Book with new revelations on JFK assassination published in Cuba

[seemslikeadream]

HAVANA, Oct. 2 (Xinhuanet) -- The book "1963, The Plot", which affirms US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and anti-Cuban groups have direct involvement in assassination of then US President John F. Kennedy, was published here Saturday.

Fabian Escalante, former head of Cuba's State Security, wrote the book in which he said Cuba was a related victim of the plans to murder Kennedy.

The book, in 248 pages, says the masterminds and actual perpetrators of the murder of Kennedy will be discovered soon and they will likely be found inside the CIA and the anti-Cuban groupsbased in Miami, Florida.

Kennedy's murder was undoubtedly backed by the US authorities, Escalante said while presenting the book, adding "they have reasons, means and men trained for such purpose."

more
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-10/03/content_2048641.htm


Fabian Escalante was born in Cuba in 1941. A supporter of Fidel Castro he worked for the country's state security department. Later he became head of Cuba's Counter-Intelligence Unit (1976-1982). In 1978 he agreed to provide information to the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

In 1978 President Jimmy Carter arranged for a group of imprisoned exiles to be released. This included Tony Cuesta who was involved in an attack on Cuba on 29th May, 1966. A member of his team, Herminio Diaz Garcia, was killed during the raid. Cuesta, who always vowed that Castro would never take him alive, attempted suicide by setting off a grenade, which blinded him and blew off his right hand. Cuesta spent a long time in hospital as a result of his serious injuries.

Just before leaving Cuba Cuesta asked to see Escalante. Cuesta told Escalante that he had been involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He also named Herminio Diaz Garcia and Eladio del Valle as being involved in the conspiracy. Cuesta asked Escalante not to make this information "public because I am returning to my family in Miami - and this could be very dangerous."

....

Tony Cuesta returned to Miami and died in 1994. The following year, Wayne Smith, chief of the Centre for International Policy in Washington, arranged a meeting on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, in Nassau, Bahamas. Others in attendance were: Gaeton Fonzi, Dick Russell, Noel Twyman, Anthony Summers, Peter Dale Scott, Jeremy Gunn, John Judge, Andy Kolis, Peter Kornbluh, Mary and Ray LaFontaine, Jim Lesar, John Newman, Alan Rogers, Russ Swickard, Ed Sherry, and Gordon Winslow.

Some high-level Cuban officials attended the conference. This included Fabian Escalante, Carlos Lechuga, a former Cuban diplomat, and Arturo Rodriguez, a State Security official. Escalante revealed details of Cuesta's confession. He also informed the group they had a spy in the anti-Castro community in Miami and knew about the plot to kill Kennedy.

more
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKescalante.htm

[geek tragedy]

1. Gee, what a shock.

Castro's spymaster accuses Castro's enemies of killing Kennedy.

Who saw that one coming?

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. The Cuban American Community

That said there are way too many theories floating around on this one....

Me... these days... maybe Northwoods had something to do with it

[Media_Lies_Daily]

3. And what's your theory?

[geek tragedy]

6. I don't have one.

There has never been a convincing account for it.

But, this is naked propaganda.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

50. Why is it "naked propaganda"? Because it's not written by an....

...American?

[Artemis Bunyon]

18. Ever heard of Operation Northwoods?

Think that's a loony theory, too?

[rinsd]

48. He didn't call it loony theory....

He just stated that a former Cuban spy chief accusing the CIA and Cuban exiles of killing Kennedy is a bit expected even comically so.

Me, I think it's damn funny after all the work that has gone into Kennedy theories, that supposedly this one is going to be the breakthrough(at least in the minds of the author and publisher).

[Media_Lies_Daily]

52. But that is what he meant, don't you agree?

[rinsd]

55. No, I think he was referencing the source....

Maybe the poster has expanded upon his comments but I took that particular post as dealing with the source.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

59. And why should the source of this book be treated with any less respect...

...than any other source?

[rinsd]

62. You're kidding right....see my other post. (nt)

[Media_Lies_Daily]

65. No, I'm not kidding.

[rinsd]

42. LOL....

Seriously, this about as good as a former director of the CIA writing that it was Castro and the Soviet Union.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

51. Actually, it's MUCH more plausible than thinking that JFK was killed by...

...Castro and/or the USSR.

You do understand that back in 1963, quite a few Americans believed that JFK was indeed killed by a Communist conspiracy. That was the nature of the international climate back then.

[rinsd]

54. It's not the theory...its the source. (nt)

[Media_Lies_Daily]

60. What about the source? What is it you don't like about the source?

[rinsd]

61. It's the former spy chief in Cuba....is this a trick question?

I find the source amusing...it's really not a big deal.

[Minstrel Boy]

63. But what he's saying is corroborative.

The House Select Committee on Assassinations sent a team to Cuba in 1978 to take testimony from him. (He says they were just interested in answers to very specific questions, and he didn't volunteer the confidential information he was entrusted by Cuesta, because he was still alive.)

He revealed the Cuesta confession to JFK researchers ten years ago in a Florida conference. What he's saying now isn't new, it's internally consistent, and it corroborates what researchers know from other sources.

And yet, you find the source "amusing."

[rinsd]

66. Oh my...I've angered a foiler...oh well. (nt)

[Minstrel Boy]

68. no anger, despite your resort to ridicule

Just - well, sadness, I suppose.

I hope, someday, you learn your own history, before you repeat it. Again.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

64. I find your post amusing....you really can't see the forest for the trees.

[rinsd]

67. Compared to your brow beating....

....such amusement must be a relief.

[seemslikeadream]

4. Testimony of Eric Hamburg

ERIC HAMBURG

Co-producer of the Oliver Stone Movie Nixon and Former

Congressional Staff Assistant Involved in the Passage of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection

Act of 1992

MR. HAMBURG: I am a film producer here in Los Angeles working with Oliver Stone. As you mentioned I co-produced the film Nixon and also edited the book of the film. And in a prior incarnation before coming to Hollywood I worked for about eight years on Capitol Hill in Washington as an aid to Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and also the representative Lee Hamilton of Indiana. And while on Congressman Hamilton's staff I worked extensively during 1991/92 on the legislation which became the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. And it was this legislation, as you know, which created the Assassination Records Review Board. So it's very gratifying to be here and appear before you today.

....

I have long felt that for many reasons, including barriers of language and culture, we have had perhaps the least understanding of the Cuban "element." For this reason, I was very interested when the Cuban Government put forward a semi-official version of their view of the assassination events in late 1993. I myself made two trips to Cuba in 1994 and spent a total of about two weeks there holding extensive meetings with General Fabian Escalante, the Cuban official in charge of their investigation of the JFK assassination. I also had additional conversations with General Escalante and his colleague Arturo Rodriguez at a conference last year in Rio de Janeiro. I was very impressed by the depth and extent of the Cuban's knowledge about these events and also the potential for useful exchanges of information and documents with the Cubans. Needless to say, Cuba is a communist country and is not a democracy, and any information emanating from Cuba must be treated with appropriate caution. Nevertheless, Cuba has a great volume of files and documents which are relevant to this case. They have many files dating back to the early 1960s on Cuban exile groups and specific individuals as well as mafia and CIA figures who were active in Cuba. Many of these would be very relevant to your work and would be of great interest.

