Newman Talks to Danny Jones About Veciana

Conspiracy author and researcher John Newman did the world a favor when he published research in his book Into The Storm that refuted many of the claims of one Antonio Veciana. Theses claims concerned when and under what circumstances Veciana allegedly met his CIA handler Maurice Bishop whom he eventually maintained was really David Atlee Phillips—one of the favorite villains of the conspiracy crowd. Newman also provided solid evidence to show that Veciana was tied more to Army Intelligence than he was to the CIA. My eBook, The Bishop Hoax, demonstrated that Veciana lied not only about the things named by Newman but about anything that suited his varied purposes. The Conclusion chapter of my book lays out Veciana's most significant prevarications.

But instead of telling his followers that Veciana is not worthy of belief in any regard, Newman has incorporated the anti-Castro activist into his sprawling conspiracy theory to end all conspiracy theories. A recent conversation with Danny Jones, a pod caster who specializes in "fringe cultures," lays out the disturbing details of Newman's current thinking regarding the Veciana matter which is just one small aspect of Newman's convoluted grand hypothesis.

First, let's look at why the assassination had to occur, according to Newman, and Veciana's role in the scheme:

[The] Antonio Veciana story this is one of the biggest misdirections ever because you can't figure out the Armageddon that was that was ... underway um at the time that's what it was that's what they were trying to do was to blow the planet not to blow the planet up but to blow all the you know the Russia China all those those countries and and so Veciana was a way to help pin this on the CIA so you don't know who's actually behind all this this Armageddon stuff going on it's the military and he was working for the military the whole time they wanted people to think it was the CIA ..."

Yes, you read that correctly. The military brass wanted to nuke Russia and China. Not only that, but when JFK said no to their plan they decided that the youthful President had to be killed and the crime blamed on the CIA. This theory is the result of Newman reading too much into contingency plans which the government has many of but most remain unused. Veciana fits into all of this because Newman thinks that he was released from prison early for the sole purpose of telling the world the falsehood about his CIA handler Bishop and his meeting with Oswald.

How did the CIA get Veciana to lie? They just pinned a drug conviction on the hapless anti-Castro activist and then dangled an early release:

... they they put him in jail for a long while because a lot of those CIA guys were running dope you know in South American stuff so they had it on everybody and so so what they do sometimes if they want to use somebody they say okay uh here's what you're going to do for us and if he says no okay you can put him in jail and so he ended up in jail.

Exactly who framed Veciana and how is, of course, not detailed. But presumably since Newman mentions the CIA and South American drug activity, he thinks that it was a rogue CIA agent or agents that were controlled by the military brass. Newman continues:

... when um they put him in jail and uh they let him out really early ... they busted him for 25 kilos of um cocaine ... and that that get that gets you about um two uh non-consecutive uh 12 year terms instantly so he was he was going to be locked up for at least 12 years if not more than that and uh they let him out in about less than two years and there was no reason why ...

That's a lot to unpack so let's get started. First, Veciana's public pronouncements were designed to prove CIA involvement in the assassination. Veciana's case officer Bishop was CIA and met with Oswald—that is the story. During his conversation with Jones, Newman doesn't discuss the time period during which Veciana was supposed to be relaying his false information. But in another presentation in 2019 summarized here, Newman mentions assets of US intelligence including Veciana who were "weaponized and used as messengers." This weaponization occurred during "the period of the Church Committee's tenure" which ended in 1976. So, presumably Newman is talking about the time soon after Veciana's 1976 prison release. Which only makes sense because they wouldn't release Veciana unless they expected immediate action.

The problem is, Veciana never said that Bishop was CIA until many years after his release from prison. Veciana told Fonzi during the 1976 interviews that Bishop was "working for a private organization, not the government." Later that year, Veciana told Dick Russell that Bishop was "part of an American intelligence service" and then "instructed him not to ask which one." This left the door open to the possibility that Bishop was Army Intelligence which was exactly the opposite of what Veciana supposedly wanted to achieve. And in 1977, Veciana told Fonzi’s assistant Al Gonzales that he "never said that Bishop was CIA" but believed that he was with "some sort of intelligence agency or with a powerful interest group" again leaving the door open to Bishop being Army Intelligence.

In 1978, Veciana testified before the HSCA and again failed to name Bishop as a CIA asset. "I always had the opinion that Maurice Bishop was working for a private firm and not the government" Veciana stated. He also refused to say that Bishop was David Phillips. In his HSCA writeup, Fonzi noted that the "U.S. intelligence agency [Bishop] was associated [with], could not be determined." Veciana's Church Committee testimony is missing but it is doubtful it would contradict his numerous pronouncements that Bishop was not CIA.

The fact is, Veciana never said that Bishop was Phillips, thus providing a concrete tie to a known CIA agent, until 2013. It is true that numerous conspiracy theorists claimed Phillips was Bishop from about 1980 onward and maybe Newman believes that the development of public opinion that the CIA was behind the assassination was the goal. But if you are releasing someone from prison specifically to blame the assassination on the CIA, why not have that person come right out and say it instead of merely hoping that conspiracy types will step in and do the job for you?

What about the evidence that supports Newman's claim that Veciana's drug conviction was a setup? There isn't any. But there is plenty of evidence that says Veciana did exactly what he was accused of. Veciana's two co-conspirators testified against him and provided damning evidence. One of the most persuasive pieces of evidence was provided by an accountant who worked at a real estate firm where Ariel Pomares, one of Veciana's partners in crime, was employed. The accountant remembered a day that he answered the telephone in the absence of Pomares. The call was from Veciana who left a message for Pomares. "Tell him my name is Veciana and I received the documents," was the simple message. It turns out that the phrase "I received the documents" was a code to let Pomares know that the cocaine had arrived and was available for delivery. Those who believe Veciana was framed have a steep hill to ascend and so far Newman isn't climbing.

Another area where Newman is playing loose with the facts concerns Veciana's sentence and the time he served. Newman implies that Veciana should have received a mandatory sentence of two "non-consecutive" 12 year terms. He offers no evidence for this statement. According to my research, Veciana was sentenced to "two seven-year terms to run concurrently" with three years parole after that. So, the most he was going to do was seven years. If there was something funny about the sentence, it should be a simple matter to prove.

Newman also says that Veciana was released after "less than two years and there was no reason why." But according to Veciana's autobiography (page 223) he served "twenty-six months." Thus far, I have been unable to independently confirm the exact length of Veciana's term, but he presumably knew how long he was there. Veciana's book also confirms the two concurrent seven year sentences and the three years of probation. It is reasonable to assume that an individual would have to serve about three years of a seven-year term before gaining parole. But with good behavior or because of overcrowding, twenty-six months would not be abnormal and likely required no conspiratorial intervention.

Newman's rambling comments to Jones are often absurd and at times could even be called paranoid. For example, Newman, now and possibly for some time, believes that the CIA "pickpocketed" his cell phone at a conference where he was speaking about the Veciana matter. Newman told Jones that after misappropriating his phone the agency returned it to a pocket on his "carry bag." A "regular looking guy" who appeared to be in late fifties then approached Newman and said "you're okay, you're okay, it's okay they just want to know what you know. You're good don't worry."

Newman went on to explain that he first quite understandably thought the "okay man" was "a crazy guy." But "a year or so" after the event he was able to "figure out" that "they [the CIA] were that interested in me right? I hadn't gotten that far in ... in terms of of any notoriety or anything like that so um yeah but that's what happened that's what they want and then I had other things happen to me later on when people ... people would say stuff to me that was good you know that they were there ... there were times when they actually applauded what I was doing and and [gave] me some information."

From listening to various videos of Newman I have also learned that he believes that his books JFK and Vietnam and his current work Popov's Mole were "suppressed" by different means. Regarding the current book, Amazon decided that some documents (which Newman believes "prove" Bruce Solie was the legendary CIA mole predicted by Popov) Newman wanted to include were "illegible" and therefore delayed publication. However, once Newman removed the offending documents and placed them on the Internet, Amazon went ahead and published the book. Newman doesn't seem to understand that Amazon controls the process and you have to go along with their rules even when you don't agree with them. Such regulations are not necessarily "suppression" and Amazon has published two books of Newman's works previously.

The rambling nature of Newman's presentation caused one Education Forum poster to believe Newman had reversed his position on one matter. At 5:50 of the video Newman says "[David Phillips] meets Veciana in a hotel in Dallas Texas and um that is where uh Oswald is there for the meeting and this is only a month before the Kennedy assassination so it looks like ... this guy uh is plotting Kennedy's murder that's so they they put Veciana and Phillips in the same um office area of a big Bank in ... Dallas together the three of so ... that's proof ... that uh Phillips was in on it and he's big CIA guy so you know ... everybody after that said the CIA killed killed Kennedy and they wouldn't give it up no matter what."

And indeed in 2020 Newman said when asked during a presentation if Phillips was Bishop "No, I don’t think so … at best [Bishop] would be a composite of several people that played roles in the saga." But it is clear (to me anyway) that Newman was merely explaining the theory that Phillips met with Oswald and was seen by an early-arriving Veciana—not endorsing it.

Newman is promising more revelations about Veciana in the forthcoming book five of his series on the assassination including the results of court filings (spearheaded by Dan Hardway) to unseal Veciana's records for his drug conviction. While these might be interesting from a historical perspective, it is unlikely they will prove that Veciana was released early at the behest of the Church Committee or another government entity. But if Veciana were released early to tell about Bishop, that would provide an obvious motive for his lies about the imaginary mentor. In any case, if Newman's statements to Jones are any indication of what is to come, it is doubtful that he be able to offer anything of substance and surely nothing that will rival his worthwhile refutation of the Veciana claims mentioned at the beginning of this article.

Was Nosenko Married to Solie's Sister-in-Law?

