Transcript with documents and links to documents of John Newman's presentation at AARC conference.

John Newman - I just want to thank the AARC for inviting me to be here with you today and to acknowledge my long friend and colleague Jay Harvey who has worked tirelessly in the archives and has been with me as a discussant for 20 years since "JFK and Vietnam." Thank you, Jay, for being there. 

I could stand here at this podium and tell you what I am prepared to say in the next hour in just five minutes instead. But, there's a difference between saying that something is true and proving that it's true. 

Stating opinions about the CIA and its operatives is pretty easy to do, proving what the facts are is much harder work. We must begin with an underlying base of facts and details, from this base an evidentiary hierarchy must be built. Any overarching theory of the JFK case must be derived from such an evidentiary hierarchy.  

The investigation of the Kennedy assassination outside of Dealey Plaza is the same as it is inside Dealey Plaza.  It is all a crime scene.  The boxes of JFK records in the National Archives are still a crime scene. The source of each detail, like any evidence, must be accounted for from crime scene to courtroom, or in this case the big screens in front of you today.

I ask that you bear with me for the technical aspects of my presentation. I am going to try and move the chains down the football field a little bit today. So, I'm going to have to work with you on the devil in the details.

Some of the ground work I will put in place today comes from the first and subsequent volumes of my forthcoming new works on the case, but, the focus of my presentation today will be devoted to putting a fresh evidentiary base in place, a base that spans from the OSS and World War II to the CIA in the late 1960's. I plan to do that by unmasking a few of the CIA officers and operatives who were behind multiple identities that bear heavily upon the Kennedy assassination case.

I'll have something more to say about George Joannides and his boss, William Kent, expand a little bit perhaps on what you've heard so far this morning. Great presentation by the way, just now. Fantastic.

I will be dealing principally with David Phillips and someone who is probably known to most of you as “Tony Sforza,” of these two names only Phillips is a true name from birth. Actually, the middle birth name of the person using the name Tony Sforza was in fact, Antonio.

So, let me pose this question, why are the CIA's multiple identities important to this case? The answer is related to something Dan Hardway said to me the first time we met, "Under many CIA operations, there is another operation in play."

I refer to these as the CIA's "Dark Operations." Peter Dale Scott gave us the term "Deep Politics," the late Gary Webb gave us the term "Dark Alliance."  In my forthcoming works I will use the term "Dark Operations," or "Dark Mater."

The CIA uses pseudonyms when its operatives handle their sources, more importantly, they are used internally at the secret level.  

This internal use is imperative for  CIA counterintelligence operations.  It makes it very difficult for moles to piece together sensitive operations.  It is the foundation of what is called compartmentalization in tradecraft and "the need to know."

Moreover, the CIA reinforces the use of multiple identities with carefully crafted deceptions in its secret cables and memos.  These deceptions backstop and maintain the differentiation between the different identities that belong to the same person.

In three secret cables I will show you today you'll be able to see how such deliberate deceptions are used to convince those reading these cables that there are two people in the story, when in fact they are both the same person.

I've come to the view that without unmasking the CIA pseudonyms, cryptonyms and multiple identities related to this case, in the end it will not be possible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt who was behind the assassination and how they got away with it.

Jay?

The pseudonyms and multiple identities I have chosen to work on with you today were inextricably woven into a CIA operation to defect and recruit Rolando Cubela who eventually with the support of the Kennedy brothers would be used in an operation, an attempted operation, to assassinate Fidel Castro.  We will penetrate deep inside of the Cubela operation and identify who the people who managed it really were.  From that base we can continue to build the evidentiary hierarchy that will uncover the darkest operation that was [ever] put into play underneath of the Cubela operation.

I don't believe there was ever a darker operation than this one. Its intent was to play the JFK/RFK plot to topple Castro back against the President and his brother.  Its success depended on Castro being alive, not dead, after the Kennedy assassination. Castro, along with the Soviet Union had to appear to be behind the president's murder with Oswald as the shooter.

There was a CIA Oswald operation to embarrass the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, Dan [Hardway] talked about it a little while ago, in foreign countries that was in play in the Fall of 1963.  

[ See Bill Simpich’s book “State Secrets: Chapter Five the Mexico City Solution.” John Tilton, of the CIA is an important figure involved that operation. Bill Simpich introduced us to a little known branch within the FBI, the Nationalities Intelligence Division and one Lambert Anderson who was in charge of the Cuban desk of the FBI’s NI. Anderson was involved in the operation to embarrass the FPCC in foreign countries.  In my opinion, this operation was a cover for a hidden operation involving Oswald in Mexico City because the embarrassment op coincides exactly when LHO is supposedly planning to go to Mexico city.  Without this embarrassment op the LHO in Mexico City op could not go forward. So, this largely overlooked op is part of the plot to kill JFK just as much as the LHO in Mexico City op is.  Anderson’s supervisor was Marvin Gheesling who was the man who took Oswald off the watch list. ]

When you look at the Church Committee's report that describes it it is a bleak and inadequate description that betrays its true function as a top shelf cover operation under which something else was really going on. [ See Church Committee Vol. 5 p. 65]

Running underneath that supposed Oswald FPCC operation was a dark op intended to tie Oswald to the Soviets and the Cubans while he was in Mexico City, whether he was there or somebody else matters less than tying the Oswald name to the Cubans and the Soviet Union.  Let's not forget that.

I have dealt with the evidence for that part of the puzzle in the 2008 sequel to my book, "Oswald and the CIA."  So, there is not time to go over that again today.

In my presentation today, I will place the Cubela operation into the adjacent area of the same puzzle. The operation to kill the president was in play underneath both the Oswald op in Mexico and the Cubela op to assassinate Castro.

However, it is important to note that the Cubela/Castro operation op had an important additional ingredient, the backing of the Kennedy brothers.  

In my presentation to you today you're going to hear a lot about four Cubans.  Three of whom became best friends during childhood and whose destiny led them to create the Directorio Revolutionario, the DR, in order to overthrow the Cuban dictator Fulgencia Batista.  

The group’s leader was Jose Antonio Escheverria.

The second childhood friend was Rolando Cubela, later assigned the CIA cryptonym, AM/Lash, and is known for the assassination plot against Castro.

And the third is Carlos Tepedino Gonzalez, later assigned the CIA crypt AM/Whip.

Jay, let's go to the next slide.

Cuba has a history of student opposition to dictators. During the early 1930's a splinter group of the Federation of University Students formed a secret organization to overthrow the Machado dictatorship.  They called it the University Students Directorate.

