Who Really Killed Kennedy?: 50 Years Later: Stunning New Revelations About the JFK Assassination (29 page)

The final report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations notes that Vallee was placed under surveillance by Chicago police and arrested on the morning of the day JFK was scheduled to arrive in Chicago. When arrested, Vallee had in his automobile an M-1 rifle, a handgun, and three thousand rounds of ammunition.
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The House Select Committee on Assassinations described Vallee in terms reminiscent of Oswald: “The committee found that the Secret Service learned more about Vallee prior to the President’s trip to Dallas on November 22: he was a Marine Corps veteran with a history of mental illness while on duty; he was a member of the John Birch Society and an extremist in his criticism of the Kennedy administration; and he claimed to be an expert marksman. Further, he remained a threat after November 2, because he had been released from jail.”
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Waldron and Hartmann believe those who planned the Chicago assassination attempt set up Vallee, like Oswald, to be the patsy who would take the fall for shooting JFK, even though professional assassins were recruited to do the shooting. “Our analysis of all the available government reports and of Vallee’s statements indicates that he was not on his way to murder JFK, or anyone else that morning,” Waldron and Hartmann wrote, concluding Vallee could easily have been on his way to meet a supposed weapons buyer who arranged to meet Valle that morning, saying he wanted to buy Vallee’s M-1 rifle and his three thousand rounds of ammunition. Vallee’s meeting could have been scheduled for a secluded spot or warehouse near Vallee’s place of work on Jackson, along the route of the JFK motorcade. “Everyone’s attention would be focused on the imminent arrival of JFK’s motorcade, not on Vallee as he waited for his contact to show up,” Waldron and Hartmann continued. “However, the contact would never appear, because it was all a setup to get Vallee in the right place at the right time with the right weapons and appearance.”
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If the plot had not been disrupted, JFK would have been shot by the professional assassins using M-1s and the same type of ammunition as in the trunk of Vallee’s automobile; a bulletin to apprehend an assassination suspect would have been broadcast by Chicago police radio, describing someone similar in appearance to Vallee; very quickly, Vallee would have been found and apprehended.

“If President Kennedy had been assassinated in Chicago on November 2, rather than Dallas on November 22, Lee Harvey Oswald would probably be unknown to us today,” assassination researcher and peace activist James W. Douglass wrote in his 2008 best-selling book,
JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters
. “Instead Thomas Arthur Vallee would have likely become notorious as the president’s presumed assassin.”
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Still, Douglass found the parallels between Vallee and Oswald startling. Vallee had worked at a secret U-2 base commanded by the CIA at Camp Otsu, Japan; Vallee later worked with the CIA at a camp near Levittown, Long Island, helping to train Cuban exiles to assassinate Fidel Castro, much as Oswald participated in a CIA training camp with Cuban exiles near Lake Pontchartrain near New Orleans.
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Chicago corruption investigator Sherman Skolnick researched the New York license plate of Vallee’s car and found that the plate was registered
to Lee Harvey Oswald.
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When Jim Douglass looked into it, a retired New York Police Department officer told him that the license plate number in question was “frozen,” suggesting Skolnick had to have gotten his information from the FBI. “The registration for the license plate on the car Thomas Arthur Vallee was driving at the time of his arrest was classified—restricted to U.S. intelligence agencies,” Douglass wrote.
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Kennedy’s trip to Chicago on November 2, 1963, was unexpectedly canceled that day at 10:10 a.m. Eastern Time, without explanation. The final report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations noted the committee was “unable to determine specifically why the President’s trip to Chicago was canceled.”
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The final report also noted the committee was “unable to document the existence of the alleged assassination team.” It also noted that Vallee, while being released from Chicago police custody on the evening of November 2, 1963, remained under “extensive, continued investigation” until 1968.
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The JFK motorcade planned for Tampa on November 18, 1963, was one of the longest amounts of time in the open for JFK of his presidency; the only longer exposed time was in Berlin. The motorcade in Tampa was scheduled to go from MacDill Air Force Base to Al Lopez Field to downtown Tampa and the National Guard Armory, then to the International Inn, ending back at MacDill.
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In a 1996 interview with Waldron and Hartmann, Former Tampa Police Chief J. P. Mullins confirmed the existence of the assassination plot in Tampa. He also disclosed that while the Secret Service had warned the Tampa Police Department of the threat, no information had been shared about the assassination plot in Chicago earlier that month. Waldron and Hartmann also report that JFK had been briefed of the danger in Tampa; however, he did not feel a second motorcade could be canceled after Chicago without raising suspicion.
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The Tampa assassination plot was never revealed to the Warren Commission or any of the government committees that investigated the JFK assassination. It was not brought to light until Waldron and Hartmann brought the plot to the attention of the JFK Assassination Review Board in 1995.
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Of particular concern in the forty-minute motorcade was the Floridian Hotel, the tallest building in Tampa at the time. JFK’s motorcade had to make a hard left turn in front of the “tall, red-brick building with dozens of unguarded windows, in the days when hotel windows weren’t sealed shut.”
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Tampa police expected the hotel to be packed with visitors who were planning to take advantage of the great view overlooking the JFK motorcade route. Tampa law enforcement went all out that day to protect JFK. Deputies from the sheriff’s office controlled the roofs of the major buildings in the downtown and suburban areas; every overpass was lined with police officers on alert.