Photo: George (Yuri Nosenko) and Louise Rosnek. Photo credit-Jefferson Morley

Last Edited 12-1-24: Don't ask me why, but I recently picked up John Newman's Popov's Mole and thereby started a trip down a deep rabbit-hole. In fact, out of the myriad issues related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the subject of Yuri (sometimes spelled Yuriy) Nosenko and the search for Popov's mole may be the most complex of all which is saying something. So, how far down that rabbit-hole I am willing to travel remains to be seen. But I did stumble on one matter that is immediately debunkable.

First, some background. Newman believes that Nosenko was a false defector designed to divert attention from the KGB and their mole in the CIA. The identity of the mole? None other than Bruce Solie of the CIA's Office of Security. This concept is very convenient for Newman and other supporters of his work. That is because Solie was the person largely responsible for Nosenko being cleared of suspicion and declared a true defector by the CIA. So, if you say Solie was the mole, the rest of your analysis benefits from that assertion. But I digress.

Newman and supporters, which include researcher Malcolm Blunt, base their theory on the work of Tennent "Pete" Bagley, a CIA officer who originally handled the Nosenko case. Bagley vehemently argued that Nosenko was false and wrote a book about it called Spy Wars. Blunt had conversations with Bagley and the epigraph of Popov's Mole is taken from one of those talks that occured in 2011. Bagley is quoted as saying:

That Solie provided rock-like protection to Nosenko, there is no doubt. Why, is the question. The bond was sealed by Nosenko's marrying Solie's wife's sister. Let's add Solie to the short list.

The obvious answer to Bagley's question is that Solie may have helped Nosenko because he felt an injustice had been done in his case. Setting that aside, I assumed that the assertion that Nosenko married into the family could be checked out with a little Internet research. And I was right. Bruce Solie had only one wife. She was Mary Elizabeth Matthews whom he married on February 22, 1944. The couple were together until Bruce's death in 1992. Mary had two sisters. One died in infancy and the other sister was Helen Louise Matthews. Since Bruce Solie had only one wife and his wife had only one living sister, in order for Bagley's claim that Nosenko married "Solie's wife's sister" to be true Nosenko must have married Helen Louise Matthews. He did not.

Helen Louis Matthews married Orlin Hudson Shires and was married to him for 64 years (the couple lived in California) until his death in 2007 which puts the date of their union at circa 1943. Since Nosenko was still alive in 2007 and theoretically could have married Helen Louise at that point even though both were elderly, let's look at what Nosenko was doing to be sure.

Nosenko (who used the name George Martin Rosnek after his release from CIA custody) evidently married in November of 1969 after gaining his freedom in April of that year. This document from September of that year tells of his desire to gain a divorce from his then Russian wife so he could marry and some of the legal challenges he faced because of his unique situation. This first US wife's (he was married three times in Russia) name was Ruby F. Rosnek. Nosenko and Ruby relocated from the Maryland-Virginia DC suburbs to Oriental, North Carolina after fearing that the KGB had located them.

After the move to North Carolina, Ruby died in 1982. Nosenko then (date unclear) married Frances Warren who was formerly married to Stephen C. Morris who died in 1981. Nosenko and Frances remained married and lived in Oriental, North Carolina until his death in 2008. So as any reasonable person can see, short of a conspiracy theory involving doubles there is zero chance that he married "Solie's wife's sister."

Does any of this really matter? It seems strange to me that Newman would choose a quote for the epigraph of his book that contains verifiably false information. Sure, I had to do a little digging to find the truth but it wasn't that difficult. It seems like Newman and his team want to make Solie and Nosenko look as friendly as they can even if it means using information they didn't properly evaluate. Or maybe they are so entrenched in Bagley's thesis that they can't imagine anything he says might be wrong.

An interesting sidenote to all of this is Bagley's apparent belief that Solie could be the mole. He told Blunt "Let's add Solie to the short list [of mole suspects]." But according to the 2022 book The Spy Who Knew Too Much by Howard Blum, Bagley believed that John Paisley and not Solie was the "master spy that Nosenko was sent to protect." If Blum is to be believed then, Bagley (assuming he was quoted accurately) could have been simply telling Blunt what he wanted to hear about Solie.

Newman Says Phillips Was Not Bishop

“But it’s no doubt in my mind what happened and there was a classic, you know, ambush. He was never gonna get out of [Dealey Plaza] alive.”

This statement by author John Newman during the question-and-answer session after his November 2020 presentation titled, “The CIA, the Army and the Pentagon: The Veciana Misdirection 3.0” was no doubt warmly received by the virtual attendees. But the real headline was his answer to another query. That response will be troubling to JFK research community members who endorse the prevailing theory that the CIA killed Kennedy.

“Was Bishop really Phillips?”

“No, I don’t think so …” Newman answered. “at best [Bishop] would be a composite of several people that played roles in the saga.”

One of the pillars of the CIA-did-it believers has been the story of Antonio Veciana who told Congressional investigator Gaeton Fonzi that he saw Lee Harvey Oswald meet with his mentor, a shadowy figure named Maurice Bishop, shortly before the JFK killing. Newman has been slowly but surely working to dismantle specific aspects of Veciana’s tale since about 2017. Regrettably, he is seeking to replace that false history with another one-the Pentagon and certain members of the Joint Chiefs of staff (working with obligatory CIA elements) were really behind the November 22, 1963 murder.

Before looking at the gist of his presentation, I need to clear up a minor mistake Newman made. At slide number three, he states, “That afternoon [the March 2, 1976 initial interview] in the living room with Fonzi, Veciana did not say that his Bishop character’s first name was Maurice. Veciana did not mention a first name at all” (emphasis added). Shortly thereafter Newman says, “… In 1976 Veciana did not know the first name of Bishop. Over the next 12 months, Veciana added the first name as Morris and then later he finally changed it to Maurice.”

But Veciana did mention the first name of Bishop as “Morris” in that initial interview (see Fonzi, 200; RIF 157-10007-10311, p. 4). Moreover, Newman understates Bishop’s first name problem. Veciana’s Church Committee deposition (which is now missing) resulted in the generation of documents that referred to “Jim” or “John” as other possibilities for the unseen mentor’s first name.

At the virtual conference, Newman described his current theory regarding Veciana, which he now characterizes as “highly probable,” in the following manner:

“In exchange for his immediate release from prison [where he was serving time on a drug charge], Veciana had to fabricate a complete makeover of his past life as a CIA agent who witnessed Oswald with his CIA handler in the fall of 1963. Veciana agreed.”

According to Newman, the “crucial moment in Veciana’s life” was the “secret deal” he made to get out of prison in February 1976. Newman maintains that Veciana dropped a “big shining lie” on Gaeton Fonzi during the initial interview. “That event was no accident. Those who offered Veciana the secret deal knew that Fonzi was a staff investigator for the Senate Select Committee and knew that Fonzi was going to interview Veciana,” Newman asserted, “And I have the evidence for that.” Newman concluded, “… they weaponized Veciana to control the narrative of the Congressional investigation of the Kennedy assassination.”

To prove his theory, Newman says that he is working to have information released to the public. “Now, we want all the documents of anything the parole board did,” Newman said, “and if they’ve been destroyed we want all the documentation of when and why they were destroyed.”

In the meantime, Newman offered several pieces of evidence to support his hypothesis. He says that three of Veciana’s friends believed in the “secret deal” and believes that their statements confirm the arrangement. The first of these friends is Felix Zabala, a sports promoter who worked on various projects with Veciana in Puerto Rico. The second was Roger Redondo who was a member of SNFE. The final friend remains unidentified but goes by the FBI pseudonym of “Wild Stallion.” Newman says that “Wild Stallion” was a “senior Alpha 66 member.”

Each of these men indeed expressed the opinion that Veciana had hatched a “secret deal” (perhaps using false statements) to achieve an early prison release. But the men’s beliefs were just that with no confirmation offered. For example, in the case of “Wild Stallion,” the FBI report called his assertions, “pure speculation” and added that he “has no tangible evidence to support this theory.” And although Zabala believed in the “secret deal” theory, he also stated that in all the years he had known Veciana, he “never indicated he had anything to do with or had information concerning the assassination of Kennedy” that would justify such a deal.

Newman offers additional evidence for the “secret deal” theory in the form of a statement made by Veciana during his 1978 HSCA testimony:

“Nevertheless, I feel compelled to answer because going to [j]ail at this point in time for a person who is on parole would mean to paralyze certain very important investigations that I am now controlling within the courts of my country” (emphasis by Newman in his presentation slide).

Newman calls this a “remarkable confession” that “gave away an important clue to the hazardous mission [the secret deal] that Veciana had to undertake to win his freedom from prison”. But Veciana launched into more than one rambling and self-serving monologue during his HSCA testimony. The speech that Newman draws the quote from started out as a response to a question about the 1971 plot to kill Castro in South America that Veciana says he was a part of. However, the country Veciana was referring to was likely his homeland of Cuba and the (probably imaginary) investigations he referenced were doubtless related to two of his pet peeves-his drug conviction “setup” (which he blamed “the Cuban government” for in this same testimony) and his fear that Castro was trying to kill him. Although the evidence shows that Veciana was guilty of the drug charge, his latter concern was a real one since he was indeed slightly wounded during an assassination attempt in 1979.

As a researcher who believes that Bishop did not exist, if Newman were to prove that Veciana procured an early release to tell his story, it would be a stroke of luck for me. Veciana’s motive for the Bishop story would then become obvious-he wanted to give the investigators their “money’s worth.” But I doubt the “secret deal” theory for several reasons.

