W. Tracy Parnell

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 conversati...

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 Nosen...

During his November 2020 presentation entitled "The CIA, the Army and the Pentagon: The Veciana Misdirection 3.0," John Newman stated: Now, we want all the documents of anything the parole board did [regarding Veciana] and if they’ve been destroyed we want all the documentation of when and why they were destroyed. Newman has made good on this assertion and filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the United States Parole Commission and the Drug Enforcement Administration according to information obtained from UniCourt and PACER . The action was filed in December of 2020 and Newman's attorney was former HSCA staffer Dan Hardway. Time will tell if Newman's efforts can prove his theory that Veciana was released from prison early to tell a false story about his CIA contact Maurice Bishop designed to divert attention from JFK's real killers at the Pentagon.

“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...

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 Road...

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...

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 ...

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 mu...