Next slide.

It was in this tradition that in 1956 Antonio Escheverria formed the secret organization known as the DR at the University of Havana.

Carlos Tepedino financed the group through the profits from his jewelry business.  And Rolando Cubela became the DR's second in command.  

Next slide. 

To this group of three I add a fourth Cuban. He was a jewel smuggler, who through family connections opportunistically insinuated himself into this childhood threesome and their secret DR.  

His name was Francisco Wilfredo Pancho Verona Alonzo.  

And he was assigned the CIA cryptonym AM/CONCERT-1.

[ some CIA docs on “Pancho”

1.) 104-10113-10074

2.) 104-10113-10082 (oddly if you just put in this RIF # it doesn’t come up.

 

To avoid confusing him with the famous Cuban leader, Antonio Verona, with whom he was not related, today I will refer to him simply as "Pancho," easy to remember.

Next slide.

The DR was active in Cuba before Castro's famous Granma naval expedition landed in Oriente province in November 1956. While Castro's 26th July group was on the run in the swamps and hills, Escheverria launched a bold attack on the presidential palace to assassinate Batista.

Castro selfishly disparaged the DR and called them cowards for not putting support of his own group ahead of their plans to topple the regime.

Castro was reportedly relieved when the plot failed. After Escheverria was gunned down in the streets, no new student leader appeared who could deal with Castro as an equal.

The DR played a crucial role in the final 20 months of the revolution, and after Batista's flight it was the DR that seized control of the presidential palace and they refused to give it up to Castro's 26 July elements until given posts in the new provisional government.  But then at the last minute, the DR leader at the time, Faure Chomon gave into Castro.  

Cubela, however, was immediately alienated by Castro's move towards Communism.

Let's go to the next slide.

A CIA man working with the CIA in Havana who appears in the files with the pseudonym Andrew F. Merton, [here’s one example] had been using Tepedino as an informant. Now Tepedino made arrangements to help Merton recruit Cubela. That attempt failed when Castro suddenly sent Cubela to Spain as Cuba's military attache.

Cubella reportedly told his closest friends that if he did not get out of Cuba right away, he would kill Castro himself.  A remark that quickly found its way to the CIA.

Castro successfully isolated and split the DR which then drifted into a void.  Many of its members were assimilated into Castro's 26 July government.

Yet, many disenchanted DR members remained who saw Castro as just another dictator who was taking Cuba Communist, and they organized clandestine opposition to his regime.  Within twelve months they fled to the United States as political refugees.  There they readopted the name Cuban Student Directorate, the DRE.

The DRE was formed as a unilateral, psychological warfare asset of the CIA station in Miami, JM/Wave.

In the summer of 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald became publicly involved with the DRE's operations.

The real person behind the Andrew F. Merton identity has been protected like Ft. Knox for 50 years, even inside the CIA.  If this identification was known to the JFK Records Review Board, they did not release it.  They might not have known about it. 

I have seen no evidence that the House Select Committee knew about it either. 

Gaeton Fonzi didn't write about it in his book "The Last Investigation."

A lone 2008 posting on one obscure JFK website picked up the scent but was thrown off the trail by an internal roadblock setup right after the assassination.  ( John might be referring to this ) The purpose of that roadblock was to decouple the man using the Merton pseudonym from his long history in the Cubela operation.  I will get to that again after proving who Merton was in this section of my presentation. But, when this part of the puzzle is put together it will allow us to solve much more of the puzzle, including the pseudonyms, nicknames, the true birth name and the CIA cryptonym for the person using the name Tony Sforza.  

Besides appearing in Cuba from 1958 to 1960, Andrew Merton also appeared in a 1954 CIA directed coup in Guatemala.  And then he reappeared again in the CIA operations in Mexico from 1961 to 1964.  

This is how you do it, you have to have life events to associate pseudonyms that are separated in the files. The Cuban experts out there know who this assignment profile belongs to, David Atlee Phillips.

Next slide, good.

Among those good soldiers who fought fearlessly for the truth in this case, and to whom we are paying tribute at this conference, is Gaeton Fonzi. He spent time in my basement, going through my files, I remember him well. Fondly.  Gaeton blazed a trail like none other to light the way to Phillips involvement with Oswald.

And we are blessed and fortunate to have Antonio Veciana here this afternoon to tell that story for us.

In the 2008 sequel to my Oswald book, I opined that the CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton played an important role in the plot to murder President Kennedy.  Now I want to stand with Gaeton Fonzi and add my name to his and others who are convinced that the CIA’s top psychological warfare officer, David Phillips, also played an important role.  

I'll begin to make that case today by sharing some work I've done for the last three years on the pseudonyms that belonged to David Phillips.

By the way, for those Phillip watchers out there among you his first CIA crypt in Chile was a combination of the Chilean digraph, whatever that is and MINATOUR-1.  I've never seen an actual crypt for Phillip before, until recently.  

Anyway, it has been widely known that Dave Phillips used a pseudonym, Michael Choadin.  The CIA has not protected that identification and has even released cables with the name Phillips handwritten in over the top of the name Choadin, many of you have probably seen these.    

Phillips was Andrew Merton.  And he was also Jack Stewart.  And he was behind more than a dozen other aliases as well.  But, the Andrew Merton/Jack Stewart identification is going to take us on a trail that begins with the DR, continues with the Joannides - JM/WAVE - DRE operation, through the Rolando Cubela - AM/LASH operation and all the way to and through the 1963 Oswald operation in New Orleans and Mexico City.  This trail takes us across familiar parts of the puzzle, James Angleton's counterintelligence staff, William Harvey’s Foreign Intelligence Staff and his "Task Force W," Cuban ops, and Desmond Fitzgerald's Special Affairs Staff, also Cuban ops.  

This trail will also begin to shine a light on another hardly known staff element at the top of the CIA, the PP Staff, The Psychological and Paramilitary Operations Staff at the top.

Guess who came from there? Howard Hunt, David Phillips, and a whole lot of other people we know and love in this case.

Hopefully, if I am disciplined, we can get to the PP staff, and I’ll show you some charts on that in the question and answer session if somebody will ask me to do it. 

To get there, however, we must be absolutely certain of each foothold along the way.  We are working with a few people who appear to be many. It’s the pseudonyms and cryptonyms that need to be broken to put this puzzle together. So, let me roll up my sleeves, I’ve already done that and break out my stubby pencil, that’s what we used in Army Intelligence on our (?) sticks, our net diagram sticks and lay the evidentiary base for this part of the puzzle. 

