Dead Wrong: Straight Facts on the Country's Most Controversial Cover-Ups
Page 18
• I co-piloted a flight that infiltrated a Military Intelligence team into Dallas on the morning of November 22, 1963, in an attempt to abort the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. This mission was at the direction of the Pentagon with CIA logistical support. John Roselli was a passenger on that flight. Intelligence for our mission, after some confusion, had identified Dealey Plaza as the sight for the operation of an assassination attempt. The detailed “inside” information as to how this operation came about, I would not know. I could only speculate as to how this information, which led to the formation of the abort team, was obtained or deciphered.
Upon reaching Dealey Plaza, the Intell Team split in three directions, looking for three or more shooters or teams that could form a triangulated crossfire. I was asked to act as a spotter, reconnoitering the south knoll in this operation with my friend and operational partner, “Sergio”. We were also looking for a diversionary act, something that would give shooters an opportunity to secretly set up. Therefore, while people were congregating around Elm Street and the Book Depository and we heard sirens coming closer, instead of looking toward the commotion, we looked away from it, scanning the perimeter and looking for a shooter or shooters attempting to set up triangulation shooting in a kill zone that we had identified. We arrived at the plaza too late to abort the assassination; there was not enough time, our people were not in position and our communications between scattered team members were very poor. Shortly after the limo turned from Houston Street and came into our view, Sergio and I both heard at least four shots, very distinctly from our vantage point on the south knoll. Two of those shots were very close together, basically on top of each other—and my partner and I were both aware that it was not the result of an echo-effect, but two clear and distinct rifle reports that were very close together. One of the shots was also from a different direction than the others; one came from the southwest, meaning from the front of the limousine, not the rear. We both knew that with certainty. When my partner and I debriefed each other later that day, we were both sure on that one different-sounding shot. That fact was hard for us to miss because the other shots came from the north and east of us and that one shot from the southwest of us had a totally different sound and came whizzing right over our heads. We were both experienced veterans of gunfire, and very familiar with its sound, and we were both certain that one gunshot came from a westerly direction.
We knew we had to ex filtrate the scene immediately because we both had extensive secret Intelligence associations and liaison, which would provide no legitimate reason to logically explain our being there as the President was fired upon. As we cleared the area, Sergio and I both caught the distinct smell and “taste” of gunpowder at a location high on the south knoll of Dealey Plaza, near the south structure of the overpass.
We flew out of Dallas a couple hours after the assassination, from Redbird Airport. We flew VFR (Visual Flight Rules) coming into and out of Redbird, because we did not have to file a flight plan which would establish a record and flight log. John Roselli was not a passenger on the flight that left Dallas after the assassination. Everyone on board the flight out of Dallas was very quiet and dejected. It was a very somber experience; heads were low, with nothing said.
I do not know the names of most of the men who were on that mission because those type of operations are intentionally structured in a manner that minimizes individual knowledge. In “Black Operations” one does not ask questions of others— that is an unwritten rule. The official post-mission debriefing took place at West Palm Beach, Florida on November 25th, my birthday. That debriefing was conducted by Rex Beardsley, Bob Bennette and Tracy Barnes.
I hereby declare that the above statements stem from my personal knowledge and direct experience and are true and correct to the best of my knowledge.
Signed and dated this 27th day of July, 2010 William Robert “Tosh” Plumlee (NOTARIZED)
It should be noted that Tosh Plumlee’s long career in covert operations has spanned many decades. At this writing, he is involved in intelligence operations against the deadly drug cartels in Mexico, working with a joint American/Mexican Military Task Force as a “contract advisor”; he is currently at work on his memoir entitled Deep Cover, Shallow Graves.
