2. “In My Mind, I Fell Off the Chair”

Title Quote: Gaeton Fonzi
Photo: Antonio Veciana

During the January 20th call, Fonzi told Hoch that he had located Veciana’s number in the phone book. On January 28th, Fonzi wrote Hoch saying that he had, “Found out that Veciana is now in prison on a narcotics charge. Claims he was framed. His son is arranging a visit [at the prison] for me.”1 But after learning that Veciana was being released early, Fonzi decided to set up an interview at Veciana’s home instead.2 On March 2, 1976, Fonzi arrived at the former activist’s modest home in the “Little Havana” section of Miami for the interview, the first of three memorable conversations.3 The following summary of Veciana’s “Maurice Bishop” story comes from three Fonzi-authored sources unless otherwise indicated. The first is his 1993 book The Last Investigation. The second is Volume X of the HSCA Appendices.4 The final and most important source since it predated the others is Fonzi’s rough notes of the three Veciana interviews.5

Here are the rough notes from the original 1976 Fonzi-Veciana interviews:

Interview 1, March 2, 1976, RIF 157-10007-10311 (hereafter referred to as Fonzi-Veciana I).

Interview 2, March 11, 1976, RIF 157-10007-10208 (hereafter referred to as Fonzi-Veciana II).

Interview 3, March 16, 1976, RIF 157-10004-10158 (hereafter referred to as Fonzi-Veciana III).

Veciana told Fonzi that he had been initially hopeful regarding Castro, but eventually came to realize that he was a communist. As his disillusionment with the dictator grew, he began to have private discussions with certain individuals about eliminating him. In response to Fonzi’s questioning about potential American involvement in such anti-Castro plots, Veciana brought up something that he had “never talked about before.”

Veciana maintained that for 13 years, an American named Maurice Bishop planned and directed his anti-Castro activities. It was Bishop who had ordered Veciana to create Alpha 66, the anti-Castro action group that conducted headline-grabbing raids against Soviet and Cuban targets and guided its overall strategy. Bishop directed the 1961 assassination attempt in Cuba against Premier Fidel Castro as well as a 1971 plot in Chile to kill the bearded dictator. Bishop was able to obtain the financing needed for these operations through connections to unnamed individuals in the US government. At this point in the conversation, Fonzi was somewhat disheartened. While Veciana’s information was interesting and potentially of use to the Church Committee, Fonzi’s main interest was the JFK assassination which he had not yet mentioned to Veciana. But then came the bombshell.

In addition to the Sylvia Odio matter, the O’Toole-Hoch Saturday Evening Post article had referred to Alpha 66 meetings hosted by a man named Jorge Salazar at his home located at 3126 Hollandale in Dallas. Without mentioning the article or Oswald, Fonzi asked Veciana if he had heard of Salazar. Veciana replied that he did not know the Salazar mentioned in Hoch’s article and that he had never seen Oswald at that address. After the evidently well-read Veciana had retrieved his own copy of the Post article, Fonzi asked Veciana why he mentioned Oswald. Veciana replied that he remembered “once having met Lee Harvey Oswald.” Fonzi tried to remain calm but as he later wrote, “in my mind, I fell off the chair.” In response to Fonzi’s frenzied follow-up questions, Veciana claimed that he met Oswald with Maurice Bishop in Dallas in late August or early September of 1963 (emphasis added).

Given Fonzi’s predilection toward conspiracy, his reaction was predictable. He believed that the “coincidental and credible” way he had received Veciana’s story lent it an air of authenticity. Rather than viewing the incredible tale with a journalist’s skepticism, Fonzi instead expressed “no doubt” about the veracity of the allegation. By immediately accepting Veciana’s story, Fonzi had fallen prey to one of the investigative pitfalls later identified by Paul Hoch. In 1993, he had warned a JFK research symposium to “Watch out for allegations which look too good to throw out, for example because they seem to make the connection between Kennedy's enemies and the assassination—that is, to provide the closure everyone hopes to find.” Veciana’s allegations met Hoch’s criteria by providing a link between JFK’s ostensible enemies (in the form of the mysterious Bishop and his CIA overlords) and Oswald.

