The Last Investigation: What Insiders Know about the Assassination of JFK | Part 3 #audiobook

Eight boozy revelations in Powder Springs aside from specific requests to check out certain leads Senator schwier gave me no investigative ground rules to follow he wanted an investigator who wasn’t Bound by the parameters of the church committee’s mandate or under the pressures of its deadline because he had

Uncovered the facts about the CIA withholding information about Castro assassination plots from the Warren Commission schwier had early leaned toward a Castro retaliation theory of the Kennedy murder his subcommittee staff on a deadline and stuck in Washington with only the file records and testimony to rely on was structuring

Its report along the same Theory yet as I discovered information which took me in another Direction schwier encouraged me to pursue the evidence wherever it led in Miami my attention was first drawn to a diverse collection of individuals who once had or still did did have an association with the CIA and

Anti-castro activity most had the means motivation and opportunity to be considered suspects in the Kennedy assassination they all denied having any connection with the assassination although a few admitted they would have like to have killed to use their remarkably similar phrase that traitor such honesty however never allayed my

Suspicions it was amazing how as soon as word of my new job had gotten around the WR circles in Miami offers of help and sources of information began rushing in calling me regularly were independent researchers journalists private investigators and individuals whose means of support I could never figure

Out there were whispered meetings with Anonymous informants in the backs of dark bars in Little Havana there were meetings in parks along biscan Bay the telephone often rang in the middle of the night and a Spanish accented voice would tip me off about the strange behavior of a certain individual in November of

1963 my files began to grow with hundreds of names and my mind spun with the attempt to keep track of information involving scores of Interlink Cuban groups slowly too I began recognizing that some of the names coming to me some of the sources of information contacting

Me were the same as those I had come across in the Warren Commission files and the stacks of FBI reports they were names which had popped up immediately after the Kennedy assassination and now strangely enough here they were again after all these years one of them was a

Cocky Bantam of a man named Mitchell Livingston wbel III as a footnote Mitch werbell and other figures from the Heyday of anti-castro activity were later profiled in Greater detail in Warren Hinkle and Bill Turner’s deadly Secrets Mitch werbell was an arms dealer who ran a farm outside of Atlanta that

Was really really a training camp for professional Killers including police and military types terrorists and anti-terrorists Soldiers of Fortune and mercenaries warbell May well have been the last of the two swashbucklers a Brad doio and delightfully entertaining fellow warbell was born in Philadelphia the son of a wealthy former zorst

Calvary officer my father dragged me all over the world he told me I was raised in some of the best bars in Europe when World War II came he wound up with the office of strategic Services oss the Forerunner of the CIA trained as a power trooper and a Guerilla Warfare expert he

Established himself as a stalwart secret agent and came out of the China Burma theater of operations a du’s paid life member of the old boys network of American secret intelligence the super spy fraternity that included Alan Dulles William Casey Richard Helms and E Howard hunt among others they don’t come more colorful

Than Mitch wbel seemingly eccentric he was in his day a Blasphemous often boozy and Always rockus Bon Von with a Sly sense of humor he wore a handlebar mustache from time to time screwed a monacle in his eye and called himself Prince Eric stough he boastfully dubbed himself Mitch I after his multiple

Invocations of that Constitutional Amendment before a senate investigation subcommittee which was questioning him about his business relationship with Robert vesco what Drew my interest to wbel was neither his color nor his wit it was his business his background and his associates it appeared that Jack groy was involved in arms dealing and

Smuggling so was Mitch wbel a passionate anti-communist wbel had run a series of weapons manufacturing and marketing firms principally military Armament Corporation in its washington-based parent Quantum ordinance Bankers which supplied countries and select revolutionary groups around around the world with Advanced Weaponry including the Ingram M11 a handheld quiet machine

Gun warbell had been called a creative genius for his designs of noise suppressors for automatic weapons and for other silent kill devices he is also been termed the principal supplier of the cia’s most sophisticated weapons early in my investigation for Senator schwier I had a long all day liquor sipping session with Mitch

Werbell in the gun fill Den on his farm in Powder Springs Georgia between sips he denied an association with the CIA I’ve always cooperated very closely he said but I’ve never allowed them to pay me one godamn dime I don’t need it nevertheless down through the years wbel has popped up with uncanny

Consistency in operations which have had the imprimer of the CIA either overtly or ctly he was all over Miami working with anti-castro activists at the height of Kennedy’s secret War war against Cuba he was in Guatemala when assassination teams swept through that country to bolster the reign of the military he was

In the Dominican Republic when the United States moved in to quash the Communist threat in Venezuela Uruguay Chile Greece Cambodia Thailand and Vietnam warbell always seemed to be passing through the most opportune and exciting moments my prolific journalistic colleague the aforementioned Andrew St George had taken a special interest in

Mitch warbell over the years and had cultivated a strange and unique relationship with the chesty little guy St George has written a number of magazine articles about warbell all very well done politically insightful and perilously revealing yet most of them are buried in Publications with very little credible impact pulp Adventure or

Girly magazines risky Revelation is the last thing that warbell should have desired yet the close relationship between subject and journalist remained intact in until wbal’s death in 1983 St George remained a frequent guest at the farm once however wbel became extremely upset at a St George article in Esquire which revealed wbal’s plans

To F A couet on the bamian island of Abaco in order to establish his own tax-free country but it wasn’t that Revelation which most bothered The Feisty arms dealer it was the accompanying photo of warbell attending to a shapely bikini clad blonde la on a sha Lounge warbell told me that photo

Almost wrecked his marriage St George’s fascination with warbell relates to among other things his concept of worb bel’s role in history sometime in the early 50s St George points out assassination became an instrument of US national policy it also became an important branch of our invisible government a sizable business

And a separate technology involving weapons and devices the ordinary taxpayer paid billions for but was never permitted to see except perhaps in the Technicolor fantasies of James Bond Flex thanks to the complicated technology of his silent kill weapons Mitch wbel was Central to the development of the talent with the

Capability to employ those weapons out of that Talent came the Special Teams concept special teams are assassination teams it was the special team concept that the CIA used within its own bureaucratic structure select individual uals were stitched together into a tight top secret Network outside their normal

Chain of command to plan the Castro assassination attempts but the first utilization of that concept had come in 1954 when according to St George a deep cover CIA team went off to Hanoi under Lieutenant Colonel Lucian conin one of wb’s closest lifelong friends the coning Mission codenamed Blackhawk was to

Harass and decimate the new communist rulers in North Vietnam its orders included the elimination of Viet cadres subsequently similar missions multiplied as CIA clandestine Services sent out special teams with the authority to kill whenever circumstances warranted there were among others the Whit star training mission in La operation loadstone in Northern Thailand

And study project Minimax in certain disaffected ethnic regions of Indonesia then in the early 60s with the cia’s employment of the hard-bitten hill tribesmen of North Burma LA and southwestern China as deep penetration and longrange reconnaissance teams into red China came large-scale top secret us intelligence operations involving unlimited license to

Kill Mitch wb’s business did very well in those days and Tai King fumon personally handcarved a tiny Rosewood Buddha for him besides his General association with assassination operations there were other reasons why wbel would interest an investigator probing the Kennedy murder including his relationship with a few

Individuals who had popped up in the FBI’s original investigation there was Jerry Patrick Heming for instance the ex-marine deeply involved in anti-castro activity who later claimed he had contact with Lee Harvey Oswald in both California and Miami Heming was among those arrested at a training camp in the Florida Keys and

After Kennedy’s Cuban Missile deal with kushev he also worked as a weapon salesman for Mitch warbell then there was wb’s Buddy Lucian conin whom he had known since his OSS days you’ve got to start with the premise that L conin is crazy said one of his former CIA bosses once crazy

Enough to always survive a beefy scarred gnarled old Grizzly of a man conine left Kansas City when he was 17 to join the French Foreign Legion in 1941 in France he switched to the OSS and lived and fought with a notorious corsac Brotherhood which was then part of the resistance later the Brotherhood

Became deeply involved in the drug trade and was considered much more effective and dangerous than its Sicilian counterpart the mafia moving on to the Far East conin was part of an OSS team parachuted into Vietnam to fight the Japanese alongside the vietman he then fought against the vietman with the Blackhawk operation

Helped no dim consolidate his power in South Vietnam and then in a policy turnaround was the cia’s liaison with the cabal of generals who murdered Jim it was Conan’s involvement with this last coup which led another old OSS cohort e Howard hunt to give him a call

Several weeks later hunt by then was working in the Nixon White House besides wanting Cony to release a group of phony telegrams which would have squarely blamed President Kennedy for the DM assassination Nixon then considered Edward Kennedy his prime political foe he wanted coning to run what was ostensibly the White House

War against the international drug trade Conan got involved in a series of sensitive operations with hunt some of which according to a later report in the Washington Post appear to have stretched so far over the boundaries of legality that they were undertaken in total secrecy one of these part of the program

Called gemstone was Operation Diamond a large organization which Bernard Barker was putting together for hunt in Miami Barker reportedly recruited some 200 former CIA Cuban agents and organized them into specialized groups for future operations among these were intelligence and counterintelligence units known as action teams the old CIA term for units

With paramilitary skills including assassination then in November 1973 coning got moved out of the White House though not out out from under White House command to become chief of Special Operations For The Drug Enforcement Administration he was to be part of Nixon’s highly publicized Nationwide police campaign led by White House

Enforcers with special powers to combat drug abuse it has been suggested that Nixon’s anti-drug campaign was in actuality a bid to establish his own intelligence Network it has also been suggested that it was exactly that bid which brought the sucker setup that was water gate and Nixon’s political assassination assassination of course is

The buzzword it struck me early on in my investigation of Kennedy’s murder how certain individuals who drew my attention for other reasons were turn out to have some association with assassination operations in their past more significantly many of the individuals were connected with others who also Drew my attention the

Multiplicity of coincidences never failed to surprise me for inance my attention was drawn to Lucian conin when I discovered his relationship with e Howard hunt who had attracted my interest because of his activities with Miami’s anti-castro Cubans when I first learned of con’s OSS background I wondered if he had crossed paths

Somewhere along the way with Mitch wbel their paths as it turned out were interlocked when Conan set up his Special Operations Branch of the DEA he recruited at least a dozen field operatives from the CIA and set them up in a safe house an office suite in the

Laau building on Connecticut Avenue in Washington the reason for operating outside of DEA headquarters was because the branch was developing a very special plan which included assassinating the key drug suppliers in Mexico the question had been raised by syndicated columnist Jack Anderson among others of whether or not the White House plumbers

Group was at some point developing an assassination capability not as a foreign policy weapon but for domestic political reasons Anderson claimed that a contract was put out on him at one time at any rate the Connecticut Avenue office was funded not by the DEA but by the

CIA Mitch wbel has admitted that he was in business there with two former CIA men manufacturing Ultra sophisticated assassination devices so there was much to discuss or try to in my meeting with Mitch wbel that long Georgia day in his gun fill Den although it turned out to be a

Verbal o doé with a drunk or a man who acted drunk by the time I got to him warbell was coming off a long bout with the booze the result of being caught Between the pressures of a few Congressional investigating committees probing his intelligence arms and Drug connections and the even tougher squeeze

By the federal agencies he worked for who wanted him to keep his mouth shut so although we spent several hours talking warbell was determined to dance drunkenly around my key areas of Interest there’s a hell of a lot I ain’t said yet he blathered at one point and

There’s a hell of a lot I ain’t going to say yet at times he claimed loss of memory I’ve been in so many places so many countries so many revolutions it’s beginning to get all mixed up in my mind yet the transcript of the tape I made during that session with wbel

Reveals despite the staccato verbal ellipses he drunkenly affected some interesting responses he admitted his involvement with some caster assassination attempts I was sitting in Miami with a godamn million dollars in cash for the guy who was going to take Fidel out but he disclaimed any knowledge of the Kennedy

Murder now I didn’t like Jack Kennedy he said I thought he was a to begin with but I was certain not to be involved in the assassination of an American president for Christ’s sake warbell also denied any gun smuggling or business dealings with Jack Ruby but half admitted a

