William C. Bishop

[Larry Hancock]

It's my understanding that Gary had his files up for sale, at least at one time. He is still living in Texas so anyone

with serious interest might be able to reach him. He did supply a variety of materal to Noel and to Dick and Dick in

turn was kind enough to copy his for me. The problem is that much, if not most of it, has only one source e.g.

Bishop himself. That is true for his file address cards and a great deal of interviews that he did.

The only thing I recall that is not directly from Bishop is a series of newspaper and magazine articles from another source

which relate to an apparent smuggling scam he was involved in years after the BOP in Florida.

The challenge is not determining what Bishop says about himself - which seems to be mainly what John posted from

namebase - its determining what of it is true. There are far more actual documents about Tosh, again the problem

is that most of them reflect his approaches to and follow up reports by the FBI and are not independently verified.

I have no doubt both were involved in interesting things, how they relate to Dallas remains unclear to me.

Being the conservative type I am, its all very interesting but I haven't seen any sign that anyone has been able to

do much more with Bishop beyond the material that Gary collected and the address checking from his note cards

that Noel did and that I did independently which at least shows he was associated with Hargraves circa 1963.

If anyone has more I'd love to see it.. Larry

[Greg Parker]

Greg,

Yes, Bishop was O'Hare or vice versa. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ph34r.gif)

James, yes, but I was trying to establish the name he was given at birth. In answering John's call for information on Bishop, you said his real name was Clarence Ward Bishop. That made me wonder why so many seem certain his real name was John O'Hare. Indeed, in trying to find an example of that just now, I came upon an article you wrote in 2005 titled "Familiar Faces in Dealey Plaza II". In that article, you gave brief biographical sketches of people possibly identified in DP photos. One of those people was listed as John Adrian O'Hare . In that bio, you state one of O'Hare's aliases was "Col. William Bishop". Anyone reading that is going to think O'Hare was his real name. Your bio has him working for MacArthur, then Willoughby.

Compare that to John's sketch of Col William Bishop... and there it is... worked for MacArthur, then Willoughby. No mention of any aliases. Then there is this http://hum.uchicago.edu/~jagoldsm/Papers/JFK/5_Cuba.pdf which cites Russell as saying he believes Bishop's real name may be John Adrian O'Hare.

Unfortunately, I can not offer any documented proof of birth name as opposed to aliases he used. To be honest, I do not think any exists.

No B/C for Clarence Ward Bishop? Do you think the record has been destroyed, or was he born into spookdom?

I have had to go on the word of guys around at the time who knew him. Some of them don't agree on points either so yes, confusion reigns supreme. I do not know what ultimately the answer is as anyone who seriously associated with Bishop is not going to go public or on the record.

That's why I'm pushing. I'm trying to ascertain what we can claim is reasonably certain and what is... a bit rubbery... Your record for accuracy in these types of areas made me think you could help sort the gnat s__t from the pepper.

To state the obvious, mysterious men like Bishop/O'Hare/Bennett/Gray are a vortex of mis and dis information which in turn makes it most difficult in figuring out what really happened on November 22, 1963.

Agreed, but I'm all for whatever information will get a new official investigation up and running. In that regard, figuring out what happened may not be necessary. And in an official inquiry, sworn statements are evidence. Evidence is what builds a case, and the value of the evidence can be tested against known facts, time-lines and by cross-examination. What would help is new witnesses who aren't "mystery" men in the spook sense, and so are not vortexes for mis and dis information. They aren't coming forward. They are being located - in surprising numbers, and in surprising ways - the latest just yesterday. He alone may be able exonerate Oswald of Tippit's murder with credible and testable testimony. Hopefully one day in the not too distant future, COPA or my mate in Ohio will get the inquiry they're aiming for, and these people will get to see the inside of a witness box, along with a host of people involved in Cuban ops you and others have identified.

However, in the classic words of Fox Mulder, 'The truth is out there', and there are very few folk living these days who can add to the bigger picture given their compartmentalized perspective. But why come forward when no one's going to believe them anyway? Sadly the demand for proof will go unfulfilled as it just doesn't exist.

The "demand for proof" only comes from the likes of McAdams. I am not demanding proof, only clarification on what facts are reasonably certain here. If an inquiry does come about, the people you're referring to hopefully won't have a choice about coming forward.

More's the pity.

