CIA releases papers that set off scandal

WASHINGTON - The CIA released hundreds of pages of internal reports Tuesday on assassination plots, secret drug testing and spying on Americans that triggered a scandal in the mid-1970s.

The documents detail assassination plots against foreign leaders such as Fidel Castro, the testing of mind-altering drugs like LSD on unwitting citizens, wiretapping of U.S. journalists, spying on civil rights and anti-Vietnam war protesters, opening of mail between the United States and the Soviet Union and China and break-ins at the homes of ex-CIA employees and others.

The 693 pages, mostly drawn from the memories of active CIA officers in 1973, were turned over at that time to three different investigative panels — President Ford's Rockefeller Commission, the Senate's Church committee and the House's Pike committee.

The panels spent years investigating and amplifying on these documents. And their public reports in the mid-1970s filled tens of thousands of pages. The scandal sullied the reputation of the intelligence community and led to new rules for the CIA, FBI and other spy agencies and new permanent committees in Congress to oversee them.

_Castro plot: In August, 1960, the CIA recruited ex-FBI agent Robert Maheu, who was a top aide to Howard Hughes in Las Vegas, to approach mobster Johnny Roselli and pass himself off as the representative of international corporations who wanted Castro killed. Roselli introduced Maheu to "Sam Gold" and "Joe," who were actually 10-most wanted mobsters Momo Giancana, Al Capone's successor in Chicago, and Santos Trafficant. The CIA gave them six poison pills, and they tried unsuccessfully for several months to have several people put them in the Cuban leader's food. This particular plot was dropped after the failed CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, but other plots continued against Castro. Details of this plot first appeared in Jack Anderson's newspaper column in 1971.

Last week, CIA Director Michael Hayden told a conference of historians that "the documents provide a glimpse of a very different time and a very different agency."

CIA spokesman George Little said Hayden has been declassifying historic documents as a way of demonstrating CIA's accountability. "The collection was reviewed exhaustively by the Rockefeller Commission and congressional committees in the 1970s. Moreover, many of the documents have been released to the public on prior occasions," Little added.

These documents also were one of the products of the Watergate scandal. Then-CIA Director James Schlesinger was angered to read in the newspapers that the CIA had provided support to ex-CIA agents E. Howard Hunt and James McCord, who were convicted in the Watergate break-in. Hunt had worked for a secret "plumbers unit" in Richard Nixon's White House. The unit originally was tasked to investigate and end leaks of classified information but ultimately engaged in a wide range of misconduct.

In May 1973, Schlesinger ordered "all senior operating officials of this agency to report to me immediately on any activities now going on, or that have gone on the past, which might be construed to be outside the legislative charter of this agency." The law establishing the CIA barred it from conducting spying inside the United States.

The result was 693 pages of memos that arrived after Schlesinger had moved to the Pentagon and been replaced as CIA chief by William Colby. Colby ultimately reported the contents to the Justice Department.

"These are the top CIA officers all going into the confessional and saying, `Forgive me father, for I have sinned,' " said Thomas Blanton, director of the private National Security Archive, which had requested release of the documents under the Freedom of Information Act.

Inside the CIA, Colby referred to the documents as the "skeletons." But another name quickly caught on and stuck: "family jewels."

They first spilled into public view on Dec. 22, 1974, with a story by Seymour Hersh in The New York Times on the CIA's spying against antiwar and other dissidents inside this country. The agency assembled files on some 10,000 people.

It’s interesting that Roselli - a member of a CIA Assassination Operaion - was flown to Dallas 11/22/63 by CIA pilot Tosh Plumlee. Plumlee’s testimojy is below -

http://www.jfkmurdersolved.com/toshfiles.htm

The following statements contained within this paper, are my personal story. Anything in previous publications is subject to question and is or has not been, reviewed, approved, or authorized, by me. My purpose in producing this unadulterated information and statement is to clarify previous errors of fact, which have been attributed to me. Therefore, this statement supersedes all previous versions of what others have claimed, speculated, or produced in media and print form, as being my true testimony and story.

