Roy
Hargraves was a member of the Interpen
(Intercontinental
Penetration Force)
group organized
by Gerry
P. Hemming.
Other
members included Loran
Hall,
Roy Hargraves, William
Seymour, Lawrence Howard, Ed Collins,
Bill Dempsey, Dick Whatley, Ramigo Arce, Ronald Augustinovich, Steve
Wilson, Joe Garman, Edmund Kolby, Howard K. Davis, James Arthur Lewis,
Dennis Harber, Ralph Schlafter, Manuel Aguilar and Oscar Del Pinto.
This group of experienced
soldiers were involved in training members of the anti-Castro groups
funded by the Central
Intelligence Agency in
Florida in the early 1960s. When the government began to crack down
on raids from Florida in 1962, Interpen set up a new training camp
in New Orleans. The group carried
out a series of raids on
Cuba in an attempt to undermine the government
of Fidel
Castro.
Hargraves
was responsible for training anti-Castro Cuban exiles. In 1963 Hargraves
led a team of exiles in a successful raid on Cuba.
After capturing two Cuban fishing boats Hargraves took them to the
Bahamas.
Hargraves,
working closely with Felipe
Vidal Santiago, carried out a series of raids on Cuba in the 1960s.
This involved a plan to to create a war with Cuba by simulating an
attack on Guantanamo Naval Base. He eventually moved to Los
Angeles where he was involved in organizing bomb attacks on the
Black Panthers and the SDS (Students
for a Democratic Society).
Some
researchers believe that a combination of Interpen members and anti-Castro
Cubans were involved in the assassination of John
F. Kennedy. This included Hargraves, James
Arthur Lewis,
Edwin
Collins,
Steve
Wilson, Gerry
P. Hemming,
David Morales,
Herminio
Diaz Garcia,
Tony
Cuesta, Eugenio
Martinez, Virgilio
Gonzalez,
Felipe
Vidal Santiago and William
(Rip) Robertson.
Roy
Hargraves
died in 2002.
Open
Debate on the Kennedy Assassination
(1)
Anthony
Summers,
Conspiracy (1980)
Gerry Hemming was
to become well known in the Sixties for his links with ClA-backed
anti-Castro exiles; but in January 1959, as American policy hung in
the balance, he was still working with Castro's people.... Hemming
explained that he believed Oswald's service at the Atsugi base made
him a likely recruit for intelligence... Hemming offers only his personal
opinion, based on a gut feeling at the time, that Oswald was involved
with one of the intelligence services when he met him in 1959.
(2)
Gerry
P. Hemming
interviewed by Anthony
Summers in 1979.
He (Lee Harvey Oswald)
was attempting to get in with the representatives of Castro's new
government, the consular officials in Los Angeles. And at that point
in time I felt that he was a threat to me and to those Castro people,
that he was an informant or some type of agent working for somebody.
He was rather young, but I felt that he was too knowledgeable in certain
things not to be an agent of law enforcement or of Military Intelligence,
or Naval Intelligence.
As a radar operator living
in a highly restricted area, he would have been fraternizing with
CIA contract employees. Sooner or later he would fraternize with a
case officer, one or more, that handled these contract employees.
He would be a prime candidate for recruitment because of job skills,
and expertise, and the fact that they could personally vouch for him
and give him a security clearance.
(3)
Thomas Bethall,
letter to Edward
Jay Epstein (25th
July, 1967)
We were recently
paid an unannounced visit by two Americans who were intimately connected
with Cuban exile groups in the summer of 1963. One, Gerry Patrick
Hemming, was even dressed in fatigues. The main purpose of their visit
seemed to be to point an authoritative finger of suspicion at Hall,
Howard and Seymour, (to an extent that we began to wonder if they
knew that others were involved and were trying to protect them.) Gerry
Patrick told me the following story which I thought might interest
you.
According to Gerry Patrick,
(he usually drops the Hemming,) there were in 1963 numerous "teams"
with paramilitary inclinations out to "get" Kennedy. Some
of these teams had been approached by wealthy entrepreneurs of the
H.L. Hunt type, (though not, I think, in fact H.L. Hunt) who were
interested in seeing the job done and even provided financial assistance.