James

[Francesca Akhtar]

Sorry if this is going off the topic slightly but I found an interesting memo on 'William Bishop' and his connections and also his character here:

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...amp;relPageId=1

To do with a General Francisco Tabernilla, it also mentions Tony Varona, a story of a young Puerto Rican girl being killled and a CIA agent Bishop knew called 'Morgan'. (anyone know who this is?)

Unfortunately some if the pages have not come out very well and some parts are so faint it is very difficult to read.

Edited April 30, 2007 by Francesca Akhtar

[Larry Hancock]

Great work Francesca, a very important post. Someone may have posted that before but I didn't pay

nearly enough attention.

So it seems that in January, 1961, shortly before the BOP, Bishiop is an outsider, attempting to

contact a number of parties including the CIA in getting some support for one of the exile groups that is not

playing in the preparations for the invasion and which has been rejected by Varona.

He goes to a CIA contact employee who doesn't think he has anything of value and is poorly informed -

and who apparently finds that he has a prior history of trying to contact the FBI with a variety of information.

Certainly makes him sound like an "opportunist" with no super deep agency or

MI contacts - and nobody to give him a solid introduction to the right people. It's this sort of thing

that worries me about all those "facts" in the namebase entry John posted...

-- thanks, Larry

[Larry Hancock]

And taking Francesca's post as an example, the following off a quick NARA search would also seem to raise

some doubts about Bishop as a deep, covert CIA employee circa 1961:

AGENCY INFORMATION

AGENCY : CIA

RECORD NUMBER : 104-10071-10342

RECORDS SERIES : JFK

AGENCY FILE NUMBER : 80T01357A

DOCUMENT INFORMATION

ORIGINATOR : CIA

FROM : CHIEF, MIAMI FIELD OFFICE

TO : CHIEF, CONTACT DIVISION/SUPPORT BR.

TITLE : C.W.BISHOP (AKA WILLIAM BISHOP) /POSSIBLE COMPLAINTS

AGAINST CIA

DATE : 05/09/1961

PAGES : 3

DOCUMENT TYPE : PAPER - TEXTUAL DOCUMENT

SUBJECTS : BISHOP, C. W.

CLASSIFICATION : CONFIDENTIAL

RESTRICTIONS : OPEN IN FULL

CURRENT STATUS : OPEN

DATE OF LAST REVIEW : 07/31/1993

COMMENTS : JFK15 : F12 : 1993.07.31.10:49:49:500032 :

[Greg Parker]

And taking Francesca's post as an example, the following off a quick NARA search would also seem to raise

some doubts about Bishop as a deep, covert CIA employee circa 1961:

AGENCY INFORMATION

AGENCY : CIA

RECORD NUMBER : 104-10071-10342

RECORDS SERIES : JFK

AGENCY FILE NUMBER : 80T01357A

DOCUMENT INFORMATION

ORIGINATOR : CIA

FROM : CHIEF, MIAMI FIELD OFFICE

TO : CHIEF, CONTACT DIVISION/SUPPORT BR.

TITLE : C.W.BISHOP (AKA WILLIAM BISHOP) /POSSIBLE COMPLAINTS

AGAINST CIA

DATE : 05/09/1961

PAGES : 3

DOCUMENT TYPE : PAPER - TEXTUAL DOCUMENT

SUBJECTS : BISHOP, C. W.

CLASSIFICATION : CONFIDENTIAL

RESTRICTIONS : OPEN IN FULL

CURRENT STATUS : OPEN

DATE OF LAST REVIEW : 07/31/1993

COMMENTS : JFK15 : F12 : 1993.07.31.10:49:49:500032 :

Yes. Well done Francesca.

Here is that above doc from Mary Ferrell data base:

William Bishop

William Bishop II

These docs seem to confirm his real name was as James indicated - Clarence Ward Bishop. One also includes the letter posted by James. The letter, btw, was meant to be addressed to MJ Chevaz. Also indicated is that he was not a Colonel, and in fact had no military career at all - he'd been in the Merchant Marines.

Edited April 30, 2007 by Greg Parker

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

This concerns someone named William Bishop. It is from Fabian Escalante's book JFK: The Cuba Files.