The testimony of former high-ranking CIA officer Victor Marchetti completely corroborates Plumlee’s testimony regarding Oswald’s intelligence training at Nag’s Head, North Carolina and the ONI False Defector Program in which Oswald participated:
STATEMENTS OF FORMER CIA OFFICER VICTOR L. MARCHETTI
(Marchetti was Executive Assistant to Deputy Director, CIA; resigned, 1969)
“One of these activities was an ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) program which involved three dozen, maybe forty, young men who were made to appear disenchanted, poor, American youths who had become turned off and wanted to see what communism was all about. Some of these people lasted only a few weeks. They were sent into the Soviet Union, or into eastern Europe, with the specific intention the Soviets would pick them up and ‘double’ them if they suspected them of being US agents, or recruit them as KGB agents. They were trained at various naval installations both here and abroad, but the operation was being run out of Nag’s Head, North Carolina.”251
“Interviewed from his Northern Virginia home, Marchetti confirmed the existence of the ONI base to me privately, saying the plan was to send young men to the Soviet Union as defectors, but who in actuality were hoping to be picked up as agents by the KGB. This process is known as “doubling,” as the young men would then in effect be double agents for both American and Soviet Intelligence. Once placing an agent in the KGB, American Intelligence could then begin funneling in disinformation. According to Marchetti, this was the plan for Oswald.”252
Oswald’s operational activities certainly coincided precisely with the operational activities of the ONI False Defector Program described by Marchetti.
(The following is from Marchetti’s testimony regarding Oswald’s mysterious phone call from the Dallas jail to an otherwise unknown person:)
QUESTION: “But there is a call mechanism set up?”
Mr. MARCHETTI: “Yes.”
QUESTION: “So it is conceivable that Lee Harvey Oswald was—”
Mr. MARCHETTI: “That’s what he was doing. He was trying to call in and say, ‘Tell them I’m all right.’”
QUESTION: “Was that his death warrant?”
Mr. MARCHETTI: “You betcha. Because this time he went over the dam, whether he knew it or not, or whether they set him up or not. He was over the dam. At this point it was executive action [assassination].”
QUESTION: “Is the contact person’s name ever the name of someone who is not necessarily an active agent but is just a contact person?”
Mr. MARCHETTI: “That’s right.”
QUESTION: “Then that person would go up to the next level?”
Mr. MARCHETTI: “That’s right, and it would be a ‘funny name’—a pseudonym. Like for example, you would have a number to call. If you were my agent, and you got yourself into a peck of trouble, you might try to contact me, but maybe you can’t get through.”
QUESTION: “I would contact you by telephone, right?”
Mr. MARCHETTI: “Yes. But I might have covered my tracks real good so you can’t contact me by telephone. In other words, I contact you, you don’t contact me. But I give you a [unintelligible] number. So you call him, but I’ve already talked to him and said, ‘Don’t touch him.’ You’re screwed up.”
QUESTION: “But you would use, for that middle man, people who were not necessarily active agents or agency people, right?”
Mr. MARCHETTI: “That’s right. Most likely they would be cut-outs. You would have to call indirectly.”
QUESTION: “Could Oswald have had a name? ... “
Mr. MARCHETTI: “He was probably calling his cut-out. He was calling somebody who could put him in touch with his case officer. He couldn’t go beyond that person. There�
�s no way he could. He just had to depend on this person to say, ‘Okay, I’ll deliver the message.’ Now, if the cut-out has already been alerted to cut him off and ignore him, then ... “253
“The FBI, while publicly embracing the Warren Commission’s ‘one man acting alone’ conclusion, has always privately known that there were three gunmen.”254
Multiple use of Oswald cover names
A great deal of evidence also suggests that there were actually two Intelligence operatives using the name Oswald as a component of their operation in the False Defector Program. The evidence is extensive, from several authors: John Armstrong has researched that particular point for decades, and his book Harvey & Lee examines that issue in precise detail. It is also well summarized in the 2010 book American Conspiracies by Jesse Ventura and Dick Russell:
“My hunch is that they were both part of a false defector program that James Angleton and his friends in counterintelligence were running out of the CIA. While Harvey was over in Russia, Lee was working with anti-Castro Cubans in Florida planning to bump off Castro (he was seen by a number of people down there at the same time). Harvey, the wimpy-chinned one in the photographs, was married to Marina. Lee, the thick-necked one, was used to set up Harvey. I believe it’s Harvey laying in the grave, and whatever happened to Lee, I have no idea.”255
BOMBSHELL DROPPED FROM HIGH LOCATION
David Atlee Phillips, Director, WHO (Western Hemisphere Operations), CIA
Dave Phillips was a twenty-five-year CIA officer and one of very few in history to be awarded the Career Intelligence Medal. He rose from full-time operative, to CIA Chief of Station, and then all the way to Chief of All Operations, Western Hemisphere. During that time he handled “the night watch” at CIA and was privy to a great degree of inside knowledge.