First, Newman says that the conspirators “knew” that Fonzi was going to interview Veciana. I take this to mean that Fonzi was unaware of the scheme and was an unwitting dupe which simplifies things. The conspirators contacted Veciana and got him to agree to this “secret deal.” In exchange for his freedom, Veciana was to represent himself-to use Newman’s words, “as a CIA agent who witnessed Oswald with his CIA handler in the fall of 1963.” The problem is he did no such thing.

As I wrote in a previous blog post:

[during the first interview with Fonzi] Veciana inexplicably uttered, “a few times [I] asked [Bishop] if he worked for the CIA. And the answer he would give … was that there isn’t only one agency, the CIA, there are a lot of agencies working for this” [the anti-Castro cause]. Veciana went on to say that he believed Bishop was “working for a private organization, not the government.” As the saying goes, you only get one chance to make a first impression. Despite the perfect opportunity to tie his mysterious mentor to the CIA, Veciana somehow completely forgot about the mission his Pentagon masters had ordered him to undertake. In fact, he seemed to be going out of his way to not implicate the agency. Worse, his reference to other “agencies” had opened the door to the possibility that Fonzi, or another investigator reviewing his notes, would consider Army Intelligence as a source of Bishop’s authority. And given Veciana’s provable ties to that group, that was a distinct possibility.

Indeed, as Newman notes in his presentation, Senator Schweiker did his own legwork which led to the Church Committee deposition of Veciana’s true Intelligence handler, Milford Hubbard of the US Army. Both Schweiker and Fonzi became aware of Veciana’s link to the Army and the lack of evidence that tied him to the CIA. Others in the US government also learned of Veciana’s Army ties. We now know that the CIA’s Scott Breckinridge was referring to the Army when he told Robert Blakey, “you know Veciana was an asset of another US government agency and not of CIA.” Because there was no Bishop, Schweiker hit a dead end in his pursuit of the ethereal mentor as an Army Intelligence asset and dropped the matter. Fonzi simply ignored the evidence that Veciana’s more tangible association was with the Army and blindly pursued the CIA angle.

Veciana again had a chance to put everyone on the right track in June of 1976 when he spoke to Dick Russell. Granted, Russell was not a government investigator, but Veciana’s statements to him show that he was not pushing the CIA angle to anyone. Veciana told Russell that Bishop was, “part of an American intelligence service, but instructed him not to ask which one.” Once again, Veciana not only refused to implicate the CIA through Bishop, but again opened the door to the possibility that he was working with another intelligence service such as the Army’s.

In August of 1977, well over a year after those first interviews with Fonzi, Veciana had yet another chance to identify Bishop as CIA. Once again, he failed miserably to do the plotters’ bidding and made a point of forcefully denying that Bishop was with the agency. Veciana told Fonzi’s assistant Al Gonzales that he “never said that Bishop was CIA” but believed that he was with “some sort of [other] intelligence agency or with a powerful interest group.” And Veciana’s reference of another intelligence agency again opened the door to potential scrutiny of the very agency he was supposed to protect-the Army. By the way, it was during this interview with Gonzales that Veciana initally said that Bishop’s first name was “Maurice.”

Veciana’s final opportunity to implicate the CIA under Fonzi’s tenure came during his 1978 HSCA testimony. Predictably, Veciana once again stated, "I always had the opinion that Maurice Bishop was working for a private firm and not the government." Veciana also refused to name David Phillips, Fonzi’s perennial Bishop suspect, as the unseen mentor. So much for directing the attention of investigators away from the Pentagon and toward the CIA. A simpler and more likely motive for Veciana to initially speak to Fonzi was his two pet peeves previously mentioned-his drug conviction and his fear of Castro. Veciana probably believed that having government investigators in his corner would lend credibility to his assertion that he was “setup” for the drug charge (and Fonzi indeed promoted that canard) and make it harder for Castro to kill him.

In addition to the “secret deal” theory, there are a few other points that I disagree with Newman about. I will offer more detail about these in my forthcoming book.

To show that Veciana disliked the CIA and would not have worked with them, Newman says the MRP endured a “CIA nightmare” in Cuba before the Bay of Pigs. The MRP asked the agency for “weapons of war” but the CIA distrusted them and provided only sabotage weapons and equipment. According to Newman, a schism in the MRP developed in June 1961 and Veciana became “military coordinator.” Veciana was very bitter toward the CIA when Cuban Intelligence crushed Operation Liborio in 1961. I assume Newman means that Veciana was bitter regarding the fact that the CIA did not provide more substantial weapons to the MRP. But why? Did Veciana really believe that having a few weapons would allow the MRP to crush Castro’s substantial security forces? Besides, Veciana had a bazooka-the problem (depending on who is telling the story) was evidently finding anyone who was willing to risk their own life by firing it at Castro.

Newman says a “secret merger” between Alpha 66 and SNFE during the Cuban Missile Crisis helped to hide the Army’s work with Alpha 66 and transfer blame for pushing JFK into war with Cuba (which, of course, never happened) from the Pentagon to the CIA. My contention is that such a merger never occurred, at least not the way Newman indicates.

Newman doubts the story that Hubbard told to Schweiker about visiting the frogmen at the Alpha 66/SNFE base. Hubbard said that SNFE leader Eloy Menoyo was the one who accompanied him to the base but Newman believes it was Veciana. Newman bases this on a report that says Veciana was scheduled to take the trip. Of course, this does not prove that he did. As further proof that Menoyo could not have made the trip Newman maintains (slide 113) that Menoyo left the US on October 10, 1962 and never returned “for years.” But a quick check of my records shows Menoyo made a speech in Chicago in May of 1963.

In conclusion, John Newman should be congratulated for recognizing that David Phillips was not Bishop and stating that publicly. Similarly, he should be commended for some of his work on the Veciana-Maurice Bishop matter. For example, Newman was the first one to show that both the 1959 and 1960 scenarios regarding Veciana meeting Bishop/Phillips in Cuba are false when checked against the known actions of Phillips. But it is regrettable that he is trying to replace Veciana’s conspiracy canard with his pet theory of Pentagon involvement in the death of JFK.

Newman's "New Paradigm"

JFK conspiracy theorist and author John Newman has done a good job of convincing both conspiracy skeptics and some members of the JFK conspiracy community that former anti-Castro activist Antonio Veciana lied about how and when he met David Phillips in Cuba, thereby casting doubt on Veciana’s whole sorry tale. Unfortunately, instead of issuing a clarion call to his devotees that further research regarding the duplicitous Veciana is a waste of time, Newman is using his success as a launching pad for an entirely new conspiracy theory. And it is likely not a coincidence that this thesis supports the preferred villains in Newman’s hypothetical JFK assassination scenario. These alleged conspirators include Generals Edward Lansdale, Curtis Lemay and Lyman Lemnitzer as well as the “enigmatic Texan Howard Burris” and perhaps others.

Newman's presentation at the 2019 Citizens Against Political Assassinations Conference titled, "Turning Antonio Veciana's Misdirection into a Roadmap," was his first opportunity to reveal this hypothesis, which has been called a “new paradigm,” to the conspiracy community. However, over two months after the presentation, the reception is decidedly mixed. Newman has received rave reviews from his loyal fanbase that consists of devotees who are willing to pay $32 for his latest tome. But another faction, representing the CIA-did-it wing of the community, is more skeptical. This group is led by Lisa Pease, whose mentor Jim DiEugenio is the dean of the Langley-did-it school of thought. Pease has already expressed skepticism of Newman’s work and had some uncomfortable Facebook exchanges with him.

Newman associate Alan Dale attributes the criticism of Newman to the fact that those who believe Veciana’s claims regarding the alleged meeting between Phillips and Oswald do so because that allegation “is regarded by many as too sacred to dispute.” Just exactly what does Newman’s theory, which has been called “a work in progress,” postulate? At first glance, that seems to be a difficult question to answer since a video of the presentation has yet to materialize. Also missing is a promised report by CAPA’s Bill Kelly who took “ten pages of notes” at the conference.

Finally, not one meaningful review of the presentation has surfaced from any of the conference attendees. Either these individuals were not impressed sufficiently by what they heard to comment or were suddenly afflicted with mass amnesia. My guess is the former. Fortunately for skeptics, in the wake of criticism of the presentation, Newman and Dale were forced to go on Facebook to defend it. Their comments provide enough information to make a significant analysis possible, although some speculation is still necessary. All information used in writing this critique was taken from a Facebook summary of Newman’s work by Dale and comments by Newman on Facebook and elsewhere on the Internet.

Newman’s most startling claim is that, “a campaign of misdirection [was] launched by Antonio Veciana the day he walked out of the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary in February 1976.” The purpose of this misdirection campaign, achieved through the “sudden early release of Veciana,” was to “control the narrative of the unfolding congressional investigations” and to "place blame on the CIA and direct attention away from the Pentagon.” This alleged state of affairs began during the tenure of the Church Committee which predated the HSCA and involved not only Veciana but other “former assets of U.S. military intelligence [who] were weaponized and used as messengers.”

Therefore, according to Newman, an unseen power, presumably a federal judge or the Church Committee itself or both, pulled some strings at the behest of the assassination planners to release Veciana. Carl Sagan wisely said that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” But what proof exists for Newman’s audacious statements?

Newman could not be in possession of court documents that show such a release of Veciana. A Google search shows that FOIA requests for such records would be denied while the individual is alive unless they sign a waiver. And presumably Veciana has been made aware of Newman’s recent desire to paint him as a co-conspirator and would neither grant Newman such a request nor give him access to papers already in his possession. In any case, such records would not necessarily reveal that Veciana was being released explicitly for the purpose of speaking to the Church Committee. Therefore, any documentary proof of the early release of Veciana for the specific purpose of speaking with Senate investigators would have to come from the JFK records or a formerly silent “witness” of potentially dubious credibility.

