Bond of Secrecy
My Life with CIA Spy and
Watergate Conspirator E. Howard Hunt
by Saint John Hunt
4
The End Of Witches Island
The loss brought about by my mothers’ death was almost unbearable. My father was being held in
various jails, and at best we only spoke with him briefly over the phone. When we could, we visited him in jail. Without any experience in living on our own, Lisa, David and I did the best we could. One day,
lawyers came to Witches Island and told us we would have to move out in 60 days. The house needed to
be sold to pay attorney fees and we should start packing and looking for somewhere to live. If things
weren’t bad enough already, my father had some kind of stroke after being attacked in a D.C. Jail.
We worried that he wouldn’t make it, and for a time he was put on suicide watch. Lisa and I packed up
the house as best as we could; it was so hard to do, with so many memories of our mother and the life we
had as a family that lay among the empty boxes and cartons that littered the loveless house. Lisa, fragile
and waif-like, cried endlessly, and nothing I could say or do would console her. We tried to cheer each
other up by talking about how we’d find a lovely small house. Lisa was adamant about living near a
certain bridge in Kensington. She was vulnerable and unprotected, with nerves strung tightly by lack of
sleep and too much worry.
We did our best to take care of little David, only nine years old, so young and so lost. I think he must
have suffered more than any of us. With so much sadness around us, we became inseparable. Then one
afternoon Lisa came home after house hunting, shouting with joy; “I found it, I found it, our perfect little
home!” We danced and held each other shouting, “We found a home, we found a home!”
That joy was fleeting: attorneys came and took David away. The only explanation they gave was that
they (my father) felt it would be a better environment for him if he moved in with his godparents in
Miami. This would prove to be a huge mistake: Miami would soon be the cocaine capital of the world,
and David was right smack in the middle of it. He would be raised with few good influences and no real
love. Now living alone and feeling betrayed by everyone, Lisa and I stayed on in the house. We kept the
lights low at night, and sat up late talking and crying, holding on to nothing but each other and the darkness
that enveloped Witches Island.
In 1973 we appeared together in support of our jailed father
at the Senate Watergate Hearings. Our pictures, splashed across
the front pages of newspapers worldwide, showed us embracing
the very man who had inadvertently destroyed everything in our
lives. We finally did find our little house and tried to put things
back together, but nothing would, nothing could, be the same.
The warm afterglow that was the memory of our mother stayed
with us, and we felt her spirit everywhere.
Lisa and I would faithfully visit her grave: first, every
weekend, later, every month, and slowly, we left her alone. She
rests in a small cemetery near Potomac, Maryland. The pastures
and woods that she so loved to ride through have all been
bulldozed and turned into shopping malls and parking lots. No
one has been to see her in decades. It’s sad to me. The truth is
that it’s just a stone with a name carved on it. She lives in my
heart and soul and in my dreams. I see her sometimes, and I
know I will see her again.
5
Picture On A Poster
My father served 33 months in federal prison, the longest stretch at Danbury, Connecticut. Frank
Sturgis, the Cuban freedom fighter, arch nemesis of Castro, plotter in assassination attempts, and coconspirator in Watergate served his sentence at Danbury as well. It was after my father’s incarceration
that the first accusations surfaced allegedly linking him and Sturgis to the murder of President Kennedy. I
remember quite well how I first heard of this.
I had moved to Oakland, California and got a job driving a delivery truck for a local bakery. I stopped
by a pay phone on my route, and as I was dialing the number something caught my eye. A familiar face
stared at me from a crudely printed poster on a phone pole. It was my father! His was among several on a
poster that read “CIA KILLED JFK.” I dropped the phone and carefully removed the poster. Back in my
delivery van, I looked at what it said. Below the large heading, it showed six photos of at least three men;
my father, Frank Sturgis, and a third I didn’t recognize. Below my father’s picture was someone who
looked like my father, only older and dirty. Below Sturgis’ picture was one of someone who looked a lot
like Frank except older, and the third man had the same photo twice, but one from a different angle. The
copy below the photos proclaimed, “E. Howard Hunt; convicted Watergate burglar and CIA assassin in
1974 and in Dealey Plaza in 1963.” The poster advertised a lecture the following day in San Francisco by
Dick Gregory and was sponsored by a group calling themselves the JFK Investigating Committee or
something like that. I was in shock! I could barely make it through the rest of my route. I didn’t know what
to think. I felt sick to my stomach. I couldn’t believe something this bad could be happening to my family
again! Hadn’t we paid enough? Hadn’t my mother died for the sins of my father? Why would these people
think such a thing? Where would it all end?