Another active roup was the United National Liberation Front (FULN), commanded by Aureliano Sanchez, a veteran politician

from prerevolutionary Cuba who was an ally of Filipe Vidal Santiago, a former Batista officer wh had organized various

civil-social bodies in exile, such as the Chamber of Commerce, the United Workers Front, the Association of Women, and

the Student Front, whit the aim of bringing exiles by any means possible. According to his statements to the Cuban authorities

Vidal was acting under orders form a CIA officer, William Bishop. The FULN's political life was ephemeral, but in early 1963 it

lead a campaign charging President Kennedy with betraying the Cuban cause. Vidal confessed that in November 1963 Bishop

received a significant sum of money from multimillionaire Howard Hughes in Dallas as a contribution to the exile cause, on the

condition that they combined counterrevolutionary efforts to eliminate "the White House rose," an allusion to Presiden Kennedy(pp.31-32)

[James Richards]

To do with a General Francisco Tabernilla, it also mentions Tony Varona, a story of a young Puerto Rican girl being killled and a CIA agent Bishop knew called 'Morgan'. (anyone know who this is?) (Francesca Akhtar)

Francesca,

That would be William Morgan. He fought alongside Castro during the revolution but was executed on March 12, 1961. Morgan was also a hero to one Lee Harvey Oswald.

Here is an interesting article.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article....RTICLE_ID=27312

Morgan below.

James

[Francesca Akhtar]

And taking Francesca's post as an example, the following off a quick NARA search would also seem to raise

some doubts about Bishop as a deep, covert CIA employee circa 1961:

AGENCY INFORMATION

AGENCY : CIA

RECORD NUMBER : 104-10071-10342

RECORDS SERIES : JFK

AGENCY FILE NUMBER : 80T01357A

DOCUMENT INFORMATION

ORIGINATOR : CIA

FROM : CHIEF, MIAMI FIELD OFFICE

TO : CHIEF, CONTACT DIVISION/SUPPORT BR.

TITLE : C.W.BISHOP (AKA WILLIAM BISHOP) /POSSIBLE COMPLAINTS

AGAINST CIA

DATE : 05/09/1961

PAGES : 3

DOCUMENT TYPE : PAPER - TEXTUAL DOCUMENT

SUBJECTS : BISHOP, C. W.

CLASSIFICATION : CONFIDENTIAL

RESTRICTIONS : OPEN IN FULL

CURRENT STATUS : OPEN

DATE OF LAST REVIEW : 07/31/1993

COMMENTS : JFK15 : F12 : 1993.07.31.10:49:49:500032 :

Yes. Well done Francesca.

Here is that above doc from Mary Ferrell data base:

William Bishop

William Bishop II

These docs seem to confirm his real name was as James indicated - Clarence Ward Bishop. One also includes the letter posted by James. The letter, btw, was meant to be addressed to MJ Chevaz. Also indicated is that he was not a Colonel, and in fact had no military career at all - he'd been in the Merchant Marines.

Thanks for posting that doc, Larry and Greg. Interesting. I just stumbled across that other memo on Bishop by accident (as I find I tend to do with these things) whilst looking for info on Maurice Bishop. Maybe one day I'll find interesting info on the people I actually intended on looking up!

I found another one on Bishop I thought others might like to see which also adds further to reports on his character, describing him as 'mentally deranged'. It also states that Ray Henson a former DPD officer knew Bishop.

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...amp;relPageId=1

Edited April 30, 2007 by Francesca Akhtar

[Francesca Akhtar]

To do with a General Francisco Tabernilla, it also mentions Tony Varona, a story of a young Puerto Rican girl being killled and a CIA agent Bishop knew called 'Morgan'. (anyone know who this is?) (Francesca Akhtar)

Francesca,

That would be William Morgan. He fought alongside Castro during the revolution but was executed on March 12, 1961. Morgan was also a hero to one Lee Harvey Oswald.

Here is an interesting article.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article....RTICLE_ID=27312

Morgan below.

James

James, thanks again , good photo. I don't remmeber having heard of Morgan before. Interesting that he knew EH Hunt and Sturgis. It also mentions that he served in Japan - I wonder if he would have come into contact with RC Nagell?

[Larry Hancock]

Francesca, looks to me that Morgan would have been gone from Japan before Nagell showed up...

Certainly Morgan was a highly visible name in the press given his fighting with Castro and then his

arrest and execution; sort of hard for me to see how Bishop would have met him in person or gotten

a referral and telephone number circa 1961.

-- Larry

[John Simkin]

Francesca, looks to me that Morgan would have been gone from Japan before Nagell showed up...

Certainly Morgan was a highly visible name in the press given his fighting with Castro and then his

arrest and execution; sort of hard for me to see how Bishop would have met him in person or gotten

a referral and telephone number circa 1961.

-- Larry

Great thread. The Forum at its best. People working with each other rather than against each other.

