Title Quote: Harold Weisberg
Photo: Weisberg with his books
Photo: Weisberg with his books
Obviously, Veciana’s most memorable claim is that he saw Bishop/Phillips with Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas shortly before the assassination of JFK. Fonzi summarized the significance of this 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.”
If Phillips had been running Veciana in some sort of anti-Castro operation (which there is no credible evidence of), it would not have been surprising since Castro was their shared enemy. This, of course, lends an air of believability to Veciana’s story, especially for those like Fonzi who were predisposed to such theories. But even conspiracy author Henry Hurt recognized that a Phillips-Veciana connection would not prove a Phillips-Oswald link. “Assuming for the sake of this discussion,” Hurt wrote, “that David Phillips is Maurice Bishop, it does not necessarily follow that there is any truth in Veciana’s story about seeing Bishop in Dallas a few weeks before the assassination with a man he believes was Oswald.”1
Exactly what evidence exists to support Veciana’s claim that he saw Oswald with Bishop/Phillips and do his allegations withstand scrutiny? Is there any evidence that a meeting of any kind occurred?
First, when was the alleged meeting? The following Fonzi-authored accounts, which countless conspiracy authors have used as a source of information for their own work, maintain that the date of the Bishop-Oswald meeting was late August or early September 1963.
- HSCA Volume X.
- “The Last Investigation” (a draft of “Who Killed JFK?”).
- “Who Killed JFK?”, The Washingtonian, 1980.
- The Last Investigation (book) 1993.
Where did Fonzi get his information about the meeting? The only one of these foundational works by Fonzi that provides citations is his HSCA writeup. At paragraph 115 of that account, Fonzi first described the date as “late August or September 1963” and listed his source as the March 2nd interview. Later at paragraph 139, Fonzi said that Veciana “believed [the meeting] was in late August 1963.” This time his citation is vague and says only “Interview of Antonio Veciana Blanch” but subsequent citations indicate Fonzi is referring to the March 11th Veciana interview.
Similarly, in his book (page 126) Fonzi states that during his first interview with Veciana, the latter said, “he met Oswald with Maurice Bishop in Dallas sometime near the beginning of September 1963.” In both the Washingtonian article and the draft, late August or early September 1963 are again mentioned. But Fonzi’s interview notes, which are available at the National Archives and somehow have escaped the scrutiny of theorists, reveal that his claims are not true.
Incredibly, in this first meeting with Fonzi on March 2, 1976, Veciana initially said the date of his encounter with LHO was “around ’62.” Later in the same interview, Fonzi tried to zero in on the date. Veciana through his interpreter now stated that “his memory isn’t certain but he thinks it was in the summer of ’63 in August. But he can’t give [a] specific date.” Immediately noticing the discrepancy, Fonzi asked “not ’62?” Veciana replied “no, no.” In this very first interview, which should be given priority since any prompting of Veciana can be all but ruled out, Veciana seemed far from certain about exactly when he allegedly saw Oswald.
In the March 11th interview, Veciana again gave conflicting statements about the date of the alleged meeting, first saying “no, it wasn’t in ‘63” and then “yes, yes it was in ’63, July or August.” Veciana then turned the tables and asked Fonzi “when was Kennedy assassinated?” After Fonzi told him that JFK was killed in 1963, he said “then it was the summer of ’63.” Nowhere in the three March 1976 interviews of Veciana, which are cited by Fonzi as the source of his information, are “late August” or “September” (in any form) mentioned and those characterizations are clearly Fonzi inventions.
In the Dick Russell interview in the summer of 1976, Veciana again indicated the date of the meeting was August 1963 with no mention of “late August.”2 In his sworn 1978 HSCA testimony, Veciana only said that the meeting was “three months prior to the Kennedy assassination,” which would again place the meeting in August.3 After examining the 1976 interviews, an unbiased journalist or investigator would have described the date of the alleged meeting as the summer of 1963, possibly in July or August since those are the only months Veciana mentioned. But as I have shown, Fonzi was not an unbiased reporter of facts, at least where Veciana is concerned.
In his book (page 141), Fonzi described how “early September” came about:
Initially, Antonio Veciana told me that it was sometime in late August or early September 1963, when Bishop called and asked him to meet in Dallas. Later, as he gave it more thought, he said it was probably early September, perhaps towards the end of the first week of the month.
