William C. Bishop

[James Richards]

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

Here you go, John,

James

[Guest John Woods]

thanks James!

[Greg Parker]

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?

Ray, the old adage applies: loose lips sink ships. My only purpose in mentioning it at all was to illustrate that relying on witnesses coming forward whose dubious pasts may render their stories liable to skepticism is not necessary - and certainly not a roadblock to solving the case. There are real, ordinary people who can give evidence alongside all the counter-revolutionaries, spooks, spook assets and spook wannabes.

I will say say this much: he is a bona fide witness never previously interviewed or properly identified. Until such time as he is interviewed, the value of anything he might recall is unknown - which is why I used the qualifier "may". It is a small group involved in a massive task and there is no timetable for how or when things will unfold. Indeed, given limited resources, no guarantee that all the effort won't be in vain from the viewpoint of desired outcomes. As a famous Aussie once said just before being strung up for the heinous crime of giving it to 'the man', "such is life."

[Greg Parker]

thanks James!

And thank you John and James.

If I had to give a "yes" or "no" response to the question, "are these pictures of the same man", my reply would be "no". To me (a non-expert), O'Hare looks like a slimmed down version of Michael Moore. In fact, he looks to have that loose, flaccid facial skin often seen in people who've been dieting. Bishop's skin looks much firmer, and possibly a little acne scarred. He's straight off the set of Dr Strangelove.

I don't think it would be wise to rule out the possibility that the (pre-assassination) documents posted on Bishop are essentially correct and that some the deeds attributed to him re Cuban ops were in fact carried out by O'Hare using Bishop's name.

[Thomas Graves]

(Escalante says):

[...] "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, a marine recruited in Fort Lauderdale by agents of the FBI and by the Cuban military intelligence service.[/b] [...] (emphasis added)

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It's obvious to me that when either 1) LHO, or 2) someone masquerading as LHO, "tried"in September of '63 to travel to Russia (yeah, right....) via Mexico and Cuba, that that person believed that he was on a CIA, etc mission to assassinate Castro and (unwittingly of course if it really was LHO) to set up LHO for what was to take place about two months later in Dallas.... IMHO, whether or not LHO was the person in M.C., his impeccable "credentials"as a wife-beating, psychopathic sociopath and former marine (with a less-than-desirable discharge), former-defector, (unprosecuted) "traitor", would-be assassin of Edwin Walker, Russia-bound-in Sept.-of-'63, Commie-sympathizing loner and overall loser, he would have been the perfect person to set up as the perfectly plausible assassin of JFK.

Even though LHO (or whoever was masquerading as LHO), wasn't "able" to carry out what he thought was his mission ("hitting" Castro), I think that the CIA was very satisfied indeed that, as part of the process, they were able to set LHO up so effectively as the patsy in the JFK thing, and the fact that LHO himself played right into their hands because he was able to effectively play only about 1.6666 of the several roles required of him in the "I Led Three Lives" world of chess-like thinking and skullduggery and yes the exciting world of "black ops." Ironic that LHO was a bright person who willingly immersed himself in, got caught up in and bested by a highly-organized network of stronger, more experienced players in this "I Led Three Lives" game. Seems to me he bit off a bit more than he could chew and that as a result he ended up with a fatal case of indigestion, thanks to Jack Rubenstein, formerly of Chicago. LHO was intelligent enough and lucky enough to play about 1.6666 of those "games" effectively, and contributing directly to his own demise, thought he was smarter than he really was and believed that he had about the same number of "lives" (8?) as the archetypal cat....

--Thomas

P.S. I resemble that... ;-]) lol

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--Thomas

P.S. The interesting part about Escalante's "testimony" is the bit about the role of the "Cuban military intelligence service" (in 1958) as regards the "recruitment " of Alan Robert Nye.....

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also

Edited May 2, 2007 by Thomas Graves

[James Richards]

P.S. imho, the interesting part is the bit about the role of the "Cuban military intelligence service" (in 1958) as regards the "recruitment " of Nye..... (Thomas Graves)

Thomas,

Nye was indeed a very interesting character.

I believe Harry Dean was aware of Nye at the time.

James

[Thomas Graves]

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

Here you go, John,

James

____________________________

James,

Regarding your post #36, do you know where (and when) the photo on the left was taken? Indo-China? Vietnam? Costa Rica? Nicaragua?