Just leave that there.

At this part of the presentation we will be working principally with four documents, the CIA Havana station cable, a JM/Wave cable, and two, very critical FBI documents.  As you look at these FBI memos, note the assignments of the person whose name the CIA still wants to be kept secret, first in Havana, and later in Mexico City. These assignments match the assignment profile of Phillips. 

Let’s get the next slide

We’ll get started with this CIA Havana station cable.  By the way, my methodology. I’m going to show you the doc. You can’t read that. I am going to blow it up in 70 font so that you can see it in the back row. And if you buy the DVD it is going to be there for you. 

So, let’s start it with this one. Go ahead to the next slide.

So, the key as you can see here is the symbiotic, very close relationship between Phillips and Carlos Tepedino.  After working together in Cuba, Phillips eventually wound up in Mexico City, where Tepedino also visited him.

This excerpt from the cable shows just how closely Carlos trusted Phillips.

Tepedino and Merton – I

11/24/59 HAVA 2940

Tepedino is Willing to cooperate with “Any friend of Andrew F. Merton in Mexico.”

When we get to the 1962 CIA Cubela defection op you will see that the agency played this “any friend of Merton,” card again to get Tepedino’s help to get to Cubela.

Next slide

This one shows that Phillips recruited Tepedino around May 1958. 

Tepedino and Merton – II

11/24/59 Hava

2940: Profession Jewler, Known to Merton 18 months anti-Commie now disaffected with Castro.

Let’s go to the next one. 

This is in Miami, an FBI Miami office Airtel, and it is the first of two key mid-1962 FBI documents that I mentioned a second ago. 

As we scroll down, a page at a time, you’ll notice in the margin there are CIA requests to keep stuff secret in there.

It’s all CIA, even though it’s an FBI document, to this day they don’t want us to know what is inside those redactions. But, the unredacted material is obviously the life story of Phillips.

Next Slide

Let’s blow some stuff up.  The redactor did not widen the redactions beyond the withheld words, a mistake that allows freaks like me to precisely count letters and spaces and fill in the blanks, like playing the game Hangman.

Let’s do this one in which Tepedino talks about his contacts in Havana. It’s got a 13 space hole into which fits perfectly the name “Dave (space) Phillips.”

Let’s go to the next one.

This one mentions Phillips’ transfer to Mexico City. It’s also easy to solve. His name fits into the first hole perfectly. But, Arthur Avignon was a CIA Deputy Chief of Station, and after Phillips left he would have been a logical choice to keep running Tepedino.

Guess whose name fits into the second hole perfectly? Arthur Avignon. 

Let’s go to the next one. 

This is the devil in the details guys.  This is what we got to do. This is Hoover memo to the CIA is the second key FBI document I mentioned.  It tells the same story that originated in the Miami Airtel. 

Again, as we scroll down, one page through it.

You will see the CIA’s, per CIA’s view, the CIA, they want this stuff redacted.  Again, the life story belongs to Phillips. 

Let’s blow some of this stuff up.  This one here, part about Tepedino’s CIA Havana contact, and it’s too easy, 13 spaces for Dave Phillips, and four for the CIA with a comma.

Next slide.  

This one about the change of Tepedino’s CIA Havana contact is

just as easy, eight spaces for Phillips and 14 again for his replacement, Arthur Avignon. 

Next slide. 

We will go back to the end of the other FBI document.  We can see that just below the bottom the CIA still wants to keep the comparison being made between two people a secret. 

Just blow it up. Let’s fill in the blanks for this crucial gem.  It is exactly 39 spaces. Guess what amazingly fits in there? “Dave Phillips was using the name Merton.” Perfect.

Let’s go to the next one.

6/18/62 Miami Airtel

For the Bureau’s info, former Legats, Havana, Now in Miami, advised that [ Dave Phillips] was using the name Merton [39 spaces]

In the same area of that document, this is another crucial gem, with two holes containing six and eighteen spaces respectively discussing an identical physical description.

Guess which names fit in there perfectly? Merton and Phillips.

Let’s go to the next one.

This one too about who contacted Cubela in Mexico City. It’s child’s play.  7 spaces for “The (space) CIA.”  

Next one.

This one too, one hole for “Phillips,” and two for “The CIA.”

You can see as you look through here that Tepedino who had been talking with the FBI about Phillips is afraid that Phillips would be thinking he’s working behind the CIA’s back.

Okay, next one. 

Now let’s turn briefly to this JM/Wave cable and scroll down to the end of it.

Next slide.

Again, it tells us how close Phillips and Tepedino were.  It also adds a new contact for Tepedino that Pancho will give him, the name Harvey Thompson.

Next slide.

Here’s a CIA document that tells us a little more about this Harvey Thompson.  Let’s blow it up.  Thompson is Phil Toomey meeting with an anti-Castro leader.  (?) was his name, (the anti-Castro leader Toomey was meeting.)  

It also, it’s not shown here, but it mentions Catherine Tate, about whom along with June Cobb, I might say something for a few minutes in a later session this afternoon. 

This is an excerpt from the CIA’s Bay of Pigs history written by  (Newman says William Pfieffer but I believe he meant Jack Pfiefer.) Pfiefer and it tells us more about Phil Toomey.  He was a close associate of Phillips and was a political and psychological strategist, a PP staffer. 

[ I believe Newman is referring to this – Official history of the Bay of Pigs Operation, Volume II: Evolution of CIA’s anti-Castro policies 1959 – January 1961. See p. 58,  212, and 266, ]

[ JOHN MIGHT BE REFERRING TO THIS –OFFICIAL HISTORY OF THE BAY OF PIGS OPERATION, VOLUME III: EVOLUTION OF CIA’S ANTI-CASTRO POLICIES, 1959 – JANUARY 1961. SEE P 212

Next slide.

This is a bunch of pseudonyms for Phillips.  We’ve talked about Choaden, the one that has been protected so long is Merton. Knight appears in Hunt’s books.

Phillips’ Pseudonyms – I

Michael M. Choaden

Andrew F. Merton

Jack Stewart/Warren

Knight

Next Slide.

We have got a bunch more here. Lawrence F. Barker pops up in Mexico City. So, if you see Lawrence F. Barker, it’s Phillips.  It’s easy to prove.

