Lacombe Training Camp location part duex

[Chris Newton]

I'm beginning to believe that the first Camp we identified, "the Big 7" Camp, is a phony camp. It's a limited hangout. It was a diversion benefiting the operators of the "other" camp (who still may have been the operators of both camps). FBI can say they shut down a camp. In theory, after it's busted, Richard Davis doesn't have to pay back any money to wealthy investors. win/win?

Just a theory. Chris

Edited August 18, 2015 by Chris Newton

[Thomas Graves]

I guess what I'm fishing for is whether or not there was an Artime / AMWORLD camp somewhere around Lacombe.

Yes. I think the Dixie Ranch location is probably the camp where we would find the hardcore guys. I remember a quote by Hemming stating to the affect that "all the biggest Cuban terrorists were there". You wouldn't send these guys to a camp with no guns -they aren't going to be making smores.

I think there is another "camp" along the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, a third camp, possibly right on the lake.

Chris,

Just thinking out loud here. I wonder why those ten guys (plus the next door neighbor who might have come over out of curiosity) were at Bill McLaney's cottage on Wednesday night, July 31? Why so many of them? Had they just arrived from Florida? Were they staying there for a few days or was it more permanent than that? Were all of them really there?

Weisberg wrote in a memo that according to a local sheriff, four camps had been raided one night, but at one of them the people hadn't been run off or arrested. I wonder if "C" was the one he was referring to?

Larry Hancock says the authorities were tipped off by someone in Miami about the explosives cache at the cottage. Any idea who that was?

--Tommy

[Chris Newton]

Larry Hancock says the authorities were tipped off by someone in Miami about the explosives cache at the cottage. Any idea who that was?

Supposedly Sturgis.

[Larry Hancock]

Actually as I recall the FBI reports from Miami name their source as a Doctor relating info from a dissatisfied exile who thought the whole bombing mission was silly because the explosives and bomb casings they had gotten didn't at all work with the aircraft they had....definitely not Sturgis Chris. I'm sure I referenced the relevant FBI documents in SWHT in the chapter I mentioned earlier. The Miami reports give a good deal of info about the aircraft and info from relayed by their source from one of the Miami exiles who was recruited for the project. I'm doing this off the top of my head but the names and document references are in the book.

[Chris Newton]

Hey Larry,

I thought I had read an actual FBI teletype (from HSCA?) that named Frank as the source of information. I'll try and hunt it down.

There is a press release with some unnamed sources (note that the lacombe raid was July 31st) :

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/S%20Disk/Sturgis%20Frank%20Fiorini/Item%2014.pdf

The pilot you speak of may be Antonio Soto Vasquez, whom I believe was on the FBI list of "persons of interest" in regards to the Lacombe raid. He was an accomplished pilot, flew one of the bombers at the Bay of Pigs and I think everything you noted about his displeasure with the camp is true. Most of the Pilots were "Batistas" and therefore aligned with the Christian Democrats and Quiroga - the guys at "Big 7 Camp" - which I think is the "phony camp". I think these guys were scammed by Richard Davis.

There are several photos of Soto here:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/59400926/Historia-de-Giron-Bahia-de-Cochinos

[Larry Hancock]

Chris, its not impossible that somebody did speculate on Sturgis.....but in the end the Miami field office did trace it back to info that had been relayed from the exile who had gone

to LA to check it all out....and left totally frustrated. There had long been speculation that Oswald might have been the source so this stuck in my mind when I came across it. I'm

tied up with some things at the moment but when I get a chance I will see if I can find the reference. Its just possible that I put some of the relevant docs on my web site in regard

to the chapter where I discuss this but I can't swear to that from memory. The other thing that I did find is some actual interviews with Davis and those involved in the one MDC camp and

it has a lot of detail.

Chris, take a look at the documents in Ch. 5 http://www.larry-hancock.com/documents/index.html and see if you find anything new to you. I see that a lot of what I recall is actually

from Victor Hernandez HSCA testimony as he was the guy pulled in by McClaney contacts in Miami who went down to Louisiana.

Edited August 18, 2015 by Larry Hancock

[Chris Newton]

Hey Gayle

if you are still following this thread there is some info on "Lefty Clark" here:

lhttp://cuban-exile.com/doc_176-200/doc0193.html

Apparently, he invested a lot of money into the "San Souci" which was just outside Havana.