Any reproduction of this article, in whole or in part, without written permission from the author is prohibited, and will be considered as a copyright violation and subject to the penalties provided by law.

I hereby declare the following to be true and correct to the best of my knowledge.

Dated this 21st day of November 2004.

Part 1: Background Information

My name is William Robert Plumlee, also known as ‘Tosh” I am a retired commercial pilot and have worked for and with the United States Government for many years. My background follows:

I was enlisted and assigned to military specialized operations at Fort Bliss, Texas in April of 1954.(RA18389060; Recon Training Command, RTC-D8) I was associated with various Military Intelligence units of the Fourth Army based at Fort Bliss, Texas, and also the Fourth Army Reserve, located at Dallas Love Field, Dallas Texas. This service period was in the early to mid fifties and into the early sixties.

Approximately 1962 through 1963, I was assigned to Task Force W Section- C-7 tab B and D during the Cuban Project which operated at the time from the JM/WAVE station attached to Miami, Florida’s ‘Cuba Desk’ of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). I operated as a contract “Undercover pilot” and also, at times, I was assigned to specialized Cuban operations of the CIA’s “Covert Action Group” (CAG) I was engaged in many secret operations through out the early sixties.

Some years later, after brief retirement, known as ‘The Farm’. I reactivated myself and became attached as an undercover operative and contract pilot for the federal government during President Reagan’s “Drug War”. I was attached to a secret team known as ‘America-Mexico Special Operations Group’ (”AMSOG”), HQ’ed Panama Southern Command. I was also a pilot and associated with the Contra Resupply Network.

I have testified four times in close door session, to various Senate and congressional investigative committees (Director FBI 1964; J Hoover; Senator Church, 1976-75; closed-door testimony, classified TS; to Congressmen Tom Downing’s investigators, before the HSCA was formed; to Senator John Kerry’s Committee of 1988-91 also classified “ “TS Committee Sensitive” and the “Tri-State Drug Task Force”, (Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico) chaired by Arizona Governor, Bruce Babbit. The cover operation contact cut out was the Phoenix Organized Crime Div. Phoenix AZ,1975-86. I worked with Senator Gary Hart and his security adviser Bill Holden, on previous intelligence matters with the NSC and the drug war with Colombia and Costa Rica. I worked UC operations with KiKi Camarena and his pilot, before they were murdered and I was a Military/DEA contract pilot, attached to Panama and Colombia, Costa Rica Investigative Task Force on Narcotics.

I have a secret classified file as defined within the National Security statutes under the name of William Robert (Tosh) Plumlee aka William H “Buck” Pearson code named “Zapata”, Miami Cuba Desk, 1960-63 MI/CIA OMC-TFW7; Section C (locate Tab B & D) classified information; portions declassified Aug 1998. Associated with Operation 40 connected to the NSC and the “White House Situations Rooms briefings. I was a contract operative for the CIA, associated with Tracy Barns, Wild Bill Harvey, Frank Bender, John Martino and many others.

I have limited this paper to one particular mission that I was assigned to on November 20, 1963. I was a covert ‘contract’ military Intel pilot on civilian status for this secret operation. I have titled this work as: “The Flight To Dallas; A Pilots Memoirs”. I have certified this copy as a declaration and personal testimony; a true account of my activities between November 20 through November 22, 1963

***

Part 2: Flight to Dallas - November 20-22, 1963

Beginning November 20, 1963, I was assigned to be a co-pilot on a top secret flight, which was attached to a Military Intelligence unit and supported by the CIA. Our mission, we were told, was to ‘Abort’ a pending attempt on the President’s life which was to take place in Dallas. We were contracted as “cut-outs” a system used to shield a secret operation from public exposure. Our team was based out of South Florida. My pilot for this operation was Emanuel Rojas. We had flown together before. I was the co-pilot for this operation. The first leg of the flight would be from Lantana, Florida ( about five miles south of West Palm Beach) to Tampa Florida. The aircraft used for the first phase of this trip was a D-18 Twin Beach aircraft. We took-off before day break on November 21, 1963 expecting to arrive in Tampa about sunup. We were to pick up other personal at Tampa. One of these people was John Roselli, whom I knew.