But as mentioned, Fonzi offers no citation for this statement and no explanation as to how Veciana’s memory improved over time since he clearly stated in the March 2 interview that he was not certain about the date of the meeting, a fact that Fonzi verified in his HSCA writeup. “Veciana could not specifically pinpoint the date of that meeting with Bishop,” Fonzi admitted. And there is no indication that Veciana, who told Fonzi he did not keep a diary, ever referred to notes or other documentation to refresh his memory. Unfortunately, Fonzi was never asked by researchers to explain why he misstated what his notes said in four key versions of his work.
Just why was Fonzi so eager to place the meeting between Oswald and Bishop in early September? Fonzi believed that Oswald, who did not drive and never had two nickels to rub together, somehow journeyed from New Orleans to Dallas during this period. On page 141 of his book he wrote “… there is one span of time, between September 6th and 9th, when Oswald’s whereabouts are absolutely unknown.” This opens the door to the idea that Fonzi urged Veciana to focus on the early September time frame. Veciana, eager to appease Fonzi whom he hoped to use to push the idea that his drug conviction was a frame-up, went along with this unsupported chronology.
In any event, Fonzi’s theory is weak for several reasons. Oswald was verifiably in New Orleans on Friday the 6th and cashed his unemployment check at the Wynn-Dixie store on Magazine Street. On Monday the 9th, he cashed an unemployment check at the Wynn-Dixie on Carrollton Avenue in New Orleans. Of course, this does not rule out a third party driving or flying him to Dallas on Saturday or Sunday. But Oswald’s wife Marina testified during the Clay Shaw trial that he was never away from home during the time they lived in New Orleans save for a night spent in jail.
Conspiracy researcher Harold Weisberg was among those left unpersuaded by Fonzi’s logic. “Sure planes fly,” the first-generation Warren Commission critic noted, “if Oswald was not known to have used them. But detailed official and unofficial investigations do not disclose any reason to believe [Oswald] was missing from New Orleans at the time in question.”4 Indeed why would Bishop/Phillips meet Oswald in Dallas at all? Why not just fly to New Orleans and meet the destitute and immobile Oswald there?
Remarkably, Veciana’s memory continued to improve over the years to the point that he could say in his 2017 autobiography, Trained to Kill, that the meeting occurred on September 7th, 1963. The person who allowed Veciana to pinpoint the date of the meeting is Wynne Johnson, whose dubious claims of witnessing the event are deconstructed in detail at my blog.5 Johnson “verified” that the date was the 7th of September after having his memory of the meeting triggered by reading various conspiracy books—one of which happened to be Fonzi’s. Johnson’s story eventually included perennial conspiracy favorites David Ferrie and Malcolm Wallace and a bonus sighting of Phillips at a party in 1965. Even Marie Fonzi did not believe Johnson and his “late-occurring” memories.
Another Fonzi creation that has become a mainstay in the JFK lexicon is that the Bishop-Oswald meeting took place at the Southland Center in Dallas. The following example is from page 332 of Destiny Betrayed by James DiEugenio:
Veciana told Fonzi he had seen Oswald in Dallas with Bishop in early September of 1963. It was at the Southland Center, a 42 story office complex built in the late fifties.
However, in HSCA Volume X, Fonzi does not mention Southland at all. The first reference to Southland by Fonzi appeared in the draft manuscript (titled “The Last Investigation”) for what became the 1980 Washingtonian article “Who Killed JFK.” In both those pieces and his book, Fonzi says without citation that the meeting “probably” took place there. Indeed, in a chronology at the end of his book (page 421), he removes any qualifying language and states it as a fact.
In the March 2nd interview, Veciana said the meeting was in a building with a “big bank or insurance company” but that he didn’t remember “whether it was blue or white.” Veciana’s description apparently made Fonzi think of Southland and during the March 11th interview, he specifically asked Veciana if the meeting took place there. Veciana replied through his interpreter “he doesn’t remember.” In this interview, Veciana went on to describe the building as “… downtown, a blue building, an insurance co. or bank building.” But Veciana never specifically stated that it was the Southland Building in any of the March 1976 interviews.
