Did the INS pick up Jean-Rene Souetre in Dallas?

[Paul Brancato]

11 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Hi Steve.  Now I remember, these are the two guys you were discussing with Leslie Sharp and another poster 3-4 months ago in another thread.  You provided pictures of them in prison I believe.  The other poster questioned their authenticity (?).  I'm not, your work is always solid.

What I do wonder about is a source in Coup in Dallas.  On page 413 in an indented portion it describes Souetre and Hungarians Vango/Varga and Marton arriving on a commercial flight in Mexico City on 11/12/63.  With multiple passports under different aliases and $1,000 each in US currency.  I think there may be a source listed in the end notes but they are not attributed to a specific point in a chapter and I can't figure this one out.  I respect Hank Albarelli's work after buying and reading A Secret Order a few years back, along with comments on here about his work.

As Steve points out the Hungarians were in prison, though it looks a bit like a country club from the pics he posted. Leslie pointed out with examples how lax and corrupted the prisons were. But let’s assume that the source of these stories had it wrong. This still doesn’t account for Souetre. A researcher friend of mine has been doing a lot of fact checking on the info in the Lafitte diaries. He thinks that they might indeed be real. Further attempts at handwriting analysis have yielded inconclusive results. It’s a gray area for sure. Albarelli had a lot of integrity and an earnest desire to solve the case. Still, he may have been deceived. I’m using all these qualifiers because there is simply no other way to view this. I think you are right to focus in on Harvey. But I wouldn’t go so far as to therefore assume that if he put together the plan for Nov 22 he would have used Cubans as shooters. His notes on QJWIN make clear his intent to use untraceable assassins. The QJWIN program is best looked at as a spotter operation, a supplier of dangerous assets for wet jobs. I’m hoping to have more to post on this issue of connections between the CIA’s JMWAVE and Madrid.

[Steve Thomas]

1 hour ago, Paul Brancato said:

As Steve points out the Hungarians were in prison, though it looks a bit like a country club from the pics he posted.

Paul,

Here are pictures of the Saint Martin de Re prison on the Ile de Re.

https://deltas-collines.org/galerie/ACBATIMENTS

You can decide for yourself if it was a Country Club.

Steve Thomas

[Roger Odisio]

3 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

As Steve points out the Hungarians were in prison, though it looks a bit like a country club from the pics he posted. Leslie pointed out with examples how lax and corrupted the prisons were. But let’s assume that the source of these stories had it wrong. This still doesn’t account for Souetre. A researcher friend of mine has been doing a lot of fact checking on the info in the Lafitte diaries. He thinks that they might indeed be real. Further attempts at handwriting analysis have yielded inconclusive results. It’s a gray area for sure. Albarelli had a lot of integrity and an earnest desire to solve the case. Still, he may have been deceived. I’m using all these qualifiers because there is simply no other way to view this. I think you are right to focus in on Harvey. But I wouldn’t go so far as to therefore assume that if he put together the plan for Nov 22 he would have used Cubans as shooters. His notes on QJWIN make clear his intent to use untraceable assassins. The QJWIN program is best looked at as a spotter operation, a supplier of dangerous assets for wet jobs. I’m hoping to have more to post on this issue of connections between the CIA’s JMWAVE and Madrid.

Yes, Souetre's whereabouts and possible involvement are still unknown.

The ZRRifle program run by Harvey in Italy was apparently begun in early '62 and disbanded sometime in '64, bookending the JFKA. It's purpose was to locate and train foreign assassins, which the CIA expressed a preference for for "security" reasons, as you say. I doubt if the project included Cubans--it surely included Europeans--but I suppose that was possible.

If you think Harvey was involved there is your hook. The question is does it lead to Souetre or someone else? Ultimately I suppose I have a bit less of an interest in discovering the identity of the shooters than establishing that they existed, if those things can be separated.

Interesting about your friend's attempt to validate the Lafitte diaries. Leslie has said she is doing the same. I have no idea whether validation is possible sufficient to convince the inevitable doubters.

[Larry Hancock]

For reference, while Harvey used ZRIFLE as an element of Staff D international operations (it apparently had been used previously as well), he was soon assigned to run the CIA element of Mongoose targeting Cuba and initiated Castro assassination projects using Cubans, in fact the expense reports filed for travel to Florida in 1963  were actually filed under ZRIFLE and he likely paid for Roselli's expenses for travel to Florida that way. Certainly Harvey is directly connected to anti-Castro Cubans and a variety of assassination activities including the rifle teams that were formed to go after Castro - which was to be a subject in the final testimony he was called to give before his murder.

[Paul Brancato]

3 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

Paul,

Here are pictures of the Saint Martin de Re prison on the Ile de Re.

https://deltas-collines.org/galerie/ACBATIMENTS

You can decide for yourself if it was a Country Club.

Steve Thomas

Sure doesn’t Steve. I was referring to pics you had posted months ago of some of the boys in prison. Was it a different one? 

[Steve Thomas]

22 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

Sure doesn’t Steve. I was referring to pics you had posted months ago of some of the boys in prison. Was it a different one? 

Paul,

No. I had earlier picked out a couple pictures of the men in question, showing them to be in the place they were said to be.

Steve

[Matt Allison]

12 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

he was soon assigned to run the CIA element of Mongoose targeting Cuba and initiated Castro assassination projects using Cubans,

Larry- wasn't that prior to his reassignment to Rome? I thought the strangeness stemmed from Harvey being down in the Keys in 1963 doing god-knows-what when he was ostensibly based in Italy as a COS.

