The Bishop Sketch-Who Did it Look Like?

The infamous sketch of Maurice Bishop is one of the things most often mentioned as “proof” that David Phillips was Bishop since theorists believe it looks like Phillips. The sketch was prepared with the help of a professional artist and represented a “pretty good” idea of what Veciana thought Bishop looked like. Of course, a sketch is just an artist’s representation and the interpretation of it is subjective. Show it to a hundred people and you’ll get a hundred different answers as to who it looks like. Fonzi and his staff showed the sketch to a number of relevant people and this was the result

Fonzi himself originally thought it looked like Paul Bethel, former head of the US Information Agency in Cuba. Sam Kail was an Army attaché who worked at the US embassy in Cuba and who Veciana said Bishop directed him to for help. Kail, who denied knowing Veciana, also thought the sketch looked like Bethel, a fact that Fonzi left out of his HSCA report. Barney Hidalgo, A CIA employee who was interviewed by the HSCA regarding his claim that a “Bishop” worked at the CIA, thought it looked “a bit” like CIA employee Willard Galbraith. This contradicts what Fonzi wrote in the HSCA report when he said, “B. H. [Hidalgo] could not identify [the sketch] as anyone he recognized.”

Bradley Ayers was a US Army Captain on special assignment with the CIA based out of JM/WAVE near Miami. Ayers thought the sketch looked to be “a very accurate drawing” of Gordon Campbell, another CIA employee. Ayers thought that Bishop was Campbell and not Phillips, but this is unlikely since Campbell died in 1962. Ultimately, I compiled a list of 14 relevant individuals who saw the sketch and only three thought it looked like Phillips. Five people did not recognize the sketch as anyone they knew and the remaining six each identified six different persons. Ironically, one of the people who thought it looked like Phillips was Phillips himself. The others were Senator Richard Schweiker whose identification of Phillips was the beginning of Fonzi’s quest to link Phillips to Bishop and CIA agent Joseph Burkholder Smith.

Please contact me at wtparnell@hotmail.com if you know of any other people that saw the sketch who are not on this list. Note that I am looking for documented interviews with individuals who were shown the sketch and asked who it looked like. I am not interested in anecdotal cases such as David Phillips' brother and his employees who allegedly thought the sketch looked like David after being told that it did.

NAME	WHO SKETCH LOOKED LIKE	SOURCE
Colonel Samuel Kail	Paul Bethel	180-10072-10179
Gaeton Fonzi	Paul Bethel	TLI
Bradley Ayers	Gordon Campbell	Sworn Statement 8-6-2007
Captain Milford Hubbard (Patrick Harris)	Owen Darnell	157-10014-10084, p. 16
James Cogswell	Former President of Freeport Sulphur	Davy, Let Justice Be Done, 87
Barney Hidalgo	William Galbraith	104-10146-10142
Max Lesnik	Did Not Recognize	180-10065-10373
William Kent (Doug Gupton)	Did Not Recognize	HSCA X Paragraph 179
Guy Vitale	Did Not Recognize	180-10083-10181
John Roselli	Did Not Recognize	157-10014-10000, p. 40
Manolo Ray Rivero	Did Not Recognize/Unknown Government Official	180-10093-10063, p. 5
Joseph Burkholder Smith	David Phillips	180-10070-10404
Richard Schweiker	David Phillips	HSCA X Paragraph 171
David Phillips	Himself or his brother	180-10131-10327, p. 93

Marie Fonzi and Veciana's "Revelation"

When is a “revelation” not really a revelation? One answer is when it is “solicited.”

Antonio Veciana made news in the JFK conspiracy community when he came forward in 2013 to say that his mysterious CIA mentor, Maurice Bishop, was really David Atlee Phillips despite previously denying that “fact” since 1976. Veciana’s “revelation” was much ballyhooed by the conspiracy community as “proof” of what Gaeton Fonzi (and they) had long suspected. The CIA, in the form of Phillips, had participated in dirty dealings involving that unsuspecting patsy Lee Harvey Oswald and the killing of JFK. Precisely what those dirty dealings were depended on who was telling the story, but, in general, it wasn’t a good thing.

However, I have suspected for a while now that Veciana’s “revelation” was less than such, mostly due to an article by Bill Kelly. In that piece, Kelly states:

… decades later, after Phillips and Fonzi had died, Fonzi’s widow Maria [sic] persuaded Veciana to come clean and issue a public statement that David Atlee Phillips was indeed “Maurice Bishop” – the mysterious spymaster who directed Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of the president, and he agreed. “Gate didn’t push too far,” Marie said, “I’m a bit more pushier than Gaeton.”

Then today, I came across a video of a presentation Mrs. Fonzi gave at the 2014 AARC conference. To my astonishment, Mrs. Fonzi admitted that she had “solicited” Veciana to release the statement implicating Phillips as Bishop. Beginning at the 31:30 mark of the video, Mrs. Fonzi unashamedly describes how she accomplished this with the help of a mutual friend, Juaquin Godoy, who was a member of the anti-Castro group MRP and an FBI informant in the sixties.