After I settled down, I began to think back and try to remember what happened the day Kennedy was
shot. Surely this would clear up the question and perhaps I could attend the lecture and clear my father’s
name, but as I thought about it, I began to feel a sickly, creeping suspicion in the pit of my stomach. I
remember very well that I was nine years old and in the fifth grade at Brookmont Elementary School when
they announced the news over the loudspeaker. Soon afterward, school was dismissed. I can’t remember
how I got home, whether I was picked up, or took the bus, but when I arrived my mother was there and
she was very upset. I tried to picture my father in the house that day, but couldn’t.
Then, like a bullet exploding in my brain, I remembered my mother telling me that my father had been
in Dallas! I can’t place the exact time she told me or if she was speaking in reference to the assassination,
but I clearly recall her telling me this around that time. It may have been before, but I also remembered
something strangely coincidental; my father elected to have some sort of plastic surgery done to reduce the
size and change the shape of his ears. In my mind these events occurred roughly at the same time. I looked
at the poster, studying it over and over again. I thought of going to the lecture but chickened out. I didn’t
want to know any more details or speculations. In the photos of the tramps, the one that is supposed to be
my father looks amazingly like him. He has a very distinct nose and the shape of his mouth is also quite
distinctive. I felt strongly that this could be him. Now, years later, we all know that the true identity of
these tramps has been discovered due to the diligent research of devoted Kennedy assassination
researchers. But for years, the accusations went on and on. Still, some feel that my father never told all of
what he knew regarding this tragic chapter in our history.
My father always maintained that he was not involved in the assassination and didn’t know anyone
who was involved. He maintained that he firmly believed Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and without
any involvement from any intelligence agency, with the exception of the KGB. This is laughable; anyone
who’s read the CIA’s own reports knows that Oswald had connections to the CIA and the FBI. The fact
that he, a U.S. Marine, defected to Russia at the height of the Cold War and then returned, with no
apparent consequences, is reason enough to draw suspicion. I wrote my father a letter asking him about
the poster and its accusations. He wrote back to me that, “As you well know, I was at home that day, and
we watched the news broadcasting the unfortunate events until late in the evening when you children went
to bed. I was in the house all day.”
Later, under oath, he would change this story several times.
He testified that he had actually been at work that day. He left
the CIA office and drove home early. Later he changed it again,
saying that he had stopped by his favorite Chinese grocery store
to purchase some items for a home cooked meal. Still, he
maintained that he was with his children throughout most of the
day. When asked what the name of his favorite Chinese store
was, he couldn’t remember. He did offer that it was located on a
certain street in Chinatown in Washington D.C. When
investigators checked all the Chinese stores in the city, none were close to that location. My father
testified that he had been seen at work that day by one of his co-workers, yet when that co-worker was
cross-examined, he could not specifically recall seeing my father, he only thought he “might” have seen
him.
How could a man whose life was in the intelligence business not be able to recall, without fail, where
he was and what he did on the day that the President of the United States was murdered? How is that
possible? Why did he change his story so many times? If his children were his alibi, why wouldn’t his
defense team call us to testify for him? This could have put the whole matter to rest once and for all.
Why? Because it was a lie; I was at our home that day, and I never saw my father. That’s not saying that he
murdered the president, but it does serve to underline the maze of lies and plausible deniability that was
our life. I never spoke to my father about these outrageous contradictions, and he never addressed this
topic … at least not until later … years later.
6
The Outlaw Life
While the rest of the world was consumed with Watergate, I was consuming drugs. First, when my
father went to prison, I stole his bottles of Quaaludes and obliterated the anguish of the loss of my mother
with heavy doses of the hypnotic. I have a photograph that someone took at the house I shared in
Kensington, Md. with my sister Lisa. In the photo I can be seen passed out under the coffee table in our
living room. Friends I am still in touch with remember how they often picked me up off the floor and laid
me out on the couch. This could only have lasted a month or two because soon my father’s stash ran out.
And, as I recall, he had quite a few bottles.
