Bernardo De Torres was
born in Havana, Cuba, in 1934. He moved
to the United States in 1955 and later worked
as a private investigator in Miami.
De Torres was a strong opponent
of Fidel
Castro and during
the Bay of Pigs Operation was Chief
of Intelligence for Brigade 2506 where he worked under David
Sanchez Morales.
During the invasion he was captured and was not released until 24th
December, 1962.
In 1963 De Torres resumed work as a private investigator. According to Gerry P. Hemming De Torres worked for Charles Siragusa, who was involved in foreign assassinations.
On 25th September, 1963, Silvia Odio had a visit from three men who claimed they were from New Orleans. Two of the men, Leopoldo and Angelo, said they were members of the Junta Revolucionaria. The third man, Leon, was introduced as an American sympathizer who was willing to take part in the assassination of Fidel Castro. After she told them that she was unwilling to get involved in any criminal activity, the three men left.
The following day Leopoldo phoned Odio and told her that Leon was a former Marine and that he was an expert marksman. He added that Leon had said “we Cubans, we did not have the guts because we should have assassinated Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs”. It is believed that De Torres was Leopoldo and Edwin Collins was Angelo.
Bernardo De Torres and Edwin Collins in 1963
De Torres later helped Jim
Garrison in
his search to discover the people behind the assassination of John
F. Kennedy. Garrison
eventually discovered that Torres was undermining his investigation
and became convinced that he was really working for JM/WAVE,
the Central
Intelligence Agency station
in Miami.
After leaving the Garrison
investigation De Torres went to work for Mitch WerBell as an arms salesman
in Latin America.
In his book Death in Washington (1980) Donald Freed suggested that De Torres might have been involved in the death of Orlando Letelier. Peter Dale Scott argued in Deep Politics (1993) that De Torres had links to the CIA and the drug trade.
While writing The Last Investigation (1993) Gaeton Fonzi interviewed Rolando Otero. He told Fonzi that De Torres (named "Carlos" in the book) was one of a five men team from Miami who was involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
In his book Rearview Mirror (2001), William Turner claims that in 1977 the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) came to the conclusion that De Torres might have played a role in the death of Kennedy. He quotes a HUCA report that: "De Torres has pictures of Dealey Plaza in a safe-deposit box. These pictures were taken during the assassination of JFK".
In an article that appeared in Key West Citizen on 2nd September, 2005, Joan Mellen, claims that Angel Murgado was one of the three men who visited Sylvia Odio in Dallas . She also identified De Torres as "Leopoldo".
Bernardo De Torres now lives in Chile.
The photograph was taken
in Miami in September, 1963. Torres
is fourth from the right.
Operation
Tilt: Photographs
Open
Debate on the Kennedy Assassination
Forum Debate on Bernardo De Torres
Forum Debate on Angelo Murgado
Namebase: Bernardo De Torres
(1) William Turner, Rearview Mirror (2001)
Eladio del Valle's body was found in a Miami parking lot twelve hours after Ferrie's was discovered in New Orleans. The DA investigator who was searching for del Valle, Bernardo De Torres, turned out to be a suspicious character in his own right. A veteran of the Bay of Pigs, De Torres showed up on Garrison's doorstep early in the probe, saying he was a private detective from Miami who wanted to help, and dropping the name of Miami DA Richard Gerstein, a friend of Garrison's, as an opener. In retrospect, Garrison remembered that every lead De Torres developed ended up in a box canyon. He also learned that De Torres was forwarding reports on his investigation to the Miami CIA station. In 1977 the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) came to believe that De Torres might have played a role in Dallas. "De Torres has pictures of Dealey Plaza in a safe-deposit box," a HSCA report states. "These pictures were taken during the assassination of JFK." When hauled before the committee, De Torres denied any implication.
(2)
Larry Hancock, Someone
Would Have Talked (2003)
Bernardo De Torres is
not a name mentioned previously in this work. De Torres is known to
have associated with several of Hemming's Interpen members and he
was well acquainted with Frank Fiorini/Sturgis. De Torres also had
strong operational contacts in Mexico City all the way up to Miguel
Nazar Haro in Mexican police intelligence. Haro was later revealed
as a key individual in drug trafficking into the U.S. and has been
associated with both Sam Giancana and Richard Cain. An FBI report
on De Torres from the 1970's refers to his "high level contacts"
with the CIA, but this is otherwise unsubstantiated (unexplained is
perhaps a better description).