Contact first he said he had no connection then added and the reason we didn’t I think we may have had an incoming but we don’t play with people like that I mean it’s as simple as that this guy Ruby he called I didn’t know who the hell he was but that was years

Ago warbell then lapsed into a drunken Mumble later when I was with the house assassinations committee I thought it might be fruitful if the committee with its subpoena power and power to Grand immunity had called warbell for formal questioning but Mitchell Livingston wbel III was just one of the characters who

Didn’t fit into the game plan nine a funny kind of guy another person who early on in my investigation popped up as a result of his intelligence connections was Frank Fiorini Sturgis one of ehard hunts cohorts in the Watergate burglary of all the characters I’ve met in my reporting and inv investigating

Career sturis is one of the most intriguing and that’s saying a lot Sturgis seems to be an easy guy to get to know he’s outspoken talkative bluntly candid usually quite visible in fact he frequently injects himself into the public Spotlight at the latest check he’s still very much involved in

Anti-castro activity with the dwindling number of militant Cubans remaining in Miami I spent a lot of time with Frank Sturgis but I haven’t figured him out yet the names of both e Howard hunt and Frank Sturgis had been prominently in the news in connection with the Kennedy assassination long before I joined

Senator scher’s investigation a small group of assassination researchers had contended that two of the three men in certain photographs taken in D Plaza on November 22nd 1963 bore striking resemblances to hunt and Sturgis the men were reportedly derelicts or tramps as the Press came to call them and were discovered in a box

Car in the railroad yard behind the grassy null above Dy Plaza the house assassinations committee would later conduct extensive accoustics test which indicated that at least four shots had been fired one from the null area while being taken to Police Headquarters the tramps were escorted across D plaza where news photographers

Took several pictures of them police later released the tramps and for years no records of their identities were found because of the publicity generated by the researchers the contention that two of the tramps were Sturgis and Hunt was examined by the Rockefeller Commission in early 1975 President Ford had appointed the

Commission that January to probe possible illegal CIA activities within the United States the Rockefeller commission relied on comparative photo analysis performed by the same FBI expert who did all the Warren commission’s analysis and then concluded that the men in the photographs were not Sturgis and Hunt about the time schwier began his

Investigation a book was published which raised the contention again titled cou d’a in America and written by Michael Canfield and Alan J weberman with a forward by Texas Congressman Henry B Gonzalez the book Incorporated a novel device it came with positive transparencies of Sturgis and Hunt

Designed to be overlaid on photos of the tramps superimposed the images did indeed bear striking similarities I would later discover however from my experience with the house assassinations committee that the science of photo comparison and Analysis is an exceptionally inconclusive technique the assassinations committee wound up spending

$83,500 on it and came up with results which in some instances are totally worthless in the assassinations committee’s investigation not only were photographs of Sturgis and Hunt submitted to a panel of experts for analysis and comparison photos of others who might be one of the tramps were examined as well the panel concluded

That Sturgis and Hunt were not the individuals in the photographs it did say however that the who resembled hunt could very well be a fellow named Fred Lee Chrisman a right-wing activist implicated in the Kennedy assassination during the Garrison investigation in New Orleans when those results came in investigators

Were frantically sent out to track down chrisman’s whereabouts on November 22nd 1963 he had since died they came back with official records and eyewitness affidavit saying Chrisman was on the west coast teaching school the day Kennedy was assassinated so much for the conclusiveness of photo analysis what was particularly

Interesting however was the panel’s conclusions in its comparison of photos of Frank Sturgis with those of the tramps it used two basic comparative techniques one metric traits was a comparison of the measurements of six facial features and their metric relationships the other morphological differences was simply whether or not

Various facial features were shaped the same the panel concluded that the average deviation between One tramp’s features and sturgis’s was low enough to make it impossible to rule out Sturgis on the basis of metric traits alone however the panel said the morphological differences indicated that Sturgis was not the in other words

Sturgis just didn’t look like the the hair and hairline were different it said and so were the nose the chin and the degree of ear projection the assassinations committee staffer in charge of organizing the photo panel’s work was an exceptionally competent research attorney named Jane Downey who was a good detailed person

One day she came to me and asked me to help gather some of the photographs which would be sent to the panel I asked her to find out whether or not the experts would take into consideration the possibility that the tramps might be wearing sophisticated ated disguises that in fact was likely if

They weren’t just Drifters in the wrong place at the wrong time as a member of the White House plumbers e Howard hunt had obtained disguises from the cia’s technical services Bureau and used them on more than one job Downey promised she would ask the photo analysts about the use of

Disguises several days later Downey told me she had checked with the photo analyst I’m told there’s no way they can tell if disguises were used she said I was surprised in other words I said if the tramps were in Disguise there would be no way the analyst could tell who they really

Are that’s what I’m told said Downey then why do a photo comparison at all I asked Downey just shrugged your shoulders well I said I hope that point is mentioned in the final report I’m sure it will be said Downey nowhere in the house committee’s final report nor in the appendix volume

Dealing with the photographic evidence is that fact mentioned in my own mind I’ve never resolved the question of whether or not Frank Sturgis looked like one of the tramps in D Plaza there are a couple of photos which have strong similarities others with few the same could be said of the hunt

Comparison my initial interest in both men however was not predicated on whether or not they were the Del Plaza tramps when the Rockefeller commission issued its conclusion that Sturgis and Hunt were not in Dallas on November 27 in 1963 it raised more questions than it resolved at the time I didn’t realize

How suspicious I should have been about the commission’s report in general it was later revealed that then vice president Nelson Rockefeller really didn’t want the CIA to air all its dirty linen and at one point quietly called in director William Colby and urged him not to tell all Rockefeller it turned out

Had earlier been a member of the White House’s operations Coordinating Board which had cleared some of the illegal CIA activity the commission was investigating although the Rockefeller commission report claimed that Sturgis and Hunt seemed to have legitimate aliis for their whereabouts on November 22nd 1963 It ultimately concluded it cannot

Be determined with certainty where hunt and Sturgis actually were on the day of the assassination Frank Sturgis absolutely knows where he was on the day after the Kennedy assassination he says the FBI found him at his home in Miami I had FBI agents all over my house he said they

Told me I was one person they felt had the capabilities to do it they said Frank if there’s anybody capable of killing the president of the United States you’re the guy that can do it I spent a lot of time with Frank Sturgis especially during the schwier

Investigation he had not been long out of prison from his Watergate sentence when we first met and I spent an evening at his home afterwards we were in contact often sometimes he would call and we would chat for hours frequently we met at a snack shop or hotel coffee

Shop he was always very direct very outspoken and I believe a lot more polished and sophisticated than the obscenity prone rough un and undereducated character he sometimes projects in talking about people he knows he often refers to someone as his close friend but no one really gets close to Frank Sturgis

He was then in his early 50s and tending toward obesity a far cry from the muscular figure he once was Sturgis has led a thousand lives maybe more he was born Frank Angelo Fiorini in Norfork Virginia but his parents separated when he was an infant and he grew up with his

Mother’s family in Philadelphia’s German Town he would later change his name to his stepfather’s Frank Anthony Sturgis when his mother remarried Howard hunt gave the name of Sturgis to the main character in one of his many pulp novels Frank Sturgis turned 17 2 days after Japan bomb Pearl Harbor and he

Immediately dropped out of high school to join the Marines he was shipped out to the Pacific jungles where he volunteered for the toughest unit in the Marines the first Raider Battalion the legendary edson’s Raiders he learned how to kill silently with his bare hands he infiltrated enemy encampments sosed

Through amphibious Landings and was aird dropped on Commando raids guadal Canal iima okanawa three serious combat wounds malaria jaundice and in the end exhaustion and possible psychon neurosis and a stay at the Sun Valley Naval Medical Center before his discharge in 1945 after the war Sturgis was a plain

Closed cop with the Norfolk Police a part-time student at William and Mary College and manager of a few bars he trained as a radio gunner in the naval reserves crewed as a merchant Seaman and did a 2-year stint with the US Army in Germany where he served with the Armed

Forces Security Agency was married widowed remarried divorced and married again Sturgis claims he got involved in Cuban activities in the early 50s when he came to Miami to visit an uncle who was married to a Cuban that’s how he got friendly with exiled former Cuban president Carlos prio he says prio was a

Multi-millionaire who at the time was funding Mountain Rebel Fidel Castro’s Guerilla war against General Batista as a footnote prio would later be convicted of arm smuggling with a Texon named Robert mccuan after the Kennedy assassination mckuin told the FBI that he was approached by Jack Ruby about a deal to sell military equipment

To Castro a week before I had scheduled a call to prio for an interview he went to the side of his Miami Beach home sat on a Shaz outside the garage and shot himself in the heart the news newspapers reported he had financial problems it was through prio Sturgis

Told me that he was infiltrated into Cuba to join Castro in the mountains soon he was a trusted Aid an emissary for Castro on arms deals all over the United States in Latin America a daring pilot who flew loads of weapons into dangerous mountain airst strips he became friendly with another Daredevil

Pilot Pedro Diaz Lans and when After the Revolution Castro appointed a Lan’s chief of the Rebel Air Force Sturgis was named the Air Force’s director of security 9 months after Castro took power Diaz Lon and Sturgis publicly decreed Castro’s communism and fled to Miami a month later they were dropping propaganda leaflets over

Havana Frank Sturgis says he was never an official paid agent of the Central Intelligence Agency and the CIA has confirmed that Proclamation yet sturis while he could not remember the first first name of his first wife in his testimony before the house assassinations committee recalled that

It was a Friday in 1958 in Santiago Cuba that he made his first contact with the CIA agent while he was still fighting with Castro then during the Bay of Pigs and during the Heyday of the CIA secret war against Castro Sturgis used equipment flew planes and directed assault craft

Which were paid for by the agency he has admitted that the B25 he flew on his first leaflet drop was later repaired with $10,000 which came from E Howard hunt then one of the cia’s local pay masters it was sturgis’s relationship with hunt that had early drawn my attention during my Kennedy assassination

Investigation however both men testified under oath to the Rockefeller commission that they first met just prior to the Watergate keeper hunt said in 1972 Sturgis said in late 71 or early 72 but that seemed strange in view of their deep involvement in Miami’s anti-castro activities in the early 60s Sturgis

Claimed that although he had known of Eduardo all his CIA contacts and funding came through Hunt’s assistant Bernard Barker there’s a lot of circumstantial evidence which contradicts that contention Sturgis admitted he worked closely with the cia’s top Cuban leader Manuel artim and I have spoken with Witnesses who often saw them together in

Little Havana team was very close to and in frequent contact with CIA liaison hunt in give us this day hunt himself claims his attention was drawn to the daring leaflet drop of Pedro Diaz Lans and he quickly made arrangements to meet with the counterrevolutionary hero hunt however writes nothing of Diaz lon’s

Co-pilot and constant companion a few years before the Rockefeller Commission in October 1972 while Sturgis was awaiting his water gate sentence Andrew St George interviewed him in his Miami home it was before the photos were publicized before the cries for another Kennedy assassination investigation began to Peak before the Rockefeller commission

Was formed St George was an old friend from the days with Castro in the mountains and Sturgis was glad to see the gregarious Hungarian he was still stung by his setup at Watergate and the black headlines which made him appear an inept and bungling burglar and according to to

St George he blurted out the real story behind the break-in a few months later St George visited Sturgis in Washington DC jail I will never leave this jail alive he says Sturgis told him if what we discussed about Watergate does not remain between us if you attempt to

Publish what I’ve told you I am a dead man in August 1974 St George published his interview with Sturgis in true magazine he quotes Sturgis as saying the Bay of Pigs hey it was one sweet mess I met Howard hunt that year he was the political officer

Of the Exile Brigade Bernard Barker was Hunt’s right-hand man his confidential clerk his body servant really that’s how I met Barker Sturgis today denies he ever said that and curses St George vehemently as I said my first interview with Frank Sturgis came not long after he was released from his Watergate

Sentence and he was keeping things relatively lowkey what particularly struck me about that interview was sturgis’s Archie bunker-like directness that night he talked diffusively chain smoking and drinking Coke Sturgis is a heavy smoker but never touches any kind of alcoholic beverage he spoke of his early days with Castro