When I was a child, my father freely offered drugs as an answer to various needs I may have had.
When I was tired, he’d offer me half of a Dexedrine tablet. If I was restless, he’d hand me some Librium or Valium. So it was a natural progression to turn to drugs. My parents weren’t boozers, aside from all the
cocktail parties, otherwise I might have had a drinking problem as well. But that’s one demon I’ve never
had to wrestle with. Alas, there is still time.
I started taking LSD when I moved to Wisconsin. I read the Tao te Ching by Lao Tzu, and dropped acid
with my girlfriend and band mates. We were young, and the whole world was an experiment. We found a
source for the highest quality “window pane” acid and brokered a deal in Milwaukee. We traded an
eighteen-wheel flatbed truck’s worth of aged barn boards for a candy jar full of the finest, purest and
strongest four-way Owsley Acid in the country. We took the drug religiously and while the summer nights
were warm and the sound of mosquitos whined in the air, we sat on top of a high hill overlooking our
farm house and watched the scenery dissolve into liquid beauty. An average trip lasted 12 to 18 hours. I
“traveled” thousands of inner miles, and I don’t think I came down for two years. I have many amazing
stories about LSD ghosts and entities. Timothy Leary would have been proud of me! [He is not joking the Owsley 4 way window pane was otherworldly, myself, I was always amazed at how such a tiny dose, could expand one's mind, I loved the stuff in high school dc ]
From Wisconsin’s natural beauty, I moved with my band and girlfriend to Oakland, California. The
great acid was all gone and cocaine was the rage. Like everybody else, I started experimenting with
street-grade cocaine. I found it an unproductive drug. Still, it was fashionable. It wasn’t until my brother
David moved out to live with me in nearby Concord that I first tried high-grade Peruvian flake.
What a difference! David had been busy at his prep school running cocaine and call girls to his
schoolmates. He had limos parked outside of his dorm on a 24 hr. standby service. He wasn’t even
eighteen yet! There are some incredible tales of drug excess and endless days of sex from those crazy
times. David and I were a toxic and dangerous combination. We pushed each other into deeper and darker
corners of abuse, neither one wanting to surface and deal with the issues that propelled us into that
downward spiral. I’m sure we came as close to death as anyone can.
Throughout this time, David had a series of girlfriends, and I was hooked up with some young sisters. I
had met them on the streets of Berkeley and invited them out to our house. After the three of us started
having sex, we hardly ever left each other’s company. We went everywhere and did everything together.
The girls’ appetite for fun and games would have crippled most men, and when cocaine-fueled sex
marathons left me too wasted, I would invite my brother to take over as sex master of these two nymphs.
The stories we could tell would surely deserve a triple-X rating.
One classic scene will have to suffice. One evening I took the girls to an exclusive Italian restaurant in
Concord, a very expensive and highbrow place. We snorted coke on the table during dinner, and a number
of hundred-dollar tips helped induce the waiters and other service people to stand around trying to shield
the dessert from the other patrons: fellatio from one of the girls, who had crawled under the table. Many
other nights, David and I could be found at another local establishment, drinking Long Island iced teas and
snorting coke.
Eventually, of course, the glamour of “toot” wore off, and the paranoia set in. David had moved into
his own place and was doing big deals in the coke world. He had his Miami connection: Cubans and Colombians. As the world watched Scarface, David lived it. He was a big spender. He had lawyers and
entertainment stars as clients. He flew coast-to-coast setting up deals and raking in the money. He carried
a gun and had weapons stashed all over the place. One time as he got into my 1965 Mustang, his 9mm.
went off and shot a hole clean through the drive shaft. We both kept an arsenal which included police style sawed off shotguns with clips, semi-automatic weapons, nunchakus, shuriken throwing stars, and a
variety of knives and lethal weapons.
The next drug of choice for me was methamphetamine. This was like discovering dynamite after
playing with firecrackers. I soon followed in David’s footsteps and built a lucrative meth business in the
Bay Area. I didn’t like the image of high roller, instead favoring a much lower profile. Over the years, I
dealt an average of several pounds of 90% pure product a month. At one time I was moving at least a
pound a week. I had two partners who were hard-core bikers: Dirty Dan and Big Don. They rode BMW’s
and were not associated with the Hell’s Angels.
