Cuban Exile Militant Claims CIA Meeting With Oswald Before JFK Killing

A former Cuban exile anti-Castro militant told a conference audience Sept. 26 in a blockbuster revelation that he saw accused presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald with their mutual CIA handler six weeks before the killing and there would have been no anti-Castro movement in Cuba without the CIA funding.

Antonio Veciana, the acknowledged leader of the Alpha 66 assassination squad of Cuban exiles in the early 1960s, made the statements in a dignified but emotion-laden manner at this year's major conference analyzing the Warren Commission report on murder of President John F. Kennedy Nov. 22, 1963 in Dallas. Alpha 66 is alleged to have tried to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro on two occasions, but Veciana, a onetime certified public accountant for a wealthy Cuban in the years before the revolution, has never been been charged with an attempt.

Separately, the general counsel of the last major government investigation into the killing issued a statement saying the CIA had deceived him and the rest of the public during the late 1970s inquiry into the validity of the Warren report. Former House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) General Counsel G. Robert Blakey issued the statement during the conference Sept. 26-28 organized at the Bethesda Hyatt Regency Hotel in Bethesda, MD by the Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC).

Veciana said he is convinced the CIA organized the president's murder and that he saw Oswald meeting with a CIA official in Dallas because Veciana arrived at his meeting fifteen minutes too early. Veciana said he believes Oswald was a CIA operative whom the agency decided to blame for a killing it organized in a complex plot.

Veciana said his CIA handler was the late David Atlee Phillips, shown in a file photo above at right. Phillips was a high-ranking CIA official who used the cover named "Maurice Bishop" during his many meetings with Veciana. Earlier this year, Veciana confirmed to researcher Marie Fonzi, widow of his friend the author Gaeton Fonzi, that "Bishop" was "Phillips." But Veciana has never previously answered questions in a public forum.

The CIA placed Phillips in charge of the CIA's Cuba operations after the newly created agency recruited him from newspaper work in 1950s. According to biographers, Phillips, a former actor born in Texas, used hundreds of aliases in his CIA work, which included a role in the CIA's covert overthrow in 1954 of the left-wing government of Guatemalan leader Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. After retirement from the CIA Phillips organized thousands of fellow intelligence officers into the politically influential Association of Former Intelligence Officers. The group quietly helped support the political career of former CIA Director George H.W. Bush and Bush allies, among other endeavors.

Veciana, 85, spoke through a translator and with a son by his side. He said he was trained as a CPA and admired "Bishop" and the CIA deeply for many years.

Now, however, he said he wanted to set the record straight because he has come to admire also Kennedy, whom and he and Phillips once regarded as a "traitor" for allowing communist Cuban leader Fidel Castro to remain in power.

President Lyndon B. Johnson was the former Texas senator and vice president who succeeded Kennedy after the assassination. Johnson named the seven-member Warren Commission to reassure the public. The commission was named for Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren and included former CIA Director Allen Dulles.

The news outlets have trivialized contrary evidence as "conspiracy" on the rare occasions they address it even if significant evidence, as in the Veciana comments, suggests that Oswald was a cog in larger operations and did not necessarily mean any harm to Kennedy, whom Titovets described as Oswald's hero. 

Time Magazine illustrated the ongoing pattern this year in Behind the Scenes: The Complete Kennedy Assassination Story, its nine-page special supplement on Sept. 24 (excerpted below) extolling the Warren Commission and vilifying Oswald, shown at right in a 1964 cover story. 

 

"The public must be satisfied," Katzenbach wrote Moyers in a now declassified memo, "that Oswald was the assassin; that he had no confederates who are still at large; and that evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial."

Justice Integrity Project Readers Guide To JFK Assassination

* Denotes major articles in this Readers Guide series

At right is a photo by this editor in Dallas showing Dealey Plaza. The Texas Book Depository Building where Oswald worked is behind the row of trees. The car in the center lane is near the location of President Kennedy's limo at the time of his fatal shooting.