Then, on November 22, 1963, Kennedy is shot down on the streets, ("Maybe
Oswald got there ahead of them," Patrick commented,) and then
for 2 years or so, there the story rests.
However, since all the
mounting controversy of the last 12 months, a startling new development
has occurred, according to Patrick. Recently, members of the "teams"
have been returning to their sponsors, taking credit for the assassination,
and at the same time requesting large additional sums of money so
that they won't be tempted to talk about it to anyone. In turn, the
sponsors have apparently been hiring Mafia figures to rid themselves
of these blackmailers.
Gerry Patrick admitted
that his own association with some of these extremist groups in 1963
has recently been causing him some concern. Incidentally, this may
very well be the true story behind the Del Valle murder in Miami,
reported this spring in the National Enquirer.
(4)
John
Kelin, review of Noel Twyman's book, Bloody Treason (1998)
Chapter 27 (is) a
long account of the author's interviews with and analysis of Gerry
Patrick Hemming. Hemming is a figure whose exact ties to the case
have always been unclear to me. But this is a fine example of Bloody
Treason being loaded with, if not new evidence, at least a lot
of information that has not been brought together like this before,
as far as I know.
Twyman says that unnamed
"prominent researchers" had warned him not to take Hemming
seriously or Bloody Treason would be "completely discredited."
But I am glad he did take him seriously, going so far as to meet with
him on a number of occasions and probe his story in depth. Hemming
is mentioned throughout the assassination literature. The author fills
in much of Hemming's background (he formed a paramilitary group as
a teenager) and demonstrates how his later activities, specifically
Hemming's group Interpen, may have involved him in the JFK assassination
plot(s). Hemming comes across as very credible in these pages.
(5)
Tom
Dunkin,
letter
to Richard
Billings (June,
1967)
First contact with No
Name Key group was in July or August, 1962, when small group was camping
on south shorts of Lake Okeechobee, near Pahokee-Belle Glade.
Among those present were
Howard K. Davis, identified as "car leader", Gerald Patrick
Hemming, aka "Jerry Patrick", Joe Garman, and Steve Wilson.
Group a bit publicity shy,
but in September, at request of WFLA-TV Tampa friend, Don Starr, tried
for footage on their activities. Met with Davis and Patrick in Miami
on Sat. Sept. 15, finally, around 2 a.m. Sunday Sept. 16, got approval.
Two carloads departed Miami
for No Name Key, including Davis, Patrick, Cuban known only as Pino,
among others. At the camp on No Name Key, Steve Wilson was in charge.
Other Americans there included Ed Collins, Bill Seymour, Canadian
Bill Dempsey, one individual identified as Finnish and in doubtful
status with Immigration, named Edmund Kolbe, also Roy Hargraves.
Number of men transported
by boat from No Name Sunday, Sept 16, for a demonstration which was
filmed on Big Pine Key, near No Name, by WFLA-TV sound crew, by myself
with film going to WTVT Tampa, plus stills which were used in Miami
Herald story on 20 September and in Glades County Democrat 21 September
1962.
Democrat article read by
a friend Larry Newman Jr., managing editor of Dayton (Ohio) Daily
News, resulting in request for a feature with fresh art, dated 15
October.
Returned to Miami on Saturday
20 October, or possibly Friday. At any rate, after beer-drinking session
in bar of Hotel Flagler, at which time Dennis Harber first encountered,
accompanied Roy Hargraves to tourist court on Flagler where he was
living with female know only as "Betty" whom he later reportedly
married.
Arrival at 2 a.m. brought
protest from Betty, who rather profanely instructed Hargraves to "get
the hell out of here and take your queer friend with you." Later
gratifyingly learned she had thought Harber was outside instead of
me.
She protested to Hargraves
that he was wasting his time with a revolution. He advised her he
had too much time invested to quit. We slept in my car outside Patrick's
headquarters, Federico's Guest House, 220 NW 8th Ave.
