Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (32 page)

CRC members included Carlos Bringuier, the man who had the muchpublicized street encounter with Oswald; Sergio Arcacha-Smith, a CRC top
official with close documented ties to CIA operative and adventurer David
Ferrie; and Carlos Prio Socarras, former president of Cuba under Batista
and one of the leading Cuban exiles close to CIA agents E. Howard Hunt,
Bernard Barker, and Frank Sturgis (all of later Watergate fame).

Prio-who had paid for the yacht Granma used by Castro to land his
revolutionaries on Cuba-had turned on Castro and become a leading
anti-Castroite. It is alleged that Prio was to become the new president of
Cuba following the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion.

Prio once was arrested in a gun-running conspiracy along with a man
named Robert McKeown. McKeown, according to evidence developed by the
Warren Commission, had been involved in a deal "running jeeps to Cuba"
and other smuggling operations with Jack Ruby, the man who killed Oswald.

In April 1977, before he was scheduled to testify for the House Select
Committee on Assassinations, Prio was found shot in the chest in his
Miami Beach garage. The wound was ruled self-inflicted.

Although the CRC had left 544 Camp Street by the time Oswald was seen
there in the summer of 1963, there were still plenty of Cuban connections.
A side entrance to 544 Camp Street was 531 Lafayette Street, the address
of Guy Banister Associates, a private detective agency. Banister, whom
the New Orleans States Item in 1967 claimed helped supply munitions to
the Bay of Pigs invaders, was a former FBI man with connections reaching
into the Bureau, the CIA, and organized crime as well as the Cuban exiles.

His secretary, Delphine Roberts, in 1978 told the Dallas Morning News
that Oswald had worked for Banister as "an undercover agent" in the
summer of 1963. During that same time, another of Banister's employees
was Oswald's former Civil Air Patrol leader, David Ferrie.

In the Warren Commission exhibits are some of Oswald's Fair Play for
Cuba Committee leaflets. They are stamped:

FPCC

544 Camp Street

New Orleans, La.

Another intriguing contact point between Oswald, 544 Camp Street, and
the Cubans was Ernesto Rodriguez. Recall that in the summer of 1963
Oswald wrote the Fair Play for Cuba Committee stating he was going to
get a small office. During this same time period, the owner of the 544
Camp Street building, Sam Newman, said he was approached by a Latin
man who asked about renting an office and said he was an electrician by
day and wanted to teach Spanish at night.

Shortly after the assassination and acting on a tip, authorities talked with
Rodriguez, who did teach Spanish and whose father was in the electrical
business.

Rodriguez, an anti-Castro militant, denied a rumor that he had tapes of
Oswald speaking Spanish, but admitted that he had met Oswald, who
apparently wanted to learn Spanish. Rodriguez also said that Oswald had
offered to train anti-Castro exiles and, in fact, it was Rodriguez who had
sent Oswald to meet Carlos Bringuier.

There was plenty of undercover activity going on at 544 Camp Street in
the summer of 1963. The location may have had something to do with it.
The building was located close to the New Orleans offices of both the FBI
and the CIA, it was near the Crescent City Garage where Oswald was seen
in the company of FBI agents and it was just around the corner from the
William B. Riley Coffee Co., Oswald's employer.

According to New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, it was here-at
544 Camp Street-that plans were set in motion that culminated in Dealey
Plaza.

It was reported to the Warren Commission by the CIA that Oswald's
pro-Castro contacts included an attempt to secure a visa to visit Cuba
during a trip to Mexico City in late September 1963. The Agency apparently went to great lengths to prove that Oswald was in Mexico City at this
time, but the effort was not entirely successful. Photographs of a man
entering the Soviet embassy and a tape recording made at the time were
shown to be of someone other than Oswald.

To document Oswald's visit to the Cuban embassy, the CIA relied on
the testimony of a Mexican who worked at the embassy, Silvia Tirado de
Duran. Duran, however, is a dubious witness at best since it is now known
that the twenty-six-year-old woman was arrested twice following the assassination on orders from the CIA and may have been coerced into giving
false testimony.

But again, it is the connections between the assassination and antiCastro groups that has always turned up the most intriguing evidence
-evidence that has largely been ignored by U.S. authorities, particularly
the Warren Commission.

One of several incidents that tend to connect Lee Harvey Oswald with
the anti-Castro Cubans involves one of the most violent of the exile
groups, Alpha 66, and its founder, Antonio Veciana Blanch.

Veciana, a former Cuban bank accountant who turned against Castro,
was conducting raids against the island during the missile crisis and has
consistently maintained that he was working for the CIA.

In the spring of 1963, Kennedy publicly criticized the hit-and-run raids
of Alpha 66, to which Veciana replied publicly: "We are going to attack
again and again." The militant Cuban leader has claimed to have worked
for a CIA officer known to him as "Maurice Bishop." According to
Veciana, he met with Bishop more than a hundred times and the CIA
officer helped guide the activities of Alpha 66, including plans to assassinate Castro. Veciana said his relationship with the Agency did not end
until 1973, when Bishop paid him $253,000 as back pay for his services.

But Veciana's most astounding claim is that, during a visit to Dallas in
late August or early September 1963, he saw his CIA case officer in
conversation with a man he later recognized as Lee Harvey Oswald.

Although the House Select Committee on Assassinations failed to "credit"
Veciana's story of the Oswald-Bishop meeting, it nevertheless went to
great lengths in an attempt to locate the mysterious Bishop, including
sending an artist's sketch of Bishop to U.S. newspapers. The committee
also scoured CIA files in an effort to identify Bishop. The Agency,
unsurprisingly, denied ever assigning a case officer to Veciana.