Thanks,

--Thomas

____________________________

Edited May 2, 2007 by Thomas Graves

[James Richards]

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

Here you go, John,

James

____________________________

James,

Regarding your post #36, do you know where (and when) the photo on the left was taken? Indo-China? Vietnam? Costa Rica? Nicaragua?

Thanks,

--Thomas

____________________________

Thomas,

It is allegedly Vietnam but give me a couple of weeks and I will have some new information on this character.

Cheers,

James

[Kathleen Collins]

Without being critical of anyone, if the idea is for clarification over further muddying, I think this is a good time to take stock.

We now have three names Bishop was supposedly born with:

John O'Hare (cited by various writers)

Clarence Ward Bishop (cited here by James)

Bill (William?) Bennett (cited as birth name possibility here by Peter)

There is also the very interesting tidbit thrown in by Robert of a William C ("Bill") Bishop being on the Sportsdrome list. Checking that list, it provides these further details from the '63 City Directory : Bank Manager, Brook Mays Music, 2927 W. Colorado Blvd., Dallas, TX. 1966 City...

I also want to throw this is in to see if it goes anywhere. From the letter posted by James, I found the following spelling/typo errors:

compleat (complete) X 2

moral (morale)

personal (personnel)

excepted (accepted)

proberly (probably)

loosing (losing)

(and as already pointed out, he spelled the name of the addressee two different ways)

Does anyone have a list of Oswald spelling mistakes to check against this list to see if he mispelled the same words in the same way?

There is a section near the back of Oswald's Tale by Norman Mailer. I did not find the specific words you mentioned, but here's some other mispellings:

identifecation (identification)

foto (photo)

registring (registering)

pacticular (particular)

carier (carrier)

passprts (passports)

chrage (charge)

investagation (investigation)

allso (also)

Urakranion, Urakrinuien (Ukranian)

Kathy

[Francesca Akhtar]

There is also the very interesting tidbit thrown in by Robert of a William C ("Bill") Bishop being on the Sportsdrome list. Checking that list, it provides these further details from the '63 City Directory : Bank Manager, Brook Mays Music, 2927 W. Colorado Blvd., Dallas, TX. 1966 City...

/quote]

Capt. Wm. J. Bishop 10826 Joaquin Dr. Dallas [1963] 214-DA1-5331

Col. Wm. J. Bishop 712 Williams Ave, Cleburne, TX [1963] 817-645-2380

I'm sure I remember reading that the Bishop we're talking about was originally from Cleburne (not sure where, maybe in Dick Russell's book?)

[James Richards]

According to some men who knew him, Col. Bishop was not his real name and he wasn't a Colonel. His real name was John Adrian O'Hare. These men were under the impression that he was a WW2 and Korean War veteran.

At the time he was a Master Sergeant in the Air Force Reserves and in 1964, led the Air Commandos.

In 1963 using the Bishop alias, he was involved with supporting anti-Castro activity. The main group he delt with was Tony Cuesta and Commandos L. He would meet either Tony Cuesta or Ramon Font at various safe houses around Southern Florida and disperse funds that were spent on equipment maintenance and on raids into Cuba.

O'Hare was also in contact with General Francisco Tabernilla who back in the early 1950's, was one of Batista's guys. Serving as Tabernilla's general assistant was a General named Eulogio Cantillo. Cantillo's son is Amado Cantillo who was one of Rip Robertson's frogmen during the Bay of Pigs and a very experienced pilot.

Robertson, Cantillo, Tony Izquierdo and several others were responsible for many sabotage acts against Cuban targets during the summer of 1963.

The money for these missions was dispersed by O'Hare.

In 1966, O'Hare secured 21,000 acres of Florida swampland and transformed it into a training facility for all facets of the military who were given extra jungle warfare instruction before heading off to Vietnam.

O'Hare was also on first name terms with Florida Governor Reubin Askew.

This information came from men who knew O'Hare and I have no real way to verify its accuracy. I thought some forum members might find it of interest.

The image below shows John Adrian O'Hare on the right. The kid on the left is his son, Tom.

FWIW.

James

Edited May 15, 2007 by James Richards

[Larry Hancock]

James, I think we can confirm a few points in that:

Ohare did secure a good bit of land in Florida.....the date was in the late 60's as I recall, but much of the funding was private

and later resulted in a legal mess. A facility, mainly an airfield was built there, and some flights did start going in and out of

the place, apparently to Latin America. There was also some contention drugs were coming back. And people involved in it did

say he had pull with the Fla. Air National Guard. Afterwards there was a belief he had scammed folks into thinking it was an

Agency operation when it was not.