His appointment by Castro at one point to oversee the gambling casinos before the mob was thrown out of Cuba and of his later anti-castro activities nor did he hesitate to admit his dis discussed with President Kennedy for his Cuban Missile deal with the Russians Sturgis you may recall was one

Of six Pilots given special warnings by the Federal Aviation Administration for making raids over Cuba at the time Kennedy was in the delicate negotiations Sturgis was also with Jerry Patrick Heming co-founder of the international anti-communist Brigade some of whose members were arrested in their paramilitary training site on

No-name key after the missile crisis Sturgis said he thought the Kennedy assassination was definitely a conspiracy he spoke of the possible motivations of the anti-castro groups that Oswald was a py and that the government agencies the FBI the Secret Service and the CIA were all involved in

A cover up he said he once refused to join the CIA even though it gave him an application because he thought it was infiltrated at its highest ranks with double agents possibly the same people who conspired to kill Kennedy he said his theory was that the assassination itself involved groups of agents in

Russia’s KGB Cuban intelligence and the CIA actually as Sturgis rambled on and around in circles there wasn’t a conspiracy theory he didn’t espouse by the end of the evening my head was reeling several months after that interview the schwier subcommittee report was released with the Castro retaliation Theory as its strong

Theme now apparently Sturgis knew which way to push the evening after the report was issued Sturgis telephoned he said he had just run into an old friend a guy with the company who had revived his mind about something he had completely forgot to tell me over the months we had been

In touch sturis now recalled an inside informant telling him about a meeting in Havana that occurred just about 2 months before the Kennedy assassination at the meeting were a number of high-ranking men including Castro his brother rul Ramiro Valdez the chief of Cuban intelligence Chay gavara and his secretary Tanya another Cuban

Officer an American known as El Mexicano and oh yeah Jack Ruby and the meeting dealt with plotting the assassination of John F Kennedy oh that’s what Sturgis had completely forgot to tell me just a bit of incidental information replete with details of the plotter names hey Frank I said I’m glad someone

Revived your mind about that incredible Frank Sturgis was out pushing Castro did it stories again and as highly unlikely as the story appeared it did have a sophisticated Edge and as Sturgis was quick to point out a hint of documentary evidence to back it up but

In fact sturgis’s story was a dressed up version of the one that first came up during the Warren Commission investigation the original story surfaced via a Miami Bay cased investigator named Al tarabochia a strong right- Wier who worked for the Senate internal security subcommittee taboo wrote a memo which somehow wound

Up with the Warren Commission that told about a Cuban Exile Source Who said he had received a letter from a relative in Cuba the letter contained the information that the Assassin of President Kennedy’s assassin had visited Cuba last year later I would track down the original writer of the letter in

Miami who would say that her information was given to her by someone she didn’t recall at any rate sturgis’s new hot tip of Ruby being in Cuba seemed to be based on a report that was untraceable in fact immediately after the Kennedy assassination Frank Sturgis was involved in other Hot Tips which

Also proved to be without Foundation One involved a reporter named James Buchanan who wrote an article for the pompo beach Sentinel quoting Sturgis as saying that Oswald had visited Miami in November 1962 to contact Miami based supporters of Fidel Castro the article also stated that while in Miami Oswald was in

Telephone contact with Cuban intelligence about that time another story began circulating which indicated that Oswald had demonstrated in Miami’s Bayfront Park with a group from the fair play for Cuba committee and had gotten in a fraus with Jerry Buchanan the brother of the reporter the FBI trade both stories

Found they were untrue and eventually contacted Frank Sturgis who denied he had anything to do with them the FBI reports wound up as Warren Commission documents one of those documents reveals that both James and Jerry Buchanan were officers in sturgis’s international anti-communist Brigade I was intrigued by the question

Of why Frank Sturgis had so early injected himself into the Kennedy assassination investigation I was intrigued as well by the character of the information he circulated imbued as it was with just the right amount of documented detail for instance there really was a fracus in Bayfront Park although Oswald was nowhere in

Sight there were however other moments which made me think I was taking Frank Sturgis much too seriously I recall one evening chatting with him on the telephone about someone I was checking into a fellow who had been described to me as one of the cia’s best trained cub

Operatives when I asked about him sturis talked for a while then said he had a friend who could tell me a lot more the friend I’ll call him Paul was an American who had spent seven years in Castro’s prisons charged with plotting to blow up a building that housed

Russian agents whom Castro visited regularly Paul had operated a small bar in Havana as a front was married to a Cuban who worked for the CIA and was deeply involved in Miami’s anti-castro activity Sturgis said he would like me to meet Paul but because Paul might

Refuse it had to be set up to appear as a chance encounter sturis said he would be having breakfast with Paul the next Saturday morning at The Westward Ho Restaurant in Little Havana and that I should just coincidentally stroll in he don’t know you’re going to be

There so when you get there I’ll just put him on a little bit said Sturgis we’re old friends I’ve known him for years it’ll be funny we kid each other a lot he’s a funny guy I spotted stur and his friend sitting at a back Booth as soon as I

Walked into the westward hoe Sturgis had his back to the door I strolled up beside him and slapped him on the shoulder hey Frank I greeted him trying to fake sudden recognition how you been how you been doing haven’t seen you around lately Sturgis looked up with a surprised yet blank

Expression hey I know you he said sure you do I said sitting down beside him sturis strained for a puzzled expression where do I know you from he pondered aloud Frank how can you forget I said continuing to play along now wait a minute don’t tell me

Said Sturgis I’ll think of it he cued his chin in his hand and dawned a look of deep reflection he appeared to be a terrible actor and I couldn’t keep a silly grin from crossing my face Paul just stared back and forth at us obviously wondering what the hell was

Going on I thought Sturgis would keep up the ACT forever pounding his farhead and mumbling a variety of concocted names oh I know I know I know he kept repeating in mock frustration but I’m drawing a blank wall I couldn’t restrain my laughter more at his display of Dramatics than at

Paul’s puzzlement finally I reached across the table and introduced myself by name to Paul he shook my hand and then turned to Sturgis well now do you remember who he is he asked Sturgis feigned a mild convulsion of embarrassed laughter oh sure sure he admitted I

Really do know who he is I was just putting you on oh Paul said with a smile on his face but obviously not getting the point of the charade gayon here Sturgis said still laughing is a friend of mine who is with the um what do you call it you know the government

Committee that’s looking into the assassination of John F Kennedy Paul didn’t miss a beat oh he said you mean the guy you killed sturis is face suddenly froze for a split second the smile was gone then he shook his head and smiled again oh yeah sure he said

Laughing I looked at Sturgis and started laughing also he was right Paul was a funny guy 10 high noon in New York a character like Frank Sturgis illustrates some of the dilemmas in invest instigating the Kennedy assassination he can’t be ignored he is by his own admission a prime suspect he

Had the ability and the motivation and he was associated with individuals in groups who considered and even employed assassination as a method to achieve their goals any investigation would have to devote some time and resources to Sturgis but there were other similar characters who injected themselves into the investigation and drained time and

Resources far beyond any valid Justice ification in some of those cases I thought I caught a glimpse of an intelligence connection and in one there was something more a force deliberately manipulating the investigation into turns so weird and wild I sometimes wondered if what I was doing was serious

Reality or if I had been lured into a carnival and thrown onto the loop the loop the self-proclaimed former Mistress of Fidel Castro Marita Loren was a spin-off of Frank Sturgis in more ways than one as a result of my discovering her during my investigation for Senator schwier she

Flashed into National notoriety and periodically reignited that flash for years afterwards she became front page news in the New York papers headlined Supermarket tabloids and hit most of the network TV celebrity shows including Good Morning America haraldo and a current affair Loren was a centerpiece of Mark Lan’s best-selling book plausible denial

And almost 18 years after our first encounter got herself a feature in of all places Vanity Fair she shot a celebrity status on the strength of her Revelation that she was unwittingly involved with the assassination team that killed President Kennedy strangely enough in my initial interview with her

She never mentioned a word about it but that interview did kick off a bizarre series of events that would track their way from the schwier subcommittee probe right through to the house assassinations committee investigation there it exploded into a drama that I now suspect was as well orchestrated as

Any successful comic Opera it consumed a lot of the committee’s time and resources and achieved its covert goal of discrediting a key witness Marita Loren herself and that in the end is what gives it significance a curvy blackhaired American Mahari is how New York daily news reporter Paul meskill described

Marita Loren’s in a six-part series called secrets of the CIA almost a year later a few months after I begun working for schwier and was beginning to spend time with Frank Sturgis I stumbled across Mill’s articles his series sparked at the time by the Rockefeller commission and church

Committee hearings on the CIA dealt mostly with the agy’s role in anti-castro activities and the action out of its Miami JM wave station at the height of the Kennedy secret War but Mesa had devoted an entire article each to Sturgis and Marita Loren he called Sturgis a bit player in the Watergate

Drama but a real life James Bond when he did his big jobs for the CIA and in fact it was through Sturgis that Mescal first learned of Loren Sturgis had casually mentioned that he helped Castro’s former mistress escape from Cuba but strangely enough could not remember her name later mcll recalled an

Article written in the early 60s in confidential the defunct Forerunner of Supermarket SLE sheets I may be the only guy in the world with a collection of old confidential magazines brags meskill Castro raped my teenage daughter had to be about the same girl Sturgis had mentioned Mescal

Figured he tracked Marita down and found her living on New York’s Upper East Side flashing his prodigious talent for lively tabloid writing mcel portrayed Marita Loren as as a quixotic seeker of Adventure and romance well at least an opportunist she was the vivacious 19-year-old daughter of an American

Mother and a German father who was Captain of the luxury liner Ms Berlin when it cruised into Havana Harbor in February 1959 one month after Fidel Castro came to power almost immediately after the Berlin dropped its anchor out came an official Cuban launch carrying the big barbuto himself along with a

Platoon of little Barb still in their rumpled Victory celebration fatigues dangling grenades and shoulder slung machine guns bejweled grands in evening gowns thinking they were being raided their minds flashing with visions of piratic atrocities screamed fainted or ran for cocktails their dinner jacketed husbands following suit well according to mescal’s colorful account

Anyway I am a friend Castro shouted waving in the manner of a non-hostile native I like Americans why Caster should shout that at a boatload of Germans mcll doesn’t explain Mescal then goes on to report Marita’s story about how Captain Heinrich Loren invites the welcoming party to stay for dinner and how while

Seated next to little Marita the fal eyed Fidel is Smitten by the time the baked Alaska comes around he offers her a job if she stays in Havana ever since he won the revolution his fan mail has picked up and he in dire need of a secretary my father and I both laughed

Marita recalled but he probably didn’t think it was funny no Captain Hinrich says little Marita must go back to Germany and finish her education Marita Smiles like a dutiful daughter but behind Daddy’s back slips Fidel a note with the address of her brother’s apartment in New York while

She’ll be staying for a while after the ship heads back a few weeks later a couple of Cuban officers knock on her brother’s door with a message from their lead leader Fidel’s backlog of mail is worse than he thought especially with letters from Germans who need to be answered in their

Mother tongue Fidel is desperate he needs her a Cubana Airlines plane is waiting to bring her back to Havana Marita does not suggest that Castro might solve his problems with a Kelly girl instead she hops on the plane I was very idealistic then she told mcll I was going on an adventure

And to my first job I was going to help the new government instead I became Castro’s play thing it wasn’t quite a life of luxury that she lived with Fidel in fact the bearded one was a bit of a slob and being permanently confined to Castro’s living and working quarters on the 24th

Floor of the Havana Hilton eventually became a drag to the teenager all I could do was read books study Spanish listen to the radio or go on the balcony and look out over Havana she told meskill she couldn’t even go shopping for clothes she said Castro outfitted her in fashionable olive green fatigues

And gave her a lieutenant star what more did a girl need then one night when she was with Castro and his bodyguards in the lobby of the Riviera Hotel a rugged wavy-haired fellow wearing a rebel uniform and the Insignia of a captain in the Cuban Air Force sidled up to her

When Castor wasn’t looking and whispered in English I know about you can you help me get out of here Marie asked yes I’m with the American Embassy said the stranger I’ll get you out and this as Mescal wrote was her introduction to commandant Frank Fiorini later known as Frank Sturgis Castro