1. Project Launches JFK Assassination Readers' Guide, Oct. 16, 2013.
2. Project Provides JFK Readers Guide To New Books, Videos, Oct. 26, 2013. This is a list of new books and films in 2013.
3. Disputes Erupt Over NY Times, New Yorker, Washington Post Reviews of JFK Murder, Nov. 7, 2013. *
4. Self-Censorship In JFK TV Treatments Duplicates Corporate Print Media's Apathy, Cowardice, Nov. 7, 2013.
5. 'Puppetry' Hardback Launched Nov. 19 at DC Author Forum on ‘White House Mysteries & Media,'  Nov. 19, 2013.
6. Major Media Stick With Oswald 'Lone Gunman' JFK Theory, Nov. 27, 2013.
   
7. JFK Murder Scene Trapped Its Victim In Kill Zone, Nov. 30, 2013.
8. Project Lists JFK Assassination Reports, Archives, Videos, Events, Nov. 2, 2013. Leading video, events and archives from the last 50 years. *
9. JFK Murder, The CIA, and 8 Things Every American Should Know, Dec. 9, 2013. The CIA implicated itself in the cover-up, according to experts who have spoken out. *
10. JFK Murder Prompts Expert Reader Reactions, Dec. 19, 2013. Reactions to our Dec. 9 column. 
11. Have Spy Agencies Co-Opted Presidents and the Press? Dec. 23, 2013. *
12. Don't Be Fooled By 'Conspiracy Theory' Smears, May 26, 2014. *
13. Experts To Reveal Secrets of JFK Murder, Cover-up at Sept. 26-28 DC Forum , Sept. 5, 2014. 
14. Washington Post Still Selling Warren Report 50 Years Later, Sept. 22, 2014. *
15. JFK Experts To Explode Myths, Sign Books In DC Sept. 26-28, Sept. 24, 2014.
16. Former Cuban Militant Leader Claims CIA Meeting With Oswald Before JFK Killing, Sept. 27, 2014. *
17. JFK Readers Guide: Assassination Books, Reports, Oct. 15, 2014. *
18. Former House JFK Murder Prober Alleges CIA ‘Lied,’ Seeks Hidden Records, Oct. 18, 2014. *
19. The JFK Murder 'Cover-up' Still Matters -- As Does C-SPAN's Coverage, Nov. 11, 2014. *
20. JFK, Nov. 22 and the Continuing Cover-Up, Nov. 24, 2014. *
21. JFK Assassination Readers Guide To 2013-14 Events, Nov. 28, 2014. *
22. CIA, Empowered by JFK Murder Cover-up, Blocks Senate Torture Report, Dec. 1, 2014. *
23. Nearly Too Late, Public Learns of Bill Moyers’ Conflicts Over PBS, LBJ, Jan. 2, 2014.
24. Why Bill O'Reilly's Lie About JFK's Murder Might Matter To You, March 17, 2015.
25. Free Videos Show Shocking Claims About CIA, JFK Murder Probes, June 29, 2015.
26. Pioneering Black Secret Service JFK Guard Abraham Bolden Warns Of Current Lessons, July 22, 2015.
27. Understanding Hollywood-Style Presidential Propaganda From JFK To Trump, Aug. 18, 2015.
28. Beware Of Wrong Conclusions From New CIA Disclosure On Oswald, Sept. 28, 2015.
29. The JFK Murder Cover-Up: Your Rosetta Stone To Today’s News, Nov. 29, 2015.
30. Austin Kiplinger, David Skorton: Two Civic Giants Going And Coming, Dec. 15, 2015.