Phillips Pseudonyms – II

Lawrence Barker

Douglas ( Conte Aguero )

“Miguel” and “Douglas”

“Bob Lee” and “Roberto” [ AM/SESS]

(Audience noise) Did somebody ask me a question?

“Douglas,” “Miguel,” and “Bob Lee,” and “Roberto” have a lot to do when he, Phillips, is running Conte Aguero, a television and radio personality in Cuba.

And I don’t have a slide for the rest of these, “John D. Nadleman,” was used in Phillips’ work for the P.P.,OP staff, the PP information coordination division and some for radio and tv.

And possibly “Neil T. Pickworth,” first used in an interview (?) for Conte Aguero.

There is also a Donald Barton who is Phillips contact, or contact of Phillips related to the Conte Aguero case.

Let’s go to the next slide.

I mentioned the roadblock set in place to decouple Phillips from Merton. This is the cable in which it was inserted.

Next slide.

We are going to blow up the top, at the very top, it says that Choadin, a known pseudonym for Phillips, is negotiating with Merton.  Because we know, I just showed you beyond a reasonable doubt that Phillips is Merton, and that Merton cannot be negotiating with himself, what we now have is a very valuable example to exactly how compartmentalization is used inside the CIA at the secret level to fragment somebody who is playing multiple roles. 

Back to the main conference title sheet.

Let me summarize this part of my presentation by posing this question – What is so crucial about the Phillips-Merton identification that it still remains classified today?

Here are some points to consider.  Eisenhower’s policy in ’57 and ’58 was to replace both Batista in Cuba and Trujillo in the Dominican Republic with less corrupt and more moderate leaders, believe it or not.

It was Phillips who chose to recruit the DR for this task in Cuba.

Why? Because the DR was the most legitimate, historically rooted Cuban revolutionary group that was not subordinate to the Communist Party.  It was Phillips and Tepedino who began the operation to defect and recruit Cubela the moment that Castro seized power. 

Without the knowledge that Phillips was Merton, a critical part of Phillips role on the path to the darkest operation disappears.

It is the Merton history that takes us from Cubela in Cuba to Oswald in Mexico City. 

After the Kennedy assassination, Phillips had to be disconnected from that history. I will end this part of my presentation with this observation – Phillips had to leave Cuba around January 1960.  Jim Knoll (sp?) the Havana station chief, using the pseudo, by the way, “Olean” (sp?) needed someone who could handle the DR element that remained, Cubela, Pancho, and Carlos Tepedino.  That someone is the subject of the remainder of my presentation.

Back to the main presentation. Oh, you’re already there.  Just leave it there.

Previously, I mentioned the failure of Tepedino and his case officer, Dave Phillips, to defect Cubela in January 1959. When Phillips left Cuba at the end of that year, the CIA Deputy Chief of Station Arthur Avignon took over Tepedino’s case. Then after Cuebela and Tepedino attended a student conference in Switzerland, in September 1960, his father called him and warned him never to come back to Cuba.

So, Tepedino came to the United States using his temporary student visa. Meanwhile, in May 1960, the remaining, disaffected, clandestine DR element inside Cuba sprang into action.  They exposed themselves by openly attacking the visiting Soviet Vice-Premier, Anastas Mikoyn. 

Afterward, they had no choice but to flee to Miami. There, they became the unilateral psychological warfare asset of the JM/Wave station.

Okay, - next slide please. No, nope, not the conference slide, next section, Jay, okay, good, we’re there.

William Kent, Dan Hardway mentioned him a minute ago, William W. Kent, [ Newman says William W. Kent, but it appears to be William M Kent, that he’s talking about.] also known as Robert K Truchard (sp?), also known as Oliver H Corvusten (sp?) also known as Douglas Gupton (sp?), reconstituted this DR remnant into the DRE.

After working for Phillips’ political and psychological branch, of W/4 at headquarters Kent was sent to the JM/Wave station in Miami to be the chief of the Wave psychological warfare branch. 

Kent’s subordinate, George Joannides, became the case officer for the DRE.  The DRE which, as you already heard, ran a dark propaganda op, right after the Kennedy assassination suggesting that Oswald’s murder of President Kennedy was part of a Castro plot.

Next slide.

William Kent managed the CIA’s use through his DRE operations of Lee Harvey Oswald.

You heard this before but I’m going to put it up there again.

House Select Committee investigator Gaeton Fonzi told Malcolm Blunt, I believe, about a conversation he had had with the daughter of William Kent.  William Kent’s daughter told Fonzi that at a Thanksgiving gathering, her father made the one and only comment he ever did about the JFK assassination, and that’s it.

“Oswald was a useful Idiot.” That’s it.

Next slide

Okay, we do some quick history here.  During Tepedino’s temporary stay in New York City Kennedy defeated Nixon in the November 1960 election, and in December the United States and Canada broke relations with the Embassy and the CIA station in Havana closed.

In order to secure a permanent visa Tepedino had to first exit and then return to the U.S. So, he spent the first half of March 1961 handling this in Mexico City. 

Cubela just so happened to be attending a conference in Mexico City at the same time, and Tepedino again made arrangements with Phillips to defect Cubella.

The file pseudonym for these activities that Phillips was again, Merton.  The second Cubela defection attempt failed, and Cubela returned to Cuba. 

A month later, in April ’61 the Bay of Pigs invasion failed, and three months after that a CIA stay behind agent in Cuba failed in an attempt to exfiltrate Cubela.

Several days later, on 16 June that same CIA agent was himself successfully exfilitrated.  His CIA cryptonym was AM/Rye-1.

I’ll be laying out the cables and facts that reveal who he was in this part of my presentation this morning.  But, meanwhile, Carlos Tepedino, frustrated by all the CIA’s failures to defect and exfiltrate his good friend Cubela dropped contact with the CIA and began giving his information to the FBI. 

At the end of 1961 the Kennedy brothers created a new committee and charged it with overthrowing Castro and developed a plan we know as Operation Mongoose.

Structurally, it became “Task Force W,” headed by the CIA’s Foreign Intelligence Staff Chief, William King Harvey, at CIA headquarters with a forward operations center at the JM/Wave station in Miami. 

In June 1962, Harvey asked JM/Wave Chief Ted Shackley to develop a new plan to defect Rolando Cubela.

Now, I am ready to take you through a close examination of this new effort, to defect Cubela, and the key events that followed in July and August of 1962. 