He'd have to know Mike McLaney

[Chris Newton]

Thanks Larry,

I checked out the index on your site - yes I want to read some (or all of them).

I've read Davis' transcript of his deposition with Garrison. I want to find a transcript of what he told Weisberg. I'd also like to find the film that was shown on TV and then suppressed after the Bay of Pigs that is mentioned by several sources - supposedly the HSCA had it but I can't any information on it.

[Thomas Graves]

I'm beginning to believe that the first Camp we identified, "the Big 7" Camp, is a phony camp. It's a limited hangout. It was a diversion benefiting the operators of the "other" camp (who still may have been the operators of both camps). FBI can say they shut down a camp. In theory, after it's busted, Richard Davis doesn't have to pay back any money to wealthy investors. win/win?

Just a theory. Chris

Chris,

Well, at least the Big 7 Camp had a stream / bayou near the house that they could practice fording across, and a swimming pool that they could learn to swim in, and a nice porch that they could learn how to disassemble and clean guns on.

In Live by the Sword Gus Russo says an informant, whom Russo calls "Juan," told him he had been a foreman on a 70-acre camp four miles from Covington (Big 7 Road was thirteen miles from Covington) which was set up to look like a "timber yard" where anti-Castro Cubans were (ostensibly) trained as lumbermen before being sent to bases in Latin American countries, not to work in the lumber industry there, but to assemble for another invasion of Cuba.

As relayed by Russo, Richard Davis had struck a deal with wealthy right-wing geologist, David L. Raggio, to assist MDC leader Laureano Batista Falla in training Cuban exiles by financing it to the tune of $10K per month and by setting up a cover company called the "Guatemalan Lumber Company" which was co-owned by Gus DeLaBarre. Gus DeLaBarre's nephew Frank DeLaBarre described the 70-acre camp to Russo as a "big lodge. They all had private rooms in one large building. It had a large porch and a swimming pool." Frank DeLaBarre recalled that he and his uncle Gus were originally approached by Richard Davis on behalf of the Catholic Church. "We thought we were offering land as homes for Cuban refugees. One day I heard gunfire out there, and I wondered if we had been duped."

Russo continues: "[Timber yard foreman] Juan, who readily admits that the (70-acre camp near Covington) was indeed used for military training, says, '[Laureano] Batista's military aide, Commandante Diego [Victor Paneque] was involved with the training. We stopped after the assassination because it was no longer kosher to go after Castro.' Another camp member, Angel Vega, testified that that the men were put into a physical fitness program, and trained in rifle assembly and disassembly -- hardly prerequisites for lumber cutting."

https://books.google.com/books?id=7Q87Rrxyh9wC&pg=PA186&lpg=PA186&dq=%22timber+yard%22+maritima&source=bl&ots=jTnFmBa4lo&sig=BVrutNc6TA9fQ2BNZ4VAKVUnZAc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCwQ6AEwA2oVChMI1ffku7S0xwIVSJINCh2sQQyx#v=onepage&q=%22timber%20yard%22%20maritima&f=false

I believe that the physical fitness and rifle assembly / disassembly took place at the Big 7 Road camp, and that no "target shooting" took place there.

--Tommy

BTW, What do you make of the Facebook account of the Lacombe "local" who encountered a bunch of dressed-in-black, gun-toting guys on Big 7 Road in the mid 1980's?

and FWIW, the "Abita Lookout Tower" is 4.16 miles to the southeast of downtown Covington.

Here's an interesting FBI document from 1967 that talks about [Richard] Rudolph Davis, the "timber camp" near Lake P., the 19 anti-Castro Cubans brought there to "work," and the "Guatemalan Lumber and Mineral Company" that Davis claimed to have set up.

http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=60405&search=guatemalen_lumber#relPageId=38&tab=page

And this FBI document talks about the "timber camp," too.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=75359#relPageId=5&tab=page

Edited August 19, 2015 by Thomas Graves

[Chris Newton]

Hey Tommie,

Yes, the "Guatemalan Lumber Company" and the story that they were training men to harvest lumber was part of the cover. Additionally, I think that there were/are real lumber operations in the area of the Dixie Ranch Camp (but not around Big 7 Camp). If you "zoom in" on google in the area of Dixie Ranch there are telltale signs of logging operations.