In his 1978 HSCA testimony, Veciana again said “I don’t recall the exact place”, only allowing that the building lobby had “blue marble or blue ornaments.” It is very unlikely that Veciana would be unable to recall the Southland building had a meeting occurred there. The building rose to a height of 550 feet and large letters spelling “Southland Life” adorned the top of the building. In fact, Veciana agreed writing in his book (page 121) that it would be difficult to misconstrue the Southland Center for “any other edifice.”
Similarly, in the Russell interview Veciana again did not mention the Southland Center and stuck to his story that Bishop had given him an address to a “bank or insurance company.” In all the key 1976 interviews and his 1978 HSCA testimony, Veciana never said the meeting was at the Southland Center and instead said he could not remember the exact location. But Fonzi concluded without proof that the meeting occurred at Southland and subsequent conspiracy authors have blindly followed his lead. Even as late as the 2014 AARC conference Veciana said only that the meeting happened in the “lobby of a downtown Dallas bank.”
In fact, Veciana never identified the location of the meeting as the Southland Center until the 2017 publication of his book which utilized every conspiracy meme in existence. The closest that Veciana came to saying the location of the Bishop meeting was the Southland Center prior to 2017 was during an interview with PBS in the nineties. In that discussion, Veciana said the meeting occurred at “possibly the tallest building in Dallas, Texas.” But since Veciana had previously said he did not know which building it was, he was likely just parroting Fonzi’s beliefs in that instance.
Why are theorists such as Fonzi adamant that the meeting occurred at Southland? Researcher Bill Kelly provided several conspiratorial reasons to favor Southland in a 2015 blog article.
- LHO was familiar with the building since he applied for a job there at the behest of George de Mohrenschildt.
- Robert Oswald’s attorney William McKenzie had offices there.
- McKenzie’s law firm represented perennial conspiracy suspect Clint Murchison.
- Southland’s “most visible tenant” was the Dallas Sheraton Hotel where both George H.W. Bush and the Secret Service were registered on November 21-22, 1963.
Another reason for the Southland myth may simply be that the more “facts” the story contains the more believable it will seem. It sounds more credible to say that the meeting was at the Southland Center than to say it was at a bank or insurance company in an unknown location.
Another inconsistency in Veciana’s Bishop story relates to his level of interaction with Oswald. In his HSCA writeup, Fonzi wrote “Veciana does not recall whether he was introduced to Oswald by name but said he did not have any conversation with him.” Fonzi cites his March 1976 interviews as the source of this information. But Veciana’s statements in those interviews were more ambiguous than Fonzi indicated. In the March 2nd interview, Veciana said that he met Oswald when Bishop quickly introduced him. But by the next interview, Veciana was saying that Bishop did not introduce Oswald and the latter never said a word.
During an interview with Dick Russell referenced on page 149 of his book, Veciana said that when he approached Bishop Oswald was with him. The three men walked to a nearby cafeteria where Bishop told Oswald he would meet him in “two or three hours.” Oswald, according to Veciana, “did not say one word.” In his 1978 HSCA testimony, Veciana first said that Oswald never spoke. Later in the testimony, Veciana said that Oswald had offered a “laconic” greeting and might have said “I’ll see you later” or “I’m leaving” before departing.6 In yet another version of the story, Veciana allegedly told conspiracy author Thom Hartmann that Oswald not only spoke but was talking about “something that we can do to kill Castro.”7
But by far there is one aspect of Veciana’s Bishop-Oswald meeting tale that has drawn the most fire from critics. Assume, for the sake of argument, that Bishop existed and he was Phillips. What is the likelihood that Phillips, who by all accounts was one of the best spies of the cold war period, would have brought together two assets from different operations? This is improbable in the extreme since all it would take to blow an operation was one misplaced utterance. Such a meeting of two operatives could make sense if Veciana and Oswald were working on the same project but even Veciana, whose later stories included suicide pills and disappearing ink, never alleged this.
Similarly, Veciana claimed that Bishop/Phillips preferred to meet in public places. But again, this makes no sense. Veciana in his role as a spokesman for Alpha 66 had become a well-known public figure in his own right and his picture had appeared in major newspapers around the country. Why meet in a public place and run the risk that Veciana would be recognized?