Jean-Guy Allard wrote a very interesting article from the Cuban magazine Granma, that linked William Morgan, David Phillips, David Morales and Gerry Hemming in May 2005.

http://www.axisoflogic.com/cgi-bin/exec/vi...7&num=17881

“Who in 1963 had the resources to assassinate Kennedy? Who had the means and who had the motives to kill the U.S. president?”, asks General Fabian Escalante in an exclusive interview in his Havana office. And he gives the answer: "CIA agents from Operation 40 who were rabidly anti-Kennedy. And among them were Orlando Bosch, Luis Posada Carriles, Antonio Veciana and Felix Rodriguez Mendigutia."

“Who were the ones who had the training to murder Kennedy? The ones who had all of the capabilities to carry it out? Who were the expert marksmen?" continues Escalante, pointing out that the case of international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles has to be seen within the historical context of what he calls "the machinery of the Cuban American mafia."

And in the heart of that machinery is Operation 40, created by the CIA on the eve of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, says the ex-chief of Cuban intelligence, author of The Plot (Ocean Press), about the assassination of the U.S. leader.

"The first news that we have of Operation 40 is a statement made by a mercenary of the Bay of Pigs who was the chief of military intelligence of the invading brigade and whose name was Jose Raul de Varona Gonzalez," says Escalante.

"In his statement this man said the following: in the month of March, 1961, around the seventh, Mr. Vicente Leon arrived at the base in Guatemala at the head of some 53 men saying that he had been sent by the office of Mr. Joaquin Sanjenis, Chief of Civilian Intelligence, with a mission he said was called Operation 40. It was a special group that didn't have anything to do with the brigade and which would go in the rearguard occupying towns and cities. His prime mission was to take over the files of intelligence agencies, public buildings, banks, industries, and capture the heads and leaders in all of the cities and interrogate them. Interrogate them in his own way”.

The individuals who comprised Operation 40 had been selected by Sangenis in Miami and taken to a nearby farm "where they took some courses and were subjected to a lie detector."

Joaquin Sangenis was Chief of Police in the time of President Carlos Prio, recalls Escalante. "I don't know if he was Chief of the Palace Secret Service but he was very close to Carlos Prio. And in 1973 he dies under very strange circumstances. He disappears. In Miami, people learn to their surprise -- without any prior illness and without any homicidal act -- that Sangenis, who wasn't that old in '73, had died unexpectedly. There was no wake. He was buried in a hurry."

Operation 40 had "in the year '61, 86 employees, of which 37 had been trained as case officers...while in Cuba we probably didn't have one single case officer trained. I didn't finish the course until July of '61 and I was in the first training group."

After the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the CIA organizes a Domestic Affairs Division. "For the first time, the CIA is going to work inside of the U.S. because until that moment, it wasn't doing it. It was prohibited.

"And at the head of this division they put Tracy Barnes, who was chief of the CIA operations group which operated against Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, and he brought to the same group of officers David Atlee Phillips, David Sanchez Morales and Howard Hunt, and two or three other Americans who just as surely worked on the Guatemala project."

The first CIA project against the Cuban revolution wasn't a landing and assault brigade, remarks the general. "The first CIA project was to create a civil war inside of Cuba. They were thinking of creating political leaders overseas, organizing a series of military cadres overseas who are the ones who will infiltrate Cuba and who will place themselves at the head of this civil war they are planning to carry out. And furthermore parallel to that, to make an intelligence network. All of this falls apart almost as soon as it is born.

"In October 1960, they realize that this project has failed, and that is when Brigade 2506 is formed, when due to the uprising of a group of patriotic military officers in Puerto Barrios in Guatemala and, this was in November, they send the Cuban mercenaries in Brigade 2506 to put down this operation."

Escalante remembers that in 1959 a "very strong" CIA center existed in Cuba with several case officers based in Havana. Among them two very important figures: David Sanchez Morales, registered as a diplomat with the U.S. embassy, and David Atlee Phillips who was doing business in Cuba since 1957.

"Phillips had a press agency, David Phillips Associates, which had offices on Humbolt St., behind the Rampa theater. We had information from a person who was his personal secretary at the time and he was using the Berlitz Academy, where he would meet with people he wanted to recruit. The Berlitz Academy was not his business, but he had recruited its director and that's why he was using it to train his agents.

"And at that time he recruits Antonio Veciana, Juan Manuel Salvat, Ricardo Morales Navarrete, Isidro Borjas, a person of Mexican origin, to carry out the internal counterrevolution."

