actually doing it for, or who this person was, for the simple reason that the same picture that appeared on Lee Harvey Oswald (ID card), also appeared on Leon Osborne. So we didn’t know if this guy was actually Leon Osborne or that, or he might have been neither. We didn’t know exactly who this was. So we delivered that. Some of that suff, documentation, was redoing some other documentation that someone else had done. And it was very amateurish, and it would never pass, if you looked at it very closely, you would know it’s a forgery. So it was merely a matter of cleaning it up. Some of it was new. One of the new things that we did for him, was a card to show that Lee Harvey Oswald was a member of the Communist Party.

Well that presented a little problem for us, because we did not even know what that card looked like. And we hunted and hunted and hunted, trying to find what it looked like, and then we were finally told by an expert: “Hey, Communists don’t carry cards, a communist is not carrying a card.” But they wanted it, so we just had to wing it and made them a nice looking card that he was a member of the Communist Party. So we completed that in May or June.

In August we made a trip to New Orleans, to deliver some guns and so forth. I had a note, another note from George Reynolds.

( Letter of Reynolds shown on screen)

George Reynolds operated four proprietary interests in Morgan City, Louisiana. And he relayed he was a high level, apparently he operated at a high level because a lot of instructions came from him and a lot of money came from him. A lot of money came from his organisations direct. Direct to whomever I said to send it to. So he worked at a high level. Besides, he was extremely well connected to the intelligence community. His sister was married to Frank Belcher, who was one of the most powerful figures, legal figures, in California.

(Picture Frank Belcher showing on screen)

Now, Frank Belcher was also partners with Joe Ball. Not actually partners in a law firm, they had a separate lawfirm, but they operated together because when you would have multiple defendants, one was represented by Joe Ball, the other by Frank Belcher. That way they wouldn’t have any conflict of interest.

(Picture of Joe Ball showing on screen)

So that was her connection, that was George Reynolds’ sister. George Reynolds had a brother, whose name was Bob Reynolds. He was chief of station at JM/Wave

(Picture of JM/Wave headquarters showing on screen)

He was a very high level CIA individual, employee. Besides, Frank Belcher was related to J.A. Belcher of J.A. Belcher Oil Company, had old time oil money from Texas. He also was known to be a CIA asset. This was well known. So all these things were working together.

So I get a letter from George Reynolds, telling me that he and Leroy Young, who happened to be his second in command, a weapons expert, helicopter pilot, you know, soldier of fortune type, and that they were going to be in New Orleans for about twenty days, a twenty day period.

(Picture of Leroy Young showing on screen)

And I was going to New Orleans, to deliver some guns to Lewis McWillie, who was a high level organized crime figure, all these people of course were connected to the CIA, the CIA knew what was going on. So I would deliver these guns over there, and while I was there, I had this stuff for Guy Banister. So he sent me this note and said he was going to stay at the La Salle Hotel with a guy by the name of Thomas Eli Davis. Thomas Davis, he was another one of those soldier of fortune types that worked for the CIA.

(Picture of Thomas Eli Davis showing on screen) (emphasis added by T. Graves)

bump

It's interesting that pilot "Bud" Belcher's father, Los Angeles attorney Frank B. Belcher, Sr was married to George Reynold's sister, Ruth B. Reynolds. And that George Reynolds' brother, Bob Reynolds, was satation chief of JM/WAVE.

--Tommy

I am one of those persons who believes Holt was connected to some degree, to the assassination, however there are some very important allegations he made that, to my knowledge have never been confirmed. Such as he claimed to be in the photo of Oswald passing out Fair Play for Cuba leaflets with several individuals in New Orleans, [in that photo he is the individual at far right,in sunglasses, I believe.]

His linking the Belcher genealogy is very critical, and I would suggest someone really look into that, if it is true, it would be something of a revelation, as it is not exactly common knowledge.

Example of details worth corroborating.

In the interview he cited Bob Reynolds as the CIA station chief at JMWAVE.

That is true but, Reynolds was not the CIA Station Chief at JMWAVE sometime after early 1962. Not long after the failed BOP operation, he was replaced by Ted Shackley. In Blond Ghost page 74 Corn wrote...."Bumping the JMWAVE Chief out of his post and replacing him with a young, brash officer would have triggered a bureaucratic uproar. Harvey did the next best thing. In early 1962 he installed Shackley as a deputy to the station chief and straighten out the mess in Miami. (Shackley came to town with his new wife, the former Hazel Burton.) Within a short time, the chief of station went on too public a drinking binge, and he was removed. Harvey slid his man from the deputy position to the top spot. For the thirty-four year old, ever confident Shackley, it was a career-making move."

Don't take my post as a p _ _ _ ing match, type of thing, I am just saying that there is a difference between someone saying something is the case and it being the case. I know Holt was ostensibly related to a Warren Commission official. But at this late stage, it is incumbent to get the I's dotted and the T's crossed.

Below is an article that references Reynolds name being redacted from some CIA documents.

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43b/108.html

There is definitely some compelling who-knows-who associations that are not exactly well known.

William Harvey and Ted Shackley were both from the Danville, Illinois area. Shackley had served at Berlin, so had Harvey. Lansdale of course is a big player, not exactly unknown to the former two and with regards to Lansdale and General LeMay it would seem impossible for the two not to have rubbed elbows before 1963.

Below is a bio of Lansdale that has a few details that some probably aren't aware of.

EDWARD G. LANSDALE. Major General USAF (Ret.) Born Detroit, 6 Feb 1908. Student, UCLA.

Journalist/advertiser. Entered U.S. Army and served with OSS in WW II; commissioned

(1943); served in Philippines (1945-48); Instructor, Strategic Intelligence School,

Lowry AFB (1948-1949); Liason Officer to Philippine Secretary of Defense Magsaysay

(1950-53);member General O'Daniel's mission to French forces in Indochina (1953-56);

Dep. Asst. Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Asst. to Secretary of Defense

(1957-63); retired 1963; Returned to Republic of Vietnam as Asst. to American Ambassador,

with rank of Minister (1965-68); Publications: In The Midst of War (1973); numerous articles.

The above bio is from Air Power and Warpower...Proceedings of the Eighth Military History

Symposium USAF Academy 1978 [published 1979]

Here's a 1978 U.S. Court of Appeals case involving J.A. "Red" Belcher Sr. and his son J.A. Belcher Jr.. I haven't read it all yet, but it does say that J.A. Belcher Sr. was a brother of E.N. "Newt" Belcher III.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qRKeC8OfplsJ:openjurist.org/582/f2d/995/schilling-v-j-a-belcher-schilling+%22belcher+oil%22+miami+%22j+a+belcher%22&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

--Tommy

Edited April 11, 2012 by Thomas Graves