I would like to mention a couple of other specific points which are examples of the kind of information which could be gained from the Cuban documents and also from related U.S. documents. These are specific points which I had followed up with General Escalante and on which he provided new information to add to what we already know from American documents. One is in the area of Lee Harvey Oswald's mysterious trip to Clinton, Louisiana in August of 1963. It has never been clear why Oswald went to Clinton or what he was doing there. I was intrigued by the fact, that according to information obtained by Jim Garrison's investigators, 0swald had told people in the Clinton area that he was living or staying with a Cuban doctor at the local hospital named Frank Silva, or Francisco Silva. I asked General Escalante to check his files and see if he had any information on this individual. He reported back that according to his sources Silva's full name was Francisco Silver Clarence and that he was related to a Frank Bartes, whose full name was Francisco Bartes Clarence. Bartes lived in New Orleans and was a close associate of Carlos Bringuier the head of the Cuban group, DRE, in New Orleans, who had a street brawl with Lee Harvey Oswald in August of '63. This incident took place shortly before Oswald's trip to Clinton. Bartes appeared at Oswald's court hearing after the incident on August 12, 1963 as a show of support for Bringuier. Bartes is discussed extensively in the book Oswald and the CIA by John Newman. I know you've heard from Mr. Newman before, where he is described as a CIA informant and operative. General Escalante even speculated that Frank Silva and Frank Bartes may actually have possibly been the same person since both shared the first and last names of Francisco Clarence. This information would appear to provide a Cuban connection to Oswald's trip to Clinton, which is very interesting. Obviously this should be followed up with a request for documents to corroborate this information. And it's my understanding that Doctor Silva is still living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, I believe.

....

Escalante also told me that Cuba has numerous files on David Morales, formerly the second in command of the JM/WAVE's Station. Escalante believes that Morales may have been in Dallas on November 22nd, 1963 and may have been in charge of the assassination operation on the ground in Dallas. He speculated that Morales may have been the person driving the Nash Rambler which allegedly picked up Oswald outside the book depository. Morales is discussed in the book The Last Investigation by Gaeton and Fonzi. Escalante also told me that according to his sources, Morales had met with Rolando Dubelo, alias Amlesh, who was a CIA asset, in Paris in September or October of 1963 as part of the CIA's ongoing effort to assassinate Fidel Castro. He believes that this was related to the plot against President Kennedy as well.

more
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/arrb/index33.htm

[Wright Patman]

20. Since 1963 we need to add the following disclaimer

as well.

"Needless to say, the U.S. is a fascist country and is not a democracy, and any information emanating from the U.S. must be treated with appropriate caution."

I think as of Dec. 13, 2000, it has been clearer than ever what our actual form of government is. Sept. 11, 2001, was the icing on the cake. We have a presidential dictatorship and the president is not selected by the people.

[seemslikeadream]

5. Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board

Pursuit of Records and Information
from Non-Federal Sources

The researcher provided the Review Board with copies of handwritten notes, on White House stationery, ostensibly prepared by Underwood and documenting his meeting with Scott. The notes state that Scott told Underwood that the CIA "blew it" in Dallas in November 1963. On the morning of November 22, the agency knew that a plane had arrived in Mexico City from Havana, and that one passenger got off the plane and boarded another one headed for Dallas. Underwood's notes state that Scott said that CIA identified the passenger as Fabian Escalante.

http://www.fas.org/sgp/advisory/arrb98/part10.htm

[mhr]

7. Motive? I Don't See A Motive On The Part Of The Exile Cubans

unless they were being used by the CIA as cutouts for plausible deniablity.

[villager]

8. motive was Bay of Pigs

rightwing Cubans felt "betrayed" by JFK, as did the Mafia, for both the Bay of Pigs, and RFK's pursuit of organized crime. Joe Kennedy's boys weren't supposed to do this -- that wasn't part of the "agreement."

Cuban exile connections run throughout the JFK assassination (i.e. Oswald's b.g., the New Orleans connections, etc.) when you look into it...

[mhr]

9. Would The Cubans Execute A Sitting President Just Because Of BOPs?

Seems far fetched as there would be other ways to seek retribution.

[villager]

10. there were several overlapping motives at work...

...in the JFK assassination. Retribution for BoP -- which was a "betrayal" by JFK of various mob/Cuban/CIA interests -- was among them.

Loss of Cuba was a huge loss of revunue to organized crime...

[Xipe Totec]

37. 114 dead, 1000+ Cuban exiles captured. Yea, I'd be pissed too.

On April 17, 1961, about 1,500 CIA-backed Cuban exiles landed at Cuba's Bay of Pigs in hopes of triggering an uprising against their homeland's communist leader, Fidel Castro.

(snip)

In the months prior to the invasion, U.S. intelligence operatives trained Bovo, Cabello and more than a thousand other Cuban exiles. They were following up a plan drawn up President Dwight D. Eisenhower and carried out by his successor, President John F. Kennedy, on the condition U.S. forces themselves would stay out -- both on the ground and in the air.

(snip)

"We were self-deluded," Bob Reynolds, the CIA station chief in Miami at the time, told Reuters. "It's pretty clear now that there was not a large body of people just waiting for a chance to turn against Castro."

(snip)

The ground and air support the exiles hoped for - and needed - never came. A mere two days after landing at the Bay of Pigs, out of ammunition and with 114 dead, the remnants of the exile brigade surrendered to Cuban troops.

http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/2001/fyi/news/04/17/bay.of.pigs/

Yea, I would call Bay of Pigs a plausible motivation for a lot of CIA trained Cuban exiles to feel betrayed and want revenge.

Look at it this way: Here we are, over 40 years later and the Cuban community still votes overwhelmingly Republican because they have not forgotten JFK's betrayal and they hold the entire Democratic party collectively accountable for the Bay of Pigs fiasco.

[tom_paine]

40. No, but they might then be predisposed to assist and "authorized" act of

revenge.

ESPECIALLY if their good friend Poppy Bush was behind the idea.

[Zen Democrat]

45. No - but because they believed it was lead to new invasion

by blaming Castro through fake Oswald in Mexico business. Simple.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

53. If you think it's "farfetched", then IMHO, you haven't been paying....

...attention.

Here are some names associated with the planning and executing of the "Bay of Pigs", as well as the Anti-Castro "Cuban Task Force": Richard Nixon, George H. W. Bush, E. Howard Hunt, Bernard Barker, Frank Sturgis, Elliot Abrams, John Negroponte, Otto Reich, and Felix Rodriguez.

Do you recognize any of those names from other events in American history?

[peacetalksforall]

41. Motive? Starting with profits.. Under Batista, the mafia and a certain

per cent of Cubans were making a ton of money with many benefits to the U.S.

Castro started a revolution to take back the country. He suceeded with the backing of the people. Through specific or accidental blunders, the U.S. turned its back on the new regime and the USSR was ready and waiting to support the people in a life based on communism.

Supposedly, there exist many quotes from mafia members about what it meant to their profits and nice life commuting to and from and living in Cuba, untouched by U.S. law when they were kicked out. The CIA also used the island.

In a sweep of anti-communitsm and the clean-up in Cuba, the U.S. gained many new immigrants - some were Batista people, some were devout Catholics who couldn't support communism, some were people who lost businesses and land with Castro's nationalization of 'sharing with the people', some found out what a good deal the U.S. gave the refugees - money, money, money and 'lotsa' benefits for these 'exiles from communism'.