In so doing it’s my intent to solve an old conundrum, what was the birth name, and what [ where ] was the birthplace of the person who used the names “Tony Sforza” and “Henry J. Sloman?” 

Next slide.

The solution again required observing how seemingly different characters undergo identical life events.

Do a search for one name in the Mary Ferrell Foundation in there, you don’t get it.  You have to compare the life events and search against two or three to put them together.  So, more specifically, I’m going to ask you to try, as complicated as this might be, to do this, as we go through the next series of documents please pay attention, close attention, to how many characters experience the following four life events.

(To Jay) Go ahead.

Who hid in his home to avoid the Cuban police the night before the Bay of Pigs Invasion?

Who failed to exfiltrate Cubela from Cuba on 8 June 1961?

Who was exfiltrated from Cuba on 16 June [1961?]

And finally, who was the father of Carlos Tepedino?

As I mentioned earlier the CIA often uses deception in the secret cables and memoranda to backstop the fragmentation of one individual into multiple identities.

You will see such deception take place in the JM/Wave cables that I’m about to show you. These cables describe the new CIA effort to deflect Cubela with the help of his best friend, Carlos Tepedino.

The intentional deception that takes place in these Wave cables was done to hide the true identity of Carlos’ father.

Now, let’s get to work laying the base for this part of the puzzle. 

(To Jay) Let’s go to the next section slide, the title slide, good.

I’m going to break up this part of the presentation into four sections.  The new JM/Wave defection plan; a surprise postcard from Cubela to Tepedino; Pseudonyms, key events to Tepedino’s Dad, and finally solving the “Sforza/Sloman” puzzle. 

We will start with the CIA’s renewed effort in 1962 to defect and recruit Cubela. 

In this section we will be dealing with just a single document which is this one Wave 4746 this is the station’s response to CIA headquarters.

Let’s blow some of that up.

This cable references the headquarters cable asking JM/Wave to develop a possible defection op.

Go to the next one.

It shows us how “Pancho” wanted to play a major role in this op and how he tried to use his family connections to bolster his case to do so. 

Go to the next one.

It gives us the jewelry business background not just for Carlos but for the Tepedino’s, period.

Next slide.

It talks about the role of the childhood threesome in the DR.

Next slide.

“Pancho” talks about how great Tepedino’s influence is over Cubela. It’s the best way to get to him. 

Next slide.

But, here is where we need to stop and slow down and take a close look here.  It’s important to pay attention to the fact that the author of this cable, NOT “PANCHO” is responsible for the following two statements about Henry Sloman. 

Like Pancho, Sloman works at the CIA JM/Wave station in Miami.

You don’t see the name Sforza on memos and cables, you see Henry Sloman. 

First of all, this Wave cable states, quite innocently it looks like, that Sloman knows Tepedino and his Dad. 

Well, that statement would lead anyone reading it to believe that Sloman and Tepedino’s Dad are two different people. 

Second, this Wave cable states that Sloman hid in Tepedino’s Dad’s home.  This statement further reinforces the impression that Tepedino’s father and Sloman can’t be the same person. 

There can be no mistake about the intent of this message, Henry Sloman is not Carlos’ Dad. 

Next one. 

And finally, Pancho with the support of the JM/Wave station offered to handle the pitch to bring Tepedino into the ongoing CIA/Cubela defection op.

As we will see, this strategy immediately turned into an unanticipated debacle. 

Next section, Jay. Next section.

It’s really great to have somebody run the slides for you.  So, that I can focus on what I have to say to you and not worry and fool with all that stuff. 

This section will deal with the surprise postcard from Cubela to Tepedino.

Let’s go to the next slide. 

It’s Wave 5457. We’ll all be working from this one, this whole section. This tells the news of how the news that Cubela’s postcard circulated and the events that took place immediately afterward.

Okay, let’s blow up some of this stuff.

The Cubella postcard story at JM/Wave began when Pancho heard about it from the surviving Escheverria family. 

Acting impetuously, egotistically, and authoritively, Pancho ordered, rather than asked, Tepedino to call him about the postcard.

Next slide

Carlos did make the call to Pancho. However, a big problem occurred when Carlos refused to give Pancho any details about the card.  Pancho now had to figure out something to save the operation and still remain a part of it.  So, this time he politely asked Tepedino to call him back that evening. 

Next slide

When Carlos did call back again, he had not changed his mind.  He still refused to give Pancho any details about Cubela’s postcard.

But, the JM/Wave station had anticipated that this would occur and had arranged for Henry Sloman to be standing in the room during the second call.  So, at this point Sloman took the phone away from Pancho to talk with Carlos.

Next Slide

So, this Wave cable gives us more details that are interesting, such as it was Tepedino’s Dad who failed to exfiltrate Cubela from Cuba in June 1961. 

But here again, we slow down and look very closely because the author here, NOT PANCHO, is making two more deceptive statements about Sloman.

First, this Wave cable tells us that Sloman was presented to Carlos using the alias “Enrique,” and that this alias was known by Tepedino’s Dad.  So, once again, the author of the Wave cable is trying to reinforce the message that Sloman and Tepedino’s father are two different people.

Second, this wave cable states that Sloman hid in Tepedino’s father’s home. 

But, over and over, these Wave cables paint Sloman and Tepedino’s father as different people. 

But, we will soon see how the drafter of this Wave cable made a crucial mistake.  When we compare its exact details with the previous Wave cable we will discover that the author of the second cable inadvertently gave us a crucial clue to the very thing being hidden – the identity of Carlos’ Father.

I’ll bring us back to that discovery at the end of this segment.  I want to finish Wave 5457 first. 

Next slide, Jay.  (42.16)

Next slide. 

This Wave cable tells us that the failed ’61 exfiltration in Cuba, a failure ascribed to Tepedino’s Dad, was the reason that Carlos Tepedino finally went to the FBI for help.

In the second phone call, however, Carlos’ attitude toward Sloman was completely different than his distaste for Pancho.  Carlos immediately told Sloman all the details in the postcard from Cubela.  

Next slide

It was then that Sloman told Carlos about the new CIA plan to defect Cubela and Sloman asked Carlos for his help to pull it off.

Go to the next one, should be 16, yeah.

Carlos Tepedino not only agreed to do it but also told Sloman he would do anything to help Cubela. 

Now, two asides to bring up here. First of all, this Wave cable also further builds upon the evidence I was developing earlier that states that Carlos Tepedino knows Merton by his true name, which we know is Dave Phillips, and the reason that this Tepedino/Merton association was brought up again in this later Wave cable is to again facilitate the Harvey Thompson contact for Tepedino.