Howard K. Davis at that
time lived at 3350 NW 18th Terrace. He accompanied both trips to No
Name Key, and was reported leader of group. (Davis, interestingly,
was listed in Associated Press Florida wire story F56MH ( believed
to be March 24, 1960, but could have been 1959) as among 29 persons
whom the Miami News listed as banned from aircraft rental on Border
Patrol orders. Davis, and another American known only as "Art",
later identified as Arthur Gerteit, were check pilots for CBS-Rolando
Masferrer Haitian invasion "air Force" in November, 1966.
Gerteit was later identified in United Press International dispatch
from Tifton, Cal, early 1967 (Apr. 11) where Cuban arrested with bombs
as he rented an airplane, as "an FBI Decoy")
On second trip to No Name
on behalf of Dayton Daily News, Harber accompanied group, which included
Cuban known to me only by last name of Pino, who also had been present
at first filming session. Pino reportedly head of an exile group called
Christian Army of Anti-Communist Liberation (ECLA), and not quotable
by name at that time.
Harber was drunk on departure
from Miami, and took one pint of whisky with him, which he asked be
rationed to him slowly. I performed this task. Pino much amused at
Harber, whom he called "el profesor."
Harber at that time was
night clerk for the Flagler Hotel, 637 West Flagler, and also taught
English (to Cuban exile students) at a language school next door to
the hotel.
Harber was described by
Patrick at that time as having terminal cancer. At present, according
to last report from Patrick, Harber was serving sentenced in Mexico
for murder, undocumented to me.
Harber lived in a small
apartment behind Flagler Hotel, and shared it with various of the
Americans occasionally, including Seymour, Collins, and a Czeck lad
known as Karl Novak, who I don't recall seeing on No Name.
(6)
Tom
Dunkin, Intrigue
at "No Name" Key, Back Channels (Spring 1992)
Oliver Stone's
JFK seems to have achieved a double objective of being a moneymaker
and a political activity stimulus, one of the movie's directors avers.
Although he
denies any spooky associations, it's going to be interesting to see
if future release of classified files on the Kennedy assassination
pinpoints new intelligence community involvement, Roy Hargraves, a
man with some shadowy past connections, acknowledges.
Hargraves
denies any "contract CIA agent" links, although he was involved
in military training of Cuban exiles in Florida and Louisiana. British
author Anthony Summers hung the contract agent tag on members of the
International Penetration Force in his book, Conspiracy.
Summer's book
on the JFK assassination cites an FBI raid and the closing of a training
site near Lake Ponchatrain several months before Kennedy's death as
a possible contributing factor in the assassination.
Hargraves
recalls there are many unanswered questions in the Cuban exile aspect
of the Kennedy case. Early in New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's
probe, "Garrison accused us of training the ‘triangulation
team' of three alleged snipers at No Name Key."
No Name Key
was the principal Florida training site for the IPF freelance volunteer
instructors. "We testified before Garrison and convinced him
he was wrong," Hargraves recalls, "and we went to work for
him for about a month" early in Garrison's late 1966 and early
1967 investigation.
Garrison's,
whose two non-fiction books, A Heritage of Stone, and On the Trail
of The Assassins, were the basis of Stone's JFK said in them that
Kennedy's "ordering an end to the CIA's continued training of
anti-Castro guerrillas at the small, scattered camps in Florida and
north of Lake Ponchatrain "added to the disenchantment which
contributed to the President's murder.
Another interesting
aspect of the Garrison investigation, is that, according to Hargraves,
a Cuban exile investigator hired by Garrison" ripped off half
the budget" to handicap the probe. Bernardo de Torres, a Bay
of Pigs veteran, "was working for the CIA", Hargraves said,
during the Garrison investigation.
De Torres,
who has since disappeared from his former Miami haunts, also served
as a security consultant to local and federal law enforcement units
during President Kennedy's visit to Miami after Fidel Castro's release
of the prisoners from the Bay of Pigs invasion.
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