Early in JFK's presidency, the CIA convinced JFK that the people of Cuba were ready and waiting to support a coup to oust Castro. They weren't, plus the invaders stumbled in more ways that their prognostication of the people's readiness. Some of the invaders were killed, some were jailed for many, many years. A fewer number of Cubans died. This was the Bay of Pigs. JFK took the blame and started not trusting the CIA.

The CIA wasn't happy that JFK wouldn't try it again. The exiles wanted Castro out - 40 plus years of manipulating the ruin of Castro. The mafia wanted Cuba back. Whoever controlled the CIA was with the exiles and the mafia.

A result of the Cuban Missile Crisis was an agreement that the USSR wouldn't supply missiles and the U.S. wouldn't continue to invade and kill Castro.

Enough of a motive?

[Media_Lies_Daily]

49. You're kidding, right? Ever hear of the Bay of Pigs?

[donsu]

11. kick - I believe Escalante

Poppy is in the mix too

[AP]

12. I tend to believe him too. This is how I always thought the the truth...

...might come out. Someone at the end of their life spilling the beans.

If this were just propaganda, why would Cuba have waited so long to make this guy the vehicle for it? Castro has been in power for a long time. It's not likely that he just came up with the idea, or has been waiting all this time to use this guy.

[RebelYell]

25. I agree

Poppy was in it up to his eyeballs. He was in Dallas the night before, but can't remember why.

Great find, Seems.

[Minstrel Boy]

13. Castro, Nov 23 1963: Oswald instrument of enemies of a moderate policy

From Fidel Castro's television address to the Cuban people, November 23, 1963, "Concerning the Facts and Consequences of the Tragic Death of President John F Kennedy" (the complete speech is reproduced in Martin Scholtz's History Will Not Absolve Us).


"International tension had even diminished considerably in recent months. These months were not months like the October crisis. The United States was not living through one of those stages of McCarthyism characterized by unbridled persecution of the most progressive elements in the United States.... No, the United States was not living through such a period. It was living through a period of fierce controversy between the more moderate sectors - among which can be found many of Kennedy's collaborators - and the ultra-reactionary sector of American society.

...

"It just so happens that these events occurred precisely at a moment when Kennedy was being severely attacked by those who considered his Cuban policy too weak.

"It could not be us, but only the enemies of the Revolution and the enemies, in general, of a more moderate policy, a less warlike policy, the enemies of a policy like this who might be interested in the death of President Kennedy, the only ones who perhaps could have received the news of the death of Kennedy with satisfaction.

...

"We cannot categorically affirm what is behind all this, but we do affirm that is is suspicious; that we must be careful, that we must be vigilant, that we must be alert. Because this man (Oswald) may be innocent, a cat's paw, in a plan well prepared by people who knew how to prepare these plans; or he may be a sick man and if so, the only honest thing is to hand him over for a medical examination and not to be starting a campaign extremely dangerous to world peace; or he may be an instrument very well chosen and very well trained by the ultra-right, by ultra-conservative reaction of the United States with the deliberate aim of eliminating a President who, according to them, did not carry out the policy he should have - more warlike, more aggressive, more adventuresome policy. And it is necessary for all people of the United States themselves to demand that what is behind the Kennedy assassination be clarified."

And an interesting story from last November:

Revealed: how Kennedy's assassination thwarted hopes of Cuba reconciliation

A few days before his assassination, President Kennedy was planning a meeting with Cuban officials to negotiate the normalisation of relations with Fidel Castro, according to a newly declassified tape and White House documents.

The rapprochement was cut off in Dallas 40 years ago this week by Lee Harvey Oswald, who appears to have believed he was assassinating the president in the interests of the Cuban revolution. {Minstrel Boy sez: As if.}

But the new evidence suggests that Castro saw Kennedy's killing as a setback. He tried to restart a dialogue with the next administration, but Lyndon Johnson was at first too concerned about appearing soft on communism and later too distracted by Vietnam to respond.

...

Peter Kornbluh, a researcher at Washington's National Security Archives who has reviewed the new evidence, said: "It shows that the whole history of US-Cuban relations might have been quite different if Kennedy had not been assassinated."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1093178,00.html

And another good book using Cuban files on the assassination:

[seemslikeadream]

15. Thanks so much MB

you give me nightmares

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/


David Ferrie

[Judi Lynn]

16. Here's a site with some views of documents gathered by Peter Kornbluh

which have been declassified in the last couple of years:

• Oval Office audio tape, November 5, 1963. The tape records a conversation between the President and McGeorge Bundy regarding Castro's invitation to William Attwood, a deputy to UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson, to come to Cuba for secret talks. The President responds that Attwood should be taken off the U.S. payroll prior to such a meeting so that the White House can plausibly deny that any official talks have taken place if the meeting leaks to the press.
  
  
• White House memorandum, Top Secret, "Mr. Donovan's Trip to Cuba," March 4, 1963. This document records President Kennedy's interest in negotiations with Castro and his instructions to his staff to "start thinking along more flexible lines" on conditions for a dialogue with Cuba.
  
  
• White House memorandum, Top Secret, "Cuba -- Policy," April 11, 1963. A detailed options paper from Gordon Chase, the Latin America specialist on the National Security Council, to McGeorge Bundy recommending "looking seriously at the other side of the coin-quietly enticing Castro over to us."
  
  
• CIA briefing paper, Secret, "Interview of U.S. Newswoman with Fidel Castro Indicating Possible Interest in Rapprochement with the United States," May 1, 1963. A debriefing of Lisa Howard by CIA deputy director Richard Helms, regarding her ABC news interview with Castro and her opinion that he is "ready to discuss rapprochement." The document contains a notation, "Psaw," meaning President Kennedy read the report on Howard and Castro.
  
  
• U.S. UN Mission memorandum, Secret, Chronology of events leading up Castro invitation to receive a U.S. official for talks in Cuba, November 8, 22, 1963. This chronology was written by William Attwood and records the evolution of the initiative set in motion by Lisa Howard for a dialogue with Cuba. The document describes the party at Howard's Manhattan apartment on September 23, 1963, where Attwood met with Cuban UN Ambassador Carlos Lechuga to discuss the potential for formal talks to improve relations. In an addendum, Attwood adds information on communications, using the Howard home as a base, leading up to the day the President was shot in Dallas.
  
  
• White House memorandum, Secret, November 12, 1963. McGeorge Bundy reports to William Attwood on Kennedy's opinion of the viability of a secret meeting with Havana. The president prefers that the meeting take place in New York at the UN where it will be less likely to be leaked to the press.
  
  
• White House memorandum, Top Secret, "Approach to Castro," November 19, 1963. A memo from Gordon Chase to McGeorge Bundy updating him on the status of arrangements for a secret meeting with the Cubans.
  
  
• White House memorandum, Top Secret, "Cuba -- Item of Presidential Interest," November 25, 1963. A strategy memo from Gordon Chase to McGeorge Bundy assessing the problems and potential for pursuing the secret talks with Castro in the aftermath of Kennedy's assassination.
  