Recall, that Tepedino said he would trust any friend of Merton, and we know that Harvey Thompson is Phillips’ associate, Toomey, the psychological strategist. 

Okay, now, let’s go to section six.

We will begin this section by resolving Life Event 1 – who was it that hid in his home, or hid in the home of Tepedino’s Dad? And by solving it [it] will open the door to the resolution of Life event number four, the identity of Carlos Tepedino’s Father.

Next slide.

As I indicated a moment ago we need to go back this one here.

Next slide.

The first paragraph of Wave 5457.

Let’s blow it up. Remember that it tells us unequivocally that Tepedino’s father hid in his own home.

Now, let’s compare it with the third paragraph of Wave 4746.

(RIF # 104-10215-10107.)

Let’s Blow it up.   

This cable tells us unequivocally that it was Sloman who hid in the home of Tepedino’s father. 

Now, you put the two together and you get the crucial slipup. 

Look, if Carlos’ father hid in his own home and Sloman is the one who hid in this home, then Sloman must be Carlos’ father.

In retrospect, it was the use of Pancho to get to Tepedino and Cubela that was the mistake. Carlos’ lack of respect for Pancho made it necessary to bring in Sloman and then to write about it in a cable made it very tricky language to do it and maintain that fragmentation.

But the discovery we made there is reinforced in concrete in the next memorandum. 

Let’s go to the next one.

We are fortunate that as it finished its work the Assassination Records Review Board released in full this copy of Pancho’s June 1962 one page biography of Carlos Tepedino and they don’t quote this in the Wave cables.

Let’s go blow up a note at the bottom.  In that note Pancho completely gives away the secret being hidden in the Two Wave cables.

Henry Sloman is Tepedino’s father and he, Sloman, hid in his home during the days surrounding the Bay of Pigs invasion.

No dancing in the end zone yet.  The Henry J. Sloman name is only a pseudonym. We need more pieces of evidence to work with.  And thanks to Pancho’s huge ego, we can find them in the documentary record. 

Let’s go to the next slide.

So, now we fast forward downstream, it’s 1969. Jake Esterline has taken over the Miami station. 

He is using the name Anthony Ponchay.  By the way, if you ever see that Anthony Ponchay, pseudo, it’s Esterline.   

He’s got a huge mess on his hands made by Pancho in the Miami media, by making accusations against someone he calls “Frank.”

Next one. 

This Esterline memo gives us three huge clues about this “Frank.”

First of all, “Frank” was Pancho’s case officer.

Second, Pancho was directed by Frank to introduce him as Frank Stevens, a professional gambler.

Third, “Frank” is “Enrique.”

Recall, that Sloman was introduced to his son Carlos on the phone as “Enrique.”

So, where does that leave us? We know that Sloman, Frank Stevens, and Enrique are three pseudonyms for the same person, who is Carlos Tepedino’s father.  We are not even remotely done yet. 

Next slide

We now need to look at this memo that the CIA Special agent in Charge, Cain (sp?) sent to Esterline after Esterline asked him to investigate the accusations made in the media by Pancho against “Frank.”

Blow it up.

From this Cain memo we get another important piece of the puzzle, Pancho himself claimed responsibility for the 16 June ’61 exfiltration of Tepedino’s Dad, “Frank.”

Next slide

Now let’s check out a couple more sections, real quick, We’ll go back to the Esterline memo, some more pieces of the puzzle.

Next Slide. 

This one here, Esterline tells us that earlier, Emelio Rodriguez Americao had been Pancho’s case officer, and that it was Emelio who turned Pancho over to “Frank” in November 1960.

I’ll come back to Pancho’s case officer history in my concluding remarks.  By the way, Emelio is an important guy, for a lot of other reasons, if it weren’t for Malcolm Blunt, I probably wouldn’t have gotten as far as I did on that.

And Esterline confirms the 16 June 1961 exfilitration of “Frank.”

Next slide.

[It’s] another section of the same Esterline memo.  Let’s blow it up.

It gives us the rest of the story about the person hiding in his home, or the home of Tepedino’s father. Esterline’s memo tells us that it was Frank Stevens who hid in his home.  Furthermore, Esterline explains how Frank’s gambling cover had served him well because it enabled his servants to convince the Cuban police that he was out of his house gambling the night before the Bay of Pigs invasion when he was actually hiding in his home.  This hiding in the home story further cements the three pseudonyms, “Frank Stevens,” “Enrique,” and “Henry Sloman,” used by Carlos Tepedino’s father.

Next slide.

At this point I want to summarize the three key life events of Tepedino’s Dad.

He hid in his home 17 through 21 April of ‘61

He failed to exfiltrate Cubela from Cuba, circa 8 June [1961.]

And his crypt, is AM/Rye-1 and AM/Rye-1 was exfiltrated on 16 June ’61.

I have a lot of documents on AM/Rye-1.  I did not have the time to do that proof.  So, you can throw that one out or take it on faith. It’ll be in my book, but I don’t have, I only have so much time today.

Let’s go to the next section, number 7.

Okay, we are almost done.  I have two remaining tasks – first to prove that the above three aliases belong to Tony Sforza and second, to reveal the birth name of the person using the name Sforza and his aliases and nicknames. 

Next slide.

Let’s go back to the Cain memo again.  Blow it up.

Cain states that Pancho said Jack Stewart, a pseudonym for Phillips I mentioned earlier, was his first contact during 1959 in Cuba.  That is incorrect. Esterline actually said that Phillips recruited Pancho sometime during 1957 and we will add that detail to my big net diagram at the end.

Next slide.

But, the Cain memo also tells us two more things about this Frank Stevens that he learned from Pancho.

Number One, Frank was a CIA supervisor in the Cuban program at JM/Wave.

Number two, Frank had earlier served in Argentina.  Any clues for those of you out thee?

Those details belong to Tony Sforza, who used the name Sarno in the Church Committee deposition, and that is Sforza’s life event right there, those two things.

As you can see, we are on the verge of adding Sforza into the mix of identities being used by a single individual who is Carlos’ Dad.

We have another huge piece of evidence to buttress this.

Let’s go to the next one.

I am now ready to turn to a beautiful Cain memo that resulted from the same mess Pancho made in the media. But, this one was sent to headquarters where there was apparently some difficulty in figuring out who “Frank” really was.

Next.

