Chapter Nineteen
I’ve been asked many times what role I think my father really played in the killing of JFK. I have, of course, thought about it for a long time. After all the bits and scraps of information that I’ve been sent, careful examination of my father’s notes and my own research into who the conspirators were and what connections they may have had, I have come up with what I believe to be a plausible scenario:
According to my father, LBJ and just about everybody else in the military-industrial complex viewed Kennedy as a threat and wanted him out of the way. Johnson knew that if Kennedy served another term, he probably had no chance of succeeding to the presidential throne, so he was open to suggestions, and agreed to control the investigation and cover-up in return for his ticket to the Oval Office. J. Edgar Hoover and the Kennedy brothers had been virtually at war, with Hoover having the institutional edge and aligning himself with Johnson.
It is alleged that just prior to the assassination, LBJ and Hoover held a secret meeting witnessed by LBJ’s mistress, Madeline Brown. Brown also has gone on record as being present when LBJ said, in a moment of anger, that he was “taking care” of Kennedy. Billy Sol Estes, close friend of LBJ, confided to his attorney, Douglas Caddy, that LBJ had told him he was part of the move to kill Kennedy. I think in trying to find the right men for the job, LBJ landed on Cord Meyer. He was a CIA officer with international connections via London and was married to Mary Meyer, a socialite and mistress of Kennedy. She was later murdered on a Georgetown pathway, her home ransacked and her diary stolen, allegedly by James Angleton, chief of counterespionage for the CIA. LBJ must have known that Meyer had an ax to grind with Kennedy and wanted revenge.
From here the plot (according to my father) branches out to involve David Atlee Phillips, a close friend of my father and suspected handler of Oswald in Mexico City. Bill Harvey, another CIA officer, had been involved in many of the darkest ops in the CIA/Mafia plots against Castro. He was someone who wouldn’t get squeamish about killing the President of the United States. In Harvey’s biography there are notes and cables by Harvey discussing the need to recruit assassins from the Corsican underworld. Harvey was the one with the connections to do just that, and it was my father’s contention that Harvey brought in Lucien Sarti as the hit man on the grassy knoll. Harvey was hoping his reward would be head of the CIA, after Johnson took control.
My father would have been the perfect man to organize the Cuban end of the assassination. Well known and respected in the underworld of anti-Castro Cuban exiles with revenge on their minds, he played the role of CIA link to these bloodthirsty mercenaries. Ever loyal to his bosses at CIA, my father shared their fear that Kennedy would virtually disband the CIA. Kennedy did in fact threaten to do just that. In addition he had fired my father’s mentors and patrons after the Bay of Pigs disaster, thereby ending his rise up the CIA ladder. After that, his credibility, like so many others, was ruined.
The Cuban paramilitary group included Antonio Veciana, ruthless leader of Alpha 66 and well-known Kennedy hater whose CIA handler was none other than David Atlee Phillips, and Frank Sturgis, another CIA mercenary and Bay of Pigs veteran (he would later work for my father during Watergate and spend time with him in Federal prison). Another member was David Morales, admitted CIA executioner, with a list of bodies dating back to 1954, when he and my father worked successfully to overthrow the Guatemalan government. I believe Morales was part of the ground team and was at the meetings with my father in which the murder was discussed. In later years, personal friends of his have come forward with tales of a drunken Morales admitting to his role in Kennedy’s death.
Morales died mysteriously just before he was to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978. Lucien Sarti was the Corsican assassin who, dressed as a policeman, fired the fatal head shot from the grassy knoll. According to witnesses, he was flown out of Dallas the day of the assassination. My father was a sniper during his stint in the OSS and had expertise in positioning a hit team using triangulation fire. I think it’s plausible that he may have been the one who scouted out the positions for the three-man sniper team at Dallas. He was flown into and out of Dallas by a pilot from the CIA station in Miami in 1963, according to whom it may well fit the timeline. Frank Sturgis and Morita Lorenz, CIA contract agent and mistress of Fidel Castro, have testified that my father was in Dallas on that day and met with them at a motel room, at which time he gave Sturgis an envelope full of cash. Lorenz was a CIA tart who was used in attempts to kill her lover Fidel.
So there it is. Of course it’s only a theory, but it makes sense to me. It’s not so massive and is pretty well contained. You have the men who do the killing, Oswald the fall guy, and the secret CIA team, with Hoover and Johnson controlling the investigation/cover-up. It’s simple, really.
What is so important about the Kennedy assassination? It’s the defining moment when the “shadow government” finally took control and started running this country like their personal business. They got away with murder. After that, the rest was easy.
I thank all the people who support my going public, and I respect those who don’t. I urge others to bring forward even the smallest links of information, and I pity my family for such cowardly and disgraceful attempts to keep the truth from coming to light. Most of all, and with a deep sense of pride and respect, love and admiration, I want to thank my father, E. Howard Hunt, who, after living with the terrible truth for over forty years, had the courage to tell me some of his secrets.