De Torres was not actually
investigated in regards to the JFK investigation until the time of
the House Select Committee on Assassinations when he came to the attention
of Gaeton Fonzi due to the revelations of Rolando Otero. Otero was
one of the sources quoted earlier describing an individual representing
himself as CIA who was spreading information about President Kennedy
within the Cuban community in Miami: "But prior to that they
had a rumor in the Cuban community, like Kennedy was a Communist.
Another Cuban would come to you who was working for one of those intelligence
groups, and he would tell you Kennedy is a Communist, he's against
us, he's messing up the whole cause."
Otero believed there was
a non-Castro conspiracy behind the assassination and he gave Fonzi
some solid leads on possible participants. These are presented in
detail in Fonzi's book The Last Investigation, including the orders
from Fonzi's supervisor that killed his effort to obtain solid incriminating
evidence by running surveillance on suspects. One of those suspects
was an individual still actively operating in the anti-Communist,
anti-Castro affairs of the 1970s, one Bernardo De Torres aka "Carlos."
De Torres was even reputed to have had photographs taken in Dallas
on November 22.
De Torres was a Bay of
Pigs veteran who had been held prisoner until December of 1962 (released
at virtually the same time as John Martino). De Torres went on to
become the military coordinator for Brigade 2506 after the assassination.
However, according to
Jim Garrison, De Torres became involved in the Garrison New Orleans
investigation (as did Roy Hargraves and Gerry Hemming) and apparently
diverted Garrison to a certain extent as well as aggressively re-introducing
Castro suspicions. He did that with his insistent media promotion
of a story pertaining to Secret Service fears of a Castro hit team
in Miami during Kennedy's visit there shortly before the Texas trip.
Between February 18 and
February 22, the Garrison investigation received considerable unwanted
publicity, much of it based upon inquiries within the Miami Cuban
community as well as the involvement of Bernardo De Torres. De Torres
was quite visible in his comments and declarations, eventually leading
the whole matter off in a direction pointing at a threat against John
Kennedy from Castro agents.
(3)
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.
(4) Gerry P. Hemming, Education Forum (24th September, 2005)
I identified Bernie de Torres even after both Gene Propper & Gaeton Fonzi [held to NDAs they signed] used code-words when referring to him. [see "Labyrinth" ("TB") & "Carlos" (The Last Investigation) for reference] One of our guys was dispatched to Dealey Plaza that week by Colonel Arturo Espaillat, who was then based in Montreal. A month later, he recounted said "mission" to me after too many beers, and was furious at having been used once again by Robert Emmett Johnson, the "Raul" of the MLK, Jr. matter.
(5) Joan Mellen, Key West Citizen (2nd September, 2005)
As Mrs. Odio testified before the Warren Commission, she was told the next day by one of her visitors that Oswald had remarked, "President Kennedy should have been assassinated after the Bay of Pigs, and some Cubans should have done that.... it is so easy to do it."
The Warren Commission lacked a context to evaluate this incident because it had not been informed of the C.I.A.'s attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro, now a matter of public record, and a matter to be concealed, unlike today when a Pat Robertson can openly advocate the assassination of a foreign leader. Had the Odio incident been explored fully, some uncomfortable truths might have emerged, truths that could have modified the conclusions of the Warren Report, just as Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer's information, tested, might have altered the findings of the 9/11 Commission, and the biography of Mohammed Atta been more thoroughly researched.
In my own study of the Kennedy assassination for my book, "A Farewell to Justice," I discovered that parallel to these secret efforts by the C.I.A., Robert F. Kennedy was organizing his own clandestine plots to assassinate Fidel Castro. The sources are the released minutes of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the Church Committee papers, and the Cubans who worked closely with the Attorney General.
