by Jim Marrs
The day after Kennedy’s assassination, Secret Service agents went to 544 Camp Street after seeing the address on some of Oswald’s pamphlets. Guy Banister’s office was closed. They learned that “Cuban revolutionaries” had had an office there. The agents brushed the whole thing off by reporting that they hadn’t found a trace of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee at 544 Camp Street.
The Saga of Tosh Plumlee
One man whose amazing travels for US intelligence and the military led him through the Cuban revolution and the Bay of Pigs Invasion on into the Kennedy assassination and even further into the Iran-Contra scandal of the Reagan administration was William Robert Plumlee.
Tosh, as he likes to be called, was born in 1937. After nearly becoming a juvenile delinquent, he joined the US Army in April 1954 and was assigned to the Texas 49th Armored Division. Later he was transferred to Dallas, where he joined the 4th Army Reserve Military Intelligence Unit. While working as an aircraft mechanic at Dallas’s Love Field, Tosh earned his pilot’s license in 1956 and was soon recruited by the CIA.
Working under such CIA officials as William Harvey, Tracy Barnes, and Rip Robertson, Tosh flew arms to Castro just prior to his 1959 revolution. After the United States turned against Castro, Tosh flew a reconnaissance mission over Cuba but crashed just before the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Making his escape back to the United States, Tosh continued his work for the agency. As a pilot operating out of the JM/WAVE station in Miami, he ferried agents and materials all around the Gulf of Mexico. He was shocked in later years to learn that one of his passengers, a military officer known to him as Colonel Rawlston was actually the Mafia chieftain John Roselli. His shock deepened when he recalled a secret flight he made on November 21, 1963.
In 2004 Plumlee gave this “true account” of that flight:
Beginning November 20, 1963, I was assigned to be a copilot on a top-secret flight, which was attached to a military intelligence unit and supported by the CIA. Our mission, we were told, was to abort a pending attempt on the president’s life which was to take place in Dallas. We were contracted as “cut-outs,” a system used to shield a secret operation from public exposure. Our team was based out of south Florida. My pilot for this operation was Emanuel Rojas. We had flown together before. I was the copilot for this operation. The first leg of the flight would be from Lantana, Florida (about five miles south of West Palm Beach), to Tampa, Florida. The aircraft used for the first phase of this trip was a D-18 Twin Beech aircraft. We took off before daybreak on November 21, 1963, expecting to arrive in Tampa about sunup. We were to pick up other personnel at Tampa. One of these people was John Roselli, whom I knew.
I had known John Roselli before this flight. I had flown Roselli and others to places like Cuba, Bimini, Galveston, Las Vegas, and California. He was also known to me as “Colonel Rawlston” or just “the Colonel.” We (Rojas and I) were to pick up “the Colonel” at Tampa’s Congress Inn that morning. We changed aircraft at Tampa to a waiting DC-3 that was registered to “Atlantic Richfield,” and continued our trip to New Orleans, where a couple of people, who I did not know, got off and a few others got on. The Colonel stayed on board the DC-3. We continued our trip leaving New Orleans and continuing to Houston International Airport, where we spent the night at the Shamrock Hilton, not far from the airport.
The next morning, November 22, 1963, between 4:30–5 a.m., our weather briefing was not favorable for a VFR [visual flight rules] flight into Dallas’s Red Bird airport. We selected Garland as an alternate in case the weather had not improved by the time we arrived near Dallas air space. We did not file a flight plan nor intended to file IFR [instrument flight rules]. This would have left a record of our flight with air traffic control. We continued to Garland, in northeast Dallas, instead of Redbird Airport in Oak Cliff, a suburb of Dallas. We made this decision because of possible bad weather southwest of Dallas that had not cleared as yet.