Veciana told Fonzi that he met Bishop in mid-1960 while employed as an accountant at the Banco Financiero in his home city of Havana. His boss was Julio Lobo, Cuba’s “Sugar King” and “first millionaire.”6 Bishop presented a business card and while Veciana could no longer recall the name of his firm, he believed it was a construction company headquartered in Belgium. Speaking excellent Spanish, Bishop engaged Veciana in a conversation about the relatively new Castro government and the direction it was heading. After a while, Bishop suggested they continue the discussion over lunch at the La Floridita, one of Ernest Hemingway’s favorite haunts. As the conversation continued, Bishop expressed concern that Castro was headed toward communism. Bishop also told Veciana that he was aware of his own ill feelings toward Castro. Veciana was shocked by this revelation since only his closest confidants knew of his disillusionment with the Cuban government.

It became obvious to Veciana that Bishop knew a great deal about him. It was equally evident that Bishop wanted to recruit Veciana into the anti-Castro movement. Veciana did not need much convincing since he had come to despise Castro whom he considered a traitor to the revolution. Veciana accepted Bishop’s offer but said he wanted to work without pay, taking only expense money until the arrangement ended. At that time, they could settle the account since Veciana did not believe that it would take long to topple Castro. Veciana logically wanted to know who Bishop represented, but he told Veciana that, “there isn’t only one agency, the CIA, there are a lot of agencies working for this [the anti-Castro cause].”

Several additional meetings between the men followed and they got to better know one another. Eventually, Bishop informed Veciana that he would need to undergo a “training program” to prepare for the work ahead. The program consisted of lectures and instruction at a building on El Vedado in a commercial area. Veciana recalled a mining company listed in the building directory as well as a Berlitz School of Languages on the first floor. Bishop occasionally attended meetings, but the primary instructor was a man he knew only as “Mr. Melton.” Veciana’s training was primarily in propaganda and psychological warfare but also consisted of instruction in sabotage techniques and explosives. Bishop repeatedly emphasized the benefits of psychological warfare over conventional methods. Veciana also received training in counterintelligence, surveillance and communications with a view toward giving him the skills needed to be a planner and organizer.

The training lasted just a few weeks and by then Veciana and Bishop had begun developing schemes to destabilize the Castro administration. One such plan involved an allegedly successful attempt by Veciana to have Che Guevara, Castro’s right-hand man, sign a $200,000 check which was then diverted to the underground. Veciana also masterminded a propaganda campaign to create public distrust in Cuba’s currency and thus destabilize it. Using the supervisory skills learned during his training, Veciana rose to become chief of sabotage for the Revolutionary Movement of the People (MRP).

Veciana remembered certain meetings with Bishop because they were special in nature. In one case, Veciana was taken to an office in the Pan American Bank Building in Miami. There, in the presence of Bishop and two other individuals, Veciana participated in a “commitment ceremony.” Veciana described the ceremony as a pledge of loyalty designed to convey the gravity of the responsibility he was about to undertake.7 Veciana told Fonzi about a CIA propaganda operation codenamed Cellula Fantasma which involved dropping leaflets over Cuba. Bishop asked Veciana to attend meetings with the group planners and report back to him. The operation, for which Veciana said the CIA paid $300,000, involved Frank Fiorini Sturgis of Watergate fame.8 Bishop told Veciana that Sturgis was more than just another soldier, although he failed to elaborate.

Although Bishop would not admit to being affiliated with the US government, he nevertheless was aware of certain individuals in the US embassy in Havana and recommended that Veciana contact them for help. One such person was “Colonel Kail” who turned out to be Colonel Samuel Kail of the US Army. Kail allegedly offered to help Veciana obtain passports and visas for plotters who wanted to leave Cuba. Since the US embassy in Cuba closed shortly after their conversation, this assistance never materialized.