  
• Message from Fidel Castro to Lyndon Johnson, "Verbal Message given to Miss Lisa Howard of ABC News on February 12, 1964, in Havana, Cuba." A private message carried by Howard to the White House in which Castro states that he would like the talks started with Kennedy to continue: "I seriously hope (and I cannot stress this too strongly) that Cuba and the United States can eventually sit down in an atmosphere of good will and of mutual respect and negotiate our differences."
  
  
• United Nations memorandum, Top Secret, from Adlai Stevenson to President Johnson, June 16, 1964. Stevenson sends the "verbal message" given to Lisa Howard to Johnson with a cover memo briefing him on the dialogue started under Kennedy and suggesting consideration of resumption of talks "on a low enough level to avoid any possible embarrassment."
  
  
• White House memorandum, Top Secret, "Adlai Stevenson and Lisa Howard," July 7, 1964. Gordon Chase reports to Bundy on his concerns that Howard's role as an intermediary has now escalated through her contact with Stevenson at the United Nations and the fact that a message has been sent back through her to Castro from the White House. Chase recommends trying "to remove Lisa from direct participation in the business of passing messages," and using Cuban Ambassador to the UN, Carlos Lechuga, instead.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB103/index.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Absolutely no doubt can remain now that President Kennedy fully intended to dramatically reassess and rearrange U.S. relations with Cuba. No doubt whatsoever.

By the way, a program based on this material runs regularly on the cable Discovery Channel. It gets replayed frequently.

[seemslikeadream]

24. Thanks JudiLyn, I'm going to look for that Discovery Channel program

here's an interview I found

Fabián Escalante (FE): A book I recently completed will be published soon,part of a series on the secret war the United States has waged against Cuba for more than 40 years. It tackles the CIA project in 1963 to assassinate Fidel Castro and how it intended, almost from the time it was conceived, to involve Cuba in the murder of President Kennedy and later justify a direct military aggression by the US against Cuba.


Progreso Weekly (PW): How do you reach those conclusions?
FE: I have carefully studied the Warren Commission Report ; the report by the Select Committee of the US House of Representatives, which between 1976 and 1978 investigated the Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations; the Senate Report by the Church Committee, which carried out an investigation of the assassination attempts on foreign politicians; and the investigations of numerous American researchers, including Mark Lane, Jim Garrison, Gaeton Fonzi and others, who in some way have studied the Dallas assassination.

PW: Did you find in those sources something that other investigators may have overlooked?
FE: What I did was to interpret some information that meant little to the American researchers and investigators because it dealt with Cuban émigrés but that meant something to us, who knew those émigrés. We also analyzed the resulting information. As you know, analysis also produces information.

PW: How long have you been interested in the topic?
FE: On November 22, 1963, I headed a small counterintelligence unit and the Dallas assassination caught us all by surprise. Two days later, Fidel appeared on Cuban television and made a minute and accurate analysis of the causes, the conditions, the preceding events and the probable motivations behind the crime. In his analysis, Fidel foresaw the forces behind the crime.

PW: Which were they?
FE: The American military-industrial complex, the US far right and, of course, the Cuban counter-revolutionary émigrés, the same émigrés who in 1961 were defeated at the Bay of Pigs -and who blamed Kennedy for their defeat- who in October 1962, with the end of the Missile Crisis, had lost every hope that the US might strike Cuba militarily; the same émigrés who watched how the veterans of Brigade 2506, held captive in Cuba after the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, returned humiliated to the US in 1962 after being exchanged for fruit jam and medicine.

PW: The Warren Commission reached the conclusion of a lone gunman, and others have spoken about a conspiracy. What makes you think that the Cuban émigrés played a role in Kennedy's assassination?
FE: In the first place, because they had the motive , the means and the opportunity. There is much evidence and a lot of information that indicate that people of that sector of the exile community were in Dallas. Second, through clues we discovered years later, in 1965, while we were investigating a CIA operation -named Amlash by the agency- to assassinate Fidel Castro. It was an operation the CIA began in 1961 when it recruited a former commander of the Rebel Army, Rolando Cubelas Secades. Cubelas was in Paris precisely on the day of Kennedy's assassination, meeting with a CIA official who gave him an artifact manufactured especially to assassinate Fidel Castro. That's a coincidence that has never been explained, at least not convincingly. Why was the CIA on November 22, 1963, delivering to an important agent a device to assassinate Fidel Castro? Several CIA officials have given explanations and even Richard Helms, then the agency's director, talked about the topic. But none of the explanations were convincing and probably are not true. On that occasion, we discovered that that plan -which we began to investigate in early 1965 and frustrated in early 1966- had had a previous edition in 1963, because we still didn't know about the Paris episode.

more
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:n9qZHC54D9kJ:www.cubanow.net/culture/Eng/num6/01escalante_one.htm+%221963,+The+Plot%22&hl=en

[Judi Lynn]

26. Excellent. Near the end of the first installment, Escalante refers

to David Phillips, who appears in the site you posted earlier. The last of the Escalante interview:

They told Robert Kennedy that his brother had been the victim of a plot by Cuban intelligence and then identified the signers of the "Cuban" letters as the people responsible for the plot and the Cuban Embassy in Mexico as the center where the plot was planned. The entire operation was directed by one person, who in my judgment was David Phillips.

David Phillips
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKphillips.htm

Progreso Weekly is a terrific source. They are the publishing arm of the radio station in Miami, Radio Progreso. The owner, Francisco Aruca has been the subject of various attacks including bombings of his travel agencies, and assaults on the employees of Radio Progreso when "exile" thugs broke in trying to get to him for a share of pounding, or whatever else was possible. This is a terrific bunch of people dedicated to getting the real news out, no matter what!

Here's their news site which changes every Thursday, if you've not seen it already. You can get a free subscription sent to you. They have an interesting section, B.S. Detector, in which they examine the news as it is transmitted by the Miami Herald's Spanish publication, El Nuevo Herald, geared to "inform" the Cuban community in Miami, as opposed to the truth!

They are very plucky, for sure! Thanks for this interview from Escalante. It's interesting to see how much they really know, isn't it?

http://www.progresoweekly.com/

[Minstrel Boy]

28. David Atlee Phillips

is essential to the whole sordid story.

The anti-Castro leader of Alpha 66, Antonio Veciana, was sponsored by the CIA, and his contact was an agent he knew as "Maurice Bishop."

In early September, 1963, in Dallas, Veciana met "Bishop" in the company of Lee Harvey Oswald.

"Bishop" was David Atlee Phillips, then-head of the CIA's Mexico City operations, and later the chief of covert ops for the Western Hemisphere.

Establishing that Bishop was Phillips is the subject of much of House Select Committee on Assassinations' investigator Gaeton Fonzi's The Last Investigation. There is no doubt, reasonable or otherwise: Phillips was Bishop.

In Dick Russell's The Man Who Knew Too Much, Fabian Escalante says that Veciana told a Cuban informant that Bishop was Phillips, but refused to solidly identify him as such before the Committee because Phillips had threatened him.

Further confirmation from the "Real History Archives":

"Gaeton Fonzi has written a book that details his search for Maurice Bishop called The Last Investigation. To Fonzi's detailed summary of reasons that David Atlee Phillips was indeed the Maurice Bishop that Veciana saw with Oswald, there is a more recent addition. In the back of his updated paperback version of Conspiracy, Anthony Summers tells of Jim Hougan's talk with CIA agent Frank Terpil. Jim Hougan will be familiar to Probe readers from our last issue. He's the author of the best book on Watergate, Secret Agenda.