I had known John Roselli before this flight. I had flown Roselli and others to places like Cuba, Bimini, Galveston Texas, Las Vegas and California. He was also known to me as”Colonel Rawlston” or just “the Colonel”. We (Rojas and I) were to pick up ‘the Colonel’ at Tampa’s Congress Inn that morning. We changed aircraft at Tampa to a waiting DC-3 that was registered to ‘Atlantic Richfield’, and continued our trip to New Orleans, where a couple of people, who I did not know, got off and a few others got on. The Colonel stayed on board the DC-3. We continued our trip leaving New Orleans and continuing to Houston International Airport where we spent the night at the Shamrock Hilton, not far from the airport. We parked the aircraft on the Trans Texas side of the airport not far from the Texas Air National Guard and their AT6 type aircraft.

The next morning, November 22,1963, about 4:30-5 a.m., our weather briefing was not favorable for a VFR flight into Dallas’s Red Bird airport. We selected Garland as an alternate in case the weather had not improved by the time we arrived near Dallas air space. We did not file a flight plan nor intended to file IFR. This would have left a record of our flight with air traffic control. We continued to Garland,in northeast Dallas instead of Redbird Airport in Oak Cliff, a suburb of Dallas. We made this decision because of possible bad weather southwest of Dallas that had not cleared as yet.

We arrived in Garland near daybreak. There had been so many threats against the President’s life that we didn’t have a great sense of urgency about this particular one. While waiting out the bad weather in Garland, and about thirty minutes after landing three of the passengers were picked up by car, including Roselli. (There are three documented corroborations of my presence at Garland airport that morning). After the weather had cleared sufficiently for the plane to continue via VFR flight rules to Redbird Airport in Dallas, we left Garland for the ten minute flight to Red Bird. We landed at Redbird around 9:30 or 10:30 a.m., perhaps as late as 11 a.m. where everybody got off and went their own way.

It was my impression at that time that I was flying an abort team into Dallas, comprised of John Roselli, a couple of Cubans and some people that I surmised were connected with organized crime in New Orleans. The CIA’s specific information about the assassination, which their field personnel had obtained from Texas informants and international sources, was past to Military Intel units attached to the Pentagon. Some of this information, I had been told, came from the interrogations of Two Cubans who had plotted to fire on Air Force One with a bazooka on November 17 in West Palm Beach, Florida.

The pre-mission briefing was held at Loxahatchee, Florida on the evening of November 20th, but since I was not “field operational” at that time, except as a ‘contract pilot’, I was not directly addressed at the briefing, other than routing and weather reports pertaining to flying the team into position. There would be no formal flight plans filed and the routing would be conducted under VFR (Visual Flight Rules) I only began to learn the full scope of the operation from my pilot Rojas and a field operative friend of mine named Sergio. Most of the details of this operation were told to me only after we had become airborne. I would learn more operational details upon reaching Redbird Airport.

I learned that it had been discussed by the abort team where to go, how to abort, and what to look for. I had not at first paid much attention to any of these details as bits and pieces unfolded. I was told that the abort team, for whom I was only the pilot at that time, would probably be looking for a minimum of 19 or 20 people that would be in the Plaza. Most of the team members felt that this was another false alarm, there had been many during the past few weeks. The detailed instructions to the team had come from Robert Bennett and Rex Beardsley, as well as another case office whose name I can not recall.