Bishop left Cuba before the April 1961 Bay of Pigs operation. Sometime after the failed operation, Veciana met with Bishop. Embittered by the breakdown of the mission, which he blamed on JFK’s reluctance to provide air support, Bishop told Veciana that the only recourse left to them was to try and kill the bearded dictator.9 Veciana first proposed an assassination during the visit of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in July of 1961, but Bishop rejected the plan. Ultimately, Bishop authorized an October 1961 attack and Veciana recruited the action men and organized the operation although he did not participate on the ground. The plan was aborted when Bishop confirmed Veciana’s fear that Castro had become aware of the assassination team’s activities. Veciana escaped the island nation in a small boat with his mother-in-law.

Veciana settled in Miami and soon after was contacted by Bishop again. Saying that “Cuba had to be liberated by Cubans,” Bishop directed Veciana to form an anti-Castro exile group ultimately named Alpha 66, which became one of the most active anti-Castro organizations and was responsible for several Cuban raids. Veciana was the chief executive officer, spokesman and fund-raiser. For the head of military operations, Veciana recruited Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo who had a reputation as a fierce rebel fighter.

Veciana intentionally created problems for JFK before and during the Cuban Missile Crisis with the timing of Alpha 66 raids. Another embarrassment to Kennedy was a special press conference held during March of 1963 while the president was in Costa Rica soliciting support for his Cuba policy. At the press conference, Veciana announced an Alpha 66 raid on a Russian ship docked in a Cuban harbor. Bishop arranged for two high-ranking government officials to attend the presser to give it legitimacy. All these Bishop-ordered tactics were carried out to embarrass JFK.

While Veciana was the public head of Alpha 66, Bishop pulled the strings behind the scenes. Over the course of their relationship, Bishop was always the one to initiate contact, a system that he had insisted on from the beginning. The only exception to this arrangement came during Alpha 66’s most active period when Veciana made arrangements to contact Bishop through a trusted intermediary.

Veciana said that Bishop was responsible for his employment with USAID during the years 1968 to 1972 maintaining that the agency would not otherwise hire an anti-Castro activist with a history of violence. In 1971, Bishop masterminded another Castro assassination plot with Veciana again handling the groundwork. As in the case of the 1961 attempt, the plot was eventually aborted, and the failure led to the eventual dissolution of the Veciana-Bishop relationship. The sticking point occurred when associates who Veciana had hired introduced an unauthorized element into the plan without his knowledge. Bishop did not accept Veciana’s explanation of the event, thereby causing a rift that never fully healed.

On July 26, 1973, Veciana met Bishop at the Flagler Dog Track in Miami. Bishop was accompanied by two younger men in an automobile. Bishop gave Veciana a suitcase with $253,000 in cash which represented payment for his services over the years.10 After this final meeting Veciana never saw his mysterious mentor again.

Veciana’s most sensational revelation, of course, was the claim that he saw Bishop in the company of Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas just a few months before the assassination of JFK. Fonzi summed up the significance of the alleged meeting in his HSCA writeup. “The committee's interest in the relationship between Antonio Veciana and Maurice Bishop,” he wrote, “is of course predicated on Veciana's contention that he saw Bishop with Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas a few months before the assassination of John F. Kennedy.”

Veciana was unable to pinpoint the exact date of the meeting but believed it was in late August or early September of 1963 according to Fonzi.11 This significant encounter occurred in public in the busy lobby of a large office building with a distinctive, blue-tiled façade in the downtown section of the city. When Veciana arrived, Bishop was there talking with Oswald. Veciana could not recall whether he was introduced to Oswald by name but said he did not have any conversation with him. Oswald remained with Bishop and Veciana only for a brief time as they walked toward a nearby coffee shop. Oswald went his separate way and Bishop and Veciana continued their meeting alone.

Veciana said that he recognized Oswald after seeing photographs of him after the Kennedy assassination. There was absolutely no doubt in his mind that the man was Oswald, not just someone who resembled him. Veciana explained to Fonzi that he had been trained to remember the physical characteristics of individuals and that, if it was not Oswald, it was his "exact" double.