Related News Coverage

C-SPAN 3, Current Implications of the JFK Assassination Cover-Up, Andrew Kreig with introduction by moderator Alan Dale, Nov. 4, 2014 (originally Sept. 26, 2014) (55 min.). 50th Anniversary of the Warren Report.  At a Sept. 26 conference, researchers talked about assassination related documents that have been declassified in the past 50 years. In September of 1964, the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy released their findings to the public in the “Warren Report” -- named after the commission’s chairman -- Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren. This was part of “The Warren Report and the JFK Assassination: A Half Century of Significant Disclosures,” a conference marking the 50th anniversary of the release of the Warren Report. People in this video: "JFK Conversations" Host Alan Dale and journalist/attorney Andrew Kreig.

C-SPAN 3, JFK Assassination and the CIA, Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC), Oct. 26, 2014, recorded on Sept. 26, 2014 (90 min.). In "Oswald, the CIA, and Mexico City," retired U.S. Army Intelligence officer and former assistant to the NSA director Dr. John M. Newman discussed declassified documents and code-names related to the CIA, Cuba and the assassination. A longtime professor, Newman is the author of JFK and Vietnam and Oswald and the CIA. This is part of a conference by AARC marking the 50th anniversary of the release of the Warren report entitled, The Warren Report and the JFK Assassination: A Half Century of Significant Disclosures. The first of many panels/sessions was on C-SPAN 3.

Other episodes in series:

• In "The HSCA and the CIA," former HSCA researchers Edwin Lopez and Dan Hardway described their time in the late 1970s working for the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). Sept. 26, 2014.
• In "U.S.-Cuba Back-channel Communications After the Bay of Pigs," Dr. Peter Kornbluh talked about President Kennedy’s attempts to open up private channels of communication with Cuba. Sept. 27, 2014.
• In "CIA and the HSCA: How CIA Controlled the HSCA and the Writing of Its Final Report," Dr. Joan Mellen discussed the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) relations with the HSCA. Sept. 27, 2014.

OpEdNews, Cuban Exile Militant Claims CIA Meeting With Oswald Before JFK Killing, Andrew Kreig, Oct. 1, 2014. A former CIA assassination team leader told a conference audience Sept. 26 in a blockbuster revelation that he saw accused presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald with their mutual CIA handler six weeks before the killing and there would have been no anti-Castro movement in Cuba without the CIA funding. Separately, the general counsel of the last major government investigation into the killing issued a statement saying the CIA had deceived him and the rest of the public during the late 1970s inquiry into the validity of the Warren report.

Boston Globe, 50 years later, doubts still raised on Warren Report, Cat Zakrzewski, Sept. 27, 2014. Fifty years after the Warren Commission concluded that a lone gunman killed President John F. Kennedy, a conference examining the assassination convened here, dominated by skeptics who mulled over conspiracy theories and cast doubt on official reports. One panelist, John Newman, who gave a presentation on CIA pseudonyms used by agents connected with the Kennedys, said the Warren Report “was not just wrong. The longer we have to study the case, the wronger its conclusions become.” his gathering, five decades after the Warren Commission published its report on Sept. 24, 1964, drew more than 200 people. It was sponsored by a private group, the Assassination Archives and Research Center, which says on its website that it is the world’s largest private archive “dedicated to acquiring, preserving, and disseminating information on political assassinations.” One of the speakers, Antonio Veciana, an 86-year-old involved in the anti-Castro movement, said through a translator that he had seen a CIA officer in Dallas with Lee Harvey Oswald before Kennedy’s assassination. Attendees had so many questions for Veciana that his talk went almost an hour over the allotted time.

WWL AM/FM (New Orleans CBS-affiliate and "The Gulf South's Regional Powerhouse"), Eric Holder's resignation as U.S. attorney general, morning host Tommy Tucker (right) interviewed on Sept. 26, 2014 author and Justice Integrity Project Director Andrew Kreig to review of Holder's performance during six years as the Obama administration's Attorney General. A particularly focus of the interview was the issue of transparency, including records the administration continues to hide regarding the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy despite the requirements of disclosure under the 1992 JFK Act unanimously passed by congress. 