Confident and hired agent for the US Central Intelligence Agency Sturgis eventually did get Loren out but not before turning her into a spy she began systematically Scavenging among the papers documents files and maps that cast P had strewn about his site and slipping them to Sturgis Frank said get all the data you

Can and I did I was a regular Mahari she told mcll unaware that she was writing his headline according to this story Loren became terribly sick one day and Sturgis arranged for two Cuban officers working with him to slip her out of the Hilton while Caster was away they put her on a

Flight to New York shortly afterwards Sturgis himself flew out of Cuba with Air Force chief Pedro Diaz Lans and set up a base of anti-castro operations in Miami the story then goes on to tell how in early 1960 when Loren recovered from her illness joined Sturgis in Florida

And volunteered for a mission that meant certain death if she was caught she told meskill the details of flying back to Havana in the guise of a tourist checking into a flea bag hotel to change into her old rebel uniform and having known Caster would be out of town

Slipping back up to his suite and Havana Hilton passing the desk was the main thing that bothered me because the desk clerks knew me I had changed my hairstyle nobody seemed to notice me I had a snub-nosed 38 caliber Detective Special clipped to the inside of my waistband once again she scavenged the

Suite and fled back to Miami with packs of files documents and Maps one of which had handdrawn circles marking areas miles away from any population Center Sturgis was waiting at the airport she didn’t know the worth of what she took but Sturgis later told her that the

United States government is very happy 3 years later Loren told mcll another government agent told her that the maps were the original groundwork plans for Soviet missile sites that Loren told Mescal at the time was her only Mission back to Havana she did talk about other anti-castro

Exploits out of Miami but said she was only on three quick boat trips delivering ing guns and supplies to anti-castro gorillas as dramatically as meskill portrayed Marita Loren’s exploits they weren’t especially Sensational or relevant in fact her story seemed quite plausible mcll had included enough documentation to give it legitimacy

Including a photograph of Marita with Fidel it was that aura of credibility that sparked my interest in one periodic Miami occurrence that Loren had described she said that when funds were needed for an anti- asro operation it came from a CIA man she knew only as

Eduardo Sturgis would meet him at a safe house from time to time to get cash years later mesco reported while reading about the Watergate break-in Marita saw a newspaper photo of former CIA man e Howard hunt and immediately recognized him as the elusive Eduardo she also recognized a picture of Sturgis

Whom she had known as Frank Fiorini Mescal hadn’t realized how important that Revelation was but I saw it as possibly confirming my suspicion of perjury by both hunt and Sturgis before the Rockefeller commission it also intensified the question of why both men would want to cover up the fact

That they were Close Associates in the early 60s if I could get a confirmation from Loren and arrange for her to give sworn testimony before Senator schwier subcommittee it might be used to put pressure on Hunt and Sturgis it might even be the first step toward finding

Out what they really knew about the Kennedy assassination I would later discover that the dominant characteristics in Marita lorenz’s life have been change and turmoil despite the fact that she was living in a luxury apartment when I first met her Loren and her 14-year-old daughter the illegitimate child of

Former Venezuelan president Marcos Perez Jimenez were collecting welfare from the state of New York Loren had met the wealthy ex dictator in Miami in 1961 2 years before he was arrested and deported reported to Spain maros said he wanted to meet me because he knew I was

Fidel’s girl she told me he chased me and I finally gave in years later on the Heraldo TV show she would claim Jimenez was an assignment from the CIA as a footnote a Miami FBI report dated October 1962 and labeled as an investigation into the white slave traffic act reveals another version of

Her first encounter with the ex dictator according according to the report Loren complained that she had been threatened by a Reuben Ruben Zito pratz as a result of an incident that had taken place in May 1961 she had been introduced to pratts by Pepe aosta a pimp who worked out of

Miami Beach’s Belair Hotel one of mobster Santos trafican Hangouts pratz had sent her to a party at a biscane Boulevard Apartment where she and a few other Latin girls as the FBI report described them were to entertain a Mr Diaz Loren claimed she left the party early

But according to the FBI report pratz demanded $75 from Loren stating he knew she received 100 Loren denied she received any money from Mr Diaz but did admit she later received a message from him asking her to visit him Mr Diaz turned out to be Perez Jimenez thereafter said the FBI report Loren

Became sexually involved with Perez Jimenez in 1970 Loren had married the manager of an apartment building near the United Nations since many of the units were rented to members of the Soviet and Soviet block un delegations the FBI recruited her husband as a paid informant according to his FBI contact

Marita herself volunteered going through the nightly trash in search of useful information she eventually split with her husband remarried and then took up with a mob enforcer who ins scon her in the Upper East Side Diggs unfortunately after setting her her up her parore was irregular in providing financial support

Probably due to the nature of his business however Marita had managed to survive over the years by being a paid informant for local and federal police agencies including the FBI US Customs and the DEA for Marita Loren life was lived on the edge when I first approached Loren I

Never mentioned my interest in the Kennedy assassination I was simply an investigator for Senator Scher of the church committee who was interested in the relationship between the anti-castro Cuban militants and the intelligence community at the time the church committee was getting a good deal of media attention with its revelation of

The cia’s attempts to kill Castro Loren was cooperative and apparently more candid with me than she had been with mcll she confirmed what she had told mcll about her relationship with Castro and showed me enough documentation including photographs that I believed her she said however the

Reason she left Castor was that she she had become pregnant and was forced to have an abortion originally she blamed Castro for the abortion but later decided it was arranged by his inner circle Loren confirmed her secret mission to Havana to steal the documents and maps from Castro’s Hilton Suite for

Sturgis but she also said she made a second trip later on this time to murder Castro Sturgis was involved but wasn’t the instigator the idea she said came from his close associate Alex Rook the story was that when Sturgis got Loren out of Cuba she wound up in New

York’s Roosevelt Hospital suffering from the effects of the sloppy abortion Alex roor showed up and befriended her he was a photographer journalist pilot rabid anti-communist former FBI employee and the wealthy son-in-law of Sherman Billingsley the celebrity owner of New York’s famous stor Club RoR also worked closely with Miami millionaire William

Paulie the ultra right winger who fronted and funded a number of agency operations as a footnote RoR would later disappear after a mysterious plane flight that arrived in Mexico City on the same day that Oswald reportedly arrived according to an FBI report roor and his co-pilot Jeffrey Sullivan had

Left Miami in a rented twin engine Beach Craft on September 24th 1963 headed for Honduras for a lobster hauling business deal that same day they arrived in marid Mex Mexico on September 27th RoR and Sullivan departed Marita and arrived in Mexico City where they remained for 4

Days on October 1st RoR and Sullivan flew back to Marita accompanied by a nervous person who appears eager to resume flight according to the FBI report the trio then departed for KMEL and upon arriving immediately took off again it is unclear whether the third person was still with RoR and Sullivan

When they left KML the last time but the plane was never seen again the rented beachcraft had been due back on September 28th an FBI report dated November 13th 1963 notes that two wealthy New York right Wingers financed R’s Venture which was meant to be a bombing mission to

Havana against President Kennedy’s dir of banning such raids after the Cuban Missile Crisis roor had already run one successful bombing mission on Havana on April 25th 1963 later in November the FAA and the CIA reported that the plane crashed in Cuba during Hurricane Flora however that hurricane didn’t

Arrive in Cuba until a week after RoR and Sullivan left KML I recently discovered a note to me written by committee researcher Patricia or after an FBI file check she reported that on October 24th 3 weeks after the beachcraft Disappeared a search party was organized by Frank sturgis’s cohort

Jerry Patrick Heming and fellow members of the international anti-communist Brigade the search party set out in a DC3 on October 31st and was ultimately unsuccessful Heming recently told me that RoR and Sullivan’s flight was part of a Castro assassination plan the third person on the plane said Heming was an

Anti-castro veteran named Molina who was to be infiltrated into CU to monitor Castro’s movements for the hit teams that were to come in later a report dated January AR 11th 1962 reveals that Miami police’s intelligence unit was notified by the Secret Service that a Raphael anelo Rodriguez Molin known as Raphael Molina

Was a suspect in a plan to assassinate John F Kennedy when he visited the family home in Palm Beach Molina said the report was to contact Armando Lopez Estrada a Miami Cuban later charged with smuggling guns and drugs while working for the CIA in the illegal Contra supply

Network according to Heming meetings to plan the Castro assassination were held aboard a Guatemalan warship in Dry Dock at Miami ship building the ship was to be used in recovering the hit teams after the assassination involvement of the Guatemalan government claims Heming meant the CIA had to have coordinated or even instigated the

Mission Loren said that Rook made the suggestion to kill Castro about two months after she returned to New York from her Havana trip for Sturgis they then flew to Miami where RoR and sturis put her up in a safe house and spent the next 3 weeks talking her into

Doing it Loren said it was early January 1960 when she returned to Havana with two poison capsules Sturges had given her afraid she would be searched at the airport she hid them in a jar of Cold Cream Loren said Castro obviously unaware that she had previously purloined his files welcomed her warmly

And asked her why she had run away she said she had missed her mother and her home after dinner when Castro fell asleep on the bed she went into the bathroom to retrieve the capsules and found they had melted into the cold cream she said that Sturgis was very

Upset when she returned to Miami and chastised her for putting the pills into the cold cream stupid stupid stupid he said it was an incredible story and sturis himself later claimed it was true but it was really of little importance to me in terms of the Kennedy assassination so I steered the

Conversation to her anti-castro activities with Sturgis in Miami eventually she confirmed the story about seeing Sturgis receive money from Eduardo she specifically recalled one incident when she was with a group of sturgis’s Pals heading down the Florida Keys to launch a gun running mission to Cuba she remembered it she said because

They were all hungry and as they passed the farms and ranches of South Florida the men in the car started kidding her about shooting a horse and eating it she said she got upset and shouted at them it was then that Sturgis said he had forgotten something and he immediately

Headed back to Miami we turned all the way around she said and went back to the little house where Eduardo had the money Loren said she saw Eduardo provide funds to the group at least three times Eduardo would come to the door and give Frank the

Money when I asked if she was certain that the man she saw was e Howard hunt she said she was very certain she had recognized him immediately when she saw his photo along with Bernard barers and sturgis’s in the newspapers when the Watergate story broke the day after I interviewed Loren

And New York I called her to reconfirm her statement that she had seen hunt and Sturgis together in the early 60s she did but as I was going over the details of that mission to the keys and the backtrack to get money it struck me that

I had neglected to ask her who was with her in Sturges on that mission her recollection seemed a little fuzzy there was me Frank Patrick Jerry Patrick Heming Alex RoR and there were two cars I don’t remember just those I mentioned maybe someone else could be one of the Cubans

Raphael deino or I’m not sure I think it was Raphael depino or Orlando Bosch I’m not sure why is it important no not really I told her I was just curious I didn’t realize how very important it would later become during our interview I asked Marita

Loren when was the last time she had been in contact with Frank Sturgis she said she had not seen him for more than a dozen years but she had spoken to him a couple of years before when she had seen his photo in the paper in connection with

Watergate she had been so shocked she had decided to give him a call at the federal prison in Danbury and he was surprised and delighted to hear from her he suggested she’d come to visit him she intended to but she told me she never did in fact she never got around to

Calling Sturgis again except for daily news reporter Paul mcll no one outside of Senator scher’s office knew I had interviewed Marita Loren but I would later learn that a few weeks after our interview Frank Sturgis just happened to get back in touch with her again just to say

Hello renew an old friendship he said soon he was visiting her in New York and involving her in spy games he had her dating an important Soviet un deleg and she even scored an Espionage coup for the FBI by coming away with a box of papers that included the Albanian

Intelligence code it was like old times I had thought I could convince the staff at the church Committee of the importance of marid Len in its probing of the cia’s off-the-book activities but it decided that since the CIA had truthfully confessed to all the agency’s assassination plots against Castro it

Didn’t need the Sturgis Loren’s poison pill attempt to muddy up up its report what most Disturbed me however was the staff’s lack of interest in pursuing the lead indicating that Sturgis and Hunt had possibly committed perjury in their sworn testimony before the Rockefeller commission one staff member candidly

