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David Sánchez Morales (August 26, 1925 – May 8, 1978) was a Central Intelligence Agency operative who worked in Cuba and Chile.
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(August 2008) |
David Sánchez Morales (August 26, 1925 – May 8, 1978) was a Central Intelligence Agency operative who worked in Cuba and Chile.
Morales, Mexican descent, spent his early life in Phoenix, Arizona, and attended school at Arizona State College in Tempe (now Arizona State University) and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles before joining the Army in 1946. He served in the 82nd Airborne, and was recruited into US Army intelligence during that time. [1] Morales maintained an Army 'cover' even after joining the Central Intelligence Agency in 1951.
Shortly after joining the CIA, Morales became an operative for the CIA's Directorate for Plans. It is alleged that he was involved in Executive Action, a series of projects designed to kill foreign leaders deemed unfriendly to the United States. Morales reportedly was involved in Operation PBSuccess, the CIA covert operation that overthrew the democratically elected President of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán. [2]
Through the 1960s and mid-1970s, Morales was involved at top levels in a variety of covert projects, including JMWAVE, the ZRRIFLE plot to assassinate Fidel Castro, the Bay of Pigs Invasion operation, the CIA's secret war in Laos, [2] the capture of Che Guevara, and the overthrow of Salvador Allende.[ citation needed ]
After the death of E. Howard Hunt in 2007, John Hunt and David Hunt revealed that their father had recorded several claims about himself and others being involved in a conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy. [3] [4] In the April 5, 2007 issue of Rolling Stone , John Hunt detailed a number of individuals implicated by his father including Morales, as well as Lyndon B. Johnson, Cord Meyer, David Atlee Phillips, Frank Sturgis, William Harvey and an assassin he termed "French gunman grassy knoll" who some presume was Lucien Sarti. [4] [5] (Lucien Sarti was in prison in France at the time of the assassination, [6] but Corsican hit man, Jean Souetre, who came to New York on Nov 19, 1963 and then left the country from Laredo, Texas on Dec 6 [7] is thought more likely to be the “Sarte” or “Satre” mentioned in Hunt's son's book [8] as the Corsican assassin allegedly contracted for "the big event". [7] )
The two sons alleged that their father cut the information from his memoirs, "American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond", to avoid possible perjury charges. [3] According to Hunt's widow and other children, the two sons took advantage of Hunt's loss of lucidity by coaching and exploiting him for financial gain. [3]
Morales' friend, Ruben Carbajal, claimed that in 1973 Morales opened up about his involvement with the Bay of Pigs Invasion operation, and stated that "Kennedy had been responsible for him having to watch all the men he recruited and trained get wiped out." Carbajal claimed that Morales said, "Well, we took care of that SOB, didn't we?" [9]
Morales is alleged to have once told friends, "I was in Dallas when we got the son of a bitch, and I was in Los Angeles when we got the little bastard". [10] presumably referring to the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, and to the later assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy in Los Angeles, California, on June 5, 1968. [11] Morales is alleged to have expressed deep anger toward the Kennedys for what he saw as their betrayal during the Bay of Pigs Invasion. [12]
In November 2006, BBC Television's Newsnight aired a twelve-minute screening of Shane O'Sullivan's documentary RFK Must Die . [12] [13] O'Sullivan stated that while researching a screenplay based on the Manchurian candidate theory for the assassination of Robert Kennedy, he "uncovered new video and photographic evidence suggesting that three senior CIA operatives were behind the killing". [12] [13] He claimed that three men seen in video and photographs of the Ambassador Hotel immediately before and after the assassination were positively identified as CIA operatives Gordon Campbell, George Joannides, and Morales. [12] [13] Several people who had known Morales, including family members, were adamant that he was not the man who O'Sullivan said was Morales. [13] After O'Sullivan published his book, assassination researchers Jefferson Morley and David Talbot also discovered that Campbell had died of a heart attack in 1962, six years prior to the assassination of Kennedy. [13] In response, O'Sullivan stated that the man on the video may have used Campbell's name as an alias. [13] He then took his identifications to the Los Angeles Police Department whose files showed the men he identified as Campbell and Joannides to be Michael Roman and Frank Owens, two Bulova sales managers attending the company's convention in the Ambassador. [13] O'Sullivan stood by his allegations stating that the Bulova watch company was a "well-known CIA cover". [13]
Harry Robbins "Bob" Haldeman was an American political aide and businessman, best known for his service as White House Chief of Staff to President Richard Nixon and his consequent involvement in the Watergate scandal.
Frank Anthony Sturgis, born Frank Angelo Fiorini, was one of the five Watergate burglars whose capture led to the end of the presidency of Richard Nixon.
Everette Howard Hunt Jr. was an American intelligence officer and author. From 1949 to 1970, Hunt served as an officer in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), where he was a central figure in U.S. regime change in Latin America including the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état and the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion in Cuba. Along with G. Gordon Liddy, Frank Sturgis, and others, Hunt was one of the Nixon administration's so-called White House Plumbers, a team of operatives charged with identifying government leaks to outside parties.
Lucien Sarti was a French drug trafficker. Sarti was shot to death in Mexico in 1972 in a drug trafficking ring raid.
George Sergius de Mohrenschildt was an American petroleum geologist, anti-communist political refugee, professor, and occasional CIA field agent. De Mohrenschildt, who moved to the Dallas area in October 1961, is best known for having befriended Lee Harvey Oswald in the summer of 1962.