Conceivably, Newman believes that the plotters went to the Church Committee and persuaded them to facilitate Veciana’s release. Under such a scenario, the committee members were convinced that Veciana had to be released “in the interest of national security” or for some similar reason. Later, they figured out that they had been duped by the plotters but by then were too embarrassed to admit that they had participated in such an ill-advised plan. But it defies belief that the entire committee would not have known about the release. In that case, active committee member Richard Schweiker, who came up with the idea that the Bishop sketch looked like Phillips, was in on the plot yet delivered an academy award-level acting job for the benefit of Gaeton Fonzi and other conspiracy-oriented investigators.

On the other hand, it is at least conceivable that Malcolm Blunt or some other astute researcher could have very recently managed to unearth a document from the National Archives that alludes to an arranged parole of Veciana. And it is plausible that the wily Veciana could have contacted committee representatives through an intermediary and offered his services and certainly had the motivation to do so. But if it indeed exists, such documentation of an early release proves nothing unless you are willing and eager to attach the most sinister connotations to it. After all, there is no doubt that the committee would want to speak to someone like Veciana who claimed to have relevant information. But perhaps the committee was concerned that the release of Veciana would result in less than favorable publicity because of his drug conviction and kept it quiet for solely that reason. In this case, in an uncommon but not inconceivable circumstance, the staffers were kept unaware.

But such a release at the behest of the Senate committee would undoubtedly have been contingent on Veciana producing relevant and verifiable information. And he would have undoubtedly been warned that his parole would be immediately reversed if he were found to be less than candid. In Fonzi’s book, he wrote glowingly of a number of things that could be verified regarding Veciana’s story. But in the HSCA report, where Fonzi had to answer to others, he admitted that “no definitive conclusion could be reached about the credibility of Antonio Veciana's allegations regarding his relationship with a Maurice Bishop.” I think the congressional investigators would have expected a better performance out of Veciana for their trouble.

In the end, it is doubtful that any document proving Veciana’s early release exists or that Newman’s theory depends on one. I say that because, if it had been shown at the presentation, it would have been trumpeted as a major revelation and the reaction of the attendees does not support that. What is likely is that Newman will follow the path of least resistance and say that one of the conspirators (or an acolyte) whispered in the ear of a federal judge and persuaded him to facilitate the release. Maybe the conspirators “had something” on the judge that enabled them to demand this unusual request. Or perhaps the judge was part of the same secret right-wing cabal that Newman believes was behind the assassination and did the deed willingly. In such a case, as mentioned, the paperwork would just be of the generic variety and say that Veciana was released for “good behavior” or a similar reason.

Having established how Newman could credibly postulate the manner of Veciana’s release by the conspirators, we need to assess the role of the two key players in this scenario, Veciana and Fonzi, as Newman sees it. Bill Kelly says that Veciana “used journalist and Congressional investigator Gaeton Fonzi to get out of federal prison.” But this statement can be easily discounted since I see no way that Fonzi, who was merely an investigator, could achieve such a feat. For further clues regarding the role of Fonzi, we can turn to a Dale’s Facebook summary of Newman’s work.

After informing skeptics of the new theory of the benefits of “staying current” by consuming four previous volumes of Newman’s work, Dale quotes Newman’s declaration that Fonzi’s “sixth sense” led him to suspect that he was being used by Veciana. However, Newman admits that, “Fonzi did not develop these impressions into a possible alternative paradigm for consideration.” Newman’s statement that Fonzi was “being used” indicates that he was unaware of the plot to implicate the CIA using Veciana-at least at first. This at least makes sense as Fonzi would have had to falsify much of his book if he were in on the plot. But if Fonzi ever had suspicions as Newman believes, he chose not to act on them and did nothing to interfere with Veciana’s activities.

In an obvious attempt to pacify the CIA-did-it people who might be offended by an overly negative portrayal of Fonzi, Newman reminds them that he admires Fonzi and considers him a friend. Newman also says that Fonzi, “stayed in my home to look over my collection of records about CIA Staff Officer David Morales.” Newman then says, “I am confident that had Gaeton lived to see the 2017-2018 documents’ release, he would have revised The Last Investigation accordingly.”

But just how could Fonzi “revise” his book to achieve such an end when the implicit thesis of that volume was that the CIA (in the form of David Phillips) was somehow involved in the JFK killing and his proof of that was the now largely debunked Veciana yarn? Does Newman believe that Fonzi could insert a disclaimer at the end of his book to inform readers that much of what Veciana said was sheer nonsense and hope they didn’t see it?

Let there be no mistake. What Newman’s theory implies is that Fonzi, rather than being a courageous investigator who fought the system to uncover CIA complicity in the assassination, was actually a clueless dupe who did precisely what the real killers of JFK wanted by drawing attention away from them. And even though he eventually realized through his keen “sixth sense” that he had been had, he sold out anyway and published a book full of falsehoods-presumably because there was a market for it. This implied characterization of Fonzi will probably not win Newman the everlasting devotion of either Marie Fonzi or Lisa Pease.

What about Veciana’s role? Newman says Veciana may not have “fully appreciated the true purpose behind his new calling.” Despite this mysterious lack of understanding on Veciana’s part, he evidently acted as the conspirators wanted anyway. Veciana’s calling, according to Newman, was to “sow confusion and use it to manipulate the unfolding narrative of congressional investigation” at the behest of his Pentagon masters. So, color Veciana a full-fledged co-conspirator. And although he was unaware of the plot, Fonzi served as an effective accomplice of the conspiratorial cabal by virtue of his sheer incompetence.

Having established a set of reasonable assumptions to work with, we can begin an examination of the plausibility of the theory. Unfortunately for Newman and his followers, problems with the concept are immediately apparent. Presumably, Newman thinks that, once the CIA-did-it oriented Fonzi called Veciana’s family and expressed an interest in him, the plotters arranged for Veciana’s release. If Fonzi or another government man had been in the pocket of the conspirators, they could have released Veciana at their leisure, but Newman is not saying that. Evidently, Veciana’s family must have also been under the control of the plotters and kept them updated on interesting developments such as government investigators phoning for an interview. But Fonzi only became interested in Veciana after reading an article by Paul Hoch, so it appears that the plotters had luck on their side. What contingency plan the plotters employed in the event they couldn’t locate a willing target such as Fonzi is not explained.

In any case, on March 2, 1976, the stage was neatly set for the plotters. They had a clueless CIA-did-it believer in the form of Fonzi ready to interview their man Veciana. And all went according to their script, at least at first. Veciana told Fonzi about a powerful American mentor (Bishop) who had planned and directed his actions as head of Alpha 66. Bishop, as Veciana’s all-powerful mentor, was obviously the perfect individual to link to the CIA in order to draw attention away from the Pentagon. Fonzi listened carefully to Veciana’s description of Bishop. Finally, he breathlessly asked Veciana if Bishop was “officially with the government.” Then, Veciana blew it.

With this golden opportunity before him, Veciana inexplicably uttered, “a few times [I] asked [Bishop] if he worked for the CIA. And the answer he would give … was that there isn’t only one agency, the CIA, there are a lot of agencies working for this” [the anti-Castro cause]. Veciana went on to say that he believed Bishop was “working for a private organization, not the government.” As the saying goes, you only get one chance to make a first impression. Despite the perfect opportunity to tie his mysterious mentor to the CIA, Veciana somehow completely forgot about the mission his Pentagon masters had ordered him to undertake. In fact, he seemed to be going out of his way to not implicate the agency. Worse, his reference to other “agencies” had opened the door to the possibility that Fonzi, or another investigator reviewing his notes, would consider Army Intelligence as a source of Bishop’s authority. And given Veciana’s provable ties to that group, that was a distinct possibility.

And it wasn’t a case of Veciana initially “freezing” in the spotlight and then redeeming himself later in the interview. Veciana mentioned Cellula Fantasma, the leafletting operation over Cuba that he claimed Bishop ordered him to infiltrate. But Veciana was quick to caution Fonzi that the operation was not run by the CIA (which proves Veciana knew nothing about it since it actually was). Of course, Veciana related the now familiar story of seeing Oswald and Bishop together. While this got Fonzi’s attention, it didn’t help the plotters since Veciana was not claiming that Bishop was CIA. The rest of the first interview covered Veciana’s own conspiracy babblings regarding Howard Hughes, Jack Ruby, HL Hunt and Gerry Hemming but little else.

Another subject that Veciana covered extensively in that first interview was his drug arrest and it is apparent that this was one of his true motives in speaking to Fonzi. Veciana went on ad nauseum about his innocence and assured Fonzi that he could prove he was “setup.” All he needed was “eight or nine months” to work on his personal innocence project. Veciana gave Fonzi the false information that there was only one witness against him but there were four witnesses besides Veciana’s two co-conspirators who indicated his guilt. The point is, Veciana spent a great deal of time in this first session talking about everything under the sun. But he spent almost no time telling Fonzi anything that could implicate the CIA in the JFK assassination and take attention away from the Pentagon plotters, particularly regarding Bishop.

A chance for Veciana to redeem himself took place in June of 1976 when he spoke to journalist Dick Russell. But Veciana again ignored the plotters’ instructions and told Russell that Bishop was, “part of an American intelligence service, but instructed him not to ask which one.” Once again, Veciana had not only refused to implicate the CIA through Bishop, but also opened the door to the possibility that he was working with another intelligence service such as the Army’s.

In August of 1977, well over a year after those first interviews with Fonzi, Veciana had yet another chance to identify Bishop as CIA. Once again, he failed miserably to do the plotters’ bidding and actually made a point of forcefully denying that Bishop was with the agency. Veciana told Fonzi’s assistant Al Gonzales that he “never said that Bishop was CIA” but believed that he was with “some sort of intelligence agency or with a powerful interest group.” And Veciana’s reference of another intelligence agency again opened the door to potential scrutiny of the very agency he was supposed to protect-the Army. Predictably, such scrutiny did occur. We now know that the CIA’s Scott Breckinridge was referring to the Army when he told Robert Blakey, “you know Veciana was an asset of another US government agency and not of CIA.” Due to Fonzi’s bias, he never seriously followed-up on the Army intelligence angle but that was in spite of Veciana rather than because of him.