Told me I don’t think perjury would scare either one of them maybe not but I didn’t think that was the point I thought it had something to do with upholding the law in the months that followed our interview Marita Loren called me intermittently you usually to ask what

Was going on in Washington and whether she was going to be called to testify I had to be non-committal because at the time I didn’t know but whenever she called she made it a point to bring up her old anti-castro Fighting days in Miami and to drop a few names guns and

Trafficante are we talking about the Belair Hotel I used to drive up to the back of the hotel and pick them up Frank arranged it and someone else who furnished money for guns was Elliot Roosevelt he lived on Delo or Star Island I forget which this went through

Irn Charles Carden The Cobbs fruit Fortune I used to live with him Roosevelt would give the money and Cardin would buy the guns in these conversations Loren kept inviting me to return to New York because she had since found boxes of material old notes and documents she had

Forgotten to tell me about on my visit she also always mentioned something about her concerns for her safety and the security of her children besides her teenage daughter Marita also had a four-year-old Son by a man she married after she and the apartment manager divorced the last thing she wanted she said was

Publicity about a week after one of these calls from Loren a huge photograph of a youthful Marita with Fidel Castro graced the front page of the New York daily news’s Sunday edition the story by Paul mcll was headlined CIA sent bed mate to kill Castro in

60 it was the poison pill story told in long and deafly melodramatic fashion mostly in Marita’s own words right up through the finding of the melted capsules it was like an omen I couldn’t just dump a glob of Cold Cream in his coffee so I shut the jar and went back

To the bedroom and watched him sleeping finally I lay down on the bed beside him I thought to hell with it let history take its course the story was picked up by most of the major newspapers around the country including the Miami Herald that brought the local television reporters

To Frank sturgis’s front door where he obligingly confirmed the episode in modest but colorful narrative he was damn proud of his attempts to kill Fidel when I called Marita she blamed Frank Sturgis for instigating the publicity it wasn’t my doing she told me the article started because of Frank

Talking Mescal called me and said you want me to write it my way or you going to talk with me I had to talk because Frank told everything anyway she said she was sorry she cooperated with Millow it’s getting out of hand she said I don’t want any more out because

I’m getting all sorts of threats but I can’t stop Frank because he knows too much about me I don’t know why he’s doing this at this point I’m afraid I could understand her concern I lived in Miami where bombings and assassinations in the Cuban Community were sparked by even the slightest rumor

Of a pro Castro lean Marita Loren had failed to kill Castro that would be enough to raise skeptical eyebrows among the old Brigade 2506 members sipping Cafe kubano at the sidewalk counters in Little Havana I thought of that when I heard the fear in Marita’s voice the next time

She called she was sobbing she had been beaten and threatened but it wasn’t by a Cuban it was by her mafiosi boyfriend he says he wants me to keep my mouth shut about trafficante if they call me to the church committee she said now she said she suspected that someone

Had broken into her apartment I had a box of Albanian codes that I had gotten when I was working with Frank and the bureau she said evidently someone took a few pieces of that code because I got a piece back with the message to keep my mouth

Shut Loren asked me if Senator schwier could do anything to protect her I just want to stay alive she said whatever the church committee’s interest in Loren schwier was concerned about the welfare of a potential witness whose importance hadn’t yet been determined he sent a letter to the attorney general

Asking the justice department to take whatever steps are available to ensure Ms Loren’s safety in order to avoid further endangering Loren with additional media attention I suggested to schwier that his letter be kept confidential he agreed a few days later Paul mcll pulled another big headline in The Daily News

Asks us guard spy in Castro death plot wrote meskill a member of the sen intelligence committee has requested justice department protection for Marita Loren the shapely spy who told the panel she had been recruited in 1960 by the CIA to kill her former lover Fidel Castro not only did mcll describe her as

An undercover agent for the CIA in the early 1960s he also revealed she had performed similar work for the FBI for about 15 years in fact the story noted in 1971 Loren had received a letter of commendation from the bureau’s New York office as far as spying goes I thought

Keeping secrets wasn’t one of Marita Loren’s strong suits I was beginning to doubt her claims that she didn’t want publicity and that she would be a reluctant witness if called to testify before the church committee still whatever her motivations now I still thought she was credible and based on

What could be checked out that her claim of being involved in anti-castro activities in Miami was valid and she remained a convincing Witness to the possibility that perjury was committed by E Howard hunt and Frank Sturgis Marita Loren remained in touch with me down through the months the

Church committee was wrapping up and the end of scher’s Investigation did I get in the report she would ask I don’t know yet but I don’t think so I would tell her that’s good she would say I don’t need the problems yet again I was getting the impression she wasn’t averse to getting

Herself into situations that might cause problem s she was still working with Sturgis and developing informant deals with the bureau the DEA and likely the CIA she told me she was beginning to travel to Miami regularly working with the US Customs Service and uncovering illegal arm sales I assumed she had a

Backlog of information from former lovers connected with the mob one of the Customs agents she was working with in Miami was a knowledgeable veteran named Steve zuus whom I had met while working for schwier zuus was a tough StreetWise fed who had been helpful to me maybe not the most

Sophisticated guy but I thought he was dedicated and level-headed enough to handle Marita after I first joined the house assassinations committee the calls from Marita Loren came more frequently she had by then learned that my primary interest was in the Kennedy assassination not in the cia’s anti-castro plots now she would tell

About new books and articles on the assassination as they appeared and inevitably she would probe me for information about her possible role in the investigation my lawyer called me yesterday and said I’m going to get subpoena she told me one night where did he get that he said he heard it over the

Up wires she said that’s why I’m calling you I moved and I want to give you my new address I couldn’t tell her how disorganized those early months of the house assassinations committee investigation were but I assured Loren no subpoena was being prepared for her then as the weeks went by and the

Committee’s direction became clear I knew Marita Loren wouldn’t fit into the game plan the information she had about Castro assassination plots and possible perjury by CIA agents was relevant to the Kennedy assassination as far as probing The agency’s credibility but the committee even early on appeared reluctant to press that I eventually

Told the Rens it was highly unlikely she would ever be subpoenaed her calls dropped to zilch in fact in the months that went by the only time her name popped up it came from an unlikely Source Jim Garrison whom I had met during the schwier investigation called and said he had

Just returned from a vacation at a spa in Arizona where he met a lawyer from New York who happened to be a deal packager and film promoter the conversation naturally came around to the Kennedy assassination and the lawyer mentioned he had a client who could put Frank Sturgis and Lee Harvey Oswald

Together his client’s name was Marita Loren Garrison said however that he subsequently learned the lawyer had a sleazy reputation and wouldn’t trust the information the guy gave him but nevertheless he thought I should know about it like Garrison I dismissed it as a wild tip I had known Marita Loren for

Almost a year and a half had spent dozens of hours talking with her and I didn’t remember her ever mentioning Oswald then several weeks later I was at the assassinations committee staff headquarters in Washington when someone came up from behind slapped me on the back and said you’re

Fired it was Jack Mor arti a former Washington DC homicide detective Mor AR’s handsome Irish countenance could have gotten him the stock part of the precinct cop in any Bing Crosby movie I thought he was one of the best investigators on the staff smart softspoken and Charming enough to ease a

Confession from a guilty Rock he was smiling when I turned around just kidding he said said but Mor arti had news that wasn’t a joke someone is trying to get you fired he said Who besides the Dozen people I could name off the top of my head I asked Marita Loren he

Said that wasn’t one of them then Mory already told me he had been asked to take a report from a customs agent named Steve zuus who had come to Washington at the orders of his Miami Chief to file a complaint with the assassinations committee about a member of its staff

Who wasad information to Frank Sturgis that information said zuus came from a customs informant named Marita Loren she claimed that Sturgis had shown her a classified government document which he said was given to him by a committee staff member named Fonzi as a result said zuus Loren Now

Does not trust the committee staffer and will no longer deal with him or as Mor AR’s report would later put it her concern is of sufficient magnitude to preclude further cont with Fonzi besides the complaint however zukus brought new information he thought the assassinations committee should have

Directly he said that the custom service had put Loren and her two children under protective custody in a Miami hotel for 2 months after she expressed fears that her life was in danger while there she admitted that she had been unwittingly involved in the plans to kill President

Kennedy she said she had driven from Miami to Dallas in two cars with a group of men including Frank Sturgis and Lee Harvey Oswald with high power rifles 2 days before the assassination she was ordered to fly back alone to Miami it sounded like an incredible story said zukus but there was some

Documentation during the time that Loren was voluntarily sequestered in Miami she filled 16 pages of a green notebook with the details of her involvement she subsequently gave him the notebook for safekeeping and he had it under lock and key in Miami I was stunned and then infuriated

It would take time and effort to deal with this development I felt Customs was allowing itself to be manipulated by an informant I deliberately doled it was more than 3 months before I put a response on the record I had no concern about the reactions of my bosses Chief

Investigator Cliff Fenton and chief Council Bob Blakey because I had documented all encounters with both Sturgis and Loren but in sending zakus to the committee it seemed to me that Marita wanted attention and wanted to be called to testify at the public hearings what was she trying to

Accomplish then there was the matter of the classified government document that Frank Sturgis said I had given him actually it was an unclassified memorandum written in 1964 by Al tabbaa an investigator with the Senate security committee then headed by Mississippi’s notorious Kami Hunter George Eastland the memorandum concerned a rumored visit

To Cuba by Jack Ruby as mentioned earlier Sturgis himself had also given me a story about a ruby visit to Cuba this one a detailed account of a meeting to plot Kennedy’s assassination a copy of tabach memorandum was in scher’s working files and one night sturis called me and asked

If he could have a copy saying he had tacha’s permission I called Troy gustofson in scher’s Office Troy got the okay from tabbaa and a copy of the memo was sent to Sturgis directly from scher’s office so much for the leak when I called Marita Loren she admitted that

Sturgis had shown her that tachia thing but denied she said it had come from me she also denied that she had ever told zucka she no longer trusted me or that she didn’t want to speak with me on the contrary she was delighted to hear from

Me I was down in Miami for a while and was looking for you she said I didn’t tell her I knew the Customs had picked up her tab for a couple of months and I didn’t mention anything about her reported trip to Dallas with Frank Sturgis and Lee Harvey Oswald neither did

She what I found fascinating however was that Sturgis was still in such close contact with her and how much she knew about his current activities she said for instance that Sturgis had recently called telling her he was doing something in Africa he was with some heavy people over there she told me some

Major and some wealthy people who are sponsoring his thing there raising an army to fight Castro’s Army in Angola stures also said he had been in Paris Switzerland and London in addition to Africa and that he had asked her to go to Europe to work with him he sent me a

First class roundtrip plane ticket on tww she said she discovered however that she couldn’t go because on her last trip to Madrid to see her daughter’s father General Jimenez she didn’t have the return Fair until she repaid the state department she couldn’t travel abroad after I spoke with Marita I

Called Steve zukas who confirmed she was behind his trip to Washington she had pressed him very hard he said I went up there just to get them to talk with her what I’d like to do is get rid of her story whether she’s got something concocted or not I’d just like to get

Rid of it and I’m sure my service would too I don’t know what’s going on it’s so far out of my field but the sooner she gets to Washington the happier I’ll be I tell you that however she gets there to that end said zukas he would

Turn over her green notebook in fact he was anxious to get rid of it he just wanted to get back to catching simple tricky smugglers in reviewing her notebook I discovered that Marita Loren has very nice handwriting very legible and graced with a modest flare in case of my death

Or injury or the death of any of my family she began I Alona Marita Loren born 81 1839 in Breman Germany want Mr Steve zukus of Miami Florida to hand this letter over to the proper people or committee she wrote 16 pages of narrative only five of which actually dealt with the Kennedy

Assassination after the extradition of my daughter’s father General Marcos Perez IM menz I felt lost and drifted back to my old Associates Frank Fiorini Sturgis and his followers the international anti-communist Brigade Miami Florida I owe Frank Fiorini and Alex RoR New York City my life Cuba 1959 after my close personal involvement with