Go to Chapter 3

The Bishop Hoax: Table of Contents

Notes

1. Email from Paul Hoch to W. Tracy Parnell, February 6, 2020.
2. Fonzi, The Last Investigation, 120-121. According to Fonzi’s notes from the first interview (RIF 157-10007-10311), Veciana was released during the week of February 15th through the 21st.
3. Researcher and author John Newman was one of the early Veciana skeptics in the JFK conspiracy community. As noted later in this book, Newman was the first researcher to show that Veciana’s 1959 and 1960 scenarios regarding how he supposedly met Bishop/Phillips in Cuba could not be true. But Newman is a committed conspiracy theorist who is working on a series of books purporting to explain how a conspiracy killed JFK. Toward that end, he has incorporated the Veciana story as an element in his grand theory. He believes that high ranking Pentagon officials were the impetus behind the plot and these individuals were the ones who somehow gained Veciana’s release from prison. The reason for his release was so he could lay a false trail that pointed toward the CIA as the perpetrators of the crime and hide the involvement of the Pentagon. The evidence for Newman’s theory is very thin and comes primarily from the statements of Felix Zabala and two other friends of Veciana who believed that he had been released in return for his testimony. But this was simply their belief and none of these people had any proof to back up their claims. Note that the Church Committee/HSCA (including Fonzi) would have had to know nothing about the arranged release or be complicit in hiding it from the public.
4. The official title is, Appendix to Hearings Before the Select Committee on Assassinations of the Ninety Fifth Congress Second Session Volume X, Anti-Castro Activities and Organizations (hereafter HSCA X).
5. The first two sources named here are really Fonzi’s version of what Veciana told him. If Fonzi had created the story strictly from the three Veciana interviews, it would have been a much different tale.
6. Veciana often described Lobo as “Cuba’s first millionaire” and may have believed it was a fact. But it is not. Tomás Terry y Adán, who died in 1886, left a fortune of 25 million dollars which was also made from sugar cane (Rathbone, The Sugar King of Havana, 1).
7. Veciana repeated this claim in his 2017 book. But omitted from both the book and Fonzi’s HSCA writeup was Veciana’s HSCA testimony that the ceremony was like those conducted by the Knights of Columbus. Of course, the CIA (or any other government intelligence agency) does not perform commitment ceremonies for their agents or assets. Indeed, Fonzi had placed a double “question mark” by the passage in his rough notes describing the ceremony indicating that even he was skeptical.
8. Fiorini-Sturgis was born Frank Angelo Fiorini on December 9, 1924. On September 23, 1952, he legally changed his name to Frank Anthony Sturgis. In court documents, Sturgis said that he wanted to take the last name of his stepfather, Ralph Sturgis. Later before the Rockefeller Commission, Sturgis said that his mother had influenced his decision due to her “bad situation” with Sturgis’ birth father (Hunt and Risch, Warrior, Kindle Edition, Chapter 2). Others have postulated various conspiratorial reasons for the name change. In any case, the surname “Sturgis” is used in this book for clarity.
9. Implausibly, Veciana maintained that Bishop asked him to write a report on the failure of the Bay of Pigs mission which Veciana was admittedly not involved in (Fonzi-Veciana I, 17). Interestingly, Veciana’s statement to Fonzi that the Bay of Pigs was “the biggest blunder of [JFK’s] life” mirrored the ethereal Bishop’s own opinion (HSCA Memo from Al Gonzales to Cliff Fenton, August 25, 1977, retrieved from the website of Larry Hancock).
10. In his book, Veciana says that his wife “arranged” for his bail after his arrest. After the payoff from Bishop which was allegedly the same day he was released, Veciana said he hid the money in “wooden statues” (Veciana with Harrison, Trained to Kill, 181-183). But reportedly, $80,000 of the $100,000 bail was provided by Veciana’s cousin, Dr. Zalduendo. Wouldn’t Veciana’s first act logically be to repay his cousin the $80,000 rather than hide the money?
11. Late August or early September is what Fonzi most often used as the date of the meeting. In his HSCA writeup, Fonzi said only “late August” (HSCA X, paragraph 139). But as we will see, Veciana really had no idea when the meeting was.

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