Veciana’s final opportunity to implicate the CIA under Fonzi’s tenure came during his 1978 HSCA testimony. Inevitably, Veciana once again stated, "I always had the opinion that Maurice Bishop was working for a private firm and not the government." Notably at this hearing, Veciana was given the chance to once and for all identify David Phillips as Bishop but refused to do so. Similarly, when Veciana had come face to face with Phillips two years before at the ARIO meeting in Reston, Virginia, Veciana said the CIA’s Phillips was not the ethereal Bishop. Despite having the ear of one of the keenest devotees of the CIA-did-it hypothesis, Veciana’s “misdirection” of the investigation from the Army to the CIA didn’t happen under Fonzi’s watch. When the HSCA report was published in 1979, Fonzi’s conclusion contained the following quote that summarizes the failure of Veciana’s “mission”:

… whether Veciana's contact was really named Maurice Bishop, or if he was, whether he did all of the things Veciana claims, and if so, with which U.S. intelligence agency he was associated, could not be determined. No corroboration was found for Veciana's alleged meeting with Lee Harvey Oswald.

As a postscript to my analysis of Newman’s theory, I add the following quote from a draft of his presentation:

I have also labored to show you how—for Veciana’s post-prison story to hold up all of these years—he had to superimpose that same false paradigm on one of the most unbelievable dramas of human history—the Cold War confrontation of 1962. Veciana’s role in that crisis is the biggest secret of his life.

Unbelievably, Newman thinks that Veciana was a key player in the Cuban Missile Crisis. To my knowledge, he is the only “historian” in possession of this belief. But that is a subject for another article.

In conclusion, John Newman believes that Veciana was ordered to run a “misdirection campaign” to both control the congressional investigations and take heat off the Pentagon-based murderers of JFK and place it on Langley. The most logical way for Veciana to accomplish this feat was to gain the ear of the credulous Gaeton Fonzi, who was very amenable to the idea of CIA complicity in the death of JFK. But while Veciana indeed told Fonzi about his mysterious mentor “Maurice Bishop,” he inexplicably refused to characterize Bishop as CIA in every relevant discussion of him between 1976 to 1979 when the “misdirection campaign” was supposedly at its peak. It wasn’t until years later that Veciana began to hint at CIA involvement and finally took that to the next stage in 2013 with his “identification” of Phillips.

Into the Storm Part 3

With Chapter 3 of Into the Storm, John Newman has done a good job of debunking Antonio Veciana’s 1959 and 1960 stories of how he met Maurice Bishop (who he now claims was David Phillips). Now, let’s turn our attention to Chapter 11: Veciana, the Secret Years-1961-1962. Newman’s premise for this chapter is that when you remove David Phillips from the equation, Veciana’s true story is much different than what he has portrayed, both to Fonzi and in his book Trained to Kill (TTK).

Veciana’s “Lost” Testimony

In his section on Operation Loborio, Newman mentions that researcher Bill Simpich believes that the “Harold Bishop” mentioned in CIA files may be a pseudonym for Harold Swenson and provides some evidence for this. Of course, any “Bishop” that turns up in the Veciana story could be a candidate for Maurice Bishop, if such a person existed. Newman writes (attributed to Simpich):

… in 1976 Veciana did not know the first name of Bishop and … over the next twelve months, Veciana added “Morris” as the first name and then later changed it to “Maurice.”

But that is not strictly correct and brings up a subject I have been looking into-Veciana’s “lost” Church Committee (SSCIA) and Senate Select Committee testimony. Veciana referred to “Morris Bishop” in the very first telling of his story to Fonzi on March 2, 1976. “Morris” eventually became “Maurice” and Fonzi claimed the difference was attributable to the way he had written down what Veciana told him because of language differences (Veciana did not speak English, at least very well). But that does not explain documents which say the first name of Bishop could also have been “Jim” or “John.” This information had to have come from Veciana, but when? Newman says that there are six versions of the Veciana story, but I would add this caveat to that statement. There are six publicly available versions.

It turns out that Veciana testified under oath before the SSCIA. Logically, this occurred in a small window after he spoke to Fonzi in March 1976 and before the SSCIA published its report on April 29, 1976. In fact, according to Fonzi and alluded to in ARRB memos, Veciana testified twice. The second testimony was given to the new permanent Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (which, of course, is still in existence). As early as December 1976, HSCA documents were produced that mention “Morris” “John” and “Jim” as possibilities for Bishop’s first name. Since “Jim” and “John” appear in no other versions of Veciana’s story, it is very likely that this information came from statements made by Veciana during one of these unseen testimonies.

According to information provided by the Mary Ferrell Foundation, both testimonies have apparently been lost. However, the existence of the testimonies is confirmed by references in Fonzi’s book and other sources. According to a July 1996 ARRB internal memo, the ARRB sought the testimonies in preparation for their own questioning of Veciana that ultimately never occurred. However, it would stand to reason that, if the ARRB had reviewed the testimony, it would have ended up being declared a JFK record and placed in the JFK collection. Since this did not happen, it may be that the ARRB never really received the SSCIA testimony. A 1997 memo by Ronald Haron that identified SSCIA testimony relevant to the ARRB listed only Veciana’s interviews by Fonzi and not his testimony.

The point of all of this is that Veciana was indeed uncertain about Bishop’s first name but not in the way characterized by Newman. Researchers need to understand that “Morris Bishop” existed right from the very first telling of the story. “Morris” likely became “Maurice” simply because Fonzi thought it sounded better. And the varying first names of Bishop may be the tip of the iceberg regarding inconsistencies in the Veciana SSCIA testimony or the second testimony before the permanent committee. We may never know since it appears the testimonies have been lost.

UPDATE: An FBI report (RIF 104-10102-10198) on an interview of Veciana's friend Felix Zabala states that the last of the testimonies occurred around December 10, 1976. This would be Veciana's testimony before the permanent committee.

Veciana and the Army

It has been one of the tenets of CIA-did-it researchers that Veciana was a CIA employee or at least worked very closely with the agency. I reported on this blog in 2017 that Veciana had been issued a Provisional Operational Approval (POA) as a sabotage man for the MRP that was never used and eventually expired. Thereafter, Veciana worked with Army Intellegence, not the CIA. Now, Newman provides new detail that confirms my findings and successfully explodes the CIA employment myth for all time.

Newman says that the price of CIA help for the anti-Castro rebels was “complete subordination to the agency.” Not only did Veciana have no interest in such subordination, but he disliked the CIA and never intended to work with them. The CIA paperwork for Veciana is now available and consists of a simple “Personal Record Questionnaire” (PRQ). This paperwork is consistent with the type of minimal relationship we know he had with the agency and is not the extensive documentation used for contract agents. Newman says that the approval of Veciana’s POA occurred before the CIA realized that the MRP had lost significance and would never recover inside Cuba. Additionally, the CIA’s Mongoose operation did not include ALPHA-66. Indeed, the head of Mongoose, William Harvey, found Veciana to be a nuisance and disrupted his sabotage plans by broadcasting government-wide alerts.

Considering these and other issues, Veciana turned to the Army for help. By 1962, Veciana had fled Cuba in the wake of the failure of Operation Liborio and founded ALPHA-66. In September 1962, around the same time as ALPHA-66’s first attack on a Cuban port at Caibarien, Veciana contacted the Army through an intermediary named Jordan Pfuntner. ALPHA-66 “refused to work with” the CIA and instead desired to work with the Army and Pfuntner laid out a plan that requested funds and equipment while providing intellegence in return. The Army expressed interest in the proposal but needed Veciana to provide Soviet “ordinance material and intellegence information on Cuba” to access his credibility.

On November 1, Veciana met with “Patrick Harris” (actually Captain Milford Hubbard) and two other Army officers in Puerto Rico. The Army men wanted to talk to Veciana about the frogmen that had participated in a recent ALPHA-66 raid. At the meeting, Veciana gave the Army men the rifles and ammunition they had requested. Newman goes on to describe the meeting and a subsequent one that occurred the same day in considerable and dramatic detail. The point is that Veciana had extensive interaction with the Army that he initiated through Pfuntner.

An excellent observation made by Newman is that, with one exception, Veciana never related his presumably memorable experiences with the Army to Fonzi or congressional investigators and did not write about them in TTK. At the 2014 AARC conference under questioning by researcher Malcolm Blunt, Veciana again minimized his involvement with Harris and the Army saying that the Army contacted him first when the reverse was true.

The single time that Veciana mentioned the Army came in his discussions with Fonzi and he again sought to minimize his involvement. In The Last Investigation, Fonzi wrote:

From a series of long conversations with Harris, Veciana concluded that Harris was Army Intelligence—especially after he told Veciana that he might be able to provide some support for his anti-Castro activities. But Harris first wanted to make an inspection trip to Alpha-66’s operational base in the Bahamas. Veciana eventually came to trust Harris and gave him and a couple of his associates a tour of the base, but Harris never did come through with any aid.

But as Newman shows, it was Veciana who wanted the inspection trip and who initiated the contact with the Army in the beginning. What was the reason that Veciana promoted the story that he worked for the CIA rather than the Army? Newman speculates that it had to do with Veciana’s time in the Atlanta penitentiary for drug smuggling and I agree with him. Newman says he is in no hurry to speculate further. However, I will have a piece up shortly that explains Veciana’s grand motive.