Dr Fidel Castro ruse I was active in Miami towards the end of 1959 became a member of the international anti-communist Brigade and took a Blood Oath to join Frank Fiori’s secret assassination group in early 1960 Marita briefly mentions the pois in capsule Caper with Sturgis attributing the scheme to higher authorities I

Firmly believed Frank F to be a member of the CIA but admits her heart wasn’t in it it is not in my makeup to take the life of another human being deliberately she uses most of narrative however to vent anger over what she claims was an attorney scheme to cheat

Her out of the trust fund set up for her and her daughter by General Jimenez before he was arrested and extradited in August of 1963 she also puts a bit of Suspicion on the general himself the general often personally said he would like to eliminate kill both of the Kennedy

Brothers although it’s segmented because of the General’s intermittent role in The Narrative here’s what Marita wrote about the Kennedy assassination a month or so prior to November 22nd 1963 I joined Frank Fiorini Azie Lee others Cubans in our group and drove in two cars to the home

Of Orlando Bosch it wasn’t unusual for Frank ferini to study maps in the in the past often we studied waterways Tides currents islands in the Bahamas where I was to navigate stolen crafts Laden with arms to a certain destination later to be picked up by others this certain highly secret

Meeting in Bosch’s home was to discuss certain streets in Dallas Texas I was under the impression we were to take another Armory I paid little attention and thought more of how I would start life again with my baby there was talk of a highly powerful rifle the discussions of feet building timings

Contacts silence Etc another car with four men waited outside the windows were closed tightly a fan was put on Mrs Bosch served Cuban Cafe and a child was told to leave the room I was rather disinterested bored worried and disgusted and felt I had outgrown the Cuban scene my thoughts

Were of Marcos Venezuela my baby girl and the extradition the word Kennedy spoken by Frank to Bosch made me say what about him all eyes were on me studying me when Azie started a dispute with Frank and Bosch about my presence I then told Frank who needs this hostile slimy bastard I

Wanted to leave when Frank spoke to all the men on my behalf after a major digression into her legal battle for the trust funds The Narrative flows on going back now to the flare up in Bosch’s home and this secret meeting with a street map of Dallas Texas on the

Table I had my mind on other things and I wanted to talk to Frank Fiorini about starting a search party to look for Alex roor who was missing in Bosch’s house that Eve I called Azie a chivato to Frank and when Azie challenged me I asked him how did

You know the meaning of that word it was Fidel’s favorite word for informant traitor he said he heard it in Cuba this meeting seemed more secretive as Frank and the others spoke in Whispers sometime in November 1963 still associating with Frank ferini and feeling lost hiding from the Press I

Told Frank sure I’ll go with him and the others and two cars to Dallas I was under the impression we would take an Armory as we had done before and which was the reason for the prior secret meeting at bosa’s home I left my daughter for a few days

With my dear friend and babysitter Willie May Taylor who was my maid while I was living with General Marcos Perez Jimenez we left after midnight in two beat up looking cars about eight or nine of us with Frank’s baby a high-powered rifle scope and silencer attached in the

Trunk of our car before we left we were briefed by Frank BOS Pedro Diaz Lans no phone calls no speaking Spanish in Texas no leaving for restaurants complete obedience supplies food and kits were dumped into the trunk we wore dark street clothes and got into the

Cars we drove all night along the coast and nobody spoke much Frank drove I sat in the back seat and slept it was hot and crowded and I sat next to a Cuban we drove through the city of Dallas to the outskirts to a drive-in Motel Frank and Pedro registered we had

Two rooms each room had two double beds Azie brought in a newspaper and everybody read it dressed I fell asleep on top of one of the beds Frank brought in food for sandwiches and soda only Frank and Bosch were to answer the phone if and when it rang that first

Night Frank waited for a member Ruby Frank spoke to him outside in the parking lot this Ruby seemed surprised at my presence and questioned Frank about me I’m sure I later told Frank where’d you get that Mafia Punk and what’s really going going on what the hell are we really

Here for Frank studied me and escorted me outside he replied by saying you make me nervous I made a mistake this is too big I want you to go back to Miami take the baby and go home I agreed and told him that I didn’t like his selection of

Men Azie Ruby who were new and not true members as I was leaving Eduardo H hunt drove up and there was a discussion on who would drive me to the airport for Miami Frank and Bosch did Eduardo at at the motel I flew under the name of Maria

Jimenez I am almost sure I stayed in Miami about 1 day and was very happy to be back with my baby I decided to cut all ties with Frank in his anti-castro group I would get nowhere and I was sick of the whole situation I had a feeling a suspicion

That Frank’s group was in Texas to kill somebody because of the secrecy of the whole thing never in a million years did I put two and two together or was ever even hinted to what they were up to all I know is that everything I have written

And am writing is the truth so help me God what struck me about that story were its similarities at least at the beginning to the incident Marita Loren had told me about almost a year and a half before when I first interviewed her the details about the two cars in the

Group members were all the same in her green book Loren simply turned the cars West and had them head for Dallas as I said at the first interview Marita Loren had impressed me as a fairly credible witness even her story of attempting to assassinate Castro with poison capsules told without the

Dramatic embellishments of a tabloid presentation had elements of plausibility now for whatever reasons Marita Loren seemed determined to beog her credibility at any rate I sent her green covered notebook to Washington where I knew it would be given an identification number and put into a file since the assassinations committee’s

Investigative game plan was already in place it was unlikely that even this apparent Ploy would get Marita the attention she seemed to want what I didn’t realize however was that there were other forces at work it was a couple of weeks after the green book had gone to Washington and after

Being away from Miami for a few days I returned home late one evening to a call from the daily news’s Paul meskill I’ve been trying to get in touch with you he said because I think something really big is going down unfortunately I’m not at Liberty to tell

You the whole thing yet but I can give you part of it the reason meskill knew something big was going down was that he was going to help it go down he was going to break a big story and although he said he couldn’t provide me with names and

Places yet he did begin telling me in his cryptic newsman style what it was about what this involves is a statement made and it’s down there it supposedly involved Sturgis and some other people with Oswald and supposedly Oswald was in a training camp down there in the

Everglades with them and they all went to Dallas together right before the Kennedy hit I interrupted him that’s from Marita Loren I couldn’t say it he said I told meskill about Jim Garrison having some time ago met the lawyer who claimed his client could put Sturgis and Oswald together Mescal knew the lawyer

As a promoter and as he put it a known crook said meskill he had a connection to Bernie spindle the greatest wiretapper of all time there was a link to the CIA I wonder if that guy put the idea in Marita’s head that’s funny because I

Thought she first told the story to a federal guy down by you and then she told it to me I gave the piece to the managing editor on Monday and he says the only way we can run this is if we get some official to say we’re

Investigating so not being able to reach you for a few days I get desperate so I call Blakey the chief counsel I didn’t give him any names either I just said I had someone who has made this statement to a Federal Officer and to me and it

Involves this matter and boy he wanted to move on it right away he says I’ll send a couple of people up to talk to you tomorrow I said wait not so fast I don’t trust some of your people I told him I knew some of the team are ex- New

York cops and before I know it my exclusive will be blown I couldn’t figure blakey’s reaction either he hadn’t been paying attention to the whole Marita Loren’s Escapade or he was playing games with mcll yes he seemed excited mcll said he was even talking about sending her out

To Dallas to try to find the motel she says they were at but I think she’ll balk at that because she told me she doesn’t want to testify she doesn’t even want to talk to the committee then Mescal thought about that for a moment and added but I don’t know

How she figures she’s going to dump it on the news and have it Splash all over the country and then avoid any follow up because it’s inevitable somebody is going to come around to her and say hey what’s with all this horeshit whatever the horeshit mesco

Wasn’t going to let it stand in the way of a fat front page story he worked on it a few more days called Frank Sturgis to get his reaction I have never met Lee Harvey Oswald in my life and then called me the night before it hit the paper as

Mescal put it the is in the fan now the headline said it all X spy says she drove to Dallas with Oswald and Kennedy assassin Squad the story was almost consistent with the one Loren had written in her green notebook Frank Sturgis Orlando Bosch and Pedro Diaz L were still the

Men she claimed went on the trip however she added two Cuban brothers whose name she does not know and some additional embroidery she said Oswald had earlier visited an operation 40 training camp in the Florida Everglades but she knew him only is Azie at the end of the piece mcll noted

Statements she made to the news and to a federal agent were reported to Robert Blakey Chief Council of the assassinations committee he has assigned one of his top investigators to interview her of course what Blakey had decided now the story had hit the papers was

That he had no choice but to put the Loren’s tale into the record part of his policy to touch every base no matter what I didn’t exactly rush into the assignment in fact I decided to wait until I had to go up to Washington on other matters and

Then hop up to New York and get Marita Loren into the record that turned out to be more than a month after mcll broke his big story it was a Friday when I called Marita from Washington to say I planed to visit her the next day she was even

More agitated than usual Frank is coming to kill me Sturgis yes he’s been threatening me he doesn’t want me to testify before the committee when is he coming I don’t know he may be on his way my daughter is very upset about it I think she went out to

Buy a gun I need help if I hadn’t gotten all those distraught calls from Marita over the years I guess I would have reacted with a greater sense of urgency but I had planned to join a group from the staff for Chinese food at the sesan

East that evening and I knew I didn’t want to get in the middle of a shootout on an empty stomach I told Marita I’d fly up first thing the next morning since I didn’t think it prudent to visit Marita alone now two other staffers joined me Al Gonzalez the

Former New York cop who had become my investigative partner in Miami and Eddie Lopez the young researcher whose Puerto Rican parents lived in New York Lopez happened to be standing in front of the peephole in Loren’s door when I knocked the door quickly flew open and Eddie

Went bugey at the barrel of a shotgun inches from his nose Marita I yelled she turned her wild stare from Eddie and recognizing me dropped the gun to her side the tension slid from her face oh it’s you she said I thought it was a Cuban Frank had sent to kill

Me suddenly I felt it was all getting too ridiculous is this what the official Kennedy assassination investigation was getting down to the stuff of drama from an Aros comp poo Western Marita put the shotgun down beside the door and invited us in she looked tired and drawn she hadn’t slept

And teenage daughter was out trying to buy a pistol to head off Sturgis before he arrived Marita had spoken to him yesterday and he said he was on his way up what should she do I thought of a few things to say but not anything that would look good in the

Next day’s headlines assassinations committee tells Marita dot dot dot all I wanted was to get her statement into the record and get the hell out of there not that I thought Sturgis would come slamming through the door with his high power sniper scoped silencer equipped baby

I think Sturgis has made some dumb moves in his life but he wouldn’t be foolish enough to provide a trail via telephone threats and warnings anyhow with Marita jumping up periodically to peek out the window and check noises at her front door it took

Us a few hours to get her to repeat the story of the Dallas trip her cast of characters remained the same as in the green book herself Sturgis Bosch Diaz Lans and Azie but this time with the two unnamed Cuban Brothers and now she also added Miami Soldier of Fortune Jerry

Patrick Heming the Caravan was not only getting crowded it was getting damn uncomfortable Heming was 6’6 and weighed about 270 lb later Marita would remember the names of the two brothers and identify them as the novo Brothers still the Coalition made sense because all the individuals were publicly known as

Associates Sturgis and Heming you may recall had made headlines as co-founders of an anti-castro group group as had the Diaz Lan’s flight from Cuba with Sturgis the novo brothers were in the news linked to Bosch in Cuban terrorist activity Azie was the odd man out I was glad to get back to Miami

Where the only danger was getting shot by an Irate motorist on I95 a call from Frank Sturgis was on my answering machine but all he said was to call him back when I got the chance since I didn’t hear from Marita on Sunday or Monday I assumed the drama had

Faded to a close it must have only been a commercial break I received a call from Paul meskill late Monday afternoon they arrested the kid he said what kid Marita’s daughter did stur just show up no not yet but Marita was bugging me all morning so I finally told

Her to call the cops so she calls these two cops she knows in the Intelligence Division because she’s been working with them on a guns and pornography thing with the mob and about noon today they go out and pick her up the Kid supposedly had gotten a 22 pistol and