We did, however, buy from and sell to the Angels numerous times over the years. They never bothered
us, and we respected who they were. We dealt straight and never burned anyone. We had our own lab,
which eventually produced as much as 300 lbs. But, after years of successful outlaw living, I was
eventually and inevitably busted.
I lived through an attempt on my life as the result of an inside betrayal. Briefly, I was set up to be
robbed. The gangsters came to my home and beat me until I was almost unconscious. They dragged me
into my house, tied me up, and prepared to torture me with boiling water if I didn’t reveal the location of
my drug stash. Before they could get the info out of me, Big Don came to my door and let himself in.
Seeing me tied and beaten, he whipped out his .45. The thieves ran out of the house as Donny fired at
them. Later, after we determined who they were, Dirty Dan and Big Don sent one of them to the hospital
severely beaten. The other was arrested for unrelated robbery and drug charges and went to San Quentin.
I was never comfortable with the enforcement end of the drug business, so I left that part of it to my
partners. I heard stories from them that would curl your toes! I was a meth addict until 2001, when I
changed my whole life. I quit drugs, stopped dealing and took my family away from the Bay Area with all
its reminders of that outlaw life.
7
Summer 2002 – 2003
In the summer of 2002 I learned that, after being hospitalized for many months, my father was still very
sick, weak and in need of a leg amputation. His prognosis was poor and he was resisting the idea of being
without one of his legs. He was suffering from vascular degeneration in his left leg, and although he’d had
several operations already, nothing could save his gangrenous limb. My brother David had been staying at
the family house in Miami and trading shifts with Laura, my father’s second wife, at the hospital. She had
practically been living there and was near exhaustion. My father had met Laura while in prison, they
married in 1977, and had two boys, Austin and Hollis.
David was due to fly to Las Vegas for a new job, and I decided it was time to see my father before his
condition worsened. If he refused the amputation he would surely die. Embittered by the past, emotionally
estranged to his eldest daughters, and not wishing to be a burden to Laura, he was tired and unable to cope
with the challenge that amputation would present. I understood this, and wouldn’t have blamed him if he
chose death. He had, after all, lived a long and fruitful life, albeit notorious at times.
I found a two-for-one flight on Southwest and decided to bring my four-year-old son Travis to meet his
infamous grandfather. This might be the only opportunity to do so, and I hoped seeing the youngest
member of our family might cheer him up enough to reconsider his situation. Upon arriving in Miami,
David picked us up and we had a brief reunion of our own. The next day Laura drove us to the hospital
and said that although very weak, Papa was excited about seeing me and meeting his grandson. At the
hospital, Laura waited in the hallway with Travis, and I walked into the dimly lit room. I was shocked by
his appearance. He was emaciated and his breathing was slow and labored. The skin on his face sagged
as if he were already dead. I walked quietly over to his bedside and sat down. I was overwhelmed by his
terrible condition as I fought to gain control of my emotions. “Papa,” I placed my hand in his, squeezing it
gently. “Papa, its Saint John.” He opened his eyes slowly and I felt him grip my hand.
“Saint, it’s so good to see you. Laura told me you were coming.” His voice was weak but his grip was
stronger than I expected.
“Papa, I’m so sorry this is happening to you.”
“You know about my leg? They want to take it off.”
“I know ... Laura told me.” He pulled back the sheet and revealed his damaged leg. There was a huge
scar, from his ankle to his groin, and his leg was swollen and purple. “Oh Jesus,” I said.
I held his hand and spoke very quietly into his ear; my face pressed against his. “Papa, you are the
patriarch of this family. You are deeply loved and needed by all your children. Losing you would be
catastrophic for all of us and we just need you and love you so much. I know this is hard but you’ve had
hard times before. You’re the rock of Gibraltar and I don’t think that Mama would want you to leave us
yet. There’s so many things that we haven’t said or talked about.” I could feel the wetness of his tears
against my cheek and I too began to cry. As our tears intermingled, he gripped my hand in an embrace that
sought to end all the anguish that had been the focus of our life. “I love you so much Papa,” I said softly
into his ear.