"Hougan got to know Terpil rather well while making a PBS documentary about him. In a tape-recorded interview, Hougan asked why Terpil was going on and on about David Phillips and the AFIO. Among other things, Terpil alleged (as have others) that Phillips' "retirement" from the CIA was phony, and that he continued to work for the CIA through the AFIO. Hougan asked Terpil why he kept talking about Phillips-was it personal, or political? Political, Terpil replied. Hougan asked where Terpil and Phillips had met. Terpil's answer is astonishing, and terribly important. Terpil had met him in Florida while living there with Hal Hendrix's daughter. Really? Asked Hougan. Yeah, said Terpil, Phillips used to come around with Hal Hendrix, but he wasn't using his real name. He was using an alias. What alias? Bishop, Terpil said, Something Bishop. Maurice Bishop? Hougan asked. Yeah, Terpil replied, Maurice Bishop. Hougan wanted to be sure Terpil wasn't putting him on, but came away convinced that Terpil did not understand the significance of what he was saying and that Terpil was answering honestly. Hougan asked how Terpil knew Bishop was Phillips. Terpil said he had run Bishop through the agency's file system in the CIA's Miami headquarters to find out who this Bishop character was. The name that came out: David Atlee Phillips."

When Phillips was dying of cancer, his brother James asked him at the end of a telephone conversation: "Were you in Dallas on that day?" David started crying, and said "Yes." That was the end of the conversation. (As told in Russell's The Man Who Knew Too Much.)

[Judi Lynn]

29. Amazing. All the people involved with this event are themselves

in danger of assured murder from the others if they reveal the identities of the others involved. That would keep them quiet.

There's so much to read now that I'm looking into what you and the others have already read. It's overwhelming.

Here's a photo of Antonio Veciana, who established the paramilitary Cuban "exile" group, Alpha 66, the person mentioned first in your post:


From the same source posted earlier in this thread:

On 26th March 1963 Alpha 66 attacked another Soviet ship. Members of Alpha 66 held a press conference suggesting the American government supported their actions. Kennedy was furious and ordered that Veciana and other leaders of Alpha 66 should be arrested and placed in a confined area in Florida.
(snip)

In 1976 Veciana was interviewed by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. He told the committee about his relationship with Maurice Bishop. He also claimed that in August, 1963, he saw Bishop and Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas. Veciana admitted that Bishop and the Central Intelligence Agency had organized and funded the Alpha 66 attacks on the Soviet ships docked in Cuba in 1963.

Veciana explained the policy: "It was my case officer, Maurice Bishop, who had the idea to attack the Soviet ships. The intention was to cause trouble between Kennedy and Russia. Bishop believed that Kennedy and Khrushchev had made a secret agreement that the USA would do nothing more to help in the fight against Castro. Bishop felt - he told me many times - that President Kennedy was a man without experience surrounded by a group of young men who were also inexperienced with mistaken ideas on how to manage this country. He said you had to put Kennedy against the wall in order to force him to make decisions that would remove Castro's regime."

Richard Schweiker, a member of the committee, speculated that Bishop was David Atlee Phillips. Schweiker arranged for Veciana and Phillips to be introduced at a meeting of the Association of Retired Intelligence Officers in Reston. Phillips denied knowing Veciana. After the meeting Veciana told Schweiker that Phillips was not the man known to him as Bishop.

Schweiker was unconvinced by this evidence. He found it difficult to believe Phillips would not have known the leader of Alpha 66. Especially as Phillips had been in charge of covert action in Cuba when Alpha 66 was established. Another CIA agent who worked in Cuba during this period, claimed that Phillips used the code name, Maurice Bishop.

David Atlee Phillips testified before the House Select Committee on Assassinations on 25th April, 1978. He denied he ever used the name Maurice Bishop. He also insisted that he had never met Veciana.

Soon after testifying Veciana was ambushed on the way home from work. Four shots were fired and one bullet hit him in the head. Veciana survived the attack but now refuses to talk about his work with Alpha 66.
(snip/)

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKveciana.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So many people involved, and they all lead to this very time and place, the White House again. Really creepy, isn't it?

Their passions led the Cuban "exiles," among others, of course, to believe their pride and rage was more important than the elected leader of the country. Gee, that's a familiar pattern among right-wing extremists. Damned disgusting, in additional to fiendish.

[Minstrel Boy]

31. "Maurice Bishop" and David Atlee Phillips:

The sketch was made from Veciana's description. To those who knew Phillips, the resemblance was striking. Phillips himself admitted it, but said it looked more like one of his brothers. Gaeton Fonzi flew to the Texas office of his brother, and he looked nothing like the picture. His brother said "Ah am astonished! Why that is amazin'! That certainly does look like David!" His secretary saw the picture and said simply "That's David." His daughter saw it and said "Why that's Uncle David! That is Uncle David!"

Near the end of The Last Investigation, Fonzi has this exchange with Veciana:

"You know that I believe what you have told me.... Except when you told me that David Phillips is not Maurice Bishop."

His eyes never moved, his expression never changed as I spoke. "Now," I said, "I would like you to tell me this one time very truthfully: Would you have told me if I had found Maurice Bishop?"

A slow smile crossed Veciana's face as he let out his breath. He was happy I had phrased the question so as to not put him in a corner. He put his head down and scratched his forehead, obviously taking time now to think carefully. Then he looked up with that half-smile still on his face.

"Well, you know," he said, "I would like to talk with him first."

That was his answer. I looked at him for a moment, then laughed. Veciana nodded his head and laughed with me.

You know, people talk about the harm US Cuban policy has inflicted upon the island, but I think the harm it has done the United States itself has been far worse.

[Mika]

14. Any connection to this? The US ban on publishing books written in Cuba

Suit's topic: ban on Cuban books
A group of U.S. publishers has sued in an effort to overturn publication rules for works from Cuba and other embargoed nations.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/9776017.htm

Six Cuban publications -- the most from any embargoed nation -- are on the groups' list of in-limbo works.

-

The suit comes amid a Bush administration crackdown on relations with Cuba. Earlier this year, travel to the island was curbed and the amount of family remittances slashed. Now, publishers say, they, too, are falling victim to the get-tough policy.

According to OFAC, presses must obtain licenses to publish works from embargoed nations, which also include Iran and Sudan, or risk fines of up to $1 million or prison sentences of up to 10 years.

-

'They want to limit the amount of money going into Cuba from publishing anything,'' said John S. Kavulich, president of the U.S. Cuba Trade and Economic Council. ``Anytime a document from Cuba is published in the U.S., it validates the revolution.''

-

''Why should we publish theirs,'' asked Jaime Suchlicki, director of the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies.

_________________________________

The GOP's Axis of evil

Universal health care

Universal education

Democracy

_________________________________

[Judi Lynn]

17. The only writings Bush wants to allow from Cuba

are the writings of our U.S. taxpayers' supported "dissident" propagandists. This is grotesque. It affords them a very comfortable living, however it allows outsiders a completely bogus perception of Cuban affairs, crafted to satisfy stringent right-wing appetites.