Was waiting for Sturgis to show up is Sturgis still supposed to show up that’s what she says heun’s been calling her it’s been coming up on high noon now for 3 days I said yeah I know Mescal laughed maybe the train broke down the train didn’t break down it was about 1:00 in

The morning when my telephone rang the caller said he was detective James Rothstein from the New York Police Department I just arrested Frank Sturgis and he asked me to call you he said it’s on the complaint of what’s her name Marita laoren he threatened her in reference to talking with you I

Understand you were up here on Saturday I felt as if I were suddenly in the middle of take five scene 4 sturgus said you wanted him to call you if anything happened said detective rosin I don’t know what the hell is going on myself that’s the last thing I would

Have told Sturgis but I figured I’d better talk to him anyway it’s so damn confusing Sturgis said when he got on the line no it’s not confusing there’s something behind it I was beginning to think that myself I asked him what had happened well I come up here to see my

Lecture people but I had been in touch with Marita because she had wanted me to come up here to tell me about the pressure she was under to put those articles in the paper about me so I come up here and I had my appointments and I

Called Marita and she says no call me later on in the evening so I went out with my friend Frank Nelson and we finished dinner about 10:30 and I called Marita and said listen I’ll see you tomorrow because it’s getting late but she says no come on over this evening so

I says all right I’ll be over in half an hour so I caught a cab and I walk into her apartment and Christ these two detectives have guns on me they tell me I threatened her and that her kid went out and bought a shotgun to kill me the whole thing is

Flabbergasting and you never said anything to her about her Dallas trip story I asked Frank no no no he said I never asked her to retract any story all I asked is why she said those things to Paul mcll and her answer was that she was pressured and I says well can you

Tell me and she says no I can’t tell you I got to see you in person there’s got to be something behind all this Frank stur just wound up spending 48 hours in The Slammer his bail was set at $25,000 surprisingly for harassment charges until his lawyer went to another

Judge and had it lowered to $110,000 sturgis’s wife Jan had to ship up cash and bonds to post it when he was arraigned more than 100 reporters and photographers descended on the human zoo at 100 Center Street a courthouse regular who calls himself cois and wears

A red loin cloth and fur anklets got upset at being ejected by the court officers and after doing a little dance made yellow rain on one of the photographers is waiting for Sturgis Coes get arrested Timothy Krauss then writing for the Village Voice provided a perspective

There was a full moon not just any full moon but the most potent of them all the one that signals Harvest Time the change of seasons and the cruel lunar tug on many a soft brain the most bizarre event of all happened just before midnight on Halloween when two of the most

Notoriously unreliable sources in America magically turned into to a front page news story that lasted 4 days how else but with the aid of occult Powers could Marita Loren have convinced the Manhattan district attorney that Frank Sturgis had phoned from Miami to threaten her life maybe With a Little

Help from Sturgis himself the press and even the police the day after Sturgis was booked I received a call from his wife Jan is a darkhaired attractive very personable woman and compared with Frank rather articulate it’s my my own personal opinion she said that Marita is not

Intelligent enough to think up all these devious plots and I’m concerned about who is behind her as soon as I heard the plan about the 14-year-old daughter being set up to kill Frank the first thing that came to my mind was that Lana Turner scenario I don’t know but I hope

It’s only a publicity stunt on her part but if it’s not and it’s somebody trying to get to Frank then it’s frightening I don’t mean to be speaking cryptically but all these things are going through my mind Jan didn’t call just to give me her opinion she said she had proof that

Frank was set up she had been talking with him and he gave her permission to play for me the recording he had made of his last telephone conversation with Marita when I got to the Sturgis home Jan was still fiddling with the tape recorder trying to find the place on the

Tape where the conversation with Marita began she pressed a button and I heard a familiar voice oops she said smiling as she quickly hit the stop button you won’t tell Frankie you heard that will you Frank also had recorded all his conversations with me the opening lines of Franks called to

Marita set the tone of their conversation Marita this is Frank hi love wait let me go to the other room the kids are making noise hold on well hi I just came back from Mount Si my mother’s in Mount Si how are you are you going to come up it’s a

Rambling but revealing conversation that goes on for about half an hour Sturgis repeatedly attempts to bring the topic around to the story about the Dallas trip at one point he mentioned he has been talking with me Fonzi says he’s going to try to get up to New York he

Says for me does he want me tell him I have memory Labs I forgot everything he told me also he says tell her not to worry about being subpoena I’m not going to subpoena her no I don’t want to be subpoena you won’t be subpoena he’s just

Going ahead and checking up on all the things that came out in the paper the statements and so forth are you going to come up you want me to send you the fee I can can you come up yeah but I don’t have the money I’ll send it to you today

I’ll send it to you tonight well you see my problem is I went to the doctor yesterday and I had to get an ingrown toenail taken out oh Jesus that hurts yeah it’s smarts I am listening to this conversation and I am trying to remember I am part of of a serious investigation

Into the assassination of President Kennedy the talk finally Rambles away from ingrown toenails to deals about movies and books Marita mentions the lawyer who first dropped the Sturgis Oswald connection on Jim Garrison in Arizona he’s been pressuring me to sign this thing for $75,000 with the 7500 advance but it

Stinks I won’t sign it Frank suggests she not sign anything until he talks to her about contracts and legalities well I’m not doing anything Marita says I’m not saying anything in fact I’d like to retract everything but then I’m going to get in trouble I’ve been warned

You’ve been warned from a visit with two people they wanted to know where I was on September 22nd I mean November 22nd 63 were these government agents yeah FBI or CIA yeah that’s why I want to talk with you I got myself in over my head

What I’m trying to figure out is who pressured you into making these statements you said two agents what are their names I’m not going to tell you I’ll tell you when you get up here well okay then I’ll be up there why don’t you

Send that to me and I’ll be up there you want me to send that tonight I’ll send it tonight Jesus I don’t know where Eastern Airlines just leave it at Eastern Airlines right I’ll call Eastern and pick it up through the whole conversation Sturgis sounds like an innocent and

Naive victim being lured into a trap perhaps a bit too naive I began to wonder and still do wonder if there wasn’t an element of collusion in this scene Frank Sturgis hasn’t survived a life cobwebbed with dangerous clandestine missions by being naive at any rate sturis picked up that

Eastern Airline ticket that Marita Loren had sent him and flew to his Destiny in New York in the end the entire episode seemed to have about as much significance as cois pissing on a photographer but in retrospect one result of this whole soap opera scenario the factor that still feeds my suspicion

Of collusion was a successful diversion from the schwier probe through the house assassinations Committee of our limited investigation resources and in the process it injected a dose of slapstick that would impair any future attempt to conduct a serious investigation into the possible involvement of e Howard hunt and Frank Sturgis in the Kennedy

Assassination The Village voices Timothy Krauss reflected the tone of the entire Affair when after Sturgis was released and the charges dropped he reported that the New York Police Commissioner was opening an investigation into the farce will the cops dig up information linking Marita Loren Frank Sturgis The

Daily News and certain members of the New York police department will a conspiracy be uncovered at last or will the police report conclude that the whole brewha was the work of a single ding bat acting alone where is Mark Lane now that we need him he would come later 11 strangers at the

Door although it was only about a dozen years after the Kennedy assassination when I began working for schwier subcommittee it surprised me to learn how absolutely bem muddling the subject had become Frank Sturgis and Marita Loren represented the muckiest aspects of the investigation there were however a number of witnesses who clearly were

Worth more attention and I was also pursuing them then one afternoon early in January 1976 I received a call about one of our leads from David Marston scher’s legal aid and my main liaison with the Senator’s office you can give up on Sylvia Odo he said the guys over on committee staff

Told they got word she’s in Puerto Rico they’re getting ready to track her down the church committee staffers played everything very close to the vest they had decided early on that their final report on Kennedy’s assassination could be written from documents they had acquired from the CIA and from CIA

Testimony admitting involvement with the mob in Castro murder plots the church committee staffers figured they didn’t have the time for much original investigation and if they did any it might bring up more than they could handle but what had become known as the Odio incident bothered them just as it had

The warrant commission they were now thinking about talking to Sylvia Odo just to cover an important Bas but Sylvia Odo was missing she had lived in Dallas at the time of the keny assassination but the word was that years ago she had moved to Miami remarried and dropped out of sight Odio

Was one of the few Witnesses in the Kennedy probe who had not exploited her role or capitalized on her early notoriety she refused interviews despite being offered large sums of money and had gone into hiding now the committee staff had apparently tracked her down in Puerto Rico I understand she just moved back

There recently said David Marston it must have been very recently I said I was talking to Sylvia Odo in Miami this morning son of a gun David laughed imagine and all those super sleuths over there are going after the CIA I had made a special effort to locate

Odio because I considered her testimony to the Warren Commission among the most significant of any Witnesses Odio had claimed that Oswald was one of three men who came to the door of her apartment in Dallas one evening during the last week in September 1963 but the Warren Commission had

Dismissed her testimony because it said it had considerable evidence that Oswald was not in Dallas at all that September that simply wasn’t true in fact in its report the commission had to resort to a blatant deception in order to discredit odo’s testimony however the commission made

The point that if Oswald had gone from New Orleans to Dallas on his way to Mexico City in September he would have had to have private transportation and he did not have a car and could not drive of course that meant that others would have been involved with him in

Which case the warrant commission’s final assertion that Oswald was not part of a conspiracy would not stand the house assassinations committee would conclude that Oswald did in fact leave New Orleans the last week in September and from his other known movements had to have access to a

Car my discovery of Sylvia Odo in Miami was important for two reasons in investigating her story I incidentally opened a new area of evidence with explosive potential and the manner in which she and her testimony were later handled by the house assassination committee indicated that it was in its

Own way as deceptive as the Warren Commission Sylvia odo’s background is important she was the oldest of 10 children who were spirited out of Cuba when their parents entered into anti-castro activity there her father Amador Odio was among Cuba’s wealthiest men the owner of the country’s largest trucking business he was once described

By Time Magazine as the Transport Tycoon of Latin America yet both he and his wife were ideal ists who had fought dictators from the time of General Machado in the 30s among Castro’s early supporters there were also among the first to turn against him when Fidel betrayed the

Revolution as Amador Odio later told me with liberal leader Manolo Reay the odos helped form one of the first anti-castro groups within Cuba Amador and Sarah Odio were arrested by Castro in October 1961 at their country estate outside Havana ironically the odos had once hosted the wedding of

One of Castro’s sisters on that very estate later Castro would turn it into a national women’s prison and Sarah Odio would spend 8 years incarcerated there while her husband was placed in a Cell on Isla deinos at the time Sylvia Odo was 24 years old living in Puerto Rico with her

Husband and four young children before marrying she had attended private school in Philadelphia and Law School in Cuba for a while after her parents arrest her husband was sent to Germany by his firm and he subsequently deserted her and their children destitute and alone she began having emotional problems by then Sylvia’s younger

Sisters Annie and Serita were settled in Dallas Serita a student at the University of Dallas had become friendly with a socially connected clubwoman named Lucille Canal who was active in the Cuban Refugee Center and the Mental Health Association when Serita told her of Sylvia’s plight canel made arrangements

To have Sylvia and the children move to Dallas and for Sylvia to receive psychiatric treatment Lucille canel became Sylvia’s closest Confidant canel later told me that Sylvia’s emotional problems brought on by the shock of suddenly being left alone with four young children her parents’ imprisonment and her abrupt

Fall from wealth to destitution resulted in attacks of sudden fainting when reality got too painful to bear canel said she had personally w witness Sylvia suffer these attacks in her home when Sylvia had first arrived in Dallas but with treatment they eventually ended until the Kennedy assassination Sylvia Odo had moved to

Dallas in March of 1963 she said she wanted only to lead a quiet life but her deep personal concerns led her and her sisters to maintain contact with politically active Cuban Exiles and to join the anti-castro group called jur Hunter revolutiona which was found by Manolo Ry her father’s old

Friend this was the same Manolo Ray whose presence e Howard hunt says forced him to resign from his position as CIA liaison with the fronte before the Bay of Pigs hunt contended that Ry was much too liberal in leftist to be permitted to join the invasion’s political front coalition Sylvia and her sisters