WND, Oswald dismissed as lone gunman in JFK killing, Forensic pathologist calls single-bullet theory 'pure nonsense,' Jerome R. Corsi (shown at left), Sept. 29, 2014. Forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht kicked off the second day of the Assassination Archive and Research Center, or AARC, conference on the John F. Kennedy slaying by insisting Lee Harvey Oswald could not have been the lone shooter. “I think the single-bullet theory is pure nonsense,” Wecht told an all-star cast of JFK assassination “conspiracy theorists” at the conference commemorating the 50th anniversary of the publication of the Warren Commission Report. Wecht, shown in a file photo at right, proceeded to explain the gyrations and changes in direction required for one bullet to have hit JFK, passing up through JFK’s body from the entrance wound in the back, to exit through JFK’s neck. “The explanations are ridiculous,” Wecht challenged. “Was JFK bending over tying his shoe when he got shot? Not if you look at the Zapruder film. JFK was sitting upright, and the entrance wound in his back was lower than the supposed exit wound in this throat. How is it possible that a bullet fired from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository moved in an upward direction transiting through JFK’s body?”

WND, JFK theorists gather, press for document release, 50th anniversary of controversial Warren Commission Report, Jerome R. Corsi, Sept. 27, 2014. On this 50th anniversary of the publication of the Warren Commission Report, the Washington-based Assassinations Archive and Research Center, or AARC, opened a three-day conference Friday featuring an all-star cast of JFK assassination “conspiracy theorists.” AARC President James Lesar began the conference by urging attendees to lobby Congress in support of a Freedom of Information Act request his organization has filed with the National Archives and Records Administration, or NARA. AARC is protesting a NARA decision to withhold from the public until at least 2017 more than 1,000 classified government documents on the JFK assassination. Lesar and his organization argue the 1992 JFK Records Act mandated the public release of all JFK assassination files in the government’s archives. Attorneys Dan Hardway and Edward Lopez, who as law students co-authored the House Select Committee on Assassinations’ long-suppressed report, “Oswald, the CIA, and Mexico City,” kicked off the conference with details of their accusation that the CIA suppressed information about Oswald’s trip to Mexico City prior to the assassination. They say Miami-based undercover CIA agent George Joannides suppressed information on Oswald’s efforts to penetrate the CIA-created Cuban Student Directorate. Hardway and Lopez filed, along with a diverse group of authors and legal exports supported by former House Select Committee on Assassinations’ chief counsel G. Robert Blakey, a lawsuit to force the CIA to release information on the agency’s involvement with Oswald and various Cuban groups.

WND, Did 3 shooters gun down JFK? Scientific studies conclude Oswald not 'lone assassin,' Jerome R. Corsi, Sept. 29, 2014. The authors of two studies of the JFK assassination presented scientific evidence they believe conclusively shows three shooters fired five shots at the president’s motorcade Nov. 22, 1963. The papers were presented at a conference in the nation’s capital over the weekend hosted by the Assassination Archives and Research Center to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the publication of the Warren Commission Report. The Warren Commission famously concluded in 1964 that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Donald Byron Thomas, author of the 2010 book Hear No Evil: Social Constructivism & the Forensic Evidence in the Kennedy Assassination, presented evidence a Dictabelt audio recording made by Dallas Police Officer H.B. McLain that picked up what sounded like five separate shots is authentic. The Dictabelt recording persuaded the House Select Committee on Assassinations, HSCA, to conclude in 1978 that there was “a high probability that two gunmen fired at President John F. Kennedy,” meaning Kennedy was “probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy,” rejecting the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Oswald was the lone assassin. In a phone interview with WND, Thomas engaged a point debated for decades now with critics of the Dictabelt evidence, including Dale Myers, that McLean was not in Dealey Plaza when the shots were fired. At the conference, Dr. Randolph Robertson, a board-certified radiologist, built on Thomas’ findings to correlate the gunshot acoustics heard on the Dallas Police Dictabelt with the Zapruder film video recording of the assassination to conclude five shots were fired by three shooters.