Zabala’s Revelation

Feliz Zabala was one of Veciana’s best friends and his occasional roommate. He was also an FBI informant. A recently released FBI report of an interview with Zabala provides more confirmation of Veciana’s desire to be known as a CIA agent. In September 1976, Veciana told Zabala that he had been called to testify before a congressional committee investigating the JFK killing. For an undisclosed reason, Veciana needed to “publicly establish himself as a former CIA operative.”

But Veciana wasn’t finished. He also told Zabala that he wanted his sister, who happened to be married to Castro’s Interior Minister, to take a letter to Fidel describing Veciana’s involvement in the 1971 plot to kill the bearded dictator. Zabala was to tell his sister that he and Veciana had a falling out and the letter was a form of revenge. Veciana believed that the hot-blooded Castro would take to the airwaves and denounce Veciana as a CIA operative, thereby establishing his agency connection in one neat action. Again, Veciana never mentioned his best friend Zabala to Fonzi or any congressional inquisitors.

Conclusion

John Newman has done much to add to our understanding of Veciana’s true history and to explain what may have motivated his baffling activities. We now have confirmed that Veciana worked with Army Intellegence and not the CIA. We also know that his story of meeting Bishop/Phillips in Cuba did not happen as he said it did. Newman does make a few missteps and arrives at some unwarranted conclusions in my opinion. One mistake is his claim that James O’Mailia was Veciana’s CIA case officer during the brief time he was an agency asset. But documentation has the case officer as Cal Hicks, so why Newman is adamant to name O’Mailia as case officer is unclear. Also, Newman is convinced O’Mailia was “Joe Melton”, another character based solely on Veciana’s unreliable statements. Another mistake is placing too much faith in statements by Delores Cao since Veciana probably coached her. These mistakes can likely be explained by Newman’s desire to neatly tie up his current assassination theory which evidently has Lansdale and the Army brass behind the JFK killing rather than the CIA. Despite these issues, I look forward to Newman’s future work on Veciana and recommend Into the Storm.

Into the Storm Part 2

Delores Cao (“Fabiola”)

According to Antonio Veciana’s book Trained to Kill (hereafter TTK), around the end of October 1959, he began a three-week training course on psychological warfare and sabotage operations which was managed by “Joe Melton.” This training allegedly occurred at the Edeficio LaRampa building in the El Verdado section of Havana, which also housed offices for the Moa Bay Mining Company and a Berlitz language school. After the training was over, Veciana would have little physical contact with his CIA mentor “Bishop” because they began communicating through “secret writing.” But, as Newman points out, never in any of his previous accounts including extensive conversations with Fonzi, had Veciana mentioned this form of communication. Indeed, in his HSCA testimony, he said that he contacted Bishop through an intermediary. All of which leads to a new topic. When pressed by HSCA counsel to name the intermediary, Veciana refused. Remarkably, the matter was dropped but this mysterious intermediary remained of keen interest to researchers.

Author Anthony Summers interviewed Veciana in 1978 and “goaded” him into providing the name of the Bishop intermediary. She was Delores Cao [1] of Puerto Rico who was previously referred to as “Fabiola” by both Fonzi and Summers to “protect her identity” even though, according to Newman, she was outed in 1993 by newly released HSCA documents. My guess is that Fonzi and Summers really wanted to keep exclusive domain over Cao, who allegedly acted as Veciana’s secretary during the years he worked as an accountant at Julio Lobo’s bank and handled his incoming calls. I use the qualifying word “allegedly” since, to my knowledge, Cao’s employment at Lobo’s bank has never been independently verified. In other words, she could simply be a friend of Veciana’s who agreed to pose as his “secretary” for all Fonzi and Summers knew. In fact, this could explain why Veciana refused under oath to give her name to the HSCA; “Fabiola” didn’t exist and Fonzi, Summers and Newman have evidently never considered that possibility. But I’ll proceed with the assumption that Cao was who she said she was for the purposes of this discussion.

During an interview with Cao that was first summarized in the 1980 paperback edition of his book Conspiracy, Summers provided Cao with the names of people who might have contacted Veciana during the time she worked with him. All the names were phony except for the name “Bishop.” Cao claimed to remember “Bishop” as a person who had contacted Veciana, a fact that theorists have trumpeted as verification of the Veciana-Bishop relationship by a third party. But as Newman points out in this passage, there is a problem with Cao:

Fonzi’s 2013 edition of The Last Investigation reveals a noteworthy remark Mrs. Cao made to Summers: “until Veciana had called her to ask if she would talk with me, she hadn’t been in touch with him for years.” Therefore, Veciana could have steered Delores into using the name Bishop before Summers arrived to interview her.

So, Newman understands that since Veciana called Cao before her interview with Summers, that certain information Cao provided to Summers must be taken with a large grain of salt. But doesn’t it also taint anything she had to say to Summers? Veciana could have told her exactly what to say or at least discussed certain subjects with her in order to plant a seed in her mind as to how he wanted the interview to turn out. It is in this section of chapter three where Newman begins to run off the rails in my view since he conveniently fails to consider the possible coaching of Cao when it comes to the issue of Veciana taking language courses in the evening. Newman writes:

In the 2013 edition of his book, The Last Investigation, Fonzi reported this crucial detail from Summers’ report about his interview with Cao: She did remember a time when he [Veciana] started taking “language courses” in the evening. (That coincided with the period when Bishop put Veciana through intelligence training with “Mr. Melton,” in the building which housed the Berlitz Language School, one of David Phillips’ “public relations” clients.)

Newman continues:

The importance of this single recollection by Mrs. Cao needs to be emphasized. Language instruction was the cover Veciana created for his presence in the Edeficio LaRampa building. Similarly, the importance of Fonzi’s parenthetical comment that the timing of Veciana’s language studies coincided with Melton’s training sessions cannot be overemphasized.

But as Newman knows, Cao could have been prompted by Veciana to say what she did. And what is the evidence that Veciana was trained at all by Melton or anyone else or that language courses were a cover? While Newman has used documentary evidence to refute some of Veciana’s claims, in this case he relies completely on Veciana’s word to support the training story. I went back to the earliest sources of information to confirm this.

The earliest version of Veciana’s Bishop story dates to March 1976 when Fonzi interviewed him for Schweiker. In those three interviews, Veciana made no reference to the alleged training at all. The next version of his story comes from the June 1976 interview of Veciana by Dick Russell. According to Russell’s Village Voice article based on that interview, Veciana only said that Melton (who had no first name in this version) “assisted with his instruction” and no date or other details are mentioned. This leaves us with Veciana’s HSCA appearance and in his first day’s testimony, Veciana stated that he couldn’t remember when he agreed to participate in the program. The following day, Veciana said that the training occurred in “the middle of 1960” and he now remembered his instructor as “Joe Melton.” Veciana qualified that by saying that “this happened almost 18 years ago, and many things happened after that” indicating that he could not be more specific when counsel logically asked him if it was “June or July” of 1960.

The point of all of this is that out of this sketchy information Newman concludes “the importance of Fonzi’s parenthetical comment that the timing of Veciana’s language studies coincided with Melton’s training sessions cannot be overemphasized”? As I have shown, the earliest sources, which are just statements by the unreliable Veciana, say the training occurred in “the middle of 1960.” And there is nothing about language courses being a cover for the training just that the training occurred in the same building as the Berlitz school but on a different floor. Finally, Veciana himself now places the training in October 1959 when it could not have occurred (at least with the help of Phillips) and did not occur according to Newman. It seems Newman has fallen into the trap of “cherry picking” what he wants to believe. And he does that because he says he has found the identity of Veciana’s “Joe Melton.”

“Joe Melton”

Newman says Melton is James Joseph O’Mailia Jr., a known CIA agent and language professor, whose cryptonym was AMCRACKLE-1 and whose files pseudonym was Gordon M. Biniaris. Newman goes to great lengths to show how he obtained details about O’Mailia and his research looks reasonable in this regard. But connecting O’Mailia to Joe Melton is more problematic for Newman.

One powerful piece of evidence against O’Mailia being Melton comes from Veciana’s HSCA testimony. Veciana stated, “Melton didn’t know any Spanish and this was one of the main problems that we encountered.” I would think that a professor teaching at Villanueva University in Havana who had obtained his degree in Peru and married a Peruvian woman would be able to speak Spanish.

As mentioned, in his HSCA testimony, Veciana stated that he was trained by “Mr. Melton.” When asked for a first name he said, “I think it was Joe.” However, in TTK, Melton became “Dick Melton” a discrepancy that was not acknowledged or explained by Veciana. Newman tries to brush off the problem by saying that there were numerous differences in Veciana’s stories over the years. But isn’t that the point? The HSCA also questioned David Phillips about knowing a “Melton” in Havana. As he was known to do, Phillips danced around the subject, but did say that Melton, “may have been the name of the man at the Berlitz school.” But Newman admits that a man named Drexel Gibson, rather than Melton, ran the school. However, Newman maintains that, “it is not out of the question that … O’Mailia might have sometimes been addressed by a version of his middle name-Joe.”

The last piece of information connecting O’Mailia to Joe Melton is the most persuasive but falls well short of being ironclad. O’Mailia is a reasonable match with the profile of Melton created by the HSCA and used as a template when attempting to locate him. The profile detailed a white American male living in Havana during the years 1959-61 who was engaged in anti-Castro propaganda as well as clandestine paramilitary and explosives training, psychological warfare and infiltration activities. O’Mailia was certainly a white male living in Havana during the years in question. And Newman says that O’Mailia was engaged in “clandestine paramilitary and explosives activities … infiltration and exfiltration activities … [and] anti-Castro propaganda and psychological warfare activities.” But the key word missing from the profile of O’Mailia that Newman provides is “training.” It seems to me that if O’Mailia were a training specialist, as is implied by Veciana’s story, that this would be a part of the documentary record.