Phillips made this astounding admission late in his life:
“My final take on the assassination is there was a conspiracy, likely including American intelligence officers.”256
Phillips also used a literary vehicle with which to give us an amazing clue to the actual context of the assassination. In addition to being a brilliant strategist, Phillips was also a gifted writer. In an unpublished manuscript that he’d made sure would be discovered, he apparently utilized that to tell us what really happened in the JFK assassination. Intelligence veterans have often used manuscripts, that are technically not works of non-fiction, as vehicles for making statements in a manner that skirts the security obligations of their lifetime secrecy agreements.
The unpublished manuscript was entitled The AMLASH Legacy. AMLASH was the CIA program to assassinate Fidel Castro, with which Phillips was closely familiar. He details characters who closely mirror himself, Oswald and others at CIA.
Then, in a climactic explanation of what actually happened, the character explicitly based on Phillips himself reveals:
“I was one of the two case officers who handled Lee Harvey Oswald ... we gave him the mission of killing Fidel Castro in Cuba ... I don’t know why he killed Kennedy. But I do know he used precisely the plan we had devised against Castro. Thus the CIA did not anticipate the president’s assassination, but it was responsible for it. I share that guilt.”257
To a brilliant tactician like Phillips, every word was important. Therefore, the key phrase is:
“I do know he used precisely the plan we had devised against Castro.”258
That’s highly indicative that an intelligence operation that had been planned against Castro was “hijacked” and redirected at President Kennedy. That would explain why alarm bells went off all over Washington the second that Oswald’s name was mentioned. That would explain the coverup and rush for closure and why Attorney General Robert Kennedy participated in it and at times even directed it. That would explain that there were actually two conspiracies:
1. The JFK murder with Oswald set-up as the patsy;
2. The massive government cover-up that was rushed into place when it seemed apparent that U.S. Intelligence had been completely compromised.
RFK registered immediate recognition of Oswald’s name. He immediately called the anti-Castro camp in Florida, dramatically shouting into the telephone: “One of your guys did it!”259
That may very well have been the “dark beauty” of the hijacked “black op”:
It forced the victims into covering up the crime.
And then abracadabra—the enigma becomes clear.
Regarding much of the above information, see Our Man in Mexico,page 238:
“The notion that David Phillips or Angleton and his Counterintelligence team ran a closely held operation involving Oswald in the weeks before Kennedy was killed has become less implausible as more records have come into public view. Phillips himself entertained such a scenario later in life. In addition to two nonfiction memoirs, Phillips also wrote novels of espionage. When he died in 1987, he left behind an outline for a novel about the Mexico City station in 1963, entitled “The AMLASH Legacy.” The leading characters were explicitly based on Win Scott, James Angleton, and David Phillips himself. The role of the Phillips character in the events of 1963 was described as follows:
“I was one of the two case officers who handled Lee Harvey Oswald. After working to establish his Marxist bona fides, we gave him the mission of killing Fidel Castro in Cuba. I helped him when he came to Mexico City to obtain a visa, and when he returned to Dallas to wait for it I saw him twice there. We rehearsed the plan many times: In Havana Oswald was to assassinate Castro with a sniper’s rifle from the upper floor window of a building on the route where Castro often drove in an open jeep. Whether Oswald was a double-agent or a psycho I’m not sure, and I don’t know why he killed Kennedy. But I do know he used precisely the plan we had devised against Castro. Thus the CIA did not anticipate the President’s assassination but it was responsible for it. I share that guilt.”260
Oswald’s role-playing may have also been related to the “Gary Powers incident.”