We arrived in Garland near daybreak. There had been so many threats against the president’s life that we didn’t have a great sense of urgency about this particular one. While waiting out the bad weather in Garland, and about thirty minutes after landing three of the passengers were picked up by car, including Roselli. There are three documented corroborations of my presence at Garland airport that morning. After the weather had cleared sufficiently for the plane to continue via VFR flight rules to Redbird Airport in Dallas, we left Garland for the ten-minute flight to Redbird. We landed at Redbird around 9:30 or 10:30 a.m., perhaps as late as 11 a.m., where everybody got off and went their own way.
The pre-mission briefing was held at Loxahatchee, Florida, on the evening of November 20th, but since I was not “field operational” at that time, except as a “contract pilot,” I was not directly addressed at the briefing, other than routing and weather reports pertaining to flying the team into position. . . . I only began to learn the full scope of the operation from my pilot Rojas and a field operative friend of mine named Sergio. Most of the details of this operation were told to me only after we had become airborne. I would learn more operational details upon reaching Redbird Airport.
I learned that it had been discussed by the abort team where to go, how to abort, and what to look for. I had not at first paid much attention to any of these details as bits and pieces unfolded. I was told that the abort team, for whom I was only the pilot at that time, would probably be looking for a minimum of 19 or 20 people that would be in the plaza. Most of the team members felt that this was another false alarm, there had been many during the past few weeks.
Although my specific assigned function was only as a pilot, upon arriving at Redbird Airport, Sergio asked me if I wanted to come along and see the president. I could also act as a spotter for him and his team, which he said were assigned to the south side of the plaza. I was told other members of the team would be patrolling the north side and the overpass. I understood we would be looking for a type of triangulated ambush. I gladly accepted Sergio’s offer. It seemed like an adventure I didn’t want to miss. We were driven from Redbird Airport to a place not far from the Oak Cliff Country Club, then driven to Dealey Plaza, where we (Sergio and I) checked various areas and attempted to spot potential members of an attack team from the position on the South Knoll.
While on the South Knoll, Sergio and I were attempting to evaluate the most logical places where shooters might be located, but everything was confused, the timing was off; team members were late getting into position. They were not where they were supposed to be and the limited radio contacts that we had with them were not working or spotty at best. It was soon after our arrival that the motorcade arrived. When the shots rang out, I had the impression of 4 or 5 shots, with one being fired from behind and to my left on the South Knoll, near the underpass and south parking lot. While leaving via the south side of the underpass near the train tracks, Sergio and I smelled gunpowder. I never saw Roselli in Dealey Plaza that day.
We were picked up on the back side of the underpass, southwest side, by a person who had previously been at the country club. After driving away, and on the way back to Redbird we stopped in the parking lot of Ed McLemore’s Sportatorium, where Sergio changed out of the clothes he had muddied when he fell down the slippery west side of the railroad tracks. We stopped by the house in Oak Cliff, then returned to Redbird Airport. We waited for a few of the operatives who had been on our flight into Dallas to return. We waited as long as we could before departing without Roselli and some of the others. At approximately 2 o’clock in the afternoon, we took off from Redbird without filing a flight plan. Our original flight out of Dallas called for us to fly to Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas. But because of the assassination that routing was changed at the last minute by Rojas. We would head for Houston and back to south Florida.
On the plane, besides myself, were Rojas, Sergio, a person who I knew as Gator from the Loxahatchee camp, and two other individuals that I didn’t know. Gator had identifying characteristics of an unusually l
arge Adam’s apple and a missing finger, which had supposedly been bitten off at an alligator farm.
The people on the flight out of Dallas were very quiet. I interpreted their silence as dejection at the mission’s failure to abort the assassination of the president. I believed that if these men had been the shooters or assassins themselves, they would have been very excited because they had carried it off. That’s why to this day I take issue with the idea, which I have been asked to speculate on many times, that the attack on the president was in behalf of the CIA, Mafia, or military intelligence, and I had unknowingly flown an attack team in which had assassinated the president.