Phillips will train illegal cadres while Morales, on his part, directs a group of North Americans who are infiltrated in the Rebel Army: Frank Sturgis, Gerry Hemming, William Morgan.

"When the revolution triumphs these people are officers in the Rebel Army, many of them in the air force because the chief there is Pedro Luis Diaz Lanz, who was the first chief of the rebel air force and who later leaves the country when an assassination attempt against Fidel fails. He will also direct Howard Hunt, who is visiting Cuba in '59 and '60 and who will write a far-fetched chronicle about Havana which is a series of lies. Hunt is a professional xxxx.

"There was information that at the end of '58, when CIA Inspector General Lyman Kirkpatrick came to tell Batista to leave power, he has an interview with a group of figures. And since this Phillips was passing himself off as a respectable North American businessman, Kirkpatrick has an interview with him. And Phillips explains to him that the situation is very difficult."

In this context, now in the middle of '58, the CIA plans an assassination attempt on Fidel with a North American citizen, Alan Robert Nye, and ex-marine recruited in Fort Lauderdale by agents of the FBI and by the Cuban military intelligence service.

"He was received here in Havana, they put him up at the Comodoro hotel, fortunately they paid his bill and that was how he was later discovered. They sent him to a zone near Bayamo where Fidel was, in a zone called Santa Rita and he was arrested there by the Rebel Army. He had instructions to introduce himself to Fidel as a sympathizer of the Cuban cause and to assassinate him at the first opportunity," recalls Escalante.

The man is arrested on December 12, 1958, by rebel forces and remains in custody until the beginning of 1959. "An officer of the Rebel Army is in charge of the investigation. Knight says that he was lodged at the Comodoro hotel and it turns out that the ones who had paid this gentleman's expenses were none other than Col. Orlando Piedra, the chief of the investigation bureau of the police, and Col. Tabernilla II, the son of the head of the army."

"These are the principal artists," says the ex-chief of Cuban intelligence. "David Phillips; David Morales; Howard Hunt; a figure who disappeared later and who was head of the CIA until diplomatic relations were broken, James Noel; and several more who were working actively."

When the Domestic Affairs Division is created, the large CIA operations base in Miami was subordinate to the central division of the CIA; "that is to say that the JM/WAVE station, which had 400 officers plus 4,000 Cuban agents, was directed by the main center in Langley.

"Whom are they going to use? Operation 40. That is to say all of the specialists who are already trained, have gone through the school, have already participated in operations against Cuba...I refer to the group of Felix Rodriguez Mendigutia, Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch, Virgilio Paz, Alvin Ross, Jose Dionisio Suarez, Antonio Veciana, Ricardo Morales Navarrete, Felipe Rivero, who recently died, the Novo Sampoll brothers, Gaspar "Gasparito" Jimenez Escobedo, Juan Manuel Salvat, Nazario Sargent, Carlos Bringuier, Antonio Cuesta, Eladio del Valle, Herminio Diaz, Pedro Luis Diaz Lanz, Rafael "Chichi" Quintero, Jose Basulto, Paulino Sierra, Bernard Baker, who was a Cuban with a North American name -- he was a guard at the U.S. embassy -- and Eugenio Martinez, alias 'Musculito.'

"And there was the team that brought together all of the North Americans: David Morales; David Phillips; Howard Hunt; Willian Harvey; Frank Sturgis; Gerry Hemming; John Rosselli, who was second head of the Chicago mafia and at that time in '62; Porter Goss, the current head of the CIA, who is in the JM/WAVE as a subordinate of Phillips and Morales."

"Operation 40 is the grandmother and great-grandmother of all of the operations that are formed later," continues Escalante.

[John Simkin]

It is also interesting to note [unconnected, I think] that one of Plumlee's false names used in the mid-60s was William Morgan. He had never met the real one, but had been given that n

ame to use after he died.

I was going to mention this. When Tosh first contacted me he was using the name William Morgan.

[J. Raymond Carroll]

What would help is new witnesses who aren't "mystery" men in the spook sense, and so are not vortexes for mis and dis information. They aren't coming forward. They are being located - in surprising numbers, and in surprising ways - the latest just yesterday. He alone may be able exonerate Oswald of Tippit's murder with credible and testable testimony

This is news to me about a new witness in the Tippit murder, and thank you for mentioning it. Is any more information available on the identity of this witness and what he has to say?

[Guest John Woods]

James,

Could you post a side-by-side comparision of Bishop/O'Hare for Greg?

Sorry old chap, I'm still having troubles posting!

johnw