Although my specific assigned function was only a pilot. Upon arriving at Redbird Airport, Sergio asked me if I wanted to come along and see the President. I could also act as a spotter for him and his team, which, he said, were assigned to the south side of the plaza. I was told other members of the team would be patrolling the north side and the overpass. I understood we would be looking for a type of triangulation ambush. I gladly accepted Sergio’s offer. It seemed like an adventure I didn’t want to miss. We were driven from Red Bird Airport to a place not far from the Oak Cliff Country Club, then driven to Dealey Plaza, where we (Sergio and I) checked various areas and attempted to spot potential members of an attack team from the position on the South Knoll. The original information the team had received from sources in Texas and the CIA was an attempt was going to be made outside the Adolphus Hotel, but for reasons unknown to them, I was told ,the routing of the motorcade had been changed at the last minute to Dealey Plaza.

While on the south knoll, Sergio and I were attempting to evaluate the most logical places where shooters might be located, but everything was confused, the timing was off, team members were late getting into position. They were not where they were supposed to be and the limited radio contacts that we had with them were not working, or spotty at best. It was soon after our arrival that the motorcade arrived. When the shots rang out, I had the impression of 4 or 5 shots, with one being fired from behind and to my left on the South Knoll, near the underpass and south parking lot. While leaving via the south side of the underpass near the train tracks, Sergio and I smelled gunpowder. I never saw Roselli in Dealey Plaza that day.

We were picked up on the back side of the underpass, southwest side, by a person who had previously been at the Country Club. After driving away, and on the way back to Red Bird we stopped in the parking lot of Ed McLemore’s Sportatorium, where Sergio changed out of the clothes he had muddied when he fell down the slippery west side of the railroad tracks. We stopped by the place in Oak Cliff, then returned to Redbird Airport. We waited for a few of the operatives who had been on our flight into Dallas to return. We waited as long as we could before departing without Roselli and some of the others. At approximately 2 o’clock in the afternoon, we took off from Red Bird without filing a flight plan. Our original flight out of Dallas called for us to fly to Shepard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas. But because of the assassination that routing was changed at the last minute by Rojas. We would head for Houston and back to south Florida.

On the plane, besides myself, were Rojas, Sergio, a person who I knew as Gator from the Loxahatchee camp, and two other individuals that I didn’t know. Gator had identifying characteristics of an unusually large Adam’s Apple and a missing finger, which had supposedly been bitten off at an alligator farm.

The people on the flight out of Dallas were very quiet. I interpreted their silence as dejection at the mission’s failure to abort the assassination of the President. I believed that if these men had been the shooters or assassins themselves, they would have been very excited because they had carried it off. That’s why to this day I take issue with the idea, which I have been asked to speculate on many times, that the attack on the President was in behalf of the CIA, Mafia, or Military Intelligence, and I had unknowingly flown an attack team in which had assassinated the President.

Part 3 - Conclusion

When I later learned that Oswald had been arrested as the lone assassin, I remembered having met him on a number of previous occasions which were connected with intelligence training matters, first at Illusionary Warfare Training in Nagshead, North Carolina, then in Honolulu at a radar installation and at Oahu’s Wheeler Air Force Base, then in Dallas at an Oak Cliff safe house on North Beckley Street run by Alpha 66’s Hernandez group, who had worked out of Miami prior to the assassination.

The post-mission debriefing was held on November 25th, my birthday, in West Palm Beach by Rex Beardsley, Bob Bennett and, I believe, Tracy Barnes. There was some discomfort or unhappiness about my having been present in the Plaza without authorization. Sergio was reprimanded for taking me along as a ‘spotter’. The report was transmitted to field headquarters Miami to JM/WAVE Headquarters, and the CIA’s Miami Cuban Desk.

I regret that prior to the production of this narrative, the context and substance of my story has been changed and/or misstated by others to suit their own purposes. When I have spoken on tape, I have been asked to speculate on certain facts which were inaccurately produced as my own factual assertions. One of the most significant problems has been that my story has been tailored and changed to support the claims of others, about whom I knew nothing.

I certify this declaration to be true and correct to the best of my knowledge.

Dated this 21st day of November, 2004

William Robert “Tosh” Plumlee, aka William H.”Buck” Pearson.

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