Shortly after this flight, Tosh was arrested and extradited to Colorado, where he was prosecuted for passing bad checks. Only one check in the amount of $51.25 was produced and Tosh tried to explain that the CIA had failed to deposit his pay for January 1962. He was jailed, which kept him out of the public eye during the time of the Warren Commission. Released in 1964, Tosh got married and tried to forget his life as a “black ops” pilot. But it didn’t work.
During the Reagan administration, Tosh was a pilot in the Iran-Contra scandal, in which illegal arms were shipped to Iran in hopes of freeing American hostages. Profits from these arms sales were then used to fund anticommunists, or Contras, in Nicaragua. Tosh said arms were flown to the Contras and their cocaine was flown back to the United States.
In 1977, Plumlee testified behind closed doors before Idaho senator Frank Church’s Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, better known as the Church Committee. This panel probed illegal and clandestine activities of the FBI and CIA. He also testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1990 and 1991 concerning his knowledge of the Iran-Contra missions. Despite his testimony and box loads of government documents pertaining to Plumlee and the operations he has disclosed, Tosh remains a controversial figure in the assassination research community, with many claiming he has failed to corroborate his various stories, as if his detractors expect illicit government operations to be thoroughly documented.
In 1991, this author accompanied Tosh on a driving trip to Florida where he pointed out various anti-Castro safe houses and aircraft still sitting on runways that were used in anti-Castro activities, and was warmly greeted in Alpha 66 headquarters, one of the Cuban exile organizations.
One of the aspects of Tosh’s story that has struck researchers as bizarre is his claim that he and other “black ops” operatives were quartered in the Loxahatchee Work Prison, which was next to a landing strip they used to fly in and out on missions. Yet, in 1991, the old prison was still there, as was the adjacent landing strip. And in a telephone conversation with this author, Alton Chaney, the retired warden of the prison, confirmed that in the 1960s the county had a contract with the federal government to house some federal prisoners. He said he was never told anything about the inmates but they seemed to have been involved in some sort of witness protection program and he knew the names he was given for them were false. “It was kinda funny,” recalled Chaney. “Some of those prisoners just kinda came and went.” A prison record would indeed seem to be the perfect alibi. One could claim he had never been at the scene of the crime, as he was in jail at the time. But none of this will ever be proven, as the stockade commander, O. C. Reynolds, said when he took over the prison in the early 1970s he was surprised to find no records were available for past years.
Returning to Dallas, Tosh was able to describe and locate with precision Cuban safe houses, including the garage apartment behind Oswald’s Beckley Street rented room and Oswald’s 1962 apartment at 602 Elsbeth, which he was able to describe accurately as determined in a later visit by this author.
There was also an odd connection between Tosh’s story of the assassination and that of James Files, who in later years claimed to be the Grassy Knoll gunman. Both men, apparently unknown to each other, were told the people who went into Dealey Plaza that day were “abort” teams sent to stop an assassination attempt. Both also started their careers in the US military. Files even said that he was told by John Roselli that the gangster was flown into Dallas on a “military flight.”
Considering the accounts of Plumlee, Ferrie, Martin, and Roberts, as well as Oswald’s bizarre military record and his trip to Russia, one must seriously consider that the ex-Marine was working in intelligence, just as his mother claimed.
Was Oswald a Spy?
After reviewing all available evidence, the answer to the above question seems to be an unequivocal yes.
The following is a quick look at some of the evidence pointing to Oswald’s involvement with spy work:
—His childhood—as a bright loner who read a wide range of books and was drawn to unpopular ideas, attracted by spy stories (the TV show I Led Three Lives and Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels were among his favorites)—perfectly fits the profile of people most desired for intelligence work.
—Oswald’s Marine career is checkered with inconsistencies and unexplained absences suggesting secret intelligence training.
—He was assigned to Atsugi base in Japan, which housed a large CIA facility.
—Oswald had an incredible ability with the Russian language. Several Russians, including his wife, said he spoke like a native, yet this high-school dropout reportedly taught himself Russian from books.