I think Mr. Russo, like a lot of people before and after him, including myself, was guilty of the same mistake - combining all these different stories to try to describe one camp when there was actually more than one camp.

The Frank DelaBarre /Paneque story sounds like pure bull - I'm sure those guys really squirm whenever someone starts asking about camps around Lacombe. Even if these guys weren't dressed in fatigues, how many Cuban Refuge groups consist of young men between 20-30 and no women, children or elderly? DeLaBarre should be put under oath.

It's interesting that either many people are using the "We stopped after the assassination because it was no longer kosher to go after Castro" excuse or this one quote form one source keeps popping up in the "myth". These guys never stopped going after Castro.

I'll explore the Covington angle too and let you know what I think.

[Chris Newton]

Tommie,

Here are two more colorful stories you might run into related . I'm not going to describe them in detail yet because I just don't have the time at the moment.

There is a story in the Weisberg collection about "El Mexicano" who may have actually been the top guy in the camp(s) above Paneque and Davis and/or he was the boss of one of the other camps (Dixie Ranch?).

Another story that's pretty fascinating is the spy/double agent story revolving around one of the guys on the list, "Fernando Fernandez".

Chris

Edited August 19, 2015 by Chris Newton

[Chris Newton]

Larry,

Is this one of the documents you referred to? It looks like a FBI summary of the Lake Pontchartrain bust. Reading from pages 16-58 provide a wealth of Info and may explain FBI interest in each of the individuals on the Garrison "list". Included are stories from two pilots - one who seems to have been the source and the other that declined to do the raid.

I got the distinct impression while reading this that everyone is lying or not forthright or simply refusing to answer any questions. One person even pleaded the fifth.

ADMIN FOLDER-J9: HSCA ADMINISTRATIVE FOLDER, LEE HARVEY OSWALD INCOMING COMMUNICATIONS VOLUME I, pg 48

(sorry about the link jumping to pg. 48 - start at pg. 16)

[Larry Hancock]

Yes, that is definitely one of the documents I was referring to and its important to note that the Victor Espinosa mentioned in the report is actually Victor Espinosa Hernandez (one of the great problems in the FBI's

connecting dots with the exiles was their inability to always give full names so that individuals who are the same often appear not to be...sigh). He is the individual I write about at length in Appendix E of SWHT and actually

had been in the CIA pre-BOP Belle Chase training camp outside New Orleans for a period before the landings. His information is important because it is substantiated independently and in his own HSCA testimony where he provides

further remarks about the abortive McClaney bombing project.

Certainly I think a lot of the statements are less than forthright, but my suspicion is that its less about the particular incident being charged than a lot of other things they had been engaged in...Espinoza Hernandez was

more than willing to dump all over the McClaney project but in other areas I absolutely know he was telling less than the full story about his own activities.

-- Larry

[Chris Newton]

Thanks Larry,

The FBI statement is essentially: "since we prevented the raid and seized all the explosives before anything was carried out... we've decided to NOT press charges".

This raises several questions and issues.

Chris

[Thomas Graves]

Yes, that is definitely one of the documents I was referring to and its important to note that the Victor Espinosa mentioned in the report is actually Victor Espinosa Hernandez (one of the great problems in the FBI's

connecting dots with the exiles was their inability to always give full names so that individuals who are the same often appear not to be...sigh). He is the individual I write about at length in Appendix E of SWHT and actually

had been in the CIA pre-BOP Belle Chase training camp outside New Orleans for a period before the landings. His information is important because it is substantiated independently and in his own HSCA testimony where he provides

further remarks about the abortive McClaney bombing project.

Certainly I think a lot of the statements are less than forthright, but my suspicion is that its less about the particular incident being charged than a lot of other things they had been engaged in...Espinoza Hernandez was

more than willing to dump all over the McClaney project but in other areas I absolutely know he was telling less than the full story about his own activities.

-- Larry

Larry,

Was Espinosa Hernandez the same guy who accompanied Oswald to McKeown's place in an attempt to buy some automatic rifles with scopes?

--Tommy

Edited August 19, 2015 by Thomas Graves