[Minstrel Boy]

19. Kennedy's murder was a Northwoods operation

Escalante, quoted in Dick Russell's The Man Who Knew Too Much:

"By mid-1963, we had infiltrated a special group" in Florida.... "A CIA official came to a safe-house in Miami and said to a group of Cuban exiles, 'You must eliminate Kennedy.' There were two objectives to the plot - to kill Kennedy and to blame Cuba for the crime."

Sounds like Operation Northwoods, doesn't it? The Joint Chiefs' plan to wage a false-flag terror campaign on American soil and frame Cuba.

Dr Peter Dale Scott, in Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, addresses the two stages of the cover-up.

First, "confidential knowledge" shared with senior officials and significant media assets which pointed to a Soviet-Cuban conspiracy. (For instance, the CIA's framing Oswald at the Soviet embassy in Mexico City: Someone pretending to be Lee Harvey Oswald made an incriminating series of telephone calls between September 28 and October 1, 1963, allegedly to the Cuban and Soviet consulates, and one supposedly between the Cuban and Soviet consulates at a time when the Cuban consulate was closed and empty. In one of the calls, the Oswald impersonator mentions having met with Valery Kostikov, a man known to the CIA as the chief of KGB assassination operations in the Western hemisphere. The CIA has lied about the tapes for decades. It claimed they were routinely destroyed before the assassination. But FBI documents have been uncovered which detail how at least two of the tapes were listened to after the assassination by Bureau agents familiar with Oswald’s voice, who determined it wasn't Oswald. The Assassination Records Review Board found CIA documents in which the CIA itself states that some of the tapes were reviewed after the assassination, contradicting its long-held public position.)

The thought of a conspiracy scared the hell out of Johnson, who feared nuclear war would result. To avoid this, he and others became willing participants in the second cover-up for public consumption: the "lone nut" story. This was the express purpose of the Warren Commission, to establish that Oswald acted alone. Earl Warren didn't want to head it, but left Johnson's office shaken after hearing how the peace of the world depended upon the finding.

[Judi Lynn]

21. Quite the payback to a President who had ultimately disapproved

the plan devised and signed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years.

"These were Joint Chiefs of Staff documents. The reason these were held secret for so long is the Joint Chiefs never wanted to give these up because they were so embarrassing," Bamford told ABCNEWS.com.

"The whole point of a democracy is to have leaders responding to the public will, and here this is the complete reverse, the military trying to trick the American people into a war that they want but that nobody else wants."

Gunning for War

The documents show "the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved plans for what may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government," writes Bamford.

The Joint Chiefs even proposed using the potential death of astronaut John Glenn during the first attempt to put an American into orbit as a false pretext for war with Cuba, the documents show.

Should the rocket explode and kill Glenn, they wrote, "the objective is to provide irrevocable proof … that the fault lies with the Communists et all Cuba ."
(snip/...)

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/jointchiefs_010501.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Easy to see after the new information has come to light from different sources retrieving documents through the FOIA that Kennedy wasn't getting the job done the right-wing reactionary sector in government wanted done regarding Cuba. This would show that a man not aligned with them to their satisfaction can surely be kicked to the curb. It would take a real hero to run independent of their approval.

[JohnyCanuck]

22. Too many DUers (and Dems) are living in dreamland.

Do you really think the organizations and/or groups behind the MOFOs that took out Kennedy would not hesitate in doing the same to Kerry (or any president Repub or Dem) who threatened to turn over too many rocks that could leave the cockroaches exposed to the light of day.

Oh sorry, I forgot. I'm just another conspiracy theorists with a tin foil hat and things in Mayberry USA are really nothing so out of whack that another election won't put it right again. In the meantime I'll just unwrap the tinfoil and settle in and watch a few Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver reruns to get a feel for how things really operate in Cleaverland.

Brainwashing America

Military Dictatorship USA

[Minstrel Boy]

23. Welcome to Brainwashington

Title of an interesting presentation by German 9/11 researcher Mathias Bröckers:
http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/co/15415/1.html

Until America honestly confronts the state-murder of its president, it'll always be easy prey for its enemies within.

[slojim240]

27. Listen, my parents of average intelligence said this when JFK was killled

Why is it that people with common sense seem to really have more wisdom about the world around them than some educated fools?

[bobthedrummer]

30. Richard Nixon was fearful that Watergate would open the "...whole Bay of

Pigs thing...".

I don't think it's ever been closed.

I've never believed The Warren Commission's opinion that the assassin was solely Lee Harvey Oswald, and I believe that Jim Garrison was on to some of the elements that conspired to kill JFK.

[Octafish]

32. The powers-that-be used Dallas to build support for Cuba invasion...

... No one knows that better than Fidel Castro. We're touching on the a subject most sensitve to the BFEE. They are the War Party and no one gets in their way -- whether elected, selected, appointed or annointed.

These turds in the War Party wanted JFK to go to war over the Bay of Pigs. JFK said "No" and they took notice, calling the young President a coward who would not go to war to keep the Communist threat out of Cuba -- meaning their property rights were impugned by nationalization.

A year and half later, during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October, 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, almost the entire cabinet, and most of Congress that had been briefed wanted JFK to launch a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union, even if it meant global nuclear war.

Kennedy said, "No. There's got to be a better way to avoid a nuclear world war." The generals and the War Party, again, called JFK a coward.

However, JFK was right. Thanks to Adlai Stevenson and Bobby Kennedy, the President ordered the government agencies to work out an alternative. That was the embargo.

Still, for his trouble keeping the world from ending, JFK was branded "soft" on communism and worse.

One of the things that has most troubled me about the JFK assassination is that there is so much evidence indicating government duplicity in the killing. Chief among these is the concerted efforts to paint Oswald as being a communist sympathizer who wanted to shoot the President and then flee to Cuba.

This is in addition to the trail created before the assassination: One man purchased trucks in Oswald's name. Another took a car dealer on a harrowing "test drive" and said he'd be "coming into money" soon.

A man impersonating Oswald appeared at the Cuban embassy in Mexico City. The CIA, for decades, stated the man was Oswald only to later recant and state they don't know who the man was. Well that, to me, shows SOMEONE went to a lot of trouble to point the finger at Castro. I think these high-ups are the ones who today want to overthrow Castro.

Their cheerleader-in-chief, Smirko Bush. The triggerman behind him? Could it be Poppy? I want to doubt it, but it gets more difficult...



This is the man the CIA top brass claimed was Lee Harvey Oswald.
Striking there's no similarity. Notice the forearms, those of a very strong man. He looks accustomed to breaking necks with them.

[Octafish]

33. An Addendum.

Here's stuff I should've included above:

Mexico City­, A New Analysis

John Newman
at the "November in Dallas" JFK Lancer Conference

http://www.jfklancer.com/backes/newman/newman_1.html


Oswald, the CIA, and Mexico City ("Lopez Report")

http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/lopezrpt/contents.htm


Tape: Call on JFK Wasn't Oswald

http://www.jfklancer.com/backes/newman/newman_1.html

[seemslikeadream]

34. Octafish new article by Loftus The Muslim Brotherhood, Nazis and Al-Qaeda

The Muslim Brotherhood, Nazis and Al-Qaeda


Saudis didn't want to come back. Saudis started paying bribes to Osama Bin Ladin and his followers to stay out of Saudi Arabia. Now the MAK split in half. Azzam was mysteriously assassinated apparently by Osama Bin Ladin himself. The radical group -- the most radical of the merge of the Arab fascists and religious extremists -- Osama called that al Qaeda. But to this day there are branches of the Muslim Brotherhood all through al Qaeda.