—The fact that several people—including a former CIA paymaster, Oswald’s Marine roommate James Botelho, and fellow Marine Gerry Patrick Hemming—have stated that Oswald worked for US intelligence.
—The manner in which Oswald traveled so easily in and out of Russia as well as the unaccounted-for funds he used suggests intelligence guidance.
—The ability of this American “defector” to leave the Soviet Union with his Russian-born wife at a time when most Russians were being denied exit permits.
—The ease with which this would-be defector obtained passports in both 1959 and 1963.
—The fact that Oswald wrote a lengthy report on his activities in Russia and, later, made a detailed report to the FBI concerning his Fair Play for Cuba Committee activities in New Orleans.
—Oswald’s notebook contained the word “microdots,” a common spy technique of photographically reducing information to a small dot.
—Oswald’s nonbinding “defection” to Russia fit perfectly the profile of an Office of Naval Intelligence program to infiltrate American servicemen into the Soviet Union during the late 1950s.
—One of Oswald’s closest contacts, George DeMohrenschildt, was himself an intelligence operative, first for the Nazis and later for the CIA.
One of the strongest pieces of evidence proving Oswald’s spy work concerns a small Minox camera found among his effects by Dallas police. Information developed by the Dallas Morning News in 1978 revealed the camera was not available to the public in 1963. It may have been spy equipment issued to Oswald. This evidence was so explosive that the FBI tried to get Dallas detectives to change their reports regarding the camera and for nearly fifteen years kept hidden photos taken by Oswald.
Dallas detectives Guy Rose and R. S. Stovall reported finding the Minox camera loaded with film in Oswald’s Marine sea bag in the Irving home of Michael and Ruth Paine hours after the assassination. The three-inch-long German-made camera was famous for being used by spies on both sides during World War II. An inventory of Oswald’s property taken from the Paine home was made on November 26, 1963. Listed under item 375 was “one Minox camera.” This inventory list was witnessed by agent Warren De Brueys, the FBI man in New Orleans who had been assigned to monitor Oswald during the spring and summer of 1963. Later, however, the FBI property inventory listed item 375 as a “Minox light meter.” Detective Rose told the Dallas Morning News, “[The FBI] were calling it a light meter, I know that. But I know a camera when I see it . . . . The thing we got at Irving out of Oswald’s sea bag was a Minox camera. No question about it. They tried to get me to change the records because it wa
sn’t a light meter. I don’t know why they wanted it changed, but they must have had some motive for it.”
The motive may have been that the existence of the camera pointed to Oswald’s intelligence connections.
Dallas Morning News reporter Earl Golz contacted Minox Corporation and spoke to Kurt Lohn, formerly in charge of Minox distribution in New York City. According to Lohn, the serial number of the camera found in Oswald’s belongings—number 27259—did not exist among any Minox cameras distributed for commercial sale in the United States. Lohn said all Minox cameras distributed in the United States carried six-digit serial numbers beginning with 135000. Number 27259 was “not a registered number . . . not a valid number,” said Lohn. Golz also determined that Minox did not sell a light meter in the United States in 1963.
A later FBI report stated that a Minox III camera was obtained on January 31, 1964, from Ruth Paine and that it belonged to her husband, who worked for Bell Helicopter. However, Mrs. Paine told Golz she did not remember being asked to turn over such a camera. Michael Paine reportedly also had a Minox camera but it was damaged and “unworkable.”
In 1979, acting on a Freedom of Information Act request by an assassination researcher, the FBI, which had denied the existence of any Minox camera, released about twenty-five photographs taken with a Minox camera belonging to Oswald. Michael Paine was unable to recall taking any pictures such as the ones the FBI released.
On page 113 of a book published by Dallas police chief Jesse Curry in 1969 is a photograph of Oswald’s property taken from the Paine home. Clearly pictured is the camera along with various Minox camera equipment, including a binocular-type telephoto lens.