“We were reissuing The Last Investigation in 2013,” Mrs. Fonzi explained, “and I wanted to put Antonio Veciana’s letter [in the book] saying that he respected Gaeton’s search for the truth.” Mrs. Fonzi wrote Veciana asking for his permission to do this and a mail correspondence between the pair resulted. During this exchange, Mrs. Fonzi, who has served as an adjunct professor at two universities, got on Veciana’s good side by saying that she always shared the newspaper articles of Veciana’s daughter Ana (who has written for the Miami Herald) with her students as “examples of fine writing.” “So, I thought let me get Ana with me too” Mrs. Fonzi told the audience with a chuckle.

“… I always reminded him of the friendship [between himself and Fonzi],” Mrs. Fonzi continued, “and then I would say, but you know that Gaet really needs to be vindicated because people who criticize his book say, ... he really shouldn’t have said that Bishop was Phillips because Veciana never did admit that.” Mrs. Fonzi goes on to explain that their mutual friend Godoy interceded with Veciana on her behalf. “Every time I wrote a letter to Veciana, I would call Juaquin,” Mrs. Fonzi remembered, “… and then he would call [Veciana] and speak Spanish to him and repeat my message and my solicitation.”

Mrs. Fonzi’s gambit went on for “about a year” before yielding results. Godoy called Mrs. Fonzi with the news that “Antonio has written [a letter about] what you want.” However, Mrs. Fonzi was still not satisfied with Veciana’s letter and told Gadoy that “[Veciana] never said who Maurice Bishop was.” Finally, after the persistent Godoy again interceded on Mrs. Fonzi’s behalf, the coveted letter stating that Bishop was Phillips arrived in her mailbox.

Despite the admission that she had worked behind the scenes to manufacture Veciana’s statement, not one conference attendee thought to ask Mrs. Fonzi if a “revelation” obtained in such a manner is really a revelation at all.

Wynne Johnson-More Questions

Wynne Johnson replied to my original questions regarding his claim that he witnessed the meeting of Bishop (who he and other theorists now say is David Atlee Phillips), Oswald and Veciana with a video that has since been taken down. While I appreciate Johnson taking the time to do this, With one exception, I found that he either avoided the questions I asked or gave an argument that I found unconvincing, but I’ll let readers be the judge. The one exception was a question in which I stated that he was “afraid” to come forward with his story. Johnson replied that it was not he who was afraid but rather Vicki’s family and I accept his reasonable explanation in this instance.

After further study of his videos and his reply to me, I have some more queries for Johnson:

In your first video, you describe several facts that led you to determine the date of the alleged Oswald/Veciana/Phillips meeting. One of these facts is that it had to be a weekend because you and Vicki would only be able to travel to Southland then because school was in. Additionally, “the busses were running on Saturday.” This implies that you had to take the bus to get to Southland. But in later videos, you state that you met Vicki at the library and walked to Southland. Later, you describe walking back to the library and getting into your car. You then drove Vicki to a department store and then home. Why the apparent discrepancy and did you even have a license at age 15?

Do you believe that Vicki is being prevented from possibly confirming your story by her husband?

In your opinion, why would the “man in the library” advise Vicki to keep silent?

You have said that “it is clear” that Vicki “knew something” before the September 7, 1963 incident. Could you elaborate on what it is she knew and how she could have acquired this information?

Do you think that Vicki asked you to bring the camera because of her “foreknowledge” of the meeting?

According to your videos, Vicki told you that the men in the lobby “wanted to kill Castro and Kennedy.” Which of the three men was Vicki referring to and how would she know this?

Do you believe that members of Vicki’s family also had “foreknowledge” of certain events?

If I have it right, the sighting of the man at a party whom you believe was David Phillips occurred in 1965. At the time, Phillips was a highly placed CIA officer stationed in either Mexico or the Dominican Republic (depending on the exact date in 1965 which you do not provide). Why would Phillips be concerned with the recruitment of high school/college students for the agency as you allege in the videos?

If I understand correctly, you state in your videos that the plotters wanted “friendly witnesses” (in the form of yourself and Vicki) in place at Southland who could be identified and found later. Why were you and Vicki chosen and why did the plotters never seek to use you in this capacity?

Just out of curiosity, who was the “researcher and author” who questioned you by phone. You may contact me at wtparnell@hotmail.com if you do not want to give the name publicly.

According to your videos, an incident involving Marie Fonzi occurred in which you apparently related some dialog that you had not previously reported. Commendably, you endeavored to correct this in a subsequent video. Could you elaborate on how this came about, how the discrepancy was detected and what Mrs. Fonzi’s reaction was?

In a similar vein, you describe a situation where Phillips asked Veciana in Spanish, “Is it him?” (referring to yourself). Veciana replied “yes younger.” You now say this is a dream, but did Marie Fonzi ever think that you were saying this really happened?

You speak of a “dark rumor” that kept you from talking about the JFK assassination until 2014. What is this “dark rumor” and if it is just a rumor, how or why could that make you stay silent?

At how many JFK conferences have you appeared to date?

Has your story been discussed on any other Internet forums?

Do you see the recent wave of skeptics of the Veciana story as detrimental to the prospects of your own story being accepted?