Moreover, by approaching Bishop/Phillips when he was with Oswald, it seems Veciana violated the standards that Bishop and Melton had taught him during his alleged training sessions. One rule (page 67 of his book) was to “reconnoiter” the area where a meeting was to occur and make sure there was “no problem” before keeping the appointment. Surely, spotting Bishop/Phillips with an unknown individual would meet the definition of a potential “problem.” And Veciana testified that this was the only time that another individual was present at a scheduled meeting.8 But Veciana inexplicably proceeded to the confab despite these anomalies.
Indeed, Congressman Christopher Dodd pressed Veciana hard on this issue during his HSCA appearance. “What I am getting at here,” Dodd logically asked, “is were you not suspicious, were you not concerned in your meeting with Mr. Bishop in Dallas that all of a sudden after all of the other meetings you had with Mr. Bishop he brings along a total stranger … were you not upset?” Veciana, who spent most of his testimony avoiding direct answers, offered a weak response. Oswald was a “colorless man” and the meeting was of a “casual” nature. Therefore, Veciana was unconcerned by this obvious breach of spy craft.9
Fonzi critic Harold Weisberg, who was formerly in the OSS, offered his take on the unlikely nature of such a public meeting in a letter to James Lesar:
All of you, too, [younger WC critics] have childish notions about intelligence agencies, like coming from novels. What was from the first obvious in the Veciana story is so gross a violation of what I think is called tradecraft that no intelligence agent of any kind would permit it, leave alone arrange it. He would never bring two of his people together, least of all in daylight and in a place where many people could see it. Phillips would never have done that or anything like it.
Former HSCA staffer Dan Hardway agreed with Weisberg, writing in a 2017 blog article:
Indeed, in describing the Castro assassination attempt Veciana describes how irate Phillips was over a slip in tradecraft when Veciana used Cuban idiom while meeting another agent in Santiago. But in Dallas, Phillips evidently allowed two assets being utilized in unrelated operations [to] meet each other? That is totally out of character with what is known of Phillips and what Veciana testifies to in every other place in his book. You would think, given his training and how well he says he learned it, that Veciana would have been upset by Phillips exposing their association to someone that Veciana didn’t know. This is, at best, an anomaly in Veciana’s story.
Those who worked in the CIA were equally skeptical of Veciana’s claims. Researcher Gerald McNally asked Ross Crozier in a 1999 interview if Phillips would run Oswald as an asset and do so “in sight of” Veciana. “That's inconceivable” the former CIA man replied. “Oswald was a real freak and I can't see Dave having anything to do with him under any circumstances. Dave was a very high officer … I don't think he'd run a low level operation like this personally.”
Finally, Veciana’s former advocate Anthony Summers became skeptical enough of his story to make the following argument to him at the 2014 AARC conference:
Okay. A very large point I want to make about this is, Phillips is the senior person. He's supposedly been an expert of some kind, as discussed by Tony [Veciana] for some time, within the CIA. Why in the world, if he wants to meet with Oswald as a possible scapegoat for the assassination of President Kennedy, would he risk meeting with Oswald when he's due to meet Antonio in 15 minutes’ time? One of the first things I think that was said that the only reason that he saw Phillips with Oswald was because he arrived 15 minutes early for a meeting. It sounds like appalling tradecraft.
Veciana’s implausible reply to Summers was that while Phillips was a “capable, serious, good at his job official,” he still made “a lot of mistakes.”
Equally unnerving, even to those who sympathize with Veciana, is the lack of detail regarding the alleged Bishop-Oswald meeting. Although Veciana has remarkably (and inexplicably) filled in a few of the particulars over the years, he originally recalled extraordinarily little. He was at first unable to remember the date, the place or even why Bishop had summoned him. Dan Hardway took up the latter point in his blog piece:
When we get to the Phillips and Oswald in Dallas story, though, things get vague, very vague. For example, he never tells us why Phillips sent for him to come to Dallas in September of 1963. I would find it very hard to believe that he does not remember what that meeting was about. I would think it would be seared into his memory because of who he met and the events occurring just two months after the meeting. So, why didn’t he tell us in the book what the meeting was about.