JFK rode in the back of the same SS-100-X Lincoln limousine he used in Dallas. Jackie Kennedy was not with her husband that day. The “bubbletop” typically used on the limo in bad weather was not deployed on that beautiful Tampa day, and given that the bubbletop was not bulletproof, JFK felt placing it on the car in good weather gave the wrong message. JFK stood in the limo for much of the motorcade, making him an easily visible target. In contrast to Dallas, two Secret Service agents rode on the running boards on the back of the JFK limo for much of the motorcade and the motorcycle escort was properly deployed, surrounding the limo in motorcycle escort coverage. “In spite of the pressure he must have been under, both from the threat and his packed schedule, JFK remained gracious, with the charm that had captured much of the nation,” commented Waldron and Hartmann on the Tampa motorcade.
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The patsy in the Tampa assassination plot was Gilberto Policarpo Lopez, a young Cuban exile who had moved from the Florida Keys to Tampa in the fall of 1963 and was under surveillance by the FBI as a possible assassination threat. Waldron and Hartmann produced the following eighteen remarkable parallels between Lee Harvey Oswald and Gilberto Policarpo Lopez, as developed from government documents and sources:

• Both were white males, twenty-three years old during most of 1963.

• Both had returned to America in the summer of 1962 from a Communist country.

• Both spent part of 1963 in a Southern city that was headquarters for one of the two mob bosses that the House Select Committee on Assassinations says were most likely behind the Kennedy assassination.

• During 1963, each was frustrated by a lack of a government document, which could hamper his employment and the prospects for his future. This need to get a favorable determination on his status could make him amenable to taking risks for a U.S. agency or make him subject to manipulation by someone saying they could help with his document problems.

• Both are said by various sources to have been assets or informants for some U.S. agency, and both were of interest to Naval Intelligence, who kept files on them.

• In mid-1963, both men and their wives moved to another city and then became involved with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

• In the summer of 1963, some of their associates saw them as being pro-Castro, while others saw them as being anti-Castro. Both were living in a city where there was much anti-Castro activity.

• In the summer of 1963, both were involved in fistfights over “pro-Castro” statements they made.

• Though both appeared at times to be “pro-Castro,” neither joined the Communist Party and neither regularly associated with local Communist party members.

• In the summer of 1963, their backgrounds would have made both of them a good, deniable, low-level intelligence asset inside Cuba. In addition to sometimes appearing to be a Castro supporter, each had a Russian connection in their background, meaning the CIA could blame any problem on the Russians if they were caught. These same attributes would also make both good Mafia patsies for the JFK assassination.

• By September 1963, both men were living apart from their wives as the result of marital difficulties.

• In the fall of 1963, both crossed the border at Nuevo Laredo and made a mysterious trip to Mexico City, where they were under photographic surveillance by the CIA. Both were trying to get to Cuba.