“I love you too, son.” As his grip weakened, I sat up and said “Papa, there’s someone I want you to
meet.” “Travis,” I called out. “Travis, come here and meet your grandpapa.” Laura slowly opened the
door and Travis came into the room and I lifted him up onto the bed. “Papa, this is your grandson,
Travis.” Though weak and emotionally drained, he lifted his head a little and said, “You are a handsome
boy.” Travis looked at me and asked if Papa was going to die and I said no, he was going to get better. I
slid Travis off the bed and Laura took him out to the hallway. After they left, I sat quietly next to my father
and reflected for a moment on all that had happened. He had lived a remarkable life, and if this was his
choice in dying, then it was up to all of us to carry on. I thought he was sleeping but he called my name
softly. “I’m here, Papa.” I said.
“I’ve had some things on my mind … I … need to … tell … talk to you when I’m not so tired.... Maybe
we can talk tomorrow. Will you be here?”
“I’ll be here Papa,” I said.
“You know I’ve always tried to do what was … what I thought was for the best … I didn’t know what
would happen … your mother knew ...” His voiced trailed off, and I kissed him on the forehead. The
following day I came back, but he slept mostly and we never got the chance to speak in private. I left a
day or two later and when I called Laura to check on his condition, she told me that he had decided to
allow the amputation. This was a brave man I thought. I don’t know if I would have made the same choice
if it had been me. I respected him for it. Time passed and the operation was a success. He had two
amputations: first at the knee, then farther up. His health started coming back and he seemed on his way to
recovery. This was short lived, and I was to hear many times that he was back in the hospital with
complications: pneumonia, or high fever. It seemed like death was stalking my father, but he just wasn’t
ready to give up. When I visited my father in August of 2003, he was doing better. Although he was
restricted to his bed and his wheel chair, his spirits lifted when I arrived. He was still quite fragile and
tired easily. He refused to work with his prosthetic leg, saying that it was just too much effort for someone
his age.
I spent time watching television with him and on really nice days, I pushed him around the
neighborhood in his wheel chair. Laura worked as a teacher and both his other children had busy
schedules, allowing lots of time for Papa and me to talk. It was on one of these days when the air was
thick and humid that we found ourselves talking about Watergate and the help I provided him when he
needed it. I was glad he recognized what I had done for him, yet I really wanted to talk about the cost to
our family. This was a painful subject and one that had rarely, if ever, been discussed. My father had a
selective memory when dealing with the trauma of the past, and as I prepared to transfer him from his
wheelchair to his bed, I pressed the conversation. I started to explain that I had spoken several times to
my sisters in an effort to reconcile some of the bitterness they felt towards him. It was no secret that
Kevan and Lisa both blamed him for our mother’s death, the disintegration of our family and the emotional
damage that had left them with so much anger and hostility. I had tried to explain that forgiveness was the
only way to heal these wounds, but they seemed unwilling to make the first move. He sighed heavily and
said he appreciated my efforts but with so little time left, he doubted that anything would change. What
did he mean by, “So little time left?”
“I have prostate cancer, Saint.”
“How long have you known?” I asked.
“About a week, but they’re still running some tests; we’re hoping it can be treated with radiation and
drugs.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“Does anyone besides Laura and me know?”
“We haven’t told anyone yet, and I want you to promise you won’t say anything until we do.”
“I promise.”
Then he said this:
“When your mother was killed, I feared for your lives … I wasn’t sure of anything, and I didn’t know
what would happen to you children. Things were out of control and I couldn’t protect you. Your mother
was everything to this family and as long as she was alive, I knew things would be all right. When she
died, I knew that I had to keep quiet about a lot of things … things that I don’t feel good about … some
things are better left alone.”
The words struck me like a semi-truck. Never in all these years had my father referred to her death as
anything but an unfortunate accident. My father had a near genius’s command of the art of spoken language,
and he picked his words very carefully. To hear him suggest that my mother was murdered was a sign that
something monstrous, something evil had happened. The hair on my arms and neck stood on end and I felt
the specter of death floating past me. I pressed him for more.
“If you need to talk about anything Papa, I’ll just listen … maybe it would be good to get some things
off your mind.”