Newman often goes too far, in my opinion. He discusses O’Mailia and Melton early on and later makes statements such as “O’Mailia used the pseudonym Joe Melton” and “[Veciana was] trained in the fall of that year by James Joseph O’Mailia, Jr.” as if these are documented facts. And while he does not come right out and say so, Newman implies that O’Mailia was Veciana’s CIA case officer and refers to him at more than one point as Veciana’s “handler.” Consider the following sentence from the book:

If Phillips was not Veciana’s CIA case officer in Cuba, then who was?

One sentence later, Newman begins his discussion of O’Mailia as Joe Melton and thereby seems to imply that O’Mailia could be that case officer. But as Newman knows, documentation naming Veciana’s CIA case officer already exists. He was Calvin Hicks, who Newman acknowledges “relayed the [December 1961] JMWAVE request [for a POA] to the Counterintelligence Operational Approvals Division.” Newman provides a citation to that document but does not mention that another document has a box which says, “Signature of Case Officer” and in the box is the name Calvin Hicks. [2] Another document provided by Newman states that Veciana’s POA was canceled and is addressed “Attention: Cal Hicks” which is strange if O’Mailia was his case officer. [3] Newman’s problem is that no documentation exists for O’Mailia being Veciana’s case officer, O’Mailia using the pseudonym Joe Melton, or for O’Mailia, or anyone else, having trained Veciana. And Newman conveniently omits any discussion of Hicks as Veciana’s handler even though he discusses Hicks later in the book.

Earlier in the same chapter, Newman makes this observation supporting his theory of O’Mailia as case officer:

I believe whoever Veciana’s case officer was would also have needed the same plausible cover for regular access to the Edeficio LaRampa. Therefore, Fonzi’s linkage of Veciana’s evening language classes to his intelligence training with Mr. Melton—a language professor at Villanueva University—crucially gives us a CIA candidate other than Phillips.

Why would Veciana’s case officer necessarily need “regular access” to the Edeficio LaRampa? Is Newman alleging that all CIA operations involving Veciana originated from that building? Even if Veciana’s story of being trained there is true, why would his case officer necessarily need access to that building rather than just the person who administered the training? And Fonzi’s “linkage” of the language classes to intellegence training comes from Veciana and his subordinate Cao only. Newman’s reporting of O’Mailia as Veciana’s case officer is problematic since those who follow Newman will repeat this “fact” when there is a distinct possibly that it is just another Veciana myth. Perhaps Veciana was never trained since he was ultimately never used by the CIA. Or perhaps no training was necessary for what the CIA hoped Veciana would do for them. Or, if such training were proposed, perhaps Veciana never showed up since, as Newman says later in the book, he hated the CIA and never intended to work for them at all.

Finally, Newman labels Melton as “a language professor at Villanueva University” before even making his case to readers that Melton was O’Mailia (he only begins to do that shortly thereafter). The bottom line is that the possibility that O’Mailia was Melton (if Melton was real) certainly exists. If true, it would not be unusual since we know the CIA did approve Veciana for sabotage operations even though he never acted in that capacity. But Newman’s characterization of O’Mailia/Melton as Veciana’s “handler” or case officer is not warranted and is refuted by documentation that shows his handler was Hicks.

In the case of both “Fabiola” and “Joe Melton” Newman cherry picks evidence to fit his theories. And even though he is one of Veciana’s biggest critics and debunkers, he is willing to believe him when it suits his purposes. There is no hard evidence currently to support the idea of “Joe Melton” as O’Mailia or that the latter trained Veciana. Similarly, even if Delores Cao was Veciana’s secretary in Havana, her statements to Summers must be viewed skeptically since Veciana contacted her prior to her meeting with Summers.

It would be prudent for researchers to stick to the facts as established by the documentary record. And the evidence that David Phillips was Bishop or that Bishop existed at all is very sparse save for Veciana’s ramblings. Ultimately, Newman seems to be setting the stage for a complete denunciation of the “LHO met with David Phillips” story but to blunt the shock on the research community (and confirm his own theories), he will evidently seek to bolster at least some of Veciana’s claims. We will have to wait for the next installment of his series to see where he goes.

In Part Three, I’ll discuss chapter 11 of the book.

Notes

1. Theorists have made much of the fact that Cao remembered the name "Prewett" and "linked the name" to Bishop during an interview with Summers. Virginia Prewett was a columnist for the Washington Daily News specializing in Latin American affairs. Her column was syndicated by the North American Newspaper Alliance which had ties to the OSS and she was undoubtedly sympathetic to right-wing causes. She told Summers she didn't know David Phillips although Phillips told a different interviewer that he knew Prewett. But all of this goes nowhere since Veciana could have coached Cao.
2. "Antonio Carlos Veciana Blanch", RIF 104-10181-10431.
3. "Memorandum for: The File on AMSHALE/1 is Canceled", RIF 104-10181-10412. Another document requesting a POA for Veciana says, "POA req'ed by PM (C. Hicks)" (NARA Record # 1993.07.12.11:46:21:620580).

Into the Storm Part 1

Since reading his book Trained to Kill (hereafter TTK), I have felt that a complete biography of Antonio Veciana, the Alpha 66 co-founder who claimed to see Lee Harvey Oswald in the company of CIA contract agent David Phillips in 1963, is a much-needed addition to the body of work related to the JFK assassination and the history of the cold war. Although Professor John Newman’s latest work, Into the Storm, discusses the enigmatic Veciana in two chapters, it naturally does not embody such an ambitious project, although Newman promises two future volumes that will discuss Veciana and could lend clarity to his murky life story. While Newman’s book does debunk some myths and represents an important resource that future biographers would want to draw upon, it turns out to be a mixed bag.

Newman is a conspiracy theorist who is in the process of writing a multi-volume series on the JFK assassination and evidently believes that elements within the military hierarchy were responsible for murdering the 35th President. I don’t agree with that verdict, but Newman has reviewed thousands of documents and his work is more reasonable than many of his fellow theorists. Therefore, his research deserves attention but with a clear understanding of where he is coming from. In the process of developing and documenting his “grand thesis” on the JFK case, Newman is willing to abandon kernels of wisdom that were previously considered sacrosanct in the conspiracy community when they are not needed for his theories. A case in point is Veciana’ s alleged recruitment by David Phillips in Cuba, an event that he shows could not have happened as Veciana said it did. However, he falls into the trap of accepting dubious, or at least undocumented, “facts” that help to promote his theories. Part 2 of this series will discuss some of these issues. However, Newman has uncovered a wealth of material and offers documentation for many of his assertions. He does occasionally rely too much on the statements of Veciana, a man who has lied repeatedly for years as he knows and writes about. In my opinion, this weakens some of his conclusions.

This article will be a discussion of Into the Storm solely as it relates to Veciana and all information here is from that book unless otherwise indicated. To cut to the chase, Newman does not discuss the holy grail-the alleged meeting between Phillips/Bishop, Veciana and Oswald. He is saving that for a later volume and will apparently have an in-depth analysis. I’ll start my review with Newman’s well-done analysis of Veciana’s changing story concerning his alleged recruitment by David Phillips in 1959 or 1960, depending on which version you are talking about. Note that some of this material has been covered previously on this blog.

Veciana’s Cuba Recruitment Stories

Newman lists six versions of Veciana’s Cuba recruitment story. They are:

• 1976-the initial Fonzi interviews [1]
• June 1976-the Dick Russell interview
• April 1978-Veciana’s HSCA testimony
• 1979 through 1993-conversations with Fonzi
• 2014-AARC conference
• 2017-TTK

To summarize, from 1976 to 2013, Veciana maintained that he met Bishop in 1960 (usually mid-1960) at a Havana bank where he worked as an accountant. The details vary somewhat, but the story was essentially consistent. It is interesting to note that Veciana did not mention the 1959 recruitment date or state unequivocally (he had previously merely hinted) that Phillips was “Bishop” until after Fonzi’s death in 2012. But beginning with the 2014 AARC conference in Bethesda Maryland, Veciana changed his story. He now claims that the shadowy Bishop was indeed David Phillips. Also, during that presentation, according to Newman, he stated that he had met Bishop at the end of 1959. But by the time of his 2017 book, Veciana had moved the date backward in time even further pinpointing it as “just a few days after Jack Ruby departed Cuba.” Available documents identify this date as September 11, 1959 [2]. Therefore, we are left with two stories of Veciana’s alleged recruitment by Phillips/Bishop-the original story of 1960 and the current version dated 1959. But Newman’s review of the documentary record shows that both are false.

The 1959 Story From TTK

The release of CIA documents in the mid-nineties revealed the true chronology of David Phillips in 1959 to 1960 [3]. Although it is unclear when Veciana became aware of the discrepancies in his story, he ultimately chose to preserve the story with alterations to the timeline rather than abandon it. According to Newman, activities that Veciana alleged Phillips/Bishop undertook in 1959 were, “out of place and out of context” when compared to the known chronology of Phillips. Newman uses the documentary record, which he refers to as “robust” to refute the 1959 recruitment.

As a result of his July 1959 contact with a Cuban cattlemen’s association, a group that was plotting to overthrow Castro, Phillips’ cover became compromised. Indeed, in his book The Night Watch, Phillips called his situation “precarious” and he and his wife decided that he would leave both Cuba and the CIA itself, eventually changing their minds on the latter point.

On August 18, Havana station cabled Washington that Phillips might have been recorded by surreptitious means and that the cattlemen and 3000 others had been “rounded up” by Cuban police. Despite the growing concerns regarding his safety, Phillips was persuaded to go back to Cuba with the instruction to “begin planning for his permanent departure” and he arrived there on August 25th.