Here Cain gives away a crucial clue at the very center of the puzzle, the “Frank” referred to by Pancho was the subject of CIA headquarters file 53472. And guess what?

Next slide.

We got it. Task Force memo in 1962 about that, and it’s a domestic alias documentation for four people.

By the way, the name being withheld at the top of the list is Emilio.  That’s Emelio.

Anyway, let’s blow up the part we really need. The big news is that number I just mentioned for “Frank,” 53472 clearly belongs to Tony Sforza. 

Now we have four names for Carlos Tepedino’s father.

1.) Tony Sforza

2.) Henry J Sloman

3.) Frank Stevens

4.) “Enrique”

Next slide.

Now, if I can resort to the “Wizard of Oz” analogy, let’s pull back the curtain to find the man in the control booth projecting all these names.

We’ll start with this CIA document about the 1965 polygraph of Carlos Tepedino.

Blow it up.

This CIA document (104-10183-10410) tells us that Carlos Tepedino is an adopted name.

It also tells us that his true name before the change was Carlos Ignatio Lopez.

And know here that Lopez’s new step-dad when he adopts Carlos, he’s not using the name Sforza, he’s using his real name, Antonio Tepedino. 

We will get to that.  Anyway, let’s blow up this handwritten note here.  The CIA handwritten notes on Tepedino’s biological parents.  

And you will see that Mom is Amada Gonzales and Pop is Ignatio Lopez.

Let’s go to the next document.

This is from Tepedino’s 1965 personal record questionnaire, and I made a composite out of that, and I’m going to blow up the parts that we really need to look at.  Carlos’ biological father, Ignacio Lopez was born in 1900 in Havana, Cuba, and died in 1950.   

Carlos’ adoptive father, and there’s the name, Antonio Tepedino, is actually Francesco Antonio Tepedino, was born, not in Ohio, which is his cover story, but 1900 in Salerno, Italy. 

[ Using the alias Sarno, Francesco Antonio Tepedino lied in his Church Committee testimony when he said he was born in Ohio. ]

In a moment, I will show you from Ancestry.com, the whole four or five generations of the Tepedino’s in Salerno going back.

1.)

But here, we might interject this rhetorical question – why is a man – I’m talking about Carlos – in his late 40’s, who is married and has a daughter, getting a new stepfather anyway?

All right, let’s go to the next slide.

To finish up here I got one more document where the CIA uses the name stepfather, it’s the same trip I mentioned earlier, Cubela going with Tepedino to the Switzerland conference.

[ A bad photo from the Switzerland conference.]

Go to the next slide.

And it is the stepfather that makes the call, stepfather who makes the call, telling him not to come back to Cuba.

Time to finish this puzzle. Let’s go to the next section.  Good, just leave it, it’s good.

This is a net diagram.  It summarizes everything I just told you for the last few minutes.  So, I’m going to leave it there for awhile. 

There is the name at the top, and there is a life event that pertains to him as the sum of his pseudos, all experienced in one line across the middle, Sforza, Stevens, “Enrique,” and Sloman.

The stepfather’s relationship to Carlos Tepedino, and I can’t really see the dates I have on there, but, 1950, that’s when that happens, and then case officer status with Pancho, that happens in 1960. Underneath, you see the earlier recruitment of them all by Dave Phillips.

So, this little net diagram says a lot of things, and I want to make some comments on it. 

I will call them facts, Francesco Antonio Tepedino that was brought into Havana at the request of Chief of Station Jim Knoll in the fall of 1960.

In his deposition to the Church Committee, using the alias Alfredo Sarno, Francesco did not say exactly what the Chief of Station wanted him to do. But, I have an idea.

There were three crucial reasons why Jim Knoll wanted him for that Cuba assignment.

First of all, someone was needed to fill in as the case officer for the DR leadership that Phillips had recruited in 1957. 

Second of all, the break with Cuba, the coming break was only months away.  So, Knoll needed someone, a new case officer to come in without State Department cover.  It would have to be deep undercover without; and function as a CIA stay behind agent, that was his gambling cover.  But, what made Francesco Antonio Tepedino uniquely qualified for this role was that he had known Cubela for about 10 years.  But, also the other important guy remaining, Carlos Tepedino, was his stepson.

That’s why Sforza was moved from Argentina.  He was actually called Tony Argentina – left his family there and came back to run Tepedino and Cubela.

Emelio Rodriguez was handling Pancho until Francesco arrived.  Francesco assumed case officer status with Pancho November 1960, and it was just months earlier that the anti-Castro DR remnant in Cuba had  come out in the open attacking Mikoyn and had to flee.

Francesco Antonio Tepedino arrives at JM/Wave in June ’61 and Pancho gets there eventually in March of ’62. [He is] still under Francesco’s case office supervision.

After the new Cubela op is underway, Joannides takes over as case officer for Pancho.

Even though I have established that the true name behind all of these names is actually Francesco Tepedino, I’m going to refer to him as Sforza for everybody’s sake in here.  That’s like a name that is not going to go away.  So, we’ll just call him Sforza.

Next slide please. Just turn that clockwise. 

I have eliminated all of the children here and just ran back through five generations, last name Tepedino, the first and middle name are always Francesco Antonio or Antonio Francesco, simply reversed every generation. 

The real son you see on the left, Antonio Tepedino would have been Antonio Francesco Tepedino, died in a car accident in 1961 in New York.  And that is in that Pancho bio of Tepedino. 

So, Carlos is the stepson, the real son in the same line of all those names died.  He was in the jewelry business up in New York, [died] in a car accident. 

Next slide.

You can pretty much read this for yourself, this is like bringing some of the data in off Ancestry stuff and elsewhere, of all these Tepedinos, including the son that died in New York in 1961.  They all come from Salerno, Italy. 

It was Francesco Antonio Tepedino’s Dad who actually immigrated to New York.  And he had already been born in Salerno, but, he arrives and they are American citizens.

Next slide.

If we get to it, as I said, in the Q & A I am willing to talk to you and show you some stuff, a little bit about the history of the PP staff, the psychological warfare function from the time of the OSS up to the late 1960’s, involving, I just said, some of your very favorite characters in this case.

Go back to the main conference title slide, please. Okay. Leave it there. 

I begin my concluding remarks by returning to the CIA’s methods of using pseudonyms and cryptonyms to compartmentalize covert ops.  The agency’s use of such methods is no longer a secret.  The fragmentation of these dark operations and activities of CIA staff officers and contract agents fifty years ago is something we must defragment today. 