As to dispersing money to Cuesta....well we know Cuesta and Alpha 66 were not excited about taking Agency money and wanted

little to do with Alpha. If Phillips/Bhishop was being used as a cut out to deceive them perhaps Ohare/Bishop was too....and he

may have been even more disassociated from the Agency than Sturgis? Would be interesting to know where the money came from...

-- Larry

According to some men who knew him, Col. Bishop was not his real name and he wasn't a Colonel. His real name was John Adrian O'Hare. These men were under the impression that he was a WW2 and Korean War veteran.

At the time he was a Master Sergeant in the Air Force Reserves and in 1964, led the Air Commandos.

In 1963 using the Bishop alias, he was involved with supporting anti-Castro activity. The main group he delt with was Tony Cuesta and Commandos L. He would meet either Tony Cuesta or Ramon Font at various safe houses around Southern Florida and disperse funds that were spent on equipment maintenance and on raids into Cuba.

O'Hare was also in contact with General Francisco Tabernilla who back in the early 1950's, was one of Batista's guys. Serving as Tabernilla's general assistant was a General named Eulogio Cantillo. Cantillo's son is Amado Cantillo who was one of Rip Robertson's frogmen during the Bay of Pigs and a very experienced pilot.

Robertson, Cantillo, Tony Izquierdo and several others were responsible for many sabotage acts against Cuban targets during the summer of 1963.

The money for these missions was dispersed by O'Hare.

In 1966, O'Hare secured 21,000 acres of Florida swampland and transformed it into a training facility for all facets of the military who were given extra jungle warfare instruction before heading off to Vietnam.

O'Hare was also on first name terms with Florida Governor Reubin Askew.

This information came from men who knew O'Hare and I have no real way to verify its accuracy. I thought some forum members might find it of interest.

The image below shows John Adrian O'Hare on the right. The kid on the left is his son, Tom.

FWIW.

James

[James Richards]

Larry,

It definitely wasn't Agency money. There is another link in the chain here which I hope to get to in the near future.

Peter,

O'Hare was based in Orlando and from what I can gather, Loxahatchee is inland of West Palm Beach. That doesn't mean much but I got the feeling that O'Hare was operating close to home.

During 1963, O'Hare had a day job with Martin-Marietta which required a security clearance. What that was about I have yet to decipher.

James

[John Simkin]

Chapter 33: “JFK and the Cuban Connection” of Dick Russell's new book, On the Trail of the JFK Assassins, was originally published in High Times Magazine (August 1996). On page 219 he writes about Felipe Vidal Santiago being arrested on a 1964 sabotage mission. He was later executed by the Cuban government but before he died he provided information on his anti-Castro activities. What is interesting is that he admitted thathe was an information conduit for General Edwin Walker. This provides an important link between the anti-Castro Cubans and right-wing elements in Dallas.

On page 223 he adds that Felipe Vidal Santiago told Cuban intelligence that on the weekend before the assassination, he was invited to a meeting in Dallas by the CIA’s Colonel William Bishop. Russell adds that just before his death Bishop told him he had knowledge of the assassination plot against JFK.

[James Richards]

According to some people who were close to Felipe Vidal Santiago, William Bishop was responsible for a boat explosion (around Christmas of 1963) that seriously injured Vidal. Other folk on board were Roy Hargraves, Ed Collins and journo Dickey Chapelle.

This was an interesting mix of people.

In an interview published in the first edition of Larry Hancock's 'Someone Would Have Talked', Hargraves claimed he and Vidal were in Dallas at the time of the assassination.

Two independent sources have claimed it was Collins who impersonated Lee Oswald in Montreal.

Not long after the assassination, Vidal who allegedly was not happy with the way things were going, had given an interview to Chapelle - the contents of which never seeing the light of day.

Collins and Vidal were to die in 1964, Chapelle in 1965.

The before mention people associated with Vidal also claimed that during 1964, Bishop was regularly visiting family members attempting to gather information on what they knew. The intimidation factor being not exactly subtle.

Sometimes he was accompanied by a well dressed man, dark complexion, ominous, who they thought worked for the agency. They didn't know his name.

FWIW.

James