Bobby's instruction to his special team was twofold. It was to discover a means of ridding the Kennedy administration of the Communist thorn in its side "ninety miles from home." It was also to protect his brother from the murderous impulses of an anti-Castro Cuban incensed by John F. Kennedy's refusal to support the invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.
Among those closest to Bobby Kennedy was a man still living in Florida today, Angelo Murgado, who, during the summer of 1963, traveled on Bobby's behalf to New Orleans. Moving among, as he puts it, "Castro's agents, double agents, and Cubans working for the C.I.A., he hoped to "neutralize" a future assassin.
In New Orleans, Mr. Murgado met Lee Harvey Oswald, who resided there in the city of his birth from April to September 1963. Hitherto unreported is that Bobby Kennedy became aware of Oswald - before the assassination.
Bobby even discovered that Oswald was working for the F.B.I., a fact brought to the attention of the Warren Commission as well, and subsequently confirmed for the House Select Committee on Assassinations in the late 1970s by an F.B.I. employee, William Walter, who viewed the Bureau's copious files on Oswald at the New Orleans field office when Oswald was arrested that August for a staged fracas on Canal Street where he was handing out "Fair Play for Cuba" leaflets.
"If the F.B.I. is controlling him," Bobby reasoned, according to Mr. Murgado, "he's no problem." Operating alone, covertly, suspecting a threat to his brother, Bobby underestimated who Oswald was and ceased to make him a major target of his concern. Bobby knew "something was cooking in New Orleans," Angel Murgado says, New Orleans that harlot city now destroyed by flood in a catastrophe of Biblical proportion, New Orleans that sin city where the Kennedy assassination incubated. But Bobby held back. He urged "caution," and apparently he did not share what he knew about Oswald with those who should have been expected to help him protect the President.
Angelo Murgado and a fellow veteran of the Bay of Pigs, in September, were the men who traveled with Oswald from New Orleans to Dallas where they visited Sylvia Odio. (Mrs. Odio testified that the three traveled together although Angelo says that when he and Leopoldo, who drove from New Orleans together, arrived at Sylvia Odio's, Oswald was already there, sitting in the apartment. That "Leopoldo" and Angelo both knew Oswald, there is no doubt). Their objective, or so Angelo thought, was to search for help in their anti-Castro efforts; they talked to Mrs. Odio about buying arms to overthrow Castro. Angelo believed he could trust his companion, referred to in the Warren Report as "Leopoldo," because not only was he a fellow veteran of the Bay of Pigs, but his brother was running for mayor of Miami. He was respectable.
Out of Angelo's hearing, "Leopoldo" phoned Mrs. Odio the next day to tell her how "Leon" Oswald had talked about the need to murder President Kennedy. "Leon" is "kind of nuts," Leopoldo said, a conclusion reflected in the Warren Report.
Placing Oswald in the company of so close an associate of Bobby Kennedy, in an incident that points to foreknowledge of the assassination, created a trap that would silence Bobby forever, rendering him powerless to make public what he knew about the death of his brother. He asked his aide, Frank Mankiewicz, whether "any of our people were involved," and, Mankiewicz told me, he thought, did you think there might be? The conversation stopped there.
Angelo had been betrayed by a companion he believed he could trust, a man not so much dedicated to the overthrow of Fidel Castro, as Angelo believed, as involved in arranging for Oswald to be blamed for the murder of the President, what the Odio visit was really about. The men who visited Mrs. Odio are identified here for the first time in print.
"Leopoldo" was Bernardo de Torres, who testified before the HSCA with immunity granted to him by the C.I.A., so that he was not questioned about the period of time leading up to the Kennedy assassination, as the C.I.A. instructed the Committee on what it could and could not ask this witness. Both the Warren Commission and the HSCA buried the anti-Castro theme, and never explored what Bobby might have known. It might be that the assassination of President Kennedy could have been prevented, just as the apprehension of the people uncovered by the Able Danger team, aided by the F.B.I., had it been granted the opportunity, might have altered the course of the 9/11 tragedy.
That Robert F. Kennedy not only knew about Lee Harvey Oswald, but also viewed him as a danger, is alone shocking. That Bobby put Oswald in New Orleans under surveillance, only to conclude that Oswald posed no threat because he was "just" involved in assassination plots against Fidel Castro, is a chilling precedent for the disasters we may continue to expect from a freewheeling approach to public accountability by government commissions that appear to be willing to keep the citizenry ignorant, and hence vulnerable to attack.