 

EDIT

This is what I found in Harvey's 1975 testimony

 

Edited June 23, 2023 by Matt Allison

[Larry Hancock]

Matt,  Harvey had actually been reassigned to Rome in early 1963 after being replaced by Des Fitzgerald with the CIA Cuba group in January. But he seems to have retained a number of his Staff D duties and connections though much of 1963,  doing some TDY (temporary duty) visits to Italy but not fully relocating to Italy until summer.  His trip to Florida, which included Roselli, was in the April 14-21 63 and the related travel documents refer to ZRRifle,  ostensibly it was to terminate the project or the person (Roselli, apparently).  However he did not just travel to Miami but took a boat trip down to the CIA maritime operations base in the Keys. Certainly Harvey had carried out the assassination project, bringing in Roselli and using anti-Castro Cuban personnel as it  targeted Castro in 62/63.

Bill Simpich has done a good job in State Secret of showing that as far as communications, being copied on memos etc.  Roselli still remained very much in the loop on Staff D and related counterintelligence activities well into 63.

The Harvey testimony you cited does not fully jibe with what we know now and that would include a meeting with Roselli in DC before his final departure, one in which Roselli stayed with Harvey at his house - that was observed by the FBI and brought some attention and a warning about associating with him.  Don't want to rely on memory on the date for that but this whole sequence of events is in SWHT/2010. 

Edited June 23, 2023 by Larry Hancock

[Paul Brancato]

Larry - what is the history of the ZR cryptonyms and what do you think ZR refers to? 

[David Boylan]

1 hour ago, Paul Brancato said:

Larry - what is the history of the ZR cryptonyms and what do you think ZR refers to? 

Paul,

From the Mary Ferrell DB: Referring to projects emanating from Staff D (signals and communications intelligence). Related, in an elastic sense, to CIA foreign intercept and code-breaking activities conducted to collect data for the NSA.

https://www.maryferrell.org/php/cryptdb.php?id=ZR

 

[Paul Cummings]

5 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

Matt,  Harvey had actually been reassigned to Rome in early 1963 after being replaced by Des Fitzgerald with the CIA Cuba group in January. But he seems to have retained a number of his Staff D duties and connections though much of 1963,  doing some TDY (temporary duty) visits to Italy but not fully relocating to Italy until summer.  His trip to Florida, which included Roselli, was in the April 14-21 63 and the related travel documents refer to ZRRifle,  ostensibly it was to terminate the project or the person (Roselli, apparently).  However he did not just travel to Miami but took a boat trip down to the CIA maritime operations base in the Keys. Certainly Harvey had carried out the assassination project, bringing in Roselli and using anti-Castro Cuban personnel as it  targeted Castro in 62/63.

Bill Simpich has done a good job in State Secret of showing that as far as communications, being copied on memos etc.  Roselli still remained very much in the loop on Staff D and related counterintelligence activities well into 63.

The Harvey testimony you cited does not fully jibe with what we know now and that would include a meeting with Roselli in DC before his final departure, one in which Roselli stayed with Harvey at his house - that was observed by the FBI and brought some attention and a warning about associating with him.  Don't want to rely on memory on the date for that but this whole sequence of events is in SWHT/2010. 

Larry just for my own clarification. What period is RFK doing his own Cuba plans versus Harvey's program?

[Paul Brancato]

5 hours ago, David Boylan said:

Paul,

From the Mary Ferrell DB: Referring to projects emanating from Staff D (signals and communications intelligence). Related, in an elastic sense, to CIA foreign intercept and code-breaking activities conducted to collect data for the NSA.

https://www.maryferrell.org/php/cryptdb.php?id=ZR

 

I find this fascinating. Didn’t Larry dig something up that two leaders of the Cuban exile brigade were picked by some early military computer? This also brings Dinkins to mind. So ZRRIFLE refers to scouting for foreign safe crackers, assassins, dirty type jobs, and it came partly under the auspices of the NSA. 

[Larry Hancock]

The best I can tell is that the ZR crypt was used for "outsourcing" assets for illegal tasks, something where you would not want to use your own personnel or even operationally approved assets - given its association with Staff D  I suspect that was primarily for things like burglaries, safe cracking, thefts, strong arm stuff against couriers etc.  Certainly reason to think it could involve things like poisonings, etc on occasion.  (the CIA normally had no sense of humor with crypts but I if they did I suspect "rifle" had more to do with burglary than shooting.  It also looks like they were limited and that ZR actions did not involve things like wire taps or electronics...I've been surprised that ZR assets were not used in Cuba instead of sending in Christ and his team.

Harvey saw it as the place to hide the new executive action project and activated it to bring Roselli back into Castro assassination efforts. What else he might have hidden under it in 63 is a really good question.

As to the NSA connection, as far as I can tell the CIA carried out actions to obtain codes, code books, and related materials such as frequencies used in adversary diplomatic and military transmissions and provided them to NSA...Simpich did a great job of outlining that relationship in regard to Mexico City.  Of course CIA also gave NSA "targets" for their intercept watch lists, as did the military and other agencies like DEA.  NSA focused on the actual technical collections including the physical intercept facilities, some of which they essentially subcontracted, primarily to the Air Force.

[Matt Allison]

One other quick thing about Harvey; I know he's portrayed as some sort of Oliver Hardy-esque oafish swine, but he was a very intelligent and savvy operator. Not to be under-estimated in any context.

[Larry Hancock]

Harvey drank excessively, so did Morales, but both were smart and totally action oriented - look at the Berlin tunnel gambit - in high risk operations.  Who the heck do you pick to take over an international assassination project other than the sharpest and baddest dude you can find - Harvey.   Who has the nerve to stand head to head with RFK over Cuba, Harvey.  Who gets booted after the missile crisis.     I've always failed to understand how a man with his skills and experience and whose wife is on record talking about how much they both hated the Kennedy's would not be the top suspect?  Is he just too obvious...