“On May 1, 1960, a U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers was shot down by the Soviets while photographing Soviet military installations. The United States first denied that it was on a spy mission but later conceded that it was. The major incident is curiously absent from Lee’s ‘historic diary,’ even though he had certainly been aware of and perhaps even involved in the missions in Atsugi. Powers, who survived the crash, believed that it was information from Lee that gave the Soviets the ability to find the U-2 and shoot it down.”261
INTELLIGENCE HISTORY OF LEE HARVEY OSWALD:
•United States Marine Corps: 1956-1959;
•Illusionary Warfare Training: Propaganda, language instruction, false identities, maintenance of cover stories, etc.; Coun- terIntelligence training for ONI’s (Office of Naval Intelligence) False Defector Program at Nag’s Head, North Carolina. 1957 *1;
•Military Intelligence operative: Top Secret security clearance, Marine Air Control, Atsugi, Japan (main CIA base in Far East); activities related to U-2 spy plane missions; Assignments related to “hostesses” at Queen Bee Night Club, Tokyo *2, and the defection-targeting of Soviet Colonel Nikolai Eroshkin; 1957-1959 *3;
•Calculated Duality: Though extremely patriotic, Oswald carefully builds a reputation of spouting Communist beliefs and Marxist leanings: “So at this point in his life, Oswald has talked like a Communist, but what he really does is join ultra-patriotic American military organizations (such as David Ferrie’s Civil Air Patrol) and work on behalf of U.S Intelligence against communism. The next major step in his life, long before leaving the Marine Corps, is to make plans to go to Russia.” (Bob Harris, February 23, 2008); 1958-1959;
•Advanced Russian: 1959; at U.S. Army Monterey School of Languages, or (more likely) Oswald’s Intelligence “double” was a native Russian speaker *4;
•Constructs Intelligence ‘Legend’: 1959; Formally applies for early military discharge; methodically plans mission into Soviet Union; applies to Albert Schweitzer College in Switzerland—“ Consider tha
t coming fresh out of the Marine Corps, he needed a way to establish a cover as a legitimate seeker of knowledge rather than an agent of the United States. The materials that the Schweitzer College mailed back to him gave him something he could present, to at least give that appearance.” (Bob Harris, February 23, 2008);
•Granted U.S. Marines Dependency Discharge: Immediately prior to his Soviet “defection” because his “mother injured foot” (a minor injury which actually occurred six months prior to the discharge); applies for passport the very next day; then travels to Europe, determining Helsinki, Finland as easiest point of entry to Russia; gains entry to Moscow, via U.S.-friendly Helsinki entry point; 1959;
•CounterIntelligence Operative: In an obvious infiltration effort, Oswald applies to Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, a notorious terrorist incubation center and a high value target to U.S. Intelligence (Carlos ‘The Jackal’ and other revolutionaries and guerrillas were trained there); KGB (Soviet equivalent of CIA) is highly dubious of Oswald’s bonafides; his application to Patrice Lumumba University is formally denied and Oswald is faced with deportation; on the day that he has been ordered to exit the country, he dramatically slits his wrist at precisely the time he is to meet Rimma Shirakova, his “guide”—who has been instructed by KGB to have Oswald on the 3:00 pm train back to Helsinki; when Oswald fails to appear in the lobby at the arranged time, Shirakova has his hotel door broken down; after the perceived suicide attempt, Oswald is granted permission to remain in Soviet Union 1959