Marie Fonzi and Veciana's "Revelation"

[Pat Speer]

A timeline is helpful.

1. Veciana told Fonzi about Bishop, but said he did not know his real name. Some of those interviewed thereafter remembered there being a Bishop, but no one could ID him.

2.  It all exploded, however, when Sen. Schweicker recognized an artist rendering of Bishop as Phillips. 

3. Phillips was then asked about Veciana, and is reported to have lied about not knowing him.

4. At that time, however, Veciana refused to ID Bishop as Phillips.

5. Fonzi late wrote a book in which he explained why he believed Bishop was Phillips. He presents Veciana's statements about meetings with Bishop, and shows how they match up with Phillips' travels. Phillips was a covert CIA operator. There's no way Veciana could have invented a character who just so happened to travel the world like Phillips. On his own, anyhow. Either Bishop was Phillips or someone had fed Veciana information to make it look like Bishop was Phillips. 

6. Fonzi dies.

7. I share a shuttle with Marie Fonzi on the way back to the airport from the 2013 Wecht Conference. I explain to her that it's too bad her husband never got Veciana to state, for the record, that, yessiree, Bishop really was Phillips. She tells me that Veciana is still alive and that maybe she'll contact him.

8. The next Fall, sure enough, Veciana puts out a statement saying Bishop was Phillips. 

9. Marie Fonzi makes an appearance at the 2014 Bethesda Conference. She fills in the blanks. She'd contacted a mutual friend of Fonzi's and Veciana's, and asked him to contact Veciana and ask him to put out a statement. The Fonzi family then met the Veciana family. According to Marie ( a delightful woman who gave me a children's book to give to my son), Veciana's son, a history teacher as I recall, is a major player here, as he is the one who convinced his father to come forward and put out the statement. 

10. There is a meet and greet at the conference. Veciana and his son are there. I speak briefly to Veciana. His son interprets. I spend more time talking to his son. He comes across as 100% sincere.

11. Veciana makes his appearance at the conference. Sure enough, he says Bishop was Phillips. Judge Burt Griffin, sitting next to me, turns to me and says "He's LYING!" After Veciana is finished, I spend some time talking to Griffin and ask him why he's so sure. He said Veciana had lived in the U.S. for more than 50 years and was speaking at the conference through a translator. To Griffin, this was a sign Veciana didn't really care about America, and that he was just trying to smear its reputation. This struck me as odd, moreover. Veciana had angered many of those in attendance at the conference by defending the CIA and explaining WHY he thought Kennedy was killed--because he was soft on communism. Veciana said that at the time he was sympathetic to those behind the assassination but that over time he'd come to realize Kennedy was a great man and that his murder was a terrible tragedy. In that there was no upside in Veciana admitting these things, I considered him quite credible.  At least about Bishop being Phillips. As to his seeing Oswald in Phillips' company, on that I believe he could be lying, or maybe just mistaken. 

12. John Newman studies Veciana's book and realizes that some of it seems designed to cover holes in earlier versions of his story. He then looks at the recently-released records and realizes that Veciana was more closely affiliated with Mil. Int. than the CIA. He then develops a belief Mil. Int. was using Veciana in an op to cloud the waters, and make the CIA look responsible for Kennedy's death. Although I tell him about talking to Marie Fonzi, and how she turned around and talked to Veciana and his family, and how this led to his declaration Bishop was Phillips, he nevertheless seems inclined to believe Veciana's declaration Bishop was Phillips and subsequent book were part of an ongoing op. From my perspective, this makes little sense. If Veciana's 2014 appearance was designed to make the CIA look bad, why did he spend so much of his appearance chastising the audience for being naive, and explaining that the CIA was and is a necessary tool in fighting the evils of the world? 

My conclusion (so far).

Bishop was Phillips.

Phillips kept his contacts with Veciana off the record.

Veciana may or may not have seen Oswald with Bishop. I suspect not. 

Veciana's motivation in telling his story to Fonzi is unclear. 

His motivation in confirming Bishop was Phillips, and in writing his book, however, is probably related to the dynamics within his own family, and not to any ongoing association with Mil. Int. 

 

 

 

Edited January 18, 2020 by Pat Speer

[Matt Allison]

The theory that Veciana was released from prison to participate in an op to blame the CIA for the Kennedy assassination sounds to me like a Rube Goldberg scenario. 

[W. Tracy Parnell]

13 hours ago, Matt Allison said:

You say that Veciana, all the way back in 1976, lied about David Phillips. You also say the two of them had no relationship.

Explain why Veciana would lie about Phillips in 1976 if he never had a relationship with him.

He never said Phillips was Bishop in the early years and denied it until 2013. In fact, he was also adamant in his original interviews with Fonzi and in an interview with Fonzi's assistant Gonzales (you can find it in Larry Hancock's online files) that he never said Bishop was CIA but could have been with an organization that had ties to the CIA or some other intelligence group. The CIA was Fonzi's idea as much of the story was. As to why he made up Bishop, the original motive (as Fonzi himself stated in his book) was to avoid prosecution. Once he had made up the story, he was stuck with it and just did with it as he pleased through the years. The stuff in his book is his attempt to write history the way he wants it. Unfortunately for him, even some in the conspiracy community are calling him out now.

[W. Tracy Parnell]

5 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

2.  It all exploded, however, when Sen. Schweicker recognized an artist rendering of Bishop as Phillips. 

There are several problems with the sketch business. Fonzi had about a dozen suspects before he settled on Phillips, including George DeMohrenshildt, Paul Bethel and J. Walton Moore. When Schweiker told him it looked like Phillips, he hit the jackpot. Not only did Phillips fit his preferred theory that the CIA did it, but he could be plausibly placed just about anywhere in the world at any time. But I looked at 14 relevant individuals (CIA and others) who saw the sketch and only three thought it looked like Phillips. One was Phillips himself, one was Schweiker and one was Joseph Burkholder Smith. Phillips thought that Fonzi fed a description of him to the sketch artist and used this as a defense in his suit against Fonzi and the Washingtonian Magazine. Phillips ultimately lost because he had become a public figure for legal purposed by then. In any case, a sketch is subjective and not proof of anything.

5 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

Phillips was then asked about Veciana, and is reported to have lied about not knowing him.

Of course, it is impossible to know if Phillips lied or not. Certainly, Phillips would have known Veciana's name "back in the day" but may have simply forgotten it by 1976 and there are indications he drank heavily. Another possibility is that once he was aware of what Fonzi and Veciana were trying to pull at the Reston meeting, he decided not to cooperate with them. That wouldn't be too surprising given the situation.

5 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

There's no way Veciana could have invented a character who just so happened to travel the world like Phillips.

Why? I've seen these amazing proofs that are supposed to "exactly match" and they really do no such thing with the exception that he said Bishop was from Texas and that was in the early accounts. As I said, Phillips can be plausibly placed just about anywhere at any time because they can say he simply flew wherever. But Veciana gives no specific times or dates (September 7 was a Fonzi invention), especially in the early accounts. He could have seen what was happening (Fonzi liked Phillips for Bishop) and filled in the details which were publicly available.

One example is the supposed meeting at the La Floridita in Havana. Besides all of the incongruities pointed out by Newman, there is the fact that the earliest reference to this by Veciana was not until after Phillips had published his book in which he mentioned that hangout. No, I think he made it all up and I expect Newman to eventually say the same thing unless he is too fearful of losing book sales and in that case, he might modify it somewhat. But he will say that Veciana never saw Oswald with Phillips.

Anyway, I like to see both sides of the story presented and that really was not happening until I came along.

http://wtracyparnell.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-maurice-bishop-story.html