OpEdNews, Symposium on the JFK Assassination: Day One, Josh Mitteldorf, Sept. 27, 2014. There are people who have devoted their careers to untangling the history of the JFK assassination, and for this I am grateful. But I came to the AARC conference in Bethesda this weekend hoping to get a broad sense of who was behind the plot, and how heirs to power in the wake of JFK continue to corrupt America to this day. In this, I was disappointed. Fifty years on, there is agreement only on the outline of a narrative: JFK was shot by several gunmen hiding on the ground in Dealey Plaza. Oswald had been pre-selected as scapegoat. CIA and LBJ were prime movers in the plot, but they could not have gotten away with what they did if JFK had not stood up to powerful military and financial interests and provoked their ire.In the day's high point, we heard a first-hand confirmation of CIA primacy in the plot. Antonio Veciana, now 86 years old and infirm, was a Cuban exile and anti-Castro activist, recruited by CIA personnel. Threads to the Present Andrew Kreig, author of Presidential Puppetry and occasional OEN contributor, makes a case that the JFK assassination fundamentally changed American politics. Presidents from LBJ through Obama have understood that they serve at the pleasure of the CIA, and demands placed on them have been increasingly audacious and destructive. Kreig goes further to assert that every recent presidential candidate (both parties) has been pre-vetted, trained and promoted by the CIA. This speaks to the importance of correcting the record, and of the timeliness of a new investigation to tell us who were the heirs to power in the wake of the Coup of 1963, and how they connect forward to the people leading our country today. Republished on LewRockwell.com.

AlterNet, Dear Mr. President, It's Time to Obey the Law: Release the JFK Secret Service Records and End Other Needless Secrecy, Thom Hartmann and Lamar Waldron, Sept. 25, 2014. It's time for the Secret Service, CIA, and FBI to obey the law by releasing their 50-year old files, and to pardon the first Secret Service whistleblower. Last week's problems with the Secret Service and White House security also warrant your attention. Secrecy is especially ironic since this week marks the 50th anniversary of the release of the Warren Report, the book-length finding issued by the Warren Commission, appointed by President Lyndon Johnson and chaired by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren. The Secret Service was one of several government agencies--along with the CIA, the FBI, and the Office of Naval Intelligence--that were found by later government committees to have withheld crucial information from the Warren Commission. Congress passed the 1992 JFK Records Act unanimously, to release all of the files related to the JFK assassination, including records about the covert US operations against Cuba in the early 1960s that surfaced in so many of the official JFK investigations. While more than 4 million pages were released, even today the National Archives refuses to say how many pages of files remain secret. Is it 50,000 pages, a figure put forth by some experts? 90,000 pages, a figure extrapolated from CIA fillings in a Freedom of Information lawsuit? Or the figure reported by NBC News in 1998 of "millions" of pages, which was confirmed by a report from OMB Watch, which quoted someone who worked with the National Archives as saying "well over a million CIA records"--not pages, but "records"--remained unreleased.

OpEdNews, Cuban Exile Militant Claims CIA Meeting With Oswald Before JFK Killing, Andrew Kreig, Oct. 1, 2014. Editor's Note: This briefer version of the above column has an active comment section for discussion. A former CIA assassination team leader told a conference audience Sept. 26 in a blockbuster revelation that he saw accused presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald with their mutual CIA handler six weeks before the killing and there would have been no anti-Castro movement in Cuba without the CIA funding. Separately, the general counsel of the last major government investigation into the killing issued a statement saying the CIA had deceived him and the rest of the public during the late 1970s inquiry into the validity of the Warren report.