If in 1976 we had known Joannides was the man behind the pseudonym Walter D Newby, the CIA would never have been able to get away with the outright perfidy of sneaking the fox into the hen house, to wit using the DRE case officer as the agency’s liaison to the House Select Committee. 

You heard a really, totally fascinating presentation about that just now this morning.

To this very day, the CIA is still hiding the entities of its officers who ran the operation to recruit and steer Rolando Cubela inot the plot to kill Fidel Castro.

We need to identify them all, for in their midst, someone was running a more sinister operation under that one where Castro would be alive and appear to be using Oswald to assassinate President Kennedy. 

So, resolving these issues surrounding the CIA’s multiple identities and pseudonyms helps us to piece together the true story of Oswald in the CIA.  And this comes to something Jim Lesar has been doing all of this time.  It enables us to make stronger cases for freedom of information act filings, having the facts, and the crypts,  and the pseudonyms doesn’t hurt us when you come before a judge and ask for files to be loosened.

Let’s go to the next slide please. 

Four decades ago, a CIA staff officer, George Joannides, handled the directorate of operations account for the agent’s liaison.  And you heard this morning his role as a case officer for the DRE was a dark op, and it was withheld from the House Select Committee. 

[ A Walter D Newby document. I don’t know if Newman used this in his presentation or not. ] 

But, Joannides was a Greek staff officer working for the CIA JM/Wave station in Miami, with the pseudonym, as Dan said, Walter D Newby.

He had been the senior case officer in charge of the DRE operations from the time of their association with Oswald in New Orleans and under Joannides supervision the DRE launched its public campaign just hours after the president’s death, designed to link Oswald to a supposed Castro plot.

That campaign was part and parcel of the darkest operation I mentioned at the beginning of my presentation, to play the JFK/RFK plan to take out Castro back against his brother, the president and his brother.

IN the 2008 edition of my “Oswald and the CIA,” I wrote about Oswald’s Mexico City trip and about Angleton’s possible role in the counterintelligence part of this plot, placing the World War III virus into Oswald’s files in an ingenious manner so as not to let it balloon up until the day of the president’s murder.

It’s a detailed plan and it’s not something I can break into detail here.  I did that before, spent a lot of time in that edition of the book. 

In addition to tying Oswald to Castro, the Mexico City op Oswald operation also implicated the KGB in the murder, too, and Dave Phillips was heavily involved in several parts of this.

In fact, Dan did such a good job in talking about his movements back and forth, headquarters, JM/Wave and Mexico City, at the crucial time of the communications, that’s one thing he didn’t do, was the cables going back and forth between headquarters CIA, and the station observing, or thinking they are observing Oswald down there.  And Phillips is all around that’s exactly when he’s down at JM/Wave those few days, that is when all that stuff goes back and forth.  

And the routing slips covering those things, which we now have, which they would not show to the House Select Committee, okay, really help inform us about who at headquarters [knew what when] and they [tell us about] it’s CI ops, and [give us] names that we have now that the Records Review board lifted the redactions on that help us know about the people who knew what was going on.

When we put all the pieces of this plot together, we can see how this dark operation, in play, underneath the top shelf operations, did more than achieve the death of JFK.  It was a malevolent and diabolical psychological warfare plot convincing Robert Kennedy he has just got his brother killed and set the stage for World War III.

And in addition to that, terrorizing several august members of our government with the prospect that such a terrible event would befall the world unless they helped engineer a lone gunman cover-up. 

Next slide.

Now I want to take an aside and address the possibility of a Joannides part two story.

You see Joannides may have been the case officer for another part of that same dark operation, and this part two was hidden from the House Select Committee. 

Remember that in June ’62 headquarters asked Wave, told Wave they were interested in defecting Cubela again and they attempted to use him in a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro.

At Wave it was Wilfredo Francisco Pancho Verona who identified Tepedino as the key to doing this, to get to Cubela and it was a this decisive moment that Pancho’s case office, Tony Sforza, turned Pancho over to “a Greek” case office who was working in the JM/Wave station. 

The JM/Wave station then used Pancho, Tepedino, and Tepedno’s stepdad, Sforza, to set up the recruitment of Cubela.  This “Greek” case officer handled Pancho for the next three years, until the cubela op was blown and he was arrested and tried in Cuba.

One might be justified in marveling at just how many Greek case officers were running Cubans at JM/Wave at the same time. 

The 1962 JM/Wave Cubela op was carried out in conjunction with Cubela’s participation at the Eighth World Festival of Youth and Students in Helsinki, Finland. 

One of Joannides  fitness reports, the one in 1962, is really interesting, it indicates that he was the case officer for, not one, but two different hemisphere wide students and teacher organizations engaged in political action propaganda and intelligence collection. 

TWO! 

Among the items that Jim Lesar has put forward in the Blakey/Hardway/Lopez FOIA file you just wnet down a couple of weeks ago, it has been filed, is a request for the release of any CIA files that may help us to determine if Joannides was in fact the Greek case officer involved in these activities.

Next slide.

Finally, let me close with this observation on the Warren Commission 50 years out – We began with a cover-up by the Warren Commission, as Lyndon Johnson used a threat of World War III as a battering ram to create and use the commission.  It was not a difficult endeavor.  I believe it is no longer conjecture, but it is a fact, that the World War III ground work had already been cooked in the CIA’s Oswald files before the assassination. 

12 years later the House Select Committee and other committees of the congress and the senate had begun opening the doors of the truth. 

Their collective works have helped confirm what most people had long suspected – the murder of President John F. Kennedy was a conspiracy after all.

The Warren Commission got it wrong.

Oliver Stone’s film “JFK” provoked the bipartisan passage of the JFK Act in the 1990’s, and 4 million pages of assassination records were subsequently placed in the national archives.  Now we can read the transcript and even listen to the phone conversations that reveal  how Johnson cajoled Senator Russell to serve on the commission and exactly how LBJ used the threat of World War III and 40 million dead Americans to force Chief Justice Earl Warren into doing what he had refused three times to do – twice to Robert Kennedy, and with the first time to Johnson, until confronted with that terrible threat, namely to head up the commission that bears his name today. 

50 years after the publication of the Warren Commission report it has become clear that it was not just wrong, the longer we have to study the case, the wronger the Commission’s findings become. IN a nutshell I will put it the longer, the wronger.

I’ll put it that way. Thank you very much.  I’ll be happy to take any questions you might have. [Applause]