“You know I’ve been unable to write anymore, and I had hoped that our lives would be better,
financially speaking, than they are. I’ve never really gotten much for my novels and I’m just too old to
write another book now.” I knew that he was living beyond his means and that Laura’s salary and his
pension from the CIA was not enough to provide for his family the way he’d hoped. “There are some
things I could write about and it’s not like people haven’t tried to get me to talk about Watergate and
Kennedy.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well for example when Oliver Stone asked me to join him on the set of the Nixon movie, I agreed to
do so, as a consultant. I flew out to California with Snyder [my father’s lawyer] and your brother. I met
Anthony Hopkins and some of the other actors and writers on the set. Stone took us all out to a lavish
dinner, and I found him very irritating as he persisted in grilling me over JFK’s murder. Finally I looked at
him and said, ‘I’ll be willing to tell you everything you want to know about JFK’s murder if you’ll pay me
five million dollars!’”
“Are you serious? Would you really do that for five million dollars?”
“Well, I would, but no one took me seriously. I did however hear from one of Stone’s writers several
times offering to write a book about my life. I think his name is Hamburg, Eric Hamburg … a nice guy
really and quite modest. He’s kept in touch every so often but I’m not sure how much money he can offer.”
I listened to my father letting him move the conversation wherever he wanted to. “Did you know that
Kevin Costner flew down to the house here to see me?”
8
Secrets Revealed
David Giammarco is a Canadian television personality and author of a coffee table book on the James
Bond movies. My father became acquainted with him when Giammarco interviewed him on the failings of
the CIA in the aftermath of 9/11. When Giammarco was working on his Bond book he asked my father to
write a short introduction. Unfortunately, my father was too ill to write, so Giammarco wrote the intro
himself and gave my father credit. This was a nice gesture, which my father deeply appreciated. In the
course of their friendship Giammarco mentioned that Kevin Costner was one of his best friends. Costner,
as we know, starred in the Oliver Stone film JFK, and had since become somewhat of a conspiracy
enthusiast. Giammarco prodded my father about the assassination and Papa told him the same thing he’d
told Oliver Stone: If the money was right, he would tell all he knew.
Later, in an incident that I was unaware of for over a year, Costner
and Giammarco had flown to Miami to discuss what my father thought
was a film project about his life. When they arrived at the house Laura
and Austin were there, and after some small talk Costner blurted out
“So, tell me Howard, did you kill the President?” They sat stunned for a
moment, and my father finally said, “I don’t know what you’re talking
about.” The meeting ended and Costner left without getting the story.
There were several things wrong with his approach. First of all he
should have never asked my father anything about JFK in front of Laura
and Austin. Laura would have never married my father if he’d admitted
to having any involvement or knowledge of the Kennedy assassination,
and I think she would have divorced him if she found out he’d been
lying all those years. Without Laura to care for my father, his life
probably wouldn’t have lasted as long as it did. Secondly, Costner
should have been prepared to discuss a ballpark dollar amount and,
thirdly, he didn’t take the time to get to know my father or for my father
to get to know him. Costner came across as just another opportunist looking to make a buck. He was
insensitive to the fact that the events in my father’s life, including the JFK period, had destroyed his first
family and he was very protective of his second family. So, I have to wonder: was $5 million the magic
number that would ease family pain?
Before I returned to California I got Giammarco’s address and phone number from my father’s
Rolodex and decided to write him a letter. My reasoning was purely selfish; I had been working on a
memoir and thought that Giammarco would be useful in helping me find a publisher. I wrote to him, and he
called back saying that, from a marketing point of view, if my father were willing to go public with the
information he felt sure about concerning JFK’s murder, it would give my book a greater chance at
success.
At this point my father had only hinted to me that he had secrets. This didn’t surprise me; his whole life
had revolved around secrets. To keep a secret all you have to do is keep quiet; to protect a secret you
have to lie. I knew a few facts; that my father had been accused and questioned about the JFK murder; he
had denied under oath any knowledge; he had lost a court case in which he was unable to satisfactorily
establish that he hadn’t been in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. A witness had testified that she had seen him in
Dallas handing out envelopes of cash to Frank Sturgis, and, whether my father admitted it or not, he was a
key figure in just about every sinister covert operation from Guatemala, the Bay of Pigs, the assassination
attempts on Castro, to Watergate. I also knew that my father had made a career using disinformation,
plausible deniability, and dirty tricks. He had well-known links to the Cuban underground and shared
their deep hatred for Kennedy. How could he not have inside information on the assassination of JFK?
Something else clicked; the cryptic words my mother had said to me: “Papa was in Dallas.” I swear
upon her memory that she told me this. Could there be another explanation? Maybe, but I don’t know what
it is.