David Atlee Phillips was an American Central Intelligence Agency officer of 25 years and a recipient of the Career Intelligence Medal. Phillips rose to become the CIA's chief of operations for the Western Hemisphere. In 1975, he founded the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), an alumni association comprising intelligence officers from all services.
Bernard "Bud" Fensterwald Jr. was an American lawyer who defended James Earl Ray and James W. McCord Jr. Other notable clients included Mitch WerBell, Richard Case Nagell and the widow of John Paisley.
Cord Meyer IV was a war veteran, a world federalist, a CIA official and a writer. After serving in World War II as a Marine officer in the Pacific War, where he was both injured and decorated, he led the United World Federalists in the years after the war. Around 1949, he began working for the CIA, where he became a high-level operative, retiring in 1977. After retiring from intelligence work in 1977, Meyer wrote as a columnist and book author.
Ilona Marita Lorenz was a German woman who had an affair with Fidel Castro in 1959 and in January 1960 was involved in an assassination attempt by the CIA on Castro's life.
William King "Bill" Harvey was an American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer, best known for his role in the terrorism and sabotage campaign known as Operation Mongoose. He was known as "America's James Bond", a tag given to him by Edward Lansdale.
Plausible Denial: Was the CIA Involved in the Assassination of JFK? is a 1991 book by American attorney Mark Lane that outlines his theory that former Watergate figure E. Howard Hunt was involved with the Central Intelligence Agency in the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy. Published by Thunder's Mouth Press, the book chronicles Lane's legal defense of Liberty Lobby, a right-wing political group that was sued for libel by Hunt after it published an article in its weekly paper, The Spotlight, linking Hunt — a former CIA operative — to the assassination. According to Lane, Thunder's Mouth Press agreed to publish it "after every other publisher in the United States had refused to do so".
RFK Must Die: The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy is a 2007 investigative documentary by Irish writer and filmmaker Shane O'Sullivan. The film expands on O'Sullivan's earlier reports for BBC Newsnight and The Guardian and explores conspiracy theories related to the assassination of United States Senator Robert F. Kennedy on 5 June 1968. The title comes from a page of "free writing" found in assassin Sirhan Sirhan's notebook after the shooting upon which Sirhan had written "R.F.K. must die - RFK must be killed Robert F. Kennedy must be assassinated... before June 5 '68."
The CIA Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory is a prominent John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory. According to ABC News, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is represented in nearly every theory that involves American conspirators. The secretive nature of the CIA, and the conjecture surrounding the high-profile political assassinations in the United States during the 1960s, has made the CIA a plausible suspect for some who believe in a conspiracy. Conspiracy theorists have ascribed various motives for CIA involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy, including Kennedy's firing of CIA director Allen Dulles, Kennedy's refusal to provide air support to the Bay of Pigs invasion, Kennedy's plan to cut the agency's budget by 20 percent, and the belief that the president was weak on communism. In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that the CIA was not involved in the assassination of Kennedy.
There are several non-standard accounts of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination, which took place shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, in Los Angeles, California. Kennedy was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel, during celebrations following his successful campaign in California's primary elections as a leading 1968 Democratic presidential candidate; he died the following day at Good Samaritan Hospital.
The assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, has spawned numerous conspiracy theories. These theories allege the involvement of the CIA, the Mafia, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, the KGB, or some combination of these individuals and entities. Some conspiracy theories have alleged a coverup by parts of the federal government, such as the original FBI investigators, the Warren Commission, or the CIA. Lawyer and author Vincent Bugliosi estimated that a total of 42 groups, 82 assassins, and 214 people had been accused at one time or another in various conspiracy scenarios.
The three tramps are three men photographed by several Dallas-area newspapers under police escort near the Texas School Book Depository shortly after the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Since the mid-1960s, various allegations have been made about the identities of the men and their involvement in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. The three men were later identified from Dallas Police Department records as Gus Abrams, Harold Doyle, and John Gedney.
Family of Secrets is a book by Russ Baker. Published by Bloomsbury Press in 2008, it describes alleged connections between the Bush family and the Central Intelligence Agency. The book asserts that President George H. W. Bush was linked to the Watergate scandal and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Family of Secrets was poorly received by critics.
George Efthyron Joannides was a Central Intelligence Agency officer who in 1963 was the chief of the Psychological Warfare branch of the agency's JMWAVE station in Miami, and in 1978 was the agency's liaison to the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations.
Gaeton Fonzi was an American investigative journalist and author known for his work on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He was a reporter and editor for Philadelphia magazine from 1959 to 1972, and contributed to a range of other publications, including The New York Times and Penthouse. He was hired as a researcher in 1975 by the Church Committee and by the House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in 1977, and in 1993 published a book on the subject, The Last Investigation, detailing his experiences as a Congressional researcher as well as his conclusions about the JFK assassination.
The Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil was a Cuban student activist group launched in opposition to Fidel Castro in 1960, based at the United States, where it soon developed links with the Central Intelligence Agency. In August 1962 it carried out an attack on a beachfront Havana hotel. As of 1963, it was the largest anti-Castro student group in Miami; it also had a chapter in New Orleans, where it had contact with Lee Harvey Oswald in mid-1963. Immediately after the November 22, 1963, assassination of John F. Kennedy, it launched a campaign asserting that Lee Harvey Oswald had been acting on behalf of the Cuban government. The group lost its CIA support in December 1966.