Attended a couple of Cuban Exile rallies and gave spiritual support to anti-castro efforts but being young and with little money there was not much else they could do by September 1963 Sylvia Odo was well established in the Dallas Cuban Exile Community had a decent job had her emotional problems under control and was

Doing well enough to be planning to move on the 1st of October to a more comfortable apartment than the tiny unit she and her four children squeezed into for the week before her moving date her sister Annie then 17 had been staying at the apartment to babysit the children

And help her pack I spoke SE SE with both sisters about what happened that week with Annie Odio a few weeks after my initial interview with Sylvia Annie was also living in Miami but both she and Sylvia told me they had not discussed the incident in Dallas for

Several years prior to my asking them about it Annie remembered that evening when three men came to the door of Sylvia’s apartment in Dallas it was still early when the doorbell rang and it was Annie who went to answer it one of the men asked to speak to Serita he spoke

English but when Annie answered him in Spanish he also spoke Spanish Annie told him that Serita didn’t live there he then said something Annie told me I don’t recall exactly what something about her being married which made me think that they really wanted my sister Sylvia I recall putting the chain on the

Door after I told them to wait while I went to get Sylvia Annie told me that two of the men were Latin looking and that the shorter heavy set one had dark shiny hair combed back and looked Mexican she also said the one in the middle was American Sylvia was initially reluctant

To talk with the visitors Annie said because she was busy getting dressed to go out but she remembers Sylvia coming out of the bedroom in her bathrobe to go to the door Sylvia Odio had also told me that it was early evening and she was getting

Dressed to go out when the three men came to the door they stood in the vestibule just inside the small front porch under the bright overhead lights Sylvia said the men told her they they were members of jur and spoke as if they knew both monolo Ray and her father all

Her conversation she said was with the taller Latin the one who identified himself as Leopoldo although he admitted he was giving her an alias or a war name which was common among anti-castro activists at the time she said she is less certain of the other latin’s name it might have been

Angel but she described him as her sister did looking more Mexican than anything else the third visitor the American was introduced to her as Leon Oswald she said Leon Oswald acknowledged the introduction with a very brief reply perhaps in idiomatic Spanish but she later decided he could not understand

Spanish because of his lack of reaction to her conversation with Leopoldo there is no doubt in Sylvia odo’s mind that her visitor was in fact Lee Harvey Oswald she said she was talking with the men more than 20 minutes and although she did not permit them in her apartment she was less than

3 feet from them as they stood in the well-lit vestibule later when I went to Dallas I confirmed her description of the scene she said the three appeared tired unkempt and unshaven as if they had just come from a long trip Leopoldo told Sylvia Odio that the

Reason they had come to her was to get her help in soliciting funds in the name of jur from local businessmen he told me she recalled that he would like for me to write them in English very nice letters and perhaps we could get some funds Sylvia was very suspicious of the

Strangers and avoided giving them any commitment but their conversation ended with Leopoldo giving her the impression he would contact her again after the three men left Sylvia locked her door went to the window and watched them pull away in a red car that had been parked

In front of the apartment she said she could not see who was driving the car but did see Angel on the passenger side the following day or the day after she still isn’t certain which Leopoldo called in our talk she was relatively certain of the gist of what Leopoldo

Said in that conversation and it is consistent with her testimony to the Warren Commission she said Leopoldo told her that the Gringo had been a marine that he was an expert Marksman and that he was kind of Loco she recalled Leopoldo saying that the Gringo Leon had said that we Cubans

We did not have any guts because we should have assassinated Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs on the day President Kennedy was killed both Sylvia and Annie immediately remembered the visit of the three men before she had seen a photograph of Oswald or knew that he was involved the

News of the president’s death instantly brought back to Sylvia’s mind that Leopoldo had told her of Leon’s remark about assassinating Kennedy Sylvia had just returned to work from lunch and was told that everyone was being sent home she began to feel terribly uncontrollably frightened and while walking to her car fainted she

Remembers waking up in the hospital across town Annie Odio was watching television at a friend’s house she and some friends had gone to see the president’s motorcade pass by at a spot several miles from De Plaza when I first saw Oswald on television she told me my first thought

Was my God I know this guy and I don’t know from where I kept thinking where have I seen this guy then I remembered my sister Rita called me and told me that Sylvia had fainted at work and that she was sending her boyfriend to take me

To the hospital the first thing I remember when I walked into the room was that Sylvia started crying and crying I think I told her you know this guy on TV who shot President Kennedy I think I know him and she said you don’t remember

Where you know him from I said no I cannot recall but I know I’ve seen him before and then she told me do you remember those three guys who came to the house that’s when Annie said she suddenly knew where she had seen Lee Harvey Oswalt before based on background and character

Alone Sylvia and Annie Odio were highly credible Witnesses their story held up through my subsequent heavy checking and I was absolutely convinced they were telling the truth one major factor in their favor was that Sylvia Odio had told more than one person about the incident before the Kennedy

Assassination she had even written to her father in prison and told him of the visit of the three strangers the warrant commission obtained a copy of his reply warning her to be careful because he did not know them I also spoke to Amador Odo himself about

It by this time Amador Odo and his wife had been released from their Cuban prisons and were also living in Miami no longer wealthy Odio a handsome dignified Old Gentleman was working nights in a low-level manager’s job for an airline but he was still proud and idealistic he

Told me that he had received the letter from Sylvia and confirmed his reply more significantly Dr Burton einbu the psychiatrist who was counseling Sylvia at the time recalled that she had told him prior to the assassination of two Latins and an American who had visited her Dr einbu also remembered

Calling her on the day of the assassination while she was in the hospital he said she mentioned Leon and in what he called his sort of histrionic way connected the visit of Leon to Kennedy’s death also relevant I thought was the fact that the FBI found out about the

Visit of the three men inadvertently both Sylvia and Annie had discussed it that day in the hospital room and decided not to say anything to anyone about it we were so frightened we were absolutely terrified Sylvia remembered we were both very young and yet we had so much responsibility with

So many brothers and sisters and our mother and father in prison we were so afraid and not knowing what what was happening we made a vow to each other not to tell anyone but their sister Serita told Lucille conel and conell told a trusted friend and soon the FBI was knocking on

Sylvia odo’s door she says it was the last thing in the world she wanted but when they came she felt she had a responsibility to tell the truth before I met Sylvia and Annie Odio I had the opportunity to evaluate their credibility I reviewed all the FBI documents and the warrant commission

Records of the Odio incident there were I thought two pivotal points first if the incident did occur as Odio contended understanding it was key to grasping the truth about Lee Harvey Oswald and the John F Kennedy assassination no theory of the assassination would stand without somehow accounting for

It second that was the very point the Warren Commission itself quickly recognized therefore it was forced to Pummel the facts about its investig ation of the incident into lies that would confirm its lone nut assassin conclusion the warrant commission was hampered of course by the FBI’s initial bungling in investigating the incident

Sylvia Odo had provided good physical descriptions of her visitors and details about their car the FBI simply did not vigorously pursue those leads and instead spent valuable time questioning people about Sylvia’s credibility and her emotional problems the bureau’s first interview with syia audio was on December 12th

1963 on August 23rd 1964 with the first draft of the Warren Commission report being written Chief Council J Lee Rankin wrote to J Edgar Hoover it is a matter of some importance to the commission that Mrs odo’s allegations either be proved or disproved one month later with a report

Already in Gs the audio incident was still a critical concern for staffers in a memo to his boss staff counsel Wesley liebler wrote there are problems Odio May well be right the commission will look bad if it turns out that she is there’s no need to look foolish by

Grasping at straws to avoid admitting that there is a problem the FBI did attempt to alleviate that problem when it interviewed a soldier of fortune named Lauren Eugene Hall on September 26 1964 Hall claimed he had been in Dallas in September 1963 trying to raise anti-castro funds with two companions

One of whom might have looked like Oswald the Warren Commission grasped that straw and detailed that interview in its final report giving the impression that Hall and his companions were odo’s visitors it then definitely concluded Lee Harvey Oswald was not at Mrs odo’s apartment in September 1963 the Warren Commission did not

Mention that Lauren Eugene Hall was one of the anti-castro gorillas arrested at the the no-name key raid at the time of the Kennedy’s Cuban Exile Crackdown or that he was part of the international anti-communist Brigade whose members led by Frank Sturgis and Jerry Patrick Heming were notorious for disseminating

Misinformation neither did the Warren Commission note in its final report even though it knew that the subsequent FBI interviews revealed that Hall’s two companions denied being in Dallas that neither looked at all like Oswald that syia Odio shown their photographs did not recognize them and that Lauren

Eugene Hall when questioned Again by the FBI admitted he had fabricated the story still later when questioned by the assassinations committee Hall denied he had ever told the FBI he had been to odo’s apartment it is no wonder that the critics early pounced on the Odio incident as being the most flagrant of

All the warrant commission distortions as Sylvia Mega wrote in her accessory after the fact if the commission could leave such business unfinished we are entitled to ask whether its members were ever determined to uncover the truth what I recall most about the first meeting I had with Sylvia Odio is her

Fear he was still very much with her after all those years she was working as a legal assistant in the Law Department of a large firm but she had remained home that morning so we could talk her husband Mauricio a handsome chap then involved in Spanish language publishing had also remained home until

He was sure his wife was comfortable Sylvia then in her late 30s still youthful and attractive was nervous but she seemed bright and mourning fresh when we began talking yet after a few hours of going over the incident and her experiences with the Warren Commission she had

Visibly aged I remember being shocked by that the way her face sagged and lines appeared under her eyes how clearly apparent was her emotional stress when I first called her Sylvia Odo had been reluctant to talk with me at all she kept asking why are they

Bringing it all up again what good will it do I told them the truth but they did not want to hear it do you think they really want to know what the answer to the Kennedy assassination is I have to admit I’ve become very cynical she also admitted being terribly

Disillusioned with the government and the fact that in the end she was officially termed a liar she had been born into a family of culture and class she had been taught style and respect she was upset when Wesley liebler about to take her deposition in the Federal Building in

Dallas immediately started joking with her about being teased by other Warren Commission staffers for his luck in interviewing the prettiest witness in the case he then invited her to dinner on the pretext of having additional questions afterwards he invited her to his hotel room she was was shocked she

Began wondering how seriously the Warren Commission was taking its investigation why should I get myself involved again she asked when I called what good will it do me what good will it do my family her children were older now she said but she still feared for

Their safety she wondered if the men who were with Oswald were still alive but Sylvia Odo was also very angry and frustrated it gets me so mad that I was just used she told me I assured her that this time would be different I told her that I believed that it’s absolutely

Necessary for the American people to learn the truth about the Kennedy assassination because the issue goes to the heart of the democratic system I told her I was sure Senator schwier was an honorable man and would not be involved in anything but an honest investigation we spoke on the telephone

Several times before she finally agreed to meet and talk with me eventually she came to trust me that was a mistake I did not know at the time that I would later become part of an apparatus that would wind up using her just as the Warren Commission did

Handling her testimony much more subtly but just as deceptively making certain that her story was not prominently presented to the American people yet in the end the house assassinations committee had to conclude that syia Odio was telling the truth and it reluctantly did say that in its final

Report the committee was inclined to believe Sylvia Odo that was a waffling admission but undeniably the house committee had finally authenticated the fact that Sylvia Odio was telling the truth and in doing so the committee had also issued an indictment against itself and against its leaders who refused to pursue the

Truth to its ultimate ends still once the truth was acknowledged a quick courtsy to honesty truth was put aside so the dance could go on on yet that small bow revealed a fatal structural crack in the foundation of the house committee’s conclusion that elements of organized crime were the probable conspirators in the

Assassination attempting to cover the committee’s ass the report crossed the bounds of rationality it is possible it noted despite his alleged remark about Killing Kennedy that Oswald had not yet contemplated the president’s assassination at the time of the Odio incident or if he did that his assassination plan had no relation to

His anti-castro contacts and that he was associating with anti-castro activists for some other unrelated reason the committee did not speculate on that other unrelated reason that door was marked CIA and it had already concluded that the agency had nothing to do with Oswald but all that was to come long

After my first talk with Sylvia Odio at the time I sensed her story was important but I didn’t realize how significantly it would figure in my investigation

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