I told Giammarco I would give it some thought. As a word of encouragement I told him that if my father
were going to trust someone it would be me. I composed a letter in which I implored him to reveal to me
what he knew, if anything, about JFK’s murder. Aside from the monetary gain, I tried to appeal to him on a
deeper, more personal, level. After devoting his life to the service of his government, he had been
abandoned by those he trusted and served under. He had been imprisoned and stripped of his dignity. His
name had been dragged through the mud by the media in connection with all manner of terrible things. His
principles and his patriotism had been challenged. He lost his wife, and his family had been damaged
beyond repair. Authors had profited by using his name to sell their conspiracy stories. He had never been
appreciated for his own writing talents. Even though he was published some eighty times, the stain of
Watergate and the media portrayal of him as a bungling burglar and second-rate writer had forever
marked his career. Now, in his last years of life, shouldn’t he marshal his strength and get back at
everyone by finally telling the truth? Didn’t he owe it to himself, the Nation, and his family to leave a
legacy of truth instead of doubt?
I sent the letter off and waited for a reply. A few days passed and then Laura called me. “Saint, your
father wants to talk to you.” I could hear Laura hand him the phone and then he said “Saint, in regards to
your letter … this is something that I’m not averse to, however you need to understand that my time and
cooperation is directly proportional to the financial prospects.”
“I understand that, Papa. Papa … are you there?” The phone went dead and I hung up. Conversations
with my father were often one-sided; he was so deaf toward the end he couldn’t hear me on the phone and
when I talked to him in person, I had to shout. He would often nod in agreement even if he couldn’t really
hear you. I called Giammarco and spoke with both him and Costner about my father’s willingness to talk
to me. My plan was to fly down to Miami and evaluate what information my father knew and report back
to them. I wasn’t sure at this point what he knew. Flying was not something I was fond of and even less so
when I realized that my flight was on Dec. 7, 2003, one day short of 31 years since my mother’s plane
crashed. Laura picked me up at the airport.
“Your father’s been in the hospital for a few days … high fever and loss of appetite, but he’s home
now and I know he’ll be very glad to see you, Saint.” I dropped her off at her school, drove to the house
and let myself in. Austin and Hollis were both out of the country, so I knew I’d have some one-on-one
time with my father. I didn’t discuss the reason for my visit with Laura because I knew she would be
against dredging up all the bad old stuff. I wondered how my father would be able to cooperate with this
project while keeping it a secret from Laura, but I decided to leave that up to him.
Pushing open the bedroom door, I walked quietly over to my sleeping father. He looked frail and gaunt,
but as I placed my hand on his, he woke up. “Papa, its Saint.”
“Saint, so good to see you. Is Laura here?”
“I dropped her off at school. We’re here alone.”
“Good, let’s go into the kitchen. I’d like to have some soup. Are you hungry?”
“I’ll have some soup with you.” I transferred him into his wheel chair and pushed him into the TV room, where he liked to watch Fox News with the volume up full blast. I prepared some soup and we sat
watching TV and discussing current events. “Papa, can we talk about my letter?”
“Okay, why don’t you take me back to my bed in case Laura comes home early? We don’t want her
getting upset by this.”
“How are you going to work this out; I mean with Laura?”
“Well for the moment, she’s willing to let us talk as long as she doesn’t hear anything unpleasant. She
believes what I told her: that I don’t know anything about JFK’s murder.”
“I think Laura’s very naïve about the darker side of politics.” I added.
“Well, that’s one of the reasons I love her so much.” he said. “Now let’s understand that what I tell you
must be kept in secrecy and you’ll never reveal any of this without my approval. Understood?” I nodded
in agreement and wheeled him back to his bedroom. I made him comfortable, and this is what he told me.
Sturgis
Morales
In 1963 my father and Frank Sturgis met with David Morales, a contract killer
for the CIA, at a safe house in Miami. Morales explained that he had been picked
by Bill Harvey, a rogue and unstable CIA agent with a long history of black ops, for
a secret “off the board” assignment. It was Morales’ understanding that this project
was coming down through a chain of command starting with vice-President Lyndon
Johnson. Intrigued, my father listened on.