(6) Gerry P. Hemming, Education Forum (11th November, 2005)
De Torres set up a lot of hits, and the problem was that they mostly favored Fidel's people. He approached me to take out Torriente for $25K, but I said that domestic work on noncombatants wasn't my line - and moreover, I questioned exactly what was, and who had, the beef against this guy?
He did NOT call Sylvia ever, and Angelo never hinted at same. Mellen alleges that the call was made behind Murgado's back. Who is the source. Not one of the compartmented guys & gals on the Odio matter have ever talked to anybody, save their "cutouts" to RFK's teams. These folks refused to discuss these matters with anybody else but me (and on a limited basis). They didn't even want to speak with others they knew or suspected to be amongst the compartmented elements. And they dogmatically and absolutely refused to talk to talk to any reporter, writer - even if the party was from the CIA/I.G.s office, and especially not with any CIA elements!!
So where does this "Bernie called back to Sylvia" really come from?
The inside scoop of Sylvia, et al. and especially any relationship with a young priest - can't be clearly answered, not by her or the others. And moreover, she wouldn't be interested in finding out either. Even when people believe that they are participating in something patriotic and noble - when the final results are kept secret, most non-operators feel used - and/or betrayed. They have a hard time grasping that it is safer for all concerned - NOT to know intricate details. However, they sure as hell feel that it is not normal when when the "Mushroom" syndrome arrives.
De Torres taking on a JFK type task, not likely - even if it was a logistics, commo, or coordinator tasking, he likes living too well - and he would avoid an Op which either might go sour, or as happens in the drug trade, you expect to be paid in Silver [Plata] but in the end you are paid in Plomo [lead]!
When an asset doesn't have a clue as to what is really going on, later on and down the road, they lose interest in finding out! Discovering that you have been "used" is a bitter experience.
Mellen wouldn't take NO for an answer, and just couldn't (or wouldn't) comprehend that most of these folks have no interest in rehashing the unknown/uncertain past. This is primarily due to a fear that: they will be linked to something bad, or worse, discover that they had been used like a goat. And they sure as hell don't want those close to them to discover their past (good or bad). It causes rifts, jealousies, and recriminations within the extended family - especially when there exist distinct opposing beliefs.
Angelo is of the same mind set as the rest, and if I hadn't believed that it was time to set history straight, and give some overdue credit - I would have never pounded him to open up just a little bit. Only on two occasions has he ever done so. Now look at what the response has been. A bunch of "Bookies"; who have never been there nor done that. "Talking the Talk, without ever having even been close to The Walk !!"
Don't bother asking a veteran grunt; they don't talk "outside of class" - and operators - If you ever find a real one, he/she won't be a conversant one.
|
Forty
years after John Kennedy's murder in Dallas, the event remains
a part of the American conscious. Polls show the majority of
the public still believes there was some sort of conspiracy
involved in his assassination and the average person thinks
it just might be exposed once the government releases all the
confidential documents some day. Those that deny the conspiracy
question scoff at all this, stating that no conspiracy could
have been good enough that somebody would not have talked after
all this time. After all we all know even successful criminals
feel compelled to tell someone, sometime. Someone Would Have
Talked tackles that objection head on, examining a number of
examples of individuals who talked when they shouldn't have.
Some talked before the assassination and some afterwards. These
are not the people who sold their stories or whose names you
would see in the tabloids. These are real people, many of them
involved in the secret war against Castro and the U.S. Government
project intended to assassinate him. You find their remarks
in reports made to Police, the FBI and Secret Service. Reports
which were never addressed in any coordinated or proactive criminal
investigation. The records have been released, people have talked,
witnesses have finally revealed the elements of both the conspiracy
and the cover-up, the real history is here in Someone Would
Have Talked and the 1,400 pages of reference exhibits that come
on this CD with it. (Larry Hancock, JFK Lancer Publications)
|
Someone
Would Have Talked
Available from Amazon Books
(order below)