• Both went by car on one leg of their Mexico City trip. Neither was a very good driver and neither man owned a car.

• In the fall of 1963, each had a job in the vicinity of JFK’s route for one of his November motorcades.

• A trusted FBI informant and a Tampa police informant placed both men in Tampa in the fall of 1963, in conjunction with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

• The week of 11/22/63, both men were in a Texas city where assassination was in the works for JFK.

• Following the events in Dallas, both men were investigated for involvement in JFK’s assassination.

• Declassified documents indicate that both men were the subject of unusual U.S. intelligence activity.
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Waldron and Hartmann conclude the parallels strongly suggest that in the months preceding the JFK assassination, the same people were manipulating both men, for the same reasons. “The evidence shows that Oswald—like Lopez—was on a ‘mission’ for U.S. intelligence when they undertook their actions in November 1963, and that instead of intending to kill JFK on November 22, 1963, Oswald planned to go to Cuba as part of a U.S. intelligence operation,” Waldron and Hartmann concluded. “In fact, after the Tampa assassination attempt, Lopez went to Texas, then actually made it into Cuba shortly after JFK’s death, according to surveillance by the CIA.”
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Waldron and Hartmann reported that in Tampa, Lopez worked for a construction firm that had long-established organized crime connections with Key West; Lopez also had a brother living in the Soviet Union in 1963.
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The documents in Oswald’s declassified CIA 201 file, otherwise known as a “personality file,” clearly demonstrate the CIA had both Lee Harvey Oswald and Gilberto Policarpo Lopez under surveillance in 1963, as were the activities in Mexico of KGB foreign assassination head Valery Kostikov.
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There is no indication Lopez met with Kostikov in Mexico City, as Oswald most likely did. But that Lopez was allowed to travel to
Cuba, while Oswald was denied a visa, may indicate that Lopez’s KGB mission in Tampa was finished as soon as the assassination attempt was canceled due to increased security.

The CIA surveillance cables in Oswald’s 201 file indicate that Lopez entered Mexico via Nuevo Laredo, Texas, en route to Havana, Cuba, on November 25, 1963, the Monday when JFK was buried at Arlington Cemetery.
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On November 27, 1963, CIA surveillance photographed Lopez at the Mexico City airport, boarding Cuban flight number 465, as the only passenger.
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No new information appears to have been developed on Lopez after he returned to Cuba five days after the JFK assassination; it is not known if he ever returned to the United States.

Another strange case involves Miguel Casas Saez, who CIA surveillance documents identify under the nickname “Miguelito.” On November 22, 1963, a Cubana Airlines flight from Mexico City to Havana, Cuba, was delayed for five hours awaiting a passenger. That afternoon, just hours after the JFK assassination, the airfield in Mexico City was particularly clogged with diplomatic personnel. Finally, around 10:30 p.m. local time, the passenger arrived aboard a private twin engine airplane. Reportedly, the passenger got out of the private airplane and boarded the Cubana flight directly, without going through customs. Once aboard, the passenger entered the cockpit of the airplane, where he remained for the duration of the flight. None of the passengers recognized him well enough to make a positive identification. Examination of various CIA declassified documents has identified the passenger as Miguel Casas Saez, also known as Angel Dominquez Martinez, the name under which he entered the United States in early November 1963.
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A CIA cable stamped January 25, 1964, identifies Miguel Casas as “an ardent revolutionary follower of Raul Castro, militiaman, and G-2.”
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The cable cites a report that Casas was in Dallas the day of the JFK assassination and that he managed to leave the United States through Laredo, Texas. He left Mexico on an airplane headed for Cuba. The CIA cable specifies that Casas “had firing practice in militias” and that he was “capable of doing anything.” A source informed the CIA that Casas
left Cuba on September 26, 1963, by small boat; after being caught in a hurricane off the coast of Florida, he landed in Puerto Rico and entered Miami from Puerto Rico, using the alias Angel Dominguez Martinez. Sources told the CIA that Casas spoke Russian well and that he was an infiltrator who entered the United States on an espionage mission. The CIA document described Casas as “age 22–23, 5’10”, dark, strong build, dark brown hair, brown eyes.”