Veciana
Harvey had told Morales that he’d been brought in by Cord Meyer, a CIA agent
with international connections, who in turn was working with David Phillips and
Antonio Veciana. Phillips was CIA station chief in Mexico City and deeply
involved in the dangerous world of the Cuban underground. Veciana was the Cuban
founder of the violent Alpha 66 group, bent on overthrowing Castro by any means
necessary. All these men shared common ground: a hatred for Kennedy. He was
dangerous to their vision of America’s political future, and had abandoned them in
their time of need by refusing to bail out the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
Cord Meyer had his own reason to hate John Kennedy. His ex-wife Mary was one
of Kennedy’s numerous mistresses, and the gossip surrounding them infuriated
Cord. After the assassination, Mary Meyer was mysteriously murdered and her
personal diary stolen from her apartment, allegedly by James Angleton, chief spook
of counterintelligence. The rumor was that Mary Meyer had kept detailed notes about
Kennedy and perhaps had information about his death.
Of the men mentioned thus far, my father knew Cord Myer, David Phillips, Frank
Sturgis and Bill Harvey. He’d never met nor heard of Morales until that night and
claimed he’d never heard of Antonio Veciana. This seems unlikely. Alpha 66 was
the leading anti-Castro faction in the Cuban underground. David Atlee Phillips
worked with my father closely and was actually recruited into the CIA by him when
Phillips was working as a journalist in Santiago, Chile. When Lee Harvey Oswald
allegedly visited the Russian Consulate in Mexico City in the summer of ’63,
Phillips was station chief there. Although Phillips denied ever meeting Oswald, Antonio Veciana gave
evidence that he had met with Oswald and his case officer, a man known to him only as Maurice Bishop,
in Mexico City. Although unwilling to identify Phillips as Bishop, Veciana did provide a detailed
description of Bishop to a sketch artist and the resulting drawing looked very much like Phillips. I sat by
my father’s bedside and asked, “What happened then?”
“Well, I asked them what this assignment was.”
Harvey
Sturgis looked at Morales and then at my father and calmly said, “Killing that son of a bitch Kennedy.”
My father said he was stunned, but I don’t think he would have been that surprised; getting rid of Kennedy
was a common topic of conversation among the Cuban exiles. The truth of the matter is that Kennedy was
also hated by much of the military-industrial complex. He was viewed as soft on
Communism, and many factions of the government, the exiles, the Mafia, and millions
of racists were looking to get Kennedy out. My father then simply asked, “You guys
seem to have enough people, what is it you need me for?”
“Well,” Frank said, “you’re somebody we all look up to … we know how you
feel about the man. Are you with us?” My father looked around the room for a minute
and said, “Look, if Bill Harvey has anything to do with this, you can count me out.
The man is an alcoholic and a psycho.”
“You’re right,” laughed Frank, “but that SOB has the balls to do it.” The meeting
ended, and my father thought it nothing more than the usual “Death to Kennedy”
ranting.
Meyer
Phillips
The next day when my father and I were alone in the house, we discussed ways that
we could divulge certain information to Giammarco and Costner without giving
anything away. My father came up with a good solution: put it in code. With that plan
in mind, my father provided me with a hand-written diagram outlining the chain of
command, a list of people who were involved, and a descriptive time line of the
events that led to the “Big Event.” This was the code for JFK’s murder. The Greek
alphabet provided the code for most names, such as “Nu” for LBJ, “Beta” for Cord
Myer and so forth. He also wrote a few pages of background material on Sturgis,
Phillips, and Cord Myer. The reason for this was that he wanted me to type out a
descriptive outline in code form and fax it to Giammarco. Hopefully it would be
enough to initiate a formal agreement and a good faith payment. My father wanted
$150,000 to be deposited in an account. In view of the fact that Costner and
Giammarco had been dangling a multi-million dollar figure for a documentary, a
book, and DVD sales and rentals, I didn’t think that $150,000 was too much. I had to
wait until Laura was out of the house to type it up and fax it off.
Sarti
Before I returned to California I had one more conversation about JFK with
my father. He related to me that it was his understanding that Oswald had in
fact fired on the President that day, but there was also another man, a French
assassin, firing from the famous grassy knoll. The man’s name sounded
something like Sarte or Satre, and he may have been recruited for the job by
Cord Myer, who had connections to the Corsican underworld. In his own
diagram, my father outlined “French con. Man … grassy knoll.”
next 42s
Window of Truth
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