OpEdNews, CIA Official Tied to JFK Assassination, Jim Lesar, Dec. 1, 2013. The Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC) learned that Antonio Veciana, the leader of Alpha 66, a Cuban exile organization devoted to overthrowing Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, has released a statement identifying "Maurice Bishop" as David Atlee Phillips, a longtime "dirty tricks" operative for the CIA who widely suspected of having played a role in a plot to assassinate President Kennedy. Marie Fonzi is the widow of Gaeton Fonzi, who investigated Kennedy's assassination for the Church Committee and the House Select Committee on Assassinations. He contended in his book, The Last Investigation, that Phillips was Bishop. His statement is at variance with his testimony before the HSCA, where he stated that a sketch of Maurice Bishop closely resembled Phillips but was not the same man. This new declaration raises even more questions regarding a possible role by the CIA in the assassination of President Kennedy. This Veciana statement should lead the American people to demand (1) the immediate release of the thousands of pages of JFK Assassination-related records that the CIA is still withholding, and (2) demand that Congress hold oversight hearings into the CIA's subversion of the investigation conducted by the HSCA, which conducted the last official investigation of the assassination

Diario de Las Americas via JFK Facts, Translation: Kennedy was killed by the CIA, says a former agent, Iliana Lavastida, Feb. 11, 2014. “The death of John F. Kennedy was a coup, an internal conspiracy," says Antonio Veciana with absolute conviction and willingness to reveal what he considers a historical truth. The Cuban exile and former agent of the CIA gave his testimony in an interview with the Diario de las Americas 50 years after the assassination in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

JFK Facts, Why the liberal press ignored the 50th anniversary of the Warren Commission, Jeff Morley, Sept. 29, 2014. The 50th anniversary of the Warren Report is, among many things, a reminder that much of the country does not have faith in the efficacy and integrity of the federal government to provide an accurate account of JFK’s death. In other words, the 50th anniversary of the Warren Commission’s report was a reminder to the journalistic professionals that their perspective on this highly symbolic issue is not credible with most people. For us people who want to be, somehow, in the business of truth, that’s not a happy thought. So superbly talented and exquisitely liberal-minded reporters and editors avoided the subject. While most Americans think it likely that someone in a position of power used assassination to advance their goals in 1963, a declining profession is clinging to the obsolete story that one man alone killed JFK for no reason (and then another killed the first guy–for no reason). It is an odd faith. Or is it a symptom of decline?

Irish Examiner, Warren of conspiracies: Kennedy’s assassination, Ryle Dwyer, Sept.  29, 2014. Ryle Dwyer examines the Warren Report into Kennedy’s assassination 50 years after publication and finds its failure to examine all the evidence undermined its conclusions.

Time, Behind the Scenes: The Complete Kennedy Assassination Story in 9 Pages, Lily Rothman, Sept. 24, 2014. Looking back on the Warren Commission Report, 50 years after its findings on the Kennedy assassination were released. In addition to recounting the events that surrounded the assassination, the Commission’s report debunked the major conspiracy theories that had emerged in the year after that day. Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. He and Jack Ruby had no connection. There was no foreign conspiracy, nor was there a domestic one. But what the report lacked in scandal it made up for in detail. “Its great value comes from the thoroughness with which the Commission carried out its investigation, from its laying to rest many malignant rumors and speculations, and from its fascinating wealth of detail by which future historians can abide,” noted Time's story on the report. After the special issue was published, Marshall Loeb, who had first joined Time in 1956, would end up spending 30 more years at Time Inc., retiring in 1994 from his job as managing editor of Fortune magazine. Following his retirement, he became editor of the Columbia Journalism Review. So it’s only fitting that, when he looks back on the Warren Commission Report piece, it’s with an editor’s eye that he sees the way those 36 hours of work have stood the test of 50 years. “I think it was a well-done job — one, to focus the material and, two, picking out which areas of the report to focus on. To this very day, if someone picks up the Warren Commission Report, which is like a big book, and picks up one of our stories about the report, it will look very good,” Loeb says. “There were no huge errors discovered afterward — I mean years afterward, when there was plenty of time to examine it.”

C-SPAN, National Archives program about the JFK Assassination Records airs Sunday, Sept. 28 at 6p & 10p ET on C-SPAN3 (1 hour, 29 minutes). Interview with U.S. National Archives official on why Archives plans not to release hidden JFK records until 2017.

C-SPAN,