Veciana also told the committee that shortly after the assassination,
Bishop contacted him and reminded him that he had a relative working for
Cuban intelligence living in Mexico. According to Veciana, Bishop wanted
Veciana to offer his relative a "large sum of money" to say that the
relative and his wife met Oswald during his Mexico City trip. Veciana said
he agreed to this scheme, but was unable to contact his relative.

The House Committee later developed information that Bishop may
have been none other than former chief of the CIA's Western Hemisphere
Division's Directorate of Operations' David Atlee Phillips. Phillips denied
being Bishop and a fearful Veciana agreed. However, after arranging a
meeting between Veciana and Phillips, the Committee staff reported it
"suspected that Veciana was lying when he denied that the retired CIA
officer was Bishop."

A prime example of interference with an investigation into links between anti-Castro Cubans and the assassination came just days after Kennedy was killed. The Chicago Field Office of the Secret Service reported
to superiors that it had heard from an informant that a Chicago group
"may have [had] a connection with the JFK assassination." The informant
reported that on the day before the assassination, a Cuban militant named
Homer S. Echevarria had stated that he had "plenty of money" for an
illegal arms deal and would proceed with the plan "as soon as we take
care of Kennedy."

The Secret Service checked on Echevarria and discovered he was an
associate of the military director of the Cuban Student Directorate (the
New Orleans chapter of the CSD was headed by Carlos Bringuier, who had
squabbled with Oswald on the streets of that city) and that the munitions
deal was financed by "hoodlum elements . . . not restricted to Chicago."

Although the Secret Service wanted to pursue the matter, the FBIwhich on November 29, 1963, was designated to control the assassination
investigation by President Johnson-"made clear that it wanted the Secret
Service to terminate its investigation" of the Echevarria report. The case
was closed.

One anti-Castro-Cuban-Oswald story that was not so easy to brush off is
that of Cuban exile Silvia Odio. She and her sister, Annie, came from a
distinguished and wealthy Cuban family. The sisters had been forced to
flee Cuba after their parents were imprisoned by the Castro government.
Their father, who intially had supported Castro's revolution, had turned
against the bearded leader and was arrested for concealing a man named
Reinaldo Gonzales, who was involved in a plot to kill Castro. Interestingly, Gonzales's co-conspirator was Antonio Veciana, the leader of Alpha
66 who operated under the instructions of Maurice Bishop.

Shortly before moving to Dallas, Silvia Odio had joined with other
anti-Castro Cubans in Puerto Rico and formed Junta Revolucionaria (the
Cuban Revolutionary Junta) or JURE.

One night in late September 1963-they believe it was the 26th or 27th-three men came to Odio's Dallas apartment. There were two Latins
and one Anglo, described as weary, unkempt, and unshaved.

The leader of the trio identified himself as "Leopoldo" and introduced
the other Latin as "Angel" or "Angelo." He introduced the American as
"Leon Oswald."

The men said they had just arrived from New Orleans, were members of
JURE, and were working with the Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRC).
They knew her father's underground name and also many details of
anti-Castro activities in Cuba, including recent plots to kill Castro. They
told Silvia Odio that they were trying to raise funds for anti-Castro
operations and wanted her help in translating solicitation letters to American businessmen. Something about the men, however, made Odio uneasy
and she sent them away after warning them that she did not want to be
involved in a campaign of violence. During their brief stay, her sister
Annie also got a good look at the trio.

Within forty-eight hours, "Leopoldo" called Silvia Odio and asked for her
thoughts on their American companion. She said the man then made a
series of comments, saying:

Well, you know he's a Marine, an ex-Marine, and an expert marksman.
He would be a tremendous asset to anyone, except that you never know
how to take him . . . He's kind of loco, kind of nuts. He could go any
way. He could do anything-like getting underground in Cuba, like
killing Castro . . . The American says we Cubans don't have any guts.
He says we should have shot President Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs.
He says we should do something like that.

Apparently, that was all "Leopoldo" had to say, for he quickly hung up
and Odio was never to hear from him again. She later told author Anthony
Summers: `Immediately, I suspected there was some sort of scheme or
plot..

Although the Odio's wrote of the incident to their father and told the
story to friends well before Kennedy's assassination, they did not tell
authorities of the strange visitors.

Both sisters were shocked and frightened to see photographs of Lee
Harvey Oswald since, then and now, they both believe him to be the same
man who was introduced to them as "Leon Oswald."

After the assassination, word of the Odio visit reached the FBI, which
investigated the matter for the Warren Commission. The commission,
having already accepted FBI and CIA evidence that Oswald was on his
way to or in Mexico City at the time of the Odio visit, stated:

While the FBI had not yet completed its investigation into this matter at
the time the report went to press, the Commission has concluded that
Lee Harvey Oswald was not at Mrs. Odio's apartment in September 1963.

Another factor that enabled the commission to dismiss the Odio story
was reports from the FBI concerning anti-Castro militant, Loran Eugene
Hall.

Although Warren Commission staff lawyers asked the FBI to prove or
disprove the Odio story in August 1964, it was not until September 26just days before the report was finalized-that the Bureau reported on the
matter. An FBI report stated that the Bureau had located Hall, who
admitted traveling to Dallas with two other Cubans and that they had
visited Odio. Hall said neither of his companions was Oswald. The matter
was dropped.

Even before the Warren report was issued, FBI agents located Hall's
two companions, Lawrence Howard and William Seymour. Both denied
ever meeting Silvia Odio.

Confronted with their statements, Hall retracted his story. In fact, Hall
denied he ever told the FBI any such thing. The Bureau failed to tell the
commission about this development. Hall, who acknowledged being imprisoned in Cuba with Mafia leader Santos Trafficante, also was an associate
of Frank Sturgis (Watergate burglar and CIA-Mafia-connected anti-Castroite)
and was twice taken into custody for engaging in unauthorized exile activities.