Author Larry Hancock reported in his 2006 book Someone Would Have Talked that he had discovered the reason behind the Bishop-Oswald meeting. Hancock says on page 183 that the reason for the confab was to “discuss the elimination of Fidel Castro,” a goal that Oswald shared with Veciana and Bishop. Hancock’s source for this information is the book Ultimate Sacrifice which in turn relies on a 1993 interview of Veciana conducted by the book’s co-author Thom Hartmann and Cuban exile expert Gordon Winslow.10
But Winslow has made his notes of the interview available. Notably absent is a reason of any kind for the Veciana-Bishop meeting. Indeed, according to Winslow’s notes, Veciana’s “recall of what he and Maurice Bishop met about was very vague.” Finally, during Veciana’s 1978 HSCA testimony, which should be given the most weight since it was under penalty of perjury, he was specifically asked what his meeting with Bishop was regarding. After an attempt at deflection by Veciana he finally said “… the subject to be discussed at that meeting was what to do in the future [after JFK confined him to Dade County and he was registered as a foreign agent].”11
Finally, Veciana skeptics have wondered why he never told another soul when he realized that he had witnessed a meeting between the assassin of JFK and an individual who he later claimed was a high-ranking CIA officer. Christopher Dodd put it best during his HSCA questioning of Veciana. “I find somewhat unbelievable that you would not talk to anyone,” the congressman noted, “even your closest comrades.” Veciana’s weak response was “nobody ever asked me officially about this connection.” 12
In summary, the evidence is compelling that the Bishop-Oswald meeting never happened and was merely a “shiny object” used by Veciana to attract Fonzi and subsequent theorists and to divert responsibility for illegal actions he may have committed during his time with Alpha 66.
The Bishop Hoax Table of Contents
Notes
1. Hurt, Reasonable Doubt, 336-337.⏎2. Russell, On the Trail of the JFK Assassins, 148.⏎
3. HSCA Executive Session Testimony of Antonio Veciana, April 26, 1978. RIF 180-10118-10145.⏎
4. Letter from Harold Weisberg to NBC-TV, June 16, 1980. Courtesy of the Weisberg Collection, Hood College.⏎
5. Although Bishop supposedly taught Veciana to “notice and remember” faces, he admitted he didn’t remember Johnson but predictably still believed his story (Veciana with Harrison, Trained to Kill, 124).⏎
6. HSCA Executive Session Testimony of Antonio Veciana, April 26, 1978, 20, 25-26. RIF 180-10118-10145.⏎
7. Waldron with Hartmann, Ultimate Sacrifice, 551.⏎
8. HSCA Executive Session Testimony of Antonio Veciana, April 26, 1978, 21. RIF 180-10118-10145.⏎
9. HSCA Executive Session Testimony of Antonio Veciana, April 26, 1978, 32-33. RIF 180-10118-10145.⏎
10. Hancock also states that Oswald’s alleged goal to eliminate Castro corroborates remarks he supposedly made to Dr. Frank Silva in Clinton, LA before the assassination. The problem is a study of Oswald’s biography reveals he was never in Clinton. Hancock’s belief is based on the work of Jim Garrison advocate Joan Mellen. Patricia Lambert addresses Mellen’s claims regarding Silva at John McAdams' site. ⏎
11. HSCA Executive Session Testimony of Antonio Veciana, April 26, 1978, 22-23. RIF 180-10118-10145. Veciana told Vic Walters that the reason for the meeting with Bishop was to discuss “different matters about the Cuban situation and other efforts in the war against Castro” (“Statements by Veciana on WCKT-TV (Miami) Week of August 19, 1977.” RIF 180-10097-10138).⏎
12. HSCA Executive Session Testimony of Antonio Veciana, April 26, 1978, 36. RIF 180-10118-10145. Another inconsistency brought out by Veciana’s HSCA testimony regards whether he spoke to Bishop/Phillips about Oswald being present at their last meeting when he next saw him. In his 1993 PBS interview Veciana stated, “I saw Bishop next time a few months later and then I told him that I was very very worried about the implications of having seen Oswald and what that might mean to us. He said do not worry.” But in his HSCA testimony, Christopher Dodd asked, “In [the next] meeting with Mr. Bishop … did you bring up the matter of Lee Harvey Oswald?” Veciana replied, “No, I never raised that point” (HSCA Executive Session Testimony of Antonio Veciana, April 26, 1978, 37. RIF 180-10118-10145.⏎
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