Osama Bin Ladin's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, came from the Egyptian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the results of a Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

There are many flavors and branches, but they are all Muslim Brotherhoods. There is one in Israel. The organization you know as “Hammas” is actually a secret chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood. When Israel assassinated Sheik Yassin a month ago, the Muslim Brotherhood published his obituary in a Cairo newspaper in Arabic and revealed that he was actually the secret leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza.

So the Muslim Brotherhood became this poison that spread throughout the Middle East and on 9/11, it began to spread around the world.

I know this sounds like some sort of a sick fantasy, but go to your computer and type in the words “Vanna,” V-a-n-n-a and the word “Nazi,” N-a-z-i, and you will see all of the articles come up. Those are all the pieces of information that the CIA was trying to hide from its employees. It did not want them to know the awful past. So, in 1984, when I was exposing European Nazis on the CIA payroll, at the same time they were trying to hide from Congress the fact that they had Arab Nazis back on the payroll to fight the Russians -- a stupid and corrupt program.

So, when Bob Baer studied his files, he was just stunned. A whole generation: the current CIA people know nothing about this. And believe me, the current generation CIA are good and decent Americans and I like them a lot. They're trying to do a good job, but part of their problem is their files have been shredded. All of these secrets have to come out.

more
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15344

:hi:

[bobthedrummer]

35. Real Nazis found a political home in the RW of The Republican Party

Plus their families, friends, colleagues...:puke::grr::argh::mad:

Russ Bellant's work documents this treasonous fact.
Old Nazi Networks in US
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/political-science/fascism/bellant/bellant.pt1

[robertpaulsen]

36. Eladio del Valle - I thought that name was familiar.

Just before leaving Cuba Cuesta asked to see Escalante. Cuesta told Escalante that he had been involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He also named Herminio Diaz Garcia and Eladio del Valle as being involved in the conspiracy. Cuesta asked Escalante not to make this information "public because I am returning to my family in Miami - and this could be very dangerous."



Eladio del Valle was murdered the same day as David Ferrie. I remember in the movie JFK he was referred to as Oswald's Cuban paymaster and is shown being hacked to death in the back of a car. The link connected with your spartacus link says he was shot in the heart.



Eladio del Valle was born in Cuba. He was a supporter of Fulgencio Batista and served as a congressman in Havana. He went into exile just before Fidel Castro gained power in January, 1959.

Del Valle moved to Florida where he was active in the Free Cuba Committee. He also worked for Santo Trafficante and with his friend, David Ferrie he was involved in fire-bombing sugar fields in Cuba.

During his investigation of the Kennedy case, Jim Garrison wanted to interview Eladio del Valle to obtain information against Clay Shaw. However, he was unable to find him.

Eladio del Valle was murdered on 22nd February, 1967. He had been shot in the heart. He died only hours after his friend, David Ferrie. Diego Gonzales Tendera, a close friend, later claimed de Valle was murdered because of his involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKeladio.htm

[Minstrel Boy]

38. Here's a bit more on de Valle's involvement,

from Dick Russell's monumental The Man Who Knew Too Much:

"Not long before his arrest on October 1, 1963, for his involvement in a scheme to flood Cuba with counterfeit pesos, ex-CIA contract agent Robert Morrow says he received a phone call at his Baltimore residence. It was Eladio del Valle, David Ferrie's friend in Miami. 'He asked me to get ahold of some electronics equipment, communications gear,' Morrow told me in 1992. 'Eladio wondered if I could supply four small walkie-talkies that could not be traced. Very-low-frequency transceivers, good at one-quarter mile at just below audio range. Del Valle was Mario Kohly's right-hand man there in Miami. He was also a liason to Rolando Masferrer, and the Mafia, and all those crazy Cubans. I told him I'd take care of his request - and I did. Later, when I saw some pictures that had been taken November 22 in Dealey Plaza, I saw one of my radios hanging out of some guy's back pocket.'"

Look at the man on the left of the curb in Dealey Plaza (next to the "Umbrella Man", who was standing, pumping an open umbrella on a hot dry day as Kennedy passed). This is after the fatal shot. Does it look as though he's holding something to his mouth? Do you see an antenae?


Another view. Does he look Cuban?


Look at these two, sitting there in the chaos:


And calmly walking away:


Both the link above and the movie are right: De Valle was brutally beaten, then was shot in the heart and had his head hacked open. The same night Ferrie died.

[robertpaulsen]

44. Great photos!

I had seen the black and white photo, but not the color photos which are very revealing. I had read eyewitness testimony from someone who thought the man next to Umbrella Man had a radio, but really hadn't seen anything that showed it.

So where was Eladio on November 22, 1963? And does this guy sitting next to Umbrella Man ever take his hat off?

[Minstrel Boy]

47. Here's another view of them, at the time of the shooting:

Kennedy's already been hit. The open umbrella is pumping, and the dark-complected man has his hand raised. Some researchers say these were signals that Kennedy had not yet received a fatal shot.



And here's a picture of Tony Cuesta, born 1928, who confessed his involvement to Escalante. Could he be the walkie-talkie man?

[Judi Lynn]

46. Yes, thanks for posting these photos. Very arresting.

Also, this is the first time I've heard Rolando Masferrer's name used in reference to this complex event. I've not learned that much about Cuban history, but I DO know Rolando Masferrer was once a powerful Cuban newspaper publisher, I think he was also a senator, and he was the creator and operator of a death squad, "Masferrer's Tigers," which swept Havana and the surrounding area in cars at night, grabbing suspected leftists and beating, torturing, and murdering them. They developed a hideous image among those they preyed upon, as an adjunct to Batista's iron-fisted control of Cuba.

He had to get the hell out of Dodge as soon as the Revolution was gathering steam, and moved to Miami. At some point he was mysteriously murdered in a car-bombing. Various local explanations are really sketchy, but the common one was simply internecine "exile" extremist stuff.

This puts Masferrer's murder in a new light, if he was also involved in something as horrendous as the assassination of an ELECTED President.

[Minstrel Boy]

57. Masferrer was a bag man for the assassination.

Retired military intelligence Colonel William Bishop told researcher Dick Russell that Masferrer was given $50,000 in Mafia funds to partially set up the Cuban side of the plot. He said he heard Masferrer and others say more than once that Kennedy was going to be hit.

You know, nothing bugs me as much as people saying Somebody would have talked! Many have. It's just, who's listening?