An investigation was launched by Havana station on August 31st as a result of events that further compromised Phillips’ and the CIA position. That investigation concluded that Phillips’ security situation was “the major concern at the present time.” The report of that investigation was written on September 15, 1959. This was the same time period that Phillips allegedly began his recruitment of Veciana, a situation that defies all credibility considering his ongoing security problems. According to Veciana, Phillips/Bishop walked into Julio Lobo’s Banco Financiero in mid-September to begin his recruitment of him. But Newman argues that Phillips would not take such a risk at the heavily-surveilled bank. Additionally, Lobo was known to Cuban authorities as a CIA informant who was bankrolling anti-Castro operations and was also under surveillance.

Veciana allegedly met Phillips/Bishop the following day at the famous (and very public) La Floridita restaurant. Again, Newman points out that this is the last place Phillips/Bishop would want to be seen considering his precarious security situation. And as I have noted previously at this blog, Veciana could have lifted the idea of the La Floridita from Phillips’ 1977 book The Night Watch which preceded Veciana’s first indication of the restaurant during his 1978 HSCA testimony.

Phillips/Bishop supposedly informed Veciana that he needed to undergo testing before his CIA mission could begin. Veciana received a call at Lobo’s bank about a week after the initial contact but, as Newman points out, the phones at the bank would have been monitored making such a contact unlikely. “Joe Melton” was waiting at an apartment building near the US embassy to administer the test while Phillips/Bishop causally waited, reading a newspaper.

After another week went by, Phillips/Bishop called again at the bank and allegedly drove Veciana to a ranch style home in Miramar. Here, Veciana was submitted to another test (administered by “John Smith”) in the form of a type of truth serum. Phillips/Bishop then drove Veciana back to the bank. Newman says that the idea of Phillips driving Veciana around Havana given his security situation is “about as likely as a germ at a Lysol convention” and the only thing missing was the “Aston Martin with automatically revolving license plates.”

At about the same time Veciana was allegedly interrogated under truth serum (about September 30th), behind the scenes the CIA was concerned about the use of Phillips in a previously authorized project that involved propaganda operations in the Havana television field. The project, which was to be supervised by Havana station, was given the cryptonym AMOURETTE-X. After extensive internal machinations which included concerns about Phillips’ security situation, an October 12 memo by Counterintelligence OA Chief Thomas Carroll Jr. stated that he was “unable to give further consideration” to Phillips for use in the project. However, at about the same time, Veciana says that Phillips/Bishop was meeting with him for six hours at the Hotel Riviera to discuss the results of his CIA tests.

By November 12, Phillips was finally authorized for project AMOURETTE-X [4]. But according to Newman, Phillips’ usefulness was a thing of the past because of his security situation and he was eventually replaced by Emilio Rodriguez who used the pseudonym Arnaldo Berenguer. Phillips left Cuba permanently in February 1960 according to CIA documents.

John Newman has done a good job of dispensing with Veciana’s Cuba recruitment stories. To sum up, it is apparent that the 1959 Cuba recruitment of Veciana by David Phillips is a mere fantasy. Similarly, Veciana’s mid-1960 recruitment by Phillips was equally impossible since Phillips was not in Cuba at the time and indeed, Newman characterizes the story as “fabricated.” And according to Newman, Veciana’s first chronological appearance in CIA records is not until December 9, 1960, about ten months after Phillips left Cuba. [5]

In Part 2, I’ll discuss “Fabiola” and “Joe Melton”, two subjects where I have problems with Newman’s research.

Notes

[1] A minor mistake made by Newman is when he says that the first interview with Fonzi took place while Veciana was still incarcerated. But that interview took place at Veciana’s home in Miami on March 2, 1976 (Fonzi, 123). Fonzi had originally intended to visit Veciana at the Atlanta Penitentiary, but changed his mind and this might explain the mix-up.

[2] Ruby apparently first returned to the US from Cuba on September 11 and then, for reasons that are unclear, returned to Cuba on the 12th and finally came back to the US on the 13th. (https://www.mafiahistory.us/a001/f_ruby.html).

[3] Newman says that Fabian Escalante was the first to discover the problem with the date Phillips supposedly recruited Veciana in Cuba and therefore moved it to 1959 in his 1995 book The Secret War. Newman diplomatically says he will leave it to “others to ponder” the reason it took researchers so long to catch up to Escalante. But it is obvious that researchers simply wanted to believe Veciana’s assertions as reported in Fonzi’s book and therefore did not question the 1960 time frame.

[4] Critics of Newman, who potentially include conspiracy theorists, might point out some problems with his narrative of the 1959-60 period. For instance, Newman tries to show the difficulty Phillips had in getting approved for the AMOURETTE-X project and implies it was because of Phillips’ ongoing security issues. Those security concerns were a consideration, but Phillips was eventually approved for the project, and critics could say the security issues could not have been as bad as Newman claims. Additionally, Newman makes the case that Phillips was in danger of being imprisoned or even executed because of his association with the Cuban cattlemen (many of whom were arrested) and the loss of operational cover that resulted. But despite this, Phillips went back to Cuba in August 1959 and remained there until February of the following year, again leaving Newman open to criticism on this point.

[5] Theorists have been proven at least partly correct that the 2017 document releases would provide new revelations as some of these were used by Newman in his work debunking Veciana.

John Newman on Veciana

Professor John Newman, author of Oswald and the CIA and several other conspiracy-oriented books, has now joined the ranks of researchers who are skeptical of at least some elements of the Maurice Bishop/David Phillips story as told by Antonio Veciana. Newman has given presentations at the JFK Lancer conference in November 2017 and at a March 2018 meeting of prominent researchers in San Francisco. Newman’s presentation, which he calls Fiction is Stranger than Truth: Antonio Veciana and David Phillips - Cuba 1959 – 1961, analyzes two scenarios regarding Veciana’s alleged initial meeting with Bishop. The presentation serves as preview of two or more chapters from his forthcoming book, which will detail the relationship between Veciana and the shadowy Bishop. All information in this article was obtained from a video of Newman’s San Francisco presentation.

I have always thought that if someone would take the time to do a chronology of events using the newly released documents and previously available information that it would be a simple matter to prove whether Phillips could be Bishop. Newman, who is an expert on finding and analyzing documents, has done just that, at least in this specific and key area of the story. From 1976 to 2014, Veciana maintained that he met Bishop in 1960 (when specifics were provided it was mid-1960) at a Havana bank where he worked as an accountant. But beginning with the 2014 AARC conference in Bethesda Maryland, Veciana changed his story. During that presentation he stated that he had met Bishop at the end of 1959 and by the time of his 2017 book Trained to Kill (TTK), he had moved the date backward in time even further pinpointing it as “just a few days after Jack Ruby departed Cuba.” Newly released documents identify this date as September 11, 1959 according to Newman. With these facts in mind, let’s look at Newman’s analysis of the original 1960 scenario as well as the recent 1959 claim.

First, Newman says that the mid-1960 time frame for the Veciana/Bishop/Phillips encounter is an “impossibility” because Phillips had left Cuba in “early February 1960” and “never set foot” on the island again. Newman criticizes conspiracy-leaning researchers and writers for not recognizing and reporting on this “verifiable fact”, noting that as late as 2013 conspiracy books had still not recognized the problem even though Fabian Escalante pointed it out as early as 1995. But by 2014, whoever was working with Veciana on TTK had recognized the situation and moved the date back to 1959. Having dispensed with the 1960 scenario, Newman proceeds to look at 1959.

By August 1959, Phillips’ cover in Cuba had become “gossamer thin” due to a complex series of events which I won’t repeat here for the sake of brevity. Suffice it to say that by the end of August, according to an internal security review by the CIA, Phillips’ cover had been compromised. By mid-September 1959, Phillips’ ongoing security problem in Cuba was the number one concern of the Havana station according to Newman. Therefore, Veciana’s claim of meeting Bishop/Phillips in mid-September must be weighed against the backdrop of Phillips’ security nightmare. It is extremely implausible that Phillips would engage in the recruitment of an anti-Castro operative in the middle of all this as Veciana now claims. Additionally, it is just as unlikely that Phillips would risk visiting Julio Lobo’s bank in Havana since Lobo was one of the most surveilled individuals in Cuba at the time according to Newman.

There are other problems with Veciana’s 1959 scenario as well. Again, considering Phillips’ security situation, it is unlikely that he would meet Veciana at the La Floridita restaurant in bustling Havana. Also, Veciana maintained in TTK that after the completion of the alleged CIA training sessions, he and Bishop/Phillips communicated entirely by letters written in invisible ink. But this fact contradicts all his previous accounts in which he communicated with Bishop by phone, either directly or through an intermediary. Finally, as a general criticism, Newman points to Veciana’s 2014 AARC statement that he protected the identity of Phillips as Bishop out of “loyalty and appreciation” and says “it is odd” that Veciana did this even though he suspected Bishop/Phillips of setting up his drug conviction.

Newman believes that Veciana has lied to researchers. Either Phillips was not Bishop, or he was Bishop (as Newman apparently still believes) but the story of how and when they met is a pure fantasy presented for reasons that are unclear. Newman states that “this sort of deception necessarily raises questions about the alleged Bishop/Oswald meeting in 1963.” I would go beyond that and say that it raises the question of whether Veciana can be believed at all.

Newman apparently believes that Phillips may have known and worked with Veciana in the early seventies on a Castro assassination plot in South America. He also believes that Veciana’s motive for going public with the Bishop allegations was his belief that Bishop had set him up to be arrested and eventually convicted of drug smuggling in 1972. Researchers will have to wait for Newman’s book to see his full interpretation of Veciana/Bishop/Phillips during the 1959-1961 timeframe and look at his source material. In any case, Newman has formulated a powerful argument that it would not have been possible for Phillips to be the Bishop portrayed by Veciana in Cuba in either the 1959 or 1960 scenarios.