W. Tracy Parnell

Researcher Bill Kelly recently published a blog article that attempts to debunk the “Lone Nut factoid” that “the only evidence of conspiracy that the HSCA came up with was the acoustical study, that has since been debunked.” Apparently because he is unhappy with my eBook, The Bishop Hoax , Kelly chose to focus his wrath on me. Kelly writes: Parnell tried to contest [Brian] Bennder’s (sic) mentioning the fact that the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) conclusion that there was probably a conspiracy in the assassination of President Kennedy, saying the only evidence of conspiracy that the HSCA came up with was the acoustical study, that has since been debunked. The problem is, I never said this. What I did say is that the conclusion by the HSCA of a probable conspiracy was based primarily on the now debunked acoustic evidence. The first draft of the HSCA report dated December 13, 1978, states: The committee finds that the available scientific evidence is insu...

Did anti-Castro activist Antonio Veciana really see Lee Harvey Oswald with CIA man David Atlee Phillips just weeks before the assassination of JFK? My new eBook— The Bishop Hoax: Fonzi, Veciana and the Making of a Conspiracy Myth —seeks to answer that question for all time. In 1976, Veciana met with Congressional researcher Gaeton Fonzi for a series of three interviews. During those meetings, Fonzi reported that Veciana said that he met with a case officer code named Maurice (Morris at first) Bishop for thirteen years. It was Bishop who directed the anti-Castro efforts of Veciana and Alpha 66. Most significantly, before one of his meetings with Bishop, Veciana claimed he saw the mysterious mentor in the company of Oswald. For twenty-five years, David Atlee Phillips was one of the most distinguished agents in the history of the Cold War CIA. In 1975, he retired to defend the agency from what he believed were unfounded accusations fueled by a media frenzy in the wake of Watergate....

There have been several examples through the years of individuals inserting themselves into the JFK story including James Files, Beverly Oliver and Gordon Arnold. The most egregious of these may be Judyth Vary Baker whose claim that she was the girlfriend of Lee Harvey Oswald and worked with him, David Ferrie, Guy Banister and Clay Shaw on a top-secret bio-weapons project has earned her a position as the head of a JFK conference. The only confirmation for any aspect of her story comes from a pay stub from the Reily Coffee Company which shows she was employed there shortly after Oswald was. In his article, “The Making of a Fantasist,” author and researcher Greg Parker refers to the works penned by Baker and those like her as “creative non-fiction.” A recent entrant into this group related to Veciana and the Bishop story may be one Wynne Murphey Johnson who says he was a witness to the alleged meeting of Veciana, Bishop (who Johnson predictably believes is David Phillips) and Oswald....

“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. Newm...

Antonio Veciana has the last laugh, at least for the time being. The former anti-Castro activist died last Thursday at the age of 91 and his hometown paper, the Miami Herald , provided him with exactly the sort of obituary he would have wanted. Herald reporter Sarah Moreno wrote that Veciana was “trained by the CIA” to carry out military actions. “Veciana worked for the CIA in Bolivia” Moreno’s article continues, “until he fell out with the agent who was running him, David Atlee Phillips.” According to Moreno, at a meeting with Phillips, whose code-name was Maurice Bishop, Veciana observed his handler talking with Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of President Kennedy. Fearing for his life and the safety of his family, Veciana did not mention the incident during congressional hearings on the assassination, according to Moreno who was quoting Veciana’s daughter Ana Veciana-Suarez. It is unfortunate that a respected publication such as the Herald did not take more care in the pre...

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 Roadma...

The infamous sketch of Maurice Bishop is one of the things most often mentioned as “proof” that David Phillips was Bishop since theorists believe it looks like Phillips. The sketch was prepared with the help of a professional artist and represented a “pretty good” idea of what Veciana thought Bishop looked like. Of course, a sketch is just an artist’s representation and the interpretation of it is subjective. Show it to a hundred people and you’ll get a hundred different answers as to who it looks like. Fonzi and his staff showed the sketch to a number of relevant people and this was the result Fonzi himself originally thought it looked like Paul Bethel, former head of the US Information Agency in Cuba. Sam Kail was an Army attaché who worked at the US embassy in Cuba and who Veciana said Bishop directed him to for help. Kail, who denied knowing Veciana, also thought the sketch looked like Bethel, a fact that Fonzi left out of his HSCA report. Barney Hidalgo, A CIA employee who was...