[Judi Lynn]

69. Masferrer would have fit in so well with these creeps.

Here's a description of his life prior to coming to the U.S. after the Revolution:

ROLANDO MASFERRER

Fulgencio Batista was forced to call on Cuban warlords like Rolando Masferrer to suppress Fidel Castro. Rolando Masferrer was born in Cuba on July 12, 1918. His father died when he was young and his mother's brother took him to live with he and his wife. His uncle was a army officer who was sent to Fort Sam Houston, in San Antonio, Texas for training with the U.S. Army. Rolando Masferrer attended school in Oklahoma, but left after only a few weeks. He returned to Cuba where he received his law degree there at age 21. At age 23 Masferrer fought in the streets against the dictator Machado. He was elected to the Cuban Senate and was the youngest Senator in its history. During the Spanish Civil War in 1938, Rolando Masferrer traveled to Spain and fought on the side of the Communists. Within months he was in a military hospital near Madrid, his left foot shattered by a bullet. It took him six months to walk again - with a crutch. The Communist Party assigned Masferrer to its Political Inspectorate. Masferrer became an enforcer for Joseph Stalin. The 'thump, thump' of his walk was dreaded by Communist functionaries throughout Europe. Six years later he broke with the Communists and formed his own political party as well as his own private army, El Tigres. Rolando Masferrer was elected to the Cuban legislature in 1949, and served as a representative under the Prio regime. Masferrer was described as "an opportunist of the first order. He was a staunch friend of President Carlos Prio Soccarras under whose regime he served as a Representative, but when Prio was ousted he turned up overnight at the side of Fulgencio Batista. He has been a Senator in Batista's Government..." The CIA and the State Department conducted a covert name check on Rolando Masferrer when he was first elected to public office. Because he was a former Communist, by 1950 a file on Rolando Masferrer existed in the Office of Security of the CIA.


EL TIGRES

In 1958 El Tigres became Batista's primary counter-terrorist force. Murder, mutilation, rape, dismemberment, castration, torture and kidnapping were the trademarks of El Tigres. Bodies of individuals who had been tortured to death were flung from speeding cars on to the streets of Havana to strike terror in the populace. The main target of Masferrer were supporters of the 26th of July Movement. Masferrer was considered a war criminal by most of the 26th of July Revolutionary Movement. Rolando Masferrer told the FBI that Fidel Castro's men "began to ambush, assassinate, and otherwise kill members of Rolando Masferrer's party. Consequently, in order to protect members of his party Masferrer went to...the Minister of the Interior and obtained permission to arm his men so that they could protect themselves. Masferrer stated it was untrue that he had a private army and that it is also untrue that he ever committed any personal atrocities, such as shooting helpless women and children." Any opponent of the Batista regime was fair game for Masferrer who operated a chain of gambling casinos and was the editor of two newspapers. On July 13, 1956, the State Department reported: "Masferrer is a powerfully-built man of 39, who has the reputation as a gangster and a killer. He was a Communist in his student days and fought for the loyalist cause in Spain, but now professes anti-Communism with a vengeance. He has a private band of 80 armed men who served as a sort of personal bodyguard and stand by to act as hatchet men if violence is called for. Enjoying President Batista's confidence, Masferrer and his little army represent a potential force of some importance. He is known to have killed certain enemies and to have scared the wits out of others. In 1950, for instance, he was found by the police, machine gun in hand, over two frightened men who were actually digging their own graves. The men were saved but Masferrer was not arrested; he had congressional immunity; he was a representative at the time." In August 1958 the FBI reported that Rolando Masferrer and Marcos Jimenez Perez, the exiled President of Venezuela, had become close associates. Rolando Masferrer told Marcos Jimenez Perez that he was "planning to take over the Cuban Government when Batista fell."
(snip/)

http://www.ajweberman.com/nodules/nodule0.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Found this also, which may be useful:

The Kennedys cracked down harder. The anti-Castro groups intensified their raids. In May, Masferrer's men raided a Cuban militia camp near Havana. American right-wing groups, angered by the Kennedy crack-down, threw their support behind the raiders. Miro Cardona resigned as head of the CRC, declaring Kennedy a Russian-led traitor against Second Naval Guerrilla. Mario Garcia Kohly, the former Cuban businessman, picked by conservatives in Eisenhower's administration (like Nixon), to replace Castro, united the anti-Castro leaders, including former Cuban president Carlos Prio Socarras, Masferrer's group in Miami (who merged with Alpha 66 and 30th of November), and David Ferrie's Lake Pontchartrain group in Louisiana. The assassination teams were chosen from these groups, according to Morrow, to shoot Kennedy. Meanwhile, Trafficante had Masferrer set up a phony CIA team to kill Castro, making sure they would be caught, provoking anti-Kennedy statements from Cuba's leaders. He arranged for a Cuban lawyer, Carlos Garcia Bongo (subject of missing HSCA pages) to leak the plot to Castro. Concurrently, the CIA had Rolando Cubela and Manuel Artime begin the real AM/LASH plot against Castro. Finally, it was Masferrer, according to Morrow, who coordinated the plan to give Ferrie's old Civil Air Patrol cadet, Lee Oswald, a high profile as the lone Castro-affiliated gunman.571

Peter Dale Scott notes that, "Whatever their shortcomings, the FBI and the Warren Commission between them meticulously demolished the prima facie case that Oswald and Ruby were agents of Castro and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee."572

Perhaps it was his failure to blame the assassination on Castro that Masferrer was killed in a car bombing in 1975 for his "systematic work in the destruction of the anti-Communist struggle." Thirty years later the exiles still sit in Florida and wait to return to Cuba. There is one other connection to Nixon: Masferrer's nephew, Rolandito, had been employed with SNG veteran Gerry Hemming at Parabellum, a subsidiary of gunrunner Mitchell WerBell's arms manufacturing company headed by Anselmo Alliegro, Jr., "an heir to the shadowy Anson millions."573
(snip)

http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:0IvlxE3BZfQJ:www.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/17th_Issue/rambler4.html+Rolando+Masferrer+nephew&hl=en

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here's a mugshot taken when he stole the car of a husband of a woman he was seeing. This would tell you he was strange!





http://cuban-exile.com/doc_076-100/doc0085.html

[Name removed]

39. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[peacetalksforall]

43. The part about the two Cubans meeting in Paris in Sep or Oct of '63

was interesting (to me) since I've thought the theories about the the trigger men being French gangsters intrigueing.

[Minstrel Boy]

56. Here's a good source: transcripts of the 1995 conference between

Cuban officials and JFK historians:
http://cuban-exile.com/doc_026-050/doc0027.html

?____________: There is the second thing we know about Phillips that is even bigger, more obvious, and that is that Phillips had been in charge of this information about the assassination since it happened and if there is a single key to this disinformation it is to blame the assassination on Cuba. And it seems to me that we should talk primarily about this and only in this context come back to the Veciana story. I would like to make two observations. One is that at the time that the Maurice Bishop story began, Phillips had caught the public eye and therefore Phillips in a sense had a reason to start creating disinformation about himself and his own role. Another point which I think is relevant, is that at a certain point and I (?) to know better than me, is that Veciana was shot through the head. It is important what year that was. It was in 1973. July 1973. I spoke to him myself by telephone, not long after this. And he said to me, "I know who you are. I would be... it would be interesting to talk to you but consider this, I have just been shot through the head."

ALL: (laughter)

?____________: And there is a point there.

Escalante: That's a very strong point. Would you offer to be shot through the head?
http://cuban-exile.com/doc_026-050/doc0027-3.html

[Minstrel Boy]

58. kick for an interesting thread n/t

[Trailrider1951]

70. Another interesting fact:

Both the states of Texas and Florida figure prominently in this bit of history. Things that make you go "Hmmmmmmm".